“Let’s Not Ever Do That Again”: SC Gov. Nikki Haley; The U.S. Has ‘Never’ Passed Laws Based On Race And Religion — Um…
Gov. Nikki Haley’s (R-SC) decision to speak out against Donald Trump and other anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim forces in the Republican Party is certainly laudable — but her awareness of American history needs a little work.
The Hill reports:
She said Wednesday that Trump’s call for a temporary ban on Muslim immigration to the country is what compelled her to speak out.
“You know, the one thing that got me I think was when he started saying ban all Muslims,” she said.
“We’ve never in the history of this country passed any laws or done anything based on race or religion,” she added. “Let’s not start that now.”
Of course, the state of South Carolina is itself a grand exhibit of America’s history of racially-based laws. It was the state where the Civil War began, as the first state to secede in the South’s effort to preserve and expand the institution of slavery, and it was where the first shots of the war were fired at Fort Sumter.
During the Jim Crow era, the state was also home to Strom Thurmond and the Dixiecrat rebellion of 1948, a political mobilization for segregation that rallied against the emerging post-World War II civil rights movement.
To be sure, both South Carolina and the United States as a whole have made progress, climbing upward from these tainted beginnings to build a great country. But it sure does sound odd to hear a political leader say that we’ve “never in the history of this country” passed such odious laws — and, “Let’s not start that now.”
A better thing to say would’ve been: “Let’s not ever do that again.” That sort of myth-busting — against the idea of America as not just a great country, but a perfect one — would, in fact, be the right way to avoid doing it again.
By: Eric Kleefeld, The National Memo, January 13, 2015
“Denying Extremists Another Recruiting Opportunity”: Kid Gloves For Homegrown Extremists Are Part Of A Strategy
Soon after a bunch of white guys with guns holed up at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in protest against the federal government, wags took to social media to deride them.
“Y’all Qaeda,” “YeeHawdists” and “Vanilla ISIS” are some of the clever put-downs circulating on Twitter.
Critics also decried what they perceive as a double standard in the seeming lack of response from law enforcement. If the gun-toting men were black or Muslim, went the typical argument, they would have incurred the full, militarized wrath of law enforcement.
So it might appear, but if you think law enforcement agencies are being deferential out of fear, you couldn’t be more wrong. Be very grateful that federal officials know exactly whom they are dealing with: troublemakers just itching for an excuse to claim that the federal government provoked them first.
As of this writing, things are still calm at the wildlife refuge, nearly 30 miles from the nearest town. But this bunch has itchy trigger fingers and enough conspiracy-addled emotion to take their standoff to the next level of danger.
In this desolate location, these guys are more likely a danger to each other than to the local population — although they have irked nearby residents and the Burns Paiute Tribe, who deem the siege a desecration of sacred land.
Ammon Bundy — the son of the Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who had his own standoff with federal agents in 2014 over $1 million in unpaid grazing fees — and the other men occupying the wildlife refuge splintered off from a protest of several hundred people, a gathering that drew Oregonians concerned about longstanding issues with rules for land overseen by U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
Bundy is from Arizona. How’d he wind up in Oregon? He smelled an opportunity for the limelight.
Bundy calls his Oregon crew Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, and it includes his brother and an Arizona man, Jon Ritzheimer, who has gained renown of late for staging armed anti-Muslim protests.
The presence of Ritzheimer and other idiosyncratic “patriots” led the Daily Beast to dub the occupation Wingnut Woodstock. These anti-government activists have come out of the woodwork at a time when some Americans have become hyper-focused on Islamic terrorists, Syrian refugees and other perceived threats to the nation.
Indeed, America faces multiple threats, including homegrown extremists. This month, Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization reviled by extremists, issued a report noting that the number of militia groups in the U.S. leapt to 276 from 202 in 2014.
In October, the Justice Department announced a new office to focus entirely on homegrown extremists. In doing so, the department acknowledged that it had taken its eye off the ball domestically, consumed as it has been with threats of overseas terrorists since 9/11.
Law enforcement authorities closer to the street haven’t been as easily distracted. A June survey by the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security at Duke University found that police were highly aware of the homegrown threat. Surveying nearly 400 departments, it found that 74 percent were more concerned about anti-government extremists than the possibility of an attack inspired by or actually the work of al-Qaida or the Islamic State.
A colleague of mine, Kansas City Star reporter Judy L. Thomas, has spent decades chronicling such movements. She has written extensively on Posse Comitatus, Christian identity groups, white nationalists, militias and now the growth of the sovereign citizen movement, loose networks that see the government as dangerously corrupt and out of control.
Part of the problem, Thomas said, is that we don’t have a consistent definition of domestic terrorism. And the term is sometimes abused for political gain. It can be difficult to determine who is a mere conspiracy theorist with an arsenal and who is likely actually to act out his revolutionary fantasies violently.
The homegrown extremist groups often see themselves as soldier-saviors of America, armed and ready to do battle with the evil federal government that is taking away constitutional rights. Thomas’ sources, including past federal agents, say that much was learned after Waco, where more than 75 people died, as well as in other encounters with militia members. Authorities prefer methods to defuse rather than spark confrontation. That will surely save lives, in Oregon and elsewhere. And it will, one hopes, deny extremists another recruiting opportunity.
Ritzheimer said this in a widely viewed video he posted online from Oregon: “I am 100 percent willing to lay my life down to fight against tyranny in this country.” Authorities are taking him at his word — and not giving him his chance for martyrdom.
By: Mary Sanchez, Opinion-Page Columnist for The Kansas City Star; The National Memo, January 8, 2015
“The Bundy Caliphate”: Ammon Bundy Starts Wingnut Woodstock in Oregon
Ammon Bundy’s band of Oregon militiamen include anti-government wingnuts who have fought the feds on behalf of ranchers before, and one activist whose anti-Muslim rhetoric sparked warnings from the FBI.
On Saturday, armed extremists seized buildings at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge—300 miles southeast of Portland—to protest prison time for Dwight and Steven Hammond, father-and-son ranchers convicted of arson for torching more than 100 acres of federal land, allegedly to cover up poaching.
The occupiers are led by Ammon Bundy, the son of Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher whose 2014 standoff with the feds made national headlines. The elder Bundy was fighting the Bureau of Land Management, which came to seize his “trespass cattle” that were grazing on public land. Right-wing militias rushed to defend Cliven, and authorities eventually retreated.
Now some of the same anti-government provocateurs are heeding the call to head to Oregon, where Ammon and about 20 others split from a peaceful demonstration on Saturday and drove 30 miles to the wildlife refuge’s headquarters, which were closed for the holidays.
The militiamen took up posts on the snow-covered desert to protest what they call the federal government’s illegal ownership of Harney County land, which they believe should belong to local ranchers.
“I didn’t come here to shoot. I came here to die,” one militiaman told Oregon Public Broadcasting reporter Amanda Peacher. The camouflage-clad man would only identify himself as “Captain Moroni,” Peacher said in a tweet.
While it appeared police didn’t take the bait, the men nonetheless stood guard at a tower typically used to watch for range fires, The Oregonian reported.
Les Zaitz, a reporter for The Oregonian, estimated about 20 people were stationed at the refuge’s bunkhouse—where women were cooking lunch—as well as at the work building and fire tower. In tweets, he described the scene as “calm, quiet, [and] no signs of damage.”
As the story unfolded Sunday, and the militants released online videos, national news and social media spectators feared violence—and observers challenged news outlets for describing the armed occupation as “peaceful.”
Not everyone in rural Oregon was happy to see the militia. Signs reading, “No Bundy Caliphate—Take your Hate Somewhere Else!” and “Protect the Blue—Militia Go Home” were posted on roads heading into Burns. Haney County schools, which were scheduled to reopen on Monday, will be closed all week because of the protest, authorities said.
At the refuge, men bundled in winter jackets and hunting camouflage milled about the parking lot, and a parked pickup truck blocked the gate. Several men, some strapped with knives and sidearms, refused to speak to a Daily Beast reporter at the scene.
While most participants appeared friendly and harmless, a few have reputations within hate groups such as the Three Percenters and the Oath Keepers, The Daily Beast has learned.
On Sunday afternoon, federal officials told Portland’s KOIN 6 that the FBI would work with local law enforcement to end the takeover.
The Harney County sheriff’s office released a statement Sunday vowing to keep citizens safe.
“These men came to Harney County claiming to be part of militia groups supporting local ranchers, when in reality these men had alternative motives to attempt to overthrow the county and federal government in hopes to spark a movement across the United States,” Sheriff David Ward said, according to OPB.
Ammon Bundy said his motley crew planned to stay there indefinitely, KOIN 6 reported.
“We’re planning on staying here for years, absolutely,” Bundy told KOIN 6. “This is not a decision we’ve made at the last minute.”
Indeed, Jon Ritzheimer, a former Marine and Arizona militia activist, released a teary-eyed YouTube video days before the event, on Dec. 31, asking his children to be good while he was gone, before railing against “the oppression and tyranny” in Oregon.
“Your daddy swore an oath… to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, and that’s why he couldn’t be with you on Christmas,” Ritzheimer said. “That’s why I can’t be with you on New Year’s.
“I am 100 percent willing to lay my life down, to fight against tyranny in this country,” Ritzheimer later said in the video, in which he’s sitting behind the wheel of a truck.
The Iraq War veteran concluded: “No matter what happens, no matter what lies are pushed out, just know that I stood for something. Don’t let it be in vain.”
A fellow extremist posted a video of Ritzheimer at the refuge, where he claimed to be “armed with the Constitution and a camera.”
“We will not fire unless fired upon, but we will stand and defend the Constitution,” Ritzheimer said.
In May 2015, Ritzheimer organized an anti-Muslim protest at a Phoenix mosque that drew 250 people, many of them armed, and invited them to draw cartoons of the prophet Muhammad following the Garland, Texas shooting.
After the Dallas-area attack, Ritzheimer began walking near the mosque waving an American flag and wearing a “Fuck Islam” T-shirt. He also tried raising $10 million on GoFundMe last summer, after claiming his life was being threatened because of his protests and that his family had to go into hiding. (The donation site came down as soon as the media spotted it.)
In October 2015, the bigot helped spur more than 20 anti-Muslim protests across the country called the “Global Rally for Humanity.
One month later, the FBI issued a warning to local authorities about Ritzheimer after he published a video of himself brandishing a gun and claiming he was heading to Hancock, New York to confront a Muslim group.
Ritzheimer was targeting Muslims of America, publisher of the The Islamic Post, which had called the Marine an “American Taliban,” the New York Daily News reported.
“Fuck you Muslims. We’re gonna stop at virtually every mosque along the way, flip them off and tell them to get fucked,” Ritzheimer says before brandishing his weapon.
The hate-mongerer is affiliated with the Three Percenters militia group, which takes its name from the mythical statistic that only 3 percent of American colonists supposedly fought in the war for independence.
Other rightwing activists descending on Oregon include Blaine Cooper, who at a 2013 town hall event told Sen. John McCain he’d have him arrested and tried for treason over his support of intervention in Syria.
Ryan Payne, an Army vet who claimed to organize militia snipers to target federal agents during Cliven Bundy’s Nevada standoff, was also present.
Payne once told the Missoula Independent he took charge “as a kind of on-the-ground commander.”
“We locked them down,” Payne said of the BLM agents. “We had counter-sniper positions on their sniper positions. We had at least one guy—sometimes two guys—per BLM agent in there. So, it was a complete tactical superiority… If they made one wrong move, every single BLM agent in that camp would’ve died.”
Brand Thornton, a political activist from Las Vegas who is now at the wildlife refuge, told The Daily Beast he was a member of the Southern Nevada Militia, which on its Facebook claims not to identify with racist, violent, or anti-government groups.
Thornton said he’s tried getting the word out about the Hammonds’ alleged plight for months. The weekend’s mission is “not haphazard at all; it’s very, very calculated,” he said.
“Whatever it takes,” Thornton told The Daily Beast. “I think we’re going to be here for at least two months, and possibly six months, that’s what I’m figuring. There’s a lot we got to do, we got a lot of education, educating people.”
Meanwhile, Arizona rancher LaVoy Finicum, Cliven Bundy’s neighbor across the border who participated in the 2014 Bundy ranch standoff, told a reporter on Sunday that he’ll stay in Oregon “until the Constitution is upheld.”
The cowboy-hat enthusiast, who like Cliven, apparently refuses to pay grazing fees to the government, told The Daily Beast he “came up here just to support the Hammond family” because the Bundys did.
“When the Bundys came here, I said, ‘Well I rode with them once, I’ll ride with them again,’” Finicum told The Daily Beast.
“It’s atrocious what they’ve done,” he said. “How can you throw them in prison for something that happened 11 years ago. They served their prison time, and now they get thrown back in jail for the same thing again. That’s unconscionable.
“Let me be very clear, this is to be peaceful,” Finicum said. “We have no intent of pointing a gun at anybody, and why would they come and point a gun at us?
“These are just some rock buildings. This isn’t about the buildings, this is about issues, this is about ideas, it’s about the Constitution. If [we] weren’t [armed], they’d roll in here and taze us all and zip-tie us and be done by supper time.”
The Hammonds said they’d turn themselves in for their prison terms on Monday. The father, who has already served three months, and the son, who’s served a year in prison, said they lit the fires to reduce invasive plants and to protect their land from wildfires. Meanwhile prosecutors said that the duo set the fires to cover up their deer-poaching on federal lands.
In October, a judge ruled their prison terms were too short under federal law and ordered them to return to the clink for about four years.
Still, the Hammond family appeared to distance themselves from the militia antics. Dwight Hammond’s wife, Susan, told OPB, “I don’t even know what ‘occupying the refuge’ means.
“I don’t really know the purpose of the guys who are out there,” she said. “I kind of understand where they come from, as far as their priorities in life.”
By: Anna Bird and Kate Briquelet, The Daily Beast, January 3, 2016
“The Strategic Vision Of The Jihadist Leadership”: ISIS Assumes We’re Stupid — And Our Useful Idiots Keep Proving It
To the delight of ISIS propagandists, our homegrown useful idiots never stop being usefully idiotic. Today, the Center for American Progress posted a bracing column by Sally Steenland and Ken Gude that demonstrates politely but unmistakably how anti-Muslim and anti-refugee conduct by Western politicians fits into the strategic vision of the jihadist leadership.
The enemy has showed us quite clearly what not to do, expecting that we will continue to do it anyway because we’re bigoted and stupid. So far, they’ve been proved right.
Given the recent video threats by ISIS against New York City and Washington, the following is especially timely, especially concerning the foiled plot to detonate a car bomb in Times Square several years ago. But the entire column by Steenland and Gude is well worth reading — and sharing with your elected representatives:
The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, is pursuing a strategy explicitly designed to provoke hostility toward innocent Muslims in Western society in order to radicalize these communities and recruit them to their cause. Listening to the American political debate in the wake of the tragic terrorist attacks in Paris, that strategy may be working. Islamophobic rants are both morally offensive and factually inaccurate and play right into the hands of our terrorist enemies.
ISIS is not hiding its objectives. In its publications, it talks of forcing the world into two camps by “destroy[ing] the grayzone” between itself and the forces aligned against it. For ISIS, the grayzone is inhabited by those who have yet to commit to one side in its clash of civilizations. In the February edition of its official magazine Dabiq, an ISIS writer outlined a plan to compel “the crusaders [the West] to actively destroy the grayzone themselves” by generating anti-Muslim hysteria in the wake of terrorism. Attacks such as those in Paris are designed to get Western governments to alienate their Muslim populations and push them toward ISIS….
Here is the truth: Rather than being a threat to national security, Muslim American communities have helped prevent more than one-third of Al Qaeda terrorist plots in the United States since 9/11. The most famous case is that of the 2010 plot to bomb Times Square in which Alioune Niass identified the car bomb and alerted police. In 2003, tips from the local Muslim community led the FBI to arrest a group that was conducting military-style training in northern Virginia.
By: Joe Conason, Editor in Chief, Editor’s Blog, Featured Post, The National Memo, November 19, 2015
“The Fox News Apology Tour”: It’s Interesting To Observe What They Are And Aren’t Sorry About
What a week for Fox News! The “fair and balanced” network was transformed into the “I’m totally sorry” network after we were treated to four—yes, four—on-air apologies from different Fox personalities.
First, we had “The Five’s” Greg Gutfeld and Eric Bolling mock a female air force pilot with some really sexist jokes. Now, they probably thought no one would care because she’s Arab. But luckily it seems that the outrage against sexism applies to women of all ethnicities and races.
Bolling and Gutfeld’s comments came during a discussion of the United Arab Emirate’s Major Mariam Al Mansouri, who flew missions as part of the United States-led coalition bombing ISIS. Al Mansouri might be heralded in the UAE for being the nation’s first female fighter, but to the comedy duo of Bolling and Gutfeld, she’s just a punch line.
Gutfeld quipped: “After she bombed it, she couldn’t park it.” (Referring to her plane.) And then Bolling, whom I often find funny although he’s trying to be serious, tried to top Gutfeld with the crack: “Would that be considered boobs on the ground or no?”
The backlash was swift. Even some of these two frat boys’ colleagues were upset. And then it built as Americans who had served in the military voiced their objections.
The result was Gutfeld and Bolling offered what appear to be sincere apologies. In fact, Bolling offered two different ones on air, so he singlehandily represents 50 percent of the Fox News apologies for the week.
And then we have a comment that comes under the category of not trying to be funny but trying to see how much red meat you can offer viewers. Last Saturday, Fox News regular guest Jonathan Hoenig commented in essence that the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II was a good thing for America with his boastful statement: “The last war this country won, we put Japanese Americans in internment camps.”
Why would that even come up, you ask? Because the four panelists—anchored by King of Comedy Eric Bolling—were talking about how law enforcement must absolutely, positively profile Muslim Americans. During their discussion regaling the joys of profiling a minority group, Bolling offered a comment that truly showcased his talent for nuance: “We know how to find the terrorists among us: profile, profile, profile.”
Hoenig, apparently wanting to continue being booked on Fox News, felt the need to up the anti-Muslim ante. Picking up where Bolling left off, Hoenig remarked, “but aren’t all Muslims suspect…given the history of Islamic threats towards this country?” That’s when Hoenig touted the upside of interning Japanese Americans, with his point apparently being it’s a possible model to follow today with Muslim Americans.
Cue another backlash. This time it was led by civil rights groups and even members of Congress like Rep. Mike Honda of California, who as a child had been held in an internment camp. Over the weekend Hoenig went on Fox News and offered an apology for his remark that interning Japanese Americans was something we should be proud of.
Look, we all make mistakes—not only in real life but also on TV. In fact, I have made jokes/comments on television and on Twitter that have landed me in hot water. Consequently, I have apologized on more than one occasion for my own idiotic remarks.
But Fox always manages to push the boundaries and make things just a little surreal. So it was that in the same week these Fox “journalists” were dishing out a bevy of apologies, several different Fox shows slammed President Obama for what they dubbed his “apology tour” after his speech Wednesday at the United Nations.
Even apologist Greg Gutfeld slammed this so-called apology tour. You see, the Fox News peeps were upset that Obama would go before the United Nations and mention the protests that had taken place in Ferguson, Missouri. Apparently the geniuses at Fox believe that the world leaders have no idea that we have racial problems in the United States.
But pointing out hypocrisy at Fox News is like pointing out gaffes by Sarah Palin. Too easy. Of course, Fox News could have just stuck to its guns and not apologized. Bolling could have simply gone on air and exclaimed, “Hey, we are Fox Fucking News, we don’t apologize for shit!” Ratings would have shot to the heavens.
However, what I find more interesting than the Fox News apologies is the recent comments made by Fox News personalities that they would not apologize for.
First, there was the now well-known and awful remark a few weeks ago by Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade after viewing the video of Ray Rice in the elevator punching his then-fiancée Janay Palmer in the face. Kilmeade responded to the horrific image with the joke: “I think the message is, take the stairs.”
While Kilmeade walked back the comment the next day after an uproar, he did not apologize. Instead, he said, “Some people feel like we were taking this situation too lightly. We are not.” No, you did—you told a joke about it. That’s the very definition of taking something lightly!
And the second remark came during the Japanese internment conversation. While Hoenig apologized for seeing the upside to internment, no one thought it was important to apologize for advocating that we should tear up the U.S. Constitution and treat American Muslims differently simply because of our faith.
Not that I expected a Fox News anchor to apologize for that comment—after all, this is the same network that not only trashes Muslims almost daily, it gives the nation’s biggest anti-Muslim bigots a platform to spew hate.
So what have we learned? Fox News is a special, almost magical place. It’s a world where jokes about sexism are apologized for but ones about domestic violence are not. It’s a place where minorities are degraded and maligned for fun. And it’s the highest-rated cable news channel in the nation.
By: Dean Obeidalla, The Daily Beast, October 1, 2014
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