The Fear: As Groundless Then As It Is Now

Two children at the Minidoka Relocation Center, Idaho, in 1943

“President Franklin D. Roosevelt felt compelled to sequester Japanese foreign nationals after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and it appears that the threat of harm to America from ISIS now is just as real and serious as that from our enemies then.”

-- Roanoke, Va., mayor David Bowers, explaining why the United States should reject the entry of refugees from Syria 

This remark, uttered this morning by a Democratic mayor to justify his order suspending all aid from his city in the effort to resettle Syrian refugees, is more deeply revealing than the man who uttered it might think. If nothing else, looking back at the internment casts a very dark shadow on our current behavior -- as it should.

First of all, it has to be pointed out that Bowers' remark is profoundly ignorant: Among the 110,000 or so people of Japanese descent rounded up into concentration camps by the U.S. government during World War II, some 70,000 of them were American citizens. Of the 40,000 non-citizens who were shipped off, the vast majority were (usually elderly) immigrants who had been in the United States for over 30 years, and who were only non-citizens because U.S. law at the time actually forbade Japanese immigrants from naturalizing. So these people were "Japanese nationals" only in a very technical sense.

More importantly, though, the now-largely-settled historical consensus is that the supposed threat posed by Japanese Americans living on the West was virtually nonexistent, and cannot in retrospect even remotely serve as justification for stripping over an entire class of citizens and their parents of their civil rights, based on their ethnicity, and rounding them up into concentration camps.

It is this nakedly racist component of the internment episode that makes Bowers' lame justification so striking, because it appears to be an endorsement of such policies. And using FDR as a fig leaf in this regard is similarly lame, because we know now that, sainted president though he may be, Roosevelt was also a deep-seated racist when it came to the Japanese, and was an avid subscriber to the patently racist "Yellow Peril" conspiracy theories that provided the grist for so much of the anti-Japanese mill of the times.

Here's a sampling of FDR's thoughts about the Japanese, from an editorial he wrote for the Macon Telegraph in 1925:

Japanese immigrants are not capable of assimilation into the American population. Anyone who has traveled in the Far East knows that the mingling of Asiatic blood with European or American blood produces, in nine cases out of ten, the most unfortunate results...In this question, then, of Japanese exclusion from the United States, it is necessary only to advance the true reason -- the undesirability of mixing the blood of the two peoples. This attitude would be fully understood in Japan, as they would have the same objection to Americans migrating to Japan in large numbers.

Unfortunately, Japanese exclusion has been urged for many other reasons -- their ability to work for and live on much smaller wages than Americans -- their willingness to work for longer hours, their driving out of native Americans from certain fruit growing or agricultural areas. The Japanese themselves do not understand these arguments and are offended by them.

Anti-Japanese sentiments used in a 1920s
political campaign in California.

Moreover, it is abundantly clear that the racist stereotypes to which not only FDR but most of the rest of the nation subscribed were in fact prerequisites for the internment. Americans believed that Japanese-Americans would betray them because racist propaganda had been assuring them of this for the preceding half-century. This was especially clear in the nature of the hysteria that swept the Pacific Coast after Pearl Harbor, which (as I previously described) was not only unusually vicious, but constantly referenced these well-established beliefs in a nonexistent conspiracy.

Central to these beliefs was the notion that the immigrant Japanese (the majority of whom were engaged in agriculture) were secretly "shock troops" sent by the Emperor to serve as a "fifth column" on American shores; they supposedly only awaited the signal to spring into action at the right moment to act as a linchpin of the long-planned invasion of the Pacific Coast.

Of course, in retrospect, we know now that no invasion of the coast was ever contemplated by Japan; their entire purpose was to establish hegemony in the Asian Pacific. But the reality is that even at the time, the military was fully aware that no invasion was even remotely likely. Nor even was a full-scale attack, a la Pearl Harbor, even feasible. At the worst, scattered raids were primarily the threat faced by the Pacific Coast.

Indeed, federal authorities already had made the assessment that the Japanese living in America posed no threat to the security of the nation. Some months before the war arrived, President Roosevelt had secured the services of Chicago businessman Curtis Munson in coordinating an intelligence report on Japanese in the United States. Munson's report, delivered on Nov. 7, 1941, couldn't have been more clear: "There will be no armed uprising of Japanese [in the United States] ... For the most part the Japanese are loyal to the United States or, at worst, hope that by remaining quiet they can avoid concentration camps or irresponsible mobs. We do not believe that they would be at least any more disloyal than any other racial group in the United States with whom we went to war."

Military strategists at the War Department were well aware that the Pacific Coast was under no serious threat of being invaded or under any kind of sustained attack, despite constant clamoring by various jingoes in the press. General Mark Clark, then the deputy chief of staff of Army Ground Forces, and Admiral Harold Stark, chief of naval operations, both ridiculed the notion of any kind of serious Japanese attack on the Pacific Coast when they testified that spring before a Senate committee, though Clark (who had spent several years as an officer at Fort Lewis, Washington) did admit that the possibility of an occasional air raid or a sustained attack on the Aleutian Islands "was not a fantastic idea."

Secondarily, West Coast Commander John L. DeWitt’s clamorous appeals for devoting badly needed troops for the defense of the West Coast were dismissed by War Department officials who knew better; to the planners there, preparing an offensive army for operations in Europe and the Pacific, such requests were self-indulgent wastes of their time.

However, the justification of the evacuation and incarceration of Japanese Americans, at least in the popular mind, was not because of fears of mere sabotage, but because of fears of invasion, to which DeWitt in his proclamations made frequent reference. The most infamous of these embodied the twisted logic behind the drive for internment:

“... It therefore follows that along the vital Pacific Coast over 112,000 potential enemies, of Japanese extraction, are at large today. There are indications that these are organized and ready for concerted action at a favorable opportunity. The very fact that no sabotage has taken place to date is a disturbing and confirming indication that such action will be taken.”

It is important to understand that, as Tetsuden Kashima explores thoroughly in his definitive text, Judgment Without Trial: Japanese American Imprisonment during World War II, the incarceration of the Nikkei in World War II was not simply the result of hysteria. In fact, as he demonstrates, it had been planned and well in the bureaucratic works for quite some time, beginning as early as the late 1920s.

However, allowing the military to incarcerate citizens en masse -- which in the end was the underlying bureaucratic purpose of the episode -- obviously raised real civil-liberties issues. And these almost certainly would have been raised immediately had anyone suggested evacuating and placing in concentration camps the nation's entire Italian-American or German-American populations.

The Nikkei, however, offered a unique opportunity in this regard, particularly since they represented a relatively smaller ethnic population -- one which was, moreover, popularly reviled and almost completely marginalized. The hysteria was already latent in the cultural landscape, and government officials and politicians at all levels -- local, state and federal -- readily whipped it higher at nearly every opportunity.

The race-driven hysteria, in essence, did not in itself cause the internment -- but it was the linchpin in convincing the public to proceed with it. And indeed, the public not only approved, it demanded it.

The result was a horrific episode in our history, a permanent black mark, and in the end a tremendous waste of the nation's resources and energies. As I've explained in my book Strawberry Days: How Internment Destroyed a Japanese American Community:

The overwhelming weight of the postwar evidence is that the internment prevented very little, if any, sabotage or espionage. Moreover, even beyond its transparent unjustness, the damage to the integrity of the Constitution, and the dangerous precedents it set, the internment of the Japanese Americans was an unfathomable waste. It demonstrably undermined the war effort, and proved not to be worth a penny of the billions of taxpayer dollars it wasted.

In addition to the hundreds of millions of dollars the actual enterprise itself cost -- rounding up 120,000 people by rail car and shipping them first to "assembly centers"; building ten "relocation centers" in remote locales, and then shipping the evacuees into them; maintaining and administering the centers for another three years, which included overseeing programs to help internees find work outside the camps; feeding the entire population of internees during this time; and then helping them to relocate near their former homes once the camps closed -- there were $37 million more in initial reparations costs in 1948, and then $1.2 billion more in the later reparations approved by Congress in 1988.

At the same time, the Japanese on the Pacific Coast, who occupied some 7,000 farms in the "Military Exclusion Zone," actually were responsible for the production of nearly half of all the fresh produce that was grown for consumption on the Coast (the Japanese also shipped out a great deal of produce to the Midwest and East). Indeed, Nikkei farms held virtual monopolies in a number of crops, including peppers, snap beans, celery and strawberries, and a large portion of the lettuce market.

When these farmers were rounded up and interned, a handful of enterprising whites decided to try running their farms with the hope of making a killing from the crops. But labor was so short that not one of these enterprises lasted beyond about five weeks, and none of them had a successful harvest. Nearly all of these farms lay fallow for the next four years. This major loss of production of fresh vegetables clearly harmed the war effort on the home front, and played a significant role in triggering the rationing that came during the war years.

Now, our nation's Republican governors and all of the GOP's presidential candidates, along with a handful of spineless, mewling Democrats like Bowers and New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan, are demanding that President Obama halt his plans to bring in large numbers of refugees from Syria. In doing so, they are not only giving in to exactly the dark impulses that the ISIS terrorists who recently struck Paris intended for them respond with, they are simultaneously empowering the far-right extremists who have been ginning up their xenophobic campaign against the refugees for several months now.

Nevermind that the vast majority of these refugees are children and the elderly (as the Washington Post explained: "The United States has asked the UNHCR to prioritize refugees who are considered vulnerable – women with children, the elderly, people who have been tortured or who may require modern medical treatment they cannot easily get elsewhere. Half the accepted refugees so far have been children. A quarter are adults over 60.")

Nevermind that the screening process, contrary to the shivering xenophobes' quivering claims, is in fact multilevel, quite arduous, and only begins after the refugees have been in camps for two years. It's hard to imagine a terrorist submitting himself to that kind of challenge unnecessarily, given that a set of fake papers and a tourist visa will get him into the country with only a fraction of that kind of scrutiny; and waiting as a "sleeper" through a multi-year process is not how ISIS terrorists have ever operated.

Nevermind that, contrary to the widely spread assumption repeated in the media that the Paris attackers included men with Syrian refugee passports, the passports they intentionally left to create that impression are now believed to have been fakes, left there so that the media would report that terrorists were coming in among the refugees. In other words, conservatives' factual basis for connecting the refugees to the Paris attacks is entirely groundless.

No, what's really important to understand is that in the end, by locking our doors to the victims of ISIS, we give ISIS exactly what it wants. We succumb to the fear, and they win. We victimize these refugees a second time, and we create a massive cauldron of extremism that will overrun whatever walls we try to erect.

Adam Taylor perhaps explained this best in the Washington Post:

The very same refugees entering Europe are often the very same civilians who face the indiscriminate violence and cruel injustice in lands controlled by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (though, it should be noted, many in Syria are also threatened by the brutal actions of the Syrian government). Globally, studies have shown that Muslims tend to make up the largest proportion of terror victims, with countries such as Syria and Iraq registering the highest toll.

If Muslim refugees come to Europe and are welcomed, it deeply undercuts the Islamic State's legitimacy. Aaron Zelin, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, has helpfully catalogued some of the Islamic State's messages on the refugees pouring into Europe from the Middle East. The messages give the impression of deep discomfort and even jealousy that the Muslim population the Islamic State so covets for its self-proclaimed "caliphate" would rather live in "infidel" Western lands.

... What seems almost certain is that the Islamic State wants you to equate refugees with terrorists. In turn, it wants refugees to equate the West with prejudice against Muslims and foreigners.

Let's be clear: It's not that there is no risk attached to bringing in refugees from Syria. There is always the possibility that one of those children will grow up to be a radical terrorist who kills lots of people. That risk, though, becomes a virtual certainty if we slam our doors on them. And it becomes less likely the more thoroughly we welcome the refugees and help them to assimilate to American society, as the vast majority are eager to do.

As Middle East terrorism expert Daniel Bynam explained several months ago in a paper for Brookings:

Both sides have it wrong. Concerns about terrorism and the refugees are legitimate, but the fears being voiced are usually exaggerated and the concerns raised often the wrong ones.

... Because the refugees are from Syria and Iraq, where the Islamic State is based, it is easy to conjure up fears that the jihadi group has inserted sleeper agents among the refugees who will burrow into host societies and then spring their trap. But the Islamic State doesn’t work that way. In its online magazine Dabiq and other propaganda organs, it stresses the ingathering of Muslims, though it does toss the occasional rhetorical bomb calling for Muslims already in the land of the infidels to“attack, kill, and terrorize the crusaders on their own streets and in their own homes.”

However, the Islamic State argues most “good Muslims” should travel to Iraq and Syria to fight on behalf of the Islamic State against its local enemies, not the other way around. (In contrast, Inspire, the English-language online magazine of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, stresses launching terrorist attacks in one’s home country.) The Islamic State might call for attacks in the West, but it has focused its own money, fighters, and suicide bombers on defeating its enemies in the Middle East. The refugees themselves, fleeing war and extremism, are not strong supporters of the most violent groups: if they were, they would have stayed in Iraq or Syria.

... If the refugees are treated as a short-term humanitarian problem rather than as a long-term integration challenge, then we are likely to see this problem worsen. Radicals will be among those who provide the religious, educational, and social support for the refugees – creating a problem where none existed. Indeed, the refugees need a comprehensive and long-term package that includes political rights, educational support, and economic assistance as well as immediate humanitarian aid, particularly if they are admitted in large numbers. If they cannot be integrated into local communities, then they risk perpetuating, or even exacerbating, the tensions between Muslim and non-Muslim communities in Europe. Despite their current gratitude for sanctuary in Europe, over time the refugees may be disenfranchised and become alienated. We’ve seen this movie before, where anger and disaffection fester, creating “suspect communities” that do not cooperate with law enforcement and security agencies and allow terrorists to recruit and operate with little interference. 

There is no easy solution to this problem, one we have had no small hand in making in the first place. I know from having dealt with the nature of terrorism for some years that the path out is fraught, but it is the only path out. We just have to be brave enough to take it. We cannot succumb to fear, because in truth, that is the only weapon they have.

If we do, our grandchildren will look back on this episode, just as most of us do today with the Japanese American internment, and regard with shame and regret for the utter waste it will leave in its wake.

Anti-Refugee Campaign Reaches Full Boil After Paris Attacks as Governors Try to Halt Flow

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]

Hardly had the smoke settled from the horrifying terrorist attacks on Paris last Friday than anti-Muslim organizations in the United States and Europe began using the tragedy to stoke Islamophobic sentiments in the media, much as they did last January in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

This time around, however, there is a twist. This time, the Islamophobes have a specific target on whom the populace and politicians can take their anger out – the flood of refugees from war-torn Syria.

The campaign to connect the refugees to fears of Islamic terrorism has been under way in the United States for some time, manifesting itself in rural areas such as Twin Falls, Idaho, and Duncan, S.C. In addition to the involvement of anti-Muslim groups such as Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy and a number of notable “women against Islam,” the attempt to tie the refugees to terrorism also aroused the involvement of antigovernment extremists such as the “III Percent” movement in Idaho.

These trends reflect a tide of anti-Muslim hatred that has been rising in the United States in recent weeks, fueled in part by Islamophobic rhetoric used by several GOP presidential candidates. That culminated in candidate Donald Trump announcing that if he were elected, he would tell the Syrian refugees: “They’re going back!”

Those sentiments, however, gained real traction in the media and in the political world when it emerged that one of the killers involved in Friday’s Paris massacres was believed to have carried a Syrian refugee passport, suggesting that he had wormed his way into France among the tide of refugees hitting much of Europe in the wake of attacks by Islamic State (ISIS) forces in Syria. (It later emerged that the passport was only found near the attacker, and European authorities so far insist that all the attackers were European nationals.)

Nonetheless, the initial reports set off alarm bells in states where the anti-refugee campaign was already gaining momentum – notably such states as Alabama, Michigan, Florida and Idaho – and eventually induced 26 Republican governors (as well as the Democratic governor of  New Hampshire) to announce on Monday that they were halting the further influx of refugees within their respective states.

“After full consideration of this weekend’s attacks of terror on innocent citizens in Paris, I will oppose any attempt to relocate Syrian refugees to Alabama through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. As your Governor, I will not stand complicit to a policy that places the citizens of Alabama in harm’s way,” Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley announced.

"Following the terrorist attacks by ISIS in Paris that killed over 120 people and wounded more than 350, and the news that at least one of the terror attack suspects gained access to France by posing a Syrian refugee, our state agency will not support the requests we have received,” Florida Gov. Rick Scott announced in a statement.

“Given the horrifying events in Paris last week, I am calling for an immediate halt in the placement of any new refugees in Arizona,” announced Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey. “These acts serve as a reminder that the world remains at war with radical Islamic terrorists. Our national leaders must react with the urgency and leadership that every American expects to protect our citizens.”

However, as Think Progress’ Ian Milhiser explains, the governors lack the authority – which, under the Constitution, is clearly relegated to the president – to refuse the refugees. Moreover, as he notes, “President Obama has explicit statutory authorization to accept foreign refugees into the United States. Under the Refugee Act of 1980, the president may admit refugees who face ‘persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion’ into the United States, and the president’s power to do so is particularly robust if they determine that an ‘unforeseen emergency refugee situation’ such as the Syrian refugee crisis exists.”

And indeed, the Obama administration has held the line. Ben Rhodes, the White House deputy national security adviser, affirmed on Sunday that the country is still poised to take in migrants from the war-torn country.

"We're still planning to take in Syrian refugees," Rhodes said on Fox News Sunday. "We have very robust vetting procedures for those refugees. It involves our intelligence community, our National Counterterrorism Center, extensive interviews, vetting them against all information."

Anti-Islam efforts have occurred on the local level, too, where Frank Gaffney and his think tank Center for Security Police have been busy, even before the attacks in Paris, developing standardized language for anti-Syrian refugee measures, hoping that counties could easily introduce laws to restrict Syrian refugee settlement. Anti-Syrian refugee legislation has already passed in Berkeley and Pickins County in South Carolina. But most efforts have focused on the state and federal level, where suggestions have even been made to restrict resettlement to Christians only.

On Monday, the president, speaking to reporters in Turkey, called such suggestions that only Christian refugees be admitted "shameful" and a "dark impulse."

"When I hear folks say, 'Well, maybe we should just admit the Christians and not the Muslims,' when I hear political leaders suggesting there should be a religious test for which person who's fleeing from a war torn country — that's shameful," Obama said. "That's not American. That's not who we are. We don't have religious tests to our compassion."

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas and a presidential candidate, announced that he intended to introduce federal legislation to shut down the Syrian refugee program. In the meantime, Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., called on President Obama to impose a moratorium on accepting Syrian refugees.

At the websites of the anti-Muslim organizations that first linked the Syrian refugees to Islamist terrorism, such as Refugee Resettlement Watch – run by anti-Muslim zealot Ann Corcoran – the mood was both celebratory (noting the “major breakthrough in garnering attention for this here-to-fore secretive refugee program”) and eager to exploit the situation: It posted a petition demanding Congress cut all funding for the Syrian refugee program.

Federal authorities indeed have identified gaps in the ability to complete background checks on Syrian refugees, but despite coverage from right-wing media suggesting that they pose a security risk, the reality is that these refugees will receive an extraordinary amount of screening before entering the U.S. relocation program. One study found that while the concerns about terrorism might be legitimate, the reasons for fear are wildly exaggerated, and in fact only fuel the potential for real terrorism further down the road.

"We are deeply concerned about the entire entire xenophobic, Islamophobic response to Syrian resettlement, and are certainly troubled about the growing role hate groups and extremists are playing in perpetuating anti-Syrian/anti-Muslim sentiment and their calls to action," Naomi Steinberg, director of Refugee Council USA, told Hatewatch. "I know that I personally fear that the events in Paris will be seen by some as an excuse to heighten their hateful rhetoric, which we know could lead, worst case scenario, to acts of violence targeting refugees and refugee champions. At the very least, this uptick in political rhetoric is helping to spread fear and making communities less secure and safe for all of us."

Knife-Wielding Man Gets 30-Month Prison Term for Hate Crime Assault in Seattle’s Capitol Hill Neighborhood

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]

Troy Deacon Burns

A man with a lengthy criminal record who claimed he couldn’t remember attacking three gay men in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood with a knife was sentenced this week to 30 months in prison after pleading guilty to committing a federal hate crime.

Troy Deacon Burns, a 38-year-old from Bremerton, WA, admitted in his plea agreement to threatening a group of three men with a knife on Jan. 25, 2015, while shouting homophobic slurs before being arrested by Seattle police. He was charged under the federal Shepard-Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act, and entered a guilty plea in August.

According to news reports, the three men encountered Burns in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, which is well known as the epicenter of the city’s LGBT community. Burns came up behind them and began shouting slurs at them, then raised a knife into a stabbing position and began chasing them.

At one point he managed to catch up to one of the men and again threatened to stab him, while simultaneously uttering an anti-gay slur. But his friends managed to pull him away from Burns’ grasp.

Seattle police arrived shortly afterward, and officers pulled their guns to arrest Burns, who then reportedly claimed he didn’t have a knife, though a search shortly revealed one in his pocket. Burns also claimed to have done nothing wrong, but then continued to shout homophobic slurs after being handcuffed and placed inside the squad car.

Burns had an extensive criminal record in Kitsap County, where Bremerton is located. It included convictions for marijuana and cocaine trafficking, as well as fourth-degree assault, supplying liquor to minors, hit-and-run driving, and for driving with a suspended license, as well as a number of other driving violations.

"No one should have to fear attack because of their sexual orientation when they walk down the streets of the cities and towns in Western Washington,” said U.S. Attorney Annette Hayes, announcing Burns’ sentencing.

The Capitol Hill neighborhood has a history being the focal point of several hate crimes, often perpetrated by people from outside the community. The problem dates back to at least 1990, when a group of neo-Nazis from northern Idaho came to Seattle intent on setting off a series of pipe bombs inside Neighbours, a popular gay nightclub in the area (those men were arrested before enacting their plot and wound up serving federal prison time). On New Year’s Eve 2014, a Libyan emigre attempted to set an arson fire behind the same club while it was packed with hundreds of patrons, but the fire was quickly extinguished, and the would-be arsonist wound up being convicted on arson charges and sentenced to a 10-year prison term.

More recently, three Russian immigrants from Whatcom County were convicted in 2005 of a hate crime assault on a gay man, Micah Painter, who was brutally beaten and slashed with a broken bottle. And in 2013, five men from out of the state were charged with hate crimes for their vicious assault on a gay black man, a crime that authorities said was motivated both by the man’s sexual orientation and his race.

A forum this spring on Capitol Hill focused on the problem, which members of the LGBT community is increasing in intensity in recent years.

‘III Percenters’ Ride Wave of Islamophobia in Idaho to Lead Anti-Refugee Protests

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]

Waving American flags and several large black banners emblazoned with their movement’s “III% Idaho” logo, a crowd of about 100 like-minded antigovernment extremists crowded onto the steps of the Idaho Capitol in Boise to protest the state’s ongoing program to help resettle Muslim refugees from Syria.

“Now, refugees coming from Islamic hotbeds of terrorism, don’t you think that poses a threat to Idaho communities?” shouted III% of Idaho spokesman Chris McIntire into a bullhorn.

“YEAH!!!!” shouted the gathered protesters.

Across the street, however, a slightly smaller crowd of about seventy counter-protesters gathered in a park facing the Capitol steps. And their message was clear from the large banner they unfurled: “We Welcome All Refugees to Boise.”

That group was organized by members of the local Interfaith Alliance, and came together more or less spontaneously in the days before the gathering. Other signs read: “Idaho is Too Great to Hate” and “Love One Another."

Their presence clearly got under the skin of the “III Percenters.” At one point, McIntire’s rant against the refugees was interrupted by a loud cheer from the crowd across the street. Seemingly annoyed, he flicked on the siren on his bullhorn, which evoked a cheer from his compatriots. Throughout the rest of his speech, he kept referring to “those on the other side.”

Brandon Curtiss, president of III% of Idaho, directed his ire at the counter-protesters. “This isn’t some made-up crap we’re spewing out here, like they’re leading you to believe across the way. Are we racist?” he shouted.

“No!!!” the crowd responded.

“Look among our crowd at how many diverse people are in here,” Curtiss continued. “All colors, races, creeds, and religions are here. Do you see racists?”

“No!!!!” cried the crowd.

“That’s what they want you to believe over there,” Curtiss said. “But that’s not what we do. We stand for our rights!” Another cheer.

“And it ain’t gonna happen on Three Percent of Idaho’s watch!”

The object of their ire was the College of Southern Idaho’s refugee resettlement program, which has been helping people fleeing war- and conflict-torn countries resettle in the Twin Falls, Idaho, area for some 30 years. In recent months, as word spread that the program planned to take in several hundred refugees from Syria’s bloody civil war, resistance to the program has become a hot political topic in the Magic Valley, much of it reflective of the recent nationwide tide of Islamophobia.

“The refugee program poses several risks,” McIntire declared to the crowd on Sunday. “I understand the sentiment about being a humanitarian effort, however, the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have stated numerous times that the refugees coming in from Syria and other failed states cannot be properly vetted. That means that their identities cannot be properly verified.”

Indeed, federal authorities have identified gaps in the ability to complete background checks on Syrian refugees, but despite coverage from right-wing media suggesting that they pose a security risk, the reality is that these refugees will receive an extraordinary amount of screening before entering the U.S. relocation program. One study found that while the concerns about terrorism might be legitimate, the reasons for fear are wildly exaggerated, and in fact only fuel the potential for real terrorism further down the road.

Jan Reeves, director of the Idaho Office of Refugees – which oversees the state’s four resettlement agencies (including CSI’s) – explained to the Idaho Statesman that it’s difficult to assure people about security because the checks on refugees are confidential.

“It’s hard to convince people that they’re adequate and will prevent the wrong people from having access to the refugee program without being able to be specific about what those checks entail,” he said.

That hasn't assured the “III Percenters,” which first made their presence felt in the controversy over the refugee program when they organized a march in Twin Falls on Oct. 17, which drew several dozen participants.

At that march, Curtiss explained the group’s rationale for becoming involved in the issue in an interview with the antigovernment website The Voice of Idaho.

“That’s what we want to do, we want to take care of Idahoans first, and we are tired of them taking the dwindling resources we already have for the state of Idaho, and funneling that over to refugee programs to help these guys coming in here, and ignoring our Idaho citizens – our homeless, our veterans, our students that need help here first. We’re not against refugees, what we’re saying is, we need a better process,” he told TVOI’s Michael Emry.

“They’re draining our dwindling resources that’s already in place and not looking out for Idahoans first, or U.S. citizens for that matter,” he added.

At Sunday’s gathering, McIntire similarly complained about the lack of funding for veterans and the homeless, as well as student loans. “We need to strengthen our communities before we invite individuals who cannot be properly identified,” he insisted.

One of the chief complaints of the “III Percenters” is the claim that such terrorist organizations as the Islamic State (ISIS) have vowed to manipulate the refugee crisis by placing “sleeper” terrorists among their ranks.

“Now, there are many terrorist organizations out there who have stated numerous times that they will manipulate the refugee crisis to spread radical Islam,” McIntire told the crowd on Sunday. “We are seeing this in Europe. We have seen it for the past several months, where refugees are rioting in the streets, they are waving Islamic flags, they are praying to Allah, they are demanding Sharia law, which includes the second-class treatment of women!”

“Not in Idaho! Not in Idaho!” replied the crowd.

Across the street, the reaction was very different. “I just couldn’t believe that these people were claiming that these refugees who are fleeing from ISIS were actually ISIS terrorists,” said one of the counter-protesters, a woman dressed in a Muslim headscarf, gesturing at the interfaith supporters. “I’m glad to see people stand up that kind of insanity.”

The main source for this claim is Brigitte Gabriel of ACT! for America, an extremist anti-Muslim group. A video of a Gabriel speech to the Family Resource Council (an anti-LGBT hate group) in which she makes describes a Muslim plan for a takeover of the United States is promoted on the TVOI site, and cited at 3% of Idaho’s Facebook page. 

Indeed, despite the III Percenters’ outspoken insistence that they’re not an extremist organization, much of the substance of their dubious claims about the refugee program has extremist origins. Given the group’s history to date, that’s perfectly in keeping with their antigovernment “Patriot” background.

The Idaho group is only the local affiliate of a broader (though hardly numerous) national movement that takes its name from the notion that only 3 percent of the people living in the colonies took part in the American Revolution – thus, the name is intended to invoke the would-be combatants in a “second American Revolution,” as its proponents like to proclaim.

The movement is largely the brainchild of Michael Vanderboegh, the onetime militiaman who in recent years has been specializing in incendiary rhetoric supporting the notion that any attempts at federal gun control will spark a new civil war, or better yet, a new revolution.

Indeed, just about any kind of federal action inspires such warnings from Vanderboegh. “The health care law carries … the hard steel fist of government violence at the center,” he declared after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. “If we refuse to obey, we will be fined. If we refuse to pay the fine, we will in time be jailed. If we refuse to report meekly to jail, we will be sent for by armed men. And if we refuse their violent invitation at the doorsteps of our own homes we will be killed — unless we kill them first.”

He also freely suggests imminent violence. A 2012 post at his blog, Sipsey Street Irregulars, titled “Vote,” advised going to the polls but added: “At least later on you can say you tried everything else before you were forced to shoot people in righteous self-defense of life and liberty.”

In the past year, the III Percenters have formed an open alliance with the similarly extremist Oath Keepers, especially as Vanderboegh has shown up at anti-gun-control protests in Washington state and elsewhere, giving speeches in which he threatens violent revolt. The alliance originated at the Bundy Ranch standoff in April 2014, where the Oath Keepers and “III Percenters” joined arms in what became an internal revolt at the encampment in Nevada. (One of the hangers-on at the Bundy Camp, Jared Miller, listed the “Three Percenter Nation” as a favorite on his Facebook page sometime before he and his wife went on a murderous cop-killing rampage in Las Vegas two months after the standoff.)

From left, Brandon Curtiss, Eric 'EJ' Parker,
and Sugar Pine Mine owner Rick Barclay.

Brandon Curtiss and his band of Idaho “Patriots” have played a large role in solidifying that alliance. In April of this year, Curtiss and several of his compatriots participated in an Oath Keepers “call to action” in southwestern Oregon, supporting a pair of local mine owners who claimed the Bureau of Land Management was threatening to destroy their property.

Curtiss and several members of his group participated in a protest outside BLM offices in Medford, and he was present when a group of local Oath Keepers showed up to harass a group of local citizens who were concerned about the presence of the militiamen bristling with guns in their community.

Joining Curtiss in Medford was a noteworthy figure from the Bundy Ranch: Eric “EJ” Parker, a Nevada native who now lives in central Idaho. Parker was notorious for having been photographed aiming his sniper rifle at federal agents from a nearby freeway at the height of tensions during the standoff. At one point, Curtiss, Parker and mine owner Rick Barclay posed for a shot of the three men flipping off the camera in what was apparently a message aimed at local media in Oregon, which Curtiss posted on Facebook.

Eric 'EJ' Parker at Saturday's rally

Parker was present at Sunday’s rally in Boise, standing on the steps just to McIntire’s right and leading the applause whenever possible.

Curtiss’ organization has participated in other “Patriot” protests, notably driving up to Lincoln, Mont., to participate in another would-be Bundy-style standoff with the federal government (this time the U.S. Forest Service) over mining rights. Much like the Oregon “standoff,” it largely went away with a whimper after it became clear the miners were indeed receiving their full due process under the law. The Idaho “III Percenters” also participated in a nationwide “call-out” to patrol military-recruitment stations, showing up at a mall in Boise with their long arms.

Despite this background, Curtiss and McIntire insist that their group has no extremism in their agenda.

“Our voice needs to be heard,” Curtiss told Emry in his Twin Falls interview. “We need to be clear here: We’re not doing this because we hate the refugees, we’re not racists or anything like that. We believe they need help. But there needs to be a process in place, and we need to be sure we have the resources available to help them, and that they go through proper vetting and security-type program before they come in here. So we know who they are. And right now there’s no system in place.”

Those reassurances did little to persuade their opposition across the street Sunday, particularly a small cluster of black-clad young anarchists, some of whom wore face masks, and who screamed loudly at the “Patriots” as they attempted to close their rally with an off-tune rendition of the national anthem. They had taken up a position at an adjoining park across the street from the Interfaith gathering, next to the crossing the marchers would have to use to depart the Capitol.

Curtiss took to his bullhorn to denounce them as “cowards” before reminding his troops not to respond to them as they filed past them on the way back to the park where their march originated. And most of the marchers remained muted as they walked in close proximity past the black-clad youngsters, who flipped them off silently.

Curtiss, in turn, couldn’t resist hitting the button on his bullhorn’s screeching siren as he walked past them. But a couple of other men wearing “III% Idaho” gear stood nearby reminding everyone: “Let’s keep it professional, folks.”

A handful of the Interfaith protesters lingered afterward, talking among themselves about the need to organize well for such events. “I think they got our message,” said one of the organizers afterward.
“The Three Percenters aren’t finding especially fertile ground in Boise for their anti-refugee message,” Jan Reeves of the Office for Refugees told Hatewatch afterward. “There’s a solid base of support for refugee resettlement here, and in Twin Falls as well.  And the spontaneous turnout on Sunday to quietly oppose their radical agenda is testimony to that.”

Sheriff David Clarke Plays a Straight-Talking Cop on Cable TV, But His Agenda Springs From Far-Right Extremism

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]

To his admirers on Fox News and other media outlets, Milwaukee County’s sheriff, David Clarke, is a plain-spoken hero, an African-American law enforcement officer who stands up against a tide of liberalism and says what needs saying.

To his critics – including the U.S. Congresswoman from his district in Wisconsin – it’s a schtick made for right-wing media like Fox, which “needs a black sheriff to give voice to the dog-whistle narratives its anchors dare not vocalize themselves.”

There’s little doubt that Clarke – who was first appointed sheriff by former Republican Gov. Scott McCallum in 2002, and has won re-election four times since – has no hesitation about wading into racial issues. Much of his reputation, in fact, has been built on the incendiary nature of his public pronouncements.

His media profile has skyrocketed in the past two years, fueled primarily by multiple appearances on Fox. But his influence has spread to other venues, including a keynote address to the National Rifle Association (at which he suggested adding an assault rifle to the national seal), as well as a recent CBS News report profiling “other voices” in the national debate over gun rights.

As Media Matters notes, Bradley’s contribution consisted of the discredited claim that mass shootings are occurring largely in “gun-free zones” (in reality, only 13% of such shootings occur in these zones). The report included similar disinformation from gun-rights extremist Larry Pratt.

All of these programs present Clarke as some kind of a normative law enforcement officer with conservative views, but in reality, Clarke’s views and advocacy go well beyond the mainstream and are, in fact, deeply mired in right-wing extremism.

Clarke calls himself a “constitutional sheriff” – which is not the benign label it appears, but rather signifies his membership in former sheriff Richard Mack’s Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, the antigovernment organization that promotes the Posse Comitatus-derived belief, among others, that the county sheriff is the supreme law enforcement entity in the United States.

Not only is Clarke a member in good standing with the CSPOA, he was named its “Sheriff of the Year” in 2013, and addressed its annual convention. His speech openly endorsed the organization’s radical interpretation of the Constitution, and he called its members “the true patriots.” Clarke also emphasized his view that “our common enemy” is “the government.”

Earlier that same year, Clarke made an appearance on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars radio program, during which he contended that any attempt by federal authorities to confiscate guns would inspire “the second coming of an American Revolution, the likes of which would make the first Revolution pale by comparison.” He then appeared on a Fox News show to explain that he and Jones were envisioning a scenario with “the feds coming in and going into homes, forcing their way into homes and removing firearms,” an idea he admitted is “preposterous.”

Clarke’s subsequent career as a frequent guest on Fox News included segments featuring vicious attacks on President Obama, whom he claims is attempting to foment racial unrest due to his “divisive policies,” as well as accusing Obama of waging a “war on cops.” He has been especially vicious in his attacks on black activists and the Black Lives Matter movement, describing them as “scum” and “subhuman” and calling for their eradication.

His rise to conservative media stardom began in early 2013 with a contentious appearance on CNN with Piers Morgan, defending his anti-gun control policies and a controversial public-service announcement Clarke had made urging residents to arm themselves with guns. Mack later said that the appearance caught his eye, since he had not heard of Clarke before then.

Shortly afterward, Clarke was named “Sheriff of the Year” by the CSPOA, a selection which provoked a piece from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s Dan Bice exploring the organization’s background and radical beliefs. Clarke fired back with a press release attacking Bice and defending the CSPOA as “a group of honorable Sheriffs and officers who vow to uphold their oath of defending the U.S. Constitution.”

Joining Clarke on the CSPOA stage that year was Stewart Rhodes, whose Oath Keepers organization has a long record as a fiercely antigovernment, militaristic group. As Media Matters notes, among others attending CSPOA that year were Larry Pratt, head of the far-right Gun Owners of America; Michael Peroutka, an active member of Neo-Confederate hate group League of the South, and Sheriff Joe Arpaio's "chief birther" Mike Zullo.

An excerpt from Clarke’s CSPOA speech:

I want to thank you folks. You’re the true patriots. Every successful movement in the history of mankind started at the grassroots level, with true believers. ….

You folks are the modern founders, because you want to return where I want to return, and it’s back to the promise that this document made to the people of the United States of America. …

What’s happening today is what was happening then. And a courageous group of  grassroots individuals – that’s what the Founding Fathers were, they were grassroots people – said, ‘Enough,’ and started to push back. And that’s what I started to do, and that’s why I started to become more outspoken.

I didn’t just wake up one day and have an epiphany start believing this stuff. But I said it’s not enough to just keep it in here. I know I have to join this movement. You folks. I’m just a footsoldier in this. You folks got it started.

To be successful, this movement’s going to have to have two things: You have to have a common enemy, and you have to have a common language. And I’m not here to tell you what to do, or this group what to do, because as I said, I’m a Johnny-come-lately. But I know about movements. And in this movement, the common enemy – and let’s not make this mistake, because I think sometimes you do – this is not about Democrats and Republicans, this is not about liberals and conservatives. Because the ruling class in Washington, D.C., sees us as nothing more than subjects. We’re not citizens anymore, in their minds.

So don’t get caught up with liberals, Democrats, Republicans, conservatives, and even people. Obama – Obama will be gone in a couple years. But guess what will still be there, and this is the common enemy: It’s government.

That’s the common enemy. It’s not Nancy Pelosi, it’s not Barack Obama, it’s not the faces and the names. These people come and go. The government remains. That’s what’s becoming oppressive, that’s what’s starting to become intrusive, more and more intrusive, and that’s what’s encroaching on our liberties.

His interview with Alex Jones earlier that year rung a number of similar notes from antigovernment conspiracy theorists:

JONES: What about this issue? Many sheriffs have said, Sheriff Clarke, that if the executive orders come down banning semi-autos, or whatever … Seriously, if they try to take physically take semi-autos, I know a lot of veterans and people that have had enough, and I would not want to be the police or sheriff’s department ordered by the Feds to try to go get guns. What is your take on the fact that, from a lot of analysts that I talk to, think that the Obama Marxist types want to start a civil war in this county. Ah, they gotta know what’s gonna happen when they try to confiscate guns.

CLARKE: Well, first of all, to me, that would be an act of terror. So, the people of Milwaukee County do not have to worry about me enforcing some sort of order that goes out and collects everybody’s handgun or rifles or any kind of firearm and makes them turn them in. And the reason is, I don’t want to get shot. Because I believe that if somebody tried to enforce something of that magnitude, you would see the second coming of an American Revolution, the likes of which would make the first Revolution pale by comparison. So the people of Milwaukee County don’t have to worry about me engaging in that sort of tyranny.

In the interview, Clarke also brought up the case of the horrifying massacre of six Sikhs at a temple near Milwaukee, an act perpetrated by a longtime white supremacist. Clarke questioned the coverage of the case, saying: “This isn’t about reducing violence. This is about attacking the Second Amendment. This is going after the wrong crowd.”

Jones replied: “Exactly. Let me ask you this question: Why does the government class, the socialist class, why do they want our guns so bad right now? What are they worried  about in the future?”

Clarke replied: “Well, I don’t want to get way out there and try to guess to what they’re getting at, but you know, government control cannot go on as long as people have some sort of ability to say, ‘Hey, wait just a doggone minute.’ And as long as that exists, the government, they – that’s what the government is, they don’t really scare the criminal, they support the criminal, after they’ve been arrested.

“But what they fear is a law-abiding person who’s gonna load up – I mean, read the Declaration of Independence. It’s right there. We’re a law-abiding people saying enough is enough, you are exerting too much influence in our lives, this is tyrannical, and it’s going to stop. That’s what we’re worried about.”

A year later, he appeared on Fox News to discuss that “second American Revolution" with Judge Jeanine Pirro:

CLARKE: It was talking about the feds coming in and going into homes, forcing their way into homes and removing firearms. And you know, the thought is preposterous.

PIRRO: You know what, the thought of it is preposterous. And people are very concerned about it. I mean, this whole idea of identifying gun owners in newspapers and chipping away at these gun rights. And getting a registry. This guy’s a chief, this guy McCarthy, the chief of the third-largest police department in the nation, who works for Rahm Emanuel, who’s so connected to the White House, who’s saying, ‘You know what, we should be able to put a chip in your gun.’ Are you crazy?

CLARKE: You know, that’s why the American people bristle at the thought of a national gun registry. And if the United States – the White House or anybody – would turn over the names of gun owners in the United States to a foreign nation, that would be an act of betrayal on the American people.

By early 2014, Fox began having Clarke appear on-air to discuss the contentious issue of police brutality when handling African Americans, which spurred the creation of the Black Lives Matter movement. In his Dec. 12, 2014, appearance on Fox News with Megyn Kelly, Clarke blamed President Obama for creating the problem.

“He built this racial divide,” Clarke said. “It was a wound that had been healing for a number of years, a number of decades […] and he reopened it with his divisive politics. … Who would have thought that after the election of the first black president in the history of the United States that we would need a period of reconstruction to try to put this country back together?”

He continued:

We have to begin to ask when white society is going to be through paying for the sins of slavery. We’re now punishing people for sins they didn’t commit. I’ve forgiven and I’ve moved on. I’ve stamped that bill marked for the wrongs of slavery paid in full. This country is now open for opportunities for all people. Instances of discrimination, racism had to go underground. OK, it’s been uprooted, the president of the United States said a couple of days ago that they were deep rooted, and that’s simply not true.

So we have to have that discussion as to when we’re really gonna be ready to move on and forgive people, especially people today who have no connection to what’s being talked about.

Clarke also has indicated his alignment with the CSPOA belief that the county sheriff has the authority to ignore other civic authorities, while discussing the riots in Baltimore this spring with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly:

O’REILLY: If the county commissioner – it’s a speculative question, it certainly could happen – gave you an order to stand down while people rioted and looted in the county, you’d have to obey that order, correct?

CLARKE: No. No. No, that’s not going to happen. I’m going to have to defy that order, obviously. I report to the people, that’s who elected  me sheriff.

O’REILLY: So if you had been in Baltimore and you had received the order from the mayor to stand down, as we have credible reporting that she gave, you would have defied the order?

CLARKE: Defied the order, sent my officers out there, made sure they had the proper resources, and made sure that they know that they have the authority to use a reasonable amount of force to accomplish their mission.

Clarke’s rhetoric is frequently laden with racially incendiary vitriol. His recent remark on Fox that Hillary Clinton is willing to “prostitute herself to secure the black vote” is only the most recent example. He also blamed Sandra Bland, a black Texas woman who died while in custody, for her own demise, saying he would “have been embarrassed” if Bland was his own daughter.

Clarke also regularly indulges in conspiracism, claiming that President Obama is trying to “emasculate” police in order to impose dictatorial control. He has even weighed in on LGBT rights, calling for “pitchforks and torches” in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing same-sex marriage. Nor has he slowed down on the references to armed revolt, telling a World Net Daily interviewer that it might take a “Lexington moment” to stop gay rights and the “socialist agenda.”

On the Oct. 11 broadcast of Jeanine Pirro’s Fox News show, he attacked Obama for flying out to Oregon to meet with townspeople in Roseburg after a mass shooting on the community college campus there, suggesting the president reduce his security instead:

You know, [President Obama] never misses an opportunity to politicize something. Any time there’s a tragedy that happens in the United States, he goes into his political bag of tricks to see what he can accomplish on his agenda and it’s sad that he exploits these people and I’m glad they saw through it. When he takes advantage and uses them to achieve a political agenda, I’m glad to see that they slapped back. This is a ‘do as I say, not as I do’ president and he speaks as he is surrounded by this protective bubble, which he should have. If he wants to disarm people, he should start with his security staff.

However, he went completely off the rails, veering into eliminationist rhetoric advocating the “eradication” of other citizens, when he went on Fox News with Pirro on August 29, 2015, to discuss the recent murder of a law enforcement officer in Texas that, according to local law enforcement officials, had been inspired by the anti-police rhetoric of the Black Lives Matter movement. (It shortly emerged that, in fact, there was nothing linking the murder to the black activists at all.)

Clarke was in a full rage. “Jeanine, I am too pissed off tonight to be diplomatic about what’s going on, and I’m not going to stick my head in the sand about [this],” he answered when Pirro asked if it was “open season” on cops out there. “I said last December that war had been declared on the American police officer, led by some high profile people — one of them coming out of the White House, one of them coming out of the Department of Justice.”

He continued: “It’s open season right now, no doubt about it. … I’m tired of hearing people call [Black Lives Matter] black activists. They’re black slime, and it needs to be eradicated from American society and American culture. I need every law-abiding person in the United States of America to stand up and start pushing back against this slime, this filth disparaging the American law enforcement officers within these communities.”

Clarke continued in a similar vein after hearing remarks from the sheriff in Texas suggesting that “all lives matter”:

We need to hear more of that from everybody. This whole movement — 'Black Lies' I've renamed it — because it's based on a lie, the 'Hands up, don't shoot.' That's why I said this slime need to be eradicated from American society and American culture.

Rather than back down, Clarke has since doubled down on such talk. On Oct. 25, 2015, he appeared on Fox & Friends and proceeded to describe the Black Lives Matter activists as "garbage" and "subhuman creeps."

That kind of rhetoric is fairly common among the militiamen and hatemongers of the extremist right. It’s fairly uncommon – and downright disturbing – coming from an elected officer of the law, especially one with a taste for TV appearances and an audience eager to lap up what he says.

Conservatives Freak Out When Black ‘Captain America’ Takes On Extremist Border Vigilantes

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]

There’s a new Captain America, and he’s black. Not only that: His first villains are border militiamen.
Repeating what happened a few years ago when Marvel Comics’ film franchise cast a black man (Idris Elba) in the role of the Viking demigod Heimdahl, white nationalists have erupted in grumbling and outrage over the iconic comic hero’s change in race – perhaps somewhat predictably.

But it is the use of border militiamen as the first villains confronted by the new “Cap” that has mainstream conservative pundits in an uproar. They appear to continue to believe that armed border-militia “minutemen” who sometimes patrol the U.S.-Mexico border are just ordinary conservatives.

However, that just isn’t true. In reality, the border-vigilante movement has been a cesspool of criminality that frequently attracts sociopaths and charlatans.

Marvel Comics editors re-launched their comic book in the summer of 2014 as the “All New Captain America,” reflective of the comic-book giant’s desire to remain current with younger readers. One of the changes in the book involved retiring Steve Rogers, the Caucasian character who has been Captain America’s “secret identity” since the 1940s. Editors chose the character of longtime Avenger Sam Wilson, a.k.a. the Falcon and an African American, to replace Rogers.

In his first issue as “Cap,” published just this month, Wilson goes up against a group of vigilante border watchers who call themselves the “Sons of the Serpent” and kidnap and harass immigrant
border crossers.

“Attention all trespassers! I am the Supreme Serpent!” the masked leader tells the hapless immigrants he has caught. “By invading this sovereign land, you defy the laws of God, nature and the United States Constitution! Therefore, I hereby apprehend you by the power vested in me by the aforementioned God, nature, et cetera, et cetera.”

An immigrant pleads that he doesn’t want any trouble, and the masked villain replies: “Oh, I believe you, sir. I can see you have enough trouble with you already, trouble and disease and crime weigh heavy on your backs.”

“Until the mighty wall is built,” the villain adds, “you come here for employment that is rightfully ours! And if denied it, you seek welfare paid for by our tax dollars! Also, you know how you make me press one for English at the beginning of every call to my satellite provider? That is something I cannot abide!”

In the end, “Cap” thrashes the vigilantes and sends them packing, musing as the narrator: “I mean, come on. Who wouldn’t want to punch these guys at least a little, right?”

These scenes provoked an outcry from a number of mainstream conservative outlets, who for some reason saw themselves in the people the superhero was beating up. The Koch-funded MacIver Institute was one of the first to raise the alarm, followed by the Washington Times, the Daily Caller, and Breitbart News. A number of conservative pundits, including Allen West, followed suit, all complaining that Captain America was making conservatives out to be villains.

On Fox News’ morning show Fox & Friends, Tucker Carlson, Clayton Morris, and Heather Childers all discussed the comic, appalled that “conservatives” were being so badly maligned.

“The [Supreme Serpent] is an American who has misgivings about unlimited illegal immigration and the costs associated with it,” Carlson explained. “And that, according to the comic book, is evil.”

“The whole theme is the same,” Carlson added later, “which is that out there in the middle of the country between Malibu and Georgetown everyone is an ignorant, snake-handling bigot and they need to be held in place or else they’ll turn this country into Nazi Germany. It’s like, the people who run this country, a lot of them actually believe that. I live near them. They really think that.”

Jim Gilchrist, one of the co-founders of the Minuteman Project, protested vigorously about the villainization of the border watchers. And at the white nationalist site VDare, much of the disgust revolved around Captain America’s new race as well as his new villains. (At the neo-Nazi site Stormfront, the change in race had long been a topic of disgruntled discussion.)

Whether or not the border vigilantes make appropriate comic book villains for Captain America to combat is a question best left to editors, creators, and readers. But there should be no confusion about whether the militiamen who have populated the border-vigilante movement since its inception a decade ago are ordinary conservatives who “have misgivings about illegal immigration,” as Carlson put it. They are not.

It is one thing to have such misgivings, but it is another thing entirely to take the law into your own hands by going out on potentially dangerous foot patrols in the desert while heavily armed and to brandish weapons at immigrants, sometimes arresting them – which is what border militiamen such as the Minutemen often do.

And while such activities have indeed attracted a fair number of well-meaning, ordinary conservatives, they have also attracted a large number of criminals and sociopaths, a number of whom have assumed leadership roles within the border movement. Much of that attraction is attributable to the nativism that drives the movement and the frequently violent and vicious rhetoric the border watchers use in their everyday discussions of immigration.

Chris Simcox's booking photo

No one embodies that tendency more than Chris Simcox, who cofounded  the Minuteman Project with Jim Gilchrist. The former California schoolteacher turned Arizona desert rat had a long history of unstable behavior that contributed to the split between his organization and Gilchrist’s shortly after their project’s April 2005 launch.

Simcox was arrested in July 2013 and charged with three counts of child molestation — later reduced to two — after his then-6-year-old daughter and one of her friends, age 5, accused him of sexually assaulting them. The trial is currently on hold after a lengthy dispute over whether he would be permitted to cross-examine the alleged victims (which he won). If convicted of the felony charges, Simcox could face life in prison.

The Ranch Rescue vigilantes in action

Even before Simcox came along with his Minuteman concept, one of the early border-militia organizers who preceded him also had a number of brushes with the law. Casey Nethercott, another Arizona resident, was involved in a border-watch operation called Ranch Rescue at the turn of the century, and he too had a number of criminal legal problems.

Nethercott — who had done prison time in California for assault in the 1990s — and some of his fellow Ranch Rescue members in 2003 assaulted two Salvadoran migrants who had crossed the border on foot and wound up on a ranch where the nativist border watchers operated. The migrants were held at gunpoint, and one of them was pistol-whipped and attacked by a Rottweiler. With the assistance of the SPLC, the migrants sued their attackers and won a million-dollar civil judgment against Ranch Rescue, including $500,000 against Nethercott, who also faced criminal assault charges in the case but eventually had them dismissed.

Nethercott eventually left Ranch Rescue and then began organizing his own border watches at a property he purchased in Arizona. Eventually he had a tense standoff with Border Patrol agents at that property; when FBI agents tried to arrest him for his role in that incident two weeks later, they wound up shooting the white supremacist who was accompanying him at the time.

Indeed, while the phrase “rule of law” even today is often bandied about by the remaining bands of vigilante nativists, the record demonstrates that this was a peculiarly flexible concept for many of the Minutemen and their associates.

Shawna Forde

Shawna Forde, for example, incorporated the phrase into the logo for her offshoot border-watch operation, Minuteman American Defense. Forde’s operation was widely promoted at the website of Simcox’s Minuteman Project co-founder, Jim Gilchrist; previously, she had been deeply involved in Simcox’s MCDC operations in Washington state.

Then, in June 2009, Forde was arrested and charged with masterminding the horrific murders of a 9-year-old girl and her father in the small Arizona border town of Arivaca, along with a white-supremacist cohort named Jason Eugene Bush and a local man, Albert Gaxiola, as part of her plan to create a border-militia compound. All three were convicted, and Forde and Bush wound up on Arizona’s Death Row.

After the arrests of Forde, Bush and Gaxiola, Forde’s former associates in the Minuteman movement fled from their onetime protégé. National leaders of the Minuteman movement — particularly Simcox and Gilchrist — hastily tried to put distance between themselves and Forde and her group. To this day, Gilchrist tries to claim that he had little to do with her.

But while Forde’s conviction severely damaged the border-watch movement — as one ex-MCDC leader put it,  “A lot of people felt, well, you’re a Minuteman, you’re a killer” — that was not the end of it.

Todd Hezlitt

In April 2012, one of Forde’s associates in the desert, a Tucson man named Todd Hezlitt, was arrested and charged with two counts of sexual conduct with a minor for an affair he had initiated with a 15-year-old girl from a local high school where he was an assistant wrestling coach. Two months later, he fled with the girl to Mexico, and he briefly became an international fugitive.

A few weeks after that, the girl turned herself in to the American consulate in Mazatlan. Hezlitt was caught a short time later and extradited. He eventually wound up agreeing to plead guilty to the sexual conduct charges in exchange for not being charged with kidnapping, and was sentenced to six years in prison.

J.T. Ready

Another violent incident from a former border watcher erupted in Arizona in May 2012 when Jason Todd “J.T.” Ready — a longtime leader of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement, and an organizer of independent NSM border watches in Arizona — went on a shooting rampage at the home of his girlfriend.

Before committing suicide, Ready shot and killed his girlfriend, Lisa Lynn Mederos, 47; her daughter, Amber Nieve Mederos, 23; the daughter’s boyfriend, Jim Franklin Hiott, and Amber’s 15-month-old baby girl, Lilly Lynn Mederos. Investigators later found chemicals and military-grade munitions at Ready's residence.

As Tim Steller at the Arizona Daily Star observed: “Undoubtedly, there have been bordermilitia members in Arizona who have carried out citizen patrols without harboring racist motives or having criminal tendencies. The problem for the movement … is that people with these motives or tendencies have cropped up repeatedly among citizen border-watchers.”

Given that history, Captain America probably has good reason for seeing a border militia gang as villainous. It’s not at all clear why mainstream conservatives, however, would see such a gang as one of their own.

Interfaith Counter-Protests Put a Damper on Armed Anti-Muslim Rallies

In Bremerton, WA, the interfaith defenders of the Muslim community were smiling even in the pouring rain.

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]

The antigovernment militiamen who concocted this weekend’s “Global Rally for Humanity” – in which they and their fellow Patriots agreed to hold protests at mosques in over 20 cities around the nation, all while bearing weapons – were not shy about their ambitions and hopes that the demonstration would be massive and worldwide.

But fantasy met reality on Saturday, when most of the planned protests simply didn’t happen after all. Among the few rallies that actually came together, the counter-protesters well outnumbered the anti-Muslim activists. Indeed, “anti-hate” protesters came out to make their presence felt even at some of the locations where not a single protestor showed.




"I expected to see a group of people here angry, with signs talking about how awful Muslims were, but no one showed up," said Brian Todd, pastor of a Baptist church in Huntsville, Al., after no one bothered to show up for the announced protest at the local mosque. Todd had come out to show his support for his Muslim neighbors.

That was a common refrain at a number of the locales. At one of the planned protest sites, in Medford, Ore., the organizers yanked their names from the national roster and renamed their rally a “Back the Blue” pro-law-enforcement affair. One of the organizers told a local TV station that they didn’t want to be associated with “a hate group.”

In Bremerton, Wash., where the rain came down in sheets, no protesters were to be found at the planned site. However, a cluster of about 35 local residents, spontaneously spurred on by news coverage of the planned rally, came out to defend their Muslim neighbors.

“We don’t mind getting wet,” one of them told Hatewatch. “It’s worth it to defend our friends.”

Some of the Bremerton participants said they saw a carful of camo-wearing folks who “flipped us off," but they didn’t stop. “I think they saw they were outnumbered badly,” one told Hatewatch.

And in Sydney, Australia – one of the organizers’ hopes for making their protest have a “global” reach – hardly anyone turned up either, except for counter-protesters who outnumbered them four to one.

There were a couple of notable exceptions. In Phoenix, the protest led by uber-“Patriot” Jon Ritzheimer – who appears to be one of the godfathers of the “global” protest and its chief promoter – drew a couple of dozen participants, several of them well armed. However, they were dwarfed in both size and volume by the chanting counter-protesters who met them and called them out as “racist.”

“I don't hate Muslims, OK? I don't hate Muslims," Ritzheimer told a Phoenix TV station. "Islam is what I have a problem with."

"Muslims are practicing Islam in its literal interpretation and that's why we have deaths going on in our country and terrorist attacks taking place," he explained.

A group of neo-Nazis attempted to join the Phoenix rally.

A small cluster of neo-Nazis wearing shirts with fascist symbols came to the rally as well, but Ritzheimer asked them to leave.

"We politely asked these Nazis to get out of here, because they do not represent us, and I do not condone those actions," he said.

And in Dearborn, Mich., a small group of anti-Muslim protesters showed up outside of the mosque, only to find an even larger group of counter-protesters as well.

As Huffington Post noted, the cumulative effect of the weekend’s protests, in fact, was a large outpouring of love and interfaith support for the Muslim community – and a large heaping of contempt for the fearmongers behind the rally.

“We are proud of our allies from different faiths who have been our partners in dialogue over the years and stand with us against fear and hate,” said Dr. Sayyid Syeed, national director of interfaith and community alliances at the Islamic Society of North America in Plainfield, Ind.

Militiamen Plan to Bring Guns to Mosques Around Nation in 'Global' Protest of Islam

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]

The perfect storm of Islamophobia cresting around the nation could reach a new watermark of ugliness this weekend, as armed protesters are planning to gather outside at least 20 mosques in various locations around the United States.

Calling the protests part of a “Global Rally for Humanity,” the self-described “Patriots” plan to bring weapons to protest outside Muslim worship centers on Saturday.

The protests appear to be the brainchild of Phoenix anti-Muslim activist Jon Ritzheimer, who made headlines in May by organizing an armed protest outside a Phoenix-area mosque. Ritzheimer then told the Phoenix New Times that he intended to take his protest idea global. Ritzheimer also has a history of issuing ugly threats, including his threat to arrest Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow for having voted in favor of President Obama’s arms deal with Iran. Even his fellow militiamen from Michigan disavowed that one.

But he's energized once again with his plan for the weekend.

“I’m going to tell everybody to utilize your Second Amendment [rights] in case we come under that much anticipated attack," he said. Ritzheimer never explained who he thought might attack them.

Two days after posting a video announcing the protest, he posted another video disavowing any responsibility for the protests, saying he was not the “mastermind” – “No, I cannot take credit for such a wonderful rally” – but that he was avidly supporting it anyway. He punctuated that video by holding up a copy of the Koran and shooting it with a pistol.

In late August he posted another video that once again promoted the protest and attacked Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who will be leading a protest Saturday in Washington D.C. Ritzheimer warned him not to carry out a purported plan to take down the American flag at the White House.

“Just know that we III Percent, we militiamen are standing at the ready across our nation,”  he said. “And when you strike, we will strike back. We will level and demolish every mosque across this country."

Despite Ritzheimer’s claims of a “global” protest that would include Australia and the U.K., so far events are confined to the United States, spread around in 22 cities so far (see map here), with the largest concentration of them in Florida and Texas, where three cities are scheduled to see armed protesters. Each of the Facebook page promoting a protest has taken a localized approach: “Our local law enforcement officers and our country are under threat like never before. Rally up with other patriots in support of local law enforcement who put their lives on the line every day to protect us,” read the Facebook page for the rally in Medford, Ore.

Meanwhile, in Port Orchard, Wash., the pitch was a different concern: “We need to send a clear message to them that we won't accept Sharia Law here in this county!!”

The Council for Islamic-American Relations issued an advisory urging mosque-goers to be careful and take safety precautions this weekend.

"A lot of the times with stuff like this, we don't know if it's just bluster or something serious,” CAIR executive director Ibrahim Hooper told the International Business Times. "Our position is generally not to give attention to people seeking cheap publicity. But there's been enough violent rhetoric around this event that we just felt it prudent to alert the community about what actions they can take to make sure everyone is safe and secure."

Organizing each of the rallies was fairly simple: All a would-be organizer had to do was create a new page on Facebook, following instructions from the original Global Rally for Humanity page: “This is how fellow patriots in your area can get in touch with one another. And if there is not an event page set up for your area yet then its time for you to take the initiative and start a page and invite patriots and share it.”

It is not certain all the rallies will come off as planned. At least one – in Racine, Wisc. – has already been canceled after their Facebook page was filled with disgusted reactions from locals.

"Unbelievable! And people wonder why we have mass shootings. Stop teaching hate!” one reader responded.