Trump and Barr Consider Antifa Terrorists, But Not The KKK

Via Facebook I found a piece in the Jewish Journal that brings into sharp focus the sickness of the Trump/Pence regime and Trump's consigliere, AG William Barr.  The FBI's own records show that white supremacy groups pose the largest domestic terrorist threat, yet instead Trump and Barr want to declare Antifa - a loose organization with no leaders or organizational structure - as a "terrorist organization."  As for White supremacists in Charlottesville and other far right actions since, Trump refers to them as "very good people." Just today, Trump overruled the Department of Defense move to rename military bases named after Confederate generals in an effort to win allegiance from his white supremacist supporters. Here are article highlights:

“The United States of America will be designating Antifa as a Terrorist Organization,” President Donald Trump tweeted on May 31, the morning after American cities were engulfed with protests decrying the death of George Floyd. In major metropolises including  New York, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, Dallas and Los Angeles, the demonstrations spiraled out of control, devolving into looting, vandalism and arson. 

Trump declared the lootings were “being led by antifa,” a decentralized movement threaded together by its militant, sometimes violent opposition to fascism and the far-right. 

Pittsburgh’s chief of police, agreed. Attorney General William Barr also pointed his finger at the group, saying the protesters were using “antifa-like tactics.” However, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said,  “A number of different groups are involved in these whether it’s antifa or it’s others, frankly.”

Whether you agree with antifa’s ideology or approach, [Trump's] the president’s announcement is shocking, given that many of the most violent hate groups in the United States aren’t designated as terrorists. One notable example is the Ku Klux Klan, which for decades has used bloodshed, intimidation and crime to terrorize Americans.

“White supremacist extremism is currently the most lethal form of extremism in the U.S.,” American University professor Cynthia Miller-Idriss told Congress in September. According to the Anti-Defamation League, the far-right was the source of 73% of domestic extremist-related slayings from 2008 to 2019. 

However, Trump has been much more hesitant to declare these menacing groups as terrorists.

The first time the U.S. labeled a white supremacist group as a terrorist organization was in April. However, the Russian Imperial Movement was not American-based. The ultra-nationalist organization is widely known for plotting bomb attacks on asylum seekers in Sweden. Meanwhile, countless other home-grown neo-Nazi, Holocaust denial, neo-Confederate and Skinhead organizations remain undesignated. 

When the United States labels a group as “terrorist,” it is not a symbolic gesture. . . . .
Terrorist groups are under the purview of terror-related intelligence bodies such as the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which is uniquely suited to handle these deadly organizations. Right now, the NCTC is prohibited from preventing violent anti-Semites like the Pittsburgh and Poway, Calif., shooters. Trump’s National Strategy for Counterterrorism includes preventing terrorists from acquiring weapons. However, known neo-Nazis still are able to obtain firearms.

Unlike white supremacist groups, which explicitly call for victimizing racial and religious minorities, antifa’s mission is not inherently violent. One could argue that by opposing fascism, the group seeks to prevent mass violence. Antifa’s rampages normally end in property damage. It’s hard to argue that the group is lethal; the only recorded death related to antifa was in January 2019 when member Charles Landeros fired at police while being arrested. He missed and was killed by returning fire.

Compare that to self-described white supremacist Robert Gregory Bowers, who is charged with walking into the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue in October 2018 and killing 11 Jews. That incident was not isolated. Patrick Crusius is charged with killing 23 people at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart in August, leaving behind a white nationalist manifesto. 

Crusius had posted about his intent to kill on the website 8chan. If white nationalists were considered terrorists, the NCTC might have been able to track and potentially stop the deadliest attack on Latinos in modern American history. 

However, Trump isn’t only ignoring white supremacist terrorism but actively pushing American institutions overlook it.

According to Reuters, Trump attempted to rename the Countering Violent Extremism program to “Countering Radical Islamic Extremism” — erasing white nationalist violence from its mission entirely. Under the current administration, federal prosecutors are limited in how they can bring white nationalists to justice. 

Whether you approve of antifa’s message or tactics, it is not nearly as consequential a threat to Americans as the vast number of white supremacist groups in this country. Although it might be more politically advantageous for Trump to rail against the anarchy-loving movement, he is driving this nation, and his blind spot endangers all Americans in his backseat.

America's Future: Getting Rid of Trump Will Help

Increased racial hatred, increased gun violence, trade wars damaging American farmers and perhaps moving the country toward a recession, and frayed relations with long time allies.  All trace back in varying degrees to a single individual:  Donald Trump.  The main is a boil (if not a cancer) on nation and conservative columnist and former Republican Jennifer Rubin makes the case that almost anyone else would be better in the White House and would set the stage where serious, sane progress to address pressing problems could begin.   If Trump cannot be removed by impeachment, then he needs to be removed at the ballot box in November 2020.  The cancer that he embodies must be removed and not allowed to further metastasize.  True, we will still have to contend with his dangerous supporters, but his removal from office will be a much needed beginning.  Here are column excerpts:

Even if we get a Democratic president Americans don’t like all that much, or whose limitations are obvious, we’ll be in a better spot than we would be with President Trump. That’s an unsurprising assumption by Democrats. But, increasingly, independents and disaffected Republicans — as seen from their praise of former president Barack Obama’s remarks on the mass murders in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio — know this to be true. “Anyone but Trump” should be the goal for all Americans, even Republicans.

For one thing, Republicans won’t have to observe the debasement of other Republicans like Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.), who lamely tried to create some moral equivalence between Trump, who incites white nationalism of the type motivating the El Paso terrorist, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who incites no one to hatred and whose ideology — progressive capitalism — hasn’t driven anyone to kill.

Whatever the problem, things would be better without Trump even with a president whose ideology and/or performance might not thrill most Americans.

Combating domestic terrorism? Just getting rid of the instigator of white nationalism would be a plus. The Post reports:

The administration has also curtailed or disbanded a Department of Homeland Security program that had been created to counter violent extremism by working with regional authorities and organizations to identify those vulnerable to radicalization, whether by Islamist groups or the far right. . . . this presidency has come to be defined by policies that are aligned with aspects of the white nationalist agenda and his penchant for fanning racial animus.

We could curtail Trump’s presidency and rebuke the white nationalist ideology, or we could reelect the man who stoked their grievance. It’s pretty easy to figure out the best option from a national security standpoint.

The trade war with China? Trump now has seized “control” of policy, . . . And how’s that working out? Not well:

Business executives, economists, and former government officials have said the worsening conflict between the White House and China was damaging the U.S. economy. Business investment contracted in the second quarter of 2019, and a number of White House officials are worried that the economy is beginning to slow.

Get rid of Trump and you would, at the very least, have a less chaotic, less impulse-driven policy from someone who understands U.S. consumers and not China pay the tariffs.

Relations with allies? They’ll immediately improve without Trump. Human rights policy? Once Trump is gone, we wouldn’t be in the business of praising mass murderers (e.g., Kim Jong Un). Environmental policy? Even some Republicans are dumping their climate change denial, but as long as Trump is in office, any hope of progress is illusory. Russia? No Democrat or Republican likely to be elected will kowtow to Vladimir Putin.

I don’t mean to suggest that all our problems will go away if Trump does, nor do I mean to suggest it doesn’t matter who succeeds him. However, we would eliminate a slew of Trump-created problems and inanities and make it possible rationally to address issues.

It’s not hyperbole to say Trump is a threat to our democracy, to national security and to progress on virtually any issue. We want the best possible president, but we will settle for anyone who isn’t Trump.

If you care about America and the future, vote Democrat in 2020 and in Virginia's 2019 elections.

The Threat of White Supremacy and Far-Right Extremism

White supremacists on the University of Virginia grounds in August, 2017.

If one were to believe the Trump/Pence regime and Republicans eager to give Trump politico fellatio, all violent, extremist motivated crimes in the USA are committed by Islamic extremists and undocumented Hispanics.  Truth be told, these allegations are all lies - like almost everything that comes out of Trump's mouth - inasmuch as the vast majority of ideologically/religiously based murders are committed by white supremacists and other far right groups. An op-ed in the New York Times authored by Thomas T. Cullen, the United States Attorney for the Western District of Virginia, looks at this reality and the need for both law enforcement and the media to face this reality.   In addition, it stresses the need for new legislation to enable law enforcement to address this growing threat of domestic terror.  Here are op-ed excerpts:

Last week, federal agents in Maryland arrested a United States Coast Guard officer and said he was plotting to assassinate Democratic members of Congress, prominent television journalists and others. The officer, Lt. Christopher Hasson, apparently was inspired by a right-wing Norwegian terrorist who slaughtered 77 people in 2011, stockpiled firearms and ammunition and researched locations around Washington to launch his attacks, according to investigators. Fortunately, the F.B.I. arrested him before he could act.

This frightening case is just one of several recent reminders that white supremacy and far-right extremism are among the greatest domestic-security threats facing the United States.

Regrettably, over the past 25 years, law enforcement, at both the federal and state levels, has been slow to respond. . . . But there are steps that can be taken to help the police and prosecutors address this growing threat — including, on the federal level, a domestic terrorism law.

In 2017, hate crimes, generally defined as criminal acts motivated by the victim’s race, ethnicity, religion, or gender, increased by about 17 percent nationally, to 7,175 from 6,121 (the number of police agencies reporting crimes also rose, by about 6 percent); in my state, Virginia, they were up by nearly 50 percent, to 202 from 137.

Killings committed by individuals and groups associated with far-right extremist groups have risen significantly. Seventy-one percent of the 387 “extremist related fatalities in the United States” from 2008 to 2017 were committed by members of far-right and white-supremacist groups . . . Islamic extremists were responsible for 26 percent.

Virginia, too, has experienced extremist violence. In August 2017, several hundred people — mainly young white men heavily influenced by white-nationalist propaganda — converged on Charlottesville, ostensibly to protest the possible removal of Confederate monuments from public parks. Among other odious acts, these “Unite the Right” protesters marched with lighted torches on the campus of the University of Virginia. They chanted “Jews will not replace us!” before attacking a small group of students and counterprotesters at the base of a statue of Thomas Jefferson.

The following day, some of these Unite the Right enthusiasts attacked and injured counterprotesters in Charlottesville. Their violence culminated when a white supremacist from Ohio drove his car into a crowd of people, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring about 30 others.

In 2009, Congress took an important step in arming federal investigators to deal with hate crimes by passing the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act. This law makes it possible to prosecute as hate crimes violent acts committed against victims because of their race, color, national origin, religion, gender, gender identity or disability.

But the hate crime law has its limitations. First, it requires proof that an individual acted because of a specific proscribed animus enumerated in the statute. That means investigators must uncover concrete evidence that the defendant was primarily motivated by, for example, racist or anti-Semitic views. Although this evidence exists in many hate crimes, it proves elusive in others.

Second, because it is a federal statute, prosecutors must prove a “jurisdictional” element, such as travel by the defendant across state lines. For those hate crimes that do not involve interstate travel or communication, the law can’t be invoked.

State officials can update and strengthen existing hate-crime laws, many of which do not include protections for some of the categories of people listed in the federal hate crimes law. Although many states have expanded these protections, the Indiana State Senate this week moved to weaken a proposed hate crime bill. In addition, states can authorize localities to place reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions on demonstrations that will likely result in widespread violence and other criminal activity, like the rally in Charlottesville.

At both the federal and state levels, immediate steps are required to curtail the alarming rise of hate crimes and extremist violence in this country.

With family members living in Charlottesville, I know how disturbing this growing menace is for even those who are not the direct victims of extremist violence.  Sadly, expect Republicans to deny the reality of where the threat truly lies and block much needed legislation.

Hate Groups On the Rise, White Supremacist Terror Attack Averted

Since he launched his campaign in 2015, Donald Trump has been singing a welcomed song to racists and white supremacists of every ilk.  By doing so, he has made out right racism acceptable in the eyes of his followers and has increasingly normalized the reprehensible. Worse yet, he has emboldened hate groups which have increased 30% over four years and some, such as would be terrorist,  Christopher Paul Hasson, have seen Trump's rhetoric as a green light to attack Democrats and journalists.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at Hasson's thwarted terror attacks while a piece in New York Magazine looks at the increase in the number of far right hate groups.  First, highlights from the Post:

A U.S. Coast Guard lieutenant and self-identified white nationalist was arrested after federal investigators uncovered a cache of weapons and ammunition in his Maryland home that authorities say he stockpiled to launch a widespread domestic terrorist attack targeting politicians and journalists.

Christopher Paul Hasson called for “focused violence” to “establish a white homeland” . . . Though court documents do not detail a specific planned date for an attack, the government said he had been amassing supplies and weapons since at least 2017, developed a spreadsheet of targets that included House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and searched the Internet using phrases such as “best place in dc to see congress people” and “are supreme court justices protected.”

“The defendant intends to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country,” the government said in court documents filed this week, arguing that Hasson should stay in jail awaiting trial.

“Please send me your violence that I may unleash it onto their heads,” Hasson wrote in a letter that prosecutors said was found in his email drafts. “Guide my hate to make a lasting impression on this world.”

Court documents do not detail what prompted federal law enforcement to begin investigating Hasson but contend that Hasson had been studying the 1,500-page manifesto of right-wing terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, who unleashed two attacks in 2011 that killed 77 people in Norway, and echoed Breivik’s attack preparations.

[A]ccording to the court filings, Hasson developed a spreadsheet of targets that included top Democratic congressional leaders and media personalities. The list includes “JOEY,” what prosecutors say is a reference to former congressman Joe Scarborough (R-Fla.), now of MSNBC; “cortez,” an alleged reference to freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.); and “Sen blumen jew,” presumably about Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.).

One individual like Hasson is frightening enough, but as the New York Magazine article reports, there has been a sharp increase in the number of active hate groups.  Here are article excerpts:

There are at least 1,020 hate groups now active in the U.S., the Southern Poverty Law Center announced on Wednesday. The civil rights group, which has tracked extremist activity since the 1980s, says it’s documented a 30 percent increase in hate group activity over the last four years, a time period it says “roughly” coincides with end of Barack Obama’s presidency and the rise of Donald Trump as a political figure.

The SPLC doesn’t just track white supremacists – it also tracks the Nation of Islam – but white extremists engaged directly in promoting nativism and myths about racial superiority make up the bulk of activity included in the organization’s annual hate report. SPLC researchers documented 112 active neo-Nazi groups, 148 white nationalist groups, and 63 racist skinhead groups, in addition to 36 neo-Confederate organizations.

SPLC argues that [Trump’s] the president’s vitriolic anti-immigrant rhetoric and soft-pedaling of white supremacist violence have emboldened hate groups.
 [I]t’s undeniable that members of the far-right have been responsible for an escalating number of high-profile violent incidents over the last several years. It’s also true that Trump, and some of his surrogates in the conservative press, have helped mainstream certain white nationalist myths. Both Trump and Fox’s Tucker Carlson briefly became fixated on the alleged persecution of white South African farmers, though there’s no evidence of a white genocide unfolding in South Africa or anywhere else, and Trump frequently amplifies myths about the disproportionate criminality of immigrants. Since Trump took office, white nationalists have beaten left-wing activists and murdered one protester . . . .
 This radicalization shows no signs of abating. Hours after the SPLC released its report, Seamus Hughes of the the George Washington University’s Program on Extremism broke the news that a lieutenant in the U.S. Coast Guard will go on trial for domestic terrorism charges. The lieutenant, Christopher Hasson, identified as a white supremacist, possessed around 1,000 rounds of ammunition, and created a hit list of liberal politicians and media figures ranging from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to MSNBC’s Chris Hayes.
 Trump hasn’t explicitly called for people like Hasson to do violence in his name. But the SPLC’s report reinforces a disturbing trend. However frustrated white supremacists may be over the border wall, others seem galvanized by the Trump presidency.

Trump/Pence Cut Funding for Programs to Counter Violent Extremism

In addition to is incendiary rhetoric and wink and nods to white nationalists and Christian extremists, Donald Trump and his accomplice, Mike Pence, have done other things to allow extremism grow in America.  For one, their regime has cut funding for programs that seek to counter extremism, especially extremism involving whites.  Statistically more violence has been wrought in America by white extremists - almost all by angry white males -  than by all Islamic extremism combined.  Yet, this regime continues to turn a blind eye to this reality and, instead, demonizes immigrants and non-Christians and, of course the legitimate media.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at the Trump/Pence effort to kill programs that focus on fighting the extremism that more and more defines the Trump/Pence base. Here are highlights:

Set aside the question of whether President Donald Trump’s rhetorical flirtations with white nationalism enabled Saturday’s mass shooting in Pittsburgh. What’s undeniable is that his administration has hobbled the infrastructure designed to prevent such murders.

In the waning days of Barack Obama’s administration, the Department of Homeland Security awarded a set of grants to organizations working to counter violent extremism, including among white supremacists. One of the grantees was Life After Hate, which The Hill has called “one of the only programs in the U.S. devoted to helping people leave neo-Nazi and other white supremacy groups.” Another grant went to researchers at the University of North Carolina who were helping young people develop media campaigns aimed at preventing their peers from embracing white supremacy and other violent ideologies. But soon after Trump took office, his administration canceled both of these grants. In its first budget, it requested no funding for any grants in this field.  It’s part of a pattern of neglect.

In Obama’s last year, according to the former director, George Selim, the office boasted 16 full-time employees, roughly 25 contractors, and a budget of more than $21 million. The Trump administration has renamed it the Office of Terrorism Prevention Partnerships, and cut its staff to eight full-time employees and its budget to less than $3 million. Under Obama, the Office of Community Partnerships housed an interagency task force on Countering Violent Extremism, or CVE, that included officials detailed from the FBI, the National Counterterrorism Center, and the Departments of Justice, Education, and Health and Human Services. Today the task force exists in name only. This decline can’t be chalked up to general budget cuts. . . . The cuts stem instead from two biases. First, in keeping with their law-and-order mentality, Trump officials would rather empower the police to arrest suspected terrorists than work with local communities to prevent people from becoming terrorists in the first place, as the Office of Community Partnerships did. Second, they believe the primary terrorist threat to Americans is jihadism, not white supremacy. The Office of Community Partnerships committed the sin of working on both. In 2017, the FBI concluded that white supremacists killed more Americans from 2000 to 2016 than “any other domestic extremist movement.” But Trump advisers have shrugged off these inconvenient facts. In an interview in 2017, White House Deputy Assistant to the President Sebastian Gorka declared that there “has never been a serious attack or a serious plot [in the United States] that was unconnected from ISIS or al-Qaeda.” When critics cited the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Gorka responded,  “It’s this constant ‘Oh, it’s the white man. It’s the white supremacists. That’s the problem.’ No, it isn’t.” Eric Rosand, a former senior State Department official, told BuzzFeed that Gorka “played a significant role in denying CVE grant funding to groups that work to de-radicalize neo-Nazis and other far right extremists.” When Trump supporters insist that he’s a steadfast foe of white supremacy, his critics often cite his history of ambivalent responses—or nonresponses—to anti-Semitism. But Trump’s words aren’t anomalous; he’s put his money where his mouth is.

Dispatch from Charlottesville: “It Was a War Zone With Countless Nazis

St. Paul's Episcopal where people were trapped by torch carrying white supremacists and Neo-Nazis

Today Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, threw aside his mealy mouthed condemnation of the KKK, white supremacists, and Neo-nazis during a press conference where he attacked the press, liberals and a creation of his disturbed imagination, the "alt-left."  During the press conference, Trump made it clear that he prefers defending the white nationalists which comprise his most loyal base to recognizing the terror that they inflicted on residents of a generally peaceful small city.  

I and 9 of my extended family members are alumni of the University of Virginia and a former brother -in-law was mayor of Charlottesville a number of years ago. The husband and I were in Charlottesville just a couple of months ago.  My sister and her family live in Charlottesville.  Bottom line: We know Charlottesville far better than Der Trumpenführer whose only contact has been his purchase of the former Kluge winery south of the city (where he employs foreign laborers rather than American employees). 

A piece in Religion Dispatches gives a taste of what law-abiding residents suffered at the hands of Donald Trump's would be brown shirts and storm troopers.  For those unfamiliar with Charlottesville, St. Pauls Episcopal Church referenced in the article (and pictured above) is located across the street from the north portico pf the Rotunda on the UVA campus.  Here are article excerpts:

Dr. Robyn Henderson-Espinoza, an RD contributor . . . . is currently in Charlottesville, Virginia. . . .  [She] was inside St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on Friday night when torch-bearing white supremacists surrounded the church, trapping congregants who had gathered for a prayer service ahead of Saturday’s planned “Unite the Right” rally. On Saturday, Henderson-Espinoza and Rev. Traci Blackmon were outside Emancipation Park offering prayerful presence and witness when neo-Nazis, fascists, and unhooded Ku Klux Klan members descended on the intersection, unleashing violence that caused the security detail protecting Blackmon and Henderson-Espinoza to literally yank Rev. Blackmon off-camera during a live interview with MSNBC’s Joy Reid.

Just a few hours later and only blocks from where Blackmon and Henderson-Espinoza had been standing, counter-protestor Heather Heyer was dead and 19 others were injured in an act of domestic terrorism when a white supremacist rammed his Dodge Challenger through a packed crowd that was marching peacefully down a narrow street.

I spoke with Dr. Robyn on Monday morning, asking for their first-hand account of the chaos white supremacists unleashed on Charlottesville this weekend. Henderson-Espinoza was clear about the roots of this violence, and particularly the silence—from the Trump Administration and white clergy members—that continues to embolden neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and proud racists to terrorize communities. . .

We gathered at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, for training and a legal briefing. And then we had an interfaith worship service. During that worship service, I was getting security briefings and updates that white supremacists were having their torch rally, and were moving toward the church. And that some of them were gathered outside the church.

So in the middle of a peaceful worship service, a prayer service for the city of Charlottesville, I was unable to be present in the work that I had been brought in to do because of safety concerns. . . . . Security became a real concern; not just for those of us who were in clergy-wear. . . . we could not release people into the streets, because white supremacists were gathering a block away.

It was unsafe for people to leave the church, so essentially, we were held hostage in a place of worship—and it was not safe.

These people [the white nationalists] were carrying bats as weapons, and sticks as weapons, and fire-burning tiki torches.

[W]hen antifa [anti-fascist] and other counter-protestors encountered nazis, it was just an outright battle. It was a war scene—a war zone.  Also, let me make clear that without antifa and anarchists being present in the streets, I may have been killed at the hands of fascists and white supremacists. This is important. . . . . You had armed militia there, standing, with assault rifles—you know, the Three Percenters were there in their camouflage and assault rifles.

The nazi groups just kept coming and coming. This is an exaggeration, but it felt like there were a million nazis, to like, 100 counter-protestors. That’s an exaggeration, but I’m just saying, that the number of nazis compared to counter-protestors was unreal. I’m just like, where in the hell did all these people come from?

These people had literally taken over the fucking city, and were beating people up in their neighborhoods. What amazes me is that these white supremacists are filled with so much hate and rage, that they just dominated the city. And our current [White House] administration did not condemn white supremacy. They were complacent and silent about it, which means that our administration gave consent.

I think that that is what is so amazing to me: these people are filled with so much hate and rage, that they can’t just have a rally. They have to take over a city, colonize the city with their violence. And that resulted in the death of Heather Heyer.

Charlottesville is hurt and broken. But this is not just about Charlottesville: this is a resurgence of white nationalism that is being supported by our current [White House] administration.

[W]hite people need to get real serious about the parasitic relationship between Christian supremacy and white supremacy. And if white clergy are preaching about social justice on Sunday mornings behind their pulpits, and refusing to get into the streets, to hold the hand of a dying person who has been pulverized by a car—or refusing to stand side-by-side with the antifa who were opposing the nazis, then they need to stop preaching about social justice on Sunday morning. 

[M]y plea for white clergy, and for white people of conscience, is this: please take your body out of the safety of your worship places and your churches, and move into the streets. Please. People are dying. People are dying because white clergy, in particular, refuse to speak out against white supremacy and white nationalism.

And what that has done is create a religion of white nationalism. The liturgy of white nationalism is this culture of violence. And the outcome of that religion and liturgy is death.

I agree 100% with the remark about the ties between white Christian supremacy and white supremacy.  If one does their research, almost every "family values" Christian organization traces back to ant-desegregation groups and, in some cases such as Family Research Council have leadership which has documented ties to white supremacy groups.  Some may find it offensive, but when I see evangelical Christians I automatically assume that they are white supremacists until it is documented otherwise. As noted numerous times, here in Virginia, The Family Foundation traces directly to those who supported Massive Resistance and the maintaining of the Jim Crow laws.

The Continued Underestimation of the Far Right Threat

James Alex Fields, Jr. - Driver of the murder vehicle

The majority of the acts of terrorism since 9-11 have been committed by far right extremist, yet the media continually down plays the seriousness that these far right elements pose to law abiding citizens. Frighteningly, Der Trumpenführer wants to direct all anti-terror efforts towards Mulsims - no doubt to play to his base and his own bigotry - even as the events in Charlottesville underscore that the real threat is white supremacists/far right Christians (I see the two groups as largely the same since white nationalism is now the true religion of the Christofascists).  As a piece in the New York Times set out, the driver of the vehicle that drove into a crowd killing one and injuring 19 others - just like Islamic extremists in London - showed many warning signs that he was a potential threat. I'm sure in no time - if it hasn't already begun - the far right will claim he had mental illness problems rather than admit it is the toxicity of their beliefs and agenda that is the true cause of what happened on Saturday.  Here are article excerpts:

Although the crash was a grisly coda to a day of clashes between white nationalists and their opponents, family members, acquaintances and internet posts suggested that Mr. Fields had mostly gone unnoticed by the authorities and researchers, even as he trafficked in radical views and unnerving behavior long before the outbreak of violence.

As a young man in Kentucky, he sometimes espoused Nazi ideology at school. A military career ended in less than four months. On Saturday, before the crash that left Heather D. Heyer, 32, dead, and 19 others hurt, he stood in Charlottesville, donned a white shirt and clutched a shield that bore a symbol of the so-called alt-right. He is expected to appear in court on Monday to face an array of charges, including a count of second-degree murder; the federal authorities have opened a civil-rights inquiry.

[O]thers who knew Mr. Fields, especially from his teenage years, said that his demeanor and opinions had troubled them for years.

“On many occasions there were times he would scream obscenities, whether it be about Hitler or racial slurs,” a woman who attended middle school with Mr. Fields in Florence, Ky., said in an email on Sunday.

The woman, who requested anonymity because she feared retaliation, said Mr. Fields “mostly kept to himself” and “didn’t start fights or try to fight.” But she described him as “exceptionally odd and an outcast to be sure.”

“He wasn’t afraid to make you feel unsafe,” said the woman, who was among the students who said Mr. Fields had made them feel unnerved. The sources of Mr. Fields’s ideology were unclear on Sunday, but his Facebook page included memes and symbols associated with the far right. But in Charlottesville, Mr. Fields stood among men believed to be associated with Vanguard America, a group whose manifesto declares that “a government based in the natural law must not cater to the false notion of equality.”

There are many more James Fields out in society and they need to be identified and protective measures taken, including changes to America's gun laws that allow such people to be armed and even more dangerous.  

Sikh Man Shot in Own Driveway by Apparent Trump Supporter

An Indian tech worker in the Mid-West was murdered last week by a white male who shouted racial slurs and told the victim to "go back to your country."  A gay couple in Key West, Florida was attacked by a white North Carolinian who yelled to them that they "were in Trump country now." Now, the Washington Post is reporting about the shooting of a Sikh man who was in his own driveway.  The attacker shouted at his victim to "go back to your country."  Such attacks are becoming increasingly frequent and thankfully are being treated in many instances as hate crimes. Yet Donald Trump supporters refuse to admit that their foul leader - and they themselves - bears any responsibility for this surge of hatred and violence.  The truth, however, is that we did not see so many acts of hatred prior to Trump's appeals to racism, religious extremism and general misogyny throughout his presidential campaign.  If Trump supporters are honest with themselves and the rest of us, they would concede that "make America great again" really means "make America white and Christian again."  Don't hold your breath for such honesty to be on display anytime soon.  Here are highlights from the Post on this latest hate driven attack:  

The 39-year-old Sikh man was working on his car in his driveway in Kent, Wash., just south of Seattle, when a man walked up wearing a mask and holding a gun.

According to a report in the Seattle Times, there was an altercation, and the gunman — a stocky, 6-foot-tall white man wearing a mask over the bottom part of his face — said “Go back to your own country” and pulled the trigger.

Authorities are investigating the shooting as a suspected hate crime, the newspaper reported.

The victim, whose name hasn’t been released, was shot in the arm at about 8 p.m. Friday and suffered injuries that are not life-threatening, the newspaper reported. The man who shot him is still on the loose. Kent Police have reached out to the FBI and other law enforcement agencies for help.

The Washington state shooting comes just weeks after an Indian man in Kansas was killed and another was injured by a gunman who told them to “get out of my country” before opening fire in a bar.

In the Kansas case, Srinivas Kuchibhotla, 32, died from his wounds. Alok Madasani, 32, was released from the hospital Thursday. A third person, Ian Grillot, a patron at the bar, was shot while trying to intervene, The Washington Post reported.

Authorities there were also investigating whether the shooting was motivated by bias, a widely held suspicion among the victims’ family members.

Family members of the two men said in interviews that they feared the current atmosphere in the United States. “There is a kind of hysteria spreading that is not good because so many of our beloved children live there,” said Venu Madhav, a relative of Kuchibhotla. “Such hatred is not good for people.”  Madhav said that “something has changed in the United States.”

Sikhs have faced similar fears since Sept. 11, 2001, worried that they are singled out for persecution because of their religious head coverings, according to Sikhnet, a global virtual community for the religion’s adherents. Sikhs, who wear turbans as part of their religion, are from northern India and are neither Hindu nor Muslim, according to Sikhnet.

America is becoming an increasingly ugly place.  As noted recently, foreign tourism is down by 17% as foreign travelers opt to go to more friendly and safe countries instead of America.