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This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: Crystallizing the political identity uniting the forces behind Eddie the Friendly Spook (Snowden) and the “libertarian” forces to be found behind the Charleston church massacre, an article by Mark Ames notes the neo-Confederate template that is to be found in this milieu: ” . . .Beyond that, the Libertarian Party’s political solution to African-American poverty and injustice was to abolish all welfare programs, public schools, and anti-discrimination laws like the Civil Rights Act. This was the solution promoted by an up-and-coming libertarian, Jacob Hornberger—who this week [May of 2015–D.E.] co-hosted an event with RON PAUL and GLENN GREENWALD. Hornberger believes that 19th century antebellum slave-era America was “the freest society in history”. . . ”
After reviewing Glenn Greenwald’s legal work running interference for the “leaderless resistance strategy” and Snowden political idol Ron Paul’s work fanning the racism underlying the Charleston massacre and the Trayvon Martin shooting, the program highlights Jeffrey Tucker.
A technocratic-libertarian, Tucker was also one of the editors of Ron Paul’s racist newsletters and deeply involved with the League of the South, a neo-Confederate organization that is joined at the hip with the Ludwig von Mises Institute and the “Paulistinian Libertarian Organization.” (Julian Assange is a big fan of Ron and Rand Paul.)
Next, the program highlights Harold Covington, an American Nazi leader whose Northwest Aryan republic propaganda and futuristic novels (intended as teaching tools) appear to have been an influence on Dylann Roof.
After the Charleston massacre, a number of African-American churches caught fire, many because of apparent arson attacks. The media are downplaying the incident.
Indeed, “officialdom” remains willfully ignorant (and complicitly silent) about some of the broader connections of Nazi and white-supremacist elements. One of the most famous attacks on an African American church was the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in 1963, with evidentiary tributaries running in the direction of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and President Kennedy.
By the same token, a New York Times Op-ed piece that discussed “white supremacist” Bob Whitaker failed to mention that he had been a key official handling security clearances and other sensitive matters for the Reagan Administration.
Much of the rest of the program highlights the long-standing Nazi and white supremacist goal of gaining control of the Pacific Northwest as an “Aryan homeland,” a key strategic and philosophical element of Harold Covington’s political outlook.
Program Highlights Include:
- Lafayette, Louisiana suspect John Houser’s Nazi influences.
- Portland (OR) police captain Mark Kruger’s honoring of Third Reich soldiers.
- Alleged Nazi and white supremacist behavior at Daimler Truck’s Portland (OR) plant.
- The German industrial capital apparently underlying Rick Boehlke, a key associate of Mohammed Atta.
- German industrialist Folker’s buying up of huge amounts of property in the Pacific Northwest.
- The significance of Boehlke’s Florida Air in Ruddi Dekkers’s recruitment of German and Arab pilots to train at Huffman Aviation.
- Review of a very important piece of analysis on “technocratic fascism.”
1a. More details are emerging on the shooter in the Lafayette, LA, theater shooting: Surprise! He’s a neo-Nazi with a history of advocating lone-wolf style attacks. The reasons behind his selection of the movie theater target remain opaque.
A gunman killed two people and wounded at least nine others during a showing of “Trainwreck” at a movie theater in Louisiana.
The 59-year-old “lone white male” opened fire about 20 minutes into the film Thursday evening at the Grand 16 theater in Lafayette, roughly 60 miles west of Baton Rouge.
Authorities identified the shooting suspect as John Russel Houser. It appears that he turned the gun on himself after unsuccessfully trying to flee by blending in with the crowd, according to police.
...
Houser is originally from Phenix City, Ala., but had bounced around before ending up at a local Motel 6, authorities said.
Police searched the room they think he was staying in and found wigs, glasses and other items that could be used as a disguise, they said.
A Columbus, Ga., woman, who wished to remain anonymous, told Yahoo News that she had purchased a home that Houser once shared with his wife. The suspect eventually lived in the house alone for two years without making any payments, she said.
“You don’t know crazy. You don’t know what we went through with that house,” she said to Yahoo News over the phone. “He had lots and lots of problems.”
The woman said Houser came from a “fine family in Columbus” — his mother was a schoolteacher, and his father was tax commissioner for Columbus. He used to attend church services years ago, she said.
She added that Houser once attended law school but dropped out.
“We’ve been up all night with the FBI,” she said. “He was dangerous. I’m just so glad that no more people were hurt than was hurt. It’s sad. We’re sad.”
In 2008, Houser’s wife, Kellie Maddox Houser, and other family members requested a protective order from him.
According to court documents, obtained by the Associated Press, he “exhibited extreme erratic behavior and has made ominous as well as disturbing statements.”
The filing said Houser had “a history of mental health issues, i.e., manic depression and/or bi-polar disorder.”
His wife also removed all weapons from their home because she feared his “volatile mental state,” according to the paperwork.
The protective order was at least temporarily granted. She later filed for divorce.
Houser had been arrested several times from 10 to 15 years ago on various charges, including arson, selling alcohol to a minor and speeding, according to the AP.
Jim Mustian, a journalist for the New Orleans Advocate, citing a local sheriff, said that Houser was denied a pistol permit in 2006 in Russell County, Ala.
The suspect’s Linkedin profile describes him as an entrepreneur in “investment management.” He claimed to have owned two pubs in Georgia and to have tried his hand at real estate development in 2006.
He pursued a bachelor of business administration at Columbus State University from 1985 until 1988 and a juris doctorate (law degree) at Faulkner University in Montgomery, Ala., his profile said.
Houser listed “God’s Business” as one of his skills.
He appeared on “Calvin Floyd Live,” previously called “Rise and Shine,” on WLTZ NBC 38 in more than 60 episodes, according to the LinkedIn page.
“Invited political controversy on every one of them, and loved every minute of it,” he said.
The show’s host, Floyd, told Yahoo News that he invited Houser on his show many times to discuss his radical views because it was entertaining and caused tremendous buzz.
“He was a guest because he was good TV entertainment, not because it was a respected opinion that he had to say. But he was very entertaining all the time,” Floyd said in a phone interview with Yahoo news. “He had Tea Party-radical Republican views on everything. I’d have a Democratic spokesperson on [for the opposing perspective]. He generated a lot of phone calls.”
Houser was a member of Tea Party Nation, according to the group’s website.
The Hatewatch Blog, which is run by the Intelligence Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, uncovered that Houser posted about his fondness for Hitler, neo-Nazis and lone wolves on several online forums.
“Do not mistake yourselves for one minute, the enemy sees all posted on this website,” he wrote on a site dedicated to the New York chapter of Greece’s far-right Golden Dawn, which espouses fascist and neo-Nazi ideologies.
“I do not want to discourage the last hope for the best, but you must realize the power of the lone wolf, is the power that can come forth in ALL situations.Look within yourselves,” he continued.
Elsewhere, on the U.S. Message Board, a political discussion forum, he wrote, “Hitler accomplished far more than any other through ‘pragmatically forming.’”
Authorities identified the young women he murdered as Macy Breaux, 21, and Jillian Johnson, 33, and said another person is in critical condition.
...
Houser’s apparent getaway vehicle had switched license plates on it and was parked near a cinema exit door, Craft said.
“It is apparent that he was intent on shooting and then escaping,” he added.
1b. ” . . .Beyond that, the Libertarian Party’s political solution to African-American poverty and injustice was to abolish all welfare programs, public schools, and anti-discrimination laws like the Civil Rights Act. This was the solution promoted by an up-and-coming libertarian, Jacob Hornberger—who this week [May of 2015–D.E.] co-hosted an event with RON PAUL and GLENN GREENWALD. Hornberger believes that 19th century antebellum slave-era America was “the freest society in history”. . . ”
With the Bay Area still cross-eyed with delirium over the championship of the NBA Golden State Warriors, we might say “Assist, Greenwald, Paul” with regard to the Charleston shootings.
Recent news has offered up a grimly instructive juxtaposition. As Glenn Greenwald and his associates in the Snowden “op” continue to bask in the glow of professional awards granted them, Dylann Roof has put into action the type of behavior advocated by Greenwald’s legal clients.
(A big supporter of George W. Bush in the early part of the last decade, Greenwald became an attorney for, and a fellow-traveler of, some of the most murderous Nazis in the country.)
As we have seen in FTR #754 and several posts, Greenwald defended Matthew Hale against solicitation of murder charges. Greenwald ran interference for the “leaderless resistance strategy.”
In particular, Greenwald provided apposite legal assistance for the National Alliance. Leaderless resistance is an operational doctrine through which individual Nazis and white supremacists perform acts of violence against their perceived enemies, individually, or in very small groups. Acting in accordance with doctrine espoused by luminaries and leaders in their movement, they avoid infiltration by law enforcement by virtue of their “lone wolf” operational strategy.
What Roof [allegedly] did is precisely the sort of thing advocated by the “Leaderless Resistance” strategy.The advocates of this sort of thing, such as Citizen Greenwald’s client The National Alliance (publisher of The Turner Diaries,” which provided the operational template for David Lane’s associates The Order) have been shielded (to an extent) from civil suits holding them to account for their murderous advocacy.
National Alliance’s books are specifically intended as instructional vehicles. Hunter is dedicated to convicted murderer Joseph Paul Franklin and was specifically designed as a “How To” manual for lone-wolf, white supremacist killers like Roof.
Note, also, that the “fourteen words” of Order member David Lane are the inspiration for “Combat 14,” the paramilitary wing of the Ukrainian fascist group Svoboda, one of the OUN/B heirs that came to power as a result of the Maidan coup of 2014. Lane drove the getaway car when “The Order”–explicitly inspired by “The Turner Diaries”–murdered Denver talk show host Alan Berg.
The “fourteen words” were also an influence on Roof.
We should note that what Greenwald did is NOT a question of outlawing free speech, as he implied. When the ACLU defended the American Nazi Party against an injunction against marching in Skokie, Illinois (a Chicago suburb with a considerable Jewish population), it did so on the grounds of constitutionally protected free speech.
Pre-Greenwald, advocating violence along the lines of what National Vanguard Books (the NA’s publishing arm) does was still legal.
However, IF someone was advocating violence against minorities, “racial enemies,” etc. and someone can be demonstrated to have acted on the basis of such exhortations, the author of the exhortation to violence could be held responsible for the consequences of their actions.
The consequences were considerable legal damages.
This is sound law. It doesn’t say you can’t say such things, however if you do, and that causes harm or death to others, you ARE RESPONSIBLE.
If someone leaves a rake on their property with the teeth facing upward and someone steps on it and is injured, the property owner bears civil liability for their actions.
That is the legal principle under which the National Aliiance, et al were being sued.
In connection with “L’Affaire Snowden,” we noted that in the background of The Peachfuzz Fascist (Snowden), one finds elements that advocate slavery, including the League of the South and other elements of the neo-Confederate movement, which apparently inspired Dylann Roof.
Snowden was an admirer of Ron Paul, to whose campaign he contributed and whose views he parrots. Ron Paul is inextricably linked with the neo-Confederate movement. Jack Hunter–a former head of the League of the South and a current aide to his son Rand Paul–was the chief blogger for Ron Paul’s 2012 Presidential campaign.
Bruce Fein, the top legal counsel for Paul’s 2012 campaign was the first attorney for Eddie the Friendly Spook and is the attorney for the Snowden family.
In a 1992 edition of his newsletter, Snowden’s political idol Ron Paul advocated that whites arm themselves and shoot black men. In so doing, he helped to set the template for George Zimmerman’s shooting of Trayvon Martin. That killing appears to have been a major influence on Dylann Roof.
The above political elements loom large in the apparent development of Dylann Roof’s motivational ideology.
“Baltimore & The Walking Dead” by Mark Ames; Pando Daily; 5/1/2015.
. . . . So when Rand Paul went on Laura Ingraham’s radio program to blame Baltimore on black culture and values and “lack of fathers,” the libertarian whom Time called “the most interesting man in politics” was merely rehashing 25-year-old mainstream Republicrat bigotries, the very same bigoted, wrong assumptions that led to all the disastrous policies we’re now paying for today.
Which brings me to the Libertarians of 1992.
After Ferguson exploded last year, Libertarians positioned themselves as the only political force that had no blood on their hands, the only political force that was “principled” enough throughout the past few decades to offer the right analyses — and the right solutions — to the problems faced by people now rising up in Baltimore.
In 1992, the most famous libertarian of all, Ron Paul, was still between Congressional stints when [the riots in] Los Angeles erupted, but he did run a profitable libertarian newsletter, “The Ron Paul Political Report,” to keep his ideas alive. Shortly after the LA riots, Ron Paul put out a “Special Issue on Racial Terrorism”offering his libertarian analysis of what he termed black “terrorism”:
“The criminals who terrorize our cities—in riots and on every non-riot day—are not exclusively young black males, but they largely are. As children, they are trained to hate whites, to believe that white oppression is responsible for all black ills, to ‘fight the power,’ to steal and loot as much money from the white enemy as possible.
“The cause of the riots is plain: barbarism. If the barbarians cannot loot sufficiently through legal channels (i.e., the riots being the welfare-state minus the middle-man), they resort to illegal ones, to terrorism. Trouble is, few seem willing to stop them. The cops have been handcuffed. . . .
. . . .“We are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, but it is hardly irrational. Black men commit murders, rapes, robberies, muggings, and burglaries all out of proportion to their numbers.”
“I think we can safely assume that 95% of the black males in [major U.S. cities] are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.”A few months later, in October 1992, Dr. Paul explained how he taught his own family—presumably including his favorite son, Rand Paul—how to defend themselves and even murder what Dr. Paul called “hip-hop” carjackers, “the urban youth who play unsuspecting whites like pianos”:
“What can you do? More and more Americans are carrying a gun in the car. An ex-cop I know advises that if you have to use a gun on a youth, you should leave the scene immediately, disposing of the wiped off gun as soon as possible. Such a gun cannot, of course, be registered to you, but one bought privately (through the classifieds, for example.).
Beyond that, the Libertarian Party’s political solution to African-American poverty and injustice was to abolish all welfare programs, public schools, and anti-discrimination laws like the Civil Rights Act. This was the solution promoted by an up-and-coming libertarian, Jacob Hornberger—who this week co-hosted an event with Ron Paul and Glenn Greenwald. Hornberger believes that 19th century antebellum slave-era America was “the freest society in history”. . . and after the LA riots, he offered this solution:
“the repeal of: (1) every law that takes money from some people and gives it to others; (2) all regulations that interfere with peaceful exchanges between consenting adults; (3) all drug laws; and (4) all compulsory-attendance laws and school taxes.”
And then there’s libertarian philosopher Murray Rothbard’s response to the LA riots. Rand Paul credits Rothbard as “a great influence on my thinking”; and Rothbard blamed the LA riots not on racism and black grievances, but rather on slow and insufficient police response and “the moral and esthetic nihilism created by many decades of cultural liberalism.” . . . .
2a. Pando’s Paul Carr gives us a closer peek at the individual, publisher Jeffrey Tucker. Let’s just say Big Tech probably doesn’t share Carr’s terror about Tucker’s views on technology and regulations, although they should probably be a little concerned about almost everything else he says. In addition to being one of the authors of Ron Paul’s racist newsletters, Tucker is a founding member of The League of the South.
“Imagine If the “Uber Is a Good Start” Guy Turned out to Be a Crazy Racist Homophobe” by Paul Carr; Pando Daily; 7/16/2015.
Or don’t, because he is.
Earlier this week, I described the most terrifying moment of my visit to the FreedomFest libertarian conference.
It came during a panel about “hacking the state” where a publisher named Jeffrey Tucker described his vision for a world where technology has disrupted away all regulations and laws. Uber, argued Tucker, was a good “first step” down that road, but was held back by Travis Kalanick’s insistence on regulating the behavior of his drivers.
Tucker also said that the only victims he felt sorry for were those who had been jailed for creating libertarian trading platforms for drugs and other illegal products and services:
“I cry about… my friend [Silk Road founder] Ross Ulbricht…. There is so much injustice in the world… If any of you want to minister to prisoners, now is a good time.”
As I wrote, Tucker came across as a fully-fledged sociopath; someone who would see the world burn and call it progress. I suggested that Tucker represents a new breed of modern tech-savvy libertarians, the old racist guard of libertarians having withered away.
It turns out I was wrong. Not about Tucker being a fucking nut — in fact, as you’ll see, he’s far more crazy than I could possibly have imagined — but rather about him being a new breed.
In fact, Tucker allegedly had a starring role in the most vile, most racist, most infamous episode in the previous incarnation of libertarianism: Ron Paul’s racist newsletters.
You’ll likely already know the newsletters I’m referring to. They were sent to Ron Paul supporters in the early 90s and, as the New Republic put it:
What they reveal are decades worth of obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews, and gays. In short, they suggest that Ron Paul is not the plain-speaking antiwar activist his supporters believe they are backing–but rather a member in good standing of some of the oldest and ugliest traditions in American politics.
Mark Ames has a classic example here on Pando, in which African Americans were described as “terrorists,” “animals” and worse:
I think we can safely assume that 95% of the black males in [major U.S. cities] are semi-criminal or entirely criminal...
What can you do? More and more Americans are carrying a gun in the car. An ex-cop I know advises that if you have to use a gun on a youth, you should leave the scene immediately, disposing of the wiped off gun as soon as possible. Such a gun cannot, of course, be registered to you, but one bought privately (through the classifieds, for example.).
I frankly don’t know what to make of such advice; but even in my little town of Lake Jackson, Texas, I’ve urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense. For the animals are coming.
When the newsletters came to light during Ron Paul’s last unsuccessful presidential run, the libertarian hero was quick to insist that he hadn’t actually written the words attributed to him. Instead, he and his defenders said, the newsletters were mostly written by unnamed ghosts on his staff.
According to none other than Reason Magazine— the house publication of modern libertarianism — one of those ghosts was… Jeff[rey] Tucker:
Timothy Wirkman Virkkala, formerly the managing editor of the libertarian magazine Liberty, told Reason that the names behind the Political Report were widely known in his magazine’s offices as well, because Liberty’s late editor-in-chief, Bill Bradford, had discussed the newsletters with the principals, and then with his staff.
“I understood that Burton S. Blumert was the moneybags that got all this started, that he was the publisher,” Virkkala said. “Lew Rockwell, editor and chief writer; Jeff Tucker, assistant, probably a writer; Murray Rothbard, cheering from the sidelines, probably ghosting now and then.” (Virkkala has offered his own reaction to the controversy at his Web site.) Blumert, Paul’s 1988 campaign chairman and a private supporter this year, did not respond to a request for an interview; Rothbard died in 1995. We reached Tucker, now editorial vice president of Rockwell’s Mises.org, at his office, and were told: “I just really am not going to make a statement, I’m sorry. I’ll take all responsibility for being the editor of Mises.org, OK?”
It gets worse. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Tucker is a full-on neo-Confederate:
Both [Lew] Rockwell [the other alleged author of the racist Ron Paul newsletters] and institute research director Jeffrey Tucker are listed on the racist League of the South’s Web page as founding members — and both men deny their membership. Tucker has written for League publications, and many League members have taught at the institute’s seminars and given presentations at its conferences.
If Tucker denies his membership then, of course, we have to take him at his word. Hopefully Tucker was able to clear up the misunderstanding when he co-hosted a sessionat the Young Americans for Liberty conference with former League of the South chairman (and Ron Paul staffer) Jack “Southern Avenger” Hunter.
Meanwhile there’s no shortage of writing that we know for certain was produced by Jeffrey Tucker, because he actually had the, uh, courage to put his name on it.
For example, this essay about hate crime against gay Americans called “The Love That Never Shuts Up” in which he argued that gay people should not be protected by anti-hate crime laws:
[I]ncluding gays among those protected by hate-crime laws is a way of granting a statutory privilege that non-gays do not enjoy. It codifies the experience of victimhood and provides an aura of sanctity that the present political culture grants to official victims. A law that presumes that gays are constantly threatened with violence makes them martyrs to a cause even before they experience martyrdom.
...
And that’s just the stuff readily available online. If the Ron Paul newsletters taught us anything — and, boy, did they — it’s that to find the really dark, disgusting shit you have to look back to before the Internet taught people like Tucker that you’re smarter not to put some things in writing.
Take, for example, the 1995 “Letter From Alabama” (embedded below) in which Tucker expressed dismay that fifteen year old black children are ineligible for the death penalty:
Apparently, it’s considered too sensitive a subject when a black boy (who is too young to be eligible for the death penalty) kills three older white women. People might get upset. Three days after the triple murder, even the local newspaper stopped reporting the details.
Receiving extensive coverage instead, thanks to roving reporters from the Associated Press, were the latest goings on in Wedowee, Alabama. A former high school principal accused of being impolite to a mixed-race girl was hired for an administrative job by the school district, over the objections of outsiders demanding ever more minority “rights.”
Or the follow-up article, a year later, in which Tucker was still furious that the boy — who, he apparently had since discovered was in fact fourteen — was still alive:
The jurors who tried the 14-year-old black boy who shot and killed three wid– ows last year, one of them my own dear neighbor, found him guilty and gave him several life terms. By law, he got the maximum. He is too young for the death penalty. It is beyond me. If you are old enough to murder, you are old enough to pay the ultimate price.
Still, absent the electric chair or perhaps the noose, Tucker, who you will remember calls himself a “Chief Liberty Officer” and told the audience at FreedomFest that “I cry a little bit about the prisoners” has another idea for punishing the poor and the black: A return to chain gangs.
Instead of lounging around prison, criminals clean up the roads, linked with thick and unbreakable cords. It keeps the highways clean, provides proximate social restitution, and the humiliating sight itself deters future criminals. What’s wrong with that? Right on cue, liberals denounced it as cruel, reactionary, unworkable, and all the rest. But according to real people in Alabama, serious crime deserves a swift and serious response.
2b. Next, we re-examine one of the most important analytical articles in a long time, David Golumbia’s article in Uncomputing.org about technocrats and their fundamentally undemocratic outlook.
“Tor, Technocracy, Democracy” by David Golumbia; Uncomputing.org; 4/23/2015.
” . . . . Such technocratic beliefs are widespread in our world today, especially in the enclaves of digital enthusiasts, whether or not they are part of the giant corporate-digital leviathan. Hackers (“civic,” “ethical,” “white” and “black” hat alike), hacktivists, WikiLeaks fans [and Julian Assange et al–D. E.], Anonymous “members,” even Edward Snowden himself walk hand-in-hand with Facebook and Google in telling us that coders don’t just have good things to contribute to the political world, but that the political world is theirs to do with what they want, and the rest of us should stay out of it: the political world is broken, they appear to think (rightly, at least in part), and the solution to that, they think (wrongly, at least for the most part), is for programmers to take political matters into their own hands. . . First, [Tor co-creator] Dingledine claimed that Tor must be supported because it follows directly from a fundamental “right to privacy.” Yet when pressed—and not that hard—he admits that what he means by “right to privacy” is not what any human rights body or “particular legal regime” has meant by it. Instead of talking about how human rights are protected, he asserts that human rights are natural rights and that these natural rights create natural law that is properly enforced by entities above and outside of democratic polities. Where the UN’s Universal Declaration on Human Rights of 1948 is very clear that states and bodies like the UN to which states belong are the exclusive guarantors of human rights, whatever the origin of those rights, Dingledine asserts that a small group of software developers can assign to themselves that role, and that members of democratic polities have no choice but to accept them having that role. . . Further, it is hard not to notice that the appeal to natural rights is today most often associated with the political right, for a variety of reasons (ur-neocon Leo Strauss was one of the most prominent 20th century proponents of these views). We aren’t supposed to endorse Tor because we endorse the right: it’s supposed to be above the left/right distinction. But it isn’t. . . .”
This is precisely the type of endeavor for which Glenn Greenwald ran legal interference when he represented the National Alliance.
Note that, in addition to his involvement with the Greensboro shooting (discussed in AFA #13) Covington was a Nazi associate of John Hinckley, as discussed in FTR #244.
“White Supremacist Calls Charleston ‘a Preview of Coming Attractions’” by Sam Thielman; The Guardian; 6/28/2015.
Dylann Roof refers to Harold Covington’s white separatist group, the Northwest Front, in his alleged manifesto. The rightwing sci-fi writer distances himself from the shooting, but his followers speculate if his work influenced Roof’s actions.
One of the shadowy figures who appears to have influenced alleged Charleston killer Dylann Roof is Harold Covington, the founder of a white separatist movement and, within supremacist circles, an influential sci-fi author. Covington, the latest in a long line of rightwing sci-fi writers, has been linked to racist crimes in the past and this week called the massacre “a preview of coming attractions”.
The racist manifesto and photos apparently posted by Roof makes mention of the Northwest Front, created by Covington, a former member of the American Nazi party who traveled to South Africa and Rhodesia in order to agitate for white power. In the accompanying photos, Roof wore patches with Rhodesian and apartheid-era South African flags on them.
Covington, if you believe his website, runs a growing enclave of white supremacists near Seattle called the Northwest Front. The non-profit group is reflected in a series of sci-fi novels, authored by Covington, about a dystopian future in which a white nation is the only answer to US economic and racial woes.
American science fiction has long had a rightward tilt, from the contemporary strain of small-press sci-fi Tea Party fantasias swarming the Hugo Awards nominations all the way back to libertarian deity Ayn Rand. But Covington’s novels are a breed apart.
His followers see conspiracy in Covington’s connections to Roof. “And why did this young man have a flight jacket with flag patches from the old White ruled southern African countries, which is where HAC spent part of his early days in the Cause, hmmm,” wrote a commenter called Wingnut under a recent podcast on the Northwest website. “Wonder if they’ll ‘find’ a pile of NF-HAC stuff in this young man’s home? Then they can pull one of those ‘the devil made me do it’ numbers on HAC.”
Covington doesn’t advocate for randomized violence; he wants revolution, to the extent that he calls his followers “comrades” and lectures them on “the purpose of revolution” among other phrases more characteristic of the left than the right. While it was clear Roof knew about the Northwest Front and seemed familiar with it, Covington condemned Roof’s shooting on his Tuesday podcast because “it doesn’t work.”
“People, don’t do this shit, this flipping out with a gun lunacy,” he said. “No, this is not just ritual disclaimer, Harold trying to cover is ass, this is what Harold really thinks.”
The Roof killings are not the first time Covington’s name has come up in connection with an allegedly racist murder. Covington was part of a group of white supremacists in the 1970s who massacred black people at a rally in Greensboro (Covington didn’t kill anyone and wasn’t in attendance on the day of the violence). He was also at one time close with Frazier Glenn Miller, who is charged with killing a woman, a 69-year-old man and that man’s 14-year-old grandson near Jewish institutions last year.
Elizabeth Wheaton wrote about Covington in her book Codename Greenkil: The 1979 Greensboro Killings. “Covington was pretty much a minor player,” she told The Guardian. “He liked the Nazi image on the white power kinds of things, but he was kind of nerdy. Most of [the others] were country people or ex-military.”
“For all of his lacks, he does not lack the ability to turn a phrase,” said Wheaton. “He’s very articulate in presenting his message.”
Covington said he’d never heard of Roof before the massacre and told The Guardian to “try Stormfront. That’s usually where newbies in the Movement end up leaving their first electronic footprint.”
Much of Covington’s influence on his followers comes from his novels, which are written in a style that reads like someone spilled a 50-gallon barrel of ethnic slurs all over a stack of early-draft Robert Heinlein novels. His choice of cultural icons dates his books considerably, even the recent ones, which are filled with up-to-the-minute references to Jane Fonda and Gilligan’s Island, but the author probably doesn’t care about these criticisms. The books are not primarily novels, anyway.
The Northwest novels “are not meant to be mere entertainment”, according to Covington’s website Northwest.org. “They are meant to be self-fulfilling prophecies. The author wishes to inspire the creation of a real Northwest American Republic, and his novels are filled with a great deal of sound practical advice about how to do it.”
There are five Northwest novels are all populated with similarly brave and heroic white men (“domestic terrorist-type dudes” in the words of Shane Ryan, the narrator of Covington’s A Distant Thunder), cruel, DW Griffith-style black people whose speech is written in dialect, and hand-wringing liberals who want nothing more than to stifle the right to free speech of (white) people who just want to secede from the US.
“As the NVA [Northwest Volunteer Army, Covington’s heroes] vise had slowly clamped down on the Northwest over the past five years, Capitol Hill had lost much of its left-wing cachet, as those artsy-fartsy habitue´s who were dusky of skin or sexually inverted either fled to more hospitable climes or got well and truly wasted, shot dead on the pavement by the NVA gunners,” Covington explains in 2004’s A Mighty Fortress.
Shane Ryan, hero of the purported oral-history-of-the-revolution volume A Distant Thunder, recalls the heroism of his white brothers and sisters up to and including teams “specialty snipers” who pick off interracial couples and, of course, Conrad Baumgarten, who “came all the way from Germany with his SS officer grandfather’s scoped ’98 Mauser to hunt Jews”.
...
Covington’s prophecy
In an email exchange with the Guardian, Covington said he was urging followers not to talk about Roof until “all the facts were out”.
What did he mean by that? “I mean that a lot of times these things are not as advertised and people like you have a tendency to try to use us as props and aids to support the Official Version. Oklahoma City being a prime example; there is a compelling case to be made that was a government sting operation gone very wrong, but I long ago gave up any hope of ever getting anybody to listen; anything we say is simply shouted down or kicked aside, we are treated as cranks at best, and facts are never allowed to interfere with the Received Wisdom from on high.
“For another example, I am well aware of the ideological orientation of the Guardian (I lived in the British Isles for a number of years [Covington spent time among skinheads in the UK – “a lot of them were great guys,” he said on a recent podcast]) and I understand that I have not a snowball’s chance in hell of getting our viewpoint represented honestly and fairly there.”
A few hours later, a new installment of his radio show went up on the Radio Free Northwest website, in which he did not advocate for violence, but did fantasize for a little while, saying that liberals were afraid of Charleston because it was “a preview of coming attractions”.
“They’ve been given a vision of a time in some imagined but possibly not too-far distant future when all of a sudden, on the street or in their office, or in some trendy fern bar, or Starbucks, or wine-and-cheese boutique on the Upper East Side or in San Francisco, they will look up, possibly from the laptop, where they are typing up their day’s quota of leftwing, liberal horseshit, and they will see a young white man like Dylann Roof standing in front of them with no steroid-pumped policemen in blue to protect their liberal candy asses from the consequences of years of their own behavior,” he said. “They will see in that young white man’s eyes, that he recognizes them. That he is now beyond deception or bullying or browbeating or Twitter-shaming or intimidation, that he knows them for what they are. And they will look down and see that he has something in his hand.”
5. A black church just burned down in Houston. We can add one more to the list of suddenly highly flammable black churches.
Is this sudden surge in black church burnings following the Charleston Massacre part of a wave of racially motivated hate crimes?
Well, as the ol’ saying goes, where there’s smoke, there’s fire...unless it’s smoke associated with the burning a black church, in which case it’s just a random tragedy.
“Black Church Burnings: Houston’s Fifth Ward Missionary Baptist Latest To Catch Fire” by Julia Glum; International Business Times; 7/15/2015.
Authorities responded early Wednesday morning to a fire at Houston’s Fifth Ward Missionary Baptist Church, the latest in a rash of burnings at predominantly black religious institutions. Nobody was injured in Wednesday fire, but the Texas church was “significantly damaged,” KHOU reported. It took firefighters about 30 minutes to extinguish the flames.
The Houston Chronicle reported that officials were investigating what caused the fire, which was first reported at 7:34 a.m. News of the blaze came as police in other states were looking into similar incidents at other churches across the South over the past month. The FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were reportedly working with local agencies to determine whether the fires were connected.
At least six churches have been burned since a white shooter killed nine black people during a June 17 massacre at the historically black Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The fatal shooting set off a nationwide discussion about race relations in the United States.
Recent church burnings include:
* On June 21, a person lit hay bales at College Hill Seventh-Day Adventist in Knoxville, Tennessee. The building wasn’t harmed, but a van was destroyed.
* On June 23, a suspected arsonist burned down God’s Power Church of Christ in Macon, Georgia. Authorities said they hadn’t found evidence the fire was a hate crime.
* On June 24, Briar Creek Road Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, suffered more than $250,000 in damages after a suspected arsonist set fire to the building. It was unclear whether the fire was racially motivated.
* On June 26, the Greater Miracle Temple in Tallahassee caught fire when a tree fell on electric wires. Fire marshals ruled the incident accidental.
* On June 26, Glover Grove Baptist Church in Warrenville, South Carolina burned down. State law enforcement were unable to determine what caused the fire.
* On June 30, Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church in Greeleyville, South Carolina, caught fire likely due to lightning strikes....
6. Ignoring the “Leaderless Resistance Strategy” for which Greenwald ran interference and which Dylan Roof (allegedly), Glenn Frazier Miller (allegedly) and John Houser (allegedly) manifested, mainstream media sources dismiss the notion that the burnings of black churches might be ideologically linked.
When news broke late Tuesday evening that yet another black church — Mount Zion A.M.E. Church in Greelyville, South Carolina — was on fire, the Internet erupted with outrage. People on Twitter noted that Mount Zion, which was also burned in the 1990s by members of the KKK, is the seventh predominantly African American church to burn to the ground in the past few weeks, and began venting their frustration using the hashtag #WhoIsBurningBlackChurches.
In response to the anger over church burnings that has been building for weeks, some media outlets, such as the Washington Post’s The Fix blog, have contended that attacks on black churches are not actually on the rise, suggesting the media is giving unwarranted coverage to the fires in aftermath of the recent shooting of nine black church goers in Charleston, South Carolina.
Along similar lines, the New York Times published a story on Tuesday purporting that there was no evidence that the arsons were hate crimes, citing investigators who said that even the intentional fires were merely acts of “vandalism.” The Times story also included quotes from inspectors claiming most of the fires are not believed to be “connected,” insofar as they aren’t thought to be part of a organized campaign of hate by one individual or group.
Granted, some of the fires do appear to be accidents, and the cause of the incident in Greelyville is still unclear. But the need to find an explicit “connection” between the fires may be misguided: When it comes to church burnings, many African Americans see the difference between an official hate crime and an act of “vandalism” as an issue of semantics, especially given the long, painful history of racists intentionally — and largely independently — setting fire to black churches all over the country. This context is the lived experience of many black Americans, and helps shed light on why — regardless of whether these fires are set accidentally or intentionally — so many are expressing dismay at the apparent rash of burnings, which prompted the NAACP to call on churches to beef up their security. . . .
7. Media have long neglected to cover violence used to terrorize African-Americans.
In recent weeks, investigators have been examining the circumstances surrounding a series of fires at predominantly black, southern churches. While some of the more recent fires were ruled accidental, authorities found evidence for arson in at least three cases. Burning black churches has a long, well-documented history as a white tactic for intimidation, particularly in the days of the Civil Rights Movement. More recently, a mid-1990s series of racially-motivated church burnings prompted the 1996 Church Arson Prevention Act.
And yet, the seeming reluctance of several media outlets—including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN.com—to seek a racial context for covering the fires has led some commentators to question what might be at stake in avoiding calling the church fires anything other than “isolated incidents” or “vandalism,” especially in light of the recent shooting in Charleston, South Carolina.
An abundance of caution in reporting should not be faulted, but the fact is that the mainstream has a long history and a short memory when it comes to reporting on anti-black violence. This might seem somewhat surprising, given the media’s proclivity for speculating about terror conspiracies. But our largely white media machine—in which I myself am an occasional participant—suffers not only from frequent bouts of paranoia, but also a tendency towards collective amnesia. If “the condition of black life is one of mourning,” as Claudia Rankine recently wrote for the New York Times, the condition of white life is one of forgetfulness.
The tendency to underreport racially-motivated violence against black communities has a long, troubling history. Along with church burnings, black Americans carry the collective memory of another kind of terror: lynchings. A horrific strategy of public, wanton violence meted out across the South, lynchings were a prominent part of the effort to suppress black social uprising and maintain white dominance. And the white press has a complicated history when it came to how lynchings and race-related murders were covered.
From Emancipation to the end of Jim Crow, lynchings erased the value of black lives by keeping the threat of violence perpetually in the air. Black men, women and children were lynched with a vicious impunity. Lynchings were generally public, with bodies stripped, hung, burned or mutilated and left on display. Postcards with pictures of the deceased were available for purchase and trading. However, as civil rights slowly advanced across the South, violence went underground, but it did not stop. In turn, the white press, particularly in the South, generally played down or ignored how the ongoing killings of black Americans helped to maintain the ethos of segregation, even as laws began to change. . . .
8. One of the signature incidents in the civil rights movement of the 1960’s was the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The bombing was one of the events depicted in the film “Selma.”
In AFA #8, we noted the evidentiary tributaries between that bombing and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. Some points made about Dr. King’s slaying in our archives:
- James Earl Ray–the patsy in the Martin Luther King assassination–was railroaded into prison.
- His “defense” attorneys are noteworthy, in this context.
- One of them was Arthur Hanes, Sr., a CIA contract agent in the Bay of Pigs and a former FBI special agent, who thought the civil rights movement was communist-inspired.
- Hanes was the mayor of Birmingham, Alabama at the time of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing and many of the other incidents that took place under the supervision of “Bull” Connor–in charge of Birmingham law enforcement at the time.
- Hanes was also the defense attorney for KKK member Robert Chambliss, convicted of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.
- In The Guns of November, Part IV, we noted that Joseph Adams Milteer–a member of the fascist National States Rights Party–was taped by an undercover Miami police informer discussing impending plans to assassinate both JFK and Dr. King using high-powered rifles with telescopic sights. Milteer linked these plots with the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.
- The head of the National States Rights Party–Jesse Stoner–was another of James Earl Ray’s “defense” attorneys.
- Jerry Ray–James Earl Ray’s brother–was a member of the National States Rights Party.
8. A recent New York Times Op-ed piece mentioned that Robert (Bob) Whitaker was running for Vice President on a white supremacist platform in 2016. What the piece (predictably) failed to note was that Robert (Bob) Whitaker held a sensitive position in the Reagan White House.
This country’s Nazis are enabled by its “Not-Sees.”
. . . . In recent years, extremists have distilled the notion of white genocide to “the mantra,” parts of which show up on billboards throughout the South, as well as in Internet chat rooms. It proclaims “Diversity = White Genocide” and “Diversity Means Chasing Down the Last White Person,” blaming multiculturalism for undermining the “white race.” The white nationalist American Freedom Party has made the mantra’s author, a segregationist from South Carolina named Robert Whitaker, its vice-presidential candidate in 2016. . . .
9. Again, what The New York Times does NOT tell us about Whitaker is that he was in charge of security clearances and other sensitive functions for the Reagan White House.
. . . KAS: When we introduced you for the first time to our readers in National Vanguard, we gave a capsule biography of you as follows:
‘Mr. Whitaker was born and raised in South Carolina, and attended the University of South Carolina and the University of Virginia Graduate School. He has been a college professor, an international aviation negotiator, a Capitol Hill senior staffer, a Reagan Administration appointee, and a writer for the Voice of America.”
So you’re a Reagan administration appointee — what’s the story behind that?
BW: I was Special Assistant to the Director of the Office of Personnel Management, in charge of security clearances, staffing, and that sort of thing. . . .
10. A Portland police captain was disciplined for a number of things, including the public honoring of five Third Reich soldiers. Was Mark Kruger part of the Aryan Northwest project?
To settle a legal claim, the city of Portland has agreed to pay $5,000 to Portland police Capt. Mark Kruger and erase two disciplinary actions from his personnel record: a suspension for his public tribute to five Nazi-era German soldiers at a city park and a reprimand for retaliating against a female lieutenant.
The steps are part of a negotiated settlement reached after Kruger, now in charge of the Drugs and Vice Division, filed a notice of his intent to sue the city in January 2013.
Kruger, through his attorney, argued that the city and the police bureau’s Director of Services Mike Kuykendall slandered him in a series of text messages. Kuykendall repeatedly referred to Kruger as a Nazi in an exchange of texts with Lt. Kristy Galvan. . . . .
. . . . As part of the unusual settlement with Kruger, the city agreed to pay him back for the 80 hours suspension without pay he received in 2010 for nailing “memorial plaques” of five Nazi soldiers to a tree on the east side of Rocky Butte Park sometime between 1999 and 2001. Kruger was a Portland officer at the time, but wasn’t on duty when he erected the plaques as a shrine he called “Ehrenbaum” or “Honor Tree.” . . . .
11. Daimler’s truck plant in Portland was alleged to have been a hotbed of officially-sanctioned Nazi and white-supremacist activity.
Daimler Trucks North America is under investigation after allegations of racist language and violent threats were made by at least five employees in North Portland, the Bureau of Labor and Industries announced Wednesday.
Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian filed a complaint against Daimler September 25. It alleges that the company failed to take appropriate action after black and African American employees were called racist names including “nigger,” “boy,” “Toby” and “buckwheat.”
A white coworker is also accused of threatening an African American Daimler employee with a noose and saying he would drag the employee behind his car.
When the threatened employee reported the incident to Daimler, Avakian alleges the company “failed to take appropriate disciplinary action against the coworker prior to his retirement.”
In addition, a swastika displayed in a Daimler bathroom wasn’t taken down in a timely manner, the complaint said.
According to the BOLI spokesman Charlie Burr, five Daimler employees have said they experienced unlawful discrimination at the North Portland facility this year. Avakian said that included black, African American, Egyptian and Vietnamese employees. . . .
12. Returning to a subject covered in—among other programs—FTR#s 477, 761 the broadcast fleshes out Atta and company’s German connections. Throughout the milieu through which the 9/11 hijackers infiltrated, one finds Germans. Hilliard’s and Dekkers’ partner (in Florida Air) Rick Boehlke worked for a wealthy German industrialist who was buying large amounts of property in the Pacific Northwest. (It is worth noting in this regard that White Supremacists have long focused on the Pacific Northwest as an area that could be turned into “an Aryan homeland.” Is it possible that Boehlke’s German benefactor was involved with such a scheme?) Note, also, that an acquaintance of Dekkers alleged that he told her he was German, not Dutch.
. . . . Who had Rudi Dekkers and co. been working for? We didn’t know anyone you could just walk up to and ask. We maybe got a clue from Mike Pickett, the aviation executive who had watched Rick Boehlke with the same amazement with which aviation professionals in Florida watched Dekkers. ‘When Boehlke came in he was just a restaurateur at the Gig Harbor airport,’ he said. ‘Then he became the General Manager for a German named Folker, a German industrialist buying up all the land in that area.’ [Emphasis added.] More Germans. Jessica Daley, an attractive airline professional in her late twenties, worked for Rick Boehlke at Harbor Air and later transferred and worked for Rudi Dekkers at Florida Air. While Harbor Air was going under, Boehlke told Jessica to fly down to Florida and see Rudi. ‘When I walked into his (Rudi’s) office he was yelling and screaming at people,’ she recalled. ‘He said, ‘People call me a bastard Nazi because I’m loud and I’m German. And I’m very demanding.’ Dekkers told her he was German, not Dutch, Jessica said. . . .
13. In FTR #483, we noted that Boehlke’s Airline was part of the infrastructure and marketing scheme of Rudi Dekkers’ operations in Florida. “Boehlke, Inc.” was linked to Florida Air (for which Katharine Harris flacked) and appears to have been part of how Dekkers attracted German and Arab pilots to his South Florida operation.
Note that, according to the BKA (the German Federal Police), key associates of Atta in Florida were the children of prominent German industrialists!
. . . .In the spring of 2001—while Mohamed Atta was at his school—Rudi Dekkers did something so incredible that we spent over a year examining it in befuddled amazement. At the same time he was receiving the most painful kind of humiliating coverage in the local press (‘Huffman Rent Is Late, Again’), Rudi Dekkers and Wally Hilliard blithely launched an airline. They called it Florida Air, or FLAIR. . . .
. . . . We were not surprised to discover no one in the local aviation community thought the move made any business sense. All agreed that FLAIR was a doomed venture from day one. Once again, the question was why were they doing it. If both had not had business with Mohamed Atta, it might not have mattered. But they had. They chose, as partner, a man named Rick Boehlke, who owned an air carrier called Harbor Air, in Gig Harbor, Washington. Boehlke was also, just then, a participant in Portland, OR., in the $340 million looting of pension funds of mostly Mob-led unions, like the Laborers Union. . . . .
. . . . What were the odds that Rudi Dekkers and Wally Hilliard would go looking for a business partner and come up with a guy with Mob ties [Bormann ties?–D.E.] who’s helping pull off a spectacular $300 million heist? . . . Florida Air, the new airline, used Rick Boehlke’s Harbor Air’s license to fly. Boehlke also ended up supplying the new airline with both planes and pilots. What Dekkers and Hilliard were bringing to the party was an open question. Meanwhile, Mohamed Atta was still at Huffman Aviation, doing no one knows quite what. Was it outside the realm of possibility that all three men—Dekkers, Boehlke, and Hilliard worked for the same company? A company, or network, specializing in ‘niches’ like looting pension funds and training terrorists to fly? Or . . . was this just another freak coincidence? What are the odds, that the men who helped terrorist ringleader Mohamed Atta establish his American beachhead would be in business with a partner who robs banks . . . from the inside. . . .
. . . . However it played out, our understanding of what the terrorist conspiracy was doing in Florida would be shaped by what it was Rudi Dekkers and Wally Hilliard were discovered to have been doing—and with whom—while Mohamed Atta practiced touch and go’s at their facilities in Venice and Naples. Florida Air launched with great fanfare in the Spring of 2001. Dekkers and Hilliard had started another aviation business that did not make business sense. . . . .
. . . . During its brief two-month existence, Mohamed Atta may well have flown for the airline as a co-pilot. No one will admit it, but there were terrorists inside the cockpit of an American airline plane during the year 2001 who didn’t need box-cutters to get there. We discovered that the chance to fly as a commercial pilot with Florida Air, after taking flight training at ‘sister company’ Huffman Aviation, had been a big part of Rudi Dekkers European sales pitch, and was played up in the company’s advertising. . . .
. . . . ‘I kept ads from flying magazines from 2000,’ said Bill Bersch, a former manager at Huffman. ‘Come to Huffman to train, and then fly with our Florida Air airline.’ The flight school was advertised as a feed into Florida Air as future employer of Huffman’s flight school students. Florida Air put the ads in everywhere, but when it came down to it they couldn’t offer flying jobs, because there wasn’t an airline for very long.’ While this would seem to be a pretty serious crime, there had been no FAA investigation, which isn’t surprising. During the course of his ‘aviation career’ in Florida, Rudi Dekkers received so many free ‘passes’ from the FAA that they should enshrine it with an exhibit at the Air & Space Museum. . . .
. . . We needed to take a closer look at Rick Boehlke, at Florida Air, and at Rudi Dekkers and Wally Hilliard’s motivations for starting it. How many businessmen behind on their rent for six month in a row have the gall, or chutzpah, to at the same time start a new airline? Was it not enough for Rudi and Wally that they were already losing money hand-over-fist in their flight school venture, they decided they might as well be losing millions in an airline as well?. . . .
14. Among the capital-generating operations of Rick Boehlke was an apparent scheme to use retirement homes. Again, note the endorsement of Boehlke’s Florida Air by Katharine Harris.
. . . . The chief and, indeed, only accomplishment of Boehlke and Dekkers’ unsuccessful airline was that it provided a rationale for the presence on the tarmac of the Venice Airport of a half dozen British Aerospace Jetstreams poised within easy reach of Caribbean hot spots. Well the airline did have one other accomplishment: it was publicly endorsed by then-Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris. . . .
15. More about Rick Boehlke:
. . . Boehlke and Dekkers seemed too similar for it to be just a coincidence.
For example, Boehlke’s aviation company was evicted from its terminal at Sea-Tac International for failure to pay back rent. And Boehlke’s aviation-related businesses didn’t make business sense, either. ‘Richard Boehlke’s former employees always wondered what the aviation business was really doing,’ reporter Mason told us. ‘From the beginning they felt that the finances flowed from the real estate holdings and the retirement home into this aviation company, and that there was really no way this aviation company was really making money. So the question about what this aviation company was really all about still remains to be seen.’ . . . .
. . . . Boehlke’s Harbor Air had invested $8 million in new planes to accommodate more passengers in 1999, for example, and company officials said 2000 was a profitable year. But the firm’s debts had already mounted to the point where management just cashed out and split. A Harbor Air employee could only speculate as to why the airline was going under. ‘Mismanagement of funds,’ said the employee. ‘[Passenger] loads have picked up tremendously. We have five or six flights in and out a day.’” . . . .
. . . .Was Rick Boehlke an innocent businessman having a horrible string of bad luck? Or had he been feathering a bank account in the Caymans? Like Rudi Dekkers, all his companies were losers. . . even his ‘flagship’ assisted living company. ‘Even Boehlke’s Alterra Health Care went sideways,’ said an aviation observer in Tacoma. ‘The stock went from $38 three years ago to 22 cents.’ The ‘cover’ story we heard was: Boehlke lost $40 million in the stock market. . . .
. . . ‘For the 53 year-old Boehlke, the sun-drenched parties aboard his personal Grumman Albatross with friends in the San Juan Islands were supposedly over,’ reported the local paper in the San Juan Islands. ‘His huge flying boat sits for sale at the Tacoma Narrows Airport in Gig Harbor, along with other assets from his bankrupt aviation company. Observers in Washington noted that he was not, however, running noticeably short of cash.’ . . . .
. . . Eric Mason explained. ‘Richard Boehlke started in business creating freestanding retirement homes, and he at one point had the largest company, the largest holding of these freestanding retirement homes in the country. One of the retirement homes that belongs to the company that Richard Boehlke once held was just a stone’s throw from the airport where Mohamed Atta was trained. You have to ask yourself, there’s a lot of coincidences here. Are they just coincidences, or is there something more to it?’ . . . .
. . . But, just a few hundred feet down the block from Huffman Aviation in Venice, Boehlke’s company, Alterra, built a gleaming new assisted living facility during the 1990’s. Surely there couldn’t be any connection between the assisted living industry and covert operations? Could there? There could. We needed to look no further than a round-up of the usual suspects. A block away from the Venice Airport, on the opposite side of the street from Boehlke’s assisted living home facility, is a large and stately colonial building which looks eerily like the plush digs of the law firm in the Tom Cruise movie ‘The Firm.’ . . . .
Three men from Rome Georgia who plead guilty in plotting “to attack critical infrastructure to motivate militia groups to rise up” were just sentenced:
And here’s a bit more how their plan for attacking critical infrastructure they were in order to rally people to their anti-government: It was going to be infrastructure like power stations and water treatment facilities which would cause so much havoc when damaged that martial law would have to imposed:
“Cannon claimed this action would cause mass hysteria and if enough sabotage was successful, then martial law, therefore trigging other militias to join the fight”
That was the plan. It’s probably not a very exclusive plan.
Rand Paul just issued what is probably the harshest political attack on another opponent so far this campaign season. It was also probably the most delusional and laughably absurd attack of the season, the kind that makes even Donald Trump’s daily trolling seem tame, but it was certainly harsh:
Yes, according to Rand Paul, we should all keep in mind that Bernie “resistance is futile” Sanders is possibly planning on killing millions should they
lack the financial resources required to surviveresist his dictates. Where does Rand get such ideas? Well, he would obviously point to some sort of simpleton interpretation of history. But it’s also worth noting that Rand may have been inspired to make such a comment while recalling the genocidal ideations of one of his heroes:Be afraid. Be very afraid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAka-tA5Ojw
Remarks about Native Americans, etc. begin at 9:27.
A seventh church in the last month was the victim of an arson attack today near Ferguson, MO today. This latest attack differs slightly from the previous six church attacks since it wasn’t a predominantly black church and the parishoners are mostly white. But as the article below notes, it also happened to be in a part of town that’s 90% black and appears to be a similar to the other attacks in terms of the methods and damage. So it looks like either the same racist arsonist or a copycat may have inadvertently tried to burn a mostly white church in a predominantly black neighborhood. It’s all a sad reminder that as the US society shambles its way towards a culture that isn’t fundamentally shaped by racialist ideologies, the unfortunate combination of mental illness, racism, and violent stupidity is going to be an increasingly volatile and pathetic mix:
There was some good news recently in the investigation of the string of predominantly black church burnings in the St. Louis area: a suspect was arrested and it doesn’t appear to be a race-based attack (the suspect is a 35 year old African American man with a long criminal history), although the motive is still a complete mystery. So those congregations are left with the highly unfortunate situation of knowing who tried to burn their churches down but still have having no idea why. Still, at least someone was arrested and that particular reign of terror is hopefully done.
In other news, three white supremacists were recently arrested in Virginia over a domestic terror plot to get a bunch of weapons, attack black churches and synagogues, then rob jewelers and armored cars and use the proceeds to purchase land and a weapons stockpile to train for the coming race war:
Well, it looks like Dylann Roof inspired at least one individual to follow in his footsteps: It turns out John Russell Houser, a fellow white supremacist, left a set of journals where he praised Dylann Roof for issuing the “wake up call”, although he critiqued Roof as “green but good,” and being too focused on blacks when he would have instead targeted his rage as liberals in general had “reached political maturity”. So it looks like Houser’s attack on the the movie theater was sort of a copy-cat of Roof’s slaughter at the church, but was also intended to be a post-racial attack by a white supremacist on a society he just loathed in general:
You have to wonder if he seriously redesigned the ISIS logo or that part was just in jest. He did reported write, “Yes, I am saluting the fundamentalist Muslims, They have stood against evil....They have my complete Christian respect,” in January of 2015, so he probably wasn’t joking about the ISIS logo.
So if Dylann Roof had “reach political maturity”, he would have decided against shooting a historic African-American church and instead eventually shot up a bunch of random people regardless of their race. And also would have become an ISIS fan. Maturing from a far-right fanboy into a far-right fanman clearly isn’t easy. On anyone.
There are reports of a possible workplace massacre that was narrowly avoided earlier this month in Washington D.C. Specifically, in the Office of Intelligence Analysis, during a meeting a senior DHS officials:
“Security allowed Wienke to go on into the building, but a security team asked him to undergo another screening about 90 minutes later at his workspace, shortly before senior DHS officials met in a nearby conference room.
The security team found a loaded revolver and five hollow-point bullets in the front pocket of his pants, and investigators said they heard Wienke “utter an audible expletive.””
Considering that the guy had a loaded revolver in his front pocket 90 minutes after getting caught with pepper spray and handcuffs in a random screening, it does seem reasonable to suspect that guy had some sort of plot in mind. That or he has a really intense gun fetish.
And considering that this random screen just randomly happened to catch the guy on the very day of this plot and authorities believe he had an unnamed co-conspirator, you have to wonder if that random screening was less than random.
Also note that the agency Wienke works at, the Office of Intelligence and Analysis, happens to be one of the main federal agencies supporting the DHS “fusion centers” set up to facilitate DHS and local law enforcement. It was the Office of Intelligence Analysis that created the “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment” 2009 document that generated a furious right-wing response and remains a source of DHS-related paranoia. So if Wienke was indeed a right-wing extremist intent on engaging in some sort of ‘lone wolf’ attack on the DHS, getting a job at the Office of Intelligence and Analysis was a logical place for him to seek employment. It will be interesting to learn when he first started working there.
If this really was all caught by a truly random security screening, it looks like a number of top DHS officials may have gotten really lucky and metaphorically dodged a bullet. But perhaps not as lucky as the National Counterintelligence Executive who recently dodged a Humvee during lunch:
“National Counterintelligence Executive Bill Evanina was eating in the Silver Diner in McLean, Virginia, on Wednesday when a Hummer crashed into the building and caught fire, said a U.S. intelligence official, who described the incident on condition of anonymity.”
Keep in mind that the man driving the Hummer, Samuel Ovie Abutoh, was a former employee of the restaurant and this was unambiguously a suicide attempt since he doused himself in a flammable liquid and tried to light himself on fire after crashing into the building.
Thus far there’s no indication of Abutoh’s motivation was and no reports of him having an extremist background, although trying to light yourself on fire at the end of your suicide attack seems closer to the jihadi end of the crazy spectrum. Still, it’s certainly possible that this was a yet another workplace murder/suicide incident and the National Counterintelligence Executive just happened to be dining there at the time. Especially if this diner happened to be located in an area where you would expect US intelligence personnel to grab a bite to eat. But with no motive publicly available, it’s hard to ignore the obvious possibilities which makes this another investigation to watch.
Abutoh presumably wasn’t driven by strong feelings about the US government and Sesame Street characters but you never know.
Noticed that Richard (Rick) Boehlke died in the crash of a Cessna Citation jet in Oregon on Jan. 9th. Two persons on board. He was apparently the owner/pilot(?). Aviation websites seem to have questions about what was going on with the flight.
Here’s a pair of articles that serve as a reminder the GOP’s ongoing interest in secession isn’t limited to the Texas GOP: The was a bit of a right-wing media manufactured freakout over the last week. The same story we repeatedly played across Fox News and Murdoch-owned sites like the Daily Mail and the NY Post. A story about man who decided to go on the guided tour of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello estate, only to be horrified by all the ‘wokeism’ he was subjected to by the tour guides. Wokeism like mentioning and acknowledging Jefferson owned hundreds of slaves.
This seemingly random Monticello visitor was so appalled he decided to tweet about it on July 4, the same day he published an article about it in the Epoch Times. Yep, this person who was so shocked by his Monticello tour that he published an article about it in the Falun Gong’s outlet notorious for promoting the trashiest kinds of far right conspiracy theories.
Who was this random person? Jeffrey A. Tucker, a long-time editor of the notoriously racist Ron Paul newsletter and founding member of the League of the South. And as we’ve seen, Tucker has been updating his pro-secession arguments over the years, with a new focus on techno libertarian fetishes like cryptocurrency. For example, here’s an article Tucker published back in 2012 celebrating the right of secession, with a new focus on secession via Seasteading. But in the eyes of the Murdoch-owned press giving Tucker repeated coverage over the last week to share his Monticello outrage, Tucker was just this random visitor outraged by all the wokism. So at the same time the right-wing media complex is doing everything it can normalized and cover up the events leading up to the January 6 Capitol insurrection, it’s worth keeping in mind that this same media complex still has no problem pushing secessionist figures on its audience:
“The conservative freakout seemingly started with a July 4 tweet from Jeffrey A. Tucker, who complained of “aggressive political messaging” at Monticello. Tucker, who is the president of the Brownstone Institute — formed in May 2021 to oppose COVID-19 precautions — also wrote a column the same day for the conspiracy theory website The Epoch Times complaining about his visit there. The New York Post picked up the story and interviewed Tucker for its July 9 article titled “Monticello is going woke — and trashing Thomas Jefferson’s legacy in the process.” The Post made clear that its ire is primarily focused on the estate teaching that Jefferson enslaved people”
A whole seemingly orchestrating right-wing media freakout that was apparently started with a July 4th tweet from Jeffrey A. Tucker. A right-wing freakout about the content of the tours being held at Thomas Jefferson’s historic Monticello estate. Specifically, the content about the hundreds of slave Jefferson owned.
On one level this was just another predictable example of right-wing media’s capacity for faux-outrage stories designed to trigger its audience’s sense of white anxiety. But as the following TPM piece points out, Jeffrey Tucker isn’t just another random person. Tucker is a co-founder of the League of the South. Yes, a co-founder of a neo-Confederate pro-secession group was upset by the teaching of slavery at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello estate, tweeted about it, and that morphed into an avalanche of sympathetic coverage for Tucker across the right-wing media. Coverage that never actually acknowledges Tucker’s neo-Confederate pedigree but instead treats him as just a random citizen:
“>A bow-tied, bespectacled guest for the segment was billed hilariously in one chyron as a “recent Monticello visitor.” Turns out there’s a little more to the story.”
For Fox News viewers, Jeffrey Tucker was a just a “recent Monticello visitor” who was upset by all the ‘wokism’ he was forced to endure during his tour of Jefferson’s estate. A random visitor who also happens to be a co-founder of the League of the South:
How many of those Fox News viewers went off to go read Tucker’s numerous pro-secession content after seeing him all over the network last week? Who knows, but it’s pretty clear that the Murdoch media empire really wants its audience to learn more about Jeffrey Tucker and what he’s all about. Expect a lot more Fox News appearances from a “recent [insert place here] visitor” who just can’t stand all this wokeism.
The League of the South is certainly having a moment. Recall the recent reports about how League of the South member Jeffrey Tucker has been given a deluge of attention for media outlets owned by Rupert Murdoch, being portrayed as just some random individual upset about ‘wokism’ and with no extremist ties. And now we’re about to learn whether or not the Republican Party of Maryland just handed the nomination for the Maryland attorney general race to another notorious League of the South member. A notorious member who, like Tucker, appears to be largely flying under the radar with an electorate that doesn’t appear to realize just how extreme the guy is. That would be former Constitution Party presidential candidate Mike Peroutka. Recall how Peroutka actually ran for a county council seat in Anne Arundel County in 2014 and won. And now he’s back, looking to become Maryland’s next attorney general.
Now, what kind of shot does Peroutka have in today’s GOP primary? We have no idea, and that’s kind of the big story here. This race is apparently seen as so unimportant that GOP primary voters have barely been paying attention. And with minimal polling, we have no real idea which candidate is likely to win. The best snapshot of the GOP primary voters’ preferences come from a mid-June survey that found Peroutka leading his opponent 17 to 11 percent, with 70 percent undecided. So Peroutka was technically in the lead, but almost all of those primary votes had no idea who they were going to support. And that was just a month ago.
Keep in mind that all of the elections taking place this year are happening at the same time Steve Bannon has pledged to field an ‘army’ of true believers to occupy state and local level offices for the purpose of ensure Republicans win elections. So while this particular race is certainly potentially a very big deal with huge implications for the state of Maryland, it’s also the kind of story that begs the question: so how many other races involving key state-level offices like attorney general or secretary of state are GOP primary voters barely paying any attention to at all this year?
“Peroutka is facing establishment favorite and former federal prosecutor Jim Shalleck in a primary contest race that’s flown under the radar for most voters. There’s been scant public polling, but Peroutka is better-known, better-funded and GOP strategists are worried he could actually win the nomination.”
Yes, this primary race for state attorney general is apparently so obscure in the mind of Maryland’s GOP electorate that almost none of the GOP voters appear to know who any of the candidates are and there’s basically no polling on the race. It’s like a black box race for the high law enforcement office in the state. Taking place in the middle of a radical takeover of the GOP by forces who want to weaponize offices like Attorneys General and Secretary of State in states across the US to warp the outcomes of elections. This is despite that fact that Peroutka is a known entity in Maryland’s political scene and an QAnon-affiliated open radical who admits that he won’t enforce laws or protections that conflict with his Biblical worldview. It’s the kind of story that should raise all sorts of questions about how many other races for important state offices are being determined by a GOP electorate that genuinely has no clue just how radical the figures in these races are:
The guy who openly declares that he’s going to only enforce his version of Biblical Law has apparently just kind of slipped through the nomination process. Or at least that’s the positive way of interpreting this story. A more negative interpretation would be that that Maryland’s GOP voters have gotten so radicalized that they’re ready to follow Peroutka down the path of theocracy. Either way, the fact that someone as openly radical as Peroutka was poised for a stealth primary victory should serve as a warning for how the 2022 election cycle could go. A warning that presumably won’t be heard by the people who really need to hear it.