Tag: kkk
Vance In Munich: Like A German Urging Americans To Embrace The Klan

Vance In Munich: Like A German Urging Americans To Embrace The Klan

Few Americans would welcome an elected leader from Germany or France who gave a speech on our soil, urging politicians here to stop shunning the Ku Klux Klan. Yet that isn't so far from the message delivered to European officials by Vice President JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference on February 14 — which understandably provoked outrage among our allies, just as Vance and his boss, President Donald Trump, must have intended.

Instead of addressing Europe's security concerns, such as Trump's impending abandonment of Ukraine to Russian aggression, Vance lectured his audience on domestic issues such as "free speech," immigration, and the rejection of ultra-right extremism.

Nobody familiar with Vance, a man known for spreading false stories about migrants eating pets in his home state, could have been surprised to learn that he uttered numerous falsehoods in Munich. Warning against infringements on religious speech, for instance, he claimed that Scotland had intimidated its citizens from privately praying in their own homes. Scottish officials instantly rebutted that absurd lie, which referred to a carefully drafted law creating small "buffer zones" for protesters at abortion clinics.

But the thrust of Vance's remarks represented a brazen attempt to interfere in the German national elections that will occur next week, signaling Trump administration support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (or AfD) party.

"Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters," Vance intoned. "There's no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principle or you don't." Although he didn't mention the AfD by name, his inference couldn't have been clearer. Every mainstream political party in Germany has quarantined that party's antisemites and Nazi apologists behind a political firewall for decades, symbolizing their nation's commitment to prevent any resurgence of fascism before it can occur.

And immediately after his appearance, greeted with stony silence from the Munich conference delegates, Vance met with AfD leader Alice Weidel. A banker who has defended her party's worst racists and bigots, while pretending that the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler was "a communist," Weidel praised Vance's speech as "excellent."

The comparison between the KKK and the AfD is all too appropriate, and not only because the German party echoes the racist rhetoric of thugs in white hoods. Back when Nazi spies in this country spent millions to subvert the United States during the years before World War II, their "German American Bund" forged a firm alliance with the Klan. It was a time when many American politicians, especially in the South, openly described the KKK as a legitimate expression of "the voice of the people." No doubt Vance would have been among them.

Today, the AfD members elected to public office in Germany don't hesitate to exploit anti-immigrant hatred and racial bigotry against both Muslims and Jews. No less an authority than the U.S. State Department — during the first Trump administration — repeatedly reprimanded the vile racism of AfD figures in its annual reports on human rights in Germany.

"While senior [German] government leaders continued to condemn anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim sentiment," the State Department noted in 2018, "some members of the federal parliament and state assemblies from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party again made anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim statements."

So typical were the poisonous outbursts from AfD officials that they drew the attention of the Anti-Defamation League in the United States, which has described the party as a "radicalized" entity "whose leaders have made antisemitic, anti-Muslim and anti-democratic" statements.

European leaders offended by Vance reiterated their determination to defend their continent against totalitarians of all varieties — as did Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose rebuke reminded everyone why most Germans will have nothing to do with the AfD. "Never again fascism, never again racism, never again aggressive war," he said. "That is why an overwhelming majority in our country opposes anyone who glorifies or justifies criminal National Socialism."

Glorifying Nazism doesn't seem to trouble Vance, Trump, or their designated hitman Elon Musk, who has publicly endorsed an AfD victory as "the only hope for Germany." But Vance's interference in German politics is more than a token of the Trump administration's fascist inclinations, as if any more were needed.

Like Trump's urge to back Russian aggression against Ukraine in his "peace" initiative, the White House embrace of German fascists again shows the American president promoting the interests of a foreign power hostile to the United States and the West. What Vance said and did enraged our longtime allies in Europe, but his words aligned perfectly with Russian President Vladimir Putin's Kremlin — whose regime's assistance to German fascism defiles the sacrifice of all the Russians and Americans who died to defeat Hitler.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.


Today's Republican Party Emits Sinister Echoes Of 'America First'

Today's Republican Party Emits Sinister Echoes Of 'America First'


When Donald Trump first adopted “America First” as a slogan for his movement, it was unclear whether he had done so from sheer ignorance of its disgraced history or as a slyly malevolent tribute.

Now, as Trump and his far-right acolytes like Fox News’ Tucker Carlson try to drum up support for Vladimir Putin and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, that old phrase eerily resonates with its original sinister intensity. Goose-stepping in line with European neo-fascists who oppose liberal democracy and seek to impose authoritarian rule, the Trumpists are serving Russia first against America and our Western allies.

Suddenly the disturbing parallels between “America First” during the 1930s and the “America First” propagandizing of today are all too clear. Then and now, a global wave of authoritarian movements and governments posed a mortal threat to democracy here and around the world. Then and now, hostile foreign powers reached deep into the United States through political proxies whose influence was at once obvious and subtle. Then and now, those forces wrapped themselves in the American flag and insisted that they were super-patriotic, the defenders of hearth and home against “alien” influences.

Of course, not every member or leader of the original America First organization, founded in 1940 to oppose US entry into World War II, was a fascist or a Nazi sympathizer; indeed, many were sincere and respectable, who were pacifists or wanted to avoid another war in Europe. But their naivete and isolationism enabled the enormous Nazi spy agencies in Berlin, which sent agents into America First to take over its local chapters and transform the entire operation into a vehicle for anti-Semitism, sedition, and vile slurs against President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Brazenly pro-Hitler organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Silver Shirts, and the American Bund (founded as the “Friends of Hitler”) directed their members to join America First as a front for treasonous plotting. They penetrated American institutions, with particular success in the Republican Senate and House caucuses – and at the same time recruited platoons of criminal thugs, not unlike the Proud Boys, into “Christian Front” militia groups that engaged in street violence. Their attempts to undermine the Roosevelt administration only ended after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

The Axis propaganda apparatus, operating as the “World Service” press agency, looks laughably primitive in comparison with the media now exploited by Russian intelligence and its proxies. While mass media has advanced far beyond the technologies available back then, the themes exploited by the enemies of democracy are remarkably consistent: not only the dog whistles of anti-Semitism, but also the demonization of racial minorities, the paranoid attitudes toward democratic government, the populist fury toward “elites,” and the promotion of outlandish conspiracy theories and smears.

When Hitler’s war machine began its rampage across Europe, starting with Poland in 1939, the voices of “America First” laid blame on everyone except the Nazi dictator. If America went to war, they insisted, the fault would lie with the British, the Jews, the international bankers, and especially Roosevelt, who was disparaged as a liar and worse. Today, as Putin attempts to overthrow an elected democratic government and impose a puppet regime in Kiev, the right-wing noise blames President Biden, Hillary Clinton, environmentalists, gays, and literally anybody except the Russian dictator.

One lingering question about Trump – and those who line up with him and Putin – is to what extent they are sponsored by the Kremlin or are simply “useful idiots.” The mystery of Trump’s relationship to Russia still remains to be fully explored.

To students of history, however, the behavior of Trump and his sycophants is darkly familiar. Across media and politics, the fans of our own authoritarian demagogue at Mar-a-Lago and his admired friend in Moscow are doing Russia’s dirty work here. In the 1930s, more than a few of the America First leaders like Charles Lindbergh were in thrall to Hitler. Now, Tucker Carlson is in thrall to the Hungarian authoritarian Orban and to the would-be czar Putin. What the American Firsters have in common then and now is hostility to liberal democracy.

Standing against them, then and now, has always meant upholding real American values. The talk is over—the test has come.

Proud Boys

Proud Boys Attacked Black Churches In DC — Just Like KKK

Reprinted with permission from DailyKos

One of the recurrent myths that far-right street brawlers such as the Proud Boys like to tell each other, in bullhorn speeches and social media posts, is that what differentiates them from "rioters" like antifa and Black Lives Matter (BLM) is that they don't engage in arson and property damage: "That's not who we are!" is a common refrain heard at right-wing events, including the recent pro-Trump "Stop the Steal" protests.

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New NRA President Chairs Board Of Confederate Monument

New NRA President Chairs Board Of Confederate Monument

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Carolyn Meadows, who is succeeding Oliver North as president of the National Rifle Association, is also the chairperson of the Stone Mountain Memorial Association, an organization that maintains the largest memorial to the Confederacy in the United States.

Meadows, who sits on the NRA board of directors and was serving as the group’s second vice president, was elected president of the NRA during an April 29 meeting of NRA board members. She will succeed North, who was ousted from the NRA amid infighting that pitted a faction led by NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre against North and Ackerman McQueen, an ad firm that is deeply enmeshed with the NRA and produces the NRA’s media operation, NRATV. LaPierre, who North said engaged in financial improprieties in his role as NRA CEO, was reportedly unanimously reelected CEO by the board.

Meadows is listed by the Stone Mountain Memorial Association website as chairperson of the organization’s board of directors. According to her site bio, “She has been actively involved in the Republican Party since 1964 and served as Georgia’s National Chairwoman for 12 years,” and she is also a board member of the American Conservative Union, the group that hosts the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

Stone Mountain, Georgia, features an enormous relief carving that depicts Confederate leaders Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis on horseback. A 2017 article in Smithsonian magazine notes that “the monument in question is carved 42 feet deep and 400 feet above ground into a granite mountain” and “is a testament to the enduring legacy of white supremacy.”

Stone Mountain is also closely associated with the revival of the Ku Klux Klan. KKK leader William Simmons “ushered in the modern era of the Ku Klux Klan, founding the Second KKK at the top of Stone Mountain on November 25, 1915,” in an event that included a cross burning and signaled “a new era of white nationalist terrorism,” according to Smithsonian magazine. Plans for the memorial were already being made at the time of the Klan ceremony, but the project ended up being shuttered for several decades and was only revived following right-wing anger over the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision ending school segregation. The monument was eventually completed in 1972.

Meadows is not the only prominent NRA official to support Confederate symbols. NRA board member Ted Nugent, who was reelected during the 2019 NRA annual meeting, has long been an outspoken defender of the Confederate flag. Previous NRA President Jim Porter, who served two years as president beginning in 2013, was also an apologist for the Confederacy, having once stated, “NRA was started 1871 right here in New York state. It was started by some Yankee generals who didn’t like the way my Southern boys had the ability to shoot in what we call the ‘War of Northern Aggression.’”

The NRA often calls itself the oldest civil rights organization in America, although that isn’t true.

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