The founder of a nativist hate group who allowed neo-Nazis to join his anti-illegal immigration rallies has a new job doing public relations work for a government official in Southern California.

Joe Turner was hired Tuesday by the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors to serve as a special projects coordinator. Turner’s responsibilities will include writing press releases and newspaper opinion pieces reflecting the views of Supervisor Neil Derry, county spokesman David Wert told Hatewatch. His salary will be $54,995.

Turner’s appointment has provoked an outcry from some community members, who point to his controversial statements and acceptance of open white supremacists at anti-illegal immigration rallies. “I guess David Duke wasn’t available,” quipped Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.

Turner founded and led Save Our State, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated a hate group since it first appeared in late 2004. On Turner’s watch, Save Our State regularly failed to turn away neo-Nazis and racist skinheads, some uniformed and carrying white power-themed flags, who joined its rallies on the streets of Southern California. Later, he led efforts to get the city of San Bernardino to pass an ordinance aimed at penalizing undocumented immigrants. That led to his being hired by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which is also listed as a hate group by SPLC, in late 2006. He left FAIR under unclear circumstances in December 2007.

Save Our State’s online forum also included blatantly racist posts that Turner failed to delete. Turner himself contributed controversial comments to the forum, including one that amounted to a defense of white separatism. “I can make the argument that just because one believes in white separatism, that does not make them a racist,” he wrote in 2005. “I can make the argument that someone who proclaims to be a white nationalist isn’t necessarily a white supremacist. I don’t think that standing up for your ‘kind’ or ‘your race’ makes you a bad person.” ( continue to full post… )

A chapter of a group once described by Ronald Reagan as the “conscience of the Republican Party” has announced plans to host a speech by the author of a book that falsely claims that homosexuals largely orchestrated the Holocaust. The Murrieta-Temecula Republican Assembly, a local chapter of the conservative GOP activist group California Republican Assembly, says it will hear on April 3 from Scott Lively — a man it boastfully describes as “The Pastor Vilified by the Newspapers as a Hater Because of his stand Against the Promotion of Homosexuality.”

Lively, who runs Abiding Truth Ministries, co-authored the notorious book The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party and claims that “the Nazi Party was entirely controlled by militaristic male homosexuals throughout its short history.” The book’s crude thesis, that gay men played instrumental roles in forming the Third Reich and carrying out the Holocaust, has been thoroughly discredited by real historians. (Lively’s speech to the Murrieta-Temecula group is entitled “The Pink Swastika.”) Lively is also co-founder of the anti-gay hate group Watchmen on the Walls.

The Murrieta-Temecula Republican Assembly’s leader did not return a message left by Hatewatch, but its website, adorned with the words “God Bless America,” does note that Lively “is called a ‘Hater’ by the leftist Southern Poverty Law Center.” (The SPLC lists Abiding Truth Ministries as a hate group because of its promotion of clearly false allegations about homosexuals.) CRA President Mike Spence said that local chapters like Murrieta-Temecula operate independently.

March has been a busy month for Lively. Just a few weeks ago, he flew to the Ugandan capital of Kampala for an anti-gay conference, where he argued that gays and lesbians should be forced into conversion therapy as an “alternative” to Uganda’s current criminal punishment for homosexuality: life in prison. Lively compared the lives of lesbians and gays to those of alcoholics, claiming that “to give arrestees the choice of therapy instead of imprisonment [is] similar to the therapy option I chose after being arrested for drunk driving in 1985 (during which time I accepted the Lord and was healed and transformed into a Christian activist).”

For years, Temecula was the home base of Lively’s Abiding Truth Ministries.  But he has recently relocated his operations to Springfield, Mass. He also keeps up a busy speaking schedule in Russia and various former Soviet republics, promoting his book.

Casper Crowell is a busy man. He’s the spiritual leader of a religious non-profit organization, the Holy Nation of Odin, Inc. Crowell designs some of its greeting cards, which he sells along with a host of other merchandise on his group’s website. He also recruits followers through several MySpace pages, a blog and his own YouTube channel. He’s been interviewed for a National Geographic Channel documentary. And in 2007 he endorsed the presidential candidacy of Republican Ron Paul.

Crowell, 46, has done all of this and more while serving a life sentence for murder in a California maximum-security prison that also is home to the likes of Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan. He proclaims himself “the honorable allsherjargothi in the Holy Nation of Odin, Inc.” That’s from Old Norse meaning “the People’s (Folk’s) Priest/servant,” Crowell says. Membership is $40 a year, unless like Crowell, you’re incarcerated.

Racist versions of Odinism and its Icelandic version, Asatru, have become increasingly popular theologies among imprisoned racists and others on the radical right in recent years. Odinism features Norse gods such as Odin, the warlike father of all gods and men. The racist version advocates the ultimate triumph of a pure, white race.

So does Crowell, who calls himself “Dr. Casper Odinson Crowell” and sports a large swastika tattoo on his chest. He is a former leader in the violent and racist Aryan Brotherhood prison gang. He left that organization because it wasn’t pure enough for him.

After quitting the Aryan Brotherhood, Crowell busied himself with the Odinism organization, which lists his wife, Linda, as executive administrative director. Linda Crowell works for the Social Security Administration in Fresno.

( continue to full post… )

Question: What’s the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce?

A)    An organization that seeks “to foster Hispanic economic development and to create a sustainable prosperity for the benefit of American society.”
B)    An organization that “is interested in … Mexico’s export of drugs and illegal aliens to the United States.”

If you chose a), chances are you’re a perfectly sensible person with a reasonable familiarity with the issues and organizations of the day. After all, the Hispanic Chamber is well known as a relatively conservative, pro-business organization that represents the interests of more than 2.5 million Hispanic-owned businesses.

If you chose b), you’re almost certainly Lou Dobbs, the insult-spewing Latino-basher who hosts CNN’s “Lou Dobbs Tonight” five times a week.

Dobbs, of course, is known for regularly pushing defamatory falsehoods about undocumented immigrants — they fill one third of American prison and jail cells, they’re part of a secret Mexican plan to “reconquer” the American Southwest, they are largely responsible for a spate of 7,000 recent leprosy cases… Even when Dobbs isn’t hosting his own show, his fill-in hosts spew such racist propaganda as the lie about subprime housing loans going to 5 million “illegal aliens.”

But Dobbs may have outdone himself on March 10, when he launched into a furious tirade against President Barack Obama, who earlier that day gave a major speech on education reform from the Hispanic Chamber’s Washington, D.C., offices. ( continue to full post… )

Seventy people, including a few well-known mainstream academics, joined prominent white nationalists and academic racists gathered in the Four Points Sheraton at the Baltimore/Washington International airport last month for the first-ever “Preserving Western Civilization Conference.” Its aim: to defend “America’s Judeo-Christian heritage and European identity.” But not much civilized was said there. Rather, the discussion centered around claims that blacks are not as intelligent as whites, immigrants are destroying America, and Islam is no religion of peace — it’s expansionist, intolerant, militant, and seeks to destroy.

The conference was convened by Jewish astrophysicist Michael Hart, author of the racist book Understanding Human History, which focuses on alleged differences in intelligence between various ethnic and racial groups. In the past, Hart was a regular at the biannual conferences put on by American Renaissance, a racist publication that wrote, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, that “[w]hen blacks are left entirely to their own devices, Western civilization — any kind of civilization — disappears.” Though few in number, Jewish academic racists were active in American Renaissance right from the start, welcomed by that group’s leader, Jared Taylor, who even once arranged for kosher meals. But Taylor has also welcomed as speakers outspoken anti-Semites, including Holocaust denier Sam Dickson and neo-Nazi activist Steven Barry, making for a potentially volatile situation.

In 2006, the explosion went off, and the façade of civility that Taylor had tried to maintain by requiring polite language and professional attire shattered. The conflict was trigged by former Klan boss and professional anti-Semite David Duke, who attacked Jews, telling the crowd, “There is a power in the world that dominates our media, influences our government and that has led to the internal destruction of our will and spirit.” Though Duke didn’t directly say Jews were that power, everyone in the crowd, which included several members of the neo-Nazi National Alliance, knew exactly who he meant, and many cried for more.

Hart couldn’t take it. He stood up and yelled at Duke, “You fucking Nazi, you’ve disgraced this meeting!” and stormed out. As many as 50 people at the conference then began to jeer and point at the rapidly disappearing Hart.

Hart and other Jewish academic racists left American Renaissance shortly thereafter, when Taylor declined to explicitly ban anti-Semites. But Hart was apparently not ready to give up public discussion of the superiority of the white race. Hence, “Preserving Western Civilization,” Hart’s Jewish-friendly replacement for the American Renaissance conference.

( continue to full post… )

Southern Poverty Law Center president Richard Cohen and Mark Potok, editor of this blog and the Intelligence Report magazine, will host a live webcast at 2 p.m. (EDT) on March 18 to discuss the SPLC’s recently released annual count of hate groups.

This year’s report documented 926 hate groups operating in the United States, representing a 54 percent increase since 2000. Potok and Cohen will discuss the factors fueling the growth of hate groups in the United States.

They will accept questions before and during the 30-minute audio webcast.

This event is closed. An audio archive is posted on iTunes (links below).

San Diego Minutemen leader Jeff Schwilk has long taken pleasure in harassing immigrants.

So perhaps it’s no surprise that he wrote a vicious E-mail to supporters threatening a federal judge who ruled in favor of an undocumented immigrant killed by a Border Patrol agent.

“This judge should be immediately dragged out, arrested and sent to Gitmo for crimes against our country!” Schwilk wrote in the E-mail titled “Death Penalty for Rock Throwers.” “Or better yet, tie him to a post near the border fence in Douglas [Ariz.] and attach 10 burritos to him as bait for these innocent little Mexican rock throwers! Put a sign next to him that says, ‘I work for the U.S. Border Patrol.’ He wouldn’t last 10 minutes. Bastard!”

Along with his comments, Schwilk forwarded an Associated Press article about the ruling in a civil lawsuit brought by the victim’s family, who was awarded $350,000. According to the AP story, U.S. District Judge Raner Collins decided that the Border Patrol agent used excessive force when he fatally shot an undocumented immigrant, 22-year-old Ricardo Olivares Martinez. The shooting occurred after an agent encountered a group of undocumented immigrants near the Arizona-Mexico border in 2003. Among them was Martinez, who tossed rocks at Agent Cesar Cervantes even after he was ordered to stop. Cervantes said he responded with deadly force because his life was in danger. The judge disagreed, saying the agent “was not in imminent danger from the deceased.”

Schwilk took exception to that finding. “If an illegal alien ever throws a rock (deadly weapon) at me, he’s a dead man! Only lethal force will be used in deadly situations. This is absolutely outrageous!”

( continue to full post… )

He’s been dead nearly two years, but there’s a fight brewing in the white nationalist movement over one of its heroes, David Lane.

Actually, the brouhaha is over only a part of Lane. About one-fourteenth of him. That portion of his ashes is reportedly in Perth, Western Australia, more than 9,000 miles from where he died in Indiana. The last time a dead man’s ashes traveled this far may be when the cremains of LSD devotee Timothy Leary and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry were blasted into orbit in 1997.

How Lane’s ashes got all the way to Perth is a matter of controversy. Women for Aryan Unity activist Victoria “Vickie” Cahill is accusing members of the Australian division of the violent neo-Nazi skinhead group Combat 18 of misappropriating the ashes “through lies” and then “sending rape threats, threats of beatings” to Cahill and other WAU members when they protested.

“We want those ashes back,” Cahill posted to Stormfront and her MySpace page March 9.

( continue to full post… )

A recent story in The [Everett, Wash.] Daily Herald detailing the troubled past of border vigilante Shawna Forde has provoked yet another round of crossfire among leaders of rival Minuteman factions and other prominent nativists.

It all began when Forde, who heads Minutemen American Defense (MAD), reported several brutal attacks this winter and implied that she’d been targeted because of her anti-illegal immigration efforts. Although the incidents are still under investigation, The Herald published a revealing profile of Forde in late February that provided more fodder for both her critics and her supporters within the anti-immigration movement. The article described a difficult childhood — including a stint in foster care and allegations of physical and sexual abuse — a lengthy criminal record that began when she was 11, the loss of a baby to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, and problems with mental illness. Forde also told The Herald that the perpetrators of the attacks might have been local criminals rather than Hispanic gang members.

Forde ally and Minuteman leader Jim Gilchrist wrote that he’d spoken to Forde about the article and that she thought it was “reasonably fair and balanced.”

“Despite Shawna Forde’s checkered past, here is a woman who really has been a ‘victim’ throughout her life, perhaps willingly, perhaps unwillingly,” he posted on Immigration Clearinghouse the day after The Herald article appeared. “To have come through the trials and uncertainties of adolescence and young adulthood with odds stacked against you, and to have overcome those odds, is a statement of her willingness to ultimately do the right thing.”

Then he took aim at Forde’s detractors. “Few of us do not have a skeleton in our closet, especially some of Forde’s harshist [sic] critics.”

One of those critics is William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, who alluded to The Herald article in a message posted on his website. “This e-mail is to inform you that some of our worst fears are now confirmed in the media and the damage to our movement is getting worse,” he wrote. “Despite new revelations that there are major problems with Shawna’s story, that she is refusing to fully cooperate with police, has an extensive criminal record, has made outlandish claims in the past, proclaims she has mental illness and disorders, has made false claims to the media, etc. … Jim Gilchrist is standing by Shawna Forde and her story!” ( continue to full post… )

A bizarre trio of American anti-gay leaders arrived in the Ugandan capital of Kampala Thursday to stage a three-day seminar, “Exposing the Truth Behind Homosexuality and the Homosexual Agenda,” in a country where homosexuality is a crime punishable by death. They are:

• Scott Lively, co-founder of the hate group Watchmen on the Walls and author of The Pink Swastika, a pseudo-history book claiming that “militant male homosexuals” helped mastermind the holocaust.

• Caleb Lee Brundidge, a “sexual reorientation coach” for the International Healing Foundation, whose signature technique, as demonstrated on CNN, involves patients “beating on chairs with tennis rackets and screaming, “Mom, Mom, why did you do this to me?” Brundidge also counsels men struggling with their sexuality to visit mortuaries with a fringe Charismatic ministry team to “practice raising the dead.”

• Don Schmierer, a board member for Exodus International, an international umbrella group covering hundreds of “ex-gay” ministries. Schmierer warns parents in his guide to preventing homosexuality to watch out for boys who show “extreme macho behavior” are “frail, deformed, deaf” or “avoid fights/physical altercations.”

According to Steven Langa, executive director of the Family Life Network, the New York-based Christian right advocacy group that organized the seminar, Lively, Brundidge and Schmierer were called to Uganda because gay activists in that county are recruiting children to homosexuality.

That justification seems farcical, considering that death threats and the fear of state-sanctioned execution have forced gay rights activists in the African country underground. Since 1990, homosexuality in Uganda has been a capital crime.

( continue to full post… )