In what may be the latest sign of simmering tensions in Florida between two prominent racist skinhead groups, two men suffered knife wounds this week during a speech by Holocaust denying historian David Irving at a luxury Palm Beach County hotel.

Irving spoke to about three dozen invited guests in a conference room he booked at the Ritz-Carlton hotel south of Palm Beach. During his talk on “decoding the Nazi message,” two men, Christopher Nachtman and John Kopko, stepped outside to argue and one of them pulled a knife, police say. A fight ensued. Furniture was broken and a carpet was bloodied. Both men were taken to nearby hospitals for treatment of knife wounds. No charges have been filed yet.

Irving is a longtime Holocaust revisionist. In 2000, he sued Emory University professor and Holocaust expert Deborah Lipstadt for libel in his homeland of Britain, after she accused of him of deliberate falsification. A London court declared Irving a pro-Nazi anti-Semite and “active Holocaust denier” and ordered him to pay all court costs. In 2006, he was imprisoned in Austria after pleading guilty to telling audiences that there were no gas chambers in the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz. Irving subsequently backed off those claims. Earlier this year, he set up a website selling Nazi memorabilia. His visit to South Florida was the latest on a surreptitious speaking tour in the United States, in which Irving informs attendees of his venue at the last minute so as to thwart protestors.

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In a new documentary pitting atheism against faith, contrarian critic Christopher Hitchens debates evangelical pastor Douglas Wilson on the merits of Christianity. “Collision,” released today, has already generated buzz: Hitchens and Wilson have appeared on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” CNN’s “The Joy Behar Show” and Fox News Channel’s “Fox and Friends,” among other programs. Newsweek Religion Editor Lisa Miller devoted a column to the 90-minute film, which she thoroughly panned: “So uncinemetic is this picture — two middle-aged white men talking — that my attention insistently wandered toward anything humanizing and finally dwelled, for too long perhaps, on a fleck of something on Hitchens’s eyelash.” Hitchens responded in a column for this week’s Slate, writing that “the subject of religion is back where it always ought to be — at the very center of any argument about the clash of world views.”

What’s missing from the media hubbub are a few salient details about Wilson. The 56-year-old pastor from Idaho seems an odd booster for Christianity, considering that some of his views sound downright un-Christian. Wilson co-wrote a booklet called Southern Slavery, As it Was, which describes the institution in almost reverent terms. “Slavery produced in the South a genuine affection between the races that we believe we can say has never existed in any nation before the [Civil] War or since,” Wilson wrote with co-author Stephen Wilkins, a founding member of the racist League of the South. “Slave life was to [slaves] a life of plenty, of simple pleasures, of food, clothes, and good medical care.”
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Of all the fantastic musings and mutterings about the H1N1 flu and vaccine, few are more outrageous than the pronouncements of retired Army Maj. Gen. Albert Stubblebine III and his psychiatrist wife, Rima Laibow. They run a nonprofit organization called Natural Solutions Foundation, which warns of the evils of vaccinations, pharmaceutical companies and genetically modified foods.

After President Obama declared a national emergency on Saturday to deal with the rapidly spreading illness, Stubblebine, a onetime intelligence officer, wasted no time e-mailing a dire warning to his members. The president’s declaration, he said, “is perhaps the most ominous domestic event I have ever encountered. We either take this hill, or we die on it.” He went on to state that Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia declared war on their own people. “Has the United States declared war on the American people today? Sadly, tragically, it would appear so. I do not wish to see the American population corralled, controlled and killed.”

H1N1, or swine flu, has never been a serious illness, Stubblebine says. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a different take. The flu is spreading fast in at least 46 states, has caused the hospitalization of about 20,000 Americans and the deaths of more than 1,000 people, the agency says.

Obama’s action gives Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius frightening authority to trample the rights of American patients, Stubblebine maintained. “None of this makes any sense UNLESS the intention is to replicate Hitler’s actions in Germany which used the all too willing medical system as a means to eliminate individuals, segments of the population and anyone who dared to speak out (or whisper) against the regime,” he wrote. Indeed, Stubblebine contends, the swine flu is a genetically engineered virus that is part of a World Health Organization-United Nations-United States scheme to sterilize untold numbers of people.
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Shawna Forde, the anti-immigration crusader who has been accused of murder in the home-invasion killings of an Arizona man and his 9-year-old daughter, got the full treatment on Sunday from her hometown paper.

The full treatment — more than 5,000 words of it by reporter Scott North in The Herald of Everett, Wash. — provides the most extensive account to date of the lies, betrayals and self-promotions carried out over the years by Forde, 41, one of three people awaiting trial for the murders of Raul Flores, 29, and his daughter Brisenia on May 30 in Arivaca, Ariz., a town near the Mexican border. Police say she believed Flores was a drug smuggler and she planned to use any drugs or money she found in the home to support her Minuteman American Defense group.

The story provides example after example of how Forde, presenting herself as an energetic patriot with deep concerns about illegal immigration and border security, found a warm welcome in the Minuteman movement, “a loose-knit, fractious network that needed volunteers enough to set aside skepticism.”

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Neo-Nazi talk show host Hal Turner, arrested four months ago on charges of threatening to assault and murder three federal judges, was released on bail today in Newark, N.J.

Turner’s attorney, Michael A. Orozco, told the Hudson Reporter that his client will be under house arrest at his home in North Bergen, N.J., until his trial, which is scheduled to start Nov. 30 in Brooklyn. He is being electronically monitored and may not speak to the media or have Internet access.

Turner, 47, was arrested on June 24 after stating on his blog that three federal appeals judges that upheld a local Chicago handgun ban “deserve to be killed.” He is accused of listing their names, addresses, phone numbers and photos in subsequent online posts.

A few weeks after his arrest, Orozco confirmed that Turner had served as a paid FBI informant. The Southern Poverty Law Center reported Turner’s FBI connection a year earlier.

An appeals court today overturned the decision of a federal judge who had released neo-Nazi leader Bill White on bond after setting several conditions. In making its decision, the three-member panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals characterized White as “a highly intelligent person apparently dedicated to having various persons killed,” according to the Roanoke Times. White was ordered back to jail last month when the government appealed Judge James Turk’s decision to grant White bail. Turk reached that decision after a psychiatrist testified that White didn’t pose an imminent threat to the community.

White, who founded the American National Socialist Workers Party, has been charged with threatening a newspaper columnist, a civil rights lawyer and others over the Internet and by phone. His trial is scheduled for Dec. 9 in Roanoke, Va., where he lives.

Reading news accounts of the past week, you may have thought conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh was merely rebuked for his history of controversial racial comments when he joined a group making a bid to buy the St. Louis Rams. Actually it was something far more serious, according to right-wing writer and commentator Selwyn Duke. Limbaugh was the victim of a “lynching,” Duke wrote in an article posted on the John Birch Society website.

It’s hard to imagine an angry mob storming the gates of Limbaugh’s Palm Beach compound (market value, $48 million) and stringing him up from a palm tree. But twice Duke wrote that Limbaugh was lynched. And in a third reference, he conjured up the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings of 18 years ago, writing that Limbaugh was subjected to a “high-tech lynching.”

An estimated 4,743 people – nearly 73 percent of them black – were lynched between 1882 and 1968, according to the Archives at Tuskegee Institute. Still, Selwyn equates a grotesque and terrifying death at the end of a rope with robust debate over Limbaugh’s views, which Selwyn claims “are in fact very mainstream.”

“It’s quite a bit over the top,” says Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP’s Washington bureau and vice president of advocacy and policy. [The organization took no position on Limbaugh’s Rams ownership ambitions]. “Lynching was one of the earliest forms of domestic terrorism. Not only was it used to wreak havoc and fear, but to kill. It was used to send a chill to other African-Americans. Whatever is happening to Rush Limbaugh, it certainly is overly inflammatory to call this a lynching.”
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Oath Keepers, the militia/“Patriot” extremist group made up of law enforcement officers, military personnel and veterans, has posted a photo on its site showing (it says) “an active duty Oath Keeper in Mosul, Iraq” wearing two Velcro-attached “tabs” or patches, one saying “Oath Keeper” and the other “Three percent.” The flag patch beneath them is also an insignia of the “Three Percenters,” an informal alliance of hard-line gun owners.

The Oath Keepers figured prominently in a recent special report by the Southern Poverty Law Center on the resurgence of the antigovernment militia movement. The report described the group as “a particularly worrisome example of the Patriot revival.” Oath Keepers is fully on board with all the standard right-wing conspiracy theories, as evidenced by its official list of 10 “Orders We Will Not Obey,” in which it vows to resist any government efforts to “disarm the American people” or turn cities into “giant concentration camps.”

In July, the SPLC also presented Congress with growing evidence that extremists are infiltrating the U.S. military and urged Congress and the military to take steps to ensure that the armed forces are not inadvertently training future domestic terrorists.

A spokesman for the Defense Department, Lt. Col. Les Melnyk, confirmed that the uniform shown in the photo is an Army combat uniform, the kind worn by soldiers in Iraq. ( continue to full post… )

A Dutch lawmaker notorious for his Muslim-bashing is scheduled to speak tonight at Temple University in Philadelphia.

Geert Wilders, who has repeatedly compared the Koran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf, was for months banned from Britain because of concerns that his anti-Islamic views would trigger violence. He held a press conference there on Friday after a court overturned the no-entry ban.

Although the Temple University event marks Wilders’ first visit to Philadelphia, he spoke in several U.S. cities during a visit to America earlier this year. In an April 27 speech in Miami, he said Europe was “on the verge of collapsing” due to an influx of Muslim immigrants. “The takeover of Europe is part of the global fight of Islam for world domination,” he said, according to a transcript of the speech that’s posted on Jihadwatch.org, an anti-Islam website. “Islam is not a religion. It is a political ideology. Islam’s heart lies in the Koran. The Koran is a book that calls for hatred, violence, murder, terrorism, war and submission.”

Because Islam is not a religion, according to Wilders, “the right to religious freedom should not apply to Islam.” He called for a moratorium on the building of new mosques and the closure of all Islamic schools because “they are fascist institutions.” He said anyone belonging to a “non-Western minority” should be required to enter into “a legally binding contract of assimilation.” He also asserted that Islamic culture is inferior to Judeo-Christian culture.

In February, he screened his anti-Islam documentary Fitna on Capitol Hill at the invitation of Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz. Fitna shows verses of the Koran along with graphic footage of atrocities committed by radical Muslims, including the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“I think he’s arguably the world’s worst Islamophobe, but what is truly scary is his acceptance in the mainstream,” said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State
University, San Bernardino. “He’s unabashedly retrograde because he exploits deep-rooted fears about citizenship and security. His reprehensible, bigoted stereotyping of Islam completely mischaracterizes the beliefs of the overwhelming majority of the world’s Muslim adherents. [And] his totalitarian proposals are not only practically preposterous, but the most morally reprehensible that one could conceive of next to murder or forced conversion.”

At Temple, campus organizations have condemned the decision by a student group called Purpose to invite Wilders. Purpose’s president, Brittany Walsh, told The Associated Press that the event was “an opportunity for the students to really express and practice their freedom of speech.” Temple officials defended the right of student organizations to host controversial speakers.

Wilders’ appearance at Temple is financed by the far-right David Horowitz Freedom Center in California. Wilders also is scheduled to speak tomorrow at Columbia University in New York.

Conspiracy theorists and aspiring domestic terrorists now have their very own online game. It’s called “Obama’s Coup Fails,” and it is the centerpiece of a new online site called United States of Earth.

The year is 2011. President Obama has outlawed private gun ownership, dissolved the Constitution and set in motion a plan to join with Canada and Mexico in the “North American Union.”

Patriots to the barricades! Players in the game fight the Second American Revolution as militia commanders, training and amassing troops with the goal of capturing Obama and his evil allies.

Crooks and Liars, the liberal political blog, has posted this how-to-play video on YouTube.

GamePolitics.com, a blog about the politics of computer and video games, provides a fairly level-headed assessment of the game here (Scroll down to Oct. 16 posts).

Our capsule review: Pretty creepy.