We can’t vouch for the cuisine at the Georgia Peach Oyster Bar in Paulding County, Georgia, but owner Patrick Lanzo serves a heaping plate full of racist rhetoric. His most recent offering: “Obamas plan for healthcare: Nigger rig it.”

Lanzo told an Atlanta TV reporter recently the sign was a critique of current health reform plans, not a racist message. He showed off pictures of Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela on the walls of his restaurant, and a 2005 NAACP membership card as proof. Of course, there’s also a mannequin wearing a Klan robe in the eatery. And Lanzo has a history of racist ruminations. A few years ago, a sign outside his restaurant asked in response to the Michael Jackson pedophilia trial: “Is Michael Jackson not guilty because he is a nigger or money.”

Other signs have included messages such as “Damn Yankees may have taken our niggers but not our guns” and “Are most lawyers just a lower form of a nigger.”

Lanzo has hosted annual music festivals of neo-Nazi skinheads. His restaurant’s website includes an image of a caricature of a robed Klansman urinating on Obama. Still, he denies being a racist. He told a reporter in 2005 that, if he’s a racist, then he’s a racist against everybody. Indeed, there is evidence that Lanzo is an equal opportunity bigot. Among the other signs he has displayed: “Immigration reform, kiss my white ass, send all illegals home,” and, “Bush, lets kick some sand niggers ass.”

Not exactly food for thought.

Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) has ratcheted up its recent campaign against Jews with the release of virulently anti-Semitic music videos.

This latest gimmick is somewhat of a departure for the rabidly anti-gay group from Topeka, Kan. For years, Westboro has been notorious for disrupting the funerals of fallen American servicemen, among others, saying God is punishing them because of the “fag-enabling” ways of their country. In April, however, the group started picketing synagogues and Jewish cultural institutions, saying the Jewish community and its religious leaders condoned homosexuality and abortion. Then, in June, Westboro members went one step further, producing music videos that demonize Jews — all Jews — with blatantly anti-Semitic parodies of popular songs.

The five videos aimed primarily at Jews feature the dubious talents of Westboro Baptist Church members and can be accessed from the group’s main website. In “Come Together,” the cut out heads of prominent Jewish figures such as Woody Allen and Madeleine Albright are made to lip-synch to the Beatles tune, whose lyrics now include the words “filthy Jews.” Grotesque caricatures of Jews that could have been ripped from Nazi propaganda posters flash on the screen, including a grinning man with a bloody knife in his hand. There’s also an image of a drowning Jew. Cut-out figures depicting Westboro members hold signs that read, “God Hates Fag Enablers” and “You will Eat Your Babies.”

In “Makes Us So Happy,” which predicts Israel’s destruction to the tune of “Hava Nagila,” two church members dressed to look like Hasidic Jews (with obviously fake beards and sideburns) growl as they fight over a penny. Afterward, with dollar signs dangling from their necks, they dance and count money. “The Beast — the one you worship/Obama — has no mercy,” they sing. (In case you’re wondering how Obama and his purported lack of mercy fit in, Westboro member Shirley Phelps-Roper told Hatewatch that the president will turn on the Jews. “There’s going to be an awful trauma, and you know who’s going to be leading those nations against Jerusalem? It’s the beast, the Antichrist Obama.”) Toward the end of the video, Westboro members — dressed like Old World Jews — join hands and dance in a ring. The women wear T-shirts emblazoned with the address of a Westboro website: JewsKilledJesus.com. ( continue to full post… )

Federal officials took away Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s deputies’ authority to make immigration arrests in the field.
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The attorney for two Muslim teens attacked last month aboard a school bus is asking the U.S. Department of Justice to step in after prosecutors decided not to file ethnic intimidation charges in the case.
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A Rhode Island State Police trooper detained 14 Guatemalan nationals and called immigration authorities after he pulled over the driver of the van they were in for failing to use a signal when changing lanes on Route 95.
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As we reported yesterday, white supremacists are enamored of first-time filmmaker Craig Bodeker’s A Conversation about Race, presumably because the polished documentary lends a veneer of respectability to their racist beliefs. Bodeker, who narrates the film, comes across as an affable guy intent on using logic and facts to debunk what he sees as the myth of racism. You won’t hear him using slurs or threats when he asserts on camera that the term is just a tool to malign whites.

His posts on YouTube put the lie to that professional image and expose him for the bigot he is. He repeatedly refers to blacks, including President Barack Obama, as “monkeys.” In one post, he uses the anti-gay slur “fag”; in another, he suggests that Van Jones, the black White House advisor who resigned last month, should be lynched.

It doesn’t take much detective work to find the offensive comments. On his documentary’s webpage, he links to his YouTube channel, which identifies his username as “Craigbe.” As “Craigbe,” Bodeker has made numerous comments on videos that other users have posted to YouTube. (He’s more restrained when commenting on excerpts from his own documentary.)

Below is a sampling of the uncensored Craig Bodeker. We thank an astute Hatewatch reader for alerting us to most of these comments.

Posted under Barack Obama Doesn’t Know Where He Met Michelle:

“…It’s all or nothing for Caucasian whites. If you’re not 100% white, you HAVE NO WHITE IN YOU.
Want proof?
The best definition of ‘white’ is someone capable of producing ‘white’ offspring. All of the ‘white’ you say exists within Obama … has been destroyed. Obama, nor any of his descendants, will ever again produce a white child.
We all must re-learn what ‘white’ really means. Not what blacks tell us it means.” ( continue to full post… )

Colorado Republican Tom Tancredo was the face of the anti-immigration movement in Congress for 10 years. While he was there, he could serve up his deport-’em-all rhetoric from the House floor. And as an early contender for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination, he drew supportive crowds and mainstream media coverage in early-voting states until he dropped out in late 2007 before the Iowa caucuses.

Since leaving Congress in January, though, he’s aggressively moving down the credibility chain in his quest for outlets for his nativist views.

In late September, he blasted the Southern Poverty Law Center from the hate website VDARE.com. And this month, he made his debut as a regular columnist at the far-right conspiracy-mongering website WorldNetDaily. By Tancredo’s standards, the initial column is somewhat restrained. He praises the “patriotic reawakening provoked by Obama’s Marxist agenda.” He attacks Sen. John McCain for his support of an insufficiently conservative U.S. Senate candidate in Colorado. And he takes a shot at Karl Rove, the longtime adviser to former president George W. Bush — the same Karl Rove who got so fed up with Tancredo’s extremism that he told him to “never darken the door of the White House again.”

But even when he enjoyed relative respectability as a member of Congress, Tancredo didn’t always confine himself to respectable venues. On Sept. 9, 2006, he delivered an anti-immigrant harangue as the honored guest at a barbecue advertised by the South Carolina chapter of the League of the South, the neo-Confederate outfit long listed as a hate group by the SPLC, as its own event. Although a Tancredo spokesman later said that the event was actually organized by a group called Americans Have Had Enough!, the league described Tancredo as “our guest” and listed a prominent league member as the event’s information contact. The room for the event was rented by Richard T. Hines, who was identified in 1997 by the racist League of Conservative Citizens as a member.

A new DVD is a hit among white supremacists looking for a smart-sounding defense of their beliefs.

Contrary to its title, A Conversation about Race isn’t really a conversation about race at all, but a slick 58-minute documentary devoted to proving the thesis that racism is a bogus concept invented to oppress whites. Debut filmmaker Craig Bodeker — who appears in his documentary with a surfer-style blond ’do, collared shirt and jeans — is upfront about his project:

“I … can’t think of another issue that is more artificial, manufactured and manipulated than this whole construct called racism,” he says in a voice-over as the documentary begins.

Later, on camera, he continues: “This construct of racism is not an objective term. It has no concise definition. In fact, it’s used too often as a tool of intimidation, like a hammer, against Caucasian whites.”

Although we don’t believe that only whites can be racist, Bodeker’s efforts to refute the entire concept of racism are far from scientific. He interviews people he finds through a Craigslist ad (ambiguously titled “Ending Racism Now”) and on a street corner in Denver, Colo., where he lives. The interviewees, who represent a variety of races and ethnicities, earnestly answer Bodeker’s questions, clearly ignorant (at least initially) of his slant. When they say they see racism in their daily lives but fail to cite strong examples, the filmmaker feels justified in sticking a knife in racism. “All of these examples of this so-called racism that permeates our nation — none of them really amount to anything,” he says to the camera. Bodeker never says whether he believes that discrimination found by courts and government commissions also doesn’t “really amount to anything.” ( continue to full post… )

EDITOR’S NOTE: Sometime Wednesday night, the video was removed from YouTube. No word on who’s responsible for putting it there in the first place, or taking it down.

Here’s an ominous posting on YouTube from the “Patriot” crowd. It advises President Obama and other prominent people (“Our Dear Leader and co.”) to “leave now and give us our country back” and to do so by next week.

“If you stay,” the silent video message continues, “ ‘We, The People’ will systematically dismantle you, destroy you and reclaim what is rightfully ours. …

“We are angry and we are ready to take back the rights of the people. We will fight and We will win. …

“Dead line [sic] for your national response: October 15, 2009

“Thank you to all patriots who support our cause. … Be prepared for when the fateful day of the declaration of war is nationally announced.”

In August, The Southern Poverty Law Center issued a special report, “Return of the Militias,” documenting a resurgence of Patriot and extreme-right militia activity around the country.

The U.S. Justice Department has begun an investigation into allegations of “discriminatory policing” by the Suffolk County (N.Y.) Police Department over how officers responded to reports of crimes against Latinos.

The investigation, announced Monday, will be conducted by the Justice Department’s civil rights division and the local U.S. attorney’s office. It comes about nine months after the agencies began looking into a complaint that the Suffolk police force failed to adequately investigate crimes against Latinos and discouraged them from seeking assistance. The complaint was filed shortly after the November killing of Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadorian immigrant fatally stabbed in the town of Patchogue in what authorities say was a hate crime.

“This is a civil, pattern or practice investigation that will seek to determine whether there are systemic violations of the Constitution or federal law by members of the SCPD,” Justice Department spokesman Alejandro Miyar said in a statement announcing the investigation.

The investigation begins one month after the release of Southern Poverty Law Center’s Report, “Climate of Fear,” which examined in detail a years-long pattern of violence and abuse directed at Latino immigrants in Suffolk County, which occupies the eastern portion of Long Island.
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