In the ranks of white supremacists, Dec. 8 is a day of celebration.

But being who they are, racist skinheads and other neo-Nazis generally treat what they call Martyr’s Day — an event meant to honor those who have died for the cause of white nationalism — as just another excuse for a beer-swilling, gut-belching, slam-dancing bacchanalia. This year, however, the festivities planned for this Saturday might just be a little different.

Billy Roper, head of the white supremacist group White Revolution (WR) and recently failed (49 votes) write-in candidate for governor of Arkansas, would like to introduce a more genteel, summer-camp-like tradition: A family-friendly potluck dinner featuring guests reciting homages to their favorite dead racist. ( continue to full post… )

It looks like Facebook. It apparently works like Facebook. But the Terms of Use, not to mention the name, might give you a clue that this definitely isn’t Facebook.

Meet AryansBook.com.

“AryanBook [sic] is a racialist, WHITE ARYAN PRIDE Social Network for Whites Only! Niggers, Jews, Mexicans, and Muds and other non-white trash aren’t allowed!” the Terms of Use page declares, even though the actual website address is aryansbook.com, with a “s.” “All anti-white, pro-Jewish, pro-nigger, pro-faggot or other communist trash is hereby banned on this Network!” ( continue to full post… )

Just when it seemed the controversy over high-tech body scanners and “enhanced” pat-down procedures at airports couldn’t get weirder, along comes Eugene Delgaudio, a Loudoun County, Va., lawmaker who claims federal transportation officials were motivated to implement the new procedures by the “homosexual agenda,” not concerns about terrorism.

Delgaudio, a Republican elected to the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors in 1999 and re-elected twice, made that and other comments Nov. 20 in a widely distributed email he sent in his capacity as president of the conservative non-profit group Public Advocate of the United States. Calling the U.S. Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) non-discrimination hiring policy “the federal employee’s version of the Gay Bill of Special Rights,” Delgaudio warned that “the next TSA official that gives you an enhanced pat-down could be a practicing homosexual secretly getting pleasure from your submission.” ( continue to full post… )

Tony Perkins, president of the anti-gay Family Research Council (FRC), was on the attack again today. In a live event broadcast from the FRC political arm’s website, Perkins announced that a new FRC poll had found that almost 63% of “active duty and retired military families oppose overturning the policy prohibiting open homosexuality in the military.” The poll, commissioned by the FRC and the neoconservative Center for Security Policy, seemed to fly directly in the face of a brand new Pentagon poll, which concluded that 70% of surveyed service members believe that ending the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy would be positive, have mixed results or be of no consequence. (Thirty percent of the 115,000 people polled by the Pentagon said the repeal would have some negative effects.)

The FRC has a record of trumpeting a series of allegedly negative aspects of homosexuality, including the false claims that gay men have high rates of pedophilia and that “homosexual activists” want to abolish all age-of-consent laws. As a result, the Southern Poverty Law Center added the group to its list of hate groups after its lengthy study of the hard core of the anti-gay right was released last week.

What accounted for the apparently gigantic gap between the two studies? It was hard to tell, largely because the FRC released very few details of the poll carried out by CC Advertising, a firm with a client list that includes conservative organizations like the Abstinence Clearinghouse. But by including “retired military families,” the poll obviously skewed its results because older generations of all Americans tend to have far less tolerant attitudes toward gays than younger Americans. The FRC poll, of course, also polled “military families,” not necessarily those serving. ( continue to full post… )

For those who perpetrate lies about gays and lesbians, old habits are apparently hard to break.

Bryan Fischer, the American Family Association’s loquacious director of issue analysis for government and public policy, responded on Nov. 26 to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s publication a few days earlier of “10 Myths,” a debunking of 10 of the most-often recited untruths that anti-gay activists use against LGBT people. (At the same time, the SPLC announced that it would be designating the AFA as a hate group.) Fischer’s essay declared the 10 lies to be “10 truths.”

In doing so, he mangled the very truth he claims to present. ( continue to full post… )

Through countless diagrams and diatribes, chalk-wielding Fox News commentator Glenn Beck has made it his mission to inform his audience that left-wing progressives are purportedly on the brink of revolution. Many of Beck’s fans take him seriously. In the past two years, at least three have decided the best response to his warnings is violence.

Kenneth B. Kimbley Jr. of Spirit Lake, Idaho, is the latest to face prison time for interpreting Beck’s rants as a call to action.

Kimbley claims to be the leader of the Brotherhood of America Patriots, an extreme-right militia whose mission, he says, is to “resist in the event the government started rounding up the patriots” and to stand up in the face of foreign invasions or societal breakdowns. (Authorities believe Kimbley’s group was tiny.) At the time of his arrest in July, Kimbley had 20,000 rounds of ammunition, a stock of firearms, and materials he planned to use to construct grenades, according to court documents.

According to the Spokesman-Review of Spokane, Wash., Kimbley’s lawyer described her client as a man with strong political views who posed no real danger to society. “In fact, everything said by Mr. Kimbley is no different than what his idol, TV commentator Glenn Beck, typically states on the air,” public defender Kim Deater wrote in court papers.

Byron Williams and Richard Poplawski, also Beck fans, got a lot farther in their alleged antigovernment actions before being caught. ( continue to full post… )