Opponents of immigration reform legislation have been trying to steer clear of white nationalists lately, hoping to keep their opposition to citizenship for undocumented Latino immigrants free from the taint of racism.

But they just can’t seem to run fast enough.

Last week, a major Heritage Foundation report about the supposed costs of illegal immigration was pilloried after the revelation that one of its authors, Heritage Foundation senior fellow Jason Richwine, had earlier claimed that there are deep differences in intelligence among races (with Latinos toward the bottom). Richwine resigned from the conservative think tank amid the outcry.

Now, this week, we discover that ProEnglish, a group with white nationalist ties, has launched an ad campaign against immigration reform. The first target is Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, according to BuzzFeed. The group’s minute-long radio ad features a Spanish-speaking character, apparently representing an undocumented immigrant, thanking Graham “for not requiring him to learn English in exchange for amnesty.” ( continue to full post… )

Ron Paul, the libertarian former Texas congressman whose hard-line views are widely admired on the radical right but who claims to reject racism, has started a new organization stacked with a hodgepodge of far-right extremists.

As The Daily Beast reported yesterday, the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity is ostensibly designed to promote a discourse about U.S. foreign policy. But its advisory board is stacked with what writer James Kirchik characterized as “a bevy of conspiracy theorists, cranks, and apologists for some of the worst regimes on the planet.” ( continue to full post… )

“The curse of Ham,” an old-time Biblical (mis)interpretation used to vilify black people and justify slavery and laws against racial intermarriage, is still alive and spreading bigotry in the United States.

The Appleby Baptist Church in Nacogdoches, Texas, is among this country’s scattered, independent fundamentalist churches still openly promoting the idea that the Biblical Noah pronounced a curse on descendants of his son, Ham. Ham had sexually molested Noah as he slept in a drunken stupor, and Noah realized it, the story goes. The curse ultimately fell on Canaan, Noah’s grandson, whose descendants were black and fated to be an underclass of slaves, according to this version of the Bible, which has been widely discredited by mainstream religious scholars. ( continue to full post… )

Jared Taylor, the man behind the racist American Renaissance journal that is at the heart of the white nationalist movement, kicks off his latest annual conference tonight at Montgomery Bell State Park, just outside Nashville, Tenn. This is the second year the event has been held at the park, after several attempts to hold the event at hotels were thwarted by protesters and the occasional bomb threat.

The theme of this year’s conference, which ends on Sunday, is “A Recommitment to Our People.” The lineup of speakers encompasses a wide range of college professors, a European white nationalist, a Holocaust-denying attorney, and various other white nationalist columnists and bloggers. ( continue to full post… )

MEMPHIS, Tenn. – Pay no attention to that man beneath the sheet.

Do not go downtown to listen to his wicked words. Do not heckle or protest his presence. He is not worth it. His time has passed. He has no teeth.

That’s the message of the city of Memphis as it faces a trying day.

On Saturday – Easter eve – the Ku Klux Klan is scheduled to hold a “mass” rally here to protest the city’s recent decision to rename three Confederate-themed parks, including one honoring Nathan Bedford Forrest, the wealthy slave trader and ruthless Rebel cavalry lieutenant general, who became the first national leader of the KKK. But as the general’s modern day Klan kin rant and rave on the steps of the Shelby County Courthouse, local political, religious and business leaders hope everyone else in town – except for a huge contingent of police officers in riot gear – is more than five miles away at a hastily organized counter-event called the Heart of Memphis. It is scheduled to be an all-day affair at the fairgrounds with food, music, an Easter egg hunt and several panels on improving race relations in this Mississippi River city of more than 600,000 residents, 63% of whom are African-American. ( continue to full post… )

White supremacist student Matthew Heimbach, a thorn in the side of Maryland’s Towson University who has led two racist campus organizations, says his White Student Union (WSU) will start patrolling the campus at night next week in order to halt what his group characterizes as a “black crime wave.”

Heimbach, a 21-year-old who has said he had his “racial awakening” while still in high school, has been in the national news since earlier this month, when he and fellow WSU member Scott Terry interrupted panelists at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) with a series of racist arguments. Terry advocated “separate but equal” policies, described slavery as providing food and shelter to black people, and allegedly muttered, “Why can’t we just have segregation” in the exchange. The event, caught on videotape and broadcast nationally, was a severe embarrassment to CPAC, which has tried to avoid being tarred as racist. ( continue to full post… )

A convicted felon from Ohio with neo-Nazi sympathies and an illegal arsenal of assault rifles, semi-automatic pistols and other weapons was tracking Jewish and African-American community leaders in Detroit before his recent arrest by a federal anti-terrorism task force, according to a report by Michael Isikoff of NBC News.

“The FBI averted a catastrophe in this case, there’s no doubt about it,” Steven M. Dettelbach, the U.S. Attorney in Cleveland, told NBC News. ( continue to full post… )

It began about two weeks ago, when a local television station in Memphis, Tenn., allowed a man with a hooded face, identifying himself only as “Edward” and speaking on what was apparently his own rear deck, to announce to the world that he would soon be bringing “thousands” of Klansmen to a protest with no date.

From there, the thin little tale morphed into something of a national story about what is being characterized as “one of the biggest KKK rallies of all time.” Articles have run in New York City newspapers and even abroad about the event, now planned for March 30 while officials weigh the Klan’s permit application, and national TV networks are considering covering it. Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong is asking for help from local and federal law enforcement agencies. The NAACP has decried the event, and a local university art professor created a 600-member Facebook page called “Challenging the Klan’s Message.”

But is the rally — which is a protest of an earlier decision to rename three Memphis parks that honored the Confederacy, including one named after the first national leader of the Ku Klux Klan — really going to be that big? Not even remotely likely. It would be a surprise if the event drew 40 Klansmen, and it will likely be considerably fewer than that. ( continue to full post… )

A Latino street gang leader and his son were sentenced in federal court Monday to lengthy prison terms for their role in a years-long campaign of racist terror and ethnic cleansing targeting African Americans in and around Los Angeles.

Since at least the mid-1990s, Latino street gangs across Los Angeles County have been targeting, beating and sometimes killing blacks in an attempt to drive them out of the region.

Just before Christmas 2006, Cheryl Green, 14, playing on her skateboard with a group of friends just south of 206^th Street in Los Angeles, was shot dead in broad daylight by two men who approached the group and opened fire without saying a word. Two members of the 204^th Street gang were later arrested in the killing. ( continue to full post… )

Students at an Alabama high school who openly engaged in “white power” salutes — including a 17-year-old accused last week of planning to bomb the school and carry out a racist massacre —could have been expelled under district rules, a school board member and a former principal told Hatewatch.

But instead of reporting the neo-Nazi salutes and shouts of “white power” carried out at various times over the past four months at Russell County High — sometimes reportedly in front of teachers, staff and school security cameras — the conduct apparently went unreported and nothing was done about it. ( continue to full post… )