There was a time, not so long ago, when Lamb and Lynx Gaede, daughters of an infamous Montana neo-Nazi, were considered the next big thing in the white supremacist movement. They were blonde, blue-eyed teenagers given to swastikas and Hitler worship, and they formed a white-power musical group called Prussian Blue, named after the color of Zyklon B residue in the Nazi gas chambers.

But then the twins grew older, rejected the views of their mother April Gaede, took up for the medical marijuana that alleviated their serious medical conditions, and said they’d come to “a place of love and light.” “We’re healers,” is how Lamb put it. “We just want to exert the most love and positivity we can.”

Could Derek Black be headed down the same road? Or is the son of Don Black, the former Alabama Klan leader who runs the racist Stormfront forum from his home in West Palm Beach, Fla., trying to have it both ways? ( continue to full post… )

Back in 1978, when the world was young and “Saturday Night Live” was only in its third season, a young comedian named Steve Martin took to the stage and told his audience how to become millionaires and never pay taxes.

“First … get a million dollars,” he said. “What do [you] say to the tax man when he comes to [your] door and says, ‘You have never paid taxes?’ Two simple words. Two simple words in the English language: ‘I forgot!’”

Porter Stansberry, an “investment advisor” with a knack for lining his own pockets, used a slightly different strategy in 2003. When the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) came to his door and accused him of making over a million dollars selling false “inside tips,” the self-aggrandizing financial guru claimed that it was his First Amendment right to tell his subscribers whatever he wanted — even if what he wanted to tell them was, as the SEC put it, “baseless speculation and outright lies.” ( continue to full post… )

Hundreds of thousands of disgruntled conservatives, still smarting from the re-election of President Obama last week, are signing petitions to allow more than 30 states to secede from the United States — and they are being joined by a motley collection of white nationalists, neo-Nazis and Klan sympathizers. ( continue to full post… )

When the word came in last night that Barack Obama and the Democrats had won national elections in a decisive victory, millions of Americans went to bed, satisfied that even if their candidate didn’t win, democracy had survived. The results made it clear that this election had in no way been stolen.

But not so at Ole Miss, which last month marked the 50^th anniversary of deadly segregationist riots. Shortly after midnight, several hundred mostly white students protested furiously, reportedly yelling anti-black racial slurs and throwing rocks at passing cars. An Obama/Biden campaign sign was burned before campus police broke up the crowd in Oxford. There were apparently no arrests or injuries.

The reaction to the re-election of our first black president from the radical right — and that seemed clearly to include some University of Mississippi students — ranged from sputtering rage and name-calling to calls for a new Southern secession, mass emigration to Europe, or even the break-up of the United States. There was one thing large numbers seemed clearly to agree on: The changing racial demographics of our country, expected to lose its white majority by 2050, was key to the result. ( continue to full post… )

The far right does not like President Obama. He’s been depicted as a Muslim (he’s not) and a terrorist sympathizer. He’s been called a fascist and compared to Hitler. He’s been pegged as a socialist and even a communist. And, of course, an entire cottage industry has been built around the false accusation that he’s not even an American.

His 2008 election also helped fuel an explosive resurgence of the antigovernment “Patriot” movement, whose sympathizers indulge themselves in all sorts of wild conspiracy theories about the federal government: It’s building concentration camps for dissidents, it’s selling out Americans to the dreaded “New World Order,” it’s planning to institute martial law, confiscate everyone’s guns and send in U.N. troops to keep order.

Of course, none of these fantasies have come true in the last four years. But therein lies the rub. The first term was nothing but an elaborate ruse to get re-elected. The second term, now that’s when everything hits the fan. Freedom itself, maybe even all of civilization, hangs in the balance. ( continue to full post… )

It’s well known that in recent years, this country has seen its electoral politics polarized to an extent that has only rarely been paralleled in American history. But that polarization in many cases goes far beyond anything resembling mainstream discourse, extending to men and women who are linked to hate groups and racial, ethnic, religious, anti-gay and antigovernment extremism, or who promote extremist propaganda. Their baseless claims typically include demonizing propaganda about certain minority groups, or conspiracy theories that have the same demonizing subtext. What follows is a look at 15 political candidates, including Democrats, Republicans, independents and members of extremist political parties, who are running for office this fall or ran earlier in the year. Research on these candidates was carried out by the SPLC Task Force on Hate in the Public Sphere. ( continue to full post… )

Bryan Fischer, the gay-bashing, truth-challenged spokesman for the American Family Association, went one rant too far Tuesday for CNN anchor Carol Costello.

“And we know from the CDC and from the FDA, not part of the vast right-wing conspiracy, that homosexual behavior,” Fischer gushed excitedly, “has the same health risks associated with …”

“That’s just not true,” Costello said, cutting him off before he could insert his foot any further in his mouth. “I’m going to end this interview now, sir. I’m sorry because that’s just not true.” ( continue to full post… )

The headline is sensational and does what headlines are supposed to do – it grabs your attention:

“California Bans Heterosexuality.”

After my initial shock, I settled down and read the story under the headline and quickly learned, to my great relief, that the Golden State hasn’t really banned heterosexuality – at least not yet. ( continue to full post… )

Anyone wondering what the future of organized hate might look like need cast their eyes no further than Matthew Heimbach, the outspoken and energetic former president of Youth for Western Civilization’s (YWC) erstwhile chapter at Towson University in Maryland and the aspiring leader of its newly proposed but as yet unsanctioned White Student Union. Heimbach’s YWC group was disbanded last year when its faculty advisor withdrew after members chalked white pride slogans on sidewalks. Now a senior at Towson, Heimbach has threatened to take the university to court if his new organization is not approved.

“Free speech advocates in Maryland are supporting our case and agree that University policies are at best in the gray or worst outright unconstitutional,” he told The Towerlight, the Towson student newspaper. “Our message will not be silenced, we have the right to meet. If the University decides to overstep their legal boundaries … then they will meet definitive, quick action.”

And to highlight the first planned first meeting of his White Student Union, set for tomorrow, Heimbach has invited his “personal hero,” a white nationalist writer named Jared Taylor who once wrote, “When blacks are left entirely to their own devices, Western civilization — any kind of civilization — disappears.” ( continue to full post… )

Psychologist Paul Cameron has been bashing LGBT people for at least 30 years. His continued demonization of LGBT people and the shoddy and suspect research methods he uses to advance his claims have earned his Family Research Institute (FRI) a place on the SPLC’s anti-LGBT hate group list. They have also earned him censure from a number of professional organizations and harsh critiques of his work (try here, here, and here for starters). In spite of all that, Cameron’s pseudoscience is still widely used to disparage LGBT people, especially by the religious right, and he still finds venues for his articles, some of which aren’t pay-to-publish. ( continue to full post… )