| No Images? Click here   Welcome to week three of HuffPost’s revamped newsletter about hate and extremism in America! Every week, reporters Luke O'Brien and Christopher Mathias will bring you news and insight from the dark corners of our increasingly polarized political system. From resurgent white nationalists and anti-government militia to social media propagandists and internet trolls, we’ll cover the characters and conversations from around the lunatic fringe. We’ll also look at the far left anti-fascist groups that battle the far right online and in the streets. Andrew Anglin can run. He can hide. But what the publisher of popular neo-Nazi hate-site The Daily Stormer can’t ever stop doing — lest his delusional and seemingly psychotic worldview collapse — is stop lying.Last week, Anglin and his troll attorney, Marc Randazza, introduced what might be history’s most offensive lie into federal court when they told a judge that Anglin, who orchestrated a campaign of harassment last winter against Tanya Gersh, a Jewish real estate agent in Montana, should not be held responsible for the anti-Semitic threats his followers made to Gersh. Why not? Because Anglin doesn’t believe the Holocaust is real. If gas chambers didn’t exist, after all, then threatening to put a Jew in a gas chamber would just be lulz, he and Randazza seem to be arguing.The legal rationale here is hard to discern, especially when you consider the violence that Anglin and other alt-right white supremacists consistently preach and that is carried out more and more often by their followers. The judge is already annoyed at Anglin and Randazza for claiming the Nazi is beyond the court’s jurisdiction as a “stateless citizen” residing in another country. (Anglin has, at turns, claimed to live in Nigeria, Russia and, most recently, Cambodia.)Where this lawsuit will go next is anyone’s guess. But we’ve got more on Anglin’s Holocaust denial defense and why it might be intended to sway his audience of demented followers as much as a federal judge. We’ve also got insight from Deborah Lipstadt, an Emory University professor and the world’s leading expert on Holocaust denial. (Lipstadt’s own legal battle with a racist liar was made into the film “Denial.”)“Revolting,” the professor told HuffPost when informed about Anglin and Randazza’s legal gambit. “Outrageous.” Christopher Cantwell, the “crying Nazi” of Charlottesville fame, cucked hard this week when an adolescent boy called into his “Radical Agenda” radio show on Sunday to thank the host for turning him and his friends into Hitler youth. “I’m 14. A year ago, I kind of got interested in your show,” the kid said. “We realized that this isn’t a joke and this is pretty real and the more we agree with you and now I’m sitting next to a book with Mein Kampf.”Cantwell prefaces his show by describing it as “entertainment, not education” and advising listeners to very what they hear with “more reliable” sources. The man, who wears Punisher shirts for feck’s sake, has a tendency to fold like a polka accordion, and when presented with evidence that he had radicalized a young teenager to Nazism, grew flustered. “Let me be completely straight with you,” Cantwell said. “This program is a joke, alright?”Powerful self-ownage.Michigan State University will let white nationalist figurehead Richard Spencer speak on its campus on March 5, and the public university is on the hook for whatever extravagant security costs the event will likely incur.MSU had initially denied a request by Spencer crony Cameron Padgett to rent an auditorium on campus, citing safety concerns. Padgett sued, and MSU — likely realizing it didn’t have a great shot at winning in court — settled the lawsuit Thursday. “I always knew we’d win,” Spencer told HuffPost. In October, the governor of Florida declared a state of emergency ahead of a Spencer event at the University of Florida. The university was legally required to spend over $500,000 on security, all for Spencer and his crew to take the stage at a campus auditorium and whine about how rude counter-protesters in the audience were. Afterwards, three Spencer fanboys fired a gun at counter-protesters in downtown Gainesville.Padgett is currently is suing, or threatening to sue, Penn State, Ohio State, the University of Cincinnati, and the University of Michigan over those schools’ refusal to let Spencer speak on their campuses. In an email, Padgett’s lawyer Kyle Bristow told HuffPost that Padgett has also recently got in touch with another school. “My client yesterday contacted Kent State University to rent a room on campuses on the anniversary of the shooting by the Ohio National Guard of violent left-wing protesters,” he wrote, referring to the infamous killing of four anti-Vietnam War protesters at the school on May 4, 1970.Three members of an anti-government, anti-Muslim militia group called the “Crusaders,” arrested last year in a plot to bomb Somali refugees in Dodge City, Kansas, won’t get the pro-Trump jury they wanted. The men’s lawyers had made the baffling argument that the jury pool was essentially too “urban,” which would lead to the “exclusion of a disproportionate portion of residents holding certain conservative political beliefs.” They wanted jurors selected from an area where Trump won the 2016 election by 55 points. But a judge shot down that request this week. Jurors will instead be selected from an area where Trump won by only 26 points.
 To understand the dangers posed by today’s far-right extremists we need to listen to them. Each week, the Angry White Men blog highlights a snippet of conversation from an “alt-right” podcast to show you how fascists and racists really think. Don't say we didn't warn you, America….This week on the 27th episode of “The Krypto Report,” white supremacist ‘Microchip’ and Robert “Azzmador” Ray addressed one of the alt-right’s favorite subjects — the best way to infiltrate the mainstream. Microchip, a pseudonymous troll in his 30s who supposedly lives in Utah, has attracted media attention for his ability to make alt-right hashtags (e.g., #rapefugee) trend on Twitter. Ray is a Nazi activist and Daily Stormer flunky with a long rap sheet of violence.During the podcast, the pair discussed optics and white nationalism after last year’s disastrous “Unite the Right” rally that resulted in the death of one anti-racist activist, scores of injuries, and several arrests. Ray knows that ranting about gassing Jews and blacks isn’t a winning strategy. He wants what he calls “American nationalism” – a political philosophy that would exclude non-whites and Jews from citizenship but doesn’t endorse the economic tenets of National Socialism.“I want that nation that our founders envisioned,” he said. “Because as I’ve always said, if you could go with a time machine, if you could bring the guys who signed the Declaration of Independence, just bring ‘em here today, and give ‘em a couple a days to absorb what’s going on, they would demand another revolution, would they not?”American Nazis enjoy referring to “the founders,” many of whom were slave-holders and who offer a convenient ahistorical way for racists to normalize white supremacy by draping it in Old Glory. Microchip agreed with Ray’s analysis, and urged white nationalists not to be so explicit with their views, at least not in public. “I’m not saying that you cannot believe that, ‘I love Hitler and I want all non-white people out’,” he explained. “But that idea is not going to work with the public. They don’t see it that way.”Microchip advocated “feed[ing] them little morsels here and there” and working up to the point where they can be more explicitly racist. Play the long game, in other words. “Subvert the society that we’re living in, and make it seem like we’re doing nothing.”Ray argued for infiltrating institutions of power as the only way forward for the alt-right – with the possible exception of armed conflict, which he admitted would fail. “We need people to run for office, we need people … who are going to keep their power level hidden while they go to law school.” Related links:  White supremacy won't fall with just a few statues. Keep up with the story here.©2018 HuffPost | 770 Broadway, New York, NY 10003 |
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