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Jun 20, 21

This Week In Fascism #142: Fox News Promotes AstroTurf Campaign Against “Critical Race Theory” & White Nationalist on Racial IQ

Welcome fellow antifascists!

We’ve got an in-depth look at the Right’s latest racist grift: Critical Race Theory, along with all the news, doxxes, and updates you can shake a stick at! There’s a lot to cover, so let’s dive right in!

News

Fox News and Elite Georgetown Think-Tank Fellow Promotes “Critical Race Theory” as the New “Sharia Law,” as Tucker Carlson Hosts White Nationalist Who Thinks Non-Whites Are Genetically Inferior

In the months directly following the George Floyd uprising, Fox News, along with Christopher Rufo, a Georgetown educated anti-civil rights campaigner, author, and fellow at various right-wing think-tanks, spear-headed a massive right-wing push against “Critical Race Theory,” resulting in Trump issuing an executive order and a slew of bills being launched that all aimed to stop educators from speaking to their students about the Right’s favorite new boogeyman.

According to Media Matters:

Fox’s coverage began in the summer of 2020, focusing on schools attempting to fold anti-racism teachings into their curricula. First, Fox’s opinion side hosted Christopher Rufo, an anti-civil rights activist who has targeted critical race theory, and ginned up controversy over purposeful misreadings of the approach — before the network’s self-described “news” side took over to report on state attempts to ban the study of systemic racism in classrooms. The network’s coverage steadily climbed in 2021 and featured a massive spike in April, with 235 mentions in that month alone.

By late June of 2021:

The [Fox] network has mentioned “critical race theory” nearly 1,300 times over the past three and a half months.

Rufo currently works at the Discovery Institute, (which promotes intelligent design theory), the Manhattan Institute, (which spearheaded the “Broken Windows” theory of counter-insurgency and policing), and the Heritage Foundation, which was strongly connected to the Trump administration and currently employs the likes of Chad Wolf and Mike Pence.

Here, the New Yorker quotes Rufo on why ‘Critical Race Theory’ was the “perfect villain” for his latest right-wing campaign:

‘Political correctness’ is a dated term and, more importantly, doesn’t apply anymore. It’s not that elites are enforcing a set of manners and cultural limits, they’re seeking to re-engineer the foundation of human psychology and social institutions through the new politics of race, It’s much more invasive than mere ‘correctness,’ which is a mechanism of social control, but not the heart of what’s happening. The other frames are wrong, too: ‘cancel culture’ is a vacuous term and doesn’t translate into a political program; ‘woke’ is a good epithet, but it’s too broad, too terminal, too easily brushed aside. ‘Critical race theory’ is the perfect villain.

Going on Tucker Carlson’s show in early September of 2020, Rufo called his troops to arms:

Conservatives need to wake up. This is an existential threat to the United States. And the bureaucracy, even under Trump, is being weaponized against core American values. And I’d like to make it explicit: The President and the White House—it’s within their authority to immediately issue an executive order to abolish critical-race-theory training from the federal government. And I call on the President to immediately issue this executive order—to stamp out this destructive, divisive, pseudoscientific ideology.

Then the ivy-league think-tank intellectual got his wish:

The next morning, Rufo was home with his wife and two sons when he got a phone call from a 202 area code. The man on the other end, Rufo recalled, said, “ ‘Chris, this is Mark Meadows, chief of staff, reaching out on behalf of the President. He saw your segment on ‘Tucker’ last night, and he’s instructed me to take action.”

Soon after, Rufo flew to Washington, D.C., to assist in drafting an executive order, issued by the White House in late September, that limited how contractors providing federal diversity seminars could talk about race. “This entire movement came from nothing,” Rufo wrote to me recently, as the conservative campaign against critical race theory consumed Twitter each morning and Fox News each night. But the truth is more specific than that. Really, it came from him.

Rushing to catch up, GOP law-makers:

…in state legislatures across the country have proposed (and, in some cases, passed) legislation banning or restricting critical-race-theory instruction or seminars; Rufo has advised on the language for more than ten bills. When Ron DeSantis and Tom Cotton have tweeted about critical race theory, they have borrowed Rufo’s phrases. He has traveled to Washington, D.C., to speak to an audience of two dozen members of Congress, and mentioned in passing that earlier in May he’d had drinks with Ted Cruz.

The Washington Post reported:

Turning outrage into action, a wave of bills have been filed in state legislatures that either explicitly or implicitly ban the discussion of critical race theory in schools. Among states where such bills have recently passed are Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Idaho and Iowa. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) promised to “make sure there’s not a single school board member who supports critical race theory.”

The key characteristic of this manufactured controversy is that it is a symbolic battle masquerading as a practical one. By passing laws to ban an idea that is never taught in schools from being taught in schools, they’re trying to create a threat, then claim they vanquished it, thereby offering their supporters a feeling of reassurance and agency. That doesn’t mean these bills will have no practical impact; teachers are reporting that they’ve become terrified of even addressing topics around race now that it could run afoul of state law. But none of this has anything to do with what critical race theory actually is; it’s a stand-in, a tool to create a new Lost Cause narrative in which conservative Whites are society’s true victims.

By now, this routine should be familiar; we went through the same thing a few years ago with the imaginary threat of “sharia law.” Many Republican legislators didn’t know precisely what it was, but they wanted everyone to be afraid of it, so in state after state they passed laws forbidding its use in court.

To keep the outrage engine working on overtime, Fox News has turned to a growing AstroTurf movement to supply them with an endless stream of guests touting the dangerous threat of ‘Critical Race Theory.’ According to VICE:

Rick Berman, an infamous right-wing lobbyist whose organizations have been accused of several astroturfing campaigns—and who is known as “Dr. Evil”—revealed that his firm is behind an organization that claimed to be a grass-roots movement against New York City’s prep schools focus on “diversity education.”

As Fox News reported on Monday, the group founded by Berman drove at least one van in front of a New York City prep school. Fox News described the group as “some fed-up parents here in New York City taking it to the next level” and as “anonymous parents.” The Fox News segment does not mention Berman or his firms.

A New York Post also published a follow-up story reporting on the vans showing up at several schools. Just like in the first story, there is no mention of Berman, and the campaign is described as a “$10,000 campaign, which was coordinated by an anonymous group Prep School Accountability.”

Media Matters went on to report that:

…Nearly a dozen of the Fox News guests the network has presented as concerned parents or educators who oppose the teaching of so-called “critical race theory” in schools also have day jobs as Republican strategists, conservative think-tankers, or right-wing media personalities, according to a Media Matters review.

Ironically, when pressed to define Critical Race Theory, Republicans seemed unable. Ted Cruz even defined Critical Race Theory as:

…”a Marxist ideology that conceives of society … Marxist ideology conceives of society as a battle between the classes, Critical Race Study substitutes race for class.”

This is ironic because this is exactly what white nationalism does – it posits that the engine of history is not a struggle between the classes; or exploiter and those being exploited, dominated, or colonized – but instead a struggle between the races, with “the Jews,” serving as a racialized version of the ruling class.

And ironically, as the Republican party has embraced “Critical Race Theory” as the latest threat to American civilization, segments of the party have doubled down on white nationalist ideology. From Stephen Miller trafficking in white nationalist and anti-immigrant publications as justification for Trump’s anti-immigrant and race based rhetoric and policies, to Paul Gosar and Steve King embracing whole sale white nationalism – even speaking at white nationalist events, to the so-called America First caucus stating the primacy of white Europeans within the fabric of America. What is this but not examples of theories based solely on race?

Just last week, Tucker Carlson, who helped whip the Trumpian base into an uproar around Critical Race Theory, brought on his show Charles Murray, a white nationalist who penned the infamous racist screed, The Bell Curve, which argues that people of different races, especially black people, have lower IQs than white people. The text has served as the backbone for “scientific” racism that has helped build the modern white nationalist and Alt-Right movement which proved pivotal in the rise of Trumpism.

As the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote:

According to Murray, disadvantaged groups are disadvantaged because, on average, they cannot compete with white men, who are intellectually, psychologically and morally superior. Murray advocates the total elimination of the welfare state, affirmative action and the Department of Education, arguing that public policy cannot overcome the innate deficiencies that cause unequal social and educational outcomes.

In Murray’s world, wealth and social power naturally accrue towards a “cognitive elite” made up of high-IQ individuals (who are overwhelmingly white, male, and from well-to-do families), while those on the lower end of the eponymous bell curve form an “underclass” whose misfortunes stem from their low intelligence.

As the Huffington Post reported what while on Tucker’s show, Murray stated:

  …that “the cognitive demands” of some occupations mean “a whole lot of more white people qualify [to do them] than Black people. Essentially, you have registered nurses, and we have data on fairly large numbers of registered nurses, Black and white, and the difference in mean IQ between the two of those is a dozen IQ points, which is a lot,” Murray said.

He went on to argue:

…[racial IQ]…does mean you have a difference in job performance, and that’s eventually going to be reflected in income as well. It’s going to be reflected in the nature of their careers, and the nature of how they end up and so forth…the cognitive demands of those occupations mean that a whole lot of more white people qualify than Black people, and even a higher proportion of Asian people qualify than white people.

This is anti-Blackness and white supremacy dressed up as pseudo-science. But anti-racists and antifascists should pay attention to Murray’s baseline argument because Tucker is attempting to mainstream them for a reason. In short, Murray is arguing that racial and class inequalities are not the product of a system of exploitation and structural racism, but instead the natural outcome of people who are just too dumb to fend for themselves – and thus the State should stop trying. From systemic poverty to the hundreds of thousands killed during the coronavirus pandemic, all can be reduced to racist theories that the stronger and smarter races and classes will survive, while others will always fail and bring civilization down with them.

With climate change threatening to displace millions and bring about the deaths of potentially billions through global warming and collapsing oceans and food systems, the project of re-cementing racist theories that can justify mass death, displacement, and genocide within the popular discourse will continue to find a home within the Republican mainstream.

Wealthy Conservative Billionaires Pumped Millions Into White Nationalist VDARE Website

Far-Right billionaires and wealthy conservatives at the head of massive foundations pumped millions into VDARE, a well-known white nationalist and anti-immigrant website run by white nationalist Peter Brimelow during the past few years, reports the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Brimelow is a former contributor to the conservative National Review magazine and for years alongside Richard Spencer and Jared Taylor worked to promote a white nationalist current that in the mid-2010’s morphed into the Alt-Right. VDARE is also credited as being one of the main publications that influenced anti-immigrant Nativist and Trump advisor, Stephen Miller. Brimelow was also on stage at an Alt-Right conference in DC in 2016 when Richard Spencer’s cries of “Hail Trump!” were met with literal Nazi salutes.

According to Hatewatch:

In an era when white nationalists increasingly embrace decentralized online activism, VDARE stands out for its organizational prowess and links to power. Hatewatch connected former Trump administration officials Stephen Miller and Julia Hahn to its founder, Peter Brimelow, in a series of stories. (Miller invited Brimelow to speak at Duke University when he studied there, and Brimelow referred to a writers workshop Hahn attended with him in private emails leaked to Hatewatch.) Celebrity anti-immigrant columnist Ann Coulter contributes to the group’s online publication. Fox News pundit Laura Ingraham retweeted a VDARE post blaming non-white workers for a COVID-19 outbreak last year.

DonorsTrust, a right-wing funding vehicle tied to Charles Koch, the Mercer family and other like-minded billionaires, pumped $1.5 million into VDARE in 2019, CMD previously reported. These tax records demonstrate that the dark money flowing from DonorsTrust accounts for only a little more than a third of VDARE’s revenue from that year.

VDARE’s recent fundraising prowess coincides with the Republican Party’s embrace of the anti-immigrant, anti-democratic worldview promoted by former President Trump and his followers. Total donations to the VDARE Foundation, the nonprofit that funds the group’s operations, surged throughout the Trump era, CMD found, culminating with an increase of nearly $4 million from 2018 to 2019. (Donors gave VDARE roughly $385,000 in 2017 and $500,000 in 2018, tax records show.)

The big increase in revenue worked out well for Brimelow, whose salary nearly doubled from the year before. According to the documents, Brimelow made about $182,000 in 2018. In 2019, VDARE paid him roughly $345,000. The VDARE Foundation appears prepared to maintain his salary, as the nonprofit ended the year with over $3.5 million in the bank.

Cops Claim Far-Right Protester was “ANTIFA,” Cite Patch of Metal Band as Evidence

According to The Daily Beast, last June an armed far-Right man at a ‘Back the Blue’ rally put a counter-protester in a headlock. Two months after the incident, police circulated a bulletin claiming that man was in fact “ANTIFA.” The evidence? He had a patch on his jacket that was in-fact the logo of thrash metal band “ANTHRAX.” As Kelly Weill reported:

Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office had circulated an internal bulletin on the gun-wielding man. The bulletin, which was also distributed by the Washington State Attorney General’s Office, included pictures of the man, as well as a possible indication of his political beliefs.

“A physical confrontation erupted, and this individual put a protester in a headlock followed by displaying a pistol for a few moments as the crowds reacted to the confrontation and the tension escalated,” the bulletin reads. “Law enforcement responded, but the subject was not contacted or identified. No shots were fired and the weapon was drawn and secured on the right side pocket of the vest. ‘ANTIFA’ is a patch on the right shoulder of the subject.”

“Antifa,” short for anti-fascist, refers to a broad movement of leftist demonstrators who oppose the far right. The movement has served, at times, as a bogeyman for police and the far right in general, with Snohomish’s own police chief resigning last year, days before the Back The Blue rally, after he fueled rumors of an ominous antifa mob approaching town. Although the leftist menace never materialized, heavily armed groups on the right patrolled the streets, some of them toting Confederate flags or patches for hate groups. (The Snohomish Police Department and the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office work together, but are separate agencies.)

The bulletin’s mention of an “ANTIFA” patch on the vest of a gun-brandishing man might have given police more reason to fear violence on the left. But, contrary to the bulletin’s claims, the patch did not say “ANTIFA.” It was the spiky, stylized logo of Anthrax, a metal band.

Ryan Shapiro, executive director of Property Of The People, said the mix-up was part of a broader trend of law enforcement cracking down on the left. “Law enforcement is so consumed by panic over dissent that cops are now seeing the ‘antifa’ boogeyman in even the most ubiquitous mall-bought metal patches,” Shapiro told The Daily Beast.

Far-Right Grifter Tim Pool Hires Conspiracy Theorist and White Nationalist “Groyper” Stan, Cassandra Fairbanks

Far-Right YouTuber Tim Pool has hired neo-fascist conspiracy peddler Cassandra Fairbanks, linked to a variety of Proud Boys, neo-Nazis, and white nationalists, as an editor for his new website. Ironically in the past, Pool has attacked Fairbanks as not “actual journalist.” In the past year, Fairbanks in the pages of the far-Right conspiracy website, The Gateway Pundit, has promoted the white nationalist Groyper movement and has been photographed with the group’s leadership. For more info on Tim Pool, check out Tim Pool clips.

Six More Threepers Indicted for Conspiracy

Six California men, four of whom are Three Percenters, have been indicted for conspiracy for their role in the January 6th siege. Alan Hostetter, Russell Taylor, Erik Scott Warner, Felipe Antonio “Tony” Martinez, Derek Kinnison, and Ronald Mele face charges of conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, making this the 3rd conspiracy case against Three Percenters to arise from the January riot.

The six men conspired together on Telegram to bring bear spray and knives to the protest at the Capitol. Hostetter and Taylor were seen on January 5th guarding Trump ally Roger Stone. Warner, Martinez, Kinnison, and Mele drove to D.C. together with equipment and weapons.

Feuerkrieg Division Resumes Recruiting in U.S.

The violent neo-Nazi organization Feuerkrieg Division is actively recruiting again in the United States and Europe. FKD dissolved in February 2020, but reappeared on the Telegram app last month at the same time that propaganda flyers for the group started appearing in various European cities. A 16 year old from California who uses the pseudonym “Hergle Zelea” has helped revive the group. The founder is a 14 year old from Estonia who goes by the name “Commander.”

Despite FKD’s small size, and the fact that most of their members are teenage boys, they are extremely dangerous. An active duty soldier named Jarrett William Smith was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in federal prison last year for distributing information on social media on how to manufacture explosives. He also allegedly discussed targeting Beto O’Rourke. Conor Climo of Las Vegas, NV was also sentenced to two years for plotting to bomb a synagogue and a queer bar. Violent attacks by FKD members have also been disrupted in Lithuania and Germany. Feuerkrieg Division​​​​​​​ members align themselves with the principles outlined in James Mason’s Siege, believing that violent racial terrorism and societal collapse will bring about fascism. The group recently announced an alliance with Texas-based neo-Nazi organization Injekt Division.

Seth Aaron Pendley Pleads Guilty To Amazon Bomb Plot

Seth Aaron Pendley of Wichita Falls pleaded guilty to to a malicious attempt to destroy a building with an explosive for plotting to blow up an Amazon data center in Virginia. Pendley was arrested in April while attempting to acquire what he believed to be C4 explosives from an individual who turned out to be an undercover agent.

Pendley claimed to have been at the January 6th siege on the capitol in D.C. He had brought along a sawed-off rifle and took a piece of glass from one of the building’s windows. He plotted to blow up the Amazon center in order to “kill off about 70 percent of the internet” and incite a revolution against “the oligarchy.”

Pendley faces up to 20 years in prison and will be sentenced on October 1st.

The Base Members Plead Guilty to Firearms Charges

Patrik Mathews, an ex-soldier and neo-Nazi from Canada, and Brian Lemley Jr., leader of The Base’s Maryland cell, plead guilty to firearms charges on June 10th. Mathews illegally entered the “United States” to join up with other members of The Base. The two men are accused of plotting to attack a gun rights rally, producing DMT, and manufacturing an illegal ghost gun. Vice writes:

In a hearing on Thursday, Mathews told U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang he accepted a plea agreement and pleaded guilty to three charges connected to possession of a machine gun and destroying a cell phone that was a part of a federal investigation. In a hearing later in the day, Lemely likewise accepted a similar plea agreement and pleaded guilty to several charges regarding harbouring and transporting Mathews illegally in the United States, transporting a machine gun, and providing Mathews (an illegal alien) with a weapon and ammunition.

Mathews and Lemley will be sentenced in October.

Doxxes

Fred Wilkins, Former KKK Grand Dragon of Superior, CO

Front Range Antifascists have identified a man who was spotted damaging a public display of Pride flags in Louisville, Colorado. The man in question is Fred Wilkins, 74, of Superior, and he led the Colorado Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s.

Wilkins has a disturbingly long history of white supremacist organizing in his home state. Shockingly, he threatened to murder talk radio icon Alan Berg in 1979, which got him suspended from his job at the Lakewood fire department. (When Berg was killed five years later, two neo-Nazis in The Order were charged for the crime. One of them was David Lane, a former Klan member and associate of Wilkins.) Records show that Wilkins once organized a Klan protest outside of a Zionist event, where he collected car license plates from the parking lot in order to target the Jews in attendance. He once counter-protested at a Chicano liberation march, where he attacked POC protesters and was predictably protected by the cops. The following year, Wilkins left the Klan to join the National Association for the Advancement of White People, founded by former Grand Wizard David Duke.

Please read and share Front Range AFA’s full doxx. If you live in Wilkins’ area, they have provided a flyer that you can print and distribute.

Matthew Robert Guse and Gregory Anthony Cristiano of Pennsylvania

Last week, photographs of a group of Nazis performing Roman salutes in a park in Bucks County, Pennsylvania surfaced on Twitter. CROH Lehigh Valley has identified two attendees of that Nazi meetup: Matthew Guse and Gregory Cristiano.

Matthew Guse is a former member of Identity Evropa, and was doxxed by Panic! in the Discord in 2019. He graduated from Lackawanna College last May and has continued his fascist organizing. Gragory Cristiano is a sex offender and pedophile living in Upper Black Eddy, where the neo-Nazi meetup took place.

CROH is still working to identify the other individuals in the photos. Please email crohlv.noblogs.org if you have any tips, and share their Twitter thread!

Steven Walid Bahoura, Proud Boy Associate and City Council Candidate of Sterling Heights, MI

Vigilant AFA has published a thread alerting the Sterling Heights community about the city council candidacy of Proud Boy affiliate Steven Bahoura. Bahoura is transphobic and anti-immigrant (despite being of Chaldean descent himself). His campaign manager is Londa Gatt, who also managed Mike Detmer’s failed race for House of Representatives in 2020.

Bahoura’s election is on August 3rd. Please help spread the word by sharing Vigilant AFA’s thread.

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