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RIGHT WING EXTREMISM

Conservative Campus Organizations Struggling With Swarms of White Nationalists

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Since early October, members and supporters of the white nationalist movement in the United States have organized and swarmed events hosted by GOP-aligned institutions that seek to engage young people on college campuses, including Young America’s Foundation, The Daily Wire, and Turning Point USA. Organizers of the disruptions have a handful of additional stunts planned for the next few weeks.

Leading the action is anti-Semitic and racist podcaster Nicholas Fuentes, who frequently denies being a white nationalist, a term he admits may be “descriptive,” but is widely unpopular. Fuentes attended the 2017 Unite the Right gathering in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a white supremacist drove a vehicle into a crowd and murdered a counterdemonstrator. His supporters have dubbed themselves the “Groyper Army,” referring to a two-year-old meme meant to depict a more racist version of the “Pepe the Frog” character hijacked by the alt-right a few years ago.

Fuentes has long antagonized Turning Point USA—he notably threw a tantrum after attempting to speak to a Turning Point USA chapter at Iowa State University earlier this year—and tensions flared after Right Wing Watch first reported that Turning Point USA severed ties with a brand ambassador who had posed for photographs with Fuentes and other far-right political entertainers.

The current wave of real-life disruptions began, according to the blog Angry White Men, on Oct. 27 at the Politicon conference in Nashville, Tennessee, where event staff blocked Fuentes from entering an event where Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk was scheduled to deliver a speech. Assisting in the propaganda push since then has been disgraced former Daily Caller editor Scott Greer, YouTube entertainer Vincent James Foxx, Identity Evropa leader Patrick Casey, and Infowars employee Jacob Lloyd. Racist blogs including The Daily Stormer, Occidental Dissent, and American Renaissance have also published articles supportive of Fuentes supporters’ antics. The string of stunts has been defended by national-level pundits including far-right columnists Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin, who was fired as a YAF speaker after she publicly backed the far-right disruptors.

White nationalists have historically targeted what they perceive to be fertile recruiting ground in campus youth organizations, and the current responses from institutional Republican groups are a reminder of why that is. For years, the GOP’s willingness to associate with bigots and racists has been noticed and seized upon by white nationalist groups, including Identity Evropa (rebranded as American Identity Movement), and by white nationalist propagandists, including James Allsup. Members of Identity Evropa have planned to recruit from Turning Point USA chapters since at least 2018, according to leaked chat logs published by Unicorn Riot.

As Vox’s Jane Coaston reported, the white nationalists targeting the campus organizations believe groups like YAF and TPUSA “need to be confronted because they are shutting down ‘socially conservative Christians and supporters of President Trumps agenda’ and promoting ‘degeneracy’ by having gay speakers.” Their strategy has been to overwhelm lines for the question-and-answer portions of college talks by more establishment figures such as Kirk and Shapiro with far-right supporters who use the opportunity to deploy far-right talking points and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in the form of questions to the speakers.

The strategy exploits two long-established accusations hurled by self-described campus conservatives: that the political left wants to silence those who advance ideas that speak too much truth to power, and that the prevalence of white nationalism in America is an overblown myth. When speakers at events hosted by groups like Turning Point USA have rejected questions posed by the far-right event crashers, the questioner uses the first talking point to establish themselves as a “truer” conservative. If the establishment speaker denounces white supremacism and anti-Semitism in answer to a far-right questioner, the disruptors claim the speakers are taking cues from the political left in order to dodge legitimate questions. Under this pressure, the conservative establishment falls to the very game it designed, and white nationalist organizers can siphon impressionable young people out of more establishment-aligned groups and into the hate movement.

At the peak of the push to confront campus conservative groups, the president’s adult son Donald Trump Jr. was heckled off stage at a Turning Point USA event at the University of California, Los Angeles, by white nationalists who were told the event would not include a question-and-answer session. Kimberly Guilfoyle, attending as Trump Jr.’s girlfriend, shouted at the disruptors that they probably needed online dating to meet people “because you’re impressing no one here to get a date in person.” Kirk was targeted on multiple occasions and at the University of Houston he unveiled a television from beneath a cloth and played a video of Fuentes that he apparently believed would cause Fuentes’ fans to distance themselves from him. Instead, Kirk was chased off campus by the chanting crowd.

Online, conservative personalities have surfaced clips of Fuentes’ podcast, including moments where Fuentes appears to promote Holocaust denial, voice support for Jim Crow laws, and explode in an anti-Semitic rant against The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh. Sebastian Gorka, who served as deputy assistant to the president for seven months in the Trump administration, spent part of a radio show in late October railing against Fuentes and his supporters, and he questioned how Fuentes was able to maintain a verified Twitter account. The rant was delivered without a hint of irony, despite the fact that Gorka was pushed from his White House post in a controversy over his membership in a far-right Hungarian group with World War II links to the Nazis.

Although Fuentes’ online viewership numbers are up for the time being, there is little indication that Fuentes’ campaign had garnered him the seat at the table he craved beyond pockets of the right that already supported him, or among conservatives who have been disgraced in the movement. Fuentes and his allies have succeeded in making noise and embarrassing major conservative youth organizations, but the end result seems counter-productive to Fuentes’ long-sought desire for credibility in the broader right-wing movement.

But even if through such disruption Fuentes only managed to further isolate himself in the broader right, the white nationalist movement availed itself an opportunity to scrape impressionable youth into its ranks, despite being unable to fully rehab its public image after the 2017 melee in Charlottesville. With blood on its hands, the “alt-right” was denounced by prominent Republicans, the media personalities affiliated with the movement were cast out, and the foot soldiers of the movement were identified, named, and shamed. The white nationalist movement splintered after Unite the Right, and ever since then, movement leaders have been throwing ideas at the wall and hoping something stuck.

It remains to be seen if this idea will stick.

Photo: TPUSA’s Charlie Kirk interviews President Donald Trump

This article was originally published at Right Wing Watch and is republished here by permission.

 

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law

Arkansas Senator Files Bill to Abolish State Library, Give Education Department Control

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The right-wing war on knowledge continues as an Arkansas state senator filed a bill Thursday to abolish the State Library as well as the library board.

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Jonesboro), along with State Rep. Wayne Long (R-Bradford), filed Senate Bill 536 on Thursday. The bill would not just remove all references to the State Library from existing laws, but also put the state’s other libraries under the control of the Arkansas Department of Education.

A previous version of the bill, SB184, would have also shuttered the Arkansas Educational Television Commission, which oversees the state’s PBS stations, according to the Arkansas Advocate.

READ MORE: Clean Up Alabama Wants State to Dump ‘Marxist’ American Library Association

The Arkansas State Library is not just a regular library. In addition to providing information to state agencies and lawmakers, it also distributes funding to the other libraries around the state. Under SB536, the Department of Education would take on all its responsibilities. The State Library is officially a part of the Department of Education already, but it operates as an independent organization.

While the proposal may sound like a shuffling-around of duties, the main thrust of the bill is to allow more direct control over the Arkansas library system by controlling the purse strings. The bill would keep libraries from distributing “age-inappropriate materials” to those under 17 years old and sex education materials from those under 12. Libraries would also have to set up a system where those in the community could request that certain items be banned for minors, according to KARK-TV. Those that don’t meet these restrictions will have state funding pulled.

Earlier legislation filed by Sullivan and passed into law includes Act 242, which ended the requirement for library directors to have a master’s degree in library science, the Advocate reported.  Sullivan, however, was unsuccessful with a proposed amendment to another bill that would strip funding from libraries affiliated with the American Library Association—meaning most, if not all of them. That amendment was rejected this week over concerns the language in it was too broad, according to the Advocate.

The ALA has been a target of right-wing politicians and activists upset with its free speech stance and fights against censorship. Sullivan in particular has objected to a provision in the ALA’s Library Bill of Rights protecting library access for all ages, the Advocate reported. He also called for the state’s chapter of the ALA to be defunded—despite the fact that it receives no state funding.

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BIGOTRY

Texas to Investigate Anonymous Complaint Teachers Used Trans Student’s Pronouns

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After a Moms for Liberty member claimed that teachers at a Texas high school used a trans student’s new name and proper pronouns, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott ordered an investigation.

On February 13, Denise Bell of the right wing, anti-LGBTQ group Moms for Liberty, addressed the Houston Independent School Board. She read a statement that she said came from the parents of a trans student at Bellaire High School. The parents were upset that teachers used the student’s new name and pronouns, according to Erin in the Morning. The anonymous statement Bell read said that the change happened without parental consent, and “goes against our Christian faith, the advice of [their] therapist and quite frankly common sense.”

Bell then claimed that the school district was “purposely and secretively transitioning minors.”

READ MORE: GOP Candidate Complaining She Wasn’t Allowed to ‘Have Kids Laugh At’ Transgender Students in Viral Video Draws Rebuke

State Representative Steve Toth—who represents a different district than the school is in—informed Abbott of the complaint in a letter on February 26. Two weeks later, Abbott replied to Toth’s letter, revealing he told the Texas Education Agency to investigate the Bellaire High School, accusing the teachers of helping “to ‘socially transition’ a student—violating the express wishes of the child’s mother,” which Abbott called “inappropriate and potentially unlawful.”

Abbott directed the TEA to not just determine whether or not the teachers did indeed use the trans student’s name and pronouns, but also open a full investigation into the school. TEA was told to find out if the school had also violated “policies concerning sexual education curriculum, parental consent for communications with students, mental health services or guidance to students, and parent grievances”; if any school employees had “engaged in misconduct”; and whether any student “has been subjected to abuse or neglect.”

That last one has a footnote on “abuse or neglect,” referring to a statement from President Donald Trump’s March 4 speech in front of a joint session of Congress:

“A few years ago, January Littlejohn and her husband discovered that their daughter’s school had secretly socially transitioned their 13-year-old little girl. Teachers and administrators conspired to deceive January and her husband, while encouraging her daughter to use a new name and pronouns—‘they/them’ pronouns, actually—all without telling January, who is here tonight and is now a courageous advocate against this form of child abuse.”

This is not the first time Abbott and his administration have attacked the state’s trans community. In his “State of the State Address” this year, he said that teachers who discuss gender transition with students should be fired, according to KTRK-TV. Texas has also banned trans students from sports as well as the use of puberty blockers in cases of minors experiencing gender dysphoria, according to the Houston Chronicle.

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AMERICA FIRST?

Tim Walz: ‘Racism’ Motivates MAGA Movement to Pardon Derek Chauvin

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Minnesota Governor Tim Walz didn’t mince words when asked what the motivation was for the new movement among MAGA Republicans to convince President Donald Trump to pardon Derek Chauvin, the former police officer who killed George Floyd in 2020.

“Racism. It’s racist. OK? That’s what I believe,” Walz said in an interview with Semafor published Wednesday.

The calls to pardon Chauvin started with an online petition earlier this month, according to The Independent. The pardon push picked up steam this week when conservative commentator Ben Shapiro of the Daily Wire launched a webseries, “The Case of Derek Chauvin.” Shapiro claims the officer was convicted on “extraordinarily scanty evidence,” saying Floyd did not die from having Chauvin’s knee on his neck for over nine minutes, but rather from drugs in Floyd’s system and heart disease.

READ MORE: Derek Chauvin Sentenced to 22-and-a-Half Years for Murder of George Floyd – Less Than Maximum Possible Sentence

Walz, however, disputes this interpretation of events.

“This was a man who murdered George Floyd on TV,” Walz said, adding that a pardon “would undermine the faith in the system.”

The White House, however, has denied that a Chauvin pardon is in Trump’s plans. Earlier this month, Trump said he hadn’t even heard about a push to pardon Floyd’s killer, and on Wednesday, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt repeated that a pardon is “not something he’s considering at this time,” according to The Grio.

However, some commentators, like The Hill’s Juan Williams are skeptical, pointing out that Trump has pardoned two police officers convicted of killing a Black man in the first days of his second term.

In 2020, after the killing, Trump condemned Chauvin.

“We all saw what we saw. It’s hard to conceive anything other than what we did see. It should have never happened,” Trump said.

If Trump were to pardon Chauvin, it would be largely moot. Presidents can only pardon those convicted on federal charges. Chauvin was convicted on both federal and Minnesota state charges. In the event Trump cleared the federal charges, the main thing that would happen is that Chauvin would be moved from the federal prison in Big Spring, Texas to a Minnesota state prison.

Minnesota sentenced Chauvin to 22 and a half years for murder; on the federal level, he was sentenced to 21 years for violating Floyd’s civil rights. Barring a federal pardon, the two sentences are running concurrently, not consecutively.

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