Visual Racism in “Historical” Photo

• • racism, visual

image0012-300x246A couple of weeks ago, an administrative assistant working for a Republican elected official  in the Tennessee state legislature sent around an email with this image (from here) and the caption,  “Historical Keepsake Photo.”

As you may or may not be able to tell from the image, it depicts all the presidents of the U.S. through to the current one, and in place of a portrait of President Obama, there is only a dark square with two eyes peering out.    The image evokes the racist blackface iconography characteristic of the Jim Crow era.

Just as we witnessed during the campaign, racist imagery has been a consistent feature of the white response to Obama’s emergence on the national political scene.

The fact that this came from a state government office suggests that this sort of white supremacy is not relegated to some marginal, fringe element of the population, but rather resonates within the mainstream of elected politicians.

If there’s a bright spot here, it’s that someone – an unnamed administrative assistant – thought that the image was wrong and forwarded it to someone outside her office.      It’s these kind of ‘race traitors’ that can work to disrupt the persistent repetition of the drum beat of white supremacy.

More Ape Stereotyping: The White Racist Frame’s Key Images

• • African Americans, politics, stereotyping, white racial frame



Ah, more “Post-Racial America” (HatTip: feministing.com):

A prominent South Carolina Republican [Rusty DePass] killed his Facebook page Sunday after being caught likening the First Lady to an escaped gorilla. Commenting on a report posted to Facebook about a gorilla escape at a zoo in Columbia, S.C., Friday, longtime GOP activist Rusty DePass wrote, “I’m sure it’s just one of Michelle’s ancestors – probably harmless.”

He, like most white racist commentators these days, of course apologized, and guess what, claimed:

“I am as sorry as I can be if I offended anyone. The comment was clearly in jest.”

Odd, how joking is supposted to make blatant racism OK….. DePass is not a small fish, but

former chairman of the Richland County GOP, was an early backer of George W. Bush and co-chairman of Rudy Giuliani’s 2008 campaign in Richland County, the state’s largest.

And, of course, the other prominent Republicans are pressing him to apologize:

Eric Davis, the current chairman of the Richland County Republicans, said his predecessor should get a pass. “Everyone says stupid things they regret later. I think the world should move on,” he said.

Racism is just no big deal for many white Americans. See too how that old white racial frame is powerful, as whites just cannot seem to let go of the ape imagery for Americans of color. This stuff is hundreds of years old. One finds it in Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, our first major book by our first secular intellectual–and white supremacist thinker.

Why are white men so slow to learn about what is blatantly racist in our post-racial America?

Ethnocentrism and Communal Conflict in Africa

• • Africa, conflict, ethnic groups

Africa

If ethnocentrism or so-called tribalism plays a catalyst role in community conflicts in sub Saharan Africa (Creative Commons License photo credit: Hitchster ), then more people in countries experiencing violent inter-communal conflict should express their ethnic identity as foremost and express stronger ties to their ethnic group. A look at Nigeria, Kenya and Zimbabwe would tell us if this is so.

Violent inter-communal conflicts in so-called ‘trouble spots’ in Africa (Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, DR Congo, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan and Zimbabwe) are evidence of the chasms in these countries that have been described variously as weak, failing or collapsed. State weakness or failure and eventual collapse is also catalyzed by the proliferation of small arms, which are readily available because they are inexpensive, portable, easy to conceal and use, and the persistence of ethnocentrism – a phenomenon rather unlike racism in its economic and political outcomes of inequities, in that, allegiance to ethnic or cultural (tribal) group, patronage based on ethnicity (or race), family and kinship ties, and networks of ethnic interest trump other networks in society. I use the popular narrow definition of ‘ethnic’: primarily signifying cultural characteristics or traits. Extreme ethnocentrism manifests as ethnic hostility. And we know too about the role of religious intolerance in contributing to these violent inter-communal conflicts. One scholar thinks that “civil wars…usually stem from or have roots in ethnic, religious, linguistic or other inter-communal enmity; the “fear of the other that drives so much of ethnic conflict stimulates and fuels hostilities between regimes.” There is some empirical evidence that cultural differences, compared to economic (class) or political (political party) differences, contribute significantly to inter-communal violent conflicts in sub Saharan Africa.

The intensity of ethnocentrism in inter-communal conflict is indeed frightening one: it transforms long-time neighbors into mortal enemies overnight based on their ethnic affiliations. Long-time neighbors become marauding killers, and ethnic (or religious) differences become reasons for denying humanity to others, and all prior social relations and interactions cease to matter.
In sub Saharan Africa, the persistence of ethnocentrism – also known as a certain tribalism –in governance and politics has been one of the challenges of the post-independence period as efforts have been focused, sometimes unsuccessfully, on building nations and nationalisms that relied less on ethnicity and ethnic patronage; this post-independence period therefore has become a project tracking the challenges of nationalism and the bane of ethnic allegiances. Also, the level of inexpensive unregulated small arms and light weapons circulating freely on the black market since the end of the Cold War have led some observers to argue that in ‘poorer’ states where security is weak and governments are unstable, stockpiles of arms only worsen community clashes by extending the duration of violence.

If ethnocentrism, or so-called ‘tribalism’ plays a catalyst role in community conflicts, it must be predicated on a certain level of social distance between social groups; that is, the extent to which members of one ethnic group would accept a member of another ethnic group metaphorically and geographically. But precise measures of social distance among ethnic groups in African countries are not available. At best, we can use as proxy measures the (1) strength of ethnic identification, defined as: “the specific group you feel you belong to first and foremost besides nationality” or (2) the strength of ethnic attachment, defined as “the identity group to which you feel much stronger ties to other than people of your nationality”. Representative sampled data from the Afrobarometer surveys in 1999 to 2001 (round 1) and 2004 (round 2) allow us to examine the extent to which ethnocentrism is prevalent in a few of the sub Saharan African countries experiencing violent inter-communal conflict. The samples ensure that all ethnic groups as well as rural and urban dwellers are represented in the data. Of the so-called trouble spots in Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and Zimbabwe were included in these surveys; so these three countries are the only test cases we can examine.

In our test cases (countries), we should expect (significantly) more respondents in the representative samples to choose their ethnic group as the one they belong to foremost and to say that they feel much stronger ties to their ethnic group members. This will be especially so in places where there have been cycles or recurrence of ethnic conflict so that the way people feel currently about their ethnicity (the strength of ethnic identity) could be strongly influenced by past ethnic violence. We could then suggest that the countries experiencing violent inter-communal conflict are more ethnocentric (tribalistic) or have not overcome ethnocentrism when compared to other African countries shown in the table.

Table 1: Which specific identity group do you feel you belong to first and foremost (1999-2001)

Country Percent choosing ethnic group
Nigeria 47.4%
Namibia 43.0
Malawi 39.1
Mali 38.5
Zimbabwe 36.0
South Africa 21.6

Country Percent choosing group other than ethnic
Tanzania 76.4%
Uganda 62.0
Lesotho 32.8
Zambia 32.9
Botswana 32.9

Note that in table 1, approximately 1 out of 2 Nigerians (47.4%), followed by Namibians (43%) chose tribe or ethnicity. Approximately 1 out of 3 (36%) Zimbabweans chose ethnicity. The proportion for Nigeria is significantly higher when compared to all the other countries except Namibia. The proportions of Zimbabweans choosing ethnic group are higher when compared to Lesotho, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia; in these countries, more people did not say they belonged foremost to their ethnic group. Kenya was not included in this round of data collection, but is included in round 2 (2004).

Table 2: Feel much stronger ties to ethnic group than other nationals in country (1999-2001)
Country Feel stronger ties to
ethnic group

Nigeria 91.6%
South Africa 78.3
Namibia 75.7
Zimbabwe 69.8
Malawi 67.9

Respondents in a subset of countries (including our test countries) were asked about the strength of ties to their ethnic group in table 2. Here again, Nigerians emerge with higher percentages. Compare the rates of Nigerians to South Africans, Namibians and Malawians.

More countries were added to the surveys in 2004 (round 2), including Kenya. The results to the question “Which specific identity group do you feel you belong to first and foremost?” are shown in table 3.

Table 3: Which specific identity group do you feel you belong to first and foremost (2004)
Country Percent choosing ethnic group
Nigeria 49.3%
Ghana 39.4
Mali 36.0
Senegal 33.8
Mozambique 28.9
Namibia 20.9
Kenya 19.4
Zimbabwe 10.9
Country Percent choosing group other than ethnic
Uganda 55.2%
Tanzania 52.5
Zambia 39.1
South Africa 31.0
Cape Verde 30.1

Note that in this second round of data collection, half of Nigerians again say they feel they belong foremost to their ethnic group. But the numbers of Kenyans and Zimbabweans saying they belong foremost to their ethnic group are lower than in countries like Ghana, Mali, Senegal, Mozambique and Namibia. Indeed, the survey shows that more Kenyans say they belong foremost to their occupational group (credit dyer). In Zimbabwe, there has been a reduction in the number of Zimbabweans choosing ethnic group in 2004 compared to data from 1999-2001; it is not clear why this is so. Indeed, in this round, more Zimbabweans chose their religious group as foremost. The question: “Do you feel much stronger ties to ethnic group than other nationals in country?” was not asked in 2004.

Conclusion

So, we can say that of our three test cases, Nigerians seem to confirm our argument. But there is a caveat: these results do not account for the widely reported inter-communal violent conflicts in which religious affiliation has been fingered as a contributory factor. Shouldn’t the surveys reveal a certain level of religion-centrism based on well documented conflicts between Christians and Moslems in the North of Nigeria? Even so, clearly, the number of Nigerians choosing ethnicity as their foremost group is remarkable when compared to other countries in the tables; the data describe Nigeria’s historical struggle for ethnic harmony.

Results for Zimbabweans are mixed – in 1999-2001, one in three Zimbabweans felt they belonged foremost to their ethnic group, and most Zimbabweans felt stronger ties to their ethnic group. But in 2004, fewer Zimbabweans felt they belonged foremost to their ethnic group. What can we make of these results from Zimbabwe? We know of the intransigence of the Mugabe regime and the reported brutality of his party machine dating back several years. But, has the political climate suppressed feelings of ethnic identification and attachment; could this be an unintended effect of political repression and economic depression? Why is it that there are more people choosing religious identity versus ethnicity between the two survey periods? Could it be that feelings of ethnic identity and attachment are mutable so that they are affected (suppressed or heightened) by prevailing social, political and economic conditions in the country?
For Kenya, the results do not support our argument; the data from 2004 tell us that 2 out of 10 Kenyans consider their ethnic identity as foremost. But, unlike Nigeria and Zimbabwe, Kenya has not had internecine ethnic conflicts in the past. The results lead me to conclude that in Kenya, class warfare has perhaps more to do with the violent inter-communal conflict than mere ethnicity. This is because more Kenyans chose occupational group; and we know that one’s occupation determines earnings and therefore socio-economic rank. If strong identification and attachment to ethnic group plays a role in violent conflict in Kenya, it must interact with occupational or stark economic dissatisfaction or differences.

These results have one caveat; the data are 6-10 years old and do not tell us about current ethnic feelings. And if feelings about ethnic identity and attachment are mutable, as suggested, then these data may only reflect ethnic feelings of 6-10 years ago. Should we then expect data from 2008 and 2009 (when collected) to show spikes in ethnic feelings especially in Kenya due to the ethnic violence in the wake of the 2008 elections? But what can we expect from Zimbabwe? Are there other unidentified factors accounting for these cultural cleavages?”
Continue reading…

Should We Regulate Extreme Racist Speech Like Other Democracies?

• • antisemitism, cyber racism, free speech, government action, journalism, language, language & discourse, law, media

Candidates Have a Legal Right to Lie to Voters
Creative Commons License photo credit: Caveman 92223

The New York Times blog site (HT, Zulema) has an editorial on the white supremacist and “free speech” issues arising out of recent killings. After their opening they have comments from a variety of criminological and legal experts (Phyllis B. Gerstenfeld, criminal justice professor; Chip Berlet, Political Research Associates; Eric Hickey, criminology professor; Edward J. Eberle, comparative law professor; Eugene O’Donnell, John Jay College of Criminal Justice; and Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Simon Wiesenthal Center.)

Here is what the Times editors open with under the general theme of “room for debate”:

The killing of George Tiller, the abortion doctor in Wichita, Kan., and the attack on the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington yesterday have raised questions yet again about the role that extremist propaganda sites play in inciting violence among some militant believers. In both cases, the suspect arrested was well-known among fringe “communities” on the Web. Most legal scholars and many experts on extremist violence in the U.S. oppose reining in of such sites, or restrictions on extremist speech generally. Should the United States consider tighter restrictions on hate speech?

Notice the language here and in later parts of the analysts’ commentaries. They talk about “militant believers” from “fringe communities,” and sometimes call them “extremist.” One has to ask why they do not call these terrorists by the term “white terrorists”? Indeed, “white” rarely appears at all in the editorial or commentaries. If these white men had been “Middle Eastern extremists,” they likely would be called by that term. Do white men get a pass when it comes go this group-linked terrorism? And not one of the scholars even raises this question and the related one about the very long U.S. history of white terrorism (e.g., thousands killed by Klan-type groups) against people of color, as well as others like Jewish Americans.

The main debate in the Times blog here is over “free speech,” and how we cannot restrict white supremacist and other hate speech because of first amendment protections. One of the Times blog commentators, Edward J. Eberle, law professor at the Roger Williams University School of Law provides what I see as very interesting comments:

The United States is perhaps the only country in the world that allows for protection of hate speech. Much of this has to do with the idea that a free exchange of ideas is important and that allowing speech — even hate-filled speech — can be a safety valve that helps prevent outbreaks of violence. Under this view, speech needs to be regulated only when it will present a clear and present danger, as when it is a direct incitement to violence.

OK, why is this point not central in our media and political discussions: We are the only country that protects aggressive white supremacist and other aggressive hate speech. Why is that? Is it only because of our first amendment and conventional ideas of “free speech” in the United States? Is it because we really do cherish freedom more than other countries? Is our past and present history one of much greater freedom and liberty than other countries? Or is it because we (especially elite whites who run the country) do not see aggressive racist or other extremist hate speech as threatening to them and the values they care about?

Yet, the United States does NOT have unlimited “freedom of speech.” This notion is in fact a myth. As Eberle points out, things like obscene speech are not protected speech, “even when there is no concrete demonstration of harm.” Indeed, numerous types of speech are not protected, including obscene words, “fighting words,” some deceptive commercial ads, etc, as this comment from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (epic.org) indicates:

Obscenity. Speech defined as obscenity is outside the boundaries of First Amendment protection. As defined by Miller v. California, obscenity is speech that (1) the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find, taken as a whole, to appeal to the prurient interest; (2) depicts or describes in a patently offensive manner specifically defined sexual conduct; and (3) lacks as a whole serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. The definition of obscenity, developed in 1973, focuses on a local “community standard,” and has proven to be the crux of litigation surrounding internet censorship cases, which by their nature cannot depend upon local community standards.

So, let me get this straight, we do legally ban obscene words, sexual words, obscene speech in many contexts even when these words have not been, or cannot be, proven to create significant harm. We still ban them in numerous settings regardless of the first amendment. But it is OK to spout much racist hate speech all over the place, including on the Internet, when one can show it causes some or much harm–including inciting people like white terrorists to commit violence against people of color and others? (Some “communities’ standards” and views of what is harmful clearly count more than others.)

Eberle notes how isolated the “free” United States is from other free countries, including those we consider our closet allies and kindred countries. Most do not protect serious hate speech, but prosecute it:

This is the case in all the European countries, like Germany, France, Britain, etc., and also Canada.

Notice that these are countries with high levels of free speech, in many ways countries where speech is more diverse and/or free than in the United States (as many newsstands in these countries reveal). Their legal systems recognize a conflict in human freedoms. The right of freedom of speech is not so absolute and does not always trump the right freedom from extremist hate speech and related hate crimes. Eberle notes what he calls the U.S.

individualist model of a right to self-determination and expression. For the Europeans and others, there is also a right to speak your mind, but there are some bounds based on respect of others.

So, how did we get to this backward place of protecting extreme racist speech over the right to be free from such vicious, often violence-generating hate speech attacks? Not one of these criminologists and law professors speaks to how we as a country might reasonably regulate the most extreme forms of racist hate speech, the kind designed to incite people to discriminate and commit hate crimes. These analysts do not consider what other “advanced” democratic countries do in this regard as legal or political strategies we might just consider in dealing with aggressive and virulent hate speech. Why are we so ethnocentric and provincial in not even knowing about or considering other, often more democratic, legal and political systems–and what they do to free their citizens from such virulent racist attacks?

Addendum: Paul Krassner reviews some of the array of speech censored and banned under the “obscenity” regulations of various places in the country. But no hate speech.

Working at the Holocaust Museum: The Impact

• • antisemitism, hate crime, racism



holocaust memorial museum childrens tile 3
Creative Commons License photo credit: Mike Murrow
Over at the DailyKos blog, author Greg Mitchell has posted a comment from his daughter, Jeni Mitchell, who worked for a time at the Holocaust Museum that was attacked yesterday:

I worked in Visitor Services and spent a lot of time talking to people both before and after their visits to the museum. It was indelibly striking, the emotion and sincerity with which people spoke to me.

I spoke to survivors of the Holocaust who had been waiting decades to see this kind of museum and memorial, who exhausted every physical strength they had to visit the museum in person. I spoke to veterans who had liberated concentration camps; as a unit, they walked into those horrors in 1945, and as a decimated unit of survivors, they walked into our museum in 1993. I received a package of letters from a Midwestern school: each student had walked through the museum and then written a heartfelt letter of thanks, expressing an idealism unworn by adult confrontation (“We shouldn’t hate anyone,” was a popular sentiment).

In truth, I never spoke to anyone who had been through the main exhibit of the Museum who was not profoundly moved and seriously affected by the experience. This was not a foregone conclusion but the result of the sensitivity and empathy embedded within the exhibit by the curatorial staff, and the raft of educational and cultural programs that supported the Museum’s mission.

I remember, before the Museum opened, there was a great sense of wonder: how many visitors would come? The fact that 2 million people a year walk through the doors shows the visceral attraction of the Museum. People want to know: what happened? how could this happen? could it happen again? what would I have done – and what can I do now? These are not easy questions, but they are among the most important.

I remember vividly my visit to the Museum some years back. Many people there were profoundly moved by the experience. Many of us wept, especially at the children’s drawings and pile of shoes. I highly recommend it to anyone who has not been there. A picture is worth a thousand words, as they say. That certainly goes for the bloody impacts of anti-Semitism, then and now.

Museums like this one play a critical role in teaching all people about the fact that racist words and frames have an impact, words and frames kill. In this case, anti-Semitic and similar racist frames have killed millions. They are still killing, thanks in part to new ways of spreading racist frames such as the Internet.

The Internet Angle: Cyber Racism and Domestic Terrorism

• • antisemitism, cloaked, cyber racism, denialism, racism, white supremacists

ValueIn today’s New York Times “Room for Debate” series, The Editors have an online forum about the “Internet angle” on the recent acts of domestic terrorism (Creative Commons License photo credit: pasukaru76 ).  In both recent cases –  the murder of Dr. Tiller and the attack on the Holocaust Museum – The Editors write that “the suspect arrested was well-known among fringe “communities” on the Web” (the quotes around “communities” are in the original from The Editors). I’m going to leave the Tiller case for now, and focus on an examination of the Internet angle in the von Brunn case.  I return to the Tiller case at the end of this post.

After von Brunn was released from prison he went to work for a Southern California bookstore affiliated with the Institute for Historical Review (IHR) a Holocaust-denial group.

I refer to the IHR site (and others) as “cloaked” sites because they intentionally disguise their intention in order to fool the unsuspecting web user about their purpose.   As I’ve written about here before and in the book, the cloaked sites draw millions of readers each year.

Following that, von Brunn created his own virulently anti-Semitic website called Holy Western Empire (link not provided).   If you’re curious about his web presence, several writers at TPM have posted screen shots of von Brunn’s overtly racist and antisemitic website and other online postings here, here and here.  Von Brunn’s sites appear to be “brochure” sites – that is, one-way transfers of information (rather than interactive sites where users can add content).

I’ve spent more than ten years researching hate and white supremacy online and in my new book, Cyber Racism, I discuss both kinds of websites:  the “cloaked” sites like those of the Institute for Historical Review and the overtly racist and antisemitic websites like von Brunn’s Holy Western Empire.

There is no denying that white supremacy has entered the digital era. And, the overt racist and antisemitic sites have proven even more popular in the Age of Obama.

Avowed white supremacist extremists, such as James von Brunn (and David Duke), were early adopters  of Internet technologies.  White supremacists were among the first to create, publish and maintain web pages on the Internet.   The reality that von Brunn and other white supremacists were early adopters of the Internet runs counter to two prevailing notions we have: 1) that white supremacists are gap-toothed, ignorant, unsophisticated and uneducated; and, 2)  that the Internet is a place without “race.”

In fact, neither of these notions is accurate or supported by empirical evidence.  There’s plenty of data to show that some white supremacists are smart, as well as Internet savvy.   And, the Internet is very much a ‘place’ where race and racism exist.

So, what’s at stake here?  What’s the harm in white supremacy online?

I argue that there are a number of ways in which white supremacy online is a cause for concern, namely: 1) easy access and global linkages, 2) harm in real life, and 3) the challenge to cultural values such as racial equality.

With the Internet, avowed white supremacists have easy access to others that share their views and the potential at least to connect globally, across national boundaries with those like-minded people.  I highlight potential because  so far, there hasn’t been any sign of transnational border crossing to carry out white supremacist terrorist acts, although while there is a great deal of border crossing happening online.

There is also a real danger that ‘mere words’ on extremist websites can harm others in real life (e.g., Tsesis, Destructive Messages: How Hate Speech Paves the Way for Harmful Social Movements, NYU Press, 2002).   And, for this reason, I’m in favor of a stronger stance on removing hate speech from the web and prosecuting those who publish it for inciting racial hatred and violence.    In my view, websites such as von Brunn’s constitute a burning cross in the digital era and there is legal precedent to extinguish such symbols of hate while still valuing free speech (see Chapter 9 in Cyber Racism for an extensive discussion of efforts to battle white supremacy online transnationally).    There is, however, lots of ‘room for debate’ on this subject and that’s the focus of the NYTimes forum today.

It’s important to highlight the cloaked websites I mentioned earlier.  The emergence of cloakes sites illustrate a central feature of propaganda and cyber racism in the digital era: the use of difficult-to-detect authorship and hidden agendas intended to accomplish political goals, including white supremacy.

The danger in the cloaked sites is much more insidious than the overt sites, and here’s why:  even if we could muster the political will in the U.S. to make overt racist hate speech illegal – admittedly a long shot – such legislation would do nothing to address the lies contained in cloaked sites.

The goal of cloaked sites is to undermine agreed upon facts – such as the fact that six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust – and to challenge cultural values such as racial equality and tolerance.    And, these sites are the ones that are likely to fool a casual web user who may stumble upon them and be unable to decipher fact from propaganda.

I’ll give you one other example of a cloaked site and connect this back to the Tiller case.   A student of mine a couple of years ago made an in-class presentation in which she included the website Teen Breaks to illustrate the concept of “post-abortion syndrome.”  Now, as savvy readers and those involved in pro-choice politics know, there is no medically recognized “post-abortion syndrome.”  This is a rhetorical strategy of the anti-abortion movement used to terrify women and keep them from having abortions.   This pro-life propaganda is effectively disguised by the cloaked site  Teen Breaks which appears to be one of many sites on the web that offer reproductive health information for teens.

This cloaked site takes a very different strategy from the “hit list” websites that publish the names, home addresses, and daily routines of abortion providers.    Whereas the “hit list” not-so-subtly advocates murder, the cloaked sites undermine the very agreed upon facts about the health risks of abortion.     These are two very different, but both very chilling, assaults on women’s ability to make meaningful choices about their reproductive lives.

Similarly, the holocaust-denial sites and the overt racist and antisemitic websites are two very different, and both chillingly effective, assaults on racial equality.

Link Roundup on Holocaust Museum Shooting

• • African Americans, antisemitism, hate crime, white supremacists

Holocaust Museum ShootingIt’s been just about 24 hours since the white supremacist James W. von Brunn (shown here in a more recent DMV photo released by police) opened fire at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. and killed security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns.   I’ll be back later today with some analysis but for now, I wanted to share my growing link archive about von Brunn and the shooting.

Mainstream News Outlets:

  • Long History of Hate (Washington Post)
  • White Supremacist to Be Charged with Murder (FoxNews)
  • Suspect called genius, ‘a ‘oner and a hothead’ (MSNBC – same content as the WaPo link above) – most memorable line is the last one, quoting someone that knew von Brunn: “The responsible white separatist community condemns this. It makes us look bad.” Indeed.
  • Guard Opened Door for Killer (CNN) – The museum canceled a performance scheduled for Wednesday night of a play about racism and anti-Semitism, based on a fictional meeting between Anne Frank and Emmett Till, written by Janet Langhart Cohen, the wife of former Defense Secretary and U.S. Sen. William Cohen. CNN also has the video (9:00) of the Cohens describing what they saw (along with another example of CNN’s horrible use of illustrative technology).
  • Holocaust Museum suspects’ views were known (LATimes) – Quotes Heidi Beirich, research director of the Southern Poverty Law Center, saying “We’ve been tracking this guy since the late 1970s. He has an extremely long history with neo-Nazis and white supremacists, and is extremely hard-core.” After his release from prison von Brunn went to work for a Southern California bookstore connected to the Institute for Historical Review, a top Holocaust-denial group in the U.S.
  • According to von Brunn’s own bio from his website used as source material by lots of the news agencies, he moved to NYC in 1947 and found a job at a “big-league advertising [firm] on Madison Avenue” although the ad firm he mentions denies that he was ever employed there.
  • His (second) ex-wife says she ‘detested’ his views – (NYDaily News) – She also says that the 6’5″ von Brunn reminded her of John Wayne and that when they were married, von Brunn frequently said that he would ‘go out with his boots on.’ “I took it to mean that he was going to go out and try to take some people with him,” she’s quoted as saying.  After leaving prison, von Brunn became a prolific writer in the white supremacist fringe and a member of the Mensa, a group for people with high IQs.



Around the Blogosphere:



If I missed a crucial link, please feel free to add a comment and post a link there.

Update: And now neo-Nazi violence, again, in Russia.

Update2: the Gun he had was illegal:

QUESTION: Can you talk about his firearm, sir? He was a convicted felon, so how did he have the rifle?

Asst. Dir. JOSEPH PERSICHINI, JR., FBI DC Field Office: That I can’t answer.

QUESTION: He was a convicted felon in possession of a firearm, a long gun. That is illegal anywhere in the country. Is that not right?

Chief CATHY LANIER, DC Police: That’s correct.

QUESTION: So, we don’t have any sense of how he came into possession of that?

LANIER: Obviously that’s something that will be followed up on.

Black Men at Work

• • antisemitism, criminal justice, racism, white supremacists

0_63_johns1_320CNN has a brief reference and picture of a hero from yesterday, at the Holocaust Museum.

Stephen Tyrone Johns, a six-year veteran of the museum’s security staff, later “died heroically in the line of duty,” said Sara Bloomfield, museum director.

Some 5,000 people go to that important museum on a typical day. Many Black men protect US institutions, and do many other hard jobs in this society, but very rarely get credit or media attention for the fine job they do.

And violent white men like the shooter never become part of a vilified racial category of “white men” in the media or public policy discussions. And as a convicted felon he had access to guns, and no one in the media has yet raised that issue?

Interesting how that works.

Update: Johns was also not wearing a bullet-proof vest, which his union had pushed for, as one of our commenters suggested.   And, the latest reports are that Johns – seeing von Brunn as an elderly man in need of assistance – was opening the door for him when von Brunn opened fire and killed him.

More on the Holocaust Museum Shooting

• • antisemitism, white supremacists

james_von_brunnIn the absence of real news and hard facts about James von Brunn, the cable news networks are making a great deal of the fact that this man was “born in 1920, making him 89 years old, so an elderly gentleman,” as one talking-head just now described him.  Longevity is no antidote for racism and antisemitism (shown here in an undated photo from his website, used without permission).

This sort of analysis does nothing to explain this man’s actions and place them in the broader context of antisemitism, white supremacy and systemic racism in the U.S.  The fact that Von Brunn, long known as a white supremacist and a convicted felon, would take this sort of action should not be surprising.   White supremacy in the U.S., rather than being an atavism, is a consistent feature of the political landscape.

While the news networks are going to prattle on about how it’s possible that an octogenarian could carry out such a shooting, what (I predict) they’ll miss is the ways that this shooting is connected to the one last week of Dr. Tiller.   As I wrote about then,  killing, abortion, antisemitism and racism are inextricably linked in the white supremacist imagination.   I’m hoping that some of the more thoughtful mainstream news people will connect these dots.

UPDATE (Joe):

The Associated Press just added this:

Von Brunn has a racist, anti-Semitic Web site and wrote a book titled “Kill the Best Gentile.” In 1983, he was convicted of attempting to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve Board. He was arrested two years earlier outside the room where the board was meeting, carrying a revolver, knife and sawed-off shotgun. At the time, police said Von Brunn wanted to take the members hostage because of high interest rates and the nation’s economic difficulties.

The museum houses exhibits and records relating to the Holocaust more than a half century ago in which more than six million Jews were killed by the Nazis. It is located across the street from the National Mall, and within sight of the Washington Monument. The museum, which draws about 1.7 million visitors each year, was closed for the day after the shooting, and nearby streets were cordoned off by police. Surrounding roads were closed at least temporarily and blocked off with yellow tape. Police cars and officers on horses surrounded the area.

CNN: White Supremacist Shooter at US Holocaust Museum

• • racism



CNN is reporting a major shooting at the DC Holocaust Museum:

The suspect in Wednesday’s shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is James von Brunn, an 88-year-old white supremacist from Maryland, two law enforcement officials told CNN.

According to TPM’s report he holds strong anti-Semitic views. They are reporting his own version of his biography like this:

James W. von Brunn holds a Bach-Sci Journalism degree from a mid-Western university where he was president of SAE and played varsity football. During WWII he served as PT-Boat captain, Lt. USNR, receiving a Commendation and four battle stars. For twenty years he was an advertising executive and film-producer in New York City. He is a member of Mensa, the high-IQ society.

In 1981 Von Brunn attempted to place the treasonous Federal Reserve Board of Governors under legal, non-violent, citizens arrest. He was tried in a Washington, D.C. Superior Court; convicted by a Negro jury, Jew/Negro attorneys, and sentenced to prison for eleven years by a Jew judge. A Jew/Negro/White Court of Appeals denied his appeal. He served 6.5 years in federal prison. (Read about von Brunn’s “And so, on December 7, 1981, a bright, crisp morning James Wenneker von Brunn visited the Federal Reserve Building on Constitution Ave., across from the Washington Monument, Washington D.C. I had cased the building twice before, and talked at length with one of the guards, a retire U.S. Marine. I posed as a freelance newspaper reporter. I wore a trench-coat with a camera-case slung over my shoulder. . The Marine (“HARRY”)) guided me through the Board Room, and Paul Volcker’s office; there I met his secretary, a smartly dressed middle-aged lady with gray hair. My objective was to arrest Volcker and the FED Brd of Governors.

Greg Sargent adds this about the Holocaust shooter and others lately:

Remember the enormous controversy that erupted in April over a Department of Homeland Security report that assessed the threat of “right wing extremists”? The story provoked days of nonstop cable chatter, forcing DHS chief Janet Napolitano to ultimately apologize.

Today, a gunman entered the Holocaust Museum and exchanged fire with security guards, leaving one in grave condition. MSNBC reports that the suspected gunman is connected to anti-government and white supremacist groups. If that proves correct, perhaps it’ll be time to revisit all that criticism of the DHS report. Right?

This passage from the DHS report in particular sparked a huge outpouring of rage on the right:

“Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.”

Given the white supremacist and extreme-right links of several other recent attackers in the US, does this signal once more the resurgence of the white supremacist and white nationalist groups we have warned about on this site?

Will major federal officials now be targets of these racist-right groups?