White Supremacist (Domestic Terrorist) in America Have Killed More Americans Than Terrorist - Page 5
Michael German, a former federal agent, sees cause for praise and concern.by Joe SextonLate in 2017, ProPublica began writing about a California white supremacist group called the Rise Above Movement. Its members had been involved in violent clashes at rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia, and several cities in California. They were proud of their violent handiwork, sharing videos on the internet and recruiting more members. Our first article was titled “Racist, Violent, Unpunished: A White Hate Group’s Campaign of Menace.” More articles followed, and another neo-Nazi group, Atomwaffen Division, was exposed. Michael German, a former federal agent who spent years infiltrating white supremacist groups, said the work of the groups constituted “organized criminal activity,” and he asked, in so many words, “Where is the FBI?”
They are endangering both American citizens and American ideals at large.By Garrett EppsI haven’t seen Justice Hans Linde in more than a decade, but I thought of him last Saturday, when I found myself locked in a science museum with frightened parents and children while neofascist thugs marched by. Hans was a child in Weimar Germany; I suspect he would have known how I was feeling. The museum was the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, in Portland. The occasion was a rally organized by the Proud Boys, an all-male group that exalts “Western values” and promotes Islamophobia. Other affiliated groups joined in—a loose conglomeration of racists, chauvinists, and just plain thugs. Some of them were connected to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, two years ago, at which a right-wing marcher drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing a woman named Heather Heyer. The Proud Boys aren’t from Portland, but they have selected the Rose City as the site for their rallies, threats, and clashes with local “antifa,” or antifascist activists. The rally Saturday was nominally to demand that Portland suppress the antifa groups so that the Proud Boys can march unopposed whenever they choose. As a washed-up reporter who covered 1960s street protests, I felt the impulse to watch what happened when the Proud Boys confronted both police and a mix of local groups, some seemingly violent and others committed to overwhelming the occasion with harmless absurdity. (Some dressed as bananas, others in unicorn costumes.)
A news network that, instead of providing actual news, gives white, conservative viewers the news they want to hearBy Klaus MarreA little over 20 years ago, Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes concocted a profitable way to tap into the white supremacist ideology still bubbling below America’s surface. They started a “news” network that, instead of providing actual news, gave white, conservative viewers the news they wanted to hear: that they, their families, and their values were under attack by minorities, gays, women, liberals, socialists, Muslims, atheists, the media, etc. — and therefore their biases were justified. It’s been a lucrative strategy. However, just making a buck wasn’t enough for them. They also wanted to shape the fortunes of the country they were dividing. Here, too, they had tremendous success. And that is what is getting lost amid the outcry over Donald Trump’s latest round of racist tweets: The US president is often just parroting what he sees on Fox News.* His racism and distorted view of reality are a direct reflection of what this conservative network decides to put on the air. While regimes throughout history have used propaganda outlets to get the word out and spread their ideology, in the US it is now very much a two-way street. Fox News is both a tool and a puppeteer, manipulating events directly and indirectly. In many cases, the network drives the conservative agenda with its programming. Then, when Trump and his allies pick up on it, Fox News gives them a platform to broadcast that agenda with no fear of criticism or being fact-checked. Then, with the message already amplified, Trump tweets clips from the network —primarily clips of its many conservative commentators — or tweets promotions for its shows. The president’s recent racist rants are a perfect illustration of how this works: Trump’s tweets directed at four Democratic Congresswomen in July followed an attack from Fox News host Tucker Carlson on one of them, US Rep. Ilhan Omar (MN). Last week, the target of another racist Trump tirade was Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD). Again, the tweets seemed to have been triggered by a Fox News segment on the lawmaker’s district in Baltimore. This symbiotic relationship between the president and his favorite TV channel is also reflected in the revolving door between Fox News and the Trump administration.
By Lucian K. Truscott IVI just got a death threat from a coward on Facebook, but It's the guys in ties on the TV I'm worried about. Some guy named James Neally, sent me a death threat a couple of weeks ago via Facebook Messenger. “Keep taling (sic) about the potus that way you did in your last article and it will be the end of you and your family.” Nice, huh? I spent several hours talking to the FBI about it this week. They’re trying to find James Neally and they’re not having much success. Facebook won’t reveal their records on Neally’s account to the FBI. He’s got a YouTube channel, on which he posted several videos of himself playing “Cripple Creek” on the banjo, but when I linked to one of the videos on my Facebook page, he took all of them down. He’s hiding now, which is what white supremacist right-wing fanatics do when they’re not actually going out and killing people, like Patrick Crusius did last week when he shot 22 people to death at a Walmart and wounded dozens of others. Going to a Synagogue, or a Walmart, or a public school, or a nightclub, or a movie theater and gunning down a bunch of people down, is what these guys do when they want to spread the evil lies of white supremacy. They seek attention, and they get it by killing people. We have a legitimate reason to be afraid of Patrick Crusius and his ilk because their deranged attachment to white supremacy causes them to kill people to bring attention to their cause. But I don’t think there’s much cause to fear the James Neallys of this world, because all they’re trying to do is shut you up. They don’t want people like me writing the things I write because it threatens their fellow white supremacists. In James Neally’s case, the white supremacist he’s trying to protect is the president of the United States.
By Greg Sargent - Opinion writerA series of mass shootings carried out by deranged men animated by white nationalist ideology — along with the arrests of others allegedly hellbent on carrying out their own carnage — has raised two critical questions. First, does the Trump administration have a comprehensive plan to combat the rising threat of white supremacist and white nationalist terrorism? And second, to what degree does President Trump’s regular trafficking in racist and white nationalist language and tropes — and his tacit winking at such activity — fuel the threat? House Democrats are set to hold hearings this fall that will intensify the focus on these questions, by posing them to officials in Trump’s own administration who are grappling with the rising menace of white nationalist violence. In an interview with me, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said that Democrats are planning to bring in senior national security officials to question them about these matters.
Rashad RobinsonWhite nationalists pervade law enforcement. Fighting far right violence means continuing our fight for police accountability. As mass violence continues, many of us have become rightly afraid for the people we love. We want justice, but we also want protection. So what are the solutions we’re hearing about following this month’s violence? One idea we must reject is the idea of trusting law enforcement to protect us from white nationalist violence, given how much they contribute to it. If people in law enforcement want to be seen as experts on defeating white nationalism, shouldn’t they have to get rid of all the white nationalists in their own ranks first? White nationalists pervade law enforcement. There is a long history of the military, police and other authorities supporting, protecting or even being members of white supremacy groups. But it’s not just history. It was revealed last week that a black man in Michigan came upon KKK materials and Confederate flags in plain view while being shown a home for sale – the home of a police officer on the force for more than 20 years who shot and killed a black man in 2009 without consequence. It’s a widespread pattern. As early as 2006, the FBI flagged it. Another FBI report in 2015, not covered nearly enough, indicated that “domestic terrorism investigations focused on militia extremists, white supremacist extremists, and sovereign citizen extremists often have identified active links to law enforcement officers”. (And that’s the FBI, which has its own history of white supremacy affinity groups.) White nationalists connect through online networks and offline groups, and openly share tactics for infiltrating and influencing police departments, border patrol, the FBI and the military. That was the case for a Virginia police officer – assigned to a high school – who was revealed to be a longtime white nationalist and served as a recruiter for Identity Evropa, one of the groups behind the Charlottesville hate rallies and violence. He was not shy about his cover. In chat messages, he “discussed ways to downplay appearances of racism, while still promoting white nationalism”. Another thing many of those like him are not shy about: stoking and celebrating violence, and promoting hateful misinformation and rhetoric. The Plain View Project tracked publicly posted social media material from more than 3,500 confirmed current and retired law enforcement officers, and found that “about 1 in 5 of the current officers, and 2 in 5 of the retired officers, made public posts or comments ... displaying bias, applauding violence, scoffing at due process or using dehumanizing language”. The Center for Investigative Reporting was able to identify almost 400 current and retired law enforcement officials who were members of private Facebook “Confederate, anti-Islam, misogynistic or anti-government militia” groups.
By Erika Harlitz-KernViking Age Scandinavians were immigrants who traded with the Muslim world and embraced gender fluidity—everything the alt-right despises. After the horrific mass shooting in El Paso on Aug. 3, it can no longer be denied that white supremacy is a deadly force in American society. The Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in August 2017 wasn’t a culmination of events but the starting point of a series of acts of racist and extremist violence, which historian Kathleen Belew warns are not isolated incidents but calls for more similar acts. Belew points out that what unites many of these extreme acts of violence is the publishing of a manifesto before the crime is committed. In these manifestos, the perpetrators explain the reasons for their actions based in a worldview created out of what historian Michael Livingston calls a weaponization of history. Livingston mentions one book in particular that is referenced over and over—namely Might Is Right or the Survival of the Fittest published by the pseudonymous Ragnar Redbeard in 1896. more...
A former FBI intelligence officer said Thursday that combating right-wing extremism and white nationalism poses a serious challenge for security officials going into 2020. “If you want intelligence to be good on the current wave of domestic terrorism — what people call right-wing extremism, Neo-Nazi extremism — I don’t think people realize how tough that target is,” Philip Mudd, who is now a counterterrorism analyst, told Hill.TV in response to a question about how security officials should prepare for the future. “It’s dispersed, that’s people in every state, but it’s also a civil liberties issue,” he added. Mudd said the first step towards combating white nationalist-fueled violence is re-evaluating the nation's political rhetoric. “Either side of the political spectrum, you cannot validate their anger,” he said in reference to members who identify as part of the Neo-Nazi movement. “You can’t even get close to saying it’s appropriate to look at a foreigner in this country or an immigrant or an asylum seeker and say that person is less than you,” he added. “It’s not a political statement, it’s what I saw with Al-Qaeda.” Mudd also said lawmakers need to take congressional action against homegrown hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan. “That means laws that say, ‘hey, groups that committed acts of violence — how about the KKK, you want to go after them? They’ve committed acts of violence for political reasons — that’s terrorism,” he said. “The politicians have to provide cover.” The mass shooting in El Paso, Texas has renewed calls to address the rise of domestic terror attacks. Federal authorities believe the suspected shooter, who killed 22 people, was motivated by hatred of Hispanics and immigrants. Republican Sen. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) is now putting forward a bill that would effectively close a loophole to make domestic terrorism a separate federal crime.
By Domenico MontanaroFollowing two recent mass shootings, about half a dozen Democratic presidential candidates are not mincing their words when it comes to President Trump. They're calling him a "white supremacist." "He is," former Rep. Beto O'Rourke said on MSNBC. He had already called Trump a "racist" and was asked whether he thought Trump was a white supremacist. "He is a dehumanizer. ... He has been very clear about who he prefers to be in this country and who he literally wants to keep out with walls and cages and militarization and torture and cruelty. And again, we in El Paso have born the brunt of all of that." Twenty-two people were killed in El Paso, Texas, earlier this month when a gunman opened fire in a Walmart. People from both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border were killed, and the shooter is believed to have written a screed deriding immigrants as invaders. The language in that manifesto is similar to the kind of language Trump has used, leading many to blame the president for using irresponsible rhetoric that could inspire people at the fringes. The progressive left has pressed candidates — and the media — to call Trump a "liar" and a "racist." In fact, in a recent Quinnipiac poll, more than half of Americans said they believe the president is a racist – and the country has been bitterly divided, through partisan lenses, on race in this country.
By Janelle GriffithMuskegon police officer Charles Anderson has been placed on leave pending an investigation into the couple's claims, the police department said.A white police officer in western Michigan has been placed on administrative leave after a prospective home buyer said he saw a framed Ku Klux Klan application and multiple Confederate flags in his house. The Muskegon Police Department announced Aug. 8 it had opened an internal investigation after a social media post was "brought to its attention" accusing the officer, Charles Anderson, of "being in possession of certain items associated with a white supremacy group." The veteran officer was immediately placed on administrative leave, according to the department. The man behind the post, Robert Mathis, who is black, has subsequently received death threats. Mathis posted a picture of the KKK document on Facebook on Aug. 7 after touring Anderson’s home with his wife, Reyna, their two children and a realtor. Reyna and Robert Mathis said they saw the application and several Confederate flags inside the house that is for sale in Holton Township, about 20 miles northeast of Muskegon. The couple believed they were in the home of a police officer because they also saw a police jacket and a photo of an officer in uniform. "My emotions were all over the place. I felt anger, sadness and shame," Reyna Mathis, 42, who is Hispanic, told NBC News on Tuesday. "Our realtor, who is white, even cried. She just kept apologizing."
They apparently don't remember how well it went for them last time.Casey MichelThe backlash to the Trump administration caging immigrant children has led to store owners asking White House officials to not eat in their restaurants and to protesters publicly confronting those supporting Trump’s policies. Now, voices on the far-right are increasingly unified in their only solution to the matter: civil war. While several far-right figures have been speculating about a looming U.S. break-up for some time, recent rhetoric is a marked escalation from even a few months ago, when certain historical illiterates were only calling for an “amicable divorce.” Now, according to increasingly shrill analysts — and even certain members of Congress — a fratricidal war is the only potential fix for the United States’ domestic tensions. Glenn Reynolds, known colloquially as “Instapundit,” led the charge with a piece in USA Today earlier this week. Pointing to White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders being denied service in Virginia and protesters identifying Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen at a Mexican restaurant, Reynolds claimed that the administration officials’ inability to eat at certain restaurants was a sign that civil war was well underway.
After El Paso, the trend is clearly pointing in a disturbing direction.by Casey MichelWhen Dylann Roof, the white supremacist terrorist behind the 2015 Charleston massacre, issued his manifesto, he did so with a specific vision of America in mind. To Roof’s mind, the United States. was his country — a white man’s nation, worth reclaiming through horrid bloodshed, done in the name of racial supremacy. To Roof, white supremacists could still conquer their country, even if they made up only a fraction of the population. Ideas that white people in America should pack up and relocate elsewhere were ludicrous to Roof. Movements to cleave part of the country — say, the Pacific Northwest — into a whites-only utopia were anathema to Roof’s endgame. “I think this idea is beyond stupid. Why should I for example, give up the beauty and history of [South Carolina?],” Roof claimed. “The whole idea is pathetic and just another way to run from the problem without facing it.” Fast forward four years, to last weekend. In El Paso, Texas, a white supremacist picked up where Roof left off. In a reprise of the Charleston shooter’s slaughter, the alleged El Paso shooter murdered some 22 individuals at a local Wal-Mart, all in the name of white nationalism. A manifesto purportedly written by the shooter lays out his extremism: how he was specifically targeting Hispanics, how his massacre would help prevent Texas from becoming a Democratic stronghold, how he aimed to end “racial mixing.”
By Luke DarbyThe same anxiety that drives white supremacists has motivated Republicans to disenfranchise populations that don’t vote for them. Before he opened fire on an El Paso, Texas shopping center, killing 22 people and injuring dozens more, the accused gunman, Patrick Crusius, allegedly posted a manifesto online explicitly stating his motivation: he was trying to stop a “Hispanic invasion of Texas”. In April, another shooter attacked a synagogue in Poway, California, killing one woman and wounding three other people. In his a “manifesto” attributed to him, he claimed he was responding to the “meticulously planned genocide of the European race”. In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in October 2018, still another shooter attacked a synagogue that he chose deliberately because the congregation helped with refugee relocation. He wrote online that they were trying to “bring invaders in that kill our people”. The man who murdered 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, earlier this year, called immigration an “assault on the European people”.. All of these shooters were obsessed with the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, sometimes referred to as “white genocide”. It’s the idea that shadowy elites – usually Jewish, almost always liberal – are orchestrating the destruction of white culture through demographic change. The theory goes that white culture will be eroded mainly through migration and birthrates: more people of color are arriving in majority white counties, the ones already there are having more and more babies, and birthrates are declining for the soon-to-be-oppressed white people.
By Gene DembyIn September of 1885, a mob of about 150 white men, armed with rifles, descended upon the Chinatown in Rock Springs, Wyo. They issued an ultimatum to the people who lived there: you have an hour to leave town. The assembled horde was angry at Chinese laborers in the region, who they blamed for keeping the choicest mining areas and depressing their wages. They felt that the Chinese were working the choicest areas of the coal mines, the part that would yield the most coal and thus the most compensation. The Chinese, they felt, were taking what was rightfully theirs. The ultimatum was a formality: the mob had surrounded the neighborhood to make sure there was no easy way to escape, and they didn't even wait the full hour. The mob rushed in, shooting wildly — the beginning of what would become a full-on pogrom. Some of the Chinese survivors would later issue an account of what happened to the Chinese consul in New York City: "Some of the rioters, when they could not stop a Chinese, would shoot him dead on the spot, and then search and rob him. Some would-overtake a Chinese, throw him down and search and rob him before they would let him go. Some of the rioters would not fire their weapons, but would only use the butt ends to beat the Chinese with. Some would not beat a Chinese, but rob him of whatever he had and let him go, yelling to him to go quickly. Some, who took no part either in beating or robbing the Chinese, stood by, shouting loudly and laughing and clapping their hands." By the time the riot ended several hours later, 28 Chinese people were dead.
By Igor DeryshHidden report shows white supremacists were responsible for every race-based domestic terror attack in 2018. The Justice Department suppressed a report showing that suspected white supremacists were responsible for all race-based domestic terror incidents last year. The report by New Jersey’s Office of Homeland Security Preparedness was distributed throughout DHS and to federal agencies like the FBI earlier this year before it was obtained by Yahoo News. The document includes data Congress has sought from the Trump administration but the Justice Department has been “unable or unwilling” to provide. The report shows that 25 of 46 suspects in 32 domestic terrorism incidents were identified as white supremacists. The 25 suspected white supremacist suspects were responsible for all “race-based” incidents while others were deemed “anti-government extremists” and “single-issue extremists.” “This map reflects 32 domestic terrorist attacks, disrupted plots, threats of violence, and weapons stockpiling by individuals with a radical political or social agenda who lack direction or influence from foreign terrorist organizations in 2018,” the report said. The map and data in the document were circulated through the DOJ and law enforcement agencies in April, which is around the time that the Senate Judiciary Committee requested the DOJ provide data showing the number of white supremacists involved in domestic terrorism. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., told Yahoo News that the committee still has not received the data. “I’m troubled by the lack of transparency, given that we haven’t received this critical information after several requests to the FBI and DOJ,” Booker said. “They cannot and should not remain silent in the face of such a dangerous threat.” - The DOJ under Trump is protecting white supremacists no wonder they like Trump.
By Marlow SternThe “Real Time” host wasn’t buying the Fox News blowhard’s outrageous claim in the wake of the El Paso massacre. “What a shitty week, right?” announced Bill Maher. “Poor El Paso and Dayton, still reeling from two disasters: a mass shooting and a Trump visit.” The comedian kicked off the latest edition of his show Real Time with an extended rant on President Trump’s bizarre, self-centered reaction to the horrifying mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, that left 30 people dead—including a visit to a hospital in El Paso where Trump ordered an orphaned baby whose parents were both killed in the shooting back to the hospital so it could pose for photos with the president and first lady, since none of the eight gunshot victims being treated in the hospital were willing to do so, according to a CNN report. “We know now this pattern we’ve always seen where whenever there’s a tragedy, it’s always about how he’s feeling, right?!” Maher exclaimed. “It’s like, is he OK? This week after the massacres, he attacked the media, Obama, Google, Sherrod Brown, the mayor of Dayton, Beto, California, Sleepy Joe. He’s the only president who thinks ‘Consoler-in-Chief’ means you console him.”
by Faris Bseiso, CNNWashington (CNN)2020 Democratic hopeful Andrew Yang said Friday that there is "no choice" but to call President Donald Trump a white supremacist, becoming the latest of the Democratic field to label the President with that term. In an interview on "New Day," Yang said "if someone acts and speaks in a certain way then you have no choice but to say that's what he is," when asked by CNN's John Berman if he would call the President a white supremacist. The comment comes after other Democratic presidential candidates have called the President a white supremacist in the wake of the two mass shootings, one involving a white supremacist suspect who is believed to have authored a racist, anti-immigrant document targeting Hispanics, as well as Trump's recent series of racist comments that included his calls for four minority congresswomen to "go back" to the countries from which they came. Three of the four lawmakers are natural-born US citizens. "In this case, I mean, it's very clear the President's actions and words have conveyed a strong sense to many Americans that he has white supremacist beliefs and that's the only standard we can go by," Yang said. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand have both said Trump is a white supremacist, making their rebukes of the President some of the strongest from the crowded field of Democratic presidential candidates. Other candidates, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Rep. Beto O'Rourke, have agreed with the characterization of the President as a white nationalist. Rep. Tim Ryan, another 2020 hopeful, told CNN's Jake Tapper that "the white nationalists think (Trump's) a white nationalist. And that's the crux of the problem."
By Justin Baragona“White supremacy is real, as evidenced by fact,” one Fox reporter publicly declared on Twitter following primetime star Tucker Carlson’s claim that white supremacy is a “hoax.” Three days after Fox News host Tucker Carlson declared on-air that white supremacy is a “hoax,” his colleague, Fox News reporter Cristina Corbin, tweeted out a rebuke of the primetime star’s comments, noting that his views do not represent hers. “White supremacy is real, as evidenced by fact,” she wrote on Friday. “Claims that it is a ‘hoax’ do not represent my views.” Corbin is currently listed on Fox News’ website as “an investigative reporter and producer based in New York.” Her bio page was still active as of this article’s publication. Her most recent article with Fox News, a report on Canadian murder suspects, was published on July 31. White supremacy is real, as evidenced by fact. Claims that it is a "hoax" do not represent my views. — Cristina Corbin (@CristinaCorbin) August 9, 2019. Corbin’s public pushback on Carlson is reminiscent of another recent episode in which a lower-level Fox News employee publicly took a stand against a right-wing host on the network.
Posted By Tim HainsCNN contributor Rick Wilson responds to FOX News host Tucker Carlson, who has been arguing that the media's focus on racial divides is an effort to distract people from class divides: RICK WILSON: Tonight smelled like an awful lot like -- although FOX has an internal philosophy of "never apologize, never back down," that somebody finally said, wait a minute, every one of these idiots with a manifesto, it could be right off of Tucker Carlson's teleprompter...
By William SaletanThe accused El Paso shooter, like other white extremists, says immigrants are outperforming whites on the merits. On Saturday, just before murdering 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, Patrick Crusius posted a manifesto online. Like the manifestos of other racist mass shooters, his screed was full of vile, incendiary nonsense about the people he hated—in this case, Hispanics. But if you read these manifestos, you’ll discover something odd: Many of the killers, in the course of their rants, acknowledge that the groups they’ve targeted have virtues or accomplishments that make them formidable—and in some cases superior—competitors. White nationalists are accidentally debunking white supremacy. Racist terrorists who have left behind manifestos or other writings—Dylann Roof (Charleston, 2015), Robert Bowers (Pittsburgh, 2018), John Earnest (Poway, California, 2019), and others—generally regard whites as victims. That’s their standard excuse for murder: that they were acting in self-defense. They’ve fretted about “ethnic replacement,” “demographic annihilation,” and “white genocide.” Crusius claimed to be fighting a “Hispanic invasion of Texas. They are the instigators, not me,” he wrote. “I am simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion.”
By John Kruzel, Amy ShermanFox News personality Tucker Carlson claimed white supremacy is a hoax and "not a real problem in America." But that’s not what the evidence shows. Speaking on his Aug. 6 show, which reaches around 3 million viewers nightly, Carlson said: "The combined membership of every white supremacist organization in this country would be able to fit inside a college football stadium. I mean, seriously. This is a country where the average person is getting poorer while the suicide rate is spiking. White supremacy, that's the problem. This is a hoax. Just like the Russia hoax, it's a conspiracy theory used to divide the country and keep a hold on power. It's exactly what's going on." As a social ill, white supremacy is difficult to quantify — despite Carlson’s suggestion that a headcount is easily obtainable. But the available data suggests a more pressing story than Carlson's take. While the FBI doesn’t code incidents as being committed by white nationalists, officials reported a 17 percent increase in hate crimes in 2017 over the previous year, and more than half were motivated by biases based on race, ethnicity or ancestry. David Sterman, a policy analyst who studies violent extremism at the left-leaning think tank New America, said Carlson’s argument amounted to willful denialism.
A former white supremacist who is now an anti-hate activist says that online platforms should treat white nationalism like other international threats from groups such as ISIS and al Qaeda. Arno Michaelis pointed to Saturday's mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, and an online manifesto being investigated in connection to the shooting that cited the Christchurch, New Zealand, mosque attack earlier this year and included anti-immigrant rhetoric. “White nationalism is an international threat as the El Paso shooter was inspired by the Christchurch shooter who was inspired by the Norway shooter,” Michaelis told Hill.TV, referencing the Christchurch shootings and the 2011 Norway attacks. “There’s very plain international connections that drive this kind of violence, so we need to start approaching white nationalism the same way we approach ISIS, al Qaeda, al-Shabaab and come down on them just as hard,” he added. Michaelis said there is a little more leeway with white nationalist content due to the First Amendment, but he argued that there must be a threshold, especially when such rhetoric incites violence. "I’m a huge proponent of the First Amendment, it’s probably the best thing about our Constitution, but at the same time we have to be wary of when this free speech actually becomes planning of terror and I think that threshold has certainly been reached," he said.
By Abigail Williams and Corky SiemaszkoMatthew Q. Gebert was part of a cell called The Right Stuff in Northern Virginia, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. A State Department official was outed for his alleged involvement with white nationalist forums and for being part of a white nationalist group in Washington, researchers from the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch program revealed Wednesday. Matthew Q. Gebert allegedly used the pseudonym “Coach Finstock” on white nationalist forums and hosted parties at his Virginia home for like-minded individuals, according to Hatewatch. The report says that Hatewatch connected “Coach Finstock” with Gebert after sourcing several Twitter accounts operated with some form of that handle to him, as well as by playing samples of his voice from appearances as “Coach Finstock” on white nationalist podcasts such as “The Fatherland” to people who know him. Hatewatch also spoke with three sources who said Gebert helped lead a Washington-area chapter of The Right Stuff, a network founded by neo-Nazi blogger Michael Peinovich, aka Mike Enoch. “[Whites] need a country of our own with nukes, and we will retake this thing lickety split,” “Coach Finstock” said on a May 2018 episode of “The Fatherland,” Hatewatch revealed. “That’s all that we need. We need a country founded for white people with a nuclear deterrent. And you watch how the world trembles.” Gebert, 38, works as a foreign affairs officer assigned to the Bureau of Energy Resources, which is a civil servant position, not a political appointment, a State Department spokesperson said.
By Leah Asmelash and Brian Ries, CNN(CNN) - A Republican state representative is speaking out against what he believes is his own party's complicity in "enabling white supremacy," and says history won't judge his fellow Republicans kindly. Nebraska state legislator Rep. John McCollister tweeted Sunday night, "The Republican Party is enabling white supremacy in our country. As a lifelong Republican, it pains me to say this, but it's the truth." The Twitter thread came one day after a white supremacist killed at least 20 people in El Paso, Texas. The criticism came as some politicians began pointing to the rhetoric from the Republican Party and the current administration as a contributing factor for the violence. McCollister, who represents part of Omaha, said that he didn't think all Republicans are racist or white supremacists, but "the Republican Party is COMPLICIT to obvious racist and immoral activity inside our party." "We have a Republican president who continually stokes racist fears in his base. He calls certain countries 'sh*tholes,' tells women of color to "go back" to where they came from and lies more than he tells the truth," he added. He finished the tweets asking his colleagues to no longer look the other way. "When the history books are written, I refuse to be someone who said nothing," he said. "The time is now for us Republicans to be honest with what is happening inside our party. We are better than this and I implore my Republican colleagues to stand up and do the right thing."
by George P. Bush - Texas Land CommissionerConservatives have not been afraid to confront extremism in our world, and we must not be afraid to confront terrorism here at home. Not long after the El Paso shootings occurred, I took to Twitter to denounce white-nationalist terrorism as a real threat to our country. I didn’t realize at the time that I was the first major Republican elected official to do so. But I certainly won’t be the last, as more details come out about the goals and views of this terrorist. What made me comment so soon? It’s simple: I read the shooter’s manifesto. We don’t have to guess what was on the shooter’s mind—he told us in plain, dark, and racist language. He wrote about protecting white people from an “invasion” of Hispanics and wanting to kill “Mexicans.” Plus, his actions underscored his words—he drove nine hours from Dallas to a shopping center in El Paso. Why didn’t he go to a mall in North Dallas to kill people? The answer is obvious—he wanted to kill Hispanic people. But for me, the real question now is: What comes next? Terrorism by white supremacists is indeed a real and present danger. We’ve seen it in this country in El Paso, Texas, and in Gilroy, California. We’ve also seen it in faraway places like New Zealand, where another white supremacist walked into a mosque and killed 51 and injured another 49. The recent attacks in the United States are shocking, but not surprising. Just a few days ago, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before the U.S. Senate that most domestic terrorism arrests in 2019 have been related to white terrorism. Stop and think about that statistic. Islamic radical terrorism remains a real threat around the world and even here at home, but most of the terrorist attacks in the U.S. are a consequence of white-nationalist terrorism. No substantive debate exists about whether this threat is real. The only question is: What are we doing to do about it?
Violent Far-Right Extremists Are Rarely Prosecuted as TerroristsSince 9/11 federal prosecutors have applied anti-terrorism laws against 34 right-wing extremists compared to more than 500 international terrorism defendants. On a narrow street in Charlottesville, Virginia, James Alex Fields Jr. pressed the accelerator of his gray Dodge Challenger. Dozens of people were walking in front of him. They had come to protest Fields and hundreds of other white supremacists who’d descended on this pleasant Southern college town for the “Unite the Right” rally in August 2017. “Our streets!” the protesters chanted in response to the white supremacists. “Our streets!” When some protesters realized the gray car wasn’t stopping, they screamed. Then came the scrapes and thuds and finally a crash as Fields barreled into the crowd, sending people into the air and diving for safety, before the Dodge slammed into the back of another car. “Holy shit!” one of the protesters said. “That Nazi just drove into people. Oh my God! We need paramedics right now!” Fields then shifted the car into reverse and backed out toward the main road, the front bumper scraping the pavement and the engine squealing. Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old Charlottesville resident, was killed in the attack. At least 19 others were hurt. Fields, a 20-year-old from Ohio who had been open about his racist views since high school, had marched in Virginia with the white supremacist group Vanguard America. He was charged in Virginia state court with murder and in federal court with hate crimes. He was not charged as a terrorist, despite then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions having initially described the Charlottesville attack as meeting “the definition of domestic terrorism.” In announcing Fields’s federal indictment 10 months later, however, Sessions avoided using the word “terrorism” altogether, saying instead that the Justice Department remains “resolute that hateful ideologies will not have the last word and that their adherents will not get away with violent crimes against those they target.”
By meghan keneallyAt least 50 people were killed at the hands of domestic extremists in 2018, an increase of 35 percent from the previous year, a new report from the Anti-Defamation League has found. That total makes 2018 the fourth deadliest year for extremist killings since 1970, and 2018 also saw the highest percentage of right-wing extremist-related killings since 2012, according to the ADL. The report from the ADL, a Jewish organization focused on fighting anti-Semitism, claims that in 2018, "every single extremist killing — from Pittsburgh to Parkland — had a link to right-wing extremism." The group details the alleged ties -- ranging from white supremacist and racist or misogynistic or Nazi ties -- of some suspects that ABC News had not previously reported on or confirmed. However, some of the incidents the ADL includes have been reported by ABC News as having anti-Semitic motivations or as hate crimes. One of the deadliest examples on their list is the shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue, where 11 people were killed by a man who prosecutors say had "made statements regarding genocide and his desire to kill Jewish people."
Right-wing terrorism or far-right terrorism is terrorism that is motivated by a variety of different right-wing and far-right ideologies, most prominently by neo-Nazism, neo-fascism, white nationalism and anti-government patriot/sovereign citizen beliefs and occasionally by anti-abortion and tax resistance. Modern right-wing terrorism first emerged in North America during the Reconstruction era (1863-1877) and it later emerged in Western and Central Europe in the 1970s, and following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, it emerged in Eastern Europe. Right-wing terrorists aim to overthrow governments and replace them with nationalist and/or fascist regimes. Although they often take inspiration from Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany with some exceptions, right-wing terrorist groups frequently lack a rigid ideology.
by Chris BaynesIncrease should 'serve as a wake-up call to everyone about the deadly consequences of hateful rhetoric' says Anti-Defamation League. Every terrorist murder in the US last year was linked to right-wing extremism, according to a new report. At least 50 people were killed by an attacker connected to right-wing extremism in 2018, an increase of 35 per cent from the previous year, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) found. The rise means nearly three-quarters of extremist murders in America in the past decade can be linked to right-wing domestic terrorism, more than three times as many as those committed by Islamists. The figures should “serve as a wake-up call to everyone about the deadly consequences of hateful rhetoric,” said the ADL, a New York-based organisation with monitors antisemitism and other hate crime. “It’s time for our nation’s leaders to appropriately recognise the severity of the threat and to devote the necessary resources to address the scourge of right-wing extremism,” said chief executive Jonathan Greenblatt.
Right-wing extremists killed more people last year than in any year since 1995New York, NY, January 23, 2019 … Right-wing extremists were linked to at least 50 extremist-related murders in the United States in 2018, making them responsible for more deaths than in any year since 1995, according to new data from the ADL. In its annual report on extremist-related killings in the U.S., the ADL’s Center on Extremism reported that at least 50 people were killed by extremists in 2018, including the 11 individuals killed in the fatal anti-Semitic attack at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. The tally represents a 35 percent increase from the 37 extremist-related murders in 2017, making 2018 the fourth-deadliest year on record for domestic extremist-related killings since 1970. Last year saw the highest percentage of right-wing extremist-related killings since 2012, the last year when all documented killings were by right-wing extremists. Right-wing extremists killed more people in 2018 than in any year since 1995, the year of Timothy McVeigh’s bomb attack on the Oklahoma City federal building.
By Luke DarbyFrom Parkland to Tree of Life, right-wing violence killed 50 people in 2018. Since 9/11, Republicans have positioned themselves as the Serious Party on things like national security and "law and order." Democrats have tried to wrestle this mantle away from them, with Obama dramatically expanding the surveillance state during his presidency. Trump's even gone so far as to claim that migrants are abandoning prayer rugs in the desert—an unfounded and long-repeated rumor that tries to link illegal immigration with threats of terrorism—all the while ignoring real, pervasive violence in the U.S. A new report out from the Anti-Defamation League documents a sharp uptick in extremist violence in 2018, up to 50 killings from 37 the year before. And all of those attacks, per the ADL, were committed by right-wing extremists. This covers several high-profile cases where the mass shooter had ties to or voiced support for white supremacists, like the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, and the massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. This comes after several other distressing stories about the rise of violent right-wing radicals. In upstate New York, three men were arrested for planning an attack on a small Muslim community. A man trying to emulate Dylann Roof failed to enter a locked, predominantly black church, so he headed to a local grocery store and shot two people to death. PBS produced a documentary about neo-Nazis joining the U.S. military for combat training. And there's been quiet concerns for years about white nationalists infiltrating law enforcement across the country, and that finally bubbled up into The New York Times this past November.
by Adam Serwer - Staff writer at The AtlanticAmericans should react to violence from religious and ethnic minorities with the same sense of proportion they reserve for far-right extremists. On Friday, the United States ended a 35-day government shutdown, the longest in history, over President Donald Trump’s demand for funding for a wall on the southern border. Hundreds of thousands of workers were missing paychecks; food-bank lines in Washington, D.C., were full of federal employees; and air-traffic controllers were warning of potential catastrophe. The president’s strategy was predicated on the belief that the more suffering the shutdown inflicted on the American people, the more likely the Democrats were to cave to his demands. But it was all worth it, Trump insists, because the wall is necessary to stem the ceaseless tide of violence from the border. “The only thing that is immoral is the politicians to do nothing and continue to allow more innocent people to be so horribly victimized,” Trump said during his prime-time address in early January. The president regularly invokes violent crises perpetrated by scary foreigners. The announcement of his candidacy began with the declaration that Mexican immigrants are “bringing drugs; they’re bringing crime; they’re rapists.” He called for a ban on Muslims coming to the United States after an ISIS-inspired attack in San Bernardino, California. In his border-wall address, he pointed to crimes committed by unauthorized immigrants, whose victims were bludgeoned to death, beheaded, or stabbed, to argue for the necessity of the wall. But there’s one spike in violence that the president rarely acknowledges or even mentions, and it’s the rise in far-right terror that has accompanied his ascension to the White House.
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By Zak Cheney-RiceTwo black senior citizens were murdered in Louisville, Kentucky, on Thursday. Maurice Stallard, 69, was at a Kroger supermarket when Gregory Bush, a 51-year-old white man, walked in and shot him multiple times. Bush then exited the store and shot Vickie Lee Jones, 67, in the parking lot before an armed bystander reportedly fired back, prompting him to flee. Police were unable to confirm accounts that Bush encountered a second armed man, who engaged him in a brief standoff where no shots were fired, according to the New York Times. “Don’t shoot me and I won’t shoot you,” the man’s son, Steve Zinninger, claimed Bush told his father. “Whites don’t kill whites.” Police apprehended Bush minutes later.
By David ChalmersThe Ku Klux Klan is a native-born American racist terrorist organization that helped overthrow Republican Reconstruction governments in the South after the Civil War and drive black people out of politics. It revived in the 20th Century as a social lodge and briefly became a nationwide political power. During the 1960s, the Klan fought the Civil Rights Movement in the South. Under attack in state and federal courts, in a racially changed and disapproving South, the Klan hangs on —marginally, but still violent. In the summer of 1866, six young ex-Confederate officers organized a social club. Drawing on their college Greek, they adopted the term for circle, "kuklos." They added the alliterative word "klan," and the "Ku Klux Klan" was born. Their nightly rides, in which members disguised themselves in masks and flowing robes, soon became a political successor to the prewar slave patrols in controlling newly freed blacks. Particularly across the upper South, Klansmen sought to overturn the new Republican state governments, drive black men out of politics, control black labor, and restore black subordination. Led by elites and drawing on a cross-section of white male society, the Klan's assaults and murders numbered in the thousands. Similar organizations such as the Knights of the White Camelia in Louisiana copied the Klan.
By Nancy D. WadsworthWhite evangelical Protestants continue to approve of President Donald Trump at about twice the rate of the general public, according to a recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute. Indeed, the figure is at an all-time high, with some 75 percent expressing a positive view as of March. Debating the question of why white evangelicals hold so fast for Trump has become a pastime for commentators, given that the president’s values and behavior would appear to be anathema to conservative Christians. Among political evangelicals, at one ideological pole stand those who purport to see a seamless connection between their agenda and that of the current chief executive. “I think evangelicals have found their dream president,” Jerry Falwell Jr. gushed last May. An oft-heard variation on this view is that Trump may be a sinner, but he’s one chosen by God for a providential mission. But then there are the prominent hand-wringers. Veteran evangelical writers like Michael Gerson, David French, and Stephen Mansfield have been wrestling with the damage this strategic partnership may be doing to a once-great religious tradition. It is an abandonment of the evangelical path, these writers argue — to varying degrees and with different emphases — for believers who claim to care about the poor, the suffering, and the outcast, not to mention sexual morality and civic virtue, to line up behind a belligerent boor who bullies women, Mexicans, and Muslims and who has a manifestly feeble understanding of religious texts and history. It’s not that evangelicals are personally prejudiced, these writers claim; nonetheless, they find it disturbing that such voters would overlook Trump’s racism and misogyny for short-term political gains. But these sympathetic critics fail to grapple with the idea that Trump’s racism and misogyny might actually resonate with the evangelical base, which happens to constitute about 35 percent of the GOP coalition. In fact, racism and intolerance are more woven into the fabric of evangelicalism than these Christian critics care to accept.
If white evangelicals are united by anything, it isn't theology.by Seth DowlandIn the 2016 election, 81 percent of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump—a statistic that has attracted enormous attention from media, scholars, and evangelicals themselves. That piece of data also raises some obvious questions: How could a group so concerned about personal morality vote for a thrice-married casino mogul? How could pro-family Christians vote for a man who admitted freely on tape to sexual assault? Over the past year, questions like these have consumed many of us who study American evangelicalism, and for good reason. The past 35 years have witnessed an outpouring of historical scholarship about American evangelicals, work that has greatly enhanced our understanding. But somehow this scholarship (my own work included) did not prepare us to understand why white evangelicals turned out so strongly for Trump and why they continue to remain his most ardent supporters. Part of the problem is that in characterizing evangelicals, historians have relied on David Bebbington’s four-pronged characterization: evangelicals are Christians who (1) focus on the importance of conversion; (2) support activism, particularly in missionary efforts to spread the gospel; (3) display a high regard for biblical authority; and (4) stress the centrality of the cross, with an emphasis on Jesus’ work of substitutionary atonement. Bebbington’s definition appears on the website of the National Association of Evangelicals as well as in countless books and lectures about the movement. It suggests that the heart of evangelicalism lies in its beliefs about God, salvation, and the Bible. The problem with this approach was captured in the headline of an article published by LifeWay, a Southern Baptist news outlet: “Many who call themselves evangelical don’t actually hold evangelical beliefs” (Dec. 6, 2017). Besides reporting that fewer than 45 percent of self-identified evangelicals strongly hold to classic evangelical beliefs, the article stated that the converse is also true: a significant number of evangelical believers reject the term evangelical. So if self-identified evangelicals don’t buy into supposedly evangelical beliefs, and a third of those who do believe those things don’t identify as evangelical, don’t we need a better definition? The answer is yes. Though Bebbington’s definition has been useful for theologically grouping a diverse set of believers, it is not necessarily the most useful way to mark the boundaries of what is often meant by the term evangelical. In fact, what most distinguishes white American evangelicals from other Christians, other religious groups, and nonbelievers is not theology but politics. White evangelicals in the early 21st century display attitudes about issues such as race, war, and immigration that differentiate them from other religious groups. White evangelicals have also become the most reliable bloc of Republican voters.
by Marian RonanTHE SIN OF WHITE SUPREMACY: CHRISTIANITY, RACISM, & RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY IN AMERICABy Jeannine Hill FletcherNever for a moment did I buy the notion that with the election of Barack Obama as president, the United States had become a "post-racial" society. But even for a skeptic like me, the statistics from the 2016 presidential election were difficult to absorb: Eighty-one percent of white evangelical Christians and 60 percent of white Catholics voted for Donald Trump. How could Christians vote for such an unabashedly racist candidate? As we attempt to answer that question, it's hard to imagine anything timelier than Jeannine Hill Fletcher's new book. In The Sin of White Supremacy: Christianity, Racism, & Religious Diversity in America, Hill Fletcher draws on her expertise in interreligious theology as well as extensive research into the history of Euro-American Christianity to lay out the devastating connections between Christian theology and the ideologies of racial supremacy that underpin our current political crisis. Then, thank God, she presents a theological paradigm to help us move toward racial and religious transformation. Hill Fletcher begins by tracking what she designates as not merely "white" but "white racism back well before the beginning of slavery, to the inscription of Christian supremacy — 'no salvation outside the Church' — into third-century Christian theology, the Crusades, and Columbus's 'discoveries.' " Then, in our own "Christian" nation, white college presidents, professors, legislators and clergy went on to apply this supremacist worldview to social and economic systems. And while white racist discourse may be less explicitly Christian today than it once was, Hill Fletcher explains that the "theo-logic" of Christian supremacy — the claim that Jesus Christ is the "only-begotten Son of God" — still supports the racist judgment that some humans are intrinsically superior to others. The primary function of this Christian white supremacist ideology was, and is, to justify the material dispossession of non-white people. This is so powerfully the case that Hill Fletcher describes it, following the work of James Perkinson, as a form of witchcraft. Whether it is through slavery, manifest destiny, the exclusion of indigenous students from land-grant universities, the Chinese Exclusion Act or the redlining of people of color from home ownership, the white supremacist racial hierarchy in the U.S. shapes virtually everything. So fundamental to this witchcraft are the ideas — the "symbolic capital" — of Christian theology that nothing less than a serious reconfiguration of that theology can transform our racially unbalanced world.
By Matthew N LyonsThe alt-right was key in getting Trump into power. But its strain of misogyny differs in sometimes surprising ways to that of the traditional Christian right. One hundred days on from Donald Trump entering the White House with its help, what will the alt-right do next? The small, loosely organised movement, which has helped to revitalise far-right politics in the United States, has made skilful use of internet activism and has a receptive ear in Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon, who as former head of Breitbart News once proclaimed his network “the platform of the alt-right”. More than shaping White House policy, however, the alt-right’s greatest impact may come from its efforts to shift the political culture. The far right thrives on global networks. They must be fought online and off. Although best known for its white nationalist brand of racist ideology, there’s growing recognition that patriarchal politics is also central to the movement. Several observers have pointed out that the alt-right advocates not just white supremacy, but more specifically white male supremacy, that the movement feeds on “toxic resentment of women”, and that sexism serves as a “gateway drug” pulling a lot of young men into it. The few alt-right women who have been profiled embrace their own subordination. Missing from these accounts is a recognition that the alt-right is reshaping patriarchal politics. Its version of male supremacy is not just more explicit or aggressive – it’s strikingly different from the version that’s been dominant among US rightists for decades. Consider abortion. Some alt-rightists, unsurprisingly, argue that abortion is simply immoral and should be banned. Yet many others in the movement disagree – and for reasons that have nothing to do with respecting women’s autonomy or privacy. These alt-rightists support legal abortion because, they claim, it’s disproportionately used by black and Latina women and, secondarily, because they see it as a way to weed out “defective” white babies. In other words, they support abortion as a form of eugenics. Both sides of this internal alt-right debate agree that women have no business controlling their own bodies. As Greg Johnson of the alt-right website Counter-Currents put it, “in a White Nationalist society … some abortions should be forbidden, others should be mandatory, but under no circumstances should they simply be a matter of a woman’s choice”. As far as I can tell, the only outsiders who have responded to this discussion are Christian rightists. For decades they’ve used the “black genocide” canard in an effort to smear abortion rights proponents as racist; now they have some actual racists to go after. But alt-rightists aren’t the least bit intimidated. For 40 years, the Christian right has been the benchmark of anti-feminist, patriarchal politics in the United States. The Christian right was the first large-scale movement in US history to put the reassertion of male dominance at the centre of its programme. Since the 1970s, it has spearheaded a whole series of patriarchal initiatives, from the campaign to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment to the self-described “biblical patriarchy” movement, which tells women they have a sacred obligation to treat their husbands as “lord”.
Young Republican women are aggrieved, outnumbered, defiant. And they aren’t going to apologize for loving the guy in the White House.By Nancy Jo SalesThe College Republicans at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill were having a cookout, which they had advertised on their Facebook page with a picture of Ronald Reagan grilling hot dogs. It was a sweltering evening in August, a week after protesters toppled the bronze statue of a Confederate soldier on their campus known as Silent Sam, and a month before Christine Blasey Ford testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that Brett Kavanaugh had attacked her at a high-school party in the 80s. There were about 60 students gathered in an out-of-the-way courtyard off red-brick Connor Hall, all of them white, and most of them conspicuously polite boys (“Would you like a Cherry Coke, ma’am?” one asked). The girls, only about a dozen, looked like college girls everywhere today, in T-shirts and tank tops, shorts and leggings. Except that they were not like college girls everywhere, most of whom lean to the left and vote Democratic, or tell pollsters they plan to. “They say we’re white supremacists, racist, misogynistic, and we have internalized misogyny,” said Cammie McMahan, 19, the College Republicans’ secretary, who wore a G.O.P. T-shirt, and a frown. I’d asked her and her friend Caitlyn McKinney, 19, what it was like being a conservative woman on their overwhelmingly liberal campus. “Name-calling is the first place they go,” said Caitlyn, who has that lilting North Carolina accent that makes everything sound gentle, even when it’s not. “They say they want to be all intersectional and everything,” said Cammie, “except when it’s us.” Ever since 52 percent of white women voted for Donald Trump, Republican women, now all but synonymous with “white women,” have become the subject of a protracted howl of outrage from more liberal circles. “‘White Women’ Becomes a Disparaging Term,” fretted the National Review in October, in a column complaining of the “vitriolic condemnation” of Republican women by mainstream media outlets. “Half of white women continue to vote Republican. What’s wrong with them?” asked The Guardian in November, days after the midterm elections, which saw only a slight movement away from the Republican Party by white women, despite two years of Donald Trump’s attacks on women, people of color, people who are transgender, and virtually anyone who doesn’t look like a backup singer for Lawrence Welk. But most mystifying of all, perhaps, is the block of young white women who continue to support the president and his party when the majority of their peers have reacted with revulsion. I went to U.N.C. to talk to some of these young women who align themselves with Trump, and to find out how it feels to be among the most despised women in America.