November 3, 2018: Neo-Nazis in MAGA Clothing

 

11/3/18: Scott Beierle, 40, who has splashed misogynistic and racist vitriol across social media, walks into a yoga studio in Tallahassee, Florida. He opens fire, killing two women, injuring four females and one man. Beierle is angry because women have shunned him in the past and interracial dating appalls him. 

In an online video, Beierle can be seen expressing admiration for Elliott O. Rodger, who had similar trouble dating and killed six and wounded fourteen in a rampage in Isla Vista, California in 2014.

 

* 

THE IDEA THAT VOTING doesn’t matter has never made sense to me. Nor do I believe that “all politicians are alike.” Let’s look at a few who prove we should all go out and vote for anyone else. 

____________________ 

“We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.” 

Rep. Steven King

____________________ 

 

First up, we have Michael Santomauro, GOP candidate for mayor of Hilton Head, S. C.

Santomauro runs RePortersNoteBook.com, a website “offering rewards to people who can disprove the validity of Holocaust events like the number of those killed or the existence of Nazi gas chambers at extermination camps.” 

Second: Arthur Jones, former member of the American Nazi Party, running as a Republican, and hoping to win a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives from the Illinois Third Congressional District. He is famous for saying he and the president stand “shoulder to shoulder philosophically,” which tells you all you need to know, not only about Jones, but this president. (See: 2/8/18.) 

In California’s Eleventh Congressional District, Republican John Fitzgerald is hoping to win a chance to go to D.C. and “drain the swamp,” and maybe get rid of all the Jews. The candidate enjoys appearing on neo-Nazi podcasts when he’s not running for office and claims the Holocaust is a “lie.” 

According to a report by Media Matters, 

He appeared on the June 23 edition of The Realist Report with host John Friend. Friend is a neo-Nazi who has said that the “Jews Did 9/11,” Adolf Hitler was “the greatest thing that’s happened to Western civilization,” and the “alleged ‘Holocaust’ of 6 million Jews at the hands of Adolf Hitler and National Socialist Germany during WWII is one of the most egregious and outrageous falsehoods ever perpetrated.”

 

In fact, if you were to believe Fitzgerald, and a certain portion of the Trump base undoubtedly do, calls to embrace “diversity” in America are all part of a sinister, race-tainting, Jewish plot.

 

* 

WHO ELSE MIGHT BE in an electoral jam? Rep. Steve King of Iowa, running for a ninth term in Congress, is taking heat for his most recent dabbling in racism and/or anti-Semitism. This is not King’s first dabbling, just the most recent. After traveling for five days in Europe, he decided to stop for a chat with leaders of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party, a party founded by a former Nazi SS officer. King did not help his cause when he later defended this chat, saying that members of the Freedom Party “would be Republicans [emphasis added, here and below] ” if they lived in the U.S.A. 

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, calls on Speaker Paul Ryan to take immediate disciplinary action against Rep. King, saying he had “met with outright anti-Semitic organizations and individuals.” 

In the wake of the Pittsburgh massacre, Greenblatt says, “What the moment demands is our country’s leaders, from all sectors of society, to make it crystal clear that anti-Semitism and hate have no place in the United States.” 

Sadly, that’s not something you should expect from Rep. King. 

In the past, he has: 

A)    Retweeted posts from a British man, Mark Collett, who likes to warn about the dangers of dark-skinned people flooding into Europe. Collett is an avowed “Nazi sympathizer.” 

B)     Endorsed a candidate for mayor of Toronto, Faith Goldy, who likes to warn that Canada is facing “white genocide.” King has described Goldy as “pro Rule of Law, pro Make Canada Safe Again, pro balanced budget, &...BEST of all, Pro Western Civilization and a fighter for our values.” 

C)    Made pork chops an issue, complaining when he learned Somali immigrants working in Iowa meat packing plants needed “a special dispensation” from their imams to handle pork. “The rationale,” King claimed without really knowing what he was talking about, “is that if infidels are eating this pork, [the Muslims] are not eating it. So as long as they’re preparing this pork for infidels, it helps send them to hell and it must make Allah happy.” At that point, King almost choked on his breakfast sausage. “I don’t want people doing my pork that won’t eat it, let alone hope I go to hell for eating pork chops.” 

D)   Said during his meeting with leaders of the Freedom Party, that immigration offers nothing of value to our country. “What does this diversity bring that we don’t already have? Mexican food, Chinese food, those things – well, that’s fine. But what does it bring that we don’t have that is worth the price? We have a lot of diversity within the U.S. already.” 

E)     Displayed a Confederate flag on his office desk – forgetting that between 1861 and 1865, Iowa sent four batteries of artillery, nine regiments of cavalry, and 46 regiments and battalions of infantry to fight the forces of the slave-holding Confederacy. 

F)     Defended the predominantly white face of the current GOP during one interview, by offering this nugget: “I’d ask you to go back through history and figure out, where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you’re talking about, where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?” 

G)   Justified his anti-Dream Act position during one interview by insisting, sure, a few good people (like 689,000) might come into this country as children, grow up here, serve in the U.S. military, go to college, consider themselves as American as King himself. They aren’t worth the trouble. “Some of them are valedictorians, and their parents brought them in,” King insists. “For everyone who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there that weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.” 

H)   Tweeted that America is endangered by current immigration because “culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.”

 

So, allow me to point out a few problems with King’s thinking. First, “the American way of life is endangered” warnings have been sounded throughout history. German immigrants were viewed as a threat in colonial times. Catholics and Quakers were banned in most of the Thirteen Colonies. Waves of Irish in the 1840s were considered an existential religious threat. The Chinese (or “Yellow Peril”) were excluded by law, from entering, after 1882. New waves of Italian and South European immigrants were blocked by means of a quota-system in the 1920s. Japanese Americans were rounded up and packed off to prison camps in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Prisoners included 77,000 U.S. citizens, because “those people” couldn’t be trusted. 

As a fan of Western Civilization myself, I would be remiss if I failed to point out that Western Civilization brought the world millennia of toxic anti-Semitism, church-sponsored witch hunting, genocide for the indigenous people of two continents, and enslavement for nine million Africans from a third. As a “bonus,” Western Civilization brought on the two most devastating wars in recorded history, birthed communist theory, which went on to infect China, spawned Stalin, and Hitler, and left the indelible stain of Nazism on the historical record.

 

Rep. Steven Stivers of Ohio, head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, takes the trouble to lambast King. A source familiar with Stivers’ thinking says he felt he “could not stay silent.” 

“Congressman Steve King’s recent comments, actions, and retweets are completely inappropriate,” Stivers says. “We must stand up against white supremacy and hate in all forms, and I strongly condemn this behavior.” 

See: Not all politicians are the same.

 

* 

OKAY, ENOUGH with the Nazis! Let’s move on to more important issues, like standing  during the National Anthem, because if anyone kneels, America cannot survive, and the Cleveland Browns will never win a Super Bowl! 

Carla Maloney, secretary of the Republican Committee of Beaver County, Pa. may not personally be running for office; but she’s supporting candidates who think the same way she does and want us all to show unflinching respect for the flag of this nation and the freedom it represents. 

Maloney is forced to resign after it leaks that she has referred to kneeling NFL players (mostly African American) as “baboons” in a series of Facebook posts. 

Just a smidge of her racism should suffice: “Steelers are now just as bad as the rest of the over paid baboons,” she says in one post. 

“You respect your flag, country and our national anthem,” she says in another. “How many men and women have lost limbs or died to protect this country and you baboons want respect.” 

Yes, nothing says “respect your flag, country and our national anthem” like dehumanizing other Americans.

 

Even African American soldiers were segregated until 1948.

 

* 

HERE IN HAMILTON COUNTY, Ohio, longtime Republican official Phil Heimlich comes out against reelection of Republican Rep. Steve Chabot. Heimlich endorses Aftab Pureval, the Democrat. 

Heimlich is worried about the future of our nation and the threat is not from kneeling football players: 

 “As a former prosecutor, this makes me sick,” Heimlich said, referring to Chabot’s criticism of special counsel Robert Mueller. “I want to be on the right side of history. We are living under the most dishonest president in history.”

 

“What is Steve Chabot’s position on that? Nothing. He refuses to speak out against this mountain of dishonesty.”

 

In similar fashion, former Republican Congressman David Jolly announces he is leaving the party. His decision is sparked by the knowledge that he and his wife are expecting their first child, a girl. He says he cannot look a daughter in the face someday and say he supported Donald J. Trump. He also advocates voting for Democrats in the midterms. “I think we’ll be safer in a divided government.” 

Speaking of safer, Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate and Republican Scott Wagner threatens to walk over his Democratic opponent’s face with…. well, this is so stupid, you should watch it yourself.

  

 

*

 

MEANWHILE, right-wing types are outraged because former Attorney General Eric Holder has said Democrats should “kick” Republicans when they go low.

 

This story is catnip for fools. You can go to YouTube, type in “Eric Holder kick em,” and pull up a dozen videos using the same abbreviated clip. All the right-wing nuts cut off as soon as Holder says he disagrees with Michelle Obama’s approach, “when they go low, we go high.” 

 

“No, no,” Holder can be seen saying, “When they go low, we kick ‘em. That’s what this new Democratic Party is about.”

 

Sean Hannity, for one, is horrified by Holder’s comments and does an entire show filled with hair-gelled indignation.

 

Naturally, he cuts off the clip right after Holder says “kick ‘em.”

 

Trump watches Hannity and flips out too. He warns Democrats they had better watch out. Right-wing nuts then watch Trump; and another cycle of Holder-related hysteria ensues.

None of the right-wingers dare to mention what Holder says a few minutes later, also on tape. He continues:

 

When I say we, you know, “We kick ‘em,” I don’t mean we do anything inappropriate. We don’t do anything illegal. But we got to be tough, and we have to fight for the very things that [civil rights leaders] John Lewis, Martin Luther King, Whitney Young – you know, all those folks gave to us.

 

You know: Follow the example of King and those who preached non-violence and peaceful civil disobedience.

 

That’s not scary at all.

 

 

POSTSCRIPT: If you are a right-wing nut case, worried about getting kicked by a crazed Democrat, at least your ceiling fans are safe until 2020. Marsha Blackburn, GOP senatorial candidate from Tennessee, has built a comfortable lead over her Democratic challenger. Blackburn first came out against EPA efficiency standards for electric devices and appliances in a passionate 2013 speech.

 

The lady was not messing around – paralleling a famous anti-Nazi poem, “First, they came for the Jews.”

 

In her version, jackbooted feds were on the march and Blackburn wasn’t going to sit around till it was too late. “First,” she warned, “they came for our health care, then they took away our light bulbs, and raided our nation’s most iconic guitar company – now they are coming after our ceiling fans.”

 

Of course, an overwhelming majority of Americans believe climate change is occurring (70%). A solid majority believe humans are the cause (58%). But as long as we have Blackburn, we’ll have inefficient ceiling fans to stir up the increasingly warm air that blankets our planet. Also, we’ll have energy-wasting light bulbs. Because if liberals ever get control, they’ll kick over our lamps, and we’ll have to go back to candles and signaling that the British are coming with lanterns.