Republicans Joined With Skinheads and Neo-Nazis to Organize Anti-Immigrant Protests in Pennsylvania

"Christian" activist Barbara Metzler Speaking with neo-nazi Ian McCorts standing behind her

By Dylan Sevett
Islamophobia has been on the rise across the country since the Paris attacks on November 13th. Mainstream politicians have endorsed and attended them at a time when 47 democrats voted to close the doors on Syrian refugees, at least 54 percent of Americans want to do the same, and major Republican front-runner Donald Trump supports forcing Muslims to wear ID badges.

In fact, anti-refugee protests are popping up all over the country. In Pennsylvania, Neo-Nazis from Keystone United, Tea Party members, patriot movement members, and Republican committee members are among the organizers of these protests.

Republican Chairwoman Mary Ann Benitez (Lackawanna County) is featured on the front-page banner of a neo-Nazi Facebook page.

“Keystone United” was known as the “Keystone State Skinheads (KSS)” until 2009. They are one of the most active single-state skinhead groups in the US, and the SPLC has categorized them as a “racist skinhead extremist group” and elaborated on their image and actions.

“While its members attempt to project a mediagenic image of being part of a new breed of more sophisticated and less spasmodically violent skins, the truth is that the group’s members have been convicted of a string of remarkably violent attacks dating back to at least 1998, ranging from bar brawls to murder.”

These far right groups are responding to a recent decision by Governor Tom Wolf to support the refugees. Senator Bob Casey also spoke publicly about accepting Syrian refugees in Pennsylvania.

Two anti-refugee rallies were held in Pennsylvania, both of which were attended by Keystone United and other far right groups.

Republican Chairwoman Mary Ann Benitez (Lackawanna
County) and Neo-Nazi Steve Smith in 2014 at the same overpass
where they recently organized an anti-immigrant rally.

In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 40 or so people protested at the State Capitol on November 2oth. Some of their signs and banners read “Terrorist Invasion, No Refugees” and “Aiding a Foreign Invasion is Treason.”

The main organizer for the Harrisburg rally was Christian activist Barbara Metzler. She spoke at the event and without any sources claimed that “91% of Muslims are on welfare or food stamps.”

Dan Gray, a speaker and writer with the Patriot Militia Movement in PA went a step further and said, “Islam is based on Mohammad, and he was a murderer,” he said. “Call me a bigot or racist, I don’t care.”

John Rentschler, who is a Republican committeeman and Civil War reenactor from Berks County, PA, shared Gray’s sentiments and said he “imagined the chorus of voices who would denounce him as a racist, as xenophobic, Islamophobic, as a bigot.” He followed up by saying, “What matters to me is MY family, MY home, MY people, MY state, MY country,” as the crowd said “Amen” after each declaration he made. He went on to claim that “our nation is being crushed by multiculturalism, political correctness, and race-guilting.”

“Steve Smith has been active in an extraordinary array of white nationalist, skinhead, and neo-Nazi groups, including American Third Position, KSS, and the Council of Conservative Citizens. He is a former Aryan Nations member and former leader of the Philadelphia chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of White People, which was created by former Klan leader David Duke but is no longer associated with him.” – SPLC

[...]

In Scranton, PA, a highway overpass protest was organized and attended by Keystone United members on November 21st. About 11 people joined them, and the co-founder of the Keystone State Skinheads, current director of the of the European American Action Coalition (EAAC), and committee member for the Luzerne County GOP since 2012 stood front and center.

This is not the only connection between the GOP and neo-nazis in Pennsylvania.

Republican Chairwoman (Lackawanna County) Mary Ann Benitez was also present at the overpass protest. Benitez is pictured in the NEPA Patriots Facebook page’s cover photo, and regularly attends anti-immigrant protests.

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'I Was 100 Percent Right' on 9/11 Muslim Remarks — Trump: You Can Get Away With That - When Your Supporters Are Idiots

By Megan Cassella
U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump insisted on Sunday he was "100 percent right" when he said he saw thousands of Muslims in Jersey City, New Jersey, cheering the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, even though fact-checkers have debunked his assertion.

In a phone interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," Trump said he has heard from "hundreds of people that agree" that there were televised Muslim celebrations of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which he used as evidence to show his remarks were true.

"I saw it. So many people saw it," said Trump, who, in the race for the November 2016 election, has been among the most vocal of the Republican candidates in expressing skepticism about Muslims in the United States. "So, why would I take it back? I'm not going to take it back."

When NBC anchor Chuck Todd suggested the people Trump heard from are supporters and might want to agree with him, Trump interrupted to note the "huge Muslim population" New Jersey has.

"Why wouldn't it have taken place?" he said of a celebration there. "I've had hundreds of people call in and tweet in on Twitter, saying that they saw it and I was 100 percent right."

[...]

"I have a very good memory, I'll tell you," he said. "I saw it somewhere on television many years ago. And I never forgot it."

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Young Black Brainwashed YouTube Sensation Who Was 'Pro Conservative' — Suddenly Renounces Conservatism

You can be absolutely sure that his ditching of right ideology will not get the same amount of publicity as his attack on president Obama and his support of Ted Cruz.
—Ronald David Jackson

CJ Pearson: The 13-year-old social media phenom apparently grew tired of being pimped by right-wing manipulators
in the wake of the ongoing killings of black people by police.
(Screen capture from YouTube video)

By Tal Kopan
The 13-year-old Internet phenom who gained national attention criticizing President Barack Obama and briefly was a part of the Ted Cruz campaign is renouncing conservatism, saying he's looking to be a voice unbound by party ideology.

CJ Pearson told CNN on Friday that concerns about the Republican Party's viewpoints on racial and gender disparity as well as youth issues convinced him he could no longer be a mouthpiece for conservatism.

President Obama: Do you really love America?

"I was tired of being a champion of a party that turned a blind eye to racial discrimination. Tired of being a champion of any cause that denies equal rights to every American. Tired of being a champion of a party that doesn't care about the issues important to young people," Pearson wrote in an email.

The 13-year-old, African-American YouTube star from Georgia said in an interview that he began considering the change after a conversation with another teen friend, who asked why he doesn't speak out on racial discrimination -- to which he replied he was concerned his followers wouldn't be pleased.

"Over the past few days, I thought about essentially how I don't want people to follow me because I'm that anti-Obama kid, or who called out Hillary Clinton or who took Bernie Sanders to task," Pearson said. "I don't want to be the conservative wonder kid that people follow because I make them feel good and like young people are part of their movement. I want to be followed because I'm the voice of a generation that doesn't have a voice at the table."

He said the video of Laquan McDonald being shot 16 times by a police officer in Chicago helped open his eyes to the systemic problems of racial discrimination in America and the need to look at the issues objectively.

Pearson was also the chairman of Teens for Ted and part of the presidential campaign for the Republican Texas senator, but separated with the Cruz campaign at the beginning of the month. Pearson said Cruz wasn't doing enough for issues affecting young people.The teen also was accused September of faking a screenshot that Obama's account had blocked him on Twitter. Pearson admits he made a mistake and says he has moved on.

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Three White Men Who Shot Black Lives Matter Protesters Emerged From Internet’s Racist Swamps (Video)

Screen shot of white supremacists who were among those who shot five Black Lives Matter protesters after
arriving armed and masked at a BLM protest to intimidate blacks.

By David Neiwert
The white supremacists who showed up to a Black Lives Matter protest Monday night in Minneapolis and shot five African-American participants were not there just by coincidence.

As more facts emerge in the case, it’s now beginning to appear that not only was the attack a carefully planned attempt to disrupt the demonstration, but the men who participated in the shootings had been radicalized in the course of conversing on websites and in chatrooms where racist and other far-right extremist ideology flourishes. Indeed, the men began networking in real life as a result of their Internet hatemongering.

Minneapolis police have now arrested three men in connection with the shooting, which occurred at about 10:45 p.m. in front of the police precinct station where the Black Lives Matter had set up an encampment Nov. 15 to protest the shooting that day of an unarmed 24-year-old black man named Jamar Clark.

According to several witness accounts, the men confronted protesters at the rally, but were in turn chased by a group of protesters into an alley, where one of them pulled a gun and shot into the crowd. None of the five victims suffered life-threatening injuries, but all were hospitalized. Authorities are trying to determine whether the men fired in self-defense, or whether the matter should be investigated as a hate crime.

“A group of white supremacists showed up at the protest, as they have done most nights,” Miski Noor, a spokesperson for Black Lives Matter, told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Noor said the protesters tried to force the group to leave the area, and the men then “opened fire.”

As Travis Gettys at Raw Story reports, the men -- Allen Lawrence “Lance” Scarsella III, 23, of Bloomington; Nathan Gustavsson, 21, of Hermantown; and Daniel Macey, 26, of Pine City – originally connected through online conversations on Facebook and at such websites as 4chan. A fourth man who goes by the online name “Saiga Marine” was part of the same group, but police released the man after questioning Tuesday, saying he was not at the scene of the shooting Monday.

A Facebook video posted by BLM activists, reportedly taken from one of the men’s pages, shows two masked men driving in a car at night, brandishing a gun and saying they were planning to go harass the “dindus” (a pejorative term to describe the black protesters). It was reportedly recorded on Friday night, and the driver identifies himself as “Saiga Marine.”

“We are on our way, we’re going to knock this shit out,” said the driver. “Fuck — and we’re going to see what these dindus are dinduing about.”

Emails posted online by the men seemed to show that they had planned these confrontations carefully. “Do you know if the BLM niggers are planning to protest again tomorrow, and if so, at what time?” one white supremacist asked in an email chain.

Scarsella’s Facebook page includes a photo of the “Bonnie Blue” version of the Confederate flag, which he captioned: “This isn’t the Somalian flag.” Among his “likes”are several gun groups associated with the extremist “III Percent” militia movement, as well as the “OAF Nation” (the acronym stands for “Operator As Fuck”) pro-militia group.

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Understanding Paul Ryan's Racism in Three Easy Steps

Republican Congressman Paul Ryan. (Photo by Gage Skidmore)

Paul Ryan is the leader of a political party that is the country’s premier white identity organization. The Republican Party has also merged conservatism and racism in such a way that appeals to white racial resentment are its Lingua Franca and a taken for granted way of thinking about political and social reality. Paul Ryan traffics in racism because the Republican Party is a racist organization. The calculus is not complicated. 

 
By Chauncey DeVega
Paul Ryan has attempted to clarify  his racist argument that “inner city” black people are lazy and do not want to work. He issued a statement that:

After reading the transcript of yesterday morning’s interview, it is clear that I was inarticulate about the point I was trying to make. I was not implicating the culture of one community—but of society as a whole.

This is a false and disingenuous pseudo apology. Paul Ryan is the leader of a political party that is the country’s premier white identity organization. The Republican Party has also merged conservatism and racism in such a way that appeals to white racial resentment are its Lingua Franca and a taken for granted way of thinking about political and social reality.

Paul Ryan traffics in racism because the Republican Party is a racist organization. The calculus is not complicated.

There has been  some smart writing about Paul Ryan’s use of  coded racial appeals. However, the majority of the news media is asking the wrong question. Instead of trying to figure out “if” Paul Ryan is a racist, the more revealing question is “what type of racist is he?”

There are three basic ways to understand Paul Ryan’s racism, both as part of a pattern of behavior by Republicans, and as an example of (symbolic) white racism in the post civil rights era.

The Southern Strategy.
Paul Ryan’s claim that black people have “bad culture”, may be genetically defective, and do not have “normal” “middle class” values about the merits of “hard work”, is a simple channeling of legendary Republican strategist Lee Atwater’s tactics for mobilizing white voters by leveraging their hostility to black Americans.

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