The Trials and Tribulations of the Fourth (?) Reich

 

Good times! This was Richard B. Spencer, a neo-Nazi "alt-right" leader, a few days after Trump's election (Nov. 19, 2016) at a fellow-traveller (Trumpist) rally in Washington:

The inflammatory nature of that gig above caused the following to happen, pretty much in this order:

1. Whitefish, Montana, where Richard Spencer lives in his mother's house and where there's a sizable Jewish citizenry, erupted in protest. Residents began discussing a rally in front of a downtown commercial building owned by Mr. Spencer’s mother, Sherry.

2. Either Sherry Spencer called her, or real estate agent Tanya Gersh called Sherry, but both women agree that Tanya agreed to list the business for sale to relieve the pressure on Mrs. Spencer. Mrs. Spencer later claimed in a published article that Tanya Gersh used the threat of protests to blackmail her into selling. Gersh became the target of an organized anti-Semitic hate campaign, which in its turn was organized by another Nazi alt-right leader, Andrew Anglin of the Daily Stormer. Anglin exhorted his “fam” online to “TAKE ACTION” to defend Spencer. He shared personal information and the social media accounts of Gersh and her family, including her son, then 12. A post in which Anglin encouraged his followers to “stop by and tell her in person what you think of her actions” was the first of some 30 articles he published targeting the Gersh family and the Jewish community in Whitefish. 

3. Mrs. Spencer's son Richard (see above) admits that he wrote the editorial that Mrs. Spencer published attacking Tanya Gersh.

4. 2017. Tanya Gersh files suit against Andrew Anglin in U.S. District Court in Montana. In 2019, she wins $14 million in damages. A team of lawyers is still searching for Anglin and his assets.

5. Nazi Editor Andrew Anglin uses his Daily Stormer to announce and promote a big new alt-right march, which intends to end at the Gersh home in Whitefish, scheduled for Martin Luther King Day, January 2017.

Richard B. Spencer.
Photo Alex Wroblewski for The New York Times

6. As tensions rose in Whitefish, Richard Spencer and both his parents made public statements distancing themselves from the march and from Andrew Anglin. Behind the scenes, the police and the federal authorities readied themselves for a potentially violent event.

7. Whitefish rallied around the Gersh family. “There were menorahs in every window in Whitefish,” Ms. Gersh said. An anti-hate rally drew 600 participants in zero-degree weather. On the eve of the neo-Nazi march, Rabbi Francine Roston organized a chicken and matzo ball soup get-together for 350 people at the middle school in Whitefish, in a demonstration of unity and appreciation. (NYTimes)

8. Not a single neo-Nazi showed up in Whitefish on Martin Luther King Day, January 18, 2017.

9. According to residents in Whitefish that the NYTimes interviewed, Richard B. Spencer is now an outcast there, unable to get a table at many of its restaurants. His organization, the National Policy Institute, has dissolved. "Meanwhile, his wife has divorced him, and he is facing trial next month in Charlottesville, Va., over his role in the deadly 2017 neo-Nazi march there, but says he cannot afford a lawyer."

The Upcoming Trial in Charlottesville

Both Richard Spencer and Andrew Anglin (along with many others) are defendants in Sines v. Kessler, which goes to court in Charlottesville on Oct. 25. A group of victims and counterprotesters filed suit in Federal court against people and groups involved in the “Unite the Right” rally, August 11-12, 2017, after a neo-Nazi plowed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing Heather Heyer, 32, and injuring at least 19 others.

Spencer's lawyer in the Charlottesville case withdrew as counsel last year. He said he hadn't been paid. Spencer is now representing himself.

Separately, in May, a federal judge in Ohio ordered Spencer’s National Policy Institute to pay $2.4 million to William Burke, a counterprotester who was severely injured in Charlottesville.

Illinois Republicans Will Have a Genuine Nazi on the Ballot

Arthur Jones
Photo Marcus DiPaola, Chicago Sun-Times

You're a mean one, Arthur Jones!

He proudly admits to formerly leading the American Nazi Party and now heads a group called the America First Committee. “Membership in this organization is open to any white American citizen of European, non-Jewish descent,” he said. He voted for Donald Trump but it didn't take long for that love affair to sour. At a gathering of neo-Nazis in Pikeville, Ky., last spring, he announced he was sorry he voted for Trump, who has “surrounded himself with hordes of Jews” including his Jewish son-in-law Jared Kushner.

But, barring an act of the gods, Jones will be the name on the Republican ballot for the 3rd Congressional District of Illinois. No other Republican stepped forward, and Jones gets it by default. He's a perennial candidate and has never gotten more than the Nazi base to vote for him, but he obviously likes seeing his name on the ballot. The Republican Party of the 3rd Congressional District are not liking it so much.

The 3rd is one of the most Democratic in Illinois, which is saying something.

So the Republicans have another Roy Moore on their hands, only worse.

Talk Is Cheap

"Five armed services chiefs — of the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, the Marines and the National Guard Bureau — posted statements on social media condemning neo-Nazis and racism in uncompromising terms. They did not mention Mr. Trump by name...."

"Republicans, too, issued new denunciations of the hatred on display in Charlottesville, although some remained vague about Mr. Trump’s remarks."

Fox News host Shepard Smith "said that he had been unable to find a single Republican to come on-air to defend Mr. Trump’s remarks."

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell denounced “hate and bigotry” in a statement on Wednesday but made no mention of Mr. Trump.

"The president’s top advisers described themselves as stunned, despondent and numb. Several said they were unable to see how Mr. Trump’s presidency would recover, and others expressed doubts about his capacity to do the job." (Reporting by Michael D. Shear, Glenn Thrush, and Maggie Haberman)

But Some People Acted

The CEO's of Trump's Strategic and Policy Forum, titans of business who were brought on during the transition as high profile backers of the president's agenda, decided yesterday to disband in order to "condemn" -- that was their word -- Trump's equivocation that anti-fascists were just as bad as white nationalists.

"There really was nothing to debate," said one member of the Strategic and Policy Forum who described the president's fiery Tuesday news conference as a "tripwire." (CNBC)

CNBC broke the news that the CEOs were jumping ship, so Trump rushed to Twitter to fire them all before they could quit.

"Very Fine People on Both Sides!" Trump's Clear Signal to White Supremacists

Following Trump's third, angry statement about the spectacle in Charlottesville yesterday, former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke whipped out his smart phone and tweeted, "Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth.”

The truth, as someone suggested, had set him free.

Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush reported that "members of the president’s staff, stunned and disheartened, said they never expected to hear such a voluble articulation of opinions that the president had long expressed in private."

Eric Cantor, the former Republican congressman and Very Big Deal from Virginia, who's also Jewish, said Trump's efforts to equate the actions of counterprotesters with the neo-Nazis were “unacceptable.” “There’s no moral equivalence,” Cantor said.

Trump's rant yesterday sparked instant condemnation, especially from fellow Republicans (who are watching the intellectual underpinnings of their ideology turn to ca-ca, along with their electoral prospects):

Speaker Paul D. Ryan called white supremacy “repulsive” and said “there can be no moral ambiguity.” 

Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Republican of Florida, tweeted: “Blaming ‘both sides’ for #Charlottesville?! No.” 

Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said white nationalists in Charlottesville were “100% to blame” and continued in a subsequent tweet: “The #WhiteSupremacy groups will see being assigned only 50% of blame as a win. We can not allow this old evil to be resurrected.”

Senator Todd Young of Indiana, a freshman Republican, wrote: “This is simple: we must condemn and marginalize white supremacist groups, not encourage and embolden them.”

Yesterday, Trump was in an emboldening frame of mind, which is obviously his native (pure white) and habitual condition.

Newly hired White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly
studies the floor (and his future) during Trump's
impromptu tantrum yesterday.
Photo by Al Drago, New York Times

The American Nazi Movement in the Era of Trump

What is the alt-right? Above all, it's a harmless-sounding euphemism for "white nationalism." What is white nationalism? What follows is its most recent and most joyous blossoming on American soil.

Last Saturday in Washington, D.C., the alt-right held an all-day celebration of Donald Trump's election. White nationalists have embraced Trump, and Trump has embraced them back, naming the movement's number one publisher, Steve Bannon, as his right-hand man (so to speak).

Richard B. Spencer

A man named Richard B. Spencer both coined the term "alt-right" and is currently president of the organization spreading its doctrine, the National Policy Institute.

At the conclusion of Saturday's pep rally for Trump in the Ronald Reagan Building and National Trade Center on Pennsylvania Avenue, Spencer said and did this:

Mr. Spencer’s after-dinner speech began with a polemic against the “mainstream media,” before he briefly paused. “Perhaps we should refer to them in the original German?” he said.

The audience immediately screamed back, “Lügenpresse,” reviving a Nazi-era word that means “lying press.”

Mr. Spencer suggested that the news media had been critical of Mr. Trump throughout the campaign in order to protect Jewish interests. He mused about the political commentators who gave Mr. Trump little chance of winning.

“One wonders if these people are people at all, or instead soulless golem,” he said, referring to a Jewish fable about the golem, a clay giant that a rabbi brings to life to protect the Jews....

As he finished, several audience members had their arms outstretched in a Nazi salute. When Mr. Spencer, or perhaps another person standing near him at the front of the room — it was not clear who — shouted, “Heil the people! Heil victory,” the room shouted it back.

If this doesn't shoot shards of ice into the chambers of your beating heart, then you either don't know history or don't care what Donald Trump is now mid-wifing into the heart of the American democracy.