A CLOSER LOOK AT THE MODERN-DAY FASCISTS IN AMERICA
COMPILATION AND COMMENTARY
BY LUCY WARNER
DECEMBER 18, 2018


https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2018/12/oregon-white-nationalist-clashes-with-antifa-activists-later-hospitalized.html
Oregon white nationalist clashes with antifa activists, later hospitalized
DECEMBER 18, 2018 Updated 6:22 PM; Posted 2:34 PM
By Shane Dixon Kavanaugh | The Oregonian/OregonLive skavanaugh@oregonian.com
The Oregonian/OregonLive

Correction Appended
Updated 2:43 p.m.

PHOTOGRAPH -- Jimmy Marr, viewed as a fixture in Oregon’s white nationalist movement, was hospitalized Monday after an altercation with antifascist activists in downtown Corvallis. In an interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive last year, Marr advocated for the extermination of Jewish people. (Beth Nakamura | The Oregonian/OregonLive)

A man viewed as a fixture in Oregon’s white nationalist movement was hospitalized Monday after an altercation with antifascist activists in downtown Corvallis.

Jimmy Marr, known for driving a pickup truck around the state with racist and anti-Semitic messages emblazoned on the sides, was admitted to Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center, hospital staff told The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Corvallis police on Tuesday said he suffered from a “medical event” during the incident. His condition is unknown, and he did not respond to phone calls or an email seeking comment.

A fight involving Marr, a 65-year-old Springfield resident, and five other people erupted on Northwest Monroe Avenue near Third and Fourth streets just before 4 p.m., police said.

Emboldened white nationalists? Look no further than this liberal Oregon college town

Accusations that a Eugene businesswoman harbored racist views has fed community anxieties about a new boldness among a relatively small but steady number of white nationalists, members of an old movement galvanized by Trump's ascendancy to the presidency. The upheaval also has trained a spotlight on Eugene, an overwhelmingly white city with its own deeply racist past and where hate crimes are on the rise.

Marr’s truck, painted with a large swastika and the slogan “Nazi is just the N-word for white men,” could be seen parked on a section of Monroe blocked off by police, the Corvallis Gazette-Times reported.

Corvallis police Lt. Dan Duncan said four people were jailed on suspicion of disorderly conduct and later released. Police on Tuesday identified the suspects as Connor Butler, 19, Ralph Bolger Jr., 64, Albert Grigorov, 22, and Noah Orduna, 23.

Duncan, a police spokesman, said he did not know what prompted the fight.

A crowdfunding campaign began circulating on social media Monday night “to support the Corvallis antifascist community who may have been injured or arrested” in the incident.

Marr has been linked with Andrew Oswalt, a graduate student at Oregon State University, who is currently serving 40 days behind bars.

Last month, Oswalt was convicted in Benton County on multiple counts of first-degree intimidation, a hate crime, for plastering racist bumper stickers on cars parked outside a Corvallis food co-op in 2017.

RELATED: OSU student with white nationalist ties convicted of hate crime

Andrew Oswalt, a graduate student at Oregon's largest university, was found guilty of targeting anti-racist activists in Corvallis.

Marr publicly supported Oswalt in the months after his January arrest, appeared several times at OSU in his pickup truck.

Oswalt was transferred to the Northern Oregon Regional Correctional Center in The Dalles on Dec. 13, one day after he was sentenced, said Benton County Undersheriff Greg Ridler.

Ridler said the county has a contract with the facility, which takes Benton County inmates who have been convicted and sentenced.

In addition to his infamous truck, Marr has drawn attention — and anger — for hanging banners with pro-white messages off freeway overpasses.

During Holocaust Remembrance Day in April, a small group in Nazi regalia gathered outside Marr's home.

In an interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive last year, Marr advocated for the extermination of Jewish people.

-- Shane Dixon Kavanaugh; 503-294-7632

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported where Andrew Oswalt was serving his sentence. He was transferred to the Northern Oregon Regional Correctional Center on Dec. 13.

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https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2018/01/osu_student_government_members.html
White nationalist views, arrest of OSU student government rep spark outrage
Updated Jan 26, 2018; Posted Jan 23, 2018

Andrew Joseph Oswalt is accused of targeting social justice activists in Corvallis with racist bumper stickers and leaflets.
Andrew Joseph Oswalt is accused of targeting social justice activists in Corvallis with racist bumper stickers and leaflets. (Benton County Sheriff's Office)

By Shane Dixon Kavanaugh
The Oregonian/OregonLive

BY SHANE DIXON KAVANAUGH AND ANDREW THEEN

A member of Oregon State University's student government faces a growing firestorm on campus amid revelations of his white nationalist views and criminal accusations that he plastered racist bumper stickers on the cars of social activists.

Andrew Oswalt alarmed students, faculty and administrators after he outlined his inflammatory thoughts about minorities and women in an interview with OSU's student newspaper published Monday.

Hours later, Corvallis police arrested the 27-year-old Ph.D. candidate on suspicion of criminal mischief, a misdemeanor. Police said he put the bumper stickers on cars belonging to members of Showing Up For Racial Justice while they gathered at a local food co-op off campus in June.

Emboldened white nationalists? Look no further than this liberal Oregon college town
Emboldened white nationalists? Look no further than this liberal Oregon college town

Accusations that a Eugene businesswoman harbored racist views has fed community anxieties about a new boldness among a relatively small but steady number of white nationalists, members of an old movement galvanized by Trump's ascendancy to the presidency. The upheaval also has trained a spotlight on Eugene, an overwhelmingly white city with its own deeply racist past and where hate crimes are on the rise.


Oswalt's peers on the student congress are now discussing the extraordinary measure of trying to oust him from his position. The student congress will meet Wednesday, where a vote to remove him could occur.

"His words and actions are morally reprehensible," said Simon Brundage, the president of the Associated Students of Oregon State University. "When someone on our student government espouses bigoted, disturbing views, it is plainly unacceptable."


"The comments reported are not in keeping with the values that are expressed by the OSU community," said Steve Clark, a university spokesman.

Oswalt criticized his arrest in an email response Tuesday to questions from The Oregonian/OregonLive, saying police are involved in "an extremely politicized attempt at character assassination."

He also affirmed his belief that whites have greater intelligence than other racial or ethnic groups and expressed his views that Jews control "most important institutions in modern life."

Student body leader at OSU arrested on suspicion of criminal mischief
Student body leader at OSU arrested on suspicion of criminal mischief

Oswalt is a graduate representative in ASOSU and a self-described member of the alt-right, according to the student newspaper.


"If anyone believes that statements I have made are in error, prove it to me, and I will recant," Oswalt wrote, explaining he prefers to be known as an "ethno-nationalist."

"With some exceptions, I have thus far been met with unchecked emotion, ad hominem, and lazy stereotyping."

Oswalt declined to offer details of the police investigation beyond saying authorities "raided my apartment while I was at work last week, causing substantial damage to the door and its frame during entry."

Corvallis Police Lt. Daniel Duncan said Oswalt's arrest wasn't related to the campus article, published in The Daily Barometer.

Oswalt was booked in the Benton County Jail and released, Duncan said. Benton County District Attorney John Haroldson said that his office may seek additional charges.

"We're going to be taking a very close look at whether the evidence supports a charge of intimidation," he said, which is a hate crime under Oregon statute.

The case comes as the state grapples with emboldened white nationalists who have stepped up public displays of racism and bigotry in the last year.

The ripple effects go beyond frequent public marches in the Portland area, where anti-fascist demonstrators have clashed with white nationalists for months or the triple-stabbing aboard a MAX train last May, which police say was a racially motivated attack.

In Eugene, considered a liberal college town, an increase in documented hate crimes and neo-Nazi activity has fed community anxieties.

Oregon white nationalist charged with stabbing acquaintance

Jacob Laskey, 37, was arraigned Monday in Eugene on charges of second-degree assault, unlawful use of a weapon and criminal trespassing.

In Corvallis, police say Oswalt and another person placed the bumper stickers that contained a racists slur for African Americans on two cars at the First Alternative Natural Foods Co-Op.

The bumper stickers covered messages on the cars that supported immigrants and refugees, said Faith Reidenbach, co-founder of the Corvallis chapter of Show up for Racial Justice. The group is designed to mobilize white people to support people of color and take action for racial justice.

An employee discovered that someone also had placed anti-Semitic leaflets on the windshields of every car in the staff parking lot at the same time, said Cindee Lolik, co-op general manager.

"The kinds of things that you would see on the Daily Stormer," Lolik said, referring to a prominent white supremacist website, "stuff straight out of Nazi Germany."

The bumper stickers and fliers came on the heels of chalk messages around town decrying "white genocide," The Coravallis Gazette-Times reported.

Police last week executed a search warrant at Oswalt's house and recovered bumper stickers and fliers that matched the ones used in the June incident, Duncan said.

Oswalt was also identified in surveillance video captured by the food co-op, according to police, which is still trying to identify the second suspect.

Oswalt, who also works as a graduate teaching assistant in chemistry at Oregon State, was elected last March to the 25-seat student house of representatives, part of the student congress that includes a 12-seat senate. He began his one-year term last summer.

He gained a reputation among his fellow representatives for making provocative statements or asides, but on money issues, not on religion and race.

Oswalt said he ran for office in response to what he viewed as "fiscal wastefulness." He particularly focused on fees levied on students in addition to tuition and other costs of attendance. He said he engaged in what he described as "performance art" when his views on fiscal issues weren't taken seriously.


https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2018/01/osu_student_rep_is_a_nazi-salu.html
PACIFIC NORTHWEST NEWS
Photos show OSU student govt. rep making Nazi salute, waving swastika flag
Updated Jan 25, 2018; Posted Jan 25, 2018

A small group of people in Nazi regalia gather in Springfield during last year's Holocaust Remembrance Day.(Pacific Northwest Antifascist Workers Collective)

By Shane Dixon Kavanaugh
The Oregonian/OregonLive

Andew Oswalt, a student government representative at Oregon State University facing a recall over his inflammatory views, marched with white power proponents in Portland, delivered Nazi salutes to cars traveling on Interstate 5 and appears to have stood with a swastika flag outside the home of a man who advocates the extermination of Jewish people last year.

Photos of Oswalt doing all those things appeared this week on the website of the Pacific Northwest Antifascist Workers Collective, a group comprised of unnamed antifa activists from Oregon and Washington.

Oswalt didn't dispute the photos Thursday.

"Germar Rudolf did nothing wrong," he wrote in an email to The Oregonian/OregonLive, referring to a chemist and Holocaust denier sentenced to prison by a German court in 1995 for inciting racial hatred. He provided no additional comment.

The details uncovered by antifa show that Oswalt for nearly a year worked with fixtures of the region's white nationalist movement to publicly organize and provoke at the same time he taught advanced chemistry and won election to the student congress at OSU.

Oswalt, a 27-year-old doctoral student, sparked an uproar on the state's largest campus this week after he outlined some of his views in a student newspaper article and was arrested on suspicion of criminal mischief for allegedly putting racist bumper stickers on the cars of social activists off campus.

White nationalist views, arrest of OSU student government rep spark outrage

"His words and actions are morally reprehensible," said Simon Brundage, the president of the Associated Students of Oregon State University.

The mounting controversy prompted Oswalt's peers on student government to announce Wednesday that they will hold a public recall vote during next month's class elections.

Antifa activists also published online chats leaked to the group of conversations among roughly 30 white nationalists in the Pacific Northwest. They show many exchanges between a commenter named "DatGoy" that antifa identified as Oswalt and Springfield resident Jimmy Marr, viewed by national groups tracking extremists as a leading figure in the movement.

Marr is infamous for driving a truck around the state with racist and anti-Semitic messages emblazoned on the sides and hanging banners off freeway overpasses.

Among Marr's other associates was Bethany Sherman, a successful marijuana entrepreneur in Eugene who antifa activists accused last year of participating in neo-Nazi activities. The allegations, made public in a similar report, prompted her to shutter her cannabis testing company and left her business reputation in tatters. Sherman disavowed any connection to neo-Nazis, but said she was proud of her white heritage.

Antifa groups, of which there are now dozens in the U.S., track individuals, on and offline, and organize demonstrations against people they believe have ties to hate groups or publicly espouse bigoted views.

Emboldened white nationalists? Look no further than this liberal Oregon college town

Accusations that a Eugene businesswoman harbored racist views has fed community anxieties about a new boldness among a relatively small but steady number of white nationalists, members of an old movement galvanized by Trump's ascendancy to the presidency. The upheaval also has trained a spotlight on Eugene, an overwhelmingly white city with its own deeply racist past and where hate crimes are on the rise.

According to antifa activists, Oswalt first came to their attention during his participation at Patriot Prayer rally in Portland last April — roughly a month after he was elected to be a representative of OSU's student congress.

Photos taken at the event along 82nd Avenue, which also attracted MAX train stabbing suspect Jeremy Christian, show Oswalt wearing a baseball helmet and sunglasses and marching with a group of avowed white nationalists.

In a different series of images published in the antifa report, Oswalt can be seen with three other men standing on an I-5 overpass holding an anti-Semitic banner and delivering a Nazi salute.

During Holocaust Remembrance Day in April, a small group of people in Nazi regalia gathered outside Marr's home in Springfield. A person antifa claims to be Oswalt can be seen in photos holding a flag with a swastika on it. That person is wearing a stocking cap, glasses and other clothing identical to the ones worn by Oswalt in numerous other photos.

Marr, in a recent interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive, said he supported the extermination of Jewish people.

Liberal Oregon town of Eugene unsettled by rise in hate crimes, white nationalism

In online chats, Oswalt uses the screen name "DatGoy," antifa members claim. "DatGoy" discusses teaching at OSU as well as plans by him and others to spread political literature on campus, frequently filling his exchanges with racial slurs toward African Americans and anti-Semitic remarks, the published copies show.

At times, "DatGoy" also talks about the need to conceal his identity and political activity from his students.

Then Oswalt gave an interview to the student newspaper. In the article published Monday by The Daily Barometer, Oswalt described himself as a member of the "alt-right" who believes that race and gender can determine intelligence levels and claims that he's been attacked in academia for being a white male.

Hours after the story came out, Corvallis police arrested him, alleging he put bumper stickers containing racial slurs on cars belonging to members of Showing Up For Racial Justice while they gathered at a local food co-op in June.

Josh Todd, executive director of Campus Compact of Oregon, said Oswalt's views aren't surprising given the Pacific Northwest's history as a haven for white nationalists and neo-Nazi groups.

"What is surprising or shocking for a lot of folks is the frequency and the increased comfort that folks who have these beliefs feel they have now," said Todd, whose nonprofit group helps university and community college presidents in Oregon better understand and serve a diversifying workforce and student body.

Carla Hill, a researcher with the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism, said Oswalt serves as another example of how people with racist views increasingly feel as if they can cast their beliefs as mainstream.

Hill pointed to Paul Nehlen, a high-profile Republican candidate for Congress in Wisconsin, who has publicly embraced anti-Semitic and "pro-white" ideas on the campaign trail. Meanwhile, a town manager in northern Maine, captured headlines last week for his unabashed promotion of a white ethno-state, a position that led to him losing his job several days later.

"It is scary that Oswalt would have access to young minds, though it's also part of the movement's drive to reach those very people," Hill said.

The Oregonian/OregonLive's Anna Marum and Andrew Theen contributed to this report.

-- Shane Dixon Kavanaugh
skavanaugh@oregonian.com
503-294-7632 || @shanedkavanaugh


PORTLAND AND PORTLANDIA

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-hate-crime-in-super-progressive-portland-should-surprise-no-one/2017/06/01/d3b99782-46d8-11e7-a196-a1bb629f64cb_story.html
Opinions
Portland isn’t Portlandia. It’s a capital of white supremacy.
Jeremy Joseph Christian speaks at a rally in Portland, Ore. (John Rudoff/Associated Press)
By Keegan Stephan June 1, 2017

Keegan Stephan is a writer, political organizer and law student in New York City.

Last week, a white supremacist allegedly stabbed two men to death and severely wounded another who tried to intervene as he hurled racial slurs at a black woman and a Muslim woman. Yet one of the most shocking aspects of the incident was where it occurred: Portland, Ore. Many Americans consider the city to be a progressive utopia, to the point of televised parody. The truth is far more complicated.

I went to high school outside Portland, and I encountered more overt white supremacy there than anywhere else. Progressive politics and discrimination are not mutually exclusive. Many classmates who would have described themselves as progressive expressed white supremacist ideals, often in violent terms. Without diversity, overt racism often goes unchecked. And where it goes unchecked, it persists.

While Portland is indeed progressive on many political issues, it is still the whitest large city in America — and that’s by design. Before becoming a state in 1859, Oregon passed laws that prohibited slavery but also required all African Americans to leave the territory. It simply wanted no black people. It went so far as to make the “crime” of being black punishable by floggings until the “perpetrator” left. Thus, when Oregon joined the union, it joined not as a free state or a slave state, but as a no-blacks state, the only state to do so.

Even as the rest of the country began to extend rights to African Americans after the Civil War, Oregon held fast to its racist origins. When the 15th Amendment was ratified in 1870, giving black men the right to vote, Oregon was one of only a few states not to sign on, and refused do so until 1959. While the 14th Amendment was passed in 1868, granting citizenship and equal protection of the law to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States,” Oregon did not ratify it until 1973.

The state left on the books anti-miscegenation and other laws that clearly violated the equal protection clause well into the 20th century. Until 2002 , the Oregon constitution even insisted that “no free Negro, or mulatto . . . shall come, reside, or be within this State, or hold any real estate.”

Technically, these laws were unconstitutional despite Oregon’s refusal to ratify the 14th Amendment, and anyone prosecuted under them should have been able to successfully overturn their conviction. Yet their existence still served to intimidate; the weight of the state’s criminal-justice system stood behind them, as Portland proved just as willing to enforce Jim Crow-style segregation as the Deep South, even banning black people from public swimming pools into the 1960s. The possibility of successfully challenging the application of these racist laws in federal court, even for those with the means to do so, offered little comfort.

(Reuters)
I was lucky enough to live across the street from Judge Belton Hamilton, the first black federal administrative law judge in the state. (A black justice still has not been appointed to Oregon’s highest state court.) One of the kindest and most generous men I’ve ever met, Hamilton told me that he never felt safe living in the state under these laws. He told me that he had to draft legislation in order to legally marry his wife (a Japanese American woman) and to buy his house in our small suburb. But although Hamilton may have helped to rewrite the laws, he never successfully changed the hearts of all our neighbors. I remember his house being vandalized regularly growing up. I remember helping him pick toilet paper out of his trees and scrub swastikas off of his stone walkway — in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

As tragic as last week’s murders were, they should shock no one. In a state that sought to exclude black people entirely, and that openly discriminated as long as the Jim Crow South, no one should be surprised that violent, white-supremacist ideologies still flourish. In the 1920s, Oregon had the largest Ku Klux Klan membership per capita of any state; in the 1980s, white nationalists chose Portland as a place to establish themselves in the Northwest; in 1988, a skinhead, egged on by two others, beat Nigerian immigrant Mulugeta Seraw to death with a bat; in 2016, a white supremacist was charged with a hate crime after mowing down a black teenager named Larnell Bruce with his SUV; just two months before this latest attack, ProPublica and BuzzFeed found that Oregon has recently had more documented hate crimes than any other state. A white nationalist rally is still slated to take place just two weeks after this latest double slaying.

In this painful moment, I hope Portland does not uncritically insist that this was an isolated incident. I hope that it seizes this moment — when the city’s hearts and minds may actually be open to critical analysis and radical change — and attempts to seriously address the deep-seated white supremacy in its midst.

Read more:

The Post’s View: The Portland train victims were heroes

Betsy Karasik: Give the Portland heroes the Presidential Medal of Freedom

Colbert I. King: The U.S. has a homegrown terrorist problem — and it’s coming from the right

Eugene Volokh: Portland mayor urges federal government to revoke permit for ‘alt-right’ demonstration, on the theory that ‘hate speech is not protected’

The Post’s View: Portland’s mayor is dangerously wrong about free speech


VOLOKH ON HATE SPEECH AND FREE SPEECH

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/05/29/portland-mayor-urges-federal-government-to-revoke-permit-for-alt-right-demonstration-on-the-theory-that-hate-speech-is-not-protected/?utm_term=.f763b12dfc18
The Volokh Conspiracy Opinion
Portland mayor urges federal government to revoke permit for ‘alt-right’ demonstration, on the theory that ‘hate speech is not protected’

By Eugene Volokh
Contributor, The Volokh Conspiracy
May 29, 2017

PHOTOGRAPH -- Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler in January. (Don Ryan/Associated Press)

From Mayor Ted Wheeler’s Facebook page (emphasis added):

On Friday three men Rick Best, Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, and Micah Fletcher stood up against bigotry and hatred. Two paid with their lives. A third was seriously injured.

Our community remains in shock and mourning. But we are also tremendously grateful to our heroes and their families for their selflessness and heroism. They will serve to inspire us to be the loving, courageous people we are meant to be.

As Mayor, I wanted to update you on a few developments:

1) I have reached out to all of the victims and their families, including the two women who were terrorized and subjected to such hatred and bigotry. I have offered my unconditional assistance and support, day or night.

2) I have confirmed that the City of Portland has NOT and will not issue any permits for the alt right events scheduled on June 4th or June 10th. The Federal government controls permitting for Shrunk Plaza, and it is my understanding that they have issued a permit for the event on June 4th.

3) I am calling on the federal government to IMMEDIATELY REVOKE the permit(s) they have issued for the June 4th event and to not issue a permit for June 10th. Our City is in mourning, our community’s anger is real, and the timing and subject of these events can only exacerbate an already difficult situation.

4) I am appealing to the organizers of the alt-right demonstrations to CANCEL the events they have scheduled on June 4th and June 10th. I urge them to ask their supporters to stay away from Portland. There is never a place for bigotry or hatred in our community, and especially not now.

5) I am calling on every elected leader in Oregon, every legal agency, every level of law enforcement to stand with me in preventing another tragedy.

6) When and if the time is right for them, I would like to work with the families to find an appropriate way to permanently remember their sacrifice and honor their courage. Their heroism is now part of the legacy of this great city and I want future generations to remember what happened here, and why, so that it might serve to both eradicate hatred and inspire future generations to stand up for the right values like Rick, Taliesin, and Micah did last week.

The murders in Portland are, of course, appalling — but, no, the government may not deny permits for speech because it views the speech as promoting “bigotry or hatred,” whether toward Muslims, blacks, whites, police officers, capitalists or whomever else. Nor can the government impose viewpoint-based timeouts for speech after certain events. If a police officer is murdered by anti-police fanatics, for instance, that cannot justify canceling the permit for a rally at which people speak out against the police, at which some attendees may hate the police, and at which a few attendees may indeed support killing police officers.

KGW-TV reports that Wheeler justified his position by saying, “hate speech is not protected under the U.S. Constitution.” But that is not correct (see here for more legal details).

Indeed, the Supreme Court has made clear that the government cannot even impose viewpoint-based demonstration security fees, even when the demonstration has an overt white nationalist message (see Forsyth County v. Nationalist Movement (1992)). It is even clearer that the government cannot just deny permits for rallies that it views as associated with racism or hostility to certain religions. (The 7th Circuit’s Nazi Skokie march case is just the most prominent example.)

The ACLU of Oregon, I’m pleased to say, takes the same view as I do:

1. The government cannot revoke or deny a permit based on the viewpoint of the demonstrators. Period. https://t.co/P9gcNPAumH

— ACLU of Oregon (@ACLU_OR) May 29, 2017

The full tweets from the ACLU of Oregon (I’m merging six together here):

1. The government cannot revoke or deny a permit based on the viewpoint of the demonstrators. Period.

2. It may be tempting to shut down speech we disagree with, but…

3. once we allow the government to decide what we can say, see, or hear, or who we can gather with

4. history shows us that the most marginalized will be disproportionately censored and punished for unpopular speech.

5. We are all free to reject and protest ideas we don’t agree with. That is a core, fundamental freedom of the United States.

6. If we allow the government to shut down speech for some, we all will pay the price down the line.

(Note that I recently had the pleasure of representing the ACLU of Oregon in an unrelated free speech case.)

Comments

Eugene Volokh
Eugene Volokh teaches free speech law, religious freedom law, church-state relations law, a First Amendment Amicus Brief Clinic, and an intensive editing workshop at UCLA School of Law, where he has also often taught copyright law, criminal law, tort law, and a seminar on firearms regulation policy. Follow


DOES HIGH RENT OR OTHER ECONOMIC STRESS EXACERBATE HATRED AS A WHOLE, AND “ORGANIZED HATE GROUPS” IN PARTICULAR? AT THIS POINT IN MY LIFE I TEND TO LOOK FOR THE MONEY IN A PATTERN LIKE THIS. THE NRA MIGHT EASILY BE A KEY MOTIVATOR AND SOURCE OF THIS MONEY FLOW. IF THE NRA ARE INTERESTED IN THE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN DONALD TRUMP AND THE RUSSIAN OLIGARCHS (BUTTINA CASE) WHY NOT IN RACE AND RELIGIOUS STRIFE AS WELL?

PEOPLE WHO WANT TO START “THE RACE WAR” WILL NEED GUNS. THEY ALSO ARE MOST OFTEN TIED UP IN SEXUAL POLITICS – GAY/STRAIGHT AND MALE/FEMALE. DRUGS AND ALCOHOL ARE ANOTHER ISSUE INVOLVED WITH SOCIAL DISSATISFACTION, AS A “SOCIAL LUBRICANT” AND SHORTLY THEREAFTER AS A GROWING PATTERN OF ADDICTION.

NOW THAT MARIJUANA IS BEING GROWN AND SOLD LEGALLY, THAT’S A HUGE CENTRAL SOURCE OF MONEY; AND ALSO IN THE PLACES WHERE THE DRUGS ARE MOST CONSUMED IT CAUSES LOCAL DISTRESS IN THE FORM OF HOMELESSNESS AND FAMILY BREAKUP. ALL OF THOSE THINGS CREATE MORE HUMAN MISERY WHICH BRINGS OUT MORE HATE, AS PEOPLE LOOK FOR A BOGEYMAN TO BLAME.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/homelessness-on-the-rise-in-some-u-s-cities/
Where Hate Groups Are Concentrated in the U.S.
RICHARD FLORIDA MAR 15, 2018

PHOTOGRAPH -- Riot police protect members of the Ku Klux Klan from counter-protesters as they arrive to rally in opposition to city proposals to remove or make changes to Confederate monuments in Charlottesville, Virginia. Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

Organized hate groups are found in 340 counties—but those counties spread across every state of the union.

Hate in America is on the rise. There are currently nearly a thousand known hate groups in the United States—an increase of 4 percent just this past year, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). At the cusp of this are white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups, which have surged the most, according to the most recent data. Furthermore, there is evidence that hateful acts have proliferated since Donald Trump began his presidential campaign.

How can we make sense of this growth in hate across the country, as well as the cultural, political, and economic factors that underpin and influence hate groups?

A new paper published in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers takes a deep dive into the geography of organized hate groups around the country. To do so, the paper’s authors—Richard Medina, Emily Nicolosi, Simon Brewer, and Andrew Linke, all of the University of Utah—use data on organized hate groups from the SPLC. In 2014, the year their study focuses on, the SPLC identified 784 organized hate groups. Previous studies, including my own, have tracked the geography of hate groups, but a key contribution of this research is that it tracks them across U.S. counties.

The geography of organized hate* in America is at once significantly concentrated and considerably spread out. On the one hand, hate groups are found in slightly more than 10 percent of U.S. counties (340 of 3,142), according to the study. But on the other, hate groups span the entire country, and can be found in every single state. While the heartland—stretching from the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Nebraska to Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas—has among the highest levels of hate groups, the East and West Coasts have a high density of these groups as well, as the map below shows.

Originally published in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers © Taylor & Francis Group 2018 (Design by Madison McVeigh/CityLab)

The study finds that, not surprisingly, the geography of organized hate is shaped by factors like race and ethnicity, education, poverty, religion, and political conservatism. Organized hate is concentrated in places that are poorer, less educated, less diverse, and whiter, more religious, and more conservative. But the precise extent to which these factors affect hate differs somewhat in different parts of the country. The maps below chart the connection between hate groups and these variables for the 340 counties that are home to hate groups.

Race

Race plays a considerable role in the geography of hate. The map below shows the connection between hate groups and the white share of the population. As you can see, there is a stronger connection between race and hate in some areas of the country than others, with it being more pronounced in the heartland and on the West Coast than along the East Coast.

The association is stronger in areas where there are concentrations of white people, while non-white people are more spatially diffuse. This, the paper notes, can cause immigrants or minorities to be perceived as threats. On the map below, dark red represents areas where the influence of white populations on hate groups is the strongest, while lighter pink indicates weaker associations between the two.

Originally published in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers © Taylor & Francis Group 2018

Poverty

Hate also tends to track with poverty. Here, the connection between poverty and hate is most pronounced in the center of the county and on the West Coast. On this map, dark red counties again show places where the correlation between hate groups and those living at or below the federal poverty level is strongest, while pink indicates places where the association is weaker.

Originally published in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers © Taylor & Francis Group 2018

Education

Hate groups tend to crop up in areas with lower levels of education. But now we see a slightly different pattern: The connection between lower education and hate groups is strongest in the South, especially parts of Texas, as well as Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana. On the map below, the darker blue areas represent places where the lack of college-educated people over 25 years of age has a greater effect on hate groups—though this is a common trend throughout the U.S. Light blue indicates places where this connection is the weakest.

Originally published in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers © Taylor & Francis Group 2018

Religion

Although hate tends to be connected to religiosity, the connection between religion and hate groups varies around the country. (The study measures religiosity based on the number of people in religious congregations compared to the number of people living in a county.) A higher number of religious people is associated with more hate groups in parts of the Midwest, Southeast, and Northeast. But there is a negative relationship between religion and hate in the West, from California and Oregon to Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. On the map below, red and pink indicate places where religion is positively associated with hate, while shades from light to darker blue indicate places where the correlation is negative.

Originally published in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers © Taylor & Francis Group 2018

Political Conservatism

Hate groups track to politically conservative areas, but the effects of political conservatism are also mixed across regions, in ways that are similar to religion. (The study measures political conservatism as the estimated share of Republican voters.) In the map below, dark red shows places where hate is more closely correlated to political conservatism, while lighter pink indicates places where the correlation is weaker. Gray areas are ones in which political conservatism doesn’t have an effect.

Originally published in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers © Taylor & Francis Group 2018

Political conservatism and religion appear to reinforce one another when it comes to organized hate in America, according to the study. But this relationship fluctuates around the country: In the Midwest, Southeast, and parts of the Northeast, religion seems to have a greater impact on hate-group activity where there is a higher degree of political conservatism. In the West and Mountain regions, the two do not interact as much.

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The study shows that while organized hate groups are concentrated in U.S. counties, no geographic region is immune to hate. Indeed, hate in America has a long, distressing history that cuts across America’s major geographic regions. The Midwest was a hotbed of white supremacy before the Civil War and is home to the Michigan Militia. The South and Southwest have long been centers for the Ku Klux Klan and other white-supremacist groups. The Northwest saw a striking rise in white-supremacist groups in the 1980s. And the Northeast has had its share of organized hate as well: In the ‘30s and ‘40s, a wave of anti-Semitic and racially motivated violence hit what we now think of progressive states like Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York.

In fact, the study argues that geography and place play a fundamental role in organized hate in America. Identity is strongly rooted to place, so hate can be understood as a reflex to defend a place from a perceived threat or “other.” Powerful local groups can mobilize around just such a defense when they feel “their” community and “their” values are under threat. In this way, hate is organized differently, and takes on different expressions, depending on the place. This sounds a lot like stories we’re hearing in the news from across America today.

About the Author

Richard Florida
Richard Florida @RICHARD_FLORIDA FEED

Richard Florida is a co-founder and editor at large of CityLab and a senior editor at The Atlantic. He is a university professor in the University of Toronto’s School of Cities and Rotman School of Management, and a distinguished fellow at New York University’s Schack Institute of Real Estate.