2016 was an intense, amazing, and horrific year. If you haven’t already, check out our year in review here. A lot has happened in the last week, so we won’t waste any time in getting right to the news.
Trump the Regime, Smash the State
A collection of churches, mosques, and synagogues is stepping up to create an underground railroad for undocumented immigrants under the new Trump regime. According to Raw Story:
A network of 450 houses of worship across the country are stepping up to act as a kind of “underground railroad” for undocumented immigrants under the nascent Donald Trump administration.
The New York Times said that these churches, synagogues and mosques are all part of the Sanctuary Movement — an interfaith movement that began in the 1960s, but which has undergone a revival in recent years as the U.S. has stepped up deportation of undocumented immigrants.
The Sanctuary Movement has gained even more momentum since the election of Republican Donald Trump, who has pledged to deport 2 to 3 million unauthorized immigrants who he says are guilty of crimes. While not every church has the space and resources necessary to physically shelter immigrants, all 450 organizations have pledged to provide “money, legal aid, food, child care or transportation,” said the Times‘ Laurie Goodstein.
Against a backdrop of continued terrorist attacks internationally, the Obama administration has jumped at the opportunity to beef up the security state this New Year’s Eve:
Police departments throughout the United States have seized upon the attack on a Christmas market in Berlin this month to justify a massive security buildup surrounding New Year’s Eve celebrations in major US cities.
These military-style operations accompanying New Year’s ceremonies, often placing whole sections of city centers on lockdown, have become as much of an annual tradition in the United States as the celebrations themselves.
The security buildup comes in spite of the absence of any credible threats of terror attacks within the United States.
“U.S. defence and security agencies said they believed the threat of militant attacks inside the United States was low during this New Year’s holiday,” Reuters reported yesterday. However, federal security bulletins have made unsubstantiated statements of concern over “homegrown violent extremists” carrying out attacks against celebrations.
The real function of these operations is not to ensure the safety of the crowds but to stoke fears over possible terror attacks in order to legitimize American imperialism’s wars abroad and to acclimate the population to police-state measures and attacks on democratic rights at home.
Obama also recently signed his last Pentagon budget, further signalling his commitment to the buildup of the American military power and helped pass the The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA):
The general outlines of the NDAA were previously reported. In addition to the base Pentagon budget, it includes a $67 billion Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) appropriation, a massive slush fund used to finance US wars abroad as well as budget-busting increases to military spending. Further funds are provided for the Energy Department’s nuclear weapons programs.
In the final version of the legislation, previously unpublicized provisions have emerged that amount to a mandate to the incoming Trump administration to continue and escalate the provocative military confrontations initiated by the Obama White House.
Included in the bill is language facilitating the “provision of man-portable air defense systems to the vetted Syrian opposition during fiscal year 2017.” As is well known, weapons funneled by the CIA and the Pentagon to the so-called “moderate rebels” have invariably ended up in the hands of Al Qaeda-affiliated militias that constitute the core fighting force in the US-orchestrated war for regime-change in Syria. These anti-aircraft missiles can be used not only to shoot down Russian warplanes, but also civilian passenger jets.
Another part of the bill aimed directly against Moscow includes a major increase in military aid to the right-wing, anti-Russian government of Ukraine, including for “lethal” military equipment.
In a blatant provocation directed against China, the legislation provides for high-level exchanges between the US military and the military of the island of Taiwan, which Beijing claims as part of its territory. The measure represents a further attack on the “One China” policy embraced by Washington for nearly four decades. It is in line with the provocation staged by Donald Trump earlier this month, accepting a congratulatory phone call from Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and thereby signaling plans for an even more confrontational policy toward China.
But the NDAA contains even more horrible aspects to it:
Along with the usual terrible, horrible, very bad, no good NDAA stuff (all the little mandates involved in continuing to operate the most irresponsibly bloated and expensive military machine on the planet), this NDAA included an ugly little Christmas gift for incoming president Donald Trump: The Countering Foreign Disinformation and Propaganda Act.
The CFDAPA (yes, I’m going to give that mouthful an acronym) started out as a separate piece of “bipartisan” legislation introduced by US Senators Rob Portman (R-OH) Chris Murphy (D-CT). It got rolled into the NDAA for the same reason Obama signed it on the Friday before a holiday weekend. That is, to minimize public attention and mute criticism.
Some of the more overheated responses to the CFDAPA paint it as a scheme allowing the federal government to “outlaw” media outlets that don’t toe the government’s line: Just wave a magic wand, declare an impertinent blog to be “foreign disinformation and propaganda,” shut the blog down, and maybe drag the blogger off to Gitmo for a long chat.
Further, the law authorizes grants to non-governmental agencies to help “collect and store examples in print, online, and social media, disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda” directed at the U.S. and its allies, as well as “counter efforts by foreign entities to use disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda to influence the policies and social and political stability” of the U.S. and allied nations.
The head of the center will be appointed by the president, which likely means the first director will be chosen by President-elect Donald Trump.
Also, if you want a ‘who’s who’ look at the people who are making up the Trump team, cabinet, and administration, check out this article from Grist.
Black Snake Killaz
On December 30th, SWAT teams were called into Standing Rock as protests again flared and demonstrators occupied a bridge, leading to 5 arrests. UPI wrote:
Police in Morton County, N.D., called in a SWAT team to the site of a Dakota Access Pipeline protest for the first time in several weeks, arresting five people.
The Morton County Sheriff’s Office said officers fired nonlethal ammunition at a crowd of more than 100 protesters assembled on a bridge Thursday afternoon near a Department of Transportation construction site.
Indigenous activists are focussing on the Dakota Access pipeline’s finances before Donald Trump takes office in an effort to further strain the oil corporation and cause continuing delays that they hope could be disastrous for the project.
After the Obama administration denied the company a key permit to finish construction, Native American activists warned that the win was only temporary and that Trump, an investor in the pipeline corporation, would seek to quickly advance the project next year.
Some indigenous advocates and environmental groups have focused their efforts to hurt the pipeline company’s profits on an approaching 1 January deadline that the operator, Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), cited in court records.
The corporation claimed in court that each month of delay cost the company $4.5m and that a failure to launch on time would lead to losses of $913m in 2017.
While some activists have continued to camp near the construction site in very harsh winter conditions, others have been organizing successful “defund DAPL” campaigns.
In this context, fighting the corporations and banks involved in DAPL across the wider social terrain is an extremely important aspect in the struggle to defeat it. If you’re looking for ideas, this IGD article might be a good idea to start here.
Solidarity actions continue in the US, such as in Michigan, where people protested at JP Morgan Chase. Meanwhile, a wide variety of pipeline projects wait in the wings and face resistance. Check out this list of 10 states where resistance to pipelines is ongoing, including Florida, where people opposed to the Sabal Trail Pipeline protested recently outside of the Army Corp of Engineers in Jacksonville. Also, in Texas, protest camps have sprung up to defeat a pipeline there. As one article wrote:
Pipeline and drilling opponents will open three camps in the high desert north of Big Bend National Park over the next week or so, hoping to attract hundreds of protesters to West Texas to block a pipeline and the development of recently discovered oil and gas fields.
The organizers aim to follow the example of the hundreds of people who traveled to North Dakota, camping out and demonstrating for months to stop —at least for now — the completion of the Dakota Access pipeline, which would have carried oil from the Bakken Shale in North Dakota to Midwestern pipeline networks that connect to the Gulf Coast refineries. The Obama administration decided not to grant the permit needed to finish the project; the incoming Trump administration, however, has pledged to give the pipeline the green light.
Let’s not lose sight of our drive to kill the black snake as well as take this energy from the #NoDAPL struggles and apply it to all of these other fights that are popping up across the US. Furthermore, let us take stock at the failures of liberalism, allyism, and non-violence and remember what actually does work: solidarity, direct action, and confronting power and capital.
Class War
A new report finds that half of millennials are now making less than their parents did at 30. From QZ:
The American dream hinges on the idea that future generations will do better than the ones that preceded them. But a new study (pdf) from a team of economists and sociologists at Harvard, Stanford, and the University of California is bad news for a whole generation: Only half of American 30-year-olds today earn more money than their parents did at the same age. That’s a steep drop from the early-1970s, when 30-year-olds were virtually guaranteed to outpace their parents’ generation in earning power.
Another study released stated that in 2016, the world’s richest increased their wealth by $237 billion dollars:
The world’s wealthiest 200 billionaires increased their net worth by $237 billion in 2016, taking their total wealth to $4.4 trillion as of the close of trading on Tuesday, an overall increase for the year of 5.7 percent, according to calculations by Bloomberg.
The major factor in the wealth increase is the surge in the US stock market since the election of Donald Trump on November 8, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average heading towards 20,000, an increase of close to 9 percent in seven weeks, or 69 percent on an annualized basis.
US billionaires have increased their wealth by $77 billion since the Trump victory based on expectations that his commitment to end corporate regulations and carry out both corporate and personal income tax cuts will boost profits.
That perception has been reinforced by Trump’s appointees to key cabinet posts, including billionaire Wilbur Ross to head the Commerce Department and former Goldman Sachs executive Steven Mnuchin as Treasury secretary.
Moreover, new data confirms that more and more US workers have highly unstable and precarious forms of income and employment, despite unemployment being at a record low:
Contributing to this inequality is the fact that while more Americans are working than at any time since August 2007, more people are working part time, erratic and unpredictable schedules—without full-time, steady employment. Since 2007, the number of Americans involuntarily working part time has increased by nearly 45 percent. More Americans than before are part of what’s considered the contingent workforce, working on-call or on-demand, and as independent contractors or self-employed freelancers, often with earnings that vary dramatically month to month.
These workers span the socioeconomic spectrum, from low-wage workers in service, retail, hospitality and restaurant jobs—and temps in industry, construction and manufacturing—to highly educated Americans working job-to-job because their professions lack fulltime employment opportunities given the structure of many information age businesses. As Andrew Stettner, Michael Cassidy and George Wentworth point out in their new report, A New Safety Net for an Era of Unstable Earnings, what all these workers have in common are highly volatile, unstable incomes and a lack of access to the traditional U.S. unemployment insurance safety net.
This increasing breakdown of everyday life in poor and working-class communities into highly policed territories was highlighted this holiday season where large scale disrubances, fights with police, and flash mobs took place in malls across the US. According to CBS Local:
Four people were arrested after a large crowd of “disorderly,” juveniles gathered at Philadelphia Mills in Northeast Philadelphia on Tuesday night, according to the Philadelphia Police Department.
The arrests follow a second night of chaos at the Philadelphia-area mall.
On Tuesday night, approximately 200 teens arrived via SEPTA bus and descended onto the mall property, but police say they were ready.
Officers were able to keep the majority of the teens outside of the mall, but roughly 30 individuals did make it inside—leaving some shoppers sheltering inside stores.
“When those 30 individuals got in the food court area they started acting disorderly. They were running around they were shouting, yelling, screaming ,” said Philadelphia Chief Inspector, Scott Small.
The mall eruptions expose as a lie the saccharine picture of America painted by the corporate press and Obama as his administration draws to a close. That mini-riots took place in fifteen different locations located hundreds of miles from one another shows that something is profoundly wrong with America.
Monday’s free-for-all in Aurora, Colorado took place at the same mall where James Holmes killed 12 people and injured 70 others in July 2012. Since Obama took office, 122 people have been killed in school shootings alone. The response of the government has been two-fold: empty banalities and the militarization of the police.
Though concerns for their immediate safety may have provoked shoppers to take flight, the underlying anxieties are rooted in social relations that are dominated by the vast levels of economic inequality that loom over every aspect of life in the United States.
Lastly, cities across the US continue to evict DIY and autonomous spaces. In Oakland:
Qilombo, a radical community social center in the heart of West Oakland’s Afrikatown, is one of the latest spaces to be impacted by the rise of code enforcement complaints, which has threatened to board up its services.
According to Qilombo’s organizers, the property’s management company—SCM East Bay—had renewed their monthly lease but reversed its decision a few days after the Ghost Ship fire.
Water Crisis
As we reported last time, many communities face horrific levels of lead contamination at the same levels or higher as in Flint, Michigan:
According to the findings, more than 1,100 of those communities had lead levels four times higher than those found in Flint. In some areas of Baltimore, Cleveland and Philadelphia the rate of elevated lead tested over the last decade was 40 to 50 percent.
The lead poisoning epidemic is rooted in a variety of causes, from antiquated lead water pipes, to toxic wastes left behind by industry to peeling lead-based paint from old homes. Children in at least 4 million US households are exposed to high levels of lead.
In Flint, 5 percent of children screened showed lead levels in excess of the 5 micrograms per deciliter threshold set by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The worst-hit areas in the city had more than twice that level.
The report cites the case of St. Joseph, Missouri, where in one small neighborhood 120 children have been poisoned by lead since 2010. The neighborhood is filled with aging houses, whose lead-based paint poses a deadly hazard. From 2010-2015, more than 15 percent of children tested in seven census tracts had elevated lead levels, well above the statewide average of 5 percent.
In the Fruitvale neighborhood of Oakland, California, 7.57 percent of children tested had dangerous levels of lead.
The Reuters report notes that Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old from Baltimore, brutally murdered by police in April 2015, suffered from lead poisoning. In 2008 Gray and his family filed a lawsuit against the landlord of the row house where they were living in Baltimore’s Sandtown-Winchester area. According to legal filings, Gray and his siblings were exposed to lead and suffered developmental problems as a consequence. The case was settled for an amount that was not disclosed.
Pennsylvania had the highest number of individual census tracts, 1,100, where at least 10 percent of childhood lead tests were elevated over the last decade. In 49 census tracts, including areas of inner city Philadelphia and Harrisburg, at least 40 percent of children had elevated lead levels.
The Reuters report quotes Dr. Helen Egger, chair of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at NYU Langone Medical Center’s Child Study Center. Dr. Egger said of the data, “The disparities you’ve found between different areas have stark implications. Where lead poisoning remains common, many children will have developmental delays and start out behind the rest.”
A new report from the Epoch Times explains:
America is simultaneously water-rich and experiencing prolonged drought. Cases of contaminated drinking water are increasing, as are tensions with neighbors over shared water resources.
By 2025, it is estimated that two-thirds of the world’s population will live in water-stressed areas, concentrated in the Middle East, North Africa, and western Asia, according to the World Resources Institute. Water scarcity, now recognized as a key contributor to the war in Syria, will almost certainly create more conflict and more water refugees.
[In ths US a]griculture drinks up about 80 percent of water consumed in America and over 90 percent in Western states.
Pollution of water tables, tap water contamination for crumbing infrastructure, and waste of limited resources, are all symptoms of a civilization in collapse. Lastly, climate migrants are already coming into the US and the trend is expected to grow as climate change increases in severity:
Across Mexico, farmers still wait for rain that doesn’t come. Severe droughts, punctuated by intense storms and flooding, are huge environmental challenges for Mexico in the coming century. By 2080, agricultural declines are expected to drive 1.4 million to 6.7 million adult Mexicans out of the country. Most of those people will come to the United States.
Hardly the drug lords and criminals of Trumpian myth, most Mexican climate migrants are struggling rural people (not unlike Trump’s own supporters). They depend on predictable weather to grow the crops they eat. When they know the rain isn’t coming, or their home has been destroyed in a flood, or some other climate-fueled event has upended their lives, families face limited options: starve or move.
Right now, the primary factors driving Mexicans to migrate to the United States are better economic prospects or family connections — both of which can be twisted up with climate change. But in Mexico and around the world, climate changes tend to reshuffle populations within borders, too. Droughts and floods, in particular, often trigger shorter-distance moves, largely from rural areas into cities.
Fire to the Prisons
In Lansing, Michigan, where prisoners have taken continuous actions during the #PrisonStrike:
About 80 high-security prisoners at Baraga Correctional Facility in the western Upper Peninsula refused to eat lunch and dinner this week in a protest over prison food, a Corrections Department spokesman confirmed.
The protest began at lunchtime on Tuesday and continued through Wednesday but appeared to taper off on Thursday, after meetings with officials from the prison and the department’s food contractor, Florida-based Trinity Services Group, department spokesman Chris Gautz said.
Gautz couldn’t provide any specifics about the prisoners’ complaints, but he said they related to both the quantity and the quality of the food.
The Fight Toxic Prisons campaign has several updates:
We got word that censorship of the initial #FightToxicPrisons mailing in support of the Sept 9 #PrisonStrike was overturned! At the ADX Supermax in Colorado no less. Read the letter here. This was the second success we have over turning censorship, with the other bring Rochester FMC (both federal facilities). Unfortunately, prisons in FL, PA, VA and TX censored our mail and either upheld the decision on appeal or chose to blow us off.
If anyone is interested in developing this mailing effort into a regular effort, perhaps a quarterly or bi-annual FTP newsletter, please get in touch and lets make it happen in the New Year!
Next, check out this audio from our Fight Toxic Prison Convergence in June, Jasmine Heiss from Amnesty International USA and the International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee lays out the injustices that Leonard has faced. Check the comments on the video for how you can help the effort to secure clemency for him.
In a Texas prison, a prisoner was gassed in his cell by guards:
On Wednesday, December 21, 2016, a prisoner at the Texas Clements Unit, Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, was gassed in his cell while handcuffed from behind. A letter written by Mr. Johnson to a supporter, dated December 22, 2016, reported that his gassing was “all retaliation for my involvement in exposing the foul abuses here.” Kevin “Rashid” Johnson is a well-known scholar and prison activist who has dedicated his efforts to exposing the civil and environmental injustices behind bars.
His most recent letter also reads:
“I’m in a gas-covered cell now. The law requires that they decontaminate a prisoner and his cell anytime they spray gas on him/her. They refused in my case. My sheets and bedding are covered in bright orange gas, underwear too, as is the cell wall.” According to the supporter who received Rashid’s letter, she could smell the toxic gas as soon as she opened the envelope.
The vicious treatment of Mr. Johnson is part of a clear pattern. There is evidently a culture among prison staff that encourages such sadistic behavior. What they have done and continue to do — both to Mr. Johnson and to thousands of other victims — constitutes a clear violation of basic human rights.
The NYC Anarchist Black Cross guide to prisoners of war has been updated. Get it here!
All Cops are Bastards
At the time of this writing, according to Killed by Police, four people were killed by law enforcement, just today, leading to the full amount of people killed in the US in 2016 to 1,152.
The shooting of a city man by an on-duty policewoman led to a protest outside of the Paterson Police Department on Monday night with protesters calling for authorities to release the name of the police officer who shot and wounded 41-year-old Larry “Sincere” Bouie in front of his two nine-year-old sons.
“Justice for Sincere! Justice for Sincere!” shouted about 35 to 40 protesters who gathered outside of the police station in the brisk autumn night as a dozen officers at the entrance of the headquarter looked on. “Justice for Sincere! Justice for Sincere!”
The protesters from Black Lives Matter made four demands: release of the officer’s name, release any footage of Saturday’s shooting, divest in police, and create a civilian review board to oversee the police force.
Antifa
IGD has been getting a lot emails and questions on social media about a supposed armed march led by Andrew Anglin, the editor of The Daily Stormer, a disgusting Neo-Nazi website, in support of Richard Spencer and his mother. Up until recently, Anglin has been opposed to Richard Spencer, the head of the National Policy Institute (NPI), and the two have been at opposite sides of the ‘Alt-Right,’ with Spencer being more conservative about his white supremacist ideals, and Anglin openly using Neo-Nazi imagery. However, after the recent NPI conference where attendees openly gave the Nazi salute, Spencer has gone into full blown Nazi mode, as much of the older white nationalist crowd has distanced themselves from him. The fallout has also led many in Spencer’s former hometown to call for his mother to disown her son, who benefits from his wealthy parents through a huge trust fund and property which he lives in and operates NPI out of. In response to this, Anglin has announced that he will bus 200 skinheads from California into Whitefish, Montana to protest “Jews” while open carrying weapons in support of the rich Spencer family. While Anglin has made similar false claims in the past, as other people have stated, this is not the time to brush these threats aside.
Currently, Spencer is getting closer and closer to Anglin, and recently appeared with his new Neo-Nazi buddy on a podcast:
Last week, Spencer sat down for an interview with two leading extremists on the “Alt-Right”: Mike Enoch who runs TheRightStuff.biz blog and Andrew Anglin, whose website The Daily Stormer –– a site that has surpassed the popularity long held by Don Black’s Stormfront –– traffics in endlessly vile anti-Semitic memes and heralds President-elect Donald Trump as “Our Glorious Leader.” The interview was posted on Enoch’s blog under the title “Between Two Lampshades,” a crude reference to the post-World War II myth that the skin of victims of the Buchenwald concentration camp had been used to make lampshades.
Calling the interview the first meeting of the “The Triumvirate,” the conversation turns on discussing their hopes for a new America under Trump and the possibilities of an ethnostate that would halt illegal immigration and give way to an all-out assault on immigration from any non-European nation. (It’s worth noting that all three are in favor of eugenics and IQ tests to determine the suitability of people to be citizens.)
In clear terms, the interview was a public relations effort for the newly united front between Spencer, a trust fund beneficiary, Anglin, an internet troll known for bragging in a video leaked online about his “jailbait,” Filipino girlfriend, and an obscure New York blogger who frequently appears on Spencer’s podcast. But Spencer seems to be willing to forge an alliance with the very factions of the Alt-Right he has tried to distance himself from using his family’s wealth and his own educational pedigree.
At the same time, Spencer is doing backflips in the mainstream press to distance himself from Anglin. As one newspaper wrote:
“I’m not telling Anglin to do anything,” Spencer now tells the Indy. “I just assumed it was a troll. Can he really bring out people for a march on a ski village in remote Montana?”
Anglin says he can, though he may be confused about where exactly his skinheads will march. Anglin, who lists a Worthington, Ohio, address on his site, says he is routing a path for the demonstration that will begin in “the center of the city” and end at the “Jewish center, where Gersh is the head and several figures in [local human rights group] Love Lives Here are members.”
This week, Spencer told the Daily Interlake that Anglin is “totally wild—that’s not my kind of thing,” while also calling him a “rational” person who wouldn’t engage in physical violence.
Asked Friday morning whether he would call upon Anglin to stand down, Spencer offered this statement: “It’s time to bring this to an end.” He then pointed the Indy to a Youtube video he posted on Friday in which Spencer says that Whitefish residents can end the controversy by renouncing Love Lives Here, and specifically the Jewish rabbis involved.
In response, Whitefish residents are organizing an anti-hate block party on January 7th. While it remains unclear as to what Anglin will do, we agree that anti-fascists should organize to shut them down and take these threats seriously. At the same time, we also have to recognize that for Spencer this is a shitshow that makes him look even worse. Let’s all grab some popcorn as we watch the Alt-Right further break apart due to it’s own stupidity.
Biggest alt-right neo-fascist misogynist anti-lqbtq anti-immigrant conference crowd-funded on @kickstarter
Stop it: https://t.co/IEJwobvPOq pic.twitter.com/JzHoECX970— South Side ARA (@Chicago_ARA) December 31, 2016
People are trying to shut down a white nationalist conference in Europe that will be attended by Greg Johnson and Matt Forney here from the US. Read more here, but from a call out to shut it down:
At this moment, Identitarian Ideas IX are using Kickstarter.com to raise funds and are very close to their goal. These funds will be used to host their conference and print the above-mentioned book into English.Even if the project gets funded, one of our demands is that the platform be dismantled and the money returned, stopping the conference funding stream.
There are steps to take to stop this conference in its fascist tracks. Fortunately, the plan is easy, safe and sends a strong message to them and their platform. We do it together, by approaching their funding stream: Kickstarter.com1. Go to https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/motpol/identarian-ideas…2. Login to Kickstarter (you can make a Kickstarter account in under 40 seconds!)3. Scroll to the bottom and click on ‘Report this project to Kickstarter’4. Select the second option: “The creator or a backer is breaking one of our Community Guidelines. We do not tolerate spam or abusive behavior.”Additionally email: [email protected], another project-boosting site designed at promoting this project.
Ann Coulter with white nationalist James Edwards, who runs the white nationalist radio show “The Political Cesspool,” at the 2016 Republican National Convention.
Ann Coulter continues to cozy up with out in the open white nationalists, as she showed up to the VDARE Christmas Party. VDARE is a white nationalist think tank that concerns itself mainly with immigration and is headed by Peter Brimelow, who appears regularly at various white nationalist events such as American Renaissance and NPI. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center:
In 2014, white nationalist John Ellis reported that Coulter attended that year’s VDARE party, but those claims were unconfirmed. There can be no mistake about her appearance at this year’s however. At the event, Coulter granted an impromptu interview with another English white nationalist and regular VDARE contributor John Derbyshire.
Derbyshire joined VDARE after being fired by the National Review in 2012 for writing a racist screed in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting titled, “The Talk: Nonblack Version.” The article, presented as a talk from a white parent to their child included lines like, “A small cohort of blacks –– in my experience, around five percent –– is ferociously hostile to whites and will go to great lengths to inconvenience or harm us.” It also included tips like, “If planning a trip to a beach or amusement park at some date, find out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks on that date.”
Derbyshire asked Coulter about the odds of Kris Kobach — the Kansas secretary of state known for his ferocious opposition to immigration and also for his support of various voter-suppression schemes — being appointed deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Coulter responded, “He doesn’t want to take it.” Derbyshire pushed her: “Do you have that authoritatively?” She responded, “Yes. And I’ve threatened to dig up his grave.” At the end of the brief interview, Coulter lamented, “If Kobach isn’t running things … there’s no second term, there’s no country.”
Kris Kobach is the Kansas secretary of state, but also as a lawyer for the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) the legal arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which was group founded by white nationalist John Tanton. Kobach and IRLI are responsible for drafting some of America’s harshest anti-immigrant laws and is a nativist champion.
American Vanguard morons told bar goers photos like these were to support veterans away from home in order to boost their image of having ‘big numbers’ on their website. Pretty pathetic.
In other antifa news, a Keystone State Skinhead/United member was arrested on gun charges, Jonny Riches has been exposed as an Alt-Right troll harassing GhostShip survivors, Ryan Zinke, another Trump pick has ties to white nationalists, drama in Nazi town is leading to a shitty ‘Deploraball,’ and American Vanguard members have further embarrassed themselves by lying to bar goers to get them to pose with fascist flags in an attempt to make their numbers look bigger.
It’s Going Down
We’ve got a couple great podcasts in the works, so stay tuned. As always, if you want to come on the show, shoot us an email. We are currently still working on the new issue of the IGD magazine and hope to have it out soon. We still have lots of shirts, order some here.
If you participated in or organized a New Year’s Eve noise demo, be sure to shoot us a report back.
We will put out our monthly update tomorrow, so look forward to some other IGD updates. But until then, happy new year!