Wilmette Nazi Patrick Langballe Arrested for Breaking into a Gas Station

Another bonehead causing trouble in the local white supremacist scene for a long time has found himself in the papers again. Patrick Langballe, who began his white power organizing while attending New Trier High School as the "White War Commission", is a former member of the now splintered World Church of the Creator(WCOTC) who did several years prison time having been convicted of multiple hate crimes. His recent arrest for breaking into a gas station to steal instant lottery tickets is just the latest on his list of embarrassing antics which caused him to get kicked out of the local Blood and Honour's C-18 division (denoted by the sloppy "28" B&H tattoo on his forehead). Rumor has it he received the boot because he was giving C-18 tattoos to non-members, making C-18 more public than they wanted by making business cards, joking about having sex with children, talking trash about other local nazis, and most importantly, providing us(ssARA) with intel on people within his own movement(thanks again). According to John Alexander of C-18, Langballe was also caught smoking weed with a person of color(apparently a horrible crime in the WN world). These are things that lead to his own comrades thinking that he is one loose cannon who can't be trusted. Let's see how much white unity he's finding in Cook County Jail where he has been sitting for more than three weeks now. From TribLocal:

A Wilmette man has been charged with breaking into a gas station to steal lottery tickets.Patrick Langballe, 34, of 1936 Schiller Ave., was charged recently with burglary, police said. Authorities said Langballe smashed the front door of the BP gas station, 901 Lake Ave., and stole instant lottery tickets at 1:15 a.m. on Nov. 1.“He was identified off a video surveillance,” said Wilmette Police Sgt. Kyle Murphy. “We knew it was him. It was a matter of locating him.”Langballe agreed to come into the Wilmette Police Department, where he was questioned and later charged, Murphy said.He allegedly stole 70 instant lottery tickets valued at $500, Murphy said.“There were some winners,” Murphy said. “But he didn’t successfully cash them in.”Bond was set Dec. 6 and Langballe was given a Dec. 20 court date at Skokie courthouse.Langballe could not be reached for comment.

Neo Nazi Mariusz Wdziekonski Sentenced to Seven years

Mariusz Wdziekonski(from the 7800 block of Lawrence Ave), an alleged member of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement, was arrested in 2008 for vandalizing 67 graves of Jewish men and women interred in Westlawn Cemetery in Norridge, Illinois. Convicted earlier this month, he received the maximum sentence of 7 years for his actions to be carried out at Stateville prison in Joliet.  While South Side ARA is glad to see one less white supremacist roaming the streets, we recognize the failure that is the prison-industrial complex, a system that sweeps problems under the rug without healing the damages caused to our communities. Taken from the Chicago Tribune:

A Norridge man found guilty of a hate crime for spraying anti-Semitic graffiti on dozens of grave markers at a Jewish cemetery has beensentenced to seven years -- the maximum penalty permitted by law.

Judge Larry Axelrood called Mariusz Wdziekonski, 25, "a bigot" before sentencing him today.

"You have this warped idea that you're going to be a hero to these
other bigots and white supremacists," Axelrood said. "You wanted to
inflict your hatred. You wanted to inflict your pain. You brought
shame to your family."

Wdziekonski did not speak during his sentencing at the Skokie branch courthouse.

Wdziekonski was convicted of  spray-painting anti-Semitic epithets and neo-Nazi and white supremacist hate symbols on 67 headstones in
Westlawn Cemetery in January 2008. One grave marker was spray-painted with a noose with a Jewish Star of David dangling from it, authorities
said.

Wdziekonski, a Polish national, was arrested in February 2008.
Investigators at the time said he was a member of the National
Socialist Movement, which the Anti Defamation League has called the
largest and most active neo-Nazi group in the United States.
After his arrest, investigators found pictures of Wdziekonski dressed
as a German storm trooper and said he was fascinated with Nazi history and culture, Assistant State's Attorney Lauren Brown said.
Held on $250,000 bond since his arrest, Wdziekonski has already been
imprisoned for almost three years and could therefore be eligible for
early release in a few months. Prosecutors said he could be deported
to Poland.

Wdziekonski testified in his own defense during the 2 ½-day trial. He
denied being a neo-Nazi or white supremacist and said he was simply a
collector of Nazi memorabilia.

"It is a hate crime because he doesn't like a single group of people,"
Brown said. "I can't imagine anything that could be worse...especially
to the Jewish community. He doesn't even have the graciousness to say
he is sorry."

Axelrood said that while the U.S. is a free country where people are allowed to have hateful beliefs, they cannot act on them.

"You can keep you beliefs," the judge told Wdziekonski, "and you can take them to the penitentiary."

Advancing the Understanding of the Ones We Destroy

In the Left there is a real a problem, amongst many, of reducing Fascism to be merely synonymous with bureaucratic or even just plain "bad", tossing the word around so loosely when describing "measures that represent the ordinary functioning of government". This only serves to delude the discussion. Fascism is a grass roots and self proclaimed anti-capitalist movement or "political behavior" based on racial/religious superiority that abandons liberty and pursues with violence a quest for internal purity and  expansion. It has many tendencies and forms. Antifascists must not only understand, but be able to explain why the work we do is necessary .  If antifascist want to develop strong militant cadre we must advance our understanding of that which we are fighting. Here are a few reads that may be helpful in capturing a definition or analyses that better suit us for internal debate.

This is a partial issue taken from the "collections" out of the sojourner truths digital archive. It was printed in 1976 and is compiled with analyses and debate about fascism in the U.S.

• Fascism in the U.S.? current debates on Fascism Partial PDF

A few books dedicated to the subject

• The nature of Fascism
• Fascism- critical conceptions in Political science
• The Anatomy of Fascism
• A history of fascism 1914-1945
• The Doctrine of Fascism
• Confronting Fascism: Discussion documents for a militant movement(book reveiew)
• The Anatomy of Fascism
• Beating Fascism in Theory and Practice

Here is a debate stemming from Confronting Fascism: Discussion documents for a militant movement between Bring the Ruckus and Three way fight. One can potentially follow the debate without having read the book itself.

• BTR vs Three way fight

Pro choice militants take on Joe Scheidler and the pro life action league

In the early hours of December 1st, pro-choice militant feminists attacked
the home of  an anti-choice "patriarch" Joe Schiedler on the North Side of
Chicago. The day fallowing the action news spread across Christian and Catholic news sites about the attack on the Scheidler's even contacting the Obama Administration to do an investigation on this "hate crime" but still, while wanting to incarcerate them, offering up a whole lot of forgiveness. Isn't it ironic that a few rocks being thrown through a couple windows grabs so much attention from their side while people who preform abortions, or even work in health clinics where they are preformed, have to wear bullet proof vests to work?

Taken from  the pro life action league website. Posted by Ann Scheidler (December 2, 2010 at 6:03 pm)

 

The broken window in the front of Joe and Ann Scheidler’s Chicago home [Photo by Ann Scheidler]

At a little after 2:00 AM on Thursday morning I awoke to the sound of breaking glass. My first thought was that a shelf must have fallen in the china cabinet. Then I heard it again. Joe and I got up and went downstairs to check out what had happened. We did not suspect anything particularly untoward. I didn’t have my contacts or glasses so I wasn’t seeing to clearly. Everything looked OK. We decided it must have been something outside, so we went back to bed.

Later in the morning when we were about to head to 7:30 Mass, Joe went out front to see if anything looked suspicious. At about the same time that he discovered shards of glass all over our front porch, I discovered a chunk of asphalt and lots of broken glass on the floor in the dining room.

A few minutes earlier I had noticed that the living room seemed a bit cold, but the windows are covered with lace shades so it wasn’t obvious that a window was broken. After finding the dining room break, I checked again in the living room. Sure enough on the floor was a plastic bag with a piece of asphalt and a note in an envelope.

Asphalt Accompanied by Cryptic Writings

I opened the envelope to find a message from a troubled woman (women). It started: “We are crazy, feminists bitches….” Clearly it was time to call the police.

 Note that came with the asphalt chunks  [Photo by Ann Scheidler]

A very concerned Chicago police officer arrived shortly. He explained that it wasn’t technically a burglary because no one tried to break it, but since it wasn’t exactly a random act of vandalism, it might fall into the category of a “hate crime.”

Now here I must confess that I do not believe in hate crimes. A crime is a crime. And chances are if you rob someone or hurt him or throw a brick through his window, you probably don’t like him. I don’t think we need layers of crimes with special labels to try to keep order.

It turns out, however, that the “hate crime” label does not fit this particular crime. The explanation? The perpetrator didn’t hate us. She just hated what we stand for. Rather a subtle difference it seems to me. The upshot is there won’t be much investigation unless it happens again.

Fortunately while the police officer was still at our house, a handy man pulled up. He was there to fix a door. I asked him if he was pretty good at windows too and he set about to replace the broken panes and get the storm window repaired.

Deathscort Training Session Same Night. Coincidence?

A few hours after the police report had been made, I recalled that the Illinois Choice Action Team (ICAT) had scheduled a training session for clinic escorts to work at Albany clinic where we regularly pray and counsel. The training was held about twenty minutes from our house. Did the ICAT announce our home address to the recruits, or did they come away from the training session in such a frenzy to stop pro-lifers that they decided to pay a visit to the Scheidlers? Who knows.

I called the police station to give them the new piece of information, but the officer on duty thought it was irrelevant because there would be no way to prove that someone from the training was the brick thrower. True, but it certainly seems likely.

A brick through your window is a pretty small price to pay for your beliefs. But there’s no guarantee that that’s where it stops. We are blessed that so many people pray for us on a regular basis. And we have received many calls from pro-life friends with assurance of their prayers. That’s why we aren’t especially unnerved by this act of vandalism. And that’s why we will pray for the post-abortive women who paid us a visit and tossed a couple of bricks. Maybe no one else is praying for them. I hope you’ll join us.

We stand in solidarity with the "crazy feminist bitches" who carried out
this action and hope they continue their good work. Actions like these are
but a taste of the resistance that will eventually over shadow the
delusional anti-choicers who condone hit lists of abortion doctors (The Nuremberg Files) but are astounded when their homes are attacked.