unite the right kessler

2ndary 11/18

see CHARLOTTESVILLE

league of the south

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RWW

05/13/2026

Michelle Boorstein, Laura Meckler and Natalie Allison @ The Washington Post: White House to host 9-hour prayer festival focused on Christian roots of U.S.

Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio and Mike Johnson will speak at the event, which centers on the idea that the founders wanted the U.S. to be explicitly Christian.

Andrew Duehren and Alan Feuer @ The New York Times: Justice Dept. Officials Consider Settling Trump Suit Against I.R.S.

One of the settlement terms under review is for the I.R.S. to drop any audits of the president, his family members and businesses.

Phil Williams @ Hate Comes To Main Street: Far-Right Grudge Match: 'Unite the Right' Organizer Sues Proud Boys Founder

Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes had suggested that Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler may have been on the payroll of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Anthony DeBarros and Annie Linskey @ The Wall Street Journal: The Late-Night Truth Social Storms That Offer a Window Into the President’s Mind

A WSJ analysis of thousands of posts found that the president uses the social-media platform to spread conspiracy theories and attack his adversaries.

Jose Pagliery @ NOTUS: FBI Created ‘Payback Squad’ to Handle Political Cases, Sources Say

Investigators are eyeing cases similar to the recent criminal prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey, one current government official told NOTUS.

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NO LNX

alternet-logo

US extremists are rattled by new sanctions against global terrorism group

How scammers use psychology to create some of the most convincing internet cons

Jordan Green January 15, 2025

The State Department has applied the “specially designated global terrorist” designation to the Terrorgram Collective in a groundbreaking move that for the first time sanctions a transnational white supremacist terrorist group with a significant presence in the United States.

The announcement on Monday — one week before President Biden leaves office — justified the designation based on the group “posing a significant risk of committing, or having participated in training to commit acts of terrorism, that threaten the security of United States nationals or national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States.” Terrorgram is an amalgam of the words “terror” and “Telegram,” the latter of which is a social media platform used by members to distribute propaganda.

“This is the first time you’ve seen a white supremacist group that had members or supporters in the U.S. receive the designation,” Seamus Hughes, a researcher at the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology and Education Center at the University of Nebraska, told Raw Story.

Two of the group’s leaders, Dallas Erin Humber of California and Matthew Robert Allison of Idaho, were indicted last year on charges that included conspiracy, solicitation of hate crimes, solicitation of the murder of federal officials, and conspiracy to provide material support for terrorists. Two other individuals, Brandon Russell — founder of the neo-Nazi terror group Atomwaffen Division — and Andrew Takhistov, who each face federal charges related to plots to attack the power grid, are also linked to Terrorgram.

The indictment against Humber and Allison describes Terrorgram as “a network of channels, group chats, and users on Telegram that promote white supremacists accelerationism: an ideology centered on the belief that the white race is superior; that society is irreparably corrupt and cannot be saved by political action; and that violence and terrorism is necessary to ignite a race war and ‘accelerate’ the collapse of the government and the rise of a white ethnostate.”

Terrorgram is not the first transnational white supremacist terrorist group to be sanctioned by the State Department. In 2020, under the first Trump administration, the State Department applied the “specially designated global terrorist” identification to the Russian Imperial Movement, which was implicated in a series of bombings in 2016 and 2017 that targeted refugee shelters in Sweden. Nordic Resistance Movement, a group founded in Sweden, was added to the list last June.

The specific bans designated groups and individuals from holding property and financial interests in the United States, while also prohibiting U.S. citizens from engaging in financial transactions with them.

Following the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., the Russian Imperial Movement invited the organizers to visit its paramilitary training camps in St. Petersburg, according to Nathan Sales, a former Trump administration State Department counterterrorism official who testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee. Sales said there is no evidence that the Charlottesville organizers accepted the invitation, but the following month, Russian Imperial Movement leaders traveled to the United States to network with white supremacists, and one posed for a photo with the group’s flag in front of the White House.

“What is most interesting for me is this represents the first time when a designation would have ramifications for U.S. prosecutors,” Hughes said. “There’s not a cadre of Russian Imperial Movement adherents in the U.S., whereas there is a good number of individuals that were drawn to Terrorgram in the U.S.”

Hughes said the designation will give prosecutors the ability to request terrorism enhancements during sentencing.

“It helps for them to tell the story to a jury that this is not just a bunch of angry people online, but an actual terrorist group,” he added.

The designation is also likely to make social media companies more reluctant to allow members and associates to organize on their platforms.

“Because tech companies can face legal risks if they provide services to designated groups or individuals, sanctions can prompt them to sever ties with those listed as terrorists,” Sales testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee back in 2022.

The announcement about the State Department sanction against Terrorgram is already causing ripples of unease across Telegram.

Reacting to the announcement on Monday, a neo-Nazi channel that advertises itself as a source of “tradecraft to evade authorities online,” posted: “We all know we are operating on borrowed time here on Telegram. It is unfortunate, as it is a hell of an app.”

The post went on to say that users should not trust Pavel Durov, the Russian founder and CEO of Telegram, to protect their data.

“We don’t want any of our admins or subscribers to wind up in federal prison over ironically being part of a ‘terror group,’” the post continued. “With no publicly available criteria to determine guilt or association, the juice is not worth the squeeze. It doesn’t make sense to maintain a presence where the enemy has the advantage.”

Prior to the arrests of two American leaders last September, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police announced charges against two unnamed Ontario men “alleged to have participated in the creation of Terrorgram Collective manifestos and Atomwaffen Division recruiting videos.”

The Canadian arrests in December 2023 followed an 18-month investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. That timeframe puts the launch of the investigation roughly in June 2021, the time of the first Terrorgram publication Militant Accelerationism, according to a Southern Poverty Law Center investigation.

Federal prosecutors allege that Humber and Allison joined Terrorgram in 2019, and became leaders of the group in the summer of 2022, “after one previous leader was arrested and charged with terrorism offenses and another became aware that he was the subject of a terrorism related investigation.”

Following Humber and Allison’s arrests, three foreign nationals appear to have taken over leadership of Terrorgram. The State Department designation identifies Ciro Daniel Amorim Ferreira of Brazil, Noah Licul of Croatia and Hendrik Walh-Muller of South Africa as “leaders of the Terrorgram Collective” and “specially designated global terrorists.”

Terrorgram is linked to two other federal prosecutions in the United States beyond Humber and Allison. Russell, the Atomwaffen founder, was arrested in February 2023 and charged alongside codefendant Sarah Beth Clendaniel in an alleged plot to carry out a coordinated attack on electrical substations designed to create a widespread power outage in Baltimore.

While Terrorgram is not directly mentioned in charging documents for the case, a review of Russell’s Telegram chats by the Southern Poverty Law Center found that he forwarded a Terrorgram document called Make It Count to another Telegram user.

Court filings by the government also allege that Russell told an FBI confidential human source that they should use Mylar balloons to short out a power transformer. That tactic is recommended in another Terrorgram publication The Hard Reset, which is described by the government as including “detailed information on how to attack a substation, including the use of Mylar balloons.”

The State Department announcement references a planned energy facility attack by Andrew Takhistov in New Jersey last summer without directly naming him.

Takhistov’s charging documents allege that he “claimed to have taken a role in the publication of” The Hard Reset and that he sent a PDF of the document to an FBI undercover employee. Takhistov allegedly praised The Hard Reset as “the only thing you need” to plan a white supremacist terror attack.

Takhistov was active in the Terrorgram group chats, and Humber posted an Audiobook promoting white supremacist murder in January 2024 in response to a request from Takhistov, according to government court filings. Later, according to the government, Takhistov thanked a Terrorgram chat administrator for posting a video “with instructions for using Mylar balloons to commit an attack on an energy facility.”

Lawyers for Takhistov and Russell could not be reached for comment for this story prior to publication.

The State Department announcement listing Terrorgram as a terrorist entity cited the Biden administration’s National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism, released in June 2021. The framework highlighted the government’s efforts to assess whether foreign entities could meet the criteria for the “specially designated global terrorist” designation.

“These designations are part of a broader U.S. government effort to address the transnational dimensions of the threat posed by [racially and ethnically motivated violent extremist] actors and reflect the Biden-Harris administration’s continued commitment to countering domestic terrorism, which includes REMVE and white identity terrorism,” the State Department said.

The emphasis on tackling white supremacist terrorism under the Biden administration has been embraced by an array of agencies in addition to State, including Homeland Security, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the FBI.

The commitment across the federal government to combating white supremacist terrorism under Biden’s leadership built on a growing consensus within the agencies that took hold during the first Trump administration. It remains unclear whether the second Trump administration will maintain the same course.

“In fact, we viewed it as such a critical threat that back in June of 2019, under my leadership, we elevated racially and ethnically motivated violent extremism to our highest threat priority, on the same level with ISIS and homegrown violent extremists, where it remains to this day,” FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in March 2021.

Wray was appointed to lead the FBI by Trump in 2017.

Kash Patel, who has been named by Trump to replace Wray in the incoming administration, has expressed skepticism towards the government’s focus on “domestic terrorism.”

“Whistleblowers have revealed in multiple ways how the Deep State is continuing to weaponize the power of the state against internal dissidents,” he wrote in his book Government Gangsters. “To pump up public support for their attacks on conservative Americans, the FBI leadership has been reportedly pushing agents to artificially inflate data on domestic terrorism to make the problem seem much worse than it is.”

Asked for clarification on Patel’s views, a Trump transition spokesperson previously pledged to Raw Story that Patel will “protect Americans from terrorism as the agency’s director.”

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25 million $

https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/charlottesville-verdict/

Returning a verdict against dozens of white supremacist leaders and organizations who organized Unite the Right, a Virginia jury has awarded millions in damages to nine plaintiffs who were injured in the violence during the chaotic rally that ended with a car attack by James Fields.

The defendants were found liable in four of six counts, including a Virginia state conspiracy claim that they subjected the plaintiffs to racial, religious or ethnic harassment or violence. But the mixed-race jury deadlocked on a major claim in the civil case against the organizers, whether they engaged in a conspiracy to commit racially motivated violence.

The plaintiffs presented evidence over the course of the four-week trial showing that the defendants meticulously planned the Unite the Right rally on the digital chat platform Discord. While the ostensible reason for the rally was to support two Confederate monuments slated for removal in Charlottesville, the organizers' private communications revealed that their true inspiration was a violent rally four months earlierin Berkeley, Calif. and that they hoped to bait left-wing opponents into the streets, and as :{primary organizer:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}::{ Jason Kessler:(style="background-color:#ff6600;"):}: put it, "fight this shit out."

The evidence showed that Kessler quickly reached out to Matthew Heimbach, an avowed fascist and antisemite who led the Traditionalist Worker Party and had already organized a coalition of "hard right" white supremacist groups that included League of the South, the National Socialist Movement and Vanguard America. All the organizations sent members to Charlottesville, and the leader of Vanguard America wound up providing a shield to Fields before he drove his car into counter-protesters.

After securing a commitment from Spencer — then the most famous figure in the alt-right movement that emerged on the coattails of Donald Trump's 2016 election — for the headlining speaker slot, Kessler wrote in a phone text: "We are raising an army, my liege, for free speech but the cracking of skulls, if it comes to it."

The plaintiffs also presented evidence that Elliot Kline, both a lieutenant to Spencer and a leader of Identity Evropa, organized Unite the Right alongside Kessler. Kline's former girlfriend, Samantha Froelich, testified that he was obsessed with exterminating Jews, saying he would "gas the kikes forever." Robert "Azzmador" Ray, a contributing writer for the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer, mentioned in a Discord chat in the month prior to Unite the Right that had "just got done with an hourlong chat with some of the organizers and I feel better about the thing. The plan is the same: Gas the kikes." After macing counter-protesters at the Aug. 11 torch march, Ray reported to his fellow neo-Nazis: "I personally literally gassed half a dozen kikes."

Counsel for the defendants argued that Fields car attack was not reasonably foreseeable or intended by the defendants, who anticipated only pushing and shoving, or, at most, fist fights, but the jury evidently didn't buy it. The defendants all testified that they did not know Fields and had not seen him prior to his appearance at the Aug. 12, 2017 rally.

Plaintiff Natalie Romero was injured in Fields' car attack, which left her with a fractured skull, a cleft lip, persistent headaches and trouble maintaining balance. Romero and co-plaintiff Devin Willis were among a small group of University of Virginia students who linked arms around a statue of Thomas Jefferson during a torch march in which white nationalists made monkey noises at them and threw lit torches at their feet while macing, punching and kicking others. All the plaintiffs, who include a pastor, a landscaper, a paralegal who recently passed the bar exam, testified that they have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of physical injuries or emotional distress.

As she and a dozen or so counter-protesters linked arms around statue, Romero described the sound of the approaching torch marchers as "almost like thunder, like the earth was growling." She recalled that they chanted "Blood and soil" and "White power."

"There's another that I hate repeating," Romero testified. "I like, hear it in my nightmares. If my phone buzzes, I hear the same cadence, the 'You will not replace us.' That one is just so terrifying to hear the whole time."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/lawsuit-over-charlottesville-unite-rally-080025307.html

no lnx pix

lawsuit over Charlottesville 'Unite the Right' rally has crippled white supremacist groups, leaders

White nationalist Richard Spencer (center) and his supporters clash with Virginia State Police in Emancipation Park after the "Unite the Right" rally was declared an unlawful gathering Aug. 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia. Hundreds of white nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the "alt-right" clashed with anti-fascist protesters and police as they attempted to hold a rally in Emancipation Park, where a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee was slated to be removed.

A white supremacist with a Nazi tattoo leaves Emancipation Park in Charlottesville, Va., Aug. 12, 2017.

Flowers and notes are left in memory of Heather Heyer, who died after she was struck when a car plowed into a crowd protesting the 'Unite the Right' rally on Aug. 12, 2017, in Charlottesville, Va.]

Firefighters from northern Idaho and eastern Washington participate in fire training on July 11, 2001, climaxing with the destruction of the church structure at the former Aryan Nations compound in Hayden, Idaho. The only other structure then remaining at the compound was the former residence of Aryan Nations leader Richard Butler, which also was to be used for firefighter training.

Supporters of US President Donald Trump protest inside the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in Washington, DC. - Demonstrators breeched security and entered the Capitol as Congress debated the a 2020 presidential election Electoral Vote Certification. ]

Civil trial over deadly 'Unite the Right' extremist rally to begin in Charlottesville

Will Carless

October 17, 2021

In this article:

Richard B. Spencer

American white supremacist, conspiracy theorist, and neo-Nazi

Donald Trump

45th President of the United States

A federal lawsuit against the organizers of the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which has rattled hate groups and white supremacist leaders, goes to trial this month.

The suit already has helped to dismantle some of America's most well-known white supremacist groups, and it has financially crippled one leader of the so-called "alt-right," the white supremacist and nationalist movement that came to prominence under President Donald Trump.

"It's very stressful, and very costly," said Richard Spencer, one of the defendants in the lawsuit and the former de facto leader of the "alt-right," in an interview. "This level of pressure is definitely scary."

Oath Keepers: Hack exposes law enforcement officers who signed up to join anti-government Oath Keepers

White supremacist recruiting: How podcasts have become the backbone for white supremacist recruiting

Video: 'White supremacy is terrorism': Biden condemns terrorism in address]

Lawsuits have long been used to dismantle or bankrupt the engines of hate in the U.S., including the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nations and the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer.

"We know that civil lawsuits work in holding accountable extremists by going after their finances and their operations," said Amy Spitalnick, executive director of the nonprofit civil rights group Integrity First for America, which is backing the lawsuit. "That has been true for decades."

But even when those groups have been crippled, white supremacists have adapted, going underground and surfacing with new organizations and leaders.

An alleged conspiracy to Unite the Right

The Unite the Right rally, held on Aug. 11 and 12, 2017, was a watershed moment for the white supremacist movement in the United States.

Coming the summer after the election of a president who kickstarted his political career by pushing a racist conspiracy theory, the event put American hatred on full display.

Clean-cut white men marched across the University of Virginia campus carrying tiki torches and chanting, "Jews will not replace us." Neo-Nazis and white supremacists, brandishing shields emblazoned with Nazi symbols, chanted racist and antisemitic slogans as they fought the removal of a Confederate monument.

Fights between white supremacists and counter-protesters broke out. Neo-Nazi James Fields drove his car into a crowd, killing Heather Heyer. Fields was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.[19 hurt some badly?]

Heather Heyer attack: Neo-Nazi James Fields gets life plus 419 years for murder in Charlottesville

Integrity First's wide-ranging lawsuit alleges that the leaders of the white supremacist movement engaged in a conspiracy to commit racially motivated violence against nonwhite and Jewish people during the Unite The Right rally.

"The violence in Charlottesville was no accident," the lawsuit states. "Defendants spent months carefully coordinating their efforts, on the internet and in person. They exhorted each other: 'If you want to defend the South and Western Civilization from the Jew and his dark-skinned allies, be at Charlottesville on 12 August' and 'Next stop: Charlottesville, VA. Final stop: Auschwitz.'"

The lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages for the plaintiffs, with the amount to be decided by a jury.

The defendants are a "who's who" of the extremist right: Jason Kessler, a key organizer of the event; neo-Nazi podcaster Christopher Cantwell; Nathan Damigo, a white supremacist who founded the group Identity Evropa; Spencer; and a host of other extremist leaders and groups.

Richard Spencer: Suit has been 'crippling'

Despite briefly rising to prominence at the outset of the Trump presidency, the last four years have proven brutal for the "alt-right," a political movement that mixes racism, white nationalism, antisemitism and populism. That's thanks in part to the pressure of the case, filed in October 2017.

Spencer has no illusions about the state of the movement he helped create. "The 'alt-right' is dead,"he said in an interview last month.

Last week, Spencer acknowledged that the Integrity First lawsuit has taken a toll.

Along with the constant stress, the lawsuit has cost thousands of dollars to defend, Spencer said. In June 2020, he told the court that the case has been "financially crippling." Now he's representing himself in court.

White nationalist Richard Spencer (center) and his supporters clash with Virginia State Police in Emancipation Park after the

The plaintiffs – a minister, students and other Charlottesville residents – have won default judgments against seven[1 did not show b/c dropped phone in toilet] of the 24 defendants, with the penalties to be decided by the jury. The court has issued five-figure fines against three other defendants for failing to produce evidence or show up for court hearings or depositions, court files show.

Meanwhile, several of the groups named in the suit have fallen apart.

Vanguard America, the neo-Nazi group that Fields marched with, fragmented after the rally. So did the Traditionalist Workers Party, a white supremacist group. Cantwell is in prison after being convicted of extortion. Identity Evropa rebranded, and in May 2020 defendants Matthew Heimbach and Elliott Kline each were ordered to pay fines of more than $12,000.

At least two defendants are in hiding: Andrew Anglin, who founded the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer and has another multi-million dollar judgment against him from another lawsuit, and his webmaster Robert Ray, who goes by "Azzmador" and disappeared from view last year after the suit was filed.

"This case is about ensuring that these folks are effectively bankrupted and dismantled," Spitalnick said. "The fact that so many of these defendants have already been marginalized in the movement is a testament to how accountability can work."

In that respect, the Charlottesville case follows a long history of using lawsuits to disrupt hate groups.

A compound razed and movements flattened

An extraordinary series of photographs from 2001 shows the demolition of the Aryan Nations compound outside Boise, Idaho. In one, a yellow digger chews into a massive swastika painted on a roof. In another, a guard tower is flattened by the same machine.

The compound was razed after the Aryan Nations was bankrupted in 2000 by a lawsuit brought by an Idaho attorney and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

That case was one of almost a dozen such lawsuits filed by the SPLC against various groups over the last 20 years.

]

"Every one of our cases led to the dissolution of a group," said Heidi Beirich, who once led the SPLC's Intelligence Project. Now she's co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. "It's a very effective tactic."

The land that once housed the group is now a public park.

In the 1980s and 90s, the SPLC filed lawsuits against several chapters of the KKK on behalf of plaintiffs who had been intimidated or threatened. The lawsuits caused those chapters to file for bankruptcy or shut down.

Beirich said she applauds Integrity First for bringing such a broad lawsuit against so many defendants. The SPLC cases typically tackled one organization or chapter at a time, she said.

Like the SPLC lawsuits, the Charlottesville case is based on more than the mere speech of hate groups, which is protected, Beirich said. It alleges the defendants engaged in illegal actions, including harassment and assault.

Ku Klux Klan Act invoked in lawsuit over insurrection

The suit against the Unite the Right organizers appears to have opened new legal fronts in the fight against extremism.

In late August, seven officers from the U.S. Capitol Police sued Trump, his longtime adviser Roger Stone and members of far-right extremist groups, alleging they conspired to use violence on Jan. 6 to attempt to prevent Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election

That lawsuit relies on the same statute used in the Charlottesville case – the federal Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, a Reconstruction-era statute that allows individuals to sue when they are injured by conspiracies.

"Unfortunately, the KKK Act is experiencing something of a renaissance," said Karen Dunn, co-lead counsel on the Charlottesville lawsuitwith Roberta Kaplan. "But we are glad it exists because this is exactly the kind of conduct it is meant to address."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Lawsuit over Charlottesville 'Unite the Right' rally goes to trial

blk female student thugswarmed when elected to student gov't? at ivy league now in boden admin? civil KKK suit ~ charlottesville indiv and groups 10 21 trms

https://www.msnbc.com/transcripts/transcript-rachel-maddow-show-10-25-21-n1282354

RWW 320

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/unite-the-right-organizer-says-hes-rekindling-ties-to-vdare/

incubator:

https://www.mediamatters.org/alex-jones/infowars-paul-joseph-watson-launching-new-project-generate-next-generation-youtubers

Far-right conspiracy theorist and Infowars personality Paul Joseph Watson announced the launch “probably within the next two weeks” of a new project that aims to “generate the next generation of YouTubers, of young political commentators.”

While appearing on Infowars program The Alex Jones Showon March 5, Watson said that his project will still involve “working together” with Infowars and that the two entities are “still going to be affiliated.” While host Alex Jones and many of his primary Infowars channels are banned from YouTube, Watson currently maintains a YouTube page with more than 1.5 million subscribers.

During Watson’s appearance, Jones said that he had been working with Watson for 18-19 years and that he was “excited” about the new project, saying, “That’s what successful operations do is they spawn new things, and I think in time you will also spawn apprentices as well.” Attempting to dismiss speculation of infighting between Jones and Watson, Jones said that the project was “pretty much my idea.”

Watson described his project as “an exciting new operation, it’s going to be where all my material is housed, and hopefully longer term we’re going to get more writers on board and organically grow it into a larger news org,” adding that he is “hoping to, you know, generate the next generation of YouTubers, of young political commentators.”

While for a time Watson was best known for being a conspiracy theorist and source of sometimes hilariously incorrect information, his commentary has taken a darker turn in recent years. In a 2018 interview with The Daily Beast, Alex Jones’ ex-wife Kelly Jones said of Infowars, “They’ve transmogrified into little white supremacists which is alarming crap,” and “Paul’s white supremacy is growing -- I know it’s a difficult issue, this refugee crisis -- but they are actively encouraging white supremacy.” Indeed, months before the deadly 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, VA, Watson interviewed the event’s organizer, Jason Kessler, about “anti-white racism."

Watson’s new project appears to be the latest effort of Infowars to get its brand of toxic commentary before a younger audience on a platform where the outlet is largely banned. On February 27, Jones made a nearly five-hour appearance on Joe Rogan’s show The Joe Rogan Experience during which he ranted and pushed outlandish conspiracy theories.The appearance has drawn more than 10 million views and Rogan’s channel is monetized, meaning YouTube is profiting off of the video through ad revenue sharing. Likewise, newly hired Infowars personality Kaitlin Bennett made a February 25 appearance on massive YouTube star Logan Paul’s podcast. Like Rogan’s show, Paul’s podcast is monetized. Recapping her appearance with Jones on his program, Bennett gloated about sharing with Paul’s audience a “perspective on gun rights and the Second Amendmentthat they probably didn’t think they were ever going to watch.” Jones said he was “glad” Bennett appeared on the show because of its large audience and because it’s hosted by the “college kids that the tweenies and 13-year-olds look up to.” Jones also said he would like to appear on the show himself.

mma eric h

https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2017/08/14/right-wing-media-provided-home-white-supremacist-he-organized-charlottesville-rally/217616

Before he organized the recent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, VA, Jason Kessler wrote for The Daily Caller and the white nationalist site VDare and appeared as a purported expert on Alex Jones’ Infowars network.

Kessler was the organizer for the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville that featured white supremacists and neo-Nazis. President Donald Trump responded to the violence by issuing a generic condemnation of problems “on many sides” and declining to specifically call out white supremacists — behavior that fits his history of emboldening the white nationalist movement.

Right-wing media outlets like The Daily Caller have also played a role in cultivating white supremacist organizers like Kessler.

The Daily Caller contracted with Kessler “to contribute reportage to” the right-wing site this spring. He wrote two pieces in April with the headlines “Trump Supporters Vow To Rally In Berkeley Without Ann Coulter” and “Uncle: MS-13 Gangsters Mutilated Va. Teenager’s Body In Grisly Murder.” Both pieces promoted Kessler’s organization Unity and Security for America and his Twitter account.

Kessler then wrote a May 14 piece about white supremacists Richard Spencer and Sam Dickson rallying in front of Confederate monuments. ProPublica subsequently reported that the Caller failed to disclose that Kessler “is supportive of white supremacist groups, and on the day of the march had himself made a speech to the protesters in which he praised fascist and racist organizations, thanked a prominent Holocaust denier, and declared the beginnings of a cultural ‘civil war.’” While the Caller suspended its relationship with Kessler, Executive Editor Paul Conner defended Kessler’s work:

“The story is factually accurate and plainly states what happened at the event,” said Paul Conner, executive editor of The Daily Caller. “But in light of his activism on the issue, we have mutually agreed to suspend our freelance relationship with him.”

Asked about the substance of Kessler’s speech in Charlottesville, Conner offered no comment on Kessler’s statements. In an email, he said only, “We pay writers for journalism, not their opinions.”

An editor’s note was appended to Kessler’s article after ProPublica reached out to the Caller about the piece, stating: “The author notified The Daily Caller after publication that he spoke at a luncheon May 14 on behalf of an effort to preserve the monument.”

Media Matters contacted Daily Caller editors this morning about the outlet’s relationship with Kessler, whether the editors regretted publishing him, and if they would consider publishing him in the future. Shortly afterward, the publication removed Kessler’s author page and all his pieces on the site. Media Matters followed up by asking for a clarification about why the site deleted those pieces. The Caller did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

[Screenshots of Kessler’s Daily Caller work]

Infowars has also had a role in promoting Kessler and his racist work.

Editor Paul Joseph Watson, who himself has a history of racism, aired a with Kessler in January to “discuss the insanity of the left and how they have lost all grip on reality.” The interview is featured on Alex Jones’ Youtube channel with the headline “Jason Kessler: Anti-White Racism Must End.” Infowars also a roughly 20-minute April interview with Kessler during which he Infowars viewers that there’s a “very pressing danger with these people” who are trying to take down Confederate statues. Both interviews promoted Kessler’s nonprofit and Twitter account.

Alex Jones aired a roughly 15-minute interview with, the day after the Saturday rally. During the segment, Jones that the media is “penalizing this guy because he’s saying one-third of the racist stuff that I disagree with against the [George] Soros group that’s a total cutout, just make us fight with each other. So how does media say he caused all the violence when clearly antifa was the ones attacking?” (Infowars has been claiming that philanthropist and one-time Media Matters donor George Soros has been purposely funding the Charlottesville violence.) Jones later said during the interview that Kessler into a “trap” set by Kessler’s enemies by being at the Charlottesville rally this past weekend.

Kessler wrote three pieces for the “alt-right” affiliated outlet GotNews from January through March. Trump has reportedly received news from that outlet, which is headed by racist troll Charles C. Johnson.

Kessler has also written several posts for the anti-immigrant white nationalist site VDare. A June 19 post (his most recent) concludes that the “governments of the West are waging a campaign of slow extermination against their own core populations. It is white genocide.”

VDare recently announced that it will host a conference next year at Cheyenne Mountain Resort in Colorado Springs, CO. The 2018 event will feature VDare Editor Peter Brimelow, Breitbart.com columnist and former Republican Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo, and writer John Derbyshire, who describes himself as a “mild and tolerant” “homophobe” and “racist.”

Brimelow has also contributed op-eds for The Daily Caller. His website posted a defense of the rally on August 12 by “Charlottesville Survivor,” which concluded that “it’s not Unite The Right that is ‘dividing’ America. Whites who aren’t comfortable with being dispossessed in every single Western country, or with seeing the symbols of their heritage wiped out, gathered to protest peacefully. … Why should Unite The Right apologize for anything? Indeed, how can the ‘Far Right’ be regarded as anything other than an incredibly moderate protest movement against a deliberate campaign of genocide?” (The white supremacists did not actually “protest peacefully.”)

rww

Two neo-Nazis who filmed One America News Network personality Jack Posobiec while he roamed the streets of a Washington, D.C., to create propaganda for the Seth Rich conspiracy theory on behalf of Rebel Media are suspected to have schemed violence in relation to the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting that left 11 murdered, court documents show.

Jeffrey Clark, who police arrested on November 9, was active on Gab, where he used his profile honoring white supremacist mass murderer Dylann Roof to connect with the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter. Prior to his arrest, he had attended the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he was photographed alongside the young man who killed counter-protester Heather Heyer. Clark’s relatives told the FBI that he sought to “expedite” a race war.

Clark’s brother, a fellow neo-Nazi named Edward, committed suicide after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting when it was revealed that Gab, a Twitter spin-off overrun with violent extremists, had provided the shooter’s profile information to law enforcement. Apparently concerned that he’d soon be receiving a visit from the FBI, he shot himself in a park.

The tie-ins don’t stop at Gab. The neo-Nazi Clark brothers were connected to a web of white nationalists who ushered in the “alt-right,” including Posobiec.

The brothers were photographed filming Posobiec while he worked on footage about the murder of former DNC staffer Seth Rich, which served as rich fodder for pro-Trump conspiracy theorists online in 2016. Posobiec also notably traveled to Comet Ping Pong, a Washington pizza restaurant and bar that was at the center of wild internet conspiracy theories about satanic pedophile rings, to “infiltrate” the scene. When a believer in the conspiracy theory took matters into his own hands and entered the restaurant with a firearm, Posobiec deleted evidence of his visit and began lying about his role in spreading the hoax.

In the images and reporting published by HuffPost, the Clark brothers are seen filming Posobiec. Jeffrey Clark reportedly told Laura Sennett of One People’s Project that “Posobiec absolutely was” aware of their neo-Nazi beliefs and had told his brother “that he was sympathetic to those beliefs.” HuffPost reports:

In May 2017, the Clark brothers teamed up with far-right “Pizzagate” propagandist Jack Posobiec, who was then the D.C. bureau chief for the far-right website Rebel Media, to shoot footage for a film Posobiec was working on about Seth Rich, the Democratic National Committee staffer whose murder near the Clarks’ home in Bloomingdale has spawned numerous far-right conspiracy theories.

Laura Sennett, an anti-fascist researcher who works with One People’s Project, spoke with Jeffrey Clark a few weeks after he and his brother were spotted in Bloomingdale with Posobiec, who by then had been fired from Rebel under mysterious circumstances after plagiarizing Jason Kessler, the white nationalist who organized the Unite the Right rally.

“[Clark] told me that Jack Posobiec hired him and his brother to follow him with a camera to take video of his investigation of Seth Rich,” Sennett told HuffPost. “Not sure if it was a documentary or a news story, but [Posobiec] was doing some kind of reporting for Rebel Media. I asked him if Posobiec was aware of his Nazi beliefs. He told me that Posobiec absolutely was and had told Jeff that he was sympathetic to those beliefs.”

TheClark brothers would stand Posobiec again at a rally he led alongside white nationalist Richard Spencer,of whom the brothers and Posobiec were both seeming fans. Alexander Reid Ross, the author of the book “Against the Fascist Creep,” tweeted that the Clark brothers had infiltrated a book talk he gave last year. According to Ross, a Daily Caller reporter was filming the incident. Later that night, Posobiec published the PDF of Ross’ book.

...

anniv charlottesville pbs nsnbc; one msnbc showed interview w/ kessler, called him the happy face on nazi hate; suit coat at podium

called heyer fat commie pig spread lie that she died of heart attack, med report blunt force trauma to abdomen

proud boy crybully false flag?!

Even McInnes’ mockery of the suburbs—a common punk trope—takes on a right-wing bent. In the September Infowars broadcast, McInnes pushed an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, claiming his neighborhood spats were the effects of a campaign by George Soros, a billionaire philanthropist and prolific Democratic donor who is Jewish.

“I’m laying on the couch here bitching about the sort of pariah status that has been imbued upon me,” he told viewers. “The reason it’s relevant to your life, is I believe it can be traced back to Soros.”

Right-wingers have blamed Soros for everything from immigration to Black Lives Matter to efforts to count every vote in the 2018 midterm elections. The blame game echoes previous efforts to portray wealthy Jews as mass manipulators, efforts that have led to pogroms and genocides against Jews. Most recently, Soros was sent a bomb allegedly by a rabid Trump supporter.

In McInnes’ case, he accused Soros of funding a network of “lesbian” lawyers who harass the far right.(He also falsely accused Soros’ staff of organizing Unite the Right “to discredit us all.”)

“I think I’m part of this sort of computer virus the Soros machine sends out in the system to mess with your life,” he said.

...After Republican Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana was shot by James Hodgkinson in a domestic terrorist attack on June 14, 2017, far-right AM talk radio host Michael Savage blamed MSNBC for the attack—which, of course, MSNBC vehemently condemned—and made the idiotic claim that the left was uniquely violent. But only two months later, on August 12, 2017, a Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia quickly turned violent—and 32-year-old activist Heather Heyer was killed in an act of vehicular homicide.One of the rally’s organizers, white supremacist Jason Kessler, applauded the killing, describing Heyer as a “fat, disgusting communist” and the attack as “payback time.”

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/20-racist-extremists-get-their-own-special-train-car-and-an-epic-police-escort

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When white nationalist Jason Kessler announced he would convene a rally in Washington, D.C.’s Lafayette Park, the logistics and operational experts in at least four different law enforcement agencies must have jumped into gear with gusto. The plans must have been elaborate, evidenced by lines of police arrayed at every juncture of the racists’ journey from the Metro stop at Vienna, Virginia, to the one in the heart of D.C., next to George Washington University. Police forces involved included those of Fairfax County, Virginia, the District of Columbia, the National Park Service and Metro.

It was at Kessler’s beckoning, after all, that white racists of every stripe and insignia descended on Charlottesville a year ago today for a rally of the same name: “Unite the Right.” Last year, Kessler’s rally, which was to have featured alt-right star Richard Spencer and former Knights of the Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke as speakers, never got off the ground.

Before the 2017 event could commence, the state police shut it down by calling a state of emergency, but then allowed armed hatemongers to roam the streets. A lot of people got hurt, mostly at the hands of the white supremacists. Thirty people were injured in one assault alone—the apparent terrorist car attack by reported neo-Nazi James Alex Fields Jr. that also killed counter-protester Heather Heyer. So, on Sunday, law enforcement in the District of Columbia and Fairfax County, Virginia, were taking no chances. Jason Kessler’s First Amendment rights would be protected with an army of thousands, while the right of the press to practice freely under the same amendment took a few lumps.

At the Vienna station, which had been designated by Kessler as the meeting place for his rally contingent, police closed the gates of one of the station entrances, even to media, and kept reporters and photographers from the station interior at the remaining entrance. Police officers would not say for sure whether media would be permitted to ride the same Metro train as the rally-goers.

When white supremacists finally emerged from a parking garage to make a grand entrance past human chains of police in day-glo vests, there were all of two dozen or so of rally-goers, led by Kessler, wearing a suit. His followers wore polo shirts or plaid button-downs; some carried American flags. At least two wore helmets emblazoned with the URL of the New Jersey European Heritage Association.

A robust but police-compliant crowd of protesters stood behind law enforcement’s lines of separation, booing and shouting as the extremists made their way into the station with a law-enforcement escort.

On the station platform, a train designated “Special” awaited the racists, who were given priority boarding. It was only after they descended the escalator to the platform that police broke lines to let in the media, who found themselves blocked off—by another line of police—from entering the train car occupied by 20 or so attendees of Kessler’s “white civil rights” rally.

In the train car directly behind the white-supremacists-only car, photographers tried to shoot pictures of Kessler and his crew through two sets of cloudy windows, while a police officer stood guard at the door that led to their specially guarded means of conveyance into the heart of the nation’s capital.

It was only a few days before that members of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689, the union representing rank-and-file Metro workers, leaked the transit agency’s plans for the white nationalists’ special train car(s) to the media. (Anticipating more rally-goers, the original plan called for three special cars.)

“More than 80% of Local 689’s membership is people of color, the very people that the Ku Klux Klan and other white nationalist groups have killed, harassed and violated,” Local 689 leaders said in a statement provided to ThinkProgress. “The union has declared that it will not play a role in their special accommodation.”

Subsequently, Metro Board Chair Jack Evans made a statement suggesting that that the agency had backed off that plan, but on the afternoon of the August 12 rally, it appeared to be in full force.

Media were again shooed away by police when the train arrived at its final destination, Foggy Bottom station. The cars bearing media and others were emptied first, with police prodding reporters and videographers to exit the station, while the extremists waited in their heavily guarded special car.

When they finally left the station, they were greeted by hundreds of protesters and people who work in the neighborhood with jeers and boos and shouted F-bombs. “Nazis go home!” some shouted.

The Kessler crew then began to march down 23rd Street with an extravagant police escort that entailed dozens of vehicles—cops on bikes and motorcylces, in cars and even vans rented from Enterprise. Photographers and videographers who followed the marchers were reportedly shoved around by police. (I didn’t personally see this because I couldn’t get close enough to the tiny band of marchers.) In fact, few in the media got anywhere near the hate-rallyers, affording the white nationalists a glut of attention with no accountability.

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Mediaite’s Caleb Ecarma reported that, once at the mic in Lafayette Park, Kessler allowed that his rally was a bust. Among other things, he blamed in-fighting on the far right.

This is largely right, at least if you consider the mutual contempt for Kessler among disparate and ideologically diverse racist groups a form of in-fighting. It would be a mistake to view Kessler’s bust as a reflection of weakness on the right. The Charlottesville melee, especially the apparent terrorist attack by Fields, reflected poorly on the right’s stars. The violent chaos that filled the streets on that day was not the image that leaders such as David Duke and Richard Spencer sought to project.

Just the night before, Spencer had led his polo-and-khaki-clad legions in a torchlit march of cinematic scope to the exquisite campus of University of Virginia, no doubt imagining it unfold to a soundtrack by Depeche Mode—an aesthetic like that of an ‘80s New York dance club, but with Nazis. And while Spencer’s audacious UVA demonstration ended with the punching of counter-protesters and the throwing of tiki-torches by his minions, it had the air of the spectacular, what with uniform chants (“Jews will not replace us!”) and the contrast of the flames against the vast lawn, classical buildings and the dark night sky.

But the next day brought the spectacle of swastikas, Confederate flags, and paunchy men with homemade plywood shields and sticks, mixing things up with scruffy-looking anti-fascist counter-protesters. Even before Fields’ killing of Heather Heyer and maiming of her co-marchers, the sight wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t just violent; it was messy, chaotic violence in bright light of a hot summer’s day.

When Kessler derided the dead young woman as a “fat, disgusting Communist” and suggested she had gotten what what was coming to her, virtually nobody, even among the extremist, racist right, wanted much more to do with him.

Even David Duke, fresh off his self-initiated cameo appearance in the latest Laura Ingraham outrage, apparently declined Kessler’s invitation to speak at this year’s event. And as Right Wing Watch’s Jared Holt reported, neo-Nazi Patrick Little made a point of saying that he’d be in D.C. the day of Kessler’s event, but wasn’t planning to attend.

But as Adam Serwer notes, the far right no longer needs to launch into elaborate cosplay to spread its messages of racism, anti-Semitism and misogyny. The same messages now imbue the rhetoric of less fringy outlets, such as Fox News Channel, where Ingraham recently did a television essay decrying “massive demographic changes” due to immigration that, in her estimation, are rendering America unrecognizable. And they form the framework for the nation’s politics, as more far-right rhetoric is incorporated in the utterances of politicians at the highest levels of government.

On the eve of Kessler’s march, President Donald J. Trump took to Twitter to condemn “racism of all kinds,” a sort of wink-wink, nod-nod to Kessler, who claims to simply be striking a blow for “white civil rights,” even as he stands surrounded by people with neo-Nazi tattoos and signs bearing racist slogans.

The president, however, did not stay in town as the city mobilized nearly all of its law enforcement resources to maintain order for Kessler’s boys’ club meeting. He was at his golfing resort in New Jersey, just as he was on the day that Heather Heyer was killed.

Tags: Donald J. Trump Jason Kessler Laura Ingraham Patrick Little neo-Nazi white nationalism white supremacist Antifa Black Lives Matter New Jersey European Heritage Association Washington Area Metropolitan Transit Agency

judge in Charlottesville on Friday awarded avowed white nationalist Jason Kessler $5 after determining an activist violated Virginia’s anti-dueling statute by yelling curse words at him, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports

Kessler sued Donna Gasapo, a Richmond-based activist affiliated with Black Lives Matter, for $500 after she yelled, “f*ck you ... f*ck you, assh*le ... crybaby Kessler” at him on March 16. Kessler said he encountered Gasapo while he was "reporting" on the trial of DeAndre Harris, a black man brutally beaten during the Charlottesville rally who was later acquitted on charges of assaulting a white supremacist.

“Someone in our community was murdered,” Gasapo said. “White supremacists stormed into our city. It doesn’t sit well with me.' Gasapo never denied Kessler’s allegation, but her lawyer, Pam Starsia, argued her statements were protected by the First Amendment. Starsia also refuted Kessler’s claim he suffered damages as a result of Gasapo’s language, and said that, as a public figure, “there were higher standards for proving malice in someone’s words,” the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports.

Judge Robert H. Downer Jr. agreed that Kessler is a public figure, but ruled Gasapo’s language did violate the statute. Still, he only awarded the white nationalist $5 of his $500 lawsuit because the judge did not believe Kessler was damaged by her words.

Starsia said she's “comforted” by the judge’s determination that Kessler is a public figure, but added she and Gasapo are discussing their options and an appeal is possible.

“I think we should all be very concerned about what this ruling means in terms of opening up other frivolous harassment suits against members of our community who are expressing their opinions and their very real feelings of frustration, which we believe are protected by the First Amendment,” Starsia said....

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/fcc-chairman-ajit-pai-alt-right-sympathizer-net-neutrality

On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 along party lines to repeal an Obama-era regulation to preserve net neutrality, defying Silicon Valley executives and consumer advocacy groups, not to mention the will of the people. A recent University of Maryland survey finds that more than 80 percent of registered voters oppose the FCC's plans.

The move will fundamentally transform the internet as we know it, allowing corporate behemoths like Verizon and Comcast to manipulate loading speeds and charge customers a premium for access to individual websites and apps. Adding insult to democratic injury, circumstantial evidence suggests the man who cast the deciding vote, Ajit Pai, sympathizes with the so-called alt-right.

Back in November, the FCC chairman and Trump appointee unveiled his plans to junk the net neutrality rules established in 2015, arguing that websites and social media platforms, rather than internet service providers (ISPs), posed the greatest threat to an open internet. At the time, Pai singled out Twitter for blame.

“The company has a viewpoint and uses that viewpoint to discriminate," he told the R Street Institute, a libertarian-minded think tank. "And to say the least, the company appears to have a double standard when it comes to suspending or deverifying conservative users’ accounts as opposed to those of liberal users. This conduct is many things, but it isn’t fighting for an open internet."

It's difficult to know exactly who Pai had in mind, but Slate's April Glaser notesthat Twitter recently deverified the accounts of several prominent white supremacists, including Laura Loomer and Jason Kessler. The former is a YouTube sensation on the alt-right who was recently banned from Uber and Lyftfor her Islamophobic tweets, while the latter was one of the organizers of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. In October, Kessler was indicted on a felony perjury charge after falsely accusing a man he'd assaulted of attacking him first.

"What’s weird about Pai’s comments is that while these are all figures on the right, conservatives don’t typically count them among their ranks," Glaser writes. "And while conservatives do sometimes cast themselves as ideological victims of Silicon Valley's overreach, there have been no recent deverifications of prominent right-wing figures, 'conservative' or otherwise, not known for promoting hate. In other words, according to Pai, the demotion of racists on a social network is a bigger deal than an action that could radically change the architecture of—and who succeeds on—the internet."

Weirder still is the video Pai released Wednesday in conjunction with the Daily Caller assuring millennials that they can still "gram their food" and "post photos of cute animals" if net neutrality is scrapped. (In May, he made a separate appealto America's youth by reading aloud the meanest tweets about his proposals, a nod to the popular segment on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!") When he's not wielding a fidget spinner and assuring viewers they can still binge-watch "Game of Thrones," he can be seen doing the Harlem Shake next to a woman named Martina Markota, a far-right conspiracy theoristwho has speculated that Hillary Clinton's former campaign chair ran a child sex ring out of the basement of a Washington pizzeria.

Before joining the Daily Caller, Markota appeared in a video for the Proud Boys, a self-described "Western Chauvinist" men's club with ties to the alt-right, where she claimed that the (thoroughly debunked) Pizzagate was real. “This is not something I’m making up because I’m trying to...put in my fantasy version of what’s going on and interject it into these email scandals," she says at one point. "This is independent of the campaign. I know what cheese pizza is."

Pai, the son of Indian immigrants, has been a subject of racist attacks himself in recent months, some of them bearing the hallmarks of the alt-right. "We all have the power to murder Ajit Pai and his family," an FCC commenter wrote in May. "Jk jk." No one stands to lose more from the repeal of net neutrality rules than the patrons of websites like 4chan and Reddit, which internet service providers will soon be able to slow to a crawl, so it's difficult to imagine white nationalists embracing Pai as an ally, and vice versa.

And yet. After the FCC chairman pleaded his case that social media networks were suppressing free speech, he earned the effusive praise of far-right radio host Matt Forney and Andrew Torba of Gab, a platform where users "are generally free to be as racist or anti-Semitic as they’d like without fear of being reprimanded or censored," according to Slate.

It's possible, even probable, that Pai was unaware of Martina Markota's history before he recorded his latest video for the Daily Caller. But the fact remains that Jason Kessler got his start as a contributor for the right-wing publication, and Pai had no reservations about lending it his imprimatur. With a White House that has excused and enabled white nationalists at every turn, no one in the Trump administration has earned the benefit of the doubt.

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splc

Unite the Right’s Jason Kessler is another white nationalist who contributed to the Daily Caller in 2017. His three pieces just happen to span some of the recent causes common to both white nationalists and some mainstream conservatives: The preservation of Confederate monuments, the hyping of grisly crimes committed by the M-13 gang as a frame to attack immigration, and the manufacturing of campus free speech martyrs, in this case Ann Coulter.

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Kessler is a fresh face on the scene, coming to prominence in late 2016 when he launched a vendetta campaign against Charlottesville, Virginia, Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy, following Bellamy’s call for the removal of a statute of Robert E. Lee from a downtown park. Kessler started a petition to oust Bellamy and also founded an anti-immigrant/white nationalist organization, Unity and Security for America, and used it to vocally support Corey Stewart, pro-Confederate Virginia gubernatorial candidate. Kessler was arrested in January for punching a man while he was gathering signatures for his anti-Bellamy petition. After video evidence showed Kessler punching the man unprovoked, he pled guilty to misdemeanor assault and was later sentenced to 50 hours of community service.

His petition campaign failed in March of 2017, but Kessler continued attacking Bellamy, sharing a number of racist articles on social media, including one that referred to Bellamy as a “pavement ape” and “Councilman Dindu,” a reference to a racist meme. At the same time he was writing for Daily Caller, Kessler also wrote for VDARE.

On May 14, the dispute over the Confederate statues galvanized white nationalists who convened in Charlottesville to protest, with Richard Spencer leading a torch-lit march. Kessler was arrested for a second time in four months for not obeying an officer’s orders.

Nevertheless, the next day Kessler published a glowing account of the protest on the Daily Caller, complete with photos from his own Twitter account (#SaveLeeandJackson). He noted that though not all of the speakers were Southerners, they, “sympathized with the fight to preserve a history which they say is increasingly under attack by Left-wing ideologues who want to tear down statues, change the names of buildings and rewrite history books to place white people in an unsympathetic and even hostile light.”

ProPublica pointed out glaring omissions from Kessler’s report, writing, “It didn’t disclose that its author, Jason Kessler, is supportive of white supremacist groups, and on the day of the march had himself made a speech to the protesters in which he praised fascist and racist organizations, thanked a prominent Holocaust denier, and declared the beginnings of a cultural “civil war.” TheDaily Caller ended its freelance relationship with Kessler only after ProPublica contacted the organization for comment. Kessler’s LinkedIn page still lists him as a DailyCallercontributor.

White nationalist Paul Gottfried, who many credit with coining the phrase “Alternative Right” alongside Richard Spencer, recently announced the lineup for his annual H.L. Mencken Club conference, a white nationalist event that takes place in Baltimore each November and was co-founded by Spencer. One Daily Caller contributor Ilana Mercer and senior investigative reporter Richard Pollock are slated as speakers for this year’s event. Mercer and Pollok will be joined by Peter Brimelow. Mercer has written over 30 articles for the DailyCaller in the past year.

In one of her many anti-Muslim screeds written on the Daily Caller, Mercer wrote in May, “Policy makers and power brokers in the West have invited Muslim immigrants to live among us in the idiotic belief that, underneath the nose-bags (the burqa, the abaya and full-body swaddle), they were just like us.” Mercer, whose personal website carries the banner “Verbal Swordplay For Civilization,” is especially proud of the “nose-bag” line, using it in multiple columns and her book The Trump Revolution.Mercer’s pieces contain racially charged rhetoric commonly found on white nationalist websites. Mercer’s own website contains praise from white nationalist John Derbyshire, who in 2007 called her, “ravishing, brilliant, and eloquent.” Writing for the DailyCallerjust after the first Charlottesville rally, Mercer penned a piece titled, “Sanctuary City Mayor Trashes American Hero Robert E. Lee,” where she called Lee a “great American.” In another piece decrying black-on-white crime in her native South Africa, Mercer wrote, “Let not the swirl of statistics conceal the flesh-and-blood casualties of this black-on-white offensive. South Africa’s farmers, undeniably, are the focus of ethnocide. Contrary to the Syrians and Somalis streaming into the United States, they would make fabulous refugees, President Trump.” The article was reposted on Jared Taylor’s American Renaissance website the same day it appeared in the Daily Caller, and no wonder. Decrying and embellishing black on white crime is a key white nationalist trope, as is claiming to there is a systematic “white genocide” taking place in South Africa.

In March of 2017, Mercer wrote another racist piece for the Daily Caller fit for the pages of American Renaissance. Her concluding paragraph of an article titled, “Africa: Before and After Colonialism,” Mercer wrote, “When all is said and done, the West is what it is due to human capital — people of superior ideas and abilities, capable of innovation, exploration, science, philosophy. Human action is the ultimate adjudicator of a human being’s worth; the aggregate action of many human beings acting in concert makes or breaks a society. Overall, American society is superior to assorted African and Arab societies because America is still inhabited by the kind of individuals who make possible a thriving civil society.”

Ilana Mercer's personal website. Mercer is especially proud of calling burqas “nose-bags," using it in multiple columns and her book "The Trump Revolution."

There is a long history of white nationalists contributing to mainstream conservative publications, such as the National Review. But the Daily Caller’s embrace of white nationalists reflects the resurgence of the nationalist right, ethno and otherwise, represented by President Trump. Trump’s campaign and Electoral College victory electrified the radical right and pulled the Overton Window further in their direction. Stephen K. Bannon’s elevation into the West Wing after running what he described as “the platform for the Alt-Right” in Breitbart was part of the jackpot shared by a rogue’s gallery of extremist political operators. This is also apparent in the administration’s immigration policy, which is almost perfectly aligned with the white nationalist movement, and was originally drafted in part by Ann Coulter. There’s no other way to understand why Daily Caller would hire Peter Brimelow as a contributor if not for Trump’s victory.

In his founding editor’s note Carlson wrote:

We see our core job as straightforward: Find out what’s happening and tell you about it. We plan to be accurate, both in the facts we assert and in the conclusions we imply. If we’re not, tell us

We’re telling you, Tucker. Your flagship website has a white nationalist problem.

An email to the Daily Caller's executive editor Paul Conner seeking comment went unanswered.