Pratt, L GOA

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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/04/us/politics/gun-owners-of-america-a-lobbying-group-grows-in-influence.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/04/us/politics/gun-owners-of-america-a-lobbying-group-grows-in-influence.html</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">POLITICS</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div><b>Upstart Group Pushes Harder Than the N.R.A.</b></div><div><b>
</b></div><div>By JENNIFER STEINHAUER APRIL 3, 2013</div><div>
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</div><div>Larry Pratt, the executive director of Gun Owners of America, which opposes expanded background checks on gun buyers and restrictions on gun purchases. Credit Christopher Gregory/The New York Times</div><div>
</div><div>SPRINGFIELD, Va. — When word surfaced in February that Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, was plotting with Democrats on a bill to expand background checks for gun buyers, Larry Pratt got really mad. Then, Mr. Pratt, the executive director of Gun Owners of America, got busy, mounting a lobbying blitz that helps explain why a bipartisan Senate deal on background checks remains elusive.</div><div>
</div><div>Within days, his staff, working from a nondescript space in a squat office building off the Beltway here — there isn’t even a nameplate on the door — was on the phone with supporters of his organization in Oklahoma. The group’s members were encouraged to inundate Mr. Coburn with e-mails and calls and to otherwise make it exceedingly clear to the senator that an enhanced background check law would not be tolerated.</div><div>
</div><div>It wasn’t long until Mr. Coburn, a gun rights advocate, had backed away from negotiations with Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the No. 3 Senate Democrat, securing at least a temporary victory for gun rights activists and frustrating advocates of new gun safety laws.</div><div>
</div><div>Once largely unknown, Gun Owners of America, with its war chest, membership and lobbying strength dwarfed by the National Rifle Association, is emerging as an influential force as a series of gun control measures heads to the Senate floor.</div><div>
</div><div>The group has already been successful in both freezing senators, particularly Republicans, who have appeared to be on the fence about supporting bills to expand background checks and increase penalties for illegal gun purchases, and empowering those who have a strong gun rights background.</div><div>
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</div><div>“They are strong defenders of the Second Amendment,” said Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, who received donations from the group during his primary campaign and is its key ally in the Senate.</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. Coburn attributed his retreat, which deeply damaged the prospects of the bill, to a plan that would have required private gun sellers to keep records. But the gun group believes its campaign contributed to his decision.</div><div>
</div><div>“His staff admitted that it kind of irritated the senator,” Mr. Pratt said. “We were told, ‘He’s getting tired of this.’ But when we hear complaints like that, we know we are close to success. We are happy he changed his mind.”</div><div>
</div><div>While it might be increasingly potent, the group is not rich.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Gun Owners of America’s total revenue in 2011 was less than $2 million, compared with the N.R.A.’s nearly $220 million. The group spent $1.3 million last year to lobby Congress, while the N.R.A. spent nearly $3 million. Its campaign contributions last year were $119,850, placing it at 2,669 on a list of 20,968 lobbying groups ranked by the Center for Responsive Politics. The N.R.A. spent $1.5 million, putting it at 230th. Gun Owners of America has 300,000 dues-paying members; the N.R.A. has five million.</span></div><div>
</div><div>But, like many grass-roots groups, it is loud. Its members pepper Republican lawmakers with calls. In Republican primaries, the group supports candidates that hew to its message, and it rates floor votes with criteria far tougher than the N.R.A.’s. Senator Max Baucus of Montana, one of the few Democrats to earn an A from the N.R.A., has a D-minus from the group. This is in part because it draws from a far broader range of past votes, like President Obama’s health care legislation, to judge lawmakers.</div><div>
</div><div>John Hart, a spokesman for Mr. Coburn, declined to respond to questions about the group’s role in the senator’s decision to pull away from negotiations over a background check bill. “No one in the Senate has a stronger record of not only defending but expanding Second Amendment rights,” Mr. Hart said, adding that “Dr. Coburn is still hopeful he can reach an agreement with Senator Schumer.”</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. Schumer said he hoped for the same. “In the area of guns there’s always political pressure,” he said. “But I know Tom Coburn well. He’s a very principled guy.”</div><div>
</div><div>Many lawmakers and gun safety advocates believe Gun Owners of America’s rising profile and heavy membership drive has led the N.R.A. to take a more aggressive stance against measures it once supported, like an expansion of background checks to include private gun sales. (In 1999, Wayne LaPierre, the chief executive of the N.R.A., said there should be “no loopholes anywhere, for anyone” on gun sale background checks.)</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Part of the group’s mission, Mr. Pratt said, is to stay on top of the N.R.A. “when we don’t think they’ve gone far enough.”</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“The N.R.A. is essentially a political party,” said Mark Glaze, the director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns. “The big majority is centrist, and the base is ideological. And they’re pulled to the right in a competition for the base with Larry Pratt, and that’s marginalizing them.”</span></div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>Gun Owners of America’s central mission now is to prevent the passage of several bills about to hit the Senate floor. It is also lobbying for a House bill that would eliminate gun-free school zones.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Democratic aides said that Republicans approached to co-sponsor a background check bill cited Mr. Pratt’s group as their biggest impediment, fearing retribution. Senator Dean Heller of Nevada worried about the group, aides say; Mr. Pratt said his group was concerned about Mr. Heller. “He’s been kind of wandering around,” Mr. Pratt said.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Mr. Heller said that the group “is a group that I respect,” adding that he believed Congress “should expand background checks,” but had declined to support a bill with Mr. Schumer. His spokesman did not respond to more requests about Mr. Heller’s relationship with the group.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>Gun Owners of America was formed in 1975 partly in response to the 1968 gun control act — “to oppose the government,” Mr. Pratt said.</b> The N.R.A., he said, was founded to work with the government on issues like marksmanship. (The N.R.A. declined to comment.)</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. Pratt cited the groups’ positions on a 2007 bill that limited gun access to members of the military with post-traumatic stress disorder, which his group opposed and the N.R.A. did not.</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. Pratt, 70, has long been active in Republican politics. He served in the Virginia legislature in the 1980s, and he worked briefly for Patrick J. Buchanan’s 1996 presidential campaign.</div><div>
</div><div>His group’s positions tend to veer farther right than those of the N.R.A. Instead of expanding background checks, he would like to unravel the existing ones on gun purchases, fearing they will lead to a national gun registry. “We have opposed them from the beginning,” he said, “because there will be mission creep.”</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Mr. Pratt’s group also opposes penalties for so-called straw purchases, or sales made to people who intend to sell or give the weapon to a person who cannot pass a background check. “There would not be straw purchasing if there were no limits on who can carry a gun,” he said.</span></div><div>
</div><div>Kitty Bennett contributed research.</div><div>
</div><div>A version of this article appears in print on April 4, 2013, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Upstart Group Pushes Harder Than the N.R.A.</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-zealot-larry-pratt-is-the-gun-lobbys-secret-weapon-20140714">https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-zealot-larry-pratt-is-the-gun-lobbys-secret-weapon-20140714</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> no few linx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Zealot: Larry Pratt Is the Gun Lobby's Secret Weapon</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>
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</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">One morning during the winter weeks after the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, the gun lobbyist Larry Pratt made the short drive from his offices in Springfield, Virginia, to the Arlington headquarters of the Leadership Institute, a training center for young conservatives. Pratt and the Institute's founder, Morton Blackwell, share a history in conservative activism going back four decades, </span>and Pratt had spoken there many times, providing legislative updates on the politics of guns. Today, there seemed to be a jauntiness to the oddly boyish-faced 71-year old, who'd found himself at the center of a national media story just beginning to fade. He opened with a joke.</div><div>
</div><div>"Piers Morgan sends his regrets he won't be able to attend," Pratt deadpanned. </div><div>
</div><div>The audience chuckled at the reference. On December 18th, 2012, four days after Adam Lanza's killing spree, the CNN host had invited Pratt to debate gun control, as most major networks have over the years. When Pratt stated that gun-free school zones — and, by extension, gun control advocates like Piers Morgan — were to blame for the tragedy in Newtown, Morgan stuttered and seethed. "You're an unbelievably stupid man, aren't you?" said the host.</div><div>
</div><div>America's Gun Violence Epidemic</div><div>
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</div><div>Pratt's critics have called him many things over the years: extreme, radical, pernicious, creepy, dogged, effective. But no one who's studied his multi-faceted career could describe him as stupid. On CNN, Pratt was smart enough not to tell Piers Morgan what he really thinks about the Second Amendment. Because what he really thinks resonates deeply with the theocratic tenets of Christian Reconstructionism, which holds that American government should be ordered according to events and dictates found in the Old and New Testaments. Nor is Pratt so stupid as to use his regular access to mainstream media to promote the "active measures" he believes American gun owners will one day be forced to unleash on a secular federal government. In his 1999 essay, "What does the Bible Say About Gun Control?" Pratt writes, "If Christ is not our King, we shall have a dictator to rule over us, just as Samuel warned."</div><div>
</div><div>Pratt doesn't talk like this when being interviewed by The New York Times or answering questions on C-SPAN. Instead, he uses the more familiar language of ensuring public safety and respecting constitutional rights. He has employed this two-track communications operation with admirable efficacy and consistency since launching Gun Owners of America as the Beltway's first "no-compromise" gun-rights lobbying group in 1976. Over 40 years, Pratt has blazed the path and built the model for a gun-rights movement that has transformed the landscape of American gun politics.</div><div>
</div><div>Today, Pratt, who declined to be interviewed for this piece, holds the power to derail and delay gun legislation enjoying broad public support, and quickly inject falsehoods and amplify paranoia among a growing network of gun activists. With the rise of the Tea Party scene, Pratt has discovered new constituencies and new platforms for spreading his message of a Biblically mandated rollback of all gun regulation. He has also found new champions in the forms of his favorite senators: Rand Paul and Ted Cruz. He believes this November offers a chance to further grow the "Second Amendment Absolutist" bloc in Congress.</div><div>
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</div><div>Larry Pratt addresses about 500 demonstrators during a rally in support of the Second Amendment in Washington, DC. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images]</div><div>
</div><div>"Look forward to 2014 as a time when we get involved as never before," Pratt told an audience at the Leadership Institute. "Look for those candidates that deserve our support. The Rand Pauls. The Ted Cruzes. The Steve Stockmans of the House and try to multiply their number. The RINOS [Republicans in Name Only] need to be humiliated. They need to be driven out of public life."</div><div>
</div><div>By Pratt's design, today's gun movement has little room for RINOS, but accommodates extremists and sometimes adopts their language. As the director of an organization claiming 300,000 members, Pratt understands the gun movement's role as that of a heavily armed guard, holding a cautionary gun to the head of America's would-be dictators.</div><div>
</div><div><b>"The Second Amendment is not for hunting, it's not even for self-defense," Pratt explained in his Leadership Institute talk. Rather, it is "for restraining tyrannical tendencies in government.</b> Especially those in the liberal, tyrannical end of the spectrum. There is some restraint, and even if the voters of Brooklyn don't hold them back, it may be there are other ways that their impulses are somewhat restrained. That's the whole idea of the Second Amendment." He reiterated the point this March during an interview with conservative talk show host Bill Cunningham. Speaking of a New York Congresswoman who had expressed fear that one of Pratt's members wanted to shoot her, Pratt said, "You know, I'm kind of glad that's in the back of their minds. Hopefully they'll behave."</div><div>
</div><div>And if they don't? When speaking before smaller, conservative audiences, Pratt explains that it is necessary to both generate an undercurrent of fear and muster the organization and will to defeat the dictator prophesized in the Book of Samuel. When asked during a 2010 Q&A session, "Do we have the will to stand up to the government when they trample our rights?" Pratt replied, "That is an exceptionally important point to raise. We can have all the guns in the world, and if we don't have the will to use them [against the government], then they are useless."</div><div>
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</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">This is the language found etched along the gun-movement's aqueduct into the dark crosscurrents of the militia movement and the radical right. It is written in Pratt's voice, because he has personally overseen engineering and construction of this aqueduct while building the larger gun-rights movement. This movement, considered as a whole, is not as conservative as Pratt. It is increasingly flavored with Libertarian ideas and language, building on outreach efforts designed to deflect attention from socially conservative politics that command ever fewer Americans.</span> But it is no less zealous than Pratt on the question of gun reform. The gun-rights movement is distinct from, and often at odds with, the official gun "lobby" that is dominated by the National Rifle Association and its industry allies. The NRA remains the 500-pound gorilla of gun politics, with a budget and membership that dwarfs all other gun groups combined. But it is now surrounded, most heavily on its right, by a growing cluster of so-called "Second Amendment Absolutist" groups, from influential state-level activist networks like the Arizona Citizens Defense League, to ascendant fundraising dynamos like Dudley Brown's National Association for Gun Rights.</div><div>
</div><div>Among the most pedigreed of these purist outfits is Pratt's Gun Owners of America.</div><div>
</div><div>"The NRA describes itself as a religion, and Larry Pratt is the snake handler," says Tom Diaz, a former analyst at the Violence Policy Center, a Washington-based gun control group, and author of two books on the gun lobby. "The NRA debates using arguable premises of the American system: What is the meaning of the Second Amendment, of self-defense? Pratt unconnects from all that, and appeals to the least informed, most paranoid people." In parallel with his frequent national media appearances, Pratt aggressively pursues smaller radio audiences to peddle conspiracy theories and recycled John Birch Society propaganda from the 1960s. In recent years he has argued that the Aurora, Colorado, mass shooting was an inside job and that the Justice Department was pursuing charges against George Zimmerman to stir up racial animosity, trigger social chaos, and "build their own communist society."</div><div>
</div><div>As the gun-rights movement grows into and with the new century, Pratt is seen as a dinosaur, yet one who still commands respect. "Larry's a hardcore throwback and a bit of a weirdo — a black helicopter and Trilateral Commission kind of guy — but he has a certain brand and a name he's been around forever," says a staffer in the office of a veteran GOP senator. Indeed, few figures have had a greater impact in the development of the pro-gun movement. Purist groups created on his "no compromise" model now lead the charges in the courts and the states to block new gun-control legislation and chip away at those that exist. Most make the NRA look moderate by comparison.</div><div>
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</b></div><div><b>"The NRA is concerned about its right flank on purity from people like Larry,</b>" says Richard Feldman, a former gun industry lobbyist and president of the Independent Firearms Owners Association. "He has said things I thought were crazy at the time, but turned out to be right. Activists respect him for getting things done."Adds Josh Sugarmann of the Violence Policy Center: "When NRA members stamp their feet over some rumored compromise, Pratt's who they go to. When he says make the calls, the calls are made, and it has influence on the Hill."</div><div>
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</div><div>Larry Pratt speaks at a pro-gun rally organised by the 'Restore the Constitution' movement in Virginia park near Washington D.C. Sipa via AP Images]</div><div>
</div><div>This influence has only recently caught the attention of media that have generally focused on the NRA and ignored the growth of groups like Pratt's. When Gun Owners of America helped lead the gun-rights charge against an expansion of background checks, the New York Times discovered this "influential force" capable of both "freezing" and "empowering" senators. This influence may help to explain the reluctance of elected officials and their staffs to discuss Pratt's lobbying operation. When contacted, several current and <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">former members of Congress and congressional staffers from both parties declined to comment on the experience of being on the receiving end of GOA's lobbying fire. The list of those who shied away from talking included nine senators and congressman, such as Republican Senators Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, as well as Democratic Senators Jon Tester and Mark Begich.  </span></div><div>
</div><div>Pratt enters his fifth decade of gun activism with ambitious plans for this influence. At an age when many lobbyists are considering retiring, Pratt is working through GOA's PAC, his membership, his allies, and a small team of fellow lobbyists to do what he's been trying to do since the 1970s: defeat any Republican who does not share his absolutist understanding of Second Amendment freedom. And it is nothing if not absolute: GOA agitates against background checks, waiting periods, and fines for straw purchases (guns purchased legally for resale on the black market).</div><div>
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</div><div><b>In his crusade to rollback every gun law on the books, Pratt likes his allies unalloyed with records and habits of compromise. Many of Pratt's current targets in the primaries enjoy high or perfect ratings from the NRA. Some of them, like Mitch McConnell, have long enjoyed "B" or higher grades from the GOA. But only perfect grades like Rand Paul's "A+" are truly acceptable in Pratt's purist world. </b>Unlike the NRA's system, GOA counts votes on any bill that tangentially touches on gun rights as a "gun vote." Sometimes no vote is required at all to arouse Pratt's displeasure, merely inaction. In explaining GOA's support for Mitch McConnell's challenger, Matt Bevin, the group cites the senator's failure to vigorously oppose The Affordable Care Act.</div><div>
</div><div><b>"Obamacare is allowing the medical profession to use information that people give their doctor against them, to take their guns," says Tim Macy, vice chairman of GOA. "McConnell hasn't stopped it so far, and he's been in a position to help stop it.</b>"</div><div>
</div><div>For much of today's gun movement, the NRA's more myopic rating system has never had much credibility. To understand why, it's necessary to go back in time to the era of GOA's founding, and imagine that the NRA has announced plans to sell it's D.C.-area offices, abandon politics, move to New Mexico, and re-open as a crunchy nonprofit devoted to conservation and hiking.</div><div>
</div><div>What sounds like a piece of alternate-history science fiction is the starting point for understanding the rise of Larry Pratt and the current configuration of forces in the gun debate.</div><div>
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</div><div>II. Genesis</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Among the many social convulsions of the 1960s was a public opinion turn in favor of gun control. The legislative expression of this turn, the 1968 Gun Control Act, established today's regulatory framework for firearms, including a federal licensing system for dealers. It was the first major gun law since Prohibition-era violence and the advent of the "getaway car" transformed crime and led to the 1934 National Firearms Act, which brought machine guns, short-barreled rifles, and silencers under strict government regulation. Another federal law soon followed: the National Firearms Act of 1938, which required the licensing of interstate gun dealers.</span></div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>In both the thirties and 1968, the NRA either accepted or collaborated in the writing and passing of the law. </b>For the group's hardline members, this was one compromise too many. Lyndon Johnson's signing of the Gun Control Act deepened a longstanding fissure inside the organization that widened into a full breach five years later. In 1973, the NRA board put its finger in the air and determined that its future depended on pivoting away from guns and toward conservation and outdoor sports. Plans were put in motion to sell its D.C. headquarters, relocate to Colorado Springs, and build a "National Outdoor Center" in New Mexico, where backpacking, hiking and wilderness survival classes would be taught alongside shooting sports. To help figure out how to finance the overhaul, the NRA commissioned the liberal New York consultant Harold Oram, whose clients included Greenpeace, McGovern for President, and the New York Civil Liberties Union. Oram's report, issued in the summer of 1976, concluded that raising the $30 million needed for the NRA's Outdoor Center would require de-emphasizing its past opposition to gun control and avoiding all mention of gun politics in NRA publications. If it renounced its past and promised to stay out of politics, Oram advised, foundations like Rockefeller, then and now a major source of non-profit grants, could be counted on for financing.</div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>During the years of the NRA's slow careen left in search of Rockefeller money, Larry Pratt was making a name for himself in a movement where the Rockefeller name was synonymous with liberal Republicanism — and nearly synonymous with the Devil himself.</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> In 1970, the 28-year-old Pratt became executive director of the American Conservative Union, founded six years prior by William F. Buckley to carry forward the flame of Barry Goldwater's failed presidential campaign. It was in this capacity that Pratt attended the 1972 GOP Republican Convention in Miami Beach, where he joined fellow conservatives in battles over Nixon's reelection platform. In Miami, Pratt forged a friendship with another young religious conservative on the make, <b>Paul Weyrich. The two men were so similar, politically and physically, that they looked like a mirror image when they were talking to each other. At the time, Weyrich was raising funds for what would soon become the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation. </b>One of the men in Weyrich's growing network was H.L. Richardson, a frustrated NRA board member, California State Senator, and member of the far-right John Birch Society. Weyrich introduced Pratt and Richardson, who became fast friends.</span></div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>In 1975, Richardson founded Gun Owners of America on the model of his first group, Gun Owners of California, established earlier that year to (successfully) oppose a state handgun ban and (less successfully) the extension of ownership waiting periods from five to 15 days</b>. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">That year also saw the establishment of one of the country's first national gun control groups, the National Council to Control Handguns. Richardson wanted a full-time lobbyist near Washington and tapped Pratt to lead the group's Northern Virginia office. In the fight against gun control, GOA would pick up the slack created by NRA drift.</span></div><div>
</div><div>"In 1975, we were the first folks on the street looking at races and the lobbying side," says Tim Macy, GOA's vice chairman. "There was a lot of talk about gun legislation, in California and nationally. When we started, the NRA did not have a political arm."</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Pratt had grown up in suburban Indiana and was relatively new to guns when he took GOA's helm. He'd purchased his first firearm during the 1968 riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King. "There were some racial difficulties," Pratt later recalled. "I heard on the radio that the police weren't sure they could control the rioters coming north on 16th Street, so I went out and bought a shotgun."</span></div><div>
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</div><div>In his adult arrival to the world of guns, Pratt resembled another rising star emerging from the 1960s conservative firmament, one who would go on to rival Pratt's influence in national gun politics<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. In 1971, Alan Gottlieb, a 24-year-old organizer for Young Americans for Freedom (another Buckley-founded group) founded the <b>Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Gottlieb </b>nurtured the group on two key resources: mailing lists, and seed money from William Loeb, the conservative publisher of the Manchester Union Leader. Like GOA's founder Richardson, Loeb sat on the NRA board. Sidelined by the liberal majority, he'd spent recent years fuming over the group's direction and was eager to help nurture a new player.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Loeb and Richardson weren't the only conservatives on the NRA board, but it took a dramatic member insurgency for them to wrest power from the liberals. At the group's 1977 annual meeting in Cincinnati, hundreds of rank-and-file from around the country staged what has become known in gun culture lore as "The Cincinnati Revolt."</span> During a long night of speeches and politicking, the membership voted in a new board drawn from the NRA's fledgling lobbying division, the Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA), and changed the by-laws in favor of strong political engagement and tighter member control. By morning, the NRA was controlled by a group of rough-edged conservatives committed to fierce political engagement. The NRA returned to Washington to find it was no longer the only gun game in town. There were now two young upstarts on the scene, Alan Gottlieb and Larry Pratt. Since Gottlieb was based in Seattle, and focused his work on direct mail, education and the courts, this left Pratt and the Gun Owners of America as the leading alternative to the NRA.</div><div>
</div><div><b>In the many legislative battle to come — handgun bans, armor-piercing bullets, background checks — the NRA would have to contend with GOA and its leader, who was neither temperamentally nor politically inclined to yield to an establishment power that had collaborated on the 1934 and 1968 gun control bills. The NRA may have undergone a radical course correction, but it was still a large institution with a deep sense of entitlement and turf.</b></div><div>
</div><div>"They've always wanted to be the only kid on the block," says Alan Gottlieb. "The NRA didn't appreciate the growth of a gun rights movement, because a movement is much harder to control. What started in the mid-1970s with my group and GOA has flowered. Now there is all this pressure from the local and state grassroots level that the NRA has to deal with."</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div><b>When the NRA re-launched its lobbying machine in 1977, it attempted to accommodate Pratt's presence in D.C. by developing a good-cop, bad-cop routine.</b></div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>"Where the NRA played an 'inside game', the GOA was about confrontational politics, more stick, less carrot,"</b> says Jeff Knox, director of the Firearms Coalition and a prominent gun journalist whose father, Neal Knox, headed the NRA's lobbying arm between 1978 and 1982. "When dad was at ILA, he saw the GOA as an extension of his tool box. They were useful to him when he could point to a GOA mailing and tell [politicians], 'See, we're being reasonable, and if you don't want us to go there, then you need to deal with us, or you're going to have to deal with them.' The relationship between the NRA and GOA has been a weird one over the years, at different times flourishing and failing. Now [they're] dramatically butting heads." (The NRA did not respond to requests for comment.)</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The most recent clash between GOA and the NRA occurred last winter, over the latter's initial, qualified support for a bipartisan Senate bill that would have shored up the country's background check system, while also relaxing restrictions on interstate gun sales. The gun community was split on the measure sponsored by Senators Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), with even some purist leaders like Gottlieb calling the bill "more gains than anything.</span>" But Pratt has never seen victory in anything that required giving an inch — especially an inch involving handing information to the federal government. The GOA sent out mailers claiming, "If your private gun transaction is covered by Toomey-Schumer-Manchin (and virtually all will be) . . . you can assume you will be part of a national gun registry."</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">This was a lie. The text of the bill not only reiterated existing laws against the compiling of a national gun database, it went so far as to threaten a jail sentence of "up to 15 years" for breaking them. But the lie worked.</span> There is a consensus that a grassroots backlash against the bill, sparked and sustained by GOA and other purist groups, forced the NRA to drop its support for the bill, helping doom it at the last hour.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Jeff Knox says the GOA played an important role, but that it was part of a swarm of limited power. "Something like 34 groups came together prior to the April vote on Manchin-Toomey. We did have an impact on NRA's decision. But the bottom line is that all of us could swarm Congress, but if [NRA-ILA Executive Director Chris] Cox walked in and gave a wink and a nod, they'd go against us. NRA is the big dog. They are the ones with the direct, immediate clout, they have the politicians' ears. That's why we have to be members [of NRA] and keep them on the straight and narrow."</div><div>
</div><div>According to Knox, Pratt's biggest strength is being "right on top of what's going on. The GOA is just faster. The NRA is hidebound and not on top of the news cycle at all. It takes them a week to respond to new information. After Newtown they waited too long, then delivered a tepid response. GOA sees the threats that others often miss."</div><div>
</div><div><b>GOA has used similarly aggressive and dishonest tactics at the state level to defeat bills it does not like.</b> In New Hampshire this winter, a group called Pro-Gun New Hampshire is backing a state bill that would create pathways for restoring gun rights to people disqualified by federal laws related to mental health problems. From his perch in Springfield, Pratt saw the bill as too weak, and attacked. Soon thousands of New Hampshire voters received anti-bill mailers with the words, "See a shrink, lose your guns" printed in red ink on the envelope. The letter attacked local groups supporting the bill as "anti-gun" — a funeral-serious charge in gun circles usually reserved for likes of Chuck Schumer.</div><div>
</div><div>Pro-Gun New Hampshire did not appreciate the epitaph, or Pratt's meddling, which it described as either ignorant or mendacious.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>"Pratt sent out this B.S. propaganda that falsely claimed the bill will disqualify gun buyers if they see a shrink," says the group's vice president, Sam Cohen. "GOA and groups like it want to promote themselves as the premiere guardian of your rights. They feel in a competitive position with each other to be the 'no compromise' group and get members. It's particularly egregious in this case because if you carefully read the law, you know they're wrong."</div><div>
</div><div>III. The Schism</div><div>
</div><div>GOA's role in undermining Manchin-Toomey led to a burst of media attention around the group. The New York Times visited GOA's Springfield office to investigate what it called "the upstart group" that "pushes harder than the N.R.A." A two-sentence biographical paragraph described Pratt as having "long been active in Republican politics," including brief stints as a Delegate in the Virginia legislature and a co-chair of Pat Buchanan's 1996 presidential campaign.</div><div>
</div><div>As with Pratt's frequent appearances on cable television over the years, no mention was made by the Times of his fringe political and religious beliefs, or the dark corners of American gun culture and rightwing politics to which these beliefs have led over the years. But these links between mainstream and fringe have long been at the core of his role in rightwing politics.</div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>"Larry Pratt has served over the years as an extremely important bridge between the more rabid parts of the gun rights movement and the radical right," </b>says Heidi Beirich, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center. "The fact that he's been linked to so many different extremists for so long — including Klansman and Christian Identity leaders — together with his roaming around on the militia circuit for God knows how long — it should put him beyond the pale."</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Larry Pratt speaks at a rally at the state capitol opposing a bill to repeal Michigan's ''stand your ground'' law in Lansing, Michigan. Jim West/ZUMAPRESS.com</div><div>Pratt's political journey through America's neo-Nazi and insurrectionist subcultures began in an unlikely setting. It was in the leafy suburbs of northern Virginia, home to some of the country's wealthiest zip codes, that Pratt settled with his wife Priscilla in the 1970s, and where he remains. It is here that he raised four children, and, once upon a time, sought to launch a political career on the other side of the lobbying desk.</div><div>
</div><div>In the months leading up to the 1977 "Revolt in Cincinnati," Pratt, then 34, announced an insurgent candidacy to represent the suburbs of southern Fairfax County in the Virginia House of Delegates. Pratt was part of a slate of conservatives seeking to knock off the moderate Republicans that dominated the local party. Typical of this old guard was five-term Republican Warren E. Barry, who supported a proposed national ban on the cheap revolvers known as "Saturday Night Specials." In announcing his candidacy, The Washington Post described Pratt as "a Washington representative for Gun Owners of America and an <b>Amway distributor."</b></div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Pratt lost the local race, but could comfort himself with a growing national reputation. Early the following year, the Post featured Pratt in a piece on "The New Right Network" that gathered weekly at the Capitol Hill Club to debate strategy and hatch initiatives. Among more than a dozen names listed in the paper's group profile, Pratt is one of the last still active in public life. Sometimes these initiatives impacted gun rights; other times, Pratt found a gun angle to justify using GOA resources. In 1979, he devised a plan, in cooperation with the American Legislative Exchange Council, which he helped found, to throw up constitutional roadblocks to D.C. statehood. "The amendment would bring in two senators who would probably be minority, and would definitely be liberal on gun control," Pratt said.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Pratt again contested a seat in the House of Delegates in 1979. Boosted by financing from his friend Jerry Falwell, the Lynchburg evangelist, and ties to what the Post called "Joseph Coors' Heritage Foundation," Pratt outspent other candidates nearly two to one. He won in a local GOP tide. But his colleagues in Richmond had never seen his breed of Republican before. "Larry was part of a small group of far-right ideologues who thought it was apostasy to vote for an MLK holiday," remembers Wiley Mitchell, Republican floor leader in the Virginia Senate from 1976 to 1988. "He was strongly opposed to women's rights. He was against everything."</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Pratt proved a divisive and an ineffectual politician. Seven of eight bills Pratt introduced his first year were defeated, including a ban on nude images on motor vehicles. (If passed, the law would have required modifying the Virginia state seal, anticipating by decades the order by Pratt's friend John Ashcroft to cover the breast of a statue in the Department of Justice.) His one victory concerned a housekeeping procedural change. The national media noticed him just once, when he declared a war on bongs and fought to ban the sale of drug paraphernalia in Virginia.</span></div><div>
</div><div>The bong battle failed to win him many friends. On the eve of losing his reelection bid, a Norfolk Virginian-Pilot poll ranked Pratt "the least effective member of the House of Delegates."</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Elsewhere in the country, more conservative districts than Fairfax were electing social and religious conservatives like Pratt. What's more, GOA, which Pratt claimed at the time was approaching 100,000 members, was in a position to help them. The year Ronald Reagan moved into the White House, Pratt told reporters his PAC was spending almost $1 million annually in support of pro-gun candidates. Closer to home, Pratt's friends were taking over the reigns of government. The August 1981 issue of Life magazine included Pratt among the ten most influential "Young Turks of the Radical Right." The spread featured a photo of Pratt cradling his first gun, the 12 gauge purchased during the 1968 riots, like a baby.</div><div>
</div><div>The defining gun battle of Reagan's first term didn't involve gunshot, but a new breed of armor-piercing bullet. It was a fight that would pit the GOA against the NRA, and in the process illuminate the radical anti-statism at the heart of Pratt's worldview.</div><div>
</div><div><b>IV. Judgment Days</b></div><div>
</div><div>In January of 1982, NBC broadcast a prime-time news special titled,<b> "Cop-Killer Bullets." </b>It described the rise of a new breed of handgun bullets made from metals capable of penetrating the common Kevlar police vest. Other media reports followed, and soon an ex-cop and New York congressman named Mario Biaggi had introduced a bill banning a wide range of armor-piercing ammunition. The gun politics fight that followed reveals how the NRA sought to protect its image from purist groups like GOA, while also maintaining its "inside game" on the Hill.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>After Biaggi introduced his bill, the NRA sent out a fundraising letter calling it "backdoor national gun control" and promised to oppose all "inanimate object controls." Behind closed doors, it did the opposite, and began working with Texas Congressman Jack Brooks, a Democrat like Biaggi, to draft another bill that more narrowly targeted handgun ammo, leaving hunting and competitive shooting bullets unaffected (in contrast to the original House bill). The Brooks bill and a sister bill in the Senate, with quiet NRA support, quickly gained bipartisan traction and the backing of the Reagan administration.</div><div>
</div><div>The gun movement was livid. Gottlieb's Citizens Committee, Pratt's Gun Owners of America, and Neal Knox's Firearms Coalition swung into action to derail the compromise bill. They produced mailers and accusations about the "betrayal" of the spirit of Cincinnati. The noise on its right may have been annoying, but it allowed the NRA to play good-cop. In October 1985, the NRA wrote letters to Congressmen reminding them that "Gun Owners of America is generating postcards in opposition to [the House and Senate bills] both of which are supported by the National Rifle Association." In December, a revised version of Biaggi's bill passed the House. In March, it cleared the Senate with 97 votes.</div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>In casting his lone nay vote, Steve Symms, a conservative Republican senator from Idaho, thanked Pratt by name for alerting him to the law's infidelity to the Second Amendment.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Pratt had more success influencing the McClure-Volkmer bill, the signature gun-legislation of the Reagan era. Known as the Firearm Owners Protection Act, it relaxed many of the provisions of the 1968 Act regulating the sale and purchase of firearms. It also outlawed the creation of a federal gun registry. The GOA worked closely with Democratic Rep. Harold Volkmer from Missouri on the final version of the Senate bill introduced in early 1985. The final bill voted on the next year was a mixed bag from the perspective of purists. Though it loosened many regulations, it not only codified the 1934 Act's regulations on automatic fire machine guns, it went further and forbade the sale of <b>machine guns</b> produced after 1986.</span></div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Pratt was a delegate to the 1980 Republican convention and knew figures in and around the new administration. But having a conservative in the White House did not lessen his hatred and distrust of the federal government. Early in Reagan's term, Pratt wrote a fundraiser mailing warning against school-trip visits to the ATF building, where children were given honorary badges and told to be law-abiding citizens. The ATF, Pratt wrote, was "encouraging them to spy on their parents and neighbors. Tomorrow while you're at work these kids could be sneaking around your property [trying to] find out more about your hunting rifle or gun collection . . . [then] sending a SECRET report to the government."</span> Nor did Pratt's ties to the administration stop him from turning his fire on individuals working in the Oval Office. When Reagan advisor Mike Deaver blocked the president from accepting a gift from Gun Owners of America in the form of a Colt Peacemaker revolver, Pratt organized a letter-writing campaign. "Friends, President Reagan does not need people like Mike Deaver on his staff," Pratt wrote to GOA members. "I want to flood the White House with postcards over this outrage. Deaver must go!"</div><div>
</div><div>Along with his gun work, Pratt was involved during the Reagan years in a wide range of social and foreign policy issues. He was a member of the Council for National Policy, a think tank bringing together leading conservative figures to generate policy for the new administration. In 1980, he founded the Committee to Protect the Family Foundation, which<b> raised money for anti-gay campaigns and assisted the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue with legal defenses. I</b>n 1986, during the depths of the AIDS crisis, Pratt bought ads around the country highlighting a D.C. law forbidding health insurance companies from denying coverage and raising rates for people who test positive for HIV. "We don't think AIDS should have civil rights," Pratt told the Los Angeles Times. "The law is a dangerous and outrageous precedent for other wacko legislators to follow. [Those who support it should be] held accountable for voting to support homosexual privileges."</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The following year, Pratt called for the quarantine of people suffering from AIDS. "Our judges coddle criminals instead of caring for the victims of crime," he wrote in a Family Foundation fundraising letter. "They've chased God out of our schools, defended abortions…and now they are trying to infect us and kill us with strange and horrible diseases."</span></div><div>
</div><div>Pratt's activities didn't stop at the U.S. border. Throughout the 1980s, Pratt added the last missing element to his extensive portfolio of conservative causes: foreign policy.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Pratt did more than support Reagan's arms build-up. He assumed a major role in a global operation assisting in the brutal, sometimes extralegal, execution of Reagan's "full-court press" against leftist forces in Central America and beyond. Under the direction of his friend Pat Buchanan, Pratt served as secretary for the privately run Council for Inter-American Security, or CIS. Ostensibly a think tank advocating an "activist" hemispheric foreign policy, the CIS in fact engaged in propaganda and intelligence gathering in the service of U.S. client states.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Sometimes this made a scramble of Pratt's anti-statist ideology. When it came to the ATF, he saw an American Stasi. But he was happy to help the FBI build files on activists.<b> During Pratt's tenure, the CIS collaborated with the Bureau in tracking undocumented Salvadoran refugees living in the U.S. </b>In his book, Break-ins, Death Threats and the FBI: The Covert War Against the Central America Movement, Ross Gelbspan documented the joint CIS-FBI effort to identify and deport political refugees back to El Salvador. The Political Asylum Project of the American Civil Liberties Union estimates that of the 154 people sent back between 1983 and 1984, over 100 were either killed or disappeared.</span></div><div>
</div><div>The CIS was part of a larger network of rightwing Cold War groups that launched Pratt well beyond his public orbit of religious conservatives focused on guns, taxes, and abortion.<b> One CIS allied organization was the Unification Church-funded World Anti-Communist League (WACL) a notorious Who's Who federation of neo-Nazis, war criminals, and rightwing terror outfits.</b> A Washington Post reporter who observed the League's 1979 conference counted "former Nazi SS officers, two neo-fascists from Italy reportedly wanted for terrorist acts, [and] members of Alpha 66, a right-wing Cuban exile group." (The reporter didn't know it at the time, but one of the attendees he quoted, Sam Dickson, was a white power activist and Atlanta-based Klan attorney.) <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The chair of WACL's US branch was Roger Pearson, a former Heritage Foundation hire of Pratt's friend Paul Weyrich. After revelations of Pearson's neo-Nazi activities, he stepped down, replaced by Elmore D. Greaves, a former organizer with the segregationist Citizens Councils.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>During the 1980s and early Nineties, it was difficult to look at Pratt's network without tripping over a WACL connection. Pratt was also active in the United States Taxpayers Party, led by WACL member Howard Phillip</b>s. WACL ties carried over into a transitional phase of Pratt's activism: His work hyping Hispanic immigration and bilingual education as national security threats. In the mid-Eighties, Pratt launched another organization, English First, as a project within his Family Foundation to wage a racially charged war against bilingual education. He got help from Anthony Bouscaren, a CIS advisor who also sat on the board of WACL. Bouscaren's publishing credits included numerous articles in the<b> neo-Nazi Roger Pearson's Journal for Social, Political and Economic Studies. This didn't stop more than a dozen GOP legislators, including Dick Armey, from joining the board.</b></div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div><b>It was during his involvement in Central American policy and supporting counterinsurgencies around the world that Pratt made multiple trips to Guatemala to observe rural "Civil Defense Patrols." Contemporary human rights observers (and two subsequent Truth Commissions) consider them "death squads" for their role in killing and torturing civilians. But Pratt found much to admire</b>. He combined observations from these visits with similarly impressed notes on the Civilian Home Defense Forces,<b> vigilante patrols in Ferdinand Marcos' Philippines</b>, for a slim book published by the Gun Owners Foundation in 1990, Armed People Victorious. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In it, he praises the leadership of Efrain Rios Montt, </span>the country's military leader during 1982 and 1983 who greatly expanded the civil defense patrols. Twenty years later, Guatemalan judges would find Montt guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity. One Amnesty International Report from Montt's tenure detailed massacres in 60 Indian villages over a three-month period, leaving more than 2,500 dead. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As late as 2001, Pratt was publically praising Montt as a "powerful Christian leader." In the concluding chapter of Armed People Victorious, titled "Bringing the Lessons Home," Pratt writes:</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>The War on Drugs can be won the same way the guerilla insurgencies were pushed back in Guatemala and the Philippines</b>… The history of the United States for years before and after the founding of the Republic was the history of an armed people with functioning militias involved in civil defense… While the United States has forgotten its successes in this area, other countries have rediscovered them. It is time that the United States return to reliance on an armed people. There is no acceptable alternative.</span></div><div>
</div><div>Having defeated communism abroad, might not similar tactics work against enemies within? After the election of Bill Clinton, a significant chunk of gun culture would begin wondering the same thing — and about enemies more diverse than drug dealers. Just as he did during the social and foreign policy clashes of the Cold War, Larry Pratt would make sure he was right in the middle of things.</div><div>
</div><div>V. Storms of Fire</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>In February of 1991, a reclusive Idaho man named Randy Weaver failed to appear at trial on charges of selling sawed-off shotguns to undercover ATF agents. His absence in court surprised no one familiar with the case. Weaver and his family had moved to the wooded mountains of Ruby Ridge to get as far as possible from the government they hated. That, and to advance what the large local population of neo-Nazis and white supremacists called the "Northwest Territorial Imperative" to carve out a racially pure state in the Pacific Northwest. Weaver believed the feds had set him up to use him against his friends in the Aryan Nations, an extremist group based in nearby Hayden Lake. Weaver's response to the repeated summons was blunt:  "Whether we live or whether we die, we will not obey your lawless government."</div><div>
</div><div>Not much happened for more than a year. Then, on the afternoon of August 21st, 1992, a group of armed federal marshals approached Weaver's cabin. A forest gunfight ensued in which Weaver's wife, young son, and a federal marshal were killed.</div><div>
</div><div>The bloodshed and the armed standoff that followed catalyzed groups across the far right into action. This activity would soon produce a national militia movement for which Ruby Ridge functioned as a modern-day Alamo. The most important event in this development was a three-day meeting convened in<b> October 1992 by Christian Identity leader Pete Peters. </b>Christian Identity maintains that Aryans are the true Jews, that blacks are a pre-Adamic subhuman species, and that a race war is coming, after which whites will establish a "Christian government." These were the baseline ideas uniting the 150 far-right leaders who answered Peters' call to action at a YMCA hall in Estes Park, Colorado. Among those present was Larry Pratt. According to media reports, Pratt railed against the 14th Amendment and delivered one of his favorite lines: "The Second Amendment ain't about duck hunting."</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>According to Leonard Zeskind's report from the conference, published in a November 1995 Rolling Stone story, <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Pratt's fellow speakers consisted mostly of extremists with little mainstream profile or Washington connections, people like Aryan Nations leader Richard Butler and Texas Klansman Louis Beam. Pratt represented a link between these worlds and the rightward edge of the conservative establishment. Pratt's presence, wrote Zeskind, "signaled the transformation of the gun lobby. Organizations like GOA or even the National Rifle Association, which were devoted to the single issue of firearms, would become the leading edge of a far right, multi-issue assault on government institutions and democratic rights. The gun lobby would be at the center of a web of right-wing warriors."</span></div><div>
</div><div>If so, they had ample opportunity to discuss this strategy. According to Richard Feldman's gun-lobby memoir, Ricochet, Pratt was part of an elite tri-annual meeting during the late Eighties and early Nineties held in D.C.'s Park Terrace Hotel. The so-called "quilting bees," writes Feldman, "were frank (no-notes-taken), free-ranging discussions of gun politics and industry trends" that brought together Pratt, Alan Gottlieb, gun-writer Joe Tartaro, Neal Knox, and the NRA brass. "We wanted to know where each group stood on an issue — so all of us could keep moving in the same general direction and avoid being sideswiped in legislative conflicts." </div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The NRA and GOA may have been moving in the same general direction, but the larger group never followed Pratt to the outer fringes of the right. When ATF agent Robert Rodriguez infiltrated the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, it was a GOA video that David Koresh played for him. According to a Treasury Department report cited by Zeskind, the video "portrayed ATF as an evil agency that threatened the liberty of U.S. citizens." This view of the agency hardened when the ATF led a siege of the compound in April of 1993 that killed 76.</span></div><div>
</div><div>In militia circles, the siege confirmed the worst suspicions about the federal government. The links between the militia scene and the gun groups had deepened to the point where NRA fundraising letters echoed the language of extremist publications on the radical right.<b> In one 1995 letter, NRA executive vice-president Wayne LaPierre described ATF officers as "jack-booted thugs" in "Nazi bucket helmets." </b>But the NRA stopped short of supporting the Christian Identity lawyer Kirk Lyons, who was representing multiple victims of Waco. Pratt and the GOA had no such compunction and donated tens of thousands of dollars to Lyons's white supremacist organization CAUSE (short for the Aryan bastions of Canada, Australia, the United States, South Africa and Europe), "Not $50,000 — but a lot of money for us," Pratt told Rolling Stone in 1995.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>For many, the gun scene's rhetoric of an "evil" and "fascist" government was immediately rendered in more sinister shades when Timothy McVeigh detonated a truck bomb under Oklahoma City's Alfred P. Murrah federal building on April 19, 1995, the second anniversary of the Waco siege. Former president George H.W. Bush spoke for many when he cancelled his NRA membership in the bombing's wake, citing LaPierre's incendiary rhetoric.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">On the afternoon of the Oklahoma City bombing, Pratt was in Washington, D.C., demonstrating in front of FBI headquarters for its role in the Waco tragedy. Three days later, Pratt spoke before a gathering of 600 Christian Identity adherents and assorted radicals convened by Pete Peters at the Lodge of the Ozarks in Branson, Missouri. Pratt addressed the<b> "Biblical Mandate to Arm" and seemed to justify McVeigh's act of terror, </b>at the time the bloodiest in American history. According to an account by Michael Reynolds in Playboy, Pratt told the gathered, "The government behaves as a beast. It did in Waco, and we have somebody, whoever it might have been, whatever group it might have been, assuming they can't rely on the Lord to take vengeance."</span></div><div>
</div><div>Pratt's extremist ties and activities only began to garner widespread attention during his brief tenure as a co-chair of Pat Buchanan's 1996 presidential campaign. During Buchanan's surprising surge in New Hampshire, Pratt was forced to step down after his extremist political views and ties came to light. But his friend hardly threw him under the bus. At a GOP debate in Manchester, <b>Buchanan used his closing comments to defend Pratt as "a devout Christian" who was under attack because of his opposition to gun control. "I would urge the gun owners of New Hampshire and America to stand with Larry Pratt and stand with me," he said.</b></div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Receiving less attention, then as now, was Pratt's work on Capitol Hill. The Republican class of 1994 brought a new generation of conservatives to town, including the biggest recipient of GOA PAC funds that cycle, <b>Rep. Steve Stockman of Houston. Stockman and Pratt likely knew each other through the militia scene and other common friends on the radical right.</b> Following the election, both Pratt and Stockman addressed a conference convened by the anti-Semitic Liberty Lobby, including a testimonial banquet in honor of its publication, The Spotlight. Mary Jacoby, who covered Congress for Roll Call, remembers Pratt as "almost a shadow Congressman" during this time. "He was always around, essentially running then-Rep. Steve Stockman's office," she says, "and writing anti-gun control legislation."</span></div><div>
</div><div>At the cusp of the George W. Bush era, Pratt decided to publicly address the revelations about his ties to the racist far-right and assorted extremists. In "Letter to a White Separatist," written in 1997 and published in his 2001 essay collection, On the Firing Line, Pratt tells a racist member of Guns of America that it is faith, not race, which makes a Christian in the eyes of God. "The Christian Identity position you espouse depends upon non-biblical ideas that end up contradicting the Scriptures." Pratt goes on to cite the Bible, as well as his travels to Latin American and South Africa, where he met many good Christians of all races, while "their pagan neighbors are still enslaved in all the works of the flesh that Paul describes in Galatians 5. They live side by side and the contrast is readily apparent."</div><div>
</div><div>Pratt has on numerous occasions rejected the charge of racism and anti-Semitism. But his habit of drawing "contrasts" (as in the above quote) can belie an idiosyncratic understanding of race. During a January 2014, interview conducted on his syndicated radio show, The Gun Owners News Hour, Pratt expressed his wish that "very happy" <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">black Africans could say to "surly" African-Americans, "Hey, buddy, you got this all wrong, let me explain to you the world really works."</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"The African from Africa is a very pro-American person, a very happy person," explained Pratt. "I know several. And they are always just happy with a joke, a pleasant smile on their face. And they clearly don't identify with the surliness that's all too frequently the attitude of their fellow African-Americans here. And they're very conservative politically. The country of Ghana, it's still illegal to commit an abortion, it's illegal to be a homosexual."</span></div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>VI. The Reckoning</div><div>
</div><div>As GOA gears up for its nineteenth election cycle under Pratt's leadership, it remains relatively small. According to public tax records, its revenues in recent years have ranged between $1.5 million (2006) to slightly below $2.3 million (2009), compared with an NRA budget of $250 million. Most of this money is generated through direct public support (direct mail, internet appeals, etc.). Annual membership dues of $20, meanwhile, usually make up between one-quarter and one-third of the total. This renders implausible Pratt's claims to having 300,000 members. Even accounting for lifetime memberships and student discounts, the 300,000 figure would bring in millions of dollars in dues alone. No doubt what members he does have are enough to make elected officials wary of crossing him, but it's difficult to avoid the conclusion that the size of the activist army under is command is overstated.</div><div>
</div><div>GOA expenses have tended to equal revenues, with most money being spent on "Membership Expenses" described on tax documents as funds to "update and inform members on the progress, accomplishments, and future programs of the organization." No one appears to be getting terribly rich off of the GOA operation, including the PAC and Foundation. Only five people are included on the employee list on GOA's 2011 990 form, though that number doesn't include lobbyists like Pratt's son, Erich Pratt. While compensation for the Board has tripled from $65,000 in 2004 to over $200,000 in 2011, Pratt's compensation from GOA ($137,500 in 2011) has dipped a bit in recent years, not including additional income from the Gun Owners Foundation and a residual income ($20,000 in 2011) from the defunct English First.</div><div>
</div><div>In membership and resources, GOA lags behind not just the NRA, but also newcomers to the hardline scene like Dudley Brown's National Association of Gun Rights. NAGR claims to offer activists the "best bang for your pro-gun buck." But few in the gun-rights movement agree with this claim. "If you take a look at what NAGR actually does with its money, there isn't a whole lot," says Alan Gottlieb. "I don't see NAGR ever turning bodies out or being anywhere, basically. In all the states we're involved in, if we bump into them one out of every 20 times, I'd say that's a lot. GOA is in more places than NAGR is with less resources." (Brown declined to comment for this story.)</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Being there is what matters. Those who do not share Pratt's politics appreciate his work, and appear willing to overlook his ties to extremists. Pratt's former role as a contributing editor at a publication of the anti-Semitic United Sovereigns of America hasn't even seemed to complicate his relationship with Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. "None of that strained GOA's relationship with JPFO," says L. Neil Smith, a Libertarian member and writer for JPFO. "I myself would also talk to white nationalists and neo-Nazi groups. I talk to liberal groups, but people don't accuse me of being liberal. I wash all that off at home. It's important to talk to anyone who will listen."</div><div>
</div><div>"Most gun people don't know his background," says Dan Zimmerman, editor of the blog TheTruthAboutGuns.com. "He's seen in a positive light. He'll go on and spar with Piers Morgan and jump in the lion's den and wave the flag."</div><div>
</div><div>But, says Zimmerman, his broader appeal stops at guns.</div><div>
</div><div>"The universe of gun owners is far too diverse and far too wide for any organization to take a hardcore stand one way or the other on social issues. It's much more libertarian leaning than conservative leaning. There's crossover, but its much more a leave-me-alone thing than it is better-dead-than-red."</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Could that orientation hinder GOA in the new century, if the politics stays the same under the next generation of Pratts?</div><div>
</div><div>"I would say, yes, Pratt's conservatism will hinder him," says Robert Farago, publisher of TheTruthAboutGuns.com. "Gun owners are diverse. They go across the spectrum, sexuality, politics, race. There is a new wave of gun owners who are libertarians, not social conservatives at all. The real battle among gun rights groups is for the new people coming in. We're getting a lot more women. Minorities are the future . We have excellent demographic data. The small, more pure groups have the momentum. We call the NRA member an OFWG — Old Fat White Guy."</div><div>
</div><div>"The gun rights movement is comprised of every political stripe," says Jeff Knox of the Firearms Coalition. "Women involvement has grown dramatically. One of the most involved activists in California is a post-op transsexual. That's one of the strengths of the movement."</div><div>
</div><div>All of which means that the movement Pratt helped found shows signs of moving in directions — tolerant, diverse, secular, gay-friendly — that he sees as evidence of the gun-grabbing dictatorship of Biblical prophecy. It would be a circular irony indeed if, at the end of his long career, Larry Pratt found himself targeting not just the secular federal Leviathan, but also his purist peers in the gun-rights movement he did so much to build.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>This story was reported in conjunction with the American Independent Institute.</div></div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/03/29/gun-owners-america-vote-gorsuch-comes-support-2nd-amendment/">http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/03/29/gun-owners-america-vote-gorsuch-comes-support-2nd-amendment/</a></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">BS</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></p><div class="entry-content" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 10px 0px 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.3em; display: inline; clear: none !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">Gun Owners of America (GOA) is urging freedom-loving Americans to contact their Senators and urge them to confirm Neil Gorsuch as the next justice of the Supreme Court.</font></h2><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 1em 0px 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GOA suggests the choice of confirming or not confirming is so clear cut that it boils down to one thing: ‘Do you support the Second Amendment?’</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gorsuch is President Trump’s nominee to fill the vacancy left behind by Second Amendment bulwark Antonin Scalia. And Gorsuch’s nomination proves Trump true to his promise to put forward a justice “<a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/10/09/presidential-debate-trump-says-he-will-use-scotus-to-save-2nd-amendment-from-people-like-hillary-clinton/" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">very much in the mold of Justice Scalia</a>.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GOA executive director Erich Pratt said, “Gun Owners of America is urging people to contact their Senators and ask for an ‘aye’ vote for the Senate.”</font></p><div class="ad adinbody Hmobi padok" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 1em auto 2em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; visibility: visible; text-align: center; height: auto; min-width: 300px; min-height: 250px; max-width: 100vw !important;"><div class="inbodyad" id="desktop-ROS-Body1" data-google-query-id="CN2VmMuG0dkCFVGGaQodI0sFoA" style="border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px auto; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; overflow: hidden; min-width: 100%; max-width: 620px; max-height: 400px;"><p style="background-color: transparent; text-align: left; font-style: italic; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 4px; vertical-align: baseline; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></p><p style="background-color: transparent; text-align: left; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 4px; vertical-align: baseline; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-weight: inherit;">G</span><span style="font-weight: inherit;">OA executive director emeritus Larry Pratt said, “[Gorsuch] supports the Second Amendment as it was written [and] as it was understood at the time. So we’re pretty comfortable getting Mr. Gorsuch on the court, that he is going to be pretty much in line of Antonin Scalia.”

District of Columbia v. Heller (2008).  Gorsuch said, “Whatever is in <em style="border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Heller</em> is the law and I follow the law.”</span></font></p><p style="text-align: left; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of<span style="font-style: inherit;"> </span><a class=" x5l" href="http://www.podcastone.com/bullets-with-awr-hawkins" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">Bullets with AWR Hawkins</a></span><span style="font-style: inherit;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">, a Breitbart News podcast. </span>He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: </span><a class=" x5l" href="https://twitter.com/AWRHawkins" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">@AWRHawkins</a>. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.</font></span></p></div><footer class="articlefooter" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><aside class="rmoreabt"><h3 style="text-align: left; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; clear: both;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Read More Stories About:</font></h3><p style="text-align: left; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.breitbart.com/2nd-amendment/" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">2nd Amendment</a>, <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">Big Government</a>, <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/tag/antonin-scalia/" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">Antonin Scalia</a>, <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/tag/erich-pratt/" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">Erich Pratt</a>, <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/tag/gun-owners-of-america/" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">Gun Owners of America</a>, <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/tag/larry-pratt/" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">Larry Pratt</a>, <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/tag/neil-gorsuch/" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">Neil Gorsuch</a>, <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/tag/president-trump/" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">President Trump</a>, <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/tag/second-amendment/" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">Second Amendment</a></font></p></aside></footer><p style="text-align: left; background-color: transparent;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</font></p><p style="text-align: left; background-color: transparent;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/fringe-gun-rights-advocate-with-ties-to-white-supremacists-helped-build-up-alec-2bd05ce25c8/">https://thinkprogress.org/fringe-gun-rights-advocate-with-ties-to-white-supremacists-helped-build-up-alec-2bd05ce25c8/</a></font></p><p style="text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2.1875rem; line-height: 2.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">Brendan Fischer, a law fellow at the </span><a href="http://www.prwatch.org/" rel="noopener" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(195, 171, 255);"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">Center for Media and Democracy</span></a><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">.</span></font></p><p style="text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2.1875rem; line-height: 2.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) works to distance itself from the NRA-bill it backed as a “model” adopted in dozens of states, it may be hoping that people will not continue to dig into the damage done by its long love affair with gun groups, like the gun-industry funded NRA and fringe groups with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Pratt" rel="noopener" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(195, 171, 255);">ties to white supremacists</a> like Gun Owners of America (GOA).</font></p><p style="text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2.1875rem; line-height: 2.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="text-align: center;">GOA’s Executive Director is Larry Pratt. In the early 1980s, Pratt and the GOA were outspoken supporters of the white rulers in South Africa during apartheid, calling a press conference in 1984 to present “evidence” that allegedly tied Bishop Desmond Tutu to an effort to violently overthrow the white minority regime in the country. In 1990, Pratt wrote a book titled “Armed People Victorious” based on his study of death squads in Guatemala and the Philippines, and advocated for similar “citizen defense patrols” in the United States. The idea reportedly caught on in 1992, when Pratt </span><a href="http://www.rickross.com/reference/militia/militia7.html" rel="noopener" target="blank" style="text-align: center; box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(195, 171, 255);">addressed</a><span style="text-align: center;"> </span><span style="text-align: center;">a three-day meeting of neo-Nazis and Christian Adherents organized by white supremacist Pete Peters. He shared the stage with a former Ku Klux Klan leader and an Aryan Nation official.</span></font></p><p style="text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2.1875rem; line-height: 2.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pratt also <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/04/11394/not-just-nra-former-alec-leader-head-gun-owners-america-sides-shooter-trayvon-mar" rel="noopener" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(195, 171, 255);">held leadership roles in ALEC</a> for many years. His relationship with ALEC began in 1978, when ALEC began an effort to oppose a constitutional amendment giving the District of Columbia full voting rights in Congress. When Pratt was elected to the Virginia State Legislature in 1981, he took a leadership position in ALEC. He sat on ALEC’s board even after he left the legislature, serving as its treasurer into the 1990s. Meanwhile, the organization Pratt helped lead shared his passion for relaxing guns laws. For decades, ALEC quietly helped advance key parts of the gun agenda, including not only bills that may protect vigilante shooters but that also lead to more armed people on the streets who may cite laws like Florida¹s so-called Stand Your Ground or “<a href="http://colorlines.com/archives/2012/04/alec_scraps_voter_id_and_kill_at_will_task_force.html" rel="noopener" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(195, 171, 255);">Kill at Will</a>” bill. ALEC’s agenda is detailed at the Center for Media and Democracy’s <a href="http://alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed" rel="noopener" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(195, 171, 255);">ALECexposed.org</a>. Even though GOA left ALEC years ago, it was a long-time member and leader. GOA leapt to the defense of Florida’s law, ratified by ALEC, in the wake of the shooting of unarmed high school student Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2.1875rem; line-height: 2.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GOA’s Larry Pratt hit the airwaves in defense of Zimmerman, the 28-year-old man who shot and killed Martin. Pratt branded 17-year-old Martin as “<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/03/25/451314/gun-owners-defends-zimmerman/" rel="noopener" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(195, 171, 255);">an aggressor</a>,” based on the account of an alleged eyewitness who would only identify himself as “John,” and described Martin as having knocked down his attacker and Zimmerman acting in self-defense.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2.1875rem; line-height: 2.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cenk Uygur remarked on his Current TV program: “Funny how the kid with no gun is the one who, in your mind, gave up all his rights. But Zimmerman, the … stalker who called the police 49 times [in many cases] on black males…he has <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/03/25/451314/gun-owners-defends-zimmerman/" rel="noopener" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(195, 171, 255);">all the rights</a> in the world.” Uygur also noted that no other witnesses corroborated “John’s” account.</font></p><div class="ad-wrapper" data-slot="1" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; left: 350px; position: relative; transform: translateX(-50%); width: 60.625rem; margin: 2rem 0px !important;"><div class="ad-container" id="div-gpt-ad-1499467661362-14" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: table; margin: 0px auto; text-align: center;"><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2.1875rem; line-height: 2.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Consider this, Pratt’s long-standing ties to white supremacists forced him to step down from his role as co-chairman of Pat Buchanan’s 1996 presidential campaign. <a href="http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,94912,00.html" rel="noopener" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(195, 171, 255);">Too radical for Pat Buchanan?</a> That’s all we need to know.</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt">https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt</a></font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">...</font></p><div id="toc" class="toc" style="border: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); background-color: rgb(248, 249, 250); padding: 7px; display: table; zoom: 1;"><ul style="list-style-type: none; margin: 0.3em 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none;"><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-1" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#English_Only_Movement_and_Racist_Connections" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber" style="text-align: left; display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">1</span><span class="toctext" style="text-align: left; display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">English Only Movement and Racist Connections</span></font></a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-2" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#Ties_to_the_American_Legislative_Exchange_Council" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber" style="text-align: left; display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">2</span><span class="toctext" style="text-align: left; display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council</span></font></a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-3" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#Articles_and_resources" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber" style="text-align: left; display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">3</span><span class="toctext" style="text-align: left; display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Articles and resources</span></font></a><ul style="list-style-type: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 2em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none;"><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-4" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#References" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber" style="text-align: left; display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">3.1</span><span class="toctext" style="text-align: left; display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">References</span></font></a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-5" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#Related_Sourcewatch" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber" style="text-align: left; display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">3.2</span><span class="toctext" style="text-align: left; display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Related Sourcewatch</span></font></a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-6" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#External_articles" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber" style="text-align: left; display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">3.3</span><span class="toctext" style="text-align: left; display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">External articles</span></font></a></li></ul></li></ul></div><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><h2 style="text-align: left; background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); line-height: 1.3;"><span class="mw-headline" id="English_Only_Movement_and_Racist_Connections"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">English Only Movement and Racist Connections</font></span></h2><div class="embedvideo thumb ev_right autoResize" style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); clear: right; float: right; padding: 10px !important;"><div class="embedvideowrap thumbinner" style="min-width: 100px; border: 1px solid rgb(200, 204, 209); padding: 3px; background-color: rgb(248, 249, 250); text-align: center; overflow: hidden; width: 250px;"><div class="thumbcaption" style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.4em; padding: 3px; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pratt claims immigrants will "take away your guns"  VID]</font></div></div></div><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0.5em 0px; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Pratt is also the founder of <a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/English_First" title="English First" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">English First</a>, an English-only lobbying group which was formed in 1986.<sup id="cite_ref-IREHR1_3-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#cite_note-IREHR1-3" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[3]</a></sup> The group's " publications have regularly featured racism and anti-Latino innuendo since [it] was created."<sup id="cite_ref-IREHR2_4-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#cite_note-IREHR2-4" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[4]</a></sup></font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0.5em 0px; line-height: inherit;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="" size="4"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Pratt ardently supported the apartheid in South Africa and has been tied to leaders of the <a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Aryan_Nations" title="Aryan Nations" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Aryan Nations</a> and former members of the Klu Klux Klan.<sup id="cite_ref-PRW_2-1" class="reference" style="line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#cite_note-PRW-2" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[2]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-IREHR1_3-1" class="reference" style="line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#cite_note-IREHR1-3" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[3]</a></sup> His ties to white supremacists led to his ouster from <a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Pat_Buchanan" class="mw-redirect" title="Pat Buchanan" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Pat Buchanan</a>'s 1996 presidential campaign</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.</span><sup id="cite_ref-5" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#cite_note-5" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[5]</a></sup></font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0.5em 0px; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Most recently, Pratt and his Gun Owners of America have came out against the immigration reform bill claiming that those granted provisional residency status will eventual vote to "take away your guns."<sup id="cite_ref-6" class="reference" style="line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#cite_note-6" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[6]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-7" class="reference" style="line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#cite_note-7" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[7]</a></sup></font></p><h2 style="text-align: left; background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); line-height: 1.3;"><span class="mw-headline" id="Ties_to_the_American_Legislative_Exchange_Council"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council</font></span></h2><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0.5em 0px; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Pratt's relationship with the <a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Legislative_Exchange_Council" title="American Legislative Exchange Council" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">American Legislative Exchange Council</a> (ALEC) began in 1978 with ALEC's effort to oppose a constitutional amendment giving full Congressional representation to DC residents. ALEC formed an alliance with Pratt's <a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America" title="Gun Owners of America" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Gun Owners of America</a> in 1979 to develop a plan to prevent ratification of the amendment, which involved states sending formal resolutions of disapproval to the federal government.<sup id="cite_ref-PRW_2-2" class="reference" style="line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#cite_note-PRW-2" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[2]</a></sup> Pratt was quoted as saying, "The amendment would bring in two senators who would probably be minority and would definitely be liberal on gun control."<sup id="cite_ref-PRW_2-3" class="reference" style="line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#cite_note-PRW-2" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[2]</a></sup></font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0.5em 0px; line-height: inherit;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="" size="4"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 1981, Pratt was elected to the Virginia State Legislature and took on a leadership position in ALEC, sitting on ALEC's <a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/ALEC_Board_of_Directors" title="ALEC Board of Directors" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">board</a> and serving as treasurer into the 1980s even after he left the legislature.<sup id="cite_ref-PRW_2-4" class="reference" style="line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#cite_note-PRW-2" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[2]</a></sup> Pratt's Gun Owners of America was an ALEC member into the 1990s</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.</span><sup id="cite_ref-PRW_2-5" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#cite_note-PRW-2" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[2]</a></sup></font></p><table style="vertical-align: top; background-color: rgb(249, 249, 249); border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170);"><tbody><tr><th style="background: rgb(41, 102, 184); border: 1px solid rgb(46, 114, 205); text-align: left; padding: 0.2em 0.4em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">About ALEC</font></th></tr><tr><td style=""><div style="padding: 2px 5px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/ALEC" class="mw-redirect" title="ALEC" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">ALEC</a> is a corporate bill mill. It is not just a lobby or a front group; it is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, corporations hand state legislators their wishlists to benefit their bottom line. Corporations fund almost all of ALEC's operations. They pay for a seat on ALEC task forces where corporate lobbyists and special interest reps vote with elected officials to approve “model” bills. Learn more at the Center for Media and Democracy's <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://alecexposed.org/" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) right center no-repeat, url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="%221.0%22" encoding="%22UTF-8%22" standalone="%22no%22%3F%3E%3Csvg" width="%2212%22" height="%2212%22%3E%3Cpath" fill="%22%23fff%22/%3E%3C/svg%3E" stroke="%22%2306c%22" d="%22M9.995" h5.982v10.5h1.5z="h5.982V10.5H1.5z" e="E" cpath="Cpath" h11v5.39l9.427="H11v5.39L9.427" l-1.31-1.31l5.393="l-1.31-1.31L5.393" l-2.69-2.688="l-2.69-2.688" l4.2="L4.2" z="z" l.022="l.022" l8.2="L8.2" l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z="l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" xmlns="%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22" xmlns:data="data">ALECexposed.org</a>, and check out breaking news on our <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.prwatch.org/" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) right center no-repeat, url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="%221.0%22" encoding="%22UTF-8%22" standalone="%22no%22%3F%3E%3Csvg" width="%2212%22" height="%2212%22%3E%3Cpath" fill="%22%23fff%22/%3E%3C/svg%3E" stroke="%22%2306c%22" d="%22M9.995" h5.982v10.5h1.5z="h5.982V10.5H1.5z" e="E" cpath="Cpath" h11v5.39l9.427="H11v5.39L9.427" l-1.31-1.31l5.393="l-1.31-1.31L5.393" l-2.69-2.688="l-2.69-2.688" l4.2="L4.2" z="z" l.022="l.022" l8.2="L8.2" l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z="l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" xmlns="%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22" xmlns:data="data">PRWatch.org site</a>.</font></div></td></tr></tbody></table><h2 style="text-align: left; background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); line-height: 1.3;"><span class="mw-headline" id="Articles_and_resources"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Articles and resources</font></span></h2><h3 style="text-align: left; background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom: 0px; line-height: 1.6;"><span class="mw-headline" id="References"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">References</font></span></h3><div class="mw-references-wrap" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><ol class="references" style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0.5em 3.2em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none;"><li id="cite_note-1" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="user-select: none;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none; text-align: left; user-select: none; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#cite_ref-1" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Jump up</a></span><div style="text-align: left; text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="user-select: none;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#cite_ref-1" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">↑</a></span> <span class="reference-text">Gun Owners of America, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://gunowners.org/larry-pratt.htm" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) right center no-repeat, url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="%221.0%22" encoding="%22UTF-8%22" standalone="%22no%22%3F%3E%3Csvg" width="%2212%22" height="%2212%22%3E%3Cpath" fill="%22%23fff%22/%3E%3C/svg%3E" stroke="%22%2306c%22" d="%22M9.995" h5.982v10.5h1.5z="h5.982V10.5H1.5z" e="E" cpath="Cpath" h11v5.39l9.427="H11v5.39L9.427" l-1.31-1.31l5.393="l-1.31-1.31L5.393" l-2.69-2.688="l-2.69-2.688" l4.2="L4.2" z="z" l.022="l.022" l8.2="L8.2" l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z="l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" xmlns="%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22" xmlns:data="data">"Larry Pratt"</a>, organizational website, accessed June 2013</span></div></span></font></li><li id="cite_note-PRW-2" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">↑ </span></div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="user-select: none;"><sup style="line-height: 1em;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none; text-align: left; user-select: none; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#cite_ref-PRW_2-0" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Jump up to:</a></span></sup><div style="text-align: left; text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><sup style="line-height: 1em;"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="font-size: large; user-select: none;"><sup style="line-height: 1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#cite_ref-PRW_2-0" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">2.0</a></sup> <sup style="line-height: 1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#cite_ref-PRW_2-1" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">2.1</a></sup> <sup style="line-height: 1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#cite_ref-PRW_2-2" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">2.2</a></sup> <sup style="line-height: 1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#cite_ref-PRW_2-3" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">2.3</a></sup> <sup style="line-height: 1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#cite_ref-PRW_2-4" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">2.4</a></sup> <sup style="line-height: 1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#cite_ref-PRW_2-5" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">2.5</a></sup></span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span class="reference-text" style="font-size: large;">Brendan Fischer, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/04/11394/not-just-nra-former-alec-leader-head-gun-owners-america-sides-shooter-trayvon-mar" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) right center no-repeat, url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="%221.0%22" encoding="%22UTF-8%22" standalone="%22no%22%3F%3E%3Csvg" width="%2212%22" height="%2212%22%3E%3Cpath" fill="%22%23fff%22/%3E%3C/svg%3E" stroke="%22%2306c%22" d="%22M9.995" h5.982v10.5h1.5z="h5.982V10.5H1.5z" e="E" cpath="Cpath" h11v5.39l9.427="H11v5.39L9.427" l-1.31-1.31l5.393="l-1.31-1.31L5.393" l-2.69-2.688="l-2.69-2.688" l4.2="L4.2" z="z" l.022="l.022" l8.2="L8.2" l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z="l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" xmlns="%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22" xmlns:data="data">"Not Just the NRA: Former ALEC Leader, the Head of Gun Owners of America, Sides With Shooter of Trayvon Martin"</a>, <i>PRWatch</i>, April 9, 2012</span></sup></div></span></font></li><li id="cite_note-IREHR1-3" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">↑ </span></div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="user-select: none;"><sup style="line-height: 1em;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none; text-align: left; user-select: none; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#cite_ref-IREHR1_3-0" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Jump up to:</a></span></sup><div style="text-align: left; text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><sup style="line-height: 1em;"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="font-size: large; user-select: none;"><sup style="line-height: 1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#cite_ref-IREHR1_3-0" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3.0</a></sup> <sup style="line-height: 1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#cite_ref-IREHR1_3-1" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3.1</a></sup></span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span class="reference-text" style="font-size: large;">Devin Burghart, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.irehr.org/issue-areas/nation-state-and-citizenship/item/397-a-history-of-problems-with-racism-and-english-only-groups" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) right center no-repeat, url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="%221.0%22" encoding="%22UTF-8%22" standalone="%22no%22%3F%3E%3Csvg" width="%2212%22" height="%2212%22%3E%3Cpath" fill="%22%23fff%22/%3E%3C/svg%3E" stroke="%22%2306c%22" d="%22M9.995" h5.982v10.5h1.5z="h5.982V10.5H1.5z" e="E" cpath="Cpath" h11v5.39l9.427="H11v5.39L9.427" l-1.31-1.31l5.393="l-1.31-1.31L5.393" l-2.69-2.688="l-2.69-2.688" l4.2="L4.2" z="z" l.022="l.022" l8.2="L8.2" l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z="l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" xmlns="%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22" xmlns:data="data">"A History of Problems with Racism and English-Only Groups"</a>, <i>Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights</i>, February 10, 2012</span></sup></div></span></font></li><li id="cite_note-IREHR2-4" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="user-select: none;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none; text-align: left; user-select: none; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#cite_ref-IREHR2_4-0" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Jump up</a></span><div style="text-align: left; text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="user-select: none;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#cite_ref-IREHR2_4-0" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">↑</a></span> <span class="reference-text">Devin Burghart, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.irehr.org/issue-areas/race-racism-and-white-nationalism/item/474-new-york-times-misses-real-story-on-gun-owners-of-america" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) right center no-repeat, url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="%221.0%22" encoding="%22UTF-8%22" standalone="%22no%22%3F%3E%3Csvg" width="%2212%22" height="%2212%22%3E%3Cpath" fill="%22%23fff%22/%3E%3C/svg%3E" stroke="%22%2306c%22" d="%22M9.995" h5.982v10.5h1.5z="h5.982V10.5H1.5z" e="E" cpath="Cpath" h11v5.39l9.427="H11v5.39L9.427" l-1.31-1.31l5.393="l-1.31-1.31L5.393" l-2.69-2.688="l-2.69-2.688" l4.2="L4.2" z="z" l.022="l.022" l8.2="L8.2" l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z="l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" xmlns="%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22" xmlns:data="data">"New York Times Misses Real Story on Gun Owners of America"</a>, <i>Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights</i>, April 4, 2013</span></div></span></font></li><li id="cite_note-5" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="user-select: none;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none; text-align: left; user-select: none; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#cite_ref-5" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Jump up</a></span><div style="text-align: left; text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="user-select: none;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#cite_ref-5" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">↑</a></span> <span class="reference-text">Southern Poverty Law Center, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2001/summer/false-patriots?page=0,8#.UbIxVRj9pno" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) right center no-repeat, url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="%221.0%22" encoding="%22UTF-8%22" standalone="%22no%22%3F%3E%3Csvg" width="%2212%22" height="%2212%22%3E%3Cpath" fill="%22%23fff%22/%3E%3C/svg%3E" stroke="%22%2306c%22" d="%22M9.995" h5.982v10.5h1.5z="h5.982V10.5H1.5z" e="E" cpath="Cpath" h11v5.39l9.427="H11v5.39L9.427" l-1.31-1.31l5.393="l-1.31-1.31L5.393" l-2.69-2.688="l-2.69-2.688" l4.2="L4.2" z="z" l.022="l.022" l8.2="L8.2" l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z="l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" xmlns="%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22" xmlns:data="data">"False Patriots: Profiles of 40 antigovernment leaders" - "Eight Lanes Out: Larry Pratt"</a>, Intelligence Report, Summer 2001, Issue Number: 102</span></div></span></font></li><li id="cite_note-6" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="user-select: none;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none; text-align: left; user-select: none; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#cite_ref-6" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Jump up</a></span><div style="text-align: left; text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="user-select: none;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#cite_ref-6" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">↑</a></span> <span class="reference-text">Miranda Blue, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/larry-pratt-immigration-reform-and-ted-cruz-s-loyalty" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) right center no-repeat, url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="%221.0%22" encoding="%22UTF-8%22" standalone="%22no%22%3F%3E%3Csvg" width="%2212%22" height="%2212%22%3E%3Cpath" fill="%22%23fff%22/%3E%3C/svg%3E" stroke="%22%2306c%22" d="%22M9.995" h5.982v10.5h1.5z="h5.982V10.5H1.5z" e="E" cpath="Cpath" h11v5.39l9.427="H11v5.39L9.427" l-1.31-1.31l5.393="l-1.31-1.31L5.393" l-2.69-2.688="l-2.69-2.688" l4.2="L4.2" z="z" l.022="l.022" l8.2="L8.2" l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z="l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" xmlns="%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22" xmlns:data="data">"Larry Pratt on Immigration Reform and Ted Cruz's Loyalty"</a>, <i>Right Wing Watch</i>, May 21, 2013</span></div></span></font></li><li id="cite_note-7" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="user-select: none;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none; text-align: left; user-select: none; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#cite_ref-7" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Jump up</a></span><div style="text-align: left; text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="user-select: none;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt#cite_ref-7" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">↑</a></span> <span class="reference-text">Gun Owners of America, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://gunowners.org/alert06052013.htm" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) right center no-repeat, url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="%221.0%22" encoding="%22UTF-8%22" standalone="%22no%22%3F%3E%3Csvg" width="%2212%22" height="%2212%22%3E%3Cpath" fill="%22%23fff%22/%3E%3C/svg%3E" stroke="%22%2306c%22" d="%22M9.995" h5.982v10.5h1.5z="h5.982V10.5H1.5z" e="E" cpath="Cpath" h11v5.39l9.427="H11v5.39L9.427" l-1.31-1.31l5.393="l-1.31-1.31L5.393" l-2.69-2.688="l-2.69-2.688" l4.2="L4.2" z="z" l.022="l.022" l8.2="L8.2" l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z="l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" xmlns="%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22" xmlns:data="data">"You Could Lose all your Guns before 2035 under the Amnesty Bill before the Senate"</a>, June 3, 2013</span></div></span></font></li></ol></div><h3 style="text-align: left; background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom: 0px; line-height: 1.6;"><span class="mw-headline" id="Related_Sourcewatch"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Related Sourcewatch</font></span></h3><ul style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0.5em 1.6em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="%221.1%22" encoding="%22UTF-8%22%3F%3E%0A%3Csvg" width="%225%22" height="%2213%22%3E%0A%3Ccircle" cx="%222.5%22" cy="%229.5%22" r="%222.5%22" fill="%22%2300528c%22/%3E%0A%3C/svg%3E%0A" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" xmlns="%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22" xmlns:data="data"><li style="text-align: left; margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America" title="Gun Owners of America" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Gun Owners of America</font></a></li><li style="text-align: left; margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/John_Tanton" title="John Tanton" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">John Tanton</font></a></li><li style="text-align: left; margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/English_First" title="English First" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">English First</font></a></li></ul><h3 style="text-align: left; background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom: 0px; line-height: 1.6;"><span class="mw-headline" id="External_articles"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">External articles</font></span></h3><ul style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0.5em 1.6em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="%221.1%22" encoding="%22UTF-8%22%3F%3E%0A%3Csvg" width="%225%22" height="%2213%22%3E%0A%3Ccircle" cx="%222.5%22" cy="%229.5%22" r="%222.5%22" fill="%22%2300528c%22/%3E%0A%3C/svg%3E%0A" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" xmlns="%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22" xmlns:data="data"><li style="text-align: left; margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nick Wing, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/16/larry-pratt-homeland-security_n_3288089.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) right center no-repeat, url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="%221.0%22" encoding="%22UTF-8%22" standalone="%22no%22%3F%3E%3Csvg" width="%2212%22" height="%2212%22%3E%3Cpath" fill="%22%23fff%22/%3E%3C/svg%3E" stroke="%22%2306c%22" d="%22M9.995" h5.982v10.5h1.5z="h5.982V10.5H1.5z" e="E" cpath="Cpath" h11v5.39l9.427="H11v5.39L9.427" l-1.31-1.31l5.393="l-1.31-1.31L5.393" l-2.69-2.688="l-2.69-2.688" l4.2="L4.2" z="z" l.022="l.022" l8.2="L8.2" l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z="l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" xmlns="%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22" xmlns:data="data">"Larry Pratt, Gun Owners Of America Leader: Obama Building Paramilitary Homeland Security Force"</a>, <i>Huffington Post</i>, May 16, 2013</font></li></ul><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b> Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, believes that President Barack Obama is building an armed force in the Department of Homeland Security meant to be “equally as powerful as the military.”</b></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In an <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=p9pFdd64e7A#!" target="hplink" data-beacon="{" p="p" lnid="lnid" interview="interview" this="this" month="month" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" http="http" www.youtube.com="www.youtube.com" watch="watch" feature="player_embedded&v=p9pFdd64e7A#!" data-beacon-parsed="true" class="bn-clickable" data-ylk="" data-rapid-parsed="slk" data-rapid_p="1" data-v9y="1" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset;">interview this month</a> with conspiracy theorist and radio host Pete Santilli and <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/gun-activists-warn-obama-raising-private-black-army-white-massacre-americans" target="hplink" data-beacon="{" p="p" lnid="lnid" first="first" caught="caught" by="by" right="Right" wing="Wing" watch="Watch" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" http="http" www.rightwingwatch.org="www.rightwingwatch.org" content="content" gun-activists-warn-obama-raising-private-black-army-white-massacre-americans="gun-activists-warn-obama-raising-private-black-army-white-massacre-americans" data-beacon-parsed="true" class="bn-clickable" data-ylk="" data-rapid-parsed="slk" data-rapid_p="2" data-v9y="1" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset;">first caught by Right Wing Watch</a>, Pratt matter-of-factly agreed with Santilli’s theory that Obama was developing a “fighting force” that could be used “against the American people” or “in opposition to a military.”</font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“During his ’08 campaign, the president had talked about setting up some kind of, what did he call it, a national security force — something of that sort — that would be equally as powerful as the military,” Pratt said. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Well, that should have told us what he was up to. If he can’t actually commandeer the military, then he’ll bulk up the Department of Homeland Insecurity and he’ll have them buy a gazillion bullets ... These are anti-personnel rounds. These are not target practice rounds. They’re not semiwadcutters, they’re not even the military ball ammo, they’re anti-personnel.”</span></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pratt went on to suggest that it was possible that the ammunition acquisitions could also be a ploy by Obama to “drive up the price and lower the availability of ammunition in particular.”</font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><strong style="box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Listen to Pratt’s comments below, <a href="https://soundcloud.com/rightwingwatch/pratt-on-obamas-private-army" target="hplink" data-beacon="{" p="p" lnid="lnid" via="via" right="Right" wing="Wing" watch="Watch" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" https="https" soundcloud.com="soundcloud.com" rightwingwatch="rightwingwatch" pratt-on-obamas-private-army="pratt-on-obamas-private-army" data-beacon-parsed="true" class="bn-clickable" data-ylk="" data-rapid-parsed="slk" data-rapid_p="3" data-v9y="0" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset;">via Right Wing Watch</a>:</font></strong></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reports of large-scale purchases of ammunition by federal agencies have set off conspiracy theorists, some of whom have been quick to conclude that the government must be preparing for civil unrest. Officials have meanwhile explained the big buys as having to do more with getting a good price for the ammunition. The <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/14/homeland-security-bullets_n_2688402.html" target="hplink" data-beacon="{" p="p" lnid="lnid" associated="Associated" press="Press" reported="reported" in="in" february="February" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" http="http" www.huffingtonpost.com="www.huffingtonpost.com" homeland-security-bullets_n_2688402.html="homeland-security-bullets_n_2688402.html" data-beacon-parsed="true" class="bn-clickable" data-ylk="" data-rapid-parsed="slk" data-rapid_p="4" data-v9y="0" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset;">Associated Press reported in February</a>:</font></p><blockquote style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 5px 0px 25px; padding: 15px 15px 15px 30px; border: none; line-height: 1.5em;"><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">Federal solicitations to buy the bullets are known as “strategic sourcing contracts,” which help the government get a low price for a big purchase, says Peggy Dixon, spokeswoman for the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Ga. The training center and others like it run by the Homeland Security Department use as many as 15 million rounds every year, mostly on shooting ranges and in training exercises.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">Dixon said one of the contracts would allow Homeland Security to buy up to 750 million rounds of ammunition over the next five years for its training facilities. The rounds are used for basic and advanced law enforcement training for federal law enforcement agencies under the department’s umbrella. The facilities also offer firearms training to tens of thousands of federal law enforcement officers. More than 90 federal agencies and 70,000 agents and officers used the department’s training center last year.</font></p></blockquote><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That explanation hasn’t mollified people like Pratt, however. In February, he <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/gun-activists-warn-obama-raising-private-black-army-white-massacre-americans" target="hplink" data-beacon="{" p="p" lnid="lnid" agreed="agreed" with="with" fringe="fringe" radio="radio" hosts="hosts" stan="Stan" solomon="Solomon" and="and" greg="Greg" w="W" howard="Howard" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" http="http" www.rightwingwatch.org="www.rightwingwatch.org" content="content" gun-activists-warn-obama-raising-private-black-army-white-massacre-americans="gun-activists-warn-obama-raising-private-black-army-white-massacre-americans" data-beacon-parsed="true" class="bn-clickable" data-ylk="" data-rapid-parsed="slk" data-rapid_p="5" data-v9y="1" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset;">agreed with fringe radio hosts Stan Solomon and Greg W. Howard</a>, who claimed that <b>Obama was seeking to “put together a racial force” to help him confiscate guns and “wipe out” those who resisted.</b></font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/larry-pratt">https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/larry-pratt</a></font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">rww</font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 20px 0px 0px; line-height: 1.5; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Pratt is the executive director emeritus of <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/organizations/gun-owners-of-america/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration: none;">Gun Owners of America</a>, taking the “emeritus” title in 2016 after 40 years at the helm of the “no compromise” gun lobby group. Through frequent media appearances and a weekly talk show, Pratt feeds dangerous paranoia to the Far Right, encouraging firearms ownership as a way to stave off race riots and government takeovers, and making frequent references to assassinating political leaders.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 20px 0px 0px; line-height: 1.5; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Pratt has long stood at the intersection of the “mainstream” right, Christian nationalists and fringe militia movements. In 1996, he was <b>forced to step down from a position on Pat Buchanan’s presidential campaign when it came to light that he had spoken at a militia event featuring a number of neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic activists</b>. Several years earlier, Pratt had coauthored what the Southern Poverty Law Center calls the book that <b>“introduced the concept of citizen militias to the radical right.” Pratt has also been active in the Christian Right,</b> including helping to funnel donations for the anti-choice group Operation Rescue through another group he ran, the Committee to Protect the Family, when Operation Rescue was running from legal judgments in the early 1990s.</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/larry-pratt-if-conservatives-lose-the-supreme-court-we-may-have-to-resort-to-the-bullet-box/" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/larry-pratt-if-conservatives-lose-the-supreme-court-we-may-have-to-resort-to-the-bullet-box/</a></font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Larry Pratt: If Conservatives Lose The Supreme Court, We May ‘Have To Resort To The Bullet Box’</font></b></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">no link</font></b></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Miranda BlueBy Miranda Blue | May 31, 2016 1:36 pm</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Larry Pratt, the executive director emeritus of Gun Owners of America, said on his “Gun Owners News Hour” radio program this weekend that if a Democrat wins the White House and the Supreme Court starts issuing decisions in favor of gun regulations, conservatives may turn to the “bullet box” to rectify the situation.</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Pratt was interviewing Robert Knight, a senior fellow at the <b>American Civil Rights Union,</b> who warned that “if a liberal Democrat is elected president, then there goes the Supreme Court, it could be two, three, four justices, and I think the Second Amendment would be in great peril if that happens.”</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Pratt responded that if such a court interprets the Constitution in ways that conservatives don’t like, they may have to restore “proper constitutional balance” through the “bullet box”:</b></font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">And at that point, we would have to come to an understanding, which we’ve been sort of taught, it’s been taught out of us, that the courts do not have the last word on what the Constitution is. They decide particular cases, they don’t make law. Their decisions, unlike the Roe v. Wade usurpation, don’t extend to the whole of society, they’re not supposed to. And we may have to reassert that proper constitutional balance, and it may not be pretty. So, I’d much rather have an election where we solve this matter at the ballot box than have to resort to the bullet box.</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Knight responded: “Well, there’s impeachment, too.”</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Pratt has previously hinted at his willingness to use violence against Supreme Court justices with whom he disagrees, issuing a warning to Merrick Garland,</b> President Obama’s nominee to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia, saying that “the Second Amendment is all about people like Judge Garland.”</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Tags: Larry Pratt Robert Knight Election 2016 gun lobby Supreme Court American Civil Rights Union Gun Owners of America</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">capt 816</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">is he a YAF spkr?!</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">constitutional-sheriffs-and-peace-officers-association</font></span></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 21.125px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The CSPOA has grown dramatically since the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting in 2012 and the subsequent rise in gun-control activism. To date, it lists by name and location nearly 500 county sheriffs and 18 state sheriff associations that have “gone on record” with the <a href="http://cspoa.org/sheriffs-gun-rights/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">CSPOA to affirm</a> “the constitutional second amendment rights of citizens in his or her jurisdiction.” Sheriffs who don’t cooperate may find themselves on the “<a href="http://cspoa.org/red-coat-list" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Red Coat List.</a>”<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; height: 0px; line-height: 1; position: relative; bottom: 1ex;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; height: 0px; line-height: 1; position: relative; bottom: 1ex;"><a title="" href="http://www.politicalresearch.org/2013/11/22/profiles-on-the-right-constitutional-sheriffs-and-peace-officers-association/#ftn5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;"><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /></a></span></span></font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 21.125px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Thomas Woods headlined <a href="http://www.politicalresearch.org/2013/11/22/profiles-on-the-right-constitutional-sheriffs-and-peace-officers-association/www.countysheriffproject.org/CSPOA_Invitation_Dec29.2011.pdf" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">CSPOA’s 2012 conference</a>, <b>co-sponsored by the JBS.</b> Though countering gun control is the CSPOA’s major issue, sheriffs speaking at the conference also reported challenging federal agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management and the Food and Drug Administration.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 21.125px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The May 2013 conference featured religion-infused rhetoric against “tyranny.” Speakers included the Constitution Party’s Michael Peroutka, <b>GOA’s Larry Pratt, J</b>oe Wolverton of the </font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">JBS, U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX)</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, and Mike Zullo.The latter is Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s chief “birther” investigator. Part of the conference was dedicated to his <a href="http://www.politicalresearch.org/2013/11/22/profiles-on-the-right-constitutional-sheriffs-and-peace-officers-association/www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUJOSNZpZEU" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">latest revelations</a> in this ongoing pursuit. <a href="http://www.politicalresearch.org/2013/11/22/profiles-on-the-right-constitutional-sheriffs-and-peace-officers-association/www.covenantamerica.us/series/ca-speakers" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Conference</a> <a href="http://www.politicalresearch.org/2013/11/22/profiles-on-the-right-constitutional-sheriffs-and-peace-officers-association/www.covenantamerica.us/agenda-kc" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">speakers</a> also included <b>several county sheriffs and Tea Party leaders.</b><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; height: 0px; line-height: 1; position: relative; bottom: 1ex;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; height: 0px; line-height: 1; position: relative; bottom: 1ex;"><a title="" href="http://www.politicalresearch.org/2013/11/22/profiles-on-the-right-constitutional-sheriffs-and-peace-officers-association/#ftn8" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;"><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /></a></span></span></font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 21.125px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In January 2013, Pennsylvania’s Gilberton Borough passed an ordinance “nullifying all federal, state or local acts in violation of the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.” The police chief behind the ordinance, Mark Kessler, spoke at the 2013 CSPOA conference, and CSPOA created a new register on its website for police chiefs, with Kessler as the first on the list. CSPOA later distanced itself from Kessler and removed him from the list when his behavior became increasingly erratic. In a video posted online, for example, Kessler <a href="http://usnews.nbcnews.com/news/2013/07/24/19660346-police-chief-in-profane-gun-video-uproar-im-not-a-delusional-lunatic?lite" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">cursed “libtards” and fired city-issued weapons at a target</a>representing Democrat Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Kessler was<a href="http://articles.mcall.com/2013-10-10/news/mc-gilberton-pa-police-chief-guns-termination-20131010_1_gilberton-police-chief-chief-mark-kessler-mayor-mary-lou-hannon" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;"> later dismissed</a> by the borough.</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="line-height: 21.125px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">- See more at: http://www.politicalresearch.org/2013/11/22/profiles-on-the-right-constitutional-sheriffs-and-peace-officers-association/#sthash.LZEO1cqD.ZIixzcPv.dpuf</font></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">omfg</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">On November 2[2015?], Gun Owners Foundation filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit an <i>amicus</i> brief in support of a challenge to the federal machine gun ban, ironically passed as part of the 1986 Firearm Owners Protection Act. </font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="line-height: 12.84px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Gun Owners not only argues that possession of machine guns by Americans is compatible with the Second Amendment, we argue that Supreme Court opinions have bolstered this view. </span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Our brief argues that the Second Amendment is not about hunting or target shooting, but about </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">self-defense against individuals and/or the state. </span></b></font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 12.84px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Finally, the Gun Owners’ brief ridicules those who say that fully-automatic machineguns are far too terrifying and powerful for ordinary people to own, and we take the ATF to task for its bait-n-switch tactics.</b></font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 12.84px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 9px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="line-height: 12.84px;">https://www.gunowners.com/8-general/82-gofchallengemachinegunban</span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 9px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="line-height: 12.84px;">
</span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">On November 2, Gun Owners Foundation filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit an <i>amicus</i> brief in support of a challenge to the federal machine gun ban, ironically passed as part of the 1986 Firearm Owners Protection Act. </font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 12.84px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Gun Owners not only argues that possession of machine guns by Americans is compatible with the Second Amendment, we argue that Supreme Court opinions have bolstered this view.  Our brief argues that the Second Amendment is not about hunting or target shooting, but about self-defense against individuals and/or the state. </font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 12.84px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Finally, the Gun Owners’ brief ridicules those who say that fully-automatic machineguns are far too terrifying and powerful for ordinary people to own, and we take the ATF to task for its bait-n-switch tactics.</font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.gunowners.org/images/pdf/n20151110.pdf" style="text-decoration: none; line-height: 18.75pt; background-color: rgb(248, 248, 248);"><font face="Times New Roman" color="#000000" size="4">Check out the brief in <em>Hollis v. Lynch</em> here.</font></a></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0in 0in 11.25pt; line-height: 18.75pt; background: rgb(248, 248, 248);"><a href="http://gunowners.me/1iXuuQu" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><font face="Times New Roman" color="#000000" size="4">And you can give a tax-deductible contribution to help support this case here.</font></a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">[<strong>UPDATE</strong>:  On December 9, 2016, Gun Owners of America filed a second brief in <em>Watson v. United States</em>.  <a href="http://www.gunowners.org/images/pdf/n20151221.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;">That brief can be read here</a>.]</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Under the Gun Control Act ("GCA"), "persons" are generally prohibited from possessing machineguns. A "person" is defined to include entities such as a corporation and partnership -- but the definition does not include a trust. Moreover, in 2014, ATF took the position that "unincorporated trusts are not 'persons' under the GCA." </font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">Based on that understanding that trusts are not persons, the Jay Aubrey Isaac Hollis Revocable Living Trust applied to the ATF for approval to manufacture and register an M-16 machinegun. When ATF eventually revoked the application, the Trust sued, but the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas dismissed the case. </span></div><span style="line-height: 12.84px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" /><div style="text-align: left;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The district court decided in <em>Hollis</em> that machineguns do not even qualify as "arms" protected by the Second Amendment. The district court relied upon cobbled together fragments and dicta from the Supreme Court's 2008 opinion in <i>Heller</i> and its 1939 opinion in <i>Miller</i>, which the district court claimed "foreclosed" the argument that machineguns are "arms."</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">The GOF brief in </span><em style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">Hollis</em><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"> argued that not only did </span><i style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">Heller</i><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"> and </span><i style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">Miller</i><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"> not foreclose the argument, but rather they support it. Indeed,</span><i style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">Heller</i><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"> explicitly stated that "the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms." And</span><i style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">Miller</i><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"> stated that weapons which are "part of the ordinary military equipment" (like the M-16) are the sorts protected by the Second Amendment. </span></div><span style="line-height: 12.84px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" /><div style="text-align: left;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The GOF brief in <em>Hollis</em> also critiqued the district court's absurd use of founding era militia requirements to support its holding. The district court seemed to believe such statutes established maximum limits on the types of weapons people "could" have. On the contrary, those statutes established minimum requirements on the sorts of weapons people "would be required" to have.</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">As the GOF brief argued, the idea is laughable that, if someone showed up at Lexington and Concord with an M-16, his commanders would have turned him away, saying "Take it home, that's far too effective a weapon to use against the Redcoats." </span></div><span style="line-height: 12.84px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" /><div style="text-align: left;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The GOF brief ridiculed those who say that fully-automatic machineguns are far too terrifying and powerful for ordinary people to own. Indeed, over the course of U.S. history, developments like the semi-automatic M-1 Garand, the lever action Henry Arms repeating rifle -- and even the firearm cartridge itself -- all were vast improvements in rate of fire and lethality over their predecessors. But you would probably not hear the argument today that the lever-action rifle is too terrifying to allow in civilian hands because of how easy it is to shoot multiple people quickly without reloading. </font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Next, the GOF brief critiqued ATF's bait-and-switch tactics when it comes to trusts and federal gun law. Under federal law, transfers of NFA weapons are exempt from the NICS background check. Indeed, under federal law, it appears that trusts are not subject to the NICS system at all, since they are not persons.</div></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">However, ATF claims that in NFA transfers to trusts, a "responsible person" must be subject to a NICS check - in direct contravention of the statute. And, our brief argued, if as ATF claims, a trust is not a person, then a trust can possess a machinegun, since only "persons" are prohibited from possessing them. In short, our brief argued that ATF cannot have its cake and eat it to, using conflicting definitions and "interpretations" whenever it suits them. </span></div><span style="line-height: 12.84px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" /><div style="text-align: left;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Finally, the GOF brief called upon the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to continue its tradition of standing up for gun rights in spite of overwhelming consensus by other circuits to do the opposite. Indeed, many years prior to <i>Heller</i>, the Fifth Circuit stood alone among the circuits in holding that the Second Amendment protected an individual right.</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 12.84px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Indeed, when we get down to brass tacks, the Second Amendment is not about hunting, or target shooting, or even just self-defense against a neighbor -- but about self-defense against the state, to the end that a "free State" be preserved. It may be, as the Supreme Court noted, that "no amount of small arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and tanks." They can, however, serve as a bulwark against tyranny.</font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="line-height: 12.84px;">This brief in <em>Hollis</em> was filed on behalf of: Gun Owners of America, Inc., Gun Owners Foundation, Gun Owners of California, Inc., The Heller Foundation, Conservative Legal Defense and Education Fund, Institute on the Constitution, and GOF Life Member and Sheriff Bradley D. Rogers (Elkhart County, Indiana). </span> </font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 12.84px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The second brief in <em>Watson</em> was filed on behalf of many of these same groups and can be <a href="http://www.gunowners.org/images/pdf/n20151221.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;">read in its entirety here</a>.</font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 12.84px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 12.84px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">---</font></span></p><h3 class="page-header" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 5px; line-height: 20px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; padding-bottom: 5px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(238, 238, 238);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Navigation</font></h3><ul class="nav menu" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 18px; list-style: none; line-height: 18px;"><li class="item-105"><a href="https://www.gunowners.com/silvester" style="text-align: left; text-decoration: none; display: block;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Harris v. Silvester</font></a></li><li class="item-121"><a href="https://www.gunowners.com/kolbe-v-o-malley" style="text-align: left; text-decoration: none; display: block;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Kolbe v. O’Malley</font></a></li><li class="item-122"><a href="https://www.gunowners.com/heller" style="text-align: left; text-decoration: none; display: block;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Heller v. District of Columbia</font></a></li><li class="item-123"><a href="https://www.gunowners.com/heien" style="text-align: left; text-decoration: none; display: block;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Heien v. North Carolina</font></a></li><li class="item-124"><a href="https://www.gunowners.com/susan-anthony" style="text-align: left; text-decoration: none; display: block;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus</font></a></li><li class="item-125"><a href="https://www.gunowners.com/abramski-us" style="text-align: left; text-decoration: none; display: block;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Abramski v. United States</font></a></li><li class="item-118"><a href="https://www.gunowners.com/batf" style="text-align: left; text-decoration: none; display: block;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">When The BATF Pays A Visit</font></a></li></ul><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><h3 style="text-align: left; margin: 12px 0px;" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" line-height="line-height" px="px" color="color" rgb="rgb" text-rendering="text-rendering" optimizelegibility="optimizeLegibility" font-size="font-size" background-color="background-color"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Organization </font></h3><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The law firm of William J. Olson, P.C. serves as Legal Counsel for Gun Owners Foundation. This law firm advises on scores of cases a year involving individuals and companies seeking legal counsel, and has written and argued friend of the court briefs for the Foundation. The Olson firm coordinates the Legal Advisory Committee which advises the Foundation on which cases should receive financial support.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Legal Advisory Committee members are:</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong>David Hardy</strong>, an attorney and an author who has published many law review articles has also served as an associate editor of the Arizona Law Review. Hardy represented Sheriff Richard Mack in his landmark case that went to the Supreme Court. Mack successfully challenged the Brady Act requirement that local law enforcement officials perform a background check on gun buyers.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><strong>William F. Harvey</strong> is an attorney, and the former Dean of the Indiana University School of Law.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong>Kerry Morgan</strong>, who is an attorney, has been a firearms dealer, and has published a number of articles in the area of natural law and unalienable rights, and a book, Real Choice, Real Freedom in American Education.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Paul Paskey</strong><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> is an attorney.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> While at Regent University Law School, he won the Firearms Civil Rights Legal Defense Fund essay contest.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> This essay was later included in a collection published by Gun Owners Foundation entitled Safeguarding Liberty: The Constitution & Citizen Militias.</span></font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong>Robert E. Sanders</strong> is an attorney, and a former Assistant Director of Criminal Investigation for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (“BATF”).</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Directors of Gun Owners Foundation are:</font></p><ul style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 9px 25px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><li style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>H.L. Richardson, former California state senator,</b> Founder and Chairman</font></li><li style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tim Macy</font></li><li style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Lawrence D. Pratt, Executive Vice President</b></font></li><li style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Samuel A. Paredes</font></li><li style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Steven Hummell</font></li><li style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">William Kuchan</font></li><li style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dan Larocca</font></li><li style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gerry Ognibene</font></li><li style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">David Rush</font></li><li style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">David Whitt</font></li><li style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">John Williams</font></li><li style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Frank McGlynn is the Foundation’s chief administrative officer</font></li></ul><h3 style="text-align: left; margin: 12px 0px; line-height: 20px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Finances</font></h3><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Many of the Foundation’s fundraising services are donated to the organization. The most recent annual audited financial statements of GOF demonstrate that fundraising expenditures constitute less then two percent of the Foundation’s total support and revenue.</font></p><h3 style="text-align: left; margin: 12px 0px; line-height: 20px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Here’s What They Are Saying About Gun Owners Foundation</font></h3><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“For over three years I was involved in a legal battle with the BATF. GOF was extremely supportive and helpful the entire time. In fact, I sincerely believe that if it wasn’t for the assistance of GOF in helping to prove my innocence, I’d probably be sitting in a Federal prison right now. Thank you so much.” — Darryl Evans, Los Angeles, California</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“When you are the subject of a malicious prosecution, it is very encouraging to know that you are not alone. The City and County tried to run my firearms business into the ground through a frivolous prosecution. I am very grateful to Gun Owners Foundation for helping me.” — General Laney, Detroit, Michigan</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Thank you so much for your efforts. GOF was there with the necessary assistance to help us fight this governmental abuse of power, and overturn the county gun ban in court.” — Tracy Finnell, Springfield, Virginia</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“When the local police violated my right to self defense with a handgun after I was threatened by neighborhood thugs, I had to fight city hall. I really appreciate Gun Owners Foundation’s support in this fight.” — Richard Manuel, Columbus, Ohio</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Without the help of the Foundation, all of the seized firearms would have been destroyed. I have worked with a number of other organizations that assist with good causes, but never one like GOF that was willing to ‘roll up its sleeves’ and dive unreservedly into a fight to protect a good family man from ruin.” — Andrew R. Haut, Bakersfield, California</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 9px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Were it not for Gun Owners Foundation, I would have had to fight bogus gun charges brought by a biased local system without the aid of any Second Amendment organization. I would have lost everything without GOF standing by me.” — Laura Kuriatnyk, Rocky Comfort, Missouri</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">--</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">rand paul PAC? links to hillary vs coal</font></p><div style="text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">pratt goa</font></div><div style="text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.gunowners.org/op0353.htm</font></div><div style="text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">10/03</font></div><div style="text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div align="justify" style="line-height: 25px; background-color: rgb(248, 248, 248);"><h2 style="text-align: left; margin: 10px 0px; line-height: 31.3875px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It's OK To Leave The Plantation!</font></h2><h3 style="margin: 10px 0px; line-height: 27.1875px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" text-align="text-align" center="center">by</span></div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="text-align: center;">Larry Pratt</span></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div></h3></div><p align="justify" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 15px; line-height: 25px; background-color: rgb(248, 248, 248);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mason Weaver was a sixties radical who got a degree in Black Studies at Merritt College in Oakland, CA and learned Swahili.</font></p><p align="justify" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 15px; line-height: 25px; background-color: rgb(248, 248, 248);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Today, Weaver is a conservative, and students can get in a whole bunch of trouble just for posting a flyer announcing his appearance on campus.</font></p><p align="justify" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 15px; line-height: 25px; background-color: rgb(248, 248, 248);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Just ask Steve Hinkle, a member of the California Polytechnic State University College Republicans. Hinkle tried to post a flier promoting Mason Weaver's speech about the topic of his book, It's OK To Leave The Plantation. Some black students who were having a Bible study in the multicultural center (savor the irony, please) confronted Hinkle when he attempted to post his flyer.</font></p><p align="justify" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 15px; line-height: 25px; background-color: rgb(248, 248, 248);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The students at the Bible study called the police because they were offended. (These students need to do a study of 1 Corinthians 13, especially verse five that says in part: "[love] does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered.")</font></p><p align="justify" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 15px; line-height: 25px; background-color: rgb(248, 248, 248);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Well, since the folks in the Bible study apparently have not gotten that far in their reading, they pressed charges before the university's Office of Judicial Affairs. Hinkle was subsequently found guilty of disruption of the campus education process. Hinkle has refused to write a letter of apology following his conviction and has been threatened with not receiving his diploma.</font></p><p align="justify" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 15px; line-height: 25px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(248, 248, 248);">It seems that he has not understood what was obvious to the Vice President of Student Affairs who said the presence of a </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">white Republican near black students made for a "collision of experience" that Mr. Hinkle was "naive" not to realize.</span></font></p><p align="justify" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 15px; line-height: 25px; background-color: rgb(248, 248, 248);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What a tribute to higher education! Students in a multicultural center, studying the Bible, are steadfast in refusing to accommodate another view they do not understand.</font></p><p align="justify" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 15px; line-height: 25px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(248, 248, 248);">What is it they did not understand? </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>As Mason Weaver explained to me during my interview of him on my radio show Live Fire,</b> the plaintiffs did not understand that they were "on the plantation." They have been brainwashed by the government schools and the welfare system into defending the status quo of dependency; a dependency orchestrated by black shakedown artists such as Jesse Jackson.[alford literally is?was?]</span></font></p><p align="justify" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 15px; line-height: 25px; background-color: rgb(248, 248, 248);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Weaver explained that the family was often broken up under slavery. The welfare state has been even more destructive of the family. But rather than dependency on the slave master in the South, the families headed by single moms are dependent on Washington.[moynohan rept?]</font></p><p align="justify" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 15px; line-height: 25px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">No one is responsible on the dependency plantation. Every bad thing that happens is somebody else's fault. "We have drive-by shootings and look to the white gun manufacturers and not at the black trigger men," says Weaver. "We cannot control the white manufacturers or the [drug] smugglers, but we can control our children. The civil rights movement was about who would control our children. But just like the children of Israel that escaped Egypt, some longed to return to Pharaoh."</font></p><p align="justify" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 15px; line-height: 25px; background-color: rgb(248, 248, 248);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Weaver explains that it is this inculcated mentality of dependence that has so strongly inclined the black community to support gun control. To be a gun owner and expect to have to defend oneself is to make a significant departure from the plantation. Freedom requires us to understand that calling 911 should be done only after the assailant has been shot, apprehended or chased off -- when the danger to the victim is over.[trayvon?]</b></font></p><p align="justify" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 15px; line-height: 25px; background-color: rgb(248, 248, 248);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Weaver's book is available at <a href="http://www.masonweaver.com/" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-out; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) !important;">http://www.masonweaver.com</a> and my interview with him can be heard at<a href="http://www.gunowners.radio/htm" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-out; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) !important;">http://www.gunowners.radio/htm</a>.</font></p></div><div style="text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Why is the man who stole Ohio campaigning with a white supremacist?</b></font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">by Bob Fitrakis</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">by Harvey Wasserman</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">OCTOBER 9, <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">2006</span></font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>J. Kenneth Blackwell, the man who stole Ohio’s 2004 presidential election, was out campaigning October 4, 2006 with a man widely viewed as one of America’s leading white supremacists. Blackwell is an African-American.</b> </font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">He is also the Republican nominee for governor of Ohio. As Secretary of State, he was the GOP point man for stealing the 2004 presidential vote that gave George W. Bush a second term. As co-chair of the state’s Bush-Cheney re-election campaign, Blackwell engineered a complex strategy of confusion, disenfranchisement and theft that mirrored what was done by Katherine Harris in Florida 2000. Harris was rewarded with a safe Congressional seat, and is now the Republican nominee for U.S. </span>Senate. Polls show Blackwell trailing between 12-20 points in his gubernatorial race, but few Ohio insiders doubt his ability to steal the necessary votes, if he can get away with it. Currently, Blackwell operatives are stressing that he’s “only 12 points down” and that they believe the race will tighten significantly by Election Day. </font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Blackwell toured the state with Larry Pratt</span>, author of ARMED PEOPLE VICTORIOUS, which advocates the creation of militant right-wing militias.</b> <b>Pratt has spoken and shared platforms in the past with Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi Aryan Nation members. </b>He was forced to take a leave of absence from Pat Buchanan’s 1996 presidential campaign over charges of white supremacist and anti-semitic views. Pratt’s 150,000-member Gun Owners of America is proudly to the right of the National Rifle Association. </font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">According to the Columbus Dispatch, Pratt says he couldn’t be a racist because he is campaigning with Blackwell, an African-American. Blackwell is “our kind of guy,” says Pratt, in reference to Blackwell’s support of gun owners’ rights. </font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4">Blackwell campaign spokesperson attorney Eric Seabrook, conceded on Sunday, October 8 to the Khari Enaharo show listeners on 98.9FM radio that Pratt was a white supremacist but, he stressed “it was all about the gun rights issue.” </font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">But this is not the first time Blackwell has lined up with extreme right-wing backers boasting racist and anti-semitic roots. Earlier this year Blackwell posted on his website a picture of himself addressing the <b>Council for National Policy.</b> The CNP has deep “neo-fascist” and Ku Klux Klan ties according to Chip Berlet of the Boston-based Political Research Associates. In addition to right wing extremists such as Jerry Falwell, Phyllis Schlafly and Pat Robertson, the CNP embraces a broad spectrum of powerful, reactionary bigots. </font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Among them are members of the Ahmanson family, major funders of extremist publications and electronic voting machines. The Ahmanson’s financial and political ties are thoroughly intertwined with both ES&S and Diebold, mainstays of the electronic hardware used to steal the Ohio vote. Among their associates are Bob and Todd Urosevich, whose executive and programming work has helped shape the two voting machine companies. </font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Others associated with the CNP include:</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Richard Shoff, a former Ku Klux Klan leader in Indiana.</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">John McGoff, an ardent supporter of the former apartheid South African regime.</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">R.J. Rushdoony, </span>the theological leader of America's "Christian Reconstruction" movement, which advocates that Christian fundamentalists take "dominion" over America by abolishing democracy and instituting Old Testament Law. Rushdoony's Reconstructionalists believe that "homosexuals . . . adulterers , blasphemers, astrologers and others will be executed," along with disobedient children.</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4"><b>Reed Larson</b>, head of anti-union National Right to Work Committee.</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Don Wildmon, TV censorship activist and accused anti-Semite.</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Lieutenant-Colonel <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Oliver North, Major General John K. Singlaub and other principals from the<b> Iran-Contra Scandal.</b></span></font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">After a public uproar, Blackwell pulled his CNP photo off his website. But he has thus far made no similar backtrack on Larry Pratt. “We’re happy to have his support,” says a campaign spokesman, reported the Dispatch. </font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Blackwell supporters continue to predict he will make a “last-minute surge” to win the governor’s race. Making no visible moves toward the mainstream, Blackwell may well be banking on two bottom lines in Bush-era electoral politics: loaded guns and rigged voting machines. </font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors, with Steve Rosenfeld, of WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO?, just published by the New Press. Fitrakis is an independent candidate for governor of Ohio, endorsed by the Green Party.</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">==</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The United States House of Representatives just passed a small appropriation that will<a href="http://mikethompson.house.gov/newsroom/press-releases/bipartisan-amendment-to-strengthen-background-check-system-passes-house" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;">improve the accuracy of the national database used to conduct background checks</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>prior to many gun sales. It’s a modest step forward, given significant loopholes in the federal background system which<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/02/04/1534871/internet-gun-sales/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;">allow many felons to evade background checks altogether</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>— Congress has not yet addressed these loopholes. Nevertheless, this appropriation is a significant victory for supporters of gun regulation during an era when the National Rifle Association appears to have a veto power over legislation.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The guns provision that passed the House, which was attached as an amendment to a larger appropriations bill that also passed early Friday morning, adds an additional $19.5 million in federal grant money which states may use to improve their submissions to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. According to Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA), one of the lead sponsors of this amendment, “<a href="http://mikethompson.house.gov/newsroom/press-releases/chairman-thompson-offers-bipartisan-amendment-to-strengthen-background-check" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;">records for at least 2.5 million fugitives weren’t entered into the NICS system</a>” in five states — potentially enabling these individuals to illegally purchase a gun. Six states have “fewer than 30 total records in the NICS system,” and “12 states have submitted fewer than 100 mental health records to the NICS system.”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In addition to passing this amendment, the House also included a provision requiring the FBI to “<a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/press/statement/2014/05/08/89366/statement-caps-arkadi-gerney-on-gun-provisions-in-house-appropriations-bill/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;">report on the progress states and pertinent federal agencies are making</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>toward submitting records to the NICS system each year,” according to the Center for American Progress’ Arkadi Gerney.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The NRA was officially neutral on Thompson’s amendment, although this is actually a step back from their earlier support for a robust background check system. In 1999, after the Columbine High School mass shooting, NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre told Congress that “it’s reasonable to provide mandatory instant background checks for every sale at every gun show.<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><a href="http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/NRA-stance-shifts-on-background-checks-4285284.php" style="font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;">No loopholes anywhere, for anyone</a>.” Other gun groups, including<b> Gun Owners of America,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://gunowners.org/oppose-the-thompson-king-nics-amendment.htm" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;">opposed the amendment</a>.</b></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Gun Owners of America</b> (GOA) is a non-profit gun rights lobbying organization founded in 1975 by Sen. H.L. (Bill) Richardson.<sup id="cite_ref-about_1-0" class="reference" style=" line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_note-about-1" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[1]</a></sup> Its associates are the Gun Owners Foundation, a <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/501(c)3" title="501(c)3" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">501(c)3</a> education foundation, and the Gun Owner of America Political Victory Fund, which raises campaign funds to support pro-gun candidates at multiple government levels.<sup id="cite_ref-about_1-1" class="reference" style=" line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_note-about-1" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[1]</a></sup></font>

<font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4">GOA has been described as "eight lanes to the right" of the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/National_Rifle_Association" title="National Rifle Association" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration: none;">National Rifle Association</a><sup id="cite_ref-2" class="reference" style="line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_note-2" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;">[2]</a></sup></font>

<h2 style="text-align: left; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 19.2px; background: none rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="mw-headline" id="Ties_to_the_American_Legislative_Exchange_Council"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council</font></span></h2>

<p style="text-align: left; margin: 0.4em 0px 0.5em; line-height: 19.2px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Gun Owners of America was a member of the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Legislative_Exchange_Council" title="American Legislative Exchange Council" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">American Legislative Exchange Council</a> (ALEC) in the 1970s and 80s.<sup id="cite_ref-PRW_3-0" class="reference" style=" line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_note-PRW-3" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[3]</a></sup> The two groups worked together to develop a plan to prevent the ratification of the amendment giving full Congressional representation to DC residents. GOA's executive director, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt" title="Larry Pratt" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Larry Pratt</a> was quoted as saying, "The amendment would bring in two senators who would probably be minority and would definitely be liberal on gun control."<sup id="cite_ref-PRW_3-1" class="reference" style=" line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_note-PRW-3" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[3]</a></sup></font></p>

<table style="line-height: 19.2px; vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid rgb(201, 215, 240); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><tbody><tr><th style="border: 1px solid rgb(64, 127, 212); padding: 0.2em 0.4em; background: rgb(41, 102, 184);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">About ALEC</font></th></tr><tr><td>

<div style=" padding: 2px 5px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/ALEC" title="ALEC" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">ALEC</a> is a corporate bill mill. It is not just a lobby or a front group; it is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, corporations hand state legislators their wishlists to benefit their bottom line. Corporations fund almost all of ALEC's operations. They pay for a seat on ALEC task forces where corporate lobbyists and special interest reps vote with elected officials to approve “model” bills. Learn more at the Center for Media and Democracy's<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://alecexposed.org/" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaaveleqvr42n3pgqkaiaheuxdqj3dqj3e6iotpusqcgj4eq5iluile0jil3pecxhchgbhz8kg4hwxau3mzecgeyfnaxp4hqnqpnt7ql0nadpd6whcclvnakksq8iiaaaaaaelftksuqmcc="AAAAVElEQVR42n3PgQkAIAhEUXdqJ3dqJ3e6IoTPUSQcgj4EQ5IlUiLE0Jil3PECXhcHGBhZ8kg4hwxAu3MZeCGeyFnAXp4hqNQPnt7QL0nADpD6wHccLvnAKksq8iiaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">ALECexposed.org</a>, and check out breaking news on our <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.prwatch.org/" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaaveleqvr42n3pgqkaiaheuxdqj3dqj3e6iotpusqcgj4eq5iluile0jil3pecxhchgbhz8kg4hwxau3mzecgeyfnaxp4hqnqpnt7ql0nadpd6whcclvnakksq8iiaaaaaaelftksuqmcc="AAAAVElEQVR42n3PgQkAIAhEUXdqJ3dqJ3e6IoTPUSQcgj4EQ5IlUiLE0Jil3PECXhcHGBhZ8kg4hwxAu3MZeCGeyFnAXp4hqNQPnt7QL0nADpD6wHccLvnAKksq8iiaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">PRWatch.org site</a>.</font></div>

</td></tr></tbody></table>

<h2 style="text-align: left; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 19.2px; background: none rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="mw-headline" id="Controversies"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Controversies</font></span></h2>

<h3 style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-style: none; line-height: 19.2px; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"><span class="mw-headline" id="Anti-Immigrant_Stance"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Anti-Immigrant</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Stance</span></font></span></h3>

<p style="text-align: left; margin: 0.4em 0px 0.5em; line-height: 19.2px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In 2013, GOA sent a letter to its supporters urging them to oppose the senate immigration bill because they "could lose all [their] guns before 2035 under the amnesty bill before the Senate,” <sup id="cite_ref-PRW_3-2" class="reference" style=" line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_note-PRW-3" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[3]</a></sup> GOA's executive director, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt" title="Larry Pratt" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Larry Pratt</a>, called immigration reform a "scamensty bill" and told listeners “you can say buh bye to your guns and buh bye to the rest of your freedom.” <sup id="cite_ref-PRW_3-3" class="reference" style=" line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_note-PRW-3" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[3]</a></sup> Pratt called immigrants would would benefit from the proposed pathway to citizenship "dependents" and illiterate and said “they’re going to be probably just sitting around drawing welfare and voting Democrat."<sup id="cite_ref-PRW_3-4" class="reference" style=" line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_note-PRW-3" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[3]</a></sup></font>

<h3 style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-style: none; line-height: 19.2px; background: none rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="mw-headline" id="Supporting_Vigilantism_in_Milwaukee_County"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Supporting Vigilantism in Milwaukee County</font></span></h3>

<p style="text-align: left; margin: 0.4em 0px 0.5em; line-height: 19.2px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In 2013, Milwaukee County Sheriff, David A. Clarke, Jr. came under fire for airing a public service announcement "telling residents that because of budget cuts, calling 911 for help is no longer their best option."<sup id="cite_ref-npr_4-0" class="reference" style=" line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_note-npr-4" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[4]</a></sup></font></p>

<dd style="text-align: left; line-height: 1.5em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-right: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">With officers laid off and furloughed, Clarke says, calling 911 and waiting for police is no longer your best bet. "You could beg for mercy from a violent criminal, hide under the bed, or you could fight back. But are you prepared?" he asks. "Consider taking a certified safety course in handling a firearm so you can defend yourself until we get there. You have a duty to protect yourself and your family."<sup id="cite_ref-npr_4-1" class="reference" style=" line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_note-npr-4" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[4]</a></sup></font></dd>

</dl>

<p style="text-align: left; margin: 0.4em 0px 0.5em; line-height: 19.2px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Clark went on to spend at least $6,175 in tax dollars on gun-themed radio ads, which he called personal safety messages, urging citizens to arm themselves for self-protection.<sup id="cite_ref-JS2_5-0" class="reference" style=" line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_note-JS2-5" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[5]</a></sup></font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">When Milwaukee County Supervisor Patricia Jursik proposed a ban on taxpayer-funded radio and TV ads starring elected officials, Clarke took out another $10,000 to make new ads.<sup id="cite_ref-JS2_5-1" class="reference" style=" line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_note-JS2-5" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[5]</a></sup> Under Jursik's plan such ads would be violations of the county ethics code and subject to fines.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">As a result, GOA members flooded Milwaukee County Board members' email accounts with notes backing Sheriff Clarke and the radio ads.<sup id="cite_ref-JS1_6-0" class="reference" style=" line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_note-JS1-6" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[6]</a></sup></font></p>

<dd style="text-align: left; line-height: 1.5em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-right: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">"I am very disappointed that a committee made up of seven supervisors voted to restrict Sheriff David Clarke from appearing in any future public service announcements," stated the first line of dozens of the emails, which came from as far as Oregon and Maryland.<sup id="cite_ref-JS1_6-1" class="reference" style=" line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_note-JS1-6" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[6]</a></sup></font></dd>

</dl>

<p style="text-align: left;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">"Are you people Nuts, abusing your authority like this?" wrote another Clarke supporter to all the Milwaukee supervisors. "Take Note: Any vote against Sheriff Clarke will be a vote against your re-election."<sup id="cite_ref-JS1_6-2" class="reference" style=" line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_note-JS1-6" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[6]</a></sup></font>

</dd>

</dl>

<h2 style="text-align: left; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 19.2px; background: none rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="mw-headline" id="Personnel"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Personnel</font></span></h2>

<h3 style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-style: none; line-height: 19.2px; background: none rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="mw-headline" id="Board_of_Directors"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Board of Directors</font></span></h3>

<li style="text-align: left; margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">H.L. "Bill" Richardson, Chairman<sup id="cite_ref-7" class="reference" style=" line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_note-7" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[7]</a></sup></font></li>

<li style="text-align: left; margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Tim Macy, Vice-Chairman and Director of Political Affairs<sup id="cite_ref-8" class="reference" style=" line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_note-8" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[8]</a></sup></font></li>

<li style="text-align: left; margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt" title="Larry Pratt" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Larry Pratt</a>, Executive Director<sup id="cite_ref-9" class="reference" style=" line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_note-9" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[9]</a></sup></font></li>

<li style="text-align: left; margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Sam Paredes<sup id="cite_ref-10" class="reference" style=" line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_note-10" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[10]</a></sup></font></li>

<li style="text-align: left; margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Gerry Ognibene<sup id="cite_ref-11" class="reference" style=" line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_note-11" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[11]</a></sup></font></li>

</li></ul>

<h2 style="text-align: left; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 19.2px; background: none rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="mw-headline" id="Contact"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Contact</font></span></h2>

<p style="margin: 0.4em 0px 0.5em; line-height: 19.2px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">Gun Owners of America</span></div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">8001 Forbes Pl Suite 102</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;">Springfield, VA 22151</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div>

<h2 style="text-align: left; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 19.2px; background: none rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="mw-headline" id="Articles_and_Resources"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Articles and Resources</font></span></h2>

<h3 style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-style: none; line-height: 19.2px; background: none rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="mw-headline" id="References"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">References</font></span></h3>

<li id="cite_note-about-1" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">↑ </span></div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><sup style=" line-height: 1em;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="text-decoration: none; background: none; text-align: left; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_ref-about_1-0" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Jump up to:</a></span></sup><div style="text-align: left; text-decoration: none; background: none;"><sup style=" line-height: 1em;"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="font-size: large;"><sup style=" line-height: 1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_ref-about_1-0" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">1.0</a></sup> <sup style=" line-height: 1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_ref-about_1-1" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">1.1</a></sup></span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span class="reference-text" style="font-size: large;">Gun Owners of America, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.gunowners.org/protect.htm" style="text-decoration-line: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaaveleqvr42n3pgqkaiaheuxdqj3dqj3e6iotpusqcgj4eq5iluile0jil3pecxhchgbhz8kg4hwxau3mzecgeyfnaxp4hqnqpnt7ql0nadpd6whcclvnakksq8iiaaaaaaelftksuqmcc="AAAAVElEQVR42n3PgQkAIAhEUXdqJ3dqJ3e6IoTPUSQcgj4EQ5IlUiLE0Jil3PECXhcHGBhZ8kg4hwxAu3MZeCGeyFnAXp4hqNQPnt7QL0nADpD6wHccLvnAKksq8iiaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">"About Gun Owners of America"</a>, organizational website, accessed June 2013</span></sup></div></span></font></li>

<li id="cite_note-2" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="text-decoration: none; background: none; text-align: left; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_ref-2" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Jump up</a></span><div style="text-align: left; text-decoration: none; background: none;"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_ref-2" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">↑</a></span> <span class="reference-text">Southern Poverty Law Center, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2001/summer/false-patriots?page=0,8#.UbIxVRj9pno" style="text-decoration-line: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaaveleqvr42n3pgqkaiaheuxdqj3dqj3e6iotpusqcgj4eq5iluile0jil3pecxhchgbhz8kg4hwxau3mzecgeyfnaxp4hqnqpnt7ql0nadpd6whcclvnakksq8iiaaaaaaelftksuqmcc="AAAAVElEQVR42n3PgQkAIAhEUXdqJ3dqJ3e6IoTPUSQcgj4EQ5IlUiLE0Jil3PECXhcHGBhZ8kg4hwxAu3MZeCGeyFnAXp4hqNQPnt7QL0nADpD6wHccLvnAKksq8iiaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">"False Patriots: Profiles of 40 antigovernment leaders" - "Eight Lanes Out: Larry Pratt"</a>, Intelligence Report, Summer 2001, Issue Number: 102</span></div></span></font></li>

<li id="cite_note-PRW-3" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">↑ </span></div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><sup style=" line-height: 1em;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="text-decoration: none; background: none; text-align: left; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_ref-PRW_3-0" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Jump up to:</a></span></sup><div style="text-align: left; text-decoration: none; background: none;"><sup style=" line-height: 1em;"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="font-size: large;"><sup style=" line-height: 1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_ref-PRW_3-0" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3.0</a></sup> <sup style=" line-height: 1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_ref-PRW_3-1" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3.1</a></sup> <sup style=" line-height: 1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_ref-PRW_3-2" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3.2</a></sup> <sup style=" line-height: 1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_ref-PRW_3-3" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3.3</a></sup> <sup style=" line-height: 1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_ref-PRW_3-4" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3.4</a></sup></span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span class="reference-text" style="font-size: large;">Brendan Fischer, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/04/11394/not-just-nra-former-alec-leader-head-gun-owners-america-sides-shooter-trayvon-mar" style="text-decoration-line: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaaveleqvr42n3pgqkaiaheuxdqj3dqj3e6iotpusqcgj4eq5iluile0jil3pecxhchgbhz8kg4hwxau3mzecgeyfnaxp4hqnqpnt7ql0nadpd6whcclvnakksq8iiaaaaaaelftksuqmcc="AAAAVElEQVR42n3PgQkAIAhEUXdqJ3dqJ3e6IoTPUSQcgj4EQ5IlUiLE0Jil3PECXhcHGBhZ8kg4hwxAu3MZeCGeyFnAXp4hqNQPnt7QL0nADpD6wHccLvnAKksq8iiaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">"Not Just the NRA: Former ALEC Leader, the Head of Gun Owners of America, Sides With Shooter of Trayvon Martin"</a>, <i>PRWatch</i>, April 9, 2012</span></sup></div></span></font></li>

<li id="cite_note-npr-4" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">↑ </span></div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><sup style=" line-height: 1em;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="text-decoration: none; background: none; text-align: left; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_ref-npr_4-0" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Jump up to:</a></span></sup><div style="text-align: left; text-decoration: none; background: none;"><sup style=" line-height: 1em;"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="font-size: large;"><sup style=" line-height: 1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_ref-npr_4-0" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">4.0</a></sup> <sup style=" line-height: 1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_ref-npr_4-1" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">4.1</a></sup></span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span class="reference-text" style="font-size: large;">David Schaper, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.npr.org/2013/01/31/170727538/milwaukee-sheriff-advises-residents-to-arm-themselves" style="text-decoration-line: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaaveleqvr42n3pgqkaiaheuxdqj3dqj3e6iotpusqcgj4eq5iluile0jil3pecxhchgbhz8kg4hwxau3mzecgeyfnaxp4hqnqpnt7ql0nadpd6whcclvnakksq8iiaaaaaaelftksuqmcc="AAAAVElEQVR42n3PgQkAIAhEUXdqJ3dqJ3e6IoTPUSQcgj4EQ5IlUiLE0Jil3PECXhcHGBhZ8kg4hwxAu3MZeCGeyFnAXp4hqNQPnt7QL0nADpD6wHccLvnAKksq8iiaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">"Milwaukee County Sheriff: 'You Have A Duty To Protect Yourself'"</a>, <i>NPR</i>, January 31, 2013</span></sup></div></span></font></li>

<li id="cite_note-JS2-5" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">↑ </span></div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><sup style=" line-height: 1em;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="text-decoration: none; background: none; text-align: left; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_ref-JS2_5-0" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Jump up to:</a></span></sup><div style="text-align: left; text-decoration: none; background: none;"><sup style=" line-height: 1em;"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="font-size: large;"><sup style=" line-height: 1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_ref-JS2_5-0" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">5.0</a></sup> <sup style=" line-height: 1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_ref-JS2_5-1" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">5.1</a></sup></span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span class="reference-text" style="font-size: large;">Daniel Bice, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/210896811.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaaveleqvr42n3pgqkaiaheuxdqj3dqj3e6iotpusqcgj4eq5iluile0jil3pecxhchgbhz8kg4hwxau3mzecgeyfnaxp4hqnqpnt7ql0nadpd6whcclvnakksq8iiaaaaaaelftksuqmcc="AAAAVElEQVR42n3PgQkAIAhEUXdqJ3dqJ3e6IoTPUSQcgj4EQ5IlUiLE0Jil3PECXhcHGBhZ8kg4hwxAu3MZeCGeyFnAXp4hqNQPnt7QL0nADpD6wHccLvnAKksq8iiaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">"David Clarke ad: Be 'ruthless' in response to attackers"</a>, <i>Milwaukee Journal Sentinel</i>, June 20, 2013.</span></sup></div></span></font></li>

<li id="cite_note-JS1-6" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">↑ </span></div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><sup style=" line-height: 1em;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="text-decoration: none; background: none; text-align: left; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_ref-JS1_6-0" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Jump up to:</a></span></sup><div style="text-align: left; text-decoration: none; background: none;"><sup style=" line-height: 1em;"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="font-size: large;"><sup style=" line-height: 1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_ref-JS1_6-0" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">6.0</a></sup> <sup style=" line-height: 1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_ref-JS1_6-1" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">6.1</a></sup> <sup style=" line-height: 1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_ref-JS1_6-2" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">6.2</a></sup></span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span class="reference-text" style="font-size: large;">Daniel Bice, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/212323951.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaaveleqvr42n3pgqkaiaheuxdqj3dqj3e6iotpusqcgj4eq5iluile0jil3pecxhchgbhz8kg4hwxau3mzecgeyfnaxp4hqnqpnt7ql0nadpd6whcclvnakksq8iiaaaaaaelftksuqmcc="AAAAVElEQVR42n3PgQkAIAhEUXdqJ3dqJ3e6IoTPUSQcgj4EQ5IlUiLE0Jil3PECXhcHGBhZ8kg4hwxAu3MZeCGeyFnAXp4hqNQPnt7QL0nADpD6wHccLvnAKksq8iiaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">"Gun group floods County Board with emails backing David Clarke"</a>, <i>Milwaukee Journal Sentinel</i>, June 20, 2013.</span></sup></div></span></font></li>

<li id="cite_note-7" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="text-decoration: none; background: none; text-align: left; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_ref-7" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Jump up</a></span><div style="text-align: left; text-decoration: none; background: none;"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_ref-7" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">↑</a></span> <span class="reference-text">Gun Owners of America, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.gunowners.org/hlrichardson.htm" style="text-decoration-line: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaaveleqvr42n3pgqkaiaheuxdqj3dqj3e6iotpusqcgj4eq5iluile0jil3pecxhchgbhz8kg4hwxau3mzecgeyfnaxp4hqnqpnt7ql0nadpd6whcclvnakksq8iiaaaaaaelftksuqmcc="AAAAVElEQVR42n3PgQkAIAhEUXdqJ3dqJ3e6IoTPUSQcgj4EQ5IlUiLE0Jil3PECXhcHGBhZ8kg4hwxAu3MZeCGeyFnAXp4hqNQPnt7QL0nADpD6wHccLvnAKksq8iiaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">"H.L. 'Bill' Richardson"</a>, organizational website, accessed June 2013</span></div></span></font></li>

<li id="cite_note-8" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="text-decoration: none; background: none; text-align: left; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_ref-8" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Jump up</a></span><div style="text-align: left; text-decoration: none; background: none;"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_ref-8" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">↑</a></span> <span class="reference-text">Gun Owners of America, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.gunowners.org/tim-macy.htm" style="text-decoration-line: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaaveleqvr42n3pgqkaiaheuxdqj3dqj3e6iotpusqcgj4eq5iluile0jil3pecxhchgbhz8kg4hwxau3mzecgeyfnaxp4hqnqpnt7ql0nadpd6whcclvnakksq8iiaaaaaaelftksuqmcc="AAAAVElEQVR42n3PgQkAIAhEUXdqJ3dqJ3e6IoTPUSQcgj4EQ5IlUiLE0Jil3PECXhcHGBhZ8kg4hwxAu3MZeCGeyFnAXp4hqNQPnt7QL0nADpD6wHccLvnAKksq8iiaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">"Tim Macy"</a>, organizational website, accessed June 2013</span></div></span></font></li>

<li id="cite_note-9" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="text-decoration: none; background: none; text-align: left; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_ref-9" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Jump up</a></span><div style="text-align: left; text-decoration: none; background: none;"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_ref-9" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">↑</a></span> <span class="reference-text">Gun Owners of America, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.gunowners.org/larry-pratt.htm" style="text-decoration-line: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaaveleqvr42n3pgqkaiaheuxdqj3dqj3e6iotpusqcgj4eq5iluile0jil3pecxhchgbhz8kg4hwxau3mzecgeyfnaxp4hqnqpnt7ql0nadpd6whcclvnakksq8iiaaaaaaelftksuqmcc="AAAAVElEQVR42n3PgQkAIAhEUXdqJ3dqJ3e6IoTPUSQcgj4EQ5IlUiLE0Jil3PECXhcHGBhZ8kg4hwxAu3MZeCGeyFnAXp4hqNQPnt7QL0nADpD6wHccLvnAKksq8iiaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">"Larry Pratt"</a>, organizational website, accessed June 2013</span></div></span></font></li>

<li id="cite_note-10" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="text-decoration: none; background: none; text-align: left; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_ref-10" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Jump up</a></span><div style="text-align: left; text-decoration: none; background: none;"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_ref-10" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">↑</a></span> <span class="reference-text">Gun Owners of America, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.gunowners.org/sam-paredes.htm" style="text-decoration-line: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaaveleqvr42n3pgqkaiaheuxdqj3dqj3e6iotpusqcgj4eq5iluile0jil3pecxhchgbhz8kg4hwxau3mzecgeyfnaxp4hqnqpnt7ql0nadpd6whcclvnakksq8iiaaaaaaelftksuqmcc="AAAAVElEQVR42n3PgQkAIAhEUXdqJ3dqJ3e6IoTPUSQcgj4EQ5IlUiLE0Jil3PECXhcHGBhZ8kg4hwxAu3MZeCGeyFnAXp4hqNQPnt7QL0nADpD6wHccLvnAKksq8iiaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">"Sam Paredes"</a>, organizational website, accessed June 2013</span></div></span></font></li>

<li id="cite_note-11" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="text-decoration: none; background: none; text-align: left; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_ref-11" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Jump up</a></span><div style="text-align: left; text-decoration: none; background: none;"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gun_Owners_of_America#cite_ref-11" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">↑</a></span> <span class="reference-text">Gun Owners of America, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.gunowners.org/gerry-ognibene.htm" style="text-decoration-line: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaaveleqvr42n3pgqkaiaheuxdqj3dqj3e6iotpusqcgj4eq5iluile0jil3pecxhchgbhz8kg4hwxau3mzecgeyfnaxp4hqnqpnt7ql0nadpd6whcclvnakksq8iiaaaaaaelftksuqmcc="AAAAVElEQVR42n3PgQkAIAhEUXdqJ3dqJ3e6IoTPUSQcgj4EQ5IlUiLE0Jil3PECXhcHGBhZ8kg4hwxAu3MZeCGeyFnAXp4hqNQPnt7QL0nADpD6wHccLvnAKksq8iiaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">"Gerry Ognibene"</a>, organizational website, accessed June 2013</span></div></span></font></li>

</ol>

<h3 style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-style: none; line-height: 19.2px; background: none rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="mw-headline" id="Related_Sourcewatch"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Related Sourcewatch</font></span></h3>

<li style="text-align: left; margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt" title="Larry Pratt" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Larry Pratt</font></a></li>

<li style="text-align: left; margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/English_First" title="English First" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">English First</font></a></li>

</ul>

<h3 style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-style: none; line-height: 19.2px; background: none rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="mw-headline" id="External_articles"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">External articles</font></span></h3>

<li style="text-align: left; margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Miranda Blue, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/gun-owners-america-warns-you-could-lose-all-your-guns-2035-if-immigration-reform-passes" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaaveleqvr42n3pgqkaiaheuxdqj3dqj3e6iotpusqcgj4eq5iluile0jil3pecxhchgbhz8kg4hwxau3mzecgeyfnaxp4hqnqpnt7ql0nadpd6whcclvnakksq8iiaaaaaaelftksuqmcc="AAAAVElEQVR42n3PgQkAIAhEUXdqJ3dqJ3e6IoTPUSQcgj4EQ5IlUiLE0Jil3PECXhcHGBhZ8kg4hwxAu3MZeCGeyFnAXp4hqNQPnt7QL0nADpD6wHccLvnAKksq8iiaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" no-repeat="no-repeat">"Gun Owners of America Warns 'You Could Lose All Your Guns Before 2035' If Immigration Reform Passes"</a>, <i>Right Wing Watch</i>, June 7, 2013</font></li>

<li style="text-align: left; margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nick Wing, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/16/larry-pratt-homeland-security_n_3288089.html" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaaveleqvr42n3pgqkaiaheuxdqj3dqj3e6iotpusqcgj4eq5iluile0jil3pecxhchgbhz8kg4hwxau3mzecgeyfnaxp4hqnqpnt7ql0nadpd6whcclvnakksq8iiaaaaaaelftksuqmcc="AAAAVElEQVR42n3PgQkAIAhEUXdqJ3dqJ3e6IoTPUSQcgj4EQ5IlUiLE0Jil3PECXhcHGBhZ8kg4hwxAu3MZeCGeyFnAXp4hqNQPnt7QL0nADpD6wHccLvnAKksq8iiaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" no-repeat="no-repeat">"Larry Pratt, Gun Owners Of America Leader: Obama Building Paramilitary Homeland Security Force"</a>, <i>Huffington Post</i>, May 16, 2013</font></li>

<li style="text-align: left; margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ian Reifowitz, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-reifowitz/gun-owners-of-america_b_3222681.html" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaaveleqvr42n3pgqkaiaheuxdqj3dqj3e6iotpusqcgj4eq5iluile0jil3pecxhchgbhz8kg4hwxau3mzecgeyfnaxp4hqnqpnt7ql0nadpd6whcclvnakksq8iiaaaaaaelftksuqmcc="AAAAVElEQVR42n3PgQkAIAhEUXdqJ3dqJ3e6IoTPUSQcgj4EQ5IlUiLE0Jil3PECXhcHGBhZ8kg4hwxAu3MZeCGeyFnAXp4hqNQPnt7QL0nADpD6wHccLvnAKksq8iiaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" no-repeat="no-repeat">"Gun Owners of America Is 'Primarying' the NRA From the Right"</a>, <i>Huffington Post</i>, May 6, 2013</font></li>

<li style="text-align: left; margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Devin Burghart, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.irehr.org/issue-areas/race-racism-and-white-nationalism/item/474-new-york-times-misses-real-story-on-gun-owners-of-america" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaaveleqvr42n3pgqkaiaheuxdqj3dqj3e6iotpusqcgj4eq5iluile0jil3pecxhchgbhz8kg4hwxau3mzecgeyfnaxp4hqnqpnt7ql0nadpd6whcclvnakksq8iiaaaaaaelftksuqmcc="AAAAVElEQVR42n3PgQkAIAhEUXdqJ3dqJ3e6IoTPUSQcgj4EQ5IlUiLE0Jil3PECXhcHGBhZ8kg4hwxAu3MZeCGeyFnAXp4hqNQPnt7QL0nADpD6wHccLvnAKksq8iiaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" no-repeat="no-repeat">"New York Times Misses Real Story on Gun Owners of America"</a>, <i>Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights</i>, Apri 4, 2013</font></li>

<li style="text-align: left; margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jennifer Steinhauer, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/04/us/politics/gun-owners-of-america-a-lobbying-group-grows-in-influence.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaaveleqvr42n3pgqkaiaheuxdqj3dqj3e6iotpusqcgj4eq5iluile0jil3pecxhchgbhz8kg4hwxau3mzecgeyfnaxp4hqnqpnt7ql0nadpd6whcclvnakksq8iiaaaaaaelftksuqmcc="AAAAVElEQVR42n3PgQkAIAhEUXdqJ3dqJ3e6IoTPUSQcgj4EQ5IlUiLE0Jil3PECXhcHGBhZ8kg4hwxAu3MZeCGeyFnAXp4hqNQPnt7QL0nADpD6wHccLvnAKksq8iiaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" no-repeat="no-repeat">"Upstart Group Pushes Harder Than the N.R.A."</a>, <i>New York Times</i>, April 3, 2013</font></li>

</ul>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">LI donny f  </font></p>

<h1 style="text-align: left; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; font-variant: inherit; line-height: 26px;"><span class="n fn" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit;"><span class="full-name" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">John Velleco</font></span></span></h1>

</div>

<p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: 20px; font-weight: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Director of Federal Affairs at Gun Owners of America</font></span>

<h1 class="print-title" style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Not Just the NRA: Former ALEC Leader, the Head of Gun Owners of America, Sides With Shooter of Trayvon Martin</font></h1>

<div class="meta" style="text-align: left;"><span class="submitted"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">by <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/users/35275/brendan-fischer" title="View user profile.">Brendan Fischer</a> <span class="print-footnote">[1]</span> — April 9, 2012 - 7:28am</font></span></div>

<ul>

<li class="vocabulary-2" style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Topics: <span class="term-59"><a href="http://www.prwatch.org/topics/corporations">Corporations</a> <span class="print-footnote">[2]</span></span>, <span class="term-60"><a href="http://www.prwatch.org/topics/democracy">Democracy</a> <span class="print-footnote">[3]</span></span>, <span class="term-70"><a href="http://www.prwatch.org/topics/politics">Politics</a> <span class="print-footnote">[4]</span></span></font></li>

</ul>

</div>

<ul>

<li class="vocabulary-9" style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Projects: <span class="term-737"><a href="http://www.prwatch.org/projects/alec-exposed">ALEC Exposed</a> <span class="print-footnote">[5]</span></span></font></li></ul></div></div><div class="content clearfix">

<p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The executive director of Gun Owners of America Larry Pratt has hit the airwaves with a rare defense of George Zimmerman, the 28-year-old man who shot and killed unarmed African-American high school student Trayvon Martin</span>. Prosecutors and law enforcement in Florida have cited Florida's "stand your ground" (aka "shoot first") law, which was conceived by the National Rifle Association and ratified by the <a href="http://alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed" target="_blank">American Legislative Exchange Council</a> <span class="print-footnote">[7]</span> (ALEC).<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Pratt is a former <b>ALEC board member</b> and notorious for racially-charged rhetoric.</span></font></p>

<h2 style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pratt's Ties to ALEC</font></h2>

<p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pratt's relationship with ALEC began in 1978, when ALEC began an effort to oppose a constitutional amendment giving the District of Columbia full voting rights in Congress. That debate began shortly after the District obtained some independence from congressional management through "home-rule," which allowed American citizens in DC to elect a mayor, but left them subject to taxation without representation in Congress. The debate over allowing DC residents to elect senators was <a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=SQNPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=gUsDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4641,1794728&dq=washington+post+american-legislative-exchange-council&hl=en%20c" target="_blank">tainted with racist objections</a> <span class="print-footnote">[8]</span> due to the large population of African-Americans in DC, and the likelihood that DC would elect two minority -- and Democratic -- Senators if accorded representation in Congress.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>To help promote its opposition to the amendment, ALEC forged an alliance with Pratt's Gun Owners of America. At the 1979 Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) conference, ALEC and Pratt's Gun Owners of America <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/files/ALEC_GOA_amend.doc" target="blank">announced</a> <span class="print-footnote">[9]</span> a plan the two groups had developed to thwart ratification of the amendment,</b> involving states sending formal resolutions of disapproval to the federal government. Pratt was clear about their interest in blocking the measure. "The amendment would bring in two senators who would probably be minority and would definitely be liberal on gun control," <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/files/ALEC_GOA_amend.doc" target="blank">he said</a> <span class="print-footnote">[9]</span>.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ALEC's relationship with Pratt and his Gun Owners of America apparently remained mutually beneficial.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Pratt was elected to the Virginia State Legislature in 1981 and soon took a leadership position in ALEC. He sat on ALEC's board even after he left the legislature, serving as its treasurer in at least <a href="http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/lbc89b00/pdf?search=%22larry%20pratt%20alec%22" target="blank">1983</a> <span class="print-footnote">[10]</span> and <a href="http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/mbc89b00/pdf?search=%22larry%20pratt%20alec%22" target="blank">1984</a> <span class="print-footnote">[11]</span> and <a href="http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/ffa08b00/pdf?search=%22larry%20pratt%20alec%22" target="_blank">1985</a> <span class="print-footnote">[12]</span>, and perhaps longer (the records from this period are incomplete beyond these specific documents).</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pratt's Gun Owners of America <a href="http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/lcn47b00/pdf?search=%22gun%20owners%20of%20america%20american%20legislative%20exchange%20council%22" target="blank">remained ALEC members</a> <span class="print-footnote">[13]</span> for <a href="http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/zyg39b00/pdf?search=%22gun%20owners%20of%20america%20american%20legislative%20exchange%20council%22" target="blank">many years</a> <span class="print-footnote">[14]</span>, into at least the 1990s.</font></p>

<h2 style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Justifying Martin's Death</font></h2>

<p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fast forward to 2012. Pratt <a href="http://current.com/shows/the-young-turks/videos/gun-advocate-to-cenk-if-you-jump-on-top-of-me-count-on-it-im-gonna-shoot-you-part-1" target="_blank">appeared</a> <span class="print-footnote">[15]</span> on Cenk Uygur's Current TV show "The Young Turks" on March 23 to assert that Zimmerman was justified in killing Trayvon Martin as he returned from a trip to 7-11 with a pack of Skittles.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pratt branded 17-year-old Martin as "an aggressor," based on the account of an alleged eyewitness who would only identify himself as "John," and described Martin as having knocked down his attacker and Zimmerman acting in self-defense. Pratt said:</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Trayvon Martin gave up his rights and shifted from being a victim to being an aggressor -- after he knocked Zimmerman down, [and] he did not run away from that situation."</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Uygur replied: "Funny how the kid with no gun is the one who, in your mind, gave up all his rights. But Zimmerman, the ... stalker who called the police 49 times [in many cases] on black males, called this guy a coon, chased him down with a gun -- he has all the rights in the world." Uygur also noted that no other witnesses corroborated "John's" account.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pratt's assertions seem to be part of a <a href="http://gawker.com/5896490/your-guide-to-the-idiotic-racist-backlash-against-trayvon-martin" target="_blank">wider right-wing effort</a> <span class="print-footnote">[16]</span> to claim the mainstream media has been inaccurately covering the Trayvon Martin shooting, and to attack the dead victim who cannot speak for himself.</font>

<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">But the law that is apparently keeping Zimmerman out of jail for killing the unarmed Trayvon Martin was</span></div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" /><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">conceived by the NRA and adopted by ALEC as a "model" bill in 2005. As noted above, Pratt and his organization were affiliated with ALEC for almost two decades.</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div>

<h2 style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pratt's Ties to White Supremacists</font></h2>

<p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pratt <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/files/I_heard_on_the_radio_that_th_0.doc" target="_blank">told</a> <span class="print-footnote">[17]</span> the Washington Post that he bought his first gun in 1968 when "there were some racial difficulties" in Washington DC. "I heard on the radio that the police weren't sure they could control the rioters coming north on 16th Street, so I went out and bought a shotgun."</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pratt founded Gun Owners of America in 1975 with H.L. Richardson, a benefactor of the Religious Right. Described as <a href="http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2001/summer/false-patriots?page=0,8" target="blank">"eight lanes to the right"</a> <span class="print-footnote">[18]</span> of the National Rifle Association<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">, GOA was <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/files/New_Right_Takes_to_States.doc" target="blank">one of the early "New Right" groups</a> <span class="print-footnote">[19]</span> to focus their political activity on the state level, rather than just on national issues</span>. The group became a major donor to state legislative races, and <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/files/New_Right_Takes_to_States.doc" target="_blank">"put the fear of death into a lot of Democrats"</a> <span class="print-footnote">[19]</span> when the group helped defeat several powerful Democratic incumbents in California in 1982.<b> GOA's focus on the states meshed well with ALEC.</b></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Pratt and the GOA were involved in more than just state politics. In the early 1980s, <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Pratt and the Gun Owners of America were <a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=Rs1jAAAAIBAJ&sjid=cAENAAAAIBAJ&pg=2888,3186554&dq=gun-owners-of-america+larry-pratt&hl=en%20outspoken%20supporters" target="_blank">outspoken supporters</a> <span class="print-footnote">[20]</span> of the white rulers in South Africa during apartheid,</span> calling a press conference in 1984 to present "evidence" that allegedly tied Bishop Desmond Tutu to an effort to violently overthrow the white minority regime in the country. "Bishop Tutu's idea of Christianity, rather than one of bringing reconciliation of the divisions within South Africa is one that would welcome the extension of the atheist slave state from Russia to his own country," Pratt said. Bishop Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize that same year.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the time, Pratt was on the ALEC board.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><span style=" background-color: #FFF200;">Also in 1984, while he sat on the ALEC board, Pratt and GOA </span></b><a href="http://www.prwatch.org/files/d%27aubussion.doc" target="_blank"><b><span style=" background-color: #FFF200;">presented a plaque</span></b></a><b><span style=" background-color: #FFF200;"> </span></b><span class="print-footnote"><b><span style=" background-color: #FFF200;">[21]</span></b></span><b><span style=" background-color: #FFF200;"> to notorious El Salvador death squad leader Robert D'Aubuisson</span></b><span style=" background-color: #FFF200;"> in 1984 for his "continuing efforts for freedom in the face of communist aggression which is an inspiration to freedom-loving people everywhere." D'Aubuisson, known as "Blowtorch Bob" for his use of a blowtorch to torture political opponents, also was involved in the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero.</span></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 1990 Pratt wrote a book titled "Armed People Victorious" based on his study of <b>death squads</b> in <b>Guatemala and the Philippines,</b> and advocated for similar "citizen defense patrols" in the United States. The idea reportedly caught on in 1992, when Pratt <a href="http://www.rickross.com/reference/militia/militia7.html" target="_blank">addressed</a> <span class="print-footnote">[22]</span> a three-day meeting of neo-Nazis and Christian Adherents organized by white supremacist Pete Peters. He shared the stage with a former Ku Klux Klan leader and an Aryan Nation official.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pratt's lengthy ties to white supremacists forced him to <a href="http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,94912,00.html" target="blank">step down</a> <span class="print-footnote">[23]</span> from his role as co-chairman of <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Pat_Buchanan" target="blank">Pat Buchanan</a> <span class="print-footnote">[24]</span>'s 1996 presidential campaign, after his racist connections were publicized by the Center for Public Integrity and others.</font></p>

<h2 style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Many ALEC Bills Disparately Impact People of Color</font></h2>

<p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Given Pratt's history, ALEC may wish to further distance itself from the Gun Owners of America director. But bills more recently approved at the behest of the NRA or with the NRA in a leadership role on<b> ALEC's Criminal Justice Task Force </b>have been shown to have a racially disparate impact.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CMD has <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/03/11366/alec-and-nra-behind-law-may-protect-trayvon-martins-killer" target="_blank">reported</a> <span class="print-footnote">[25]</span> on how the corporations and state legislators on the ALEC Criminal Justice Task Force in 2005 approved the NRA-sponsored "Castle Doctrine Act" as an ALEC model, which was then introduced in statehouses across the country (and has been cited to allow Trayvon Martin's killer to walk free). The ALEC model bill expands the common-law castle doctrine beyond the home to give criminal and civil immunity to a person who uses deadly force "anywhere they have a right to be," whenever they believe themselves to feel threatened.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As appears to have been the case with Trayvon Martin in Florida and Bo Morrison in Wisconsin, this opens the door for people who find young black men "threatening" to respond to that perceived threat with deadly force. Because the law goes beyond creating a mere defense against conviction (which already exists under long-standing American legal traditions), and instead establishes a <em>presumption</em> of innocence, in situations where there are few eyewitnesses other than the alleged killer and the person who is killed (as was the situation in the deaths of Martin and Morrison), the presumption of immunity can be very difficult to rebut.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As CMD has also <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/03/11366/alec-and-nra-behind-law-may-protect-trayvon-martins-killer" target="_blank">noted</a> <span class="print-footnote">[25]</span>, where the ALEC "Castle Doctrine Act" opens the door for racial bias to be protected under the criminal justice system, the ALEC model "Voter ID Act" may sanction racial prejudice in the electoral system. 34 states introduced bills containing elements of the ALEC Voter ID Act in 2011. A study from the Brennan Center found that approximately 5 million people do not have the state-issued IDs the ALEC model requires to cast a ballot, many of whom are people of color.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The racial impact of these bills and others approved by the ALEC Criminal Justice Task Force over the years are perhaps less surprising given ALEC's past history of working closely with GOA and Larry Pratt.</font></p>

</div>

<div class="print-footer"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">Center for Media and Democracy • 520 University Avenue, Suite 260 • Madison, Wisconsin 53703</span></div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Phone: 608-260-9713 • Fax: 608-260-9714</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div></div>

<div class="print-source_url" style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong>Source URL:</strong> <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/04/11394/not-just-nra-former-alec-leader-head-gun-owners-america-sides-shooter-trayvon-mar">http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/04/11394/not-just-nra-former-alec-leader-head-gun-owners-america-sides-shooter-trayvon-mar</a></font></div>

<p /><div style="text-align: left;"><strong style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">Links:</strong></div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[1] http://www.prwatch.org/users/35275/brendan-fischer</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;">[2] http://www.prwatch.org/topics/corporations</div><div style="text-align: left;">[3] http://www.prwatch.org/topics/democracy</div><div style="text-align: left;">[4] http://www.prwatch.org/topics/politics</div><div style="text-align: left;">[5] http://www.prwatch.org/projects/alec-exposed</div><div style="text-align: left;">[6] http://www.addtoany.com/share_save?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.prwatch.org%2Fnews%2F2012%2F04%2F11394%2Fnot-just-nra-former-alec-leader-head-gun-owners-america-sides-shooter-trayvon-mar&linkname=Not%20Just%20the%20NRA%3A%20Former%20ALEC%20Leader%2C%20the%20Head%20of%20Gun%20Owners%20of%20America%2C%20Sides%20With%20Shooter%20of%20Trayvon%20Martin</div><div style="text-align: left;">[7] http://alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed</div><div style="text-align: left;">[8] http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=SQNPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=gUsDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4641,1794728&dq=washington+post+american-legislative-exchange-council&hl=en%20c</div><div style="text-align: left;">[9] http://www.prwatch.org/files/ALEC_GOA_amend.doc</div><div style="text-align: left;">[10] http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/lbc89b00/pdf?search=%22larry%20pratt%20alec%22</div><div style="text-align: left;">[11] http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/mbc89b00/pdf?search=%22larry%20pratt%20alec%22</div><div style="text-align: left;">[12] http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/ffa08b00/pdf?search=%22larry%20pratt%20alec%22</div><div style="text-align: left;">[13] http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/lcn47b00/pdf?search=%22gun%20owners%20of%20america%20american%20legislative%20exchange%20council%22</div><div style="text-align: left;">[14] http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/zyg39b00/pdf?search=%22gun%20owners%20of%20america%20american%20legislative%20exchange%20council%22</div><div style="text-align: left;">[15] http://current.com/shows/the-young-turks/videos/gun-advocate-to-cenk-if-you-jump-on-top-of-me-count-on-it-im-gonna-shoot-you-part-1</div><div style="text-align: left;">[16] http://gawker.com/5896490/your-guide-to-the-idiotic-racist-backlash-against-trayvon-martin</div><div style="text-align: left;">[17] http://www.prwatch.org/files/I_heard_on_the_radio_that_th_0.doc</div><div style="text-align: left;">[18] http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2001/summer/false-patriots?page=0,8</div><div style="text-align: left;">[19] http://www.prwatch.org/files/New_Right_Takes_to_States.doc</div><div style="text-align: left;">[20] http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=Rs1jAAAAIBAJ&sjid=cAENAAAAIBAJ&pg=2888,3186554&dq=gun-owners-of-america+larry-pratt&hl=en%20outspoken%20supporters</div><div style="text-align: left;">[21] http://www.prwatch.org/files/d'aubussion.doc</div><div style="text-align: left;">[22] http://www.rickross.com/reference/militia/militia7.html</div><div style="text-align: left;">[23] http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,94912,00.html</div><div style="text-align: left;">[24] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Pat_Buchanan</div><div style="text-align: left;">[25] http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/03/11366/alec-and-nra-behind-law-may-protect-trayvon-martins-killer</div>

</div>

<a href="http://www.prwatch.org/print/11394"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">http://www.prwatch.org/print/11394</font></a>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://mediamatters.org/tags/larry-pratt">http://mediamatters.org/tags/larry-pratt</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Despite regularly uniting with fringe conspiracy theorists -- and often joining them in espousing outlandish conspiracies --<b> Gun Owners of America executive director Larry Pratt, l</b>ongtime National Rifle Association board member Ted Nugent, and former NRA president David Keene represent organizations that still wield considerable influence in the debate over gun legislation.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The NRA says that it has millions of members and annual revenues in excess of $200 million, and their annual meetings regularly draw leading Republican presidential candidates. Pratt's group Gun Owners of America has also become an important player in the gun debate; an April article by <em>The New York Times</em> <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/04/04/ny-times-hides-extremism-of-fringe-gun-lobby-gr/193468">highlighted</a> how GOA was "emerging as an influential force" over then-pending Senate gun legislation, while ignoring Pratt's own record of extremism.</font>

<ul>

<li>

<p style="text-align: left;"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gun Owners of America Execuive Director Larry Pratt is happy to appear on talk shows hosted by conspiracy theorists who believe 9/11 was an inside job, think white Christians should arm themselves for the coming race war, or want to shoot Hillary Clinton in the vagina.</font></b>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Pratt told <em>Media Matters</em> in a lengthy interview this week that outlandish, discredited claims by the likes of talk show hosts Alex Jones and Pete Santelli do not bother him as long as his interviewer "has an audience and he provides a microphone for us to reach that audience."</font></p>

</div>

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<li>

<p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"As long as I have a chance to present what Gun Owners of America is doing ... ideally seek support for Gun Owners of America, get [people] on our alert list, receive the alerts, then that's all good," Pratt said.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In the interview, Pratt also defended conspiratorial claims he had made on extremist programs, including his suggestion that the government might have been involved in the 2012 mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado</span>.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Pratt's organization has become an important player in the gun debate, with <em>The</em> <em>New York Times </em>in April<em> </em><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/04/us/politics/gun-owners-of-america-a-lobbying-group-grows-in-influence.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0">heralding their role</a> as an "increasingly potent group" that was "emerging as an influential force" over then-pending Senate gun legislation</b>. This high-profile role has come in spite of Pratt's <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/04/04/ny-times-hides-extremism-of-fringe-gun-lobby-gr/193468">long record</a> of extremism.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As <em>Media Matters</em> <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/05/29/the-lunatic-world-of-gun-rights-radio/194254">has documented</a>, discredited conspiracies and outlandish and offensive statements are the stock-in-trade of several radio talk show hosts whos<b>e regular guests have included Pratt, as well as gun advocates Ted Nugent and former NRA President David Keene.</b></font></p>

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<li>

<p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Among the radio shows that Pratt has frequented are those hosted b<b>y Jones, Santelli,</b> and Stan Solomon and Gary Franchi.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Solomon, a race-baiting host who is convinced a war between a "black force" and a "white resistance" is set to break out at any moment, also believes the December 2012 mass shooting at the Sandy Hook elementary school was a "programmed event" designed to help pass gun legislation. </font></p>

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<p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Franchi is an avid conspirator who drew unwanted attention when NBC News <a href="http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/02/09/10358155-super-pac-supporting-ron-paul-is-operated-by-a-911-truther?lite">highlighted</a> his history of promoting conspiracy theories, including his extensive involvement in the "9-11 truth" movement and his belief that the government is secretly building FEMA concentration camps to round up American citizens.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Jones <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/04/16/alex-jones-and-his-enablers/193647#jones1">believes</a> the government actively carried out or was otherwise involved in the 9-11 attacks, the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the mass shooting in Newtown. (He also recently <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/05/21/alex-jones-explains-how-government-weather-weap/194167">suggested</a> a government "weather weapon" could possibly have created the devastating tornado in Oklahoma.) </font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Santelli in recent weeks has been in the news for repeatedly expressing his desire to shoot Hillary Clinton "in the vagina" over her supposed treasonous acts. </b></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Asked if he agrees with these hosts or finds any problem with their views, Pratt stated, "If they will provide an audience, we're happy to speak to their audience."</font></p>

<div class="read-full" style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/05/30/why-a-leading-gun-activist-frequents-extremist/194271"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Continue reading ›››</font></a></div>

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<li>

<h1 style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/05/29/the-lunatic-world-of-gun-rights-radio/194254"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">The Lunatic World Of Gun Rights Radio</font></a></h1>

<h2 style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How Gun Activists Team Up With Fringe Conspiracy Theorists</font></h2>

</li>

</ul>

<h1 class="node-title" style=" text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Crazy Pro-Gun Republicans Claim Obama is Raising Private Black Army to Massacre Whites</font></h1>

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<div class="story-date" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><em>March 1, 2013</em>  |  </font></div>

<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gun Owners of America president Larry Pratt appeared Tuesday on the <em>Talk to Solomon Show</em> alongside conservative blogger Greg W. Howard, of <a href="http://gawker.com/5659351/twittergate-how-internet-jerks-pranked-the-tea-party" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Twittergate fame</a> <span class="print-footnote">[3]</span>, for another chance to spew <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/people/larry-pratt" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">anti-Obama conspiracy theories</a> <span class="print-footnote">[4]</span>.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Pratt predicted that President Obama may begin confiscating guns <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqxafCHrcbM&feature=youtu.be" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">in order to provoke a violent response</a></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><span class="print-footnote" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">[5]</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> to justify further oppression, which host Stan Solomon feared would lead to the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of people.</span></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pratt once again insisted that Obama is acting like King George III, a sentiment with which Solomon concurred, saying, “That will happen quickly and they will wipe those people out to set an example.”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Solomon wasn’t finished: “I believe they will put together a racial force to go against an opposite race resistance, basically a black force to go against a white resistance, and then they will claim anyone resisting the black force they are doing it because they are racist.”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Howard agreed: “You may be right because he has been sowing the seeds of racial hatred; we were healing quite well as a nation on racial issues until Obama came along and now we have a lot of racial discord.”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After arguing that Obama is “not American” and not a natural born citizen, Howard maintained that Obama may begin “wiping out a few hundred people who own guns, pull a large scale Waco or a Ruby Ridge type incident” and have it “tinged it with racial overtones.” But just in case Obama goes through with his plans to “take down” the Internet, “people are setting up phone-trees all over the place” to stop Obama in his tracks.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“If Obama can take your guns away he can take your car, he can take your home, he can take your bank account, he can take your very life,” Howard said.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Unsurprisingly, Pratt agreed with their insane ramblings: “I do agree that the Obama administration would definitely be capable of something as evil as you were suggesting.”</b></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">However, Pratt warned that “a lot of people resolved, ‘no more free Wacos,’” and that if Obama “starts playing the massacre game the way you did at Waco, well, you’re going to get surrounded, you won’t be able to go home safely, your family won’t be safe.”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Watch:</font></p>

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<div style=" text-align: left;"><em><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">See more stories tagged with:</font></em></div>

<div class="field-item even" style=" text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.alternet.org/tags/gun-safety" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Gun safety</a> <span class="print-footnote">[6]</span>,</font></div>

<div class="field-item odd" style=" text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.alternet.org/tags/massacre" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">massacre</a> <span class="print-footnote">[7]</span>,</font></div>

<div class="field-item even" style=" text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.alternet.org/tags/racial-violence" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">racial violence</a> <span class="print-footnote">[8]</span>,</font></div>

<div class="field-item odd" style=" text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.alternet.org/tags/president-obama-0" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">president obama</a> <span class="print-footnote">[9]</span>,</font></div>

<div class="field-item even" style=" text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.alternet.org/tags/right-wing-0" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">right wing</a> <span class="print-footnote">[10]</span></font></div>

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<div class="print-source_url" style=" text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong>Source URL:</strong> <a href="http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/crazy-pro-gun-republicans-claim-obama-raising-private-black-army-massacre-whites" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/crazy-pro-gun-republicans-claim-obama-raising-private-black-army-massacre-whites</a></font></div>

<div style=" text-align: left;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Links:</font></strong></div>

<div style=" text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[1] http://www.Rightwingwatch.org</font></div>

<div style=" text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/brian-tashman</font></div>

<div style=" text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[3] http://gawker.com/5659351/twittergate-how-internet-jerks-pranked-the-tea-party</font></div>

<div style=" text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[4] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/people/larry-pratt</font></div>

<div style=" text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[5] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqxafCHrcbM&feature=youtu.be</font></div>

<div style=" text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[6] http://www.alternet.org/tags/gun-safety</font></div>

<div style=" text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[7] http://www.alternet.org/tags/massacre</font></div>

<div style=" text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[8] http://www.alternet.org/tags/racial-violence</font></div>

<div style=" text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[9] http://www.alternet.org/tags/president-obama-0</font></div>

<div style=" text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[10] http://www.alternet.org/tags/right-wing-0</font></div>

<div style=" text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[11] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B</font></div>

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<div style="text-align: left;"><b style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">News * Analysis * Research * Action</font></b></div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Volume 1, Number 5 * March 7, <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">1996</span></b></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><blockquote>

<p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Communism as the ultimate evil has always been the specter haunting property owners, as it threatens the very root of their class position and superior status. The Soviet, Chinese, and Cuban revolutions were traumas to Western elites, and the on-going conflicts and the well-publicized abuses of Communist states have contributed to elevating opposition to communism to a first principle of Western ideology and politics. This ideology helps mobilize the populace against an enemy, and because the concept is fuzzy it can be used against anybody advocating policies that threaten property interests or support accommodation with Communist states or radicalism. It therefore helps fragment the left and labor movements and serves as a political- control mechanism. If the triumph of communism is the worst imaginable result, the support of fascism abroad is justified as a lesser evil.</font>

<i><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">-- Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky</font></i></p>

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<h1 style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A Small Circle of Friends:</font></h1>

<p /><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Larry Pratt, the Council for Inter-American Security and International Fascist Networks</b></div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div>

<p /><div style="text-align: left;"><b>by Tom Burghardt</b></div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights </b></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div>

<p /><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#a" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">The Council for Inter-American Security</a></div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#b" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">CIS and WACL: A Marriage Made in Hell</a></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div>

<div style="text-align: left; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#c" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Larry Pratt, the Council for Inter-American Security and the War Against Immigrants</a></div>

<div style="text-align: left; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#d" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Conclusion</a></div>

<div style="text-align: left; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#e" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Appendix</a></div>

<div style="text-align: left; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#f" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Notes and sources</a></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div>

<h2 style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Introduction</font></h2>

<p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Recent allegations of anti-Semitism and racism levelled against <b>Larry Pratt, a national co-chairman of the Buchanan for President</b> campaign committee, is an intriguing example of media obfuscation and "truth" on the half-shell. That Pratt addressed the 1992 "Christian Men's Meeting," organized by notorious Christian Identity racist, Pete Peters, is an established fact. That Pratt shared the platform with Aryan Nations <i>fuhrer</i>  , Richard Butler and "former" Klan "Grand Dragon," Louis Beam, the neo-Nazi architect of "leaderless resistance," is incontestable. That he gave a speech at the 1993 Jubilation Conference in Sacramento, California, an annual gathering of far-rightists' sponsored by the anti-Semitic publisher of <i>Jubilee,</i>   the flagship tabloid of the Christian Identity movement, is true and has been accurately reported by the bourgeois press.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What should be of equal concern to the media is information about Mr. Pratt which is far more damaging -- his close collaboration over a 20 year period with an international network of war criminals, neo-Nazi terrorists, and the organizers of Asian, European and Latin American death squads. But because such activities advanced the geopolitical and military goals of the United States, Pratt's actual record is passed over in <i>silence</i>  ; a facet of media self-censorship that has been well- documented elsewhere.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#1" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[1]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the outset of this report I will emphasize, Pratt is a reactionary whose political orientation can aptly be described as clerical-fascist. On numerous occasions, he has expressed disdain for democracy and the economic, political and social rights of the oppressed. His ideological and personal links to the theocratic wing of the Christian Right, the anti-abortion movement and "Patriot" militias, though of interest, will be explored in another report currently in preparation.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This edition of AFIB however, will explore at some length, the dimensions of Larry Pratt's ties to the national security state. I will demonstrate that Pratt, Buchanan and a host of other "respectable conservatives," far from being "outsiders" or "populists" are active agents and apologists for the global crimes of U.S. imperialism.</font>

<h2><div style="text-align: left;"><a id="appup" name="appup" style="font-size: large;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Council for Inter-American Security: </span></font></a></div><a id="appup" name="appup" /><div style="text-align: left;"><a id="appup" name="appup" /><a id="appup" name="appup" /><a id="appup" name="appup" /><a id="appup" name="appup" /><a id="appup" name="appup" /><a id="appup" name="appup" /><a id="appup" name="appup" /><a id="appup" name="appup" /><a id="appup" name="appup" /><a id="appup" name="appup" /><a id="appup" name="appup" /><a id="appup" name="appup" /><a id="appup" name="appup" /><a id="appup" name="appup" style="font-size: large;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Intellectuals in the Service of Global Terror</font></a></div></h2>

<p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Council for Inter-American Security (CIS) is a rightist outfit that played a pivotal role formulating Washington's program for counter-revolutionary war and mass murder in Central America during the 1980s. <b>Larry Pratt, was a central figure within the CIS hierarchy as was Patrick Buchanan</b>; Pratt was secretary to the group while Buchanan functioned as an organizational director (see <a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#append" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">Appendix</a> for complete list of board members and principle players).</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But CIS was more than a New Right think-tank researching and formulating foreign policy for the Reagan administration. The group functioned in a dual-capacity; as an<b> alarmist "public policy institute" and as a domestic spy ring, a "privatized" version of the FBI's infamous COINTELPRO operations. Having staked-out Latin America as their geopolitical niche, CIS targeted Central America solidarity activists, progressive clergy, and the Salvadoran exile community. The group gathered intelligence and disseminated disinformation, funneling data on foreign policy opponents to the FBI and the intelligence service of the Salvadoran death squad state.</b></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The domestic side to illegal CIA-Contra operations were aided by a broad spectrum of domestic and international reactionaries. Many of the state-sanctioned criminals who sought to subvert democratic processes in the U.S. and overseas were connected to a network which included, among others: the <b>John Birch Society </b>(JBS); the<b> World Anti-Communist League (WACL)</b>; Christian fundamentalist and Catholic theocrats; anti-Castro terrorists grouped in Alpha 66/Brigade 2506; the<b> LaRouche</b> organization and the Unification Movement of South Korean fascist,</span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Rev. Sun Myung Moon</span>.</b><a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#2" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[2]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While such groups operated secretly, they did so with the knowledge, financial backing and encouragement of powerful American corporate and political interests. According to <b>journalist Ross Gelbspan:</b></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A...private group which flourished during the Reagan era was the Washington-based <b>Council for Inter-American Security. </b>The group disseminated reams of material during the 1980s purporting to prove linkages between a Soviet-inspired global terror network and liberal and left-wing American groups opposed to US foreign policies. CIS also expended considerable effort to improve the public image of the reputed Salvadoran death squad leader Roberto D'Aubuisson. When the <b>FBI's CISPES files were pried open in 1988 by a lawsuit brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights they were found to contain several reports written by<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> J. Michael Waller, </span></b>a researcher whose work has been sponsored by the nongovernmental Council for Inter-American Security. But Waller's work to connect American political dissenters to an international communist-terrorist plot was part of a public- private partnership.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#3" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[3]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>By 1984, FBI "active measures" against CISPES </b>and the Sanctuary Movement were in full-swing.<b> Fifteen Bureau field offices, dozens of agents and hundreds of "private" right-wing intelligence "assets" were involved in these illegal operations. More than 200 incidents of harassment and intimidation against activists were documented. Many incidents involved church and office break-ins, theft of files and the infiltration of local CISPES chapters by Bureau informants.<span style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Peaceful public rallies and demonstrations were disrupted by goons affiliated with Rev. Moon's Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles (CARP).</span></b></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>One case that had particularly ominous implications was that of Yanira Corea, a 24 year old Salvadoran exile active in the Los Angeles CISPES chapter. In June 1987, the young woman was<span style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> kidnapped, sexually assaulted, tortured and threatened with death if her "subversive" activities didn't stop.</span> Corea's brother was a union activist in El Salvador. Prior to her abduction she received a threatening letter containing dried flower petals a photo of her three year old son and the notation -- "Flowers in the desert die," a traditional warning of the death squads</b><span style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#4" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[4]</a></span></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Though Bureau informants could not produce a shred of evidence linking these groups to "terrorism," the FBI actually <i>increased</i>   the level of their attacks. According to the logic of Bureau red hunters, the <i>lack</i>   of criminal activity in and of itself was demonstrable <i>evidence</i>   of a broad "conspiracy" hatched by shrewd agents linked to the KGB. This was an illusion that the Council for Inter-American Security helped to create.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Throughout the period, the FBI were fed reports alleging that CISPES was a "terrorist" organization. Waller, a research director and editor of the CIS journal, <i>West Watch</i>  , wrote a text with the fanciful title, "CISPES: A Terrorist Propaganda Network," that was given wide play by the media.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#5" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[5]</a> However, because Mr. Waller's services produced the desired <i>propaganda effect</i>   intended by his handlers, he secured several generous grants from the <b>State Department's Latin American <span style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Office of Public Diplomacy (OPD).</span></b><a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#6" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[6]</a> Recent American history is replete with examples of the profitability of lying in order to advance State interests; Elliot Abrams and Oliver North are but the tip of the iceberg in this regard.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Prior to Reagan's 1980 election, CIS was the principle organization leading the charge for an "activist" foreign policy to "defeat communism" in Central America. In 1980, they published the influential, <i>A New Inter-American Policy for the Eighties</i>  , generally known as the "Santa Fe Document."</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lewis Tambs, "Sante Fe's" principle editor, would be appointed by Reagan as ambassador, first to Columbia and then to Costa Rica, the launching pad for Contra attacks into Nicaragua along the "Southern front."<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#7" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[7]</a> Other Committee of Sante Fe members included Roger Fontaine, a National Security Council (NSC) adviser on Latin American affairs; retired Lt. General Gordon Sumner, who became a special assistant to the Secretary of State for Latin American affairs; and<b> Lynn Francis Bouchey, an active organizer for the Unification Church's CAUSA operations </b>in Central and South America.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#8" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[8]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Bouchey, the co-author of <i>The Strategy of Terror</i>   (written with Stefan Possony), was a former member of the </span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Young Americans for Freedom </span>employed by the American-Chilean Council, a front for the murderous Pinochet regime</b>.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#9" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[9]</a> Possony, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institute, long-time WACL operative and board member of Lyndon LaRouche's, Fusion Energy Foundation, was a founding member of the Council, as was Dr. Anthony Bouscaren, a right-wing operative who had worked for the racist<b> Pioneer Fund</b> (see below).<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#10" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[10]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Committee of Sante Fe alleged among other things, that the U.S. "must seize the initiative or perish. World War III is almost over." CIS viewed the Soviet Union as an "aggressor" that was "strangling the Western industrialized nations."<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#11" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[11]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Central America was described as "the soft underbelly of the United States." The authors called for the "restoration" of the Monroe Doctrine as the linchpin of U.S. regional strategy. In other words, the United States was free to pursue its regional interests unhindered. Bluntly, this meant that the internal politics of the Central American states were subject to "review" by the U.S.: "correctives" -- dictated from Washington -- would be applied as needed.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As a practical necessity, such "correctives" included the destruction of the Cuban, Grenadian and Nicaraguan Revolutions and the maintenance of "the fundamental order of things" in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. The Committee wrote:</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">America is everywhere in retreat. The impending loss of the petroleum of the Middle East and potential interdiction of sea routes spanning the Indian Ocean, along with the Soviet satellization of the mineral zone of Southern Africa, foreshadow the Findlandization of Western Europe and the alienation of Japan.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Even the Caribbean, America's maritime crossroad and petroleum refining center is becoming a Marxist-Leninist lake. Never before has the Republic been in such jeopardy from its exposed southern flank. Never before has American foreign policy abused, abandoned and betrayed its allies to the south in Latin America.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...It is time to sound a clarion call for freedom, dignity and national self-interest which will echo the spirit of the American people. Either a <i>Pax Sovietica</i>   or a world-wide counter-projection of American power is in the offing. The hour of decision can no longer be postponed.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#12" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[12]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Though the authors freely employed alarmist rhetoric with little regard to the actual history of U.S. regional domination, "Sante Fe" was not the production of marginal right-wing "kooks" obsessed by the "red menace." According to the Interhemispheric Resource Center,</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the early years of the Reagan administration, the organization was one of the more influential think tanks of the New Right, providing both policy and policymakers to the new administration. In the heyday of its influence, one observer noted, top officials of CIS "shuttle[d] to and from key policy-making and advisory roles in the administration...." Among those tapped for administration positions were Patrick Buchanan, who became President Reagan's communications director...<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#13" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[13]</a></font>

<b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Today, Buchanan markets himself as an "outsider" standing up for the "workin' man," against a godless, secular humanist cabal of multinational corporations, abortionists, feminists, homosexuals, immigrants and socialistic "one-worlders" intent on imposing a New World Order on the American people. His project has been assisted by the media who have tossed his actual record down the Orwellian memory-hole.</font></b>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As noted above, CIS was engaged in a covert war against U.S. leftists, progressive clergy and the Salvadoran exile community, channeling information gleaned by its operatives, to the FBI and the Salvadoran national security apparatus. This too, has a long history in the United States.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#14" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[14]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Col. Samuel Dickens, a former intelligence officer and CIS board member, was the executive director for inter-hemispheric affairs for the<b><i> American Security Council (ASC), an outfit founded by ex-FBI agents. ASC was an instrumental group which targeted leftists during the 1950s, the period of the<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> McCarthyite witch-hunts</span></i></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">.</span> Founded in 1955, ASC funding has been provided by Motorola, Lockheed, Boeing and General Dynamics, among others.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#15" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[15]</a> The information they collected, much of it bogus, was then sold to ASC's dues-paying corporate members. At the height of their domestic operations <b>ASC red hunters, including the sinister<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Roy Cohn</span>, Senator McCarthy's chief inquisitor</b>, were gathering the names of alleged "subversives" at the staggering rate of 20,000 <i>per month.</i>  <a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#16" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[16]</a> One analyst has said that the ASC is "not just the representative of the military-industrial complex, it is the personification of the military-industrial complex."<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#17" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[17]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Another significant source of support for the Council and a host of other "conservative" organizations, was <b>Rev. Moon's Unification Church</b>. Bouchey helped organize two conferences for CAUSA, led by another retired general, E. David Woellner.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#18" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[18]</a> He was also a board member of the United States Global Strategy Council, identified by researchers, Louis Wolf and Frederick Clarkson as "another CAUSA operation."<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#19" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[19]</a> In 1981, Bouchey was "specially commissioned" by Moon's World Media Institute to prepare and present a "content analysis" of media coverage of U.S. policy in El Salvador.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#20" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[20]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Active chapters of Moon's organization existed throughout the region; the largest affiliates were centered in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay.</b> In Brazil, the director of CAUSA said, "we are forming the future base for a large political party, though at present we are still apolitical...we want to form a movement like<b> Le Pen's in France.</b>" Needless to say, French fascist, Jean Le Pen, has done just that with the National Front, with significant financial backing from the Moon network.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#21" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[21]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Moon's extensive Latin American operations had a dual- purpose: the construction of an anti-communist "armed church" and as a "unofficial" link among CIA intelligence assets and the leaders of the death-squad states.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In Bolivia, Thomas Ward was a liaison between the CIA, Nazi war criminal <b>Klaus Barbie,</b> Barbie's organization, the "Fiances of Death" and the regime of "cocaine general" Luiz Garcia Meza,</span> prior to Bolivia's bloody 1980 putsch. Ward and Barbie "were often seen together;" the introspective Ward was described as an individual "who always seemed to be absorbed in prayer." According to Col. Bo Hi Pak, Moon's chief lieutenant: "God has chosen the Bolivian people in the heart of South America as theones to conquer communism." This during a period when Bolivian narco-operations were greatly expanding -- with the knowledge of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#22" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[22]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Other CIS board members or advisors who have had close ties to the Moon organization:</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Roger Fontaine:</span> a former member of the National Security Council. After leaving the NSC, Fontaine became a reporter and political analyst for the <i>Washington Times</i>  , a newspaper owned by a subsidiary of the Moon network. Salvadoran death-squad leader, Roberto D'Aubuisson bragged of his ties to the Reagan administration, particularly Roger Fontaine, to the <i>New York Times</i>   during a 1981 interview</b>.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#23" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[23]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lt. General Gordon Sumner: a CIS director and advisor; Sumner was also a board member of the International Security Council (ISC), described by Herman and O'Sullivan as the "main U.S. agency of the Moon system in the field of terrorism propaganda." An international conference organized by ISC and CAUSA was held in January 1986 in Tel Aviv; speakers included Bo Hi Pak and <b>Arnaud de Borchgrave, the publisher of the <i>Washington Times.</i> </b> <a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#24" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[24]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These were neither incidental nor marginal connections. CIS served both as an intelligence conduit from "private" sources such as the American Security Council and CAUSA, and as an informal employment agency which provided analysts to the Reagan administration at the inception of Washington's murderous counter-insurgency wars in Central America.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>As CIS secretary, Larry Pratt </b>was a well-placed "asset" in his own right, serving as a link between the public policy/research arms of the organization, the interventionist wing of the theocratic Christian Right and as an "informal" public relations spokesperson for Washington's Central American agenda via Gun Owners of America and the CIS-affiliated, North-South Institute.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But in order to fully appreciate the sinister nature of the Council for Inter-American Security, Pratt's involvement and his broader links to international fascist networks, there is another organization, also little explored by "mainstream" media, which deserves our attention, the World Anti-Communist League.</font>

<h2 style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CIS and WACL: A Marriage Made in Hell</font></h2>

<p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The World Anti-Communist League was founded in 1966 by two close Asian allies of the United States,<b> Taiwan</b> and South Korea, and a third organization, the Nazi-dominated, Anti-Bolshevik Block of Nations (ABN), led by the Ukrainian war criminal Yaroslav Stetsko.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#25" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[25]</a> As we have seen above with CIS, Rev. Moon's Unification network was an instrumental force operating behind the scenes. Moon assets were closely linked to the Korean Central Intelligence Agency and Japanese <i>yakuza</i>   crime syndicates, many of whose leaders were convicted war criminals let off the hook by U.S. occupation forces at the war's end.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ABN was a organizational bridge linking Eastern and Western European fascists to the intelligence services of Britain and the United States. Indeed, ABN was formed with U.S. funds and was a model frequently employed by future anti-communist emigre groups. Washington's unflagging commitment to the destruction of the Soviet Union was a continuation of the Third Reich's "Operation Barbarossa" -- by other means. Christopher Simpson's description of the group provides a chilling glimpse into the <i>modus operandi</i>   of "containment:"</font></p>

<p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The ABN was dominated by Ukrainian nationalist veterans of the OUN/UPA (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists/Ukrainian Insurgent Army), and it included a half dozen open Nazi collaborators on its executive board. Its newspaper, <i>ABN Correspondence</i>  , published praises of wartime genocidalists such as Ustachi Fuhrer Ante Pavelic and Slovakian quisling Premier Monsignor Jozef Tiso. Alfreds Berzins, whom the U.S. government once termed a "fanatic Nazi" responsible for sending innocent people to concentration camps, was the president of the ABN "People's Council." Berzins was simultaneously a Latvian leader of the Assembly of Captive European Nations. His vice- president at the ABN was the Belorussian quisling Radislaw Ostrowsky.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#26" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[26]</a></font></p>

</blockquote>

<p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If such anti-communist "patriots" were serviceable as "democrats" abroad, why not at home? In the United States, WACL's first chairman was Roger Pearson, a white supremacist, eugenicist and neo-Nazi. Pearson was the editor of<b> Willis Carto's anti-Semitic rag, <i>Western Destiny</i> , the forerunner of the Liberty Lobby's <i>Spotlight</i>   tabloid. </b>By the mid 1970s, Pearson served on the editorial boards of both the Heritage Foundation and the American Security Council.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#27" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[27]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Last Fall, Mr. Pratt addressed a Liberty Lobby testimonial banquet in honor of the 20th anniversary of <i>Spotlight</i>  . Though Larry Pratt has stated publicly he "loathes" groups such as Aryan Nations and other Nazis, it would appear his oft-quoted protestations of "innocence" are less than credible given Mr. Carto's documented history of bigotry and racism.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Pearson, who has described himself as a "mainstream conservative," boasted to an associate about his alleged role in hiding Nazi doctor Josef <b>Mengele</b>, the "Angel of Death" who directed Nazi "medical experiments" at the Auschwitz extermination camp.</span> With degrees in anthropology and economics, Pearson is the author several books on eugenics. His most "popular" are <i>Eugenics and Race</i>   and <i>Race and Civilization</i>  . He credits Professor Hans F. K. Gunther, a Nazi racial theoretician, as the inspiration behind the latter volume.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#28" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[28]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Under Pearson's tutelage, WACL added Western European chapters that were drawn from the ranks of Nazi war criminals, Third Reich collaborators, neo-Nazis and right-wing terrorists. Western European affiliates included the racist British League of Rights and Italy's Italian Social Movement (MSI). Pino Rauti, the founder of the outlawed group, <i>Ordine Nuovo</i>   was a key WACL Western European contact.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#29" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[29]</a> Rauti and countless other Italian fascists including the war criminal, June Valerio "Black Prince" Borghese, and key members of the Italian general staff, were "rehabilitated" Nazi collaborators recruited by the CIA into NATO's "stay behind" anti-communist terror network, also known as "Gladio."<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#30" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[30]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">An off-shoot of <i>Ordine Nuovo</i>   was the terrorist group, the Armed Revolutionary Nuclei (ARN), responsible for the 1980 bombing of the Bologna train station which killed 85 people. The notorious neo-fascist killer, Stefano delle Chiaie, the ARN architect of the Bologna massacre, attended the pivotal 1980 conference of the WACL-affiliated, Latin American Anti-Communist Confederation (CAL), held in Buenos Aires at the height of the "dirty war" against the Argentine left.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#31" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[31]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CAL was the organizational expression of a little-known group of Mexican neo-Nazis, the Tecos or "owls," centered at the Autonomous University of Guadalajara. Founded by Third Reich collaborator, Carlos Cuesta Gallardo, the Tecos have created several anti-communist front groups which include the Mexican Anti-Communist Federation (FEMACO) and the Inter-American Confederation of Continental Defense (IACCD). These "men of action" were drawn from the ranks of the Mexican secret police, military officers, wealthy landowners and industrialists.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#32" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[32]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tecos leader, Raimundo Guerrero, was recruited into the organization by Gallardo. According to Anderson and Anderson, the Tecos have close links with the remnants of the Romanian Iron Guard fascists of Horia Sima in Spain. The group publishes the anti-Semitic magazine, <i>Replica</i>  . Serving as a liaison among right-wing death squads throughout Latin America, the Tecos joined WACL in 1972. But the Tecos are more than a collection of aging Nazis; investigative journalist Manuel Buendia, was assassinated in Mexico City after publishing a three-part series exposing "Los Tecos" in 1984.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#33" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[33]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The 1980 CAL conclave was hosted by members of the military junta and the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance (AAA) death squad. Delle Chiaie journeyed to Buenos Aires from Bolivia where he had forged a murder-for-hire and cocaine smuggling partnership with CIA asset, Klaus Barbie.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#34" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[34]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Others who attended the CAL conference included, John Carbaugh, an aide to North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms and Mario Sandoval Alarcon, the "godfather" of the Guatemalan death squads. Sandoval brought along a protege to Buenos Aires, the cashiered Salvadoran army major, Roberto D'Aubuisson. In 1981, Sandoval was an invited guest at the Reagan inaugural ball.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#35" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[35]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Another individual who was an honored guest at the Reagan <i>fete</i>   was Adolpho Cuellar, the chairman of WACL's branch in El Salvador; that is, until he was <i>permanently</i>   "removed from service" by the FMLN. According to Holly Sklar, "Cuellar is remembered by former Salvadoran army officers 'as a man who used to appear at interrogation centers and beg permission to torture the prisoners.'"<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#36" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[36]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Shortly after the CAL conference, 50 Argentine "military advisors" and unconventional warfare "specialists" arrived in El Salvador and began training the military junta in advanced counter-insurgency "techniques," much as their Israeli counterparts were doing in Guatemala and Honduras.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#37" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[37]</a> They were joining CIA and U.S. Army Special Forces operatives already in place. Massacres and "disappearances" escalated at an alarming rate.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#38" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[38]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Such developments were greeted with enthusiasm by CIS and their fellow-travellers. <b>Board member, Andy Messing, a close personal friend of Lt. Col. North and the president of the National Defense Council said at the time, "going to war is [my] favorite pastime.</b>"<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#39" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[39]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Pearson became too hot to handle he was forced to resign in 1980, temporarily replaced as WACL's North American chairman by Elmer D. Greaves, an organizer of the s<b>egregationist Citizens Council.</b><a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#40" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[40]</a> But did Pearson leave in disgrace, discredited as a fascist, a racist and an apologist for the Nazi Holocaust? Hardly. Hanging on the wall of Pearson's Washington, D.C. office is a letter from then President, Ronald Reagan:</font></p>

<p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">You are performing a valuable service in bringing to a wide audience the work of leading scholars who are supportive of a free enterprise economy, a firm and consistent foreign policy and a strong national defense.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Your substantial contributions to promoting and upholding those ideals and principles that we value at home and abroad are greatly appreciated.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#41" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[41]</a></font></p>

</blockquote>

<p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With Pearson's departure, WACL was in crisis and in danger of disbanding. It is during this period, that John K. Singlaub came to the rescue, reorganizing WACL's American chapter.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Retired U.S. Army General and CIS board member, <b>John K. Singlaub,</b> has a long, bloody history of involvement with the formulation and execution of U.S. counter-insurgency strategy and covert operations around the world. A member of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) at the end of World War II, Singlaub moved up the ladder, becoming CIA desk officer for China in 1949 and deputy station chief in Korea during the war.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> During the Vietnam war he commanded the Special Operations Group, which implemented the CIA's Phoenix Operation, responsible for the cold-blooded murder of some 40,000 Vietnamese and the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of other Vietnamese in "strategic hamlets."</span> Singlaub was appointed head of the U.S command in South Korea in 1976, but was removed in 1978 when he publicly disagreed with President Carter's plans to withdraw U.S. troops.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#42" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[42]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A significant figure, within the national security apparatus and the far-right, Singlaub was well-placed to serve as a contact who could network neo-fascist killers, drug peddlers and state- sanctioned terrorist "assets" employed by the national security state itself. Herman and O'Sullivan write:</font></p>

<blockquote style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Singlaub was...close to the Reagan White House. From April 1983 until October 1984 he chaired an official Pentagon panel established to design U.S. policies toward developing countries. The panel also included Brigadier General Heine Anderholt, a contributing editor to Soldier of Fortune, and another half dozen extreme right-wing military officers and academicians. In April 1984, Singlaub met with President Reagan and National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane and was named "the chief fund-raising contact" to the contra army in Central America. With this choice, the president plucked from the world of the paramilitary/neo- Nazi fringe a man who had spent six years since his forced retirement from the army in some of the most powerful and dangerous organizations on the U.S. and international extreme right, where his associates included former Nazis, Nazi collaborators, anti-Semites, leaders of death squads, and a motley crew of mercenaries. Reagan honored these with a warm greeting to WACL at its 1984 gathering, asserting that the organization was playing a "leadership role" in the "gallant struggle being waged by the true freedom fighters of our day." Within a year at Bitburg, Reagan would pay his respects to the Waffen-SS.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#43" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[43]</a></font></blockquote>

<p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is within this context as well, that Patrick Buchanan, then Reagan's communications director, echoed calls issued by the Nazi-linked, Captive Nations Committee (CNC), to abolish the Justice Department's Office for Special Investigations (OSI), responsible for prosecuting war criminals still at large. This should not come as a shock to anyone, since many members of CNC held dual membership in WACL.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Andy Messing, as well as Howard Phillips, chairman of The Conservative Caucus </b>and current leader of the United States Taxpayers Party (USTP), were key figures within WACL's American branch. Larry Pratt shares Phillips' ideological commitment to the clerical-fascist doctrine of Christian Reconstructionism; indeed, Pratt is a national committee member of Phillips' USTP.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Phillips and other American far-rightists, including Black "pro-life" Republican Party presidential candidate, Alan Keyes, were members of the South Africa lobby. The International Freedom Foundation (IFF), an organization founded by "conservative" activist, Jack Abramhoff, was recently exposed by senior South African military personnel as a cut-out of the South African military and Special Branch. IFF functioned as a propaganda arm for South African STRATCOM (strategic communications) counter-insurgency operations directed against the African National Congress and the trade union confederation.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#44" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[44]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These are some of the individuals found within Mr. Pratt's small circle of friends, but for "reasons of state," the bourgeois media has tended to "forget" the invaluable services rendered to imperialism by such "extremist" representatives of the "radical religious right."</font>

<h2 style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Larry Pratt, the Council for Inter-American Security and the War Against Immigrants</font></h2>

<p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fighting communism at home and abroad were not the only missions undertaken by the Council for Inter-American Security and their stalwart secretary, Larry Pratt. With the collapse of the degenerated workers' states in the USSR and Eastern Europe, crowned by the annexation of the German Democratic Republic by West German Capital, new "enemies" appeared on the horizon -- both in Europe and the United States.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>By 1990, the "Culture Wars," the assault on the basic rights of people of color, the organized proletariat, immigrants, women, queers and the left had come to replace the mythological significance of the "Red Menace" for the far-right. Mr. Pratt, this time in the guise of "defender" of "traditional family values,</b>" and "America's Godly heritage," was equal to the task, "protecting" white Christians from a "flood" of "illegal" immigrants. Pratt would use his skills as a propagandist and his position as president of Gun Owners of America, to launch a new campaign -- to make English the official language of the United States.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Under the auspices of CIS, Pratt was the president of a racist, anti-immigration outfit, English First. Officers of Pratt's group are also leaders of the alarmist, United States Border Control (USBC). The Denver-based, North-South Institute (NSI) is a non-profit arm of the Council for Inter-American Security</b>. NSI vice president and director, Lt. General Gordon Sumner, also a CIS director as we have seen, is an officer of USBC and NSI.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#45" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[45]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A close ally of Pratt's in this enterprise is Anthony Bouscaren. A CIS advisor along with Singlaub and Sumner, Bouscaren was a board member of WACL's American branch. During the l960s, Bouscaren worked for Wycliffe Draper's Pioneer Fund, a racist organization which has bankrolled pseudoscientific "research" which allegedly proves that blacks are genetically inferior to whites. The Pioneer Fund has been an instrumental force behind the scenes, funding neo-eugenicist research such as that of Phillipe Rushton, as well as many anti-immigration groups, including the "mainstream" Federation for American Immigration Reform, whose oxymoronic acronym is "FAIR."<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#46" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[46]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>During the 1970s, Bouscaren was a board member of the American-Chilean Council, a group which served as a public relations arm of the <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Pinochet</span> death squad state.</b> There Bouscaren worked with Ronald Docksai, the founder of the Council for Inter- American Security and L. Francis Bouchey, who would lead the organization during the 1980s.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#47" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[47]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Well after his stint with the Pioneer Fund, Bouscaren published numerous articles in Roger Pearson's <i>Journal for Social, Political and Economic Studies</i>   -- that is, after Pearson had been exposed as a Nazi by the <i>Washington Post.</i>  <a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#48" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[48]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bouscaren signed the "Declaration of San Salvador," as a proxy for John Singlaub. The declaration was the result of a right-wing conference held in San Salvador in 1985; it included many WACL members and focused on ways to involve civilians in anti-communist efforts. The document announced the formation of the Central American Anti-Communist Defense Accord, intended to create a combat group known as the Central American Civilian Military Alliance (CACMA).<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#49" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[49]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But CACMA was more than a WACL propaganda project. <b>Drawing on the experiences of Guatemala's notorious "Program of Assistance to Areas in Conflict" (PAAC), inspired by the<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> CIA's Phoenix Operation</span> in Vietnam, PAAC's "civic action" program included forced relocation of Mayan peasants into "model villages" and the creation of hated "civilian self-defense patrols." </b>WACL, CACMA and their CIA handlers viewed these operations as a means of generalizing and standardizing the "Guatemalan experience" throughout the region. In this near- genocidal enterprise against the Mayan people, the death squad regime was offered much assistance by Israeli as well as domestic "assets" within the U.S. Christian Right, especially from the clerical-fascist Reconstructionist wing of the movement.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#50" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[50]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The counter-insurgency doctrine of "low-intensity conflict" (LIC), became a significant factor on the home front. Beginning in the early 1990s, veterans of CIA-Contra operations and their intellectual architects, began propagandizing for a systematic application of LIC methodology within the imperialist heartland itself. The "war on drugs" and the Immigration and Naturalization Service's brutal border sweeps, detention and deportation of so-called "illegals," many of whom are political refugees, are but the tip of the iceberg in this regard.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Echoing the xenophobic campaign already in full-swing within the reunified Germany, CIS and English First issued a paper, <i>Creating a Hispanic America: Nation Within a Nation?</i>   This racist diatribe virtually equates bilingual education with "terrorism." "Bilingual education has national security implications," its authors inform us. Given CIS's role in support of the CIA-Contra wars, their equation -- Latino = Terrorist -- certainly comes as no surprise. According to anti- racist researcher and activist, Michael Novick:</font></p>

<p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The paper compares the U.S. southwest to French-speaking Quebec, with its potential for separatism. It sees the Chicano and Spanish-speaking population as in themselves a threat to U.S. national security and unity.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The paper also indulges in more blatant racism. It describes the Indian ancestors of Latinos as "uncivilized barbaric squatters" with "a penchant for grotesque human sacrifices, cannibalism, and kidnapping women." This is the ideology that guides English First leader Pratt in his fund- raising appeals for the English Only cause. In one letter soliciting potential donors, Pratt claimed, "many immigrants these days are encouraged not to learn English. They remain stuck in a linguistic...ghetto, living off welfare and costing working Americans billions of tax dollars."<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#51" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[51]</a></font></p>

</blockquote>

<p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Larry Pratt is a key leader of the reactionary U.S. Taxpayers Party (USTP). </b>As touched upon briefly, Pratt is a national committee member of Howard Phillips' outfit, as well as a national co-chairman of Patrick Buchanan's campaign committee. A central plank of the USTP's platform is the requirement that English become the "official" language of the United States. The USTP is opposed both to bilingual education and the use of multilingual ballots for U.S. elections.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>But buried within the USTP's 1992 platform is the bland phrase: the USTP "reject[s] the practice of bestowing U.S. citizenship on children born to illegal alien parents while in this country."</b> This is an attack on the 13th and 14th amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The 13th amendment abolished slavery, while the 14th amendment granted full citizenship rights to former slaves as well as to the children of non-citizen immigrants born in the U.S., legal or otherwise. In fact, Pratt and his cohorts within the "Patriot" movement seek to repeal these amendments as part of their drive to create a "Christian Republic."</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The origins of "Patriot" thinking regarding constitutional "revisions" of citizenship rights, is the little known but virulently racist, League of Pace Amendment Advocates. Daniel Johnson, the author of the so-called Pace Amendment is a far- rightist with close ties to many neo-Nazis, including Richard Barrett's Mississippi-based Nationalist Movement and the Populist Party, founded by arch anti-Semite, Willis Carto, the leader of the Liberty Lobby.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#52" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[52]</a></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Pratt and his cohorts within the Council for Inter- American Security have much to answer for in their service to U.S. imperialism. Their role as active agents for murderous policies designed to bring the Central American people "in line" with the "rule of law" and the "civilized norms of the Western democracies," have had very grave consequences indeed.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Their close collaboration with the FBI and the Salvadoran intelligence service unquestionably resulted in the deaths of <i>hundreds</i>   of refugees after their forced deportation to<b> El Salvador.</b> According to the Political Asylum Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, out of 154 refugees deported in 1983 and 1984, 42 returnees were killed, seven were arrested, five were jailed, 47 were "disappeared" and an additional 43 others "disappeared" under violent circumstances. Certainly an admirable record Mr. Pratt and his "Patriot" companions can reminisce over during Bible study, perhaps.<a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html#53" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">[53]</a></font>

<h2 style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Conclusion</font></h2>

<p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Far from being an innocent wrongly accused of anti-Semitism and racism, Larry Pratt is an individual committed to a world- view which begins and ends with global economic-political- cultural-military domination by U.S. imperialism; this is the context and ideology behind Patrick Buchanan's allegiance to xenophobic "America First" nationalism.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Pratt's 1990 book, <i>Armed People Victorious</i>  , touted by the bourgeois press as a "passionate defense" of gun rights and the militia movement, is a volume inspired by the anti-communist death squads which operated so "efficiently" in Guatemala and the Philippines.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pratt's close working relationship with the Council for Inter-American Security and the World Anti-Communist League provided him both with the theoretical and practical knowledge necessary to forge effective links among a host of individuals and organizations who actively sympathized with U.S.-sponsored terror and mass murder in Central America.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It should come as no surprise, least of all to a mendacious press that remained silent while imperialism implemented a policy of <i>extermination</i>  , that fascists such as Pratt would recommend the creation of the domestic equivalent of Central American <i>death squads</i>   in the United States to deal with troublesome enemies of today's "Culture Wars."</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What is significant is <i>not</i>   that individuals such as Mr. Pratt are "extremists" or the "enemies" of a supposedly "pluralist democracy." Of far greater significance is that this "public-private partnership" among a host of reactionary organizations and the national security state, is the <i>norm</i>  ; an enduring legacy of settler-colonialism grounded in white supremacist ideologies -- and ideologues -- who are hell-bent on maintaining imperialism's global domination <i>by any means necessary</i>  .<a id="e" name="e" style=" font-weight: bold;"> </a></font>

<h2 style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Appendix</font></h2>

<p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Principle directors, associates and research analysts involved with the Council for Inter-American Security. Compiled by the Interhemispheric Resource Center, Group Watch Reports, Box 4506, Albuquerque, NM 87196-4506. On PeaceNet, IRC's Group Watch archive can be found on cdp:pra.reactionary; this excellent archive is maintained by Political Research Associates.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">L. Francis Bouchey, president; Lt. Gen. Gordon Sumner, Jr. (USA-Ret.), chairman; Larry D. Pratt, secretary; Richard W. Powell, treasurer; Michael Connelly, general counsel. Directors: Robert W. Searby (Deputy Undersecretary for International Affairs, Department of Labor), Patrick J. Buchanan (former communications director for President Reagan); Michael Carricarte (Carricarte Corp); Col. Samuel T. Dickens (American Security Council); Ronald F. Docksai (president emeritus); Francis P. Graves (Republican National Committee); Lewis A. Tambs (U.S. Ambassador to Colombia, Costa Rica); Andy Messing (National Defense Council); Robert Emmet Moffit (former senior Legislative Assistant for Foreign Affairs). David Hirschmann, research director; Max Primorac, research fellow; Clemens Michel, research fellow; David Spencer, research fellow; Michael Caputo; John Lenczowski, consultant. James Whelan, president of the Inter-Security Educational Institute, co-publisher of West Watch. Michael Waller, West Watch editor and former research director. General John K. Singlaub (USA, Ret.); advisory board. Members of the first Committee of Santa Fe: L. Francis Bouchey, Roger W. Fontaine, David C. Jordan, Gordon Sumner, Lewis Tambs editor. Members of the second Committee of Santa Fe: L. Francis Bouchey, Roger Fontaine, David C. Jordan, Gordon Sumner. Inter-American Security Educational Institute: Fr. Enrique T. Rueda, project director.</font>

<h2 style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Notes and sources</font></h2>

<p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="1" name="1" style=" font-weight: bold;">[1]</a> see in particular: Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, <i>Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media</i> , New York, Pantheon Books, 1988; Noam Chomsky, <i>Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies</i> , Boston, South End Press, 1989; Martin A. Lee and Norman Solomon, <i>Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in the Media</i> , New York, Lyle Stuart, 1990; see, in particular, chapters 10-12</font>

<span style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="2" name="2" style=" font-weight: bold;">[2]</a> Ross Gelbspan, <i>Break-ins, Death Threats and the FBI: The Covert War Against the Central America Movement</i> , Boston, South End Press, 1991; for background on COINTELPRO see: Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, <i>Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement</i> , Boston, South End Press, 1990</font></span>

<span style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="3" name="3" style=" font-weight: bold;">[3]</a> Gelbspan, op. cit., pp. 76-77. Currently J. Michael Waller is a leading spokesperson for the Washington, D.C.-based, American Foreign Policy Council; a rightist think-tank.</font></span>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="5" name="5" style=" font-weight: bold;">[5]</a> cited in Chip Berlet, <i>The FBI and Right-Wing Spy Networks</i> , New York, Center for Constitutional Rights, 1991, p. 4</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="6" name="6" style=" font-weight: bold;">[6]</a> Gelbspan, op. cit., pp. 124-125</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="7" name="7" style=" font-weight: bold;">[7]</a> Holly Sklar, <i>Washington's War On Nicaragua</i> , Boston, South End Press, 1988, p. 58</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="8" name="8" style=" font-weight: bold;">[8]</a> Frederick Clarkson, "'Privatizing' the War," <i>Covert Action Information Bulletin</i> , Washington, D.C., Number 22 (Fall 1984), p. 33</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="9" name="9" style=" font-weight: bold;">[9]</a> Alan Crawford, <i>Thunder On The Right: The "New Right" and the Politics of Resentment</i> , New York, Pantheon Books, 1980, p. 197</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="10" name="10" style=" font-weight: bold;">[10]</a> Sara Diamond, <i>Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States</i> , New York, The Guilford Press, 1995, pp. 348-349 Marvin Liebman, a reactionary leader of the "China Lobby" organized the American-Chilean Council with funds supplied by "private Chilean contributions which were transmitted to us by the Consejo Chileno Norteamericano." According to Dr. Diamond, ACC founders included: Professor James D. Atkinson, Murray Baron, Professor A.T. Bouscaren, Ralph de Toledano, Lev Dobriansky, Ronald Docksai, Walter Judd, David Keene, Anthony Kubeck, Eugene Lyons, Stefan Possony, David Rowe. Ronald Docksai was the founder and first president of CIS.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="11" name="11" style=" font-weight: bold;">[11]</a> Sklar, op. cit., p. 58</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="13" name="13" style=" font-weight: bold;">[13]</a> Interhemispheric Resource Center, Group Watch Project: Council for Inter-American Security, Albuquerque, 1991</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="14" name="14" style=" font-weight: bold;">[14]</a> Nelson Blackstock, <i>COINTELPRO: The FBI's War On Political Freedom</i> , New York, Pathfinder Press, 1988; Frank Donner, <i>Protectors of Privilege: Red Squads and Police Repression in America</i> , Berkeley, University of California Press, 1990</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="15" name="15" style=" font-weight: bold;">[15]</a> Edward S. Herman and Gerry O'Sullivan, <i>The "Terrorism" Industry: The Experts and Institutions That Shape Our View of Terror</i> , New York, Pantheon Books, 1989, p. 100</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="16" name="16" style=" font-weight: bold;">[16]</a> Diamond, op. cit., p. 46</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="17" name="17" style=" font-weight: bold;">[17]</a> Herman and O'Sullivan, op. cit., p. 100</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="18" name="18" style=" font-weight: bold;">[18]</a> Clarkson, op. cit., p. 33; Herman & O'Sullivan, op. cit., p. 93</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="19" name="19" style=" font-weight: bold;">[19]</a> Louis Wolf and Frederick Clarkson, "Arnaud de Borchgrave Board's Moon's Ship," <i>Covert Action Information Bulletin</i> , Washington, D.C., Number 24, Summer 1985, p. 35</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="20" name="20" style=" font-weight: bold;">[20]</a> Clarkson, op. cit., p. 33</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="21" name="21" style=" font-weight: bold;">[21]</a> Frederick Clarkson, "Moon's Law: God Is Phasing Out Democracy," <i>Covert Action Information Bulletin</i> , Washington, D.C., Number 27, Spring 1987, p. 40</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="22" name="22" style=" font-weight: bold;">[22]</a> Kai Hermann, "Klaus Barbie: A Killer's Career," <i>Covert Action Information Bulletin</i> , Washington, D.C., Number 25, Winter 1986, p. 19</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="23" name="23" style=" font-weight: bold;">[23]</a> Stewart Klepper, "The United States in El Salvador," <i>Covert Action Information Bulletin</i> , Washington, D.C., Number 12, April 1981, p. 9</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="24" name="24" style=" font-weight: bold;">[24]</a> Herman and O'Sullivan, op. cit., p. 96</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="25" name="25" style=" font-weight: bold;">[25]</a> Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson, <i>Inside the League: The Shocking Expose of How Terrorists, Nazis and Latin American Death Squads Have Infiltrated the World Anti-Communist League</i> , New York, Dodd, Mead & Co., 1986, p. 13</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="26" name="26" style=" font-weight: bold;">[26]</a> Christopher Simpson, <i>Blowback: The First Full Account of America's Recruitment of Nazis, and Its Disastrous Effect On Our Domestic and Foreign Policy</i> , New York, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988, p. 269</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="27" name="27" style=" font-weight: bold;">[27]</a> Diamond, op. cit., p. 157</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="28" name="28" style=" font-weight: bold;">[28]</a> Anderson & Anderson, op. cit., p. 93</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="30" name="30" style=" font-weight: bold;">[30]</a> for background on "Gladio" and NATO's "stay behind" network, see: Arthur E. Rowse, "Gladio: The Secret U.S. War to Subvert Italian Democracy," <i>Covert Action Quarterly</i> , Washington, D.C., Number 49, Summer 1994 and, Anti-Fascist Action (AFA), "Staying Behind: NATO's Terror Network," <i>Fighting Talk</i> , London, Issue 11, May 1995</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="31" name="31" style=" font-weight: bold;">[31]</a> Anderson & Anderson, op. cit., pp. 98-99 and Stuart Christie, <i>Stefano Delle Chiaie, Portrait of a Black Terrorist</i> , London, Anarchy Magazine/Refract Publications, 1984</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="32" name="32" style=" font-weight: bold;">[32]</a> Anderson & Anderson, op. cit., pp. 71-81</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="36" name="36" style=" font-weight: bold;">[36]</a> Sklar, op. cit., p. 83</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="37" name="37" style=" font-weight: bold;">[37]</a> ibid., pp. 84-86; for Israel's role in Central America see, Jane Hunter, <i>Israeli Foreign Policy: South Africa and Central America</i> , Boston, South End Press, 1987, pp. 95-181</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="38" name="38" style=" font-weight: bold;">[38]</a> Ellen Ray, "Argentina Activates International Death Squads," <i>Covert Action Information Bulletin</i> , Washington, D.C., Number 16, March 1982, pp. 14-16 and, same issue, "Salvadoran Deserter Discloses Green Beret Torture Role," pp. 17-18</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="39" name="39" style=" font-weight: bold;">[39]</a> Sklar, op. cit., pp. 238-239</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="40" name="40" style=" font-weight: bold;">[40]</a> Anderson & Anderson, op. cit., p. 102</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="43" name="43" style=" font-weight: bold;">[43]</a> Herman & O'Sullivan, op. cit., p. 69 Supporting counter- revolutionary terror was a very profitable enterprise indeed. GeoMilitech, founded by Singlaub and his partner, Barbara Studley, procured $5.3 million in weapons which were transferred to Contra leader, Adolfo Calero, in June 1985; a cozy relationship all around.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="44" name="44" style=" font-weight: bold;">[44]</a> Dele Olojede, "D.C. think tank was an apartheid tool," <i>San Francisco Examiner</i> , Sunday, July 16, 1995, p. C-7; for background on the International Freedom Foundation see, David Ivon, "Touting for South Africa: International Freedom Foundation," <i>Covert Action Information Bulletin</i> , Washington, D.C., Number 31, Winter 1989, pp. 62-64</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="45" name="45" style=" font-weight: bold;">[45]</a> Russ Bellant, <i>The Coors Connection: How Coors Family Philanthropy Undermines Democratic Pluralism</i> , Cambridge, MA, Political Research Associates, 1990, p. 65</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="46" name="46" style=" font-weight: bold;">[46]</a> Ruth Conniff, "The War on Aliens: The Right calls the shots," <i>The Progressive</i> , Madison, WI, October 1993, p. 24</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="47" name="47" style=" font-weight: bold;">[47]</a> Diamond, op. cit., p. 348</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="48" name="48" style=" font-weight: bold;">[48]</a> Anderson & Anderson, op. cit., p. 153</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="50" name="50" style=" font-weight: bold;">[50]</a> Hunter, op. cit., pp. 118-127 and, Sara Diamond, <i>Spiritual Warfare: The Politics of the Christian Right</i> , Boston, South End Press, 1989, pp. 164-168</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="51" name="51" style=" font-weight: bold;">[51]</a> Michael Novick, <i>White Lies, White Power: The Fight Against White Supremacy and Reactionary Violence</i> , Monroe, Maine, Common Courage Press, 1995, pp. 188-189</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="53" name="53" style=" font-weight: bold;">[53]</a> Gelbspan, op. cit., p. 219</font></p>

<p style="text-align: left;"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Circulated by:</font></b>

<div style="text-align: left;">Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights (BACORR)</div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">750 La Playa # 730</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;">San Francisco, California 94121</div><div style="text-align: left;">Voice: (415) 437-4032</div><div style="text-align: left;">E-Mail: </div>

<p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On PeaceNet visit BACORR's <women.clinicdefense>conference. For subscription information e-mail Wendi Jones,<wjones igc.apc.org="igc.apc.org" /></women.clinicdefense></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BACORR text files can also be found on the following sites:</font>

<div style="text-align: left;">Arm The Spirit</div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">WWW:gopher://locust.cic.net:70/11/politics/Arm.The.Spirit/BACORR FTP: ftp.etext.org --> /pub/politics/Arm.The.Spirit/</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;">BACORR FTP: ftp.etext.org --></div><div style="text-align: left;">/pub/politics/Arm.The.Spirit/Antifa/Antifa.Info-Bulletin </div><div style="text-align: left;">Institute For Alternative Journalism (AlterNet) http://www.alternet.org/an/demworks/html gopher://gopher.igc.apc.org:70/00/orgs/alternet </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div>

<p /><div style="text-align: left;">BACORR: DEFENDING CLINICS, EXPOSING TERRORISM -- </div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BECAUSE NO ONE'S GONNA DO IT FOR US!</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div>

<p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[posted March 7, 1996]</font></p>

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<div style="text-align: left;"><b><a href="http://www.refuseandresist.org/contact/join.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Join Refuse & Resist!</a></b></div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">305 Madison Ave., Suite 1166, New York, NY 10165</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;">Phone: 212-713-5657</div><div style="text-align: left;">email: <a href="mailto:info@refuseandresist.org" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">info@refuseandresist.org</a></div>

<p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><div><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; width: 630px; margin: 0px auto 2rem; padding: 0px; position: relative; line-height: 1.7rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://antifascistnews.net/tag/fred-trump/">https://antifascistnews.net/tag/fred-trump/</a></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; width: 630px; margin: 0px auto 2rem; padding: 0px; position: relative; line-height: 1.7rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://antifascistnews.net/2016/03/01/donald-trumps-kkk-connection-runs-deeper-thank-you-think/" rel="bookmark" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">DONALD TRUMP’S KKK CONNECTION RUNS DEEPER THAN YOU THINK ... As the media pundits expect Donald Trump to clean up on tonight’s Super Tuesday run, Trump’s recent response to the endorsement of David Duke is getting more headlines than his usual racist antics.  Duke recently put forward a formal announcement, stating that if you care about your “race” then you are “required” to vote for Trump.  Duke is one of the best known white nationalists in the world, formerly becoming state representative in Louisiana before running for Governor, and almost winning with 55% of the state’s white vote.  Duke is one of the few open racists to see any electoral success into the 1990s, where he continued to support his past KKK and neo-Nazi affiliations, deny the Holocaust, argue for racial differences in intelligence, and run his organization, the National Association for the Advancement of White People.</font></a></font></p><p style="text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Duke is only one on the long list of white nationalist endorsements.  Recent, Jared Taylor of American Renaissance <a href="https://antifascistnews.net/2016/01/21/white-nationalist-american-freedom-party-running-donald-trump-super-pac/" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">voiced a robocall</a> in support of Trump in Iowa, which was funded by the nationalist <a href="https://antifascistnews.net/2016/02/10/the-white-genocide-hustle-the-american-freedom-party-runs-bob-whitaker-for-president/" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">American Freedom Party</a>.  The Radix Journal, <a href="https://antifascistnews.net/2015/08/20/the-white-stuff-an-open-letter-to-the-right-stuff-and-the-daily-shoa/" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Right Stuff,</a>Counter-Currents Publishing, Occidental Dissent, The Daily Stormer, and many more have jumped behind Trump, using his open nativist rhetoric as the mainstreaming of their own racism.  Every one of these organizations have shared membership with various incarnations of the KKK, drawing them straight to Trump, yet Donald’s KKK connections move even beyond that.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After Duke’s endorsement, Trump was cornered on CNN and asked to denounce Duke and the Ku Klux Klan.</font></p><blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; quotes: none; line-height: 1.26316;"><p style="text-align: left; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I don’t know anything about David Duke. I don’t know what you’re even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacist. I don’t know. I don’t know, did he endorse me, or what’s going on?</font></p></blockquote><p style="text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/28/politics/donald-trump-white-supremacists/" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Trump later said that he had a “bad earpiece,”</a> but in reality he was refusing to denounce a base that has thrown more resources than expected at him.  While he may play ignorance, he actually knows exactly who David Duke is and where his politics come from.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a 2000 report by ABC News, Donald Trump was interviewed about the Reform Party and its connections to the paleoconservative and racist right-wing.</font></p><blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; quotes: none; line-height: 1.26316;"><p style="text-align: left; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As you know, the Reform Party has got some pretty big problems.  Not the least of which is Pat Buchanan, David Duke, Fulani, and it’s a problem.</font></p></blockquote><p style="text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He then went on to bring up the same reference with the New York Times discussing the relationship between the Reform Party and the New York Independence Party.</font></p><blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; quotes: none; line-height: 1.26316;"><p style="text-align: left; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although I am totally comfortable with the people in the New York Independence Party, I leave the Reform Party to David Duke, Pat Buchanan, and Lenora Fulani.  That is not company I wish to keep.</font></p></blockquote><p style="text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is difficult for Donald to now claim that he knows nothing about David Duke, and therefore will not condemn him as the Anti-Defamation League has requested.  He was endorsed by Duke quite a while ago actually, and when he originally found out he smiled and joked “I even got endorsed by that KKK guy.”</font></p><p style="text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump’s connections to the KKK actually go much deeper into his family tree, which is a politic that we have seen played out in his new public persona.  Fred Trump, Donald’s millionaire father, has been well known for his work with the New York KKK.  He was arrested after a Klan riot in Queens in 1927.  The arrest was a part of a 1,000-person racial brawl that came after a rally intended to restore the “Native-born Protestant Americans” to New York City.  This was in line with the deep anti-Catholic views of the New York KKK of the period, which also said the police were mainly made up of Roman Catholics.  The flier that they were handing out for the event read:</font></p><blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; quotes: none; line-height: 1.26316;"><p style="text-align: left; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Liberty and Democracy have been trampled upon,” the flier stated, “when native-born Protestant Americans dare to organize to protect one flag, the American flag; one school, the public school; and one language, the English language.</font></p></blockquote><p style="text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The language of this flier seems awfully familiar given Trump’s recent rhetoric about Latino/a and Muslim Immigrants.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><a href="https://itsgoingdown.org/trumpism-pt-2-american-fascist/" style="font-weight: inherit; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Fred Trump went on to “jumpstart” the campaign of arch-racist Barry Goldwater, where they also got backing from the John Birch Society</a><span style="font-weight: inherit;">.  With influence from Roy Cohn, Goldwater went on to develop what was later called the “Southern Strategy,” which plays on Southern racism using “dog whistle” terms to signal to the base. </span><b> Cohn went on to become Trump’s “mentor,”</b></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b> and helped him to countersue a group that was suing him for discrimination against African Americans in his business</b><span style="font-weight: inherit;">.   Cohn eventually introduced him to Roger Stone, a man who has walked the line between the right-wing of the GOP and Libertarian Party and openly racialist, nativist, and white nationalist movements.</span></span></font></p><p style="text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since Donald’s recent misstep on CNN, he has been roundly denounced, even by the GOP establishment.  Joe Scarborough has dropped him entirely with disgust, and Paul Ryan decided to speak up publicly in a press statement.</font></p><blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; quotes: none; line-height: 1.26316;"><p style="text-align: left; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There has been a lot of talk in the last 24 hours about one of our presidential candidates and his seeming ambivalence about David Duke and the KKK, so let me make it perfectly clear.  That is not the view of Republicans who have been elected to the United States Senate, and I condemn his views in the most forceful way….If a person wants to be the nominee of the Republican Party, there can be no evasion and no games. They must reject any group or cause that is built on bigotry. This party does not prey on people’s prejudices. We appeal to their highest ideals. This is the party of Lincoln…his is fundamental. And if someone wants to be our nominee, they must understand this. I hope this is the last time I need to speak out on this race.</font></p></blockquote><p style="text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Neither of these men are the bastion of progressive values, so their disgust is a good sign of how far outside of any conventional discourse Donald Trump has become.  With the recent <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-klan-rally-in-anaheim-erupts-in-violence-one-man-stabbed-20160227-story.html" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">violent stabbing of anti-fascist protesters in Anaheim by California by KKK members</a>, few are willing to accept this tacit support for the KKK that Trump has given.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">David Duke has gone to Twitter to continue to support Trump openly, decrying the “corporate media” for distorting his views and libeling Trump.  Donald himself has recently given a speech that his presidency would further criminalize libel, a journalistic dishonesty that is already illegal.  He may have trouble understanding that the reporting on him has actually been straight forward, yet he will not accept that he simply does not look good after ranting and raving on stage.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As votes are being cast today, we are about to learn a lot about what American whites are willing to accept to protect their last vestiges of privilege.  Anti-racist author <a href="http://www.timwise.org/2016/01/tim-wise-on-the-david-pakman-show-donald-trump-and-the-politics-of-racial-scapegoating-1716/" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tim Wise</a> started his career with an organization fighting David Duke’s two political runs in Louisiana.  After Duke got more than half of the white vote even though the media coverage clearly revealed his open racial politics, Wise said that he had to reckon with what was happening to whites.  He labeled this turn “Dukism,” the ability for these whites to overlook his Nazism.  Anti-fascist writer Alexander Reid Ross has given the current period <a href="https://itsgoingdown.org/trumpism-pt-1-trump-the-populist/" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Trumpism</a>, and has a similar pattern to both David Duke and Pat Buchanan, two people that Trump had previously condemned.  In periods of crisis and strife, working class whites are presented with a choice on how they will deal with the country’s future.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hopefully, this is not the choice they will make.</font></p></div><footer class="entry-meta" style="text-align: left; clear: both; line-height: 1.33333; text-transform: uppercase; margin: 24px 54px 0px auto; max-width: 474px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); padding: 0px 30px;"><span class="tag-links" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://antifascistnews.net/tag/david-duke/" rel="tag" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 2px 4px 2px 10px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 7px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; background-color: rgb(118, 118, 118); border-radius: 0px 2px 2px 0px; display: inline-block; line-height: 1.27273; position: relative;">DAVID DUKE</a><a href="https://antifascistnews.net/tag/donald-trump/" rel="tag" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 2px 4px 2px 10px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 7px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; background-color: rgb(118, 118, 118); border-radius: 0px 2px 2px 0px; display: inline-block; line-height: 1.27273; position: relative;">DONALD TRUMP</a><a href="https://antifascistnews.net/tag/fred-trump/" rel="tag" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 2px 4px 2px 10px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 7px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; background-color: rgb(118, 118, 118); border-radius: 0px 2px 2px 0px; display: inline-block; line-height: 1.27273; position: relative;">FRED TRUMP</a><a href="https://antifascistnews.net/tag/kkk/" rel="tag" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 2px 4px 2px 10px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 7px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; background-color: rgb(118, 118, 118); border-radius: 0px 2px 2px 0px; display: inline-block; line-height: 1.27273; position: relative;">KKK</a><a href="https://antifascistnews.net/tag/paul-ryan/" rel="tag" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 2px 4px 2px 10px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 7px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; background-color: rgb(118, 118, 118); border-radius: 0px 2px 2px 0px; display: inline-block; line-height: 1.27273; position: relative;">PAUL RYAN</a><a href="https://antifascistnews.net/tag/roy-cohn/" rel="tag" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 2px 4px 2px 10px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 7px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; background-color: rgb(118, 118, 118); border-radius: 0px 2px 2px 0px; display: inline-block; line-height: 1.27273; position: relative;">ROY COHN</a></font></span></footer><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://itsgoingdown.org/trumpism-pt-2-american-fascist/</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On a fast-pace, FOX News talk show discussing the recent beating of a Black Lives Matter protestor at a Trump rally, the presidential hopeful phoned in with an ambivalent tone. First contemplating the host’s term “roughed up,” the Don returned to the notion with more effrontery: “<a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/11/22/9778330/trump-protester-rally-violent" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">maybe he should’a been roughed up</a>.”</font></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Activists around the world signaled despair at the thought that the local violence against a Black Lives Matter protestor would translate to open season against protestors across the US. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it did, in Minneapolis, where white supremacists fired on a peaceful gathering of Black Lives Matter demonstrators, sending five to the hospital. According to reports, before they fired the shots, the culprits yelled, “<a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjlo7uD66_JAhVM9GMKHSihBI4QqQIIITAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fheavy.com%2Fnews%2F2015%2F11%2Fminneapolis-jamar-clark-4th-police-precinct-protests-shooting-shots-fired-white-supremacists-victims-suspects-injuries-photos-video-black-lives-matter%2F&usg=AFQjCNHKsjHMvIWcDBdmwSnN-HU4X6vBhA&sig2=3SWWiiN5e0eSEFJwQalCEA" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Race war and Trump 2016!</a>” Trump’s parallel non-response came in the form of a tweet—a meme with false information about “black-on-white crime” <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjlo7uD66_JAhVM9GMKHSihBI4QqQIIHzAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thenation.com%2Farticle%2Fblack-lives-matter-activists-shot-while-trump-busy-sharing-neo-nazi-graphic-on-twitter%2F&usg=AFQjCNELgRsLVrsdi1z41-stjj8rZokKuw&sig2=FQRJRqpmIDWHqhAWRjUTjw" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">traceable to a neo-Nazi handle</a>.</font></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Despite the fact that even mainstream media sites and <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/24/politics/donald-trump-fascism/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">even conservative commentators</a> have begun to note the proximities between Trump’s ideology and fascism, some more academic commentators still seem to be on the fence. <a href="http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2015/10/on-trump-fascism-and-stale-social.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">One article states that</a> describing Trump as a fascist “</span></span></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">obscures the fact that Trump’s demagogic hate-mongering is deeply rooted in mainstream U.S. politics.” Some have even gone <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/08/26/the-trump-phenomenon-and-the-european-populist-radical-right/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">as far back as the 19</a></span></span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/08/26/the-trump-phenomenon-and-the-european-populist-radical-right/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; height: 0px; line-height: 0; position: relative; bottom: 1ex;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">th</span></span></span></span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/08/26/the-trump-phenomenon-and-the-european-populist-radical-right/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;"> Century “Know Nothings”</a> to identify Trump’s style.</span></span></span></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We have seen Trump’s recent statements to the effect of <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/20/opinions/obeidallah-trump-anti-muslim/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">issuing special IDs</a> (perhaps badges?) to Muslims in the US and <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/trump-shut-mosques-u-s-elected-article-1.2405975" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">shutting down “certain” Mosques</a> reflected in the opportunism of Republicans refusing Syrian refugees. Both seemed to land symbolically too close to the anniversary of the US’s rejection of the St. Louis carrying Jews fleeing from Nazi Germany, with the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/holocaust-museum-syrian-refugees_564f10ede4b0d4093a573793" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">US Holocaust Museum pointedly condemning</a> the treatment of Syrian refugees. We could further note that, according to his ex-wife, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trumps-ex-wife-once-said-he-kept-a-book-of-hitlers-speeches-by-his-bed-2015-8" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Trump used to read from a book of Hitler’s speeches, </a></span></span></span><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trumps-ex-wife-once-said-he-kept-a-book-of-hitlers-speeches-by-his-bed-2015-8" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">My New Order</span></span></span></em></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">, kept in a cabinet near his bedside. There are also reports that when he visits, Trump’s cousin <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2015/07/donald-ivana-trump-divorce-prenup-marie-brenner" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">“clicks his heels and says, ‘Heil Hitler.”</a></span></span></span></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">While it is very useful to observe racist tendencies in the US and Europe before fascism (and even alongside it), I would argue for an alternative viewpoint. Returning to the 19</span></span></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; height: 0px; line-height: 0; position: relative; bottom: 1ex;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">th</span></span></span></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Century is provocative, but we would do well to identify the important influence fascism has had on the US (and vice-versa) not just as a detail, but as a significant milestone. Trump’s chatter belongs just as much in the fictional Hotel Wessex at the opening of of Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 warning of American fascism, </span></span></span><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It Can’t Happen Here</span></span></span></em><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">, as it does in his own mega-hotels.</span></span></span></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All in the Family</font></span></span></span></em></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As is well-known, the Don’s</span></span></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> father, Fred Trump,</span></span></span></b><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b> <a href="http://www.inquisitr.com/2411565/donald-trumps-fathers-kkk-ties-fred-trump-named-in-1927-klan-members-clash-with-police/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">likely took part in the Klan’s militant street activity during the 1920s</a>, which many would suggest represents a simple, US-American phenomenon. </b></span><span style="font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In fact, the Klan had heavy cross over with the American Legion, the leader of which announced in 1923, “<a href="http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v15/v15n3p6_weber.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Do not forget that the Fascisti are to Italy what the American Legion is to the United States</a>” (don’t worry, we won’t). Just over a decade later, the Klan would join a united paramilitary organization called the Storm Troops with the corporate-funded Silver Shirts, the German American Bund (the Nazi Party in the US at the time), the Black Legion, and other racist neo-fascist groups. While the Klan is distinctly US-originated, by the end of the 1930s, they were intertwined with the US’s homegrown Nazis, and by the 1970s were inextricably united with David Duke’s brand of neo-fascism.</span></span></span></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It wasn’t just the Klan, though. In 1976, correspondence between J Edgar Hoover and his “</span></span></span><a href="http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/F%20Disk/FBI/FBI%20Nazis%20World%20War%20II/Item%2001.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">pen-pal</span></span></span></a></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">” Nazis running Interpol during the late-1930s emerged, showing that Hoover’s autographed picture hung on the wall of Interpol’s offices in Nazi Berlin, </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">and he remained on good terms with Nazi high officials until three days before Pearl Harbor. He became Interpol vice president in 1946, and refused to use his power to incarcerate Nazis war criminals on the run. Instead, through the State Department, the OSS, and FBI, the US </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">brought Nazi scientists to the US</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, and helped coordinate the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratlines_(World_War_II_aftermath)" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">escape</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> of numerous high ranking Nazis. To view neo-fascism as foreign to US groups like the Klan and neo-Confederate organizations is to ignore how it was absorbed in this country and to what utility.</span></span></span></span></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Klan has never been the sole or even principle point of intersection for US fascism; formal, official Americanism has always been the lynchpin. During the 1920s, the US’s great industrial and finance moguls, from Hearst, Ford, Du Pont, and GM to the house of JP Morgan, Jr., went fascist, and big business groups like the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), a leading purveyor of Americanist propaganda, joined them. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In 1923, after Mussolini’s March on Rome, </span><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=sWB9BgAAQBAJ&pg=PA145&lpg=PA145&dq=extreme+leader,+not+only+converted+by+the+lightning+stroke+of+intelligence+and+falling+from+his+error+like+Saul+of+Tarsus+from+his+horse,+but+leading+through+the+streets+of+a+reunited+country+a+great+body+of+citizens&source=bl&ots=rTTT5OrUUR&sig=2gHsfQVIaYHUrLoWoKQhMk3InZc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjE07Xt2a_JAhVW2mMKHT8kDJAQ6AEIIDAA#v=onepage&q=extreme%20leader%2C%20not%20only%20converted%20by%20the%20lightning%20stroke%20of%20intelligence%20and%20falling%20from%20his%20error%20like%20Saul%20of%20Tarsus%20from%20his%20horse%2C%20but%20leading%20through%20the%20streets%20of%20a%20reunited%20country%20a%20great%20body%20of%20citizens&f=false" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">the counsel of NAM delivered a speech</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> to their convention called il Duce an “extreme leader, not only converted by the lightning stroke of intelligence and falling from his error like Saul of Tarsus from his horse, but leading through the streets of a reunited country a great body of citizens,” liberating Italy from “the blighting hand of radical socialism.”</span></font></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fascism and the Red Scare</font></span></span></span></em></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Along with the NAM, the America First Committee, founded by publishing magnate Henry Regnery</b><span style="font-weight: inherit;">, warned that intervention in WWII would be traumatic to the US’s small and medium-sized manufacturers, insisting that the US maintain neutrality. One of NAM’s most well-regarded propagandists was a columnist named George Sokolsky, who famous anti-fascist journalist George Seldes aptly called an “</span><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=N_LbUSH0N1sC&pg=PA182&lpg=PA182&dq=seldes+%E2%80%9Cagent+%5Bof%5D+fascist+%5Binterests%5D.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=L110zfrL_N&sig=G34HIPefm51e93deKriM7QKSeao&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwibheSJ2q_JAhVH4WMKHcfDCo8Q6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&q=seldes%20“agent%20%5Bof%5D%20fascist%20%5Binterests%5D.”&f=false" style="font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">agent [of] fascist [interests]</a><span style="font-weight: inherit;">.” By the time the US entered the War, the NAM had abandoned its pro-fascist position, but it maintained the same spirit and ideology, shifting the focus to anti-communism.</span></font></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">While the American Legion’s Americanist Committee spurred the anti-communist movement toward McCarthy’s show trials, Sokolsky played the part of “<a href="https://archive.org/stream/investigationofs0156unit/investigationofs0156unit_djvu.txt" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">clearance man</a>” for an “American Fascisti” that now enforced the Black List in Hollywood. Senator McCarthy</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> attempted to stay clear of associations with fascism. However, by 1948, McCarthy’s awkward enthusiasm for the liberation of German POWs had become impossible to hide, as he dove into the Malmedy war crimes case along with Regnery and Rudolf Aschenauer, a</span></span></span></span><em style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></span></em><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">high ranking official of the Socialist Reich’s Party (the heir of the Nazi Party), which helped to derail denazification in Europe.</span></span></span></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">McCarthy also developed a relationship with the well-known fascist agent Francis Parker Yockey on his trips to Germany, according to the latter’s friend John Anthony Gannon, and a letter obtained by the FBI, penned in 1952, reveals that McCarthy went so far as to ask Yockey to ghost write a speech for him. The manuscript, “America’s Two Ways of Waging War,” also intercepted by the FBI, concludes in the following fashion: “We shall liberate our land from the domination of traitors and then, by the help of the Almighty God, we shall restore the word </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none !important;">America</i></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> to its old meaning in the world before all nations. By the deluge of our votes, by the irresistible storm of our organized protest, we shall sweep America clear of its inner enemies and onward to its God-given Destiny.” </span></font></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Yockey’s tailor-made mission to make America great again was likely going to be unfurled at a rally planned later that year for which McCarthy was a keynote, hosted by the fascist successor to the German American Bund and “floor managed” by infamous Nazi H. Keith Thompson. After negative press in </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none !important;">The Daily Compass</i></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> and </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none !important;">The New York Post</i></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">, McCarthy pulled out.</span></font></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Americanism Comes to the Don</font></span></span></span></em></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><a name="socialHighlighted2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" /></span><a name="socialHighlighted2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="font-weight: inherit;">Perhaps partly as a form of PR, McCarthey enlisted a hot, young, Jewish columnist and lawyer named </span><b>Roy Cohn </b><span style="font-weight: inherit;">as his chief prosecutor for the Red Scare</span></span><span style="font-weight: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. After illegally convincing judge Irving Kaufman to hand down sentences of execution to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg while acting as a prosecutor in the notorious anti-communist espionage case</span><span style="font-weight: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">, Cohn found his way to McCarthy through Sokolsky, who he considered his father figure. One of the more well-funded circles that Cohn gained credibility by </span></span></span></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" /></a><a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1988-04-10/books/bk-1279_1_roy-cohn/3" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">helping to establish</span></span></span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> was the </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>Young Americans for Freedom (YAF),</b></span><span style="font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> an anti-communist youth group notorious for singing </span></span></span><a href="http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/51926" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">fascist hymns</span></span></span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span></span></span></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The master of national sleaze, Cohn’s rancor was particularly vitriolic toward Jews. According to Robert Sherrill writing in </span><a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/king-cohn/" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">The Nation</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, “[Cohn] spent a great deal of his life tormenting Jews to show that, down deep, he could be just as anti-Semitic as the most bigoted WASP.”</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> After Cohen went on what one historian calls a “book-burning” romp through Europe with his semi-secret boyfriend, McCarthy started to feel the heat</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. When Cohn’s boyfriend was drafted into the army, his tactics of pulling strings, bribing, and blackmailing backfired, and McCarthy found himself in a full-scale war with the Army, leading to the collapse of McCarthyism.</span></font></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><a name="socialHighlighted1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" /></span><a name="socialHighlighted1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In the aftermath, McCarthy would drink himself into a death spiral, and some of the leadership of the NAM, including leader James O Welch, moved on to spearhead the John Birch Society, which amassed a sizable constituency of fascists, masking their anti-Semitism in cryptic anti-communist conspiracy theories. In the words of </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Chip Berlet and Matthew Lyons’s impeccable book, </span></span></span></span><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" /></a><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Right-Wing-Populism-America-Close-Comfort/dp/1572305622" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Right Wing Populism in America</span></span></span></a></em><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-weight: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">, </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: inherit;">“it was at the NAM, during the height of the Red Menace hysteria, that Welch honed his Americanist philosophy.” </span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 1964, the Birchers threw most of their influence behind Barry Goldwater, whose campaign was </b></span></span></span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><a href="http://krpoliticaljunkie.com/episode-89/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">jumpstarted</span></span></span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> by a German </span></span></span><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">émigré</span></span></span></em><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> turned New York real estate entrepreneur named Fred Trump.</span></span></span></b></em></em></em></em></em></em></em></em></em></em></em></em></em></em></em></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-weight: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Although even Richard Nixon and Pat Buchanan felt that Goldwater went too far at times, his campaign established “the Southern strategy.” </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="font-weight: inherit;">Like Cohn and Sokolsky, the Birchers and Goldwater shared what Cohn’s biographer von Hoffman calls, somewhat tepidly, an “apparent willingness to accommodate himself to European fascism.” As time went on, Cohn would sink into a role as one of the Birchers’ leading intelligence men along with members of La Rouche’s network in what would later become known as the Council for Inter-American Security (CIS), infamous for snooping on the Committee in Solidarity for the People of El Salvador (CISPES). By the onset of the 1970s, Cohn’s public life involved representation of mobsters, Studio 51, and a certain élite. In these circles, at a place for</span><b> Manhattan high rollers called Le Club, Cohn met Fred Trump’s son, Donald.</b></span></font></span></span></span></em></em></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>With Roy Cohn, Down and Dirty</b></font></span></span></span></span></em></em></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-weight: inherit;">The two must have gotten along swimmingly, because Cohn became Trump’s mentor, guiding him through lawsuits and counter-lawsuits as his business grew. It was </span><b>Cohn who told the young Don to <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/23/trump-s-mobbed-up-mccarthyite-mentor.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">countersue</a> </b><span style="font-weight: inherit;">after being charged with discriminating against black people in 1973—a policy perhaps incurred from his father’s era. Although he lost the countersuit, Trump would revolutionize his dad’s old business into a lavish, luxurious, and extremely modern enterprise. The posterboy of the highflying modernism of the 1980s, Trump outfitted his hotels and casinos with sumptuous furnishings and the latest in technology. He became a Bloom County cartoon character for some, a symbol of the “new man” of the 1980s for others. Either way, he represented a morally bankrupt class that never stepped foot on a tightrope that didn’t have a golden safety net beneath it.</span></font></span></span></span></em></em></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">During his relationship with the </span></span></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none !important;">ne plus ultra</i></span></span></span></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="font-weight: inherit;"> of yuppie playboys, Cohn also insisted on a reputably conservative public profile. By the early 80s, he even claimed to reject the John Birch Society, even as he joined the advisory board of the Western Goals Foundation, a private intelligence group organized by leading Birchers that openly worked with Nazis like Hitler’s unreconstructed spy chief, Reinhard Gehlen, who had been rescued from war crimes trials by the CIA’s first chief, </span><b>Allen Dulles,</b><span style="font-weight: inherit;"> in order to help coordinate clandestine anti-communist resistance.</span></span><span style="font-weight: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> By the mid-1980s, Western Goals had become embroiled in the Iran-Contra scandal due to the workings of the CIS, among others, which Cohn had been a part of since the 1950s. (As reported by </span></span></span></span><a href="http://www.ainfos.ca/A-Infos96/3/0020.html" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Antifa</span></span></span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> in 1996, the CIS’s hierarchy included</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b> Klan and Aryan Nations collaborator</b></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b> Larry Pratt,</b></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> who went on to co-chair Pat Buchanan’s 1992 presidential run, as well as Buchanan, himself, who we’ll come to later in this article.)</span></span></span></font></em></em></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A UK copy-cat organization called Western Goals Institute formed in the late-1980s, throwing its support behind Le Pen,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> who historian Martin A. Lee calls the “neofascist führer” of the French radical-right party, Front National. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">One of the top funders for Western Goals Foundation was the Bircher son-of-an-oil-magnate Nelson Bunker Hunt, who also helped bankroll the Council for National Policy, tied to the leadership of US Nazi Willis Carto’s old Nazi comrade, Roger Pearson (a former member of the editorial board for the Heritage Foundation, which politely allowed Trump to pull out of his September, since his <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/254187-trump-ditches-conservative-sc-forum" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">birther ideas</a> are beyond the pale).</span></font></span></span></span></em></em></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-weight: inherit;">While up to his eyeballs in fascism, Cohn attempted to keep his conservative slate clean by fighting legal rights to gay people, although he was gay, himself, and later died of AIDS. Underneath the alleged mob links, drugs, and corruption there remained strong bonds between Trump’s mentor to the fascist-fused Americanism of the War years, </span><b>brought through McCarthyism by the leadership of NAM into the John Birch Society, and further into the Western Goals Foundation.</b></font></span></span></span></em></em></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Meet Roger Stone</b></font></span></span></span></span></em></em></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This year, Trump enlisted as his campaign manager another of Cohn’s protégés, Roger Stone, who </span></span></span><a href="http://beforeitsnews.com/gold-and-precious-metals/2015/08/behind-the-scenes-of-the-donald-trump-roger-stone-show-2654434.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Mark Ames</span></span></span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> profiles on Before It’s News: “Roger Stone is a Libertarian prankster fighting the two-party stranglehold; and Donald Trump is a right-wing populist shaking up the system because by gum, he just doesn’t care and he doesn’t need to care,” Ames writes. “That’s one, very dumb, very gullible way of putting it.” Another way of describing Roger Stone, according to Ames, is “Dick Nixon dirty trickster, fascist fan of Roy Cohn, lobbyist for some of the worst dictators in the world.”</span></span></span></font></em></em></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Stone met Trump through Cohn in NYC around the 1979 Reagan campaign, but was brought into the world of politics in the early 1970s, at the age of 19, by Donald Segretti, who initiated the teenage Stone into the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP)</b><span style="font-weight: inherit;">. Notably using American Nazi Party members to shift voters from the American Independent Party to the Democratic Party, among other dirty tricks, CREEP’s fellow members included Pat Buchanan, who once described recollections of Holocaust survivors’ as “group fantasies of martyrdom,” and G. Gordon Liddy, a bizarre man obsessed with pain tolerance and willpower who grew up with an avowed admiration for Hitler and later became ghostwriter for J. Edgar Hoover. </span><a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/2004/11/23/g-gordon-liddy-listening-to-hitler-made-me-feel/132337" style="font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Liddy would remark</a><span style="font-weight: inherit;">, “at assemblies where the national anthem is played, I must suppress the urge to snap out my right arm.”</span></font></span></span></span></em></em></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">After Watergate, Stone linked up with notorious lobbyists Charlie Black and Terry Dolan—another publicly anti-gay but closeted gay man who died of AIDS—to found the </span></span></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=8haLsgCsae8C&lpg=PA51&pg=PA51&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">National Conservative </a><a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=8haLsgCsae8C&lpg=PA51&pg=PA51&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Political Action Committee</a></span></span></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> (NCPAC) as a revision of the old Barry Goldwater campaign. Both Black and Dolan were former YAFers of the </span></span></span><a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB121495512615821247" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">fascist songbook</span></span></span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> era.</span></span></span></span></font></em></em></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Other than helping <a href="http://www.vice.com/read/yeah-ron-paul-is-racist-after-all-sorry" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Ron “Stormfront” Paul</a> to his first election victory in Texas, the NCPAC formed Conservatives Against Liberal Legislation (CALL, later renamed Conservatives Alliance), connected to Carto’s neo-Nazi outfit Liberty Lobby. In turn, CALL created the National Coalition for America’s Survival, which included the reincarnation of the grandaddy of them all, the America First Committee, headed up by </span></span></span><a href="http://www.adl.org/combating-hate/domestic-extremism-terrorism/c/backgrounder-arthur-jones-1.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/#.VjQI_hitqRs" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Art Jones, an infamous neo-Nazi</span></span></span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span></span></span></font></em></em></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-weight: inherit;">Stone also formed a heavyweight power-broker consulting firm with Black, Paul Manafort, and Lee Atwater (later BMSK), which started out on the Reagan campaign and </span><b>Donald Trump’s casino business,</b><span style="font-weight: inherit;"> and later became notorious for representing the apartheid-supported army of witch-burning opportunist Jonas Savimbi in Angola.</span></font></span></span></span></em></em></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>However, Stone came into his own by fixing votes.</b></span><span style="font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> His methods were honed in New Jersey during the 1980s, where he employed a “National Ballot Security Task Force” to patrol majority-black and latino precincts while wearing what the local NAACP president described as “</span></span></span><a href="https://italkyoubored.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/roger-stone-pretty-reckless-is-going-straight-to-hell-part-four/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Gestapo armbands</span></span></span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.”</span></span></span></font></em></em></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Holocaust Denial and Nativism</b></font></span></span></span></span></em></em></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>Throughout the 1990s, Trump was Stone’s most well-known client, and his casino industry hijinks, including manipulation and sabotage of Native tribes, are infamous.</b></span><span style="font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> In 2000, Stone </span></span></span><a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/278vjcro.asp" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">pitted the Don against Pat Buchanan</span></span></span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> for the Reform Party ticket, but the Trumpster backed out after having pointed out, ironically, that fascists were supporting Buchanan’s campaign</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. Later that year, Stone would become infamous for orchestrating the “Brooks Brothers Riot,” which shut down the presidential election recount in Miami-Dade, prompting New York Rep Jerald Nadler to call out “a whiff of fascism in the air.”</span></span></span></span></font></em></em></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">After riding high with Bush, Stone’s went in for a change, and he turned to the libertarians, eventually </span></span></span><a href="https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/gary-johnson-swindle/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">sparking a relationship with libertarian candidate Gary Johnson</span></span></span></a></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="font-weight: inherit;"> that would involve Roy Cohn, the mafia, and the white nationalist </span><b>Tanton</b><span style="font-weight: inherit;"> network</span></span><span style="font-weight: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. Continuing forward, Stone went on a neo-fascist media hub called Red Ice Radio hosted by Hitler fan, Henrik Palmgren, to chat about Cohn and the “legitimate threat of domestic communism” during the McCarthy era. Stone’s visit came at the tale end of </span></span></span></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/red-ice-radios-summer-of-anti-semitic-white-pride" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">an intense season of </a><a href="http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/red-ice-radios-summer-of-anti-semitic-white-pride" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">guests</a></span></span></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> such as “white man march” activist Kyle Hunt, Norse reconstructionist Stephen McNallen, and Holocaust denier Dennis Wise.</span></span></span></font></em></em></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Some of Stone’s libertarian intrigues surrounded </span></span></span><a href="https://italkyoubored.wordpress.com/2014/02/21/roger-stone-pretty-reckless-is-going-straight-to-hell-part-nine/#ftnote303" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Scott Israel’s campaign</span></span></span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> for the Sheriff’s office of Broward County. Last year, the Sheriff’s office told the South Florida Gay News it would cost nearly $400,000 to release the office’s internal homophobic emails. This year, the department faced a major scandal when four Ft. Lauderdale cops were caught regularly sending racist texts including sexualized murder fantasies and creating a promotional Klan video.</span></span></span></font></em></em></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since leaving the Trump campaign, Stone has pitched a possible run for Senator under his home ticket, the Libertarian Party of Florida. The only other party candidate is a surreal character who calls himself Augustus Sol Invictus—a goat sacrificing, eugenics spewing, fascist-symbol-using Thelemite.</font></span></span></span></em></em></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>Due to his connections to the extensive “immigration reform” network of John Tanton, there is speculation that, before leaving, Stone left the Don with the numbers of 11 million “illegals” to deport before departing</b></span><span style="font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">. As the </span></span></span><a href="https://www.splcenter.org/20151027/trump-stump" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Southern Poverty Law Center</span></span></span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> (SPLC) explains, Trump’s immigrant policy is “almost indistinguishable from the policy proposals made by John Tanton, a white nationalist who founded the Federation for American Immigration Reform and essentially created the modern nativist movement.” This is the same platform admired by the neo-fascist National Policy Institute’s Richard Bertrand Spencer, Tanton’s close friend, who sees it as a major step toward “</span></span></span><a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/richard-bertrand-spencer-0" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">peaceful ethnic cleansing</span></span></span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.”</span></span></span></font></em></em></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Whiff of Fascism?</font></span></span></span></em></em></em></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Beyond simply co-opting the platforms of white nationalists, the Trumpster’s own “</span></span></span><a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/07/14/1402264/-Trump-outsources-stock-photo-of-American-soldiers-to-1941-Germany" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">whiff of fascism</span></span></span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">” moment might have been that time when his campaign circulated an add with an American flag just transparent enough to view an image of a Nazi war re-enactment. His campaign apologized and retracted the image, but have remained defensive about most other innuendos and outright threats. For example, at a rally in Rochester, New Hampshire, the Don fielded a question asking, “</span></span></span><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2015/09/17/3702969/man-asks-trump-when-can-we-get-rid-of-all-the-muslims-in-america-his-answer-was-horrifying/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">When can we get rid of</span></span></span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> [Muslims]?,” infamously responding, “We are going to be looking at a lot of things.” Like a schoolboy, Trump later </span></span></span><a href="http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1509/19/cnr.09.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">whined</span></span></span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> that “it was the first time in my life I got in trouble for not saying anything.”</span></span></span></font></em></em></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Or perhaps one could detect a whiff when Trump suppressed journalists like </span></span></span><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-telemundo-reporter-video-border-2015-7" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Jose Diaz-Balart</span></span></span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> in Texas and </span></span></span><a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-tells-jorge-ramos-go-back-to-univision/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Jorge Ramos</span></span></span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> in Iowa, telling the former, “You’re finished” and the latter to “go back to Univision.” When <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/24/politics/donald-trump-protestor-agitator-deserved-it-cohen/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">the brutal beating of a Black Lives Matter protestor</a> at a Trump event was met with the statement, “<a href="http://www.theroot.com/articles/news/2015/11/trump_advisor_maybe_black_lives_matter_protester_deserved_to_be_roughed.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">maybe he deserved it</a>,” it seemed as though Trump’s campaign had more clearly presented itself in relation to fascism, defined by journalist Arun Gupta as “a cross-class project of national renewal based on psycho-sexual appeals of racial purity and militarism, aimed against sections of the working class and bourgeoisie alike.”</span></span></span></font></em></em></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There are more substantial underpinnings, however, which require a more thorough investigation of the content of fascism, itself, as well as Trump’s own flare for revolutionary rhetoric and violence. That much will be forthcoming in the next column.</font></span></span></span></em></em></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></em></em></div><p style="text-align: left;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></em></em></p><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">

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Pratt, L GOA

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