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      Jewish conservatives condemn Trump for meeting antisemite Nick Fuentes

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      Jewish conservatives condemn Trump for meeting antisemite Nick FuentesMike Pence, Chris Christie and several Republican senators were also critical, to varying degrees, of former president Several Republican lawmakers and prominent Jewish conservatives have condemned Donald Trump for meeting with white supremacist and antisemite Nick Fuentes, in a rare distancing from the ex-president.Trump’s former vice-president Mike Pence, the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, and several Republican senators were critical, to varying degrees, of Trump, who has come under fire after dining with Fuentes last week.Joe Biden on collision course with unions over effort to block rail strike – liveRead moreFuentes, described by the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League as “among the most prominent and unapologetic antisemites in the country”, met Trump with Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, who has repeatedly made racist comments about Jewish people.“President Trump was wrong to give a white nationalist, an antisemite and a Holocaust denier a seat at the table,” Pence said in an interview with News Nation on Monday. “I think he should apologize for it, and he should denounce those individuals and their hateful rhetoric without qualification.”Chris Christie, a sometime Trump ally who, like Pence, is said to be considering a presidential run, told the New York Times that Trump’s actions “make him an untenable general election candidate for the Republican party in 2024”.“This is just another example of an awful lack of judgment from Donald Trump,” Christie said.Jewish conservative figures also spoke out against Trump, including Jay Lefkowitz, a former adviser to George W Bush.“We have a long history in this country of separating the moral character of the man in the White House from his conduct in office, but with Trump, it’s gone beyond any of the reasonably acceptable and justifiable norms,” Lefkowitz told the newspaper.Trump has said Ye had been invited to dinner and “unexpectedly showed up with three of his friends”, “whom I knew nothing about”.Ben Shapiro, a Jewish rightwing personality who has been supportive of Trump in the past, rejected Trump’s explanation in a post on Twitter.“A good way not to accidentally dine with a vile racist and anti-Semite you don’t know is not to dine with a vile racist and anti-Semite you do know,” Shapiro wrote on Sunday.The meeting with Fuentes, a Holocaust denier who has repeated the racist “white genocide” theory, was not the first time Trump has engaged with racism.After deadly clashes at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump declared that there were “very fine people on both sides”, and he told the far-right Proud Boys group to “stand by” during a presidential debate.“President Trump hosting racist antisemites for dinner encourages other racist antisemites,” the Republican Louisiana senator Bill Cassidy tweeted on Monday. “These attitudes are immoral and should not be entertained. This is not the Republican party.”The Republican West Virginia senator Shelley Moore said: “It’s ridiculous you would do something with someone who espouses those views.”The condemnation was far from universal, however. PBS approached 57 Republican politicians for comment on Trump’s meeting with Fuentes, and a majority declined to comment.Others said it was wrong for Trump to hold the meeting, but stopped short of criticizing the former president, while the Florida senator Marco Rubio defended Trump.“I know (Trump) is not an antisemite. I can tell you that for a fact that Trump is not but this guy (Fuentes) is evil. And that guy is a nasty, disgusting person. (Fuentes) is an ass clown,” Rubio told a reporter.CNN reported that during the dinner Trump “was engaged with Fuentes and found him ‘very interesting’”.“At one point during the dinner, Trump declared that he ‘liked’ Fuentes,” CNN said.The twice-impeached former president, who has filed for corporate bankruptcy at least four times, said he had given Ye business advice during the dinner.“We got along great, he expressed no anti-Semitism, & I appreciated all of the nice things he said about me on ‘Tucker Carlson.’ Why wouldn’t I agree to meet? Also, I didn’t know Nick Fuentes,” Trump said on Truth Social, his rightwing social media platform.TopicsDonald TrumpUS politicsRepublicansAntisemitismThe far rightKanye WestnewsReuse this content More

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      Donald Trump ‘shied away from criticising Nick Fuentes’

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      Donald Trump ‘shied away from criticising Nick Fuentes’Advisers wanted ex-president to distance himself from white supremacist with whom he dined but Trump feared alienating supporters – insiders Donald Trump repeatedly refused to disavow the outspoken antisemite and white supremacist Nick Fuentes after they spoke over dinner at his Mar-a-Lago resort, rejecting the advice from advisers over fears he might alienate a section of his base, two people familiar with the situation said.”The former US president was urged publicly and privately to denounce Fuentes in the aftermath of the dinner, which included the performer Ye, previously known as Kanye West, who has also recently been propagating antisemitic remarks.But Trump eschewed making outright disavowals of Fuentes, the people said, and none of the statements from the campaign or on his Truth Social account included criticism of Fuentes, despite efforts from advisers who reached Trump over the Thanksgiving holiday.Republican says Trump ‘empowering’ extremists by having dinner with white supremacist Read moreTrump ultimately made clear that he fundamentally did not want to criticise Fuentes – a product of his dislike of confrontation and his anxiety that it might antagonise a devoted part of his base – and became more entrenched in his obstinance the more he was urged to do so.Across three statements on Friday, Trump initially sought only to play down the dinner and made no mention of Fuentes or his views, before saying angrily in a post on his Truth Social website that evening that Ye “expressed no antisemitism” and “I didn’t know Nick Fuentes”.The line about not knowing Fuentes was the closest Trump came to acknowledging the offensive nature of the dinner, under pressure from advisers who warned him that being associated with a racist and Holocaust denier could further damage his personal brand as well as his recently launched 2024 presidential campaign.But even with his ignorance of Fuentes taken at face value, the statements signal Trump will give extraordinary deference to the most fringe elements of his base – even if it means potentially losing support from more moderate Republicans who have not typically cared for his indulgence of extremism.Trump has had a long history of delaying or muting criticism of white supremacy, drawing moral equivalency in 2017 between neo-Nazis and counter protesters at the deadly unrest in Charlottesville, Virginia, and refusing to denounce the far-right Proud Boys group at a 2020 presidential debate.The halting response to Fuentes most closely mirrored his inability to condemn white supremacist groups after Charlottesville, the people said, when Trump faced intense criticism for not naming the rightwing groups in the bloodshed that ended with the death of a young woman.When reached for comment, the Trump 2024 campaign said the former president had a record of combating antisemitism, including the appointment of a special envoy to combat antisemitism, and strengthening ties to Israel by recognising Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights.The circumstances of the dinner at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday, though, have been a new source of consternation for aides, who privately concede that Ye should never have been allowed to meet with Trump in the first place given his own recent antisemitic history.Trump had intended to meet with Ye one-on-one for some time, according to a person briefed on the matter, though it was postponed around the time that Ye tweeted offensive tropes against Jews – only for it to be inexplicably rescheduled for late November.The former president ended up meeting with Fuentes, who was at the unrest in Charlottesville, after he came along with Ye and a former Trump campaign aide Karen Giorno. There was only a skeleton staff from Trump’s “45 Office” at the property ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday.During the dinner, the person said, Fuentes told Trump he was among the former president’s supporters, but that he had been unimpressed with the 2024 campaign launch speech because it appeared stilted instead of appearing “authentic” with his ad-libs and off-the-cuff remarks.Trump, who had told Fuentes that his advisers preferred him to read speeches as scripted, turned to Ye at one point and said: “He gets me.”Fuentes also told Trump that he thought the former president would crush other 2024 candidates in a primary, including the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, the person said – only for Fuentes to appear to endorse DeSantis on his livestream, saying the future of the country “isn’t Donald Trump”.TopicsDonald TrumpThe far rightAntisemitismUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Pittsburgh Jews decry pro-Israel group’s support for Republican extremists

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      Pittsburgh Jews decry pro-Israel group’s support for Republican extremistsAipac is spending millions to oppose Democrat who would be Pennsylvania’s first Black female member of Congress More than 240 Jewish American voters in Pittsburgh have signed a letter denouncing the US’s largest pro-Israel group for backing extremist Republican election candidates while spending millions of dollars to oppose a Democrat who would be Pennsylvania’s first Black female member of Congress.US progressives show strength in primaries and predict more wins aheadRead moreThe letter condemned the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) for its attempts to defeat Summer Lee, a candidate for the district that includes Pittsburgh, after failing to block her during the Democratic primaries earlier this year because of her criticisms of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians.The signatories said they were “outraged that at this critical moment in American history, Aipac has chosen to cast Democrats like Lee as extremists” while endorsing more than 100 Republican candidates who voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election.The letter suggested that Aipac does not represent the views of the majority of American Jews and is working against their interests by also endorsing Republicans who promote white supremacy, a particularly sensitive issue in a city where 11 worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogues were murdered in an antisemitic attack four years ago.“We also condemn Aipac endorsement of lawmakers who have promoted the antisemitic ‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy theory that helped inspire the murder of eleven members of the three synagogues housed at Tree of Life,” the letter said.“Clearly, their definition of ‘extreme’ is completely opposite to that held by the majority of American Jews – who worry about the stark rise in antisemitism and white nationalism in our state and in our country.”It is the first time Aipac has funded support for a Republican contender for Congress over a Democrat in a general election, marking a further shift away from its once more bipartisan approach.Aipac’s campaign funding arm, the United Democracy Project (UDP), is paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for television advertising and mailings against Lee. The group is backing Mike Doyle, who supports a federal ban on abortion and has described himself as very conservative.The UDP has posted a leaflet to voters calling Lee “too extreme” because of her positions on police, prison and immigration reform. The leaflet makes no mention of her criticisms of Israeli government policies which do not appear to be an election issue for most voters, although Aipac has previously said that its “sole factor for supporting Democratic and Republican candidates is their support for strengthening the US-Israel relationship”.Lee has drawn Aipac’s fire for her support of setting conditions for the US’s considerable aid to Israel, for accusing Israel of “atrocities” in Gaza, and for drawing parallels between Israeli actions against Palestinians and the shooting of young black men in the US.In a tweet earlier this week, Lee accused Aipac of funding extremists: “8 days from making history in PA–where Black women have never had federal representation–Aipac is funding my extreme GOP opponent. Since endorsing 100+ insurrectionists, Aipac has repeatedly shown us that democracy has never been as important as keeping progressives out.”Lee’s campaign has an additional cause for concern because her Republican opponent has the same first and last name as the outgoing Democratic member of Congress she is seeking to replace. In an apparent attempt to exploit potential confusion, Doyle’s website does not mention that he is a Republican.Aipac’s campaign against Lee is a rematch after it tried and failed to block her during the Democratic primaries earlier this year.The UDP spent more than $25m in the primaries to defeat candidates it deemed too critical, or insufficiently supportive, of Israel, including about $2.6m against Lee. Most of the candidates opposed by Aipac lost but Lee won her race by a slim margin.Much of the advertising in support of Aipac-backed candidates in the primaries played up Democratic party values such as equality. One of those opposed by the lobby group, Congressman Andy Levin who lost his primary and seat, on Wednesday tweeted that Aipac’s opposition to Lee revealed its professed support for liberal values to have been a sham.“If it wasn’t clear before, it certainly is now: AIPAC doesn’t care about our party’s values and priorities and it’s willing to empower extremists and undermine American democracy in order to defeat principled, progressive candidates,” he wrote.One of those who initiated the letter from members of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community was Ritchie Tabachnick who sits on the steering committee of a more moderate pro-Israel organisation, J Street. Tabachnick said the letter speaks for the majority of the city’s Jews because they are disturbed at Aipac “supporting some of the most extreme Republicans, people who make openly antisemitic remarks promote antisemitic conspiracy theories”.“It’s quite possible to be pro-Israel and antisemitic. They often go hand in hand. Aipac have chosen to prioritise the-pro Israel and ignore the antisemitic elements that go with it,” he said.Tabachnick said he believed Aipac was attempting to shut down widening criticism of Israel in the US, a task made more urgent by the expected return of Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister in coalition with far-right Jewish nationalists.“They are trying to control the narrative,” he said.But Tabachnik said he does not believe Aipac represents the views of most of the US’s Jewish community.“They are a loud, politically smart minority,” he said of the group.Aipac denies taking sides against the Democrats, saying that Lee’s views put her “outside of the Democratic mainstream”.Aipac has been approached for comment.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022US politicsPennsylvaniaAntisemitismIsraelDemocratsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      The Guardian view on the Buffalo shooting: a wake-up call for the Republican right | Editorial

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      The Guardian view on the Buffalo shooting: a wake-up call for the Republican right EditorialVersions of ‘replacement theory’ are becoming dangerously close to mainstream in American politics According to a poll published in the United States earlier this month, one in three adults believes that an attempt is being made “to replace native-born Americans with immigrants in order to achieve electoral gains”. A similar proportion sees the cultural and economic influence of US-born Americans diminishing as a consequence. The vast majority of those holding these views are likely to be white. From being a fringe notion on the extreme right, “replacement theory” appears to be entering the bloodstream of mainstream political discourse in the US.This should be seen as an insidious, disturbing backdrop to the mass shooting that took place in Buffalo at the weekend. Payton Gendron, the teenage suspect, is charged with shooting 13 people – 11 of them black – in a supermarket in a black neighbourhood of the city. Ten died. The action appears to have been carried out alone, and the suspect reportedly posted an online “manifesto” in which replacement theory is melded with anti-black racism and antisemitic content and tropes. Most of its material seems to have been culled via solitary immersion in far-right websites. Black people, read one passage, were equivalent to immigrants in that they “invade our lands … live on government support and attack and replace our people”.Buffalo joins Charleston, El Paso and Pittsburgh as a site of bloody tragedy, after murderous attacks by lone white attackers. Last year the FBI identified the lethal rise of far-right terrorism aimed at minority ethnic groups as the biggest domestic security threat to America. Inevitably, there will now be renewed focus on President Biden’s stalling gun control programme – the latest to come up against the seemingly insuperable intransigence of Congress and the influence of the National Rifle Association. This was the deadliest mass shooting in America in 2022, but also the 198th to claim the lives of four or more people since the turn of the year. Despite Mr Biden’s commitment to reform, improved background checks and a ban on the kind of assault weapon used in Buffalo seem as far away as ever. Social media platforms will also come under renewed and deserved scrutiny.But there is a wider political context that needs to be recognised. The post-Trump radicalisation of parts of the Republican right has led to the cultivation of demographic and racial anxiety, succouring extremist views. Explicit references to race or ethnicity are usually absent from such interventions, allowing plausible deniability. The Fox News political commentator, Tucker Carlson, who hosts one of the most popular cable news shows in the US, regularly ploughs this furrow: in one show last year, Mr Carlson argued that Democrats are seeking “the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people”, who are “newly arrived from the third world”.Channelling and perpetuating the Trumpian “build a wall” mindset, senior Republican politicians have also used the language of replacement and “invasion” in relation to the southern border. Proposals for immigration amnesties have been conspiratorially framed as a means to secure a permanent liberal majority in Washington. Meanwhile the caricature of “critical race theory” as a pro-black threat to white identity has incubated the fear of a kind of “replacement” from within. In the wake of the Buffalo shootings, Mr Biden said that hate “remains a stain on the soul of America”. The radical Republican right and their cheerleaders are coming perilously close to being its enablers.TopicsBuffalo shootingOpinionUS politicsJoe BidenDonald TrumpAntisemitismThe far righteditorialsReuse this content More

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      Buffalo shooting: how white replacement theory keeps inspiring mass murder | Jason Stanley

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      Buffalo shooting: how white replacement theory keeps inspiring mass murderJason StanleyThis once fringe ideology, which was at the heart of Nazism, has gained mainstream traction thanks in part to the likes of Tucker Carlson on Fox News On Saturday, 18-year-old Payton Gendron parked his car in front of the entrance to a Tops Supermarket in a Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York. Exiting the car wearing metal armor and holding an assault rifle, he shot and killed a female employee in front of the store, and a man packing groceries into the trunk of his car. After entering the store, he murdered the store’s guard, and by the end of his killing spree, he had shot 13 people, killing 10 of them.Eleven of the people he shot were Black, and two were white. As the manifesto he left behind makes clear, this was fully intentional. The first listed goal in his manifesto was to “kill as many blacks as possible”.Gendron was a meticulous planner. He live-streamed his massacre, and the video begins with him following to the letter the beginning of the plan he lays out in the manifesto.. But the manifesto – which is meant to inspire and instruct subsequent attacks – also outlines the ideology that inspired the murders. Gendron was motivated by a classic version of White Replacement Theory, the view that a cabal of global elites is trying to destroy white nations, via the systematic replacement of white populations. According to White Replacement Theory, the strategies employed by these “global elites” include the mass immigration of supposedly “high fertility” non-whites, and encouraging intermingling between members of non-white races and whites. Gendron was deeply influenced by a series of recent mass killers who were animated by white replacement theoryincluding Brenton Tarrant, whom Gendron openly acknowledges as his model. In Christchurch, New Zealand, Tarrant massacred 51 people at a Mosque in the name of White Replacement Theory, also live-streaming his actions.Gendron’s manifesto begins in a similar fashion to Tarrant’s, by decrying the “white genocide” that will result from the supposedly low fertility rates of white populations and the high fertility rates of non-white immigrants brought in to “replace” them. It is more openly anti-Black than Tarrant’s manifesto – it is a deeply American version, with roots in Jim Crow and lynching. It is also vastly more explicitly antisemitic. Ten pages of Gendron’s manifesto are devoted to arguing for a genetic basis for the racial IQ gap, as well as (ironically) a genetic basis for higher rates of violent crime. It’s clear that Gendron closely follows various academic debates about race, IQ, and crime. According to the ideology guiding Gendron, Black people are not intelligent enough to engineer the replacement of whites, and the destruction of their civilization. The real actors behind White Replacement, according to Gendron, are the Jews, a topic which occupies the subsequent 29 pages of his manifesto.Gendron’s lengthy section on Jews purports to document Jewish hatred of non-Jews. It includes a section of Talmud quotes supporting Gendron’s thesis that Jews hate Christians, and a section documenting supposed control of academia, media, and industry (focusing on the pharmaceutical industry). Gendron ties Jews to child abuse and pedophilia. The section mocks a supposed Jewish fixation on environmental causes of Black crime. Gendron argues that Jews are behind Black social and political movements and organizations, including the NAACP and Black Lives Matter.Gendron also argues that Jews are behind the movement for transgender inclusivity, supposedly sponsoring transgender summer camps for “Scandinavian style whites”.The section ends by blaming Jews for creating “infighting” between people and races. The example Gendron’s manifesto provides is that “Jews are spreading ideas such as Critical Race Theory and white shame/guilt to brainwash Whites into hating themselves and their people”.The ideology that motivated Gendron’s mass murder in Buffalo, White Replacement Theory, has a lengthy and blood-soaked 20th century history. Since 2011, it has been the explicit motivation for over 160 murders, including Norway’s Anders Breivik’s slaughter of 77 people, mostly immigrants, in 2011, Dylann Roof’s mass murder of Black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, the Tree of Life Synagogue killings in 2018, and the murder of 23 people, mostly immigrants, in El Paso, Texas, in 2019.Mass atrocities do not occur in a vacuum. They are enabled by a present normalization of a lengthy previous history, a process that the philosopher of mass killing Lynne Tirrell labels the social embeddedness condition. White Replacement Theory was the dominant structuring narrative of Nazi ideology. Adolf Hitler also announced his genocidal intent in a lengthy manifesto about the supposed Jewish threat to white civilization, entitled Mein Kampf, which was published in 1924. Hitler also was obsessed by mass immigration, and the threat it posed to “white civilization.”Currently, White Replacement Theory has been mass popularized and normalized, perhaps chiefly by the American political commentator Tucker Carlson. It is rapidly moving to the center of the mainstream narrative of America’s Republican party. In this form, it appears stripped of its explicit connection to antisemitism. You will not find Tucker Carlson asserting that the Jews are behind the mass replacement of American whites that he bemoans regularly in what is regularly the most watched cable news show in the United States among adults 25-54.But what Carlson has been doing is spending an entire year repeating a conspiracy by Christopher Rufo that says that American education has been infected by a pro-Black ideology (CRT) that was created by German Jewish Marxist intellectuals (the Frankfurt School). And that while the CRT version of this conspiracy theory is new, it is a direct descendent of the “cultural marxism” conspiracy theory, which was a primary topic of Breivik’s manifesto.The fact that Carlson does not mention American Jews as a target by name should be cold comfort to American Jews. Every single right wing anti-Semite in America who watches Tucker Carlson’s show hears him as denouncing Jews when he regularly platforms the 20th century’s worst anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.Some American Jews hope that by identifying as white, and lending their support to racist narratives about IQ and crime, they can diminish rightwing American antisemitism. This is a terrible error. American Ku Klux Klan ideology in the 1920s strongly overlapped with Nazi ideology, placing Jews at the center of a conspiracy fomenting a supposed race war to overthrow white civilization. American Jews who support Tucker Carlson and his ilk, that is, others who repeat the White Replacement narrative, are supporters both of anti-Black racism, and antisemitism in its most violent form.It is in the tracts of the 20th century’s most explicit antisemites that we find the development of White Replacement Theory, who used it to justify the mass killing of Jews. Gendron’s manifesto reveals yet again the unbreakable historical link between anti-Black racism and antisemitism. Any supporter of White Replacement Theory is a clear enemy of the Jewish People.America has many mass shootings. But this mass killing of Black Americans in a Buffalo supermarket must serve as a wake-up call to our country. White Replacement Theory is deeply ingrained in the worst aspects of American and European history. With its attacks on “Critical Race Theory”, this is a fact that the American political right is deliberately and knowingly trying to erase from our collective consciousness, so they can appeal to it again as a political weapon against liberal democracy.As Gendron’s manifesto makes clear, White Replacement Theory is not just an attack on minorities. It is a weapon directed by fascists at American democracy itself.TopicsUS newsOpinionBuffalo shootingNew YorkAntisemitismRaceUS politicsThe far rightcommentReuse this content More

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      Republican hopes to ride far-right rage into Idaho’s governor’s office

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      Republican hopes to ride far-right rage into Idaho’s governor’s office Lieutenant governor Janice McGeachin is building a coalition including white nationalist and far-right militia backing, in what she tells supporters is ‘the fight of our lives’As the far right in America seeks to increase its political influence, including by seeking elected office, one figure is emerging as potentially its most powerful figure: Idaho’s lieutenant governor, Janice McGeachin.McGeachin is running for governor of the state and building a coalition including white nationalist and far-right militia backing, in what she tells her supporters is “the fight of our lives”.Last month at the America First Political Action Conference, a white nationalist conference, McGeachin praised attendees: “Keep up the good work fighting for our country,” she said in a pre-taped address.“I need fighters all over this country that are willing stand up and fight,” McGeachin continued, urging attendees to push out moderates in the Republican party. “Even when that means fighting amongst our own ranks because there are too many Republicans who do not exhibit the courage that is needed today for us to fight and protect our freedoms and our liberties. We are literally in the fight for our lives.”Three years after attending the the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, the far-right provocateur Nick Fuentes created the white nationalist conference AFPAC in the hopes of branding it a far-right alternative to the more mainstream conservative gathering CPAC. Fuentes is a well-known white nationalist and notorious antisemite who mocks how Jews were murdered in the Holocaust while also denying the Holocaust occurred.McGeachin has a history of giving speeches and mingling at far-right rallies, often riding the wave of the latest rightwing outrage. Last year at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, McGeachin gave a rousing speech at a mask-burning event on the Idaho capitol steps, where children burned masks in front of their parents.The Guardian reported last year on the growing civil war inside the Republican party in Idaho, when McGeachin imposed a ban on masks while the governor was out of state. McGeachin also created a taskforce to look into claims of “indoctrination” in schools in order to project children from “the scourge of Critical Race Theory, socialism, communism and Marxism” according to documents obtained by the Idaho Statesman newspaper.This month McGeachin also jumped on the cause of the trucker convoy protest, speaking at a locally planned convoy rally in Idaho. According to local TV station KTVB about 500 people showed up to protest against Covid-19 mandates, though Idaho has none. McGeachin told the crowd “Sometimes they refer to us as being ‘extreme’ for our views,” before reading out loud a quote from Barry Goldwater defending extremism in pursuit of liberty. “We are a free nation and it is so important that we stand now and continue to fight for that freedom and that liberty that makes this country so great,” she said.McGeachin has also attended a gathering where she was endorsed by a rightwing militia figure whom she had apparently made political promises too. In a video previously obtained by the Guardian Eric Parker – who was charged over his role in the standoff in 2014 at Bundy Ranch in Nevada where he was pictured pointing an assault rifle at federal agents – reminded McGeachin that she once told “if I get in, you’re going to have a friend in the governor’s office”.Experts who follow the far right in the US believe McGeachin represents a serious threat, especially as more militia-affiliated groups have started to enter local government in the US, such as in California’s Shasta county.“From her recent speech at AFPAC, continued embrace of white nationalism and endorsements from prominent antisemitic leaders to her longstanding ties with paramilitaries, it couldn’t be clearer that McGeachin is a danger to the rule of law, Idaho communities and democratic institutions,” said Amy Herzfeld-Copple, deputy director of programs at Western States Strategies, a non-profit that works for inclusive democracy through nonpartisan education and advocacy.A total of 31 faith leaders in Idaho recently signed an open letter calling for McGeachin to resign. Rabbis, reverends, pastors and others of different faiths across the state warned in the letter of the “staggering consequences of ignoring extremism” and describe a “rising tide of antisemitism here in Idaho”.The letter cited recent acts of vandalism including at the Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial in Boise. It said: “By associating with alt-right actors and groups like AFPAC in addition to your ties to militia groups that advocate for political violence and harassment in Idaho, you have proven you are not fit to hold elected office, let alone serve a heartbeat away from becoming Idaho’s next governor.”Rabbi Dan Fink of Ahavath Beth Israel in Boise, who co-signed the letter, said in an interview with KTVB that he was courted by McGeachin earlier this year, to help with a campaign against antisemitism.“The dissonance was so extraordinary. I both hurt and at some level, had to laugh because it was surreal,” Fink said in the interview, appalled that McGeachin would share a stage with a Holocaust denier while trying to enlist a rabbi’s help. “That you have the chutzpah to reach out to me and say ‘help me on antisemitism’ while going out and glorying in the presence of antisemites is extraordinary,” Fink said.Herzfeld-Copple said it was not clear how deep McGeachin’s popular support was in Idaho.“McGeachin is a troubling anti-democracy figure in our region seeking to build a national profile with violent and bigoted social movements that increasingly see her as their access to power. But we know these extremists are a minority and Idahoans have routinely rejected those who court white nationalists,” said Herzfeld-Copple.But far-right controversy is never far away from McGeachin and this week she took the highly unusual step of intervening on behalf of a far-right group in a child welfare case involving a 10-month old baby who is the grandson of a campaign consultant for the militia leader Ammon Bundy, founder of the far-right group People’s Rights.The child had been taken away from the parents after officials determined the child was “suffering from severe malnourishment” and in imminent danger. But the Idaho Statesman obtained text messages between McGeachin and Governor Brad Little showing McGeachin seeking to intervene in the case. “Is this true? Call off this medical tyranny tell the hospital to release the baby to his parents,” she wrote.Bundy himself was subsequently arrested this week for trespassing at St Luke’s hospital, where he went to protest with scores of supporters over what he called a “medical kidnapping”.“Nearly every day, McGeachin’s actions become more dangerous. She contradicted pleas from law enforcement and hospital officials and used her government Facebook page to discuss a confidential child welfare case, contributing to a mob of Ammon Bundy supporters that caused a lockdown at Idaho’s largest hospital, compromising delivery of patient and emergency care,” said Herzfeld-Copple.Experts who monitor the far right note that while there is a growing number of far-right legislators at the state and federal level, such as the Arizona state sentator Wendy Rogers, who has admitted to being a member of the Oath Keepers militia, or the Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who spoke at the same white nationalist conference as McGeachin amid chants of support for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.If McGeachin were to win the race and become governor in Idaho it would be a major victory for far-right politics in America.“There are a lot of implications for having someone in the executive branch giving the stamp of approval to far-right paramilitary groups and white nationalists,” said Devin Burghart, executive director of Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights.“In recent years it is unprecedented to see a lieutenant governor doing things like participating in a white nationalist conference or weighing in on a far-right-driven child endangerment issue, we haven’t seen that high a level of support for the far right since the days of the Council of Conservative Citizens, the lineal descendants of the White Citizens Council in the south.” said Burghart.Burghart warned that state politics and far-right extremism in the sparsely populated west of the US is often forgotten in the national political conversation, but it can have major consequences.“What happens out here in the west becomes a model, a testing ground for far-right activism. And what happens out here in the west doesn’t stay in the west, it migrates around the country, said Burghart.TopicsIdahoUS politicsRepublicansThe far rightAntisemitismfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Nearly one in five applicants to white supremacist group tied to US military

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      Nearly one in five applicants to white supremacist group tied to US militaryLeaked documents show that about 18 out of 87 applicants, or 21%, to Patriot Front were currently or formerly affiliated with military Nearly one in five applicants to the white supremacist group Patriot Front claimed to hold current or former ties to the US military, according to leaked documents published and reviewed by the Southern Poverty Law Center and alternative media collective Unicorn Riot.Some 18 out of the 87 applicants, or 21%, said they were currently or previously affiliated with the military. One applicant, who claimed to be a former Marine, also said he currently worked for the Department of Homeland Security, according to the SPLC’s Hatewatch, a blog that tracks and exposes activities of American rightwing extremists.A white supremacist and neo-fascist hate group, Patriot Front emerged as a rebrand of the neo-Nazi organization Vanguard America in the aftermath of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.According to the SPLC, the Patriot Front “represents one of the most prominent white supremacist groups in the country” and is led by Thomas Rousseau, a 23-year old man based in Dallas, Texas. “A nation within a nation is our goal. Our people face complete annihilation as our culture and heritage are attacked from all sides,” Rousseau once said.In January, Unicorn Riot published over 400 gigabytes of data that included “ostensibly private, unedited videos and direct messages [that] reveal a campaign to organize acts of hatred while indoctrinating teenagers into national socialism (Nazism),” the journalist collective said.Group members and applicants expressed an open admiration for Nazi ideologies, with the latter expressing various motivations for joining the group.One applicant, who said he lived in San Diego, claimed to be a current DHS employee and told Patriot Front he was inspired to join after he “found out about the Jews while in the marines”.Another applicant used derogatory language about LGBTQ+ people and said he “first saw” them during his time in the military.Someone else from Salt Lake City said he “shifted focus and questioned things” after his second deployment and went from being a Republican to joining the far right.Applicants also touted their various skill sets, including “great land-navigation, great physical fitness, able to clear rooms” and “basic medical training”. Others said they had been “trained in firearms”. One claimed to train people in “marine corps martial arts” and said he was the leader of the Kansas Active Club, an affiliate of the Rise Above Movement, a Southern California-based SPLC-designated hate group.‘We are desperate for new people’: inside a hate group’s leaked online chatsRead moreIn addition to alleged military affiliations, the leak also revealed that the group targets minors. According to Unicorn Riot, Patriot Front recruits “members through the internet who are still legally minors, indoctrinating them with white supremacist ideology and even encouraging them to lie to their parents so the group can transport them across state lines for fascist events”.Patriot Front’s official policies require members to be at least 17 and a half years old, but it “goes by a case by case basis” with certain members being below that age.In the past year, there has been growing concern surrounding the far-right radicalization of current and former military members. More than 80 defendants charged for their affiliation with the deadly January 6 riots have been found to have ties to the military, with most being veterans.Last March, the Pentagon released a report that cited domestic extremist groups posing an increasing threat to the military by attempting to recruit service members and in certain situations join the military to gain combat experience.“Military members are highly prized by these groups as they bring legitimacy to their causes and enhance their ability to carry out attacks,” the report said. “In addition to potential violence, white supremacy and white nationalism pose a threat to the good order and discipline within the military,” it added.In October, a House panel convened to discuss ways to address veterans being increasingly targeted for recruitment by extremist groups.“They provide them with a tribe, a simplistic view of the world and its problems, actionable solutions and a sense of purpose, and then they feed these vulnerable individuals a concoction of lies and an unrelenting narrative of political and social grievance,” retired Marine Lt Col Joe Plenzler said at the panel.A study last year by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that in 2020, 6.4% of all domestic terror attacks and plots were committed by active-duty or reserve personnel, up from 1.5% in 2019 and none in 2018.TopicsThe far rightRaceAntisemitismUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump condemned by Anti-Defamation League chief for antisemitic tropes

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      Trump condemned by Anti-Defamation League chief for antisemitic tropesJonathan Greenblatt says that ‘insinuating that Israel or the Jews control Congress or the media is antisemitic’ The chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League led condemnation of Donald Trump after the former president used antisemitic tropes in remarks about American Jews and Israel.Mark Meadows was at the center of the storm on 6 January. But only Trump could call it offRead more“Insinuating that Israel or the Jews control Congress or the media is antisemitic, plain and simple,” Jonathan Greenblatt said. “Unfortunately, this is not the first time he has made these offensive remarks.”Trump was speaking to the journalist Barak Ravid, author of a book on Trump and the Middle East. Parts of the interview aired on Friday on a podcast, Unholy: Two Jews on the News.“It’s a very dangerous thing that’s happening,” Trump said. “There’s people in this country that are Jewish and no longer love Israel. I’ll tell you, the evangelical Christians love Israel more than the Jews in this country.”Trump also used a line he has delivered before – to a Jewish audience in 2019 – about Israel and Congress.“It used to be that Israel had absolute power over Congress,” he said, “and today I think it’s the exact opposite. And I think Obama and Biden did that. And yet in the election, they still get a lot of votes from the Jewish people. Which tells you that the Jewish people, and I’ve said this for a long time, the Jewish people in the United States either don’t like Israel or don’t care about Israel.”Trump also said “they’re Jewish people that run the New York Times” and claimed the newspaper “hates Israel”.On Twitter, Greenblatt said: “Once again, former President Trump has linked his lack of strong support among most US Jews to their feelings about Israel and used classic antisemitic stereotypes about Israeli and Jewish control of Congress and the press to bolster his argument.“It’s sad that once again we have to restate this point, but the vast majority of American Jews support and have some type of connection to Israel, regardless of which political candidate they vote for.“Let me be clear: insinuating that Israel or the Jews control Congress or the media is antisemitic, plain and simple. Unfortunately, this is not the first time he has made these offensive remarks.”The American Jewish Committee said: “Why is Mr Trump once again fueling dangerous stereotypes about Jews? His past support for Israel doesn’t give him license to traffic in radioactive antisemitic tropes – or peddle unfounded conclusions about the unbreakable ties that bind American Jews to Israel. Enough!”Notably, Republicans who have condemned Democrats including the Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar for allegedly using antisemitic tropes did not rush to respond to Trump’s remarks.Amid widespread anger, the former Obama adviser Ben Rhodes said: “If Ilhan Omar said the same things Trump did it would dominate politics and media for a week, statements issued from every organisation, (bipartisan) resolutions in Congress, etc. What bullshit.”Bill Pascrell, a New Jersey Democrat, said: “There can be no question that the words by Donald Trump are vile, despicable antisemitism … This level of hate is not just tolerated but invited by the modern GOP.”Ilhan Omar and the weaponisation of antisemitism | Joshua LeiferRead moreQasim Rashid, a human rights lawyer and radio host, said: “While American Jews represent only 2% of Americans, FBI data shows Jews suffer more than 60% of religiously motivated hate crimes.“Donald Trump’s reckless antisemitism further endangers Jewish Americans, and the GOP proudly standing by him makes them complicit. Unacceptable.”Like many other authors, Ravid interviewed Trump at Mar-a-Lago after his defeat by Joe Biden in the 2020 election and his attempts to overturn that result including stoking the deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January.Ravid’s interview has already made news, after Trump reportedly said of the former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a key ally when in power: “Fuck him.”According to Axios, Trump said: “The first person that congratulated [Biden] was Bibi Netanyahu, the man that I did more for than any other person I dealt with … Bibi could have stayed quiet. He has made a terrible mistake.”TopicsDonald TrumpAntisemitismUS politicsUS CongressRepublicansIsraelnewsReuse this content More