On July 1, over at Minnesota righty superblog True North (“Pointing Minnesota in the Right Direction”), Kevin Ecker decided to use his time to highlight an anti-immigration rally in Austin, Minnesota:
Political activism at it’s [sic] best is honest grassroots efforts by people finally fed up with lying politicians who decide to do something about an issue rather than just complain. We have a great example of that coming up here in Minnesota on the immigration issue.
On Saturday, July 11th at 2 PM, there will be a rally held at the Mower County Courthouse. It’s located at 201 First Street NE, Austin, MN. This will be the second rally in a month at that location.
Basically Austin is a town that the residents feel has been devastated by illegal immigration, and a lone resident, Sam Johnson, finally got fed up. He organized the first rally despite being up against professionally organized counter protests by the likes of La Raza, Centro Campesino and various Marxist organizations bussed in from the cities.
Sam Johnson, honest American, just doing the best he can to make our country free of “illegal immigration.” Or, you know, any immigration. Because this is Sam Johnson:
In case you’re wondering — and I doubt you are, but some people might not be able to view the picture — yes, that’s a guy wearing a neo-Nazi uniform. Because Sam Johnson isn’t just a hard-working white American who’s fed-up with illegal immigration. He’s a neo-Nazi, the head of the National Socialist Movement Southeast Minnesota. He is one of the most vile individuals in my state, and he’s a guy who the world will be better off without.
Sally Jo Sorensen of the outstanding Bluestem Prairie blog actually interviewed Johnson (one hopes she took a long, hot shower afterward); you should really read all of part one and bookmark the site for the next two installments, but here’s a brief excerpt:
“Minorities should not be citizens,” Johnson said, “only 100 percent true white Americans.” He outlined his vision of a nation in which all people of color would be stripped of their citizenship, no matter how long their families had lived in the United States, and moved to communities that would be strictly delineated according to race.
People of African descent would live with other people of African descent, Latinos with Latinos, Asians with Asians, American Indians with American Indians, and “real Americans” with other “real Americans. “Real American” and non-citizen status would be determined be having had family living in the country for five generations or 50-70 years.
Only if non-whites broke the law would they be sent back to the country of their ancestors’ origins, regardless of how long their families had lived in the United States. Of course, Johnson emphasized, this would dictate deporting all immigrants living here illegally.
“Minorities could have jobs, own homes, and enjoy their own culture,” he said. They simply wouldn’t be citizens of the United States, nor could they become citizens. They would have to keep separate.
Why separate?
“If you look back in history to every country that’s allowed different races to mingle,” he said, “you’ll see that nation has fallen.”
“Look at what happened to Rome,” he said, when I example him for an example of what he meant. “Jews and Africans came into Rome, there were uprisings, and Rome fell.”
This is the guy that True North — a blog that has included Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn.; PowerLine’s Scott Johnson; and David Strom, the head of the Minnesota Taxpayers League as contributors — decided to back. A neo-Nazi. But that shouldn’t be surprising — the Republican party has deliberately chosen to throw its lot in with the most extreme elements of the hard-core, fascist-and-no-that’s-not-hyperbole, racist right. It is disgusting. It is despicable.
This is why those of us on the left don’t buy it when the right claims that they’re not racist — because they are so very willing to embrace racists when it helps them. If Republicans want to stop being seen as the party of hate, they need to stop the hatred. Otherwise, they need to own the fact that a sitting Republican congresswoman is a contributor to a website that promoted a neo-Nazi hate rally, promotion that included sharing Sam Johnson’s email address with those looking to get involved. Only a party that found racism acceptable could be comfortable with that.
UPDATE: Just because these things have a way of finding their way down the memory hole:
“Jews and Africans came into Rome, there were uprisings, and Rome fell.”
Or maybe Rome went out and conquered part of Africa and Judea. But I guess it’s nice to see that American racists aren’t just making a special illogical exception for Native Americans — they have a general principle that if group A conquers group B, then group B become the foreign intruders, and group A is the real natives.
National socialists are the very worst kind of socialists.
I think there should be a trigger warning before that picture of the guy in the Neo-Nazi uniform.
While this is truly frightening, it is blatant and undeniable. For me, the more subtle stuff is just as frightening because it’s so manipulative. Do people know that Mitt Romney — who has taken a firm stance against undocumented workers — actually rode to power on the backs of those very workers? His “saving” of the Olympics in Salt Lake City, which undeniably thrust him onto the national stage as a serious presidential contender, would never happened without thousands of undocumented workers in Utah who did the grunt work to make the Olympics happen. The mayor of Salt Lake City at the time has said this in a documentary.
“‘Only if non-whites broke the law would they be sent back to the country of their ancestors’ origins, regardless of how long their families had lived in the United States.'”
So…I guess he’s proposing that taxpayer money, including his, be spent on DNA testing and in-depth geneaological research for every non-white person who breaks the law? And if someone had ancestors from multiple places, would they get some sort of time-share in each country? (Although one has to wonder what would happen for a Native American: “Sir, your country of origin appears to be…Illinois”).
Shooting fish in a barrel like this would be more fun if I didn’t suspect that a good chunk of America secretly agrees with him.
“True North?” Oh, that’s nice. That’s a famous quote from the Canadian National anthem – you know, the “socialist,” multicultural country to the north of Minnesota? This Sam Johnson guy must loooooove Canada.
O Canada!
Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
From far and wide, O Canada,
We stand on guard for thee.
God keep our land glorious and free!
While this is truly frightening, it is blatant and undeniable. For me, the more subtle stuff is just as frightening because it’s so manipulative.
Agreed, but this kind of think is nice precisely because it’s blatant and undeniable. So often, the right blows their dogwhistles, then acts offended that anyone had the temerity to hear them. It’s nice when there isn’t even even implausible deniability.
“Look at what happened to Rome,” he said, when I example him for an example of what he meant. “Jews and Africans came into Rome, there were uprisings, and Rome fell.”
Okay I may not be up to snuff on history but wasn’t it invading tribes from present day Germany that pretty much sealed the fate of Rome? And wouldn’t those invaders kinda be his ancestors?
Grr. This guy can’t even get his history right. Rome wasn’t really that integrated, first of all. Secondly it fell because its resources were stretched too thin and it was attacked by – Germans. (Huns and Visigoths, whose decendants live in what is now Germany.)
Cute! That sensuous bald head! I can’t help but dream.
Henry at Crooked Timber once said:
(See also this comprehensive list of reasons Rome declined and fell.)
Really, Rome fell because of the Christians–so this guy is against Christianity, right? Right?
Well, I’ve had a fair amount to say regarding immigration issues, so I’ll say something on this. I’ll keep it short; this guy is an a$$shole and I oppose everything he stands for.
Ugh. Times like this I wish Reader had a ‘regretful but glad to be informed’ tag next to the ‘like’ tag. That thing just never seems appropriate for articles like this.
Yeah, we had 20 of the local NSM here in Riverside b/c they started their state chapter here. They’ve been demonstrating purportedly undocumented immigrants congregating at a day laborer center but they were protesting against a wide swath of people last Saturday.
Anyone who thinks it’s just about “immigration” should check out their 25 point plan at the NSM Web site. Our local Nazis have been a bit disingenuous about that part of their activism.
I had some strange conversation with our mayor in the elevator and I told him they planned to keep returning (actually emboldened by the counter-demonstrating including the brawl on Saturday) and he just waved his arms and said “that’s not the announcement I want to make”. I also got asked to critique the police response by the police department, which is under criticism by the coalition against Hate for being too restrained.
The city’s looking at legal action to take the expel the Nazis from the city, which might bring in the ACLU to defend the Nazis.
There’s about eight of them, they’re not very impressive looking, a group of young men and women being mentored by a Bay Area Nazi and they’ve pretty got the city at their mercy mostly because of the response to them. They’re feeding on the high unemployment rate of my city (about 15%) and the strong anti-Latino sentiment, not limited at all to undocumented immigrants in the city which is about 50% comprised of Latinos now.
What was the police reponse, Radfem? What do those who think it was too restrained want the police to do?
I’ve seen “U.S. out of North America” scrawled on the wall in a St. Paul bar. I’m not crazy about the sentiment, but I wouldn’t mind seeing it applied to Mr. Johnson. And somebody ought to tell him that historians don’t really talk about the “fall” of Rome any more.
I’m not sure why the Roman Empire fell, but if you are going to cite German attacks, can we please also acknowlege that what is Germany today was conquered and made part of the Roman Empire before that? I am certainly not in favour of making excuses for the wrongs of Germany in the past, but there are more than enough real artrocities to not need to make up new ones.
Also, it is strange that this guy, running around with a swastika and a nazi uniform,would actually be arrested in Germany. There are (frustratingly) far to many right extremists here, but wearing of nazi-emblems is considered to be hate-speach and demand for violence in and of itself and is therefore forbidden (so is making public statement about the Holocaust not having happened). I am still not sure how I feel about that in regards to freedom of speach,and it certainly doesn’t stop new extremist movements from forming, but it still gave me pause when looking at that picture.
More OT: On the one hand, calling the right out on their ties to racism should be made a lot easier by incidents like these. On the other hand, they will probably make excuses and then quietly celebrate having insured themselves of those extremist’s support as well as the support of all those who, while not active in these organisations, silently agree with them.
It is so shameful that this movement managed to survive the end of the NSDAP and spread out over the world.
I hope there will be many articles like this one, and that the attention created will be focused on the atrocities he is spewing, instead of giving him more of a platform of willing listeners.
It is truly frightening to see aspects of history repeating itself allover the world- financial crisis followed by increased hatred against the so called “others”, accusations of them “stealing our jobs”- it is all so horribly familiar.
So… when will “Bachman contributes to blog that endorses neo-Nazi” become national news?
El Jeffe,
Expect a pretty big post responding to this tomorrow on SITD and True North.
Followed, you may expect, by a whole lot of people googling every single person you’ve ever quoted on any of your blogs, looking for anyone that might embarass you in retrospect, notwithstanding the fact that you may have quoted them in perfectly good faith, not knowing that they had embarassing baggage.
Now, Jeff, you might respond to that “Good Lord, why? I had no idea! I don’t pre-emptively google every single person I quote!” I mean – do you?
I happen to know Kevin Ecker. He’s a friend of mine, and an excellent blogger. The only association he has with “Naziism” is the one you (plural and singular) jam down his throat against his will – and all of ours, by association.
I’m a little concerned by this need y’all seem to have to see your opposition as not only “wrong”, but actively depraved, too.
But (looks around) I guess I’m in the wrong crowd to complain about that…
“Bachman contributes to blog that endorses neo-Nazi”
Er, I wasn’t aware that quoting someone, ignorant of any larger context, constituted an “endorsement”.
Please enlighten.
For the record I did not know Sam Johnson was a Neo-Nazi, and had I known I would have promptly forgotten about his event. As far as I knew he was simply just another small time illegal immigration activist. Being as I’m interested in the immigration issue and being pro-enforcement (not anti-immigration as you so delicately put it), I was giving publicity to an event.
Knowing what I know now, no I wouldn’t have given it a plug. At the time googling a name like Sam Johnson just seemed an act of futility, plus there was no reason to suspect such ties. Unlike you I don’t automatically assume others are motivated by hatred.
And I would hardly count simply giving an event publicity as an “endorsement”.
If that’s the standard you want to go with, that’s your call but you might want to think how that applies to your own posts
Not to mention how if you have to reach back three months to find this loose of a association with hatred, what does that say about your case?
MBerg,
You don’t get the difference between “person you’ve ever quoted on any of your blogs” and “person whose actions you’re holding up as ‘Political activism at it’s best'”?
I guess that’s about what I expect from a person who considers Nazism to be merely “embarrassing baggage.” Gosh, the invasion of Poland, whoops! and the Holocaust, totally Germany’s bad!
Most people here don’t feel any need to see conservatives as depraved. I’m married to a very active Republican who used to work for Phil Gramm. I just got our hotel reservation to attend a conservative conference in D.C. The owner of this blog just posted recently about his favorite conservative and libertarian bloggers, including ones who disagree with him on issues as fundamental as same-sex marriage.
plus there was no reason to suspect such ties
Yeah, who’s ever before heard of anyone who virulently opposes illegal immigration — who is concerned not just about law-breaking, but about an influx of particular ethnic groups — being a racist? This fellow Sam, he is totally sui generis.
Kevin, when something is described as “political activism at its best,” that cannot reasonably be taken as anything but an endorsement.
That said, I entirely accept your explanation: you didn’t know he was a Nazi, and wouldn’t have endorsed his protest if you had known. That’s totally understandable, and I could imagine something similar happening to anyone.
But does it give you any pause — any pause at all — to find that you yourself were unable (eta: at least in this case) to tell the difference between views about immigration you agree with, and views about immigration said by a Nazi?
So far, you and MBerg are saying stuff like “you might want to think how that applies to your own posts.” But contrary to what you and MBerg seem to think, I feel certain that Jeff has never even accidentally called a Nazi’s activities “activism at its best.” Because there is no overlap of views between Jeff’s views and the views of a Nazi like Sam Johnson.
There is, apparently, a substantive overlap between your views on immigration, and Sam Johnson’s. To be perfectly clear, I’m not saying you’re a Nazi. On the contrary, I credit you for immediately updating your post.
But what, exactly, would have to occur for you to engage in self-examination? If finding that you agree with a Nazi doesn’t do that for you, what will?
Look – Kevin, seeing one small facet of Johnson’s personality, complimented it, utterly unknowing of the larger context of his personality. Trying to make it more than that is stretchy at best, really dishonest at worst.
I guess that’s about what I expect from a person who considers Nazism to be merely “embarrassing baggage.” Gosh, the invasion of Poland, whoops! and the Holocaust, totally Germany’s bad!
Um, yeah. I’m a master of understatement. What do you want – to see who can rend their garment the hardest at the mention of Naziism?
Let’s do! I covered the Medina Shootout in North Dakota, in 1982, where neo-Nazis killed two federal marshals; I knew plenty of the cops involved. When I started in talk radio in the eighties, I used to get anti-semitic death threats; notwithstanding the fact that I’m a goy, it was not long after Alan Berg was murdered in Denver by, you got it, neo-Nazis. Wanna talk about Poland?
Just saying – save the “gotchas” for your own crowd.
[this post has been edited]
That’s foul play; are you trying to Godwin the anti-illegal-immigration viewpoint?
I think that plenty of my own views on immigration (most of which involve stricter enforcement of existing laws and most of which do not involve amnesty for illegal immigrants currently in the U.S.) could certainly be “said by a Nazi.” And I’m sure as hell not a Nazi–nor, being of significant Eastern European Jewish descent, am I a Nazi fan.
So what if some Nazi asshole happens to agree with me (or him) that we should stop illegal immigration? How is that different from the fact that some Palestinian terrorist undoubtedly shares some of your views on Gaza?
The Nazi is still an asshole and the hypothetical Palestinian is still a terrorist. The Nazi may want to segregate POC as well as stop illegal immigration; the terrorist may want to slaughter Jews as well as claim political rights for Palestinians. I don’t agree with those views any more than you do. But the validity of my views (and yours) remain unchanged by the fact that some very unsavory people happen to share some of them.
If you, as you claim, believe the statement that he didn’t know he was a Nazi, and if you look at the first of the two quotes (which is the only one at issue if that claim is true; the other one wasn’t in his post) what exactly is so offensive about it? Here it is again:
Note that it refers specifically to ILLEGAL immigration. Where in that do you find the Nazi trigger? Or, for that matter, the purported general anti-immigrant sentiment?
Plenty of people are against illegal immigration, me included. Plenty of people are against political apathy to illegal immigration, me included.
Of those people, a smaller subset are also racist Nazi asshats. But I know a shitload of people who are strongly against illegal immigration and guess what? NONE of them are racist Nazi asshats. in fact, I’d say that racist nazi asshats make up a small (unfortunately vocal and publicized) fraction of those people who are against illegal immigration.
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Actually, SM, I think that a lot of people who are “against illegal immigration” are disturbingly apathetic to the well-being of undocumented migrants, at least in the rhetoric they use and the solutions they offer.
Talking about undocumented immigrants as if they’re invaders “devastating” and “overrunning” American towns until Americans get “fed up” and “stand against” them on the “battlefield,” frames the undocumented immigration issue as if it were a war to be fought against invaders.
That’s an attitude which encourages hatred and dehumanization, rather than talking about solutions that recognize that undocumented immigrants are humans, too, and their well-being is important (in addition to, not instead of, the well-being of legal residents). It’s that attitude which makes it acceptable, rather than a scandal, when undocumented immigrants (including children) are treated in unfair ways and held in inhumane conditions, and sometimes die.
I think you can be against undocumented immigration without expressing the attitudes in that quote. And if you don’t see anything wrong with the attitudes in that quote — then yes, I think that’s a problem. And I don’t think it’s just a meaningless coincidence that there’s an overlap between dehumanizing, warlike rhetoric about immigration from non-Nazis, and dehumanizing, warlike rhetoric about immigration from Nazis.
Can anyone tell me what “coagublog” means? Just curious.
Ampersand,
Yeah I do hate it when I have those “get off my side asshole” moments. And certainly I’d be silly not to do a little soul-searching. But ultimately there is a fundamental difference between our views.
Sam hates all immigrants for…well, being a different color. On the other hand I wish that those coming to our country had some respect for our laws by following them. I believe that a county that can’t enforce it’s own borders doesn’t exist. And I believe that for national security reasons we should at least have an awareness of who is within our borders.
If you can’t see the difference between my views and a Neo-Nazi then I feel sorry for you.
Kevin,
I think we’ve all had those “get off my side!” moments, no matter which side we’re on. :-)
I’m not very familiar with your views, except for the one post that Jeff quoted. I do accept that there are fundamental differences between your views and Nazism. And just to be clear, I’m not in any way calling you a Nazi.
At the same time, I do think there are strong elements of dehumanization and xenophobia in how the right discusses immigration. And that is what the mainstream right, and the Nazis, have in common — dehumanization and xenophobia.
This is a bit like Inspector Javert complaining that Jean Valjean has no respect for property because he stole some bread.
Most undocumented immigrants come to this country because they really, really, really need to work. I do want people to respect just laws, of course, but I don’t think it’s realistic or fair to expect that people are going to value border laws more than they value eating, or feeding their children.
When I was a kid, I’d canoe between the US and Canada (easy to do on the St. Croix river in Maine). But it’s a little nonsensical to say that because I did that, neither Canada or the US exists.
We’d have a much better idea of who is within our borders, if we had a liberal immigration policy, so people who want to come here to work or live can do so legally. Policies that don’t give enough people legal avenues for coming to the States, inevitably lead to a high number of people sneaking in.
Have the NSM ever protested in cities with large populations of undocumented immigrants from European countries? And against those immigrant groups? Just curious. I would guess by their 25 point plan, not.
The people who complained that the police were too restrained felt that they could have stopped a small group of counter demonstrators from attacking the Nazis (and there was a fistfight) and that the police should have not allowed a group of “unexpected” anarchists from Claremont to stay in the street demonstrating. But some of these same folks would have been upset if the police had forced the anarchists off the street saying it was excessive or not enough restraint. It’s like people saying that the police conspired to let the Nazis get attacked by the counter demonstrators and yet they were also at the same time collaborating with the Nazis.
I think the police made tactical errors in the beginning (which they’ve admitted that things didn’t work out as planned) when the Nazis first arrived but I think that everyone was surprised when one of the groups that said they would provide security instead attacked the Nazis and then tried to get other people to attack them. The coalition organizers have some lessons to take back too.
The irony with the counter demonstrating is that it’s played right into the Neo Nazis hands. They’ve gotten a lot of publicity and they know they issue a press release on another protest and hundreds of people will show up along with five police agencies. I spoke at a meeting and will probably get flak for saying they had a free speech right. I’ve learned through Tyisha Miller when the Klan showed up, that you have to keep focusing on addressing the issues and sentiments that attract these groups and gangs in the first place. Often when you make inroads in those issues, these organizations tend to dry up.
Ampersand, I do have rebuttals to each of those, although I’m not sure thread-jacking a comment thread is the best way to present those.
Especially when the topic of that comment thread is on Jeffy making libelous accusation of my personal beliefs and those of my friends.
It also occurs to me to point out that all this evidence you use to indicate I should have known Sam Johnson’s Nazi beliefs was posted several months AFTER I put up my post.
Kevin:
1) As far as I know, Jeff’s name is “Jeff,” not “Jeffy.” A lot of blogs encourage that sort of grade-school mockery of names; this is not one of those blogs.
2) I don’t believe you have a case for libel. I think you’d be better off arguing that Jeff’s post was unfair; bringing “libel” into it tends to cause discussions to devolve into legalisms.
3) I never said that you should have known Sam Johnson’s Nazi beliefs, so I’m a bit puzzled by your last paragraph. Was your last paragraph intended to be addressed to Jeff?
4) Finally, I appreciate your consideration in not thread-jacking. If you want to respond to me without thread-jacking, please feel free to post a response on the open thread.
It also occurs to me to point out that all this evidence you use to indicate I should have known Sam Johnson’s Nazi beliefs was posted several months AFTER I put up my post.
How did you come to know of Johnson’s organizing the rally in the first place? You don’t mention in the post how you got your information.
If you were aware of Johnson’s anti-immigration activities, you probably would have known about this prior rally, in which Johnson was reported as a member of the NSM.
But yeah, people who talk about immigrations as an “invasion” and who want a “battleground” … who would expect any racism or hatred there?
Just to clarify, I don’t agree with Ampersand that illegal immigration is necessarily morally justified. Lots of people immigrate to the U.S. illegally even though they could eat in their home countries; I don’t think that the defense of necessity holds up for more than a few. And the huge number of illegal immigrants makes Americans unwilling to expand the legal immigration quotas, which means that my relatives spend years on waiting lists to get an immigration visa, and count themselves lucky if they can get even an H1 visa that will tie them to a particular employer and not allow them to apply for permanent residency.
However, it’s precisely because my family — legal immigrants to the U.S. — have been the target of the rhetoric of “invasion” and “they’re stealing our jobs,” that I’m automatically suspicious of anyone who talks about the issue in those terms.
Some folks have had the privilege of not having been so targeted, so they can merrily go along thinking that such rhetoric is just a colorful way of talking about genuine law-breaking, and that it’s not a sign of hatred toward all immigrants.
Kevin, you came to the wrong place to threaten libel. Apparently the “lefty coagublogs” attract lawyers like crazy, which is part of the reason why there is such a precision in the language used here much of the time.
Oh, some conservatives are so silly about “defamation” and “libel” that I rarely even bother pointing out their errors anymore. They either use those legal terms as a synonym for “I disagree with your opinion of me!” or they run to the British courts (which are finally getting sick of this nonsense and cracking down on such tourism despite the lack of a First Amendment in the UK).
PG, it’s true that not every undocumented immigrant coming to America faced a “move or die” quandary. It is true, however, that economic distress is a major, and possibly the major, thing driving most immigration, including undocumented immigration.
This is why there are more undocumented migrants from Mexico to the US than vice versa — people want to earn a living.
I feel that undocumented immigration is, at most, a minor affront to morality — the equivalent of driving over the speed limit or paying taxes late. So no, I’m not going to condemn it, especially when committed by people who are (by and large) just trying to work so that they and their family can have a better life. We should be trying to increase opportunities, not cut them off.
Finally, policies limiting legal immigration are the fault of the policy-makers — not of undocumented migrants.
A lot of undocumented immigrants are from El Salvador and Guatemala. Most of the day laborers in my city for example are the latter, coming here to do construction work which has mostly dried up so actually there are fewer of them.
The ADL wrote this article on the NSM’s actions in California which mirror a lot of the SOS/Minutemen activities. The SOS/Minutemen claim not to be recruiting from the Nazi/White Supremacist organizations but there were two SOS/Minutemen at the demonstration in Riverside on Saturday.
It is true, however, that economic distress is a major, and possibly the major, thing driving most immigration, including undocumented immigration.
But “economic distress,” when not at the point of threatening one’s life, is not a necessity defense against having broken the law. Particularly by American standards, my father’s family was “economically distressed” when he was growing up, but no one was dying for lack of food (they may have been somewhat malnutritioned, but so are some poor people in the U.S.). The father of this family presumably saw himself as “economically distressed,” even though he and his wife were university graduates.
Obviously I appreciate a parent’s desire to give her children as good a life as possible — it’s largely what drove my parents to immigrate and work hard. But there’s a significant difference between the Jean ValJean scenario you cite (in which breaking the law is done only to keep a child from starving) and the situations of most illegal immigrants. In particular, those who pay a coyote up-front, rather than being enslaved to pay off the debt, clearly have some resources available.
PG,
You expressed interest in how I found out….well, here’s the timeline:
Yesterday, I got an email from my blog indicating someone left a comment on that post asking :
“Are you unaware or just unconcerned that Sam Johnson is a proud and unapologetic neo-nazi?”
In the illegal immigration debate, my side is frequently smeared with labels like Nazi or worst. So at first I wrote it off as just another of those, although why it was being left on a four month old post was a little confusing.
I then got an email from a couple of the True Northers indicating that Fecke had put up a post about this. After reading through the post and finding the accusation I did some further googling and found sure enough that there was plenty of evidence of Sam Johnson’s Nazi beliefs. Although in my defense, none of them were online at the time I posted my article.
So add in the fact that I couldn’t have known anyway, but that’s hardly a good defense yeah? Anyway, so knowing what I knew then I editing both the post on my blog and on True North adding a note indicating Sam Johnson’s Nazi beliefs.
I only added the note because I didn’t want to sweep it under the rug and pretend it never happened like some journalists do. But I did want to make it very clear to future visitors what Sam’s motivations were and that I did NOT endorse such filth.
So there you have the aftermath of events from my viewpoint.
So no I didn’t know of his Nazi ties. As near as I can tell his Nazism was not well known at the time I published mine. Plus none of the newspaper articles I read about the rally at the time gave ANY indication of his radical beliefs.
Kevin,
It sounds like you did all you could reasonably do, down to putting a note on your post instead of just deleting it. Kudos on a situation well-handled.
Kevin,
My question was: How did you come to know of Johnson’s organizing the rally in the first place? You don’t mention in the post how you got your information.
You’ve dodged that question, instead answering a question I never asked, which was how you came to know of Johnson’s being a neo-Nazi.
Further ignoring my comment @37, you claim “Although in my defense, none of them were online at the time I posted my article.”
Your article is dated Wednesday, 01 July 2009 13:17. In my comment, I linked the Austin Daily Herald’s article, “Immigration protest brings out two sides,” which is dated as “Updated 09:42 a.m., June 4, 2009.” This article states, “The protest was originally scheduled by Samuel Johnson, Austin resident and member of the National Socialist Movement, to rally against illegal immigration. To counter Johnson, a number of people came out with signs supporting human rights and decrying Nazism.”
June 4, 2009 came before July 1, 2009. So an article that was posted on June 4 would have been available to a person who posted something on July 1.
And that’s only one article about Sam Johnson I found that was available prior to your post. There’s also the admiring posts about him and that June protest on various white supremacist websites:
http://newsaxon.org/blog/view/id_11847/title_NSM-Moblizes-local-citizens-in-Minnesota/
http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=601186
Good grief, the email address you posted for people to contact him in order to join this “political activism at its best” was “nsmsoutheastmn -at- gmail -dot- com.” As in, “National Socialist Movement Southeast Minnesota.”
Again, nice for you that your life has been so beautifully devoid of xenophobia that stuff like this doesn’t raise your red flags.
Yeah, the whole, “republicans are racist because they contribute to a guy who promoted an event that was organized by Nazis” is a little too tenuous to hold water. It sounds kinda like the “democrats are terrorists because Obama was at a school with an ex-Weather Man.” There’s so many other ways Republicans are racist, no need to resort to guilt by association.
Robin,
I think Jeff’s point is not that every Republican who has written on True North is racist, nor even that Kevin himself is racist. Rather, Jeff said, “Only a party that found racism acceptable could be comfortable with that. ”
I disagree slightly with Jeff, because I don’t think that Kevin or his comrades consciously deem acceptable what they consider to be racism. The problem is that they seem to find only a very narrow category of things to be racist (self-declared Nazi? OK, that’s racist) and are utterly unconscious of the signals given off by those who don’t literally announce themselves as Nazis or KKK members. The True Northers see nothing racist in the rhetoric of invasion to describe immigration. Thus, they inevitably end up allying themselves with and praising the activities of people who are, even by Republicans’ narrow metrics, racists.
It is true, however, that economic distress is a major, and possibly the major, thing driving most immigration, including undocumented immigration.
True. But while being in economic distress provides an incentive for someone to enter the U.S. illegally, it does not give them a right to do so. In fact, U.S. immigration law and policy is specifically engineered to deny permission to immigrate to people seeking admission because they are poor and can’t get a job in their home country. People seeking work are only admitted if they have a skill or profession that is needed and is in short supply in the U.S. – again, if their admission is seen as an advantage to the U.S. If their admission would be an advantage to the applicant but not to the U.S. they are to be denied.
This is why there are more undocumented migrants from Mexico to the US than vice versa — people want to earn a living.
Finally, policies limiting legal immigration are the fault of the policy-makers — not of undocumented migrants.
Hm. I’d say that such policies are the responsibility of the policy-makers and their efforts to follow the law, act in the best interests of the U.S. and bend to the will of the electorate. Your use of the word “fault” here implies that there’s something inherently wrong with policies limiting legal immigration.
Policies that don’t give enough people legal avenues for coming to the States, inevitably lead to a high number of people sneaking in.
Only in combination with the fact that the U.S. enjoys a higher standard of living – which stems from a high level of personal liberty, individual rights and a respect for the rule of law and makes it more desirable to be here than in their country of origin. Not that you necessarily said so, but the fact that people have to resort to illegal action in order to avoid being denied their objective by the law is not a reason for changing the law to facilitate that behavior. To my mind it’s a reason for making whatever changes to the law and it’s enforcement is necessary to reach the objective of the original law.
I feel that undocumented immigration is, at most, a minor affront to morality — the equivalent of driving over the speed limit or paying taxes late.
I feel that illegal aliens are in both violation and contempt of American law. I think that the penalties for doing so should be substantially increased for both the violators and for those who facilitate them (e.g., their employers). I think that the U.S. needs to take much stronger measures in ensuring that illegal aliens cannot get access to employment, public services, loans at government-insured financial institutions, etc., which would cause them to leave voluntarily. I think such measures are needed to help American citizens in low-paying jobs by forcing greater competition among employers for their services, and I also think they are needed in order to ensure America’s security.
Immigrants to the US (including undocumented immigrants) have an extremely high employment rate. Therefore, they do have skills our economy needs; if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be able to find work here.
Well, in a utopian world, there wouldn’t be any such laws.
But, in this world, I do think some immigration laws are necessary. However, I do think there’s something wrong — many things wrong — with the particular set of immigration laws the US is currently using.
As a principle, if you really believed this (and I assume you don’t), it would be monstrous. For instance, was the fact that slaves continually attempted to escape slavery a good argument for trying harder “to reach the objective of the original law”? What about same-sex couples who continually broke laws against having gay sex — was that a good argument for trying harder to reach “the objective of the original law”? And prohibition — should our response to the failure of prohibiting alcohol have been to “substantially increase” the penalties?
Laws are not good and just, or bad and unjust, based on if people break the law.
I think the purpose of immigration laws should be fourfold: 1) To make the US more secure by allowing us to know who has entered the country, 2) to improve the economic situation within the US, 3) to avoid causing significant harm to people who enter (or attempt to enter) the US, and 4) to avoid causing significant harm to those legally in the US.
Our current laws are doing okay as far as 2) goes — studies have consistently failed to show substantial economic harms to Americans due to immigration, and often show substantial benefits.
1) is a failure. Our policies — combined with economic distress in other countries — have inevitably led to large channels of undocumented migration into the US. The vast, vast majority of the many thousands of people who come here without documentation are not terrorists — but if there is even one or two terrorists among the thousands, finding them would be like finding a needle in a haystack. We’d have a far better chance of finding any hypothetical [*] undocumented migrant terrorists if undocumented migration was rarer.
3) is a failure. Undocumented migrants die trying to get into the US, sometimes die in prison if they get caught, and are far too often taken advantage of by traffickers and employers.
Documented (or would-be documented) migrants, meanwhile, find the system far too difficult to navigate, full of frustrating double binds, and unclear.
4) is a failure. It’s become all too common for legal residents of the US — both Americans and documented migrants — to be caught up in the legal apparatus intended to catch undocumented migrants. This happens most often to Latin@s, of course.
Since our current laws are failing to satisfy three of the four purposes of immigration law, I think there’s good reason to reform them.
[*] I say “hypothetical” because so far, virtually all people who commit terrorist acts in the US are Americans or entered the country legally.
PG,
Sorry I misinterpreted your question. How did I become aware of his organizing? I saw information about it in several articles, local press and a few blogs I think. To be honest I don’t remember exactly. Basically put all the various tidbits of information into one blog post and that was that.
If the aim of your question is did I talk to Sam either directly or indirectly? No. Do I know Sam or any of his associates? No. Do I belong or associate with any hate group, either directly or indirectly? No.
Hopefully that clears it up.
Immigrants to the US (including undocumented immigrants) have an extremely high employment rate. Therefore, they do have skills our economy needs; if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be able to find work here.
It’s true that they wouldn’t be able to find work here if they didn’t have skills someone needs, but the reason they find work (the undocumented ones) is that they’re willing to do the same job as a local but for much less money. It’s not that the immigrants have skills that we couldn’t get here; it’s that those skills can be bought much cheaper by importing them from the third world.
This is economically productive. It helps our economy to be able to hire people cheaper. It’s just very hard on the people already in the economy who had settled expectations about things like wage rates, and the deflation on wages (particularly at the bottom) is something that I would think liberals care about. A good portion of wage stagnation for unskilled labor in the economy comes from competition from low-skill, hyper-cheap immigrant labor.
To put it another way, I have a client who wants $1000 worth of illustrating. I can hire you, but I also know an undocumented guy from Yugoslavia who will do it for a third of what you’d charge. So either adjust your income expectations to Yugoslavian standards, or be out-competed.
As a principle, if you really believed this (and I assume you don’t), it would be monstrous. For instance, was the fact that slaves continually attempted to escape slavery a good argument for trying harder “to reach the objective of the original law”?
No. In that case the objective of the original law was monstrous – to buy and sell people as though they were properly property and to compel their labor without their consent. In such a case whether or not people are resorting to violating the law to gain their objective is moot; there are other much more compelling reasons to change the law. And while I wouldn’t characterize the laws you refer to in your other two examples as monstrous, they did represent intrusion of government into something that was not it’s proper concern – which was a compelling reason for changing the law.
Immigation laws should ensure that decisions regarding whether or not aliens are admitted to the U.S. are made on the basis of what best serves the economic and other interests of the U.S. It should also track those admitted to ensure that we know where they are, whether they are engaged in the activities that they said they would be engaged in upon entry, and whether they have left/are leaving as scheduled. They should also certainly ensure that those admitted do not do harm to the U.S. Whether or not they should have any role in ensuring that no harm comes to those entering the U.S. depends on what you define as “harm”. It should certainly ensure that no part of the system causes harm to people entering the U.S. legally.
However; if people who are denied (or never seek) legal entry into the United States resort to illegal activities to do so, it is not the fault of U.S. immigration law. If they are injured or killed doing so, it is not the fault of U.S. immigration law. It is the fault of the people who decided to take those actions. They could have decided not to take those actions. They decided instead to perform a specific act and have sole responsibility for the outcome of those acts. The United States has a right and a responsibility to restrict entry into the U.S. so as to keep out people whose presence will not be of an advantage to the U.S. The fact that someone who has been denied entry under that system decides to risk their life to enter anyway does not shift responsibility for their life from themselves to the U.S. It is not the responsibility of American law to ensure that no harm comes to those who come to such harm in the process of breaking it.
If current systems for finding and deporting illegal aliens are mistakenly misidentifying American citizens, then those systems need to be fixed. Not eliminated; fixed. The objective of finding and deporting illegal aliens is not monstrous and it is very definitely a legitimate objective of government. If current systems for dealing with legitimate immigration are inefficient we are wasting taxpayer money and on that basis, if no other, they should be fixed.
Given that persons old enough to be employed are generally not granted resident alien status unless they have a job waiting for them (or are guaranteed support by someone who has the resources to do so), mixing the employment rate of resident aliens and illegal aliens is not meaningful. This discussion does not concern people who are here legally.
I’d also challenge your assertion that the fact that someone is employed shows that the jobs they are doing are needed. All it shows is that someone is willing to pay them what they’re earning in order to get the labor they provide. That doesn’t mean that the work they are doing is needed.
For example; in driving though Lake Forest (a suburb of Chicago where the average income is quite high) I note that there’s groups of people working on residential landscaping, mowing the lawns, trimming the bushes, etc., etc. I think it’s reasonable to suspect that quite a few of those workers are illegal aliens. If the landscaper was forced to hire unskilled Americans and pay them what those Americans would want for wages – plus pay benefits, Social Security, etc., etc., there’s every possibility that the homeowners might decide that they don’t need to have all that fancy landscaping at all and just not hire anyone to do it. There are a lot of luxury goods and services in the U.S. – by no means does the fact that someone is employed at a job mean that the job is needed.
Anyone whose been laid off by a still-functioning company can tell you that as well.
I’d argue that a law that causes unnecessary harm by its implementation shares some of the blame for the harm caused, even if the harm is caused by people breaking the law.
Let’s take a simple example: jaywalking. We don’t want people crossing in the middle of the street where cars aren’t expecting them to be, and so we have a fairly sophisticated system whereby people can use crosswalks at corners, certain places (particularly near schools) have people hired at certain times to protect people crossing, use electronic signaling systems to indicate their intention to cross at busy intersections, etc. etc.
Now, the effectiveness of this system does depend, at least in part, on punishing people who attempt to break crossing laws. Sometimes people are so stupid that they don’t care about the risk to life and limb caused by crossing in the middle of a busy road, not to mention the unfair delay imposed on the more powerful, and therefore necessarily more careful, motor vehicle traffic. Therefore, cops can ticket people for jaywalking.
However, if someone jaywalks and gets hit by a car and dies, we don’t necessarily lay the blame entirely on them for breaking the law! If the crossing light is broken or the power to that intersection is out, they might have had no choice but to cross the street illegally. If the nearest legal place to cross is very far away, people will tend to cross illegally, and are seen as justified in doing so. If they were being chased by an assailant at the time, they might not have had the time or inclination to wait for a “WALK” signal.
And, even if none of this were the case, if it were someone just jaywalking because they can’t be bothered to cross legally even though it’s easy to do so… if they’re struck and killed by a drunk driver speeding at 50mph on a 25mph road, I would tend to place the blame mostly on the driver.
In short: when someone breaks a law and suffers or dies for doing so, one can’t conclude on that information alone that it’s entirely or even partially their fault. Laws, and the systems of enforcement and implementation that back them up, have to consider at each step of their design what the implications will be. If a law, or a system implementing a law, will cause people to suffer and die, that’s a serious problem that needs consideration, even if the people suffering and dying are only those who are breaking that law.
If you enact jaywalking laws but can’t be bothered to design your city streets so that people can cross legally and safely, throwing your hands up and going “Well, they had it coming” when people are hit by cars would be reprehensible.
Are you suggesting that immigration law is somehow immune from having to be considered in this light?
(Sorry, meant to say in my first paragraph “even if the harm is caused to people breaking the law”)
Although i thought a sitting Republican congresswoman contributing to a website that inadvertently promoted a neo-Nazi hate rally had a few too many degrees of separation, i generally agree with the gist of this piece. My first thought however went to the anaolgy of ANSWER and the anti-war rallies.
With the recent political violence down at fort hood, i though i’d throw the analogy in the ring.
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