Bigotry, Cassandra, Political Crack, Terrorism

Everything’s Coming Up Nazis

On Saturday, in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, a bunch of neo-Nazis tried to crash a Pride celebration by stealthily crowding themselves into a U-Haul truck. They were caught because someone saw them blithely loading up their weapons and gear in front of the hotel they were all staying in. Their matching costumes probably also helped tip people off to their ill intent.

They were headed to the town’s Pride celebration to riot and hurt and maybe kill LGBTQ people, and they weren’t just from Idaho. KREM-TV reported that the 31 would-be domestic terrorists came from at least 11 states. How did they end up there?

Once again, the right wing Twitter account, Libs of TikTok, the subject of a Washington Post investigative story, is to blame. Via the Southern Poverty Law Center:

It is unclear to Hatewatch how Raichik became aware of the Pride event in Coeur d’Alene, but Dave Reilly, a white supremacist who attended the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, and once organized with the hate group Identity Evropa, actively sought her help in drawing attention to it.

White supremacist David Reilly encouraged Libs of TikTok to address the Couer d’Alene Pride event in this tweet.

“Amazing! @libsoftiktok do this one next,” the Idaho-based Reilly tweeted five days earlier on June 2, tying the then-upcoming Coeur d’Alene Pride celebration to an article in the Daily Caller about a different, North Carolina-based Pride event that folded after facing pressure from Libs of TikTok.

“Idaho Tribune” also drew attention to it. Idaho Tribune, far from a real newspaper, is an obscure junk news publication that on multiple occasions has promoted Reilly’s political activism. Antiracist activists also tipped Hatewatch off to infrastructural overlap between a website that promotes Reilly by name and Idaho Tribune. Hatewatch reviewed source code for David Reilly’s website and the Idaho Tribune site and confirmed that the two sites share graphics from the same web-hosting account, meaning they are likely controlled by the same person.

Nothing is a coincidence, is it? Because how about this—the former US House Rep who was caught in Poland trying to smuggle out Ukrainian children to put them up for adoption is also tied into these would-be domestic terrorists:

The awful Libs of TikTok account was responsible for another hate incident. This time it was the Proud Boys deliberately disrupting drag queen story hour at a library in San Lorenzo, CA.

A children’s story hour at a California library was disrupted by several members of the Proud Boys on Saturday, prompting local authorities to launch a hate-crime investigation as LGBTQ and anti-extremism advocates warn that such threats by far-right extremists are intensifying.

Roughly 25 miles from San Francisco across the East Bay, the San Lorenzo Library was hosting Drag Queen Story Hour when a group of five men interrupted the event and began hurling homophobic and transphobic insults at attendees, including the drag performer known as Panda Dulce, officials said. Drag Queen Story Hour, where performers read books to children, takes place in a part of the library where any member of the community can hold a meeting, according to Lt. Ray Kelly, a spokesman for the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office.

“The men were described as extremely aggressive with a threatening violent demeanor causing people to fear for their safety,” Kelly said in a statement. In addition to the hate-crime probe, authorities have also launched an investigation of whether the Proud Boys’ actions “annoyed or harassed children,” which is a violation of the penal code.

A right wing extremist in Arizona has vowed to “hunt” LGBTQ people and their allies. And if you think that makes him a Republican Party pariah, you’d be wrong:

Schmidt has also appeared in an anti-vaccination video with Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and another video with Arizona State Sen. Wendy Rogers (R). Rogers was censured by her Republican congressional colleagues in March for speaking at the America First Political Action Conference, an event organized by white nationalist Nick Fuentes.

In case you’re wondering how this links up with things like the white supremacist shooting in Buffalo:

In other words, it’s more of the same Great Replacement Theory nonsense.

Finally, lest you think that any of this will harm any of these losers in the short term, there’s this:

A Seattle-area police officer was walking by an assistant chief’s office in 2020 when he spotted something strange on the door — insignia of high-ranking Nazi SS officers.

The officer reported it to the police chief, which led city officials in Kent, Wash., to suspend the assistant chief — 27-year department veteran Derek Kammerzell — for two weeks without pay. But after taking heat from those who felt the punishment was too soft, those officials sought to push Kammerzell out of the department entirely.

Now, the city’s leaders have agreed to pay more than $1.52 million to make that happen. While acknowledging that the settlement is “a substantial sum,” they said they believe the payout lets them move on by ridding Kent of an employee whose presence would distract from the department’s mission of policing the city.

The outro of this post writes itself:

%d bloggers like this: