EXTREMISTS –
WHO THEY ARE
COMPILATION AND
COMMENTARY
BY LUCY WARNER
MAY 20, 2020
CBS NEWS HAS A
VERY CONCERNING INTERVIEW WITH ONE OF THE PROFESSIONAL HATERS, WHO SEEMS TO BE
ENJOYING THE DISTRESS HE IS CAUSING. THAT ARTICLE IS FOLLOWED BY ONE FROM
ALMOST EXACTLY A YEAR AGO WITH AN ALMOST IDENTICAL TITLE, “THE EXTREMIST NEXT
DOOR.” THEY ARE BOTH REALLY IMPRESSIVE ARTICLES ON A SUBJECT THAT ALWAYS SEEMS
TO RUN UNDERNEATH THE RADAR UNTIL ANOTHER WHITE SUPREMACIST KILLS SOME MORE
PEOPLE. THE KEY PHRASE IN BOTH TITLES IS “NEXT DOOR.” THE FIRST, FROM CBS, DELVES
INTO PERSONALITY ISSUES INVOLVED IN RIGHTIST RADICALIZATION, ESPECIALLY ON THE INTERNET,
AND THE SECOND IS A STUDY OF JESSE DUNSTAN AND A SMALL GROUP OF OTHERS WHO WERE
INVOLVED IN THE 2017 FASCIST MARCH ON CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA. BOTH ARE EXCELLENT.
READ ON.
TWO OF OUR SUPERHEROES:
*THE SOUTHERN
POVERTY LAW CENTER
*THE BARD
CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF HATE
THE CBS SERIES REVERB:
EXTREMISTS NEXT DOOR
By TAYLOR
MOONEY, CBS NEWS, March 12, 2020, 6:58 AM
Are your kids
being radicalized online?
VIDEO – ADAM
YAMAGUCHI INTERVIEW, 29:32
REVERB is a new
documentary series from CBSN Originals. Watch the latest episode,
"Extremists Next Door," in the video player above.
Joanna
Schroeder, a writer and mother of three, was looking over her son's shoulder as
he scrolled through his Instagram "Discover" feed. When a meme
depicting Hitler appeared, he quickly liked it and kept scrolling. Schroeder,
confused, stopped him and had him scroll back. Her son had thought the meme had
an anti-Hitler message, but on closer inspection — and to his horror — the meme
was actually pro-Hitler. A seemingly harmless scroll through Instagram
immediately turned into a learning moment for both mom and son.
"We read
it and he was horrified," she recalled. "Of course he unliked it. And
I was like, 'You have got to slow down and read what you're liking, because
your friends can see that you liked this and I know you don't believe that
way.' ... It was a big moment for both of us."
Beyond that,
Schroeder said, "It opened my eyes to a bigger system — a bigger system at
work of these online personalities who are normalizing hate in very insidious
ways, almost always with humor."
cbsn-originals-extremists-joanne2.jpg
Joanna
Schroeder talks with her children about what they encounter online. CBS NEWS
Acts of
violence and domestic terrorism tied to white supremacy are largely committed
by individuals among the same demographic: young white men. For parents with
sons like Schroeder to prevent their boys from going down the path of
right-wing extremism, it's important to understand why boys fall into it in the
first place.
"I've now
worked with over 100 individuals who have been involved in extremist movements,
hate movements, and have turned their lives around. When I look at their
pathways, their stories as to what got them into the movement, and also what
got them out, there's a common thread throughout," said Vidhya Ramalingam,
co-founder of Moonshot CVE, an organization that combats violent extremism.
"They're seeking a community, they're seeking some sense of belonging, and
these groups and movements provide them that, even online."
Depression and
anxiety can play just as large a role in an individual's radicalization as
loneliness and isolation. In college, Caleb Cain became severely depressed and
dropped out. When he returned home he was convinced he could help himself
through self-help videos online, which is when he discovered Stefan Molyneux, a
vocal far-right white nationalist. Cain soon looked to Molyneux as a
father-figure and was drawn into that world.
"What I
can say is anybody that starts to believe that the world is crumbling and
falling apart and that there's no hope and things are getting worse and worse,
a lot of those people do turn to radical behavior," said Cain, who has
since renounced those views and become an outspoken critic of the alt-right.
cbsn-originals-extremists-caleb-computer.jpg
Caleb Cain once
fell under the sway of far-right extremists online, but now speaks out against
them. CBS NEWS
Parents,
meanwhile, are searching for ways to make sure their own kids don't go down the
same dangerous road. Schroeder takes a hands-on approach to parenting her sons,
championing intervention and education. She believes kids' internet usage
should not be severely censored; instead, roaming the internet with parental
supervision can be an extremely important learning tool.
"I firmly
believe that kids should be allowed to use adult YouTube, not just [YouTube
Kids], when their parents are with them," she said. "I think kids
should be exposed to the internet younger than the parents may want them to be
so that they can get those experiences online while they're supervised and also
while they're young enough to be interested in our opinions."
When it comes
to the use of hurtful, racist or anti-Semitic language, Schroeder says what's
most important is to have a level-headed conversation with kids make sure they
are a contributing part of the conversation, and avoid shaming tactics.
"Instead
of pushing your kids away, invite them into a conversation," she said.
"Like, 'What do you think that means? … To me, this is what it means. What
does it mean to you?' And invite them to have empathy for the person who is
harmed by it, without shaming them. Because ... human nature reacts to shame
with anger. And anger is the reaction that white supremacy feeds on."
Schroeder
stressed throughout her interview with CBSN Originals that in sensitive
conversations revolving around white supremacy and alt-right narratives,
parents and their kids should work together and learn from each other.
"This is a
really key lesson for parents: Our kids have things to teach us. We don't know
more about the internet than they do. But there are things we know more than
they do about. There are things that we know more about than they do," she
said. "So I can take what I know about how people are exploited, I can
take what I know about propaganda, I can take what I know about racism, and I
can go to my son — who knows more than me about how Instagram works and he
knows more than me about YouTube and YouTubers — and we can collaborate in how
to help solve these bigger problems, rather than me trying to tell him he's
doing it wrong."
© 2020 CBS
Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved
ABOUT ADAM
YAMAGUCHI
Adam Yamaguchi
Bio, Age, Wife, Net Worth
By Sabena Shahi
| On: 09 Jun, 2019
Quick
Information
Date of Birth 1978-09-28
Nationality American
Profession TV Producer
Marital Status Single
Wife/Spouse Not
Known
Divorced/Engaged Not Yet
Girlfriend/Dating Not Known
Gay/Lesbain No
Ethnicity Asian
Net Worth Not Disclosed
Height N/A
Adam Yamaguchi,
an award-winning news/documentary correspondent, has contributed to NBC News
and CNN. He has also produced the Animal planet documentary-series, Ice Cold
Gold and Vanguard series on Current TV.
Vanguard was
distributed worldwide and earned the prestigious Peabody and DuPont awards.
Adam started
his television career after he began serving as editor-in-chief of the Daily
Bruin newspaper. Then, he moved to work with FOX Sports, CNN, and TV Asahi
Japan.
While working,
Adam traveled the world in pursuit of stories, covering the Space Shuttle
Columbia disaster, the September 11 attacks, and the 2000 presidential election
and subsequent debacle.
While covering
the stories, Adam kept his life on stake, covering deadly drug wars in Mexico
and Latin America, humanitarian crises, and wildlife trafficking in Asia.
Moreover, Adam
also traveled to Colombia and Bolivia to produce a series on coca cultivation
and changing attitudes toward the U.S. policy in the region.
As of now, Adam
works as executive producer, a correspondent for CBC Corporation and CBS News.
CONTINUE ON TO THE
STORY OF A GROUP OF WHITE SUPREMACISTS WHO WERE ACTIVE AT CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA,
AND WERE SEEN MARCHING TOGETHER WITH THE YOUNG MAN WHO DROVE HIS CAR INTO A GROUP
OF COUNTERPROTESTORS, KILLING A YOUNG WOMAN. HE HAS BEEN CONVICTED OF MURDER.
DID HE THINK OF THAT AS A POSSIBILITY, I WONDER?
https://highlandscurrent.org/2019/05/17/the-extremist-next-door/
The Extremist
Next Door
Chip Rowe By
Chip Rowe | May 17, 2019
Photograph --
Dunstan is shown in a video he posted to YouTube: "Ellis Island was a big
mistake."
First
Pittsburgh, then Christchurch and Poway — where does the hate come from?
When the four
pseudonymous hosts of a popular white supremacist podcast produced in southern
Dutchess County were “doxxed” — or publicly identified — in January 2017, three
immediately left the show.
The fourth
seemed to shrug and carry on. He began using his real name on the show and made
no effort to scrub his identity or address from the internet. This astonished a
contributor to It’s Going Down, an anti-fascist site, who wrote: “We could be
dealing with someone preparing to live as an open Nazi in Fishkill, New York.”
Two years
later, Jesse Dunstan, 40, remains a co-host of TDS (a
consumer-friendly rebranding of its original name, The Daily Shoah, which
mocks the Holocaust), on which he spews hatred for Jews, blacks, Muslims and
gays. The show — one of 18 hosted on a website run by Dunstan called The
Right Stuff (TRS) — has more than 400 episodes.
VIDEO -- Jesse
Dunstan is shown in a video he posted to YouTube: “Ellis Island was a big
mistake.”
The Southern
Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which tracks extremists, calls TRS “one of the
white supremacist movement’s most popular and effective (audio) propaganda hubs.”
It says there are 34 loosely organized chapters of TRS listeners — their
gatherings are called “pool parties” — up from four just two years ago.
An offshoot of TRS called Identity Dixie and described by the SPLC as
“neo-Confederate” has seven chapters. Recruitment fliers promoting TRS
have been posted at the University at Albany, Purdue, Kent State and other
universities, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
“People need to
understand that TDS is more than a podcast,” says Michael Edison Hayden, a senior
investigative reporter for the SPLC who earlier this month posted a video
clip from a 2017 book-burning conducted behind Dunstan’s home. “They
are attempting to build an on-the-ground white supremacist movement.”
That Dunstan
lives in the Hudson Valley is not widely known, which may be how he navigates
dual identities, hating openly but not openly hated. He resides with his
wife and two children in a modest home that he has owned since 2007, pays his
taxes and has played guitar in local bands. From family photos once posted on
social media, he appears to be a regular guy. And he used to be, years ago,
when he was growing up in Garrison.
Spreading hate
Dunstan
launched TDS in 2014 with Mike Peinovich, a prominent white supremacist who
may also live in Fishkill, based on social-media clues and videos posted at TRS.
To conceal their identities, Peinovich used the name Mike Enoch, Dunstan
became Seventh Son or Sven, and the other two hosts went by Ghoul
and Bulbasaur. The podcast made a name for itself with the
popularization of “echoes,” which began as a reverb the hosts used whenever
saying the name of a Jew and morphed into triple parentheses placed around
names on social media to indicate Jews or Jewish influence.
Three TDS
hosts, clockwise from upper left: Mike Peinovich, Jesse Dunstan and Alex
McNabb (angrywhitemen.org)
“The show came
out of edgy libertarianism and the jokey ‘troll’ culture of the
internet,” explains Daniel Harper, a researcher who has listened to
hundreds of episodes for his own podcast, which debunks far-right
propaganda. “These guys aren’t stupid; they have political knowledge. Jesse’s
job is to be the jokester and keep the show moving.”
Harper says
that, on the show, Dunstan doesn’t appear to be as engaged as Peinovich in
the pseudo-intellectual discussions. “When Enoch goes into his sophistry, Sven
— or Jesse, he goes by both — will play an audio clip of a slur or racist joke
to throw Mike off whatever point he’s making,” Harper says.
Dunstan is
particularly admired by listeners for his racist song parodies. The SPLC
found in a study of posts in TRS chat rooms that a number of listeners credited
Dunstan’s songs with drawing them into the movement. “If you can get them
to laugh, you can get them on our side,” explained a user named LeBlanc.
Some mentioned
specific songs they admired, such as Dunstan’s version of Bryan Adam’s “Summer
of ’69” (renamed “Summer of ’88,” after code for “Heil Hitler”) in which
the chorus ends, “These are the first days of our Reich.”
PHOTOGRAPH -- Three
of the four co-hosts of TDS were photographed at the Unite the
Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017, along with James Alex Fields
Jr., who in March pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and 28 other charges
after he drove his car into a crowd of counterprotestors. (Photo by Sandi
Bachom)
“You get them
hooked in with Sven’s songs,” a poster observed, “then when they’re all
relaxed, Mike comes in and cracks them over the head with some real shit.”
Because much of
the discussion involves code words, the site once published a lexicon to
help listeners follow along. Harper says that, if you listen closely, some
terrifying ideas emerge from the banter. He points to one conversation that
stood out because the hosts rarely talk so explicitly about their beliefs.
In the
exchange, a co-host known as Jayoh de le Rey argued that segregation has
never worked and that the only realistic option for solving the “problem” of
Jews, blacks and other non-Aryan groups is “un-ironic extermination,” a
signal to listeners that he wasn’t kidding.
“That’s rough,”
replied Dunstan, adding with a laugh that “extermination the other way is
what’s going on now.” When Peinovich argued that “you don’t reduce conflict
by increasing the diversity,” Dunstan responded: “Well, you reduce it to
nothing once you’ve won, once you’ve increased diversity [sic] to 100
percent. I mean, that’s how ethnic conflict goes. One wins, one loses.”
Editor’s Note
Hate is not
news — it’s part of the history of the Highlands, the Northeast, the South, the
country, humanity. Long before Jesse Dunstan, another influential white
supremacist, Henry Fairfield Osborn, lived in Garrison at a time when the Ku
Klux Klan operated openly in Philipstown and Beacon and across the nation.
More recently, fliers were posted in Beacon by members of two white supremacist
groups and a swastika and anti-Semitic slur were painted inside an empty
house in Nelsonville owned by a Jewish resident.
Those incidents
and, more importantly, the killings at synagogues in Pittsburgh and Poway,
California, and at two mosques in New Zealand, have left some Highlands
residents feeling exposed. In all three attacks, the gunmen took inspiration
from racist rhetoric and crackpot logic of the type spewed by Dunstan and other
bigots.
“The animating
theory of white supremacists is ‘white genocide’ — that white people are in
danger of being eliminated from the Earth,” explained Michael Edison
Hayden of the Southern Poverty Law Center, who noted that the number of
hate groups in the U.S. rose significantly five years ago after the census
bureau predicted whites will be a minority by 2044. “When you embrace
framing like that, the situation can only decline and only become violent.”
All that seemed
reason enough to share the presence of Dunstan and his hate factory while
trying to avoid providing what one researcher calls “the oxygen of
amplification” for his views. We had extended discussions inside and
outside our organization about whether we should “expose” Dunstan — although
it’s not exactly that, since he’s not in hiding and is being watched closely by
analysts who track the far right.
One rabbi we
interviewed felt strongly that The Current should write about
Dunstan, reasoning that “the ideas that give birth to violence are powerful,”
and that anyone who advocates white supremacy should not be allowed to live in
the shadows. “To bring an idea into the public discourse and expect not to
be held accountable is sort of naïve,” the rabbi said. “The burden of this
hatred should be borne by the people putting the hatred into the world, not by
the people who are made vulnerable by it.”
Added Hayden: “People
should not be hysterical [with fear] about this, but the community also should
not ignore the fact that people who harbor extremist views are in the
neighborhood.”
We’d like to
hear what you think. How should a community deal with hate? Email me at
editor@highlandscurrent.org.
Chip Rowe,
Managing Editor
FROM HERE TO
THERE
Everyone grew
up somewhere, and for Jesse Dunstan, it was Philipstown. At the Garrison
School, his eighth-grade classmates voted him “most artistic.” In the
yearbook from his senior year at James O’Neill High School in Highland Falls,
he quoted John Lennon (“We all shine on, like the moon and the stars and sun”).
He was married at St. Philip’s Church in Garrison and, two years later, the
birth announcement for his eldest child appeared in The Putnam County News
& Recorder.
Dunstan did not
respond to interview requests made by email, a letter sent to his home and a
phone message left at a number believed to be his. A member of Dunstan’s
immediate family, contacted by email and phone, declined comment; another close
relative did not respond to a Facebook message or email.
Dunstan’s
Fishkill home appears to be a gathering place for bigots: A photo of
racist leader Richard Spencer leaning against the house (above) was shared on a
white supremacist chat board with the caption “Sven’s house looks cozy,” and
the Southern Poverty Law Center on May 1 posted a 2017 video clip of a
book-burning ritual behind the Dunstan home at which Peinovich and two other
white supremacists (not including the host) throw Nazi salutes.
Ken Stern, the director
of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate, who has been studying
extremism since the 1980s, said he was not surprised to learn that a prominent
white supremacist grew up in the Hudson Valley.
“A lot of folks
with this ideology are not necessarily someone you’d pick out of a crowd,” he
says. “What has changed is that extremists feel they have the wind at their
back because of the politics of this country and abroad. They hear
people in the mainstream saying things that sound familiar in terms of their
views of ‘us and them’ and that ‘white folk are endangered and we have to do
something about it.’ They see it as a noble cause.”
In April, FBI
Director Christopher Wray told Congress that the agency considers white
supremacists to be a “persistent, pervasive threat” to public safety.
Despite his extremism,
Dunstan sees himself as a regular guy, waiting for society to catch up.
“We’re just normal people,” he says in a 12-minute rant he posted to YouTube
under his real name. “But to the globalists and you-know-who” —
presumably, anti-fascists and/or Jews — “we’re ‘Nazis,’ we’re full of hate [because]
we don’t want to be wiped out and demographically replaced by immigrants.
Don’t let anyone tell you this is a nation of immigrants. The whole Ellis
Island experiment was a big mistake. We’re still feeling the repercussions of
letting those people in who weren’t north European.”
Of the nearly
50 hate groups with chapters in New York state identified by the Southern
Poverty Law Center, TRS is the only one in the Mid-Hudson Valley.
The alleged
killer in Christchurch, New Zealand, who is accused of shooting 50 people
dead on March 15 and another victim who died later, cited this same fear of
“replacement” — a common trope among white supremacists — in a manifesto he
posted before the attacks, as did a 19-year-old charged with attacking a
synagogue in Poway, California, on the last day of Passover, killing one
and injuring three others, including the rabbi.
Dunstan is not
alone in his ignorance. According to the SPLC, there are nearly 50 hate
groups with chapters in New York State, including the American Freedom
Party, Identity Evropa (now the American Identify Movement), the National
Socialist Liberation Front, Patriot Front, and the Racial Nationalist Party of
America, as well as The Right Stuff, which Dunstan operates out of a post
office box in Hopewell Junction. (In 2017, Dunstan registered an LLC of the
same name with New York State.)
Trying to
Explain
“Humans need
to belong to something. For so much of us, our identity helps us
belong. I have my roots in New York, my Irish ethnicity, my Catholicism,
my alma mater, my membership in the world of journalism, and
conservatism, plus the very local, human connections. Among alienated
white men, many of whom lack religion and come from places without strong senses
of community, they seek to belong to something, but nothing is there. But they
know they’re white and they know they’re American. So white nationalism follows.”
~Timothy Carney, author of Alienated America, in The Christian Post
In the hours
after the killings in Christchurch, while Christian and Jewish leaders sat for zakat,
or afternoon prayers, in a show of support at a Beacon mosque, Dunstan also
responded to the killings. He reposted on Twitter a photo of a woman holding
a sign that read, “No more white terrorism,” and commented, “There are ways to
achieve such a lofty goal, but you’re not interested.”
Social media
When people in
the Highlands were asked how they would respond if a white supremacist with a
popular podcast lived in their neighborhood, a typical reaction was, “White
supremacists have podcasts?” TRS claims 100,000 listeners a week and posts
episodes of TDS on YouTube and at least one audio archive that states in its
terms and conditions that it does not allow hate speech. The podcast format
and private chat rooms were embraced by extremists after the violence at the
Unite the Right march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017 prompted
companies such as Facebook and Twitter to close their accounts.
White
supremacists continue to play cat-and-mouse with the social-media giants.
Dunstan posted more than 3,300 tweets at SeventhSonTRS (which included his
real name in the bio, noted he lived in Fishkill and included a link for
donations) before it was closed; his most recent Twitter account, which
also had his real name in the bio, had 2,000 followers before it was
suspended in April. He also has at least two Facebook accounts,
including one with 1,500 friends who include Peinovich and many others who
appear from their monikers and bio photos to be white supremacists. A gallery
photo shows an oven mitt that the show sent in 2016 to donors with its name
and the words “Pop ’em in!,” a reference to the Nazi gas chambers.
Hatred of
‘Other’ Not a New Idea
A century ago,
promoting ‘scientific’ racism
As it happens, Garrison
— population 4,400 — was home to a prominent white supremacist besides
Jesse Dunstan.
The men grew up
about a mile from each other and attended the same church, but Dunstan never
met Henry Fairfield Osborn. They lived a century apart, but the racist ideas
they spread are similar.
As a boy,
Osborn spent summers in Garrison; as an adult he lived in the landmark home at
Castle Rock; he is buried in the St. Philip’s churchyard. A celebrated
paleontologist and conservationist, Osborn was president of the American Museum
of Natural History for 25 years and championed the teaching of science and
evolution in public schools.
Henry Fairfield
Osborn
“He was as
well-known in his time as Albert Einstein,” says Brian Regal, a history
professor and author of Henry Fairfield Osborn: Race and the Search for the
Origins of Man. “He wanted to do good in science and politics and religion.
Yet, at the same time, his ideals were stained by a much darker strain of
thinking.”
In 1916, Osborn
wrote the introduction for The Passing of the Great Race, a book by a museum
trustee and friend, Madison Grant, that Adolf Hitler praised as “my Bible.” Toward the end
of his life, Regal says, Osborn distanced himself from Grant, who he felt
had become too extreme. But a year before his death, Osborn was deeply
impressed after a visit to Germany by the Nazis’ “racial hygiene” campaign.
“He viewed the Nazis in the same way that some socialists in America viewed
Stalin, through rose-colored glasses,” Regal says.
Although Osborn
would accuse his colleague Grant of not basing his arguments about race on the
firm foundation of science, some of Osborn’s arguments were equally ridiculous.
He claimed, for example, that there were three “species” of humans — the
superior Nordics (Homo sapiens europaeus), the Mongolians and the Negroids.
The latter were in “a state of arrested brain development,” he declared,
because food is easier to find at the equator.
More ominously,
a century before Dunstan and the shooters in Pittsburgh, Christchurch and Poway
claimed the superior white race faces “replacement,” Osborn endorsed the
same fallacy.
“The original
pioneer stock is dying out; the foreign element is in the
ascendency,” he wrote. “Purity of race is today found in but one nation —
the Scandinavian; but Scandinavia has been seriously bled by emigration.”
He expressed little faith in “the melting pot” and said protecting white
people needed to be “a matter taken into consideration by the State.”
Hitler loved
it, but many Americans, not so much. When Osborn died in 1935, a reader
wrote The New York Times to protest a plan by the American Museum of Natural
History to erect a memorial. “If a monument is needed to supplement the
racial achievements of the professor, it should be erected at Nuremberg, where
his racism is carried out under the emblem of the swastika,” he wrote.
Those donors
and the $10 a month that Dunstan and Peinovich charge visitors to access TRS
podcasts likely support them and other employees, says Harper. After the
four original co-hosts of the flagship show were doxxed, Dunstan — momentarily
the lone voice at the console — assured listeners the site would survive.
“There’s nothing else for us to do but TRS,” he said. (Days after he was
identified, Dunstan said on the show that he had purchased a shotgun.)
Peinovich soon
returned to TRS, embracing his notoriety, although his parents asked him to
change his name, according to an account in The New Yorker.
He and Dunstan
have since been joined by two new co-hosts. The first is Alex McNabb,
who has always used his real name and last month lost his job as an
emergency medical technician in rural Virginia after he said on the show that
he “terrorized” a black child by using a large-gauge needle to draw his blood.
(In a videotaped hearing before a county board, McNabb claimed TDS is simply
“edgy shock comedy” akin to Howard Stern and that he had been joking.)
The second, Jayoh de le Rey, has not been identified.
The optics
In a report
issued earlier this year, the Southern Poverty Law Center noted that after
their exposure at Charlottesville, white supremacists argued over strategy. Instead
of rallies that brought bad publicity and led to participants being identified
and losing their jobs, “movement figureheads largely settled in favor of
putting forward as inoffensive a public presentation as possible,” the
group reported.
That suited
Dunstan. In March 2018 he removed a podcast called Action! from the TRS platform,
saying it didn’t fit with the site’s mission. The show was produced by a member
of the Traditionalist Worker Party, which promotes violent street protests.
According to the SPLC, during the online bickering over the removal, Dunstan
explained that his quibbles weren’t with “optics” such as the “uniforms,
helmets, polo shirts, torches, banner drops or monuments,” but with the
efficacy of open conflict.
Deciphering the
Far Right
The image
below, posted by Jesse Dunstan on one of his Facebook accounts, requires explanation,
which is provided with assistance from the Anti-Defamation League.
It is taken
from a Playstation 4 game called FarCry5 that includes a right-wing cult, but
was altered by Dunstan, who superimposed faces over most of the game characters
in the original image.
IMAGE -- From
left, is Mike Peinovich (1); Sam Hyde (2), a comedian whose name has become a
“meme,” or repetitious punchline, in the white supremacist world; Dunstan (3);
Richard Spencer (4); Andrew Anglin (5), founder the neo-Nazi site The Daily
Stormer; Nathan Damigo (6), founder of the white supremacist group Identity
Evropa; and a female character from the game.
In the game
image, the person kneeling (7) has “sinner” scrawled on his back; Dunstan
changed that to “normie,” a reference to people who are not white supremacists.
“In the bigger
picture, fighting with antifa [anti-fascists] is an energy siphon GloboHomo* set up to
entrap us and and waste our time,” Dunstan wrote, according to the
SPLC. (GloboHomo is shorthand for a globalized/homogenized culture that tolerates
diversity and racial equality.) Dunstan argued that energy would be better
spent growing platforms like TRS.
“I want to
replace the Jewry that runs news and entertainment media,” he wrote.
Unfortunately,
not every bigot believes in the power of podcasts. In October, hours before 11
people were shot dead at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, the alleged killer, Robert
Bowers, posted a message on a site called Gab. “Screw your optics,” he said,
addressing other extremists. “I’m going in.”
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ABOUT CHIP ROWE
Chip Rowe
Rowe is the
editor of The Current. A former longtime national magazine editor, he has
worked at newspapers in Michigan, Idaho and South Dakota and has bachelor’s and
master’s degrees in journalism from Northwestern University. He lives in
Garrison.
COMMENTS
15 thoughts on
“The Extremist Next Door”
J Carlos
Salcedo on May 19, 2019 at 3:19 pm said:
Any racism on
the bases of ethnicity or skin color can only be overcome by shining light on
it. To discuss it openly is healthy. Our community has come a long way, but
there is always room for improvement. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “I
have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”
Thomas Carrigan
on May 20, 2019 at 5:35 pm said:
Thanks for
shining a light on this.
Richard Shea on
May 20, 2019 at 6:15 pm said:
It comes as no
surprise that awful people like Jesse Dunstan and the like are in our midst;
there are racists everywhere. His despicable ideology is born of ignorance and
perpetuated through hate.
I am compelled
to wonder what was in this man’s past that put him in his current state of
being; he grew up in Garrison, which I would like to think was progressive
during his formative years.
Although it is
thought-provoking, his individual story is not worth dwelling on. Since the
election of Donald Trump as president of the U.S., hatred and stupidity have
come out of the shadows and into the mainstream once again. It’s worse than
most people thought and individuals like Dunstan are living proof. It will take
a concerted effort to put them back in their rightful place, the sewers of
history.
My thanks to The
Current for having the courage to shine a light on the dark side of things
here in the Hudson Valley.
Shea is
supervisor of Philipstown.
Linda
Tafapolsky on May 20, 2019 at 11:01 pm said:
Bravo to The
Current for publishing this valuable article. My heart goes out to those
individuals who have to live with the pain and shame of being related to a
hate-monger, but I hope they find the courage to publicly denounce the ideology
of hate.
Kelly Tanner on
May 21, 2019 at 12:15 pm said:
I very much
appreciate knowing that literal Nazis live and spread filth minutes from my
front door. This is excellent reporting.
Joanne Kenna on
May 22, 2019 at 2:21 pm said:
This was
excellent reporting, as well as a heads-up to our community.
I thought it
was important that other locals know about the article so I shared it on
Philipstown Locals. It was taken down. Now, that is a moment of truth. When a
newspaper article is taken down because two people complain about it being a
“political” posting [which is not allowed on the group], you have to ask
yourself, what is political about the article?
Alan Brownstein
on May 22, 2019 at 5:51 pm said:
Thanks for your
superb journalism in covering “the extremist next door.” When I started reading
the article, I had no idea that the extremist was literally next door — ouch!
Your coverage
is a wake-up call for all of us in the Hudson Valley that hate is pervasive
(i.e., not just in someone else’s neighborhood) and must be addressed with love
and education — and with resistance.
I hope that
your journalism will spark a community conversation about constructive ways of
addressing this matter among religious, civic and other leaders in Beacon and
Cold Spring. Maybe The Current could host a meeting inviting our leaders and
Highlands residents to explore options.
My only concern
is that such a conversation may inadvertently create a platform for white
nationalists. But shining a light on darkness is the best road to take.
Steven Ventura
on May 23, 2019 at 10:43 pm said:
Thank you for
the excellent — and frightening — article on local white supremacists. Exposing
these people and these organizations is the first step in exposing their lies and
the cynical dishonesty their cause is based on.
Stephen Holton
on May 23, 2019 at 10:44 pm said:
“The Extremist
Next Door” shows the complexity of our community. It is not as clear-cut as we
had imagined, or as positive as we had hoped.
The church calls
us to the positive aspects of our nature and to build up our community. We
invite those souls who are lost in the sin of white supremacy, or other sins,
to turn and follow where Jesus led the way.
Our communities
are complicated. Our families are complicated — in history and today.
You note a
relative of the Osborn family of Garrison whom you describe as a white
supremacist. There was another Osborn relative who was an attorney in New York
City before the Civil War. He defended escaped slaves from their former
masters, who would re-enslave them. When he lost a case, in that miscarriage of
justice which characterized our country at that time, he helped them escape to
Canada. He also helped black colleges.
During the
Civil War, when President Lincoln dedicated the battlefield at Gettysburg, he
said: “Four score and seven years ago, our fathers dedicated on this continent
a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the principle that all men
are created equal.”
We are a new
nation, not like the old nations of Europe that were divided by race and class,
and where many served the few. We were driven or dragged here. Now we attempt
to build a new nation, where all might be equal, regardless of race and class.
St. Philip’s
began as a church of the privileged few in Garrison. But that changed after the
Civil War, and perhaps because of it. Many Civil War veterans lie in our
churchyard. The priest was a returning Union Army chaplain. He led his people
in service to the surrounding communities, of many races and classes.
Happily, we
still follow his lead, and invite others to help — of whatever race or class or
faith or political views. In fact, the most compassionate person in Jesus’
parables was an immigrant — the good Samaritan.
In this
complicated world, let us build up our community together, and love our
neighbors as ourselves.
Holton is the
interim rector of St. Philip’s.
Cali Gorevic on
May 23, 2019 at 10:44 pm said:
Congratulations
for your article, “The Extremist Next Door.”
Unfortunately,
as we continue to evolve as a nation, deep divides threaten the fabric of our
society. We are seeing white supremacy erupt in riots and slaughter. Many of
your readers are members of minorities and need to be protective of their
security.
Shortly after
the article was published, a link to it was shared on the Philipstown Locals
group on Facebook. Someone in that organization immediately decided that it
should be removed. I am trying to understand what they might have been
thinking: That the community should not be kept informed of local white
supremacy activity? That there is nothing to worry about? That hate-mongering
is acceptable?
Thank you for
keeping us aware of what is going on around us, giving us the opportunity to
stand up for our beliefs and fight bigotry.
Andrew Johnson
on May 23, 2019 at 10:45 pm said:
Your report is
a must-read for local residents. The tactic of normalizing the ideas espoused
by these groups is a danger to the entire country and something that must be
combated at every turn, which is difficult and important work.
Ken Stern on
May 23, 2019 at 10:45 pm said:
“The Extremist
Next Door” shines a bright light on hate. But what can we do about it, as
individuals, communities and organizations?
It matters
whether hate is confined to the margins or becomes mainstream. The more
mainstream, the more normalized and more dangerous it is. The threat is from
both types of hate — the visceral kind that sometimes gins up people with guns
or bombs, or the normative type that accepts hate as “just the way things are,”
like when Jews were kept in ghettos or people were enslaved because of the
color of their skin.
Hate is like a
bully — if you don’t stand up, the bully becomes emboldened. Whenever we
hear hate against anyone, we should do our best to interrupt or expose it. While
that’s a hard thing to do, and sometimes scary, it is important if we want to
cultivate a culture in which hate is less likely to become accepted. If
you’re not concerned when hatred is directed against another group, do this
thought experiment: substitute your own group, and see if you feel the same, or
if the same societal rules apply.
We also have to
be creative. Some communities, when faced with a proposed white supremacist
march, have started “Project Lemonade” programs, raising pledges tied to a
metric (such as how long the march lasts) with money to be given to things the
haters would detest, like hate-crime training for police or anti-bias
education. The hateful speech is no longer “free,” and sometimes the hate group
may back off.
Hate has been,
and will always be, part of the human story. But we tend to focus on hate in a
silo. What motivates an individual to hate? How does hatred work in groups? How
does it play out in politics? To combat it better, we have to understand that
hate operates on all these levels simultaneously. We need new interdisciplinary
models to help all of us become more effective and strategic in opposing hate,
relying on testable theories, rather than being guided by our outrage. Helping
produce that knowledge is the goal of the faculty and students collaborating at
Bard College’s Center for the Study of Hate, where I am director.
Colin Cheyne on
May 23, 2019 at 10:46 pm said:
How much of a
loser do you have to be to think the best thing about yourself, the character
trait you are proudest of, is the color of your skin and where your ancestors
are from? Pathetic.
Brent Spodek on
May 23, 2019 at 10:46 pm said:
Way back in the
second century, the sage Rabba taught that no person can say that their blood
is more precious than the blood of another.
It’s a
remarkable statement, really — we Jews have always been a particular people,
with distinct customs and traditions which at times we have thought represented
the very will of God. That heritage which we value teaches that at the most
fundamental level of life itself, we all bleed the same red blood.
Unfortunately,
not all our neighbors agree.
With some truly
extraordinary reporting, The Current laid out that the Hudson Valley has the
unfortunate distinction of being an important center of white nationalism.
This is not far
away and this is not theoretical. Here, in the area where we make our lives and
build our community, are people who produce a podcast which, in its own words,
says the only realistic option for solving the “problem” of Jews, blacks and
other non-Aryan groups is “unironic extermination.”
So what do we
do?
We should
continue to take steps to defend and protect ourselves, both at home and at
synagogues.
We should
continue to be in coalition with people of good conscience, with
African-Americans, immigrants, LGBT folk and others who are targeted by white
supremacy.
We should
continue to hold our elected officials accountable for how they protect us from
domestic terror.
And most of
all, we should live our values as proudly and loudly as we can. One of our core
values is that we all — in our different hues and faiths — are all images of
the One God and we all bleed red just the same — no one life is more valuable
than another.
So with that in
mind, I want to invite all of us — Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus and all
people of good conscience, who find the ideology of blood-purity repugnant, to
live our values at the Units of Love blood drive on Sunday, June 2, as a form
of protest. It will be held from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Lewis Tompkins
firehouse at 13 South Ave., in Beacon.
The blood
collected that day will not go just to Jews or just to African-Americans or
just to Muslims. It will go from human beings who open their hearts to other
human beings in pain, suffering from accidents or from cancer.
I recognize
that the U.S. blood system has a complicated racial and ethnic history, and
that even to this day its treatment of LGBT donors is deeply problematic.
Nonetheless, I cannot imagine a better rejoinder to our white supremacist
neighbors, who think their blood purer than ours, than to fill the blood system
with the donated blood of Jews and blacks and Mexicans and Muslims.
May our blood
supply be so diverse that the white supremacists refuse medical treatment, lest
they be tainted with our blood. And may we soon see a day when the distinction
between O+ and B- is the only blood purity anyone tries to maintain.
Spodek is the
rabbi at the Beacon Hebrew Alliance.
Chloe
Wareham-Gordon on May 31, 2019 at 10:14 am said:
I want to thank
The Current for chronicling the extreme rhetoric of Philipstown-raised Jesse
Dunstan and his podcast. You lifted a veil on hate’s dark, lurking presence in
the Hudson Valley.
The article
prompts a painful introspection — has our community inadvertently fostered
these beliefs? Research indicates that growing up in diverse communities
increases one’s propensity for tolerance. Thus, we must contend with the
long-term impacts of our area’s lack of diversity (Philipstown is 90 percent
white). And the Highland’s history of breeding and sponsoring KKK members
cannot be ignored.
I have an acute
memory of being kicked out of a Cold Spring antique shop when I was 15 when I
had a friend with me who is of Afro-Caribbean descent. The shopkeeper claimed
that he feared that we would “steal” something. As a child growing up in the
region, I was frequently taunted over my curly hair, and I was once referred to
as “Jew-nose” by a classmate. I recall girls in my class who would spend hours
trying to domesticate their unruly curls, armed with straighteners and
chemicals, so they could “fit in.” The homogeneity of the school populations,
compounded by such a small, tight-knit populace, ends up accentuating any
differences one might project.
Did this
culture impact Dunstan? Would his future be changed if he had grown up
elsewhere? This is an uncomfortable question that is essential for our
community to consider.
Perhaps the
panacea for pervasive bullying is the same as the one to combat hate? That is,
increased racial and socioeconomic diversity, acceptance/tolerance, and
improved education. It is time for our community to discuss policies and
campaigns that will sponsor a more mixed — and, therefore, open minded —
locality.
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NO, ACCORDING
TO THE URBAN DICTIONARY ONLINE, GLOBOHOMO* ISN’T A REFERENCE TO THAT
UNFORTUNATE WORD FOR GAY MEN, BUT A MISHMASH LIKE “BLOG,” WHICH MEANS “WEBLOG.”
IT MEANS THE CULTURAL HOMOGENIZATION AND GLOBALIZATION THAT IS GOING ON AT THIS
POINT, AND WHICH THESE YOUNG MEN APPARENTLY FIND THREATENING AND REPULSIVE.
COLORFUL COSTUMES FROM AROUND THE WORLD MUST EXCITE THEIR ANGER, RATHER THAN
THEIR INTEREST. THAT IS SAD.
GLOBOHOMO IS
USED IN MORE THAN ONE WAY, THOUGH, AS THIS ARTICLE SHOWS. THAT IS WHAT I
DISLIKE ABOUT SO MANY SLANG WORDS. THEY HAVE NO REAL ROOTS IN THE LANGUAGE AND
THEY MUTATE LIKE A RETROVIRUS WITH USAGE, MEANING THEREFORE WHATEVER THE USER
WANTS TO EXPRESS AT THE MOMENT. THAT ANNOYS ME BECAUSE I HAVE TO SEARCH IT ON
THE INTERNET FOR THE MEANING(S). FOR INSTANCE, NOBODY CALLS THE INTERNET THE “WEB”
ANYMORE, EITHER, SO MAYBE I WILL HAVE TO RENAME MY BLOG TO SOME NEWER AND MORE
TRENDY WORD. PEOPLE WILL BE SAYING BEHIND MY BACK, “EEWWW, SHE’S SO RETRO.”
SO, BACK TO THE
SUBJECT, GLOBOHOMO SEEMS TO BE MORE OR LESS LIKE THE TERM “MILQUETOAST,”
MEANING SOMEONE WHO IS SO INOFFENSIVE AS TO BE UNINTERESTING AND ABOVE ALL,
UNHELPFUL WHEN YOU NEED THEM. WHEN I SAY THAT WORD, I AM USUALLY REFERRING TO A
“MODERATE” DEMOCRAT WHO WILL DO ANYTHING TO AVOID STANDING UP FOR THE HUMAN NEEDS
AND RIGHTS OF PEOPLE WHO MAKE LESS THAN $70,000 A YEAR.
THIS ARTICLE IS
INFORMATIONAL ON THE INNER LIFE OF THE “BASKET OF DEPLORABLES” WHO HAVE EMERGED
FROM THE ROCKS THEY WERE LIVING UNDER BEFORE PRESIDENT TRUMP WAS ELECTED. THIS
ARTICLE ON THEIR LANGUAGE USE IS WRITTEN BY AN OUTSIDER WITH CONTACTS, OR MAYBE
JUST A HIGH DEGREE OF OBSERVATION, WHO IS INTERESTED IN WORDS FOR THEIR OWN
SAKE AS I AM. IT IS A BIT LONG, SO I CUT IT OFF BEFORE ALL THE EXAMPLES WERE
GIVEN, SO THE READER WHO DOES WANT TO SEE EVERY TWEET MAY GO TO THE “WE HUNTED
THE MAMMOTH” WEBSITE.
What is
“Globohomo?” A comprehensive guide to the alt-right’s new obsession, with
tweets
JULY 24,
2019 · 65 COMMENTS
By David
Futrelle
ART -- Gay
Atlas, deadlifting the earth
If you’ve spent
any time arguing with right-wing trolls online, you’ve probably encountered the
alt-right’s new favorite buzzword (that isn’t really a word): “globohomo.” And
you may have found yourself wondering: What on earth is a globohomo, anyway,
and why are right-wingers so mad about it?
The term has
been floating about for several years now; I first encountered it way back in
2016 on the blog of everyone’s favorite racist pickup artist, Heartiste, and
our old friend fiend Roosh V is fond of it as well. But it’s gained popularity
in the last year or so, serving as a sort of catch-all replacement for the term
“white genocide” for some of the people who, well, used to use the term “white
genocide” all the time.
Ostensibly,
“globohomo” is short for “global homogenization,” a an alleged vast conspiracy
to destroy “traditional” culture and values and replace them with a sort of
global (naturally) corporate uniculture.
But it’s rarely
used in this way, at least not exactly. For those who’ve seized upon the term,
“globo” means “globalist” and therefore Jews; while “homo” (the suffix) means,
well, “homo” (the slur). (Some, evidently worried that “globohomo” isn’t
gay-sounding enough, add “gayplex” to it — “globohomo gayplex.”)
And so
“globohomo” has come to mean something like “the global homosexual/Jewish
conspiracy to degenerate our culture up real good with drag queens and anal sex
and possibly Ben Shapiro.”
If that
definition seems a bit incoherently exapansive, that’s because the trolls
who’ve embraced the term are using it as an all-purpose epithet. Perhaps the
only way to truly define “globohomo” is to see how people (and I use that term
lightly) are using it on, for example, Twitter.
Here are just a
few of the things that right-wing trolls think are a part of the “globohomo”
agenda.
Jews:
Brian
@tweetofhell
Jews are
globohomo, send tweet
9:23 PM - Jul
9, 2019
Twitter Ads
info and privacy
See Brian's
other Tweets
All part of the
globohomo 'def not the jews never mention the jews lots of coincidences"
plan pic.twitter.com/OqVtvYEn7F
— Jack took my
birb (@TaTaTylenol) July 14, 2019
Actual LGBTQ
people:
mcpaddy
@volcelsupremacy
when they said
globohomo they literally meant GLOBO HOMO
6:40 PM - Feb
19, 2019
Twitter Ads
info and privacy
See mcpaddy's
other Tweets
I want to say
the Canadian Armed Forces is literally gay, but I know our proud military
history & men who have and do currently serve.
This globohomo
bs doesn’t belong in our schools or government but it *especially* has no place
in our military.
Imagine what
our enemies think! pic.twitter.com/7EDQgQzMqW
— Faith J Goldy
✝️ (@FaithGoldy)
July 19, 2019
. . . .
**** ****
**** ****
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