The end of winter has brought an dramatic uptick in far right activity in America. 2014 seemed on course to be no different from 2012 or 2013, which saw very little organizing or activity by Klan and neo-Nazi groups. In the past few weeks there has been an armed standoff in Nevada, a racist murder spree in Kansas, a storming of a union hall by Ukrainian fascists in Chicago and massive KKK flyer drops in Ohio and throughout the Midwest.
In each incident, the response by government agencies has been muted and coddling. Mainstream media sources appear unwilling or not competent to conduct basic background research either the players or the action on the field. Frazier Glenn Miller, a long time white supremacist, decided to start Passover with a murder spree on Sunday, April 13 in Kansas City. Meanwhile in Chicago, activists engaged in a teach-in at a United Electrical Workers Union hall were besieged by a mob of nearly 50 Ukrainian fascists.
The Chicago area has also seen the a recent wave of far right activity. Several times in the past months, unknown persons have engaged in the distribution of KKK and neo-Nazi literature at night. Thousands of pages of hate tracts have been left at homes and business in a single night. The literature has had the logos of and contact information for multiple groups although the method and timing of the clandestine literature drops suggest a single group distributing all the information.
The mainstream press was quick to announce Miller's history of failed attempts at getting elected to public office in Missouri as a write-in candidate where he garnered less than 50 votes per attempt. The press was silent on his earlier electoral history in North Carolina where he twice got over 5,000 votes while running for Congress. After shooting three people at a Jewish community center and a Jewish assisted living facility, Miller was captured at a nearby elementary school.
He was reported to have screamed “Heil Hitler” repeatedly during and after his capture but the press gave no information on why an armed and murderous neo-Nazi was captured without a gunfight at an elementary school when nearly all other similar active shooters are gunned down by law enforcement. While Miller murdered innocents and 50 Ukrainian fascists stormed a union hall in Chicago, a rancher in Nevada was having an armed standoff with federal agents over grazing fees. The rancher, Cliven Bundy, grazed his cattle on government land for decades without paying fees. He owed over one million dollars in back fees.
When federal agents arrived to remove hundreds of his cows from federal land, they were met by over 1,000 armed protestors who pointed arms at the agents. The press described these protestors “militia members” while several were sporting neo-Nazi tattoos. The incident ended without gunfire with the feds re-grouping and seeking some other way to extract the owed fees and prohibit continued grazing. This bold resurgence of open and sometimes armed neo-Nazi activity has been preceded by a rash of literature drops by an offshoot of the KKK.
Recently flyers and business cards bearing a North Carolina phone number for the Loyal White Knights of the KKK have appeared by the thousand in single nights in Georgia, Florida, Springfield Missouri, Cookeville Tennessee, Texas, Chicago as well as Hillsboro and Lancaster in Ohio. The flyers in Texas and Lancaster, Ohio arrived with candy, presumably to entice children, while the car of a bi-racial teenager was targeted with extra flyers in Hillsboro, Ohio.
The after an hour standoff at the United Electrical Workers hall in Chicago, the police arrived but did not arrest any of the fascists. While attempting to storm the hall, they also attempted to take pictures of the teach-in participants and left dozens of flyers bearing the symbol of the Ukrainian component of the Waffen-SS and identifying the group as being aligned with the “Right Sector” fascist coalition, which is the largest far right group in the Ukraine. The months of low level action in around the country were followed by a surge of action on the 13th of April, which is also the first day of Passover.
This date is exactly one week before Adolf Hitler's birthday, which is traditionally celebrated by fascists around the world with rallies, barbeques, cross-burnings and car-bombings, like the Oklahoma City bombing of April 19, 1995. The Free Press will continue to report on this fascist upsurge, and the work of ordinary people to beat it back.
