Neofascist groups are attempting to stoke racial resentment to exploit the disaster for their own gain.
First the good part:
After canvassing, phone-banking and holding public meetings, Columbiana County, Ohio, organizers with River Valley Organizing (RVO) released a set of demands from residents of East Palestine and surrounding areas in the wake of Norfolk Southern’s train derailment disaster that led to a controlled burn of toxic chemicals and mandatory evacuations of residents within one mile of the crash site last month.
Thirty-eight of 151 cars on Norfolk Southern’s 32N train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, on February 3 after a wheel bearing overheated, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. The derailment also caused a fire that damaged 12 more cars. Eleven of the cars were carrying hazardous materials, including vinyl chloride and ethylhexyl acrylate that were later intentionally burned off, sending a toxic mushroom cloud billowing over the town.
The bill for East Palestine community’s demands, organizers say, should be footed by Norfolk Southern. Demands include relocation for any resident who wants it; independent soil and water testing that includes testing for the presence of dioxins; guaranteed health coverage for East Palestine residents alongside Federal Health and Human Services-provided health monitoring; and safe and responsible disposal of Norfolk Southern’s toxic waste.
But Columbiana County organizers and East Palestine residents aren’t waiting around to be saved. Instead, they’re working toward manifesting their demands themselves through a coordinated mutual aid effort to meet the community’s immediate needs in the context of what they say are failing state institutions captured by Norfolk Southern. East Liverpool resident and RVO Director Amanda Kiger tells Truthout that her organization and partners are leading by example and pushing back directly against corporate capture with community engagement and organizing.
There’s quite a bit more on how RVO is working to coordinate a response to the environmental disaster — it’s worth reading for that alone. It’s only further down that the not so good news appears.
Far Right Descends on East Palestine
Norfolk Southern’s corporate malfeasance and the state’s failure to adequately safeguard residents in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, Deeter says, has been compounded by the presence not only of Republican politicians including former President Donald Trump and Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, but also of explicitly neo-Nazi and neofascist groups seeking to exploit the disaster to stoke reactionary politics.
On February 14, Patriot Front posted a video showing members traveling to East Palestine and distributing water and other supplies to residents. The video shows members handing one resident what appears to be literature or a contact card along with water. Meanwhile, members of the white supremacist National Justice Party (NJP) showed up to a February 15 town hall, and according to organizers, heckled officials and distributed literature before and after the event.
NJP’s website reposted an article and video from a partner white supremacist propaganda outfit claiming that one of NJP’s leaders, Michael McKevitt, attempted to ask a question of East Palestine Mayor Trent Conaway during the February 15 town hall. The embedded video shows another NJP leader, Joseph Jordan, confronting Republican Ohio Rep. Bill Johnson at the town hall. The article highlights the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee’s donations to Representative Johnson’s campaign, even though the donations are not related to any issues in East Palestine, furthering antisemitic tropes by suggesting a “Jewish conspiracy.” NJP, via the same propaganda outfit, later claimed credit for local and state officials successfully pressuring the federal government for funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
It’s part of what could be called a deliberate “white-washing” strategy by these groups to attempt to repair their reputations following the convictions of so many of their members for their actions on January 6. While extending a ‘helping hand’, so to speak, they are also advancing their toxic agenda.
Far right groups are using a deliberate far right strategy of exploiting unfolding crises to appeal to residents and survivors on the basis of race and presenting fascist organizing and propaganda as legitimate solutions. The strategy has the potential to broaden the groups’ appeal in a political environment in which former President Trump, Senator Vance and Fox News continue to employ a racialized euphemism that frames the residents of East Palestine as a “forgotten” people, citing residents’ whiteness as the reason for the state’s failure and corporate capture.
Even as PSF [Patriotic Socialist Front] attempted to co-opt the unfolding disaster in East Palestine, the organization also took aim at the mutual aid groups who live and operate there and continue to raise funds and provide sustained aid on the ground in a way that isn’t focused on recruitment. A February 24 post on the group’s Telegram channel called the mutual aid effort involving DSA, Socialist Rifle Association and Food Not Bombs a “gayop,” and claimed that the effort is funding critical race theory and “Gender Crit reeducation initiatives.” A separate post baselessly claimed “antifa” members were preventing residents from receiving water bottles.
READ THE WHOLE THING. The article points out that wherever there is disruption and disaster, right wing extremists groups are looking to gain a foothold. People who are angry, feel betrayed, ignored, belittled, and are getting a diet of conspiracy theories from right wing media and politicians are targets of opportunity. (This sounds like a job for David Neiwert.) As climate disruption increases, there will be no shortage of similar opportunities for the far right to exploit, even as their ‘solutions’ make things worse.
It’s one of those terrible synergies, where corporate fascism creates problems that can be exploited by populist fascists. Norfolk Southern is an example of how the rail industry’s drive for profits above all threatens democracy. It’s why there is a growing call for decisive government action.
It should not be forgotten that establishment voices on the right have been feeding the fire. The Guardian reports on how it’s been turned into a question of race (distracting away from the corporate malfeasance) by Republicans and the usual suspects like Tucker Carlson.
...Leading the charge, as is so often the case with such white-America nativist fearmongering, is the Fox News star Tucker Carlson. “East Palestine is overwhelmingly white, and it’s politically conservative,” he said recently. “That shouldn’t be relevant, but it very much is.”
Carlson went on to describe East Palestine as a “poor benighted town whose people are forgotten, and in the view of the people who lead this country, forgettable”. He highlighted the indisputable suffering of local residents who were forced to evacuate a two-mile area and since they have returned home remain fearful about the quality of the air and water.
Then Carlson contrasted such hardship with what he called the “favoured poor” who live in “favoured cities” such as Detroit and Philadelphia – a clear euphemism for urban centers, often led by Democratic mayors, with large Black populations.
The article by Betsy Reed goes on to detail how Republicans and right wing media are trying to frame this story — and also deal with a problem of their own:
...By leaning on race-baiting, he said, Republicans hope to be able to smooth over the glaring gulf between white, working-class Americans who make up a large proportion of the party’s Maga base and the super-rich, corporate-friendly donors who bankroll the movement (Trump included). “So you racialize the problem - and say that white folks are being cheated out of economic opportunities by the ‘woke mob’ - or Detroit and Philadelphia, to take attention away from the challenges you face forging a coherent economic line,” Gorski said.
What happened and is happening in East Palestine should be taken as symptoms of serious illness in the body politic.