As rueful Pasco event officials discovered, neo-Nazi skinheads use MMA tourneys as hate festivals

Daily Kos Staff Emeritus

Thursday January 05, 2023 · 1:39 PM PST

2023/01/05 · 13:39

Skinhead MMA tournament in San Diego — A San Diego MMA tournament held in August formed a template for neofascist 'Active Clubs' to organize hate festivals by deceiving gym and arena owners and operators.

As far as the overseers of a publicly owned events center in Pasco, Washington, could tell, the men who approached them about hosting a mixed-martial arts tournament last month were just ordinary boxing promoters looking for a facility. So the event got the green light.

But when the participants all showed up at the HAPO Center on Dec. 3, it quickly became apparent that the event was in fact a gathering of neo-Nazi skinheads commemorating the death of a notorious white-supremacist terrorist. Sponsored by neofascist “Active Clubs,” the “Martyrs Day” event was billed both as an MMA tournament featuring fighters sporting a variety of Nazi-themed tattoos, as well as a “white-power” metal band concert.

David Neiwert

Daily Kos Staff Emeritus

Tuesday January 03, 2023 · 4:01 PM PST

2023/01/03 · 16:01

When Chaya Raichik—former Brooklyn real-estate agent behind the stochastic terroism-promoting LibsofTikTok account on Twitter—appeared publicly for the first time on Tucker Carlson’s daytime Fox Nation show last week, she claimed she was exposing her identity so that she could take her campaign against the LGBTQ community public. Both she and Carlson claimed she was simply reposting unedited videos with only bare-bones commentary, and that there was nothing hateful about doing so … before launching into a bigoted rant describing the LGBTQ community as a “cult” comprising “evil” people “out to groom kids.”

Denials notwithstanding, the real-world effects of Raichik’s targeted attacks—which have played an outsize role in the far-right’s mounting campaign of threats and violence against the LGBTQ community, revolving around the spread of rhetoric depicting them as pedophilic “groomers”—have been far-reaching. A recent survey of those effects by the antifascist veterans group Task Force Butler found that “almost one in four locations, events, or individuals that were directly targeted by LibsofTikTok experienced some form of digital or real world harassment or other consequence after being profiled by the account.”

David Neiwert

Daily Kos Staff Emeritus

Monday January 02, 2023 · 8:00 AM PST

2023/01/02 · 08:00

Everyone who knew Ken Balcomb—the great whale scientist who died this week at age 82 after a long struggle with cancer—has stories to tell about him, often many of them. My favorite is one that he liked to tell sometimes, but that other people I know witnessed on several different occasions.

Balcomb’s primary job for nearly 50 years was to keep a census of the endangered Southern Resident killer whales (SRKWs) who were the subject of his lifelong study, and he did so by taking their photographs. At times, he said, it seemed as though the orcas knew that he and his researchers were trying to gather information on them to help them and were eager to help them learn—especially when it came to the newest members of population.

David Neiwert

Daily Kos Staff Emeritus

Sunday January 01, 2023 · 4:00 PM PST

2023/01/01 · 16:00

no image description available — A humpback whale surfaces near Maui in 2017.

I have an odd hobby: collecting whale sounds with a hydrophone. It began when I bought one of the devices in 2004 so I could listen in on killer whales. Since then, I’ve gathered a nice collection of both Northern and Southern Resident orcas, as well as humpback whale sounds in various locations, and even sperm-whale echolocation in New Zealand.

But in February 2017, I managed to collect humpback whale sounds without a hydrophone—and quite accidentally. It happened in Maui during a snorkeling trip to swim with the green turtles that are populous there on the island’s southwestern shore. I thought I was hearing whalesong while underwater—and sure enough, I had.

David Neiwert

Daily Kos Staff Emeritus

Monday December 26, 2022 · 4:00 PM PST

2022/12/26 · 16:00

FRIDAY HARBOR, Washington—After five summers of mostly being absent, the maybe-now-inappropriately-named Southern Resident orcas returned to their traditional summer habitat in 2022: not entirely or even robustly, by any means, but much more frequently than in the preceding half-decade.

It was enough to raise hope that the Chinook salmon runs coming out of British Columbia’s Fraser River are finally starting to recover—after flatlining in 2016 and for the next four years—enough to bring the orcas who feed on them back to their traditional Salish Sea summer feeding grounds. And for the most part, signs are generally positive—though there are some distinct clouds in the picture.

David Neiwert

Daily Kos Staff Emeritus

Friday December 23, 2022 · 10:55 AM PST

2022/12/23 · 10:55

Steve Bannon at TPUSA — Steve Bannon closed out Turning Point USA's weeklong eliminationism festival by whipping up the 'awakened army' of insurrectionists in Phoenix.

If you had any thought that the insurrection that we all saw unfold on Jan. 6 might have just been a one-day affair—rather than the ongoing attack on American democracy that it in fact has become—you just needed to see Steve Bannon wrapping up this week’s eliminationism-themed “America Fest 2022” put on by Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA outfit in Phoenix.

Bannon’s speech was like the exhortations of a cheerleading executive, except for the subject. “Are we at war?” he demanded to know at the outset. After a feeble “Yes” from the audience, he repeated: “No! I wanna hear it! Are we at war?” “Yes!!!” the audience shouted. “Are you prepared to take this to its ultimate conclusion and destroy the deep state?" he demanded. “Yes!!!!” they replied. “Root and branch?” “Yeahhh!!!”

David Neiwert

Daily Kos Staff Emeritus

Thursday December 22, 2022 · 12:31 PM PST

2022/12/22 · 12:31

WASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 05: Supporters of web designer Lorie Smith and counter-protesters demonstrate in front of the U.S. Supreme Court Building on December 05, 2022 in Washington, DC. The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments from cases including one involving Lorie Smith, the owner of 303 Creative, a website design company in Colorado who refuses to create websites for same-sex weddings despite a state anti-discrimination law. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) — Activists turned out to defend the LGBTQ community during recent protests outside the U.S. Supreme Court

The antidemocratic far right has been building momentum for its campaign of intimidation against the LGBTQ community this year by organizing gangs of armed neofascist thugs to turn out at their events—ranging from Pride gatherings to drag-queen story hours—and has largely done so without resistance. That’s beginning to change—and it seems to be making a difference.

Increasingly, communities who want to protect their LGBTQ members from the right’s politics of menace are turning out on their own to defend them. In Texas, when Proud Boys, neo-Nazis, and Patriot Front neofascists turned up to protest outside drag-queen performances in both Grand Prairie and in San Antonio, exponentially larger crowds of counterprotesters turned out to stand in silent defense of the community. In Idaho, a planned Proud Boys/militia protest outside a holiday drag show in Boise fizzled completely when a large community counterprotest was organized.

David Neiwert

Daily Kos Staff Emeritus

Tuesday December 20, 2022 · 5:26 PM PST

2022/12/20 · 17:26

Lauren Boebert at TPUSA confab — Lauren Boebert told the Turning Point USA America Fest crowd on Monday that the new Republican House plans to 'weed out the Deep State.'

Operations like Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA (TPUSA)—ostensibly a campus-conservative recruitment organization, though nowadays its scope and reach is much broader—have always played a critical role in the radicalization process that has transformed the conservative movement and the Republican Party into the far-right extremist bloc it is today. They are transmitters, bridgers of the gaps. They constantly commingle mainstream Republicans with white nationalists and other extremists until it’s impossible to tell the difference.

This was on full display this week at TPUSA’s annual conference in Phoenix, Arizona. On one hand, the speakers included mainstream GOP royalty like Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump Jr., Kari Lake, and Kimberly Guilfoyle. At the same time, it also featured Congresswoman Lauren Boebert of Colorado ranting at the audience about how the new Republican House is “going to take our country back” by “weeding out the Deep State”—not to mention far-right “thought leader” James Lindsay’s claim that “drag queens are a provocation” intended to inspire violence so that the LGBTQ community can have a “Drag Floyd.”

David Neiwert

Daily Kos Staff Emeritus

Sunday December 18, 2022 · 6:05 PM PST

2022/12/18 · 18:05

Todd Banducci harasses Marc Lyons — Todd Banducci, center rear (in grey jacket) harasses longtime North Idaho College attorney Marc Lyons at the end of a recent meeting, calling him "a disgrace." Lyons tendered his resignation the next day.

One of the broad indicators of the creeping far-right power grab’s increasing traction is dysfunction: the more their anti-democratic agenda takes hold and their toxic behavior spreads, the worse everything runs. This is why their years of systematically undermining, attacking, sabotaging, and finally hollowing out the major requisite institutions for a functioning democracy—elections, the free press, effective schools, and effective government—are coming home to roost now.

There’s a drama unfolding in northern Idaho right now that embodies how this works. The same far-right cabal that has seized control of the Kootenai County Republican Party apparatus has done likewise with the board of Coeur d’Alene’s local community college, North Idaho College, and their ongoing sabotage of the school’s administration—to the point that school could lose its accreditation.

David Neiwert

Daily Kos Staff Emeritus

Thursday December 15, 2022 · 2:49 PM PST

2022/12/15 · 14:49

Rep. Andy Biggs claims Buffalo shooter was leftist — Arizona Congressman Andy Biggs claimed Thursday that both the mass shooter in Buffalo and Paul Pelosi's attacker were 'leftists.'

One of the unfortunate realities of the Republican assumption of control of the House in 2023 is that congressional committees’ power to investigate far-right terrorism and insurrection will functionally evaporate, because the GOP has zero interest in pursuing the matter. Rather the opposite: Republicans have demonstrated over the past two years at congressional hearings that they’re intent on turning them into clown shows, diverting attention away from the subject as a means to cover their own culpability, trotting out bogus witnesses like Candace Owens to waste everyone’s time with claims that Democrats are the real terrorists.

Congressman Jamie Raskin’s House Committee on Oversight and Reform gave it one last shot this week, though, with a final hearing on “Confronting White Supremacy.” True to form, Republicans offered as their only witness an activist from the Independent Women’s Network (IWN) who claimed that the truly grave threat to American democracy wasn’t white supremacy, it was “the Woke Army.” Republican congressmen, meanwhile, tried to claim that the white supremacist who shot up a Black neighborhood grocery store in Buffalo was actually a “leftist.”

David Neiwert

Daily Kos Staff Emeritus

Wednesday December 14, 2022 · 2:06 PM PST

2022/12/14 · 14:06

BOCA CHICA BEACH, TX - AUGUST 25: SpaceX founder Elon Musk during a T-Mobile and SpaceX joint event on August 25, 2022 in Boca Chica Beach, Texas. The two companies announced plans to work together to provide T-Mobile cellular service using Starlink satellites. (Photo by Michael Gonzalez/Getty Images)

At one time, Twitter worked hard to banish the QAnon conspiracy cult and its accompanying disinformation, not to mention its hateful agenda, the culmination of which envisions the mass execution of American liberals. Last year, the social media platform boasted that it had suspended 150,000 QAnon accounts.

This week, its new owner, Elon Musk, signaled to his 121 million followers that, not only is he now red-pilled, but he too subscribes to the QAnon universe of conspiratorial beliefs—with a simple one-word/one-emoji tweet: “Follow [rabbit emoji].” Like much of Musk’s recent right-wing trolling, its simplicity offers plausible deniability, but “follow the white rabbit” is a well-established QAnon motto urging its adherents to plunge down its otherworldly conspiracist rabbit holes.

David Neiwert

Daily Kos Staff Emeritus

Tuesday December 13, 2022 · 1:37 PM PST

2022/12/13 · 13:37

A man wearing Trump 2020 buttons on his hat listens to Republican nominee for governor of Arizona Kari Lake speaking a rally at Dream City Church in Phoenix, Arizona, on November 7, 2022 on the eve of the US midterm elections. (Photo by Olivier TOURON / AFP) (Photo by OLIVIER TOURON/AFP via Getty Images) — Kari Lake's election denialism may not have won her election, but it establish the devotion of her gullible donors.

Even though election denialists were largely crushed in crucial elections in the 2022 midterms, denialism isn’t going away anytime soon. Besides the election of over 200 election denialists to offices around the country, it’s also turned into a lucrative grift, and no one really wants to turn off the spigots.

The Election-Denialist-in-Chief, Donald Trump, of course, continues to milk his claims of ongoing election fraud as a fundraising gimmick. But his election-denialist minions—particularly losing candidates like Arizona’s Kari Lake and Washington state’s Joe Kent—are likewise continuing to pump the fundraising levers alongside halfhearted attempts to contest their electoral losses.

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As rueful Pasco event officials discovered, neo-Nazi skinheads use MMA tourneys as hate festivals

Chaiya Raichik’s ugly anti-LGBTQ bigotry revealed on TV, manifested in real-world harassment

Ken Balcomb’s considerable scientific legacy outweighed by movement he created to save SRKWs

Watch and listen: Humpback whales sing in the background on snorkeling visit with green turtles

Southern Resident report for 2022: Orcas return to Salish Sea in summer, but worries remain

‘Are we at war?’ Bannon exhorts TPUSA’s ‘awakened army’ to ‘take this to its ultimate conclusion’

Far right’s armed thugs unable to intimidate LGBTQ community, thanks to large crowds of defenders

Lindsay leads anti-LGBTQ hate parade at TPUSA’s annual gathering, with large supporting cast

Far-right takeover of Idaho community college board has predictably dire, chaotic consequences

A ‘Woke Army’? Republicans turn final House hearing on far-right violence into a clown show

Musk tries to pretend he wasn’t signaling QAnon, but cult’s believers are celebrating, planning

Election denialism isn’t going away anytime soon, because it’s such an effective far-right grift