Washington DC – A group of American Muslims, joined by interfaith leaders, have launched an initiative to get thousands of Americans to take part in a march in Washington DC on July 23, in what they call a stand against bigotry, “extremism”, and gun violence.
The American Muslim March will take place at the National Mall – home to various large-scale historical gatherings – to also condemn “terrorism” and vocally eschew the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS), organisers said.
Rally sponsors include more than 20 organisations representing the three monotheistic regions, as well as the Buddhist, Sikh, Hindu, and Bahai communities.
The initiative comes at a time when anti-Muslim sentiment is high, in part driven by the rhetoric of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has called for the banning of foreign Muslims from the United States.
Trump has made his Muslim ban a centrepiece of his candidacy: he recently reiterated his proposal following an attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, which left 49 people dead. He also suggested profiling Muslims, citing Israel as an example, and implied that US President Barack Obama was complicit or sympathetic to radicalised Muslims.
Some Muslim groups have been more vocal about terrorism, gun violence and Islamophobia, since a married couple, inspired by ISIL ideology, killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California.
“We were motivated to take action after San Bernardino,” said Khaled al-Mufti, a member of the rally organising committee. “We wanted to denounce ISIS as an ideology that claims to be representative of Islam, but it’s not. That’s not the religion we practise. We want to make it loud and clear to all the world: This is not Islam.”
‘Hostility towards minorities’
The rally is being organised by the Islamic Society of Central Florida, and the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) in Washington DC, which recently hosted Secretary of State John Kerry and Hollywood actress and activist Angelina Jolie with Syrian refugees in recognition of World Refugee Day.
For the event, organisers are reaching out to renowned Muslims such as Yousef Islam, previously known as Cat Stevens, retired basketball legend Kareem Abdul Jabbar, and influential Islamic scholar Hamza Yusuf. They are hoping to attract about 100,000 people from the Muslim and immigrant communities and anybody “affected by the recent surge in hostility towards minorities”, Mufti told Al Jazeera.
“The rhetoric going on in the presidential campaigns is creating an atmosphere of bigotry,” he said. “This is not only towards Muslim, but also towards immigrant communities. We therefore wanted to provide a platform for everyone to speak about those issues.”
The Southern Poverty Law Centre, which tracks hate groups, said anti-Muslim attacks rose sharply in 2015, “egged on by a steady drumbeat of propaganda from Islamophobes and given a megaphone by the press and a presidential frontrunner given to racist and Muslim-hating oratory”. Last year, three young Muslim Americans were shot dead by a man known for his hatred of Islam in the university town of Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Also in 2015, there were approximately four times as many attacks on mosques than the previous year, according to a recent report released by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and the Centre for Race and Gender at UC Berkeley.
The 78 instances where Muslim houses of worship were targeted – via arson, vandalism or other methods – partly show the pervasiveness of Islamophobia in all aspects of society, according to Hatem Bazian, the centre’s director of the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project, who contributed to the report.
“The report gives the widest view of the situation facing Muslims today in America and we are still speaking about 2015 and not yet accounting for the full impact of Trump’s campaign and the shift that he made in making Islamophobia acceptable and patriotic,” Bazian told Al Jazeera.
‘Muslim-free zones’
The report highlights the various methods in which Islamophobia is manifested, including the rise in anti-Islam groups, armed demonstrations outside of mosques, hate crimes against Muslim Americans, and private businesses declaring themselves ‘Muslim-free zones’.
In 2014, there were 74 Islamophobic groups, the report found – 33 whose primary purpose is to promote prejudice against Islam and Muslims, and the rest whose “work regularly demonstrates or supports Islamophobic themes”, such as Fox News Channel and the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Islamophobia is also driven by a political elite, Bazian said, who, “facing trickle down economic failure and dead-end domestic policies they championed over 40 years since the Reagan administration … offer the Muslim subject as the springboard to avoid all issues and thus win seats”.
The the so-called (and frankly, misnamed) “alt-right” has been making a name for itself with this year’s Presidential election season, and folks want to know more about who these characters are and where they come from since they want to make themselves a part of the mainstream so much they are contributing to art shows this weekend. So since we have been going after this crowd since before One People’s Project even began, DLJ has been making the media rounds over the past few months basically trying to catch people up to what we have been seeing all these years. He makes one of those rounds on Friday, when he makes an appearance on the Karen Hunter Radio Show.
On Friday, something called the L.I. Heathen Metal Fest will be taking place that will feature bands associated with the neo-Nazi scene. One is Wotanorden, a National Socialist Black Metal (NSBM) band with ties to neo-Nazi groups such as Blood and Honor and the Keystone State “Skinheads”. Another is Cold Northern Vengeance is a band out of New Hampshire that’s sketchy enough to get listed on a Stormfront post of a list of pro-White bands. The show is being produced by Wolf Tyr Productions who also has a show this weekend in Stroudsburg, PA that will also feature Wotanorden as well side project Norsewind which features Wotanorden members and have been kicked off events and from radio shows when their connections are discovered. It’s pretty short notice, but it’s never too late to let folks know when the rats come out to play.
Something called the Pocono Folk Pagan And Viking Metal Fest II is making it’s way to Stroudsberg, and it’s bringing Nazism with them, courtesy of two bands. One is Wotanorden, a National Socialist Black Metal (NSBM) band with ties to neo-Nazi groups such as Blood and Honor and the Keystone State “Skinheads”. The other is Norsewind, which features Wotanorden members and have been kicked off events and from radio shows when their connections are discovered. The show is being produced by Wolf Tyr Productions who also has another show this weekend in Long Island that will also feature Wotanorden as well as another dubious band called Cold Northern Vengeance. It’s pretty short notice, but it’s never too late to let folks know when the rats come out to play.
This year, it’s not about what Keystone State “Skinheads” has planned. We already know they really don’t want to see us and are going to do everything they can to avoid us. We have already won that battle. This year, it’s about coming out on our time to say there is still work to be done.
From Antifa Philadelphia:
It’s that time of the year again.
Every October, The Keystone State “Skinheads” attempt to hold a public rally along boathouse row in Fairmount Park. This rally is billed as a “Leif Erikson Day Celebration.” It is, in reality, the one time a year that KSS tries to hold a space in Philly, if only for an hour. This grants them some measure of legitimacy as “activists” and represents their last foothold of a street presence in Philadelphia. They have encountered opposition most of the past 10 years. Last year, in order to avoid Anti-Fascists, KSS held their event in the middle of the night after announcing they would be in the park at noon.
Antifa Philadelphia intends to be in Fairmount Park on October 9th, Leif Erikson Day. We will gather at the Thorfin Karlsfeni statue on Boathouse row and rally against Racism, Colonialism, and KSS organizing in our city and state. We are calling on all Anti-Racists and Anti-Fascists to join us in confronting KSS and showing them that they are (still) not welcome in Philadelphia.
The National Socialist Movement (NS) has decided to make what they call their “fall political rally” in Harrisburg, PA on Nov. 5, a few days before Election Day. It’s not like they think they are going to sway voters or anything – unless you count whatever BS their more suit-and-tie brethren calling itself the “alt-right” can make of it. And of course since they started this umbrella outfit called the Aryan Nationalist Alliance that incorporates Klan groups and your more knucklehead organizations like Aryan Strike Force into the same fold as the NSM, that means they will be out as well. Community members have been organizing around opposing this and they expect a huge turnout on their part. And we will be remiss in saying look out for a Black Dominican NSM associate named Gabriel Diaz should he have the spine to show up again after being caught infiltrating our groups!
The next National Policy Institute (NPI) conference will be held at the same place as the last NPI event – the Ronald Wilson Reagan Building in Washington, DC. It will be the same old thing as before, hating Blacks, Hispanics, Muslims and Jews (that is guaranteed with Kevin MacDonald among the speakers) and every racist internet troll coming out to meet and network with one another. But this time, there’s a treat in store: A-List talent! Well, A-List talent as far as they are concerned, but the rest of us might put this one in maybe the x or y area to be honest.
Folks, National Policy Institute managed to score former reality show star and occasional rapper Tila Tequila for a pre-conference party the night before! We are not kidding!
Now for those who don’t know, Tila Tequila is famous for her VH1 reality show A Shot At Love With Tila Tequilla which aired for two seasons almost ten years ago. She has also made herself into a social media sex symbol, but that started to take a very WTF turn when she started dressing as a scantily clad Nazi in some of her photos and began making statements defending Hitler and attacking Jews. Now for those who haven’t caught up with today’s world of neo-Nazism, the fact that her real name is Thien Thanh Thi Nguyen and that she is Vietnamese would cause people to scratch their head a bit. In fact, she disavowed her Asian ethnicity in a Tweet not too long ago:
The Asian what? Don’t worry, I have already disavowed the Asian community. I’m with the Aryans now. https://t.co/GnnVop78I5
— Tila Tequila (@AngelTilaLove) July 7, 2016
And for today’s neo-Nazi/White Supremacist, which calls itself the “alternative right” or “alt-right” that is just red meat to them. The so-called “alt-right” has managed to snare some persons of color, Jews, and LGBT persons to champion the notion that all of them need to be marginalized by White people, which when you consider that the biggest thing that drives National Policy Institute (who’s leader Dick Spencer is who came up with the name Alternative Right as a name for his old blog) is eugenics, or more to the point, Blacks are inferior to Whites, Whites are inferior to Asians and all need to be segregated from each other. So somehow Tequila probably thought she hasn’t put her “career” far enough down the shitter, so she signed on to be the entertainment for this thing.
This is the year to do it too, as President-Elect Donald Trump, who’s election has prompted massive protests across the country, is the one bringing all of this crap to the forefront. NPI even says it in their statement about this conference:
“The past 12 months might be remembered as the year of Donald Trump . . . the year of the Red Pill . . . and the year of the Alt Right. It was a time when more people joined our movement then (sic) ever before and when our ideas began invading the mainstream.”
The problem this crowd has is that the opposition has also taken more notice of them because of Donald Trump! The last time NPI held a conference, it was met by the largest group to have ever oppose them, and if they are recruiting celebrities to their events, it is only going to encourage more to come out before they grow even more. One thing to note: The Ronald Reagan Building where this is being held is at 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. The Old Post Office, which is now Donald Trump’s newest hotel is only a few blocks away at 1100 Pennsylvania Ave! Donald Trump’s biggest neo-Fascist supporters will be celebrating the win not too far away from one of Trump’s properties! The opposition to the NPI conference was already in high gear before the election and the protests, so you can expect a major groundswell of opposition on Saturday, when the rally against the conference is to take place.
One thing about the past 12 months is the fact that all this has become the straw that has broken the camel’s back, and it’s going to be dealt with once and for all. And they know it. That’s why the location of the pre-conference event with Tila Tequila is being kept a secret!
Remember a few months ago how a neo-Nazi crew calling itself White Lives Matter held a rally outside the Houston offices of the NAACP? Well now they are making their way to the Texas State House. They will be there this Saturday to call for…well, who cares really? They are Nazis, and who gives anything remotely considered a rat’s ass what they want? In any case, according to reports they plan this to be in other locales such as Oklahoma, Washington State and California and of course there will be opposition. For more information on this silly troupe, check out the following links:
Houston: Report From White Lives Matter Protest
https://itsgoingdown.org/houston-report-white-lives-matter-protest/
Houston: Whites Lives Matter Exposed as Neo-Nazi Front; to Protest ADL October 1st
https://itsgoingdown.org/houston-whites-lives-matter-neo-nazis-protest-adl-houston/
Crackers in the Concrete | Unity and Struggle
http://unityandstruggle.org/2016/09/16/crackers-in-the-concrete/
Giant Hamburger presents:
punx and skins united against fascism fest
With
Barra Brava (mexico)
Revolucion oi (texas)
The Loveless (ohio)
Sober Hate(anaheim)
Malditas Drogas(anaheim)
Sufre (anaheim)
Preston Wiginton is a White Supremacist out of College Station, Texas who for the past eleven years has been hosting neo-Nazi and other assorted Fascists at Texas A&M via speaking events, and whenever he does protests break out while the school says they are powerless to do something about it, as they did for his latest event in a statement noting “private citizens are permitted to reserve space available to the public as we are a public university.” Wiginton’s next one however, is going to be damned interesting as he will now host Dick Spencer of the National Policy Institute, who is still trying to benefit from his newfound notoriety coming from the White Supremacist conference he held in Washington DC on Nov. 19. Spencer, who was born and raised in Dallas and is fresh from getting his ass handed to him by Texas A&M alum Roland Martin on Martin’s News One television program (and yes he reached out to his alma mater about this), is probably going to see more opposition than anyone Wiginton has ever had on campus only because Spencer is the Nazi scumbag that everyone has been seeing on the news as of late. Dick should get used to that. He and everyone that went to that conference are now pariahs of the highest order and people are more than happy to remind them all just how much they are pariahs.