EXTREME POLITICS

But there seems to be something about Pirate Bay that no one wants you to read: its debt to one of the most notorious fascists in Europe.

Carl Lundström was linked to a gang of skinheads that attacked Latin American tourists in Stockholm in the mid-1980s. Over the years, Lundström has switched his support from Keep Sweden Swedish to the far-right headbangers party New Democracy – but was thrown out for being too right wing. He’s currently bankrolling 100 candidates for the Swedish equivalent of the BNP.

Lundstr̦m is alleged to own 40 per cent of The Pirate Bay Рthe largest share Рand gave it servers and bandwidth to get going. As one of the four defendants, been a regular attendee in court.

The Register

Interesting to see the far-right appear on this issue, but the demise of big media would serve their agenda.

But, whoever actually wrote them, the newsletters I saw all had one thing in common: They were published under a banner containing Paul’s name, and the articles (except for one special edition of a newsletter that contained the byline of another writer) seem designed to create the impression that they were written by him–and reflected his views. What they reveal are decades worth of obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews, and gays. In short, they suggest that Ron Paul is not the plain-speaking antiwar activist his supporters believe they are backing–but rather a member in good standing of some of the oldest and ugliest traditions in American politics.

To understand Paul’s philosophy, the best place to start is probably the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Auburn, Alabama. The institute is named for a libertarian Austrian economist, but it was founded by a man named Lew Rockwell, who also served as Paul’s congressional chief of staff from 1978 to 1982.

Paul’s alliance with neo-Confederates helps explain the views his newsletters have long espoused on race. Take, for instance, a special issue of the Ron Paul Political Report, published in June 1992, dedicated to explaining the Los Angeles riots of that year. “Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began,” read one typical passage. According to the newsletter, the looting was a natural byproduct of government indulging the black community with “‘civil rights,’ quotas, mandated hiring preferences, set-asides for government contracts, gerrymandered voting districts, black bureaucracies, black mayors, black curricula in schools, black tv shows, black tv anchors, hate crime laws, and public humiliation for anyone who dares question the black agenda.” It also denounced “the media” for believing that “America’s number one need is an unlimited white checking account for underclass blacks.” To be fair, the newsletter did praise Asian merchants in Los Angeles, but only because they had the gumption to resist political correctness and fight back. Koreans were “the only people to act like real Americans,” it explained, “mainly because they have not yet been assimilated into our rotten liberal culture, which admonishes whites faced by raging blacks to lie back and think of England.”

The New Republic

This magazine normally does its research. Ron Paul remains popular because he encourages a rejection of the last 50 years of American politics in other ways, but possibly also rejection of multiculturalism.

Being familiar with your own rights as a citizen of a state should be at the very core of your personal education.

A state does not wish its people to know their rights, as it is much easier to get away with impunity and have absolute power when the citizens are ignorant of their rights.

The public education system in the United States, of which I have experience with the Texas variant, briefly touches on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights of the United States of America. The very documents of which our entire Legal and Governmental structure are founded on deserve no more than a glance if you take it from the state run education system.

Since so many people fail to learn about those documents on their own, it has become easy for rights to be violated by those in power. The violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the United States is one that everyone can help to put a stop to.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

GPO

The Fourth Amendment specifies that any warrant must be judicially sanctioned for a search or an arrest. Warrants must be supported by probable cause with a limited scope specified by information given to a judge, normally through a law enforcement officer.

The Fourth Amendment only applies to government entities such as law enforcement and government agents. It does not guarantee a right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizure conducted by private citizens or organizations. This is why you cannot board an air craft without being searched and why being searched by your employer is legal.

One of the places that we can fight unreasonable searches is the court house.

Recently I received a jury summons. I have no problem with sitting in on jury duty and fulfilling the role of a defunct legal system. I do however have issue with my person being searched without reason. Since the court system falls under government jurisdiction, without a warrant they have no rights to search you.

When I arrived at the metal detectors I informed that Sheriff that I would not consent to be searched based upon my Fourth Amendment right to do so. He promptly informed me that if I did not proceed I would be held in contempt of court. I inquired if he could provide documentation signed by the court to that effect. He left his station and went to talk to a nearby official.

I do not know the conversation that was had, but I can guess it went something to the effect of the official telling the Sheriff that he has no right to search me and to release me. Upon returning the Sheriff inquired if I needed a note for work and dismissed me.

There were three possible outcomes in this situation. The first being he returns with a document signed by the court stating that I would be required to be searched. If this were the case I would have well been within my rights to hire a lawyer to defend myself against a Bill of Rights violation. The second outcome would have been to allow me to enter without being searched and provide an escort (which I inquired about them doing and was turned down). They would not endorse this due to the high visibility of the act. Other jurors would undoubtedly inquire as to why I had a police escort with me throughout the day. The court gets away with a majority of its fallacies due to uninformed participants.

The third outcome was what I expected and that was a release of obligation to jury duty. This was my latest experience with the jury system and armed with knowledge of the law I not only educated myself but also a rather irritated Sheriff.

This event affirmed a truth in my mind: we must not let misguided government fear of the unknown to infringe on our rights at citizens. Any system dependent on the ignorance of those involved is inherently flawed and should be restructured, or it will facilitate and thus encourage tyranny.

by Gostimir

The neo-Nazis weren’t bumbling skinheads, Kindler said. They were autonome Nationalisten or free nationalists – a radical, political segment of the far-right scene in Germany who are growing in number and, experts fear, poised to create a new wave of neo-Nazi violence.

These disparate events, according to observers, are explained by upheavals in the far-right scene caused by the breakdown of old alliances and the emergence of new, aggressive splinter groups.

”It’s a trend,” said Matthias Adrian, a former skinhead who now helps extremists quit the scene. ”We’ve noticed more threats against those getting out and attacks on democratic activists by right-wing extremists. The atmosphere has changed and it is now more aggressive. This is the tip of the iceberg.”

”It’s not a coincidence,” said Deidre Berger, director of the AJC in Berlin. ”There’s a trend towards very loosely organised cells which use modern means of communication and are therefore harder to keep track of. It also means they can work across borders so you have more communication between these cell-like structures in different countries in Europe.”

“The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency charged with watching extremists, is naturally cautious about drawing conclusions from the latest data and incidents such as the rest stop attack, but an official from the agency admitted the government was worried by the growth of the skinheads, neo-Nazis and other far-right extremists seemingly operating independently.

They are a new phenomenon in the scene and they are more interested in confrontation,” he told The Local. “At demonstrations, you notice they are less willing to take the orders of the police and more willing to fight the left-wing counterdemonstrators. Even most of the right-wing scene says they are too aggressive.”

The Local

Interesting development: the far-right has gained more popular support, which is causing its infrastructure to collapse, and it’s now getting granular. This may benefit far-right parties who want to distance themselves from the violence while allowing the violent to suppress their political enemies.

Skinheads and other extremists are a small but growing group in Switzerland, where researchers say one in three people is xenophobic and one in five anti-Semitic.

But the far right remains fractured and weak, with just 1,200 active members, according to the national research programme findings.

Rightwing extremism has changed throughout the years in Switzerland from a limited underground movement at the end of the Second World War into a larger subculture today, according to Damir Skenderovic, author of one of the 13 studies.

Swiss Info

If one in three people is anti-multicultural (“xenophobic”) then these Nationalists really are doing a poor job if they have only 1200 members. It’s my suspicion that the anti-Semitism statistic is dubious, because some who are anti-Israel/Zionist become anti-Semitic, even though Zionism is Nationalism and so to oppose it is anti-Nationalist. However, anti-immigrant/anti-multicultural sentiment is widespread through Europe, but I think the far right is getting weaker than this article describes because they are unable to popularize themselves through this. Possibly they should consider becoming far-left Nationalists in order to attract the mostly leftist voters.

On the day after Obama’s historic election, more than 2,000 people joined Don Black’s Web site Stormfront.org, a remarkable increase from the approximately 80 new members a day he was getting, Black said. His Web site, which was started in 1995, is one of the oldest and largest hate group sites. The site received so many hits that it crashed after election results were announced. The site boasts 110,000 registered members today, Black said.

“People who had been a little more complacent and kind of upset became more motivated to do something,” said Black, who also said he joined his first hate group at age 15.

Obama serves as a “visual aid” that is helping respark a sense of purpose in current supporters and lure new members, said neo-Nazi David Duke, the former Klan leader who was elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives in the 1980s. Duke said he fears “the white European-American” heritage will soon be destroyed. He added that his Web site sees around 40,000 unique visitors a day, up from 15,000 a day before Obama won the election.

CNN

I’m inclined to take this less seriously than they do. People joining stuff on the internet rarely translates into political activity. Being volunteers, they are compelled to do nothing but show up to the website and complain. You can see this on all ends of the political spectrum, from anarchist websites to far right ones.

However, unlike all the ineffective Official(tm) far-right activity, this is nationalism on a practical level. An east coast community decides it wants to stay European-American, and enacts law to make it so.

One of the country’s fastest-growing counties for Hispanic growth, Prince William’s overall population more than doubled between 1980 and 2006, and its immigrant population exploded to more than 14 times its size in 1980, the Brookings study said. Jobs and housing lured immigrants and native-born newcomers to the Virginia county.

The study found that as many Hispanics and other minorities settled in older neighborhoods, some longtime Prince William residents felt the nature of their community change.

The county became one of a few in the Washington region that has cracked down on illegal immigration in recent years. In Virginia’s Loudoun County and Maryland’s Frederick County, law enforcement authorities also are trained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to enforce federal immigration law.

Stewart [Corey Stewart, chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors] said officials don’t intend to re-evaluate the county policy.

“Through a lot of painful discussion, we have come up with a policy that the vast majority of the community is happy with and is effective,” he said.

Immigrant rights groups have said that the policy, which drew national attention, has created strife between Hispanic immigrants and police and spurred an exodus of Hispanics.

[A] study [by the Brookings Institution] said that the county’s ability to weather the financial crisis will depend on its success in attracting new homeowners and retaining businesses.

WTOP

Of course, they’re refuted both reasons: the community is financially stable, so can’t be bought out, and it’s unconcerned with people who are not constituents there. An interesting development in the far-right’s transition to the mainstream. In due course, the far-right is likely to disappear, and be replaced with more localized community activism and Ron Paul libertarian rightism as we see here.

Christopher Hitchens is currently in Beirut sponsored by the same group that owns NOW Lebanon. He got in a few nights ago and surprisingly went out drinking. On his way out of the bar he saw an SSNP poster and wrote on it ‘F— the SSNP.’ There just happened to be some SSNP thugs near by–most likely asking people for their ID, and most likely to no avail–and saw him write on the poster and kicked his ass. He is still walking with a limp.

Three of our “scoop” brigade–Jonathan Foreman, Michael Totten and Christopher Hitchens–got involved in a street brawl with some thugs of a Syria-loving skinhead party called the SNPN after Hitchens rather gallantly insulted their swastika flag. On our way to a meeting with Minister of State Nissib Lahoud, Hitchens showed me the gashed knuckles and bruises suffered during the punch up. The attackers had apparently come out of nowhere on posh Hamda Street, where they had gone to buy shoes. “I was on the ground,” Hitchens said, “and getting it in the head.”

HuffPost

There are skinheads in Syria?

Finally, the call for papers for the ECPR’s 5th conference (at Potsdam, September 10-12 2009) is out. Our section on the Radical Right will consist of the following nine panels:

* The Radical Right in Central and Eastern Europe
* The Internationalisation of the Radical Right
* Will Fascism return?
* On the Borderline Between Protest and Violence: Political Movements of the New Radical Right
* Consequences of the surge of anti-immigration parties
* The Radical Right in Western Europe
* Inside the Radical Right: An Internalist Perspective
* Party-based Euroscepticism in Western and Eastern Europe
* Neighbourhood Effects Revisited: the Visualisation of Immigrants and Radical Right-Wing Voting

Each panel can have up to five paper givers, so the section offers us a chance to bring together cutting edge research on the Populist/Extreme/Radical Right from various subfields (parties, voters, rational choice, normative theory – you name it). Please submit your abstract via the the electronic submission system to the appropriate panel(s).

ECPR

It will be interesting to see what they come up with.

It will either be psychological fluff explaining away the problem, or reveal an insight into Europe’s crumbling identity as the root of its leadership problems.