Morning Briefing: Texas State GOP Lawmaker Meets with Notorious White Nationalist
Morning Briefing: Texas State GOP Lawmaker Meets with Notorious White Nationalist
Texas State Rep. Jonathan Stickland reportedly 'hosted prominent white supremacist Nick Fuentes and other right-wing activists for several hours.'
Morning Briefing: Texas State Rep. Jonathan Stickland, “the ultraconservative leader of a group that has donated millions of dollars to high-profile Texas leaders, hosted prominent white supremacist Nick Fuentes and other right-wing activists for several hours.”
Other far right figures reportedly present at the meeting included Chris Russo, founder and president of Texans for Strong Borders; Ella Maulding, a right-wing social media personality; and Kyle Rittenhouse, who became a far right figured after being acquitted of killing two men during a Black Lives Matter protest in 2020.
Stickland is the president and chairman of Defend Texas Liberty PAC, a right-wing political action committee that supports ultraconservative Republican candidates, which has received millions in campaign contributions from Texas GOP megadonors including Farris Wilks and Tim Dunn.
Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan called on Republican state lawmakers to “distance themselves from the controversial Defend Texas Liberty PAC and to donate any contributions they received from the PAC to charity.”
Gabrielle Hanson, the far right candidate for mayor of Franklin, Tennessee, denied that she sought support from neo-Nazi White Supremacists group, however, the leader of the group claimed that Hanson made a “specific request… despite her claims that she had nothing to do with it.” Hanson has also been linked to a campaign by white supremacist “to harass her critics.”
In Johnston, Rhode Island, local law enforcement is reportedly “investigating after dozens of hateful white nationalist messages were found on front lawns,” and the propaganda was spread in multiple neighborhoods was produced by the Nationalist Social Club (NSC-131), a neo-Nazi White Supremacists group based in New England.
Must Reads
Tim Dickinson reports that “White Lives Matter is a white power group, founded in 2021 and organized on the Telegram social media network. Rolling Stone has obtained a copy of the group’s White Lives Matter Activist’s Manual, the details of which are reported here for the first time. Part manifesto, part how-to guide, the manual lays bare the strategy and motivations of the group, as well as its extreme devotion to white nationalism. The cover page reads, in part: ‘We are in this until the end. Victory or Death.’ As a racist slogan, ‘White Lives Matter’ has been around since the early days of the Black Lives Matter movement late last decade. But the manual makes clear, ‘The WLM initiative of April 2021 has nothing in common with any prior ‘WLM’ groups, just a name similarity.’ And where BLM demands equal treatment of Black Americans, WLM is devoted, unabashedly, to white supremacy… The aim of White Lives Matter, the manual states, is to achieve ‘an absolute White majority population’ in ‘all of the countries or continents that we have built.’” [Rolling Stone]
Frederick Clarkson writes that “while the term New Apostolic Reformation* has stood the test of time for more than a quarter of a century, some don’t like it, mostly because others in the movement have been harshly criticized. Several speakers argued that NAR should not be used because, even among those in the movement, most have never heard of it. Of course there are many standard terms used by scholars and journalists that lay members of religious movements and institutions may be unfamiliar with, like Mainline Protestantism, Catholic integralism, and premillennial dispensationalism, to name just a few. The simple fact is that there’s nothing wrong with this well conceived, widely used, and utterly neutral term. The NAR has many tendencies, just like other broad expressions of Christianity. Mainline Protestantism is also a broad encompassing term, despite the fact that the communities within it can be quite different. No one term can capture everything, and further explanation is almost always necessary.” [Religion Dispatches]
Will Carless, Chris Ullery, and Alia Wong report that “in less than two years, BookLooks has become the go-to resource for anyone seeking to ban books – especially books about gay people or sexuality – from school and public libraries, according to researchers, library experts and a USA TODAY analysis of book-ban attempts nationwide. Across at least a dozen states, USA TODAY found attempts to remove hundreds of book titles that directly cited BookLooks reviews. Those attempts ranged from individual parents filing challenges to remove a handful of specific books, up to statewide legislation requiring that books be rated and recalled from schools. In all those cases, the parents, activists or lawmakers produced BookLooks’ text, or simply listed links to the website, as their rationale. BookLooks is ‘not trying to tell you, ‘don't buy this book’ and ‘buy that book,’’ said Cynthia Walsh, who promotes using the site and is running for a school board seat in Fairfax County, Virginia. It’s telling you: ‘Here's a list of books, go find them.’” [USA Today]
What to expect from Radical Reports: Morning Briefing provides a daily round-up of reporting on the Radical Right; Extremist Links offers a weekly round-up of extremists activities including the white supremacist and militia movements; Narratives of the Right delivers weekly analysis of the current narratives in far right online spaces and promoted by right-wing media; and Research Desk provides monthly highlights research and analysis from academia on the Radical Right.
Who else, would Texass meet with???
This is horrible, but it doesn't surprise me at all.