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Bucky

(54,027 posts)
Tue Nov 24, 2015, 01:33 PM Nov 2015

Penn. GOP Officials Caught Joining Neo-Nazis in Anti-Refugee Rallies

http://usuncut.com/politics/republicans-and-neo-nazis-protest-syrian-refugees-in-pennsylvania/

Republican Officials Just Got Caught Joining Neo-Nazis in Anti-Refugee Rallies

In fact, anti-refugee protests are popping up all over the country. In Pennsylvania, Neo-Nazis from Keystone United, Tea Party members, patriot movement members, and Republican committee members are among the organizers of these protests.

“Keystone United” was known as the “Keystone State Skinheads (KSS)” until 2009. They are one of the most active single-state skinhead groups in the US, and the SPLC has categorized them as a “racist skinhead extremist group” and elaborated on their image and actions.

========== <snip> ============

Two anti-refugee rallies were held in Pennsylvania, both of which were attended by Keystone United and other far right groups.

In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 40 or so people protested at the State Capitol on November 2oth. Some of their signs and banners read “Terrorist Invasion, No Refugees” and “Aiding a Foreign Invasion is Treason.”

The main organizer for the Harrisburg rally was Christian activist Barbara Metzler. She spoke at the event and without any sources claimed that “91% of Muslims are on welfare or food stamps.”

Dan Gray, a speaker and writer with the Patriot Militia Movement in PA went a step further and said, “Islam is based on Mohammad, and he was a murderer,” he said. “Call me a bigot or racist, I don’t care.”

John Rentschler, who is a Republican committeeman and Civil War reenactor from Berks County, PA, shared Gray’s sentiments and said he “imagined the chorus of voices who would denounce him as a racist, as xenophobic, Islamophobic, as a bigot.” He followed up by saying, “What matters to me is MY family, MY home, MY people, MY state, MY country,” as the crowd said “Amen” after each declaration he made. He went on to claim that “our nation is being crushed by multiculturalism, political correctness, and race-guilting.



We're about halfway down the slippery slope now.
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villager

(26,001 posts)
1. Isn't it redundant to attempt a distinction between "GOP" and "Neo-Nazi?" Each implies the other.
Tue Nov 24, 2015, 01:34 PM
Nov 2015

More and more so, with each passing day.

randys1

(16,286 posts)
2. I have been saying for a few years that teaparty are racists, terrorists.
Tue Nov 24, 2015, 01:41 PM
Nov 2015

The terrorism is about to go into full gear.

They really hate minorities and white folks like me who support them.

They dont play by the rules of common decency either.

I want to reach out to them one more time:

"Stop hating people who are different from you, how about we all try and get along somehow?"

 

hifiguy

(33,688 posts)
11. You may as well talk to rocks.
Tue Nov 24, 2015, 04:14 PM
Nov 2015

Those not-very-bright to begin sheeple with are running on the fumes of their reptile brains.

Bucky

(54,027 posts)
5. That observation used to be an amusing joke, or a bellwether of politically sloppy thinking
Tue Nov 24, 2015, 01:47 PM
Nov 2015

There is, of course, a monumental philosophical and cultural difference between mainstream conservatism and national socialism. The problem is that Republican voters have been lied to and subjected to knee-jerk scare tactics by their leaders and Fox News for so long that they've been reduced into being perpetually misinformed and half-informed voters. A generation ago, they were the more educated voting block. Now they take pride in their hatred of experts, fear of foreigners, and lack of understanding of how government works.

So now, it doesn't matter that philosophically conservatives and fascists are incompatible. Culturally they only need to be united over is a shared culture of hatred. I keep hoping at some point they'll wake up and snap back to just bitching about taxes. But, for now, the drift into extremism seems pretty unstoppable.

 

villager

(26,001 posts)
7. "Used to be" is key here, though many of us have seen it coming since the 80's....
Tue Nov 24, 2015, 01:54 PM
Nov 2015

...especially as the far-right -- which is where "conservatives" and fascists have their meet-up -- pushed through to each new excess and illegality, with virtually no pushback

As for a culture of hatred, don't forget there's also the "hatred of culture" -- i.e., anything they don't understand (which is most things) -- which unites the GOP and the self-described Nazis.

The drift into extremism is indeed pretty unstoppable. It will be all-too-interesting to see what its endgame eventually is for the USA....

 

hifiguy

(33,688 posts)
12. The propaganda has been openly corporatist/fascist
Tue Nov 24, 2015, 04:23 PM
Nov 2015

for a long while now, and Herr Doktor Goebbels would look lovingly at how Ailes has perfected Goebbels' own Big Lie tactics. Ailes is the modern Goebbels and no other comparison will do. Limbaugh et al represent the Alfred Rosenberg/julius Streicher style of keeping the rabble hyped up with red meat lies. Ailes represents the triumph of Goebbels' vision of slickly packaged psyops that have the veneer of respectability and believability - calling it "news" accomplishes that trick.

And remember what Giovanni Gentile said about fascism: "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." (emphasis added)

This man is the founder and inspiration for all modern right wing media up to and including Faux:





And this guy is also in the mix:

 

villager

(26,001 posts)
14. And people --whether here or in Germany or wherever-- remain as absolutely gullible to that Big Lie
Tue Nov 24, 2015, 04:33 PM
Nov 2015

I suppose the dumbing down of our "education" assembly lines only assists in that goal....

 

hifiguy

(33,688 posts)
15. I'd venture that the average American today
Tue Nov 24, 2015, 04:46 PM
Nov 2015

is probably less well-educated, maybe considerably less well educated, in terms of critical thinking skills, than the average German was in the early 20th century.

The common culture of well-educated Germans in that era was Goethe, Schopenhauer, Schiller, Marx, Hegel, Kant, Mozart, Beethoven, Mann, Brecht, etc. Germany of that era was also the most scientifically advanced country on the planet and home to Einstein, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Planck, Pauli, and countless other titans of science. Modern Americans, are to put it bluntly, largely imbeciles as to the important thought of the ages. Cultural philistines.

It's been easy for decades to graduate from many colleges without being meaningfully exposed to literature, history, philosophy or the other humanities. It's called getting a "business degree" an oxymoron if ever one there was. Business schools are, for the most part, corporate-funded money machines that manufacture by the tens of thousands, "educated" morons who have the cultural literacy of the likes of Sarah Palin. It is their purpose to do so. That is what the oligarchy wants. It does not want people who know how to think critically. Such people are, as Goebbels knew, a mortal danger to a fascist state.

 

KamaAina

(78,249 posts)
6. "John Rentschler, who is a Republican committeeman and Civil War reenactor"
Tue Nov 24, 2015, 01:47 PM
Nov 2015

I wonder which side he reenacts.

underpants

(182,829 posts)
8. Who wrote this, Mel Brooks?
Tue Nov 24, 2015, 02:23 PM
Nov 2015

As I read that and it just kept listing those involved - skinheads, tea party, etc- and THEN the reenactor part all I could think of was a modern day version of the line of bad guys in Blazing Saddles.

Bet there were some Methodists too

 

Aerows

(39,961 posts)
13. GOP "leadership"
Tue Nov 24, 2015, 04:25 PM
Nov 2015

is comprised of people that are nuttier than a pecan pie in a fruitcake factory.

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