Congressman鈥檚 Immigration Remarks Prompt Calls for Death, Torture
Posters on neo-Nazi forums are publicly calling for the torture and murder of Congressman Pete Stark (D-Calif.) over comments he made on June 26 during a Fremont, Calif., town hall meeting. The Youtube of the event has gone viral among racist and anti-immigration groups.
During the meeting, Stark mocked a questioner who identified himself as a Minuteman, the loosely organized movement that is best known for holding armed border-watch patrols, by saying, 鈥淲ho are you going to kill today?鈥� When the Minuteman claimed that border security was a disaster, Stark replied: 鈥淚f you knew anything about our borders, you would know that鈥檚 not the case. Our borders are quite secure, thank you.鈥� Stark鈥檚 remarks were met with jeers from the audience.
Stark鈥檚 assertion that U.S. borders are secure has been met with violent reaction in racist circles. On the neo-Nazi Vanguard News Network forum, poster 鈥淢ike Todd鈥� suggested the congressman be tortured to death by being 鈥渟taked out along the border face up with his eyelids cut off to be eaten by ants.鈥� In the same thread, 鈥淔red鈥� wrote, 鈥淪tark will have one rope reserved for him on the 鈥楧ay of the Rope,鈥欌�� a reference to a scene in the infamous race-war novel, The Turner Diaries, when 鈥渞ace traitors鈥� are murdered and hung from lamp posts and trees.
鈥淭he incredible vitriol directed at Congressman Stark is really quite frightening,鈥� said Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center鈥檚 Intelligence Project, which found and publicized the comments. 鈥淏ut these kinds of comments are not entirely limited to those on the radical right. In fact, the furious tone of many opponents of immigration has helped to unleash this kind of visceral rage.鈥�
On Stormfront.org, which is the world鈥檚 largest racist forum and run by a former Alabama Klan leader, 鈥淓agerWarrior鈥� wrote: 鈥淚f there is any Justice in the World that 鈥榤an鈥� will suffer a horrible slow death at the hands of the Mestizos he so obviously represents.鈥�
The thread about Stark on the white supremacist political party 's website is particularly nasty. A poster going by the name 鈥淩obert Jones,鈥� who is described as a leader and senior moderator of the party鈥檚 forum, wrote: 鈥淭reason, may his death be protracted and his suffering severe. We do have laws for dealing with such treachery if only we can gain the political power to enforce them.鈥� 鈥淢arcius鈥� pitched in with 鈥淗is acts can only be described as verging on treason.鈥�
is what the American Third Position is all about. This past January, ATP co-founder William Daniel Johnson said that he intended to qualify 鈥渉igh-level people,鈥� meaning prominent white nationalists, for campaigns on the ATP ticket in a large number of states. The party, which says it exists to represent 鈥渢he political interests of White Americans,鈥� is currently attempting to gain ballot access in California by registering the required 88,991 voters, which would allow the party to field candidates on that state鈥檚 ballot.
ATP is a relatively new group, established just this past year. But given the group's explicitly anti-immigrant platform, it establishment is part of a larger trend. Demographic change, propelled largely by immigration, is one of the major factors driving an explosion in hate groups. In 2009, the number of hate groups reached an all time high of 932, up from 602 groups in 2000. That represents a more than 50% rise in the number of such groups over the course of the last decade.
