In Florida (OK, maybe we should just stop right there), a federal judge decided Friday that 21-year-old Brandon Russell was a good candidate to be released on bond. That would be even though Russell admitted he’d made explosives, likes to hang out in online neo-Nazi chat rooms and talk about killing people and blowing stuff up, and was arrested with two guns, a buttload of ammo, white power literature, and a framed photo of Timothy McVeigh in his apartment. Perhaps the deciding factor was that the McVeigh photo wasn’t autographed.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas McCoun III just plain wasn’t convinced there was “clear and convincing evidence” that Russell, charged last month with unregistered destructive devices and unlawful storage of explosives, might pose a threat to the community. It’s not like he was a weirdo or anything.
Why, yes, the story does get even WTF-er. Russell came to the attention of authorities, as one will, when one of his three roomies (all four of them had been neo-Nazis together) renounced white supremacy, converted to Islam, and admitted killing the other two roommates because they didn’t respect his newfound religion. Devon Arthurs, 18, confessed to the murders in Tampa:
Arthurs was arrested on May 19. Police found his roommates, 22-year-old Jeremy Himmelman and 18-year-old Andrew Oneschuk, with gunshot wounds in the head and upper body. They also found Russell, crying outside their apartment after finding his roommates dead.
Police discovered Russell’s bomb-making devices, as well as an explosive known as HTMD (hexamethylene triperoxide diamine), in the garage after searching the apartment, court records say.
Ah. So Russell is one of those sensitive Nazis. Also, it should be clear from this narrative that Islam makes people become violent deranged killers.
Russell told detectives he’s a white nationalist, and a member of a neo-Nazi group calling itself “Atom Waffen,” German for “atomic Weapon” and also a pretty good band name. He acknowledged playing around with the HTMD and bomb parts found in his apartment, but insisted the chemicals were only meant to be used for homemade rockets, which officials said was a pretty unlikely use for HTMD.
Here’s a fun detail!
After he talked to detectives, Russell went to a gun store in Homestead, Fla., where he bought two hunting rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. He was later arrested.
Tampa sounds like a pretty relaxed place to have explosives, guns, and hundreds of rounds of ammo. It’s not nearly as laid-back as the Keys, though, where residents gather every day and attempt to shoot the sun out of the sky.
Why, yes, Mr. Russell is also a member of the Florida National Guard. Seems like a good place for an avowed neo-Nazi. He doesn’t have any prior arrests, and relatives said they’re willing to keep an eye on him, the little scamp, so Judge McCoun said that while he found Russell’s purchase of a small arsenal a tad concerning, he didn’t think it was enough to justify denying bond. After all, what could be dangerous about a neo-Nazi who idolizes Tim McVeigh, likes fiddling with bombs and guns, and just lost two of his best Nazi buds to a former friend who joined a religion Nazis despise? Our guess is that he intends to get some rest after his ordeal, the poor lad.
Young Mr. Russell is still in the Pinellas County Jail after prosecutors requested a 72-hour delay to give them time to file a more detailed motion requesting that McCoun reconsider his ruling. As of yet, it doesn’t appear that anyone has set up a GoFundMe to help Russell regain his precious, precious guns.
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Hey Stephen, I think its time for your first party
Oooh, di’! Guess who died? Bob Whitaker.
Who the hell is Bob Whitaker, you ask? You probably don’t know his name, but if you have spent any time at all in internet comment sections over the last decade or so (at places other than Wonkette, as we do not allow comments), you have almost definitely read some version or another of his “mantra.”
It’s that one. You know the one. The one that starts out with “ASIA FOR THE ASIANS, AFRICA FOR THE AFRICANS, WHITE COUNTRIES FOR EVERYBODY!” and ends with “Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white.” Sometimes it ends with “Diversity is a code-word for white genocide?” Yeah. That one. He wrote that.
Yes, it was written by a real guy, and now that guy is dead. He died in his sleep this past Saturday, June 3, from natural, non-“White Genocide”-related causes.
You probably assume he was some kind of fringe white supremacist guy — right? Like just some dude from Stormfront, maybe the KKK? Well, you would be wrong. Bob Whitaker, ladies and gentlemen, was a former Reagan appointee to the Office of Personnel Management.
A far-right propagandist for more than a half-century, the former economics professor and Reagan appointee to the Office of Personnel Management was linked to radical, often racist, populist campaigns for most of his career. He once claimed to have had a swastika poster on his wall when he was young to protest desegregation. In fact, his advocacy of segregation and racist ideology seems rooted in his opposition to America’s early civil rights struggles.
According to Whitaker’s followers, he’s a former clandestine CIA agent and mercenary in Rhodesia who helped craft the propaganda message that ended the Soviet Union — claims for which there is no known historical record.
Although Whitaker had long been a propagandist for white supremacist causes, he didn’t publish the “mantra” until 2006. Arguably, this “mantra” could, in many ways, be seen as the very genesis of the alt-right and the near-mainstreaming of white supremacist movements.
It was through this mantra, and his other propaganda, that Whitaker found a way to make White Nationalism seem reasonable to stupid people.
What if I said there was this RACE problem and this RACE problem would be solved only if hundreds of millions of non-blacks were brought into EVERY black country and ONLY into black countries?
How long would it take anyone to realize I’m not talking about a RACE problem. I am talking about the final solution to the BLACK problem?
And how long would it take any sane black man to notice this and what kind of psycho black man wouldn’t object to this?
But if I tell that obvious truth about the ongoing program of genocide against my race, the white race, Liberals and respectable conservatives agree that I am a naziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews.
As stupid as this meme is, it has been incredibly toxic. It took things that most of us agreed on as common goods — anti-racism and diversity — and tried to make them into something ugly.
It is this kind of racism that has since since overtaken the old timey racism. It’s gone from “White people should remain dominant” to “White people are being oppressed!” and “Why can these OTHER groups have things that we can’t? How is that fair? And how am I a bad person for wanting these things, too?” It is this new strain that asks, “Why can black people have black pride and gay people have gay pride, but if I say I have WHITE PRIDE I’m a racist?” And sure! If you completely ignore the fact that things like “Black Pride” and “Gay Pride” are in fact a response to subjugation, that seems totally reasonable and fair.
The mantra itself and the idea of “White Genocide” created an incredibly successful and enticing narrative of victimhood for white people that was more appealing than “We should be in charge of stuff because we’re better than everyone else.” Not to say that doesn’t still exist — it sure as hell does — but this sort of propaganda has been more effective and more far-reaching.
The generations following the Baby Boomers were largely the first to grow up in a world in which virulent racism was considered a “fringe” thing. Although obviously racism existed and was a problem, most of us considered it a given that Jim Crow laws were bad, Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks were heroes, and that the kind of people who didn’t believe those things existed primarily as freaks on the daytime talk show circuit. Because of this background, the best way to appeal to this group was by telling them that they were the new minority. That they were the ones being oppressed and discriminated against this time.
How do you turn people who have grown up learning that Martin Luther King was a hero into virulent racists? By telling them, “You’re the new Martin Luther Kings, BUT FOR WHITE PEOPLE, who are now the oppressed ones.”
This also happened to coincide with a new examination of racism as it exists now, and the consideration of things like white privilege. It was easier, for a lot of these people, to glom onto propaganda that portrayed them as the victims rather than as unwitting villains, to cling to an ethos that required no serious introspection, empathy for others or consideration for their feelings. Propaganda that told them “You are perfect just the way you are.” And the best way to make people love you, always and forever, is to make them feel good about themselves.
The most successful forms of racism and discrimination have always relied on framing the perpetrators as victims or potential victims themselves. It’s really hard to create an ethos just around “Hey, let’s be assholes!” No one wants to be the bad guy, no one wants to see themselves as a “bad person.” In the world Whitaker created for “victimized whites” — we’re “the real racists.” They are not “racists,” we are “anti-white.”
Whitaker himself technically ran “against” Trump as the American Freedom Party’s candidate for vice president in the 2016 election. However, I do believe that the “memeification” of his mantra over the course of ten years on right-wing websites is partly what set the stage for Trump’s win. It’s impossible to ignore this. You’re not going to go to a pro-Trump forum or comment section, ever, without seeing the term “White Genocide” plastered all over the place. You’re not going to see a right-wing website that is not filled with people echoing his ideas about race and immigration. Frankly, it’s possibly the reason that Trump was able to make immigration the major issue it eventually became.
He is dead and I’m glad he’s dead. Hopefully, his stupid meme will die too, eventually.
This Sunday night’s Backlash show marks the beginning of a new era in WWE, one that would have been shocking even two years ago. For the first time in its history, the world’s largest professional wrestling promotion is attempting to turn a Japanese wrestler into one of its top stars—the top star, in fact, of one of…
I’m white. Really white. Raised on Lawrence Welk in the Rocky Mountains white. My white-person cred includes my unabashed love for Bruce Springsteen and the fact that if I eat anything spicier than a sharp Cheddar I crumble into dust and blow away. That is how white I am. Which is why I have trekked to the secret cave and lit the sacred candles and after half an hour or so of moving giant mirrors around I have lit the Merle Haggard symbol and if you look up you will see it in the sky. If you are a very young white person maybe you didn’t get the handbook yet, and so you will not know that when you see Merle Haggard’s ghostly visage above you that means that you must without delay get to your nearest Olive Garden for the White People Meeting.
I have prepared my remarks for publication so that nobody can say they missed the memo. Here is the rough draft, with full remarks to be published afterwards.
***
Good evening and welcome to this, the most sacred of white-people rituals, where we vote on the rules. We have not had a rules convention in quite some time, and I call this one against the backdrop of a dire emergency. There are a few points we need to cover this evening, and I’ll start off the conversations. Same rules as always: show of hands and your options when voting will be “yes,” “no,” “I need more information” and “let’s hold a seance to ask Caligula.”
There is a seemingly small concern that we need to address before it becomes a thing. It’s the rhyming. We’re still doing “white” and “right” and “might” and in the meantime have you heard the vocabulary coming out of your average minor hit on Soundcloud? It wasn’t hard to be the best at words when we were the only ones allowed to know most of them, and if you refer back to the minutes of that meeting we had when the slaves were freed this was something we talked about – to maintain any sense of our own superiority we were going to have to get more creatively verbose. We have failed to do that.
In fact, we’re giving up language to everyone else. We can’t even invent new insults anymore; we’re relying on the shit our great-great-great-grandpappies made up and I have to say, it’s embarrassing. Actually it’s why I called the meeting: Bill Maher is one thing, we all know that there’s an age at which one’s mental acuity begins to break down and they can’t be expected to write creative jokes or bon mots anymore and we just sort of collectively wait for them to die because otherwise we’d have to talk to them and as you know, due to the White People For Peace Accord of 1974, we let the Olds drift into obscurity when they lose their edge rather than making a fuss, to avoid internal strife.
But this guy in Flint, I think we need to address officially and as a bloc. If you’ve not heard about him, he says that the reason Flint doesn’t have clean water is that black people don’t pay their bills, though he didn’t say “black people” and he didn’t allow himself to be hobbled by stupid things like “facts” and “what actually happened there.” He’s resigned for the indiscretion of being caught on tape saying all this stuff but I think we need to discuss seriously the fact that this kind of stupidity is increasing of late.
Seriously, guys, we’ve talked about this, and we know what we would do if it were us, and the fact that nobody’s done it is an entirely incomprehensible miracle. The reason that Flint doesn’t have clean water is because the same pricks that missed the ’87 meeting were too busy speculating in overpriced housing to think about basic utilities. Which means it’s us. We’re the reason Flint doesn’t have clean water.
I know the ’87 Treaties are divisive because half the voting bloc skipped the meeting in favor of that coke party, but a quick reminder: we did promise black people that we wouldn’t use the n-word anymore. Here are the reasons why:
We decided not to be that lazy.
We are white people. We are not “cool.” We look ridiculous trying.
In the wide world of insults, “gibbering cockwomble” is more fun to say
And here’s what we negotiated in return:
EVERYTHING.
So I’d now like to open the floor for discussion on two separate motions:
First, we have a motion to create a new White-Person Category as a punitive measure. Membership in the new category of So Lame Even White People Won’t Fuck You will be automatically conferred on any man over the age of 25 who uses a racial slur in casual conversation. Category members will be relegated to their own tables at every white-people function, and any woman seen associating with them will be themselves added to the category. This way we can preserve the sacred right of free association while also having a handy way to make clear who’s lost the right to be listened to on racial matters.
Second, we have a motion to punch Richard Spencer in the face, so whichever Olive Garden has him in it, please vote amongst yourselves and let us know whether we need to drive over there ourselves or whether you’ll handle it.
We will now break out into discussion groups. There is watered-down fruit punch and a plate of pecan sandies at every table. Please keep in mind that the conference on the question of Donald Trump has been pushed off for two weeks because we’re having trouble finding enough EMTs for the final grudge match, which we expect will have at least as many casualties as the Abraham Lincoln Approval Conference did.
Artists and scientists say breakthroughs are often "lucky accidents," but one band is basing an entire music video on that premise. The song Midnight Oil from UK-based Shaking Chains uses algorithms to select semi-random bits of video from the hundre...
Way back in 2010, the USA Network’s comedy detective show Psych staged a mini Twin Peaks reunion, and with that gum already coming back in style, it’s only appropriate that Psych would get a little revival of its own. As reported by Variety, USA has announced Psych: The Movie, a two-hour holiday event that will see James Roday and Dulé Hill reprising their roles as fake psychic detective Shawn Spencer and his partner Ovaltine Jenkins, with Timothy Omundson, Maggie Lawson, Corbin Bernsen, and Kirsten Nelson returning as well alongside other “fan-favorite characters.”
The movie will take place three years after the show’s last episode (which aired on USA in 2014), and it will be about the core Psych characters reuniting when a “mystery assailant” goes after one of them. Series creator Steve Franks will direct the movie, and he also co-wrote the script along with Roday. It ...
Adding this to my to-do list before we leave the hood
We know, there's Dante's and Boiler Room, Reno and Father & Son, but bear with us—Paulie Gee's is serving up Detroit-style pizza squares that are simultaneously the fluffiest and crispiest we've ever had. [ more › ]
Many of the most horrifying parts of The Silence Of The Lambs are in its quiet sexual insinuations, particularly the way Clarice Starling is eyed by other men and the flirtatious repartee she builds with Hannibal Lecter. While many horror movies derive their power by investigating the interplay between violence and sex, a trailer edit of Jonathan Demme’s 1991 classic dices and reassembles the movie into a rom-com so convincing, it seems like it could’ve actually been the movie.
Of course, you have to cut out Buffalo Bill and a whole bunch of people being eaten, but much of the set-up of the original movie works perfectly here. Jodie Foster’s a spunky ingenue tasked with her biggest challenge, getting into the mind of a grumpy, almost avuncular figure who seems to see through her polished exterior to the real woman underneath. Despite all the odds, professional and ...
The eightscore young blondes and brunettes ofMonty Python And The Holy Grail’s Castle Anthrax have some serious competition in the red-band trailer for The Little Hours, the “unapologetically raunchy” medieval comedy that debuted at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Alison Brie, Aubrey Plaza, and Kate Micucci star as sisters Alessandra, Fernanda, and Ginevra, three foul-mouthed nuns who wile away their days rolling their eyes in confession, hurling obscenities at the peasant who works at their convent, and fighting amongst themselves. That is, until the arrival of handsome new day laborer Masseto (Dave Franco), whose presence makes the convent explode into what the official description calls “a whirlwind of pansexual horniness, substance abuse, and wicked revelry.”
Based on a bawdy tale from the 14-century Italian collection The Decameron, The Little Hours has already been condemned by the Catholic League as “pure trash,” giving heathens yet another reason to ...
One of the first things you learn about smoking weed is how to control the social situations you find yourself in. Maybe you like going out and talking to people when high; maybe you just want to dissolve into a couch. Either way, getting acclimated with your preferences along those lines is a crucial early element in marijuana consumption, and it is normally arrived at by finding yourself way outside of your comfort zone. Like, for example, on television.
In celebration of 4/20 tomorrow, News Be Funny compiled this set of obviously high people on broadcast news segments. They range from Tommy Chong inadvertently admitting that he is high to people who never quite admit they are high but whose red eyes and dazed participation in the interview heavily suggest it. (There is also what appears to be a COPS-style segment midway through of a guy for whom ...
Here’s a look at one of the most unusual, most unlikely, and, strangely, most beloved campgrounds in the entire United States.
OPEN…AND CLOSED
When the United States entered World War II following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, it was just a matter of time until American soldiers would go into battle against the German and Italian forces occupying North Africa. So in 1942, the Marine Corps opened a base called Camp Dunlap on 630 acres of desert land in Southern California, where it trained troops to fight in conditions similar to those in North Africa.
Camp Dunlap wound down after the war and closed for good in 1956. The military stripped the base of everything of value, and after they cleared out, the citizens of the nearby city of Niland tore down the few remaining buildings and used the lumber to build a church. All that was left were the concrete slabs that had served as the floors for dozens of portable buildings and tents. A few ex-marines decided to stay behind, roughing it on campsites they built on the slabs. “The Slabs,” or “Slab City,” as it’s called, has been occupied ever since.
Only the toughest and most determined “slabbers” could stand to live at the site year-round; in summer the temperature can climb past 120°F in the shade, what little there is. But over the years, the site became a popular wintering spot for RV “snowbirds.” By the 1980s, more than 3,000 campers, travel trailers, and motor homes were descending on the site each October and staying until April, when they packed up and headed north again before it got too hot. Slab City had a lot to offer its “citizens,” most of whom were on limited or fixed incomes: It was warm in winter but not unbearably hot, and because it was owned by the state (and not private property) it was legal to stay there. It didn’t cost a penny in rent, and because it was just 50 miles north of the Mexican border, affordable prescription drugs and medical care weren’t far away, either.
Before you quit your job and hit the trail for Slab City, there are a few things you need to know. For starters, there’s still no water, electricity, or sewage service. There’s not much fresh air, either: Slab City is just three miles from the Salton Sea, a dying body of water that’s bigger than Lake Tahoe. Fed by salty runoff from the irrigated fields of the Imperial Valley (known as the Valley of the Dead before the irrigation went in), the Salton is already saltier than the Pacific Ocean, and by 2017 it will be so salty that nothing will be able to live in it. The fish die-off is already well under way, and as migratory birds eat the diseased and dying fish, they die, too, and end up in the lake. The overpowering stench has been compared to a combination of cow manure, skunk spray, rotten eggs, urine-soaked hallways, and vomit.
And while Camp Dunlap has been closed for more than 60 years, the adjacent Chocolate Mountain Gunnery Range is still open for business. It’s attacked day and night by bombers and fighter planes using real ordnance. As if the loud noises and trembling ground weren’t enough, some Slab City denizens make extra money sneaking onto the range at night to collect shrapnel that they sell for scrap metal. The military sends out patrols to stop them, but the county sheriff has caught more than one “scrapper” red-handed trying to bring unexploded cluster bombs, antitank rockets, and even Sidewinder missiles back to Slab City. A few of the scrappers have been blown to bits by the bombs.
So is Slab City the last bastion of true freedom and independence in America, or is it a stinking, sunbaked, postapocalyptic ticking-time-bomb vision of hell on earth? It depends on who you ask. It’s certainly not for everyone: A 1989 survey of visitors to the Salton Sea area found that not only did most of them say they’d never want to return, more than half said they were afraid to return.
And yet in spite of it all, people keep coming back. They’ve created quite a thriving community in Slab City, complete with swap meets, a library, a singles club, a Christian center, a church, a pet cemetery, and an outdoor stage where people gather to listen to live music every night. Nearly everyone has a CB, and they’re usually tuned to channel 23, the unofficial Slab City channel, especially for the 6:00 p.m. nightly news bulletins and announcements. Many residents are better known by their CB handles (Stargazer, Brain Dead, Cardboard Johnny) than they are by their real names.
When groups of snowbirds start arriving in October, they tend to cluster their rigs in groups for security. But the various factions at Slab City—snowbirds, year-round slabbers, migrant laborers, the Apple Dumpling Gang (dune buggy enthusiasts), and even the local sheriff’s deputies, who patrol the area regularly—manage to interact on a daily basis without much fuss. Many slabbers have built small businesses that provide services to other residents. Does your rig need a new fan belt? Do you need water hauled in, or your garbage hauled out? Is your TV on the fritz? Do you want to replace your electric generator with solar panels? Someone in Slab City can take care of it for you. They even have an Avon Lady.
STAY TUNED
Imperial County isn’t crazy about Slab City, and neither is the State of California, which owns the land. But nobody wants the responsibility—or the expense—of closing it down and cleaning it up. Forty years’ worth of abandoned cars, burned-out trailers, and other junk would have to be hauled away, and the hundreds of “gopher holes” (makeshift septic tanks) scattered around the site would have to be dealt with. And who knows how many unexploded bombs are still lying around? On more than one occasion the state has tried to sell Slab City, perhaps to someone who would clean it up, put in utilities, and turn it into a commercial campground. But who would pay to camp between the stinky Salton Sea and a live bombing range? And as much as the county must hate to admit it, when all those RVs roll into town each October, they pump a fortune into the economies of Niland and other small towns in the area.
Even if the county could get rid of Slab City, would it really want to? Every year the conversation in Slab City fills with speculation and worry that this season might be the last, and every year the old-timers laugh it off. “Somebody’s always got a plan to clean up the Slabs,” one resident said in 1994. “I’m 87 now, and if I live to be 100, I’ll still be coming here.”
___________________
The article above was reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into California. This volume brings you stories of the Golden State you've never heard before. You’ll meet child prodigies, spies, traitors, celebrities (and sidekicks), gossips, hermits, humanitarians, and zealots.
Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!
I’m white. Really white. Raised on Lawrence Welk in the Rocky Mountains white. My white-person cred includes my unabashed love for Bruce Springsteen and the fact that if I eat anything spicier than a sharp Cheddar I crumble into dust and blow away. That is how white I am. Which is why I have trekked to the secret cave and lit the sacred candles and after half an hour or so of moving giant mirrors around I have lit the Merle Haggard symbol and if you look up you will see it in the sky. If you are a very young white person maybe you didn’t get the handbook yet, and so you will not know that when you see Merle Haggard’s ghostly visage above you that means that you must without delay get to your nearest Olive Garden for the White People Meeting.
Artists and scientists say breakthroughs are often "lucky accidents," but one band is basing an entire music video on that premise. The song Midnight Oil from UK-based Shaking Chains uses algorithms to select semi-random bits of video from the hundre...
Chicago rap up-and-comer Femdot, post-punk legends ESG and Chicago house staple Derrick Carter are among the notables. [ more › ]
We know, there's Dante's and Boiler Room, Reno and Father & Son, but bear with us—Paulie Gee's is serving up Detroit-style pizza squares that are simultaneously the fluffiest and crispiest we've ever had. [ more › ]
(Image credit: Flickr user Gerry)
(Image credit: Flickr user Don Barrett)
(Image credit: Flickr user rocor)
(Image credit: Flickr user Marc Cooper)
(Image credit: Flickr user bellbeefer)
(Image credit: Flickr user rocor)
The article above was reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into California. This volume brings you stories of the Golden State you've never heard before. You’ll meet child prodigies, spies, traitors, celebrities (and sidekicks), gossips, hermits, humanitarians, and zealots. 