Latest Developments and Trends in Extremism & Terrorism

 
April 25, 2013 1

Director of White Supremacist Organization Tied to Anti-immigrant Groups

roan-garcia-quintana

Roan Gar­cia Quintana

Roan Garcia-Quintana, a direc­tor of the white suprema­cist Coun­cil of Con­ser­v­a­tive Cit­i­zens (CofCC), is closely tied to anti-immigrant orga­ni­za­tions in the United States. Garcia-Quintana is a well-known leader in the CofCC, a group descended from the White Cit­i­zens Coun­cils, which opposed deseg­re­ga­tion of schools dur­ing the Civil Rights era.

He is a fre­quent speaker at CofCC regional events and national con­fer­ences. The CofCC has called mixed-race mar­riage “the mon­gre­liza­tion of the races” and is openly hos­tile to immi­gra­tion. The CofCC state­ment of prin­ci­ples says, “We there­fore oppose the mas­sive immi­gra­tion of non-European and non-Western peo­ples into the United States that threat­ens to trans­form our nation into a non-European major­ity in our lifetime.”

In a recent post on his Face­book wall, Garcia-Quintana wrote about attend­ing an event spon­sored by the extreme anti-immigrant group Fed­er­a­tion for Amer­i­can Immi­gra­tion Reform (FAIR).  The event, “Hold Their Feet to the Fire,” which took place April 17 and 18 in Wash­ing­ton, DC, brought together anti-immigrant activists, fig­ures, radio hosts and immi­gra­tion restric­tion­ist mem­bers of Con­gress in an effort to influ­ence the immi­gra­tion debate. This year’s event focused on try­ing to derail immi­gra­tion reform by dis­cussing what FAIR sees as prob­lems with the new immi­gra­tion reform bill pro­posed by a bipar­ti­san group of senators.

Par­tic­i­pants in the event pre­sented their views on con­ser­v­a­tive talk radio and lob­bied mem­bers of Con­gress to vote against the bill.  On his Face­book page Garcia-Quintana said, “Attended the Fed­er­a­tion for Amer­i­can Reform’s annual Hold Their Feet to the Fire to lobby our SC Con­gres­sional Del­e­ga­tion to stop the Rubio-McCain-Schumer Amnesty bill.” A photo on FAIR’s Face­book wall indi­cates that Garcia-Quintana also attended FAIR’s 2011 “Hold Their Feet to the Fire” event.

Garcia-Quintana’s rela­tion­ship with anti-immigrant orga­ni­za­tions dates back a num­ber of years. He is the founder of the South Carolina-based anti-immigrant group Amer­i­cans Have Had Enough Coali­tion. He also appeared in a 2009 video titled “Immi­gra­tion 103—American Trauma: Jobs and the Econ­omy,” pro­duced by the anti-immigrant group Num­ber­sUSA.

There are well-documented ties between the anti-immigrant move­ment and the CofCC beyond Garcia-Quintana. Roy Beck, the founder of Num­ber­sUSA and Rick Olt­man, a for­mer FAIR field orga­nizer, both addressed CofCC national con­fer­ences in the past. In addi­tion, other well-known fig­ures in the anti-immigrant move­ment, such as Wayne Lut­ton, the edi­tor of the anti-immigrant jour­nal The Social Con­tract, have also spo­ken at CofCC events.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

April 23, 2013 2

Hate App Targets Towson University

The increas­ing exploita­tion of easy-to-use soft­ware to cre­ate smart­phone apps by hate groups sig­nals a move into a new realm of dig­i­tal propaganda.

Some hate groups, like the neo-confederate League of the South, have pro­duced apps intended for a gen­eral audi­ence. Oth­ers, how­ever, are devel­op­ing apps with spe­cific pro­pa­ganda tar­gets in mind. For exam­ple, the Tow­son White Stu­dent Union, founded by white suprema­cist Matthew Heim­bach, a stu­dent at Tow­son Uni­ver­sity in Mary­land, has cre­ated an app specif­i­cally tar­get­ing stu­dents at the school.

Like the League of the South’s app, the Tow­son White Stu­dent Union (Tow­son WSU) app is visu­ally crude and tech­ni­cally rudi­men­tary, pri­mar­ily offer­ing a col­lec­tion of links. In the case of the Tow­son WSU app, the links lead to blogs, a group Face­book page, a Twit­ter account for the group’s orga­nizer, a Google search results page, and a YouTube chan­nel for the group.

These Android apps are not avail­able through the autho­rized Google Play web­site. However, as Android apps do not need to be cer­ti­fied for instal­la­tion (unlike iPad/iPod/iPhone apps), they are read­ily avail­able through unof­fi­cial apps dis­tri­b­u­tion websites.

Years ago, tech­no­log­i­cal advances made it easy for hate groups to cre­ate web­sites with­out actu­ally hav­ing sophis­ti­cated com­puter knowl­edge or skills. As the preva­lence of wire­less devices increases and easy-to-use app cre­ation soft­ware pro­lif­er­ates, the pres­ence of this sort of smart­phone and tablet app will undoubt­edly increase.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

April 22, 2013 0

Inspire Magazine: A Staple Of Domestic Terror

Pres­sure Cooker Bomb From Inspire Magazine

Update — April 23: Fed­eral law enforce­ment offi­cials have report­edly con­firmed that Dzhokhar Tsar­naev and his brother got bomb-making instruc­tions from Inspire magazine.

Shortly after author­i­ties revealed that pres­sure cook­ers were used in the explo­sives det­o­nated at the Boston Marathon last week, numer­ous media out­lets began to report and spec­u­late that the bombs matched designs in Al Qaeda in the Ara­bian Penin­sula’s English-language ter­ror mag­a­zine, Inspire.

Let’s be clear, there is still no evi­dence that broth­ers Tamer­lan and Dzkhokhar Tsar­naev read the ter­ror­ist mag­a­zine or used its pres­sure cooker instruc­tions, which are not unique to Inspire. How­ever, the Tsarnaev’s online activ­ity and social media pro­files indi­cate some fas­ci­na­tion with mil­i­tancy and Islam that are con­sis­tent with other mes­sages of Inspire.

Numer­ous inter­na­tional and domes­tic extrem­ists moti­vated by rad­i­cal inter­pre­ta­tions of Islam have been influ­enced by the mag­a­zine and, in some cases, report­edly uti­lized the bomb mak­ing instruc­tions in their attempts to carry out attacks. In the United States, for example:

  • In Novem­ber 2012, Raees Qazi was arrested along with his brother, She­heryar, for allegedly plot­ting a bomb attack against unspec­i­fied tar­gets in New York City.  Raees report­edly admit­ted hav­ing read Inspire mag­a­zine, and a search of his home turned up bomb-making com­po­nents con­sis­tent with instruc­tions that can be found in an issue of Inspire he had read.
  • In Novem­ber 2011, Jose Pimentel was arrested and charged with state-level ter­ror­ism offenses in New York after he allegedly came close to com­plet­ing three bombs based on an Inspire design. Pimentel’s web­site, “True Islam,” also reposted PDF copies of Inspire mag­a­zine. Pimentel appar­ently had planned to attack return­ing U.S. mil­i­tary per­son­nel, post office and police targets. He is still await­ing trial.
  • In July 2011, Naser Jason Abdo was arrested at a motel in Killeen, Texas, where author­i­ties claimed that he was plot­ting to attack a restau­rant fre­quented by mil­i­tary per­son­nel based at Fort Hood.  Bomb mak­ing com­po­nents were recov­ered from the motel room. The arti­cle “How to Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom” from the first issue of Inspire mag­a­zine was report­edly also found in his room. Abdo has since been sen­tenced to life-in-prison for his attempted attack.
  • Adel Daoud, who was arrested in Sep­tem­ber 2012 and charged with plot­ting to bomb a Chicago-area bar, sent his friends copies of the mag­a­zine in order to “brain­wash them,” and called Inspire “the best mag­a­zine I have read.”

Inspire’s solic­i­ta­tion for reader con­tri­bu­tions have also played a role in the rad­i­cal­iza­tion process of other would be bombers in the U.S.

  • Mohamed Osman Mohamud, who was con­victed of attempt­ing to bomb the 2010 Christ­mas Tree Light­ing in Port­land, Ore­gon, allegedly wrote and sub­mit­ted an arti­cle to Inspire, although it was not published.
  • Quazi Nafis, who pleaded guilty to attempt­ing to bomb the New York Fed­eral Reserve Build­ing in Octo­ber 2012, also wrote an arti­cle that he sup­pos­edly planned to sub­mit to Inspire after his attack in which he described his desire to “destroy America.”

Most recently, in Novem­ber 2012, four men from South­ern Cal­i­for­nia were arrested and charged with plan­ning to travel abroad to Afghanistan to fight along­side the Tal­iban and Al Qaeda. Accord­ing to the crim­i­nal com­plaint, the inves­ti­ga­tion began in Jan­u­ary 2012 when one of the men was searched as he crossed the U.S.-Mexico bor­der and was found to have a copy of Inspire in his possession.

Samir Khan, a 24-year-old Amer­i­can known for dis­trib­ut­ing ter­ror­ist pro­pa­ganda mate­r­ial online, was the prin­ci­pal author of Inspire before he was killed by a U.S. drone strike on Sep­tem­ber 30, 2011.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Older Posts
Newer Entries