Posts Tagged ‘white student union’
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.

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September 13, 2012 18

White Supremacist Student Leader Creates Web site for his “White Student Union”

Matthew Heim­bach, a Tow­son Uni­ver­sity stu­dent who is try­ing to start a “White Stu­dent Union” on cam­pus, cre­ated a web­site for the union that fur­ther reveals his white suprema­cist beliefs.

On the newly cre­ated site, Heim­bach pro­vides links to what he describes are “pro-white” web­sites.   Almost all of the sites listed, how­ever, are actu­ally openly white suprema­cist, such as those for the Council of Con­ser­v­a­tive Cit­i­zens (CCC), the Amer­i­can Third Posi­tion and Amer­i­can Renais­sance.

The CCC is a direct descen­dant of the white suprema­cist White Cit­i­zens Coun­cils that fought inte­gra­tion in the 1950s and 60s. Amer­i­can Third Posi­tion is a whites-only polit­i­cal party whose mis­sion is “to rep­re­sent the inter­ests of White Amer­i­cans.” Amer­i­can Renais­sance is the racist web­site run by white suprema­cist Jared Tay­lor, who pub­lishes a monthly jour­nal by the same title and hosts an annual con­fer­ence that brings together some of the lead­ing white suprema­cists in the United States.

Heim­bach recently announced that Tay­lor will speak at Tow­son on Octo­ber 2, 2012.

Heim­bach also lists “rec­om­mended read­ings” that include books authored by a vari­ety of well-known white suprema­cists and racists, such as Fran­cis Parker Yockey’s “Imperium,” con­sid­ered one of the essen­tial works of mod­ern white supremacy. One book rec­om­mended by Heim­bach is the novel “Camp of the Saints” by French­man Jean Ras­pail. This racist novel por­trays a France being invaded by non-whites who are depicted as disease-carrying and sex­u­ally aggres­sive. The list also fea­tures two books authored by the late white suprema­cist Sam Fran­cis: “Essen­tial Writ­ings on Race” and “Race and the Amer­i­can Prospect.” In the lat­ter book, Fran­cis bemoans the “absence of racial con­scious­ness among whites.”

Prior to cre­at­ing the Web site, the Tow­son stu­dent news­pa­per, The Tow­erlight, pub­lished a let­ter by Heim­bach advo­cat­ing for a white stu­dent union.   Fly­ers were also placed all over the Tow­son cam­pus that pro­claimed: “love your race, sup­port a white stu­dent union.”

Heim­bach is a for­mer leader of the Youth for West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion chap­ter at Tow­son, a group with racist ties whose motto is “defend­ing the West on campus.”

Heim­bach still needs the approval of the Uni­ver­sity to make the White Stu­dent Union an officially-sanctioned uni­ver­sity group.  His Web site sug­gests that he will set­tle for an unsanc­tioned group if need be.  Either way, he has made clear his inten­tion to impose his white suprema­cist views on Tow­son stu­dents, staff, and faculty.

ADL, right-wing extrem­ism, white suprema­cist, white stu­dent union, hate group, jared tay­lor, coun­cil of con­ser­v­a­tive cit­i­zens, Amer­i­can renais­sance, Amer­i­can third posi­tion, fran­cis parker yockey, imperium, matthew heim­bach, youth for west­ern civilization

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