Posts Tagged ‘white supremacist’
 
May 22, 2013 0

In Vancouver, Washington, a Cluster of Luysters

brent-luyster-tightrope

Brent Luys­ter

Mem­bers of the Clark County, Wash­ing­ton, SWAT team arrested three men this past week, at least two of them known white suprema­cists, in con­nec­tion with a pos­si­ble hate crime at a Van­cou­ver bar in March 2013.  Arrested at their sep­a­rate res­i­dences were Brent Ward Luys­ter, Robert Arlen Luys­ter, and Don­ald H. McElfish. 

The three men allegedly attacked a 45-year-old black man at a bar in Rose Vil­lage, punch­ing, kick­ing and beat­ing the vic­tim while using racial slurs and threat­en­ing to kill him.  Police have charged the three sus­pects with second-degree felony assault and racially moti­vated mali­cious harassment.

The two Luys­ter broth­ers have a long his­tory of white supremacy and crim­i­nal activ­ity, dat­ing back to at least 2000.  That sum­mer, as racist skin­heads, the two men (and two oth­ers) attacked an African-American man in a racially-motivated assault.  They pleaded guilty to assault charges in 2001.  Three years later, police arrested Brent W. Luys­ter again, this time for vio­lat­ing parole by asso­ci­at­ing with another white suprema­cist.  In July 2005, Van­cou­ver police arrested Brent W. Luys­ter and another white suprema­cist on alle­ga­tions of mali­cious harassment.

Brent W. and Robert A. Luys­ter have not, how­ever, been the only Luys­ters to have got­ten in trou­ble in this fash­ion.  In late 2004, another Brent Luys­ter, Brent D. Luys­ter (iden­ti­fi­able by the “white pride” tat­toos on his upper arms), briefly escaped from the Larch Cor­rec­tions Cen­ter in east­ern Clark County.  He may be the father of Brent W. and Robert.

In early 2005, Port­land, Ore­gon, police arrested a fourth white suprema­cist Luys­ter, Michael Lee Luys­ter, for not hav­ing a driver’s license while trans­port­ing a car­load of white suprema­cists to protest at a local com­mu­nity cen­ter.  Port­land is just south of Vancouver.

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March 28, 2013 1

White Supremacists To Stage Protest Over Memphis Parks

This Sat­ur­day, March 30, mem­bers of a North Carolina-based Ku Klux Klan group and other white suprema­cists will stage a protest at a cour­t­house in down­town Mem­phis, Ten­nessee, to protest that city’s deci­sion to rename three local parks bear­ing names related to the Con­fed­er­acy. In ral­ly­ing sup­port for the protest, Chris Barker, the “Impe­r­ial Wiz­ard” of the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (LWK), told fol­low­ers that the gov­ern­ment was attempt­ing to “erase all that our Anglo Saxon Race has to be proud of.” Fol­low­ing the protest, the LWK plans to host a cross-burning on pri­vate prop­erty at an undis­closed location.

A num­ber of Klan groups reacted with anger in Feb­ru­ary 2013, after the Mem­phis City Coun­cil voted 9–0 to rename Nathan Bed­ford For­rest Park, Con­fed­er­ate Park and Jef­fer­son Davis Park with less offen­sive titles. Of the three, the park named after For­rest had been the most con­tro­ver­sial, as prior to the Civil War, For­rest had been a slave trader, and dur­ing the War was a gen­eral who had been asso­ci­ated with the mas­sacre of African-American sol­diers. After the war he became the first national leader of the Ku Klux Klan. 

Klan reac­tion fol­low­ing the vote was predictable. James Moore, the LWK’s Grand Dragon for the Realm of Vir­ginia, posted a YouTube video of him­self attempt­ing to describe the City Council’s unan­i­mous vote as a “con­tin­u­ing cul­tural geno­cide [against] white Americans.” Frank Ancona, the Missouri-based leader of another Klan group, the Tra­di­tion­al­ist Amer­i­can Knights, claimed that “nig­gardly politi­cians” had “declared WAR on our White Con­fed­er­ate Heroes and History.”

Barker launched a cam­paign ask­ing his mem­bers and those of other Klan groups to call Mem­phis city coun­cil mem­bers to protest the deci­sion, even pro­vid­ing Klans­men with their phone num­bers and e-mail addresses. Frank Ancona urged his own mem­bers to par­tic­i­pate in “call­ing these degen­er­ate scum ASAP and let’s make them sorry they ever made this ridicu­lous deci­sion.” Some city coun­cil mem­bers have reported receiv­ing such communications.

On Feb­ru­ary 14, Tamra Crow­der sub­mit­ted a per­mit on behalf of the LWK for  the group’s pub­lic protest.  Other white suprema­cists soon joined in.  On March 10, the National Social­ist Move­ment (NSM), a neo-Nazi group based in Detroit, Michi­gan, announced that NSM leader Jeff Schoep would speak at the Mem­phis event.  NSM mem­bers from Texas, South Car­olina and Geor­gia also plan to attend. The North­ern Mis­sis­sippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Arkansas-based Inter­na­tional Key­stone Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and the Louisiana-based neo-Nazi group Aryan Nations have all also claimed that mem­bers would attend.

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March 21, 2013 7

Extremists Flock to 40th Annual CPAC Conference

Mer­lin Miller, a white suprema­cist affil­i­ated with the Amer­i­can Free­dom Party, attended CPAC 2013.

The 40th annual Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence (CPAC) on March 14–16, 2013 in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. attracted a num­ber of indi­vid­u­als on the extreme right of the polit­i­cal spec­trum. Atten­dees at CPAC this year included a white suprema­cist who ran for Pres­i­dent in the 2012 elec­tion, mem­bers of a “white stu­dent union” at Tow­son Uni­ver­sity, and a reported white suprema­cist who cur­rently runs an anti-immigrant group. A promi­nent mem­ber of the anti-government Oath Keep­ers group pre­sented at the event.

Sher­iff Richard Mack of Ari­zona, an anti-government activist and mem­ber of the Oath Keep­ers, pre­sented at this year’s CPAC at a ses­sion titled “How a Con­sti­tu­tional Sher­iff can Pro­tect Your Sec­ond Amend­ment Rights.” The Oath Keep­ers claim they will refuse to carry out cer­tain “orders” that they expect the fed­eral gov­ern­ment to issue, such as putting cit­i­zens in con­cen­tra­tion camps, assist­ing for­eign troops in invad­ing the coun­try and declar­ing mar­tial law. Dur­ing his speech, Mack claimed “the Pres­i­dent has no author­ity in your county” and asserted that “there is no gun con­trol in the Constitution.”

Matthew Heim­bach, a for­mer activist with the now defunct racist group Youth for West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion (YWC) and the founder of the “white stu­dent union” at Tow­son Uni­ver­sity in Mary­land, attended CPAC with other stu­dents. Heim­bach and another stu­dent, Scott Terry, dis­rupted a panel titled, “Trump the Race Card: Are You Sick and Tired of Being Called a Racist When You Know You’re Not One?” Terry pro­claimed that “I feel like my peo­ple, my demo­graphic are being sys­tem­at­i­cally dis­en­fran­chised” and asked the speaker, K. Carl Smith of the group Fred­er­ick Dou­glas Repub­li­cans, “Why can’t we be more like Booker T. Wash­ing­ton Repub­li­cans?” Smith responded by talk­ing about a let­ter writ­ten by Fred­er­ick Dou­glas for­giv­ing his slave mas­ter. Terry inter­rupted Smith, blurt­ing out, “for giv­ing him shel­ter and food and…,” caus­ing a com­mo­tion. A few moments later both Terry and Heim­bach fur­ther dis­rupted pro­ceed­ings by shout­ing that Mar­tin Luther King was a “Marxist.”

Robert Van­der­voort, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the anti-immigrant group Pro­Eng­lish, attended this year’s CPAC. Van­der­voort is report­edly the for­mer head of the white suprema­cist group Chicagoland Friends of Amer­i­can Renais­sance, a local chap­ter of the white suprema­cist orga­ni­za­tion Amer­i­can Renais­sance. Another extrem­ist in atten­dance was Merlin Miller, a white suprema­cist who ran for Pres­i­dent in the 2012 elec­tion on the Amer­i­can Third Posi­tion (A3P) ticket. A3P, now renamed the Amer­i­can Free­dom Party, is a white suprema­cist polit­i­cal party. Miller attended one ses­sion titled “Iran and the Islamist Threat to Amer­ica and the West: What is — What Should Be — Our Strat­egy.” As reported by ADL, Miller attended an anti-Semitic “Hol­ly­wood­ism” con­fer­ence in Tehran ear­lier in 2013.

Though one of the major themes of the 2013 CPAC was increas­ing inclu­siv­ity in the GOP, extrem­ist ele­ments, though small in num­ber, were still able not only to attend but to par­tic­i­pate at this year’s event.

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