BORN IN PALESTINE, ASSASSINATED BY PIPE-BOMB IN LOS ANGELES

Santa Ana's Palestinian, Christian, Human Rights Activist Alex Odeh, KILLED BY Jewish Extremists

ASSASSINATED on 11 Oct 1985 in His Santa Ana Office by Jewish Terrorists, But Investigation Scuttled Despite Strong Evidence Linking his Murder to terrorist "Jewish Defense League"

(Note: It is confirmed that the ADL's investigator paid by Bruce Hochman had the key to Odeh's office in his files)

2023Oct30 LA Times: Bomber’s parole a 'gut punch' for Palestinian Americans

 

latimes.com

Bomber’s parole a 'gut punch' for Palestinian Americans - Los Angeles Times

Gabriel San Román

ByGabriel San RománStaff Writer 

Oct. 30, 2023

 

From <https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-10-30/jewish-defense-league-bomber-robert-manning-parole-patricia-wilkerson-murder>

 

 

 

Nearly 40 years ago, long before the latest conflagration between Israel and Hamas militants, a bomb ripped through the Santa Ana office of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, taking the life of the group’s regional director, Palestinian American activist Alex Odeh.

The FBI labeled the bombing a terrorist attack and early on identified the Jewish Defense League as “the possible responsible group.” At the time, the JDL was the focus of numerous state and federal investigations and had gained notoriety as an underground network of radical militants, espousing a violent form of Jewish nationalism that mainstream Jewish leaders rejected.

The FBI never formally charged anyone in Odeh’s death, but for years the agency’s investigation focused on Robert Manning, a burly ex-boxer from Los Angeles, and his wife, Rochelle, both JDL adherents.

With the Odeh probe still underway, Manning was convicted in 1993 of an unrelated murder: a 1980 mail-bomb attack that killed Patricia Wilkerson, a Manhattan Beach secretary. Manning was sentenced to life in prison. And in the ensuing decades, the Odeh case largely went cold.

Since becoming eligible for parole in 2001, Manning tried — and failed — seven times to win release. He appealed the most recent rejection, and on Oct. 3, an appellate board overturned the decision in accordance with a federal law that mandates parole for inmates who have served 30 years of a life sentence and are deemed unlikely to reoffend.

Now 71, Manning is on track to be paroled in July from a federal penitentiary in Phoenix.

The appellate board found that Manning’s “almost spotless record during his 32 years of incarceration made it unlikely he would reoffend.” The decision also took into account Manning’s age and health concerns, according to a U.S. Parole Commission spokesperson.

Paul Batista, an attorney representing Manning, declined to comment and did not make his client available for interview. At a past parole hearing, Manning detailed plans to live with his sister in Los Angeles and sell his prison artwork online if he won release.

Among Arab American leaders, news of Manning’s parole has aggravated the painful wound of Odeh’s still unsolved death, and for some, has reinforced a belief that the American judicial system let them down.

“It was a gut punch,” said Abed Ayoub, national executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, a civil rights group created in 1980 to combat anti-Arab stereotypes. “If Manning was truly reformed, then he would cooperate and give law enforcement names of the individuals he worked with or the individuals that he knows were involved in the Odeh assassination. He’s done none of that.”

Ayoub learned of Manning’s parole through the Justice Department’s victim notification system, an alert service for federal crime victims. The decision came just days before the committee hosted its annual memorial banquet for Odeh in Garden Grove.

Founded by controversial Rabbi Meir Kahane, the JDL emerged in New York City in 1968 in the wake of the Six Day War between Israel and a coalition of Arab states. Its members embraced a self-appointed mission to aggressively combat antisemitism with swaggering slogans like “every Jew a .22” that over time evolved into terror campaigns against their perceived enemies.

Five terror attacks in 1985 alone led the FBI to warn Arab Americans that they were in a “zone of danger” from an unnamed group taking aim at the “enemies of Israel.”

“To many Jews in North America, they were seen as heinous crimes,” said Alon Burstein, an Israel Institute Fellow and visiting assistant professor in UC Irvine’s political science department. “On the other hand, it was also seen as the first time — with the exception of the state of Israel — that Jews were standing up militantly and saying ‘never again.’ ”

Manning grew up in an Orthodox Jewish household in Los Angeles, where he dropped out of Fairfax High School at 17. He joined the Army only to leave a year later on a “not able to adjust” discharge. He worked variously as a private investigator, machinist and draftsman.

Manning joined the JDL’s West Coast chapter in 1971 and soon ran afoul of the law. He was convicted in the 1972 bombing of an Arab activist’s Hollywood home, and sentenced to three years’ probation after disavowing his JDL affiliation in court.

After the case, he left for Israel, where he renewed his JDL ties and continued to travel back and forth to the U.S.

Federal authorities considered Manning a suspect in four political bombings in 1985, including the one that killed Odeh. One attack killed a suspected Nazi in Paterson, N.J.; another bomb exploded outside the home of a suspected Nazi in Brentwood, N.Y., and a third injured two police officers trying to defuse a bomb sent to an Arab American group in Boston.

But the attack Manning served time for — Wilkerson’s mail-bomb murder — did not appear political in nature. Two years after Manning’s 1993 conviction, a Los Angeles federal jury convicted real estate agent William Ross of paying Manning to carry out the attack. Prosecutors said Ross intended the bomb for Wilkerson’s boss, who had sued Ross over the sale of a Manhattan Beach house, costing him thousands of dollars.

Manning’s wife, Rochelle, whom prosecutors also implicated in the bombing, died in an Israeli prison in 1994 while fighting extradition to the U.S.

With Manning in prison for the Wilkerson murder, the FBI continued to question him in the Odeh bombing. At his last three parole hearings, the Odeh family and representatives of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee were recognized as victims of Manning and allowed to argue against his release.

During a Nov. 2020 hearing, Manning explicitly denied involvement in the Odeh bombing and challenged the government to bring a case. “If they say I’m the top subject, then charge me for it, and I’ll go to court and prove my innocence,” he said.

Last year, Manning sued the government for allowing the Odeh family and the Arab committee to participate in his parole hearings. A judge dismissed the suit in February.

Odeh’s eldest daughter, Helena, said being recognized as victims at Manning’s parole hearings had brought her family some comfort. Now, with him set to be paroled, even that half-measure of justice seems to be slipping away.

“It does seem like we’re taking a step back,” Helena said. “But we’re going to continue to fight for justice and hope that my dad’s murder is solved. He didn’t deserve to die the way that he did.”

Odeh was seen as a polite, soft-spoken voice of moderation in his day. He was a poet and lecturer at Coastline College in Orange County, as well as West Coast director for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. He held an unwavering commitment to Palestinian statehood as a prerequisite for peace in the Mideast.

With the Israel-Hamas war exploding anew, Helena said she is thinking of her father more often than usual.

“I wonder what he would do or say in this situation,” she said. “I know he wouldn’t want innocent people getting hurt all around.”

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-10-30/jewish-defense-league-bomber-robert-manning-parole-patricia-wilkerson-murder

2022Jan04 Haaretz Is U.S.-Israel Alliance Blocking Justice in Murder Case of Palestinian-American Activist? [YES]

San Román asks: 

“Did this case face obstacles from the State Department? 

Was there a critical lack of cooperation on behalf of the Israeli government? 

Is there anything in extradition treaties that basically forbade Manning being indicted in connection with the Odeh bombing? 

Is there anything in the extradition treaty between the U.S. and Israel that’s getting in the way of bringing over Ben-Yosef and Fuchs?”

Is U.S.-Israel Alliance Blocking Justice in Murder Case of Palestinian-American Activist? 

Samuels, Ben | link Haaretz   |Tel Aviv. 04 Jan 2022.   

WASHINGTON – On the morning of October 11, 1985, Alex Odeh arrived at his office at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s headquarters in Santa Ana, California. Odeh, a Palestinian-American activist and the ADC’s West Coast regional director, opened his door and was fatally wounded by a pipe bomb, dying several hours after being taken to a nearby hospital.

Odeh’s murder shocked, though did not surprise, the Arab-American community. Odeh was a frequent target of death threats over several years, mainly from extremists associated with the Jewish Defense League – a Jewish extremist organization linked to a raft of terror attacks against Arab-American leaders in the run-up to his murder.

Three decades later, the FBI has yet to announce suspects in Odeh’s killing, though recent investigative reporting, action in Congress and a growing willingness to indict far-right Jewish extremists have revived the cold case. 

Though no one has been identified formally, three people of interest were named at the scene of the crime – it was later learned – and they were also named 11 years later at a multiagency meeting. They were identified once more when Odeh’s eldest daughter, Helena Odeh, and ADC President Samer Khalaf addressed one of the men’s parole hearings decades later.

SUSPECTS FLEE TO ISRAEL

The three reported suspects were quickly linked to the JDL but fled to Israel shortly after the bombing. While one of the men is currently in federal prison after being extradited to the United States in 1993 for an unrelated murder, the other two are believed to be living openly in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba.

The 36-year unsolved murder reemerged last month after Sen. Richard Durbin, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, demanded an update from the FBI on the case after investigative reporting by feature writer Gabriel San Román for The Los Angeles Times' Times OC newsletter, which focuses on Orange County.

“This heinous case of domestic terrorism must be zealously investigated and, finally, resolved. In order to preserve the rule of law and deter future would-be attackers, the terrorists who murdered Alex Odeh must not escape accountability,” Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, said when he wrote FBI Director Christopher Wray.

COVER UP

San Román, who has been reporting on the Odeh murder for more than a decade, describes the case as “one of the most peculiar cold cases in U.S. history, and it’s been made peculiar by the pressures impressed upon it and not the actual leads and evidence-gathering.”

Zone of danger

San Román says people close to the investigation firmly believe the Odeh murder hasn’t remained a cold case due to a lack of leads. His reporting, citing the Santa Ana police’s Lt. Hugh Mooney, revealed that the FBI-LAPD anti-terrorism task force surveilled two people while they were traveling from New York to Los Angeles, though this trail later went cold upon their arrival at Los Angeles International Airport.

“Per Mooney’s vivid recollection, those two individuals were Robert Manning and Keith [Israel] Fuchs,” San Román says. San Román's reporting late last year marked the first on-the-record confirmation from a law enforcement official involved in the case that the three men were immediately identified as people of interest. In 1988, The Village Voice’s Robert Friedman had cited an anonymous source identifying Manning and Fuchs, as well as Andy Green, who now goes by the name of Baruch Ben-Yosef.

The three were linked to the JDL, the group that was founded by Meir Kahane in 1968 and preached a racist form of Jewish nationalism. “It had an agenda that supported violence and political extremism, and was known as the entity for engaging in a series of violent incidents throughout the country,” says the vice president of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, Oren Segal.

“When people think of extremist and terrorist organizations, the JDL certainly fits that bill and is one of the few that had an orientation around Kahane and his sense of nationalism and Jewish identity,” Segal adds. “It’s unique as a Jewish organization. I can’t think of any organization with the JDL’s agenda that is on any list.”

Of the three suspects, San Román is particularly interested in the Los Angeles-born Manning. He was extradited to the United States from Israel in 1993 over the fatal 1980 mail bombing that killed a secretary in Manhattan Beach, California, Patricia Wilkerson. Manning is currently in a federal prison in Arizona. 

In 2016, Manning requested that he be allowed to serve the remainder of his life sentence in Israel. “The far right in Israel sees Manning as a folk hero of sorts. That mortified both the Wilkerson and the Odeh families,” San Román says.

Helena Odeh and Khalaf of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee addressed Manning’s 2018 and 2020 parole hearings. While Manning has not been formally linked to the Odeh murder, San Román reported that the Justice Department found that the ADC and the Odeh family were victims of Manning; the department never responded to San Román’s request for comment.

“There’s a strong sense that Manning had something to do with the Odeh case, short of actually charging, indicting or convicting him of it,” San Román says. “It’s classic squaring the circle, and that’s where things are at right now.”

The cases of Green and Fuchs, however, pose greater questions about Israel’s cooperation in recent decades. Mooney told San Román that a 1996 multiagency meeting revealed that the FBI was trying to surveil them in Israel due to a lack of cooperation from the Shin Bet security service and the Israeli government.

Also, the FBI would not comment on another pertinent detail revealed by San Román. “A State Department official basically curtailed the FBI’s efforts with a big lecture about international relations. Mooney recalls that politics trumped detective work,” he says. 

“The ADC has a lot of big questions about what exactly is getting in the way of pursuing justice and producing an indictment. Mooney has seen a lot of homicide cases in his career, and did not feel as if this case was thwarted by anything other than politics. He felt it was easy to prosecute.”

2nd Class Citizens & Double-Standard: FBI Denies Protection & Rule of Law to

Zogby adds: “I was upset personally and professionally. The then-FBI director said after Alex was murdered that we were in a zone of danger. We knew we were in a zone of danger. We were subject to death threats all the time, we were subjected to violence a number of occasions. The fact that so little was done to find the murderers, especially when there were leads aplenty, was deeply troubling.”

A visit from Kahane

[DUFUS FBI Investigation - Claiming 'False Flag Operation ' by Palestinian linked organization]

There were shortsighted attempts to tie Odeh’s murder as revenge for the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, a tourist killed by Palestine Liberation Organization hijackers on the Achille Lauro cruise ship in 1985. 

Odeh appeared on local television to comment on the Klinghoffer killing, which San Román says was the framing the media chose after the Odeh killing. “Santa Ana was not the first ADC office to be bombed; you have to look at it in context,” San Román says. “Whoever was culpable would have been planning this long in advance, and Odeh unequivocally condemned the murder of Klinghoffer.”

Jewish Defense League deputy Irv Rubin said his tears were spent on Klinghoffer, so his tear ducts were dry for Odeh. “There’s just a lot that points to the other way on this. Alex Odeh was assassinated in a context of a string of bombings and long feared for his life before Klinghoffer appeared in headlines,” San Román says.

Zogby recalls how his own office at the Palestinian Human Rights Campaign was firebombed in 1980. “The JDL issued a statement approving of the fire, but they didn’t claim credit. We know from our own personal experience with them – Kahane came to my office pounding on the door screaming ‘We know you’re in there, come out,’” Zogby says. “We knew that they were a threat.”

While Durbin’s letter puts the onus on the FBI, Román believes the FBI was actually “pretty zealous and professional” about surveillance and any difficulty arose from superiors. “Three people are mentioned, almost as a mantra at this point, by those still interested,” he says.

Zogby believes the case also has relevancy for the current focus on domestic extremism. “With all the resources we expend on domestic extremism and this murder has never been acted upon, even when there were leads aplenty, and we haven’t said to the Israelis that we want to extradite these guys or send over officials to actually question them? It’s an insult,” he says.

 “It’s an insult to Alex’s family, it’s an insult to my community and it’s an insult to those who believe that there ought to be one standard of law for everybody. It can’t be that you can murder an Arab American and get away with it.”

From a political standpoint, Durbin represents the highest level of interest in the Odeh case in 36 years. Also, there is optimism about the Biden administration’s potential role due to Attorney General Merrick Garland’s prosecutorial work on the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

While Zogby is pleased with Durbin’s interest, his optimism remains cautious. “I’ve been in this game for a long time and I don’t want to play Charlie Brown and the football,” he says. “I see hopeful signs that something might happen, and then it turns out for naught.”

For her part, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the lone Palestinian American currently serving in Congress, told the House in October: 

“Arab Americans and Palestinian Americans are still here, loud and proud, speaking truth to power, and carrying on Alex’s fight in his memory. Our politics of love are the only response. Those who support oppressive policies in Palestine that murdered Alex and those who continue to fearmonger and whip up hate against us to this day will not win. We will never give up, Alex. I am proud to be here because of you.”

While U.S. lawmakers have provided advocacy over the years, Durbin’s letter undoubtedly represents renewed interest in the case, amid several unanswered questions.

San Román asks: 

“Did this case face obstacles from the State Department? Was there a critical lack of cooperation on behalf of the Israeli government? Is there anything in extradition treaties that basically forbade Manning being indicted in connection with the Odeh bombing? Is there anything in the extradition treaty between the U.S. and Israel that’s getting in the way of bringing over Ben-Yosef and Fuchs?”

These are big questions, he says, and Durbin’s strongly worded letter plays a key role.

“There’s too much momentum for it to fade into oblivion,” San Román sums up. “Thirty-six years on and people are still asking ‘Who killed Alex Odeh?’ while never losing sight of who he was as a person. There’s no going back on this.”

Works Cited

Samuels, Ben. "Is U.S.-Israel Alliance Blocking Justice in Murder Case of Palestinian-American Activist?" Haaretz Jan 04 2022 ProQuest. 24 Nov. 2023 .============== 


2021Oct15 LA Times: Amid new revelations, Alex Odeh’s assassination in O.C. remains unsolved

2021Oct15Amid new revelations, Alex Odeh’s assassination in O.C. remains unsolved

ByGabriel San Román

Daily Pilot / LA Times

Oct. 15, 2021 3:20 PM PT

 From <https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-10-15/amid-new-revelations-alex-odehs-assassination-in-o-c-remains-unsolved>

On the morning of Oct. 11, 1985, Santa Ana Police Officer Hugh Mooney received an urgent call from the department’s watch commander about a bombing. Around 9 a.m., a thunderous blast demolished the second story of an office building on 17th Street and left one man, Alex Odeh, critically injured.

Mooney sent homicide investigators over to Western Medical Center in Santa Ana, where doctors desperately tried to save Odeh’s life.

“The information I had was that he had a traumatic amputation of one of his legs,” said Mooney, who hasn’t spoken publicly about that day until now. “It didn’t look good for him. I wanted to get a dying declaration if one was available.”

But Odeh, a Palestinian American activist, never regained consciousness and died two hours after a rigged pipe bomb detonated when he opened the door to the Santa Ana office of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. Odeh served as West Coast regional director of the civil rights organization formed in 1980 to combat anti-Arab stereotypes in U.S. media while promoting balanced reporting on Middle Eastern affairs.

A deputy chief assigned Mooney to manage the crime scene; he didn’t know it at the time, but “Area B,” the police-designated section of the city he commanded, became a smoldering site of a seemingly far-removed Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Santa Ana police and the city’s Fire Department established a command center at an office across the street. About 20 minutes after taking control of the scene, Mooney noticed a helicopter hovering overhead before it landed on a vacant lot.

Four men exited the chopper.

“These guys come out and they come walking over to us — a couple of FBI agents and a couple of LAPD Joint Terrorism Task Force members,” Mooney said. “They told us that they had been tracking a couple of guys from New York out to Los Angeles and they lost them at LAX. They were probably responsible for the bombing. At that time, they gave us two names.”

An anonymous “police official,” which Mooney says wasn’t him, previously disclosed similar details to Village Voice reporter Robert Friedman more than 30 years ago, an account that disclosed the names of Andy Green, Robert Manning and Keith Fuchs.

Mooney recalled being told about Manning and Fuchs.

The three men belonged to the Jewish Defense League, an extremist group founded by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane that the FBI initially suspected of carrying out a series of bombings that year, including in Santa Ana. A month after Odeh’s killing, FBI spokesman Leon Bonner publicly attributed the attack to the JDL — a claim that disappeared from all future comments made by the agency.

The case remains open and unsolved 36 years later, with the FBI having never publicly named suspects despite the immediate intelligence Mooney says he received at the scene.

 

IMAGE: Alex Odeh served as the West Coast regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee at the time of his death.  (Courtesy of the Odeh family)

Without arrests, every anniversary since the bombing has become a ritual of frustration for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, known as the ADC, as it continues to press for answers and accountability. In 1986, Rep. John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, chaired a congressional hearing on Odeh’s assassination. Ten years later, the Justice Department and the FBI announced a $1-million reward for information leading to a conviction in the crime.

The case continues to grow colder by the day despite all efforts.

Ahead of the Alex Odeh Memorial Conference this weekend in Garden Grove, the ADC is again asking questions, this time of a new White House administration. The group feels more optimistic with U.S. Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland at the head of the Department of Justice.

“If any attorney general over the past 36 years should have a deep-rooted understanding of the importance of prosecuting these cases, it’s him,” said Abed Ayoub, ADC’s National Legal and Policy Director, citing Garland’s past as a federal prosecutor in the Oklahoma City bombing.

The ADC is demanding Garland make public the names of any suspects and their whereabouts along with other key details of the case.

Manning is considered a person of interest in the case, and his location is well-known. He’s serving a life sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Phoenix.

After Manning was extradited from Israel in 1993, a jury convicted him for a mail-bomb murder that killed a Manhattan Beach secretary in 1980. During the Obama administration, the Justice Department took an extraordinary step in 2016 and recognized the ADC and the Odeh family as Manning’s victims.

“It’s kind of a paradox where they recognize us as a victim but they haven’t charged him with the crime that they recognize us of being a victim of,” Ayoub said. “What’s the holdup?”

The internal classification cleared the way for Helena Odeh, Alex’s eldest daughter, and Samer Khalaf, ADC president, to speak at Manning’s parole hearings in 2018 and 2020.

In addition to the campaign for justice, a proposed resolution from Rep. Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana) seeks to memorialize Odeh as a matter of record. On Sept. 30, he introduced HR 695, which expresses “profound sorrow” over his death as a victim of domestic terrorism. It recounts Odeh as a poet and a lecturer at Coastline College in Orange County in addition to his ADC activism.

“This is a man [who] was murdered, it would appear, because of his anti-discrimination activities,” Correa said. “This is something that is not tolerated in America.”

Michigan Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the first Palestinian American woman ever elected to Congress, co-sponsored the resolution. Correa hopes that more of his House colleagues do the same, not just as an act of remembrance but also to renew interest in the investigation. He plans a House floor speech in that effort.

“This is a cold case, and in murder there’s no statute of limitations,” Correa said. “We want to find out what happened. There’s a lot of allegations. It becomes even more critical what the answer is given our concern with domestic terrorism.”

Late radio personality Casey Kasem helped raise private funds for the Odeh statue sculpted by an Algerian American artist. Above, a closeup of the statue inscription.

(Scott Smeltzer / Daily Pilot)

More than a decade passed before Mooney got another close — and final — look at the Odeh case. In 1996, he accompanied Santa Ana Police Department homicide Det. Ferrell Buckels as they traveled to the FBI’s Los Angeles office for an hourlong meeting about it.

Alongside Buckels, the lead Santa Ana police investigator on the case, Mooney recalled being seated at a table with FBI agents, New York Police Department officers and a State Department official.

The FBI appeared frustrated with the prospects of prosecution. Earlier on, they allegedly enjoyed some cooperation with Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, in the effort to locate Green and Fuchs, both long rumored to have lived in Kiryat Arba, an Israeli settlement near the West Bank city of Hebron.

But after the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in November 1995 by an Israeli right-wing extremist, the working relationship cooled. The Arab League briefly arose as a possible alternative at the meeting. According to Mooney, the State Department official intervened around that time with a lecture about the “bigger picture” of international relations.

Answers sought in 1985 slaying of Palestinian activist Alex Odeh

Oct. 21, 2013

“That was the end of it,” Mooney said.

The FBI, citing the ongoing 36-year-old investigation, declined to confirm or deny Mooney’s accounts from the scene in 1985 or the 1996 meeting.

Both Santa Ana police officers left the FBI office that day feeling like their time had been wasted.

Buckels “was visibly upset when we were coming back,” Mooney said of the long ride home. “His idea of the law was that the law is the law, regardless of who you are.”

Later that year, Buckels retired from the Santa Ana Police Department. He died in 2017. Nobody on the force is currently assigned to the Odeh case.

Mooney retired as a lieutenant in 2002 and is transparent about the case’s gaps, too: According to him, no witnesses were interviewed, no surveillance footage existed, nor were any fingerprints found at the scene.

How the bomb made its way to Santa Ana before being planted remains a mystery.

For all questions left unanswered, Odeh, a local resident, husband and father of three daughters, was assassinated and the investigation languishes on — not for an apparent lack of leads.

“It was a very solid case and easy to prosecute,” Mooney said. “I feel really sorry for the family, especially the kids. They were so young. [Odeh] was a good man — a man of peace.”

 

From <https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-10-15/amid-new-revelations-alex-odehs-assassination-in-o-c-remains-unsolved>

 

 Abed Ayoub, ADC’s National Legal and Policy Director

2013Oct21 LA Times: Answers sought in 1985 slaying of Palestinian activist Alex Odeh

Answers sought in 1985 slaying of Palestinian activist Alex Odeh

By Paloma Esquivel, Oct. 21, 2013 12 AM PT

From <https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-xpm-2013-oct-21-la-me-ln-1985-slaying-alex-odeh-answers-sought-20131021-story.html>

Nearly three decades after Alex Odeh, a Palestinian American civil rights leader, was killed when a pipe bomb ripped apart his Santa Ana offices, the slaying remains unsolved.

At the time, the White House condemned the killing as an act of terrorism. The FBI told Congress that solving the killing was one of its highest priorities.

Now, civil rights groups and members of Congress, including Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Santa Ana), are calling on the FBI to do more to solve the 1985 case.

“I believe the Odeh family deserves closure,” the Orange County congresswoman wrote in a letter to Atty. Gen. Eric Holder this year.

Odeh was born in what was then the British mandate of Palestine, but his family left to escape the violence and he became a naturalized American citizen. He settled in Orange County, where he was a vocal critic of Israeli policies against Palestinians. He became regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, a civil rights organization founded by former U.S. Sen. James Abourezk (D-S.D.) in 1980.

SEEKING COMMON GROUND

Odeh was dedicated to seeking common ground with members of other religious and ethnic communities, said Richard Habib, a retired businessman and former board member of the ADC. On the day Odeh was killed, he was scheduled to speak at a synagogue in Fountain Valley.

“Alex was really a pioneer in trying to move people on both sides, on many sides, of this conflict toward dialogue, toward conversation,” said Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, a Freeman Fellow with the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a New York-based peace group.

“And he paid with his life for that.”

About one year into the investigation, an FBI official told a congressional subcommittee that Jewish extremists were suspected in the bombing. Then-Assistant FBI Director Oliver B. Revell said the agency had identified suspects in the case whom its agents were pursuing. But no charges were ever filed.

SUSPECTS GET AWAY (STEALING LAND)

Over the years, law enforcement sources have said the investigation focused on onetime members of the militant Jewish Defense League. One potential suspect is now serving life in prison in California for another bomb slaying. Others live in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

FBI REWARD

In 1996, the FBI offered a $1-million reward for information that would help solve the Odeh crime. In 2005 and again in 2010, it publicized the reward. But nothing came of the efforts.

All the while, Sami Odeh, the victim’s brother, did his best to keep the case from being forgotten.

“The entire trauma, the mechanics of how to deal with it, the newspapers, the burial and everything else went to Sami,” Habib said.

When Sami Odeh died in June, never having known who killed his brother, many of his friends and fellow advocates felt they owed it to him to push the investigation forward, said Raed Jarrar, director of communications and advocacy at the ADC.

The ADC has teamed with the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People and Jewish Voice for Peace, an Oakland-based group, to launch a petition asking the Justice Department to bring Odeh’s killers to justice.

Additionally, Sanchez and Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) are urging the department to step up its investigation.

Sanchez is seeking signatures from members of Congress on a letter that will ask the Justice Department for specific details about the case, including possible suspects and steps taken to interview them.

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-xpm-2013-oct-21-la-me-ln-1985-slaying-alex-odeh-answers-sought-20131021-story.html

paloma.esquivel@latimes.com 

2022 DOCUMENTARY - Assination of Alex Odeh

Documentary Film: Who Killed Alex Odeh?

The assassination of a beloved Palestinian-American activist in Southern California sets off a 35-year quest for justice that exposes the transnational dimension of the Israel/Palestine conflict.

May 10, 2022

Story Synopsis

On the morning of October 11, 1985, a Palestinian-American activist named Alex Odeh opened his office door in Orange County for the last time. A trip-wire bomb exploded. He died hours later in a nearby hospital. His premature death left his widow Norma, a recent immigrant and stay-at-home mother, to raise their three young daughters alone. Alex’s murder shook the local Arab-American community. He was a civic leader, western regional coordinator for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and a well-liked teacher, activist and poet. 

Decades later, the case remains open under FBI investigation. The suspects are American-born extremists who joined the Israeli settler movement to colonize the West Bank, where Alex’s hometown, Jifna, is located. From documentarians and SMPA Associate Professors Jason Osder and William Youmans, comes Who Killed Alex Odeh? a socio-political true crime mystery that highlights the fundamentally transnational nature of the Israel/Palestine conflict. 

Story Significance

The immediate context is the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Specifically, this film looks at how the international conflict intersects with American life and politics through a 1985 assassination in southern California. The topic is global and local, past and painfully present; from the origins of the conflict up to the contemporary voices who are ascendant in Israeli politics today.  

This film investigates the U.S. government’s investigation to ask why this case is unsolved and looks deeply at the impact of this act of terrorism on Alex’s family and the Arab American community’s participation in civic life. It asks audiences to see the how a traumatic political assassination leaves a long-term scar. In December, 1985, FBI Director William Webster admitted that the Alex murder and other attacks put Arab-Americans in a “zone of danger.” Alex’s brother Sami observed that Webster said this without putting forward a plan to address it, isolating them against the threat. Indeed, the Odeh family still lives in fear. They express concerns that their push for justice could make them a target, but they continue to speak out. 

The filmmakers seek to convert the controversial issues into assets by being even-handed, critical and embracing a humanistic understanding of all parties. The different currents come together in the question, “who killed Alex Odeh?” To ask this is to ask: why has this case remained open for decades? Most would agree that a crime committed on U.S. soil should be investigated and prosecuted. This in turn invites a generative discussion about America’s role in the Israel/Palestine conflict (and vice versa). The story also inverts common frames and misperceptions about how we define terrorism. 

You can support the creation of Who Killed Alex Odeh? here.

Media and Public Affairs Building

805 21st Street NW

Suite 400

Washington, DC 20052

202-994-6227

smpa@gwu.edu

 

From <https://smpa.gwu.edu/documentary-film-who-killed-alex-odeh>


2015 30th Anniversary of Alex Odeh's Murder | Al Jazeera

US: The mystery murder of Palestinian Alex Odeh

On 30th anniversary of activist’s killing, US Congresswoman renews call for justice in the unsolved case.

By Ray Hanania

Published On 11 Oct 2015

From <https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2015/10/11/us-the-mystery-murder-of-palestinian-alex-odeh>

On 30th anniversary of activist’s killing, US Congresswoman renews call for justice in the unsolved case.

It was 30 years ago on Sunday when activist Alex Odeh entered the offices of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Santa Ana, California, and a pipe bomb exploded – killing him and wounding seven others.

A Palestinian Christian from Jifna who published a poetry book on Palestine called Whispers in Exile, Odeh was reportedly targeted by Jewish Americans who, in the 1980s, stepped up violence against pro-Palestinian activists in the United States.

The attack was quickly declared a civil rights violation and a hate crime and was turned over by local police to the FBI, which continues to offer a $1 million reward for information on the killing.

“This unresolved case is a social injustice,” Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, whose 46th district includes Santa Ana, told Al Jazeera. She joined a chorus of calls from community leaders and activists urging the FBI to make this case a priority.

“This year marks the 30th anniversary of Alex Odeh’s murder, and his community and family has yet to gain closure and justice for his death. I am frustrated with responses from the FBI and Department of Justice since Odeh’s assassination,” said Sanchez.

“I will continue to fight for answers to Alex’s death and bring those that killed him to justice. We must remember what he stood for and what he dedicated his life to: the pursuit of civil and human rights, as well as peace and mutual understanding between our diverse communities.”

‘Deliver justice’

Officials of both the FBI and the US Department of Justice told Al Jazeera resolving the case remains a priority.

“The FBI has not allowed the memory of Mr Odeh to fade due to the passage of time,” said David Bowdich, the assistant director of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office. 

The latest news from around the world. Timely. Accurate. Fair.

“While exhaustive investigation has been conducted over three decades on this case, members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force continue to investigate proactively and generate new leads. I am hopeful that one day we will solve this case and deliver justice to Mr Odeh’s family.”

No person has been charged with the murder, and no suspects have been named, but community activists continue to point to two American Jews and former members of the Jewish Defense League who fled to Israel.  

“The US Attorney’s office supports the FBI’s continued investigation into this case, and our thoughts are with the family of Alexander Odeh, his friends, and the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee on the 30th anniversary of his murder,” said US attorney Eileen M Decker of the central district of California. 

“Although the efforts of many dedicated prosecutors and agents over the last 30 years have not solved this case, it remains an active investigation, and we stand willing to prosecute this case when we obtain sufficient evidence to do so.” 

Fatina Abdrabboh from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee said justice demands that the perpetrators be held to account.

“It’s something that must be done,” Abdrabboh said.

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2015/10/11/us-the-mystery-murder-of-palestinian-alex-odeh

Ray Hanania

Ray Hanania is an award winning American Arab journalist and author based in Chicago. He can be reached at rghanania@gmail.com

 rghanania@gmail.com

 

From <https://www.aljazeera.com/author/ray_hanania_150917093001765>

Terrorists: Jewish Extremist "Jewish Defense League"

Hate Group Profile: Jewish Defense League

Jewish Defense League

Profile: Southern Poverty Law Center

The Jewish Defense League (JDL) is a radical organization that preaches a violent form of anti-Arab, Jewish nationalism. Its late founder, Rabbi Meir Kahane, claimed that Jews face fierce anti-Semitism domestically and abroad and must protect themselves by any means necessary.

Extremist Group Info: SPLC Designated Hate Group

Date Founded 1968

Location New York, NY

The JDL's position with regard to Israel is denial of any Palestinian claims to land and the calling for the removal of all Arabs from the "Jewish-inherited soil." The group has orchestrated countless terrorist attacks in the U.S. and abroad, and has engaged in intense harassment of foreign diplomats, Muslims, Jewish scholars and community leaders, and officials.

In Its Own Words

"To turn the other cheek is not a Jewish concept. Do not listen to the soothing anesthesia of the establishment. They walk in the paths of those whose timidity helped bury our brothers and sisters less than thirty years ago." —Rabbi Meir Kahane, Jewish Defense League founder

"[I]n the end — with few exceptions — the Jew can look to no one but another Jew for help and … the true solution to the Jewish problem is the liquidation of the Exile and the return of all Jews to Eretz Yisroel — the land of Israel."— Jewish Defense League's "Five Principles"

"It was the lack of discipline and Jewish unity that led continually to the destruction of the Jewish people. It is Jewish unity and self-discipline that will lead to the triumph of the Jewish people." — Jewish Defense League's "Five Principles"

Background

The Jewish Defense League was founded in 1968 by Rabbi Meir Kahane (born Martin Kahane). Its inception was part of the white backlash surrounding the New York City teachers' union strikes of 1968. The strikes brought to the surface racial tension between the predominantly Jewish teachers union, and black residents who were seeking greater control over their neighborhood schools. This, coupled with black demands for more civil service jobs, stirred the already hostile racial climate in Manhattan's neighborhoods and led working-class Jews in the outer boroughs to join the JDL. Kahane, who then wrote for The Jewish Weekly, an Orthodox periodical, flooded the tabloids with stories of blacks and Puerto Ricans terrorizing Jews in Manhattan. He dispatched JDL units to "patrol" predominantly Jewish areas, which ultimately led to an ethnic polarization of neighborhoods.

By 1970, however, the JDL had changed its primary cause to the plight of Soviet Jews. From that point on, the main objective of the JDL was to terrorize Soviet establishments in the U.S. to influence the communist nation to change its anti-Semitic policies — specifically, its ban on emigration to Israel. The terrorism become so severe that President Richard Nixon feared JDL activity would threaten the Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty (SALT) II negotiations with the Soviet Union. In 1970 alone, the JDL committed five acts of terrorism, taking over the East Park Synagogue in Manhattan twice, in May and in November, to protest the Soviet U.N. Mission across the street. Throughout the 1970s and '80s, JDL members did everything from pouring blood over the head of a Soviet diplomat at a reception in Washington, D.C., to planting a smoke bomb in a Carnegie Hall performance of a Soviet orchestra. With each incident, the JDL claimed responsibility by phoning in its official slogan, in reference to the Holocaust, "Never again!"

Members of the Jewish community in Moscow, however, made clear that they did not appreciate the JDL's efforts in the U.S., which were made allegedly on their behalf. In a New York Times article headlined "Anti-Soviet Violence Here Upsets Jews in Moscow," Soviet Jews publicly made their case against the JDL. "A number of Jewish activists refused permission to emigrate … feel that [anti-Soviet] harassment in New York hurts their cause and may give Soviet authorities an excuse to become even more intransigent," the newspaper reported.

Though Soviets were their main victims, the JDL has targeted anyone it considers a threat to the survival of radical Jewish nationalism. This includes U.S. and foreign diplomats, domestic radical-right organizations, Arab and Muslim activists, journalists and scholars, and Jewish community members who are simply not "Jewish enough." In 1975, six JDL members forced their way into the office of the executive vice president of the San Francisco Jewish Welfare Foundation and assaulted four staff members, including one who had been crippled from time spent in a concentration camp. The break-in was to protest the "slow response" of the federation to community needs of Jews in San Francisco.

The following year, JDL members began targeting diplomats of all nations who had voted for a U.N. resolution equating Zionism with racism. Three members were charged with invading and vandalizing the Mexican consulate in Philadelphia, and were later convicted of obstructing foreign officials and their duties, damaging property of a foreign government, and conspiracy.

The JDL also pitted its radical agenda against that of Nazis. In 1981, 20 members of the JDL took over the offices of the American Civil Liberties Union in Atlanta to protest its representation of neo-Nazis in court. Later that year, eight members attacked National Socialist Party of America leader Harold Covington with steel pipes as he approached NBC studios in New York, which led Covington to state, later that evening on the "Tomorrow" show, that "all Jews should be gassed." Earlier that year, the JDL had terrorized Boleslavs Maikovskis, an accused Nazi war criminal. A representative from the JDL took responsibility for throwing four gasoline firebombs into the Latvian ex-Nazi's home in Mineola, N.Y.

The JDL has experienced waves of internal strife throughout its years of operation, first of all with Kahane's emigration to Israel in 1971. Kahane's successor, David Fisch, was a Columbia University student who could not maintain unity in the early years. Kahane returned to the U.S. in 1974 to name Russel Kelner international chairman. Kelner was a former U.S. Army lieutenant, trained in guerilla warfare and ready to direct the JDL's paramilitary camp. In 1990, an Egyptian-born Islamic extremist, El Sayyid Nosair, assassinated Kahane during a Zionist conference in New York City, again throwing the group into disarray.

The JDL got some unwelcome international attention in 1994, when Baruch Goldstein, a JDL member, massacred 29 Palestinian Muslims kneeling in prayer at a mosque in the West Bank city of Hebron. The JDL's website justifies Goldstein's mass murder by saying "Goldstein took a preventative measure against yet another Arab attack on Jews."

In 2002, then-JDL Chairman Irv Rubin was jailed while awaiting trial on charges of conspiracy in planning bomb attacks against the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City, Calif., and on the office of Arab-American Congressman Darrell Issa. Rubin slit his throat with a prison-issued safety razor, and fell or jumped off a balcony, sustaining injuries that led to his death several days later. Rubin's co-defendant in the case, Earl Krugel, met a similar fate in 2005 in a Phoenix prison when another inmate, reportedly, swung a bag containing a cinderblock into the back of Krugel's head, killing him. Krugel was murdered less than two months after being sentenced as part of a plea bargain.

In 2003, the Rubin family filed a wrongful death suit, citing allegedly suspicious circumstances. Upon the death of Rubin, Shelley Rubin, Irv's widow, named Bill Maniaci temporary leader of the JDL. In 2004, Rubin called for Maniaci to resign. When he refused, he was stripped of his title and membership, taking a large portion of the organization with him. After a lengthy legal battle over the JDL's intellectual property and website, Shelley Rubin won the title of permanent chairman and CEO of the JDL.

In 2009, never-before-seen FBI documents concerning Rubin's alleged confession and details about his death were published by the online news site TheEnterpriseReport.com.

The FBI deemed the league a right-wing terrorist group in their report "Terrorism 2000/2001," but its domestic influence has waned in the years since, and today the JDL has no active chapters In the U.S. The JDL continues to wield steady membership through its website and blog, which distort news stories in order to vilify politicians, academics, and community leaders as "anti-Semitic." One such attack was entitled "Carter the Jew Hater," and attacked the former president's book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. The JDL today has chapters in Eastern Europe, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Russia, and the United Kingdom.

 

From <https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/jewish-defense-league>

 

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-10-30/jewish-defense-league-bomber-robert-manning-parole-patricia-wilkerson-murder

From <https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/jewish-defense-league>

2023Nov15: Community Advisory: ADC Alarmed by Hate Groups, Re-emergence of JDL - ADC


adc.org

Community Advisory: ADC Alarmed by Hate Groups, Re-emergence of JDL - ADC

3–4 minutes

 

Washington, DC | adc.org | November 15, 2023 – The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) is alarmed and deeply troubled by the hate expressed at yesterday’s Israel sponsored March in support of Genocide, held in Washington, D.C. We are alarmed by the strong showing of support and presence of supporters of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), a terrorist organization. The JDL is responsible for the 1985 bombings of ADC offices, one of which killed our Southern California Regional Director Alex Odeh, and the 2001 attempted assassination of Rep. Darrell Issa. This display came just one day after the New York Daily News published an opinion piece titled “Confronting bigots for Jew hatred: A new Jewish Defense League is what is needed”. It is revolting that any media company would allow for the promotion of a terrorist organization, but in the current environment of anti-Arab racism it is just par for the course.

In addition to allowing the antisemitic Christian Zionist leader John Hagee to speak, the crowd shouted down any speaker who dared to say that Palestinians were humans deserving of basic dignity. The estimated 20,000 who gathered explicitly called for the massacre of innocent Palestinians, with signs such as “Let Israel Finish the Job”, “Civilians Who Praise the Slaughter of Jews are not Innocent”, and “Many Gazans Civilians are Hamas In-Training”. Signs were waved that contained horrific and hateful stereotypes of Arabs, and in an irony that is completely expected from Zionists, many signs co-opted “from the river to the sea” to specifically call for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

ADC National Executive Director Abed Ayoub said, “The openness with which the JDL is being represented and promoted is a serious threat to Arab Americans, Palestinian Americans, and every American who stands up for Palestinian rights. The JDL and its ideology is a threat and must be rejected by all levels of government and all Americans of conscience.”

The Jewish Defense League (JDL) is a Jewish far-right religious-political organization in the United States and Canada, whose stated goal is to “protect Jews from antisemitism by whatever means necessary”. It has been classified as “a right wing terrorist group” by the FBI since 2001, and the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled it a hate group. The FBI has linked the JDL to various acts of terrorism within the United States.

Founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York City in 1968, the JDL’s self-described purpose was to protect Jews from local manifestations of antisemitism. Its criticism of the Soviet Union increased support for the group, transforming it from a “vigilante club” into an organization boasting a claimed  membership of over 15,000 at its peak. The JDL took to bombing Arab and Soviet properties in the United States, and targeting various alleged “enemies of the Jewish people”, ranging from Arab-American political activists to neo-Nazis, for assassination. A number of JDL members have been linked to violent, and sometimes deadly, attacks in the United States and in other countries.

https://adc.org/jdl-protest/

 

JDL - THREAT ON YASSIR ARAFAT Makes for Interest court Case

Kelner case- Semantics Matters: "Conditional if" and "Unconditional"

Kelner case- Semantics Matters: "Conditional if" and "Unconditional"

To properly understand Kelner's use of the word "unconditional,"we must first consider the case of United States v. Watts (1969) 394 U.S. 705, 22 L. Ed. 2d 664, 89 S. Ct. 1399 on which Kelner relied. Watts was convicted of threatening the President of the United States. He had stated, in a small Discussion group during a political rally,

"And now I have already received my draft classification as 1-A and I have got to report for my physical this Monday coming. I am not going.

If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J. [President Lyndon B. Johnson]." (Id. at p. 706.) The Supreme Court reversed Watts's conviction, holding that the trial court erred in denying his motion for acquittal.

Defense counsel had stressed the alleged threat "was made during a political debate, that it was expressly made conditional upon an event -- induction into the Armed Forces -- which [Watts] vowed would never occur, and that both [Watts] and the crowd laughed after the statement was made." (Id. at p. 707.)

The Supreme Court concluded that taken in context, and considering the conditional nature of the threat and the reaction of the listeners, the only possible Conclusion was that the statement was not a punishable "true threat," but was rather political hyperbole privileged under the First Amendment. (Id. at pp. 707-708.) The Watts threat was not merely conditional in the abstract, but conditioned on an event which the defendant "vowed would never occur." Thus, far from conveying an immediate prospect of execution, this threat explicitly contained a condition the defendant promised would not come to pass.

 

United States v. Kelner, supra, 534 F.2d 1020 involved a televised press conference called by the Jewish Defense League in which Kelner, dressed in military fatigues and armed with a weapon, stated that his group was going to kill Yasser Arafat, who was to be in New York for a meeting of the United Nations.

 

New Standard - Personal Intention vs. "True threat"

 

The Kelner court disagreed. Instead of an inquiry as to the defendant's intent to carry outthe threat, the Second Circuit concluded the Constitution mandated only an inquiry as to whether the threat convincingly expressed an intention of being carried out. (United States v. Kelner, supra, 534 F.2d at p. 1027.)

Clearly, the Kelner court did not intend "unconditionality" to prohibit punishment of threats including "if" language.This is evidenced by its Discussion of the "purpose and effect" of the "true threat" requirement.

It "is to insure that only unequivocal, unconditional and specific expressions of intention immediately to inflict injury may be punished -- only such threats, in short, as are of the same nature as those threats which are . . . 'properly punished every day under statutes prohibiting extortion, blackmail and assault . . . .'"(United States v. Kelner, supra, 534 F.2d at p. 1027.) By definition, extortion punishes conditional threats, specifically those in which the victim complies with the mandated condition. (See Pen. Code, § 518 ["Extortion is the obtaining of property from another, with his consent, . . . induced by a wrongful use of force or fear . . . .]; Pen. Code, § 519, subd. 1 [fear as will constitute extortionmay be induced by a threat to do unlawful injury to the victim].)

Likewise, many threats involved in assault cases are conditional. A conditional threat can be punished as an assault, when the condition imposed must be performed immediately, the defendant has no right to impose the condition, the intent is to immediately enforce performance by violence and defendant places himself in a position to do so and proceeds as far as is then necessary. (People v. McCoy (1944) 25 Cal. 2d 177, 182, 193, 153 P.2d 315 [assault with a deadly weapon accomplished by defendant's demand, with knife held over victim, that victim not make any noise or the knife will be used].)

It is clear, then, that the Kelner court's use of the word "unconditional" was not meant to prohibit prosecution of all threats involving an "if" clause, but only to prohibit prosecution based on threats whose conditions precluded them from conveying a gravity of purpose and imminent prospect of execution.

Substantial Evidence

Because we have concluded the use of the word "if" in defendant's threat does not absolve defendant from liability, her substantial evidence challenge is easily resolved. Defendant threatened to hire someone to kill Foss if he did not join her Universe Reform Party. Although grammatically conditional, this threat contained a considerable degree of unconditionality, since compliance with defendant's condition would be practically impossible. The other three factors, unequivocality, immediacy and specificity, were also present in significant degrees. The threat was directed to Foss and specifically identified not only the manner in which it would be carried out (carjacking), but confirmed defendant's possession of the means to accomplish it ($1,000 to hire gang members). The threat was also unequivocal and immediate. If Foss refused to join the party (a virtual certainty), the injury would occur. Thus, each of the four factors was sufficiently present to convey to Foss a gravity of purpose and imminent prospect of execution. As a result of the threat, Foss was frightened and nervous and altered his habits in order to preserve his safety. The jury's Conclusion the threat was sufficiently unequivocal, unconditional, immediate and specific to convey to Foss a gravity of purpose and imminent prospect of execution was thus supported by substantial evidence and will be upheld.

Defendant also contends that there may not have been a threat at all and Foss's fear for his safety was not reasonable. Because Gormly did not immediately give the phone message to Foss and Foss did not immediately contact the police, defendant claims Foss must have known the phone call was "just another in a long series of foolish, harmless communications" from her. We disagree. The telephone call was concededly different from all earlier communications Foss had received from defendant, in that it contained an explicit death threat. Gormly could not have immediately notified Foss of the phone call; he did not know how to reach Foss. Foss did not call the police until after receiving the package because the package greatly changed the circumstances of the earlier threat. The postcard had indicated to Foss that defendant was no longer in an institutional setting and was in the Los Angeles area. The package proved that defendant had access to Foss's office. Nor was the package an innocent collection of documents, but it contained a threatening item -- the dead cat. All of these circumstances combined to make the telephoned death threat more threatening than it originally appeared and provided substantial evidence to support the jury's verdict.

Disposition

The judgment is affirmed.

ARMSTRONG, J., and GODOY PEREZ, J., Concurring.


Other stuff--Background

UCI visiting racist 'scholar' ALON BURNSTEIN--Israeli Zionist-Nazi Terrorist

 

Ex-Jewish Defense League bomber’s parole a ‘gut punch’ for Palestinian Americans

October 30, 2023

Alon Burstein, poli sci, Los Angeles Times, Oct. 30, 2023 

Five terror attacks in 1985 alone led the FBI to warn Arab Americans that they were in a “zone of danger” from an unnamed group taking aim at the “enemies of Israel.” “To many Jews in North America, they were seen as heinous crimes,” said Alon Burstein, an Israel Institute Fellow and visiting assistant professor in UC Irvine’s political science department. “On the other hand, it was also seen as the first time — with the exception of the state of Israel — that Jews were standing up militantly and saying ‘never again.’ ”

For the full story, please visit https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-10-30/jewish-defense-league-bomber-robert-manning-parole-patricia-wilkerson-murder.

Would you like to get more involved with the social sciences? Email us at communications@socsci.uci.edu to connect.

 

From <https://www.socsci.uci.edu/newsevents/news/2023/2023-10-30-bustein-la-times.php>

 

Alon Burstein

Visiting Assistant Professor

Israel Institute Fellow

Department of Political Science

University of California Irvine

3151 Social Science Plaza B Political Science

Irvine, CA 92697

United States

alon.burstein@uci.edu

I am a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California Irvine, spending three years in this lovely region as part of an Israel Institute Teaching Fellowship.

I completed my PhD in Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2021, writing my dissertation under the supervision of professors Mark Juergensmeyer and Eitan Alimi.

 

My research centers around violent social mobilization and collective action. Specifically, I explore the dynamic interaction between groups and their surrounding environment, analyzing how these drive groups to adopt new ideological perceptions and tracing how these perceptions  lead to the use of different violent and non-violent actions. Previous projects have focused on differences between international secular and religious terrorism, the emergence of grassroots violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, minority mobilization in Israel, and the rise of international xenophobic White Power terrorism. I have also recently written about Israel's process of democratic backsliding, specifically how such developments will influence the Israeli-Palestinian arena. 

 

Feel free to roam around and check out my various publications, projects, data collections, and guest lectures / media appearances.

© 2023 Alon Burstein

 

From <https://www.alonburstein.com/>

 

 

Peer-Reviewed

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Non-Peer-Reviewed

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© 2023 Alon Burstein

 

From <https://www.alonburstein.com/publications-1>

 

https://davidson.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=alma991024980248605716&context=L&vid=01DCOLL_INST:01DCOLL&lang=en&search_scope=MyInst_and_CI&adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine&tab=Everything&query=creator,exact,Jaworski,%20Jared%20A.,AND&facet=creator,exact,Jaworski,%20Jared%20A.&mode=advanced&offset=0

 

Challenges of Comparatively Studying Groups: Frame Analysis, Paired Comparisons, and Terrorism Research

 

From <https://methods.sagepub.com/case/challenges-of-comparatively-studying-groups-terrorism-research>

Abstract

Designing a comparative study of groups, movements, and collectives presents significant challenges. Although some of these challenges are undoubtedly case-specific, this research methods case discusses three challenges which will appear, in one form or another, in most comparative projects: identifying measurement units, designing a comparative framework, and collecting and analyzing data. Each of these is discussed by drawing on an example from a study I conducted which compared the ideological rigidity and flexibility of secular and religious terror groups. Drawing on insights from sociology’s social movement theory, from terrorism research, and broadly from qualitative textual analyses, the case guides the reader toward thinking of creative ways to manage such challenges as they develop, based on the specific needs of the study she or he is conducting.

 

From <https://methods.sagepub.com/case/challenges-of-comparatively-studying-groups-terrorism-research>

 

Armies of God, Armies of Men: A Global Comparison of Secular and Religious Terror Organizations

 

Alon Burstein

Pages 1-21 | Published online: 10 Feb 2016

ABSTRACT

This article compares the violent activity of secular and religious terror organizations. Utilizing data compiled by the Global Terrorism Database cross-referenced with secondary and primary sources regarding the degree of religious components embedded in organizations’ ideologies, it tests the violent patterns of activity carried out by organizations guided by predominantly secular, secular/religious, and religious ideologies, between the years 1970 and 2012. The findings confirm that a) religious ideology correlates with specific, more deadly, attack tactics and violent patterns; and b) the degree of religious components within terror organizational ideology should be tested along a spectrum: the more religious an organization is, the more attacks it tends to carry out, and the deadlier its attacks become.

 

From <https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/NT8rXFxnDHVIpTIs9QSW/full>

 

===================

 

Geopolitics & Security

How Religious Extremism Changed the Face of Terrorism

 

Commentary

Alon Burnstein

9th January 2017

Over the past thirty years, religiously motivated groups have become the dominant actors using terrorism and sub-state violence. While, until the mid-1980s, conflicts such as those in Kashmir, Israel/Palestine, and the Philippines were dominated by secular-nationalist, sometimes Marxist groups, religious sub-state actors have infiltrated and become dominant in nearly all asymmetrical conflicts worldwide. Even new emerging conflicts which begin as nationalistic or ethnic, such as the Syrian or Lebanese civil wars, have spiraled to include, and often become dominated by, religiously motivated groups. Has academic research fully understood the influence of this change?

Academics studying religiously motivated terrorism suggest that, unlike secular terror organisations, religious groups do not see themselves as engaged in an earthly conflict against an enemy that has committed some historic wrong.

[1]Link to footnote

Rather, they see themselves as soldiers in the army of God, fighting against ‘His’ enemies as part of a larger cosmic, eternal battle of good against evil. Two main outcomes of this crucial difference are predicted in the literature:

1) religious groups will tend to carry out deadlier, more extreme acts of violence as they are trying to destroy a demonic enemy rather than convince their earthly enemy to do something; and

2) religious groups will not negotiate or accept anything less than total victory, as their success has been prophesised by God Himself. How far are these theoretical predictions borne out by facts on the ground?

At first glance, both prophesies appear accurate.

The most extreme terrorist attacks, including 9/11, chemical terrorism in Tokyo, and the lion's share of suicide attacks over the past 45 years, have been committed by groups guided by a religiously inspired ideology. In addition, these attacks are often not accompanied by a coherent list of demands from the group's enemy, and it could be suggested that their aim is more to generally lash out against that enemy, or in some cases bring about a prophesised Armageddon. Regarding the absolutism of violent religious extremist groups, the predictions also seem to have merit as, compared to the secular examples of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Colombian FARC, or the Kurdish PKK, religious terror groups tend to avoid  negotiation with the enemy of God.

The lion's share of suicide attacks over the past 45 years, have been committed by groups guided by a religiously inspired ideology.

However, despite these seeming corroborations, anomalies abound. Academic research predicting that religious terror groups will be inherently more violent and will not accept any negotiation with the enemy has been hard pushed to account for circumstances in which such groups, without any obvious change of ideology, deviate from these patterns. Deviations include distinguishing between national enemies despite religious affiliation, tacitly accepting ceasefires and recognising negotiated agreements, and in some cases de-radicalising and accepting political process.

the hybrid terror group.

One factor which has been overlooked to date may provide the answer to these anomalies: the hybrid terror group.

Dividing groups into ‘secular’ or ‘religious,’ researchers have not been able to sufficiently account for the full breadth of the extremism spectrum. A vast array of groups incorporate only certain degrees of religious guidance into their ideology, combining this guidance along with other elements such as nationalism (such as the Syrian Army of Islam) or racism (such as the KKK). As a result of this combination of religious and other ideological tenets, groups may ‘break the mould,’ following the predicted patterns of religious terror groups only to a certain degree.

The Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas is an example of this type of hybrid. Established in 1988 by the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine, the group’s founding covenant presents the combination of different principles that make up Hamas’ ideology. While article one opens the covenant by declaring that “The Movement’s program is Islam,” and article seven links the group to all Islamic movements worldwide, article six limits the group to historic Palestine, explicitly asserting that the group “is a distinguished Palestinian movement.” More explicit is article 14, in which the group declares its allegiance to three circles in no uncertain terms: “the Palestinian circle, the Arab circle, and the Islamic circle.”

The anomalies Hamas presents in the face of predictions regarding its behaviour can be accounted for by this mixed ideology. On the one hand, Hamas is true to its religious ideals of the “Islamic circle,” and refuses to negotiate directly with its enemy. Moreover, the group has repeatedly declared that, regardless of political circumstance, it will not recognise Israel’s right to exist. On the other hand, in keeping with its national obligation to the “Palestinian circle,” the group has repeatedly accepted ceasefires and indirect negotiations with Israel aimed at alleviating Palestinian suffering. Holding true to its “Arab circle,” the group has not openly joined in any Islamist attack against Arab states despite state leaders being depicted as heretics, and has repeatedly attempted to placate all sides of Arab conflicts and deny any involvement in any internal Arab strife.

This analysis helps explain the actions of other religious and hybrid terror groups as well. Many Salafi-jihadi organisations like al-Qaeda are bound to their international religious war – in al-Qaeda’s case against “Jews and Crusaders” – and make no compromises when it comes to violence. For hybrid groups, however, the level to which religion dominates their ideology may explain how far they are willing to compromise. This is the likely reason that, for example, some religiously motivated groups in Syria were willing to participate in a negotiated ceasefire with the Syrian regimes, while groups like ISIS and former al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Fatah al-Sham have rejected the very notion of a ceasefire. Similarly, this may explain why some Islamist groups in Gaza reject even indirect ceasefires with Israel while Hamas accepts them.

Academics and policy makers are struggling to devise effective methods of dealing with the global problem of terrorism and extremism. While the response to nationalist or ethnic violent groups has usually been a mix of repression and accommodation, which has often led to negotiations and in some cases to de-radicalisation, responses to religiously-motivated groups has nearly always been securitised, which has not proven itself as a long-term solution. Perhaps by distinguishing between those absolutist solely religious extremist groups and those with more complex hybrid ideologies, policy makers and academics could devise new strategies of dealing with terrorist groups, creating policy responses which would be more successful in de-radicalising these organisations and lead them to privilege certain more accommodating aspects of their agenda at the expense of others.

The views expressed by this author remain solely their own and are not to be taken as the view of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.

Footnotes

Such as Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New-York: Columbia University Press, 1998); Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (California, Los-Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2003); Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill (New-York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 2003).

 

From <https://www.institute.global/insights/geopolitics-and-security/how-religious-extremism-changed-face-terrorism>

 

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https://theconversation.com/the-upcoming-elections-in-israel-demystifying-the-political-map-38687

theconversation.com

The upcoming elections in Israel: demystifying the political map


 Liora Norwich
Postdoctoral fellow, Brandeis University

Alon Burstein
PhD Student

 

From <https://theconversation.com/the-upcoming-elections-in-israel-demystifying-the-political-map-38687>

 

 

Published: March 17, 2015 5.46am EDT

 

 

Tuesday marks the elections for the twentieth Israeli Knesset (or parliament), an event which, as a result of electoral reform and the declining fortunes of the right-wing Likud, could be one of the most significant in the country’s recent history.

Israel has a proportional representation system with elections held approximately every four years (although rarely does a government last its whole term, as attested by the fact that this will be the country’s 34th). Thus, Israel is governed through coalitions, with traditionally the largest party selected by the President to form the government.

Because no party has ever won a majority of seats (or 61) in Knesset since the state was established in 1948, governments are always formed as a result of intense coalition bargaining, a less-than-transparent process which has tended to favor smaller parties, enabling them to sign deals with larger ones in return for cabinet positions and prioritizing their policies on the national agenda.

No fewer than 26 parties are running lists of candidates in this election. What’s more, polls show that between 10 and 11 parties will pass the election threshold of 3.25% (recently raised from 2%) to sit in parliament. Given a newly restructured Israeli political map, what are the most likely coalitions that could form after Tuesday? What would these coalitions offer for Israeli domestic policy and the long-stalled peace process with the Palestinians?

A rare opportunity? A Unity-Centrist Government

Although unity governments, composed of blocks of left-wing parties led by Labor and those led by right-wing Likud have occurred only four times in Israel’s history, the creation of two new centrist parties (which together poll around 20 seats) presents a unique opportunity for a new kind of unity government.

In such a government, Labor (in its current reformulation as the “Zionist Camp”) and Likud (which each poll puts at between 21-25 seats) would coalesce with “Yesh Atid” (“There is a Future”) and “Kulanu” (“All of Us”), both centrist parties.

Yesh Atid and Kulanu focus on domestic economic issues such as lowering the cost of living and redistribution, and appeal for support to the disgruntled Israeli middle class which turned out on mass to the 2011 summer protests. With Likud and Labor in the coalition, such a government could feasibly include 66 to 70 of the 120 Knesset members.

Such a government, composed of left and right with secular centrist parties, could advance major changes in Israeli domestic politics, including promoting a stronger separation of religion and state, providing economic benefits for families in which all adults are working, enticing ultra-orthodox and Arab-Israeli youths to take part in Israel’s military or national service, and possibly advancing the formation of a constitution (a process which has seen only incremental advances since Israel’s foundation.)

However, given that this coalition would be relatively evenly split between left and right (with Yesh Atid leaning more to the left and Kulanu more to the right), it is likely only to lead Israel further into a stalemate regarding possible resolutions of the Palestinian conflict. Deadlock has for too long been the status quo. Given the importance of security and international diplomacy in Israel, such a government, while stable in principle, may be very short lived.

The usual suspects: Another right-wing government

Since the start of the Second Intifada in 2000 and the departure of the last Labor government, the Israeli political map has shifted to the right of the Likud.

In response to Ariel Sharon’s Disengagement from Gaza and Netanyahu’s failure to deepen Israel’s hold of the West Bank fast enough, young leaders have left in frustration to form their own small parties. Accordingly, Likud could still remain the leader of the largest right-wing block in the Knesset, despite having lost both MKs and constituents, and possibly not even being the largest party to emerge from the elections.

To the immediate right of Likud is “Ha-Bait Ha-Yehudi” (“The Jewish Home”), a party polling between 11-14 seats led by Naftali Bennet (a Netanyahu protégé) which champions the development of West Bank settlements and the promotion of religiously oriented policies. With Moshe Kahalon’s Kulanu party (Kahalon is himself another former Likud minister), other smaller, extreme-right parties sure to support a ring-wing government are: (former Netanyahu confidant) Avigdor Lieberman’s “Yisrael Beyteynu” (“Israel Our Home”) party, and Eli Yishai’s “Yahad” (“Together”). Both espouse different forms of racial separation between Jews and Arabs. From the ultra-religious block, the “Shas” and “Yahadut ha-Torah” (“The Jewish Torah”) parties, which routinely swap allegiances for budgetary allocations for their constituents, could likely be persuaded to join such a union as well.

Such a right-wing coalition, with the Likud ironically as the most left-leaning party in the mix, could create a dangerous situation of rising extremism, with parties in the coalition challenging Likud to hold true to its original right-wing expansionist agenda in the Palestinian Territories.

If such a right-wing coalition wins a majority, it is likely that little would change on the security-diplomatic front.

Lip-service would be devoted to advancing a settlement with the Palestinians while simultaneously promoting a status-quo situation (with a slight deepening of Israeli control) in the West Bank, along with a continued hard-line offensive strategy vis-à-vis the Hamas-held Gaza Strip.

On the domestic front, a right-wing coalition with religiously-oriented parties as core partners would likely undo recent changes (ironically put in place by the outgoing Netanyahu government) requiring ultra-orthodox Jews to serve in the IDF, while economic policies would likely continue as they have in the previous years.

At the same time, however, the ongoing problem of explaining hawkish security policies to the international community would likely continue as well, compounding the escalating clashes between the Likud and other parties in Knesset and causing instability in the coalition.

What about a resurgence of the Israeli left?

While Labor has been in decline and has not led the government since 2001, the current elections may present the opportunity that the party has been waiting for.

Yair Lapid, the charismatic leader of the Yesh Atid party, has openly expressed his disappointment in the Netanyahu government (where he sat as Minister of Finance for the last two years), and his party would likely join with Labor, and the smaller left-wing Meretz party. Based on the “Zionist Camp’s” secular and socialist leanings, the Kulanu party could possibly be persuaded to join as well.

A question remains regarding where the remaining backing for the coalition would come from. Two options exist.

The first-ever joint list of Arab parties has been formed for this election (a response by individual Arab parties to fears of not passing the raised electoral threshold), and could provide the coalition with a critical block of 12 to 13 seats.

However, Arab participation in an official coalition would be unprecedented, and with demands from the Arab parties for collective rights and national minority status it is unclear if there is the political will on both sides for such a monumental shift towards accommodation with Israel’s Arab citizens.

Alternatively, were the coalition to emphasize its socialist agenda, it could attempt to court the ultra-orthodox parties Shas and Yahadut ha-Torah. Their entrance, however, would potentially alienate anti-religious parties such as Meretz and Yesh Atid.

While this balancing act is not new for left-leaning coalitions (dating back to the days of Oslo and Yitzhak Rabin in 1992), it does pose a serious challenge for Labor’s comeback.

As such a left-wing government would be weakened by its dependence on partners who are not “natural allies.” While all could likely agree on the security-diplomatic front of promoting a final settlement with the Palestinians, on the domestic level the parties would clash on issues of religion and state and economic as well as social policies.

Thus, while stability may be maintained if a diplomatic channel begins to form with the Palestinians, the failure of such a process would spell doom for the government.

The changing Israeli political map

The Israeli political map has seen much change in the country’s history -– from a Labor-dominated coalition system, to a bi-polar one, and gradually to one that is highly fractured.

In the current round of elections, the playing field is unusually wide open, and depending on which type of coalition forms after Tuesday, we could be seeing a new phase beginning in Israeli politics.

 

 

 

 

https://theconversation.com/the-upcoming-elections-in-israel-demystifying-the-political-map-38687

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Backgrounder: Ku Klux Klan

=================---

Ku klux klan Goals

 

 

 

In this 1926 cartoon, the Ku Klux Klan chases the Catholic Church, personified by St. Patrick, from the shores of America. Among the "snakes" are various supposed negative attributes of the Church, including superstition, the union of church and state, control of public schools, and intolerance.

The first and third Klans were primarily Southeastern groups aimed against Black people. The second Klan, in contrast, broadened the scope of the organization to appeal to people in the Midwestern and Western states who considered Catholics, Jews, and foreign-born minorities to be anti-American.[86]

The Second Klan saw threats from every direction. According to historian Brian R. Farmer, "two-thirds of the national Klan lecturers were Protestant ministers".[173] Much of the Klan's energy went into guarding the home, and historian Kathleen Blee says that its members wanted to protect "the interests of white womanhood".[174] Joseph Simmons published the pamphlet ABC of the Invisible Empire in Atlanta in 1917; in it, he identified the Klan's goals as "to shield the sanctity of the home and the chastity of womanhood; to maintain white supremacy; to teach and faithfully inculcate a high spiritual philosophy through an exalted ritualism; and by a practical devotedness to conserve, protect and maintain the distinctive institutions, rights, privileges, principles and ideals of a pure Americanism".[175] Such moral-sounding purpose underlay its appeal as a fraternal organization, recruiting members with a promise of aid for settling into the new urban societies of rapidly growing cities such as Dallas and Detroit.[176] During the 1930s, particularly after James A. Colescott of Indiana took over as imperial wizard, opposition to Communism became another primary aim of the Klan.[86]

 

From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan#Goals>

 

 

 

===================

Ku Klux Klan

The Ku Klux Klan, with its long history of violence, is the oldest and most infamous of American hate groups. Although Black Americans have typically been the Klan’s primary target, adherents also attack Jewish people, persons who have immigrated to the United States, and members of the LGBTQ community.

 

From <https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/ku-klux-klan>

KU KLUX KLAN

Example: Populism, Racism, and Conspiracy for the masses--you are white, that is your identity, you will lose your identity if blacks and blacks are dangerous, criminal, inferior, and evil, so fear them.

Example: violent campaign of deadly voter intimidation during the 1868 presidential election From Arkansas to Georgia, thousands of Black people were killed. Similar campaigns of lynchings, tar-and-featherings, rapes and other violent attacks on those challenging white supremacy became a hallmark of the Klan.

 

 

splcenter.org

Ku Klux Klan

9–12 minutes

 

Top takeaways

Continuing the same trajectory as years past, the number of active Ku Klux Klan hate groups again declined in 2022. The decline can be attributed to infighting that has long been a hallmark of the Klan, as well as the comparatively greater appeal of newer racist groups that feature more contemporary tactics and rhetoric that is focused online and on younger audiences.

There were very few Klan events of note in 2022, and there were 22 flyering incidents, which was the same amount in 2021.  However, the subsequent news coverage they received helped maintain the false perception that the Klan is a dominant white supremacist group in America.

Key moments

Longtime themes of Klan rhetoric – including the need to “take back the country” – continued to permeate Klan propaganda in 2022.  While there were Klan rallies throughout 2022, they were small, remote and operated by individual Klan organizations with little cross coordination or overlap between other groups.

Election denialism has played a role in Klan mainstream relevancy and messaging revolving around the country being lost to “undesirables.” Former Grand Dragon David Duke’s radio show continues to falsely promote that millions of votes were stolen in the 2020 election. The Klan activity is mostly confined to flyering and spreading propaganda online, most of which is spread on alt-tech platforms like MeWe and the neo-Nazi forum Stormfront. Old Glory Knights in Tennessee and the Loyal White Knights of North Carolina and Virginia were recorded as having contributed to most of the flyering in 2022, while the United Klan Nation was most active on Telegram. Stormfront remains a popular outlet for Klansmen with some updated daily channels focusing on recruitment and propaganda.

What’s Ahead

KKK activity will likely remain stagnant or continue to decline in 2023. Platforms like Stormfront that are not very publicly accessible will likely be where much Klan activity remains, and Klan events are likely to remain equally insulated. Contemporary white supremacy movements will continue to eclipse the Klan in terms of recruitment, propaganda, events, and overall success and many within the movement view the Klan as defunct or out of touch.

 

Background

In 1865, at the conclusion of the Civil War, six Confederate veterans gathered in Pulaski, Tennessee, to create the Ku Klux Klan, a vigilante group mobilizing a campaign of violence and terror against the African American people that benefits from the progress of Reconstruction. As the group gained members from all strata of Southern white society, they used violent intimidation to prevent Black Americans – and any white people who supported Reconstruction – from voting and holding political office.

In an effort to maintain white hegemonic control of government, the Klan, joined by other white Southerners, engaged in a violent campaign of deadly voter intimidation during the 1868 presidential election. From Arkansas to Georgia, thousands of Black people were killed. Similar campaigns of lynchings, tar-and-featherings, rapes and other violent attacks on those challenging white supremacy became a hallmark of the Klan.

The first leader or “grand wizard” of the Ku Klux Klan was Nathan Bedford Forrest, a well-known Confederate general. Within the structure of the Klan, he directed a hierarchy of members with outlandish titles, such as “imperial wizard” and “exalted cyclops.” Hooded costumes, violent “night rides” and the notion that the group made up an “invisible empire” conferred a mystique that only added to the Klan’s infamy.

After a short but violent period, the “first era” Klan disbanded when it became evident that Jim Crow laws would secure white supremacy across the country. However, the legacy of the original Klan, and the figureheads of the Confederacy before it, have been enshrined across the country in the “Cult of the Lost Cause.” Only in recent years – after gaining significant attention through large counterprotests and after deadly attacks from far-right extremists – have these statues started being removed and public spaces renamed. On July 9, 2020, Tennessee’s State Capitol Commission voted to remove the bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest from the state capitol building. It was subsequently removed on July 23, 2021, and placed in the Tennessee State Museum.

In 1915, the Ku Klux Klan was revived by white Protestants near Atlanta, Georgia. In addition to the group’s anti-Black ideological core, this second iteration of the Klan also opposed Catholic and Jewish immigrants. A growing fear of communism and immigration broadened the Klan’s base throughout the South and into the Midwest, with a particular stronghold in Indiana. By 1925, when its followers staged a march in Washington, D.C., the Klan had as many as 4 million members and, in some states, considerable political power. A series of sex scandals, internal battles over power and newspaper exposés quickly reduced the group’s influence.

The Klan arose a third time during the 1960s to oppose the civil rights movement and attempt to preserve segregation as the Chief Justice Earl Warren-led U.S. Supreme Court substantiated civil rights in multiple rulings. Bombings, murders and other attacks by the Klan took a great many lives. Murders committed by Klansmen during the civil rights era include four young African American girls killed in 1963 while preparing for Sunday services at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, and the 1964 murder in Mississippi of civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner.

Throughout the second and third eras of the Klan, many Black Americans left Southern states in the Great Migration. While those who moved North were seeking economic prosperity and social opportunities, they were also hoping to escape the racial terror centered around the Klan’s ideological stronghold in the South. With over 6 million Black Americans taking part in this migration, the demographics of the country shifted dramatically.

With the conclusion of the Vietnam War in 1975 and the subsequent return of American soldiers, several key figures arose within the Klan. Louis Beam, upon his return from Vietnam, joined the Alabama-based United Klans of America. His teachings on “leaderless resistance” and early adaptation to technological advances helped bridge neo-Nazi and Klan groups into the organized white power movement. Similarly, David Duke – founder of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in 1975 – maintained a distinctly antisemitic hatred that closed ideological gaps with neo-Nazis.

Through a series of court cases aimed at bankrupting the Klan and closing the group’s paramilitary training camps, the organization has been greatly weakened. Internal fighting and government infiltrations have led to a seemingly endless series of splits, resulting in smaller, less organized Klan chapters. Given the Klan’s insistence on remaining an “invisible empire,” it is nearly impossible to estimate how many active members there are today. However, it is fair to assume that the infighting, rigid traditions and the uncouth image of the Klan are not attracting significant new membership.

2022 KKK hate groups

View all groups by state and by ideology.

* - Asterisk denotes headquarters.

American Christian Dixie Knights of the Ku Klux Klan

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Christian Revival Center Harrison

Arkansas

East Coast Knights of the True Invisible Empire

Pennsylvania

Honorable Sacred Knights of the Ku Klux Klan

Madison, Indiana

Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan

Pelham, North Carolina

Virginia

Old Glory Knights of the Ku Klux Klan

Santa Fe, Tennessee

True311.com

Tennessee

United Klan Nation

Tennessee

White Christian Brotherhood of the Ku Klux Klan

Maryland

White Christian Brotherhood of the Ku Klux Klan

Dayton, Ohio

Klan glossary

AKIA: A password meaning “A Klansman I Am,” often seen on decals and bumper stickers.

Alien: A person who does not belong to the Klan.

AYAK?: A password meaning “Are You a Klansman?”

CA BARK: A password meaning “Constantly Applied By All Real Klansmen.”

CLASP: A password meaning “Clannish Loyalty A Sacred Principle.”

Genii: The collective name for the national officers. Also known as the Kloncilium, or the advisory board to the Imperial Wizard.

Hydras: The Real officers, with the exception of the Grand Dragon.

Imperial Giant: Former Imperial Wizard.

Imperial Wizard: The overall, or national, head of a Klan, which it sometimes compares to the president of the United States.

Inner Circle: Small group of four or five members who plan and carry out “action.” Its members and activities are not disclosed to the general membership.

Invisible Empire: A Ku Klux Klan’s overall geographical jurisdiction, which it compares to the United States although none exist in every state.

Kalendar: Klan calendar, which dates events from both the origin and its 1915 rebirth Anno Klan, and means “in the year of the Klan,” and is usually written “AK.”

Kardinal Kullors: White, crimson, gold and black. Secondary Kullors are grey, green and blue. The Imperial Wizard’s Kullor is Skipper Blue.

K.B.I.: Klan Bureau of Investigation.

KIGY!: A password meaning “Klansman, I greet you!”

Klankfraft: The practices and beliefs of the Klan.

Klanton: The jurisdiction of a Klavern.

Klavern: A local unit or club; also called “den.”

Kleagle: An organizer whose main function is to recruit new members. In some Klans, he gets a percentage of the initiation fees.

Klectokon: Initiation fee.

Klepeer: Delegate elected to Imperial Klonvokation.

Klonkave: Secret Klavern meeting.

Klonverse: Province convention.

Kloran: Official book of Klan rituals.

Klorero: Realm convention.

SAN BOG: A password meaning “Strangers Are Near, Be On Guard.”

Terrors: The Exalted Cyclops’ officers.

====================

 

Knights of the Ku Klux Klan

Founded by David Duke in 1975, the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan has attempted to put a "kinder, gentler" face on the Klan, courting media attention and attempting to portray itself as a modern "white civil rights" organization. But beneath that veneer lurks the same bigoted rhetoric.

 

From <https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/knights-ku-klux-klan>

 

Massacre of Communist Workers' Party protesters

On November 3, 1979, five communist protesters were killed by KKK and American Nazi Party members in Greensboro, North Carolina, in what is known as the Greensboro massacre.[279] The Communist Workers' Party had sponsored a rally against the Klan in an effort to organize predominantly Black industrial workers in the area.[227] Klan members drove up with arms in their car trunks, and attacked marchers.

 

From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan#Massacre_of_Communist_Workers'_Party_protesters>

 

Chattanooga, Tennessee, shooting

In 1980, three KKK members shot four elderly Black women (Viola Ellison, Lela Evans, Opal Jackson, and Katherine Johnson) in Chattanooga, Tennessee, following a KKK initiation rally. A fifth woman, Fannie Crumsey, was injured by flying glass in the incident. Attempted murder charges were filed against the three KKK members, two of whom—Bill Church and Larry Payne—were acquitted by an all-white jury. The third defendant, Marshall Thrash, was sentenced by the same jury to nine months on lesser charges. He was released after three months.[281][282][283] In 1982, a jury awarded the five women $535,000 in a civil trial.[284]

 

From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan#Massacre_of_Communist_Workers'_Party_protesters>

 

Michael Donald lynching

After Michael Donald was lynched in 1981 in Alabama, the FBI investigated his death. The US attorney prosecuted the case. Two local KKK members were convicted for his murder, including Henry Francis Hays who was sentenced to death. After exhausting the appeals process, Hays was executed by electric chair for Donald's death in Alabama on June 6, 1997.[285] It was the first time since 1913 that a white man had been executed in Alabama for a crime against an African American.[286]

With the support of attorneys Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and state senator Michael A. Figures, Donald's mother Beulah Mae Donald sued the KKK in civil court in Alabama. Her lawsuit against the United Klans of America was tried in February 1987.[287] The all-white jury found the Klan responsible for the lynching of Donald, and ordered the Klan to pay US$7 million, but the KKK did not have sufficient funds to pay the fine. They had to sell off their national headquarters building in Tuscaloosa.[287][286]

 

From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan#Massacre_of_Communist_Workers'_Party_protesters>

 

 

Knights of the Ku Klux Klan

splcenter.org

 

The group's leaders, from Duke to current chief Thomas Robb, have been plagued by their own racist views, which inevitably shine through the smokescreen, and by the attacks of other Klan members who view their interest in mainstream media and politics as hypocritical and counterproductive.

In Its Own Words

"Non-whites who reside in America should be expected to conduct themselves according to Christian principles and must recognize that race mixing is definitely wrong and out of the question. It will be a privilege to live under the authority of a compassionate White Christian government."

— The Knights Party website

"[T]here are politicians in Washington D.C. working around the clock chipping away at our liberty, but thanks to the foresight of our founding fathers America has held out the longest against the global, race mixing, homosexual, anti-Christ forces working to wipe out White Christianity the way we have always known it."

— The Knights Party website 

 

"The Mexican birthrate in this country is five times that of white people. The black birthrate is four times larger. America will become a Third World nation if these trends continue. Unless we slow down and cut off immigration by beefing up border control and encourage welfare recipients to have fewer kids, the white population in America will be swamped."

— David Duke in the run-up to the KKKK's 1977 "Border Patrol" operation

 

 "Dats when A'hs does what A'hs want. Dat's also when A'hs kin have da white girls, and da free food stamps."

— KKKK leader Thomas Robb, The White Patriot

 

"Fear of the Klan will never win our people over but rekindling the love for their heritage will — and love of heritage is what we want. Love of Race, Love of Nation, Love of Faith. This is our Goal — This is our Hope!"

The Crusader, 2005

 

Background

In true David Duke style, the foundation of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (KKKK) is shrouded in political myth. Duke's claim that the Knights were founded in 1956 by Ed White (a pseudonym for Jim Lindsay) has, however, been largely discredited as a propagandistic attempt by the budding Klan leader to fend off depictions of his group as an inconsequential upstart. The group seems to have first appeared briefly in New Orleans in 1973, with Duke billing himself grand dragon and Jim Lindsay grand wizard. But records show that the KKKK was not formally incorporated in Louisiana until 1975, following Lindsay's murder, when Duke listed himself as founder and national director and his then-wife, Chloe, as secretary. 

Duke's attempts to win over the old guard of Klan leaders, both by re-imagining the origins of his group and by reaching out early on to fellow "Klan brothers," belied his revolutionary plans. Famously calling on fellow Klansmen to "get out of the cow pasture and into hotel meeting rooms," Duke saw himself as the leader of a slick, new Klan which would captivate the public through political discourse, eschewing the violent methods of the past. Duke thus brought the art of media manipulation to the Klan, wooing mainstream media personalities such as NBC host Tom Snyder and attracting dozens of reporters to write excited stories about the Knights' 1977 "Border Patrol" publicity stunt, a supposed effort to close the U.S.-Mexico border to undocumented entrants that lasted just a few days. Under Duke's management, the Knights opened its doors to women and Catholics (while never giving up entirely on the view that women are, above all else, best utilized for producing white babies). This all served to reinforce the public image of a more modern, educated Klan, an image that Duke reinforced by shunning Klan robes for suits and ties.

Duke also revamped the Klan's particular brand of bigotry. No longer a mere horde of cross-burning minority-haters, the Knights, like many other American hate groups, became "Nazified" — focused on Jews rather than blacks as the primary enemy — with Duke spinning elaborate theories about everything from Jewish control of the Federal Reserve to a Jewish conspiracy behind the civil rights movement. Likewise, the leadership of state KKKK chapters boasted a pantheon of budding neo-Nazi figures, including notorious anti-Semite Don Black in Alabama, White Aryan Resistance founder Tom Metzger in California, and David Lane, a future leader of the terrorist group The Order, in Colorado. 

For a while, the Knights prospered, hosting in 1975 one of the largest Klan gatherings in decades in Walker, La. By 1979, Duke had built membership in the KKKK to an estimated 1,500, with another 10,000 non-member supporters. Duke and his tactics were arguably the catalyst for the Knights' growth, but the egocentric leader also posed a constant threat to his group. Even one of the Knights' greatest successes, the Walker rally in 1975, contained the seeds of trouble. In the rally's wake, its organizer, Knights member Bill Wilkinson, quit in disgust over Duke's management of the proceeds. This kind of criticism soon became common, with aides to Duke, also including Metzger and others, eventually alienated by what they portrayed as his corruption, his womanizing and his self-serving desire for personal political glory. A series of schisms rocked the Knights, and by 1980, the breakaway group that Wilkinson had formed following his departure — the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan — boasted more members than Duke's KKKK. 

Thus, by the time that David Duke left in disgrace, after being caught on camera trying to sell the Knights' membership list, the KKKK was already weakened. That, plus the prosecution of several group leaders including Duke for allegedly inciting a riot at a New Orleans meeting, decimated the Knights. Many of those KKKK members who remained followed Duke to his new, non-Klan group, the National Association for the Advancement of White People, and the KKKK almost entirely collapsed several years later with Don Black's 1981 arrest for conspiring to invade the Caribbean nation of Dominica. Leadership of the weakened KKKK passed to Stanley McCollum and the 1980s saw a decline in Klan activity, with the Knights claiming only a few hundred members when Thom Robb took over in 1989.

Robb, who eschewed the Klannish "Imperial Wizard" title in favor of the more businesslike "National Director," led the group to something of a revival in the early 1990s, even attempting at one point to start a family-oriented Klan camp near the KKKK's new headquarters at his home in Harrison, Ark. Claiming, like Duke, to represent a "kinder, gentler" Klan, Robb followed in Duke's media-exploiting footsteps with the added boon of expanded Internet communications. Robb's was the first Klan site on the Web and he managed to develop a number of linked sites, thus creating the impression of a mushrooming cyber-movement. A gifted public speaker, Robb was also an adherent and pastor of Christian Identity theology who wooed his listeners with speeches embracing a more subtle form of hate cloaked behind white "pride" and Christian compassion. But these promising efforts could not stop a series of schisms similar to those that plagued the KKKK under Duke.

Like Duke, Robb also had a sharp interest in financial matters. He "formalized" KKKK recruitment, abandoning initiation rites in favor of a simple mail-in fee, in return for which members received booklets and tests allowing them to pay for their "promotion" to the next level. Complaints arose that this practice made Klan membership virtually meaningless. The salesmanship exhibited by Robb has sparked other controversies about money management, as well. In 1994, a number of high-ranking members split with Robb amidst accusations that he had made off with telephone hotline funds and a $20,000 donation to the group. These peoples were also highly critical of Robb's "kinder, gentler" approach and went on to found more confrontational Klan factions. One of the splinters that emerged was a Michigan-based group that promptly hosted a more "traditional" Klan rally, hoods and all, in Lafayette, Ind. Ed Novak, an ex-lieutenant of Robb's, founded the Chicago-based Federation of Klans and took with him roughly one third of Robb's membership. 

Although weakened since the 1994 split, the KKKK has continued to stage rallies and other events, garnering the most media attention for its involvement in several "free speech" lawsuits. The group was represented by the ACLU in a 1999 Missouri case in which a local KKKK chapter was initially barred from participating in the state's "Adopt-a-Highway" cleanup program (the Adopt-a-Highway technique had been advocated by David Duke himself). And, that same year, it engaged in a failed attempt to underwrite St. Louis, Mo., broadcasts of the National Public Radio new program "All Things Considered." Most recently, the Knights were sued by the conservative tabloid Rhinoceros Times in North Carolina for allegedly inserting Klan leaflets into papers that were then distributed to local residences.

Today, Robb's website continues to bill the Knights, somewhat disingenuously, as "the most active white rights organization in America" (it clearly is not) and still offers Klan membership (and promotion!) for a price. Robb recently began calling his organization "The Knights Party" in an attempt to emphasize what he sees as the need for a softer, more political approach along the lines of David Duke's tactics. In order, apparently, to finance political activity, the Knights website offers numerous wares for sale, such as handcrafted, glazed-ceramic statues of Klansmen.

splcenter.org

 

 

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Splc comprehensive report

Ku Klux Klan

A History of Racism and Violence

SIXTH EDITION, 2011

COPYRIGHT © 2011 BY THE SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER

 

https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/Ku-Klux-Klan-A-History-of-Racism.pdf

https://www.splcenter.org/20110228/ku-klux-klan-history-racism

 

 

 

Exploiting Fears

The message was clear — the new Klan was serious. That meant expanding its list of enemies to include Asians, immigrants, bootleggers, dope, graft, night clubs and road houses, violation of the Sabbath, sex, pre- and extra-marital escapades and scandalous behavior. The Klan, with its new mission of social vigilance, soon had organizers scouring the nation, probing for the fears of the communities they hit and then exploiting them to the hilt.

And the tactic was immediately a raging success. By the late summer of 1921, nearly 100,000 had enrolled in the Invisible Empire, and at $10 a head (tax-free since the Klan was a “benevolent” society), the profits were impressive. While Simmons made speeches and tinkered with ritual, Clarke busied himself with expanding the treasury, launching Klan publishing and manufacturing firms and investing in real estate. The future looked very good.

But during that summer the Klan leaders in Atlanta ran into their first trouble — controlling their far-flung empire. While Klan officials talked of fraternal ideals in Atlanta, their members across the nation began to take seriously the fiery rhetoric the recruiters were using to drum up new initiation fees. Violence first flared in a rampage of whippings, tar-and-feathers raids and the use of acid to brand the letters “KKK” on the foreheads of blacks, Jews and others they considered anti-American. Ministers, sheriffs, policemen, mayors and judges either ignored the violence or secretly participated. Few Klansmen were arrested, much less convicted.

 

From <https://www.splcenter.org/20110228/ku-klux-klan-history-racism#the%20invisible%20empire>

 

Blacks were regularly lynched by white mobs.

 

The Klan Exposed - drove up RECRUITING

In September 1921 the New York World began a series of articles on the Klan, backed up by the revelations of an ex-recruiter. Another newspaper reported some of the internal gossip and financial manipulations within the Atlanta headquarters. And even more embarrassing was a story in the World that Clarke and Mrs. Tyler had been arrested, not quite fully clothed, in a police raid on a bawdy house in 1919.

 

The Klan was accepted as part of american life in the early 1920s.

The article badly tarnished the Klan’s moralistic image and precipitated a serious rift within the ranks. The World exposés also brought demands for countermeasures, and congress responded in October 1921 with hearings into the Klan’s activities. Although the congressional inquiry so upset Clarke that he considered resigning, the actual hearings did little damage to the Klan. Simmons explained away the secrecy of the Klan as just part of the fraternal aspect of the organization. He disavowed any link between his Klan and the nightriders of reconstruction days, and he denied — just as Forrest had done 50 years earlier — any knowledge of or responsibility for the violence. The committee adjourned without action, and the Klan benefited from all the publicity.

 

From <https://www.splcenter.org/20110228/ku-klux-klan-history-racism#the%20invisible%20empire>

 

More Violence at BLACKS…but then WHITES!

And its violence was clearly revealed. Under Evans, the Klan launched a campaign of terrorism in the early and mid-1920S, and many communities found themselves firmly in the grasp of the organization. Lynching’s, shootings and whippings were the methods employed by the Klan. Blacks, Jews, Catholics, Mexicans and various immigrants were usually the victims.

But not infrequently, the Klan’s targets were whites, Protestants and females who were considered “immoral” or “traitors” to their race or gender. In Alabama, for example, a divorcee with two children was flogged for the “crime” of remarrying and then given a jar of Vaseline for her wounds. In Georgia, a woman was given 60 lashes for a vague charge of “immorality and failure to go to church”; when her 15-year-old son ran to her rescue, he received the same treatment. In both cases, ministers led the Klansmen responsible for the violence.

But such instances were not confined to the South. In Oklahoma, Klansmen applied the lash to girls caught riding in automobiles with young men, and very early in the Klan revival, women were flogged and even tortured in the San Joaquin Valley of California.

In a period when many women were fighting for the vote, for a place in the job market and for personal and cultural freedom, the Klan claimed to stand for “pure womanhood” and frequently attacked women who sought independence.

Political Gains

During the period of its most uncontrolled violence, the Klan also experienced unprecedented political gains. In 1922, Texas sent Klansman Earl Mayfield to the U.S. Senate, and Klan campaigns helped defeat two Jewish congressmen who had headed the Klan inquiry. Klan efforts were credited with helping to elect governors in 12 states in the early 1920s.

With two million members, new recruits joining the secret rolls daily, a host of friendly politicians throughout the land and his internal enemies subdued for the moment, Evans wanted to influence the presidential election of 1924. He even shifted his national headquarters from Atlanta to Washington. The Klan had a foothold in both parties since Deep South members tended to be Democrats while Klansmen in the North and West were often Republicans. But of the three major Presidential candidates, two were outspoken enemies of the Ku Klux Klan. And when the Democratic convention opened in New York, many Democrats were demanding the party adopt a platform plank condemning the Ku Klux Klan. The resulting fight tore the convention apart. After days of bitter wrangling over the issue, the platform plank denouncing the Klan lost by a single vote.

Although politicians became increasingly uncomfortable with Klan allies as a result of the turmoil, the success of the Klan candidates across the nation in 1924 buoyed Evans’ spirits. His notoriety peaked with a parade of 40,000 Klansmen down Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue to the Washington Monument in August 1925. Evans boasted of having helped reelect Coolidge, of having secured passage of strict anti-immigration laws and of having checked the ambitions of Catholics and others intent on “perverting” the nation. The Klan was riding high.

Losing Ground

But the decline of the Ku Klux Klan was already well underway. By 1926, when Evans tried to repeat the parade in Washington, only half as many marchers arrived, and they were sobered by the news of political defeats in areas that a year before had been considered safe Klan strongholds.

Increasingly the Klan suffered counter attacks by the clergy, the press and a growing number of politicians. Then, in 1927, a group of rebellious Klansmen in Pennsylvania broke away from the Invisible Empire, and Evans promptly filed a $100,000 damage suit against them, confident that he could make an example of the rebels. To his surprise, the Pennsylvania Klansmen fought back in the courts, and the resulting string of witnesses told of Klan horrors, terrorism and violence, named members and spilled secrets.

Newspapers carried accounts of testimony ranging from the kidnapping of a small girl from her grandparents in Pittsburgh to a Colorado Klansman who was beaten when he tried to quit. One particularly horrible story described how a man in Terrell, Texas, had been soaked in oil and burned to death before several hundred Klansmen. The enraged judge threw Evans’ case out of court.

The next year the Democrats nominated Al Smith — a New York Catholic and longtime Klan foe — for president against the Republicans’ Herbert Hoover. The Ku Klux Klan had a perfect issue which Evans hoped to use to whip up the faithful. But his Invisible Empire had melted from three million in 1925 to no more than several hundred thousand, and the Klan was no factor in Hoover’s election. Americans had clearly tired of the divisive effect of the masks, robes and burning crosses. What was left of the Klan’s clout disappeared as its old friends in office, smelling the new political winds, deserted the organization in droves.

During the 1930s, the nation struggled through the Great Depression, and the Klan continued to shrink. It became primarily a fraternal society, its leaders urging its members to stay out of trouble and the national headquarters hoarding its meager funds. After Franklin D. Roosevelt took office, the Klan began to charge that he was bringing too many Catholics and Jews into the government. Later they added the charge that the New Deal was tinged with communism. The red menace was used more and more by Evans and other Klansmen as the rallying cry, and communists eventually replaced Catholics as one of the Klan’s foremost enemies.

Only in Florida was the Klan still a factor in the 1930s. With a membership of about 30,000, the Klan was active in Jacksonville, Miami, and the citrus belt from Orlando to Tampa. In the orange groves of central Florida, Klansmen still operated in the old night riding style, intimidating blacks who tried to vote, “punishing” marital infidelity and clashing with union organizers. Florida responded with laws to unmask the nightriders, and a crusading journalist named Stetson Kennedy infiltrated and then exposed the Klan, rousing the anger of ministers, editors, politicians and plain citizens.

 

Women’s auxiliaries of the Ku Klux Klan formed their own marching corps and joined in mass Klan demonstrations.

New Leadership

Evans was replaced in 1939 by James A. Colescott of Indiana. He led the Klan in the Carolinas, where unions were trying to organize textile workers, and in Georgia, where nightriders flogged some 50 people during a two-year period. An outcry from the citizens of Georgia and South Carolina brought arrests and convictions, and the Klan was forced to retreat.

In the North the Klan suffered another reversal when some local Klan chapters began to develop ties with American Nazis, a move Southern Klansmen opposed but were basically powerless to stop. The end came in 1944 when the Internal revenue Service filed a lien against the Ku Klux Klan for back taxes of more than $685,000 on profits earned during the 1920s. “We had to sell our assets and hand over the proceeds to the government and go out of business,” Colescott recalled when it was over. “Maybe the government can make something out of the Klan — I never could.”

Powerful social forces were at work in the United States following World War II. A new wave of immigrants, particularly Jewish refugees, arrived from war-torn Europe. A generation of young black soldiers returned home after having been a part of a great army fighting for world freedom. In the South, particularly, labor unions began extensive campaigns to organize poorly paid workers. The migration from the farms to the cities continued, with a resulting shakeup in old political alliances.

Bigots began to howl more loudly than in years, and a new Klan leader began to beat the drums of anti-black, anti-union, anti-Jew, anti-Catholic and anti-communist hatred. This man was Samuel Green, an Atlanta doctor. Green managed to reorganize the Klan in California, Kentucky, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Florida and Alabama. But both federal and state bureaus of investigation prosecuted Klan lawlessness, and Green found that his hooded order was surrounded by enemies. The press throughout the South had become increasingly hostile; ministers were more and more inclined to attack the Klan, and state and local governments passed laws against cross burnings and masks.

By the time of Green’s death in August 1949, the Klan was fractured internally by disputes and hounded by investigations from all sides in response to a wave of Klan violence in the South. Many Klansmen went to jail for floggings or other criminal acts. By the early 1950s, the Invisible Empire was at its lowest level since its rebirth on Stone Mountain in 1915.

 

From <https://www.splcenter.org/20110228/ku-klux-klan-history-racism#the%20invisible%20empire>

 

 

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splcenter.org

2021Jul15 SPLC analysis - Neo-Nazi's Bitcoin History Suggests Russian Darknet Link

July 15, 2021 | SPLC LINK | BY Michael Edison Hayden and Megan Squire

ANALYSIS

Hatewatch identified Anglin’s transactions through software that specializes in analyzing cryptocurrency transactions. Hatewatch believes based upon our reading of that software that in 2016 Anglin paid money to a Russian darknet site that traffics in hacked personal data, drugs, ransomware, stolen credit cards and money laundering. Hatewatch could not determine exactly why Anglin transferred currency to the apparent darknet site highlighted through the software. He did not respond to an email requesting comment on the findings published in this story, but he did deny them in a neo-Nazi forum he operates.

“This is totally fake. I don't even know what any of this is about. I never bought any Russian darknet drugs lol,” Anglin told other forum users in a comment on July 16. “I have never used bitcoin for anything other than website stuff.” You can read Anglin’s complete response to this analysis by clicking here.

Anglin, a neo-Nazi known for leading internet-based harassment campaigns against women, Black, Jewish and Muslim people, among others, issued the Bitcoin payments in July and August of 2016, Hatewatch determined. At that time, Anglin produced a deluge of propaganda promoting Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. (Anglin voted for Trump that year via absentee ballot from the southern Russian city of Krasnodar.) The Southern Poverty Law Center successfully sued Anglin for $14 million over the terror campaign he organized against Tanya Gersh, a Montana-based Jewish real estate agent he targeted through his website in December 2016. Anglin has hidden from the public in recent years and has so far failed to pay out the judgment against him.

Promoting the darknet to a generation of extremists

Anglin and his Daily Stormer collaborator Andrew “weev” Auernheimer have promoted the darknet among the site’s community of readers for years. By darknet, Hatewatch refers to a layer of the internet that is only accessible through Tor, a peer-to-peer web browser that enables users to be anonymous. In an era when typically only those with money can obtain privacy online, activists endorse Tor as a means of protecting one’s identity from those who seek to steal data or create harm. Anglin and Auernheimer seek anonymity through Tor to help them engage in pro-fascist activism without outsiders detecting their activity, which often includes stirring up online harassment campaigns. Anglin advocated for his readers to download and employ Tor back in August 2015, when explaining how to skirt around software that blocks IP addresses.

“We already know how to deal with the IP blocking. We just use Tor,” Anglin wrote in that post, encouraging his readers to troll a comment section. “Download and use Tor browser. It’s very simple. Comment on the top stories until you’re banned, reset Tor, repeat. The Android version of Tor also works great, if you want to Troll on the move with your smartphone.”

Tech companies such as GoDaddy and Google originally provided web services to the Daily Stormer, but they cut ties with the hate site in August 2017 following the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which Anglin promoted. Anglin and Auernheimer moved the Daily Stormer to more than a dozen different domains in the months that followed, often using a darknet address as a permanent home for the site at times when readers couldn’t access it on the clear web, where most internet activity happens. (Anglin sometimes refers to the clear web as the “normie web” to his readers.) Anglin wrote an entry on a personal blog on Aug. 25, 2017, calling the site’s move to the darknet “fitting.”

An early proponent of cryptocurrency

Anglin adopted cryptocurrency within years of it becoming available, and today operates at least 200 Bitcoin addresses. In addition to the addresses he uses to solicit donations, many of the other addresses are created as byproducts of his long history using the cryptocurrency. Each time Bitcoin holders receive “change” back from transactions on the blockchain, that “change” is held in a new address. Hatewatch determined that Anglin frequently combined the coins from his “change” addresses with coins held in his known donation addresses in order to make new payments.

Anglin’s transaction history also stands out for the money he holds relative to other extremists, his volume of transactions and his apparent interest in websites that traffic in illegal goods, stolen data and money laundering, Hatewatch determined. We also found that Anglin has traded at least $1,144,648 worth of Bitcoin in total across 6,147 transactions, 4790 inbound and 1357 outbound, spanning six and a half years. Anglin wrote in his denial that “[Hatewatch] just print[s] whatever amount of money to try to stop people from donating.” Anglin commonly solicits donations from his readers, sometimes threatening to stop working if he runs out of funds.

“We have long been banned from operating within the normal financial system. As far back as 2014, we were banned from PayPal and credit card processors, and switched to Bitcoin,” Anglin wrote of cryptocurrency in a February post.

Hatewatch found a series of transactions involving an address known to belong to Anglin on Dec. 24, 2014, which marks his first known use of the Bitcoin blockchain. On that date, two unidentified Bitcoin users sent Anglin four payments in quick succession of 0.008814 BTC each. (White supremacists place symbolic significance on the numbers 14 and 88.) Hours later, on the same date, someone also sent Anglin a 0.04 BTC payment. The person who sent the payment also transacted multiple times with the white nationalist Don Black, Hatewatch determined. (Black, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, created the white supremacist forum Stormfront and invested early in Bitcoin.) Hatewatch reached out about the transactions by email to Stormfront, Black’s website, but no one wrote back.

Anglin later spent Bitcoin at sites associated with darknet services, according to Hatewatch’s interpretation of the blockchain analysis software. In summer 2016, Anglin made payments to a Russian darknet website, Hatewatch found. He paid out roughly $19.68 on July 3, 2016, $31.74 on July 19, 2016, and $15.04 on Aug. 6, 2016, according to our reading of the software. Around the same time, Anglin transacted with addresses on the Bitcoin blockchain associated with trafficking in money laundering practices. In cryptocurrency parlance, these “mixing services” allow multiple users to combine their coins to obscure their precise destination. Anglin began receiving payments from users through mixing services in October 2016 and continued as recently as January 2020, Hatewatch found.

Daily Stormer’s move to Monero

Today, Anglin no longer solicits Bitcoin donations on his Daily Stormer website, but instead encourages readers to donate Monero, a privacy-focused coin embraced by the criminal underworld. Designed to obscure transactions from public view, darknet market shoppers spend theoretically untraceable Monero tokens to evade law enforcement scrutiny. For that reason, Hatewatch can analyze only fragments of Anglin’s cryptocurrency history right now, emphasizing payments he either made or received through known Bitcoin wallets.

“Every Bitcoin transfer is visible publicly,” Anglin wrote in February about moving Daily Stormer donations to Monero. “Generally, your name is not attached to the address in a direct way, but spies from the various ‘woke’ anti-freedom organizations have unlimited resources to try to link these transactions to real names. With Monero, the transactions are all hidden.”

The private security company CipherTrace claims to have developed the capacity to trace Monero transactions on behalf of law enforcement, according to an August 2020 statement on their website. CipherTrace notes in their statement that 45% of darknet markets now carry out transactions in Monero, making it the second most-used cryptocurrency for such transactions behind Bitcoin.

Russian darknet services, American crimes

One example of the type of Russian darknet site Anglin may have paid is “uniccshop.ru,” which the Justice Department (DOJ) described as being part of a “transnational criminal organization” when they issued cybercrime-related charges against 36 people connected to it in February 2018. A man named Andrey Sergeevich Novak operated the Unicc.ru site at the time Anglin made the apparent payments. Novak used the aliases “Unicc,” “Faaaxx” and “Faxtrod” while he participated in a shadowy group known as the InFraud Organization, which victimized “millions in all 50 states and worldwide,” contributing to losses of over $530 million through hacking and data theft, the indictment said. Hatewatch reached out to the DOJ for an update in the case against Novak and a comment on Anglin’s apparent use of darknet markets and is awaiting a response.

Law enforcement has also cracked down on Bitcoin mixing services in recent years. Federal authorities arrested Roman Sterlingov, the administrator of a website called BitcoinFog, on money laundering charges in April. Hatewatch reached out to the Internal Revenue Service for a comment on users of Bitcoin mixing services and an update on the Sterlingov case. If they respond, Hatewatch will update this story.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify that the analysis of Andrew Anglin’s bitcoin wallet data was made by an SPLC analyst interpreting data from a blockchain analysis software. Hatewatch also updated the analysis to include Anglin’s comment about our findings.

Photo illustration by SPLC

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2021/07/15/neo-nazis-bitcoin-history-suggests-russian-darknet-link

 

 

 

 

Semantics Matters: "Conditional if" and "Unconditional"

To properly understand Kelner's use of the word "unconditional,"we must first consider the case of United States v. Watts (1969) 394 U.S. 705, 22 L. Ed. 2d 664, 89 S. Ct. 1399 on which Kelner relied. Watts was convicted of threatening the President of the United States. He had stated, in a small Discussion group during a political rally,

"And now I have already received my draft classification as 1-A and I have got to report for my physical this Monday coming. I am not going.

If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J. [President Lyndon B. Johnson]." (Id. at p. 706.) The Supreme Court reversed Watts's conviction, holding that the trial court erred in denying his motion for acquittal.

Defense counsel had stressed the alleged threat "was made during a political debate, that it was expressly made conditional upon an event -- induction into the Armed Forces -- which [Watts] vowed would never occur, and that both [Watts] and the crowd laughed after the statement was made." (Id. at p. 707.)

The Supreme Court concluded that taken in context, and considering the conditional nature of the threat and the reaction of the listeners, the only possible Conclusion was that the statement was not a punishable "true threat," but was rather political hyperbole privileged under the First Amendment. (Id. at pp. 707-708.) The Watts threat was not merely conditional in the abstract, but conditioned on an event which the defendant "vowed would never occur." Thus, far from conveying an immediate prospect of execution, this threat explicitly contained a condition the defendant promised would not come to pass.

 

United States v. Kelner, supra, 534 F.2d 1020 involved a televised press conference called by the Jewish Defense League in which Kelner, dressed in military fatigues and armed with a weapon, stated that his group was going to kill Yasser Arafat, who was to be in New York for a meeting of the United Nations.

 

New Standard - Personal Intention vs. "True threat"

 

The Kelner court disagreed. Instead of an inquiry as to the defendant's intent to carry outthe threat, the Second Circuit concluded the Constitution mandated only an inquiry as to whether the threat convincingly expressed an intention of being carried out. (United States v. Kelner, supra, 534 F.2d at p. 1027.)

Clearly, the Kelner court did not intend "unconditionality" to prohibit punishment of threats including "if" language.This is evidenced by its Discussion of the "purpose and effect" of the "true threat" requirement.

It "is to insure that only unequivocal, unconditional and specific expressions of intention immediately to inflict injury may be punished -- only such threats, in short, as are of the same nature as those threats which are . . . 'properly punished every day under statutes prohibiting extortion, blackmail and assault . . . .'"(United States v. Kelner, supra, 534 F.2d at p. 1027.) By definition, extortion punishes conditional threats, specifically those in which the victim complies with the mandated condition. (See Pen. Code, § 518 ["Extortion is the obtaining of property from another, with his consent, . . . induced by a wrongful use of force or fear . . . .]; Pen. Code, § 519, subd. 1 [fear as will constitute extortionmay be induced by a threat to do unlawful injury to the victim].)

Likewise, many threats involved in assault cases are conditional. A conditional threat can be punished as an assault, when the condition imposed must be performed immediately, the defendant has no right to impose the condition, the intent is to immediately enforce performance by violence and defendant places himself in a position to do so and proceeds as far as is then necessary. (People v. McCoy (1944) 25 Cal. 2d 177, 182, 193, 153 P.2d 315 [assault with a deadly weapon accomplished by defendant's demand, with knife held over victim, that victim not make any noise or the knife will be used].)

It is clear, then, that the Kelner court's use of the word "unconditional" was not meant to prohibit prosecution of all threats involving an "if" clause, but only to prohibit prosecution based on threats whose conditions precluded them from conveying a gravity of purpose and imminent prospect of execution.

Substantial Evidence

Because we have concluded the use of the word "if" in defendant's threat does not absolve defendant from liability, her substantial evidence challenge is easily resolved. Defendant threatened to hire someone to kill Foss if he did not join her Universe Reform Party. Although grammatically conditional, this threat contained a considerable degree of unconditionality, since compliance with defendant's condition would be practically impossible. The other three factors, unequivocality, immediacy and specificity, were also present in significant degrees. The threat was directed to Foss and specifically identified not only the manner in which it would be carried out (carjacking), but confirmed defendant's possession of the means to accomplish it ($1,000 to hire gang members). The threat was also unequivocal and immediate. If Foss refused to join the party (a virtual certainty), the injury would occur. Thus, each of the four factors was sufficiently present to convey to Foss a gravity of purpose and imminent prospect of execution. As a result of the threat, Foss was frightened and nervous and altered his habits in order to preserve his safety. The jury's Conclusion the threat was sufficiently unequivocal, unconditional, immediate and specific to convey to Foss a gravity of purpose and imminent prospect of execution was thus supported by substantial evidence and will be upheld.

Defendant also contends that there may not have been a threat at all and Foss's fear for his safety was not reasonable. Because Gormly did not immediately give the phone message to Foss and Foss did not immediately contact the police, defendant claims Foss must have known the phone call was "just another in a long series of foolish, harmless communications" from her. We disagree. The telephone call was concededly different from all earlier communications Foss had received from defendant, in that it contained an explicit death threat. Gormly could not have immediately notified Foss of the phone call; he did not know how to reach Foss. Foss did not call the police until after receiving the package because the package greatly changed the circumstances of the earlier threat. The postcard had indicated to Foss that defendant was no longer in an institutional setting and was in the Los Angeles area. The package proved that defendant had access to Foss's office. Nor was the package an innocent collection of documents, but it contained a threatening item -- the dead cat. All of these circumstances combined to make the telephoned death threat more threatening than it originally appeared and provided substantial evidence to support the jury's verdict.

Disposition

The judgment is affirmed.

ARMSTRONG, J., and GODOY PEREZ, J., Concurring.

Disposition

The judgment is affirmed.

1. On May 25, 1994, defendant's appellate counsel filed an opening brief requesting independent review of the record by this court pursuant to People v. Wende (1979) 25 Cal. 3d 436, 158 Cal. Rptr. 839, 600 P.2d 1071. On July 18, 1994, in light of the conflicting appellate authority, we requested counsel to brief the issue of whether the statute could be violated by a conditional threat. Defendant's appellate counsel then filed a supplemental brief addressing that issue, as well as raising insufficiency of the evidence as to the existence of any threat or any reasonable fear on the part of the victim. A respondent's brief was filed. Defendant subsequently submitted a brief, in propria persona, raising the issue of ineffective assistance of trial counsel. Based on the record on appeal, defendant has failed to establish ineffective assistance of counsel.

2. The message addressed to Foss stated that Stanfield of the Universe Reform Party had called at 8:05 a.m. on August 9, 1993, and stated: "Has 1000.00 to pay to gang banger to take care of you. She will call back at 1:30 today."

3. The police logged the contents of the package, which also included a white bra with an earring attached, a cloth, a book entitled "Sexist Justice" and articles on women's rights.

4. The Brooks opinion relied on the general development of federal law subsequent to Kelner in determining the meaning of the California statute. (People v. Brooks, supra, 26 Cal. App. 4th at pp. 146-149.) To the extent Brooks relied on cases that may have implicitly differed from the Kelner rule, we respectfully disagree with its analysis. The California Legislature has chosen to codify the Kelner rule. While it is appropriate to consider other courts' interpretations of this rule, it is inappropriate to consider subsequent developments in First Amendment jurisprudence. At the time it was enacted, Penal Code section 422 may have been intended as the broadest terrorist threat statute possible under First Amendment restrictions. However, the Legislature did not choose to use terminology that would allow the statute to grow in accordance with First Amendment jurisprudence, and has instead frozen California law at the Kelner formulation.

5. The particular language the instruction was found to have followed was the precise language adopted by the California statute.

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This Document Cites the Following Cases:

People v. Brooks

 


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