Tag: Soeren Kern

A Brief History of Antifa: Part II


Soeren Kern posted his “A Brief History of Antifa: Part I” at the Gatestone Institute on June 12. I cross posted it on my Blog on June 13 (adding a photo of a fed-up person kicking an Antifa person in the groin political toon that upset some social platforms). Here is the cross post of Part Two.

 

After I read this I formed an opinion that has been brewing on the inside of me for some time. TO BE CLEAR – My opinion is NOT at all formulated by the author (Soeren Kern) of this exposé – at least not in this article. After reading – ESPECIALLY the Antifa in their own words portion – It might be time for some local activism with your NRA or 2nd Amendment Clubs, BECAUSE it is becoming clear local government controlled by the Democratic  Party do NOT care about YOUR Life, Liberty or Personal Property. Again ESPECIALLY, if you are a Christian, Conservative and American believing in America’s heritage and exceptionalism.

 

JRH 6/23/20

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A Brief History of Antifa: Part II

Antifa in the United States

 

By Soeren Kern

June 23, 2020 at 5:00 am

Gatestone Institute

 

  • “The only long-term solution to the fascist menace is to undermine its pillars of strength in society grounded not only in white supremacy but also in ableism, heteronormativity, patriarchy, nationalism, transphobia, class rule, and many others.” — Mark Bray, “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” 2017.

 

  • “They’re coming from other cities. That cost money. They didn’t do this on their own. Somebody’s paying for this…. What Antifa is doing is they’re basically hijacking the black community as their army. They instigate, they antagonize, they get these young black men and women to go out there and do stupid things, and then they disappear off into the sunset.” — Bernard Kerik, former commissioner of the New York City Police Department.

 

  • The coordinated violence raises questions about how Antifa is financed. The Alliance for Global Justice (AFGJ) is an organizing group that serves as a fiscal sponsor to numerous radical left-wing initiatives, according to Influence Watch, a research group that collects data on advocacy organizations, foundations and donors…. The Open Society Foundations, Tides Foundation, Arca Foundation, Surdna Foundation, Public Welfare Foundation, and the Brightwater Fund have all made contributions to AFGJ, according to Influence Watch.

 

  • One of the groups funded by AFGJ is called Refuse Fascism … an offshoot of the Radical Communist Party (RCP)…. The group’s slogan states: “This System Cannot Be Reformed, It Must Be Overthrown!”

 

[Gatestone] Editor’s note: This is Part II of a series on the history of the global Antifa movement. Part I described Antifa and explored the ideological origins of the group. Part II examines the history, tactics and goals of the movement in the United States.

 

Antifa in the United States is highly networked, well-funded and has a clear ideological agenda: to subvert, often with extreme violence, the American political system, with the ultimate aim of replacing capitalism with communism. Pictured: An Antifa demonstration on November 16, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

 

U.S. President Donald Trump recently announced that the American government would designate Antifa — a militant “anti-fascist” movement — as a terrorist organization due to the violence that erupted at George Floyd protests across the United States.

 

The Code of Federal Regulations (28 C.F.R. Section 0.85) defines terrorism as “the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.”

 

American media outlets sympathetic to Antifa have jumped to its defense. They argue that the group cannot be classified as a terrorist organization because, they claim, it is a vaguely-defined protest movement that lacks a centralized structure.

 

As the following report shows, Antifa is, in fact, highly networked, well-funded and has a clear ideological agenda: to subvert, often with extreme violence, the American political system, with the ultimate aim of replacing capitalism with communism. In the United States, Antifa’s immediate aim is to remove President Trump from office.

 

Gatestone Institute has identified Antifa groups in all 50 U.S. states, with the possible exception of West Virginia. Some states, including California, Texas and Washington, appear to have dozens of sub-regional Antifa organizations.

 

It is difficult precisely to determine the size of the Antifa movement in the United States. The so-called “Anti-Fascists of Reddit,” the “premier anti-fascist community” on the social media platform Reddit, has approximately 60,000 members. The oldest Antifa group in America, the Portland, Oregon-based “Rose City Antifa,” has more than 30,000 Twitter followers and 20,000 Facebook followers, not all of whom are necessarily supporters. “It’s Going Down,” a media platform for anarchists, anti-fascists and autonomous anti-capitalists, has 85,000 Twitter followers and 30,000 Facebook followers.

 

Germany, which has roughly one-quarter of the population of the United States, is home to 33,000 extreme leftists, of whom 9,000 are believed to be extremely dangerous, according to the domestic intelligence agency (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, BfV). Violent left-wing agitators are predominantly male, between 21 and 24 years of age, usually unemployed, and, according to BfV, 92% still live with their parents. Anecdotal evidence suggests that most Antifa members in the United States have a similar socio-economic profile.

 

In America, national Antifa groups, including “Torch Antifa Network,” “Refuse Fascism” and “World Can’t Wait” are being financed — often generously, as shown below — by individual donors as well as by large philanthropic organizations, including the Open Society Foundations founded by George Soros.

 

To evade detection by law enforcement, Antifa groups in the United States often use encrypted social media platforms, such as Signal and Telegram Messenger, to communicate and coordinate their activities, sometimes across state lines. Not surprisingly, the U.S. Department of Justice is currently investigating individuals linked to Antifa as a step to unmasking the broader organization.

 

Historical Origins of American Antifa

 

In the United States, Antifa’s ideology, tactics and goals, far from being novel, are borrowed almost entirely from Antifa groups in Europe, where so-called anti-fascist groups, in one form or another, have been active, almost without interruption, for a century.

 

As in Europe, the aims and objectives of the American Antifa movement can be traced back to a single, overarching century-long ideological war against the “fascist ideals” of capitalism and Christianity, which the Antifa movement wants to replace with a “revolutionary socialist alternative.”

 

The first so-called anti-fascist group in the United States was the American League Against War and Fascism, established in 1933 by the Communist Party USA. The League, which claimed to oppose fascism in Europe, was actually dedicated to subverting and overthrowing the U.S. government.

 

In testimony to the U.S. Congress in 1953, CPUSA leader Manning Johnson revealed that the American party had been instructed by the Communist International in the 1930s to set up the American League Against War and Fascism:

 

“as a cover to attack our government, our social system, our leaders… used as a cover to attack our law-enforcement agencies and to build up mass hate against them… used as a cover to undermine national security… used as a cover to defend Communists, the sworn enemies of our great heritage… used as a cover for preparing millions of people ideologically and organizationally for the overthrow of the United States Government.”

 

A precursor to the modern Antifa movement was the Black Panthers, a revolutionary political organization established in October 1966 by Marxist college students in Oakland, California. The group advocated the use of violence and guerilla tactics to overthrow the U.S. government.

 

Historian Robyn C. Spencer noted that Black Panther leaders were deeply influenced by “The United Front of the Working Class Against Fascism,” a report by Georgi Dimitroff delivered at the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International in July and August 1935:

 

“By 1969, the Panthers began to use fascism as a theoretical framework to critique the U.S. political economy. They defined fascism as ‘the power of finance capital’ which ‘manifests itself not only as banks, trusts and monopolies but also as the human property of FINANCE CAPITAL — the avaricious businessman, the demagogic politician, and the racist pig cop.'”

 

In July 1969, the Black Panthers organized an “anti-fascist” conference called “United Front Against Fascism,” attended by nearly 5,000 activists:

 

“The Panthers hoped to create a ‘national force’ with a ‘common revolutionary ideology and political program which answers the basic desires and needs of all people in fascist, capitalist, racist America.'”

 

The last day of the conference was devoted to a detailed plan by the Black Panthers to decentralize police forces nationwide. Spencer wrote:

 

“They proposed amending city charters to establish autonomous community-based police departments for every city which would be accountable to local neighborhood police control councils comprised of 15 elected community members. They launched the National Committees to Combat Fascism (NCCF), a multiracial nationwide network, to organize for community control of the police.”

 

In 1970, members of the Black Panthers created a terrorist group called the Black Liberation Army, whose stated goal was to “weaken the enemy capitalist state.”

 

BLA member Assata Shakur described the group’s organizational structure, which is similar to the one used by today’s Antifa movement:

 

“The Black Liberation Army was not a centralized, organized group with a common leadership and chain of command. Instead there were various organizations and collectives working together out of various cities, and in some larger cities there were often several groups working independently of each other.”

 

Other ideological anchors of the modern Antifa movement in the United States include a left-wing terrorist group known as the Weather Underground Organization, the American equivalent to Germany’s Red Army Faction. The Weather Underground, responsible for bombings and riots throughout the 1970s, sought to achieve “the destruction of U.S. imperialism and form a classless communist world.”

 

Former FBI Counterterrorism Director Terry Turchie has noted the similarities between Black Lives Matter today and the Black Panther Party and Weather Underground groups of the 1960s and 1970s:

 

“The Black Panther Party was a Marxist Maoist Leninist organization and that came from Huey Newton, one of the co-founders, who said we’re standing for nothing more than the total transformation of the United States government.

 

“He went on to explain that they wanted to take the tension that already existed in black communities and exacerbate it where they can. To take those situations where there is a tinderbox and light the country on fire.

 

“Today we’re seeing the third revolution and they think they can make this happen. The only thing that is different are the names of the groups.”

 

American Antifa

 

The roots of the modern Antifa movement in the United States can be traced back to the 1980s, with the establishment of Anti-Racist Action, a network of anarchist punk rock aficionados dedicated to fist-fighting neo-Nazi skinheads.

 

Mark Bray, author of “The Antifa Handbook,” explained:

 

“In many cases, the North American modern Antifa movement grew up as a way to defend the punk scene from the neo-Nazi skinhead movement, and the founders of the original Anti-Racist Action network in North America were anti-racist skinheads. The fascist/anti-fascist struggle was essentially a fight for control of the punk scene during the 1980s, and that was true across of much of north America and in parts of Europe in this era.

 

“There’s a huge overlap between radical left politics and the punk scene, and there’s a stereotype about dirty anarchists and punks, which is an oversimplification but grounded in a certain amount of truth.”

 

Anti-Racist Action was inspired by Anti-Fascist Action (AFA), a militant anti-fascist group founded in Britain in the late 1970s. The American group shared the British group’s penchant for violently attacking political opponents. ARA was eventually renamed the Torch Network, which currently brings together nine militant Antifa groups.

 

In November 1999, mobs of masked anarchists, predecessors to today’s Antifa movement, laid waste to downtown Seattle, Washington, during violent demonstrations that disrupted a ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization. The Seattle WTO protests birthed the anti-globalization movement.

 

In April 2001, an estimated 50,000 anti-capitalists gathered in Quebec to oppose the Third Summit of the Americas, a meeting of North and South American leaders who were negotiating a deal to create a free trade area that would encompass the Western Hemisphere.

 

In February 2003, hundreds of thousands of anti-war protesters demonstrated against the Iraq War. After the war went ahead anyway, some parts of the so-called progressive movement became more radicalized and birthed the current Antifa movement.

 

The Rose City Antifa (RCA), founded in Portland, Oregon, in 2007, is the oldest American group to use “Antifa” in its name. Antifa is derived from a group called Antifaschistische Aktion, founded in May 1932 by Stalinist leaders of the Communist Party of Germany. Antifa’s logo, with two flags representing anarchism (black flag) and communism (red flag), are derived from the German Antifa movement.

 

The American Antifa movement gained momentum in 2016, after Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described Socialist, lost the Democratic Party’s nomination to Hillary Clinton. Grassroots supporters of Sanders vowed to continue his “political revolution” to establish socialism in America.

 

Meanwhile, immigration became a new flashpoint in American politics after Donald Trump campaigned on a pledge to reduce illegal migration. In June 2016, protestors violently attacked supporters of Donald Trump outside a rally in San Jose, California. In January 2017, hundreds of Antifa rioters tried to disrupt President Trump’s inauguration ceremony in Washington, DC.

 

In February 2017, Antifa rioters employing so-called black bloc tactics — they wear black clothing, masks or other face-concealing items so that they cannot be identified by police — shut down a speech by Milos Yiannopoulos, a far-right activist who was slated to speak at the University of California at Berkeley, the birthplace of the 1964 Free Speech Movement. Antifa radicals claimed that Yiannopoulos was planning to “out” undocumented students at Berkeley for the purpose of having them arrested. Masked Antifa vandals armed with Molotov cocktails, bricks and a host of other makeshift weapons fought police and caused more than $100,000 in property damage.

 

In June 2018, Republican Representative Dan Donovan of New York introduced Bill HR 6054 — “Unmasking Antifa Act of 2018” — that calls for prison sentences of up to 15 years for anyone who, while wearing a mask or disguise, “injures, oppresses, threatens, or intimidates” someone else who is exercising any right or privilege guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. The bill remains stalled in the House of Representatives.

 

In July 2019, Antifa radical Willem Van Spronsen attempted to firebomb the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Tacoma, Washington. He was killed in a confrontation with police.

 

That same month, U.S. Senators Ted Cruz and Bill Cassidy introduced a resolution that would label Antifa a “domestic terrorist organization.” The resolution stated:

 

“Whereas members of Antifa, because they believe that free speech is equivalent to violence, have used threats of violence in the pursuit of suppressing opposing political ideologies; Whereas Antifa represents opposition to the democratic ideals of peaceful assembly and free speech for all; Whereas members of Antifa have physically assaulted journalists and other individuals during protests and riots in Berkeley, California;

 

“Now, therefore, be it resolved, that the Senate … calls for the groups and organizations across the country who act under the banner of Antifa to be designated as domestic terrorist organizations.”

 

“Antifa are terrorists, violent masked bullies who ‘fight fascism’ with actual fascism, protected by Liberal privilege,” said Cassidy. “Bullies get their way until someone says no. Elected officials must have courage, not cowardice, to prevent terror.”

 

Antifa Exploits Death of George Floyd

 

Antifa radicals increasingly are using incendiary events such as the death of George Floyd in Minnesota as springboards to achieve their broader aims, one of which includes removing President Trump from office.

 

Veteran national security correspondent Bill Gertz recently reported that the Antifa movement began planning to foment a nationwide anti-government insurgency as early as November 2019, when the U.S. presidential campaign season kicked off in earnest. Former National Security Council staff member Rich Higgins said:

 

“Antifa’s actions represent a hard break with the long tradition of a peaceful political process in the United States. Their Marxist ideology seeks not only to influence elections in the short term but to destroy the use of elections as the determining factor in political legitimacy.

 

“Antifa’s goal is nothing less than fomenting revolution, civil war and silencing America’s anti-communists. Their labeling of Trump supporters and patriots as Nazis and racists is standard fare for left-wing communist groups.

 

“Antifa is currently functioning as the command and control of the riots, which are themselves the overt utilization of targeted violence against targets such as stores — capitalism; monuments — history; and churches — God.”

 

Joe Myers, a former Defense Intelligence Agency official and counterinsurgency expert, added:

 

“President Trump’s election and revitalization of America are a threat to Antifa’s nihilist goals. They are fomenting this violence to create havoc, despair and to target the Trump campaign for defeat in 2020. It is employing organized violence for political ends: destruction of the constitutional order.”

 

New York’s top terrorism officer, Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller, explained why the George Floyd protests in New York City became so violent and destructive:

 

“No. 1, before the protests began, organizers of certain anarchist groups set out to raise bail money and people who would be responsible to be raising bail money, they set out to recruit medics and medical teams with gear to deploy in anticipation of violent interactions with police.

 

“They prepared to commit property damage and directed people who were following them that this should be done selectively and only in wealthier areas or at high-end stores run by corporate entities.

 

“And they developed a complex network of bicycle scouts to move ahead of demonstrators in different directions of where police were and where police were not for purposes of being able to direct groups from the larger group to places where they could commit acts of vandalism including the torching of police vehicles and Molotov cocktails where they thought officers would not be.

 

“We believe that a significant amount of people who came here from out of the area, who have come here as well as the advance preparation, having advance scouts, the use of encrypted information, having resupply routes for things such as gasoline and accelerants as well as rocks and bottles, the raising of bail, the placing of medics. Taken together, this is a strong indicator that they planned to act with disorder, property damage, violence, and violent encounters with police before the first demonstration and/or before the first arrest.”

 

In an interview with The Epoch Times, Bernard B. Kerik, former police commissioner of the New York City Police Department, said that Antifa “100 percent exploited” the George Floyd protests:

 

“It’s in 40 different states and 60 cities; it would be impossible for somebody outside of Antifa to fund this. It’s a radical, leftist, socialist attempt at revolution.

 

“They’re coming from other cities. That cost money. They didn’t do this on their own. Somebody’s paying for this.

 

“What Antifa is doing is they’re basically hijacking the black community as their army. They instigate, they antagonize, they get these young black men and women to go out there and do stupid things, and then they disappear off into the sunset.”

 

After photos appeared to show protesters with military-grade communications radios and earpieces, Kerik noted: “They have to be talking to somebody at a central command center with a repeater. Where do those radios go to?”

 

Across the country, in Bellevue, Washington, which was also hit by looting and violence, Police Chief Steve Mylett confirmed that the people responsible were organized, from out of town, and being paid:

 

“There are groups paying these looters money to come in and they’re getting paid by the broken window. This is something totally different we are dealing with that we have never seen as a profession before. We did have officers that were in different areas that were chasing these groups. When we make contact, they just disperse.”

 

Antifa Financing

 

The coordinated violence raises questions about how Antifa is financed. The Alliance for Global Justice (AFGJ) is an organizing group that serves as a fiscal sponsor to numerous radical left-wing initiatives, according to Influence Watch, a research group that collects data on advocacy organizations, foundations and donors.

 

AFGJ, which describes itself as “anti-capitalist” and opposed to the principles of liberal democracy, provides “fiscal sponsorship” to groups advocating numerous foreign and domestic far-left and extreme-left causes, including eliminating the State of Israel.

 

The Tucson, Arizona-based AFGJ, and people associated with it, have advocated for socialist and communist authoritarian regimes, including in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. In the 2000s, AFGJ was involved in anti-globalization demonstrations. In the 2010s, AFGJ was a financial sponsor of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

 

AFGJ has received substantial funding from organizations often claiming to be the mainstream of the center-left. The Open Society Foundations, Tides Foundation, Arca Foundation, Surdna Foundation, Public Welfare Foundation, the Ben & Jerry Foundation and the Brightwater Fund have all made contributions to AFGJ, according to Influence Watch.

 

One of the groups funded by AFGJ is called Refuse Fascism, a radical left-wing organization devoted to promoting nationwide action to remove from office President Donald Trump, and all officials associated with his administration, on the grounds that they constitute a “fascist regime.” The group has been present at many Antifa radical-left demonstrations, also according to Influence Watch. The group is an offshoot of the Radical Communist Party (RCP).

 

In July 2017, the RCP bragged that it took part in violent riots against the G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany. The RCP has argued that capitalism is synonymous with fascism and that the election of President Trump would lead the U.S. government to “bludgeon and eliminate whole groups of people.”

 

In June 2020, Refuse Fascism took advantage of the death of George Floyd to raise money for a “National Revolution Tour” evidently aimed at subverting the U.S. government. The group’s slogan states: “This System Cannot Be Reformed, It Must Be Overthrown!”

 

Antifa’s “Utopia”

 

Meanwhile, in Seattle, Washington, Antifa radicals, protesters from Black Lives Matter, and members of the anti-capitalist John Brown Gun Club seized control of the East Precinct neighborhood and established a six-square-block “autonomous zone” called the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, “CHAZ,” recently renamed “CHOP,” the Capitol Hill Organized (or Occupied) Protest. A cardboard sign at the barricades declares: “You are now leaving the USA.” The group issued a list of 30 demands, including the “abolition” of the Seattle Police Department and court system.

 

“Rapes, robberies and all sorts of violent acts have been occurring in the area and we’re not able to get to them,” said Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best. Several people have been wounded or killed.

 

Christopher F. Rufo, a contributing editor of City Journal, observed:

 

“The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone has set a dangerous precedent: armed left-wing activists have asserted their dominance of the streets and established an alternative political authority over a large section of a neighborhood. They have claimed de facto police power over thousands of residents and dozens of businesses — completely outside of the democratic process. In a matter of days, Antifa-affiliated paramilitaries have created a hardened border, established a rudimentary form of government based on principles of intersectional representation, and forcibly removed unfriendly media from the territory.

 

“The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone is an occupation and taking of hostages: none of the neighborhood’s residents voted for Antifa as their representative government. Rather than enforce the law, Seattle’s progressive political class capitulated to the mob and will likely make massive concessions over the next few months. This will embolden the Antifa coalition — and further undermine the rule of law in American cities.”

 

Antifa in its Own Words

 

The American Antifa movement’s long-term objectives are identical to those of the Antifa movement in Europe: replacing capitalism with a communist utopia. Mark Bray, one of the most vocal apologists for Antifa in the United States and author of “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” explained:

 

“The only long-term solution to the fascist menace is to undermine its pillars of strength in society grounded not only in white supremacy but also in ableism, heteronormativity, patriarchy, nationalism, transphobia, class rule, and many others. This long-term goal points to the tensions that exist in defining anti-fascism, because at a certain point destroying fascism is really about promoting a revolutionary socialist alternative.”

 

Nikkita Oliver, former mayoral candidate of Seattle, Washington, added:

 

“We need to align ourselves with the global struggle that acknowledges that the United States plays a role in racialized capitalism. Racialized capitalism is built upon patriarchy, white supremacy, and classism.”

 

Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, confirmed that the immediate goal is to remove President Trump from office:

 

“Trump not only needs to not be in office in November, but he should resign now. Trump needs to be out of office. He is not fit for office. And so, what we are going to push for is a move to get Trump out. While we’re also going to continue to push and pressure Joe Biden around his policies and relationship to policing and criminalization. That’s going to be important. But our goal is to get Trump out.”

 

Rose City Antifa tweeted:

 

“As antifascists we know that our fight is not just against organized fascism, but also against the capitalist state, and the police that protect it. Another world is possible!”

 

Seattle Antifascists added:

 

“This is the revolution, this is our time and we will make no excuses for the terror.”

 

A group called PNW Youth Liberation Front, Antifa’s youth organization, tweeted:

 

“The only way to win a world without police, prisons, borders, etc. is to destroy the oppressive systems which we are currently caught in. We must continue the fight against the state, imperialism, capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and so on if we ever want to be free.”

 

A pamphlet distributed in the Seattle “Autonomous Zone” stated:

 

“The idea that the working class can control our own lives, without states, governments or borders, is also called anarchism. But how do we get from our current capitalist society to a future anarchist-communist one? …. In order to destroy the current order, there will need to be a revolution, a time of great upheaval.”

 

A poster in the Seattle “Autonomous Zone” stated:

 

“Oh, you thought I just wanted to defund the police? This whole system needs to go.”

 

One of the leaders of the Seattle “Autonomous Zone” said:

 

“Every single day that I show up here I’m not here to peacefully protest. I’m here to disrupt until my demands are met. You cannot rebuild until you break it all the way down. Respond to the demands of the people or prepare to be met with any means necessary. By any means necessary. It’s not a slogan or even a warning. I’m letting people know what comes next.”

 

A group called the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement, which has nearly 15,000 Twitter followers, called for an insurrection:

 

“Revolutionary greetings from the insurrection sweeping throughout the occupied territories of the so-called United States of America.

 

“As the history of this miserable nation repeats itself once again, what has become clearly evident is that black people have been and will continue to be the only revolutionary force that is capable of toppling the oppressive status quo.

 

“Everywhere the pigs [a derogatory term for police] have lost their will to fight. Their eyes, which only yesterday were windows to empty hatred and contempt, now display stultifying self-doubt and cowardice. For once, their behavior portrays their weakness as every step they take back is marked by hesitation.

 

“Together, if we keep pushing, this land of chattel slavery, indigenous genocide, and foreign imperial aggression can finally be wiped out so that it will only be remembered as one of the more ugly chapters in human history.”

 

An Antifa radical from Maryland tweeted:

 

“This isn’t protest. This is rebellion. When rebellion gets organized we get revolution. We are seeing the beginnings of that and it’s glorious.”

 

An Antifa agitator from New York comments on the American flag:

 

“That sh*t is a f**king cloth with colors on it. It doesn’t live or breathe and is nothing but a representation. Any Black, Latinx, or Native person looking at that thing being respected, should be offended at that flag that represents genocide, rape, slavery, and colonization.”

 

An Antifa media platform, “It’s Going Down,” wrote:

 

“Looting is an effective means of wealth redistribution.”

 

An Antifa activist from North Carolina on free speech:

 

“The idea that freedom of speech is the most important thing that we can protect can only be held by someone who thinks that life is analogous to a debate hall. In my opinion, ‘no platforming’ fascists often infringes (sic) upon their speech, but this infringement is justified for its role in the political struggle against fascism.”

 

Torch Antifa Network, in response to President Trump’s announced plans to designate Antifa as a terrorist group:

 

“Antifa will be designating the United States of America as a terrorist organization.”

 

Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. Follow Soeren Kern on Twitter and Facebook

______________________________________

 

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A Brief History of Antifa: Part I


The irony behind George Floyd’s murder by fired and arrested former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin and his three accomplices is the Communist anarchy the American Left backs. Communism will bring injustice to America not the cloaked lie of Social Justice that will NEVER happen in a Communist America.

Hospitalize Antifa Scum

With that sentiment the Gatestone Institute has begun to paint the actual Communist agenda behind Communist Antifa.

 

JRH 6/13/20

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& debit cards are accepted by my PayPal account: 

Please Support NCCR

Or support by getting in the Coffee from home business – 

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***************************

A Brief History of Antifa: Part I

 

By Soeren Kern
June 12, 2020 at 5:00 am

Gatestone Institute

 

  • Empirical and anecdotal evidence shows that Antifa is, in fact, highly networked, well-funded and has a global presence. It has a flat organizational structure with dozens and possibly hundreds of local groups.

 

  • Antifa’s stated long-term objective, both in America and abroad, is to establish a communist world order. In the United States, Antifa’s immediate aim is to bring about the demise of the Trump administration.

 

  • A common tactic used by Antifa in the United States and Europe is to employ extreme violence and destruction of public and private property to goad the police into a reaction, which then “proves” Antifa’s claim that the government is “fascist.”

 

  • Antifa is not only officially tolerated, but is being paid by the German government to fight the far right. — Bettina Röhl, German journalist, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, June 2, 2020.

 

  • “Out of cowardice, its members cover their faces and keep their names secret. Antifa constantly threatens violence and attacks against politicians and police officers. It promotes senseless damage to property amounting to vast sums.” — Bettina Röhl, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, June 2, 2020.

 

A common tactic used by Antifa in the United States and Europe is to employ extreme violence and destruction of public and private property to goad the police into a reaction, which then “proves” Antifa’s claim that the government is “fascist.” Pictured: A senior citizen flees after being brutally beaten by members of Rose City Antifa on June 29, 2019 in Portland, Oregon. (Photo by Moriah Ratner/Getty Images)

 

U.S. Attorney General William Barr has blamed Antifa — a militant “anti-fascist” movement — for the violence that has erupted at George Floyd protests across the United States. “The violence instigated and carried out by Antifa and other similar groups in connection with the rioting is domestic terrorism and will be treated accordingly,” he said.

 

Barr also said that the federal government has evidence that Antifa “hijacked” legitimate protests around the country to “engage in lawlessness, violent rioting, arson, looting of businesses, and public property assaults on law enforcement officers and innocent people, and even the murder of a federal agent.” Earlier, U.S. President Donald J. Trump had instructed the U.S. Justice Department to designate Antifa as a terrorist organization.

 

Academics and media outlets sympathetic to Antifa have argued that the group cannot be classified as a terrorist organization because, they claim, it is a vaguely-defined protest movement that lacks a centralized structure. Mark Bray, a vocal apologist for Antifa in America and author of the book “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” asserts that Antifa “is not an overarching organization with a chain of command.”

 

Empirical and anecdotal evidence shows that Antifa is, in fact, highly networked, well-funded and has a global presence. It has a flat organizational structure with dozens and possibly hundreds of local groups. Not surprisingly, the U.S. Department of Justice is currently investigating individuals linked to Antifa as a step to unmasking the broader organization.

 

In the United States, Antifa’s ideology, tactics and goals, far from being novel, are borrowed almost entirely from Antifa groups in Europe, where so-called anti-fascist groups, in one form or another, have been active, almost without interruption, for a century.

 

What is Antifa?

 

Antifa can be described as a transnational insurgency movement that endeavors, often with extreme violence, to subvert liberal democracy, with the aim of replacing global capitalism with communism. Antifa’s stated long-term objective, both in America and abroad, is to establish a communist world order. In the United States, Antifa’s immediate aim is to bring about the demise of the Trump administration.

 

Antifa’s nemeses include law enforcement, which is viewed as enforcing the established order. A common tactic used by Antifa in the United States and Europe is to employ extreme violence and destruction of public and private property to goad the police into a reaction, which then “proves” Antifa’s claim that the government is “fascist.”

 

Antifa claims to oppose “fascism,” a term it often uses as a broad-brush pejorative to discredit those who hold opposing political beliefs. The traditional meaning of “fascism” as defined by Webster’s Dictionary is “a totalitarian governmental system led by a dictator and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism, militarism, and often racism.”

 

Antifa holds the Marxist-Leninist definition of fascism which equates it with capitalism. “The fight against fascism is only won when the capitalist system has been shattered and a classless society has been achieved,” according to the German Antifa group, Antifaschistischer Aufbau München.

 

Germany’s BfV domestic intelligence agency, in a special report on left-wing extremism, noted:

 

“Antifa’s fight against right-wing extremists is a smokescreen. The real goal remains the ‘bourgeois-democratic state,’ which, in the reading of left-wing extremists, accepts and promotes ‘fascism’ as a possible form of rule and therefore does not fight it sufficiently. Ultimately, it is argued, ‘fascism’ is rooted in the social and political structures of ‘capitalism.’ Accordingly, left-wing extremists, in their ‘antifascist’ activities, focus above all on the elimination of the ‘capitalist system.'”

 

Matthew Knouff, author of An Outsider’s Guide to Antifa: Volume II, explained Antifa’s ideology this way:

 

“The basic philosophy of Antifa focuses on the battle between three basic forces: fascism, racism and capitalism — all three of which are interrelated according to Antifa…. with fascism being considered the final expression or stage of capitalism, capitalism being a means to oppress, and racism being an oppressive mechanism related to fascism.”

 

In an essay, “What Antifa and the Original Fascists Have In Common,” Antony Mueller, a German professor of economics who currently teaches in Brazil, described how Antifa’s militant anti-capitalism masquerading as anti-fascism reveals its own fascism:

 

“After the left has pocketed the concept of liberalism and turned the word into the opposite of its original meaning, the Antifa-movement uses a false terminology to hide its true agenda. While calling themselves ‘antifascist’ and declaring fascism the enemy, the Antifa itself is a foremost fascist movement.

 

“The members of Antifa are not opponents to fascism but themselves its genuine representatives. Communism, Socialism and Fascism are united by the common band of anti-capitalism and anti-liberalism.

 

“The Antifa movement is a fascist movement. The enemy of this movement is not fascism but liberty, peace and prosperity.” [Blog Editor bold emphasis]

 

Antifa’s Ideological Origins

 

The ideological origins of Antifa can be traced back to the Soviet Union roughly a century ago. In 1921 and 1922, the Communist International (Comintern) developed the so-called united front tactic to “unify the working masses through agitation and organization” … “at the international level and in each individual country” against “capitalism” and “fascism” — two terms that often were used interchangeably.

 

The world’s first anti-fascist group, Arditi del Popolo (People’s Courageous Militia), was founded in Italy in June 1921 to resist the rise of Benito Mussolini’s National Fascist Party, which itself was established to prevent the possibility of a Bolshevik revolution on the Italian Peninsula. Many of the group’s 20,000 members, consisting of communists and anarchists, later joined the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39).

 

In Germany, the Communist Party of Germany established the paramilitary group Roter Frontkämpferbund (Red Front Fighters League) in July 1924. The group was banned due to its extreme violence. Many of its 130,000 members continued their activities underground or in local successor organizations such as the Kampfbund gegen den Faschismus (Fighting-Alliance Against Fascism).

 

In Slovenia, the militant anti-fascist movement TIGR was established in 1927 to oppose the Italianization of Slovene ethnic areas after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The group, which was disbanded in 1941, specialized in assassinating Italian police and military personnel.

 

In Spain, the Communist Party established the Milicias Antifascistas Obreras y Campesinas (Antifascist Worker and Peasant Militias), which were active in the 1930s.

 

The modern Antifa movement derives its name from a group called Antifaschistische Aktion, founded in May 1932 by Stalinist leaders of the Communist Party of Germany. The group was established to fight fascists, a term the party used to describe all of the other pro-capitalist political parties in Germany. The primary objective of Antifaschistische Aktion was to abolish capitalism, according to a detailed history of the group. The group, which had more than 1,500 founding members, went underground after Nazis seized power in 1933.

 

A German-language pamphlet — “80 Years of Anti-Fascist Actions” (80 Jahre Antifaschistische Aktion)” — describes in minute detail the continuous historical thread of the Antifa movement from its ideological origins in the 1920s to the present day. The document states:

 

“Antifascism has always fundamentally been an anti-capitalist strategy. This is why the symbol of the Antifaschistische Aktion has never lost its inspirational power…. Anti-fascism is more of a strategy than an ideology.”

 

During the post-war period, Germany’s Antifa movement reappeared in various manifestations, including the radical student protest movement of the 1960s, and the leftist insurgency groups that were active throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

 

The Red Army Faction (RAF), also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang, was a Marxist urban guerrilla group that carried out assassinations, bombings and kidnappings aimed at bringing revolution to West Germany, which the group characterized as a fascist holdover of the Nazi era. Over the course of three decades, the RAF murdered more than 30 people and injured over 200.

 

After the collapse of the communist government in East Germany in 1989-90, it was discovered that the RAF had been given training, shelter, and supplies by the Stasi, the secret police of the former communist regime.

 

John Philip Jenkins, Distinguished Professor of History at Baylor University, described the group’s tactics, which are similar to those used by Antifa today:

 

“The goal of their terrorist campaign was to trigger an aggressive response from the government, which group members believed would spark a broader revolutionary movement.”

 

RAF founder Ulrike Meinhof explained the relationship between violent left-wing extremism and the police: “The guy in uniform is a pig, not a human being. That means we don’t have to talk to him and it is wrong to talk to these people at all. And of course, you can shoot.”

 

Bettina Röhl, a German journalist and daughter of Meinhof, argues that the modern Antifa movement is a continuation of the Red Army Faction. The main difference is that, unlike the RAF, Antifa’s members are afraid to reveal their identities. In a June 2020 essay published by the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Röhl also drew attention to the fact that Antifa is not only officially tolerated, but is being paid by the German government to fight the far right:

 

“The RAF idolized the communist dictatorships in China, North Korea, North Vietnam, in Cuba, which were transfigured by the New Left as better countries on the right path to the best communism….

 

“The flourishing left-wing radicalism in the West, which brutally strikes at the opening of the European Central Bank headquarters in Frankfurt, at every G-20 summit or every year on May 1 in Berlin, has achieved the highest level of establishment in the state, not least thanks to the support by quite a few MPs from political parties, journalists and relevant experts.

 

“Compared to the RAF, the militant Antifa only lacks prominent faces. Out of cowardice, its members cover their faces and keep their names secret. Antifa constantly threatens violence and attacks against politicians and police officers. It promotes senseless damage to property amounting to vast sums. Nevertheless, MP Renate Künast (Greens) recently complained in the Bundestag that Antifa groups had not been adequately funded by the state in recent decades. She was concerned that ‘NGOs and Antifa groups do not always have to struggle to raise money and can only conclude short-term employment contracts from year to year.’ There was applause for this from Alliance 90/The Greens, from the left and from SPD deputies.

 

“One may ask the question of whether Antifa is something like an official RAF, a terrorist group with money from the state under the guise of ‘fighting against the right.'”

 

Germany’s BfV domestic intelligence agency explains Antifa’s glorification of violence:

 

“For left-wing extremists, ‘Capitalism’ is interpreted as triggering wars, racism, ecological disasters, social inequality and gentrification. ‘Capitalism’ is therefore more than just a mere economic order. In left-wing extremist discourse, it determines the social and political form as well as the vision of a radical social and political reorganization. Whether anarchist or communist: Parliamentary democracy as a so-called bourgeois form of rule should be ‘overcome’ in any case.

 

“For this reason, left-wing extremists usually ignore or legitimize human rights violations in socialist or communist dictatorships or in states that they allegedly see threatened by the ‘West.’ To this day, both orthodox communists and autonomous activists justify, praise and celebrate the left-wing terrorist Red Army Faction or foreign left-wing terrorists as alleged ‘liberation movements’ or even ‘resistance fighters.'”

 

Meanwhile, in Britain, Anti-Fascist Action (AFA), a militant anti-fascist group founded in 1985, gave birth to the Antifa movement in the United States. In Germany, the Antifaschistische Aktion-Bundesweite Organisation (AABO) was founded in 1992 to combine the efforts of smaller Antifa groups scattered around the country.

 

In Sweden, Antifascistisk Aktion (AFA), a militant Antifa group founded in 1993, established a three-decade track record for using extreme violence against its opponents. In France, the Antifa group L’Action antifasciste, is known for its fierce opposition to the State of Israel.

 

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of communism in 1990, the Antifa movement opened a new front against neoliberal globalization.

 

Attac, established in France in 1989 to promote a global tax on financial transactions, now leads the so-called alter-globalization movement, which, like the Global Justice Movement, is opposed to capitalism. In 1999, Attac was present in Seattle during violent demonstrations that led to the failure of WTO negotiations. Attac also participated in anti-capitalist demonstrations against the G7, the G20, the WTO, and the war in Iraq. Today, the association is active in 40 countries, with more than a thousand local groups and hundreds of organizations supporting the network. Attac’s decentralized and non-hierarchical organizational structure appears to be the model being used by Antifa.

 

In February 2016, the International Committee of the Fourth International advanced the political foundations of the global anti-war movement, which, like Antifa, blames capitalism and neoliberal globalism for the existence of military conflict:

 

“The new anti-war movement must be anti-capitalist and socialist, since there can be no serious struggle against war except in the fight to end the dictatorship of finance capital and the economic system that is the fundamental cause of militarism and war.”

 

In July 2017, more than 100,000 anti-globalization and Antifa protesters converged on the German city of Hamburg to protest the G20 summit. Leftist mobs laid waste to the city center. An Antifa group called “G20 Welcome to Hell” bragged about how it was able to mobilize Antifa groups from across the world:

 

“The summit mobilizations have been precious moments of meeting and co-operation of left-wing and anti-capitalist groups and networks from all over Europe and world-wide. We have been sharing experiences and fighting together, attending international meetings, being attacked by cops supported by the military, re-organizing our forces and fighting back. Anti-globalization movement has changed, but our networks endure. We are active locally in our regions, cities, villages and forests. But we are also fighting trans-nationally.”

 

Germany’s domestic security service, in an annual report, added:

 

“Left-wing extremist structures tried to shift the public debate about the violent G20 summit protests in their favor. With the distribution of photos and reports of allegedly disproportionate police measures during the summit protests, they promoted an image of a state that denounced legitimate protests and put them down with police violence. Against such a state, they said, ‘militant resistance’ is not only legitimate, but also necessary.”

 

Part II of this series will examine the activities of Antifa in Germany and the United States.

 

Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. Follow Soeren Kern on Twitter and Facebook

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© 2020 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute. [Blog Editor: I did not attain the stated permission and so if instructed by GI, the cross post version will be removed.]

 

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European Union Declares War on Internet Free Speech


Voltaire on Free Speech & Rulers

Intro to ‘European Union Declares War on Internet Free Speech’

Edited by John R. Houk

May 3, 2016

 

I just finished an anti-Multiculturalist post inspired by the Gatestone Institute that focused on the EU hammering Counterjihad journalist Ingrid Carlqvist (of Sweden) and a bit of fund raising – “Multiculturalism Destroying Europe’s Culture”. As I was doing my daily Internet surfing I discovered another Gatestone Institute article by Soeren Kern exposing the fact that the big dogs of Social Media are in complete agreement with the European Union on squelching Free Speech exposing the dark side of Islam which is currently showing up Muslim refugees and immigrants.

 

The Social Media giants spoken of in the article:

 

 

 

 

  • Microsoft: Bill Gates and Paul Allen are the original names connected to Microsoft, but then Steve Ballmer became the shot caller for the computer giant amassing billions of dollars in fortune (as in over $20 billion with a “B”). Apparently Satya Nadella the big dog now. Microsoft influence in Social Media is its fingerprint on PCs and the Internet. Here’s a decent synopsis of their influence:

 

… Microsoft are almost expected to have an enviable social media presence. They have led the way to the future, so social media is an important aspect of their strategy as a trailblazing company that creates and innovates. They have created web browsers, operating systems, office applications and web services almost dominating the internet and giving people the ability to be immersed into a technological world. (How Microsoft Uses Social Media [CASE STUDY]; By CASEY FLEISCHMANN; LinkHumans.com)

 

Interestingly the owners of YouTube which is Google, are not talked about by Soeren Kern. Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University:

 

After the company’s IPO in 2004, founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and CEO Eric Schmidt requested that their base salary be cut to $1. Subsequent offers by the company to increase their salaries were turned down, primarily because their main compensation continues to come from owning stock in Google. (Google; Wikipedia; page was last modified on 31 May 2016, at 22:47.)

 

Apparently “Google” is now an amalgam multiple corporations with a publically held corporation at the top being Alphabet:

 

Silicon Valley – and Wall Street – have a new king. Alphabet, the company formerly known as Google, looks set to become the world’s largest publicly traded company …

 

…

 

Commercially, when we say Alphabet, we really mean Google. The old company still represents the vast majority of Alphabet’s revenues, and almost all of its major businesses (including search, maps, YouTube, advertising and Android) still sit under Google and its new chief executive, Sundar Pichai. The rest of Alphabet may represent the bets on the industries of the future but for today, it’s Google that pays the bills. (How Alphabet became the biggest company in the world; By Alex Hern; The Guardian; 2/2/16 03.08 EST)

 

Wikipedia on Alphabet Inc.:

 

Alphabet Inc. (commonly known as Alphabet, and frequently informally referred to as Google) is an American multinational conglomerate created in 2015 as the parent company of Google and several other companies previously owned by Google.[5][6][7][8][9] The company is based in Mountain View, California and headed by Google’s co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, with Page serving as CEO and Brin as President.[10] The reorganization of Google into Alphabet was completed on October 2, 2015.[11] Alphabet’s portfolio encompasses several industries, including technology, life sciences, investment capital, and research. Some of its subsidiaries include Google, Calico, GV, Google Capital, X, and Google Fiber. Some of the subsidiaries of Alphabet have altered their names since leaving Google—Google Ventures becoming GV, Google Life Sciences becoming Verily and Google X becoming just X. Following the restructuring Page became CEO of Alphabet while Sundar Pichai took his position as CEO of Google.[5][6] Shares of Google’s stock have been converted into Alphabet stock, which trade under Google’s former ticker symbols of “GOOG” and “GOOGL”.

 

The establishment of Alphabet was prompted by a desire to make the core Google Internet services business “cleaner and more accountable” while allowing greater autonomy to group companies that operate in businesses other than Internet services.[6][12] (Alphabet Inc.; Wikipedia; page was last modified on 1 June 2016, at 13:41.)

 

In the 21st century, money is power. People this is a lot of power pushing Multicultural ideology to the detriment of Western culture in Europe and America.

 

JRH 6/3/16

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European Union Declares War on Internet Free Speech

 

By Soeren Kern

June 3, 2016 at 5:00 am

Gatestone Institute

 

  • Opponents counter that the initiative amounts to an assault on free speech in Europe. They say that the European Union’s definition of “hate speech” and “incitement to violence” is so vague that it could include virtually anything deemed politically incorrect by European authorities, including criticism of mass migration, Islam or even the EU itself.

 

  • Some Members of the European Parliament have characterized the EU’s code of online conduct — which requires “offensive” material to be removed from the Internet within 24 hours — as “Orwellian.”

 

  • “By deciding that ‘xenophobic’ comment in reaction to the crisis is also ‘racist,’ Facebook has made the view of the majority of the European people… into ‘racist’ views, and so is condemning the majority of Europeans as ‘racist.'” — Douglas Murray.

 

  • In January 2013, Facebook suspended the account of Khaled Abu Toameh after he wrote about corruption in the Palestinian Authority. The account was reopened 24 hours later, but with the two posts deleted and no explanation.

 

The European Union (EU), in partnership with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft, has unveiled a “code of conduct” to combat the spread of “illegal hate speech” online in Europe.

 

Proponents of the initiative argue that in the aftermath of the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels, a crackdown on “hate speech” is necessary to counter jihadist propaganda online.

 

Opponents counter that the initiative amounts to an assault on free speech in Europe. They say that the EU’s definition of “hate speech” and “incitement to violence” is so vague that it could include virtually anything deemed politically incorrect by European authorities, including criticism of mass migration, Islam or even the European Union itself.

 

Some Members of the European Parliament have characterized the EU’s code of online conduct — which requires “offensive” material to be removed from the Internet within 24 hours, and replaced with “counter-narratives” — as “Orwellian.”

 

The “code of conduct” was announced on May 31 in a statement by the European Commission, the unelected administrative arm of the European Union. A summary of the initiative follows:

 

“By signing this code of conduct, the IT companies commit to continuing their efforts to tackle illegal hate speech online. This will include the continued development of internal procedures and staff training to guarantee that they review the majority of valid notifications for removal of illegal hate speech in less than 24 hours and remove or disable access to such content, if necessary.

 

“The IT companies will also endeavor to strengthen their ongoing partnerships with civil society organisations who will help flag content that promotes incitement to violence and hateful conduct. The IT companies and the European Commission also aim to continue their work in identifying and promoting independent counter-narratives [emphasis added], new ideas and initiatives, and supporting educational programs that encourage critical thinking.”

 

Excerpts of the “code of conduct” include:

 

“The IT Companies share the European Commission’s and EU Member States’ commitment to tackle illegal hate speech online. Illegal hate speech, as defined by the Framework Decision 2008/913/JHA of 28 November 2008 on combating certain forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law and national laws transposing it, means all conduct publicly inciting to violence or hatred directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, color, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin….

 

“The IT Companies support the European Commission and EU Member States in the effort to respond to the challenge of ensuring that online platforms do not offer opportunities for illegal online hate speech to spread virally. The spread of illegal hate speech online not only negatively affects the groups or individuals that it targets, it also negatively impacts those who speak out for freedom, tolerance and non-discrimination in our open societies and has a chilling effect on the democratic discourse on online platforms.

 

“While the effective application of provisions criminalizing hate speech is dependent on a robust system of enforcement of criminal law sanctions against the individual perpetrators of hate speech, this work must be complemented with actions geared at ensuring that illegal hate speech online is expeditiously acted upon by online intermediaries and social media platforms, upon receipt of a valid notification, in an appropriate time-frame. To be considered valid in this respect, a notification should not be insufficiently precise or inadequately substantiated.

 

“The IT Companies, taking the lead on countering the spread of illegal hate speech online, have agreed with the European Commission on a code of conduct setting the following public commitments:

 

  • “The IT Companies to have in place clear and effective processes to review notifications regarding illegal hate speech on their services so they can remove or disable access to such content. The IT companies to have in place Rules or Community Guidelines clarifying that they prohibit the promotion of incitement to violence and hateful conduct.

 

  • “The IT Companies to review the majority of valid notifications for removal of illegal hate speech in less than 24 hours and remove or disable access to such content, if necessary.

 

  • “The IT Companies and the European Commission, recognising the value of independent counter speech against hateful rhetoric and prejudice, aim to continue their work in identifying and promoting independent counter-narratives, new ideas and initiatives and supporting educational programs that encourage critical thinking.”

 

The agreement also requires Internet companies to establish a network of “trusted reporters” in all 28 EU member states to flag online content that “promotes incitement to violence and hateful conduct.”

 

The EU Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality, Vĕra Jourová, has defended the initiative:

 

“The recent terror attacks have reminded us of the urgent need to address illegal online hate speech. Social media is unfortunately one of the tools that terrorist groups use to radicalize young people and racists use to spread violence and hatred. This agreement is an important step forward to ensure that the internet remains a place of free and democratic expression, where European values and laws are respected. I welcome the commitment of worldwide IT companies to review the majority of valid notifications for removal of illegal hate speech in less than 24 hours and remove or disable access to such content, if necessary.”

 

Others disagree. The National Secular Society (NSS) of the UK warned that the EU’s plans “rest on a vague definition of ‘hate speech’ and risk threatening online discussions which criticize religion.” It added:

 

“The agreement comes amid repeated accusations from ex-Muslims that social media organizations are censoring them online. The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain has now begun collecting examples from its followers of Facebook censoring ‘atheist, secular and ex-Muslim content’ after false ‘mass reporting’ by ‘cyber Jihadists.’ They have asked their supporters to report details and evidence of any instances of pages and groups being ‘banned [or] suspended from Facebook for criticizing Islam and Islamism.'”

 

NSS communications officer Benjamin Jones said:

 

“Far from tackling online ‘cyber jihad,’ the agreement risks having the exact opposite effect and entrapping any critical discussion of religion under vague ‘hate speech’ rules. Poorly-trained Facebook or Twitter staff, perhaps with their own ideological bias, could easily see heated criticism of Islam and think it is ‘hate speech,’ particularly if pages or users are targeted and mass reported by Islamists.”

 

In an interview with Breitbart London, the CEO of Index on Censorship, Jodie Ginsburg, said:

 

“Hate speech laws are already too broad and ambiguous in much of Europe. This agreement fails to properly define what ‘illegal hate speech’ is and does not provide sufficient safeguards for freedom of expression.

 

“It devolves power once again to unelected corporations to determine what amounts to hate speech and police it — a move that is guaranteed to stifle free speech in the mistaken belief this will make us all safer. It won’t. It will simply drive unpalatable ideas and opinions underground where they are harder to police — or to challenge.

 

“There have been precedents of content removal for unpopular or offensive viewpoints and this agreement risks amplifying the phenomenon of deleting controversial — yet legal — content via misuse or abuse of the notification processes.”

 

A coalition of free speech organizations, European Digital Rights and Access Now, announced their decision not to take part in future discussions with the European Commission, saying that “we do not have confidence in the ill-considered ‘code of conduct’ that was agreed.” A statement warned:

 

“In short, the ‘code of conduct’ downgrades the law to a second-class status, behind the ‘leading role’ of private companies that are being asked to arbitrarily implement their terms of service. This process, established outside an accountable democratic framework, exploits unclear liability rules for online companies. It also creates serious risks for freedom of expression, as legal — but controversial — content may well be deleted as a result of this voluntary and unaccountable take-down mechanism.

 

“This means that this ‘agreement’ between only a handful of companies and the European Commission is likely in breach of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (under which restrictions on fundamental rights should be provided for by law), and will, in practical terms, overturn case law of the European Court of Human Rights on the defense of legal speech.”

 

Janice Atkinson, an independent MEP for the South East England region, summed it up this way: “It’s Orwellian. Anyone who has read 1984 sees its very re-enactment live.”

 

Even before signing on to the EU’s code of conduct, social media sites have been cracking down on free speech, often at the behest of foreign governments.

 

In September 2015, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was overheard on a live microphone confronting Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on what he was doing to prevent criticism of her open-door immigration policies.

 

In January 2016, Facebook launched an “Online Civil Courage Initiative” aimed at Facebook users in Germany and geared toward “fighting hate speech and extremism on the Internet.”

 

Writing for Gatestone Institute, British commentator Douglas Murray noted that Facebook’s assault on “racist” speech “appears to include anything critical of the EU’s current catastrophic immigration policy.” He wrote:

 

“By deciding that ‘xenophobic’ comment in reaction to the crisis is also ‘racist,’ Facebook has made the view of the majority of the European people (who, it must be stressed, are opposed to Chancellor Merkel’s policies) into ‘racist’ views, and so is condemning the majority of Europeans as ‘racist.’ This is a policy that will do its part in pushing Europe into a disastrous future.

 

Facebook has also set its sights on Gatestone Institute affiliated writers. In January 2013, Facebook suspended the account of Khaled Abu Toameh after he wrote about corruption in the Palestinian Authority. The account was reopened 24 hours later, but with the two posts deleted and no explanation. Abu Toameh wrote:

 

“It’s still a matter of censorship. They decide what’s acceptable. Now we have to be careful about what we post and what we share. Does this mean we can’t criticize Arab governments anymore?”

 

In June 2016, Facebook suspended the account of Ingrid Carlqvist, Gatestone’s Swedish expert, after she posted a Gatestone video to her Facebook feed — called “Sweden’s Migrant Rape Epidemic.” In an editorial, Gatestone wrote:

 

“After enormous grassroots pressure from Gatestone’s readers, the Swedish media started reporting on Facebook’s heavy-handed censorship. It backfired, and Facebook went into damage-control mode. They put Ingrid’s account back up — without any explanation or apology. Ironically, their censorship only gave Ingrid’s video more attention.

 

“Facebook and the EU have backed down — for now. But they’re deadly serious about stopping ideas they don’t like. They’ll be back.”

 

Facebook Censorship & Ingrid Carlqvist

This week, the EU, in partnership with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft, unveiled a “code of conduct” to combat the spread of “illegal hate speech” online in Europe. The next day, Facebook suspended the account of Ingrid Carlqvist, Gatestone’s Swedish expert, after she posted a Gatestone video to her Facebook feed — called “Sweden’s Migrant Rape Epidemic.”

 

 

Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos/Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter. His first book, Global Fire, will be out in 2016.

 

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© 2016 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

 

Blog Editor: If GI asks me to remove this post I will comply. If you wish to share anything other than a link you had better GI permission.

 

Sex Slaves, Beheadings and Twitter Terrorism


Soren Kern writes of the societal idiocy allowed to continue in Europe to accommodate the political correctness of promoting multicultural diversity rather than promoting the indigenous culture related to Christianity and a Western ethos. Most European political leaders are committed to allowing Islam to flourish even though an obvious societal disintegration is taking place in Europe that will end in the continent’s Islamization at worst to a bloody cultural civil war at best.

This current snapshot provided by Kern is only now gaining a toe-hold in the United States of America. If President Barack Hussein Obama and Democratic Party cohorts have their way America will devolve into the same cultural-societal chaos beginning to emerge in Europe.

My fellow American voters. DO YOU REALLY WANT THIS INTOLERANT ISLAMIC INFECTION TO INFEST AMERICA the land of the free and home of the brave?

VIDEO: Star Spangled Banner

JRH 8/8/15

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Sex Slaves, Beheadings and Twitter Terrorism
One Month of Islam in Europe: June 2015

By Soeren Kern

August 8, 2015 at 5:00 am

Gatestone Institute

· “If European countries accept a wave of migrants, there will be terrorists among them. … By accepting the migrants, we strongly facilitate the Islamic State’s expansion to Europe.” — Czech President Miloš Zeman.

· “We are committed to being active participants in our society, but it has to be on Islam’s terms, without compromising our own principles and values. Democracy is antithetical to Islam… The way forward for Muslims in Denmark is to resist the anti-Islamic integration policy and the aggressive foreign policy pursued by successive governments in this country.” — Hizb-ut-Tahrir.

· “If you talk about immigration, you are a xenophobe. If you talk about security, you are a fascist. If you talk about Islam, you are an Islamophobe.” — French MP Henri Guaino.

· “We cannot lose this war because it is fundamentally a war of civilization. It is our society, our civilization that we are defending.” — French Prime Minister Manuel Valls.

In Austria, a 26-year-old Bosnian immigrant named Alen Rizvanović drove his SUV at high speed through the main shopping areas of Graz, Austria’s second-largest city, and rammed into a crowd. He then got out of his vehicle and began stabbing bystanders with a large knife. The June 21 attack left three people dead and 34 others injured.

Police were quick to rule out a religious motive and insisted that the attack was a random act of violence perpetrated by a deranged killer, but a subsequent investigation found that Rizvanović was a devout Muslim with many links to radical Islam.

On June 16, the Criminal Court of Vienna found ten Muslims guilty of attempting to join the Islamic State in Syria. A Turkish man accused of organizing transportation for the group of nine native Chechens, aged between 17 and 27, received a three-year jail term, while others got prison terms of between 19 months and three years. The men were arrested by Austrian border police in August 2014 as they were attempting to travel to Syria via Turkey.

The convictions came just weeks after a 14-year-old Turkish boy who downloaded bomb-making plans onto his Playstation console was sentenced to two years’ detention after pleading guilty to terrorism charges. The boy, who was living in Sankt Pölten in northeast Austria, had also established contacts with jihadists linked to the Islamic State. Sixteen months of the sentence were suspended. The boy will serve what remains of the eight-month term in a juvenile detention center.

More than 200 Austrian citizens and residents have joined jihadist groups in the Middle East; 30 have been killed and around 70 have returned.

In Belgium, police on June 8 carried out 21 coordinated raids of suspected Islamist militants, mostly of Chechen origin, in Antwerp, Bredene, Louvain, Namur and Ostend. Some of those investigated were known to have received jihadist training in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Syria, but police found no evidence to confirm suspicions that they were planning an attack. Initially, 16 people were arrested, but later, all but two were released.

In Brussels, Françoise Schepmans, the mayor of the Molenbeek-Saint-Jean district of the capital, initiated dismissal proceedings against a police officer identified as Mohamed N. after he wrote in a debate on Facebook that he would kill “each and every Jew.” Using the pseudonym Bebeto Gladiateur, the police officer wrote: “The word Jew itself is dirty. If I were in Israel, frankly, I would do to the Jews what they do with the Palestinians — slaughter each and every one of them.” Schepmans said: “These statements shock me. I’ve never been ambiguous about those issues. I cannot accept that a municipal police officer has that attitude.”

In Britain, a 22-year-old female refugee from Iraq was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison for “twitter terrorism.” Alaa Esayed, from Kennington, South London, was sentenced at the Old Bailey after pleading guilty to encouraging terrorism and disseminating a terrorist publication. Between June 2013 and May 2014, she posted on an open account to her 8,240 followers more than 45,000 tweets in Arabic, many of them encouraging violent jihad. Her account, which included a profile image of a woman in a burka and holding a Kalashnikov, was listed by Al-Qaeda as among the 66 most important jihadi accounts.

In Manchester, 33-year-old Iqbal Ali of Oldham was sentenced to life in prison for using threats and violence to force four women to serve as his sex slaves in a harem. Ali, allegedly as part of a 14-year campaign to “sleep with as many women as possible,” subjected the women to beatings, physical punishment and public humiliation if they disobeyed him. He was caught when one of the women received hospital treatment for severe neck injuries after she collapsed in a pharmacy.

In Lancashire, 34-year-old Mohammad Liaqat was sentenced to two years in prison after he stormed into the Mount Carmel Roman Catholic High School in Accrington and attacked the headmaster over a dispute about the school’s policy on beards. Liaqat said he was angered by the school’s decision to ban two 14-year-old Muslim pupils from lessons because they refused to shave off their beards. Liaqat’s own children were not involved in the case. He later turned up at the St. Oswald’s RC Primary School, also in Lancashire, and attacked the principal there. Liaqat has been banned from having contact staff at four schools in the Accrington and Burnley areas.

More news about Islam in Britain during June 2015 can be found here.

In Cyprus, Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides confirmed that a 26-year-old Lebanese-Canadian man — who was arrested after authorities found almost two tons of ammonium nitrate in his basement — was part of a Hezbollah bomb plot to attack Israeli and Jewish targets on the island. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the case was proof that Iran, which backs Hezbollah, continues to foment terrorism in the region.

In the Czech Republic, Saudi Arabia canceled a scheduled Czech-Saudi economic forum to protest against alleged anti-Islam statements by Czech officials. Czech President Miloš Zeman has issued statements in which he linked Islam with violence. In remarks on International Holocaust Remembrance Day in January, the 70-year-old president said: “The Islamic State is similar in character to the Nazi Germany of the early 1930s. If we are to prevent a super Holocaust and massive slaughters of people, we need concerted military action… under the aegis of the United Nations Security Council.”

The Saudi-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), refuted the allegations. It said:

“The Czech President’s statements on Islam are in line with the statements the President made in the past, where he linked believers in the Quran with anti-Semitic and racist Nazis and said that the enemy is anti-civilization spreading from North Africa to Indonesia, where two billion people live.

“Such statements not only show President Zeman’s lack of knowledge and misunderstanding of Islam, but also ignore the historical facts that anti-Semitism and Nazism are a European phenomenon through and through. They have no roots in Islam, neither as a religion nor as a history or civilization. The Holocaust did not take place in the area from North Africa to Indonesia.”

President Zeman has refused to apologize for his statement. On June 28, he said: “If European countries accept a wave of migrants, there will be terrorists among them. … By accepting the migrants, we strongly facilitate the Islamic State’s expansion to Europe.”

In Denmark, Hizb ut-Tahrir, a radical Islamic group, told Muslims to boycott the June 18 general election because democracy is incompatible with Islam. In a press release, the group said:

“We are committed to being active participants in our society, but it has to be on Islam’s terms, without compromising our own principles and values. Democracy is antithetical to Islam, and it is a sinking ship, even its own supporters lose increasingly confidence in the system and are looking for an alternative.

“The way forward for Muslims in Denmark is to resist the anti-Islamic integration policy and the aggressive foreign policy pursued by successive governments in this country. We must protect our Islamic identity and values ​​as well as disseminate the message of Islam to the wider society around us in word and deed. We also have the duty to call for and support the global work for the restoration of the Caliphate, the Islamic solution to the myriad of problems that we Muslims are facing globally.”

With all votes counted, a bloc of center-right parties led by former Prime Minister Lokke Rasmussen ousted Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt’s center-left coalition. The anti-immigration Danish People’s Party became the second-largest party in parliament. The election results reflect voters’ growing frustration with multiculturalism, Danish asylum and refugee policies and runaway immigration from Muslim countries.

New statistics released by the Danish Immigration Service showed that 90% of all asylum applications have been approved so far in 2015. This is in stark contrast to 2004, when only 10% of such applications were approved.

In Copenhagen, the Islamic Society in Denmark began accepting donations for the construction of a third mega-mosque in the capital. The project is expected to cost 80 million kroner ($11.7 million) and construction could begin in 2017.

In France, former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s opposition party — recently rebranded “The Republicans” — held a meeting on the question of “Islam in France or Islam of France” as part of a roundtable discussion on the “crisis of values” in France. Sarkozy said: “The question is not to know what the Republic can do for Islam, but what Islam can do to become the Islam of France.”

Muslim groups criticized the meeting. “We cannot participate in an initiative like this that stigmatizes Muslims,” said Abdallah Zekri, the president of the National Observatory on Islamophobia. The organizer of the meeting, MP Henri Guaino, said: “Can we not talk about subjects that split opinion? If you talk about immigration, you are a xenophobe. If you talk about security, you are a fascist. If you talk about Islam, you are an Islamophobe.”

Prime Minister Manuel Valls told a half-day conference on relations with the Muslim community on June 15 that “Islam is here to stay.” He also stressed that there is no link between Islam and extremism. “We must say all of this is not Islam,” Valls said. “The hate speech, anti-Semitism that hides behind anti-Zionism and hate for Israel … the self-proclaimed imams in our neighborhoods and our prisons who are promoting violence and terrorism.” The conference did not discuss radicalization because the issue was deemed to be too sensitive.

On June 28, Valls told iTele that there are between 10,000 and 15,000 salafists in France, and that 1,800 people were “linked” in some way to the Islamist cause. He said that the West was engaged in a “war against terrorism,” adding: “We cannot lose this war because it is fundamentally a war of civilization. It is our society, our civilization that we are defending.”

On June 6, Valls said that more than 850 French citizens or residents had travelled to fight in Syria and Iraq. More than 470 are still there and 110 are believed to have been killed on the battlefields.

On June 29, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve revealed that France has deported 40 imams for “preaching hatred” in the past three years. “We have deported 40 preachers of hatred since 2012,” he said. “Since the beginning of the year we have examined 22 cases and around 10 imams and preachers of hatred have been expelled.”

On June 7, Cazeneuve said that 113 French citizens or residents have died as jihadists on battlefields in the Middle East. There are 130 ongoing judicial proceedings concerning 650 persons related to terrorism, and 60 individuals have been banned from leaving the country.

In Lyon, Yassin Salhi, a 35-year-old father of three, confessed to beheading his boss and trying to blow up a chemical plant near the city. The severed head of his boss was found hanging on the fence of a site belonging to a US-based gas and chemicals company, next to two flags bearing the Muslim profession of faith. Salhi, a truck driver, was born in France to parents of Moroccan and Algerian descent. Before his arrest, Salhi took a picture of himself with the severed head and sent the image to a French jihadist fighting for the Islamic State in Syria. Salhi’s wife said: “We are normal Muslims. We do Ramadan.”

In Bordeaux, the De L’Orient à L’Occidental grocery store, whose owners recently converted to Islam, scrapped a “gender ban” after facing a barrage of criticism. In an effort to ensure that males and females did not come into contact with each other at the store, the owners attempted to ban women from shopping on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and to ban men on Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays.

In Paris, the Administrative Court on June 23 rejected a case brought by a mother trying to sue the French government for failing to stop her teenage son from leaving to join jihadists in Syria. The boy was 16 when he left with three others from the southern French city of Nice in December 2013, taking a plane to Turkey and then traveling overland to Syria. His mother, identified only as Nadine A., argued that airport police in Nice should have stopped the boy because he had only a one-way ticket and no baggage. But the court ruled that the airport officers were not responsible, and it rejected her demand for €110,000 ($120,000) in compensation.

Meanwhile, more than a dozen members of Forsane Alizza (Knights of Pride), a group formed to defend Muslims against Islamophobia, went on trial in Paris on June 7 for allegedly plotting terrorist attacks. The group — formed in August 2010 by a 37-year-old Franco-Tunisian, Mohamed Achamlane, who refers to himself as “Emir” — put a message on its website demanding that French forces leave all Muslim-majority countries. The message said: “If our demands are ignored, we will consider the government to be at war against Muslims.”

Members of the French Islamist group Forsane Alizza rally in the street. More than a dozen members of the group went on trial in June on charges of plotting terrorist attacks.

 

Achamlane also released videos of himself giving inflammatory speeches, using phrases such as, “By all-powerful Allah, we will put scars on France.” The group also issued a list of “targets” including Jewish shops in the Paris region. In court, Achamlane said: “There is no radical or moderate Islam. There is only authentic Islam.” The government described the group as a private militia, but the 15 members of the group denied that they were members of a terrorist group. If convicted, each member of the group faces up to ten years in prison.

In Germany, Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière, in an interview with the newspaper Rheinische Post, said that the number of German jihadists fighting in Syria has risen to around 700. “The number has never been as high as it is now,” he said. The number of violent Islamists in Germany who are “prepared to commit politically motivated crimes of considerable importance” was around 330. He said there are more than 500 ongoing counter-terrorism operations involving 800 Islamists.

Meanwhile, a debate erupted over whether Muslim students should be exempted from mandatory visits to former concentration camps as part of Holocaust education programs. The dispute centered on a proposal that would require students in all secondary schools in the southern state of Bavaria to visit Holocaust memorials as part of the school curriculum.

The proposal was opposed by the governing Christian Social Union, which said that “many children from Muslim families… have no connection to our past and… will need much more time before they can identify with our history. We need to be careful about how we address this issue with these children.”

Also in Bavaria, the administrators of the Wilhelm-Diess-Gymnasium, a school in Pocking, warned parents not to let their daughters wear revealing clothing in order to avoid “misunderstandings” with the 200 Muslim refugees housed in emergency accommodations in a building next to the school. The letter said:

“The Syrian citizens are mainly Muslim and speak Arabic. The refugees have their own culture. Because our school is directly next to where they are staying, modest clothing should be worn in order to avoid disagreements. Revealing tops or blouses, short shorts or miniskirts could lead to misunderstandings.”

A local politician quoted by Die Welt newspaper said:

“When Muslim teenage boys go to open air swimming pools, they are overwhelmed when they see girls in bikinis. These boys, who come from a culture where for women it is frowned upon to show naked skin, will follow girls and bother them without their realizing it. Naturally, this generates fear.”

In Berlin’s Neukölln district, a 26-year-old Muslim woman was allowed to begin an internship as a junior lawyer in the town hall. Local authorities had initially considered rejecting Betül Ulusoy’s application because she insisted on wearing a Muslim headscarf. Berlin’s neutrality law (Neutralitätsgesetz) stipulates that anyone who works for the city is prohibited from showing outward signs of religiosity. But city officials made an exception for Ulusoy, apparently in order to avoid being accused of Islamophobia.

In the Netherlands, the Dutch parliament voted against allowing MP Geert Wilders to stage an exhibition of American cartoons based on the Prophet Mohammed. Wilders said he was disappointed in the parliament’s decision and pledged to show the cartoons during a television party political broadcast. But the national public broadcasting company NPO failed to air the video as planned. Wilders accused NPO of sabotage. On June 24, Wilders’ video was finally aired on Dutch public television.

Also in June, Social Affairs Minister Lodewijk Asscher said that he was considering a plan that would require Turkish imams to take a course in the Dutch language and culture before they are allowed to move to the Netherlands. Such a course would “lay the foundations for successful integration,” Asscher said. Yassin Elforkani from the Muslim lobby group CMO, which claims to represent nearly 400 mosques in the Netherlands, said that rather than “continually importing” imams from Turkey, the Netherlands should establish an indigenous imam training program similar to the one in Germany.

Meanwhile, a court in Rotterdam sentenced a 22-year-old man from Delft to four years in prison for planning to use the proceeds of an armed robbery to support jihadists in Syria. Police, who were tipped off by an informant, arrested Mohammed A. while he was on his way to carry out an armed robbery in Scheveningen. They found three guns in his car. The court ruled that Mohammed A. was guilty of a “serious terrorism offense” because he was planning to use the proceeds from the robbery to support violent jihad.

In Norway, the Police Security Service (PST) revealed that nearly a dozen refugees sent to Norway under the UN’s quota system turned out to have close links to the terror groups Islamic State and the al-Nusra Front. Police also discovered that some refugees had backgrounds in Syria’s secret police, and others were suspected of carrying out war crimes during the country’s ongoing civil war.

The newspaper Dagbladet also reported that Islamic extremists are scouting refugee reception centers in Norway in search of new recruits for terrorism. According to the paper, several people who received asylum in Norway later became central figures in the country’s radicalized Islamic community.

Meanwhile, an increasing number of Norwegians are converting to Islam, apparently because of a perceived need for stronger rules in Norway’s liberal society. “Converting to Islam is perhaps the most extreme form of youthful rebellion today,” Muslim convert and religion professor Anne Sofie Roald told the newspaper Aftenposten. She said she thinks conservative Islam represents clear limits and a new form of security in Norway’s “anything goes” society.

In Spain, police arrested three young Frenchmen after they were caught driving a Mercedes at 235 kilometers per hour (146 miles per hour), almost twice the 120 km/h legal speed limit, on the AP-7 motorway through the southern province of Valencia. Police found €200,000 ($219,000) in cash stuffed in a duffel bag in the car’s trunk; none of the three men was able to explain the provenance of the cash. A subsequent investigation found that one of the three men was being monitored by French authorities on suspicion that he had been recruited by the Islamic State and was preparing to leave for Syria.

On June 22, the trial of Nabil Benkaddour, a Moroccan who attempted to join the Islamic State in Syria, began at the High Court in Madrid. Benkaddour was arrested the southern Spanish region of Murcia in November 2014 after he tried to travel to Syria via Turkey. He was not allowed to board the plane, however, because he did not have a return ticket. Spanish police later discovered that Benkaddour had been “very active on radical jihadist forums on the Internet” and had broadcast videos used for jihadist indoctrination and recruitment. He had also posted a photograph of his three-year-old son holding a toy rifle, along with images of various terrorist leaders, with the message: “You have chosen the path of Jihad and we will follow it.” Benkaddour faces two years in prison if the court finds him guilty of “glorifying terrorism.”

In Sweden, police arrested two people in raids in Stockholm and provincial city of Orebro on June 1 as part of a crackdown on the recruitment of young men to fight with jihadists groups abroad. The Swedish Security Police (SAPO) said Orebro, a city of 140,000 people, has become the fourth largest Swedish source of recruits for Islamist groups after Malmo, Gothenburg and Stockholm. According to SAPO, about 300 Swedish nationals or residents are believed to have joined the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Around 35 of these have been killed and 80 have returned to Sweden.

On June 17, the Swedish government announced that it was contemplating drafting a new law that would ban its nationals from fighting with jihadist groups such as the Islamic State. “It is unacceptable that Swedish citizens are travelling to join the Islamic State, financing the group or fighting for it,” Justice Minister Morgan Johansson and Interior Minister Anders Ygeman wrote in an article published by the newspaper Dagens Nyheter.

More news about Islam in Sweden during June 2015 can be found here.

______________________

Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter.

Copyright © 2015 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved.

About Gatestone Institute

U.S. ALAC to Austrian ALAC?


Jan Sobieski vs Pasha Kara Mustafa at Vienna

 

John R. Houk

© October 22, 2014

 

American Laws for American Courts (ALAC) are primarily laws passed on the State level in the USA. What is ALAC?

 

American Laws for American Courts was crafted to protect American citizens’ constitutional rights against the infiltration and incursion of foreign laws and foreign legal doctrines, especially Islamic Shariah Law. READ ENTIRETY FOR DETAILS (American Laws for American Courts; Infidel Task Force)

 

Americans in individual American States have begun to recognize that there are elements in Islam – particularly Sharia Law – that are totally incompatible with the Freedom, Liberty and Rights assured to us by the U.S. Constitution.

 

Since the U.S. Constitution enshrines Religious Freedom in the First Amendment Muslim apologists started to rail against State laws that expressly use the phrase “Sharia Law” to keep American Courts from using Islamic concepts jurisprudence precedents. This happened in Oklahoma when over 70% of the voters passed a law preventing Sharia from being used as a legal precedent in State Courts in 2010. Due largely by a lawsuit filed by Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood connected Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Federal Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange ruled the Oklahoma SQ 755 unconstitutional in 2013 because the law singled out a specific religion. Under Governor Fallin’s direction, rather than pursuing further appeals Oklahoma chose another legal path using the wording of ALAC to specify that OK State Courts cannot use any foreign laws as a legal precedent in rendering decisions. This wisely expands the anti-Sharia focus to include Left Wing agendas that Obama might promote via the auspices of the United Nations and overseas Court proceedings. By August 2013 the OK Senate approved the ALAC wording 40-3 and the OK House approved it 85-7. Governor Mary Fallin then promptly made the ALAC official with her signature. Take that you weaselly Radical Muslims pretending to be Moderate!

 

The Muslim Brotherhood and Saudi inspired Wahhabi lobbyist are still trying to exploit the U.S. Constitution to make unconstitutional portions of Sharia acceptable in the USA. Those Muslim apologists have been joined by American Leftists either deluded that multiculturalism is good or use Islam to fight America’s Christian heritage via cultural dilution.

 

After looking at snail-like slow understanding in America that Islam is a threat, I have to share what I consider some astounding news from the West European nation of Austria. In case you have had your head in the sand – partly due to the failure of the American media – the growing Muslim minority in Western Europe are essentially becoming successful in forcing nations to accept Islamic cultural styles as a part of Europe’s fabric of society. One can hear that the UK, France, Germany, Sweden and Norway to name a few nations have gone out of their way politically to enforce multiculturalism in their society to the point that Muslim-Sharia enclave-zones and even Sharia Law accepted as the rule of law to be enforced in regard to Muslims and to favor Muslims in disputes with non-Muslims.

 

This European socio-political practice is multiculturalism taken to an insane level of destroying their Western heritage.

 

The German-speaking nation of Austria is about to embark on a new rule of law path to begin to emphasize the cultural heritage of Austria over the imported Islamic culture. In this case one can say ALAC can be an acronym for Austria Laws for Austrian Courts. This is huge because not too long ago Austria prosecuted and convicted an Austrian politician for hate-speech in speaking the truth about Islam. Of course the Muslim minority is outraged in Austria because of the potential of ending Islam’s favored status in a European nation that still emphasizes multiculturalism over real Liberty and heritage.

 

Soeren Kern writing for the Gatestone Institute shares the details of this potential Austrian new heritage protection via the rule of law designed to thwart Radical Islam.

 

JRH 10/22/14

Please Support NCCR

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Austria: Civil Law vs. Sharia Law

 

By Soeren Kern

October 21, 2014 at 5:00 am

Gatestone Institute

 

Austria has emerged as a major base for radical Islam and as a central hub for European jihadists to fight in Syria.

 

The proposed revisions would, among other changes, regulate the training and hiring of Muslim clerics, prohibit the foreign funding of mosques, and establish an official German-language version of the Koran to prevent its “misinterpretation” by Islamic extremists.

 

Muslims would be prohibited from citing Islamic sharia law as legal justification for ignoring or disobeying Austrian civil laws.

 

Leaders of Austria’s Muslim community counter that the contemplated new law amounts to “institutionalized Islamophobia.”

 

Official statistics show that nearly 60% of the inhabitants of Vienna are immigrants or foreigners. The massive demographic and religious shift underway in Austria, traditionally a Roman Catholic country, appears irreversible.

 

The Austrian government has unveiled a sweeping overhaul of the country’s century-old “Islam Law” that governs the legal status of Austria’s Muslim community.

 

The proposed revisions—which are aimed at cracking down on Islamic extremism in Austria—would regulate the training and hiring of Muslim clerics, prohibit the foreign funding of mosques, and establish an official German-language version of the Koran, among other changes.

 

The government says the modifications would give Muslims legal parity with other religious groups in Austria. But the leaders of Austria’s Muslim community counter that the contemplated new law amounts to “institutionalized Islamophobia.”

 

The updated Islam Law (Islamgesetz) was presented as a draft bill to parliament on October 2 and overhauls the current law, which dates back to 1912.

 

The original law was brought into being to help integrate Muslim soldiers into the Habsburg Army after the Austro-Hungarian Empire annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908. The law recognized Islam as a religious community in Austria, and allowed Muslims to practice their religion in accordance with the laws of the state.

 

After the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed in the aftermath of World War I, the number of Muslims in Austria was reduced to just a few hundred people. After World War II, however, Austria’s Muslim population increased rapidly with the arrival of “guest workers” from Turkey and the Balkans in the 1960s, and refugees from Bosnia in the 1990s.

 

The Muslim population in Austria now exceeds 500,000 (or roughly 6% of the total population), up from an estimated 150,000 (or 2%) in 1990. The Muslim population is expected to reach 800,000 (or 9.5%) by 2030, according to recent estimates.

 

Official statistics show that nearly 60% of the inhabitants of Vienna, the capital and largest city of Austria, are immigrants or foreigners.

 

The massive demographic and religious shift underway in Austria, traditionally a Roman Catholic country, appears irreversible. In Vienna, for example, Muslim students now outnumber Catholic students at middle and secondary schools. Muslim students are also on the verge of overtaking Catholics in Viennese elementary schools.

 

At the same time, Austria has emerged as a major base for radical Islam. A June 2014 report by the Austrian intelligence agency [BVT] warned of the “exploding radicalization of the Salafist scene in Austria.” Salafism is an anti-Western ideology that seeks to impose Islamic sharia law.

 

Austria has also emerged as a central hub for European jihadists seeking to fight in Syria, because Austria’s geographic location provides easy access to land routes through the Balkans.

 

Photo: The Austrian Islamist known as “Abu Hamza al-Austria,” fighting in Syria, pictured from his jihadist recruitment video.

Austrian Islamist known as Abu Hamza al-Austria

 

In an interview with Austrian Public Radio Ö1-Morgenjournal, the Austrian Minister for Integration and Foreign Affairs, Sebastian Kurz, said the rapid rise of Islam in Austria has rendered the old Islam Law obsolete. A new law is needed, he said, to stipulate more clearly the rights and responsibilities of Muslims living in the country.

 

From now on, according to Kurz, Muslims residing in Austria will be expected to adhere to Austrian values and to acknowledge the primacy of Austrian law over Islamic Sharia law. In practice, he said, this means that Muslims would be prohibited from citing Islamic law as legal justification for ignoring or disobeying Austrian civil laws. Sharia law has “no place” in Austria, he stressed.

 

The new law would regulate at least a dozen separate issues, including relatively non-controversial matters such as Muslim holidays, Muslim cemeteries, Muslim dietary practices and the activities of Muslim clergy in hospitals, prisons and the army.

 

More significantly, however, the bill seeks to limit the religious and political influence of foreign governments within the Austrian Muslim community by prohibiting foreign countries—presumably Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf states—from financing Islamic centers and mosques in Austria.

 

The legislation also seeks to prevent the growth of a parallel Islamic society in Austria by regulating mosques and requiring clerics to be trained exclusively at Austrian universities. The new law would require Muslim groups to terminate the employment of clerics who have criminal records or who are deemed to pose a threat to public safety.

 

The new restrictions—including an employment ban for foreign clerics in Austria—would apply especially to Turkey: 65 of the 300 Muslim clerics working in Austria are Turkish civil servants whose salaries are being paid for by the Turkish government’s Religious Affairs Directorate, the Diyanet.

 

Muslims leaders in Austria say that in the absence of foreign funding, many mosques in Austria would have to be “closed immediately” because they are not financially viable apart from outside support. Moreover, they argue, the prohibition of foreign funding violates the constitution because the same restrictions are not being applied to Christians or Jews.

 

The foreign funding restrictions, however, do not appear to apply to the Vienna-based King Abdullah International Center for Inter-Religious and Inter-Cultural Dialogue. Critics say the multi-million-dollar institution, which was inaugurated in November 2012, is an effort by Saudi Arabia to establish a permanent “propaganda center” in central Europe from which to spread the anti-Western Wahhabi sect of Islam throughout the rest of Europe.

 

The new Islam Law also requires the Austrian Muslim community to agree on a standardized German-language translation of the Koran, the Hadiths and other Islamic religious texts. The government has argued that an official version of the texts would prevent their “misinterpretation” by Islamic extremists.

 

“There are countless translations, countless interpretations,” Kurz told public radio Ö1. “We will be pushing for this vigorously. It is also in the interest of the Muslim community that words are correctly interpreted and reproduced.”

 

However, Muslim leaders say it would be next to impossible for Sunnis, Shiites and Alawites to agree on a “correct” translation of the Koran. In any event, they say, the state cannot outlaw alternative translations.

 

A group called Muslim Youth of Austria [MJÖ] has described the new Islam Law as an “intolerable legal scandal” that seeks to “place the broad mainstream of Muslims either under state supervision, or to split them into weak and therefore meaningless groups.”

 

The president of the Austrian Islamic Community [IGGiÖ], Fuat Sanac, says the new law is “naïve” and treats Muslims as “second-class” citizens: “We do not agree with the draft Islam Law. It was presented to the public without our approval.”

 

Sanac has vowed to file an appeal with Austria’s constitutional court to stop the new law, which he says “risks humiliating” the country’s Muslim population.

 

Kurz maintains that the primary purpose of the new Islam Law is to establish the “primacy of national law over religious law.”

 

The government hopes the new law will be approved by Parliament in November and enter into force sometime in 2015. However, Muslim opposition to the initiative may mean that the 1912 version of the law will remain unchanged for the foreseeable future.

___________________

U.S. ALAC to Austrian ALAC?

John R. Houk

© October 22, 2014

___________________

Austria: Civil Law vs. Sharia Law

 

Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter.

 

Copyright © 2014 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved.

 

About Gatestone Institute

 

“Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.”
— John Adams

 

Gatestone Institute, a non-partisan, not-for-profit international policy council and think tank is dedicated to educating the public about what the mainstream media fails to report in promoting:

 

o   Institutions of Democracy and the Rule of Law;

 

o   Human Rights

 

o   A free and strong economy

 

o   A military capable of ensuring peace at home and in the free world

 

o   Energy independence

 

o   Ensuring the public stay informed of threats to our individual liberty, sovereignty and free speech.

 

Gatestone Institute conducts national and international conferences, briefings and events for its members and others, with world leaders, journalists and experts — analyzing, strategizing, and keeping them informed on current issues, and where possible recommending solutions.

 

Gatestone Institute will be publishing books, and continues to … READ THE REST

 

Powerful Islamist Org. Ramps Up War on Free Speech in West


Stop Global Islamization

In the spirit of my last post concerning Geert Wilders giving a little correction to Pope Francis’ claim that authentic Islam is not violent, here is the Clarion Project exposing the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) for telling us Islam trumps Free Speech.

 

JRH 12/12/13

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Powerful Islamist Org. Ramps Up War on Free Speech in West

The primary objective of the OIC is to pressure Western countries into passing laws that would ban ‘negative stereotyping of Islam.’

 

By SOEREN KERN

December 12, 2013

The Clarion Project

 

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation, an influential bloc of 57 Muslim countries, has released the latest edition of its annual “Islamophobia” report.

 

The “Sixth OIC Observatory Report on Islamophobia: October 2012-September 2013” is a 94-page document purporting to “offer a comprehensive picture of Islamophobia, as it exists mainly in contemporary Western societies.”

 

The primary objective of the OIC—headquartered in Saudi Arabia and funded by dozens of Muslim countries that systematically persecute Christians and Jews—has long been to pressure Western countries into passing laws that would ban “negative stereotyping of Islam.”

 

In this context, the OIC’s annual Islamophobia report—an integral part of a sustained effort to prove the existence of a “culture of intolerance of Islam and Muslims” in the West—is in essence a lobbying tool to pressure Western governments to outlaw all forms of “Islamophobia,” a nebulous concept invented by the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1990s.

 

The OIC report comprises five main chapters and several annexes aimed at documenting “incidents of slandering and demeaning Muslims and their sacred symbols including attacks on mosques, verbal abuses and physical attacks against adherents of Islam, mainly due to their cultural traits.”

 

But the common thread that binds the entire document together is the OIC’s repeated insistence that the main culprit responsible for “the institutionalization of Islamophobia” in Western countries is freedom of speech, which the OIC claims has “contributed enormously to snowball Islamophobia and manipulate the mindset of ordinary Western people to develop a ‘phobia’ of Islam and Muslims.”

 

According to the OIC, freedom of expression is shielding “the perpetrators of Islamophobia, who seek to propagate irrational fear and intolerance of Islam, [who] have time and again aroused unwarranted tension, suspicion and unrest in societies by slandering the Islamic faith through gross distortions and misrepresentations and by encroaching on and denigrating the religious sentiments of Muslims.”

 

Chapter 1 of the report deals with “Islamophobia, Intolerance and Discrimination against Muslims,” and purports to reveal the “unabated rise of Islamophobia in Western countries, thereby exacerbating tensions at all levels and constituting additional obstacles to the diversity and multicultural fabrics of the societies.”

 

According to the OIC, freedom of speech is to blame for the “perpetuation of Islamophobia,” which:

 

“…has become increasingly widespread, which, in turn, has caused an increase in the actual number of hate crimes committed against Muslims. These crimes range from the usual verbal abuse and discrimination, particularly in the fields of education and employment, to other acts of violence and vandalism, including physical assaults, attacks on Islamic centers and the desecration of mosques and cemeteries.”

 

“In this context, acceptance of various forms of intolerance, including hate speech and the propagation of negative stereotypes against Islam and Muslims in some western countries contribute towards proliferation of intolerant societies. This process is further supported by… the exploitation of freedom of expression and perpetuation of an ideological context advocating an inescapable conflict of civilizations.”

 

Another factor favoring “the climate of intolerance” is:

 

“…the negative role played by major media outlets who not only propagate stereotypes and misperceptions about Islam, but also undermine and usually keep shadowed any meaningful instance of individuals or groups speaking out against intolerance, including advocacy of religious hatred and violence. This biased approach of the media has helped drawing an emphatically demonized, sometimes dehumanized, image of Muslims in the minds of a certain class of people which is predisposed to xenophobic feelings due to the increasingly dire economic situation, or the simply to the irrational fear of the other.”

 

Chapter 2 of the report deals with “Manifestations of Islamophobia in the West.” According to the OIC:

 

“The number of Islamophobic incidents continues to rise in the US, as a result of anti-Muslim propaganda. It is particularly alarming that anti-Muslim sentiments are taking deeper roots infiltrating further in the educational system. Notable among several other worrying trends/cases are: the initiatives taken by a leading and powerful US legislator [US Representative Peter King] to convene special Congressional Hearings on Radicalization of Islam in the US… In the same vein, the Republican Party in the recent 2013 [sic] US Presidential elections also used the anti-Islam card as a strategy.”

 

“With regard to Islamophobic trends in Europe, various reports and polls have revealed growing misperception vis-à-vis Islam and Muslims. Among the most common and recurring… are the ideas that Muslims are inclined to violence including revenge and retaliation; that Islam is an inherently expansionist religion, which strives for political influence, and whose followers are obsessed with proselytizing others, and more generally that Islam deprives women of their rights and encourages religious fanaticism and radicalism. According to the same polls, only a minor portion of the public tends to see Islam in a more positive light, as being a religion of peace that preaches love for neighbors, charity, openness and tolerance… Muslims who live in xenophobic environments are more exposed to daily stress and other forms of moral prejudice.”

 

The OIC concludes that “journalists and media organizations have a responsibility to avoid promoting rhetoric of hate by acting as a platform for its widespread dissemination.”

 

Chapter 3 of the OIC report highlights “Some Positive Developments” in terms of initiatives and other steps and positions taken to combat Islamophobia, including:

 

“…the condemnation of anti-Muslim hate speech by various quarters, including non-Muslim religious leaders; the barring from entry of certain Islamophobes to a number of countries where they intended to take part in anti-Muslim rallies or deliver inflammatory lectures; the recognition of Muslim holidays and other strict sanctions taken against acts of manifest religious intolerance. It was noted with satisfaction that a number of international organizations, including UNSECO, the OSCE and the Council of Europe, have recognized the danger posed by Islamophobia and have taken concrete steps to combat it, notably by laying down Guidelines for Educators on Countering Intolerance and Discrimination against Muslims.”

 

Chapter 4 of the report, “OIC Initiatives and Activities to Counter Islamophobia,” focused on the OIC’s ongoing efforts to promote the so-called Istanbul Process, an aggressive effort by Muslim countries to make it an international crime to criticize Islam. The explicit aim of the Istanbul Process is to enshrine in international law a global ban on all critical scrutiny of Islam and Islamic Sharia law.

 

In recent years, the OIC has been engaged in a determined diplomatic offensive to persuade Western democracies to implement United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) Resolution 16/18, which calls on all countries to combat “intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of… religion and belief.” (Analysis of the OIC’s war on free speech can be found here and here.)

 

Resolution 16/18, which was adopted at HRC headquarters in Geneva in March 2011 (with the support of the Obama Administration)—together with the OIC-sponsored Resolution 66/167, which was quietly approved by the 193-member UN General Assembly on December 19, 2011—is widely viewed as marking a significant step forward in OIC efforts to advance the international legal concept of defaming Islam.

 

Chapter 5 of the OIC report provides a set of conclusions and recommendations, which call on Western governments, international organizations and non-state actors to:

 

“Take all necessary measures within their power and legal/jurisdictional systems to ensure a safe environment free from Islamophobic harassment… by strictly enforcing applicable hate crime and discrimination laws;

 

“Create, whenever necessary, specialized bodies and initiatives in order to combat Islamophobia… based on internationally recognized human rights principles and standards;

 

“Combat Islamophobic hate crimes, which can be fuelled by Islamophobic hate speech in the media and on the Internet;

 

“Take all necessary measures to ensure that the media refrains from serving as a platform for the dissemination of hate speech… by associating extremism and terrorism to Islam and Muslims… and presents the true positive nature of Islam.

 

“Implement provisions of UNHRC Resolution 16/18 through the Istanbul Process mechanism as it offers a positive platform for debate, exchange of best practices and maintaining of a common and unified stance.”

 

The report states that “the OIC and the Member States should not be complacent in underscoring the fact that our present day world is gradually being driven towards the dangerous precipices of growing intolerance of religious and cultural diversity. This is the clear and present danger that the OIC has been consistent in warning the international community against. The sooner the phenomenon of Islamophobia is addressed, the better it is for ensuring peaceful coexistence of the present as well for the future generations to come.”

 

The report concludes with the transcript of a speech by OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, in which he thanks American and European political leaders for their help (here and here) in advancing his efforts to restrict free speech in the West.

 

“The Istanbul Process initiated with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton … must be carried forward … the Istanbul Process must also be seen as a poster child of OIC-US-EU cooperation …” Ihsanoglu said.

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Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.

 

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