Majorityrights News > Category: Localism

Alt-Right, “LONDON’S BURNING: TOWERING INFERNO EXPECTED TO COLLAPSE”, 13 June 2017:

A 24-storey residential tower block in West London is ablaze in scenes reminiscent of the 9-11 “terrorist attack” in New York, with the building, gutted by fire, expected to collapse.

The fire broke out just after 1am on Wednesday, with many residents in their beds. Some people appear to be trapped and have been attempting to signal the 200 firefighters and rescue workers attending the blaze with torches and lights from their smartphones.

The building in question is Grenfell Tower on the Lancaster West Estate. It was built in the 1970s and in recent years has been going through rather chaotic renovation.

In December 2015 the Grenfell Action group reported a number of serious problems caused by renovation work:

- There were big queues for lifts on each floor because the workers were using both of them.

- The condition of the lifts at the start of the day were unacceptable; they were in the state that would be expected by the end of the day.

- Cllr Atkinson stated that he had seen sad notes on front doors asking Rydon workers at least to knock before entering flats.

In 2016 the same group reported a major fire hazard in the building:

“In recent weeks TMO staff allowed a quantity of household ‘bulk’ rubbish to accumulate, including old mattresses, in the temporary entrance foyer of the tower. This accumulation constituted a potential fire risk and a danger to residents. The TMO area manager and her staff were slow to react and no-one had been bothered to organise the clearence of this rubbish.”

It is not yet known if the fire is connected to problems with renovation, or if there is another cause. At present it appears to be linked to the extreme overcrowding in London, combined with neglect by the local Conservative-run council. But, this being London, terrorism must also be considered as a possible cause.

                       
                                Kevin MacDonald               and                 James Bowery

NPR,“A ‘Forgotten History’ Of How The U.S. Government Segregated America”, 3 May 2017:

Federal housing policies created after the Depression ensured that African-Americans and other people of color were left out of new suburban communities - and pushed instead into urban housing projects, such as Detroit’s Brewster-Douglass towers. Paul Sancya/AP

In 1933, faced with a housing shortage, the federal government began a program explicitly designed to increase — and segregate — America’s housing stock. Author Richard Rothstein says the housing programs begun under the New Deal were tantamount to a “state-sponsored system of segregation.”

Race: Historian Says Don’t ‘Sanitize’ How Our Government Created Ghettos

Code Switch: Everyone Pays A Hefty Price For Segregation, Study Says

The government’s efforts were “primarily designed to provide housing to white, middle-class, lower-middle-class families,” he says. African-Americans and other people of color were left out of the new suburban communities — and pushed instead into urban housing projects.

Rothstein’s new book, The Color of Law, examines the local, state and federal housing policies that mandated segregation. He notes that the Federal Housing Administration, which was established in 1934, furthered the segregation efforts by refusing to insure mortgages in and near African-American neighborhoods — a policy known as “redlining.” At the same time, the FHA was subsidizing builders who were mass-producing entire subdivisions for whites — with the requirement that none of the homes be sold to African-Americans.

Rothstein says these decades-old housing policies have had a lasting effect on American society. “The segregation of our metropolitan areas today leads ... to stagnant inequality, because families are much less able to be upwardly mobile when they’re living in segregated neighborhoods where opportunity is absent,” he says. “If we want greater equality in this society, if we want lowering of hostility between police and young African-American men, we need to take steps to desegregate.”

Interview Highlights

On how the Federal Housing Administration justified discrimination

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America - by Richard Rothstein

The Federal Housing Administration’s justification was that if African-Americans bought homes in these suburbs, or even if they bought homes near these suburbs, the property values of the homes they were insuring, the white homes they were insuring, would decline. And therefore their loans would be at risk.

There was no basis for this claim on the part of the Federal Housing Administration. In fact, when African-Americans tried to buy homes in all-white neighborhoods or in mostly white neighborhoods, property values rose because African-Americans were more willing to pay more for properties than whites were, simply because their housing supply was so restricted and they had so many fewer choices. So the rationale that the Federal Housing Administration used was never based on any kind of study. It was never based on any reality.

On how federal agencies used redlining to segregate African-Americans

The term “redlining” comes from a development by the New Deal, by the federal government of maps of every metropolitan area in the country. And those maps were color-coded by first the Home Owners Loan Corp. and then the Federal Housing Administration and then adopted by the Veterans Administration, and these color codes were designed to indicate where it was safe to insure mortgages. And anywhere where African-Americans lived, anywhere where African-Americans lived nearby were colored red to indicate to appraisers that these neighborhoods were too risky to insure mortgages.

On the FHA manual that explicitly laid out segregationist policies

The Two-Way: Interactive Redlining Map Zooms In On America’s History Of Discrimination

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Reveal News, “White nationalist gets his money from cotton fields – and the government”, By Lance Williams 17 March 2017:

Topics: Accountability

Two weeks after last year’s presidential election, white nationalist Richard Spencer held forth on a cable news show about how white people built America.

“White people ultimately don’t need other races in order to succeed,” he told the audience of the black-oriented program, “NewsOne Now.”

The exchange grew heated as host Roland Martin questioned Spencer’s rhetoric: Didn’t slaves help build America? Wasn’t the nation’s 19th-century economic boom propelled by the slave labor that produced the world’s cotton on Southern plantations?

America’s rise was “not through black people” and “has nothing to do with slavery,” Spencer retorted. “White people could have figured out another way to pick cotton,” he said. “We do it now.”

He is in a position to know. Spencer, along with his mother and sister, are absentee landlords of 5,200 acres of cotton and corn fields in an impoverished, largely African American region of Louisiana, according to records examined by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. The farms, controlled by multiple family-owned businesses, are worth millions: A 1,600-acre parcel sold for $4.3 million in 2012.

The Spencer family’s farms also are subsidized heavily by the federal government. From 2008 through 2015, the Spencers received $2 million in U.S. farm subsidy payments, according to federal data.

USDA farm subsidy payments to Spencer family companies, 2008-2015

Farm Payments

Dickenhorst Farms $1,014,558
Spencer Farms $524,655
Dickenhorst Trust $201,460
Sher-Di-Je Land $165,029
Poor Richard Partnership $98,878
A-Renee Partnership $78,016
Total $2,082,596

Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture data compiled by the Environmental Working Group

Although Spencer has attracted extensive media attention as a leader of the so-called alt-right movement – particularly after he drew Nazi salutes at an event celebrating Donald Trump’s election – he never has explained publicly how he supports himself while actively promoting his agenda via conferences and media appearances. The finances of his nonprofit think tank, the National Policy Institute, are a mystery; the organization hasn’t filed a public report since 2013. On Monday, the Los Angeles Times reported that the IRS revoked the institute’s tax-exempt status.

Spencer, 38, is a dropout from a Duke University Ph.D. history program who emerged during the Trump campaign as one of the nation’s most visible white separatist agitators. In his writing, speeches and interviews, he has given an intellectualized explanation for how he came to advocate creating a whites-only “ethno state” in North America. While in graduate school, he has said, he was compelled by critiques of multiculturalism and political correctness and by demographic data indicating that whites are en route to minority status in the United States.

But the Spencer family’s business interests and geographic history suggest a different possible lineage for Richard Spencer’s racist politics. The family’s farm holdings are a legacy of its ties to the Jim Crow South, passed down by Spencer’s grandfather, who built the business during the turbulent civil rights era.

Spencer family land holdings in Louisiana
Farming company Parish Acreage
Dickenhorst Farms Tensas 1,888
Dickenhorst Farms East Carroll 967
Sher-Di-Je Land Tensas 1,186
A-Renee Partners Madison 753
Poor Richard Partnership Franklin 400
Spencer, Sherry Madison 90
Total   5,284

Sources: Louisiana Tax Commission parish tax rolls; parish assessment records

Spencer declined in an interview this week to discuss how much money he personally receives from cotton farming and government subsidies and whether that income funds his political activities.

“I’m not involved in any direct day-to-day running of the business,” he said, later adding: “I’m going to navigate the world as it is, and I’m not going to be a pauper.”

One Spencer family farming company, which holds title to 400 acres of land, is called the Poor Richard Partnership.

In the interview, Spencer also downplayed his family’s influence on his political views, saying, “My parents are very mainstream Episcopalian Republicans in Dallas.”

Although Spencer grew up in an affluent neighborhood of Dallas and now splits his time between Montana and Washington, D.C., his family lived in the South for generations. Records show his mother attended segregated schools as a girl in the small northeast Louisiana city of Monroe. Later, Spencer’s mother inherited farms in northeast Louisiana from her late father. Today, her two children are her business partners.

Spencer’s mother did not respond to an email and voicemails seeking comment for this story. In the past, she has said she does not share her son’s views. In an open letter sent to their local newspaper in December, Spencer’s parents, Sherry and Rand, said that while they love their son, “we are not racists. We have never been racists. We do not endorse the idea of white nationalism.”

The region that is home to the Spencers’ farms has a history of slavery and racism. Through the civil rights era, the Klan targeted black residents there with lynchings, cross burnings and other violence. In Tensas Parish, where the Spencers own 3,000 acres of farmland, blacks didn’t win the right to vote until 1964, according to Elvadus Fields Jr., mayor of the town of St. Joseph.

White supremacist views typically run in the family, said writer and race relations expert Cleo Scott Brown. Feelings of racial superiority often are passed “from generation to generation, because that’s what they believe,” said Brown, whose father – a civil rights leader in East Carroll Parish, where the Spencers own 900 acres of farmland – was shot and wounded during a 1962 voter registration drive, allegedly by a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Agribusiness in the region today is heavily mechanized and provides few jobs. In 2013, CNN reported that East Carroll Parish suffers from the worst income inequality in the nation: The richest 5 percent of residents earned an average of $611,000 per year, 90 times what the poorest 20 percent earned. The parish’s population is 67 percent black.

Ownership of Spencer family farming companies

Farming company

Owners
Dickenhorst Farms Sherry Spencer, Richard Spencer and sister
Dickenhorst Trust Dickenhorst Farms (Sherry Spencer, Richard Spencer and sister)
Sher-Di-Je Land Dickenhorst Farms (Sherry Spencer, Richard Spencer and sister)
Spencer Farms Sherry Spencer
Poor Richard Partnership Sherry Spencer*
A-Renee Partners Sherry Spencer and daughter

*Records show that Richard Spencer has received subsidy income from the partnership but don’t identify him as an owner.

Sources: U.S. Department of Agriculture data compiled by the Environmental Working Group; Louisiana secretary of state filings

Race relations have improved significantly in recent decades. But after Trump’s election, some white residents celebrated by draping their pickup trucks with Confederate flags and driving through the region’s towns, according to the Rev. Roosevelt Grant, head of the NAACP branch in Winnsboro, Franklin Parish, near another of the Spencers’ farms.

The Trump presidency, he said, “has caused people to pray more.”

Spencer’s maternal grandfather, Dr. R.W. Dickenhorst, established the family farming business. He was a radiologist who started a medical practice in Monroe in 1952 and became wealthy and socially prominent, according to local newspaper obituaries.

Racial segregation was a given in Monroe then. Blacks were barred from housing, schools and public facilities used by whites. White superiority “was the way of life; that was the way it was, and anyone challenging it was challenging God’s will,” said the Rev. Roosevelt Wright Jr., a local historian in Monroe.

Dickenhorst’s daughter, Sherry, who would grow up to be Richard Spencer’s mother, enrolled in all-white Neville High School in 1962, according to district records. In 1964, at the start of her junior year, integration of the school began, with a single African American student enrolling.

As Dickenhorst’s medical practice prospered, he bought farmland in northeast Louisiana on the Mississippi River’s west bank. He died decades later, in 2002, and his wife died the following year. By then, their only daughter was the wife of a wealthy Dallas eye surgeon and the mother of two grown children: Richard Spencer and his sister, who did not respond to an email and phone calls seeking comment.

Today, through Dickenhorst Farms and several related companies, Sherry Spencer, 68, and her two children jointly own most of the family farmland, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data compiled by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group. Sherry Spencer is general partner of Dickenhorst Farms, and Richard Spencer and his sister are part owners, according to state and federal records. The family contracts out crop production to local farmers, a common practice in a region where corporations and absentee owners control much of the land.

The Spencer family’s farms are headquartered at a $3 million home in the ski town of Whitefish, Montana, where Sherry Spencer now lives. Also headquartered there: Richard Spencer’s think tank, his AltRight.com website and other white nationalist-related enterprises he controls, including a book publisher and web design outfit. Spencer also has lived in Whitefish in recent years ­– sometimes in his mother’s home, sometimes in a condominium she owns, according to documents and interviews.

The Spencers have received payments from two federal farm programs. One is the commodity subsidy program, intended to guarantee income for farmers who are helping to maintain supplies of certain crops deemed important by the government. The other is the conservation reserve program, which pays farmers for environmentally sound farming practices. Most of the $2 million paid to the Spencers has been in commodity subsidy payments for growing cotton.

Yet, Spencer has been bitterly critical of America and its government.

“This is a sick, disgusting society,” he declared in his speech at an alt-right gathering in Washington after the election, “run by the corrupt, defended by hysterics, drunk on self-hatred and degeneracy.”

Note: I have no necessary qualms with Spencer’s wealth (though ultimately, something like Bowery’s/ William Jennings Bryan’s progressive land taxation based on site value might be in order) nor do I have anything against his family’s alleged history of wanting to live separately from blacks. - DanielS

Diversity Macht Frei, 5 Jan 2017:

               
Alex Cioni, leader del Comitato Prima Noi, condannato dal Tribunale di Vicenza a 5 giorni di galera e 1.310 euro di ammenda per manifestazione non autorizzata.

Virtually every day, when I read Italian patriot sites, I see stories about asylum seekers, mainly sub-Saharans, staging spontaneous demonstrations, blocking traffic, holding up hand-scrawled placards protesting about something or other, usually the quality of the food they are given. Usually I don’t even bother posting articles about these incidents here, because there are simply too many of them.

Sometimes the police divert traffic so the invaders can carry on their protests undisturbed; sometimes they talk to them and persuade them to return to their accommodation; they almost never arrest them unless the invaders physically attack them. But here we have an incident where a small group of Italian patriots gathered and held up banners for a few minutes at a hotel that had been marked as a future asylum centre. And were charged and convicted for doing so. The incident in question is shown in the video above. Their banners say things like “Stop fake refugees. Stop the Asylum Industry”.

  Five days in prison and a fine of 1,310 euros. This is the penalty imposed on Alex Cioni, leader of the Prima Noi Committee, by the Vicenza Tribunal His offence was to have demonstrated in front of a hotel marked as a future reception centre for migrants to show his disagreement with the arrival of the refugees.

  The incident took place last 17 July when some representatives of the Prima Noi Committee displayed a banner and placards in front of the glass door in the Hotel Eden in Schio, expressing their unhappiness about the announced arrival of a substantial number of asylum seekers. An unauthorised demonstration, because - according to the judge - no request had been made in advance to the authorities responsible for public security.

  Cioni was convicted for this reason, although the sentence was suspended because he had no criminal record. “The complaint filed by the Digos officials and the related judgement from the tribunal in Vicenza,” said the Committee management, “represents an unequivocal clumsy attempt to intimidate our activity.”

  “A banner in a private place is not a demonstration for which reason the conviction for demonstrating is absurd,” the person involved explained to the Alto Vicentino Online. “It makes no sense to call an initiative like ours a demonstration, lasting only a few minutes. It is clear the incident has been instrumentalised.” Cioni will file an appeal however

Source

TNO, “French Mayor on Trial for Truth”, 24 Dec 2016:

The French mayor of the town of Béziers has been charged with “hate crimes” after saying that it was a “problem” that a class in a local school was 91 percent Muslim.

The charges were brought by the Jewish “International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism” (Ligue Internationale Contre le Racisme et l’Antisémitisme, LICRA).

Mayor Robert Menard denied his comments were discriminatory, saying he had “just described the situation in my town.”

       
“The most striking proof of the great Replacement in progress. Just look at old class photos.” - Mayor Robert Menard.

The comments were made back in September 2016, when Menard told French news channel LCI that “In a class in the city Center in my town, 91 percent of the children are Muslims. Obviously, this is a problem. There are limits to tolerance.”

At the same time, Menard tweeted his regret at witnessing “the great replacement” of France’s white population by Third World invaders.

According to French media, his comments were “seized upon” by LICRA, and the Jewish group immediately pressed charges for “hate” and “incitement.”

After months of deliberation, Menard’s trial date has now been set for March 8, LICRA announced on their Twitter feed.

       

After months of deliberation, Menard’s trial date has now been set for March 8, LICRA announced on their Twitter feed.

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Tanya Gersh has called upon Sherry Spencer to sell her Whitefish, Montana building.

Richard Spencer’s mother, Sherry Spencer, had no intention of selling her Whitefish, Montana building until she received terrible threats, the threats she said came from Tanya Gersh, a local realtor with links to so-called “human rights” organizations.

According to Sherry Spencer, on November 22nd, Tanya Gersh spoke with her on the phone and she relayed that if Sherry Spencer did not sell her building that 200 protestors and the national media would show up outside - which would drive down the property value - until she complied. Gersh’s other conditions included that Mrs. Spencer should publicly denounce her son in a statement written by the Montana Human Rights Network and that she make a donation to this organization from the sale of the property. As Gersh announced on Facebook, she was “spear heading” the campaign.

Gersh followed up on her conditions in a number of emails, which have been made public. She even shamelessly suggested that she act as Sherry’s realtor! In other words, she and the local “human rights” organizations appeared to seek financial benefit from threats of protests and reputation damage. They also threatened tenants currently leasing space from Spencer’s mom.

Sherry had no intention of selling her property in Whitefish until being harassed and receiving this pressure from Tanya Gersh, as leveraged by threats of protest from the anti-racist protest organizations - Love Lives Here  and Montana Human Rights Network - apparently at her behest to serve three functions:

1) To punish her son for promoting White Nationalist sovereignty.

2) To profit her local real estate business by instigating Sherry to a fire sale of her property.

3) To profit liberal groups such as “Love Lives Here” through donation of sale proceeds to them or similar anti-racist organizations: which generally oppose the necessary practice of social classification and discrimination on the basis of those social classifications (a least as Whites may render them - as such, they call it “racism”); despite the fact that capacity for social classification and discrimination is humanly impossible to avoid and absolutely necessary for survival of and against certain human species; as well as a generally necessary practice in defense against predation in order to facilitate human and pervasive ecology.

DM, 15 Dec 2016:

The mother of white supremacist Richard Spencer claims she is suffering financially due to the backlash against her son’s controversial views.

Sherry Spencer, who lives in Whitefish, Montana, said she is being forced to sell a building she owns in the small town because residents are rebelling against her son.

Sherry Spencer says she is being forced to considering selling the building she owns at 22 Lupfer Avenue (pictured), because of backlash against her son.

Richard Spencer shot to prominence last month when footage emerged of him delivering a ‘hateful speech’ at a white nationalist meeting held to celebrate Donald Trump’s election win.

A video by The Atlantic taken inside the Ronald Reagan building showed Spencer, leader of the National Policy Institute, shouting, ‘Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!’ as some of the people in attendance lifted their hands in a Nazi salute.

He also claimed America belongs to white people, who he suggested are faced with the decision to either ‘conquer or die’.

The speech drew intense criticism from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, which said in a statement Spencer made: ‘several direct and indirect references to Jews and other minorities, often alluding to Nazism.’

‘He spoke in German to quote Nazi propaganda and refer to the mainstream media. He implied that the media was protecting Jewish interests and said, “One wonders if these people are people at all?”’

And according to Sherry Spencer, the criticism has been echoed by people in her hometown - where he son also has a business registered and visits regularly.

Sherry Spencer told KTMF she is selling a building she owns at 22 Lupfer Avenue, which she currently sublets. It houses a beauty salon and vacation rentals. She also runs a real estate business from the building.

‘As painful as this is, I am exploring a potential sale of the building,’ she said.

She also took aim at a local human rights group, Love Lives Here, and accused it of damaging her family.

‘We are stunned by the actions of Love Lives Here, an organization claiming to advocate tolerance and equal treatment of all citizens, yet coursing financial harm to many innocent parties,’ she said.

One of the strongest opponents to Sherry is local real estate agent Tanya Gersh, who said Spencer has backed her son and allowed him to spread his views.

‘She is profiting off of the people of the local community, all the while having facilitated Richard’s work spreading hate by letting him live and use her home address for his organization,’ Gersh told the network.

Love Lives Here also responded to Sherry’s remarks, saying it ‘did not know what she (was) talking about’.

‘We don’t cause financial harm to anybody,’ co-founder Ina Albert said, before going on to say the group does not have a specific problem with the Spencers.

‘I don’t know what (Richard) does when he comes here. But that is not our problem with Richard Spencer.

‘It is the National Policy Institute and what that stands for and our town being smeared by his philosophy.’

The National Policy Institute was established in 2005 by Spencer, and it is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as ‘hate group’.

Gersh went on to call for Sherry to sell the building immediately, and then use the money to help human rights causes.

‘(She) Could address this by selling the building, making a donation to human rights efforts, and making a statement in opposition to white supremacist ideas spread by Richard,’ Gersh said.

Sherry Spencer also told the network she loves her son, but does not agree with his ‘extreme positions’.

Sherry Spencer is pictured with her husband Dr. Rand Spencer at a benefit in April 2016

As Sherry Spencer writes:

These threats came from Tanya Gersh, a local realtor with links to “human rights” organizations Love Lives Here [Phone: 406-309-5678] and the Montana Human Rights Network [Phone:406-442-5506].

On November 22, Gersh and I spoke on the phone. She relayed to me that if I did not sell my building, 200 protesters and national media would show up outside — which would drive down the property value — until I complied. Gersh’s other conditions included that I make a public denunciation of my son in a statement written by the Montana Human Rights Network and that I make a donation to this organization from the sale of the property. As Gersh announced on Facebook, she was “spear heading” the campaign.

Gersh followed up on her conditions in a number of emails, which I’ve just made public. She even shamelessly suggested that she act as my realtor! In other words, she and the local “human rights” organizations appeared to seek financial benefit from threats of protests and reputation damage.

READ MORE...

Mark Collett:

Nationalism should never be about being edgy and scaring people. We aren’t some 1% motorcycle club, with the motto, ‘no one likes us and we don’t care.’  ..we aren’t trying to scare people or offend them. In fact, we are trying to offer scared people hope…and our people have plenty to fear.