The JBAKC was started in 1978 by a group of white anti-racist activists with ties to the Weather Underground. They named the organization after abolitionistJohn Brown, who advocated and engaged in violence as a means to end slavery in the U.S. According to founding member Lisa Roth, the event that triggered the formation of the group was the discovery that the KKK was actively organizing in New York Stateprisons.[1] The JBAKC soon had chapters in several states, but was most active in New York City, Chicago, and San Francisco.[2] The group promoted itself by distributing fliers at punk rock concerts, and was supported by benefit concerts from punk bands like the Dead Kennedys, The Contractions, and Dirty Rotten Imbeciles.[3][4]
In 1980, the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee distributed a pamphlet entitled "Take a Stand Against the Klan", which outlined the group's "Principles of Unity":
Fight White Supremacy in All Its Forms! Death to the Klan! Support the Struggle of the Black Nation for Self-Determination! Support the Struggle to Free the Land!
Support the Struggle of Third World People for Human Rights! Oppose White Supremacist Attacks!
The John Brown Anti-Klan Committee published a quarterly national newsletter, originally called Death to the Klan, and later renamed No KKK, No Fascist USA!. The paper had a circulation of 10,000 and focused on issues such as the racist nature of tracking in schools, homophobia, and political prisoners.[1] The New York chapter also published a local newsletter called Up South. In 1991 the JBAKC released a video about fascism and anti-fascism in the US entitled Behind the Burning Cross: Racism USA.[2]
Protests
Flier distributed by the JBAKC Los Angeles chapter in 1984
The JBAKC directly confronted white supremacists when they held rallies, and the confrontations sometimes became violent. In 1983 the group worked with the Brown Berets to disrupt a KKK march in Austin, Texas. The protesters hurled rocks and bottles at the marchers, and the ensuing fights resulted in 12 injured people and 11 arrests. The Austin police chief blamed the violence on the JBAKC and Brown Berets, but one police officer was found to have used excessive force in the arrest of a Brown Beret member.[5] Later that year, three members were arrested for participating in a riot outside an Arlington, Virginiahigh school, where neo-Nazis held a demonstration to mark "White Pride Day".[6]
When a group of KKK members protested at a Gay Pride Parade in Chicago in 1986, they were met by counter-demonstrators from JBAKC and another anti-racist group. A crowd of around 2,500 Klan supporters chased the anti-Klan groups, leading to 17 arrests and minor injuries to eight police officers.[7]
In addition to confronting white supremacists, the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee also took a stand against what they saw as police brutality. In 1983, 20 members of the Los Angeles chapter demonstrated outside the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department to protest the shooting of a five-year-old black boy by a white police officer from the Stanton Police Department. The protesters passed out a pamphlet headlined "Stop Killer Cops!" and claimed that the officer overreacted because he felt threatened being in a black community. A police spokesperson claimed that the child had waved a realistic toy gun at the officer.[8]
As part of their effort to challenge white supremacy, the group worked to clean up antisemitic and racist graffiti in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago. The swastikas and similar graffiti were spray-painted on the 40th anniversary of Kristallnacht, when Jewish-owned businesses across Germany were vandalized. The vandalism was attributed to William G. Leinberger, a member of the neo-Nazi group Chicago Area Skin Heads.[9]
Despite their work opposing certain forms of antisemitism, not all Jewish groups supported the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee. At two California anti-Klan rallies, the JBAKC were confronted by protesters from the far right Jewish Defense League (JDL), who accused the group of antisemitism for their strong positions against Zionism. JDL spokesman Irv Rubin said of the Committee, "They hate Israel with a passion".[10][11] The Anti-Defamation League also criticized the JBAKC, claiming that the organization "actually promotes racism and advocates organized violence."[citation needed] The JBAKC, for its part, referred to Zionism as "the enshrinement of white supremacy," accused Zionists of "work[ing] with the Klan and other white supremacist groups," and asserted that there was no inherent opposition between "Zionism and Nazism."[12]
The Jewish Defense League (JDL) is a far-right religious and political organization in the United States and Canada. Its stated goal is to "protect Jews from antisemitism by whatever means necessary"; it has been classified as "right-wing terrorist group" by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) since 2001, and is also designated as hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. According to the FBI, the JDL has been involved in plotting and executing acts of terrorism within the United States. Most terrorist watch groups classify the group as inactive as of 2015.
The Ku Klux Klan, commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is the name of several historical and current American white supremacist, far-right terrorist organizations and hate groups. According to historian Fergus Bordewich, the Klan was "the first organized terror movement in American history." Their primary targets, at various times and places, have been African Americans, Jews, and Catholics.
White supremacy is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White supremacy has roots in the now-discredited doctrine of scientific racism and was a key justification for European colonialism.
Supremacism is the belief that a certain group of people is superior to all others. The supposed superior people can be defined by age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, language, social class, ideology, nationality, culture, or belong to any other part of a particular population.
David Ernest Duke is an American politician, white supremacist, antisemitic conspiracy theorist, and former grand wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. From 1989 to 1992, he was a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives for the Republican Party. His politics and writings are largely devoted to promoting conspiracy theories about Jews, such as Holocaust denial and Jewish control of academia, the press, and the financial system. In 2013, the Anti-Defamation League called Duke "perhaps America's most well-known racist and anti-Semite".
White pride and white power are expressions primarily used by white separatist, white nationalist, fascist, neo-Nazi, and white supremacist organizations in order to signal racist or racialist viewpoints. It is also a slogan used by the prominent post-Ku Klux Klan group Stormfront and a term used to make racist/racialist viewpoints more palatable to the general public who may associate historical abuses with the terms white nationalist, neo-Nazi, and white supremacist.
Frederick Paul Fromm is a Canadian former high school teacher, white supremacist, neo-Nazi, and perennial political candidate.
In the United States, domestic terrorism is defined as terrorist acts that were carried out within the United States by U.S. citizens and/or U.S. permanent residents. As of 2021, the United States government considers white supremacists to be the top domestic terrorism threat.
This is a list of topics related to racism:
Mark "Mordechai" Levy is a U.S.-based political activist and founder of the militant Jewish Defense Organization (JDO), a breakaway faction of the Jewish Defense League. David Tell of the Weekly Standard wrote that the group is "located at the farthest, shadowy margins of American public life." Levy has organized a paramilitary training camp located in Upstate New York, named after Revisionist Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky.
The National Socialist Movement (NSM) is a Neo-Nazi organization based in the United States. It was a part of the Nationalist Front. Once considered to be the largest and most prominent Neo-Nazi organization in the United States, in recent years its membership and prominence have plummeted. It is classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Stormfront is a neo-Nazi Internet forum, and the Web's first major racial hate site. The site is focused on propagating white nationalism, Nazism, antisemitism and Islamophobia, as well as anti-feminism, homophobia, transphobia, Holocaust denial, and white supremacy.
Roy Everett Frankhouser, Jr. was a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, a member of the American Nazi Party, a government informant, and a security consultant to Lyndon LaRouche. Frankhouser was reported by federal officials to have been arrested at least 142 times. In 2003 he told a reporter, "I'm accused of everything from the sinking of the Titanic to landing on the moon." He was convicted of federal crimes in at least three cases, including dealing in stolen explosives and obstruction of justice. Irwin Suall, of the Anti-Defamation League, called Frankhouser "a thread that runs through the history of American hate groups."
Thomas Linton Metzger was an American white supremacist, neo-Nazi leader and Klansman. He founded White Aryan Resistance (WAR), a neo-Nazi organization, in 1983. He was a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s. Metzger voiced strong opposition to immigration to the United States, and was an advocate of the Third Position. He was incarcerated in Los Angeles County, California, and Toronto, Ontario, and was the subject of several lawsuits and government inquiries. He, his son, and WAR were fined a total of $12.5 million as a result of the murder of Mulugeta Seraw, 28, an Ethiopian student, by skinheads in Portland, Oregon, affiliated with WAR.
The Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is a group styled after the original Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Formed around 2012, it aims to "restore America to a White, Christian nation founded on God's word".
Redneck Revolt is an American political group that organizes predominantly among working-class people. The group supports gun rights and members often openly carry firearms. Its political positions are anti-capitalist, anti-racist and anti-fascist. Founded in Kansas in 2009, members were present at several protests against Donald Trump and against the far-right in 2017.
The Unite the Right rally was a white supremacist rally that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, from August 11 to 12, 2017. Marchers included members of the alt-right, neo-Confederates, neo-fascists, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and far-right militias. Some groups chanted racist and antisemitic slogans and carried weapons, Nazi and neo-Nazi symbols, the Valknut, Confederate battle flags, Deus vult crosses, flags, and other symbols of various past and present antisemitic and anti-Islamic groups. The organizers' stated goals included the unification of the American white nationalist movement and opposing the proposed removal of the statue of General Robert E. Lee from Charlottesville's former Lee Park. The rally sparked a national debate over Confederate iconography, racial violence, and white supremacy. The event had hundreds of participants.
Racism in Jewish communities is a source of concern for people of color, particularly for Jews of color. Black Jews, Indigenous Jews, and other Jews of color report that they experience racism from white Jews in many countries, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Kenya, South Africa, and New Zealand. Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews also report experiences with racism by Ashkenazi Jews. The centering of Ashkenazi Jews is sometimes known as Ashkenormativity. In historically white-dominated countries with a legacy of anti-Black racism, such as the United States and South Africa, racism within the Jewish community often manifests itself as anti-Blackness. In Israel, racism among Israeli Jews often manifests itself as discrimination and prejudice against Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews, Ethiopian Jews, African immigrants, and Palestinians. Controversially, some critics describe Zionism as racist or settler colonial in nature.
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