Rally to highlight failure of democracy for whites

Glad to see were already making a splash in Lansing! Heil Victory!

By Matthew Miller Lansing State Journal

On the Web site of the National Socialist Movement, the neo-Nazi organization that will rally Saturday at the state Capitol, there is a list of "things not to say to the media."
Among the forbidden statements are "We are rallying because we want media attention," "We are rallying because we want to bankrupt the city," and "We are rallying because we want a violent reaction from local blacks/Hispanics/Jews."

Bill White, a spokesman for the Minneapolis-based group, is the person whose name is signed to that piece of public relations strategy, and he held to it in an interview this week.
He said the group isn't looking for confrontation.

Rather, it wants to send the message that liberal, multicultural democracy "has failed the white working people of this country."

He said the current system - that would be the "Judeo-capitalist system," in his formulation - "deliberately strips white working people of their identity, their sense of history and their sense of who they are." (GO BILL!)

He blames Jews (and Bolsheviks and internationalists and capitalists and immigrants and minorities).
He says that most white people in America share his views, even if they've been cowed into silence by the powers that be.
Exaggerated numbers?

Just how many people do share his views is an open question. White, who was in Lansing on Tuesday, said the group has thousands of members.
Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors extremist groups, said the number is closer to 300. (WHATEVER)

Regardless of which version is closer to the truth, the National Socialist Movement is likely the largest white supremacist organization in the United States.

It has grown rapidly in the past few years as other groups - such as the Aryan Nations, National Alliance and World Church of the Creator (now the Creativity Movement) - have crumbled.
But the group doesn't seem to need significant numbers to provoke significant reactions.
In October, a planned demonstration by a few dozen NSM members in Toledo sparked a riot that cost the city more than $300,000. More than 100 counterprotesters were arrested; none of the group's supporters was.

The example is extreme, but the dynamic has played out in other cities. The NSM typically brings 30, 50, occasionally 100 protesters. They are invariably outnumbered by counterprotesters, who, in turn, are outnumbered by police.

Jeff Schoep, the NSM's commander, said the group expects to have 200 supporters in Lansing on Saturday.

But some who study such groups say that exaggeration of their support base is more the rule than the exception.

"These people exaggerate their numbers, so it can seem as if they really constitute some kind of threat," said Philippa Strum, author of "When the Nazis Came to Skokie: Freedom for Speech We Hate." (Thats becasue you a Pinko Moron)

"In fact, they don't, and they're well aware of that, and that's why they have to resort to a kind of in-your-face approach to what they want to do."
Immigration is key

Schoep said his group is coming to Lansing, in part, because "Michigan in particular has been hit hard by the illegal aliens."

He mentioned Michigan's foundering economy and the feeble state of the auto industry.
The idea that economic hardship makes recruiting for white supremacist groups easier is one he shares with some on the other side of the ideological spectrum.

Potok said the "most macro factor" fueling an increase in those groups' numbers is globalization.
That is, insofar as globalization has led to an uptick in immigration, insofar as globalization has brought about economic dislocations in white communities, it has led some to believe their ways of life are threatened.

"I'm not suggesting that simply because a car factory closes, people are going to go out and join a Nazi group," Potok said. "But it certainly provides an opening for right-wing ideologues to come in and organize."

Essentially, that is what Schoep says his group is doing. Counter-protests, he added, help more often than they hurt.
"Our enemies provocate and scream and yell and sometimes they throw horse feces," he said. "When they go out and do their demonstrations, we don't try to drown them out, because what they say is so ridiculous.

"If the politicians and these people thought we were just idiots," he added, "why would they spend their time and their money and their efforts to drown out our message?"