August 26, 2008

Nazi Worries in Denver, and Among Arizona GOP

Phoenix New Times: “J.T. Ready, the Ernst Roehm of the East Valley, second from right, at a neo-Nazi rally in Omaha earlier this month [September, 2007].”

With at least one suspected plot against Barack Obama’s life foiled this week, the Southern Poverty Law Center gauges the mood of American neo-Nazis, who “reacted overwhelmingly with suspicion that they were being set up by the federal government to take the fall.” I don’t want to reproduce the revolting, violent, racist remarks quoted in the SPLC’s article, but you should read the piece, if only as a reminder that Adolf Hitler is alive and well and living in the United States of America.

Meanwhile, one Arizona Republican with half a clue (despite his deliciously-ironic name of “Flake,” and a headline that would be hilarious were the subject matter not so deadly serious) has figured out that connections to the neo-Nazis aren’t good for party business.

But before you take Flake’s worries about “the name and reputation of the Republican Party” at face value, you should ask whether Flake would care so much if he wasn’t using the issue to help get his own brother-in-law elected to office:

Flake says Republican’s neo-Nazi tie hurts GOP

Three Republican congressmen took time this week — amid a pivotal presidential campaign and on the doorstep of their national convention — to demand removal of a minor functionary on the very lowest rung of the party’s ladder. …

[U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz.], along with Reps. John Shadegg and Trent Franks, sent a letter Tuesday to Tom Husband, Maricopa County Republican chairman, demanding that J.T. Ready be removed as a precinct committeeman in legislative District 18 because of his ties to the neo-Nazi movement.

That district, in west Mesa, is home to one of the state’s most bitter primary election battles. It pits state Rep. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, a nationally known advocate of strict immigration enforcement, against Kevin Gibbons, a Mesa immigration lawyer who is Flake’s brother-in-law. …

Pearce’s opponents have made hay lately over his alleged affiliation with Ready, who also is a staunch foe of illegal immigration and is openly aligned with White supremacist and neo-Nazi elements. …

A campaign mailer sent by a group calling itself Mesa Deserves Better contains a picture of Pearce with Ready at the rally under the headline, “You wouldn’t associate with neo-Nazis, but Russell Pearce does.” …

In May of [2007], Ready was on the warpath against Matt Browning, a Mesa police detective who had spent years investigating racist hate groups.

In a presentation at the Capitol in early 2007, Browning said some extreme anti-immigration activists were little more than terrorists.

Ready responded with an e-mail campaign accusing Browning of slander. “All border activists, constitutional study groups, and tax protestors, and especially any White Heritage Club members, have been labeled as ‘domestic terrorists,’ ” Ready’s e-mail said.

Bill Straus, executive director of the Arizona chapter of the Anti-Defamation League, said at that time that his group had been monitoring Ready. “We were an organization that first spotlighted the fact that he attended an event held by the National Vanguard, a neo-Nazi organization, here,” Straus said on May 4, 2007. …

The three congressmen said in their letter that Ready’s neo-Nazi activities have continued since then. They said he attended a neo-Nazi gathering in Omaha in September 2007 and distributed racist and anti-Semitic literature at a county party meeting in January.

The congressmen spoke out only now, Flake said, because they did not realize until recently that Ready was an elected Republican official. …

Lots more at the link.

And you have to ask: What were Mesa voters thinking when they elected such a blatant hatemonger to represent them? You’d think if their thing is just garden-variety xenophobia, they could have at least chosen a Repug without such a visible white sheet.

Further reading:

The Nativists: Jason “J.T.” Ready, 34
Southern Poverty Law Center

Russell Pearce’s Willie Horton: White supremacist J.T. Ready
Phoenix New Times, September 22, 2007

Posted by: Sapphocrat

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