July 27, 2010

Racism, Schmacism: John McCain–Meet J.T. Ready!

Last week, VDARE.COM posted James Ryan’s Brown Herring: J.T. Ready and his ‘Neo Nazi’ Border Patrol, about a typical Main Stream Media effort to smear immigration patriots in general and Arizona’s SB1070 in particular.

More recently, the fashionably liberal Daily Beast has carried an extended version of this smear: Arizona's White Supremacist Problem, by Terry Greene Sterling [Email her] (Sterling seems to be making a career out of this: she has just published Illegal: Life and Death in Arizona's Immigration War Zone, which we will be happy to review if she sends us a copy.)

Besides Ready, Sterling attacks Pinal County Sherriff Paul Babeu, the stooge in embattled Senator John McAmnesty’s hilarious conscience-rupturing "build the dang fence" ad, because he appeared on a couple of politically incorrect radio shows, notably James Edwards’ Political Cesspool.

The only evidence of Political Cesspool’s "white supremacism" that Sterling offers is that it "lists among its principles a desire ‘to revive the White birthrate’ and ‘to grow the percentage of Whites in the world relative to other races.’"

So Sterling thinks we should suppress the white birthrate? We should lower the percentage of whites relative to other races?

And, presumably, she thinks my old friend Elliott Abrams is a Jewish supremacist?

Not for the first time, we find lumpen liberals incapable of making the elementary intellectual distinction between white nationalism and "white supremacism". It’s almost as if they don’t want to.

I myself, along with many others on the American Right, have done a Political Cesspool interview—the booker was a charming gentleman with an Indian name.

My response to critics, which I would have recommended to Sheriff Babeu had he not immediately gone into a PC cringe (probably at the McCain campaign’s behest), would be as follows: get lost—or words to that effect. [Lawman backs off interview on 'white' show, by Tim Steller and Brady McCombs, Arizona Daily Star, July 21, 2010]

In these media appearances, we are responsible only for what we ourselves say.

VDARE.COM readers should buy Edwards’ impeccably reasonable new book Racism, Schmacism: How Liberals use the "R" Word to Push the Obama Agenda (which we do expect to review soon) and decide for themselves.

The only important part of Sterling’s smear is inadvertent—she says

"[T] he Babeu flap is just the latest way in which the fierce debate over Arizona’s new migrant [a.k.a. illegal alien] law, which is being challenged in federal court and, barring an injunction or court ruling, is slated to take effect on July 29, has stirred up the ugly underside of immigration—hate groups with nativist and white-supremacist links."

But these imaginary dybbuks and golems are not the ugly underside of immigration. The ugly underside is the Treason Lobby: the ethnic rent-seekers, the sociopathic cheap labor whores, the paranoid Holocaust hysterics, all seeking consciously or unconsciously to destroy the historic American nation.

Ironically, Sterling herself concludes by discrediting her premise—confirming our James Ryan’s prescient skepticism about Ready’s alleged ferocious fascism. She writes:

"[T]hese days, Ready says, he has had a change of heart. In a quirky flip flop that could only happen in Arizona, the 37-year-old alleged Nazi spins himself as more of a liberal than some of the mainstream politicians running for office on a secure-the-borders platform.

“‘My view has significantly changed since I’ve been patrolling the desert,’ Ready asserts. He’s‘re-evaluated’ a lot of things and has ‘modified’ his earlier views. He is no longer a member of the National Socialist Party, he says. Bumping into migrants in the desert who are thirsty, hungry, and injured has opened his ‘whole humanitarian side.’

“‘I no longer see them as invaders,’ he claims.” ‘I see them as economic refugees.’ “(Links added)

That’s an Arizona flip-flop worthy of Senator McMaverick himself. Ready will go far.

Below we post an "Arizona Activist"’s anonymous memoir of Ready:

The Odyssey Of J.T. Ready—And Who Should Be Blamed

By "Arizona Activist"

James Ryan’s Brown Herring: J.T. Ready and his ‘Neo Nazi’ Border Patrol was an accurate analysis of the problems with J.T. Ready. I want to add to it by giving you my personal perspective.

JT and I were acquaintances back in the days he was a Minuteman. We weren’t close friends, but we did hang out with each other a few times to talk politics and whatever else was on our minds. He liked to talk about a full range of issues, but he was most concerned about illegal immigration.

JT was fun to talk to because he was very well informed about political issues. Of course he was very conservative, but his views were not unusual and could almost be considered common in places like Arizona.

JT’s activism with so many different groups led to associations with guys like Russell Pearce, Joe Arpaio, Chris Simcox, Jim Gilchrist, Glenn Spencer, etc etc. Sometimes the connection was no more than JT being in the same room and maybe shaking hands.

It’s important to emphasize that, during that time period, most of us thought of JT as good-natured rambunctious guy, who happened to be a very conservative activist. He didn’t stand out of the crowd. People probably didn’t even notice him much. None of us had a clue that he was going to join the neo-Nazis, because if we did we would certainly have tried to talk him out of it.

So we were stunned and disappointed when a picture of JT and the Nazis spread around the internet. It totally blindsided us. As far as I know, all of the people I mentioned ceased to talk to JT when they found out he was getting into the Nazi thing. But, of course, it was too late for many of them—the pictures had been taken.

And the fact that we disowned JT as a friend and associate simply didn’t matter to the Open Border fanatics. They were just waiting for something to use to smear anyone in the immigration reform movement. The lefties had been accusing us of being white supremacists and Nazis for a long time. Now JT handed them the "proof" on a silver platter.

The $outhern Poverty Law Center went on a witch hunt to find anybody seen in public with JT. Their guilt-by-association campaign was a very sleazy form of character assassination, because none of us could have guessed that JT would mess around with neo-Nazis. I have not talked to a single person who approved of JT’s turn to the dark side.

I think JT loved the media attention he was getting. The angrier the liberals got, and the more they castigated him, the more his ego was inflated. He probably didn’t think much about what his new image would mean for his future, or he wouldn’t have done it. To JT, marching around with a Nazi flag was probably a form of entertainment.

JT isn't an evil villain or a demonic thug, like he is being portrayed. He is a nice guy. Or at least he used to be. I know that sounds weird but it's true. He is the kind of guy that is cool to hang out with. I never went hunting or fishing with him, but I know he would be an excellent partner for that sort of thing. I am convinced that, as an activist, he would have gone no further than the Minutemen—if something substantial had been done to tighten the border.

Perhaps by some people's standards, JT is a "racist"—but I dispute it. His animus against Mexicans is caused by their law-breaking on the border rather than their race or ethnicity. Unless JT changed since I talked to him, he isn't the classic white supremacist type that we associate with Nazi Germany or the Ku Klux Klan. I think you could find thousands of Marines who would feel no different about law, guns, enforcement etc.

Of course, JT could have changed a lot since I knew him. Evil can grow in a person, especially if they only hear one voice.

JT and I got into a big argument one time. He said all illegals crossing the border should be shot on sight. I'm not at all sure JT would make an exception for white guys crossing illegally—so how much of a "racist" is he?

Shooting illegal border crossers is far too extreme for me. But a lot of people in Arizona do think that’s the only way to really stop the invasion. They are frustrated and want something done, and they won’t mind seeing blood spilled if that is what it’s going to take to get control of the border.

These extreme views are gaining traction as the Federal government and the national media bully and castigate Arizona and thwart us in our attempt to protect our land and our homes.

Most of us view JT as a pest, because he tends to show up during our public protests to hog the cameras—and of course the media is more than happy to lump us together. We wish JT and his small group of swastika wavers would stop it, because he is hurting our efforts to solve the immigration problem politically.

I doubt the neo-Nazis have much of a future—unless the Obama lawsuit wins. If that happens, all sorts of people who are feeling angry and disempowered will join any group that promises solutions.

Are the Open Borders types too stupid to understand what they are creating? They should accept some of the responsibility for what they did to JT—and consider what life will be like if there are thousands of JTs marching to the border to take control of the situation.

Peter Brimelow (email him) is editor of VDARE.COM and author of the much-denounced Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster, (Random House - 1995) and The Worm in the Apple (HarperCollins - 2003)