04.18.10
Public Relations Funnies with Poker Face
Yesterday, a handful of neo-Nazis were in downtown LA trying to provoke a riot with the police and immigrants. It did not go well for them.
Wrote one friend who had to get through it:
There were unintentionally humorous elements. The cops in riot gear escorted the Nazis back to their cars after the demonstration, but instead of making a smooth getaway, one of their crappy cars wouldn’t start. So the Nazis were trying to use jumper cables and shield themselves as the counter-protesters rained rocks and bottles on them …
What did [Paul Fussell] call this? The bottom-out-of-sight class?
And today DD takes readers back to the local chapter of the white Christian identity movement in Allentown, Poker Face.
On tax day Poker Face issued a press release. And it mentioned me! Although it was primarily aimed at one of the group’s regular arch-enemies, the Anti-Defamation League.
Mr. Poker Face, Paul Topete, did a question and answer for the settling of various controversies swirling about his band.
Here’s one part of it:
Question: As you might know, the Anti-Defamation League wrote something on their website speaking out against your band. They refer to your band as anti-government and anti-immigrant, and they post stuff from your website and interviews you’ve done that they claim are anti-Semitic and Holocaust denials:
http://www.adl.org/main_Extremism/poker_face_anti_government.htm
RESPONSE – We weren’t aware of that until you pointed it out. Thank you. Actually we’re not all that concerned about the ADL/SPLC/AIPAC and their history of character assassinations. Heck, they even attacked Frank Zappa. It’s hard to take them
serious when they have ties to known terrorist groups like the JDL and JDO as well as many other illegal activities like spying on Americans in California etc.
And here is another:
As you’ve probably seen, there are other blogs that have been writing this stuff too:
[link to DD post]
Do you have any response to any of this?
RESPONSE – Never heard of him …
There is also a long non-explanation on Holocaust denial. (Readers can find it easily enough at the top of the band’s website.)
But the best part of the press release is this:
QUESTION – … and claiming that Israel was behind 9/11. Do you believe these things?
ANSWER – We do not believe that Israel was the sole perpetrator of 9-11
Is there a public relations damage control expert who can help these poor folk out? Probably not.
In any case, readers will remember the local newspaper did a lukewarm story on Poker Face, one which mentioned the band’s forum for Holocaust denial at the foot of the piece.
The salient paragraph was this:
But Poker Face also has raised eyebrows with a forum on its Web site that includes such topics as the authenticity of the Holocaust, Jewish control of the media and repatriating illegal immigrants.
At the time, DD was passed comment from the Call’s assigning features editor before the story was done but after the nature of Poker Face’s website was brought to her attention.
They’re worth noting:
“I did just go to the Web site to see what I could see and after 10 minutes, still did not find anything. I see there are thousands of posts on the forum – just don’t have time to sift through.”
Maybe that was true. Or maybe not. To steal a phrase, it’s an eyebrow raising statement.
And this is because it is difficult to log onto Poker Face’s web forum and not immediately stumble upon rants like these:
Your eyes are not failing, your mind not playing tricks. Yes, this is what it says:
“Elliot Spitzer was set up by the mossad with a JAP-Shiska … [he is] not a zionazi cock-sucking Israeli firster …”
“Write on Mr. Spitzer, your sage wisdom is needed now more than ever,” it concludes.
That’s some recommendation. If only we all had such friends.
Next …
Here Topete expresses his disappointment with famous Christian fundamentalist preachers because they blather on “teebee … about how we have to protect the atheistic JEW founded Israel.”
And …
“It just never stops with the International Jewry and its affront to freedom for all,” writes a seemingly angered Topete.
Kevin MacDonald was written about by the OC Weekly recently here.
An excerpt:
Over the years, the Long Beach State psychology professor has courted controversy for books and articles asserting Jews have kept their culture throughout the millennia as a strategy that lets them compete against and subvert Western civilization. His works have been denounced by his 49ers colleagues, civil-rights organizations—seemingly everyone except white supremacists, who revere him as their movement’s contemporary intellectual giant.
All along, MacDonald has insisted he isn’t an anti-Semite or a neo-Nazi and definitely not a racist—he’s just a hard-working academic whose work happens to have an exclusively skinhead following. “I don’t necessarily endorse all of the attitudes reflected in all of the articles,??? MacDonald wrote to the Southern Poverty Law Center in regards to a 2008 exposé in its Intelligence Report magazine showing the professor’s courting of the extreme right through submitting his work in their publications and accepting their grants.
But at [a summer 2009 meeting of the Institute for Historical Review, the country’s premier Holocaust-denying organization], MacDonald began shedding his regular-guy façade. And with his introductions to Freedom 14 and other local neo-Nazis at that conference, the professor began the first steps toward emerging as a full-fledged bigot.
Topete’s posts on Jews creep into almost every corner of the band’s forum. Here are a couple quick screen shots of various message threads. They speak eloquently for themselves.
Note helpful ‘Christian identity info’ stuck in the middle of the rubbish about the ‘lost tribes of Israel.’ That was considerate.
Update
The Call keeps tryin.’ Atta boys.