It is supposed to be theoretical Monday, but here in Kansas City it is not a day for much theory. As you all know, yesterday a white supremacist by the name of Glenn Miller, Jr. apparently took time off from a drunken gambling spree at local casinos to drive out to Overland Park (about twenty minutes south and west of where I live in Kansas City) to kill himself some Jews. The cowardly racist didn't even have the nerve to try and enter the building at the Jewish Community Center (JCC) or the Village Shalom assisted living and nursing home. He stood in the parking lots of both buildings and opened fire instead. At the JCC he killed fourteen year old Reat Underwood and his grandfather William Corporon, both were Methodists. Both were white. He then headed over to Village Shalom where he killed Terri LaManno, a Catholic and, also white. Reat had gone to the Jewish Community Center on Sunday with his grandfather, physician William Corporon, 69, to try out for the KC SuperStar singing and scholarship competition. LaManno was visiting her mom as she did every Sunday at Shalom Village. That none of the victims were apparently Jewish does not matter. They were human beings with lives still to live. They were killed because some Jew hating bastard either thought they were Jewish or figured since they were at Jewish institutions they might as well have been. He didn't really care. This is a hate crime.
Three people, three very innocent people, who were merely going about their daily lives on a rainy Sunday in suburban Kansas City had their lives snuffed out in the name of racist hate. I truly mourn each of them, and their deaths make me seethe with anger.
Glenn Miller is a long time white supremacist who has been living of late in southwest Missouri. One People's Project describes Miller as a,
...veteran white supremacist ...(who) once ran a white supremacist paramilitary operation before he turned FBI informant and in recent years had been seen posting regularly on a white supremacist website forum, where his last post was to note that he had spoken yesterday to Craig Cobb the white supremacist who attempted to take over a small town in North Dakota last year.
Miller is a former KKK Grand Dragon down in North Carolina and the founder of the white nationalist Patriot Party.
In 2012 Miller spoke to undergraduates at Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri. David Embree, an adjunct instructor in religious studies at MSU, said he invited Miller to speak during a one-week class offered between semesters. The class was about "White Supremacists in the Ozarks." Brilliant move Embree. From the Springfield Leader:
When Miller visited the class, he railed against Jews. A student challenged him and told him she was Jewish.
Miller told her, according to Embree, "You should be one of the first to go."
Embree was asked if he considered ending the talk at that point and asking Miller to leave.
He did not. "This was getting pretty close to the end of the time," he said. "I kept things orderly.
About his appearance at the University Miller posted on his blog that two Jewish students were present. Miller wrote that he was in a heated exchange with one of them. "I raised up and blurted out, 'Hell yes, I hate you and all jews, and you all deserve my hate for what your people have done to mine." He also wrote that in his presentation he denied the Holocaust, calling it the "holyhoax." He closed with "Heil Hitler!"
In another of Miller’s posts, from Jan. 10, 2012, he uses multiple slurs to refer to the students in the class. “No holds barred, no quarter given to the 2 kikess’ present, and though I was allotted only 45 minute to speak, plus a 15 minute Q&A period, the 16 students and I ran our mouths, nonstop almost for 2 full hours and 5 minutes. Time flew.”
Ah, academia and free speech.
I try to tell people I have no use for free speech for nazis. Many get all huffy about that. What they can't seem to get through their heads is that no one has the right to call for the murder of others, for genocide. No one, personally speaking as a Jew, gets a free pass to call for my murder and to attempt to incite others to take up the cause. Beyond that, as I try again to explain to these valiant defenders of free speech for white supremacists and nazis, these people mean what they say, their words lead to violence. Miller's words, his free speech, led directly to what happened yesterday. Three people are dead.
Last fall, when a group of nazis and white supremacist came to hold a rally in downtown Kansas City, Missouri, I joined with hundreds of others to shout them down, to watch them slink out of town behind a cordon of police. Another group, led by the Institute for Research and Education in Human Rights, Inc. and various civic and mainstream liberal organizations thought we should not have done that. They said WE were promoting violence. They said we should be nice. They tried to split our ranks in the fight against white supremacy, fascism, and nazism. They held a sing-a-long miles away. We paid these do gooders advice "no never mind." What happened yesterday, as I wrote yesterday on Facebook,
... is one reason we have to stand up to and kick the ass of nazis whenever and wherever they rear their ugly heads. This is why we don't just go hold some kumbaya sing-a-long far away. This is why we shout them down, run them out of town, smash them however we can and by whatever means are necessary.
There is more. Last month, David Irving, the grandfather of the holocaust denial movement, came to town. A group of anti racists, anti fascists alerted the Hampton Inn where his meeting was scheduled of who he was and what he was about. The Hampton in On the Plaza didn't care. They welcomed his little meeting. The anti-fascists showed up and disrupted the event. The manager of the Hampton Inn threatened to have them all arrested. Since then a campaign has been mounted here against the Hampton Inn and is demanding an apology.
Miller, by the way, was also a holocaust denier.
Get it.
I, for one, do not believe that nazis are the biggest threat we face. They remain relatively small in number and weak. However, this does not mean they are not dangerous. They are. Yesterday once again proves that. Those who always advise us to ignore them when they come to town, when these white supremacists show up to march, to speak, to rally, have got to realize today that they, not we as they always say, are playing into the white supremacists hands. Every time they speak, march, rally, these nazi pigs get their word out to someone...embolden themselves...and the result is racist violence and death. You don't ignore these people. You shut them down however you can and wherever they appear.
Meanwhile, Miller himself, I hope faces some "white supremacist justice" of his own. You see, Miller in addition to everything else he is, also is a snitch. Over 25 years ago he worked out a deal with the feds to save his skin by testifying agains his friends. After going underground, Miller was arrested on April 30, 1987 in Ozark, Missouri, on numerous Federal criminal charges along with three other men (Tony Wydra, Robert "Jack" Jackson, and Douglas Sheets). After his arrest, Miller agreed to testify against several other defendants in a major Federal sedition trial in Arkansas. At that time he testified in the federal trial of 14 men, including 10 charged with sedition and five who had been accused of conspiring to kill a federal judge and an FBI agent . Miller testified in the trial as part of a plea bargain in which he also spent three years in prison "on weapons charges and for plotting robberies and the assassination of SPLC founder Morris Dees." He also testified in court that the founder of the Order, Robert Mathews, had given him $200,000 to start the White Patriot Party. The Order was a white supremacist group in the early 1980s responsible for a number of murders and bank and armored car robberies.
This sort of thing doesn't go over real well in prison, in the white supremacist movement, in any movement. I won't say here what I hope happens to Glenn when next he shows up in the general population of some prison somewhere. All I can say is "good luck Glenn" when next you meet up with your cohorts.
Now, we also learn, as I expected we would, that the fools from the Westboro Baptist Church up the interstate in Topeka plan on picketing the funerals. They plan to picket the funerals of three white Christians who were murdered by a Jew hating white supremacist because they, too, hate Jews. Don't ask these people to make any sense. Their minds are so full of hate that would be impossible.
This is life in the belly of the belly of the beast these days.
NOTE AND UPDATE: I thought yesterday that I remembered this. Miller was also involved in the massacre of five anti nazi demonstrators from the communist workers party back in 1979 in Greensboro, North Carolina. I couldn't find anything until now, so I didn't mention it.
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