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<strong>IN</strong>TELLIGENCE BRIEFS<br />
Strange brew: Political<br />
races, especially<br />
for the Republican<br />
nomination, have<br />
been marked by an<br />
extraordinary level of<br />
extremist, demeaning<br />
and factually untrue<br />
rhetoric.<br />
Anonymous’ beef with the<br />
KKK dates back to the November<br />
2014 protests in Ferguson, Mo.,<br />
that followed the decision not<br />
to prosecute Darren Wilson, the<br />
white police officer who fatally<br />
shot unarmed black teenager<br />
Michael Brown. At that time,<br />
Anonymous retaliated against a<br />
Klan group that threatened to<br />
use “lethal force” against protesters<br />
by hacking the group’s<br />
Twitter account and releasing<br />
personal identifying information<br />
about its members.<br />
But even when their hearts<br />
are in the right place, the “virtual<br />
vigilantes” (as Vox termed them)<br />
of Anonymous can make mistakes.<br />
In 2014, before<br />
Wilson’s identity was<br />
made public, the group<br />
released the name of a<br />
police officer its members<br />
believed had shot<br />
and killed Brown. They<br />
got the wrong guy, and<br />
then couldn’t stem<br />
the avalanche of death<br />
threats sent to their<br />
accidental victim.<br />
Soon after Operation<br />
KKK simmered down,<br />
a Vermont prosecutor<br />
mounted a more focused<br />
attack on Klan activity<br />
when he charged a Klan<br />
activist with disorderly<br />
conduct, with a hate<br />
crime enhancement, for<br />
allegedly targeting an<br />
African-American woman and<br />
a Latina with fliers promoting<br />
the Klan. On Nov. 10, authorities<br />
in Morrisville arrested William<br />
Schenk, of North Carolina, saying<br />
that the 21-year-old’s intentional<br />
delivery of KKK materials<br />
to minority subjects’ homes constituted<br />
a threat and was not protected<br />
by the First Amendment. If<br />
convicted on all charges, Schenk<br />
— who was on probation in his<br />
home state in connection with a<br />
2011 arson — faces more than four<br />
years in prison.<br />
[ EXTREMISM <strong>IN</strong> THE MA<strong>IN</strong>STREAM ]<br />
Candidates for<br />
President, Other<br />
Offices, Voice<br />
Extremist Views<br />
Donald Trump described President<br />
Dwight D. Eisenhower’s<br />
brutal “Operation Wetback” as a<br />
“very humane” way to accomplish<br />
mass deportation, responded to<br />
the beating of a Black Lives Matter<br />
protester at a campaign rally<br />
by saying, “Maybe he should have<br />
been roughed up,” and claimed<br />
to have personally seen “thousands<br />
and thousands” of New Jersey<br />
Muslims celebrating the 9/11<br />
attacks — something that both law<br />
enforcement and media investigations<br />
have thoroughly debunked.<br />
Ben Carson said he found the<br />
notion of gun control more disturbing<br />
than the sight of a bullet-riddled<br />
dead body, believed<br />
the biblical figure Joseph built<br />
the Egyptian pyramids to serve<br />
as granaries, and asserted that<br />
Palestinian Authority President<br />
Mahmoud Abbas, Ayatollah Ali<br />
Khamenei of Iran and Russian<br />
President Vladimir Putin all went<br />
to school together in Moscow<br />
in 1968.<br />
Ted Cruz suggested baselessly<br />
that the man who murdered<br />
three at a Colorado<br />
Planned Parenthood (see story,<br />
p. 7) was a “transgendered leftist<br />
activist.” Mike Huckabee<br />
lauded American Family Radio<br />
— which features among its pundits<br />
Bryan Fischer, who claims<br />
that LGBT people were responsible<br />
for the Holocaust and<br />
that because American Indians<br />
failed to embrace Christianity,<br />
they deserved to have their land<br />
taken by European settlers — for<br />
offering viewpoints that people<br />
“are not going to get on NPR.”<br />
Marco Rubio selected a man who<br />
believes President Obama was<br />
fathered by a communist pedophile<br />
as co-chair of his Alabama<br />
campaign committee.<br />
These men are GOP front-runners<br />
— individuals who, if the 2016<br />
presidential race continues along<br />
the same path in which it began,<br />
stand a reasonable chance of being<br />
elected to what is arguably the<br />
most powerful position on earth.<br />
It’s hard to say which candidate’s<br />
rhetoric is most appalling.<br />
AP IMAGES/JOHN LOCHER<br />
4 splc intelligence report
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