Links to today’s show transcripts:
Stonewall Jackson’s Great-Great-Grandsons Call for Removal of Confederate Monuments
At least 1,500 symbols of the Confederacy can be found in public spaces across the country. But now a number of the monuments are coming down. Calls for the removal of the statues are even coming from the descendants of the leaders of the Confederacy. Two of the great-great-grandsons of Confederate General Stonewall Jackson, Jack and Warren Christian, have just written an open letter to the mayor of Richmond calling for the removal of the Stonewall Jackson statue in Richmond. They write, “Our sense of justice leads us to believe that removing the Stonewall statue and other monuments should be part of a larger project of actively mending the racial disparities that hundreds of years of white supremacy have wrought.”
Life After Hate: Trump Admin Stops Funding Former Neo-Nazis Who Now Fight White Supremacy
Foreign Policy recently published an FBI and Department of Homeland Security bulletin that concluded white supremacist groups were “responsible for 49 homicides in 26 attacks from 2000 to 2016…more than any other domestic extremist movement.” Despite these findings, the Trump administration recently slashed funds to organizations dedicated to fighting right-wing violence. One group, Life After Hate, which works to help white nationalists and neo-Nazis disengage from hate and violent extremism, was set to receive a grant under the DHS’s Countering Violent Extremism program, approved by the Obama administration. When Trump DHS policy adviser Katharine Gorka released the final list of grantees in June, Life After Hate had been eliminated. Gorka is the wife of Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka, who has been linked to a Hungarian far-right, Nazi-allied group.
Nephew of Fascist Who Marched in Charlottesville & Former Neo-Nazi on Confronting Racists
Days after the deadly white supremacist rally in Charottesville, Virginia, a remarkable letter was published in a local newspaper in Fargo, North Dakota. The letter was written by Pearce Tefft about his son, Peter Tefft, who was photographed attending Saturday’s deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. Pearce Tefft wrote, “[N]one of his beliefs were learned at home. We do not, never have, and never will, accept his twisted worldview. [Peter] once joked, ‘The thing about us fascists is, it’s not that we don’t believe in freedom of speech. You can say whatever you want. We’ll just throw you in an oven.’ Peter, you will have to shovel our bodies into the oven, too. Please son, renounce the hate, accept and love all.” Democracy Now! recently spoke with another member of the family, Jacob Scott, Peter Tefft’s nephew, along with Christian Picciolini, co-founder of Life After Hate, a nonprofit helping people disengage from hate and violent extremism. He was a leading neo-Nazi skinhead gang member and far-right extremist in the ’80s and ’90s.
