Is the line between mainstream American Conservatism and the White Supremacist fringe beginning to blur?
And should taxpayers have to pay to protect the free speech of hate mongers at public institutions? Recently, Michigan State University had to spend $3,780 for metal detectors to protect an MSU student organization that has been labelled a hate grop by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Is this really my responsibility: to protect a jerk from getting hurt for saying ignorant and hatefull things?
The all American boy in the black hat is Kyle Bristow president of the Michigan State University chapter of the Young Americans for Freedom. He looks like the poster child for FFA and all things American and a group named Young Americans for Freedom must be a bunch of flag waving patriots.
Actually, Mr. Bristow is an avowed White Supremacist with ties to prominent Neo Nazis such as Preston Wiginton, from whom he adopted the the black cowboy hat. Mr. Wiginton has recently sponsored a speaking engagement by Nick Griffin, National Chairman of the British National Party, Britain's homegrown fascists. Incidentally, Griffin is also a Holocaust denier. In November, Wiginton, clearly young Bristow's mentor, spoke at a Russian Ultra-nationalist rally in Moscow which included a call for ethnic cleansing in Russia. Wiginton stirred the crowd with a Hitlerian rant while waving his cowboy hat wildly. The Russian Nazis responded by chanting "White Power," for several minutes in English following the speech. Of course, those are the actions of Bristow's mentor, I wonder what our blue-eyed young American thinks himself?
Kyle Bristow took over the MSU-YAF in 2006. He quickly morphed the YAF from a mainstream campus Republican group into the only college organization in the United States that the Southern Poverty Law Center labels a hate group. Bristow has earned this designation by mounting a full-scale assault on pretty much everyone at MSU who isn't a white conservative. Just read the laundry list of his activities and you should easily distinguish this kid from the millions of respectable conservatives in this country.
Bristow has done all of the following while heading the MSU-YAF:
- Publicly outed several gay and lesbian MSU students by posting their photos on Facebook with insults included.
- Posted the images of non-white MSU students on Facebook as well. He even referred to some of the folks of color as "savages." What a good all American boy!
- Posted "Gays Spread Aids" posters across the MSU campus.
- Led a YAF attempt to stop MSU from establishing a Chicano/Latino Studies Doctoral Program. He referred to the program as a "Doctorate in Savagery."
- Asserted that Columbus brought civilization to the New World. He went on to assert that without Columbus the Indians would still be "running through forests in loincloths, scalping each other, and shoving bones through their noses." Actually, except for the scalping part that sounds like most middle class white kids now.
- He and several other members of the YAF mocked a Latin-American labor leader who came to MSU to speak about alledged murders of labor activists by South American Coca Cola bottlers. I'll give him one for creativity. He and his buddies shouted insults at the guest speaker while chugging two liters of Coke.
So, what do we think of this guy? Does this reflect the views of the average East Tennessee Republican? I doubt that very seriously, but such talk and action are increasingly becoming normal among the far right of the GOP.
The photo and all factual information in this post came from the Southern Poverty Law Center website. This is a link to the article: http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?pid=1499
I've also included a link to the MSU-YAF website. There are no overt White Supremacist statements on the website. The YAF wisely sticks to the Pro-Life and only conservatives love America and support our troops type of arguments. That makes them palatable to more people: http://www.msu.edu/~yaf/NewFrame.htm
