Individuals associated with some of the country’s oldest and most violent racist skinhead groups have been charged with hate crimes in Washington state, just hours after a jury convicted a neo-Nazi of murder for his actions at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Five men have been arrested in New York after being caught on video singling out and attacking protesters Friday last week during Proud Boys-led violence.
The radical right started the year on a roll, with allies in the White House. But then came Charlottesville, and the movement was knocked back on its heels. Still, Trump's rhetoric and the country's changing demographics continue to buoy the movement.
From its inception, the alt-right has attempted to paint itself as “normal,” just a growing movement of average American white men who happen to be obsessed with racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and misogyny.
For the racist “alt-right” and white nationalist crowd, the song “Charlottesville Ballad (War is Coming)” by “folk” musician Paddy Tarleton (identified as Patrick Corcoran by The News Journal, a newspaper in Delaware) has been the song of late summer in 2017.
Charles Powne, owner of Soleilmoon Recordings, recently responded to an inquiry from Portland, Oregon’s Willamette Weekly (WW) regarding SPLC’s listing of his music label as a seller of “Hate Music.” Powne said, "The solution to bad speech is not to shut it down, but to overcome it with more speech.”
Neo-Nazis advertised a white-power rock show to be followed by a march into gay neighborhood, but they never showed up to face the hundreds who turned out to protest their plans.
White power music was in trouble. But then racist bands discovered iTunes, and now they're back in business.
