KKK Pamphlets with Lollipops Found in Virginia

At least six Chesterfield County residents received flyers purportedly from a Ku Klux Klan group last week.

County police received five calls about KKK flyers being left at residences between March 17 and 19, according to spokeswoman Liz Caroon.

“Four of those calls were from the Woodlake area,” said Caroon via email. “At this point, distributing the flyers in this manner does not appear to be a crime, as the distributor did not trespass on anyone’s property and distributing the materials in this way does not violate the littering law. As always, we encourage residents to report suspicious activities or materials left in their neighborhoods.”

The flyers, which read that they are from the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, have a variety of bigoted and false claims against African Americans, Native Americans and Jewish people under the headline “Liberals – The Most Intolerant Hate Group in the World.” The flyer includes contact information for the Loyal White Knights, including an address for a post office box in Pelham, North Carolina.

Mary Ann Owens, a 69-year-old journalism instructor at Virginia Commonwealth University, said she first learned about the flyer on her lawn after a neighbor passing by spotted it and texted her on March 21. Owens, who hadn’t left her home in three days, found the note in a sandwich-sized plastic bag that had pieces of candy inside.

“That’s what bothers me. Candy would lure in children,” said Owens, who lives in Woodlake and didn’t contact police about the matter. “It’s awful.”

Virginia saw 133 incidents of flyers and banners from radical right groups in 2019, including 16 from the KKK. The SPLC, a nonprofit legal advocacy organization, compiles the map using information from social media platforms, news articles and tips received by the nonprofit.

Man Killed in FBI Shootout Planned to Bomb Hospital, Synagogue Over Coronavirus

Timothy Wilson, a man who died in an FBI shootout in Missouri, was planning to bomb a hospital providing “critical medical care” during the current coronavirus health care crisis, according to a statement from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Wilson felt compelled to act when the Belton mayor issued a stay-at-home order to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak, The New York Times reported.

The Informant’s Nick R. Martin has unearthed social media posts he says were made by Wilson on Telegram channels using the handle Werwolfe 84; according to Martin’s research, Wilson was “an admirer of the 1980s terrorist group The Order” and was linked to “two active neo-Nazi organizations,” the National Socialist Movement (NSM) and Vorherrschaft Division (VSD). Elon University computer science professor Megan Squire helped Martin with the research.

According to Martin, Wilson was active on Telegram on Tuesday, March 24, writing that he thought the government was using coronavirus as an “excuse to destroy our people,” adding, “Mark my words it’s coming I hope people are ready.” He also commented on COVID-19, according to Martin, writing, “If you don’t think this whole thing was engineered by Jews as a power grab here is more proof of their plans. Jews have been playing the long game we are the only ones standing in their way.”

In the March 25, 2020 statement, the FBI revealed that it had executed a probable cause arrest the day before for Timothy Wilson, 36, at the 100th block of Wilbur Parish Circle in Belton, Missouri. That action came “at the conclusion of a long-running domestic terrorism investigation,” the FBI wrote.

FBI agents went to arrest Wilson, who was armed, when Wilson “was injured and transported to an area hospital where he was later pronounced deceased,” according to the statement from the FBI. The New York Times reported that Wilson was killed in a shootout with FBI agents. It’s not clear whether he died at his own hand or was shot by the agents.

According to the FBI, Wilson was the “subject of a months-long domestic terrorism investigation, which revealed him to be a potentially violent extremist, motivated by racial, religious, and anti-government animus. Wilson was actively planning to commit an act of domestic terrorism – a bombing – and over the course of several months considered several targets.”

According to the FBI, “with the current health crisis, Wilson decided to accelerate his plan to use a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED) in an attempt to cause severe harm and mass casualties.”

He considered various targets and “ultimately settled on an area hospital in an attempt to harm many people, targeting a facility that is providing critical medical care in today’s environment,” said the FBI. “Wilson had taken the necessary steps to acquire materials needed to build an explosive device. At all times during the investigation, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force kept close track of Wilson in order to protect public safety.”

In fact, says the FBI, the FBI was prepared to arrest Wilson when he arrived to pick up what he thought was an explosive device but “there was no actual bomb.”

On March 23, 2020, the Belton police tried to quash public rumors relating to COVID-19, showing how the outbreak has that community on edge. “It has come to our attention that an individual has made a post on social media stating that her step-father was contacted by a Belton Police Officer in reference to the stay at home order,” they wrote. “This post claims that people will be stopped to check compliance with the order and that, if they are not in possession of documentation justifying them being in public, they will be ticketed. The stay at home order issued by the City of Belton and Cass County is not a curfew order and is certainly not martial law. Citizens will not be stopped without cause and made to justify their presence in public. There is no letter that citizens need to obtain from their employer to show the police. There is no documentation to obtain from the police department either. Our call center has been inundated with calls reference this erroneous post.”

Swastika Found at Immigration Help Center Assisting Israelis

The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office is investigating a vandalism incident at the Guatemalan May Center in Lake Worth Beach as a possible hate crime. When employees arrived at the center located at 430 North G Street on Thursday morning, they found a swastika spray-painted onto the building next to front-door entrance.

Also spray-painted onto the building were two messages: “Voting won’t stop us this time” and “God Bless America.”

The Center has provided services to immigrant families, including undocumented workers, for three decades. Lucia Barnes, the center’s assistant executive director, said her staff and volunteers were shaken and concerned for their safety.

“Should we, God forbid, get prepared for a shooting or something like that?” Barnes said. “It’s a very scary situation.”

PBSO spokeswoman Teri Barbera confirmed the incident was under investigation. She added that vandalism charges could bring a hate-crime enhancement, which increases the penalty for an offense if the victim is targeted because of race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or disability.

Barnes said the center, which is run almost entirely by grants and donations, does not have cameras on the property or private security. “We don’t have the resources,” she said.

The center assists 1,000 families a month, although all services are now being provided by phone as the result of the coronavirus pandemic. While most of those seeking assistance are from Guatemala or other Central American countries, the center also works with immigrants from other parts of the world including Israel and India.

As of Thursday afternoon, the graffiti remained on the building’s wall. Barnes said the center was working with a nearby paint store to cover the swastika and written messages.

8 Members of a German Neo Nazi Group Heading to Jail

Eight members of a German neo-Nazi cell have been jailed after a court found them guilty of forming a “terrorist organisation” that was planning a campaign of violence.

The higher regional court in Dresden sentenced the accused, aged between 22 and 32, to prison terms ranging from two years and three months to five and a half years for the ringleader of the group that called itself “Revolution Chemnitz”.

The trial, which lasted six months, was closely watched in Germany where concern has been growing over an increasingly militant far-right scene.

A racist gunman shot dead nine people at a shisha bar and a cafe in the western city of Hanau last month, stunning the country and prompting the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, to urge citizens to resist the “poison” of xenophobia and hatred.

The eight jailed on Tuesday were part of the hooligan, neo-Nazi and skinhead scene in and around the city of Chemnitz in Saxony state, in Germany’s former communist east.

They banded together in an online chat group in September 2018, shortly after the murder of a German man by a Syrian sparked anti-migrant street riots in Chemnitz.

The court heard how the ringleader, electrician Christian Keilberg, asked the other seven to sign up to a manifesto in the chat group that called for perceived enemies to be targeted through armed violence.

The text said the group’s aim was to make the National Socialist Underground or NSU “look like a kindergarten group” – a reference to a neo-Nazi extremist group uncovered in 2011 that murdered 10 people and planted three bombs.

During the trial, defence lawyers argued unsuccessfully that their clients had either not fully understood the manifesto or did not take it seriously.

Five of the defendants carried out a first attack on 14 September 2018, “armed with glass bottles, weighted knuckle gloves and an electroshock appliance” that hurt several foreign residents in Chemnitz, prosecutors said.

The violence was believed to have been a “test run” for a larger attack on 3 October, the day Germany celebrates reunification.

Judges in Dresden found the five who took part in the assault guilty of serious breaches of the peace.

Prosecutors said the group wanted to upend German society through “violent attacks and armed assaults” against immigrants, political opponents, reporters and members of the economic establishment.

Authorities at the time said they believed the group’s members were trying to acquire semi-automatic weapons for a planned bloodbath on Germany’s National Unity Day.

Most of the men were arrested on 1 October 2018 while Keilberg was picked up two weeks later.

Justice minister Christine Lambrecht said the trial had again highlighted “the danger posed by rightwing extremist terror groups” in Germany, driven by “hatred and contempt for democracy”.

The security services and prosecutors would continue to work together to “hold the perpetrators accountable”, she added.