In IREHR's Special Report, Tea Party Nationalism, the leader of a Tea Party Patriots group in Woods County, Texas, Karen Pack, was cited on three counts: The first was the simple fact that the Woods County group was one among several others who had sponsored events featuring Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff who has become one of the main advocates for organizing armed militias. The second count pointed to Pack's apoplectic view that Christianity was under attack by an unnamed, yet "evil" enemy. Her corollary belief that there is no separation of church and state in her obviously Christian America was also noted. A third count noted that Ms. Pack had once been listed by the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan as an "official supporter" and a subscriber to its tabloid, White Patriot.

In response, Ms. Pack has signed a letter that claimed there was a hole in the report's story. She was 16 years old at the time she subscribed, she said. On this point her letter needs to be quoted: "I know that is no excuse for being involved with the KKK who, as you point out, tried to gear their message to a more Christian audience in the early 90s. At the mature age of 16, I should have easily read through the lines and known that a 'Christian Patriot' was a code term for the KKK."

{jb_quoteright}I know that is no excuse for being involved with the KKK who, as you point out, tried to gear their message to a more Christian audience in the early 90s. At the mature age of 16, I should have easily read through the lines and known that a 'Christian Patriot' was a code term for the KKK.     --Karen Pack{/jb_quoteright}

Actually, IREHR agrees with Ms. Pack on one point: there is no excuse for being involved with the KKK. As the accompanying graphic demonstrates, however, there were no "code" words involved, and no holes in the report's story. The name of the Ku Klux Klan publication in question was "White Patriot," not Christian Patriot. The Klan name was emblazoned front and center. And in the pictured edition, distributed in 1996 when Ms. Pack would have seen it, the Knights harken back to their founder, David Duke. An extended article inside this edition details Klan activity over the previous years. There is nothing obscure about what this Klan group was doing in the mid-1990s. Any 16 year old with enough savvy to subscribe to the White Patriot could see what they were getting in to.

In the end, however, it is not what Ms. Pack did in 1996 that rendered her into a subject in IREHR's report, Tea Party Nationalism. What ultimately counts now is the vitriol that she has helped inject into the Tea Party bloodstream. It is a symptom of something much larger and more dangerous that needs to be opposed forthrightly by all people of good will. On this point, the silence of the Tea Party Patriots national organization is extremely telling. 

Peter Gemma, a resident of a Sarasota, Florida, is a Tea Partier signed up to the ResistNet Tea Party faction. Gemma is also a professional white nationalist. He served as head of Design, Marketing, and Advertising for the white nationalist Council of Conservative Citizens newsletter, the Citizens Informer.

Just over a week after the IREHR Special Report Tea Party Nationalism first exposed many of the so-called “birthers” in the leadership of the different national factions, Tea Party Nation (TPN) founder Judson Phillips decided to openly join that growing list yesterday.

Rather than join those who claim the President Obama is not a natural-born American, Phillips promoted his peculiar theory as to why he thinks that President Obama is ineligible to hold the office. Phillips brand of “birtherism” weaves another layer of xenophobia into this already racially-charged discourse on citizenship.

In an article on the TPN website entitled, “The Birth Certificate of Barack Obama,” Phillips writes, “Is Obama really an American citizen, as all of the folks hitting the eligibility question ask?  By birth, probably, but there is a curve ball. As a child, his mother married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian, who then adopted Obama and they moved to Indonesia. The law in effect at the time stated that if an American child was adopted by a citizen of another country and moved to that country, the child lost its American citizenship.  The child could regain its citizenship by applying to an American Embassy at age 18 but would only be treated as a naturalized citizen.”

Phillips explained that he hoped that there would be a court ruling that would find Obama ineligible to be President. Nevertheless, he wanted that ruling to occur after 2013, because he wants Obama in the 2012 presidential race. Phillips argued that keeping President Obama in office “will all but guarantee a Republican win in 2012.”

Although Phillips had been coy about the topic until now, his public embrace of the birther position should come as no surprise. As IREHR reported in February, at the Tea Party Nation Convention in Nashville, Phillips introduced Joseph Farah, of the far right website WorldNetDaily.com, as the Friday evening keynote speaker. Farah spent much of his speech cooking up a Biblical basis for his obsession with Obama’s birth certificate.

Phillips joins TPN marketing director Pam Farnsworth in publicly embracing the birther position. Other birthers in prominent national Tea Party leadership roles include Amy Kremer (Tea Party Patriots, later Tea Party Express), Mark Williams (Tea Party Express), and Darla Dawald (ResistNet).

 

For more on the Tea Parties and the Birthers, see "'Who is An American?': Tea Parties, Nativism and the Birthers" in Tea Party Nationalism.

It's finally time for Tea Party Nationalism to go live.