#like ok what band what tribe what is it actually called in their language what area etc etc. you gotta ask these questions when you see it

[bjornkram]

Image ID:

First photo is a gif of a multi vortex tornado. The two vortexes are circling around each other giving it the illusion of two legs walking followed by a much larger single vortex.

Second photo is a still image of the same phenomenon but much closer and one of the "legs" is up and almost bent like a knee and there is a smaller third vortex that looks like it's just forming.

Third photo is a still image that is blurry and zoomed in in just the tornado, there are three vortexes all tangled around each other giving it the shape of an arm poking out but the legs are less distiguished.

Fourth photo is a still image taken by Homer G Ramby and is of two thin tall vortexes that look like skinny legs doing high steps

Fifth photo is a screenshot of a post on r/tornado from user ConradShu titled "Deadman walking is not an Indian legend" and reads:

"It became famous with Jarrell and we all know the picture. A specific documentary (I can't remember) from the early - mid 2000s was the first time ever that a multi-vortex tornado was referred to as "Dead man walking" and added it was an "Indian legend". This is false. There are no Indian legends about multi-vortex tornadoes that resemble a walking man. This was added purely for dramatic effect for the show, but since then, has become an adopted terminology for certain pictures that capture the likeness.

Keep in mind, Native Americans weren't out there chasing storms. They could absolutely read the weather decently, and when there was a huge storm approaching, they would take as best shelter as they could. The appearance of a "dead man walking" typically happens so quick, that you only really notice it in pictures. Not even on video really, and it also very much depends on the angle you're looking at the storm from. To say that it was observed by the naked eyes of Native Americans enough for there to be a legend about it is utterly nidicolous.

However, there is terminology of "Dead Man Walking" that does date back to the 1800s. It was used to describe the eerie calmness before a storm hit."

End ID

What are dead man walking tornadoes? :O

it’s a multi-vortex tornado. i dont remember the tribe it originates from (i think it was cherokee), but there’s a native american legend…? saying? that goes “if you see a man in a tornado, you are about to die.”

the most infamous shot of a dead man walking tornado hit jarrell, texas in 1997

it did so much damage to the town it caused the scale that tornados are measured by, the fijita scale, undergo revisions, and it made anchoring buildings in the tornado alley region pretty much mandatory. (it took the entire town off the map. only those who had taken shelter outside of the town or in underground bunkers survived.)

two more examples of dead man walking tornadoes looking like a person are a tornado from 2011 that hit cullman, alabama

and a tornado from 1975 that hit xenia, ohio

[mysilentmemory]

KOREAN SUPERSTAR SIWON CHOI COVERS PRESTIGE HONG KONG JULY 2018

Can one of Asia’s biggest singing and acting exports really be that nice? We find out.

JULY 1, 2018 , 

odestars change. An exaggeration? Maybe, but it’s a close call.

A room bustling with the click-clacks and chatter of people hanging clothes, setting up lights and taking pictures of the Hong Kong skyline from our set suddenly pauses. Choi is here. One by one, faces light up and the voices of those who are meeting the star for the first time rise in pitch. He takes it all in his stride, strolling around the suite greeting those he already knows by name and others he doesn’t with a smile and a firm handshake.

It’s convincingly sincere. First there’s the running quip – “Sum sum is our passcode today guys, OK?” he jokes with the crew. “Sum sum,” the Cantonese translation of the little finger-heart symbol Koreans have coined is now a running trend in most Asian countries. I ask him what it means. “I don’t know actually,” he says with a shrug. “I think other gestures are big displays of affection but this is a small gesture that carries sincerity? I didn’t actually like doing it that much at first but now it’s fun because it makes people happy – so I do it.”

His candour is refreshingly different from the hauteur one expects from someone who’s been in the industry for 13 years. Choi and Super Junior, the 10-piece boy band of which he’s a member, were instrumental figures in the Hallyu wave that swept across the globe. It’s no wonder, then, that the man has 4.7 million followers on Instagram, 6.37 million on Twitter and a staggering 16.4 million on Weibo (that last figure is more than double the population of Hong Kong). To many, he’s a god, with legions of Super Junior fans – self-named “Elfs”, a tribe unto themselves – and his own subdivision of fandom known as “Siwonests”.

Choi’s mix of friendliness and consummate professionalism becomes apparent as the shoot gets under way. He hits all the right angles, checking the screen to see if each shot passes muster and offering to shoot more. “Are you happy with it?” he asks those of us huddled around the display monitor. “I can shoot more if you’d like me to!” After an hour and a half or so, maintaining the pensive smoulder that celebrity features often require, he asks mid-pose, “Can I smile? I’m better at that, I think.” Immediately his crew remarks, “Ippo [pretty],” and it’s clear that those of us who don’t speak Korean are wont to agree.

Listening to snatches of conversation with his Korean team, the occasional oppa is dropped into the mix – Korea’s equivalent of the Japanese kawaii. Made popular by the country’s television shows and adopted by hordes of screaming tween and teenage fans at the sight of their favourite boy-band members, it means “big brother” and is used to refer to an actual older brother as well as to address all close older male friends. When I bring this up, I’m met with a sheepish grin.

“My team and I have been working together now for almost six years. We’re very close, so it’s OK,” he says. “When we work in Korea, they say Mr Choi but today, because I think they think you guys won’t understand, they can be casual and call me oppa.”

Line Choi’s amiability up against his accomplishments and you’ll understand why it seems so extraordinary. Even before his debut in 2005, he was the first person in Korea to be awarded the fourth row in the black belt for Taekwondo at the age of 14, changing the pre-existing rule that only people aged 18 could be awarded for the achievement. Before being invited to join Super Junior, he was already acting alongside Hong Kong’s Andy Lau.

“I wanted to be an actor first,” he says. His is a well-known story, auditioning without his parents’ knowledge and being accepted. The band was created as a collection of the best (hence “Super”) trainees (hence “Junior”) in SM Entertainment’s cohort. “They convinced me to be a singer and I said yes, but I definitely wanted to be an actor,” he says.

An actor he definitely has been. Although the group remains a fundamental part of Choi’s career – it’s the reason he’s in Hong Kong this time round, as part of its comeback world tour Super Show 7, performing the band’s first album since 2015 – Choi has always kept a firm foot in acting.

Inspired by his initial experience filming with Lau, Choi has gone on to act in hits such as Helios and To the Fore, as well as the international blockbuster Dragon Blade, in which he starred alongside Jackie Chan, Adrien Brody and John Cusack. “It’s an incredible environment for an actor,” he says. “They’re incredibly professional and very caring. I was really impressed with how they cared about the Korean actor.”

It doesn’t come without hard work, though, “When I shot To the Fore, I had to use three languages, English, Mandarin and Korean,” he says. “When they changed my dialogue on set, all the other actors and actresses were fine, because it was their mother language, but in my case it was really hard because it wasn’t my mother language – and even if they had changed the Korean dialogue, I might’ve gotten into some trouble because I want to perform the best that I can, and to do so I need to prepare.

“I’m the only Korean actor in that movie. If I’m not good, I’m not good as a Korean so I have to take responsibility for my country and I really need to do my best.”

Thanks to his determination to achieve fluency in English and Chinese, along with his native Korean, Choi is poised to become the next Asian superstar to make it big in the US. Choi’s mentor is Jackie Chan, who told him that “an actor’s character always comes first – manners and respect”, he says. “But that I should also always be very careful choosing each and every single role I undertake.”

It’s a lesson he’s taken to heart and it paid off when he chose to play Kim Shin Hyuk, a happy-go-lucky senior magazine editor, the supporting lead in 2015 hit Korean series She Was Pretty, right before Choi enlisted in the army. He didn’t end up getting the girl in the show’s 16 episodes, but he did leave an untold number of women swooning from what Korean drama discussion boards call “second-lead syndrome” and waiting for his return with bated breath.

After being discharged from the military in August last year, he picked up the lead role of Byun Hyuk in Revolutionary Love, reprising elements of his character in She Was Pretty – and this time he definitely gets the girl. So how does he pick them? “When I choose my roles, I only think about three things” he says. “First, what I can do well now. Second, what people want me to do. The third is what I should do now.”

“Military service is almost two years, and it’s quite a long time for my supporters and fans to wait for me. I wanted to show them my gratitude, so I was thinking about how I could do this. Revolutionary Love came along and it contained all three elements, as well as a little comedy, a little romance and a little bit of dynamism, so I chose it.”

What is success for Choi? It’s not money, fame or power, I learn, despite the fact that his fans can look forward to a new Super Junior album this year, more concerts, the possibility of more Asian and American projects and a mission with Unicef in the works. To Choi it’s happiness and contentment.

“I think happiness is the first thing that comes to mind,” he says. “If you’re not happy and you let that stuff get to your head, you might get ill. Does success actually equate to happiness? Maybe not to everybody, but I don’t think happiness is non-success either.”

His industry is not particularly predisposed to contentment and happiness, I counter, so how does he balance it? “Part of my job is to achieve balance. Alongside being able to face God at the very end, to know I have made him happy and to have helped those in need, I think it’s to be positive.

“I don’t want to show people when I’m mad or when I’m sad, because I don’t want people to worry about me. Part of my job is to achieve balance between the human Siwon Choi and the celebrity. As a celebrity it’s my responsibility to be a role model, to create a good environment. If I’m calm, focused on work and smiling, then everybody else will be smiling and having a good time. So I believe in always being positive.”

It’s perhaps this warmth that draws those around him to him. “I stay in the same hotel whenever I come to Hong Kong” he says. “I know the manager and the employees so well and I say hi to everyone. It’s been two years since I’ve been here, but when I came back this time they prepared a surprise for my birthday with balloons and a cake. They wrote ‘Welcome Home’ on the card and it touched me.”

How so? “Well, it made me grateful for what I have because, you know, if we give in to the negative thoughts in this job, it can become tough, very tough. So we always have to think positive, stay positive. That moment was the happiest moment of my year so far. It made me think, well, my life might not be so lonely in the future. It might be quite full.”

PHOTOGRAPHY | RICKY LO | prestigeonline

[leirathemartian]

Am I too old for tag lists? :P

@raesand tagged me and I’m kind of in a procrastinating depression funk, so why not. 

basics what’s your name ➔ Hayley do you have a nickname ➔ nope, although a lot of people call me Leira do you have a middle name ➔ mmm too much sharing do you like your name ➔ It’s ok do people often mispronounce your name ➔ No, but they almost always misspell it  do you like the meaning of your name ➔ Well. The Anglo-Saxon meaning is pretty boring (”hay meadow”) but when I was a kid I was told/had a cross-stitch thing that said it meant “Lover of the sea” and I really like that. when is your birthday ➔ 11/22 how old are you ➔ 25 do you like your age ➔ Honestly, I don’t know. Every age has its pros and cons, I guess. I miss not being as stressed when I was a teenager, but I haaated high school. So, I don’t know. It’s stressful because I’m working on graduating and then I’ll have to get a job and be, like, a real adult and shit. what’s your zodiac sign ➔ Scorpio/Sagittarius cusp apparently

appearance what’s your hair colour ➔  Light brown/dark blonde is your current hair colour your natural hair colour ➔ Sort of, but the ends are bright blond do you dye your hair ➔ Yeah every so often I enjoy changing it up do you have natural highlights ➔ I did when my hair was long enough for it to absorb sun before I cut it off when was the last time you had a haircut ➔ A couple months. I need one, badly, lol what length is your hair right now ➔ Longish pixie do you have straight, wavy or curly hair ➔ Wavy/curly do you have frizzy hair ➔ 100%. It’s better than when it was long, though do you use a curling iron ➔ No do you use a hair straightener ➔ No do you braid your hair ➔ Sometimes. Used to all the time when it was long what’s your eye colour ➔ blue do your eyes change colour ➔ lol no 

do you wear contacts ➔ Only when I’m dressed up/being active if so, do you use colour contacts or regular contacts ➔ Regular do you wear glasses ➔ Indeed do you have naturally long eyelashes ➔ Mmmm not really do you wear braces ➔ Nope do you have dimples ➔ Nope do you have moles ➔ All of them do you have outstanding cheekbones ➔ Lol no my face is too round to have outstanding features. I also have no chin. do you have freckles ➔ Yes indeedy do you have piercings ➔ 8, all in my ears. Two lobe piercings, helix, daith, tragus, flat. do you have tattoos ➔ Yup, I have a Water Tribe tattoo do you wear make up ➔ Occasionally do you paint your nails ➔ Yes, fairly often do you wear jewelry ➔ Well, I always wear earrings. Plus usually my wedding band and an ourobouros ring. are you happy with your height ➔ It’s fine personality would you consider yourself outgoing or shy ➔ Neither  are you sarcastic  ➔ It’s my love language what’s your biggest fear ➔ Failure. Also heights and snakes, which are my actual phobias. are you religious ➔ Not anymore do you get easily along with people ➔ Ehhh. Depends on the person. do you cry easily ➔ Sadly

school do you go to middle school ➔ No do you go to high school ➔ No do you go to a private school ➔ No are you home schooled ➔ I used to be have you graduated from school ➔ From many schools, lol.  what grade are you in ➔ Errrr. 5th year PhD student so... 21st?

have you skipped a grade ➔ Yes, I skipped 7th grade. It was a bad idea, I wasn’t socially prepared for going to college early. have you been held back a grade ➔ No have you ever failed a class  ➔ I got a C- the first time I took Fluid Mechanics, which is failing in grad school, although I maintain that was because of bad teaching, because when I retook it I easily got an A.

have you been sent to the principals office ➔ Homeschool doesn’t have principals :P

have you skipped school ➔ A lot in college/grad school, usually for mental health reasons have you cheated on a test ➔ Not that I can remember

family do you live with your biological parents ➔ dear god no not anymore do you get along with your parents ➔ Ehhh. My mom and I are good, but my dad still likes to try to control me. do you tell your parents everything ➔ Fuck no. do you have strict parents ➔ Yes.

do you have siblings ➔ Two brothers are you the oldest ➔ Yes. are you in the middle ➔ ... are you the youngest ➔ ... are all of your grandparents still alive ➔ No, one of my grandfathers is dead friendships do you have a best friend ➔ I do! Friends since we were 12. And my husband is up there too. do you have more than 10 friends ➔ I don’t think so, not close ones anyway. do you have at least 2 friends you can trust with your life ➔ Yeah, probably do you have a lot of guy friends, a lot of girl friends or equal girl and guy friends ➔ Mmmm.... slightly more women. do you text with your friends a lot ➔ Not particularly relationships what’s your relationship status ➔ Married have you ever been in love ➔ Quite a lot do you believe in love at first sight ➔ I love all animals at first sight :P

have you ever been in a relationship ➔ Am in one, lol have you ever had a secret admirer ➔ I don’t think so. Been one, though. have you ever been asked out on a date ➔ Yup!

have you ever been kissed ➔ Yes have you ever made out with someone ➔ Yes have you ever been cheated on ➔ Also yes, he was an asshole have you ever been proposed to ➔ Yes do you want to get married ➔ I’d hope so, since I am do you want kids ➔ Eventually, once I have a real job country where were you born ➔ USA where do you live right now ➔ USA have you ever been out of the country ➔ Not as much as I’d like but yes. do you prefer country or city ➔ Country do you like sightseeing ➔ Haha yes, I am unashamed that I enjoy being a tourist is one or more of your parents from another country ➔ No what places would you like to visit  ➔ I’d like to go back to Scotland/Ireland. Also Iceland, Sweden, Thailand, South Korea, Greece, .... etc. are you fluent in more than one language ➔ Sadly, no. what languages can you speak ➔ English and I still retain enough Spanish to say hi to someone/read signs. Same with French. I know a tiny bit of Swedish.

health do you have any allergies ➔ No are you lactose intolerant ➔ Slightly. I have IBS and sometimes it’s a trigger. IT depends on the amount. have you had surgery ➔ Fix a broken elbow, another to fix a deviated septum have you had stitches ➔ Not that I can remember have you broken a bone ➔ Said elbow has someone close to you died of a disease ➔ My grandfather died of cancer do you exercise a lot  ➔ Hahahahaha no. I used to LARP/do archery, but sadly drama ruined that for me. I also many moons ago rode horses (and owned them!) but now I’m poor. experiences have you ever had a near death experience ➔ No have you ever been on a plane ➔ Yup quite a lot have you ever had an allnighter ➔ God no. I need a lot of sleep. have you ever been to school/work after a sleepless night ➔ Yeah have you ever been in a physical fight ➔ See above re LARP. We literally hit each other for fun. Also, used to do Muay Thai. have you ever been to a wedding ➔ Yes, including my own, lol.  have you ever been to a funeral ➔ Yes have you ever lived in a different country ➔ Maybe one day have you ever been drunk ➔ Ugh yes. Lately every time it gives me a migraine, though. have you ever been trick or treating ➔ Yes, I miss being a kid and so that wasn’t weird. :’D have you ever been in a school play ➔ Yes, I was a theater kid in high school have you ever been to a camp ➔ Horseback riding camp have you ever driven a car ➔ Own one, so quite often skills how many languages are you fluent in ➔ One have you ever read a book in another language ➔ Does Beowulf count? can you roll your tongue ➔ Yes can you braid hair ➔ Yes. Regular, french, dutch, and fishtail. can you do a handstand ➔ Haha no, I’m fat and unathletic. habits do you crack your knuckles ➔ Mhm do you bite your nails ➔ You caught me doing it right now do you bite your lips ➔ Sometimes, I’m an anxious biter/skin picker

favourites

what’s your favourite movie ➔ Hmmmm. I honestly don’t know. Star Wars is up there. what’s your favourite tv show ➔ Avatar, Parks and Rec, Steven Universe, House what’s your favourite book ➔ Hahahahahaha I have like, no joking, 50 favorite books. It would be easier to do favorite authors: N.K. Jemisin, Ann Leckie, Tolkien, Robert Jordan, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Jacqueline Carey, Brandon Sanderson, Douglas Adams, Robin Hobb, Margaret Atwood... ok I’ll stop there. I’ll put it this way. I regularly read 150-200 books a year so there’s a lot I like. what’s your favourite song ➔ I don’t really have one, I guess. what’s your favourite colour ➔ Purples/blues what’s your favourite animal ➔ Catsssss what’s your favourite season ➔ Autumn!

this or that summer or winter ➔ Winter, I love the cold and hate the heat. It’s miserable right now and humid as fuck.

day or night ➔ Ehhh I mean I’m always exhausted so. Neither :P cats or dogs ➔ Cats but I also love dogs. rain or shine ➔ A balance of both. coffee or tea ➔ Coffee. Black. reading or writing ➔ See above re reading 200 books a year. Lol. I mostly associate writing with work. humorous or serious ➔ Humorous, especially with TV

brown or blue eyes ➔ Idk eyes are pretty

single or group dates ➔ Meh kind of over dates. I’d rather hang out with friends and play board games. texts or calls ➔ Texts. Calls exacerbate my anxiety. driving or walking ➔ Driving. I’m lazy. last

last phone call ➔ My vet checking on my cat, who has a cold. Lol. last text ➔ My dad asking me to come down tomorrow last song you listened to ➔ Something from the Star Wars soundtrack last thing you ate ➔ Chicken curry. last thing you drank ➔  Water. I’m boring. last purchase  ➔ Chips and dip last time you cleaned your room ➔ Couple days ago, I guess?

People to Tag I have no idea, lol

[allofbeercom]

‘Call me a racist, but don’t say I’m a Buddhist’: America’s alt right

They present themselves as modern thinkers of extremism. But the US far right, discovers Sanjiv Bhattacharya, have the same white supremacist obsessions

Every few weeks, William Johnson, the chairman of the white nationalist American Freedom Party (AFP), holds a lunch for members, the goal being to make America a white ethnostate, a project that begins with electing Donald Trump. This week, its at a grand old French restaurant called Taix, in Echo Park, Los Angeles an odd choice on the face of it. Echo Park is a trendy hood. Its hipster and heavily Hispanic. In fact, given the predominance of Latino kitchen staff in this city, it may be wise to hold off on the Trump talk until the food arrives.

About three months ago, Johnson begins, I was talking to Richard Spencer about how we need to plan for a Trump victory. Spencer is another prominent white nationalist he heads the generic-sounding National Policy Institute. I said: I want Jared Taylor [of American Renaissance] as UN Ambassador, and Kevin MacDonald [an evolutionary psychologist] as secretary of health and Ann Coulter as homeland security! And Spencer said: Oh Johnson, thats a pipe dream! But today, hed no longer say that, because if Trump wins, all the establishment Republicans, theyre gone They hate him! So whos left? If we can lobby, we can put our people in there.

Around the table five young men, roughly half Johnsons age (hes 61), nod and lean in. They all wear suits and ties, address the waiter as sir and identify as the alt right, the much-discussed nouvelle vague of racism. Are you guys familiar with the Plum Book? Johnson asks. Its plum because of the colour, but also because of the plum positions there are 20,000 jobs in that book that are open to a new administration.

So we need to identify our top people! says Eric, one of the men at the table.

Just anyone with a college degree! Johnson says.

Right. Eric is practically bouncing in his seat with excitement. We need to get the word out. We are the new GOP!

A whiter future: pro- and anti-Trump supporters clash outside Trump Towers in New York. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Its not every day that a brown journalist gets to sit in on a white-nationalist strategy meeting. But these are strange times. Racism is trending. Like Brexit, Trump has normalised views that were once beyond the pale, and groups like the AFP have grown bold. Their mans stubby orange fingers are within reach of actual power, so maybe its time to emerge from the shadows at last.

I first met Johnson in May after he signed up as a Trump delegate before being swiftly struck off by the campaign when the press found out. Hes a surprising figure. An avid environmentalist, fluent in Japanese and, in person, not the bitter old racist Id expected but rather a jolly Mormon grandfather, bright eyed and chuckling, a Wind in the Willows character. Eric is even more unexpected. Tall and impassioned, he came to racism via hypnotherapy, of all things. He sells solar panels for a living and practises yoga. Together with his friends Matt and Nathan, who are also here at lunch, he runs an alt-right fraternity in Manhattan Beach a beer and barbecues thing. Theyre called the Beach Goys. Were starting a parody band, he beams. Weve found a drummer!

Between them they represent two poles of a racist spectrum, young and old. And judging from this lunch, its the millennials who are the more extreme. Johnson wants white nationalists to appear less mean and he finds the JQ, the Jewish Question, archaic. But Eric loves the meanness of the alt right. Were the troll army! he says. Were here to win. Were savage! And antisemitism is non-negotiable. In fact, hed like to clear up a misnomer about the alt right, propagated by the Breitbart columnist Milo Yiannopoulos, who is often described, mistakenly, as the movements leader. Milo casts the alt right as principally a trolling enterprise, dedicated to attacking liberal shibboleths for the lulz theres precious little actual bigotry. But Eric insists otherwise. Yes, they like to joke, they have memes, theyre just as funny as liberals have I heard of their satirical news podcasts, the Daily Shoah and Fash the Nation? But make no mistake, the racism is real. Eric especially enjoys The Daily Stormer, a leading alt-right news site, which is unashamedly pro-Hitler.

What unites Johnson and Eric is what they describe as the systematic browbeating of the white male namely all this talk of privilege, the Confederate flag, Black Lives Matter and mansplaining. But beyond that, its the looming extinction of the white race. This is the language they use. Also: Diversity equals white genocide. The alt right loves to evoke genocide while harbouring Holocaust deniers. Their point is that white people are melting away like the icecaps, and they have a primal drive to stop it. In 2044, non-Hispanic whites will drop below 50% of the US population. The generation of the white minority has already been born, Eric says. Look at South Africa and Rhodesia. Thats where were headed. Total disenfranchisement.

Mexican activists on the campaign trail. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

I want to reassure him that his Brown Rulers will be gentle and that slavery isnt so bad when you get used to it. But its not me they want to hear from, its white people. This is the white nationalists burden the very people theyre trying to save are the ones who most fiercely oppose them. The only group I cannot get along with is white people, says Johnson. Because white people hate white people who like white people.

A couple of days later, Johnson is at his cluttered desk in downtown LA, nattering merrily in Japanese to a woman in Tokyo. He gets lots of media requests these days, but especially from Japan. Theres an uncanny connection between Japan and white nationalism in America. Jared Taylor, white nationalisms foremost intellectual, is another fluent speaker. Its an ethnostate and its deeply nationalist, he says. And they have resisted the pressure to admit refugees. I say: God bless them!

For his part, Johnsons racism was shaped in Japan. He grew up in Eugene, Oregon, a state founded as a white utopia, in a modest Mormon home, back before the LDS church gave black people the priesthood in 1978. But it was his two-year mission to Tohoku, Japan, that turned him. As he went from door to door, locals would opine on the greatness of white America. They had an inferiority complex after the war, so we were treated like celebrities, he says. Oh, it was just the funnest time! A few years later, while working in Japan as an attorney, he wrote a book advocating the repatriation of all non-whites with appropriate reparations, because I thought America was going to collapse unless I did something. When he returned to LA, he sent a copy to every congressman. He was 32.

Clearly things didnt work out as planned. His forays into politics floundered and then his offices were bombed. So he retreated from activism for nearly 15 years, only returning in 2009 to form the AFP just in time for the rise of the alt right.

We head to his 67-acre ranch near Pasadena, a hilly lot backing on to a national forest. I asked to meet his family, but his wife refused, so we tour the farm instead his persimmon orchard, his horses and ducks. And there on his pick-up truck is a stencil of Jimi Hendrix. My daughter likes to paint, he says proudly. None of his five children are white nationalists, though they have promised to marry within the race.

Youre a white supremacist with a black artist painted on your truck, I tell him. And he flinches. Thats the meanest, most hurtful swearword there is. Just because I say different races have different strengths doesnt mean I think Im superior. He doesnt like racist either. Its a pejorative. I prefer race realist.

But its not my reality, Bill. Im sticking with racist.

Well, OK. But people who embrace racist are mad at everybody. I get along with people. You cannot function in Los Angeles without encountering other races, so I look for areas of similarity and agreement. Its important to treat everyone with the highest respect on a micro level.

I thought America was going to collapse unless I did something: William Johnson, chairman of the American Freedom Party, at home on his ranch near Pasadena. Photograph: Barry J Holmes for the Observer

On a macro level, however, darkness falls multiculturalism is doomed, the different races will never get along, and our only hope is Balkanisation: separate territories for separate tribes. And whatever accelerates that transition is welcome, even racial strife. I dont think friction is a good thing, he says, but it would help facilitate the split that is necessary.

We stop to feed his alpacas. Theres a brown one, a black one and a white one, standing peacefully together against the chicken wire fence.

See Bill, theyre getting along.

He laughs. I wish people were like alpacas.

Im with Eric at a Mexican restaurant in Manhattan Beach where he lives, an upscale, white neighbourhood in the South Bay. He clears space on the table and grins. OK, you ready? Your first tarot card reading with the Hitler Youth!

Its been an odd afternoon. We walked along the beach and I asked about his gmail address which includes the number 1488, a potent number for white supremacists. The 14 stands for the 14 words coined by the late David Lane of the group The Order: We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children. And the 88 refers to HH (H being eighth in the alphabet) or Heil Hitler. Eric sighed. OK, but this stuffs hard to talk about, he said. It depends how red-pilled you are.

Alt-righters love talking about the red pill. Its a reference to The Matrix blue-pilled people bumble through a life of illusion, while the red-pilled have seen the truth and theres no turning back. Like all conspiracy theorists they see the hidden hand that guides all things, but for the alt right that hand is Jewish. The red pill is classic antisemitism, rebooted for a younger generation. As we walked, he laid it out the banking, the media, the globalism. We passed games of beach volleyball and family picnics, while he explained why the Holocaust was exaggerated and Hitler got a bad rap.

A nation without colour: William Johnson speaking at an AFP conference in 2013.

Have you noticed that kombucha isnt as fizzy as it used to be? he asks, along the way, because Eric isnt your average Nazi. He trained as a spiritualist. He has taught meditation. He brought his tarot cards in case I wanted a reading.

Dont tell me its the Jews, I tell him. He laughs. You said it, not me!

In the late 70s, the Klansman David Duke swapped his hood and robes for a suit and tie, and took white supremacy out of the cross-burning fields and into the boardroom. Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center describes the alt right in similar terms, as Racism 2.0, a rebranding for the digital generation. Its a trendy reboot alt right makes white supremacy sound like an art collective. And Eric, the kombucha Nazi, just takes it a step further into the aisles of Whole Foods. Hes a locally sourced, wild-caught bigot high in omega-3s and antisemitism. It makes him more sinister in some ways, and more harmless in others. As Nazis go.

Hmm, Nazi. Like Johnson, hes squeamish about terms. Warriors against political correctness can be awfully sensitive. Its such a slur, he says. But come on hes a Hitler apologist. OK, fine, he says. Just dont say Im a Buddhist, because Im actually more into Norse and Celtic mysticism now.

Itll come as no surprise that someone whod rather be called a Nazi than a Buddhist has a strange story to tell. Originally from a well-off white suburb of Chicago, he moved to Las Vegas to pursue music. Then one day, in the gym of his condo building, he met a guru figure well call Frank. A spiritualist and businessman, Frank introduced Eric to New Age mysticism and Japanese Buddhism. And it was under Franks guidance that Eric moved to LA to study hypnotherapy and began a career giving readings and tarot shows at a psychic bookshop. Frank, he says, was his mentor and best friend. But then Eric took a turn. He radicalised himself. He left the New Age life, finding it too feminine, and spiralled down a sinkhole of conspiracy theory. He and Frank have been estranged ever since. Frank is black.

By the book: author Ann Coulter. Photograph: Aaron Davidson/Getty Images

Today, Eric still meditates and practises yoga. His weeks are spent like David Brent, as a travelling salesman, driving around meeting his solar energy clients. His weekends, however, are all about the Beach Goys, which now has 15 members. Last week, they went on a hike to the Murphy Ranch in the Pacific Palisades, a decrepit old property that was originally built as a refuge for Hitler after the war. Next week is their first band rehearsal. Erics going to play guitar and sing. And this is the future he wants not a plum job with the Trump administration. I dont see myself as a bureaucrat, he says. I want to take the Beach Goys national. I want to inspire people.

It could happen. Trump has unleashed something in America. Johnson wont reveal the AFPs membership numbers Maybe we want to appear bigger than we are? but Eric insists the alt right is on the march. Were growing with every hashtag, every BLM protest, every city that becomes a Detroit, or a London, he says. Were everywhere! Were the guy next to you at yoga, the barista at Starbucks… Its like Fight Club for supremacists, a deeply unsettling thought (which is why Eric loves it).

But his delight in being a secret Nazi detracts from the seriousness of it all, the white genocide stuff. Hes having too much fun. And I wonder, as we finish our beers, if it will pass for Eric, this Nazi phase. He just doesnt seem that threatening. Then he starts up about a race war, that old white-supremacist chestnut. Because behind the trolling veneer, the alt right is more traditional than alt. What Eric believes is vintage racism, the same old wine in a new ironic cask. And Tony Benns words ring as true as ever: Every generation must fight the same battles again and again.

Our civilisation is at war and we need to secure our people, Eric says. We must seize power and take control. And the idea that we can do this peacefully is probably not realistic.

We get along well enough, Eric and I, but he has the same micro/macro discrepancy as Johnson. And at a macro level, there is only despair and division. I do not advocate violence, but I will give my life for my blood and for the honour of my ancestors.

He thrums the tarot cards in his hands, his voice getting more animated. We accept the game thats being played. We accept that the lion and the gazelle are competition. But they dont have to hate each other. Thats just how we view it.

He shrugs. Its scary. The world is scary. This is not a game for children.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/call-me-a-racist-but-dont-say-im-a-buddhist-americas-alt-right/

[topsolarpanels]

‘ Call me a racist, but don’t say I’m a Buddhist ‘: America’s alt right

They present themselves as modern intellectuals of extremism. But the US far right, detects Sanjiv Bhattacharya, have the same white supremacist obsessions

Every few weeks, William Johnson, the chairman of the white patriot American Freedom Party( AFP ), holds a lunch for members, the goal being to stimulate America a white ethnostate, a project that begins with electing Donald Trump. This week, its at a grand old French eatery called Taix, in Echo Park, Los Angeles an odd choice on the face of it. Echo Park is a trendy hood. Its hipster and heavily Hispanic. In fact, given the predominance of Latino kitchen staff in this city, it may be wise to hold off on the Trump talk until the food arrives.

About three months ago, Johnson begins, I was talking to Richard Spencer about how we need to plan for a Trump victory. Spencer is another prominent white patriot he heads the generic-sounding National Policy Institute. I said: I want Jared Taylor[ of American Renaissance] as UN Ambassador, and Kevin MacDonald[ an evolutionary psychologist] as secretary of health and Ann Coulter as homeland security! And Spencer said: Oh Johnson, thats a pipe dream! But today, hed no longer say that, because if Trump wins, all the establishment Republican, theyre run They detest him! So whos left? If we can foyer, we can set our people in there.

Around the table five young men, roughly half Johnsons age( hes 61 ), nod and tilt in. They all wear suits and ties, relating to the waiter as sir and identify as the alt right, the much-discussed nouvelle vague of racism. Are you guys familiar with the Plum Book ? Johnson asks. Its plum because of the colour, but also because of the plum positions there are 20,000 jobs in that volume that are open to a new administration.

So we need to identify our top people! says Eric, one of “the mens” at the table.

Just anyone with a college degree! Johnson says.

Right. Eric is practically ricochetting in his seat with exhilaration. We need to get the word out. We are the new GOP!

A whiter future: pro- and anti-Trump advocates clash outside Trump Towers in New York. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Its not every day that a brown journalist gets to sit in on a white-nationalist strategy meeting. But these are strange days. Racism is trending. Like Brexit, Trump has normalised views that were once beyond the pale, and groups like the AFP have grown bold. Their mans stubby orange fingers are within reach of actual power, so perhaps its time to emerge from the darkness at last.

I first gratified Johnson in May after he signed up as a Trump delegate before being swiftly struck off by the campaign when the press found out. Hes a surprising figure. An avid environmentalist, fluent in Japanese and, in person , not the bitter old racist Id expected but instead a jolly Mormon grandfather, bright eyed and chuckle, a Wind in the Willows character. Eric is even more unexpected. Tall and impassioned, “hes come to” racism via hypnotherapy, of all things. He sells solar panels for a life and practises yoga. Together with his friends Matt and Nathan, who are also here at lunch, he operates an alt-right frat in Manhattan Beach a brew and barbecues thing. Theyre called the Beach Goys. Were starting a parody band, he beams. Weve discovered a drummer!

Between them they represent two poles of a racist spectrum, young and old. And judging from this lunch, its the millennials who are the more extreme. Johnson wants white patriots to appear less mean and he discovers the JQ, the Jewish Question, archaic. But Eric loves the meanness of the alt right. Were the troll army! he says. Were here to win. Were savage! And antisemitism is non-negotiable. In fact, hed like to clear up a misnomer about the alt right, propagated by the Breitbart columnist Milo Yiannopoulos, who is often described, mistakenly, as the movements leader. Milo casts the alt right as principally a trolling enterprise, dedicated to assaulting liberal shibboleths for the lulz theres precious little actual intolerance. But Eric insists otherwise. Yes, they like to gag, they have memes, theyre just as funny as liberals have I heard of their satirical news podcasts, the Daily Shoah and Fash the Nation ? But build no mistake, the racism is real. Eric especially enjoys The Daily Stormer , a resulting alt-right news site, which is unashamedly pro-Hitler.

What unites Johnson and Eric is what they describe as the systematic browbeating of the white male namely all this talk of privilege, the Confederate flag, Black Lives Matter and mansplaining. But beyond that, its the looming extinction of the white race. This is the language they use. Also: Diversity equals white genocide. The alt right loves to provoke genocide while harbouring Holocaust deniers. Their point is that white people are melting away like the icecaps, and they have a primal drive to stop it. In 2044 , non-Hispanic whites will drop below 50% of the US population. The generation of the white minority has already been born, Eric says. Look at South Africa and Rhodesia. Thats where were headed. Total disenfranchisement.

Mexican activists on the campaign trail. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

I want to reassure him that his Brown Rulers is likely to be gentle and that bondage isnt even worse when you get used to it. But its not me they want to hear from, its white people. This is the white patriots burden the very people theyre trying to save are the ones who most ferociously oppose them. The only group I cannot get along with is white people, says Johnson. Because white people detest white people who like white people.

A couple of days later, Johnson is at his cluttered desk in downtown LA, nattering blithely in Japanese to a woman in Tokyo. He gets lots of media requests these days, but especially from Japan. Theres an uncanny connection between Japan and white patriotism in America. Jared Taylor, white patriotisms foremost intellectual, is another fluent speaker. Its an ethnostate and its deep nationalist, he says. And they have resisted the pressure to admit refugees. I say: God bless them!

For his part, Johnsons racism was shaped in Japan. He grew up in Eugene, Oregon, a nation founded as a white utopia, in a modest Mormon home, back before the LDS church dedicated black people the priesthood in 1978. But it was his two-year mission to Tohoku, Japan, that turned him. As “hes been gone” from doorway to door, locals would opine on the greatness of white America. They had an inferiority complex after the war, so we were treated like celebrities, he says. Oh, it was just the funnest hour! A few years later, while working in Japan as an attorney, he wrote a book advocating the repatriation of all non-whites with appropriate reparations, because I thought America was going to breakdown unless I did something. When he returned to LA, he sent a transcript to every congressman. He was 32.

Clearly things didnt work up as schemed. His forays into politics floundered and then his offices were bombed. So he retreated from activism for nearly 15 years, merely returning in 2009 to form the AFP merely in time for the rise of the alt right.

We head to his 67 -acre ranch near Pasadena, a hilly lot backing on to a national forest. I asked to meet his family, but his wife refused, so we tour the farm instead his persimmon orchard, his ponies and ducks. And there on his pick-up truck is a stencil of Jimi Hendrix. My daughter likes to paint, he says proudly. None of his five children are white patriots, though they have promised to marry within the race.

Youre a white supremacist with a black artist painted on your truck, I tell him. And he flinches. Thats the meanest, most hurtful swearword there is. Just because I say different races have differing strengths doesnt entail I believe Im superior. He doesnt like racist either. Its a pejorative. I prefer race realist.

But its not my reality, Bill. Im sticking with racist.

Well, OK. But people who espouse racist are mad at everybody. I get along with people. You cannot function in Los Angeles without encountering other races, so I look for areas of similarity and arrangement. Its important to treat everyone with the highest respect on a micro level.

I believed America was going to breakdown unless I did something: William Johnson, chairman of the American Freedom Party, at home on his ranch near Pasadena. Photograph: Barry J Holmes for the Observer

On a macro level, however, darkness falls multiculturalism is doomed, the different races will never get along, and our only hope is Balkanisation: separate territories for separate tribes. And whatever accelerates that transition is greeting, even racial strife. I dont suppose friction is a good thing, he says, but it would help facilitate the divide that is necessary.

We stop to feed his alpacas. Theres a brown one, a black one and a white one, standing peacefully together against the chicken wire fence.

See Bill, theyre get along.

He laughs. I wish people were like alpacas.

Im with Eric at a Mexican restaurant in Manhattan Beach where he lives, an upscale, white neighbourhood in the South Bay. He clears space on the table and smiles. OK, you ready? Your first tarot card reading with the Hitler Youth!

Its been an odd afternoon. We walked along the beach and I asked about his gmail address which includes the number 1488, a potent number for white supremacists. The 14 stands for the 14 terms coined by the late David Lane of the group The Order: We must procure the existence of our people and a future for white children. And the 88 refers to HH( H being eighth in the alphabet) or Heil Hitler. Eric sighed. OK, but this stuffs hard to talk about, he said. It depends how red-pilled you are.

Alt-righters love talking about the red pill. Its a reference to The Matrix blue-pilled people bumble through a life of illusion, while the red-pilled have watched the truth and theres no going back. Like all conspiracy theorists they ensure the hidden hand that guides all things, but for the alt right that hand is Jewish. The red pill is classic antisemitism, rebooted for a younger generation. As we walked, he laid it out the banking, the media, the globalism. We passed games of beach volleyball and family barbecues, while he explained why the Holocaust was exaggerated and Hitler got a bad rap.

A nation without colour: William Johnson speaking at an AFP conference in 2013.

Have you noticed that kombucha isnt as fizzy as it used to be? he asks, along the way, because Eric isnt your average Nazi. He trained as a spiritualist. He has taught meditation. He brought his tarot cards in case I wanted a reading.

Dont tell me its the Jews, I tell him. He chuckles. You said it , not me!

In the late 70 s, the Klansman David Duke swapped his hood and robes for a suit and affiliation, and took white dominance out of the cross-burning fields and into the boardroom. Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center describes the alt right in similar terms, as Racism 2.0, a rebranding for the digital generation. Its a trendy reboot alt right builds white domination sound like an art collective. And Eric, the kombucha Nazi, just takes it a step further into the aisles of Whole Foods. Hes a locally sourced, wild-caught bigot high in omega-3s and antisemitism. It attains him more sinister in some manner, and more harmless in others. As Nazis go.

Hmm, Nazi. Like Johnson, hes squeamish about terms. Warriors against political correctness can be awfully sensitive. Its such a slur, he says. But come along hes a Hitler apologist. OK, penalty, he says. Just dont say Im a Buddhist, because Im actually more into Norse and Celtic mysticism now.

Itll come as no surprise that someone whod instead be called a Nazi than a Buddhist has a strange story to tell. Originally from a well-off white suburb of Chicago, he moved to Las Vegas to pursue music. Then one day, in the gym of his condo house, he met a guru figure well call Frank. A spiritualist and businessman, Frank introduced Eric to New Age mysticism and Japanese Buddhism. And it was under Franks guidance that Eric moved to LA to study hypnotherapy and began a career giving reads and tarot demonstrates at a psychic bookshop. Frank, he says, was his mentor and best friend. But then Eric took a turning. He radicalised himself. He left the New Age life, detecting it too feminine, and spiralled down a sinkhole of conspiracy hypothesi. He and Frank have been estranged ever since. Frank is black.

By the book: author Ann Coulter. Photograph: Aaron Davidson/ Getty Images

Today, Eric still meditates and practises yoga. His weeks are spent like David Brent, as a travelling salesman, driving around gratifying his solar energy clients. His weekends, however, are all about the Beach Goys, which now has 15 members. Last week, they went on a hike to the Murphy Ranch in the Pacific Palisades, a decrepit old property that was originally constructed as a refuge for Hitler after the war. Next week is their first band rehearsal. Erics going to play guitar and sing. And this is the future he wants not a plum job with the Trump administration. I dont find myself as a bureaucrat, he says. I want to take the Beach Goys national. I want to inspire people.

It could happen. Trump has unleashed something in America. Johnson wont uncover the AFPs membership numbers Perhaps we want to appear bigger than we are? but Eric insists the alt right is on the procession. Were growing with every hashtag, every BLM protest, every city that becomes a Detroit, or a London, he says. Were everywhere! Were the guy next to you at yoga, the barista at Starbucks … Its like Fight Club for supremacists, a profoundly unsettling thought( which is why Eric loves it ).

But his delight in being a secret Nazi detracts from the seriousness of it all, the white genocide stuff. Hes having too much fun. And I wonder, as we finish our brews, if it will pass for Eric, this Nazi phase. He simply doesnt seem that threatening. Then he starts up about a race war, that old white-supremacist chestnut. Because behind the trolling veneer, the alt right is more traditional than alt. What Eric believes is vintage racism, the same old wine in a new ironic cask. And Tony Benns terms ring as true as ever: Every generation must fight the same combats again and again.

Our civilisation is at war and we need to secure our people, Eric says. We must seize power and take control. And the idea that we can do this peacefully is probably not realistic.

We get along well enough, Eric and I, but he has the same micro/ macro discrepancy as Johnson. And at a macro level, there is only desperation and division. I do not advocate violence, but I will give my life for my blood and for the honour of my ancestors.

He thrums the tarot cards in his hands, his voice becoming ever more animated. We accept the game thats being played. We accept that the lion and the gazelle are competitor. But they dont “re going to have to” dislike one another. Thats just how we view it.

He shrugs. Its scary. The world is scary. This is not a game for children.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

The post ‘ Call me a racist, but don’t say I’m a Buddhist ‘: America’s alt right appeared first on Top Rated Solar Panels.

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[laurenhaldeman]

Sol Plaatje Museum, Duggan-Cronin Gallery and Galeshewe Township

Thurs, Feb 25 8:35am SA time / 12:35am IA time

Our tour guide for today is Kim Maruping – a fabulous young woman with a wheelhouse of talent: in addition to running her own tour company (Maruping Agency) she is a writer, playwright, historian and community leader. Outside the Kimberley Club, we climb into a minibus with her and her drivers, and head out for a day full of touring. As we drive, Kim speaks about her town with both eloquence and humor. “The weather in Kimberley is ridiculous” she jokes, “You know, you we can have four seasons in one day.”

We start at the Sol Plaatje Museum. South African writer Sol Plaatje– a journalist, linguist and translator – is renown in this town: he was a founder member and first General Secretary of the South African Native National Congress (SANNC), which eventually became the ANC. His legend is alive here, in the same way that Vonnegut is revered in Iowa City, Fitzgerald in New York, Dickinson in Amherst. People speak of him personally, with a sense of intimacy that seems familial, like extended family.

Leaving the museum, we pull up beside the Big Hole. “There are still diamonds in the Big Hole,” Kim tells us. “There are a lot of bodies inside the Big Hole as well” she waxes, solidifying once again the dual nature of the glittering yet tarnished history of this town.

Stoplights are called “robots” in South Africa, but I don’t know that yet, so when she urges us (on way to our next stop) to look back, and says “Back there were the first robots in Kimberley” I turn with such expectant anticipation that my head vibrates. “Where, where?!?” I say. Later, when someone mentions that they “have a real problem with robots here,” I don’t remember what that means right away, so instead I imagine silver metallic machines, with digital voices, walking slowly through the streets at dawn. No Lauren. Robots = Stoplights.

At the McGregor Museum, we are privy to an actual artifact, unwrapped from its protective storage – a hand axe made of banded ironstone that dates back to 800,000 years ago. It was found in a sinkhole at Kathu Pan and was produced by a process known as acheulian, and used in a masterful way by homo ergaster. An equally effective tool could have been made with less precision and beauty in undoubtedly less time, but someone wanted to make this tool a work of art as well. We are also shown a book, handed down from the archeologist’s grandfather, signed to the family by Sol Plaatje. These two objects seem in some strange and perfect relation to each other. The museum is quiet with our looking.

The McGregor Museum houses the Duggan-Cronin Gallery, and we head there next, to see the Thandabantu photography collection of Alfred Duggan-Cronin. Between 1919 and 1939, he recorded large aspects of traditional life of South African tribes on film and the respect he showed his subjects was reflected in the name he was given, Thandabantu, a Matabele word meaning one who loves people.

Next stop is the township, and on our way there, we pass the Hospice in Kimberley. Kim points it out and says “On your right is the Five-To.” She stops herself mid-explanation and says “OK you know now I’m going to teach you some Kimberley slang. A ‘Five-To’ is what we call the Hospice. Because, well, you know, people go in there when they are five minutes to death.” There is a beat of silence and then the whole minibus erupts in laughter.

We enter Galeshewe Township, a neighborhood where the Mayibuye Uprising occurred in 1952. Kim leads us to the monument erected for the fallen of that conflict, and to the former office and house of Robert Sobukwe. Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, a South African political activist, intellectual and professor, was banished, sickly, to house arrest in Galeshewe township after his imprisonment at Robben Island for political dissent. (“We thought he was Five-To,” says Kim with a smile. “But he was really just a Quarter-To.”) Even under house arrest, though, he was able to communicate with fellow anti-apartheid activists using sign language and signals during his closely surveilled meetings. He finished his law degree as well, and began his own law firm under house arrest.

We are viewing the monument and the destroyed office building when a group of boys from the township school start singing for our attention. “Take a picture, take a picture!” they say, and I start clicking. They move like models, posing and mugging for the camera, each instant making a new face. These kids live in the age of selfies and snapchat just like any other teenagers around the world. This township is a very impoverished part of Kimberley, and taking it all in is heartbreaking, but watching these boys do what all the teenagers do makes my mother-heart happy.

[topsolarpanels]

‘ Call me a racist, but don’t say I’m a Buddhist ‘: America’s alt right

They present themselves as modern intellectuals of extremism. But the US far right, detects Sanjiv Bhattacharya, using the same white supremacist obsessions

Every few weeks, William Johnson, the chairman of the white patriot American Freedom Party( AFP ), holds a lunch for members, the goal being to attain America a white ethnostate, a project that begins with electing Donald Trump. This week, its at a grand old French restaurant called Taix, in Echo Park, Los Angeles an odd choice on the face of it. Echo Park is a trendy hood. Its hipster and heavily Hispanic. In fact, given the predominance of Latino kitchen staff in this city, it may be wise to hold off on the Trump talk until the food arrives.

About three months ago, Johnson begins, I was talking to Richard Spencer about how we need to plan for a Trump victory. Spencer is another prominent white patriot he heads the generic-sounding National Policy Institute. I said: I want Jared Taylor[ of American Renaissance] as UN Ambassador, and Kevin MacDonald[ an evolutionary psychologist] as secretary of health and Ann Coulter as homeland security! And Spencer said: Oh Johnson, thats a pipe dream! But today, hed no longer say that, because if Trump wins, all the establishment Republicans, theyre run They dislike him! So whos left? If we can hall, we can set our people in there.

Around the table five young men, roughly half Johnsons age( hes 61 ), nod and lean in. They all wear suits and ties, relating to the waiter as sir and identify as the alt right, the much-discussed nouvelle vague of racism. Are you guys very well known the Plum Book ? Johnson asks. Its plum because of the colouring, but also because of the plum positions there are 20,000 jobs in that book that are open to a new administration.

So we need to identify our top people! says Eric, one of “the mens” at the table.

Just anyone with a college degree! Johnson says.

Right. Eric is practically ricochetting in his seat with excitement. We need to get the word out. We are the new GOP!

A whiter future: pro- and anti-Trump supporters clash outside Trump Towers in New York. Photo: Alamy Stock Photo

Its not every day that a brown journalist gets to sit in on a white-nationalist strategy meeting. But these are strange days. Racism is trending. Like Brexit, Trump has normalised views that were once beyond the pale, and groups like the AFP have grown bold. Their men stubby orange thumbs are within reach of actual power, so maybe its is high time to emerge from the darkness at last.

I first fulfilled Johnson in May after he signed up as a Trump delegate before being swiftly struck off by the campaign when the press found out. Hes a surprising figure. An avid environmentalist, fluent in Japanese and, in person , not the bitter old racist Id expected but instead a jolly Mormon grandfather, bright eyed and chuckling, a Wind in the Willows character. Eric is even more unexpected. Tall and impassioned, he came to racism via hypnotherapy, of all things. He sells solar panel for a life and practises yoga. Together with his friends Matt and Nathan, who are also here at lunch, he operates an alt-right frat in Manhattan Beach a brew and barbecues thing. Theyre “ve called the” Beach Goys. Were starting a charade band, he beams. Weve saw a drummer!

Between them they represent two poles of a racist spectrum, young and old. And judging from this lunch, its the millennials who are the more extreme. Johnson wants white patriots to appear less mean and he sees the JQ, the Jewish Question, archaic. But Eric loves the meanness of the alt right. Were the troll army! he says. Were here to win. Were savage! And antisemitism is non-negotiable. In fact, hed like to clear up a misnomer about the alt right, propagated by the Breitbart columnist Milo Yiannopoulos, who is often described, mistakenly, as the movements leader. Milo casts the alt right as principally a trolling enterprise, dedicated to attacking liberal shibboleths for the lulz theres precious little actual bigotry. But Eric insists otherwise. Yes, they like to joke, they have memes, theyre just as funny as liberals have I heard of their satirical news podcasts, the Daily Shoah and Fash the Nation ? But induce no mistake, the racism is real. Eric especially enjoys The Daily Stormer , a leading alt-right news site, which is unashamedly pro-Hitler.

What unifies Johnson and Eric is what they describe as the systematic browbeat of the white male namely all this talk of privilege, the Confederate flag, Black Lives Matter and mansplaining. But beyond that, its the looming extinction of the white race. This is the language they use. Also: Diversity equals white genocide. The alt right love to evoke genocide while harbouring Holocaust deniers. Their point is that white people are melting away like the icecaps, and they have a primal drive to stop it. In 2044 , non-Hispanic whites will fell below 50% of the US population. The generation of the white minority has already been born, Eric says. Look at South Africa and Rhodesia. Thats where were headed. Total disenfranchisement.

Mexican activists on the campaign trail. Photo: Alamy Stock Photo

I want to reassure him that his Brown Rulers will be gentle and that slavery isnt so bad when you get used to it. But its not me they want to hear from, its white people. This is the white nationalists burden the very people theyre trying to save are the ones who most fiercely oppose them. The only group I cannot get along with is white people, says Johnson. Because white people loathe white people who like white people.

A couple of days later, Johnson is at his cluttered desk in downtown LA, nattering blithely in Japanese to a woman in Tokyo. He get lots of media requests these days, but especially from Japan. Theres an uncanny connection between Japan and white patriotism in America. Jared Taylor, white patriotisms foremost intellectual, is another fluent speaker. Its an ethnostate and its deeply nationalist, he says. And they have resisted the pressure to admit refugees. I say: God bless them!

For his part, Johnsons racism was shaped in Japan. He grew up in Eugene, Oregon, a nation founded as a white utopia, in a modest Mormon home, back before the LDS church gave black people the priesthood in 1978. But it was his two-year mission to Tohoku, Japan, that turned him. As “hes been gone” from doorway to door, locals would opine on the greatness of white America. They had an inferiority complex after the war, so we were treated like celebrities, he says. Oh, it was just the funnest day! A few years later, while working in Japan as an lawyer, he wrote a book advocating the repatriation of all non-whites with appropriate reparations, because I guessed America was going to breakdown unless I did something. When he returned to LA, he sent a transcript to every congressman. He was 32.

Clearly things didnt work out as schemed. His forays into politics floundered and then his offices were bombed. So he retreated from activism for nearly 15 years, only returning in 2009 to form the AFP simply in time for the rise of the alt right.

We head to his 67 -acre ranch near Pasadena, a hilly plenty backing on to a national forest. I asked to meet his family, but his wife rejected, so we tour the farm instead his persimmon orchard, his ponies and ducks. And there on his pick-up truck is a stencil of Jimi Hendrix. My daughter likes to paint, he says proudly. None of his five children are white nationalists, though they have promised to marry within the race.

Youre a white supremacist with a black artist painted on your truck, I tell him. And he flinches. Thats the meanest, most hurtful swearword there is. Just because I say different races have differing strengths doesnt entail I guess Im superior. He doesnt like racist either. Its a pejorative. I prefer race realist.

But its not my reality, Bill. Im sticking with racist.

Well, OK. But people who embrace racist are mad at everybody. I get along with people. You cannot function in Los Angeles without encountering other races, so I look for areas of similarity and agreement. Its important to treat everyone with the highest respect on a micro level.

I guessed America was going to collapse unless I did something: William Johnson, chairman of the American Freedom Party, at home on his ranch near Pasadena. Photo: Barry J Holmes for the Observer

On a macro level, however, darkness autumns multiculturalism is doomed, the different races will never get along, and our only hope is Balkanisation: separate territories for separate tribes. And whatever accelerates that transition is welcome, even racial discord. I dont think friction is a good thing, he says, but it would help facilitate the divide that is necessary.

We stop to feed his alpacas. Theres a brown one, a black one and a white one, standing peacefully together against the chicken wire fence.

See Bill, theyre getting along.

He laughs. I wish people were like alpacas.

Im with Eric at a Mexican restaurant in Manhattan Beach where he lives, an upscale, white neighborhood in the South Bay. He clears space on the table and grins. OK, “youre ready”? Your first tarot card reading with the Hitler Youth!

Its been an odd afternoon. We strolled along the beach and I asked about his gmail address which includes the number 1488, a potent number for white supremacists. The 14 stands for the 14 words coined by the late David Lane of the group The Order: We must procure the existence of our people and a future for white children. And the 88 refers to HH( H being eighth in the alphabet) or Heil Hitler. Eric sighed. OK, but this stuffs hard to talk about, he said. It depends how red-pilled you are.

Alt-righters love talking about the red pill. Its a including references to The Matrix blue-pilled people bumble through a life of illusion, while the red-pilled have ensure the truth and theres no turning back. Like all conspiracy theorists they find the hidden hand that guides all things, but for the alt right that hand is Jewish. The red pill is classic antisemitism, rebooted for a younger generation. As we strolled, he laid it out the banking, the media, the globalism. We passed games of beach volleyball and family picnics, while he explained why the Holocaust was exaggerated and Hitler got a bad rap.

A nation without colouring: William Johnson speaking at an AFP conference in 2013.

Have you noticed that kombucha isnt as fizzy as it used to be? he asks, along the way, because Eric isnt your average Nazi. He trained as a spiritualist. He has taught meditation. He brought his tarot cards in case I wanted a reading.

Dont tell me its the Jews, I tell him. He laughs. You said it , not me!

In the late 70 s, the Klansman David Duke swapped his hood and robes for a suit and tie-in, and took white dominance out of the cross-burning fields and into the boardroom. Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center describes the alt right in similar terms, as Racism 2.0, a rebranding for the digital generation. Its a trendy reboot alt right attains white supremacy sound like an art collective. And Eric, the kombucha Nazi, just takes it a step further into the aisles of Whole Foods. Hes a locally sourced, wild-caught bigot high in omega-3s and antisemitism. It attains him more sinister in some manner, and more harmless in others. As Nazis go.

Hmm, Nazi. Like Johnson, hes squeamish about terms. Warriors against political correctness can be awfully sensitive. Its such a slur, he says. But come near hes a Hitler apologist. OK, fine, he says. Just dont say Im a Buddhist, because Im actually more into Norse and Celtic mysticism now.

Itll come as no surprise that someone whod rather be called a Nazi than a Buddhist has a strange narrative to tell. Originally from a well-off white suburbium of Chicago, he moved to Las Vegas to pursue music. Then one day, in the gym of his condo building, he met a guru figure well call Frank. A spiritualist and businessman, Frank introduced Eric to New Age mysticism and Japanese Buddhism. And it was under Franks guidance that Eric moved to LA to study hypnotherapy and began a career giving reads and tarot depicts at a psychic bookshop. Frank, he says, was his mentor and best friend. But then Eric took a turn. He radicalised himself. He left the New Age life, discovering it too feminine, and spiralled down a sinkhole of conspiracy hypothesi. He and Frank have been estranged ever since. Frank is black.

By the book: author Ann Coulter. Photo: Aaron Davidson/ Getty Images

Today, Eric still meditates and practises yoga. His weeks are spent like David Brent, as a travelling salesman, driving around gratifying his solar energy clients. His weekends, however, are all about the Beach Goys, which now has 15 members. Last week, they went on a hike to the Murphy Ranch in the Pacific Palisades, a decrepit old property that was originally built as a refuge for Hitler after the war. Next week is their first band rehearsal. Erics going to play guitar and sing. And this is the future he wants not a plum job with the Trump administration. I dont consider myself as a bureaucrat, he says. I want to take the Beach Goys national. I want to inspire people.

It could happen. Trump has unleashed something in America. Johnson wont reveal the AFPs membership numbers Perhaps we want to appear bigger than we are? but Eric insists the alt right is on the procession. Were growing with every hashtag, every BLM protest, every city that becomes a Detroit, or a London, he says. Were everywhere! Were the guy next to you at yoga, the barista at Starbucks … Its like Fight Club for supremacists, a profoundly unsettling guessed( which is why Eric loves it ).

But his delight in being a secret Nazi detracts from the seriousness of it all, the white genocide stuff. Hes having too much fun. And I wonder, as we finish our brews, if it will pass for Eric, this Nazi phase. He simply doesnt seem that threatening. Then he starts up about a race war, that old white-supremacist chestnut. Because behind the trolling veneer, the alt right is more traditional than alt. What Eric believes is vintage racism, the same old wine in a new ironic cask. And Tony Benns words ring as true as ever: Every generation must fight the same battles again and again.

Our civilisation is at war and we need to secure our people, Eric says. We must confiscate power and take control. And the idea that we can do this peacefully is likely not realistic.

We get along well enough, Eric and I, but he has the same micro/ macro discrepancy as Johnson. And at a macro level, there is only hopelessnes and division. I do not advocate violence, but I will give my life for my blood and for the honour of my ancestors.

He thrums the tarot cards in his hands, his voice getting more animated. We accept the game thats being played. We accept that the lion and the gazelle are competition. But they dont “re going to have to” dislike each other. Thats just how we view it.

He shrugs. Its scary. The world is scary. This is not a game for children.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

The post ‘ Call me a racist, but don’t say I’m a Buddhist ‘: America’s alt right appeared first on Top Rated Solar Panels.

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They present themselves as modern thinkers of extremism. But the US far right, discovers Sanjiv Bhattacharya, have the same white supremacist obsessions

Every few weeks, William Johnson, the chairman of the white nationalist American Freedom Party (AFP), holds a lunch for members, the goal being to make America a white ethnostate, a project that begins with electing Donald Trump. This week, its at a grand old French restaurant called Taix, in Echo Park, Los Angeles an odd choice on the face of it. Echo Park is a trendy hood. Its hipster and heavily Hispanic. In fact, given the predominance of Latino kitchen staff in this city, it may be wise to hold off on the Trump talk until the food arrives.

About three months ago, Johnson begins, I was talking to Richard Spencer about how we need to plan for a Trump victory. Spencer is another prominent white nationalist he heads the generic-sounding National Policy Institute. I said: I want Jared Taylor [of American Renaissance] as UN Ambassador, and Kevin MacDonald [an evolutionary psychologist] as secretary of health and Ann Coulter as homeland security! And Spencer said: Oh Johnson, thats a pipe dream! But today, hed no longer say that, because if Trump wins, all the establishment Republicans, theyre gone They hate him! So whos left? If we can lobby, we can put our people in there.

Around the table five young men, roughly half Johnsons age (hes 61), nod and lean in. They all wear suits and ties, address the waiter as sir and identify as the alt right, the much-discussed nouvelle vague of racism. Are you guys familiar with the Plum Book? Johnson asks. Its plum because of the colour, but also because of the plum positions there are 20,000 jobs in that book that are open to a new administration.

So we need to identify our top people! says Eric, one of the men at the table.

Just anyone with a college degree! Johnson says.

Right. Eric is practically bouncing in his seat with excitement. We need to get the word out. We are the new GOP!

A whiter future: pro- and anti-Trump supporters clash outside Trump Towers in New York. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Its not every day that a brown journalist gets to sit in on a white-nationalist strategy meeting. But these are strange times. Racism is trending. Like Brexit, Trump has normalised views that were once beyond the pale, and groups like the AFP have grown bold. Their mans stubby orange fingers are within reach of actual power, so maybe its time to emerge from the shadows at last.

I first met Johnson in May after he signed up as a Trump delegate before being swiftly struck off by the campaign when the press found out. Hes a surprising figure. An avid environmentalist, fluent in Japanese and, in person, not the bitter old racist Id expected but rather a jolly Mormon grandfather, bright eyed and chuckling, a Wind in the Willows character. Eric is even more unexpected. Tall and impassioned, he came to racism via hypnotherapy, of all things. He sells solar panels for a living and practises yoga. Together with his friends Matt and Nathan, who are also here at lunch, he runs an alt-right fraternity in Manhattan Beach a beer and barbecues thing. Theyre called the Beach Goys. Were starting a parody band, he beams. Weve found a drummer!

Between them they represent two poles of a racist spectrum, young and old. And judging from this lunch, its the millennials who are the more extreme. Johnson wants white nationalists to appear less mean and he finds the JQ, the Jewish Question, archaic. But Eric loves the meanness of the alt right. Were the troll army! he says. Were here to win. Were savage! And antisemitism is non-negotiable. In fact, hed like to clear up a misnomer about the alt right, propagated by the Breitbart columnist Milo Yiannopoulos, who is often described, mistakenly, as the movements leader. Milo casts the alt right as principally a trolling enterprise, dedicated to attacking liberal shibboleths for the lulz theres precious little actual bigotry. But Eric insists otherwise. Yes, they like to joke, they have memes, theyre just as funny as liberals have I heard of their satirical news podcasts, the Daily Shoah and Fash the Nation? But make no mistake, the racism is real. Eric especially enjoys The Daily Stormer, a leading alt-right news site, which is unashamedly pro-Hitler.

What unites Johnson and Eric is what they describe as the systematic browbeating of the white male namely all this talk of privilege, the Confederate flag, Black Lives Matter and mansplaining. But beyond that, its the looming extinction of the white race. This is the language they use. Also: Diversity equals white genocide. The alt right loves to evoke genocide while harbouring Holocaust deniers. Their point is that white people are melting away like the icecaps, and they have a primal drive to stop it. In 2044, non-Hispanic whites will drop below 50% of the US population. The generation of the white minority has already been born, Eric says. Look at South Africa and Rhodesia. Thats where were headed. Total disenfranchisement.

Mexican activists on the campaign trail. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

I want to reassure him that his Brown Rulers will be gentle and that slavery isnt so bad when you get used to it. But its not me they want to hear from, its white people. This is the white nationalists burden the very people theyre trying to save are the ones who most fiercely oppose them. The only group I cannot get along with is white people, says Johnson. Because white people hate white people who like white people.

A couple of days later, Johnson is at his cluttered desk in downtown LA, nattering merrily in Japanese to a woman in Tokyo. He gets lots of media requests these days, but especially from Japan. Theres an uncanny connection between Japan and white nationalism in America. Jared Taylor, white nationalisms foremost intellectual, is another fluent speaker. Its an ethnostate and its deeply nationalist, he says. And they have resisted the pressure to admit refugees. I say: God bless them!

For his part, Johnsons racism was shaped in Japan. He grew up in Eugene, Oregon, a state founded as a white utopia, in a modest Mormon home, back before the LDS church gave black people the priesthood in 1978. But it was his two-year mission to Tohoku, Japan, that turned him. As he went from door to door, locals would opine on the greatness of white America. They had an inferiority complex after the war, so we were treated like celebrities, he says. Oh, it was just the funnest time! A few years later, while working in Japan as an attorney, he wrote a book advocating the repatriation of all non-whites with appropriate reparations, because I thought America was going to collapse unless I did something. When he returned to LA, he sent a copy to every congressman. He was 32.

Clearly things didnt work out as planned. His forays into politics floundered and then his offices were bombed. So he retreated from activism for nearly 15 years, only returning in 2009 to form the AFP just in time for the rise of the alt right.

We head to his 67-acre ranch near Pasadena, a hilly lot backing on to a national forest. I asked to meet his family, but his wife refused, so we tour the farm instead his persimmon orchard, his horses and ducks. And there on his pick-up truck is a stencil of Jimi Hendrix. My daughter likes to paint, he says proudly. None of his five children are white nationalists, though they have promised to marry within the race.

Youre a white supremacist with a black artist painted on your truck, I tell him. And he flinches. Thats the meanest, most hurtful swearword there is. Just because I say different races have different strengths doesnt mean I think Im superior. He doesnt like racist either. Its a pejorative. I prefer race realist.

But its not my reality, Bill. Im sticking with racist.

Well, OK. But people who embrace racist are mad at everybody. I get along with people. You cannot function in Los Angeles without encountering other races, so I look for areas of similarity and agreement. Its important to treat everyone with the highest respect on a micro level.

I thought America was going to collapse unless I did something: William Johnson, chairman of the American Freedom Party, at home on his ranch near Pasadena. Photograph: Barry J Holmes for the Observer

On a macro level, however, darkness falls multiculturalism is doomed, the different races will never get along, and our only hope is Balkanisation: separate territories for separate tribes. And whatever accelerates that transition is welcome, even racial strife. I dont think friction is a good thing, he says, but it would help facilitate the split that is necessary.

We stop to feed his alpacas. Theres a brown one, a black one and a white one, standing peacefully together against the chicken wire fence.

See Bill, theyre getting along.

He laughs. I wish people were like alpacas.

Im with Eric at a Mexican restaurant in Manhattan Beach where he lives, an upscale, white neighbourhood in the South Bay. He clears space on the table and grins. OK, you ready? Your first tarot card reading with the Hitler Youth!

Its been an odd afternoon. We walked along the beach and I asked about his gmail address which includes the number 1488, a potent number for white supremacists. The 14 stands for the 14 words coined by the late David Lane of the group The Order: We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children. And the 88 refers to HH (H being eighth in the alphabet) or Heil Hitler. Eric sighed. OK, but this stuffs hard to talk about, he said. It depends how red-pilled you are.

Alt-righters love talking about the red pill. Its a reference to The Matrix blue-pilled people bumble through a life of illusion, while the red-pilled have seen the truth and theres no turning back. Like all conspiracy theorists they see the hidden hand that guides all things, but for the alt right that hand is Jewish. The red pill is classic antisemitism, rebooted for a younger generation. As we walked, he laid it out the banking, the media, the globalism. We passed games of beach volleyball and family picnics, while he explained why the Holocaust was exaggerated and Hitler got a bad rap.

A nation without colour: William Johnson speaking at an AFP conference in 2013.

Have you noticed that kombucha isnt as fizzy as it used to be? he asks, along the way, because Eric isnt your average Nazi. He trained as a spiritualist. He has taught meditation. He brought his tarot cards in case I wanted a reading.

Dont tell me its the Jews, I tell him. He laughs. You said it, not me!

In the late 70s, the Klansman David Duke swapped his hood and robes for a suit and tie, and took white supremacy out of the cross-burning fields and into the boardroom. Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center describes the alt right in similar terms, as Racism 2.0, a rebranding for the digital generation. Its a trendy reboot alt right makes white supremacy sound like an art collective. And Eric, the kombucha Nazi, just takes it a step further into the aisles of Whole Foods. Hes a locally sourced, wild-caught bigot high in omega-3s and antisemitism. It makes him more sinister in some ways, and more harmless in others. As Nazis go.

Hmm, Nazi. Like Johnson, hes squeamish about terms. Warriors against political correctness can be awfully sensitive. Its such a slur, he says. But come on hes a Hitler apologist. OK, fine, he says. Just dont say Im a Buddhist, because Im actually more into Norse and Celtic mysticism now.

Itll come as no surprise that someone whod rather be called a Nazi than a Buddhist has a strange story to tell. Originally from a well-off white suburb of Chicago, he moved to Las Vegas to pursue music. Then one day, in the gym of his condo building, he met a guru figure well call Frank. A spiritualist and businessman, Frank introduced Eric to New Age mysticism and Japanese Buddhism. And it was under Franks guidance that Eric moved to LA to study hypnotherapy and began a career giving readings and tarot shows at a psychic bookshop. Frank, he says, was his mentor and best friend. But then Eric took a turn. He radicalised himself. He left the New Age life, finding it too feminine, and spiralled down a sinkhole of conspiracy theory. He and Frank have been estranged ever since. Frank is black.

By the book: author Ann Coulter. Photograph: Aaron Davidson/Getty Images

Today, Eric still meditates and practises yoga. His weeks are spent like David Brent, as a travelling salesman, driving around meeting his solar energy clients. His weekends, however, are all about the Beach Goys, which now has 15 members. Last week, they went on a hike to the Murphy Ranch in the Pacific Palisades, a decrepit old property that was originally built as a refuge for Hitler after the war. Next week is their first band rehearsal. Erics going to play guitar and sing. And this is the future he wants not a plum job with the Trump administration. I dont see myself as a bureaucrat, he says. I want to take the Beach Goys national. I want to inspire people.

It could happen. Trump has unleashed something in America. Johnson wont reveal the AFPs membership numbers Maybe we want to appear bigger than we are? but Eric insists the alt right is on the march. Were growing with every hashtag, every BLM protest, every city that becomes a Detroit, or a London, he says. Were everywhere! Were the guy next to you at yoga, the barista at Starbucks… Its like Fight Club for supremacists, a deeply unsettling thought (which is why Eric loves it).

But his delight in being a secret Nazi detracts from the seriousness of it all, the white genocide stuff. Hes having too much fun. And I wonder, as we finish our beers, if it will pass for Eric, this Nazi phase. He just doesnt seem that threatening. Then he starts up about a race war, that old white-supremacist chestnut. Because behind the trolling veneer, the alt right is more traditional than alt. What Eric believes is vintage racism, the same old wine in a new ironic cask. And Tony Benns words ring as true as ever: Every generation must fight the same battles again and again.

Our civilisation is at war and we need to secure our people, Eric says. We must seize power and take control. And the idea that we can do this peacefully is probably not realistic.

We get along well enough, Eric and I, but he has the same micro/macro discrepancy as Johnson. And at a macro level, there is only despair and division. I do not advocate violence, but I will give my life for my blood and for the honour of my ancestors.

He thrums the tarot cards in his hands, his voice getting more animated. We accept the game thats being played. We accept that the lion and the gazelle are competition. But they dont have to hate each other. Thats just how we view it.

He shrugs. Its scary. The world is scary. This is not a game for children.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

The post appeared first on Top Rated Solar Panels.

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‘ Call me a racist, but don’t tell I’m a Buddhist ‘: America’s alt right

They present themselves as modern thinkers of extremism. But the US far right, detects Sanjiv Bhattacharya, have the same white supremacist obsessions

Every few weeks, William Johnson, the chairman of the white nationalist American Freedom Party( AFP ), holds a lunch for members, the goal being to stimulate America a white ethnostate, a project that begins with electing Donald Trump. This week, its at a grand old French restaurant called Taix, in Echo Park, Los Angeles an odd option on the face of it. Echo Park is a trendy hood. Its hipster and heavily Hispanic. In fact, given the predominance of Latino kitchen staff in this city, it may be wise to hold off on the Trump talk until the food arrives.

About three months ago, Johnson begins, I was talking to Richard Spencer about how we need to plan for a Trump victory. Spencer is another prominent white patriot he heads the generic-sounding National Policy Institute. I said: I want Jared Taylor[ of American Renaissance] as UN Ambassador, and Kevin MacDonald[ an evolutionary psychologist] as secretary of health and Ann Coulter as homeland security! And Spencer said: Oh Johnson, thats a pipe dream! But today, hed no longer say that, because if Trump wins, all the establishment Republican, theyre run They detest him! So whos left? If we can foyer, we can set our people in there.

Around the table five young men, roughly half Johnsons age( hes 61 ), nod and tilt in. They all wear suits and ties, relating to the waiter as sir and identify as the alt right, the much-discussed nouvelle vague of racism. Are you guys familiar with the Plum Book ? Johnson asks. Its plum because of the colouring, but also because of the plum stances there are 20,000 jobs in that volume that are open to a new administration.

So we need to identify our top people! says Eric, one of “the mens” at the table.

Just anyone with a college degree! Johnson says.

Right. Eric is practically ricochetting in his seat with excitement. We need to get the word out. We are the new GOP!

A whiter future: pro- and anti-Trump supporters clash outside Trump Towers in New York. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Its not every day that a brown journalist gets to sit in on a white-nationalist strategy meeting. But these are strange periods. Racism is trending. Like Brexit, Trump has normalised views that were once beyond the pale, and groups like the AFP have grown bold. Their humen stubby orange thumbs are within reach of actual power, so perhaps its time to emerge from the darkness at last.

I first satisfied Johnson in May after he signed up as a Trump delegate before being swiftly struck off by the campaign when the press found out. Hes a surprising figure. An avid environmentalist, fluent in Japanese and, in person , not the bitter old racist Id expected but rather a jolly Mormon grandfather, bright eyed and chortle, a Wind in the Willows character. Eric is even more unexpected. Tall and impassioned, “hes come to” racism via hypnotherapy, of all things. He sells solar panel for a living and practises yoga. Together with his friends Matt and Nathan, who are also here at lunch, he runs an alt-right fraternity in Manhattan Beach a beer and barbecues thing. Theyre called the Beach Goys. Were starting a parody band, he beams. Weve determined a drummer!

Between them they represent two poles of a racist spectrum, young and old. And judging from this lunch, its the millennials who are the more extreme. Johnson wants white nationalists to seem less mean and he discovers the JQ, the Jewish Question, archaic. But Eric loves the meanness of the alt right. Were the troll army! he says. Were here to win. Were savage! And antisemitism is non-negotiable. In fact, hed like to clear up a misnomer about the alt right, propagated by the Breitbart columnist Milo Yiannopoulos, who is often described, erroneously, as the movements leader. Milo casts the alt right as principally a trolling enterprise, dedicated to attacking liberal shibboleths for the lulz theres precious little actual intolerance. But Eric insists otherwise. Yes, they like to joke, they have memes, theyre just as funny as liberals have I heard of their satirical news podcasts, the Daily Shoah and Fash the Nation ? But attain no mistake, the racism is real. Eric especially enjoys The Daily Stormer , a resulting alt-right news site, which is unashamedly pro-Hitler.

What unites Johnson and Eric is what they describe as the systematic browbeat of the white male namely all this talk of privilege, the Confederate flag, Black Lives Matter and mansplaining. But beyond that, its the looming extinction of the white race. This is the language they use. Also: Diversity equals white genocide. The alt right loves to evoke genocide while harbouring Holocaust deniers. Their phase is that white people are melting away like the icecaps, and they have a primal drive to stop it. In 2044 , non-Hispanic whites will drop below 50% of the US population. The generation of the white minority has already been born, Eric says. Look at South Africa and Rhodesia. Thats where were headed. Total disenfranchisement.

Mexican activists on the campaign trail. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

I want to reassure him that his Brown Rulers is likely to be gentle and that bondage isnt so bad when you get used to it. But its not me they want to hear from, its white people. This is the white patriots burden the very people theyre trying to save are the ones who most ferociously oppose them. The only group I cannot get along with is white people, tells Johnson. Because white people hate white people who like white people.

A couple of days later, Johnson is at his cluttered desk in downtown LA, nattering merrily in Japanese to a woman in Tokyo. He get lots of media requests these days, but especially from Japan. Theres an uncanny connection between Japan and white patriotism in America. Jared Taylor, white nationalisms foremost intellectual, is another fluent speaker. Its an ethnostate and its deeply nationalist, he says. And they have resisted the pressure to admit refugees. I say: God blesses them!

For his part, Johnsons racism was shaped in Japan. He grew up in Eugene, Oregon, a country founded as a white utopia, in a modest Mormon home, back before the LDS church gave black people the priesthood in 1978. But it was his two-year mission to Tohoku, Japan, that turned him. As he went from door to door, locals would opine on the greatness of white America. They had an inferiority complex after the war, so we were treated like celebrities, he tells. Oh, it was just the funnest day! A few years later, while working in Japan as an attorney, he wrote a volume advocating the repatriation of all non-whites with appropriate reparations, because I believed America was going to breakdown unless I did something. When he returned to LA, he sent a copy to every congressman. He was 32.

Clearly things didnt work out as schemed. His forays into politics floundered and then his offices were bombed. So he retreated from activism for nearly 15 years, only returning in 2009 to form the AFP just in time for the rise of the alt right.

We head to his 67 -acre ranch near Pasadena, a hilly lot backing on to a national forest. I asked to meet his family, but his wife rejected, so we tour the farm instead his persimmon orchard, his ponies and ducks. And there on his pick-up truck is a stencil of Jimi Hendrix. My daughter said that she wished to paint, he says proudly. None of his five children are white patriots, though they have promised to marry within the race.

Youre a white supremacist with a black artist painted on your truck, I tell him. And he flinches. Thats the meanest, most hurtful swearword there is. Just because I tell different races have different strengths doesnt entail I think Im superior. He doesnt like racist either. Its a pejorative. I prefer race realist.

But its not my reality, Bill. Im sticking with racist.

Well, OK. But people who embrace racist are mad at everybody. I get along with people. You cannot function in Los Angeles without encountering other races, so I look for areas of similarity and agreement. Its important to treat everyone with the highest respect on a micro level.

I thought America was going to collapse unless I did something: William Johnson, chairman of the American Freedom Party, at home on his ranch near Pasadena. Photo: Barry J Holmes for the Observer

On a macro level, however, darkness autumns multiculturalism is doomed, the different races will never get along, and our only hope is Balkanisation: separate provinces for separate tribes. And whatever accelerates that transition is greet, even racial discord. I dont suppose friction is a good thing, he says, but it would help facilitate the divide that is necessary.

We stop to feed his alpacas. Theres a brown one, a black one and a white one, standing peacefully together against the chicken wire fence.

See Bill, theyre getting along.

He giggles. I wish people were like alpacas.

Im with Eric at a Mexican restaurant in Manhattan Beach where he lives, an upscale, white neighbourhood in the South Bay. He clears space on the table and grinnings. OK, you ready? Your first tarot card reading with the Hitler Youth!

Its been an odd afternoon. We strolled along the beach and I asked about his gmail address which includes the number 1488, a potent number for white supremacists. The 14 stands for the 14 terms coined by the late David Lane of different groups The Order: We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children. And the 88 refers to HH( H being eighth in the alphabet) or Heil Hitler. Eric sighed. OK, but this stuffs hard to talk about, he told. It depends how red-pilled you are.

Alt-righters love talking about the red pill. Its a reference to The Matrix blue-pilled people bumble through a life of illusion, while the red-pilled have find the truth and theres no turning back. Like all conspiracy theorists they insure the hidden hand that guides all things, but for the alt right that hand is Jewish. The red pill is classic antisemitism, rebooted for a younger generation. As we walked, he laid it out the banking, the media, the globalism. We passed games of beach volleyball and family barbecues, while he explained why the Holocaust was exaggerated and Hitler got a bad rap.

A nation without colouring: William Johnson speaking at an AFP conference in 2013.

Have you noticed that kombucha isnt as fizzy as it used to be? he asks, along the way, because Eric isnt your median Nazi. He developed as a spiritualist. He has taught meditation. He brought his tarot cards in case I wanted a reading.

Dont tell me its the Jews, I tell him. He giggles. You said it , not me!

In the late 70 s, the Klansman David Duke swapped his hood and robes for a suit and tie-in, and took white domination out of the cross-burning fields and into the boardroom. Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center describes the alt right in similar terms, as Racism 2.0, a rebranding for the digital generation. Its a trendy reboot alt right makes white dominance sound like an art collective. And Eric, the kombucha Nazi, just takes it a step further into the aisles of Whole Foods. Hes a locally sourced, wild-caught bigot high in omega-3s and antisemitism. It constructs him more sinister in some ways, and more harmless in others. As Nazis go.

Hmm, Nazi. Like Johnson, hes squeamish about words. Warriors against political correctness can be awfully sensitive. Its such a slur, he tells. But come near hes a Hitler apologist. OK, fine, he says. Just dont tell Im a Buddhist, because Im actually more into Norse and Celtic mysticism now.

Itll come as no surprise that someone whod rather be called a Nazi than a Buddhist has a strange story to tell. Originally from a well-off white suburb of Chicago, he moved to Las Vegas to pursue music. Then one day, in the gym of his condo building, he met a guru figure well call Frank. A spiritualist and tycoon, Frank introduced Eric to New Age mysticism and Japanese Buddhism. And it was under Franks guidance that Eric moved to LA to study hypnotherapy and began a career devoting reads and tarot reveals at a psychic bookshop. Frank, he says, was his mentor and best friend. But then Eric took a turning. He radicalised himself. He left the New Age life, detecting it too feminine, and spiralled down a sinkhole of conspiracy hypothesi. He and Frank have been estranged ever since. Frank is black.

By the book: writer Ann Coulter. Photograph: Aaron Davidson/ Getty Images

Today, Eric still meditates and practises yoga. His weeks are spent like David Brent, as a travelling salesman, driving around satisfying his solar energy clients. His weekends, however, are all about the Beach Goys, which now has 15 members. Last week, they went on a hike to the Murphy Ranch in the Pacific Palisades, a decrepit old property that was originally constructed as a refuge for Hitler after the war. Next week is their first band rehearsal. Erics going to play guitar and sing. And this is the future he wants not a plum job with the Trump administration. I dont see myself as a bureaucrat, he tells. I want to take the Beach Goys national. I want to inspire people.

It could happen. Trump has unleashed something in America. Johnson wont uncover the AFPs membership numbers Maybe we want to appear bigger than we are? but Eric insists the alt right is on the procession. Were growing with every hashtag, every BLM protest, every city that becomes a Detroit, or a London, he says. Were everywhere! Were the guy next to you at yoga, the barista at Starbucks … Its like Fight Club for supremacists, a profoundly unsettling thought( which is why Eric loves it ).

But his delight in being a secret Nazi detracts from the seriousness of it all, the white genocide stuff. Hes having too much fun. And I wonder, as we finish our beers, if it will pass for Eric, this Nazi phase. He simply doesnt seem that threatening. Then he starts up about a race war, that old white-supremacist chestnut. Because behind the trolling veneer, the alt right is more traditional than alt. What Eric believes is vintage racism, the same old wine in a new ironic cask. And Tony Benns terms ring as true as ever: Every generation must fight the same battles again and again.

Our civilisation is at war and we need to secure our people, Eric tells. We must confiscate power and take control. And the idea that we can do this peacefully is likely not realistic.

We get along with well enough, Eric and I, but he has the same micro/ macro discrepancy as Johnson. And at a macro level, there is only hopelessnes and division. I do not advocate violence, but I will give my life for my blood and for the honour of my ancestors.

He thrums the tarot cards in his hands, his voice becoming ever more animated. We accept the game thats being played. We accept that the lion and the gazelle are rivalry. But they dont have to detest one another. Thats just how we view it.

He shrugs. Its scary. The world is scary. This is not a game for children.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

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