now this is just strange
Every once in a while, the name of Hal Turner bubbles up to the top of the swamp before sinking again. It might be vaguely familiar to you, if you like to keep track of fruitcakes. Turner, a white supremacist, had an internet show which he used to rail against everyone he hated. Which was everyone. What made Turner noteworthy was his explicit advocacy of violence: he frequently stated that public figures should die, or be executed; that Jews should be spit on in the streets. It is rare you find somebody in these modern times who publicly advocates lynching; Hal Turner sought to make up for the lack on his own. A while back, Turner actually aired a plan to kill several public figures -- i.e., how you would go about storming houses and dealing death to those within. This got some minor attention on some of the blogs I read; Turner didn't do a damn thing; he just shot off his mouth, but people wondered why he hadn't been arrested for incitement to violence. He was talking about assassinating major political figures, which one would think is the sort of thing that would get a fellow shipped off to Gitmo.
The Southern Poverty Law Center tracks these dudes, as you'd expect, and they keep close tabs on the white-power types (probably closer than they deserve). The SPLC says they found out why Hal Turner didn't get arrested: he was an FBI informant.
According to the SPLC, this came out when Turner's site was hacked earlier this month. The hackers posted emails they found to white supremacist websites. The emails were between Turner and an FBI handler. Apparently, Turner was trying to encourage kill-crazy loons to contact him. He'd then rat on 'em to the Feds.
Turner is now no-commenting like crazy and disassociating himself from racialist movements, so it seems to be true. I checked around on some white supremacist sites so you don't have to; basically, they figure he and another guy who liked to argue for violence were government plants whose job was to discredit (stop snickering) the white power movement (I told you, stop snickering!). I don't know if Turner was a plant all along, or if the Feds pressured and flipped him. Either way, it's interesting. But I think it was ludicrously irresponsible to have people advocating assassination and murder on the payroll, even as rats. Yes, rats are necessary, but this guy? Jeez.
(On a side note, I've been convinced for years that Michael Savage, an unbelievably right-wing talk show host, is in fact a dedicated left-winger who fakes his bombastic views in order to make money and lay groundwork to discredit and disillusion his fans when he decides he's got a big enough pile of it.)
And I'm posting too much about news and politics lately. Um, THE WIRE rules! SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES sucks like the vortex at the end of THE MONSTER SQUAD! H.L. Mencken's autobiographies are terrific, and will make THE WIRE come off as even more amazing.
