ANTIFA & SPLC INTIMIDATION & THREATS GET WISCONSIN & MINNESOTA COUNTER-JIHAD CONFERENCES CANCELED

ANTIFA & SPLC INTIMIDATION & THREATS GET WISCONSIN & MINNESOTA COUNTER-JIHAD CONFERENCES CANCELED 

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2018/04/antifa-and-splc-intimidation-and-threats-get-wisconsin-and-minnesota-counter-jihad-conferences-canceled; republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:

In The Coming of the Third Reich, historian Richard J. Evans explains how, in the early days of National Socialist Germany, Stormtroopers (Brownshirts) “organized campaigns against unwanted professors in the local newspapers [and] staged mass disruptions of their lectures.” To express dissent from Nazi positions became a matter of taking one’s life into one’s hands. The idea of people of opposing viewpoints airing their disagreements in a civil and mutually respectful manner was gone. One was a Nazi, or one was silent (and fearful).

Today’s fascists call themselves “anti-fascists.” Just like the Nazis, they are totalitarian: they are determined not to allow their opponents to murmur the slightest whisper of dissent. Forcibly suppressing the speech of someone with whom one disagrees is a quintessentially fascist act.

And here we are. This is America, 2018.

“Antifa And The SPLC Successfully Shut Down Four Anti-Islam Conferences,” by Jim Simpson, Daily Caller, April 12, 2018:

Antifa groups used information from the Southern Poverty Law Center to successfully shut down four conferences on the threat of Islam scheduled in Wisconsin and Minnesota last weekend.

The hotels slated for the events were flooded with threatening calls, and the organizers voluntarily canceled one of the events following numerous warnings that it would not be safe. A fifth conference in Des Moines, Iowa carried on in defiance, despite leftists showing up to disrupt the proceedings.

The conferences were hosted by Worldview Weekend, a conservative Christian organization that produces radio and TV shows and sponsors events nationwide. The SPLC posted the locations for these venues, after which Antifa groups urged their members through social media to attend events and swamp the venues with threatening calls and messages.

According to Worldview CEO Brannon Howse, a state trooper even visited the Minneapolis hotel where an event was planned for Sunday. He said the police were concerned about conference security and the organizer should add more police. With the financial losses from other canceled events, Howse said they could not afford to provide more security than those already hired, and cancelled that last event out of safety concerns.

The conferences sought to expose how leftists supported by George Soros, the John Templeton Foundation and other donors are intimidating America into silence by labeling anyone who exposes them as “racists,” “Islamophobes” and “white supremacists.” An event last fall featuring this author and DHS whistleblower Philip Haney was canceled by the venue following a similar campaign from Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) operatives. A second event in Illinois went on despite threatening calls to the organizer, her employer and the event location.

One of the conference speakers, John Guandolo, is listed on an SPLC list of “anti-Muslim extremists.” Guandolo is president and founder of Understanding the Threat. He is a Naval Academy graduate, a combat veteran Marine officer, a former FBI special agent who created the first government trainings on the Muslim Brotherhood and its U.S. operations, and was recruited by the Department of Defense to provide strategic analysis regarding these threats.

According to Guandolo, UTT is the only organization that provides tools for leaders, elected officials and law enforcement to map out and investigate jihadi networks. “I teach and train about the things that energize the jihadis (Sharia), and the networks that support jihad and the jihadis. This is primarily the Muslim Brotherhood, of which CAIR, an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror financing trial, is a prominent part. The Muslims themselves say they are motivated by Sharia (Islamic law),” he said….

The general manager at the Radisson Hotel Green Bay, who was referenced in the “Red & Black Anarchists” post, sent the following email notifying Howse that he was canceling that event two days before it was to occur:

Good afternoon Brannon,

I wanted to inform you that we will be cancelling your event that is scheduled for this Saturday. … the hotel has received numerous phone calls from the community opposing this event and threatening to protest. We need to ensure that the safety of our guests come first so with that in mind, we will be cancelling this event.  I left you a voicemail as well.

Should you have further questions about this, please reach out to me directly.  My email is [REDACTED] or my work number is [REDACTED]

Steve Ninham

General Manager…

According to Howse, a combined total of at least 3,500 people had registered for the four canceled events: more than 1,500 in Minneapolis and another 2,500 in the three Wisconsin sites. The cancellation of these events cost well over $60,000, Howse said.

“And that doesn’t include lost ad revenues and other opportunity costs,” he told TheDC. “We promoted these events for the past six months, including 40,000 mailings in December and another 40,000 in January, and used up valuable staff time that could have been spent on other endeavors.”

The hotel manager at the Des Moines event told TheDC that the hotel does not have a litmus test for events. “We rent facilities to groups with a wide variety of opinions and interests across the spectrum politically, philosophically and otherwise. Our goal is to see that each of them receive the highest quality of service we can provide,” he said.

The manager said that protesters showed up and did all they could to disrupt the proceedings without pushing it far enough to get thrown out by police. Howse said that when he handed out brochures intended for the audience, one protester snatched the whole stack and put it in his backpack. He was forced to return the brochures when approached by the police. These attendees were described as “rude and intimidating.”

One person who did get asked to leave was Jack Gunnar Schuler, a local high school teacher. According to the Des Moines Register, Schuler is a transgender activist who was born a woman named Elyse, but since April of 2016 now identifies as a man. He also claims to have been a Marine, but his Facebook profile photo shows him wearing an Army T-shirt — something a Marine is very unlikely to do.

Schuler had been walking around the event snapping photos of everyone in attendance, posting more than two dozen of them on Facebook, with disparaging comments about the attendees.

Activists associated with Antifa often use this strategy to publicly intimidate, shame and threaten their political opponents.

Schuler walked up to Guandolo and said, “I think you’re a f**king disgrace. You’re an absolute disgrace to the Corps and the uniform.”

Schuler was immediately escorted out by police. He videoed the whole encounter. It has since been scrubbed from his Facebook site, but you can watch it here (language warning).

Howse was suspicious of Schuler and asked if he was carrying a gun. Shuler snapped a picture of Howse and posted it on Facebook with the comment, “This guy asked me if I had a gun in my bag. Remember kids. The second amendment is only for white people to use against brown people.”

Two prominent Muslims came to witness the event: CAIR-Iowa chapter presidentAbshir Omar and State Rep. Ako Abdul-Samad. Omar is a Somali Muslim refugee and member of the Democratic Socialists of America who was supported by CAIR in his unsuccessful 2016 bid for Des Moines City Council. Abdul-Samad has been praised by CAIR, and is also a current member of the Black Panther Party’s Des Moines chapter.

Samad was critical of the event’s message, telling WHO TV that the term “jihad” is misunderstood. “The Jihad that we talk about in the Quran, prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, said very clearly that the Jihad is the Jihad of an-Nafs, which means the Jihad of self. You’re [sic] Jihad is within you and every religion has a Jihad.”

Asked for a response by WHO TV, Guandolo said, “That’s absolutely not true. In Islam, there’s only one legal definition for Jihad, and that’s warfare against non-Muslims.”…

There is no doubt about that.