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League of the South member explains the rally and their beliefs on Southern Heritage. Brittany Crocker/ USA Today Network - Tennessee

A rebel flag was torn up and thrown toward protesters but landed at the feet of a police officer in the street dividing the two groups during a rally in Ft. Sanders Saturday, Aug. 26, 2017.(Photo: Michael Patrick/News Sentinel)Buy Photo

One of the most visible white nationalists at the recent Fort Sanders Confederate monument demonstration was, until until a few years ago, active in communist organizations, the Occupy movement and protests against racism.

Garon Archer, a native of Johnson City, was the protester on Aug. 26 who repeatedly screamed, "The Southern nation is a white nation."

He said he came to last Saturdays demonstration to represent the League of the South, an Alabama-based white supremacist group that has said it considers mainstream U.S. culture corrupt and is rebelling against the politically correct and multicultural diversity in the South.

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Two weeks earlier, Archer was visible in "Democracy Now!" footage of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Clad in a baseball helmet andholding a shield, he attacked a counter-protester. At a similar rally in New Orleans, he was recorded screaming racial slurs at a black woman.

But just a few years ago, Archer appeared in a 2012 YouTube video of an Occupy movement demonstration in Florida, protesting for the arrest of George Zimmerman, who fatally shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida. In the video, Archer who was himself 17 at the time chants slogans against racism and burns a Confederate flag bandanna.

A few months later, he appeared in Tampa for a rally against the Republican National Convention.

The Tampa Bay Times describedthe young activist:

'Garon Archer is in town to protest the Republicans, but he admits he doesn't know the rules.The 17-year-old Happy Valley High School senior from Johnson City, Tenn., carries a red banner attached to a wooden flagpole to the Coalition to March on the RNC gathering Monday morning at Perry Harvey Park.The pole, it turns out, is too long.The police won't let him in.So he breaks the pole himself to make it fit the designated length."I came from Johnson City, Tenn.," says the teenager, "to say no to the Republican agenda."Someday, he says, he hopes to be a union organizer.'

Then, in early 2014, Archerpenned an article for a Communist Party USA newsletter, At the time,he was the Tennessee leader of another communist group, "Party of Communists USA."

"We are duty bound to provide a challenge to the far-right agenda, be it republicans or democrats who are fostering it," he wrote in the newsletter. "We must build a strong and independent communist party. A party capable of leading the working class into a new phase of struggle against the increasingly vicious far-right agenda."

Archer said it was his growing discontent with economic decline that pushed him from one side of the political spectrum to the other beginning in 2015.

"I broke out of that mold and embraced social conservatism and nationalism along with populism," he said.

The Southern people have a right to be the majority group in their own homeland, and measures must be taken to combat the demographic decline of indigenous Southerners, he said. Anything less is genocide.

Archer added that he doesn't consider Native Americans, whom he's proud whites "conquered," to be "indigenous southerners."

As a teenager in the Tri-Cities, Archer joined Occupy Johnson City with a passion for righting wrongs but seemed to display a penchant for violence that unnerved some other members of the group.

"He always wanted to talk about need for armed self-defense in a situation that didn't really call for it, said Dennis Prater, who was then an adjunct instructor at ETSU. He met Archer when whe was still in high school and they were in Occupy Johnson City together. "Around 2014, he started getting kind of obsessed with (Soviet revolutionary Joseph) Stalin and this North Korean ethnic separatist group. He was making a lot of ice-pick jokes, a reference to Soviet Marxist leader Leon Trotsky, who opposed Stalin and was assassinated with an ice ax at Stalins direction.

Another Occupy Johnson City member, Heidi Davis, said Archer ramped up his calls to incite violence shortly after the Trayvon Martin demonstration. It was around that time, she said, he began to pull away from the group.

Counter-protestors chant during a protest for the removal of a Confederate monument in Fort Sanders along 17th Street in Knoxville, Tennessee on Saturday, August 26, 2017.(Photo: Calvin Mattheis, Knoxville News Sentinel)

"We told him we wouldn't feed into it, she said. "We tried to talk to him about his actions and tried to curb him becoming radicalized, but it didn't work."

Archer eventually stopped coming to group meetings at all.

Occupy Johnson City members later learned Archer was running an Appalachian white nationalist web page. That eventually led him to the white nationalist Traditionalist Workers Party and League of the South, which Southern Poverty Law Center has designated a Neo-Confederate hate group.

Archer's cousin Shannon said hes puzzled by his family member's newfound ideology.

"He's always been really into the government thing, Shannon Archer said. But this is erratic, like all of the sudden, so I don't know.

The white nationalists seem to be OK with him being violent," Davis said, "and we weren't. I don't think he actually cares about the politics he is spouting."

Nina Fefferman, an associate professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee, has studied how social behaviors in grassroots organizations can make members susceptible to radicalization.

"It's not clear how each specific person would make that transition," she said, but studies suggest that when groups of people who support each other in increasingly radical beliefs are also being constantly confronted with an opposing viewpoint, the groups are more likely to become radical.

"You have kind of a perfect storm of escalating radicalization," Fefferman said.

Fefferman said that trying to convince an opposition group that its beliefs are wrong may be counterproductive.

The view on 17th Street in Fort Sanders 20 minutes before the demonstration began contained almost all counter protesters.(Photo: Rachel Ohm/News Sentinel)

"Theoretically, if both sides actually kind of left each other alone, you'd end up with societies that were utterly incapable of dealing with each other, but not exactly radicalized against each other," she said. "So, instead of arguing to change someone's mind, it is more beneficial to argue to say that the beliefs are not something that your society can tolerate.

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Outspoken East Tennessee white nationalist at Fort Sanders rally once active in Occupy, communist groups - Knoxville News Sentinel

A cover-up, did I hear someone say?

A game of passing the buck and obfuscation is going on in the controversy surrounding the severe beating with a steel pipe of Whitby teen Dafonte Miller by off-duty Toronto police officer Michael Theriault and his brother, Christian.

On August 16, at a press conference held at Queens Park by a coalition of community groups and activists,Millers lawyer, Julian Falconer, announced the filing of a formal complaint on behalf of his client with the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD) alleging that Toronto and Durham police tried to conceal the attack.

The complaint alleges the police forces blindly accepted the brothers accounts of what happened and that Theriaults father, John, a detective with the Toronto Police Services Professional Standards unit, made the call not to contact the provinces Special Investigations Unit (SIU), the independent civilian agency that investigates serious incidents involving police.

I was part of the group at the press conference, which included Noa Mendelsohn Aviv, acting executive director of Canadian Civil Liberties Association, and Renu Mandhane, chief commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, calling on the Attorney General to immediately implement recommendations made by Justice Michael Tulloch on police oversight to the province in March. Tullochs report recommends clarity around language related to notification of the SIU as well as the police duty to co-operate in SIU investigations. Three decades after the units creation following the shooting deaths of a number of Black men by Toronto police, were somehow still debating the issue.

The attack on Miller, which Falconer has described as gratuitous, brutal and unprovoked Miller will need to have an eye surgically removed was reported to the SIU by Falconer four months after the fact. And only then after charges laid against Miller after the incident were withdrawn by the Crown.

Theriault has since been charged with one count each of aggravated assault, assault with a weapon, and public mischief for his part in the beating and then (allegedly) lying about what happened to Durham police when they were called by Miller (and reportedly two other witnesses) to the scene.

Toronto Police chief Mark Saunders has decided to bring in the Waterloo Regional Police Service to conduct a review of Toronto polices handling of the incident and why the SIU wasnt called as per provincial protocol. The Toronto Police Services Board has chosen to hide behind Saunders's reviewrather than demand a public accounting by the chief.

Board chair Andy Pringle has claimed the decision to call in Waterloo police was based on the fact there were different versions of why the incident was not reported to the SIU.But its doubtful senior officers who may have had a hand in this scandal will be disciplined.

Some 15 officers of the Durham Regional Police Service attended the scene. A Toronto police officer was also reportedly present.Durham police claim that they informed the Toronto Police Service that it was their responsibility to notify the SIU.Whatever. The matter remained under wraps and Theriault carried on as a police officer as if nothing had happened.

No information has been forthcoming, for example, as to whether Professional Standards asked any questions, interviewed Theriault, put him on suspension or re-assigned him to administrative duties, pending an investigation.

What is known about the incident bears close resemblance to an act of vigilantism like what happened to Trayvon Martin in Sandford, Florida, on February 26, 2012, and sparked protests across the U.S.

Martin, a Black teenager on holidays, was walking down the street in an affluent, gated community where he was visiting relatives. George Zimmerman, the areas neighbourhood watch coordinator, became suspicious of this stranger and challenged him. He also called the local police.

But instead of waiting for police to arrive he tackled Martin and, in the struggle that followed, shot and killed the 17-year-old.Though Zimmerman was acquitted, the fact remains that a Black youth was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He paid with his life.

Miller was walking with friends in a neighbourhood in Ajax in December 2016 when he was confronted by Theriault and his brother at approximately 3 am.

Conflicting media reports suggest the Theriaults confronted Miller about change allegedly stolen from their fathers car.Theriault reportedly identified himself as a police officer more than once during the incident.

Did the Durham cops who eventually arrived on the scene conduct a full investigation of the incident?Or did they decide that Theriault had acted in accordance with the law that Stephen Harper enacted in 2012 after what happened to David Chen, the owner of Lucky Moose Food Mart in Torontos Chinatown?

In 2010, Chen had caught and tied up a man he suspected of repeat shoplifting and tossed him in a delivery van while waiting for the police. Following its investigation, Toronto police charged Chen with kidnapping.

This caused a national furor and resulted in the law that came into effect in June 2012, empowering private citizens to arrest a suspect when caught within a reasonable time after an alleged crime.

It would be ironic if the Chen law was officer Theriaults justification for his action.

While the Chen law allows people to take reasonable actions to protect themselves, their family and their property, it isup to a judge to decide if the individuals action was reasonable in the circumstances.

Durham policecharged Miller, suggesting they concluded that officer Theriault was justified in assaulting Miller.

This is strange. Chen was charged. So was Toronto restaurant owner Naveen Polapady, who went after someone with a broom handle in August 2011. Polapady accused the man of repeatedly trying to steal from his restaurant and claimed that he got no help from the police despite repeated reports.

Another issue: after Durham police informed Toronto police, which is not disputed or denied, what action did it take on officer Theriaults treatment of Miller?

Saunders has strenuously denied that there was any cover-up. In which case, this was either gross incompetence or the fraternity of the blue line acting like the three proverbial monkeys who saw no evil, heard no evil and spoke no evil about a brother officers conduct.

The basic, undisputed fact established by the SIU investigation is that the Theriaults actions merit criminal charges.

Theriault was off-duty and, as a Toronto cop, out of his jurisdiction.

If Miller had, indeed, been suspected of theft, the right course would have been to call the police just as the Toronto police told David Chen and Naveen Polapady. As a police officer, Michael Theriault would have known this well.

You would have expected that both police service boards Durham and Toronto would have taken a dim view of this.

That expectation would be in keeping with the report of a previous independent review on behalf of the police chief the review of former Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci into police interactions with people in crisis. In that report, Iacobucci spoke at length about the kind of people who should be working for the police service.

The police service claims it has implemented the Iacobucci report. Its kid-glove treatment of Theriault makes you doubt that.

No one has said how quickly Waterloo polices review will be conducted or whether its scope will include not only the conduct of Theriault but also those who first heard about his actions and apparently did nothing about it.

The Police Services Act Regulation 267/10 states that a chief of police shall cause an investigation to be conducted forthwith into any incident with respect to which the SIU has been notified. And, further, that the chief shall report his or her findings and any action taken or recommended to be taken to the board within 30 days after the SIU director advises the chief of police that he or she has reported the results of the SIUs investigation to the Attorney General.

Its been almost two months since the SIU announced the laying of charges against Theriault on July 17.

Its not hard to understand why many in the community lack confidence that anything will come from the injection of another force to conduct a review.

Alok Mukherjee served as chair of the Toronto Police Services Board from 2005 to 2015. He is a distinguished visiting professor at Ryerson University.

news@nowtoronto.com | @nowtoronto

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Was police beating of Black teen Dafonte Miller an act of vigilantism? - NOW Magazine

The opening scene of the new season of American Horror Story, appropriately subtitled Cult, is set on US election night, in November of 2016. A diverse group of liberals (including a lesbian couple, an Asian-American couple, and a black woman) watch MSNBC, nervously awaiting the results. Meanwhile, a Cheeto-munching young, white alt-right type, alone on his couch in another home, stares at Fox News.

When the race is called for Donald Trump, the liberals are in shock: I wont believe anything until I hear Rachel Maddow say it, shes the only one I trust, one deadpans.

Meanwhile, the far-right man celebrates by humping his TV to chants of USA, USA.

In February, American Horror Story creator Ryan Murphy revealed that the new season of his anthology series on FX would be about the 2016 US presidential election. Since then, Murphy and FX have been cagey about how much, exactly, the show will deal with the contentious election.

After the first three episodes, its clear that the answer is: a lot.

American Horror Story: Cult is perhaps the least subtle political satire ever made, but thats probably the point. In post-Trump America, theres no time for subtlety. The story, as Murphys series often do, becomes progressively more ridiculous. A cult of homicidal people in clown masks wreak havoc across an affluent Michigan suburb. A gerbil explodes in the microwave. The phrase, a lesbian George Zimmerman, is uttered.

But beneath the over-the-top antics and the shows rote home invasion and psychological thriller tropes, is an engaging meditation on fearhow it plays tricks on the mind, how it pits human beings against one another, how it wins elections.

Cult is the only season of the show so far that doesnt feature some kind of supernatural element. All the horror is steeped in real-life fears, ones that have been brought further into the light, for many, since Trump became president of the United States: emboldened racists, attacks on minorities, and the deterioration of human decency.

It doesnt feature Trump or Hillary Clinton as characters, but it might as well. A right-wing man, strengthened by Trumps victory, decides to run for city council on a platform of inciting fear. Played by American Horror Story regular Evan Peters, he answers the question, What if the Joker from Batman was also a white nationalist? His philosophy is that fear is a good thing, that it sets us free, shows us who we really are (or who we yearn to be). Hes unhinged, but also charismatic, and quickly attracts a team of damaged souls as his groupies.

But Cult isnt just a parody of the racist and xenophobic contingent of Americans who have felt emboldened by Trumps victory. The show is also critical of oversensitive, egotistical liberal Americans, ones who might display an exterior of compassion and inclusivity but are part of the problem thats dividing the country further into political cults.

Sarah Paulson, another American Horror Story veteran, plays one half of the shows stereotypical progressive couplelesbians who refuse to allow their young son to give his pet a cisnormative name. Shes a guilt-ridden Jill Stein voter whos deeply triggered by Trumps win and begins to succumb to her various anxieties and phobias (one of which is, of course, a fear of clowns). Go to hell Huffington Post, fuck you Nate Silver, she says, before she starts going crazy.

Her psychologists advice for dealing with the anxiety brought on by Trump is to check out of the world and into your life, but the demonic clown cultboth real and imaginarymakes that difficult. Therapy is tough when The Purge is happening outside of your home every night.

Whats unique about Murphys show, apart from its signature campy style, is its timing. Its not satirizing long-past history, its satirizing this precise moment in time, what Americans are living through right now.

Saturday Night Live and other sketch and talk shows parse and mock the latest news. But unlike American Horror Story, those shows traffic in caricature, skewering politicians, government leaders, and public figures. Murphys show targets the vanities and self-deceptions of the rest of usshowing how were all complicit in the horror that is modern American politics.

The show works best when its doing that: turning the aftermath of the 2016 US presidential election into a personal horror story. Cult is not what American Horror Fans might be used to, but its the scariest nightmare Murphy has conjured up yet.

American Horror Story: Cult premieres Sept. 5 on FX.

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The new 'American Horror Story' is a disturbing satire of liberal fears in Trump's America - Quartz

Acts of kindness have been seen in the waters of Houstonand the latest has warmed the hearts of social media.

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From Trae Tha Truth to reporters and jet-ski ownerscoming to the aid of evacuees, the courageous acts have proven just how big the heart really is. A group of teenagers continued the vibe this week when they helped an elderly woman pull her car out of a floodedravine. The video was shared widely on Twitter by writer Matthew A. Cherry.

With the hashtag #IAmNotYourStereotype, the director points out how their attire should never be connected to negative intentions. The death of Trayvon Martin brought to light racist stereotypes connected to African-Americans, when the teens hoodie was called suspicious by his killer George Zimmerman. By defying stereotypes in the most troublesome moment of the year, the teens have been labeled heroes.

As the group of teens push the car out of the flooded ravine, the cameraman assures her safety. You good maam? We got you though, the teen is heard is saying. We [have] to stick together.

As the death tolls reached 39, fellow Houston natives have tried to help their neighbors any way they can. This included a mattress store owner turning his retail space into a shelter, dozens of boat owners searching for people in flooded homes and celeb natives raising money by the millions.

READ Questions That Need Answers: Heres What We Need To Know About Hurricane Harvey And The Relief Efforts

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Black Superheroes In Hoodies Help Elderly Woman Trapped In Hurricane Harvey - Vibe

Complaints are growing louder that "Black Lives Matter" lawn signs are being vandalized and disappearing from yards around Evanston.

But without video cameras or someone witnessing the crime, both a city alderman and a police commander say lawn sign destruction is difficult to prosecute.

"I asked our problem solving team to make it a priority," said Ald. Tom Suffredin, 6th Ward, who has heard residents in his ward complain of yard sign vandalism and theft. "I take it very seriously."

The hashtag "#BlackLivesMatter" started circulating following the acquittal of George Zimmerman, a night watchman at a residential community, in the shooting death of African American teen Trayvon Martin in Florida in 2012. It grew into a national movement in 2014, after the fatal shooting of 18-year old Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.

Black Lives Matter is now an organization as well as a movement.

It is "working for the validity of Black life," according to the organization's website.

"When we say Black Lives Matter, we are broadening the conversation around state violence to include all of the ways in which Black people are intentionally left powerless at the hands of the state," the website reads.

Suffredin said he listens when residents tell him how they feel following the affront to their personal property.

The alderman also noted that the vandalism hasn't been restricted to the Black Lives Matter signs. Before the November 2016 presidential election, one resident found his Trump candidate yard sign had been set on fire.

The Black Lives Matter yard signs began popping up in Chicago area about the same time as the protests that followed the Ferguson shooting, supporters said.

At Lake Street Church in Evanston, member Betsy Wilson said she started putting them out in 2015. About 12 signs went missing that first summer, she said.

But she continued to replace them, and said only one has been stolen so far this summer.

At first "they were disappearing every week or so," Smith said.

But some Evanston residents say the vandalism and theft appear to be getting personal.

Evanston/Skokie School Dist. 65 school board member and 8th Ward resident Anya Wiley Tanyavutti said a woman she didn't recognize "violently hit and stomped" on her Black Lives Matter sign in broad daylight.

The vandalism occurred shortly after her family had gathered in the lawn nearby, she said.

"We tried to catch up with her to ask why she did it. She ran," Tanyavutti said.

Another neighbor snapped photos of the suspect, Tanyavutti said, but she has not been identified.

"It seems unusual that it would be one person" responsible for all of the sign vandalism, Tanyavutti said. "A lot of people are concerned."

Evanston police Commander Joseph Dugan confirmed Tanyavutti's account.

Yard signs are common targets for vandalism, he said, and many Evanston residents display Black Lives Matter signs in their yards. But he said the damage and thefts are not being reported at a higher-than-usual rate.

"Driving around, there's a lot of support for that cause around town," Dugan said, as well as a few yard signs displayed for other causes right now. That could make the Black Lives Matter signs more attractive targets for vandals.

In Skokie, just over the northwest border with Evanston, resident Corrie Wallace, 44, said she put out her first Black Lives Matter sign about a year ago. She soon started walking outside to find it "laying face down," she said. The same thing happened to the sign in her parents' yard nearby.

Then last fall, Wallace said she received an anonymous letter saying that "Black Lives Matter is anti-Israel," and asking her to change it to read "Black Lives Count."

She didn't, and instead called the police before adding a sign that reads "Hate Has No Home Here," as well as another sign describing her values of tolerance and inclusivity.

Last month, she said she woke up to find the Black Lives Matter sign was stolen. A couple weeks ago, the Hate Has No Home Here sign was gone, too.

"It's beyond frustrating," Wallace said. "It's the principle that you shouldn't touch other people's stuff."

The situation is especially hurtful, Wallace said, as her parents, an interracial couple, moved to the Evanston/Skokie area from Mississippi because they felt it was a place where their marriage would be accepted.

"Whoever is doing this, I think it's very intentional," Wallace said. "The hatred that's associated with black people is real."

gbookwalter@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @GenevieveBook

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Evanston residents condemn theft, vandalism of 'Black Lives Matter' signs - Chicago Tribune