Let’s defeat the white supremacists and put Syed Taj in Congress representing Michigan’s 11th district

It’s taken ten years, but the neo-Nazis have finally discovered this website. It would seem they didn’t like something that I’d written a few days ago exposing the background of a white supremacist by the name of Daniel Johnson, who is running to represent Michigan’s 11th district in Congress. And they’ve been leaving comments all evening, both on my site, and that of Stormfront.org. (You can read all of their comments by clicking on that first link.)

One Stormfront commenter went so far as to say that, as a race traitor, I was the same as “a child molester” and deserved “all the same recrimination.” Another encouraged fellow white nationalists to vote for the Republican candidate in the race, and not Johnson, who is running as a member of the Natural Law Party. “I know he’s probably a great guy,” this individual said of Johnson, “but please don’t vote for him. The Republican candidate, Kerry Bentivolio, is one of the best major candidates running for national office this year. We can’t let Syed Taj win. And, no, I’m not being like one of those morons who says ‘any vote for a 3rd party is a vote for Obama’. In the Presidential race, by voting Republican or Democrat you’re voting for ZOG. By voting for Kerry Bentivolio, you’re voting against ZOG.” ZOG, for those of you who aren’t up on your conspiracy theories, is shorthand in white power circles for the Zionist Occupation Government, which, according to the far right, has been seeking to control the entire earth since before Henry Ford first started publishing The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Bentivolio, you might be interested to know, has been described in the press as “a reindeer rancher some party officials have labeled as an extremist.” And, when they say “party,” they don’t mean the Democratic party. They mean the Republican party. (Yes, Republicans consider him to be an extremist.) Bentivolio is an acolyte of Ron Paul, who’s campaign is being funded to a large extent by Liberty for All, a Texas-based organization with ties to Paul. I haven’t seen polling data, but, according to today’s Detroit Free Press, he’s favored to win the heavily Republican district, which, until recently, had been thought to be an easy win for Thaddeus McCotter. McCotter, though, as you may remember, was recently forced to drop out of the race, after it was discovered that a majority of the signatures submitted with his nominating petition had been forged. Bentivolio, who had sought to challenge McCotter in the primary, it would seem, was simply in the right place at the right time, when McCotter was forced out. The Republican establishment tried desperately to field a more palatable candidate at the last minute to go up against him, but couldn’t. (Bentivolio, before turning to politics, was a teacher at Fowlerville High School, a job which he was apparently forced to leave after an investigation involving his repeated intimidation of students.)

By my count, there have been eight comments left on this site so far by white nationalists, and I’d like to ask you to join me in contributing a dollar for each one of them to the campaign of Syed Taj, the man running against Bentivolio and Johnson. Actually, if you could, I’d like to ask for you to give a dollar for every comment left over the 24 hour period ending tomorrow at 8:00 PM, which is what I intend to do. Can I count on you to do that? As I think I made pretty clear at the top of the post, it’s imperative that Taj win this race, and I think that we could really make a big impact, not only by directing a few dollars to Taj’s campaign, but by reaching out to our friends and neighbors in Plymouth, Canton, Livonia, Westland, Novi, Milford, South Lyon, and Wayne, and letting them know about Bentivolio, Johnson and the men, like those who gather at Stormfront.org, who support them.

You can make donations to Taj either through his site (see link above), or through Act Blue.

And please share this post by way of Facebook. As the election is only a month away, we haven’t much time to get the word out.

update: OK, the number of white nationalist comments has doubled since I started writing this post. As of midnight, there are 15 comments from the members of Stromfront.

This entry was posted in Civil Liberties, Michigan, Politics and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

27 Comments

  1. Posted October 2, 2012 at 10:59 pm | Permalink

    It’s now $15.

  2. Edward
    Posted October 3, 2012 at 5:54 am | Permalink

    I had no idea that Bentivolio was such a radical. I was focused on Johnson. This is a more important race than I thought.

  3. Posted October 3, 2012 at 6:49 am | Permalink

    You delete em? Aw man…
    I popped corn and errythn.
    So this blog is going back to being informative/reliable?
    Shit. Now I gotta buy a TV.

  4. John Thomas Allcock
    Posted October 3, 2012 at 7:55 am | Permalink

    I’ d post a comment, but I haven’ t a fucking clue what you are on about. What is a, “white power group”, and how are they different to a, “black power group”, something you don’ t seem to ever concern yourself with?
    And what the hell is a white supemscist? Is that like a jewish supremacist who claims he belongs to the chosen people of God?
    Sorry to appear ignorant, but I’ ve never met any people belonging to either of the two groups you single out, so I think you will appreciate my position.
    Oh, one last question if I may. Is the site, ” Stormfront”, the one who’ s members proclaim they are proud to be white? I quite like that sentiment actually. If you ain’ t proud of who you are, then how can you be proud of anything, like our achievements in life and the achievements of our kith and kin? Or maybe you think pride is a bad thing? Should we whip ourselves if we feel pride?
    Hope you can help.

  5. site admin
    Posted October 3, 2012 at 8:11 am | Permalink

    The comments in question have not been deleted. They can be found in the earlier thread concerning Daniel Johnson.

    http://markmaynard.com/2012/09/candidate-for-michigans-11th-congressional-district-asks-if-youre-concerned-about-the-future-of-the-white-race/

  6. Megan
    Posted October 3, 2012 at 8:58 am | Permalink

    Donated!

  7. Mr. X
    Posted October 3, 2012 at 9:07 am | Permalink

    Donated.

  8. Meta
    Posted October 3, 2012 at 9:36 am | Permalink

    Liberty For All is the PAC of a 21 year old Libertarian millionaire. The following is from the Daily Beast.

    In the hard-fought race to represent Michigan’s 11th Congressional District, Democrat Syed Taj is taking on a kid.

    Technically, his opponent is Kerry Bentivolio, the 60-year-old Republican contender who won a primary to fill the seat of Thaddeus McCotter, the GOP congressman who served for close to three decades before resigning in July after a scandal involving fraudulent primary signatures.

    But when Taj looks at Bentivolio, he sees John Ramsey, a 21-year-old millionaire. Ramsey, who is finishing his undergraduate degree through online courses at Stephen F. Austin University in Texas, has poured $2.7 million of an inherited fortune into Liberty for All, the super PAC he cofounded in late 2011. LFA has already worked on the election of one Republican congressman, Thomas Massie, who won a primary election in Kentucky, and has so far plowed more than $660,000 into helping Bentivolio.

    There are no published polls of the race for the 11th Congressional District, but Thomas Kerr, a local political operative who has worked mostly with Democrats, says the race is “neck and neck” and that Bentivolio would “definitely not” be putting up such a strong fight were it not for the outside money. “He’s just one of those candidates who throws his name in the ring every time there’s an election for something. And he just got lucky this time.”

    In the post–Citizens United age of dark-money democracy, Ramsey may be the youngest super-PAC financier in the country—some have taken to calling Liberty for All the “Brat PAC”—but like everyone from David Koch to George Soros, his goal is straightforward. “I wanted to create a professional organization that is dedicated to winning elections,” Ramsey said in an interview.

    Ramsey said that he and Preston Bates, his 23-year-old executive director, founded LFA to get more “liberty movement” candidates elected to both state and federal offices. Ramsey approached prominent libertarians, including Cato Institute executive director David Boaz and Thomas E. Woods, Jr., a fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He even met with the libertarian granddaddy himself, Ron Paul, at Paul’s home.

    LFA’s first candidate was the Tea Party–backed Massie, who won a hard-fought primary for a House seat in May. After that race, Ramsey shifted his focus to Michigan, where he and Bates selected Bentivolio out of the Republican field after a close inspection of his libertarian bona fides.

    “Do they match our values?” Ramsey said of LFA’s method of choosing which candidates to back. “That’s the first thing. The second thing is, can they win? It would be nice to go knock Nancy Pelosi or somebody like that out of office with a good liberty candidate, but that’s just not realistic.”

    Bentivolio—who is a reindeer farmer, Vietnam veteran, and former school teacher who acted in a low-budget film called The President Goes to Heaven—is enough of a character to raise an eyebrow or two, even in conservative circles. But Ramsey was behind him quickly.

    “I’ll tell you, the results speak for themselves,” Ramsey said. “The fact of the matter is we’ve been in operation for nine months and we have two election victories where we were the deciding factor.”

    The only problem: the candidates themselves don’t necessarily agree.

    Massie, on whom LFA spent about two dollars for every one spent by his opponents, isn’t convinced of Ramsey’s influence. “I didn’t know about the super PAC, I didn’t know that it existed when I got into the race in January,” Massie said in an interview. Believing that high-level Republican endorsements would be the deciding factor in his race, Massie was less interested in attracting large amounts of cash.

    Even so, Liberty for All recruited volunteers to help support Massie’s run out of an office in Bellevue, Ky. As the election neared, mainstream Republicans such as former senator Jim Bunning came out for Massie’s rival, while Massie himself secured the endorsement of Tea Party favorite Rand Paul.

    In the end, Massie said, the endorsements canceled each other out, and LFA’s role was not decisive. “We would have won if nobody had endorsed anybody,” he said.

    Bates disagrees. “People don’t vote because someone endorsed people. People vote because they have access to information,” he said. “I think it’s undeniable that we were the difference maker in this campaign.”

    Meanwhile, Taj remains fully convinced of the power of Ramsey’s purse. Bentivolio would not even be a contender in the Michigan race, Taj said, were it not for the outside funds the Republican is receiving. “My district is not that far gone, not that extreme,” Taj said. “We have Democrats, we have Republicans, but they are moderate people.”

    Filings with the Federal Election Commission suggest that Taj may be right. As of the beginning of October, he had received 364 contributions from individual donors for a total of more than $270,000, according to the FEC. Bentivolio has picked up 50 individual contributions totaling close to almost $70,000—but that is less than half of the $168,000 that Liberty for All has spent on behalf of ads for the candidate.

    And even that number is far overshadowed by the $450,000 LFA spent to help knock Bentivolio’s Republican rival, Nancy Cassis, out of the race in August.

    As late as Aug. 1, Cassis, a write-in candidate, was leading Bentivolio 52 percent to 36 percent, according to a Detroit Free Press poll. Between Aug. 3 and the Aug. 7 primary, LFA released at least 7 ads and mailers either supporting Bentivolio or attacking Cassis. While it is not possible to trace a direct line from the ads to the primary result, by the time the final votes were announced, Bentivolio had scooped up twice as many as Cassis.

    Bentivolio initially expressed interest in being interviewed by The Daily Beast, but then stopped responding to requests for comment.

    Rick Tyler, a former adviser for Winning Our Future, the pro–Newt Gingrich super PAC, said it is nearly impossible to judge if a super PAC was responsible for a win or loss after a race is over. “This is a business where, you know, everybody is clamoring for credit, everyone is going to take credit, and it’s very hard in retrospect to determine,” Tyler said.

    Ramsey, who was reluctant to give details about his investments, described himself as a young investor who learned when to buy and sell from his grandfather, Justin Robert Howard, who died in 2010. Choosing a candidate is like picking a good company, he said. “I do look at it as an investment,” Ramsey said.

    Whatever their degree of impact, his methods are not entirely in step with some of the major conservative super PACs, which tend to devote the bulk of their resources directly to beating Democrats. American Crossroads, for example, the influential group with close ties to Karl Rove, has spent $680,000 to support Republicans in 2012 and more than $27 million in efforts to defeat Democrats.

    Liberty for All, on the other hand, has spent no money at all on campaigns aimed at Democrats. The PAC has spent about $803,000 supporting Republican candidates, but more—about $894,000—fighting against other conservatives they did not like, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

    Tyler said there are no rules of thumb on how PACs should use their funds to support candidates. “It’s the wild, wild West, and it should be,” Tyler said.

    While LFA won’t release its internal polling numbers, Bates said that they indicate that the Michigan race remains close. Natalie Mosher, a manager for Taj’s campaign, said that a poll conducted by strategic research company Greenberg Quinlan Rosner a month ago showed Taj ahead by one point. (A project coordinator for Greenberg Quinlan Rosner declined to confirm those numbers, saying the company’s polling results are confidential.)

    No matter who wins, Bates says LFA does not have any plans to slow down soon. Bates said that the PAC is thinking of the current races it is involved in as “trial balloons,” and said they would like to raise $25 million for their super PAC next year to prepare for midterm elections.

    “We view our role as simply a conduit to connect voters with information,” Bates said. “So just like any other amplifier, we wanted to simply just connect people and let them know their choices.”

    Read more:
    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/03/21-year-old-millionaire-buys-his-way-to-political-influence.html

  9. Meta
    Posted October 3, 2012 at 9:42 am | Permalink

    It’s inherited money. The following is from Mother Jones.

    Ramsey incorporated Liberty for All in March, along with Preston Bates, a onetime Democratic state committeeman from Louisville who, like Ramsey, had decided to put off graduation indefinitely to focus on politics. The two met while working on Ron Paul’s presidential campaign in Iowa and saw an opportunity. There are dozens of political action committees across the country dedicated to supporting Ron Paul—Ramsey gave $550 to one of them, Revolution PAC, last fall—but their emphasis on grassroots organizing meant that they were inherently myopic. The idea for Liberty for All, as they envisioned it, was to put together an organization that could think big.

    “We’re the only freedom organization that is focused on winning elections, plural,” Bates says. “They were focused on winning one election and that’s Ron Paul’s campaign. Our [goal] is to become an institution.” They’re hoping to create nonprofit spinoffs devoted to voter education and candidate development. That would give the “Liberty movement”—the term of choice for Paul’s brand of libertarian-infused conservatism—the kind of infrastructure it currently lacks. “I don’t know of frankly any super-PAC that’s doing that,” Bates says. “I would call us more like a party, frankly.” He points to groups like the Democratic National Committee and National Republican Congressional Committee as models.

    The other major difference between Liberty for All and various other Paul-inspired PACs, though, is that Liberty for All has money. When Ramsey’s grandfather passed away in 2010, John and his two siblings became millionaires overnight, inheriting holdings in real estate, timber, natural gas and other industries in separate accounts. Ramsey won’t say how much he has left in the bank, but he’ll open up his checkbook again if necessary.

    Read more:
    http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/05/john-ramsey-liberty-for-all-super-pac

  10. Posted October 3, 2012 at 12:07 pm | Permalink

    The Stormfront discussion is entertaining.

    “I wonder how they figured out he was one of us?”

  11. R2Me2
    Posted October 3, 2012 at 12:25 pm | Permalink

    Maybe it was the phone call he placed to thousands of voters, introducing himself as a white nationalist.

  12. TeacherPatti
    Posted October 3, 2012 at 2:48 pm | Permalink

    There is really nothing wrong with being “proud” of being white, just as there is nothing wrong with wanting “men’s rights”. The problem is that white power groups are all a bunch of racist sacks of shit who, instead of talking up the awesome shit white people have done, go around hating on black people. White people have done some awesome shit, you guys! Cotton gin? White person. Polio vaccine? White person. Vibrator? White person. So sure, you can be proud of being a cracker but I don’t think you have to hate on non-whites to do so.
    (Similarly for the “men’s rights” groups which IME are fronts for misogynists who rant about “feminist views” in colleges. You can certainly want equal rights for all…I just don’t think you have to call me a cunt quite so much to do so)

  13. Posted October 3, 2012 at 3:13 pm | Permalink

    When I was in high school (in Mississippi) I once asked someone why we don’t have “white history month.”

    The response was,

    “Every month is white history month, you fool”

    I was like, “yeah, you’re right.”

  14. Chuck Warpehoski
    Posted October 3, 2012 at 7:40 pm | Permalink

    Count me in.

  15. Just Sleuthing
    Posted October 6, 2012 at 8:47 am | Permalink

    Okay, this is bizarre.

    William Daniel Johnson is a corporate attorney in the Los Angeles area who does seem to have a long history of taking advantage of lax residency requirements to run for Congress in other states.

    The Politics1.com page on Michigan congressional races describes this Daniel Johnson as a “Business Development Manager, USMC Veteran & ’08 Candidate”. http://politics1.com/mi.htm

    A 2008 candidate? In 2008, William Daniel Johnson was running for Los Angeles County superior court judge. A quick look at the Wayback Machine for politics1.com shows that this Daniel Johnson was running as the Libertarian candidate for Michigan’s second congressional district http://web.archive.org/web/20081030150242/http://www.politics1.com/mi.htm and you can follow a link to his website at http://web.archive.org/web/20081029224214/http://danjohnson.lpwm.org/ – yes there’s a photo and this is not William Daniel Johnson. Ballotpedia has a page on Daniel Johnson running in MI-11 at http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Daniel_Johnson_%28Michigan%29 and the photo shown there is definitely William Daniel Johnson the California white supremacist.

    I’m not exactly convinced this Daniel Johnson is the same William Daniel Johnson, but I’m not yet completely convinced he isn’t either. The white supremacist phone message is a big clue that they are the same.

    My best guess right now is that the Daniel Johnson running this year in MI-11 is indeed William Daniel Johnson, but the Dan Johnson who ran in MI-2 in 2008 is not the same person and politics1.com has incorrect information about the current candidate. But who knows?

  16. Me
    Posted October 6, 2012 at 6:31 pm | Permalink

    This is a bunch of garbage innuendo that has no place in American politics.

  17. Posted October 7, 2012 at 10:29 pm | Permalink

    Imagine my disgust when I listened to my voice mails this evening and discovered a campaign message from this pig, going on about “European Americans” and race. I actually had to look him up because I was shocked that someone would just blatantly put that crap in public like that. Syed Taj gets my vote.

  18. Posted October 8, 2012 at 9:22 pm | Permalink

    The final number, by my count, was 26.

  19. atf
    Posted October 9, 2012 at 10:01 am | Permalink

    @TeacherPatti obviously didn’t come up in Ann Arbor schools. The cotton gin was first imagined by a slave, not Eli Whitney. http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi127.htm

  20. atf
    Posted October 9, 2012 at 10:13 am | Permalink

    .. and the reason why white men have dominated the scientific gains in recorded history, is because whiteness has been privileged since colonial times, and maleness an eon longer than that. So Eli Whitney, being a white inventor, could patent and idea that a slave could not. Also written history is created in the image of an oppressor – its been violently whitewashed all the way to the elementary school book. Native American genocide, WWII internment camps, and US occupation of Haiti are hallmarks of our contemporary ignorance because of this.

  21. Jane
    Posted October 10, 2012 at 3:56 pm | Permalink

    Donated!

  22. well hatched
    Posted October 14, 2012 at 7:41 pm | Permalink

    Touche. Sound arguments. Keep up the great effort.

  23. Susie Muffs
    Posted October 25, 2012 at 12:42 am | Permalink

    Imagine a truly divers world without racist white ppepl and how wonderful it could be! There would be no more war or hatred and all the world would live in peace and harmony. I would doughnate my mony to get rid of Nazi but i am on welfare eva since hateful white billionaire republicraps stole my job. Pleez vote Obama 2012!

  24. Posted November 4, 2012 at 10:43 pm | Permalink

    Syed Taj is an extremist Muslim associated with “Council on American-Islamic Relations”. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has been connected to the terrorist organization Hamas, a federal judge said in a July 2009 ruling unsealed last week.

    Why should anyone in this District vote for this pro-Islamic extremist sympathizer?

    Mark, you sound like a Communist agitator.

  25. Posted November 4, 2012 at 10:59 pm | Permalink

    Why don’t you try going and talking to Taj yourself, Rose? I’m sure he’d be happy to speak with you.

  26. Rose
    Posted November 5, 2012 at 2:43 am | Permalink

    @Peter Larson

    Why should I go speak to Syed Taj? I can read his background on my own. Taj admitted accepting money from the CAIR front. And let’s be honest. CAIR is a front for extreme Islamists.

    I would be happier speaking with an American who puts America First! And that is who I am voting for.

  27. Edward
    Posted November 5, 2012 at 6:54 am | Permalink

    From the CAIR website:

    CAIR’s advocacy model is the antithesis of the narrative of anti-American extremists. Indeed, our track record of success solidly repudiates extremist arguments that Muslims cannot get fair treatment in our nation.

    CAIR advocates for American Muslims through the media, government and all legal, traditional avenues available to public interest groups. CAIR staff and volunteers proactively train our community in strategies to improve grassroots ability to take their due roles in civic affairs and redress grievances.

    Our moral position is clear. We unequivocally condemn terrorism. Any group that hurts civilians deserves condemnation. As recently as January, 2009, CAIR’s vigorous condemnation of violence committed in the name of Islam was acknowledged by the United States Institute of Peace in its report “Islamic Peacemaking Since 9/11.”

    We are proud of our principled advocacy for just and peaceful resolutions to conflicts even when that advocacy requires stances that are not viewed as politically correct.

    In truth, however, condemnations alone do not solve problems. That is why CAIR’s moral position, which is prompted by the basic Islamic principle that no one has the right to take innocent life, is backed by action. CAIR has its sent staff to Baghdad to appeal for the release of a kidnapped American journalist; produced anti-terror public service announcements in English, Arabic and Urdu; coordinated an Islamic anti-terror religious ruling (fatwa); raised money for rebuilding churches in the wake of Middle East violence and called on Islamic religious leaders to deliver anti-terror messages in their sermons.

    CAIR has condemned specific terrorist actions against Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Americans, Spaniards, Turks, Israelis, Saudis, Russians, Egyptians, Jordanians, Iraqis, British, and so on.

    CAIR has condemned specific terrorist groups by name. On 3/11/2009, the 5th anniversary of the tragic Madrid attacks, CAIR issued a statement saying, “We unequivocally condemn all acts of terrorism, whether carried out by al-Qa’ida, the Real IRA, FARC, Hamas, ETA, or any other group designated by the U.S. Department of State as a ‘Foreign Terrorist Organization.’”

    In 2007, CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad joined 137 other Muslim leaders and scholars from around the world in sending a first-of-its-kind open letter designed to promote understanding between Muslims and Christians worldwide. The letter, entitled “A Common Word Between Us and You,” was sent to Pope Benedict XVI, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and more than 20 other Christian leaders. Awad is also an original endorser of the Amman Message and its three points of tolerance.

    Anti-American extremists are well aware of our rejection of their views. Following CAIR’s criticism of remarks by an extremist leader, a German blogger noted that some within the “jihadi community…issu[ed] angry rants about the apparent treachery of American Muslims, including specifically the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).” Alleged Tampa Bay extremist Sami Osmakac, who was charged in 2012 with plotting to attack location in Florida, also railed against CAIR.

    We find that our detractors prefer to nitpick—to give a facetious example: “You did not condemn terror against Brazilians, ergo you must support it”—rather than acknowledge our resoundingly clear words and deeds.

    To allow ourselves to focus on promoting a more positive society rather than writing a specific condemnation of every group or addressing murderous behavior toward every ethnic and religious group on the planet, we have adopted a simple, comprehensive message: “We condemn terrorism whenever it happens, wherever it happens, whoever commits it. Period.”

    http://www.cair.com/AboutUs/MisinformationandConspiracyTheoriesAboutCAIR.aspx

4 Trackbacks

  1. […] Re: White Nationalist running for Congress in Michigan Let’s defeat the white supremacists and put Syed Taj in Congress representing Michigan’s… […]

  2. […] http://markmaynard.com/2012/10/lets-defeat-the-white-supremacists-and-put-syed-taj-in-congress-repre…ru78 11th district, adult pornography, congress, democrat, Kerry Bentivolio, kerry bentivolio racist, krazy kerry, Michigan, Republican, u.s. senate, white supremacist […]

  3. […] as I mentioned in my previous post, his extremist, anti-governemnt views seem to be winning him the support of white nationalists. Fortunately for Bentivolio, though, he’s been able to stay in the race thanks to three […]

  4. […] folks shouldn’t vote for either the tea partying Kerry Bentivolio or the white supremacist Daniel Johnson in the race to represent Michigan’s 11th congressional district, but I haven’t really […]

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