Local hate groups clash

Neo Nazis vs Zionists with peace activists caught in the middle

I used to attend events where I was the only one with a camera. Now everyone takes pictures all the time everywhere and for no reason. I was at one event a few years ago. There was a conflict between an especially dull group of alt-right oldsters on one side and an odd alliance of anarchists and admirers of the Israeli state on the other. I was just there to see the protest, but, at my age, people would either think I was a Nazi or a Zionist and I don't want anyone suspecting for even for a second that I was either. But I was caught in a crossfire. Everyone had a camera and they were all taking pictures.

The group had been a pacifist discussion group on campus. They were anti-war in general, and, naturally, were highly critical of Israel. This made them the target of constant attacks by Zionists who, of course, made baseless accusations of anti-Semitism. This resulted in the group being driven from a couple of churches they used to meet at.

The head of the group was a retired professor named Orville who was able to get them classroom space for their meetings. Orville was nearly a hundred-years-old. In response to the continuing attacks on them by Israel-lovers, he made the unfortunate decision to change it from a pacifist group to a free speech group. They'd talk about anything.

All the false accusations of anti-Semitism had attracted actual anti-Semites to join. The new focus on free speech, the informal structure of the organization and its leader being way past his prime conspired to turn it into an alt-right discussion group. It came out that a woman in the group was acting as a caregiver for Orville. She was sleeping with a married neo-Nazi who was also a member, and that gave them undue influence over him.

This was revealed by another member of the group, a retired religious studies professor named Billy. He was old, white and American as you would imagine, but he had converted to Hinduism. But he was no George Harrison or Shirley MacLaine. He was a right-wing Hindu and had enthusiastically adopted the Hindu tendency of morbid, violent hatred for Muslims.

The group disbanded when the founder died. Three of them announced that they were forming a new group to focus on hating Muslims and they were never heard from again.

One was an impoverished retiree who never had a real job. He lived on Social Security and had self-published a book he copied and pasted together. The book was anti-Muslim. He was Jewish but was a Holocaust denier. Another was a Lithuanian immigrant. He claimed he was kicked out of the Soviet Union when they found out he worked for the CIA. Seems like they would have arrested him. He's now a "white separatist". I don't know what's keeping him going back to Lithuania which is nearly all-white.

And the other was Billy, the Hindu convert. A quick Google search revealed that he was written up in a book called Re-Framers: 170 Eccentric, Visionary and Patriotic Proposals to Rewrite the U.S. Constitution. He has proposed 100 amendments to the constitution, including one to legalize racial profiling, especially of Muslims, and one to criminalize homosexuality.