Posted: December 16, 2010 at 6:48 am

V for Vendetta, Guy Fawkes, Extremism, and a School Board Shooting

During the recent 2010 campaign in Montana, the ultra-right-wing legislative candidate Derek Skees and his gang were accused of extremism because they appeared at Tea Party rallies wearing masks of Guy Fawkes. Fawkes, you will recall, was an English revolutionary and terrorist who tried to blow up the British parliament.

It wasn’t just Skees. The Fawkes fad was a nationwide phenomenon among the far-right, and even the Republican party got into the action. The Republican Governor’s Association, in its fundraising material, featured Fawkes-mask wearers, like in this scary video named “Remember November” by the RGA, the title being a dual reference to election day and to the November 1605 plot by Fawkes to assassinate every member of Parliament. Throughout 2010, Fawkes masks were popping up around the right-wing circuit, on Youtube, and at Tea Party rallies. Time Magazine ran a brief snippet on the whole Fawkes business, but that was about it as far as media coverage.

When confronted about this apparent endorsement of anti-government violence (which is a sensitive subject in the Flathead, where some militia members reside in the deep countryside), Skees brushed off the criticism and provided a clever answer: he and his right-wing pals who pay homage to Fawkes are not extremists, and don’t condone revolutionary upheaval such as Fawkes practiced. Rather, they are just big fans of the movie “V for Vendetta,” in which the protagonist freedom-fighter wears a Fawkes mask himself (and blows things and people up, but as a good guy).

So what shall we make, then, of the deranged and angry gunman who walked into a school board meeting in Panama City, Florida, spray painted a giant red V with a circle around it (the logo for the movie) on the wall, ranted briefly about taxes and his wife losing her job, and then opened fire on the school board members? Police later found hard-core anti-government propaganda at the gunman’s house, and also discovered that his entire Facebook page was devoted to “V for Vendetta”.

In the immediate reporting after the shooting, virtually no major news sites made the connection between the Movie, the Masks, the Right Wing and the shooter, but it is very real.

Time and again, whether at abortion clinics or in Oklahoma City or now at a school board meeting, we see the end results of the right-wing’s number one reason for existence: make ignorant, simple people as enraged at the government as possible.

Of course, when someone acts violently out of his anti-government fever as this man did, and a liberal blogger makes the claim that the Right Wing’s constant efforts at incitement are partially to blame, conservatives will promptly declare outrage not at the shooter, but at the Left.

Posted: September 29, 2010 at 12:48 pm

A Hard-Hitting Ad Appears in Whitefish

Here’s an ad from today’s Flathead Beacon, paid for by a community group called the North Valley PAC, exposing some alarming and deeply disturbing aspects of a right-wing candidate named Derek Skees whom I’ve written about before.

Skees is running for the open Whitefish legislative seat being vacated by Mike Jopek . It’s a competitive district and during the last several campaigns, Jopek himself got ruthless amounts of negative media dropped on him by various third party groups, calling him every name under the sun, most of it blatantly false.

And now Republicans are getting a little of their own medicine, except it appears that in this instance what is being said about their candidate is true.

The ad makes three simple claims. The first claim is that Skees uses racist imagery. It cites the well-known incident last May in which Skees wore a Confederate flag in public–a symbol of racism–to the local Memorial Day parade of all places.

Skees then wrote an e-mail bragging about it, and it got around. In the e-mail he says, among other things, that 1) he and his family enjoy wearing the confederate flag, 2) Lincoln had no right to meddle in the South’s affairs, 3) yes, slavery was bad, but 4) the South could do, constitutionally, what it wanted, including break away from the United States without interference from the Union [and thus, I presume, continue on with slavery].

Secondly, the ad claims that Skees’ campaign has connections to anti-Semitic activity because the Skees campaign treasurer was one of the major underwriters of a recent conference at which Red Beckman, the notorious anti-Semitic writer, was a headline speaker.

Indeed, Rick Breckenridge, the right-wing nutjub extraordinaire who is listed on Skees’ campaign website as his treasurer (and who was defeated by loyal Cowgirl reader Will Deschamps for the GOP Chair spot a few years back), was a platinum sponsor of the “Liberty Conference 2010.” This conference got on the radar of the Montana Human Rights Network and other national hate-watch groups, not only because of Beckman’s presence but also the presence of two or three other scary figures who dabble in white supremacy or other Far Right endeavors.

As for Beckman, he has written that during the Holocaust, Jews got their comeuppance because they “worship Satan” and are “the evil anti-Christ religion.” Nice guy. Also, the mailer doesn’t mention it, but a tipster tells me that there are photos and other proof that Skees was in attendance at the conference.

The third allegation, accompanied by an incriminating photo, is that Skees and his pals run around wearing masks of Guy Fawkes.

This is creepy. Fawkes is the man who tried to assassinate every member of British Parliament in the 17th century and take over the government, and is now the favorite icon of the Far Right. Skees has obviously forgotten (or does not care) that a few years ago an armed militia, Project 7, almost pulled off a plot to assassinate dozens of judges and other officials in Whitefish and Kalispell.

This Fawkes business also puts in perspective a police report from Whitefish a few weeks ago, where a frantic woman called the cops because a campaign worker (almost certainly from the Skees campaign) knocked on her door brandishing a side arm.

Skees is a questionable character in other respects. He teaches a course on The 5000 Year Leap, a wacked-out treatise which to me is veiled white supremacy. He also goes around telling people that God told him to become a state legislator.

If God reads the Flathead Beacon, God will soon be distancing herself from Derek Skees. As will mortals too. I’d say from here on out, nobody of any repute will give him money, let alone open the door for him. And the GOP will have to walk away or risk having to defend whatever Skees does or says. No doubt Skees will pull the old “they’re lying about me!” response, but I don’t see where the wiggle room is. You wear a confederate flag, you live with the consequences. You go to a conference where a guy like Beckman is a headliner, you own it (like Obama owning Jeremiah Wright. Remember that, Derek?). You show up in a Mask of an anti-government assassin in a place that is especially sensitive to the implications the mask carries with it, you own that too.

Great work on the part of Steve Braun, the organizer of the North Valley group, who is showing that progressives in Montana aren’t afraid to take the gloves off and call a nut a nut.

And send a donation to Will Hammerquist, Skees’ opponent, who has been spending his time not consorting with extremists, but supporting Whitefish’s vital tourist economy and jobs by protecting two of it’s most important assets–Glacier Park and the Flathead River–from pollution from Canadian mining companies.