SUMMARY: Religious communities across the country expressed shock and sorrow after two weekend congregation attacks. The incidents, at a New York rabbi’s home and a Christian church in Texas, raise concerns that violence toward religious groups may be rising. Tree of Life Congregation's Rabbi Jeffrey Myers and the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention’s Reverend Ted Elmore join Nick Schifrin to discuss.
SUMMARY: According to the FBI, hate crimes are on the rise in the U.S. Studies also suggest white nationalist and white supremacist ideologies are spreading. Derek Black was raised in a household that espoused such beliefs, but during college, his views gradually evolved. Special correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault talks with Black about his journey and the best way to help others find a similar path.
SUMMARY: Violent hate crimes are on the rise in the U.S. and across the globe. As a result, the ways in which hate groups use social media to threaten, galvanize and radicalize are drawing new scrutiny, including from Congress on Tuesday. Amna Nawaz reports on the Capitol Hill discussion and talks to Kristen Clarke of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a national civil rights organization.
SUMMARY: This year, a handful of GOP congressional candidates have openly expressed or supported racist views, opening up a divide in the party over how to address the issue and who Republicans want to be. Lisa Desjardins takes us inside a Virginia Senate race, where candidate Corey Stewart is a polarizing figure.
SUMMARY: Brennan Gilmore filmed the moment when a car plowed into a crowd of protesters in Charlottesville, killing one woman and injuring 19 others. When he made his video public and spoke out to the news media, he became the target of death threats and conspiracy theories. A former foreign service officer and a Democratic campaign aide, Gilmore joins Judy Woodruff to recount his experience.
Update, Aug. 19, 2017:
This story has been updated to include a comment from PayPal.
Update, Aug. 22, 2017:
The name of Taboola's spokesman was removed at the company's request.
Because of its “extreme hostility toward Muslims,” the website Jihadwatch.org is considered an active hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League. The views of the site's director, Robert Spencer, on Islam led the British Home Office to ban him from entering the country in 2013.
But its designation as a hate site hasn't stopped tech companies — including PayPal, Amazon, and Newsmax — from maintaining partnerships with Jihad Watch that help to sustain it financially. PayPal facilitates donations to the site. Newsmax — the online news network run by President Donald Trump's close friend Chris Ruddy — pays Jihad Watch in return for users clicking on its headlines. Until recently, Amazon allowed Jihad Watch to participate in a program that promised a cut of any book sales that the site generated. All three companies have policies that say they don't do business with hate groups.
Jihad Watch is one of many sites that monetize their extremist views through relationships with technology companies. ProPublica surveyed the most visited websites of groups designated as extremist by either the SPLC or the Anti-Defamation League. We found that more than half of them — 39 out of 69 — made money from ads, donations or other revenue streams facilitated by technology companies. At least 10 tech companies played a role directly or indirectly in supporting these sites.
Traditionally, tech companies have justified such relationships by contending that it's not their role to censor the Internet or to discourage legitimate political expression. Also, their management wasn't necessarily aware that they were doing business with hate sites because tech services tend to be automated and based on algorithms tied to demographics.
In the wake of last week's violent protest by alt-right groups in Charlottesville, more tech companies have disavowed relationships with extremist groups. During just the last week, six of the sites on our list were shut down. Even the web services company Cloudflare, which had long defended its laissez-faire approach to political expression, finally ended its relationship with the neo-Nazi site The Daily Stormer last week.
“I can't recall a time where the tech industry was so in step in their response to hate on their platforms,” said Oren Segal, director of the ADL's Center on Extremism. “Stopping financial support to hate sites seems like a win-win for everyone.”
But ProPublica's findings indicate that some tech companies with anti-hate policies may have failed to establish the monitoring processes needed to weed out hate sites. PayPal, the payment processor, has a policy against working with sites that use its service for “the promotion of hate, violence, [or] racial intolerance.” Yet it was by far the top tech provider to the hate sites with donation links on 23 sites, or about one-third of those surveyed by ProPublica. In response to ProPublica's inquiries, PayPal spokesman Justin Higgs said in a statement that the company “strives to conscientiously assess activity and review accounts reported to us.”
After Charlottesville, PayPal stopped accepting payments or donations for several high-profile white nationalist groups that participated in the march. It posted a statement that it would remain “vigilant on hate, violence & intolerance.” It addresses each case individually, and “strives to navigate the balance between freedom of expression” and the “limiting and closing” of hate sites, it said.
After being contacted by ProPublica, Newsmax said it was unaware that the three sites that it had relationships with were considered hateful. “We will review the content of these sites and make any necessary changes after that review,” said Andy Brown, chief operating officer of Newsmax.
Amazon spokeswoman Angie Newman said the company had previously removed Jihad Watch and three other sites identified by ProPublica from its program sharing revenue for book sales, which is called Amazon Associates. When ProPublica pointed out that the sites still carried working links to the program, she said that it was their responsibility to remove the code. “They are no longer paid as an Associate regardless of what links are on their site once we remove them from the Associates Program,” she said.
Where to set the boundaries between hate speech and legitimate advocacy for perspectives on the edge of the political spectrum, and who should set them, are complex and difficult questions. Like other media outlets, we relied in part on the Southern Poverty Law Center's public list of “Active Hate Groups 2016.” This list is controversial in some circles, with critics questioning whether the SPLC is too quick to brand organizations on the right as hate groups.
Still, the center does provide detailed explanations for many of its designations. For instance, the SPLC documents its decision to include the Family Research Council by citing the evangelical lobbying group's promotion of discredited science and unsubstantiated attacks on gay and lesbian people. We also consulted a list from ADL, which is not public and that was provided to us for research purposes. See our methodology here.
The sites that we identified from the ADL and SPLC lists vehemently denied that they are hate sites.
“It is not hateful, racist or extremist to oppose jihad terror,” said Spencer, the director of Jihad Watch. He added that the true extremism was displayed by groups that seek to censor the Internet and that by asking questions about the tech platforms on his site, we were “aiding and abetting a quintessentially fascist enterprise.”
Spencer made these comments in response to questions emailed by ProPublica reporter Lauren Kirchner. Afterwards, Spencer posted an item on Jihad Watch alleging that “leftist 'journalist'” Kirchner had threatened the site. He also posted Kirchner's photo and email, as well as his correspondence with her. After being contacted by ProPublica, another anti-Islam activist, Pamela Geller, also posted an attack on Kirchner, calling her a “senior reporting troll.” Like Spencer, Geller was banned by the British Home Office; her eponymous site is on the SPLC and ADL lists.
Donations — and the ability to accept them online through PayPal and similar companies — are a lifeline for sites like Jihad Watch. In 2015, the nonprofit website disclosed that three quarters of its roughly $100,000 in revenues came from donations, according to publicly available tax records.
In recent weeks, PayPal has been working to shut down donations to extremist sites. This week, it pulled the plug on VDARE.com, an anti-immigration website designated as “white nationalist” by the SPLC and as a hate site by the ADL. VDARE, which denies being white nationalist, immediately switched to its backup system, Stripe.
Stripe, a private company recently described by Bloomberg Businessweek as a $9 billion startup, is unusual in not having a policy against working with hate sites. It does, however, prohibit financial transactions that support drugs, pornography and “psychic services.” Stripe provided donation links for 10 sites, second only to PayPal on our list. Stripe did not respond to a request for comment.
VDARE editor Peter Brimelow declared on his site that the PayPal shutdown was likely part of a purge by the “authoritarian Communist Left to punish anyone who disagrees with their anti-American violence against patriotic people.” He urged his readers to donate through other channels such as Bitcoins. “We need your help desperately,” he wrote. “We must have the resources to defend ourselves and our people.”
In 2015, VDARE received nearly all of its revenue — $267,038 out of total $293,663 — from donations, according to publicly available tax return forms that the Internal Revenue Service requires nonprofits to disclose.
Brimelow did not respond to our questions, instead characterizing ProPublica as the “Totalitarian Left.”
Some sites also supplement their donations with revenue from online advertising. For instance, SonsofLibertyMedia.com, which is on the SPLC list, generated about 10 percent of its revenue — $37,828 — from advertising in 2015, according to its tax documents.
The site, which describes itself as promoting a “Judeo-Christian ethic,” and recently posted an article declaring that a black activist protesting Confederate statues needed “a serious beat down,” does not appear to attract advertisers directly.
Instead, Sons of Liberty benefits from a type of ad-piggybacking arrangement that is becoming more common in the tech industry. The website runs sponsored news articles from a company called Taboola, which shares ad revenues with it. Known for being at the forefront of “click-bait,” Taboola places links on websites to articles about celebrities and popular culture.
Taboola's policy prohibits working with sites that have “politically religious agendas” or use hate speech. “We strive to ensure the safety of our network but from time to time, unfortunately, mistakes can happen,” said a Taboola spokeswoman. “We will ask our Content Policy group to review this site again and take action if needed.”
Sons of Liberty founder Bradlee Dean said that he forwarded our questions to his attorney. The lawyer did not respond.
Hate sites can initiate relationships with tech companies with little scrutiny.
Any website can fill out an online form asking to join, for instance, Amazon's network, and often can get approved instantly. Once a website has joined a tech network, it can quickly start earning money through advertising, donations, or content farms such as Taboola that share ad revenues with websites that distribute their articles.
Some companies, such as Newsmax, say that joining their ad network requires explicit prior approval.
But, according to a former Newsmax employee, the only criterion for this approval was whether traffic to the site reached a minimum threshold. There was no content review. Salespeople were told to be aggressive in signing up publishing partners.
“We'd put our news feed on anybody's page, anyone who was willing to listen,” he said, “it's about email addresses, it's about marketing, they don't care about ultra conservative or left wing.”
Dylan Roof frequented a website described by the SPLC as “white nationalist.” He said in a manifesto posted online that finding the website was a turning point in his life. He went on to murder nine African-American churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015. That year, USA Today found Newsmax ads on the site.
They no longer appear there.
SUMMARY: Events in Charlottesville last week prompted the tech community to take steps against hate speech. Companies like Google have stopped hosting white nationalist websites, and Facebook and Twitter have shut down known white nationalists' accounts. Cindy Cohn of the Electronic Frontier Foundation warns that the tactics used to silence neo-Nazis online could be used against others in the future.
SUMMARY: Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. and Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review, join Hari Sreenivasan to discuss the week's news; including Stephen Bannon getting pushed out of the White House, how criticism over his response to Charlottesville has affected the Trump presidency and, what national turmoil over racism means for party politics.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): And now to the analysis of Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne — he's also co-author of the upcoming book “One Nation After Trump” — and “National Review” senior editor Ramesh Ponnuru.
Mark Shields and David Brooks are away.
Let's start with the big news first, your reactions to the ouster of Steve Bannon.
RAMESH PONNURU, National Review: Well, it's been rumored to be happening for several weeks now. And I think this is just another example of the volatility and turnover in this administration, much of it based on petty jealousy and resentment of people who are getting, in President Trump's view, too much press.
HARI SREENIVASAN: E.J.?
E.J. DIONNE, The Washington Post: I think that's all true.
I also think it's the case a lot of this talk about Trump as populist was always phony, that Bannon was the one guy in there who on economic issues represented the kind of populism. And his being pushed out, I think means that the Trump administration becomes much more of a kind of corporate Republican place.
He was also obviously radioactive on racial questions because of the alt-right's — Breitbart's history of kind of ethno-nationalism. And so I think the two forces came together to force him out of there.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Does this change anything at the White House? We have already had reports tonight that he's headed back to Breitbart, that there could be a way where he ends up forcing more change in the White House from the outside than the inside.
RAMESH PONNURU: One of the interesting things, although E.J. was talking about this corporate Republican Party, you see the corporate side of this White House, it doesn't have much institutional Republican presence.
Of course, Trump is a fairly recent Republican himself. Reince Priebus, the Chief of Staff, former Chief of Staff, who had been chairman of the RNC, was pushed out.
And one of the really interesting things here is that how many New York Democrats are now influential in this administration. Where it goes from now, it all depends on Trump, all of this. You know, we all obsess in Washington too much about the personnel. He's the person who sets the tone. He's the person who sets the policies.
E.J. DIONNE: Ramesh has just come up with a brilliant Republican strategy. Blame the Democrats for Donald Trump.
(LAUGHTER)
E.J. DIONNE: I think that you will see some change, but not a lot of change.
If you really want to change the Trump administration, you have to change the guy at the top. And that's not happening anytime soon. But, again, where I do think where you will see some movement is on this economic side, where I suspect, for example, this is a victory for China, because Trump was — I mean, Bannon was the hawk on China trade.
And as he said in that interview with Bob Kuttner — and, by the way, a Trump administration official will never again give an interview to a liberal columnist — is that he was fighting Gary Cohn, the chief economic adviser, great victory for him — he was fighting the Treasury Department.
And so I think that's an area where you will see change. And I think, by the way, it's obviously a victory for John Kelly, who wanted to impose order, and Bannon was clearly a threat to order in the White House.
SUMMARY: Chief strategist Steve Bannon ended his tenure at the White House Friday, yet another departure in a string of top staff firings. Bannon has been credited with helping President Trump win the 2016 election and has played a controversial role in the administration. Hari Sreenivasan discusses the ouster with Washington Week's Robert Costa.
SUMMARY: It was another turbulent week at the White House, featuring the departure of President Trump's senior strategist Steve Bannon, who promised to wage "war" at figures inside the White House and Republicans from his Breitbart website, and the collapse of several advisory panels. PBS NewsHour Special Correspondent Jeff Greenfield joins Hari Sreenivasan from New York to put the chaos in context.
SUMMARY: The national fallout continues after three people died and multiple people were injured in the chaos of a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday. The NewsHour's PJ Tobia and Mark Scialla join Hari Sreenivasan to discuss why many see the rally as a turning point, as well as to offer a look at the “Antifa” counter-protesters.
SUMMARY: Hari Sreenivasan takes a deep look at the nation's divide following Saturday's deadly incident during a white nationalist rally held in Charlottesville, Virginia, as well as what the Trump administration needs to do with Vanita Gupta of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and George Selim, a former Department of Homeland Security official.
SUMMARY: The violent events in Charlottesville, where white supremacist groups came out of the shadows, seem to have brought rising American tensions over race and racism to a head. Hari Sreenivasan gets perspectives from Leonard Pitts Jr. of The Miami Herald, Carol Anderson of Emory University, and Mark Potok a former senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center.
SUMMARY: As politicians and influential business leaders weigh in on President Trump's comments on Charlottesville, how is the American public responding? Political correspondent Lisa Desjardins joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss a new PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll about the clashes and the President's comments, how lawmakers of his own party are speaking out, plus Confederate statues at the Capitol.
SUMMARY: Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe declared a state of emergency in Charlottesville on Saturday as hundreds of white nationalists and alt-right activists clashed with police and counter-protesters. It was the second rally to protest the city’s plan to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from Emancipation Park. The NewsHour's P.J. Tobia joins Hari Sreenivasan from Charlottesville.
SUMMARY: As locals grappled with the aftermath of a white nationalist rally that left three people dead on Saturday, Mayor Michael Signer wasted no words on denouncing President Donald Trump for what he says is his culpability in the violence. But a white nationalist leader told The NewsHour's P.J. Tobia that the radical left is at fault.
SUMMARY: Rallies on Friday and Saturday in Charlottesville, Virginia that were reminiscent of Ku Klux Klan gatherings shook people who have for generations fought for civil rights in Virginia and across the country. Activist, writer and educator Leontyne Peck with the University of Virginia’s President’s Commission on Slavery unpacks the weekend’s events with Hari Sreenivasan.
SUMMARY: Despite the nation’s focus on Islamic terrorism since 9/11, homegrown, right-wing extremists have also killed dozens of Americans. Peter Bergen, the director of the National Security Studies program for New America, joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss the toll of homegrown terrorism in light of the Charlottesville white nationalist rally car attack.
SUMMARY: White nationalist groups are nothing new to the U.S. But in recent years, their numbers have grown, drawing whites who feel marginalized in today's America. The NewsHour's P.J. Tobia visits a white separatist community in Indiana to understand why they're supporting Donald Trump this election. Sensitivity Warning: This report contains graphic images and symbols that are widely considered to represent hate speech.
P.J. TOBIA (NewsHour): Late summer, in the hills of East Tennessee, a small group of white power activists hold a meeting. There's merchandise, music, and a rewriting of history.
MAN: Despite the mythology, Russian Jews were never oppressed in any way.
P.J. TOBIA: Later, the group goes to a nearby town for a rally, in the center of it all, Matthew Heimbach.
MATTHEW HEIMBACH, Traditionalist Worker Party: Because a white homeland shall be our homeland.
P.J. TOBIA: Just 25 years old, the Southern Poverty Law Center has called Heimbach the face of a new generation of white nationalists.
In 2015, he founded the Traditionalist Worker Party. They're white separatists who want distinct homelands in the U.S. for whites and blacks. They want Jews out of the country entirely.
Are you guys racists?
MATTHEW HEIMBACH: The definition of racist is thrown around all the time in America, and it's used almost exclusively just to determine any white people that want to be able to advocate for their best interests.
P.J. TOBIA: But there were Nazis and all kinds of very strident anti-minority propaganda. Anyone with a Nazi symbol on them is going to be considered a racist, if not racially insensitive.
MATTHEW HEIMBACH: And so our movement is moving towards being a European-style nationalist movement. And I respect all my comrades from other organizations. They might take a little bit of a different presentation than we do. And you can see what direction our movement is moving in. And I'm happy to be a part of that.
SUMMARY: In the presidential election arena this week, the two major-party candidates called each other racists, and questions arose over Donald Trump's support among alt-right enthusiasts. As for Hillary Clinton, she seems to be focusing on casting herself as the lesser-of-two-evils option. For analysis, we turn to syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.
SUMMARY: Donald Trump is appealing to voters who reject mainstream conservative ideals. These members of the so-called "alt-right" have typically taken their frustrations to the internet, rather than to the polls. John Yang interviews the Washington Free Beacon's Matthew Continetti and The Washington Post's David Weigel about the alt-right's "hierarchical" tendencies and potential impact on conservatism.
JOHN YANG (NewsHour): Today, Hillary Clinton debuted a fresh line of attack against Donald Trump.
HILLARY CLINTON (D), Presidential Nominee: That is what I want to make clear today. A man with a long history of racial discrimination, who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far, dark reaches of the Internet, should never run our government or command our military.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
JOHN YANG: This comes a little more than a week after Trump made Steve Bannon his campaign's CEO.
Bannon is on leave from his job as executive chairman of Breitbart News, a Web site Bannon has called a platform for something called the alt-right. It's a movement that lives largely online, rejects mainstream conservative politics, and is linked to nationalist and white supremacist sentiments.
Clinton said Trump has echoed alt-right rhetoric.
HILLARY CLINTON: All of this adds up to something we have never seen before. Now, of course, there's always been a paranoid fringe in our politics, a lot of arising from racial resentment. But it's never had the nominee of a major party stoking it, encouraging it, and giving it a national megaphone, until now.
JOHN YANG: Clinton's campaign backed up their candidate's message online with this new video that includes a Ku Klux Klan member expressing support for Trump.
MAN: Donald Trump would be best for the job.
QUESTION: For President?
MAN: Yes.
MAN: I am a farmer and white nationalist. Support Donald Trump.
