UPDATE:a This link takes you to Todd’s article in the Michigan Messenger.
“White Pride” activists will be staging a march in downtown Jackson Sunday, March 21 at 1 p.m.And while the activists say they are just a bunch of white folks who are proud of their heritage, recruitment videos for the sponsoring group, Battalion 14 Michigan, tell a very different story.
Defending the group’s march, a person identified as cabman1 posted on the Open Carry bulletin board the following statement about the march:
I see your maturity level. You are White and yet you come in here and start off by insulting us. You go off of what you have learned thru the media. You view white people that express themselves as thuggish racist brutes. I did not set-up this march for an onslaught of battles, I set it up as a peaceful march. You say that “we do NOT represent you”. You are exactly right, we don’t. I am going out there to represent me. The people that are joining in are going out there for themselves.
Why must this be motivated by “Hate”? I love my race and my heritage, is there something wrong with that? Have you been brainwashed so bad that everything the “white man” does is wrong? What is wrong with going out and saying to others who and what you are and being proud of it? If another race goes out and says “Black Pride” or “Brown Pride”, do I have a problem with that, NO! They are entitled to live their lives the way they wish so that when the day comes for them to depart this world, they can look back and say, I lived my life the way I wanted and it was a happy one. What gives you the right to say what is right and wrong in this world? That view is merely from your observation, it doesn’t mean that it is true, just true in your eyes. If I am not mistaken, only God can judge me. You may be angry at what I want to do this Sunday, and that is fine. I am not going to bash you for having your own opinions. I am a bit more mature than that.
However, as warm and mushy as Cabman1 attempts to make the march sound, the reality of Battalion 14 Michigan’s mission is evident on the web.
The following recruitment video was posted on YouTube.
Note the use of neo-Nazi imagery- swastikas, the 14 words and 88 (Heil Hitler, 8 as in H the eight letter of the alphabet). Authorities indicated the group was connected to the Ohio Hammerskins, but the Southern Poverty Law Center reports there is an active Hammerskin group located in Detroit.
The fact this group has indicated it will openly carry guns, as citizens in Michigan with legally licensed handguns are allowed to do, is troubling.
The march route will take the group right up what one former city council member in Jackson told me this morning was the city’s “racial fault line.” On one side of the street are neighborhoods inhabited mostly by white residents. On the other side, neighborhoods with most African-American and Latino residents.
YAFWatch will be on the ground on Sunday with video, still photography and more. Watch for updates.
NOTE: Todd Heywood has given us permission to repeat his YAF Watch post here.
[...] by Battalion 14 Michigan, a group whose recruitment videos uses neo-Nazi imagery. More about that here. [...]