From cable to the White House, the mainstreaming of white nationalism

  It doesn’t take the infiltration of a hate group meeting or a deep dive into extremist chat rooms to be exposed to white nationalist ideas.

  Take Dylann Roof, who murdered nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, after a chain of events that started with a simple Google search.

  As Roof wrote in an online manifesto, when he typed the words “black on White crime” into Google, he came across the website of a crudely racist group called the Council of Conservative Citizens. There, he found what he described as “pages upon pages of these brutal black on White murders.”

Dylann Roof murdered nine people because of a lie about 'black-on-white crime'

  It’s been three years since Dylann Roof massacred nine black parishioners in a Bible study in Charleston, South Carolina.

  As he methodically shot his victims at the historic Emanuel A.M.E. Church with a Glock pistol, court testimony reveals that Roof said, “Y’all are raping our white women. Y’all are taking over the world.”

  How did Roof become so immersed in white supremacist propaganda about black violence that he would be driven to murder?

Jeff Sessions: Champion of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant extremists

  Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, one of President-elect Donald Trump’s closest advisers during his campaign and his selection for U.S. attorney general, has longstanding and extensive ties to both anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim extremist groups.

  Sessions, who has served in the U.S. Senate since 1997, has for years been the key bridge between the anti-immigrant movement and Congress. His efforts to combat comprehensive immigration reform legislation have won him plaudits across the nativist landscape.

Charles C. Haynes: When combatting extremism, schools are the long game

  Propaganda works.

  Consider Mohammad Abdulazeez, the young man who shot and killed five service members in Chattanooga, Tennessee last week.

  According to FBI reports, Abdulazeez was inspired to “martyrdom” through listening to the hate-filled sermons of Anwar al-Awlaki, the al Qaeda recruiter killed by an American drone strike in 2011.

  Or consider Dylann Roof, the suspect in the murder of nine African American churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina earlier this summer.

Richard Cohen: Charleston shooter’s manifesto reveals hate group helped to radicalize him

  This weekend we found out more about how the suspected Charleston church shooter, 21-year-old Dylann Storm Roof, became a violent racist extremist at such a young age.

  On his website, Roof left a 2,000-word manifesto in which he identifies himself as a white nationalist and says he was “truly awakened” to his beliefs after reading the online propaganda of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a notorious, racist hate group.

Anti-LGBT rally in Montgomery draws strong rhetoric and the League of the South

  Sanctity of Marriage-Alabama held another rally against marriage equality Saturday on the steps of the Alabama Capitol in Montgomery. The rally featured several speakers who not only decried the January federal court ruling that struck down Alabama’s ban on same-sex marriage, but also homosexuality in general. This is the second rally the group has held this month (the first was Feb. 7) and the second time that theocrat John Eidsmoe was a speaker. He was the keynote speaker at the first.

  Eidsmoe is listed as “senior counsel and resident scholar” at the Foundation for Moral Law (FML) a Montgomery-based organization founded in 2002. Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore was president of the FML until he stepped down in 2013 to run for the position he now holds. His wife Kayla Moore is currently the president.