Dear New Yorkers,
The NYPD is beefing up the unit that collects intelligence on terroristic threats after discovering an alarming spike in racist online rhetoric circulated by white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups — and directed at New York.
Police Department officials say they’re girding against a growing threat: out-of-towner white nationalists taking their hateful agendas to the nation’s most diverse metropolis.
We also talked to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Anti-Defamation League and to a white supremecist who was recently charged with threatening a Manhattan-based Jewish group from his home in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
When white nationalist Garrett Kelsey discovered an internet video castigating Nordic neo-Nazis, he allegedly turned his fury on the Manhattan-based Jewish group that posted it.
From his home in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Kelsey left a voicemail ranting about “filthy (expletive) Jews” — then followed up with a threat to “take action” if the video didn’t come down in three days, authorities said.
In an interview with THE CITY, Kelsey described the group in the video not as Nazis but as members of the “Nordic resistance.”
“These are just people who want to do what everyone in the world wants to do, which is to protect your ethnic heritage,” he said.
Kelsey was arrested last month by the NYPD and FBI at his Iowa home and charged with one count of making an interstate threat. He’s out on $50,000 bond.
His case, authorities say, is emblematic of a growing threat in New York City: out-of-towner white supremacists taking their hateful agendas to nation’s most diverse metropolis.
It’s happening via online message boards, xenophobic posters plastered in immigrant neighborhoods, even at public rallies in Manhattan. Much of the hate is fueled by groups promoting the conspiratorial “white replacement theory.”
More here in our special report.
http://thecity.nyc/2019/08/anti-new-york-white-supremacist-hate-is-rising-nypd-says.html?utm_campaign=mailchimp&utm_source=daily&utm_medium=newsletter
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