As we’ve been talking about the last couple of weeks, after Hurricane Harvey came through the Gulf coast, a bunch of goofball gun toters from Portland, Oregon calling themselves American Freedom Keepers teamed up with a racist motorcycle club calling themselves the Confederate Riders of America and sauntered into a small flood ravaged community known as Little Cambodia outside of Rosharon Texas.  They immediately informed FEMA that the community “wasn’t ready” for federal help, and took over the recovery efforts for the town.  That’s just what was needed – a bunch of unqualified, anti-government weirdos pushing out the actual experts, getting in the way, and slowing down response for actual help.  Had they just volunteered and cooperated with authorities (as has been done all over the region), it would have been great.  Had they left their guns and body armor at home, it would have been better.  Had they not worn their white supremacist leather it would have been super.  Even not threatening FEMA workers would have been a start.

But NO. These folks announced themselves in charge, and started flooding (no pun intended) Facebook with live videos ranting about how they didn’t need the government and that they could save these poor people with eleventy seven dollars, and a few volunteers.  They then attacked a local television reporter for daring to ask who these people were after telling the reporter that FEMA wasn’t welcome.

The result was easily predictable.  The residents of Little Cambodia were poorly served and the federal response has been greatly delayed – that happens when scary people take over a community and run people off.  But worse, and more obvious, is the absolute failure of the effort.  Have some homes been cleaned up?  Certainly.  Have some people been helped? Yes. But now what?  These “citizen groups” have no resources.  They have no support base short of some Facebook donors who have no money.  These groups are not qualified or trained in hurricane recovery and have kept out those who are.

So, who are these folks?  We’ve talked about the racists who belong to the Confederate Riders of America before, but what about American Freedom Keepers?  They’re a typical shadowy militia group from the Pacific Northwest who call themselves “peacekeepers” and run all over the country protecting racists.  They’ve been seen in scuffles around the country, most notably in Charlottesville Virginia where they went to “protect” the white supremacists during their tiki torch rally on the campus of the University of Virginia.  Their little escapade turned into a rout when one of the racists they were protecting decided to plow his car into a bunch of counter protestors, killing one and injuring dozens.

Militia groups like AFK have flourished since the election of President Obama.  They are fed a steady diet of libertarian bullshit from right wing media and conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones, and are brainwashed to believe that government is the enemy.  Most of the time they love to parade around in camo carrying guns “protecting” some preferred class of people, usually racists.  However, when Harvey flooded much of our coast, one group decided they could demonstrate just how their libertarian religion worked and could show the world how government was not needed (with a side benefit of arguing that they’re not really bigots since they’re helping Asian people).

Which leads us back to Little Cambodia.  AFK’s effort to save Little Cambodia came apart this week when their national secretary was accused by an AFK member of absconding with all of the organization’s money totaling a whopping $700.  These folks are now stranded, are begging for money from donors, but are sticking to the mantra that government is no good while worrying about how to get home.  We’ll see how long they last before declaring victory and actually going home.

This is the problem with this kind of libertarian belief system.  It simply doesn’t work – it’s never worked in any society on the planet.  This is the lesson that goofy militia organizations need to learn.  Societies exist for the common good and have rules for a reason.  Ad hoc support or decision making doesn’t serve the society as a whole and therefore doesn’t work.  Putting on camo and slinging a rifle doesn’t put you in charge of anything.  A bunch of you wearing camo and slinging rifles doesn’t make you a militia.  You’re just a bunch of guys wearing camo and slinging rifles.  Period.

While volunteerism is good, vigilantism is not.  The rescue effort after Harvey gave the perfect textbook example of how societies are supposed to function.  Local, state, and federal authorities threw everything they had behind the effort while tens of thousands of Texans (and the Cajun Navy) stepped up and helped.  Let me be sure I’m clear here – they helped. They worked with local authorities. They didn’t try to take over.  They didn’t announce they were in charge and push out other help.  They cooperated.  In other words, they acted like normal people.  And it worked.  Lives were saved and homes are being restored.  That’s called a functioning society.

AFK and the CRA who came to Little Cambodia didn’t do that.  They decided who could come in. They decided the federal government couldn’t come in.  They decided who would get help and who wouldn’t.  In other words, they freelanced, and now their organization is unsurprisingly coming apart, they’re out of money, and the poor folks in Little Cambodia are poorly served.  And the federal government is way behind.  Thanks, guys.

The problem with AFK is that they’re trying to look like a bunch of good guys to burnish their reputations after the Charlottesville disaster.  They also announced they were coming to Texas to protect rescuers which wasn’t needed.  They acted like assholes and got in the way, which is common for militia goofballs.  The lessons here?  Simple: 1) Assist authorities on the ground and don’t get in the way; 2) Help where you can; let the system work where it can and help where it isn’t;  3) Don’t be an asshole.  Oh, and 4) Leave your AR-15s at home.  This is a flood zone, not Afghanistan.

If even one of these guys learn these lessons, maybe some good will come from this disaster.  I’m not holding my breath.

We’ve been getting some interesting responses to our post earlier this week about flood ravaged Little Cambodia and how two “citizen organizations” took over, and announced that FEMA was not welcome.  Yes, you, Rick and Cowboy (officers of the motorcycle club Confederate Riders of America), you said it.  ON TELEVISION.  YOU determined YOU were in charge and the YOU were having a meeting with FEMA because, “They came in here blind.”  So, guys parading around in black leather vests covered in white supremacist imagery declared themselves in charge.  Teamed up with Portland Oregon militia group American Freedom Keepers, fresh off their mission of “protecting” racists and white supremacists in Charlottesville Virginia, with CRA just up and decided who was going to get help and when, and when the federal government could come in.  I’ve been wondering who died and put them in charge?

We’ve been getting some pretty lively feedback on our post from some of these folks and their supporters, acting shocked and saying things like, “…there’s not a racist bone in my body…” and other such declarations, exactly as we said they would in the original post.  Essentially, it’s “How can we be racists?  We’re helping Asian people.”  Of course.  And we’re supposed to ignore your statements and actions immediately prior to this disaster.

There are several issues here –

• First, and let’s be clear…these people desperately need help, and these organizations are helping.  Houses are getting cleaned up, some supplies are making it in.  However,
• They have clearly delayed federal response by at least a week, maybe longer.  They’ve delayed residents getting federal aid. They’ve taken up time with law enforcement.  FEMA representatives felt threatened, and I’m betting they weren’t scared by the muddy streets.
• Third, who the hell put these guys in charge?  That’s the weird thing about these goofy citizen and militia groups.  They somehow believe that they can show up with rifles slung, declare themselves in charge, and just take over.  Like one of our readers said, it’s like watching one of those old westerns where the evil rancher shows up with a bunch of his ranch hands and just takes over the town.  These goofballs do this all the time…they think they can put on some camo and body armor, whip out their AR-15s, wrap a shemagh around their necks, put in an earpiece, and all of a sudden they’re “peacekeepers”.  Yes, peacekeepers who get in the way of actual police trying to keep the peace.
• And last, but not least, when you dress in racist symbols or paramilitary gear, openly carry weapons, support white supremacist demonstrations, do YouTube videos about “protecting our southern heritage”, so and and so forth, you can’t then be shocked when normal people make the observation that maybe, just maybe, you actually are a racist.  Feigning shock at that glaring fact is not convincing.

Yeah, yeah, and I’m not going to listen to your  bullshit about how being the “Confederate” Riders is not racist.  The entire confederacy was about the belief in the superiority of the “white race” over the “lesser race” and the “permanence” of this superiority.  It’s especially odd that some groups, like the CRA, wear BOTH the American flag and the Confederate battle flags.  You do know that the Confederacy rebelled against the US government, right?  You know they committed treason, right?  Oh, and they also lost.  How inconvenient.  So, you can’t honestly say you’re for your “Confederate heritage” AND support the Constitution.  Those two things are mutually exclusive.  Oh, and before you blather on about the Confederacy being about states rights and your “heritage” let me just interrupt you with a direct quote from declaration of secession made by the State of Texas, February 2, 1861:

“She [Texas] was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery–the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits–a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy.” (emphasis mine)

So, I’m not going to allow you to blather unchallenged about you not being racists.  Oh, and one last thing.  Let’s look at some pictures and we’ll let people judge for themselves whether you “fine folks” are racist or not:

Confederate Riders Patch

Nazi Cross

Skinhead Cross

White Supremacist Black Saltire

KKK Cross

Confederate Battle Flag

Remember the white supremacists chanting “Blood and Soil!” during their march in Charlottesville?  The chant is part of the German Nazi tradition of , “Blut und Boden”, based on blood descent and inherited land.  In other words, the right of the white race to dominance in their homeland. In Nazi and White Supremacist symbolism, the red represents the Blood, and the black represents the Soil.  The similarities between these symbols and the CRA patches are striking and certainly don’t look simply circumstantial.  If they are, you can certainly understand the confusion of normal people when we see them.  So, if the shoe fits…

You guys want to really help?  Take your guns and put them in the truck.  Pack up your camo and black leather.  Act like normal people wanting to help and cooperate with local and federal officials.  We’re not Somalia where it’s every man for himself.  We’re also not a military dictatorship. We’re a civilized society.  I suggest you join it and put all that self-righteous “peacekeeper” and “southern heritage” BS aside so these people can get back on their feet (and you can then go home and leave us alone).

Words fail to describe the disaster unfolding before us so I’ll try a picture from the Texas Department of Transportation.

The dark blue symbols with the slash through it are road closures; the light blue circles are flooding.  To give non-Texans a sense of scale, the east-west distance of this map is over 300 miles.  So far, thousands of homes have been inundated.  Tens of thousands of people are out of their homes.  The ENTIRE Texas National Guard has been activated with over 12,000 personnel mobilized.  The US Coast Guard has brought HALF of its US helicopter fleet to the Houston metro area.  The shelter at the George R. Brown Convention Center is now near capacity with 5,000 people who’ve lost their homes, and shelters all over the area are running full.  Gasoline shortages are just right around the corner since most of the refineries here are shut down; both of the metro areas major airports are still shut down.

The only word that begins to capture this disaster is unprecedented. Unfortunately, one word that can’t be used is unexpected.  This is what happens when you pave over hundreds of square miles of land that was once prairie.  This is what happens when you build homes on top of watershed and up against major rivers and bayous.  This is the expected result of unbridled development without appropriate oversight for infrastructure.  We’re finally reaping the result of what we have sown for years, and if we’re honest, there is major work to be done beyond simply repair these thousands of homes and buildings.

We’ll see if our elected officials will follow through after the television lights turn off.