Your Daily Nazi: McCorkell Collection Update

This clip from CBC brings the latest, in particular that the University of Ottawa, which got some of McCorkell's artifacts after he moved East from Saskatchewan , is willing to let the collection be sold off to private collectors:

As for me, I was most interested in the few glimpses of McCorkell's collection that the clip offers.  My favorite piece is this:

Maybe its a bit of pottery.  I'm not sure.  But the beast carved on its surface is pretty clearly a Griffin, one of my favorite of the mythical creatures.  And that's chiefly because:

Much of the griffin folklore originated from the deserts of central Asia, specifically in an area of alluvial gold deposits in a thousand-mile corridor dividing land masses that are now China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan. Mayor's research led her to consult paleontologists to see what kinds of fossils were common to the area.

The Gobi, Turfan and Dzungarian deserts contain some of the world's richest fossil beds, and many fossils appear on the surface because of the windswept nature of the region. Fossils of the plant-eating Protoceratops are the most commonly found dinosaur fossils in the Gobi desert.

Protoceratops was a creature six or seven feet long, with four legs, claws, and a scary beak that looked like a huge lobster claw....  [A]ncient people may have dug up skeletons of the Protoceratops, a probable theory considering that American tourists who visited the Gobi Desert in 1992 uncovered a complete, standing dinosaur skeleton trapped in the sand. It would only take a small imaginative step for ancient prospectors, making similar finds, to think that living griffins existed and guarded their nests like protective mother birds in the same standing position. 

You can see the two creatures compared here, for example.

Not much more to add here other than to repeat myself: it would be a pity if this collection was sold off to fund a gang of white supremacists.

As to the U of O's decision, I suspect McCorkell's collection is good but not essential.  Rare but not that rare.  I've seen ancient coins, for example, turn up in flea markets in Arizona.  One fellow told me the piece he was hawking for $30 U.S. showed a constellation of stars on the face that were not visible with the naked eye, suggesting that the ancients had had contact with alien races.  I told him I was just off the plane, not the boat.

PS.  U of O labels the griffin thusly: Panel from painted terracotta revetment frieze with griffin from Düver (Turkey) 550 B.C.

Your Daily Nazi: Nazis Of Ancient North America

Just a link to ARC's long but well-done discussion of the White Nationalist mangling of the Solutrean Hypothesis, wherein--according to the bone-head version in any case--North America's first settlers were European, who were later slaughtered by Asian hordes who swarmed over the land-bridge from Berengia. As far as I can tell, the archeology stuff is accurate, and its a good excuse to look at some very beautiful stone point technology.

My picture here is of a Cumberland Point, from a bit later in Prehistory (image got from here). They are very rare, and considered the Cadillac of North American lithic technology.

Your Daily Nazi: Nazis Online And On Radio

The adaptive use of new technology was central to this achievement. The Nazis pioneered voice amplification at rallies, the distribution of recorded speeches and the sophisticated targeting of poster art toward groups and regions.

But it was radio that proved the most powerful tool. The Nazis worked with radio manufacturers to provide Germans with free or low-cost "people's receivers." This new technology was disorienting, taking the public sphere, for the first time, into private places -- homes, schools and factories. "If you tuned in," says Steve Luckert, curator of the exhibit, "you heard strangers' voices all the time. The style had a heavy emphasis on emotion, tapping into a mass psychology. You were bombarded by information that you were unable to verify or critically evaluate. It was the Internet of its time."

A terrific piece by Michael Gerson, which concludes:

This comparison to the Internet is apt. The Nazis would have found much to admire in the adaptation of their message on neo-Nazi, white supremacist and Holocaust-denial Web sites.

Not much to add to it, as a matter of fact. As I am feeling profoundly lazy this afternoon.

Your Daily Nazi: Warman And Farber Fight 'Em, While Speechys Ponder Their Very Existence

American Neo-Nazi Bill White is being charged with making death threats, based on the testimony of Canuck Nazi hunters Bernie Farber and Richard Warman. Good news, made weird by the strange role Mr. White has played in the on-going Canadian Speechy Wars.

You see, back in April free speech warrior Ezra Levant publicly questioned Mr. White's very existence, instead theorizing that he might be a CHRC sock-puppet:

I, too, would have believed that the CHRC's Ian Fine received the bigoted e-mails he describes, and I even would have believed that Richard Warman was threatened by a man in the U.S. named Bill White.

[...]

But after last month's day-long hearing, where we learned that the CHRC regularly confects such bigoted comments themselves and goes to great (and sometimes illegal) lengths to hide their tracks, I just can't take any claims from the CHRC or Warman seriously that rely on Internet comments, the provenance of which cannot be independently verified.

And the "Bill White" Internet site -- well, let's just say that Mr. White, who has never been seen in body, only online, has come in handy on quite a few occasions for the CHRC and Warman, such as when Warman and the Canadian Jewish Congress tried to get the Canadian government to permit them to block foreign websites from Canadian Internet users.

[...]

It may well be that the e-mails to Fine were sent by someone other than his own staff. And it may well be that there is somebody named Bill White who is not just another sock puppet for Warman, Dean Steacy and others. It could be. And, with any other group of people, that would be the normal thing to assume. But we're long past the point where the CHRC can be regarded as normal, and where their statements -- even under oath -- can be believed without independent verification.

The madness continued unabated--Nay! was cranked to 11 on the crazy-scale--in Ezra's comments section. For example, Connie Fournier from FreeDominion showed up:

The thing about Bill White is that even the people who proudly call themselves 'Nazis' or 'white nationalists' seem to think he is about as genuine as Grant Bristow.

Ezra is 100% correct when he says we can't believe anything our opponents say anymore.

Then suspected Lemire sock-puppet Fourhorses made an appearance! Eventually, the whole gang arrived!

Nor was the mood of cheerful paranoia spoiled when Mr. White himself crashed the party:

I know, Jew Levant, that when you look upon a God, you see only the radiant light of a soul you know you can never possess.

However, I assure you, I am not merely an ethereal apparition of the God of the Light and Order, opposed eternally to your race of demons, but I have material form as well.

A brief search of Google will yield plenty of photographs and news accounts of my actual presence among men.

(As an aside, give Mr. White credit: this guy knows how to hate. Shaidle, MacMillan and their crew-- they're nothing but wannabes next to him)

No, they didn't let Bill White get them down at Ezra's place, because they figured it couldn't be a real Neo-Nazi writing this stuff, it had to be...wait for it...Richard Warman pretending to be a Neo-Nazi so as to...somehow...infiltrate...well, at this point things get a bit obscure.

In any case, that's how bent this debate has become, when the Speechy movement goes beyond arguing that no limitations on expression are justified in stopping the spread of Neo-Nazis, to denying that they have corporeal being.

Your Daily Nazi: Nazis Eyes On Canada!

They have been dubbed a “terrorist threat” by the FBI and linked to numerous acts of violence across the United States, including murder. But now they have their sights set on Winnipeg — and a controversial case that has seen two young children taken away from their alleged neo-Nazi parents.

August Kreis III, the leader of the Aryan Nations, told the Free Press his organization is prepared to mobilize whatever resources are necessary to ensure the decision isn’t allowed to stand.

He said the case is unlike anything he’s ever heard of and he fears it will set a dangerous precedent across North America.

Meanwhile, Ezra asks "Do you like how Albertans are being described to newcomers -- as a bunch of stupid bigots?"

...which is an interesting question when you compare this graphic of StormFront's Canadian Membership
...with this population breakdown by province from the 2006 census. Alta., with 10% of the population, has 16% of the Nazis! They've even been seen in the streets of Calgary! In fact all of the Western Provinces seem over-represented, given their population. Oh My!