After the City Council meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 2, I spent some time online reading about Redneck Revolt. Mitchell Elmo Fryer, who works for City Councilmember Michelle Kennedy at the Interactive Resource Center, is the leader of the Silver Valley Redneck Revolt, the chapter in this area.
It is estimated that there are over 30 chapters of Redneck Revolt in the US, and reading their literature was strangely familiar. The goal according to what I read is to raise the working class to fight against racism, capitalism, rich people and the government that is holding them back.
The Redneck Revolt appears to emphasize for the media its opposition to racism, but the organization’s literature also states, “we stand against the nation-state and its forces which protect the bosses and the rich.”
It is similar to the Communist Workers Party that was involved in the shoot out with the Ku Klux Klan and Neo Nazis on Nov. 3, 1979. The CWP had also chosen the KKK as its enemy and the shootout was at a “Death to the Klan” rally and march sponsored by the CWP.
I have some personal experience with the KKK because in 2009 The Rhinoceros Times sued the Knights Party of the KKK and won a permanent restraining order prohibiting them from using The Rhinoceros Times to distribute their literature and a $25,000 settlement.
What we learned was that it was difficult to find members of the KKK. We hired a private detective to try and find out who was involved locally and couldn’t. We ended up suing the national organization of the Knights Party in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Reportedly there has been a resurgence of white supremacist groups, such as the “Unite the Right” gathering in Charlottesville last year, but the opposition to racist groups such as the KKK is only a small part of what the Redneck Revolt is about.
Redneck Revolt literature spends a lot of time on guns. How to handle guns. What type of guns are best in what type of situation. Guns appear to be a big part of the organization and members of Redneck Revolt do like to appear heavily armed in public as they were in Charlottesville.
The Redneck Revolt in its organizing principles states, “We believe in the right of militant resistance.” It states, “Redneck Revolt believes in using any and all means at our disposal to gain our freedom and true liberty, provided those methods do not violate our basic humanity or integrity.”
The next heading in the organizing principles is, “We believe in the need for Revolution.”
On the resources page of the Redneck Revolt website was, according to several news outlets, a pamphlet titled the “Mini-Manual of the Urban Guerrilla;” it has evidently been removed. This is what it sounds like a short manual on how to conduct urban warfare, with sections on sabotage, kidnapping, execution and terrorism.
One line in the organizing principles states, “We are not pacifists.” Perhaps that should be underlined. This is an organization opposed to police, prisons, courts and other systems of social control that serve the rich and powerful.
One of the complaints that Fryer made at the City Council meeting was that law enforcement had his organization under surveillance. He also complained that Greensboro police officers were handling a KKK informant and were racists.
One of those officers was Sgt. S. Flowers, who happened to be at the meeting. Online you can find a video by the Southern Poverty Law Center narrated by Flowers about lone wolf attacks such as the one at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, which was by a white supremacist acting alone.
It’s hard to believe that the SPLC would enlist a racist to narrate a video for them about racist shootings.
From what Fryer said at the meeting, it sounded like the Greensboro police officers were some how involved with the KKK, not that they were working as part of a federal task force using an informant to get information from inside the KKK, which is exactly what law enforcement should be doing.
Law enforcement should also have any group such as the Redneck Revolt that is heavily armed and advocates violence as a solution to the problems of society under surveillance. According to their literature, this is not a bunch of good old boys getting together on the weekends to shoot targets, as the name might imply. It is a group that believes using guns and violence is what must be done to change society more to their liking and they are trying to convert members of the working class to their way of thinking.
The KKK is a convenient target because, outside of a small group of true believers, the KKK is an organization that is not feared as much as ridiculed. It was the plan of the CWP to start with the KKK, which would lead to a revolution. It appears that same strategy is being used by Redneck Revolt with the difference of putting the emphasis on guns and violence first but still using the KKK as a target to get people involved.
If the law enforcement agencies in this country were not doing everything in their power to stay one step ahead of the Redneck Revolt and the KKK then it would be a dereliction of duty.
One of the stated goals of the Interactive Resource Center is to find jobs for people experiencing homelessness. Once they have jobs they become members of the working class – the very class of people that Fryer and the Redneck Revolt are targeting for recruitment.
