Article Demolishing the Lies about Somali Americans as Massive Fraudsters Refusing to Integrate and Backing Terrorists

As you’re no doubt aware, Trump sent his ICE goons particularly into Minnesota to deal with the Somali community there. Right-wing YouTubers had put up videos claiming that the city’s Somali community were fraudulently claiming benefits from the state by setting up fake businesses. These included fake schools with no pupils, like a ‘Quality Learing Centre’ featured in one such video, as well as similar businesses intended to help the community which also had no students, customers or staff. The money claimed for these businesses were allegedly being sent of to support the al-Shabbaab Islamist terrorist organisation back in Somalia. They were also supposed to be falsely claiming money for autism and other disabilities, the money for which was being spent instead on supporting their businesses and stores. The people themselves refused to integrate. Those shown in the videos could not speak English, and there was a very strong impression that most were unemployed. Trump had said in another video that the Somalis were bad people, and he wanted them gone.

However, an article by Richard Michael Solomon in the journal, Current Affairs, reproduced by the Democrats in their Daily Dose of Democracy onlin4e newsletter, has demolished these falsehoods. It points out that the fraud allegations have been around for years, and have been distorted by Trump and the Maga maniacs. The involvement of the Somalis has been exaggerated, while the fact that the ringleader and many senior figures in the network are White has been ignored. The crime rate in Somali areas is the same or lower than in other areas, there is a high degree of self-sufficiency and their level of integration is high relative to the historic record.

Here’s the article:

‘Demolishing lies about Somali Americans
Richard Michael Solomon, Current Affairs: “The conservative Manhattan Institute recently claimed that Somali Americans are siphoning ‘billions of taxpayer dollars’ to a militant Islamist organization in Somalia called Al-Shabaab. The context for the allegation, made by the Institute’s City Journal, is a scandal implicating several dozen people from Minnesota, mostly of Somali descent, who defrauded the government through an autism service, housing program, and pandemic-era NGO called Feeding Our Future. The Trump Administration used these allegations to end Temporary Protected Status for Somalis, forcing hundreds of people to soon leave the country or face deportation. President Donald Trump first announced the plan shortly after the City Journal story went viral—blustering on Truth Social that ‘Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great State, and BILLIONS of Dollars are missing. Send them back to where they came from. It’s OVER!’

The fraud part of the scandal is real and not particularly new. Minnesota and FBI investigators have pursued the cases for years, including against Aimee Bock, the white woman who led Feeding Our Future. What City Journal authors Christopher Rufo and Ryan Thorpe do is ignore the scheme’s white ringleader and other white suspects. They vastly inflate the numbers, blame Somali culture, and demand Somalis be deported en masse. Their evidence, too, for the Al-Shabaab connection is remarkably thin; key sources within the story itself have since called it ‘bullshit.’ Given Rufo’s track record (he once offered a $5,000 bounty for ‘proof’ that Haitian Americans in Ohio were skinning cats for meat), his rumor-based reporting is not trustworthy. But facts are no obstacle to Rufo’s imagination: in his words, ‘Somalis in Minneapolis are stealing billions from American taxpayers, loading bags of cash onto commercial flights, and funding terrorism back in Mogadishu.’

Right-wing media has used the story to reinforce an emergent narrative that Somali Americans 1) are criminals, 2) drain welfare, and 3) don’t assimilate. Public attention has inspired imitators, including a widely-discredited video by YouTuber Nick Shirley on Minnesota daycares. Deadly ICE raids on Minneapolis have followed. A closer look at the allegations, however, reveals how detached they are from reality.

Rufo and his colleagues are charlatans who incite hatred and division, but their lies are not sophisticated. They rely instead on cheap rhetorical tricks and statistical distortions. Agitators like Nick Shirley similarly borrow from the visual language of investigative journalism, but actually just manipulate their viewers with cheap editing. The truth is that Somali Muslims in Minnesota are a law-abiding community with the same or lower crime rates than other Americans. Their rates of self-sufficiency are high, and measures of assimilation are also high relative to the historic record. So why the bigotry? The lies serve to distract attention from bigger fraudsters and divide working people from confronting those with real power over their lives.”‘

Oi Punk Song About How the KKK Should be Dealt With

Skinheads and Oi music have a reputation for racism and extreme right-wing politics and violence. But not all of them, by any means. I read somewhere, probably on the Net, that Skinhead fashion originally started with the Jamaicans and then was taken over by White working class youth. There’s an anti-racist skinhead organisation. A friend of mine met one of their members years ago at a protest he was on, and there’s a documentary on YouTube about the skinhead organisation that was set up specifically to put a well-aimed Dr. Marten’s boot into the Nazis and other White supremacists.

I found this musical expression of skinhead hate and contempt for them on YouTube. It’s from a band, Oi of the Tiger, and it’s entitled Hang the Klan. It’s loud, aggressive and you can’t hear everything that’s being sung, but the chorus is very clear: ‘Hang the Klan’. There’s footage of the Klan at their wretched cross-burnings and marches, but it ends with the simulated hanging of one of them from a tree. I don’t know anything about this band, but there might be some links to the LGBTQ movement, as a cartoon at the beginning of the video of one of the Klansmen dangling from a tree has the legend ‘F*gs and D*kes Against White Knights (the Klan)”. As Reform goose step around in the polls and Trump is unleashing his ICE goons to arrest anyone who looks at them funny, I thought this might be a suitable song to put up.