Side one of the new anti-Pearce flier.
Side two, featuring Pearce and the Ernst Roehm of the East Valley.
I've been screaming in the wilderness about the links between avowed neo-Nazi J.T. Ready and state Rep. Russell Pearce for well-over a year. Now Republican consultant Nathan Sproul has taken up the cause with a new anti-Pearce flier focusing on Pearce's ties to white supremacy. The mailer features a photo of Ready and Pearce together at an anti-immigration picnic in June of '07, where both men spoke, and where I watched them work the crowd together.
The first page of the flier shows an Omaha-beach style photo of a WWII-era U.S. Army helmet upside-down in the sand. It reads, "Too many of our bravest men and women died fighting the Nazis."
The opposite side shows the infamous pic of Ready and Pearce, smiling, arm-in-arm, which I first culled from a white supremacist Web site last year.
"You wouldn't associate with Neo Nazis," states the flier up top. "But Russell Pearce does."
Inset is a photo of Ready at a neo-Nazi rally in Omaha, Nebraska. The flier also revisits Pearce's 2006 forwarding of a National Alliance e-mail to his supporters, positing the following question regarding Pearce's claim that it was an error:
"When was the last time you accidentally sent Nazi e-mails to hundreds of people?"
You can see detailed images of both sides of the flier, here
Back when this happened, J.D. Hayworth backed off an endorsement of Pearce, labeling the e-mail incident "regrettable" and "disturbing." The flier also pictures Hayworth, along with his disavowal of support for Pearce. Just the other day, Hayworth was slamming Sproul for a flier also sent to Mesa Republicans this week that highlights the Pearce spousal abuse allegations. Wonder what J.D. will have to say today about this doozy.
I can hear all the Republican bloggers now, screaming and baying for blood, defending Pearce, and claiming Pearce didn't know of J.T.'s allegiances. Scream all you want, but J.T. had been publicly denounced both by the Anti-Defamation League of Arizona and myself. (The ADL actually spoke of Ready during an open legislative hearing many months before the Pearce-Ready pic was taken.) And prior to Ready's affinity for neo-Nazism being outed, the East Valley Tribune had reported on the fact that Ready had been twice court-martialed and booted from the Marines.
Bosom bigot buds, as they work the crowd on the lawn of the state Capitol, June of '07.
Finally, Pearce not only spoke at the same event as Ready in 2007, he listened to Ready's pro-fascism speech (I use the word "fascism" here in the literal sense), and then palled around with him. As I observed them together, I was both disgusted and amazed. In any other state in the nation, such an association would be the kiss of death. But other than myself, no one made noise about it.
Now, I will watch in amusement as local wing-nuts tie themselves into knots over this. I may be a liberal, but I have never viewed the GOP as inherently racist or bigoted. Republicans are the party of Nazi-killer Dwight D. Eisenhower, and The Great Emancipator Abraham Lincoln. Now it seems as if one wing of the Arizona Republican Party is trying to take back that legacy. I applaud them.
Watch, as neo-Nazi J.T. Ready describes his "final solution" for the immigration issue. Listen, as he name-checks both Russell Pearce and J.D. Hayworth.
