GOP presidential candidates are nervously returning money and double checking their finances this week. An investigation recently revealed that the leader of the white supremacist group that is said to have radicalized Dylann Roof, the 21-year-old white man who murdered nine black people during a bible study in Charleston last week, has donated tens of thousands of dollars to Republican campaigns.

Sixty-two-year-old Earl P. Holt III is president of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CofCC), a self-declared “conservative activist group” that opposes “race mixing” as a religious affront and that “vilifies blacks as an inferior race.” Holt has donated $65,000 to campaign funds in recent years, including 2016 GOP presidential candidates Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Rick Santorum. According to Federal Election Commission filings, Holt has provided $8,500 to Senator Cruz since 2012. Another $1,750 was given to Senator Paul’s action committee, and $1,500 was donated to Senator Santorum, who attended Sunday’s memorial service at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina. A spokesman for Cruz’s campaign was quick to say that the money donated by Holt would be immediately refunded. Also in hot water to return money funded by this extremist organization is Paul, who said today that he would also be foregoing the money donated by Holt. Santorum  finally denounced the funding on Monday afternoon, saying he would be donating the money to the victims’ families.

GOP candidates got cash from white nationalist cited by Charleston shooting suspect http://t.co/sLN6nNSdYV pic.twitter.com/d1Gqsdz9D4

— Talking Points Memo (@TPM) June 22, 2015

Over the past four years, a user named Earl P. Holt III has posted racist comments on The Blaze, a conservative news outlet. On a February 2014 article, the user–who is suspected to be the same Earl P. Holt III who is funding Republican campaigns–wrote that black activists would “kill you, rape your entire family, and burn your house to the ground.” Roof echoed these chillingly racist remarks as he complained to his victims in Charleston last week, saying: “You rape our women and you’re taking over our country, and you have to go.” A close associate and former director of the CofCC, Jared Taylor, was asked by Holt to handle all media inquiries relating to the Charleston massacre. When asked about the online user going by Holt’s full name, Taylor stated: “If there’s a statement that is ‘Earl P. Holt III’, he probably made it.”

On Saturday, Internet sleuths discovered that Dylann Roof had a website complete with a racist manifesto, which states that he learned about black on white crime from the CofCC website. Roof says it was the Trayvon Martin killing and his opinion that George Zimmerman did no wrong in shooting the unarmed black teen that began his obsession with “black on white violence.”

In an online statement, Holt said he was not surprised that Roof had learned about “black-on-white violent crime” from the CofCC. He stated that the Council is one of the few brave activist groups that are not afraid to “accurately and honestly” disclose “the seemingly endless incidents involving black-on-white murder.” Holt said the Council of Conservative Citizens should not be held responsible for Roof’s actions just because he gained “accurate” information from the website.

Santorum has declared the statements made and sentiments held by Holt to be “unacceptable.” But isn’t it unacceptable to have your campaign financed by individuals and groups that represent the beating heart of racism? It’s easy to wonder if Cruz, Paul, and Santorum knew that their campaigns were receiving donations from a man who runs a white supremacist organization. Moreover, if the media had not exposed Holt’s status as a white supremacist, would the candidates have donated and refunded the money? Hopefully this exposure will shed light on the often amoral campaign financing process and lead to more scrutiny about where our presidential candidates are getting their money.

Emily Dalgo

Emily Dalgo is a member of the American University Class of 2017 and a Law Street Media Fellow during the Summer of 2015. Contact Emily at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post GOP Candidates in Hot Water After Receiving Donations From White Supremacist Leader appeared first on Law Street.

Sharonda Coleman-Singleton.

Reverend Clementa Pinckney.

Cynthia Hurd.

Tywanza Sanders.

Myra Thompson.

Ethel Lee Lance.

Reverend Daniel L. Simmons.

Reverend Depayne Middleton-Doctor.

Susie Jackson.

So, fellow white folks. Know any of these names? Any of these lives?

No?

But we all know the name in the headline.

Stop saying his name. Stop sharing his manifesto. Infamy was one of his goals. #Charleston #DontSayHisName

— David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) June 20, 2015

That’s why you clicked on this post, right? Outraged, right, because we would never pick up a gun and murder Black people, in a church for crying out loud, so how can we possibly all be this killer kid?

But we don’t need a gun and we don’t need a confederate flag to be the Charleston shooter.

Because the murderer in Charleston was, yes, an individual young person, but the murderer was also all of us white folk.

It’s all of us who tweeted #notallwhitepeople after the shooting but criticized Black people in Baltimore for rising against state violence.

We know #NotAllWhitePeople are racist; we're attacking a white supremacist system, so stop whining. pic.twitter.com/Y5wR0ebSVv

— • J a y n a • (@jxchristine_) June 18, 2015

It’s all of us who let him say that he slaughtered Black people to “protect” white women, and we still remained on the proverbial sidelines, letting him murder people in our name.

It’s all of us who prioritize our white tears over the lived experiences of people of color.

It’s all of us, even when we don’t remain passive in the face of state violence.

Because even when we don’t remain passive, we can travel down the street–or even run down the street–confident that we won’t get shot by cops.

Because even when we do protest against white supremacist state violence, we benefit from it.

We benefit from it, and we can do nothing to change that except, maybe, beginning to acknowledge it, and encouraging other white folk to acknowledge it, too.

Because the Charleston shooting is not an exception. This young man’s racism and racist violence are not exceptions.

Dylann Roof is not an extremist, he's the logical expression of #WhiteSupremacy & nostalgic settler-colonialism: http://t.co/Q1f822CCpG #USA

— Kamal Fizazi (@kamalfizazi) June 23, 2015

He has been honest. He has been explicit about what every single structural foundation of this country is entrenched in.

The young man who took so many lives in Charleston is simply more honest than the rest of the country. He explicitly states what all of these foundational fixtures of U.S. society implicitly yet violently impose on people in this country and across the world every day–from our slavery-defending and genocide-based Constitution; to the racist “war on drugs” that is actually a war on communities of color; to the fact that Black History Month is the only time narratives by any kind of POC are highlighted in our schools; to the microaggressions that dominate the workplace, internet, media, and just about everything else; to the environmental racism that is killing even more people of color than police violence–white supremacy.

White people — all of us, no matter how radical our politics or how intersectional our identities (my dis/abilities and queerness do not make me any less white)–materially benefit from and participate in white supremacy.

So yes, we are all Dylan Roof.

And if we don’t want to be?

Well, acknowledging our positions in a white supremacist country and turning off our white tears in favor of genuinely prioritizing those that white supremacy kills is a fine place to start.

Jennifer Polish

Jennifer Polish is an English PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center in NYC, where she studies non/human animals and the racialization of dis/ability in young adult literature. When she’s not yelling at the computer because Netflix is loading too slowly, she is editing her novel, doing activist-y things, running, or giving the computer a break and yelling at books instead. Contact Jennifer at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Fellow White Folks: We Are All Dylan Roof appeared first on Law Street.