Photo credit” Wikimedia Commons, ICE arrest
Old Glory Club
It’s not so much that the Old Glory Club is unusual, which has “26 chapters in 20 US states”(“Revealed: the far-right, antisemitic men’s club network spreading across US,” Guardian, July 5, 2025), as the fact that the kind of violent male bonding and hate which it represents is so endemic in the US. But there is a frightening piece of this not-so-atypical hate group, and that is “participants who include past and currently serving military personnel, lawyers, civil servants, and prominent antisemitic influencers” according to the Guardian. That’s a pretty fair cross-section of US society.
What could be expected with the kind of vitriol and white supremacy that is represented in the Trump presidency and his administration? The far-right movement in the US has been going on for decades and is littered with doses of antisemitism, racism, and the insanity that whites in the US will be replaced with the “other,” or those who don’t look exactly like most in the Trump administration, or most of those in power. There’s also a bizarre kind of male virility represented in these insane movements, and if Trump is a symbol of that with his past behavior on display in a New York court, then I’m immediately giving up decades of weight lifting for a more sedentary kind of life.
Recall how Trump called out Mexicans as criminals as he descended the steps at Trump Tower in New York City to announce his 2016 presidential campaign? This is the same baloney represented by groups such as Old Glory. Go back in time for the white supremacist rally, the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017. Go back to slavery, to the eradication of the indigenous population. The far right in Charlottesville, made up of fascists, white nationalists, Nazis, far-right militias, and Klansmen, killed one protester, and two state troopers were killed in a helicopter crash linked to the riot. Recall their chants of “blood and soil,” directly out of the Nazi playbook, and “Jews will not replace us.”
None of this right-wing insanity, hate, and murder is new to the US. Racism got an early start in the US with slavery and the reaction to post-Civil War Reconstruction. Decades of Jim Crow followed, with lynchings, extending to today with mass incarceration.
The incarceration of Japanese Americans was yet another example of intolerance toward a group of people who were an integral part of US society until the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. Today, the nation under Trump, with the emphasis on “ under,” has arrested about 95,000 immigrants through Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) actions, casting a net of fear across immigrant communities and continuing the surge of white supremacy in the US. How could the growth of the Old Glory Club come as a surprise to anyone?
Immigration reform is long overdue, but the criminalization of immigrants is part of right-wing propaganda. Much of the immigrant population in the US involves the needs of business and capitalism. However, when 40% (ABC News statistic) of immigrants arrested in ICE raids have done nothing illegal in the US, even casual observers are left wondering if this is smoke and mirrors while the far right steals the remnants of republican democracy. The far right now has both hands in the pockets of ordinary people!
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