TEABAGGER BAND POKER FACE TO HOST FUNDRAISER TO FREE A FASCIST

Given how many often things get convoluted in such trials as to not provide an accurate picture, as evidenced by the twists and turns already made in the case as it is, we are going to avoid predicting what is going to happen in the murder-for-hire case of Aryan Nations attorney Edgar J. Steele. But the We’re not racist” teabagger band Poker Face is planning to hold a benefit for him, and how can we not opine on that? Look, we expect the usual defenses of freedom of speech and charges that the federal government are out to get Steele for being “politically incorrect”, not to mention that thing about Poker Face calling him a “Patriot Attorney”. We just have one question though: Why is it the only time this crowd sees patriots, defenders of freedom and attacks on freedom of speech is when they concern people who are diametrically opposed to the freedoms of those who don’t have white skin or follow the Christian faith. Edgar Steele once wrote that we should not honor Martin Luther King, Jr. or “the nonexistent ideals that King supposedly has come to represent: equal opportunity, brotherhood and overcoming prejudice.” That’s not exactly the sentiment of someone that would invoke visions of a free society. Unfortunately for Steele, we do honor King, those ideals and the fact that people like Steele can do no more than cry about it on the Internet – at least while they are not locked up somewhere that is. As for Poker Face, just add this to the list of futile attempts to have it both ways. You cannot bitch about being called racist and anti-Semitic while defending and supporting racist and anti-Semitic people and ideals. They have not yet announced when or where they are having this fundraiser. They want to keep it under wraps so people won’t be able to alert the venue and prompt them to pull the rug out from under the whole thing. Apparently Poker Face believes in freedom to a point, just like their “Patriot Attorney” Steele. If they were truly about freedom for all, they would feel that way about those who would want the freedom to decide if a concert for a white supremacist is something they want in their venue.

One People’s Project

ALLENTOWN, PA–The band Poker Face, a band affiliated with tea party groups who have long denied being a racist and anti-Semitic band, has announced they are holding a fundraiser for a Idaho-based white supremacist attorney accused of orchestrating a murder-for-hire plot to kill his wife and mother-in-law.

“Another one of our friends being setup by the anti-American parasites of the ADL. This time they are f-ing with Ed Steele,” Lead singer Paul Topete wrote on the Poker Face forum on their website under the name “Pokerkid”. “Groups like the ADL and SPLC will be imprisoned for their crimes against Americans and America, when we take over our government again.”

Edgar J. Steele, an attorney from Bonner County, Idaho who represented the late Dick Butler and 3 Aryan Nations security guards in 2000 civil trial that bankrupted the racist group, has been in jail since June on charges that he tried to hire someone to murder his wife Cyndi and her mother. According to federal court documents, Larry Fairfax, a handyman and a friend of Steele’s for over 20 years, informed authorities that Steele had discussed with him six months earlier a list of people he wanted dead, and he agreed to the plot and accepted travel money, court documents say. After federal agents were able to record Steele planning the murders after concealing a device on Fairfax, Steele was arrested the day he was supposed to have an alibi when his wife and mother-in-law was killed.

The case has taken a number of turns since the arrest however. Fairfax had since been arrested because he neglected to inform authorities that the pipe bomb meant to kill Cyndi Steele and her mother had already been rigged. Car mechanics at a Jiffy Lube in Coeur d’Alene, ID found the device when the vehicle was brought into service, and Fairfax told authorities that he had contructed the bomb. Another twist is that Cyndi Steele has come out in defense of her husband, saying that his arrest is actually part of a government plot to silence him, and is planning a speaking tour to build support for him. “The FBI says that my husband hired Larry Fairfax to kill me and my mother,” Cyndi said at a press conference in September. “That is not true. We have been married for 25 years. Ed loves me, I love him.”

The author of a book entitled “Defensive Racism”, Steele failed to successfully defend Aryan Nations in a $6 Million lawsuit brought about by the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of Victoria and Jason Keenen two Native Americans attacked by Aryan Nation guards outside its compound in 1998. It effectively bankrupted the organization, now fragmented with several organizations in the US claiming to be the true Aryan Nations, and forcing them out of their compound near Hayden Lake. He has since been a favorite speaker at white supremacist conferences, including those sponsored by Willis Carto’s Barnes Review and David Duke’s European American Rights Organization (EURO), and has worked as a spokesperson for the reportedly defunct white supremacist singing duo Prussian Blue.

As Cyndi Steele did during the press conference. Edgar Steele maintains that the evidence against him has been fabricated. In a jailhouse letter published in the American Free Press and reposted in Paul Topete’s post on the case, Steele also says that in truth Fairfax, who he calls his “hillbilly handyman” is actually trying to cover up stealing $60,000 in silver from Steele with the story of the alleged murder plot. “Knowing I would discover the theft [and] know it was him, he tried to kill me with two pipe bombs he placed on the cars he knew I drove,” Steele wrote. “They both failed to go off. Cyndi left town with one before he removed it, which led to the discovery of the car bomb on our Mitsubishi SUV.”

Curiously, even though Steele says that his arrest was part of a plot to cover up the theft of the silver, he also says that Fairfax has approached him before about being a hit-man for him. “This murder-for-hire plot is beyond my hillbilly hit man, so I assume he went to the ADL, which either fabricated tapes that he played for the FBI recorder or produced a mimic of me to make the tapes for the FBI on the spot,” Steele wrote. “Regardless, I have been framed and set-up! [By the way], the ADL was quoted extensively in the government’s opening papers in court.”

Poker Face, who is profiled in the NAACP report on racist elements in the Tea Party campaigns as already having “a reputation for anti-Semitism” when they participated in the July 4, 2009 T
ea Party rally in Senate Park in Washington, DC, has not announced where or when the Steele fundraiser is to be held and will not tell anyone where in particular until closer to the day to avoid the calls of protest to venues where they play. On Saturday, they played at Planet Trogg in nearby Whitehall, and earlier that day, Topete was seen with a ladyfriend at the End the Fed Rally outside the Federal Reserve Building in Philadelphia. Steele’s trial was set for November 1, but to date has not begun.