Navy officer relieved of duty amid anti-Semitic accusations

[oberliner]

NORFOLK - The Navy has relieved an officer of duty while it investigates accusations that he heads two anti-Semitic groups.

Lt. Cmdr. John Sharpe was relieved Wednesday of his assignment as public affairs officer on the Carl Vinson aircraft carrier, said Jim Brantley, a spokesman for the U.S. Fleet Forces Command.

Brantley said regulations bar Navy personnel from participating "in any organization that espouses supremacist causes," but gave no additional information. He said the Navy investigation began after a reporter for PortFolio magazine asked Tuesday about allegations of "supremacist" activity by Sharpe.

According to the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, Sharpe leads the Legion of St. Louis as well as IHS Press.

The latest edition of Intelligence Report, the center's magazine, described Sharpe's groups as grounded in extremist Catholic traditionalism and "nakedly anti-Semitic."

Sharpe, who lives in Carrollton in Isle of Wight County, said Friday that he founded the Legion and IHS, but that neither he nor those entities are anti-Semitic or affiliated with any supremacist groups.

"What do you mean, anti-Semitic? Have I advocated harming people because they're Jewish, hating people because they're Jewish, having any attitude to them because they're Jewish or any other religion? Absolutely not."

http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm?story=120893&ran=124140&tref=y

[asthmaticeog]

1. Purveyor in 5... 4... 3... 2...

[Erika]

2. Can't comment on Subject too touchy n/t

[Skittles]

3. f*** it then, I will

if the accusations are true that is conduct unbecoming of an officer - PERIOD

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. BINGO

[Lurking Dem]

7. Why touchy?

[GreenZoneLT]

4. Hmm. Needs more research.

Sounds like he's a loony, far-right Catholic, but there's no shortage of those in the Navy. One of the best commanders I ever had was the news director for EWTN (Mother Angelica's far-right-Catholic TV channel). Never heard or saw him express any religious bigotry, and as a UU atheist, I'm certainly fair game for that.

Reading the link, he does sound pretty loopy. Very concerned about the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy to undermine Catholicism. I gotta join the Masons; that whole Judeo-Masonic conspiracy sounds like fun. I already know how to lay brick, so that should be an in.

[oberliner]

6. What kind of research?

Not sure how your subject line matches the text in your post.

[Lurking Dem]

8. From SPLC

The 'Synagogue of Satan'
by Mark Potok




From a makeshift pulpit inside an Indiana Quality Inn, a baby-faced priest angrily denounces the Jews, saying they mean to "destroy all Christian nations."

In offices in State Line, Pa., an intense, bespectacled man tirelessly recounts how the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia "predicts the anti-Christ will come from Jewry" and warns of the Jews' role in the coming "New World Order."

At a gathering near the Philadelphia airport, men in priests' collars and brown monk's robes rage against the "Judeo-Masonic" conspiracy to destroy the Catholic Church, the "Marxist-Jewish" scheme to wreck American schools, and even an elaborate 9/11 plot, "predicted by the Blessed Virgin Mary 84 years ago."

For most Americans, the world of "radical traditionalist Catholicism" is so remote and little-known -- it entered the nation's consciousness, just barely, with revelations about the strident anti-Semitism of actor Mel Gibson and his father, Hutton -- that it may seem wholly irrelevant to the modern world. Is it really important what a group of people, many excommunicated and most gathered behind the walls of their monasteries and other institutions, think about the Jews? That many believe there was no Holocaust? That some say every pope since 1958 has been illegitimate, and a few even insist the real pope has been kidnapped?

snip

In February 2006, John Sharpe, head of the Legion of St. Louis and another leading radical traditionalist, sold books at a conference of the racist magazine American Renaissance that also played host to neo-Nazi David Duke.

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=703

[Cerridwen]

9. "White supremacists" in the military has been a concern for years

This appears to be part and parcel of the concern and response to the "infiltration" of the U.S. military by these types of hate groups.

An article that addresses this from the Stars and Stripes

RAF MILDENHALL, England — The Pentagon has long been aware of the threat posed by white supremacists in uniform.

In June 1996, the services’ secretaries addressed the House of Representatives National Security Committee on the military’s moves to eliminate hate groups in the armed forces.

--snip--

“The only way to defeat the greatest military in the world is to know that military,” he said. “That’s why I still try to get commanders to know that these guys are trying to infiltrate the military.”

--snip--

“We’re very worried that the problem will get worse, not better, both because the Pentagon does not take it seriously and due to the increase in recruitment we are about to see,” Potok said.

more at above link