A website run by Idaho neo-Nazi Scott Rhodes has distributed a new set of racist robocalls to Florida voters targeting the state’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Andrew Gillum.
The calls, which voters received today, contain a racist impersonation of Gillum while “black spiritual music plays in the background, and a monkey screeches occasionally to refer to Gillum.” Rhodes achieved notoriety last year after “police linked him to the distribution of white supremacist propaganda at Sandpoint (Idaho) High School, harassment of a Sandpoint resident, and threatening, anti-Semitic calls that included recordings of Hitler.” Amanda Terkel at HuffPost reported:
Voters in Florida received the robocall on Tuesday, and HuffPost obtained audio of the recording. Speaking in an exaggerated minstrel dialect, an actor pretends to be Gillum, saying: “Well hello there. I is the Negro Andrew Gillum, and I be asking you to make me governor of this here state of Florida.”
Black spiritual music plays in the background, and a monkey screeches occasionally to refer to Gillum, who is the mayor of Tallahassee.
The ad says Gillum’s health care plan will be quite cheap, because he’ll just give chicken feet to people as medicine. It talks about how Jewish people are going to vote for him, because Jews are “the ones that been putting Negroes in charge over the white folk, just like they done after the Civil War.”
At the end of the robocall, a disclaimer says it was paid for by The Road To Power, a white supremacist website and podcast based in Idaho that sent out a similar call against Gillum in August, when he was running in the Democratic primary. The group has been linked to racist robocalls in Virginia, Oregon, California, Idaho, Iowa and Pennsylvania.
HuffPost also posted audio of the call. Road to Power distributed a similar call with white supremacist messaging against Gillum in August.
The calls are orchestrated by Rhodes, who runs a website called Road to Power that describes itself as “White Nationalist anti-jew.” Rhodes is vehemently anti-Semitic, using his site’s podcast to crank out pro-Holocaust propaganda and argue that black people are “incompatible with civilization.” Rhodes’ podcast has negligible reach, even among white supremacist circles, but Rhodes has managed to make headlines by sponsoring abhorrent robocalls to voters across the United States.
Rhodes has distributed racist robocalls aimed at spreading generalized hate beyond specific elections. On a call sent in mid-August received by Right Wing Watch on a Washington, D.C., phone number, a male voice says, “No white civilization has ever survived mixing with the Negro animal, whether ancient Egypt or today's South Africa. It's time to expel all Negroes to Africa or it will end America.”
Road to Power programming revels in white nationalist rhetoric, and expressions of pure racial hatred. For example, the video podcast’s opening sequence features an image of a “Jude” gold star on a pile of ashes and a cut-scene in one episode contains footage meant to depict black people being whipped by slave owners—set to the song “Whip It” by Devo.
Right Wing Watch has documented Road to Power robocalls sent to California voters in support of neo-Nazi Patrick Little during his failed campaign for U.S. Senate. Little ran his campaign on a platform so extreme that he discouraged his supporters from using traditional means to donate to his campaign because campaign contributions are public record.
