Frank Meeink’s public-facing story is one where he leaves hate behind and spends the rest of his life speaking out against it. This isn’t true, of course. He works with Light Upon Light.
Frank Meeink was quite the prolific bonehead back in the 80s and early 90s. He was a neo-Nazi gang recruiter in South Philadelphia. He had a public access show called The Reich and ABC’s Nightline and other outlets even platformed him, as NPR reports, “as a spokesman for neo-Nazi topics.”
“I did a lot of national TV shows, like with Ted Koppel and other news organizations, and so I’ve been kind of a face,” he told NPR.
Meeink’s redemption story, according to the NPR interview, began in prison. He spent a few years behind bars for kidnapping a leftist skinhead and “beating another man senseless for several hours.” Meeink says meeting people of other races led him to rethink his Nazism, but the act that made him quit the movement completely was the 1995 Oaklahoma City Bombing by white nationalist Timothy McVeigh. Meeink claims he was so horrified by McVeigh that he began talking to the FBI about his time in the white nationalist movement.
Shortly after, Meeink also began speaking publicly about his time as a neo-Nazi. The claim is often made that 1998’s ‘American History X’ is loosely based on Meeink’s life story, though it’s unclear if that’s actually the case. Meeink was a co-founding member of the deradicalization nonprofit Life After Hate in 2009.
Christian Picciolini, another former neo-Nazi, was also a co-founding member of Life After Hate. Picciolini has since left Life After Hate and formed his own organization called Free Radicals Project in January 2018. Picciolini’s split with Life After Hate sparked litigation, but neither this conflict nor the personal conflict between Meeink and Picciolini is the subject of this article. As such, we won’t discuss it much further here, beyond noting that Picciolini has spoken out against Light Upon Light and Meeink:
“You are a fraud. As someone who has known you for years and fired you because of your indiscretions in the past, this is just another incident in a long line of incidents,” Picciolini told Meeink in December last year after Meeink tabled for the Clarion Project, an incident we’ll cover shortly.
“Our founder [Christian Picciolini] has made it very clear that he does not support the work of so-called Light Upon Light and called out some others in the “de-radicalization” space as dangerous and providing cover to dangerous people,” Free Radicals Project said in a tweet.
Meeink appears to have begun associating with Light Upon Light as early as March 2019—here is an archive of his page on LUL’s website. In one article for LUL’s blog, Meeink calls himself “The Original Former.” But “former” isn’t a good description for anybody working with Light Upon Light. As previous posts on our blog have established, Light Upon Light actively and unapologetically promotes hate groups. Meeink’s connections with the Clarion Project are perhaps the most glaring example of this.
The Clarion Project, formerly the Clarion Fund and RadicalIslam.org, is designated by the SPLC as an anti-Muslim hate group. Clarion was started to distribute a number of Islamophobic propaganda films with titles like “The Third Jihad” and “Iranium.” One of their films, “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West,” was cited in neo-Nazi mass murderer Anders Breivik’s manifesto.
Alarmingly, the NYPD used Clarion propaganda as a training video for their officers in 2011. NYPD’s Director of Intelligence Analysis at the time was Mitch Silber, who is also a founder of Light Upon Light.
A more recent example of the Clarion Project’s demonization of Muslims came in 2015, when Ryan Mauro, the Director of their “Intelligence Network,” went on Fox Business. Mauro falsely claimed the community of Islamberg, New York harbors “training camps… for guerrilla warfare training.” This community has been demonized by widespread conspiracy theories on the far-right; conspiracies that have almost ended in terrorist attacks. In 2019, a “MAGA gang” plotted to murder Muslim families in Islamberg with improvised explosive devices, but were stopped by law enforcement.
The goal of the Clarion Project is to demonize Muslims and foment mass violence and state discrimination against them. They are directly responsible for this and other incidents of bigotry, terror and harassment in Islamberg and against the rest of the Muslim community in the United States.
Clarion doesn’t just target Muslims. In early 2019, they also demonized antifascist activism as an “extremist movement” and a “hate ideology” to which Generation Z is “vulnerable.” Clarion compared antifa to ISIS, citing Trump 2016 campaign advisor Oz Sultan.
Meeink’s willingness to work with Clarion undermines his claims of being a “former” in two ways: 1) He gives them a pass to spread Islamophobia by associating with them and lending them credibility. No one can claim they’re a “former” if they help someone who spreads hate look more credible. 2) Using a bad faith “both sides” comparison between neo-Nazis who want to commit genocide and antifascists who want to prevent genocide obfuscates that basic fact. If you claim to be a “former” neo-Nazi, you know damn well there is no comparison between antifa and neo-Nazis and you know damn well that pretending “the other side” is just as bad as your “former” side benefits neo-Nazism.
Any organization legitimately fighting racism and other systems of bigotry and oppression would see Clarion as a vector spreading the disease of bigotry against Muslims. But, as we have established, Light Upon Light is not legitimately fighting these systems. Light Upon Light’s goal is to launder racists’ reputations and parade them around in a network of national security grifters for money.
On December 19th, 2019, Frank Meeink tabled for the Clarion Project at Turning Point USA’s annual Student Action Summit in Florida. This is doubly condemning: TPUSA has a long history of members being exposed as white nationalists or otherwise part of the far-right. The white nationalist group Identity Evropa/American Identity Mopvement planned to use TPUSA to recruit members. The SAS was a circus. Most of the attention was on white nationalist ‘Groyper’ king Nick Fuentes, who showed up to troll bigoted pundit Ben Shapiro. Current Identity Evropa/American Identity Movement leader Patrick Casey has thrown his support behind Nick Fuentes.
But Meeink’s presence at this fascist circus didn’t go unnoticed. Journalist Nick Martin first pointed out Meeink’s presence at the event. “It damages their credibility when former extremists associate themselves with an anti-Muslim hate group like this. It just furthers the cycle of hate,” Martin wrote.
Reactions were split. Shireen Qudosi, a so-called “Muslim Reformer” who has been interviewed by anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer and is Clarion’s National Correspondent, accused Martin of “taking the extremist tactic of painting a thing in one shade.” Qudosi is also the author of the Clarion piece discussed above that compares antifascists to ISIS.
It should be noted that Qudosi wrote an opinion piece for Clarion a week after the TPUSA Summit which quoted both Jesse Morton and LUL associate/active Sines v. Kessler defendant Jeff Schoep. The piece had to do with the recent securitization of parts of New York in the wake of antisemitic attacks. This securitization effort is being headed by one of Light Upon Light’s founders, Mitch Silber, who we will cover in upcoming articles.
But back to the reaction to Meeink’s collaboration with Clarion. “The org you work for has pushed the myth of Muslim “no-go zones” in Europe and worked with some of the most noxious anti-Muslim voices in America. Its “Obsession” film was cited in Breivik’s manifesto. If you’re trying to prevent violent extremism, this ain’t the way,” Martin told Qudosi.
Curiously enough, Samantha Kutner, who recently left her position as a research consultant with LUL, agreed with Martin that associating with Clarion was going too far. In correspondence Kutner posted between herself and Clarion employee Shoshana Palatnik, Kutner says “The materials the Clarion project creates do not fight extremism. They create narratives that exacerbate extremism on both sides.”
When AntiFash Gordon (AFG) pointed out that Meeink works with LUL, they tried to deflect.
“Those collaborating with Light Upon Light are not bound by exclusivity,” LUL’s official Twitter responded, adding “Independent of whether you agree w/ the medium, the focus should be on the message.” They said that Meeink “is talking his experiences as a #Neonazi, which could be useful for any anti-Islam crowd to hear.” This ignores the fact that Meeink’s presence was in support of the “anti-Islam crowd,” rather than his being there in order to counsel them on exiting the movement.
“So you’re cool with your “influencers” collaborating with hate groups?” AFG replied.
The question went unanswered.
Meeink responded to criticism of his working for Clarion through several rambling, vague tweets over the next week.
“Communication what a great gift,” he wrote in the caption of a picture of himself shaking hands with a young man wearing a TRUMP 2020 yarmulke.
“To live by what I preach to understand that even conservatives deserve empathy,” he wrote on the 21st of that month.
This happened on the same day that AFG documented how Clarion used a post featuring Meeink’s life story to lobby right-wing legislators at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) Conference. ALEC is one of the strongest engines of right-wing politics in the US. Its conference is intended to build relationships between state legislators and right-wing activists, and teach state legislators how to more effectively advance right-wing politics. The stated purpose of Clarion’s presence at the ALEC Conference was to promote their “Preventing Violent Extremism” program to legislators, and their post uses Meeink’s presence and life story for credibility.
“Am I a good human being or coward for not engaging in Twitter rhetoric led by an egomaniac and his internet crew? I think it’s the same person anyway,” he wrote on the 30th, probably referring to a thread by AFG about Meeink’s connections to Clarion. In later posts Meeink rambled about how he’d rather spend time with his family than deal with it.
The criticisms of Meeink do not hinge on whether or not he is a “bad human being” or tainted by his past. They are based solely on his actions in the present day. Meeink’s responses to such criticism are typical of Light Upon Light’s reaction when the group is confronted with its own participation in hate. They make a bad faith argument: “everyone deserves empathy, so why can’t we talk to bigots?” Deradicalization groups, of course, do talk to bigots all the time. But we have seen absolutely no evidence that LUL is trying to hold bigots accountable, or that Meeink is working with Clarion to reform its virulent Islamophobia.
When LUL members are criticized for their actions, they hide behind vague, culty rhetoric and act like people don’t understand what they’re doing. When that doesn’t work, they simply ignore criticism, attack their critics’ character, and obfuscate what they’re really about.
Even Kutner’s denunciation of Clarion uses a bad faith “both sides” equivalency. Just as Clarion wants us to believe antifascists are as bad as ISIS, Kutner wants us to believe Jihadi terror and the U.S. government-stoked Islamophobia that Clarion represents are two sides of the same coin and not a direct result of U.S. imperialism.
The reason for this is obvious. Most of LUL’s work relies on providing a pseudo-intellectual justification for U.S. imperialism and the national security industry. Jeff Schoep and Jason Kessler have done absolutely no work to repair the damage their involvement in white nationalism caused and yet LUL sees fit to parade them around in front of NatSec wonks. The doctrine of “Countering Violent Extremism” that LUL’s researchers subscribe to was always about putting a veneer of academia and community engagement over mass surveillance. If Light Upon Light’s involvement with Clarion proves anything, it’s that you either have to be actively against racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia, or else you’re enabling them. You can’t have it both ways.
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