Illinois Politician Associated With Racist Sites, Radio
Michael Kleen, the Republican candidate for mayor of Rockford, Ill., is running on an innocuous “safer streets” platform, pledging “appreciation for commonsense and moderation” on a campaign website that sparkles with sweet reason, offering a profile of a trustworthy, public-spirited candidate.
But Hatewatch has discovered that there’s more to Kleen than the sanitized information his campaign offers. The citizens of Rockford — the third largest city in Illinois, with a population that is 20% African-American and 16% Latino — may not realize that Kleen has published his very controversial views on immigration, secession and education on hate-oriented sites such as VDARE.com and WorldNetDaily.com. He also participated in several interviews on The Voice of Reason Radio Network, a mouthpiece for the white nationalist movement that went offline last August.
Kleen, 31, owns a desktop publishing business called Black Oak Media. He’s written fiction and nonfiction books, specializing in tales of the supernatural and Illinois historical lore. With his master’s degree in American history, he’s also dabbled in opinion posts and, he says, his interests are becoming increasingly political. After losing a race for the Winnebago county board last year — he did get 43% of the vote — Kleen became the Republican candidate for mayor of Rockford, a city with 153,00 residents.
His posts on VDARE have blasted multicultural education and a moderate immigration reform bill co-sponsored by Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain several years ago. “It would open the floodgates to immigration in the Southwest and give citizenship to millions of Mexican nationalists who … have no love for their adopted country and who seek the eventual cultural and political severance of large swaths of territory,” Kleen wrote in one post.
more . . . http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2013/01/15/illinois-politician-associated-with-racist-sites-radio/?utm_source=WhatCounts+Publicaster+Edition&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Hatewatch+Headlines+for+January+17%2c+2013&utm_content=Illinois+Politician+Associated+With+Racist+Sites%2c+Radio
