Friends sent Bluestem this news item from the AgriGrowth Council's website, AgriGrowth Holds Annual Minnesota Ag & Food Summit, Welcoming Top Agri-Food Executives, MDA Commissioner Thom Petersen and more.
I found the bit about one top Agri-Food Executives most interesting:
. . .Additionally, Don Schiefelbein, Partner at Schiefelbein Farms, was presented with this year’s Distinguished Service Award. Since 1968, it has been an AgriGrowth tradition to present the Distinguished Service Award for unique service and significant contributions to strengthening food systems and agriculture in Minnesota.
On top of owning and operating a large farm operation, Schiefelbein also has served as President of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and President of the American Angus Association. In 2017, he was also recognized as Minnesota Cattleman of the Year.
“I am honored to receive this year’s Distinguished Service Award from AgriGrowth, and I greatly appreciate their shared vision of building a strong, resilient agri-food industry in Minnesota. My job is to raise cattle, and amazing opportunities keep coming my way that allow me to lead and elevate the value of agri-food,” said Schiefelbein. “I am proud to be connected to so many in our industry who share a passion for elevating agri-food and feeding the world.”.
“Every year, AgriGrowth is proud to recognize agri-food leaders who are positively impacting our sector and making a difference. Don Schiefelbein is an effective leader and voice for agri-food here in Minnesota, and across the nation,” said Nelsen. “He highlights all that Minnesota agriculture has to offer.” . . .
My most vivid memory of Schiefelbein is the moment in July 2021 when he hosted the Minnesota stop of the ARISE USA Resurrection Tour.
The nationwide tour drew some attention at the time for its extremist views. Bluestem posted in UPDATE: Coming to Gilfillan Farm on July 8: Resurrection Tour, wrapped in vicious antisemitism:
According to "Constitutional Sheriffs" group teams up with Antisemitic Conspiracist, Chuck Tanner and Devin Burger's article published on the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights' website:
On the Fourth of July, the “Arise USA” buses roll into Keystone, South Dakota, for the “Resurrection Tour.” The stop is the fortieth of the Arise USA: The Resurrection Tour’s scheduled 110-day, eighty-nine stop journey across the country.
At the Keystone stop, for $1000 per person, VIPs can visit Historic Deadwood, take group photos at Mount Rushmore and Custer State Park, mingle with Arise USA speakers at a cash bar, and get a ride to the big rally. Beyond the pomp and circumstance, the stop is also billed as “the beginning of the second American Revolution.”[1]
Behind the bunting and vinyl bus wraps, Arise USA is a fusion of two far-right strands: deeply antisemitic Qanon-style conspiracies combined with a return of the Posse Comitatus as the solution to the “Deep State.”
The tour is organized under the auspices of the Earth Intelligence Network, a non-profit run by former CIA employee turned antisemitic QAnon conspiracy monger, in partnership with the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) of longtime militia figure Richard Mack
Lead tour organizer, Robert David Steele, is a prolific purveyor of antisemitism who spews conspiracy theories about “satanic Zionists” engaged in a global plot against white people; deems Jews “a secret society that believes itself to be exempt from all laws and customs of others;” promotes Holocaust denial; calls for jailing all Jews not sufficiently “loyal to the Republic;” and declares that we must “eradicate every Zionist who refuses to be loyal to their country of citizenship and the rule of law.”[2]
Former sheriff Richard Mack, a feature on the militia speaking circuits since the early 1990s, created the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association to woo law enforcement officials to side with the far-right and revive Posse Comitatus ideas.
Steele and Mack are now working side by side on this tour. In interviews, the two have talked of using the journey to build a movement together. . . .
Steele's antisemitism is documented in depth in the article; he spreads notions from the notorious The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion as well as citing some of the most notorious Holocaust deniers. From Tanner and Burger's article:
. . .Arise USA promotions do not, however, point out Robert David Steele’s obsession with Jews. If the brief description in the introduction makes Steele sound Nazi-esque in his antisemitism, it is not an accident – a fact that becomes crystal clear in a cursory browse of his Public Intelligence Blog, subtitled “The truth at any cost lowers all other costs – curated by former U.S. spy Robert David Steele.”[10]
Before even reading an article on the site, the depth of Steele’s antisemitism becomes painfully evident in the fact that a search of “Protocols of Zion” on Steele’s website finds at least forty-two articles that cite this text to expound on the “Zionist conspiracy.”[11]
The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion is a 19th-century Czarist-backed fabrication that purported to document the existence of a global Jewish conspiracy for world domination. Antisemites have repeatedly used this document to incite bigotry and violence against Jews, including the German Nazis. The Protocols were also distributed by Christian Identity adherent and Posse Comitatus creator William Potter Gale.[12]. . .
. . . Another article on the Public Intelligence Blog promotes the idea of a Jewish conspiracy to “eradicate” white men by citing the views of British antisemite David Icke. Asking questions such as, “What are we to make of racially themed congressional caucuses, safe spaces, segregated dorms and theme houses, separate graduate ceremonies, and national lobbying groups such as the former National Council of La Raza (‘the Race’)?” the article answers,
“As David Icke so clearly illuminates, this is a Deep State & Zionist propaganda push seeking to incite a violent civil war that disarms and eradicates the white men specifically, and heterosexual men generally.”[36]
David Icke is well known for his bizarre conspiracy theory holding that “a reptilian race has controlled the planet for thousands of years and continues to do so today” and that reptilian “Jewish Rothschilds” lay behind Nazi atrocities against Jews.[37]
A search of Steele’s blog finds at least 105 articles referencing David Icke.[38] In a lauding review of Icke’s book Everything You Need To Know, But Have Never Been Told, Steele wrote,
“There are three kinds of holistic thinking: secular, ecological, and cosmic. With the exception of David Icke I know of no one, anywhere, who actually thinks holistically at all three levels (I fall short at the cosmic level).”[39]
In the review, Steele takes a detour to praise Holocaust denier, Ernst Zundel:
“I will mention here that I knew Ernst Zundel and his wife, both passed now, and found his victory over the Zionists in Canadian court cases compelling – Auschwitz, to take one example, for (sic) forced by facts to reduce from 6 million to 1.5 million the number of dead (still overstated, the Red Cross total is under 300,000), and it is now compelling known that a) most Jews (and Germans) died from starvation, typhus, and allied bombing and b) the Zionists refused to take the Jews offered an exit – all of them – for the bargain price of $3 million – the Zionist leaders WANTED hundreds of thousands of Jews to die so that they could CREATE the holocaust myth. It merits comment that the Zionist Wikipedia page on Ernst Zundel is full of lies and does not properly credit him with his extraordinary accomplishments at documenting the truth and demonstrating that the narrative about gas ovens is a total fabrication” [Italics added.[40]
Robert David Steele and Richard Mack’s Arise USA Tour has taken the far-right effort at law enforcement recruitment full circle – back to the vicious antisemitic roots of the original Posse Comitatus, albeit with a different vessel to express that antisemitism.
It is no longer possible for Richard Mack and the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association to lean on vague denials about the group’s ties to bigotry. Instead, the evidence of Richard Mack’s CSPOA partnership with antisemitism is wrapped around the outside of one of the Arise USA tour buses.
Heckova a fellow, Schiefelbein's pal, whom he introduces in on the Steele's tour website.
The flyer for the event:
Here's the video of Schiefelbein's opening schtick, rustled from the website of the tour's late organizer, Robert David Steele. Schiefelbein snipes about methane from cattle being an important issue, implying climate change isn't an important issue, then bashes gender identity issues, praises his family's lack of divorces while blaming declines in the country on the state of other people's families, then moves to snipe about a president who can't say it's a nation "under God" (not sure which urban legend he's hitting on there. He closes with praise for Trump, who by this point wasn't President.
If this is all "all that Minnesota agriculture has to offer," Bluestem has to wonder who in the AgriGrowth Council's audience was at the 2021 event.
Schiefelbein also introduced COVID denier Patriot: Bradley R. Meyer, as a "local hero." Readers can watch Meyers' talk here. Sadly, Steele, another COVID denier, died of the coronavirus a few months later. At VICE, David Gilbert reported on August 30 in QAnon Anti-Vaxxer Called COVID a Hoax Even as His ‘Lungs Stopped Functioning.
Bluestem does wonder if the Kimball cattleman moderates his message to audiences less outraged that the patriots who showed up that summer's day near Redwood Falls.
Take for instance, the March 27, 2023 AgWeek article, Livestock leaders say farmers need to engage in climate conversations, summarized by its subhead and lede:
Minnesota dairy farmer Steve Schlangen and beef producer Don Schiefelbein say farmers need to be involved in environmental policy, even if they don't buy into all the climate change theories.
To Don Schiefelbein, whether a beef producer thinks fears about climate change are legitimate or not doesn’t really matter, but they can’t shy away from the issue. . . .
If only one could unsee his 2021 performance among fellow traveling patriots, you might want to have a conversation with that man.
Likewise, there's this message of unity in Farm and Ranch Guide's Schiefelbein: ‘Band together for greatest strength’:
The Minnesota State Cattlemen’s Association was proud to welcome one of their own – Don Schiefelbein – to their state convention.
Schiefelbein, of Kimball, Minn., has spent 2022 serving as president of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA). In that role, he’s traveled and visited with cattle producers across the United States.
His message to his Minnesota friends was the same message he’s shared across the nation – instead of focusing on sensitive issues, focus on issues that people agree on. . .
. . .The popular notion that it’s acceptable to simply not talk to someone if you have a disagreement is wrong, he said.
“If you disagree with someone, gather up all your friends and neighbors that think like you and bring them to the table, so when your ideas are being discussed, it becomes the majority idea,” he said. “That’s how the U.S. is supposed to work, and that’s what I implore each and every one of you to do. . . .
And those extremist gatherings he's willing to host-- jeepers, why would the ag media or AgriGrowth bring that up? He's such a unifier.
Photo: Don Schiefelbein with AgriGrowth Executive Director, Tamara Nelsen, giving him his plaque at the Minnesota Ag & Food Summit. Via Agrigrowth Council's website.
Related posts
- COVID denier & victim Robert David Steele's pal, anti-vaccine doc Bradley Meyer, in Olivia tonight
- UPDATE: Coming to Gilfillan Farm on July 8: Resurrection Tour, wrapped in vicious antisemitism
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