VDOT worker says revoked license plate isn't coded Nazi message....

Usually we'll only give you snippets of a story on this blog, but this one includes VDOT, NASCAR, the Confederacy, Islam and Hitler.

Kudos to Brigid Schulte of the Washington Post on this phenomenal story about this license plate. 

 

Douglas Story, a Chantilly dump truck driver for the Virginia Department of Transportation, says he wanted to grab people's attention when he paid $224.90 to have a mural of the burning World Trade Center detailed onto the tailgate of his Ford F-150 along with a sticker that reads: "Everything I ever needed to know about Islam I learned on 9/11."

But he got more than he bargained for when a photo of his pickup went viral on the Web last week. Motorists and Muslim groups complained that his Virginia vanity license plate -- 14CV88 -- was really code for neo-Nazi, white supremacist sentiments. The state Department of Motor Vehicles voted last week to recall Story's plates and force him to buy new ones.

"There is absolutely no way I'd have anything to do with Hitler or Nazis," Story said Wednesday. He contacted The Washington Post after an article about his plate appeared last week; the state, citing privacy rules, had declined to release the identity of the plate's owner. "My sister-in-law and my niece are Jewish. I went to my niece's bat mitzvah when she turned 13 three years ago. Does that sound like something an anti-Semite would do?"

Story says the numbers 14 and 88 on his plate were not references to a white power slogan or "Heil Hitler," as the Council on American-Islamic Relations theorized, but an homage to his favorite NASCAR drivers: Tony Stewart, who drives car No. 14, and Dale Earnhardt Jr., who drives No. 88.

Story applied for the vanity plate in March 2009, shortly after Earnhardt changed his car number from 8 to 88 and Stewart changed his from 20 to 14.

CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said his group looked into the meaning of the numbers 14 and 88 after receiving complaints about Story's license plates. He said the group found that among neo-Nazis, 88 refers to "Heil Hitler," because H is the eighth letter of the alphabet. White supremacists sometimes use the number 14, Hooper said, as shorthand for the 14-word motto, "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children."

Story says that his truck has long been decorated with the Confederate battle flag and that he does have "CV" Sons of Confederate Veterans plates, which he obtained after discovering that his great-great-great-grandfather was a second lieutenant with the Alabama Partisan Rangers during the Civil War.

The flag "celebrates my Southern heritage," he said. "And the numbers recognize my favorite drivers in that southernest of sports, NASCAR."

He says he doesn't know who took the photo of his truck, in a handicapped parking spot, that became a viral sensation on the Web. "Probably someone who obviously has a soft spot for Islam," he said, pronouncing the word "I-slam," "because if you pronounce it 'Ih-slahm,' it's not disparaging enough."

He said he has a permit that allows him to park in handicapped spaces because of injuries he suffered in a 1985 motorcycle accident.

Hooper said he doesn't buy Story's version "given the overt anti-Muslim bigotry displayed on the truck and the Confederate flags and their historic connotation of racism. But it's his right to make that appeal to the Virginia DMV." Story said he has no intention of appealing. "I don't want my truck firebombed," he said.

Story received a certified letter last week from the DMV ordering him to get new plates. And his boss told him that he could no longer park on VDOT property with the anti-Islam mural. So Story spent an afternoon getting new randomized plates and peeling the mural off by hand.

"I feel naked," he said.

Here's the full story from the Washington Post.

And here's the original story when the DMV recalled the plate but refused to identify the driver.  

UPDATE:

Perhaps Doug Story should have updated his facebook page before speaking with the Washington Post and disavowing any Nazi beliefs. Now maybe this is a fake facebook page.

Mr. Story's public profile says he apparently is "!00% White, 100% Aryan" and "Over the past 28 years I, like David Duke, have had an Awakening." Gawker has the goods on Mr. Story.

Yikes - Doug Story welcome to cyberspace.  

2nd UPDATE: Doug Story's contact info includes www.newsaxon.org - a website devoted to "an online community for white by whites."  

Comments

[Dean]

Beatwatcher,

Do you see those red, white and blue Xs on his truck? He's a racist.

[Beatwatcher]

I would like to know how his tailgate mural makes him a racist. Islam has nothing to do with race, it is a theology. Is someone saying "if you don't have middleastern descent then you can't be muslim", now who is being the racist? The Hitler plate thing is so far out there as a reach, someone really needs to get a life. He is being singled out solely on the mural.

[Jeanine Cunningham]

What is the world coming to. A person expresses his family heritage and pride in his fav driver and he is a racist. Then puts a mural for the world to see and remember what horrible things the Islam did to this country. And he is the BAD guy! Please !!! What is next all the God plates and bumper stickers that refer to GOD has to be removed.. All I can say is that the gentlemen that owns the truck. GOD BLESS you for being proud and not afraid to express yourself !!!!!

[Dean]

It doesn't matter if Mr. Douglas is a Nazi, or not. He is a racist.

[Gen. Robert E. Lee]

The damn islamo fascists hate you and want your children and grandma dead. Hate em' back.

[tioDon]

Blah, blah,blah...IT'S CALL FREEDOM OF SPEECH....of course that doesn't apply to the protected groups only to white, Christian, hard working males....this country is so pathetic it deserves to be the craphouse it's becoming because we've decided to let the worst elements of our society controls what the rest of us say, think, publish, believe.

[sidnancy5]

doesn't matter if he's a neo or not. Freedom of speech. Geezus- don't take that away TOO!

[Brent]

Let the man have his civil liberties, freedom of speech! This man is not a Nazi and should be allowed to keep his vanity plate. Maybe we should remove the number 8 from all VA plates.

[Becky]

Whatever happened to "Freedom of Speech?" I feel more and more like the principles that this country are founded on are being taken away. If all Amercians have the right to practice "freedom of religion" then each American deserves the right of "freedom of speech" as well.

[Kim]

I think it's garbage that they made him change his plates and I think it's a shame he peeled the mural off. .. FREEDOM OF SPEECH.. is protected by the FIRST AMENDMENT... and this STILL AMERICA... I'd of told them to flake off... You don't like it, tough luck! Anyone can read anything into anything they choose - this Hooper guy went too far and bleeding a dead cow... It's a damn shame that this "special intrest group" is forcing this man to change HIS likes and HIS heritage... You don't like our FREEDOM of SPEECH or our choices to express it.. the go back to wherever you or your people were born and leave America alone!