The British National Party has set up a branch in the United States – nine years after it abandoned a fundraising drive across the Atlantic amid controversy over its links with American white supremacists.
The far-right party described its new US "unit" as simply a social networking organisation designed to help expatriate BNP supporters stay in touch with one another, and the party, while working abroad. But the Government last night accused the BNP, which has been hit by internal strife following poor general election results, of looking overseas to promote "hate and intolerance".
The new US branch has signed up 90 sympathisers, while a Canadian branch has 60 members. The party is also trying to boost its presence in Europe and the Far East. The American operation is being co-ordinated by an IT worker from Croydon, Adam McArthur, who recently moved to the US to take up a job. Mr McArthur, a BNP officer since February, lives in Berryville, a small town in rural Virginia just over an hour's drive from Washington DC.
The move follows the collapse of American Friends of the BNP, based in Virginia, which was set up to raise cash for the party and was addressed by Nick Griffin, the party's leader. Members of the group included David Duke, the leader of the Ku Klux Klan at the time, who was photographed with Mr Griffin. James W von Brunn, the white supremacist who shot dead a guard at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington last year, attended two meetings.
The organisation was run by Mark Cotterill, a veteran figure on the far right, who drew inspiration from the IRA's success in raising money in North America in the 1990s. It folded amid claims that its fundraising activities were illegal under American law. Mr Cotterill returned to Britain and has left the BNP.
In January, Mr McArthur registered under American law to reactivate the party's presence in the country. According to US government documents, he said the branch would "organise US-based members, so that we can develop social networking campaigns to increase votes for the BNP in the forthcoming local and general elections".
He also said he would advise the party's supporters on how to vote in British elections. The move was part of efforts co-ordinated by the BNP's overseas liaison officer, Andy McBride, to forge links with sympathisers around the world.
Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities, told The Independent: "This just shows there's nothing British about the BNP. It's a sign of the party's own weakness that it has to look outside Britain to try to peddle their messages of hate and intolerance."
Mr McBride said the new branch would be carefully monitored to prevent extremist sympathisers of organisations such as the KKK from joining.
"People are told that if they come into this party because they hate people, or hate the colour of their skin, it's the wrong party for them," he said. Mr McBride added that the party did not encourage donations from members living abroad because it involved completing "immense" amounts of paperwork.
Meanwhile in Britain
The British National Party is struggling under a weight of debts estimated at more than £500,000 and has suffered a series of resignations of prominent activists. Its cash crisis has arisen because of unpaid bills to suppliers and the cost of fighting legal actions with Unilever over the use of an image of a Marmite jar in an election broadcast and with the Equality and Human Rights Commission over its constitution.
Nick Griffin fought off a challenge to his leadership and has promised to step down in 2013. Last May, he said he wanted to "make way for a younger person" and focus on getting re-elected to the European Parliament in 2014. But infighting has continued to destabilise the party, with Eddy Butler, its former campaigns director, and Richard Barnbrook, the BNP's sole London Assembly member, both recently expelled.
Last week, Wiltshire's only BNP councillor, Michael Simpkins, quit the party over the scale of its debts and said he would sit on Corsham Town Council as an independent. He said he knew of two local printers that waited six months for the BNP to pay its bills. Meanwhile, Jim Dowson has said he will be stepping down as the BNP's chief fundraiser. He has faced accusations of making inappropriate advances to a young female activist. He has denied the claims and said he is the victim of a dirty-tricks campaign.
Independent
Showing posts with label white supremacists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label white supremacists. Show all posts
November 01, 2010
May 14, 2010
County Durham terror plot father and son are jailed
Ian (left) and Nicky DavisonPolice found the deadly chemical when they raided Ian Davison's home in Burnopfield, County Durham, last June. The 41-year-old admitted producing a chemical weapon, preparing for acts of terrorism and having terror handbooks. His son Nicky, 19, who was convicted of possessing material useful for acts of terror, was detained for two years at a young offenders' institution.
The pair, who had earlier been tried separately at Newcastle Crown Court, set up and ran the Aryan Strike Force (ASF) website.
Ian Davison created ricin at his home in 2006 or early 2007, Andrew Edis QC, prosecuting, said. It was found when police raided the property in June last year and is now stored at the UK's Porton Down chemical weapons centre. The court heard that Ian Davison researched how to make the killer chemical and then followed instructions, having bought its easily-sourced ingredients.
Passing sentence, Judge John Milford told the father: "A particularly unpleasant aggravating feature of this case is that you corrupted your son."
Mr Edis said: "He was a leading member of the ASF which was a neo-Nazi organisation dedicated to using violence. Its slogan was 'Whatever it takes'. The purpose of the violence was the creation of an international Aryan group which would establish white supremacy in 'white' countries. They were followers of the ideology of Adolf Hitler, who they revered, and whose work Mein Kampf was among many available on their website."
Mr Edis said the ASF had about 350 members recruited via the internet, though not all were active. Other alleged members will face trial later this year.
Mr Edis said: "This defendant intended to perpetrate acts of terrorism. The ricin which he made would be used in pursuit of the cause espoused by the group."
The Crown said the group had not picked out particular targets, but had run a training camp in Cumbria and made promotional films. The ASF, also known as the Wolf Pack, aimed to overthrow "Zionist" governments and considered itself to be the UK's most right-wing group. Davison Snr was in contact with a Nazi in Serbia and the pair discussed poisoning water supplies used by Muslims, Mr Edis said. Davison Snr possessed many copies of terror guidebooks such as the Anarchist's Cookbook and made them available for download.
Toby Hedworth QC, defending, said a psychological report showed Davison Snr was a "super-wimp not a savage" who had a "fragile ego".
Peter Carter QC, for Davison Jnr, said his client was of previous good character and had been corrupted by his father. He has now thrown away any chance of an Army career, the court heard. The judge said he accepted the son had been influenced by his father.
"But you were actively in the website and expressed on it the same vile, racist views as your father," he said. "I accept you knew nothing of the ricin."
Judge Milford also expressed surprise that the Anarchist's Cookbook was still available to buy on the Amazon website and asked the authorities to look into it.
Outside court, Det Supt Neil Malkin, of Durham Police, said he wanted terror manuals removed from the internet.
"This is a landmark case and will bring the attention of the authorities at a national level to the need to restrict these documents," he said.
He said just downloading the Anarchist's Cookbook from the internet was an offence. He added: "Ian Davison was only one step away from producing a terrorist event."
The Crown Prosecution Service said Ian Davison was the first man in England and Wales to be convicted of a terrorism-related offence involving ricin. Counter terrorism division lawyer Stuart Laidlaw said the pair were "Nazi zealots" who believed in white supremacy and revered Adolf Hitler. He said: "They hated minority ethnic groups, be they black, Asian, Muslim or Jewish."
He added that 10 fatal doses of ricin were found in Ian Davison's house, all of which were made by him.
BBC
White supremacist and son await sentence
A white supremacist who created deadly ricin will be sentenced along with his racist son today
Police said former pub DJ Ian Davison, 41, was plotting to use the killer chemical which was found in a jam jar in his kitchen when officers raided. He ran a group of internet extremists known as the Aryan Strike Force with his 19-year-old son Nicky, who was convicted last month of preparing for acts of terrorism by downloading the guidebooks the Anarchist's Cookbook and The Poor Man's James Bond.
The teenager, of Grampian Way, Annfield Plain, County Durham, claimed he became involved in white supremacy to please his racist father. A jury took 50 minutes to convict him at Newcastle Crown Court.
Davison Snr, of Myrtle Grove, Burnopfield, County Durham, had already admitted producing a chemical weapon, preparing for acts of terrorism and three counts relating to possessing the terror handbooks. Ricin is extracted from the castor bean and exposure to small quantities can be fatal. The US Centre for Disease Control suggested that as little as 500mg - about half a grain of rice - could be lethal if injected or inhaled, and has no known antidote.
The father and son were both remanded in custody ahead of their sentencing at Newcastle Crown Court.
After Davison Jnr's conviction, Detective Superintendent Neil Malkin said: "I have no understanding of their intended target. What I do know is the nature of the organisation and what it had pulled together in terms of the ricin, pipe bombs and the manuals can only give me concerns that the next step was to take it to the streets."
The Aryan Strike Force was in the early stages of preparation when it was raided last summer, and planned paramilitary operations which aimed to topple the "Zionist" government. Members believed themselves to be the most racist group in Britain.
Independent
Police said former pub DJ Ian Davison, 41, was plotting to use the killer chemical which was found in a jam jar in his kitchen when officers raided. He ran a group of internet extremists known as the Aryan Strike Force with his 19-year-old son Nicky, who was convicted last month of preparing for acts of terrorism by downloading the guidebooks the Anarchist's Cookbook and The Poor Man's James Bond.
The teenager, of Grampian Way, Annfield Plain, County Durham, claimed he became involved in white supremacy to please his racist father. A jury took 50 minutes to convict him at Newcastle Crown Court.
Davison Snr, of Myrtle Grove, Burnopfield, County Durham, had already admitted producing a chemical weapon, preparing for acts of terrorism and three counts relating to possessing the terror handbooks. Ricin is extracted from the castor bean and exposure to small quantities can be fatal. The US Centre for Disease Control suggested that as little as 500mg - about half a grain of rice - could be lethal if injected or inhaled, and has no known antidote.
The father and son were both remanded in custody ahead of their sentencing at Newcastle Crown Court.
After Davison Jnr's conviction, Detective Superintendent Neil Malkin said: "I have no understanding of their intended target. What I do know is the nature of the organisation and what it had pulled together in terms of the ricin, pipe bombs and the manuals can only give me concerns that the next step was to take it to the streets."
The Aryan Strike Force was in the early stages of preparation when it was raided last summer, and planned paramilitary operations which aimed to topple the "Zionist" government. Members believed themselves to be the most racist group in Britain.
Independent
May 04, 2010
Pictures of UK neo-Nazi plotters released
Ian Davison (left) and son NickyHate mob leader Ian Davison, 41, planned to use the deadly poison ricin and recruited hundreds of followers to his Nazi Aryan Strike Force. His son Nicky, 19, had set up a computer network of white supremacist extremists around the world.
Members of the group planned to fight against what they called the "Zionist-occupied government" and believed Britain had been taken over by Jews. A police raid at the Davisons’ home on Grampian Way, Annfield Plain, Co Durham in England, found copies of paramilitary manuals 'The Poor Man’s James Bond' and the 'Anarchist’s Cookbook' on two computers.
Davison Jnr, a former milkman’s assistant, denied any knowledge of the documents and claimed a “mischievous” friend downloaded them. But he was convicted on Friday of three counts of possessing information useful in committing or preparing terror acts. Former pub DJ Davison Snr previously admitted six charges, including producing deadly ricin, one of the world’s most dangerous substances. They will be sentenced at Newcastle Crown Court on May 14.
Judge John Milford remanded Davison in custody and he was taken away after hugging his weeping mother in the public gallery.
The racist gang was fully intending to use the deadly ricin, said the officer leading the investigation, Detective Superintendent Neil Malkin.
“I have no understanding of their intended target,” he said. “What I do know is the nature of the organisation and what it had pulled together in terms of the ricin, pipe bombs and the manuals can only give me concerns that the next step was to take it to the streets.”
He said the deadly substance was found in a sealed jar and was in a usable state. It has now been taken to the UK’s chemical weapons centre at Porton Down.
Mr Malkin said the father was the head of the organisation which had “abhorrent views” towards “ethnic minorities and Jewish people”. But the son was old enough to know his own mind, the detective said.
“He lived in an atmosphere of extreme right-wing white supremacist neo-Nazi rhetoric and he has embraced that.”
Mr Malkin said others investigated as part of the inquiry will face prosecution later this year.
Evening Echo
March 04, 2010
US facing surge in rightwing extremist and militia groups
• Civil rights report shows 250% rise in extremist patriot groups
• Groups fuelled by economy and media conspiracy theories
The US is facing a surge in anti-government extremist groups and armed militias, driven by deepening hostility on the right to Barack Obama, anger over the economy, and the increasing propagation of conspiracy theories by parts of the mass media such as Fox News.
The Southern Poverty Law Centre, the US's most prominent civil rights group focused on hate organisations, said in a report that extremist "patriot" groups "came roaring back to life" last year as their number jumped nearly 250% to more than 500 with deepening ties to conservative mainstream politics.
The SPLC report, called Rage on the Right, said the rise in extremist groups was "a cause for grave concern" given their propensity to use violence during their heyday in the 90s, most notably with the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people. It added that the issues driving support for such groups were increasingly populist and that "signs of growing radicalisation are everywhere".
"Patriot groups have been fuelled by anger over the changing demographics of the country, the soaring public debt, the troubled economy and an array of initiatives by President Obama that have been branded "socialist" or even "fascist" by his political opponents," the report said.
"Already there are signs of … violence emanating from the radical right. Since the installation of Barack Obama, rightwing extremists have murdered six law enforcement officers. Racist skinheads and others have been arrested in alleged plots to assassinate the nation's first black president. One man from Brockton, Massachusetts – who told police he had learned on white supremacist websites that a genocide was under way against whites – is charged with murdering two black people and planning to kill as many Jews as possible on the day after Obama's inauguration. Most recently, a rash of individuals with anti-government, survivalist or racist views have been arrested in a series of bomb cases."
The report says the patriot movement has "made significant inroads into the conservative political scene" in part driven by a growing view of the US administration "as part of a plot to impose 'one-world government' on liberty-loving Americans".
"The Tea Parties and similar groups that have sprung up in recent months cannot fairly be considered extremist groups, but they are shot through with rich veins of radical ideas, conspiracy theories and racism," the report says.
The SPLC notes that the rise comes as part of a deepening disillusionment with government in which just one quarter of Americans think government can be trusted. It said that a recent poll found that the anti-tax Tea Party movement is viewed in more positive terms than the Democratic or Republican parties.
"The signs of growing radicalisation are everywhere. Armed men have come to Obama speeches bearing signs suggesting that the 'tree of liberty' needs to be 'watered' with 'the blood of tyrants'. The Conservative Political Action Conference held this February was co-sponsored by groups like the John Birch Society, which believes President Eisenhower was a communist agent, and Oath Keepers, a patriot outfit formed last year that suggests, in thinly veiled language, that the government has secret plans to declare martial law and intern patriotic Americans in concentration camps," the SPLC said.
The report says that, unlike during the 1990s, the patriot movement's core ideas are more widely propagated and accepted by prominent politicians and some in the mass media, such as the Fox News presenter Glenn Beck.
"As the movement has exploded, so has the reach of its ideas, aided and abetted by commentators and politicians in the ostensible mainstream," said the report. "Beck, for instance, reinvigorated a key patriot conspiracy theory – the charge that the federal emergency management agency is secretly running concentration camps – before finally 'debunking' it."
How far such language is now part of the mainstream political discourse was confirmed by Politico today, which reported that it had obtained a Republican national committee document detailing plans to raise election funds with "an aggressive campaign capitalising on 'fear' of President Barack Obama" and a promise to "save the country from trending toward socialism".
In the presentation, the administration is portrayed as "the Evil Empire", and Obama as the Joker in Batman.
Patriot groups and militias are planning a march on Washington next month ostensibly in defence of the right to carry guns.
Guardian
• Groups fuelled by economy and media conspiracy theories
The US is facing a surge in anti-government extremist groups and armed militias, driven by deepening hostility on the right to Barack Obama, anger over the economy, and the increasing propagation of conspiracy theories by parts of the mass media such as Fox News.
The Southern Poverty Law Centre, the US's most prominent civil rights group focused on hate organisations, said in a report that extremist "patriot" groups "came roaring back to life" last year as their number jumped nearly 250% to more than 500 with deepening ties to conservative mainstream politics.
The SPLC report, called Rage on the Right, said the rise in extremist groups was "a cause for grave concern" given their propensity to use violence during their heyday in the 90s, most notably with the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people. It added that the issues driving support for such groups were increasingly populist and that "signs of growing radicalisation are everywhere".
"Patriot groups have been fuelled by anger over the changing demographics of the country, the soaring public debt, the troubled economy and an array of initiatives by President Obama that have been branded "socialist" or even "fascist" by his political opponents," the report said.
"Already there are signs of … violence emanating from the radical right. Since the installation of Barack Obama, rightwing extremists have murdered six law enforcement officers. Racist skinheads and others have been arrested in alleged plots to assassinate the nation's first black president. One man from Brockton, Massachusetts – who told police he had learned on white supremacist websites that a genocide was under way against whites – is charged with murdering two black people and planning to kill as many Jews as possible on the day after Obama's inauguration. Most recently, a rash of individuals with anti-government, survivalist or racist views have been arrested in a series of bomb cases."
The report says the patriot movement has "made significant inroads into the conservative political scene" in part driven by a growing view of the US administration "as part of a plot to impose 'one-world government' on liberty-loving Americans".
"The Tea Parties and similar groups that have sprung up in recent months cannot fairly be considered extremist groups, but they are shot through with rich veins of radical ideas, conspiracy theories and racism," the report says.
The SPLC notes that the rise comes as part of a deepening disillusionment with government in which just one quarter of Americans think government can be trusted. It said that a recent poll found that the anti-tax Tea Party movement is viewed in more positive terms than the Democratic or Republican parties.
"The signs of growing radicalisation are everywhere. Armed men have come to Obama speeches bearing signs suggesting that the 'tree of liberty' needs to be 'watered' with 'the blood of tyrants'. The Conservative Political Action Conference held this February was co-sponsored by groups like the John Birch Society, which believes President Eisenhower was a communist agent, and Oath Keepers, a patriot outfit formed last year that suggests, in thinly veiled language, that the government has secret plans to declare martial law and intern patriotic Americans in concentration camps," the SPLC said.
The report says that, unlike during the 1990s, the patriot movement's core ideas are more widely propagated and accepted by prominent politicians and some in the mass media, such as the Fox News presenter Glenn Beck.
"As the movement has exploded, so has the reach of its ideas, aided and abetted by commentators and politicians in the ostensible mainstream," said the report. "Beck, for instance, reinvigorated a key patriot conspiracy theory – the charge that the federal emergency management agency is secretly running concentration camps – before finally 'debunking' it."
How far such language is now part of the mainstream political discourse was confirmed by Politico today, which reported that it had obtained a Republican national committee document detailing plans to raise election funds with "an aggressive campaign capitalising on 'fear' of President Barack Obama" and a promise to "save the country from trending toward socialism".
In the presentation, the administration is portrayed as "the Evil Empire", and Obama as the Joker in Batman.
Patriot groups and militias are planning a march on Washington next month ostensibly in defence of the right to carry guns.
Guardian
January 21, 2010
Nick Griffin to address US white supremacist conference
BNP leader Nick Griffin will join Ku Klux Klan members, neo-Nazis, holocaust deniers, anti-immigration extremists and eugenicists at the white supremacist American Renaissance conference in Virginia next monthThe convicted racist will appear alongside Dan Roodt, author of “Afrikaner Survival Under Black Rule”, David A. Yeagley, author of “What’s Up With Dark Men?”, lawyer to white supremacist groups Sam G Dickson, segregationist Jared Taylor – who believes Martin Luther King “left a legacy of division and resentment” – Raymond Wolters, a ’scientist’ who wishes to conduct experiments into race and IQ, and racist filmmaker Craig Bodeker.
American Resistance, a newsletter published by Taylor, promotes pseudoscientific research which argues that non-whites are genetically and morally inferior; their conference seeks to bring together various right-wing racist people and ideas. Infoshop News adds that:
“The Anti-Defamation League writes that AmRen, “promotes their views by attacking racial, ethnic, and religious diversity, which they call ‘one of the most divisive forces on the planet’ and therefore ‘dangerous’” and that, “many of North America’s leading intellectual racists have written for American Renaissance or have addressed the biennial American Renaissance conferences”.”A campiagn has been launched to put pressure on the hotel hosting the event to cancel or face a boycott. Yesterday Left Foot Forward reported Griffin’s attempt to use the Haiti earthquake for political gain.
Left Foot Forward
December 05, 2009
‘Neo-Nazi’ Blogger’s Fate In Hands of Brooklyn Jury
A New Jersey blogger crossed the line protecting free speech by writing that three federal judges in Chicago “must die” for a decision supporting gun control, a prosecutor said Friday in Brooklyn federal court, as the defense countered in closing arguments that giving a passionate opinion is not a crime.
“There is no right to threaten violence against people,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney William Ridgway. The judges, he added, “received that threat just by virtue of doing their jobs.”
Hal Turner, 47, of North Bergen, N.J., was charged earlier this year with threatening to assault or kill a federal judge. Defense attorney Nishay Sanan sought to portray him as a “shock jock” and fierce gun control opponent whose tirades were protected by the First Amendment.
“Giving your opinion is not a crime,” he said in his closing argument. “To do it passionately is not a crime.”
The lawyer also cited evidence that his client once was a paid FBI informant in investigations of neo-Nazis and white supremacist groups.
“What does he get from his country? Betrayal,” he said.
The arguments came after only one day of testimony U.S. DistrictCourt for the Eastern District of New York, located adjacent to Cadman Plaza in Downtown Brooklyn, where the trial was moved based on a change-of-venue request. Prosecutors called three federal agents to describe Turner’s fiery web site entries; his attorneys opted not to call any witnesses.
The jury began deliberating Friday afternoon.
Turner’s troubles began in June after the three judges with the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — Richard Posner, Frank Easterbrook and William Bauer — upheld a district court ruling dismissing lawsuits challenging handgun bans in Chicago and Oak Park. The same day, Turner blasted the decision with a lengthy Internet posting. In one passage, he quoted Thomas Jefferson as saying, “The tree of liberty must be replenished from time to time with the blood of tyrants and patriots,” court papers said.
Authorities say he then went too far by writing: “Let me be the first to say this plainly: These judges must die. Their blood will replenish the tree of liberty.”
Turner later posted the judges’ photographs, telephone numbers and work addresses, along with maps of a federal building that pointed out truck bomb barriers, they say. He also referenced the 2005 slaying of the mother and husband of another federal judge in Chicago, they say.
“Apparently, the 7th U.S. Circuit didn’t get the hint after those killings,” authorities say he wrote. “It appears another lesson is needed.”
In a separate case, Turner, who prosecutors have portrayed as a radical white-supremacist, was charged with “inciting injury to persons” for urging blog readers to “take up arms” against Connecticut lawmakers who proposed legislation to give Roman Catholic lay members more control over parish finances. If convicted of threatening the Illinois judges, Turner would face up to 10 years in prison.
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
“There is no right to threaten violence against people,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney William Ridgway. The judges, he added, “received that threat just by virtue of doing their jobs.”
Hal Turner, 47, of North Bergen, N.J., was charged earlier this year with threatening to assault or kill a federal judge. Defense attorney Nishay Sanan sought to portray him as a “shock jock” and fierce gun control opponent whose tirades were protected by the First Amendment.
“Giving your opinion is not a crime,” he said in his closing argument. “To do it passionately is not a crime.”
The lawyer also cited evidence that his client once was a paid FBI informant in investigations of neo-Nazis and white supremacist groups.
“What does he get from his country? Betrayal,” he said.
The arguments came after only one day of testimony U.S. DistrictCourt for the Eastern District of New York, located adjacent to Cadman Plaza in Downtown Brooklyn, where the trial was moved based on a change-of-venue request. Prosecutors called three federal agents to describe Turner’s fiery web site entries; his attorneys opted not to call any witnesses.
The jury began deliberating Friday afternoon.
Turner’s troubles began in June after the three judges with the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — Richard Posner, Frank Easterbrook and William Bauer — upheld a district court ruling dismissing lawsuits challenging handgun bans in Chicago and Oak Park. The same day, Turner blasted the decision with a lengthy Internet posting. In one passage, he quoted Thomas Jefferson as saying, “The tree of liberty must be replenished from time to time with the blood of tyrants and patriots,” court papers said.
Authorities say he then went too far by writing: “Let me be the first to say this plainly: These judges must die. Their blood will replenish the tree of liberty.”
Turner later posted the judges’ photographs, telephone numbers and work addresses, along with maps of a federal building that pointed out truck bomb barriers, they say. He also referenced the 2005 slaying of the mother and husband of another federal judge in Chicago, they say.
“Apparently, the 7th U.S. Circuit didn’t get the hint after those killings,” authorities say he wrote. “It appears another lesson is needed.”
In a separate case, Turner, who prosecutors have portrayed as a radical white-supremacist, was charged with “inciting injury to persons” for urging blog readers to “take up arms” against Connecticut lawmakers who proposed legislation to give Roman Catholic lay members more control over parish finances. If convicted of threatening the Illinois judges, Turner would face up to 10 years in prison.
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Labels:
Blog,
free speech,
Hal Turner,
neo-Nazi,
white supremacists
November 17, 2008
White rage: The rednecks out to kill Obama
When millions watched Barack Obama give his history-making victory speech in Grant Park on election night, one thing stood out starkly – the bulletproof screen surrounding him. But just how serious is the threat of assassination to the President-elect?
Shawn Adolf and his cousin Tharin Gartrell fancied that 28 August, 2008 would be a good day for the next president of the United States to die. They had the guns – Gartrell was later caught with a Ruger Model M77 Mark II bolt-action rifle with an attached scope and bipod, and a Remington Model 721, also with a scope. They were believers in a radical white supremacist ideology that gave them the motivation they needed to risk their own lives, if necessary, to prevent a black man from entering the Oval Office. (Or, as a friend reported Adolf as saying: "No nigger should ever live in the White House.")
And they had at least the outlines of a plan. They checked into the downtown Denver hotel where they believed Barack Obama was staying, and talked about the ways they could try to gun down the Democratic nominee on the day he was due to accept his party's nomination at an outdoor sports arena before an adoring crowd of more than 70,000 people.
Like many assassins before them, both the successful ones and the idle fantasists, Adolf and Gartrell took their inspiration from popular culture. They considered hiding a rifle inside a hollowed out television camera – an idea they borrowed from the Kevin Costner-Whitney Houston vehicle The Bodyguard. (It is also similar to the way al-Qa'eda operatives posing as a news crew assassinated Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of Afghanistan's Northern Alliance, on 9 September, 2001, but it is far from clear whether Adolf and Gartrell had any notion of this.)
They toyed with the idea of hitting Obama from as far away as 750 yards, using one of their high-powered rifles; according to their friend Nathan Johnson, who may or may not have been part of the plot, they had in mind the conspiracy theory that President Kennedy was not shot by Lee Harvey Oswald from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building, but rather by professional assassins stationed on the "grassy knoll" above Dallas's Dealey Plaza.
None of these plans was ever remotely realistic, however. Adolf and Gartrell may have had some fearsome weaponry, and a vague affiliation with a white supremacist biker gang called the Sons of Silence, which disavowed them the moment they were arrested. But they were also rank amateurs living in a crystal methamphetamine-induced haze of paranoia and race hatred. (One can't help thinking Adolf's name went to his head, at least a little, as he fingered the swastika ring on his finger.) They had no clue how to circumvent the security surrounding Obama – prosecutors who examined their plans laughed them off as ludicrously naïve. And they couldn't even figure out what every half-interested member of the press corps knew, that Obama was not staying at the Hyatt Regency, the temporary HQ of the Democratic National Committee, but at a different hotel altogether.
Four days before Obama's acceptance speech, Gartrell was pulled over for drunk-driving in the Denver suburb ' of Aurora after a patrol officer spotted his rented Dodge Ram truck swerving erratically, and the whole plot, such as it was, fell apart almost instantly. Certainly, the officer found plenty inside the truck to sound alarm bells – the two high-powered rifles, a silencer, a bulletproof vest, camouflage clothing, and three fake identification cards. But it was also clear that Gartrell was high on meth as well as drunk. The truck contained enough drug-making equipment to be considered a mobile meth lab.
Gartrell ratted out Johnson and Adolf almost as soon as he was taken in and photographed for his singularly striking mugshot. (With his bleached blonde hair, heavy silver earrings and pierced lip, he looks like the neo-Nazi from central casting.) Johnson was in the room at the Hyatt Regency, and wasted no time in talking himself – insisting he had no idea about any assassination plot while almost simultaneously telling the world Adolf was planning to "go down in a blaze of glory" and take Obama with him.
Adolf was a tougher proposition, the only one of the three with a serious criminal record, including burglary, forgery, drugs and weapons raps. At the time of his arrest he was wanted on eight outstanding charges and had recently skipped out on a $1 million bail payment. He was staying at a different hotel in the Denver suburbs. When the police arrived, he jumped out of his sixth-floor room on to the roof of the hotel kitchen four floors below, then jumped again to the ground, breaking his ankle as he landed. He didn't make it far. He, too, was found to be high on meth. When asked why he was wearing a bulletproof vest, he said he was convinced someone wanted to kill him.
We will no doubt learn more colourful details about the trio of would-be assassins when their trial begins this week. Intriguingly, though, they are being prosecuted on drugs and weapons charges only. Their prosecutor, Troy Eid, has said he is absolutely confident the "meth heads", as he calls them, never posed a risk to Obama or anyone else.
Not everyone is happy with this decision. After all, marginal people have hatched assassination plots before, and sometimes succeeded – one thinks of John Hinckley hitting President Reagan in 1981. And Barack Obama was never just another presidential contender; as the first African American to come even close to the highest political office on the planet, in a country whose history is spattered with the blood of racial animus, he is, by common consent, a target several orders of magnitude more tempting than the average for an extremist fringe of kooks, crazies, anti-government militia types, Ku Klux Klan members and other white race warriors, all of whom tend to be unforgiving in their ideological fervour, not to mention armed to the teeth.
He was granted 24-hour Secret Service protection just a few months into his campaign, in May 2007, after his friend and fellow Illinois senator, Dick Durbin, raised the alarm on his behalf. (Usually candidates receive that protection far later in the election cycle, after they have their party primaries sewn up.) We don't know exactly how hard the Secret Service has had to work on his behalf, although we do know that two men from the old confederate South – one from North Carolina, the other from Florida – were arrested and charged with making threatening statements against him in July. We know that effigies of Obama being lynched, or sliced through the head with a hatchet, have popped up periodically around the country – one on the campus of the University of Kentucky, another in Orange County, California in the run-up to Halloween.
We also know that Obama's supporters have been almost maniacal in their desire to prevent him sharing the tragic fate of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King. On a couple of occasions during primary season, when security ' guards at Obama campaign events stopped searching people's bags because of the backlog of people trying to get in, sympathetic reporters, bloggers and ordinary members of the public complained as loudly as they knew how. Likewise, when someone at a Sarah Palin rally in Clearwater, Florida in early October reacted to a mention of Obama's name by shouting "kill him!", there was such a clamour on the internet that the Secret Service made a rare public announcement saying it was launching an official investigation.
How much of a risk of assassination does Obama face? The most immediate, comfortable answer to that is: not much. The Secret Service has vastly improved its procedures and protocols since the spate of political assassinations of the 1960s and early 1970s. No president would now be allowed to drive at a snail's pace in an open-top car through the centre of a major city, as John Kennedy did in Dallas on 22 November, 1963. The sheer numbers of Secret Service members assigned to presidential protection has increased dramatically since the attempt on Reagan's life – we don't have exact figures on how much, but we do know that when one unhinged man toyed with the idea of tossing a grenade at President Bush in Atlanta in 2005, he never got remotely close enough to give it a real try.
The more worrying answer is that Obama will almost certainly inspire a large number of assassination plots because of the colour of his skin, and that it only takes one of them to be blessed with luck, proper organisation and a little official incompetence to pose a serious threat. When asked how much of a risk he faces, he has acknowledged that the color of his skin will be a problem for some people. And he knows that Colin Powell, the only other African American of significant stature in recent times to consider a run at the White House, decided not to pursue the presidency in part because his wife, Alma, feared for his safety.
"There's not any question he's under more threat than most politicians," said Mark Potok, one of America's leading researchers into hate groups who edits a monthly Intelligence Report for the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center. "I think we are seeing a kind of perfect storm of conditions that might well help white supremacist movements grow, and grow rapidly.
"We have changing demographics, and the Census Bureau projection that whites will lose their majority status in America by 2040. We have the tanking economy, and now... a black man in the White House. This makes some Americans feel they are losing their world – the sense that the country their forefathers built is slipping away from them."
The number of racist hate groups tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Centre has grown by almost 50 per cent during the Bush administration years, from about 600 in 2000 to almost 900 now. In contrast to the 1990s, when the "angry white man" phenomenon fuelled the militia movement and led to the white-supremacist inspired Oklahoma City bombing, much of this new growth has been triggered by virulent hostility to immigrants pouring in from Mexico.
It is entirely possible, though, that the emphasis will change now that Obama is about to enter the White House. Certainly, the neo-Nazi movement senses an opportunity: to judge by the endless chatter on far-right websites, they see a President Obama as the best recruiting tool they've had in years. "Obama will be a signal, a clear signal for millions of our people," the former Louisiana Ku Klux Klan leader and erstwhile candidate for governor, David Duke, wrote earlier this year in an essay he called A Black Flag for White America. "Obama is like that new big dark spot on your arm that finally sends you to the doctor for some real medicine. ... Obama is the pain that let's [sic] your body know that something is dreadfully wrong... Millions of European Americans will inevitably react with new awareness of their heritage and the need for them to defend and advance it."
That logic suggests the far right is not, in fact, itching to pull the trigger on Obama. Except that we are hardly dealing with rational people. The neo-Nazi magazine National Socialist wrote a cover story in September purporting to debunk the "myth" that Obama might be assassinated. But the cover also showed a photograph of the candidate in the crosshairs of a rifle (altered to look like a swastika) under the headline: "Kill this NIGGER?" And the piece went on to suggest that Obama, backed by Communists and Jews, planned to commit genocide against working white people.
Likewise, the "imperial wizard" of the Ku Klux Klan, an Indiana railway worker who calls himself Ray Larsen, denied any intent to attack Obama when interviewed on television a few months ago. But he added: "If that man is elected president, he'll be shot sure as hell."
If that doesn't have the Secret Service worried, it should. Some security experts have already started drafting memos with ideas on how to keep Obama better protected using state-of-the-art technology – for example, hand-held TeraHertz scanners that would-be assassins could not spot. Martin Dudziak, a Virginia-based security specialist who has worked on counter-terrorism issues, pointed out glumly that it is unusually difficult to profile would-be attackers. As he put it in a memo drafted in October: "There are frankly and very unfortunately, a lot of people in the USA who have deep-rooted 'phobic' hatred of an African American... being president. We should not try to deny this sombre reality."
If the inept Denver plot was not warning enough, news of another planned anti-Obama assault broke at the end of last month with the arrest of two White Power advocates in Tennessee. Daniel Cowart and Paul Schlesselman didn't appear to be any more competent than Adolf and Gartrell. They had grand schemes to kill more than 100 African Americans, and fantasised about killing Obama dressed in white dinner jackets and top hats, but they couldn't so much as rob a house – they gave up on their intended target after spotting a guard dog out back and got picked up after shooting out the windows in a church.
Still, they had some serious weapons: a sawn-off shotgun, high-powered rifles and a couple of handguns. And Cowart appears to have been a founding member of a hate group called the Supreme White Alliance. While their dreams of killing Obama might have been fanciful, some of their other plans might not. "They might well have shot up a black high school, or hurt a group of black children," Potok said.
And it is entirely conceivable that other, more competent criminals will follow them. Obama may not have appeared remotely daunted when he delivered his victory speech in Chicago's Grant Park on election night, but it is worth remembering that he was also speaking behind a bulletproof glass shield. Such precautions, one suspects, will be the rule rather than the exception over the next four or eight years.
"There is a boiling rage just beneath the surface," Potok added. "We're talking about a minority, clearly, of whites. It's hard to say how large that group of people is. But I think this represents the beginning of a real white backlash in a certain quarter of the population."
Independent
Shawn Adolf and his cousin Tharin Gartrell fancied that 28 August, 2008 would be a good day for the next president of the United States to die. They had the guns – Gartrell was later caught with a Ruger Model M77 Mark II bolt-action rifle with an attached scope and bipod, and a Remington Model 721, also with a scope. They were believers in a radical white supremacist ideology that gave them the motivation they needed to risk their own lives, if necessary, to prevent a black man from entering the Oval Office. (Or, as a friend reported Adolf as saying: "No nigger should ever live in the White House.")
And they had at least the outlines of a plan. They checked into the downtown Denver hotel where they believed Barack Obama was staying, and talked about the ways they could try to gun down the Democratic nominee on the day he was due to accept his party's nomination at an outdoor sports arena before an adoring crowd of more than 70,000 people.
Like many assassins before them, both the successful ones and the idle fantasists, Adolf and Gartrell took their inspiration from popular culture. They considered hiding a rifle inside a hollowed out television camera – an idea they borrowed from the Kevin Costner-Whitney Houston vehicle The Bodyguard. (It is also similar to the way al-Qa'eda operatives posing as a news crew assassinated Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of Afghanistan's Northern Alliance, on 9 September, 2001, but it is far from clear whether Adolf and Gartrell had any notion of this.)
They toyed with the idea of hitting Obama from as far away as 750 yards, using one of their high-powered rifles; according to their friend Nathan Johnson, who may or may not have been part of the plot, they had in mind the conspiracy theory that President Kennedy was not shot by Lee Harvey Oswald from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building, but rather by professional assassins stationed on the "grassy knoll" above Dallas's Dealey Plaza.
None of these plans was ever remotely realistic, however. Adolf and Gartrell may have had some fearsome weaponry, and a vague affiliation with a white supremacist biker gang called the Sons of Silence, which disavowed them the moment they were arrested. But they were also rank amateurs living in a crystal methamphetamine-induced haze of paranoia and race hatred. (One can't help thinking Adolf's name went to his head, at least a little, as he fingered the swastika ring on his finger.) They had no clue how to circumvent the security surrounding Obama – prosecutors who examined their plans laughed them off as ludicrously naïve. And they couldn't even figure out what every half-interested member of the press corps knew, that Obama was not staying at the Hyatt Regency, the temporary HQ of the Democratic National Committee, but at a different hotel altogether.
Four days before Obama's acceptance speech, Gartrell was pulled over for drunk-driving in the Denver suburb ' of Aurora after a patrol officer spotted his rented Dodge Ram truck swerving erratically, and the whole plot, such as it was, fell apart almost instantly. Certainly, the officer found plenty inside the truck to sound alarm bells – the two high-powered rifles, a silencer, a bulletproof vest, camouflage clothing, and three fake identification cards. But it was also clear that Gartrell was high on meth as well as drunk. The truck contained enough drug-making equipment to be considered a mobile meth lab.
Gartrell ratted out Johnson and Adolf almost as soon as he was taken in and photographed for his singularly striking mugshot. (With his bleached blonde hair, heavy silver earrings and pierced lip, he looks like the neo-Nazi from central casting.) Johnson was in the room at the Hyatt Regency, and wasted no time in talking himself – insisting he had no idea about any assassination plot while almost simultaneously telling the world Adolf was planning to "go down in a blaze of glory" and take Obama with him.
Adolf was a tougher proposition, the only one of the three with a serious criminal record, including burglary, forgery, drugs and weapons raps. At the time of his arrest he was wanted on eight outstanding charges and had recently skipped out on a $1 million bail payment. He was staying at a different hotel in the Denver suburbs. When the police arrived, he jumped out of his sixth-floor room on to the roof of the hotel kitchen four floors below, then jumped again to the ground, breaking his ankle as he landed. He didn't make it far. He, too, was found to be high on meth. When asked why he was wearing a bulletproof vest, he said he was convinced someone wanted to kill him.
We will no doubt learn more colourful details about the trio of would-be assassins when their trial begins this week. Intriguingly, though, they are being prosecuted on drugs and weapons charges only. Their prosecutor, Troy Eid, has said he is absolutely confident the "meth heads", as he calls them, never posed a risk to Obama or anyone else.
Not everyone is happy with this decision. After all, marginal people have hatched assassination plots before, and sometimes succeeded – one thinks of John Hinckley hitting President Reagan in 1981. And Barack Obama was never just another presidential contender; as the first African American to come even close to the highest political office on the planet, in a country whose history is spattered with the blood of racial animus, he is, by common consent, a target several orders of magnitude more tempting than the average for an extremist fringe of kooks, crazies, anti-government militia types, Ku Klux Klan members and other white race warriors, all of whom tend to be unforgiving in their ideological fervour, not to mention armed to the teeth.
He was granted 24-hour Secret Service protection just a few months into his campaign, in May 2007, after his friend and fellow Illinois senator, Dick Durbin, raised the alarm on his behalf. (Usually candidates receive that protection far later in the election cycle, after they have their party primaries sewn up.) We don't know exactly how hard the Secret Service has had to work on his behalf, although we do know that two men from the old confederate South – one from North Carolina, the other from Florida – were arrested and charged with making threatening statements against him in July. We know that effigies of Obama being lynched, or sliced through the head with a hatchet, have popped up periodically around the country – one on the campus of the University of Kentucky, another in Orange County, California in the run-up to Halloween.
We also know that Obama's supporters have been almost maniacal in their desire to prevent him sharing the tragic fate of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King. On a couple of occasions during primary season, when security ' guards at Obama campaign events stopped searching people's bags because of the backlog of people trying to get in, sympathetic reporters, bloggers and ordinary members of the public complained as loudly as they knew how. Likewise, when someone at a Sarah Palin rally in Clearwater, Florida in early October reacted to a mention of Obama's name by shouting "kill him!", there was such a clamour on the internet that the Secret Service made a rare public announcement saying it was launching an official investigation.
How much of a risk of assassination does Obama face? The most immediate, comfortable answer to that is: not much. The Secret Service has vastly improved its procedures and protocols since the spate of political assassinations of the 1960s and early 1970s. No president would now be allowed to drive at a snail's pace in an open-top car through the centre of a major city, as John Kennedy did in Dallas on 22 November, 1963. The sheer numbers of Secret Service members assigned to presidential protection has increased dramatically since the attempt on Reagan's life – we don't have exact figures on how much, but we do know that when one unhinged man toyed with the idea of tossing a grenade at President Bush in Atlanta in 2005, he never got remotely close enough to give it a real try.
The more worrying answer is that Obama will almost certainly inspire a large number of assassination plots because of the colour of his skin, and that it only takes one of them to be blessed with luck, proper organisation and a little official incompetence to pose a serious threat. When asked how much of a risk he faces, he has acknowledged that the color of his skin will be a problem for some people. And he knows that Colin Powell, the only other African American of significant stature in recent times to consider a run at the White House, decided not to pursue the presidency in part because his wife, Alma, feared for his safety.
"There's not any question he's under more threat than most politicians," said Mark Potok, one of America's leading researchers into hate groups who edits a monthly Intelligence Report for the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center. "I think we are seeing a kind of perfect storm of conditions that might well help white supremacist movements grow, and grow rapidly.
"We have changing demographics, and the Census Bureau projection that whites will lose their majority status in America by 2040. We have the tanking economy, and now... a black man in the White House. This makes some Americans feel they are losing their world – the sense that the country their forefathers built is slipping away from them."
The number of racist hate groups tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Centre has grown by almost 50 per cent during the Bush administration years, from about 600 in 2000 to almost 900 now. In contrast to the 1990s, when the "angry white man" phenomenon fuelled the militia movement and led to the white-supremacist inspired Oklahoma City bombing, much of this new growth has been triggered by virulent hostility to immigrants pouring in from Mexico.
It is entirely possible, though, that the emphasis will change now that Obama is about to enter the White House. Certainly, the neo-Nazi movement senses an opportunity: to judge by the endless chatter on far-right websites, they see a President Obama as the best recruiting tool they've had in years. "Obama will be a signal, a clear signal for millions of our people," the former Louisiana Ku Klux Klan leader and erstwhile candidate for governor, David Duke, wrote earlier this year in an essay he called A Black Flag for White America. "Obama is like that new big dark spot on your arm that finally sends you to the doctor for some real medicine. ... Obama is the pain that let's [sic] your body know that something is dreadfully wrong... Millions of European Americans will inevitably react with new awareness of their heritage and the need for them to defend and advance it."
That logic suggests the far right is not, in fact, itching to pull the trigger on Obama. Except that we are hardly dealing with rational people. The neo-Nazi magazine National Socialist wrote a cover story in September purporting to debunk the "myth" that Obama might be assassinated. But the cover also showed a photograph of the candidate in the crosshairs of a rifle (altered to look like a swastika) under the headline: "Kill this NIGGER?" And the piece went on to suggest that Obama, backed by Communists and Jews, planned to commit genocide against working white people.
Likewise, the "imperial wizard" of the Ku Klux Klan, an Indiana railway worker who calls himself Ray Larsen, denied any intent to attack Obama when interviewed on television a few months ago. But he added: "If that man is elected president, he'll be shot sure as hell."
If that doesn't have the Secret Service worried, it should. Some security experts have already started drafting memos with ideas on how to keep Obama better protected using state-of-the-art technology – for example, hand-held TeraHertz scanners that would-be assassins could not spot. Martin Dudziak, a Virginia-based security specialist who has worked on counter-terrorism issues, pointed out glumly that it is unusually difficult to profile would-be attackers. As he put it in a memo drafted in October: "There are frankly and very unfortunately, a lot of people in the USA who have deep-rooted 'phobic' hatred of an African American... being president. We should not try to deny this sombre reality."
If the inept Denver plot was not warning enough, news of another planned anti-Obama assault broke at the end of last month with the arrest of two White Power advocates in Tennessee. Daniel Cowart and Paul Schlesselman didn't appear to be any more competent than Adolf and Gartrell. They had grand schemes to kill more than 100 African Americans, and fantasised about killing Obama dressed in white dinner jackets and top hats, but they couldn't so much as rob a house – they gave up on their intended target after spotting a guard dog out back and got picked up after shooting out the windows in a church.
Still, they had some serious weapons: a sawn-off shotgun, high-powered rifles and a couple of handguns. And Cowart appears to have been a founding member of a hate group called the Supreme White Alliance. While their dreams of killing Obama might have been fanciful, some of their other plans might not. "They might well have shot up a black high school, or hurt a group of black children," Potok said.
And it is entirely conceivable that other, more competent criminals will follow them. Obama may not have appeared remotely daunted when he delivered his victory speech in Chicago's Grant Park on election night, but it is worth remembering that he was also speaking behind a bulletproof glass shield. Such precautions, one suspects, will be the rule rather than the exception over the next four or eight years.
"There is a boiling rage just beneath the surface," Potok added. "We're talking about a minority, clearly, of whites. It's hard to say how large that group of people is. But I think this represents the beginning of a real white backlash in a certain quarter of the population."
Independent
August 28, 2008
Evidence of Extremist Infiltration of US Military Grows
The racist skinhead logged on with exciting news: He’d just enlisted in the United States Army.
“Sieg Heil, I will do us proud,” he wrote. It was a June 3 post to AryanWear Forum 14, a neo-Nazi online forum to which “Sobibor’s SS,” who identified himself as a skinhead living in Plantersville, Ala., had belonged since early 2004. (Sobibor was a Nazi death camp in Poland during World War II).
About a month after he announced his enlistment, Sobibor’s SS bragged in another post to Forum 14 that he’d specifically requested and been assigned to MOS, or Military Occupational Specialty, 98D. MOS98D soldiers are in high demand right now. That’s because they’re specially trained in disarming Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) like the infamous roadside bombs that are killing and maiming so many U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Presumably, a part of learning how to disarm an IED is learning how to make one.
“I have my own reasons for wanting this training but in fear of the government tracing me and me loosing [sic] my clearance I can’t share them here,” Sobibor’s SS informed his fellow neo-Nazis.
One of his earlier posts indicated his reasons serve a darker purpose than defending America: “Once all the Jews are gone the world will start fixing itself.”
Sobibor’s SS included enough biographical details in his various posts to Forum 14 over the years, including that he’s a single father from the small town in southern Alabama, that a military investigator with access to enlistment records for recent months should have little trouble discerning whether the Army is actually teaching a skinhead with genocide on his mind how to be a tactical bomb maker.
But there’s little reason to expect that will happen.
Two years ago, the Intelligence Report revealed that alarming numbers of neo-Nazi skinheads and other white supremacist extremists were taking advantage of lowered armed services recruiting standards and lax enforcement of anti-extremist military regulations by infiltrating the U.S. armed forces in order to receive combat training and gain access to weapons and explosives.
Forty members of Congress urged then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to launch a full-scale investigation and implement a zero-tolerance policy toward white supremacists in the military. “Military extremists present an elevated threat to both their fellow service members and the public,” U.S. Senator Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican, wrote in a separate open letter to Rumsfeld. “We witnessed with Timothy McVeigh that today’s racist extremist may become tomorrow’s domestic terrorist.”
But neither Rumsfeld nor his successor, Robert Gates, enacted any sort of systemic investigation or crackdown. Military and Defense Department officials seem to have made no sustained effort to prevent active white supremacists from joining the armed forces, or to weed out those already in uniform.
Furthermore, new evidence is emerging that not only supports the Intelligence Report’s findings, but also indicates the problem may have worsened since the summer of 2006, as enlistment rates continued to plummet, and the military accepted an ever-lower quality of soldier in a time of unpopular war.
First of all, a new FBI report confirms that white supremacist leaders are making a concerted effort to recruit active-duty soldiers and recent combat veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the unclassified FBI Intelligence Assessment, “White Supremacist Recruitment of Military Personnel Since 9/11,” which was released to law enforcement agencies nationwide: “Sensitive and reliable source reporting indicates supremacist leaders are encouraging followers who lack documented histories of neo-Nazi activity and overt racist insignia such as tattoos to infiltrate the military as ‘ghost skins,’ in order to recruit and receive training for the benefit of the extremist movement.”
The FBI report details more than a dozen investigative findings and criminal cases involving Iraq and Afghanistan veterans as well as active-duty personnel engaging in extremist activity in recent years. For example, in September 2006, the leader of the Celtic Knights, a central Texas splinter faction of the Hammerskins, a national racist skinhead organization, planned to obtain firearms and explosives from an active duty Army soldier in Fort Hood, Texas. That soldier, who served in Iraq in 2006 and 2007, was a member of the National Alliance, a neo-Nazi group.
“Looking ahead, current and former military personnel belonging to white supremacist extremist organizations who experience frustration at the inability of these organizations to achieve their goals may choose to found new, more operationally minded and operationally capable groups,” the report concludes. “The military training veterans bring to the movement and their potential to pass this training on to others can increase the ability of lone offenders to carry out violence from the movement’s fringes.”
Currently, 46 members of the white supremacist social networking website Newsaxon.com identity themselves as active-duty military personnel. Six of these individuals are members of “White Military Men,” a New Saxon sub-group.
Earlier this year, the founder of White Military Men identified himself in his New Saxon account as “Lance Corporal Burton” of the 2nd Battalion Fox Company Pit 2097, from Florida, according to a master’s thesis by graduate student Matthew Kennard. Under his “About Me” section, Burton writes: “Love to shoot my M16A2 service rifle effectively at the Hachies (Iraqis),” and, “Love to watch things blow up (Hachies House).”
As part of his thesis research, Kennard, at the time a student at Columbia University’s Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, also monitored claims of active-duty military service earlier this year on the neo-Nazi online forum Blood and Honour, where “88Soldier88” posted this message on Feb. 18: “I am in the ARMY right now. I work in the Detainee Holding Area [in Iraq]. … I am in this until 2013. I am in the infantry but want to go to SF [Special Forces]. Hopefully the training will prepare me for what I hope is to come.”
One of the Blood and Honour members claiming to be an active-duty soldier taking part in combat operations in Iraq identified himself to Kennard as Jacob Berg. He did not disclose his rank or branch of service. “There are actually a lot more ‘skinheads,’ ‘nazis,’ white supremacists now [in the military] than there has been in a long time,” Berg wrote in an E-mail exchange with Kennard. “Us racists are actually getting into the military a lot now because if we don’t every one who already is [in the military] will take pity on killing sand niggers. Yes I have killed women, yes I have killed children and yes I have killed older people. But the biggest reason I’m so proud of my kills is because by killing a brown many white people will live to see a new dawn.”
The Army is currently investigating war crimes allegations leveled against Iraq combat veteran and active-duty Army soldier Kenneth Eastridge, 24, who is facing trial for the December 2007 murder of a fellow serviceman. After Eastridge was arrested for that killing, National Public Radio publicized his MySpace page, which showed Eastridge displaying a tattoo of SS lightning bolts, a common neo-Nazi insignia.
Another member of Eastridge’s company recently told Army investigators that Eastridge used a stolen AK-47 to fire indiscriminately at Iraqi civilians from his moving Humvee on the streets of Baghdad. “The military is to some extent desperate to get people to fight, soldiers who are not fit, mentally and physically sick, but they continue to send them,” Eastridge’s attorney told Kennard. “Having a tattoo was the least [of Eastridge’s] concerns.”
As part of the research for his thesis, “The New Nazi Army: How the U.S. military is allowing the far right to join its ranks,” Kennard used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain from the Army’s Criminal Investigative Division investigative reports concerning white supremacist activity in 2006 and 2007. They show that Army commanders repeatedly terminated investigations of suspected extremist activity in the military despite strong evidence it was occurring. This evidence was often provided by regional Joint Terrorism Task Forces, which are made up of FBI and state and local law enforcement officials.
For example, one CID report details a 2006 investigation of a suspected member of the Hammerskins, a multi-state racist skinhead gang, who was stationed at Fort Hood, a large Army base in central Texas. According to the report, there was “probable cause” to believe that the soldier “had participated in a white extremist meeting and also provided a military technical manual 31-210, Improvised Munitions Handbook, to the leader of a white extremist group in order to assist in the planning and execution of future attacks on various targets.”
The report shows that agents only interviewed the subject once, in November 2006, before Fort Hood higher-ups called off the investigation that December.
Another report, also from 2006, covers an investigation of another Fort Hood soldier who was posting messages on Stormfront, a major white supremacist website. One CID investigator expresses his frustration at the muddled process for dealing with extremists. “We need to discuss the review process,” he writes. “I’m not doing my job here. Needs to get fixed.”
A third CID report, regarding a 2007 investigation, notes the termination of an investigation of a soldier at Fort Richardson, Alaska, who was reportedly the leader and chief recruiter for the Alaska Front, a white supremacist group. According to the report, the investigation was halted because the solider was “mobilized to Camp Shelby, MS in preparation for deployment to Iraq.”
Hatewatch
“Sieg Heil, I will do us proud,” he wrote. It was a June 3 post to AryanWear Forum 14, a neo-Nazi online forum to which “Sobibor’s SS,” who identified himself as a skinhead living in Plantersville, Ala., had belonged since early 2004. (Sobibor was a Nazi death camp in Poland during World War II).
About a month after he announced his enlistment, Sobibor’s SS bragged in another post to Forum 14 that he’d specifically requested and been assigned to MOS, or Military Occupational Specialty, 98D. MOS98D soldiers are in high demand right now. That’s because they’re specially trained in disarming Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) like the infamous roadside bombs that are killing and maiming so many U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Presumably, a part of learning how to disarm an IED is learning how to make one.
“I have my own reasons for wanting this training but in fear of the government tracing me and me loosing [sic] my clearance I can’t share them here,” Sobibor’s SS informed his fellow neo-Nazis.
One of his earlier posts indicated his reasons serve a darker purpose than defending America: “Once all the Jews are gone the world will start fixing itself.”
Sobibor’s SS included enough biographical details in his various posts to Forum 14 over the years, including that he’s a single father from the small town in southern Alabama, that a military investigator with access to enlistment records for recent months should have little trouble discerning whether the Army is actually teaching a skinhead with genocide on his mind how to be a tactical bomb maker.
But there’s little reason to expect that will happen.
Two years ago, the Intelligence Report revealed that alarming numbers of neo-Nazi skinheads and other white supremacist extremists were taking advantage of lowered armed services recruiting standards and lax enforcement of anti-extremist military regulations by infiltrating the U.S. armed forces in order to receive combat training and gain access to weapons and explosives.
Forty members of Congress urged then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to launch a full-scale investigation and implement a zero-tolerance policy toward white supremacists in the military. “Military extremists present an elevated threat to both their fellow service members and the public,” U.S. Senator Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican, wrote in a separate open letter to Rumsfeld. “We witnessed with Timothy McVeigh that today’s racist extremist may become tomorrow’s domestic terrorist.”
But neither Rumsfeld nor his successor, Robert Gates, enacted any sort of systemic investigation or crackdown. Military and Defense Department officials seem to have made no sustained effort to prevent active white supremacists from joining the armed forces, or to weed out those already in uniform.
Furthermore, new evidence is emerging that not only supports the Intelligence Report’s findings, but also indicates the problem may have worsened since the summer of 2006, as enlistment rates continued to plummet, and the military accepted an ever-lower quality of soldier in a time of unpopular war.
First of all, a new FBI report confirms that white supremacist leaders are making a concerted effort to recruit active-duty soldiers and recent combat veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the unclassified FBI Intelligence Assessment, “White Supremacist Recruitment of Military Personnel Since 9/11,” which was released to law enforcement agencies nationwide: “Sensitive and reliable source reporting indicates supremacist leaders are encouraging followers who lack documented histories of neo-Nazi activity and overt racist insignia such as tattoos to infiltrate the military as ‘ghost skins,’ in order to recruit and receive training for the benefit of the extremist movement.”
The FBI report details more than a dozen investigative findings and criminal cases involving Iraq and Afghanistan veterans as well as active-duty personnel engaging in extremist activity in recent years. For example, in September 2006, the leader of the Celtic Knights, a central Texas splinter faction of the Hammerskins, a national racist skinhead organization, planned to obtain firearms and explosives from an active duty Army soldier in Fort Hood, Texas. That soldier, who served in Iraq in 2006 and 2007, was a member of the National Alliance, a neo-Nazi group.
“Looking ahead, current and former military personnel belonging to white supremacist extremist organizations who experience frustration at the inability of these organizations to achieve their goals may choose to found new, more operationally minded and operationally capable groups,” the report concludes. “The military training veterans bring to the movement and their potential to pass this training on to others can increase the ability of lone offenders to carry out violence from the movement’s fringes.”
Currently, 46 members of the white supremacist social networking website Newsaxon.com identity themselves as active-duty military personnel. Six of these individuals are members of “White Military Men,” a New Saxon sub-group.
Earlier this year, the founder of White Military Men identified himself in his New Saxon account as “Lance Corporal Burton” of the 2nd Battalion Fox Company Pit 2097, from Florida, according to a master’s thesis by graduate student Matthew Kennard. Under his “About Me” section, Burton writes: “Love to shoot my M16A2 service rifle effectively at the Hachies (Iraqis),” and, “Love to watch things blow up (Hachies House).”
As part of his thesis research, Kennard, at the time a student at Columbia University’s Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, also monitored claims of active-duty military service earlier this year on the neo-Nazi online forum Blood and Honour, where “88Soldier88” posted this message on Feb. 18: “I am in the ARMY right now. I work in the Detainee Holding Area [in Iraq]. … I am in this until 2013. I am in the infantry but want to go to SF [Special Forces]. Hopefully the training will prepare me for what I hope is to come.”
One of the Blood and Honour members claiming to be an active-duty soldier taking part in combat operations in Iraq identified himself to Kennard as Jacob Berg. He did not disclose his rank or branch of service. “There are actually a lot more ‘skinheads,’ ‘nazis,’ white supremacists now [in the military] than there has been in a long time,” Berg wrote in an E-mail exchange with Kennard. “Us racists are actually getting into the military a lot now because if we don’t every one who already is [in the military] will take pity on killing sand niggers. Yes I have killed women, yes I have killed children and yes I have killed older people. But the biggest reason I’m so proud of my kills is because by killing a brown many white people will live to see a new dawn.”
The Army is currently investigating war crimes allegations leveled against Iraq combat veteran and active-duty Army soldier Kenneth Eastridge, 24, who is facing trial for the December 2007 murder of a fellow serviceman. After Eastridge was arrested for that killing, National Public Radio publicized his MySpace page, which showed Eastridge displaying a tattoo of SS lightning bolts, a common neo-Nazi insignia.
Another member of Eastridge’s company recently told Army investigators that Eastridge used a stolen AK-47 to fire indiscriminately at Iraqi civilians from his moving Humvee on the streets of Baghdad. “The military is to some extent desperate to get people to fight, soldiers who are not fit, mentally and physically sick, but they continue to send them,” Eastridge’s attorney told Kennard. “Having a tattoo was the least [of Eastridge’s] concerns.”
As part of the research for his thesis, “The New Nazi Army: How the U.S. military is allowing the far right to join its ranks,” Kennard used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain from the Army’s Criminal Investigative Division investigative reports concerning white supremacist activity in 2006 and 2007. They show that Army commanders repeatedly terminated investigations of suspected extremist activity in the military despite strong evidence it was occurring. This evidence was often provided by regional Joint Terrorism Task Forces, which are made up of FBI and state and local law enforcement officials.
For example, one CID report details a 2006 investigation of a suspected member of the Hammerskins, a multi-state racist skinhead gang, who was stationed at Fort Hood, a large Army base in central Texas. According to the report, there was “probable cause” to believe that the soldier “had participated in a white extremist meeting and also provided a military technical manual 31-210, Improvised Munitions Handbook, to the leader of a white extremist group in order to assist in the planning and execution of future attacks on various targets.”
The report shows that agents only interviewed the subject once, in November 2006, before Fort Hood higher-ups called off the investigation that December.
Another report, also from 2006, covers an investigation of another Fort Hood soldier who was posting messages on Stormfront, a major white supremacist website. One CID investigator expresses his frustration at the muddled process for dealing with extremists. “We need to discuss the review process,” he writes. “I’m not doing my job here. Needs to get fixed.”
A third CID report, regarding a 2007 investigation, notes the termination of an investigation of a soldier at Fort Richardson, Alaska, who was reportedly the leader and chief recruiter for the Alaska Front, a white supremacist group. According to the report, the investigation was halted because the solider was “mobilized to Camp Shelby, MS in preparation for deployment to Iraq.”
Hatewatch
Labels:
Nazis,
Stormfront,
US military,
white supremacists
August 27, 2008
Plot to Assassinate Obama? White Supremacists are Worried
As news of a possible assassination plot against Sen. Barack Obama broke on Monday and Tuesday, white supremacists reacted overwhelmingly with suspicion that they were being set up by the federal government to take the fall.
Reports from Denver indicate that the three men arrested in the supposed plot on Sunday — Tharin Gartrell, Nathan D. Johnson and Shawn Adolf — may have been linked to a “white supremacy group,” possibly racist skinheads. One of the men was reportedly wearing a swastika ring when arrested, and one was said to be linked to a motorcycle gang called the Sons of Silence. The Southern Poverty Law Center has no evidence linking the gang or any of the three men to white supremacism.
“Seems more like an attempt by ZOG to assassinate us,” wrote “DAglaff Wolfing” on Stormfront.org, the most important white supremacist Web forum, referring to the “Zionist Occupation Government” — white supremacist lingo for the federal government. Added “Ravening Wolf” in the same thread: “It wouldn’t surprise me if these people are jews [sic], or dumb patsies, involved in yet another false-flag Mossad operation … in order to conjure up yet more anti-gun legislation.”
“I completely predicted that they would do this,” “AZDane” wrote on Stormfront. “If Obama IS assassinated, it will be the gov’t doing it and we’ll take the blame. Like always.”
Many of those posting derided those arrested because police also found quantities of methamphetamine. (“Besides,” wrote one, “real white men wouldn’t have been stopped from completing their mission, whatever it may be. These people were fools.”) But they kept coming back to the idea of a government plot.
“It sounds like concocted BS,” wrote “General1812.” “Seriously, plots that are this serious don’t come to the surface so easily. The government law enforcement [agencies] may be expecting Obama to win, and so are getting ready to conduct a preemptive strike against WNist [white nationalist] organizations.”
Or, as “Alida302” put it in the Stormfront thread: “Sound like a bunch of wannabe small timers to me. They need to make sure that [Obama’s] black ass is protected. His death would bring down a s**tstorm of hell upon all of us.”
Earlier, long before the Democratic convention opened in Denver, many white supremacists were arguing that an Obama victory could actually be good for their movement. They predicted that such a victory would shock white Americans, drive millions of them into white supremacist groups and, ultimately, lead to a race war that would finally result in the much hoped-for final Aryan victory.
HateWatch
Reports from Denver indicate that the three men arrested in the supposed plot on Sunday — Tharin Gartrell, Nathan D. Johnson and Shawn Adolf — may have been linked to a “white supremacy group,” possibly racist skinheads. One of the men was reportedly wearing a swastika ring when arrested, and one was said to be linked to a motorcycle gang called the Sons of Silence. The Southern Poverty Law Center has no evidence linking the gang or any of the three men to white supremacism.
“Seems more like an attempt by ZOG to assassinate us,” wrote “DAglaff Wolfing” on Stormfront.org, the most important white supremacist Web forum, referring to the “Zionist Occupation Government” — white supremacist lingo for the federal government. Added “Ravening Wolf” in the same thread: “It wouldn’t surprise me if these people are jews [sic], or dumb patsies, involved in yet another false-flag Mossad operation … in order to conjure up yet more anti-gun legislation.”
“I completely predicted that they would do this,” “AZDane” wrote on Stormfront. “If Obama IS assassinated, it will be the gov’t doing it and we’ll take the blame. Like always.”
Many of those posting derided those arrested because police also found quantities of methamphetamine. (“Besides,” wrote one, “real white men wouldn’t have been stopped from completing their mission, whatever it may be. These people were fools.”) But they kept coming back to the idea of a government plot.
“It sounds like concocted BS,” wrote “General1812.” “Seriously, plots that are this serious don’t come to the surface so easily. The government law enforcement [agencies] may be expecting Obama to win, and so are getting ready to conduct a preemptive strike against WNist [white nationalist] organizations.”
Or, as “Alida302” put it in the Stormfront thread: “Sound like a bunch of wannabe small timers to me. They need to make sure that [Obama’s] black ass is protected. His death would bring down a s**tstorm of hell upon all of us.”
Earlier, long before the Democratic convention opened in Denver, many white supremacists were arguing that an Obama victory could actually be good for their movement. They predicted that such a victory would shock white Americans, drive millions of them into white supremacist groups and, ultimately, lead to a race war that would finally result in the much hoped-for final Aryan victory.
HateWatch
April 17, 2008
People like him voting BNP
Arguments have raged over the decision by local newspapers in London to accept an advertisement from the British National Party last week. Searchlight is more interested in the “wholesome” white family that featured in the ad alongside the slogan “People Like You Voting BNP”.For a start the adults of the family will certainly not be voting BNP in the London elections on 1 May. That’s not because they don’t support the BNP – they do. This is the family of Nick Cass, a longstanding BNP organiser and local election candidate, from that well known London suburb of … West Yorkshire! In this year’s elections he is standing for Kirklees Council as the BNP candidate in Mirfield.
In the newspaper ad, Cass is wearing a dark jacket. When he appeared in the Sky TV programme BNP Wives in January, he was having a massage, which gave us the chance to find out whether his nazism was more than skin deep. For prominent on his right arm, between shoulder and elbow, is a “tree of life” tattoo.
This symbol, also known as the life rune, is a favourite among nazi groups worldwide, several of which have adopted it as their logo. Under Hitler it was the symbol of the SS Lebensborn project, which encouraged SS troopers to have children out of wedlock with “Aryan” mothers and kidnapped children of Aryan appearance from the countries of occupied Europe to raise as Germans. To white supremacists today the tree of life signifies the future of the “white race”.
The BNP’s slogan also is not quite what it seems. In fact it was copied from the Front National in France, the leader of which, Jean-Marie Le Pen, has convictions for hate crime and Holocaust denial. Like Cass, Le Pen is not a man Londoners will readily identify with.
Many people have condemned the editors of the various newspapers that ran the BNP ad. Searchlight has discovered that in many cases the decision was imposed on the editors by the papers’ owner, Archant, which describes itself as “the UK’s largest independently-owned regional media business”. Its portfolio includes many London titles including the Hampstead and Highgate Express, the Hackney Gazette, the Barking and Dagenham Post and the Recorder group of papers in East London.
But Archant is unlikely to be to blame for the strange appearance of the BNP ad. The Cass family photo is strangely elongated, as if the designer was unclear how to resize a picture to fit the space. Now the BNP’s chief designer is one Mark Collett of Leeds, a man widely derided in the BNP as incompetent. We see what they mean.
The BNP are definitely not people like us.
Searchlight
Labels:
BNP,
Front National,
Jean-Marie Le Pen,
Lebensborn,
Nick Cass,
SS,
white supremacists
September 12, 2007
Hatewatch for the week of Sept 12th 2007
White Supremacists Arrested For Killing Homeless Men
Eric "Killa" Snow, 25, and James "Twister" Winquist, 23, allegedly beat to death two homeless men with baseball bats, then showed off one victim's severed hand at a party...
Alabama Churches Plan To Protest Klan Rally
Northern Alabama ministers are urging their parishioners to join them in a "silent witness" against racial hatred at a KKK rally planned for Sept. 15...
Aryan Warriors Prison Letters Lead To Indictments
Federal officials revealed that more than 10,000 coded notes and letters written by members of the Aryan Warriors prison gang resulted in 14 racketeering indictments...
KKK Leaflets Distributed in Manassas
Supporters of an Arkansas-based Ku Klux Klan group distributed dozens of leaflets urging "white Christian America" to unite against non-whites...
Eric "Killa" Snow, 25, and James "Twister" Winquist, 23, allegedly beat to death two homeless men with baseball bats, then showed off one victim's severed hand at a party...
Alabama Churches Plan To Protest Klan Rally
Northern Alabama ministers are urging their parishioners to join them in a "silent witness" against racial hatred at a KKK rally planned for Sept. 15...
Aryan Warriors Prison Letters Lead To Indictments
Federal officials revealed that more than 10,000 coded notes and letters written by members of the Aryan Warriors prison gang resulted in 14 racketeering indictments...
KKK Leaflets Distributed in Manassas
Supporters of an Arkansas-based Ku Klux Klan group distributed dozens of leaflets urging "white Christian America" to unite against non-whites...
Labels:
Aryan Warriors,
KKK,
Ku Klux Klan,
white supremacists
July 06, 2007
Neo-nazi '14 words' painted on cross
A racist slogan frequently used by white supremacists and neo-Nazis has been stencilled onto the base of the cross on top of Bray Head.
The words Czternascie Stow in Polish, followed by their English translation '14 Words' are painted clearly in black capitals in a prominent place at the popular sight-seeing spot. The fourteen sinister words of the original slogan are 'we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.'
The credo was coined by the late David Lane, an American neo-Nazi and founding member of the far-right white supremacist organisation The Order'. The words were inspired by a longer passage in Adolf Hitler's memoir and manifesto, Mein Kampf'. Sometimes the Fourteen Words, often stylised as 14W, is spray-painted or used to deface property in order to mark turf in prisons and other urban areas.
The Town Clerk, Christine Flood, has said that Bray Town Council had not been aware of this issue but would now treat it as an emergency and have the offensive graffiti removed straight away.
'We do have a contractor who goes to the cross at regular intervals,' she remarked. 'But it's a very big job in terms of access and equipment.'
Bray man, Seamus Connor, who lives in the vicinity of Bray Head, is appalled by the defacement of the local landmark, and by the racially-prejudiced motivation behind it.
'It's an absolute disgrace that in such a cosmopolitan society people would still think in this way,' said Seamus. 'It should be removed immediately.'
He added, however, that he didn't think the slogan represented the views of the majority of people living in Bray.
Bray People
The words Czternascie Stow in Polish, followed by their English translation '14 Words' are painted clearly in black capitals in a prominent place at the popular sight-seeing spot. The fourteen sinister words of the original slogan are 'we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.'
The credo was coined by the late David Lane, an American neo-Nazi and founding member of the far-right white supremacist organisation The Order'. The words were inspired by a longer passage in Adolf Hitler's memoir and manifesto, Mein Kampf'. Sometimes the Fourteen Words, often stylised as 14W, is spray-painted or used to deface property in order to mark turf in prisons and other urban areas.
The Town Clerk, Christine Flood, has said that Bray Town Council had not been aware of this issue but would now treat it as an emergency and have the offensive graffiti removed straight away.
'We do have a contractor who goes to the cross at regular intervals,' she remarked. 'But it's a very big job in terms of access and equipment.'
Bray man, Seamus Connor, who lives in the vicinity of Bray Head, is appalled by the defacement of the local landmark, and by the racially-prejudiced motivation behind it.
'It's an absolute disgrace that in such a cosmopolitan society people would still think in this way,' said Seamus. 'It should be removed immediately.'
He added, however, that he didn't think the slogan represented the views of the majority of people living in Bray.
Bray People
Labels:
14 words,
Czternascie Stow,
David Lane,
neo-Nazis,
white supremacists
June 30, 2007
Neo-Nazi nancys fret about frying their bare skinheads
Sorry, I just liked the headline :-)
Mother-hennish white supremacists planning a small rally in Boston today are more concerned with avoiding sunburn and filling their bellies with picnic food than “agitating” the public, according to the hatemongers’ Web postings. One organizer urges the neo-Nazis to cover their skinned heads with a hat “so you don’t burn your scalp,” while another boasts about his mom’s fruit salad.
Nonetheless, cops are planning to keep an eye on the rally, billed as a regional get-together in memory of David Lane, a neo-Nazi terrorist who died in May.
“We are aware of it and we’re prepared,” said Boston police spokesman David Estrada. The protests are planned for City Hall and the O’Neill Federal Building.
For the big cookout after the rally, the racists’ leaders told members to count on plenty of steak tips, boneless chicken and macaroni salad, but said they need money or other dishes, according to the Web site North East White Pride.
“Dress appropriately. . . . Drink plenty of water,” the bigots warn. One skinhead gourmand gushed that his mother’s “special desert” - a fruit salad mixed with sour cream - would wow his fellow Nazi wannabes. “It’s mixed with marshmellows (sic) and as well the fruits of all kinds and then perfectly mixed in with sour cream,” the poster, Irishskin88, brags on the Web site. “You can barely taste the sour cream. Anyhow as I said I will try and bring a big bowl.”
The dwindling ranks of skinheads turned the last North East White Pride Hub rally into a laughingstock when 125 anti-protesters ran the gaggle of 10 supremacists out of town under police guard on Martin Luther King Day 2006.
Boston Herald
Mother-hennish white supremacists planning a small rally in Boston today are more concerned with avoiding sunburn and filling their bellies with picnic food than “agitating” the public, according to the hatemongers’ Web postings. One organizer urges the neo-Nazis to cover their skinned heads with a hat “so you don’t burn your scalp,” while another boasts about his mom’s fruit salad.
Nonetheless, cops are planning to keep an eye on the rally, billed as a regional get-together in memory of David Lane, a neo-Nazi terrorist who died in May.
“We are aware of it and we’re prepared,” said Boston police spokesman David Estrada. The protests are planned for City Hall and the O’Neill Federal Building.
For the big cookout after the rally, the racists’ leaders told members to count on plenty of steak tips, boneless chicken and macaroni salad, but said they need money or other dishes, according to the Web site North East White Pride.
“Dress appropriately. . . . Drink plenty of water,” the bigots warn. One skinhead gourmand gushed that his mother’s “special desert” - a fruit salad mixed with sour cream - would wow his fellow Nazi wannabes. “It’s mixed with marshmellows (sic) and as well the fruits of all kinds and then perfectly mixed in with sour cream,” the poster, Irishskin88, brags on the Web site. “You can barely taste the sour cream. Anyhow as I said I will try and bring a big bowl.”
The dwindling ranks of skinheads turned the last North East White Pride Hub rally into a laughingstock when 125 anti-protesters ran the gaggle of 10 supremacists out of town under police guard on Martin Luther King Day 2006.
Boston Herald
Labels:
Boston,
hatemongers,
neo-Nazis,
skinheads,
white supremacists
June 15, 2007
Ex-KKK man guilty of 1964 murder of black teenagers
A US marshal escorts James Ford Seale, 71, from the federalcourthouse in Jackson, Mississippi earlier in the trial.
James Ford Seale had pleaded not guilty to the charges relating to the deaths of Charles Moore and Henry Dee, both aged 19 at the time of their disappearance on May 2 1964. Their bodies were later found in the Mississippi river.
Seale's conviction was achieved on the words of a confessed Klansman, Charles Edwards, who was granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for turning on his old friend.
He testified that Seale had belonged to the same Klan chapter, or klavern, as he had, which was led by Seale's late father. The prosecution team admitted to the jury they had made "a deal with the devil" but argued that it was the only way to get justice 43 years after the killings.
Seale, who declined to testify, now faces up to two life sentences. He is unlikely to leave prison alive.
As the guilty verdicts were returned, the victims' relatives hugged each other and cried.
Seale's prosecution may mark one of, if not the last trial of its kind from the brutal heyday of the KKK and its violent clashes with the civil rights movement. As witnesses pass away, the likelihood of further trials diminishes.
During the trial, the jury heard that white supremacists, often with the complicity of local police officers and the courts, were consciously targeting civil rights activists in an attempt to terrorise them into silence. Seale was arrested a few months after the men disappeared, but murder charges were later dropped against him.
Prosecutors alleged that the two victims had been picked up while they were hitchhiking, thrown into the boot of a car and taken to a forest where they were beaten in an attempt to extract information on firearms being brought into the area.
Edwards said that he saw Seale hold a gun to Dee and Moore, while the two young black men were beaten for about half an hour, 30 or 40 times each. Edwards claimed that although he had been involved in the beating, he had not been present when the men had been thrown into the river.
He said Seale later told him how the men were dumped alive in a backwater of the Mississippi river with weights attached to them.
Defence lawyers that the case was flimsy because it relied on the evidence of one man, an "admitted liar". "This case all comes down to the word of one man, an admitted liar, a man out to save his own skin. A case based on his word is no case at all," the lead defence lawyer, Kathy Nester, said.
Seale has always denied membership of the KKK.
Before the trial started, a former FBI agent gave evidence that he had confronted Seale and accused him of the murder a few months after the deaths. Edward Putz said Seale had replied: "Yes, but I'm not going to admit it. You are going to have to prove it."
Guardian
Labels:
1964,
Charles Moore,
Henry Dee,
James Ford Seale,
KKK,
Ku Klux Klan,
white supremacists
May 29, 2007
Sharing the hate
Video-sharing websites become extremist venue
Los Angeles blacks are destroying property and attacking white people as a soft, pitiful ballad plays in the background. Then, about two minutes into the video, the words "Whose Freedom?" appear as a still frame of a young, smiling German girl at a Third Reich rally suddenly replaces the footage of the 1992 Rodney King riots. A man wearing a swastika armband stands protectively behind her, his head cropped from the frame, while the words, "A paradise lost," scroll down beneath her chin. Finally, a message, "Save the White Race," fills the screen before dissolving into a Celtic cross encircled by the phrase, "White Pride World Wide."
NSM International, a recruiting arm of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement, produced this video, probably at a cost of just a few dollars. But despite its amateurish nature, its makers are getting a big bang for their buck, thanks to YouTube, the red-hot video-sharing website that allows anyone with a camera phone or digital camcorder to upload for free their videos. The NSM video is now available to millions of people.
Welcome to the latest medium for the American radical right — one more electronic venue that seems particularly suited for recruitment of the young. Since it was founded in February 2005, YouTube, along with competitors like Flickr and Google Video, has become hugely popular, especially among the young. YouTube alone streams hundreds of millions of clips daily to a global audience, with its users posting more than 65,000 new videos to its swollen archives every day. And while extremist clips like the NSM recruitment video are only a tiny percentage of those posts, neo-Nazis and other white supremacists are close on the heels of the commercial advertisers now rushing to exploit this still-burgeoning medium.
"Increasingly, the Internet is replacing membership groups as the primary way for white supremacists to obtain information and communicate," asserts a January report on the white supremacist movement by Strategic Forecasting Incorporated, an intelligence analysis think tank. "Adherents regularly establish their presence on popular Web destinations such as MySpace and YouTube."
As of mid-January, roughly 12,000 white supremacist propaganda videos, hate rock concert highlight reels, and Holocaust denial pseudo-documentaries, many of them posted anonymously, were openly available on video-sharing websites. (This estimate was derived through keyword searches of the three leading sites and an analysis of how many were extremist, rather than merely mentioning extremism.) One of the most popular videos, "Branik White Power," is a poor-quality depiction of skinheads gone wild, set to roaring hate rock. The high-speed montage depicts Nazi skins dancing violently in the "mosh pit" near the stage, throwing punches, waving "SS" flags, and showing off white-power tattoos. Since it was posted by YouTube user "bulldog88" in May 2006, it has been downloaded more than 40,000 times.
Some of the most noxious videos are more reserved in their approach, such as "The Real David Duke," which has the former Klan leader pontificating on race relations for nine minutes and which has been viewed more than 10,000 times since it was posted last October. Another example, is "David Irving on the Holocaust," a five-and-a-half-minute excerpt of a speech by the notorious Holocaust denier in Britain that's been downloaded over 4,000 times during the same time period.
The Irving video was posted to YouTube last October by "Hadden88" ("88" is neo-Nazi code for "Heil Hitler"), who has compiled his own YouTube "channel" of 79 videos, most of them anti-Semitic mini-"documentaries" and speeches by hate peddlers like Irving, National Alliance founder William Pierce, and Adolf Hitler.
Other popular YouTube racist videos include a series of six "White Nationalist News" clips, the earliest episode dated last Sept. 8, some of which have been viewed more than 3,000 times; "Ku Klux Klan – A Secret History," posted in September, and its accompaniment "Ku Klux Klan 4-Ever," posted in December, each viewed over 11,000 times; "Nazi KKK," posted in October and viewed 15,000 times; "Russian skinheads. We are here," posted in December and viewed over 45,000 times; and "Skinhead" posted in November and viewed 132,000 times.
Video-sharing may be a particularly effective way for extremist groups, which have long sought ways to find new recruits, to connect with young people. You-Tube and its imitators are immensely popular among children, teenagers and young adults, and sometimes a single video will be downloaded literally millions of times. In addition, compared to direct-mail literature or dead-of-night "literature drops" on people's lawns, posting video footage is vastly less difficult, expensive, risky and time-consuming — and it can be done anonymously with virtually no effort.
Videos can also easily be used to create a false image. While back-country Klan cross-burnings, warehouse hate rock festivals, and neo-Nazi park rallies may draw only a handful of supporters, a crafty amateur filmmaker can edit or exploit camera angles to foster the illusion of a much larger and more dramatic event.
NSM, for example, posted a YouTube video last October depicting their August rally in Madison, Wis. A couple of dozen NSM members, dressed like Nazi storm troopers, seig-heil enthusiastically as the speaker rails: "Pedro go home! White America was founded by white Americans for white Americans! We will not allow our nation to become brown!" The camera lingers lovingly on the snappy accessories and stern gazes of the NSM, creating in the minds of some electronic visitors the impression of a polished, powerful show. But what the footage doesn't show is hundreds of booing, jeering anti-racist protesters right across the street.
Questioned last December by the Intelligence Report about NSM videos on YouTube, NSM Commander Jeff Schoep claimed: "The effectiveness of the NSM and its growth speaks for itself. We use many tools." Schoep also complained that civil rights groups were pressuring YouTube to remove "all so-called racist content."
Actually, YouTube already bans "hate speech," defined as "slurs or the malicious use of stereotypes intended to attack or demean a particular gender, sexual orientation, race, religion or nationality." But the sheer volume of video files posted to the site each day makes it practically impossible to police all content. As a result, particular videos are normally only removed as a result of a user complaint.
"We remove the offending content and send users a warning notice for violating our terms of use," says Jennifer Nielsen, marketing manager for YouTube. "Users who repeatedly violate our terms of use have their accounts terminated, all of their videos removed and they are permanently banned from YouTube."
Racist extremists are hardly likely to be deterred by such mild consequences, particularly because most live in countries with criminal penalties for possession or distribution of such Internet propaganda. By using American video-sharing websites, foreign extremists like Germany's National Democratic Party (NPD) make it vastly more difficult for legal action to be brought against them in their own countries.
The NPD, a neofascist political party, frequently posts newscasts of Hitler memorials and Holocaust-denying speeches on U.S.-based video sharing sites. Last December, for example, after the NPD posted glowing reports on YouTube of a highly publicized conference of Holocaust deniers hosted by Iran, the British paper The Independent described YouTube as "a favorite neo-Nazi website."
While YouTube operators now have scrubbed the site for those NPD videos, more than 350 other NPD clips are still available on YouTube, and the party recently announced plans to launch its own video-sharing website, based in America. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda, would be proud.
SPLC
Los Angeles blacks are destroying property and attacking white people as a soft, pitiful ballad plays in the background. Then, about two minutes into the video, the words "Whose Freedom?" appear as a still frame of a young, smiling German girl at a Third Reich rally suddenly replaces the footage of the 1992 Rodney King riots. A man wearing a swastika armband stands protectively behind her, his head cropped from the frame, while the words, "A paradise lost," scroll down beneath her chin. Finally, a message, "Save the White Race," fills the screen before dissolving into a Celtic cross encircled by the phrase, "White Pride World Wide."
NSM International, a recruiting arm of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement, produced this video, probably at a cost of just a few dollars. But despite its amateurish nature, its makers are getting a big bang for their buck, thanks to YouTube, the red-hot video-sharing website that allows anyone with a camera phone or digital camcorder to upload for free their videos. The NSM video is now available to millions of people.
Welcome to the latest medium for the American radical right — one more electronic venue that seems particularly suited for recruitment of the young. Since it was founded in February 2005, YouTube, along with competitors like Flickr and Google Video, has become hugely popular, especially among the young. YouTube alone streams hundreds of millions of clips daily to a global audience, with its users posting more than 65,000 new videos to its swollen archives every day. And while extremist clips like the NSM recruitment video are only a tiny percentage of those posts, neo-Nazis and other white supremacists are close on the heels of the commercial advertisers now rushing to exploit this still-burgeoning medium.
"Increasingly, the Internet is replacing membership groups as the primary way for white supremacists to obtain information and communicate," asserts a January report on the white supremacist movement by Strategic Forecasting Incorporated, an intelligence analysis think tank. "Adherents regularly establish their presence on popular Web destinations such as MySpace and YouTube."
As of mid-January, roughly 12,000 white supremacist propaganda videos, hate rock concert highlight reels, and Holocaust denial pseudo-documentaries, many of them posted anonymously, were openly available on video-sharing websites. (This estimate was derived through keyword searches of the three leading sites and an analysis of how many were extremist, rather than merely mentioning extremism.) One of the most popular videos, "Branik White Power," is a poor-quality depiction of skinheads gone wild, set to roaring hate rock. The high-speed montage depicts Nazi skins dancing violently in the "mosh pit" near the stage, throwing punches, waving "SS" flags, and showing off white-power tattoos. Since it was posted by YouTube user "bulldog88" in May 2006, it has been downloaded more than 40,000 times.
Some of the most noxious videos are more reserved in their approach, such as "The Real David Duke," which has the former Klan leader pontificating on race relations for nine minutes and which has been viewed more than 10,000 times since it was posted last October. Another example, is "David Irving on the Holocaust," a five-and-a-half-minute excerpt of a speech by the notorious Holocaust denier in Britain that's been downloaded over 4,000 times during the same time period.
The Irving video was posted to YouTube last October by "Hadden88" ("88" is neo-Nazi code for "Heil Hitler"), who has compiled his own YouTube "channel" of 79 videos, most of them anti-Semitic mini-"documentaries" and speeches by hate peddlers like Irving, National Alliance founder William Pierce, and Adolf Hitler.
Other popular YouTube racist videos include a series of six "White Nationalist News" clips, the earliest episode dated last Sept. 8, some of which have been viewed more than 3,000 times; "Ku Klux Klan – A Secret History," posted in September, and its accompaniment "Ku Klux Klan 4-Ever," posted in December, each viewed over 11,000 times; "Nazi KKK," posted in October and viewed 15,000 times; "Russian skinheads. We are here," posted in December and viewed over 45,000 times; and "Skinhead" posted in November and viewed 132,000 times.
Video-sharing may be a particularly effective way for extremist groups, which have long sought ways to find new recruits, to connect with young people. You-Tube and its imitators are immensely popular among children, teenagers and young adults, and sometimes a single video will be downloaded literally millions of times. In addition, compared to direct-mail literature or dead-of-night "literature drops" on people's lawns, posting video footage is vastly less difficult, expensive, risky and time-consuming — and it can be done anonymously with virtually no effort.
Videos can also easily be used to create a false image. While back-country Klan cross-burnings, warehouse hate rock festivals, and neo-Nazi park rallies may draw only a handful of supporters, a crafty amateur filmmaker can edit or exploit camera angles to foster the illusion of a much larger and more dramatic event.
NSM, for example, posted a YouTube video last October depicting their August rally in Madison, Wis. A couple of dozen NSM members, dressed like Nazi storm troopers, seig-heil enthusiastically as the speaker rails: "Pedro go home! White America was founded by white Americans for white Americans! We will not allow our nation to become brown!" The camera lingers lovingly on the snappy accessories and stern gazes of the NSM, creating in the minds of some electronic visitors the impression of a polished, powerful show. But what the footage doesn't show is hundreds of booing, jeering anti-racist protesters right across the street.
Questioned last December by the Intelligence Report about NSM videos on YouTube, NSM Commander Jeff Schoep claimed: "The effectiveness of the NSM and its growth speaks for itself. We use many tools." Schoep also complained that civil rights groups were pressuring YouTube to remove "all so-called racist content."
Actually, YouTube already bans "hate speech," defined as "slurs or the malicious use of stereotypes intended to attack or demean a particular gender, sexual orientation, race, religion or nationality." But the sheer volume of video files posted to the site each day makes it practically impossible to police all content. As a result, particular videos are normally only removed as a result of a user complaint.
"We remove the offending content and send users a warning notice for violating our terms of use," says Jennifer Nielsen, marketing manager for YouTube. "Users who repeatedly violate our terms of use have their accounts terminated, all of their videos removed and they are permanently banned from YouTube."
Racist extremists are hardly likely to be deterred by such mild consequences, particularly because most live in countries with criminal penalties for possession or distribution of such Internet propaganda. By using American video-sharing websites, foreign extremists like Germany's National Democratic Party (NPD) make it vastly more difficult for legal action to be brought against them in their own countries.
The NPD, a neofascist political party, frequently posts newscasts of Hitler memorials and Holocaust-denying speeches on U.S.-based video sharing sites. Last December, for example, after the NPD posted glowing reports on YouTube of a highly publicized conference of Holocaust deniers hosted by Iran, the British paper The Independent described YouTube as "a favorite neo-Nazi website."
While YouTube operators now have scrubbed the site for those NPD videos, more than 350 other NPD clips are still available on YouTube, and the party recently announced plans to launch its own video-sharing website, based in America. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda, would be proud.
SPLC
April 26, 2007
Hatewatch: for the week of April 25th 2007
Former National Alliance leader convicted of hate crimes
Shaun Walker, the former national chairman of the neo-Nazi
organization National Alliance, was found guilty along with two other
NA members of conspiracy in racially motivated attacks.
Jury awards $9 million dollars in Billy Ray Johnson case
A civil jury in Linden, Texas, assessed $9 million in damages against
four white men who beat a mentally retarded black man and left him for
dead beside a garbage dump.
SPLC calls for investigation of professor
The Southern Poverty Law Center urged Cal State Long Beach officials
to investigate psychology professor Kevin MacDonald, whose writings
about Jews are widely used by white supremacists, including David
Duke.
City supervisor placed on leave for making Klan jokes
A Chicago Department of Transportation project director allegedly
referred to black employees as "mambo" and paraded around with a red
tablecloth over his head while calling himself the "Grand Wizard."
Southern Poverty Law Center
Shaun Walker, the former national chairman of the neo-Nazi
organization National Alliance, was found guilty along with two other
NA members of conspiracy in racially motivated attacks.
Jury awards $9 million dollars in Billy Ray Johnson case
A civil jury in Linden, Texas, assessed $9 million in damages against
four white men who beat a mentally retarded black man and left him for
dead beside a garbage dump.
SPLC calls for investigation of professor
The Southern Poverty Law Center urged Cal State Long Beach officials
to investigate psychology professor Kevin MacDonald, whose writings
about Jews are widely used by white supremacists, including David
Duke.
City supervisor placed on leave for making Klan jokes
A Chicago Department of Transportation project director allegedly
referred to black employees as "mambo" and paraded around with a red
tablecloth over his head while calling himself the "Grand Wizard."
Southern Poverty Law Center
April 22, 2007
White supremacists blame immigration and Asians for Virginia Tech tragedy
In the wake of the tragic shooting rampage at Virginia Tech, extremists and white supremacists and conspiracy-oriented Internet forums and Web sites have focused on the ethnicity of the killer in an attempt to blame Asians, immigrants and other minorities for the deaths and to spread a message of hate, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
"Extremists are using the Virginia Tech shootings to spread a message of hate against immigrants, particularly Asians," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. "They are using the shooter's Asian ethnicity as an excuse to pile on hate against Asians, Blacks, Jews and immigrants. It is yet another example of how the neo-Nazis and haters are seeking to create an atmosphere of divisiveness around the immigration debate and to engender fear of minority groups living in America."
Some white supremacists groups have posted virulently anti-immigrant, racist and anti-Semitic videos on YouTube, the popular mainstream video sharing site, with deceptive titles such as "Virginia Tech Shooting Update" that make them appear as if they were legitimate news clips dealing with the aftermath of the shooting.
Some examples of the types of chatter taking place on extremist sites follow.
• Anti-Asian Rhetoric: Some of the terms used to describe Asians include: "cold, calculating and cruel" and "worthless dirtbags" who "have infected and overpopulated too many parts in America…" One poster on a white supremacist Internet forum wrote that Asians should "Stay in China!" Others refer to Asians with racially derogatory names such as "chop chop," "po chop," and "gook."
• Anti-Diversity Rhetoric: "This is one example of a tragedy that simply would not have happened in a WN [White Nationalist] country. That Asian man wouldn't have been here in the first place," reads a post on a white supremacist site. A post on another virulently anti-Semitic site read: "Guns don't kill people. Niggers, spics and gooks kill people."
• Anti-Semitic Rhetoric: Extremists are discussing the shootings in the context of a variety of anti-Semitic stereotypes, including Jewish control of the media and of the U.S. government, and a Jewish "conspiracy" to repeal the Second Amendment.
• Holocaust Denial Rhetoric: Several posts have engaged in Holocaust denial in referring to the slaying of Liviu Librescu, the Jewish professor and Holocaust survivor who was reportedly killed while attempting to protect his students, claiming that the Holocaust was a "hoax."
• Videos: In an attempt to spread their message of white supremacy and anti-Semitism, neo-Nazis associated with the Vanguard News Network have created over a dozen videos with titles including "Virginia Tech Shooting Update," and posting them on YouTube in an apparent attempt to deceive viewers into thinking they are getting legitimate news stories, when in fact the videos contain virulently racist, anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant messages.
• Protests at Funerals: The virulently anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church has plans to protest at the funerals of the victims, claiming the shooting was God's vengeance for homosexuality in America.
ADL
"Extremists are using the Virginia Tech shootings to spread a message of hate against immigrants, particularly Asians," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. "They are using the shooter's Asian ethnicity as an excuse to pile on hate against Asians, Blacks, Jews and immigrants. It is yet another example of how the neo-Nazis and haters are seeking to create an atmosphere of divisiveness around the immigration debate and to engender fear of minority groups living in America."
Some white supremacists groups have posted virulently anti-immigrant, racist and anti-Semitic videos on YouTube, the popular mainstream video sharing site, with deceptive titles such as "Virginia Tech Shooting Update" that make them appear as if they were legitimate news clips dealing with the aftermath of the shooting.
Some examples of the types of chatter taking place on extremist sites follow.
• Anti-Asian Rhetoric: Some of the terms used to describe Asians include: "cold, calculating and cruel" and "worthless dirtbags" who "have infected and overpopulated too many parts in America…" One poster on a white supremacist Internet forum wrote that Asians should "Stay in China!" Others refer to Asians with racially derogatory names such as "chop chop," "po chop," and "gook."
• Anti-Diversity Rhetoric: "This is one example of a tragedy that simply would not have happened in a WN [White Nationalist] country. That Asian man wouldn't have been here in the first place," reads a post on a white supremacist site. A post on another virulently anti-Semitic site read: "Guns don't kill people. Niggers, spics and gooks kill people."
• Anti-Semitic Rhetoric: Extremists are discussing the shootings in the context of a variety of anti-Semitic stereotypes, including Jewish control of the media and of the U.S. government, and a Jewish "conspiracy" to repeal the Second Amendment.
• Holocaust Denial Rhetoric: Several posts have engaged in Holocaust denial in referring to the slaying of Liviu Librescu, the Jewish professor and Holocaust survivor who was reportedly killed while attempting to protect his students, claiming that the Holocaust was a "hoax."
• Videos: In an attempt to spread their message of white supremacy and anti-Semitism, neo-Nazis associated with the Vanguard News Network have created over a dozen videos with titles including "Virginia Tech Shooting Update," and posting them on YouTube in an apparent attempt to deceive viewers into thinking they are getting legitimate news stories, when in fact the videos contain virulently racist, anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant messages.
• Protests at Funerals: The virulently anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church has plans to protest at the funerals of the victims, claiming the shooting was God's vengeance for homosexuality in America.
ADL
Labels:
anti-semitic,
Asians,
extremists,
hate groups,
Holocaust,
immigrants,
neo-Nazis,
white supremacists
March 29, 2007
Hatewatch: for the week of March 28th 2007
Gay man’s murder spurs campaign to update laws
Detroit Free Press
March 21, 2007
Prompted by the beating death of 72-year-old Andrew Athos, state and federal lawmakers introduced legislation to expand the definition of hate crimes to include attacks on gays and lesbians.
Read more
Fort Bragg skinhead killer dies in prison
The Fayetteville Observer
March 22, 2007
James Burmeister, 31, one of two racist skinheads convicted in 1997 of randomly murdering a black couple while serving in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, died of natural causes in prison, ten years into a life sentence.
Read more
National Vanguard organizes 'White Pride' rally
East Valley Tribune
March 21, 2007
Several members of the neo-Nazi group National Vanguard's Arizona chapter held "White Pride Worldwide" banners at a busy intersection in observance of a United Nations-designated "Harmony Day."
Read more
White supremacists arrested for murder
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
March 24, 2007
Two members of the Riverside Skins allegedly shot to death a drug dealer they feared would become an informant.
Read more
Neo-Nazi march cost city $32,000
Columbia Tribune
March 20, 2007
City agencies spent more than $32,000 on security for a 45-minute march by two-dozen members of the National Socialist Movement near the University of Missouri-Columbia on March 10.
Read more
SPLC
Detroit Free Press
March 21, 2007
Prompted by the beating death of 72-year-old Andrew Athos, state and federal lawmakers introduced legislation to expand the definition of hate crimes to include attacks on gays and lesbians.
Read more
Fort Bragg skinhead killer dies in prison
The Fayetteville Observer
March 22, 2007
James Burmeister, 31, one of two racist skinheads convicted in 1997 of randomly murdering a black couple while serving in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, died of natural causes in prison, ten years into a life sentence.
Read more
National Vanguard organizes 'White Pride' rally
East Valley Tribune
March 21, 2007
Several members of the neo-Nazi group National Vanguard's Arizona chapter held "White Pride Worldwide" banners at a busy intersection in observance of a United Nations-designated "Harmony Day."
Read more
White supremacists arrested for murder
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
March 24, 2007
Two members of the Riverside Skins allegedly shot to death a drug dealer they feared would become an informant.
Read more
Neo-Nazi march cost city $32,000
Columbia Tribune
March 20, 2007
City agencies spent more than $32,000 on security for a 45-minute march by two-dozen members of the National Socialist Movement near the University of Missouri-Columbia on March 10.
Read more
SPLC
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