American Swastika

Violence Prevention and Policy Series

This series publishes new books in the multidisciplinary study of violence.
Books are designed to support scientifically based violence prevention
programs and widely applicable violence prevention policy. Key topics are
community-based youth development projects, juvenile and/or adult
community prison re-entry programs, community-based addiction and
violence intervention and prevention programs, and school culture and
climate studies with recommendations for organizational approaches to
school-violence reduction. Studies may combine quantitative and
qualitative methods, may be multi- or interdisciplinary, or may feature
European research if it has a multinational application. The series
publishes highly accessible books that offer violence prevention policy as
the outcome of scientifically based research that are designed for college
undergraduates and graduates, community agency leaders, school and
community decision makers, and senior government policy makers.

SERIES EDITOR
Mark S. Fleisher, Research Professor, Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel
School of Applied Social Sciences, Begun Center for Violence Prevention
Research and Education, Case Western Reserve University, 10900 Euclid
Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44106-7164 USA, 216-368-5235 or
[email protected].

EDITORIAL BOARD
Scott H. Decker, Foundation Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice,
Arizona State University
Finn-Aage Esbensen, Chair and E. Desmond Lee Professor of Youth Crime
and Violence, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University
of Missouri-St. Louis
Daniel Flannery, Professor and Director of the Begun Center for Violence
Prevention Research and Education, Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel
School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University
C. Ronald Huff, School of Social Ecology, and Professor Emeritus,
Department of Criminology, Law and Society, University of California,
Irvine
Lorine Hughes, School of Public Affairs, University of Colorado
Cheryl Lee Maxson, Professor of Criminology, Law and Society, University
of California, Irvine
Andy Papachristos, Department of Sociology, Yale University
William G. (Bo) Saylor, Research Statistician, BoSaylor Statistical
Consulting
James F. Short, Jr., Professor and Director Emeritus, Social and Economic
Sciences Research Center, Washington State University
Mark I. Singer, Leonard W. Mayo Professor of Family and Child Welfare,
Case Western Reserve University
Frank van Gemert, Free University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The
Netherlands
BOOKS IN THE SERIES
Gang Cop: The Words and Ways of Officer Paco Domingo by Malcolm W.
Klein
Measuring Prison Performance: Government Privatization and
Accountability by Gerald G. Gaes, Scott D. Camp, Julianne B. Nelson, and
William G. Saylor
European Street Gangs and Troublesome Youth Groups edited by Scott H.
Decker and Frank M. Weerma
Violence and Mental Health in Everyday Life: Prevention and Intervention
Strategies for Children and Adolescents by Daniel J. Flannery
Studying Youth Gangs edited by James F. Short, Jr., and Lorine A. Hughes
Family Abuse and Violence: A Social Problems Perspective by JoAnn Miller
and Dean D. Knudsen
Reducing Youth Gang Violence: The Little Village Gang Project in Chicago by
Irving A. Spergel
American Swastika: Inside the White Power Movement’s Hidden Spaces of
Hate, 2nd Edition, by Pete Simi and Robert Futrell
 American Swastika

Inside the White Power Movement’s

Hidden Spaces of Hate

Second Edition

Pete Simi and Robert Futrell

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

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Copyright © 2015 by Rowman & Littlefield

First edition published 2010.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or
mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission
from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Simi, Pete.
American swastika : inside the white power movement’s hidden spaces of hate / Pete Simi and
Robert Futrell. — Second edition.
pages cm. — (Violence prevention and policy series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4422-4136-7 (cloth : alkaline paper) — ISBN 978-1-4422-4137-4 (paperback : alkaline
paper) — ISBN 978-1-4422-4138-1 (electronic)
1. White supremacy movements—United States. 2. Hate groups—United States. 3. Racism—United
States. 4. Terrorism—United States. 5. United States—Race relations. I. Futrell, Robert. II. Title.
E184.A1S599 2015
305.800973—dc23
2015014724

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National
Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO
Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

 Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the National Science Foundation; the

National Institute of Justice (2006-IJ-CX-0027); the Harry Frank
Guggenheim Foundation; the Department of Homeland Science and
Technology Directorate’s Office of University Programs through Award
Number 2012-ST-061-CS0001, Center for the Study of Terrorism and
Behavior; the University of Nevada, Las Vegas; and the University of
Nebraska, Omaha for their generous financial support for this project.
Although these institutions do not necessarily agree with the opinions
expressed in this book, we appreciate their willingness to encourage and
assist our research.
We also thank a number of law enforcement agencies that offered
invaluable insights into our case through conversations and data on white
power activism. These are: Anaheim, California, Police Department; Costa
Mesa, California, Police Department; Fullerton, California, Police
Department; Huntington Beach, California, Police Department; La Habra,
California, Police Department; Las Vegas, Nevada, Metro Police
Department; and Orange County, California, Parole and Probation.
As with any complex project, we owe a lot of gratitude to our
colleagues for their camaraderie, advice, and helpful feedback on our
research and arguments. This book is much stronger because of your
efforts.
Our editors have been invaluable. Mark Fleisher’s hard-hitting
critiques forced us to clarify our argument and improve our prose.
Although we may never fully meet his high standards, we are grateful for
his prods and insights. Sarah Stanton and Kathryn Knigge at Rowman &
Littlefield also deserve great thanks for their professionalism, enthusiasm,
and patience with us.
We thank our friends and families. We are grateful for your love,
care, wisdom, and understanding. We could not have completed this book
without your support.
Lastly, without the access that our Aryan contacts provided us, we
could not have written this book.
 Introduction

We live in complicated times. Following Barack Obama’s election to

the US presidency in 2008, there were commentators who imagined that a
postracial era had finally arrived. The rise of a biracial leader who spoke
so eloquently about the power of hope and change signaled to many
Americans that they were witnessing a momentous turning point in the
country’s long fight for civil rights. There was a glimmer, if only
momentary, that America was on the verge of an open and honest
confrontation with our racist legacy. Yet in 2015, race remains America’s
pivotal point of conflict. Nationwide protests against police brutality,
racial violence, and broader structural inequalities erupted after a white
police officer killed an unarmed black teen in Ferguson, Missouri, followed
by a white Staten Island, New York, police officer’s deadly choking of a
black man accused of a misdemeanor crime. America remains far from a
postracial society.
Some argue American racism is now “color-blind” and expressed
more through subtle social conventions that merely hint at biased
tendencies rather than through overtly racist acts.[1] But overt racists and
racist acts remain alive and well. Missouri Ku Klux Klan members
responded to protests in black communities over the Ferguson incident
with threats of violence and allusions to lynching the “chimps.” Two
hundred protesters met the NAACP’s Journey for Justice march through
Missouri with Confederate flags, racial epithets, and a display of fried
chicken, watermelon, and a forty-ounce beer bottle placed in the street.
Gunfire shattered windows in a van traveling with the marchers.[2]
Right-wing extremism persists in social networks whose participants
advocate varied combinations of white supremacist beliefs, anti-federalist
attitudes, and religio-racist fundamentalism. Participants include loose
collections of people identifying themselves as white power racists, militia
members, sovereign citizens, anti-immigration activists, patriots, Tea
Partiers, Oath Keepers, and birthers to name a few. These groups express
conspiratorial anxieties rooted in populist worries about racial and ethnic
change, immigration, governmental overreach, and public debt. They
share a deep distrust in the government and imagine a shadowy cabal of
elites intent on robbing Americans of their freedoms. Some claim the
federal government secretly plans to declare martial law and intern
patriotic Americans in concentration camps.
Media figures and even some mainstream politicians fuel extremists’
beliefs. Popular far-right pundits, including Alex Jones, Ann Coulter, Glenn
Beck, Wayne Allen Root, Larry Pratt, and Austin Miles, broadcast intense
paranoia and anger to millions of Americans. Following the Ferguson
protests, Alex Jones and others insisted that the demonstrations signaled
the coming race war and that the federal government would respond by
declaring martial law and imposing a dictatorship.[3] These claims intensify
racial extremists’ fears about white racial genocide. White power
extremism also periodically seeps into conventional politics, as evidenced
by revelations of US House of Representative’s majority whip Steve
Scalise’s past association with longtime Klan leader David Duke’s
organization, the European-American Unity and Rights Organization
(EURO).[4]
Racial extremists infuse far-right beliefs with virulently racist and
anti-Semitic delusions. They rant about the necessity of racial and anti-
Semitic violence to defend the “white race” from genocide and to combat
the specter of a “one world government” bent on making whites
subservient to Jews and other “lower-order” races. Some adherents
stockpile weapons in preparation for a race war they believe is on the
horizon. Virtually all of them participate in a cultural milieu that promotes
fantastical visions of racial violence and white power.
Participation ebbs and flows across right-wing networks. Militia
groups increased during the 1990s but mostly fell apart in the aftermath
of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. While many militia members
withdrew their participation after that infamous event, extremists
persisted in white power networks, which expanded during the 2000s
under the radar of most Americans. Paramilitary militia groups resurfaced
in 2005 in response to national immigration debates and then declined in
2011 due to disorganization, criminal scandals, and as policy makers in
states such as Arizona and Alabama adopted the movement’s goals.[5]
Participation appears to be growing again as a range of right-wing
extremists responds to a recent wave of child immigrants and President
Obama’s executive order to allow more undocumented immigrants to
remain in the United States.[6] In 2013, the Southern Poverty Law Center
(SPLC) counted more than one thousand active “antigovernment patriot
groups” in the United States, with 240 paramilitary militia groups among
them.[7] The SPLC also counts almost eight hundred active white
supremacy hate groups.[8]
The varied and persistent forms of right-wing extremism surprise
many, but not those of us who track the far right. The United States has a
long history of heinous and disturbing racial and ethnic discrimination,
xenophobia, and violence. The Ku Klux Klan, the nation’s most notorious
symbol of white supremacy, claimed between three and five million
members in the mid-1920s.[9] Since then, Klan membership and activities
have cycled through peaks and valleys, with the most notable actions
coming during the 1950s and 1960s civil rights conflicts. As Klan support
waned in the 1970s, emergent neo-Nazi skinheads grew in the 1980s,
combining white power rhetoric and ideology with a youth aesthetic
expressed through white power music and Nazi symbolism. Like the
hooded, white-robed, cross-burning Klan gatherings before them, neo-
Nazis like Tom Metzger’s White Aryan Resistance held public displays that
brought intense, albeit episodic, media attention and helped to form a
new white power stereotype: young, wild-eyed, tattoo-laden, sneering,
belligerent, in-your-face, skinhead racists. As authorities and antiracist
groups challenged white power groups, several branches began to
withdraw from the most public forms of activism and advocate for lone-
wolf tactics to avoid repression.
Slowly, experts and authorities have come to acknowledge right-wing
extremism as a serious threat. In 2009, the Department of Homeland
Security identified white supremacist and violent antigovernment groups
as important domestic terror threats.[10] More recently, West Point’s
Combating Terrorism Center demonstrated a dramatic rise in the number
of right-wing extremist attacks and violent plots.[11] And although violent
attacks by homegrown right-wing extremists receive substantially less
attention than violence by jihadist militants, domestic right-wing
extremism is more deadly.[12] In 2014, US attorney general Eric Holder
reconstituted a committee on domestic terrorism that was first
established after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing but then shelved after
9/11 as the federal government shifted focus to international terrorism.
But the sorts of lone-wolf attacks that right-wing extremists now
carry out are notoriously difficult to anticipate. In 2012, longtime white
power activist Wade Michael Page gunned down six people at a Sikh
temple near Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Page developed his extremist beliefs
during a six-year stint in the US Army. After his discharge, he became a
prominent fixture in the white power music scene, playing with bands
such as Youngland, End Apathy, and Definite Hate. He bounced around
from Colorado to California and eventually to Wisconsin with his
girlfriend, working blue-collar jobs and performing racist music. Pete Simi
spent hundreds of hours talking to and observing Page during fieldwork
for American Swastika. While Page was steeped in a culture that
celebrated violence against blacks, Jews, and other non-Aryans, nothing
clearly distinguished him from thousands of others as the one who would
translate violent words into violent action.
It remains vital to understand just how the most extreme element of
the far right—the white power movement—continues to persist in a
society that mostly vilifies and marginalizes fanatical racism. We revised
this second edition of American Swastika to provide an up-to-date
perspective on white power activism and organization. Since the first
edition, we have continued our research on white power activists and
networks. Our ongoing work confirms many of the conclusions we drew in
the first edition about how and why white power activists nurture their
violent, paranoid, racist, anti-Semitic, and antigovernment fantasies. Our
focus in the second edition remains on how white power extremists
sustain a potent culture of hatred in seemingly benign settings such as
homes, backyard parties, Bible study meetings, bars, music shows, and the
Internet. We call these settings “Aryan free spaces” because they afford
racial extremists opportunities to openly express and sustain their radical
ideas with like-minded comrades.
Yet, as with all movements, white power activism and organization is
not static. People move in and out of white power networks, new groups
appear as others fade, new movement websites come online as others go
offline, and movement scenes transform. This second edition captures the
present-day features of white power activism. We describe the activities
of today’s most active white power groups while acknowledging the legacy
of recently weakened or disbanded networks. We also discuss long-
standing white power websites so critical to the movement’s continuity,
along with more recent manifestations of white power cyberactivism. The
music companies who drive the white power music scene have shifted as
well. We detail the new players in the scene and how they operate. We
also analyze how some white power activists continue to embrace the
legacy of white power communities as inspiration to establish new ones.
Extremism and hatred simmer in Aryan free spaces. And when
extremist ideology endures, so does the potential for extremist action. It
is risky to remain collectively ignorant about how the extremist right
persists. Long written off by many observers as politically innocuous
wackos, racial extremists persist by concealing their views in public while
nurturing them in private. Paramilitary militia radicals wield potent ideas
about dispossession and violence. White power neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and
others interpret these ideas through a potent lens of racial and anti-
Semitic hate. We should not be surprised when more of them violently
lash out, because the inspiration for their violence is anchored in the
extremist culture that has been percolating for years. American Swastika
explains where white power activists, today’s most extreme elements of
the right wing, sustain their culture of hate.
1. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and
the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America (Lanham, MD: Rowman &
Littlefield, 2009).
2. Hannah Baldwin, “Journey for Justice Runs into Hostile Counter-protest,
Keeps Marching,” Missourian, December 3, 2014,
http://www.columbiamissourian.com/a/182383/journey-for-justice-runs-
into-hostile-counter-protest-keeps-marching (accessed December 13,
2014).
3. Brian Tashman, “Alex Jones: Government Will Use Ferguson to Start
Race War,” Right Wing Watch, December 2, 2014,
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/alex-jones-government-will-use-
ferguson-start-race-war" (accessed December 13, 2014).
4. Ashley Parker and Alan Rappeport, “Representative Steve Scalise of
Louisiana Acknowledges Addressing Racist Group in 2002,” New York
Times, December 29, 2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/30/us/politics/louisiana-congressman-
steve-scalise-acknowledges-addressing-racist-group-in-2002.html (accessed
January 14, 2015).
5. SPLC, “‘Nativist Extremist’ Groups Decline Again,” Intelligence Report
153 (Spring 2014), http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-
report/browse-all-issues/2014/spring/Nativist-Extremist-Groups-Decline-
Again (accessed December 3, 2014).
6. SPLC, “Recent Wave of Immigrant Children May Have Revitalized
Nativist Extremist Movement,” SPLC News, November 21, 2014,
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/news/splc-s-intelligence-report-
recent-wave-of-immigrant-children-may-have-revitalized- (accessed
December 3, 2014).
7. SPLC, “Active Patriot Groups in the United States in
2013,”http://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/active_patriot_groups.pdf
(accessed December 3, 2014).
8. The SPLC’s Hate Map documents “939 active hate groups in the United
States during 2013. It defines hate groups as organizations that advocate
“beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people,
typically for the immutable characteristics.” From this list, we included
neo-Nazis, white nationalists, Christian Identity followers, Holocaust
deniers, racist skinheads, KKK members, Neo-Confederates, general hate
groups, anti-immigrant groups, and anti-Muslim groups. We excluded
anti-LGBT, black separatist, and radical traditional Catholic groups.
Available at http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/hate-map (accessed
December 12, 2014).
9. Rory McVeigh, The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan: Right Wing Movements and
National Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009).
10. US Department of Homeland Security, “Rightwing Extremism: Current
Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and
Recruitment” (unclassified assessment, April 2009),
http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/rightwing.pdf (accessed December 12,
2014).
11. Arie Perliger, Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s
Violent Far-Right (West Point, NY: Combating Terrorism Center at West
Point, 2012), https://www.ctc.usma.edu/v2/wp-
content/uploads/2013/01/ChallengersFromtheSidelines.pdf (accessed July
6, 2014).
12. Peter Bergen and David Sterman, “U.S. Right Wing Extremists More
Deadly Than Jihadists,” CNN, April 15, 2014,
http://us.cnn.com/2014/04/14/opinion/bergen-sterman-kansas-shooting
(accessed December 1, 2014; also see the New America Foundation’s
International Security project data
athttp://securitydata.newamerica.net/extremists/analysis.html.
 Chapter 1
Hidden Spaces of Aryan Hate
RaHoWa! (rä-ho-wä, from Racial Holy War) Expression of white power
solidarity

On Passover eve 2014, Frazier Glenn Miller[1] gunned down a

fourteen-year old boy and his grandfather outside a Jewish community
center in Kansas City. He then murdered another woman outside a nearby
Jewish retirement community. Only days earlier, as both the Passover
holiday and Adolf Hitler’s birthday neared, the Anti-Defamation League
warned of the increased likelihood of violent attacks against Jewish
Americans. As television cameras documented his arrest, Miller, a
notorious Ku Klux Klan leader, snarled and shouted, “Heil Hitler!”[2]
Less than a year earlier, Wade Michael Page opened fire at a Sikh
temple in suburban Milwaukee, Wisconsin, killing six temple members
and wounding four others. In the decade before his killing spree, Page, a
neo-Nazi Hammerskin, made a name for himself among white
supremacists as a member of several notorious white power bands with
names like Youngland, Intimidation One, End Apathy, and Definite Hate. He
found extremists in the white power music scene who shared and
encouraged the virulent racist fantasies that fueled his violence.
Both Miller and Page were longtime Aryan activists, steeped in a
potent culture of racial and anti-Semitic hatred, paranoia, and conspiracy.
Miller immersed himself in white power culture for more than three
decades. Following twenty years of active military duty, Miller joined the
neo-Nazi National Socialist Party in 1979 and participated in the group’s
armed attack, which killed five antiracists and Communist Worker Party
members in Greensboro, North Carolina. Miller founded the Carolina
Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Patriot Party in the 1980s and
became notorious for leading a “new, militant breed of Klan leaders.”[3]
Page became a neo-Nazi during his US Army service.[4] He was stationed at
Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, home to multiple clusters of white power
members during the 1990s.[5] After his six-year military service, Page
immersed himself in the thriving Southern California white power music
scene, rose to prominence in white power circles by playing the festival
circuit with several bands, and joined the Hammerskin Nation, one of the
most active and violent neo-Nazi networks.[6]
In 2009, Keith Luke shot and killed two African immigrants, then
raped and tried to murder a third. After police apprehended him, he
confessed that the slayings were part of his plot to kill as many nonwhites
and Jews as he could. He had planned to continue his killings at a
synagogue bingo hall later that night.[7] Like Miller and Page, Luke’s
rampage was a lone-wolf act. But unlike Miller and Page, he had no
known direct ties to organized extremist groups. Luke was radicalized
online. His descent into white power violence happened as he “educated
himself about the ‘nonwhites’ on the internet.”[8] Luke spent most of his
free time on white power websites, such as Podblanc, which “celebrates
racially motivated murder, along with ‘lone wolf’ domestic terrorism, and
features videos of skinheads in several countries beating to death non-
white immigrants.”[9] According to the Anti-Defamation League, Luke was
very active online in the weeks leading up to his killing spree, surfing racist
websites, posting racist commentary, and watching more than 2,300 white
power videos on YouTube.[10] Most of the videos that he tagged as
favorites “were anti-Semitic or white supremacist in nature, with titles
such as ‘Aryans Rise—They Seek Your Death.’”[11]
These attacks are just a few in a growing trend of violent plots and
lone-wolf massacres carried out by white power extremists.[12] The killers
draw inspiration from a potent culture of white power extremism that
encourages racist and anti-Semitic violence. Those like Miller, Page, and
Luke, who act out their violent fantasies, represent a much broader
network of white power activism. According to the Southern Poverty Law
Center, almost eight hundred racist and anti-Semitic groups exist in the
United States.[13] The majority of Aryans associated with these groups do
not lash out at those whom they consider their enemies. Instead, they
gather in typically low-profile face-to-face gatherings and on the Internet,
where they support and sustain the cultural milieu from which killers
sometimes emerge.
Such extremism is nothing new in the United States. Since the mid-
1800s, organized white supremacy has persisted in a variety of forms. For
instance, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) emerged in the aftermath of the Civil War
“to maintain the supremacy of the White race in the republic,” grew to
more than five million members in the 1920s, and persists as among the
most commonly recognized symbols of US white power ideology today.[14]
Early twentieth-century postcards celebrated southern black lynchings
with photos of hanged and sometime charred bodies of dead African
Americans. White supremacists justified lynchings to protect white
women and rein in blacks who had too much freedom. During the civil
rights era, Klansmen bombed so many black churches and businesses in
Birmingham, Alabama, that many referred to the city as “Bombingham.”
Since the 1980s, neo-Nazi and racist skinhead groups have grown in
number and now represent the most active factions of US white power
activism. These groups show more of a propensity toward lethal racial and
anti-Semitic violence than other contemporary white power groups.[15]
Today’s racial extremists call themselves Aryans, white power, and
racial separatists. They anchor the white power movement (WPM), a loose
network of individuals and groups who embrace an ideology that the
white race is genetically and culturally superior to all nonwhite races and
deserves to rule over them. Aryans[16] claim that both their genetic
lineage and cultural heritage is under attack by race mixing and
intercultural exchange. They draw inspiration and symbols from Hitler and
Nazi Germany, Pagan ritualism, Nordic warrior myths, and the Judeo-
Christian Bible, which they interpret from a radical, racialist point of view.
[17] Members of this subculture imagine that African Americans, Jews,

Hispanics, homosexuals, and other nonbelievers are out to destroy them.

Aryans are driven by a deep hatred of these groups and also by pride,
camaraderie, and the solidarity they feel toward fellow believers.
Aryans believe they are prosecuting a war to combat the extinction
of the white race. Advocates of white power ideology proclaim themselves
as race warriors fighting a shadowy cabal of powerful Jewish families they
call ZOG, or Zionist Occupied Government, that directs America’s culture
industry, business, and government with the intent of eradicating the
white race. Aryans have committed some of the most violent acts of
homegrown terror and hate crime in American history, brutalizing and
killing their racial enemies and those they suspect of supporting those
enemies.[18] Many Aryans still plot against their enemies, and they hope
to one day awaken the sleeping masses of whites, fight a race war, and
retake their rightful position of power.

EXPLAINING ARYAN PERSISTENCE

How is such radical hatred able to persist in modern America? American
Swastika provides an answer to this question. We build our explanation
from firsthand ethnographic accounts of Aryans’ lives. Our goal is to
provide a sober explanation of Aryan persistence and inform strategies to
counter the threats posed by Aryans and white power ideology. Our
discussion exposes how Aryans cling to their extremism even as they are
enmeshed in a wider society that vilifies their radical beliefs. Where
radical beliefs endure, violent radical action may follow. One factor in the
endurance of these beliefs is the role of the hidden social contexts where
Aryans gather to privately cultivate racial hatred. We call these contexts
Aryan free spaces.

Aryan Free Spaces

Aryan free spaces are settings where white power members meet
with one another, openly express their extremist beliefs, and coordinate
their activities. The term free space is a metaphor social scientists use to
describe a type of setting where marginalized groups feel some degree of
freedom to express oppositional identities and beliefs that challenge
mainstream ideas.[19] Free spaces provide relatively powerless groups
opportunities to safely articulate the aggression and hostility they feel
toward the powerful.
Free spaces can be created in real-world physical settings, such as at
a corner table in a busy restaurant where political activists quietly discuss
plans for a guerrilla demonstration, or in small, private, at-home meetings
behind locked doors. Free space can also be created for larger gatherings
such as backwoods survivalist camps organized on private lands. Likewise,
activists may find sanctuary in virtual spaces on the Internet, where they
log into chat rooms, read political writings, listen to movement music, or
watch videos that promote their causes. Whether large or small, physical
or virtual, the common denominator of free spaces is that participants
use them to nurture oppositional identities that challenge prevailing
social arrangements and cultural norms.
American Swastika describes how Aryans use free spaces to overcome
feelings of isolation and alienation by connecting with other Aryans and
immersing themselves in white power culture. Aryan free spaces offer
members solidarity, affection, and support for their crude fantasies of a
utopian, militant, racially exclusive, all-white world.
Aryan free spaces may take the form of ordinary and benign settings
and activities, but the content of the talk, rituals, and symbolism is
anchored in white power ideology. For instance, most Aryan homes do
not stand out as dens of hatred to neighbors or casual passersby.
Outwardly, they tend to blend into their neighborhoods, apartment
buildings, and communities. Inside, however, swastikas decorate the
walls, white power literature lines the bookshelves, family pictures are full
of Aryan symbolism, and mealtime prayers stress white power visions.
Aryan homes are refuges from the mainstream world where members
escape into a context defined by their white power beliefs.
The groups that meet in Aryan free spaces can vary greatly in size.
Small Aryan cadres of a dozen or less may gather under the auspices of
informal gatherings such as backyard barbecues, Bible study meetings,
weekend campouts, or hiking excursions. Up to five hundred Aryans may
attend the bar shows, concerts, and festivals that make up the white
power music scene. Millions of Aryans from around the world meet online
through racist websites that promote white power culture. In some
private Aryan communities, white power advocates are physically walled
off from the outside world in order to live their image of a pure Aryan
lifestyle.

Stigma, Concealment, and Aryan Survival

Aryans straddle the worlds of white power ideology and the
mainstream culture. Aryans detest the mainstream culture as the
mainstream detests them. They are abhorred and stigmatized at work,
school, and in their neighborhoods, where their self-conceived enemies
surround them.

Sources of Aryan Stigma

A stigma is a mark of infamy and disgrace.[20] Perhaps the most

significant source of Aryan stigma derives from their reverence for Adolf
Hitler and Nazi Germany as a model nation-state. Aryan advocacy of racial
separatism and white supremacy also valorizes the most bigoted aspects
of the Southern Confederacy. White power ideology claims that whites’
biological superiority is reflected in their political and cultural superiority
as well. Aryans see the mainstream masses who oppose white supremacy
as deluded by Zionist Occupied Government (ZOG) conspirators into
supporting white genocide. They fantasize about exposing ZOG to the
masses of whites and empowering Aryan ideologues.
These Aryan fantasies contradict several trends in modern American
society. Since the late 1950s, integrationist policies and multicultural
ethics have isolated racial extremists in the United States and increased
the public stigma attached to white power culture and its adherents.[21]
Public opinion data indicates strong opposition to overt Aryan extremism
in the United States.[22] And fantasies of white genocide and an
impending race war have little significance in the lives of most American
citizens.[23]
Popular media, government, and human rights organizations all vilify
Aryans and white power culture. News accounts of white power activity
typically lampoon Aryans as ignorant buffoons and fringe wackos.[24]
Government attempts to combat white power groups have been ongoing
since the 1960s, when the FBI began the Operation White Hate Group
Program.[25] Most recently, human rights organizations, such as the
Southern Poverty Law Center, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and the Anti-
Defamation League, have challenged white power groups through
successful lawsuits against White Aryan Resistance, Aryan Nations, and
Imperial Klans of America.[26]

Aryans Hide among Us

 Aryans are intensely aware of the stigma attached to their beliefs
and the risks of publicly communicating their ideas.[27] Exposure would
likely mean loss of employment and possibly the vandalizing and picketing
of their homes.[28] Most of the Aryans interviewed for American Swastika
reported such concerns about being shunned or even surveilled and
arrested if they were to openly voice their extremist beliefs.[29]
Aryans camouflage their identities in public to avoid constant
confrontations they cannot win. In our midst, they blend into ordinary life
and often pass by us without our recognition. These are not, as popular
images have us believe, strident, hostile fanatics who stand out from the
crowd and are always ready to fight.[30] In most everyday settings, Aryans
are invisible.
To be sure, Aryans do not always keep a low profile. Racist skinheads
brawl with blacks and Hispanics. Klansmen beat racial enemies and white
race traitors. Neo-Nazis go on gay-bashing walkabouts. National Socialists
stage intermittent marches and rallies to promote white power. And there
are the spontaneous confrontations that occur on subways, in bars, and
on the street. White power groups have also spawned organized crime,
murders, and bombings.
But for all the vitriol and valorizing of violence in white power
ideology, overt confrontations and organized violence are still relatively
rare events.[31] James Scott notes that hiding hostility is a rational tactic of
marginalized, powerless groups.[32] Only fools fight openly when the deck
is so stacked against them. Aryan resistance is a much more prosaic
struggle to withstand or counteract the forces they oppose.
While Aryans project an image that hides much about their
extremism, they do not see their secrecy as a lack of commitment to white
power ideas or acquiescence to anti-Aryan mainstream culture. Rather,
they see concealment itself as a form of activism. Concealment is essential
for Aryan survival, both for individuals and for the movement. Many
white power leaders now explicitly advocate that Aryans limit their public
displays of allegiance. When members go to jobs where they work
alongside African Americans, attend schools with Jews, live in
neighborhoods with Latinos, buy groceries from gays, and ride trains with
white race traitors, there should be no hint of hatred for these groups. In
these contexts, Aryans play down their extremist identity.[33] Most Aryans
see members “who use overtly racist symbols in public or who adopt an
exaggerated racist style as movement novices.”[34] By strategically
concealing their extremism from outsiders, savvy Aryans prepare
themselves for future opportunities to instigate and fight the race war
they believe is drawing near.[35]
Aryans use their free spaces to escape from the mainstream and
openly celebrate their mutual bigotry and hatred. In these hidden cultural
worlds they are able to build the emotional connections that reinforce
individual and collective white power identity.[36] Aryans’ use of free
spaces helps them overcome isolation, despair, and hopelessness, which
might otherwise sap their devotion to white power culture.

Hatred and Violence Thrives in Free Spaces

Aryans are not unique in their use of free spaces to sustain a radical
worldview. By definition, extremists operate on the margins of society and
face repression from those in power. They try to avoid repression by
hiding their radical beliefs, blending into the crowd with an appearance of
normality. Extremist groups—from al Qaeda in the Middle East or Jemaah
Islamiyah in Indonesia to environmental extremists, right-to-life radicals,
and racial extremists in the United States—create places of refuge where
they meet, find comfort with like-minded comrades, and plot to advance
their cause.[37] For such marginalized groups, “the sheer maintenance of a
cultural community of activists is the outer limit of what is possible”
under some circumstances.[38]
Free spaces shed light on how Aryanism persists and where potential
sources of hate violence remain in America. Aryans’ low-profile activities
typically do not produce the sort of headline-grabbing events that bring
attention to their extremism. But we should not confuse a low profile
with a weak and innocuous form of radicalism. Their efforts reproduce a
radical cultural milieu filled with ideas about hate and violence. Ideas of
violence may precede acts of violence, and Aryan free spaces create the
contexts for nourishing such ideas. Thus, the potential for radical action
persists. Violent Aryan terror remains a constant threat to tolerance and
integration in America.

STUDYING ARYAN PERSISTENCE

Gaining access to Aryan free spaces was not easy. Our approach was time
consuming, labor intensive, and emotionally draining as we tried to
overcome our gut feelings of shock, revulsion, rage, and sadness at the
things we saw and heard. Our research goal was to understand Aryans on
their own terms in their natural settings. This required listening to them
with the discipline to temper our reactions to what our subjects said. It
meant repeatedly reading over Aryans’ views about the world and taking
those views seriously. It was necessary to exclude our own moral and
ethical values and assumptions in order to understand and interpret the
meaning of Aryans’ point of view.
We conducted fieldwork with white power activists and groups
between 1996 and 2014. We used a multimethod approach,[39] including
interviews, participant observation, and content analysis of white power
movement websites and related Aryan literature. Interviews included one-
hour to six-hour face-to-face and telephone interviews with 128 current
and former Aryan activists. Thirty-six respondents were group leaders,
and ninety-two were rank-and-file members. Ninety-four follow-up
interviews with primary contacts led to 222 total interviews.[40] Snowball
and purposive sampling strategies produced contacts with a wide range of
white power networks.[41] Specific organizations represented in the
sample include White Aryan Resistance, Aryan Nations, Hammerskin
Nation, National Alliance, and branches of the Ku Klux Klan.
Of the 128 interviewees, ninety-seven were male and thirty-one were
female. Their ages ranged from eighteen to seventy-eight years. Our
informants represent a broad cross section of socioeconomic status found
in the movement.[42] The majority described either their current or
childhood socioeconomic status as middle class. We confirmed that a
sizable minority worked in mid- to upper-level professional occupations,
such as attorney, college instructor, X-ray technician, and so on. Most
informants had a high school diploma or the equivalent, and a quarter of
all informants attended some college.[43]
 Our participant observation includes Christian Identity adherents in
the southwest and northwest and a variety of Aryans in Southern
California. We made twenty-three house visits with groups in Arizona,
Nevada, and Utah. These visits lasted from one to three days and gave us
access to a variety of social gatherings, such as parties, Bible study
sessions, hikes, and campouts. Additionally, we made four separate three-
to five-day visits to the Aryan Nations’ former headquarters in Hayden
Lake, Idaho, to observe and interview participants at Aryan Nations World
Congresses and informal gatherings that Aryans organized outside the
official congress proceedings.
Our fieldwork in Southern California included observations of social
gatherings and twenty-two stints in activists’ homes ranging from two
days to five weeks. Our extended involvement in these settings allowed
for, among other things, insight into how these Aryans express their racist
identity. Our firsthand data are rare among research on Aryan activism.[44]
We organized our data around six primary themes: (1) early
childhood experiences (for example, political socialization in the family);
(2) educational experiences and peer group socialization; (3) entry into
the white power movement; (4) level and type of movement participation;
(5) ideological orientation; and (6) identity-maintenance strategies. Our
qualitative coding techniques[45] helped us to identify and extract relevant
information across our data set.
In the book’s chapters, we intersperse analysis with extended
descriptive, firsthand observational, and interview data. Our observations
and interview data give readers insight into the raw experience of being in
the settings and the energy and emotion Aryans express as they bond
with one another.
Some of the stories described or language used throughout the book
may be offensive to readers. It was offensive to us. But omitting it would
only serve to soften the positions of the people quoted. We have kept
some of the language in the book to illustrate the intensity of Aryans’
feelings. In some instances, we have paraphrased, while in other instances
we have let the record speak for itself.
We have disguised names and certain details of our observations to
protect the confidentiality of our research subjects. While we present our
themes in a systematic and organized way, we do not intend to depict a
homogeneous picture of Aryans and their experiences. Our goal is to
render an accurate and insightful representation of the enduring culture
and organization of contemporary white power activism and the hidden
social contexts where hate endures.

PLAN OF THE BOOK

American Swastika provides intricate descriptions of Aryan free spaces to
explain how white power ideas are sustained and reproduced. Before
turning to those free spaces, chapter 2 discusses the various branches of
the white power movement, their specific ideological beliefs, and the
common doctrines among the branches that bind diverse Aryans together.
Chapters 3 and 4 focus on Aryan free spaces where small, local cadres
of Aryans meet. Chapter 3 describes Aryan homes as free spaces where
parents socialize their children into their white power visions. Aryans also
use their homes to stage a range of small, informal gatherings, Bible study
groups, and ritual parties. Chapter 4 highlights parties, skinhead crash
pads, and other Aryan meeting places where activists model their culture
of hatred and recruit new members to the cause.
In chapter 5, we focus on white power music as an organizing
resource that draws together Aryans in a range of activities such as
concerts, festivals, music websites, streaming radio, fan magazines, and
chat rooms. The movement’s music scene engages both seasoned activists
and new members in activities that promote Aryan style and politics.
Chapter 6 turns to white power activists’ use of the Internet to
promote their politics. Aryans utilize cyberspace to create strong virtual
links between organizations that members use to quickly transmit
information about the movement. Aryans also use cyberspace for online
social networking and as a gateway to connect in real-world settings.
Chapter 7 describes private white power communities. These Aryan
settlements are devoutly racist. They create a pure white space that
symbolizes the white supremacist world they seek. The communities
support worship centers and white power archives stocked with Aryan
literature and movement paraphernalia. The settlements also support
paramilitary training and have been the seedbed for the most notorious
acts of extremist violence.
White power families, parties, crash pads, music shows, cyberspace,
and private communities are the free spaces where Aryan hatred survives.
We conclude American Swastika by discussing what Aryan persistence
means for the future of racial and anti-Semitic hatred and violence in
America.
1. Frazier Glenn Miller is a pseudonym that he frequently used. His legal
name is Frazier Glenn Cross.
2. David Eulitt, “White Supremacist Charged in Kansas City-Area Shootings
Appears in Court,” CBS News, April 15, 2014,
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/frazier-glenn-cross-facing-murder-charges-
in-kansas-city-area-shootings (accessed November 15, 2014).
3. SPLC, “Extremist Files: Frazier Glenn Miller,”
http://www.splcenter.org/get%20informed/intelligence%20files/profiles/Glenn%20Mill
(accessed November 15, 2014).
4. Daniel Trotta, “U.S. Military Battling White Supremacists, Neo-Nazis in
Its Own Ranks,” Huffington Post, updated October 21, 2012,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/21/us-army-white-
supremacists_n_1815137.html (accessed October 22, 2014).
5. Marilyn Elias, “Sikh Temple Killer Wade Michael Page Radicalized in
Army,” Intelligence Report 148 (Winter 2012),
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-
issues/2012/winter/massacre-in-wisconsin (accessed October 22, 2014). In
the mid-1990s Ft. Bragg was home to multiple clusters of white power
activists, including James Burmeister, a private in the Eighty-Second
Airborne Division. In 1995, Burmeister murdered an African American
couple out taking an evening walk in order to earn his spiderweb tattoo.
The tattoo symbolizes a murder committed for the white power
movement.
6. Elias, “Sikh Temple Killer.”
7. Anti-Defamation League, “Massachusetts Lone Wolf Convicted of First-
Degree Murder,” ADL (blog), June 11, 2013, http://blog.adl.org/tags/keith-
luke (accessed October 12, 2014).
8. David Holthouse, “Website Read by Accused Racial Killer Encouraged
‘Lone Wolf’ Murders,” SPLC Hatewatch (blog), January 23, 2009,
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2009/01/23/website-read-by-accused-
racial-killer-encouraged-lone-wolf-murders (accessed March 3, 2011).
9. SPLC, “Experts Discuss the Role of Race Propaganda after White
Massachusetts Man Kills Two African Immigrants,” Intelligence Report 134
(Summer 2009), http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-
report/browse-all-issues/2009/summer/from-hate-to-hurt (accessed
March 3, 2011).
10. Anti-Defamation League, “Massachusetts Lone Wolf”; Ron Kampeas,
“Kansas City Shootings Highlight Threat of ‘Lone Wolf’ Attacks,” Jewish
Telegraphic Agency, April 14, 2014, http://www.jta.org/2014/04/14/news-
opinion/united-states/kansas-city-shootings-highlight-threat-of-lone-wolf-
attacks (accessed November 15, 2014).
11. Anti-Defamation League, “Massachusetts Lone Wolf.”
12. Arie Perliger, Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s
Violent Far Right (West Point, NY: Combating Terrorism Center at West
Point, 2012), https://www.ctc.usma.edu/v2/wp-
content/uploads/2013/01/ChallengersFromtheSidelines.pdf (accessed July
6, 2014).
13. SPLC, “Hate Map,” http://www.splcenter.org/hate-map (accessed
December 12, 2014).
14. Betty Dobratz and Stephanie Shanks-Meile, White Power! White Pride!
The White Separatist Movement in the United States (New York: Cengage
Gale, 1997), 36.
15. Perliger, Challengers from the Sidelines.
16. We use Aryan as a descriptor for all individuals who are involved in
the white power movement. The term Aryan has a long history and
signifies specific geo-cultural groups. See also Romila Thapar, “The Theory
of Aryan Race and India: History and Politics,” Social Scientist 24 (1996): 3–
29. Aryan was a name widely used in Nazi Germany as part of the Third
Reich’s “master race” theory. Contemporary white power advocates
continue to use the term to describe themselves. There is some
disagreement among neo-Nazis about what is and what is not Aryan. Over
the past couple of decades there has been a shift toward “Pan-Aryanism,”
or the idea that despite variations among whites, all belong to a single
racial family that stretches across the globe. Research on the human
genome shows no genetic differences between so-called races. DNA
evidence demonstrates that humans are a single race, evolved in the past
100,000 years from the same small number of tribal groups that migrated
out of Africa and colonized the globe.
17. It is difficult to distinguish hard-and-fast boundaries of white power
hate culture. Like most movements, there are few absolute lines to be
drawn. The different branches of the white power movement overlap with
other subcultures that are not necessarily directly connected to white
power ideals. For example, a large number of neo-pagans reject white
supremacist doctrine, while other neo-pagan groups clearly endorse neo-
Nazi and white supremacist ideals. For a fuller discussion of this point in
regard to neo-paganism, see Mattias Gardell, Gods of the Blood: The Pagan
Revival and White Separatism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003).
18. We acknowledge that hate crime is a sweeping category that includes
a wide range of offenses. For an in-depth discussion of the concept of
hate crime, see James Jacobs and Kimberly Potter, Hate Crimes: Criminal
Law and Identity Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
Specifically, we are thinking of activities explicitly carried out in the name
of white power, such as the violence of the group known as The Order and
the Oklahoma City bombing. For a chronological listing of white power
violence, see Michael Newton and Judy Ann Newton, Racial and Religious
Violence in America: A Chronology (New York: Garland, 1991).
19. Sara Evans, Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the
Civil Rights Movement and the New Left (London: Vintage, 1979); Sara
Evans and Harry Boyte, Free Spaces (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1992); Francesca Polletta, “‘Free Spaces’ in Collective Action,” Theory and
Society 28 (1999): 1–38.
20. Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1963).
21. James Aho, The Politics of Righteousness: Idaho Christian Patriotism
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1990); Michael Barkun, Religion
and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994); David Bennett, The
Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American
History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995); Mitch
Berbrier, “The Victim Ideology of White Supremacists and White
Separatists in the United States,” Sociological Focus 33 (2000): 175–91;
Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons, Right Wing Populism in America: Too
Close for Comfort (New York: Guilford, 2000); Kathleen Blee, Inside
Organized Racism: Women in the Hate Movement (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2002); Sara Diamond, Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing
Movements and Political Power in the United States (New York: Guilford,
1995); Dobratz and Shanks-Meile, White Power! White Pride!; Jeffrey
Kaplan, “Right-Wing Violence in North America,” in Terror from the
Extreme Right, ed. Tore Bjørgo (London: Frank Cass, 1995), 44–95; Richard
Mitchell, Dancing at Armageddon: Survivalism and Chaos in Modern Times
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001); David Wellman, Portraits of
White Racism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Joe Feagin
and Hernan Vera, White Racism: The Basics (New York: Routledge, 1995);
Abby Ferber, White Man Falling: Race, Gender, and White Supremacy
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998); Leonard Zeskind, Blood and
Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins
to the Mainstream (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009).
22. See Michael Lewis and Jacqueline Serbu, “Kommerating the Ku Klux
Klan,” Sociological Quarterly 40 (1999): 139–57.
23. Blee, Inside Organized Racism; Kaplan, “Right-Wing Violence.” See
Cornell West, Race Matters (New York: Vintage, 1994). Mainstream racism
in the United States shares some important assumptions with white
power ideology, but there are also important differences. As Blee
explains, “The ideas that racist activists share about whiteness are more
conscious, elaborated, and tightly connected to political action than those
of mainstream whites. . . . The difference between everyday racism and
extraordinary racism [of the WPM] is the difference between being
prejudiced against Jews and believing that there is a Jewish conspiracy
that determines the fate of individual Aryans, or between thinking that
African Americans are inferior to whites and seeing African Americans as
an imminent threat to the white race” (76). Moreover, notions of an
impending “race war,” a “Zionist Occupied Government,” and the current
“genocide of the white race” are core beliefs that are widely shared by
WPM adherents but have little salience with the general public. Perhaps
the most telling indication of the WPM’s marginalization from the
mainstream is the tendency among “everyday” racists to disavow and
disassociate themselves from the Klan, skinheads, neo-Nazis, and other
openly racist groups. See also Feagin and Vera, White Racism.
24. For similar arguments, see Aho, Politics; Blee, Inside Organized Racism.
25. Kenneth O’Reilly, Racial Matters: The FBI’s Secret File on Black America,
1960–1972 (New York: Free Press, 1989).
26. SPLC, “SPLC Wins $2.5 Million Verdict against Imperial Klans of
America,” SPLC News, November 14, 2008,
http://www.splcenter.org/news/item.jsp?aid=345 (accessed January 28,
2009).
27. This circumstance reflects Doug McAdam’s distinction between the
substantial physical, social, economic, and legal costs incurred by “high-
risk activism” and those incurred by “low-risk” forms against which intense
and enduring repercussions are much less likely. Doug McAdam, Freedom
Summer (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 208.
28. Tore Bjørgo, “Entry, Bridge-Burning, and Exit Options: What Happens
to Young People Who Join Racist Groups—and Want to Leave,” in Nation
and Race: The Developing Euro-American Racist Subculture, ed. Jeffrey
Kaplan and Tore Bjørgo (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998),
231–58; Blee, Inside Organized Racism.
29. See also Blee, Inside Organized Racism; Dobratz and Shanks-Meile,
White Power! White Pride!, 23.
30. Aho, Politics, and Blee, Inside Organized Racism, also make this point.
31. The relative infrequency of Aryan violence is hard to fully interpret.
And while the topic is exceedingly interesting, we want to bracket analysis
of when and why Aryans choose to engage in conflict and fully express
their hatred toward non-Aryans. A systematic analysis of violence is
beyond our focus in this book, but several factors appear to influence
whether individuals fully assert their Aryanism, including: age and
experience, alcohol consumption, group reputation for violence, and the
number of Aryans present during the situation. Based on our
observations and interviews, however, the volume of these instances is
minimal in comparison to the amount of concealment these activists
perform on a daily basis.
32. James Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant
Resistance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985); James Scott,
Domination and the Arts of Resistance (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1990).
33. Pete Simi and Robert Futrell, “Negotiating White Power Activist
Stigma,” Social Problems 56 (2009): 89–110.
34. Blee, Inside Organized Racism, 167.
35. Simi and Futrell, “Negotiating Stigma.”
36. Robert Futrell and Pete Simi, “Free Spaces, Collective Identity, and the
Persistence of U.S. White Power Activism,” Social Problems 51 (2004):16–
42.
37. Any time people feel constraint and coercion we can expect a “prosaic
but constant struggle” to withstand or counteract the force. False
compliance and backstage defiance are “weapons of the weak” used to
mitigate or deny claims of the powerful. See also Scott, Weapons; Scott,
Domination.
38. Steven Buechler, Social Movements in Advanced Capitalism (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2000), 208; see also Hank Johnston, “New Social
Movements and Old Regional Nationalisms,” in New Social Movements:
From Ideology to Identity, ed. Enrique Larana, Hank Johnston, and Joseph
R. Gusfield (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), 267–86; Verta
Taylor, “Social Movement Continuity,” American Sociological Review 54
(1989): 761–75.
39. Norman Denzin, The Research Act: A Theoretical Introduction to
Sociological Methods (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978).
40. We interviewed several informants three or more times.
41. Bruce Berg, Qualitative Research Methods for the Social Sciences
(Boston: Pearson, 2004); John Lofland and Lyn Lofland, Analyzing Social
Settings: A Guide to Qualitative Observation and Analysis (Belmont, CA:
Wadsworth, 1995).
42. See also Aho, Politics; Blee, Inside Organized Racism.
43. The appendix provides more information on sample data.
44. See Blee, Inside Organized Racism, for an eloquent elaboration of this
point.
45. Berg, Qualitative Research; Barney Glaser and Anslem Strauss, The
Discovery of Grounded Theory (Chicago: Aldine, 1967); Mathew Miles and
Michael Huberman, Qualitative Data Analysis (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage,
1994).
 Chapter 2
Contemporary Aryan Hate
What is the character of Aryan organization and ideology? Observers
of white power activity offer two distinct answers to this question. One
answer suggests that Aryans are an irrational and disorganized subculture
rife with internal conflict.[1] For instance, Mattias Gardell says, “The level
of discord, mutual enmity, organizational fragmentation, and ideological
division characterizing the world of white racism [is] far too high to be
able to speak of a white racist movement in any meaningful way.”[2] From
this point of view, it appears that ideological schisms threaten to divide
Aryans into politically innocuous and fragmented factions. Yet Gardell
also affirms, “If there is not a ‘movement,’ there is still a ‘something’ that
all or most of the different networks, channels of communication,
organizations, activists, and tendencies may be seen as parts of.”[3] An
emphasis on the disorganized aspects of Aryanism obscures its strategic,
structured, and persistent dimensions.
We advocate a second perspective that sees racist activism as “a
social movement, a ‘family’ of overlapping networks of activists who
sustain and spread racist and anti-Semitic ideas and encourage violence
and terror.”[4] To be sure, most Aryan activity does not closely resemble
the standard depiction of social movements with traditional, centralized
organizations that mobilize mass insurgents to public protests. Aryan
organization is anchored in fluid, transitory, and informal “submerged
networks” that periodically coalesce in Aryan free spaces.[5] Aryan free
spaces require deliberate, calculated organization and sustained
commitments among participants to persist. Aryan free spaces are
movement spaces where white power advocates congregate to reinforce
their dedication to the cause and draw others into the ranks of Aryan
activism.[6]
The Aryans who connect in free spaces manifest white power
ideology in four distinct branches: the Ku Klux Klan, Christian Identity and
neo-pagan racists, neo-Nazis, and racist skinheads. We discuss each of
these branches below in some detail, specifying their history and core
ideological principles. The ideological and stylistic differences across the
branches can be a source of discord and power struggle. But Aryans from
across these branches also embrace basic doctrines that transcend their
ideological differences and create points of general agreement. We
conclude by describing each Aryan branch, their common doctrines, and
the solidarity Aryans build with these beliefs.

KU KLUX KLAN
The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) has persisted through several eras of change in
America’s political climate. A small cadre of young Confederate veterans
organized the first Klan group in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1866. Ku Klux
refers to the Greek word kuklos, meaning circle or band. Original Klan
members conceived of the group as a fraternal order where Confederates
could continue to meet after the Civil War.
Klan members quickly developed a doctrine based on the defense of
white supremacy during Reconstruction. The KKK’s ranks swelled in 1868,
and the organization grew more political as Southern whites reacted
against black civil rights policies. The Klan expanded from outposts in half
a dozen Tennessee counties to multiple groups in nearly every Southern
state. Klan activity became violent, and numerous members were
implicated in whippings, beatings, and murders of Southern blacks. Klan
groups assassinated black Republican politicians and murdered voters
during the 1868 election. Allen Trelease estimates that more than one
thousand racial murders occurred in Louisiana alone.[7]
This wave of Klan violence was the impetus for the federal
government’s adoption of the Civil Rights Act of 1871, then known as the
Ku Klux Klan Act. In response, Klan officials formally disbanded to avoid
federal sanctions, although many local groups continued to meet
regularly.
The KKK reemerged in 1915 when Alabama native William J. Simmons
founded the Second Era Klan in Stone Mountain, Georgia. Simmons
implored all white Americans to join “The World’s Greatest Secret, Social,
Patriotic, Fraternal, Beneficiary Order.” Simmons emphasized a doctrine of
“100% Pure Americanism” to preserve the racial purity of white Anglo-
Saxon Protestant Americans. White mobs targeted African American
communities across the United States, and anti-Semitism flourished as the
KKK cast Jews and other “mongrel” groups as “outsiders” who threatened
white America’s racial integrity.[8]
By 1925, KKK membership reportedly reached between two and five
million people nationwide. Such high numbers reflected the extent to
which early twentieth-century Americans accepted the Klan’s explicit
racist and anti-Semitic views. The KKK also gained political strength and
became one of the largest and most powerful political organizations in US
history.
Klan-sponsored candidates won US Senate races in Alabama,
Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, Oklahoma, and Texas, and in 1924 a Klan-
endorsed candidate won the Kansas governorship. Klan membership
crossed class lines and included influential Americans, such as Supreme
Court Justice Hugo Black and presidents Harry Truman (who resigned after
attending one meeting) and Warren Harding. By the late 1920s, however,
membership numbers began plummeting as various scandals, including
stories of indiscriminate terrorism and brutality, tarnished the Klan’s self-
righteous image. By the 1930s, the Klan was active in limited areas, such
as Florida, where membership topped thirty thousand.
Klan activism reemerged again in response to civil rights protests
during the 1950s and 1960s. Klan members carried out arson and
numerous bombings and assassinations, including the murder of three
civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi, in 1964, which became the
topic of the major motion picture Mississippi Burning (1988). Federal
authorities responded with Operation White Hate Group, infiltrated Klan
organizations, and arrested and prosecuted many leading members in
Alabama, Mississippi, and other Southern states.[9]
Government pressure led to a precipitous drop in official KKK
membership numbers during the 1970s and 1980s. By the late 1980s, most
Klan groups were fragmented and in dire financial straits. By 1995, about
sixty splintered Klan groups remained in the United States, and
membership had declined to well below ten thousand.[10] However, KKK
numbers increased again a decade later. The Southern Poverty Law Center
estimates that 143 Klan chapters were active in 2008.[11]
During the early 2000s, immigration fears and economic concerns,
along with a “new racist discourse”[12] of white victimization and loss of
white cultural heritage, combined to rejuvenate the modern KKK. The
Anti-Defamation League observes that Klan participation grew during this
period across several areas where Klan activity had not been strong for
many years, such as Iowa, as well as traditional strongholds in Florida,
Louisiana, and Indiana.[13] But more recently, Klan growth seems to have
stagnated. While the Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that there
are active KKK chapters in forty-one states, with between five thousand
and eight thousand members,[14] the number of Klan chapters dropped
from a high of 221 in 2010 to 163 in 2013.[15] The largest and most active
Klan group today is the Loyal White Knights, with fifty-two chapters across
thirty-eight states in the southern, northeastern, and western United
States.[16]
Klan networks increasingly overlap with neo-Nazi and racist skinhead
groups. This so-called Nazification is evident as Klan groups integrate neo-
Nazi symbolism and rituals into long-standing KKK traditions.[17] The
German swastika has become a familiar symbol at KKK-sponsored
gatherings along with the German Iron Cross emblazoned on traditional
Klan robes and hoods. Some Klan groups have abandoned traditional
robes and hoods for military-style uniforms reminiscent of the Nazi SS.[18]
Today’s Klan members are active in the white power music scene. For
instance the Empire Knights of the KKK operates KKKradio.com, a website
that streams white power music and racist propaganda.
The Klan’s greatest impact on the white power movement may be its
historic legacy. The Ku Klux Klan has now persisted for almost 150 years.
Radical groups in addition to the KKK have emerged in the landscape of
racist extremism. Despite factional infighting and stagnation, the Ku Klux
Klan remains a symbol of perseverance alongside newer extremist groups
and continues to inspire Aryan vigilantism and devotion to white power.
We turn next to discuss Christian Identity and neo-pagan racists, neo-
Nazis, and racist skinheads.

CHRISTIAN IDENTITY AND NEO-PAGANISM

Christian Identity and neo-pagans make up a branch of Aryan extremism
anchored in religion and mythology. Christian Identity espouses a
theological justification for white superiority through interpretations of
the Judeo-Christian Bible. Neo-pagans combine pre-Christian pagan myths
with Aryan racist and anti-Semitic ideals.

Christian Identity
Christian Identity believers define nonwhites as evil incarnate and
promote racial violence as acts ordained by God. They see blacks, Latinos,
Asians, and other nonwhites as lower-order subspecies of “pre-Adamic
mudpeople” and, therefore, not fully human.[19] These beliefs are rooted
in British Israelism, a nineteenth-century English theology that posits the
true Israelites were Anglo-Saxons. Christian Identity adds to this
interpretation the notion that Jews are descended from Satan and
resulted from Eve’s copulation with the serpent. Identity believers
imagine they are warriors in a righteous battle against the Jewish
conspiracy to eradicate the white race.[20]
Historically, the most prominent Christian Identity group has been
Aryan Nations/Church of Jesus Christ Christian, founded by Richard Butler
in 1974. Under Butler’s leadership, Aryan Nations grew to include
chapters in twenty-six states with multiple chapters in Louisiana, New
Jersey, and Ohio. Butler hosted a number of annual gatherings on his
compound at Hayden Lake, Idaho. The most notorious were the Aryan
Nations World Congresses, which brought together members from other
white power branches.
Aryan Nations was bankrupted in 2000 when the Southern Poverty
Law Center (SPLC) won a $6.3 million lawsuit against Butler. The Aryan
Nations lost their compound to the plaintiffs in 2001, and the group
splintered following Butler’s death in 2004. Now separate Aryan Nations
factions claim to be the rightful heirs to Butler’s legacy. August Kreis leads
one faction based in Lexington, South Carolina. Kreis is well known among
Aryans for advocating an alliance between Islamic jihad and the white
power struggle.[21] Morris Gulett leads a second faction based in
Converse, Louisiana, while Jerald O’Brien leads a third Aryan Nations
group claiming rightful inheritance of Butler’s legacy. Located in Coeur
d’Alene, Idaho, O’Brien’s members have leafleted the Coeur d’Alene area
announcing the return of Aryan Nations to Idaho. Most recently, Shaun
Patrick Winkler, who frequented Butler’s Aryan Nations compound before
its demise, purchased seventeen acres near Butler’s original property and
started to build a new compound where families affiliated with the Klan
or Aryan Nations can move to build residences.[22] Each faction struggles
to match the resources, membership, and notoriety Aryan Nations
enjoyed under Butler’s leadership.
Christian Identity also persists in many small, independent cells of
believers. Christian Identity members meet in Aryan free spaces such as
small Bible study groups, independent churches, and cultural heritage
organizations linked by a range of websites devoted to the cause.

Neo-paganism
Racist neo-pagans celebrate the ancient pre-Christian, proto-
Germanic spiritual traditions of Odinism and its Icelandic cousin, Asatru.
Odinism and Asatru share a social Darwinist philosophy that defines the
survival of pure whites as a goal to be achieved at all costs.[23]
Racist neo-pagans draw upon Norse mythology to emphasize the
mystical and heroic nature of European folk heritage. Neo-pagans
construct racial consciousness and solidarity around the worship of Odin,
the chief Norse god of wisdom; Thor, the Norse god of strength; and
Freyja, the Norse goddess of fertility and love.[24]
Racist neo-Pagans see these gods as pure white deities that stand
apart from the bastardized spirituality of mainstream Christianity. They
also tend to “biologize spirituality” through the belief that their white
gods and goddesses are “encoded in the DNA of their descendants.”[25]
Gardell explains, “Blood is thought to carry memories of the ancient past,
and divinities are believed to be genetically engraved upon or reverberate
from deep down within the abyss of the collective subconscious or ‘folk
soul’” of true Aryans.[26]
As they are interspersed throughout the larger Aryan networks of the
neo-Nazi and skinhead faithful, neo-pagans have spread their motifs to
other factions of the white power movement. Thus, Aryan websites, racist
literature, white power musicians, and racist music lyrics feature
“muscular heathens, pagan gods and goddesses, runes and symbols,
magic, and esoteric themes in abundance.”[27] The warrior imagery
appeals to Aryans across all branches because warrior imagery symbolizes
the righteous, combatant ideal with which many contemporary Aryans
identify. Not all Aryans are devout followers of pagan rituals and spiritual
beliefs, but neo-paganism provides modern-day Aryans with a collection
of symbols, images, and ideals that amplify white power ideology.

NEO-NAZIS
Neo-Nazi networks persist through parties, crash pads, the white power
music scene, and the Internet. Neo-Nazis embrace traditional Nazi
symbolism, such as the swastika; describe themselves as National
Socialists; revere Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich; and promote eugenics
to ensure the existence of a pure white race.[28] George Lincoln Rockwell
formed one of the earliest versions of neo-Nazis in 1958 with the
American Nazi Party (ANP). The ANP popularized Holocaust denial among
the American racist right and encouraged followers to join forces with
Christian Identity churches.[29]
The National Alliance, White Aryan Resistance, and the National
Socialist Movement (NSM) have been three of the most influential sources
of American neo-Nazism.[30] William Pierce founded the National Alliance
in 1974 after he became involved with Rockwell and the American Nazi
Party during the 1960s. In 1978, Pierce, a former physics professor,
authored the Turner Diaries, which depicts a racist guerrilla war and a
truck bombing of a federal building. Timothy McVeigh reportedly used the
Turner Diaries as an inspirational blueprint for the 1995 bombing of the
Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City.[31]
Pierce established the National Alliance headquarters in 1985 on his
346-acre farm in Hillsboro, West Virginia. He and a small cadre of
members used the headquarters to publish white power books and other
propaganda, operate the white power music company Resistance Records,
and organize Internet activities. In 2001, the National Alliance claimed
thirty-five groups in thirty different states. Pierce’s death in 2002 dealt a
severe blow to the group, resulting in a substantial drop in the number of
Alliance units and members. Recent evidence points to a shift in the
National Alliance from a relatively large membership organization toward
a small, loosely organized clique of white supremacists with long histories
of violence and criminal offenses.[32]
Since Pierce’s death, several groups have splintered from the
National Alliance. Billy Roper’s White Revolution was one of the most
prominent neo-Nazi groups until he shut down the group in 2011 to join
with Klan leader Thom Robb’s Knights Party.[33] Roper, a former high
school history teacher with a master’s degree in anthropology, draws
upon Nazi-era ideals of Volk[34] to celebrate an ideal of Aryan racial
kinship. Roper is noted for his efforts to pull together factions from across
the movement for rallies, music shows, and other Aryan gatherings. In
2010, Roper entered the Arkansas governor’s race representing the
Nationalist Party of America.
Tom Metzger’s White Aryan Resistance (WAR) is a long-standing
multimedia clearinghouse for neo-Nazi ideology. Metzger founded WAR in
the 1980s after traveling a circuitous route through several white power
branches. Metzger began his career in right-wing extremism during the
1960s and joined the John Birch Society. He quickly left the organization,
dissatisfied with their unwillingness to openly advocate anti-Semitism. In
1975, Metzger joined David Duke’s Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and
ascended to the rank of grand dragon, the KKK’s highest-ranking state
officer in California. Eventually Metzger and Duke parted ways, and after
an unsuccessful congressional bid in 1980, Metzger founded the White
American Political Association, which he eventually renamed the White
Aryan Resistance. WAR has been in the forefront of the white power
movement’s Internet presence and aggressively recruits younger
generations to the cause.[35] Metzger’s WAR explicitly advocates lone-wolf
insurgency to avoid surveillance and repression directed at more formal
membership groups.[36]
The National Socialist Movement formed in 1974 as an offshoot of
the American Nazi Party but remained on the periphery of US neo-Nazi
groups until the mid-1990s, when Jeff Schoep took over NSM leadership.
Schoep stepped into the vacuum created by William Pierce’s death to
recruit new members into the NSM. The more than fifty NSM chapters in
the United States periodically sponsor public rallies against illegal
immigration and gay marriage. The NSM also sponsors an armed border-
watch unit that patrols the US-Mexican border in Southern California.[37]

RACIST SKINHEADS
Racist skinheads are the youngest branch of the white power movement.
They derive from a distinct youth subculture, and since the late 1980s
racist skinheads have synthesized neo-Nazi ideals and symbolism. Racist
skinheads persist in loosely organized gangs and activist networks that
congregate in skinhead crash pads and white power music gatherings. The
largest organized groups, such as the Hammerskin Nation, produce white
power concerts and festivals and have active cells around the world and
an extensive Internet presence.
Racist skinhead groups formed in the United States during the late
1970s as a response to increased economic pressures, Latino and Asian
immigration, and the growth of minority street gangs. The early US racist
skinheads in the 1970s and 1980s drew inspiration from disaffected British
skinheads associated with the extreme right-wing National Front and the
British National Party.[38] Prior to the mid-1980s, skinhead racism was
limited mainly to intermittent local conflicts with nonwhites and minority
street gangs. In the late 1980s, however, WAR leader Tom Metzger, along
with Aryan Nations’ Richard Butler and other white power groups, began
vigorously recruiting skinheads into the cause of global Aryan activism.
Racist skinheads organize themselves in a variety of ways.[39] There
are racist skinhead gangs with state-level affiliations, such as the West
Virginia Skinheads; county affiliations, such as Orange County Skins; and
city affiliations, such as the Las Vegas Skins.[40]
The two most prominent American skinhead groups are Hammerskin
Nation and Volkfront. The Hammerskins claim six regional chapters in the
United States—Northwest Hammers, Midland Hammers, Confederate
Hammers, Western Hammers, Northern Hammers, and Eastern Hammers
—and official chapters in twelve other countries.[41]
Hammerskins annually host dozens of white power music shows and
festivals, along with Aryan barbecues, mixed martial arts viewing parties,
and a “Führer’s Birthday Party” to commemorate Adolf Hitler’s birthday.
Their signature event, Hammerfest, regularly draws several hundred
Aryans to hear a dozen white power bands and speakers. Other events
include “Martyrs Day” celebrations to commemorate the Silent
Brotherhood founder Robert Mathews, an Aryan terrorist who was killed
in a 1984 shoot-out with federal authorities in Whidbey Island,
Washington. Groups such as Volksfront and the American Front often
cosponsor Martyrs Day, which features keynote speakers such as Richard
Kemp, an imprisoned member of the Silent Brotherhood, who phones in
from federal prison.
During the 2000s, Volksfront was one of the fastest-growing and most
active racist skinhead groups. Founded in an Oregon state penitentiary by
Randal Lee Krager and Richard Arden in 1994, Volksfront called itself “The
Independent Voice of the White Working Class” and claimed chapters in
sixteen states and eight countries.[42] Volksfront members were closely
linked with Hammerskins and Blood & Honour, and Aryans from across
the movement’s branches attended its annual music festivals and
participated in its web forums. One of Volksfront’s main goals was to
create an all-white private community, and the group had reportedly
purchased land for this purpose in Oregon, Washington, and Missouri.[43]
Volksfront used its Missouri property to host an Aryan summit and music
festival called Althing, dedicated to Samuel Weaver, martyred son of
Christian Identity adherent Randy Weaver, who was killed by federal
authorities in an Idaho standoff in 1992. However, in 2012, following
tensions with the Hammerskin factions, Volksfront announced its
dissolution. Most Volksfront members “have gone silent, or at least
underground, though it’s possible they will resurface—possibly as racist
groups no longer affiliated with [Volksfront].”[44]
Our sorting of Aryan branches overstates the lines of distinction
among these networks, which in reality are much more blurred and
porous. The white power movement encompasses contradictory realities.
Some Aryans hold hardline stances against other believers, which creates
the basis for schisms.[45] However, many Aryans collaborate across
ideological lines to sustain the Aryan cause. Aryans of all stripes move
back and forth across racist networks that meet in Aryan free spaces and
uphold some basic white power doctrines on which all Aryans agree.

ARYAN DOCTRINE AND COLLECTIVE IDENTITY

Aryans sustain a sense of solidarity anchored in fundamental aims and
ideological doctrines shared across the different white power branches.[46]
In their free spaces they nourish and reinforce a sense of group unity
around these doctrines and certain elemental beliefs about what it means
to be an Aryan.
First and foremost, Aryans across all branches believe they possess a
unique ancestry that links them literally as racial brothers and sisters.
That is, Aryans imagine they are all connected by an innate biogenetic
superiority. This presumed racial superiority is used to justify their belief
in Aryan cultural superiority. Aryan doctrine claims that race mixing and
intercultural exchange threaten their superior genetic and cultural
lineage. In this way, Aryans see themselves as victims of a society that not
only fails to acknowledge the natural superiority of whites but also
suppresses and destroys all things Aryan.[47] This view is summed up in
the Aryan mantra known as the “14 Words”: We must secure the existence
of our people and a future for white children.
Aryans idealize traditional male-dominant families in which women
are meant for domesticity, particularly for rearing white children to
become the early risers of the racial revolution. Aryans desire a racially
exclusive world where nonwhites and other subhumans are vanquished,
segregated, or at least subordinated to Aryan authority.
Their beliefs are amplified by the emotions that accompany them.
While it is easy to imagine that hate is the sole emotion underlying Aryan
solidarity, it is only part of the picture. Expressions of intense hatred,
anger, frustration, and outrage toward racial others do permeate Aryan
networks. These “reactive emotions”[48] are prominent in the
relationships that galvanize white power members against their enemies.
But Aryans also express a range of “vitalizing”[49] and “reciprocal”[50]
feelings of pride, pleasure, solidarity, loyalty, solicitude, affection,
gratification, and love directed toward one another. These sorts of
convictions are the “glue of solidarity”[51] that transcends ideological and
stylistic differences among Aryan branches and helps link members
around the common goal of white power.

***

Constructing solidarity is a major accomplishment for members of

such an extreme and marginalized ideology as white power. Aryan free
spaces are the primary contexts where white power members fashion a
sense of unity around core beliefs and the emotions they arouse.
We now turn to discuss how Aryans build solidarity in their free
spaces. We begin with the family as the most intimate of Aryan free
spaces. Aryan families are the clearest and most direct representation of
white racial kinship. The family home is meant to be a pure white space
offering escape from mainstream society. Aryan parents use this space to
envelop their children in white power hate culture in order to socialize
new recruits for the movement.
1. Mattias Gardell, Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White
Separatism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003); Robert Balch, “The
Rise and Fall of Aryan Nations: A Resource Mobilization Perspective,”
Journal of Political and Military Sociology 34 (2006): 81–113.
2. Gardell, Gods, 71. See also Leonard Zeskind, Blood and Politics: The
History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the
Mainstream (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009).
3. Gardell, Gods, 73.
4. Kathleen Blee, Inside Organized Racism: Women in the Hate Movement
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Betty Dobratz and
Stephanie Shanks-Meile, White Power! White Pride! The White Separatist
Movement in the United States (New York: Cengage Gale, 1997); Carol
Swain, The New White Nationalism in America: Its Challenge to Integration
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
5. Alberto Melucci, Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information
Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
6. The Southern Poverty Law Center projected an increase in the number
of Aryan groups of 40 percent between 2000 and 2007. According to Mark
Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, “The number of hate groups
operating in the United States rose from 762 in 2004 to 803 [in 2005]
capping an increase of fully 33% over the five years since 2000.” Mark
Potok, “The Year in Hate, 2005,” Intelligence Report 121 (Spring 2006),
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=627 (accessed
July 4, 2006). More recently, the Christian Science Monitor reports that
“immigration levels helped boost the number of hate groups from 602 in
2000 to 888 in 2007.” Patrik Jonsson, “After Obama’s Win, White Backlash
Festers in US,” Christian Science Monitor, November 17, 2008,
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1117/p03s01-uspo.html (accessed
December 18, 2008).
7. Allen Trelease, White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern
Reconstructionism (New York: HarperCollins, 1971).
8. See Blee, Inside Organized Racism; David Chalmers, Hooded
Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 1987); Nancy MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of
the Second Ku Klux Klan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Rory
McVeigh, The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan: Right-Wing Movements and National
Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009); Leonard
Moore, Citizen Klansmen (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1991).
9. David Cunningham, There’s Something Happening Here: The New Left,
the Klan, and FBI Counterintelligence (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2004).
10. Some observers prematurely predicted the Klan’s demise. Certainly,
since the 1960s the Klan has not been reinvigorated enough to draw the
large following it enjoyed in the 1920s. The Klan has, however, remained
an active branch within the larger WPM. Beginning in the mid-1970s, the
KKK experienced a small revival, purportedly heralding what some called
the “new Klan.” This “new Klan” was marked by two divergent trends: KKK
leaders like David Duke and Donald Black tried to establish a more
respectable, businesslike Klan (“hate with a pretty face”). Duke’s efforts in
politics led to his 1989 election to the Louisiana state legislature as a
Republican; however, he was narrowly defeated in a US Senate election
the following year and in his bid for the governorship in 1991. Duke’s
efforts garnered an immense amount of publicity, and in the
gubernatorial race he received more than seven hundred thousand votes,
which included a majority of whites in Louisiana. Some Klan leaders
shunned this attempt at “mainstreaming” the Klan, instead opting for a
more militant approach (“from robes to combat boots”). For example,
during the 1970s and 1980s, Glen Miller’s North Carolina–based Carolina
Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which eventually became the White Patriot
Party, terrorized minorities across the Carolinas and Virginia and
stockpiled weapons and explosives in preparation for the coming race
war. In 1979 Miller and an assortment of other Aryans from various
groups opened fire on industrial workers and communists participating in
a “death to the Klan” rally, killing five and wounding eleven others.
Around the same time, Louis Beam’s Texas Knights of the KKK was
terrorizing immigrant Vietnamese fishermen in Galveston, Texas, burning
boats and threatening violence if they did not leave the waters. Another
force influential in promoting the revitalization and radicalization of the
Klan was the former grand dragon of the Michigan Ku Klux Klan, Robert E.
Miles, who received a nine-year sentence for his participation in planning
the bombing of empty school buses that were to be used in a busing
program in Pontiac, Michigan. From his federal prison cell, Miles began
promoting a more paramilitary version of the Klan. For further discussion,
see Patsy Sims, The Klan (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1996).
11. SPLC, “Hate Map,” http://www.splcenter.org/hate-map (accessed July
1, 2009).
12. Mitch Berbrier, “The Victim Ideology of White Supremacists and White
Separatists in the United States,” Sociological Focus 33 (2000): 175–91.
13. Anti-Defamation League, “Ku Klux Klan Rebounds,” 2007,
http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/kkk/klan_report.pdf (accessed July 8,
2014).
14. SPLC, “Ku Klux Klan,” http://www.splcenter.org/get-
informed/intelligence-files/ideology/ku-klux-klan (accessed July 9, 2014).
15. Mark Potok, “Ku Klux Kan’t,” Intelligence Report 155 (Fall 2014),
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-
issues/2014/fall/Ku-Klux-Kant (accessed November 19, 2014).
16. The Southern Poverty Law Center dealt a blow to Klan resurgence in
2008 by winning a $2.5 million lawsuit for a Hispanic teen beaten by
Imperial Klan members. The verdict has bankrupted the IKA and
dismantled its compound. Imperial Klan leader, Ron Edwards, has vowed
to continue the group and the Nordic Fest music festival.
17. Anti-Defamation League, “Ku Klux Klan—Ideology,”
http://archive.adl.org/learn/ext_us/kkk/ideology.html?
LEARN_Cat=Extremism (accessed November 19, 2014).
18. Anti-Defamation League, “Ku Klux Klan—Ideology.”
19. Brent Smith, Terrorism in America: Pipe Bombs and Pipe Dreams
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994).
20. For an in-depth discussion of Christian Identity, see Michael Barkun,
Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity
Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994).
21. In February 2014, South Carolina authorities arrested Kreis on charges
of child sexual abuse. Kreis has a history of legal troubles, including
federal fraud charges. See Bill Morlin, “Racist Leader August Kreis Arrested
for Sexual Abuse of Children,” SPLC Hatewatch (blog), February 20, 2014,
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/02/20/racist-leader-august-kreis-
arrested-for-sexual-abuse-of-children (accessed November 19, 2014).
22. Bill Morlin, “Neo-Nazi Builds North Idaho Compound to Replace
Defunct Aryan Nations,” Intelligence Report 148 (Winter 2012),
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-
issues/2012/winter/aryan-nations-redux (accessed November 19, 2014).
23. SPLC, “Neo-pagans Peter Georgacarakos, David Lane and Richard
Scutari Publishing from Prison,” Intelligence Report 98 (Spring 2000),
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=270 (accessed
November 19, 2014).
24. Dobratz and Shanks-Meile, White Power!
25. Gardell, Gods.
26. Gardell, Gods, 17.
27. Gardell, Gods, 1.
28. Prior to and during World War II a number of different Nazi parties
and leaders surfaced in the United States. During the 1930s, more than
120 American fascist organizations started around the country, the most
notorious being the German American Bund, the Silver Shirt Legion, and
the Black Legion. These groups’ most lasting effect was their cross-
fertilization of European fascism with traditional American nativism.
These were the earliest predecessors to American neo-Nazis, who have
been active since the 1950s. The National Renaissance Party (NRP) was the
first US neo-Nazi organization to form after World War II. Founded in 1949
by James Madole in Beacon, New York, the NRP gained notoriety in the
early 1950s by organizing marches and rallies in which members wore Nazi
uniforms and regalia. The NRP’s influence lay in its ability to garner media
attention through spectacle displays (something later neo-Nazi
organizations would emulate) and its role as a starting point for several
neo-Nazi leaders. For histories of US Nazism and proto-fascist groups prior
to World War II, see Susan Canedy, America’s Nazis: A Democratic
Dilemma (Menlo Park, CA: Markgraf, 1990); and David Bennett, The Party
of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995).
29. Frederick Simonelli, American Fuehrer: George Lincoln Rockwell and the
American Nazi Party (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999).
30. The Creativity Movement has also been a persistent presence in the
neo-Nazi wing of the WPM. Although the group claims to be “a
professional, non-violent, progressive pro-white religion”
(http://www.creativitymovement.net), its leaders promote a particularly
extreme brand of hate based on race war ideology first touted by founder
Ben Klassen in 1973. The Creativity Movement website welcomes all
racists and provides them with contact information for Creativity chapters
in the United States, Europe, and Australia. The group’s web forum,
Skinheads of the Racial War, hosts articles on the race war, member
discussions, and announcements for movement events. It has been active
in recruiting young skinheads along with prison inmates to its cause. In
1999, Creativity member Ben Smith launched a three-day, one-man
ethnic-cleansing campaign that killed two people and wounded seven.
The groups’ infamous leader, Matt Hale, was sentenced to forty years in
prison for ordering the assassination of a federal judge. Many Aryans now
see Hale as one of the movement’s prisoners of war.
31. Pierce also wrote the novel Hunter, which depicts a government
contractor moonlighting as a sniper who kills “racial enemies” in his spare
time. Pierce dedicated Hunter to the racist serial killer and assassin Joseph
Paul Franklin.
32. See David Holthouse, “Erich Gliebe’s Neo-Nazi National Alliance,
Ridiculed by Online Community: Neo-Nazi National Alliance Falls on Hard
Times,” Intelligence Report 135 (Fall 2009),
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=1077 (accessed
October 3, 2009).
33. Dianne Dentice, “The Demise of White Revolution: What’s Next for
Billy Roper?” Social Movement Studies: Journal of Social, Cultural, and
Political Protest 12, no. 4 (2013): 466–70.
34. Volk is a Germanic word that translates literally as “the people” of the
German nation. Adolf Hitler used it as the concept of the national soul,
which connotes spiritual connections among the Germanic people and
German land. For the Third Reich, the Volk included only pure Aryans,
which led to the extermination strategy toward Jews and other non-
Aryans.
35. During the 1980s, Metzger began producing the public access cable
television talk show Race and Reason, featuring interviews with Aryan
activists. He also published instructional handbooks on guerrilla warfare
and was a frequent guest on national talk shows. His son’s appearances
on Geraldo resulted in an infamous brawl that left the show’s host,
Geraldo Rivera, with a broken nose.
In 1990, Metzger’s White Aryan Resistance was sued by the Southern
Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on behalf of the family of Mulegata Seraw, who
was murdered in 1988 by several members of Eastside White Pride, a local
skinhead gang in Portland, Oregon. The jury agreed with the SPLC that
members of Eastside White Pride were incited to racial violence by
affiliates of White Aryan Resistance and awarded $12.5 million in
damages to Seraw’s family, which effectively bankrupted WAR and
reinforced Metzger’s advocacy of underground tactics. For further
discussion, see Elinor Langer, A Hundred Little Hitlers: The Death of a Black
Man, the Trial of a White Racist, and the Rise of the Neo-Nazi Movement in
America (New York: Metropolitan, 2003).
36. See WAR’s website, http://www.resist.com.
37. Anti-Defamation League, “The National Socialist Movement,”
http://www.adl.org/Learn/Ext_US/nsm (accessed June 29, 2009).
38. Skinhead culture began in Great Britain and developed in two waves
through the 1960s and 1970s. The first skinheads emerged in Great Britain
in the late 1960s as a response to deteriorating traditional working-class
communities, a stagnating economy, and job competition with
immigrants. While they did not explicitly associate with Nazism, they were
ardently nationalist in political orientation and fervently opposed to
foreign immigration, which was reflected by their affinity for violently
attacking Pakistani immigrants, which they called “Paki-bashing.” The first
skinheads “were aware that they attended the worst schools, lived in the
poorest districts, and had the worst jobs with the smallest wages. They
perceived hippies and students as idle layabouts living off the state.”
Michael Brake, “The Skinheads: An English Working Class Sub-Culture,”
Youth and Society 6, 179–200 (quote at 184). Early skinheads defined
themselves along themes of nationalism, ultramasculinity, and working-
class concerns about the lack of economic opportunity. They expressed
their political sentiments primarily through stylistic imagery while
distancing themselves from traditional, organized political ties and
activities (for example, unions, political parties, marches, etc.). They
became politicized as a second wave of English skinheads emerged in the
late 1970s and explored associations with the National Front (NF) and the
British National Party (BNP), extreme right-wing political parties that saw
the utility of drawing disaffected white youth into their ranks. The second
wave of skinheads spread beyond Britain and emerged in several other
European countries as well as North America.
39. David Holthouse, “Nationalist Socialist Movement Building a
Juggernaut,” Intelligence Report 121 (Spring 2006),
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?pid=1037 (accessed
March 19, 2007); Langer, A Hundred Little Hitlers.
40. Skinhead styles also vary from region to region. Some skinhead groups
emphasize the idea of retaining the “authentic” and traditional
appearance of the skinhead style, while in other areas (most notably
Southern California) some skinheads blend a traditional style with a more
contemporary “gangsta” style (for example, baggy pants, socks pulled up,
etc.). Still other highly politicized skinheads encourage their brothers to
play down the most noticeable aspects of their style by growing out their
hair and covering tattoos to reduce their stigma and find legitimate jobs
while covertly pursuing white power aims.
41. International branches of Hammerskin Nation are in Australia,
Canada, Italy, New Zealand, Portugal, France, Germany, Sweden, Spain,
Great Britain, Switzerland, and Hungary. Information available at
http://www.hammerskins.net/chapters.html (accessed July 2, 2009).
42. Volksfront claimed chapters in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, California,
Virginia, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Massachusetts, Illinois,
Missouri, Texas, Wisconsin, Arkansas, and Arizona. International chapters
were located in Australia, Canada, Ireland, Great Britain, Germany, Spain,
Croatia, and Switzerland.
43. Information available at Anti-Defamation League, “Volksfront,”
http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/volksfront/default.asp?
LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=3&item=volk
(accessed July 2, 2009).
44. Heidi Beirich, “The End of Volksfront?” Intelligence Report 152 (Winter
2013), http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-
all-issues/2013/winter/the-end-of-volksfront (accessed November 15,
2014).
45. One schism within the movement centers on the issue of criminal
activity and whether white power gangs such as the Nazi Lowriders and
PEN1 are true Aryans. Aryans throughout the movement revere terror
cells like the Silent Brotherhood, in part because they used money from
their armed robberies to give direct financial support to movement
organizations such as the National Alliance. However, some Aryans
question whether the Nazi Lowriders and PEN1’s criminal activity helps or
hurts the movement because the groups do not seem committed to
distributing the money they make from drug running, robberies, and
other crimes back into the movement. Aryans who oppose the Nazi
Lowriders and PEN1 say that the groups are not truly committed to the
political cause of white power. Aryans who support the Nazi Lowriders
and PEN1 consider the groups as frontline warriors fighting racial enemies
and protecting whites in prison and on the streets.
46. Val Burris, Emory Smith, and Ann Strahm, “White Supremacist
Networks on the Internet,” Sociological Focus 33 (2000): 215–34.
47. Berbrier, “The Victim Ideology”; Blee, Inside Organized Racism.
48. James Jasper, “The Emotions of Protest: Affective and Reactive
Emotions in and around Social Movements,” Sociological Forum 13 (1998):
397–424.
49. Verta Taylor, “Emotions and Identity in Women’s Self-Help
Movements,” in Self, Identity, and Social Movements, ed. Sheldon Stryker,
Timothy J. Owens, and Robert W. White (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2000), 271–99.
50. Jasper, “Emotions of Protest.”
51. Randall Collins, as quoted in Jasper, “Emotions of Protest,” 399.
 Chapter 3
Aryan Hate in the Home
We all know the movement begins with the family. If you can’t save
your family, then what’s the point? Keeping your families pure and
raising your kids among your kin is what we fight for. —Darren, SWAS
member[1]

Aryan homes are the most private, guarded, and valued of the white
power movement’s free spaces. Homes offer Aryans control over what
they say and do and are the spaces where Aryans can close the doors and
draw the blinds to hide their subversive acts from those who oppose
them.[2] Aryan parents use the home as a place to raise their children as
tomorrow’s warriors who will defend the white race against genocide.

I stood in the doorway to Erik and Andi’s living room and watched
the scene unfold. Four Aryan mothers sat around the room chatting about
their children. Two toddlers played on a blanket in the middle of the
floor. Andi busied herself with the birthday cake in the kitchen behind
me. It all seemed rather unremarkable, except for the white power
themes that dominated the occasion.
Seven Aryan families had gathered to celebrate Erik and Andi’s son
Hunter’s birthday. Erik and Andi named Hunter for the fictional killer of
Jews and interracial couples in the infamous white power fantasy novel
Hunter. This was only Hunter’s fourth birthday, but he and his friends
already appeared to embrace an Aryan attitude.
I stepped quickly out of the doorway as two young boys, Turner and
William, came stomping through in their black Doc Marten boots, arms
raised in salute, repeatedly shouting, “White power!” Turner wore a white
power music T-shirt, while William wore a red T-shirt emblazoned with
“88,” the Aryan code for “Heil Hitler.”[3]
The parents watched Turner and William’s display. As Turner passed
his mother, she patted his head, looked at the others, smiled, and said
proudly: “He’s already racially aware.”
Throughout the afternoon, Hunter and friends played tag and hide
and seek and wrestled in the yard. As the children prepared to play hide
and seek, Erik helped them decide who was “it”: “Eeny, meeny, miny,
moe. Catch a nigger by the toe . . .”
The most memorable white power symbol was Hunter’s birthday
cake. Erik called the kids and parents into the dining room, and then Andi
walked out of the kitchen carrying a red-and-white birthday cake in the
shape of a swastika. A lit candle topped each arm of the swastika. The
group sang the happy birthday song followed by a “Sieg heil” chant and
Nazi salutes.
I lingered at the edge of the group, watching in amazement as Aryans
transformed one of the most common family rituals into a deeply racist
experience.

Aryan parents normalize racist extremism among their children by

making white power culture central to family life. They fill their homes
with racist and anti-Semitic symbols and name their children after icons of
the movement. They use white supremacist stories and homeschool to
immerse their children in Aryan ideology.
But homes are not completely free. The degree to which Aryans can
explicitly fashion their homes and family life to normalize extreme racism
varies, in part, by where they live. While some isolated rural families live
very private lives that allow them to openly display extremist beliefs,
most Aryans reside in urban and suburban settings surrounded by those
they hate. Prying neighbors and landlords pose the risk of exposure and
confrontations. It is therefore important for Aryans to balance their desire
for white power purity and expression in the home with the need to
conceal their extremism from outsiders.
In this chapter, we focus on white power parents’ socialization styles.
[4] Socialization refers to the process by which humans learn the norms,

values, and ideals of a culture and community. Socialization strategies can

vary among members of the same culture. We discuss three distinct Aryan
family types—hard-core, newly respectable, and communitarian—to
describe how Aryans use the home as a free space.[5]
Seth and Jessie are a hard-core family that mirrors popular
stereotypes of extremely dysfunctional, raucous, violent, and
impoverished Aryans with criminal histories. Kate and Todd represent a
newly respectable family, maintaining a façade of mainstream normality
that masks their home’s white power culture. Darren and Mindy raise
their family as part of a rural communitarian network of Aryans who meet
regularly, share resources, and collaborate to raise their children in a
private setting saturated with Aryan idealism.
Although Aryan family styles differ, the common factor across Aryan
families is that they use their homes as free spaces where Aryan culture
survives through child socialization and family rituals. Aryans agree that
rearing white children is a righteous task essential for strengthening the
movement.

SETH AND JESSIE’S HARD-CORE HOME LIFE

Seth and his wife, Jessie, are staunchly committed racist skinheads. Seth is
thirty-four years old, and his short and stocky build, shaved head, goatee,
and tattoos create an intimidating public persona. He earned his veteran
skinhead status during his nearly two decades with the group White
Aryan Resistance, or WAR Skins, and later as a Hammerskin. Seth grew up
in what he describes as a “pretty typical everyday family” and calls his
father a “traditional conservative who was racist but never put race as the
most important factor.”[6]
When Seth was a teenager, he met racist skinheads at punk music
concerts. Despite the tensions that carousing with racists caused with his
father, Seth talks fondly of his recruitment into white power groups,
getting inked with racist tattoos, and playing in racist bands.
Jessie, a year older than Seth, is tall and slender with dark red hair.
She has a volatile personality shaped by a life on the streets as an
associate of the white power criminal gang the Nazi Lowriders and two
stints in prison for drug dealing. Her life has been steeped in racism. Her
father, a successful attorney, taught Jessie about racial hatred as a young
child. He advocated pseudoscientific theories of racial supremacy and
trained Jessie to believe in a natural order of white dominance. Although
Jessie came from an affluent family, after dropping out of school in her
teens, she turned to street life and befriended skinhead gang members.
Seth and Jessie live in an ordinary-looking three-bedroom apartment
in a small working-class city in Southern California with Jessie’s three
young children from two earlier marriages, Ronnie (age five), Sven (four),
and Ethan (three).[7] Seth’s daughter, Amber (twelve), from his first
marriage, regularly visits them. Jessie is jobless and stays at home with
the kids. The family struggles to get by on Seth’s job as a credit collection
agent.
Seth and Jessie both talk passionately of their deep commitment to
Aryanism and saving the white race from genocide. They claim their main
goal in life is to raise their children as young white power warriors. Seth
has been active in the Southern California white power music scene for
more than a decade, playing in a number of bands and organizing white
power concerts. Despite their low income, he takes leave from work
several times a year to play with his band at Aryan festivals around the
United States and Europe.
Young Aryan girl salutes with her family at a neo-Nazi gathering in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, on
September 12, 2004. Her “88” shirt symbolizes an Aryan code for “Heil Hitler.” H is the eighth letter
of the alphabet; 88 = HH = Heil Hitler.
Photo by William Thomas Cain © Getty Images
Seth and Jessie’s home is a far cry from Seth’s classic skinhead crash
pad where he lived prior to their marriage. The crash pad was constantly
filled with Seth’s skinhead friends and Aryan musicians. Walls were
covered with signs of the movement, including white power music
posters, a Hitler portrait, and a swastika flag displayed in the living room.
White power books, pamphlets, and CDs littered the tables and floors.
The white power symbolism throughout Seth’s old crash pad is like
the accessory items in other Aryan family homes we had seen. Religious
Aryans fill their homes with the Christian cross along with spiritual
movement messages. Neo-Nazi, Christian Identity, and Klan families
display statuettes and paintings of Hitler, swastika flags, and images of
Nazi Germany along with Confederate flags and wall hangings to mark
local group affiliations. Iconic Nordic imagery appears commonly in homes
across Aryan branches.
Seth and Jessie avoid openly brazen signs of Aryanism in their home.
They fear exposure to Hispanic neighbors, who vastly outnumber whites
in their complex, and the apartment manager, who sometimes enters
unannounced. They hide the most obvious signs of white power, but they
are not happy about these constraints. Seth says they are just biding their
time in the apartment as they save money for a house where they can be
free to “live as we please.”[8]
Seth and Jessie express Aryan beliefs in some inconspicuous ways.
Seth wears T-shirts, many emblazoned with the insignia of his favorite
white power bands. To the uninitiated, Aryan band logos can be difficult
to decipher as white power symbolism, but to the Aryans like Seth who
wear them, band logos are very meaningful symbols of resistance.
Jewelry is a staple in the wardrobes of activist parents and children.
The first time we met Jessie, a necklace of tiny swastikas dangled loosely
around her neck. She later showed us Waffen-SS lightning-bolt earrings
and a Celtic ring with “HH” and “88” stamped around it.
This is not to say, however, that Aryan clothing is always subtle in its
meaning. We observed Aryans whose around-the-house clothing choices
displayed images that are impossible to misconstrue: Nazi soldiers,
swastikas, and hooded Klansmen, as well as messages such as “Supreme
White Power.” Kathy, a Southwest Aryan Separatist, wearing a “Hitler
World Tour” T-shirt as she cooked breakfast one morning, explained: “At
work I can’t wear a shirt like this. So I feel pretty good around here to be
able to put it on and be myself. I like that a lot.”[9]
Around their apartment, Seth and Jessie typically dress their two
oldest boys to mimic their father’s skinhead uniform of Doc Marten boots,
jeans, and T-shirt. Their youngest son sometimes sports infant bodysuits
covered with swastikas and German iron crosses. Their children also play
dress up in Nazi uniforms and wear more covert clothing styles that
include ordinary jersey shirts that bear the numbers “14” to represent the
“14 Words” mantra, “88” for “Heil Hitler,” and “18,” which is code for the
first and eighth letters of the alphabet, A and H, Adolf Hitler’s initials.
While Seth and Jessie’s home décor did not scream “white power,”
they did create displays infused with Aryan themes. Like many families,
Seth and Jessie displayed family photographs around their home. After
Jessie pointed at a photo of her oldest son, Ronnie, giving a Sieg heil
salute, we realized that in several pictures their children wore movement
clothing and were surrounded by racist symbols.

Raising “Little Hitler”

Seth and Jessie’s hard-core parenting style encourages an acidly racist
and anti-Semitic culture among their children. We found their tactics
painful to watch. Seth and Jessie were under supervision by Child
Protective Services. Jessie was on parole. Their oldest son, Ronnie, was
undergoing psychiatric therapy. Jessie was particularly vicious at times,
cursing, yelling, and hitting the kids at the slightest provocation.[10] The
violence carried over into constant fights among their three young boys.
Seth and Jessie paid little attention to these fights except when they
encouraged the battles so that their boys would, according to Seth, “learn
self-defense.” The effects of racist socialization in this hard-core
environment were clearly visible on Ronnie, whom Seth and Jessie’s
friends nicknamed “Little Hitler.”
Ronnie was born while Jessie was incarcerated and he spent the first
three years of his life living with his biological father, Lars, an active Nazi
Lowrider. Lars and his friends reportedly forced Ronnie to drink malt
liquor and abused him physically, sexually, and psychologically. When
Ronnie was three years old, Lars was convicted of murder and sentenced
to life in prison. Ronnie lived with Lars’s parents until Jessie was released
from prison.
Ronnie had just turned five years old when we met him.
Psychologists had recently diagnosed him with several mental health
problems, including attachment disorder and oppositional defiance
disorder. Ronnie is physically aggressive. He constantly fights with his
brothers and his peers, and he killed a small bird (and tried to kill a
kitten) with his bare hands. Ronnie is also sexually aggressive and brags
that “I stick my ding-a-ling in girls’ mouths at school.”
Seth and Jessie are adamant about turning Ronnie into a neo-Nazi.
Seth and Jessie have taught him movement slogans such as Sieg heil,
which he frequently yells at his parents and anyone else around him.
When Seth puts Aryan music on the stereo, Ronnie dances excitedly
around their living room, singing the lyrics. Ronnie has learned to call
himself a skinhead and to label all dark-skinned people he sees as niggers
and muds. He watches a lot of television, mostly violent cartoons and
movies. Seth and Jessie tell Ronnie to mimic the violence in the shows as
practice for fighting racial enemies. When watching television, Seth and
Jessie point out the “darkies,” “faggots,” and “Jewbags” to remind Ronnie
about his racial enemies.
Like other Aryan families we studied, Seth and Jessie use birthday
celebrations as ritual initiations for their children to embrace white power
culture. For Ronnie’s fifth birthday, Seth and Jessie presented him with a
cake decorated with swastikas and iron crosses. Aryan parents often use
phrases like “14 Words” or “white power” along with figurines of robed
Klansmen or Nazi guards on their children’s birthday cakes. During the
parties, parents and friends racialize the happy birthday song by
substituting the child’s name with phrases like “young Aryan” and “white
warrior” and infuse entire celebrations with Sieg heil salutes and choruses
of “White power!” and “Rahowa!”
Parents also infuse gift giving at birthdays and holidays with racial
themes. Seth and Jessie transformed a G.I. Joe action figure into “G.I.
Nazi,” complete with swastika armbands and SS emblazoned on the doll’s
forehead. As they gave the doll to Ronnie, Seth and Jessie explained to
him that “G.I. Nazi will help save the white race.” Other parents gave
blond, blue-eyed Barbie dolls they called “Aryan girls” to their young
daughters. We also saw gifts of clothing with racist symbols, Aryan comics,
white power coloring books, neo-Nazi video games, Aryan music, and SS
knives among other weapons.
 Seth and Jessie also commemorate Aryan holidays, such as Hitler’s
and his deputy, Rudolph Hess’s, birthdays. They use these celebrations to
help Ronnie imagine an Aryan legacy that extends beyond his own family.
Seth and Jessie also join with other Aryan families to memorialize the
death of Ian Stuart Donaldson, the “godfather” of white power rock music.
Similar ritual commemorations occur in Christian Identity families. We
witnessed families praying for martyred Aryans such as Gordon Kahl, a tax
evader and founder of a Texas Posse Comitatus cell, and Silent
Brotherhood founder Robert Mathews, who led the terrorist cell in
murder, counterfeiting, and armed robberies.
Aryan parents control their children’s environment to expose them
to role models and experiences that affirm the attitudes and aspirations
they think are best for their children. This socialization style is no
different in families of other cultural backgrounds except that Aryans
emphasize violent, racist, white power fantasies that they must hide from
outsiders.
The home is one of the places where Aryans are able to sustain racist
visions in the most unrestricted manner. Seth and Jessie’s hard-core Aryan
home life reflects a style we also saw with other families. But Aryan
families are varied. Newly respectable families racialize the home in more
subtle ways.

THE NEWLY RESPECTABLE: TODD AND KATE

Todd is thirty-two years old, short, and slender. Tattoos of Aryan warriors,
Celtic crosses, and swastikas cover his chest, stomach, and back. Todd’s
parents divorced when he was twelve years old, and he spent much of his
youth on the streets of Los Angeles.

My mom was all fucked up and there was nobody else to take care of
me and my brothers, so my aunt took us. They were pretty racist. . . .
She would say, “I don’t want you hanging out with niggers. I don’t
want you hanging out with beaners.” [She] dated the grand dragon of
the local KKK. They were adamant about [extreme racism].[11]

In his early teens, Todd followed his older brother Jason into the
notorious Southern California Aryan criminal gang Public Enemy Number
One (PEN1). Todd spent fourteen years with PEN1, committed to the
group’s hard-core racism, which couples a “mercenary and criminal
nature”[12] with white power ideology.
At thirty, Todd began to distance himself from PEN1’s hard-core
lifestyle of drugs, crime, and gangbanging. He felt burned out from his
hard-driving lifestyle and wanted to settle down with his new wife, Kate.
He did not completely exit white power activism, however. He is a regular
in the Southern California white power music scene, often visits his
friends’ crash pads, attends Aryan house parties, and keeps in close
contact with PEN1 leaders.
Todd’s wife, Kate, is thirty years old and a veteran Orange County
Skin. In high school, she rebelled from her middle-class upbringing by
befriending a group of local racist skinheads. Kate said, “I made some bad
choices when I was young, doing drugs and helping skinhead friends break
into some homes.”[13] She was arrested for one burglary, served three
months in jail, and then “cleaned up her life” after her release.
Kate met Todd at a white power concert when she was twenty-five.
Todd and Kate dated and married three years later. Like Todd, Kate
remains committed to the white power movement. She closely follows the
movement through Aryan websites but each year limits her face-to-face
contact to just a few white power music shows or parties.
Todd and Kate’s attitude about raising their Aryan family reflects the
new respectability ideal advocated by White Aryan Resistance leader Tom
Metzger. Metzger and other prominent Aryans encourage activists to
strategically hide their Aryanism in order to blend into the mainstream.
The rationale is that clandestine Aryans are not easy to detect and can
therefore infiltrate the social system; rise to positions of wealth, power,
and respectability; give resources back to the movement; and become role
models for future Aryans. This strategy encourages racist skinheads to
grow out their hair, cover their tattoos, stay out of trouble, earn college
degrees, find good jobs, and raise children in a stable environment filled
with potent Aryan idealism.
Judging only by outward appearance, Todd and Kate live a rather
ordinary, solidly middle-class way of life. Todd works full-time as a welder,
Kate as a paralegal. They have two young boys, Teddy and Alex, whom
they see as their foremost responsibility. Their freshly painted, well-
landscaped house looks no different from others in their attractive
middle-class neighborhood. Signs of the white power movement are hard
to find inside the home as well. Todd stashes his swastika flag and other
racist paraphernalia in a closet, hides his Aryan tattoos, and lowers the
volume when he plays white power music. Yet their home is an Aryan
enclave.
Todd and Kate hope to shield their kids from the street life they
experienced. The couple rejects the hustling, gangbanging, and drugs of
their youth but not their commitment to white power ideology. They are
still devoted and steadfast in their plans to raise Aryan children. They
imagine their boys attending college, taking professional jobs, and rising
to influential positions where they can change society with their white
power vision.
Like most Aryan parents we studied, Kate and Todd talk of strikingly
familiar parental worries. We listened as they spoke about many of the
same anxieties as other doting parents, such as their children’s health and
nutrition and what they learn in school. They fret about Teddy and Alex’s
future, but these worries are sifted through the filter of white power
ideology.
When Teddy and Alex are sick, Todd and Kate worry about the care
they will receive from doctors and nurses who might be secret agents of
ZOG. They also worry that their children might be brainwashed in public
school by ZOG-controlled teachers. ZOG could turn them against white
power ideals and control their future.
Todd and Kate expose Teddy and Alex to home-based white power
culture in several ways. They pepper their talk with matter-of-fact
statements about “niggers,” “spics,” “Jew-dogs,” and “muds.” They clothe
their boys with covert Aryan symbols, such as football jerseys numbered
“88.” Todd and Kate read their sons bedtime stories about Aryan heroes,
give toys that purportedly reflect their Aryan values, and emphasize Aryan
superiority. Todd tells Teddy and Alex about the white power music
shows he attends, describes in detail the meaning of song lyrics, and
emphasizes that they are among the enlightened few engaged in a
struggle against ZOG. If Teddy and Alex embrace Aryan ideals, Todd and
Kate are convinced that they will be among the chosen few who are
prepared for the race war that will come.
Todd and Kate teach their children more than Aryan hatred. They
also emphasize love, camaraderie, and kinship among Aryans. Kate says:
“I’m raising our kids so they understand that racialism isn’t just about
hate and violence. I want them to only have white friends and understand
their white heritage. I plan to teach them to be proud of their ancestors
and to love their whiteness.”
Todd and Kate stress racial kinship with other Aryans. As Randall
Collins says, these sentiments are the “the ‘glue’ of solidarity” that really
binds all people to one another.[14] Kate and Todd hope that by nurturing
these same feelings in their young children, they will imagine themselves
as part of a larger Aryan family.

Soft-Sell Socialization
Todd and Kate also use an indirect socialization strategy to teach
their children white power ideas. Quietly persuasive, soft-sell tactics favor
a subtler tone that serves to normalize Aryan beliefs. Such methods
reflect the hard reality that Aryans cannot totally exorcise mainstream
influences from their children’s lives.
Todd and Kate direct their kids’ mainstream exposure toward
experiences that are consistent with Aryan ideals. They surround their
kids with white people and white culture, hoping to make nonwhites
seem odd and undesirable social contacts. This tactic is relatively easy for
them now, since the boys do not yet attend school, but the difficulty will
increase as they grow up and become exposed to a greater number of
outside influences.
This strategy is a popular topic of conversation in many Aryan circles.
We once listened as a group of Aryan parents at a party related how they
limited their children’s contact with nonwhites. Ryan, a Colorado Skin,
said: “I surround them with white culture, friends, and family. . . . We
don’t discuss race much, but my kids only attend birthday parties and
play groups with white children. They have white parents, white children,
and white friends and that’s what they know.”[15]
 Other Aryans emphasize their Eurocentric cultural heritage to subtly
accentuate white culture without pushing young children too early to
confront explicit and extreme styles of racial hatred. Brandy, a Christian
Identity mother, explained:

I just teach them about their Irish heritage. I teach them to be loyal
to their kin. I don’t want my children to ruin their lives by hating
everything like I’ve seen happen. My six-year-old goes to school, and I
volunteer for class parties and field trips. I just allow my kids to have
their own ideas and I do my best to instill white pride in them. I think
this works a lot better than force-feeding them.[16]

Television, films, and other media are a major thorn in the side of
Aryan parents, so they closely monitor what children watch. Beth, a
Christian Identity disciple, ended one of her daughter’s favorite shows
when a black character was shown. “She used to watch Clifford the Big Red
Dog all the time, but then we saw an episode where he had a black friend
and we said no more. Little Mermaid’s not too bad, but it’s got some
multicultural crap, too.”[17]
Aryan parents that we studied did not totally ban popular media
from the home, but, like Beth, they screened the content of television
shows and movies for how many nonwhite characters would be shown,
whether nonwhites were villains or heroes, and whether plot lines
promoted race mixing or homosexuality. Michelle, a Colorado Skin, blocks
channels, such as Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and PBS, to ensure that
her daughters are not inadvertently exposed to culturally diverse shows.
“The media is so antiwhite, so we have to use what we can to our
advantage. We use white books and movies that have the right message.
We block the cable channels that have antiwhite kid shows.”[18]
Some Aryan parents allow their children to watch shows with
ethnically diverse casts and then use those shows to teach their kids
about racial doctrine. Seth and Jessie used movie characters to teach their
son Ronnie about racial enemies. In one instance, Ronnie asked,
“Mommy, is that guy [the Rock’s character in the movie Scorpion King] on
our side or is he one of our enemies?” Jessie replied, “Honey, it’s hard to
tell, but he’s not white. Those other guys are on our side [pointing at two,
clearly white, protagonists].”
Soft-sell socialization strategies attempt to address the dichotomy
between Aryans’ desire for a purified white-only existence and the reality
that such racial purity is almost impossible to achieve. Like other newly
respectable Aryan families, Kate and Todd try to bring their children along
gradually, decreasing the confusion youngsters may feel as they are
taught extremist values that conflict so starkly with the mainstream
norms that also surround them. They try to cloak their radical beliefs in
the appearance of mainstream normality while simultaneously rejecting
mainstream anti-Aryan ideas. But living a veiled resistance inevitably
creates dissonance and a double bind.
Todd and Kate worry about their kids being co-opted by mainstream
culture and drifting away from white power ideals. Their worries reflect
those of some hard-core white power members who criticize the new
respectability strategy for creating soft, uncommitted Aryans. But if Todd
and Kate were to be more open about their Aryanism, they would run the
risk of jeopardizing their middle-class success, leading to the downward
mobility so common among Aryan activists.[19] They fear that exposing
their true identities would bring critical scrutiny and stigma, possible job
loss, and disruptions to their home life and to many of the relationships
they use to mask their Aryan beliefs.
Hiding under the veil of normality may not create the kind of
powerful socialization experiences white power parents hope will ensure
their children become Aryan warriors. But public exposure of parents’
racial extremism might well weaken the movement’s goal of gaining a
foothold in mainstream society. The power of Aryan free spaces is that
they allow Aryans to retreat into contexts that challenge multicultural
ideology and experiences. Newly respectable families adopt mainstream
appearances while mixing explicit and implicit racialized messages in their
homes. Communitarian families, to which we now turn, are not as
encumbered, although, as with all Aryans, there are also limits to their
expression of hate in the home.

DARREN AND MINDY’S COMMUNITARIAN FAMILY LIFE

Darren and Mindy are parents in a communitarian white power network
in rural Nevada. They both grew up near Reno, Nevada, and describe their
parents as “patriots but not white power.” Raised as Mormons in the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS), Darren and Mindy also
experienced socialization into a narrow worldview. They now reject the
LDS Church for straying from white supremacist beliefs.
Mindy is twenty-six years old and traces her white power extremism
to high school confrontations with blacks and Polynesian girls. These
confrontations drove her toward white groups, where she took up with
skinheads and immersed herself in white power ideology. Darren, twenty-
nine, turned to Aryanism in high school. “I felt there was a lot of racial
bullshit in school. I got tired of all these niggers walking around doing
whatever they wanted and the skinheads weren’t having any of that shit.
We stood up to people and kicked ass.”[20]
Darren and Mindy married soon after high school and, fearing a race
war, joined a small communitarian white power group, the Southwest
Aryan Separatists (SWAS), to avoid the major cities, where the racial
fighting would begin.[21] Darren learned from his Aryan friends about the
rural hotbed for racism where SWAS was located. The dozen families that
made up SWAS welcomed them. SWAS families live within twenty miles of
one another and meet regularly for events, such as weekly dinners, Bible
study meetings, homeschooling, camping, and birthday celebrations.
After several years renting a home, Darren and Mindy bought twelve
acres with another Aryan couple, Erik and Andi. During our fieldwork,
both families were building a solar-powered home, growing their own
food, and stockpiling weapons and supplies in preparation for the
government collapse and racial battles they anticipated. Darren and
Mindy talk enthusiastically about the freedom they experience living with
other Aryans in a communitarian style. Darren wants to “just live off the
land, live by the scripture, raise my family, raise my crops.”[22] They see
their secluded homestead as a fortress to defend against ZOG. “I want to
see ’em coming. I know eventually they will. When they do we’ll be
ready.”[23]
When we met them, Darren and Mindy were living in a mobile home
parked on their land. They spent much of their free time in the afternoons
and weekends working on their new home and a barn. Darren erected a
Confederate flag outside their trailer and decorated the inside with a
portrait of Hitler and a Klan painting in the living room. White power
children’s books, movement pamphlets, and other paraphernalia were
scattered throughout their home.

Cultural Isolation
SWAS parents like Darren and Mindy romanticize the idea of total
societal withdrawal to create a pure Aryan lifestyle for their children. They
go to great lengths to try to ensure a purified existence, free from anti-
Aryan society, by carving out private family spaces where they can be
submerged in white power culture.
Such social and geographic isolation is an extreme measure and
relatively uncommon among WPM families, who often reside in urban and
suburban areas. But SWAS members see a purification effect in their
seclusion. Withdrawal shields the family from mainstream authorities and
anti-Aryan culture, they say, and helps nurture the survivalist skills and
sensibilities required for the inevitable race war.
Daily life at Darren and Mindy’s home reflects a pastoral ideal. They
are transforming their land into a sustainable homestead. Their kids play
carefree in the woods that cover the property, participate in chores, and
help build their solar home. The SWAS families in the area trade hosting
duties for gatherings such as bonfire parties, birthday celebrations, and
Bible study meetings. They also trade labor, such as carpentry, gardening,
and babysitting, within the SWAS network.
Mindy and Darren’s isolation means their children are not directly
exposed to much mainstream culture as compared to families like Seth
and Jessie, who live in urban areas surrounded by what they define as
mainstream filth. Yet Mindy and Darren’s socialization style is still fueled
by the fantasy vision of a coming race war, which all SWAS families are
gearing up to survive. Mindy and Darren encourage their children to
explore the woods as a way to become familiar with the land they will
protect with their lives from “niggers, ZOG, and the bad, evil government.”
They work together as a family on their building projects, as well as on
hunting, fishing, and other survivalist skills, to ready themselves for the
apocalyptic race war. Bill, a SWAS parent, explained: “Our youth are going
to be responsible for securing our race. Everything we do, it’s not just for
fun, it’s very serious and he needs to know what he’s up against.”[24]
SWAS children are ensconced in a closed society and relatively
shielded from the outside world. Their lives are dominated by the specter
of race war and survival. But it is hard to predict whether exposure to
inevitable outside non-Aryan influences will reshape their intense
childhood Aryan socialization experiences.

Gender Lessons

SWAS kids learn that Aryan men and women in the movement have
distinct roles. Like most Aryan families, Darren and Mindy idealize the
patriarchal structure in which men are esteemed protectors of family and
race and women are relegated to the subordinate, albeit vital, roles of
motherhood and homemaker.
Aryan ideology prescribes that men must be warrior combatants. In
their role as fathers, men are expected to prepare themselves and their
family for the enduring racial struggle. SWAS men like Darren fancy
themselves as outdoorsmen. They camp, hike, and hunt to hone their
survivalist skills, and they stockpile weapons, food, and water. SWAS men
lead backcountry outings as survivalist training missions to prepare
families against ZOG attacks.
SWAS parents see families as the core fighting unit. Homes are their
defensive refuge in the race war. SWAS boys quickly learn their roles in
this mythic battle. Darren explicitly models the dominant male role for his
sons, repeatedly reminding them of their responsibility to family and race.
He prepares them to fight to the death to repel ZOG. “All my kids, you
know, we’re shooting it out; we’re staying. My boys, they say, ‘Dad, we’re
going to hold our guns and shoot back, and if you and Mom get killed
we’re gonna shoot it out.’”[25]
Urban neo-Nazi men also play out warrior fantasies in their
gangbanging and bar fights. But frequent fighting is a young man’s game.
Older veteran skinheads like Todd and Seth typically stay out of brawls
they once instigated. Todd and Seth own weapons, however, and practice
combat at shooting ranges.
 Procreation is the main role for SWAS women. Women encourage
one another to have children for the movement and talk to their own
young girls about the responsibility to have Aryan babies when they are
grown. The women’s prodding of one another comes with the tacit
assumption that the Aryan community of women will support one
another by trading child care, dinners, hand-me-down clothes, and
domestic help. The mutual support moderates the expense of rearing
children, making it possible to have more than they could otherwise
afford alone.
White power ideology defines procreation as Aryan womens’ main
contribution to the racial struggle. Mindy explained: “I love having white
babies! I love the fact that I can contribute in that way, helping my people
by helping produce the next generation. When you look in your white
baby’s eyes you can see the world you’re creating.”[26]
Kathy, a fellow Southwest Aryan Separatist, proudly showed us her
newest child and spoke of the honor of motherhood. “Look at him [her
newborn son], he’s so special. He’s white and that just makes it even
more special. That’s what’s so amazing, knowing that I’m helping save my
race. It’s an honor to raise white babies.”[27]
In their role as movement mothers, women do more than procreate
and raise their own little Aryans. For example, Mindy and other SWAS
women operated an outreach program called Operation White Care to
send care packages to Aryans in the US military stationed in the Middle
East.[28]
Mothers in hard-core and newly respectable Aryan families also
connect with one another for support and camaraderie. Jessie takes her
kids to the beach with other skinhead families and trades hand-me-down
clothes and toys. Kate is an Aryan soccer mom, carting her kids along with
two others from Aryan families to soccer games on their all-white teams.
While these may look like typical family activities, each mother ensures
that her children’s experiences are situated in a context where racial
extremism bubbles just below the surface.[29]

Aryan Names
 SWAS racial socialization begins at birth with the choice of baby
names drawn directly from Aryan symbolism. Darren and Mindy’s eight-
year-old daughter is named Liberty, symbolizing white power commitment
to freedom from ZOG and patriotism to America, which they envision as a
pure white nation. Forrest, their five-year-old son, is named for the first
Ku Klux Klan imperial wizard, Nathan Bedford Forrest. As mentioned
earlier, Erik and Andi named their son Hunter after the fictional character
in William Pierce’s infamous white power fantasy novel, Hunter, who guns
down interracial couples and Jews to cleanse America and save the future
of white civilization.[30] Their daughter’s name, Ariana, derives from the
word Aryan.
Aryan parents use these names to link children to a racist tradition,
which they expect will help instill a racialized identity. White power
parents commonly look to Nordic mythology or to German culture, which
they associate with the Nazis, for names that symbolize their beliefs. We
did not meet anyone named Adolf, but parents do use less notorious
German names.[31] Randy, a SoCal Skin and friend of Seth and Jessie, told
us, “I’ll probably name my child Dieter if I have a son. That would be in
honor of my grandfather, who was SS, and because it’s a good German
name and that’ll help my son stay in touch with his roots.”[32]
Parents reinforce the significance of names with stories and
admonitions about their meaning. Cal, a SoCal Skin, said, “Aryan names
won’t start a revolution or anything, but names are like a lot of other
things; it’s what they symbolize that’s important. [Names] tell you
something about what’s in a person’s heart. It’s kind of like the ‘14
Words’; they may just be words, but they’re also a lot more than that.”[33]
Baxter, a father of four and veteran neo-pagan believer, agreed. “The
name is very important; it defines the spirit of a newborn, and parents
should think carefully about their decision of what to name their child.
Think of anyone you know. Their name represents everything about that
person.”[34]
White power parents choose names explicitly to instill their children
with racial extremism. The act of naming a child with some meaningful
referent is not unique to Aryans. Parents of all cultures do it. But unless
those Aryan names reflect the most infamous historical figures, like Hitler,
they are not likely to be noticed. To the uninitiated, the meaning of
Hunter, Forrest, Ariana, and other common white power names is not
clear, which helps children pass in mainstream settings. For those in the
know, however, such names may represent a significant, lifelong symbolic
attachment to the white power movement. The goal is to convert an
Aryan-named child into a person committed to a white power identity.

Homeschooling Hate
Aryan homeschooling systematically transmits white power culture to
kids. Mindy homeschools her children, focusing on the fundamentals of
reading, writing, and math, but her makeshift curriculum is saturated with
Aryan themes. History and social studies lessons concentrate on European
cultures and Western civilization while vilifying Asian, Middle Eastern, and
African cultures. Her lessons are historical accounts of Nordic nations,
Anglo-British experiences, and Nazi Germany. Mindy uses these narratives
to emphasize white accomplishments that convey Aryan superiority. She
says homeschooling gives her the chance to transmit Aryan truth.
SWAS and other Aryan communitarian networks divide teaching
responsibility across parents to ease each family’s burden and draw on
complementary skills of the parents. The mothers who teach come
together to plan lessons, organize supplies, and discuss teaching
strategies to ensure that all SWAS children receive well-rounded white
power instruction. Carrie, a SWAS mother with two boys, said, “We
completely control the environment where they’re raised, and this means
we can exclude nonwhites from their childhood, which is excluding them
from their worldview.”[35]
Another SWAS mother, Brenda, reflected on the purity of
homeschooling. “Homeschool is the best. You provide the information;
they live it. Homeschool allows me to know that my children will get the
truth and not all this liberal propaganda.”[36]
Homeschooling is not limited to communitarian families like SWAS.
Aryan parents worry about their children’s education, and many see
homeschooling as a way to control their children’s political indoctrination.
Homeschooling gives parents the direct and systematic power to racialize
the content of their child’s learning and to keep them out of the public
school system, which Aryans see as a brainwashing tool to perpetuate lies
about race mixing and to force-feed students with liberal Jewish
propaganda.
The white power website Stormfront.org declares:

Education is a key component to our survival, however, the

conventional idea of education is not sufficient, because of the
liberal, Jewish bias that is imposed on most learning materials. . . .
For our children to be properly educated we must have places to
teach them the accomplishments of white Europeans and the
importance of staying true to one’s race. If we don’t take the time to
show them the way, they will be brainwashed by ignorant liberal
teachers . . . that encourage race mixing and degeneracy.[37]

Aryan parents also fear for children’s safety in public schools,

imagining schools as playgrounds for nonwhite gangs who have declared
open season on white students, bullying, beating, and murdering them as
school officials sit idly by. Homeschooling resolves the problems of public
school and guarantees that Aryan children will remain immersed in racist
culture. Melanie, a SoCal Skin, summed up the attitude of the Aryan
homeschoolers we studied:

We need to educate our children. They’re being indoctrinated into a

society that has no morals, no responsibility. To survive, we need to
teach our children that there’s more to life than the garbage they’re
feeding us. Our kids shouldn’t be afraid to walk the streets and
schools without being preyed upon; they should be able to enjoy
being white kids. I’ve worked hard to be a mother and a teacher.[38]

White power lessons saturate children with ideals that stress

biological and cultural attachment to Aryan racial kin. Cal, a SoCal Skin
with a three-year-old son, uses themes of white heritage and cultural
preservation to justify his child’s education. “My son is homeschooled. I
teach him to be proud of his people . . . that he’s part of the race that
created civilization. I just want to make sure he inherits what is rightfully
his and what our forefathers fought so hard to pass on.”[39]
Similarly, Janine, a SoCal Skin and mother of three, homeschools her
children to stress sacred cultural knowledge that public school would
deny them. “European culture is fading; our tradition is being stripped
away so we have to do something to fight the assault. I think with the
public schools just promoting filth and hypocrisy, I can’t imagine sending
my kids there, so I teach them here.”[40]
Despite its appeal, however, homeschooling remains an unattainable
luxury for most Aryan parents. With a few exceptions, the families we
studied sent their children to public schools. Homeschooling requires a
support network that is absent for many Aryans. Seth and Jessie want to
homeschool but do not know other Aryans near them who homeschool
and do not feel prepared to do it alone. Thus, Seth and Jessie’s
socialization prepares their kids to stand up and fight the “niggers and
spics” who, they imagine, will threaten Ronnie and his brothers in public
schools.
Aryans like Kate and Todd take a different approach to school. They
acknowledge the virtues of homeschool, but they both work and do not
have the time to spare. They moved to their neighborhood precisely so
their children could attend a predominantly white public school. They
view public school as a place where their kids will learn to exist as Aryans
in settings that champion anti-Aryan attitudes. They also talk about public
school as an essential experience for their children prior to college.
College, they believe, will guarantee their children the credentials for
getting a good job in a mainstream setting.
In accord with the newly respectable creed that a poor Aryan is an
ineffective one, Kate and Todd plan for their kids to blend into the
mainstream and secretly contribute to the Aryan cause. The choice of
public schools adds risk and exposes their children to precisely the type of
social influences that may hinder an Aryan identity. Yet Kate and Todd
believe that they can saturate their children’s experiences in the home
with enough Aryanism to combat the normalizing tendencies of the public
school experience and harden their children against mainstream, anti-
Aryan culture.
 ***

Aryan families—hard-core, newly respectable, and communitarian—

live diverse styles while sharing a fundamental commitment to white
power. Debates rage inside the white power movement over which style is
most effective for the movement’s survival. Hard-core parents and
activists claim that newly respectable families have sold out and do little
more than play act as Aryans. Likewise, hard-core Aryans see many
communitarian groups, especially those ensconced in rural hideaways, as
shirking from the front lines of the racial struggle occurring in urban
zones. Aryans committed to the newly respectable strategy dismiss hard-
core families as rogues of the movement who lend little to the ultimate
goal of preparing to take the reins of political and social power. Newly
respectable families offer another route into Aryanism that does not
require self-denial of society’s fruits. All Aryan families imagine that it is
only a matter of time before whites will take over society.
What white power adherents all agree on is the importance of the
family to anchor and sustain the white power movement. Aryan homes
provide a private setting where white power members trace in-group/out-
group boundaries and attempt to create the next generation of believers.
Their weaving of white power ideological messages into the mundane
routines of daily life reduces the psychological distance between everyday
life and organized hate.
Homes are white power sanctuaries that affect both children and
parents. By nourishing their children on Aryan ideas, parents hope to
create budding little soldiers committed to carrying on the fight against
ZOG for white supremacy. But the devotion to raising Aryan children also
gives white power parents a strong sense of purpose and direction that
sustains their own commitment to the cause. White power parents
identify an intense responsibility to use their children to promote the
white power movement.
Racial socialization in the free space of homes is part of Aryans’
constant struggle against ZOG and multicultural ideals. Aryan resistance in
the home makes no headlines, but each seemingly inconsequential act
helps sustain white power ideas in the family and makes possible the
persistence of the white power movement. We now turn to another Aryan
free space—the informal gathering—that intersects closely with homes
and provides an added layer of socialization and support for white power
ideology.
1. Darren, SWAS member, interviewed January 22, 1997.
2. See Hank Johnston, “New Social Movements and Old Regional
Nationalisms,” in New Social Movements: From Ideology to Identity, ed.
Enrique Larana, Hank Johnston, and Joseph R. Gusfield (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 1994), 267–86; Hank Johnston, Tales of
Nationalism: Catalonia 1939–1979 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University
Press, 1991). Johnston notes that the intergenerational transmission of
collective identity is essential for movement endurance in repressive
contexts, and the control and anonymity available in the home ensures
that identity work can proceed relatively unchallenged. Likewise, Richard
Couto, “Narrative, Free Space, and Political Leadership in Social
Movements,” Journal of Politics 55 (1993): 57–79, explains that when the
chance of repression is high for overt forms of political resistance, identity
work occurs “in carefully guarded free spaces, such as the family.”
3. H is the eighth letter of the alphabet, thus 88 represents HH, for “Heil
Hitler.”
4. Aryans use their homes for much more than child socialization. We
leave other uses of the home to our discussion in the next chapter.
5. We studied Aryan families from all branches of the movement by
staying in their homes, observing their daily patterns and their
relationships with other families, and interviewing them about how they
sustained their beliefs and socialized their children to carry on Aryan
ideas. We visited Aryans living in small, rural towns and also spoke to Ku
Klux Klan, racist skinheads, and neo-Nazi families attending large white
power events such as the Aryan Nations gatherings. We also interviewed
Aryan Nations families who lived full-time near the organization’s
compound, devoting their lives to the Aryan Nations church and Pastor
Richard Butler’s vision of a white separatist nation in the Pacific
Northwest. Finally, we observed and interviewed neo-Nazi families living
in Southern California.
6. Seth, interviewed September 19, 2003.
7. Jessie is estranged from her fourth child, who lives in the Midwest with
the parents of one of Jessie’s ex-husbands.
8. Seth, interviewed July 19, 2004.
9. Kathy, SWAS activist, interviewed June 26, 1997.
10. We never directly observed physical punishment that crossed the line
into child abuse; however, we recently discovered that Ronnie was placed
in foster care due to child abuse charges stemming from Jessie hitting
Ronnie with a blunt object across his back that resulted in injuries
requiring medical attention.
11. Todd, interviewed June 1, 2002.
12. Anti-Defamation League, “Public Enemy Number 1 (PENI),”
http://archive.adl.org/learn/ext_us/peni.html (accessed February 19,
2007); Pete Simi, Lowell Smith, and Ann Stacey, “From Punk Kids to Public
Enemy Number One,” Deviant Behavior: An Interdisciplinary Journal 29
(2008): 753–74.
13. Kate, interviewed June 2, 2002.
14. Randall Collins, as quoted in James Jasper, “The Emotions of Protest:
Affective and Reactive Emotions in and around Social Movements,”
Sociological Forum 13 (1998): 399. Hate and other “reactive emotions” are
crucial to the relationships that galvanize WPM members against their
enemies. But to fully understand WPM persistence, we must also account
for a range of “vitalizing” and “reciprocal” feelings such as friendship and
camaraderie. For further discussion of these issues, see Verta Taylor,
“Emotions and Identity in Women’s Self-Help Movements,” in Self,
Identity, and Social Movements, ed. Sheldon Stryker, Timothy J. Owens,
and Robert W. White (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000),
271–99.
15. Ryan, Colorado activist, interviewed June 29, 2004.
16. Brandy, AN activist, interviewed May 23, 1997.
17. Beth, Christian Identity member, interviewed June 12, 2000.
18. Michelle, Colorado activist, interviewed June 29, 2004.
19. Kathleen Blee, Inside Organized Racism: Women in the Hate Movement
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
20. Darren, SWAS member, interviewed May 20, 1998.
21. A small group of skinheads from Nevada and Arizona founded
Southwest Aryan Separatists (SWAS) in the late 1980s. The most
prominent member, Darren, identified as a skate punk during his early
teens, started a punk rock band when he was seventeen, and became a
skinhead after listening to some borrowed tapes with Christian Identity
sermons that professed Aryan supremacy. Darren and his friends began to
call themselves SWAS, got inked with swastika tattoos, met regularly at
one member’s crash pad, and began brawling with black and Hispanic
gangs in Phoenix. They intimidated Jewish community organizations by
crashing their meetings and holding small marches during which they
chanted about Aryans being the true children of Israel. During the Ruby
Ridge standoff in 1992, some of them traveled to Idaho to protest against
the federal government, or what they called “Satan’s forces.” Some core
members began calling for armed insurgency, although most in the group
were not convinced the time was right for such extreme measures. The
controversy splintered the group, with the majority moving to the rural
Nevada area where we contacted them and were invited to visit.
22. Darren, SWAS, interviewed August 13, 1997.
23. Darren, SWAS, interviewed August 13, 1997.
24. Bill, SWAS activist, interviewed January 22, 1997.
25. Darren, SWAS activist, interviewed March 30, 1999.
26. Mindy, SWAS member, interviewed January 23, 1997.
27. Kathy, SWAS member, interviewed June 26, 1997.
28. The Operation White Care project is similar to the efforts of the group
Women for Aryan Unity (WAU), which has sponsored a number of
movement activities, including “Welcome to the World Little One,” an
initiative to secure the future of Aryan folk “one child at a time.” During
the initiative in 2005, WAU attempted to coordinate women throughout
the movement to send gift packages to help new mothers with a
newborn’s first needs, such as receiving blankets, baby wipes, and
diapers. WAU described Operation White Care project as a way to “say
thank you to all the moms and dads bringing new Aryan children into the
world.” The WAU website that originally promoted the “Welcome to the
World Little One” Initiative (www.w-a-u.net/baby.html, last accessed July
14, 2005), has since been modified several times as the site managers
removed its most extremist elements. The group emphasizes that they are
“United under the banner of folkish ideals and preservation,” which
covers its racism with notions of Nordic cultural heritage
(http://www.wau14.com, accessed April 28, 2015).
29. Blee, Inside Organized Racism. Blee’s research demonstrated nuances
in gender relations among movement members. Blee describes females
who are often ideologically relegated to subordinate positions, but in
practice they occupy important positions of power. Aryan women hold
groups together by helping recruit new members and organizing events
that retain existing members.
30. Andrew Macdonald [William Pierce], Hunter (Hillsboro, WV: National
Vanguard Books, 1989).
31. A New Jersey couple reportedly did, in fact, name their son Adolf
Hitler. The news came to light when a local grocery store refused to sign a
birthday cake with the name. The couple also named their daughter
Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell, after Nazi SS commander Heinrich
Himmler. Douglas B. Brill, “Holland Township Man Names Son after Adolf
Hitler,” Warren County News Express-Times, December 14, 2008,
http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/warren-county/index.ssf?/base/news-
0/122923112231930.xml&coll=3&thispage=1 (accessed January 5, 2009).
32. Randy, SoCal Skin, interviewed February 25, 2001.
33. Cal, SoCal Skin, interviewed August 20, 2002.
34. Baxter, Aryan Nations activist, interviewed May 23, 1997.
35. Carrie, SWAS member, interviewed January 27, 1997.
36. Brenda, SWAS activist, interviewed January 19, 1999.
37. Stormfront forum main web page, http://www.stormfront.org
(accessed January 7, 2001).
38. Melanie, Southern California neo-Nazi, interviewed August 21, 2002.
39. Cal, SoCal Skin, interviewed July 15, 2004.
40. Janine, Aryan mother, interviewed June 20, 2004.
 Chapter 4
Hate Parties
To have people over, get the bonfire going, the more people come
around the more they want to be here. We’re building the
community we desire. —Darren, SWAS member[1]

Bonfire parties, house parties, backyard barbecues, Bible study

meetings, bars, and campouts all serve as gathering places where Aryans
nurture white power identity. They use these contexts to display their
ideals and commitments through their talk, dress, and ritualism. At first
glance, it may be difficult to see the overtly political nature of these
gatherings. Their form mirrors very ordinary social events. But a closer
look reveals these occasions as clearly political movement activity.

It all seemed so familiar. Thirty or so people in a field, under the

stars, warming themselves by a bonfire, drinking beer and carousing, as
music blared from a car stereo nearby. I couldn’t count the number of
times I had attended a party like this in high school and college. But this
party was also very different. I stared across the flames at five boisterous
guys telling a string of jokes about “muds” and “kikes.” Every few seconds
the flickering fire illuminated their shaved heads, swastika tattoos, and
clothes emblazoned with symbols of hate.
The music’s distorted guitar and thumping bass drum suddenly
became louder, bringing me out of my trance. Rich, a burly, heavily
tattooed, nineteen-year-old skinhead, shouted, “Hey, I just put on some
Skrewdriver! Are there any Jews out there? Ha ha!” He gave a Nazi salute
toward the blasting stereo. Others followed his lead and responded to his
question with “Fuck no!” A few seconds later the song began—“Nigger!
Nigger! Out! Out!”—and a couple nearby started singing along, arm in
arm. Soon, the entire group joined in a chorus of “Sieg heil!” and “White
power!” and a collective energy moved across the gathering. I was
impressed by their camaraderie and scared by their message.
I knew only a few people at the party. My invitation had come from
Darren and Mindy, the Southwest Aryan Separatist (SWAS) couple that I
had made contact with a few months earlier. They had twelve acres in the
high Nevada desert and had mentioned to me that they regularly hosted
these parties. I asked whether I could attend, not knowing quite what to
expect other than it would be a party for racists.
Most of the partygoers were either young male skinheads or SWAS
families. Some families had brought their teenage children, who mingled
with a few other teens from the county high school. When the Sieg heil
salutes stopped and the crescendo of chants died down, I turned to one
of the shaved-headed teenagers standing nearby, introduced myself, and
after some idle small talk, I asked, “So how did you hook up with these
guys?” He replied, “I met a couple ’em at a music show down in Quincy
about a year ago and they’ve been kind of looking out for me since.”
“Oh yeah? Like how?” I asked. “Well, just teaching me about being a
skinhead and letting me read some of the books, giving me tapes and CDs
to play.”
As we talked, one of his friends joined the conversation. Cindy was
fifteen, and although she knew of SWAS, she said she wasn’t a member.
She came to the party to “just hang out and have fun.”
After a while, Darren introduced me to Russ, a twenty-something
construction worker who was new to SWAS. Russ told me that, like many
other SWAS adherents, he had grown up in a strict, conservative family
that held some racist views, but he had decided that he was more radical.
He wasted no time putting me on the spot.
“You seem like you’re really trying to take all this in,” he said in a
tone I took as suspicion. He went on, “I can tell you’re not sure about all
of this. I can tell you’re trying to hide certain things.”
He was right, of course, and I admitted it. “You’re right, I guess. I’m
just trying to learn as much as possible.” He seemed satisfied, for the
moment, and he quickly turned our conversation toward the intricacies of
Christian Identity beliefs. I just listened.

Aryans need these informal gatherings to sustain a shared identity

against the anti-Aryan world.[2] Cal, a SoCal Skin, explained the
importance of intimate, informal gatherings for sustaining the movement:
“When you live in a world like we do, you have to find places where you
don’t have to hold back on being racist; where other people feel and act
the same way you do. The parties are definitely part of it. You get a
chance to come together in a small setting where it’s easier to know
people and build friendships.”[3]
Aryans build their friendships by sharing personal stories about how
they became Aryans, the injustices they face, and how they persevere.
Their talk evokes feelings of pride and pleasure about being an Aryan and
hope about the movement’s future. By congregating with other like-
minded activists, Aryans cultivate and sustain an oppositional racial
consciousness.

GETTING BACK TO “GOD’S WHITE WILDERNESS”

Like most Aryan gatherings, Darren and Mindy’s bonfire parties were
much more than an excuse to drink beer and carouse. SWAS members talk
of the spirituality of their experience. On their land far outside of town,
under the stars and beside the primal warmth of the fire, they feel that
they are communing with nature, or more specifically, “white nature.”
They invest nature with feelings of deep racial purity.[4] They revel in the
feeling of “getting away” to places where they can stand under the stars
before God’s sublime universe and imagine that the universe was made
solely for whites.
SWAS members, Southern California neo-Nazis, and Pacific Northwest
Aryans that we observed incorporate a get-back-to-white-nature ethos
into outings like hikes and campouts. They use excursions to places like
the Sierra Nevada Mountains to amplify feelings of autonomy,
transcendence, and faith in white power.
Bill, a SWAS founder, said: “The hikes we do up here have a religious
significance. The hikes get us back in nature. They get us back into that
spirit of living and being close to the land.”[5]
On a group hike with six other Aryans, James, a twenty-three-year-old
SWAS member, stopped at the edge of a cliff, gazed out over the canyon,
and declared to the group:

It’s when you come here and stop and look around, that’s when you
realize your racial destiny and heritage. This is what we struggle for,
 the right to maintain this kind of purity. You know, the way things
are going, thanks to the multicultural third-world invasion, if it
continues, there won’t be places like this for much longer. I’d sacrifice
my life to keep that from happening.[6]

SWAS members spoke of their fantasy to take over the Sierras and
turn it into the pure white space they feel it is meant to be. Gazing
skyward at a majestic limestone monolith, Erik, a SWAS veteran, talked
reverentially of hanging a gigantic Nazi banner across the cliff face. He
said, “We want to reclaim this for the true people of Israel.”[7] When we
asked Darren directly about the meaning of the wilderness experiences,
he said: “We consider the hikes and campouts like a kind of racial and
religious retreat. We look at them as much more than just having fun on
the side of a mountain. These are our opportunities to come together. It’s
a time for us to be together.”[8]
Pacific Northwestern Aryans also invest their region with racialized
religious meanings. Gus, a Christian Identity believer, said he feels
physically and ideologically protected from the “polluted” mainstream.
“This part of the country is still white and we’re trying to keep it this way.
You come up here and you thank God there are still a few places like
this.”[9] Gus and his Aryan Nations comrades construe their wilderness
excursions as racial bonding that helps them remain committed to white
power ideals despite living in the culturally diverse society they despise.

Aryan Bible Study

SWAS members make the spiritual meanings of their outings even
more explicit by studying scripture in what they believe is God’s white
nature. Darren and Mindy alternate between Bible study hikes and Bible
study gatherings in their home. Darren explained: “We have Bible study
classes once a week or whenever I can get people together. You know, we
meet at someone’s house or go hiking and study the scripture.”[10]
Bible study meetings help members elaborate and refine white
power spirituality and ritualistically commit to their cause. The
movement’s most religious branches organize home-based Bible study
gatherings that typically begin with a racially themed prayer followed by
study of biblical passages. Members interpret passages as evidence of
God’s favor for Aryans. Some groups chant white power religious slogans
as part of initiation rites and commitment ceremonies, where members
pledge themselves to God and the movement.
Many meetings we saw were planned weekly affairs with regular
times and days. These gatherings draw from five to twenty members to
explore biblical insights that inform their racist ideals. Members of
Christian Identity sects, like SWAS and Aryan Nations, along with
adherents to Odinism and Asatru, use these gatherings to reject the
watered-down Christian rhetoric they see dominating other religious
settings.
Sessions organized by small, independent movement churches may
attract up to fifty members at a time, and congregations may include
several hundred members. Prior to the demise of his Aryan Nations
compound in 2001, Richard Butler held weekly prayer services and Bible
study classes for twenty to thirty local Aryans. Sarah, a veteran Aryan
Nations member and mother of three, recalled the gratitude she felt
about the congregation’s support:

We’re blessed that we can actually worship together the way Yahweh
intended us to. We have the freedom to raise our hand [as she
salutes Nazi-style], to give thanks to our Lord, to show our Lord that
we continue to respect the laws of racial separation that are
prescribed in the Bible, and that one day in the future this will be the
law of the land.[11]

Most Aryan religious gatherings occur at homes, where members are

assured privacy and control. As we saw in chapter 3, the home is an
important site for white power gatherings of all kinds. The most common
type of white power gathering at homes is the house party.

HOUSE PARTIES AND CRASH PADS

The following ethnographic account offers a glimpse into a typical neo-
Nazi house party.
 It was a warm summer night in Orange County, California, just the
kind of idyllic, top-down, “wind blowing through your hair” night
mythologized in countless songs and stories about Southern California. I
was driving Seth home after an Aryan house party we’d been to that
night. We had just dropped off his friend Paul at his apartment and began
heading across town to Seth’s crash pad when he turned to me and said,
“We only wish you were one of us. I mean it’s cool what you’re doing
trying to get it from our perspective, but we want you to be one of us.
We’ve never given anyone access like this.”
Trying to deflect this clear invitation, I replied, “Didn’t you guys take
the people from American History X all around?” “Yeah but not like this,”
Seth said. “We never took them to parties and over to people’s houses for
get-togethers.” I felt strangely flattered but wondered about the cost for
this unprecedented access. I quickly got my answer.
After a pause, Seth’s tone changed. This was a quirk of his that I was
becoming accustomed to. He turned and said, “Just keep in mind if it
turns out you’re a cop, I’ll personally hunt you down and slit your fucking
throat, after I kill your family.”
Strangely, death threats were also something I was becoming
accustomed to. I told him, as I always had, that I was a sociologist, not a
cop, and then tried to convince myself that he was just posturing as part
of his skinhead bravado, even as I knew that some Aryans were not
content with aggressive words alone. Seth’s threat capped a long and
interesting night.
The party in Costa Mesa had been filled with Aryans. I’d seen plenty
of small Aryan parties where about a dozen white power friends hung
out, drank beer, and commiserated about race problems. But this was the
first large white power house party I’d been able to get into.
My guides were Aryan Front Skins. I knew Seth the best. He’d always
been the most open to me, inviting me to meet his family and offering to
introduce me around to his Aryan friends. Seth’s band mates Paul and Jay
were friendly to me the few times I’d met them before, but I was not
nearly as familiar with them.
We got to the party early because Seth, Paul, and Jay were
performing and wanted to set up their equipment before others arrived.
They called their band Hate Train. They were using the party for rehearsal
before they began a run of bar shows in the local white power music
scene.
We pulled into the driveway of a modest, single-story, ranch-style
stucco house with a single-car garage. It was on a corner lot, which was a
little bigger than most others in the neighborhood. The backyard was not
walled off. Only a small picket fence separated it from the sidewalk.
Paul knocked, and the front door swung open. Donny, beer in hand,
welcomed us in with a big smile. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, and
his style seemed more rockabilly than neo-Nazi. His medium-length brown
hair was slicked back from his muttonchop sideburns. I learned later that
Donny was a punk rocker as an adolescent and eventually turned to
Nazism in his rebellion against some of the left-wing elements in the punk
scene. In his spare time he promoted white power music and ran a web-
based company that trafficked in hate rock. He also worked full-time as a
manager at a telephone company, where he concealed his Nazi beliefs so
that he could, as he called it, “infiltrate the system.”
From the outside there was nothing to mark the place as a white
power haven. The décor inside was a different story, however. As I
scanned the rooms, it was clear that this was a headquarters for white
power activism. National Alliance and Klan leaflets were piled on the
kitchen table. Photos of Don posing with skinheads and other Aryans at
music shows hung on walls around the house. Don covered his
refrigerator with Aryan photos and promotional posters for white power
music shows. One prominent display showed Don and WAR leader Tom
Metzger shaking hands and embracing. There were also many photos of
young, pretty female activists dressed in revealing clothes marked with
Aryan symbols.
Other Aryans trickled in, and within an hour, more than fifty people
packed the house. Most of them looked to be in their late twenties or
early thirties, although a few were clearly teenagers. Two-thirds of the
attendees were male. They wore jeans or cargo shorts and T-shirts.
Swastika, SS, and German iron cross tattoos on their arms clearly marked
many of them as devoted Nazis. The women dressed in jeans and T-shirts.
Hate Train began to play songs about white unity and the racial
struggle. Most of the lyrics were difficult to make out, as the loud,
distorted guitar and heavy drums overshadowed their vocals. Some words
were clear, however—“nigger,” “white power,” and “Aryan pride.”
Partygoers packed the living room where the band played. Only a
couple of feet separated the front row of people from Seth and his
bandmates. People stood shoulder to shoulder, making the room
claustrophobic. No one seemed to mind, though. Skinheads sang along to
the choruses, gave Sieg heil salutes, and periodically chanted, “White
power! White power!” at almost deafening levels.
Hate Train played nonstop for about an hour. As the set wore on,
some men became more animated, clasping hands and shoulders and
bouncing to the beat. Those who could not fit into the room craned their
necks from the kitchen and bedroom hall to see the band and the crowd.
I was anxious in a room so tightly packed with Aryans. The band
members were my “protection” should someone question my presence.
But no one hassled me, since only those in the know had been invited. I
presumed that others thought I was one of them, but I could not shake
my worries that word might spread of an outsider in their midst.
While standing there, my mind flashed back to the story Paul had
told me earlier in the day about the newspaper reporter who was invited
to a Hammerskin party in Texas but by the end of the night found that he
was no longer welcome. A group of Hammers took him from the house,
nearly beat him to death, and left him in a drainage ditch. I took that as a
warning and felt on edge during the night, like the moment I caught the
eye of a skinhead whom I did not know. Dressed in full-on skinhead garb
and already close to drunk, he just stared at me while leaning over to one
of his friends, mouthing the words, “That’s the guy who wants to study
us.”
When Hate Train finished its set I had my guides back. I listened to
conversations about ZOG, the global Jewish conspiracy, the “mud
problem,” and small victories for the movement. The party felt like a
private mini-rally as they lamented the injustices they faced.
I watched closely as two veteran Hammerskins from Florida started a
conversation with a group of young skinheads. Quickly, Ray, a tanned,
muscular skinhead with racist tattoos on both arms, turned his attention
toward the two youngest skinheads. He motioned them toward the
corner, drew them closer, and in a deep, guttural voice intoned, “We are
the warriors! That’s our God-given racially determined destiny. We have
to remain strong. We have to keep healthy. That’s why I love hanging out
with my brothers because that’s what this does; it keeps me proud, it
keeps me strong.”
The youngsters listened intently and nodded in approval.

Whites Only!
House parties like Don’s are the most common occasions for small
groups of Aryans. They occur at private homes, where entrée is often
tightly controlled. The parties give activists a chance to connect with one
another by displaying their allegiances, telling stories, and participating in
Aryan rituals. They flaunt their beliefs by way of T-shirts, pullovers, and
jackets marked with insignias of hate bands, white power group names,
and Aryan codes. They uncover their tattoos, putting them on full display,
and openly greet one another with Aryan gestures. The house itself is
decorated for the event with swastikas, Confederate flags, and other
movement symbols.
In these “whites only” environments, hosts closely scrutinize who
enters the home to keep out nosy neighbors, police, and antiracists. At
small gatherings that do not draw much attention, keeping the space free
of outsiders is a simple task. But the scene changes at larger parties where
unknown people show up and entry is more difficult to control. Hosts and
their friends take turns watching the door to ensure they know who is
coming in and going out. They closely scrutinize strangers for Aryan
tattoos, clothing, or other indicators of being true to the cause. If they do
not conform, hosts and friends confront and interrogate them about their
background and affiliations, forcing them out of the party if they fail the
test.
As celebrations grow and become more raucous, however, attention
to who comes and goes can wane, so eventually almost anyone can enter.
When entry opens up, a mood of defiance seems to build. The message
for non-Aryans is: “C’mon on in and see who we are. We dare you. If you
don’t agree, fuck off.”
Confrontations are especially likely when strangers enter whom
Aryans suspect of having traces of African, Latino, Asian, or other
nonwhite ancestry. In one instance, a drunken Indonesian neighbor
wandered into an Aryan backyard barbecue that had been hopping for
several hours. He quickly drew attention from several partygoers, and
Smitty, a veteran skinhead just released from his second stint in prison,
sauntered over and began questioning him: “Who the fuck are you and
what the fuck are you doing here? Do you know where you are? This is a
fucking white power party! White-fucking-power! Get the fuck out, you
fucking mud!”
Staring blankly and appearing confused, the neighbor stood his
ground. Smitty drew closer and readied for an attack until another
partygoer intervened, telling the neighbor that, for his own good, he
needed to “get the fuck out.” The command hit home, and the neighbor
quickly left.
The party’s normal pace resumed, albeit with a new focus for
conversations. The night’s theme became the “drunk Indian who almost
got beat down,” which provided a jumping-off point for commentary
about various aspects of Aryan superiority and power, along with mock
fighting moves to mimic what violence might have been done to the
neighbor had he stayed. The confrontation was a display of Aryan
bravado that set the boundary for the “pure white” space.

Symbolic Tales, Myths, and Meanings in House Parties

Aryans use house parties to swap stories about who they are and
what they want. The settings are filled with a cacophony of Aryan voices
spinning tales about what it means to be Aryan, the injustices they face,
how they became enlightened to the cause, and small victories against
ZOG. Their talk amplifies solidarity and purpose among veterans and
introduces initiates to the Aryan culture of hate.[12]

The Meaning of Aryan

White power members talk incessantly about what it means to be

Aryan. In particular, they imagine themselves as aware of aspects of the
world that non-Aryans do not see. This enlightened worldview illuminates
the secret cabal of ZOG, pure whiteness, signs of a coming race war, and a
fine-tuned reading of anti-Aryan themes in popular media and politics.
During a Southern California house party, Dylan stood at the center of six
Aryans, regaling them with his disbelief of whites “not down with the
cause.”

What baffles me is how so many white people can’t see what’s going
on before them, or worse, they don’t care. I don’t see how anybody
in their right mind could look at a blond, blue-eyed woman with a
Negro, with mulatto children and look upon that and see that’s not
wrong.[13]

Aryan race myths require leaps of faith that can only be sustained in
a context where others constantly nourish them. Aryans talk about the
need for collective support to sustain their views. Paul, a SoCal Skin,
declared to several other Aryans at a small party in his apartment:

We really need people to stand up right now. The only way to get
through this is by leaning on the others in your race who see through
all this bullshit. We are the only ones who know. Without that moral
support, we could never make it, we’d never last as a people, and our
culture really would die off.[14]

These informal discussions play a central part in both defining and

sustaining Aryan extremism.
Aryans tend to idealize themselves as a special group with hard and
fast boundaries that define insiders versus outsiders. But some
conversations in parties and other Aryan free spaces highlight how
members work to clarify the essence of being an Aryan. For instance, at a
bonfire party we watched as confusion brewed among a group of SWAS
members over marriage and race mixing. Russ claimed that he “might be
willing to marry an Indian or Mexican, but not a black, that’s just wrong.”
Visibly disturbed, Mindy replied, “That’s disgusting, they’re spics,
how can you say that?”
“I only meant maybe,” he responded.
 The others launched into a vigorous debate to negotiate and clarify
the boundaries of Aryan relationships along strictly white racial lines. This
conversation not only clarified group norms about Aryan relations and
marriage but also pressured Russ to acknowledge his momentary lapse of
reason and draw him back into the fold.

Injustice Tales

Aryans define themselves by the alleged injustices they face. Their

conversations about Aryan identity invariably lead into morality and
injustice tales that highlight just how the deck is stacked against whites.
Aryan injustice talk revolves mostly around worries about the
preservation and advancement of the Aryan race.[15] They lament to one
another about the slow death of white culture and Aryan superiority.
They attribute their problems to broad conspiracies against the white
race.[16]
Aryans see ZOG clandestinely distorting whites’ “true and righteous
racial claims” while promoting “sick values to contaminate the Aryan mind
by controlling television, media, music, art, fashion, religion, science, and
education.”[17] An Orange County Skin explained to his comrades during a
backyard party: “In today’s world it’s a crime to be a white heterosexual
male. Through the government and through the media, we’re always
getting the short end of the stick and getting screwed.”[18]
A WAR Skin replied by pointing out the injustice he saw in the
uneven treatment of races that want to express their racial pride: “How
come a black guy can call another black guy a nigger and I can’t? How
come a guy with brown pride is cultural and white pride is racist? How
come we need affirmative action, if everybody is equal? Why do we have
to stack the deck for nonwhites?”
Aryans are particularly quick to talk with new recruits at parties
about such injustices. We watched as veterans told tale after tale of
dramatic conversion experiences that took them from “racial naïveté to
racist enlightenment.”[19] Many of these tales highlight schoolyard fights
with African Americans and Hispanics as the catalyst that turned them
into racial extremists.[20]
 At an Idaho house party, Matt, an Aryan Nations veteran, told seven
young skinheads gathered around him that his moment of racial
consciousness came when “I was stabbed during the 1980s during the
racial uproar [over desegregation].” He crouched into a fighting stance and
slashed through the air as if holding a knife. “Goddamn niggers! Sliced me
across the stomach! Look here.” He lifted his shirt to reveal a dark, eight-
inch scar across his abdomen. “That just showed me their mentality,” he
hissed. “Why should I have to live with these animals who’d rather see me
dead? It don’t make sense.” Then, he paused for effect, looking each
young skinhead in the eye. “That’s when I knew.”[21]
We watched similar scenes repeated in house parties in Southern
California. These groups were the most active recruiters we saw. They
organized most of their house parties with the clear intention of
identifying “freshcuts,” a skinhead term for young, new recruits, and
bringing them into the fold.
Most recruitment parties are overtly Aryan. Veterans show off their
racist tattoos, white power clothing, and other signs of affiliation to
impress the uninitiated. But not all recruitment parties are so
straightforward. Racist skinheads also hold incognito recruitment parties
by inviting audience members at local punk and metal concerts to an
after-show party. Racist skinheads strategically play down their extremism
at these parties to soften the shock to newcomers. They purposely tone
down the racist décor in the house and feel out partygoers to determine
their receptivity to white power ideas. If veterans sense that enough of
the partyers might be receptive, they begin to expose their ideology by
uncovering their tattoos, playing Aryan music, and talking with partyers
about white power beliefs.
Veterans use toned-down versions of their injustice tales to
introduce their ideology to neophytes. Eschewing hard-core words like
nigger, veterans convey injustices against whites that led them into
activism. Jack, an Orange County Skin, told his conversion tale to three
punk rockers in a corner at one recruitment party: “I was barely fifteen
years old and all the white kids were being harassed. You know how it is
with all the black music, rap music, break dancing, and everybody wants
to be Negro. The white kids were ashamed of their heritage.” He went on,
with an air of disbelief, “They were ashamed to be white! Like you, I just
rejected all that. I became the opposite of all these other misled white
kids. They were cowering. They had no spines. It was my way of rebelling
against the liberals.”[22]

Fortifying Tales

Aryans have relatively few grand tales of success. The race war has
not happened and they remain relatively powerless. So members talk
about small victories that foreshadow greater future triumphs. Their
fortifying tales convey ideas about Aryan destiny and the righteousness of
the racial struggle to sustain members’ belief in the movement.[23] Stories
of small victories help them to persist against the odds.
A common skinhead fortifying tale revolves around the idealized
image of the Aryan warrior. Aryans tell stories of battles that, while they
may be embellishments or outright lies, dramatize Aryan courage,
strength, honor, and fearlessness in the face of their enemies. Ross, a
SoCal Skin, related a superhuman feat to a group gathered at an after-
concert party:

So we want to get in this party, and the guy is saying, “You can’t
come in.” My brother punches him, and all of a sudden you see this
crowd of fuckin’ niggers coming from the party, and they know we’re
skinheads, and my brother is standing in the doorway. Every hit was
a knockout, and I’m not fuckin’ exaggerating. My brother had a pile
of fifteen or twenty niggers in front of him. Finally he turns around
and says, “Get in the car. Let’s go.” That’s my brother, he’s a super
skinhead.[24]

This talk of small victories often concerns defensive tactics used to

keep white neighborhoods “clean and safe” from racial enemies. We
listened to conversations about defending Aryan turf from African
American and Hispanic “intrusions.” During a house party in Anaheim,
California, Angie recounted a recent incident in her neighborhood when
she noticed an African American woman looking at a house for sale near
her own home: “I was looking out my front window and noticed this black
chick walking around the neighbor’s house that’s for sale. So I walked out
and told her the house was no longer available. No way I’m letting some
nigger move in next to us.”
Her fellow Aryans praised her and told several similar stories. Of
course, people who do not identify with extremist hate also may voice
racist statements. In Aryan circles, however, these statements carry the
weight of intense hatred and violent ideals. The group agreed that it was
next to impossible to “keep neighborhoods white,” but anytime Aryans
can stem the tide, they feel they win a small victory against ZOG and racial
genocide.
Aryans also find small victories when old acquaintances affirm a
member’s racist convictions. Roger, a WAR activist, talked of frequent run-
ins with former high school friends who seemed to acknowledge Aryan
principles:

Oh yeah, I run into people I went to high school with. At the time
they didn’t agree with me, and then all these years later I run into
them and they say, “Hey, all those things you were saying, you were
right you know. You hit the nail right on the head.” That’s real
encouraging, you know?[25]

This alleged proof of the righteousness of hate gives Aryans like

Roger confidence to keep fighting in the face of disbelievers. These
fortifying myths and other morality tales are a form of Aryan ritualism
that reproduces white power culture.[26]

Crash Pads
Young neo-Nazi and racist skinhead crash pads have the look and feel
of nonstop house parties. These Aryan free spaces resemble frat houses
for young racists, where white power culture draws nascent Aryans
deeper into extreme hate.[27] Young skinheads organize crash pads in
houses, mobile homes, and apartments. These spaces shelter comrades
and provide opportunities to carouse with others who believe in the
cause.
 Our brief story of Damon’s house offers a glimpse into a typical
skinhead crash pad.

Seth asked me to drive him to “a friend’s house,” but he didn’t tell

me why. I was leaving that afternoon but had some time and agreed to
take him. I had only known Seth for a few weeks, but it was clear to me
that he was holding something back about where we were going.
We drove across Riverside and twenty minutes later turned into a
dilapidated neighborhood. After a couple more turns, Seth said, “Right
there,” motioning for me to pull over and park in front of a ramshackle
two-story house with chipped and faded yellow paint, a large front porch,
and an old Ford truck in the driveway.
We got out, and as we were closing our car doors, Seth looked across
and, in a grave voice, said, “Look, you don’t wanna mess with this guy.
He’ll cut your fuckin’ head off if he thinks you’re causing trouble. Just
don’t ask any questions. But if you do start talking with him or any others
in there, make sure they know what you’re doing. You don’t want them
thinking you’re trying to hide something.”
The “guy” was Damon, an ex-con and a badass Aryan Front skinhead.
He was six feet tall, bald, and stocky. His tank top showed off his muscular
body fully sleeved—covered neck to wrists—with racist tattoos. Seth told
me later that he had gotten many of the tattoos in prison while serving a
five-year sentence for attacking three Latinos in a city park.
I followed Seth through the front door. He greeted Damon in the
middle of the living room, and Seth told me to wait while they both
walked into the kitchen. I scanned the living room. A swastika banner and
Confederate flag hung on opposite walls. The house smelled like a dirty
ashtray. The floor was littered with fast-food wrappers. The couch was
ripped and had cigarette burns all over it. The rickety wooden coffee table
in front of the couch was covered with rows of beer cans, bottles, and
white power CDs.
Seth and Damon were standing in the kitchen, where I could see dirty
dishes overflowing the sink. I overheard Seth say, “No, he’s not a cop, you
don’t need to worry about that.”
Damon stayed silent, stared at me, and nodded his head slightly. He
seemed willing to tolerate me on Seth’s word, but nothing more. I was
uncomfortable but decided to walk into the kitchen. Seth told me to wait
while they went down into Damon’s basement to talk more.
A woman who looked to be in her middle thirties sat at the kitchen
table looking down at a small pile of white powder. She picked up the
straw, looked up at me, and asked in a tired, hoarse voice, “Do you want
some?” I thanked her for the offer but declined. She didn’t seem to mind
and quickly returned her attention to the powder on the table in front of
her.
She looked like the stereotypical tweaker. Tangled, unwashed hair;
acne-covered skin; and an edginess that reminded me of a hyperactive
child. Just beyond the kitchen window a beat-up swing set and a few
other toys were scattered about. My stomach churned as I contemplated
the idea of raising children in this environment.
As I shuffled back into the living room, Seth came out, motioned to
the door, and said, “Let’s go.” He never told me what he and Damon were
up to.
On the drive back, Seth described Damon’s house as a place where
skins “partied and crashed all the time.” He had seen at least twenty
people living there at times, sleeping on the couches and floors. Many of
them were new to Southern California and needed a place to crash
temporarily “until they got their bearings.” Damon hosted white power
bands in town for gigs and had house concerts for local bands.
Seth took me to Damon’s crashpad four more times over the next
two years. Each visit was for a party. Two of the gatherings were relatively
low-key affairs with about twenty skins. The other two parties were rowdy
blowouts with more than fifty Aryans packing the house and spilling out
into the yard. At both parties I had expected the police to show up for
noise and nuisance complaints. They never came, and I wondered
whether neighbors were simply too intimidated to call.
At each party, duffle bags and backpacks with sleeping bags were
strewn throughout the house, a clear sign that some of the partyers had
been traveling and were probably new to the scene. Alcohol and drugs
flowed freely, and white power music blared from the stereo in the living
room. The skinheads talked about the Southern California hate music
scene, gang battles, and ZOG.
The ritualism was always the most fascinating part of these parties.
At each party, eight or nine skinheads formed a circle in the living room,
arms clasped around each other’s necks, and stomped and chanted in
unison to hate rock. At times, it felt as if the floors would cave in. An
Aryan Front tattoo artist set up shop in the kitchen and inked several
members as part of their initiation into the group.
Damon and his comrades used his crash pad as a key recruitment
space. At each party, seven or eight teenagers shuffled around, appearing
unsure of their place in the group. The veteran skinheads called them
“freshcuts” and throughout the night chatted them up about what they
thought of the scene, what they knew about the white cause, and
whether they were “down with white power.” Damon’s friends had
already identified these youngsters as recruitable, although I wasn’t quite
sure how they did this. Seth said they wouldn’t have been brought to
Damon’s if they weren’t already associated with other Aryans.[28]
Most of the regulars I met at Damon’s crash pad were male
skinheads. For them, Damon’s place was not just a hangout but one of the
few places they could meet with other extremists like themselves.

In the years of field observations and interviews to follow, we

learned that Damon’s crash pad was just one of many across the country
where skinheads stay. Crash pads are filled with Aryan symbolism, racist
books, hate music fanzines, and political pamphlets. White power
banners and slogans cover the walls. The most extreme crash pads also
decorate the exterior of the home with Nazi banners and graffiti-style
writing boasting Aryan slogans.
Weapons and race war are consistent topics of crash pad
conversations. We watched members pass around for inspection guns,
knives, and brass knuckles as they discussed urban survival strategies and
the coming race war. Crash pads are also used as staging areas for
leafleting racist literature, public protests, and “city walks,” in which
skinheads cruise urban areas looking for confrontations with racial
enemies.[29]
Crash pads vary in permanence. Skinheads seem to have an attitude
of planned obsolescence toward their hangouts, typically treating them
with reckless abandon. Most crash pads are in disrepair, and the walls,
ceilings, and floors are typically strewn with crude Aryan graffiti.
Aryan gang crash pads like those created by PEN1 are temporary
spaces where people congregate for days or weeks until either they are
compelled to leave by property owners or police or new opportunities
arise elsewhere.[30] PEN1’s members move weekly between motels and
dilapidated apartments around Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, and San
Bernardino Counties. They take over these locations, transforming them
into crash pads as they party, graffiti the space, and conduct their criminal
operations. They then leave them demolished. Ace, a PEN1 skinhead, said:
“We never really claim territory, you know, we just think that wherever we
are is our territory. That’s how PEN1’s always been. Why claim specific
territory? We don’t need to say this street or block is ours. It’s all
ours.”[31] This attitude reflects the idealized notion of Aryan supremacy,
which gives them natural dominion.
Veteran skinheads with some financial success will sometimes open
their homes as crash pads for younger Aryans. Clay, a founding member of
the Southern California skinhead gang Aryan Reich Skins, moved to
Phoenix, Arizona. There he started a mortgage company and purchased a
new two-story home in an affluent Phoenix suburb. He immediately
offered the home to young skinhead recruits as a space to live and be
immersed in white power culture.
Unlike most Aryan crash pads we saw, where ten or twenty racist
skinheads cycled in and out every few weeks, the scene at Clay’s was
stable. Few skinheads moved in and out, partly because Clay wanted to
keep a low profile among his neighbors and saw his home as an informal
halfway house where skinheads could congregate, find some stability, and
make a new start with school and jobs. He expected them to follow his
example and give money and time back to the Aryan cause.
Most crash pads are semipermanent spaces somewhere between
Clay’s secret house and PEN1’s temporary motel rooms. Crash pads carry
reputations in skinhead circles as gathering places where Aryans can find
camaraderie among other members.
Skinhead crash pads also are sites of ritualism. We next describe
dramatic performances and tattooing ceremonies, which Aryans use to
build strength and solidarity.
 ARYAN RITUALISM
Aryan rituals are collective acts that arouse emotions and intensify
solidarity by marking the boundaries between white power advocates and
their enemies.[32] Aryans’ storytelling itself is ritualistic, invoking common
themes time after time. But Aryans also elaborate their tales with
performances and ceremonies that reproduce group solidarity and
commitment.[33]

Performing White Power

Ritual performances occur routinely at Aryan parties. Some are as

simple as semispontaneous gestures by members who arrive at parties
and give animated Sieg heil salutes or shout Aryan mottos to the group,
who respond in kind. At other gatherings, however, time was set aside for
more elaborate performances, including organized group shouts of Sieg
heil, pledges, and commitment ceremonies that amplify Aryan values.
Darren and Mindy staged performances at their regular bonfire
parties. They were particularly fond of burning effigies of blacks and Jews.
Darren called this “nigger lynching.” The first time he said, “We’re going to
lynch a nigger tonight,” it was not clear that he was not talking about a
real person. The lynching was only symbolic, but nonetheless, it
heightened solidarity among the partyers.

Partyers began arriving at six. As the first car drove up, Darren said,
“I’ll be back in a minute,” and he turned and strode to the barn. He
emerged a half hour later, walked to the keg, poured a beer, and said with
a smile to the group gathered around, “Wait till you see what I made for
the party!”
Two hours later, about thirty Aryans gathered around the bonfire.
Darren nudged his friend Erik, and they both turned and walked to the
barn. Darren soon came out carrying a large wooden cross, with Erik
behind him carrying in his arms what looked like a scarecrow. As they
approached, it was clear that this was the “nigger” they planned to lynch.
The effigy was covered with black cloth to mimic dark skin, and
dressed in a blue baseball cap turned to the side, an old Michael Jackson
T-shirt, and blue jeans.
Darren and Erik positioned the cross on the edge of the fire pit and
pounded it into the ground with a sledgehammer. The crowd of more
than thirty adults and their children began to gather in a circle around the
cross. Darren secured the effigy in place on the cross and added wood to
the fire. After a few minutes, flames licked the bottom of the cross, and it
started to burn.
The effigy caught fire, and the entire group began chanting in unison,
“Rahowa! Rahowa! Rahowa!” Children chanted, imitating their parents.
Older kids gave Nazi salutes to one another. A woman standing next to
me knelt down beside her young daughter and said, “Honey, that cross
celebrates our ancestors. The niggers and spics want to take that away
from us.”
“Let’s go nigger hunting!” shouted a young skinhead whose fist was
thrust toward the sky.
Fortunately, his plan was met with disdain. Several SWAS parents
told him to cool down. I wondered whether a younger, less family-
oriented crowd may have taken to his idea more enthusiastically.
The chants of “Rahowa” faded when a new mantra emerged: “Burn,
nigger, burn! Burn, nigger, burn!”
Darren stepped in front of the fire, facing the crowd, silhouetted by
an orange glow, face shrouded in shadows. “I want to thank all of you for
coming out tonight. Our little Buckwheat,” he said solemnly, pointing to
the effigy as the group laughed, “is to remind us that we’re in a fight.” His
voice got louder as he continued, “This is guerrilla war, and we need to
start thinking in those terms. They call it hate, hate crime, whatever. It’s
self-defense! You’re defending yourself, your family, your country, and
your culture!”
The fire continued to burn. The cross and effigy were soon reduced
to ashes.
After Darren’s speech, the group was clearly more energized. They
talked excitedly of the movement, ZOG, Illuminati, the black menace,
illegal immigrants, and other Aryan threats.

Ritual occasions help to illuminate how some people become Aryans.

This ritual created a palpable group feeling of camaraderie and affection,
emphasized love among Aryans, and translated hatred and violence as
righteous self-defense. Such emotional messages help us imagine the
compelling force among people who surrender themselves to the group.
Aryan rituals are powerful tools to encourage commitment to the cause
and camaraderie with white racial kin.

Sieg Heil
Group chants of Sieg heil are a ritual performance Aryans use to
intensify members’ esprit de corps. At bonfire parties, house parties, and
barbecues, we watched the ominous scene of ten, twenty, and sometimes
dozens more skinheads and neo-Nazis as they chanted in unison and
thrust their arms upward, with each Sieg heil shouted louder than the
last.

Several members of White Revolution are blindfolded before their commitment ceremony as part of
their initiation into the Aryan Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. August 16, 2003, Colt, Arkansas.
Photo by David S. Holloway © Getty Images
Aryans usually combined the chants with backslaps and bear hugs,
which heightened the intensity of the collective experience. Skinheads
also broke into mock fights, and circling group members clasped hands
and stepped in unison to the chant and music.

Dramas
 Choreographed dramas are Aryans’ most striking ritual performances.
These are usually violent, like Darren’s mock lynching, complete with
props, such as a hangman’s noose and effigies of blacks or Jews hanging
from trees or doorways. We recorded stories and saw photos of mock
beheadings, where Aryans dressed as hooded executioners with double-
edged axes and swords symbolically behead other Aryans painted in
blackface and dressed in “ethnic” clothing with afro wigs.
Aryans sometimes blend these performances with commitment
ceremonies. New recruits are formally initiated into the movement by
performing part of the mock execution themselves while veterans prompt
them to declare their commitment to “the Aryan way.”

Tattoos
Aryans view tattooing rituals as one of the most important ways to
demonstrate their commitment to the cause. They cover themselves with
swastika tattoos, German iron crosses, Confederate flags, portraits of
Hitler, German soldiers, crossed hammers, and white power slogans.
Slogans may be ones that express broad unifying themes across the
movement, such as “White Power,” “White Pride,” “SKIN,” “Proud to Be
White,” and “SWP,” for Supreme White Power, or may be ones that signify
allegiance to specific groups such as Orange County Skins, WAR Skins, or
Hammerskin Nation.
Tattoos are the clearest symbol of an Aryan’s devotion. Randy, an
Orange County Skin, said that a swastika or other obvious Aryan tattoo
“basically says you’re down for the cause. If you have a swastika on,
you’re letting it all hang out. You’re saying ‘I’m gonna fight and be down
for the cause so much that I’m willing to take that risk to show everybody
white power.’”[34] Like many Aryans, Randy’s racist tattoos cover his back,
chest, and upper arms.
Sleeves, or tattoos that cover arms from neck to wrist, denote
members who are among the most deeply committed. They are willing to
overtly display their allegiance to the Aryan cause. Aryans may take this a
step further by tattooing their entire body, including their face, with race-
related insignia.
 Tattoos show commitment that goes beyond mere rhetoric. We
asked Hank, a SoCal Skin whose arms are sleeved with hate insignia, why
tattoos are so revered in the movement. “Well,” he said, “they’re about
displaying your racial pride, making sure there’s no doubt. As you get
more and more, it’s a way of reinforcing who you are and drawing that
line a little harder each time.”[35]
Similarly, Cory, a Hammerskin, said: “Why do we want [tattoos]? We
want to tell a story, to establish who we are, and what we’ve done or will
do. We want people to know we’re down for our race and down for the
cause.”[36]
Darren talks of a deepening devotion he feels with every new tattoo.
Pointing to a German iron cross on his forearm, he said, “This was my first
tattoo. I’ve had seven since that one and with each one you feel a little
more committed. You know you’re never going back.”
Aryans use tattooing as a bonding ritual. At several parties, we
watched racist skinheads get inked in the company of other skinheads as
part of initiation and hazing ceremonies. Just after the tattoo is complete,
other skinheads slap the tender tattooed area while chanting racist
slogans or singing hate songs. Tattooing rituals signify rugged masculinity
and unity with other skinheads. At times, tattooing becomes extreme.
Anthony, a longtime SoCal Skin, described the ritualistic violence that can
be sparked by the commitment rituals surrounding tattooing:

We were at a party at an apartment and a couple of guys at the party

were American Alliance, and they wanted this guy Chucky to become
part of ’em, but he had to like earn his bolt [lightning bolt tattoo]
before they would let him in. Everybody there was drunk. Chucky was
drunk, so he goes down to the street corner to look for somebody
that he can assault to earn his bolt to get in. He comes back with a
bloody knife and he’s all sweaty and says, “Hey I just stabbed these
spics,” and of course the party goes crazy. Chucky gets carried off to
some other place and they are so pleased with him, they take a
staple and an ink pen and that is how he got his first lightning bolt.
[37]

The extreme version of this commitment ritual involves an initiate

who commits murder to earn a particularly significant tattoo. In
November 1995, four Nazi Lowriders beat to death a homeless African
American man to earn their lightning bolts. They were later arrested and
convicted of murder.[38]
White power tattooing is neither a one-time ritual for most Aryans
nor for initiates only. Veterans often add repeatedly to their tattoos.
Successive tattoos are a physical symbol of their identification with
extremist hate and social distance from the mainstream. Fellow Aryans
typically etch the tattoos, and their art is their most significant
contribution to the movement. Nick, an LA County Skin and tattoo artist,
explains the pride and service to the movement he feels when inking
fellow skins:

I’m most proud about the work I do on other skins. I get to see young
ones who are getting their first one and will always remember that
one, but I also get to give my brothers who’ve been out here for
years their fifteenth or whatever tattoo. Either way, I’m doing my
little bit to help the movement where I can.[39]

Like many groups whose membership is highly restrictive, Aryans

anchor their commitment symbolically through visual symbols.[40]
Tattooing rituals help Aryans take on signs of their racial loyalty,
consciousness, and self-completion as devoted to the cause. It is the
intense collective experience that establishes much of the meaning the
tattoos have for Aryans who get them.

***

The combination of veterans with new recruits at Aryan parties and

gatherings gives younger Aryans a chance to interact with more seasoned
extremists, who model Aryan style and attitude, share stories, and involve
recruits in rituals to draw them into the movement. These informal Aryan
gatherings are political to their core.[41] They offer Aryans a racist milieu
crucial to the survival of extremist hatred. Aryan gatherings are also
seedbeds for recruitment. A 2006 National Institute of Justice study on
right-wing terrorist recruitment indicates about 75 percent of right-wing
extremists who have planned or participated in terrorist activity were
recruited in homes and crash pads.
Another component of Aryan gatherings is the strategic use of music.
In the next chapter, we shift our attention to Aryan music concerts and
festivals. The extensive network of white power bands, music companies,
web-based music sites, and music shows offer Aryans spaces to meet and
nourish hate culture.
1. Darren, SWAS member, interviewed June 13, 1998.
2. We would remind the reader that extremists of any stripe need such
gatherings for reinforcement against the mainstream.
3. Cal, SoCal Skin, interviewed September 7, 2002.
4. Right-wing extremists have a long history obsessing over the issue of
purity and pollution and associating nature with racial characteristics.
Hitler and Nazi Germany were especially reverent of nature, and neo-
fascists sometimes overlap with “green” movements. For further
discussion, see Boria Sax, Animals in the Third Reich: Pets, Scapegoats, and
the Holocaust (New York: Continuum, 2000); Robert Paxton, The Anatomy
of Fascism (New York: Vintage, 2005); Mabel Berezin, Making the Fascist
Self: The Political Culture of Interwar Italy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1997).
5. Bill, SWAS activist, interviewed June 28, 1997.
6. James, SWAS activist, interviewed March 13, 1999.
7. Erik, SWAS activist, interviewed January 21, 1997.
8. Darren, SWAS member, interviewed January 21, 1997.
9. Gus, Aryan Nations activist, interviewed July 9, 1997.
10. Darren, SWAS member, interviewed January 21, 1997.
11. Sarah, Aryan Nations activist, interviewed April 17, 1997.
12. Although we do not include them as a separate analytical section
above, racist and anti-Semitic jokes permeate conversations among
activists at just about every setting where Aryans gather. The jokes
dehumanize their racial enemies, usually by imagining extreme violence
against them. Aryan hate humor is extremely racist, but without the
gravity that usually accompanies racist speech. The jokes convey and
reinforce Aryan ideals among members in a more casual and, for them,
entertaining way than the heavy, incendiary polemics of a racist speech or
white power publication. For more on racist humor, see Michael Billig,
“Humour and Hatred: The Racist Jokes of the Ku Klux Klan,” Discourse and
Society (2001): 267–88.
13. Dylan, Southern California activist, interviewed November 21, 2002.
14. Paul, SoCal Skin, interviewed March 30, 2002.
15. Betty Dobratz and Stephanie Shanks-Meile, White Power! White Pride!
The White Separatist Movement in the United States (New York: Cengage
Gale, 1997).
16. Mattias Gardell, Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White
Separatism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 68; Kathleen Blee,
Inside Organized Racism: Women in the Hate Movement (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2002); Dobratz and Shanks-Meile, White
Power!
17. Gardell, Gods, 68.
18. Trent, Orange County Skin, interviewed August 3, 1998.
19. Blee, Inside Organized Racism, 35.
20. Aryan stories about conversion often segue into talk of how to
enlighten and draw others into the movement. After Scotty, an Orange
County Skin, told of his entrée into racist extremism, he explained how he
had identified neighbors who had moved in across the street as
potentially sympathetic to the cause. He saw a Confederate flag hanging
in their garage. “I thought these guys might be interested, but we let them
come to us. Eventually they came over for a few beers and we started
playing the right kind of music to see what was up. If that works, then we
start talking politics. It doesn’t even matter if they’re white power or not,
but if we can get them moving in the right direction then we’re doing our
job.” Stories of recruitment strategies range from the fantastical to the
more practical. Sometimes these stories reveal big dreams of a societal or
worldwide Aryan conversion through momentous actions, such as
commandeering global media outlets and presenting the “facts” of the
white power worldview. While these scenarios are all but impossible,
white power advocates seem to revel in a collective imagination of what it
might be like to accomplish such monumental acts. Most stories focus on
more realistic strategies such as leafleting public areas, schools, and
concerts with white power pamphlets; placing white power stickers in
obtrusive places; and creating signs, slogans, and persuasive arguments to
gain potential recruits.
21. Matt, Aryan Nations activist, interviewed July 3, 1999.
22. Jack, Hammerskin, interviewed March 17, 2002.
23. Kim Voss, “The Collapse of a Social Movement: The Interplay of
Mobilizing Structures, Framing, and Political Opportunities in the Knights
of Labor,” in Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements, ed. Doug
McAdam, John D. McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996), 227–60.
24. Ross, Southern California activist, interviewed May 30, 2001.
25. Roger, WAR activist, interviewed March 30, 2002.
26. Some of their fortifying myths suggest that there is a group of secret
Aryans—the hidden faithful—located throughout major social institutions
such as the police, military, government agencies, and even corporate
America. Bill, a SWAS member, claimed: “Of course I know a lot of people
in law enforcement, military, high up positions in their company. There
are a lot of people out there that were never involved in the racialist
movement, never involved, that still agree with us, but when the time
comes, they know they would be on the right track.” These faithful remain
hidden, even from other Aryans, because they are infiltrating institutions
that ZOG controls. Recent US military investigations suggest these sorts of
claims are not entirely fanciful. In a 2006 Southern Poverty Law Center
report, a Department of Defense gang investigator tells of an internal
investigation that uncovered 320 Aryan extremists at Fort Lewis,
Washington, alone. Investigators also uncovered an online network of
fifty-seven Aryans on active duty at five different army and marine
installations. Aryans believe they have “friends in high places,” a sort of
reserve army that they envision rising up when the race war begins.
27. Also see Mark Hamm, In Bad Company: America’s Terrorist
Underground (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2002).
28. Seth, interviewed February 18, 2003.
29. For an in-depth discussion of the relationship between staging areas
and gang violence, see Elijah Anderson, Code of the Street: Decency,
Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City (New York: Norton, 1999).
30. A few of these crash pads, then, operate as much more than
ideological havens for Aryan skins to gather. Some are used as safe houses
for fugitive Aryans hiding out from law enforcement or storage sites for
stolen money, guns, explosives, ammunition, and other equipment. Aryan
terrorist cells, such as the Silent Brotherhood and the Aryan Republican
Army, utilized safe houses as part of their criminal operations, which
included assassinations, bank and armored car robberies, as well as
bombings of Jewish synagogues, gay nightclubs, and government
buildings. The Silent Brotherhood was particularly adept at this in the
mid-1980s, developing an extensive network of crash pad safe houses
across the western United States. One of these served as a telephone
message center that allowed members indirect and covert contact with
other members. Members used the message center to locate other
members and to pass on information to them about criminal operations
and law enforcement surveillance.
31. Ace, PEN1 skinhead, interviewed June 23, 2002.
32. See Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (New York:
Free Press, 1965 [1912]); Randall Collins, Interaction Ritual Chains
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).
33. Collins, Interaction, 36.
34. Randy, Southern California activist, interviewed March 19, 2000.
35. Hank, SoCal Skin, interviewed November 17, 2002.
36. Cory, Hammerskin, interviewed August 17, 2002.
37. Anthony, LA County Skinhead and tattoo artist, interviewed March 18,
2002.
38. Evelyn Larrubia, “Prosecution Rests in Alleged Racial Killing,” Los
Angeles Times, October 22, 1999,
http://articles.latimes.com/1999/oct/22/local/me-25077 (accessed May
22, 2009).
39. Nick, LA County Skinhead and tattoo artist, interviewed August 19,
2002.
40. Lewis Coser, Greedy Institutions: Patterns of Undivided Commitment
(New York: Free Press, 1974).
41. Pete Simi, “Recruitment among Right-Wing Terrorist Groups,” Final
Report-2006-IJ-CX-0027 (Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice,
2008).
 Chapter 5
The White Power Music Scene
I listen to white power music and I have that feeling of being involved
with something as a whole. It’s something where I can sit at home
alone and even though I know the whole world is against me I can
pop in a CD and listen to it. —Mike, Midwest Aryan[1]

Music is an integral part of the white power movement.[2] Aryans use

music to convey ideas about their righteous struggles, focus movement
activities, and unite racists in Aryan free spaces, which range from house
parties to bar shows and festivals to music websites. In these free spaces,
Aryan members display their style and share attitudes and emotions that
bind them as racial extremists.
White power music performers and listeners think of Aryan music as
a form of activism. Performers and listeners use white power music to
help them stay committed to the cause as it reminds them why they fight
for Aryan supremacy. The crowds that gather for bar shows and concerts
participate in collective rituals that help anchor them to an ethos of white
power and to other activists.
We begin this chapter with a discussion of the Aryan band Hate Train
and its rise to prominence in the white power music scene. We then focus
on other white power bands, their music, and the bar concerts and
festivals where Aryans gather to hear white power music and nourish
their commitments to the movement. Finally, we discuss the Aryan
recording companies that promote and sustain the white power music
scene.

HATE TRAIN’S RISE

Hate Train’s rapid rise in the white power music scene began in the winter
of 1998. The band had played a series of house parties to prepare for
their first public gig in a tiny dive bar on the outskirts of Anaheim,
California.
They expected a few dozen local Aryan friends to watch them play
their first show. This public performance raised the ante for them. Playing
private house parties felt safe, but if word about the show got out to the
wrong crowd—namely, antiracist groups and the police—there was no
telling what would happen.
The show was a coming-out party for Hate Train’s singer, Hank. Hank
had never been so publicly open about his racism. As a relative newcomer
to the movement, he was anxious about performing publicly. Antiracists
frequently picketed Aryan shows, and police sometimes raided concerts,
arresting audience and band members alike. He was nervous.
Seth, Hate Train’s drummer, was anxious for different reasons. He
could not wait to perform. A veteran racist skinhead, Seth had longtime
ties to the Aryan music scene. During the 1980s, he worked closely with
White Aryan Resistance (WAR) leader Tom Metzger to use music to draw
skinheads and punks into white nationalist politics. Seth organized house
shows and bar concerts and then joined his first white power band, Aryan
Rage, in 1991. The band broke up two years later, and ever since then,
Seth had been trying to form another group.
Seth recruited Hank after hearing him play at a punk show in Los
Angeles. Hank recalled:

I met Seth at one of my old band’s shows. We [Hank’s band] were

punk but mainstream. I was already white power in my views, but
kept pretty quiet about it. After this one show Seth came up to me
and introduced himself, and said he liked our set. He bought me a
beer and we sat down and started talking. He told me he was
thinking of starting a new band but needed a singer. I liked what I
heard and we decided to form Hate Train not long after that. I told
my old band, “Hey I’m going to start playing music for our people.”
They haven’t talked to me since.[3]

That was six months before Hate Train’s first public gig. In that time,
Hank fully embraced white power culture, and Aryan activists embraced
him. The camaraderie and support he received from his fellow Aryans
surprised him. His new friends made up for the old friends he lost when
he joined the movement.
 Being new and all and not knowing anyone really at first I wasn’t sure
how it was going to turn out. I got started pretty late in life, but it
hasn’t seemed to make a difference. People are like, “Way to go!
We’re glad you’re with us,” and it feels good knowing I’m actually
doing something for my race.[4]

Hate Train’s guitarist, Lance, dressed more like a skateboarder than a

white power skinhead. At his day job as a marketing analyst for a large
public relations firm, he played down any visible racist leanings even
more. He wore his hair slicked back rockabilly style and covered the racist
tattoos inked across his shoulders, back, and chest with a dress shirt and
tie. Lance, like Seth, also had a long history as an Aryan. He ran with two
skinhead gangs in his early teens. But as many of his gang friends
succumbed to drugs or were arrested, he shifted course toward college.
Lance also began to read more about Tom Metzger’s White Aryan
Resistance and attend Aryan music shows in Southern California. He
jumped at Seth’s invitation to join the band. Hate Train and the white
power music scene provide the perfect anchor for his activism. As he
explained, “I’m now part of an international movement of nationalists.
We’re all fighting to end the reign of the international Jew and the
domination he has over our race’s destiny.”
For their first show, Hate Train was booked with another Aryan band
and two nonracist punk bands. The night went off without a hitch. No
protesters arrived, and no police interrupted. Some thirty Aryans mixed
with a few regulars who seemed curious and slightly amused at the racist
skinheads. Second in the music lineup, Hate Train played from 9:00 to 9:30
p.m. The occasion was ordinary for everyone except Seth, Hank, and
Lance. For them, the show was a meaningful step into the white power
music scene. After the show, Hank said, “We needed to do something like
that. We knew it wasn’t going to be a big show or anything. It was more a
way of officially announcing we’re here and we’re ready to start playing
music for white people.”[5]
What happened in the following months caught them all by surprise.
Seth promoted the band locally and also with prominent Aryan music
companies at the time, such as Resistance Records. Word about their
sound and style spread among Southern California Aryans and into the
broader white power music scene.
Two months after their first show, SkinFest organizers invited Hate
Train to a white power festival in Texas. Seth now refers to this as their
“first real show” because, as he described it, the performance really “put
them on the map” as a legitimate band in the movement’s music scene.
SkinFest was only the beginning. White power promoters got wind of
that successful performance, and Hate Train received invitations to more
prominent gigs. The band played at large bar shows in Southern California
and was then invited to play the first Hammerfest. The festival, organized
by the Hammerskin Nation, drew about six hundred Aryans to a private
farm in rural Georgia, where they heard a lineup of the most popular
bands in the Aryan music scene.
Within a year of their first bar show, Hate Train gained a wide
following in the white power music scene. Fans gravitated to the band’s
punk spirit, their theatrical performances, and the inventive
transformations of well-known pop songs into Aryan-themed songs. They
recorded two CDs and continued to play at a series of major Aryan
festivals. Enthusiasm for their music spread to Europe, and the European
National Socialist online fanzine, Blood and Honour, wrote glowing reports
of their performances.
Hate Train’s popularity among European skins led to bar concerts
and festivals in England, France, Italy, Germany, and the Czech Republic.
In the summer of 2004, a European extreme right-wing party invited Hate
Train to headline one of its rallies, which drew more than five thousand
Aryans. Seth, Hank, and Lance saw this as a tremendous honor and felt
they had arrived.

HATE BANDS AND HATE MUSIC

During the 1990s, white power music grew into a pervasive form of Aryan
ideological expression. New bands and the music companies that
promoted them spread rapidly. The bands mainly play rock, heavy metal,
country and western, or Aryan folk styles.
White power rock is the most popular Aryan music style. The sound
morphed from the punk and Oi! styles of 1960s and 1970s English
working-class culture. Punk and Oi! use hard guitar and drums, simple
musical structures, and vocals that resemble fast-paced chants.
Contemporary white power versions of Oi! draw direct influence from
the late-1970s British band Skrewdriver, the first premier Aryan rock band,
whose members veered from punk anarchism toward racist politics.[6]
Skrewdriver appealed to a growing number of American skinheads who
moved toward extreme right-wing politics and Aryan ideology during the
1980s.[7]
Skrewdriver had a major influence on white power music. We
interviewed dozens of Aryans who told us about the importance of the
band in their racial awakening. Dave, a Volksfront member from St. Louis,
vividly recalled the moment, saying, “The first time I heard Skrewdriver
was it. Every skinhead can tell you about that. It was a bootleg of a
bootleg of a bootleg and the sound wasn’t worth shit, but it was still
magical. It was instantaneous.”[8] Andy, a skinhead from Vancouver,
Washington, recalled a similar experience:

The first white power song I ever heard was “White Power” from
Skrewdriver in high school on a shitty fifth- or sixth-generation
cassette copy. It [the song] totally floored me. Once I heard that, it
took over me. That was the attitude and feeling I had been looking
for. I was already racially aware, but Skrewdriver motivated me.[9]

Veteran white power musicians like Tom also claim Skrewdriver as

their inspiration: “A friend gave me this bootlegged tape and I started
listening to it and couldn’t believe how powerful it was. I knew I had to
become a skinhead once I listened to that tape. The tape was
Skrewdriver.”[10]
There are now about one hundred American white power bands and
well over two hundred hate bands spread over twenty-two other
countries, and the number of bands appears to be growing.[11] Although
the sounds and styles of racist music—rock, heavy metal, country and
western, folk, and other genres—are distinguishable from one another,
the lyrical themes in the songs highlight Aryan nationalism, white power,
race war, anti-Semitism, anti-immigration, anti–race mixing, white
victimization, and racial loyalty. Songs like Skrewdriver’s “Race and
Nation” paint a clear picture of the Aryan nationalist vision so central to
the movement.[12]
The Bully Boys, Max Resist, Final War, and Youngland are among the
most popular American white power bands. The Bully Boys, a Dallas,
Texas, band, mirror Skrewdriver’s punk and Oi! sound. They were one of
the first bands to closely align themselves with the Hammerskin Nation.
Detroit-based, Max Resist and the Hooligans also align themselves with
the Hammerskins.
The Bully Boys’ song “Jigrun” is a prominent white power anthem
that imagines a night terrorizing blacks.[13] One of Max Resist’s most
popular songs among Aryans, “Boot Party,” refers to stomping racial
enemies to death.[14] Final War and Youngland, bands formed in Orange
County, California, sing about Aryan honor, brotherhood, volk, white
pride, and white heritage. Their songs sustain the movement by
promoting commitment and unity in hard times. Final War’s “Pride and
Tradition” describes problems Aryans face and a need to battle for the
righteous truths of Aryan destiny. Aryans from across the movement’s
branches embrace Youngland’s “Stand One, Stand All,” a short, powerful
statement of Aryan idealism and unity.[15]
Prussian Blue was a unique and widely publicized white power music
group. The duo consisted of teenage fraternal twins Lynx and Lamb
Gaede, referred to by Aryans as the white power Olsen twins, in reference
to the mainstream pop celebrities Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. A Gaede
performance in 2001 at an Aryan festival caught the attention of National
Alliance leader and Resistance Records owner William Pierce, who
immediately signed them to a recording contract.[16] The Gaedes
combined Aryan folk themes and bubble-gum pop-rock to create a buzz
among Aryans. The Gaedes recorded several CDs with songs written by
the bands Rahowa and Brutal Attack.
The Gaedes’ original songs included “Sacrifice,” which honors Robert
Mathews, founder of the white power terror cell the Silent Brotherhood,
and Nazi leader Rudolph Hess. The Gaedes wrote the song “The Lamb
Near the Lane” after exchanging letters with imprisoned Aryan terrorist
and convicted murderer David Lane.
Prussian Blue garnered popular media attention, including feature
segments on ABC’s Primetime and Good Morning America and was a
subject of articles in Newsweek, Gentlemen’s Quarterly, Elle Girl, and the
Los Angeles Times. The Internet is replete with the duo’s videos.[17]

Consciousness-Raising Music
Activists revere white power bands as movement icons, and their
songs fuel Aryan rage. Hate rock’s seductiveness can be gauged by
members’ accounts of how they joined the white power movement. Aryan
music fans talk about how the music helps them feel unique and superior
to those people still blinded from the truth of their white power vision.
Biggie, a Colorado skin, identifies the defining musical moment of his
racial awakening:

I had some racist views before I started listening to [white power]

music, but once I heard that first Skrewdriver song, I was sold. It
really did change my life. I started going to white power shows
whenever I could, and I’d drive anywhere. . . . It connected me to
other people who were willing to say, “You know, I’m a racist. So
what? I’m proud of who I am.”[18]

Sociologist Kathleen Blee noticed a similar pattern of music’s impact

on Aryans’ enlightenment. As a California skinhead girl told her, “How I
really started believing, thinking, in that white separatist sense and then
got all white supremacist, it was really through the music. . . . It gives you
an identity . . . you’re special, you know, because you’re white.”[19]
This sense of being “special” draws from a privileged knowledge
Aryans have about what they imagine as the true nature of the world.
Aryans think of themselves as among the few who see through and reject
mainstream society’s effort to destroy white culture and the white race.
They consider music a tool to demonstrate to other whites, and especially
young members, the righteous way.
Kenny, a SoCal Skin, talks about music as a powerful way to reach
white youth: “It’s good for us to have music that raises consciousness of
white kids as opposed to listening to all the other crap the mainstream
gives out. Music is a good tool, you know. It helps with motivation to get
more education about what is going on.”[20] The message in music is easy
to disseminate secretively as well.

Music has the potential to get through to the kids like nothing else.
The great thing about music is, if a kid likes it, he will dub copies for
his friends and so on. This has the potential to become a grassroots,
underground type movement, which we see happening already.[21]

Some bands consciously create music that will appeal to potential

recruits. Samuel, a veteran white power band member in Seattle,
explained his band’s strategy to perform low-key racist music, which is not
too shocking for new recruits but may eventually draw them into more
extremist white power culture. Samuel said, “We try to keep our lyrics
fairly approachable for people that may not pay a lot of attention to
racial issues in order to try and persuade them to think about things.
Once they’re on our side they can listen to groups with real hard-core
lyrics.”[22]

A White Revolution member’s young son clutches at his Blue Eyed Devils fan T-shirt. The Blue Eyed
Devils are a popular band in the white power music scene. March 30, 2003, Van Buren, Arkansas.
Photo by David S. Holloway © Getty Images
Bands and the music scene are key elements in the white power
movement. The free spaces in which the bands play become sites of
intense recruitment as members and newcomers create collective
experiences to celebrate their beliefs. When bars host white power music
shows, they become Aryan free spaces.

WHITE POWER BAR SHOWS

We begin our analysis of these music free spaces with an ethnographic
narrative that takes us into a Southern California white power bar show.

“You’re sure my name is on the list?” I said into the phone while
driving alone to the suburban strip mall outside Garden Grove, California.
“Yeah man, no worries. You’re on there,” Seth assured me.
I was still worried that Seth might have forgotten to add my name to
the guest list. Security would be heavy for Hate Train’s show, as it usually
was for gigs at larger venues like the Lotus Club, where they were playing
tonight. These big bar shows could attract protesters and police. The
entry list was one way that organizers tried to keep the space inside the
bar free for Aryans to congregate and party. I could expect a hassle if my
name was not on the list.
Security was tight, as I expected. I drove past the club’s parking lot to
scan the scene and prepare myself for the walk to the door. I saw four
burly skinheads outside the club’s entrance. Down the sidewalk a group of
about ten to fifteen protesters held signs reading “Nazis Go Home” and
“Diversity Is Our Strength.” I parked a block away, took a deep breath to
gather my wits, then strode toward the bar trying to exude an air of
confidence.
“Hey! Don’t go in there you fucking Nazi! You hater!”
I ignored the protesters, looked straight ahead, and quickly stepped
past the doorman into the small lobby entrance to the bar. A small line
had formed as two doormen wearing black “American Front Security” T-
shirts checked names and collected the cover charge. I stepped up, said
my name and held out a twenty-dollar bill. After a couple of seconds, the
skinhead looked up, grabbed my money and said, “Enjoy the show,
brother.” I stepped forward to be patted-down by the other doorman and
then walked inside.
I moved quickly to the edge of the bar to get my bearings. The place
was buzzing with conversations, and the bar’s stereo primed the audience
by playing National Socialist black metal, a hard-hitting Gothic style of
hate rock. The club was one large room, with a bar full of high tables and
chairs on the left and a music stage on the wall opposite the bar.
Handbills from local punk and hip-hop bands adorned the walls.
It was a half hour before showtime, and the crowd already exceeded
more than seventy people. They were mostly male neo-Nazis between
twenty and thirty years old. Some older veterans were there as well, along
with some teenage fresh cuts.
Most of the men had close-cropped or fully shaved heads and
tattoos covering their bodies. Some wore traditional skinhead garb—tight
blue jeans, Doc Marten steel-toed work boots, tight T-shirts, and colored
suspenders. A group of eight high schoolers wore plain white T-shirts on
which they had written in dark ink “Las Vegas Skins.” Others wore plain
shirts or shirts emblazoned with band insignia or swastikas and other
hate symbols.
Two other Aryan styles stood out in the bar. One group sported an
urban style with knee-length trouser shorts sagging at the waist to show
their boxer shorts, white tank tops, tube socks pulled knee-high, and
athletic shoes with thick shoelaces. Another group presented a more
polished look with styled hair, designer jeans, and polo shirts.
The men outnumbered the women four to one. About ten women
chose a fairly conventional punk look, with heavy mascara, and short,
stylishly unruly hair. The others did not clearly mark themselves as punk
or Aryan.
The show organizers lined up several tables along the wall near the
entrance and filled them with CDs, T-shirts, books, hats, posters, and
other merchandise. Some of the T-shirts indicated allegiance to Aryan
groups such as the National Alliance, Hammerskins, and World Church of
the Creator, while others were specific to white power bands, such as Max
Resist, Angry Aryans, and Skrewdriver. One table was strewn with
pamphlets, cards, and Aryan books.
Paul, an Aryan musician I had met before, stood nearby. He was in
his late twenties, medium height and build, and his dark hair was usually
shaved down to little more than stubble. He wore a green Ireland T-shirt
with navy Dickie shorts. White power tattoos decorated his arms and legs:
a German iron cross tattoo on his left calf and Nordic warriors sketched
across both arms.
 I joined Paul at the bar and asked what he thought of the crowd.
“Great!” he said, pointing out the different groups and cliques that had
come out. He turned to me with a smile, winked, and said, “Diversity is
our strength, you know?”
I laughed as I thought of the irony in that statement. Neo-Nazis claim
their world has been turned upside down by diversity policies and
multicultural attitudes. Sometimes, though, they use conventional
phrases, such as “strength in diversity,” to support their worldview.
I tagged along with Paul as he ambled over to a group of skinheads
and Klansmen who were talking about the protesters outside the club.
Tim, who I would shortly discover was a local Klan leader, looked nothing
like a stereotypical Aryan. He was dressed in slacks, a dress shirt, and a
tie. His medium-length brown hair and a neatly trimmed mustache belied
his extremism. He knew everyone in the group but me, and he quickly
extended his hand and said, “I’m Tim. Good to meet you. Here, take my
card.”
I glanced down and saw what resembled a standard business card,
except for the logo of a hooded Klansman riding a horse, and his official
title, “Grand Dragon.”
He said, “I was just out there with those faggot bastards! I kept trying
to get them to step off the sidewalk to get ’em arrested for trespassing.”
Tim described the confrontation when Donny, a white power music
promoter, approached and handed each of us flyers, saying, “I gave these
to the media outside.”
It was a surprisingly well-written paragraph about free speech that
painted the protesters as fascists trampling the rights of “American
patriots to gather peacefully for music and fun.”
“Peacefully” was the word that stuck out to me. White power music
shows in Southern California had a reputation for violence. For several
years, music organizers in the Southern California white power music
scene had given up on bar shows because so many of them had been
marred by brawls and stabbings among boisterous Aryans.
Violence is part of the music scene culture and the wider movement.
White power music weaves violent lyrics with driving beats that build
excitement and tension. Skinheads prance, posture, and slam dance in the
pit fronting the stage. Their antics can quickly turn from mock fights to
real ones. Personal disputes or intergroup conflicts that Aryans bring to
the shows exacerbate this tendency.
The tightly organized security team at the show reflected the
organizer’s worries about past violence. Several band members playing
the gig had commented that the organizers really “had it together.”
Through websites, leaflets, and word of mouth, promoters implored
attendees to set aside any differences for the music and the spirit of
Aryan brotherhood.
The emphasis on “peace” did not affect some of the more belligerent
groups. Seth told me the day before that one of his Aryan friends known
as Mackie had “screwed over” some members of Public Enemy Number
One (PEN1) in a drug deal. PEN1 responded by giving members a “green
light” on Mackie, meaning that they were to attack and punish him.
Seth said, “I’m good friends with Mackie but I’m also close with a lot
of PEN1 guys, and I understand that this is business and Mackie shouldn’t
have fucked with ’em like that.” He said he’d be “on guard” at the show in
case Mackie showed up. He wanted nothing to do with him while he was
green-lighted. Although Mackie did not attend the music show that night,
he wasn’t able to avoid the green light for long. Two weeks after the show
a PEN1 member brutally stabbed Mackie.
When the first band, Aggressive Force, hit the stage at 8:00 p.m., the
lead singer, a burly, middle-aged skinhead whose arms were sleeved with
white power tattoos, grabbed the microphone and began yelling at
several dozen skinheads standing ready in front of the stage. “You’re a
white power skinhead. Always fight! We’ll never die!”
The music began and the group fronting the stage began to move
suddenly, bodies jerking side to side. They then formed a circle and began
stomping in unison, throwing their elbows wildly. Most of these skins
were already shirtless, exposing tattoos on their chests, stomachs, and
backs. The circle broke down as the next song began, and the skinheads
started a new dance with their bodies flailing in all directions. Aggressive
Force finished their set by leading the crowd in Sieg heil salutes and
chants of “Skinhead! Skinhead!”
The next band, Final War, was led by two veteran skinheads joined
by two newcomers not far removed from high school. Their brand of rock
was surprisingly comprehensible compared to most bands, whose heavy
bass and screamed vocals render the lyrics almost totally unintelligible:
“I’m hated by society. . . . Fight to the end for a world in which our race
could never die. . . . Fight with fists. . . . Never surrender . . . the Zionists
will soon be beat.” A later tribute to Nazi idol Rudolph Hess was slow and
melodic. “Sieg heil for Rudolph Hess. . . . Your courage never dies. . . .
Heroes never die.”
The show continued for more than three hours, mixing six bands
with Aryan leaders, such as Tom Metzger and the Aryan Front music
promoter who organized the show, rallying the crowd with speeches and
Aryan-themed chants, including “White power! White power! White
fucking power!”
The infamous Max Resist closed out the show. They finished their set
to loud applause and a chorus of “Sieg heil” that went on for several
minutes. When the chants died down, some in the audience started
making their way for the door. Many Aryans stayed around to talk with
one another and visit with the bands. They took photos, exchanged
phone numbers and e-mail addresses, and sought out the organizers to
compliment them on the night’s success.
An hour later, the bar owners ushered the stragglers out, although a
dozen of us stayed behind for an after-hours party. I remained in the bar
because of my connection with Seth. I then saw the strangest
circumstance of the night.
Seth introduced me to one of the bar owners, Joel, a Lebanese man
with long, dark, kinky hair, an olive complexion, and a thick accent. I
thought, “How can this guy be standing here among these racists? He’s
the epitome of what these skinheads call a ‘sand nigger.’” Sensing my
surprise, Seth told me that Joel was “okay” and that his partner was an
associate of the Hells Angels.
Later, I asked Joel about the Aryans playing a show in his bar. He said
that while he didn’t completely share their politics, he did share their
anti-Semitism. “It’s obvious the fuckin’ Jews are causing so much of the
problems in the world. Fuck them. If these guys want to annihilate them, I
say do it.” Joel felt that letting neo-Nazis play music shows at his bar was
supporting freedom of speech: “I let everyone else play here. Why
shouldn’t I let them play, too?”
 Bar shows are core events of the white power music scene and one of
the main occasions movement organizers use to bring white power
activists together. Most bar shows are local affairs that draw different
branches of Aryans from the surrounding city and local region. The
smallest of these events draw between twenty and thirty people, while
shows in larger clubs can bring together up to three hundred. The more
elaborate multiday festivals draw between four hundred and six hundred
racists from local, national, and even international white power networks.

The white power band Intimidation One performs for a crowd of several hundred supporters at the
National Guard Armory on August 24, 2002, in Towson, Maryland.
Photo by David S. Holloway © Getty Images

A Place to Let Go

Organizers promote Aryan music shows to encourage a sense of

purpose and fellowship among a broad range of Aryans. Music spaces
provide white power members a place to express their activist identity
and commitment to the cause. For the night or weekend, these events
promote cathartic releases of racist emotions and displays of hate. Rick, a
veteran WAR skinhead and Aryan musician, explains:

When you’re at a show you get to do things you normally can’t do,
and it just feels great to let go and be what you are [as he points to
audience members simultaneously performing Sieg heil salutes to the
 band on stage]. We’re all here because we’re white and we want to
be somewhere where that’s not a crime . . . and that’s hard to find
today.[23]

Finding places to have white power music shows is no easy task.

Most club owners are hostile to white power ideas. Even those who do
not immediately reject the notion of an Aryan concert are typically cool to
the prospect and want to avoid the negative publicity, fights, and other
hassles. Their reluctance vastly limits the number of venues available for
white power shows.
Despite the obstacles, Aryan promoters have cobbled together a
small network of club owners like Joel who are either sympathetic to the
cause or interested in the money the shows bring in. The Southern
California scene is made up mostly of shows played in dive bars that
typically host nonracist punk, gothic, and metal bands. A handful of more
upscale clubs will periodically host white power shows.
The largest bar shows pull in Aryans from different states and,
sometimes, different countries. Many of these individuals come from their
own vibrant local scene and bring information about their favorite bands,
styles, and movement experiences. Kenny, an LA County skinhead,
explains that his concert experiences provided a sense of a much larger
Aryan community, which encouraged him to increase his level of
participation.

I didn’t really hang out with others [in the WPM] much. I pretty much
did my own thing. But then I went [to a large bar show] and that’s
when it started to change. That show helped build so much unity.
There were people from all over. It was all ’cause of this show.[24]

Aryans talk about feelings of unity and commonality as part of the

typical experience at white power music shows. Lance, a SoCal Skin, feels
camaraderie among Aryans as well as anger and hatred toward nonwhites
and Jews, which reinforces his connection to other white power members.
Lance said: “When I hear [white power music] it ignites something in me.
The live shows are energizers for racial pride; they just fill you up with
love and hope for the future.”[25]
 Aryans’ descriptions of the music scene reveal an unmistakable sense
of enjoyment and satisfaction derived from white power music shows. At
these concerts Aryans feel a combination of defiance and self-respect.[26]
The very existence of hate concerts filled with Aryans symbolizes their
capacity to act for their beliefs in the face of mainstream oppression.[27]

Music Rituals and Member Recruitment

Aryans attribute pride, pleasure, and solidarity to both the music and
the associated activities. Their feelings are amplified through collective
rituals performed by bands and audiences. Chants and dances are their
most common rituals. The chants are usually straightforward calls and
responses: “Sieg heil!” “White power!” and the variation “White fucking
power!” complemented with Nazi salutes. They talk about their collective
experiences shouting taboo expressions as exhilarating and important to
their sense of fellowship.
Group dance rituals raise the communitarian spirit of the events.
Skinheads perform semichoreographed, ritual boot-stomping dances that
evoke power, violence, and militarism. The dance usually involves ten to
twenty people stomping and rotating in a circular formation. Sometimes
one person moves to the center, crouching and stomping, circling in the
opposite direction, and growling or shouting at the other skinheads.
Often, the center skinhead will then run into the circled Aryans in a
feigned but very physical attempt to break free. After several minutes a
new skinhead moves to the center, and they repeat the ritual.
Slam dancing in front of the stage is less choreographed but no less
ritualistic. Slam dancers enact violent stylistic performance through
aggressive pushes, bodily crashes, and mimicked moves of a mock fight.
Slam dancing sometimes escalates into actual brawls between two or
more Aryans. Other dancers usually break up these fights after a minute
or so. Less frequently, the brawls spread to the larger group of dancers
and sometimes escalate out of control. To an outsider, the fights can
seem like discord among Aryans, but in most instances the fighting is just
another part of the ritual experience that Aryans use to distinguish
themselves as violent warriors.
 Aryans combine chants and dances with displays of white power
symbols. Audience members wear tank tops, and some men go bare
chested, to flaunt their racist tattoos. Others wear jackets and T-shirts
with white power patches that indicate their affiliation with local or
national groups.
Concert organizers stay active during the shows. They distribute
movement materials and talk with attendees about their beliefs. They
stock the bar with white power CDs, stickers, patches, band T-shirts,
fanzines, and white power literature. However, some bar owners do not
allow this sort of open marketing of the movement. In these cases,
veteran members will cruise the bar to covertly distribute flyers to
concertgoers with contact information for white power groups. Bands
work with movement recruiters by encouraging newcomers to sample the
merchandise, carouse with band members, and befriend other activist
“brothers and sisters.” Recruiters stress themes of racial love, pleasure,
and fellowship among Aryans at the shows as much as they stress themes
of anger and racial hate.

FESTIVALS
Aryans revel in the private spaces of white power music festivals. Festivals
are the largest, most elaborate, and notorious music spaces. Festivals
unite Aryans for days at a time to live the pure white relationships and
experiences they fantasize about. The festivals are typically set on remote
private property as protection from protesters and authorities.

Aryans called it a music festival. Although tiny in comparison to

mainstream music festivals, they were right in that there was a crowd of
people camped out to hear music and carouse. Festivalgoers had been
instructed through a password-protected website to meet at a grocery
store parking lot, where organizers would screen them, sell them thirty-
dollar tickets, and then give them specific directions to the site. The
festival was a two-day and two-night event with eight bands scheduled to
play.
I stood in front of my tent and scanned the groups. Kids ran among
the campsites where the early arrivals had circled lawn chairs around beer
coolers. A constant stream of Aryans walked around the grounds.
Occasionally one raised a drink and yelled, “White power!” or “Rahowa!”
prompting others to yell back in approval.
Hours earlier I had met Seth and Paul by the car rental counter at the
Atlanta airport. We were to meet several other Aryans there as well, grab
lunch, and then follow them to the festival. I wasn’t exactly sure where
our Aryan guides were taking us. Organizers had kept the festival’s specific
location a secret in an effort to keep authorities and anti-Aryans from
infiltrating the scene. Seth and Paul were band members and had received
directions, but they felt more comfortable following local neo-Nazis to the
property.
After lunch we loaded up for a ninety-minute drive into the Georgia
countryside. We turned off the state highway onto a dirt road that led to
a gate marked with a sign: “Whites Only!”
We rolled past the gate into a clearing surrounded by pine woods.
More than a dozen tents had already been set up beside several RVs in a
back corner of the clearing. I rolled down my window and heard a stereo
blaring Skrewdriver across the grounds—“You are the diamonds in the
dust. You stand out from the crowd.”
Vendors busily set up long tables under canvas tent covers loaded
with CDs, books, T-shirts, and Nazi memorabilia. I saw a skinhead stroll by
with a T-shirt I’d seen many times before. The shirt’s ominous image and
message always gave me pause. It showed a portrait of Hitler and lettering
that read, “Next time . . . No More Mr. Nice Guy!”
Skinheads, Klan members, and neo-Nazis from around the country
spread themselves across the grounds. They reveled in the freedom to
display their beliefs. They joked and caroused in ways that closely
mimicked the Aryan Nations World Congresses in Idaho that were my first
experiences at large Aryan gatherings.
We parked, pitched our tents, and then wandered over to the beer
stand, where a short line had formed. Seth broke into his usual mock
Ebonics talk to anyone who would listen. “You be sayin’ what? I gonna call
Shanagaway. Shanagaway, you know what dis white boy just said? Said I
smell funny.” He then shifted tone and in mock response said, “Well,
honey, ya know I always said dem whiteys are da devil. Dey brought us
here in chains, dey always keepin’ us down. You know what you need to
do honey? You need to putta cap in his ass.”
A skinhead at the front of the line punctuated the end of this
performance by shouting, “Fuck the niggers!”
Others laughed and hollered, “Fuck them!” in reply.
We got our beers and went to a food line that sold hamburgers with
chips for two dollars. We grabbed our food and wandered over to sit with
a group of skinheads Seth recognized. I sat next to Vicki, a blonde woman
in her mid-thirties. She told me that she was from Southern California and
had known Seth since they were teenagers. In fact, she had married one
of Seth’s old friends.
I explained that I was here for research and she seemed eager to talk,
especially about her husband. “He wasn’t able to come ’cause he couldn’t
get the time off from work and he has to be careful about these events.
He’s been locked up a couple times and he doesn’t need any problems
with cops messing with him like they do sometimes at these shows.” She
said she was eager to bring her kids to a festival, to “show them who we
are and how many believe in the cause.”
After Vicki left, a young skin sat down and introduced himself as
“Casper from Indiana.” I listened to his tales about the time he had spent
in Southern California drifting from one skinhead crash pad to another. It
was clear that he knew Seth and others from his time in California. After
half an hour of conversation, he turned and asked, loud enough for
everyone in the circle to hear, “So you’re a researcher? So what do you
think about us racists? I mean do you think we’re all crazy or what?”
I tried to think of a quick answer that would shift attention from me
when Seth suddenly interrupted, “Hell, he’s more racist than I am. He
knows we’re right.”
Casper laughed, “Well, of course, he’s racist! You’d have to be blind
not to be!”
I was thankful for Seth’s comment. It gave me some cachet to have
him vouch for me, and, more important, the group’s attention shifted
from my beliefs to the issue of how so many whites were blinded from the
truth. Yet I was also worried. I knew that Seth wanted me to be racist. He
wanted all white people to be racist. I wondered whether I had
accidentally crossed a line somewhere and he thought I believed in his
cause.
 As I mulled this over, the group broke up and people shuffled off to
their tents. Tomorrow was the big day. More Aryans would arrive, and the
music would start in the late morning and go deep into the night,
punctuated by the swastika and cross burning planned as the finale. As
Seth and I lay in the dark waiting for sleep to come, he turned and
reminded me, as he had other times before, to watch myself tomorrow.
There would be a lot of Hammerskins at the show, and things could get
volatile. His mantra was “Just watch and listen and look like one of us.”
After breakfast the next morning, I walked over to the stage area to
watch the first band set up. Nearby, twelve burly skinheads were busy
arranging an area for the “strongest man contest,” where they would
compete in the dead lift, bench press, tire lift, and other tests of strength.
Hate Train didn’t play until the afternoon, but Seth, Paul, and the others
were already busy rehearsing, so I was on my own.
I planned to make my way around the field, striking up conversations
with people I’d met the night before. Things began uneventfully. I met a
couple of Casper’s friends who had come down with him from Indiana.
Dave, a soft-spoken, middle-aged man with graying hair, wore a blue work
shirt with the sleeves cut off and showed no visible tattoos. Casper’s
other friend, Rich, was short, stocky, and clean-cut. He wore a Max Resist
tour shirt and jean shorts. He looked to be in his late twenties. Dave
immediately asked where I lived. When I said “Las Vegas,” he asked about
how many nonwhites lived there. I replied, “Quite a few.” He nodded in
disgust and said,

Yeah, I used to be a taxi driver down in LA. God, what a cesspool! All
the filth! Driving taxis and seeing what all these nonwhites were
doing, I lived in this shithole apartment near Watts and these black
motherfuckers used to harass me all day long. People were banging
on my door all night. My place got broke into four times in the year
that I lived there. I finally couldn’t take it anymore.

Just then, the first band of the day, Intimidation One, started to play.
We stopped our conversation and walked over toward the stage to join
the crowd.
The audience near the stage was mostly skinheads. Within minutes
they started slam dancing—knocking into one another, pushing and
stomping. A few Klansmen and other neo-Nazis formed a half-circle
around them, nodding their heads to the music and giving Sieg heil
salutes toward the band.
Casper, Dave, and I stood at the back of the crowd, about twenty-five
yards from the stage. A young skinhead approached us between band
sets. His head was freshly shaved and he was full of swagger. He was
short, about five-seven, and wiry. A huge plug of chewing tobacco
protruded from his lower lip. Without hesitating, he said, “Hey!” and
started telling us about a recent incident that happened in his hometown
in Oregon.
I wasn’t sure whether he knew Casper or Dave. They didn’t seem to
greet him with any recognition. We listened as he told us how two of his
friends had recently beaten a gay man in a warehouse.
“My buddies asked this fag if he wanted to get fucked up the ass and
then they rammed a baseball bat right up his ass,” he said excitedly with a
cocky smirk. His eyes were brown and dull, and he stared intently at us.
Was he looking for approval? I wondered.
He went on. “They just beat this fag and left him for dead.”
I considered that he might be testing us, looking for a reaction.
Maybe he thinks one of us is an infiltrator. Maybe he thinks it’s me.
He continued to tell us that the police had recently hauled him in. “It
was funny. They tried to pin all these phony charges on me, but they
never mentioned the one thing I did do. I axed this nigger up a while back
with a hatchet and they never even mentioned it.” He said it in a matter-
of-fact way, as if he were telling us the score of last night’s ballgame.
Was this guy for real? I wondered. If he did this, is he really stupid
enough to tell a group of strangers about it? I remained silent, watching
him and trying to convince myself that he was talking tough just to
impress us.[28]
At a lull in the skinhead’s story, I broke away and moved to the other
side of the stage. I watched the next band, Jewslaughter, set up their
equipment. They were to be followed by a Klan leader speaking about
lone-wolf activism. Hate Train would then take the stage. I decided to
return for the speech and Hate Train’s set. For now, I headed to my tent
to decompress and write down my observations.
By midafternoon, festival organizers announced that more than four
hundred Aryans were in attendance. The camping area was full of tents.
Vendors did brisk business. The audience at the front of the stage grew in
size and energy, and during Hate Train’s set, three injured skins were
pulled out of the dancing area.
The last band in the lineup, Angry Aryans, finished their final song at
around 10:00 p.m. The audience readied for the swastika and cross
burning, which was scheduled to close the evening’s festivities. Klansmen
in full regalia led the ceremony. The group was hushed as they began the
ritual. I watched the hooded men, feeling like I’d been transported
directly back to the 1950s, when KKK grand wizards and their followers
held sway in the Deep South. A small girl interrupted my thoughts when
she turned to her mother in a voice loud enough to be heard across the
crowd, “Mommy, these guys are kooks!” Her mother looked horrified and
scolded her, “Don’t talk like that; just watch.” I couldn’t help but smile.
While the cross and swastika burned, the robed Klansmen led the
crowd in hymns and chants. I was tired, but most of those in the crowd
seemed energized by the ceremony. Some clasped shoulders and sang or
chanted in unison. Others stood alone, mouthing the words and gazing
into the fire. The sense of fellowship, shared feeling, and purpose among
them was obvious. It struck me that, however short-lived these events
were, they seemed crucial to help participants invigorate their
commitment and press on with the struggle. Before long, I headed to the
tent for some sleep, eager for the next day’s flight home.
A group of boys follows a man across a field at the White Heritage Days Festival, which was held on
private land, September 18, 2004, near Scottsboro, Alabama. The crosses on the ground were later
erected and burned in a cross-lighting ceremony.
Photo by David S. Holloway © Getty Images

For a time in the 2000s the size and frequency of white power music
festivals dramatically increased.[29] The most prominent festival,
Hammerfest, organized by the Hammerskin Nation, has been held
annually since 2000 and draws hundreds of activists from both the United
States and Europe.[30] Other festivals proved less durable, such as the
Nordic Fest, produced by the Imperial Klans of America and held from
2000 until 2010 when the Imperial Klan’s leader, Ron Edwards, was
arrested on federal drug charges. Aryans hold other music festivals more
spontaneously to celebrate holidays or commemorate “fallen Aryan
heroes” such as Robert Mathews. Aryan festival events usually include up
to a dozen bands, speeches from WPM leaders, workshops on Aryan
heritage and activism, ritual swastika and cross lightings, sporting
competitions, and sales of a wide array of white power merchandise.

A Chance to Build Unity

Activists talk enthusiastically of the empowering communitarian
spirit they feel at the festivals. The privacy of the festival setting is crucial
to create a space where Aryans feel comfortable displaying white power
pride and unity. Being together with so many Aryans gives Otto, a SoCal
Skin, a sense of Aryan power and inspiration. “When people come
together at the music shows, we’re telling each other that our beliefs can
withstand all of the bullshit out there and we don’t have to cave in, we
don’t have to give up.”[31]
Likewise, Garth, an Idaho Aryan, explains: “The shows really bring
people together. They keep you strong, they keep you feeling like you’re
part of something, part of the movement, and if we can keep together,
then there’s hope that we can save the white race from destruction.”[32]
The privacy at the festivals allows Aryans to openly express white
power beliefs. Activists set up temporary tent towns where Aryans from
many locales can connect. Participants joke and carouse with one another
in ways that contradict the stereotypes of intense, menacing, vitriolic
Nazis brimming with animosity and hatred. Aryans feel comfortable to let
down their guard at festivals like this. Festivals also bring together
different ages of white power activists, creating a powerful context for
sustaining and transmitting the movement’s culture across generations.
[33] Sammy, a Colorado Aryan, describes a visceral, unifying spirit at the

festivals, saying, “[The festivals] are great. We get dressed up [in Aryan
regalia] with all these great white families, and that’s what is really
important . . . a chance to build unity and remember why we do all of this.
It’s for racial kinship.”[34]

WHITE POWER MUSIC COMPANIES

We close this chapter with a discussion of how white power music
companies organize and produce movement music. Aryan recording
companies organize and support white power music festivals with money,
space, and volunteers for the events. They also widely promote the shows
through their extensive Internet presence.
While the numbers have fluctuated over the past fifteen years, we
estimate that around forty North American companies are involved in the
multimedia hate music culture.[35] They include small two- to three-
person Internet outlets that stock and distribute Aryan music as well as
larger independent labels that sell merchandise and organize live concerts
and festivals. Aryan music company organizers see their role as raising the
communitarian spirit among white power activists. Joey, an Aryan music
distributor, says:

The music we produce lets them express their anger for those
working against their people. The music helps them develop strong
racial rootedness and feel part of a large community of white people
who care about the same things they do—a community who isn’t
afraid of being called names or not being “politically correct”; a
community that is not afraid to stand up for their race.[36]
Stacks of Panzerfaust Records’ “Project Schoolyard” CDs waiting to be shipped at the Panzerfaust
Records office in Newport, Minnesota. Project Schoolyard was launched in 2004 as a recruitment plan
to distribute one hundred thousand free CDs to kids aged thirteen to nineteen at schools. After a
change in leadership in 2005, Panzerfaust Records was renamed Free Your Mind Productions.
Photo by David S. Holloway © Getty Images
During the past decade, the two most prominent white power music
companies, Resistance Records and Free Your Mind Productions, pursued
their goal to create a racist alternative to mainstream music. Resistance
Records was an arm of the National Alliance, and Free Your Mind
Productions grew out of the Hammerskin Nation. The two companies had
elaborate national and international Internet distribution networks for
their music and merchandise. Resistance Records and Free Your Mind
Productions set the standard for present-day white power music
production.
Resistance Records emphasized youth recruitment. The late National
Alliance leader and Resistance Records CEO, William Pierce, told his
followers:

Our aim is to make Resistance music have a much bigger impact on

young people in the future than it has had in the past. . . . We want
millions of young, white Americans and Europeans to make
resistance music their music of choice, instead of the Negroid filth
churned out by MTV.[37]

Resistance Records billed itself as “the soundtrack for the white

revolution.”[38] The company offered more than seven hundred music
titles spanning all the WPM music genres. The songs, cover art, and band
names, such as Fueled by Hate, Aryan Terrorism, Brutal Attack, Blue Eyed
Devils, Angry Aryans, Racist Redneck Rebels, and RaHoWa, emphasized
themes of violence and racist hatred aimed at African Americans, Jews,
Asians, and immigrants.
The company appeared to do modestly well compared with other
small, nonracist independent music labels. The Anti-Defamation League
reported that Resistance sold up to fifty thousand white power CDs per
year before legal troubles in 1997.[39] In 1999, Pierce bought the Swedish
company Nordland Records, reportedly doubling Resistance’s inventory to
eighty thousand compact discs and expanding its market.[40]
 The acquisition gave Resistance an immediate presence in Sweden,
“one of the world’s largest producers [and consumers] of racist rock.”[41]
By 2000, sales had rebounded as Resistance reportedly received about
fifty orders per day, averaging seventy dollars in merchandise, equaling
more than $1 million in annual sales. In the years following William
Pierce’s death in 2002, the National Alliance began to crumble amid
internal dissension and defection. Resistance Records began to suffer the
same fate, and by 2013, the National Alliance was in organizational
disarray, while Resistance Records had dissolved. As of 2015, the National
Alliance hosts a website that offers readers a manifesto and claims two
headquarters—the original Hillsboro, West Virgina, compound and a
locale in Laurel Bloomery, Tennessee. Resistance Records retains a
presence as a webpage that ominously proclaims “We Are Back,” but it
offers no products and is otherwise inoperable.
Free Your Mind Productions had an even shorter and more
tumultuous history. Anthony Pierpont and Eric Davidson founded the
company as Panzerfaust Records in September 1998.[42] They cultivated
close links to the Hammerskin Nation, Volksfront, and White Revolution.
But Panzerfaust changed hands after these three organizations withdrew
their support from the company because of internal disputes over money,
combined with Pierpont’s legal troubles and claims about his impure
racial heritage. Bryant Cecchini and others seized control of the
Panzerfaust website and reorganized it in early 2005 as Free Your Mind
Productions before eventually folding.
Free Your Mind Productions described their mission as offering white
people opportunities to find and embrace their true Aryan identity.
Anthony Pierpont explained before he was forced out that the music
company’s role was to provide places for disaffected whites to connect
with an authentic, indigenous Aryan culture: “You’d be amazed at how
many [white] people are looking for an outlet to be something different,
where they don’t have to feel guilty about being white or act like a nigger
to be cool. . . . We give them that opportunity.”[43]
The music websites created by the companies served as retail
clearinghouses for Aryan music and merchandise and spaces where
committed fans and activists and even the mildly curious could talk to one
another through online chatrooms. While Aryans ordered compact discs
and MP3s through the Resistance Records and Free Your Mind
Productions sites, they also accessed twenty-four-hour streaming radio,
music reviews, Aryan books, videos, jewelry, clothing, and links to
additional websites, where members connected to other dimensions of
white power culture. These websites also created opportunities for
“bring[ing] distant isolated groups and individuals together [to] reach an
audience far beyond any they could reach with their traditional
propaganda.”[44] James, a Southeast Aryan who runs a small Internet
music site, explained: “We think a lot about how to reach a wider
audience, with the [mainstream] media pushing all this anti-white
propaganda. We can’t let that media define us. We’ve got to find ways to
get the message out. The websites help connect people to something
larger.”[45]
When Resistance Records and Free Your Mind Productions shut down
operations, some Aryans feared that they had lost a vital part of the
movement. However, several smaller companies quickly emerged to fill
the void and made white power music more readily available than ever
before. Dozens of US white power music distributors, including NSM88
Records, Micetrap, Tightrope, MSR Productions, Get Some 88 Records, and
ISD Records, provide easy access to CDs, MP3s, live streaming, and
catalogs for ordering Aryan-themed merchandise.
Although white power distributors symbolize indigenous movement
organizations built, operated, and supported by white power members,
the companies are becoming increasingly unnecessary as white power
music availability expands into more mainstream forums. The most recent
development over the past several years involves the availability of Aryan
music through mainstream multimillion-dollar enterprises such as iTunes,
Amazon, Spotify, and Google Play. As of September 2014, iTunes offered
the music of fifty-four white power music bands for purchase and
download.[46] White power members can choose songs from the most
popular white power bands such as Skrewdriver, as well as from lesser-
known groups such as Kill Baby, Kill!
While Aryan music distributors often emulate the efforts of
mainstream music and merchandising sites, new access to mainstream
distributors provides “a new and unprecedented tool to effectively
distribute hate music and with it the ideology required to recruit new
supporters.”[47] The white power music industry now benefits from some
of the most sophisticated and effective marketing techniques in the
world. As Aaron Flanagan, director of research for the Center for New
Community, an antiracist group based in Chicago, explained,

The scary thing about iTunes is that it places [racist music] in this
forum, that companies like Apple are brilliant at, creating a
marketplace that pushes these cultural products closer to the
consumer and facilitates the purchasing of them in ways that are so
intuitive.[48]

For instance, iTunes, Amazon, and similar online music stores offer
customers who purchase nonracist punk, hardcore, and heavy metal
music additional recommendations that include songs and albums by
explicit white power bands such as Skrewdriver. As Keegan Hankes notes,
this “type of exposure . . . has never before been so openly available for
an insular music scene that has depended on word of mouth to gain
popularity.”[49] In December 2014, iTunes responded to criticism by
removing most of the white power artists it carried, but other outlets,
including Amazon and Spotify, continue to offer extremist music.[50]
The availability of white power music via mainstream media outlets
highlights a larger trend of mainstreaming hate, which is most notable in
Europe. In 2005, Skinhouse Hellas, a white power–only venue, opened in
Trikala, Greece, hosting regularly scheduled music shows featuring some
of the most popular Aryan bands such as Brutal Attack and the Bully Boys.
The venue has now been operating for nearly a decade and represents a
new step in the direction of white power music by forging enduring
relationships between the business community, police, and the
mainstream public.[51] The easy availability of white power music may be
surprising to many who remain unaware of the pervasiveness of Aryan
culture, but for white power activists, this type of persistence is a major
accomplishment.
 ***

Music theorist Tia DeNora says that music is a way of living ideas.[52]
WPM activists use music as a form of aesthetic expression to establish
themselves as true Aryans. The music itself evokes multiple emotions that
activists draw upon to support and sustain their commitment. The songs
express racial hatred and violence along with potent emotions of pride,
honor, love, and movement unity.
Aryans experience white power music’s inspirational imagery. The
realization that there are many other racists who listen to the same music
with the same convictions helps to anchor Aryans’ commitments. Greg, a
veteran Northern Hammerskin, explains:

What it does to people who listen to white power music, it gives

them a certain level of confidence when they’re trying to keep their
jobs or to raise a child. You know you can get through your day with
the whole world against you instead of giving up or selling out. We
say, “You know what, we’re racists and nobody likes us, but we don’t
care and we’re not gonna go away, and tomorrow is another day.”[53]

White power activists use music as a major ideological and

organizational resource, uniting Aryans in festivals, bar concerts, and
parties. Bar shows cater to local activists in specific locales, while larger
concerts and festivals draw together members from widely scattered
Aryan scenes.
The white power music scene persists, but “not all racists agree on
what forms of racist culture are appropriate [and] the question of music
can provoke especially hot disputes.”[54] Some factions see the music
scene as a distraction from real movement politics and the limit of most
members’ activism rather than a stepping-stone to deeper commitment.
Our analysis demonstrates that white power music is much more
than a superficial stylized packaging of Aryan ideas. White power music is
a powerful tool for transmitting virulent racist and anti-Semitic ideas and
organizing white power members.[55] Potential recruits may start in the
scene by just hanging around without the pressure of delving too far into
the ritual culture of hate. But one visit to a festival or bar concert can lead
to more, and eventually recruits may dive headlong into Aryan culture in
both virtual and real-world venues. And for those who are already
committed to the movement, the music scene helps to further sustain
their involvement.
Aryans’ contact with the white power music scene extends beyond
the shows. Musicians and promoters use cyberspace to enhance access to
and involvement in the Aryan scene. In the next chapter, we discuss the
ways that Aryans use the Internet to extend their participation in white
power culture.
1. Mike, Midwest Aryan, interviewed September 1, 2001.
2. Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison, Music and Social Movements:
Mobilizing Traditions in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998).
3. Hank, interviewed June 14, 2001.
4. Hank, interviewed June 14, 2001.
5. Hank, interviewed June 14, 2001.
6. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and
the Politics of Identity (New York: New York University Press, 2002); Vron
Ware and Les Back, Out of Whiteness: Color, Politics, and Culture (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2002).
7. Skrewdriver’s lead singer, Ian Stuart Donaldson, died in a car accident in
1993, and white power music bands and concert organizers have since
immortalized him with memorial music shows that honor his life, web-
based biographies and discographies, and CD compilations of
Skrewdriver’s music.
8. Dave, Volksfront skinhead, interviewed July 14, 2000.
9. Andy, Washington skinhead, interviewed April 25, 1997.
10. Tom, Aryan musician, interviewed July 9, 2001.
11. Southern Poverty Law Center, “White Power Bands,”
http://www.tolerance.org/news/article_hate.jsp?id=403 (accessed May 30,
2002); Anti-Defamation League, “White Power Music Groups,”
http://archive.adl.org/learn/ext_us/music_country.html (accessed
December 23, 2014).
12. Modified lyrics for Skrewdriver’s song “Race and Nation” can be
retrieved from http://www.metrolyrics.com/race-and-nation-lyrics-
skrewdriver.html (accessed November 15, 2007).
13. Modified lyrics for Bully Boys’ song “Jigrun” can be retrieved from
https://www.rxlyrics.com/lyrics/b/bully-boys/jigrun-74.html.
14. Modified lyrics for Max Resist’s song “Boot Party” can be retrieved
from http://www.lyrster.com/lyrics/boot-party-lyrics-max-resist.html.
15. Modified lyrics for Youngland’s song “Stand One, Stand All” can be
retrieved from
http://www.lyricsondemand.com/y/younglandlyrics/standonestandalllyrics.html
16. Their mother, April Gaede, a veteran Aryan activist and their manager,
actively pushed the girls into the Aryan scene. She homeschooled them
through sixth grade and then enrolled them in a Bakersfield, California,
junior high where their Aryan ties were unknown for some time. They
apparently fit in well at school until word spread of their involvement in
white power activism. Their mother then moved the family to a small
Montana town to avoid tensions they faced in Bakersfield.
17. The twin duo has since renounced the white power movement and
their Aryan beliefs. Their mother, however, remains involved and
committed to spreading the movement.
18. Biggie, Colorado skinhead, interviewed August 23, 2002.
19. Quoted in Kathleen Blee, Inside Organized Racism: Women in the Hate
Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 162.
20. Kenny, Aryan activist, interviewed February 21, 2002.
21. Neo-Nazi activist quoted in Blee, Inside Organized Racism, 161.
22. Samuel, Seattle activist, interviewed June 29, 2004.
23. Rick, WAR skinhead and Aryan musician, interviewed July 15, 2002.
24. Kenny, LA County skinhead, interviewed March 28, 2002.
25. Lance, SoCal skinhead, interviewed June 23, 2003.
26. For similar points, see Derrick Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The
Permanence of Racism (New York: Basic, 1992); and Elisabeth Jean Wood,
“The Emotional Benefits of Insurgency in El Salvador,” in Passionate
Politics: Emotions and Social Movements, ed. Jeff Goodwin, James Jasper,
and Francesca Polletta (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 267–
81.
27. Wood, “Emotional Benefits.”
28. A few days later I talked to a journalist who tracks hate crimes in the
United States. After checking with his contacts in law enforcement, he
found nothing to confirm the skinhead’s story and expected that it was
just brash talk from an attention seeker.
29. Southern Poverty Law Center, “Former Hate Music Promoter George
Burdi Discusses His Experiences with Racism and the White Power Music
Industry,” Intelligence Report 103 (Fall 2001),
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=179 (accessed
March 30, 2002).
30. Anti-Defamation League, “The Consequences of Right-Wing Extremism
on the Internet,” 2002,
http://www.adl.org/internet/extremism_rw/cord_rock.asp (accessed
February 5, 2002).
31. Otto, SoCal skinhead, interviewed August 13, 2000.
32. Garth, Idaho Aryan, interviewed July 12, 1999.
33. For similar findings, see Mark Hamm, In Bad Company: America’s
Terrorist Underground (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2002), 85–
93.
34. Sammy, Colorado Aryan, interviewed February 19, 2001.
35. Center for New Community, Soundtracks to the White Revolution:
White Supremacist Assaults on Youth Music Subcultures (Chicago: Center
for New Community, 1999).
36. Joey, Aryan music distributor, interviewed June 11, 2004.
37. William Pierce, “Resistance Magazine,”
http://resistance.com/magazine (accessed August 2, 2003).
38. George Burdi created Resistance Records in 1993. An early hate music
pioneer and leader of the Canadian World Church of the Creator, he first
sold music out of his home in suburban Windsor, Ontario. He then moved
his operation to suburban Detroit a year later to avoid strict Canadian
laws against hate propaganda. A 1997 joint US and Canadian raid on
Burdi’s home and office stopped record sales until William Pierce and the
National Alliance acquired Resistance Records in 1999. Pierce died in 2002,
leaving his protégé, Erich Gliebe, to run both the National Alliance and
Resistance Records.
39. Anti-Defamation League, “Deafening Hate: The Revival of Resistance
Records,” 2000, http://www.adl.org/resistance_records/Reviving.asp
(accessed February 5, 2002).
40. Anti-Defamation League, “Deafening Hate.”
41. Tore Bjørgo, “Entry, Bridge-Burning, and Exit Options: What Happens
to Young People Who Join Racist Groups—and Want to Leave,” in Nation
and Race: The Developing Euro-American Racist Subculture, ed. Jeffrey
Kaplan and Tore Bjørgo (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998),
231–58; according to a 1997 survey of eight thousand young Swedes
between the ages of twelve and nineteen by the Centre for Migration
Studies and the National Council of Crime Prevention in Sweden, 12.2
percent reported listening to white power rock “sometimes or often.” See
Heléne Lööw, “White Noise Music: An International Affair,”
http://www.freemuse.org/sw6649.asp (accessed May 30, 2002).
42. The term Panzerfaust refers to a Nazi-era antitank weapon and can be
literally translated as “armored fist”—a concept Pierpont and Davidson
used to communicate the idea of white power music as “the audio
ordnance that’s needed by our comrades on the front lines of today’s
racial struggle.” “About Panzerfaust Records,”
http://www.panzerfaust.com/about.shtml (accessed June 29, 2003).
43. Anthony Pierpont, interviewed July 14, 2002.
44. David Hoffman, The Web of Hate: Extremists Exploit the Internet (New
York: Anti-Defamation League, 1996).
45. James, Southeastern Klansman, interviewed December 15, 2002.
46. Keegan Hankes, “Music & Money & Hate,” Intelligence Report 156
(Winter 2014), http://www.splcenter.org/Music-Money-and-Hate
(accessed November 28, 2014).
47. Hankes, “Music & Money & Hate.”
48. Hankes, “Music & Money & Hate.”
49. Hankes, “Music & Money & Hate.”
50. Kory Grow, “Apple Pulls White-Power Music from iTunes,” Rolling
Stone, December 12, 2014,
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/apple-pulls-white-power-music-
from-itunes-20141212 (accessed December 25, 2014).
51. Kirsten Dyck, Rock for the Reich: The International Web of White Power
and Neo-Nazi Hate Music (unpublished manuscript, 2014).
52. Tia DeNora, Music in Everyday Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2000).
53. Greg, Northern Hammerskin, interviewed September 1, 2001.
54. Blee, Inside Organized Racism, 165.
55. For more on this point, see John Street, “Fight the Power: The Politics
of Music and the Music of Politics,” Government and Opposition 38 (2001):
113–30.
 Chapter 6
Virtual Hate
The net has provided us with the opportunity to bring our point of
view to hundreds of thousands of people. . . . [White power
websites,] which are interactive, provide those people who are
attracted to our ideas with a forum to talk to each other and to form
a virtual community . . . and that’s the beauty. —Don Black, founder
of Stormfront.org[1]

The survival and growth of the white power movement depends on

the Internet. Hundreds of Aryan websites organized around the world
offer easy and anonymous access to white power culture. Members build
and extend personal relationships with one another online as they chat,
post videos, download music, visit racist parenting and education
websites, and play online hate games. They also use this virtual realm to
organize and extend real-world activities, such as house parties, concerts,
and festivals.
In this chapter, we explain the critical role of cyberspace as an Aryan
free space. We describe how white power members use the Internet and
what they experience on white power websites. Specifically, we describe
how Aryans use cyberspace to access white power culture and immerse
themselves in a “lived, communicative environment” with other Aryans.[2]
The web has given Aryans a new place to assemble in expansive
cybercommunities[3] where they preserve racist and anti-Semitic
narratives and build virtual social solidarity. Online forums are echo
chambers for hate.[4]

ARYAN HATE CULTURE ONLINE

Aryan culture online is only microseconds away. Keyword searches such as
Aryan or white power on any search engine bring up an array of virulent
racist and anti-Semitic websites. For example, the search term white
power brings up the American Nazi Party’s (ANP) website. The ANP calls
itself a “political-educational association dedicated to the 14 WORDS.”
The ANP’s home page is replete with swastikas, including the German Nazi
Party’s Parteiadler (eagle-atop-a-swastika) emblem and swastikas
emblazoned with the American flag. Visitors also see recruitment videos
and white power messages, such as “White Power for White People!
Fight!” and the “14 Words” quotation—“We must secure the existence of
our people and a future for White children”—scrolling across the page.
The ANP also offers visitors a long diatribe about its beliefs that ends with
admonitions for whites to embrace members as “brothers and sisters . . .
fathers and mothers . . . friends and co-workers . . . WHITE AMERICA, just
like YOU!” Readers can also link to the ANP Twitter account, download
podcasts, and read Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
One of the longest-running white power websites, Stormfront.org,
offers streaming Stormfront Radio shows and sixty-three forums where
Aryans post their thoughts about Aryan ideology and practices. The site’s
home page proclaims the Stormfront community as the “Voice of the new
embattled White minority!” along with the creed “White Pride
Worldwide.” The discussion forums include explicit threads on
membership and activism, such as white nationalist “Ideology and
Philosophy,” “Culture and Customs,” “Strategy and Tactics,” “Stormfront
Summits,” and other movement events. Other threads range from
financial and legal advice to white singles networking, classified ads,
homeschooling strategies, poetry, and homemaking. The “For Stormfront
Ladies Only” thread offers a space where Aryan women discuss their
movement roles along with more mundane topics. Among the most
viewed topics are “I Love White Boys” and a variety of discussions on
pregnancy and motherhood.
Stormfront.org claims almost three hundred thousand registered
users and more than ten million discussion posts across its forums and
threads. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) calls Stormfront “a
magnet and breeding ground for the deadly and deranged.”[5] Since the
site came online in 1995, Stormfront members have been responsible for
almost one hundred killings, although the trend increased significantly
following Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential election.[6]
Other white power websites offer access to trappings of Aryan
culture and style. The online catalog GetSome88.com sells white power
clothing, accessories, collectibles, and books. The site’s home page is
dominated by images of young female models posing seductively in white
power T-shirts with the GetSome88 Celtic cross logo, along with hoodies
from white power bands Skrewdriver and Extreme Hatred. One click sends
visitors to the “Girls Shirts” page, which offers women’s T-shirt selections
with phrases such as “I Heart My Skinhead,” “Racist Girl,” and “White
Pride World Wide.” The site’s format is like most any online retail site.
Customers’ selections go into a shopping cart, they make payments with
their Visa or Mastercard, and the company ships the items the next day.
The money cycles through the movement to white power causes.
Micetrap.net, a white power music website, links Aryans to streaming
white power music through “Micetrap Radio” and hosts an online store
with an extensive white power music catalog. One click into the catalog
brings up the band Stormtroop 16 and their recording Steel Capped
Justice. The album’s cover art shows four skinheads wearing steel-toed
boots kicking a black man on the ground. Racist Redneck Rebels’ album
Keep the Hate Alive! sits at number three on their bestsellers list. This
album’s cover art depicts a close-up shot of a hooded Klansman pulling a
noose over the head of a screaming black man. The images are
superimposed onto a Confederate flag. The home page asks Aryans to
“like” the site on Facebook, follow Micetrap on Twitter, and connect the
page to Tumblr and Pinterest.
White power cyberspace is truly an interlinked web of hate. An
Internet search for Aryan websites generates a list that goes on for pages.
NS88.org even offers the “White Pages,” which ranks the top one hundred
white nationalist websites around the world. And each Aryan website also
hosts links to even more racist pages.
Such easy online access to the movement is meaningful to white
power activists. Aryan websites show idealized Aryan families. Children
pose in Klan robes and SS uniforms with arms raised in Nazi salutes. Trey,
a SoCal Skin, reflected on the meaning of access to white power web
images and paraphernalia:

It’s really cool how you can get all this shit off the Net now. Ten years
ago there really wasn’t that much, but now you’ve got all the music,
the clothes. I bought my daughter a toy figure of Hitler from a
 website. I mean, you’re not going to find that at Walmart.[7]

Aryans use the Internet to weave movement culture into their daily
lives and access the movement from anywhere with an Internet
connection. At home and work, in coffee shops and bars, Aryans
participate in white power culture by chatting with other Aryans, listening
to streaming hate rock, shopping white power retail websites for Aryan
merchandise, reading inspirational texts, or playing racist video games.
Members consume these symbols and experiences in ways that
authenticate their commitment to the movement.

Selling the Aryan Aesthetic

White power music companies, such as Micetrap Records, Tightrope
Records, and NSM88 Records, are among the savviest online distributors
of hate culture. To market white power music and style to activists, they
offer online catalogs filled with Aryan clothing, activities, and mementos.
Some websites link to photo galleries of racists at concerts. Concert-going
Aryans display attire, tattoos, jewelry, and other symbols of Aryan
authenticity for viewers to admire.
Online white power merchandisers mimic mainstream Internet
retailers. The websites are easily navigable for customers. For instance,
each item on the NSM88 site has an adjacent “Buy Now” button for quick
and easy checkout. Antipathy Records offers a currency conversion
calculator to simplify foreign transactions. The companies also emphasize
customer satisfaction, ensuring patrons the best selections, lowest prices,
safe access to their products, and quick, discreet delivery.
Lifestyle materials integral to Aryan membership create revenue
streams for white power movement coffers. Aryan web enterprises
promote the idea of online purchases as an easy way to contribute money
to the movement. In addition to accepting mainstream credit cards,
online retailers use the PayPal money transfer tool to ease customer
transactions.[8] White power retailers also advertise products on
Amazon.com where they not only sell their items but earn fees for
referring supporters to the Amazon website to buy their wares.[9]
 Strategically promoting the indigenous character of the enterprises
helps to enhance members’ sense of connection to economically viable
movement institutions that support what they see as their much
misunderstood and maligned Aryan aesthetic. In turn, WPM members
directly contribute to the movement by providing a revenue stream
through their purchase of the merchandise. Keeping members’ money
circulating in the movement nourishes and sustains the white power
music scene and the organizations behind it.
This relationship between WPM music enterprises and activists who
participate produces a “co-op effect” similar to the way that progressive
movements in the 1960s and 1970s established alternative service
organizations such as food co-ops and community credit unions to serve
those seeking cultural materials, lifestyles, and commercial options
outside, and competitive with, the mainstream providers. Members’
participation and resources sustained those organizations, with the most
successful becoming enduring institutions and lending a strong sense of
efficacy to members’ efforts. While certainly more clandestine than these
organizations, WPM music and merchandising enterprises are establishing
themselves as viable anchors for transmitting and supporting movement
identity. Their success in this regard creates opportunities for activists to
feel involved in an authentic, viable, self-sustaining alternative white
power scene that is their own and which they see as a legitimate rival to
the mainstream music and culture.[10]

Aryan Cybergames
Online racist video games offer especially virulent Aryan socialization
experiences.[11] Aryans convey racist and anti-Semitic images and ideas in
games such as Aryan 3, Ghetto Blaster, Shoot the Black, White Power
Doom, ZOG’s Nightmare 2, and Ethnic Cleansing. Games draw both novice
and longtime racists to interactive versions of Aryan racial extermination
and white domination fantasies.[12]
In the first-person shooter game Ethnic Cleansing, the race war has
begun. Players choose to control a neo-Nazi or Klansman avatar as they
defend their city, which has been overrun by blacks and Latinos controlled
by a Jewish boss. Avatars roam city streets and subways to take back the
city by killing racial enemies. Monkey and ape sounds accompany black
killings, Jewish enemies yell “Oy vey!,” while poncho-wearing Latinos
shout, “I’ll take a siesta now!” and “Ay carumba!” when they are
destroyed.
National Alliance signs and posters appear on the virtual city streets.
White power music comprises the soundtrack. The game concludes when
a player confronts the Jewish boss, a rocket-wielding former Israeli prime
minister, Ariel Sharon, who taunts players: “We have destroyed your
culture!” and “We silenced Henry Ford.” When Sharon is killed, he says,
“Filthy white dog, you have destroyed thousands of years of planning.”
National Socialist Movement gamers developed the first-person
shooter game ZOG’s Nightmare 2, in which players make their way
through an urban landscape populated by blacks, Latinos, and other
nonwhites. Players must “liquidate all the non-white invaders and purify
the NSM party headquarters, while Jew-controlled police hunt the player.”
The game encourages players to “Gun down the brown!”[13]
Aryans imagine racist computer games as a critical recruiting tool.
Charlie, a Southeast Aryan, proclaimed, “Online video games are a great
idea for the movement. It’s planting a seed. [We] need these games for
what they say and do. There’s just something about the visual part and
being able to really get into it.”[14] If nothing else, the games certainly
allow both novice and seasoned Aryans to role-play racist and anti-
Semitic hatred in a virtual environment.

Children’s Virtual Indoctrination

Video games are just one part of the virtual realm that Aryans devote
to racial socialization. They aim some white power websites directly at
children, streaming racist cartoons and posting racist coloring pages,
white power–themed puzzles, and Aryan children’s stories.
The “For Kids” section of the I Love White Folks website has Aryan
crossword puzzles with questions about Aryan supremacy. The website
also contains original fairy tales. “Johnny White and the Dark Slavers”
describes how the hero travels back in time to rescue one hundred white
girls from enslavement and saves the white race. “The Magic Parakeet”
offers a tale about a child who follows his father’s advice to eradicate
racial diversity.
Parents also find online support for racist homeschooling. Web-
based teaching materials, such as lesson plans, workbooks, and children’s
literature, are available at several sites to download, print, and distribute.
I Love White Folks—For Kids offers history lessons, such as “The March of
the Titans,” a pseudohistorical survey of the white race, including
anthropological and archaeological research about Aryan racial evolution
and white supremacy. Women for Aryan Unity and Stormfront.org also
host chat rooms where Aryan parents discuss strategies for indoctrinating
their children into hate culture.

White Power Video and Social Networking Sites

Aryans do not limit their web presence to nonmainstream sites.
Many use the popular video hosting site YouTube to upload scores of
racist and anti-Semitic Aryan videos that range from amateur footage of
rallies, marches, and live concerts to professionally produced white power
music videos. Aryans have also produced their own white power
documentaries and infomercials to market hate culture and white power
groups. More recently, Aryans turned to Twitter and Tumblr to link with
one another and promote their racist and anti-Semitic agenda. Twitter
users with handles such as WhitePride, Amazon 14/88, and Blonde White
Pride tweet virulently racist comments, memes, photos, and videos to
their followers. The American Nazi Party, one of the most active Aryan
Twitter accounts, draws more than six thousand followers to read their
tweets, from the benefits of racially based national socialism to
complaints about “the ignorant hate that persists against Hitler.”[15]
Similarly, Tumblr users with account names such as mein-fuehrer,
whitepride-oi, and whitesupremacymemes post Aryan symbolism, candid
social photos, memes, and other images reflecting white power themes.
The posts include hashtags such as #whitepower, #swastika, #racist, #KKK,
and related Aryan topics to create searchable links to similar posts.
The mainstream popularity of Facebook and other social networking
sites motivated the National Socialist Movement to create its own social
networking site for Aryans, New Saxon. Participants construct virtual
identities through personal profiles, blogs, and photos and link to other
Aryans based on their preferred ideological branch, music tastes, and
other interests. New Saxon organizers describe their site as a virtual place
where

people of European descent may enjoy many great features which

will enable fun interaction among members. New Saxon is an
excellent place to meet like minded people with high moral
character, a love for their heritage and culture, have strong family
values and are politically active in various grassroots projects.[16]

The Internet offers a variety of ways to access extremist ideology.

With a few clicks, white power web surfers can move through virtual
spaces full of taboo symbolism, talk and images promoting racial violence,
and social networks of white power advocates. In the next section, we
analyze what online hate culture means to Aryans and how they use it to
sustain their devotion to Aryan ideology.

“IT KEEPS ME FEELING CONNECTED”

Even the most isolated Aryans can feel they are an interactive part of a
widespread community of racists using the Internet.[17] Jay, an Aryan
Front skinhead, uses the Internet to allay his feeling of isolation from the
movement.[18] As he points out, “I don’t have much free time anymore to
attend festivals, but e-mailing and the chat rooms make me feel a lot less
alone. The Internet just makes it easier to be a racialist when you know
people all over the world are fighting for pretty much the same thing you
are.”[19] And Scotty, also an Aryan Front skinhead, explained, “[The
Internet] keeps me feeling connected to the movement and that gets
pretty hard sometimes because I work two jobs and have a family.”[20]
Aryans access a global online community. Veteran Hammerskins say
that the Internet helped them better imagine an international movement
of racists. Forrest, a Hammerskin, explained:
 Since we’ve been able to access the Internet and e-mail Hammers in
other countries it’s changed everything. We really see ourselves as
part of an international movement. We communicate with each
other on a regular basis, we coordinate events. It’s really different
than before we had the Internet. We knew about [skinheads in other
parts of the world], but it was more word of mouth and now we’re
actually working together.[21]

White power members build and sustain their connections online

largely by sharing accounts of their struggles. Their online chats, videos,
and writings detail injustices that they perceive and define the social,
physical, and moral boundaries that separate them from racial enemies
and non-Aryans. White power members imagine a future “cleansed” of
their enemies.
Aryans pay close attention to how they present themselves online.
Since skin color and other visual cues are not available in cyberspace,
other signs of racial loyalty are crucial. The names they use in their
postings are almost invariably pseudonyms that bear the mark of
movement membership, such as Aryan Warrior, White Resistance, or
Mudslayer. They fill their cybertalk with expressions of kinship and
fraternity by using terms like brother and sister to evoke solidarity. Aryans
also rely upon shared codes to establish their allegiance. Online postings
about topics that might otherwise seem far removed from racialist
themes, such as advice on troubleshooting computers or cooking recipes,
often begin or close with phrases like “88,” “Sieg heil,” or “14 Words” to
mark their white power affiliation.
Embracing the Aryan aesthetic and conveying that commitment to
others online sustains members’ identification with the collective “we” of
the movement.

Discovering Aryan “Truth”

Aryans’ virtual conversations are often organized around how they
became enlightened to the true racialized nature of world affairs and the
forces out to destroy the white race. Like the conversations that dominate
real-world house parties, Aryan enlightenment stories tend to highlight a
personal trauma as the trigger to someone’s racial awakening. Members
initiate online conversations about these moments by posting questions
like, “When did you realize you hated niggers?” and “What made you hate
Jews?” The responses contain some of the most emotion-laden
discussions among Aryans that we tracked online.
We note below a sample from a typical day of postings in a chat
room on an Aryan music website. This online conversation highlights
racial awakening. The thread of interaction began when a veteran
member posted the question: “When did you become a racist?” Then he
told his own enlightenment story. Within twenty-four hours he received
twenty-one responses about personal traumas caused by “nonwhites.”

when i was in 1st grade i was dragged into the boys room by 4
niggers was beat to a pulp then pissed on by all 4 of them. . . . I
learned to stand up for myself and realize now I have good reason
[to hate]. TruckingSkinhead

I personally just have always seen around me how we are much

different than non-Whites and liked that I was white. But, what made
me a “pure racist” so to say is when I attended middle school which
was 90% niggers. HateMachine

When I was a child I never had non-white friends, because here in my

small town were no niggers or other alien shit. And later when I was
13 or 14 years old, I began to hate these fucking bastards . . . because
they come to our nice quiet town and to school and began trouble.
We built our first racist groups and tried to resist, against all these
turkeys (here in germany there are millions of turkeys, more than
niggers) and other scumbags. NorthernHammerskin

Hmmm, when did I start to hate spear-chuckers? . . . All the coons I

came across in high school were annoying and cared more about
their fucking shoes. Pathetic. By my senior year, I had enough to the
point that I felt like dismembering everyone and everything in my
sight. Now I am in college, and I see all these gatorbaits all over the
place. Always remember that hatred is purity. AKHate[22]
 These accounts define moments that mark each member’s step into
racial extremism. The narratives pivot on school-age conflicts with racial
enemies and a deep-seated feeling of white superiority. Whether or not
the stories are true matters little in this context. Their potency lies in
reinforcing Aryan cultural norms as members tell and retell their stories.

Betrayal, Dispossession, and Violence

White power members constantly demonize and scapegoat racial
enemies online.[23] Aryan cybertalk mainly blames blacks, Jews, and
Hispanics for marginalizing whites. Aryans identify themselves as victims
betrayed and dispossessed by multiculturalist ideology. They single out
blacks and Hispanics as perpetrators of innumerable rapes, beatings, and
murders of whites. They repeatedly lament the loss of clean, safe, white
neighborhoods and cities to dirty minority incursions.

Now we are the minority. They are breeding us out. Killing us off and
we let this shit fucking happen? BULLSHIT!!! Where can my daughter
play? Today I can’t believe how organized we [racist skinheads] all
are and bringing everyone together! Special thanks to the net and
the creators of the HSN [Hammerskin Nation]!!! Grab your brothers
and sisters and MAKE them see. Make us all a safe neighborhood for
all our children of tomorrow. And to all who are fighting the good
fight and aren’t falling for it but can stand up proud . . . THANK YOU!
Thanks for letting me vent. I just can’t take it anymore! 88Rocker[24]

[In] any big city you name, the nonwhites are flying into the airports
like crazy. New families are arriving in the big cities with their
suitcases in hordes each day. We’re not winning the war, only
perhaps slowing it down somewhat. Those foreigners and especially
the blacks loveeeee the BIG CITIES to death. Chicago . . . BLACK. New
Orleans . . . BLACK. Memphis . . . BLACK. Atlanta . . . BLACK. St. Louis . .
. BLACK. NO COUNTRY in the world will be oblivious to the non
whites unless it’s the country we as WN’s [White Nationalists] come
together to form. WhiteInstinct[25]
 Aryans level blame at nonwhites for all manner of social ills. In doing
so, they build extensive and elaborate discussion threads fantasizing
about racial cleansing and white domination. A common theme in these
fantasies is killing racial enemies; however, the scale of violence in these
dreams varies from random individual victims to outlandish final
solutions for the “nonwhite problem,” as illustrated by a post on
Whiterevolution.com:

Niggers don’t have the ability to think. Lets put those fuckers on a
rape table and beat them with chains and clubs, kick them shock
them, hang them. Let’s wall off an entire state, add the spics and
jews in for good measure, and let them kill each other. I guess I have
just about had it with all the bleeding hearts that refuse to see the
truth. . . . I’m scared of not having another White person left in this
shithole of a country who will stand up for what is right. We are the
minority friends. VikingBlood[26]

Aryans sometimes link their violent fantasies to reality by posting

models of real-world Aryan violence. Members post articles on Aryan
actions, hate crimes, and ethnic conflicts around the world, framing them
as inspirational stories to help them keep the faith. A member of a Free
Your Mind Productions forum posted a news article with photo images
and a video clip of a gay rights march in Belgrade, Serbia. Discussion
focused on the melee that erupted during the march when racist
skinheads and Serbian nationalists attacked and severely injured several
marchers. A small sample of the discussion thread shows how members
enthusiastically hailed the skinhead violence:

8fuckin8! thats the idea smashing queers and zog enforcers. Viking88

Damn those pics are great. If anyone deserves a good beating its that
lot. Takes me back to the good ole days of my youth. Three cheers for
the brothers taking care of business. . . . Fag bashing by moonlight oh
god don’t it feel so right. Battlefront

that scene where that one skin kicks that Anarchist/Red fag is funny
 as fuck. Hate-crime

that was awesome. way to go for our boys over seas! WhiteLaw

Fag bashing? I don’t know. I’d be afraid to get their blood on me.
Really if you think about it, God only knows what these people got
and all it takes is some blood getting splashed on your person.
NordicThunder

That’s why you’re supposed to bash fags with bricks. I feel the same
way about nigger blood. I always carry a pair of leather gloves. Hate
Crimes Pass the Time! Odinsdaughter

Don’t worry they can’t win, still breathin, kick em again! Believe me
they’re better off dead. KikeKiller

Don’t waste good leather gloves on a nigger, what if you can’t get the
stains out? Just use cheap fake leather mits and a long steel pipe or
crow bar. That way you can whack them in the head and such from a
distance and not even get any bodily fluid on you. Aryanfront[27]

These Aryans celebrate hate violence as a blow against ZOG, blacks,

and others. They extol the virtues of exacting punishment upon their
enemies. Aryans celebrate rioters like those in Belgrade as icons whose
acts represent the type of Aryan courage, violence, and heroism needed
to win the race war.

Declarations of Faith
Racial extremists use online discussion forums to openly declare their
faith and find others who support their radical beliefs. Many postings
appear to come from new recruits who have lurked in the web forums
without posting. With their assured anonymity, web forums are the safest
space for new recruits to come out to others about their beliefs.
Newcomers declare their faith with detailed confessions of how they
discovered “Aryan truth.” In the chat room Forum 14, one novice Aryan
declared allegiance to the movement:

Hey my white brothers & sisters,

After far too many years of sitting back and doing nothing, I’ve finally
come around! I can’t take the damn niggers, spics, ragheads, fags and
kikes taking over our country. Who gives a damn about the white
man? We do!!! And I’m glad to be a part of it. Over the course of
many years, I felt so alone and powerless and wondered if there was
anyone like myself who could see what was happening. Then I sought
out others on the internet. . . . It’s great to be a part of WR! Thank
you everyone for the warm welcome. . . . Wishing you all 14 words.
whiteusa[28]

Newcomers typically find enthusiastic support from others:

Mike, you are so welcome here. We have a lot of good people here,
all happy to meet you, and converse with you. . . . There are people
of all ages . . . and we are all of one mind . . . enjoy your participation
on this forum. Lucy[29]

Welcome buddy! I can’t help but notice that you’re from “Dixie.” I
live here in the heart of it myself. Indeed, there is much work to be
done . . . which is why I must ask which southern state you live in. We
gotta make this southeastern network stronger! SouthernMan[30]

Hi Celtic and welcome to the forum. You should be very glad that you
have learned the truth, and are going to be living the white way now.
You have two precious little girls, who are your responsibility. You
must start NOW training them correctly. You have a big job ahead of
you. . . . Welcome, join in the posting, and get to know the people
here. Wolf1488[31]

Aryan interactions in cyberspace deal with more than just racial

enlightenment, dispossession, hatred, and violent fantasies. Members
also use cyberspace as a source of virtual therapy for easing the burden of
carrying such a stigmatized, deviant identity.
 ARYAN CYBERTHERAPY
Communication among activists in cyberspace helps them sustain their
commitment in the face of oppositional social pressure. Recurring posts
emphasize the value of virtual connections that link isolated activists to
the broader movement. Aryans often end their entries with an uplifting
statement about drawing strength from others in cyberspace.

Thanks everyone. I take heart in knowing that there are others like
me all across the world and that even though I am alone in a sea of
mud and liberal scum I am a rock. 14/88. IronCross[32]

i thank you all very much. i really enjoy posting seems like i could do
it all day. i like hearing the opinions of others this is just about the
first place i have ever had such a warm welcome i hope we can grow
close and stick together in this war we are fighting. i get so tired
sometimes fighting for our race but it helps when you know others
are in the fight and feel the same way you do. AryanAngel[33]

Aryans weave the fraternal quality of these exchanges throughout

most of their online conversations. Users constantly encourage one
another to ask questions about the movement and find ways to be more
involved. These statements seem to be directed specifically at young
recruits to push forward their political socialization.

Feel free to ask any questions you might have. I may not have the
answer but someone will. Just jump in with both feet. We are glad
that you and the other younger folks are here. If you don’t ask, you
don’t learn. American Anglo88[34]

Advice flows freely among the posters who seek and give guidance to
one another on ways to spread the movement’s messages, parenting
strategies, finances, and relationship problems. Frequent postings advise
on disputes with romantic partners and acquaintances who oppose a
member’s extremism.
 Hi my name is Chris and I am 18 and I been in the movement for
almost a year but I’ve always been racially aware of what’s going on.
Anyways I wanted to get your opinion on a problem I have. See my
girlfriend is mad as hell at me for being racist because i just told her
and she said if i stay racist she will break up with me. so i just wanted
to get some peoples opinion. Painless Brutality[35]

Chris’s post drew sixteen responses in less than twenty-four hours.

All were empathetic and many suggested various strategies, ranging from
gradually introducing his girlfriend to Aryan ideology to violent strategies
intended to demonstrate the virtues of Aryanism.

Same deal with me mate, my girl is German and very anti nazi’s. But
talk to her, try to educate her. My girl is slowly coming around now.
red neck nzr[36]

Another suggested:

Take her for a walk in a nigger ghetto. Take the ass-beating and then
see if she becomes racist. Vegas h8s Spearchuckers[37]

Chris expressed his gratitude to the respondents and vowed to “keep

them posted.”

Coming Out to Non-Aryans

Online conversations also focus on how Aryans should come out

about their extremist beliefs to nonracist family and friends. A primary
theme in Aryan postings is racial kinship.

Hey, sorry I have to rant. My sister hates everything we stand for. I

know it should be expected because the jews have so much control
today, but I just don’t understand how your own flesh and blood can
turn on you for realizing the truth. I have tried to explain everything
to her, but she never listens she just yells over me. I just can’t do it
anymore. What would any of you do in this situation?
 Aryan88chick[38]

I recently talked to my cousin online, that I used to love, and she

used to love me. But once I expressed my love for the white race, she
just flipped out on me. That’s what happens when people grow up
on the nigger loving mtv jew box their whole life. . . . She may not
agree with me and say bad things about me and my people, but she
is still my cousin. What to do? Zogslayer[39]

I joined this forum because I’m hurt and confused. I’m seventeen and
I’ve never exactly been fully white pride. I’m DAMN proud of my
ancestry, but not actively racist. Now my blonde, nordic cousin
WILLINGLY slept with a nigger. I’m hurt and getting angrier as I write.
My whole family, they’re all so proud of her. So proud of her
betrayal. For the first time in my life, I’m ashamed of my family. None
of my friends understand my horror. I don’t know where to turn. I
joined here hoping some of you could help me decide what to do.
WhitePride[40]

Each of these postings quickly generated between fourteen and

twenty replies from other members who relayed similar personal
experiences. Respondents empathized that they could relate to the
posters’ situations and feel their pain.
They also stressed the sanctity of their Aryan beliefs over all else.
These replies reinforce the idea that an Aryan’s true friends and family
are found only inside the movement. Empathy is evident in members’
responses to the last post above:

Such appalling news brought tears to my blue eyes. . . . I’m thankful

you have asked us for comfort, for we are willing to give it.
Remember, you are not alone. Focus on your beliefs, ignore the nay-
saying and great things will become of you. I’m positive that this is
true, for I have been clinging on to my beliefs for five years through
dirt, blood, sweat, and tears, and still my dreams shine brightly
without any dwindle. Jenocide[41]
 I feel your pain but you must understand that family is good, but
when it is spoiled by some nigger fucking inferior, that there is a giant
WP family waiting for you, and will help you. . . . As far as your family
making you ashamed, well then try and open your door to them a bit
and show them your point of view. If they are angered and don’t
want to hear the truth then you have to accept that you are superior
to all of them. RACE FIRST! Hitler’s Aryan Ghost[42]

Activists idealize white power faith. Consequently, Aryans fill their

online conversations with admonitions to keep the faith in the face of
mainstream social pressure and affirm white power attitudes by glorifying
white racial kinship.

Dependency and Loneliness

Cyberspace helps Aryans affirm their commitments to white power
identity. Aryans open up to others about their virulent hatred and find
support for their beliefs. Advice on coping with loneliness flows freely
through the chat rooms. Members assure one another that they are not
alone in their fight and express mutual moral support and concern to
ease the strains of their stigmatized social status as Aryans.[43]
Aryans depend on web forums to connect to the broader WPM
community. When the websites go offline for technical upgrades or
reorganization, some members reveal just how deeply dependent they
are on the forums to connect with other Aryans. After a temporary
shutdown on an Aryan discussion board, members expressed their deep
disappointment about the downtime and exhilaration about the
discussion board’s return. Responding to others’ frustrations about the
brief hiatus, a forum participant wrote:

Damn right!!! I kept clicking on it like someone with a broken remote.

Lol Glad to see everyone back here. Kinda gives ya a warm feelin’
knowing there’s other people out there that think like you. Spring
Demon[44]

Another responded:
 Me to [sic], bro! I really enjoy posting in this forum with others who
share my faith and knowledge of the true nature of race and nation.
Without it I get lonely. There is so much trash hurled at us through
the media that is meant to isolate us. . . . I for one am glad to find a
place like this. AryanPrincess[45]

Aryans build a sense of community online. But the online

connections are not confined to the virtual world. Their connections also
extend to real-world activities. We end this chapter by explaining the ties
between Aryan virtual free spaces and their real-world spaces of hate.

CYBERSPACE TIES TO REAL-WORLD ARYAN SPACES

Aryans “do not neatly divide their worlds into two discrete sets: people
seen in person and people contacted online.”[46] The relationships Aryans
develop online add layers of interaction to social connections they
already make in the real-world spaces where they meet. Aryan websites
support activist networks and are tied to real-world activities. Major white
power groups, such as the Hammerskin Nation, use the web to promote
national and regional gatherings. Local groups of activists coordinate
house parties and campouts via e-mail and chat rooms. Aryans also
extend their interpersonal relationships using e-mail, networking sites,
and Internet forums.
Aryans even participate vicariously in real-world gatherings through
the web. The largest and most prominent Aryan gatherings, such as white
power music concerts, typically have an extensive web presence. Members
who cannot attend can still be involved through live blogs, streaming
broadcasts, and audiovisual recordings of the performances.
Attendees also report directly to one another about concerts,
festivals, and even campouts as a way to spread access to members in
cyberspace. Aryans’ enthusiastic descriptions of movement events affirm
their perceptions of vibrant movement community. Thrilled attendees of
Unity Fest in Northern California filled the forum group CaSkinhead with
descriptive exchanges of the event.

Let me tell you about the beginning of what had to be one of the
 most memorable weekends of my entire life. Up in the beautiful,
mountainous areas not far from my own home, I took part in one of
the most welcoming, exciting and enthusiastic events that any Aryan
could experience: Unity Fest. This one had it all: great food cooked to
perfection, raffles with bitchin’ prizes, entertainment for the kids,
and most importantly, numerous White brothers and sisters ready
for fun, all located in the coniferous mountains of California.
FightforFreedom[47]

Aryans also create many virtual extensions of their real-world

interpersonal relationships.[48] Virtual contact among Aryans continues
when a concert is over or a party winds down. Members extend their
opportunities to interact by sharing e-mail addresses and web-forum
information where they can be reached.
Online connections in web-forum groups become real-world meetings
among Aryans. Chat room participants ask one another how to connect
offline. Web-forum group organizers are especially quick to respond with
invitations. In a typical exchange, a nascent WPM member, whitewarrior,
asked:

Do any of you guys ever meet up in the real world? I live in

Farmington. If any of you guys would like to get together, please feel
free to contact me. whitewarrior[49]

A membership coordinator for the state branch of White Revolution

responded within minutes.

White Revolution members actually get together quite often.

Sometimes for cookouts, but mostly for our meetings. We will be
having a meeting later on in the month. If you feel comfortable
enough to send me your email, I can put you on our email list so you
can stay up to date on what we are doing.[50]

Queries from members who move to a new area are also common in
chat rooms.
 i am a skingirl planning on moving to south city in the middle of april
and i dont know many people there. it would be good to meet some
like minded folk. email me if you get some time. Hail Victory!
skingirl14[51]

Responses to this posting were quick and inviting. Most

congratulated her on the move and offered to bring other Aryans to meet
her when she arrived.

***

We have seen that Aryans use cyberspace as a relatively safe and

efficient way to communicate their virulent racist and anti-Semitic
challenges to mainstream culture and to display Aryan norms that
members are encouraged to reflect in their own lives. Many websites are
channels to real-world movement spaces, giving activists opportunities to
connect with fellow Aryans.
The white power movement’s web presence symbolizes an Aryan
community. Activists might have a hard time regularly connecting outside
cyberspace. Val Burris and his colleagues point out that the Internet
seems to hold a “special attraction for those [Aryans] in search of ‘virtual’
community to compensate for the lack of critical mass in their own
[locale]” and to extend their otherwise sporadic participation in the
movement’s real-world free spaces.[52]
Some Aryans never connect to others through the web, while others
may limit their involvement in the movement by secretly surfing white
power websites and lurking in chat rooms. In fact, some activists have
coined the term “net-Nazis” to castigate members who spend the bulk of
their time posting in web forums and chatting online while avoiding more
public activism. Yet as white power activists craft more and more virtual
spaces to support and encourage the unconstrained expression of radical
racism, they help to amplify and sustain more members’ involvement in
the movement.
In the next chapter, we shift our focus to private Aryan communities.
These settlements are the most restricted Aryan free spaces. In residential
communities, white power members participate in a microcosm of the
idealized Aryan separatist world they desire.
1. Don Black, founder of the first major white power movement website,
Stormfront.org, appearing on ABC’s Nightline, January 13, 1998.
2. Mark Nunes, Cyberspaces of Everyday Life (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2006).
3. Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the
Electronic Frontier (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1993); Sherry Turkle,
Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1995).
4. Suzanne Brunsting and Tom Postmes, “Social Movement Participation in
the Digital Age: Predicting Offline and Online Collective Action,” Small
Group Research 33 (2002): 525–54; Mario Diani, “Social Movement
Networks Virtual and Real,” Information, Communication & Society 3
(2000): 386–401; Sherry Turkle, “Cyberspace and Identity,” Contemporary
Sociology 28 (1999): 643–48; Stephen Doheny-Farina, The Wired
Neighborhood (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996); Donna
Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature
(London: Free Association, 1991).
5. Heidi Beirich, “White Homicide Worldwide,”
http://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/downloads/publication/white-
homicide-worldwide.pdf (accessed October 10, 2014).
6. Beirich, “White Homicide Worldwide.”
7. Trey, SoCal Skin, interviewed June 14, 2004.
8. Heidi Beirich, “Financing Hate,” Intelligence Report 153 (Spring 2014),
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-
issues/2014/spring/financing-Hate (accessed November 11, 2014).
9. Beirich, “Financing Hate.”
10. Robert Futrell, Pete Simi, and Simon Gottschalk, “Understanding Music
in Movements: The White Power Music Scene,” Sociological Quarterly 47,
no. 2 (2006): 275–304.
11. Although we are not claiming a direct relationship between racist
video games and violence, substantial research demonstrates that violent
media images heighten aggressive behavior among individuals, especially
children. For further discussion, see Greg Anderson and Karen Dill, “Video
Games and Aggressive Thoughts, Feelings, and Behavior in the Laboratory
and in Life,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78, no. 4 (2000):
772–90.
12. The WPM is not the only revolutionary movement to embrace the
strategic use of video games. The militant Islamic organization Hezbollah
markets a game to Arab children that awards points for killing Israeli
soldiers, while a Syrian company sells a game that lets kids kill Jewish
settlers. For further discussion, see Anti-Defamation League, “Hezbollah
Releases Anti-Israel War Game,” August 17, 2007,
http://www.adl.org/main_Terrorism/special_force_2.htm (accessed
September 6, 2008).
13. Anti-Defamation League, “The National Socialist Movement,”
http://www.adl.org/Learn/Ext_US/nsm (accessed June 29, 2009).
14. Charlie, Southeastern Aryan activist, interviewed June 28, 2003.
15. American Nazi Party @ANP14, https://twitter.com/anp14 (accessed
November 29, 2014).
16. New Saxon, http://www.newsaxon.org (accessed July 29, 2008).
17. Jeffrey Kaplan and Leonard Weinberg, The Emergence of a Euro-
American Radical Right (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press,
1998), 159; David Hoffman, The Web of Hate: Extremists Exploit the
Internet (New York: Anti-Defamation League, 1996), 72.
18. Some of these conversations extend into announcements for
movement-focused services and tactical planning to disseminate the
“word.”

Coming Soon the first pro-white credit union if your interested in

learning more email me at [email protected]. . . . Stop feeding
the beast and become a founding member of the first pro-white
credit union. . . . Creating financial freedom and wealth for our
people is a huge step in the right direction. PrideofaWhiteMan.
Stormfront.org (accessed March 13, 2003)

After recently completing some upper level web design training, I

would like to offer my services to any white nationalist activists,
organizations, and businesses. I do not provide web hosting, but
would love to meet some people who do, and work together with
them. To see a version of my handiwork go to
pages.prodigy.net/lexo. ForVictory. Stormfront.org (accessed March
 13, 2003)

On a Resistance Records bulletin board, discussion centered for a time on

ways to extend Project Schoolyard, a Panzerfaust Records/Free Your Mind
Productions program that distributed free racist CDs at targeted US high
schools. This chat suggested members target college radio stations in their
area as an outlet for Aryan music.

I have an idea that I’m working on and hope that you join me as well
in this endeavor. As we all know, “Project Schoolyard” has been a
success and I have a similar idea. How about making white power
music CDs and trying to get college radio stations to play the music?
College radio stations aren’t commercial and are pretty much free to
play whatever they like as long as it falls within FCC guidelines.
NoRemorse. Resistance.com (accessed November 18, 2004)

Seven forum users immediately affirmed the idea, and several offered
additional ideas.

Actually, we do that, and there are more than a few college radio
stations that play our stuff . . . some know exactly what we are
about, some I suspect do not. A couple of our customers in college
have gotten into the college radio stations as DJs or whatever, for the
express purpose of playing our music. Ghostrider. Resistance.com
(accessed November 18, 2004)

Announcing and discussing these aspects of activism gives members a

sense that action is occurring in the broader movement and conveys a
sense of strength, efficacy, and the wherewithal of Aryan activism.
19. Jay, Aryan Front activist, interviewed June 27, 2004.
20. Scotty, Aryan Front activist, interviewed June 12, 2004.
21. Forrest, Northern Hammerskin, interviewed July 13, 2002.
22. Postings on http://www.panzerfaust.com (accessed November 27,
2004).
23. Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons, Right-Wing Populism in America:
Too Close for Comfort (New York: Guilford, 2000). Lane Crothers, Rage on
the Right: The American Militia Movement from Ruby Ridge to Homeland
Security (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003).
24. 88Rocker, post on White Revolution, http://www.whiterevolution.com
(accessed July 28, 2007). As of August 2011, the White Revolution site no
longer exists at that URL.
25. WhiteInstinct, post on Stormfront, http://www.stormfront.org
(accessed July 20, 2007).
26. VikingBlood, post on White Revolution,
http://www.whiterevolution.com (accessed August 20, 2007).
27. Postings on Free Your Mind Productions,
http://www.freeyourmindproductions.com (accessed February 13, 2004).
28. whiteusa, posted on White Revolution,
http://www.whiterevolution.com (accessed February 20, 2006).
29. Lucy, posted on White Revolution, http://www.whiterevolution.com
(accessed July 29, 2004).
30. SouthernMan, posted on Stormfront, http://www.stormfront.org
(accessed March 12, 2006).
31. Wolf1488, posted on White Revolution,
http://www.whiterevolution.com (accessed April 13, 2005).
32. IronCross, posted on White Revolution,
http://www.whiterevolution.com (accessed January 31, 2005).
33. AryanAngel, posted on Stormfront, http://www.stormfront.org
(accessed November 3, 2005).
34. American Anglo88, posted on “White Revolution,”
http://www.whiterevolution.com (accessed January 20, 2005).
35. Painless Brutality, posted on Panzerfaust,
http://www.panzerfaust.com (accessed January 14, 2005).
36. red neck nzr, posted on Panzerfaust, http://www.panzerfaust.com
(accessed January 16, 2005).
37. Vegas h8s Spearchuckers, posted on Panzerfaust,
http://www.panzerfaust.com (accessed January 16, 2005).
38. Aryan88chick, posted on Stormfront, http://www.stormfront.org
(accessed July 5, 2006).
39. Zogslayer, posted on Stormfront, http://www.stormfront.org (accessed
November 4, 2005).
40. WhitePride, posted on Free Your Mind Productions,
http://www.freeyourmindproductions.com (accessed November 12, 2005).
41. Jenocide, posted on Free Your Mind Productions,
http://www.freeyourmindproductions.com (accessed November 12, 2005).
42. All posted on Free Your Mind Productions,
http://www.freeyourmindproductions.com (accessed November 12, 2005).
43. The support members find online is very similar what occurs in other
web-based support groups such as menopause groups, recovering
alcoholics, and drug addicts. Barry Wellman and Milena Gulia, “Virtual
Communities as Communities,” in Communities in Cyberspace, ed. M. A.
Smith and P. Kollock (New York: Routledge, 1998), 167–94.
44. Spring Demon, posted on Free Your Mind Productions,
http://www.freeyourmindproductions.com (accessed January 21, 2005).
45. AryanPrincess, posted on Free Your Mind Productions,
http://www.freeyourmindproductions.com (accessed January 21, 2005).
46. Wellman and Gulia, “Virtual Communities,” 182.
47. FightforFreedom, posted on CaSkinhead, http://www.caskinheads.com
(accessed July 20, 2007).
48. Mary Virnoche and Gary Marx, “Only Connect—E. M. Forster in an Age
of Electronic Communication: Computer-Mediated Association and
Community Networks,” Sociological Inquiry 67 (1997): 85–100.
49. whitewarrior, posted on White Revolution,
http://www.whiterevolution.com (accessed January 24, 2005).
50. AryanTerror88, posted on White Revolution,
http://www.whiterevolution.com (accessed January 24, 2005).
51. skingirl14, posted on Panzerfaust, http://www.panzerfaust.com
(accessed May 22, 2004).
52. Val Burris, Emory Smith, and Ann Strahm, “White Supremacist
Networks on the Internet,” Sociological Focus 33 (2000): 215–34 (quote at
232).
 Chapter 7
Private Aryan Communities
During the past few decades, white power groups formed a small
number of private communities where members live in racially exclusive
Aryan free spaces. Some settlements contain as few as a dozen members,
while others have hosted up to one hundred. The most notorious private
Aryan communities include the 346-acre National Alliance grounds near
Hillsboro, West Virginia; Elohim City, a thousand-acre white separatist
community in eastern Oklahoma; and the now-defunct twenty-acre Aryan
Nations compound at Hayden Lake, Idaho. These compounds house Aryan
worship centers and white power libraries stocked with Aryan literature
and movement paraphernalia. Compound members practice Aryan
educational, religious, and paramilitary training.
The compounds are hubs for white power networking. Some activists
make pilgrimages to the communities, which host large gatherings where
devotees experience a “pure” Aryan settlement. These communities serve
as way stations for traveling WPM activists, including some on the run
from authorities.[1]
Private Aryan communities are cultural repositories. White power
members talk of these communities as the truest form of mainstream
defiance and commitment to white racial kinship. Aryan communities
symbolize an independent, enduring, and righteous resistance against a
multicultural society. Members organize the settlements to represent a
small-scale, racially exclusive, anti-Semitic world. In private Aryan
communities, white power extremists have planned some of the most
notorious acts of Aryan violence.
We begin this chapter by describing the origins, history, and
organization of several private Aryan communities. Two of the most
publicized, albeit now disbanded, private Aryan communities are The
Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (CSA) and Aryan Nations.
Elohim City and the National Alliance compounds persist. We discuss the
disbanded communities because they are powerful symbols that continue
to serve as inspiration to Aryan resistance and as models for present-day
Aryan gatherings.
 Private communities are the most secretive Aryan free spaces. Few
outsiders have studied their day-to-day activities. Much of our discussion
here necessarily relies on secondary sources because we have the least
direct observational experience with private Aryan communities.
However, we do draw upon our own fieldwork data from the Aryan
Nations compound and the Aryan congresses held there.

PURE ARYAN SPACE

Prior to the major civil rights desegregation efforts in the 1960s, white
supremacists had no immediate need to wall out the mainstream world.
Racial exclusivity was the norm in many regions across the United States.
According to James Loewen, “‘sundown towns’—those towns that
systematically excluded African Americans and other minorities, often
with signs at the city limits that usually said ‘Nigger, Don’t Let the Sun Go
Down on You in [Whitesville]’ were everywhere in America.”[2] Loewen
writes:

Most independent sundown towns expelled their black residents, or

agreed not to admit any, between 1890 and 1940. Sundown suburbs
arose still later, between 1900 and 1968. By the middle of the
twentieth century, it was no longer rare for towns [ranging from a
few hundred to many thousands] to be all white. It was common,
and usually it was on purpose.[3]

While some sundown towns persist today, most have dissolved, as

civil rights policies curtailed the most overt racist practices. In the
aftermath of these changes and in the context of spiritual-religious
revivalism, Aryans established private communities to wall themselves off
from the cultural turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s.

The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord

From its formation in 1971 until its destruction in 1985, The
Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord was one of the most active
and notorious Aryan settlements. CSA became a model for later private
Aryan communities. Texas minister James Ellison founded CSA on more
than two hundred acres near the Missouri-Arkansas border. Their
geographical isolation separated CSA families from the taint of
mainstream society, and the area’s isolated and rugged terrain made
monitoring by authorities especially difficult. The property’s location on
state borders also complicated jurisdictional responsibilities.[4]
Ellison started CSA as a Christian fundamentalist community. He
drew together fifteen families committed to simple living and purity in
their spiritual and physical lives.[5] Early CSA members followed strict
dietary standards that included occasional fasting and prohibitions on
alcohol, drugs, and smoking.
During the late 1970s, after Ellison claimed to have a vision of a
coming race war that would engulf America, he and his followers turned
to Christian Identity principles and transformed the property into a white
supremacist, paramilitary training camp. The group adopted the name
The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord to reflect their
increasing radicalization. Ellison began characterizing “the CSA mission as
establishing an ‘Ark for God’s people’ for the coming race war. God’s
people were white Christians [while] Jews, he told his followers, were not
really God’s chosen people, but rather a demonic and inferior race.”[6]
The insular CSA community stressed collective experiences. The
community met for praise meetings three or four times per week and had
at least one extended Bible study meeting each week.[7] For a short time,
the group experimented with polygamy and, according to former CSA
member Kerry Noble, used the Bible meetings to develop justifications for
the practice.[8] Members performed traditional gender roles, with the
males, known as “the Cedar Boys,”[9] working outside the home cutting
timber on the property, farming, and doing carpentry. CSA women
homeschooled their children and tended to household chores.[10] Some
members also held jobs outside the compound in local businesses, such
as a sawmill and a department store.
The CSA settlement built a church, a communications center,
workshop, munitions storage bunker, and member houses.[11] Each family
lived in its own twenty-four-square-foot residence without electricity and
running water. Reflecting their apocalyptic worldview, members
strategically positioned their homes in three separate directions from the
main settlement as defensive vantage points in case of attack.[12] Families
also prepared for attacks with underground storage and safety bunkers.
Members created paramilitary training areas that included a mock
village called “Silhouette City . . . complete with pop-up targets of blacks,
Jews, and police officers wearing Star of David badges”[13]
In 1982, the Federal Bureau of Investigation suspected that CSA had
just more than one hundred active members living on or in close
proximity to the compound.[14] Others estimated the number at closer to
two hundred.[15]
CSA members often attended gun shows in their preparations for the
race war. Here they met and formed alliances with members of Aryan
Nations, Silent Brotherhood, Posse Comitatus, local Ku Klux Klan chapters,
Elohim City, and the Christian Patriot Defense League.[16] CSA members
used these connections to increase their weapons and food stockpiles as
well as to fellowship with like-minded Aryans.
These networks also allowed Ellison to enlist survivalist combat
coaches for his paramilitary training program on the CSA compound. He
called survivalist training the “Endtime Overcomer Survival Training
School.” The survival school gave courses in “urban warfare, riflery and
pistolcraft, military tactics, Christian martial arts, and wilderness
survival.”[17]
To supplement their income, CSA members traded semiautomatic
rifles, silencers, and other weapons on the gun-show circuit.[18] Ellison
prodded his followers into thievery and pawning personal goods that
were not crucial to warfare and survival. Followers even pawned their
own wedding rings.[19] Such income increased the CSA stockpile of
weaponry, chemicals, explosives, food, and first-aid supplies.[20]
Ellison and his CSA followers originally stockpiled weapons and
performed survivalist training as defensive preparation for racial conflict.
But in the early 1980s, CSA planned several terrorist plots.[21] In 1983,
federal marshals killed Christian Identity adherent Gordon Kahl in a
shoot-out. After that event, CSA declared the compound “an arms depot
and paramilitary training ground for Aryan warriors.”[22] CSA planned the
assassinations of a local FBI agent and a US district judge and plotted the
poisoning of municipal water supplies, arsons, and bombings.[23]
The original plan to destroy the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in
Oklahoma City was hatched by CSA members nearly twelve years before
Timothy McVeigh and his accomplices bombed it to complete the mission.
[24] Although CSA failed to execute most of their terrorist plans, CSA

members and their associates bombed a Missouri community church

known to support homosexuality and an Indiana Jewish community
center. CSA radicals also detonated explosives near a natural gas pipeline
in Arkansas, robbed and murdered a pawnshop owner they thought was
Jewish, and murdered an African American Arkansas state trooper.[25]
CSA’s spree of violence ended in April 1985. Ellison and other CSA
followers surrendered at CSA’s compound following a four-day standoff
with federal agents.[26] The FBI’s search of the CSA compound uncovered
nearly two hundred firearms, including land mines, machine guns, assault
rifles, thousands of rounds of ammunition, antitank rockets, and a large
supply of cyanide.[27]
In September 1985, CSA leaders James Ellison and Kerry Noble and
four other CSA activists were sentenced to federal prison on racketeering
and weapons charges, which effectively destroyed the group and the
settlement.[28] After his release from federal prison, Ellison took up
residence at Elohim City.

Elohim City

Founded in 1973, Elohim City is the oldest major racialist community

still operating in the United States. Robert Millar moved to the United
States from Canada in the 1950s and organized eighteen Christian Identity
members to build a settlement on four hundred acres near Muldrow,
Oklahoma, an isolated and mountainous area along the Oklahoma-
Arkansas border. Millar and his followers planned an insular Christian
Identity community. They named it Elohim City, or “City of God,” while
waiting for the Rapture.[29]
Elohim City residents are notoriously secretive about their beliefs
and activities and shield their racialism from outsiders. The city hosts a
population that reportedly fluctuates between seventy and ninety
residents. Members focus on “pure” living, shunning the outside world
and its decadence, which they claim will bring the apocalypse to cleanse
the world of all impurities.
Elohim City believes devoutly in racial separatism. Prior to his death
in 2001, Millar preached separatism as a strategy to avoid conflict and
strengthen bloodlines and kinship ties among “true, pure Aryans.” Millar’s
son John now leads the community and continues his father’s emphasis
on racial separatism.[30]
The community includes a K–12 school, church, community medical
service, armed patrol unit, and construction firm, which financially
supports the community.[31] Elohim City members begin each day with a
Pentecostal-type church service that may last several hours. Recreational
activities are exclusively community events. The entire community,
including children, participates in parties, picnics, canoe trips, and evening
socializing.
After the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, reports linked the event to
Elohim City and thrust the community into the national spotlight. Elohim
members have cultivated ties with right-wing racial extremists, along with
violent antitax and militia groups. Elohim’s founders were also closely tied
to The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord. In 1982, several
Elohim members attended CSA’s national convention at the group’s
compound, and Robert Millar preached several times during that
gathering.
CSA founder James Ellison and his close associate Richard Wayne
Snell repeatedly visited Elohim City in the early 1980s. When the FBI
surrounded the CSA compound to arrest Ellison and his followers in 1985,
they requested Millar’s cooperation to mediate a peaceful surrender to
the armed standoff. Robert Millar was Snell’s spiritual adviser, and John
Millar testified as a character witness when Snell was sentenced to death
for the 1984 murder of an Arkansas state trooper.[32] On April 19, 1995,
the same day as the Oklahoma City bombing, Robert Millar visited Snell
just before he was executed. Millar witnessed the execution and arranged
for Snell’s body to be buried at Elohim City.
Elohim members have been tied to other extremist groups, including
Aryan Nations, the Aryan People’s Republic, and White Aryan Resistance.
Mark Thomas, former Pennsylvania minister for the Aryan Nations, who
hosted meetings of neo-Nazis, skinheads, and other white racist groups
on his Pennsylvania farm, helped organize the Aryan Republican Army and
arranged for several of its members to live at Elohim City. Cheyne and
Chevie Kehoe, who founded the small but violent Aryan People’s
Republic, reportedly sought refuge at Elohim City. Dennis Mahon, a
former imperial dragon in the Oklahoma Ku Klux Klan and an organizer for
White Aryan Resistance, kept a trailer at Elohim City. In June 2001, the
New York Post reported that Elohim City members revere McVeigh as a
martyr, and pictures of him are displayed throughout the compound.[33]
Although Elohim City persists, its future appears tenuous. Robert
Millar’s son John remains as a patriarch and spiritual leader. But the
community’s membership declines as elders die and some of the younger
residents leave the community for a less isolated and constrained life.
Still, among white power devotees, Elohim City remains a symbol of Aryan
purity and persistence.

National Alliance
William Pierce founded the racist and anti-Semitic group National
Alliance in the early 1970s. Pierce attracted members with his cosmotheist
philosophy, which promotes “the superiority of the white race and the
unity of the white race with nature.”[34] In 1985, Pierce relocated the
group’s headquarters from Arlington, Virginia, to a 346-acre farm in rural
West Virginia. He called the new compound the Cosmotheist Community
Church and, for a time, received partial tax-exempt status for his religious
activities. Pierce died in 2002.
Pierce’s protégé, Erich Gliebe, took over in 2002, and despite some
infighting, the group continued to operate Resistance Records until 2013,
along with National Vanguard Books, radio shows, and an extensive
website. In 2014, Gliebe handed over his position as National Alliance
chairman to Will Williams, a retired Army Special Forces operator and
former Alliance board member.[35]
The National Alliance headquarters was never organized as an Aryan
settlement in the same mold as Elohim City or the former CSA. At most,
the compound hosted seventeen full-salaried staff members, including
computer programmers, web designers, video game techies, shortwave
broadcasters, and film producers.[36] Few Alliance members lived onsite.
There are relatively few structures on the property apart from a church,
Pierce’s former house, a guesthouse, and a warehouse for Resistance
Records and National Vanguard Books.[37] But, as Resistance Records’
sales grew, the company constructed a major new building with room to
seat up to four hundred people, offices for twelve staffers, and a video
production suite.[38] National Alliance also enhanced its publishing efforts
by acquiring new and “expensive office and printing machinery and its
own diesel power plant, along with a flatbed dump truck and a log-
splitting machine,” presumably to use in building more structures on the
compound.[39]
The National Alliance used its West Virginia compound as
headquarters to organize and register local National Alliance units around
the country. Before his death, Pierce had built the Alliance membership to
more than 1,400 members and pulled in an estimated one million dollars
a year in dues and earnings from music and book sales.[40] Pierce also held
conferences at the Alliance headquarters, to which he invited between
thirty and fifty members with “leadership potential” to teach them about
the Jewish conspiracy and recruitment strategies. The National Alliance
conferences and communiqués via the National Alliance website offered
ideas and resources to local Aryan leaders for organizing National Alliance
members and sympathizers.[41]
Pierce and the National Alliance attracted an array of violent Aryans
to the West Virginia compound and their events.[42] Robert Mathews
delivered a fiery speech at an Alliance meeting shortly after he organized
a violent Aryan terrorist cell, the Silent Brotherhood. Mathews attended
several National Alliance events and, through his contact with Pierce and
the National Alliance, had come to believe that a violent racial revolution
was needed to prevent white genocide. Mathews and the Silent
Brotherhood murdered liberal radio host Alan Berg and committed a
series of armored car robberies, allegedly distributing some of the loot to
Pierce and the National Alliance. Mathews was killed in a shoot-out with
police and is considered a martyr by many white supremacists. More
recently, Alliance members have been involved in mass murder plots,
deadly beatings, shootings, stabbings, and other forms of violent
criminality.[43]
Following Pierce’s death in 2002, the National Alliance began to
struggle under Erich Gliebe’s leadership. For more than a decade, Gliebe
resisted calls for his resignation from leaders across the National
Alliance’s units, but he lost loyal members and revenues shrank due to his
financial mismanagement. Now the Southern Poverty Law Center
estimates fewer than one hundred Alliance members, and no one lives at
the West Virginia headquarters.[44] But the National Alliance’s decade-
long decline may now change as Will Williams takes the helm. Williams is
“known as a hard-liner even on the neo-Nazi scene [and is] also highly
respected among many [National Alliance] members and others on the
radical right.”[45]
Whatever happens to the National Alliance, it is clear that Pierce left
behind a legacy that continues to inspire hate. Despite tumultuous
infighting, the group has persisted more than a decade after Pierce’s
death. Local and regional National Alliance units are still active around
the country, and if Williams is able to bring these units together as allies,
the West Virginia compound may once again be an active headquarters
for racial and anti-Semitic hate.

Aryan Nations

Prior to its demise in 2001, Aryan Nations was the most widely
recognized white power community. Aryan Nations members were
relatively open to researchers and reporters. Consequently, the Aryan
Nations compound became the most studied white power encampment.
[46] In the following sections, we draw extensively from our participant

observation fieldwork at Aryan Nations, complemented by published

reports from other observers.
Richard Butler established the twenty-acre Aryan Nations compound
outside of Hayden Lake, Idaho, in 1974. The compound was “the prime
nerve-center for the Aryan movement in the occupied United States”[47]
and quickly became “renowned as a gathering point for a wide range of
white supremacist groups and individuals.”[48]
Butler called it “the international headquarters for the white race.”
He held annual Aryan gatherings on the land between 1980 and 2000, and
he imagined the community as “a national racial state,” saying, “We shall
have it at whatever price necessary. Just as our forefathers purchased
their freedom in blood so must we. . . . We will have to kill the
bastards.”[49]
Butler’s emphasis on violent solutions to the race problem remains
front and center. The Aryan Nations website proclaims: “We are a
worldwide Pan-Aryan crusade dedicated to the preservation and
advancement of our Race—Our Race is Our Nation! Racial Purity is our
Nations Security! Our Motto: Violence Solves Everything.”[50]
In contrast to this rhetorical grandeur, the compound itself was quite
unremarkable. From the state road, a dirt driveway led through native
pines. Only after winding up to the guard gate was it clear that the area
was an Aryan compound. A prominent sign at the guard gate welcomed
visitors: “Whites Only.” After passing through the gate, the compound
came into view. Visitors first saw Butler’s modest farmhouse, then an
office, a visitors’ bunkhouse, a work shed with a swastika painted on the
roof, a watchtower, and the chapel of Butler’s Church of Jesus Christ
Christian. Adjacent to the church and work shed was a clearing where the
Aryan faithful camped during mass gatherings. Butler’s office had desks
for him and his secretary, a printing press, and a workshop.
White power symbolism was emblazoned in the buildings. Butler’s
office displayed images of Adolf Hitler, along with many photographs of
himself with white power movement leaders. Inside the chapel a stained-
glass window formed the Aryan Nations symbol. Butler had positioned
wooden crosses, a bust of Hitler, and another swastika around the chapel.
Aryan Hall, a space adjoining the chapel, was filled with Aryan and neo-
Nazi imagery. Robert Balch writes:

Posters depicting Storm Troopers mingled with paintings

representing AN’s vision of the future: the Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse, Aryan Warriors battling apelike mud people, and a
youth, sword in hand, standing triumphantly over the corpse of a
 Jewish dragon while rays of light beamed down from Heaven.[51]

Front entrance to the Aryan Nations bunkhouse used by guests at the compound. April 22, 1997.
Photo by Pete Simi

Swastika painted on the work shed roof at Aryan Nations compound. April 22, 1997.
Photo by Pete Simi
Only Butler and no more than a dozen people lived at the compound
for extended periods. Common full-time residents included the director of
security, a position that shifted hands regularly, along with any immediate
family. Butler frequently provided Aryan pilgrims a safe haven in which to
retreat, worship, and invigorate their racist commitments. Butler also
reached out to racist ex-cons who needed a place to stay after their
release. He invited white power leaders for periodic visits to the
settlement. Butler most frequently hosted Aryan Nations members who
lived in communities in and around Hayden Lake and visited on Sundays
for church service and communal fellowship.

Congresses and Youth Assemblies

 Aryan Nations came to prominence in the white power movement
during the late 1970s, when Butler began an outreach strategy to draw
new members and veteran white supremacists to Idaho. He churned out
racist and anti-Semitic literature and ran ads in right-wing magazines
“[touting] the attractions of the inland Northwest. Butler also organized
meetings with other Identity leaders to promote a [white] separatist
agenda [and took] the bold step of inviting [into his group]
representatives of the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi groups who ordinarily
did not mix with Identity people.”[52]

Interior view of Aryan Hall at the Aryan Nations compound, Hayden Lake, Idaho. April 22, 1997.
Photo by Pete Simi
Butler’s efforts culminated in the first Aryan Nations World Congress,
held at the compound in 1980. He wanted to draw Aryans from all
branches into a single setting where they “could set aside their sectarian
differences and work together for racial preservation.”[53] Held
consistently from 1980 to 2000,[54] the congresses drew up to five hundred
activists per gathering from across the country.
The meetings attracted a veritable “who’s who” of prominent
extremists.[55] We observed leaders of Oregon’s National Socialist
Vanguard; Aryan Nations members and branches from Ohio, Pennsylvania,
New York, Montana, California, Georgia, Alabama, Kansas, and Missouri;
leaders and rank-and-file members from the National Alliance, Ku Klux
Klan, and skinhead organizations; and representatives from white power
media organizations such as Panzerfaust Records and 14 Words Press.
Butler also sought to organize young Aryan activists. During the
1980s, he ran an Aryan Nations Academy to teach the group’s philosophy
to children of local Aryans. Although it is difficult to confirm the claim, an
information packet that Butler mailed out in 1982 said that “the
‘academy’ had 15 full-time students.”[56] One of these children, David
Tate, eventually became a member of the Silent Brotherhood terrorist cell
and was sentenced to life in prison for murdering a Missouri state
trooper.[57]
Between 1989 and 1996, Aryan Nations also hosted gatherings Butler
called the Aryan Youth Assembly, which was part of the outreach effort to
support new WPM members. The assemblies highlighted the importance
of cultivating the next generation of Aryans by building a force that would
carry the movement forward. Although the assemblies were explicitly
youth oriented, many veterans of the congresses also attended and
created a setting where veterans socialized young recruits.
One of the most notable differences between the congresses and
youth assemblies was the prominence of white power music. While music
was a part of the larger congresses, it was much more central to the
assemblies, whose main attendees were young skinheads. To attract
young Aryans, Butler hosted popular white power bands such as Bound
for Glory and Odin’s Law.

A Place to Be “True White Men”

Butler imagined the congresses and youth assemblies as

“consciousness-raising events intended to create and sustain a collective
Aryan identity, transcending barriers, of class, religion . . . and factional
allegiance.”[58] The gatherings were one of the few places where
movement activists could directly experience a large group of white power
adherents from across the movement and hear WPM leaders’ speeches
about racism and anti-Semitism. Butler explained that the congresses
were one of the few places WPM members could openly flaunt their
beliefs: “They allow us to be true white men. We can say ‘nigger’ and not
have to worry about losing a job and having someone scream ‘racist.’ It
used to be this way in all of America, not just places like here.”[59]
As attendees arrived at each congress, guards checked their names
against a registration list, handed each person a schedule of speakers and
events, and then directed them to the parking area. Most Aryans milled
around on the first Friday morning of congresses, talking, drinking coffee,
and setting up their camping spots. Conversations began as people
introduced themselves, identified where they were from, and then
described their locale’s racial makeup and Aryan politics. Aryans also
gathered around tables covered with white power books, music,
magazines, T-shirts, films, flags, paintings, sculptures, military uniforms,
and bumper stickers.
A period in the early afternoon on the first day was set aside for an
official press conference; only Caucasian reporters had access to the
grounds for these couple of hours. Butler stood with several key staff
members on a wooden deck adorned with Nazi, Confederate, and Aryan
Nations flags and spoke in grandiose terms about the goals of the
weekend and of the broader movement. When the press conference
ended, Aryan Nations security promptly escorted the reporters off the
grounds.
The congresses then began in earnest. Butler gave a keynote address,
and other movement leaders spoke as well. Most of the weekends were
given to speeches and workshops on movement ideology, recruitment
strategies, athletic contests, and, for a time, survivalist training and
guerrilla warfare. Although we did not observe this, James Aho describes
“nigger shooting” contests, during which armed Aryans shot at “among
other targets, crude facsimiles of running black men and enlarged photos
of despised Jewish faces.”[60]
Butler scheduled times for “fellowshipping,” periods of informal
networking among the attendees. Dinner marked the official end of each
day. Then attendees gathered around bonfires to carouse or left the
compound to attend parties at local Aryan homes.
After sundown on the last full evening of each congress, Butler
convened a grand ritual of cross and swastika lighting. Aryan-themed
prayers were followed by ritualistic chants of “Sieg heil,” “Rahowa,” “14
Words,” and “White power.” The next morning offered chapel services,
followed by a “Soldier’s Ransom” ritual in which men pledged their
allegiance to the movement and reaffirmed their commitment to the
cause. By lunchtime on the final day, attendees packed up and began
their trip home.
 Despite Butler’s best intentions to carry off disciplined, well-ordered
weekends, things did not often go as planned. Drawing together racists
from different factions was a challenge. Butler and his staff did not
manage it seamlessly. Some attendees, particularly neo-Nazi skinheads,
flaunted Butler’s prohibitions on guns, alcohol, and drugs. The security
patrol was a rag-tag outfit. Events often failed to start on time.[61] Balch
observes that “[Aryan Nations] events may have been good [public
theater, but] the script lost its punch because the cast, crew, and director
could not deliver a convincing performance.”[62]
Balch’s view is valid but incomplete. The congress’s theater may have
been weak, but its practical and symbolic significance was powerful. Those
who attended the congresses and youth assemblies found an Aryan social
scene where they could meet face to face and form alliances in a rare
whites-only context.
We interviewed Aryans at Hayden Lake about their unique feeling of
being insulated from the outside world. Charlie, an Aryan Nations
veteran, said, “Right now we’re here together as a people and, you know,
that’s what’s going to allow us to defeat the Zionist Occupied
Government. These [congresses] help us build our solidarity and bring
people together. It gives us time away from everything else.”[63]
Attendees told us how the time they spent fellowshipping helped to
renew their white power commitments and strengthen their resolve to
persist as Aryans. Mike, a longtime visitor to the compound, explained:
“These congresses are a good time for us to come together in one place
where we can feel some comfort being around proud white people. These
few days make it possible to get through the rest of the year.”[64] Gary,
another Aryan Nations veteran, said, “If we don’t do things like this, then
how are we going to keep the movement together?”[65]
Russ, an Alabama Klan member with five Aryan Nations World
Congresses under his belt, emphasized the special draw the events held
for him and others, saying, “Aryan congresses are a time for us to come
together, a special time. And we recognize how special this is, how much
this event signifies, and how much it means to keeping our race alive.”[66]
A strong indication of the importance the Aryan gatherings had for
the movement was their two-decade lifespan. The congresses and youth
assemblies were no short-lived experiment. Movement activists saw such
gatherings as symbolic of enduring Aryan righteousness. And the rituals
buttressed their faith in this idea.

Aryan Nations Rituals

The congresses and youth assemblies generated excitement, power,

pride, and a collective affirmation of white power identity. The symbolism
combined hatred and violence toward racial enemies as well as love and
kinship among Aryans. Rituals portrayed romanticized visions of Aryan
traditions anchored by Nordic warrior and religious themes.
Speeches by white power leaders were the congresses’ most frequent
ritual activity. Most speeches, like Neuman Britton’s (described below),
were fire-and-brimstone sermons designed to agitate Aryan hate.

I listened as Pastor Neuman Britton seethed in racist anger before

the packed church on the Aryan Nations compound. It was the second day
of the Aryan Nations Annual World Congress, and the attendees were
primed for his hate sermon. “The Jews are bloodsuckers! They must die!
We need to fill the streets with their blood,” he bellowed, face red from
exertion. He paused, and the crowd responded in unison: “White power!
Sieg heil! Hail victory!”
For the first ten minutes of the sermon I stared straight ahead, trying
not to look at the others around me. I had seen most of the congregation
earlier in the day as I wandered around the compound. Then, I mainly felt
a sociologist’s curiosity about them. But now, sitting among this group of
true believers chanting for blood, I was simply scared. As Neuman Britton
fumed in explosive rage, I wondered whether the parishioners all felt the
same intense hatred as he did. They all listened intently. The young neo-
Nazis in the audience seemed particularly mesmerized.
I was struck with how much his tirade and the audiences’ interest
contrasted with the morning’s opening speech. Then, an elderly man
droned on about ZOG for what seemed like hours and literally put almost
half of the audience to sleep. No one shouted “White power!” or “Hail
victory!” The glassy-eyed audience just sat quietly, waiting for the end.
But Britton had everyone’s attention. The pastor’s face looked warped as
he spewed his racist vitriol: “The race traitors will be the first to hang—it’s
the white race mixers who are really ruining this country!” At times, I felt
like he was speaking directly to me, targeting me, “the race traitors, some
are in this very room!”
Britton ended his forty-five-minute sermon, and the congregation
broke up. I walked straight outside to get some fresh air. The Aryan
Nations Compound was surrounded by tall, fragrant pine trees that
swayed in the soft summer breeze. Aryans from around the country milled
about, chatting and drinking coffee and sodas. I sat down on a bench at
the edge of the encampment and considered the irony of such a tranquil
place being used for sustaining an extremist hate movement.[67]

The most dramatic rituals at the congress were cross lightings ignited
by robed and hooded Klansmen. Attendees circled a swastika and cross
and listened as leaders explained the meaning of the cross and swastika
lighting. The lighting was a deeply religious ritual that continued eons of
Christian and Aryan heritage. Cindy, an Aryan Nations member, said,
“When we light the cross we think of how much we love our people. We
love them enough to die for them, like Christ. The lit cross is an ancient
Aryan symbol.”[68]
Steven, a Kentucky Klansman, described how the ceremony created a
feeling of peacefulness and release, saying, “I always feel so peaceful
when the crosses are lit. I guess kind of just at ease or something like the
natural order the way it’s supposed to be.”[69]
The Soldier’s Ransom ceremony performed on the congress’s final
day marked the collective meaning of the gathering and left participants
with renewed commitment to the movement. Men lined up for the
ceremony in the chapel’s center aisle and then passed a broad sword
along the line, each kissing the hilt and pledging his allegiance to the
Aryan cause. Each man stated his own pledge in turn.

I pledge my life to the racial struggle. I will give my life in honor of

our white heroes and warriors who have gone before me and given
the ultimate sacrifice: The Order, Gordon Kahl, Ian Stuart. These are
 my forefathers and I will do everything in my power to meet their
standards and to make our white homeland a reality. Heil Hitler! Heil
Bob Mathews! White power! Rahowa!

Following this pledge, each man stepped aside to be blessed by an

Aryan Nations pastor. The pastor dipped his thumb in oil and then
rubbed a cross symbol on the man’s forehead.
Dylan, an Aryan from Oregon, talked about his reverence for the
ceremony.

I’ve done the Soldier’s Ransom ceremony once before, but it’s time
to do it again and really get the feelings renewed. During the year it’s
easy to forget about our responsibilities to our race and just get
caught up in the daily crap that all of us have to face. But looking
into Pastor Butler’s eyes and thinking about everything he’s given us,
that really puts a lump in my throat. It’s these times that get me
through.[70]

Throughout the congress weekend, attendees sang racialized hymns,

wore symbolic Aryan regalia, and participated in crude military exercises.
These are the activities that strengthen devotees’ commitment by
reaffirming collective grievances. Rituals generate and amplify activists’
solidarity “high,”[71] which sustains commitment to a risky cause.[72]

Pilgrimage

Trips to the Aryan Nations compound for a congress or youth

assembly or at another time of the year served as a spiritual pilgrimage
and badge of honor that signaled deep commitment to the white race.
Attendance at Butler’s gatherings grew during the 1980s. Their notoriety
and reverence grew among white power members from all the
movement’s branches.[73] Rachel, a Washington State Skinhead, said:

Aryan Nations is a gathering place for the movement; there’s no

doubt about it. It’s kind of one of those places that every racialist has
to come to. Just to be here and feel part of this that’s so much bigger
 than you. It tells that you’re not alone and there are others who see
things the same as you.[74]

Attendees talked of their visits as a way to pay homage to Butler and

the movement. Upon arriving, first-timers often sought out Butler to
express the honor they felt being in his presence and at the compound.
Those who eventually made it to a congress, like Charley, a skinhead from
Sacramento, frequently lamented that they should have come sooner to
experience the movement in a pure white space: “Yeah, this is my first
time up here. I just had to make it. I should have come up here a long
time ago, but I’m going to start coming up here more now.”[75]
Regular attendees were often quick to express that their
commitment to attending the congress overshadowed much in their lives.
Bill, a Southwest Aryan Separatist, said, “I used to have to drive sixteen
hours just to go to congress and I’d never miss ’em. If I couldn’t get the
time off from work, I’d go anyway, just leave. I lost a few jobs doing that,
but it was worth it; it was always worth it.”[76]
Once they were on the compound, members devised ways to express
their commitment and reverence for the gathering and Butler. A young
skinhead told a group at Aryan Nations of his plans to pay respect to
Butler by wearing his grandfather’s Nazi SS uniform to the congress in
order to “honor Pastor Butler and what he’s done here.”[77]

Aryan Nations’ Legacy

In the mid-1980s, Aryan Nations came under intense scrutiny from

law enforcement and media. Congresses grew in popularity, and
testimony in the trials of several members of the Aryan terrorist cell the
Silent Brotherhood revealed close ties to Aryan Nations. The compound
also faced strident opposition from human rights groups as well as local
authorities, business leaders, and the public. Local and state police
harassed and arrested congress attendees. Federal agents and human
rights organizations, such as the Anti-Defamation League and the
Southern Poverty Law Center, stepped up their infiltration efforts and
organized protests at the gate.
 By the mid-1990s, most of the group’s original members dropped out
to avoid attention from authorities.[78] Butler still held the congresses, but
the main attendees were neo-Nazi skinheads who were volatile,
unpredictable, and challenged the family atmosphere Butler intended for
congress weekends.[79] Butler ended the youth assemblies in 1995.
The knockout blows to Aryan Nations were landed in 1999 and 2000.
In 1999, former Aryan Nations security guard Buford Furrow “went on a
shooting rampage in California, wounding five people at a Jewish
community center, and later killing a nonwhite postal worker.”[80] As news
of the incident and Furrow’s history with Aryan Nations spread, Butler
became embroiled in a civil suit prosecuted by the Southern Poverty Law
Center on behalf of Victoria Keenan and her son Jason. Aryan Nations
security guards had chased the Keenans’ car, run them off the road into a
ditch, and threatened them at gunpoint. The guards reportedly claimed
that the Keenans fired at the compound as they drove by. In 2000, the
jury levied a $6.3 million judgment against Butler.
Butler soon filed for bankruptcy, and the compound was sold at
auction in 2001. The buyer burned all the buildings and removed all traces
of Aryan Nations from the property.[81]
Stripping Butler of his property forced a hiatus on the annual events
that had been a white power institution for twenty years. Butler
continued to lead Aryan Nations from a small house in Hayden, Idaho,
and posted messages on the group’s website.[82] The Aryan Nations World
Congress was reconstituted in 2003 at a campground in Farragut State
Park near the former compound. Seventy-five attendees gathered with an
ever-defiant Butler. He told a reporter, “What you’re seeing here today is
the awakening of the white race.”[83]
Butler officially anointed activist Ray Redfeairn as his successor at the
2003 day-long event, which was reported on a number of white power
Internet sites.[84] Representatives attended from groups such as the Aryan
Nations Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, White Revolution, and the National
Socialist Movement.[85] However, attendance plummeted to forty people
at the 2004 congress. Butler died two months later. Aryan Nations has
since been embroiled in a struggle over leadership and no large-scale
congresses have been held since.
Inspirational Symbol

Aryan Nations lives on as an inspirational symbol to many in the

movement. Other white power groups have used the congresses and
youth assemblies as models for their own gatherings. Some groups openly
tout these meetings as white power gatherings in the same vein as the
Aryan Nations. Others draw on the Aryan Nations legacy but disguise their
gatherings as family-oriented festivals celebrating European heritage,
Nordic culture, or Anglo-Celtic history. These festivals draw veteran white
power activists, but their toned-down racist rhetoric and covert inferences
of “culture” and “heritage” aim at recruiting new members who might
initially be turned off by more explicit and aggressive displays of Aryan
ideas. The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that now some two
hundred of these festivals are held each year.[86]
Aryan Nations, CSA, and Elohim City continue to inspire some Aryans
to acquire land and establish compounds on which white power members
can gather. Butler’s Aryan Nations legacy lives on in efforts by white
supremacists to establish communities in the US Northwest. For instance,
in 2007, Volksfront announced its land purchase in southern Oregon “to
use as a national headquarters with an incorporated school, library,
museum and recreation center; it also intends to use the land for
homestead-style housing and agriculture.”[87] Volksfront’s vision was
based on Richard Butler’s call for a whites-only living space in the Pacific
Northwest, which he termed the “Northwest Territorial Imperative.”[88] In
2012 one of Richard Butler’s protégés, Shawn Winkler, purchased property
in northern Idaho near the former Aryan Nations headquarters. Winkler
envisioned a new Aryan Nations compound and began to build the first
structure. Financial troubles thwarted Winkler’s plans. He faces potential
foreclosure for delinquent monthly payments and will likely abandon the
property. Following a failed bid to be elected sheriff of Bonner County,
Idaho, Winkler shifted his Aryan organizing efforts to Louisiana, where an
Aryan Nations faction recently anointed him the new Imperial Wizard of
the Aryan Nations Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.[89]
As Winkler was developing his plans for another Idaho Aryan
Nations, longtime white supremacist Paul Craig Cobb set his eyes on Leith,
North Dakota, a tiny town of sixteen residents. In 2011, Cobb began
purchasing property in Leith with secret plans to transform the town into
a whites-only Aryan colony. Within a year Cobb controlled more than a
dozen properties and publicly announced his plans for the Aryan
homestead in a white power web forum.[90] By 2012, tax records indicated
that a few of the most notorious white power leaders, including WAR’s
Tom Metzger and neo-Nazis Alex Linder and April Gaede, purchased Leith
properties from Cobb.[91] After the Southern Poverty Law Center exposed
Cobb’s plans, Leith residents mobilized to block Cobb’s efforts there.
National media attention also followed. In November 2013, Cobb was
arrested and charged with felony terrorizing for walking around Leith
carrying a loaded rifle and harassing residents. After receiving four years
probation, Cobb claimed he would “‘retire from white nationalism’ and
ask the court for permission to move to Missouri.”[92] Months later, the
SPLC exposed that Cobb was again buying property in another tiny North
Dakota town, perhaps to revive his plans for a white power enclave.[93]
Although neither Winkler nor Cobb’s recent plans have come to
fruition, their efforts continue a tradition of Aryans who seek to draw
other racists into physical settlements where they hope to anchor white
power communities.

***

Although many private Aryan communities are relatively tumultuous,

short-lived ventures, many white power members see them as symbols of
Aryan purity. These Aryan free spaces are set apart from mainstream
culture and relatively insulated from the outside world. Permanent
residents of communities like Elohim City imagine themselves to be taking
the most extreme step into committed racialism by devoting themselves
to living full-time in a racially pure society.
The communities vary in their insularity, economic autonomy, and
openness to outsiders. The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord
was the most tightly controlled settlement, while Aryan Nations was quite
open to outside observers. The National Alliance created less of a
community atmosphere than the others but used its property as an
outpost to disseminate white power hate culture.
The violent radicalism associated with CSA, Elohim City, National
Alliance, and Aryan Nations brought them close scrutiny by law
enforcement authorities and human rights groups. Nevertheless, Elohim
City and National Alliance continue to sustain their activities, although
the deaths of their founders curtailed aspects of the communities.
Private Aryan communities envelop their members in a culture that
stokes conspiracy, paranoia, and racial violence. The most ominous legacy
these communities leave behind is the violence they encourage. Terrorism
was the death knell for CSA and Aryan Nations. Members of these
communities led some of the most notorious Aryan-organized crimes in
US history:

Plans for bombings, thefts, and murders carried out by CSA

members were hatched inside the CSA settlement.
William Pierce and the National Alliance housed violent Aryans
and were implicated in a number of incidents, including inspiration
for Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in
Oklahoma City, a plan that originated at CSA years earlier.
Nearly a decade later, McVeigh was linked to members of Elohim
City, some of whom might have also helped McVeigh bring his
twisted plans to fruition.[94]
Elohim City was the seedbed for other violent radicalism and
provided refuge to Aryans implicated in a range of racial hate crimes.
Aryan Nations has been a spark for racial violence; they
harbored violent racists and provided a context that encouraged
racial and anti-Semitic violence.
The Silent Brotherhood drew members from the Aryan Nations,
National Alliance, Ku Klux Klan, and CSA.

The communities also created a second powerful symbolic legacy that

continues to influence Aryans from all branches. Defunct Aryan
communities such as CSA and Aryan Nations stand as martyrs for a
righteous cause. White power activists interpret attacks on white power
communities as evidence of the broader ZOG conspiracy to eliminate the
white race. Thus, these Aryan free spaces live on as meaningful symbols
that Aryans use to bolster and justify their defiance against an anti-Aryan
world.
The networks that these communities helped build, especially
through Butler’s annual congresses, also persist, although their contact
now is made in other Aryan spaces, such as white power websites,
concerts, and festivals. Based on their research of Aryan extremism,
Jeffrey Kaplan and Leonard Weinberg write: “[Aryan Nations and the
annual congresses] provided a relatively stable communal experiment. . . .
Pastor Butler established important connections . . . that will continue to
flourish long after the Hayden Lake compound is but a memory.”[95]
With only a few exceptions, efforts to form and sustain permanent
private Aryan communities like Elohim City or Aryan Nations appear to be
fading. Now, more temporary, small-scale, private gatherings such as
house parties have replaced the function that private Aryan communities
once provided to sustain the white power movement, and broad-based
social networking using the Internet is the norm among Aryans. Music
gatherings, house parties, and online white power networks are now the
main hidden spaces of hate where Aryans sustain their vision of racial
violence and a white power world. These new forms of community have
implications for the persistence of Aryan hate culture and the potential
for racial and anti-Semitic violence from white power extremists.
1. Stuart Wright, Patriots, Politics, and the Oklahoma City Bombing
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Mark Hamm, In Bad
Company: America’s Terrorist Underground (Boston: Northeastern
University Press, 2002); Kerry Noble, Tabernacle of Hate: Why They Bombed
Oklahoma City (Prescott, ON: Voyageur, 1998).
2. James Loewen, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism
(New York: New Press, 2005).
3. Loewen, Sundown Towns, 9.
4. Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture, s.v. “Covenant, the Sword,
and the Arm of the Lord,”
http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?
entryID=4031 (accessed October 2, 2007).
5. Michael Barkun, Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the
Christian Identity Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1994); Noble, Tabernacle.
6. Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture; MIPT (Memorial Institute
for the Prevention of Terrorism) Terrorism Knowledge Base,
http://www.tkb.org/Group.jsp?groupID=3226 (accessed October 2, 2007).
The Terrorism Knowledge Base is now held by and accessible through the
National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to
Terrorism, http://www.start.umd.edu/news/terrorist-organization-profile-
information-now-available-through-start (accessed May 14, 2015).
7. Noble, Tabernacle.
8. Noble, Tabernacle.
9. Noble, Tabernacle, 35.
10. Noble, Tabernacle.
11. Noble, Tabernacle.
12. Noble, Tabernacle.
13. James Corcoran, as quoted in Wright, Patriots, 84.
14. Noble, Tabernacle.
15. Wright, Patriots.
16. Wright, Patriots.
17. The Nizkor Project, “Paranoia as Patriotism: Far-Right Influences on the
Militia Movement,”
http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/orgs/american/adl/paranoia-as-
patriotism/covenant.html (accessed October 2, 2007); Noble, Tabernacle.
18. Brent Smith, Terrorism in America: Pipe Bombs and Pipe Dreams
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994).
19. Noble, Tabernacle; Smith, Terrorism in America.
20. Noble, Tabernacle; Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt, Silent Brotherhood:
The Chilling Inside Story of America’s Violent, Anti-Government Militia
Movement (New York: Signet, 1990); Smith, Terrorism in America.
21. Noble, Tabernacle.
22. Smith, Terrorism in America, 64.
23. Smith, Terrorism in America.
24. Wright, Patriots; Noble, Tabernacle.
25. Wright, Patriots; Noble, Tabernacle; Smith, Terrorism in America.
26. Noble, Tabernacle.
27. Noble, Tabernacle; MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base.
28. Kerry Noble, James Ellison’s right-hand man, testified against Ellison,
rejected Aryan ideology, and now writes and speaks publicly about the
threat of domestic terrorism from extremist white power groups.
29. Anti-Defamation League, “Elohim City,”
http://www.adl.org/learn/Ext_US/Elohim.asp?xpicked=3&item=13
(accessed October 3, 2007).
30. Robert and John Millar never publicly called for violence against racial
others. In fact, they have both claimed that ethnic and racial cleansing is
“ungodly” and “un-Aryan.” But they do believe that separating different
racial groups is important.
31. Summer Shook, Wesley Delano, and Robert Balch, “Elohim City: A
Participant-Observer Study of a Christian Identity Community,” Nova
Religio 2 (1999): 245–65; Hamm, In Bad Company.
32. Snell was also subsequently convicted and sentenced to die for the
1983 murder of a pawnshop owner in Texarkana whom he mistakenly
thought to be Jewish. Snell reportedly told a CSA colleague that the
pawnshop owner was “a Jew who deserved to die.”
33. Anti-Defamation League, “Elohim City.”
34. Anti-Defamation League, “National Alliance,”
http://www.adl.org/Learn/ext_us/N_Alliance.asp (accessed October 3,
2007).
35. Don Terry, “In Major Surprise, Erich Gliebe Steps Down as National
Alliance Chairman,” SPLC Hatewatch (blog), October 24, 2014,
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/10/24/in-major-surprise-erich-gliebe-
steps-down-as-national-alliance-chairman (accessed December 23, 2014).
36. Terry, “Gliebe Steps Down.”
37. SPLC, “Neo-Nazi National Alliance Struggles to Survive under New
Chairman Erich Gliebe,” Intelligence Report 107 (Fall 2002),
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?pid=94 (accessed
August 19, 2006).
38. SPLC, “National Alliance Struggles.”
39. SPLC, “National Alliance Struggles.”
40. Terry, “Gliebe Steps Down.”
41. The efforts have produced events such as the “Spring Buffet Dinner”
and the “European American Cultural Fest” organized by members of the
Cleveland, Ohio, National Alliance chapter. The events drew more than
one hundred people of all ages for food, drink, and Irish and Slovakian
music and dance. They also featured talks by WPM leaders such as Pierce
and White Aryan Resistance leader Tom Metzger. Likewise, the
Sacramento, California, chapter sponsored the “Winter Solstice
Celebration” and “Winter Thule,” billing them as family events. WAR’s
Tom Metzger also attended and spoke at these events.
42. Aryans also visited the National Alliance headquarters as fugitives
seeking safe haven from law enforcement. The most notable of these
fugitives is German neo-Nazi and Aryan musician Hendrik Möbus. Möbus
was convicted of killing a fourteen-year-old boy in 1993 in the former East
Germany. While in prison, Möbus promoted a genre of music known as
National Socialist black metal (or NSBM), which combines neo-Nazi
ideology with a gothic black-metal sound. German authorities released
Möbus from prison after he served five years. Once out of prison, Möbus
continued to produce and promote NSBM music, but in 1999, after a
probation violation that involved a public Nazi salute and demeaning
public statements about his murder victim, he was to be rejailed. Möbus
fled from Germany to escape incarceration and was active in neo-Nazi
groups in the United States prior to befriending Pierce in 2000. He was
arrested by US marshals in 2000 outside the National Alliance compound
and sent back to Germany. See Anti-Defamation League, “William Pierce,”
http://archive.adl.org/learn/ext_us/pierce.html (accessed December 12,
2014).
43. Mark Potok, “Ten Years after Founder’s Death, Key Neo-Nazi
Movement ‘a Joke,’” SPLC News, July 23, 2012,
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/news/shipwreck-ten-years-after-
the-death-of-its-founder-the-once-dominant-national-alli (accessed
December 24, 2014).
44. Terry, “Gliebe Steps Down.”
45. Terry, “Gliebe Steps Down.”
46. James Aho, The Politics of Righteousness: Idaho Christian Patriotism
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1990); James Coates, Armed and
Dangerous: The Rise of the Survivalist Right (New York: Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 1987); Flynn and Gerhardt, Silent Brotherhood; Raphael Ezekiel,
The Racist Mind: Portraits of American Neo-Nazis and Klansmen (New York:
Viking, 1995); Betty Dobratz and Stephanie Shanks-Meile, White Power!
White Pride! The White Separatist Movement in the United States (New
York: Cengage Gale, 1997); Richard Mitchell, Dancing at Armageddon:
Survivalism and Chaos in Modern Times (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2001); Robert Balch, “The Rise and Fall of Aryan Nations: A Resource
Mobilization Perspective,” Journal of Political and Military Sociology 34
(2006): 81–113.
47. Aryan Nations website, http://www.aryan-nations.org (accessed
October 4, 2007).
48. Kathleen Blee, Inside Organized Racism: Women in the Hate Movement
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 196.
49. Anti-Defamation League, “Aryan Nations/Church of Jesus Christ
Christian,” http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/Aryan_Nations.asp?
xpicked=3&item=11 (accessed October 3, 2007).
50. Aryan Nations website.
51. Balch, “Rise and Fall,” 86.
52. Balch, “Rise and Fall,” 86.
53. Balch, “Rise and Fall,” 86.
54. Butler canceled the congress in 1985 to lower Aryan Nations’ profile
after the Silent Brotherhood carried out a rash of robberies. Some of the
Silent Brotherhood’s members visited the Aryan Nations compound, and
Butler feared the media attention.
55. Anti-Defamation League, “Aryan Nations.”
56. Anti-Defamation League, “Aryan Nations.”
57. Flynn and Gerhardt, Silent Brotherhood.
58. Balch, “Rise and Fall,” 89.
59. Aryan Nations leader Richard Butler, sermon, June 29, 1997.
60. James Aho, “White Man as a Social Construct,” European Legacy 4
(1999): 62–72.
61. Mitchell, Dancing at Armageddon.
62. Balch, “Rise and Fall,” 94; see also Mitchell, Dancing at Armageddon.
63. Charlie, AN activist, interviewed July 2, 1999.
64. Michael, AN activist, interviewed July 22, 1998.
65. Gary, AN activist, interviewed July 3, 1999.
66. Russ, Alabama Aryan, interviewed July 3, 1999.
67. This event took place on July 8, 1999.
68. Cindy, Aryan Nations member, interviewed July 8, 1999.
69. Steven, Kentucky Klansman, interviewed July 8, 1999.
70. Dylan, Aryan Front member, interviewed July 9, 1999.
71. Doug McAdam, Freedom Summer (New York: Oxford University Press,
1988).
72. For similar description of Aryan National Congress rituals, also see
Aho, “White Man,” and James Aho, “The Recent Ethnogenesis of White
Man,” Left Bank 5 (1993): 55–63.
73. Pilgrimages to Aryan Nations were also for more instrumental
purposes, such as running from the law. Butler was generous to Aryans in
trouble with authorities and offered his land as a refuge or hideout. As
Carl, a skinhead who was living at the compound during one visit, told us,
“I’m from New Hampshire, I was having some trouble with the law back
there, so I came out here [AN property] to live for a while and stay out of
trouble. Works out fine since I’ve been wanting to come out here for a
long time now, and I’ve been really grateful about spending time with
Pastor Butler.” Like William Pierce, Butler reportedly also gave refuge for a
time to infamous German neo-Nazi musician Hendrik Möbus when he
came to the United States in the late 1990s to escape jail time in
Germany.
74. Rachel, Washington State Aryan, interviewed April 25, 1997.
75. Charley, Northwest skinhead, interviewed April 22, 1997.
76. Bill, SWAS member, interviewed January 27, 1997.
77. Tom, Washington State skinhead, interviewed April 19, 1997.
78. Balch, “Rise and Fall”; Mitchell, Dancing at Armageddon.
79. Balch, “Rise and Fall,” 100.
80. Balch, “Rise and Fall,” 106.
81. Balch, “Rise and Fall.”
82. Balch, “Rise and Fall.”
83. Kari Huus, “Aryan Nations Plots a Comeback at Idaho Campout,”
MSNBC, December 16, 2003, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3340524
(accessed March 4, 2004).
84. Huus, “Aryan Nations.”
85. Huus, “Aryan Nations.”
86. For recent examples of some of these “heritage fesitvals,” see James L.
Smith, “‘Klanbly Friendly’ Tennessee: State Becomes Hate Tourist Mecca,”
SPLC Hatewatch (blog), December 3, 2014,
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/12/03/tennessee-where-the-klan-
was-born-now-hosts-many-racist-events (accessed December 23, 2014).
87. Anti-Defamation League, “Volksfront—Ideology,”
http://archive.adl.org/learn/ext_us/volksfront/ideology.html?
xpicked=3&item=volksfront (accessed December 27, 2014).
88. Anti-Defamation League, “Volksfront—Ideology.”
89. Bill Morlin, “Neo-Nazi Builds North Idaho Compound to Replace
Defunct Aryan Nations,” Intelligence Report 148 (Winter 2012),
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-
issues/2012/winter/aryan-nations-redux (accessed November 19, 2014).
90. Ryan Lenz, “White Supremacists Making Bid to Take Over North Dakota
Town,” SPLC Hatewatch (blog), August 22, 2013,
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2013/08/22/white-supremacists-making-
bid-to-take-over-north-dakota-town (accessed October 14, 2014).
91. Lenz, “White Supremacists Making Bid.”
92. Ryan Lenz, “Court Hands Craig Cobb Four Years’ Probation for
Terrorizing Leith Residents,” SPLC Hatewatch (blog), April 29, 2014,
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/04/29/court-hands-craig-cobb-four-
years-probation-for-terrorizing-leith-residents (accessed October 14,
2014); Don Terry, “Craig Cobb: Will Leave North Dakota if Charges
Dropped,” SPLC Hatewatch (blog), November 27, 2013,
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2013/11/27 (accessed December 7, 2014).
93. Ryan Lenz, “White Supremacist Craig Cobb Buying Property in North
Dakota—Again,” SPLC Hatewatch (blog), July 2, 2014,
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/07/02/white-supremacist-craig-cobb-
buying-property-in-north-dakota-again (accessed December 7, 2014).
94. Hamm, In Bad Company; Wright, Patriots.
95. Jeffrey Kaplan and Leonard Weinberg, The Emergence of a Euro-
American Radical Right (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press,
1998), 150.
 Chapter 8
Enduring White Power Activism
Estimating the Aryan Threat and What to Do about It

Politicians, pundits, and newscasters tell us that terrorism is an

external threat. Their proclamations are accompanied by images of
bearded, weapons-bearing Muslims in the Middle East. Of course, the
reality of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon, followed by the “war on terror” in Afghanistan and Iraq and
new worries about ISIS as a growing threat, fuels this imagery.
The idea that terrorism equals Middle Eastern violence seems
indelibly etched into our collective imaginations. But we should not forget
another important moment in our nation’s recent past—April 19, 1995—
the day Timothy McVeigh detonated the homemade bomb that destroyed
the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and killed 168
people, including 19 children, and injured more than 500. Until 9/11, the
Oklahoma City bombing stood as the deadliest act of terrorism on US soil.
The bombing horrified the nation, and in the immediate aftermath, many
observers speculated that it was an act of foreign attackers.[1] The
aftershock came when the bombing turned out to be an act of
homegrown terror and the point man was a young, clean-cut, white male
and decorated Gulf War veteran with no prior criminal record. The natural
question became—“What turned this All-American boy into a mass
murderer?”
While observers focused on individual motivations and psychological
explanations, most of their accounts failed to ask about the organization
of right-wing extremism. What was McVeigh doing prior to the bombing?
Years later, we know that McVeigh was deeply integrated into a potent
culture of paranoia, conspiracy, and violence. He participated in the
hidden spaces of radical racist and anti-Semitic culture. His journey from
learning extremist views to taking radical action was guided by a
persistent network of white power activists, including neo-Nazis, Christian
Identity adherents, and Elohim City members who imagined they were
waging a righteous war against a government and world gone bad.[2] In
short, this “All-American boy” became America’s most notorious
homegrown terrorist after being integrated into Aryan free spaces that
normalize ideas of extremist hate and violent insurgency.
The potential for homegrown terror persists in Aryan hate culture
found in white power families, Aryan house parties, the white power
music scene, Aryan cyberspace, and private white power communities.
Right-wing violence that springs from these spaces includes shooting
sprees by lone wolfs such as Frazier Glenn Miller’s attack on Jewish
gathering places in Kansas City, Kansas, or Wade Michael Page’s massacre
of Sikhs at a temple in suburban Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Extremist
violence also includes the many underreported instances of street-level
beatings, harassment, and intimidation by white power believers against
blacks, Jews, and others they detest. American Swastika answers where
and how racial and anti-Semitic extremism persists and why we should
not expect the potential for violence to fade anytime soon.

AN INFRASTRUCTURE OF HATE
Understanding violent extremism requires us to focus on much more than
the violent incidents themselves. We must also pay careful attention to
the settings and situations that precede violent acts. Ideas about racist
and anti-Semitic violence are expressed, ritualized, and reinforced in
Aryan free spaces. These are the backstage settings where extremists
encourage violent action for the cause of white power.
The hidden spaces of Aryan hate provide members with the social
supports they need to sustain their radical commitments. White power
members use crash pads, concerts, backyard barbecues, and the Internet
to meet, exchange ideas, and build solidarity with other Aryans. In these
contexts, they express their collective identity in talk and concretize it in
rituals. Together they keep alive the vision of a future world where blacks,
Jews, and other racial enemies are vanquished or destroyed. That vision
nourishes violence, destruction, and death. Aryan free spaces are at the
core of the contemporary white power movement.
Our up-close look at these contexts reveals that Aryans have built a
bilevel infrastructure of free spaces that support distinct kinds of social
ties and activities. White power families, racist parties, Aryan spiritual
meetings, campouts, and skinhead crash-pad gatherings nurture close-knit
interpersonal ties among small networks of Aryans who typically live in
the same town and connect regularly in face-to-face settings. They embed
their extremist ideals in collective activities that normalize racist and anti-
Semitic hate in their lives. But these local pockets of Aryanism are also
insular and can be fraught with the same sort of tensions as any small
community. It is hard to imagine a geographically broad Aryan movement
persisting with only isolated, local networks to sustain an activist culture.
White power ideology persists because activists also connect with
broader movement networks through the white power music scene and in
cyberspace. Aryan concerts and websites help link otherwise disconnected
local activists to much broader webs of white power culture, where they
perceive a larger social movement. Music shows give Aryans opportunities
to meet others from across the country and even around the world who
share their extremist views. Cyberspace provides Aryans the same
opportunities in the virtual realm, as they connect through streaming
audio and visual webcasts, blogs, and chat rooms.
The act of connecting with other Aryans and the substance of those
connections are both crucial to sustaining activism. Aryan free spaces
provide experiences that are otherwise fleeting in most devotees’
everyday lives. Most Aryans must live dual lives because their extreme
racial and anti-Semitic attitudes are maligned at work and school and
other mainstream settings. Aryan free spaces are among the very few
social spaces where they can express their radicalism and find social
support and ideological affirmation.
The relationships that Aryans build in these spaces brim with
emotions that help bind them together. Anger and hatred galvanize
Aryans against their racial enemies, and they talk of “killing Jews to keep
Hitler’s dream alive” or “lynching the niggers and spics” as easily as most
people discuss plans for dinner and a movie. But Aryans’ lives are not
consumed solely by hate. They also experience positive feelings of pride,
power, efficacy, pleasure, love, and kinship in these contexts, which
legitimate and intensify their connections to other white power believers.
The combination of these emotions is the glue of Aryan solidarity that
allows the movement to persist.[3]
 ESTIMATING THE ARYAN THREAT
So what are we to make of Aryan persistence? Does the fact that white
power culture endures in Aryan free spaces threaten civil society? And, if
so, what kind of threat do Aryans pose?
Extremist elements clearly challenge American values of freedom,
equality, and peace. Aryans are steeped in an ideology that glorifies
brutality against those they define as racial enemies and envisions a race
war as the final step toward white supremacy. Most Aryans will not act
out their extremist fantasies, but some will. And, as Aryans draw new
members into their ranks and socialize them in their hidden spaces of
hate, the odds of racist and anti-Semitic violence grow.
Consider the long histories of extremism among some of the Aryans
in our research. We interviewed people who have participated in race
riots, murders, bombings, robberies, drug dealing, money laundering,
identity theft, and counterfeiting schemes to support Aryan causes. One
member threatened to assassinate a US senator and made the claim on a
nationally broadcast television program, no less. Another member, Wade
Michael Page, acted out the sort of violent fantasies that he sang about in
his white power songs when he murdered six and wounded four Sikhs,
whom he likely identified as racial enemies simply based on their brown
skin and turbans. Some of the Aryan groups we discussed have stockpiled
major weapons and other military equipment for the impending race war
they imagine on the horizon.
Also, consider the number of indictments involving Aryan extremists
over the past few decades. Between 1984 and 2002, more US federal
indictments (187) were handed down to homegrown Aryan extremists
than to international terrorists (185).[4] Between 2000 and 2002, the
number of Aryan indictments declined compared with international
terrorist indictments as authorities turned their attention after 9/11 to
threats from Islamic extremists. But Aryan radicals have not stopped
planning violence. The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that in the
decade following the Oklahoma City bombing, Aryans and other right-
wing extremists planned or carried out more than sixty terrorist plots,
twenty-three of which occurred between 2000 and 2005.[5] The list
includes

plans to bomb or burn government buildings, banks, refineries,

utilities, clinics, synagogues, mosques, memorials and bridges; to
assassinate police officers, judges, politicians, civil rights figures and
others; to rob banks, armored cars and other criminals; and to amass
illegal machine guns, missiles, explosives, and biological and chemical
weapons.[6]

Authorities detected and quashed most of these plots before they

were carried out, but at least twenty-two people died during this time as
a result of organized Aryan violence.[7]
Non-Islamic terror activity has clearly increased since Barack Obama’s
2008 election. Recent studies by the US Department of Homeland Security
and West Point’s Combatting Terrorism Center indicate a growing number
of right-wing attacks and violent plots.[8] The white power attacks in
Kansas City and Milwaukee, along with events such as the Boston
Marathon bombing, prompted federal officials to reconvene a domestic
terrorism committee first organized after the Oklahoma City bombing but
then abandoned following the 9/11 attacks. This move was “more than
overdue.”[9]
Even these worrisome facts about domestic terror do not fully
capture the violence sown by Aryans. Racist skinheads frequently engage
in low-profile street violence that does not draw much attention. Aryan
gang violence and street fights often go underreported as white power
crimes. At the same time, white power leaders have amplified their calls
for lone-wolf action against Aryan enemies. The solitary nature of a
growing list of lone wolves makes it difficult to know how many Aryans
will look to wage their singular race wars.[10] Finally, Aryans stockpile
weapons and ammunition and play war games to prepare for racial
combat. These preparatory efforts set the stage for future Aryan violence.
What catalysts might turn preparation into action? Extremist actions
flow from perceived threats. As we write at the beginning of 2015, fears of
ZOG and a “new world order, federal overreach, economic troubles,
immigration, and Islamic expansion nourish Aryan angst. These perceived
perils, combined with a mixed-race president, provide ample fuel to
sustain current levels of Aryan violence and could prompt even more.”[11]
Moreover, unrest over recent police killings of unarmed blacks highlights a
racial divide that Aryans see as a fertile context for mobilizing new white
power members and may serve as catalysts for violent plots.
To draw new members to the cause, Aryans hope to stoke white
fears and exploit racist sentiments that still persist among many
Americans. US officials are concerned that white military veterans
returning from Middle East conflicts with combat skills and experience will
be susceptible targets of recruitment and radicalization efforts by white
power extremists.[12]
White power groups are also strategically reframing their public
message to alter perceptions.[13] “New racist” rhetoric claims whites as
minority victims who face discrimination and contradicts the values of
cultural pluralism. Aryans use this rhetoric to neutralize white power
stereotypes with claims that they are merely interested in preserving their
Southern or Nordic cultural heritage. In reality, these efforts are a ploy to
disguise racial extremism and attract recruits.[14] Behind the scenes, in
Aryan free spaces, their hate remains as virulent as ever.
Our main point is that when radical ideas endure, so does the
potential for radical action. The potential for white power violence is
nested in the movement’s hidden spaces, where Aryans wield potent
ideas of hate. We do not presume a simple cause-effect relationship
between exposure to hate culture in Aryan spaces and extremist violence.
Most Aryans exposed to the radicalism in Aryan free spaces do not
become violent race warriors. The relationship between free spaces and
violence is more complex.
White power culture endures in fluid, transitory relationships among
Aryan activists and groups that periodically coalesce in Aryan free spaces.
[15] In a movement so focused on ideals of hatred, members’ immersion in

Aryan free spaces will inevitably encourage some to violently enact those
ideals. Aryan violence may break out in spontaneous interpersonal street
fighting as extremists battle enemies one on one or in small groups. It
may also come in large-scale acts of terror by lone wolves operating
without clear and direct links to groups or by larger white power networks
coordinating attacks. Whatever form Aryan violence takes or whoever
perpetuates the acts, the inspiration will emanate from the culture of
hate that endures in Aryan free spaces.[16]

WHAT TO DO
The white power movement endures, but in a precarious state, buffeted
from the inside by ideological schisms and conflicts over strategy and
tactics and from the outside by a long list of opponents. If Aryans
maintain their infrastructure of free spaces where members support one
another in their beliefs, white power culture will persist. At present,
whatever vitality the white power movement possesses is reflected in the
strength and persistence of Aryan free spaces where racism and anti-
Semitism thrive.
Could eliminating the infrastructure of Aryan free spaces dismantle
the white power movement? This logic imagines that if there are no Aryan
free spaces, there is no movement and, consequently, no source to
promote extremist Aryan ideas or violence. This is the same logic that
informs the strategy of most authorities and watchdog groups. Federal
authorities and the Southern Poverty Law Center’s successful efforts to
strip Aryan Nations of their compound in 2000 brought the twenty-year
run of the Aryan Nations World Congress to an end. This was a huge blow
to Aryan extremism, and it provided some momentum for authorities to
target other white power spaces. The SPLC has also been successful in
crippling the Imperial Klans of America, White Aryan Resistance, and the
White Patriot Party.[17]
Yet if we seek to dismantle all Aryan free spaces, we should prepare
for the unintended consequence of more rather than less violent
extremism, at least in the short term. The social ties that members
cultivate in Aryan free spaces may help constrain their most heinous
actions. For many Aryans, the movement’s free spaces may act as pressure
release valves that allow members to let loose their frustrations among
themselves rather than in overt violent acts against their enemies. In fact,
we observed many Aryans stressing to one another the importance of
staying true to the white power vision while also discouraging overt acts
of violence and destruction that draw unwanted repression.
 Socially isolated Aryans may be the most dangerous. Repression
increases the risks of losing the few supportive social environments where
Aryans find positive status and experience feelings of joy, trust,
reciprocity, racial kinship, love, and belonging with like-minded others.
Thus, while Aryans sustain extremist ideology in their spaces of hate, they
may also feel tethered to them in ways that discourage higher rates of
violent activism for fear of jeopardizing themselves and the movement.
Should Aryans lose these spaces, some committed members might retreat
further underground while newly isolated lone wolves and small terror
cells could spin adrift and act on their violent fantasies.
Finally, questions about how to deal with racist and anti-Semitic
extremism raise the vexing issue of how much a democratic society should
tolerate from Aryans and other extremists. Any attempt to eradicate
political free spaces inevitably pushes against the constitutional
protections for freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom from
surveillance, and the right to privacy. The rollback of civil liberties under
the Bush and Obama administrations’ “war on terror” expanded state
power in potentially dangerous ways.[18] As authorities renew their focus
on homegrown Aryan threats, we must carefully consider the implications
of using expanded state powers. Do we continue to contest Aryans
through the battle of ideas and strict enforcement of criminal sanctions
rather than seeking to deny them their constitutionally protected free
spaces? Or do we push at any cost to eliminate the infrastructure of Aryan
free spaces where hate culture persists?
While the inclination toward hard repression may have certain
attractions or seem necessary in the effort to combat violent extremism,
we see such measures as a dangerous intoxicant at odds with the ethos of
American democracy. At the same time, we encourage vigilance, dialogue,
and monitoring to counter extremism’s corrosive effects. And, of course,
any illegal activity must be met with arrests and prosecutions. What we
do know is that any attempt to combat Aryan extremism requires a clear
understanding of how white power culture persists. We hope that
American Swastika helps us all better comprehend the organization and
endurance of the contemporary white power movement and contributes
to discussions about how to counter the threat of extreme racist and anti-
Semitic ideas.
1. Stuart Wright, Patriots, Politics, and the Oklahoma City Bombing
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 6.
2. Wright, Patriots.
3. Randall Collins, “Stratification, Emotional Energy, and the Transient
Emotions,” in Research Agendas in the Sociology of Emotions, ed. Theodore
D. Kemper (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 27–57.
4. The largest number of Aryan indictments occurred in the mid-1980s,
inspired by several groups’ declaration of insurgency against the federal
government called the “WAR in 84.” Indictments rose again in the mid-
1990s, the most notorious being the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
5. Andrew Blejwas, Anthony Griggs, and Mark Potok, “Terror from the
Right: Almost 60 Terrorist Plots Uncovered in the U.S.,” Intelligence Report
118 (Summer 2005),
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=628 (accessed
October 15, 2006).
6. Blejwas, Griggs, and Potok, “Terror from the Right,” 1.
7. Blejwas, Griggs, and Potok, “Terror from the Right,” 1.
8. US Department of Homeland Security, “Rightwing Extremism: Current
Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and
Recruitment” (unclassified assessment, April 2009),
http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/rightwing.pdf (accessed December 12,
2014); Arie Perliger, Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding
America’s Violent Far-Right (West Point, NY: Combating Terrorism Center
at West Point, 2012), https://www.ctc.usma.edu/v2/wp-
content/uploads/2013/01/ChallengersFromtheSidelines.pdf (accessed July
6, 2014).
9. Elizabeth Chuck, “Domestic Terrorism Task Force ‘More than Overdue,’
Experts Say,” NBC News, June 11, 2014,
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/domestic-terrorism-task-force-
more-overdue-experts-say-n128541 (accessed December 28, 2014).
10. Michael E. Ruane, Paul Duggan, and Clarence Williams, “At a
Monument of Sorrow, a Burst of Deadly Violence,” Washington Post, June
11, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2009/06/10/AR2009061001768.html (accessed June
18, 2009).
11. US Department of Homeland Security, “Rightwing Extremism.” This
report marks a major shift in perspective for the agency. As recently as
2005, the Department of Homeland Security concluded that white power
extremists do not pose a substantial threat to domestic security. In
response, the Southern Poverty Law Center warned:

A draft internal document from the U.S. Department of Homeland

Security that was obtained [in spring 2005] by the Congressional
Quarterly lists the only serious domestic terrorist threats as radical
animal rights and environmental groups like the Animal Liberation
Front and the Earth Liberation Front. But for all the property damage
they have wreaked, eco-radicals have killed no one—something that
most definitely cannot be said of the white supremacists and others
who people the American radical right.

SPLC, “Almost 60 Terrorist Plots Uncovered in the U.S. since the Oklahoma
City Bombing: Terror from the Right,” Intelligence Report 118 (Summer
2005), http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=628
(accessed March 3, 2014).
12. US Department of Homeland Security, “Rightwing Extremism.”
13. Mitch Berbrier, “Impression Management for the Thinking Racist: A
Case Study of Intellectualization as Stigma Transformation in
Contemporary White Supremacist Discourse,” Sociological Quarterly 40
(1999): 411–33; Mitch Berbrier, “‘Half the Battle’: Cultural Resonance,
Framing Processes, and Ethnic Affectations in Contemporary White
Separatist Rhetoric,” Social Problems 45 (1998): 431–50; Mitch Berbrier,
“Making Minorities: Cultural Space, Stigma Transformation Frames, and
the Categorical Status Claims of Deaf, Gay, and White Supremacist
Activists in Late Twentieth-Century America,” Sociological Forum 17 (2002):
553–91; Mitch Berbrier, “The Victim Ideology of White Supremacists and
White Separatists in the United States,” Sociological Focus 33 (2000): 175–
91.
14. White power music culture and cyberspace appear to be especially
potent points of contact for attracting new members. Hate rock
intermingles highly racist and anti-Semitic ideas with familiar, pop-culture
commodity forms such as music and clothing styles, jewelry, stickers, and
other paraphernalia. We see evidence of a slow and stealthy seep of
white power imagery and messages into the mainstream cultural
landscape. Already the German iron cross, a staple image of neo-Nazi
groups and white power bands, has become a very popular symbol in
alternative clothing and advertising. For instance, the popular custom
motorcycle shop West Coast Choppers uses the cross prominently in their
promotions as a sign of rebellion and strength, but not to promote white
power. The more that such cherished neo-Nazi symbols become familiar
images, the greater chance Aryans have to attract unsuspecting visitors to
websites and gatherings. Aryan cyberspace offers the easiest access to
movement culture, where the merely curious can make contact,
experiment with the ideas, and take steps into other Aryan free spaces
where white power culture persists.
15. Alberto Melucci, Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information
Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
16. The Olympic Park bomber, Eric Rudolph, is a case in point. Rudolph’s
attacks included detonating bombs at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta,
at abortion clinics in Atlanta and Birmingham, Alabama, and in an Atlanta
lesbian nightclub. He killed two and injured 119 people. His exact
motivations and links to other extremists remain somewhat mysterious.
What is clear is that Rudolph is vehemently antiabortion, antigay,
antifeminism, racist, and anti-Semitic, and he feels that American culture
is rapidly deteriorating (see Rudolph’s writing on
http://www.ArmyofGod.com). He has a long history of associations with
Christian Identity adherents and other right-wing extremists. When
Rudolph was eighteen, he lived for six months at Pastor Dan Gayman’s
Christian Identity community, the Church of Israel, in Schell City, Missouri,
where Gayman served as his mentor and considered Rudolph a potential
husband for one of his daughters; see Maryanne Vollers, Lone Wolf: Eric
Rudolph and the Legacy of American Terror (New York: Harper Perennial,
2007).
17. SPLC, “SPLC Wins $2.5 Million Verdict against Imperial Klans of
America,” SPLC News, November 14, 2008, http://www.splcenter.org/get-
informed/news/splc-wins-25-million-verdict-against-imperial-klans-of-
america (accessed December 12, 2014).
18. For a penetrating analysis of the unfulfilled potential of democracy
and the agents who see to it that democracy remains but a dream
deferred, see Cornell West, Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight against
Imperialism (New York: Penguin, 2004).
 Appendix

Making Contact and Developing Rapport

One of the most asked questions about the research in American

Swastika is how we made contact with Aryans and collected our data. Pete
Simi performed the participant observations and interviews that we draw
upon in the book. Pete first made contact in 1997 with the Southwest
Aryan Separatists (SWAS) using a simple letter of introduction that
identified him as a sociologist researching subcultures. Pete gained entrée
to Aryan Nations via a series of phone calls requesting to visit and
observe their gatherings. Aryan Nations granted access on one condition
—that Pete was white. Contacts with other Aryans snowballed from there,
producing the broad sample from which we draw in the book. Below, Pete
describes making contact and developing rapport with Aryans.

I first made contact with the Southwest Aryan Separatists (SWAS)

after a colleague found the group’s post office box number and suggested
I write them a letter asking to talk with SWAS leaders. Not expecting much
to come of it, I addressed the letter to Erik, a SWAS leader, and sent it off.
Erik responded almost a month later, offering to meet for lunch in the
small town near his home. He wrote, “We can talk and if you’re ok I might
show you the movement.” A week later, I met with Erik and fellow SWAS
member Darren at a small bar. I passed whatever litmus test they used to
judge me. I think they mainly wanted to make sure I was Caucasian and
not a cop. At the end of the lunch, Erik and Darren invited me for another
visit and offered to put me up in their homes. My fieldwork began in
earnest three weeks later when I took them up on their offer and stayed
at Erik’s house for two days.
Erik and Darren’s status as SWAS leaders eased my entrée into the
group. I was not hassled by any SWAS members, and they allowed me to
ask questions and observe their lives. This openness might seem a bit
surprising. Aryans live in a world that is hostile to their beliefs, and they
are often antagonistic toward outsiders. They prefer secrecy to avoid
conflicts with ZOG infiltrators, whom they perceive are out to destroy
them. Yet they cannot totally close themselves off from the outside world.
Aryans try to recruit new adherents, which requires them to be somewhat
open to people they do not know well. I expect that Erik, Darren, and
other Aryans who were open to participating in the research imagined
that they might be able to recruit me into the movement or at least that
this book might publicize and celebrate the movement.
I was invited to the 1997 Aryan Nations World Congress after I made
several phone calls to their Idaho compound to request entrée as a
researcher. The Aryan Nations office manager granted my request on the
single condition that I was white. Following the congress, I visited the
compound and Aryan Nations members around Hayden Lake, Idaho, to
observe their informal gatherings and church services. Eventually I
attended two other congresses and visited the Aryan Nations on another
occasion when there was no large gathering planned. The initial contacts
with SWAS and Aryan Nations began a snowball sample that spread into
each of the main branches of the white power movement.
Gaining entrée and building rapport was much more difficult in other
groups. White power movement networks are diverse and loosely
structured. Levels of activism vary widely among participants, and some
networks are more open to outsiders than others. Southern California’s
exotic assortment of racial extremists also offered some of the most
difficult and riskiest attempts at entrée.
One of the people I met at the Aryan Nations introduced me to Seth,
my most important contact in Southern California. Seth was active in the
Southern California hate music scene and friends with members of several
white power networks. Seth invited me into his home and introduced me
to key members of White Aryan Resistance, Hammerskins, Nazi Lowriders,
and Public Enemy Number One (PEN1). These introductions were
invaluable, but Seth’s assurances alone did not guarantee my safety.
Racist gangs such as PEN1 and Nazi Lowriders contain career criminals
who are both aggressive and paranoid toward anyone who does not
appear to be part of the scene. Members who used drugs such as
methamphetamine were especially unpredictable. Several times I was
confronted by drugged-out or drunken Aryans who accused me of being a
police infiltrator.
Most Aryans were willing to tolerate my presence so long as I did not
disrupt their gatherings. If I arrived accompanying a white power member
and then hung around unobtrusively at parties, concerts, and other
gatherings, chances were low that I would be challenged. However, at
some gatherings there were one or two members who I could tell were
uncomfortable with my presence, as indicated by their continued glances
my way and whispered conversations with other Aryans as they tried to
identify me. I became very adept at spotting these Aryans and watched
them closely for potential trouble.
One of my best assets for building rapport with racist skinheads was
my ability to drink large quantities of beer while controlling my faculties.
My willingness to imbibe was like a badge of acceptance that gained me a
bit of insider status. Most important, however, was my physical
appearance. As a relatively nondescript “white guy,” I am of average
height and weight and have no detectable spoken accent. In short, I did
not stand out in the crowd and easily blended into Aryan gatherings,
despite having no racist tattoos or white power clothing.
Participant observation in risky settings sometimes requires
compromise of one’s beliefs and values to avoid conflicts. At times, I
outwardly portrayed myself as sympathetic to the Aryan cause despite my
deep personal opposition to racist and anti-Semitic beliefs. I found
deception was necessary in order to build rapport with Aryans. I snickered
at racist jokes that I found appalling or nodded vociferously in agreement
when Aryans talked to me about white racial genocide. Despite this
strategy, I was still occasionally threatened with bodily harm or death,
although I was never attacked.
I frequently had to parry Aryans’ efforts to recruit me into the cause.
During the first few recruitment attempts, I directly answered that I was
there only as a researcher with no intent to become an Aryan. Being
rebuffed did not sit well with the recruiters, and they were quick to
threaten me. They said that if I reported anything they considered unfair
or inaccurate or revealed their identities, then I would be “hunted down
and killed.” After these threats, I usually tried to skirt the issue by
changing the subject, or in the few instances in which I felt particularly
threatened, I would avoid conflict with a response of “We’ll see,” to
create the impression that I might be recruited in the future. While I
found this strategy thoroughly distasteful, it felt like a necessary survival
response at the time.
Participant observations and interviews with Aryans were
emotionally exhausting. Watching television with Aryans meant listening
to constant banter about the inferiority of nonwhites and talk about how
to control or kill their racial enemies. Trips to the grocery store meant the
prospect of verbal harangues directed toward minority drivers or
pedestrians.
I had to be careful when asking direct questions in these settings.
Too many questions or queries that seemed too probing made Aryans
wary of me and more likely to close themselves off. Some Aryans were
overtly supportive of my research. On more than one occasion, Aryans
who were aware of my research intentions commented on what they
called “my laid-back approach” as a good way to research them. Evan, a
North Carolina Klan member, once commented, “You seem to be doing
this the right way; I like how you just hang out and sit back and ask
questions just kind of casually.” A small skinhead network in Southern
California also took an active interest in my method. After five separate
two- to three-day visits over a three-month period, several members
asked me to tape record their conversations without letting them know
ahead of time. They thought it would help them maintain a natural flow
of conversation and give me better information.
Many, although not all, Aryan contacts were open to formal
interviews. Aryans seemed to relish talking about their ideology, but they
were much more guarded discussing their personal backgrounds. Pinning
down respondents to provide in-depth accounts of their life histories was
the most difficult task.
Scholars and other observers have questioned the ethics of building
too much rapport with Aryans; getting close is akin to sympathy. To avoid
this dilemma, some researchers suggest using an open and honest
approach, emphasizing to Aryans that you do not share their views of
racial extremism and are not open to recruitment. However, this strategy
compromises the degree of intersubjectivity the ethnography can reach. I
tried as much as possible to understand Aryans from their point of view. I
did not openly disagree with their claims and practices and even
befriended several contacts during the fieldwork. I felt a tremendous
amount of internal guilt and discomfort. The perversity and illogic of their
world astounded me. Yet in many ways the form of Aryans’ lives was far
more ordinary than I expected. They work, play, raise children, attend
school, surf the web, and listen to music, among other routine, everyday
activities. What differs is the ideological content of their experiences and
the effort they give to sustain those radical ideas. Understanding strange
and unfamiliar worlds is one of the main goals of ethnography. This
understanding requires that researchers, to some extent, attempt to take
on the perspective of their research subjects, if only for a time.
 Glossary

14 Words: Aryan commitment pledge: “I must secure the existence of

my people and a future for white children.”

18: code for Adolf Hitler

88: code for Heil Hitler

AN: Aryan Nations

ANP: American Nazi Party

B&H: Blood & Honour

HSN: Hammerskin Nation

KKK: Ku Klux Klan

NA: National Alliance

NLR: Nazi Lowriders

NSM: National Socialist Movement

PEN1: Public Enemy Number 1

SWAS: Southwest Aryan Separatists

SWP: Supreme White Power

WAR: White Aryan Resistance

WPM: White Power Movement

ZOG: Zionist Occupied Government
Notes
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 Index

A
American Nazi Party (ANP), 1 , 2 , 3 , 4
Anti-Defamation League, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 ,
15
anti-Semitism, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6
Aryan, defined, 1 , 2
See also white power movement
Aryan Nations (AN), 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 ,
16 , 17 , 18.1-18.2 , 19.1-19.2 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26
demise of, 1
headquarters, 1
legacy, 1 , 2.1-2.2
pilgrimage to, 1 , 2.1-2.2 , 3
rituals, 1.1-1.2
violence, 1 , 2
World Congress, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4
youth assemblies, 1.1-1.2
See also Christian Identity See also Furrow, Buford See also Soldier’s
Ransom ceremony
Aryan Republican Army, 1 , 2
Asatru, 1 , 2
See also neo-Paganism

B
Balch, Robert, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5
Blee, Kathleen, 1 , 2 , 3
Blood & Honour (B&H), 1
Blue Eyed Devils, 1
British National Party, 1 , 2
Britton, Neumann, 1.1-1.2
Bully Boys, 1.1-1.2 , 2 , 3
Burris, Val, 1 , 2
Butler, Richard, 1.1-1.2 , 2 , 3 , 4.1-4.2 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8
death of, 1
See also Aryan Nations

C
Cecchini, Bryant, 1
See also Panzerfaust Records
Christian Identity, 1 , 2 , 3.1-3.2 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13
city walks, 1
Civil Rights Act of 1871, 1
Cobb, Paul Craig, 1.1-1.2
Collins, Randall, 1 , 2
communal activities
Bible study, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9.1-9.2 , 10
camping, 1 , 2 , 3
fellowshipping, 1 , 2
hikes, 1 , 2.1-2.2
parties, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10.1-10.2 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 ,
18 , 19 , 20 , 21
tattooing, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6

T
The Covenant, the Sword, and Arm of the Lord (CSA), 1 , 2.1-2.2 , 3
extremist ties, 1
founder, 1.1-1.2

C
crashpad, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9.1-9.2 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14
Creativity Movement, 1
cyberspace
cybergames, 1
cybertherapy, 1.1-1.2
loneliness and dependency, 1.1-1.2
ties to real world spaces, 1.1-1.2
and violence, 1.1-1.2
and white power merchandise, 1 , 2 , 3
YouTube, 1 , 2
See also social networking

D
Donaldson, Ian Stuart, 1 , 2
Duke, David, 1 , 2 , 3

E
Edwards, Ron, 1 , 2
Ellison, James, 1.1-1.2 , 2.1-2.2 , 3 , 4
Elohim City, Oklahoma, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5.1-5.2 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12
establishment of, 1
extremist ties, 1.1-1.2
See also Millar, Robert See also Oklahoma City bombing
emotions
and identity, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6
reactive and vitalizing emotions, 1 , 2
and ritual, 1
See also cybertherapy See also racial kinship

F
family
white power types, 1
See also socialization
fascism
prior to and during World War II, 1
FBI See Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 1 , 2
Final War, 1
Free Your Mind Productions, 1 , 2 , 3.1-3.2 , 4 , 5
See also Panzerfaust Records
free space
defined, 1.1-1.2 , 2
infrastructure of, 1.1-1.2
strategies to dismantle, 1.1-1.2
as strength of white power movement, 1 , 2
uses of, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14
freshcuts, 1 , 2 , 3
Furrow, Buford, 1

G
Gayman, Dan, 1
Gardell, Mattias, 1 , 2
GetSome88, 1
Gliebe, Erich, 1 , 2

H
Hale, Matt, 1
Hammerfest, 1 , 2 , 3
Hammerskin Nation (HSN), 1 , 2 , 3 , 4.1-4.2 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12
See also Free Your Mind Productions See also Panzerfaust Records
Hate, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4.1-4.2 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13
hate crime, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4
hate rock See white power music
Hayden Lake, Idaho, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10
See also Butler, Richard See also Aryan Nations
Hess, Rudolph, 1 , 2 , 3
Hitler, Adolf, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 ,
18
as child’s name, 1
homeschool See socialization
Hunter See Pierce, William
I
identity
and solidarity, 1.1-1.2
strategic concealment of, 1.1-1.2
See also stigma
ideology See white power movement
immigration, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5
Imperial Klans of America, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4
Internet See cyberspace

J
Jemaah Islamiyah, 1

K
Kahl, Gordon, 1 , 2 , 3
KKK See Ku Klux Klan
Kreis, August, 1 , 2
Ku Klux Klan, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 ,
18 , 19
history of, 1.1-1.2
membership, 1.1-1.2
predicted demise of, 1
See also Imperial Klans of America
Ku Klux Klan Act See Civil Rights Act of 1871

L
Lane, David, 1
Loewen, James, 1
lone-wolf strategy, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5
Luke, Keith, 1

M
Mathews, Robert, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4
Max Resist and the Hooligans, 1 , 2
McVeigh, Timothy, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6
methodology
entrée, 1.1-1.2
fieldwork, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5.1-5.2
sample, 1.1-1.2 , 2 , 3
Metzger, Tom, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8
See also White Aryan Resistance
military, U.S., white power infiltration of, 1 , 2
Millar, Robert, 1.1-1.2 , 2
Miller, Frazier Glenn, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5
Mississippi Burning, 1
Möbus, Hendrik, 1 , 2
music See white power music

N
National Alliance (NA), 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15
, 16 , 17
founding, 1
headquarters, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4
See also Pierce, William See also Resistance Records
National Front, 1 , 2
National Socialist Movement (NSM), 1 , 2 , 3 , 4
Nazi Lowriders (NLR), 1 , 2 , 3
neo-Nazi, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 ,
19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29
history of, 1 , 2.1-2.2
neo-Paganism, 1.1-1.2 , 2
See also Asatru See also Odinism
net-Nazis,, 1
Noble, Kerry,, 1 , 2
Nordic Fest, 1

O
Obama, Barack, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5
Odinism, 1 , 2
Oi!, 1.1-1.2
Oklahoma City bombing, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8

P
Page, Wade Michael, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5
Panzerfaust Records, 1 , 2
Project Schoolyard,, 1 , 2
See also Free Your Mind Productions
Pierce, William, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14
death of, 1 , 2 , 3
Hunter,, 1 , 2 , 3
The Turner Diaries, 1
See also National Alliance See also Resistance Records
Pierpont, Anthony, 1 , 2
See also Panzerfaust Records
Posse Comitatus, 1 , 2
private Aryan communities
as inspirational symbols, 1.1-1.2
See also Aryan Nations See also The Covenant, the Sword, and Arm of the
Lord See also Elohim City See also National Alliance
Prussian Blue, 1 , 2 , 3
Public Enemy Number One (PEN1), 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7

R
race war See white power movement: ideology
racial genocide See white power movement: ideology
racial kinship, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7
racism
mainstream versus white power, 1
See also white power movement: ideology
Rahowa, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9
recruitment, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 ,
18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24
in cyberspace, 1 , 2 , 3
through music, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10
in parties, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6
Resistance Records, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10
George Burdi,5n38
See also National Alliance
Rockwell, George Lincoln, 1
Roper, Billy, 1
See also White Revolution
Rudolph, Eric, 1

S
Silent Brotherhood, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11
Simmons, William J., 1
skinhead, racist
history of, 1 , 2 , 3
See also crashpad
Skrewdriver, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7
socialization
birthdays, 1 , 2 , 3
of children, 1.1-1.2 , 2.1-2.2
communitarian family style, 1.1-1.2
defined, 1
hard-core family style, 1.1-1.2
newly respectable family style, 1.1-1.2
soft-sell socialization, 1.1-1.2
television and movies, 1 , 2
social movement, defined, 1
See also white power movement
social networking
Facebook, 1 , 2
New Saxon, 1
Tumblr, 1
Twitter, 1 , 2
Soldier’s Ransom ceremony, 1 , 2
Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12
, 13 , 14 , 15 , 16
lawsuit against Aryan Nations, 1 , 2 , 3
stigma
Aryan, 1.1-1.2
and concealment, 1 , 2
defined, 1
sources of, 1
support for, 1.1-1.2
Stormfront.org, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4
storytelling
coming out, 1.1-1.2
conversion, 1 , 2 , 3
enlightenment, 1 , 2
declarations of faith, 1.1-1.2
dispossession, 1.1-1.2
fortifying, 1.1-1.2 , 2
injustice, 1 , 2.1-2.2
sundown town, 1
swastika See symbols
symbols
“14” Words, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7
“18”, 1 , 2
“88”, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6
clothing, 1 , 2 , 3
Confederate flag, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5
HH, 1 , 2 , 3
iron cross, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8
jewelry, 1 , 2 , 3
names, 1.1-1.2 , 2 , 3
Sieg heil, 1 , 2.1-2.2 , 3.1-3.2 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11
Supreme White Power (SWP), 1 , 2 , 3
tattoos, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9.1-9.2 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13
T
terrorism
Aryan federal indictments, 1
terror cell, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8
threat, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9
Trelease, Allan, 1
The Turner Diaries See Pierce, William

V
violence
and Aryan culture, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11
volk
Aryan threat, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9.1-9.2 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16
defined, 1 , 2
Volksfront chapters, 1 , 2 , 3

W
White Aryan Resistance (WAR), 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12
white power movement
cultural isolation, 1.1-1.2
defined, 1
gender, 1 , 2.1-2.2
identity, 1 , 2.1-2.2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12
ideology, 1 , 2.1-2.2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17
networks, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8.1-8.2 , 9 , 10.1-10.2 , 11
schisms, 1 , 2
straddling dual cultures, 1.1-1.2
white power music
bands, 1 , 2 , 3.1-3.2 , 4 , 5 , 6
bar shows, 1.1-1.2 , 2 , 3
companies, 1.1-1.2
festivals, 1.1-1.2
and rituals, 1.1-1.2
styles, 1.1-1.2
See also Aryan Fest See also Hammerfest See also Nordic Fest
White Revolution, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6
World Church of the Creator, 1

Y
Youngland, 1 , 2 , 3

Z
Zionist Occupied Government (ZOG), 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 ,
12 , 13 , 14 , 15
 About the Authors

Pete Simi is associate professor of criminology and criminal justice at

the University of Nebraska, Omaha. He has published a number of articles
on the white power movement and was awarded a grant from the
Department of Justice to study recruitment strategies for white
supremacist groups.

Robert Futrell is associate professor of sociology at the University of

Nevada, Las Vegas. He has published widely on the white power
movement as well as on issues of environmental sustainability in the
West.