Skinhead Infantry
www.MickMaurer.com
| 'Planning a Skinhead Infantry' In the fall of 1999, the neo-Nazi National Alliance published in its Resistance magazine an article by one "Joachim Peiper," who was described as "a professional soldier, racialist and White separatist." In fact, Peiper was Steven Barry, a former Special Forces member who had just been named as the Alliance's "military unit coordinator." Barry, who had started his own extremist Special Forces Underground group while at Fort Bragg, N.C., used the article, headlined "Planning a Skinhead Infantry," to offer advice to white supremacists wanting to enlist in the armed forces to enhance their skills. Here are several excerpts: Light infantry is your branch of choice because the coming race war, and the ethnic cleansing to follow, will be very much an infantryman's war. It will be house-to-house, neighborhood-by-neighborhood, until your town or city is cleared and the alien races are driven into the countryside where they can be hunted down and "cleansed." Operations will consist primarily of patrolling, ambush, raids, cordon and search, search and destroy, assault on fortified positions, and point and area defense of White enclaves -- all light infantry missions. When you go to the Army recruiter and tell him you want to be an infantryman -- and let me emphasize this, tell him you want infantry and accept nothing else -- your unit of choice priorities are, in order, as follows: 75th Ranger, 82nd Airborne, 101st Air Assault, 10th Mountain, 25th Infantry. Recruiters these days are against the wall. Last year every branch of service failed to meet their recruiting quotas. ... If a half-dozen strapping young White men strolled into an Army recruiter's office and said, "We want to be infantrymen," the recruiter [would] swoon and faint away out of nothing but pure joy at his deliverance from his pressing monthly quota. Don't even think your Africanesque ritual scarring [tattoos] will be overlooked or ignored. ... Confess your sinful tattoos to the recruiter. Tell him or (gagging) her, that you were young and stupid and got mixed-up with a bad crowd, followed the mindless herd, but now you deeply regret it, wished you had gone to church instead of skinhead concerts, and please, oh, please, I don't think that way anymore, I love Negroes as my brothers and won't you please, oh, please help me prove I've become "tolerant" and a lover of "diversity" by letting me join the Army that is "America's model for race relations?" At some point in the [recruitment] process you will be asked if you belong to any "extremist" organizations or espouse any "supremacist" causes. Lie. The only acceptable answer to any question like that is "no."... During Basic Training you will be ordered to strip to be inspected for "Bad Tattoos." However, having made it this far it is unlikely you'll simply be kicked out. Do not -- I repeat, do not -- seek out other skinheads. Do not listen to skinhead "music." Do not keep "racist" or "White supremacist tracts" where you live. During your service you will be subjected to a constant barrage of equal opportunity drivel ... . Keep your mouth shut. Endure it. If you are ever questioned about "race relations" parrot the following lines: "There are no races in the Army, we are all green." ... "I rely upon the man next to me to do his job, his race doesn't matter." ... You get the idea. If you are a leader in the skinhead "movement" advise your newly recruited members to not get tattoos and tell them their first duty as a skinhead is to join the Army and become a trained infantryman. As a professional soldier, my goal is to fill the ranks of the United States Army infantry with skinheads. As street brawlers you will be useless in the coming race war. As trained infantrymen you will join the ranks of the Aryan warrior brotherhood. Unattributed reproduction of material from any SPLCenter.org page is strictly prohibited. © Copyright 2005 Southern Poverty Law Center |
| A Few Bad Men Ten years after a scandal over neo-Nazis in the armed forces, extremists are once again worming their way into a recruit-starved military. by David Holthouse July 7, 2006 -- Before the U.S. military made Matt Buschbacher a Navy SEAL, he made himself a soldier of the Fourth Reich. Before Forrest Fogarty attended Military Police counter-insurgency training school, he attended Nazi skinhead festivals as lead singer for the hate rock band Attack. And before Army engineer Jon Fain joined the invasion of Iraq to fight the War on Terror, the neo-Nazi National Alliance member fantasized about fighting a war on Jews. "Ever since my youth -- when I watched WWII footage and saw how well-disciplined and sharply dressed the German forces were -- I have wanted to be a soldier," Fain said in a Winter 2004 interview with the National Alliance magazine Resistance. "Joining the American military was as close as I could get." Ten years after Pentagon leaders toughened policies on extremist activities by active duty personnel -- a move that came in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing by decorated Gulf War combat veteran Timothy McVeigh and the murder of a black couple by members of a skinhead gang in the elite 82nd Airborne Division -- large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists continue to infiltrate the ranks of the world's best-trained, best-equipped fighting force. Military recruiters and base commanders, under intense pressure from the war in Iraq to fill the ranks, often look the other way. Neo-Nazis "stretch across all branches of service, they are linking up across the branches once they're inside, and they are hard-core," Department of Defense gang detective Scott Barfield told the Intelligence Report. "We've got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad," he added. "That's a problem." The armed forces are supposed to be a model of racial equality. American soldiers are supposed to be defenders of democracy. Neo-Nazis represent the opposite of these ideals. They dream of race war and revolution, and their motivations for enlisting are often quite different than serving their country. "Join only for the training, and to better defend yourself, our people, and our culture," Fain said. "We must have people to open doors from the inside when the time comes." Soldier Shortage In 1996, following a decade-long rash of cases where extremists in the military were caught diverting huge arsenals of stolen firearms and explosives to neo-Nazi and white supremacist organizations, conducting guerilla training for paramilitary racist militias, and murdering non-white civilians (see timeline), the Pentagon finally launched a massive investigation and crackdown. One general ordered all 19,000 soldiers at Fort Lewis, Wash., strip-searched for extremist tattoos. But that was peacetime. Now, with the country at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the military under increasingly intense pressure to maintain enlistment numbers, weeding out extremists is less of a priority. "Recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the armed forces, and commanders don't remove them from the military even after we positively identify them as extremists or gang members," said Department of Defense investigator Barfield. "Last year, for the first time, they didn't make their recruiting goals. They don't want to start making a big deal again about neo-Nazis in the military, because then parents who are already worried about their kids signing up and dying in Iraq are going to be even more reluctant about their kids enlisting if they feel they'll be exposed to gangs and white supremacists." Barfield, who is based at Fort Lewis, said he has identified and submitted evidence on 320 extremists there in the past year. "Only two have been discharged," he said. Barfield and other Department of Defense investigators said they recently uncovered an online network of 57 neo-Nazis who are active duty Army and Marines personnel spread across five military installations in five states -- Fort Lewis; Fort Bragg, N.C.; Fort Hood, Texas; Fort Stewart, Ga.; and Camp Pendleton, Calif. "They're communicating with each other about weapons, about recruiting, about keeping their identities secret, about organizing within the military," Barfield said. "Several of these individuals have since been deployed to combat missions in Iraq." Every year, the Army's Criminal Investigation Division conducts a threat assessment of extremist and gang activity among army personnel. "Every year, they come back with 'minimal activity,' which is inaccurate," said Barfield. "It's not epidemic, but there's plenty of evidence we're talking numbers well into the thousands, just in the Army." Last July, the white supremacist website Stormfront hosted a discussion on "Joining the Military." "There are others among you in the forces," wrote one neo-Nazi in the Army. "You are never alone." Nazi SEAL Not all military commanders fail to give known extremists the boot. "The response differs from command group to command group," Barfield said. "Most put up a front and say, 'Oh, this guy's in big trouble,' but actually do nothing unless he commits a felony. But some kick their ass out right away." Barfield noted that commanders are far more likely to take immediate action if the soldier is stateside in a non-combat role, rather than fighting overseas. In one recent instance, Robert Salyer, a lieutenant in the Navy and military lawyer with the Judge Advocate General Corps, was dishonorably discharged and barred from military law practice when it came to light that he was a member of the white supremacist neo-Confederate group League of the South. And in late June, Airman First Class Andrew Dornan, who was assigned to the firing party in the U.S. Air Force Honor Guard, was sentenced to nine months confinement and dishonorably discharged after he posted messages glorifying Adolf Hitler on his personal webpage and threatened to detonate a bomb on a military base. But the military took no such action against former Navy SEAL Matt Buschbacher, who continued to fight in Iraq after the Southern Poverty Law Center had alerted officials to his active support of neo-Nazi groups. Buschbacher told the Intelligence Report he joined the neo-Nazi movement "for the same reason everyone joins: I was angry and looking for some answers. I wanted to belong to something that made me feel good about myself." In 1998, when Buschbacher was still a teenager living in Terrace Park, Ohio, a wealthy, almost exclusively white suburb of Cincinnati, he was ordained as a reverend in the World Church of the Creator, a violent neo-Nazi organization. He rose fast. In 1999, he was the head of the hate group's Cincinnati chapter when Chicago member Benjamin Smith went on a three-day, two-state shooting spree that targeted Jews, Asians and blacks. Smith killed two people and wounded nine before committing suicide as police closed in. Afterward, Buschbacher praised Smith as "a dedicated activist for our racial cause" in The Cincinnati Inquirer. "We have pride in our race, heritage, and culture, and we will do anything to prevent it from being destroyed," he said. "White man is the creator, the creator of civilizations." In May 2000, Buschbacher attended Nordic Fest, an annual skinhead festival sponsored by the Imperial Klans of America in Kentucky, where he posed in front of a flaming swastika, seig heiling. He joined the Navy shortly afterward. Again, Buschbacher advanced quickly. In October 2001, he completed 26 weeks of SEAL training at the Naval Special Warfare Center in Coronado, Calif. In August 2002, while an active duty SEAL but not yet stationed in Baghdad, Buschbacher attended the National Alliance's invitation-only "leadership conference" at the neo-Nazi group's West Virginia compound. The conference was held just weeks after the death of National Alliance founder William Pierce, author of The Turner Diaries, the fantasy novel about revolution and race war that inspired Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. Pierce also wrote the seminal pamphlet, "What is the National Alliance?" It was in that tract that Pierce explained that a National Alliance member in the military "[u]ses his daily interactions with career personnel to select exceptional individuals who are receptive, and he then gives them the opportunity to serve their race while carrying out their military functions." 'Heroes Among Us' Today, Matt Buschbacher denies recruiting Navy personnel into the Alliance. What's clear is that for years after becoming a SEAL, he violated military regulations without repercussions by staying active in the neo-Nazi movement. Using the online pseudonym "Mattiasb88" [88 is neo-Nazi code for "Heil Hitler"] to hide his identity, Buschbacher designed and distributed National Alliance fliers, white power screen savers, and a photo montage of Pierce on the Internet via his website, racialpride.com, which displayed a logo of a burning swastika and this mission statement: "The purpose of this website is to provide white patriots with a large database of information for recruiting and self-improvement." Buschbacher also posted messages to the white supremacist website Stormfront and the website of Resistance Records, a hate rock music company owned by the National Alliance. In the fall of 2003, the National Alliance magazine Resistance even published a collage of "Scene Shots" that included a small photo of Buschbacher wearing a Turner Diaries T-shirt and giving a Nazi salute. Buschbacher hasn't been the only neo-Nazi to fight in Iraq. Forrest Mackley Fogarty, a member of the Tampa, Fla., unit of the National Alliance, was deployed for 18 months during Operation Iraqi Freedom with his Army National Guard unit. "There are some dirty Arabs enjoying their 70 virgins because of my actions and that of my fire team," Fogarty boasted in the Winter 2005 issue of Resistance. (Fogarty was identified in the article only as "Forrest of Attack.") Jon Fain, a neo-Nazi who currently lives on the National Alliance compound, was part of the original Iraq invasion force in 2003, as a U.S. Army engineer. Shawn Stuart, the Montana state leader of the National Socialist Movement, another neo-Nazi group, served two combat tours in Iraq as a U.S. Marine before he was discharged in 2005. Stuart told the Missoula News that he joined the NSM in 2004, while he was still a Marine, because he "came to believe the United States is fighting the war on Israel's behalf." None of these men, it appears, were ever disciplined for neo-Nazi activities. All were honorably discharged. James Douglas Ross Jr. was not so fortunate. Ross, a military intelligence officer stationed at Fort Bragg, was caught shipping disassembled AK-47s to the United States from Iraq in 2004, officials said. When investigators searched his off base housing, they found a weapons arsenal, thousands of rounds of ammunition, and hate group materials. Ross was forced to return from Iraq and given a bad conduct discharge. "But they let him keep the weapons [he kept in his house]," said Department of Defense investigator Barfield, adding that Ross has since relocated to Washington, where he's a leader of the Eastern Washington Skins, a neo-Nazi gang. "He kept his military connections, and he's still trying to recruit soldiers, so we're still dealing with him." For his part, despite his sometimes brazen activities, Matt Buschbacher tried hard to avoid exposure as a neo-Nazi in the military. But his identity became clear after he posted a photo of himself in a "Mattiasb88" Yahoo profile in 2004, and then advertised his neo-Nazi E-mail address in a July 2004 posting to a currency trading forum. "I am in the military and currently in Iraq," he wrote there. "If anyone would like to purchase some Iraqi dinars I have access to as much as you would like." That September, Buschbacher was profiled in his hometown Terrace Park community newspaper, Village Views. The article, "Heroes Among Us," reported he was fighting terrorism with a SEAL unit based in downtown Baghdad. Two years later, Matt Buschbacher is back from Iraq -- also with an honorable discharge, despite the fact that the Southern Poverty Law Center informed the military of his background while he was still on active duty. He lives in Denver, Colo., and teaches classes on how to pick up women. "I have no connection with any neo-Nazi anything any more," Buschbacher told the Intelligence Report. Photographed holding a red rose, he was recently splashed across the cover of a weekly newsmagazine in Denver promoting his new book, Date the Women of Your Dreams. The cover story made no mention of his neo-Nazi past. Training for Race War According to a 1998 study commissioned by the Department of Defense, "Young civilian extremists are encouraged by adult leaders to enlist in the military to gain access to weapons, training, and other military personnel." The reasons are obvious: Soldiers are trained to be proficient with weapons, combat tactics, and explosives, to train others in their use, and to operate in a highly disciplined culture that is focused on the organized violence of war. This is why military extremists present an elevated threat to public safety, and why extremists groups both recruit active duty personnel -- especially those with access to classified information or sophisticated weaponry -- and influence their members to join the armed forces. "The threats posed by extremism to the military are simultaneously blatant and subtle," the Defense Department study said. "On the one hand, high-profile terrorist acts and hate crimes committed by active and former military personnel can have seriously detrimental effects on the civil-military relationship as well as on the morale and security of military personnel. On the other hand, even the non-violent activities of military personnel with extremist tendencies (e.g., possessing literature and/or artifacts from the extremist 'movement'; dabbling in extremism through computerized telecommunications activities; proselytizing extremist ideologies, etc.) can have deleterious consequences for the good order, discipline, readiness, and cohesion of military units." Special Forces soldiers who double as extremist operatives present a special danger, since they have commando skills gained at huge taxpayer expense -- often including urban warfare, long-range reconnaissance, and combat demolitions. "Hate groups send their guys into the U.S. military because the U.S. military has the best weapons and training," said T.J. Leyden, a former racist skinhead and Marine who recruited inside the Marine Corps for the Hammerskins, a nationwide skinhead gang. He later renounced the neo-Nazi movement and now conducts anti-extremism training seminars on military bases. "Right now, any white supremacist in Iraq is getting live fire, guerilla warfare experience," Leyden said. "But any white supremacist in Iraq who's a Green Beret or a Navy SEAL or Marine Recon, he's doing covert stuff that's far above and beyond convoy protection and roadblocks. And if he comes back and decides at some point down the road that it's race war time, all that training and combat experience he's received could easily turn around and bite this country in the ass." Department of Defense investigator Barfield confirmed that threat assessment. "Today's white supremacists in the military become tomorrow's domestic terrorists once they're out," he said. "There needs to be a tighter focus on intercepting the next Timothy McVeigh before he becomes the next Timothy McVeigh." 'White Soldier's Burden' In April 1995, the same month Timothy McVeigh detonated a 7,000-pound truck bomb outside a federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, the National Alliance erected a billboard on the main road leading into Fort Bragg, an Army base in Fayetteville, N.C. The billboard's message read, "Enough! Let's Start Taking Back America," and listed the neo-Nazi group's toll-free number. The billboard was the work of Robert Hunt, a National Alliance recruiter and active duty member of the Army's elite 82nd Airborne Division, which is based at Fort Bragg. By late 1995, a large neo-Nazi skinhead gang had formed within the 82nd Airborne. Members saluted a Nazi flag in their barracks, distributed National Alliance literature on base, and held drunken barracks parties where they blasted "Third Reich," a rockabilly white power anthem by the band Rahowa (short for "Racial Holy War") with lyrics about killing blacks and Jews. In December 1995, two members of the 82nd Airborne skinhead gang gunned down a black couple in a random, racially motivated double murder that shocked the nation and sparked a major investigation of extremism in the military as well as congressional hearings. The killers were eventually sentenced to life in prison, and 19 other members of the 82nd Airborne were dishonorably discharged for neo-Nazi gang activities. "The fallout from the skinhead killings was immediate," racist skinhead Steve Smith recalled in his 2005 essay, "The White Soldier's Burden." Smith was in the Army from 1991 to 1996 and was stationed at Fort Bragg at the time of the murders. "White soldiers at Fort Bragg were inspected to see if they had any 'racist' tattoos. The Army also held mandatory classes on 'extremist' organizations." Before the Fort Bragg slayings, military regulations on extremist activity by active duty soldiers were ambiguous. There were no specific regulations on extremism at all until 1986, when it came to light that active duty soldiers were providing guerilla training and stolen military weapons to a paramilitary Ku Klux Klan faction led by a former Green Beret. The Southern Poverty Law Center then urged Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger to "prohibit active-duty members of the armed services from holding membership in groups like the Klan or from taking part in their activities." Weinberger responded by issuing this directive: "Military personnel must reject participation in white supremacy, neo-Nazi and other such groups which espouse or attempt to create overt discrimination. Active participation, including public demonstrations, recruiting and training members, and organizing or leading such organizations is utterly incompatible with military service." Though sternly worded, many commanders interpreted that order to mean that while active participation in extremist groups was prohibited, so-called "passive support," such as distributing propaganda, listening to hate rock, displaying flags or symbols, and "mere membership," were still allowed. After the Fort Bragg slayings, however, the Department of Defense toughened military policy somewhat to read, "Engaging in activities in relation to [extremist] organizations, or in furtherance of the objectives of such organizations that are viewed by command to be detrimental to the good order of the unit is incompatible with Military Service, and is, therefore, prohibited." Then-Defense Secretary William Perry used even stronger language to describe the intent of the updated regulation. "Department of Defense policy leaves no room for racist and extremist activities in the military," Perry stated. "We must -- and we shall -- make every effort to erase bigotry, racism, and extremism from the military. Extremist activity compromises fairness, good order, and discipline. The armed forces, which defend the nation and its values, must exemplify those values beyond question." Lowering Standards Neo-Nazis have no respect for the values of a free democracy or the shining example of equal opportunity its military is meant to be. When Jon Fain, the Army engineer, was interviewed in 2004 for a Resistance article titled, "On the Front Lines for the Jews," he advised neo-Nazis considering a military career to "[n]ever allow yourself to be brainwashed into the 'everybody's green' lie." In the Stormfront discussion on joining the military, neo-Nazi "Ulfur Engil" wrote that he was stationed with the Army in Europe and offered this guidance: "Nothing will change what you are. If you join, you are still the same enlightened white man (or woman) you always have been." Hundreds of neo-Nazis online identify themselves as active duty soldiers. "When you are in, after you finish basic training, your discretion is very important," Ulfur Engil wrote in a recent Internet posting. "If you are someone who wears boots and braces keep a second pair that's neutral looking (black). Remove any obvious pins from your jacket (runes by themselves are okay, though. They don't take issue with them, providing there is no obvious [racist] arrangement. The USO in Keflavik, Iceland, actually sold runes!) Do NOT use any Internet connection offered by the base or do ANYTHING on a military server. NOTHING. Get an Internet connection that is private and off-base, invest in EvidenceEliminator, and set up an email account with Hushmail and/or Ziplip." Extremists in the military are tricky to unmask. "They're a lot smarter about it than street gang members," said Barfield. "They don't brag and boast like gang bangers." The best way to reduce the number of extremists in the armed forces is to prevent them from entering the military in the first place. "But now we're lowering our recruiting standards. We're accepting lesser quality soldiers," Barfield said. In a move to boost enlistment, the military is allowing more and more recruits with criminal records to sign up. A recent Chicago Sun-Times article revealed the percentage of recruits granted "moral waivers" for past misdemeanors had more than doubled since 2001. The military also revised its rules on inductee tattoos earlier this year to allow all tattoos except those on the front of the face. Both changes in the rules made it easier for extremists to join. And while military regulations prohibit (PDF) all gang-related or white supremacist tattoos, many recruiters are ignoring such tattoos, or even literally covering them up. "I had one case where a recruiter and his wife took a guy to their house and covered up his tattoos with make-up so he could pass his [physical examination]," Barfield said. Military regulations also call for any superior officer who spots a soldier with a neo-Nazi or white supremacist tattoo to refer the soldier to a commander, who then is supposed to demand the soldier have the tattoo removed. If the soldier refuses, he's supposed to be kicked out. "But there's a loophole," Barfield said. "If they never refer them, they can't refuse, so they just never refer them, and they stay in." "If you have any kind of tattoo prior to going in, they will require you to write out a statement as to what it is, and what it means to you," advised a neo-Nazi in the Stormfront military forum. "If it's something obvious like a swazi [swastika], then they will probably say, 'No go.' But, something more obscure, like a Schwarze Sonne [a "black sun," another Nazi symbol] or a Celtic cross would probably be okay, so long as no phraseology accompanies it." "The average Joe recruiter can spot the most obvious tattoos," said Leyden, who trains the military in identifying hate group members. "But the vast majority of them don't know what 'White Power' in German looks like, they don't know what 88 in Roman numerals means, and now, they may not even care, because they're under this extreme pressure to fill the void, and who are they filling the void with? Therein lies the danger." 'Switchblades and Smeared Blood' The large tattoo on the right arm of Air Force airman Robert Lee West depicts a menacing wizard with a scythe. His recruiter probably saw no problem there, but the photo of himself West has up on his EveryonesSpace web page should wave a red flag. In it, West, with his head shaved, is standing in front of a swastika and Iron Eagle banner, holding an assault rifle and a shotgun. West, 23, who's stationed at Warner Robins Air Force Base in Georgia, lists his general interests as "switchblades and smeared blood." In his "About Me" section, he writes: "I train most days for marksmanship, combat, demolition, politics, economics, religion, military tactics, oratory, and propaganda. I will give my life for a cause greater than my own. My mind and spirit shall ensure life for my people, and death for yours. I shall fight until I have achieved victory. Just remember when you speak to me that I don't play by ZOG [Zionist Occupation Government] rules and I will not hesitate to sever your subclavian artery." Special Agent Will Manuel of Air Force's Office of Special Investigations at Warner Robins said he's "well aware" of West's neo-Nazi identity. "We've seen all his pictures, we've read his website, and we know what's he doing." Yet despite the toughened policy declared by the Pentagon a decade ago, Manuel says, "We're not going to go after him just based on what he says he believes, or on him making a lot of claims. There has to be an overt act first. He has to actually organize or recruit or commit a crime. But even his pictures and writings raise concerns, obviously, because we know that where you have one [neo-Nazi], there's usually another, and what he claims to represent totally goes against the core values of the military." Ten years after the military crackdown on extremism, it's clear that there are still a great many Robert Lee Wests in the U.S. armed forces. And that should worry all Americans. In 1996, the Ft. Bragg murders sparked Congressional hearings on extremism in the military. Then-Air Force Secretary Sheila E. Windall said in her testimony, "We have an absolute obligation, and the American people have an absolute right to expect, that military members will use their expertise and the lethal tools of their trade to protect them and never to harm them." But some in the military appear to have lost sight of that obligation in the fog of war. "The regulations could use some fine tuning, but they're already on the books," Barfield said. "They're just not being enforced. My fear is that it's going to take another Fort Bragg before that changes." Anthony Griggs, Joseph Roy Sr., and Laurie Wood contributed to this report. Intelligence Report Summer 2006 Southern Poverty Law Center 400 Washington Ave. Montgomery, AL 36104 Unattributed reproduction of material from any SPLCenter.org page is strictly prohibited. © Copyright 2007 Southern Poverty Law Center |
| Gangs, Extremists Groups, and the Military: Screening for Service Authors: Marc Flacks; Martin F. Wiskoff; SECURITY RESEARCH CENTER MONTEREY CA Abstract: The purpose of this report is to examine the feasibility of instituting or improving measures for screening military enlistees for gang or extremist group involvement. The report begins with an extensive review of the literature on right-wing extremism and street gangs, with a specific emphasis on the implications of these phenomena for the United States Armed Forces. This review includes an in-depth discussion of three main approaches to understanding right-wing extremism, and an examination of actual cases of extremist activity in the military. Next, the review considers documented and potential cases of gang activity in the military. Throughout this review, opportunities for identifying and screening gang members and extremists are highlighted, as are some drawbacks and caveats regarding such screening. The second major section of the report reviews the military's current responses to the problems of gangs and extremism among enlisted personnel. It begins by discussing the enlistment process, including prescreening by recruiters, aptitude and medical screening at Military Entrance Processing Stations (MEPSs), background screening during the pre-enlistment and pre-accession phases of the enlistment process, and further enlistee observation occurring at Recruit Training Centers (RTCs). Next, a variety of Department of Defense (DoD) Directives and Service policies regarding active-duty personnel are discussed. Here, particular attention is given to how such policies have been changing in response to the rise of problems like gang and extremist activity among military personnel and to how the different Services have approached such problems. Finally, the military's current efforts to research gang and extremist problems further are examined. |
| S. Africa fears white extremists in military seek to start 'race war' New York Times Friday, November 1, 2002 Johannesburg, South Africa -- South Africa's defense minister said Thursday that the government had begun searching for white extremists within the military and the police force who might be trying to ignite "a race war" within the country, state radio reported. Defense Minister Mosiuoa Lekota said he believed that a small number of disaffected white soldiers and police officers remained opposed to democracy. He said there was no evidence yet to link security officers directly to Wednesday's bombings in Soweto, which killed one person and wounded another. "It is quite clear that there is a group of disaffected whites, however maverick in character," Lekota said. "They are a racially oriented group. They want to achieve a race war." Sam Mkhwanazi, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry, said he was not familiar with Lekota's comments and had no further details about the government's efforts to identify white extremists within the military and police force. In recent months, the authorities have arrested 17 Afrikaners -- including three senior army officers -- and charged them with plotting to overthrow the government. The authorities have not linked the Afrikaners to the Soweto bombings, but officials say they have little doubt that a small group of white extremists has begun to arm itself. Earlier this month, police officers uncovered a buried cache of weapons on a farm, including thousands of rounds of ammunition, dozens of grenades and 16 homemade bombs. In September, the police discovered a truck loaded with ammunition, gasoline bombs and an AK- 47 assault rifle. The authorities linked both discoveries to white right-wing groups. Copyright 2002 Journal Sentinel Inc. |
| Extremism and the military: A timeline 1953 Pedro del Valle, a highly decorated Marine Corps lieutenant general, forms the Defenders of the American Constitution, an anti-Semitic organization of retired, high-ranking U.S. military officers obsessed with exposing and combating a global Jewish conspiracy to establish a "One World Order." 1959 The American Nazi Party, the first post-war neo-Nazi group, is formed in Arlington, Va., by retired U.S. Naval Commander George Lincoln Rockwell. Rockwell, who will be assassinated by a follower in 1967, is an early popularizer of Holocaust denial and Christian Identity, a violently anti-Semitic theology. Retired Army Lt. Col. William Potter Gale, who served on the staff of World War II Gen. Douglas McArthur, forms the California Rangers, a paramilitary arm of the Christian Defense League. Gale will go on to become the principal architect of the Posse Comitatus, a violent and anti-Semitic movement of the 1970s and 1980s. 1960 Former Navy rear admiral and World War II hero John Crommelin runs a fiercely anti-Semitic, white supremacist campaign for mayor in Montgomery, Ala., saying, "The key to segregation of the races and the ultimate survival of the Christian White Race is a thorough understanding ... of the Communist-Jewish conspiracy." 1961 President Kennedy reprimands U.S. Army General Edwin A. Walker, commander of the 24th Infantry Division in Europe, for indoctrinating his troops with extreme-right literature. Walker resigns in protest and later serves five days in jail for illegally organizing anti-civil rights demonstrations. Walker becomes the model for the right-wing military demagogue in Fletcher Knebel's 1962 book Seven Days in May, a fictional story of U.S. military leaders plotting to overthrow the president. 1967 Retired high-ranking military officers John Crommelin and Pedro del Valle found the white nationalist organization Sons of Liberty. 1968 Crommelin and del Valle sponsor the Washington, D.C.-based Youth for Wallace to back the presidential campaign of Alabama's segregationist Gov. George Wallace. After Wallace loses, Youth for Wallace becomes the National Youth Alliance, which will eventually morph into the infamous neo-Nazi organization National Alliance. 1976 A local "klavern" of David Duke's Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is publicly exposed at Camp Pendleton, Calif., after a group of black Marines attack white Marines they mistakenly believe are members. The ensuing investigation leads to the brief jailing and transfer of 16 Marines who are Klansmen, but none are court-martialed because associating with hate groups will not be prohibited until 1986. 1979 Members of a Knights of the Ku Klux Klan chapter made up of soldiers at the U.S. Army base in Fort Hood, Texas, act as security guards at a Klan rally featuring Knights' boss David Duke and Texas leader Louis Beam. A violently inclined former Vietnam War helicopter gunner, Beam is one of the first hate group ideologues to heavily promote recruiting on military bases. A KKK cell of 20 Navy shipmen is uncovered on a supply ship based in Norfolk, Va., and a cross burning is reported on the deck of an aircraft carrier. 1986 Active duty military personnel illegally provide guerrilla training and weapons stolen from the military to the White Patriot Party, a paramilitary Klan offshoot set up in 1980 by Frazier Glenn Miller, a Green Beret, and Stephen Samuel Miller. One Marine admits selling the group 13 anti-tank rockets, 10 Claymore mines and almost 200 pounds of C-4 explosives. A government investigation finds 32,000 rounds of ammunition, 1,500 grenades and 3,600 pounds of explosives missing. The Department of Defense, responding to the White Patriot Party scandal, orders military personnel to "reject active participation in white supremacy, neo-Nazi and other such groups." Many military commanders interpret the September directive to still allow "passive support" and "mere membership" in extremist groups. 1990 Five military policemen at Carswell Air Force Base in Texas are discharged for participating in Klan activity. One of them, Sgt. Timothy Hall, is identified as the KKK's chief recruiter in Texas and is also fired from his part-time job as Tarrant County deputy sheriff, along with two fellow deputies he'd recruited. More than 300 rifles, 200 handguns, a mortar, a rocket launcher and neo-Nazi literature are found in the Cambridge, Mass., home of Air National Guard Technical Sergeant Henry A. Stram. Police value Stram's arsenal, with more firepower than the city's entire police force, at $150,000 and $200,000. 1991 Army Sgt. Michael Tubbs, a Green Beret demolitions expert who fought in the first Gulf War, is arrested along with another officer on charges that they stole a vast arsenal of military weapons and explosives for Tubbs' Knights of the New Order. Authorities say Tubbs had a list of black and Jewish targets. He later pleads to theft and conspiracy charges and serves four years in prison. In 2004, Tubbs will become active in the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the League of the South. 1992 While stationed at Ft. Bragg, N.C., Green Beret Sgt. Steven Barry forms Special Forces Underground, a white supremacist organization for active duty and veteran Special Forces soldiers, and publishes a magazine, The Resister. Barry is later reprimanded but leaves the military without further sanctions. He will briefly join the neo-Nazi National Alliance as its "military coordinator" in the late 1990s. 1994 Five soldiers at Ft. Benning, Ga., are charged with stealing machine guns, hand grenades, military explosives and booby trap components to give to the Aryan National Front, a white supremacist group based in Alabama, and the Confederate Hammerskins, the Georgia-based chapter of a national neo-Nazi skinhead syndicate. 1995 On April 19, Army veteran Timothy McVeigh, an antigovernment extremist who won a Bronze Star as a Bradley Fighting Vehicle gunner in Operation Desert Storm, ignites a bomb in Oklahoma City that leaves 168 people dead. Also convicted in the attack will be fellow veteran Terry Nichols, who McVeigh met at Fort Benning, Ga. While in the Army, McVeigh encouraged fellow soldiers to read The Turner Diaries, a neo-Nazi novel that serves as a blueprint for the Oklahoma bombing. In December, three white Army paratroopers at Fort Bragg, N.C., are arrested in the random murder of a black couple carried out to earn their spider web tattoos, a racist badge of honor for killing non-whites. In the end, Randy Meadows testifies against James Burmeister and Malcolm Wright, who are sentenced to life in prison. Another 19 Fort Bragg paratroopers are discharged for participating in neo-Nazi activities. 1996 Prompted by outrage over the Oklahoma City bombing and the Fort Bragg murders, Congress holds hearings and the Army forms a task force on extremism. As a result, the Department of Defense amends its regulations to strengthen the prohibition on extremist activity. Defense Secretary William Perry says the rules are meant to leave "no room for racist and extremist activities within the military." In July, antigovernment extremist Eric Rudolph, who was trained at the Air Assault School while in the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky., sets off a bomb at the Atlanta Summer Olympics, killing one person and wounding 111. Rudolph will go on to bomb a lesbian nightclub and two abortion clinics, killing a police officer, before leading authorities on a five-year manhunt that only ends in 2003. 2002 U.S. Army Gulf War veteran John Allen Muhammad masterminds the Beltway sniper attacks as part of a scheme to extort $10 million dollars Muhammad planned to use to establish a black separatist nation somewhere in Canada. Muhammad had joined the black separatist Nation of Islam in 1999 and later was connected with Jamaat Al-Fuqra, a Pakistan- and U.S.-based Muslim extremist group. 2003 FBI agents arrest Maj. Rafael Davila, a retired Washington Army National Guard intelligence officer, and his ex-wife, Deborah Cummings, on espionage charges. Prosecutors allege that in 1999, Davila and Cummings conspired to illegally transfer documents classified as "top secret" to the Aryan Nations, a neo-Nazi group based in Idaho, that outlined plans for U.S. troop deployments during a domestic crisis. 2006 Evidence compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center and presented to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld shows that large numbers of neo-Nazis and other extremists are still finding their way into the armed forces, in large part because of intense pressure to keep force levels high during the Iraq war. © Copyright 2005 Southern Poverty Law Center |
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