Like most hate groups, the National Socialist Movement (NSM) conducts virtually all its business in secret. So leaders of America’s largest neo-Nazi group couldn’t have been happy last week when hundreds of its private E-mails appeared on the Internet.

The messages — more than 600 of them dated between July 2007 and August 2009 — are posted to the website wikileaks.org, which publishes leaked documents. They were sent to a hotmail account maintained by an NSM member identified as William Herring, a self-described ex-con who handled correspondence for the group. They provide a glimpse into the inner world of the NSM, whose members seem to spend almost as much time at each other’s throats as they do standing up for the white race.

Among the highlights was a major dust-up in fall 2007 that featured claims of Jewish collaboration and led to the ouster or resignation of several key members, including the group’s 2008 presidential candidate. On Oct. 3, 2007, NSM leader Jeff Schoep wrote an “internal party memo” urging members to stop squabbling. “When Col. Bishop and I have to play babysitter, and talk to people about drama, it makes us, all of you, and our Party look foolish,” he wrote. “America is being overrun with Mexicans and other invaders, instead of expelling certain people, these members and the Party are better served if the drama is saved for the playground, and we all get back to work.” Two weeks later, he adopted a harder line in another E-mail to NSM members. “The NSM does not operate as a Democracy, your pledge of Loyalty is to the Party and its Leadership. Honor your Oath, and your Pledge of Loyalty to the Party, or get out of our Ranks now while you still can!”

In mid-October 2007, Schoep took aim at former NSM regional leader Jim Ramm, an alias for Matthew Ramsey, in a flurry of E-mails. “Jim Ramm is collaborating with the ADL [Anti-Defamation League],” Schoep declared in a message dated Oct. 18. He also forwarded an E-mail titled “giving it to the jews” in which Ramm, who served as webmaster for NSM’s nukeisrael website, supposedly threatened to give the site to the ADL. Ramm later asserted that the E-mail was a fake and denied contact with “the Jews.” He attacked Schoep in a rambling Oct. 21 E-Mail, alleging that Schoep had covered up for an associate who was coming on to Ramm’s then-girlfriend. He complained that in 2006, NSM records grossed over $110,000 in sales, yet wasn’t required to report profits to members. “NSM members are expected to just smile and just hope Commander is spending the money wisely,” he said. “NSM members make no mistake: Jeff Schoep is in this just for the money and he really doesn’t give a damn about the White Race.” ( continue to full post… )

“Let’s see out the Fuhrer’s dream/To break the back of the eternal jew/Rid the world of the evil we’ve seen/Make it safe for me and you.”
— From “Under the Hammer” by Brutal Attack

“When the battle is over and the victory is won/And the White man’s lands are owned by true white people/the traitors will all be gone.”
— From “White Warriors” by Skrewdriver

If you thought such unabashedly bigoted music was available only from underground sources, you’d be wrong. With a few clicks at Apple’s iTunes website, Internet users can buy albums and songs from white supremacist groups such as Bully Boys, Final War, Stormtroop 16 and H8Machine.

But what has one iTunes customer particularly incensed is that the website has apparently removed homophobic songs by reggae artists, but left the white supremacist music. Galen Andrews, who lives outside Des Moines, Iowa, told Hatewatch that he thinks all hate music should be pulled from iTunes. “It made me sick,” he said of the white supremacist music. “I think it’s irresponsible of iTunes to offer that kind of music. I don’t like the fact that they’re selling racism for profit.”

Among the anti-gay songs no longer available on iTunes are Buju Banton’s “Boom Bye-Bye” and T.O.K.’s “Chi-Chi Man,” Andrews said. ITunes, which bills itself as “the world’s most popular digital media player,” did not respond to several phones messages and E-mails seeking comment. However, it’s not the only mainstream music distributor selling racist and offensive tracks. ( continue to full post… )

Last week, prosecutors in Pima County, Ariz., announced they’re seeking the death penalty for Minuteman American Defense leader Shawna Forde, who allegedly masterminded a May 30 home invasion robbery in which a Latino man and his 9-year-old daughter were shot to death.

But those prosecutors have it all wrong.

At least, that is, according to a new website proclaiming Forde’s innocence and portraying the border vigilante leader as the victim of a government conspiracy abetted by a racist, sexist media smear campaign.

“Shawna’s become the target of a socialist government’s clumsy attempts to marginalize and terrorize America’s patriots,” declares a recent post to JusticeForShawnaForde.com. The site also blames “the unholy government/Marxist-media alliance” and Latino corrections officers in almost the same breath: “The evidence is there: Shawna has been set-up to be punished for things she didn’t do by the (mostly Hispanic) Corrections Officers (CO’s) in the women’s side of the prison.” No evidence at all is offered to support this assertion.

The Arizona Daily Star identified the creator of the website as Laine Lawless, a militant feminist and hard-core border vigilante with a history of coordinating with neo-Nazis (although she denies corresponding with leaders of the National Socialist Movement, telling the Star that the E-mail in question was fabricated by unknown persons). “I’m tired of women getting screwed over by men in this movement,” Lawless told reporter Tim Steller. “Nobody in the Minuteman movement except for me is willing to talk to her [Forde].” ( continue to full post… )

As President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats have learned this month, an antigovernment, pro-militia mentality is alive and well in the United States. On Monday, a guy named Ernest Hancock staged a videotaped interview with a man carrying a semiautomatic rifle slung over his shoulder outside the venue where the president spoke to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Phoenix.

Hancock freely admitted that the interview he conducted — it was posted on YouTube — of a rifle-toting man named “Chris” was a publicity stunt to demonstrate that people can lawfully carry guns. Hancock himself packed a 9-millimeter Beretta on his hip. But Hancock is not just another ardent Second Amendment supporter. An online radio show host and publisher of a website called freedomsphoenix.com, he has been a vocal supporter of Arizona’s Viper Militia – a paramilitary group that stockpiled weapons and bomb-making equipment in the 1990s.

A grand jury indicted 10 men and two women in 1996 on weapons and conspiracy charges after an undercover state officer infiltrated the Viper Militia. Among those arrested was Dean Pleasant, who had run for the Arizona Senate on the Libertarian Party ticket. Police confiscated more than 400 pounds of ammonium nitrate and other bomb-making components in one of three homes they raided in Phoenix. They seized dozens of shotguns, rifle and other weapons, as well as home videos, including one that purportedly showed members casing Phoenix buildings as potential targets. Eleven of the 12 defendants, including Pleasant, entered guilty pleas or were convicted at trial and received prison sentences of up to nine years. ( continue to full post… )

In a promotion for its lobbying extravaganza on Capitol Hill next month, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) asserts that lawmakers must “restore integrity to our immigration system.”

Apparently, such integrity does not preclude the use of deadly force against an unarmed suspect. A featured speaker at next month’s Lobby Days will be Ignacio “Nacho” Ramos, one of two former border patrol agents convicted of multiple felony charges in connection with the 2005 shooting of a drug smuggler who was fleeing from them. Ramos is scheduled to speak on Sept. 16 as part of FAIR’s annual three-day lobbying campaign that brings anti-immigrant activists to the Capitol to meet with lawmakers. The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated FAIR a hate group because of its ties to white supremacists.

Ramos was sentenced in 2006 to 11 years in prison for his role in shooting the undocumented immigrant, but was freed earlier this year after President George Bush granted clemency to him and to former border patrol agent Jose Compean, who was also involved in the shooting. Although Bush commuted their sentences, he did not pardon them, so they remain convicted felons. Nearly all their convictions were upheld last year by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that “[t]he trial of the case was conducted fairly and without reversible error.” ( continue to full post… )

The leaders of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, the largest and richest border vigilante organization in the United States, have long been accused of scamming donors and members with shady fundraising practices. These practices included the supposedly “Israeli-style” border fence fundraising campaign, in which the MCDC solicited hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund the construction of a high-tech security barrier that turned out to be nothing more than a barbed wire cattle fence.

Now the president of the MCDC, Carmen Mercer, has been called out by her state’s chief prosecutor for allegedly participating in a mail fraud conspiracy.

Last Friday, Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard filed a lawsuit against Mercer and the President and CEO of Property Tax Review Board Inc., a Granada Hills, Calif., company that in recent weeks mailed thousands of deceptively official-looking letters to Arizona homeowners soliciting $189 in exchange for a “property-tax-assessment analysis.”

According to Goddard, the letters were designed and written in a way intended to deceive recipients into thinking the letters were official government communications from their county assessor’s office. Goddard said his office had received hundreds of calls about the letters, including complaints from Arizona’s 15 county assessors, whose offices were likewise inundated with calls.
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Globetrotting white supremacist financier and organizer Preston Wiginton (at right, showing the flag at a 2007 white nationalist rally in Moscow) was barred from entering the United Kingdom last week by Home Office authorities at London’s Heathrow Airport. Wiginton, a U.S. citizen, was trying to enter the U.K. to address the racist throngs at the tenth annual “Red, White and Blue” summer festival put on by the neofascist British National Party, or BNP.

The Home Office stated that it denied entry to Wiginton because it deemed his presence in the U.K. would not have been conducive to the common good. Wiginton has a close relationship with BNP chairman Nick Griffin, as well as ultra-right politicians and white nationalist academics and activists in Russia, the Texas native’s adopted homeland. (Wiginton resides part of the year in a Moscow apartment he sublets from ex-Klan boss David Duke.) Wiginton also brags about friendships with the leaders of violent neo-Nazi skinhead gangs in Russia, and claims that he pumps $50,000 a year of his own money into the global white supremacist movement.

In the U.S. in recent years, Wiginton has appeared at racist skinhead gatherings and co-sponsored lectures with hate groups such as the Council of Conservative Citizens and the Michigan State University chapter of Young Americans for Freedom.
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The SPLC’s report, “The Second Wave: Return of the Militias,” released Aug. 12, has drawn a spirited response. Here’s a representative sampling of E-mails and comments. Names have been removed from all messages except the one from Mr. LUCIFER. A few of the longer ones have been edited for length, but otherwise they’re reproduced just as they came in.

———-

LUCIFER L LUCIFER
999 HELL STREET
HELL
GA
24652
United States
1-999-999-9999

U/R DIRTY SHIT EATING COMMIE SLIME MAGGOTS, HATCHED FROM A KARL MARX TURD.
I’M WAITING FOR U DOWN HERE, GET READY, MAGGOTS.

—————

What a load of crap!  I think I will list the Southern Poverty Law Center on my list of hate groups.

————

Sorry I am not a hillbilly racist nazi, just a legal non-violent gun owner that knows your demonizing gun owners is completely evil propaganda… We know who the fall guys are…and as a American who believes in Liberty and Freedom for all can see the same old game the SPLC plays…and I am one of millions waking up to the evil lies that are written by .org’s as this one. You should cringe because your game is so transparent.

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Three years ago, neo-Nazi Craig Cobb announced that he was moving to Estonia to help build a European white supremacist movement.

It didn’t quite go as planned. Cobb, who runs the white supremacist video-sharing website Podblanc, recently reported that he’s being kicked out of the country where he once hoped to form an International Office of White Diaspora. “My ‘crimes’ are, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs: Endangering public security, public order, public safety, moral standards, health, or some other relevant public interests,” he posted on Podblanc in an account laced with expletives and racial epithets.

It’s not the first country that’s given him the boot. On June 2, Cobb, 57, traveled to Helsinki, where he hoped to receive asylum from the Finnish government because of persecution based on religion (the racist World Church of the Creator), race (“indigenous White”), membership in white nationalist groups, and political opinion (“right wing secessionist-separatist and preservationist of our wonderful, extreme-technological-giving 8% White Precious Minority on the Teeming Dark Planet”). ( continue to full post… )

The 1990s saw the rise and fall of the virulently antigovernment “Patriot” movement, made up of paramilitary militias, tax defiers and so-called “sovereign citizens.” Sparked by a combination of anger at the federal government and the deaths of political dissenters at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas, the movement took off in the middle of the decade and continued to grow even after 168 people were left dead by the 1995 bombing of Oklahoma City’s federal building — an attack, the deadliest ever by domestic U.S. terrorists, carried out by men steeped in the rhetoric and conspiracy theories of the militias.

In the years that followed, a truly remarkable number of criminal plots came out of the movement. But by early this century, the Patriots had largely faded, weakened by systematic prosecutions, aversion to growing violence, and a new, highly conservative president.

As we report today (see complete report here), they’re back. Almost a decade after largely disappearing from public view, right-wing militias, ideologically driven tax defiers and sovereign citizens are appearing in large numbers around the country. “Paper terrorism” — the use of property liens and citizens’ “courts” to harass enemies — is on the rise. And once-popular militia conspiracy theories are making the rounds again, this time accompanied by nativist theories about secret Mexican plans to “reconquer” the American Southwest.

One federal law enforcement agency has found 50 new militia training groups — one of them made up of present and former police officers and soldiers. Authorities around the country are reporting a worrying uptick in Patriot activities and propaganda. “This is the most significant growth we’ve seen in 10 to 12 years,” says one. “All it’s lacking is a spark. I think it’s only a matter of time before you see threats and violence.”

A key difference this time is that the federal government — the entity that almost the entire radical right views as its primary enemy — is headed by a black man. That, coupled with high levels of non-white immigration and a decline in the percentage of whites overall in America, has helped to racialize the Patriot movement, which in the past was not primarily motivated by race hate. One result has been a remarkable rash of domestic terror incidents since the presidential campaign, most of them related to anger over the election of Barack Obama.

At the same time, ostensibly mainstream politicians and media pundits have helped to spread Patriot and related propaganda, from conspiracy theories about a secret network of U.S. concentration camps to wholly unsubstantiated claims about the president’s country of birth.

The latter claims from the so-called “birthers” first gained traction when far-right hard-liners like writer Jerome Corsi, politician Alan Keyes and Watergate felon and radio show host G. Gordon Liddy questioned the validity of the president’s birth certificate. But they have picked up speed thanks to the likes of Lou Dobbs, the CNN and radio host who has repeatedly demanded that Obama “show the documents” proving his citizenship — this despite the fact that the birther claims had been thoroughly debunked by a guest host of Dobbs’ own CNN show and by many others.

As Chip Berlet, an analyst of the radical right at Political Research Associates, said in a recent report: “The current political environment is awash with seemingly absurd but nonetheless influential conspiracy theories, hyperbolic claims and demonized targets. And this creates a milieu where violence is a likely outcome.”

Fifteen years ago, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote then-Attorney General Janet Reno to warn about extremists in the militia movement, saying that the “mixture of armed groups and those who hate” was “a recipe for disaster.” Just six months later, Oklahoma City’s federal building was bombed.

Today, the Patriot movement may not have reached the level of white-hot fury that it did in the 1990s. But the movement clearly is growing again, and Americans, in particular law enforcement officers, need to take the dangers it presents seriously. That is equally true for the politicians, pundits and preachers who, through pandering or ignorance, abet the growth of a movement marked by a proven predilection for violence.