Five Indiana men were charged today in a violent attack Saturday that injured 10 alleged participants in a meeting to plan white nationalist strategy at a suburban Chicago restaurant.

Anti-Racist Action (ARA), a loosely organized group that fights racism, took credit on its website for the attacks, but it wasn’t immediately clear if the suspects are members. The group does have a Hoosier chapter. ARA spokespeople did not respond to E-mail requests for interviews.

The men were charged with felony mob action, felony aggravated battery and felony criminal damage to property, according to Steven Neubauer, chief of police in Tinley Park, Ill. The alleged attack took place just after noon at the Ashford House Restaurant. The men charged are Jason Sutherlin of Gossport, Ind.; Cody Sutherlin, Dylan Sutherlin and Robert Stuck of Bloomington, Ind.; and John Tucker of Spencer, Ind. ( continue to full post… )

Two members of a new white supremacist group in Minnesota discussed killing former associates in the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement (NSM) and using homemade napalm in a truck bomb attack on the Mexican consulate in St. Paul, newly released court documents say.

Joseph Benjamin Thomas, 42, of Mendota Heights, Minn., and Samuel James Johnson, 31, of Austin, Minn., both former NSM members, were involved in the plot, an FBI affidavit says.

The FBI investigation of the pair began in January 2010 and involved the use of a tracking device secretly placed on Thomas’ car on Aug. 29, 2011, allowing agents to track his travels and identify potential co-conspirators. On Jan. 23 of this year, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled law enforcement officers must obtain search warrants to plant GPS tracking devices on suspects’ vehicles, the FBI sought and obtained court authorization to continue monitoring Thomas vehicle, the affidavit says. ( continue to full post… )

Peter Mangs, who went on trial in Sweden this week for allegedly killing three people and attempting to kill 12 others because he hated immigrants, apparently did business with America’s leading neo-Nazi organization at least once.

Mangs is believed to have shot his victims, who included many Muslims and other immigrants in his home city of Malmo, during a seven-year spree that stretched from 2003 to 2010. In October 2010, police asked the public for help in locating a gunman who they feared was targeting immigrants in the city, where some 40% of residents or their parents were born outside Sweden, and a tip led to Mangs. Police found a pistol, a silencer and a vest for carrying a spare gun barrel in his home.

Two years before the shooting spree began, Mangs, who is now 40, made a purchase from the National Alliance, which was then the most important neo-Nazi group in America, and one that was well known to European radicals. Records obtained by Hatewatch do not show what Mangs bought, but the group’s National Vanguard Books at the time had only a few items matching the total Mangs spent, $11.95, on May 10, 2001. One of them was Hunter, a novel written by the late Alliance chief William Pierce that depicted the nighttime murders of mixed-race couples using a silenced pistol. ( continue to full post… )

The Missouri National Guard is investigating a new claim that its ranks are infiltrated with neo-Nazis – this time a “patched member” of the violent American Front, whose members stand accused of plotting violence in Florida.

The inquiry comes after the Missouri Legislature conducted a hearing in April to look into how the Guard took more than a year to process three complaints about another guardsmen who was an admitted neo-Nazi.

In the American Front case, a Missouri Guard member identified as Ryan Riley provided firearms and military combat training to members of the white supremacist, militia-style group, including ex-cons, last summer in Florida, court documents allege. ( continue to full post… )

The last issue of the SPLC’s Intelligence Report presented a scathing portrait of “a hard-line fringe” of the Men’s Rights Movement (MRM): “women haters whose fury goes well beyond criticism of the family court system, domestic violence laws, and false rape accusations,” whose rage is “directed at all women, not only perceived feminists.”

The article, entitled “Leader’s Suicide Brings Attention to Men’s Rights Movement,” provoked a tremendous response among men’s rights activists (MRAs) and their sympathizers. ( continue to full post… )

Members of the American Front – a well-armed, militia-style white supremacist group in Florida – were planning acts of violence and preparing for “an inevitable race war” when 11 of them were arrested last week, court documents say.

The documents, the outgrowth of a two-year investigation, also say American Front members received paramilitary training at a fortified compound near St. Cloud, Fla., from one of its Missouri members who is a U.S. military reservist. He was not among those arrested.

The American Front compound is on 10 acres in Florida’s Osceola County and is owned by group leader Marcus Faella, 39, and his wife, Patricia, 36, who were among those arrested on state charges of conducting illegal paramilitary training, attempting to shoot into an occupied dwelling, and prejudice while committing a crime. ( continue to full post… )

Conservatives tend to object when the gay rights movement is compared to the civil rights movement, often claiming that LGBT activists are trying to “hijack” a unique moment in American history.

It had been our impression here at Hatewatch that this objection was underpinned by an antipathy toward being compared to racist reactionaries who protested desegregation, the end of laws barring mixed-race marriage, and the other triumphs of the civil rights movement.

So it’s a little mystifying that in the last two weeks, two prominent anti-gay activists have compared their crusade to the Civil War – and themselves to the Confederacy. ( continue to full post… )

The FBI in 2010 disrupted what its agents now believe was a terrorist plot that involved killing President Obama, according to testimony and court documents filed in U.S. District Court in Spokane, Wash.

The revelation came at the two-day sentencing hearing for white supremacist Wayde Lynn Kurt, the accused mastermind of an alleged plot that was foiled with his arrest on federal firearms and forgery charges.

At the time of his arrest on Aug. 30, 2010, Kurt was associated with a gang of violent neo-Nazi skinheads and white supremacist Odinists who proudly talked of carrying out “coon-hunting” racial attacks in the Pacific Northwest. Their conversations were captured on a videotape that was later turned over to the FBI and shown in court during Kurt’s sentencing hearing. ( continue to full post… )

A hard-hitting propaganda campaign unleashed this year by Wayne LaPierre, executive director of the National Rifle Association, may be convincing Americans that President Obama will crack down on gun ownership if he’s re-elected and becomes a lame duck.

Skyrocketing sales of guns and ammunition, along with some shortages due to stockpiling, are reported by many U.S. shops. ( continue to full post… )

The Justice Department has cut a deal with a former member of the Alaska Peacemaker Militia to bolster its case against the group’s leader Schaeffer Cox and two others on trial in U.S. District Court in Anchorage.

Michael O. Anderson, who was arrested with Cox and co-defendants Lonnie Vernon and Coleman Barney in March 2011, will testify for the prosecution, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported Tuesday as opening arguments were heard. ( continue to full post… )