Veterans Today, a website that purports to be a “military veterans and foreign affairs journal” but is really a locus of the far right, is now squarely in neo-Nazi territory.

Oh, sure, Veterans Today (VT) has engaged in all kinds of conspiracy theorizing, most of it focusing on the alleged evils of Israel, for years. Senior editor and board chairman Gordon Duff has claimed that the 9/11 attacks were a joint U.S./Israel operation and that the U.S. government is totally controlled by Israel. The site has even claimed that the Holocaust never occurred or was greatly exaggerated.

But this December, VT seemed to be trying to outdo itself when its financial editor Mike Harris, who also sits on VT’s editorial board, went on Iranian government-backed Press TV to claim that the recent murders of 20 small children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary school was carried out by Israeli death squads. The reason, he said on Dec. 17, is that the Israelis were angry about the United Nations’ vote in November to grant the Palestinians non-member observer status. ( continue to full post… )

Alaska Peacemaker Militia founder and gun-rights advocate Francis Schaeffer Cox — described by federal investigators as a “delusionally dangerous man” — will serve almost 26 years in federal prison, despite his show of last-minute contrition.

The 28-year-old defendant, who became a modern-day poster boy of sorts for the militia movement, was convicted by an Alaska jury last June of nine federal charges – seven of them illegal firearms counts — related to a conspiracy to kill a judge and law enforcement officers. He was acquitted of charges of carrying a handgun while conspiring to purchase destructive devices and possession of a handgun while discussing the murder conspiracy. ( continue to full post… )

Students at an Alabama high school who openly engaged in “white power” salutes — including a 17-year-old accused last week of planning to bomb the school and carry out a racist massacre —could have been expelled under district rules, a school board member and a former principal told Hatewatch.

But instead of reporting the neo-Nazi salutes and shouts of “white power” carried out at various times over the past four months at Russell County High — sometimes reportedly in front of teachers, staff and school security cameras — the conduct apparently went unreported and nothing was done about it. ( continue to full post… )

In what appears to be yet another sign that the federal government is cracking down hard on key figures in the antigovernment “sovereign citizens” movement, officials in upstate New York last week unsealed a grand jury indictment of Glenn Richard Unger, who goes by the alias of Dr. Sam Kennedy, on charges that he filed fraudulent federal tax forms.

The seven-count indictment against Unger, 62, of Ogdensburg, N.Y, was brought by a federal grand jury in Syracuse last month, the Watertown Daily Times reported today. The indictment accused Unger, who the Southern Poverty Law Center profiled as a major sovereign leader in 2010, of filing fraudulent tax-refund claims amounting to $36 million between 2007 and 2011. Unger was arraigned last week and remains in custody while a judge considers setting a bond for him. ( continue to full post… )

Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, the immigrant-bashing, Muslim-hating leader of the far-right English Defense League was sentenced yesterday to 10 months in a British prison after pleading guilty to trying to illegally enter the United States. Yaxley-Lennon used a friend’s passport in order to speak at a gathering of other immigrant-bashing, Muslim-hating bigots last Sept. 11 in New York City. ( continue to full post… )

Weeks before Derek Mathew Shrout allegedly started building improvised hand grenades in his military family’s home, before the 17-year-old was arrested for plotting to use the devices against black and gay students and a teacher, he was committing racist acts in full view of everyone at an Alabama high school.

Two of his former friends say that Shrout – sometimes wearing his Junior ROTC U.S. Army-issued uniform – repeatedly performed stiff-arm sieg-heil salutes and shouted “white power” at Russell County High School in Seale, Ala., where he apparently intended to carry out the attacks. The community is some 20 miles from the U.S. Army’s sprawling Fort Benning, Ga., compound, where the suspect’s father is stationed. ( continue to full post… )

Five Indiana men, all members of an anti-racist group, will serve between 3½ and 6 years in prison after striking plea deals for their roles in an armed attack on a group of white supremacists last May in the Chicago suburb of Tinley Park.

The guilty pleas came Friday on the eve of a trial for Alex Stuck, John S. Tucker and brothers Dylan, Cody and Jason Sutherlin, all members of the anti-racist group Hoosier Anti-Racist Movement, the Chicago Tribune reported.

The five, all from Bloomington, were charged with 37 counts, including armed violence, after they confronted a group of white supremacists who were holding a gathering May 19 at a Tinley Park restaurant. ( continue to full post… )

Authorities in Alabama may have averted another school massacre by arresting a 17-year-old white supremacist who allegedly was building homemade bombs to target African-American students at his school.

The teen, identified by authorities as Derek Shrout, was to appear in court in Seale, Ala., today on a felony charge of attempted assault.

Russell County Sheriff Heath Taylor told Hatewatch today that a search of the youth’s home on Friday turned up a couple dozen small tobacco cans and two larger metal containers marked “Fat Boy” and “Little Man.” The names are similar to the code names “Fat Man” and “Little Boy” used for the atomic bombs dropped on Japan by the United States during World War II. All of the containers were filled with pellets and had holes drilled in them. The sheriff said other ingredients needed to complete the devices, such as black powder and fuses, were not found. ( continue to full post… )

A sixth man has pleaded guilty to federal hate crime charges related to the June 2011 racially motivated killing in Jackson, Miss., of a black man assaulted and run over with a pickup truck by a gang of white youths. That brutal murder was captured on surveillance video and broadcast nationally.

Joseph Paul Dominick, 21, of Brandon, Miss., faces a maximum of five years in prison after pleading guilty yesterday to conspiracy to commit federal hate crimes. He pleaded guilty to a criminal information, waiving grand jury indictment and striking a plea deal with federal prosecutors, just a month after The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson published an editorial blasting the Justice Department for a  “thick cloud of secrecy” surrounding the protracted investigation. ( continue to full post… )

Whether the massacre of 20 Connecticut first-graders and six educators by a madman armed with an assault rifle in December will lead to meaningful gun control legislation is far from certain.

But nearly three weeks after the Dec. 14 bloodbath, the American far right – from elements of the Tea Party to bigoted bloggers to conspiracy theorists – is working itself into an absolute frothy uproar at even the possibility that it may become more difficult to purchase a military-style assault rifle or a magazine that carries dozens of bullets. ( continue to full post… )