Federal prosecutors in Texas have obtained guilty pleas from eight of the 35 members of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas (ABT) charged with racketeering and a host of violent crimes, including murders, arsons, robberies and assaults.

The first guilty pleas in the massive prosecution came just two months after federal charges were filed, suggesting prosecutors have a strong case and are working to strike deals with some of the accused who could get lighter sentences in exchange for cooperation. But some of the guilty pleas include specific language that the defendant isn’t cooperating — so they don’t end up with a “snitch jacket” and protective custody while doing prison time. ( continue to full post… )

LUDOWICI, Ga. – The suspected leader of a murderous militia of military men was the last to be interrogated that mild Georgia winter evening 18 months ago. Although he was only 20 at the time, United States Army Pvt. Isaac Aguigui played it cool and defiant. “You can go to hell,” he told an agent from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI). His tough-guy act didn’t last long. Within 20 minutes, Aguigui deserted his rigid military discipline and whimpered, “I’m just going to end up in a jail cell alone for the rest of my life.”

Today, his tearful prophecy came true.

The now 22-year-old soldier was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after pleading guilty to the murder of Tiffany York, 17, and her boyfriend, Michael Roark, 19, a former soldier who served with Aguigui at the Fort Stewart Army base in Hinesville. Georgia state prosecutors say the young sweethearts were shot to death in the woods not far from the sprawling military facility to keep secret Aguigui’s video-game inspired militia and its delusional plans to overthrow the government of the United States through a torrent of bombings, kidnappings and political assassinations. ( continue to full post… )

White nationalists, learning yesterday of activist Derek Black’s renouncing of the movement, reacted with disbelief, conspiracy theories and unbridled fury. But it was the fact that Black, son of the former Alabama Klan leader who now runs the largest racist Web forum in the world, made his comments to the Southern Poverty Law Center that seemed to be the single factor that most rankled the racist world.

The reaction that may have been the most noticed came from Don Black, who expressed his shock about his son’s comments on his Stormfront blog. “Derek was here all weekend, helping us build and replace old windows” at the family home in West Palm Beach, Fla., the elder Black wrote. “He’s made it annoyingly obvious over the past few months he was no longer interested in WN [white nationalist] activism, but he always said he was still WN. I knew the Jews at the Poverty Palace [SPLC] were working hard, since he would be such a big prize for them.

“But he didn’t give us a clue as to what he planned today.” ( continue to full post… )

The anti-immigrant lobby has long enjoyed influence in Washington but in recent years has been forced to defend itself against charges that it represents the narrow interests of white nationalists who fear the “browning” of America.

So it may have surprised some when a new coalition of African-American activists, called the Black American Leadership Alliance (BALA), announced its opposition to legislation that could provide a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented Latino immigrants.

In a June 3 letter to members of Congress, BALA claimed the proposed bill “will harm black American workers more than any other group” because “[m]ass immigration and amnesty puts African Americans from all walks of life out of work and suppresses wages, causing them to compete with aliens willing to work in poorer working conditions for cheaper pay.”

What BALA did not say in that letter — or during a press conference in April when it called itself the African American Leadership Council — was anything about its provenance. There’s a good reason for that. It turns out that BALA is simply the latest front group for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the flagship of a network of anti-immigrant organizations formed by the white nationalist John Tanton. ( continue to full post… )

Derek Black, son of the former Alabama Klan leader who now runs the largest racist Web forum in the world, has renounced white nationalism, saying that he has been through “a gradual awakening process” and apologizing for his past activism.

In an E-mail (pdf) to the editor of this blog earlier this week, Black, 24, wrote that he had come to see the arguments of white nationalism as “principally flawed,” adding that he had realized that American society is marked by an “overwhelming disparity between white power and that of everyone else” and that white nationalism was really about “an entrenched desire to preserve white power at the expense of others.” ( continue to full post… )

A sixth man has been identified and arrested for his alleged involvement in a May 2012 attack by anti-racist activists on a group of white supremacists and white nationalists in a restaurant in the Chicago suburb of Tinley Park.

Jason Richard Hammond, 28, of Chicago, faces state charges of armed violence, aggravated battery and mob action, Tinley Park Police Chief Steve Neubauer said following the suspect’s arrest last Thursday, the Chicago Tribune reported.

In early January, five Indiana men, Alex Stuck, John S. Tucker and brothers Dylan, Cody and Jason Sutherlin, all members of the Hoosier Anti-Racist Movement, pleaded guilty to charges associated with the attack and received prison sentences ranging from 3 1/2 to six years. The case was detailed in the cover story of the current edition of the Intelligence Report. ( continue to full post… )

The FBI has arrested a Utah man who is accused in court documents of making machine guns and discussing the bombing of an Internal Revenue Service building and other government facilities.

Keith Max Pierce, 34, of Provo, Utah, currently is only charged with three federal firearms charges – failure to register as a firearms dealer, illegal possession of machine guns and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number.

Officials have not said what Pierce’s motivations may have been. ( continue to full post… )

In all the brouhaha surrounding Jack Hunter, the aide to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) exposed as a longtime neo-Confederate activist this week, Hunter’s past as the leader of the Charleston, S.C., chapter of the League of the South (LOS) hardly registered. After all, Hunter said when confronted by the Washington Free Beacon, when he was with the group in the 1990s, it was “explicit” in its rejection of racism.

Baloney. ( continue to full post… )

Michael Hill. Profile avail at SPLC Intel. Files

Michael Hill, the increasingly militant head of the neo-Confederate League of the South, has reached a conclusion following the revelation this week that Jack Hunter, an aide to U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has long harbored neo-Confederate beliefs: It may no longer be possible for the radical right to work within the confines of mainstream politics, or, specifically, the Republican Party. ( continue to full post… )

Tony Perkins

As barriers to equality for the LGBT community continue to fall, the Family Research Council (FRC), an influential Christian Right group that has been propagating anti-gay pseudo-science for decades, is broadening its message by adopting the language of the antigovernment “Patriot” movement.

Case in point: This week, less than two weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the federal government cannot discriminate against legally married same-sex couples, the FRC circulated an online fundraising appeal that urges recipients to “Seize this Opportunity to Stop Tyranny in America!” ( continue to full post… )