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… )

The annual neo-Nazi skinhead rock concert known as Hammerfest will be held this Saturday in or near Boise, Idaho, where authorities say they are worried about the potential for violence at or after the event.

Hammerskin Nation, one of the largest and most-dangerous neo-Nazi skinhead groups in the United States, is sponsoring the 25^th annual gathering after patching up differences with a former rival, the equally violent Vinlanders Social Club. ( continue to full post… )

A Virginia judge sentenced notorious neo-Nazi and convicted felon Bill White to 10 more months in prison yesterday for violating his parole and fleeing to Mexico after posting an Internet rant against the U.S. government. He had indicated on his Facebook page that he was in Tehran, but was arrested June 8 in Playa del Carmen, which is about an hour south of Cancun.

“I’m sorry for leaving the country without permission,” White told U.S. District Judge James Turk. White, the former leader of the neo-Nazi American National Socialist Workers Party, also said that after completing a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence on multiple charges of threatening enemies, he had tried to leave his former beliefs behind, but a difficult transition from solitary confinement to living on parole led to what he called “irrational thinking.” ( continue to full post… )

Editor’s Note: This article was first published on Aug. 19 in The Spokesman-Review, based in Spokane, Wash. The 11-day siege at Ruby Ridge began 20 years ago today, on Aug. 21, 1992. The author of this post covered the Aryan Nations and other extremist groups during his 37-year career as a reporter with The  Spokesman-Review.

Ruby Ridge.

Who would have thought 20 years ago this week that those two words would become an icon, a reference point in American culture? ( continue to full post… )

Editor’s Note: On Wednesday — a day after failing to respond to Hatewatch’s request for comment — former congressman Tom Tancredo’s Team America PAC wrote Hatewatch to say, “Tom Tancredo is not speaking at the Council of Conservative Citizens” (CCC). The unsigned email did not say if Tancredo had withdrawn from the speaking engagement after receiving widespread criticism or had never agreed to speak. Hatewatch has in its possession a hard copy of the CCC newsletter, The Council Reporter, dated Spring 2012. Its front page article, about the CCC’s upcoming national conference, says, “This year’s conference features former Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO) as the Saturday luncheon speaker” and features a color photo of Tancredo.

Tom Tancredo has no more secrets.

The former Republican congressman from Colorado, known for his biting anti-immigration rhetoric and campaign ads suggesting Latino immigrants are rapists and drug dealers, is scheduled to be the luncheon speaker at next month’s annual conference for the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC). The theme of the conference? “Multiculturalism – the Death of America.”

Sharing the dais with Tancredo will be a rogue’s gallery of the racist right, including James Edwards, who hosts the white nationalist Political Cesspool radio show; Don Black, the former Klansman best known for creating Stormfront.org, the first major Internet hate site; and Leonard Wilson, a longtime segregationist and Alabama commander for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a neo-Confederate group that, like Tancredo, staunchly opposes immigration. ( 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… )

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… )

Some residents in a Mobile, Ala. neighborhood found white supremacist newspapers on their front lawns Thursday morning, five days after the racially charged beating of a white man by a group of about 20 African Americans.

According to witnesses, the attack on Matthew Owens, 40, came after Owens confronted and displayed knives to children who had chased a loose basketball into his yard. But witnesses also said one of the attackers said, “Now that’s justice for Trayvon,” a reference to Trayvon Martin, the unarmed teen who was killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer in Florida. ( continue to full post… )

A Houston jury has convicted three men who sported white supremacist tattoos on federal hate crime charges for carrying out a racially motivated assault on a 29-year-old black man they cornered at a bus stop.

Charles Cannon, 26, Michael McLaughlin, 41, and Brian Kerstetter, 32, face up to 10 years in prison when they are sentenced in July by U.S. District Court Judge Kenneth Hoyt of the Southern District of Texas. Prosecutors dismissed charges against a fourth man, Joseph Staggs, who testified against the others.

The convictions were the first in Houston under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, enacted in 2009. ( continue to full post… )

Tom Metzger — a wily, iconic racist ideologue who has for years espoused “lone-wolf” terrorism — could soon find himself facing criminal charges filed by the federal government he’s excoriated for decades.

Federal investigators, fresh off a related mail-bombing conviction in Arizona, may be pressing for what could develop into a major Justice Department criminal case against “Terrible Tommy” Metzger, as he likes to call himself. Court records filed in three states show the investigators strongly suspect Metzger provided the Arizona bomber with explosive-making instructions, knowing they would be used in the commission of a crime of violence. ( continue to full post… )