Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
skinheads
A Skinhead’s Story: Bryon Widner and ‘Erasing Hate’
07 months ago
It’s hard enough trying to overcome a history of violence and race hatred for a new life of redemption and purpose. Imagine trying to do so with the evidence of your evil past etched indelibly on your face in the form of tattoos proclaiming racist and violent themes.
After spending 16 years as a vicious brawler [...]
News Roundup for June 23, 2011
07 months ago
A settlement has been reached in a lawsuit over “blatantly racist and offensive” comments made by white Philadelphia officers on the popular police Internet forum Domelights.com. The settlement requires the city to hire an anti-discrimination consultant as well as enhance anti-discrimination training within the department.
Two New York men pleaded not guilty to charges of attempting [...]
Council of Conservative Citizens Networking with Racist Skinheads
08 months ago
Seems the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) has some new allies these days. The group’s Tennessee chapter is co-hosting a June 18 barbeque with two notorious skinhead groups, Volksfront and Blood and Honour, according to postings on the chapter’s website and other racist forums. The event, whose contact is easttnskin83@yahoo.com, is being held for “networking [...]
American Front Founder David Lynch Shot to Death
011 months ago
Early this morning, a man was killed and a woman injured in a shooting in Citrus Heights, Calif., a suburb of Sacramento. Law enforcement authorities said the man, who was shot in the head and torso, was found dead inside the home. The woman, who was shot in the leg, was taken to a local hospital for treatment. Local media reports said that two children were believed by law enforcement to have been inside the home at the time of the shooting.
Law enforcement sources have confirmed to Hatewatch that the man who was shot was David Lynch, 40, and his death is being treated as a homicide.
Lynch was a clever and charismatic racist skinhead organizer whose history of racist activism dates back to the late 1980s, when he became the eastern states coordinator for American Front, a nationwide skinhead coalition modeled after Britain’s racist National Front. After American Front’s power waned in the mid-1990s, Lynch lived for a time in Canada, then relocated to Sacramento, where he gradually assumed control of the Sacto Skins, one of the oldest skinhead gangs in the country.
While he maintained a strong presence in the Sacramento white supremacist subculture from the late 1990s through 2005, at one point meeting with then-National Alliance chairman William Pierce when the neo-Nazi leader visited Sacramento, Lynch for the most part limited his activities to that city alone.
Later, Lynch’s empire expanded. In 2007, law enforcement officials told the SPLC that Lynch had united skinhead crews in northern and southern California, Utah and Florida under the banner of a newly energized American Front. He had also established a United States division of Troops of Tomorrow, an international skinhead organization, and helped to launch Prison Skin, a prison outreach campaign to support and glorify incarcerated skinheads.
Skinheads and neo-Nazis from around the country are posting memorials to Lynch on Facebook. Expressing what seems to be the common sentiment, Billy Roper of White Revolution wrote: “Dave Lynch: My Friend, and one of the best men I’ve ever known, a hero of our people and our cause. We are in shock.”
No further details were immediately released about the shootings.
Investigators: White Power Guerrilla Manual Behind Attacks on Police
0Two men charged with attempting to kill police officers in Hemet, Calif., used what prosecutors are calling a white power “guerrilla warfare manual” to guide a nine-month campaign of terror and violence against the police department, its buildings and vehicles.
The anonymously written “White Resistance Manual” was posted on the website WhiteHonor.org and contained do-it-yourself guides that Nicholas John Smit and Steven Hansen used to build such guerrilla-styled weapons as zip guns and “Panji boards” – spiked boards rigged with trip wires, according to Daniel DeLimon, a prosecutor with the district attorney in Riverside, Calif. “It’s basically a guerrilla warfare manual instructing people on different types of weapons, on creating weapons, on police investigations, basically how to conduct covert urban operations,” DeLimon told HateWatch in a telephone interview.
The manual is not the first to provide extremists with the know-how to turn militant. Similar antigovernment paramilitary manuals were circulated among private militia groups in the 1990s, and directions to build pipe bombs or create the neurotoxin ricin periodically appear on extremist newsgroups. Still, this manual’s comprehensive approach prompted alarm in an area of southern California that DeLimon described as a “magnet” for white supremacist ideologues. “We see all different types of propaganda,” he said. “But I’ve never actually seen this manual.”
WhiteHonor.org has since been pulled offline, investigators say, and the manual appears to no longer be readily available on the Internet. Its existence came to light when The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, Calif., reported details of police search warrants that were unsealed in response to a request from the newspaper.
Former roommates Smit, 40, and Hansen, 37, each face felony charges that include attempted murder of a police officer for trying to fire a World War II-era training rocket at the Hemet police station, and conspiracy to kill a detective. The men are suspected in six other attempted attacks and fires that detectives believe were carried out to prevent an officer who arrested Smit on marijuana charges from testifying against him, the Press-Enterprise reported.
All together, the attacks constituted a campaign of terror against police that played out between December 2009 and July 2010, beginning when Hemet detective Chuck Johnson found Panji boards near his squad car. Several weeks after that, on New Year’s Eve, a police building was filled with natural gas in what appeared to be preparation for an explosion that never came. The harassment continued in the following months when a remotely rigged zip gun fired a bullet at an officer and missed, and a series of arsonist fires torched four Hemet city trucks. Officers, as a precaution, were told to inspect their squad cars for tampering each day before duty. Roadblocks went up behind the main police station, and blast-proof glass, barricades and fences were installed.
Despite the lack of success Smit and Hansen had inflicting injury with their attacks, DeLimon said some officers have suffered psychological trauma as a result. “You can imagine that after basically being hunted for nine months, some of the officers are pretty shaken up,” he said.
Feds Charge Alleged Accomplice in 1998 Skinhead Murder Case
01 year ago
by Robert Steinback
in skinheads
On July 4, 1998, two women invited anti-racist skinhead pals, Lin “Spit” Newborn, 25, and Dan Shersty, 21, to a late-night party in the desert outside of Las Vegas. But there was no party: Newborn and Shersty were shot to death in what police and prosecutors called a planned execution by the leader of a rival, neo-Nazi racist skinhead group.
One man, John Edward “Polar Bear” Butler, identified as a leader of the Independent Nazi Skins, was convicted of murder and sentenced to death (the sentence was later reduced to four life terms). But investigators were never able to amass enough evidence to bring charges against Butler’s girlfriend at the time, Melissa Hack, who they believed was one of the women (the other has not been identified) who lured the victims to their deaths that night.
That is, until now. According to the Las Vegas Review Journal, federal cold-case investigators have charged Hack with one count of making a false statement in connection with the 1998 case, and are pursuing new evidence against her.
“The investigation identified several subjects who were suspected of luring the victims into the desert the night they were killed,” according to the complaint, which was prepared by Fred Merrick, a Las Vegas police violent crimes section detective who was deputized as a temporary federal agent to work with the FBI on the 1998 cold case, which occurred on federal land.
The new complaint asserts that Hack associated with the Independent Nazi Skins, and that Hack’s brother Ross, also a neo-Nazi skinhead, and others in the group were feuding with Newborn. “Based upon the investigation into the murders, (Melissa) Hack is considered to be a subject.”
According to a 1999 article by Jason Gay in the Boston Phoenix, and other reports, Newborn and Shersty were active in Las Vegas’s underground punk rock and ska scene, “and shared a passionate disdain for the neo-Nazi skinheads who occasionally crashed local concerts and parties.” Newborn, who was black and worked at a body-piercing salon, was a gregarious and engaging man who became a leader in the city’s newly formed chapter of Anti-Racist Action (ARA), a national organization that confronts hate groups around the country. Shersty, who was white and worked as a jet mechanic at Nellis Air Force Base, also joined and became close friends with Newborn.
ARA, which says it has been “fighting fascism in the streets since 1988,” believes in direct action against racist hate groups. Its website banner states, “We go where they go. We don’t rely on the cops or courts to do our work for us.” The group asserts that it aims to build “a broad, strong movement against racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, discrimination against the disabled, the oldest, the youngest, and the most oppressed people. We want a classless, free society.” The group has engendered controversy over the years for its willingness to meet force with force.
Newborn and Shersty’s ARA membership put them in polar opposition to the racist, neo-Nazi skinhead organizations also active in Las Vegas at the time. Authorities believe Butler engineered the murders to eliminate two prominent non-racist skinhead critics.
According to investigators, on July 3, 1998, two women entered the Tribal Body Piercing shop where Newborn worked, and one had her navel pieced. The women – one believed to be Hack – invited Newborn to a party in the desert northwest of the city. Newborn told Shersty, and both decided to go. Eyewitness accounts, and a convenience store surveillance video, showed Newborn and Shersty with Hack not long before the murders.
Early the next morning, a group of ATV riders discovered Shersty’s bullet-riddled body near his car, and three people – Butler, Hack and 19-year-old Joseph Justin – nearby. The trio told the riders they had just discovered the body and to call police. They then left the scene, but the riders noted their car’s license number; it belonged to Hack’s mother.
Two days later, Newborn’s body was found about 150 yards away. Less than two weeks later, police went to question Butler, who fled. During the chase, police recovered a .32 caliber handgun that matched bullets that struck Shersty. Eventually, Justin admitted that Butler had asked him to help remove evidence from the crime scene the next morning. He testified against Butler, who was convicted in December 2000.
Justin also testified that Butler told him Ross Hack was the other gunman the night the two men were killed. But charges were never brought against either Melissa or Ross Hack.
According to the new federal complaint, Hack met June 16 with a Nevada parole officer supervising her on unrelated narcotics charges. Merrick and FBI Special Agent Kevin Sheehan, who were present to further question Hack about the murders, seized Hack’s cell phone and found on it photos of Hack and “numerous additional individuals she visibly appeared to associate with. Some of the individuals bore tattoos or signs and symbols that could be relevant to the 1998 murder investigation,” according to the Review Journal report.
Hack’s attorney, Brent Bryson said the federal charge against his client, is a “thin case” filed in retaliation for her perceived lack of cooperation during the murder investigation.
“What’s happening here is they have been unable to piece the case together, because we all know if they had enough evidence against her, they’d charge her,” Bryson told the Review Journal. “They don’t, so they’re putting the squeeze on her in other ways, trying to make her feel the pressure.”
Racist Skins Renounce Busted IKA Leader
01 year ago
Poor Ron Edwards. Even racist skinheads don’t want to hang out with the former Klan leader.
Edwards — the Imperial Klans of America (IKA) founder who defended himself against a successful lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center — was arrested last week on federal drug charges, including methamphetamine distribution.
That was too much for the Supreme White Alliance (SWA), a skinhead group that had been assisting the IKA with its annual hate rock gathering, Nordic Fest. Less than a week before this year’s Nordic Fest — planned for Memorial Day weekend at Edwards’ compound in Dawson Springs, Ky. — the SWA announced it would no longer be involved with the event. “The Supreme White Alliance drops it’s [sic] support of the Imperial Klans of America, Ron Edwards, and Nordic Fest due to current events,” SWA Vice President Richard Kidd, a former IKA member, wrote on Sunday. “Even though innocent until proven guilty, in order to preserve our reputation as a club for our members, the SWA has always been a drug free club and always will be. This is not intended to disrespect Ron Edwards or the IKA, but we will not be affiliated with them until all legal charges have been dropped.”
The SWA, which previously considered its leader to be Edwards’ son, Steven, wasn’t the only group to distance itself from Nordic Fest. Blood and Honour USA, a coalition of several skinhead groups, posted a similar message Saturday on a web forum: “After discussions among the various crew heads in the US that make up Blood and Honour USA, we have collectively decided that at this time, given the amount of evidence — not only that which led to his being charged — but also that of individuals that have witnessed behaviours of this type — that Blood and Honour USA is pulling any and all support from the Nordicfest music festival and also any and all support of the IKA.”
Blood and Honour had stern words for Edwards, who was released Friday on a $25,000 bond. “Drugs, drug users, and those that market them cannot and will not be tolerated – regardless of who the persons are that are involved. Indeed it is even worse when someone that has held themselves up as a standard of white nationalism becomes caught up in this ****** nonsense.”
In addition, Nordic Fest participants won’t be able to advertise on Stormfront, the leading white supremacist web forum. Richard Lindstrom, a Stormfront administrator and former board member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance, announced the ban on Saturday.
Ron Edwards has other legal woes: In 2008, the Southern Poverty Law Center won a $2.5 million judgment for a teenager who was beaten by IKA members. Edwards, one of two defendants in that lawsuit, is appealing the verdict.
In a message on its website today, the SWA sounded a more empathetic note. “Drugs are a weakness that we as Aryan Warriors must overcome,” wrote National Treasurer James Reeves. “The effects of Meth, speed, cocaine, marijuana, etc. have taken a toll on our country and our people that if not stopped now, may not be stoppable in the future. It is tearing families apart at the seams. If anyone does have a problem, seek proffesional [sic] help or help from one of us. We are a family and we are here to help each other.”
Soldiers Among Skinheads Charged in Brutal Beating of Homeless Man
01 year ago
by Sonia Scherr
in skinheads
Three soldiers are among a group of skinheads accused of severely beating a homeless man with baseball bats and pipes in Cincinnati.
Police have charged two Iraq war veterans, Pvt. Riley Feller, 24, and Spc. Travis Condor, 25, with the felony assault of 52-year-old John Johnson at a homeless encampment earlier this month, according to news accounts. Feller is with the 16th Cavalry Regiment at Fort Knox in Kentucky, while Condor is a member of the 82nd Airborne Division stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.
Michael Hesson, 24, who is not in the military, was arraigned Tuesday on the same charge. Authorities are looking for an unidentified fourth man, also believed to be a soldier. Johnson was treated overnight at a hospital for a head wound and other injuries suffered in the April 10 attack.
Cincinnati Detective Kip Dunagan told the Cincinnati’s TV station WKRC that the skinheads went looking for someone to assault. “‘At one point, one of the suspects said, ‘Let’s go mess somebody up.’ He used another word besides ‘mess’ but the other suspects said, ‘That sounds like a good idea.’ They got into a vehicle and they went specifically looking for a bum, as they call it.’”
Not all skinheads are racists, and it’s unclear whether the men accused of attacking Johnson espoused white supremacist beliefs. WLWT, the NBC affiliate in Cincinnati, reported on its website that Hesson told investigators that “all four men had ties to possible white supremacist groups.”
On Feller’s publicly accessible MySpace page, which contains numerous links to skinhead-related music and video, he describes himself as “skinhead … enough said” and lists his occupation as “Army for now.” He was also wanted for misdemeanor assault, drunken driving and unauthorized license plate charges after he failed to show up for a July 2009 court date, according to The Cincinnati Enquirer.
Several states (though not Ohio) now protect homeless people under their hate crime laws. Following a Senate vote earlier this week, Florida is expected to become the third state to allow for enhanced penalties for crimes motivated by bias toward the homeless. In recent years, the state has seen a rash of assaults, some of them fatal, targeting those living on the streets. Florida follows Maryland, Washington, D.C., and (in a more limited way) Maine in extending hate crime protections to the homeless.
The Cincinnati incident isn’t the only criminal case in recent weeks possibly involving extremists in the military. Last month, an active-duty soldier was implicated in an alleged plot to sell firearms and grenades to a white supremacist group. William Bolton, 31, stationed in Virginia, was identified in a federal indictment as a member of the Connecticut White Wolves, a white supremacist group now known as Battalion 14. He was charged with conspiring to rob a firearms manufacturer and of illegally selling a firearm. Bolton, who pleaded not guilty to both charges at his arraignment on April 5, faces up to 30 years in prison. Four other (non-military) men were also charged in the seven-count indictment, which alleged that another member of the White Wolves made three explosive grenades that he packed in a cardboard box marked with a hand-printed swastika. The grenades were delivered to an unidentified witness, who made a cash payment to the group’s leader, 29-year-old Kenneth Zrallack of Ansonia, Conn. As Zrallack and the witness shared a drink, Zrallack’s girlfriend prompted them to call out “88” — neo-Nazi code for HH, or “Heil Hitler.”
That arrest bolsters the SPLC’s earlier findings that racial extremists are infiltrating the military and that service members are being recruited by hate groups. Since 2006, the Southern Poverty Law Center has provided the military with extensive information about white supremacist activity in its ranks. In November, the Pentagon tightened its ban on extremist activity; the revised policy not only prohibits active participation in supremacist groups, but also forbids advocacy of supremacist doctrine and causes.