/ Watch you cry!
Kill a Couple of Towel Heads for Me OK!
Perhaps ironically considering their general warmongering, the American neo-Nazi movement was for the most part virulently against the war in Iraq. Most of the groups hold to an updated conspiracy theory about Jewish power, which they call ZOG, or Zionist Occupation Government. It is premised on Western governments’ supposed submission to Jewish and Israeli power. On their internet forums, US soldiers are often greeted with incendiary comments about being “Jewish warriors” and “Zionist crusaders” for fighting in the War on Terror. This should not be surprising. The white supremacist movement across America has ebbed and flowed since the heyday of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1950s South. It is plagued by fissures and rivalries and ideological nitpicking that have always damaged its ability to form a large-scale and coherent movement. In 2008, there were over 150 different far-right groups—ranging from the Hitler worshippers to Christian nationalists—nestled all over the country. But as the War on Terror raged, extremism was increasing around America generally, according the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a group that investigates hate and racist groups. In its report Rage on the Right it said that in 2008 extremist groups had come “roaring back to life,” increasing by nearly 250 percent as well as building links to the mainstream right-wing.17 It was a grave concern given their willingness to kill innocent Americans (as Timothy McVeigh had demonstrated), even more so now that they had military training.
Charles Wilson, spokesman for the National Socialist Movement, tells me the group is “150 percent against the war in Iraq. It was a total mistake to invade Iraq; we can’t even secure our own borders. By 2015 white people will be a minority in America.” The IKA, or Imperial Klans of America, is based on the original KKK. “I am, as many of us are, a vet,” Truitt Lilly, the spokesman, writes in an email because he wants to remain faceless (and voiceless). “I do not encourage anyone to join any part of Z.O.G. However, military training is good training for anyone: tactics and physical and self defense and discipline are key to any Christian’s way of life and should be taken into one’s consideration.” The original KKK is against it too. “We have opposed the war in Iraq since day one,” national director Pastor Thomas Robb tells me. “If we are going to have a war then it needs to be done constitutionally.”
But none of this anti-war sentiment has stopped them taking advantage of the opportunities for training. “We do encourage them to sign up for the military. We can use the training to secure the resistance to our government,” says Wilson. “Every one of them takes a pact of secrecy . . . Our military doesn’t agree with our political beliefs, they are not supposed to be in the military, but they’re there, in ever greater numbers.” He claims to have 190 members serving. Billy Roper, founder of White Revolution, is another advocate. “A number of skinheads have gone into armed forces for education, college, tuition, and the military training provided,” he says. “They are using it to secure the future for white children. Anyone in the movement overseas knows they are getting training and financial help. America began in bloody revolution and it might end that way.” Even Forrest, who talks with a glint in his eye about his time in Iraq, is actually against the war in essence. “I don’t believe in the War on Terror,” he says. “It’s a war to protect Israel; I don’t think we need to be over there, I just went. I get in this conversation a lot, but I don’t like it when people call me a warrior for Israel.”
Tom Leyden was in the movement for fifteen years before he managed to extricate himself in 1996. “I had to get out mostly because of my kids,” he says on the phone. “I realized that the movement wasn’t after me but my children. I was an organizer and recruiter, and I realized it wasn’t me they wanted but my children, my boys would be the next generation and militants are much more hardcore than their predecessors.” Forrest knows about Leyden and isn’t impressed. “That guy is a punk—I’ll eat him for lunch,” he says. “He’s milking the Jews—he had a couple of tattoos, said he was leader of the Hammerskins, there’s no rank structure in the ’skins like he says. He has everything to gain by doing this—he has to stay employed, so he says, ‘Skinheads are back!’” Leyden provides me with photographs of current servicemen with racist tattoos riding up their arms. “The military says maybe 1 percent is gang members,” he says, “well, that’s 14,000 people: they don’t do training exercises that big! 90 percent of the gangs in the US are street gangs but 9 percent are white supremacists. That’s 1,400 people are being trained by the armed forces who are extremist racists.”
I stalk neo-Nazi forums for a period and they are still replete with bravado and machismo from people who claim to be soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan who are shooting the locals not to further the military’s strategic goals but because killing “hajjis” is their duty as white militants. The website New Saxon is a social networking website for “people of European descent.”18 One of the possible professions when making a profile is the military. There are currently forty-six members who claim to be serving. There is even a group—populated by six professed soldiers called “White Military Men”—started by a young man whose page is headlined with the phrase “FightingforWhites.” “All men with military experience, retired or active/reserve should join this group to see how many men have experience to build an army. We want to win a war, we need soldiers,” his profile reads. “FightingforWhites” is actually Lance Corporal Burton of the Second Battalion Fox Company Pit 2097, from Florida. In his About Me section, he writes: “Love to shoot my M16A2 service rifle effectively at the Hachies (Iraqis),” and among his passions is: “Love to watch things blow up (Hachies House).” His turn-offs include: “Overweight, lazy, illegals, *WIGGERS*, rape crimes, soldiers that died in Iraq, the Air Force (I called in an airstrike and they apparently had ‘tea time’ when it was called in).” On his wall his friend writes: “THANKS BROTHER!!!! kill a couple towel heads for me ok!”
There are other examples of the same ostentatious advertising of military credentials on neo-Nazi websites. On the forum of the website Blood and Honour, neo-Nazis encourage their serving comrades to commit indiscriminate murder, and allude to the training they are getting. “I am in the ARMY right now,” writes 88Soldier88. “You have no idea how ‘nice’ we have to treat these fucking people. I work in the Detainee Holding Area so I see these fuckers every day (Terrorists) and we have to treat them better than our own troops. Its sick. I am in this until 2013. I am in the Infantry but want to go SF [Special Forces]. Hopefully the training will prepare me for what I hope is to come.”19 “I get out in 2009. I have the training I need and will pass it on to others when I get out,” writes AMERICANARYAN. 88Soldier88 says he is leaving for Iraq in three days. “Aye bro stay safe!!” says AngryAryanHitman, “try get a few notches on ya rifflebutt from the filthy sand nigger cunts.” “Good Luck Mate, Stay safe, Get a few Kills, and come Home,” says “Paul.” “Good luck and i hope everything goes well stay safe keep your head down and try to bag a few sand niggers,” says 14 callum 88.
Via the website I wrote to a soldier, Jacob Berg, who claimed to be serving in Iraq. “There are actually alot more ‘skinheads’ ‘nazis’ White supremacists now then there has been in a very long time,” he wrote back. “Us racists are actually getting into the millatary alot now because If we dont every one who already is will take pitty on killing sand niggers. yes I have killed women, yes I have killed children, and yes I have killed Older people. But the biggest reson Im so proud of my kills Is because by killing a brown many white people will live to see a new dawn.”
In 2009, the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks released the internal emails of the NSM, including mine, and uncovered a number of military members conversing with the leadership back in the US. As the SPLC documents:
Among those who contacted NSM was an infantryman who identified himself as Kyle R. Wrobel. Writing from a hotmail contact, Wrobel told NSM that he was from Cleveland, Ohio. “i am a sergeant in the US Army infantry, currently serving my second combat tour to iraq,” he wrote on Jan. 17, 2008. “i vehemently support your cause, and want to become heavily involved. my wife and i both advocate and support the cause. i want a lifetime membership and want to
