A couple of years ago, I was browsing the history section of Recycled Books, Records, and CD’s in Denton and came across a book that I have, to this day, been unable to finish. Ralph Ginzburg’s 100 Years of Lynchings is a disturbing and distressing look into black lynchings in the American South and Midwest from the late-19th Century to the early 1960s. It’s explicitly-detailed, nauseating, and helps the reader realize that what they knew about the Jim Crow South was a watered-down, Reader’s Digest version of Southern U.S. history.
Contained in the pages of the book is the real history of the American South.
The kicker of the book is that Ginzburg wrote very little for it, as the contents are press clippings from various newspapers chronicling the lynching events. Even worse, these newspaper articles are largely supportive and in admiration of those white communities who took a perverted and horrific sense of justice into their own hands.
But since the years immortalized in Ginzburg’s book, the white supremacist movements that largely fanned the flames leading to incidents like the ones in the pages have been largely rendered impotent. Public perception changed during and following the Civil Rights Movement and these groups found themselves on the receiving end of public backlash and lawsuits that stripped their coffers, and ultimately, their means of influence (most notably with the wrongful death lawsuit brought by Beulah Mae Donald, mother of lynching victim Michael Donald, that bankrupted the United Klans of America).
But 25 years after Beulah Mae Donald castrated the Klan, white supremacy saw a notable uptick in support and membership, partially in response to the election of President Barack Obama and grievances regarding lax border security, illegal immigrant naturalization, and more recently, Syrian refugees and the removal of Confederate images from public areas and government buildings. This uptick has been considered largely benign, but taking into consideration events that took place at the end of April, some would contend that the “benign” uptick in white power membership may be a little more malignant than initially thought.
45 miles west of Atlanta, Ga., on a rural highway, sits the Georgia Peach Oyster Bar. While sporting the usual rural bar persona — lingering cigarette smoke, billiards, a television mounted in the corner — the Georgia Peach also has a stage decked out in white nationalist support — including Confederate, Nazi, and Klan imagery — and a single door in the back that separates a shady meeting room from the rest of the establishment.
It was in this room, following an event in the Confederate holy land, Stone Mountain, Ga., that saw nine arrests (eight of whom were people protesting the white supremacist’s presence), representatives from 11 white nationalist organizations came together to sign a document pledging support to the Aryan Nationalist Alliance, an umbrella organization meant to unify all white nationalist groups and stop the petty in-fighting that has kept them from fully realizing what they have in common: a belief in the superiority of the white race.
The Aryan Nationalist Alliance is organized by the National Socialist Movement (NSM) and is currently backed by:
- Loyal White Knights, considered to be most militant and violent Klan group in history;
- Rasistisk Loyalists, a worldwide Aryan militant group;
- Vinlanders Social Club, a skinhead group known for drinking, brawling, and following a racist version of Odinism;
- Aryan Nations, a once-powerful group that attracted a wide-spectrum of racist and antisemitic ideas;
- Texas Rebel Knights, a fundamentally-Christian Klan organization composed of American “patriots”;
- America First, a former anti-war group that lobbied to keep the United States out of World War II, but continues to exist as a pro-Nazi, antisemitic group;
- Racial Nationalist Party of America, a white nationalist group based out of Lockport, N.Y.,
- SS Action Group, a white power splinter group formerly part of the NSM;
- Phineas Priesthood, white Christian nationalist organization inspired by the Biblical figure Phineas and tied to Larry McQuilliams, who tried to burn down a Mexican consulate building in Austin, Texas in December 2014;
- Aryan Strike-Force, a white power organization dedicated to the ethnic cleansing of minority groups.
That evening, members of each of these factions, now unified as the Aryan Nationalist Alliance, gathered in a horse pasture. They held torches and surrounded burlap-wrapped, gasoline-soaked tokens of their beliefs — a swastika and a cross. Will Quigg, the Grand Wizard of the California chapter of the Loyal White Knights, shouted to the gathered personalities of the white power movement:
“For God! For race! For nation! Approach your symbol! Do not turn your back on the symbol!”
The men lit these tokens as they have for over a century and chanted their iconic manta — “white power!” — while the flames touched the darkend, dotted Dixie sky.
To ask those who formed this white power compact what the events of that night mean is to be answered with optimism. NSM leader Jeff Schoep told the gathered white power advocates while the burning cross and swastika flickered in their eyes:
“This is making history. We are putting together all the white nationalist organizations… There is no more time for division, whether it’s over religion, whether it’s over uniforms, whether it’s over symbols. If you’re still trying to create division and you’re trying to say you’re involved in this white power movement, there is something wrong with you.”
But to ask people like J. Michael Martinez, a Klan historian and author of Carpetbaggers, Cavalry, and the Ku Klux Klan, the alliance isn’t an indicator that the influence of the white power movement will grow in any meaningful way.
Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, shares Martinez’s skepticism. In an interview with Vocativ over the subject, Pitcavage said of the alliance:
“Bless their hearts. I’m sure they’re cross-half-burned sort of people. They’re probably also ignorant of how these things have gone in the past… This is something that white supremacists try every now and then. There have been Klan umbrella groups and other generic umbrella groups. They last for a couple of years. It doesn’t really help them do anything that they weren’t already doing.”
A member of the NSM referred to the alliance as a “political movement, not a hatred movement,” while NSM leader Jeff Schoep spoke positively of the alliance’s future:
“We’re using social networking. We still use old-school leaflets. We have NSM records. We’ve got the music. We’ve produced video games… There’s so many things we do to outreach… We try to be all-encompassing.”
And that’s what is so worrisome about this move by the NSM and their ilk. It’s so much easier to get your hands on white power materials than it used to be. While writing this article, I came across scores of white power writings, music, and and promotional materials on the surface web. If I had access to the Deep Web, I’m sure the breadth of available material is even more staggering.
Even though Facebook works diligently to remove white power propaganda from their pages, other social media outlets aren’t as discriminatory in their content. Members of the NSM and other white nationalist groups use Twitter to promote their beliefs and websites devoted to these groups have no shortage of information and misinformation to entice people who may find camaraderie among white nationalists.
https://twitter.com/nsm88/status/726581202312941568
https://twitter.com/CulturalCombat/status/726095020982312960
i love when @FoxNews interviews #trumpprotesters. they're literally so fucking stupid its so funny. lmfaooo #Trump2016 #whitepride
— Ṣarah ☼ (@_buckyeahh) April 24, 2016
While anti-white power sentiment is more commonly found among social media users and the population at large, a more mainstream version of white nationalism is more recurrent than many believe. With white nationalism being closely affiliated with “patriot” movements, the love and preservation of God and country, beliefs in a cascading nation due to government corruption, partisan division among the citizenry on nearly every pressing issue, and the staggering amount of misinformation and ignorance cloaking that same citizenry, the influence of white nationalism has been interwoven into the larger frustrated narrative.
Consider the adoption of #BlueLivesMatter, #AllLivesMatter, and more recently, #WhiteLivesMatter as the Black Lives Matter movement gained steam. Those behind the counter-movements, as well as those who support them, view Black Lives Matter as just a black advocacy group creating dramatic divides in racial harmony, even though the movement’s only function was to raise awareness to the plight black Americans still face everyday in a country that claims to be “post-racial.”
In the last few years, many have started wearing their prejudices on their sleeves. This has largely contributed to the success of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, for example, and is commonly observed when race, gender, or sexual orientation become the subject of conversation. These same people are quick to respond to criticism of their bigotry with a criticism of “political correctness” and turn themselves into victims while victimizing someone else.
Conservative media is wildly popular among these circles and checking the authenticity of what is being pushed is a widely-ignored course of action. When Dylann Roof killed nine people at the Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C. last summer, “news” outlets like Fox News tried to paint him as a product of “leftism” and that his motivation was anti-Christian philosophy, despite his actions likely being racially-motivated and likely influenced by white nationalism (which is a right-wing philosophy), as evident by his writings and his sporting of a Rhodesian flag and Confederate symbols.
Dylann Roof is an example of how accessible groups like the Klan and NSM are now.
While the NSM and other white nationalist groups are dangerous upon themselves, what is more dangerous than these institutions is the watered-down white nationalism working its way into the mainstream. While the stereotypical appearance of NSM and Klan members are burly, poorly-educated white men with swastikas tattooed on their arms, the current face of the white power movement is a man named Matthew Heimbach. He’s young, intelligent, attractive, has a knack for organization, and speaks proudly of his beliefs — which he calls “traditionalism” — frequently in white power lectures.
Another face of the white nationalist movement is Jared Taylor, a Yale-educated man frequently seen in a suit and tie, who founded the New Century Foundation, a white-power think tank, and hosts an annual conference where “racist intellectuals rub shoulders with Klansmen, neo-Nazis, and other white supremacists.”
White nationalism has never had this kind of reach before and the climate is perfect for their numbers to grow. Even with that being said, we cannot say for certain that white power movements will grow in numbers and in popularity due in part to the Aryan Nationalist Alliance. But if the NSM and other nationalist groups have their way, memberships will skyrocket.
Even if people like Martinez and Pitcavage are right and this alliance will ultimately mean nothing for the white power movement, it’s important that we are all aware of it, because if they’re wrong and this alliance helps remove the life support from the white power movement, that April night at the Georgia Peach Oyster Bar will be remembered as a pivotal event in bringing the movement back to life.
Featured image by Confederate Till Death, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
[H/T Vocativ]
