Posts Tagged ‘hammerskins’
 
November 5, 2012 0

Idaho White Supremacist Wounds Two Deputies in Shootout

Kyle Alan Batt, a 27-year-old white suprema­cist from Cald­well, Idaho, remains hos­pi­tal­ized fol­low­ing a shootout on Octo­ber 23 in which Batt allegedly shot two Canyon County deputies search­ing for him in con­nec­tion with an aggra­vated assault inves­ti­ga­tion. The shoot­ings are the lat­est in a string of nearly 30 shootouts between police and domes­tic extrem­ists in the United States since 2009.

The inci­dent began ear­lier in the day when Batt allegedly appeared at the home of a woman with whom he had been hav­ing a rela­tion­ship. Batt report­edly car­ried a firearm and made threats at the woman. The woman called Cald­well police, but Batt had already left the scene when offi­cers arrived.

Later, five Canyon County sheriff’s deputies went to a res­i­dence in Cald­well look­ing for Batt.  Batt allegedly opened fire at the offi­cers as they approached the house, hit­ting two of them before flee­ing. One offi­cer was able to return fire and hit Batt before he fled. A few hours later, deputies found Batt hid­ing in a nearby garage, at which point he report­edly tried to take his own life by shoot­ing himself.

One of the two wounded deputies remains in seri­ous con­di­tion; the other was treated and released with only minor injuries. Batt was listed in crit­i­cal condition.

Batt has a long crim­i­nal his­tory, includ­ing sev­eral drug con­vic­tions. He is also a white suprema­cist with a large “white power” tat­too stretched across his breast­bone. He has con­nec­tions with other white suprema­cists in the Nampa-Boise area, includ­ing mem­bers of the Ham­mer­skins racist skin­head group. The Ham­mer­skins’ pres­ence in this area has sig­nif­i­cantly increased in recent years and the Ham­mer­skins held their 2012 “Ham­mer­fest,” the group’s annual large white power music con­cert, in the Nampa-Boise area on Octo­ber 6, less than a cou­ple of weeks before the shootout.

Among the 100+ atten­dees at the Boise Ham­mer­fest was Brent Rack­ley, the band­mate of Ham­mer­skin Wade Page, who killed six peo­ple and injured more dur­ing a shoot­ing ram­page at a Sikh tem­ple in Wis­con­sin in August 2012. It is not known if Batt attended Hammerfest.

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August 10, 2012 0

ADL Releases New Report On White Power Music Scene In The U.S.

The recent tragic shoot­ing spree at the Sikh tem­ple in Oak Creek, Wis­con­sin, in which Wade Michael Page killed six peo­ple before killing him­self after a shootout with police, has drawn atten­tion to the shad­owy world of white power music.

Page, a com­mit­ted white suprema­cist and mem­ber of the Ham­mer­skins, a hard­core racist skin­head group, was heav­ily involved in the white power music scene in the United States. He played in a num­ber of white power bands over the pre­vi­ous 12 years, most promi­nently the bands Def­i­nite Hate and End Apathy.

Page was just one of hun­dreds of white suprema­cist musi­cians lis­tened to by thou­sands of white suprema­cists in the United States and beyond. Today, white power music per­me­ates the sub­cul­ture of the white suprema­cist move­ment. Not all white suprema­cists enjoy white power music, but many of them do, espe­cially neo-Nazis and racist skin­heads. For lis­ten­ers, white power music is not sim­ply enter­tain­ment. It is music with a mes­sage, a medium used to express an ide­ol­ogy suf­fused with anger, hatred and violence.

ADL’s new report, The Sounds of Hate: The White Power Music Scene in the United States in 2012, details the cur­rent state of the white power music scene.

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August 8, 2012 3

Girlfriend of Suspected Sikh Temple Shooter Arrested

On Tues­day, author­i­ties inves­ti­gat­ing the Wis­con­sin Sikh Tem­ple shoot­ing arrested the for­mer girl­friend of Wade Page, the sus­pected shooter, on a weapons charge. Misty Cook (whose for­mal name may be Brenda Misty Cook), 31, was charged with being a felon in pos­ses­sion of a firearm after police allegedly found a weapon in the house she shared with Page.

Misty Cook (on right) with Volks­front mem­bers, circa 2007–2008

Accord­ing to court records, Cook had a felony con­vic­tion in 2005 for flee­ing and elud­ing police in Mil­wau­kee County. She received a sen­tence of 18 months’ pro­ba­tion and served 97 days in jail. Cook was not involved in the deadly shoot­ing, but like Page, was a white supremacist.

Cook’s con­nec­tions to the white suprema­cist move­ment date back a num­ber of years. Accord­ing to a post­ing she made on April 18, 2012, to an on-line forum for sup­port­ers of the Ham­mer­skins, a racist skin­head group, she “heard Pas­tor But­ler speak 8 years ago and it was very inspir­ing.”  “Pas­tor But­ler” is Richard But­ler, the deceased founder of the noto­ri­ous neo-Nazi group Aryan Nations. 

In the mid-2000s, Cook had a strong asso­ci­a­tion with the hard­core white suprema­cist group Volks­front, which has a pres­ence in the Chicago area, where she lived at the time. A Volks­front spokesper­son even admit­ted to the Mil­wau­kee Journal-Sentinel that she had dated sev­eral Volks­front mem­bers. How­ever, for unknown rea­sons, she broke with that group around 2008.

By 2009, she had become an active sup­porter of the Ham­mer­skins, join­ing Crew 38. Like other hard­core racist skin­head groups, the Ham­mer­skins do not allow women to become mem­bers.  Crew 38 (the 38 stands for “Crossed Ham­mers”) is a “sup­port group” they started for women, hangers-on, and peo­ple who wished to become Ham­mer­skins someday.

Cook posted fre­quently to the Crew 38 site, author­ing over 850 mes­sages in a three-year period. In many post­ings, Cook expressed sup­port for the Ham­mer­skins, stat­ing in one post, for exam­ple, “I have a lot of respect for what the Ham­mers do. I just tend to enjoy broth­ers who are local and I see them all the time.” On her screen avatar for that forum, she iden­ti­fies her­self as “Crew38 Wisconsin.”

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