Posts Tagged ‘hate crime’
 
August 14, 2012 0

White Supremacists React to Sikh Temple Shootings

Since the Sikh tem­ple shoot­ing in Wis­con­sin on August 5, reac­tions from Amer­i­can white suprema­cists have var­ied widely, from deplor­ing the shoot­ings to prais­ing the shooter, Wade Michael Page.

Early responses occurred before white suprema­cists learned the shooter was a long-time white suprema­cist.  Many reac­tions expressed con­cern that the mass shoot­ing would prompt calls for gun control. Others were unhappy with the tar­get.  “I have to say that Sikhs are the least objec­tion­able non-White immi­grant group in North Amer­ica by far!!” wrote one poster on the white suprema­cist dis­cus­sion forum Storm­front.   Another Storm­fron­ter agreed:  “There’s so many legit­i­mate ene­mies, it’s just so stu­pid to pick Sikhs.”  A poster to the Van­guard News Net­work (VNN) asked, “Why get focused on Sikhs?  Just weird.  Very spe­cific turd in a giant sewer…Our worst ene­mies are jews and white trai­tors.  If you aren’t fight­ing them, you just aren’t living.”

Oth­ers made crude jokes, as did this Storm­fron­ter from Wis­con­sin:  “In a related story, sev­eral gas sta­tions and con­ve­nience stores in the Mil­wau­kee area have put out Help Wanted signs.”

Soon, how­ever, white suprema­cists learned of Page’s extrem­ist past, prompt­ing a gen­eral attempt at dis­tanc­ing them­selves.  Some claimed the shoot­ing was not rep­re­sen­ta­tive of white suprema­cists.  Oth­ers thought it was poor tar­get­ing.  “He…never learned the cru­cial les­son,” posted one Storm­fron­ter.  “Don’t attack the symp­toms, attack the cause.”  A VNN poster opined that “I don’t mind the mas­sacres so much as the sheer idiocy of those doing the shoot­ing, the ran­dom thought­less­ness of their tar­gets.  If they are going to go out in a blaze of glory then they should at least attempt to select more polit­i­cally sig­nif­i­cant tar­gets instead of mean­ing­less indi­vid­u­als.”  Many expressed fear of a back­lash against the white suprema­cist movement.

Oth­ers, how­ever, thought of Page as a mar­tyr to the cause.  “See you in Val­halla, brother,” posted Zach But­ler, a North Car­olina white suprema­cist, to his Face­book pro­file.  One Orange County based white power music band, Armed and Ready, posted to its Face­book page:  “R.I.P. Brother Wade, out with a whim­per or out with a bang, it’s your choice.”

These sorts of sen­ti­ments appeared espe­cially pop­u­lar among mem­bers and sup­port­ers of the Ham­mer­skins, the large racist skin­head group of which Page was a mem­ber.   “For Wade, the fight goes on,” posted one Idaho Ham­mer­skin to Face­book.  “R.I.P. brother, you’ll be missed!” wrote another.  “RIP, Wade, U were one hell of a white patriot,” posted Robert Kopko, a Florida Ham­mer­skin.  Sev­eral days later, he announced that he was “gonna go out with some broth­ers an[d] have a cou­ple drinks for a fallen patriot.”  Another Florida Ham­mer­skin wrote that “I miss my good friend WADE!  HAIL WADE!!”

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August 6, 2012 1

ADL Connects Suspected Shooter at Wisconsin Sikh Temple to White Supremacist Skinhead Group

The man iden­ti­fied by law enforce­ment author­i­ties as the sus­pected gun­man in the Wis­con­sin mur­der spree on Sun­day, August 5, Wade Michael Page, 41, was a white suprema­cist skin­head known to the Anti-Defamation League for sev­eral years as the leader of End Apa­thy, a white power music band affil­i­ated with the Hammerskins. 

The Ham­mer­skins are a long­stand­ing hard­core racist skin­head group with a his­tory of vio­lence and hate crimes.  Page was him­self a mem­ber of the Ham­mer­skins (he was a “prospect” in 2011), and iden­ti­fied him­self as a North­ern Ham­mer­skin, part of the group’s Mid­west branch.  He was pre­vi­ously asso­ci­ated to vary­ing degrees with a vari­ety of other white suprema­cist bands. 

Page, who some­times referred to him­self by the pseu­do­nym “Jack Boot,”  is fes­tooned with white suprema­cist tat­toos, includ­ing a Nazi Death’s Head (Totenkopf) tat­too and a Ham­mer­skins tattoo.

Accord­ing to an inter­view Page gave to a Hammerskins-associated record label in 2010, he started End Apa­thy in 2005 and wrote many of its songs, as well as play­ing gui­tar and singing vocals. In recent years, End Apa­thy has been a fea­tured band at many Hammerskin-organized white power music con­certs, includ­ing the August 2010 “Meet  & Greet BBQ & Bands” in North Car­olina, the Ham­mer­skins’ St. Patty’s Day Show in March 2011 in Orlando, Florida, and Ham­mer­fest 2011 in Octo­ber 2011, also in Orlando.

Images of Wade Page:

Wade Page at Ham­mer­skin concert

Wade Page (on left) with Def­i­nite Hate

Wade Page (on right) at Ham­mer­skin event

Wade Page at Ham­mer­skin concert

Wade Page (on left) play­ing with Def­i­nite Hate

Wade Page and Def­i­nite Hate at 2011 Ham­mer­skins “St. Pad­dys Day” concert

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June 13, 2012 0

The Bloody Trail of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas

What’s the most vio­lent extrem­ist group in the United States today? The answer may be sur­pris­ing: it is the Aryan Broth­er­hood of Texas (ABT), one of the largest white suprema­cist prison gangs in the coun­try. Accord­ing to ADL records, since 2000, this racist group—which has no rela­tion­ship to the older, “orig­i­nal” Aryan Brotherhood—has killed more Amer­i­cans than any other domes­tic extrem­ist group.

Since 2000, ABT mem­bers and asso­ciates have com­mit­ted at least 29 mur­ders in the United States, all in Texas or neigh­bor­ing states. The true num­ber is likely con­sid­er­ably higher, as most mur­ders that occur behind prison walls do not get reported by the media. The 29 known killings are all “street” killings, more evi­dence of the grow­ing pres­ence of racist prison gangs on the streets of America.

Why are there so many ABT mur­ders? There are two main rea­sons. The first is that the ABT incul­cates an accep­tance of vio­lence in its mem­bers; vio­lence is as often as not the first—or even only—solution to a per­ceived problem.

The sec­ond relates to the nature of racist prison gangs in gen­eral and the ABT in par­tic­u­lar: the ABT is an orga­nized crime group as well as a white suprema­cist group. The ABT con­sti­tu­tion even acknowl­edges that it can be a “hin­drance” to put ide­o­log­i­cal beliefs before “busi­ness trans­ac­tions” and that the group has to gen­er­ate income to fur­ther its “mis­sion and growth.” The result is that many ABT mur­ders take place in con­nec­tion with their “tra­di­tional” crim­i­nal activ­i­ties, such as metham­phet­a­mine traf­fick­ing, home inva­sions, and iden­tity theft.

Even more ABT mur­ders are actu­ally inter­nal mur­ders, in which gang mem­bers kill their own, usu­ally because they believe or sus­pect the vic­tim has become an infor­mant or bro­ken gang rules, but also some­times due to fac­tional or other inter­nal fights. It is almost as dan­ger­ous to be an ABT mem­ber as it is to encounter one.

Iron­i­cally, only 3 of the 29 known mur­ders linked to this white suprema­cist group in the past 12 years were actu­ally hate-related, though there have been other hate-related crimes by ABT mem­bers, rang­ing from assaults to arsons of African-American churches.

There is no doubt­ing, how­ever, the vicious­ness of the ABT killings, some of which were torture-murders while oth­ers were execution-style killings, in which the victim’s body was burned, decap­i­tated or oth­er­wise dis­mem­bered in order to make iden­ti­fi­ca­tion difficult.

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