May Not So Merry For White Supremacists

April ended with a shock to the racist world, as prominent Arizona white supremacist and border vigilante J.T. Ready fatally shot four people before turning his gun on himself.   White supremacists would not be given a chance to catch their breaths, however, as the month of May continued to serve them setback after setback.

Christopher Brooks of American Front

On the heels of the Ready murder-suicide came a high profile incident in Florida in early May, in which law enforcement officers rounded up almost the entire Florida contingent of the hardcore racist skinhead group American Front on weapons, paramilitary training, and hate crimes charges.  To date, authorities have made 14 arrests.  According to court documents, the group allegedly conducted paramilitary training to prepare for an “inevitable race war” and discussed possible acts of violence ranging from shooting at a house to attacking an anti-racist group.

This just set the stage for a wave of arrests and setbacks to the white supremacist movement in May, including:

• In mid-May, Virginia neo-Nazi Bill White became a fugitive, announcing that he had “left the country,” though authorities think otherwise.  White, who had been released from prison in April, missed a re-sentencing court hearing and possibly feared he might be sent back to prison.

•  On May 17, court documents revealed that a Minnesota white supremacist, Joseph Benjamin Thomas, arrested with another white supremacist a few weeks earlier on drug and weapons charges, respectively, had allegedly planned to attack the Mexican consulate in St. Paul.

• On May 19, anti-racist activists crashed a Chicago-area white supremacist event billed as an “economic summit,” attacking attendees and sending three to the hospital.  Police arrested five anti-racists on charges related to the attack.  Adding insult to injury, police also arrested two of the attendees of the white supremacist event—one for child pornography and the other for unlawful possession of weapons by a felon.

• On May 30, Joliet resident Brian Moudry, a long-time Chicago-area white supremacist associated with the Creativity Movement, was arrested on federal arson and civil rights charges in connection with the 2007 arson of an African-American family’s house a few doors down from Moudry’s.

• Also on May 30, agents from the Washington, D.C., Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested Virginia white supremacist Douglas Howard Story for allegedly attempting to obtain a fully automatic AK-47.  Story had a track record of on-line comments about responding with violence to encounters with police and about how President Obama might be assassinated.