Neo-Nazi Bill White Arrested in Mexico

Authorities arrested neo-Nazi Bill White in Mexico on June 8, after he allegedly spent nearly a month on the run.  He is reportedly back in the United States and being held in Miami, Florida.

A federal arrest warrant was issued for White after it was discovered that he was no longer in Virginia, where he was on probation.  A federal jury had convicted him in December 2009 on four counts, including making threats on the Internet and witness intimidation. White, who served over two years in prison, was released in April 2011.

White may have feared being sent back to prison. His appeal of his conviction on First Amendment grounds led a federal appeals court to uphold the conviction in March 2012. However, the court also ruled that White should have received a stiffer sentence on one of the counts involving intimidating letters he sent to the African-American residents of a Virginia Beach housing complex who were filing a discrimination suit against their white landlord. The U.S. government, which had originally indicted White, asserted that because at least one of the tenants had young children, White should have received an enhanced sentence for targeting an especially vulnerable population. The appeals court agreed with the government’s argument. White had been scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in Roanoke, Virginia, in May for resentencing in the case.

Since his release from prison in April 2011, White had been writing for two anti-Semitic publications, the conspiracy-oriented American Free Press (AFP) and The Barnes Review (TBR), a Holocaust denial publication. Both are published by long-time anti-Semite Willis Carto.

More recently, in March 2012, AFP announced that it was hosting a book release dinner in honor of White’s new book, Centuries of Revolution: Democracy, Communism, Zionism. The event was co-hosted by TBR and the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens.

White is the former head of the now-defunct American National Socialist Workers Party, and a former leader in the National Socialist Movement.

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.