Richard Spencer’s Neo-Nazi Friend Hopes to Bring More Hate to Montana Town
An apparent alliance of Alt-Right leader Richard Spencer with out-of-state neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin has already unleashed a barrage of vicious bigotry at the Jewish community of Whitefish, Montana. Further escalating the conflict, Anglin announced that for the planned armed white nationalist march through Whitefish in January, “We will be busing in skinheads from the Bay Area.”
“I have already worked out most of the details with the leaders of the local groups,” claimed Anglin. Details about participating white power skinhead groups are still unclear, but the nature of the outside groups with whom Anglin has worked can be seen in the pages of his Daily Stormer website.
Anglin signaled his relationship with the Golden State Skinheads (GSS) and allied Traditionalist Worker Party (TWP) in a July 2016 article posted on the Daily Stormer. The two groups had organized a Sacramento, California rally with the California Skinheads to show opposition to “globalism” and to clash with those protesting Donald Trump in California. Fighting between racists and anti-racists at the rally led to seven people being stabbed and nine hospitalized.
Anglin appears to relish such violence, seeing it as a potential recruitment tool. He dubbed the Sacramento conflict “the first major battle of the dawning race war in America” and “a decisive victory for the forces of good.” He continued,
“Five of the terrorists ended up stabbed and are now in the hospital… Nigga (sic) done got stabbed up wiff (sic) hes (sic) own knife! Only one of our guys was stabbed. This is a monumental victory, both symbolically and literally…. So it’s good publicity… I’m sure more than a few young White (sic) kids are hearing this news and beginning the process that will lead them to eventually fighting on the streets alongside us. All very exciting… We are in a race war. And I mean to win it. Hail Victory!” [Emphasis in original].
The Traditionalist Workers Party
Obliterating any “Alt-Right” façade, the mission statement of the Traditionalist Worker Party declares, “We are unapologetically nationalists, fighting to secure the existence of our people and a future for White children.” This statement plays on the infamous 14 Words penned by neo-Nazi David Lane. A member of the terror underground, the Order, Lane died in prison while serving a 150-year sentence for his role in the murder of Jewish talk show host Alan Berg.
Though the Traditionalist Workers Party has not yet announced intentions to visit Montana in January, Anglin lauded praise on the violence-linked white nationalist group.
“Excellent work in Sacramento, Matt,” Anglin praised TWP leader Matt Heimbach during an interview after the violent clash in Sacramento. The TWP leader responded, “Thank you so much comrade, the true respect belongs to our very own ‘Sacramento Spartans’.” Heimbach described that the TWP has a “very active chapter in California along with our alliance with the Golden State Skinheads (GSS)…I got to know the comrades in GSS and really respect them for their dedication to the Cause.”
Matt Heimbach is a name familiar to IREHR readers. Heimbach founded a relatively successful White Student Union at Towson University in Maryland and created the Traditionalist Youth Network. At a 2013 National Socialist Movement rally in Kansas City, Heimbach was giving the Seig Heil stiff-armed salute just like the rest of the neo-Nazis.
During his conversation with Anglin, Heimbach spoke of his affinity for Nazi thugs:
“Our Cause here in America needs an SA to serve the same purpose they did in Germany in the 1920’s and 1930’s, to be the frontline soldiers of our nationalist struggle and thus in this day I call for movement unity between the ‘boots and suits,’ it is the only path to victory.”
The SA refers to the Sturmabteilung, or Storm Detachment. Better known as “brown shirts,” the SA was the early paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party, serving to violently attack its enemies. The SA played a lead role in Kristallnacht, the 1938 pogrom that saw 91 Jews killed, more than 900 synagogues set on fire, some 7,500 Jewish businesses and homes looted, and about 30,000 Jewish men sent to concentration camps.
The Golden State Skinheads
Among the other “forces of good” in California that Anglin spoke highly of are the Golden State Skinheads, a statewide white power skinhead crew.
The Golden State Skinheads casts itself as a “social club of California white nationalists.” Behind this veneer lurks an affinity for Nazism. Photos on the group’s website show young men throwing up Nazi salutes, their shirts emblazoned with GSS’s Iron Cross logo. Another photo shows an individual wearing a swastika shirt.
The Golden State Skinheads also promotes the Blood and Honor American Division. Blood and Honor was formed in 1987 by British neo-Nazi Ian Stuart Donaldson of the white power band Skrewdriver. In 1988 Donaldson wrote,
“Eventually there will be a race war and we have to be strong enough in numbers to win it. I’ll die to keep this country pure and if it means bloodshed at the end of the day, then let it be.”
Donaldson also boasted of having ties to “some of Adolf’s SS who escaped the war trials” and who would “visit me at our concerts” to “discuss our common goal, getting rid of Britain’s uninvited guests.”[1]
For the Golden State Skinheads, Blood and Honor “is the figurative table at which all White nationalists may gather in the spirit of brotherhood and racial unity to coordinate efforts on sociopolitical activism.”
Since the group’s founding, Blood and Honor members have been convicted of numerous acts of violence. In 1998, four Blood and Honor members brutally murdered two homeless men in Tampa, Florida. In 2011, five Blood and Honor associates firebombed the residence of an interracial couple in Arkansas.
Racist skinheads who idealize friends of the Nazi SS and a white nationalist who pines for streets filled with Nazi brown shirts. These are the unwelcome guests that Richard Spencer’s bigotry may be inviting to the town of Whitefish, Montana.
Anglin and David Duke
As if to make clear his own endgame, Anglin appeared on neo-Nazi David Duke’s radio show on December 27 to talk about Whitefish. This exchange summed up a vision that would have resonated amongst the 1938 Nazi perpetrators of Kristallnacht:
Duke: “If we don’t overthrow the Jewish power over our media, over our government, over our banking institutions, if this doesn’t happen, there is no possibility of our salvation…[T]he Jewish issue is the issue, isn’t it. It’s the reason why we are now on the edge of abyss.”
Anglin: “It’s the only issue, and it’s the only issue that really needs solved. I mean, we talk about these other problems, but they’re all stemming from this Jewish problem…I mean feminism, the homosexual problem, the black problem, the immigration problem…If you got these Jews, if you got them out of the way, and out of this manipulation, and all of this psychological and emotional manipulation, that they do, that they use against us. If we remove them we would be able to solve all these problems.”
You can stand with the good people of Whitefish, and against Richard Spencer and Andrew Anglin’s white nationalism and anti-Semitism, by supporting Love Lives Here and the Montana Human Rights Network.
NOTES
[1] See Lowles, Nick and Steve Silver. 1998. White Noise: Inside the International Nazi Skinhead Scene. Searchlight. London.
