US military battling neo-Nazis in its own ranks
They call it "rahowa" - short for racial holy
war - and they are preparing for it by joining the ranks of the world's
fiercest fighting machine, the US military.
White supremacists, neo-Nazis and skinhead groups
encourage followers to enlist in the Army and Marine Corps to acquire the
skills to overthrow what some call the ZOG - the Zionist Occupation Government.
Get in, get trained and get out to brace for the coming race war.
If this scenario seems like fantasy or bluster, civil
rights organizations take it as deadly serious, especially given recent events.
Former US Army soldier Wade Page opened fire with a 9mm handgun at a Sikh
temple in Wisconsin on Aug. 5, murdering six people and critically wounding
three before killing himself during a shootout with police.
The US Defense Department as well has stepped up efforts
to purge violent racists from its ranks, earning praise from organizations such
as the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has tracked and exposed hate groups
since the 1970s.
Page, who was 40, was well known in the white supremacist
music scene. In the early 2000s he told academic researcher Pete Simi that he
became a neo-Nazi after joining the military in 1992. Fred Lucas, who served
with him, said Page openly espoused his racist views until 1998, when he was
demoted from sergeant to specialist, discharged and barred from re-enlistment.
While at Fort Bragg, in North Carolina, Page told Simi ,
he made the acquaintance of James Burmeister, a skinhead paratrooper who in
1995 killed a black Fayetteville couple in a racially motivated shooting.
Burmeister was sentenced to life in prison and died in 2007.
No one knows how many white supremacists have served
since then. A 2008 report commissioned by the Justice Department found half of
all right-wing extremists in the United States had military experience.
"We don't really think this is a huge problem, at
Bragg, and across the Army," said Colonel Kevin Arata, a spokesman for
Fort Bragg.
"In my 26 years in the Army, I've never seen
it," the former company commander said.
Experts have identified the presence of street gang
members as a more widespread problem. Even so, the Pentagon has launched three
major pushes in recent decades to crack down on racist extremists. The first
directive was issued in 1986, when Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger ordered
military personnel to reject supremacist organizations.
That failed to stop former Marine T.J. Leyden, with
two-inch SS bolts tattooed above his collar, from serving from 1988 to 1991
while openly supporting neo-Nazi causes. A member of the Hammerskin Nation, a
skinhead group, he said he hung a swastika from his locker, taking it down only
when his commander politely asked him to ahead of inspections by the commanding
general.
"I went into the Marine Corps for one specific
reason: I would learn how shoot," Leyden told Reuters. "I also
learned how to use C-4 (explosives), blow things up. I took all my military
skills and said I could use these to train other people," said Leyden, 46,
who has since renounced the white power movement and is a consultant for the
anti-Nazi Simon Wiesenthal Center.
In 1995, eight months before the Fort Bragg murders, two
former Army soldiers bombed the Oklahoma City federal building, killing 168
people. With a growing awareness of the spreading militia movement, the
Pentagon in 1996 banned military personnel from participating in supremacist
causes and authorized commanders to cashier personnel for rallying, recruiting
or training racists.
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