Then & Now

Bill white will long be remembered in Toledo. And as he gathers his crew around him for yet another appearance - if you believe, his mind has turned, once again, to creating chaos and disrupting business as usual.

I have written quite a bit about Bill White and feel that he is still worth taking a good long look at. As Tony Willow and I are in the process of putting together another episode in our series about him, I found myself digging in the archives once again and what I found truly meirts more than a passing mention.

In Februrary of 2002, Bill White announced that he was filing a lawsuit against a man by the name of Mark Salotte as well as Chuck Munson and Anti-Racist-Action. The reason for the suit was that he believed that he had been libled by Salotte and others. Now, I know that is like the pot calling the kettle black - but we are talking about Bill White, after all.

I unearthed Salotte's article which is a pretty good synopsis of the life and times of Bill White. While much of the article talked about his life as an anarchist, it eventually described his metamorposis into a neo-Nazi. The interesting part about all of this, to me, is that much of what he said then still applies to Bill White today. Hence, I am going to publish a portion of that article.

“Though people are occasionally taken in by his pretences at journalistic
objectivity (for maybe a few weeks), his absurd accounts of events are
pretty generally assumed to be made up, by his friends on the right wing
just as much as by the left. But he has often proved to be somewhat
perceptive in reading between the lines of movement dialogue, picking up on
divisive issues and figuring how how to bring out those issues. And even
the most rigid and ideological groups on the fascist right have shown
themselves willing to take up his suggestions, at least in their dealings
with the anti-racist movement.

“What keeps Bill amusing is the number of outright lies and rumors he
spreads. When you keep in mind that none of it is real, it almost makes a
nice spy story. "Often i find myself attacking myself from one IP address,
defending myself from another, and then watching the dopes try to take
sides and taking all my manifestations seriously." (7) So you get, for
example, a post claiming to be a press release from him saying he's joined
the National Alliance, then 5 minutes later a post from him denying it but
saying it was a nice joke, then a joking post from Billy Roper.

“The rumors he spreads about activists are just as easy to dismiss. 75% of
what he reports is made up, and its easy to tell what parts that is --
usually the parts where the mystical racial fetishes show though the most
clearly. When, for example, he claims that such-and-such a "Jewish ARA
member" (especially when the individual in question is neither Jewish nor a
member of ARA) turned information over to the police about the
organization, nobody believes it anyways.

“The thing to keep in mind in dealing with all this is that we know exactly
who Bill White is and what he stands for, so none of these rumors matter in
the least. Whether he's a member of the National Alliance, or the Church of
the Creator, or the 'leader' of a thousand teenage terrorists, he's still
just a lone neo-nazi, and at that, one who's too unstable to be part of any
organization for too long anyhow.

“A joke making the rounds of the DC activist scene these days is that its a
good thing that Bill has finally started to get cozy with the nazis,
because when he tries to pull the sort of shit with them that he's been
trying on the left for the last five years, they won't just laugh it off,
they'll shoot his ass, and we'll finally be rid of him. Of course, its
funny cause its true... For the moment, he can claim to represent a "third
position" but in reality do nothing but provide ideological cover for
neo-Nazis. But sooner or later, it'll come time to put up or shut up. And
at that point, he'll either be reduced to taking orders from William Pierce
and his like (though one would think that the National Alliance could find
a propagandist who could actually spell and write complete sentences) or
trying to strike out on his own to maintain his image. Judging by the means
he's used to try and draw recruits from the left, this would mean anonymous
"poison pen" attacks, spreading snitch jackets and lies to break up
potential alliances, and generally misrepresenting any and every event to
fit his own personal reality -- stuff that's not likely to go over too well
in a movement that's known for leaving people who fall out of favor in
comas.”

Does that sound like anyone we all know? Now that he has wound his way through pissing off three-fourths of the racist right, one has to ask how long he will last with the National Socialist Movement. Now, Bill is smart - that's for sure. But Bill is also well known and his tactics are recognized by enough people that he is constantly being called into question. Of course, we have to consider that we are dealing with the NSM - they might not be as quick on the draw as some of the others.

One thing for certain, however, Bill White will not remain with the NSM forever. It will be very interesting to see if he is able to screw over them the way he has others. More interesting, however, is where does he go from here? The left doesn't want him. He will burn his bridges with the right. So, what's left?