Insanity Begets Insanity

And the insanity continues. This just goes to prove that in the neo-Nazi realm there is no loyalty...but, there is lots of insanity. Timothy Bland turned own his own and threatened not only the wife of a comrade - but their child. Insanity begets insanity and the insane attract others who are mad.

Man gets probation for threats to Va. neo-Nazi's wife


Posted to: Crime News Virginia



The Roanoke Times

© January 19, 2011

By Mike Gangloff



Timothy Bland, who pleaded guilty last year to threatening the wife of jailed neo-Nazi leader Bill White, was sentenced today to five years' probation.



Bland, 46, a Baltimore resident whose lawyer said he was a mentally ill follower of Bill White's online racist rants, told U.S. District Judge James Turk he was unaware of his actions when he phoned Meghan White.



"I feel terrible about what I did," Bland said. "I allowed someone to push me and prod me over a 2 1/2-year period until I lost control."



Defense lawyer Jim Crawford of Baltimore said Bland has a long history of mental illness and has been diagnosed as bipolar.



Federal sentencing guidelines suggested at least a year in prison. Crawford asked for probation, noting that Bland's mother, who financially supports him, has stage 4 breast cancer. Assistant U.S. Attorney Pat Hogeboom said he didn't object as long as strict controls were placed on Bland's activities.



Turk prohibited Bland from drinking alcohol and said he will be monitored by the federal probation office for five years.



Bland phoned Meghan White in December 2009, two days after a federal jury in Roanoke found Bill White guilty of four charges related to threatening people.



Bland told Meghan White he was coming to Roanoke to kill her and her infant daughter. He called back several times to say he was getting closer to the city, and finally that he had arrived and was getting a motel room. Bland also text messaged his victim a picture of his genitals, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office said.



The calls terrified Meghan White, who soon took her daughter and moved in with relatives. She said she didn't know Bland and didn't think her husband did either.



Crawford said Bland was "prime game" to be recruited by Bill White and followed White's racist proclamations online. Hogeboom said that in Bill White's trial, Bland was summoned as a prosecution witness to testify that he was willing to act on White's threats against minorities.



Bland was never actually called to the stand in White's trial. Meghan White was a potential defense witness. She also wasn't called to testify.



It was after Bland returned from the trial to Baltimore that he telephoned Meghan White.



Crawford said Bland feared retribution from Bill White or members of the American National Socialist Workers Party, the group White claimed to command.



After Bill White's trial, Bland told his lawyer he received phone calls from people connected to the group. He began drinking heavily, Crawford said, and when he called Meghan White, he was "clearly inebriated, clearly psychotic in many ways, clearly delusional."



The same night he threatened Meghan White, he called police in Baltimore to say that he was a former member of a Nazi group and that people were trying to kill him.



"Bland's vile, hateful threats directly caused the victim in this case real distress," U.S. Attorney Tim Heaphy said today in a statement. "Anyone who tries to intimidate or frighten another person by using the telephone, the internet, the U.S. mail, or any other instrumentality of interstate commerce will be prosecuted in this district."

WHITE POWER IN AMERICA

REJECTING THE HATE

More Photos Here From Mark Zaleski
When 600+ counterprotestors show up to stand against the Nazi's, the point is made. Mainstream America has no tolerance for those promoting and promulgating a hate-filled agenda.

The signs, symbols, and speech displayed by the National Socialist Movement, et. al. have always engendered an anger and a revulsion among those who seek to preserve and protect the fabric of a multicultural society and the recent events in Riverside, California are no exception.

TO ORIGINAL SOURCE

By LORA HINES
The Press-Enterprise

A brief fistfight and a lime-throwing incident led to arrests of at least two counterprotesters Saturday during a three-hour neo-Nazi rally near a well-known Riverside day labor gathering site.

The fight erupted minutes after 20 neo-Nazis arrived and took positions behind metal barricades erected by the Riverside Police Department near Madison Street and Railroad Avenue. Police barricaded an estimated 600 counterprotesters about 150 feet away on the other side of the street.

But more than two dozen counterprotesters, including members of the Brown Berets, a Chicano activist group, rushed toward the neo-Nazis and the two groups yelled at each other.

One unidentified Brown Beret member, who was later arrested, pushed over a barricade and a brawl between both sides barely started before dozens of officers wearing riot gear and using batons quickly stopped it.

Another counterprotester, who identified himself as Geronimo Rivera, 32, was led away by police and arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon.

Rivera, held on $25,000 bail, was arrested in connection with limes being thrown at the neo-Nazis shortly before the rally ended.

The counterprotesters cheered as the neo-Nazis ended the rally, giving the signature Nazi salute as motorcycle officers escorted them to their SUVs and minivans.

SAME AREA AS BEFORE

The demonstration, which led to the closure of part of Madison near Indiana Avenue, was a follow-up to a short rally last month in the same area.

On Saturday, police established a command near the rally site, and an estimated 75 officers kept counterprotesters from confronting neo-Nazis. A police helicopter flew overhead during much of the rally.

The California Highway Patrol closed the eastbound offramp at Madison from Highway 91 during the rally, which resulted in traffic backing up to at least Van Buren Boulevard. Trains also were halted as neo-Nazis spilled onto the tracks.

Riverside police Sgt. Jaybee Brennan couldn't say how much the rally could cost Riverside taxpayers.

RALLY CALLED SUCCESS

Jeff Hall, a Riverside resident and state director of the National Socialist Movement, said the group met its goal -- to shut down the day labor site.

"We're going to be here again and again," he said.

The neo-Nazis and counterprotesters spent much of the time videotaping and yelling disparaging comments and names, urging the other group to go home.

Counterprotesters dared neo-Nazis to confront them and held signs that read "Tolerance, yes. Hatred, no," "Stop harassing day laborers," "Human beings are not illegal" and "We do the jobs you can't live without."

Neo-Nazis criticized homosexuals, Jews and undocumented workers taking jobs.

A group of about 100 people identified as students in support of day laborers defied police and marched on Madison toward the neo-Nazis before a line of motorcycle officers and riot police blocked them. They beat makeshift drums, blew whistles and yelled "Nazis go home."

The students from the Claremont colleges were among the counterprotesters who last month drove off the neo-Nazis, said member Troy Araiza-Kokkinis.

He said the students would counterprotest as long as the neo-Nazis rally.

"Our obligation is to drown them out and combat racism in the Inland Empire," Araiza-Kokkinis said. "We'll come back every week."

This afternoon Tuesday June 10,James Von Brunn age 89 went on the attack, after a lifetime of nurturing ,promoting anti-Semitic ideas, Von Brunn a avowed racist decided to go out with a bang. A bang that has been heard around the world, the bang is called White Supremacy and it's rounds where aimed at the Washington DC Holocaust Museum,targeting the innocent people inside and assaulting the memory of 6 million people murdered.

Many American have been lulled into the belief that this type of hatred no longer exist in the country. We have convinced ourselves that with the election of President Obama neo Nazis, kkk were things of the past.

Von Brunn because of his age may be anomaly but the ideas of organized racism and lone wolf terror ta tics are the norm for many in the far right racist movement.

Just last week a notorious Internet racist broadcaster who has encouraged this type of racist violence for years, was finally arrested for threatening people with violence. Numerous times he would broadcast that "violence solves everything". Today we have seen that violence.

We at Citizens Against Hate believe this violence is just a beginning.
Floyd Cochran

PS. Nikki will be posting more info soon -

Just A Little Circle of Friends...

Just A Little Circle of Friends...
(Forty Years of Deception Still Alive and Well)
By Nicole Nichols
March 25, 2009

Old adages such as "Birds of a feather flock together, " or "You are judged by the company you keep" often have been proven to have exceptions, yet they still hold true in many situations and maybe more so in the White Supremacy Movement.

I have written countless articles chronicling the sleazy side of the neo-Nazi's in the United States and have often noted what appears to be a disproportionate propensity toward domestic violence, child abuse or neglect, adultery, promiscuity, and pornography. Additionally, I have frequently pointed out the lack of loyalty to each other among members of this group.

A few years ago, I started asking questions and pointing out what I believed to be some rather interesting relationships among a certain group of people, all operating together, to further an agenda of hate, bigotry, anti-Semitism, and genocide. As the years have passed, those relationships have become even more suspect in the mind of this writer. As is evidenced and well chronicled, the White Supremacy Movement has largely been factionalized for the last forty years. Yet there are many commonalities between the factions. Indeed, the ties often cross ideological lines and move into the realms of religion, revisionism, and politics. Because these groups pose a danger to the very fabric of American society, it behooves us to know where their support base is and who really finances racism, anti-Semitism, and bigotry in the United States and abroad. It is also important that the hypocrisy and deception of those leading the movement be explored and exposed to all who hold an interest in knowing the truth. In order to bring this all into perspective, a little history of these people must be told. As we move through the tawdry and violent world of hate we will demonstrate the true nature of those leaders from the past as well as those attempting to weave their way into the mainstream today.


In 1974, twenty-four-year old David Duke formed the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and was running roughshod in Louisiana. Needing money for many of his white power endeavors, Duke published a book under the name of Dorothy Vanderbilt entitled "Finders Keepers." It was a women's self-help book giving advice on vaginal exercises, fellatio, and anal sex.

Also in 1974, he had married Chloe Hardin with whom he had two children. Chloe was active in Duke's Klan group but after ten years together, Hardin divorced Duke and moved to Florida where she met and married one of David's Klan buddies, Don Black who is now the Stormfront guru.

As a teen, Duke began communicating with Dr. William Luther Pierce, founder of the infamous National Alliance and author of the "Turner Diaries." For many years the Alliance was considered the largest and most formidable hate group in America. It spawned numerous future leaders of racist and anti-Semitic groups nationwide.

David Duke was somewhat of an anomaly within the movement at that time. With his proclamation that he was going to change the face of the Klan, he was able to recruit others such as Louis Beam, Don Black, and Tom Metzger into this radicalization from sheets to suits.

While Duke believed in the rhetoric he was spewing, he was unable to control his own ego and appetites. He had found a way to appease his own need for recognition and his penchant for a lavish lifestyle - he became a professional racist - a con man.

Membership lists are the lifeblood of white supremacist organizations. These rosters are necessary to building, maintaining and financing their groups and their activities. Because of the unsavory nature of the beliefs and the endeavors of such groups, members generally prefer to remain anonymous and they rely upon the leaders to maintain their privacy.

Duke knew the importance of these lists and he set out to build his own database of like-minded people and potential contributors - by any means necessary.

Now, Duke wasn't above unscrupulous behaviors. After all, he had expenses to meet and an agenda. In 1972, he was arrested for pocketing $500 in contributions that were meant for the campaign coffers of George Wallace so stealing and selling membership lists was no big deal. Stealing the membership from the National Alliance was easy.

By the latter half of the 1970's, his womanizing had become legendary. The Rev. Johnny Lee Clary, former Kluxer and bodyguard to Duke turned anti-racist, related to one reporter how Duke would wave the Bible around preaching Christian values and then take a members' wife to bed.

Never mind that Duke was the married father of two, Tom Metzger, a long-time racist leader, spoke of how Duke would arrive at various events and begin hitting on women. "We used to tell people, 'When Duke comes to town make sure your wife is safely locked up and don't let him near your daughter,'" said Metzger.

John Maginnis, author of "Cross to Bear," a profile of David Duke, recounted the story of a legislative aide who had lunch with Duke. "He started explaining to me that blonde, blue-eyed, Scandinavian looking people were God's chosen people, that they were made in his image. He said that God didn't want to dilute this perfection so we should only mate with others of our kind. He then asked me if I wanted to mate with him. It was the weirdest come-on line I've ever heard."

One of Duke's former girlfriends, Lori Eden, a swimsuit and lingerie model who owned and operated her own adult website, claimed that at one point in their relationship she believed herself to be pregnant. Duke, who is a strong pro-life advocate, offered to take her to Paris where they could get the "abortion pill" which was not legal in this country. According to Eden, Duke said he had been through this kind of thing before and feared that the publicity would ruin him politically.

David Duke didn't work. He ran his political campaigns, the proceeds of which he lived off of. He duped his supporters into believing that their contributions were helping him save the white race. And he lived large - nose job, chin implant, houses, babe on each arm, limos to the casinos and money to burn - other people's money. According to those close enough to know, a typical day for Duke would find him sleeping late, checking the mail for money, playing golf, going to the gym, and then heading for the casino at night.

Eventually, it all caught up with him, however. In 2003, Duke was sentenced to a short stint in federal prison for raising funds under false pretenses (mail fraud) and lying on his tax forms.


Vince Breeding - real name, Bruce Alan Breeding - was Duke's right hand man for a number of years. To those who knew of his background this should have seemed like a strange union - at least on the surface. While Duke favored the clean-cut image with impeccable dress and spouted Christian values, Breeding was playing guitar in a black metal band called Acheron that was Satanic to the core. The leader of the group was Vincent Crowley, reported an ordained "priest" in Anton LaVey's Church of Satan. He moonlighted in a striptease club in the Tampa Bay area.

In 1994, Breeding joined Dr. Pierce's National Alliance and became very active in promulgating their message of racism and anti-Semitism. He produced an underground radio show out of Tampa on which he broadcast Dr. Pierce's American Dissident Voices 24/7. When his radio signal began to interfere with the broadcasts of other local radio stations, citizens in the area started to complain to which he often responded with threats of violence and promises to never cease. Eventually, he was shut down.

Vince Breeding was certainly no Mr. Nice Guy. His associations alone were cause for many to raise their eyebrows and keep him at arms length. The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that during 1997, while Breeding was organizing events featuring Holocaust denier David Irving and the chameleonic David Duke he was sharing an apartment with Todd Vanbiber, another member of Pierce's National Alliance.

In January of 1996, Vanbiber and friend, Brian Pickett, robbed the Barnett Bank in Tampa. A month later they robbed the New Milford Savings and Loan in Danbury, Conn. After the Danbury robbery they paid Dr. Pierce a visit where they donated $1000.00 of their booty to the cause and purchased $700.00 in books from the Alliance.

In April of 1997, as he was assembling an 8-inch pipe bomb, capped at both ends, it blew up in Vanbiber's face causing serious injury. When the ATF searched his storage unit, they found several weapons, ammunition, and munitions manufacturing guides.

According to the authorities, "fourteen bombs were to be placed along two major routes in the Florida tourist capital: Interstate 4, the major access highway to Walt Disney World, and U.S. Highway 441."

Several of the bombs had already been fully assembled. Some had been prepared with timing devices, batteries, timers, and clocks. They had initially planned the bombing for April 19, the second anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing before a change in plans.

While Breeding was not officially implicated in his roommate's bombing escapade, he was busily setting up websites to further the National Alliance's bid for new recruits.

As Breeding maintained his membership in the National Alliance and worked dilligently to bolster their rank and file, his relationship with David Duke began to blossom. In 1999, Breeding launched the Nationalist News Service which operated out of Don Black's internet group, Stormfront.

The National Alliance was big and becoming bigger. Their Resistance Records enterprise was becoming a cash cow for the N.A. and Dr. Pierce, and the envy of other hate groups around the world. When Vince Breeding stole the mailing list of the white power music organization, his relationship with Dr. Pierce was severed instantly. We can only speculate as to who enticed Breeding into such an act.

Once he had burned that bridge he and the membership list traveled to Louisiana where he moved in with Duke and became his lackey. Actually, they suited each other quite well. Both had a penchant for money and life in the fast lane. Both were unprincipled. And both had honed their ability to con and scam their way through life.

After numerous name changes, Duke's organization settled on being known as the European American Unity and Rights Organization or EURO. Breeding, using the name of Vince Edwards, ran Duke's website and enhanced Duke's presence on the web. Both maintained their ties with Duke's other acolyte, Don Black, who had already built an amazing white power base on the internet.



Shortly after David Duke was sentenced to 15 months in prison, in 2003, a bombshell was dropped on the white nationalist community when it was revealed that Vince Breeding, a.k.a. Vince Edwards, a.k.a. Bruce Allen Breeding, was also "Vince the Munkay" who was anything but a white supremacist.

Vince the "Munkay" traipsed around at a party in sunglasses and a furry, floor length coat proclaiming, "You will learn to respect the dark powers of the Munkay," while promoting his "Xsite" magazine and website.


Both the rag and the site advertised "Ebony Escorts" as well as mother-daughter sex acts, and gay, lesbian and bisexual dating services.

As Breeding's alter-ego, "The Munkay" came to light one could only wonder how much about all of this was known to Pierce, Duke, Black, et.al. They knew. To think otherwise is inconceivable denial.

During Duke's incarceration, Don Black managed to keep him at the forefront with his Stormfront website. Periodic updates were always available as well as nauseating lamentations about the unjust system that kept him from his followers.


Black grew up during a time of civil unrest and turmoil in this country and he chose to become a movement in his own right. During his high school years he decided that his high school was the perfect place to recruit others into his efforts to save the white race from what was surely to be its extinction. He began by handing out flyers and newspapers containing information on the dire straits of his people. Of course, school administrators determined that this was unacceptable and banned all political propaganda from school grounds.

This was a challenge to Black. He knew he had to get creative so he garnered a mailing list of students and began sending his message through the mail. By the time he was a Junior, he had set his eye on the political machine. He knew where he was going. Politics - that's where he could do the most good to keep his beloved South and his country to stay segregated along racial lines.

J.D. Stoner, a staunch segregationist and leader of the National States' Rights Party was running for Governor of Georgia and Don Black decided to help in his campaign.

Now, Black was in training in the National Socialist Youth Movement which was a branch of the National Socialist White People's Party. For those unfamiliar, the NSWPP had been formerly called the American Nazi Party until George Lincoln Rockwell changed the name shortly before his assassination.


Robert Lloyd was the second in command of the NSWPP and, by many accounts, he had been Rockwell's pick as his successor over the current leader at the time, Matt Koehl. (Koehl now heads up a neo-Nazi outfit known as "The New Order." He was also a member of Stoner's National States' Rights Party). It's important to note that Robert Lloyd and William Luther Pierce were tight and rumor has it that Lloyd and Pierce broke into the safe of Rockwell and destroyed his political testament.

Knowing that they had a young, eager-beaver in the Stoner campaign, Robert Lloyd instructed Don Black to steal the membership list of the National States' Rights Party from Stoners' office, no doubt assuring him that such a deed would ingratiate him to the powers that be. Black was only too happy to accommodate.

What the 16-year-old didn't plan on was the vehemence with which Stoners' followers protected his files. As Don was lifting the roster out of the office, he was met with a .38- caliber hollow point to the chest. The gun was fired by Jerry Ray, brother of James Earl Ray. Jerry Ray beat the charges by claiming that he believed Black to be reaching for a weapon and fired in self-defense. Of course, it didn't help that Black was is in the process of committing a serious crime.

After college, Don Black hooked up with David Duke and began helping in the recruitment process as well as in Duke's political campaigns. The charlatanistic Duke schooled the young man in his beliefs that supremacy should be promoted as nationalism and that sheets should be traded for suits. The public persona was, of course, to always be quite different than the private.

In 1981, Don Black, along with nine other white supremacists tried their hands at becoming mercenaries. They were caught in the middle of trying to execute a planned coup that they dubbed "Operation Red Dog." The men were to leave out of a New Orleans marina and stage an offensive take-over of the small island of Dominica. They would do this with eight machine guns, ten shotguns, five rifles, ten handguns, ten pounds of dynamite, 5,496 rounds of ammunition, and a large Nazi flag.

When arrested, they were charged with "seeking to create a drug, gambling, and offshore banking empire on the island republic." Black made the following statement before being sentenced to three years in prison for violation of the U.S. Neutrality Act:

"What we were doing was in the best interest of the United States and its security in the hemisphere and we feel betrayed by our government."

Our federal prisons' rehabilitation services were made available to Mr. Black during his time there and he certainly put them to use. In some ways, you could say that that those services created a monster. Black immersed himself in computer programming classes and upon his release he knew he had a future.

First, he ran for a U.S. Senate seat - quite unsuccessfully. He also married the former Chole Duke - David Duke's ex-wife.

Black started experimenting with the internet. He quickly realized the potential the World Wide Web held for recruiting and networking with like-minded people the world over. The sheer anonymity that the net offered was compelling. His experimentation led to his creation of Stormfront in 1995. Stormfront has served as an umbrella and clearing house under which people from various hate groups and supremacy persuasions have been able to congregate, share information, and publish ideas for the last fourteen years. It has also served as a money-making enterprise for Don Black.

While Black left the Klan, he did not leave Duke or his organization. Quite the contrary. Through Stormfront, Black has provided a venue and a forum from which Duke can mentor and influence others in his endeavors.

It is important for the reader that we pause at this juncture and reflect upon a few pertinent truisms that might not be evident at this point. The three individuals profiled so far have some obvious commonalities.

All three have been extremely influential in the movement for decades. All three became involved in racist and anti-Semitic activities at a very young age. All three have made their livelihoods from the movement and illicit exploits. All three possess many of the same character flaws - amorality, criminal minds, and disloyalty. What may not be as evident is their recruitment and the influence of others sharing membership in certain groups.

Throughout the discussion thus far one name emerges time and time again - that of Dr. William Luther Pierce and his organization, the National Alliance. Accordingly, as is still the case today, cross-participation in various groups was not unheard of. As we progress through this look at our little circle of friends the reader is asked to keep in mind the names of certain individuals and organizations so as to be able to make the connections between them.

While names and acronyms such as the National Socialist White People's Party (NSWPP) or the National States' Rights Party (NSRP) may be confusing or even alien to the reader, it is important to grasp the scope of the ties that one has to the other.

Regardless of how baseless or unfounded the beliefs of the racist right seem to mainstream Americans, the truth is that many of the followers deeply buy into the rhetoric spewed by the leaders of these organizations. As you have seen, so far, membership lists are among the coveted assets of these groups largely because of the financial benefits. But, hate, to people like Pierce and Duke and Black is also a business. It is their job - their way of making a living.

Book sales, white-power music sales, speaking engagements, and member donations all help them to line the pockets of their organizations and themselves. But, there's more...much more. Political ties and palm-greasings are important and very necessary as well as friends in very high places.

As we move on to a few other note-worthy individuals, please note the not-so-complex web of companions that has suckered in the unsuspecting and the implications for the future that such pernicious bedfellows holds for all of us.

To Be Continued...

THE PRICE OF FREE SPEECH?

THE PRICE OF FREE SPEECH…
Posted on January 17, 2008 by nicolen | Edit
Feedom of speech is cherished in this country, as it should be. Most people who are sane, rational, educated, and imbued with a modicum of integrity realize that with such rights there comes a certain degree of responsibility. However, when those who fall short in any of those areas decide to wave a banner and orate from a dais or tree stump we can expect there is a cost to the rest of us.

That cost may be extracted in the form of hurt feelings, civil or racial unrest, bruised psyches, and yes…even dollars. The following article appeared in the City Pulse in Lansing, Michigan and demonstrates the inherent dangers of racism and racist reasoning as well as the cost to others when administrators are hamstrung between the rock and a hard place. To read the article in it’s original form click here.

Black Hats on Campus
Written by David Holthouse
Wednesday, 16 January 2008
Preston Wiginton is one busy neo-Nazi.


In October 2005, he won the “Strongest Skinhead” contest at Hammerfest, a racist skinhead festival in Draketown, Ga., where he announced that he was organizing secret paramilitary training in preparation for the coming race war. In the following days, Wiginton posted more than 300 messages to the white nationalist online forum Stormfront, writing in one that “beating down a mud,” or non-white, is a “righteous act of collective preservation.”

Since then, Wiginton has continued to appear at white supremacist events across the United States — and abroad, too. Just this Nov. 4, Wiginton spoke to a crowd of 5,000 Russian ultranationalists at a Moscow rally against non-white immigration that included calls for Serbian-style ethnic cleansing. Waving his black cowboy hat, the Victoria, Texas, resident said, “I’m taking my hat off as a sign of respect for your strong identity in ethnicity, nation and race.” The audience responded with Nazi salutes and chants of “White power!” in English.


But Wiginton, ever the activist, has not neglected smaller venues. A mere 10 days before the Moscow rally, Wiginton served as master of ceremonies at an appearance in East Lansing, by British Holocaust denier Nick Griffin, the national chairman of the white supremacist British National Party.


This time, Wiginton’s venue was not a skinhead keg party, backwoods cross burning or neo-Nazi rally on foreign soil. It was a lecture hall on the campus of Michigan State University.



Kyle Bristow (far right) and four other members of YAF-MSU (who declined to be identified) protesting Sen. McCain’s appearance Sunday at the Kellogg Center over his position on illegal immigration (E.J. Jocque/City Pulse).
Wiginton, 43, is not a Michigan State University student. He’s not an alumnus or a faculty member, either. But he is chummy with MSU junior Kyle Bristow, the 21-year-old chairman of the Michigan State University chapter of Young Americans for Freedom, or MSU-YAF — the only university student organization in the country listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.


Acting in collusion with elder white supremacists like Wiginton, and with the financial and logistical support of a major conservative foundation, Bristow and a handful of cronies have roiled their campus and the surrounding community by hosting speakers like Griffin, issuing vicious homophobic and racist insults, and staging publicity stunts masked as political demonstrations that seem inspired in equal parts by the movie “Animal House” and the Hitler Youth.


“He’s become a divisive force,” former MSU-YAF member Kari Lynn Jaksa, an MSU junior who describes herself as a Republican with strong libertarian leanings, says of Bristow. “Frankly, he’s embarrassing.”

A YAF a Minute
In November 2006, MSU-YAF organized a “Straight Power” demonstration in downtown Lansing to protest a proposed local civil rights ordinance (which passed unanimously) protecting gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgener individuals from discrimination on the basis of their sexual orientation. YAF members carried signs that read “End Faggotry” and “Go Back in the Closet.”


Also last year, Bristow and Wiginton co-administered two racist online groups — “True American Patriot” and “Jobs a White Man Won’t Do” — within the Facebook social network. (The pair also share a fondness for black cowboy hats. Bristow wore his while anti-racist protesters outside the MSU building where Griffin spoke on Oct. 26 beat a piñata effigy of Griffin with sticks.)


MSU-YAF has since cosponsored a “Catch an Illegal Immigrant Day” contest, held a “Koran Desecration” competition, jokingly threatened to distribute smallpox-infested blankets to Native American students, and posted “Gays Spread AIDS” fliers across campus.


Last spring, when the MSU leftist group Students for Economic Justice hosted a lecture by a Colombian labor organizer detailing allegations of union busting and murder by the owners of Coca-Cola bottling plants in South America, Bristow and his minions jeered, waved American flags and conspicuously guzzled from large bottles of Coke while the speaker tearfully described witnessing his best friend being gunned down by paramilitary thugs.


“YAF’s ridiculous tactics are making all conservatives at MSU look bad,” Jaksa, an international relations major, told the Intelligence Report. “It’s gotten to the point where I hate to even say I’m a conservative anymore in class discussions or private conversations, because people automatically assume that I’m with Kyle Bristow. It’s important to me that people know there are sane conservatives on this campus. We’re not all racists and fascists.”


Jaksa said that when she joined MSU-YAF her freshman year, “It was basically just the action wing of the College Republicans.” Now, according to Jaksa and other sources, the College Republicans at MSU have asked Bristow to stop attending their meetings.


“We protested in favor of fiscal and social conservatism. We held demonstrations against liberal senators who voted a way on a bill that we didn’t agree with. But our agenda was very much what I could categorize as mainstream Republican,” Jaksa said. “That was before Kyle took it over [in spring 2006] and YAF went off the deep end.”

Friends in High Places
Despite its notoriety, MSU-YAF is widely supported by mainstream conservative politicians and power brokers in Michigan. The group was influential enough in rallying support for the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative — the deceptively named affirmative action ban that Michigan voters approved in 2006 — that MCRI Executive Director Jennifer Granz thanked MSU-YAF by name in her election night victory speech.


Last May 2, a few days after the SPLC named MSU-YAF a hate group — a move that received a great deal of public attention in the state — Michigan Republican Party Chairman Saul Anuzis endorsed MSU-YAF and defended Bristow on a talk radio show. “This [Bristow] is exactly the type of young kid we want out there,” Anuzis said. “I’ve known Kyle for years, and I can tell you I have never heard him say a racist or bigoted or sexist thing, ever.”


In fact, Bristow and his minions frequently single out and ridicule individual MSU gay, lesbian, and non-white students online, posting their photos and calling them “freaks,” “scum” and “savages.” Last September, Bristow criticized MSU’s decision to establish a Chicano/Latino Studies doctoral program in a news release headlined, “MSU Offers Doctorate in Savagery.”


And last March 31, roughly one month before Anuzis defended Bristow against accusations of bigotry, Bristow posted this comment on the MSU-YAF Web site: “If Christopher Columbus didn’t bring civilization to the Americas, the Indians would still be running through forests in loincloths, scalping each other, shoving bones through their noses, worshipping pagan gods, and spreading syphilis. Thank God Christopher Columbus put an end to this backward culture.”


Bristow politely refused a request to be interviewed for this article, saying that his “legal counsel” had advised him against such an interview because he’s considering legal action against the SPLC, which publishes the Intelligence Report, for defamation.
But there are some clues to his personality.


In a recent online dating profile, Bristow wrote that he plans to enroll in law school after he graduates from MSU in the fall of 2008 with a degree in international relations. Among his hobbies are “conservative politics,” “watching the History or Court TV channels,” “shooting my pellet gun” and “looking at my coin collection.”
Several MSU students who’ve been in classes with Bristow described him as a classmate who participated infrequently in seminar discussions, rarely asked questions and generally kept his political views to himself.


Jaksa, the former MSU-YAF member, said that she and Bristow hung out together quite a bit during their first year at MSU. “He was just a relaxed, normal kid at the beginning of our freshman year,” Jaksa said. “But then he underwent this odd transition. You know how most people, when they get to college, either move to the center or become more liberal in terms of their political beliefs? Well, Kyle did the opposite. It was like he kept moving farther and farther to the right to counterbalance all the people around him he saw moving to the left.”


Ted Madsen, another MSU international relations major who’s now in his junior year, said that he first met Bristow a few days after their freshman year began in the fall of 2005. “He struck me as very driven and very strait-laced,” recalled Madsen. “He was quite vocal about the fact that he was against drinking and smoking but, all in all, he was a fairly likeable guy.”

Bristow in Power
In spring 2006, shortly after he assumed control of MSU-YAF, Bristow ran unopposed and was elected to represent James Madison College — the college attended by all international relations majors — on the Associated Students of Michigan State University, or ASMSU, the university’s student government body.


Just before the academic year ended, Bristow posted his 13-point agenda online. It included these goals: “Hunt down illegal immigrants in the Lansing area and have them deported”; “Eliminate funding for all non-heterosexual student organizations”; “Create a Caucasian Caucus and give them representation on the ASMSU”; and “Eliminate representation to ASMSU for all of the following groups: Alliance of LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender] Students; the Arab Cultural Society; the Black Council; the International Students Association; the Women’s Council; the North American Indigenous Student Organization,” and practically every other non-white, non-heterosexual, or non-Christian student group at MSU.


“I was outraged when I saw it,” said Madsen. “I told him, ‘Your agenda of hate has got to stop, Kyle.’ He’s used that phrase repeatedly in a mocking fashion since.”


Madsen gave Bristow a choice: “Either resign and apologize to the James Madison community for fouling our name, or be removed from office.” Bristow did not resign and did not apologize. It took Madsen and his supporters only two days to gather enough signatures on a recall petition to force a vote, which took place in the fall of 2006, at the beginning of Bristow’s sophomore year. Ninety-six percent of the James Madison students who cast ballots voted to recall Bristow. He was forced to relinquish his seat on the ASMSU.


“I don’t regret it [leading the recall effort], although I do realize that his being recalled only further marginalized and radicalized Kyle to the point where he’s become a joke to many people,” said Madsen. “YAF is routinely ridiculed and mocked on campus, but what many people who refuse to take Kyle seriously may not realize is that Kyle believes all press coverage is good coverage, and while 10,000 people who read what he has to say will be disgusted, one or two will be intrigued. He’s using the media coverage to reach those one or two people at a time and that’s what concerns me about YAF, because what he’s articulating is dangerous.”

The University’s Role
Whatever its potential harm to society, MSU-YAF’s offensive antics have pinned university administrators between the rock of protecting free speech and the hard place of encouraging multiculturalism. For now MSU-YAF remains a registered and officially sanctioned student organization, meaning it’s entitled to certain benefits, including the free use of MSU facilities and university accounting services.


MSU also has to pay for security at YAF events, which invariably draw heated protests. Last April, for example, the university shelled out $3,780 to rent metal detectors for one night to place at every entrance to a YAF-sponsored lecture by nativist extremist leader Chris Simcox, founder of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a border vigilante group.


Simcox was introduced to an unruly crowd by Jason Van Dyke, a neo-Confederate lawyer based in Denton, Texas. Van Dyke once attended MSU but did not graduate. By his own account, he was kicked out in 2000 after being arrested for domestic violence, possession of a banned weapon and firearm safety violations. (Van Dyke said he was merely transporting a rifle across campus on the first day of hunting season.) Also, according to Van Dyke, MSU police found extremist literature, including the race war fantasy novel The Turner Diaries and the anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion, in his on-campus residence.


When he attended MSU, Van Dyke was a hotly controversial columnist for the State News, an MSU student newspaper. Now, like a former high school football star haunting his old campus, trying to relive the glory days, Van Dyke posts daily rah-rah messages on the MSU-YAF Web site and often travels to East Lansing for MSU-YAF happenings. He and Bristow often wear matching black cowboy hats.


When MSU-YAF held its “Koran Desecration” contest last August, Van Dyke offered this entry: “I would catch Osama Bin Laden and then take a power drill and hollow out a section of the Koran as he was forced to watch. After doing this, I would cut Osama Bin Laden’s genitals off with a rusty hacksaw, place them in the hollowed-out Koran, wrap it in an American flag infected with smallpox, and send the whole package directly to Mecca.”


Van Dyke was equally statesmanlike at the Simcox lecture, which was initially attended by about 40 Simcox supporters and about 100 anti-Simcox protesters, many if not most of them Latino MSU students. Addressing the protesters, Van Dyke said: “Remember, the First Amendment gives you the right to use four-letter words. So I have two more words for you: ‘work’ and ‘soap.’”


Already tense, the situation in the lecture hall erupted. Protesters banged on seats and shouted angrily, preventing Simcox from speaking. MSU police arrested five demonstrators and cleared the room of anyone they perceived to be anti-Simcox, which included virtually all Latinos. This in turn led to allegations of racial profiling, since the campus police officers allowed white protesters to stay.


One week after the Simcox event, a group of 11 students filed a formal complaint with the MSU Office for Inclusion and Intercultural Initiatives. They accused MSU-YAF of violating the university’s anti-discrimination policy, which prohibits the bias-motivated harassment of any “University community member” but includes this caveat: “These prohibitions are not intended to abridge University community members’ rights of free expression or other civil rights.”


The complaint filed against MSU-YAF accuses the group of “systematically — as a matter of regular organization practice — targeting groups and individuals for harassment, intimidation and public ridicule.”


University officials declined to discuss the complaint with the Intelligence Report, citing a pending investigation.

Behind the YAF Brand
Young Americans for Freedom was originally a centralized organization of rabidly anti-communist university student groups created in 1960 by National Review founder William F. Buckley. The original incarnation of YAF was also strictly opposed to the civil rights movement and, in 1962, gave its first annual Freedom Award to segregationist South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond.


YAF remained active nationwide through the 1980s, but is now essentially moribund. The YAF national headquarters Web page consists of a notice of sadness at the “recent news” of Ronald Reagan’s death, which occurred in June 2004. Now, Young Americans for Freedom is basically just a brand name for radical right-wing student activism, taking form as a loose and decentralized network of campus chapters, each one appearing to act independently.


In fact, the YAF brand is being co-opted and promoted by the Leadership Institute, a hard-line conservative nonprofit organization based in Arlington, Va., that is dedicated, according to its mission statement, to “identifying, recruiting, training and placing conservatives within the public policy process in the U.S. and abroad.” Republican National Committee executive committee member Morton Blackwell — who orchestrated a campaign against Anita Hill at the University of Oklahoma after she came forward with sexual harassment allegations against then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas — founded the Leadership Institute in 1979 and is still its president. Major donors include the Coors Foundation and Rich DeVos, founder of the troubled Amway multilevel marketing firm.


Christian Coalition founder Ralph Reed and disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff were both trained by the Leadership Institute, as was Jeff Gannon, the fake White House news correspondent who lobbed softball questions for President Bush from 2003 until 2005. That’s when it was revealed that Gannon had been a gay prostitute before attending the Leadership Institute Broadcast School of Journalism, after which he somehow obtained White House press credentials as a reporter for “Talon News,” Gannon’s one-man operation.


Bristow and Van Dyke both interned at the Leadership Institute last summer. There are currently more than 20 YAF organizations on campuses across the country, most of them started in the past five years by Leadership Institute-trained activists. (The Campus Leadership Program division of the Leadership Institute, according to its Web site, “fosters permanent, effective, conservative student organizations on college campuses across America.”) MSU-YAF is by far the most radical. Its most recent event, the lecture by British National Party Chairman Nick Griffin, was promoted by overtly white supremacist organizations including the American Renaissance newsletter, the Council of Conservative Citizens, and Stormfront. Attending the Griffin lecture incognito were members of the European-American Unity and Rights Organization, a white nationalist group founded by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, as well as members of the Keystone State Skinheads and the National Alliance, both neo-Nazi organizations that promote violence against non-whites, non-heterosexuals and Jews.


The only violence surrounding the Griffin event, however, was directed at MSU-YAF when a handful of its members were chased by an angry mob of anti-racist activists afterward. Bristow claimed members of the mob were carrying baseball bats and pieces of lumber. No injuries were reported.

Demeaning MSU?
MSU President Lou Anna Simon has been fairly tight-lipped on the ongoing MSU-YAF controversy. Reacting to the MSU-YAF sponsored “Catch an Illegal Immigrant Day” back in September 2006, Simon chided MSU-YAF for sponsoring an event she described as “demeaning to individuals and to the values of Michigan State University.”
But Oct. 25, the day before Griffin’s lecture, Simon issued a statement making it clear that putting up with racist propaganda is the price that a university must pay if it is committed to free speech.


“A university should be an open marketplace for the free exchange of ideas,” Simon said. “There are individuals who speak at campus events whose rhetoric and ideas I find reprehensible, and although I may not appreciate their positions, I do respect their right to share their views. The more extreme the view, in either direction, the more it tests us.


“Although we may disagree with one another’s positions, we must respect the rights of individuals to express their positions without fear of intimidation or physical harm. … Acts intended to prohibit the free speech rights of any individual or group, such as destroying informational materials, preventing access to an event, or shouting down a speaker do not support this philosophy and undermine our efforts to encourage robust intellectual discourse.”


MSU student Claudia Gonzalez experienced Bristow’s favorite mode of discourse first-hand when she participated in a protest outside an MSU-YAF event featuring anti-immigration hardliner Tom Tancredo, a Republican congressman from Colorado. “He [Bristow] came up to me and told me, ‘The one thing I’m most proud of is that my granddaddy stole Aztlan from your granddaddy,’” Gonzalez said.


Shortly after that exchange, MSU-YAF named Gonzalez “Leftist Freak of the Year” and posted her photo online. A few days later, the San Bernardino, Calif.-based hate group Save Our State posted her home address, phone number and parents’ home address, along with the message, “Please go and express your views.”


“I don’t feel completely safe on campus or at my home anymore because of YAF,” Gonzalez said. “And neither do a lot of other students of color and GLBT students, because YAF is clearly networking with these other hate groups, and they’re basically issuing an open invitation to skinheads and [anti-immigration] vigilantes and Nazis to come to MSU, who otherwise would never step foot on campus. … If it weren’t for YAF, MSU wouldn’t be on the hate group radar. But now it is.”