Irregular Army Read online

  After three hours trucking around we all resolve to head out of the zoo. We walk to the gate and I say goodbye. “I’ve got to get you the CD!” Forrest remembers. And before long he has run to his car and come back with his latest album, Survival. The jacket has a picture of him in military fatigues in Iraq. Back at the hotel I cast an eye over the lyrics, which are written in Gothic type on the inside sleeve. “Eye For An Eye” opens with the lines: A slow painful death I strive / Why are you still alive? The chorus goes: It’s our turn to watch you bleed / It’s our turn to tear you limb from limb . . . We will leave no survivors of this bloody war. Another one, “In Battle”: In battle there are no laws . . . It’s kill or be killed, die with the rest . . . Relief came when I pulled the trigger and watched you die / I can’t stop laughing everytime I remember you start to cry / Watch you cry!

  Kill a Couple of Towel Heads for Me OK!

  Perhaps ironically considering their general warmongering, the American neo-Nazi movement was for the most part virulently against the war in Iraq. Most of the groups hold to an updated conspiracy theory about Jewish power, which they call ZOG, or Zionist Occupation Government. It is premised on Western governments’ supposed submission to Jewish and Israeli power. On their internet forums, US soldiers are often greeted with incendiary comments about being “Jewish warriors” and “Zionist crusaders” for fighting in the War on Terror. This should not be surprising. The white supremacist movement across America has ebbed and flowed since the heyday of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1950s South. It is plagued by fissures and rivalries and ideological nitpicking that have always damaged its ability to form a large-scale and coherent movement. In 2008, there were over 150 different far-right groups—ranging from the Hitler worshippers to Christian nationalists—nestled all over the country. But as the War on Terror raged, extremism was increasing around America generally, according the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a group that investigates hate and racist groups. In its report Rage on the Right it said that in 2008 extremist groups had come “roaring back to life,” increasing by nearly 250 percent as well as building links to the mainstream right-wing.17 It was a grave concern given their willingness to kill innocent Americans (as Timothy McVeigh had demonstrated), even more so now that they had military training.

  Charles Wilson, spokesman for the National Socialist Movement, tells me the group is “150 percent against the war in Iraq. It was a total mistake to invade Iraq; we can’t even secure our own borders. By 2015 white people will be a minority in America.” The IKA, or Imperial Klans of America, is based on the original KKK. “I am, as many of us are, a vet,” Truitt Lilly, the spokesman, writes in an email because he wants to remain faceless (and voiceless). “I do not encourage anyone to join any part of Z.O.G. However, military training is good training for anyone: tactics and physical and self defense and discipline are key to any Christian’s way of life and should be taken into one’s consideration.” The original KKK is against it too. “We have opposed the war in Iraq since day one,” national director Pastor Thomas Robb tells me. “If we are going to have a war then it needs to be done constitutionally.”

  But none of this anti-war sentiment has stopped them taking advantage of the opportunities for training. “We do encourage them to sign up for the military. We can use the training to secure the resistance to our government,” says Wilson. “Every one of them takes a pact of secrecy . . . Our military doesn’t agree with our political beliefs, they are not supposed to be in the military, but they’re there, in ever greater numbers.” He claims to have 190 members serving. Billy Roper, founder of White Revolution, is another advocate. “A number of skinheads have gone into armed forces for education, college, tuition, and the military training provided,” he says. “They are using it to secure the future for white children. Anyone in the movement overseas knows they are getting training and financial help. America began in bloody revolution and it might end that way.” Even Forrest, who talks with a glint in his eye about his time in Iraq, is actually against the war in essence. “I don’t believe in the War on Terror,” he says. “It’s a war to protect Israel; I don’t think we need to be over there, I just went. I get in this conversation a lot, but I don’t like it when people call me a warrior for Israel.”

  Tom Leyden was in the movement for fifteen years before he managed to extricate himself in 1996. “I had to get out mostly because of my kids,” he says on the phone. “I realized that the movement wasn’t after me but my children. I was an organizer and recruiter, and I realized it wasn’t me they wanted but my children, my boys would be the next generation and militants are much more hardcore than their predecessors.” Forrest knows about Leyden and isn’t impressed. “That guy is a punk—I’ll eat him for lunch,” he says. “He’s milking the Jews—he had a couple of tattoos, said he was leader of the Hammerskins, there’s no rank structure in the ’skins like he says. He has everything to gain by doing this—he has to stay employed, so he says, ‘Skinheads are back!’” Leyden provides me with photographs of current servicemen with racist tattoos riding up their arms. “The military says maybe 1 percent is gang members,” he says, “well, that’s 14,000 people: they don’t do training exercises that big! 90 percent of the gangs in the US are street gangs but 9 percent are white supremacists. That’s 1,400 people are being trained by the armed forces who are extremist racists.”

  I stalk neo-Nazi forums for a period and they are still replete with bravado and machismo from people who claim to be soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan who are shooting the locals not to further the military’s strategic goals but because killing “hajjis” is their duty as white militants. The website New Saxon is a social networking website for “people of European descent.”18 One of the possible professions when making a profile is the military. There are currently forty-six members who claim to be serving. There is even a group—populated by six professed soldiers called “White Military Men”—started by a young man whose page is headlined with the phrase “FightingforWhites.” “All men with military experience, retired or active/reserve should join this group to see how many men have experience to build an army. We want to win a war, we need soldiers,” his profile reads. “FightingforWhites” is actually Lance Corporal Burton of the Second Battalion Fox Company Pit 2097, from Florida. In his About Me section, he writes: “Love to shoot my M16A2 service rifle effectively at the Hachies (Iraqis),” and among his passions is: “Love to watch things blow up (Hachies House).” His turn-offs include: “Overweight, lazy, illegals, *WIGGERS*, rape crimes, soldiers that died in Iraq, the Air Force (I called in an airstrike and they apparently had ‘tea time’ when it was called in).” On his wall his friend writes: “THANKS BROTHER!!!! kill a couple towel heads for me ok!”

  There are other examples of the same ostentatious advertising of military credentials on neo-Nazi websites. On the forum of the website Blood and Honour, neo-Nazis encourage their serving comrades to commit indiscriminate murder, and allude to the training they are getting. “I am in the ARMY right now,” writes 88Soldier88. “You have no idea how ‘nice’ we have to treat these fucking people. I work in the Detainee Holding Area so I see these fuckers every day (Terrorists) and we have to treat them better than our own troops. Its sick. I am in this until 2013. I am in the Infantry but want to go SF [Special Forces]. Hopefully the training will prepare me for what I hope is to come.”19 “I get out in 2009. I have the training I need and will pass it on to others when I get out,” writes AMERICANARYAN. 88Soldier88 says he is leaving for Iraq in three days. “Aye bro stay safe!!” says AngryAryanHitman, “try get a few notches on ya rifflebutt from the filthy sand nigger cunts.” “Good Luck Mate, Stay safe, Get a few Kills, and come Home,” says “Paul.” “Good luck and i hope everything goes well stay safe keep your head down and try to bag a few sand niggers,” says 14 callum 88.

  Via the website I wrote to a soldier, Jacob Berg, who claimed to be serving in Iraq. “There are actually alot more ‘skinheads’ ‘nazis’ White s
upremacists now then there has been in a very long time,” he wrote back. “Us racists are actually getting into the millatary alot now because If we dont every one who already is will take pitty on killing sand niggers. yes I have killed women, yes I have killed children, and yes I have killed Older people. But the biggest reson Im so proud of my kills Is because by killing a brown many white people will live to see a new dawn.”

  In 2009, the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks released the internal emails of the NSM, including mine, and uncovered a number of military members conversing with the leadership back in the US. As the SPLC documents:

  Among those who contacted NSM was an infantryman who identified himself as Kyle R. Wrobel. Writing from a hotmail contact, Wrobel told NSM that he was from Cleveland, Ohio. “i am a sergeant in the US Army infantry, currently serving my second combat tour to iraq,” he wrote on Jan. 17, 2008. “i vehemently support your cause, and want to become heavily involved. my wife and i both advocate and support the cause. i want a lifetime membership and want to become involved and do whatever i can as soon as possible.”

  Wrobel served for four years in the Army and was discharged in November 2008 as a specialist, according to an Army spokesman. The type of discharge is not public information, the spokesman said, though an acquaintance of Wrobel said it was honorable. (It’s unclear why Wrobel stated in his E-mail to the NSM that he was a sergeant, which is higher ranking than a specialist.) Wrobel received seven awards for his service, including the Combat Action Badge and the Iraq Campaign Medal for two year-long tours in Iraq, as well as the Army Good Conduct Medal.20

  I had tried to get an interview with a NSM soldier (which was never forthcoming), but the Wikileaks release revealed the private correspondence between the group’s members about my request which gives a shocking insight into how prevalent their members were in the military: “I did my part and forwarded his inquiry to NSM Colorado who is lead by Davi the guy who got the purple heart in Afghanistan,” said Commander Jeff Schoep, the head of the organization and arguably the most powerful Nazi in America. “He . . . did not respond back. I know the Colorado guys are active and recruiting, just processed 2 or 3 new members from there. I cannot force them to talk to student reporters. Apparently they just don’t want to do it. I agree with you, its an opportunity to reach people, but it seems most of our members will not talk with any Press. 88.”21 (In Nazi code, 88 symbolizes Heil Hitler, H being the eighth letter in alphabet.)

  The more public internet bravado is hard to vet for truth, but there has been a real-life high-profile case of murder involving a soldier in Iraq who had SS bolts tattooed on his arm. The victim, Kevin Shields, was murdered on December 1, 2007, in Colorado Springs by three of his fellow soldiers, Louis Bressler, Kenneth Eastridge, and Bruce Bastien, Jr., who all served in Iraq as part of the Second Brigade Combat Team, Second Infantry Division in their early twenties. Bressler and Bastien were each put away for sixty years for their part in the murder alongside a litany of other crimes in Colorado Springs, while Eastridge is now serving a ten-year prison sentence for his part. But in the aftermath of the arrests, National Public Radio publicized the MySpace page of Eastridge.22 It showed him proudly displaying his SS bolts tattoo. It also had a picture of him holding a cat in Iraq with the caption, “Killed another Iraqi pussy.” There is a picture of a gun and a cache of ammo. “Ready for Whatever!!!!” says the caption. He has another tattoo that reads: “Killing is what I do.” After his arrest, Bastien told investigators that he and Eastridge had randomly fired at civilians in Iraq during patrols through the streets of Baghdad. In broad daylight, Bastien alleged, Eastridge would use a stolen AK-47 to fire indiscriminately at Iraqi civilians. At least one was hit, he said.23 “We were trigger happy. We’d open up on anything. They even didn’t have to be armed. We were keeping scores,” said another member of the platoon, José Barco, who is serving fifty-two years in jail for shooting and injuring a pregnant woman in Colorado Springs.24 So far, no one has been charged with shooting civilians in Iraq.

  The military not only ignored Eastridge’s extremism, but on his return from combat awarded him a Purple Heart and Army Achievement medals. Eastridge’s lawyer, Sheilagh McAteer, becomes palpably angry when I talk to her on the phone. She claimed that the military were now knowingly sending mentally unstable young men to Afghanistan and Iraq. “The military is to some extent desperate to get people to go to fight, soldiers who are not fit, mentally and physically sick, but they continue to send them,” she told me. “Having a tattoo was the least of his concerns.” Another white supremacist soldier, James Douglas Ross, a military intelligence officer stationed at Fort Bragg, was given a bad conduct discharge from the army when he was caught trying to mail a submachine gun from Iraq to his father’s home in Spokane, Washington. Military police found a cache of white supremacist paraphernalia and several weapons hidden behind ceiling tiles in Ross’s military quarters. After his discharge, a Spokane County deputy sheriff saw Ross passing out fliers for the neo-Nazi National Alliance.25 On top of this, in early 2012, a photo emerged of a ten-strong US Marine Scout sniper unit posing for a photo with a Nazi SS bolts flag in Sangin, Afghanistan. According to the military, the symbolism was unknown to the soldiers. “Certainly, the use of the ‘SS runes’ is not acceptable and Scout Snipers have been addressed concerning this issue,” Marine Corps spokesman Captain Gregory Wolf said.26 But nothing about the SS bolts was unacceptable, and the claim that it could result in punishment was laughable. There were countless similar examples throughout the War on Terror that the military had known about—and brushed under the carpet.

  Emerging Terrorists

  The magnitude of the problem within the army and other branches of the military is, however, hard to quantify. The military does not track extremists as a discrete category, coupling them with gang members. People in the neo-Nazi movement claim different numbers. The National Socialist Movement claimed 190 of its members are inside. White Revolution claimed twelve. Tom Metzger claimed that 10 percent of those serving in the army and Marines are extremists of some sort. But the problem was conceded by the Department of Homeland Security in a 2009 report, Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment, which noted that “the willingness of a small percentage of military personnel to join extremist groups during the 1990s because they were disgruntled, disillusioned, or suffering from the psychological effects of war is being replicated today.”27 On the back of the publication, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano had to apologize to veterans’ groups about her department’s findings that “the return of military veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities could lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks.” But the report was right. Following an investigation of white supremacist groups, a 2008 FBI report declared: “Military experience—ranging from failure at basic training to success in special operations forces—is found throughout the white supremacist extremist movement.”28 In white supremacist incidents from 2001 to 2008, the FBI identified 203 veterans. Most of them were associated with the National Alliance and the National Socialist Movement, which promote anti-Semitism and the overthrow of the US government, and assorted skinhead groups.

  Because the FBI focused only on reported cases, its numbers don’t include the many extremist soldiers who have managed to stay off the radar. But its report does pinpoint why the white supremacist movements seek to recruit veterans—they “may exploit their accesses to restricted areas and intelligence or apply specialized training in weapons, tactics, and organizational skills to benefit the extremist movement.” In reality, white supremacists were using their military status to build the white right. The report found, for example, that two army privates in the Eighty-Second Airborne Division at Fort Bragg had attempted in 2007 to sell stolen property from the military—including ballistic vests, a combat helmet, and pain medications such as morphi
ne—to an undercover FBI agent they believed was involved with the white supremacist movement (they were convicted and sentenced to six years in prison). It also found multiple examples of white supremacist recruitment among active military including a period in 2003 when six active-duty soldiers at Fort Riley were found to be members of the neo-Nazi group Aryan Nations, working to recruit their army colleagues and even serving as the Aryan Nations’ point of contact for the State of Kansas.

  It seemed everyone knew what was happening. A 2006 report by the National Gang Intelligence Center noted that “various white supremacist groups have been documented on military installations both domestically and internationally.”29 Neo-Nazis “stretch across all branches of service, they are linking up across the branches once they’re inside, and they are hard-core,” Department of Defense gang detective Scott Barfield told the SPLC. “We’ve got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad,” he added. “That’s a problem.”30 Harold Cloverdell served in the army in Afghanistan for a year and in Iraq for two years. “You can go in any restaurant you can find graffiti, maybe a swastika,” he says. “Or ‘I hate hajjis’—what they call someone with Middle Eastern heritage . . . It pisses you off that you see it,” he continues, “as it effects someone’s performance, most guys are white in the infantry, a lot of them tend to be of European descent, it may have made someone else uncomfortable.” Aaron Lukefahr is now a member of the Aryan Nations, but served two years as part of the Marine Corps in Okinawa in Japan. “I know of at least one other racialist,” he tells me. “Once I saw some swastikas in our barracks, stationed in Japan, I don’t know who that was, they never found out who it was, but there wasn’t much investigation into it as an extremist act rather than an act of vandalism.”