Disgraced Neo-Nazi Bill White's Conviction in Chicago

It hasn't been a good holiday season for disgraced Nazi leader Bill White who was finishing up his first 30 month bid only to be convicted at trial in Chicago of another felony - this time for soliciting threats against a federal jury member from the Matt Hale World Church of the Creator trial. Now he awaits sentencing at MCC where he was placed in protective custody because he was attacked by another inmate. Looks like the once NSM leader now hated by everybody nazi failure follows in Matt Hale's footsteps to federal prison.

The prosecution brought up a number of Bill White's hateful acts from over the years - including  praising the murder of Judge Joan Lefkow's husband and Eric Hunt's attack on Elie Wiesel. White also frequently posted detailed (but frequently incorrect) personal information with racist threats against the Jena 6, dozens of suspected ARA members, and others involved in the struggle for equality and justice. But what really nailed him was posting the name, address, phone number and place of employment of a federal juror from the Matt Hale trial in Chicago calling him a "gay jewish anti-racist" and that "everyone involved with the Matt Hale trial should have been murdered". Mark Hoffman testified on Monday that he broke down to tears in fear after receiving dozens of racist threats because Bill White posted his full name, address, phone number, and place of employment on his nazi website Overthrow.com. Prosecutors then brought up his affiliation and praise for other well known violent nazis like Eric Hunt to demonstrate White had the capability to influence "young stupid 18 year olds like Phil Anderson" to commit acts of racial violence.

Phil Anderson and Bill White as
the ANSWP at the 2009
Hitler Birthday Celebration

Two Nazis came forward and testified at the trial both giving up internal details about their work with Bill White, his NSM splinter group the ANSWP, and the Creativity movement. One witness Michael Burks is already a well known Nazi detractor and FBI informer who has burned all bridges with Bill White, the ANSWP, and the Kentucky KKK. The other witness is also very well known around to us: Phil Anderson, who after Whites imprisonment, went on to start the Illinois Nationalist Socialist Front (INSF) who just couldn't keep it together after getting their asses kicked at last year's failed "White Pride World Wide" march and having his mentor Steven Turpel exposed as a dangerous child molester and rapist. Burks' betrayal to the white power movement is already well known but now Phil Anderson will have to explain why he turned against his former leaders and so-called comrades. And even though there was satisfaction and amusement watching Bill White squirm as the prosecutor called him a "ghoul" bringing up case after case from his hateful past, there is something worrisome about the State achieving a guilty verdict.

Tthe State has never been our ally in the revolutionary struggle against racism. For the most part Nazis and the Klan have always been unofficial boot boys for capitalism and the State - terrorizing communities while having a wink wink relationship with the cops and ruling classes because they do their dirty work. They may bust a few boneheads from time to time but by far the FBI targets and disrupts leftists and revolutionary groups more than right-wing extremists. You have to wonder why they are still trying to keep the MOVE 9, the Angola 3, Mumia Abu Jamal, Leanord Peltier, Oscar Lopez Rivera and many other revolutionaries in jail. Not to mention the mass arrests, beatings, and killings committed by the police against even pacifist wings of the civil rights movement. Chicago has a particularly bloody history where their COINTELPRO operations straight up assassinated Black Panther Party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, and also where CPD detective Jon Burge and others savagely tortured and imprisoned hundreds of innocent black men. Earlier this year, dozens of anti-war activists had their homes raided across the midwest and were subpoened by FBI purportedly searching for ties to international "terrorist" organizations. And the same government that Bill White's lawyers say are "persecuting him for his ideas" are also prosecuting folks standing up against racist terror like the Love Park 4, Arpaio 5, Dee and Kelsey, and more.

So while you may hear the big stories like Bill White, or "Operation Stormfront" which netted over 50 white power gang member arrests in California last month, or Chicago's own Patrick Langballe and Mariusz Wdziekonski, it does not make up for the every day racial profiling and police brutality committed by the criminal "justice" system. A disproportionate majority of people behind bars are people of color up against racist cops, judges, juries, politicians with much more power over our lives than a handful of nazi losers. The reality is that the prison industrial complex - a white supremacist institution acting as an extension of modern day slavery - must be abolished entirely if we are serious about fighting oppression in all forms.

At the 2010 ARA conference in Portland our second point of unity was modified to further articulate our opposition to their court systems:

We don't rely on the cops or courts to do our work for us. This doesn't mean we never go to court, but the cops uphold white supremacy and the status quo. They attack us and everyone who resists oppression. We must rely on ourselves to protect ourselves and stop the fascists.

We don't seek in asking permission from anybody to gather in public or to drive out the facsists using whatever tactics we feel are most effective. We also refuse to cooperate with the State or leave it all up to systematic reforms to fight racism as if they were capable of it anyway.  Militant direct action - like the kind delivered to the NSM every time they attempt to march in Phoenix AZ - is the only way we'll be able to destroy all that stands in our way of creating an egalitarian society free from racist sexist and homophobic oppressions.

Although we are happy Bill White is off the streets (and that he won't be allowed near the internet when he gets out) this does not mean we believe locking Nazis up is a real solution (especially considering it's possible they will be supported by white prison gangs such as the Aryan Brotherhood, the Northsiders, Nazi Low Riders and others). Don't get us wrong - we aren't exactly rushing to defend the "free speech" of racist scum like Bill White. But the prosecuters securing a conviction in this case also sets dangerous legal precedent which can and has in the past been used to repress revolutionary movements at an even greater magnitude. Consider the 2005 Toledo Ohio riots against the NSM rally organized by Bill White - when the NSM announced they would return to Toledo in December for a second rally, the city of Toledo passed the day before an emergency injunction banning any public gathering anywhere outside the downtown permitted area. This injunction was eventually used to arbitrarily arrest over dozens of anti-racists for simply gathering in public at libraries and elsewhere.

"Toledo Police Protecting Bill
White at 2005 NSM Rally

Bill White followed in the footsteps of Matt Hale: he attempted to be a national white power leader and threatened a lot of innocent people and organized others into action, but in the end he got more than he bargained for. He tried so hard to be some sort of martyr but never quite made it - difficult when he is hated by so many even other Nazis who praise his imprisonment. But even though he is embarassing to their movement  there is always the risk he could influence some fringe boneheads who would follow his lead and take action. If so we will be there to remind them that there no future for white supremacy and they, like their disgraced and fallen "leaders," are going to get hit big time.