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Rival White Supremacist Groups Unite To Fight “Race War”
The Georgia Peach Oyster Bar sits along a rural highway about 45 miles west of Atlanta. From the outside, it could pass for a single-story house if not for the neon beer signs. Inside, it looks like any other dusty saloon in the dregs of Dixie: a bar, pool tables under Bud Light lamps hanging from the ceiling, a TV mounted in the corner of the room. It’s what’s behind a single doorway leading to a backroom that makes the Georgia Peach unique.
Dozens of white nationalists from various groups across the country gathered here on a Saturday night in April and spirits were high, giving the room the feel of a white supremacist theme park. In one corner, a tattoo station where shirtless men were getting inked up. In another, a guy sold T-shirts featuring swastikas and hooded Ku Klux Klansmen with the words “The Original Boys in the Hood.”
Centered along a back wall was a stage with a podium, the backdrop comprised of a banner with the contact information for the National Socialist Movement (NSM), the predominant neo-Nazi group in the United States, as well as swastikas and other white nationalist imagery.
A porch off the back of the building looks out over a multi-acre horse pasture, an idyllic country scene were it not for the 15-foot wooden cross and swastika that three neo-Nazis were wrapping in burlap and dousing in gasoline in preparation for the night’s festivities. Inside the bar, attendees milled about smoking cigarettes and sipping drinks in celebration of what they are calling an historic event.
Later, after the sun had set on the Georgia Peach, approximately 75 white supremacists gathered in the horse pasture. Members of different factions of the Ku Klux Klan, in ceremonial robes and hoods, were joined by members of the NSM and several other white nationalist groups, as well as several unaffiliated individuals who are sympathetic to the white nationalist agenda. They had all flocked to Georgia that day to attend two racially fueled rallies in support of the “white pride” movement. Each person in the group was given a wooden torch before forming a circle around the cross and swastika.
“For God! For race! For nation!” Will Quigg, the Grand Wizard of the California chapter of the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, shouted to the group of white nationalists. “Approach your symbol. Do not turn your back on the symbol.”
On Quigg’s command, the group set the two symbols ablaze. Cheers of “White Power” echoed across the field.
It would be just another rally for racists were it not for the cross and the swastika burning side-by-side. For those unfamiliar with the white nationalist movement, both are racist emblems that seemingly go hand in hand. But for those in the movement, the union of these two symbols is the dawning of a new era of white supremacy.
The official alliance of white supremacist organizations comes at a time when there is a surge in extremist organizations emerging across the country. White nationalists see a litany of significant problems that draw people to their ranks, including lax border security and President Barack Obama’s executive actions to give U.S. citizenship to millions of undocumented immigrants. Then there’s the federal government’s plan to allow Syrian refugees into the country, not to mention the removal of the Confederate battle flag from statehouses across the South after Dylann Roof, a self-made white supremacist inspired by white-pride rhetoric, allegedly killed nine people at a predominantly black church in South Carolina. Add to that the candidacy of Donald Trump, who has certainly helped fan the flames of white supremacy with his anti-immigrant rhetoric. The success of the Black Lives Matter movement threw additional fuel on the fire.
“We have a black president, gay marriage is now legal in this country. There’s so many modernizing influences over the last 20 years or so,” said J. Michael Martinez, an expert on Klan history and author of “Carpetbaggers, Cavalry, and the Ku Klux Klan.” “So many Klansmen have those old South values and they’ve become increasingly marginalized. Their isolationist behavior has not been good for them for the last 20 years or so. I hate to say it, but it’s probably a good move for them to organize and do things differently than they have for the last few decades.”
Click to expand...
The Dawn Of A New Era In White Supremacy And Racism In America
The Georgia Peach Oyster Bar sits along a rural highway about 45 miles west of Atlanta. From the outside, it could pass for a single-story house if not for the neon beer signs. Inside, it looks like any other dusty saloon in the dregs of Dixie: a bar, pool tables under Bud Light lamps hanging from the ceiling, a TV mounted in the corner of the room. It’s what’s behind a single doorway leading to a backroom that makes the Georgia Peach unique.
Dozens of white nationalists from various groups across the country gathered here on a Saturday night in April and spirits were high, giving the room the feel of a white supremacist theme park. In one corner, a tattoo station where shirtless men were getting inked up. In another, a guy sold T-shirts featuring swastikas and hooded Ku Klux Klansmen with the words “The Original Boys in the Hood.”
Centered along a back wall was a stage with a podium, the backdrop comprised of a banner with the contact information for the National Socialist Movement (NSM), the predominant neo-Nazi group in the United States, as well as swastikas and other white nationalist imagery.A porch off the back of the building looks out over a multi-acre horse pasture, an idyllic country scene were it not for the 15-foot wooden cross and swastika that three neo-Nazis were wrapping in burlap and dousing in gasoline in preparation for the night’s festivities. Inside the bar, attendees milled about smoking cigarettes and sipping drinks in celebration of what they are calling an historic event.
Later, after the sun had set on the Georgia Peach, approximately 75 white supremacists gathered in the horse pasture. Members of different factions of the Ku Klux Klan, in ceremonial robes and hoods, were joined by members of the NSM and several other white nationalist groups, as well as several unaffiliated individuals who are sympathetic to the white nationalist agenda. They had all flocked to Georgia that day to attend two racially fueled rallies in support of the “white pride” movement. Each person in the group was given a wooden torch before forming a circle around the cross and swastika.
“For God! For race! For nation!” Will Quigg, the Grand Wizard of the California chapter of the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, shouted to the group of white nationalists. “Approach your symbol. Do not turn your back on the symbol.”
On Quigg’s command, the group set the two symbols ablaze. Cheers of “White Power” echoed across the field.
It would be just another rally for racists were it not for the cross and the swastika burning side-by-side. For those unfamiliar with the white nationalist movement, both are racist emblems that seemingly go hand in hand. But for those in the movement, the union of these two symbols is the dawning of a new era of white supremacy.
The official alliance of white supremacist organizations comes at a time when there is a surge in extremist organizations emerging across the country. White nationalists see a litany of significant problems that draw people to their ranks, including lax border security and President Barack Obama’s executive actions to give U.S. citizenship to millions of undocumented immigrants. Then there’s the federal government’s plan to allow Syrian refugees into the country, not to mention the removal of the Confederate battle flag from statehouses across the South after Dylann Roof, a self-made white supremacist inspired by white-pride rhetoric, allegedly killed nine people at a predominantly black church in South Carolina. Add to that the candidacy of Donald Trump, who has certainly helped fan the flames of white supremacy with his anti-immigrant rhetoric. The success of the Black Lives Matter movement threw additional fuel on the fire.
“We have a black president, gay marriage is now legal in this country. There’s so many modernizing influences over the last 20 years or so,” said J. Michael Martinez, an expert on Klan history and author of “Carpetbaggers, Cavalry, and the Ku Klux Klan.” “So many Klansmen have those old South values and they’ve become increasingly marginalized. Their isolationist behavior has not been good for them for the last 20 years or so. I hate to say it, but it’s probably a good move for them to organize and do things differently than they have for the last few decades.”
Click to expand...
The Dawn Of A New Era In White Supremacy And Racism In America
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