Neo-Nazis force a hard calculation
Activists plot proper response to July rally at Capitol
By Jennifer Latson
The Olympian
March 06, 2006

The emergence of a tiny neo-Nazi group that is planning a 
July rally at the Capitol has residents working to keep the 
white supremacist group from gaining a foothold here.

Members of the fledgling Washington chapter of the National 
Socialist Movement recently spread thousands of fliers through 
the urban areas of Thurston County, decrying minority groups 
and promoting the July rally. When eight of the neo-Nazis had 
the group’s first demonstration in Olympia in January, they 
drew a crowd of 200 counter-protesters.

More publicity-seeking incidents by the group are likely in 
Olympia as the July rally nears, said officials at the 
Anti-Defamation League, one of several watchdog groups tracking 
the neo-Nazi organization. They say the group is growing.

Watchdog groups are warning South Sound residents not to be 
lured into violent clashes with the group.

Protests resulted in the arrests of 17 people in Orlando, Fla., 
last month and at least 100 in Toledo, Ohio, last fall, when 
members of the Minnesota-based neo-Nazi group marched through 
black neighborhoods in the cities.

The neo-Nazis try to provoke outrage, and that might rile a 
crowd of opponents until the counter-protesters commit a crime, 
say members of the watchdog groups.

But the watchdog organizations also caution against ignoring 
the group. Complacency, they say, is one of the reasons Coeur 
D’Alene, Idaho, became a stronghold for the now-defunct white 
supremacist group Aryan Nations.

Emerging threat

The National Socialist Movement’s members are energetic, 
provocative and fiercely bigoted, the group’s opponents say.

Nationally, they have become the prominent white supremacy 
group during the past few years, while other major groups, 
such as the northern Idaho-based Aryan Nations and West 
Virginia-based National Alliance, disintegrated.

“They’ve grown very fast in the past year,” said Mark Potok, 
director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s intelligence 
project, which has monitored the group’s activity. “They’re 
quite active.”

Members of the National Socialist Movement declined to be 
interviewed by The Olympian.

Potok estimates the group has 200 to 300 members nationally; 
the Washington chapter has 10 or 12, according to estimates 
by the northwest office of the Anti-Defamation League.

The group wasn’t active in Washington until earlier this year, 
when neo-Nazi Justin Boyer moved from Ohio to Washington and 
kick-started the dormant local chapter.

At the Jan. 22 rally in Olympia, Boyer said his group was 
protesting the “genocide” of the white race through the spread 
of a multicultural society. Even though the group was 
outnumbered by counter-protesters, he said, the media exposure 
from the rally would attract people to its cause. “We don’t 
have to hate nobody. We love everyone in their own nations,” 
he said, adding, “We’re not violent.”

In the past few months, the neo-Nazis have had rallies in 
Olympia, Seattle and Boyer’s hometown of Des Moines. They 
gathered Sunday outside the Everett Events Center in Snohomish 
County and are promoting more rallies and flier drops throughout 
the spring.

The group is small, but its momentum worries civil rights 
activists. The group reaches out to younger people in its 
recruiting efforts and has a junior division for teenagers.

Political party

The neo-Nazis also have registered as a national political 
party with plans to run a candidate for president.

“I don’t think they’re shaping up as the new Aryan Nations, 
but they’re growing rapidly, and they’re definitely a cause 
for concern,” Potok said. “They’re a pretty noxious group in 
terms of provoking violence and their interest in children. 
They’re trying to build the next generation of people who 
will fight for the white race.”

While the group declares itself opposed to violence and has 
been careful not to break laws, activists worry that it will 
attract people who are more likely to commit crimes.

“Should we be afraid of them as individuals? No. Should we 
be concerned that a neo-Nazi group is forming and becoming 
more active in the Northwest? Yes,” said Rob Jacobs, regional 
director of the Anti-Defamation League. “The biggest risk is 
continued growth, and ultimately, with continued growth, some 
of the activities we’ve seen historically with other groups 
result in violence.”

The group’s message is genocidal. In a radio show broadcast 
on its Web site, a new member of the Washington group jokes 
about buying a Boeing warehouse to create the world’s biggest 
gas chamber.

The more pressing concern, say civil rights workers, is not 
violence the group might commit, but violence it might provoke.

“They actually managed to start a major riot in a major American 
city. That’s the immediate threat,” said Potok, referring to the 
group’s October demonstration in Toledo.

After seeing the Aryan Nations group make Coeur D’Alene the seat 
of right-wing extremism nationwide, Jacobs said, he’s not ruling 
out the potential threat of a new fringe group.

“Without a community response rejecting their presence and their 
philosophy, (Aryan Nations) grew to the point where it destroyed 
the reputation and image of northern Idaho,” Jacobs said. “More 
than that, the community itself lived in fear.”

Members of the National Socialist Movement have called local groups, 
who are protesting their recent activity, and threatened to show up 
at their events. Their Web site lists the names and phone numbers of 
local opponents under the heading “enemies of the white race.”

“To everyone in a religious group or an ethnic group or an activist 
group, hearing that you’ll have a bunch of people in the back wearing 
brown shirts and swastikas is a scary proposition,” Jacobs said.

Community response

The neo-Nazi group has stirred an animated debate among South Sound’s 
activist groups, which are brainstorming responses to the planned 
July rally. At least two groups dedicated to fighting the neo-Nazis 
have sprung up, with a collective membership of more than 60 people.

The local activists have mulled strategies from the satirical to the 
somber. Some, inspired by “The Producers,” favor a mocking emulation 
of the neo-Nazis. Other people have proposed dressing as concentration 
camp prisoners and silently following the group the next time it marches 
through town.

“There’s a consensus growing on a tactic that’s basically ridicule.

We’re probably going to go with that,” said Olympia resident Drew 
Hendricks, who plans to protest the July rally from as close as he 
can get to the group. “We’ll probably do a spoof on their uniforms 
or on the stereotypes that they have of us.”

Still others have proposed a nonconfrontational counter-demonstration, 
staged away from the neo-Nazi rally, where residents would celebrate 
diversity and condemn the group’s philosophies.

Unity in the Community

The group Unity in the Community drew more than 50 people to its 
first meeting on the subject, including local clergy and law enforcement 
officials. They tended to prefer such a rival demonstration, which could 
include something like a walkathon to benefit causes the neo-Nazis oppose.

Experts on hate groups also favor the idea of a separate counter-protest, 
arguing that confronting the groups inevitably degrades into a screaming 
match, or even violence.

“That is really a very bad plan that accomplishes the hate group’s goals, 
which are to get on the front page,” said Potok of the Southern Poverty 
Law Center.

Randy Blazak, a sociology professor at Portland State University and 
chairman of the Oregon Coalition Against Hate Crimes, helped organize 
a counter-protest when neo-Nazis planned a rally in Portland’s Gabriel 
Park a year ago.

The protest was in a different part of town and drew thousands of people, 
including the mayor.

“The more significant event was what happened away from the park,” Blazak 
said. “Thanks to these Nazis, a lot of the community came together and had 
a great day.”

Confrontation predicted

Olympia police Cmdr. Tor Bjornstad has met with some of the local groups 
working on a response to the neo-Nazis. He counsels community members to 
ignore the group entirely but says he knows it is unlikely that everyone 
will heed his advice.

“It’s just terribly wishful thinking on my part,” Bjornstad said.

“I know 100 percent that there’s going to be a confrontation of some 
kind there,” he added.

The neo-Nazis appear to have chosen Olympia as the focus of their 
publicity-seeking efforts because of the area’s reputation as a liberal 
bastion and the home of The Evergreen State College — they know they’ll 
get a response from residents, experts on hate groups said.

While those experts share Bjornstad’s concern about confronting the 
neo-Nazi group, they disagree that it’s best to ignore the white 
supremacists completely.

“It’s an important thing to keep aware of them and to respond in a 
positive way, to say that our communities don’t accept their philosophy,” 
said Jacobs, of the Anti-Defamation League.

Members of the neo-Nazi group are open on their Web site about their 
plans to grab attention.

“We are the most unified Nazi group in America. We’re getting as big 
as the German groups. It just takes time to get more members,” said 
Washington National Socialist Movement leader Boyer in an interview 
on the group’s online radio show. “Basically, it’s a good time to do 
rallies because the world’s changing and white people are waking up.”

There has been a nationwide surge in groups like the National Socialist 
Movement, and it seems generally to correlate with an increase in 
immigration, said Potok, with the law center.

There are 803 active hate groups in the country, an increase of about 
one-third from 2000, when there were 602, according to the Southern 
Poverty Law Center, which does an annual count of the groups.

“The U.S. in many ways has gone backward in race relations,” Potok 
said. “We study these things pretty closely, and I think there has 
been real growth.”

When hate is dangerous

Hate groups have appeared in Olympia before, although none has been 
so high-profile as the National Socialist Movement. Racist groups 
periodically dump fliers on South Sound lawns, and in a few cases, 
people affiliated with the groups or who share their ideologies 
commit hate crimes.

• December 1991: An Olympia skinhead is involved in an assault on a 
black man in Seattle.

• August 1992: A 17-year-old Olympia boy is bludgeoned and stabbed 
to death in a railroad tunnel in downtown Olympia by a pair of racist 
skinheads. The boy, Bob Buchanan Jr., is Asian-American.

• July 1993: Neo-Nazis bomb NAACP offices in Tacoma.

• January 1994: Jewish tombstones are repeatedly vandalized at 
Tumwater’s Masonic Memorial Park.

• April 1995: Two Olympia High School students are assaulted on 
campus and called “fags.”

• January 1996: Two gay men are assaulted outside Thekla, then a 
nightclub in downtown Olympia.

• November 1998: A white cross is planted on the lawn of an 
interracial family near Yelm.

• December 2002: A Lacey woman finds a swastika and other racially 
offensive graffiti in her home. She has a black boyfriend.

• March 2003: Four skinheads kill a homeless man in Tacoma so that 
one of them can earn the red shoelaces that are awarded after a 
member of the groups attacks “an enemy of the white race.”

Movement timeline

• September 2005: Joseph Boyer moves from Ohio to Des Moines to 
head a Washington chapter of the National Socialist Movement. 
He was recruited by a leader of the national group to revive 
the mostly dormant Washington section of the neo-Nazi group.

• Jan. 22: Eight members of the group hold their first march, 
in downtown Olympia. About 200 protesters demonstrate against 
the group.

• Feb. 12: Ten members of the group hold a demonstration near 
the Lenin statue in the Seattle neighborhood of Fremont.

• Feb. 21: Neo-Nazis toss thousands of fliers onto the lawns 
of South Sound residents in the middle of the night. Tumwater 
residents wake to find racist messages taped to plastic Easter 
eggs in their yards.

• Sunday: The group has a rally in Snohomish.

• This spring: The group has plans for more leaflet distribution 
and rallies around Western Washington, according to its Web site.

• July 2-4: The group is planning a rally and campout on the steps 
of the Capitol in Olympia.

Northern Idaho

When Richard Butler formed Aryan Nations in the mid-1970s, people 
largely dismissed the threat of the extremist group, headquartered 
on a compound near Hayden Lake in Idaho.

It became the country’s best-known white supremacist group, drawing 
as many as 200 people to conferences each summer and making northern 
Idaho synonymous with racism.

The group’s prominence faded after a series of violent events in 
the late 1990s.

In 1998, a former Aryan Nations guard wounded five people in a 
shooting at a Jewish Community Center in Los Angeles, then shot 
a Filipino-American postal worker. The gunman, Buford Oneal Furrow 
Jr., was a 1979 graduate of Timberline High School in Lacey and 
had been living in Nisqually Valley with his parents before the 
shooting.

The same year, a mother and son were assaulted by Aryan Nations 
guards when they stopped their car near the Hayden Lake compound.

Fines from the court cases bankrupted the group, forcing it to 
give up its compound.

Experts say the National Socialist Movement does not appear to 
be shaping up as the next Aryan Nations, but they aren’t dismissing 
the threat.

Jennifer Latson covers Thurston County and Tumwater for The Olympian. 
She can be reached at 360-754-5435 or jlatson@theolympian.com.

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