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William Alexander “Bill” White (born 29 May 1977) is the leader of the internet-based American National Socialist Workers' Party, and administrator of a former website dedicated to anti-Zionist and anti-capitalist speech, Overthrow.com.

White came to public attention in 1996 in a front page article in The Washington Post after he posted allegations about the stepmother of a girl he said was being abused.^[1] In 1999 he expressed support for the teenage killers of 12 students and a teacher in the Columbine High School massacre because they were being oppressed by America's fascist education system.^[2] In 2005, The New York Times quoted him as having "laughed" when United States district court judge Joan Lefkow's husband and mother were murdered,^[3] because Lefkow had ruled against white supremacist Matthew Hale in a trademark dispute. He told The Roanoke Times that he looked forward to "further killings of Jews and their sympathizers."^[4] White is skeptical of the Holocaust, saying "claims that ... the gas chambers were part of a 'Holocaust' of 'six million,' were invented almost entirely by the Soviet Union, and were later adopted by the Jewish communities of the Western nations."^[5] The Anti-Defamation League quotes White as saying "there was no Holocaust" and describes what they call "White's Holocaust denial rhetoric".^[6]

In 2008, White was arrested for alleged threats to a federal juror after activist Charles "Heavy Fed" Gilliam contacted the FBI and asked that he be investigated. The FBI confiscated his computer equipment, resulting in the closure of Overthrow.com. On December 18, 2009, he was found guilty on four counts.

Early activism

White was raised in the Horizon Hill neighborhood of Rockville, Maryland. According to an April 1999 interview with The Washington Times, he began to drift toward anarchism after reading The Communist Manifesto at the age of 13. He attended Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, where he founded the Utopian Anarchist Party (UAP) and published a magazine that focused on opposition to the education system, psychiatry, and the police.^[7]

After graduating in 1994, White studied psychology at the University of Maryland, College Park, where, in 1995, he started another political group called the Bill White Student Group (a continuation of the UAP), set up Overthrow.com as the group's website where he published material from a wide range of political viewpoints, including communism, anarchism, and fascism.^[8]

In 1995, White faced criminal charges of possessing deadly weapons — a knife and a club — distributing obscene material, and attempting to escape from police custody, arising out of the distribution of political leaflets, though Montgomery County declined to prosecute the case. A 2002 article in The Gazette states that, in 1997, White served seven months in the Montgomery County Detention Center on weapons, assault and resisting arrest charges.^[9]

On February 14, 1996, White was featured in a front-page story in The Washington Post after posting on Internet news groups the name and telephone number of a woman he thought was abusing her daughter. The supposed victim had allegedly told a university counseling group that her parents would not allow her to use the telephone or see friends; someone from the group spread the story, and White posted it, asking readers to telephone the mother and "tell her you are disgusted and you demand that she stops." The Post reported that the mother and stepfather were near breaking point after receiving threatening telephone calls. ^[1]

Columbine High School massacre

On April 20, 1999, two teenage students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, went on a shooting rampage at Columbine High School, killing 12 students and a teacher, before committing suicide.

Reuters wrote that White's website had published that "schools and juvenile psychiatric centers ... prescribe anti-depressants are evil and should be destroyed, and it gives a list of "Music to Shoot Your School Up By." The report continued that "[t]here are so many parallels between the Web site's message and the April 20 massacre in Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, that some police hate-crime experts say privately it is not inconceivable that the two teen-age gunmen in that case visited the site." ^[2] FBI officials told Reuters there was no indication that the website had any connection to the shooting.

White told Reuters that "the reason [the Columbine victims] got killed is that they are part of an authoritarian social movement and were seen by the killers as symbolic of that movement ... What the shooters were shooting at was not people but the movements they symbolized. It's a shame that authoritarian Christians, who are trying to dominate our society, don't have a clue how objectionable they are until people start shooting them."^[2] He said he would neither confirm nor deny that what he called a "Colorado cell" of his Utopian Anarchist Party had been in contact with the teenagers before the shooting.^[2]

White later clarified his position on Columbine in an interview with Jack Ross for Pravda:

People were predictably outraged, and let me be clear that I sympathize with what they did — I don't support it or think it was necessarily the "right" thing to do. What I said was that the public school system is actively involved in hurting youth, that it is psychologically destructive to them, and that the necessary effect of the evil violence the public schools do on a massive scale is evil violence directed back at them and the people and institutions which symbolize them.^[10]

Moving left and right

White says that in 1997-8 he was involved with the Revolutionary Communist Party's (RCP) Refuse and Resist and Coalition against Police Brutality, as well as the International Socialist Organization (ISO).

In 2000, White joined Ross Perot's Reform Party and the campaign to elect Pat Buchanan, then running for president on a Reform Party ticket. White later told American Free Press that he resigned from the Buchanan campaign after a few months out of concern for what he called the campaign's "dishonest practices."

White worked as a columnist for the Russian website Pravda Online.

Business interests

White incorporated his first company, White Web Publishing Inc., in 2002, which he sold in 2003. He set up an eBay clone called "ShopWhite" with the aim of capturing the White Power music and paraphernalia market, but the venture failed after security and administrative problems.^[11]

In late 2003, White moved to Roanoke, Virginia, where he began trading as White Homes and Land LLC. According to The Roanoke Times and the Southern Poverty Law Center, White has owned nine single and multi-family properties in an impoverished black neighborhood in South West Roanoke since April 2004.^[12]

White told the Roanoke Times that he is not a racist or Nazi, describing himself as a "libertarian socialist," ^[4] although he admits to being an antisemite: "I wouldn't be out here buying and fixing up houses if I had some agenda against the black community ... The Jews, I despise. They hate me. I hate them."^[13] He acknowledges having written of Roanoke residents that "the local nig-rats are already conspiring to test me."^[13].

Intimidation and activism

On October 15, 2005, White provided assistance to the National Socialist Movement in organizing their neo-Nazi march and rally in Toledo, Ohio. The march was cancelled by police when the National Socialist Movement and around 20 supporters were outnumbered by several hundred anti-racists and members of the largely African-American neighborhood in which the rally was to take place. White, the National Socialist Movement's Dayton leader Mark Martin, and the rest of their supporters began to taunt the crowd with racial epithets. Some of the counter-protesters became violent and began rioting. More than 100 were arrested.^[14][15]

In July 2006, White was removed from the NSM and formed the internet-based American National Socialist Workers' Party (ANSWP). On April 19, 2007, two of the fifteen ANSWP members were arrested when they unveiled a swastika flag during a speech by President George W. Bush in Tipp City, Ohio.^[16] On May 23, 2007 White mailed letters and copies of National Socialist, the ANSWP magazine, to the residents of an apartment complex in Virginia Beach, Virginia where tenants had complained about discriminatory behavior by their landlord.^[17][18]

Access to White's websites in Canada

In 2006, Canadian human rights lawyer Richard Warman and the Canadian Jewish Congress asked the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, Canada's telecommunications regulator, to block access in Canada to White's websites. Warman said the websites contained material intended to incite violence against him that caused him to fear for his life.^[19]

Publishing Jena 6 addresses and phone numbers

On September 22, 2007, the FBI opened an investigation of Overthrow.com because it listed the addresses of five of the Jena Six and the telephone numbers of some of their families "in case anyone wants to deliver justice." The Jena 6 were charged with a racially motivated attack on a 17-year old white student. According to an FBI spokeswoman, the website "essentially called for their lynching"."^[20]

Al Sharpton stated that some of the families have continuously received threatening and harassing phone calls. ^[20]

Roanoke attack

In October 2007, White was attacked by Aries Brown and Lattoria Minnis, two African-Americans, both of whom were convicted of assault after a judge rejected their claims that White had assaulted them.^[21][22] During the trial, White testified that he choked Brown unconscious during the incident^[23], and later published an essay "Transcendence and the Killing of the Wicked" describing the experience.^[24]

Federal trial and conviction

On October 17, 2008, White was arrested in Roanoke, Virginia, by the FBI. The arrest stems from an alleged threat White made against a federal juror involved in the Matt Hale case in 2004 and posting the juror's personal information online. White is being held without bond.^[25] Other counts against White, filed December 11, 2008, include alleged threats he made against poor black tenants suing their landlords, and threats against others, including Canadian human rights activist Richard Warman, columnist Leonard Pitts, former South Harrison Township, New Jersey mayor Charles Tyson, and a university administrator from Delaware.^[26][27][28]

If convicted on all counts, White could face up to 55 years in prison and up to $1,750,000 in fines.^[29] In a prosecutorial press release announcing White's initial indictment, it was noted that "[t]he Court, however, would determine the appropriate sentence to be imposed under the advisory United States Sentencing Guidelines." ^[30] In July 2009, one count of inciting violence was dismissed by the judge.^[31] The trial on the seven remaining charges began on December 9, 2009.^[32] On December 18, the jury found him guilty on four counts and not guilty on three counts. He faces a sentence of up to 35 years.^[33]

Notes

References

• "Shadowed by Threats, Judge Finds New Horror" by Jodi Wilgoren, David Bernstein, Gretchen Ruethling, Mindy Sink, and David Johnston, New York Times, March 2, 2005 (link is to the abstract only; full article must be purchased)
• "The Bottom of the Barrel" by Ryan O'Donnell, FrontPageMagazine.com, April 16, 2003
• "Jack Ross: Interview with Pravda.ru's Bill White" by Jack Ross, Pravda, January 10, 2002
• "Anarchist Web site salutes 2 killers", no byline, Washington Times, May 3, 1999
• "Web Site Asks Youths To Carry Weapons, Build Bombs" by Sarah Tippit, Reuters, May 3, 1999 - now a deadlink
• "Bigots in Business: Neo-Nazi landlord in black Virginia neighborhood", Southern Poverty Law Center, no byline, undated, retrieved June 9, 2005
• "Freedom Lover Takes Long Road to Truth", American Free Press, no byline, undated, retrieved June 8, 2005
• "Landlord denies allegations of sinister agenda" by Mike Hudson, Roanoke Times, July 9, 2004
• "School shooter liked to create macabre drawings and stories" by Amy Forliti, Associated Press, March 22, 2005
• "Weise's words, images keep Web buzzing" by David Hanners, Pioneer Press, undated
• Cramer, John and Jen McCaffery. "White Supremacist Comments on Case." Roanoke Times & World News, 3 March 2005.
• Ahearn, Lorraine. "Neo-Nazi Site Posts Addresses of Truth Panelists." Greensboro News & Record, 3 July 2005.
• "The 'N-Word,' and Other Readers' Letters," Philadelphia Daily News, 10 Aug. 2005.
• CNN article about Nazi event with Bill White quote
• Article on December Toledo nazi rally
• LSJ.com article on Lansing Neo Nazi rally
• 2008 Southern Poverty Law Center article on White
• How Two Canadians Helped Nab America's Top Neo-Nazi by Colin Freeze, the Globe and Mail, December 12, 2008.

External links

• Libertarian National Socialist Green Party, on behalf of which White has spoken.