nazisinthemilitary.com
Nazis In The Military The new Nazi army: How the US military is allowing the far-right to join its ranks. "I find it very disconcerting that there are high-level military officials that are unaware of this growing problem. This is a serious issue that deserves serious attention from the Pentagon brass." Tom Tancredo (R-Littleton) asking General David Petraeus about the infiltration of American gangs into the United States military during a hearing on US progress in Iraq on April 9th 2008. Forrest Fogarty was 14 when he decided he wanted to be a Nazi. After bullying at the hands of black and Mexican children at high school in Los Angeles, his adolescent rage needed an outlet. He turned to the three passions that would sustain him to the present day: the skinhead movement, hardcore violence and neo-Nazi punk music. At 15 he moved from LA to downtown Tampa, Fl, with his father, a celebrated Vietnam veteran, and started at Leto Public High in the sunny climes of Hillsborough County. His incessant fighting and penchant for spouting his Hitler-inspired racism was too much for the school authorities to permit. He never went back to education and forged an identity through immersion in the hate-filled music of the neo-Nazi movement. He became obsessed with Ian Stuart Donaldson, the lead singer of the British skinhead band Screwdriver and at 16 got the their album cover - a Viking carrying a staff - tattooed all the way up his left forearm. For the next eight years he drifted through dead-end jobs in construction and landscaping. He began hanging out with the National Alliance, one of the biggest neo-Nazi organizations in the US at the time, and became a member. Fogarty had always seen himself as a fighter and warrior. He resolved to do what two generations of Fogarty's had done before him: join the military. Letting everybody in The neo-Nazi movement has had a long and tense relationship with the US military reported back as far as the Korean and Vietnam wars. The leaders in the movement have often encouraged members to sign up in an effort to receive combat and weapons training to bring to the Race War domestically. The US military command in turn has periodically introduced legislation and guidelines in an effort to stifle the infiltration of white supremacists and neo-Nazis into their ranks. Since September 11th 2001 and the two-front war in Afghanistan and Iraq, this fraught relationship has taken a new turn. In January 2008, there were 158,000 US military personnel in Iraq, with 17,000 in Afghanistan. In all, over a million individuals have served in both wars. In 2005 the army missed their enlistment targets by the largest margin since 1979. This strain on the army in terms of maintaining these huge troop levels has caused their enlistment standards to slip. From educational attainment to criminal records, less is now asked. According to every white supremacist and neo-Nazi organization I talked to in the US - which has included over a dozen different groups - this new laxness has included the military attitude to far-right extremists as well. R), he has seen the ebbing and flowing of the military attitude to far-right extremists over the past forty years. "All the gang-bangers, all the blacks, Mexicans, and white supremacists. I would say that 10 percent of army and marines -they are not in the Navy and Air force so much - are racist extremists of some variety." Erich Gliebe, the chairman of one of the most important neo-Nazi groups in the United States, the National Alliance, agrees. "I've heard the military have relaxed the regulations from a couple of members that are in there," he says. "I think if a person wants to get into the military with just saying that they are in the National Alliance now that they can. In 2008, with the declining number of troops, I don't think they are as picky as they used to be." Securing a future for white children And these same extremist groups are taking advantage. The National Socialist Movement (NSM) is explicitly interested in using the military to gain training. "We do encourage them to sign up for the military," says Lt. "We can use the training to secure the resistance to our government." Wilson says the party has 190 members currently serving in the military. "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." Billy Roper, who used to be part of National Alliance, runs White Revolution which has close to 500 members. "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." A subjective decision Fogarty knew back in 1997 the tattoo he had riding up his forearm could be a problem. In a neo-Nazi underworld obsessed with secrecy racist tattoos remained the biggest indicator of extremism for a recruiter. Army Regulation Pamphlet 600-15, published in 2000, notes that, "Extremist groups frequently use tattoos to show group association." It continues: "Skinheads frequently use tattoos and symbols of lightning bolts, skulls, Nazi swastikas, eagles, and Nordic warriors." It instructs recruiters that if a soldier refuses to be rehabilitated - which they state as removing the tattoo - disciplinary actions including discharge should be taken. On one evening we chat at his favourite dive on the side of a highway, the other we spend a rainy day trudging around Tampa's Lowry Zoo with his two children, 13 and 9 On the telephone before we meet at the Winghouse Bar & Grill, he tells me I will recognize him, even though I've never seen a picture. "Just look for the skinhead with the tattoos," he says, laughing. With his tightly cropped hair, Wife beater' vest, and muscular arms covered with tattoos - ranging from the Screwdriver album piece to the Celtic cross - he is a poster-boy skinhead. "Everyone around here knows I'm a skinhead," he reassures me. "I'm completely public about being a racist and Nazi," he says. "I get into fights maybe twice a month, because some niggers will get pissed off with it." Every time a black person enters the bar, he emits a hiss of disapproval. "I don't want to look at them, I don't want them near me, I don't want to smell them. And people say, Oh people who are racialist you've never hung around black people'... bullshit, I've showered with them, I've lived with them, I don't like them... they're fucking savages, they're tribal motherfuckers, they are different to us, how they think, how they conduct themselves." Despite his vitriolic racism Fogarty wasn't worried about not being allowed into the army. Military protocol stipulates that each new recruit with suspicious tattoos must write an explanation about the divinity and meaning of their body art. Fogarty's are quite clearly the kind written about in ARP 600-15 - a Nordic warrior, and a Celtic cross. "They just told me to write an explanation of each tattoo and I made up some stuff and that was that," he says. Fogarty was enlisted and stationed in the 3rd Infantry Division based at Fort Stewart, GA, the largest Army installation east of the Mississippi River. This happened in 1997 even before the new military attitude to tattoos really took hold as troops were needed ever more desperately. It shows that regulations were loose before and have got even looser. Now more Fogarty's are getting through, as the commanders in the army hierarchy admit to a liberalism that wasn't in place previously. S Douglas Smith is the Public Affairs Officer at the Department of the Army. "We don't exclude people from the army based on their thoughts," he says. But a tattoo of an offensive nature, racial, sexual, or extremist might be a reason for them not to be in the military."
"The tattoo is a relatively subjective decision," he continued. "We try to educate recruiters on what extremist tattoos, but it's going to depend on the recruiters' knowledge of tattoos." As evidenced by a...
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