Neo-Nazis Target Immigrants in California, Arizona, Minnesota

November 8, 2009

From NPR:

The National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi group, held two rallies in Arizona and Minnesota on Saturday to demonstrate against undocumented immigration. Similar rallies in Riverside, Calif., near Los Angeles, have led to violent clashes with counter-protesters.

Late last month, a rally near a day-laborer site in Riverside attracted about two dozen members of the National Socialist Movement (NSM), who wore World War II-era Nazi garb. They were outmatched by about 700 counter-protesters.

The two sides were separated by dozens of police officers in riot gear. NSM members taunted counter-protesters with racist epithets. Fights broke out and several counter-protesters hurled rocks and bottles. The neo-Nazis left 3 hours later, under police escort.

Counter-demonstration organizer Kevin Akin helped mobilize over 50 community and religious organizations against the NSM.

“The broader the resistance is to the Nazis, the more difficult it is for them to find specific targets. We’re hearing only irritation, anger and fear from the community,” Akin says. “The fact is, when the come to Riverside, their enemy is the whole community.”

The National Socialist Movement is known for provocative confrontations.

The group’s Web site called counter-protesters an unruly mob of “Mexicans, Jews and homosexuals.”

NSM members, meanwhile, are depicted in strictly heroic terms.

“They’re proud of who they are, tired of white guilt being shoved on their kids and multiculturalism. They can’t see any reason for it,” Jeff Hall, the National Socialist Movement’s state president, tells NPR.

Hall is a burly skinhead with a German military Iron Cross tattooed on the back of his skull. He set up the group’s California headquarters in Riverside last year. He led the recent street rallies in a predominantly Latino neighborhood already battling gang violence, home foreclosures and high unemployment.

“I think Riverside was waiting for something like this. I’d like to see it cleaned up. And I see on so many street corners groups of Hispanics, most of whom you can easily assume came here illegally,” Hall says. “In times when we’ve been hit so hard with the recession and job losses, we’re standing up for the American workers.”

It’s white American workers he’s talking about. The National Socialist Movement’s guiding principles — which are posted on its Web site and are founded on the Nazi Party’s “25 Points” — are clear: only those of “pure White blood may be members of the nation.” Click here for the full story.