American Front
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article does not cite any references or sources. (March 2007) Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. |
The American Front was a white power skinhead organization, which was started in the mid-1980s in San Francisco, California by Bob Heick, aka "Nazi Bob", aka "Bob Blitz".
The American Front began as a loose organization modeled after Britain's National Front, which attempted to merge the skinhead subculture with white power politics. Heick was known for terrorizing the San Francisco punk and anarchist scenes. This climaxed with Heick and his friend breaking the windows of a Haight Street anarchist bookstore, Bound Together Books.
Heick began working with Tom Metzger's White Aryan Resistance in 1988 after gaining notice for holding the Third Positionist themed "White Workers Day Parade", on May 1 1988. Though Heick was never an official member of W.A.R., Metzger promoted Heick as a youth spokesman for the movement.
Heick and the American Front gained notoriety by being a thorn in the side of artist Boyd Rice. Heick and Rice posed in American Front uniforms for an article on neo-Nazis in Sassy Magazine. Rice claims he was never really a member of the American Front, but he liked the dynamic character of Heick. Hieck moved with his family to Portland, Oregon were he has since not been actively involved in the Front since the mid 90s.
Contents |
[edit] History
[edit] Origins
In 1985, after years of associating with peers of all races (including an Asian American girlfriend) and changing his nickname from Bob Nohawk to Bob Blitz, Bob Heick began writing and distributing original leaflets on various topics mostly from a nationalist anti-communist stance in response to the increasing leftist influence in the local punk subculture. After a window-breaking incident at Bound Together Books, the anarchist collective that ran the store used the original American Front flyer as part of a press release listing several alleged skinhead crimes committed in the Haight-Ashbury district. The press release triggered a week-long flurry of media attention on white power skinheads, beginning with the San Francisco Examiner headline "Thugs Terrorize Haight". TV and radio outlets followed suit.
Originally intended as a banner organization for all American skinheads, regardless of local group (i.e. Bay Area Skin Heads, S.F Skins, North Side Firm), the American Front had no formal structure or membership. Some skinheads from Southern California began using the name in a gang context, which was very common in the Los Angeles punk scene. That faction of the American Front was completely independent of Heick after 1985, and spread to other cities, partly due to members who were in the Military of the United States. In San Francisco, Heick lost favor with the mostly-apolitical skinheads. The media attention and constant vandalism brought increased attention from the local police. In addition, Heick's progression from patriotism to Nazism lost him many friends, and some people accused him of trying to take over the local skinhead scene. Heick changed direction, associating with heavy metal music fans and redneck types. He formed the short-lived group United White Brethren in the North and South Bay Areas.
[edit] Transformation into political group
Upon his return to San Francisco in 1987, Heick found the newer generation of local skinheads to be more receptive to Nazi ideology, and that Nazism had become fashionable in some circles. It was at this time that the American Front transformed into a political organization, and its membership was no longer exclusively comprised of skinheads. On May 1, 1988, The American Front held its first White Workers Day march on Haight Street in San Francisco. The 65 mostly skinhead participants marched unopposed from "Skinhead Hill" in Buena Vista Park to Golden Gate Park. This was heralded by Tom Metzger of White Aryan Resistance on his telephone hotline, in the WAR newspaper, and on TV; due to the promotion of a Third Positionist agenda that was favored by both the A.F. and W.A.R. at the time (as opposed to a Nazi or Ku Klux Klan approach the latter of which Metzger was desperately trying to shed). The American Front tabloid Aryan Warrior was published soon after, and had the minor distinction of being the first white nationalist newspaper to be laid out on a laser printer. Metzger began referring media to Heick as a spokesman for white power skinheads, even over members of his own group, such as his former youth spokesman Dave Mazella (who later testified against Metzger in his 1990 Portland, Oregon civil trial)
Around that time, the American Front gained a lot of local and national media exposure. Heick appeared on the news magazine show The Reporters, which focused mainly on Heick and included news footage of the Mayday march. Articles in publications such as Rolling Stone, Hustler, and Sassy Magazine featured the American Front. Of all media appearances, none gained as much attention as the "Young Hate Mongers" episode of Geraldo, which led to Geraldo Rivera's famous nose-breaking incident.
By 1989, there were American Front units in 14 US states. However, there was little support in San Francisco, the birthplace of the organization. Mayday 1989 saw an American Front march at San Francisco City Hall. To avoid facing a strong counter-protest, the American Front alerted the media about the event at the last minute. This ploy backfired, giving the AF zero media coverage for the demonstration, which was only witnessed by police and homeless people who congregate in the area.
[edit] Aryan Woodstock
Heick tried to organize a concert of white power bands in a small town in Northern California. The venue canceled when they found out it was being sponsored by the American Front. Soon after, a local supporter informed Heick that he knew of a doctor who owned numerous acres of land. Heick began the initial planning of the event, but was pushed aside by Tom Metzger, and the concert became a White Aryan Resistance event instead of an American Front event. Heick and Metzger disagreed on almost every facet of the planning of the festival, including the name, Aryan Woodstock. Heick disagreed with Metzger's promotion of the event on his Aryan Update phone hotline, because the hotline was monitored by anti-racist activists, and would give them time to organize against the event. The undoing of the festival lay in the permit. A WAR activist with a legal background undertook the task of securing the required permits. After speaking with three different bureaucrats, he was told that no permit would be required to play live music at a private event on private land, as long as sanitation was provided for.
During the two weeks leading up to Aryan Woodstock, the event was a leading local news story. Both Heick and Metzger were seen attending city council meetings filled with community groups and protestors. The county sought an injunction to block the gathering, and Heick appeared before Judge William Snowden to defend AF and WAR's right to assemble. Judge Snowden ruled that the gathering may take place, but there could be no music. Roughly 300 people from across the United States made it onto the property before the landowner, Howard Londsale, caved to police pressure and allowed the authorities to close off the entrance. This stranded many would-be attendees, some who had traveled great distances to be there. Several hundred protesters were also positioned outside the property.
Tension between AF and WAR increased soon after, when it was revealed that a longtime WAR financial contributor felt neglected by the Metzger organization, and switched his support to the American Front. The undercurrent of hostility toward Heick then extended to his then-girlfriend, who soon ended their relationship and her ties to the white power movement. Heick spent the next year visiting various AF units in California and across the United States before getting married and settling down in Portland Oregon.
[edit] 1990s
While still in the Bay Area in 1990, Heick openly announced on the AF telephone hotline that the group would appear in San Francisco's Union Square on the first Saturday in May. The message ran for a month prior to the event with the correct date time and place. Opponents of the AF held a Mayday demonstration three days prior, on May 1. On the day of the AF event, Heick arrived with 10 men and three women, and marched directly into 300 missile-throwing protesters. Police descended upon the AF contingent and confiscated their wooden shields. Police were hit from both sides and made no attempt to separate the two groups. After 20 minutes, injuries included a broken arm, a minor head injury, and in the case of Heick, a broken nose.
In October 1990, Tom Metzger was found liable in a Portland, Oregon civil court case involving the death of Mulegata Seraw, an Ethiopian who died during an altercation with local white power skinheads. During the same week of the court ruling, Heick relocated to that city. This fact was known to every anti-racist group in the city. The Coalition for Human Dignity published fliers featuring Heick's home address, and distributed press releases announcing his arrival. Local TV news crews arrived at Heick's apartment just a few days after he moved in.
Heick still received regular invitations to appear on national television, but unlike in the 1980s, many of the new offers were to appear on trash TV shows. Heick refused those offers, restricting his interviews to genuine news programs. Press interest in Heick and the AF was waning, and Heick focused on local activism.
The American Front's 1991 May Day demonstration was held at Portland City Hall, and was intended to counteract Portland's self-congratulatory stance on the Metzger verdict. There was a large counterprotest, but no violence. In 1992, Heick and American Front associates were the first out-of-state activists to arrive at the Randy Weaver stand-off at Ruby Ridge. Heick was featured in a videotape of the event, blockading a fuel truck and lambasting the local contractor driving the truck for supporting the government.
Around this time, AF focused on demonstrations and literature distribution. The group's telephone hotline was revived in Portland and remained active till Heick left the group in 1995. In the 1990s, the Washington and California AF sections published The Voice of Revolution magazine, which had strong ties to the newly-formed Combat 18 in England. In New York, Jim Porazzo published Greystorm, the title being a reference to the greyshirt uniform of the official American Front. In Portland, Heick published Revolutionary Nationalist
Much of the focus of AF activity was in protest of hate crime laws, which they claimed only target whites. AF was also known for harassing Portland city commissioner Mike Lindberg, who called the group "Gay Bashing Skinheads" in the press, even though no such crimes where ever attributed to the group, nor where any other acts of violence. The Albany, Oregon area unit of the AF held regular demonstrations at the state capital and other government offices in central Oregon.
[edit] Change of leadership and location
The American Front briefly resurfaced under the leadership of James Porazzo, who moved the American Front to Harrison, Arkansas and began to push a Third Position philosophy. During this period, the American Front used pro-working class, anti-capitalist, environmentalist, anti-globalization and communist positions in conjunction with a racial organizing platform — just as they had with the skinhead, industrial music and Satanism scenes in the 1980s. Porazzo targeted Jews as the major players in the capitalist system, and blamed Zionism for global turmoil.
[edit] Aftermath
In the 2000s, the American Front was no longer active, except for a few activists who functioned only on the Internet. All of the group's websites and contact addresses have since disappeared.
