Volksfront

This article is about an American political organization. Volksfront is also the German word for popular front (usually left-wing), or for the right-wing Afrikaner Volksfront in South Africa.

Volksfront (also known as Volksfront International) describes itself as an international fraternal organization for persons of European descent.^[1] It has been called "neo-Nazi" and a "racist-skinhead group" in press reports.^[2][3][4] The Anti-Defamation League claims since its establishment in 1994, the group has been growing nationally and internationally has called the group "one of the most active skinhead groups in the United States."^[5] The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has added Volksfront to its list of hate groups.^[6]

The group was founded in 1994 in the Oregon State Penitentiary by Randall Krager along with three other inmates in an Oregon prison.^[7] It has expanded to three continents and ten countries: Spain, Portugal, Germany, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Official supporter chapters abroad exist in Croatia, Italy, Switzerland, and New Zealand. Volksfront has chapters in states such as Oregon, Massachusetts, Arizona, California, New York, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina, Washington, Illinois, Missouri, Florida, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Michigan, Oklahoma, and Virginia.^[5][8]

Contents 1 Events 2 Ideology 3 Press Coverage 4 Violence by Volksfront members 5 Footnotes 6 See also 7 External links

Events

Volksfront holds several events, including weekend-long white power concerts and speakers two or three times a year. The group also holds white unity gatherings and memorial parties in remembrance of white supremacists who have been murdered or imprisoned around the world.^[9] An annual Volksfront event called Althing is held south of St. Louis, Missouri at the group's Samuel Weaver Memorial Hall, which is named after the son of Randy Weaver, who was killed by federal agents in 1992.^[10]

Ideology

One of Volksfront’s said goals are to establish a semi-autonomous whites-only living space in the Pacific Northwest, which they call the “Northwest Territorial Imperative,” a term also used by Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler. Volksfront claims to have already purchased a large parcel of land in Oregon and other places for this purpose.^[11]

According to its Web site, Volksfront plans to construct a European-American community center on the land, which it intends to use as a national headquarters with an incorporated school, library, museum and recreation center; it also intends to use the land for homestead-style housing and agriculture.^[1]

Volksfront states on their website that the group does not support Nazism and white supremacy:

"As a group we believe in the right of all people to live free from alien and foreign domination, including and especially, persons of European descent. As a group, we do not believe in the inherent superiority of a particular race over another as it relates to the value of human life. We do not seek to oppress, victimize or intimidate any other racial or religious group, but we will defend our own race and VF family without apology or question from all comers. We do not believe in or support tyrannical or totalitarian government of any type."^[1]

According to groups such as the Anti-Defamation League, Volksfront is a virulently racist and anti-Semitic group that has become the most active neo-Nazi group on the West Coast of the United States, and which maintains close alliances with many other hate groups.^[5]

Press Coverage

On December 10, 2009. History, formerly known as The History Channel, an international satellite and cable TV channel aired TV series Gangland episode named "Skinhead Assault" covering the topic of the group known as Volksfront.^[12]

Violence by Volksfront members

Although Volksfront officially rejects illegal activity, members have occasionally initiated politically-motivated acts of violence.^[1][13]

• In November 2007, 22-year-old white supremacist Gabriel Laskey was sentenced to six months incarceration (with work release), six months home detention, and five years probation for an attack in which a group of men threw stones etched with swastikas through the stained-glass windows of Eugene, Oregon's Temple Beth Israel during religious services.^[14] In April 2007, his brother Jacob Laskey, the ringleader of the group and self-avowed white supremacist admitted to intent to commit acts of violence and destruction against people of ethnic and racial groups and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to deprive people of civil rights, intentionally damaging religious property, solicitation to murder witnesses, soliciting a bomb threat against a federal courthouse, two counts of obstruction of justice, and being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison.^[15][16]

• Kurtis Monschke, 20, a probationary unit leader for Volksfront, was sentenced to life in prison on June 4, 2004, for his role in the March 23, 2003, murder of Randall Mark Townsend, 42, in Tacoma, Washington^[16]

• In April 1998, Brian Zauber, a former member of the Volksfront Arizona unit, was charged with leading a gang attack on three women who he thought were lesbians.^[16]

• Gabriel and Jacob Laskey (formerly Volksfront’s Prisoner Affairs Coordinator in Eugene) had previously been charged with an attack on the same synagogue.^[16] On March 20, 1994, Chris Lord, a one-time affiliate of Volksfront and the neo-Nazi group American Front, fired ten armor-piercing bullets into the Temple.^[16] He was convicted of first-degree intimidation, unlawful use of a weapon, first-degree criminal mischief and being a felon in possession of a firearm. Lord was sentenced to four and a half years in prison.^[16]

Footnotes

See also

• List of white nationalist organizations

External links

• Official Volksfront website
• Volksfront - Extremism in America, Anti-Defamation League
• SPLC article on Volksfront
• Overview of U.S. white supremacist groups (See page 10.)
• American Skinheads Documentary
• Skin of a different color - Willamette Week