David Lane (white supremacist)

David Eden Lane (November 2, 1938 – May 28, 2007) was an American white supremacist leader and convicted felon.^[2][3][4] A founding member of The Order, he was convicted and sentenced to 190 years in prison for racketeering, conspiracy, and for violating the civil rights of Alan Berg, a Jewish radio talk show host, who was murdered on June 18, 1984. He died while incarcerated in the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana.^[4][5]

Lane coined the best-known slogan of the U.S. white supremacist movement, the 14 Words. He has been described by the SPLC as "one of the most important ideologues of contemporary white supremacy."^[2]

Early life

Lane was born as the third of four siblings in Woden, Iowa; he had a brother and two sisters. His father was an alcoholic migrant worker who was physically abusive towards his wife and children. Lane would later claim that his father forced his mother to engage in prostitution so he could obtain "booze money", and that his older brother was rendered with permanent deafness as a result of a "beating gone awry".^[6] When Lane was four years old, his father abandoned his family. In 1944, his older brother was arrested after searching for food in a neighbor's trash bins, and he and his sisters were placed in foster care. Lane was soon adopted by a traveling Lutheran minister, which resulted in Lane being separated from his two sisters. Lane has described his adoptive father as a "doctrinaire fundamentalist from the old school".^[7] Bored with endless hours of church services, Lane rejected Christianity, and originally shared relatively pagan beliefs.^[7] Lane claims that he first noticed the beauty of the Caucasian race after befriending a blonde-haired girl in first grade to whom he was attracted.^[6] Lane has also stated that while he reenacted battles with his foster brother as a child, he would portray a Nazi stormtrooper while his brother portrayed an American soldier.^[6]

Travelling across the Midwestern United States with his adoptive family, Lane finally settled in Aurora, Colorado, where he attended Aurora High School. Originally aspiring to become a golf professional,^[8] Lane worked as a real estate broker until his license was revoked because he "wouldn't sell homes to coloreds in white neighborhoods."^[9]

Lane was briefly a member of the John Birch Society before joining the Ku Klux Klan, becoming the organizer of the Denver unit of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in 1979. In late 1981, Lane became Colorado State Organizer of the Aryan Nations.^[9]

Lane met Robert Jay Mathews in July 1983 at the Aryan Nations world congress.^[10] On September 22, 1983, Lane was among the nine founding members to be sworn into The Order, a group which dedicated itself to delivering "our people from the Jew and bring total victory to the Aryan race."^[11] The Order was accused of stealing over $4.1 million in armored car hijackings, killing three people (one of whom was Order member Walter E. West), detonating bombs, counterfeiting money, organizing militaristic training camps and carrying out numerous other crimes with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the "Zionist occupational government" they deemed in control of the United States and to "liberate the Pacific Northwest as a homeland for whites" in the process.^[12]

Convictions and incarceration

For his role in The Order's crimes, Lane was sentenced to consecutive sentences totaling 190 years, including 20 years for racketeering, 20 years for conspiracy, both under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), and 150 years for violating the civil rights of Alan Berg, a Jewish radio talk show host, who was murdered on June 18, 1984.^[13] Berg was shot and killed in the driveway of his Denver home by three members of The Order.^[14] David Lane was the getaway driver. Lane was arrested on the evening of March 30, 1985 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.^[15]

Lane was also among 14 men prosecuted for seditious conspiracy in Fort Smith, Arkansas, but he was acquitted. Lane was considered extremely dangerous by the American justice system and was incarcerated at various times after his conviction in the United States Penitentiary, Marion, the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado, and the Federal Correctional Complex, Terre Haute.

While incarcerated, he had the Federal Bureau of Prisons ID # 12873-057.^[16] Lane wrote books and articles about gematria and the demographic and sociopolitical status of the white race for white nationalist periodicals and websites. With his wife and Ron McVan, he ran a publishing company called 14 Word Publications in Idaho to disseminate his writings.

He was featured in Nazi Pop Twins, a documentary aired on July 19, 2007, on Channel 4 in the UK.^[17] In it he was shown speaking by phone with Prussian Blue and termed them "fantasy sweethearts" and that he viewed them like daughters.^[18]

Lane's earliest possible release date from prison would have been on March 29, 2035 (at age 96). He died on May 28, 2007, in FCC Terre Haute due to an epileptic seizure.^[4] On June 30, 2007, white supremacists held memorial demonstrations for Lane in cities across the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine.^[19]

Beliefs

Racial beliefs

Lane stated that his beliefs can be best summarized by a slogan called the 14 words, a term that he coined: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children." He also coined a second 14-word slogan: "because the beauty of the White Aryan woman must not perish from the earth."^[6]

Lane believed white people needed "exclusive territorial imperatives"^[20] to survive and stated, "Today, in the year 2005, approximately two percent of earth's population is White female of child bearing age or younger... The remaining whites are hopelessly integrated, terrorized, brain washed, miscegenated and are rapidly being overrun by six billion coloreds."^[21]

While keeping on good general terms with adherents of Christian Identity, Lane was strongly against Christianity^[22] believing it to be problematic for white people because its philosophies are anti-nature and Jewish in origin. He preferred a nature-based European Paganism as the original religion of whites. Similarly he believed that completely white nations are necessary to eliminate miscegenation. He considered white people who supported what he characterized as the "Zionist conspiracy" to be "race traitors"^[23] and was very hostile towards Christian patriots, constitutionalists, Neo-Nazis who believed in being voted into power^[24] and those within the White Power movement who reject domestic terrorism^[25][26] and revolution.^[27]

Lane authored the 88 Precepts, a collection of statements on natural law, which combine in white nationalist shorthand with the 14 words to "14-88" or "14/88".^[28]

Wotanism

Lane was a major proponent of Wotanism, inspired by an 1936 essay by Carl Jung titled "Wotan". Lane had expressed his derision for universalists:^[29]

Lane contributed a one-page introduction to a book by Ron McVan called Creed of Iron: Wotansvolk Wisdom.

14 Word Publications and Temple of Wotan are now defunct and no longer have mailing addresses or websites although Wotanism lives on.

In 2004, Lane authored a short story entitled KD Rebel, which is set in the near future and tells the story of a Wotanist guerrilla army known as Kinsland Defenders who have established tenuous control over portions of Western Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, which they call Kinsland.^[31] The story mostly focuses on the Kinslanders' practice of "capturing" miscegenating or "wayward" young girls and women from urban areas, in order to indoctrinate them into Wotanism so the Kinslanders can practice polygamy and have large numbers of children. Lane advocated the inclusion of polygamy as part of Wotanism.^[32]

References

Bibliography

• Flynn, Kevin & Gerhardt, Gary The Silent Brotherhood, Signet (1990, ISBN 0-451-16786-4)
• Gardell, Matthias, Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism, Duke University Press (2003, ISBN 0-8223-3071-7)
• Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas, Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity. (2001, ISBN 0-8147-3155-4)
• Schwartz, Alan M. (editor), Danger: Extremism — The Major Vehicles and Voices on America's Far-Right Fringe, Anti-Defamation League (1996, ISBN 0-88464-169-4)

Other sources

• (1997) Introduction to Creed of Iron: Wotansvolk Wisdom by Ron McVan (14 Word Publications, ISBN 0-9678123-0-5)
• (1999) Deceived, Damned & Defiant: The Revolutionary Writings of David Lane (14 Word Publications, ISBN 0-9678123-2-1)
• (2000) Kaplan, Jeffrey (editor), Encyclopedia of White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right (Altamira Pressm ISBN 0-7425-0340-2)
• (2004) KD Rebel, fiction (link)
• (2006) Blood & Honour Interviews David Lane (link)

External links

• David Lane profile in the ADL's "Extremism in America" series.
• David Lane's writings
• Collection of David Lane's Works in one file
• On Polygamy, essay by Lane