David Lane (white supremacist)

David Eden Lane (November 2, 1938 – May 28, 2007) was an American white supremacist leader and convicted felon.^[1][2][3] A 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]

Lane coined the best-known slogan of the U.S. white supremacist movement, the Fourteen Words. He has been described by the SPLC as "one of the most important ideologues of contemporary white supremacy."^[1]

Early life

David Lane was among the nine founding members to be sworn into The Order, a white supremacist revolutionary terrorist organization active in the United States between September 1983 and December 1984

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".^[5] 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 described his adoptive father as a "doctrinaire fundamentalist from the old school".^[6] Bored with endless hours of church services, Lane rejected Christianity, and originally shared relatively pagan beliefs.^[6] Lane claimed that he first noticed the beauty of the Caucasian race after befriending a blonde-haired girl in first grade to whom he was attracted.^[5] 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.^[5]

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 Originally aspiring to become a golf professional,^[7] Lane worked as a real estate broker until his license was revoked because he "wouldn't sell homes to coloreds in white neighborhoods".^[8]

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.^[8]

Lane met Robert Jay Mathews in July 1983 at the Aryan Nations world congress.^[9] On September 22, 1983, Lane was among the nine founding members to be sworn into The Order, a white supremacist group which dedicated itself to delivering "our people from the Jew and bring total victory to the Aryan race."^[10] 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 (see Northwest Territorial Imperative).^[11]

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.^[12] Berg was shot and killed in the driveway of his Denver home by three members of The Order.^[13] David Lane was the getaway driver. Lane was arrested on the evening of March 30, 1985 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.^[14]

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.^[15] 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.^[16] In it he was shown speaking by phone with Prussian Blue (the music act from the documentary) and termed them "fantasy sweethearts" and that he viewed them like daughters.^[17]

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.^[3] On June 30, 2007, white supremacists held memorial demonstrations for Lane in cities across the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine.^[18]

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."^[5]

Lane authored the 88 Precepts, a collection of statements on natural law, which combine in white supremacist shorthand with the 14 words to "14-88" or "14/88".^[19] In white nationalism, 88 is also a reference to "Heil Hitler".

Wotansvolk

Lane was one of the founders of the Wotansvolk movement, a racist branch of Odinism (or Wotanism) he helped found in the mid 1990s, which heavily outreached to prisons.^[20] Lane distanced himself from "universalist" Odinists who did not embrace racism as a core part of the movement.

14 Word Press and Temple of Wotan are now defunct as organizations and no longer have mailing addresses or websites, although Wotanism is still practiced by independent kindreds.

Lane also taught something he called the "Pyramid Prophecy", which included the concept that a Bible code was inserted by "Aryan adepts" within the King James Version of the Christian Bible. Lane was described by the code he deciphered as "the Man of prophecy".^[20] Lane also issued a declaration called "Moral Authority" which calls the United States a "Red, White and Blue traveling mass murder machine" intent on committing genocide against white people. According to the declaration, "true moral authority belongs to those who resist" this purported genocide.^[5]

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)

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