April 03, 2008 Neo-Nazis and other white supremacists plan to host events in Florida, Missouri, North Carolina and elsewhere to commemorate the April 20 birthday of Adolf Hitler. This year's events include an "Adolf Hitler Celebration," a "Fuhrer's Birthday Party," and a celebration of "the Great One's 120th birthday." Groups are promoting the meetings and celebrations as "family friendly" in an effort to pass on their hateful ideology to children and continue Hitler's legacy for future…

March 24, 2008 The Laurens, South Carolina-based Redneck Shop, known for selling Klan robes and other white supremacist items and for hosting Klan and neo-Nazi meetings, is at the center of a new dispute. David Kennedy, an African American civil rights leader, claims to own the building that houses The Redneck Shop.  He is now questioning whether John Howard, a former Ku Klux Klan (KKK) grand dragon who claims the right to use the building for the rest of his life, is operating the…

January 03, 2008 Police in Corona, California, arrested a member of the racist skinhead gang Public Enemy Number One (PEN1) for attempted murder. Kory Shaw, 32, was arrested on November 20, 2007, on a Riverside County felony arrest warrant for attempted murder stemming from an alleged attempted homicide in July 2007.  According to court documents, Shaw allegedly conspired with two white supremacist co-defendants (who were incarcerated at the time) to murder another inmate in the…

December 04, 2007   A self-proclaimed white supremacist has been charged with the murders of two men in Oklahoma. Darrell Lynn Madden, 37, of McClain County, was charged in November 2007 with both the October 2007 murder of a 62-year-old gay man and the murder a month later of a man suspected to be Madden's accomplice in the October killing. According to authorities, both Madden and his 26-year-old alleged accomplice, Bradley Qualls, were linked to a white supremacist group…

November 06, 2007 A much circulated e-mail message claims that the University of Kentucky has "removed the Holocaust from its school curriculum because it 'offended' the Muslim population." There is absolutely no truth to this rumor. This rumor is nearly identical to an earlier e-mail rumor about schools in the U.K. It appears someone substituted the words "University of Kentucky" for "U.K." and recirculated the message.

September 18, 2007 A federal judge in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, California, sentenced two high ranking members of the racist prison gang Aryan Brotherhood to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The September 10, 2007, sentencing follows the January 9, 2007, conviction of Robert Lee "Blinky" Griffin, 59, and John William “Youngster” Stinson, 52, on federal racketeering charges stemming from six murders and three attempted assassinations under the RICO …

September 07, 2007   Following a two year investigation, police in Hingham, Massachusetts, arrested two alleged white supremacists for the April 2005 murders and mutilation of two homeless men. Eric Jeremy Snow, 25, and James Scott Winquist, 23, were arrested on August 31, 2007, and charged with murder after law enforcement listened to recorded phone conversations between the two men allegedly discussing the killings. The two men reportedly met while inmates in 2003.  Two…

August 22, 2007 Hillsborough County Sheriff's Sergeant Ronald Harrison was killed in the early morning hours of August 15, 2007, in Brandon, Florida, by a lone white supremacist in what investigators are calling a random attack. The shooter, Michael Allen Phillips, 24, was shot and killed by SWAT members a few hours later, after a stand-off with police in which he fired numerous shots at officers surrounding his mother’s house, where he lived. According to law enforcement, during…

August 14, 2007   Two detectives from the Bastrop, Louisiana, Police Department were killed in a shootout at a motel while trying to apprehend a fugitive—who turned out to be a member of the Aryan Circle, a violent racist prison gang -- on the run from a double murder in Texas. The Aryan Circle member, Dennis Leighton Clem, also died in the August 10, 2007, motel shootout.  A female associate, Tonya Smith, allegedly fled the scene, but was captured two days later in…

August 10, 2007 A federal court in Binghamton, New York, has permanently barred tax protester Robert Schulz and his two organizations, We the People Foundation for Constitutional Education Inc., and We the People Congress Inc., from promoting a tax fraud scheme. Schulz is one of the most prominent leaders of the anti-government tax protest movement in the United States. Schulz allegedly used the two entities to promote a nationwide tax fraud scheme called the "Tax Termination Package"…

July 27, 2007 “Operation Blue and White” is the name of a lengthy undercover investigation into alleged firearms and drug trafficking violations by members of the Peckerwoods, a white supremacist outlaw motorcycle gang. The Los Angeles Field Division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and the San Diego County Sheriff's Department initiated the investigation in 2006. The investigation recently resulted in the seizure of  24 firearms, including…

July 27, 2007   A Superior Court Judge in Pima County, Arizona, sentenced Blake Joseph Edwards, 32, to 11 years in prison for the racially motivated aggravated assault of an African-American man inside of a restaurant last year.   Edwards, who has the words “pecker” and “wood” tattooed on his knees, was also ordered to pay $75,000 in restitution, with the possibility of more compensation ordered in the future. The term Peckerwood is commonly…

July 23, 2007 An unsigned e-mail message, which has been widely forwarded, claims that the actress Angelina Jolie has made unflattering statements "both verbally and in writing" about America and Israel. This rumor surfaced around the time of the June 2007 premiere of "A Mighty Heart," in which Jolie stars as Mariane Pearl, the wife of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was killed by Islamic extremists in Pakistan. The e-mail claims that Jolie "hates The American Fascist…

July 23, 2007 A jury in San Francisco convicted Eric Hunt, 24, of felony false imprisonment as a hate crime, misdemeanor battery, and misdemeanor elder abuse for his attack against noted author, Holocaust survivor, and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel. The jury found Hunt, a resident of Sussex County, New Jersey, guilty on July 21, 2008, after hearing two weeks of testimony, including Wiesel's account of the attack and details regarding Hunt's mental health and Holocaust denial beliefs. On…

July 17, 2007   Federal authorities have indicted 14 men believed to be members of a white supremacist gang based in the Nevada prison system. The federal racketeering indictment, which was unsealed in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas on July 12, 2007, charges the men with murder, extortion, drug trafficking, fraud, identity theft, gambling schemes, and other crimes both behind bars and outside of the prisons, in order to “promote white supremacy and purity of the white race…

July 11, 2007 Two members of Public Enemy Number 1(PENI), a large and violent white supremacist gang based in Southern California, were found guilty of first-degree murder and other charges related to their activities with the gang. Michael Allen Lamb, 32, and Jacob Anthony Rump, 30, both of Huntington Beach, were convicted of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and committing murder for the benefit of the gang. The verdict came in on July 10, ten days after the Santa Ana…

May 30, 2007 White supremacist David Lane, a member of The Order, a white supremacist terrorist group that carried out armed robberies, assassinations and other crimes during the 1980s, was found dead in his cell at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.  Lane, 68, was reportedly suffering from cancer. Lane was associated with a variety of Klan and neo-Nazi groups, including Aryan Nations, in the 1970s and 1980s and gained notoriety when he and other members of The Order (also…

April 12, 2007 Palm Springs, California, police arrested Mandie Kearns, 28, of Desert Hot Springs, for allegedly stabbing two African-Americans on April 5, 2007. The incident occurred behind a coffee shop in Palm Springs, after a street fight had broken out involving a group of 15 to 30 people.  The two victims found by police, a man and a woman, both 20 years old, were severely beaten and stabbed; the woman had two collapsed lungs. Police arrested Kearns at the scene, where…

March 01, 2007 The Anti-Defamation League has received inquiries over the years about conspiracy theories regarding the Bilderberg group, a legitimate business entity with ties to Europe and America. The following information debunks a recurring myth, circulated via the Internet, that the group is part of a conspiracy to promote a "new world order" under their control. Deriving its name from the Dutch hotel where it first met in 1954, the Bilderberg group is an actual, legitimate…

January 29, 2007 A widely circulated e-mail suggests that U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) attended a fundamentalist Muslim religious school, known as a "madrassa," as a child living in Indonesia, and that his childhood education was steeped in radical Islam. In fact, from ages 6 through 10, he attended a public school in Indonesia with both Muslim and non-Muslim students. Sen. Obama is not a Muslim; he is a Christian who attends the United Church of Christ.