Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America

By the late 1970s, various factions of the white power movement had started working together by staging events, such as screenings of the pro-KKK film Birth of a Nation, to provoke confrontations with left-wing demonstrators. Screenings of Birth of a Nation afforded them a chance to demonstrate to a wider audience their willingness to step up to those they regarded as communists and other “traitorous, radical, and dangerous” elements (58). Even when police or the National Guard were able to forestall violence, white power activists hoped their appearance in public as a well-armed militia would impress potential recruits and intimidate foes. Preparation for “war against communists, blacks, and other enemies” (60) helped erase distinctions between Klansmen, neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, and other white power elements, just as the radical left was cracking under internal divisions and government infiltration. Linkages among various white power groups turned factions into a broader social movement, with networks of kinship and mutual support developing among them. To patch up their differences, they downplayed race and instead focused on communism, which was perceived as a threat to religion, marriage, and property, as well as established racial hierarchies.

A major area of focus was North Carolina, where socialist labor organizers had run afoul of the Klan. The Left had their own armed groups, although they were sorely lacking the equipment or military experience of their opponents. In November 1979, in the city of Greensboro, members of the Communist Workers Party (CWP) held a “Death to the Klan” rally, prompting local white power groups to form a caravan of cars, driving by with insults and firing shots in the air, until the two groups collided in the street. As some of the protestors reached for their handguns, a dozen Klansmen and neo-Nazis opened fire, leaving five dead and a dozen injured. News coverage of the event was brief due to the onset of the Iranian hostage crisis only days later. After the district attorney filed charges against 14 Klansmen and Nazis, the shooters claimed self-defense on the basis that their victims were communists, and therefore enemies of the nation. The all-white jury seemed receptive to this message, with the foreman reportedly calling the Klan a “patriotic organization.” Public dislike of the CWP seemed to affect the prosecutors, who failed to present evidence that the shooting was a premeditated plot to kill their members, and not just an unfortunate escalation. The CWP also did not help matters by refusing to participate in the trial in any way. The jury returned a not-guilty verdict for all defendants, which the white power movement took as an enormous triumph and impetus to further confrontations, especially after a second trial in federal court led to the same result. A third, civil trial found the killers liable only for one death, that of the only non-CWP member to be killed. For the white power movement, this was a green light to expand the war against communism, at home and abroad.