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Montana Extremist Issues Threats

A recent Montana transplant who once sat at the feet of Aryan Nations leader Richard Butler, neo-Nazi Karl Gharst sent letters to a host of civil rights groups, naming them “Jewish criminals and traitors to the white race.”

In September, neo-Nazi Karl Gharst started writing. A recent Montana transplant who once sat at the feet of Aryan Nations leader Richard Butler, he sent letters to a host of civil rights groups, naming them “Jewish criminals and traitors to the white race.”

In one letter last October addressed to Media Matters that mentioned the Southern Poverty Law Center, La Raza and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Gharst said he would hold all four guilty of “illegal operations” that “violat[ed] the sovereignty of Montana by working against and contrary to the lawful and rightful citizens of the SState [sic].” (By lawful, he meant white.)

This is not the first time Gharst has turned aggressive. In 2004, he pleaded guilty to charges stemming from threats to a social worker he called a “greasy, turd-colored mongrel.” Then, last September, Gharst sent an E-mail to the Montana Human Rights Network accusing the anti-racist group of being a “Jewish criminal organization working with other Jewish organized crime networks.” The letter threatened that Gharst would form a “citizen grand jury” to indict his enemies, who include anyone who dares question his ardent white supremacist views.

But the idea had started weeks before. In an interview with the Intelligence Report several weeks before he started writing his letters, Gharst accused this reporter of being an “illegal alien” unqualified to conduct the interview. Montana was formed as a “sanctuary for the persecuted white Christian,” he said, and it would not be ruined by efforts to expose the actions of racist extremists like him.

”You stand for the death of our race,” Gharst said. “Sieg Heil!”

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Neo-Nazi