Vanguard News Network: A Track Record of Violence
The shooting rampage at two Jewish community centers in suburban Kansas City yesterday afternoon that left three people dead, including a 14-year-old boy and his grandfather, also left the radical racist right casting blame and pointing fingers at each other.
Much of that blame is being directed at Alex Linder and the gutturally racist website Vanguard News Network (VNN) he founded in 2000. The site declares, 鈥淣o Jews. Just Right.鈥
The alleged neo-Nazi gunman, Frazier Glenn Miller, who was arrested shortly after the shooting and shouted 鈥淗eil Hitler鈥 from the back of a police car, has posted over the years more than 12,000 times to VNN, a site one white nationalist critic calls 鈥渁 swamp.鈥
But the 73-year-old Miller is not the first VNN user to turn to murder and mayhem.
Brad Griffin, the editor of the white nationalist website Occidental Dissent and who writes under the name 鈥淗unter Wallace,鈥 posted on his site today that VNN is 鈥渢he same swamp that gave us the Curt Maynard, Yankee Jim, and JT Ready murder suicides, Joe Snuffy the Spokane bomber, Todd Van Biber who blew himself up with a pipe bomb, and Craig Cobb鈥檚 plot to take over Leith and his 鈥榩atrol鈥 of the town.鈥
Maynard, who used the screen name 鈥淢elcur鈥 when posting on VNN, shot his ex-wife to death before killing himself following a police chase in 2010. In July 2008, Maynard posted to VNN, urging Miller to 鈥渓ead by an example.鈥
鈥淚鈥檝e heard you and dozens of others condemn blogging as a waste of time, and constantly encourage others to sacrifice themselves,鈥 Maynard wrote to 鈥淩ounder,鈥 Miller鈥檚 screen name on VNN. 鈥淲hy don鈥檛 you do it, I mean why don鈥檛 you strap on some explosive and walk into a room full of k---- and blow yourselves to Kingdom come.
鈥淚 say this in the nicest and most respectful manner possible, why don鈥檛 you lead by example and relieve us, this world, of a dozen goddamned Jews.鈥
In 2008, the body of VNN poster James 鈥淵ankee Jim鈥 Leshkevich, 52, a prolific white supremacist blogger, letter-to-the editor writer and radio host, was found hanging in a garage attached to the home he shared with his 55-year-old wife, Deborah. She was found beaten and strangled to death in the couple鈥檚 bedroom, the victim of an apparent murder-suicide.
VNN poster 鈥淛oe Snuffy鈥 is really Kevin Harpham, who was sentenced to 32 years in prison in 2011 for building and planting a bomb 鈥 鈥渁 weapon of mass destruction鈥 鈥 along the route of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade route in Spokane, Wash.
The bomb was concealed in a backpack. The lead sinkers in the radio-detonated device were coated with Warfarin rat poison, evidently intended to increase bleeding.
Had it gone off, dozens of men, women and children would have been killed or injured.
A bomb did go off in the face of Todd Vanbiber, a member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance. In 1997, Vanbiber was planning to detonate 14 pipe bombs on a major route in Orlando, Fla., to divert attention from two bank robberies Vanbiber and his comrades were planning in the city. He was tinkering with one of the bombs in his storage shed when it exploded in his face.
He was sentenced to 60 years in prison, but his prison time was drastically reduced when he testified against his accomplices. After his release from prison in 2002, for several years he offered offered advice on stocks and other topics on VNN.
The last poster Griffin mentions in his post about the VNN swamp is Craig Cobb, the neo-Nazi who tried to buy up the tiny North Dakota town of Leith and turn it into an all-Aryan enclave named 鈥淐obbsville.鈥
But Cobb was arrested last November and charged with seven felony counts of terrorizing his neighbors as he and a follower 鈥減atrolled鈥 the streets with rifles. Cobb has been in jail ever since, but could be released soon under a plea agreement, a deal Leith officials oppose.
Research by the Southern Poverty Law Center (人兽性交) shows that having multiple murderers associated with a racist forum is not surprising. A forthcoming two-year study by the 人兽性交 will show that nearly 100 people have been murdered in the last five years by active users on another prominent racist web forum, Stormfront.org. Maynard and Leshkevich were avid users of Stormfront as well.
Griffin also posted his theory about why Miller allegedly murdered 鈥渁 random 14-year-old child and his grandfather in cold blood.鈥 A 53-year-old woman was also killed in the afternoon attacks.
鈥淔irst, Glenn Miller thought the 14-year-old child and his grandfather were Jewish, and his hero Alex Linder has consistently advocated his 鈥榩rincipled solution鈥 of exterminating the Jews for 10 years now, so Glenn assumed that by acting to exterminate the Jews he would win the admiration of his peers at VNN Forum.鈥
Griffin added that Miller 鈥渟wallowed鈥 Linder鈥檚 鈥減sychopathic nonsense鈥 about 鈥淐hristian morality as a major obstacle to the dehumanization and extermination of the Jews鈥 and 鈥渁s a result he wasn鈥檛 restrained by the Ten Commandments when he opened fire on the 14-year-old child and his grandfather.鈥
The boy and his grandfather were killed in the parking lot of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City. The center was packed with hundreds of teenage singers, auditioning for a singing contest while young performers were trying out for a part in 鈥淭o Kill A Mockingbird.鈥
A poster on VNN identifying himself as Tom Sanders said he liked Miller and was 鈥済lad he will go to heaven for sure now.
鈥淭hese Bolshevik brats,鈥 Sanders wrote, 鈥渨ere rehearsing the play 鈥楾o Kill a Mockingbird,鈥 which is about a scum lawyer who gets a black rapist of a white women off, and is portrayed as a hero.
鈥淗e acted appropriately. That kind of filth is disgusting and they should all be shot more than once.鈥
It is indeed a dark and scary swamp.
Laurie Wood contributed to this report.