White Supremacists Fantasize That Obama Will Help Them Recruit

On October 27, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms announced the arrest of two young neo-Nazis, Daniel Cowart and Paul Schlesselman, who allegedly plotted to assassinate Barack Obama. The strange event suggests that a criminal element within the white supremacist movement is hell-bent on racial violence if Obama becomes president.

On the other hand, key leaders of the movement's organized front see a potential Obama administration as a rising tide that will lift their sagging boats. They hope to leverage white resentment against Obama's presidency to generate unprecedented funding, bolster membership rolls, and influence the political mainstream.

According to the ATF, Cowart and Schlesselman planned to suit up in white tuxedoes and top hats and then massacre 88 black people, 14 by decapitation, including Obama among their targets. The numbers 88 and 14 are signifiant in neo-Nazi culture: "H" is the 8th letter of the alphabet; "HH" stands for "Heil Hitler." Fourteen symbolizes the 14-word pledge of the neo-Nazi group, The Order.

Initially portrayed in media accounts as "lone wolves" without institutional affiliations, new information about the would-be assassins suggests deeper connections into the subculture of neo-Nazi thugs united by an adulation of Adolf Hitler and desire for vigilante violence. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, one of the would-be assassins, Daniel Cowart, was a "probate member" of an incipient youth group of the neo-Nazi movement, Supreme White Alliance.

Cowart also maintained a friendship with the SWA's founder, Steven Edwards. Steven Edwards is the son of Ron Edwards, the founder of the Imperial Klans of America, a neo-Nazi outfit best known for the "Nordic Fest" white power concerts it holds at its 15-acre compound in Kentucky.

After the Southern Poverty Law Center revealed Cowart's connection to SWA, the group posted a defensive statement on its website denying his role in organizational activities. "Since [the SWA's annual election] none of the SWA members have had any contact with accused," the website declared. "So before you get your story wrong, [SPLC], get the facts." At the same time, the Supreme White Alliance acknowledged that Cowart was indeed a "probate member."

Even as it distances itself from the plot against Obama, the SWA openly advocates violence against minority groups. Its website currently posts a statement reading "Unless we have an unseen army of total Barbarians, devoid of pity, of compassion, of compunctions, of restraining moralisms, we are doomed. He who practices chivalry, when the enemy has none, fights with both hands tied behind his back. Our people must have commitment, courage, and honor fighting to free their land from the jewish scourge. Better one day as a lion, than years as a sheep."

In April 2008, Cowart and several SWA members celebrated Adolf Hitler's birthday at member's house. While there, Cowart rubbed shoulders with Joshua Steever, a 28-year-old with the word, "Racist," boldly tattooed on his forehead. In July 2006, Steever was arrested for threatening to kill two black high school students in Newark, California. A year earlier, Steever had been arrested for attacking a man with an axe handle. "He just roves around from state to state screwing with people," Daryle Jenkins, founder of the anti-racist group, One Peoples Project, told me.

Cowart's profile closely resembles that of his friend, Steever. A high school dropout who lived with his grandparents, Cowart described his mood as "bored" on a personal web page. This October, he struck out to fulfill his violent fantasies with Schlesselmann, a fellow Tennessee-based neo-Nazi he met online. Like Steever, who lashed out against students of a predominately black school, Cowart and Schlesselman planned to massacre students at an unspecified, mostly black high school. In the end, the destructive duo resorted to shooting out the front window of a black church in Brownsville, Arkansas in the dead of night before they were arrested.