top4/30/2013
Terrorist Organization Profile: |
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| n/a | |
| n/a | |
| United States | |
| Around 1990 | |
| Unknown number of members | |
| Leftist, Racist | |
| Unknown | |
| American Front (AF) is a skinhead group that was founded by Bob Heick around 1990. According to some sources, the group was founded in Portland, Oregon, while other sources locate AF's roots in San Francisco, California. Within a few years, AF had spread across the northwest and beyond. AF members have been arrested in Napa, San Francisco, Sacramento, Pennsylvania, Florida, Maryland and Washington. Heick, a high school dropout, first encountered racist skinhead culture in Britain in 1984. At the time, the racist organization National Front was winning a war with anti-racist skinheads for control of the British skinhead movement. When Heick returned to the United States, he launched his own skinhead organization, American Front. Membership in American Front is by application only, and the application implies that if a member betrays the organization, the punishment is "death by crucifixion [sic]." (www.cgiaonline.org) This is a common attitude among skinheads, who are most brutal toward those who try to leave the movement. (Ridgeway, 185) AF members have committed heinous crimes. In 1991, police offers searching a Beaverton, Oregon residence from which AF members had been evicted found a "hit list" of Portland police officers who were to be targeted. In California and Washington during July of 1993, there was a series of bombings targeting public meeting places for blacks, gays and Jews in California and Washington. American Front members Wayne Paul Wooten, Jeremiah Gordon Knesal and Mark Kowaalski were convicted of committing two of those attacks: the bombing of the Elite Tavern (a gay club) on July 22, and the bombing of an NAACP meeting hall on July 20. According to U.S. Attorney Mike Yamaguchi, Wooten, Knesal and Kowaalski were part of a larger conspiracy to incite race war. (Espinosa, 8/14/93) The bombings seem to have been timed to coincide with the sentencing of the police officers convicted in the Rodney King case, presumably to take advantage of heightened racial tension connected with the case. |
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| American Front's new leader is James Porazzo. Porazzo moved AF to Harrison, Arkansas, and made it the most explicitly Third Positionist group in America. The idea behind "Third Position" philosophy is to unify the extreme right and extreme left in their fight against the global capitalist system. Third Positionists are both socialist and racist. Porazzo advocates "socialist revolution in a racialist context," explaining "We propose a workable, realistic alternative, and that is Seperatism! White autonomy, Black autonomy, Brown autonomy and death to the current twisted system.... The only other obvious route would be an eventual winner take all race war: I don't think anyone with any sense would want that.... [L]et me make it clear that American Front would rather fight the REAL ENEMY -- the system. [The system we must fight is] the dictatorship of the dollar. [The forces of global capitalism are controlled by] the Zionists and the Race that spawned them...a filthy, evil people the world would be better without. [Charging interest] is a filthy Jewish practice." (Porazzo, qtd in "Neither Left Nor Right") | |
Key Leaders
Related Groups
- Aryan Nations (AN) -- Ally
- Fourth Reich Skinheads -- Ally (Suspected)
- Hammerskin Nation -- Ally
U.S. Government Designations
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| No | |
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Learn more about these U.S. Department of State classifications: Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) Terrorist Exclusion List (TEL) |
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Other Governments' Designations
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| No | |
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| No |
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