This article is an embedded Arkansas Tech University college newspaper reporter’s view of The ShieldWall Network, touching on the White Nationalist movement as a whole. Her views are her own.

Inside white nationalism

by Hannah Butler

Since Barack Obama’s first victory in the 2008 election, the United States has seen a rise in right-wing extremism.

The Southern Poverty Law Center tracked 926 hate groups that year; an increase from 2007, in which the SPLC counted 884. Out of the 926, white nationalists showed a presence in at least 126 of these.

As the numbers rose, so did white nationalism. The highest numbers totaled 1,018 hate groups in 2012, with 147 white nationalism organizations among those. Hate groups took a dip after that; however, acts of violence from right-wing extremists did not.

In some cases, right-wing extremism has led to acts of domestic terrorism. Between 2008 and 2015, according to David Neiwert, author of “Alt America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump,” the U.S. has seen 201 cases of domestic terrorism. Within those, roughly 115 were committed by right-wing extremists, and more commonly, those who held white nationalist views.

In each act of domestic terrorism, there are common trends of leaving behind manifestos, declaring white nationalism beliefs and explanations for committing these acts of violence. Most recently, Brenton Tarrant has been accused of the New Zealand mosque shooting in Christchurch, in which he is being charged for 50 counts of murder as well as 39 counts of attempted murder.

Tarrant left behind a 73-page manifesto, demonstrating his sympathy to white nationalist beliefs.

The year before, Jason Kessler and Richard Spencer, two well-known faces in the white supremacist movement, held the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Later, a car drove into the crowd, injuring 19 and killing one. Eleven arrests were made.

Supporters of the white supremacist movement screamed that Dylann Roof was a hero, a man who killed nine African-Americans in Charleston, South Carolina back in 2015.

And in Arkansas, white supremacy was shown in February as 54 white supremacists of the New Aryan Empire prison gang were arrested for acts of murder, kidnapping and drug trafficking.

In 2018, the SPLC announced that hate groups totaled 1,020, with white nationalism reaching 148 groups.

White nationalism has become hidden in plain sight; as the movement and beliefs are steadily increasing, the more it has become normalized. White nationalism ideology is slowly sneaking into politicians’ mouths and spewing out little by little, even if the ideology is not ardently declared as their own.

White Nationalist Ideology

White nationalism is found in different forms. For a small group based in Mountain View, Arkansas, its ideology is based around a concept of balkanization. Its leader, Billy Roper, has been advocating for white power since the 1980s.

“We are far more mainstream, and far more numerous than you might think. According to a relatively recent poll, roughly a third of Americans believe that it’s very likely another civil war is coming,” said Roper, “My racial views are the same as those of America’s Founding Fathers, who wrote the Naturalization Act of 1790 prior to the ratification of the Constitution, and the Naturalization Act of 1795, after. By today’s definition of the term, the United States was founded of and by and for whites (‘our posterity’) and white Nationalists. Jefferson, the author of the Declaration, included.”

The ShieldWall Network, formed by Roper, is a collective of men scattered across Arkansas, with various chapters across East Tennessee and Texas. Roper has outlined his beliefs on his website, The Roper Report, summing it up to these points:

The political and cultural divisions in America are deepening and widening, leading towards a now inevitable civil war. This coming conflict will result in the breakup of the United States into several independent countries, or ethnostates, called ‘balkanization.’

It is in the best interests of white Americans to move out of majority non-white areas and into majority White regions of the country before this occurs. For this reason, we encourage a voluntary migration of the United States’ founding people from racially diverse multicultural areas to homogeneous rural areas of the country.

In order to be good citizens as well as to promote theirs and their family’s best interests, Whites should work to become active persons of influence in our communities, including finding and networking with like-minded people near us and working together to secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.

Other common beliefs held by the ShieldWall Network and other white nationalist groups include taking a stand against homosexuality, abortion and interracial marriage. These groups are also typically known to associate with beliefs such as Holocaust denial and supporting the rights of gun ownership within America.

The organization has a section called the Phalanx; men who are willing to train for the second civil war. There’s a lot of men who wanted to do more with their lives. Julian Calfy, a native of Southern California and regional coordinator of SWN, wanted to join the military before he got caught up in a felony. Now, he fights for white nationalism, a belief he has associated with since he was 13 after being bullied in elementary school. While some have held these beliefs for years, others have been recruited and sought after.

A glimpse into tactics

“It’s not that we hate other people. It’s that we love our own,” – Johann Carollo, ShieldWall Network regional officer 

The ShieldWall Network and white nationalist groups alike defend their beliefs by a concept known as white grievance. It’s the idea that whites are suppressed and suffer in the face of other races and cultures. It is in part shown as a need to protect the white race. White nationalists will use this angle for others to show interest in family values.

“I disliked so many things that were happening. And it’s like I was driven by hate. But as the years progressed that I did this for longer, it stopped being about hate, and it started becoming about things that I loved a lot and things that I really cared about,” said Carollo.

Today, though, the most common method that white nationalists are using is what’s hiding in plain sight. The groups are known to portray ideas and beliefs that are commonly held yet secretly hidden by the rest of America.

“My dad often gave me the advice that white nationalists are not looking to recruit people on the fringes of American culture, but rather the people who start a sentence by saying, ‘I’m not racist, but …’” wrote Roland Black in a New York Times opinion piece.

Black is a former white nationalist and son to Don Black, founder of Stormfront, an online forum for less restrictive speech, and the godson of David Duke, another prominent white nationalist who once served as the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

“The most effective tactics for white nationalists are to associate American history with themselves and to suggest that the collective efforts to turn away from our white supremacist past are the same as abandoning American culture,” continued Black, “My father, the founder of the white nationalist website Stormfront, knew this well. It’s a message that erases people of color and their essential role in American life, but one that also appeals to large numbers of white people who would agree with the statement, ‘I’m not racist, but I don’t want American history dishonored, and this statue of Robert E. Lee shouldn’t be removed.’”

In the Age of Trump

When President Trump first announced his candidacy for president in 2015, it was more than enough for Don Black and Duke to get behind.

“In Trump’s speech, Don heard echoes of a strategy he and Duke had pioneered together 35 years earlier when they tried to rehabilitate the Klan’s image by shift its focus from cross burnings in the Deep South to rallies against illegal immigration on the California border,” wrote The Washington Post reporter Eli Saslow in his book “Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist.”

Beliefs of the alt-right and white nationalists have become intertwined. Duke proposed the idea of a border wall in the 1970s and set up a Klan Border Watch to patrol the U.S./Mexico Border.

Other politicians and right-wing media are doing more to portray similarities with white nationalists as well. Corey Stewart, a Republican party politician who is known for being sympathetic toward white nationalist views, ran for the U.S. Senate in 2018, losing to Democratic incumbent Tim Kaine.

The Fox News show “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” averages 3.2 million nightly viewers and topped all cable news shows in March 2019.

Tucker Carlson, an American commentator on Fox News, has gathered support from white nationalists. Back in March, Roland Black announced the popularity of Carlson’s show amongst his family:

“It’s really, really alarming that my family watches Tucker Carlson show once and then watches it on the replay because they feel that he is making the white nationalist talking points better than they have and they’re trying to get some tips on how to advance it.”

And with the 2020 election looming, a potential Democratic president might advance the white nationalism movement rather than hinder it. 

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