Richard Barrett (1943-2010), White Power zealot

This could turn out to be an actual case that kinda-sorta looks like political violence by a leftwinger: Arrest made in white supremacist Richard Barrett's death in Rankin County Jackson Clarion-Ledger 04/22/10.

A nasty old white supremacist got murdered and a young African-American guy has been arrested in the case.

White supremacist Richard Barrett (1943-2010), now departed to his eternal reward


Vicent Justin McGee, 22, arrested in the case


Does Glenn Beck finally have a martyr? But then, I've been watching Beck the last few days describing with the help of some bizarre chalkboard drawing of railroad tracks how Communist and socialist and fascist and Nazi and progressive and liberal and European are all the same thing. So he may think a skinhead White Power guy is a leftwinger.

From the Clarion-Ledger report:

Barrett campaigned throughout the country against Communism and civil rights laws. In 1968, he served on the 1968 presidential campaign staff of Alabama Gov. George Wallace.

Between 1967 and 1969, Barrett was under FBI surveillance because of his racial rhetoric. ...

Barrett was also an author. "The Commission,” a self-published book trumpeting his viewpoints, was published in 1982 by Barrett & Co. Publisher. In the book he tells how and why he decided to protest integration in 1954.

"Nausea hit me in the pit of my stomach. Fear of my country overshadowed me," he said, remembering his thoughts after he heard about the U.S. Supreme Court's decision on Brown vs. the Board of Education, which ended school segregation.

"Nature not men decreed that Negroes were different," he wrote in his book. "Those who mingled with colored were as much an aberration as the unwanted bluebird in the redbird's nest and every bit as disruptive of natural and societal disorder."

Barrett founded a tiny sect called the Nationalist Movement.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) describes him this way in an undated article:

Richard Barrett is the founder and leader of the Nationalist Movement, a white supremacist organization based in Learned, Mississippi. While the group has never enjoyed significant influence on the far right -- due in part to Barrett's reluctance to share the spotlight -- it has been able to attract a steady (if small) number of aggressive skinheads. An attorney and tireless promoter, Barrett is best known for staging well-publicized rallies, often following legal actions that uphold the group's free speech rights. He has repeatedly drawn large crowds of counterprotestors, some of whom have responded violently. Since the mid-1990s Barrett has extended his legal battles to the Internet arena, successfully waging a campaign to have Web pages characterizing members of his Nationalist Movement as “haters” taken down.

Barrett grew up in New York and New Jersey and served with the Army in Vietnam:

A partisan of the American South, particularly Mississippi ("Mississippians were endowed with an unconquerable anti-communist spirit because they had to perennially guard against a takeover by Negroes...."), he moved to the Magnolia State in 1966. He later received a law degree from Memphis State University in Tennessee.

Once in Mississippi, he began organizing anti-integrationist, anti-civil rights and a variety of "patriotic" and pro-white "heritage" events. For more than a decade, he organized an annual dinner honoring white male athletes called "Spirit of America." The gathering enjoyed the support of United States congressmen, governors and local politicians as late as 1984 (long after Barrett's racist views were publicly known), in part because he was successful in promoting the event as a celebration of civic values.

This is the kind of legacy of white bigotry this sad old man leaves behind:

Back in Mississippi, Barrett spearheaded a movement to support Byron de la Beckwith, who was convicted in February of 1994 for the 1963 killing of Medgar Evers, a regional leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Barrett collected 4,000 signatures demanding that Mississippi Governor Kirk Fordyce pardon Beckwith, whom Barrett called "the prisoner of an affirmative-action jury," but the governor refused to meet with Barrett.

Undaunted, in September 1994, Barrett, along with members of the Ku Klux Klan, led a march in Alabama calling for Beckwith's pardon. The two dozen marchers also rallied in support of Hulond Humphries, the principal of Randolph County High School, who had been fired for threatening to cancel the senior prom if mixed-race couples attended.

He published a hate rag called All The Way, which has a website, as does the Nationalist Movement. The June 1990 issue gives a sample of his perspective:

Nationalist Television aired a pro-flag show here on Flag Day. The Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish pressure group, immediately announced plans to "counter" the program. "It'll be our Wal-Mart duds up against their $2,000.00 suits," said N-TV. "Our pennies will beat their millions in the name of the American Way of Life." Minority spokesman, Carolyn Moncrief, stated that Negro and Jewish groups were combining to air anti-Nationalist shows following Airlink, the nation's largest pro-majority public access broadcast.

The May 1, 2010 edition will hopefully be the last for All The Way. On page 6 is a column signed by the late Barrett, "Moguls do not have a clue, until their world is shattered by popular uprising: Hollywood-Japanese axis propels Africanism." It's, well, a very dumb and bigoted review of the movie 2012:

The “hero” manages to convince the leaders of the world that he is correct, by being more “compassionate” and “globalist” than the mere whites around him. In fact, they unofficially elect him leader of the world, as the planet collapses and the Dark Continent emerges as the new homeland for an integrated, shipwrecked remnant. So, Back-to-Africa finally takes place, interspersed with a small group of whites, which will eventually dissolve via miscegenation. Even the John-Birch-Society conspiracy theories never took quite so many liberties. Negroes in space? A given. America wiped out? No problem. The church toppled? Par for the course. Even nature sides with amalgamation, as a character, who had objected to his son marrying an Oriental, meets his doom, while the couple survives. The upshot is that “the brown will inherit the earth.” If the Negroes, Israelis and Japs cannot pull it off, nature will. So, give up trying to take America back, Crackers.

Then he jumps from there to drawing a broad social conclusion, one that makes me think that anyone whose mind is really haunted by this kind of stuff really will find peace in the grave:

The 2012-theme harks back to Clayton Williams, with his illfated advice to the woman being raped to “lay back and enjoy it.” The only problem is that the same scenario has played out before. The Moors in Spain. The Royalists in America. The Soviets in Russia. The Weimars in Germany. And even the Obamists in Washington. Hollywood delights in producing films depicting miscegenation, integration and “diversity” as “normal” and, even, delightful. But, such excesses invariably get enough dander up to prompt a ferocious backlash. It is as though the Oriental potentates and Hollywood moguls, however, do not have a clue, until their world is shattered by universal revulsion and popular uprising.

I must admit to being morbidly curious about just what he meant by the "Weimars in Germany".

I wonder if anyone will miss this guy. Even his handful of followers.

See also:

Who was Richard Barrett? by Howard Ballou WLBT 04/22/10

The life and ideology of Richard Barrett by Marsha Thompson WLBT 04/22/10 With video.

Tags: radical right, white racism