An influential white supremacist who inspired alleged Charleston shooter Dylann Roof said that the massacre in Charleston, South Carolina was just “a preview of coming attractions,” reported RawStory.
The white supremacist is Harold Covington and he leads the Northwest Front. Roof, in his written manifesto, regarded the Seattle-based Northwest Front as a major political influence that guided his white supremacist ideology. Covington has a history of racist crimes.
Covington is a former member of the American Nazi party, noted RawStory. He also traveled to South Africa and Rhodesia to “agitate for white power.” After the shooting, Several photos of Roof surfaced showing him wearing a jacket with patches of apartheid-era South Africa and Rhodesian flags.
Users of the Northwest Front’s website made comments about a possible conspiracy to take down the group.
“And why did this young man have a flight jacket with flag patches from the old White ruled southern African countries, which is where HAC (Covington’s initials) spent part of his early days in the Cause, hmmm,” commented a user on Covington’s last podcast. “Wonder if they’ll ‘find’ a pile of NF-HAC stuff in this young man’s home? Then they can pull one of those ‘the devil made me do it’ numbers on HAC.”
Covington supports launching a racial revolution in America and condemned Roof’s shooting as an unorganized random act of “lunacy.” “It doesn’t work,” he said.
That isn’t to say Covington doesn’t advocate racial violence, he just prefers it to be an organized, militaristic mission. In the 70s, a group associated with Covington launched an attack against black people who were attending a rally in Greensboro. He wasn’t present at the attack and didn’t kill anyone, but it’s likely he helped organize the attack.
Covington also pens sci-fi novels with a strong white supremacist subtext and “are not meant to be entertainment.”
“They are meant to be self-fulfilling prophecies,” said Covington’s website. “The author wishes to inspire the creation of a real Northwest American Republic, and his novels are filled with a great deal of sound practical advice about how to do it.”
If Covington’s goal is to inspire racial violence, he accomplished that goal with the Charleston shooting. He didn’t pull the trigger, but Covington might as well have.
