Civil War
The Local Groups that Make MAGA Possible
Part II of the Series
by Paul A. Olson
Nebraskans for Peace Board Member
For a Trump-style insurrectionist party to have much power in Nebraska, it would have to control more than the GOP-Underwood-style party elites mentioned in my last article. It would have to have foot soldiers that believed in white supremacy and the need to use violence to create a theocratic realm. More people are active in the MAGA movement than those in the MAGA sector leadership of the Republican party or those who follow Brandon Straka, the Omaha activist who heads the #Walkaway Campaign to get liberals to join the Trump movement. This man was arrested for his activities at the Capitol on January 6 and pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in the Capitol riot. There is plenty of evidence that White Supremacists are active here in our state and organizing. The Southern Poverty Law Center lists the following Nebraska groups as dedicated to a white racist ideology: Folks Front/Folkish Resistance Movement (Neo-Nazi); MSR Productions (Hate Music); Patriot Front (White Nationalist); Proud Boys (General Hate); Third Reich Books (Neo-Nazi); and National Socialist German Workers Party (Neo-Nazi). In addition, Oath Keepers have been active.
According to a brilliant UNO student senior thesis on hate groups in Nebraska (Grant Van Robays, Hate in the Heartland: Examining Hate Groups in Nebraska’s Past and Present, 2022), these groups have the following ideologies and activities:
1. Folkish Resistance Movement: Van Robays account of FRM is as follows: “According to FRM... [o]nly “white people of good stock may be members of the nation.” The movement’s symbol is the swastika:” The swastika apparently represents the very existence of the white people and the struggle for their existence... The requirements to become a member of FRM aren’t overly burdensome. One must be at least 18 years old, able-bodied, male, of White European descent, from the U.S. or Canada, willing to perform activism, not have issues with substance abuse, and agree with the 14 points...“These are White Supremacist points. The FRM propaganda includes a flyer that says, “Break Debt Slavery, ‘White Lives Matter, Resist Zionism,’ and ‘Blood and Soil,’ each of which are common in the neo-Nazi, anti-Jewish, and white supremacy scene.” FRM’s activity is a new and small organization with pamphleteering across Nebraska.
2. MSR: This hate music and paraphernalia company is in Nebraska and headed by a man named David Daboll. Van Robays says, “While the company did operate in Wheat Ridge, [Colorado], from the early 2000s until at least 2016, it now appears Van Robays operates the business from either his home base in Hershey, [Nebraska], or at MSR headquarters in Omaha or Gering. In the 1980s, Van Robays started MSR Productions as a white nationalist music label, where he created hate music under the name Lightning Rod. However, the company now sells flags, shirts, beanies, DVDs, stickers, and even gift certificates.”
3. Patriotic Front: The Patriotic Front is a group derived from an earlier neo-Nazi group. It substitutes patriotic symbols for swastikas and appeals to white pride and fear of the other. As Van Robays recounts, “The group from 2020 distributed flyers in York, Grand Island, Omaha, Kimball, Hastings, North Platte, Scottsbluff, and Chadron. ... The content of these flyers/posters included the ‘America First’ slogan, as well as new messages such as ‘One nation against invasion,” Revolution is tradition,’ ‘For the nation, against the state,’ ‘Reclaim America,’ and ‘Reject poison.’ The poison referenced here likely means the COVID vaccine, though it could mean anything that the supposed tyrant state pushes upon the masses. The other messages blur the line between being patriotic and advocating for revolution. One could argue that these flyers cross that line. And while incidents include mere words and not violent action, these messages can still cultivate a hateful and malignant ideology that can be used to justify discrimination and militancy against the outgroup or government.”
4. Proud Boys: The Proud Boys are known nationally for their role in the January 6 insurrection. Ironically, though, they attacked the police in Washington, and they have appeared at “Support the Police” rallies in Nebraska. As Van Robays remarks, “The story of the Proud Boys in Nebraska does not end at that Back the Blue rally (i.e., the Support the Police Rally here). At this rally, a spokesperson for the Omaha Police Department claimed to have not heard of the Nebraska chapter of the Proud Boys. This could mean that the local Proud Boys kept a low profile, were too insignificant to warrant police attention, or perhaps could indicate a police oversight. As Janelle Corr points out in a post from the left-wing Nebraska publication Seeing Red, “[A] handful of Proud Boys met at a bar in Omaha on a recruiting stop in 2018, where they were photographed brandishing the ‘OK’ hand sign that can be used to represent white power or just troll liberals (2020). This article indicates that at least some members of the Proud Boys were known of in public. The Proud Boys’ freedoms were on display later in 2020, as members draped a Proud Boys sign on the bridge over Dodge Street, as photographed by an Omaha citizen. This display occurred in October 2020, after Trump’s ‘Stand back and stand by’ message to the Proud Boys.” Though the Proud Boys have been recruiting in Nebraska, no public media outlets have estimated their size.
5. Third Reich Books (Neo-Nazi); National Socialist German Workers Party (Neo-Nazi): These organizations are run by the perdurable Gary Lauck. They are dedicated to publishing neo-Nazi propaganda to be sent all over America and to other countries. The organizations do not organize much in Nebraska. His group distributed some flyers in Omaha in 2019, but the influence of this publicity junk fuels the worldwide neo-Fascist movement. NFP has covered Lauck’s activities for decades.
6. Oath Keepers: In addition, the leader of Nebraska Oath Keepers and Oath Keepers in the Western United States was a Nebraskan, Steve C. Homan.
In a recent month, I wrote a letter to Attorney General Douglas Peterson of Nebraska concerning the activities of the Nebraska Oath Keepers group, not included in the SPLC list but very active in the January 6 insurrection:
The president of Nebraska Oath Keepers has been Steven C Homan, a USMC Vietnam Veteran. He was also Western states’ vice president. It is unclear what Mr. Homan’s role in Oath Keepers is since he has apparently chosen to go inactive. In an interview in The Atlantic magazine, he is described as follows: When I called him (Steven C. Homan), he recounted how he’d focused on recruiting people with military skills (to Oath Keepers) while trying not to draw too much attention. He weeded out the “wild hats.” He wanted people willing and able to “slug back” against the government if necessary but levelheaded enough not to start the fight. He referred to them as “quiet patriots,” his version of the militant right’s Gray Man trope, a silent majority that will come to his side in a conflict.
The web has Mr. Homan participating in the Bundy ranch standoff (https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2014/05/02/militiamen-and-oath-keepers-drew-weapons-threatened-kill-each-other) and other Oath Keepers activities such as its work intensifying the Ferguson, Missouri riots. He claims responsibility for the Oath Keepers Fort Leavenworth billboard urging revolt with the slogan “The Tea Party is Not the Enemy,” ostensibly calling for revolt by the soldiers at the fort near there.
Mr. Homans disappears as the president of Nebraska Oath Keepers, apparently to be replaced by Kenneth Hall by 2017. Hall is a musician who performs “patriotic” music and claims to be no longer associated with the leadership of Oath Keepers. But in 2017, he claimed to be “regional director for Nebraska Oath Keepers region 6.” Though Oath Keepers denies that it is a racist group, arguments have appeared that it is covertly a white supremacist group. Earlier in this decade, Kevin Gleason, a firearms instructor, indicated that he had “planned and instituted the Nebraska Oath Keepers Community Preparedness Team (CPT) plan in accordance with the national organization’s concept, resulting in the actual creation of active teams throughout the state.” One cannot be sure what this means in an organization given to secrecy and violent action. Still, it does not sound auspicious, and the national organization’s description of such teams sounds remarkably like they are the militia.
The most recent note I can find about Oath Keepers’ activity in Nebraska is a statement that Nebraska is seeking to collect a $9,300 judgment against the Oath Keepers in the Nebraska Workers’ Compensation Court in Lancaster County District Court for failure to pay worker’s compensation on a salary of of $36,500 in 2021 wages. Apparently, Oath Keeper’s hired employees in the state though my sources do not give a name.
I did not receive a reply from Atty. General Peterson, and I do not know whether Oath Keepers and other violent White Supremacist groups in this state are under police examination. The Nebraska Constitution (1, section 17) forbids private militias, and Nebraska Statute 28-110 against hate group’s intimidation says,
A person in the State of Nebraska has the right to live free from violence, or intimidation by threat of violence, committed against his or her person or the destruction or vandalism of, or intimidation by threat of destruction or vandalism of, his or her property regardless of his or her race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, or disability.
My view is that Nebraska has not adequately enforced its constitution or its laws in area of militias and threat of violence.
This piece is based entirely on material about extremist organizing that is found on the web. One can only speculate how much more is on the dark web or known to police agencies. It is clear that racist, anti-government organizations are organizing in Nebraska, some of them armed, and that hate groups and militias are not condoned by Nebraska law. They call themselves conservative groups, but they are not conservative.
Traditional conservatism grew out of Edmund Burke’s opposition to the violence and extremism of the French Revolution and his desire for democratic reform rather than revolution. Traditional conservatism respects history, institutional wisdom accumulated over decades, truth, and the understanding derived from experience in the political arena. Anthony Quinton, a significant conservative thinker of our century and student of Burke, has defined conservatism as follows:
[P]olitical wisdom…is not to be found in the theoretical speculations of isolated thinkers but in the historically accumulated social experience of the [whole] community…[in] traditional customs and institutions [and people with] extensive practical experience of politics. (The Politics of Imperfection, 1978: 16–17)
The Nebraska MAGA people and the White Supremacist organizations of our state are not conservative in respecting historically accumulated social experience or practical experience in politics. They are, as many of them claim, revolutionaries on behalf of a flag, not ours—treason’s Confederate flag or Trump’s thin blue line flag supposedly supporting the police but practicing violence against them. I do not follow traditional conservatism but prefer it to what is now called conservatism here. For the sake of the common good and the welfare of our state, Nebraskans for Peace members need to study these stirrings toward civil strife in our midst and to ask judicial agencies to enforce the laws against hate groups and militias. If we seek peace, we must also seek it at home.
Nebraskans for Peace Board Member
For a Trump-style insurrectionist party to have much power in Nebraska, it would have to control more than the GOP-Underwood-style party elites mentioned in my last article. It would have to have foot soldiers that believed in white supremacy and the need to use violence to create a theocratic realm. More people are active in the MAGA movement than those in the MAGA sector leadership of the Republican party or those who follow Brandon Straka, the Omaha activist who heads the #Walkaway Campaign to get liberals to join the Trump movement. This man was arrested for his activities at the Capitol on January 6 and pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in the Capitol riot. There is plenty of evidence that White Supremacists are active here in our state and organizing. The Southern Poverty Law Center lists the following Nebraska groups as dedicated to a white racist ideology: Folks Front/Folkish Resistance Movement (Neo-Nazi); MSR Productions (Hate Music); Patriot Front (White Nationalist); Proud Boys (General Hate); Third Reich Books (Neo-Nazi); and National Socialist German Workers Party (Neo-Nazi). In addition, Oath Keepers have been active.
According to a brilliant UNO student senior thesis on hate groups in Nebraska (Grant Van Robays, Hate in the Heartland: Examining Hate Groups in Nebraska’s Past and Present, 2022), these groups have the following ideologies and activities:
1. Folkish Resistance Movement: Van Robays account of FRM is as follows: “According to FRM... [o]nly “white people of good stock may be members of the nation.” The movement’s symbol is the swastika:” The swastika apparently represents the very existence of the white people and the struggle for their existence... The requirements to become a member of FRM aren’t overly burdensome. One must be at least 18 years old, able-bodied, male, of White European descent, from the U.S. or Canada, willing to perform activism, not have issues with substance abuse, and agree with the 14 points...“These are White Supremacist points. The FRM propaganda includes a flyer that says, “Break Debt Slavery, ‘White Lives Matter, Resist Zionism,’ and ‘Blood and Soil,’ each of which are common in the neo-Nazi, anti-Jewish, and white supremacy scene.” FRM’s activity is a new and small organization with pamphleteering across Nebraska.
2. MSR: This hate music and paraphernalia company is in Nebraska and headed by a man named David Daboll. Van Robays says, “While the company did operate in Wheat Ridge, [Colorado], from the early 2000s until at least 2016, it now appears Van Robays operates the business from either his home base in Hershey, [Nebraska], or at MSR headquarters in Omaha or Gering. In the 1980s, Van Robays started MSR Productions as a white nationalist music label, where he created hate music under the name Lightning Rod. However, the company now sells flags, shirts, beanies, DVDs, stickers, and even gift certificates.”
3. Patriotic Front: The Patriotic Front is a group derived from an earlier neo-Nazi group. It substitutes patriotic symbols for swastikas and appeals to white pride and fear of the other. As Van Robays recounts, “The group from 2020 distributed flyers in York, Grand Island, Omaha, Kimball, Hastings, North Platte, Scottsbluff, and Chadron. ... The content of these flyers/posters included the ‘America First’ slogan, as well as new messages such as ‘One nation against invasion,” Revolution is tradition,’ ‘For the nation, against the state,’ ‘Reclaim America,’ and ‘Reject poison.’ The poison referenced here likely means the COVID vaccine, though it could mean anything that the supposed tyrant state pushes upon the masses. The other messages blur the line between being patriotic and advocating for revolution. One could argue that these flyers cross that line. And while incidents include mere words and not violent action, these messages can still cultivate a hateful and malignant ideology that can be used to justify discrimination and militancy against the outgroup or government.”
4. Proud Boys: The Proud Boys are known nationally for their role in the January 6 insurrection. Ironically, though, they attacked the police in Washington, and they have appeared at “Support the Police” rallies in Nebraska. As Van Robays remarks, “The story of the Proud Boys in Nebraska does not end at that Back the Blue rally (i.e., the Support the Police Rally here). At this rally, a spokesperson for the Omaha Police Department claimed to have not heard of the Nebraska chapter of the Proud Boys. This could mean that the local Proud Boys kept a low profile, were too insignificant to warrant police attention, or perhaps could indicate a police oversight. As Janelle Corr points out in a post from the left-wing Nebraska publication Seeing Red, “[A] handful of Proud Boys met at a bar in Omaha on a recruiting stop in 2018, where they were photographed brandishing the ‘OK’ hand sign that can be used to represent white power or just troll liberals (2020). This article indicates that at least some members of the Proud Boys were known of in public. The Proud Boys’ freedoms were on display later in 2020, as members draped a Proud Boys sign on the bridge over Dodge Street, as photographed by an Omaha citizen. This display occurred in October 2020, after Trump’s ‘Stand back and stand by’ message to the Proud Boys.” Though the Proud Boys have been recruiting in Nebraska, no public media outlets have estimated their size.
5. Third Reich Books (Neo-Nazi); National Socialist German Workers Party (Neo-Nazi): These organizations are run by the perdurable Gary Lauck. They are dedicated to publishing neo-Nazi propaganda to be sent all over America and to other countries. The organizations do not organize much in Nebraska. His group distributed some flyers in Omaha in 2019, but the influence of this publicity junk fuels the worldwide neo-Fascist movement. NFP has covered Lauck’s activities for decades.
6. Oath Keepers: In addition, the leader of Nebraska Oath Keepers and Oath Keepers in the Western United States was a Nebraskan, Steve C. Homan.
In a recent month, I wrote a letter to Attorney General Douglas Peterson of Nebraska concerning the activities of the Nebraska Oath Keepers group, not included in the SPLC list but very active in the January 6 insurrection:
The president of Nebraska Oath Keepers has been Steven C Homan, a USMC Vietnam Veteran. He was also Western states’ vice president. It is unclear what Mr. Homan’s role in Oath Keepers is since he has apparently chosen to go inactive. In an interview in The Atlantic magazine, he is described as follows: When I called him (Steven C. Homan), he recounted how he’d focused on recruiting people with military skills (to Oath Keepers) while trying not to draw too much attention. He weeded out the “wild hats.” He wanted people willing and able to “slug back” against the government if necessary but levelheaded enough not to start the fight. He referred to them as “quiet patriots,” his version of the militant right’s Gray Man trope, a silent majority that will come to his side in a conflict.
The web has Mr. Homan participating in the Bundy ranch standoff (https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2014/05/02/militiamen-and-oath-keepers-drew-weapons-threatened-kill-each-other) and other Oath Keepers activities such as its work intensifying the Ferguson, Missouri riots. He claims responsibility for the Oath Keepers Fort Leavenworth billboard urging revolt with the slogan “The Tea Party is Not the Enemy,” ostensibly calling for revolt by the soldiers at the fort near there.
Mr. Homans disappears as the president of Nebraska Oath Keepers, apparently to be replaced by Kenneth Hall by 2017. Hall is a musician who performs “patriotic” music and claims to be no longer associated with the leadership of Oath Keepers. But in 2017, he claimed to be “regional director for Nebraska Oath Keepers region 6.” Though Oath Keepers denies that it is a racist group, arguments have appeared that it is covertly a white supremacist group. Earlier in this decade, Kevin Gleason, a firearms instructor, indicated that he had “planned and instituted the Nebraska Oath Keepers Community Preparedness Team (CPT) plan in accordance with the national organization’s concept, resulting in the actual creation of active teams throughout the state.” One cannot be sure what this means in an organization given to secrecy and violent action. Still, it does not sound auspicious, and the national organization’s description of such teams sounds remarkably like they are the militia.
The most recent note I can find about Oath Keepers’ activity in Nebraska is a statement that Nebraska is seeking to collect a $9,300 judgment against the Oath Keepers in the Nebraska Workers’ Compensation Court in Lancaster County District Court for failure to pay worker’s compensation on a salary of of $36,500 in 2021 wages. Apparently, Oath Keeper’s hired employees in the state though my sources do not give a name.
I did not receive a reply from Atty. General Peterson, and I do not know whether Oath Keepers and other violent White Supremacist groups in this state are under police examination. The Nebraska Constitution (1, section 17) forbids private militias, and Nebraska Statute 28-110 against hate group’s intimidation says,
A person in the State of Nebraska has the right to live free from violence, or intimidation by threat of violence, committed against his or her person or the destruction or vandalism of, or intimidation by threat of destruction or vandalism of, his or her property regardless of his or her race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, or disability.
My view is that Nebraska has not adequately enforced its constitution or its laws in area of militias and threat of violence.
This piece is based entirely on material about extremist organizing that is found on the web. One can only speculate how much more is on the dark web or known to police agencies. It is clear that racist, anti-government organizations are organizing in Nebraska, some of them armed, and that hate groups and militias are not condoned by Nebraska law. They call themselves conservative groups, but they are not conservative.
Traditional conservatism grew out of Edmund Burke’s opposition to the violence and extremism of the French Revolution and his desire for democratic reform rather than revolution. Traditional conservatism respects history, institutional wisdom accumulated over decades, truth, and the understanding derived from experience in the political arena. Anthony Quinton, a significant conservative thinker of our century and student of Burke, has defined conservatism as follows:
[P]olitical wisdom…is not to be found in the theoretical speculations of isolated thinkers but in the historically accumulated social experience of the [whole] community…[in] traditional customs and institutions [and people with] extensive practical experience of politics. (The Politics of Imperfection, 1978: 16–17)
The Nebraska MAGA people and the White Supremacist organizations of our state are not conservative in respecting historically accumulated social experience or practical experience in politics. They are, as many of them claim, revolutionaries on behalf of a flag, not ours—treason’s Confederate flag or Trump’s thin blue line flag supposedly supporting the police but practicing violence against them. I do not follow traditional conservatism but prefer it to what is now called conservatism here. For the sake of the common good and the welfare of our state, Nebraskans for Peace members need to study these stirrings toward civil strife in our midst and to ask judicial agencies to enforce the laws against hate groups and militias. If we seek peace, we must also seek it at home.
