Don t show me this message again✕
The head of a neo-Nazi group was arrested in Arizona after allegedly brandishing a gun at a group of Black men.
Burt Colucci 45, is the current commander of the Nationalist Socialist Movement, a leading neo-Nazi group in the US, according to The Southern Poverty Law Center.
He was arrested on Monday in a Phoenix suburb for pointing the loaded handgun at a Black man and threatening to kill him and his friends.
The incident happened outside a hotel after Mr Colucci reportedly put trash on the car of the Black men and used racial slurs towards them, according to police reports.
Arizonaâs past with neo-Nazis is colliding with its political present
Photo by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy | Arizona Mirror
In February 2012, the nationâs eyes were on Mesa as the four remaining Republican candidates for president debated. Among those eyes were those of FBI agents who were keeping tabs on a local Neo-Nazi by the name of JT Ready who was amongst the attendees at the Mesa Arts Center.Â
Three months later, Ready would kill his girlfriend and her family â including an infant â in a murder-suicide.Â
âJT Ready was seen speaking with several unidentified subjects at the end of the Republican GOP party debate hosted in Mesa, Arizona,â FBI agents wrote in their report, which was made public under the Freedom of Information Act. âNo criminal activity was observed.âÂ
historically when there is financial hardships in a country, people are looking for answers. for a political organization like the national socialist movement, it is prime, fertile recruiting grounds. it was easy to blame the job losses on immigrants, minorities and jews. but he tells me his plan backfired. instead of radicalizing new recruits, this multiethnic city began de-radicalizing him. i was hearing stories from other people. i never considered those before. i never thought about them. i was simply fighting for my tribe. when i started listening to some of the other people, it s not just a whitish you. it is an issue of all americans are having this. you have this elite class getting richer and richer and richer. the middle class and the poor the poor have gotten just poorer, and that s, you know, where things have changed.
but even after 27 years in the white power movement, jeff s poison mindset isn t his only hurdle. his entire livelihood comes from peddling neo-nazi merchandise on a website he runs. this here is an education into neo-naziism. everything from the clothing to the music to the pamphlet to the down loads to the video games and patches. let s kill the [ bleep ]. this is probably the most extreme cd we have released. i m horrified by what jeff is showing me and trying to remember that this is his only source of income. if i walk into a place to try to get a job, what am i going to put on my resume? commander of the national socialist movement. you can google my name, and that s all that comes up. i can recognize how hard it
don t you feel responsible for furthering the violence of that cause? thank you for checking on us. this is only my second time meeting with jeff. i m still trying to figure out if he s real. don t we have a responsibility of the ideas we put out into the world? there s so many things i want to say, so i m probably going to be all over the place. that s hrt. we re here to talk about these things. it s confusing time. i ve been through it. i feel in a lot of ways i have wasted my life. white power! jeff reminds me a lot of myself. we re both the same age and mid westerners who embraced the white power movement when we were teenagers. but i turned my back on hate when i was 22, while jeff continued to rise through the ranks, taking control of the national socialist movement when he was just 21.