Neonazi in police service of the USA
AIB Magazine (translated by Anna Bunk & Frederik Fuß)You can become anything in the US, the say. Also a cop, even if you were a leading neonazi within the “Blood & Honour”-Network. In 2017 we reported about Bart Alsbrook, who was appointed as commisserial police chief, and his past in the militant neonazi-scene.1 Following an update about the case and why Alsbrook’s activities aren’t “water under the bridge”.
- 1Cf. AIB Nr. 116 „Von Blood & Honour zum Polizeichef“.
Interview with Bart Alsbrook in the documentary „Skinhead Attitude“ .
Man with a badge.
“I really like to know, what all the C-18 warriors do (…)”. That’s how Yves Rahmel comments a sequence of one “Kriegsberichter”-video in social networks. It shows an interview with Alsbrook about “musical activism vs. combat in real life”.1 Alsbrook was the most important contact person of the “Blood & Honour”-Network (B&H) und its military wing “Combat 18” (C18) in Texas and appeared in many videos of “Kriegsberichter” until the 2000s. Commentator Rahmel from Chemnitz is one of the most powerful points of attachment of the Rock-Against-Communism-business till today. Among other because of his close connection to the neonazi-label “PC-Records”. Alsbrook answered Rahmel’s question: “Obvious. Because everyone reports to you immediately.” “Bart Alsbrook, you’re the policeman. I guess you get the information first”, Rahmel replied. The list of comments is long and seems like a who-is-who of the old B&H squad. Beside Rahmel there are some exposed members of the European network and some from the US’. Like Jon Pressley from North Carolina, who poses as till today as the leader of C18 in the USA. In 2018 he travelled i.a. to the Saxon Ostritz, where many C-18 activists from whole Europe met at the neonazi-festival “Schild & Schwert” (shield & sword). The video, under which Alsbrook left a number of comments about the role of B&H, was published at the 1th September 2018 by Marko “Jäsa” Jarvinen who’s mainly responsible for “Kriegsberichter”-series and stages as ambassador of C-18 Finland.
Did nothing wrong
Alsbrook became new commissarial police chief of Colbert, Oklahoma, only one year ago, in August 2017. The office in this small-town previously had exchanged the administration at short intervals. Unlike the previous head of the police, Alsbrook is a certified “Reserve Officer”. To become a police officer with full legal power he needed another certificate. He would have gotten it after six month. Briefly after his appointment the TV-station “KXII-TV” revealed his activities inside B&H and C18. Alsbrook offered the police station his demission thereupon. However, the city councilors’ speaker responded to the research, “that they do not want him to leave, because he would not have done anything what would justify his booting out”. Alsbrook left the guard in Colbart nonetheless, but got hired as a “Reserve Officer” in the small-town Achille, which is only a few miles away, just a short time later. “We do not consider events that are more than twenty years ago”, the city told the news page “Harold Democrat”. “I left all the racist stuff behind me, over fifteen years ago”, Alsbrook stated to the same newsportal. This would mean he had nothing to do with the neonazi-scene since 2002.
Non-public comments as well as for everyone findable contributions in social networks from Albrook speak for the opposite. For example, in 2016 he wished Jens-Uwe Arpe, singer of the B&H-band “Kraftschlag”, a happy birthday and posted pictures of an automatic rifle, presented by a mummed woman wearing a B&H T-shirt. In 2017, an Australian C18-activist reported that an antifascist in Russia had been killed by neonazis. Alsbrook’s comment: a link to a music video of the sixties-pop-band “Dave Clark Five”, whose most famous song’s chorus goes like “Sha na na na hey hey hey goodbye” – a mockery of the young antifascist who got killed at St. Petersburg in February 2017. He also leaves a lot of “likes” on respective pages, for example on a picture of Hitler in his infancy, posted by a German female neonazi activist with the words “Boy come back soon” in April 2017, or lately on pictures from the C18-activist Jon Pressley which appeared in social networks in February 2019. On the latter Donald Trump is pictured with a sign on which communists are offended in sexist manner in a vulgar slang.
“Silent” membership?
All “water under the bridge”, as Alsbrook’s actual employer asserts? Certainly not as even from active neo-nazis his opinion is appreciated. In online debates he explains extensively what B&H means in his view and criticizes negative developments of the network. He responds thereby on the music industry within the organization and tattles about former comrades. It is obvious to everyone involved that he is a “man with a badge” as Marko “Jäsa” Jarvinen calls him. “There’s a reason why Hitler smashed the SA”, Alsbrook wrote in relation to neo-nazi activists who are all about music and money. Regarding the way he injects himself into the debate he seems like a “silent member” or like an “activist in retirement”. There are no allegations, snitch accusations or insinuations that he would no longer adhere to “the cause”. Rather it seems as if one agrees with his statements and is proud of “El Barto”. On Marko “Jäsa” Jarvinen’s website “Ainaskin-Media” – which is responsible for the production of the “Kriegsberichter”-videos – a contribution of Alsbrook for the video magazine is advertised with the words “Tattoos & Beer featuring an Oklahoma Sheriff (no joke!)”2 .
Racist basic mood
US civil rights movements could tell a long story about what it means to meet a “silent” B&H activist as a sheriff. The conditions in the Midwest have worsened in recent years. The racism deeply rooted in the local society is still emerging. One of the oldest groups of the civil rights movement, the “National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People” (NAACP), even declared a travel warning for Missouri, a bordering state of Oklahoma, in 2017. In 2014 Michael Brown, a black youngster, was shot by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. The voices of the civil rights movement became louder and with them the campaign “black lives matter” grew. Racists used the riots after the murder of Brown to split the society with resentment. 2017 there was an amendment in Missouri, which was designed to complicate lawsuits against discrimination at work. In the same year the State Attorney General noticed, that police officers stopped black car drivers 75 percent more often. Openly visible, institutional racism, be it through racial profiling or through amendments like in Missouri, is also a consequence of the appointment of Donald Trump as president. Neo-nazis and “white supremacists” feel empowered as they have not been for a long time. The old squad of persons from "Hammerskin Nation" and "Blood & Honour/Combat 18" sees themselves as called to support the (violent) advance of the extreme right – not least on marches like in Charlottesville. “Men with badges”, like Bart Alsbrook, should provide the necessary tailwind on a legal scale. Beside the influence on his present job as “Reserve Officer” it would be to clarify retrospectively whether he was active in the police service in Dallas even before 2017. Because that’s exactly what comments in social networks suggest.