Daniel Burnside, considered a prominent Pennsylvania hate group member, says he hides from no one. The self-employed artist and Potter County resident says it’s easy to find his business and the Coudersport home he shares with his wife and children.
“That’s the life I have to live, with the scum of the earth that’s been brain-washed,” he said this week.
Burnside, 42, is a leader in the National Socialist Movement, listed as a neo-Nazi organization and a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups around the country.
According to the center, there are 40 active hates groups in Pennsylvania, giving it the fifth-highest number in the United States. The center says there are 917 hate groups nationwide. California, with 79, has the most.
In Pennsylvania, the center’s list includes six racist skinhead groups, seven Ku Klux Klan organizations, four Neo-Nazi organizations, and a few with labels such as anti-Muslim, anti-LGBT and “general hate.” There are several groups the center labels as “black separatist” and which the center says “typically oppose integration and racial intermarriage.”
PennLive recently called or emailed more than a dozen of the Pennsylvania groups. It received responses from three, including Burnside.
Burnside said he oversees the National Socialist Movement in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware. He objects to the “hate group” label given by the Southern Poverty Law Center, although he says “coming from a trash heap like that it’s an honor.”
He says the movement is a “political organization” devoted to “pride and love of my own kind,” meaning white people.
Burnside argues that other groups, such as racial minorities, routinely form organizations to promote their race and culture, and countries including China and Israel carry out “nationalist” policies. But when white Americans talk of doing the same, he said, it’s considered “hate.”
“If you’re white, you’re not allowed to be proud, to embrace your own kind,” Burnside says.
Burnside says he “adores” President Donald Trump. He commonly uses the term “libtard” and says the news media has brainwashed most Americans. He refuses to say how many members his group has in Pennsylvania, although he claims, “I can’t fill out membership forms fast enough.” He says he would have participated in the white supremacist, white nationalist march in Charlottesville, Va., if not for his wife giving birth that weekend.
Burnside blames local officials for the violence that erupted in Charlottesville and resulted in three deaths, saying officials chose not to enforce the rights of a group that had a permit to legally assemble and did so to spur a clash.
He refuses to be specific when asked about his organization’s ultimate goal and what would happen to non-whites he considers “weak and deviant.” He argues there’s a globalist movement with a goal of “white genocide,” and his and similar groups “won’t let us be streamrolled.”
“Why can’t we have one white nation on earth?” he says.
Burnside says he’s undeterred by those who oppose groups such as his and have taken to posting their photos and personal information on social media. In the wake of Charlottesville, the tactic, known as “doxxing,” has cost some white supremacists and neo-Nazis their jobs and has opened some to ridicule.
“I have no intention of hiding. We have great support in this area,” he says, referring to the Coudersport community.
Potter County has long been known as a hotbed for white supremacist activity, although many local officials and residents say the area has been unfairly branded.
But the area came under a spotlight this spring following the indictment and arrest of six alleged members of a group called the Aryan Strikeforce. The group, which authorities said had close ties to Potter County, were charged with illegally obtaining guns, ammunition and money to carry out the group’s activities.
The stated goal of the Aryan Strikeforce is to “protect the honour of our women, children and the future of our race and nation.”
CNN wrote this about the Southern Law Poverty Center, “Some critics of the SPLC say the group’s activism biases how it categorizes certain groups. For example, there are a number of Christian-based advocacy groups listed because the SPLC says the groups have hateful language and policies regarding the LGBT community. Those groups are very critical of the list arguing that they are faith-based and that the list includes them with neo-Nazi, white supremacy and other groups that may advocate violence.”
But CNN notes that the FBI doesn’t track domestic hate groups, and “the SPLC’s tally is the widely accepted one regarding groups such as neo-Nazis, white supremacists and black nationalists.”
The Nation of Islam is a national organization with chapters in Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. The South Poverty Law Center calls it a black separatist group and writes, “Black separatists typically oppose integration and racial intermarriage, and they want separate institutions — or even a separate nation — for blacks. Most forms of black separatism are strongly anti-white and anti-Semitic, and a number of religious versions assert that blacks are the Biblical ‘chosen people’ of God.”
Minister Rodney Muhammad, who heads the group in Pennsylvania, estimates it has about 2,000 members in the state and says it’s growing weekly. He says the hate group label is wrong and “you won’t find us spewing hatred.”
He says the group has a major focus on “our people cleaning up our own community,” steering clear of vice and stopping violence by blacks against other blacks. He further says the group works with people including whites, Jews, Latinos and Asians and that was recently evidenced by the group’s participation in the Philadelphia march against hatred held in response to the events in Charlottesville.
Asked whether the group believes races should remain separate, he replies that groups routinely segregate themselves and cites examples such as the “Chinatowns” in major cities, or areas that are primarily Jewish or Dominican. That’s not considered hatred, he argued, nor is blacks wanting to live in places where businesses are owned by blacks.
Asked about interracial marriage, he said, “We don’t think interracial marriage works, it doesn’t solve problems.” For example, he argued that true love can’t occur between a black woman and a white man because the white man will likely have racial views that would prevent him from fully accepting his wife’s family and would be inclined to go along with long-standing racist policies, perhaps out of fear of upsetting other whites. He argued interracial marriages are affected by “institutionalized racism” even if the racism isn’t openly expressed.
Muhammad said a goal of his group is for the country to acknowledge and address conditioned and institutionalized racism. “There’s nothing wrong with looking truthfully at something and saying we have to deal with it,” he says.
The H.L. Mencken Club is based in Elizabethtown and, according to the SPLC, a white nationalist hate group. White nationalists, according to the SPLC, “espouse white supremacist or white separatist ideologies, often focusing on the alleged inferiority of nonwhites.”
It’s run by Paul Gottfried, a 75-year-old retired Elizabethtown College humanities professor. Of the SLPC’s hate group designation, he says, “I think it’s absolutely crap,” and calls SLPC “a disgusting, slanderous group.”
He says the H.L. Mencken Club is a “discussion group” consisting of about 150 people who are “conservative intellectuals.” Members are typically past retirement age, and many are retired professors or corporate lawyers, he says. He says the group has African-American members and he has relatives who died in the Holocaust. “I am not any sort of racist … none, absolutely none,” he says.
Gottfried says the group stands for constitutionally limited government and upholding the First Amendment right to openly discuss any subject its members consider important. Its members are “appalled by political correctness” and believe intolerance “comes overwhelmingly from the left.”
Gottfried says he believes all U.S. citizens have equal rights regardless of race, but he opposes extending such rights to people who come here illegally.
“African Americans have equal rights under the law. I have never questioned that,” says Gottfried. Regarding Charlottesville, he says, “I think blame is deserved on both sides.”
Gottfried says he was a tenured Elizabethtown professor, teaching political theory, classical Greek and medieval history.
Asked why anyone might consider his organization to be a hate group, he says it’s likely because Richard Spencer, the prominent white supremacist, “drifted in and out of the group.” Gottfried says Spencer is no longer a member and would not be welcome.
Gottfried says he regards neo-Nazis as inconsequential. “The threat is minimal in this country. This is not Germany in the 1930s. They are obnoxious, they are horrible, but they are minimal,” he says.
Burnside, the Coudersport-based official for the National Socialist Movement, says non-members, often military veterans, regularly tell him they support his efforts. He also says groups such as his, and people who share those views, are wholly responsible for the election of Trump, and he cites that as proof that many, many people share the views of groups such as his.
