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Fifty years ago, they were screwed-up kids sent to the Florida School for Boys to be straightened out. But now they are screwed-up men, scarred by the whippings they endured. Read the story and see a video and portrait gallery.
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There are more than 40 hate groups in the state, with neo-Nazi and white supremacist chapters in the bay area.
By SHANNON COLAVECCHIO-VAN SICKLER
Published August 28, 2005
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[AP photo]
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TAMPA - They meet every month in Brandon to discuss upcoming projects: Billboard ads, appearances at cultural festivals and concerts, giveaways of music CDs that promote their beliefs.
In June, on three private acres near Spring Hill, they held their annual Summer Solstice Festival - a celebration of food, speakers and musicians.
And last month at the Comfort Inn off Busch Boulevard in Tampa, they sponsored the visit of a longtime British author. More than six dozen people paid $10 each to hear David Irving, best known for denying there were gas chambers at Auschwitz or that Adolf Hitler authorized the genocide of millions of Jews.
Meet the Tampa Bay chapter of National Vanguard, a neo-Nazi group whose growing ranks include residents of Sarasota, St. Petersburg, Tampa and the Suncoast.
Sixty years after the Japanese surrender that ended World War II, Hitler and his white supremacist views live on in groups like this.
This is especially true in Florida, home to 43 hate groups including National Vanguard, a reorganized group formerly called National Alliance, the Ku Klux Klan and the Confederate Hammer Skins.
Clearwater is home to a chapter of the Creativity Movement, the nation's third-largest neo-Nazi group, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Tampa has chapters of the League of the South, a neo-Confederate group, and of the National Association for the Advancement of White People.
The only state with more hate groups is South Carolina, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Allen Kolhelp of the Anti-Defamation League said the number of hate groups isn't surprising, given that Florida is a densely populated state in the South. But even in the southern United States, with its history of slavery, the ideology of National Vanguard and other neo-Nazi groups is considered extreme, Kolhelp said.
"It's just ultra extremist right-wing conservatism, so far outside the mainstream that they look up to the ideals of Hitler," Kolhelp said.
Todd Weingart, leader of the National Vanguard's Tampa unit, said not everyone in the Vanguard subscribes to Hitler's national socialism, "but it's probably the closest thing" to describing members' beliefs.
One major difference: "Hitler was really focused on the German people," said Weingart, a 27-year-old Pinellas County native. "We are focused on white people wherever they may live. It's to pretty much educate and awaken people of European descent about the issues affecting our culture."
Weingart won't say how many members are in the local unit of National Vanguard. But they come from all over the Tampa Bay area, he said.
"Our chapter definitely has been growing," he said.
To join, members fill out an application in which they pledge to be "a White person of good moral character, of entirely European descent."
The Tampa Bay Vanguard unit is considered to be among the most active in the United States, frequently the subject of stories and videos posted on National Vanguard's Web site.
Last fall, the chapter peppered a Spring Hill neighborhood with fliers proclaiming "LOVE YOUR RACE." The flier, featuring a bare-shouldered blond woman, listed a Tampa post office box and a contact number with a 727 area code.
In February, the chapter hired a plane to fly over Daytona International Speedway during the Daytona 500, trailing a "LOVE YOUR RACE" banner.
The following month, Weingart and other Vanguard chapter members went to the St. Patrick's Day parade in Ybor City and handed out CDs with the music of 12 "pro-White bands," according to a video on the Vanguard Web site.
The video shows a white middle-aged man taking one of the Vanguard CDs, then asking Weingart what the Vanguard is all about.
Is it an Irish group? he asked.
"Oh, it's white nationalism," Weingart replied. The man nodded and walks away, CD in hand.
Weingart turned to the camera and smiled.
"Did you see that? He was interested."
[Last modified August 24, 2005, 15:18:17]
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