White Supremacist Elected In Pennsylvania

by: Publisher

Mon Jun 04, 2012 at 22:37:31 PM EDT

Recruited into the neo-Nazi movement while he was stationed at Fort Bragg in the 1990s, Smith, of Pittston, Penn., has been active in an extraordinary array of white nationalist, skinhead, and neo-Nazi groups, including American Third Position, Keystone United(formerly Keystone State Skinheads), and the Council of Conservative Citizens. He is a former Aryan Nations member and former leader of the Philadelphia chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of White People, which was created by former Klan leader David Duke but is no longer associated with him. Smith also belongs to a Pennsylvania-based group called the European American Action Coalition (EAAC), which according to its website was formed in fall 2011 'by a few well known White activists in the great and historic state of Pennsylvania.'...

Smith's ties to the racist right stretch far beyond the political. In 2001, he co-founded a racist skinhead group now known as Keystone United (which was until 2009 known as the Keystone State Skinheads, or KSS), one of the largest and most active single-state racist skinhead crews in the country. In March 2003, he and two other KSS members were arrested in Scranton for beating up Antoni Williams, a black man, using stones and chunks of pavement. Smith pleaded guilty to terrorist threats and ethnic intimidation and received a 60-day sentence and probation.

To advance his goals, Smith has distanced himself somewhat from his violent past and focused on political activism. As state chairman for American Third Position (A3P), a white nationalist political party that aims to deport immigrants and return the United   States to white rule, he has for several years been working the crowds at local Tea Party gatherings, which he once described as 'fertile grounds for our activists.'

In October 2010, he led a delegation of A3P activists in presenting the party's position to a Scranton Tea Party group. 'We explained that the A3P was formed to represent white Americans, who have been denied representation for decades,' he said in a press release on A3P's website. 'We provided them with a true alternative to the typical dead-end conservatism with which so many of these concerned and partially awakened Americans are involved.'

The Times Leader reported that the Luzerne County GOP was unaware of Smith's decades-long involvement with racist causes — and his criminal record — and will be meeting to discuss the situation.