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Harold Covington

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Harold Covington
2nd President of the National Socialist Party of America
In office
1977–1981
Preceded byFrank Collin
Succeeded byorganization disbanded
Personal details
Born
Harold Armstead Covington

(1953-09-14)September 14, 1953
Burlington, North Carolina, U.S.
DiedJuly 14, 2018(2018-07-14) (aged 64)
Bremerton, Washington, U.S.
OccupationAuthor
Military career
AllegianceUnited States
Service / branchUnited States Army
Years of service1971–1973
RankPrivate First Class

Harold Armstead Covington (September 14, 1953 – July 14, 2018) was an American neo-Nazi activist and writer. In his later years, he advocated the creation of a "white homeland" in the Pacific Northwest known as the Northwest Territorial Imperative, and was the founder of the Northwest Front (NF), a white separatist political movement that sought to establish a white ethnostate. He was a controversial figure even within the neo-Nazi movement.

After high school he joined the United States Army and joined the neo-Nazi group the National Socialist White People's Party. After being discharged from the army, Covington moved to South Africa, then Rhodesia, before being deported from Rhodesia for harassing members of a Jewish congregation. Upon his return to America, he joined the National Socialist Party of America (NSPA), becoming its leader. Following the Greensboro massacre that involved the NSPA, Covington was accused by both the Nazis and the Communists involved of being involved and possibly having informed on the far-right to escape consequences, which he denied. He wrote and self-published several fiction novels to mixed reception within the white nationalist movement.

Early life

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Harold Armstead Covington was born on September 14, 1953, in Burlington, North Carolina,[1] to Forrest McAllister Covington (1925 – 1999) and Frances Anne Covington (née Glass)[2][better source needed] as the eldest of three children. His father was a folk singer. His younger brother Ben Covington disavowed him and his views, and said several of his claims about his life were made up. According to Ben Covington, Covington's beliefs devastated their parents.[3]

He attended Chapel Hill High School.[4] He briefly wrote for his high school's newspaper in an activities column, but was kicked off shortly after for using it to express his complaints, particularly about the school's black students.[4]

Early political activities, Rhodesia and South Africa

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In 1971, he graduated from high school and joined the United States Army, joining the National Socialist White People's Party (NSWPP) the same year.[5] He claimed he was honorably discharged from the army two years later due to his racism.[4]

After his discharge from the U.S. Army, he moved to Johannesburg in South Africa in December 1973, where he worked as a payroll clerk, before moving later to Bulawayo, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).[4] Covington was a founding member of the Rhodesian White People's Party and later claimed to have served in the Rhodesian Army as a mercenary.[4][6] According to his son and official records he only worked as a filing clerk for a brief time,[6][7] and according to the Rhodesian government had never served in their army.[7]

He was deported from Rhodesia in early 1976 due to his racism. This came after Covington sent hostile letters to the Bulawayo Hebrew Congregation that caused them to fear for their safety.[8][6] Afterwards he moved to Raleigh, North Carolina and joined the National Socialist Party of America, then rising in popularity among the neo-Nazi movement.[7]

Later political activities

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Covington was a contentious figure on the far-right, and would often take the blame for many negative events that befell the movement.[9][10] Academic Jeffrey Kaplan described him as having "always raised more ire than virtually anyone in the fissiparous world of American National Socialism".[10] Similarly, the Southern Poverty Law Center said that Covington had launched "endless attacks on most of the leaders of the extreme right, to the point where he is today almost totally isolated from the organizations that make up the white supremacist movement". Other neo-Nazis nicknamed him "Weird Harold".[3]

He was involved in the Greensboro massacre of 1979, which killed five members of the Communist Workers' Party.[11][8][12] Despite being a key organizer of the demonstration that led to the massacre and the leader of the NSPA, who were involved, he was not actually present at the event.[12] The Federal Bureau of Investigation attempted to track him down so he could disprove allegations made by the Nazis and the Communists involved in the massacre that he was a CIA or FBI operative. The FBI failed to find him, having lost his trail after tracking him to South Africa. There is a widespread belief among the neo-Nazi movement that Covington escaped consequences for his involvement in Greensboro by informing on them.[8][13][12] Covington denies this.[12] Separately he was accused by other neo-Nazis of secretly being Jewish,[3] or gay.[14]

In 1980, while leader of the National Socialist Party of America, he lost a primary election for the Republican nomination for candidates for attorney general of North Carolina, winning 56,000 votes.[15][11] Covington resigned as president of the NSPA in 1981.[16] That same year, Covington alleged that would-be presidential assassin John Hinckley Jr. had formerly been a member of the NSPA. Law enforcement authorities were never able to corroborate this claim and suggested the alleged connection "may have been fabricated for publicity purposes".[17] Covington later settled in the United Kingdom for several years, where he made contact with British far-right groups and was involved in setting up the neo-Nazi terrorist organisation Combat 18 (C18) in 1992. C18 openly promotes violence and antisemitism and has adopted some of the features of the American far right.[18] He married an Irish woman and got dual citizenship.[11] In 1994, Covington started an organization called the National Socialist White People's Party, using the same name of the successor to the American Nazi Party under Matt Koehl, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.[19][20]

He launched a website in 1996; using the pseudonym Winston Smith (taken from the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four), Covington became one of the first neo-Nazi presences on the Internet.[19][20] Covington used the website and the Winston Smith pseudonym to disseminate Holocaust-denial material.[21] Online, Covington and his followers had what was described as a "vituperative online feud" with neo-Nazi leader William Luther Pierce and his followers over "the future of the white internet". Covington complained that "the Net is being viciously and tragically abused by a shockingly large number of either bogus or deranged 'white Racists' [...] I think it is too early just yet to quantify how the lunacy interacts with, counteracts and affects the impact of the serious political work".[22] Beginning in 2005, Covington maintained a political blog titled "Thoughtcrime".[23]

He moved to Olympia, Washington.[3] He advocated the creation of a "white homeland" in the Pacific Northwest (known as the Northwest Territorial Imperative).[24] In November of 2008, he founded the Northwest Front, a movement devoted to creating a white ethnostate.[25][5]

Covington was mentioned in the media in connection with the Charleston church shooting, whose perpetrator Dylann Roof discussed the Northwest Front in his manifesto, and was critical of its means and objectives.[26] According to Covington, the shooting was "a preview of coming attractions", but he also believed it was a bad idea for his followers to engage in random acts of violence, instead supporting organized revolution.[27]

Writing career

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In addition to his leadership of various neo-Nazi organizations, Covington was also a prolific writer in the form of both blogs and books, publishing 11 novels in total.[28] His books were all self-published and print on demand, outsourcing the production and distribution to an unrelated company. Covington promoted this approach and said it helped him avoid the publication pitfalls and censorship that befell other far-right extremist literature like The Turner Diaries.[29] Genres he wrote in included occult, medievalist, gothic, crime, and historical fiction; Covington claimed that there was "a political and racial message somewhere" in all of his books.[28][14] He is best known for his series of four Northwest Independence novels that began in 2003, the Northwest series: A Distant Thunder, A Mighty Fortress, The Hill of the Ravens, The Brigade.[10][30][12] The series focuses on a white separatist insurgency that overthrows a defective American government in the Pacific Northwest.[12] Within this series Covington had a self-insert character as the "Old Man" who advises the main characters.[13]

Kevin Hicks writing for Southern Poverty Law Center criticized these novels as "cheesy" and "confused", saying that Covington's failure to translate his "dubious talent" into fiction writing was "a small gift for which the human race can feel truly grateful".[14] Jeffrey Kaplan said of his writing ability that he had "a rare talent with a pen" and that "no one on the receiving end of Covington’s bombastic wit emerged unscathed, and none would ever forgive the Nazi Bard". He attributed the "widespread anti-Covington animus" within the neo-Nazi movement to this.[10] He further described the Northwest series as "in many ways the best of the American post-apocalyptic literature of the radical right".[31] The reaction to the Northwest series within the White nationalist movement itself was mixed.[10][12] One writer for the white supremacist publication Vanguard News Network praised it as a better work than The Turner Diaries and "the most authoritative treatment of White separatism in the English language". Other white nationalists criticized the strategy promoted in the book as too minimalist in its aims, failing to take over the whole nation.[12]

Death and legacy

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Covington died in Bremerton, Washington, on July 14, 2018.[5] His ideas influenced some far right groups, including the Atomwaffen Division and The Base.[28]

Publications

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Non-Northwest

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  • The March Up Country (1987)
  • The Stars in Their Path: A Novel of Reincarnation (2001)
  • The Black Flame (2001)
  • Rose of Honor (2001)
  • Freedom's Sons (2013)

Northwest series

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  • The Hill of the Ravens (2003)
  • A Distant Thunder (2004)
  • A Mighty Fortress (2005)
  • The Brigade (2007)

References

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  1. ^ Atkins, Stephen E. (September 13, 2011). Encyclopedia of Right-Wing Extremism in Modern American History. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. ISBN 979-8-216-13985-0.
  2. ^ "Covington History - H and I". Archived from the original on October 4, 2011.
  3. ^ Jump up to: a b c d "Ben Covington Offers Insight Into His Brother Harold's Neo-Nazi Activity". Southern Poverty Law Center. November 30, 2008. Retrieved March 18, 2025.
  4. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e Wheaton 2009, p. 45.
  5. ^ Jump up to: a b c Lenz, Ryan (July 25, 2018). "Harold Covington, founder of white separatist group, dies at 64". Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved July 26, 2018.
  6. ^ Jump up to: a b c Murphy, Dan (June 18, 2015). "Why would an American white supremacist be fond of Rhodesia?". The Christian Science Monitor. Boston. ISSN 0882-7729. Retrieved March 27, 2016.
  7. ^ Jump up to: a b c Wheaton 2009, p. 46.
  8. ^ Jump up to: a b c Wheaton 2009, pp. 45–46.
  9. ^ Michael 2010, p. 159.
  10. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e Kaplan 2018, pp. 10–11.
  11. ^ Jump up to: a b c Goodrick-Clarke 2001, p. 27.
  12. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g h Michael 2010, p. 160.
  13. ^ Jump up to: a b Kaplan 2018, p. 11.
  14. ^ Jump up to: a b c Hicks, Kevin (Summer 2003). "Neo-Nazi Harold Covington Authors Cheesy Occult Novels". Intelligence Report. Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved July 23, 2011.
  15. ^ "Nazi Loses in Republican Primary". Reading Eagle. No. 102. Associated Press. May 7, 1980. p. 30. Retrieved February 18, 2013 – via Google News Archive.
  16. ^ "N.C. Nazi Chief Quits". The Sumter Daily Item. Vol. 86, no. 143. Associated Press. March 27, 1981. p. 4B. Retrieved July 23, 2011 – via Google News Archive.
  17. ^ "Doubts grow over Hinkley's nazi ties". The Times-News. Vol. 106, no. 80. Hendersonville. Associated Press. April 2, 1981. Retrieved July 23, 2011 – via Google News Archive.
  18. ^ "antisem/archive". Institute for Jewish Policy Research. September 1998. Archived from the original on July 13, 2015. Retrieved July 23, 2011.
  19. ^ Jump up to: a b "Hate on the Internet: The Anti-Defamation League Perspective – Statement of Anti-Defamation League before the Senate Judiciary Committee". Hatemonitor.csusb.edu via Wayback Machine. September 14, 1999. Archived from the original on January 3, 2008. Retrieved July 23, 2011.
  20. ^ Jump up to: a b Goodrick-Clarke 2001, p. 28.
  21. ^ Gardell, Mattias (2003). Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism. Durham: Duke University Press. p. 106. ISBN 978-0-8223-3071-4.
  22. ^ Back 2002, p. 647.
  23. ^ Tsai, Robert (2014). America's Forgotten Constitutions: Defiant Visions of Power and Community. Harvard University Press. p. 338. ISBN 978-0-674-05995-5 – via Google Books.
  24. ^ Clarke, Brennan (July 25, 2011). "Neo-Nazi sympathizer fatally shot by Nanaimo police didn't fire flare gun, probe told". The Globe and Mail. Toronto. ISSN 0319-0714. Archived from the original on July 27, 2011. Retrieved November 7, 2013.
  25. ^ Michael, George (January 2014). "Fighting for an Aryan Homeland: Harold Covington and the Northwest Front". Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International. 20 (4).
  26. ^ Berger, Knute (July 8, 2015). "Hate-Filled Zone: The racist roots of a Northwest secession movement". Crosscut. Retrieved November 25, 2020.
  27. ^ Thielman, Sam (June 28, 2015). "White supremacist calls Charleston 'a preview of coming attractions'". The Guardian. London. ISSN 0261-3077.
  28. ^ Jump up to: a b c Young & Downes 2022, Covington and his novels.
  29. ^ Boucher & Young 2023, p. 143.
  30. ^ Boucher & Young 2023, p. 147.
  31. ^ Kaplan 2018, p. 12.

Works cited

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