Harold Covington

Harold Armstead Covington was born on September 14, 1953, in Burlington, North Carolina, the eldest of three children. His father was a folk singer. He attended Chapel Hill High School. His racist views were largely born out of his experiences with racial integration in school in the 1960s, which he described in negative terms. He was described by teachers as a gifted student and won a place at the annual Governor’s School for Gifted Boys. One of his teachers at the time said that he was a "bright, creative boy. But his intelligence should be channeled—before he does something destructive to society." 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. == Political activities ==

Covington was a contentious figure on the far-right, and would often take the blame for many negative events that befell the movement. Academic Jeffrey Kaplan described him as having "always raised more ire than virtually anyone in the fissiparous world of American National Socialism". 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". He claimed he was honorably discharged from the army two years later due to his racism. He joined the Franklin Road chapter of the National Socialist White People's Party (NSWPP) about that time. According to his son and official records he only worked as a filing clerk for a brief time, Afterwards, members of the North Carolinan NSPA branch, in what was probably an effort to distract from Greensboro, plotted to bomb a shopping center. This was probably planned without Covington knowing, and he was horrified upon learning, fearing white people would be harmed. The plot was thwarted due to the high rate of infiltration by informants, which only furthered the rumor that Covington himself was an informant. At the same time, it was revealed that the leader of the national NSPA, Frank Collin, was half-Jewish; several neo-Nazis, including Covington, then searched Collin's home, whereupon they found a collection of homosexual child pornography. Covington and several other neo-Nazis engineered a coup and turned Collin over to the police, and he was sentenced to several years in prison. Unlike other neo-Nazis, Covington refused to accept that Collin was partially of Jewish descent. Covington became leader of the NSPA, but became embroiled in a leadership dispute and was forced to resign in 1981. 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". Faced with criticism, in 1982 he fled the country to Ireland and the United Kingdom. He married an Irish woman and got dual citizenship. In the late 1980s, Covington was a neighbor and friend of North Carolinian white supremacist and Church of the Creator member William White Williams; they collaborated in an effort to broadcast Tom Metzger's white supremacist broadcast show Race and Reason. However, Covington had a lengthy feud with the COTC and its leader Ben Klassen, which extended into a feud with Williams; Covington accused Williams of only being out for Klassen's money. The COTC's paper Racial Loyalty issued harsh criticisms of Covington, (alleging that he was "a government agent, a closet rabbi, an agent provocateur of the Greensboro Massacre, an ADL informant, and a Mossad agent") and Covington sued the COTC, Klassen, and Williams for libel, though Covington later dropped the case. Williams and Klassen then got Covington fired from his job. Covington claimed that Williams disguised himself as an FBI agent and contacted his employer, saying the Jewish Defense League had a plot to assassinate Covington. Internet propagandizing and the Northwest Territorial Imperative 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, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. 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. Covington used the website and the Winston Smith pseudonym to disseminate Holocaust-denial material. 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". Beginning in 2005, Covington maintained a political blog titled "Thoughtcrime". In 1998, continuing their previous feud, Will Williams sued Covington for libel and won $10,000; in what several commentators described as an effort to avoid paying Williams, Covington then moved states to Olympia, Washington. He founded the Northwest Front, a movement devoted to creating a white ethnostate. 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. == Writing career ==

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. Academic Jeffrey Kaplan noted his writing ability, saying he was perhaps the most skilled propagandist ever produced by American neo-Nazism; he further said that "even the writings of the Commander himself, George Lincoln Rockwell, were but candles in the wind before the blast of Covington’s purple prose." Kaplan noted his body of work as "voluminous", with an "unusual capacity for self-analysis" for a neo-Nazi. 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. 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. 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. The series focuses on a white separatist insurgency that overthrows a defective American government in the Pacific Northwest. Within this series Covington had a self-insert character as the "Old Man" who advises the main characters. Kevin Hicks writing for Southern Poverty Law Center criticized his occult novels as "cheesy" and "confused", saying that Covington's failure to translate his "dubious talent" for propaganda writing into fiction writing was "a small gift for which the human race can feel truly grateful". Kaplan said 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. He further described the Northwest series as "in many ways the best of the American post-apocalyptic literature of the radical right". The reaction to the Northwest series within the White nationalist movement itself was mixed. 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. == Death and legacy ==

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

Nonfiction • The March Up Country (1987) • Dreaming the Iron Dream (2005) • The Northwest Front Handbook (2014) Fiction • Vindictus: A Novel of History’s First Gunfighter (2000) • Fire and Rain (2000) • Slow Coming Dark: A Novel of the Age of Clinton (2000) • The Stars in Their Path: A Novel of Reincarnation (2001) • The Black Flame (2001) • Revelation 9 (2001) • Rose of Honor (2001) • The Renegade (2001) • Bonnie Blue Murder: A Civil War Mystery (2001) • Other Voices, Darker Rooms: Eight Grim Tales (2001) Northwest series • The Hill of the Ravens (2003) • A Distant Thunder (2004) • A Mighty Fortress (2005) • The Brigade (2007) • ''Freedom's Sons'' (2013) == References ==