Yesterday the death was announced of US Nazi Harold Covington, best known in recent years for his attempts to establish a 'white homeland' in the pacific north west of the United States. Here in the UK, Covington had a degree of public recognition for a brief period in the early 1990s, where he lived here in Britain, and helped to establish the Combat 18 group.
To see some initial reaction to his death, his Northwest Front group's initial comment can be seen here, and the Southern Poverty Law Center's obituary here. One issue with Covington was the belief in sections of the far-right that he was not what he claimed to be, and was working for the FBI or some other intelligence or law enforcement agency. This view was perhaps helped by a media tendency to link Covington to the 1979 Greensboro massacre, where five members of the Communist Workers Party were killed at an anti-Ku Klux Klan demonstration. Covington was never charged with any offence in relation to that incident, but gave provocative media interviews stating he did not give a "happy damn" about the demonstrators, and they got what they deserved. If Covington was a spook or asset it would make his time in England, and role in establishing a neo-Nazi group which flirted with terrorism, all the more significant.
Way back in 1995, Larry O'Hara attempted to analyse some of the conflicting threads around C18, Covington and the security services. That article was published in issue 30 of Lobster magazine, and you can also read it on the Notes from the Borderland magazine website here.
It is always useful to go back to articles, even after twenty years, see how they stand the test of time, and how we might examine events anew today. Whether fresh information emerges about Covington, now he is safely out of the way in Valhalla, remains to be seen.
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