‘Americans First’ Leader Joins Neo-Nazi Protest

“J.T.” Ready, a prominent Minuteman Civil Defense Corps volunteer and anti-immigration activist based in Phoenix, has been flitting around the edges of the neo-Nazi movement for more than a year now, quietly creating a profile on the racist social networking website New Saxon and attending a private gathering organized by the neo-Nazi organization National Vanguard.

But when the National Socialist Movement held an anti-immigration rally in Omaha, Neb., on Sept. 1, the leader of the Americans First nativist extremist group was making his public debut as a full-blown neo-Nazi. Photographs (above) captured a grinning Ready, clad in a grey business suit, standing side-by-side with NSM members who wore brown-shirt uniforms with swastika armbands. Any doubt that Ready was an open white supremacist, as well as a hard-line nativist, evaporated at that point.

"I was a guest speaker in Omaha," Ready said. "If I am a guest speaker at a Black Panther event, will you report that I am a black supremacist, too? I would be more than happy to speak at one of their [Black Panther] events. We have the very same enemy after all."

Ready, who ran unsuccessfully for Mesa City Council, is a twice court-martialed ex-marine who received a bad conduct discharge. He fudged the biography he provided as a political candidate to a local newspaper. He was arrested for aggravated assault with a weapon and damage to property in Florida in 1992 and made headlines in March 2006 when he fired a gun at a Latino man.

A past president of Mesa Community College Republican Club, Ready appears in a video produced by former militia member and convicted felon Russ Dove in which he offers his own final solution to illegal immigration. Clad in a turtleneck and a skull-adorned do-rag, Ready says: “I may be the first one to advocate this but I firmly believe in having a mine field across the border. This is 100% effective.”

For more on Ready’s political connections, including his chummy relationship with Arizona State Rep. Russell Pearce, click here.