Council of Conservative Citizens Networking with Racist Skinheads

Seems the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) has some new allies these days. The group's Tennessee chapter is co-hosting a June 18 barbeque with two notorious skinhead groups, Volksfront and Blood and Honour, according to postings on the chapter's website and other racist forums. The event, whose contact is easttnskin83@yahoo.com, is being held for "networking together" and "discussing ideas and plans to make a positive impact on our region."

The CCC is certainly racist, sometimes crudely so; at one point its website featured a pictorial comparison of Michael Jackson and an ape. But the group has usually been more of a suit-and-tie outfit, rather than the street-fighting types that are typical of racist skinhead groups like Volksfront. In the 1990s, the CCC even attracted mainstream politicians, including then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, as speakers for its events. That all ended after the SPLC documented the CCC's racism in a 1998 exposé, though state-level politicians still occasionally appear at the group's conferences.

Gordon Baum, the head of the CCC, told the SPLC that the Tennessee chapter was not supposed to meet with what he called "costumed Nazis" and that he would look into the situation.

"We don't join meetings with neo-Nazi groups," Baum said. "That's a no-no."

"Easttnskin83," the CCC contact for the event, seems to be an avid networker. On the racist Stormfront forum last September, he wrote that he hoped to attend a rally and dinner being held by the United Knights of the Tennessee Order of the Ku Klux Klan. In October, he was advertising on the same forum how to reach members of Blood and Honour. In a May post on Stormfront, easttnskin83 was pressing his fellow racists to buy David Lynch memorial t-shirts, the proceeds of which go to the recently murdered neo-Nazi skinhead's family.

The CCC has also recently engaged in outreach of a different sort. In early May, Sid Secular, who runs the CCC's Washington, D.C., chapter advertised in an email and on the American Renaissance website an upcoming event that would feature John Wolfe of Youth for Western Civilization (YWC), a campus organization that has been expanding rapidly. Secular praised YWC for being "the only organization representing and standing up for our Western heritage on college campuses" and for stirring up debate on "controversial issues including immigration, multiculturalism and classical education that were thought to be driven off college campuses." YWC's events have featured prominent hate group leaders, and the group has ties to European extremists.

Wolfe had spoken earlier to the CCC as a representative of Carrying Capacity Network (CCN), a group that says it is dedicated to a "sustainable future" for the United States but whose agenda is anti-immigrant. CCN has ties to extremists and has long been headed by Virginia Abernethy, a former member of the CCC's editorial advisory board.

The advertisement for Wolfe's presentation disappeared after the SPLC contacted YWC head Kevin DeAnna about his group working with the CCC. DeAnna told the SPLC, "I have no colleague named John Wolfe. I don't know who that is and there is no YWC member speaking at [the CCC] event."

Karmetriya Jackson contributed to this report.