Hate Groups Riled Up Over Prospect of President Obama
Fringe groups to be watched even more closely if Obama wins.
— -- The prospect of a Black president has America's bastions of hate in an uproar. Leaders, including the wizard of the Imperial Klans of America, Ron Edwards, have long warned the white race is under attack and must be defended. Federal authorities say web sites have featured ugly calls to target Senator Barack Obama.
And twice now since August, two sets of self-proclaimed neo-Nazi skinheads have been caught in what officials say were feeble but still troubling plots to assassinate Obama.
"If Obama is elected president, these people see the world as they know it to end," said Morris Dees, co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
In the most recent case, federal agents say two men, Daniel Cowart and Paul Schlesselman, planned to go on a killing spree against more than a hundred African Americans and then, they told the Secret Service, go out in a blaze of glory, dressed in white tuxedos and top hats during the assassination attempt. Cowart is described as the leader.
"His views are strongly Neo-Nazi," said Dees, "which explains why he wants to kill black people and why he's ultimately interested in the assassination of Sen. Obama."
Cowart and Schlesselman told the Secret Service they met using the website of a new hate group, the Supreme White Alliance, a next generation of neo-Nazis and racist skin heads.
"We're being discriminated against just because we believe in our white rights," said Steven Edwards of Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, who is considered the leader of the Supreme White Alliance.
Like his father, the Klan wizard before him, Edwards represents yet another generation of Americans who find comfort in hate. It is a fringe group, but one that will be even more closely watched if the country elects as President a mixed-race Black man who represents all they fear.
In an contentious interview with ABC News Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross on Nightline Tuesday, Edwards said that the assassination plot alarmed him and he sought to portray his group as a social club, with no ties to two men under arrest.
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