Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America

The first step in Beam’s new war was to establish paramilitary units that would both engage in violent actions and help to institutionalize a militaristic subculture capable of waging war for years, if not decades, to come. Beam began by forming his own branch of the Ku Klux Klan, separate from factions torn apart by government surveillance, and allying with David Duke’s Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. While Duke was camera-friendly and tried to soften the Klan’s racism, Beam inspired and carried out violent acts against alleged communists and racial enemies, framing such acts in terms of his Vietnam experiences. Beam represented the latest iteration of a Klan resurgence in the wake of war—the Klan itself took root shortly after the US Civil War, reached the apex of its membership after World War I, and carried out some of its most notorious attacks during the post-WWII civil rights movement—with veterans in each case taking a leading role.

One of Beam’s major initiatives was the Klan Border Watch in Texas, a paramilitary operation that promised to deter illegal immigration with threats of vigilante violence. He set up a paramilitary camp, Camp Puller, that trained people, including teenagers, on a variety of tactics including “strangulation, decapitation using a machete, hijacking airplanes, and firing semiautomatic weapons” (39). Believing nuclear war to be imminent, Beam’s soldiers would presumably have the skills to survive the onslaught and then wage a racial war and establish an all-white utopia. Despite these lofty objectives, Beam and his associates began with more modest goals, such as targeting Vietnamese refugees who worked as fishermen in Galveston, Texas. The presence of these refugees had already led to tensions, as their arrival coincided with an economic downturn and they were accordingly blamed for stealing a dwindling number of available jobs. A local veteran described it as “Uncle Sam has broken his promise to the Vietnam veterans and kept his promise to the Vietnamese” (42), and white power activists promptly capitalized on the issue, insinuating that the refugees were communist infiltrators who, adding insult to injury, were living off taxpayers’ money. A harassment campaign escalated into the attempted burning of two Vietnamese-owned fishing boats in early 1981, and in February a Klan rally again threatened vigilante violence if the government did not act. While the fishermen responded with legal action, some news outlets accepted the Klan’s framing of the conflict as an extension of the Vietnam War, even though only one side was acting violently. With help from the Southern Poverty Law Center, the fishermen secured an injunction against the Klan from harassing them or carrying weapons. A Texas district attorney prepared another injunction to close Beam’s paramilitary camps, although others were popping up in many states. In response, Beam relocated to Idaho and began to associate with the local Aryan Nations, planning not just to harass communists but to kill them.