:Harold Covington

{{Infobox officeholder

| name = Harold Covington

| image = Harold A. Covington photo.webp

| office = 2nd President of the National Socialist Party of America

| term_start = 1977

| term_end = 1981

| predecessor = Frank Collin

| successor = Organization disbanded

| birth_name = Harold Armstead Covington

| birth_date = {{birth date|mf=yes|1953|9|14}}

| birth_place = Burlington, North Carolina, U.S.

| death_date = {{death date and age|2018|7|14|1953|9|14}}

| death_place = Bremerton, Washington, U.S.

| occupation = Author

| module = {{Infobox military person|embed=yes

|allegiance = United States

|branch= United States Army

|serviceyears= 1971–1973

|rank= Private First Class

}}

Harold Armstead Covington (September 14, 1953 – July 14, 2018) was an American neo-Nazi activist and writer. In his later years, he advocated the creation of a "white homeland" in the Pacific Northwest known as the Northwest Territorial Imperative, and was the founder of the Northwest Front (NF), a white separatist political movement that sought to establish a white ethnostate. He was a controversial figure even within the neo-Nazi movement.

After high school he joined the United States Army and joined the neo-Nazi group the National Socialist White People's Party. After being discharged from the army, Covington moved to South Africa, then Rhodesia, before being deported from Rhodesia for harassing members of a Jewish congregation. Upon his return to America, he joined the National Socialist Party of America (NSPA), becoming its leader. Following the Greensboro massacre that involved the NSPA, Covington was accused by both the Nazis and the Communists involved of being involved and possibly having informed on the far-right to escape consequences, which he denied. He wrote and self-published several fiction novels to mixed reception within the white nationalist movement.

Early life

Harold Armstead Covington was born on September 14, 1953, in Burlington, North Carolina,{{Cite book |last=Atkins |first=Stephen E. |title=Encyclopedia of Right-Wing Extremism in Modern American History |year=2011 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |isbn=979-8-216-13985-0 |language=en}} the eldest of three children. His father was a folk singer. His younger brother Ben Covington disavowed him and his views, and said several of his claims about his life were made up. According to Ben Covington, Covington's beliefs devastated their parents.{{Cite web |date=2008-11-30 |title=Ben Covington Offers Insight Into His Brother Harold’s Neo-Nazi Activity |url=https://www.splcenter.org/resources/reports/ben-covington-offers-insight-his-brother-harolds-neo-nazi-activity/ |access-date=2025-03-18 |website=Southern Poverty Law Center |language=en-US}}

He attended Chapel Hill High School.{{sfn|Wheaton|2009|p=45}} He briefly wrote for his high school's newspaper in an activities column, but was kicked off shortly after for using it to express his complaints, particularly about the school's black students.{{sfn|Wheaton|2009|p=45}}

Early political activities, Rhodesia and South Africa

In 1971, he graduated from high school and joined the United States Army, joining the National Socialist White People's Party (NSWPP) the same year.{{Cite web |last1=Lenz |first1=Ryan |date=2018-07-25 |title=Harold Covington, founder of white separatist group, dies at 64 |url=https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/07/25/harold-covington-founder-white-separatist-group-dies-64 |access-date=2018-07-26 |website=Southern Poverty Law Center |language=en-US}} He claimed he was honorably discharged from the army two years later due to his racism.{{sfn|Wheaton|2009|p=45}}

After his discharge from the U.S. Army, he moved to Johannesburg in South Africa in December 1973, where he worked as a payroll clerk, before moving later to Bulawayo, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).{{sfn|Wheaton|2009|p=45}} Covington was a founding member of the Rhodesian White People's Party and later claimed to have served in the Rhodesian Army as a mercenary.{{sfn|Wheaton|2009|p=45}}{{Cite news |last1=Murphy |first1=Dan |date=2015-06-18 |title=Why would an American white supremacist be fond of Rhodesia? |url=http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Security-Watch/Backchannels/2015/0618/Why-would-an-American-white-supremacist-be-fond-of-Rhodesia-video |access-date=2016-03-27 |newspaper=The Christian Science Monitor |location=Boston |language=en-US |issn=0882-7729}} According to his son and official records he only worked as a filing clerk for a brief time,{{sfn|Wheaton|2009|p=46}} and according to the Rhodesian government had never served in their army.{{sfn|Wheaton|2009|p=46}}

He was deported from Rhodesia in early 1976 due to his racism. This came after Covington sent hostile letters to the Bulawayo Hebrew Congregation that caused them to fear for their safety.{{sfn|Wheaton|2009|pp=45–46}} Afterwards he moved to Raleigh, North Carolina and joined the National Socialist Party of America, then rising in popularity among the neo-Nazi movement.{{sfn|Wheaton|2009|p=46}}

Later political activities

Covington was a contentious figure on the far-right, and would often take the blame for many negative events that befell the movement.{{sfn|Michael|2010|p=159}}{{sfn|Kaplan|2018|pp=10–11}} Academic Jeffrey Kaplan described him as having "always raised more ire than virtually anyone in the fissiparous world of American National Socialism".{{sfn|Kaplan|2018|pp=10–11}} Similarly, the Southern Poverty Law Center said that Covington had launched "endless attacks on most of the leaders of the extreme right, to the point where he is today almost totally isolated from the organizations that make up the white supremacist movement". Other neo-Nazis nicknamed him "Weird Harold".

He was involved in the Greensboro massacre of 1979, which killed five members of the Communist Workers' Party.{{sfn|Goodrick-Clarke|2001|p=27}}{{sfn|Wheaton|2009|pp=45–46}}{{sfn|Michael|2010|p=160}} Despite being a key organizer of the demonstration that led to the massacre and the leader of the NSPA, who were involved, he was not actually present at the event.{{sfn|Michael|2010|p=160}} The Federal Bureau of Investigation attempted to track him down so he could disprove allegations made by the Nazis and the Communists involved in the massacre that he was a CIA or FBI operative. The FBI failed to find him, having lost his trail after tracking him to South Africa. There is a widespread belief among the neo-Nazi movement that Covington escaped consequences for his involvement in Greensboro by informing on them.{{sfn|Wheaton|2009|pp=45–46}}{{sfn|Kaplan|2018|p=11}}{{sfn|Michael|2010|p=160}} Covington denies this.{{sfn|Michael|2010|p=160}} Separately he was accused by other neo-Nazis of secretly being Jewish, or gay.

In 1980, while leader of the National Socialist Party of America, he lost a primary election for the Republican nomination for candidates for attorney general of North Carolina, winning 56,000 votes.{{Cite news |date=1980-05-07 |title=Nazi Loses in Republican Primary |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=QxQyAAAAIBAJ&sjid=i6IFAAAAIBAJ&pg=3115,5477183 |access-date=2013-02-18 |work=Reading Eagle |page=30 |language=en-US |via=Google News Archive |issue=102 |agency=Associated Press}}{{sfn|Goodrick-Clarke|2001|p=27}} Covington resigned as president of the NSPA in 1981.{{Cite news |date=1981-03-27 |title=N.C. Nazi Chief Quits |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=VYgiAAAAIBAJ&pg=5063,4821415 |access-date=2011-07-23 |work=The Sumter Daily Item |page=4B |language=en-US |via=Google News Archive |volume=86 |issue=143 |agency=Associated Press}} That same year, Covington alleged that would-be presidential assassin John Hinckley Jr. had formerly been a member of the NSPA. Law enforcement authorities were never able to corroborate this claim and suggested the alleged connection "may have been fabricated for publicity purposes".{{Cite news |date=1981-04-02 |title=Doubts grow over Hinkley's nazi ties |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=AD8aAAAAIBAJ&pg=4414,3778065 |access-date=2011-07-23 |work=The Times-News |location=Hendersonville |language=en-US |via=Google News Archive |volume=106 |issue=80 |agency=Associated Press}} Covington later settled in the United Kingdom for several years, where he made contact with British far-right groups and was involved in setting up the neo-Nazi terrorist organisation Combat 18 (C18) in 1992. C18 openly promotes violence and antisemitism and has adopted some of the features of the American far right.{{Cite web |date=September 1998 |title=antisem/archive |url=http://www.axt.org.uk/antisem/archive/archive2/uk/uk.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150713035219/http://www.axt.org.uk/antisem/archive/archive2/uk/uk.htm |archive-date=2015-07-13 |access-date=2011-07-23 |publisher=Institute for Jewish Policy Research |language=en}} He married an Irish woman and got dual citizenship.{{sfn|Goodrick-Clarke|2001|p=27}} In 1994, Covington started an organization called the National Socialist White People's Party, using the same name of the successor to the American Nazi Party under Matt Koehl, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.{{sfn|Goodrick-Clarke|2001|p=28}}

He launched a website in 1996; using the pseudonym Winston Smith (taken from the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four), Covington became one of the first neo-Nazi presences on the Internet.{{Cite web|url=http://hatemonitor.csusb.edu/US_Senate/Howard_Berkowitz.html |title=Hate on the Internet: The Anti-Defamation League Perspective – Statement of Anti-Defamation League before the Senate Judiciary Committee |publisher=Hatemonitor.csusb.edu via Wayback Machine |date=September 14, 1999 |access-date=July 23, 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080103132832/http://hatemonitor.csusb.edu/US_Senate/Howard_Berkowitz.html |archive-date=January 3, 2008 }}{{sfn|Goodrick-Clarke|2001|p=28}} Covington used the website and the Winston Smith pseudonym to disseminate Holocaust-denial material.{{Cite book |last1=Gardell |first1=Mattias |author-link=Mattias Gardell |title=Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism |title-link=Gods of the Blood |publisher=Duke University Press |year=2003 |isbn=978-0-8223-3071-4 |location=Durham |page=106 |language=en}} Online, Covington and his followers had what was described as a "vituperative online feud" with neo-Nazi leader William Luther Pierce and his followers over "the future of the white internet". Covington complained that "the Net is being viciously and tragically abused by a shockingly large number of either bogus or deranged 'white Racists' [...] I think it is too early just yet to quantify how the lunacy interacts with, counteracts and affects the impact of the serious political work".{{sfn|Back|2002|p=647}} Beginning in 2005, Covington maintained a political blog titled "Thoughtcrime".{{Cite book |last1=Tsai |first1=Robert |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=09aDAwAAQBAJ&q=%22Harold+Covington%22++++blog++%22Thoughtcrime%22&pg=PA338 |title=America's Forgotten Constitutions: Defiant Visions of Power and Community |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=2014 |isbn=978-0-674-05995-5 |page=338 |language=en |via=Google Books}}

He moved to Olympia, Washington. He advocated the creation of a "white homeland" in the Pacific Northwest (known as the Northwest Territorial Imperative).{{Cite news |last=Clarke |first=Brennan |date=2011-07-25 |title=Neo-Nazi sympathizer fatally shot by Nanaimo police didn't fire flare gun, probe told |url=https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/neo-nazi-sympathizer-fatally-shot-by-nanaimo-police-didnt-fire-flare-gun-probe-told/article2109423/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110727122701/http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/neo-nazi-sympathizer-fatally-shot-by-nanaimo-police-didnt-fire-flare-gun-probe-told/article2109423/ |archive-date=2011-07-27 |access-date=2013-11-07 |work=The Globe and Mail |location=Toronto |language=en-CA |issn=0319-0714}} He founded the Northwest Front, a movement devoted to creating a white ethnostate.

Covington was mentioned in the media in connection with the Charleston church shooting, whose perpetrator Dylann Roof discussed the Northwest Front in his manifesto, and was critical of its means and objectives.{{Cite news |last=Berger |first=Knute |date=2015-07-08 |title=Hate-Filled Zone: The racist roots of a Northwest secession movement |url=https://crosscut.com/2015/07/hate-filled-zone-a-group-of-white-racists-wants-a-nw-secession-a-vile-dream-with-deep-historic-roots |access-date=2020-11-25 |work=Crosscut |language=en-US}} According to Covington, the shooting was "a preview of coming attractions", but he also believed it was a bad idea for his followers to engage in random acts of violence, instead supporting organized revolution.{{Cite news |last=Thielman |first=Sam |date=2015-06-28 |title=White supremacist calls Charleston 'a preview of coming attractions' |url=https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/28/harold-covington-northwest-front-dylann-roof-manifesto-charleston-shooting |website=The Guardian |location=London |issn=0261-3077}}

Writing career

In addition to his leadership of various neo-Nazi organizations, Covington was also a prolific writer in the form of both blogs and books, publishing 11 novels in total.{{sfn|Young|Downes|2022|loc=Covington and his novels}} His books were all self-published and print on demand, outsourcing the production and distribution to an unrelated company. Covington promoted this approach and said it helped him avoid the publication pitfalls and censorship that befell other far-right extremist literature like The Turner Diaries.{{sfn|Boucher|Young|2023|p=143}} Genres he wrote in included occult, medievalist, gothic, crime, and historical fiction; Covington claimed that there was "a political and racial message somewhere" in all of his books.{{sfn|Young|Downes|2022|loc=Covington and his novels}}{{Cite web |last=Hicks |first=Kevin |date=Summer 2003 |title=Neo-Nazi Harold Covington Authors Cheesy Occult Novels |url=https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2003/neo-nazi-harold-covington-authors-cheesy-occult-novels |access-date=2011-07-23 |website=Intelligence Report |publisher=Southern Poverty Law Center |language=en-US}} He is best known for his series of four Northwest Independence novels that began in 2003, the Northwest series: A Distant Thunder, A Mighty Fortress, The Hill of the Ravens, The Brigade.{{sfn|Kaplan|2018|pp=10–11}}{{sfn|Boucher|Young|2023|p=147}}{{sfn|Michael|2010|p=160}} The series focuses on a white separatist insurgency that overthrows a defective American government in the Pacific Northwest.{{sfn|Michael|2010|p=160}} Within this series Covington had a self-insert character as the "Old Man" who advises the main characters.{{sfn|Kaplan|2018|p=11}}

Kevin Hicks writing for Southern Poverty Law Center criticized these novels as "cheesy" and "confused", saying that Covington's failure to translate his "dubious talent" into fiction writing was "a small gift for which the human race can feel truly grateful". Jeffrey Kaplan said of his writing ability that he had "a rare talent with a pen" and that "no one on the receiving end of Covington’s bombastic wit emerged unscathed, and none would ever forgive the Nazi Bard". He attributed the "widespread anti-Covington animus" within the neo-Nazi movement to this.{{sfn|Kaplan|2018|pp=10–11}} He further described the Northwest series as "in many ways the best of the American post-apocalyptic literature of the radical right".{{sfn|Kaplan|2018|p=12}} The reaction to the Northwest series within the White nationalist movement itself was mixed.{{sfn|Kaplan|2018|pp=10–11}}{{sfn|Michael|2010|p=160}} One writer for the white supremacist publication Vanguard News Network praised it as a better work than The Turner Diaries and "the most authoritative treatment of White separatism in the English language". Other white nationalists criticized the strategy promoted in the book as too minimalist in its aims, failing to take over the whole nation.{{sfn|Michael|2010|p=160}}

Death and legacy

Covington died in Bremerton, Washington, on July 14, 2018. His ideas influenced some far right groups, including the Atomwaffen Division and The Base.{{sfn|Young|Downes|2022|loc=Covington and his novels}}

Publications

= Non-Northwest =

The March Up Country (1987)
The Stars in Their Path: A Novel of Reincarnation (2001)
The Black Flame (2001)
Rose of Honor (2001)
Freedom's Sons (2013)

= Northwest series =

The Hill of the Ravens (2003)
A Distant Thunder (2004)
A Mighty Fortress (2005)
The Brigade (2007)

References

= Works cited =

{{Cite journal |last=Back |first=Les |date=2002-01-01 |title=Aryans reading Adorno: cyber-culture and twenty-first century racism |journal=Ethnic and Racial Studies |language=en |volume=25 |issue=4 |pages=628–651 |doi=10.1080/01419870220136664 |issn=0141-9870}}
{{Cite journal |last1=Boucher |first1=Geoff |last2=Young |first2=Helen |date=February 2023 |title=Digital books and the far right |journal=Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies |volume=37 |issue=1 |pages=140–152 |doi=10.1080/10304312.2023.2191905 |issn=1030-4312 |doi-access=free}}
{{Cite book |last=Goodrick-Clarke |first=Nicholas |author-link=Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke |title=Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity |title-link=Black Sun (Goodrick-Clarke book) |publisher=New York University Press |isbn=978-0-8147-3124-6 |year=2001 |language=en}}
{{Cite journal |last=Kaplan |first=Jeffrey |author-link=Jeffrey Kaplan (academic) |date=July 2018 |title=America's apocalyptic literature of the radical right |journal=International Sociology |language=en |volume=33 |issue=4 |pages=503–522 |doi=10.1177/0268580918775583 |issn=0268-5809}}
{{Cite journal |last=Michael |first=George |author-link=George Michael (professor) |date=2010-01-21 |title=Blueprints and Fantasies: A Review and Analysis of Extremist Fiction |journal=Studies in Conflict & Terrorism |language=en |volume=33 |issue=2 |pages=149–170 |doi=10.1080/10576100903488451 |issn=1057-610X}}
{{Cite book |last=Wheaton |first=Elizabeth |title=Codename Greenkil: The 1979 Greensboro Killings |publisher=University of Georgia Press |year=2009 |isbn=978-0-8203-3148-5 |language=en-US}}
{{Cite journal |last1=Young |first1=Helen |last2=Downes |first2=Stephanie |date=2022 |title=Popular fiction and white extremism: Neo-Nazi ideology and medievalist crime fiction |journal=Literature Compass |language=en |volume=19 |issue=11 |pages=–12684 |doi=10.1111/lic3.12684 |issn=1741-4113}}