Aryan Nations plans to regroup in the East

Associated Press

COUDERSPORT, Pa. — Sitting in an edge-of-town eatery, his 2-year-old son Gideon on his lap, August Kreis looks like any other father who takes his children to McDonald’s and plays with them in the park.

But at his home just outside this rural community near the New York border, Kreis is preparing for a day when he says he and his supporters will establish a "white, Christian republic" and drive out Jews, blacks, Asians and others from the United States and Canada.

"When the time comes, the nonwhites are going to be told that now’s the time to get out," Kreis said. "They’re going to run to their own lands. Those that don’t run, that don’t want to leave, would rather fight, we’re going to fight them and kill them."

Kreis and his beliefs are not new to this Potter County community that once was home to FBI hero Elliott Ness and mystery writer Margaret Sutton, but his plans to relocate the leadership of Aryan Nations to this sparsely populated region have brought anger and worry from some residents.

"I don’t have time for someone who’s bigoted and prejudiced," said Marion Peet, a member of the Coudersport Borough Council. "I know that there’s a lot of animosity between August and some people around town, but most wish he would just go away."

While he is well known among residents, few will talk publicly about Kreis or the Aryan Nations, for fear of reprisals.

A longtime member of so-called Christian Identity movement, including the Ku Klux Klan and the Sheriff’s Posse Comitatus, Kreis was chosen to design the Aryan Nations’ Internet site and quickly rose to prominence.

Now as the designated "minister of information and propaganda," the 46-year-old Kreis plans to use his 10 acres to help relocate the group from Idaho, where its 20-acre compound was lost last year after a $6.3 million civil rights judgment against Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler.

"Where Posse Comitatus and the Klan are an American thing, Aryan Nations is international," Kreis said. "What better forum could I use to express our viewpoint and get the Identity viewpoint out to the people?"

Aryan Nations national director Harold Ray Redfeairn of Dayton, Ohio, is expected to join Kreis in Potter County in the spring, and an Aryan Youth Congress is scheduled there for April 20 — the anniversary of Adolph Hitler’s birthday.

While the 83-year-old Butler remains the group’s spiritual leader from his home in Idaho, Kreis and Butler’s named successor, Redfeairn, hope to use the Pennsylvania land as a base to rebuild the Aryan Nations into a national and international force for white supremacy.

Morris Dees, chief counsel for the Southern Poverty Law Center, doesn’t expect much success for the group, which over the years has included some of the nation’s most violent racists and anti-Semites.

"There’s nothing left of them," Dees said. "They went to Pennsylvania because they’ve got nowhere else to go. This particular group is on its dying gasp."

Copyright ©2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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