Louis Beam

Louis Ray Beam Jr. (born August 20, 1946 in Lake Jackson , Texas ) is an American right-wing extremist who was initially active in the Ku Klux Klan and later in the Aryan Nations . The concept of the " Leaderless Resistance " goes back to him , the basis for both Combat 18 and the White Aryan Resistance . In Germany, the concept was adapted by the Free Comradeships .

Life

Louis Beam grew up in Lake Jackson, Texas and attended an all-white school at the time. School friends reported that he was racially oriented from a young age . From 1967 to 1968 he served for 18 months in the Vietnam War . For his commitment he was awarded the "US Medal for Aviators" (Air Medal with V Device for Heroism). On his return he joined the Ku Klux Klan of Robert Shelton , which operated as the United Klans of America . In 1976 he moved to the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan under David Duke . Through his military experience, he served as a trainer for guerrilla tactics and rose to the Grand Dragon. Together with Tom Metzger and David Duke, he led a vigilante group that apprehended illegal Mexican immigrants on the border between the United States and Mexico . He also trained "white fishermen" to use weapons to fight against fishermen of South Vietnamese descent.

In the summer of 1981 he left the clan and joined the Aryan Nations. There he was initially responsible for the computer network Aryan Nations Liberty Net, which published various racist and anti-Semitic newsletters via a bulletin board system , but also published various sensitive information, for example the address data of the Anti-Defamation League . He also installed a point system that was intended to serve as an incentive to assassinate political opponents and was used well into the 1990s. Louis Beam became a pioneer of right-wing extremist Internet use , which was used by the Thule network in the 1990s .

In 1983 he organized the networking of the Aryan Nation in the prison system of the United States.

On April 24, 1987, Beam and 13 other members of racist groups such as The Order were charged with conspiracy. Beam initially evaded prosecution by fleeing to Mexico . For several months he was on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list . However, Beam was arrested by Mexican authorities after a shooting. However, on April 7, 1988, he and his co-defendants were acquitted.

For a while he published the magazine “The Seditionist”, with which he tried to promote his idea of ​​a new right within the framework of the Christian identity movement . He first presented the idea of ​​a " Leaderless Resistance " in 1992 at a congress that Peter J. Peters of the LaPorte Church of Christ called to discuss the siege of Ruby Ridge . It appeared in a compendium published by Peter J. Peters through the mail order business "Scriptures for American Ministries", and was also published in February 1992 in "Seditionist". The article was widely discussed in the international right-wing scene and was picked up by, among others, Tom Metzger from WAR . This idea was influenced by the anti-communist Ulius Louis Amoss , who developed a similar concept in the height of the Cold War that would have been used in the event of an invasion by the Soviet Union . In the essay, Beam described several combat troops, so-called cells, which existed organisationally independently of one another and whose only common ground is ideology. Autonomous actions are supposed to shake the state. The Leaderless Resistance should get by without a chain of command and hierarchy. The single cell can also consist of a single person.

After his trial, Beam rarely appeared in public. In 1992 at a Klan march, he spoke to 400 Klan members and Nazi skinheads . He gave two other speeches at the Aryan World Congress in 1993 and 1995. In the following years, he withdrew more and more from the organization , who for years was the successor to Richard Butler in the Aryan Nations. According to his own account, he suffers from long-term effects of contact with Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. He continues to promote his old ideas on his website and offers a number of his essays as online text.

Private life

Beam was married a total of four times. In 1987 he married Beam Sheila Toohey, who remained married until 1997. After the divorce, there was a custody battle over the two daughters, in which details of Beam's parenting style became public. He had forbidden the girls to use a swimming pool, to which black people also had access. He advised his ex-wife to move from Texas to Idaho and warned her of an impending " race war ".

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Louis Beam. (No longer available online.) Anti-Defamation League , archived from the original on December 5, 2001 ; Retrieved February 2, 2012 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ Our daddy . In: Der Spiegel . February 26, 1973, p. 77-78 ( spiegel.de ).
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} Thomas Grumke : Right-wing extremism in the USA . Leske and Budrich, Opladen 2001, ISBN 3-8100-2868-1 , p. 85-91 .
4. ↑ Thomas Pfeiffer: Virtual counter-public and a way out of the “right ghetto” . In: Stephan Braun, Alexander Geisler, Martin Gerster (eds.): Strategies of the extreme right: ´ Background analysis answers . Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2009, ISBN 978-3-531-15911-9 , pp. 290 .
5. ↑ ^{a b c} Jeffrey Kaplan: Encyclopedia of white power: a sourcebook on the radical racist right . Rowman & Littlefield, 2000, ISBN 0-7425-0340-2 , pp. 17-22 .
6. ↑ The Firebrand: Racist Leader Headed for Downfall? In: Southern Poverty Law Center (Ed.): Intelligence Report . No. 106 (summer), 2002, p. 3 ( splcenter.org ).