Bragging racists take pride in connection to Klan

By Greg Roberts, The Age 3rd June, 26 A.C. (1999 A.D.)

Like John King, who shocked the world by dragging an African-American to his death in Jasper, Texas, Patrick O'Sullivan, an Australian supporter of the Ku Klux Klan, is prouod of the race-hate tattoos that cover his body.

"White Power" is engraved on his torso alongside "RAHOWA", a word cobbled from RAcial HOly WAr.

"I'm sick of hearing about how all those poor niggers and gooks are underprivileged," said Mr O'Sullivan, 27, of Melbourne.

"I believe that whatever is good for the white race is the ultimate virtue, Whatever is bad for the white race is the ultimate sin."

Mr O'Sullivan, who is unemployed, wrote a letter of support to John King in prison, where he is on death row for tying 49-year-old James Byrd to a truck and dragging him to death.

King's trial heard how Mr Byrd was still alive after being dragged two kilometres down a dirt road before his body slammed into a culvert, severing his head, right arm and shoulder.

Mr O'Sullivan said he admired the way King failed to express any remorse for the killing.

"I wanted to tell him to hold his head up and to show my admiration for a man who is non-repentant about what he did.

"That poor guy is on death row and they made a big deal about it but nothing gets done when a white gets killed."

The Texas Department of Corrections refused to pass the letter on to King. It told Mr O'Sullivan that the letter would create a "clear and present danger of violence of physical harm to a human being".

Mr O'Sullivan said he supported the KKK because "the white race is under threat through race-mixing and other nefarious means and something has to be done about it".

He is also a member of the white supremacist World Church of the Creator, another KKK ally which describes itself as a "powerful new religious creed structure for the survival expansion and advancement of Nature's finest, the white race".

Among its "commandments of creativity" is an assertion that "the inferior colored races are our deadly enemies".

The group's Internet site includes an introduction to the Skinheads of the Racial Holy War, with electronic messages flashing Gas The Jews, Niggers Are Animals, and God Hates Fags.

Another group with ties to the KKK is the National Socialist Party of Australia, which proclaims Adolf Hitler ideology as the "soul of our movement" and has its national headquarters in Brisbane.

The present edition of the newsletter of the Imperial Klans of America, the parent body of the KKK group in Australia, thanks the party for its "kind words and support", and for operating a post office box for the Klan. Party members wearing swastika armbands attended a recent public meeting in Brisbane which was ignored by the local media but filmed by a visiting German crew.

Police intervened when verbal exchanges between members and bystanders became heated.

The party's national director, Mr John Streicher, says he shares the KKK's goals and knows the Klan's Australian leadership, including a Queensland man known as "The Foot".

"We are ordinary working class people who want a fair go for this country," Mr Streicher said.

"I would like to see a separate Aboriginal state in the middle of Australia. We can close it off and they can live off the land, as they say they've done for 40,000 years."

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