ARYAN Brotherhood most violent of U.S. prison

ARYAN Brotherhood most violent of U.S. prison

Arguably the largest and most violent of U.S. PRISON GANGS, the Aryan Brotherhood (AB) was organized at California’s San Quentin Prison in 1967. It evolved from a series of white-supremacist jailhouse cliques in the 1950s and early 1960s, including groups called the Bluebirds, the Nazi Gang, and the Diamond Tooth Gang. It was initially established to protect white inmates from violence by nonwhite gangs, primarily the MEXICAN MAFIA.

Today, the AB has members in prisons throughout the United States, while those on the outside (however briefly on parole) engage in a variety of criminal activities that include wholesale theft, the manufacture and sale of illegal drugs, and contract murder.

As suggested by its name, the AB is a far-right, racist, and anti-Semitic group that nurtures intense hatred of Jews and nonwhite minorities. In addition to the “AB” logo, its heavily tattooed members traditionally sport swastikas, the lightning-bolt symbol of the Nazi SS, shamrocks, the Satanic numerals 666, and various expressions of “White Pride.”

In prisons where gangs are theoretically banned, AB members meet and plot their crimes under the guise of holding Odinist religious ceremonies (an ancient Scandinavian belief system adopted since the 1990s by many neo-Nazis who reject “Jewish” Christianity).

This marks a change from 1980s when most AB members publicly espoused the CHRISTIAN IDENTITY creed (maintaining that Anglo-Saxons are God’s chosen people, while Jews are literally children of Satan).

Violence is habitual with AB members. In August 1993 AB member Roy Slider was convicted of assaulting a black prison guard, Thomas Davis, in Ohio. A year later, in October 1994, AB disciple Donald Riley drew a life prison term in Houston, Texas, for the murder of a black Marine Corps veteran. Between 1996 and 1998 an AB “reign of terror” at California’s Pelican Bay State Prison included six murders. In April 1997 AB member John Stojetz was convicted of murdering a black teenage inmate at an Ohio state prison.

In 1998 when black victim James Byrd, Jr., was dragged to death behind a pickup truck near Jasper, Texas, two of those arrested for the crime were self-declared AB members who were festooned with racist tattoos.

During commission of the crime, one of the killers gleefully declared, “We’re starting The TURNER DIARIES early.”