Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America

by Kathleen Belew

In parallel with the way white power activists in Greensboro understood themselves as participating in a global war against communism, mercenaries such as Posey expressed approval of acts of white power violence at home.8 Links between white power activists and mercenaries were strong and sustained. In Rhodesia, where between 1965 and 1980 as many as 2,300 American mercenaries defended the white minority-rule government, soldiers for hire included John Birch Society members and neo-Nazis.9 One gun dealer and former Klansman who later sold a cache of fourteen AR-15 assault rifles to the white power terrorist group the Order claimed to have been “approached by people in Alabama who I am now told were undercover agents for the government about engaging in gun running to South America,” presumably CMA. Although he declined the sale, the attempt reveals continued interconnection between the CMA and the white power movement.