Milton Kleim

“”The "movement" is a corrupt network of cranks, losers, sinister opportunists, and fools with an axe to grind.

Milton John Kleim, Jr. (born 1971, Lodi, California) is a former neo-Nazi who was an Internet propagandist for the National Alliance when the Internet was in its infancy.

Neo-Nazi activities

Start

He was born to working-class parents from a "long line of German [farmers]" and grew up in the Sacramento area.

In June 1993, he was apparently still in Lodi, the city of his birth, as attested by his presence at a city council meeting there, but by October of that year, when the Eternal September had started, he had gone off to Minnesota. At this time he started spewing neo-Nazi conspiracy-theories onto Usenet out of St. Cloud State University, part of the extensive system of Minnesota State Colleges and Universities. At that point he called himself a "theistic naturalist," seemingly describing a sort of pantheism, although his identification of his beliefs with those of pre-Christian Germanic religion, and linking them to the volkisch movements of the early 20th century, indicate that he may have had Wotanist leanings.

Nazi Primer

In early 1995, having become affiliated with William Luther Pierce's National Alliance, he authored a "National Socialism Primer" that stumped for the National Alliance and also included a list of books, videos, and contact information for aspiring neo-Nazis. This primer is still making the rounds on some neo-Nazi sites.

rec.music.white-power newsgroup vote

In February 1996, Kleim proposed the creation of a new Usenet newsgroup, rec.music.white-power, where "white-power music" was to be discussed. To create a group in the rec.* hierarchy on Usenet requires a formal voting procedure; much heated debate on the topic ensued.

The vote came back with 592 voting for the newsgroup versus 33,033 voting against it; Kleim, ever one to see the bright side of a situation, promptly announced that the entire affair had been a publicity-stunt aimed to raise the media profile of the National Alliance and obtain a hit-list counter-espionage data relating to anti-Nazi Internet activists.

Departure from white-supremacism

April Fools' Day prank

On April Fools' Day, 1996, Kleim (now located in Roseville, a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota) posted a prank message to Usenet stating that as a result of meeting a girl while conducting research at the University of Minnesota, he had converted from Nazism to Christianity. It was a harbinger of things to come.

Repudiation of the contemporary white-supremacist movement

At some point Kleim became involved with a white-power skinhead woman, which introduced him to the white-power skinhead scene for the first time. He disliked what he saw. When they broke up, it apparently threw Kleim into an existential crisis. On June 14, 1996, he posted a message entitled A Reckoning, starting with these lines:

“”I am certain to be denounced as a "race-traitor" by many of my so-called "friends" for these statements. That's OK; they have a right to their opinion, as I and my Winchester have a right to mine.

In it, although not repudiating his Nazism (he stated that "If we could field another Hitler for president, I would fight like I've never fought before to elect him"), he really laid it on the white-power skinheads, comparing their (lack of) achievements to his own "large scale" accomplishments (specifically, the rec.music.white-power stunt). He concluded from the skinheads' conduct that the Nazis' "race-war" had been lost.

Nine days later, he posted a follow-up in which he criticized the skinheads further and also took William Pierce to task for selling the copyright to his racist novel The Turner Diaries to a Jew.

He also requested that his "National Socialism Primer" be removed from white-supremacist websites. Several of them, including Stormfront, did not comply.

Repudiation of racism

On October 14, 1996, Kleim posted a far broader repudiation, entitled For T. His April Fools' Day joke had become a reality; he had met a woman who was not up to the exacting Nazi standards in those matters, and who had led him to repudiate racism entirely (although he did not convert to Christianity as he had announced in the April Fools' Day post).

After this resignation, he made sporadic posts on Usenet, including a statement in October 1999 in which he made a fuller explanation of his actions and a spate following the September 11 terrorist attacks, in which he brought light to the fact that many white-supremacist organizations were supporting al-Qaeda due to the fact that both groups hate Jews.

He identified himself as "quite heathen" at this time, and had a signature reading, "Heathens for America - Stand Proud Today!"

Present day

His Wikipedia article, which has now been deleted for non-notability, stated that as of January 2008 he was a student in the Library and Information Sciences program at San Jose State University.

External links

• Archives of Kleim's activity on Usenet