Thursday, September 22, 2005

Nazi Skinheads Heading To Georgia

Nazi skinheads are heading to Georgia to a white power concert known as Hammerfest. According to One People’s Project Hammerfest 05 appears to be scheduled to take place in Temple, Georgia which is just over 43 miles from Atlanta and has a population of 5,056.

It appears the exact location will be the Georgia Peach Museum and Restaurant at 4108 Buchanan Hwy., which is run by a convicted sex offender named Patrick Lanzo. One People’s Project reports, “A number of Klan rallies have been held here in the past. One such rally was the Aryan Unity Rally on May 18, 2002. He has also held Hammerfest here before, but according to one website, Lanzo once hired a black stripper for the event, and it didn’t go over well, prompting the Hammerskins to look for other venues. This will be the first time since then Hammerfest has returned. “

The racist “concert” and conclave is scheduled for October 1 and 2 and will feature a number of nazi bands and a speech by Tom Metzger of the White Aryan Resistance.

One People’s Project points out, “In years prior, the location of Hammerfest had been kept secret in order to prevent the show from being shut down or countered by protests. In fact, Hammerfest 2005 had been promoted as being in a “secret location” in Atlanta. This is the first time the location had been announced so publicly, and it is not known if the organizers approve of the sign. Last weekend there was some trucks seen there bringing in equipment to build the stage.”

The ADL describes the Hammerskin Nation, a sponsor as, “the most violent and best-organized neo-Nazi skinhead group in the United States.”

A demonstration was already planned by the NAACP at the Georgia Peach Museum for October 1 in response to numerous racist signs found in the joint. If it is still on and you happen to be in the Atlanta area you might want to join in.

Hammerfest is one of the two major racist skinhead concerts of the year. The other, AryanFest, which is sponsored by the Volksfront, a Portland-based white supremacist group, was last held a few weeks ago in the Oregon Columbia River Gorge town of Cascade Locks. Besides music, the event featured a speech by Idaho lawyer Edgar Steele, the attorney for Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler, who died bankrupt in 2004 after losing a $6.3 million lawsuit. Sources: One People’s Project, Stormfront White Nationailt Community, News Review (Roseburg, OR), ADL

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