The number of National Socialist Movement (NSM) units (some made up of just one person or a few members) often fluctuates, with many lasting for a short period. Although the NSM lost units around the country in 2008, some of the more active units in the Midwest have been able to recruit more members. The Missouri and Wisconsin units were the most active NSM chapters. The group also established new representatives in Idaho, Kentucky, North Carolina, and West Virginia.
 In December 2008, Paul Paletti, the NSM's Wisconsin Membership Director, pleaded guilty to battery, resisting arrest, and obstructing police in state court in Waukesha, Wisconsin. The December 20, 2008, plea agreement requires Paletti to pay $1,713 in fines and to serve two years probation, during which time he is forbidden from engaging in any white supremacist activities.
Paletti, 35, who has a tattoo of the number “88,” the white supremacist code for “Heil Hitler,” was originally charged with felony battery as a hate crime for assaulting a Mexican teenager outside a bar in April 2007, but the charge was reduced to misdemeanor battery as part of the plea arrangement. Paletti insisted that he was not part of any extremist group.
 In fall 2008, the NSM established a chapter in Riverside, California. The group holds monthly meetings; Missouri-based NSM leader Steven Boswell and his wife Christina Drake, another NSM activist, traveled to the California chapter's first meeting to lend support. The chapter has reached out to and worked with other white supremacists including “skinheads, Klansmen, and pro-white socialists from all around California.” During the group’s second meeting, held in December 2008, members burned a Mexican flag, which one referred to as a “buzzard rag.”
2007 Developments
The membership of the National Socialist Movement (NSM) grew slightly in 2007, which can be attributed to vigorous recruitment efforts, the demise of another neo-Nazi group, the National Vanguard, and the continued downward spiral of the National Alliance, once the largest neo-Nazi organization in the U.S. In the late summer of 2007, former members of the neo-Nazi groups National Alliance and National Vanguard broke away from their old organizations and started a new NSM unit in Phoenix, Arizona. They soon boasted of a group of members in Tombstone and many new members in the Phoenix area, and began to hold monthly meetings.
The NSM's growth occurred despite internal bickering that resulted in a number of key members leaving the group in mid-to-late 2007, including John Taylor Bowles, who was the head of the group's South Carolina chapter and its 2008 presidential candidate; Nick Chapell, who was the head of the NSM's Viking Youth Corps and the group's treasurer; and Jim Ramm, who ran a Website for the group and helped develop an anti-Semitic and racist videogame.
The departure of Bowles, Chapell and Ramm marked the second time in two years that infighting led to splits within the NSM. Bickering had previously led to key members either resigning or being expelled from the group in June 2006. Those who left included the group's then media liaison, Bill White and Cliff Herrington, a long-time NSM leader.
Some NSM members who left the group in 2006 and 2007 formed their own neo-Nazi organizations, described below.
Significant Figures
John Taylor Bowles—National Socialist Order of America
 In 2006, the NSM announced that that John Taylor Bowles, leader of the group's South Carolina chapter, would be their presidential candidate. In early 2007, Bowles and an entourage of NSM members traveled to various Midwestern states to promote his candidacy, which even received some mainstream media attention. Through the summer of 2007, Bowles made announcements about campaigning in various states. He also used virulently anti-immigrant rhetoric to launch “Operation Throw back the Wetback on the Texas/Mexico border” to “confront the illegal invasion directly on the frontlines…” By October 2007, however, Bowles had left the NSM. That same month, he announced the formation of a new neo-Nazi group, the National Socialist Order of America (NSOA). In December 2007, Nick Chappell, another South Carolina NSM member, became the national director of the NSOA.
Bill White—American National Socialist Workers Party
 Bill White, who had been the NSM's “media liaison” and spokesperson, currently leads the American National Socialist Worker's Party (ANSWP), a Virginia-based neo-Nazi group. Following White's departure from the NSM, White founded the ANSWP in the summer of 2006. With a small group of followers across the country, White publishes a monthly magazine, maintains a Web site, and stages events with the purpose of demonizing Jews and non-white minorities. White is generally disliked by many in the extremist community due to his use of antagonistic propaganda even against his fellow white supremacists and is known for being a publicity seeker.
In October 2008, authorities in Roanoke, Virginia, arrested White, who was charged with obstruction of justice for the “attempted use, or threatened use of force…” after posting on-line personal information regarding the jury foreperson who served in the trial of Matt Hale, a white supremacist convicted of soliciting the murder of a federal judge. In September 2008, White posted the name, address, birth date, place of work, home, cell and office phone numbers, along with a photograph of the juror, on his Website in an article headlined “Gay Jewish Anti-Racist Led Jury.” While executing a search warrant at White's office in October, federal agents seized computers and files related to his Website.According to authorities, the warrant covered any documents, photos, or other information that could show White's possible “intent to intimidate or injure persons whose personal information has been posted.” White's Website was also shut down.
Also in October 2008, White posted an article to his Website that alleged, “If elected to office, Barack Obama plans to work with the Jew communists who support him to commit acts of genocide against the same white working class he seeks to appeal to.” He entitled the September 2008 issue of his magazine “Kill this Ni--ger?” The cover of the magazine featured a picture of Barack Obama pictured through a rifle scope with a swastika surrounding it.
White's activity leading to his October 2008 arrest was not the first instance in which he has posted the personal information of perceived enemies on his Web site. In response to the racial and community tensions in Jena, Louisiana, in September 2007, White posted the addresses and phone numbers of the “Jena 6” (the six African-American teenagers criminally charged with assaulting a White teen shortly after a noose was found hanging from a tree on the high school grounds) on his Web site, under the title “Lynch the Jena 6.” He also stated in the post that, “if these ni—ers are released or acquitted, we'll mail directions to their homes to every white man in Louisiana if we have to in order to find someone willing to deliver justice.”
In February 2007, White posted what he believed to be Elie Wiesel's three addresses on his Web site and to a neo-Nazi Internet forum after a Holocaust denier assaulted Wiesel in San Francisco. He titled his post “Where Elie Wiesel Lives In Case Anyone Was Looking for Him” and included Wiesel's age, birth date, phone number and names of two of Wiesel's relatives.
Forming the ANSWP and Friction with NSM
After his departure from the NSM, White established the American National Socialist Workers Party. Although the group has few active members, some NSM leaders did join the ANSWP, including Michael Blevins, who had been the director of NSM's ”office of information,” and Justin Boyer, who had been head of the NSM unit in Seattle. Both Blevins and Boyer assumed leadership roles in the ANSWP but have since left the group.
After being expelled from the NSM, White began a propaganda campaign against the group and its leaders. In August 2006, White brought a lawsuit against the NSM, accusing the organization of libeling him. In May 2007, the case was decided in NSM's favor. White reportedly intends to appeal the decision.
Role in the NSM
While a leader within the NSM, White often represented the face of the group to the media. He acted as the group's spokesperson when a planned NSM march led to riots in Toledo, Ohio, in October 2005, and attracted national media attention.
White was responsible for some of the tensions that caused infighting in the NSM in the spring and summer of 2006. He was also largely behind a rift between the NSM and the Vinlanders, a racist skinhead group. His taunts against the Vinlanders on his own Website resulted in a brawl between members of the two groups at Nordicfest, a white power event in Kentucky in May 2006.White's derogatory comments toward the Vinlanders and others in the white supremacist movement led many extremists to question why the NSM kept him on as a leader. In early July 2006, NSM leader Jeff Schoep and then chairman Cliff Herrington, gave White a 30-day suspension and reprimanded him for his disruptive behavior and attacks on other members in the white power movement. White claimed that he then resigned from the group; NSM reported that he was expelled for insubordination.
Cliff Herrington—National Socialist Freedom Movement
 Cliff Herrington, theformer chairman of the NSM and one of its founding members, also experienced problems with the NSM in the summer of 2006. An anti-hate group reported that Herrington's wife belonged to a "Satanic cult" and was using the same P.O. Box for her group as the NSM unit in Tulsa, run by her husband. Many NSM members, who consider themselves Christians, expressed anger that anyone associated with the NSM would have ties to a Satanic cult. Although Herrington claimed that he had nothing to do with Satanists, some NSM members demanded that Herrington cut all ties to the Satanist group. When that reportedly did not happen, NSM leaders announced in July 2006 that Herrington had "retired" from his duties. In a subsequent, angry statement, Herrington made it clear that he felt that he had been forced from the NSM due to a "coup d'etat" and claimed that he still retained his position. In the statement tofellow white supremacists, he declared, “I am the Chairman of the NSM in perpetuity until voluntarily, or by natural or unnatural means as so relived [sic]. I cannot be fired & I was not.” Herrington, too, claims to have created a new group, the National Socialist Freedom Movement, but it appears to exist mostly on line.
Other significant events
In February 2007, testimony in a Florida court revealed that the NSM Florida unit leader David Gletty was an FBI informant. According to the testimony, Gletty's cooperation with the FBI led to the arrest of Tom Martin, 23, and John Rock, 35, after Gletty wore a wire to a meeting and agreed to help them rob a drug dealer. Martin and Rock also reportedly discussed having robbed several other drug dealers. Martin is a member of White Revolution, a white supremacist group and John Rock is allegedly a member of the Confederate Hammerskins, a racist skinhead group.
A major loss to the NSM was the December 2006 death of Bill Hoff, a long-standing NSM member and its 2008 vice-presidential candidate. Hoff had been an open white supremacist for decades, including a stint as the Grand Dragon for the New York Invisible Empire (a Ku Klux Klan group) in the late 1980s before he relocated to South Carolina where he eventually joined the NSM.
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