Pennsylvania GOP Now Just Straight Up Electing Actual Curb-Jobbing Nazis

So, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, new? Oh, just elected an actual neo-Nazi to your GOP Central Committee? Sounds like good times! Let us learn some stuff about Steve Smith (haha, probably not that Steve Smith), who has just been elected to your central committee with the rabid support of totally not racist Teabaggers.

Recruited into the neo-Nazi movement while he was stationed at Fort Bragg in the 1990s, Smith, of Pittston, Penn., has been active in an extraordinary array of white nationalist, skinhead, and neo-Nazi groups, including American Third Position, Keystone United (formerly Keystone State Skinheads), and the Council of Conservative Citizens. He is a former Aryan Nations member and former leader of the Philadelphia chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of White People, which was created by former Klan leader David Duke but is no longer associated with him. Smith also belongs to a Pennsylvania-based group called the European American Action Coalition (EAAC), which according to its website was formed in fall 2011 “by a few well known White activists in the great and historic state of Pennsylvania.”

Well, at least Steve Smith ain't hidin' it. He announced the certification of his election on WhiteNewsNow.

But surely, Southern Poverty Law Center, there is more?

In March 2003, he and two other [Keystone State Skinheads, which he cofounded] members were arrested in Scranton for beating up Antoni Williams, a black man, using stones and chunks of pavement. Smith pleaded guilty to terrorist threats and ethnic intimidation and received a 60-day sentence and probation.

60 DAYS? But why would they put such a patriot hero in jail for his political actions! Surely that is 60 days too many for an upstanding (now) GOP elected official hero! OPPRESSION! AMERIKKA! WORSE THAN CUBA! AND SO FORTH!

Now tell us about how the Tea Party is totally not racist please.

To advance his goals, Smith has distanced himself somewhat from his violent past and focused on political activism. As state chairman for American Third Position (A3P), a white nationalist political party that aims to deport immigrants and return the United States to white rule, he has for several years been working the crowds at local Tea Party gatherings, which he once described as “fertile grounds for our activists.”

Well, that's good enough for us!

[ SPLC via ThinkProgress ]