SPLCenter.org: The Wannabe

Former National Alliance 'intellectual' Kevin Strom wants to be a boss On a hot Saturday in the middle of June, a crowd of white supremacists gathered in a town near Tampa to celebrate the arrival of a new summer and the emergence of a would-be leader in their movement — Kevin Alfred Strom. (...) The event, the Summer Solstice Festival, marked a special moment in Strom's long and dreary career as a professional racist and anti-Semite. He was finally coming out of the shadows after decades of thankless labor in the musty back offices of the neo-Nazi movement. Strom had long played a key but subservient role to William Pierce, founder of the National Alliance — until recently the most important neo-Nazi group in the country — and then to Erich Gliebe, who was anointed over Strom as Pierce's successor, even though it was Strom, not Gliebe, who had created the Alliance's well-known weekly radio show; Strom who convinced Pierce to venture into the white power music business; and Strom who edited the Alliance's flagship publication in his role as the group's in-house "intellectual." Now, at long last, it was Strom's turn to shine, to be shown respect, to be treated like a leader. Last spring, Strom and other disgruntled Alliance principals were summarily expelled from the Alliance after they tried but failed to overthrow or curtail the power of the Alliance's current leaders. Soon after he was ejected, Strom formed his own group, National Vanguard, lifting the name from the Alliance magazine he had edited for years. When Strom left the Alliance, hundreds of other members left with him, most of them at least temporarily joining National Vanguard (NV). The Alliance's old Tampa unit, now an NV chapter loyal to Strom, organized the Summer Solstice Festival.