The leader of the Aryan Nations, a white supremacist group once strong in the Northwest, has condemned the planting of a bomb along the route of a Martin Luther King Day parade in Spokane, Wash., and says his group isn’t responsible.
Morris Gulett, the leader of the group, said in a six-minute video press release that he condemns any violence that could harm innocent children.
“We absolutely do not condone this type of activity, but emphatically do condemn the use of force and terror,” he said. Gulett said he was responding to those who’ve speculated that the Aryan Nations was responsible for the bomb.
Last Monday, an incendiary device described as highly dangerous by the FBI was found stuffed in a backpack along the parade route in downtown Spokane. The parade was re-routed and no one was hurt, and the FBI is continuing its search for a suspect and motive. The FBI has called it an act of “domestic terrorism.”
Some have suggested that the Aryan Nations, which was once based in Idaho, less than an hour from Spokane, and whose leaders tried to unsuccessfully reestablish it in Oregon last year, could have been responsible for the plot.
Gulett said in his video that it’s not true. (The organization is now based in Louisiana.) He did, however, acknowledge that his group is a “racist organization. We care only about the survival and the existence of our people, our children, our race.”
He went on to say that King was a “sexual degenerate, a liar and a plagiarist,” a common theme among King’s more virulent critics. He said Aryan Nations believes the time will come when it must use “great violence and terror.” According to Gulett, the federal government will “topple” “from the decay within it,” leading minorities to “take to the streets” demanding the social benefits they were once receiving from the government.
“We believe that that will be the time when our people will have to resort to great violence and terror in order to defend ourselves and our families,” he said.