White Power Groups’ Recruitment of Vietnam War Veterans

by Cassandra Rosas

The United States has spent few years of its centuries-long history at peace, as no more than a few decades pass before the country is at war again. The impacts of these wars are felt not just abroad but at home, exemplified by the Vietnam War, which not only devastated Vietnam but also the United States itself. The Vietnam War was unique in that it led to the public’s demoralization and a poor domestic reception for returning soldiers.¹ The experience of losing shook the country’s national identity of the invincible American soldier and threatened the idea of America being a world power.² The Vietnam veteran would come to represent America’s failure as soldiers returned home only for the public to label them as baby-killers or addicts.³ The American public didn't just blame soldiers but the country’s governance as a whole. Disdain for the American government grew on both sides of the political spectrum, and on the right side of the political aisle, growing hate groups evolved into militias.⁴ The white power movement used the alleged loss in Vietnam and growing political unrest as fuel to expand. Through using the Vietnam War as a touchstone, white power groups recruited Vietnam veterans, among others. White Power groups recruited veterans through appealing to racist rhetoric, by targeting veterans returning to social unrest, and by utilizing the sense of betrayal veterans felt.

Multiple scholars have analyzed the Vietnam War through various frames, such as political, gender, and racial. The earliest work that reflects how the Vietnam War may have played a role in the white power movement is Susan Jeffords' The Remasculinization of America. Jeffords argues that the most significant way to consider the war is as the effort of gendered interests that sought to re-masculinize American culture and reestablish the nation’s values and interests.⁵ While Jeffords did not implicitly reference the movement, her idea of masculinity being a driving force behind the war is reflected in how much white power groups and the surrounding literature would highlight the need to regain patriarchal ground. Evelyn Schlatter’s Aryan Cowboys, published in 2006, claimed that white supremacist groups would try to construct masculinity through the idea of “the West,” as both the desire to be manly and the mythos of westward expansion influenced the groups’ ideologies.⁶ Schlatter’s work echoes Jeffords’ theme that gender -in particular masculinity- supersedes race with regard not just to the Vietnam War but also to the narrative around it. An early concept of Belew’s work is present in Aryan Cowboys: that inside right-wing groups, a survivalist culture developed after the Vietnam War as a way for men to prove themselves and prepare for any alleged upcoming wars.

In 2013, Nick Turse published Kill Anything That Moves, which alleged that the widespread killing of Vietnamese civilians regularly occurred and was endorsed by American military forces during the Vietnam War.⁷ His work helps substantiate how white power groups used the fostered culture of dehumanization and mass violence towards the Vietnamese. Lastly, Kathleen Belew’s monograph Bring the War Home ties together the preceding sources in the most comprehensive analysis of the Vietnam War, race and gender, and white power groups. Belew attributes the origin of militarized white power groups to the Vietnam War’s loss and the resulting sociopolitical upheaval.⁸ The new militias did not work to save America from minorities or left-wing politics, but viewed America as their enemy in their quest to create a new, all-white nation. Belew’s work tracks notable figures like Louis Beam of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Academia is not alone in studying white supremacy, as in recent years, so has the federal government. This interest is due to increasing domestic terrorism committed by alt-right extremists and US military personnel.⁹ While previous research has identified the motivations of white power members, this paper aims to capture Vietnam veterans in their own words and provide their perspective to existing academia.

This paper uses Belew’s definition of white power to distinguish it from other white supremacist movements. White power is used to describe the binding movement between different sects of pro-white ideology between 1975–1995; a movement that was aimed against the state and significantly more violent than past pro-white movements as activists attempted to bring about political change.¹⁰ White power unified tax resistors, the KKK, and neo-Nazis into one movement that envisioned replacing the government instead of saving it. The movement marked a change from former vigilante violence into extreme acts of domestic terrorism.¹¹ To carry out acts of domestic terrorism, white power groups developed militias, ones that required veterans' military knowledge to carry out their missions and avoid government intervention.¹² Thus, recruitment targeted veterans who not only provided experience but also a sense of military culture that bolstered the violent rhetoric white power groups cultivated.¹³ Louis Beam, mentioned previously, worked as the grand dragon, a state leader, for the Texas KKK.¹⁴ Beam would become one of the most prominent theorists and tacticians behind the white power movement, popularizing the concept of leaderless resistance. Beam advised white activists to act in small cells, without large groups or direct orders from leadership, to avoid government infiltration and destruction.¹⁵ This approach kept the movement from being compromised in large swathes and protected white power leaders from any culpability.¹⁶ His influence not only kept white power leaders safe but also boosted recruitment numbers. Beam focused on recruiting veterans to the movement by addressing the grievances veterans had against the state, the public, and the war.

Beam was able to exploit racist rhetoric in veterans and the military as part of his recruitment strategy, capitalizing on the discourse around military racial integration and anti-communist ideals. While certainly not every member was bigoted, racism was pervasive in the military against both African-Americans and the Vietnamese. When the Vietnam War kicked off, racism was already an open secret in the army as bigotry was commonplace both abroad and domestically. For example, in 1970, the U.S. Marine Corps had recorded over a thousand incidents of racial violence.¹⁷ Interviewed veterans reaffirmed how racism was commonplace during the war. Veteran Tony Taylor recounted how race kept people divided at the base and how cross-burnings took place in Vietnam. Despite Americans needing to be unified against the Vietnamese, Taylor remarked that once the fighting was over, racial boundaries came back into play.¹⁸ James Holmes, another veteran, confirmed witnessing Confederate flags and when serving at Cam Ranh Bay, he faced incredible racism.¹⁹ Taylor and Holmes' experiences demonstrate how in Vietnam racial prejudice continued, with some soldiers being bold enough to participate in open Klan activity. Kenneth Morefield, an adviser to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, described how race relations worsened in his unit as men became increasingly unwilling to cooperate with one another.²⁰ Therefore, racial division was felt by the soldiers and their commanders, as seen in reduced military unity. An infamous racial incident that captures the racial tensions of the time is the Camp Pendleton Fourteen. This incident involved fourteen black Marines being arrested after an altercation with Klan members in 1976. Alleged Klan activity included anti-black buttons, posters, and newspapers.²¹ The presence of open Klan activity demonstrates how white power members may have been able to recruit veterans, as racial prejudice was frequent in the military.

Beyond anti-black racism, white power groups also appealed to veterans through anti-communist rhetoric that often conflated with anti-Vietnamese sentiment. One of Beam’s techniques to continue the Vietnam War in the United States was to feed into the conflict between American fishermen and Vietnamese refugees. Beam accomplished this by stoking the economic fears of the fishermen to go after the alleged more financially successful Vietnamese and by playing into anti-communist stereotypes. As evidenced in his remarks to the Dallas Morning News after Beam and the Klan were facing a lawsuit from the Vietnamese fishermen, Beam promised the fishermen “a lot better fight than they got from the Viet Cong.”²² Beam’s rhetoric attracted veterans, as reflected in how Gene Fisher, a Vietnam veteran and a fisherman himself, was convinced to lead an attack against the Vietnamese immigrants. Fisher remarked that "There was a time that I was proud to wear my uniform and ribbons to show I fought in Vietnam. But now I'd be ashamed to because I was a fool…Uncle Sam has broken his promise to the Vietnam veterans and kept his promise to the Vietnamese.”²³ Fisher was not the only veteran to express anti-Vietnamese sentiment after returning home. Stanley Gilbert, a veteran who had lost two brothers to the war, was far more vocal about his hatred. Gilbert was also involved with the fishing conflict as a shrimper himself and remarked that “I hate gooks. If they jack with me, I’ll kill them.”²⁴ Gilbert and Fisher’s words here reflect how Beam was able to use existing anti-Vietnamese sentiment to continue racial prejudice at home and draw veterans to his cause. By claiming to be against Vietnamese communism and encroachment, Beam drew in veterans who already espoused racist beliefs or were feeling threatened into his hate group. The boat burning incident was only one of many acts against the Vietnamese fishermen, as crosses were burned in their yards and armed Klansmen rode publicly around the shrimping bay.²⁵

Furthermore, anti-Vietnamese sentiment, much like anti-black sentiment, was common during the War. Veterans reported feeling uneasy around civilians as they viewed them as potential enemies or even inhuman. Veteran Gene Richardson corroborates this viewpoint as once when getting a haircut from a Vietnamese civilian, Richardson still expressed unease that his throat could be slit.²⁶ Another veteran, George Forrest, shared similar sentiments, remarking that he had not considered the enemy human until 1993, on a trip to Vietnam. Forrest elaborated that soldiers purposefully made demeaning comments about the Vietnamese, civilian or not, as the soldiers' focus was to kill them [the enemy] before they were killed.²⁷ These veterans' experiences reflect how if the Vietnamese were not regarded with suspicion, they were disregarded entirely. Beam captured this uneasiness and hostility towards the Vietnamese as American soldiers could not tell the enemy apart from allies and used it as material to incite racial violence towards the Vietnamese in America.²⁸ Consequently, Beam was able to use existing racial tensions against both African-Americans and Vietnamese to recruit veterans into his cause.

White power tactics did not limit themselves to racial divides but also used increasing social unrest. As mentioned previously, Beam was able to wield the growing hostilities between American fishermen and Vietnamese refugees, so too were other white power groups using issues like anti-communism and civil rights movements. Violence attributed to the multiple rights movements is not just a result of pushback but also a response to the war itself. Warren Schaich noted that racial violence increased after the war as whites reacted to what they perceived as black encroachment into historically white spaces. This is not only because of civil progress but also because war increases aggression at home.²⁹ It was then inevitable that there would be violent social backlash from white supremacist and later white power groups against not just racial progress but also communism.³⁰ Anti-communist ideology, often conflated with anti-immigrant ideology, was exemplified in Beam himself, who espoused the idea of communist activists in Vietnamese refugees and encouraged veterans to act violently against these “communists” who now resided in the United States.³¹ As white power groups made anti-communism central to their cause, they were able to potentially draw anti-communist veterans to their movement and use their beliefs to further anti-immigrant sentiment.

The political shift from white power groups is further seen as they capitalized on increasing feelings of being adrift in the public as conservative Americans increasingly questioned the reasons behind alleged moral degradation, shifting racial demographics, and being cheated out of what they felt they deserved.³² Many of the grievances from the turbulent era after the war blend in with complaints veterans felt. White power groups, through criticizing the government’s “no-win wars,” were able to express veterans' frustrations with the war and its alleged lack of leadership.³³ White power groups used this discontent to convince veterans to make the switch from social discontent to all-out bigotry. One example of a Vietnam veteran who turned to white power groups in response to the changing environment was Bob Spitler. Spitler formed his own neo-Nazi group, the Aryan Renaissance Command, who stated that in Vietnam he was a victim of the “criminally mismanaged economy” and to get back at the country or perhaps government, Nazism was the only way he knew how.³⁴ Spitler represents how veterans can be attracted to hate groups through a sense of wanting to get back at the government.

Lastly, white power groups were able to use veterans' sense of betrayal from both the American government and the public to recruit them. Feelings of resentment or disappointment in the government are widespread among Vietnam veterans. Most claim that it was politicians who held America back from winning the war, with perceptions of the government ranging from being incompetent to actively malicious.³⁵ Veteran James Holmes claims the war was lost due to the way politicians had soldiers fight, citing that after stopping bombing in 1968, there was a policy that on patrols soldiers could not have rounds in their weapons.³⁶ More extreme sources attributed the loss in Vietnam as intentional, claiming that the government itself was the enemy.³⁷ This meant that white power groups recruited veterans by claiming the government had wronged them, offering them both a target for their frustrations and valorizing their service by making Vietnam so central to the cause.³⁸

In addition to facing betrayal from the government for waging a war they did not intend to win in veterans' eyes, veterans also faced harsh public reception. Holmes recounted that he’d had friends with urine thrown on them and that veterans in the face of such scrutiny hid the fact that they ever served.³⁹ White power groups used the backlash veterans faced as a recruiting tactic by drawing on the growing resentment of returning soldiers. Veteran Michael Richey, who described his experience as leaving him embittered, as resentment built against the antiwar protestors who didn't feel Vietnam was a “just war.”⁴⁰ While Richey never joined any hate groups, it was these feelings that Beam would use to draw veterans towards his hate group. Beam’s 1983 book Essays of a Klansman spoke directly to Vietnam veterans, sympathizing with veterans regarded as monsters and spurring veterans to action with words such as “America’s political leaders, bankers, church ministers, newsmen, sports stars, and hippies called us 'baby killers', and threw chicken blood on some of us when we returned home...I want these same traitors to face their enemy now, the American fighting man they betrayed, all three million of us.” Beam drew on the resentment veterans felt towards the public and government to incite them to act, going as far as to say America would face its own Viet Cong in the form of veterans.⁴¹

Thus, Beam attempted to recruit veterans into his cause directly, the Ku Klux Klan, an act not unsuccessful as seen with his previous involvement of Vietnam veterans in the attacks on Vietnamese fishermen in Texas.⁴² Beam was not the only one successful in recruiting disgruntled veterans to his cause, as Richard Butler, founder of Aryan Nations, claimed to have successfully recruited Vietnam veterans.⁴³ In sum, white power groups were able to use veterans' feelings of betrayal to convince them to turn against a country they claimed had already abandoned them and deserved retribution in the form of violence.

Being attracted to conservative or even bigoted groups in the face of sociopolitical pressure is not a new phenomenon. As Vernon Jordan, president of the National Urban League, noted, “as the economic pie gets smaller. Their [influential white Americans] fears are fueled, and therefore, their racism surfaces.”⁴⁴ This can be seen in how it was not just veterans making up the white power groups, but also farmers who were increasingly vulnerable during the 1980s farm crisis and tax protestors, which demonstrates how average Americans get caught up in hate groups.⁴⁵ Vietnam veterans were not unique in being targeted, but were unique in how they were targeted. Veterans, as a result of the commonality of racism directed at both Black and Vietnamese people, were exposed to racism not just on a covert level but on a violent one, as the Vietnamese were automatically seen as the enemy. This shared experience, which coincided with many veterans experiencing social and civil unrest spilling over into their time abroad or being confronted with it when they returned home, made reactionary politics in an attempt to hold onto the status quo inevitable. Lastly, the government and the public’s dismal response to returning soldiers all culminated in the white power movement having veterans serve as prime recruits.

The veterans emboldened to join white power groups, while created by the unique circumstances following the Vietnam War, are not alone in being the only service members to join. Rather, they are part of a larger pattern of former and present service members joining extremist fringe groups. By analyzing the push and pull factors behind their recruitment, it's possible to gain a better understanding of the continued allure and operation of hate groups and what must be done to combat them.

---

1. Kathleen Belew, Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2019), 10. ↩
2. Kathleen Belew, Bring the War Home, 22. ↩
3. William Outlaw, “The True Legacy of the Vietnam War - va News,” news.va.gov, December 21, 2011, https://news.va.gov/5563/the-true-legacy-of-the-vietnam-war/. ↩
4. Belew, Bring the War Home, 20. ↩
5. Susan Jeffords, The Remasculinization of America: Gender and the Vietnam War (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1989). ↩
6. Evelyn A. Schlatter, Aryan Cowboys: White Supremacists and the Search for a New Frontier, 1970–2000 (Austin, Texas: University of Texas, 2006). ↩
7. Nick Turse, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (New York, New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Co, 2013). ↩
8. Belew, Bring the War Home, 2. ↩
9. Seth G. Jones, “Violent Domestic Extremist Groups and the Recruitment of Veterans.” Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep37718, 2. ↩
10. Belew, forward to Bring the War Home (Harvard University Press 2018), ↩
11. Belew, Bring the War Home, ix. ↩
12. Jones, “Violent Domestic Extremist Groups,” 20. ↩
13. Belew, Bring the War Home, 20. ↩
14. “Louis Beam,” Southern Poverty Law Center (2026 SPLC, January 10, 2025), https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/louis-beam/. ↩
15. Belew, Bring the War Home, 4, 28. ↩
16. “Louis Beam,” Southern Poverty Law Center (2026 SPLC, January 10, 2025), https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/louis-beam/. ↩
17. Jones, Seth G. “Violent Domestic Extremist Groups,” 4. ↩
18. Thomas Murray, “Tony Taylor: Racism,” Florida Center for Instructional Technology, accessed November 22, 2025, fcit.usf.edu/vietnam/taylor/4.html. ↩
19. “James Holmes | 101st Airborne Division, 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, a Company - Army,” Witnesstowar.org, 2025, https://www.witnesstowar.org/combat_stories/Vietnam/7632. ↩
20. “Kenneth Moorefield | 9th Infantry Division - Army,” Witnesstowar.org, 2025, https://www.witnesstowar.org/combat_stories/Vietnam/5680. ↩
21. Forward. (1977), 1 (56). GI Press Project. Independent Voices. Reveal Digital. https://jstor.org/stable/community.28036872, 5. ↩
22. The Viet Cong (VC) are also known as the National Liberation Front and operated with the People’s Army of Vietnam. The VC operated as the main communist opposition to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and American armed forces, with the Viet Cong name derived from “Vietnamese communist”. The VC often worked as guerrilla soldiers and hid among local Vietnamese. Pritzker Military Museum & Library, “Armed Forces | Vietnam War | Pritzker Military Museum & Library | Chicago,” www.pritzkermilitary.org (2026 Pritzker Military Museum & Library), accessed June 26, 2026, https://www.pritzkermilitary.org/explore/vietnam-war/armed-forces. On the news article see "Fearful Vietnamese sue Fishermen ask for protection from Klan, Texans." Dallas Morning News (Dallas, Texas), April 17, 1981: 1. Readex: The Historical Dallas Morning News, 1885–1985. https://infoweb-newsbank-com.ezp.twu.edu/apps/readex/doc?p=EANX&docref=image/v2%3 A0F99DDB671832188%40EANX-12EC8E61F1EA8E88%402444712-12EA88BB4E286705%400-12F4 101603D9C378%40Fearful%2BVietnamese%2Bsue%2BFishermen%2Bask%2Bfor%2Bprotection%2Bfr om%2BKlan%252C%2BTexans, 3; ↩
23. Belew, Bring the War Home, 47. ↩
24. Dallas Morning News (Dallas, Texas), August 11, 1979: 1. Readex: The Historical Dallas Morning News, 1885–1985. https://infoweb-newsbank-com.ezp.twu.edu/apps/readex/doc?p=EANX&docref=image/v2%3A0F99DDB 671832188%40EANX-12C0AFFE725CF0D5%402444097-12BC31BC73C8657E%400. ↩
25. “Louis Beam,” Southern Poverty Law Center (2026 SPLC, January 10, 2025), https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/louis-beam/. ↩
26. “Gene Richardson | 2nd Battalion, 60th Infantry Regiment - Army,” Witnesstowar.org, 2025, https://www.witnesstowar.org/combat_stories/Vietnam/12769. ↩
27. “George Forrest | 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment - Army,” Witnesstowar.org, 2025, https://www.witnesstowar.org/combat_stories/Vietnam/5706. ↩
28. Belew, Bring the War Home, 29. ↩
29. Warren Schaich, “A Relationship Between Collective Racial Violence and War.” Journal of Black Studies 5, no. 4 (1975): 374–94. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2783666. ↩
30. Common Sense. (1965). Common Sense, 461. University of Kansas. Independent Voices. Reveal Digital. https://jstor.org/stable/community28144671, 3. ↩
31. Ross Milloy, “Vietnam Fallout in a Texas Town,” New York Times Sunday Magazine, April 6, 1980, SM10. ↩
32. “Common Sense.” Common Sense, no. 575 (January 15, 1971). https://jstor.org/stable/community28144787, 2. ↩
33. Louis R. Beam Jr, Essays by a Klansman (Hayden Lake, ID 83835: A.K.I.A. Publications, 1983), 85-86. ↩
34. WayBack Archives, “1986 DOCUMENTARY: Neo-Nazis & White Supremacist | White Terror ©,” YouTube, August 29, 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEU6aIz3_9U. ↩
35. Thomas Murray, “Bob Black: This War Was Different,” Florida Center for Instructional Technology, accessed November 22, 2025, https://fcit.usf.edu/vietnam/black/4.html. ↩
36. “James Holmes | 101st Airborne Division, 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, a Company - Army,” Witnesstowar.org, 2025, https://www.witnesstowar.org/combat_stories/Vietnam/7633. ↩
37. “Common Sense.” Common Sense, no. 553 (January 15, 1970). https://jstor.org/stable/community28144764, 2. ↩
38. Beam, Essays by a Klansman, 32-34. ↩
39. “James Holmes | 101st Airborne Division, 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, a Company - Army,” Witnesstowar.org, 2025, https://www.witnesstowar.org/combat_stories/Vietnam/7633. ↩
40. “Michael Richey | 3rd Battalion, 47th Infantry, 9th Infantry Division - Army,” Witnesstowar.org, 2025, https://www.witnesstowar.org/combat_stories/Vietnam/5125. ↩
41. Beam, Essays by a Klansman, 40. ↩
42. Belew, Bring the War Home, 47. ↩
43. Bill Morlin, “A Petri Dish for Racism Supremacists’ Message Spreading through Nation, Butler Says,” Spokesman.com (The Spokesman-Review, July 22, 1995), https://www.spokesman.com/stories/1995/jul/22/a-petri-dish-for-racism-supremacists-message/. ↩
44. Sunday, November 30, 1980. Directed by Robert Vitarelli. Columbia Broadcasting System, 1980. https://video.alexanderstreet.com/watch/face-the-nation-sunday-november-30-1980. ↩
45. Levitas, The Terrorist next Door, 5-8. ↩

Page last updated 8:30 AM, July 1, 2026