Gregory Withrow was born on May 1,1961 and is an American far-right White supremacy activist.
34 Facts About Greg Withrow
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Greg Withrow was described by the Chicago Sun-Times as being "widely acknowledged as the founder of the [white power] 'skinhead' movement in 1978".
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In later years Greg Withrow repudiated his change of heart and returned to far-right activism.
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Greg Withrow was the son of first cousins who married due to unplanned pregnancy.
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The marriage ended after three years and Greg Withrow was raised by his father, Albert.
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Greg Withrow stated that he came from a racist background and that his father made him read far-right literature and study the life of Adolf Hitler whilst growing up in Sacramento, California.
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Greg Withrow subsequently claimed that he had exaggerated and invented much of the narrative of his childhood in order to receive sympathy.
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Greg Withrow joined the Ku Klux Klan at the age of 14 and with his friends set up a gang that carried out a series of muggings against Japanese tourists and gay people.
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Greg Withrow was quickly arrested however when one of his intended victims proved to be an undercover police officer.
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In 1979, whilst in attendance at American River College, Greg Withrow established the White Student Union as an attempt to increase white supremacist action among the student population.
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Greg Withrow had become disillusioned with what he saw as the ineffectiveness of the Ku Klux Klan.
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Greg Withrow came to the attention of Tom Metzger and before long Withlow's group had formed a close link with the Aryan Youth Movement, the youth branch of Metzger's White Aryan Resistance.
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Greg Withrow attracted further controversy at the 1986 Aryan World Congress by stating that non-Aryans in the USA should "be terminated or expelled".
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Greg Withrow claimed that he advocated a cell-based organization akin to leaderless resistance, albeit one that he personally called the "100 Hitlers policy", arguing that it allowed the movement to continue to function even when individual cells were brought down by law enforcement.
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Greg Withrow claimed that he renounced racism in 1987 due to the death of his father and the fact that he had fallen in love with a woman whose family had come to the United States as refugees from Nazi Germany.
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Greg Withrow decided to quit the movement in 1987 after his father died and he fell in love with a woman whose family had fled Hitler's Germany.
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Greg Withrow stated that "I've said a lot of terrible things and I've spread a lot of harm; I don't want to hate anymore".
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Greg Withrow claimed that his former friends captured him and tortured him to near death before he was able to escape.
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Greg Withrow had been nailed to a crossbeam and slashed with knives before being left for dead.
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Now publicly declaring his support for anti-racism, Greg Withrow became a mainstay on daytime television and tabloid talk shows, being interviewed by Oprah Winfrey, Phil Donahue and Montel Williams, as well as accepting speaking engagements for groups such as the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith.
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On one occasion he appeared alongside Tom Metzger's son John on The Phil Donahue Show and Greg Withrow claimed that Metzger told him that he deserved to die for leaving the white supremacist movement.
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Greg Withrow provided testimony to a number of government agencies and initiatives.
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Greg Withrow married a Mexican American woman named Maria Rodriguez in 1994.
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Greg Withrow had settled in Butte County, where he picked up a string of arrests for minor offences including petty theft and vandalism, including a case where he was found mentally unfit to stand trial.
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Elizabeth Thompson mentioned that she found Greg Withrow to be a frightening personality, particularly after he reacted negatively to the way she had portrayed him in Blink.
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Mike Ramsey, the Butte County District Attorney, felt that it was around the time of the release of Blink that Greg Withrow began to move back to white supremacy, largely because the documentary presented him in a stark manner and led to a tailing off in interest from media outlets.
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Finally in May 2000, Greg Withrow wrote a paper entitled "The Truth Hurts" and he sent copies of it to McCarthy, Governor Gray Davis, Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante and Attorney General Bill Lockyer.
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Greg Withrow followed this in August 2001 by filing a lawsuit seeking to abolish all of California's hate crime laws and demanding a $1 million payment to any White person who had been convicted under existing legislation.
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Greg Withrow's lawsuit included 68 pages of statements further repudiating his earlier anti-racist work and denouncing it as a hoax.
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Greg Withrow divorced Maria Rodriguez on May 6,2000, after an altercation between the couple in which she attacked him with a baseball bat whilst he attacked her with a knife.
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Greg Withrow argued that he was a "mole for the white Aryans, the cause of revolution" intent on infiltrating the Anti-Defamation League and he claimed that whilst he was appearing on talk shows in order to condemn racism, he was leading a gang that appeared on them in order to support white supremacy.
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Greg Withrow declared that it had been part of the cell structure idea that he had previously supported.
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In 2005, Greg Withrow was arrested after undergoing a six-hour crucifixion in Sacramento.
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The protest was stopped by police, although Greg Withrow had already had one of his hands nailed to the board by the time they arrived.