27 Facts About Harold Covington

Harold Armstead Covington was an American neo-Nazi activist and writer.

Harold Covington was a controversial figure even within the neo-Nazi movement.

Harold Covington wrote and self-published several fiction novels to mixed reception within the white nationalist movement.

Harold Armstead Covington was born on September 14,1953, in Burlington, North Carolina, the eldest of three children.

Harold Covington briefly wrote for his high school's newspaper in an activities column, but was kicked off shortly after for using it to express his complaints, particularly about the school's black students.

Harold Covington claimed he was honorably discharged from the army two years later due to his racism.

Harold Covington was a founding member of the Rhodesian White People's Party and later claimed to have served in the Rhodesian Army as a mercenary.

Harold Covington was deported from Rhodesia in early 1976 due to his racism.

Harold Covington was a contentious figure on the far-right, and would often take the blame for many negative events that befell the movement.

Similarly, the Southern Poverty Law Center said that Harold Covington had launched "endless attacks on most of the leaders of the extreme right, to the point where he is today almost totally isolated from the organizations that make up the white supremacist movement".

Harold Covington was involved in the Greensboro massacre of 1979, which killed five members of the Communist Workers' Party.

That same year, Harold Covington alleged that would-be presidential assassin John Hinckley Jr.

Harold Covington later settled in the United Kingdom for several years, where he made contact with British far-right groups and was involved in setting up the neo-Nazi terrorist organisation Combat 18 in 1992.

Harold Covington married an Irish woman and got dual citizenship.

In 1994, Harold Covington started an organization called the National Socialist White People's Party, using the same name of the successor to the American Nazi Party under Matt Koehl, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Harold Covington launched a website in 1996; using the pseudonym Winston Smith, Covington became one of the first neo-Nazi presences on the Internet.

Harold Covington used the website and the Winston Smith pseudonym to disseminate Holocaust-denial material.

Harold Covington advocated the creation of a "white homeland" in the Pacific Northwest.

Harold Covington founded the Northwest Front, a movement devoted to creating a white ethnostate.

Harold Covington was mentioned in the media in connection with the Charleston church shooting, whose perpetrator Dylann Roof discussed the Northwest Front in his manifesto, and was critical of its means and objectives.

Harold Covington's books were all self-published and print on demand, outsourcing the production and distribution to an unrelated company.

Harold Covington promoted this approach and said it helped him avoid the publication pitfalls and censorship that befell other far-right extremist literature like The Turner Diaries.

Genres he wrote in included occult, medievalist, gothic, crime, and historical fiction; Harold Covington claimed that there was "a political and racial message somewhere" in all of his books.

Harold Covington is best known for his series of four Northwest Independence novels that began in 2003, the Northwest series: A Distant Thunder, A Mighty Fortress, The Hill of the Ravens, The Brigade.

Harold Covington attributed the "widespread anti-Covington animus" within the neo-Nazi movement to this.

Harold Covington further described the Northwest series as "in many ways the best of the American post-apocalyptic literature of the radical right".

Harold Covington's ideas influenced some far right groups, including the Atomwaffen Division and The Base.