Ex-Aryan's book chronicles fall - and his rise

LONGVIEW, Wash. - Longview's most notorious Nazi says he's sorry.

In December 2007, Zach Beck, a young, well-connected member of the Aryan Nations, organized a white supremacist rally at Longview's McClelland Arts Center.

The rally attracted only about 30 sympathizers. But more than 400 Longview residents marched in a counter-demonstration to support the cause of local diversity. A swarm of TV news crews descended on Longview. Beck didn't show up for the rally, and his moment in the local public eye came to an unceremonious end.

But this year, Beck, who is serving a 51-month sentence at a federal prison in Arizona, self-published a book disavowing the neo Nazi movement and also publicly apologizing to the communities he victimized.

"My behavior was childish, immature and lacking intelligence," Beck wrote in one of many letters to The Daily News this year. "I truly want to apologize for the image of hate I brought upon the residents of Cowlitz County."

Beck said he realized his beliefs were "rooted in fear" and that he needed to "evolve." He began writing the book just after his June 2011 conviction for violating the civil rights of a black man he attacked with two other men in a Vancouver sports bar.

"I wanted to explain how a young kid whose first concert was the Grateful Dead, (who) wore tie-dye T-shirts and worshipped Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix could fall prey to a world of hate and violence," Beck told the newspaper. "But more than that, (I wanted to show) why I was able to overcome such an ignorant, primitive ... instinct such as racism."

'Angry with God'

The book, called "Hate Behind Blue Eyes, Memoirs of an American Nazi," rambles for long stretches and includes entire chapters on neo Nazi dogma. But it also offers a glimpse inside the movement and illustrates the events that led up to the 2007 Longview hate rally.

What changed Beck's mind about the white supremacist movement? Beck wrote in his book that he had practiced a sort of religious faith through the Nazi movement and was taught to pray while making the Nazi salute. During one of his many stays in jail, he was struck by the futility of praying in such a way.

"I became very angry with God," Beck writes. "How could he let me fall prey to hate and why would he allow me to waste so much time, energy, blood, sweat and ... freedom for nothing?!"

Beck said that getting away from his mentor, Richard G. Butler, the Aryan Nations founder who died in 2004, also was key.

"Traveling opened my eyes to the truth," Beck wrote. "Getting out of there (Butler's Nazi compound in Idaho where Beck had, perhaps, been most intensely indoctrinated) and meeting new people, going to different places, coming across old pleasures - music, girls, friends and experiences - made me experience life for all that it is and not all that it can't be. The love I have for life is stronger than any sort of manufactured hate I've ever experienced."

Beck declined to say how many copies of the book he has sold. But he said his public disavowal of the white supremacist movement prompted prison officials to house him in a secure unit for his own protection. "I had to be moved to a 'gang dropout' yard," Beck wrote in his correspondence with a reporter.

"The Aryan Brotherhood has me marked for a "K.O.S" - kill on sight," he wrote in one letter. "Oddly enough, I felt a sense of accomplishment with that. It meant my book's message is a viable threat to white supremacy."

There's little question that Beck, now 33, caused nothing but trouble in Cowlitz County during his time here. Beck told the newspaper that Butler dispatched him to Longview where he and a small group of local Nazis ran a campaign of thuggery, including spray-painting Swastikas and beating up local residents.

In May 2004, Beck shot at a police officer who came to arrest him after he broke into a Kelso woman's home and attacked her. Beck, who later said he was drunk at the time, was sentenced to 33 months in prison. Beck also was convicted of cocaine possession in Cowlitz County.

Local law enforcement agencies spent about $14,000 in overtime to monitor the 2007 diversity march and Nazi rally. In 2008, Beck hacked the law library computer in the Cowlitz County Jail and was caught surfing porn and white supremacist websites.

"Washington doesn't want me to come back, and I feel the same," Beck wrote in a Jan. 16 letter to the Cowlitz County Superior Court about his fines.

Cowlitz County Commissioner Dennis Weber, who was Longview's mayor at the time of Beck's Nazi rally, said in an email last week that Beck wrote to apologize about 18 months after the 2007 event.

"I did forgive him," Weber wrote. "Interesting, though, that now he is trying to profit from his experience by writing a book. I don't feel obligated to go out and buy it."

Mark Bergeson, a now-retired Lower Columbia College professor who organized a 400-person diversity march to counter Beck's hate rally, said he was surprised Beck had quit the white supremacist movement.

"Seriously?" Bergeson said on hearing the news. "If he is really doing that, that takes courage. ... I'm moved by that. I think people can change."

Bergeson last heard from Beck in February 2009, when Beck sent him a letter from prison in Walla Walla.

"Mark - your (sic) an idiot!" the letter begins. "You discriminate and your (sic) stupid along with the rest of your closd (sic) minded haters." After making several offensive comments about people of mixed race, Beck signed off the letter thus: "You promote the work of the devil. White power!"

Bergeson said he sought the advice of local law enforcement to ensure his own safety. "It threw a scare into me," he said of the letter, adding, "I think it would be a great thing if Zach Beck became humanized."

The grooming of a supremacist

Beck said he was born in 1979 in Northern California and spent much of his childhood in Arizona. He wrote in his book that he had trouble fitting in, was ruthlessly bullied by other kids and was even sexually molested by "some neighborhood kids." He said he started drinking at 14.

He spent his teenage years bouncing around California, indulging in its Bohemian culture.

"I grew my hair out, wore tie-dye clothing, hemp necklaces and started smoking marijuana," he writes. "My first concert was the Grateful Dead. I loved it. It was a great show even without the mushrooms and cocaine."

"Ironically," Beck wrote, he lost his virginity to a black girl in his early teens. "I enjoyed having friends that were different from me. Different races, different cultures, different languages."

That changed shortly after Beck was busted with marijuana, in violation of his probation, and sent to prison for a year at age 19. During his first day in a minimum-security state prison in Fort Grant, Ariz., Beck said about a half-dozen white supremacist gang members welcomed him into their fold and laid out a series of rules.

"In prison in Arizona, it doesn't matter where you grew up or if you were adopted by people of a different race," Beck said. "When you 'hit' (enter) the yard, you go to your color, period!"

The Nazis explained that white inmates such as Beck cannot "sit on another race's bed, go into another race's 'house' (living space), eat, drink, smoke, play games, cards, sports or do business, buy or sell anything to other races beyond an introduction." In addition, the men told him, "If you're told to 'boot up,' it means we're going to war: find something sharp and wait in this area until told to move."

Beck was then handed a copy of "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," a classic history by William L. Shirer that chronicles Nazi Germany from 1932 to 1945.

"I was too scared to speak," he recalled.

As the weeks wore on, Beck was tasked with selling and holding drugs, keeping lookout for guards, passing messages or beating up "some poor kid for listening to rap music or something equally trivial." As a reward, he was covered in neo Nazi tattoos.

Beck wrote that he began reading propaganda published by the Aryan Nations. He already was living in a violent, racially segregated environment, so what he read started to make sense. All of this dogma was supposedly validated by the Bible, Beck wrote.

He found a new religious conviction through the hate groups and kept reading Aryan Nations literature, saying "The more I read into it, the more powerful I felt."

Beck was released Feb.15, 2000, the day after his 21st birthday. In 2003, he went to live in Butler's home in Hayden, Idaho, becoming bodyguard, assistant and pupil of the movement's notorious leader.

"Busts of Hitler and Jesus adorned the small living room," according to Beck. "There were about four Bibles on the coffee table and a library that looked to contain every piece of literature ever written since the dinosaurs walked the earth." There were two German Shepherds named "Hauns" and "Frits."

Butler's home "became a Nazi fraternity house. There was even a Nazi radio show broadcast from his living room," Beck writes. "I wasn't used to this kind of exposure. ... It's the attention that became addicting."

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, still has a file on Beck, said Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Montgomery, Ala., organization and editor of its magazine, "Intelligence Report."

"We never took Zach Beck as any important leader. He's a bit of a street thug," Potok said. "He made a spectacle of himself, living with Richard Butler ... basically being a loudmouth jerk."

Yet, Potok said, it's important to watch individuals like Beck because they might be domestic terrorism threats. Potok, for example, cited Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and Kevin William Harpham of Colville, Wash., a white supremacist who planted an explosives- and shrapnel-laden backpack at a 2011 Martin Luther King Day parade in Spokane. The bomb didn't detonate, and Harpham was sentenced to 32 years in prison.

"The world that Zach Beck moved in is a world where individuals are willing to murder and even carry out mass attacks," Potok said.

So can Beck be taken seriously when he says he's done with the neo Nazi movement?

"I take Zach Beck at his word," Potok said. "He certainly seems sincere and he's not the only one who has made a move like this. ... I know of many cases like this where a young kid ended up in prison and very quickly was pushed into racist activities."

A run for

elective office

Beck says he eventually became Butler's second in command and protege. Butler fed him a steady stream of supremacist literature, including "The Turner Diaries," an anti-government novel found in the car of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

"At the time, it felt good to be a part of something I considered noble," Beck writes. "Living with Butler at the headquarters of one of the most popular white supremacist organizations in the world exposed me to a lot of influential people within the white power movement."

He and other white supremacists ran for City Council in 2003 in Hayden, Idaho, at the same time Butler ran for mayor, prompting a flurry of press coverage about the Aryan Nations' attempt to co-op Hayden's government. They all lost, and Beck spent election day in jail after he was accused of walking up to a Latino man and punching him in the face, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. In his book, Beck denies the allegation.

After the election, Beck moved to Longview. He told The Daily News this month that Butler made him the bodyguard for a wealthy Longview woman who had been "financing a large part of the Aryan Nations' activities." Beck said he ended up marrying the woman, who is 20 years his senior. She gave him a credit card and a new truck and took him on lavish vacations. The perks created tension with other skinheads, who Beck said became jealous. Beck and the woman now are divorced.

Beck doesn't mention Longview by name in the book. He told the newspaper he didn't want to further embarrass residents here. Still, he writes in his book that his goal in southwest Washington was to further the white power movement by recruiting new local Nazis.

"White supremacy is exhausting work, but I was eager to start this project. I needed reinforcements," he wrote. "Once I started to accumulate a following, we started to have weekly meetings about how to expand while targeting our youth while they're still young and easily influenced."

The young Nazis made a game of committing crimes in order to get news coverage. "I know it sounds crazy, but this is how we bonded and grew stronger as a family," Beck wrote.

Beck and his Longview Nazis also spent their days shaving each other's heads, giving each other Nazi tattoos, sleeping with as many "skinhead chicks as possible to keep our race alive," and sending young, new Nazis on "missions" to beat someone up and earn red laces to thread through their combat boots - indicating that they had spilled blood for the movement.

In late 2007, Beck rented the McClelland Arts Center, calling his planned event a religious gathering to "recruit other neo Nazis." About 30 skinheads showed up for the three-hour rally, which included several Aryan Nations speakers, a reading of poetry about Viking mythology, and the playing of punk music, the distribution of Nazi literature and the screening of a 9/11 conspiracy video. Beck didn't show. In an email this month, he told a reporter that had he attended, he would have been arrested for a probation violation related to alleged cocaine possession.

After all the trouble, Bergeson, the organizer of the diversity march to counter that neo Nazi rally, said of Beck, "I don't think he caused any damage at all. There were so few people that turned out."

"I think people made a very powerful statement that we won't tolerate this. This isn't who we are," Bergeson said. "Longview gets kind of scoffed at for being a mill town, for being kind of dumb. But there's a lot of wonderful people here. (Beck) put something in motion that was very positive for the community, for who we are."