Harold Covington

Covington was born on September 14, 1953, in Burlington, North Carolina, to Forrest McAllister Covington (1925 – 1999) and Frances Anne Covington (née Glass) as the eldest of three children.[4] According to an interview with Covington, at age 15 in 1968 he was sent to Chapel Hill High School.[5]

In 1971, he graduated from high school and joined the United States Army.[1]

In 1971, Covington joined the National Socialist White People's Party (NSWPP), the political successor to the American Nazi Party (ANP).[1] He moved to South Africa in December 1973,[6] after his discharge from the U.S. Army, and later to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).[7] Covington was a founding member of the Rhodesian White People's Party and later claimed to have served in the Rhodesian Army. He was deported from Rhodesia due to his racist beliefs, particularly due to his threatening letters to the Jewish community.[7]

In 1980, while leader of the National Socialist Party of America, he lost a primary election for the Republican nomination for candidates for attorney general of North Carolina.[8] Covington resigned as president of the NSPA in 1981.[9] That same year, Covington alleged that would-be presidential assassin John Hinckley Jr. had formerly been a member of the NSPA. Law enforcement authorities were never able to corroborate this claim and suggested the alleged connection "may have been fabricated for publicity purposes".[10]

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 (C18) in 1992. C18 openly promotes violence and antisemitism and has adopted some of the features of the American far right.[11]

In 1994, 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. He launched a website in 1996; using the pseudonym "Winston Smith" (taken from the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four), Covington became one of the first neo-Nazi presences on the Internet.[12][13] Covington used the website and the Winston Smith pseudonym to disseminate Holocaust-denial material.[14]

Beginning in 2005, Covington maintained a political blog titled "Thoughtcrime".[15] As a fiction writer, Covington authored several occult-themed novels.[16][17] As an author, he is best known for his series of five Northwest Independence novels: A Distant Thunder, A Mighty Fortress, The Hill of the Ravens, The Brigade, and Freedom's Sons.[18]

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.[19] According to Covington, the shooting was "a preview of coming attractions", but he also believed it was a bad idea for his followers to engage in random acts of violence, instead supporting organized revolution.[20]

Towards the end of his life, Covington created a group that wanted a white ethnostate in the Pacific Northwest.[21]

Covington died in Bremerton, Washington, on July 14, 2018.[1]