ULYSSES, Pa. — The traffic sign that greets visitors on the
south side of Ulysses, a tiny town in rural far north-central Pennsylvania, is
suitably quaint — a silhouette of a horse-drawn cart reminding drivers that the
Amish use the roads, too. But on the north side of town, along the main
thoroughfare, is a far different display: a home dedicated to Adolf Hitler,
where star-spangled banners and Nazi flags flutter side by side and wooden
swastikas stand on poles.
White supremacy has had a continuous presence in Ulysses and
surrounding Potter County since the Ku Klux Klan arrived a century ago, giving
the town — with a population today of about 650 — improbable national
significance. In the mid-2000s, it hosted the World Aryan Congress, a gathering
of neo-Nazis, skinheads and Klan members.
This year, after a sting operation, federal prosecutors
charged six members of an Aryan Strike Force cell with weapons and drug
offenses, contending that they had plotted a suicide attack at an anti-racism
protest. A terminally ill member was willing to hide a bomb in his oxygen tank
and blow himself up, prosecutors said. The group had met and conducted weapons
training in Ulysses.
Neo-Nazis and their opponents here say that white extremists
have grown more confident — and confrontational — since the rise of Donald
Trump. Two months before the 2016 presidential election, the KKK established a
“24 hour Klan Line” and sent goody bags containing lollipops and fliers to
hundreds of homes. “You can sleep tonight knowing the Klan is awake,” the
message read. A regional newspaper ran Klan advertisements saying, “God bless
the KKK.”
Local police said the group had not openly recruited in
years.
Two weeks later, the area’s two neo-Nazi groups, the
National Socialist Movement (NSM) and Aryan Strike Force, held a “white unity
meeting” in Ulysses to discuss their response to Trump and plan joint action.
One organizer would not say when the groups had last met, simply commenting:
“It’s just a good time.”
Potter County is staunchly Republican and has voted
Democratic once since 1888; Trump received 80 percent of the vote, tying with
Herbert Hoover for the highest percentage won. Read more...
