Imperial Wizard of incendiary Loyal White Knights of the KKK arrested for Stabbing fellow Klansman “with intent to kill” after Klan sponsored “Trump Victory Parade” imploded in Farce 

National media, counter protesters in ski masks and jack boots descend on rural North Carolina but Klan group is a no-show

By Nate Thayer

December 4, 2016

(Updated with new quotes from stabbing victim 1530 hours December 4, 2016)

Christopher Eugene Barker, the Imperial Wizard of the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan who announced a month ago that his Caswell County, North Carolina headquartered white supremacist group would be holding a “Donald Trump Victory Parade” Saturday December 3, 2016, was arrested Saturday and charged with “Felony Aiding and Abetting Assault with a deadly weapon with Intent to Kill Inflicting Serious Injury” after he and another KKK leader are alleged to have stabbed another Klan member “multiple times in the upper chest” during a drunken argument.

Barker, 37, is being held in the Caswell County jail on $200,000 secured bond.

Barker is charged in connection to the stabbing of Richard Dillon of Hammond, Indiana–another member of the LWK Klan group–on Barker’s rural property at 2634 U.S. Highway 158 East Yanceyville N.C. in Caswell County, North Carolina which abuts the state border south of Danville, Virginia.

Also arrested was William “Billy” Hagen, 50, the West Coast Grand Dragon of the LWK and their “King Kleagle”–or chief west coast recruiter. Hagen, who uses the alias Billy Quigg, is charged with “Felony Assault with a Deadly Weapon with Intent to Kill Inflicting Serious Injury” and is being held on $350,000 secured bond.

The charges are North Carolina’s equivalent to “attempted murder”.

Dillon 47, of Hammond, Indiana was stabbed after an argument erupted between Klan members as a small group of five LWK members were gathered drinking at Barker’s home around 3 o’clock in the morning late on Friday night/early Saturday morning  hours before the LWK Klan members were scheduled to gather in a “car parade” through the town of Roxboro, North Carolina. Approximately 20 vehicles sped through the main street of the small town, arriving and exiting in under five minutes and never getting out of their vehicles, in what the Klan called a “Trump Victory Parade” .

Shortly after the U.S. presidential elections last month, the Loyal White Knights website had announced they would hold a public “Trump Victory Parade” on December 3, but refused to name a location or time.

William Hagen of Orange, California and Christopher Eugene Barker of East Yanceyville, North Carolina allegedly attacked Richard Dillon during a gathering of five Klan members at Barker’s residence on U.S. Highway 158 in East Yanceyville early Saturday morning. “Barker and Hagen and one other guy wanted me dead. Their intent was to kill me,” said Richard Dillon in an interview on Sunday as he recovered from “multiple stab wounds to the interior upper chest” and elsewhere on his body. “I had a confrontation with Hagen months ago criticizing him for the California rally where they got beat up by counter protestors.”

At Barker’s house in the early morning hours of Saturday December 3rd were 8 people: Christopher Barker, William Hagen of California, Richard Dillon and a friend who is not a member of the Klan from Indiana, Barker’s wife, Amanda, their two school age children, and one other LWK member whose identity is known but who remains not in custody.

“The only reason there are not three people in jail is because I don’t remember the guys name,” said Dillon. “But I would absolutely recognize his picture immediately.”

Dillon said that while being repeatedly stabbed by Hagen in Barker’s dining room, Barker blocked the exit door refusing to allow Dillon to escape. “Barker was encouraging Hagen to kill me. They were both drunk. The dining room floor was covered in my blood.”

“While Hagen and Barker and the other guy were getting increasingly drunk, they were becoming more and more antagonistic towards me,” said Dillon. “Chris Barker was antagonizing the argument the whole time, encouraging Hagen to fight me. So was the other guy,” said Dillon. “I knew it was time to leave, but I knew I wouldn’t get out the door.”

Meanwhile, a friend of Dillon’s, also from Indiana but not a member of the LWK, who travelled to North Carolina with the stabbing victim, had earlier gone back to their truck and was frantically texting Dillon saying “They plan to kill you. We got to leave here now.” But Dillon had left his phone in the truck and did not receive the messages.

During the violent attack in Barker’s home, according to Dillon, “Barker went out to the truck and opened the driver’s side door and said ‘Richard is in the house and he is dead’,” according to Dillon. “Barker said ‘I will take you to an ATM right now and give you $2000 if you just leave town and say nothing.'” But Barker, who has no drivers license due to multiple alcohol related driving arrests, insisted on driving. “I have no doubt Barker was going to kill my friend, too. Their intent was to kill me. I should be dead right now.”

Dillon managed to escape the house and he and his friend drove the 27 miles to Danville, Virginia Regional Medical Center. “Blood was just gushing out, pouring out of my chest. I couldn’t stop the bleeding. I held a towel pressed against my chest and it just soaked in blood. My truck floor is caked in blood.”

Documents from the Danville Regional Medical Center say Dillon was treated for”multiple stab wounds to the interior chest.” They inserted “double IV’s in me.”

Emergency room personnel called the cops. “At first, I wouldn’t tell them anything. I told them ‘I fell on a couple of knives’,” Dillon said. 

The Danville police asked Dillon “You are bleeding out and probably going to die and you have nothing to say about who did this to you?”

Dillon said the knife William Hagen attacked him with was “a 5 or 6 inch unfoldable knife with a black titanium blade. You know, the kind you keep strapped to your boot legs.”

After having dozens of staples sewn together to close his chest wounds and “12 staples in my thumb” and leaving the Danville Medical Center “I thought to myself ‘Barker and Hagen tried to kill me. I am supposed to be dead. Fuck the ‘I fell on a couple of knives story’. I want them in jail and I am going to tell the sheriff what happened.”

From Danville, Dillon and his friend drove to the Caswell County, North Carolina Sheriff’s Office and requested to talk to officers “sometime between 4:00 am and 8:00 am Saturday morning”. He was debriefed by a “bunch of cops. I don’t remember who or where they were from. Some were in uniform and some weren’t,” said Dillon. He said the cops brought in sniffer dogs and took pictures of the interior of his truck “which was caked in blood.”

The Caswell County Sheriff’s Office quickly obtained a search warrant for the home of Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard Christopher Eugene Barker and executed the warrant accompanied by and with the assistance of the North Carolina State Highway Patrol, North Carolina Alcohol Law Enforcement, and the Rockingham County Sheriff’s Office.

Barker and Hagen were arrested on Barker’s property, according to Caswell County Sheriff Michael Welch.

The members of the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which is headed by Barker, came from as far away as California, Indiana, Tennessee, Georgia and elsewhere for the highly publicized Ku Klux Klan “Trump Victory Parade” which was not to be.

A November announcement on the Loyal White Knights website of a “Trump Victory Parade” scheduled for December 3rd attracted widespread, international media attention, but the group refused to release a time or location for the public gathering. The original announcement posted on the LWK website was removed days later. Almost none of the hundreds of media outlets who ran stories in November on the upcoming event actually talked to anyone from the LWK group.

But this didn’t stop the media attention.

On Friday evening the day before the alleged Klan rally, Captain Michael Adkins of the Caswell County Sheriff’s Office said in an interview that no permits had been issued to the LWK Klan group to gather for any public event  anywhere in Caswell County, North Carolina. “I have been inundated with media calls from everywhere, but we have seen no activity indicating there are Klan supporters gathering for any kind of public event, and there has not been any permit issued which would allow them to do so,” said Captain Adkins. ” There has been no influx of out-of-state cars or people from outside the community,” Adkins said of his rural county. “Believe me, we are keeping a close eye on Barker and any indications of trouble.”

But sources in the Loyal White Knights on Friday evening insisted they would be holding what they now described as a “car parade” Saturday in support of Trump’s presidential victory, but they still refused to announce a time or location.

More than 50 journalists showed up in the tiny unincorporated hamlet of Pelham, North Carolina Saturday morning from as far away as Mexico and Oregon in anticipation of a public Klan rally whose message was said to be support for the victorious presidential campaign of Donald Trump. But none had actually spoken with any member of the LWK.

Pelham, which is in far northwestern Caswell County near the Virginia border, is only the home of the Post Office Box mailing address of the Loyal White Knights Klan faction. There are no known Klan members who actually live there and there has never been a public Klan event held in the tiny hamlet.

Also arriving Saturday in Pelham were more than 100 anti-racist counter protestors, some wearing ski masks, jack boots, and carrying baseball bats, looking to confront the Klan. Caswell County sheriff’s deputies responded mid-morning after a group of counter protesters started to march down the street looking menacing.

First the journalists and the anti-Klan protestors gathered at the Pelham “Welcome Center” early Saturday morning where rumors suggested the Klan was going to gather.

Then word spread that the Klan were at a Methodist church on nearby Shady Grove road, so the groups, which did not include any Klan members, moved on to the church. There they found “two little old ladies sitting outside by a table having a charity bake sale selling homemade pies,” said Patti Okeefe, the editor of the local weekly newspaper, the Caswell Messenger, which has published every Wednesday since 1926.

But there was no Ku Klux Klan staging at the Methodist church.

So the group migrated back to the Pelham Welcome Center, which was about a half mile away, but still no Klan were to be seen.

However, a lone pro-confederate flag supporter did appear among the crowd. An anti-Klan demonstrator was seen walking through the gaggle of media and counter protestors announcing a “Confederate flag guy” was in the crowd.

But he, too, turned out to be protesting the Loyal White Knights of the KKK.

Gary Williamson, head of the “Alamance County Taking Back Alamance County” organization, which promotes Southern heritage, explained he was there to protest the Klan appropriating the confederate flag as a symbol of racism.

The KKK  “isn’t us. This ain’t nothing that we’re about,” Williamson told reporters. “We support heritage and the positive parts of our history. As far as them and what they do, it isn’t part of our history. It’s sick and disgusting.”

Rumors still abounded, with most now contending that everyone was now gathered at the nearby Pelham “Community Center”.  So the crowd migrated the short distance in the small town from the Pelham “Welcome Center” to the Pelham “Community Center”.

There, journalists and would be counter protestors saw four white men standing leaning against a white pickup truck sporting Tennessee license plates and scowling at the counter-protestors who were dressed in all black and wearing ski masks and red bandanas to cover their faces.

Reporters and anti-Klan protestors approached the surly white men and asked “Are you guys with the Ku Klux Klan?”

“No,” the less than friendly group said, less than credibly.

The LWK Klan group never did announce publicly, as they had promised,  a time or location of the “Trump victory parade”. After a few hours on what was decided was a wild goose chase, most of the media called it a day by early afternoon and started their trip home. The anti-Klan counter protesters, meanwhile, had heard another rumor that the Klan was gathering just across the North Carolina border in Danville, VA and more than a hundred appeared in the quiet city and started marching down the street. North Carolina State Police and the Caswell County Sheriff’s Office alerted the Danville police the rough around the edges counter protestors were on their way to Danville, which is about 30 miles from Pelham, North Carolina. Danville police kept order and no incidents resulting in arrests occurred.

Meanwhile, about 300 people attended a “NC Justice and Unity Rally” in Raleigh, North Carolina, to object to the Klan rally that wasn’t. Other counter protests were held in cities across North Carolina, including “March for Love” gatherings in Salisbury, Durham, Charlotte, and Mebane.

Then, shortly after 3 p.m., about 20 cars and pickup trucks flying Confederate and Klan flags drove swiftly through the small town of Roxboro, population 8,362, about 37 miles east of Pelham over the Caswell County line in Rockingham County

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IT’S HAPPENING. KKK just came through Roxboro. Battle flags & shouting “WHITE POWER!” pic.twitter.com/rcjHbmUUiR

— Natalie A. Janicello (@natalie_allison) December 3, 2016

Some yelled “White Power!” out of open windows as they sped through town, encouraged to leave the town quickly by police who had blocked traffic. Some flew American, Confederate, and Ku Klux Klan flags. A few pickup trucks had large Loyal White Knights decals attached to the doors of their vehicles. No one got out of their vehicles. Local authorities asked the N.C. Highway Patrol to direct traffic and block intersections on U.S. Highway 501, to facilitate a speedy exit of the small vehicle convoy. “We learned late this afternoon the group wanted to come to Roxboro. I want to thank our law enforcement partners who helped us close intersections so the group could enter and leave the city as fast as possible,” a statement released by the Roxboro police said.

The Klan “car parade” in Roxboro was over in under 5 minutes.

But since nobody knew the Klan would be there, nobody was gathered to watch.

None of the counter protestors who had massed in Pelham were in Roxboro.

After the very brief appearance in Roxboro, which had been scheduled to take place in the morning but was postponed because of the stabbing assault earlier in the morning of which none of the journalists or counter protestors were aware had occurred, the Klan members dispersed. An earlier scheduled get together to celebrate with food, alcohol, and a cross burning at Barker’s property was cancelled, although the LWK supporters were not told why.

Barker and Hagen both have long criminal records, according to law enforcement records and other sources.

Christopher Eugene Barker, an unemployed career criminal who is the self-styled head of the North Carolina based Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, has been arrested more than 40 times in North Carolina alone.

While Barker claims to run the “largest Klan in the U.S.”, citing a figure of 10,000 members, in truth there are only a handful of active members throughout the U.S., according to several members of his Klan group, recent defectors from the LWK, leaders of other KKK organizations, and law enforcement sources.

The LWK is what is known among the world of right-wing political extremists as a “cyber Klan” and mainly does not exist outside the Internet. The less than 100 members spread out through the U.S. that do exist have mostly never met each other in real life, and almost all joined over the Internet through social media.

But there is a small consistent group of about a dozen hardcore members who do show up for public events. The LWK does benefit from its particularly incendiary rhetoric which whips up media publicity and a particularly extremist sub-set of white supremacists, anti-Semites, neo-Nazis and other fringe elements in the far right-wing extremist community who are attracted to the LWK because of their hateful rhetoric. The Loyal White Knights of the KKK include many adherents to neo-Nazi philosophy and they were in a formal alliance with the largest neo-Nazi group in the U.S., the National Socialist Movement (NSM), until a gathering of neo-Nazi’s sponsored by the NSM in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in early November formally expelled Barker’s Loyal White Knights from the coalition of white supremacist organizations..

In addition, the LWK accepts most anyone as a member in exchange for payment of $120 a year in dues, mostly via Pay Pal, according to more than a dozen former LWK members and leaders of other KKK groups. The media publicity such as November’s announcement of a pro Donald Trump “Victory Parade” drives traffic to the LWK website where people can join the group via cyberspace for ‘membership dues’ and other required and encouraged fees. And that money all goes to the self designated Imperial Wizard, Christopher Barker, who lives with his wife Amanda Barker in rural Caswell County, and has been unemployed for many years.

While it might seem obvious, given the theme of Saturday’s scheduled pro-Trump rally, who the LWK supported for president, it isn’t.

The Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, in fact, publicly officially endorsed Hillary Clinton in this year’s presidential campaign.

But they were lying, using the unlikely pledge of support to create a media frenzy, which it did. The primary spokesman for the KKK ‘Clinton for President’ public endorsement was William “Billy” Hagen, who, along with Chris Barker, is the other man in jail accused of stabbing their fellow Klansman in the pre-dawn hours of Saturday morning.

Hagen and Barker’s LWK public declaration of only months ago that his group had endorsed Hillary Clinton was accompanied by their claims of having donated $20,000 to her presidential campaign. That, too, gained widespread media attention. And that, too, was untrue.

“All of the LWK support Hillary. Donald Trump was saying all the right things in the beginning. He is still saying all the right things, but if he really thinks he is going to get Mexico to pay for building a 20-foot wall, he is crazy. Hillary is more looking after our interests and backgrounds. We found out Hillary’s background and we sent $20,000 to her campaign through the Church of the Invisible Empire of the Loyal White Knights,” said LWK West Coast Grand Dragon Billy Hagen–now in the Caswell County jail– in an interview with this reporter earlier this year. “We want Hillary in office. She is a friend of the Klan. That is the position of the entire Loyal White Knights. I am in charge of the West Coast region of the LWK,” Hagen added.

Hagen had gained even more national attention early in 2016 when the LWK was attacked by counter protestors and badly beaten during a Klan rally in an Anaheim, California city park. “I have a fractured wrist in a cast, three broken ribs, a bruised spleen, and a hematoma the size of a tomato over my right heart,” he said during an interview shortly after the February demonstration.

Hagen’s mug shot while being booked today into the Caswell County jail looked like he had a similar bad day on Saturday.

“We want Hillary to be president. Trump is all talk. If he really thinks he is going to be president, he is losing his head. Trump is just another Ross Perot. Hillary is going to stop the open border policy,” Hagen insisted last summer in another interview with this reporter.

In a telephone interview from his North Carolina home in March 2016, LWK Imperial Wizard Barker confirmed his Klan groups support for Clinton. “Yes. We support Hillary for President,” he said before hanging up the phone abruptly.

Former members of the Loyal White Knights said that any talk of supporting Hillary Clinton was an intentional political trick by Barker and the LWK “to deceive people and smear politicians.”

“I remember one time in a telephone conference class Chris Barker said that they were going to endorse Barack Obama to try to get him impeached. Barker said the best way to kill a politicians campaign was to receive an endorsement from the Klan. Honestly, I believe that is what this Hillary endorsement thing is. As far as donating $20,000, that is highly doubtful. As much as I dislike Hillary Clinton this is an attempt to defame her character,” said Trey Gordon, a former Exalted Cyclops–or local leader– for the LWK in Louisiana who left the group in 2015 to devote his efforts to condemning the Klan faction.

In fact, Mr. Barker has not publicly appeared at any public event for over four years. Why? Because the conditions of Barker’s federal parole prohibit him from engaging in any Klan activity. “Part of my federal parole is I can not be involved in any Klan work. I haven’t attended a (Klan) rally in two years,” he said in an interview last year.

In addition, Christopher Eugene Barker is an undercover informant for the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, after being arrested by the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, and Firearms in 2012 on charges of possession of a weapon by a convicted felon–which carries a mandatory 10 years minimum in a federal prison. From his Forsyth County, North Carolina jail cell at that time in August 2012, where Barker was booked in as a “federal inmate”, he called the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force and offered to cooperate in exchange for being allowed out of jail. After six days in a county jail, a federal judge ruled in a court sealed hearing that Barker be released to the FBI JTTF.

After the mass murder of nine God-fearing black church goers in South Carolina in June 2015, Barker’s telephone voice mail message had his voice saying “The KKK would like to say hail victory to the young warrior Dylan S. Roof, who did what the bible told him to do, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. They have spilled our blood for too long. It is about time someone spilled theirs.”

Barker has a criminal record that includes more than 40 arrests in North Carolina alone, according to law enforcement documents that span over at least 18 years and include numerous felonies. These include possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, forgery, larceny, possession of stolen goods, malicious arson, assault on a female, and at least 5 driving under the influence of alcohol charges. He was arrested last year again for ‘driving while impaired’ in Caswell County.

But Chris Barker has never spent more than a few nights in jail, according to court records.

Officials from his home Rockingham county in North Carolina long ago had enough of Mr. Barker.

“We have long been aware of Chris Barker. We have charged Barker over the years with forgery, assault with a deadly weapon, making threats, an arson charge, an assault on a female in 2011 and again in 2014, DWI in 07 and 09 and 04, possession of stolen goods, larceny, two charges of possession of a stolen weapon, and an open container charge last month. And that is just in Rockingham County,” said Craig Blitzer, the Rockingham County, North Carolina District Attorney in an interview.

“We have arrested Barker many times, but as for his Klan, we haven’t seen anyone else but him,” said Lieutenant Richie Jeffries of the Eden, North Carolina police department, the small town where Barker lived until recently. “We don’t know of any other people from here who are members of his group. It is just a website,” said Jeffries.

On Christmas eve, 2008, Barker was arrested for malicious arson for trying to burn the house down of Tony Davis of Eden, N.C. and held on $100,000 bond at the Rockingham County jail, according to documents and the Rockingham County Fire Marshal’s office in an interview.

Imperial Wizard Barker accused Mr. Davis of having an affair with his wife, Amanda Barker–the Loyal White Knights of the KKK number two–and burned Davis’s house down using a  petroleum accelerant, according to the Rockingham, North Carolina Fire Marshal in an interview.

“We found his electronic discount card–the kind you swipe at the cash register at Wal-Mart each time you buy something–at the fire scene, which traced back to Barker,” said Rockingham County Fire Marshall Robert Cardwell in an interview.

“When we went to talk to him, he was so drunk we couldn’t understand half of what he was saying. He was drinking beer through the whole interview.”

The Fire Marshall said that Barker accused the man who lived in the house of having an affair with his wife. ” I think Mr. Barker has a problem with alcohol,” he said.

The charges were dismissed in April of 2009 after “the prosecuting witness failed to appear”, according to the Rockingham County Court clerk, who noted in an interview that the “prosecuting witness had pending charges against him”. The resident of the home, Tony Davis, is a career criminal now incarcerated in Florida.

Barker has been convicted several times for driving while drunk. In June of 2015, he plead guilty to alcohol related charges–at least his 6th alcohol related arrest.

In 2011, Barker was charged with assault on his wife, Amanda Barker, but those charges, too, were dismissed “when the prosecuting witness failed to appear,” said the Rockingham County court clerk in an interview. She added that the “prosecutor asked for a motion of continuance, but it was denied by the judge so the charges were dropped.”

“Both Amanda and Chris fired guns at each other inside their trailer,” said one KKK leader. “Amanda then called the cops.” But she didn’t show up in court. In 2014, Amanda Barker filed another charge of “assault against a female” against her husband, according to the Rockingham County District Attorney, Craig Blitzer, in an interview. Chris Barker has also been arrested at least twice for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, a federal charge that carries a ten-year mandatory minimum jail sentence.

But several other Ku Klux Klan leaders, former members of the LWK, law enforcement sources, and others with direct knowledge of Barker’s work on behalf of U.S. federal law enforcement authorities, have long contended that Barker has been an informant for the U.S FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Barker was arrested on August 7, 2012 by U.S. federal law enforcement authorities, and jailed in Forsyth County, North Carolina. There are no official court records for what he was charged with in North Carolina, only confirmation he was being held as a “Federal Inmate.” His federal arrest court documents have been sealed by the court for years. Shortly after his federal arrest and release from custody six days later, all of his previously available mug shots from his prior arrests, were ordered removed from public access and online, a process not unusual when someone agrees to work as a federal law enforcement confidential informant.

But federal and local law enforcement and Ku Klux Klan sources say Barker was charged under federal laws for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. In 2012, the average sentence length for offenders convicted under this charge was 180 months–or 15 years–in prison.

If an offender has three prior felony convictions–which Mr. Barker had and has–there is a minimum sentence of 15 years without parole under federal sentencing guidelines.

Chris Barker was released from federal custody after six days. According to sources familiar with the case, Barker contacted the FBI on August 10, 2012, told them he had information that he was willing to share in exchange for a deal to stay out of prison, and was released on August 13, 2012.

William “Billy” Hagen, who was arrested Saturday with Barker, also has had a busy year as a lieutenant for Barker.

On February 27, 2016 three people were stabbed during a violent melee at a Ku Klux Klan rally in Anaheim, California. At least one was critically wounded, according to police. 13 people were detained following the violence, including at least seven Klan members, two of whom are accused of stabbings, said Anaheim Police Sergeant Daron Wyatt in an interview at the time.

One of those arrested said his name was William Quigg, the California Grand Dragon—or state chapter head—of the North Carolina based Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. “Quigg” is also the “West Coast King Kleagle” of the LWK—or chief recruiter for the Klan faction.

But “Billy Quigg” is not his real name. It is William “Billy” Hagen, according to other members of the LKW Klan faction, the man arrested for Saturday’s stabbing in Caswell County, North Carolina.

The violence in Anaheim California in February was instigated by anti-Klan counter-protestors, said several eyewitness and police.

As soon as several Klan members arrived at the site of the approved demonstration, they were attacked by a larger contingent of counter-protestors. “As soon as they got out of their vehicle, immediately they were attacked by counter-protesters and this caused a melee down the block,” Anaheim Police Sergeant Daron Wyatt said.

 

 

A black sport utility vehicle pulled up and several KKK men dressed in black uniforms covered in Klan and confederate flag insignia got out and began to unload signs when about 50 counter-protesters attacked them with flying debris and physical assaults. “Three people were stabbed by the fire hydrant,” Darren Simpson, 49, told the Los Angeles Times. “These Klan guys were fighting for their lives.”

The Klan members attempted to get back into the car but it sped off, leaving three of them behind, including the Klan leader William Hagen. The angry mob chased Hagen down the block, yelling “Get out of here! You’re not welcome!”

Grand Dragon of the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan William Hagen was photographed wielding a flag pole flying the American flag in a widely distributed picture taken by the Associated Press.

After I wrote an article on the California incident, Hagen contacted me objecting to being called by the name William Hagen.

William “Billy” Hagen attempted to get me to “correct” my article, insisting his name was “Will Quigg.” It wasn’t. But he did go to some rather amusing acrobatics to insist I mislead my readers.

Mr Hagen aka “Quigg” had just achieved national headlines after his LWK Klan group tried to hold a demonstration in Anaheim, California and Hagen almost got stomped to death by local residents who did not take kindly to his presence (Not without irony, Hagen was rescued by a Jew who got between him and a gaggle of darker complexion youth who nearly killed him). Hagen was seen in excellent photographs defending himself against the mob while he wielded a flag pole flying the American flag.

“My name is Will Quigg, I don’t know where you came up with my name being William Billy Hagen. That’s news to me. This is just a short message to get those misprinted comments straightened out,” he wrote, signing his name as “Will Quigg, CA. Grand Dragon, Church of the invisible Empire, The Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.” Hagen then added “Also, our Imperial Wizard is not a FBI informant. I hope now I have to set the record straight on these issues!!”

So I called Hagen up at his home in California. Audibly in pain, Hagen said “I have a fractured wrist in a cast, three broken ribs, a bruised spleen, and a hematoma the size of a tomato over my right heart.”

And then he continued to insist he was not Hagen, but rather “Quigg.”

I noted that he had identified himself as Billy Hagen in previous conversations; had been identified by several other members of his Klan organization as Billy Hagen; had registered under that name on a cross-country airplane flight from Los Angeles to Greensboro, North Carolina (which requires legal identification and frowns upon using fake aliases) to attend a high-profile Klan demonstration in support of the white youth who had just murdered nine God-fearing black church parishioners in South Carolina; and was detained by Anaheim, California police under the name Billy Hagen earlier that month, Hagen wanted to change the subject, and started digging the hole he was in deeper.

He told me that Hagen was “my roommate’s name. I use his name when I do things in public.”

I suggested to him that giving law enforcement (when placed under arrest) or federal aviation officials from the Transportation Safety Administration (when boarding a commercial airliner) false names was pretty clearly against the rules and constituted a felony, but said I would be happy to contact them to verify his claims regarding his true identity if he insisted. Hagen again wanted to change the subject.

He wanted to talk about how his Loyal White Knights of the KKK had endorsed Hillary Clinton for President.

 

 

The purported pro-Trump Klan rally is far from the first time Barker has used the international media to give both credence and exposure to his message.

After the massacre of black churchgoers in South Carolina in 2015, dozens of media outfits did phone interviews with “South Carolina Grand Dragon Robert Jones”, and “Imperial Klaitrop James Spears”.

Dylann Roof is a “young warrior” who was “heading in the right direction; wrong target,” the Charleston, South Carolina Post and Courier newspaper quoted ‘Robert Jones’ saying, who billed himself as the “South Carolina Grand Dragon” for the LWK. “

“Robert Jones, of the Loyal White Knights in North Carolina” told The Daily Beast that his Klan was engaged in a national recruitment drive. “We’re doing this from the East Coast to the West Coast, just to let people know the Klan’s in their community,” Robert Jones, the grand dragon of the hate group they say is based in Pelham, N.C was quoted saying. “Especially with all the stuff that’s in the news—in South Carolina they’re wanting to take the Confederate flag down.”

To an Illinois newspaper, “Spears declined to say which town in the Realm of South Carolina he operates out of and also would not disclose the location of the Klan’s New Lenox (Illinois) headquarters. ‘It’s a secret,’ he said. ‘We’re the invisible empire. That’s our nickname.’” Spears said he “felt sorry for the boy,” speaking of the Charleston, South Carolina church shooter Dylann Roof. “I think he picked the wrong target. A better target for him would have been these gang-bangers, running around rapping, raping and stealing.”

The problem is neither Spears or Jones actually exist. Both ‘Robert Jones’ and ‘James Spears’ are, in truth, the same person—37-year-old Chris ‘Christopher Eugene’ Barker of East Yanceyville, North Carolina.

“Always remember: If it ain’t white, it ain’t right,” Barker signs off on his current automated website message on the 1-800 number hotline of the Loyal White Knights of the KKK.

The Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan were created by Chris Barker in April 2012, after he was expelled from or left under acrimonious circumstances at least 4 other Ku Klux Klan groups in the previous year.

After these internecine squabbles between Barker and other Klan groups, including the Virginia-based Rebel Brigade of the Knights of the KKK, the Missouri-based Traditionalist American Knights of the KKK, the West Virginia Original Knight Riders of the KKK, the Alabama-based United Klans of America, the Tennessee White Knights, and the Virginia-based Virgil’s White Knights of the KKK, Chris Barker formed his own KKK group on the internet, the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

“Chris Barker is a drunk, a thief, a liar, and hate filled cowardly lunatic who enlists people to do what he himself doesn’t have the guts to do with his inflammatory public rallies which he doesn’t attend but sits in the comfort of his own home while putting his members in danger,” said the Imperial Wizard of the Tradtionalist American Knights of the KKK, Frank Ancona, whose Klan is headquartered in Missouri. “He is the stereotypical Klansman portrayed by the media. But for Barker, it is all true.”

“Barker is a piece of crap. He is a fake and a liar,” said JB Elmore, a KKK ‘Imperial Giant’–the highest rank accorded in the Klan–of Virgil’s White Knights of the KKK, who was once designated the “most dangerous white separatist in America”, in an interview. “Chris Barker is not a Klansman. I don’t talk to the media. I wouldn’t be talking to you, but you asked me about Barker and I will talk all night about him. He is a drunk and a federal agent.”

“Barker has been kicked out of every Klan he has tried to join,” said the Imperial Wizard of Virgil’s White Knights of the KKK. “He is a real problem. We don’t allow him or his Klan to attend any of our events.”

“They are inciting the public over a hot issue to gain publicity and attract paying members over the internet. Chris Barker and the LWK invented himself and his Klan on lies built on lies. He has conned the media into believing he is something he is not,” said JB Elmore of Virgil’s White Knights of the KKK.

“”Barker doesn’t help our cause. Everything he touches there is destruction,” said Bradley Jenkins, the Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America in an interview last year. “This man is perpetuating himself as a Klansman, when he is an impostor.”

“God said you should always find something good to say about someone, but I don’t think God ever met Chris Barker,” said Bill Barker, no relation to Chris Barker, the Imperial Wizard of the Virginia based Rebel Brigades of the KKK.