What We Know About the Sikh Temple Shooting in Wisconsin So Far
An unnamed US defense official says that Page is a 40-year-old Army veteran who was honorably discharged in 1998 after six years of service, Bloomberg reports. Page served as a Hawk missile repairman and a “psychological operations specialist.” The LA Times reports that Page’s discharge was not honorable, but a lower administrative level, and that he was reduced in rank from sergeant to specialist before leaving the Army—both moves that may reflect a conduct problem at the end of his service.
More on Page’s racist tattoos, and the chilling interview he gave in 2010.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has identified Page as “a frustrated neo-Nazi who had been the leader of a racist white-power band.” (The frontman of the band End Apathy, named Wade, gave this interview to the white supremacist website Label 56 in 2010.) SPLC also claim to have been tracking Page ever since he tried to buy goods from the neo-Nazi National Alliance in 2000. The National Alliance was led by Dr. William Luther Pierce, the author of the infamous 1978 novel The Turner Diaries. Pierce, who died in 2002, is considered one of the ideological godfathers of the modern American white nationalist movement. Pierce promoted white power music ventures, racist video games, weekly radio addresses, and online forums to advance his organization’s cause.