The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia ricin suspect a disturbing sign of the times
One example of a rising tide of white nationalism shambled into a federal district courtroom in Gainesville Wednesday.
William Christopher Gibbs wore shackles, orange Crocs and a dirty, mustard-yellow jumpsuit with “INMATE” stenciled on back. He had an unruly shock of curly blond hair and an unshaven look that gave cover to an attempted mustache.
The 27-year-old Fannin County resident is a specimen of a latent strain of racist belief that many Georgians were convinced was part of the state’s past rather than a newly loud aspect of its present.
Gibbs was arrested last month when police say he turned up in a hospital emergency room for ricin exposure. He is charged with possession of an illegal biological agent and faces years in federal prison, if convicted.
He entered a not guilty plea before U.S. Magistrate Judge J. Clay Fuller.
But his social media footprints on white extremist forums show a man on the edge of society. According to posts on a racist website, Gibbs was an adherent of the Creativity Movement, a pseudo-religious movement that posits whites as superior to other races.
Writing last August on a forum about the Black Lives Matter protests, Gibbs wrote, “They expect the whole world out of playing the pity card . ... Their race is nothing but a problem.”
Gibbs was less haughty Wednesday sitting quietly next to Natasha Perdew Silas, a federal public defender, and coincidentally, a black woman. Instead of backing up his online swagger, Gibbs listened intently as Silas walked him through financial forms demonstrating his lack of wherewithal that entitles him to her services. Then she went to work for him.
“You have some discovery for me?” Silas said, asking the federal prosecutor for the evidence against Gibbs. “I don’t see a lab report.”
“I don’t want your help,” Gibbs failed to say, nor did he repeat the slur he tossed about online.
Silas, who received her undergraduate degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her law degree from the University of Virginia, is regarded among her colleagues as an excellent attorney.
“He seems like a mannerable young man,” she said of Gibbs a few moments after he shuffled off, flanked by U.S. Marshals.
A troubling trend
At the time of his arrest, Gibbs was staying with his grandparents in Morganton, a town of about 300 near Blue Ridge. Morganton is so small that the local pastor and the mayor are found in the same person, Mike England.
England said he was unaware of Gibb’s association with white supremacy, but he wasn’t shocked. He said he encounters a lot of racism in his community.
When he wrote an editorial in the local newspaper criticizing “all these church deacons in this area that use the n-word like it’s common language,” England said he received a membership card in the mail from a white supremacist compound in nearby Epworth. He promptly burned the card.
“I have to give them credit for their wit,” he said. “Every year now I get an invite to their annual
fundraising picnic to say the blessing.”
Gibbs is so marginal that it’s tempting to write him off as a loner. But Georgia has seen too much of this type of behavior lately to simply ignore it.
In January, a group of white extremists gathered in a metro Atlanta hotel for what they dubbed the Atlanta Forum, a name perhaps derived from a 2015 gathering of neo-Nazis in the United Kingdom dubbed the London Forum. The event cross-pollinated alt-right activists with neo-Confederates for a kind of bull session of hatred.
Those involved cheered the event as a “rousing success,” in part because it happened at all.
According to a recap of the forum on a podcast aimed at white nationalist activists, one organizer said the group kept a low profile, blending in with other groups, such as a chiropractic convention happening at the same time.
They were giddy in the afterglow of the event.
“We should’ve encouraged everyone to lie and say we were with the chiropractor meeting so that if we got caught saying something ... they would think all the chiropractors are racists,” one of the organizers giggled. “That would’ve been great.”
Supremacists see turning tide
There is more. In February, a business owner in Dahlonega ramped up her spat with the city over a development issue by unfurling a Ku Klux Klan flag and banner over one of her buildings. The sight drew immediate protest from downtown denizens, but it also drew appreciation from some who apparently had been waiting for just this moment.
One was Chester Doles, a former leader in the racist National Alliance who became a cause célèbre in white nationalist circles when he pleaded guilty to an illegal weapons charge in 2004 and was sentenced to several years in federal prison. Speaking to a Washington Post reporter, Doles said he sees the tide turning, in part because of the election of Donald Trump.
“In the last 50 years, I didn’t think we had the votes to elect a governor, much less a president,” Doles said. “And yet here we are today.”
This resurgence predates the president. The organizers of the Atlanta Forum seem to date their own renaissance to the 2015 shooting of black congregants in a Charleston, S.C., church by white supremacist Dylann Roof and the backlash it created against Confederate symbolism.
And just this week, the Augusta-based Community Foundation for the Central Savannah River Area acknowledged its role in donations funneled to white nationalist Richard Spencer’s National Policy Institute. The foundation was Spencer’s largest single contributor between 2013 and 2015.
The foundation is a donor-directed fund, meaning donors give the fund money and direct where it goes. The foundation gave Spencer’s group at least $25,000. Fund officials said they have severed ties to Spencer; they would not reveal the original source of the donations.
As for Gibbs, he remains behind bars pending trial or a plea deal. Fortunately for him, he has able representation paid for by you and me.
As AJC Watchdog, I’ll be writing about public officials, good governance and the way your tax dollars are spent. Help me out. What needs exposing in your community? Contact me at cjoyner@ajc.com.