Harold Armstead Covington (September 14, 1953 – July 14, 2018) was an American neo-Nazi activist and writer. He was a controversial figure even within the neo-Nazi movement; academic Jeffrey Kaplan described him as having "always raised more ire than virtually anyone in the fissiparous world of American National Socialism".
After high school he joined the United States Army and joined the neo-Nazi group the National Socialist White People's Party (NSWPP). After being discharged from the army, Covington moved to South Africa, then Rhodesia, before being deported from Rhodesia for harassing members of a Jewish congregation. Upon his return to America, he joined the National Socialist Party of America (NSPA), becoming its leader. Following the Greensboro massacre that involved the NSPA, Covington was accused by both the Nazis and the Communists involved of being involved and possibly having informed on the far-right to escape consequences, which he denied. He ran for a number of local political positions in the 1970s, but did not achieve electoral success. In 1980, he ran for attorney general of North Carolina, receiving 56,000 votes in the Republican primary, over 43% of the vote.
In his later years, he advocated the creation of a white ethnostate in the Pacific Northwest and was the founder of the Northwest Front (NF), a white separatist political movement that sought to establish a new nation to that effect. He wrote and self-published several fiction novels to mixed reception within the white nationalist movement.
Early life
Harold Armstead Covington was born on September 14, 1953, in Burlington, North Carolina, the eldest of three brothers. His father, Forrest Covington, was a folk singer and employee of Western Electric. Both of his parents were traditional conservatives.
He was the grandson of A. B. Glass, the founder of the Greensboro Dixie Bedding Company; from this company Covington received a large inheritance. His younger brother Ben Covington later disavowed him and his views, and said several of his claims about his life were made up. According to Ben Covington, Covington's beliefs devastated their parents. In 1980, Covington said his father had not spoken to him in 8 years.
He attended Chapel Hill High School. His racist views were largely born out of his experiences with racial integration in school in the 1960s, which he described in negative terms. He was described by teachers as a gifted student; he won a place at the annual Governor's School for Gifted Boys program in Winston-Salem, one of 400 students annually selected in the state. There, he studied drama. He briefly wrote for his high school's newspaper in an activities column, but was kicked off shortly after for using it to express his complaints, particularly about the school's black students.
Political activities Covington was a contentious figure on the far-right, and would often take the blame for many negative events that befell the movement. Academic Jeffrey Kaplan described him as having "always raised more ire than virtually anyone in the fissiparous world of American National Socialism", while Stephen E. Atkins noted that "despite his long career as a neo-Nazi, Covington is not a popular figure in the movement", attributing this to his conflicts with other well known white supremacists. Similarly, the Southern Poverty Law Center said that Covington had launched "endless attacks on most of the leaders of the extreme right, to the point where he is today almost totally isolated from the organizations that make up the white supremacist movement". Other neo-Nazis nicknamed him "Weird Harold". Separately he was accused by other neo-Nazis of secretly being Jewish, or gay.
NSWPP, South Africa, and Rhodesia In 1971, he graduated from high school and joined the United States Army. He joined the Franklin Road chapter of the National Socialist White People's Party (NSWPP) the next year. While stationed at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii, he passed out neo-Nazi propaganda. He was posted to its Californian branch in El Monte, California, where he was led by local leader Joseph Tommasi. Initially, the NSWPP's leader, Matt Koehl, seeing Covington as a quality propagandist, moved him to the party's headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, to edit their White Power periodical. Covington grew to despise Koehl and became one of his foremost in-movement enemies. Numerous other neo-Nazis also hated Koehl; what set Covington apart from the rest was the sheer extent of his loathing, which would persist for the rest of his life, and extended to accusing him over the decades of homosexuality, financial impropriety, and being involved in the murder of the NSWPP's original founder, George Lincoln Rockwell.
He was honorably discharged from the army two years after joining due to his racist activities; the army psychiatrist deemed him as having paranoid personality disorder. After his discharge from the U.S. Army, he moved to Johannesburg in South Africa in December 1973, where he worked as a payroll clerk, before moving later to Bulawayo, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Covington was a founding member of the Rhodesian White People's Party and later claimed to have served in the Rhodesian Army as a mercenary. According to his son and official records he only worked as a filing clerk for a brief time, and according to the Rhodesian government had never served in their army. He was deported from Rhodesia in early 1976 due to his racism. This came after Covington sent hostile letters to the Bulawayo Hebrew Congregation that caused them to fear for their safety. After leaving the NSWPP, he affiliated with George Dietz, and then returned to his home state of North Carolina.
National Socialist Party of America
Covington moved to Raleigh, North Carolina and joined the National Socialist Party of America, then rising in popularity among the neo-Nazi movement. The party was led by Frank Collin, and Covington rose quickly in the organization's ranks, to its leadership. Covington tried to build the party up in North Carolina. Jeffrey Kaplan described his involvement in the NSPA as "one of the greatest disasters of Covington’s long career—and that is saying much, given Covington’s unfortunate organizational history." The North Carolinan branch of the NSPA was known for its unusual array of members, who Covington tried to organize, to no avail. While involved in the NSPA in the late 1970s, Covington ran for a variety of local political positions in Raleigh, including the city council and the role of mayor. He also ran for state senate; all of his electoral efforts were unsuccessful. At this time he had no job and simply took what money he needed from party finances, though he claimed he also made money writing fiction under a pseudonym.
He was involved in the Greensboro massacre of 1979, which killed five members of the Communist Workers' Party. While it was a conflict between the CWP and the Ku Klux Klan, two of the sixteen accused were also NSPA members. Despite being a key organizer of the demonstration that led to the massacre and a leader of the NSPA, Covington was not actually present at the event. Additionally, the violence was likely kicked off by a federal informant who Covington was accused of having brought to the group. There is a widespread belief among the neo-Nazi movement that Covington escaped consequences for his involvement in Greensboro by informing on them. The Federal Bureau of Investigation later attempted to track him down so he could disprove allegations made by the Nazis and the Communists involved in the massacre that he was a CIA or FBI operative. The FBI failed to find him, having lost his trail after tracking him to South Africa. Covington denied that he was an informant.
In 1980, while a leader of the National Socialist Party of America, he ran for a primary election for the Republican nomination for candidates for attorney general of North Carolina. He was disavowed by the Republican state leadership and only ran a marginal campaign, though attracted a decent amount of media attention; his campaign promise was "less law and more justice". Despite losing the primary, he won 56,000 votes with 43% of the total. This was a far better performance than both Covington and Republican state leaders had expected, and Covington received national media attention as a result. Speaking with the Associated Press, Covington said that the Republican party was full of "closet Nazis" and that "there are 56,000 people in this state who are either Nazis or fools". That year, he sponsored a neo-Nazi gathering called Hitlerfest.
Afterwards, members of the North Carolinan NSPA branch, in what was probably an effort to distract from Greensboro, plotted to bomb a shopping center. This was probably planned without Covington knowing, and he was horrified upon learning, fearing white people would be harmed. The plot was thwarted due to the high rate of infiltration by informants, which only furthered the rumor that Covington himself was an informant. At the same time, it was revealed that Frank Collin was half-Jewish; several neo-Nazis, including Covington, then searched Collin's home, whereupon they found a collection of homosexual child pornography. Covington and several other neo-Nazis engineered a coup and turned Collin over to the police, and he was sentenced to several years in prison. Unlike other neo-Nazis, Covington refused to accept that Collin was partially of Jewish descent. Covington became leader of the NSPA in 1980, but became embroiled in a leadership dispute and was forced to resign in April 1981, replaced as leader by Michael Allen. 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".
International activity Faced with criticism, in 1982 he fled the country. He traveled throughout several countries for the next five years, living for a time in Ireland, the United Kingdom, and South Africa. He married an Irish woman and got dual citizenship there, before returning to the United States in 1987. That year, his book, The March Up Country, was published by the neo-Nazi book publisher Liberty Bell Publications. In 1988, he established in Raleigh the Confederate National Congress (CNC), a white supremacist group pledging allegiance to the confederacy, which later affiliated with the KKK.
In the late 1980s, Covington was a neighbor and friend of North Carolinian white supremacist and Church of the Creator member William White Williams; they collaborated in an effort to broadcast Tom Metzger's white supremacist public-access show Race and Reason. However, Covington had a lengthy feud with the COTC and its leader Ben Klassen, which extended into a feud with Williams; Covington accused Williams of only being out for Klassen's money. The COTC's paper Racial Loyalty issued harsh criticisms of Covington, (alleging that he was "a government agent, a closet rabbi, an agent provocateur of the Greensboro Massacre, an ADL informant, and a Mossad agent") and Covington sued the COTC, Klassen, and Williams for libel, though Covington later dropped the case. Williams and Klassen then got Covington fired from his job. Covington claimed that Williams disguised himself as an FBI agent and contacted his employer, saying the Jewish Defense League had a plot to assassinate Covington. According to the local newspaper The News & Observer, Covington afterwards became Williams's "longtime rival".