Hitler Idaho by Charles Krafft.
"Hitler Idaho" by Charles Krafft. FINE ARTS MUSEUMS OF SAN FRANCISCO

Patrik Hermansson, a "young, gay, anti-racist activist from Sweden," spent a year undercover in America's alt-right circles, which he writes about for Hope Not Hate. Part of his journey involved a trip to Seattle:

The day before the forum I’m invited to an exclusive barbecue in a suburb of Seattle at the house of Charles Krafft, the infamous Nazi ceramicist. His home is a temple to National Socialism. Swastikas cover the walls and Mein Kampf sits on the bookshelf, alongside works by Mussolini, Evola and WW2 paraphernalia.

Most of the people there are men between 17 and 25 and most carry guns. “We’re all about the 14 words” a guy called Kato tells me when I ask about Cascadia, referencing the infamous white supremacist slogan (“We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”). “Whites are going to be a minority in this country by 2040,” he adds before telling me about the impending “race war."

There is much, much more.

Hermansson isn't the first person to expose Krafft's allegiance to the Nazis. In fact, that would be The Stranger's former art critic Jen Graves, who broke the story in 2013. It's a fascinating, disturbing tale, and you can read it here.

As part of his project, Hermansson also interviewed Seattle-based white nationalist Greg Johnson. Posing as a graduate student writing a thesis on "political oppression of the right-wing," Hermansson can be seen speaking with Johnson in a surreptitiously recorded video published by the New York Times. Johnson boasts of seeing a recent rise in traffic to the website for Counter Currents Publishing, a white nationalist imprint for which he serves as editor-in-chief. He also expresses his support for ethnostates, saying he believes society should "expel" Jews to Israel.

Johnson invited Hermansson to the Northwest Forum, a Puget Sound Area convention for white nationalists and white supremacists that Johnson organizes. It was there that Hermansson spoke with Krafft.

In a post published on the Counter Currents website today, Johnson called Hermansson a "rat" and apologized to the "30-odd" people who attended the Northwest Forum.