White Aryan Resistance

The White Aryan Resistance (commonly known by the acronym WAR) was founded in 1983 by Tom Metzger, a television repairman from Fallbrook, California. He formed WAR to promote both his anti-Semitic, racist views and a philosophy he calls the “third force position,” a form of labor-oriented national socialism based on the ideology of Otto and Gregor Strasser, two brothers who led a leftist wing of the German National Socialist movement in the 1920s.

Prior to the establishment of WAR, Metzger's background included membership in several right-wing extremist groups. During the 1960s, he was a member of the John Birch Society. In 1975, Metzger joined David Duke's Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and became California's Grand Dragon. During this same time, he was ordained as ...