Putting Things in Perspective For Our Neo-nazi Friends

You know that you're on the lowest rung of the social acceptability ladder when even outlaw biker gangs don't want to demean themselves to be seen with you.

The following excerpt is found in The Bandido Massacre by Peter Edwards (also author of One Dead Indian which is about the death of Dudley George):

Chapter 6: No Surrender Crew reads as follows:

Despite Weiner [Kellestine's] strange and violent ways, Boxer [Muscedere - head of the Canadian Bandidos] wasn't about to abandon the man who had brought him into the outlaw biker fold. During Kellestine's frequent stays behind bars, Boxer would pass a hat for donations to help pay the mortgage and utilities at Weiner's farm. Others in the club grumbled that they weren't entitled to such largesse when they were in custody, but they didn't dare challenge Boxer on it, more out of respect for his hard knuckles than for Weiner's financial well-being. For his part, no one gave more to Kellestine than Boxer, so he didn't see why his other brothers shouldn't help out too.

As Boxer assumed the Bandidos' top Canadian post, he found he was always defending his old friend to other members. There was the embarrassment about the time that Weiner crashed a gay pride parade in London, flanked by white supremacists with shaved heads and black T-shirts with a clenched white fist logo on their backs. It was a public display by the Bikers Against Pedophiles group founded by Concrete Dave Weiche, the biker son of local Nazi Martin Weiche. In a symbolic message that only he could understand, Kellestine waved a Confederate flag in front of the news cameras and made a great show of moral rectitude. Toronto-area clubmates shuddered at the unseemly media freak show of Kellestine attempting to mock gays. There is an understanding that a one percenter club shouldn't get involved in any political cause, unless it was something that directly affects them, like motorcycle helmet laws. The idea is that they are supposed to be freedom-loving rebels, not bigots who try to impose their values on others. The Greater Toronto Area Bandidos worried that things like the Pride Parade debacle only destroyed whatever mystique they might have built up, and would inevitably make them targets of jokes themselves. "It makes you look like small-town hillbillies," one former Toronto area Bandido grumbled. "If you keep your mouth shut, you keep some mystique." Boxer also veered away from gay-bashing, just as he made it clear he wasn't a racist or anti-Semite. For someone who looked like a good old boy, he could be surprisingly liberal and tolerant. "They all have a mother," Boxer told a club friend. "People are who they are. They just have to be given respect. Look at how people look at us."

Keep this in mind as the Northern Alliance show up to protest the Pride Parade in London this July. Even the Bandidos want nothing to do with them.