He shouted a Nazi slogan at television cameras when arrested minutes later. For this, he may be charged with a federal hate crime.

He has a prison record, but had never been convicted of any direct violence. He served three years, mostly in Otisville, N.Y., after pleading guilty to a weapons charge and to sending a threat through the mail. 

He twice ran for office as Frazier Glenn Cross, on an anti-Semitic and white supremacist platform. He tried to get the Federal Elections Commission to give him equal time to share his views. He has a long history of involvement in racist and Neo-Nazi organizations, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Reading what Cross writes is chilling. He mailed a “Declaration of War” to supporters in 1987, calling on “Aryan warriors of The Order” to kill enemies—with a numerical point system for Jews, race traitors, and black people. The writing takes a tone of militant victimhood. He pleaded with the federal government to be left alone and allowed to live in peace, but they would not let him.

Neo-Nazi groups, racist groups, and anti-immigrant groups have been making a bit of a comeback in Europe and Russia, too. They are no joke. Most Americans go about their business, assuming that people share the value of accepting differences, of welcoming the stranger, of getting rid of our own prejudices. We are naive.

Old Specter

The old specter of hatred has been gathering strength. Like Voldemort’s disembodied self in a forest, it has been biding time. It’s been hanging on, in neat country houses with Confederate flags, in pretty mountain towns, in prairies, and in cities. 

The groups, and the ideology, feed on people’s sense of being deprived of something, of being cheated. But it is not our government or a global Jewish conspiracy that is cheating us. I think it is the general deterioration of our culture that gives rise to that sense of grievance. 

Economic dislocations, joblessness, consumerism, bleak and vulgar art and music, leave people wanting to pin blame. Wanting to fight. Ready to smash something or someone. Even a 14-year-old boy and his grandfather, who were two victims of Sunday’s shootings.

Long-Term Grievances

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Cross’s grievances ran deep, and lasted a long time.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), founded in Montgomery, Ala., by lawyer Morris Dees, tracks and exposes hate groups. It tangled with Cross in the 1980s. According to the group, it sued him for running his Ku Klux Klan group, “an illegal paramilitary organization and using intimidation tactics against African-Americans.” Cross went to prison after violating the terms of a settlement with SPLC. 

Almost 30 years later, police said the attacks happened within minutes of one another. At around 1 p.m. Sunday, a gunman shot two people in the parking lot behind the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City. He then drove to a retirement community, Village Shalom, and killed a woman or girl there.

The family of the first two victims released a statement identifying them as Dr. William Lewis Corporon, who died at the scene, and his 14-year-old grandson, Reat Griffin Underwood, who died at Overland Park Regional Medical Center. They were Christians. The family asked for privacy.

Cross lives in a small single-story home outside the southwest Missouri town of Aurora, some 180 miles south of Overland Park. Neighbor Mitzi Owens, 45, said Cross always seemed friendly, but that locals are well aware of his racist leanings.

“It’s crazy that someone can be so likable, but be full of this kind of hate,” she said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.