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Under a hot, cloud-filled sky at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, the boys are slapping along in their Birkenstocks, and the girls are skipping along in their frilly
sundresses, and on the second floor of the F.W. Olin Building, in Room 213, eight kids are listening to German teacher Erika Scavillo lecture on the deeply disturbing movie they will see in
a few minutes. It’s called _The Inheritors_, and it’s about the neo-Nazi movement in Germany, which, says _Frau_ Scavillo, is illegal but which flourishes nonetheless, as it does in other
countries, most notably Sweden and the United States. Listening to this, one of _Frau_ Scavillo’s students shifts in his seat. The movie rolls. It has lots of violence (neo-Nazis beating the
crap out of people) and lots of sex (neo-Nazis getting it on in near-NC-17 fashion). In the middle of one torrid episode, _Frau_ Scavillo stops the film and says, “Should I fast-forward?”
The students giggle, slightly embarrassed, all of them except the kid sitting in the second tier of desks. He’s different from the rest. He’s got a long black ponytail, scruffy chin whiskers
and an odd push-broom mustache. He wears a black T-shirt, black steel-toe-type boots and black military-style trousers. And right now, he doesn’t look like he’s feeling much of anything
about the movie or the class; or if he is, he’s not letting on. He is a twenty-year-old from Massachusetts who has attended Wofford for three years. In that time, he’s never gone to a
Wofford frat party and gotten drunk or gone to a Wofford football game to cheer on the Terriers. On campus, he almost always is alone. He has a 3.8 grade-point average and, unlike
more-typical Wofford students, he rarely skips out on his classes, and he turns in his papers on time. As it happens, he is also the founding leader of a neo-Nazi organization called the
Knights of Freedom, which in the past year has become a major presence in the world of neo-Nazis and those who oppose them. The student’s name is Davis Wolfgang Hawke. That’s his legal name
and the name by which he is known at Wofford College. But it’s not his only name. To his parents, for instance, he is and always will be Andrew Britt Greenbaum, the name given to him when he
was born; and among his followers in KOF, he’s got to be called Commander Bo Decker or Commander Decker or simply the Commander, though never simply Bo. EDITOR’S PICKS A bell rings, ending
class, the movie to be finished next time. The Commander strides out of the room and down a hall, neo-Nazi business on his mind. But he doesn’t get very far. Two men dressed in late-model
suits lurch into his path and identify themselves as cops. The one wearing a Snoopy tie is Detective Sgt. Richard Banks. “Are you associated with the Knights of Freedom?” Banks asks. The
Commander takes a moment. “I am.” “If you wouldn’t mind,” says Banks, “I’d like to talk with you.” “What’s this about, anyway?” “Your activities,” says Banks, gloomily. The Commander sighs,
agrees to meet Banks later and hustles over to Wofford’s campus-life building, with its pool tables, its Fruitopia and Lance cracker machines, its signs on the walls (ZTA LOVES GREEK WEEK!)
and its cafeteria, featuring the chicken-party sandwiches that the Commander can’t get enough of. On the way, he passes groups of kids who give him a casual eye. These kids all look alike:
blond hair, blue eyes, JanSport backpacks, Nikes, soft, childish. They drive the same kinds of cars: Mercedes, BMWs, Toyota Land Cruisers. They will go on to the same kinds of careers,
becoming doctors (well, OK, dentists) and nurses, attorneys and judges, CEOs and CFOs of smallish companies, propelled forward by a four years of life at Wofford, not a top-notch private
college but a very good one nonetheless, SAT verbal average 582, SAT math average 591, $20,000 per year, hopefully fulfilling the college’s primary mission as stated in the official
handbook: that its students, each and every one of them, “be challenged to a common search for truth and freedom, wherever that search may lead, and in which each person may become aware of
his or her own individual worth….” Meanwhile, the Commander has other dreams. Until a year ago, Commander Decker and his Knights of Freedom were little more than bit players in the neo-Nazi
world. He formed the group in 1996, while still a high school senior living at home in the affluent Boston suburb of Westwood. For a while, he distributed hate literature on street corners
in some of the area’s blue-collar neighborhoods, but that just wasn’t making it. After graduation, he left Massachusetts – “It’s a very liberal state. It’s a very Jewish state. It’s a very
black state. There’s nothing there for me” – for South Carolina. He thought his views might find a friendlier audience there – and he knew for a fact that its gun laws were friendlier. Two
years passed, during which he made little headway. Then, in August 1998, while on summer vacation, he taught himself HTML, designed a Web site and put it up on the Internet. RELATED