chapter who, in 1979, murdered five anti-Klan protesters in what became known as the Greensboro Massacre. Covington would later boast of “greasing Communists” in Greensboro even though, as usual, he never participated in any fighting. Fighting, it would seem, was for other people.

But that didn’t stop him from lying about himself in order to project an image of a fighter. In a 2008 interview with the Southern Poverty Law Center, Harold’s brother Ben Covington said that Harold exaggerated details about his time in Rhodesia. “In different blogs and writings, he was always bragging, ‘Oh, I was a mercenary in Rhodesia and I went out and did all this fighting,'” Ben said.

This was entirely typical of Harold. He even lied about a grade school fight that he turned intohis Neo-Nazi origin story. According to Ben, Harold would tell “a story about when he had his great racial epiphany,” which was when two or three black students cornered him in the bathroom. “According to him, the black kids were up to thuggery and he, bravely, of course, grabbed a Pepsi bottle, smashed it, and fought his way out, bloodying his foes and covering himself in glory,” Ben told the SPLC.

“He learned from this, of course, that he could stand up righteously and defend himself as a free white man.”

In reality, Harold, when confronted by these students after “mouthing off” to them in the school courtyard, never smashed a bottle and fought back. Instead he urinated in his pants, forcing their parents to pick him up from school.