Early Life
Lane was born as the third of four siblings in Woden, Iowa; he had a brother and two sisters. His father was an alcoholic migrant worker who was physically abusive towards his wife and children. David would later claim that his father forced his mother to engage in prostitution so he could obtain "booze money", and that his older brother was rendered with permanent deafness as a result of a "beating gone awry". When David was four years old, his father abandoned his family. In 1944, his older brother was arrested after searching for food in a neighbor's trash bins, and he and his sisters were placed in foster care. Lane was soon adopted by a traveling Lutheran minister, which resulted in Lane's being separated from his two sisters. Lane has described his adoptive father as a "doctrinaire fundamentalist from the old school". Bored with endless hours of church services, Lane rejected Christianity and originally shared relatively pagan beliefs. Lane claims that he first noticed the beauty of the Caucasian race after befriending a blonde-haired girl in first grade whom he was attracted to. Lane has also stated that while he reenacted battles with his foster brother as a child, he would portray a Nazi stormtrooper while his brother portrayed an American soldier.
Travelling across Midwestern United States with his adoptive family, Lane finally settled in Aurora, Colorado, where he attended Hinkley High School. Originally aspiring to become a golf professional, Lane worked as real estate broker until his license was revoked because, he "wouldn't sell homes to coloreds in white neighborhoods."
Lane was a member of the John Birch Society before joining the Ku Klux Klan, becoming the organizer of the Denver unit of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in 1979. In late 1981, Lane became Colorado State Organizer of Aryan Nations.
Lane met Robert Jay Mathews in July 1983 at the Aryan Nations world congress. On September 22, 1983, Lane was among the nine founding members to be sworn into The Order, a group which dedicated itself to delivering "our people from the Jew and bring total victory to the Aryan race." The Order was accused of stealing over $4.1 million in armored car hijackings, killing two people, detonating bombs, counterfeiting money, organizing militaristic training camps and carrying out numerous other crimes with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the United States government.
Read more about this topic: David Lane (white Nationalist)
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