Neo-Nazi cheers on Oregon militants: 'What Dylann Roof did was a hissy fit -- this is not'

The leader of a white separatist group that wants to create a "white utopia" in the Pacific Northwest is cheering from the sidelines as out-of-state militants try to shake off federal control of public lands at an Oregon wildlife refuge.

"Looks like someone may have decided to start the revolution without us," wrote Harold Covington, leader of the racist Northwest Front group, shortly after a group of self-styled militiamen took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

Covington is a longtime neo-Nazi propagandist who hosts the Radio Free Northwest podcast and also publishes occult science-fiction novels, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

He also longs to expel non-whites from states such as Idaho, Oregon and Washington to establish a racist enclave for himself and other "Aryan" men and women.

Oregon was admitted to the Union, in 1859, with a voter-approved constitution that banned slavery but also excluded free blacks from living in the state.

Covington's influence is questionable, but his ideas reached accused Charleston gunman Dylann Roof -- who wrote about the Northwest Front in his "manifesto."

Northwest Front, like other white separatist groups, is founded on the "14 words" of white nationalist David Lane: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children."

There are no documented ties between the Malheur militants and organized white supremacist groups, although a self-proclaimed member of an Arizona Ku Klux Klan group claims he helped organize an anti-Muslim rally with participant Jon Ritzheimer.

Even so, Covington praised the militants from afar and called on his own followers to take inspiration from their anti-government actions.

"What Dylann Roof did was a hissy fit. This is not," Covington wrote Monday. "There is in fact a worthy cause here, a legitimate casus belli. That in itself is a rarity worth respecting."

Watch this interview with Covington explaining his dream of a racist enclave: