A New Jersey man who has built a career catering to hate said Monday he will shutter his business in hopes of finding "spiritual peace."
Steven Wiegand, one of the largest purveyors of white supremacist music and merchandise in the country, said he has thought about closing down his website for years but feels more urgency now because he sees the pain it causes "average everyday people" in his community.
"My main focus needs to be healing whatever is going on in myself and between any neighbors. I've spoken to a few. There are plenty of people who are upset, rightfully," Wiegand, who founded Micetrap Distribution more than 20 years ago, said Monday.
It is a remarkable reversal for a man who has spent two decades carving out a leading position in the world of white supremacist merchandise and who throughout the years and as recently as Wednesday has shown no public sign of discomfort with that role.
That image cracked Sunday _ days after the Inquirer published a story about his business and a week after clashes between white supremacists and counter protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia left one woman dead _ when Wiegand posted on his website that he no longer has the "passion and enthusiasm that made the business the success that it became."
"After the recent issues in Charlottesville, Virginia, it has forced me to take a long, deep look into myself," Wiegand wrote. "And after speaking with friends and neighbors, I can no longer be aligned with the violence (from all sides) that I have always been against."
Wiegand founded the business, using a Maple Shade P.O. Box, in the mid 1990s. As competitors disbanded, he took on more customers and grew. Among the items available in his store: Confederate and Nazi flags, a button bearing the image of a lynching and the phrase "Good Night Black Pride," and a vinyl record titled "Ethnic Cleansing: Hitler was Right (More Dead Jews.)"
Devin Burghart, vice president of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights and an expert on the white-power music industry, said Wiegand has been known for selling some of the most "hard-core, violent and racist music in the entire industry."
That has earned Wiegand the attention of both the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Southern Poverty Law Center lists Micetrap as a hate group and at one time named Wiegand one of the 40 "leaders on the radical right" to watch.
Wiegand said last week and again Monday that the groups have him all wrong. He said he has no connection to the white supremacist movement and does not espouse any of their beliefs.
He said he first thought about closing down his business in the early 2000s when he lost a job at a gas station because his bosses found out about the website. But he said he kept going in part because he believed _ and still does _ in people's First Amendment to buy the material he sells.
"It's always been to me, I'm operating my business. Someone orders it. I put it in an envelope. And I send it," Wiegand said. "But at the point a Jewish community center is concerned or the guy down the street and his kids are worried, in this world with how charged up it is and all the violence, it's time to end it."
Wiegand said after the Inquirer article was published, he saw individuals posting about his business on his township's Facebook page and talked to neighbors who he said are "really scared and afraid right now, and that hurts me."
"There was never any intention of harming people, and to me it was just merchandise," he said. "But at this point, I can understand the Holocaust stuff is upsetting or the other things. I just can't do it anymore."
As of Monday morning, he had taken down his online radio station, which streamed hate music 24-hours a day. His online store is still active, and Wiegand said he will fulfill orders that come in before he shuts it down. But he said that will be soon.
"It could be a couple hours," he said. "It could be a couple days."
He said he is working on the technical aspects of closing down the site, which has multiple other domains direct to it.
He is also trying to figure out his finances. Micetrap is Wiegand's full time job. He said he is more profitable than ever, and in particular has seen a spike in sales in the last few weeks. He said one of his biggest questions is what to do with his merchandise, which he said has been collected over more than 20 years. He said he doesn't want to sell it to a competitor, because he would prefer to make a clean break.
"I'm scared to death," he said. "...It's going to be very difficult for me to figure out what I'm going to do but that's something, like I said this is something I need to do. I can't keep putting it off. I've been putting it off long enough."
