Topeka psychiatrist says white power music purchases were for research and client aid

A Topeka psychiatrist who is writing an academic book on the impact of racism and bigotry — and how it can manifest in music — says he has been harassed in the wake of a Swedish socialist group releasing the names of customers of a far-right website he used for research.

Kirby Pope said he started studying the effects of hate speech, racism and the media associated with them about eight years ago after encountering a client who held extreme beliefs. He said his research was to help clients and for his book.

Antifascist Action Sweden, a libertarian socialist group that targets fascists and white power movements, on Dec. 4 made public the names, addresses, phone numbers and emails of thousands of customers from the website Midgard. The online store features white supremacist music, literature, clothing and even such weapons as pepper spray and baseball bats.

"Midgard is politically unbound and we are glad to help people and organizations that fight for the white cause," the website's "about us" page says.

Topeka psychiatrist Kirby Pope said he used Midgard site for research

Pope purchased 38 items through the Midgard website since 2017, according to the registry posted by AFA-Sweden.

"Music is a powerful force for good and ill, as we know, and music has a potency to it, particularly for adolescents," Pope said. "So it's a combination of things, its lyrical content, because the form the music takes, which there's a spectrum of that to all the way from ballads to extreme metal type music. The feelings it instills in a person, how it may reinforce certain negative drives or fuel anger, the beat the rhythm, in combination with the lyrics, and how I've treated adolescents that kind of use this sort of thing to charge themselves up."

Pope said youths relate to others with similar struggles, people who feel excluded, misunderstood, and often bullied or traumatized themselves.

"And it gives them kind of a sense of power, even superiority," he said, "but that power and superiority overlies vulnerability and actual feelings of inferiority."

The Midgard online registry includes more than 20,000 orders overall, mostly based in Northern Europe, although there are orders recorded in Asia, Australia and the Americas. Nearly 1,500 orders were shipped to the United States.

AFA-Sweden said this isn't the first time similar data dumps have occurred. It says it targeted at least three other white power websites since 2016. The group didn't respond to a request for comment.

"Due to the extensiveness of the register, we have chosen to place it on this external page with features that make it easily searchable. We want the register to be a resource for anyone who wants to investigate and attack the Nazi movement," AFA-Sweden said in a news release accompanying the leaked data.

What does Kirby Pope say happened after the registry was published?

Pope, 65, has been employed since 2001 by Family Service and Guidance Center, where he's been a Distinguished Staff Awards recipient. Pope said he isn't related to Will Pope, the former Topeka City Council candidate who faces federal charges linked to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Kirby Pope said he received an anonymous phone call Dec. 11 that was "very threatening." The caller threatened to "destroy" Pope, and implied his livelihood and reputation would also be ruined.

Pope said he, and people the sender attempted to connect him to, then received about four emails "of the same character" beginning Dec. 13. The emails came from accounts using fake names. Tom Lemon, an attorney representing Pope, showed one of the emails to The Capital-Journal.

One gave the name "Omie Wise." Wise was an 1808 North Carolina homicide victim and the subject of a ballad twice recorded by performing artists in the 1920s. The email accused Pope of being a Nazi and attached screenshots from the register.

On X, formerly known as Twitter, an Indiana-based anti-fascists account called Red Orchestra AFA tweeted Pope's name and employer, and linked to the the online registry of Midgard customers to its nearly 1,500 followers. The account directed followers to report Pope to the American Board of Psychoanalysis and requested Pope's employer investigate him. The original post had 69 retweets.

"There were clearly incorrect assumptions made that I was misidentified as identifying with repugnant material I was looking at," Pope said.

No attempts were made at extortion or blackmail, Pope said, though he sensed an "implication that extortion or money stuff is involved." He said he felt physically threatened by the messages.

He said he was uncertain whether those who contacted him identify with hate group ideology and hope to shut down his research, or have the misconception that he is a neo-Nazi.

"I was rather shocked, because I view this as I wasn't doing anything wrong. I was investigating something. I felt it was for the greater good," Pope said.

White power groups are more covert than in the past, expert says

Midgard's "about us" page says "so-called patriot groups and reds" have attacked it since its inception as a brick and mortar store in the late 1990s. The website didn't return a request for comment.

When it started, the network of white power groups was more overt than they are now. Then, white power music was one of the ways these groups network.

"If you go back to the 1990s, for example, and look at the sort of white power music and cultural representations that were around then, it was a lot more of a binding influence in the movement than it is today," said Donald Haider-Markel, a University of Kansas political scientist who studies political extremism.

Today, the networks of extremist racist groups are more covert than they were in the past. While the typical skinhead of the 1990s may have worn racist tattoos proudly and openly, today's extremists are more likely to operate anonymously, Haider-Markel said.

In response to the anonymization of far-right groups, and emerging technologies like social media, far-left groups have increasingly turned to doxing, or the sharing of one's private information, to attack political enemies.

"For more than six years, it's been a specific strategy of those on the left to use the hacking skills of those in the community to get into websites, to get into various software and hardware components where they can get information about who belongs to this group, who has given money to this group, who is engaged in activities in this group," Haider-Markel said.

What's next for Kirby Pope?

Pope said he felt certain his colleagues will be supportive.

"They know me," he said. " I'm a dedicated, well-trained child psychiatrist, and I want to continue helping my nation as well as I possibly can."

Despite receiving harassment and threats in the wake of the leak, Pope said he believes the work is important enough that he'd do it again.

"I feel strongly enough about this, I would still go ahead with the research I've been doing," he said. "This has thrown an uncomfortable piece into it, but I don't plan to stop."

Contact Tim Hrenchir at threnchir@gannett.com or 785-213-5934.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Topeka psychiatrist Kirby Pope claims harassment for racism research