David Eden Lane (November 2, 1938 – May 28, 2007) was an American neo-Nazi and a co-founder of the white supremacist organization The Order. For his actions as part of The Order, Lane was convicted and sentenced to 190 years in prison for racketeering, conspiracy, and the violation of the civil rights of Alan Berg, a Jewish radio talk show host, who prosecutors claimed was murdered by a member of the group via a drive-by shooting with Lane acting as driver, though they were unsuccessful in getting murder convictions. He died while incarcerated at the FCI Terre Haute in Terre Haute, Indiana.
While in prison, Lane wrote many white supremacist materials and coined the "Fourteen Words", a well known white supremacist slogan in North America. He has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as "one of the most important ideologues of contemporary white supremacy".
David Lane was born November 2, 1938 in Woden, Iowa. At the time of his birth, the town was largely populated by Germanic immigrants. Lane was the third of four siblings, with a brother and two sisters. His father was an alcoholic itinerant worker who was physically abusive toward his wife and children; Lane described his father as "a truly despicable creature", and described his mother as an "uneducated [...] farm girl". In one instance, his father beat Lane's older brother Roger so severely that he was rendered permanently deaf. In 1942, when Lane was four years old, his father abandoned his family. In 1944, Roger was found searching for food in a neighbor's trash bins, and Lane and his sisters were placed in an orphanage.
After being placed in state care Lane was separated from and lost contact with his biological family. He was soon adopted by a traveling Lutheran minister. With his new family he moved frequently. Traveling across the Midwestern United States with his adoptive family, Lane finally settled in Aurora, Colorado, where he attended Hinkley High School. His adoptive family was strictly Christian, which contributed to Lane's distaste for Christianity. As an adult, he changed his last name back to his biological father's surname, rather than that of his adopted family. He attended a community college, which he left after one semester despite obtaining good grades.
Lane claims that he rejected Christianity early in life, finding the faith boring. Lane later favored pagan beliefs as a more authentic ancestral "white" religion, as opposed to what he viewed as Jewish-influenced Christianity. Lane claimed that he first became attracted to women of the "Caucasian race" after befriending a blonde-haired girl in first grade. Lane stated that while he reenacted battles with his foster brother as a child, he portrayed a Nazi stormtrooper while his brother portrayed an American soldier. It is uncertain how true some of these claims are.
Lane was briefly 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. Originally aspiring to become a golf professional, Lane worked as a real estate broker starting in 1973, but his license was revoked because he "wouldn't sell homes to coloreds in white neighborhoods". In 1979, his biological sister Jane tracked him down, and Lane regained contact with his biological family for the first time in several decades. He became close again with his brother who died during Lane's trial. Lane blamed federal agents for the later death of his brother. His other sister did not share his views, but Jane had also become a white supremacist and was married to the leader of the Pennsylvania branch of Aryan Nations, Carl Franklin. This contact with Jane and her husband led to Lane making contact with Aryan Nations. In late 1981, Lane became Colorado State Organizer of Aryan Nations. He distributed his first pamphlet, "The Death of the White Race", in the Denver area, leading to publicity and attention from the Anti-Defamation League; he claimed that the Denver police attempted to assassinate him by helicopter after this.
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 white supremacist group led by Mathews whose mission was to "deliver our people from the Jew and bring total victory to the Aryan race." The Order was accused of stealing over $4.1 million during armored car hijackings, killing three people (one of whom was Order member Walter E. West), detonating bombs, counterfeiting money, organizing militaristic training camps and carrying out numerous other crimes with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the "Zionist occupational government" they deemed in control of the United States and to "liberate the Pacific Northwest as a homeland for whites" in the process (see Northwest Territorial Imperative).
For his role in The Order's crimes, Lane was sentenced to consecutive sentences totaling 190 years, including 20 years for racketeering, 20 years for conspiracy, both under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), and 150 years for violating the civil rights of Alan Berg, a Jewish radio talk show host who was murdered on June 18, 1984. Berg was shot and killed in the driveway of his Denver home by three members of The Order. Lane was arrested on the evening of March 30, 1985, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. While he did not pull the trigger, prosecutors said Lane drove the getaway car and played a large role in the planning of Berg's assassination.
Lane was also among 14 men prosecuted for seditious conspiracy in Fort Smith, Arkansas, but he was acquitted. Lane was considered extremely dangerous and thus held in high-security facilities such United States Penitentiary, Marion, the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado, and the FCI Terre Haute.
While incarcerated, he had the Federal Bureau of Prisons ID # 12873–057. Lane wrote books and articles about gematria and the demographic and sociopolitical status of the white race for white nationalist periodicals and websites. With his wife and Ron McVan, he ran a publishing company called 14 Word Press in Idaho to disseminate his writings.
He was featured in Nazi Pop Twins, a documentary aired on July 19, 2007, on Channel 4 in the UK. In it, he was shown speaking by phone with Prussian Blue (the music act from the documentary) and termed them "fantasy sweethearts" and that he viewed them like daughters.
Lane's earliest possible release date from prison would have been on March 29, 2035 (at age 96). He died on May 28, 2007, in FCI Terre Haute due to an epileptic seizure. On June 30, 2007, white supremacists held memorial demonstrations for Lane in cities across the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine.
Lane stated that his beliefs can be best summarized by a slogan he called the "Fourteen Words": "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children." He also coined a second 14-word slogan: "because the beauty of the White Aryan woman must not perish from the earth."
While he was in prison, Lane wrote the 88 Precepts as a treatise on his views on race, politics, and philosophy (88 is a common alpha numeric code to praise Adolf Hitler, as "Heil Hitler" uses the eighth letter of the English alphabet, H, for the start of both words). Lane viewed these as the principles behind the two "Fourteen Words" slogans. The 88 Precepts are critical of democracy and oppose government under the claim of taxation as theft. They also promoted servant leadership, a Deistic theological view, and rejected racial integration, calling it a "euphemism" for "White genocide." Lane's writing also sought to establish a white ethnostate in North America and in Eastern Europe.
"88 Precepts" is one of several key texts, printed and distributed through 14 Word Press, including the "White Genocide Manifesto" (which contained 14 key points). As in his other writings, Lane repeats the claim that white people are threatened by a lack of exclusive territorial hegemony and "forced racial mixing". Lane viewed the United States government as part of a Zionist conspiracy.