Quick viewing(Text Mode)

Hate Groups Is Extremism on the Rise in the United States?

Hate Groups Is Extremism on the Rise in the United States?

Researcher Published by CQ Press, A Division of SAGE CQ www.cqresearcher.com Hate Groups Is extremism on the rise in the ?

ational crises create opportunities for extremists. Today the global economic crisis now wreaking havoc on millions of American households is hitting while the first black president is in the NWhite House and the national debate over re- mains unresolved. Already, some far-right extremists are proclaim- ing that their moment is arriving. Indeed, an annual tally by the Southern Poverty Law Center shows 926 hate groups operating in 2008, a 50 percent increase over the number in 2000. And the Followers of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Department of Homeland Security concludes that conditions may Movement demonstrate at the opening of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in favor far-right recruitment. But a mix of conservatives and liberal Skokie, Ill., on April 19, 2009. free-speech activists warn that despite concerns about extremism, the administration of should not be intruding on I constitutionally protected political debate. Some extremism-monitoring N THIS REPORT S groups say Obama’s election showed far-right power is waning, THE ISSUES ...... 423 I not strengthening. But that equation may change if the economic BACKGROUND ...... 430 D crisis deepens, the experts caution. CHRONOLOGY ...... 431 E CURRENT SITUATION ...... 435 CQ Researcher • May 8, 2009 • www.cqresearcher.com AT ISSUE ...... 439 Volume 19, Number 18 • Pages 421-448 OUTLOOK ...... 441 RECIPIENT OF SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION SILVER GAVEL AWARD BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 445 THE NEXT STEP ...... 446 HATE GROUPS CQ Researcher

May 8, 2009 THE ISSUES SIDEBARS AND GRAPHICS Volume 19, Number 18 MANAGING EDITOR: Thomas J. Colin • Could the election of a Hate Groups Active in All [email protected] 423 black president and the eco- 424 But Two States Hate groups were active in ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR: Kathy Koch nomic crisis spark far-right [email protected] political activity or violence? all the states except Hawaii • Are immigrants in danger and Alaska in 2008. ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Kenneth Jost from extremist violence? Dozens of Extremist Events STAFF WRITERS: Thomas J. Billitteri, • Is right-wing and ex- 425 Are Planned This Summer Marcia Clemmitt, Peter Katel tremist speech encouraging Many are being held in KKK CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: Rachel Cox, hate crimes? strongholds. Sarah Glazer, Alan Greenblatt, Barbara Mantel, Patrick Marshall, BACKGROUND 428 Hate Groups Increased Tom Price, Jennifer Weeks by 50 Percent DESIGN/PRODUCTION EDITOR: Olu B. Davis Building Movements The number of hate groups 430 Hatred of played a active in the United States in- ASSISTANT EDITOR: Darrell Dela Rosa key role. creased to 926 in 2008. FACT-CHECKING: Eugene J. Gabler, Michelle Harris Chronology Fighting and Killing 431 Key events since 1934. EDITORIAL INTERN: Vyomika Jairam 432 sympathiz- ers embraced extremism. Concern About Extremism 432 Rising in Europe Explosion and Aftermath Czech Republic expels ex-Klan 434 Violence further intensified leader Duke. in the 1990s. A Division of SAGE ‘’ Label Comes in 436 Handy for Critics PRESIDENT AND PUBLISHER: CURRENT SITUATION But respected writers say it’s John A. Jenkins a legitimate — if unlikely — EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, Hate in April concern. REFERENCE INFORMATION GROUP: 435 Alix B. Vance Hitler’s birth month begins At Issue the extremist rally season. 439 Is anti-immigration rhetoric Copyright © 2009 CQ Press, A Division of SAGE. provoking hate crimes against SAGE reserves all copyright and other rights herein, Free Speech, Latinos? unless previously specified in writing. No part of this 437 The government has been publication may be reproduced electronically or oth- accused of undermining erwise, without prior written permission. Unautho- radical ideas. FOR FURTHER RESEARCH rized reproduction or transmission of SAGE copyright- ed material is a violation of federal law carrying civil Recruiting Veterans 444 For More Information fines of up to $100,000. 438 Military training is valued Organizations to contact. CQ Press is a registered trademark of Congressional by neo-Nazi supremacists. Quarterly Inc. Bibliography 445 Selected sources used. CQ Researcher (ISSN 1056-2036) is printed on acid- UTLOOK free paper. Published weekly, except; (Jan. wk. 1) O The Next Step (May wk. 4) (July wks. 1, 2) (Aug. wks. 3, 4) (Nov. 446 Additional articles. wk. 4) and (Dec. wk. 4), by CQ Press, a division of Guns in Holsters 441 SAGE Publications. Annual full-service subscriptions Extremists say they are Citing CQ Researcher start at $803. For pricing, call 1-800-834-9020, ext. 1906. biding their time. 447 Sample bibliography formats. To purchase a CQ Researcher report in print or elec- tronic format (PDF), visit www. cqpress.com or call 866-427-7737. Single reports start at $15. Bulk pur- chase discounts and electronic-rights licensing are also available. Periodicals postage paid at Washington, D.C., and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to CQ Researcher, 2300 N St., N.W., Suite 800, Washington, DC 20037. Cover: Getty Images/Scott Olson

422 CQ Researcher Hate Groups BY PETER KATEL

“This is the formula — the formula for hate,” says James THE ISSUES Cavanaugh, special agent in wo police officers charge of the Bureau of Al- drove up to a brick cohol, Tobacco, Firearms and T house in the middle- Explosives (ATF) Nashville, class Pittsburgh neighborhood Tenn., division and a veter- of Stanton Heights on April 4, an investigator of far-right ex- responding to an emergency tremists. “Everything’s align- call from a woman about her ing for them for hate.” 22-year-old son. “I want him The Department of Home- gone,” Margaret Poplawski told land Security (DHS) drew a a 911 operator. 1 similar conclusion in early She also said that he had April, adding a concern weapons, but the operator over the apparent rekin- failed to share that crucial in- dling of extremist interest in formation with the police, recruiting disaffected military who apparently took no spe- veterans. cial precautions in respond- “The consequences of a ing. Seconds after officers prolonged economic down- Stephen J. Mayhle and Paul turn . . . could create a fer- J. Sciullo walked into the tile recruiting environment house, Richard Poplawski Richard Poplawski, 22, faces murder charges in for right-wing extremists and opened fire, killing both men. Pittsburgh after allegedly shooting and killing three even result in confrontations He then shot and killed Eric police officers on April 4, 2009. Three weeks earlier, between such groups and Poplawski, who tatooed on his chest what he reportedly Kelly, a policeman outside described as an “Americanized” Nazi eagle, apparently government authorities,” 5 the house. After a four-hour posted an anti-Semitic message on , a neo- the DHS said. standoff, Poplawski surren- Nazi Web site. The number of active hate groups in the The election of Barack dered. 2 Hours after that, the has jumped to 926 groups — a 50 percent Obama as ’s first Anti-Defamation League and increase — since 2000. African-American president a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette re- also could prompt an ex- porter traced a March 13 Web post by have long festered in the extreme out- tremist backlash. “Obama is going to Poplawski to the neo-Nazi Web site posts of U.S. political culture. While be the spark that arouses the white Stormfront. extremists typically become active in movement,” the -based Nation- “The federal government, main- times of social and economic stress, al Socialist Movement * — considered stream media and banking system in Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City a leading neo-Nazi organization — an- these United States are strongly under bomber, struck in 1995 during a rel- nounced on its Web site. 6 the influence of — if not complete- atively tranquil, prosperous time. (See But the Obama effect will be neg- ly controlled by — Zionist interest,” “Background,” p. 435.) ligible among hardcore, violent ex- the post said. “An economic collapse Now, law enforcement officials warn, tremists, says an ex-FBI agent who of the financial system is inevitable, dire conditions throughout the coun- worked undercover in right-wing ter- bringing with it some degree of civil try have created a perfect storm of rorist cells in the early 1990s. “They’re unrest if not outright balkanization of provocations for right-wing extremists. in an alternative universe,” says Mike the continental U.S., civil/revolution- In the midst of fighting two wars, the German, author of the 2007 book ary/racial war. . . . This collapse is country is suffering an economic cri- Thinking Like a Terrorist, and now a likely engineered by the elite Jewish sis in which more than 5 million peo- policy counselor to the American Civil powers that be in order to make for ple have lost their jobs, while the hy- Liberties Union on national-security a power and asset grab.” 3 percharged debate over immigration issues. “When you believe the American Obsessions with Jewish conspira- — and the presence of about 12 mil- cy, racial conflict and looming col- lion illegal immigrants — continues * “Nazi” is the German-language contraction lapse of the political and social order unresolved. 4 of “National Socialist.”

www.cqresearcher.com May 8, 2009 423 HATE GROUPS

Mental health problems also may Hate Groups Active in All But Two States play a role in such violence, not all Hate groups were active in all the states except Hawaii and of which is inspired by hate rhetoric. In the single deadliest attack on im- Alaska in 2008, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. migrants in memory, Jiverly Wong Iowa, , Texas and Mississippi had the largest is charged with killing 13 people concentrations of groups. (and then himself) at an immigrants’ service center in Binghamton, N.Y., Wash. Mont. 2 N.H. one day before Poplawski’s alleged N.D. 1 Minn. 12 6 2 Vt. 1 killings in Pittsburgh. Eleven of 8 Wis. 23 Ore. S.D. 4 Maine Wong’s victims were immigrants, Wyo. 10 7 7 Iowa Mich. 24 Mass. 2 N.Y. 13 like Wong, a native of Vietnam. Wong Neb. 66 Ill. R.I. 2 Nev. 4 Ind. Ohio Pa. 37 left a note in which he complained Utah Colo. Conn. 5 Mo. 23 16 23 13 W.Va.Va. of his limited English-speaking abil- 5 15 Kan. 8 N.J. 40 Calif. 30 Ky. 11 14 26 ity and depicted himself as a victim 84 Okla. Del. 4 9 N.M. Ark. Tenn. 38 N.C. of police persecution. Ariz. 19 30 20 Ala. S.C. Md. 13 But in other recent cases in which 19 1 Miss. Ga. Texas 45 immigrants were targeted, the alleged La. 66 36 40 D.C. 8 66 22 shooters did invoke far-right views. Fla. Keith Luke, 22, who lived with his Alaska 56 mother in the Boston suburb of 0 Brockton, was charged in January Hawaii with killing a young woman, shoot- 0 Source: “The Year in Hate,” Southern Poverty Law Center, February 2009 ing and raping her sister and killing a 72-year-old man — all immigrants government is the puppet of , ter’s Intelligence Project. Despite the from Cape Verde. His planned next whether Obama is the face of the gov- increased activity, the center says there’s stop, police said, was a synagogue. ernment instead of George W. Bush nothing approaching a mass move- Luke, whom one law enforcement makes little difference.” ment. Moreover, drawing connections source described as a “recluse,” al- Indeed, says Columbia University between extremist organizations and legedly told police he was “fighting historian Robert O. Paxton, the Obama hate crimes can be complicated. extinction” of . 10 victory demonstrated that the coun- “Most hate crimes are not com- A similar motive was expressed by try’s worrisome conditions haven’t mitted by members of organized a 60-year-old Destin, Fla., man charged sparked widespread rejection of the hate groups,” says Chip Berlet, se- with killing two Chilean students and political system — the classic catalyst nior analyst for Political Research wounding three others, all visiting for major upsurges of extremism. Associates of Somerville, Mass., who as part of a cultural-exchange “Sure, we have a black president, but has been writing about the far right program. Shortly before the killings, if were really at the door, for a quarter-century. “These groups Dannie Roy Baker had asked a neigh- we wouldn’t have elected him,” says help promote violence through their bor, “Are you ready for the revolu- Paxton, a leading scholar of European aggressive rhetoric. But you’re more tion?” And last summer, he had sent fascism. (See sidebar, p. 434.) likely to be victim of from e-mails to Walton County Republican Still, Paxton and others caution that a neighbor.” Party officials — who forwarded them the sociopolitical effects of the eco- For example, three young men to the sheriff’s office. One said, in nomic crisis may take a while to hit. from Staten Island, N.Y., charged with part, “The Washington D.C. Dictators The Montgomery, Ala.-based Southern beating a 17-year-old Liberian immi- have already confessed to rigging elec- Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which grant into a coma on presidential elec- tions in our States for their recruiting tracks the and other tion night last year were not accused dictators to overthrow us with foreign “hate groups,” reports activity by 926 of membership in anything more than illegals here.” 11 such groups in 2008, a 50 percent in- a neighborhood gang. Their victim, Some immigrant advocates say such crease over the number in 2000. 7 who also lives on Staten Island, said comments indicate that extremists are “That is a real and a significant rise,” his attackers, one of them Hispanic, exploiting resentment of immigrants in says Mark Potok, director of the cen- yelled “Obama” as they set on him. 8 the hope of stirring up more attacks.

424 CQ Researcher “It is the perfect vehicle, particu- larly with the decline of the econo- Dozens of Extremist Events Planned This Summer my,” says Eric Ward, national field di- More than two dozen gatherings of white extremists will be held rector of the -based Center for around the nation this summer, according to the Anti-Defamation New Community, which works with League. Many are being held in traditional Ku Klux Klan (KKK) immigrants. “With American anxiety strongholds in the South and Midwest by groups such as the KKK, building, they hope that they can use immigrants as scapegoats to build their National Socialist Movement and Christian Identity organizations. movement.” Upcoming Extremist Events in the United States “Illegals are turning America into (Partial list, May-October) a third-world slum,” says one of a series of leaflets distributed in the Location Event New Haven, Conn., area in early Russelville, Ala. Courthouse rally organized by Church of the National March by North-East White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. (NEWP). “They come for welfare, or Odessa, Mo. Paramilitary training organized by the Missouri Militia. to take our jobs and bring with them drugs, crime and disease.” Phoenix, Ariz. Gathering organized by neo-Nazi Nationalist Coalition The NEWP Web site carries the cryp- Arizona with invitations to members of Stormfront, a tic slogan, “Support your local 1488.” hate Web site. In neo-Nazi code, “88” represents York County, Pa. Open meeting of the neo-Nazi National Socialist “Heil Hitler,” words that begin with Movement for current and interested members. the eighth letter in the alphabet. And Marshall, Texas KKK cookout on private property organized by the “14” stands for an infamous, 14-word United White Knights. racist dictum: “We must secure the ex- istence of our people and a future for Las Vegas, Nev. Workshop organized by Paper Advantage, a sovereign white children.” Its author was the late citizen group advocating right-wing anarchy. David Lane, a member of the violent Champaign Paramilitary training with the Unorganized Militia of neo-Nazi organization, The Order, who County, Ohio Champaign County. died in prison in 2007. 12 Burlington, N.C. Conference organized by the neo-Confederate North The Order, whose crimes included Carolina Chapter of . the murder of a Jewish radio talk- show host in Denver in 1984, sprang New Albany, KKK rally at county courthouse followed by a from the far-right milieu, as did Ok- Miss. gathering and cross-burning on private property. lahoma City bomber McVeigh. And a Dawson Springs, Annual Nordic Fest white power rally organized by source of inspiration in both cases was Ky. the Imperial Klans of America. a novel glorifying of Jews and Oceana and Camping trip organized by the white-supremacist blacks, The Turner Diaries, authored Muskegon forum . by the late William Pierce, founder of counties, Mich. the neo-Nazi National Alliance, based in West . 13 Schell City, Mo. National youth conference organized by Church of Pierce’s death from cancer in Israel, whose followers practice Christian Identity, a 2002 was one of a series of devel- racist and anti-Semitic religion. opments that left a high-level leader- Jackson, Miss. Annual national conference of racist group Council of ship vacuum in the extremist move- Conservative Citizens. ment. One of those trying to fill it Sandpoint, Idaho Weekend conference organized by America’s Promise is Billy Roper, 37, chairman of Ministries, practitioners of Christian Identity. White Revolution, a group based in Russellville, Ark. Roper predicts that Pulaski, Tenn. Weekend gathering commemorating the birthday of racial-ethnic tensions will explode Nathan Bedford Forrest — the first KKK leader — when nonstop immigration from Latin including a march, cross-burning and fellowship. America forces the violent breakup Source: Anti-Defamation League of the United States.

www.cqresearcher.com May 8, 2009 425 HATE GROUPS

“We’re at a pre-revolutionary stage, tion, Supreme White Alliance, though Still, the economic crisis offers re- where it’s too late to seek recompense the organization said he’d been ex- cruiting possibilities to extremists, through the political process, and too pelled before the alleged murder plot because millions of people are suf- early to start shooting,” Roper says. was conceived. 14 fering its effects. “I would be sur- As police and scholars monitor ex- Michael Barkun, a professor of po- prised if the economic crisis did not tremist groups, here are some of the litical science at Syracuse University, produce some very nasty side ef- key questions they are fects,” he says, citing the asking: pseudo-constitutional in- terpretations adopted by Could the election of the “Posse Comitatus” a black president movement that flour- and the nation’s eco- ished in the 1980s. “Cer- nomic crisis spark a tainly some of the fringe resurgence of far- legal doctrines on the far right political activi- right lend themselves to ty or violence? exploitation here.” * The precedent-shat- Yet for a segment of tering nature of Obama’s U.S. society, Obama’s presidency could pro- election is already stoking vide enough of a spark the fires of rage, says an- for racist reaction, some other veteran observer of extremism experts the far right. Michael Pit- argue. Others question cavage, investigative re- whether that’s enough search director for the Anti- to propel significant Defamation League, says numbers of people into that immediately after the outright rejection of the election, extremists with political system, even MySpace pages started in- amid the nation’s eco- cluding the slogan, “I have nomic turbulence. They no president.” note that organized These are anecdotal racist violence against signs, Pitcavage acknowl- African-Americans was edges. But he notes that at AP Photo/Bradley C. Bower already fading by the Members of the World Order of the Ku Klux Klan, one of scores of least one president in the late , after civil Klan groups in the United States, rally on Sept. 2, 2006, at recent past did prompt an rights had become the Gettysburg National Military Park, site of a decisive battle. extreme reaction on the far law of the land. right. “The election of Bill Nonetheless, at least some members says older extremists may see Clinton, I would call one of the sec- of the far right are reacting. Shortly Obama’s election as a big favor to ondary causes of the resurgence of before the presidential election last year, their movement. “They tend to think right-wing extremism in the 1990s,” he federal agents charged an 18-year-old of it as a great recruiting tool,” says says. Clinton’s draft avoid- from Arkansas and a 20-year-old from Barkun, who specializes in political ance and his evasive acknowledgement Tennessee with plotting to kill Obama and religious extremism. “My sense is of past drug use aroused enormous after first killing 88 , be- that from their point of view, they anger among extremists (as among heading 14 of them — apparent ref- would see it as a continuation of what mainstream conservatives), Pitcavage erences to the “88” and “14” codes. they regard as the marginalization of The father of one of the young men the white population: ‘See, we were * Posse Comitatus means “power of the said the alleged plans were no more right all along.’ ” county,” a phrase that adherents used to de- than “a lot of talk.” According to the But extremists may be disap- note the supposed illegitimacy of the federal SPLC, the 20-year-old, Daniel Cowart, pointed, Barkun adds, given how government. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 had been a probationary member of the election itself showed the ex- was passed to remove the U.S. Army from a new and active organiza- tent to which has weakened. domestic law enforcement activities.

426 CQ Researcher says — sentiments that expanded into Still, the sociopolitical consequences migration is a current and constant conspiracist views after a violent con- of the economic crisis transcend fi- flow that is, in my view, only build- frontation between federal law en- nancial problems at individual out- ing up problems and conflict for the forcement officers and a heavily armed posts of right-wing opinion. future, and that’s a process that could religious group in Waco, Texas. Cavanaugh, the longtime ATF offi- be stopped. That is why it is much But at least one right-wing writer cial, is one of many who sees the more a subject of political interest.” on racial issues says that in his cir- global economic meltdown as an echo Bipartisan congressional legislation to cles Obama’s presidency has had lit- of the crisis in Germany’s Weimar Re- provide a “path to citizenship” — re- tle effect. “We have always had so- public in the 1920s and early ’30s, strictionists prefer the term “amnesty” phisticated readers whose views of which enabled Hitler’s National So- — for illegal immigrants” stalled dur- the world are not going to be cialist Party to come to power. ing the George W. Bush administration. knocked askew by some unforeseen “This is how they recruited,” says Aside from mainstream political de- political event,” says , ed- Cavanaugh. “ was founded on bate over the solution to illegal im- itor of American Renaissance, a mag- blaming the Jewish people for the eco- migration, immigrant advocates say azine based in Oakton, Va., a Wash- nomic crisis.” In today’s United States, they’re worried that violence against ington suburb. “Though I don’t wish Cavanaugh hypothesizes, extremists Latinos — or brown-skinned people to detract at all from the symbolic im- could try to make immigrants the group thought to be immigrants — is on the portance of a non-white American responsible for the crisis. rise. According to the most recent FBI president, it’s very much part of a But Cavanaugh doubts that Obama’s statistics, there were 830 attacks of var- predictable sequence. Readers of Amer- presidency, per se, appeals to ex- ious kinds on Hispanics in 2007. By ican Renaissance don’t necessarily tremists. Many of them view the con- comparison, 1,087 attacks were made approve of the idea of a black pres- ventional political system as the “Zion- on homosexuals, who are also fre- ident, but it’s not something that wakes ist Occupation Government,” or ZOG. quent targets of hate speech. 18 In them up to something they weren’t “The president has done more to unite 2000, there were 557 reported attacks aware of before.” Taylor greeted the country — you can feel it,” he on Hispanics compared to 1,075 at- Obama’s election with an article head- says. “That doesn’t help hate groups tacks against homosexuals. 19 lined, “Transition to Black Rule?” 15 get stronger. They can rail against any But both conservatives and liberals Taylor’s magazine opposes all anti- president, and they have. Any presi- take a dim view of those FBI statis- and affirmative-action dent to them is the head of ZOG.” tics. Marcus Epstein, a conservative laws but doesn’t espouse violence. anti-immigration activist who draws a However, attendees at the magazine’s Are immigrants in danger from line between his views and those of annual conference in 2006 included extremist violence? extremists, criticizes the FBI catego- well-known extremists, including David Black Americans have been far and rization scheme for using the ethnic Duke. When the former Louisiana Klan away the major targets of 20th-century term “Hispanic” only for crime victims. leader raised the issue of Jewish in- extremist violence. Offenders, by contrast, are listed only fluence, a Jewish attendee walked But organized racist violence, from by race, so “Hispanic” doesn’t appear. out. Taylor later wrote that he would cross-burning to bombings, The result, he argues, is that statistics never exclude Jews, adding, “Some and of black communi- are skewed so that any Hispanic hate- people in the [American Renaissance] ty leaders or white civil rights sup- crime perpetrators are statistically in- community believe Jewish influence porters, has faded from the scene, de- visible. (The FBI says that the agency was decisive in destroying the tradi- spite episodic hate crimes that “does not agree” that its categories tional American consensus on race. sometimes target Jews as well as blacks. “render the data invalid for statistical Others disagree.” 16 Obama’s election demonstrated the purposes.”) As for the ailing economy, Taylor extent to which the black-white divide Epstein, executive director of The says it hasn’t been helping his pub- in American life has narrowed. Indeed, American Cause, a conservative or- lication. “We haven’t seen any sort of when it comes to arousing political pas- ganization founded by political com- sudden leap in subscribers,” he says. sion, race has been replaced by illegal mentator and immigration restriction- “If anything, the economic conditions immigrants, who number an estimated ist , is particularly are bad for us because we’re a non- 12 million in the United States. 17 concerned about illegal immigrants profit organization. We depend on “Black people are here, and no one with criminal records committing fur- contributions; people have less to is talking about deporting them,” says ther crimes. He cites the case of Manuel contribute.” Taylor of American Renaissance. “Im- Cazares, who turned himself in to

www.cqresearcher.com May 8, 2009 427 HATE GROUPS police in Hannibal, Mo., in March, “All hate crimes are abominable, and saying he’d killed an ex-girlfriend and Hate Groups Increased any decent person would oppose them a male friend of hers. Cazares, a Mex- by 50 Percent no matter who the target is,” says Ira ican citizen, was in the United States Mehlman, national media director of the illegally, but police hadn’t checked his The number of hate groups Federation for American Immigration status, although federal immigration active in the United States — Reform (FAIR), which advocates re- authorities said his name wasn’t in including , Ku Klux stricting immigration. “But they are hyp- their database. 20 “Illegal immigrants Klan and neo-Nazis — ing the statistics on hate crimes. Hate kill American citizens — that greatly increased more than a 50 per- crimes against Hispanics are much fewer outweighs the number of crimes com- cent from 2000 to 2008. in actual number than attacks against mitted by right-wing gays or Jews, who represent much small- against immigrants,” Epstein says. Hate Groups in the U.S. er percentages of the population.” He cites a statistical analysis by Hard-core extremists still rank Jews Edwin S. Rubinstein, an economic 1,000 as their No. 1 enemy, says Pitcavage at consultant in Indianapolis and former the Anti-Defamation League, which was senior fellow at the , 800 926 formed in 1913 to combat anti-Semitism. a conservative think tank. Writing on 600 Some of the most horrific hate crimes the VDare Web site, which opposes 602 are committed by “mission offenders,” immigration except by white people, 400 or mentally ill people who hear voices Rubinstein, while acknowledging that that command them to rid the world of 200 national data on crime and ethnicity a particular set of evildoers, Pitcavage are thin, extrapolated from California 0 says. 24 While they may target Jews — and national figures to estimate that 2000 2008 and those are often some of the most in any given year illegal immigrants Source: “The Year in Hate,” Southern horrific crimes — “racial/ ethnic targets” “could kill 2.6 persons per day across Poverty Law Center, February 2009 — including Latinos and immigrants in the U.S.” 21 general — do run a risk from hate The vast majority of violent crimes In any event, supercharged rhetoric crime because they’re “more visually fall within city and state jurisdic- from extremists has ratcheted up fear identifiable and thus better targets of tions, not all of which collect data among immigrants and their advocates. opportunity,” he says. on ethnicity. Mark Hugo Lopez, as- Ward of the Center for New Communi- sociate director of the Pew Hispanic ty says that recent episodes of violence Is right-wing and extremist Center, and co-author of a recent targeting immigrants reflect a general speech encouraging hate crimes? report on Hispanics and federal hostility toward immigrants that he’s The killings of three Pittsburgh crime, says. “The reason that we sensing on the street. For example, he police officers intensified the ongo- used federal statistics is that those says, following an organizational meet- ing debate over free speech and its are the cleanest data.” The Pew study ing in Wilmer, Minn., a town in the consequences. Some liberal and left- showed that 70 percent of Latino meat-processing factory belt of the upper wing commentators saw Richard offenders were non-citizens, and that Midwest, “A woman pulls up behind a Poplawski’s horrific crime as an out- 3.1 percent of all Latino convicts car of our field people and starts scream- growth, at least in part, of the far- were sentenced for crimes of violence, ing racial epithets.” right culture that had in- including murder. 22 Though of little significance by itself, fluenced him, judging by his Web Others warn that hate crime statis- Ward says it reflects an atmosphere that posts. In addition, they say, his rage tics aren’t reliable where immigrants reminds him of “things I saw in the had been stoked by conservative com- are concerned. “One of the difficul- 1980s and ’90s during the rise of the mentators. Still, the Pittsburgh reporter ties we have is getting certain com- neo-Nazi movement.” He adds, “These who helped trace those posts argues munities to report hate crime,” said kinds of incidents, I would call an early in the online magazine Slate that the Brian Levin, director of the Center for warning of what will be the backlash.” writings reveal more inner torment the Study of Hate and Extremism at Immigration restrictionists argue that than ideology. California State University, San Bernardi- their political foes are whipping up pas- Journalist Dennis B. Roddy wrote no. Illegal immigrants are especially sions in an effort to create the appear- that Poplawski also posted to a non- reluctant, says Levin, in a widely shared ance that Latinos in general and immi- racist conspiracist site — Infowars, which observation. 23 grants in particular face growing danger. describes its politics as libertarian. There,

428 CQ Researcher the alleged cop-killer “seemed to find is directed to inciting or producing im- you grow up hearing ‘holy’ cursing . . . a bridge from the near-mainstream minent lawless action.” 27 day in and day out, it can feel and to a level of paranoid obsession in Worries about the effects of vicious sound normal, justified and even good.” search of an explanation for his life’s and hyperbolic speech haven’t only Darwish didn’t call for banning the failures. For that, one does not need come from the left. In 2005, Freedom transmissions. 29 an ideology, just an inclination.” 25 House, a human-rights advocacy or- But the more explosive recent Nevertheless, Roddy acknowledges ganization then headed by former disputes over speech arise from the that Poplawski complained on Infowars CIA director James Woolsey, a neo- immigration conflict. At the center that the site neglected race. Other conservative, issued a report accusing of the controversy are radio and commentators insisted that Poplawski’s the government of Saudi Arabia of cable TV commentators like Glenn posts follow a clear pattern. disseminating “hate propaganda” — Beck, of . In June 2007 “Poplawski’s black-helicopter and targeting Christians, Jews and converts (before he had joined Fox), Beck anti-Semitic ravings put him at the from Islam — in religious publica- read on his radio program a fake outer edge of the right,” wrote Gary tions sent to mosques. 28 commercial for “Mexinol” — a fuel Kamiya, executive produced from the editor of Salon, a bodies of illegal immi- liberal online mag- grants from Mexico. 30 azine. “But his para- “We have a butt noid fear that Obama load of illegal aliens in was going to take our country,” said the away his AK-47 is fake ad, which was as- mainstream among cribed to Evil Conser- conservatives . . . vative Industries. “With fomented by the Mexinol, your raw ma- NRA and echoed terials come to you in by right-wing com- a seemingly never- mentators from ending stream.” Beck Lou Dobbs to Lim- tried to put some dis- baugh.” 26 tance between himself Kamiya doesn’t and the ad’s authors, propose limiting free- though in a lighthearted speech rights, but he tone. “I don’t even know does argue that ex- if that’s conservative,” he treme anti-Obama and said, chuckling. “That gun-rights rhetoric is would be . . . psychotic, 31

bound to produce AFP/Getty Images/Bob Daemmerich perhaps?” more episodes like the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, a neo-Nazi Army veteran, Last year, Janet Pittsburgh shootings. was executed in 2001 for killing 168 people, including 19 children, Murguía, president of the at the Murrah Federal Building. While extremists typically become The U.S. Supreme active in times of social and economic stress, McVeigh struck National Council of La Court has ruled that in 1995 during a period of relative tranquility. Raza, a leading Hispan- even hate-filled racist ic organization, cited speechmaking is pro- the segment in calling tected by the First Amendment. In 1969, In late March, an American writer for cable channels to “to clean up the the court overturned the terrorism- of Arab descent wrote on a conserv- rhetoric of their own commentators or advocacy conviction of an Ohio Ku Klux ative Web site that American Muslims take them out of their chairs.” She ar- Klan leader who’d given a speech in- who get their news on satellite TV gued that much of the commentary cluding a call to “send the Jews back from the are, in effect, by the hosts and some of their guests to Israel,” and to “bury the niggers.” The being brainwashed into a pro-jihadist spurred anti-immigrant violence. “When court ruled unanimously that the gov- outlook. “We must never underesti- free speech transforms into hate speech, ernment may not “forbid or proscribe mate the power of hate propaganda,” we’ve got to draw that line.” 32 advocacy of the use of force or of law Nonie Darwish wrote, “because, quite Epstein of The American Cause violation except where such advocacy simply, it works. Believe it or not, if argues that Murguía is trying to

www.cqresearcher.com May 8, 2009 429 HATE GROUPS

“muzzle” free speech. The painful At first a Roosevelt supporter, the “radio reality of the nation’s economic cri- priest” by 1934 was raging against FDR sis, not anti-immigrant rhetoric — BACKGROUND and the Jews, on whom he blamed the explains more about anti-Hispanic Great Depression. violence, he says. After the United States entered World “People should not hold an individ- Building Movements War II, the Catholic Church and the ual Hispanic responsible for the fact that federal government forced Coughlin wages are being depressed, and they xtreme-right political movements off the air. Pelley was convicted in can’t get a job, or that schools are over- E reached their peak in the 1930s 1942 of sedition and intent to cause crowded, that there’s an increase in crime in the United States and abroad. Adolf insurrection in the military and was in the community,” he says. “But that’s Hitler came to power in Germany in sentenced to 15 years in prison. 36 the reason these people are lashing out. 1933. Benito Mussolini, originator of By war’s end, American fascism In the few cases of [violence], they’re the term “fascism,” who began his rule as a mass movement had ended. But responding to the problems that immi- of Italy in 1922, soon forged an al- a core of committed activists kept gration causes.” liance with Hitler. Other far-right move- the far right alive, spurred on by the Epstein argues that mainstream ments triumphed in Central Europe. Cold War against the anti-immigration groups like FAIR The United States, of course, never and the first stirrings of the civil provide a legitimate channel for cit- succumbed to totalitarian rule. But the rights movement. 37 izens who favor limiting immigration American extreme right did command As public opposition to to express their views. “If there was a sizable sector of public opinion. 34 grew, Smith preached that Jews and no one actually speaking for Amer- As in Germany and elsewhere communists were one and the same icans, they’re going to turn to more (though not to a major extent in Italy), and that never occurred. radical groups,” he says. Epstein posts hatred of Jews played a key role in The founding of the John Birch So- his writings on the VDare Web site the American right-wing mobilization, ciety in 1958 marked the reemergence but says he doesn’t agree with all with communists and socialists close of conspiratorial, far-right views — the views expressed on the site, some behind on the enemies list. minus the anti-Semitism — in re- of them virulently racist. , founder of the Ford spectable society. Birch Society doc- A recent post by one contributor Motor Co., actively spread anti-Semitism trine viewed the United as a argued that hiring people of South in the 1920s, using a newspaper that he communist organization. Founder Asian Indian ancestry guaranteed owned, , to Robert Welch, an executive in his “corruption and ethnocentric dis- publish vast amounts of propaganda about brother’s candy company, went fur- crimination”; another opined that a Jewish plot for world domination. 35 ther, calling President Dwight D. Eisen- hiring better public school teachers After Ford withdrew from public hower “a dedicated, conscious agent and firing less competent ones means anti-Semitic activity under pressure of the communist conspiracy.” 38 “on net, firing blacks and hiring from Jewish organizations and the Welch’s wild accusation stoked out- whites.” And another contributor at- U.S. government, other leaders rage in the political mainstream. Pres- tacked “the cultural pollution of our emerged. Gerald L. K. Smith, a min- ident Harry S Truman reportedly called ‘entertainment industry,’ which pro- ister and failed political candidate al- the Birch Society “the Ku Klux Klan, motes diversity, and lied with hate-mongers, denounced without nightshirts.” 39 white demoralization.” 33 President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) By the mid-1960s, the Klan — es- Cavanaugh of the ATF says he’s and African-Americans as well as Jews. tablished in 1866 in Pulaski, Tenn. — aware that a constellation of legal or- William Dudley Pelley led the fascist had become the center of extremist ganizations provide moral backing Silver Legion — the “Silver Shirts” — resistance to the . even for violent actions. In the civil which dedicated itself mainly to march- Members and ex-members of the se- rights days, such groups were known es and other publicity-seeking events cret organization carried out some of as the “white-collar Klan,” he says. “They expressing hatred of Jews, blacks and the most notorious crimes of the era, support people who will go out and all minorities. including the 1963 bombing of the do those things.” The Rev. Charles Coughlin, a Roman 16th Street Baptist Church in Birm- But, he says, free speech is free speech. Catholic priest, known as “Father ingham, Ala., in which four young “Is it illegal?” he asks rhetorically. “It’s Coughlin,” soared to national promi- girls were killed; the of awful, but I can’t do much about awful, nence and influence through radio broad- civil rights leader Medgar Evers in and I shouldn’t be able to.” casts from his church outside Detroit. Continued on p. 432

430 CQ Researcher Chronology

1971 Park, Colo., to plan cooperation 1930s-1960s Anti-Semitic, Christian Identity activist with less-threatening groups. . . . Attempts to create U.S. versions William Potter Gale formulates the Federal siege of the Branch Davidi- of European fascism fail, but far- doctrine underlying the radically an religious-cult compound in Waco, right activists build smaller orga- anti-government Posse Comitatus Texas, leads to deaths of more than nizations after World War II. movement, which by 1976 has at 80 people. . . . Extremists depict least 12,000 members, according to Ruby Ridge and Waco as examples 1934 the FBI. of government ruthlessness. . . . The Rev. Charles Coughlin (“Father Outrage at government helps build Coughlin”) gains a nationwide fol- 1978 “patriot militia” movement. lowing for denouncing President The Turner Diaries, a genocide Franklin D. Roosevelt and Jews. fantasy by neo-Nazi William Pierce 1995 (pseudonym: Andrew Macdonald), Timothy McVeigh, an extremist 1941-1942 is published. military veteran inspired by The Coughlin is forced off the air and Turner Diaries, detonates truck another far-right leader, William 1983 bomb outside Alfred P. Murrah Dudley Pelley, is sent to prison Posse Comitatus leader Gordon Kahl Federal Building in Oklahoma for sedition. kills two federal marshals in North City, killing 168 people. . . . Dakota, later dies in a shootout with Militia membership declines. 1952 federal agents in Arkansas. Anti-Semite Gerald L.K. Smith fails • to persuade the Republican Party 1984 to link communism and Jews. The Order, a small extremist group inspired by The Turner Diaries, 2000s Extremist move- 1958 murders a Jewish talk-show host in ment erodes further following is founded. Denver who had denounced 9/11 attacks and the removal racism. . . . The group’s founder is of major figures by death and 1963 killed later in a shootout in Wash- imprisonment, but economic Ku Klux Klan members bomb a ington state. crisis ignites fears of a resur- black church in Birmingham, Ala., gence. killing four young girls. 1988 A federal jury in Arkansas acquits 2001 1967 14 right-wing extremists, including McVeigh executed by lethal injection. American neo-Nazi leader George five members of The Order, on Lincoln Rockwell is killed by an sedition and other charges. 2004 embittered ex-aide. Richard Butler, influential leader of • Idaho-based “,” dies 1969 of natural causes. U.S. Supreme Court rules that a Ku Klux Klan leader’s denunciations 1990s Extremist vio- 2005 of blacks and Jews are constitution- lence climaxes in armed con- Up-and-coming extremist leader ally protected speech. frontations with federal officers. Matthew Hale, founder of World Church of the Creator, is sentenced • 1992 to 40 years for conspiracy to com- An attempt to arrest survivalist and mit murder. Christian Identity proponent Randy 1970s-1980s Weaver in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, ends 2009 Anti-government and anti-Jewish with the deaths of a marshal and Homeland Security Department warns organizations turn to violence, Weaver’s wife and young son. extremists could exploit economic cri- most often against police officers, sis as a recruiting opportunity; critics who are seen as agents of the 1993 blast department for focusing on ide- “Zionist Occupation Government.” Extremist leaders gather in Estes ology rather than criminal acts.

www.cqresearcher.com May 8, 2009 431 HATE GROUPS

Concern About Extremism Rising in Europe Czech Republic expels ex-Klan leader . emories of the horrific consequences of far-right ex- ed by Jörg Haider, who died in a car crash shortly after the vote. tremism remain strong in Europe. Yet nearly 65 years Haider made his brand of politics a major force by combining M after the Nazi Holocaust, the extreme right has been salesmanship, xenophobic opposition to immigration and appeals gaining ground in parts of the continent, prompting worries to the Nazi heritage of ’s country of birth. that is on the upswing. Haider had been forced to quit as a provincial governor in 1991 “The possibilities for a rise of the far right in the light of (he was reelected in 1999) after praising Hitler’s “orderly employ- the financial and economic crisis are there,” Anton Pelinka, a ment program.” And in 1995 he praised Waffen SS veterans as “de- professor of politics at Central European University in Budapest, cent men of character who remained faithful to their ideals.” 3 Hungary, told , a leading British newspaper. 1 Indicators of the growing strength of extremism extend into So far, the European far right is advancing further — at the Germany and Britain as well as parts of the former Soviet bloc. polls and in the expansion of illegal neo-Nazi organizations — In Russia, where ultranationalist groups, including neo-Nazis, are than in the United States. But the gains by European extremists part of the political landscape, there were at least 85 systematic give heart to their U.S. counterparts, who have long maintained killings of migrant workers from Central Asia, as well as others ties to Europe, though some European governments do their best seen as ethnically non-Slavic, in 2008, according to the Sova Cen- to disrupt the relationships. In April, the Czech Republic expelled ter, a Moscow-based hate crime-monitoring group. The victims ex-Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, a neo-Nazi, who had been included a migrant worker from Tajikistan who was beheaded. invited by an extremist Czech group to lecture in Prague and Brno. Human-rights advocates who denounce these killings have been And the British government announced in early May that it threatened with death themselves. 4 had barred — among others — Don Black, founder of the Violence isn’t limited to Russia. In late 2008, the police chief Stormfront Web site, from entering Britain. of Passau, a Bavarian town with a strong neo-Nazi presence, was Duke’s aborted visit notwithstanding, transatlantic ties may stabbed following his 2008 order to open the grave of a former have frayed somewhat following the 2002 death of William Pierce. Nazi who had been buried with an illegal flag. 5 The American neo-Nazi leader had been traveling regularly to The attack took place against a backdrop of increasing vi- Europe for meetings, says Mark Potok, Intelligence Project di- olence by German neo-Nazi organizations. A German news- rector at the Southern Poverty Law Center, in Birmingham, Ala. paper reported that violent crimes originating in the extremist But even if Duke fails to take Pierce’s place as emissary to the right increased by 15 percent during the first 10 months of Old World, American far-right Web sites commonly post links to 2008. And a government research institute reported that a greater extremist Web sites and news from Europe. 2 segment of male teenagers — 5 percent — were involved in The news is plentiful. In Austria, the country’s two far-right neo-Nazi groups than in mainstream politics in 2007-2008. In parties together won 29 percent of the vote in national parlia- formerly communist-ruled eastern Germany, nearly 10 percent mentary elections last year. One of the parties had been found- of youths participated in far-right groups. 6

Continued from p. 430 Rockwell had been a mentor to light of five Communist Workers Party Jackson, Miss., that same year; the mur- William Pierce, a former university members who were starting an anti-Klan der of three civil rights workers in physics professor who in 1974 march in Greensboro, N.C., in 1979. 1964 in Neshoba County, Miss.; and founded the National Alliance, which the killing of another civil rights work- became a major influence in the er in Alabama in 1965. 40 extremist right. Pierce became na- Fighting and Killing Anti-civil rights violence ebbed after tionally notorious in the 1990s as enactment of the Voting Rights Act author of The Turner Diaries, in 1965. From then on, the extrem- which laid out a scenario for white ess visibly, another trend was under ist right became steadily more influ- genocide of blacks, Jews and “race L way. An extreme anti-government enced by neo-Nazism. George Lin- traitors” — a process led by a se- and anti-Jewish movement founded in coln Rockwell, founder of the cret brotherhood known as The 1971 by William Potter Gale began American , pioneered the Order, which sets events in motion growing, especially in the West and white-nationalist trend. The former by blowing up FBI headquarters Midwest. Posse Comitatus (“Power of Navy pilot and World War II veteran with a truck bomb. the County”) held that the federal gov- was shot and killed by a dismissed The first open sign of a Klan-Nazi ernment was constitutionally illegiti- follower in 1967. 41 nexus was the 1979 killing in broad day- mate. For example, county justices of

432 CQ Researcher Throughout Western Europe, the enormous growth of immi- “As jobs are lost and welfare becomes meaner and leaner, the grant populations, especially from Muslim countries, has provided politics of blaming the outsider can only grow.” 11 the biggest boost to right-wing parties — from traditional con- servative groups to neo-Nazis — over the past two decades. 1 Quoted in Kate Connolly, “Haider is our Lady Di,” The Guardian, Oct. 18, 2008, p. A29. For background, see Sarah Glazer, “Anti-Semitism in Europe,” However, the European far right’s growth isn’t uniform. In , CQ Global Researcher, June 2008, pp. 149-181. Jean-Marie Le Pen, an apologist for Nazism who was one of the 2 For example, see “Stormfront forum, international,” www.storm pioneers of the post-World War II extreme right, saw his National front.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=18; .net — Occidental , http://kinism.net/; The French Connection, http://iamthewitness. Front party win only 4.3 percent of the vote in parliamentary elec- com/; League of American Patriots, http://leagueap.org/wordpress/?page_id=17. 7 tions in 2007. Analysts said that President Nicolas Sarkozy effec- 3 Quoted in Matt Schudel, “Jörg Haider; Politician Made Far-Right Party a tively co-opted Le Pen’s anti-immigration politics, though without Force in Austria,” , Oct. 12, 2008, p. C8. the ethnic and religious extremism. In 2002, Le Pen had finished 4 Michael Schwirtz, “Migrant Worker Decapitated in Russia,” The New York 8 Times, Dec. 13, 2008; Luke Harding, “Putin’s worst nightmare: Their mis- second in the first round of the presidential race. sion is to cleanse Russia of its ethnic ‘occupiers,’” magazine Le Pen’s counterparts across the English Channel are show- (U.K.), Feb. 8, 2009, p. 32; “Neo-Nazis threaten to murder journalists in ing more success. The (BNP) is seen by Russia,” Committee to Protect Journalists, Feb. 11, 2009, http://cpj.org/2009/02/ neo-nazis-threaten-to-murder-journalists-in-russia.php. some British politicians as likely to win the most votes in an 5 Nicholas Kulish, “Ancient City’s Nazi Past Seeps Out After Stabbing,” The election in June to choose European Parliament representatives. New York Times, Feb. 12, 2009, p. A18; “Police Chief Long Reviled by NPD BNP leaders portray their party as defending the country against Leadership,” Spiegel Online International, Dec. 19, 2008, www.spiegel.de/ international/germany/0,1518,597645,00.html. non-white immigrants. Pro-immigrant policies “have made white 6 9 Ibid.; and “German teens drawn to neo-Nazi groups — study,” Reuters, Britons second-class citizens,” the party says. March 17, 2009, http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-385546 Meanwhile, the BNP is trying to play down its historic anti- 20090317. Semitism. Party leader Nick Griffin wrote in 2007 that taking an 7 In 2008, Le Pen was fined 10,000 Euros for having called the Nazi occu- pation of France “not especially inhumane, even if there were a number of “Islamophobic” stance “is going to produce on average much bet- blunders.” Quoted in “Le Pen fined over war comments,” The Irish Times 10 ter media coverage than . . . banging on about ‘Jewish power.’ ” (Reuters), Feb. 9, 2008, p. A10. That purely tactical shift notwithstanding, others in the Euro- 8 Adam Sage, “Hard-up National Front sells office to immigrants,” pean political world argue that old-school anti-Semitism is flour- (London), Aug. 13, 2008, p. A37. 9 “Immigration — time to say ENOUGH!” British National Party, undated, ishing — on the left as well as the right — often disguised as http://bnp.org.uk/policies-2/immigration. Also see Andrew Grice, “The BNP are opposition to Israeli policies. now a bigger threat than ever,” (London), April 10, 2009, p. A12. “The extravagant rhetoric of the demagogic left and right is 10 Quoted in Matthew Taylor, “BNP seeks to bury and gain Jew- gaining ground, and the most obvious manifestation is the re- ish votes in Islamophobic campaign,” The Guardian (London), April 10, 2008, p. A17. turn of anti-Semitism as an organizing ideology,” Dennis Mac- 11 Denis MacShane, “Europe’s Jewish Problem,” Newsweek, International Edi- Shane, a Labor Party member of Parliament, wrote in late 2008. tion, Dec. 15, 2008, p. 0. the peace held legal supremacy over spawn. By 1976, the FBI estimated Posse ations, on the grounds that the loans the U.S. Supreme Court, according to membership at 12,000 to 50,000, not were illegal. When authorities enforced Posse ideology, and federal currency including sympathizers. foreclosure orders, trouble sometimes was invalid. 42 Posse Comitatus played a major role erupted. Posse alienation went far deeper. in raising the level of far-right extrem- In 1983, Gordon Kahl, a Christian An anti-Semitic religious doctrine ism to a fever pitch in the last two Identity Posse activist who had served known as “Christian Identity” exerted decades of the 20th century. In the early a prison term for tax evasion, killed deep influence on many Posse lead- 1980s, economic crisis gripped the Farm two federal marshals following a meet- ers and members, including Gale (de- Belt, bringing a wave of foreclosures. ing to recruit members in North Dakota. spite his own definitively proved Jew- The Posse launched a major recruiting Kahl fled and was killed three months ish descent, which he denied). The drive, preaching that Jewish bankers later in a gunfight with federal agents doctrine — rejected by all mainstream were to blame for the falling grain in Arkansas. Kahl became a in Christian denominations — holds that prices and land values that brought extremist circles. white people are the genuine de- many farmers to ruin. An almost identical episode took scendants of the Biblical Hebrews. One Posse tactic was to flood the place the next year near Cairo, Neb., That is, they’re God’s chosen people, federal court system with amateur when a Posse sympathizer, Arthur and Jews and blacks are the devil’s lawsuits to cancel farmers’ loan oblig- Kirk, was killed in a shootout with

www.cqresearcher.com May 8, 2009 433 HATE GROUPS state police officers serving foreclo- group had in- for “camouflage” — the ability to blend sure papers. Before the shooting cited the group who killed Seraw. in the public’s eye the more com- started, Kirk denounced Jews, bankers The verdict, in a civil brought by mitted groups of resistance “with main- and the Israeli intelligence agency, the SPLC, required Metzger and his stream ‘kosher’ associations that are Mossad, to officers trying to get him codefendants to pay $12.5 million to generally seen as harmless.” 49 to surrender. 43 Seraw’s family. 46 Similarly, others at the meeting ad- Ideology aside, some farmers who vocated uniting with less extreme groups accepted help from the Posse were try- to form a broad anti-government ing to survive financial crisis. Another Explosion and Aftermath movement. 50 group formed in the 1980s dedicated Meanwhile, a related development itself purely to violence. he violence that marked the 1980s had just shocked the mainstream po- The Order (its name borrowed T intensified in the ’90s, sparked by litical establishment. David Duke, a from The Turner Diaries) vowed to the botched 1992 arrest of survivalist former Klan leader who hadn’t re- strike the “Zionist Occupation Gov- and Christian Identity adherent Randy nounced his anti-black or anti-Jewish ernment” in defense of “White Amer- Weaver for failing to appear in court views, won the 1991 Republican pri- ica.” Robert Mathews founded the small on a gun-law charge. (He’d been given mary for Louisiana governor. (He went group with eight other men in the the wrong court date.) Weaver had holed on to lose the general election.) 51 early 1980s. By 1983, The Order had up with his family in remote Ruby Ridge, Following the Estes Park conclave, begun committing armed robberies to in northern Idaho, which had become “militias” sprang up around the coun- raise money. In 1984, the group as- a center for the extreme right and was try, especially in the rural Midwest and sassinated a Denver radio talk-show home to Christian Identity leader West. Ideas animating the movement host, , who was Jewish, and Richard Butler. 47 included survivalism, gun-rights defense had argued with racists on the air. When federal marshals attempted and — among many members, but Later that same year, the group robbed to arrest Weaver, who had not been not all — far-right conspiracy theories. an armored car of $3.6 million. involved in previous violence, a gun- Among those who passed through Mathews died in a shootout with fight broke out in which Weaver’s son militia circles was a U.S. Army veter- federal agents on Whidbey Island, and a marshal were killed; later, dur- an of the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War, near Seattle, in December 1984. ing a siege of the family’s cabin, an Timothy McVeigh. In 1985, 23 surviving members of FBI sniper killed Weaver’s wife. Weaver But before McVeigh’s name hit the the group went to trial or pleaded surrendered and was sentenced to 18 headlines, a series of events near guilty to racketeering charges, with months in prison. 48 Waco, Texas, would seize national at- most receiving sentences of 40 to 100 FBI handling of the case was tention and electrify the far right. Mem- years. David Lane later was sentenced widely considered a fiasco, and worse. bers of the Branch Davidian religious to 150 years in a separate trial for par- But on the far right, a more omi- cult, led by a fiery preacher named ticipating in Berg’s murder. 44 nous view prevailed: Ruby Ridge David Koresh, fired on ATF agents Federal prosecutors in Fort Smith, seemed to validate conspiracist fears attempting to search for guns and Ark., failed, however to convict Lane of government violence against gun ammunition believed to be stored at and 13 other extremists of sedition in owners and opponents of the “New the Davidians’ compound; four 1988. They’d been charged with plot- World Order” — far-right code for agents were killed. On April 19, 1993, ting to overthrow the government and U.N.-controlled global government. after a 51-day siege, FBI agents moved set up a separate white nation in the Months after Ruby Ridge, Christian on the compound with tanks. In the Pacific Northwest. 45 Identity preacher Peter Peters orga- conflagration that resulted, Koresh and That same year, in that very region, nized a meeting of about 150 ex- about 80 other Davidians died, in- an upsurge of anti-minority violence tremists at Estes Park, Colo. In a cluding many children. by skinheads claimed the life of Ethiopi- keynote speech, , a for- A widespread suspicion that FBI an immigrant , who mer leader of the Texas Klan and one teargas canisters started the fire be- was bludgeoned to death with a base- of those acquitted in the Arkansas came a certainty on the far right. In ball bat by the East Side White Pride sedition case, outlined a strategy of those circles, Waco stood as evi- gang. Three years later, , “” — formation of dence of government ruthlessness. an infamous extremist, was small cells of committed activists with- Koresh, who had followed the Weaver found responsible for the death, along out central direction. A Vietnam vet- case closely, probably wouldn’t have with others, on the grounds that his eran, Beam also spoke of the need been surprised. “Koresh spoke to me

434 CQ Researcher frequently on the phone about Ruby to kill a federal judge. Since his im- Yet neo-Nazi rallies, at least in Ridge,” says Special Agent Cavanaugh prisonment, extremist-watchers say, major metropolitan areas, typically of the ATF, who negotiated with the no charismatic leader has emerged from don’t draw big crowds of extremists. Branch Davidian leader during the the extremist world. In Skokie, Ill., a Chicago suburb with siege. Koresh and his top aide “were a large Jewish population — includ- well-versed in everything that hap- ing Holocaust survivors — the open- pened there and were spitting out ing of a state holocaust museum in ‘New World Order’ crackpot con- CURRENT April drew a neo-Nazi demonstration spiracy theories.” — of seven people. Twelve thou- In 2000, an outside counsel to the sand people attended the opening Justice Department concluded that the SITUATION ceremony, where former President canisters hadn’t started the fire but that spoke. 59 Davidians themselves ignited it. 52 This year’s rally season began with But by then, April 19 had become Hate in April a snag. “East Coast White Unity” and notorious for another reason. On “” (“Peoples’ Front” in Ger- April 19, 1995, McVeigh detonated a man) had planned to meet in Boston bomb in a rented truck he parked in itler was born in April, which over the April 11 weekend. But after front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal H marks the beginning of the pub- the Boston Anti-Racist Coalition told Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 lic rally season for right-wing extrem- the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) people, including 19 children. Arrest- ists, and for opponents who mount about the nature of the “Patriot’s Day” ed hours later after a traffic stop, counterdemonstrations. 55 rally, the VFW withdrew permission McVeigh was later often described as This year promises to be a busy to use their hall. Instead, the event a lone wolf. But, among other activ- one for haters. In April alone, 32 con- was held at an American Legion Hall ities, he had sold The Turner Diaries ferences, celebrations, militia training in Loudon, N.H. 60 at gun shows, which were popular sessions and other events were planned “These racist speakers, bands and with militia members and with ex- by neo-Nazi, Klan, Christian Identity their supporters will always have to tremists in general. and related organizations in 22 states, walk on egg shells and face the very “McVeigh was not a lone extrem- according to the Anti-Defamation real prospect of their events being ex- ist; instead, he was trained to make League; dozens more events are posed to the general public, wherev- himself look like a lone extremist,” scheduled into October. 56 er and whenever they rear their ugly wrote former FBI agent German. “It’s The list includes Hitler birthday heads,” the coalition said in a post on a right-wing terrorism technique that commemorations in Illinois and North an anarchist Web site. 61 comes complete with written instruc- Carolina and a march by robed Klan But Roper of White Revolution tion manuals.” 53 members in Pulaski, Tenn., where replied, “Because a venue, or two, or The bombing — for which McVeigh Confederate veterans founded the three, has cancelled on us due to the was executed in 2001 — made Turn- Klan. efforts of anti-white, communist and er Diaries author Pierce and his Na- Counterdemonstrators showed for Jewish activists, the event has not tional Alliance notorious. But the bomb- an NSM rally of about 70 members been cancelled and will go on,” he ing also saw a steep decline in militia the day before at the Gateway Arch said. “We plan for such eventualities membership, as those without a high in St. Louis, Mo. No one was arrest- in depth.” 62 level of commitment to extremist pol- ed, but the two groups yelled at each For its part, One People’s Project, itics dropped away. other and traded “Heil Hitler” salutes an anti-supremacist organization, says More blows followed. Pierce died of and raised-middle-finger retorts. A sec- it infiltrates neo-Nazi and Klan groups cancer in 2002. Two years later Butler ond group of counterdemonstrators to find out about planned events in died; earlier he had lost his Idaho com- organized by the ADL held a “rally for time to organize countermobilizations. pound after losing a civil lawsuit filed respect” at a nearby site. 57 “We can’t keep on allowing groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. 54 Commenting on the NSM rally, like the Klan, Aryan Nations, National Then, in 2005, Matthew Hale, 33, Lewis Reed, president of the St. Louis Alliance, National Vanguard and the considered an up-and-coming extrem- Board of Aldermen, said, “It’s sad that National Socialist Movement to hold ist leader as head of the World Church there are still people today, in 2009, society at-large hostage,” Daryle La- of the Creator, was sentenced to 40 that only want to divide the races and mont Jenkins of One People’s Pro- years in federal prison for conspiring breed hate.” 58 ject said. 63

www.cqresearcher.com May 8, 2009 435 HATE GROUPS

‘Fascism’ Label Comes in Handy for Critics But respected writers say it’s a legitimate — if unlikely — concern.

ccompanying today’s worries about an extremist resur- Obama’s extreme critics insist otherwise. Obama heads a “ gence are fears that the United States could, if eco- government,” conservative blogger David Limbaugh (brother of A nomic conditions worsen, embrace fascism — the to- radio commentator ) told a radio interviewer. And talitarian ideology that modern hate groups champion. , a conservative magazine, likened Obama’s But the concern focuses on the federal government itself, economic policies to those of Mussolini. 3 not fringe, neo-Nazi organizations. Indeed, some of President The author of piece, senior editor Quinn Hillyer, Barack Obama’s foes are calling him a fascist, the same label added that he wouldn’t go so far as to compare Obama’s ad- some had applied to President George W. Bush. ministration to that of Adolf Hitler, whose version of fascism The labeling would seem to show once again that “fascist” turned out far deadlier than the Italian original. Still, he wrote, is one of the most loosely applied — and handy — terms in “The comparison of today’s situation to that of Italian fascism the political lexicon. Nevertheless, fascism isn’t foreign to the is no mere scare tactic but a serious concern.” 4 United States, even though the word comes from 1920s Italy. In calling Obama a fascist, critics may simply be hoping for Italian dictator Benito Mussolini coined “fascismo” to name the better results than they got when they tried pinning the “so- violence-glorifying, socialist-hating and ultranationalist move- cialist” label on him during and after the 2008 presidential cam- ment he formed after World War I, appropriating a term then paign. “We’ve so overused the word ‘socialism’ that it no longer used for militant political groups of all stripes. 1 has the negative connotation it had 20 years ago, or even 10 Notwithstanding those Italian roots, Robert Paxton, one of years ago,” Sal Anuzis, former chairman of the Michigan Re- the leading historians of the European far right, wrote that the publican Party, told . “Fascism — every- first fascist group in history may have been the Ku Klux Klan. body still thinks that’s a bad thing.” 5 “By adopting a uniform . . . as well as by their techniques of To be sure, only a small minority accepts “fascist” as a com- intimidation and their conviction that violence was justified in pliment. But aiming it at a politician after first denouncing him the cause of their group’s ,” wrote Paxton, a Virginia as a leftist seems an odd tactic, given fascists’ historic hatred native, “the first version of the Klan in the defeated American of socialists. 6 South was arguably a remarkable preview of the way fascist But that seemed to bother Obama’s foes as little as the fact movements were to function in interwar Europe.” 2 that they were borrowing from the vocabulary that some crit- But Paxton, an emeritus professor of social science at Co- ics of the Bush administration used in 2001-2008. lumbia University, dismisses the attempt to label Obama fas- The liberal group MoveOn.org, for instance, created an ad in cist as a desperation move. “When there’s a popular figure and 2004 that tried to connect Bush to Hitler, intoning: “A nation warped you can’t get a grip on opposing him, you call him a fascist,” by lies. Lies fuel fear. Fear fuels aggression. Invasion. Occupation. he says. “As opposed to Hitler and Mussolini in uniform, shriek- What were war crimes in 1945 is foreign policy in 2003.” 7 ing into microphones and juicing up the of crowds, Liberal author Naomi Wolf made a similar case in her book Obama is a calm, reasonable person whose basic drives have The End of America, published toward the end of the Bush ad- all been toward bolstering democracy and the .” ministration. 8

On April 19, 2008, 30 to 40 mem- ticipating, making it one of the bigger Matthew Hale’s World Church of the bers of the National Socialist Move- events of its type. But no independent Creator gathered in York, Pa., where ment (NSM) rallied in Washington confirmation was available. a former mayor and eight others had for an anti-immigration march from In 2005, Roper organized a protest been charged in the 1969 death of a the National Mall to the U.S. Capi- demonstration outside an event in black woman during a racially charged tol. They were greeted by raucous Boston commemorating the 60th an- riot. Several hundred counterprotesters counterdemonstrators, five of whom niversary of the liberation of Nazi death fought with Hale’s supporters in the were arrested for allegedly assault- camps. Police and counterprotesters far city streets, as police tried to sepa- ing police officers with pepper spray outnumbered Roper and his dozen or rate the groups. Twenty-five people and a pole. 64 so demonstrators. 65 were arrested. 66 White supremacist gatherings don’t However, on occasion, suprema- However, in April of that year, only tend to be large affairs. Roper told a cists’ crowds have been bigger, and about 30 to 40 neo-Nazis showed up reporter by phone from the New Hamp- violence has erupted. In 2002, about in York for a Hitler’s birthday cele- shire event that 200 people were par- 60 supporters of the now-imprisoned bration. 67

436 CQ Researcher “The Nazis rose to winning election as chancellor power in a living, if bat- in 1933. “You can draw some tered, democracy,” Wolf parallels — with care,” he says. wrote. “Dictators can rise in “The focus should be on steps a weakened democracy even away from the rule of law.” with a minority of popular Still, Paxton discourages support.” 9 complacency. “In three years, Drawing in part from if we’re not out of this mess, Paxton’s most recent book we could see something that

on fascism, Wolf argued that AFP/Getty Images/Axel Schmidt would call itself the patriotic erosions of civil liberties Followers of the neo-Nazi NPD party stand defiantly near a party or the minutemen, a under the Bush adminis- “Berlin against Nazis” poster during a demonstration symbol that has a nice nation- tration paralleled events in in Berlin on May 1, 2009. Anti-immigration alistic resonance,” he says. “It neo-Nazis and skinheads often clash with Italy and Germany as Mus- would sweep up all the dis- anti-fascists on May Day in Germany. solini and Hitler moved to- contented from the left and the ward totalitarian rule. right; it would be light on ide- But these arguments ology. The immigration issue leave out the widespread loss of faith in democracy, and the would be a very plausible gathering point for some sort of state of near-civil war that served as the backdrop to the rise movement like this.” of fascism in Italy and Germany, Paxton says. By contrast, Americans opposed to Bush expressed their 1 Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (2004), pp. 4-5. discontent within the system, by voting in Obama, Paxton 2 Ibid., p. 49. notes. And the political climate even before that, when Wolf 3 Quinn Hillyer, “Il Duce, Redux?” The American Spectator, April 2, 2009, http://spectator.org/archives/2009/04/02/il-duce-redux. Limbaugh quoted in was writing, didn’t begin to approach the Italian and German Carla Marinucci and Joe Garofoli, “Fascist? Socialist? Attacks on Obama take precedents. “In the collection of pre-conditions, you need a shrill tone,” Chronicle, April 9, 2009, p. A1. something worse,” he says. “A lost war, big-time national hu- 4 Hillyer, op. cit. miliation — we might get there, but we’re not quite there yet 5 Quoted in John Harwood, “But Can Obama Make the Trains Run on Time?” The New York Times, April 20, 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/04/20/us/politics/ — and a sense that our existing way of doing politics isn’t 20caucus.html?scp=1&sq=fascism&st=cse. working. And then power moving to the streets, with para- 6 Paxton, op. cit., pp. 60-67. military organizations. I don’t see any of that.” 7 Marinucci and Garofoli, op. cit. Paxton does agree that the detention and intelligence- 8 Naomi Wolf, The End of America: Letters of Warning to a Young Patriot, gathering policies adopted after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist A Citizen’s Call to Action (2007). 9 attacks could be compared with early moves by Hitler upon Ibid., pp. 39-40.

shared her view that the report tried turmoil, the election of a black presi- Free Speech, Hate Speech to tie conservatives to extremists. 68 dent and a growing number of veter- Homeland Security Secretary Janet ans — whom right-wing extremists have ome conservatives are attacking Napolitano later responded that the a documented interest in recruiting — S the Department of Homeland Se- agency is on “the lookout for crimi- are creating a climate in which far-right curity (DHS) examination of far-right nal and terrorist activity but we do not extremism could flourish again. Specif- extremism as a barely disguised attack — nor will we ever — monitor ide- ically, the report said the DHS “assesses on political foes of the Obama ad- ology or political beliefs.” 69 that right-wing extremist groups’ frus- ministration. The report noted that extremists are tration over a perceived lack of gov- “One of the most embarrassingly especially interested in recruiting vet- ernment action on illegal immigration shoddy pieces of propaganda I’d ever erans, an observation that triggered has the potential to incite individuals read out of DHS,” thundered conser- angry criticism from some veterans’ or- or small groups toward violence.” But vative blogger . Oth- ganizations (see below). In essence the any such violence would likely be ers in the conservative blogosphere 14-page assessment holds that economic “isolated” and “small-scale.” 70

www.cqresearcher.com May 8, 2009 437 HATE GROUPS

Though critics later said the DHS on extremist activities in the 1990s and Extremism-watchers, for their part, failed to distinguish between extremists outlined some ideas said to be circu- greeted the DHS report as an echo and mainstream political advocates, the lating now on the far right. 73 of their own conclusions. “This report did try to draw that line. De- But the report lumped together ex- Homeland Security report reinforces bates on gun rights and other consti- tremists and mainstream political ac- our view that the current political and tutional issues are often intense — but tivists with no violent inclinations. economic climate in the United States perfectly legal, the report said. “Violent “Militia members most commonly as- is creating the right conditions for a extremists,” it added, “may attempt to sociate with third-party political rise in extremist activity,” said Potok co-opt the debate and use the contro- groups,” the report said, going on to of the SPLC. 81 versy as a radicalization tool.” 71 name supporters of 2008 libertarian But one of the center’s most fero- But Berlet of Political Research As- presidential candidate Bob Barr, Con- cious left-wing critics, writer Alexander sociates argues that the report itself stitution Party candidate Chuck Bald- Cockburn, ridiculed that reasoning, ac- crosses into the potentially unconsti- win and Rep. , R-Texas, who cusing the center of “fingering militia- tutional territory of monitoring ideo- ran for the Republican Party presi- men in a potato field in Idaho” instead logical trends. dential nomination. 74 of “attacking the roots of Southern pover- “The government should not be “This smacks of totalitarian regimes of ty, and the system that sustains that in the business of undermining rad- days gone by,” said Baldwin, one of many poverty as expressed in the endless pris- ical ideas,” he says. “As citizens we to react furiously to the document. 75 ons and death rows across the South, have a responsibility to challenge Within weeks, the Missouri State disproportionately crammed with blacks rhetoric that demonizes and scape- Highway Patrol had apologized to the and Hispanics.” 82 goats, but I don’t think the First three politicians and replaced the head Fights are also continuing over broad- Amendment allows the government of the fusion center. 76 casters’ commentaries. In Boston, radio to be in that battle.” Not all critics came from the right. station WTKK-FM suspended right-wing Despite attacks from the left as well “This is part of a national trend where radio talk-show host Jay Severin after he as right, some commentators defend- intelligence reports are turning atten- responded to the influenza outbreak ed the report against its critics. “This tion away from people who are ac- with comments including: “So now, in DHS assessment was begun more than tually doing bad things to people who addition to venereal disease and the other a year ago, before Barack Obama was are thinking thoughts that the gov- leading exports of Mexico — women even nominated,” blogger Charles ernment, for whatever reason, doesn’t with mustaches and VD — now we Johnson — a political independent like,” former FBI agent German told have swine flu.” Mexicans, he said, are who had been popular with conserv- The . 77 “the world’s lowest of primitives.” 83 ative critics of Islam — wrote on his The ACLU, where German is now Franklin Soults, a spokesman for influential “Little Green Footballs” site. a policy counselor, noted that the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee “It was not done at the behest of the North Central Texas Fusion System Advocacy Coalition, called Severin’s Obama administration. . . . The DHS had produced a report in February language “dehumanizing.” report is not intended to target anyone that tied former Rep. Cynthia McKinney Severin himself referred questions but the most extreme elements of the and former U.S. Attorney General to his lawyer, George Tobia, who told far right, and it’s depressing to see so Ramsey Clark to “far left groups” that the Boston Globe that he expected the many bloggers jumping to totally un- allegedly sympathize with the Iranian- broadcaster to be back on the air soon. warranted conclusions.” 72 backed Hezbollah militia of Lebanon “But I don’t know when.” 84 Reaction to the document may and other armed movements in the have been especially intense because Middle East. 78 it followed closely on an uproar that Fusion centers, German said, are an Recruiting Veterans greeted disclosure of a report on the “equal opportunity infringer” on civil rights “Modern Militia Movement” in Mis- of citizens on the right and the left. 79 ischarged from the U.S. Marine souri. It was produced by a “fusion Indeed, DHS says that it produced D Corps after being arrested for al- center,” one of 70 around the coun- a report earlier this year on left-wing legedly taking part in armed robberies try that were set up by law enforce- extremists. That report soon leaked at two hotels in Jacksonville, N.C., a ment agencies after Sept. 11 to en- out as well. The document forecast a former lance corporal now faces sure that intelligence is shared between rise in cyber-attacks aimed at busi- prosecution for allegedly threatening federal, state and local officers. The nesses, especially those deemed to be President Obama’s life. 80 report mostly summarized information violators of animal rights. Continued on p. 440

438 CQ Researcher At Issue: Is anti-immigration rhetoric provoking hate crimes against

Latinos?Yes

MARK POTOK MARCUS EPSTEIN DIRECTOR, INTELLIGENCE PROJECT, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, THE AMERICAN CAUSE SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER WRITTEN FOR CQ RESEARCHER, APRIL 2009 WRITTEN FOR CQ RESEARCHER, APRIL 2009

cross the board, nativist organizations in America have ast year, Barack Obama accused broadcasters Lou Dobbs angrily denounced those who suggest that demonizing and Rush Limbaugh of “feeding a kind of .” arhetoric leads to hate violence. One of them even re- He added that their broadcasts were a “reason why hate cently issued a press release criticizing the “outrageous behav- l crimes against Hispanic people doubled last year.” ior” of groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center that pro- Obama’s facts and logic are plain wrong. The FBI found pose such a link and “provide no proof whatsoever.” only 745 anti-Latino hate crimes nationwide in 2007, down Nativist organizations take the remarkable position that hate from 770 in 2006. In fact anti-Hispanic hate crimes per capita speech directed against Latino immigrants has no relationship dropped 18 percent over the last decade. at all to hate crime — not even the utterly false allegations Most of these hate crimes were for minor offenses, such as that Latinos are secretly planning to hand the American South- graffiti or name-calling, with only 145 aggravated assaults, two west over to Mexico, are far more criminal than others, are murders and no rapes in 2007. To put this in perspective, for- bringing dread diseases to the United States, and so on. mer Hudson Institute economist Ed Rubenstein estimates illegal In addition to defying common sense, that head-in-the-sand aliens murder at least 949 people a year. approach completely ignores the statements that are typically There is also no evidence that hate crimes are motivated by made by hateyes criminals during their attacks. the immigration-controlno movement. Those who claim there’s a Take the case of Marcelo Lucero, who was allegedly mur- connection cannot point to a single, significant commentator or dered by a gang of white teenagers in the Long Island town politician who has advocated violence against Latinos. Nor can of Patchogue, N.Y., last November. Prosecutors say the sus- they find a single hate crime committed by their followers. pects told detectives they regularly went “beaner jumping” — Although whites are the vast majority of listeners of conser- beating up Latinos — and that they used racial epithets dur- vative talk radio and television, they committed only 52 per- ing the attack. “Let’s go find some Mexicans to [expletive] up,” cent of hate crimes against Latinos — a percentage well one said beforehand, according to Newsday. below their proportion of 66 percent of the population. More- Nativist groups use the fact that we don’t know precisely over, County classified 42 percent of black-on- where the teens’ fury comes from to deny it was related to na- Hispanic hate crimes as “gang related.” This is not to suggest tivist demonization. But just because it’s not possible to pinpoint that blacks cannot be racist, but that they are unlikely to be in- the exact source of their racial anger — rhetoric from nativist fluenced by the purveyors of supposed anti-immigrant rhetoric. groups, their parents, local anti-immigrant politicians, or pundits The 2008 murder of José Osvaldo Sucuzhanay in Brooklyn — does not mean it magically popped into the assailants’ . by blacks who targeted him because they mistook him as gay There is also hard evidence to back up the link between was denounced as a significant anti-Hispanic, anti-immigrant demonization and violence. According to FBI statistics, anti- hate crime by all New York politicians and by The New York Latino hate crimes went up 40 percent between 2003 and Times. Even when they were at large, the race of the killers 2007 — the very same period that saw a remarkable prolifera- was rarely mentioned. tion of nativist rhetoric. Groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center that perpetu- Experts agree that there is a link. “Racist rhetoric and de- ate misconceptions about anti-Latino hate crimes make no se- humanizing images inspire violence perpetrated against inno- cret of their goals. They want supporters of immigration con- cent human beings,” says Jack Levin, a nationally known hate trol silenced because, in the words of La Raza president Janet crime expert at Northeastern University. “It’s not just the most Murguía, “We have to draw the line on freedom of speech, recent numbers. It’s the trend over a number of years that when freedom of speech becomes hate speech.” lends credibility to the notion that we’re seeing a very real These organizations run relentless smear campaigns accus- and possibly dramatic rise in anti-Latino hate incidents.” ing virtually all opponents of illegal immigration — no matter Ignoring the role that demonization plays in such violence how nuanced or tempered — of hate speech that must not is a surefire way to generate more of it. Marcelo Lucero’s be allowed on the airwaves, in print, or in front of Congress. murder is only the latest in a sad list of violent incidents in- Before we abandon our core democratic principles of free spired No by ugly rhetoric that will certainly grow longer. speech and open debate in the name of stopping hate crimes, we should at least get our facts straight.

www.cqresearcher.com May 8, 2009 439 HATE GROUPS

Continued from p. 438 recruiting veterans, only to prompt sion received six-year prison sen- Kody Brittingham, 20, who served outraged reaction from some veter- tences for attempting to sell body in the 2nd Tank Battalion, 2nd Ma- ans’ organizations and some politi- armor and other equipment in 2007 rine Division, was indicted in Febru- cians. “To characterize men and to an undercover agent posing as a ary for the alleged threat by a feder- women returning home after defend- white-supremacist movement mem- al grand jury in Raleigh, N.C. An ing our country as potential terrorists ber. And in 2005, a former Army in- unnamed federal law enforcement of- is offensive and unacceptable,” House telligence analyst who’d been con- ficial told the Jacksonville (N.C.) Daily Republican leader John Boehner of victed of a firearms violation founded News that the charge followed dis- Ohio said in a press release. The De- a skinhead group that reportedly ad- covery of a journal in Brittingham’s partment of Homeland Security owes vocated training members in firearms, barracks at Camp Lejeune in which our veterans an apology.” 88 knife-fighting, close-quarters combat he laid out a plan to kill Obama, who In discussing extremists’ interest in and “house sweeps.” 90 at that point hadn’t yet been inaugu- veterans, the FBI said that neo-Nazis The FBI intelligence assessment rated. Investigators reportedly also were not discouraged by the small followed an investigation by the SPLC. found white-supremacist literature number of vets who might be re- In 2006 the center published a de- among Brittingham’s possessions. 85 sponsive to recruiting pitches. tailed report that quoted neo-Nazi How plausible the vets, a supremacist who alleged assassination had renounced the ex- plans were is not tremist cause, as well as clear. But the arrest a Defense Department did reawaken con- investigator. Extremists cerns about white- “stretch across all branch- supremacist and es of service, they are neo-Nazi recruitment linking up across the of men with military branches once they’re in- training, especially side, and they are hard- those with combat ex- core,” investigator Scott perience (Brittingham, Barfield told the SPLC. however, had never “We’ve got Aryan Nations served overseas). graffiti in Baghdad.” 91 Those concerns Worries about a neo- aren’t limited to Nazi presence in the extremist-watchers military had surfaced from advocacy or- Getty Images/David S. Holloway years before U.S. troops Members of the National Socialist Movement demonstrate on the ganizations. An FBI grounds of the U.S. Capitol on April 19, 2008. Fifteen years earlier, on were deployed to report last year another April 19, a fire during an FBI siege at the Branch Davidian and Afghanistan. The counted 203 indi- compound outside Waco, Texas, killed David Koresh and trigger was the random viduals with “con- about 80 followers, including many children. murder in 1995 of a firmed or claimed” black man and woman military experience who had been “The prestige which the extremist in Fayetteville, N.C., by two soldiers spotted in extremist groups since the movement bestows upon members in the elite Army 82nd Airborne Di- Sept. 11 attacks, which effectively with military experience grants them vision, whose home base is nearby marked the beginning of a period the potential for influence beyond Fort Bragg. In the uproar that fol- in which hundreds of thousands of their numbers,” said the report, which lowed, 22 members of the 82nd — military personnel began acquiring is marked “unclassified/for official use including those arrested for the killing battlefield experience. 86 only/law enforcement sensitive.” The — were found by the Army to have Those 203 individuals represent a mi- report, now available online, has cir- extremist ties. 92 nuscule fraction of the country’s 23.8 mil- culated among journalists and non- But far-right efforts to penetrate lion veterans or 1.4 million active-duty governmental specialists. 89 the Armed Forces apparently con- personnel, the report acknowledged. 87 Among a handful of specific cases, tinued. The SPLC published excerpts The recent DHS assessment dis- the FBI noted that two privates in from a 1999 article in the National cussed extremist groups’ interest in the elite Army 82nd Airborne Divi- Alliance magazine by an Army Special

440 CQ Researcher Forces veteran who urged young Others would argue that U.S. society He adds that he hasn’t seen any supremacists to sign up. “Light in- and government have firmer foundations evidence of this taking place. How- fantry is your branch of choice,” he than the Soviet system, which came to ever, left-right extremes have met wrote, “because the coming race power in 1917 and sustained itself first before, at least elsewhere. Mussoli- war, and the to fol- by mass terror and then by mass re- ni’s early fascist movement took in low, will be very much an infantry- pression. former socialists like him. The “so- man’s war. It will be house-to-house, In any event, the consensus among cialist” in Germany’s National So- neighborhood-by-neighborhood, until monitors of the far right is that ex- cialist (Nazi) Party did express some your town or city is cleared and the tremist intensity hasn’t even reached — short-lived — opposition to cap- alien races are driven into the country- the level of the 1990s — the point at italism. Attempts by some European side where they can be hunted down which the extremist movement “goes far-rightists to co-opt left-wing anar- and ‘cleansed.’ ” 93 from red-hot to white-hot,” as Pitcav- chists represent an attempt to revive Supremacists who enlisted were age of the ADL puts it. that tradition. told to stay undercover: “Do not — A key indicator of the latter stage Also up in the air, to Barkun and oth- I repeat, do not — seek out other is the discovery of major conspira- ers, is whether America’s tradition of skinheads. Do not listen to skinhead cies or actual large-scale attacks, racial conflict will reassert itself in a coun- ‘music.’ Do not keep ‘racist’ or ‘White- such as the Oklahoma City bomb- try whose demography has been trans- supremacist tracts’ where you live. ing. “In the 1980s and mid-’90s, a formed from the old, white majority- During your service you will be sub- variety of white-supremacist or anti- black minority pattern. jected to a constant barrage of equal government extremist groups had One effect of the growing Latino opportunity drivel. . . . Keep your huge plots — start a white revolu- political presence likely will be an mouth shut.” 94 tion, break off part of the country, accommodation by the Republican hit military targets,” Pitcavage says. Party, where most support for tougher “What they shared was an elaborate immigration control has centered, large-scale conception, often far larg- says Potok of the Southern Poverty OUTLOOK er than actual capabilities. If we start Law Center. The result would be that seeing some more of these we will white, non-Hispanic voters alienated know that things are starting to go by demographic change fall away white-hot again.” from the conventional political sys- Guns in Holsters The present crisis is too new to tem. “When that happens, a lot of suddenly spawn a new wave of high- these people would just go home, intensity extremism, Pitcavage adds. but some percentage of them would he possibility that far-right ex- “Movements don’t start overnight,” he go into that extremist world,” he T tremists will emerge from the says. “It takes a while for people to speculates. “For them, there’s no margins is as uncertain as the course experience these things and form a way out of a multiracial system. So of today’s economic crisis, veteran reaction to them.” it’s ‘Let’s go off and start our own analysts say. But Barkun at Syracuse University country.’ ” For their part, extremists includ- says today’s conditions are far more On the organizational side, Potok ing Roper of White Revolution har- alarming than those of the “white-hot” theorizes, the absence of major, con- bor no doubt that the medium-term years. War and global economic crisis trolling figures, such as Pierce of the future will see the outbreak of major alone open the possibility of a new National Alliance and Butler of Aryan racial and ethnic violence accompa- extremism paradigm, he says. Nations may be a danger sign. “I under- nying the breakup of the United States. ”We’re in an economic situation stand that a lot of really scary people, “A lot of people might think it’s im- which is so dire and so long-lasting like The Order, came out of the Al- possible, but if you had gone to that it will have social and political liance,” he says, adding that some ex- those same people in 1980 and told effects,” Barkun says. “Things may tremist leaders have a history of de- them the Berlin Wall was going to develop along entirely novel lines picting a need for violence only at fall and the Soviet Union was going that don’t necessarily arise out of pre- some indefinite point in the future. to collapse without a single missile existing groups, or that can readily “Leaders ultimately have the effect of being launched, they would have be placed along the right-wing con- holding people back: ‘We’re going to thought that was impossible too,” tinuum, where the extreme right and kill the Jews, but keep your guns in Roper says. the extreme left come together.” your holsters.’ ”

www.cqresearcher.com May 8, 2009 441 HATE GROUPS

7 David Holthouse, “The Year in Hate,” Intelli- 15 Jared Taylor, “Transition to Black Rule,” Notes gence Report, Southern Poverty Law Center, American Renaissance, Nov. 14, 2008, www. spring 2009, www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/ amren.com/mtnews/archives/2008/11/transition article.jsp?aid=1027. For background, see Ken- _to_b.php. 1 Quoted in Jonathan D. Silver, “911 Oper- neth Jost, “Hate Crimes,” CQ Researcher, Jan. 8, 16 Jared Taylor, “Jews and American Renais- ator Failed to Warn About Weapons,” Pitts- 1993, pp. 1-24. sance,” American Renaissance, May 2006, burgh Post-Gazette, April 7, 2009, p. A1. Un- 8 Tom Hays, “Feds charge 3 men in elec- www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2006/04/jews less otherwise indicated, all details of this tion bias attacks,” The Associated Press, _and_americ.php. event are drawn from Post-Gazette articles Jan. 7, 2009; Christine Hauser and Colin 17 Passel and Cohn, op. cit. published April 5-8, 2009. Moynihan, “Three Are Charged in Attacks 18 “Hate Crime Statistics, Victims, 2007,” FBI, 2 Quoted in Michael A. Fucco, “Deadly Am- on Election Night,” The New York Times, www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2007/table_07.htm. bush Claims the Lives of 3 City Police Of- Jan. 8, 2009, p. A25. 19 Ibid. ficers,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 5, 2009, 9 Manny Fernandez and Javier C. Hernan- 20 Jim Salter, “Mo. town outraged over p. A1. dez, “Binghamton Victims Shared a Dream killings, illegal immigrant,” The Associated 3 Quoted in Dennis B. Roddy, “On Web: of Living Better Lives,” The New York Times, Press, March 20, 2009; “Hannibal murder sus- Racism, Anti-Semitism, Warnings,” Pittsburgh April 5, 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/ pect is illegal alien,” The Associated Press, Post-Gazette, April 7, 2009, p. A1. 04/06/nyregion/06victims.html?scp=7&sq=Jiverly March 4, 2009. 4 “The Employment Situation: March 2009,” Binghamton&st=cse; Al Baker and Liz Rob- 21 Edwin S. Rubinstein, “Illegals kill a dozen U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, April 3, 2009, bins, “Police Had Few Contacts With Killer,” a day?” VDare, Jan. 12, 2007, www..com/ www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm; Jef- The New York Times, April 7, 2009. rubenstein/070112_nd.htm. frey Passel and D’Vera Cohn, “Trends in 10 Quoted in Jessica Fargen, “Sicko Kill Plot 22 Mark Hugo Lopez and Michael T. Light, Unauthorized Immigration,” Pew Hispanic Emerges,” Boston Herald, Jan. 23, 2009, p. “A Rising Share: Hispanics and Federal Crime,” Center, Oct. 2, 2008, http://pewhispanic.org/ 5; Milton J. Valencia, “Father of attacked Brock- Pew Hispanic Center, Feb. 18, 2009, p. 4, reports/report.php?ReportID=94. CQ Re- ton sisters calls for justice,” Boston Herald, http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/104.pdf. searcher has published reports on immigra- Jan. 24, 2009, p. B3. 23 Quoted in Sarah Burge, “Hate Crimes tion going back to the early 1920s. Three of 11 Quoted in Melissa Nelson, “FL man acted Continue Their Rise in Riverside County,” the most recent are: Reed Karaim, “Ameri- oddly before Chilean students’ deaths,” The Press-Enterprise (Riverside, Calif.), July 20, ca’s Border Fence,” Sept. 19, 2008, pp. 745- Associated Press, March 13, 2009. 2006, p. B1. See also Denes Husty III, 768; Alan Greenblatt, “Immigration Debate,” 12 “Hate on Display: A Visual Database of “Crime vs. Hispanics up,” The News-Press Feb. 1, 2008, pp. 97-120, and Peter Katel, Extremist Symbols, Logos and Tattoos,” ADL, (Fort Myers, Fla.) Feb. 11, 2007, p. A1, and “Real ID,” May 4, 2007, pp. 385-408. undated, www.adl.org/hate_symbols/num Troy Graham, “Hate Crime Statistics Belie 5 “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic bers_14-88.asp. For a Web site filled with Truth,” Daily Press (Newport News, Va.), and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in praise for Lane see www.freetheorder.org/ Jan. 30, 2000, p. A1. Radicalization and Recruitment,” Homeland dlrip.html. 24 “A Local Prosecutor’s Guide For Responding Security Department, April 7, 2009, http://im 13 Jeffrey Gettleman, “William L. Pierce, 68; to Hate Crimes,” American Prosecutors Re- ages.logicsix.com/DHS_RWE.pdf. Ex-Rocket Scientist Became White Su- search Institute, undated, www.ndaa.org/pdf/ 6 “Why Obama is Good for Our Movement,” premacist,” , July 24, 2002, hate_crimes.pdf. National Socialist Movement, undated, p. B10. 25 Dennis B. Roddy, “An Accused Cop Killer’s www.nsm88.org/activities/why obama is good 14 Quoted in John Krupa, “Teen in plot lists Politics,” Slate, April 10, 2009, www.slate.com/ for our movement.html. See also Alan Green- drinking as his job,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, id/2215826/. blatt, “Race in America,” CQ Researcher, July 11, Oct. 29, 2008; see also Holthouse, op. cit. 26 Gary Kamiya, “They’re coming to take our 2003, pp. 593-624. guns away,” Salon.com, April 7, 2009, www. salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2009/04/07/richard _poplowski. About the Author 27 Quoted in Adam Liptak, “The Nation: Pris- Peter Katel is a CQ Researcher staff writer who previ- ons to Mosques; Hate Speech and the Amer- ously reported on Haiti and Latin America for Time and ican Way,” The New York Times, Jan. 11, 2004. The Supreme Court decision is Brandenburg Newsweek and covered the Southwest for newspapers in v. Ohio, 395, U.S. 444 (1969). New Mexico. He has received several journalism awards, 28 Quoted in Katherin Clad, “Group cites including the Bartolomé Mitre Award for coverage of drug Saudi ‘hate’ tracts,” , trafficking, from the Inter-American Press Association. He Jan. 29, 2005, p. A1. holds an A.B. in university studies from the University of 29 Nonie Darwish, “Muslim Hate,” Front- New Mexico. His recent reports include “Mexico’s Drug PageMagazine.com, March 25, 2009, www.front War,” “Homeland Security” and “Future of the Military.” pagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=A629F1 F3-BBBA-420D-8C31-D340A577A083.

442 CQ Researcher 30 “Glen Beck joins Fox News,” Reuters, Oct. 16, Birchers Were Birched,” The New York Times, 50 Leonard Zeskind, “Armed and Dangerous,” 2008, www.reuters.com/article/televisionNews/id Dec. 10, 1961. Rolling Stone, Nov. 2, 1995. USTRE49G0NW20081017. 40 See Shaila Dewan, “Revisiting ’64 Civil Rights 51 Megan K. Stack, “Duke Admits Bilking Back- 31 Eric Boehlert and Jamison Foser,” On radio Deaths, This Time in a Murder Trial,” The New ers,” Los Angeles Times, Dec. 19, 200, p. A22. show, Beck read ‘ad’ for refinery that turns York Times, June 12, 2005, p. A26; Manuel 52 Susan Schmidt, “Investigation Clears Agents Mexicans into fuel,” County Fair , Media Roig-Franzia, “Reopened Civil Rights Cases Evoke at Waco,” The Washington Post, July 22, 2000, Matters for America, June 29, 2007, (audio Painful Past,” The New York Times, Jan. 10, p. A1. See also “Final Report to the Deputy clip is posted), http://mediamatters.org/items/ 2005, p. A1. For background on the KKK, Attorney General Concerning the 1993 Con- 200706290010. see the following Editorial Research Reports, frontation at the Mt. Carmel Complex,” John 32 Ariel Alexovich, “A Call to End Hate Speech,” predecessor to CQ Researcher: K. Lee, “Ku C. Danforth, Special Counsel, Nov. 8, 2000, The New York Times, The Caucus blog, Feb. 1, Klux Klan,” July 10, 1946; W.R. McIntyre, www.apologeticsindex.org/pdf/finalreport.pdf. 2008, http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/ “Spread of Terrorism and Hatemongering,” 53 Mike German, Thinking Like a Terrorist: 02/01/a-call-to-end-hate-speech/?scp=1&sq=mur Dec. 3, 1958; H.B. Shaffer, “Secret Societies Insights of a Former FBI Undercover Agent guia%20hate%20speech&st=Search; “President and Political Action,” May 10, 1961; R.L. (2007), p. 71. and CEO Janet Murguia’s Remarks at the Wave Worsnop, “Extremist Movements in Race and 54 Woo, op. cit.; “William Pierce, 69, Neo-Nazi of Hope press briefing,” National Council of La Politics,” March 31, 1965; S. Stencel, “The Leader, Dies,” The New York Times, July 24, Raza, Jan. 31, 2008, www.nclr.org/content/view South: Continuity and Change,” March 7, 1980, 2002, p. A16. points/detail/50389/. and M.H. Cooper, “The Growing Danger of 55 “Hitler’s birthday was April 20, 1889. Un- 33 , “What Obama hasn’t figured out Hate Groups,” May 12, 1989. welcome distinction as Hitler’s birthday bur- yet,” Vdare, April 27, 2009, http://blog.vdare.com/ 41 Fred P. Graham, “Rockwell, U.S. Nazi, Slain,” dens Austrian town,” The Globe and Mail archives/2009/04/27/what-obama-hasnt-figured- The New York Times, Aug. 26, 1967. (), (Reuters), April 20, 1989. out-yet-better-teachers-means-___/; Patrick Cle- 42 Except where otherwise indicated, this 56 “Schedule of Upcoming Extremist Events: burne, “More Indians means more . . .,” Vdare, subsection is drawn from Levitas, op. cit., 2009,” regularly updated, www.adl.org/learn/ April 19, 2009, http://blog.vdare.com/archives/ and James Ridgeway, Blood in the Face: Events_2001/events_2003_flashmap.asp. 2009/04/19/more-indians-means-morefill-in-blank/; The Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, Nazi 57 Steve Giegerich, “Angry words fill air at Cooper Sterling, “Tom Tancredo at American Skinheads, and the Rise of a New White neo-Nazi rally,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 19, University: Maybe It Is About Race,” Vdare, Culture (1990). 2009, p. A4. March 14, 2009, www.vdare.com/sterling/0903 43 Wayne King, “Right-Wing Extremists Seek 58 Quoted in ibid. 14_tancredo.htm. to Recruit Farmers,” The New York Times, 59 Lisa Black, “Holocaust museum opens to 34 Unless otherwise indicated this subsection Sept. 20, 1985, p. A13. See also “Arthur Kirk: ‘fight capacity for evil,’ ” , draws on Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Kirk & Radical Farm Groups,” nebraskastud April 20, 2009, p. A8. Fascism (2004); William E. Leuchtenburg, ies.org, undated, ww.nebraskastudies.org/ 60 Padraig Shea,” Spurned by Hub hall, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal (1963); 1000/frameset_reset.html?www.nebraskastud supremacist group holds rally in N.H.,” The and Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons, Right- ies.org/1000/stories/1001_0112.html. Boston Globe, April 12, 2009, p. B3; “White Wing in America: Too Close for Com- 44 “Supremacists Sentenced,” The Washington supremacists’ event shifted to N.H.,” UPI, fort (2000); Daniel Levitas, The Terrorist Next Post, Dec. 4, 1987; “Five White Supremacists Get April 12, 2009. Door: The Militia Movement and the Radical Long Prison Terms,” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 7, 61 “We shut down the fascists!” Boston Anti-Racist Right (2002). 1986, p. A41; “40-Year Sentences Given to 5 in Coalition, April 8, 2009, www.anarkismo.net/ 35 See Binjamin Segel, A Lie and a Libel: The White-Supremacist Group,” The New York Times article/12633. History of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (The Associated Press), Feb. 8, 1986, p. A17. 62 Billy Roper, “One If By Land, Two If By (1996). For an article in the Dearborn Inde- 45 “13 Supremacists Are Not Guilty of Conspir- Sea,” White Revolution, April 8, 2009, http:// pendent that takes the Protocols as fact, see acies,” The New York Times, April 8, 1988, p. A14. whiterevolution.com. Henry Ford and the editors of the Dearborn 46 Richard A. Serrano, “Metzger Must Pay 63 “Ku Klux Klan Coming to Your Town?” Independent, “ ‘Jewish Protocols’ Claim Partial $5 Million in Rights Death,” Los Angeles Times, The Tennessee Tribune (Nashville), July 6, 2006, Fulfillment,” www.churchoftrueisrael.com/Ford/ Oct. 23, 1990, p. A1. p. C8. original/ij12.html. 47 Elaine Woo, “Richard Butler, 86; Supremacist 64 “Arrests, fights break out at neo-Nazi march,” 36 Biographical sketch in “William Dudley Pel- Founded the Aryan Nations,” Los Angeles Times, wtop.com, April 19, 2009, www.wtop.com/ ley Collection,” University of North Carolina at Sept. 9, 2004, p. B8. ?sid=1389944&nid=25. Video available at Albert Asheville, D. H. Ramsey Library, http://toto.lib. 48 David Johnston with Stephen Labaton, Xavier Barnes, “The Arrests, Counter-Demo,” unca.edu/findingaids/mss/pelley/default_pelley_ “F.B.I. Shaken by Inquiry Into Idaho Siege,” undated, www.truveo.com/The-Arrests-Counter- william_dudley.htm. The New York Times, Nov. 25, 1993, p. A1. Demo-NSM-March-on-DC-19/id/3760920024. 37 Unless otherwise indicated, this subsection 49 Louis Beam, “Leaderless Resistance,” February 65 Brooke Donald, “Two arrested outside draws on Levitas, op. cit.; and Berlet and Lyons, 1992, www.louisbeam.com/leaderless.htm. See Boston Holocaust gathering,” The Associated op. cit. also “Militias,” in Peter Knight, ed., Conspiracy Press, May 9, 2005. 38 Quoted in ibid., p. 180. Theories in American History: An Encyclopedia 66 R. Scott Rappold, “Mobs clash in York,” 39 Quoted in Thomas M. Storke, “How Some (2003), pp. 467-476. York Sunday News, Jan. 13, 2002 , p. A1.

www.cqresearcher.com May 8, 2009 443 HATE GROUPS

67 Marc Levy, “White supremacist rally sparsely attended,” The Associated Pres, April 22, 2002. 68 Michelle Malkin, “Confirmed: The Obama FOR MORE INFORMATION DHS hit job on conservatives is real,” michelle- The American Cause, 501 Church St., Suite 315, Vienna, VA 22180; (703) 255-2632. malkin.com, April 14, 2009, http://michelle- Educational organization founded in 1993 by conservative commentator Pat Buchanan malkin.com/2009/04/14/confirme-the-obama- that supports “conservative principles of national sovereignty, economic patriotism, dhs-hit-job-on-conservatives-is-real/. See also and individual freedom.” Stephen Gordon, “Homeland Security docu- ment targets most conservatives and liber- Anti-Defamation League, Law Enforcement Agency Research Network; tarians in the country,” The Liberty Papers http://adl.org/learn/default.asp. A monitoring and research program aimed mainly (blog), April 12, 2009, www.theliberty at keeping law enforcement agencies up to date on extremism. papers.org/2009/04/12/homeland-security-doc ument-targets-most-conservatives-and-libertar Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover Building, 935 Pennsylvania Ave., ians-in-the-country. N.W., Washington, DC 20535; www.fbi.gov/hq/cid/civilrights/hate.htm. Provides statis- 69 Quoted in “Napolitano defends report on tics, information on the agency’s anti-hate crime program and links to other sites. right-wing extremist groups,” CNN, April 15, 2009, www..com/2009/POLITICS/04/15/ Political Research Associates, 1310 Broadway, Suite 201, Somerville, MA 02144; extremism.report/. (617) 666-5300; www.publiceye.org. A left-oriented think tank that investigates the far right. 70 “Rightwing Extremism. . . .,” op. cit., p. 5. 71 Ibid., p. 6. Southern Poverty Law Center, 400 Washington Ave., Montgomery, AL 36104; 72 “About That DHS Report on Right-Wing www.splcenter.org/intel/intpro. Specializes in suing extremist organizations; main- Extremism,” Little Green Footballs, April 14, tains a research arm that monitors the extreme right. 2009, http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/ 33364_About_That_DHS_Report_on_Right- Stormfront, P.O. Box 6637, West Palm Beach, FL 33405; (561) 833-0030; Wing_Extremism. www.stormfront.org/forum. A heavily trafficked far-right site. 73 “The Modern Militia Movement,” MIAC [Mis- souri Information Analysis Center] Strategic White Aryan Resistance, Tom Metzger P.O. Box 401, Warsaw, IN 46581; Report, Feb. 20, 2009, pp. 3-4, www.scribd. www.resist.com. A Web site maintained by a longtime extremist leader. com/doc/13290698/The-Modern-Militia-Move mentMissouri-MIAC-Strategic-Report-20Feb09-; David A. Lieb, “Analysis: Militia report unites 82 Quoted in ibid. , “King April 15, 2009, http://republicanleader.house. ACLU, Republicans,” The Associated Press, of the Hate Business,” The Nation, May 18, 2009, gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID April 6, 2009. www.thenation.com/doc/20090518/cockburn. =122567. 74 “Modern Militia Movement,” op. cit. 83 Quoted in David Abel, “WTKK-FM sus- 89 “White Supremacist Recruitment . . . ,” op. 75 Chad Livengood, “Agency apologizes for pends Severin for derogatory comments about cit. See also Jim Popkin, “White-power militia report on candidates,” Springfield (Mo.) Mexicans,” The Boston Globe, April 30, 2009, groups recruiting from military,” “Deep Back- News-Leader, p. A1. www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/ ground — NBC News Investigates,” July 16, 76 Chris Blank, “Mo. Patrol names new leader 2009/04/_jay_severin.html. 2008, http://deepbackground.msnbc.msn.com/ for information center,” The Associated Press, 84 Quoted in ibid. archive/2008/07/16/1202484.aspx. April 6, 2009. 85 Lindell Kay, “U.S. charges former Marine 90 “White Supremacist Recruitment,” op. cit. 77 Quoted in Lieb, op. cit. with making a threat against Obama,” Jack- 91 David Holthouse, “A Few Bad Men,” In- 78 Quoted in “Prevention Bulletin,” North sonville Daily News, Feb. 27, 2009, www2.jour telligence Report, Southern Poverty Law Cen- Central Texas Fusion System, Feb. 19, 2009, nalnow.com/content/2009/feb/27/us-charges- ter, July 7, 2006, www.splcenter.org/intel/news/ p. 4, www.privacylives.com/wp-content/ former-marine-with-making-a-threat-agai. item.jsp?pid=79. uploads/2009/03/texasfusion_021909.pdf. 86 “White Supremacist Recruitment of Military 92 Art Pine, “Ft. Bragg Troops Restricted After 79 Quoted in Lieb, op. cit. Personnel since 9/11,” FBI, Counterterrorism Are Painted,” Los Angeles Times, 80 “Leftwing Extremists Likely to Increase Use Division, July 7, 2008, http://wikileaks.org/wiki/ July 17, 1996, p. A9; William Branigin and of Cyber Attacks over the Coming Decade,” FBI:_White_Supremacist_Recruitment_of_Military_ Dana Priest, “3 White Soldiers Held in Slay- Department of Homeland Security, Jan. 26, Personnel_2008. ing of Black Couple,” The Washington Post, 2009, www.fas.org/irp/eprint/leftwing.pdf. 87 Ibid. Dec. 9, 1995, p. A1. 81 Quoted in “Homeland Security: Economic, 88 “Boehner: Homeland Security Report Char- 93 “Planning a Skinhead Infantry,” sidebar to Political Climate Fueling Extremism,” Southern acterizing Veterans as Potential Terrorists is “A Few Bad Men,” op. cit., www.splcenter.org/ Poverty Law Center, April 15, 2009. ‘Offensive and Unacceptable,’ ” press release, intel/news/item.jsp?sid=21. 94 Ibid.

444 CQ Researcher Bibliography Selected Sources

Books sessment of the far right attacks it as a justification for po- litical of Obama administration critics. Berlet, Chip, and Matthew N. Lyons, Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close For Comfort, Guilford Press, 2000. Jenkins, Philip, “Home-grown terrorism,” Los Angeles Times, Longtime analysts of the far right chronicle the long history March 10, 2008, p. A17. of a movement that’s larger than right-wing extremism. During the presidential campaign, a prominent Penn State historian of religion forecast a new wave of right-wing ex- German, Mike, Thinking Like a Terrorist, Potomac Books, tremism — and of repressive Democratic response. 2007. A former FBI agent recounts his undercover assignments Roddy, Dennis B., “An Accused Cop Killer’s Politics,” Slate, in violent, far-right cells while arguing for government focus April 10, 2009, www.slate.com/id/2215826/. on law-breaking, not ideology. A reporter who investigated the man charged in the recent Pittsburgh police killings finds his political ideas jumbled. Levitas, Daniel, The Terrorist Next Door: The Militia Move- ment and the Radical Right, St. Martin’s Press, 2002. Serrano, Richard A., “ ’90s-style extremism withers,” Los The life of Posse Comitatus founder William Potter Gale Angeles Times, March 11, 2008, p. A1. provides the framework for an independent scholar’s detailed Writing before the latest wave of concern about extremism, history of domestic militias. a veteran correspondent reported that the far right hadn’t re- covered from the blows it suffered early in the decade. Paxton, Robert O., The Anatomy of Fascism, Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. Shapiro, Walter, “Long Shadow,” , A leading scholar of the European extreme right distinguishes April 1, 2009, www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=9b21 between its historic relics and the elements that survive. 52b7-07fc-4503-9f33-4e2d222161d8. A veteran political writer sees a likely surge in populist rage Raspail, Jean, The Camp of the Saints, Charles Scribner’s with violent undertones. Sons, 1975. Popular on the far right, this novel by a well-known French Reports and Studies writer anticipates the fervent opposition to immigration from developing countries by depicting it as an invasion that will “The Modern Militia Movement,”Missouri Information Analy- topple Western democratic societies. sis Center, Feb. 20, 2009, www.scribd.com/doc/13290698/The- Modern-Militia-MovementMissouri-MIAC-Strategic-Report-20 Ridgeway, James, Blood in the Face: Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Feb09. Nations, Nazi Skinheads, and the Rise of a New White The report, later repudiated by Missouri officials, triggered Culture, Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1990. a nationwide controversy over government intrusion in po- Journalist Ridgeway’s prescient book includes documentary litical debate. extremist material. “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Cli- Articles mate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” Department of Homeland Security, April 7, 2009, www.fas. Blow, Charles M., “Pitchforks and Pistols,” The New York org/irp/eprint/rightwing.pdf. Times, April 3, 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/04/04/opin The controversial evaluation of the potential for a resurgence ion/04blow.html. of the far right prompted a backlash against governmental A columnist argues that apocalyptic talk from conservative monitoring of ideological trends. commentators preaching revolution and warning of gun- grabbing plans by the Obama administration may set off “White Supremacist Recruitment of Military Personnel unstable minds. since 9/11,” Federal Bureau of Investigation, July 7, 2008, http://wikileaks.org/wiki/FBI:_White_Supremacist_Recruit Hedgecock, Roger, “Disagree with Obama? Gov’t has eyes ment_of_Military_Personnel_2008. on you,” WorldNetDaily, April 13, 2009, http://wnd.com/ This recent and more focused FBI report on extremists’ in- index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=94799. terest in recruiting veterans received little attention, except The conservative columnist who obtained the first leaked among specialists. copy of the Department of Homeland Security’s recent as-

www.cqresearcher.com May 8, 2009 445 The Next Step: Additional Articles from Current Periodicals

Europe Collins, Kristin, “Hispanic Leaders Fear for Safety,” News & Observer (North Carolina), July 19, 2008, p. A1. Baker, Andrew, “America Is Walking Away From Fighting Several of North Carolina’s prominent Hispanic advocates Hate in Europe,” The Forward (New York), March 14, have received an abundance of profanity-laced messages. 2008, p. 11. The State Department is backing out of a proposed ini- Constable, Pamela, “Neo-Nazis Clash With Protesters,” tiative to train European police how to effectively respond The Washington Post, April 20, 2008, p. C3. to hate crimes. Violence erupted after the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement marched in Washington, D.C., to denounce illegal immigration. Besser, James D., “Jew Hatred Cited By European Rights Group,” Chicago Jewish Star, June 8, 2007, p. 1. de la Isla, Jose, “Hispanics Victims of Hate Crimes,” San Anti-Semitic hate crimes in Europe are occurring at a much Angelo Standard-Times (Texas), Dec. 21, 2008. higher frequency than in the 1990s, according to several in- Many who commit crimes against immigrants in Texas claim ternational human rights groups. that it is because immigrants pose a public-safety threat.

Danilova, Maria, and Olga Bondaruk, “Ukraine Grapples Jones, Bart, “Latino Group Seeks U.S. Probe,” Newsday With Alarming Rise in Hate Crimes,” The Associated (New York), Dec. 23, 2008, p. A22. Press, July 11, 2008. A Latino rights group has asked the Department of Justice The alarming rise of hate crimes in the Ukraine may hin- to investigate alleged lax attention to hate crimes by law der its chances of securing a spot in the European Union enforcement officials in Suffolk County, N.Y. and NATO. Marquez, Myriam, “Innocent Chilean Students Paid Savage Marquand, Robert, “ ‘Fitna’: Dutch Leader’s Anti-Islam Price for Man’s Hate,” Miami Herald, March 1, 2009, p. B1. Film Brings Strife,” The Christian Science Monitor, Several Chilean college students were killed during an anti- March 26, 2008, p. 1. immigration rampage by a Florida man. An incendiary film against Muslims by a right-wing Dutch party leader has led to Islamic riots in the country and Reddy, Sumathi, “Attacks Against Latinos Increasing, FBI abroad. Reports,” Seattle Times, Nov. 24, 2008, p. A4. Hate-related attacks on Hispanics grew 40 percent from 2003 Momigliano, Anna, “ ‘Xenophobic Climate’ Fueling Policies, to 2007, while the total number of hate-related incidents nation- Violence in Italy,” The Christian Science Monitor, Oct. 1, wide has remained steady over the same period. 2008, p. 4. A recent wave of racially motivated attacks in Italy has Ross, Janell, “Hate Crimes Rise Against Hispanics and caused a backlash from those who feel like they are being the Disabled,” The Tennessean, May 10, 2008. treated as second-class citizens. Hate crimes against Hispanics in Tennessee more than doubled from 2006 to 2007, while those against the disabled grew from Sonne, Paul, “Russians Sentenced for 19 Hate Killings,” 1 to 30. The Associated Press, Dec. 15, 2008. Seven young Russians have been sentenced to prison amid Walker, Devona, “To Fringe, Border Debate Is a Boon,” a series of hate crimes involving racist assaults, xenophobia The Oklahoman, June 6, 2008, p. 1A. and neo-Nazism. Most members of the National Socialist Movement are con- cerned over the continued flow of undocumented immi- Immigrants grants.

“Latinos’ Deaths Prompt Calls for Hate Crimes Law,” The Watanabe, Teresa, “Crimes Rooted in Hatred Increase,” Associated Press, Dec. 16, 2008. Los Angeles Times, July 25, 2008, p. B3. Recent beatings of Latino immigrants have led Hispanic Hate crimes in Los Angeles County have reached their groups to lobby for a federal hate crimes law. highest point in five years largely due to increased attacks on Latinos and blacks, according to county officials. Bello, Marisol, “White Supremacists’ New Angle,” USA Today, Oct. 21, 2008, p. 3A. Whaley, Monte, “Climbing Reports of Hate Crime Tell Bad- Recent membership gains in supremacist groups have been News/Good-News Story,” Denver Post, April 11, 2008, p. A1. fueled by the debates on illegal immigration and the struggling Statistics suggest that hate crime in the Denver area is not economy. due to any anti-immigration sentiments.

446 CQ Researcher Obama The University of North Carolina refuses to use the term “hate crime” in its student codes of conduct because of the Asbury, John, “Attacks Linked to Election of Obama, Police complexities and constitutional guarantees of free speech. Say,” Press Enterprise (California), Jan. 18, 2009, p. C1. Local police believe that a series of attacks in a California Liptak, Adam, “Freedom to Offend Outside U.S., Hate Speech suburb stem from the election of Barack Obama as the first Can Be Costly,” The New York Times, June 12, 2008, p. A1. black president. Hate speech is more constitutionally protected in the United States than in other countries, including democracies. Curry, George E., “Obama Triumph Sparks Increase in Racist Behavior,” Wave West (California), Nov. 20, 2008, p. A6. Lowry, Rich, “Hate-Speech Complaint Battles Free-Speech A recent rise in racist incidents is a reminder that hate Ideal,” Sun Journal (Maine), June 12, 2008, p. A8. groups still flourish despite the election of Barack Obama A Canadian human rights group has accused a journalist of as the nation’s first black president. “hate speech” for publishing a scathing editorial against Muslims.

Hauser, Christine, and Colin Moynihan, “Three Are Miller, Matthew, “Free Speech Controversy Split Campus,” Charged in Attacks on Election Night,” The New York Lansing State Journal (Michigan), March 2, 2008, p. 1A. Times, Jan. 8, 2009, p. A25. Debates over whether hate speech is free speech has created a A group of Staten Island men have been charged with at- rift between several student groups at Michigan State University. tacking black men on election night after it became clear that a black man would be elected president. Murse, Tom, “Pitts Opposes Expansion of Hate Crimes Law,” Lancaster New Era (Pennsylvania), April 30, 2009, p. B1. Jonsson, Patrik [cq], “After Obama’s Win, White Backlash Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Pa., has opposed speech protections based Festers in US,” The Christian Science Monitor, Nov. 17, on sexual orientation and gender identity over the belief that 2008, p. 3. they would crimp free speech. Obama’s presidential victory and the political marginalization of certain Southern whites could produce a backlash against Torres, Joe, “FCC to Investigate Link Between Hate Speech what some have called the dawn of a post-racial America. and Hate Crimes,” La Prensa San Diego, Feb. 6, 2009, p. 1. The National Hispanic Media Coalition has called on the Fed- Saslow, Eli, “Hate Groups’ Newest Target,” The Washington eral Communications Commission to investigate the impact of Post, June 22, 2008, p. A6. hate speech over the airwaves on the Latino community. Barack Obama’s achievements as a symbol of racial progress and cultural unity have also sparked an increase in white- Ziner, Lee, “New Initiative Aims to Stop ‘Hate supremacist activity. Speech,’ ” Providence Journal (Rhode Island), March 21, 2008, p. B1. Toone, Stephanie, “Some Fear for Obama’s Safety as Race A new initiative borne out of an altercation between a store Nears End,” Augusta Chronicle (), Nov. 3, 2008, owner and Spanish-speaking customers seeks to stop hate p. A3. speech directed at immigrants and communities of color. A foiled amateur plot to assassinate Barack Obama has raised concerns over his safety amid a growing number of CITING CQ RESEARCHER hate groups. Sample formats for citing these reports in a bibliography Witt, Howard, “Hate Incidents in U.S. Surge,” Chicago include the ones listed below. Preferred styles and formats Tribune, Nov. 23, 2008, p. A4. vary, so please check with your instructor or professor. More than 200 hate-related incidents have been reported with- in three weeks after Barack Obama was elected president. MLA STYLE Jost, Kenneth. “Rethinking the Death Penalty.” CQ Researcher Speech 16 Nov. 2001: 945-68.

Gamboa, Suzanne, “Latino Group Claims ‘Hate Speech’ Emerg- APA STYLE ing Over Immigration,” The Associated Press, Jan. 31, 2008. Jost, K. (2001, November 16). Rethinking the death penalty. The National Council of La Raza has launched a web site to counter what it considers to be ‘hate speech’ that has CQ Researcher, 11, 945-968. emerged from immigration debates. CHICAGO STYLE Goldberg, Daniel, “Term ‘Hate Crime’ Rejected for Free Jost, Kenneth. “Rethinking the Death Penalty.” CQ Researcher, Speech Reasons,” Herald-Sun (North Carolina), Feb. 27, November 16, 2001, 945-968. 2009, p. C5.

www.cqresearcher.com May 8, 2009 447 In-depth Reports on Issues in the News

Are you writing a paper? Need backup for a debate? Want to become an expert on an issue? For 80 years, students have turned to ?CQ Researcher for in-depth reporting on issues in the news. Reports on a full range of political and social issues are now available. Following is a selection of recent reports:

Civil Liberties Education Health/Safety Closing Guantánamo, 2/09 Reading Crisis? 2/08 Extreme Sports, 4/09 , 10/08 Discipline in Schools, 2/08 Regulating Toxic Chemicals, 1/09 Gay Marriage Showdowns, 9/08 Student Aid, 1/08 Preventing Cancer, 1/09 America’s Border Fence, 9/08 Racial Diversity in Public Schools, 9/07 Heart Health, 9/08 Immigration Debate, 2/08 Stress on Students, 7/07 Global Food Crisis, 6/08 Crime/Law Environment/Society Politics/Economy Judicial Elections, 4/09 Future of Journalism, 3/09 Business Bankruptcy, 4/09 Mexico’s Drug War, 12/08 Confronting Warming, 1/09 Future of the GOP, 3/09 Prostitution Debate, 5/08 Reducing Carbon Footprint, 12/08 Middle-Class Squeeze, 3/09 Public Defenders, 4/08 Protecting Wetlands, 10/08 Public-Works Projects, 2/09 Gun Violence, 5/07 Buying Green, 2/08 The Obama Presidency, 1/09 Upcoming Reports Fertility Ethics, 5/15/09 Future of Books, 5/29/09 Children’s Rights, 6/5/09

ACCESS CQ RESEARCHER PLUS ARCHIVE CQ Researcher is available in print and online. For access, visit your li- brary or www.cqresearcher.com. Get Online Access to Vital Issues From 1923 to the Present STAY CURRENT To receive notice of upcoming CQ Researcher reports, or learn more CQ Researcher Plus Archive delivers fast, about CQ Researcher products, subscribe to the free e-mail newsletters, online access to ev- CQ Researcher Alert! and CQ Researcher News: http://cqpress.com/newsletters. ery CQ Researcher report from 1991 PURCHASE to the present, To purchase a CQ Researcher report in print or electronic format (PDF), PLUS lets you ex- New! plore the complete visit www.cqpress.com or call 866-427-7737. Single reports start at archive of Editorial $15. Bulk purchase discounts and electronic-rights licensing are also Research Reports* available. from 1923-1990. Search and browse more than 3,600 in-depth reports. SUBSCRIBE Loaded with handy online features, CQ Researcher Annual full-service CQ Researcher subscriptions—including 44 reports a Plus Archive provides the trustworthy reporting and year, monthly index updates, and a bound volume—start at $803. Add the advanced online functionality today’s research- $25 for domestic postage. ers demand. The new “Issue Tracker” feature pro- vides quick links to past and present reports on the CQ Researcher Online offers a backfile from 1991 and a number of tools specific topics you need. to simplify research. For pricing information, call 800-834-9020, ext. For a free trial, visit http://library.cqpress.com/trials. 1906, or e-mail [email protected]. For pricing information, call 1-800-834-9020, ext. 1906 or e-mail [email protected].

*Editorial Research Reports, the predecessor to CQ Researcher, provides the same expert, nonpartisan reporting on the vital issues that have shaped our society.

CQ Press • 2300 N Street, NW, Suite 800 • Washington, DC 20037

Top View