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Anti-Semitism - Hate Groups in America
Introduction
Organized hate groups such as the Ku Klux
Klan or neo-Nazi organizations remain unremitting sources of anti-Jewish
hostility and significant factors in assessing the intensity of
anti-Semitism in America today.
There are instances in which hate group
members and associates engage in violence or vandalism to fulfill the
aims of the hate groups themselves. Relative to the total number of
incidents committed in America, such examples are rare. In addition,
there is the potential for hate group propaganda-particularly the most
vicious and incendiary examples-to inspire unaffiliated individuals to
commit acts of terror in pursuit of their own aims. Such acts are also
relatively rare. However, the propaganda produced by the myriad of
American hate groups can potentially affect the impressionable young,
the disaffected, and those looking for a scapegoat to explain away their
problems. Thus, a culture of hate, shielded by First Amendment
protections, exists on the fringes of American society.
Aryan Nations
Despite the poor health of its leader,
Richard Butler, and internal power struggles that have siphoned off
support and membership over the past decade, the Hayden Lake,
Idaho-based Aryan Nations remains an organization of serious concern and
a potential catalyst for acts of violence. The ideology that motivates
the group's hatred is "Christian Identity," a pseudo-religious doctrine
which argues that Northern European whites and their American
descendants are the "Chosen People" of Scriptural prophecy; that Jews
are the "Synagogue of Satan"; that Blacks and other people of color are
subhuman "mud people," and that the Bible mandates that homosexuals be
executed. To promote this agenda, Aryan Nations hosts semiannual
gatherings at its headquarters, conducts a "prison outreach ministry"
affiliated with the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang, and operates a Home
Page on the World Wide Web. Aryan Nations is the most significant
"Identity"-oriented organization in America.
Ku Klux Klan
Though currently suffering its greatest
decline since the 1940s, with its three most prominent national units of
the era-the United Clans of America, the Invisible Empire Knights of the
KKK and the Knights of the KKK-either defunct or factionalized,
America's oldest hate group, the Ku Klux Klan, continues to operate on a
local level, in some instances still engaging in illegal acts of
violence and intimidation. Local Klan factions active today include:
The Christian Knights of the Ku
Klux Klan: Formed in 1985 by Virgil Griffin
and based in Mount Holly, North Carolina. The Christian Knights are
active in North and South Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee. A suspect in
two June 1995 arsons of predominately Black South Carolina churches-part
of an apparent epidemic of church arsons occurring throughout the
country since January 1995-carried a card identifying him as a member of
the Christian Knights.
The Keystone Knights of the Ku
Klux Klan: A breakaway faction from the
now-defunct Invisible Empire Knights of the KKK, the Keystone Knights
was founded by Barry Black in 1992 and is based in Johnstown,
Pennsylvania. The Keystone Knights publishes an anti-Jewish, anti-Black
newsletter called The Keystone American.
The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
(Arkansas Faction): The Harrison, Arkansas-based Knights of the KKK, led
by Thom Robb, is the largest and most active Klan faction operating in
the nation today. Nonetheless, a rash of schisms and defections in 1994
has contributed to a dramatic decline in the Knights' numbers; from a
total of approximately 1,000 members three years ago, the Knights today
can claim a hard-core membership of at most 500, spread across seven
states. In addition to traditional KKK activities, Thom Robb also
maintains a Klan Web site on the computer Internet.
The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
(Michigan Faction): A splinter group in Thom Robb's Knights formed in
August 1994 when three Klan officers in Michigan, Indiana and Illinois
claimed the Knights' name for themselves and declared Robb "deposed" as
national director. Robb responded by expelling the three from the
Knights. The Michigan faction of the Knights today maintains an even
lower profile than the Arkansas branch.
Federation of Klans, Knights of
the Ku Klux Klan: The Federation of Klans was
formed in April 1994 by Chicagoan Ed Novak (né Ed Melkonian) following
his defection from the Knights of the KKK. Though originally making
significant inroads among Klansmen at the start of his defection, Novak
has engaged in little organizing since 1994, and today Federation of
Klans membership stands at no more than 50 people across five states.
Knights of the White Camellia Ku
Klux Klan: The Knights of the White Camellia,
a Texas Klan group led by Charles Lee, along with the Texas chapter of
Thom Robb's Knights of the KKK, has been linked to a number of incidents
of racial intimidation and harassment in Vidor, Texas. These incidents,
which occurred in 1992 and 1993, involved efforts to prevent the
desegregation of an all-white Federally assisted housing project in
Vidor. Among the reported acts of intimidation was the threat to blow up
a housing unit to prevent its integration; residents of the project
additionally alleged that the White Camellia Knights carried automatic
weapons on a bus they drove through the housing complex and that one
Klan member offered white children $50 to beat up African-American
children. The Texas Commission on Human Rights has brought a civil suit
against both Klan groups in response to these incidents.
Militias
Though not anti-Semitic in intent, the
militia movement is nonetheless a highly significant development on the
far right in the 1990s, and has become a lightning rod for anti-Semitic
propaganda and agitation. Coming to public attention in early 1994,
militia organizations now operate in at least 40 states, with membership
totaling as much as 15,000 nationwide-more than the current number of
skinheads, neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klansmen combined.
Militia groups came under intense scrutiny
in the national media after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, because of
accused bomber Timothy McVeigh's possible association with the Arizona
Patriots, a militia-style group with a history of weapons stockpiling
and anti-Semitism, and a militia group in Michigan, and because it was
widely reported that he embraced the same political agenda that animates
the movement.
Among McVeigh's reported inspirations for
the Oklahoma City catastrophe was the neo-Nazi fantasy novel, The
Turner Diaries; moreover, he and Terry Nichols-the other accused
perpetrator-were devoted readers of The Spotlight, a weekly
tabloid newspaper published by the Liberty Lobby, the leading
anti-Semitic propaganda organization in the United States.
Additional manifestations of anti-Semitism
in the militia movement can be found in a number of cases. For example,
the leader of the Militia of Montana, John Trochmann, in addition to a
current association with Liberty Lobby, was a 1990 speaker at an Aryan
Nations event. More explicitly, Linda Thompson, a propagandist and
activist in militia circles, stated last year, "it seems pretty obvious
to me. . . that we've gotten so much infiltration in Secret Service and
F.B.I. by Israeli Mossad that it [the FBI] is predominantly
Israeli-controlled." In a subsequent Internet posting, Thompson also
praised the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Furthermore,
popular speakers on the militia circuit include avowed anti-Semites such
as the tax protector "Red" Beckman and the conspiracy theorist Eustace
Mullins.
National Alliance
The neo-Nazi National Alliance is the most
sophisticated, best organized and best financed overtly Hitlerian
organization in the United States. Its leader is William Pierce, a
former officer in the American Nazi Party of George Lincoln Rockwell,
and the author of The Turner Diaries, the fantasy novel reported
to have inspired the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Over the past 20 years,
the National Alliance has been home to, or connected with, some of
America's most violent right-wing terrorists, including The Order, the
most significant right-wing domestic terror group of the 1980s. In
addition to promoting books such as The Turner Diaries, the
National Alliance produces propaganda, often designed to appeal to
neo-Nazi skinheads, denouncing Jews as well as "black, brown and yellow
parasites."
Equal opportunity bigots, the National
Alliance also creates propaganda that attacks gays and lesbians, women
and feminism, and even the disabled. Such materials are distributed
across the country and around the world via printed flyers, Internet
postings on the World Wide Web and shortwave radio broadcasts.
Skinheads
Neo-Nazi skinheads in the United States
have been responsible for at least 41 murders since December 1987. Some
of the more notorious of these killings have included the stomping death
of a 15-year-old Vietnamese immigrant by two 18-year-old skins in
Houston, Texas. The following year in Arlington, Texas, three
16-year-old members of the Confederate Hammerskins killed an
African-American man while he sat on the back of a truck with white
friends. Skinheads belonging to the Aryan National Front were
responsible for two separate killings of homeless African-American men
in Birmingham, Alabama, during the winter of 1991-92. In January 1995,
two skinhead brothers near Allentown, Pennsylvania, murdered their
father, mother and younger brother; the two murderers had reportedly
been visitors to the "Christian Identity" compound of Pennsylvania Aryan
Nations activist Mark Thomas. So immersed were they in skinhead culture
that the two had slogans and Nazi insignias tattooed on their foreheads.
Racist skinheads do not confine their
bigotry purely to ethnic prejudice. They have also been responsible for
several murders and countless assaults against gays and lesbians. Fatal
attacks have occurred in New York City; San Diego; St. Louis; Salem,
Oregon; and Reno, Nevada. Furthermore, racist skinheads have also
attacked and even killed their anti-racist counterparts in brawls and
unprovoked attacks.
Like the most militant members of the
"Christian Identity" and militia underworlds, some skinheads have
harbored fantasies of fomenting a race war in the United States. In July
1993, four members of the Fourth Reich Skins were among a group of eight
charged in Los Angeles with planning a conspiracy to bomb an
African-American church, to mail a letter bomb to a rabbi, and to
assassinate several Black public figures. Within 10 days of the Los
Angeles arrests, three skinheads from Washington State were also
arrested in connection to two bombings that were part of another plot to
ignite a race war. The three Washington skinheads later pleaded guilty.
White Aryan Resistance
Founded by former California Klan leader
Tom Metzger in 1983, WAR has been the leading information and propaganda
clearinghouse for the neo-Nazi skinhead movement in the United States.
In addition to its catalyzing presence among young hatemongers, WAR on
at least one occasion has played an instigating role: in 1988, Dave
Mazzella, then billed as a WAR "vice-president," met with members of a
Portland, Oregon, skinhead gang, East Side White Pride. After receiving
a "crash course" with Mazzella on the finer points of street brawling
and ethnic intimidation, three members of the gang attacked a group of
Ethiopian immigrants with a baseball bat and steel-toed boots. One of
the immigrants, Mulugeta Seraw, was murdered.
In response to this hate crime, ADL and the
Southern Poverty Law Center in 1990 instituted civil litigation against
Metzger on behalf of the Seraw family. With the participation of
Mazzella-who was not charged in the murder and who meanwhile had left
the racist movement and renounced his ties to the Metzgers-the two civil
rights groups were able to secure a $12.5 million judgment against WAR
and Metzger. Upheld on appeal in April 1993, this judgment is one of the
largest civil verdicts of its kind in U.S. history. Nonetheless, WAR
continues to publish a monthly tabloid and operates a telephone hate
message service, as well as an Internet Home Page, to disseminate the
lowest level of hatemongering propaganda against Jews, Blacks and other
groups. With a proven record of violence, WAR remains a group whose
activities and publications demand the attention of law enforcement and
the condemnation of the public.
From:
www.adl.org
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