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our way of life? We will organize for own survival," Duke said.
He once drew a map of the U S. that segregated ethnic groups
into various regions, which he gave such names as Minoria,
West Israel, New Africa.
The "idea of an Aryan homeland has triggered a migrat
ion" to the Pacific Northwest, Tom Reiss wrote in The New York
Times in late May "Many Americans are aware of militarists in
the area - mostly because of the 1992 shootout between federal
officials and the family of a white supremacist, Randy Weaver,
in Ruby Ridge, Idaho But now the decade-old organized effort
to get hate groups from around the country to settle in the new
white bastion is showing results." A Portland group that monitors
hate groups, Coalition for Human Dignity, reports that "a steady
stream of hardcore racists have resettled to Oregon, Washing
ton, Idaho and Montana."
There is considerable local resistance to the white
supremacy migration into the Northwest. In 1986 outraged
officials and residents of Kootenai County, Idaho, where Butler
relocated his Aryan Nations from Southern California in 1978,
sent a letter to virtually every county and city government in the
states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming,
about a thousand in all, requesting that they "send a message of
absolute clarity to the Aryan Nations, Ku Klux Kian, neo-Nazis
and other hate groups that their racist, supremacist and
prejudicial beliefs are contrary to those embraced by the people
of the Northwest and their governments." It was asked that cities
and counties in the region pass resolutions that uphold the U S.
Constitution and in particular the 13th Amendment, which
prohibits slavery and establishes citizenship, and the 14th
Amendment, which ensures that "No state shall make or enforce
any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of
citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any
person of life, liberty or property without due process of law; or
deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the
law."
Oregon coastal counties and towns such as Clatsop
County, Seaside and Astoria responded by passing the request
ed resolution. Cannon Beach took the position that it was not
city business but each commissioner recorded personal
opposition to the Aryan Nations. Others like Tillamook County
and the city of Warrenton chose to not discuss the resolution.
The Warrenton city manager said at the time, 'W e do not get
into those things." He might have had a point. The resolution
was little more than symbolic grasping of a crucifix or wearing
garlic to ward off vampires and werewolves. A few of the
councils or commissions ignored the resolution probably
because of significant local sympathy for the white homeland
idea At any rate it was not expected then or now that any of the
region's governments would voluntarily relinquish their authority
or power The white supremacists regard local authority with the
same contempt they do ZOG and would as soon wage holy war
and seize the Northwest by force if they ever got the chance.
The Northwest is a fertile nursery for savage philoso
phies and grim visions. The Aryan Nations in Idaho has received
the most attention and is "one of the largest neo-Nazi organiza
tions in America," Reiss wrote, "with chapters in 20 states and
ties to the wide array of skinhead, militia and supremacist
groups." The Aryan Nations (its formal name is the Church of
Jesus Christ Christian Aryan Nations) was founded in the 1940s
and has been established since 1978 in Idaho. It is anti-Jew,
anti-Catholic, anti-black, anti-Hispanic, anti-homosexual and
anti-communist. Its members are trained and urged to commit
acts of violence. The Aryan Nations spawned The Order, though
Butler says his errant archangel Mathews struck too soon.
Several years ago a series of meetings at Hayden Lake were
held to allegedly plot bombing the Alfred Murrah Federal Build
ing in Oklahoma City that was, Reiss wrote, "chillingly similar" to
the April 19 explosion that killed 167. A schism between Butler
and a longtime apostle, Keith Gilbert, launched a breakaway
sect, the Restored Church of Jesus Christ Aryan Nations, which
is headquartered in Post Falls, Idaho. Its national plan is to kill
all blacks.
Indigenous to the Northwest is the Posse Comitatus
which was started in Portland in 1969 with the core belief that
the highest legal authority is county sheriff. A loosely affiliated
organization that opposes income tax and gun control laws, and
claims Jews control the federal government, the Posse inspired
the recent growth of guntoting anti-government militias through
out the country. Oregon Posse members held off police at a
potato packing shed in Springfield in 1976, and were suspected
but never charged with a murder/arson plot against Portland
judges in 1985. A national Comitatus leader was killed in a
shootout with police and FBI agents in Arkansas in 1983 after he
earlier killed tw j U S. marshals. Perhaps the most notorious
standoff by a Posse member was Weaver's in 1992 during
vtfiich his wife and son were killed.
"Here in the Northwest the militias pose a much bigger
problem than Aryan Nations", says Floyd Cochrane, former
front man for Aryan Nations who recently toured Oregon publicly
recanting his former white supremacism ("I am not free of bigot
ed thoughts," he says) and warning that 'The whole radical right
is on the rise." Michigan has the strongest militia in the country,
Cochrane says. Montana and Idaho host the strongest militias in
the Northwest. Oregon's militia force is weak but growing. Eco
nomic upheaval makes rural Oregon a primary recruiting ground
for the militia and other hate groups (and also fertile for the
Oregon Citizens Alliance, which electorally targets gays and
lesbians as non-citizens.) Militia organizers claim 300 members
in Marion and Polk Counties, and also groups in the central and
southern parts of the state.There are a few members in Portland
and a militia in Lane County.
The Ku Klux Kian and the American Nazi Party have
long had strong influence in the region. The KKK was founded
after the Civil War to rob and murder blacks and prevent them
from benefitting from their release from slavery. It has had
periods of great influence, most notably in the 1920s when it
was nationally powerful, particularly in the South and the North
west. The KKK was especially popular in Oregon during the
1920s; it helped elect a governor in 1922 and influenced both
houses of the state legislature. Most of the Oregon KKK's wrath
was focused on Jews, Catholics and "aliens" (primarily Chinese
and Japanese immigrants). Homosexuals were deep in the
closet and escaped the KKK's attention. There was little activity
against blacks because they were fewer in Oregon than furtive
or fugitive gays.
The KKK has 42 separate and sometimes competing
organizations nationwide, although its membership has fallen
considerably in recent years
The American Nazi Party is a nativist offshoot of the
original National Socialist Party that was started in Germany in
1919 It is perhaps the most virulent of the w4iite supremacist
groups and openly preaches a domestic sequel to the Holocaust
of World War 2 that eliminated millions of Jews, Gypsies, homo
sexuals, mental/physically handicapped and political deviants.
American Nazis have committed many acts of violence, includ
ing murder
There are also smaller adhoc groups, locally grown and
primarily part of the youthful nihilistic rebellion, that openly
TOM TOMORROW
approve of fascist ideology. A Portland example, the New Order
Legion, was organized as "the moderate voice of fascism,"
opposed to violence and terrorism except in specific instances
as well as to nonwhites, feminism, abortion, homosexuality and
Khazars, a Turkish tribe that allegedly infiltrated European
Judaism several centuries ago and whose members Aryan anti-
Semitists say claim to be Jews.
The Khazar theory is formed of the basic scripture of the
white supremacy movement, "Anglo-lsraelism," which is known
also as Christian Identity and Kingdom Identity. "Anglo Saxon
and kindred people are the true Israel," Thom Robb, national
chaplain of the KKK wrote. "Identity breaks the power Jewry has
over America -th e fear being driven into people's hearts ..'If you
don't bless Jews, God w ll curse you!' Now we're Israel. We don't
have to play patsy with the Jews anymore." Anglo-lsraelism is
the claim that God promised Israel would change its name and
go west to occupy islands and new nations,"and in all the world,"
L. J. Davis wrote, "only the western Europeans, especially the
British and Americans, met these explicit and demanding criteria
...The conclusion was inescapable: Europeans and their
descendants were God's favorite people in the entire universe,
the Chosen People." Reiss wrote in the NY. Times that
Christian Identity, based on an obscure 19th century doctrine
called British Israelism, "holds that Anglo-Saxons are the true
Jews of the Bible and that modem Jews are the children of
Satan." Underneath the surface of this zany concept is the
chilling suggestion that the Nazis were the Children of Israel and
the six million Jews they exterminated were impostors.
"America is entering the Dark Ages," KKK chaplain
Robb said in an interview several years ago. 'The center will not
hold. There will be class war between rich and poor , minorities
and whites," says David Duke. The CSA Journal, weekly organ
of The Covenant. The Sword, The Arm of the Lord, a very far
right group that was inspired by Matthew 10:34 ('Think not that I
have come to send peace on earth I came not to send peace
but a Sword"), shrieked quite luridly in one edition that 'There
will be economic collapse, riots in the cities, famine and war It
will be so bad that parents will eat their children... Communists
w ll kill wrfiite Christians and mutilate them; witches and satanic
Jews will offer people up as sacrifices to their gods openly and
proudly; blacks will rape and kill white wamen; homosexuals will
sodomize whoever they can . All but the elect will have the mark
of the beast." In another issue the CSA Journal invited whites,
Asians and blacks to "join together to wipe out Jews. Together
we can make the Holocaust a reality and not a Jewish fable."
Such are the dreams and worldview of vtfiite suprema
cists. Their meanness and posturing w th guns and the violence
WHY?
There have been many tears shed
For the people who are dead.
As I heard about the news,
I started to feel the blues.
I look at my mom as she weeps in sorrow,
As she worries if the death toll will rise tomorrow.
As the families of the dead suffer,
I wish that I could help them be tougher.
As I see all the families cry
I think how lucky I am.
And wonder WHY???
they commit w th them are palpable signs of underlying dread
and mental decline, a slide to savagery as a result of collusive
intelligence incapable and unwilling to take the cognitive steps
toward understanding their fear Pain and death are their only
philosophical offerings. They worship the rituals of violence and
form a primarily male brotherhood of ecclesiastical vengeance.
They disguise themselves w th elaborate costumes or favor an
anonymity of uniforms. They believe that intimidation and brutal
ity are the only methods through which anyone will take them
seriously They are frightened little men, no matter their degree
of brutality, who can only hope to impose themselves on their
era with hatred and violence because they are not imaginative
enough to think of anything else. They believe they are victims
of powerful forces they narrowly define wthout synthesizing the
victimization they cause others by their misinterpretation of their
discontent. They act like people without history, who display no
sympathy with the interconnectedness of races, cultures and
knowledge. They speak of other races as if they were separate
species and view life as a perpetual race war that they must win.
'The fact that there are now paramilitary groups around
the country reflects intense alienation linked to paranoid theories
of history (which are) intensified by millennialism," futurist Alvin
Toffler said in an interview He sees a proliferation of political
and religious sects, some of them "armed w th weapons of mass
destruction that go far beyond fertilizer bombs." He is also con
cerned about such "terrifying pieces to the future" as possible
development of "race-specific weaponry" able to "zero in on
ethnically linked characteristics and target those who carry
them" and competing eugenic strategies made possible by the
biological revolution.
Though it is necessary to realize that white supremacist
ferocity is fueled by fear and deep inferiority, it would be a grave
mistake to underestimate their vicious racism and to believe
they have any other vision than vengeance If you are black,
Hispanic, Jewsh or even Catholic, or if you are married or in
other ways associated with them, if you are homosexual, multi
cultural, physically or mentally handicapped, or if you publicly
disagree that the United States is a vhite Christian nation, or
criticize the rabid racism and anti-Semitism that is a cornerstone
of that faith, these people mean to do you harm, to kill you or
remove you.
Half a century ago world civilization felt the horrors of
human reversion, the growth of small seeds of hatred and
oppression that quickly flowered into the most evil systems in
history. Fascism and Nazism began in the dirty alleys and
backstreets of European cities and emerged from rock-throwing
violence to exterminate entire peoples, in particular European
Jewry but also other types of undesirables that today’s neo-
Nazis wish to get rid of. (Of homosexuals, a leader of the New
Order Legion told the Willamette Week that they "will either be
corrected" by "Skinnerian behavior modification" or "it's the
bullet. ) But after all of the blacks, Jews, Arabs, Hispanics,
Asians, Catholics, homosexuals, physically and mentally
handicapped, prostitutes, Gypsies, wtches and devil worship
pers are taken care of, who w ll the brownshirts remove next,
perhaps all persons of intellect and education as happened in
Cambodia? And people who disapprove of ethnic cleansing will
not be left alone The killing fields w ll be our own yards
It might be a universal hope that the most remembered
person of the 20th century be someone like Mohandis Gandhi,
but it w ll probably be Adolf Hitler. Not long ago in Germany a
neo-Nazi leader said that he and his followers loved Hitler as
devoutly as Christians love Christ. In the United States, the
KKK, the American Nazi Party, the Aryan Nations, various
Militias and the rest of the Christian/Kingdom Identity movement
have merged Hitler and Christ into the same deity. An Israeli
reporter, Yossi Melman, in describing Palestinian terrorist Abu
Nidal as a political fringe figure, perhaps defined as well the
situation that is developing in America when he wrote:
"But the fringe is starting to become the center."
'•MICHAEL MATTINGLY
(age 11)
This has been revised from an earlier article that
appeared in the July 1986 NCTE