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White supremacist leaders turn up in Louisiana and Arkansas to rally new supporters

The Detroit News

May 22, 2004

The former self-appointed imperial wizard of the Louisiana-based Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is out of prison and living in Louisiana. He is an effective demagogue. The ex-Klan leader, David Duke, a former one-term member of the Louisiana state House, began serving his 15-month sentence for tax and mail fraud on April 15, 2003. Last month he was released to a halfway house in Baton Rouge, La.

Since he left the Klan in 1980 and founded the National Association for the Advancement of White People, Duke has continued to spew anti-Jewish and anti-African American venom, laced with talk about the need for "white survival."In January 2000, Duke established the European-American Unity and Rights Organization, originally named the National Organization for European American Rights.

Meanwhile, a 32-year-old former Arkansas school teacher and founder of a new neo-Nazi organization based in Russellville, Ark., called White Revolution, is also making recruiting efforts. The White Revolution leader, Billy Roper, this week got about two dozen followers in Topeka, Kan., to protest the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision...

Unfortunately, the activities of racists are not in the distant past. In April 2001, an off-duty African-American Michigan State Police trooper in a Howell bar was beaten by two white men. One was subsequently convicted and one entered a guilty plea. Nor are shocking incidents confined to southeastern Michigan. In May 2003 near Midland, seven white boys kicked, whipped with a belt and yelled racial slurs at a middle school classmate who was African-American.

When hate groups are allowed to flourish, hatred is passed from one generation to another. America cannot look the other way and allow the resurgence of racial intolerance.

SEE: http://www.detnews.com/2004/editorial/0405/22/d08-160193.htm

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Authorities arrest 6 white supremacists

Greg Botonis

May 22, 2004

LANCASTER, CA -- Six purported members and associates of a white supremacist gang were arrested Friday after dozens of law-enforcement officers raided a west Lancaster home. Thousands of dollars in tools and equipment believed to be stolen, swords and a shotgun, a car, methamphetamine, and neo-Nazi paraphernalia were taken away, officials said. Three toddlers were taken into protective custody.

Law-enforcement officials did not release the name of the three men and three women arrested at the house on 38th Street West, or of another man and a woman elsewhere in Lancaster. One man was wanted in connection with a crime earlier this month in Los Angeles, although LAPD officers would not disclose any information about the crime.

From the single-story home and its garage, deputies carried swords, machetes and a pistol-grip shotgun, plus a tomahawk painted red and various hunting knives and daggers. Inside the garage, deputies said, they found a stolen Saturn sedan plus new air compressors, an engine hoist and pneumatic tools.

Inside the home, deputies said they found a small amount of methamphetamine. They found a photographs of one of the arrested men smoking the drug and another photograph of a second man giving a Nazi salute in front of a fountain at Disneyland.

One of the women arrested at the home was on federal probation for a hate-crime conviction and had stopped reporting to her probation officer, officials said. The other two women were on summary probation and were arrested for violating their probation by associating with gang members, weapons and drugs, officials said.

SEE: http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200~20943~2164196,00.html

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Boys may have sought guns for Utah school attack

Matt Canham and Linda Fantin

May 22, 2004

SALT LAKE CITY, UT -- Summit County officials say two high school students found to have drawn hundreds of pictures depicting violence against classmates and teachers recently tried to get guns. This information, obtained by deputies Friday, fuels Sheriff Dave Edmunds' suspicion that the two 15-year-olds from South Summit High School were planning a violent attack on their school...

"One of the things that really shocked us, that triggered the search, was the magazine found in one kid's backpack," said South Summit District Superintendent Timothy Smith. "It was the May 9, 1999, issue with the big, front-page story about Columbine." That and "other papers" in the backpack led police to search a locker shared by the two boys.

There, they found notebooks and stacks of paper filled with detailed violent illustrations, threatening language and neo-Nazi symbolism. The drawings "were specifically about school employees and schoolchildren there," he said. "Some were labeled, they actually had names attached to them." Hundreds of caricatures include depictions of the boys -- labeled by name -- raping, sodomizing and committing acts of violence against teachers and students, also named...

SEE: http://www.sltrib.com/2004/May/05222004/utah/168715.asp

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A growing racial divide at Temescal Canyon

William Finn Bennett

May 22, 2004

LAKE ELSINORE, CA -- In the 10 days since a campus melee and fights erupted at Temescal Canyon High School, the racial and ethnic divides separating many students have grown even wider, more than a dozen students said last week ... A USC professor of sociology said that one possible explanation of the boiling over of tensions may lie in changes in the makeup of the school population over the years.

"If the (minority) population is growing, it can cause problems," said Dowell Myers, a professor with USC's school of policy and planning and an expert on shifting populations in California. "Probably the whites are not used to accommodating them ... and the larger group is (now) more antagonistic because they are used to being dominant," he said. "It sets the conditions where it can happen."

The proportion of Latino students at Temescal Canyon has increased by 15 percent over the past four years, state Department of Education figures show. During the same period, the white student population has dropped by 10.4 percent.

A recently completed study of the two high schools by the Orange County Human Rights Commission states that there are neo-Nazi groups on campus, and that most students and some staff members were aware of those groups.

Commission Executive Director Rusty Kennedy agrees with Myers that an increase in the number of minority students at a school can lead to increased tensions. He said last week that he has seen the same phenomenon occur in Orange and Los Angeles counties over the past two decades as Latino populations have grown in many communities.

"The ethnic shifts have caused resentment and hostility," Kennedy said. "Basically, the 'white-power' attackers are a very small group, but they can make the Latinos' and other minorities' lives very uncomfortable."

SEE: http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2004/05/23/news/californian/21_38_585_22_04.txt

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Confront hate in community; don't ignore it

Rick Bella

May 24, 2004

PORTLAND, OR -- ...Several times this year, racist fliers and CDs have been distributed in Tigard in an apparent effort to recruit young people to the cause. Other efforts have hit Tualatin, Sherwood and Beaverton. Meanwhile, the Tualatin Valley Skins have been pumping out their local-access shows to 121,000 cable subscribers spanning Washington County, part of Clackamas County and 12 cities.

At least six times a week, "Resistance Rock Radio" airs a potentially deadly brew of high-energy heavy metal tunes and "white pride" lyrics. The effect could be intoxicating to young people desperate to belong to something and looking for convenient scapegoats.

Another six or eight times a week, "Freedom of Thought" runs on cable-access channels, serving up neo-Nazi lectures over clips of lovable puppies, kittens and zoo denizens. It would be easy for the unaware to miss the attempt to link the ugly with the beautiful in the viewers' subconscious.

I think you should watch the shows so you can appreciate exactly what we're up against. In fact, I think you should tune in with your kids and then discuss the shows with them.

I think you should go to the Tualatin Valley Skins' own Web site -- www.nukeisrael.com. Count how many times you see Hitler's face, how many times you see minorities blamed for everything. Count how many times "white pride" is used as an excuse for resenting everyone else. Then, I think you should take a walk in the park -- make that Cook Park at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, where police, city and school officials are holding an anti-hate rally.

I'm not sure what may turn the tide, but I know nothing will change if we pretend this isn't happening right here.

SEE: http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/rick_bella/index.ssf?/base/metro_southwest_news/1085227549317940.xml

"If the (minority) population is growing, it can cause problems," said "If the (minority) population is growing, it can cause problems," said Dowell Myers, a professor with USC's school of policy and planning and an expert on shifting populations in California. "Probably the whites are not used to accommodating them ... and the larger group is (now) more antagonistic because they are used to being dominant," he said. "It sets the conditions where it can happen." , a professor with USC's school of policy and planning and an expert on shifting populations in California. "Probably the whites are not used to accommodating them ... and the larger group is (now) more antagonistic because they are used to being dominant," he said. "It sets the conditions where it can happen."

Probably, the whites are used to running away from the minorities moving in. They likely came from another suburb that was becoming more brown/yellow, and left because they couldn't handle getting along with "other" people.

It's not just whites either, because a lot of African Americans fled LA back in the 70s too. And they ended up in similar exurbs. And they are sometimes racist too. (Asians and Latinos aren't immune from this racism either, trust me.)

So, what happened was that the most racist people left the increasingly multicultural suburbs first, but, lacking economic clout and being working class, found themselves sqeezed by the ever increasing income disparities in the Reaganomics era. They were seeking cultural segregation, and also expected the (now illegal) economic segregation and white supremacy to continue.

I believe this sets the stage for resentment, neo-nazi organizing, and so forth. It goes beyond "accomodating" (to use the prof's language) to threatening something that these people don't want to believe: that segregation was ended in the 1950s, and non-white people have rights to work and live. The violence at schools is just the most dramatic symptom.

I have no studied proof of this, but it's the impression I've gotten from talking to a lot of people and reading. Generally speaking, the people in the exurbs are from the suburbs or city, and they left some time ago. When they talk about problems, they focus on undocumented immigration, jobs, crime, and see these things which are generally economic as the source of social problems.