United States of America
The 1996 general election results were mixed. President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, was
comfortably re-elected, defeating Republican challenger Bob Dole and third-party
challenger Ross Perot. However, Republicans maintained control over both houses of
congress: the senate and the house of representatives. If anything, the newly elected
congress is likely to be more conservative than its predecessor: a significant number of
moderate Republicans were replaced by more conservative members of their party.
The Religious Right (see RELIGION) continued to be active politically, especially within
the Republican Party. The party's platform was heavily influenced by the Religious Right,
to the point where Republican presidential candidate, Bob Dole, publicly distanced himself
from it in order to cultivate the political mainstream.
Far-right militia groups (see PARTIES, ORGANIZATIONS, MOVEMENTS) also soldiered on.
Various plots were uncovered and prosecutions begun against militia cells collecting the
material of, and preparing for, acts of domestic terrorism.
A rash of church burnings, largely affecting black churches, caught the nation's attention
in 1996. Jewish groups, such as the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the
Anti-Defamation League (ADL), established funds to help rebuild the churches; a black and
Jewish teenage group helped rebuild an Alabama church over the 4 July holiday, and in
August President Clinton, Vice President Gore and their families joined Rabbi James Rudin
of the AJC and the Revd Joan Brown Campbell of the National Council of Churches to help
rebuild a church in Tennessee.
Minister Louis Farrakhan, head of the Nation of Islam movement (NOI), followed up his
successful "Million Man March" of 1995 with a series of controversial trips to
alleged terrorist-sponsoring states such as Libya, Iran and Iraq (see PARTIES,
ORGANIZATIONS, MOVEMENTS). He also convened a "National Political Convention" in
St Louis, Missouri, which was poorly attended, and a "World Day of Atonement" at
the United Nations in New York. Farrakhan remained true to his pattern of asking to meet
with Jews while continuing to make outrageous antisemitic expressions, and while the NOI
continued to print and distribute antisemitic books and periodicals.
In the meantime, a number of Jewish groups continued their efforts to terminate
government-funded contracts with companies affiliated with the NOI, premised on the belief
that such companies were violating the equal employment opportunity laws applicable to
businesses that receive such contracts.
In 1996, the economic picture in the USA showed the unemployment rate to be 5.3 per cent,
with inflation up to 3.3 per cent in 1996 from 2.5 per cent in 1995. Economic growth for
1996 was 2.5 per cent. Consumer prices rose at an annual rate of 3.3 per cent.
Although religious-based antisemitism dates back to colonial days, antisemitism with a
racist bent emerged during the 1890s. This was when the large-scale immigration of Jews
began that characterized the next three decades. US antisemitism followed the European
nineteenth-century pattern and instituted moves to restrict immigration. A result of this
trend was the passage by the US congress in the 1920s of national origin quotas. These
quotas largely closed the doors to immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. The
resultant effect of the quotas was that, some years later, the USA was unavailable as a
refuge for a significant number of Jews fleeing Hitler's Europe. Another result of the
"nativist" trend was the re-emergence in the early twentieth century of the Ku
Klux Klan (KKK). Dormant since its first incarnation following the Civil War, the KKK
promoted antisemitism and became a potent force.
In the early twentieth century, antisemitic stereotypes proliferated within the popular
cultural areas of vaudeville and the stage, and later in motion pictures. In 1903 the
Kishinev pogrom galvanized many leading US Jews to fight antisemitism, leading to the
formation of the AJC on 3 February 1906.
In 1913 Leo Frank, a Jew, was wrongfully convicted of the murder of a young Christian
woman in his factory in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1915 Frank was removed from his prison cell
by a vigilante mob and lynched, a victim of rumours, slanders and calls to anti-Jewish
pre-judice.
In the 1920s the automobile manufacturer Henry Ford, believing and then popularizing The
Protocols of the Elders of Zion, conducted a seven-year propaganda campaign through
his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, against what he termed the
"International Jew". The 1930s, the era of the American depression, was a time
of distinct anti-Jewish bias in many areas of society. Large-scale discrimination against
Jews in employment, higher education and housing combined with virulent political
antisemitism resulting from the rise of Nazism in Germany and fascism in other European
countries. The last major eruption of antisemitism in the USA occurred during this period,
with an upsurge of ideologically motivated and political anti-Jewish activity. The era
gave rise to domestic anti-Jewish bigots, such as Father Charles Coughlin, Gerald L. K.
Smith and William Dudley Pelley, the leader of the Silver Shirts. It also witnessed the
rise of the German-American Bund, led by Fritz Kuhn, and the notorious anti-Jewish speech
by the aviator and US hero Charles A. Lindbergh to an America First Committee rally.
Especially influential in the 1930s was Father Coughlin, a Catholic priest whose weekly
radio broadcasts with an openly antisemitic message reached millions. Coughlin's campaign
paved the way for isolationist organizations, such as the America First Committee, to
attract anti-semites to their banners. Interestingly, echoes of some of Father Coughlin's
speeches can be heard today in the verbiage of some NOI speakers, such as Khallid Abdul
Muhammad.
The 1940s-a period of social cohesiveness as the USA went to war-saw a diminution of some
forms of antisemitism. Nonetheless, there was continuing anti-Jewish bias in employment
and housing, while in social clubs there were other, "polite" forms of
discrimination. Quotas on Jewish students also continued at many major universities.
The 1950s was an era in which the Jewish communal agenda in the USA was almost synonymous
with the civil rights struggle. In 1954, the supreme court's decision in Brown vs.
Board of Education ruled segregated schools illegal (the AJC underwrote the
sociological studies upon which the supreme court based its decision). In the years
following the Brown case, those who fought to preserve racial segregation caused serious
social turmoil. There was some scapegoating of Jews, an increase in KKK activity and the
growth of "white citizens' councils". There was also a proliferation of
antisemitic fringe groups. During the post-war years, antisemitism lost much of its
ideological strength. Serious manifestations of antisemitism ceased to be a factor in the
USA.
In the last three-and-a-half decades there has been little political antisemitism:
discriminatory barriers have continued to fall in all areas of US society, including the
corporate world. Notwithstanding these trends, there have been some noteworthy
manifestations of antisemitism during the latter part of the twentieth century. Together
with the McCarthyite witch-hunts, the late 1950s and 1960s witnessed the rise and growth
of radical far-right groups. These groups advanced a theory that sometimes focused on Jews
as promoters of a conspiracy to spread communism and control the world. In 1960, during a
two-month period, a swastika-daubing epidemic took place resulting in 643 desecrations of
synagogues and other Jewish property throughout the USA. In the 1970s, at the height of
the anti-Vietnam War movement and at the beginning of the women's movement, antisemitism
was also expressed by the political left. Using the infamous UN Resolution 3379, which
equated Zionism with racism, as a political wedge, various left groups sought to portray
Jews as racist, and/or as part of a conspiracy to spread capitalism and control the world.
During the latter part of the 1980s and continuing into the 1990s the number of incidents
of antisemitic vandalism and harassment rose around the country. However, the general
diminution of most forms of antisemitism continued. Analysts suggest that there is no
contradiction between the rise in the number of acts of antisemitic vandalism and the
decline in anti-Jewish attitudes. It is not always possible to determine to what degree
incidents are motivated by antisemitic sentiment alone. In particular, acts of vandalism
may be the work of juveniles with cans of spray paint rather than outright anti-Jewish
acts. Therefore, it is not always accurate to extrapolate conclusions about societal
beliefs from acts of vandalism. The rise in antisemitic hate crimes generally reflects the
upward trend of hate crimes against other communities. The one difference is that Jewish
property (synagogues, cemeteries) is often the target of a large proportion of antisemitic
hate crimes, while among other groups of victims, such as the gay community, the targets
are more likely to be human beings.
It is worth noting that in the "moments of conflict" during the post-war period,
at a time when one might expect outbursts of antisemitism­p;for example, the oil
crises of the 1970s, the farm crisis of the 1980s and, most dramatically, the Pollard
affair, which clearly evoked the question of "dual loyalty"­p;there was
no increase in manifestations of antisemitism. This was not the case in the USA before the
Second World War, when conflict situations led to expressions of antisemitism. Conversely,
there have been indications that the US populace is willing to overlook a politician's
antisemitism if he is appealing for other reasons. David Duke was elected a state
representative in Louisiana in the 1980s. He won the majority of white votes in his
campaigns for senator and governor in the early 1990s despite his racist and antisemitic
history, as well as his Holocaust denial and neo-Nazi views. Patrick Buchanan, despite his
antisemitism, was seen as a welcome member of the Republican Party in the 1992
presidential campaign and there-after. He even won some of the early caucuses and
primaries in the 1996 presidential campaign, before losing to former senator Bob Dole.
One major source of anxiety in the 1990s derives from Afrocentrist antisemitism in the
African American community, particularly the activities of the NOI. This anxiety was
fuelled by two events. The first was the speech in July 1991 by Professor Leonard
Jeffries, Jr, of City College of New York, who claimed that Jewish conspiracies controlled
the slave trade and negative depictions of African Americans in Hollywood movies, among
other things. The second was the riot in August 1991 in the Crown Heights area of Brooklyn
that was set off when an African American child was killed by an out-of-control car in a
motorcade of the late Lubavitcher rabbi Menachem Schneerson. A three-day riot broke out,
targeting Jews and Jewish property in the neighbourhood. In the early hours of the riot, a
young Australian Hasidic scholar, Yankel Rosenbaum, was fatally stabbed. Lemrick Nelson,
tried for Rosenbaum's murder, was acquitted on state murder charges in October 1992, but
subsequently convicted on federal civil rights charges in early 1997 (see LEGAL MATTERS).
Classical antisemitism continues to be expressed by NOI leaders and in NOI publications;
yet it is not met with the same level of denunciation by mainstream blacks and whites as
would the same anti-Jewish sentiments if uttered by a KKK or militia leader.
Virtually all the world's racial, national, ethnic, cultural and religious groupings
are represen-ted in US society. Furthermore, the ethnic complexity of the population tends
increasingly to displace the hegemony of those of white European descent. According to
1990 census figures, 12.1 per cent of the population of the US were black, 9 per cent were
of Hispanic origin, 2.9 per cent were Asian Americans and 0.8 per cent were native
Americans. The 75 per cent representing people of white European descent in 1990 is
expected to fall to an estimated 52.7 per cent by 2050.
Although the USA has a long democratic tradition, it also has a history of racism. Racial
discrimination continues to show itself in various sectors of US society. Hotly debated by
scholars, community leaders and politicians is the degree to which racism contributes at
present to the significant disparities that exist between white Americans, African
Americans, Hispanic Americans, native Americans and some groups of Asian Americans. The
Arab American community is also subject to negative stereotyping and some harassment,
particularly during periods of tension in the Middle East and after acts of terrorism.
Despite the emergence of a sizeable black middle class, including highly successful black
artists and sports figures, a large percentage of African Americans live in inner-city
ghettos plagued by poverty, unemployment, crime, drugs, illiteracy and violence. In 1995,
41.9 per cent of all black children lived at or beneath the poverty line. The 1994 African
American infant mortality rate was 14.9 per 1,000 live births, compared with 6.3 per 1,000
live births for whites. These problems were even more pronounced in the native American
community, where unemployment on some reservations hovered at over 80 per cent.
In 1996 the US department of justice, under a mandate from the Hate Crimes Statistics Act,
reported 7,947 incidents characterized as hate- or bias-motivated during 1995 (the third
year of reporting, up from 5,932 in 1994-but with 9,584 law enforcement agencies reporting
in 1995 as opposed to 7,356 in 1994), with 5,645 racially or ethnically motivated, 1,277
motivated by religion (1,058 of which were antisemitic) and 1,019 by sexual orientation.
Reporting, although improved in 1995, continued to be characterized by non-compliance by
many state and local jurisdictions. Because in many places additional paperwork is a
disincentive for police to classify an incident as a hate crime, the statistics are not
always accurate. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the agency that collects the
data, is trying to improve the reporting for subsequent years.
During 1996 there were thirty-four incidents of church burnings; these apparent arsons
disproportionately affected black churches in the South, but there were many incidents at
white churches and some burnings as far afield as Connecticut. The American Jewish
community expressed its solidarity with the affected parishioners, with statements issued
by virtually every major organization. Many followed up with more substantial endeavours
by pressing for remedial legislation and by fund-raising to assist the churches in
rebuilding.
Following June hearings on the church arsons before the Congressional Black Caucus, at
which the ADL testified, and the Senate Judiciary Committee, the senate and the house of
representatives­p;with the backing of the organized Jewish
community­p;quickly and unanimously passed the Church Arson Prevention Act of 1996.
The omnibus bill, which at mid-year still awaited signature by the president, amended the
1988 Religious Vandalism Act (legislation that the AJC had played a significant role in
conceptualizing and promoting) so as to expand the kinds of offences to which it applies,
increased resources for federal prosecution of hate crimes, extended an existing mandate
for collection of hate crimes statistics, and allowed the federal government to provide
loan guarantees for the rebuilding of non-profit institutions affected by arson or terror.
In addition, several drives were put in place by Jewish groups, often in collaboration
with non-Jewish charities, to raise funds for the devastated congregations. Thus, the AJC
joined with the National Council of Churches and the National Conference of Catholic
Bishops in a fund-raising effort, as did the New York Board of Rabbis and the Foundation
for Ethnic Understanding; the ADL set up its own fund to which contributions could be
made.
According to figures from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the largest groups
of immigrants who lawfully entered the USA in 1994 were from Mexico, the former Soviet
Union (FSU), China, Philippines, Dominican Republic, Vietnam and India. Allegations have
been made of violence by the border police towards undocumented Mexican im-migrants.
A growing concern with immigration was made manifest by the passage (by 59 to 41 per cent)
of California's controversial Proposition 187 in the elections of November 1994. If the
provision is ever enforced (there is a court order pending against its enforcement), it
will prevent the state's estimated 1.8 million illegal immigrants from receiving
non-emergency health care, welfare and education. The measure would also compel teachers
and health professionals to inform the immigration authorities of suspected illegal
immigrants, including their children. The matter is still in litigation.
Throughout 1996 officials of Jewish organizations traditionally supportive of "fair
and generous" immigration policies-together with coalition partners at various other
ethnic, religious and civic groups-sought to prevent the immigration reform bills
introduced in both houses of congress in 1995 from becoming law. For many, one of the most
crucial concerns was posed by the house bill's provision intended to sharply cap the
number of refugees eligible to be granted asylum in the USA. The bill would have capped
refugee admissions at 50,000, around 60 per cent less than the 110,000 refugees allowed
into the United States in 1995, including around 22,000 Jewish refugees from the FSU.
Jewish groups were also concerned about the view expressed in some quarters that Jews from
the FSU were no longer sufficiently in danger to be treated as refugees.
In March the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to "split the bill", dividing the
legal immigration and illegal immigration sections into two distinct initiatives. The
bill, which now did not further limit the number of legal immigrants, was passed by the
senate on 2 May. The full house also voted to "split the bill" and adopted an
amendment that removed the refugee caps. There remained concern as to what would emerge
from the conference committee due to draft the legislation in its final form. A formal
conference was finally announced in late September and the house voted by 305 to 123 to
pass the immigration bill that it produced.
The bill was more controversial in the senate, with criticism of provisions that would
have further curtailed public benefits to legal immigrants. The most controversial
provisions were removed, but the law as enacted still included provisions that undermined
US commitment to the protection of refugees.
In June, the house of representatives passed the Foreign Operations Appropriations Act,
and it was passed by the senate in July. The senate version contained three notable
amendments. The "Lautenberg Amendment" continued the policy of allowing refugee
status for Jews from the FSU along with certain other groups. The other two provisions
concerned indicted war criminals in the former Yugoslavia, and German compensation to
Holocaust survivors. The final bill included the "Lautenberg Amendment", but not
the other two amendments.
In terms of membership and influence the impact of racist and antisemitic groups on
society in 1996 was minimal. Nonetheless, the white supremacist movement has gradually
expanded since the early 1980s, and has been responsible for occasional manifestations of
violence, allegedly including the bombing of the federal office building in Oklahoma City
in 1995. No single organization dominates the movement, which is composed of probably
hundreds of groups of varying sizes and overlapping activities whose fortunes wax and
wane. To one degree or another, however, they share the goal of creating a society
dominated by white Christians in which the rights of others (particularly Jews and African
Americans) are denied; many of them espouse theories of Jewish conspiracy and Holocaust
denial and many are adherents of Christian Identity churches (see below and RELIGION). The
number of hard-core activists in the movement has been estimated at at least 25,000. A
much greater number of floating sympathizers, estimated at between 150,000 and 200,000,
attend meetings or rallies, buy literature and make donations. But the "bright
line" between this fringe and mainstream society has shown signs of erosion. One
example was the statement of Representative Helen Chenoweth giving credence to the claim
that the United Nations had usurped US sovereignty in US national parks (see MAINSTREAM
POLITICS). This claim was believed beyond the paranoid militia crowd: the official
brochure of Tennessee's Great Smoky National Park included an article this summer entitled
"Park is Not Run by United Nations".
The major antisemitic and white supremacist propaganda organization is the Liberty Lobby,
founded in 1955 by Willis A. Carto, a professed admirer of Hitler and a leading exponent
of the Populist Party (see below). Carto was one of the key figures in US Holocaust denial
as the founder of the Institute for Historical Review (IHR) and its antisemitic publishing
house, Noontide Press (see PUBLICATIONS AND MEDIA and HOLOCAUST DENIAL). In 1991 the
Liberty Lobby launched the Populist Action Committee to support far-right candidates
standing as Republicans, Democrats, Populists or independents. The organization's weekly
tabloid, Spotlight, is widely distrib-uted and produces a popular talk show, Radio
Free America (see PUBLICATIONS AND MEDIA). The Liberty Lobby has also been an ardent
promoter of the militia movement. In fact Timothy McVeigh, one of the accused Oklahoma
City bombers, had advertised a rocket launcher under a pseudonym in Spotlight, and
allegedly used a Spotlight -issued phone card while plotting the bombing.
Formed in 1984 under the leadership of the former KKK leader Robert Weems, the Populist
Party fields candidates in local, state and federal elections. Its most famous candidate,
David Duke, another former KKK leader, stood as the Populist Party's candidate in the 1988
presidential election before he won a seat in the Louisiana state legislature as a
Republican in 1989. The Populist Party's presidential candidate in 1992, Bo Gritz, was a
former Green Beret upon whom the character Rambo was supposedly based and who has emerged
as a leading influence on the US militia movement. Once the political arm of the Liberty
Lobby, the Populist Party has received publicity and support in Spotlight. In the
early 1990s the party split into two factions: one, the Populist Action Committee, led by
Carto, and the other led by Don Wassall. The latter publishes the tabloid Populist
Observer.
Mark Downey, the vice-chair of the Populist Party in Washington state, attracted some
attention in 1996. Speaking at a candidate forum, Downey, who was running for legislative
office, said that homosexuals should be killed, and ended his presentation with a
stiff-arm Nazi salute. He also held a fund-raising dinner at which the major scheduled
speaker was Michael Hoffman II, a well-known Holocaust-denier. And Downey led a group of
protesters at KTSW, a Tacoma CBS affiliate, because the radio station aired a docu-drama
entitled Ruby Ridge: An American Tragedy.
The KKK is the oldest of the contemporary racist organizations in the USA. It has enjoyed
several periods of growth since its founding in the years following the Civil War, during
the 1920s and during the 1950s and 1960s. While many of today's KKK groups attempt to
project a more "respectable" and less violent image, they have incorporated a
Nazi-inspired antisemitism into traditional white supremacy, and the KKK's original
Prot-estantism has largely given way to adher-ence to Christian Identity beliefs (see
below and RELIGION). According to Klanwatch, an independent group that monitors KKK
activity and produces a publication of the same name, the total membership of the
different factions that are known collectively as the KKK is 6,000. The ten-year decline
in KKK membership came to a halt in 1991, with perhaps a small upward swing since 1992.
The disbanding of the Invisible Empire Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, led by James W.
Farrands and based in Sanford, North Carolina, occurred in 1993 as part of the settlement
of a lawsuit brought against them by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The principal KKK
organization remaining was the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, led by Thom Robb and based in
Harrison, Arkansas. Robb's group, which has attempted to appeal to a more
"moderate" mainstream, has suffered defections from those who favour greater
militancy. KKK rallies and marches were held in 1996 in: Altoona, Puxatawny and
Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania; Louisville, Kentucky; Bryan and Wilmington, Ohio; LaGrange
and Kokomo, Indiana; Tulsa, Okla-homa; Thurmont, Maryland; Ann Arbor, Saginaw and Midland,
Michigan; and Chicago, Illinois. The American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan held a cross
burning in Salida, California, to protest against Black History Month. KKK members were
also arrested in some of the burnings of black churches, including that of the Mount Zion
AME Church in Greeleyville, South Carolina, and the Macedonia Baptist Church in
Bloomville, South Carolina.
Aryan Nations, established in 1974 by Richard Butler, a Christian Identity
"preacher" and former Klansman, acts as an umbrella organization to unite
various KKK and neo-Nazi groups. Although based in Hayden Lake, Idaho, the group's
membership is nationwide. In 1989 a headquarters for the south was opened in Tennessee.
The group, which defines its aims as the creation of a whites-only preserve in the Pacific
Northwest of North America (the so-called "Northwest Imperative"), holds an
annual "world congress" for white supremacists and neo-Nazis from the USA,
Canada and Europe. At this congress instruction is provided on urban terrorism and
guerrilla warfare. According to Klanwatch, in July 1996 the Aryan Nations congress
drew roughly 100 people, about 100 less than had attended in 1995. Aryan Nations also
holds an annual youth festival to mark the anniversary of Hitler's birth in April. The
organization is also active in Canada.
One outgrowth of Aryan Nations was The Order, an underground network of white supremacists
that formed in 1983 after two Aryan Nations leaders, Louis Beam and Robert Miles,
published a small-circulation newsletter calling for a movement of "leaderless
resistance". Under this concept, small cells would take independent action, making it
more difficult for the law enforcement authorities to break up the groups. The specific
aim of The Order was to organize cells to carry out acts of violence and terror to create
a Pacific Northwestern whites-only republic. Members of The Order were responsible for,
and often convicted of, numerous murders, robberies and bomb plots. The Order is defunct
at present but attempts have been made to revive it. Two Order-like groups went on crime
sprees in 1996: the Aryan Republican Army in the Midwest and the Phineas Priesthood in the
Northwest.
White Aryan Resistance (WAR) is a white-supremacist organization based in San Diego,
California, and headed by former KKK leader Tom Metzger and his son John. Metzger is best
known for his television programme, Race and Reason, which has been broadcast on
community access stations in at least ten states, including California, New York, Texas
and Virginia. WAR espouses an ideology known as the Third Position, which rejects both the
capitalist West and the former communist East. The organization claims to represent the
interests of the international white working class in its "battle" against race
mixing and capitalist exploitation. Metzger also favours a loose organizational structure
and "leaderless resistance". Despite being fined $12.5 million in connection
with the 1988 murder of an Ethiopian immigrant, Metzger and WAR remain active. Affili-
ated to WAR is the Aryan Women's League, founded by Lyn Metzger, daughter of the WAR
leader, which has branches in several cities.
WAR continues to influence young racists: "WAR" monograms were popular among
California skinheads in 1996, and a twenty-five-year old New York City police officer was
suspended after he allegedly pasted a sampling of WAR's racist and neo-Nazi stickers on a
bar's bathroom (see below). WAR also maintains an Internet site, with depictions of Jews
as vermin and blacks as sub-human.
The Christian Patriot movement is a part of the white-supremacist movement. Some Christian
Patriots are also known as Populists, America Firsters, Freemen, Identity Believers or
Patriots. At the time of their emergence, in the tax protest movements of the late 1970s,
they mostly belonged to the Posse Comitatus movement (Latin for "power of the
country"), active in the 1970s and 1980s. Today, the Christian Patriots are
affiliated to dozens of different organizations, including the militia movement. Christian
Patriots believe in an international Jewish banking conspiracy. They also believe the USA
should be a Christian republic instead of a democracy in which the "idle and
parasitic majority" have the power to subvert the "productive minority".
They believe that only property-owning Christians should have a voice and that
"internationalists" (usually Jews) and "aliens" are attempting to
establish international socialism. In effect, they believe that the USA is the biblical
promised land-promised to white Aryan Nordic types­p;and that the US Constitution
and Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the Constitution) are divinely inspired
and must be treated like scripture. Subsequent amendments (income tax, votes for women,
equal rights) they see as man-made and suspect.
In 1996 various militia groups, including the Freemen in Montana, published material
reflecting Christian Patriot views, promoting the idea of different levels of citizenship
based on skin colour and religion. Most Christian Patriots also are Christian Identity
adherents; Christian Identity provides a neat theological package of racism and
antisemitism that helps empower the white-only political views of Christian Patriotism
(see RELIGION).
Neo-Nazi skinheads have menaced numerous US communities over the past decade. Southern
Poverty Law Center estimates the number of racist skinheads to be about 4,000 nationwide.
Skinhead violence has been racist in nature, targeted at African Americans, Jews and
Jewish institutions, Asian Americans, and homosexuals and other groups. There have been at
least thirty-four homicides committed by skinheads since 1990. These have led to dozens of
convictions for murder, assault, arson and, most frequently, vandalism.
In April, two young men described by police as "neo-Nazi punk rockers", were
arrested in connection with vandalism in Jewish cemeteries in the Los Angeles area,
including the unearthing and theft of at least one skull. That same month, nine skinheads
were arrested after a fight involving blacks and Hispanics in Wisconsin. This group, known
as "The Fond du Lac Boot Boys", included a nineteen-year-old who possessed
business cards from the neo-Nazi group the National Alliance (see below). In June a
scuffle broke out in Auburn, Washington, between protestors and a group of skinheads who
were about to be inducted into the KKK at a ceremony held at the local American Legion
hall. In July, two sixteen-year-olds from Antelope Valley, California, were charged with
assaulting two black teenagers with a machete. In October, four skinheads were arrested in
southern California and charged with stabbing a Hispanic fisherman. Members of this group
had been overheard making "white pride" comments, and one had white supremacist
and KKK literature. In November, in the early morning hours, a skinhead gang charged into
a Ralph's Supermarket in Orange County, California, attacking three employees. Also in
November, an Everett, Washington, skinhead, who sported large tattoos on his arms with the
words "white" and "power", was arrested on charges relating to the
1995 California murder of a black man and the beating of a Hispanic teenager.
As in years past, there is no national skinhead organization. Rather, there are loosely
linked networks of gangs with names like Northern Hammerskins, American Front, New Dawn
Hammerskins, Confederate Hammerskins, American Spring, Fourth Reich, Aryan Resistance
League, National Front and SS of America. White Power music is the unifying force of the
skinhead movement. Resistance Records, founded by the Canadian Church of the Creator
(COTC) leader, George Burdi, publishes skinhead rock music tapes and CDs. WAR is the
"adult" organization to which neo-Nazi skinheads are most often linked, although
other groups, such as the Aryan Nations, the National Alliance and, particularly in the
Southeast, the KKK, have attracted skinhead followers.
The National Alliance is a highly structured hierarchical organization founded by William
Pierce, the author of the pro-violence novels The Turner Diaries and Hunter,
and a follower of American Nazi Party founder, George Lincoln Rockwell. The organization,
based in West Virginia, promotes a violent form of national socialism and calls for the
extermination of non-Aryans. It has been gaining in influence, primarily among young
skinheads, and also recruits members in Canada and the UK. It operates phone message
centres in the USA and Canada and publishes a monthly, National Vanguard. Pierce
received additional notoriety this year when The Turner Diaries was reprinted by a
publishing house. Despite the efforts of the Southern Poverty Law Center, the AJC and the
Simon Wiesenthal Center, major book chains stocked the book, ignoring the fact that
profits from its sale would help the National Alliance carry out its activities, among
them printing racist comic books targeted at school children. The Turner Diaries was
also an inspiration to the accused Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh-a major scene in
the book is eerily similar to the actual bombing, down to the time of day and size and
type of explosive used. McVeigh peddled the book while in the military, and later at gun
shows. He also reportedly phoned the National Alliance two weeks before the bombing.
In May, Pierce suffered a setback in an-other matter. A North Carolina federal jury,
acting on a suit brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center, ruled that Pierce had bought
land from Ben Klassen, the head of the white supremacist COTC, as a way to help Klassen's
group avoid turning over the property to the family of Harold Mansfield. Mansfield was a
black soldier who had been shot in 1991 by a COTC "reverend", and whose family
had been awarded the land in question in a law-suit. Pierce was ordered to pay the family
$85,000.
The Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei/Auslands- und Aufbauorganisation
(NSDAP/AO, German National Socialist Workers' Party/Overseas Section) was founded in 1972.
Headed by Gary Lauck of Lincoln, Nebraska, the NSDAP/AO has become the world's largest
supplier of neo-Nazi and Holocaust-denial material to Germany, where such propaganda is
illegal, as well as to other European countries. Lauck published material in more than ten
languages, including Russian, and disseminated it in various forms, including on computer
disks and by e-mail. He also sponsored two cable television talk shows in the USA. In
August, Lauck was convicted in a German court for violating laws against inciting racial
hatred and distributing Nazi paraphernalia. He was sentenced to four years in prison at
the Hamburg state court in September (see Germany ).
The bizarre pseudo-political activities of the followers of seventy-six-year-old Lyndon
LaRouche continued in 1996. LaRouche was released from prison in January 1994 after
serving five years of a fifteen-year prison sentence for financial irregularities.
Antisemitism is a mainstay of the international LaRouche network. Its rhetoric identifies
a "hard kernel of truth" in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In 1996,
LaRouchites were recruiting support in various countries, especially in Eastern Europe,
Russia and Australia (seeAustralia). They
also stepped up co-operation with other US groups, such as the NOI in Washington, DC, and
militia organizations around the country.
The activities of militia groups continued in 1996 in nearly every state. Estimates of the
number of militia members range from 10,000 to 40,000. Some, though not all, of these
militia groups had documented connections to white-supremacist and antisemitic groups. One
of the most notorious is the Militia of Montana (MOM), organized by John Trochmann, who
has links with the Aryan Nations in Idaho. Militia groups cite the Second Amendment
(incorrectly interpreted as guaranteeing an individual the "right . . . to keep and
bear arms") and the Tenth Amendment (reserving powers not delegated to the federal
government "to the States . . . or to the people"). They appeal to disaffected
Americans by talking about gun rights, the 1993 Brady Bill and the 1994 assault rifle ban
(the former mandates a waiting period for the purchase of firearms; the latter outlaws
nineteen types of assault rifles and ammunition clips holding over ten rounds). Also cited
is the government shoot-out with the white supremacist fugitive Randy Weaver in Ruby
Ridge, Idaho, in 1992, and the federal government's siege of the Branch Da-vidian cult in
Waco, Texas, in 1993 (both Weaver and the Branch Davidians were wanted for gun
violations). These events, claim the militias, prove that the federal government is
encroaching on, and even attacking, the rights of Americans. Many militia groups have
attracted large numbers to initial meetings, though subsequent meetings are typically less
well attended. The federal government is the principal target of the armed militias,
although conspiracy theories, including anti-Jewish stereotypes, drive this movement. The
movement is heavily armed and has adopted "leaderless resistance" (see above).
In 1996 it seemed that every few weeks another militia cell was arrested after illegally
preparing for "war". Convictions for such activity in 1996 included guilty
verdicts in Oklahoma against Willie Ray Lampley and others for plots to bomb various
targets, including the ADL's Houston, Texas, office, abortion clinics and gay bars; many
other trials are pending.
Among the more important militia actions in 1996 were as follows: in April, three members
of the Georgia Militia were charged with conspiracy to build pipe-bombs for warfare
against the federal and state governments. The indictment alleged that the group planned
to "assassinate politicians, starting at the highest levels". Initial reports,
aired by the CBS reporter Jim Stewart, included allegations that the group had discussed
pipe-bombing the Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia. Department of justice officials
immediately refuted this report, but testimony about discussions of using the pipe-bombs
to terrorize the Olympic Games-in fact, of robbing drug dealers in order to accumulate
enough money to quit work and train full-time for Olympic terrorism-was heard during the
autumn trial of the militia members, all of whom were convicted of stockpiling pipe-bombs.
(At the time of writing, no one has been charged with an actual pipe-bombing of the
Olympic Games, which caused two deaths and scores of injuries.)
On 23 April 1996, the FBI issued a na-tional alert about a militia plan called
"Project Worst Nightmare". Several FBI offices had received copies of the text,
which threatened to "shut federal operations down" and "destroy media
installations" by various acts of terrorism if Montana's Freemen (see below) were
attacked.
In May, in Wenatchee, Washington, militia leader Bruce Alden Bannister was convicted of
assault against a police officer, and was ordered to pay $50 per month towards the
officer's $412 medical expenses. In July he paid $50-in pennies.
Also in May, a Fort Myers, Florida, teenage militia group, calling itself Lords of Chaos,
was arrested for the murder of a high school band director. The arrests were well timed:
the group had plans for later that week. They intended to go to Disneyworld, assault and
detain employees dressed as Disney characters, steal their costumes, then walk around the
park shooting blacks with a silencer-equipped gun.
In June, a Long Island militia group was arrested. The group, which included the president
of a UFO club, planned to kill local Republican officials by contaminating their
toothpaste with radioactive material.
In July, authorities arrested members of the Arizona Vipers, a Phoenix-area militia group
that had been training to attack public buildings, and which had threatened to kill
infiltrators. They were arrested with explosives and other ordnance in a Phoenix suburb.
By the year's end, some of the group had pleaded guilty.
Also in July, nine members of the Washington State Militia were arrested on explosives and
conspiracy charges. According to documents filed in this case, the group planned to use
its weaponry in battle against either the US government or the UN. On the other side of
the Cascade mountains, in Spokane, Paul James Cavanugh, Jr, a militia supporter, was
arrested in connection with a 29 April 1996 pipe-bombing of the Spokane City Hall. At his
arrest he possessed an Uzi machine gun, extra ammunition clips, a home-made bomb and an
assortment of large knives and martial arts weaponry.
Over the Labor Day weekend militia supporters planned to rally in Washington, DC.
Organized by Citizens Against Legal Loopholes (which reportedly sells The Protocols of
the Elders of Zion as well as militia videos blaming the US government for the
Oklahoma City bombing) and the Committee of 1776 (a Pennsylvania pro-guns group), the
scheduled speakers included the veteran antisemite Eustace Mullins (author of The
Biological Jew, The Federal Reserve Conspiracy and The World Order ) ,
Jack McLamb, founder of Police Against the New World Order and Larry Pratt of Gun Owners
of America, among others. When only a small number of people showed up one organizer
explained that the militia supporters must have been stuck in traffic.
In October, members of the Mountaineer Militia in West Virginia were arrested and charged
with plotting to blow up the FBI fingerprint building in Clarksburg. The group's training
manual, The Principles of Militia Operations, Principles of Militia Training, and
Organizational Structure, stated: "[W]e are at war . . . our struggle is an 'all
or nothing' war, which has been launched against our heritage." The manual promoted
the "Four F's of counterinsurgency . . . Find 'em, Fix 'em, Fight 'em and Finish
'em". Among those arrested was a firefighter.
In the same month, three men were ar-rested in Washington state and charged with crimes
stemming from a series of bombings and bank robberies in the Northwest, including the
bombing of the Spokane Spokesman-Review and a Planned Parenthood centre. The
men-Charles Barbee, Robert Berry and Verne Jay Merrell-left behind material at crime
scenes with the symbol of the Phineas Priesthood, a description used in recent years by
some white supremacists. (In 1990 the Christian Identity leader, Richard Hoskins, wrote a
book entitled Vigilantes of Christendom: The Story of the Phineas Priesthood. It
distorts biblical passages to glorify violence against Jews and minorities.) All three men
had associations with America's Promise Ministries (APM), a Christian Identity church in
Sandpoint, Idaho, known in the area for distributing The Protocols of the Elders of
Zion, Henry Ford's The International Jew, and other antisemitica, including
Holocaust-denying material. In the 1980s Merrell-who worked for many years with security
clearances in nuclear power plants-had been active with the Arizona Patriots, a Christian
Identity paramilitary group that had threatened to kill the then governor, Bruce Babitt,
and to bomb dams and federal buildings. Barbee had been quoted in 1995 admitting that he
was part of a cell getting "ready to conduct guerrilla warfare". According to
journalist David Neiwert, the Phineas Priesthood's agenda included: "executing"
inter-racial couples and homosexuals; bombing abortion clinics and "executing"
abortion doctors; bombing civil rights centres and "executing" civil rights
leaders and other "race mixers"; and robbing banks to finance the priesthood's
activities, purchase arms and help finance the activities of other radical
"patriots" and white supremacists. (In April 1996, in a case that may be
unrelated, Phineas Priesthood leaflets were circulated in Idaho Falls, Idaho.)
Also in October the Royal Canadian Mounted Police found a cache of weapons (including
automatic rifles and a .50 calibre machine gun), ammunition and other gear in a remote
area of British Columbia. The site was reportedly a training camp for a US militia group.
In November, militia leaders held a "Third Continental Congress" in Kansas City,
Missouri. Convened in the basement of a Holiday Inn, and publicized in part by a notice
sandwiched between that for a pest control company's meeting and a similar announcement
for a motor repair group, the meeting's goal was "to establish the Republican
Provisional Government". Only a handful attended.
In December, two militia members from Michigan were charged with killing William Gleason,
who was in hiding after failing to appear on firearms charges-police had earlier found
assault rifles, military equipment and over 1,000 rounds of ammunition in his car. Gleason
and the two militia members charged had had a falling out over allegiance to the militia
leader Mark Koernke, also known as "Mark From Michigan".
With concern over the perils posed by the militia movement heightened by the Oklahoma City
bombing of April 1995, Jewish organizations joined with congressmen Charles Schumer
(Democrat, New York) and Peter King (Republican, New York) in an ongoing call for House
Judiciary Committee hearings on the issue. They, and supporting Jewish organizations,
expressed frustration that extensive hearings were being held concerning government
actions at Waco, Texas, and Ruby Ridge, Idaho, while fanatical anti-government agitators,
whose beliefs had clearly already been the catalyst for many dozens of deaths, received
scant attention. As the summer of 1995 drew on with no house session on the militia
movement scheduled, Congressman Schumer convened an informal hearing on Capitol Hill in
July 1995 at which the AJC, the ADL and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, among others,
presented statements.
Four months later, a formal hearing was at last held before the House Judiciary
Subcommittee on Crime, at which the aforementioned Jewish organizations were among the
groups and individuals testifying about the dangers posed by paramilitary groups. The
Jewish groups took the occasion to express support for bills directed at the violent
activities of paramilitary groups introduced by Congressmen Schumer and Jerrold Nadler
(Democrat, New York). Not all those present at the hearing were so enthusiastic.
Congressman Bob Barr (Republican, Georgia) termed himself "flabbergasted" to
hear Jewish groups, which he noted had a reputation for concern about civil liberties, in
"such a pell-mell rush to outlaw more activity" when "we already have very,
very extensive criminal laws in this country that do protect us against acts of violence
or conspiracy to commit acts of violence". Kenneth Stern, the AJC's programme
specialist on antisemitism and extremism, disagreed with the notion that the proposed
legislation constituted a threat to civil liberties, asserting that the formation of
paramilitary units by the militia groups endangers lives and poses a threat to surrounding
communities.
Two other major cases involving armed white supremacist groups occurred in 1996. A group
that investigators called the "Midwestern Bank Bandits" was arrested early in
the year. Calling itself the Aryan Republican Army (ARA), the group held up over twenty
banks in 1994 and 1995 in Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin, Missouri, Nebraska and Kentucky, getting
away with over $250,000. The group's goal was "to open the door to the overthrow of
the US government", according to one of its members. The ARA had a distinctive style:
members wore shirts bearing the FBI logo, and purchased getaway cars using the names of
retired FBI agents.
An eighty-one-day stand-off between federal law enforcement and a Montana Christian
Patriot group known as the Freemen occurred in 1996. Various Freemen had had warrants,
including federal warrants, outstanding for years, and had made life difficult for many
public servants in Montana, having issued "common law bounties",
"indictments", "liens" and fraudulent checks. Nick Murnion, the county
attorney of Jordan, Montana, had been told that when the Freemen caught him, they would
not bother building a gallows to hang him from; rather, they would let him swing from a
bridge. The FBI, however, refused to arrest the Freemen despite the pleading of local
residents, in part because of criticism it had received for its handling of the 1992 Randy
Weaver siege at Ruby Ridge, Idaho (an FBI agent was indicted in October for obstruction of
justice related to the Weaver case), and the 1993 stand-off with the Branch Davidians at
Waco, Texas. While the FBI waited, the Freemen were conducting classes for up to thirty
visitors each week, teaching them how to set up common law courts and write fraudulent
financial instruments. The AJC, however, tried to prod the FBI, first through insistence
that Murnion be invited to testify before the House Crimes Subcommittee in the fall of
1995, then through a national press conference, and finally through a profile of the
Freemen in Kenneth Stern's book Force Upon the Plain: The American Militia Movement and
the Politics of Hate. The FBI, however, did not arrest any of the Freemen until 25
March 1996, by which time residents of Jordan had formed a posse and were poised to arrest
the Freemen themselves. An eighty-one-day stand-off began. Unlike in past situations, no
law enforcement personnel were killed or wounded, and the FBI was willing to wait for the
extremists to give up. Various far-right personalities, including State Senator Charles
Duke and Bo Gritz, were used as intermedi-aries during the ordeal. Finally, after their
electricity was turned off, the Freemen surrendered, and were charged in federal court,
where they refused counsel, refused to be fingerprinted and refused to recognize the
court's jurisdiction. Related Freemen cases were also prosecuted in other federal
districts. In Colorado, a man trying to pass a cheque from the Freemen group was indicted
after trying to buy eight Hummer all-terrain vehicles. Also in Colorado, three others,
including the husband of a Colorado state representative, were indicted on state charges
related to fraudulent financial transactions. In Nevada, a retired insurance broker was
arrested after using a bogus Freeman cheque to pay for his mother's funeral. In Michigan,
two men were in-dicted after writing more than $500,000 in bad Freemen cheques. In Utah, a
Freeman was indicted for helping five other Freemen avoid arrest. And in October, three
Freemen followers were convicted in a California federal court of fraud and
money-laundering.
Of significance in 1996 was the proliferation of "common law courts".
Reminiscent of the Posse Comitatus of the 1970s (see above), which proclaimed the county
sheriff as the highest legitimate government official and then sent out
"bounties", "liens" and "indictments" against public
officials, accusing them of "treason", the 1990s "common law courts"
are also an expression of white supremacist, Christian Patriot belief. Over 100 of these
"courts" have been established around the country, conducting campaigns that the
AJC has termed "paper terrorism" against county, state and federal officials.
The Jordan, Montana, confrontation between federal officials and Freemen was an example of
this phenomenon, and of the increasing connection between these "courts" and
militia groups as para-legal and paramilitary arms of the white supremacist movement. The
AJC, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ADL have been working with law enforcement
officials to encourage prosecution of groups that use fraudulent financial or judicial
documents, and/or threaten public officials and others with such bogus claims. And in
December, fifteen people were convicted in Troy, Missouri, for judicial tampering. The
group, members of a "common law court", had filed a $10.8 million judgment
against a real judge who was going to preside over a traffic charge.
In another manifestation of Christian Patriot/common law/militia behaviour, a Texas group
called the Republic of Texas issued liens, set up a common law jury, and ordered the US
government, the International Monetary Fund and the Holy See of the Catholic Church to pay
$93 trillion for "150 years of plundering". The group claims that Texas is an
independent nation, challenging the US's annexation of that state in 1846. At the year's
end, huge civil contempt fines were accumulating against this group. Other white
supremacist and neo-Nazi activity of note in 1996 included the following incidents.
In January, a man was killed outside a gay bar in a town twenty-five miles from Houston,
Texas. In August, Daniel Christopher Bean was convicted of the murder. Bean belonged to a
neo-Nazi group called the German Peace Corps, and stabbed Frederick Mangione to death
because he was gay. Mangione's body bore 35 stab wounds.
In March, John Howard opened the Redneck Shop in Laurens, South Carolina, featuring the
World's Only Ku Klux Klan Museum. "It's our heritage that should not be
forgotten", Howard explained. Local clergy protested against the museum, dismissing
Howard's claim that the museum was only educational. Howard also rented out the back of
his building for local KKK meetings.
Also in March, the US Army announced disciplinary proceedings against nine 82nd Airborne
Division soldiers from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for racist activities. All nine were
alleged to be skinheads.
In April, a man from Hood River, Oregon, who feared that the USA was turning into a police
state, was arrested for stockpiling weapons and explosives. Two burglars had set off a
booby trap on his property, igniting 200 pounds of explosives and 90,000 rounds of
ammunition. Agents found another 1,200 pounds of explosives in the man's truck and 60
pounds buried alongside his driveway.
Also in April, in Jackson, Mississippi, a white supremacist killed one person and wounded
ten others, going on a shooting spree in a shopping centre in a largely black
neighbourhood with two AK-47s, an MAC-11 assault rifle, a twelve-bore shotgun, an AR-15
and two handguns. He fired over 100 rounds. The man, Larry Shoemake, hid in and eventually
set fire to a restaurant, dying in the flames. Neo-Nazi notes were later found spread
around his house, which also sported Nazi flags and white supremacist literature.
That same month, a black inmate at an Ohio prison was stabbed to death by a white
supremacist gang known as the Aryan Brotherhood. Also in April, more than thirty people
were arrested as part of a Phoenix-based Aryan Brotherhood enterprise, smuggling weapons
and drugs into ten Arizona prisons.
In June the Army discharged a soldier after he put KKK literature in mailboxes in
Watertown, New York.
In late July or early August someone arranged the chopped stalks of a Mansfield Township,
New Jersey, cornfield into a sixty-foot swastika, clearly visible from the air. Also in
July, red painted swastikas were found on the doors of at least six black soldiers at Fort
Bragg, North Carolina. After an investigation the Army issued a statement saying that a
black soldier was responsible, and the commander of the Army's Special Forces recommended
that the soldier be discharged.
And in July further evidence of the "common law" tax and money scams became
clear when 600 New York City employees were investigated for tax evasion. Fifteen police
officers were indicted after sending letters to the Inland Revenue Service (IRS) claiming
that they were beyond US sovereignty.
In September, two black aircraft mechanics at Kelly Air Force Base claimed that men
wearing pillowcases that resembled KKK hoods drove by and taunted them. Also in September,
the white supremacist Faron Lovelace was captured in the Priest Lake area of northern
Idaho. Lovelace was an escaped bank robber who allegedly killed a fellow racist in 1995
after a disagreement. Lovelace was also connected to the 1995 kidnapping and robbery of
Jill and Malcolm Friedman of Colville, Washington. The Friedmans were eventually released,
and reported that their kidnapper said he had picked them because he thought they were
Jewish. (They are actually Episcopalian.)
In October, two South Carolina men were charged with shooting into a predominantly black
crowd with an assault rifle, wounding three teenagers. The men had just attended a KKK
sponsored rally, and were found with KKK literature in their vehicle. One of the two also
had a statue of a Klansman and a Confederate battle flag in his front yard.
In November, a New York City policeman was arrested, and suspended from his job, after
pasting neo-Nazi stickers in an Orange County, New York, bar. One of the stickers sported
the Internet address for the WAR web site, others contained derogatory references to
blacks, including a depiction of a man dressed with neo-Nazi paraphernalia choking a black
man, and the phrase "Kill Niggers".
In December, a New York state prison guard was suspended after he was discovered flying a
Nazi flag on his porch. The guard was also reportedly a member of the National Association
for the Advancement of White People. When asked about the flag he said, "I am not a
racist and not a Nazi. I like the colour of the flag. I put the American flag out,
too."
Also in December, the Bethel Temple in Eugene, Oregon, a predominately black church, was
defaced with the letters "KKK" and a swastika.
A neo-Nazi group, the National Socialist White Workers Party, was given permission to
erect a six-foot-tall concrete cross in a local park for the December holiday season. The
town manager explained that the group's free speech rights required him to accede, based
on a federal court's ruling involving the town's earlier refusal to allow the Lubavitch
Center to erect a menorah.
Islamist groups also continue to function and fundraise within the USA. Pro-Hamas videos
were made and distributed in the USA, encouraging Arabs to engage in and bankroll an
Islamic holy war. "He who supports a warrior's family with goodness, it is as if he
fought himself," one videotaped Hamas member explained. "The warrior has his
reward, and the facilitator-that is, the one who pays money to support the jihad -gets
his own reward, plus the reward of the warrior." In July the New York Post
reported that Mideast terror groups made about $100 million per year from an illegal scam
involving grocery stores. The terror groups would buy supermarket coupons by the pound,
cut them, handle them so that they looked worn, then redeem them. In September, Ramzi
Ahmed Yousef and two others were convicted of a conspiracy to blow up US commercial
airliners. The group planned to smuggle explosives on board planes departing from East
Asia, then get off at the next stop, priming the bombs to explode on the next leg. They
wanted to destroy as many as a dozen US jets in a period of a few days in January, 1995,
killing thousands (see LEGAL MATTERS). FBI agent Oliver B. Revell summed up the new type
of Islamist terrorism Yousef represents. "In the past", Revell said, "we
were fighting terrorists with an organizational structure and some attainable goal like
land or the release of political prisoners. But Ramzi Yousef is the new breed, who are
more difficult and hazardous. They want nothing less than the overthrow of the West, and
since that's not going to happen, they just want to punish-the more casualties the
better."
The Chicago-based Nation of Islam (NOI) movement was founded in 1930 by Elijah Muhammad,
formerly Elijah Poole. Its espousal of black separatism made life problematic for
mainstream civil rights and black organizations throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. The
NOI has long been riven by factional disputes, the most celebrated split being the
departure in 1964 of Malcolm X, who turned to orthodox Islam and was subsequently
assassinated. Under the leadership of Louis Farrakhan, the movement recently has become
influential in the African American community. Estimates of the organization's size range
from 10,000 to 30,000 members, with many times that number of young ad-mirers. NOI mosques
or temples exist in 120 cities.
Antisemitic rhetoric figures prominently in the movement's Afrocentrist ideology (see
EDUCATION), as does anti-white, anti-Catholic, anti-Korean and homophobic rhetoric.
Farrakhan's most memorable antisemitic tirade of 1996 occurred during his annual Savior's
Day speech: "Allah will punish you," he said, referring to Jews. "You are
wicked deceivers of the American people. You have sucked their blood. You are not real
Jews . . . You are the synagogue of Satan, and you have wrapped your tentacles around the
US government, and you are deceiving and sending this nation to hell. But I warn you . . .
you would be wise to leave me alone. But if you choose to crucify me, know that Allah will
crucify you." In the same speech Farrakhan also returned to the time-worn image of
himself as Jesus-like and Jews as the tormentors of Jesus: "The Jews don't like me,
they didn't like Jesus . . . The Jews put the Romans on Jesus, and the Zionists are
stimulating and pulling strings in Washington." Another major ideological theme of
the NOI is the insistence that the persecution suffered throughout history by blacks is
far worse than that suffered by the Jews under the Third Reich. As a corollary to this
view, Farrakhan in February compared an Iraqi hospital to one of the Nazi death camps (see
below). And in March, an NOI leader, Khalid Abdul Muhammad, publicly questioned the
Holocaust, saying that even "among their own people, their scholars question the
number". He also dismissed the Nazi atrocities as "white on white crime".
In early 1996, Farrakhan embarked on a five-week "World Friendship Tour" to
twenty-three countries. In Nigeria, he defended the military dictatorship. Asked about the
junta's execution of the Nigerian environmentalist and author Ken Saro-Wiwa (whose
supposed crime was seeking oil profits for the Ogoni tribe), Farrakhan said, "You
hanged one man. So what?"
In Sudan, Farrakhan not only defended the ruling party against western criticism for its
promotion of terrorism, he also dismissed vast evidence of the country's ongoing
enslavement of blacks as a "Jewish conspiracy". In fact, Farrakhan met with the
Sudanese president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who, according to the Wall Street Journal,
not only condones slavery, but also himself "owns African slaves from southern
Sudan". Among Farrakhan's other visits were those to three allegedly high-profile,
terrorist-sponsoring nations: Iran, Iraq and Libya. In Iran he was reported to have said:
"You can quote me: God will destroy America by the hands of Muslims . . . God will
not give Japan or Europe the honour of bringing down the United States; this is an honour
God will bestow upon Muslims." Borrowing the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's term,
Farrakhan also referred to the United States as "the Great Satan". In Iraq he
met with the dictator Saddam Hussein. He said that UN sanctions against Iraq were "a
crime against humanity" and that "[V]isiting the hospital we visited today would
be, or could be, compared to visiting one of the [Nazi] death camps".
When Farrakhan returned to the United States, he was criticized for his cavorting with
dictators. He used his 25 February Savior's Day speech to defend himself and those with
whom he had met. "Qadaffi is hated because . . . he's financing liberation struggles
against imperialists and Zionists and oppressors", Farrakhan said. He continued his
foreign travels later in the year, including Cuba and Canada, and made return trips to
Iraq and Iran. In August he went again to Libya, this time to receive a $250,000
"humanitarian" award bestowed by Colonel Qadaffi (see Libya). Because
Libya is regarded as a sponsor of terrorism by the USA (it is also harbouring two people
wanted for trial over the downing of Pan Am flight 103 in Scotland), US law prohibits the
transfer of money to or from that country. Farrakhan petitioned the treasury department
not only to receive the prize money but also to get a $1 billion "gift" from
Qadaffi that would enable the NOI, in the words of a Libyan press statement, "to
mobilize the oppressed minorities" so that they could "play a significant role
in American political life". Farrakhan also praised Qaddafi for his work in
liberating oppressed peoples around the world.
Although Farrakhan said the money would be used to help blacks, Qadaffi said the money
would offer "a loophole to enter the fortress [the USA] and to confront it from
within". The treasury department denied Farrakhan's request; Farrakhan said he would
contest the decision in "the mother of all court battles".
A justice department spokesman announced after Farrakhan's return to the USA that, if the
NOI received the promised money from Libya, an investigation would be launched into the
possible violation of the requirement that foreign agents register with federal
authorities, and the treasury department indicated that it was, in any event, looking into
whether Farrakhan had violated US law by spending American currency while in Libya, Iraq
or Iran. Congressman Peter King (Republican, New York), an outspoken critic of Farrakhan,
called for investigation not only of Farrakhan but also of the administration's
"inaction", inasmuch as US citizens are prohibited from even visiting these
nations without the state department's permission.
A hearing was held before the House International Relations Subcommittee on International
Operations and Human Rights in March, ostensibly for the purpose of investigating outlaw
regimes and their attempts to influence US policy, but the inquiries of the panel's
members, including those of Congressmen King, Christopher Smith (Republican, New Jersey),
chairman of the subcommittee, and Tom Lantos (Democrat, California) were clearly focused
on the issues raised by what Congressman Lantos labelled as Farrakhan's "terror
tour", which demonstrated, for him, that Farrakhan was not only "a vicious
racist and hate-monger" but also "a potential national security threat".
Congressman Donald Payne (Democrat, New Jersey), chair of the Congressional Black Caucus,
and Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (Democrat, Georgia) criticized the hearing, the latter
commenting that it was "a thinly veiled attempt to do a little
Farrakhan-bashing". Neither Farrakhan nor any of his supporters were asked to
testify, although scores of his supporters filled the hearing room and an additional room
into which the proceedings were piped. Although no action was reported taken by the
administration with respect to travel to interdicted countries, it was subsequently
announced that the administration would not waive applicable law barring receipt of funds
from Libya, thereby seemingly mooting the NOI-Libya partnership.
Following all of these events, it seemed to some observers that Farrakhan's trafficking
with regimes viewed by most Americans as dictatorships and supporters of terrorism had, by
his own hand, stalled his aspirations to mainstream leadership within the African American
community. But it was difficult to reconcile that perspective with his receiving an award
as "Newsmaker of the Year" after the "terror tour" from the National
Newspaper Publishers Association, an organization of black newspaper publishers-a move
that drew sharp expressions of dismay from Jewish leaders.
In April, Farrakhan was quoted in a New Yorker profile written by Henry Louis Gates as
saying that he believes his father, whose parents were Portuguese, may have been Jewish.
"If in my lineage there are Jews," Farrakhan said, he hoped that before he died
he "not only will have rendered a service to my own beloved community of black people
but will also have rendered a service to the Jewish community". In the same interview
Farrakhan also spoke about "wise Jews who plan evil", including a conspiracy of
Jewish bankers. Also in April, Edgar Bronfman, head of the World Jewish Congress, met with
Farrakhan at the behest of the journalist Mike Wallace, despite the long-standing policy
of groups such as the AJC and the ADL not to meet with overt antisemites such as
Farrakhan. Two days after the meeting, at which Bronfman "was convinced that
Farrakhan was sincere in trying to build bridges to the Jewish community", Farrakhan
spoke in Brooklyn and, according to Bronfman, "compared Iraqi children to the
children of the Holocaust". Six months later, Bronfman's meeting came to light.
Bronfman called Farrakhan "evil personified" and stated that "no
self-respecting person, let alone a Jew, should have anything to do with him".
In September, Farrakhan turned his attention to domestic politics. With the help of the
ousted former leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP), Ben Chavis (who had also assisted in organizing the "Million Man
March"), Farrakhan convened a "National Political Convention" at the TWA
Dome in St Louis, Missouri. Held on 27-29 September, and subtitled "The Convention of
the Oppressed", the goal was to create another political force since it was believed,
with good reason, that the Democratic party took black votes for granted and that the
Republican party ignored them. The event was a dismal failure. The presidential candidates
were invited. Only the antisemitic conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche (see above) came.
Organizers expected between 20,000 and 30,000. According to Reuters, "fewer than 500
people attended".
Also in September, Farrakhan received an unexpected boost from Republican vice
presidential candidate Jack Kemp. Eleven months earlier the Republican leadership had been
almost self-righteous in its statements about the "Million Man March", blasting
Farrakhan as antisemitic and President Clinton as not being harsh enough in his
condemnation of the NOI leader. Now, instead, Jack Kemp belittled the central role of
bigotry in the NOI. While calling on the group to "renounce antisemitism", Kemp
said he believed Farrakhan's ideas about black self-help were "wonderful". And
Kemp said that if he had been asked to speak at the "Million Man March", he
would have done so. The one-year anniversary of the "Million Man March" was on
16 October 1996. Farrakhan organized a rally called the "World Day of Atonement"
at the United Nations Plaza in New York. Farrakhan again offered to meet with the Jewish
community; the rhetoric of antisemitism was downplayed at the rally; police estimated the
crowd at 38,000, but organizers said that as many as 200,000 showed, despite the fact that
the rally permit was for less than 50,000. (Commenting on the controversy Farrakhan later
said, "White men can't jump and white men can't count.") Following the event,
Farrakhan held a press conference sponsored by Libya at the United Nations.
Affiliated to the NOI are private security companies. NOI Security, formed in 1990 and
based in Washington, DC, and New Life Inc., run by Farrakhan's son-in-law, Leonard
Farrakhan Muhammad, and based in Chicago, in the past few years have been awarded
contracts worth millions of dollars to police and protect public housing estates in
several major cities, including some under the auspices of the US department of housing
and urban development. But in September 1996 in New York, Governor George Pataki ruled
that a state-financed housing project must break its contract with an NOI-linked security
group called the "X-men", after the group had been discovered distributing
antisemitic literature. In response, New York-based NOI minister Conrad Muhammad referred
to Assemblyman Jules Polonetsky, a critic of the "X-men", as a
"snotty-nosed Jewish politician". Such pronouncements from NOI ministers
continued to be nothing unusual. A few weeks before Conrad Muhammad's statement about the
housing project, he called Kenneth Stern of the AJC a "racist dog", a
"brownshirt", a "fascist" and a "Nazi", all because neither
Stern nor any other AJC official would appear on camera with Muhammad at a television talk
show to "debate" whether Farrakhan should have been able to take Qadaffi's $1
billion gift. Farrakhan's desire to inculcate younger NOI members with antisemitism was
also reflected in statements of Quannel X, NOI's national youth minister. He said: "I
say to Jewish America: get ready . . . knuckle up, put your boots on, because we're ready
and the war is going down . . . The real deal is this: black youth do not want a
relationship with the Jewish community or the mainstream white community or the
foot-shuffling, head-bowing, knee-bobbing black community . . . All you Jews can go
straight to hell."
Smaller black extremist groups were also active in 1996. In Georgia an offshoot of the NOI
called the Five Percent Nation was allegedly preparing for guerrilla warfare and buying
weapons for that purpose, financing its operation through a spree of robberies of
fast-food stores. Members went on trial in October 1996. There were also reports of a
black militia-like group operating in the Detroit, Michigan, area. And in Indianapolis,
Idaho, a small group burned a US flag on 4 July in protest over the arrest of a Black
Panther leader, and over the treatment of blacks in the USA. A group known as the New
Black Panther Party was active in Texas. Members of this group, accompanied by an NOI
member, Khallid Muhammad, travelled to the site of a burned black church in June, where
some brandished shotguns, threatening violence. The New Black Panther Party also targeted
the Dallas school board. Because of the group's threats, gun-toting and scuffling with
police, a number of school board meetings had to be cancelled.
During the primary season, arch conservative and antisemite Patrick Buchanan did well
in some of the earlier caucuses and primaries, before being defeated by Bob Dole. That
some antisemites and extremists gravitated to Buchanan was no surprise. He was promoted in
far-right publications and, in February, Larry Pratt, one of his top aides, took a leave
of absence after it was disclosed that Pratt had attended a meeting of white supremacists
and Christian Identity adherents in 1992, during which he advocated the formation of armed
militia units. Another co-chair, Michael Farris, was criticized for having attended a
January anti-abortion banquet honouring Paul Hill. Hill, believing that killing abortion
providers was an acceptable means of opposing abortion, had been convicted of a 1994
murder of a physician and a companion in Pensacola, Florida.
During the campaign, Ross Perot's Reform Party worked in alliance with leaders and members
of the former New Alliance Party (NAP). The NAP, headed by Dr Fred Newman and Dr Lenora
Fulani, was part cult, part political party, and overtly antisemitic, promoting Louis
Farrakhan as well as anti-Jewish terrorists, and calling Jews "stormtroopers of
capitalism". The NAP was dissolved in 1994 and the group was reinvented as the
Patriot Party, which worked with Perot.
Neo-Nazi Arthur Jones ran for congress as a Republican in Chicago. And the neo-Nazi and
former KKK leader David Duke ran for the US senate in Louisiana. Both lost. However, the
white supremacist activities of Don Rogers, an incumbent California state senator, were
exposed during the year. Using a Christian Patriot white supremacist fiction, Rogers had
declared himself a "sovereign citizen" exempt from paying income taxes in a 1992
affidavit filed in a California court. The affidavit included Rogers's explanation:
"I was born . . . white. [The] main purpose [of the 14th Amendment was to establish]
the citizenship of the Negro. And because such a white man's citizenship was not
restricted by the 14th Amendment and because he receives no protection from it, he has no
reciprocal obligation to a 14th Amendment allegiance or sovereignty and owes no obedience
to anyone under the 14th Amendment." Legislative leaders noted that, while Rogers's
claim was "idiotic", they "do not punish idiotic ideas".
In a Georgia congressional race Billy McKinney, the father of Representative Cynthia
McKinney, called his daughter's Republican opponent a "racist Jew".
Representative McKinney said she was "embarrassed" by her father, and issued a
statement abhorring "any form of racism or antisemitism [including that of] Billy
McKinney".
The newly elected congress no longer contains Steve Stockman, a militia-supporting
representative from Texas, who was defeated. But it still boasts Idaho Congressman (the
title she prefers) Helen Chenoweth. Shortly before her election she was quoted complaining
about the "United Nations takeover of America's national parks [and] the coming one
world order".
In January 1995, Christina Jeffrey-dismissed by House Speaker Newt Gingrich from her new
position as historian for the house of representatives because of earlier remarks about a
high school Holocaust course that were described as antisemitic-immediately began to seek
to clear her name. By the year's end Jeffrey's tenacity had been rewarded, at least in
part. The first step in her exoneration was ADL president Abraham Foxman's action in
writing to her in August that "ADL is satisfied that any characterization of you as
antisemitic or sympathetic to Nazism is entirely unfounded and unfair"; this amounted
to a retraction of statements made by the ADL in January, when it praised Gingrich for
firing Jeffrey. There followed a private meeting in November between Jeffrey, Foxman and
Gingrich following which Gingrich told reporters, "I think she deserves some
vindication". There was talk of hiring Jeffrey as a consultant to the house of
representatives, although not for the house historian position, because that position had
been eliminated after her dismissal.
The ADL's annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents reported a decline in the number
of antisemitic incidents in 1996. The total of 1,722 incidents represents a decline of 7
per cent, or 121 incidents, from the 1995 total of 1,843. There were 941 incidents of
harassment, threats and assaults directed against Jewish individuals and institutions.
This figure represents a decline of 16 per cent from the 1995 total of 1,116. Incidents on
college campuses also declined. There were 90 such incidents in 1996, representing a
decrease of 28 from the total of 118 in 1995. However, incidents of vandalism rose: there
were 781 acts of antisemitic vandalism in 1996, an increase of 54 incidents, or 7 per
cent, over the year before. The five states reporting the highest total of antisemitic
incidents of all kinds in 1996 were New York (328), New Jersey (238), California (186),
Florida (123) and Massachusetts (106).
In the justice department's hate crime figures for 1995 (see RACISM AND XENOPHOBIA), 16
per cent of the incidents were motivated by religious bias. Of these 1,277 incidents,
1,058 were classified as anti-Jewish; the remainder included incidents classified as
anti-Catholic (31), anti-Protestant (36), anti-Islamic (29), anti-other religious group
(102), anti-multi-religious group (20) and anti-atheism/ agnoticism, etc. (1).
In January, an October 1995 memo from a low-level department of defence official came to
light. Addressed to defence contractors, it urged them to look out for Israeli espionage,
noting alleged "strong ethnic ties to Israel present in the US". In response,
Representative Nita Lowey (Democrat, New York) wrote to Secretary of Defense William
Perry, saying, "I deeply resent the implication that American Jews would commit
treason against their nation because of their Jewish heritage".
In May, the FBI sent out an alert in the aftermath of threats by Hamas and Hizbullah to
target Jews worldwide. The FBI said it had received threats that 1,200 Jewish executives
and doctors within the USA would be killed unless Israel withdrew from Lebanon and paid
$12 billion by 5 May. Jewish groups uniformly said they would not be intimidated by such
threats. The threat was communicated in a two-page letter sent to the San Jose,
California, Mercury News by the previously unknown "Inter-national Freedom
Fighters".
Shortly after these reported threats, the FBI began an investigation into letters
threatening attacks on US mosques and Muslim groups. According to the Jewish Telegraphic
Agency (JTA), the letters were "reportedly mailed from Birmingham, England, [and]
purport to come from a branch of the Jewish Defense League-Kahane Chai in Britain . . . A
Kahane spokesman [said] he had no knowledge of the letter." The reverse side of the
mailing sported a picture of a Lebanese man carrying his dead children.
In early May, a Jewish high school in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, area was evacuated
after a telephoned threat by someone who identified herself as a member of Hizbullah.
Also in May, the AJC terminated its joint sponsorship of the National Polish American and
Jewish American Council, ending a seventeen-year relationship with the Polish Amer-ican
Congress (PAC) after the PAC's leader, Edward Moskal, sent a letter to Aleksander
Kwaniewski, the Polish president, lamenting "the submissiveness of the Polish
authorities to demands raised by Jews" (see Poland). The letter
complained about "preferential treatment given to Jews who are seeking the return of
their property in Poland", the banning of a development near Auschwitz in response to
Jewish concerns, and the "unfortunate and unnecessary" apology offered by the
Polish minister of foreign affairs for the 1946 Kielce pogrom. President Kwaniewski wrote
back to Moskal, rejecting his concerns and stating that there "should be no place for
harmful stereotypes, xenophobia, racial or ethnic pre-judices".
In autumn 1996, Sam Sachs, a Jewish cadet, was subjected to antisemitic slurs by
instructors at the Oregon Public Safety Academy in Monmouth, Oregon. One instructor used
the term "Jew them down", about buying something for a low price. In another
incident an instructor asked Sachs if he was going to roast a pig for his bar mitzvah, and
if he was going to be circumcized.
Westchester County, New York, suffered a series of antisemitic incidents during the year.
In February, September and November, houses and other property were defaced with swastikas
and other antisemitic graffiti.
In Philadelphia the office of Representative Robert Borski (Democrat, Pennsylvania) was
defaced with swastikas twice-in April and again in August.
In the early morning hours on the third night of Chanukah, someone threw a rock through
the front window of a Newtown, Pennsylvania, home, snatched an electric menorah and
smashed it, breaking all nine bulbs. Neighbours responded by putting menorahs up in their
windows, much as some residents had done in Billings, Montana, three years earlier after a
similar hate crime. Three high school students were arrested.
In 1996 some Jews faked antisemitic incidents. Steve and Al Rubin, a father and son from
Miami, Florida, were convicted on charges of theft, conspiracy and criminal mischief. They
had sent teenagers to paint swastikas and other antisemitic graffiti on fifteen Hillel
Community Day School buses. The younger Rubin, who worked at the school, steered the
repair order to his father's garage. And in Oregon, three former Reedsport residents were
sentenced to more than nine years in prison for conspiring to defraud their insurance
company by setting fire to their residences. They had claimed the fires were the result of
arson by antisemites.
In another incident, it was announced in February 1996 that the house of representatives'
Page Board had dismissed a page who was believed to have painted a swastika on the
dormitory door of another page. The swastika was found the previous November by a
seventeen-year-old Jewish page on the morning after he and several other pages had had an
argument. A spokesman for Congressman Gary Ackerman (Democrat, New York), sponsor for the
latter page, commented that "in the end, justice has been served". No criminal
charges were brought, reportedly for lack of sufficient evidence.
In January, a concert at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, drew criticism. A
group called the Folger Consort performed selections intended to show harmonious relations
between Jews, Christians and Muslims during the time of King Alfonso II Sabio of Spain
(1221-84). One song, "A Que do Bon Rey Davi", contained antisemitic lyrics; it
told of a Jew who murdered a boy who was singing a song in praise of the Virgin Mary, and
conclu-ded with the mass murder of the town's Jews.
Also in January, Warner Music reversed its plans to include Steve Cokely and NOI minister
Conrad Muhammad in its "Our Roots Run Deep" lecture series as part of Black
History Month. Cokely, a former aid to Chicago mayor Harold Washington, is a proponent of
the modern-day blood libel that "AIDS . . . is a result of doctors, especially Jewish
ones, who inject the AIDS virus in blacks". Muhammad, who calls Jews
"bloodsuckers", and says that "Christians practice a dirty religion",
also claims that AIDS in the African American community is a result of "white plots
against black people". Jewish groups were pleased at Warner Music's removal of Cokely
and Muhammad from its programme.
In February, the pop star Michael Jackson released a video including his song "They
Don't Care About Us". In June 1995, at the time of the song's release, Jewish groups
had protested because it contained the lyrics "Jew me, sue me", and "kick
me, kike me". Jackson had apologized and promised to rerecord the track with
different lyrics. But the video nonetheless contained the original antisemitic phrases.
In March the ADL tried to withdraw its Janusz Korczak Literary Award, after it was
announced that Richard Lukas would receive the prize for his book Did the Children
Cry?: Hitler's War Against Jewish and Polish Children. When ADL officials reviewed the
book they discovered that it presented "a sanitized picture of Polish involvement
with Jews during the war". Calling the award a "mistake", the ADL
nevertheless presented the prize to avoid litigation.
Also in March, the National Newspaper Publishers Association, a group of 200
black-oriented papers, presented its "Newsmaker of the Year" award to NOI leader
Louis Farrakhan, citing his "higher level of moral authority" and his
"vision beyond the ordinary".
In April, the actor Marlon Brando, appearing on CNN's Larry King Live, said that
Jews "run" Hollywood, "own" the entertainment industry, and
"should have greater sensitivity about the issue of people who are suffering because
they've been exploited. We have seen the nigger, we have seen the greaseball, we have seen
the chink, the slit-eyed Jap, but we never saw the kike", Brando said, "because
they knew perfectly well that's where you draw the wagons around." Brando apologized,
but the next month O. J. Simpson, speaking at Oxford University, defended Brando's
antisemitic statement, saying that "[n]obody ever intellectualized what he [Brando]
said because the Jewish community mobilized . . . they had this man on his knees in three
days, crying, apologizing".
In May the Cincinnati Reds owner, Marge Schott, known and disciplined in 1993 by Major
League Baseball for her past bigoted statements, said that Hitler "was good" at
the beginning, but then "just went too far". In reaction to the ensuing uproar,
Schott voluntarily stepped down as managing general partner of the team.
In June, the French synchronized swimming team agreed to change its performance slated for
the Atlanta Olympic Games after protests from French Jews (see France).
In September, Ted Turner, the chairman of CNN, said that News Corporation chairman Rupert
Murdoch was acting "like the late Fuhrer". Turner apologized for the remarks.
The incident followed a similar 1995 misstatement by Turner, when he said that his
difficulties in purchasing a network left him feeling like "those Jewish people in
Germany in 1942". It preceded another gaff in October 1996, when Turner again likened
business competitors to Nazis.
In April 1996, veteran WABC radio talk-show host Bob Grant was fired for a racist comment.
Grant had long been criticized by black groups and by the AJC for his racist banter.
In November a 1994 tape of Texaco executives came to light, reflecting bigoted remarks
against blacks, Jews and others.
In December, New York City council-member Sheldon S. Leffler (Democrat, Queens) called
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani an "Ubermensch ", during a debate on a plan to
develop superstores in the New York area. "[I]f you're a zealot, a former prosecutor,
an Ubermensch," Leffler reportedly said, "you may not feel you need to
listen to what ordinary citizens in this city want to have to say." Also in December,
newly released tapes of the late President Richard Nixon revealed his deep-seated
antisemitism. Repeatedly using the term "rich Jews," he spoke of a "Jewish
cabal" and claimed that Jews "are stealing in every direction." He made
these remarks while advocating IRS audits of "the big Jewish contributors to the
Democrats."
Racist and antisemitic black extremist speakers continued to speak at campuses around
the country. Speakers on the circuit included Professor Tony Martin of Wellesley College
and various NOI representatives. Also of note in 1996 were verbal and written attacks from
many Afrocentrists on the Wellesley professor Mary Lefkowitz, dismissing her work as
"racist". A professor of classics, Lefkowitz published Not Out of Africa,
a book challenging the basis of Afrocentrism as built on myths-for example, she debunked
the assertion that Aristotle "stole" knowledge from the library at Alexandria
because the library was built only after Aristotle's death, and proved that many current
Afrocentric claims have their basis in European works of fiction as well as the rituals
that Freemasons developed, based on their fascination with ancient Egypt.
In January, Seth Greenberg, basketball coach for California State University at Long
Beach, opened a grease board, intent on diagramming plays for his team, which was visiting
New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. Someone had written in red ink, "Seth, get
ready for an ass-kicking, you Jew bastard". During the game spectators also used
racial slurs against the Long Beach team, calling whites "white boys" and blacks
"niggers".
In March, Howard University's student newspaper sported an editorial in which it vilified
the ADL as bent on attacking black leadership, ADL regional director David Friedman as a
"pariah", and Howard professor Russell Adams as someone who should be "held
accountable" for working co-operatively with the ADL. The editorial was paired with a
cartoon that depicted the ADL as a devil in a university building.
In June, four students at the Tri-County Regional Vocational Technical High School in
Franklin, Massachusetts adorned their gradu-ation gowns with KKK slogans and swastikas.
Their messages of hate were not noticed until after graduation, but their principal
notified military authorities when four of the students signed up as recruits. After a
prompt investigation the military discharged all four.
In July, Thomas Bird resigned as the newly named director of the Jewish studies programme
at Queen College. Bird had been criticized by some Jewish faculty members, citing among
other things Bird's Catholicism as something that should disqualify him. The AJC and other
mainstream Jewish groups supported Bird-in fact the AJC gave him its coveted
Interreligious Award-noting that Jewish studies is a serious academic field, and that it
demeans the seriousness of the subject to suggest that only a Jew is qualified to direct
such a programme.
In November, antisemitic literature was placed in drop boxes around the University of
Oregon campus. Entitled The Definitive Poetic Prophecy Against Jewish Racist
Superiority, it began: "A secret group obsessed by power/ Gathered themselves in
a 'darkened' hour/ To plot and scheme for world control/ With 'financial' power their
central goal . . . "
Antisemitic propaganda was disseminated by all forms of media and was for the most part
well protected by freedom of speech guarantees. In terms of the printed word, many
pub-lications including books, magazines, journals, newspapers, newsletters and pamphlets
by far-right, militia and neo-Nazi organizations (see PARTIES, ORGANIZATIONS, MOVEMENTS)
purveyed antisemitism. However, unlike a generation ago, there were no national mainstream
antisemitic serial publications. Some mainstream black-oriented tabloids, such as the Amsterdam
News in New York, continued to promote Afrocentric claims and the activities of the
NOI, while ignoring or sanitizing their antisemitism.
Radio, short-wave, public access and cable television channels provided opportunities,
protected under licensing ordinances, for white-supremacist, black-supremacist and
neo-Nazi groups to broadcast to communities around the country, as well as
internationally. A continuing issue in 1996 was the proliferation of "talk
radio" programmes, including many that provided a forum for often unchallenged racist
and antisemitic remarks.
The California-based publishing house Noontide Press (see PARTIES, ORGANIZATIONS,
MOVEMENTS) continued its activities in 1996. However, Willis A. Carto's empire is in the
midst of litigation between Carto and a group of IHR staffers who have wrested control of
IHR from him. In 1996, Carto lost his lawsuit, and a multi-million dollar judgment was
entered against him for illegally converting money left to the IHR. Noontide Press
published Holocaust-denial texts such as Arthur Butz's Hoax of the Twentieth Century and
the works of Paul Rassinier, as well as traditional antisemitic material like The
Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Henry Ford's The International Jew.
Among the more important newspapers and journals that espoused antisemitism were the
following. Spotlight (Washington, DC) is a 32-page weekly Liberty Lobby tabloid,
founded in 1974, to which the average number of subscribers is approaching 100,000. This
figure is significantly lower than its readership a decade ago (200,000-300,000). The
racist, antisemitic and Holocaust-denying articles that fill Spotlight 's pages are
not written in the baldly crude language of KKK and neo-Nazi literature. They are coded in
populist, anti-federal government or conspiratorial rhetoric. Spotlight is an
important promoter of the militia movement and the conspiracy theories that help fuel it.
White Patriot is a publication of Thom Robb's Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. The
Truth at Last (Georgia) is a racist, antisemitic and homophobic monthly published by
long-time neo-Nazi Ed Fields, a national council member of the America First Party. Liberty
Bell (West Virginia) is a neo-Nazi monthly published by an independent publisher. The War
Eagle is a neo-Nazi skinhead newsletter that first appeared in 1994. It was produced
by veteran neo-Nazis and America First Committee members Art Jones, John McLaughlin and
Roger Fountain.
The Jubilee is a bi-monthly tabloid of the Christian Identity movement (see
RELIGION) published by Paul Hall in Midpines, California. It has also been promoting the
militia movement, and in April held a "Jubilation Celeb-ration" in Nevada,
drawing about 350 antisemites and white supremacists including Randy Weaver, Pete Peters
and Republican state senator Don Rogers (California).
Scriptures for America is the publishing arm of Pete Peters's Christian Identity Church.
Among its offerings is a $32 version of the New Testament, called the "Anointed
Standard Translation". It is marketed as a "Jew-free" bible.
Aid and Abet is a newsletter of the militia movement, published by the former
Arizona policeman Jack McLamb. The newsletter is aimed at recruiting law enforcement
officers into the movement. Taking Aim is a newsletter of the militia movement that
bills itself as "the Militiaman's newsletter".
Endsieg and the New Order (Lincoln, Nebraska) are publications of Gary
Lauck's NSDAP/AO. The New Order is published in English, French, German, Spanish
and Hungarian, and is disseminated internationally.
Final Call is the NOI newspaper, often sold on street corners by members of the
organization, whose sales records directly affect their status in the organization. There
are also NOI bookshops selling books and tapes of NOI speeches, as well as the infamous The
Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews , a rewrite of The Protocols of the
Elders of Zion targeted at a black audience. (There have also been reports of The
Secret Relationship being sold at various major market bookstores in some cities.)
The publications of Lyndon LaRouche and his followers, the New Federalist (for-merly
New Solidarity ) and Executive Intelligence Review, single out prominent
Jews, Jewish families and Jewish organizations for special abuse.
Antisemitic and white-supremacist groups produce radio programmes that are regularly
broadcast. The talk-radio programme produced by the Liberty Lobby, Radio Free America,
is carried on more than 300 US radio stations and on short-wave to Europe, the Middle East
and elsewhere. Pete Peters (see above) hosts a weekly television show, Truth for the
Times . He also hosts a radio programme that is broadcast in several US cities. And
Mark Koernke, a Michigan-based militia leader whose name surfaced shortly after the
Oklahoma City bombing, when he sent an immediate fax to a member of congress, continues to
broadcast on the short-wave station WWCR. In an October broadcast he advised listeners to
buy short lengths of pipe and bury them on their property in order to confuse "New
World Order" forces when they come looking for caches. A caller, approving of the
idea, suggested that road kill be buried with the metal, to give government officials a
smelly surprise.
The dissemination of racism and antisemitism via the global telecommunications network has
increased in recent years. The Internet has emerged as an uncontrollable, unpoliceable and
decentralized zone where independent voices, however unpopular or objectionable, can
"speak" and be heard; the number of Internet users had reached into the millions
in the USA and Canada as the year ended. The number of web sites was also growing quickly.
Furthermore, information in cyberspace is protected by the same freedom of speech
guarantees as other forms of expression. However, the parameters of what is allowed are
not yet clearly defined.
As noted, the Internet increasingly is becoming a communication tool of the antisemitic
far right. The Liberty Lobby, for example (see PARTIES, ORGANIZATIONS, MOVEMENTS),
sponsors a bulletin board called Logoplex BBS. Mike Vanderboegh, of the Alabama Militia,
began an Internet service called "Deeswatch", a part of the militia
counter-intelligence effort to track groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center. This
counter-intelligence effort also reportedly targets the AJC and the ADL. The most active
US bulletin board, Cyberspace Minuteman, acts as a linchpin for far-right groups
throughout the USA and Europe. And the Resister , known as "The Political
Warfare Journal of the Special Forces Underground", is available in an Internet
edition. (Its volume 2, issue no. 4 was largely devoted to attacks on the ADL's Abe
Foxman, the Southern Poverty Law Center's Morris Dees and AJC's Kenneth Stern.)
Bomb-making manuals have also been transmitted by computer links, as have recipes for
chemical warfare. For example, on 17 June someone posted what purported to be the formula
for a "home chemical warfare agent . . . so that the 'common man' has an effective
weapon against 'big brother'". Appearing in a newsgroup, the instruction noted that
the "mixture is perfect for Molotov cocktails with devastating effects".
Increasingly, antisemitic groups and individuals are opening home pages on the World Wide
Web and developing strategies to advertise their web sites, such as posting information
about them in various USENET newsgroups. It is clear that in the years to come the
Internet will become the most important communication tool for active antisemites
worldwide.
Meanwhile, the use of other older, lower-tech means of dissemination of antisemitism
continues. Various hate groups use telephone answering machines to spew hatred and recruit
members. Cable television stations also allow hateful programmes over their community
access channels. For example, WAR leader Tom Metzger (see PARTIES, ORGANIZATIONS,
MOVEMENTS) has produced more than forty-five half-hour segments of a television programme,
Race and Reason. These were broadcast on community access stations. In fact, cable
access laws allow community members to produce their own programmes, or sponsor previously
recorded videos. Community access laws do not let the station censor such programmes for
hateful content, although regulations that restrict the number of times a person can air a
programme and/or strictly enforce rules that require sponsors to live within the cable
region have made the use of this medium more difficult for those with a hateful political
agenda. Community responses with counter-programming can be effective too. For example, in
June, the public access station in Pocatello, Idaho, aired The Other Israel, a
notorious video that distorts the Talmud to promote antisemitism, and which also includes
Holocaust-denial material.
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is the USA's second largest Christian body,
numbering over 14 million members. In June, 1996 the SBC's national convention, meeting in
New Orleans, Louisiana, adopted a resolution calling upon the denomination to intensify
its "evangelizing among the Jewish people".
The SBC immediately drew sharp reactions from the Jewish community as well as from many
Christian leaders. Rabbi A. James Rudin, the AJC's interreligious affairs director, called
the SBC resolution an "act of spiritual arrogance", which, if carried out, would
represent the "spiritual annihilation" of the Jewish people. SBC leaders denied
that the resolution was anti-Jewish. Rather, it was just the opposite. They declared that
for Christians not to seek the conversion of the Jews would, in itself, constitute an act
of antisemitism because it would withhold the Christian Gospel from the Jews.
To carry out this new campaign, the SBC appointed a former missionary to Israel as its
director of "Jewish evangelism". The SBC action was also the source of a
well-publicized debate between Jewish leaders and SBC officials at the 15th National
Workshop on Jewish Relations that took place in Stamford, Connecticut in late October
1996.
Because 1996 was an election year in the USA, extensive attention was paid to the
continuing phenomenon known as the Religious Right. The Christian Coalition, the
best-known Religious Right organization, played an active role in both the presidential
and congressional elections. In addition, the Coalition, led by the Revd Pat Robertson and
Ralph Reed, also focused on local electoral races throughout the country.
Reed denied charges of antisemitic bias in the Religious Right. However, some of
Robertson's published writings attacked "liberal Jews" and he made constant
negative references to "international bankers". Although President Clinton was
re-elected, the Religious Right did claim that its active efforts on behalf of Republican
congressional candidates prevented Democratic control of the house of representatives and
the senate. At the year's end, two things seemed clear: the Religious Right had lost some
of its influence in the political realm, and the charges of antisemitism would continue.
The white supremacist wing of the Regligious Right includes followers of the Christian
Identity Church. Christian Identity adherents believe in two creations. In short, they
believe that God first tried a creation that failed-thus explaining ethnic minorities.
When God tried again, He created Adam and Eve. Eve impregnated with the seed of Adam
produced Abel and the white race. Eve impregnated with the seed of Satan produced Cain,
whose descendants are the Jews. Minorities are thus pre-Adamic beasts, sometimes called
"mud people", and Jews are the literal offspring of Satan.
In late November 1996, two Lutheran-Jewish conferences took place in Sarasota and Palm
Beach, Florida, that represented a growing rapprochement between these two faith
communities. In 1994, the Evangelical Lutheran Church (ELC), the USA's largest Lutheran
body, adopted a resolution renouncing the antisemitism that is found in the later writings
of Martin Luther. As a direct result of this action, an increasing number of ELC
congregations are engaged in educational programmes intended to eradicate all vestiges of
antisemitism from church life including teaching, preachings and liturgy. The ELC action
and its implementation is a direct attempt to address the problem of religious
antisemitism that is found in many parts of the Christian com-munity.
Finally, there were repeated calls, especially from the AJC, for a papal encyclical
dealing with antisemitism and the church's role in the Holocaust. As the year ended, no
encyclical or statement was yet issued.
Holocaust denial plays a role in most white-supremacist organizations in the USA. The
vanguard of Holocaust denial, however, has been the California-based IHR (see PARTIES,
ORGANIZATIONS, MOVEMENTS). The IHR was producing a bi-monthly journal, the pseudo-academic
Journal for Historical Review, and eight newsletters each year worldwide, as well
as publishing and distributing numerous books. However, the regularity of its
publica-tions has been sporadic since the group's ed-itors took over from Willis A. Carto,
the IHR's founder (see PUBLICATIONS AND MEDIA). Before that turmoil an annual
international conference hosted by the IHR attracted over 100 Holocaust-deniers from
around the world. In 1994 the editors of the journal wrested control of the institute from
Carto as part of an effort to sanitize its image, and purportedly to exercise control of a
multi-million-dollar bequest left to the IHR by an heir of Thomas Edison. The issue
remains an internal conflict that is the subject of pending litigation. The winner of the
power-play seemingly is the institute's director, Tom Marcellus, who is supported by Ernst
Zundel, Robert Faurisson and the British Holocaust-denier David Irving (see Canada, France, United Kingdom). Carto
founded a new Liberty Lobby-linked Holocaust-denial journal called the Barnes Review,
named after Harry Elmer Barnes, one of the "founding fathers" of Holocaust
denial, which he continues to publish.
Holocaust-denial material also appears regularly on newsgroups on the Internet. The IHR
increasingly uses the newsgroups and bulletin boards to disseminate its publications. It
has stated its intention of making available on the Internet everything it has published
in the last fourteen years. Meanwhile, in 1996, Canadian resident Zundel (see above) found
students at ten American universities to post his Holocaust-denying propaganda in an
effort to circumvent the German government's effort to block access to web sites, such as
his, that encourage racial hatred (see Germany ). The
students Zundel enlisted claimed they were not helping him because they agreed with his
message, but because they wanted to fight censorship. One of the schools­p;the
University of Massachusetts­p;ordered the graduate student involved to remove
Zündel's messages.
An important medium since 1991 for the dissemination of Holocaust denial among students
has been the placing of advertisements in campus newspapers around the country by Bradley
R. Smith, head of the so-called Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust and media
director for the IHR. However, in 1996, fewer than five campuses ran one of his
advertisements. Smith also advertised his web site where that information could be found.
Holocaust-denying literature was also found in 1996 placed inside Holocaust-related
library books.
Also of note, in Pocatello, Idaho, a professor who gave a public talk about the Holocaust
began receiving Holocaust-denying and antisemitic literature at his home, daily.
David Irving (see above) made speeches around the country during 1996. His fund-raising
organization, the David Irving Fighting Fund, has an office in the USA (as well as in the
UK, Germany and Australia). He also gained notoriety from his latest work, a biography
called Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich. St Martin's Press, a major
publisher, originally defended its decision to publish the book, then decided not to print
it after public criticism prompted the company chairman to read the page proofs (see
COUNTERING ANTISEMITISM).
Lillian Baker died in October. She was well known in Holocaust-denying circles for her
claims that Japanese Americans were not held against their will in US concentration camps
during the Second World War.
A major study released by the AJC in 1996 examined the Religious Right (see RELIGION)
and other US citizens with regard to a host of issues, and provided a context for the
study of antisemitism. The AJC study, A Survey of the Religious Right: Views on
Politics, Society, Jews and Other Minorities , was conducted during May and June by
the Gallup International Institute and analysed by Dr Tom W. Smith of the University of
Chicago's National Opinion Research Center. The survey examined 507 US citizens aligned
with the Religious Right and 503 other Americans. Respondents were considered aligned with
the Religious Right if they affirmed all three items on Gallup's evangelicalism scale and
also self-identified as political and/or social conservatives.
With regard to the survey findings as they relate to feelings about Jews, Smith
interpreted the results as indicating that "the Religious Right exhibit a mixed and
complex attitude toward Jews". Thus, on a positive side, those aligned with the
Religious Right are more supportive of Israel and of the special biblical status of Jews
than are other Americans. For example, 61 per cent (compared to 52 per cent of other
Americans) are sympathetic towards Israel. And 72 per cent (as against 43 per cent of
other Americans) agree that "Jews have a right to the land of Israel, since it was
promised to them by God". Or again, 53 per cent (as against 28 per cent of other
Americans) agree that "now, as in the past, Jews remain God's chosen people".
However, on the negative side, those aligned with the Religious Right are more likely than
other Americans to raise objections to Jews on religious grounds. Thus, 58 per cent
(compared to 22 per cent of other Americans) disagree with the statement "Jews do not
need to be converted to Christianity". And 22 per cent (as against 8 per cent of
other Americans) think that Jews must still answer for killing Christ. Those aligned with
the Religious Right are also somewhat more likely than other Americans to believe that
Jews and Christians do not share similar values and cannot get along together.
Finally, in terms of the social and political acceptance of Jews, those aligned with the
Religious Right differ little from other Americans. Thus 79 per cent are willing to vote
for a Jew as president, 88 per cent do not believe that Jews have too much influence in US
society, and 96 per cent are willing to live with Jews as neighbours.
On the issue of the controversial NOI leader Louis Farrakhan (see PARTIES, MOVEMENTS,
ORGANIZATIONS) a March CBS News Poll of 1,029 respondents found that 48 per cent believe
he is prejudiced against whites and Jews. Only 16 per cent viewed these charges against
Farrakhan as unfair, and over one-third of respondents said they don't know or had no
response.
An item looking at the question of Jewish influence was contained in a poll of 1,975
respondents conducted in May-June by Princeton Survey Research Associates for the Pew
Research Center. The item examined the level of influence various groups have in
government and political matters, and nearly half (49 per cent) said that they would like
to see "the Jews" have less influence than they have now, while 27 per cent
would like to see them have more influence than they have now. Eight per cent volunteered
that they have about the right amount of influence, and 16 per cent did not know.
A federal appeals court ruled in March that Lemrick Nelson will be tried as an adult in
the federal case in which he is charged with violating Yankel Rosenbaum's civil rights.
Rosenbaum, a twenty-nine-year old Hasidic student from Australia, was murdered when a mob
attacked him after a car driven by a Hasidic Jew went out of control and killed a
seven-year-old African American boy in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in 1991 (see HISTORICAL
LEGACY). Nelson, who was a teenager at the time of the murder, was acquitted in state
court in 1992. Jury selection in the federal case began at the end of the year.
In May, the US supreme court refused to hear an appeal from a federal court's decision
that a cross-bearing seal for the city of Edmond, Oklahoma, was unconstitutional.
There were legal developments in several terrorism cases during 1996. In January, Sheikh
Omar Abd al-Rahman was sentenced to life in prison for plotting a series of bombings and
assassinations that prosecutors said was intended to force the United States to end its
support for the governments of Israel and Egypt. Nine of the sheikh's co-defendants were
also sentenced to prison terms ranging from twenty-five years to life. Among them was El
Sayyid Nosair, the man widely believed to have assassinated the militant Rabbi Meir Kahane
but who was acquitted of murder charges in 1991. Nosair received a life sentence. In May,
three suspected US terrorists were convicted by a federal jury in Oklahoma of plotting to
blow up various targets, including the Houston office of the ADL. Willie Ray Lampley, his
wife and an-other defendant were planning the bombing of civil rights centres, welfare
offices, gay bars and abortion clinics. Lampley had told a Phoenix newspaper that he and
his followers discussed blowing up the ADL office because Jews have "robbed this
country until money has no value whatsoever".
Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the man accused of leading terrorist cells that plotted attacks on US
targets at home and abroad, was convicted in September, along with two other defendants,
of trying to blow up twelve US commercial aircraft. Yousef was a former chauffeur for
Sheikh Omar Abd al-Rahman (see above).
Terrorism remained a preoccupation throughout 1996. Debate continued, among American Jews
and Americans in general, in the aftermath of terrorist attacks at home and in Israel, as
to whether, and what kinds of, new legislative and executive responses were required. One
key concern for some was how such measures were to be balanced against civil liberties and
due process protections.
Anti-terrorism legislation had been debated in both houses of congress during 1995, but
had not become law. After the bombings carried out by Hamas terrorists in Israel in
February and March 1996, the anti-terrorism bill, a version of which had already passed in
the senate, was brought back before the house of representatives for action. Having been
further amended, the bill passed in the house on 14 March by a vote of 229 to 191. The
adopted amendments were criticized by Jewish groups. However, in April the house-senate
conference committee reported back a bill that restored some of the provisions that Jewish
groups regarded as essential in the fight against terrorism. For example, the bill
provided authority to the secretary of state to designate certain foreign groups as
terrorist organizations and prohibited fund-raising on behalf of such groups, and expanded
federal jurisdiction over terrorism-related offences. The bill gave greater regard to
civil liberties and due process than the earlier drafts. Certain Jewish groups were still
opposed to the final version of the bill because of provisions relating to habeas
corpus and summary exclusion procedures for handling asylum claims; other Jewish
organizations endorsed the final bill, notwithstanding those provisions. In the end, the
bill was passed by overwhelming margins by both houses of congress, and was signed into
law by the president on 24 April 1996.
In the wake of the Olympic Games bombing (see PARTIES, ORGANIZATIONS, MOVEMENTS) and the
mid-air explosion of TWA flight 800 during the summer of 1996, President Clinton and
members of congress met to discuss the expedited enactment of supplemental anti-terrorism
legislation. Discussions by a bipartisan, bicameral task force failed to reach consensus
over the items that ought to be in the new package. On the eve of the July recess a bill
was introduced in the house of representatives. It did not include the measures designated
by the president and others as most crucial, but it passed by an overwhelming bipartisan
margin. However, the senate did not bring the bill up for a floor vote before the congress
recess began in early October, with congress not due to return again until January 1997.
At the state level, in May both houses of the Illinois legislature passed an
anti-terrorism bill, an initiative pressed by the Metropolitan Chicago Jewish Community
Relations Council after reports circulated that Hamas was raising money in the Chicago
area. The bill was signed into law by Governor Jim Edgar.
Developments in several cases involving suspected war criminals or collaborators occurred
during the year. In May, the justice department began deportation proceedings against a
New Jersey man who promoted the persecution of Jews in Hungary during the Second World
War. The proceedings against Ferenc Koreh, aged eighty-six, were begun after a federal
appeals court upheld an earlier decision to strip Koreh of his US citizenship. Koreh has
admitted to being the founder and editor of a virulently antisemitic newspaper. The
justice department alleges that Koreh was also a high-ranking propagandist in the
Hungarian government.
The accused Nazi collaborator Aleksandras Lileikis was stripped of his US citizenship in
May when a federal judge in Boston, Massachusetts, issued a summary judgment. Lileikis,
aged eighty-eight, was a former chief of the Nazi-sponsored Lithuanian security police who
facilitated the deportation of thousands of Lithuanian Jews to Nazi death camps. The
prosecutors claimed that Lileikis's role in the killings was more substantial than he led
US officials to believe when he was granted a visa in 1955. Lileikis left the USA without
waiting to hear the result of his appeal in the US courts, and arrived in Lithuania in
June 1996 using his Lithuanian passport (see Lithuania).
Another Lithuanian, who was second in command to Lileikis, was also stripped of his
citizenship in June. Kazys Gimzauskas, also aged eighty-eight, had already voluntarily
returned to Lithuania more than two years earl-ier while he was under investigation by the
justice department's Office of Special Investigations (OSI).
A Florida resident who admitted that he concealed his service in the Nazi-sponsored
Lithuanian Battalion, which murdered thousands of unarmed Jews, agreed in May to move back
to Lithuania. In a settlement reached with the OSI, Juozas Budreikis, aged seventy-nine,
admitted that he willfully misrepresented and concealed his service in the battalion when
he immigrated to the USA in 1958, and again when he applied for citizenship in 1967.
Also in May, a US federal judge stripped a Detroit area resident of his citizenship for
concealing his Nazi past when he applied for naturalization. Ferdinand Hammer, aged
seventy-four, served as an SS guard at the Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen concentration
camps. Deportation proceedings were initiated in November.
And on 31 December, the justice department filed charges against Michael Kolnhofer,
alleging him to have been an SS guard at Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald. Within hours, he
began shooting at police officers outside his Kansas City home, and was himself shot.
According to reports, he called the officers antisemitic names, and asked, "Why for
you shoot me? I not a Jew."
During the year there were also legal developments involving the issue of church-state
separation. In January, a federal appeals court declared constitutional the Religious
Freedom and Restoration Act. The measure, which requires the government to prove a
compelling interest in limiting religious observances, had been declared unconstitutional
by a district court in Texas.
In August, a Jewish high school student took her case to the US court of appeals for the
Tenth Circuit, arguing that a public school cannot compel students to participate in the
practice of religion or permit a teacher to engage in religious proselytizing. Rachel
Bauchman, a sixteen-year-old student enrolled in a public high school in Salt Lake City,
Utah, challenged her teacher's proselytizing during class, her school's use of the choral
class at religious services in area churches, and her school's attempt to compel her to
perform religious devotional music at choir class, at school concerts, in churches and at
the school's graduation ceremony. Despite the proof of her claims of religious
discrimination, a federal district court dismissed Bauchman's complaint in May, ruling
that the facts she alleged failed to establish a constitutional violation. Several leading
religious organizations, both Jewish and Christian, filed a friend-of-the-court brief in
support of Bauchman.
At the same time, a federal district court in Mississippi ruled that the North Pontotoc
School District violated the constitutional separation of church and state by permitting
students to recite prayers over the school public address system and by allowing the
teaching of Bible classes as part of the school curriculum. The lawsuit was initiated by
Lisa Herdahl, a Lutheran, who said that she and her five children were harassed and
threatened when she objected to the school's religious practices. While advocates of
church-state separation hailed the ruling as a victory, they objected to that aspect of
the decision which allowed children to continue meeting in the school's gymnasium for a
religious service before school.
As 1996 began, not one, but two, pitched battles were underway turning on proposals for a
"religious freedom" constitutional amendment. The first battle was between those
who wanted to see some sort of constitutional amendment addressed to church-state
issues-conceptually reformulated early in 1995 from the earlier notion of a school-prayer
amendment into a broader "religious equality" amendment-and those opposed to any
such initiative. The Christian Coalition (see RELIGION) and a number of allied groups on
the Religious Right had made passage of a "religious equality" amendment a
prominent part of their agenda, albeit that the contours of what they wanted that
amendment to include were left vague. Opponents of the amendment were organized in a broad
coalition of religious and civic groups that included a Jewish community almost unanimous
in the view that the initiative was unnecessary and a substantial threat to religious
liberty. Thus, even though it opposed much of the rest of the Jewish community in support
for vouchers, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations joined with its co-religionists
as part of the coalition. And the Agudath Israel of America, which did not join in the
coalition, took a "wait-and-see" attitude. The second battle-and this was the
front that explained why the year began without the imprimatur of the Republican
congressional leadership-was of a more internecine nature. Advocates of the amendment were
at loggerheads over what the final language of the amendment should be and even, to a
large extent, over just which aspects of existing church-state law should be revisited.
Thus a "religious liberties" amendment introduced by Ernest Istook (Republican,
Oklahoma) in November 1995 was to allow "student-sponsored" prayer in the public
schools and explicitly permit public acknowledgements of "the religious heritage,
beliefs, or traditions of the [American] people". In contrast, the amendment
introduced by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde (Republican, Illinois), the
"religious equality" amendment­p;introduced in the senate, as well, by
Senator Orrin Hatch (Republican, Utah)­p;was more directly intended to allow
funding of religious institutions by authorizing, if not requiring, the government to
subsidize churches, synagogues and parochial schools to the same extent it subsidizes
secular entities that provide equivalent services. From the perspective of many Jewish
groups and other opponents, however, they amounted to the same thing, since each contained
additional, vague language that left the door open for the primary aim of the other to be
achieved. Those groups quickly weighed in, asserting that either amendment would undo the
delicate constitutional balance that both protects religious expression and guards against
religious coercion in favour of (or against) religion.
Following reports that the respective proponents of the two measures had been unable to
reconcile their differences, House Majority Leader Richard Armey (Republican, Texas)
introduced a proposed "religious freedom" amendment as the leadership
alternative to the earlier Hyde and Istook initiatives. Even as the bill was introduced,
hearings were announced for Tuesday, 23 July with talk of a mark-up before the August
recess. Reportedly, the intent was to move this bill to a house floor vote in September in
time for that vote to be recorded in the Christian Coalition's voter guide. However, it
became evident at the hearing (at which the AJC interreligious affairs director, Rabbi
Rudin, testified) that the new initiative had not alleviated the determination of
Representative Istook and others to push for their own version. No mark-up took place
before the 104th congress concluded.
On other church-state fronts, unlike the virtually united front presented by the Jewish
community in opposing proposals for a constitutional amendment, the community was split
with respect to the issues of vouchers and "charitable choice". Orthodox Jewish
organizations remain committed, in particular, to voucher legislation as an important
source of additional support for parochial schools. Free-standing bills to create pilot
school-voucher programmes that would use public funds, introduced in the senate by
Senators Joseph Lieberman (Democrat, Connecticut) and Dan Coats (Republican, Indiana) and
in the house of representatives by Dave Weldon (Republican, Florida) and Frank Riggs
(Republican, California) did not move out of committee. And an attempt to include a
voucher provision in the appropriations bill failed, but only after the dispute over this
issue stalled passage of that bill for many months.
The "charitable choice" issue was posed most prominently in the welfare reform
bill vetoed twice by President Clinton but then signed by him in August 1996. That law
allows religious organizations to become state contractors for provision of block-granted,
public-assistance programmes without, in the view of most Jewish groups, providing for the
kind of safeguards necessary to ensure that direct-service providers are hired on a
non-discriminatory basis, and that government funds are not used for sectarian purposes.
Speaking of these and other initiatives that, although short of a constitutional
amendment, nevertheless significantly alter the church-state landscape, the B'nai B'rith
official Reva Price asserted: "It's very smart politics. Instead of going for big,
broad change like the religious equality amendment, [they are attempting to enact] little
pieces that chip away" at the constitutional prohibition on government establishment
of religion.
The US congress was far from the only church-state battleground. The vouchers issue
continued to play out on a number of state and local battlegrounds. And the Florida state
legislature passed a school prayer bill by strong margins-only to see the bill vetoed in
May 1996 by Governor Lawton Chiles. The Florida governor's action followed his office's
receipt of some 20,000 letters and phone calls urging a veto, the result of a grassroots
campaign in which the Florida Jewish community played a significant part. No attempt to
override the decision had been made by mid-year. The vetoed bill would have afforded local
school boards the authority to allow student-led prayers at secondary school graduation
ceremonies and other school events. The battle over the Florida bill, suggested an
official of the National Jewish Democratic Council, was "a precursor of battle lines
to come".
In recent decades honest, sometimes painful, disagreements over public issues have
divided African Americans and Jews. Attesting to the sense of urgency felt by sectors of
both the African American community and the Jewish community regarding the troubled state
of this relationship, the AJC and Howard University formed a partnership to develop a
forum for the two communities to talk to each other. Common Quest, a national magazine on
African American/Jewish relations, has been designed to fulfil that purpose. The first two
issues appeared in the spring and autumn of 1996. The magazine received critical acclaim
in wide sections of the national media and reaches a list of 18,000 prominent African
Americans, Jews and others representing a wide variety of professions and institutions.
In 1996 the AJC, the ADL, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center
all drew attention to the issue of the Internet as a vehicle for hateful messages (see
PUBLICATIONS AND MEDIA).
In February, 2,500 people marched in Westchester County, New York, to protest against a
series of swastika daubings on houses in the area. A community-wide meeting was also held,
and a task force established. Other incidents of antisemitic graffiti would again plague
the area in November, including the words "Kill Jews" and "Jew Pigs"
scribbled on houses.
The AJC, the ADL, the Southern Poverty Law Center and other human rights groups consulted
with the Pentagon during the year about extremists within the military and the National
Guard.
In April, St Martin's Press, responding to letters from the AJC and the ADL, reversed its
decision and decided not to publish a biography of the prominent Nazi Joseph Goebbels
written by the Holocaust-denier David Irving (see HOLOCAUST DENIAL). The publisher had
originally defended its decision to print the book, but after the chairman of the Press
read the manuscript, St Martin's changed its position.
Also in April, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the AJC and the Simon Wiesenthal Center
contacted national booksellers, encouraging then not to stock neo-Nazi William Pierce's The
Turner Diaries (see PARTIES, ORGANIZATIONS, MOVEMENTS). The groups noted that they
were not questioning the right of the booksellers to stock the book, but, rather, were
raising the moral questions involved. Booksellers only stock a fraction of the volumes
that are printed each year, the AJC noted. "The distribution of this book will help
finance one of the main organizations promoting hatred and violence against innocent
Americans", the group said.
The Lieberman amendment declared it "the Sense of the Senate" that the UN's
Implementation Force should take a more active role in detaining suspected war criminals
indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal of the former Yugoslavia. The
D'Amato/Inouye amendment calls upon the German government to significantly expand
eligibility for Holocaust survivor compensation. Among other inequities built into the
current system, compensation is often available only to those survivors living in the
United States, Israel and certain other western countries. The Jewish victims of Nazi
persecution in Eastern Europe and the FSU have waited more than fifty years to be
compensated for their suffering, but can now only receive restitution if they leave their
home countries. The vast majority of these survivors are already more than seventy years
of age, and are unable to confront the physical and emotional ordeal of emigration at this
time in their lives. (In some cases, the affected survivors have received compensation,
but then only in amounts far less than have been made available to survivors in the West.)
On 17 September, the conference committee on the FY1997 Foreign Operations Appropriations
bill completed work on the measure. The final bill-which became part of the Continuing
Resolution (CR)-included $50 million in anti-terrorism aid to Israel and the Lautenberg
Amendment. But it dropped the D'Amato/Inouye resolution on compensation for Holocaust
survivors. However, the legislative history of the CR did include several items pertinent
to this issue, including an expression of congressional support for less rigid conditions
on eligibility for compensation for Holocaust survivors residing in the USA. Finally, the
CR omitted the senate-passed Lieberman resolution concerning indicted war criminals in the
former Yugoslavia.
In November, the Oxnard, California, public library decided not to acquire a
self-published book entitled There's a Fish in the Courthouse. Written by Gary L.
Wean, and praised as an exposé of municipal corruption by a city council candidate, the
800-page book claimed a Jewish conspiracy in the judicial system, and called the Holocaust
a "scam".
As in 1995, an assessment of antisemitism in the USA in 1996 reveals a mixed picture.
On the positive side, it is clear that hostility towards Jews continues at a far lower
level than hostility towards other minority groups, including African Americans, gays and
native Americans. In addition, there are few signs of institutional antisemitism in the
USA today, that is, the attempt to limit the entry of Jews into key power sectors, whether
economic, political, educational or cultural. Indeed, by nearly all measures, Jews
constitute a remarkably successful group within US society, being fully integrated into
the nation's fabric.
On the negative side, one can point to the growing presence of extremist militias, which
have a strong potential for terrorist violence-a potential that should be greater in 1997
than 1996, since the trial of Timothy McVeigh for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing began at
the end of March 1997 and will be followed by that of his co-defendent, Terry Nichols.
McVeigh and Nichols both had attended some militia meetings and shared their virulent
anti-government ideology. Militia groups claimed that the bombing was the handiwork of the
government, creating its own "Reichstag fire". The AJC has expressed concern
about the possibility of increased militia activity once the trials begin as paranoid
militia members are likely to see the proceedings as a "Stalinist show trial"
designed to set the stage for their arrest. By using join-the-dots conspiracy theories,
militia members have already speculated on alleged connections between McVeigh, Elohim
City (a Christian Identity compound), the National Alliance, the Midwestern Bandits, the
Phineas Priesthood, the as-yet unidentified John Doe no. 2 and German neo-Nazis. Militia
members' paranoia is likely to be exacerbated by defence strategies that will inevitably
try to "blow smoke" by suggesting other conspiracies as having a part in the
bombing. For example, the McVeigh defence team has already subpoenaed three British
antisemites (David Irving, John Tyndall and Charlie Sergeant, see page UK), to testify
about supposed links between US and UK neo-Nazis. Of deep concern, too, is the possible
use of biological or chemical weapons by militia cells: there have been three incidents in
the last two years in which militia or white supremacist members were found possessing
such material.
Beyond the far right, what is also troubling is the growing acceptance of the NOI leader,
Louis Farrakhan, as a prominent African American figure and the number of prominent
people, black and white, who are willing to overlook his clear and continuing record of
antisemitism. For while Farrakhan did damage to his image by cavorting with alleged
terrorist regimes during the year, he still remains a charismatic figure who uses the
media to his advantage. Adding to the nervousness of US Jews is the increased success of
the Religious Right movement in advancing its political agenda.
Antisemitic behaviour on an individual level in the USA has fluctuated in recent years.
This is especially true of antisemitic vandalism, which, according to ADL figures,
increased for five years up to 1991, decreased in 1992, increased again in 1993, increased
yet again to a record high in 1994, decreased by 11 per cent in 1995, and then decreased
again in 1996. What accounts for these fluctuations is not at all clear.
As in recent years, what is most disturbing about the current situation in the USA with
regard to antisemitism is the breakdown of the taboo on expressions of antisemitism. For
decades this taboo was in place, mainly in shocked response to the Holocaust, and it
served to protect Jews. In recent years, however, the taboo has begun to wear thin,
evidenced this year, for example, by the words of Ted Turner, comparing his business
predicaments to the Holocaust.
Ignorance of the Nazi genocide, partly due to the passing of generations, and propelled by
those-black and white-with political designs to diminish or deny the Holocaust, continues
to erode its symbolic power and meaning. In part, this explains why Jews, on college
campuses, for example, are exposed to expressions of hostility that were unlikely to come
to the surface in an earlier period. In part this also reflects a general coarsening of
public discourse in the USA. In addition, it is no longer considered
"fashionable" to champion the cause of the Jewish minority in the USA. One
consequence of this is that Jewish leaders find it much more difficult at present to find
allies in the general community for the struggle against antisemitism. It is a telling
sign of where things now stand in inter-group relations in the USA that Jews are routinely
challenged by other US citizens to "prove" that Louis Farrakhan is an
antisemite. This reflects an insensitivity to antisemitism that was not present before.
© JPR 1997