🚀 go-pugleaf

   ASSAULT ON AMERICA
   Many American Right-Wing Racial Extremists Applaud Sept. 11 Attacks
   
   By JIM NESBITT
   
   c.2001 Newhouse News Service
   
   
   With the towers of the World Trade Center fatally damaged but still
   standing, a leader in one of the many splinter groups of the Far Right
   fringe of American politics posted a Web site message praising the
   "Islamic freedom fighters" and hoping the terrorist attacks were the
   first shots in a racial holy war that would topple the U.S.
   government.
   "May the WAR be started," wrote August Kreis, webmaster of the
   neo-Nazi Sheriff's Posse Comitatus group, based in Ulysses, Pa. "DEATH
   to His (God's) enemies, may the World Trade Center BURN TO THE GROUND!
   ... We can blame no others than ourselves for our problems due to the
   fact that we allow ... Satan's children, called jews today, to have
   dominion over our lives."
   While many Americans are swept up in the patriotic fervor that has
   followed the Sept. 11 jetliner assaults on the Pentagon and the World
   Trade Center, the loose and fractious network of neo-Nazis, skinheads,
   Klansmen, Christian patriots, neo-Confederates and white separatists
   have had a far different reaction.
   In newsgroup postings, Web site articles and Internet radio
   broadcasts,they have expressed everything from outright admiration for
   the Arab terrorists to more measured communiques. The latter condemn
   the terrorists,but blame the attacks on an American foreign policy
   that unabashedly backs Israel, calling for an "America First" shift
   toward isolationism.
   The most hardcore response comes from groups that see themselves at
   war with the U.S. government, which they have dubbed the Zionist
   Occupation Government, or ZOG. Despite their racial and religious
   beliefs, they express solidarity with anyone who attacks what they see
   as the common enemy.
   It is a sign of a pronounced generational shift of beliefs in the
   radical American Right and increased willingness to monitor
   international events to find philosophical allies in groups that an
   earlier wave of racists dismissed as "mud people."
   War against ZOG -- the U.S. government -- is the ultimate target of
   America's racial revolutionaries and overrides all other
   considerations. ZOG is a tagline from "The Turner Diaries," a novel of
   racist revolution by neo-Nazi National Alliance leader William Pierce
   that has become a guidebook for many racists and anti-government
   zealots, including executed Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.
   In a bulletin board message documented by KlanWatch, the investigative
   arm of the civil rights watchdog group, the Southern Poverty Law
   Center, National Alliance deputy Billy Roper wrote: "The enemy of our
   enemy is, for now at least, our friends. We may not want them marrying
   our daughter, just as they would not want us marrying theirs. We may
   not want them in our societies, just as they would not want us in
   theirs. But anyone who is willing to drive a plane into a building to
   kill jews is alright by me. I wish our members had half as much
   testicular fortitude."
   On his daily Web site bulletin board, White Aryan Resistance (WAR)
   leader Tom Metzger wrote: "This operation took some long-term
   planning, and, throughout the entire time, these soldiers were aware
   that their lives would be sacrificed for their cause. If an Aryan
   wants an example of `Victory or Valhalla,' look no further."
   Civil rights watchdogs who monitor these groups say sentiments like
   those expressed by Metzger and Roper are common among white
   separatists and anti-government zealots and are a marked departure
   from the fanatical patriotism, anti-Communist fervor and white
   supremacy espoused by movement founders like William Potter Gale, the
   ex-Army colonel who formed the Posse Comitatus, or 1960s-era Klan
   leaders like Robert Shelton of Alabama.
   There is also a parroting of the anti-free trade, anti-global
   capitalism rhetoric commonly found among the left-leaning street
   protesters who have hounded meetings of the World Trade Organization
   and World Bank, sparking riots in Seattle and in Italy, experts say.
   "Thirty years ago, these people wrapped themselves in the flag, were
   rabidly anti-Communist and fought against the civil rights movement,"
   said Mark Potok, KlanWatch spokesman and editor of its quarterly
   Intelligence Report.
   "Today, these people despise America, they despise capitalism, they
   despise globalism and racial and religious diversity. What was
   essentially a restorationist movement, like the Klan wanting to
   restore Southern apartheid ... is an utterly revolutionary radical
   right today."
   Paired with an increasing awareness of international events and the
   Internet-driven ability to communicate instantly with like-minded
   groups in Europe, America's racially driven activists have expressed
   support for the "ethnic cleansing" campaigns of deposed Serbian leader
   Slobodan Milosevic and the push for a Palestinian homeland and the
   "intifada" against Israel.
   Common philosophical ground can be found between the radical Islamic
   fundamentalists of Osama bin Laden, prime suspect in the jetliner
   attacks, and the radical racists of the American right, said Brian
   Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at
   the California State University at San Bernardino.
   "It turns on religious purity, geographic purity and a rigid
   philosophy on how society should be ordered," Levin said. "Both want
   their own homeland, hermetically sealed, where they can practice their
   own exclusionary, religion-based social order. In many ways, American
   racial radicals mirror the intolerant, extremist groups you see on the
   international scene."
   Not everyone in the Far Right supports the terrorists who attacked
   America.
   "That's unfortunate," former Alabama Klan leader Don Black said of
   Billy Roper's expression of admiration.
   Black now runs a string of white separatist Web sites called
   Stormfront out of his West Palm Beach, Fla., home. He and fellow
   former Klan leader David Duke, an unsuccessful candidate for governor
   and U.S. senator in Louisiana, condemn the attacks, but use them as a
   platform for sharp criticism of American support of Israel and a call
   for a more isolationalist foreign policy.
   Duke, in an article entitled "Will Anyone Dare to Ask Why?" that is
   posted on both his and Black's Web sites, calls Israel's increasingly
   bloody fight with the Palestinians "a policy of ethnic cleansing," and
   invokes the history of Israel's own terrorist campaigns against the
   British and Arab residents of what was then called Palestine.
   "Let me be very, very blunt," Duke writes of the Sept. 11 attacks on
   America. "The ultimate cause of this terrorism stems directly from our
   involvement in and support of the criminal behavior of Israel."
   Black downplayed the number of "white nationalists" expressing support
   for the terrorists who attacked America and called for swift
   punishment of those responsible. But at the same time, he found common
   ground with Palestinian nationalists.
   "We don't have too many people who are sympathetic to the terrorists,
   but there are people who are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause," he
   said. The Palestinians "have their own agenda, but we certainly do
   share their dislike of American foreign policy being controlled by
   Israel."
   Militia groups and neo-Confederate organizations like the League of
   the South also condemn the attacks and call for swift revenge. But
   they, too, use this deadly incident as a platform to launch broadsides
   on their own pet topics, be it immigration policy that they see as too
   open and destructive of traditional American values or concern that
   war fever will cause the government to clamp down on civil liberties.
   In an article documented by KlanWatch, League of the South president
   Michael Hill wrote: "In part, these events sprang from an `open
   borders' policy that has for the past four decades encouraged massive
   Third World immigration and thus cultural destabilization. ... This is
   America's wake-up call to forsake its idolatry and to return to its
   true Christian and Constitutional foundations."
   Hill's sentiments were amplified by a more mainstream public figure,
   conservative evangelist Jerry Falwell, one of the founders of the
   politically active Moral Majority. "I really believe that the pagans,
   and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the
   lesbians. ... I point the finger in their face and say `You helped
   this happen,"' Falwell said during the week of the attacks.
   Falwell and fellow religious conservative Pat Robertson, who expressed
   support for Falwell's position, were roundly criticized for these
   remarks and backed off them.
   But where mainstream religious leaders see a public relations
   nightmare, leaders of Far Right fringe organizations see an
   opportunity.
   In a Web site post documented by KlanWatch, Matt Hale, leader of the
   neo-Nazi World Church of the Creator, wrote: "The time is at hand to
   preach ... why these attacks: the control of the United States
   government by International Jewry. ... We must NOT allow this
   opportunity to be squandered."
   (Jim Nesbitt can be contacted at jim.nesbitt@newhouse.com)
X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 #5