Messages

[Hate Music Loved by Skinheads - Detroit becomes home to the neo-Nazi sound]

Hate Music Loved by Skinheads - Detroit becomes home to the neo-Nazi sound

THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE - March 29, 1995
Author: Brian Lysaght: Reuters
The city that created the Motown sound in the 1960s is quietly becoming a recording mecca for a disturbing new musical genre -- white supremacist hate music favored by neo-Nazi skinheads.

Detroit-based Resistance Records, which produces and distributes music by bands such as Aryan, Berserkr and Aggravated Assault, is building a following among America's estimated 4,000 skinheads and their counterparts in Europe, experts say.

``They're very significant,'' Richard Lobenthal, Michigan director of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, said of Resistance. ``They sort of provide the groove. They galvanize the movement, move them and entertain them.''

Resistance offers music with a thunderous heavy metal beat. Many lyrics are violently anti-African American and anti-Jewish.

``White people awake/Our future is at stake/Save the white race/Put you in your place,'' sings the band Centurion on ``Fourteen Words.'' The narrator in Aryan's ``Grandfather's Tale'' asks his grandfather ``. . . How it happened/How you overthrew the Jew/You sent the niggers running/I wanna hear that too.''

It was at a Detroit concert organized by Resistance that teenage skinheads Bryan and David Freeman, who are accused of murdering their parents and younger brother last month in Pennsylvania, met Frank and August Hesse of Michigan.

Police said the brothers and their cousin, Nelson Birdwell III, fled to the Hesses' farm in Hope, Mich., after the killings and were arrested there. The Freemans, who have Nazi slogans tattooed on their foreheads, are awaiting trial in Pennsylvania.

QUARTERLY MAGAZINE

Resistance also bills itself as a multimedia company and distributes a well-produced, 32-page quarterly magazine in which it has said it is setting up access to the Internet and is working on a ``pro- white'' motion picture.

The group is trying to organize American skinheads nationally for the first time, according to Klanwatch, an Alabama-based organization that monitors hate groups.

A Klanwatch report claims that U.S. skinheads have committed 35 homicides and ``hundreds of brutal assaults'' since 1988.

Experts say the two men behind Resistance are George Burdi, 24, of Toronto, and Mark Wilson, formerly of Milwaukee, who now lives in suburban Detroit.

Burdi, using the name George Eric Hawthorne, performs with a band called RaHoWa , short for ``racial holy war.'' He wrote in Resistance magazine's winter issue that he hopes to boost its circulation to 65,000, from 12,000 currently.

``We must reach our people, concentrating on the youth, and convince them that we have the only plausible and real answer to the nightmare that multi-racialism has brought,'' he said.

Efforts to reach Burdi and Wilson were unsuccessful. A business address listed in Michigan is unoccupied.

`White Homeland'

Burdi, who faces an assault charge stemming from a 1993 brawl between skinheads and anti- racist activists in Ottawa, told the New York Times recently that ``we want a white homeland. We want to live separate from other races.''

Don Black, a former Ku Klux Klan official who operates a white- supremacist computer bulletin board in West Palm Beach, Fla., said music is a good tool to attract young skinheads. ``Music is really important to any political and cultural movement, and Resistance has become the premier provider of that music,'' he said.

Mark Shearer, manager of Rock of Ages record store in suburban Garden City, Mich., said Resistance record sales picked up as a result of the Freeman killings.

``It's kind of an underground thing, and to be honest, I think a lot of people buy it out of curiousity more than anything else,'' Shearer said.
Edition: THREE STAR
Section: NEWS
Page: A7
Index Terms: DETROIT ; SKINHEADS ; Resistance Records ; Anti-Defamation League ; B'nai B'rith ; Richard Lobenthal ; Frank Hesse ; August Hesse ; Nelson Birdwell III ; Klanwatch ; George Burdi ; Mark Wilson ; George Eric Hawthorne ; RaHoWa; Don Black ; HATE CRIMES ; MUSIC ; RACIAL DISCRIMINATION ; BUSINESS ; ORGANIZATIONS ; OFFICIALS ; NAZISM ; US ; ANTI-SEMITISM ; BLACKS
Dateline: Detroit, Mich.
Record Number: 10426
Copyright 1995 San Francisco Chronicle

[Sugar-coated poison in school corridors]

Sugar-coated poison in school corridors

Toronto Star, The (Ontario, Canada) - February 27, 1995
Author: Robin Harvey TORONTO STAR
No single incident sparked the inferno of hate that incinerated the goodwill and tolerance at one Metro-area high school.

A group of Heritage Front supporters came to the school one day last year. They just started chatting with a few students, about politics, current events, trying to influence their thinking.

They told the students that "those people" - immigrants - stole jobs from Canadians. And now they were out to steal the white man's God, too. If not, how come there were prayers of different faiths being held in the schools, they asked.

Eventually, about 80 students adopted the philosophies of the hate-mongers. Some started wearing swastikas. Some started claiming certain corridors for "their kind" only.

Then there were extortions and assaults on some minority members. A Muslim student, offering up his obligatory daily prayer to God, was attacked.

But what is worst of all is it took only three weeks for the hate to get a foothold in the school, says Detective Dino Doria of the Metro Police hate crimes unit. Eventually arrests were made, students got counselling and the school is getting back to normal. But similar events are happening at schools all across the Metro area right now, Doria says.

He relayed the story to parents and educators at a seminar last week, warning that the number of hate mongers in Metro is growing and that young people are their target recruits.

"Hate mongers are no dummies," he said. They know how to sway young people with "sweet, sugar-coated poison."

As the number of hate crimes goes up - figures for the first half of 1994 show a 51 per cent hike in the number of hate-crime victims - the chance that your child may be targeted for recruitment is increasing, he said.

Most hate crimes are perpetrated by youths and young men between the ages of 12 and 25, he said. Most are not formal members of hate groups and they come from a variety of backgrounds, he said.

Doria says hate propaganda is now easily accessible on the Internet. And, he says, there is a growing body of rock music CDs - put out by groups like RaHoWa and Skrewdriver - that exclusively target teens with bigoted and hate messages.

High school recruiters typically start off small and usually choose two students, he says. The targeted students usually seem somewhat awkward and don't fit in easily in any one school group.

Eventually, the target learns he or she can be cool and accepted - if they buy the white power message.

Besides the Heritage Front, other groups like the Church of the Creator, Aryan Nations and the Ku Klux Klan are working in Metro to recruit younger members. Currently an estimated 40 national hate groups operating across Canada run racist hatelines, put out racist literature and run paramilitary training camps for young recruits.

"Their proposals are carefully worded, sweet sugar-coated poison," Doria says.

Most hate mongers are more sophisticated than in the past, he says. The groups tell young recruits they only want to "protect" the rights of whites. They hire lawyers to review their propaganda and take personality courses to be better able to win over more members.

Jessica Young, who became active against racial intolerance after her own school, Humberside Collegiate, became the site of racist white power acts, says it is important for students to reach out to each other.

She says the kids who feel separate, left alone, who don't get a sense of belonging from their peers will be the ones who are vulnerable to joining a hate group.

Young says workshops in her school on valuing diversity and how silence is complicity have been very helpful. But mostly students must feel they are not alone and can turn to someone for help.

"We were so shocked - how could this happen in our school," she says.

Dr. Karen Mock, of the League for Human Rights of B'nai Brith Canada, says the hate monger's goal is to dehumanize his target.

Once that is done, people start believing it is okay to mistreat a group. That is why it is so important to report and oppose hate mongers as soon as their activities are uncovered, she says.

A pamphlet prepared by the human rights league says parents should watch for any significant change in their child's behavior and be aware of the books or music he or she is interested in.

If a parent finds racist doodling or graffiti or if a child starts wearing clothes that are a trademark for racist power groups they should talk to their child. Several agencies including the Ontario Human Rights Commission, local race relations committees and the race relations ministries can be contacted for help.
Caption: Photo: Karen MOCK: Human rights advocate says hate monger's goal is to dehumanize target.
Edition: METRO
Section: LIFE
Page: C1
Record Number: 950227TS09463
Copyright (c) 1995, Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved.

[The Religion of Hatred]

The Religion of Hatred

THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE - February 6, 1994
Author: SARAH HENRY: Los Angeles Times Magazine: Center for Investigative Reporting
Patrick McCarty carries a tan briefcase and wears a navy blazer, starched white shirt, pressed trousers and a vibrant red tie with a fishhook pattern -- a fashionable motif, no doubt, in the small Gulf Coast town of Niceville, Florida. McCarty is dining in a neighborhood eatery not far from his suburban tract home. In keeping with the seaside theme, the restaurant's walls are adorned with fake fish.

McCarty, a former Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh devotee and a self-described psychotherapist, claims to have a doctorate in philosophy from an East Coast university he refuses to name. However, this October day he appears most comfortable speaking in the jargon of a marketing mogul.

What he's selling, McCarty says excitedly, is ``like Coca-Cola. As far as positioning, (it's) No.1.'' But the product is nowhere near as innocuous as a soft drink.

McCarty is the proud peddler of prejudice. He is the current leader of the white supremacist Church of the Creator, ``the only racist religion known to mankind right now,'' as the businessman is wont to boast. McCarty's official title is Pontifex Maximus (Latin for ``high priest''), although in keeping with his preference for corporate culture, he favors the lower-keyed title of executive director, because, he says, it makes ``the whole thing a bit more acceptable and recognizable.''

The COTC espouses a race-based religion known as Creativity, which worships nature -- not a higher God -- and is ``dedicated to the survival, expansion and advancement of the white race.'' It is virulently anti-Semitic, racist and, unlike most white supremacist groups, anti-Christian as well.

Church of the Creator dogma dictates that a racial holy war, or RAHOWA in COTC parlance, must ensue to rid the world of ``parasitical Jews'' and the so-called ``mud races'' (people of color). A ``Jewish conspiracy,'' according to the COTC, controls the federal government, international banking and the media.

McCarty took over the COTC in January 1993 and readily concedes that his mission is to make it profitable. Asked if anything is unique about running a business that preaches hatred of Jews and other minorities, he responds: ``It's all the same thing. It doesn't really matter. It's just a different commodity. We've had people say that a religion is not a business, but I don't know any that aren't.''

Long a bit player in the already marginal world of white supremacists, the Church of the Creator has recruited heavily since the late '80s -- and with some success. McCarty brags of a following in the thousands, including members in all 50 states and in 37 countries, with strong chapters in Germany, South Africa and Sweden. He says the COTC prints between 20,000 and 40,000 copies a month of Racial Loyalty, its tabloid.

Watchdogs of white supremacism say McCarty's numbers are inflated; they estimate the church's following in the hundreds rather than thousands. But the COTC has been especially successful in reaching the most active, impressionable and violent disciples of the hate movement today: young, racist skinheads. In recent years, more than 30 COTC skinhead chapters have popped up in states such as California, New York and Wisconsin.

Numbers, however, don't tell the whole story. Indeed, the group's real strength may lie not in signing up supporters but in the particular power of its message. ``They're dangerous in that they influence young kids,'' explains Danny Welch, director of Klanwatch, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center. ``The No.1 reason why we go after the COTC,'' he adds, ``is because they instill violence in people through their rhetoric.'' The COTC membership is so violent that the group has leapfr ogged to the top of the list of organizations that Klanwatch tracks -- superseding the Ku Klux Klan in the South, the California-based White Aryan Resistance (WAR) and the Aryan Nations, headquartered in Idaho.

The most obvious sign of the group's higher profile is the growing list of criminal acts committed by its followers. The group has a national prison-based ``brotherhood'' of about 180, many of whom are doing time for racially motivated crimes, according to Klanwatch. COTC members have been linked to terrorist conspiracies and violence -- including murder -- against minorities both in the United States and abroad.

In July 1992, a Florida jury convicted George Loeb, a COTC minister, of murdering Harold Mansfield, an African American who had served in the Persian Gulf War. Loeb shot Mansfield after a parking-lot altercation. And at least five of the COTC's Canadian members have been arrested on charges ranging from kidnaping to assault.

Last July, one of three skinheads suspected of firebombing the NAACP office in Tacoma, Washington, confessed that he was a COTC minister. Also in July, two Orange County residents associated with the COTC -- Geremy von Rineman, 22, and his then-girlfriend, Jill Marie Scarborough -- were arrested on weapons charges in conjunction with a federal undercover sting that also uncovered a separate skinhead plot to kill Rodney King and to bomb the First African Methodist Episcopal Church. As part of the operation, Joe Allen, working on behalf of the FBI, had infiltrated the Church of the Creator.

Ironically, the COTC's emergence as a big-league player in global racist circles coincides with potentially self-destructive growing pains. The group has been embroiled in leadership struggles and faces financial uncertainty as well as the mounting scrutiny of federal law-enforcement officials and hate-group watchdogs.

Just who are the followers that worship at the Church of the Creator, and why are they preparing for a racial holy war? And does the COTC have the staying power of veteran racist groups like the Klan and WAR? Or will the world's only white-power religion become a victim of its own success?

Jeremiah (Jeremy) Knesal of Auburn, Washington, has a long juvenile record with a racist bent. Knesal, 19, is a recent COTC convert who took its prophecy of a racial holy war very much to heart. In fact, he tried to start one. But after his side trip to a J.C. Penney store in a failed attempt to steal jeans, T-shirts and underwear, the race war that was just beginning was all over.

It was a summer day in Salinas, and Knesal got busted for shoplifting. A routine police search of Knesal's car turned that dime-a-dozen arrest into a large-scale investigation involving the FBI, the U.S. Attorney's Office and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Inside his 1987 green Volvo were three metal pipe bombs, four loaded rifles, ammunition, racist literature, military-style clothing and wigs. The car also contained a certificate from the Church of the Creator: Knesal was ` `a member in good standing.''

It didn't take long for Knesal to spill the beans. He told an FBI agent, who says Knesal was ``very proud'' to be a COTC reverend and state director, that he had bombed the NAACP building in Tacoma a week earlier. (No one was hurt in the blast.) Court documents reveal that Knesal, along with two other white supremacists not connected to the COTC, intended to start a race war on a battleground ranging from Oregon to the U.S.-Canadian border. The trio planned to murder black rap artists Ice-T and Ice Cube and to bomb synagogues and military installations.

In November, Knesal was charged for his role in the NAACP bombing; he is expected to plead guilty at a hearing scheduled for February 9. On December 1, Knesal pleaded guilty to four felony counts on the explosives and firearms charges. He faces a maximum sentence of 35 years in prison and more than $1 million in fines.

When he was arrested, Knesal perfectly fit the profile of a recent COTC recruit. He favored the skinhead look: shaved head, Doc Martens boots and racist tattoos, which, according to an FBI agent, ``cover his body from the neck on down to his ankles and out to his wrists.'' He was affiliated with more than one racist group, and he was kicked out of two high schools for distributing hate literature.

A worthy warrior in the race war, Knesal is also a confused and troubled teenager. He has a prior conviction for malicious harassment of a Latino. But his father, Gordon Knesal, describes him as a ``great kid'' who always treated Gordon's fiancee, Adriana Pittaluga, a Latina, with kindness and respect.

The COTC is especially attractive to young people like Knesal, experts say, because the group's dogma offers a reason for their failures.

Today's racist organizations are often less structured and more decentralized than traditional hate groups. Now, the elder statesmen of hate provide a basic framework of beliefs for a younger generation of racists, who are being encouraged to start a worldwide white revolution on their own.

Welcoming the young has proved to be a savvy strategy of the COTC. ``It's hard to get a lot of old-line Klansmen to hand out newspapers, but you can get together four or five skinheads, and they'll put out 2,000 pieces of literature in a neighborhood,'' says Klanwatch chief investigator Joe Roy. Teenagers are also effective at fulfilling racism's ultimate goals. As COTC founder Ben Klassen wrote in 1988, the movement wants to get ``rid of'' Jews and nonwhite races through ``murder, treac hery, lying, deceit, mass killing, whatever it takes to win.'' Unlike seasoned hatemongers, skinheads are impatient for change. ``Kids get frustrated, they don't want to wait; they are hands-on people,'' Roy says.

The COTC's largest ``hands-on'' youth followings have been in Milwaukee and Toronto. At its peak in 1992, the Milwaukee chapter had about 80 active members and an aggressive leader, Mark Wilson (also known as the Reverend Brandon O'Rourke). Several of Wilson's followers are White Berets, members of the COTC's security forces. According to McCarty, the White Berets are an ``elite unit'' who ``protect (COTC) members and their property from harm.'' Asked whether the White Berets are armed, he laughs and responds: ``In ways.''

The Canadian group, at one time about 100 strong, is led by George Burdi, who calls himself the Reverend Eric Hawthorne, a 23-year-old bodybuilder and college dropout with a penchant for quoting Nietzsche. In a telephone interview, Burdi says concern over immigration, multiculturalism, unemployment and the environment are all strong drawing cards. ``There's a tremendous amount of support'' for the COTC message, says Burdi.

The spirit of COTC youth is apparent in the music of Canada's RAHOWA rock band. Burdi, its lead singer, said in an interview for a recent MTV special on hate rock that music is ``the best way to reach youth ... (with) our political ideas.'' On the program, Burdi is seen introducing bands at a Toronto club packed with over-amped skinheads bouncing off one another. When RAHOWA 's turn comes, he begins to belt out a song that has a familiar tune. To a reworked version of the 1960s Nancy Sinatra hi t ``These Boots Are Made for Walkin','' Burdi shouts:

These boots are made for stompin',

And that's just what they'll do.

One of these days these boots are gonna

Stomp all over Jews.

The Church of the Creator has its roots in western North Carolina, in the tiny rural town of Otto, just shy of the Georgia border. The community consists of a couple of gas stations, a few craft shops, a home-style restaurant, post office, flea market and country music hall.

For more than a decade, it was also the home of Ben Klassen, founder and driving force behind the Church of the Creator. Klassen, who first registered the COTC in 1973 in Lighthouse Point, Florida, moved to Otto permanently in 1982. There, on his 22-acre property, he built an oddly shaped three-story church, complete with the COTC's white-power insignia.

According to townsfolk, Klassen was intelligent, philosophical and quiet, a polite man who kept to himself. He lived with his wife and daughter in a large but simple A-frame home overlooking his church, in a secluded sub-development.

But if Klassen wasn't active in Otto, his ideas were well-known around town. ``I got along with Ben just fine. Now, I sure didn't get along with his beliefs, but I figured he had a right to them,'' says J.J. Ayers, a neighbor of Klassen's. . ``He'd get all stirred up about the n----rs and the Jews -- he hated them. And he made that pretty clear,'' adds the 79-year-old farmer.

Ben Klassen was born in Ukraine to German-speaking Mennonite parents. His family, described in his books as ``early victims of Jewish Communism,'' lived briefly in Mexico and then moved to Canada, where he earned a degree in electrical engineering and a bachelor of arts. In 1945, Klassen settled in the United States and became a citizen three years later. He had a varied career: He was a farmer, a schoolteacher, a nickel miner, an engineer, a Realtor and a Republican state assemblyman in Florida for a short time. Klassen was also the inventor of one of the first electric can openers and, in later life, an accomplished oil painter. But Klassen's greatest achievement, he believed, was creating a religion for the white race, a group he d ubbed ``Nature's Finest.''

In 1938, when he was 20, he had borrowed ``Mein Kampf'' from the library. ``The book ... was to influence my life more than any other,'' he wrote later. It took another 30 years, but it was at this young age that ``the vague outlines'' for his ``full-fledged racial religion for the White Volk'' began to take shape. That religion would become Creativity: a creed that maintains that one's race is one's religion.

Klassen was not, by most accounts, a charismatic leader. But he was a prolific writer: During his 20 years as head of the COTC, he pumped out racist propaganda at a prodigious rate -- more than 15 books, including the organization's three sacred texts: ``The White Man's Bible,'' ``Nature's Eternal Religion'' and ``Salubrious Living,'' a guide to healthy habits for white warriors that he co-wrote.

Though Klassen didn't know it at the time, his writings would later position the COTC as a front-runner in the new world order of racism. Some of his books are considered classics in today's white-power movement, and Racial Loyalty is regarded as ``good'' hate literature both in the United States and abroad, where such publications are hard to come by; in Germany and Canada, for example, it is illegal. The paper has features like ``Cupid's Corner,'' a matchmaking service for finding the right-white-mate: ``White Men and Women, be fruitful and multiply! This planet is all ours!''

Although Klassen claimed that his creation was a religion, he had mixed success convincing government officials of that notion. In 1982, when he built his church in Otto, the organization was granted tax exemption ``as a bona fide nonprofit religious organization'' from the North Carolina Department of Revenue -- a ``fact'' Klassen cited repeatedly. What Klassen failed to make public, however, was that the state's approval was contingent on a federal government ruling, and the IRS has no record of an exemption.

But for about seven years, Klassen's Otto property did enjoy tax-exempt status, until Richard Lightner became the Macon County assessor. In 1987, Lightner started an investigation, which concluded in 1989 that the Church of the Creator was not, in fact, a church at all.

In a battle that dragged on for four years, the county finally succeeded in revoking Klassen's tax-exempt property status in November 1991. In an anticlimactic ending, he failed to appear in court.

At the same time the COTC was losing in court, it was winning on the streets. Klassen was beginning to strike a chord with racist skinheads. Many skinheads allied themselves with longtime racist Tom Metzger and his Fallbrook-based WAR, but they were growing disillusioned. In the late '80s, Metzger was embroiled in a lawsuit that revealed he had spent their contributions on such personal items as a hairpiece. They were attracted to Klassen's philosophy and his emphasis on physical training for the race war.

Klassen was also looking for a worthy successor. Metzger says Klassen repeatedly courted him to take the reins, but he declined because ``there were some problems. It's a church to start with, and I wouldn't want to be allied with a church.'' Klassen then made several missteps in choosing the next Pontifex Maximus before picking McCarty out of the blue last January.

McCarty says he learned about the COTC from watching ``Geraldo'' and was intrigued. On his way back from a business trip to Charlotte in October 1992, McCarty called on Klassen. The by-then beleaguered leader lamented his inability to find a replacement, and McCarty says he cheered up Klassen with his ideas for ensuring the group's economic security. Not long after that, McCarty got the nod.

Along with the COTC's problems, Klassen faced personal difficulties in 1992. His wife of many decades died after a long battle with cancer. In July of that year, he sold most of his compound, including the church and school, to a former leader of the American Nazi Party.

Last summer, Klassen began work on his final project. He had registered a part of his remaining land for a burial plot and was seen clearing it. He went into town to arrange for his gravestone, and on his property he burned shredded documents and took other files to a landfill. On August 7, Klassen quietly committed suicide. His daughter, who had been visiting her father, discovered that he had taken an overdose of sleeping pills. A suicide note -- not made public -- referred to a chapter i n ``The White Man's Bible.'' In the book, Klassen wrote: ``Suicide (is) not dishonorable. Like the ancient Romans we believe that under certain circumstances suicide is an honorable way to die, rather than live on in shame, humiliation or captivity.''

Speculation surrounding his suicide has swelled in recent months. Some say Klassen feared a lawsuit because of the wave of violent crimes by COTC members. Others say he was despondent over his wife's death. Still others contend that it was a simple matter of his life's work being done.

As his gravestone made clear: HE GAVE THE WHITE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD A POWERFUL RACIAL RELIGION OF THEIR OWN.

Dr. Rick McCarty, as he pre-fers to be known, runs the COTC out of a small office in Niceville, Florida. The COTC has no place of worship in Niceville, but there are two large warehouses that hold thousands of dollars' worth of merchandise -- books, T-shirts, stickers and other paraphernalia that the COTC sells.

It's clear that during his short tenure McCarty has tried to bring some structure to a loose-knit organization. ``Twenty years ago as a small religious movement just starting out we had more money coming in then (sic) going out. Today we have become so huge that our outgoing postage alone, would fed (sic) a small country,'' reads a letter from McCarty to COTC members, asking them to pay their fair share.

McCarty concedes that there is ``probably a lot of violence'' within the group, that many of its members own guns and other weapons, and that some could be dangerous. ``They're not a majority,'' he says. Pressed on whether the COTC's rhetoric encourages violence among the young, McCarty replies with a laugh: ``Saying yes to a question like that would probably get you sued later on. So I'd have to answer no to that.''

McCarty's main motivation seems to be to turn the COTC into a thriving venture. He has trademarked the COTC's name, emblem and rallying cry, RAHOWA . He calls the COTC's symbols powerful marketing tools that must be protected. Recently, he cottoned onto a lucrative new moneymaker. ``I did some tape cassettes. Basically, all I did was take a chapter out of Klassen's books and read it on the tape and sold it for 10 bucks,'' he says triumphantly. ``Kids love that stuff.''

Joe Roy and Danny Welch, the Klanwatch investigators, work out of the Southern Poverty Law Center's modern offices in downtown Montgomery. Inside the building, bankers' boxes filled with files on the COTC are piling up. Roy and Welch are keeping a close eye on the Church of the Creator. The law center, known for its novel civil court challenges against white supremacists, announced in August that it was investigating the COTC to determine whether there was a case to be made for a federal lawsuit against the group.

Klanwatch and the law center keep tabs on hate groups such as the COTC with the hope of one day putting them out of business. In recent years, the center has had some success with an inventive legal strategy. They go after the hate theorists for the violent acts of the followers. Using that tactic, in 1990, the center won a $12.5 million judgment against Metzger and WAR group in a case involving skinheads in Portland, Oregon, who beat to death an Ethiopian student.

For now, the law center is mum about its exact plans for a lawsuit against the COTC. Their investigation, Roy and Welch will tell you, is continuing and may take as long as three years to complete. Pressure on the COTC is also coming from law-enforcement agencies. The long list of COTC-related arrests has hit some of the group's VIPs. Canada's George Burdi, for example, has two court dates scheduled for May. Pending court dates are having a chilling impact on individual chapters, which ar e often held together only by a thin leadership thread.

Klassen's suicide, too, may have hurt the COTC's chances for survival, and not just because the founder's free flow of money has dried up. McCarty's emphasis on business over zeal appears to be creating internal conflicts. For example, Klanwatch reports that early last year disgruntled Milwaukee members were plotting against the new leader. All of this is good news to Welch and Roy. ``If there's one thing that we've learned,'' Welch says, it is that ``if there's no leadership -- and in this field McCarty is untested -- it will kill the movement. Leadership is everything.''

Still, few are content to wait and see whether the Church of the Creator will self-destruct. The case for vigilance was made clear by the law-center founder, Morris Dees, in an op-ed piece he wrote for the New York Times. ``Until recently, skinhead violence was random and impulsive, mostly street crime targeting the nearest minority person. But their international counterparts have waged terrorist campaigns against immigrants and other minorities for two years,'' wrote Dees, in a reference to widespread neo-Nazi violence in reunified Germany. ``It may only be a matter of time before another race war scheme is hatched by American white supremacists.''

No matter what's done in an effort to stop racist organizations -- whether it's community pressure, jail time or civil suits -- the ideas promulgated by groups such as the Church of the Creator never go away. McCarty is banking on that fact.

As a true believer in the wonders of the marketplace, if nothing else, McCarty says he sees a future in capitalizing on Klassen's death. ``You know, most religions don't get off the ground until their founder dies,'' he says. ``That's been when they really take off. I see the COTC as a religion that's not quite there yet. It needs a soul.

``But a lot of times a founder of a religion leaves an open window when they die. You can make mythical heroes out of them when they're gone.''
Caption: PHOTO (3)
(1) Rick McCarty poses before the Post Office flag in Niceville, Florida / BY ELIZABETH HEFELFINGER/SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE, (2) Members of the Church of the Creator demonstrate at the city hall in Auburn, New York / BY BILL WARREN/THE ITHACA JOURNAL/SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE, (3) The late Ben Klassen, founder of the Church of the Creator, in front of the House of Worship he built in North Carolina / BY BOB SCOTT/SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE
Memo: Sarah Henry is a staff writer with the Center for Investigative Reporting in San Francisco. Fariba Nawa and Sunny Park of the center provided research for this article. Reprinted from the Los Angeles Times Magazine. (C)1993 Center for Investigative Reporting.
Edition: SUNDAY
Section: THIS WORLD
Page: 5/Z1
Index Terms: Patrick McCarty ; Church of the Creator ; Jeremiah (Jeremy) Knesal ; Ben Klassen ; RAHOWA; Klanwatch ; US ; ORGANIZATIONS ; RELIGION ; RACE ; HATE CRIMES
Record Number: 13383
Copyright 1994 San Francisco Chronicle

[Toronto boasts North America's first record label trading exclusively in hate rock]

Toronto boasts North America's first record label trading exclusively in hate rock

Toronto Star, The (Ontario, Canada) - August 14, 1993
Author: Gail Swainson Toronto Star
And that's just what they'll do.

One of these days these boots are gonna stomp all over Jews.

- Toronto race rock band RaHoWa , perverting Nancy Sinatra's

1960s song called "These Boots are Made for Walkin'."

* * *

THIS ISN'T nicey-nicey pop music with a danceable beat. It's way beyond the pain threshold and obnoxious in the extreme, with lyrics tailored to offend any decent right-thinking person.

It's the kind of music and message that anyone would love to hate.

A group of Toronto-based white power musicians has started Resistance Records for the express purpose of hawking some of the most virulently racist hate propaganda ever recorded. Their aim is to attract a new generation of recruits to their brand of neo-Nazi racism.

Enlisting popular music to influence teens is hardly a novel idea. But using music as a deliberate tool to market hate propaganda introduces a chilling twist to the much-debated issue of censorship in music.

Rock, rap, jazz, the blues and other forms of popular expression have a long and honorable tradition of breaking taboos. Is race rock just another way for youth to push the envelope? Or have things finally gone just too far?

Dan Hart, program director at CIUT, the University of Toronto's student-run radio station, says that comparing race rock to other forms of youthful musical non-conformity gives it a veneer of respectability it simply doesn't deserve.

"I wouldn't sanction it with that umbrella," Hart says. "It's propaganda; it's a pamphlet; it is clearly about hate and the misrepresentation of history."

Karen Gordon, a CBC music and arts critic, says the idea that rock music provides a handy and legitimate vehicle for sedition may itself be outdated.

"Pop music, which was once a music of rebellion, has been co-opted by the marketing people, so I'm not certain that this notion of it being a taboo thing exists any more," Gordon says.

Hate rock isn't art, she says. "It's another marketing device. If you want to sell your beer to 18-to-24-year-old men, you sponsor a rock tour, and this is just another vehicle for selling hate propaganda. This shouldn't be confused with artists doing legitimate protest music, such as rallying cries for the oppressed. This is propaganda, not artistry."

Resistance Records is the brainchild of 23-year-old skinhead George Burdi. Known as Reverend Eric Hawthorne to his followers, Burdi is also head of the Toronto branch of the militant white power group Church of the Creator and lead singer of the "racialist rock" band RaHoWa (an acronym for Racial Holy War).

"Music is the ultimate form of bringing a message to the masses," Burdi says. "Youth seek role models through musicians. They say, 'Wow, I love this band and if this is the opinion of the band, then it is my opinion too.' " The label, North America's first to trade exclusively in hate rock, was started last spring with $50,000 in seed money and a Detroit box office number. From there, tapes from the label's eight bands are shipped to Canadian destinations.

Bands with names such as Nordic Thunder, Aggravated Assault, Aryan and the Voice have all been signed to Burdi's label. "The market's phenomenal," he says. "We have a monopoly on it and it's virtually untapped."

Burdi says the label's Detroit address allows Resistance Records to dodge Canada's strict laws and take advantage of America's more liberal rights to free speech.

Tapes are also easily shipped over the border and are rarely checked by customs agents, he says. That allows the free flow of material to Canada that, if produced here, would likely be banned under Canadian laws.

In recent years, obscenity laws were used in both the U.S. and Canada to crack down on recordings considered objectionable. Three years ago, an album by Miami rappers 2 Live Crew called As Nasty as They Wanna Be was found to be obscene by a U.S. federal court judge.

Though it would be a stretch to label race rock as obscene, minority rights advocates say that Canada's hate laws should be used to crack down on white supremacist bands.

Bernie Farber of the Canadian Jewish Congress says he resents suggestions that banning albums by hate groups is an attack on free speech. "Canada is not the United States. We happen to have laws dealing with forms of speech and it is a law that has finely balanced our sacred right to free speech with the rights of minorities not to be harmed or vilified."

Gordon agrees. "These groups are selling hatred so it should fall under the laws dealing with hate propaganda; it's not music."

American jazz writer Nat Hentoff says he can see only danger in curbing free speech rights. "There is no legitimate rationale for censorship. Once you start saying what speech is okay and what is not you're setting up a chilling effect."

Hentoff says hatemongers must be countered in open forums rather than driven underground. "I would rather have the kind of society where as awful, as wrong, as hateful as that kind of speech is, you rebut it. The Canadian Jewish Congress have access to forums, why come down and prosecute speech when you can rebut it."

Songs with titles such as "Coon Hunt," "Race Riot" and "White Revolution" will certainly never zoom to the top of the mainstream charts. Nevertheless, Farber says, racial rock poses a very real threat.

"It's literally the new wave in hate promotion," he says. "They know that the best way to attract young people today is through music, hard-driving, hard- hitting music. And it's not as if it is being done underground. It is being done in full view of the authorities. It is almost taunting society in many respects."

Farber says police appear reluctant to press charges against racial rock bands - even though a man arrested in the vicious beating of a Tamil dishwasher was seen hours before at a RaHoWa concert in Downsview last month.

"Parents have to be concerned that kids just wanting to attend a rock concert can be easily manipulated by these various groups into a hateful mindset ripe for indoctrination," Farber says. "This is not about equal rights for whites; it is about straight discrimination."

Bill Bobek, publicity manager at Much Music in Toronto, says he believes that artists must be allowed to express their points of view. "For me, it is a free speech issue," he says. "Anyway, who is going to judge what is appropriate? Someone who doesn't know what a 17-year-old is going through because they have forgotten?"

Much Music does have a committee that vets videos and Bobek admits that controversial videos are rarely aired. But he doesn't see this as a form of censorship. Much is merely exercising its right to choose what it will show in the same way that newspapers and magazines select what material will run in their publications.

A show called Too Much for Much airs videos considered too hot for regular programing on the music station. But generally, Much refuses to play any videos that don't meet community standards, Bobek says.

"Racialist" rock lyrics are replete with what Burdi admits are offensive words and images, guaranteed to attract the young and offend the old: "Some of the music being put out is raw hatred. It is just so offensive, it is just so crude that it can't help but attract attention just by the sheer audacity of having the guts to be so politically incorrect."

Burdi said that no matter what the Canadian authorities decide to do with their music - ban it or ignore it - it will sell. "I invite the system to try to stop it. I invite them to, if they did ban an album, everyone would want to have it, and it would spread like wildfire in the underground.

"Music is fed on controversy. Ignore us and we get huge because we can develop unhindered. Attack us and we get huge because you create controversy and the youth want to hear us. Either way, we win."

He points to sales of an album by U.S. rapper Ice-T that included a song called "Cop Killer." The album shot to the top of the charts when community groups demanded it be banned.

Bobek agrees that young people will seek out music that has been driven underground. But he sees only a very small market for racialist music. "I don't think you can legislate this away. The best thing the authorities can do is show young people how wrong this is." Racial rock is big in Europe. Two labels, Rock-O-Rama and Rebelles Europeens, have bands that regularly crack the Top 10 in Germany. RaHoWa , which was signed to Rebelles Europeens, jumped labels in the spring. But Burdi said his band along with several others on Resistance Records will be distributed by the French company in Europe.

Other European skin-head groups such as No Remorse (which played in Ottawa several years ago), Skrewdriver, Brutal Attack and Skullhead, draw crowds in the thousands at their concerts in Britain, Burdi says.

Bound for Glory, a racial rock band from Minnesota, sold more than 20,000 copies of its last album through the mails. "That's pretty big for a band with a European label, for a record that can't be put on record store shelves," he says.

"You have to also remember that there's probably 10 copies dubbed for every copy sold, especially because of its lack of availability. So 20,000 copies is just the tip of an iceberg. It could be more like 200,000."
Caption: Star color photo (RANKIN): RACISM ROCK: The members of Toronto white supremacist band RaHoWa . Star drawing on page B5 (Raffi Anderian): rock guitar.
Edition: SA2
Section: INSIGHT
Page: B1
Record Number: 930814TS44411
Copyright (c) 1993, Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved.

[Action on racists thwarted by A-G, Metro police insist]

Action on racists thwarted by A-G, Metro police insist

Toronto Star, The (Ontario, Canada) - August 6, 1993
Author: Gail Swainson TORONTO STAR
Attorney-General Marion Boyd has refused to lay criminal charges against operators of a racist telephone hotline and other hatemongers despite recommendations from investigating officers, Metro's deputy police chief says.

But the ministry says it is mystified by the charges.

Police have come under fire from the Canadian Jewish Congress for refusing to prosecute members of a neo-Nazi rock group and the white supremacist Heritage Front, which runs the Heritage Hotline.

But Deputy Chief David Boothby said yesterday that police have recommended to the attorney-general's office on "numerous" occasions that those who run the hate line and others be prosecuted under Canada's Criminal Code.

"It's our job to take cases to the attorney-general's office and say, 'Can we proceed with this?'

"But it's up to them to decide whether or not we do," Boothby said.

The Criminal Code states that only an attorney-general can lay hate-related charges. Police conduct the initial investigation.

Attorney-general's office spokesperson Barbara Krever said she is mystified by allegations that the ministry has failed to act on police recommendations to charge hatemongers.

"We're seeking to meet with Metro police to clarify this, but we are unable to find any evidence to support these allegations," Krever said yesterday.

Lawyers at the attorney-general's office often consult police informally, Krever said.

The Jewish congress had pressed police in June to lay Criminal Code charges against members of RaHoWa (an acronym for Racial Holy War) after a North York concert.

Hours later, a skinhead seen at the show was charged with beating a Tamil man unconscious. RaHoWa 's lead singer, George Burdi, was arrested later in June for assaulting a female anti-racist demonstrator at an Ottawa Heritage Front rally.

Provincial officials had earlier told the congress they were waiting for a "rock solid" case to prosecute.

Congress spokesperson Bernie Farber said yesterday that officials with his group had been led to believe by Boyd's office that it was doing its job but police were dragging their feet in laying charges.

"What we have found out is the exact opposite," Farber said.
Section: NEWS
Page: A2
Record Number: 930806TS42913
Copyright (c) 1993, Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved.