Expert provides hate update

By POLINA OLSEN

article created on: 2009-01-15T00:00:00

The Ku Klux Klan seemed normal, even neighborly, when Randy Blazak grew up in Stone Mountain, Georgia. After all, his best seventh grade friend became an Exalted Cyclops of the Southern Nights.

But, when Blazak studied sociology at Emory University, he escaped that life. Now a professor at Portland State University and chair of the Coalition Against Hate Crimes, his background provides unusual insight.

“As a graduate student, I decided that I had an opportunity to understand people like Kenny,” he told the Jan. 8 Oregon Area Jewish Committee lunch gathering at the Perkins Coie law office in downtown Portland.  “I knew him not as an inbred sociopath but as a person who followed a different path than I.”

During his talk on “Hate Groups in Oregon 20 Years After the Seraw Murder,” Blazak showed how familiarity helped him infiltrate various groups in America and Europe, and even change some minds. In fact, when Portland skinheads murdered the Ethiopian immigrant Mulegata Seraw in 1988, he was working undercover with a skinhead group in Florida.

“They knew about [the murder] before it hit the national news,” he said.

Blazak stressed the difference between hate groups and hate crimes like the one against Seraw. Citing a recent Boston study, he said only about 5 percent of hate crimes are committed by hate groups. The impact of the organized groups, however, extends beyond its membership especially since the Internet makes communication instant and easy.

Finally, Blazak discussed society’s response to hate groups. The first response is institutional through laws. He noted Oregon had one of the first hate crime laws in the country, and that President George W. Bush vetoed a federal hate crime law since it included gay rights.

The second response is through the community.

“If the community does not respond [to a hate crime], it sends a message that it agrees with the people who committed the crime,” he said.

Blazak’s suggestions on personal response brought the most discussion.
“Sometimes you might go into a lecture, or sometimes it’s just rolling your eyes to say you disapprove,” he said.

Blazak finds the best answer is often a comment such as “Oh, I didn’t know you were a bigot,” or “I didn’t know you were anti-Semitic.” Or, he tries humor—“You must think I’m white. I’m not, just very light skinned.”

Above all Blazak stressed, “In the end love wins. As tempting as it is to just want to lock them up, sometimes it only makes things worse,” he said. “There is no better advocate against hate than someone who has been in it and has been led lovingly out of it.”  
He gave a recent experience as an example:

A distraught local AmeriCorps teacher invited him to speak on racism at her school. Specifically, she targeted two young skinheads. After the lecture, Blazak saw the two eating lunch in the cafeteria, one with a peanut butter sandwich, the other a bagel.

He told them they were the worst Nazis he ever saw.

“Peanut butter was invented by George Washington Carver, a black man, and bagels are Jewish,” he said.  You’re celebrating diversity.”

Sometime later, one of the young Nazis called to talk.

“It’s the peanut butter,” he told Blazak. “I can’t give it up.”

For more information about the Coalition Against Hate visit www.againsthate.pdx.edu.

Hate Groups Currently Operating In Oregon

Professor Randy Blazak provided the following information about Oregon hate groups during his Jan. 8 Oregon Area Jewish Committee lecture:

•Ku Klux Klan: “Oregon still has a Klan, but it was big in the 1920s,” Blazak said. Mainly an anti-Catholic organization, they regularly protested outside St. Mary’s Academy in downtown Portland and boycotted Catholic businesses. Now a small group, the Klan works out of Grants Pass with some activity in Coos Bay including allegations of police involvement.

“The Klan believes G-d is white and non-whites are not fully human,” Blazak said. Recently, they’ve enjoyed a revival inside the U.S. military, and they increasingly focus on anti-Latino activity around illegal immigration.

•Neo- Nazis: Both the National Socialist Movement and American National Socialist Workers Party operate in Oregon.

“ANSWP is mostly one guy in Tigard,” Blazak said. “He’s 30 years old and lives with his mom.” Best known for releasing balloons painted with swastikas around the area, he videotapes and posts the events on YouTube.

The somewhat larger NSM allies itself with the Tualatin Valley Skinheads. One man runs their Web site, formerly NukeIsrael.com and now zogsnightmare.com. (Zog stands for Zionist occupational government). NSM believes an international Jewish conspiracy controls the United States government, the media, banks, etc, Blazak said. They often cite the anti-Semitic fabrication “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion,” which is also used by Islamic Radicals and, in fact, became a TV mini-series in Egypt.

Blazak once interviewed a well-known Oregon neo-Nazi named Rick Cooper: “He said, ‘do you know why they have Taco Bell in schools? It’s the Jews. The Jews want white kids to like Mexican food so when the race war breaks out they won’t want to kill any Mexicans.’”

•Christian Identity: This group sees the Bible as a racial document that enforces white supremacy. They believe in the two seed theory which Blazak explained: In the beginning, Adam and Eve were created in God’s image as white people. They had one child, Abel. Cain, the offspring of Eve and the serpent, was the first Jew. Non-white, non-Jewish races descend from human-animal interbreeding in the Garden of Eden. When Cain murdered Abel, the epic battle between good (descendents of Adam and Eve) and evil (Jew, descendents of Cain) began.

Aryan Nations is the major Christian Identity group.  “Until 2000 it was big in Hayden Lake, Idaho,” Blazak said. “Thanks to the Southern Poverty Law Center, they are no longer there.” Aryan Nations still owns property in Medford, Oregon, and another group lives in Boring. Several skinheads claim Christian identity.

Phineas Priests are a Christian Identity offshoot. “They believe that a story in Numbers mandates the murder of race-mixers and abortion doctors,” Blazak said. Eric Rudolph, the 1996 Atlanta Olympic bomber, belonged to the group.

•Racist skinheads – Skinheads began as a male working class response to the 1960s peace and love movement in England and were co-opted by Nazis, Blazak said.

Volksfront, the Portland area skinhead organization, started as a prison group in about 1996.

“They’re connected to lot of activity in the area including a gruesome murder in Tacoma of a white homeless man,” Blazak said.

Skinheads outreach with hate rock, which they distribute over the internet. Portland bands include Intimidation One, Jew Slaughter, and Total Hate. “They often play in other places including Europe where they attract fairly sizable audiences,” Blazak said. “This has become a global phenomenon.”

•S.H.A.R.P.s (Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice) are sometimes referred to as liberal Nazis. “One of the codes is the number 88,” Blazak said.  “Since H is the 8th letter of the alphabet, 88 means HH or Heil Hitler. If I see a skinhead and I say, ‘are you 88,’ and he says ‘yes,’ it means he’s a Nazi. In my world, you pay attention to people’s tattoos, to their boot laces -- lots of subtle code.”

•Racist Odinists: This new group bases its beliefs on Norse mythology. “It can be violent,” Blazak said. “The way into heaven is to die in battle. It’s a  co-opting of a Viking religion. There are non-racist Odinists who aren’t happy with these folks.”

•Racist Prison Gangs: “This is the big growth area, and it’s kind of off the radar,” Blazak said.  When prison integration began at San Quentin in the 1960’s, the Aryan Brotherhood formed ostensibly to protect white inmates from minority gangs.

•The primary Oregon group is called European Kindred, and one smaller group is called the Insane Peckerwood Society. (Peckerwood is prison slang for white guy). Blazak’s main concern is future parolees. “They became members inside the prison,” he said. “Upon release, there’s an expectation that they will continue the activity.”

Additional Groups in Oregon:

•Patriot Militias:  The best-known member of this group was probably Timothy McVeigh, who bombed the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995. These Christian Identity believers hope to eliminate non-whites through a race war, Blazak said. They also want to launch nuclear weapons on Israel. “The feeling is the [United States] government is controlled by the Jews.”

•Most Patriot Militia groups organize around gun rights and anti-tax issues. “We do have a militia in Oregon, but they have tried to promote themselves as just anti-government and not racist,” Blazak said.

•Nation of Islam –This group believes white people are the product of an evil scientific experiment. “There’s not much in presence in Oregon,” Blazak said. “But, it does have presence in Oregon’s prison system.”

•Anti-Gay groups: According to Blazak, groups like the Oregon Citizen Alliance are organized primarily around the act of depriving sexual minorities of their civil rights.