Tom Metzger (white supremacist)

Tom Metzger
Born Thomas Linton Metzger
(1938-04-09) April 9, 1938
Indiana, United States
Residence Warsaw, Indiana, United States
Known for Head of the White Aryan Resistance
Children John Metzger, Lori Metzger

Thomas Linton "Tom" Metzger (born April 9, 1938) is an American white supremacist, skinhead leader and former Klansman.[1][2][3][4] He founded White Aryan Resistance (WAR). He was a Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s. Metzger has voiced strong opposition to immigration to the United States. In the early 1980s, he was registered with the Democratic Party and sought to be a Democratic candidate for the United States House of Representatives and Senate. He has been incarcerated in Los Angeles County, California, and in Toronto, Canada, and has been the subject of several lawsuits and government inquiries. He, his son John, and WAR were fined $12 million as a result of the murder of an Ethiopian by skinheads affiliated with WAR.[4]

Early life

Metzger was born and raised in Indiana.[5] He served in the U.S. Army from 1961 until 1964 when he moved to Southern California to work in the electronics industry.[5] For a short time, he was a member of the right-wing group the John Birch Society, and attended anti-Communist luncheon meetings sponsored by the Douglas Aircraft Corporation.[5]

By 1968 Metzger had moved to Fallbrook, California, and supported Democrat-turned-independent George C. Wallace for President.[5] Metzger stopped paying taxes in the 1970s, and by 1972 his tax protest over the Vietnam War had destroyed his thriving television business but introduced him to other tax protesters who, he said, were atheist racists, Christian Identity racists, Nazis, all kinds of people.[5]

Ku Klux Klan

During the 1970s he joined the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which was led by David Duke, eventually becoming the Grand Dragon for the State of California. In the summer of 1979, he organized a patrol, the Klan Border Watch[6] to capture illegal Mexican immigrants south of Fallbrook, California.[6] Metzger's Klan organization also had a security force which was involved in confrontations with Communists and anti-Klan protesters.[7][8]

Metzger's branch of the Klan split with Duke's organization in 1980 to form the California Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.[9] Also in 1979, he took Greg Withrow, of the White Student Union "under his wing," which later became the Aryan Youth Movement (AYM), for youth associated with White Aryan Resistance.[10]

Views

According to Steven Atkins, Metzger "differs from other white supremacists in rejecting the basic tenets of the Christian Identity movement because he considers himself the champion of the Third Position. The Third Position is racism oriented toward attracting the white working class and is anti-capitalist in orientation. Metzger believes in racial separation within designated areas for different racial groups except for Asian Americans, who would be expelled from the United States." [4] In 1988 Metzger, recorded this message on his "WAR HOTLINE",

You have reached WAR Hotline. White Aryan Resistance. You ask: What is WAR? We are an openly white-racist movement—Skinheads, we welcome you into our ranks___The federal government is the number one enemy of our race. When was the last time you heard a politician speaking out in favor of white people?... You say the government is too big; we can’t organize. Well, by God, the SS did it in Germany, and if they did it in Germany in the thirties, we can do it right here in the streets of America_We need to cleanse this nation of all nonwhite mud-races for the survival of our own people and the generations of our children.[4]

White Aryan Resistance

In 1982 he left the Klan to found a new group, the White American Political Association, a group dedicated to promoting "prowhite" candidates for office. After losing the 1982 California Senate Democratic primary, Metzger abandoned the electoral route and reorganized WAPA as White American Resistance in 1983 and then to White Aryan Resistance, to reflect a more "revolutionary" stance.[11][12]

In 1985 Metzger was invited to speak at a rally of the Nation of Islam. Despite Metzger's open racism towards blacks, the two groups found common ground in their desire for racial separation and in their hate of Jewish people. Metzger donated $100 to the Nation of Islam.[13]

Metzger made numerous television appearances in addition to hosting his own cable TV public-access television show, Race and Reason. In one of his first cable episodes, Metzger invited the gothic rock band Radio Werewolf onto the show, during which a confused Metzger was given an honorary membership in the band.[14] In November 1988, his son appeared on an episode of the Geraldo show in which a brawl broke out and Geraldo Rivera's nose was broken.[15]

Oregon civil trial

The group was eventually bankrupted as the result of a civil lawsuit centered on its involvement in the 1988 murder of Mulugeta Seraw, an Ethiopian man who had moved to the United States to attend college. In 1988, white power skinheads affiliated with WAR were convicted of killing Seraw and sent to prison. Kenneth Mieske said he and the two others killed Seraw "because of his race".[16] Metzger declared that they did a "civic duty" by killing Seraw.[17] Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a civil suit against him, arguing that WAR influenced Seraw's killers by encouraging their group East Side White Pride to commit violence.[18][19]

Metzger's decision to represent himself at his trial became the source of considerable civic derision through the legal incompetence he displayed - never more so than when he accepted an option for a new trial judge during the initial stages of the trial in preference to the interim appointed judge whom he thought to be Jewish; only after he had made his decision did he discover that the new judge, [Ancer] Haggerty, was African American.[20]

At the trial, WAR national vice president Dave Mazzella testified how the Metzgers instructed WAR members to commit violence against minorities. Tom and John Metzger were found civilly liable under the doctrine of vicarious liability, in which one can be liable for a tort committed by a subordinate or by another person who is taking instructions. The jury returned the largest civil verdict in Oregon history at the time—$12.5 million—against Metzger and WAR.[21] The Metzgers' house was seized, and most of WAR's profits go to paying off the judgment.

Post-Oregon trial

After the trial, Metzger's home was transferred to Seraw's estate for $121,500, while Metzger was allowed to keep $45,000 under California's Homestead Act.[22] The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League came up with the $45,000 needed to pay Metzger for the home.[22] Metzger was warned that any damages left in the house would result in a lawsuit, and while he left it in "a mess" with cracked windows, there was no serious damage.[22] As a result of the sale of his home, he was forced to move into an apartment.[22]

In May 1991, Metzger had to agree to stop selling T-shirts of Bart Simpson in a Nazi uniform with the words "Pure Nazi Dude" and "Total Nazi Dude".[23] He was convicted in 1991 of burning a cross in 1983, and sentenced to six months in prison and 300 hours community service working with minorities.[24] He was released from prison 46 days into his sentence to be with his critically ill wife.[25] In 1992, Metzger and his son violated a court order not to leave the country and entered Canada to speak to the Heritage Front. Soon afterwards, he was arrested for violating Canadian immigration laws by entering the country to "promote racial hatred".[26]

Since the early 1990s, Metzger has advocated the "lone wolf" method of organization, of which there are many, for white nationalist groups, which states that a person should not outwardly display his/her racist ideology, but must act covertly.[27]

In 2003, Metzger appeared in a documentary by Louis Theroux, titled "Louis and the Nazis".[28][29] During this documentary, Theroux criticised Metzger for his use of racist language and also for his evidently hypocritical behaviour. On one hand, Metzger was portraying himself as a man totally devoted to his racist viewpoints, and purported to want nothing to do with members of other ethnic groups. However, on the other hand Metzger was filmed seemingly enjoying the fruits of multiculturalism as he was filmed singing in a largely non-white karaoke bar and also went on a day trip to Mexico during the documentary. During the karaoke bar visit, Theroux comments that " It had been a long, and in some ways, depressing day. I'd found Tom's attitudes exhausting and I still more confused when the karaoke bar he took me to turned out to be largely non-white. I could only assume that, for Tom, karaoke sometimes took precedence over racism."[30]

Metzger moved to Warsaw, Indiana. On June 2, 2009, agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms raided Metzger's home. No arrests were made and no information was released on what was found inside his house. Metzger was allowed to leave the premises during the search and stated that address books, compact discs, tapes and computers were seized in the raid.[31][32]

Metzger resides near Warsaw, Indiana,[33] and is still mandated to make payments to Seraw's family.[34] Metzger now hosts an Internet radio talk show.

Mainstream party politics

Metzger has registered at various times as a Democrat. In 1980, Metzger won the Democratic Party nomination for the U.S. House of Representatives with over 40,000 votes in a San Diego-area district.[35] The local Democratic Party chairman disavowed his candidacy, instead endorsing incumbent four-term Republican Clair Burgener.[36] Metzger lost by over 200,000 votes in November 1980 to a several-term incumbent in a heavily Republican district.

In 1982 he sought the Democratic Party's senatorial nomination, running against then-Governor Jerry Brown and author Gore Vidal, winning almost 76,000 votes (and 2.8% of the vote) in the Democratic Party primary.

In 2010, Metzger took out an advertisement in the Warsaw Times-Union, in order to announce his intention to challenge, as an independent, U.S. Representative Mark Souder, a Republican from Indiana's 3rd congressional district. "I'd go to Washington and get into Congress, and have a fistfight every day," Metzger told local news station WANE-TV in Fort Wayne.[37] Metzger did not make it into the ballot for the election, which was ultimately won by Republican Marlin Stutzman.

Electoral history

California's 43rd Congressional District Democratic Primary election, June 3, 1980[38]
Party Candidate Votes %
Democratic Tom Metzger 33,071 37.1
Democratic Ed Skagen 32,679 36.6
Democratic Hubert Higgins 23,462 26.3
Total votes 89,212 100.0
Voter turnout %
United States House of Representatives elections, 1980[39]
Party Candidate Votes %
Republican Clair W. Burgener (incumbent) 298,815 86.6
Democratic Tom Metzger 46,361 13.4
Total votes 345,176 100.0
Voter turnout %
Republican hold
United States Senatorial Democratic Primary election, June 8, 1982[40]
Party Candidate Votes %
Democratic Edmund G. "Jerry" Brown, Jr. 1,392,660 50.7
Democratic Gore Vidal 415,366 15.1
Democratic Paul B. Carpenter 415,198 15.1
Democratic Daniel K. Whitehurst 167,574 6.1
Democratic Richard Morgan 94,908 3.4
Democratic Tom Metzger 76,502 2.8
Democratic Walter R. Buchanan 55,727 2.0
Democratic Bob Hampton 37,427 1.4
Democratic Raymond "RayJ" Caplette 31,865 1.2
Democratic William F. Wertz 30,795 1.1
Democratic May Chote 30,743 1.1
Total votes 2,748,765 100.0
Voter turnout %

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Ray, Nancy (March 6, 1992). "Wife of White Supremacist Tom Metzger Is Dead at 49". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 16 March 2016.
  2. ↑ Fleming, Lorell (March 15, 2006). "White supremacist Metzger no longer living in Fallbrook, he says". San Diego Union-Tribune. Retrieved 16 March 2016.
  3. ↑ Marks, Kathy (2014). Faces of Right Wing Extremism. Branden. pp. eq. ISBN 978-0828320160. Retrieved 16 March 2016.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Atkins, Steven E. (2011). Encyclopedia of Right-Wing Extremism In Modern American History. ABC-CLIO. pp. 55–58. ISBN 978-1-59884-350-7. Retrieved 16 March 2016.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Turner, Wallace (October 7, 1986). "Extremist Finds Cable TV is Forum for Right-wing Views". New York Times. Retrieved 2007-09-18.
  6. 1 2 Neiwert, Dave; Robinson, Sara (2005-10-07). "Coddling Extremists". Rights. Seattle: Orcinus. Retrieved 2010-02-02.
  7. ↑ "Anti-Immigration Groups". Intelligence Report. Montgomery, AL: Southern Poverty Law Center. May 2001. Retrieved 2010-02-02.
  8. ↑ Berkowitz, Bill; Dobbs, Lou (2006-07-01). "Dubious Guest List". Rome: Inter-Press Service. Retrieved 2010-02-02.
  9. ↑ "The Real David Duke," Newsweek, November 18, 1991, Pg. 24
  10. ↑ "The Godfathers". Southern Poverty Law Center. Fall 2006. Retrieved 2007-11-15.
  11. ↑ Michael and Judy Ann Newton eds. The Ku Klux Klan; an encyclopedia Garland Reference Library of the Social Science Vol.499 London and New York; Garland Publishing inc. 1991 pp.92, 387
  12. ↑ Anti-Defamation League Danger: Extremism; the major voices and vehicles on America far right fringe New York; Anti-Defamation League 1996 pp.77-8
  13. ↑ Uncommon Ground: Secret Relationship
  14. ↑ Race and Reason Interview with Radio Werewolf, Los Angeles, July 8, 1985
  15. ↑ "Racist Violence". geraldo.com. 2007. Retrieved 2007-07-14.
  16. ↑ "Guilt Admitted in Racial Killing". The New York Times. Associated Press. May 3, 1989. Retrieved 2007-11-18.
  17. ↑ "Making War on WAR". Time. October 22, 1990. Retrieved 2007-09-18.
  18. ↑ London, Robb (October 26, 1990). "Sending a $12.5 Million Message to a Hate Group". The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-09-18.
  19. ↑ "Lawyer makes racists pay". USA Today. October 24, 1990. p. 02.A. Retrieved 2007-09-18.
  20. ↑ Berry, Jason (March 21, 1993). "The High Price of Hate". The New York Times. Retrieved 2013-01-17.
  21. ↑ Goodman, Walter (May 13, 1991). "Review/Television; Behind the Hate, With Bill Moyers". The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-08-26.
  22. 1 2 3 4 "Metzger Leaves Former Home a Mess, but it's undamaged". The Oregonian. 1991-09-19. pp. F3.
  23. ↑ "Bart Used by Extremists". Washington Times. 1993-05-13.
  24. ↑ "Supremacist Gets 6 Months in Cross Burning". New York Times. 1991-12-04. Retrieved 2007-09-18.
  25. ↑ "Klan leader let out of jail to be with critically ill wife," The Gazette (Montreal, Quebec), February 22, 1992
  26. ↑ "White Aryan leaders deported Jewish groups applaud decision," The Globe and Mail July 3, 1992
  27. ↑ "Tom Metzger/White Aryan Resistance". Anti-Defamation League. August 24, 2007. Retrieved 2007-08-25.
  28. ↑ "Those ugly Americans". New Zealand Listener. Retrieved 2010-10-04.
  29. ↑ Smith, Rupert (2003-12-22). "Reich and wrong". Guardian. London. Retrieved 2010-10-10.
  30. ↑ "Louis and the Nazis (2003 TV Movie): Quotes". IMDb.
  31. ↑ "ATF raids home of White Aryan Resistance founder". Wane.com.
  32. ↑ "White supremacist reacts to ATF raid". Wane.com.
  33. ↑ "W.A.R - White Aryan Resistance". The Insurgent. 2007. Retrieved 2008-10-08.
  34. ↑ "Hate-crime case award will be hard to collect, experts say". The Press-Enterprise. August 24, 2007. Retrieved 2007-08-25.
  35. ↑ "Clair Burgener dies at 84". North County Times. September 10, 2006. Retrieved 2007-07-14.
  36. ↑ "Democrats Disavow Nominee From Klan". New York Times. June 6, 1980.
  37. ↑ New York Daily News, "Ex-Klu (sic) Klux Klan leader and white supremacist uses ad to run for Congress," by Michael Sheridan (March 9, 2010 - retrieved on March 10, 2010).
  38. ↑ Our Campaigns "California District 43 - Democratic Primary Race - June 3, 1980", (retrieved on August 15, 2009).
  39. ↑ Office of the Clerk of the United States House of Representatives "Statistics of the Congressional Election of November 4, 1980," (retrieved on August 15th, 2009).
  40. ↑ Our Campaigns California U.S. Senate - Democratic Primary Race - June 8, 1982," (retrieved on August 15th, 2009).

Further reading

External links

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