Bad Moon Rising

This program was made possible by the members of KQED. We will start from the trenches. We will raise the standard on how and where the rest of their money is my power. Who runs your church's biggest part of. Who does run the church. It was a quite a few churches run by Jewish population. Churches. And the early part of 81 there was a discernible and disturbing rise in the number of anti-Semitic incidents of vandalism arson attempted arson. We've seen an enormous increase in the kind of overt racial violence that one had thought

was a thing of the past and confined largely to the south. On the contrary it's been springing up all over the United States from South Carolina to Connecticut to California. That cross was burned by the Ku Klux Klan here in this field in serious California. Now three months later on a quiet summer day. That night seems like a bad dream. Why did it happen here. And why has the KKK suddenly burst onto the scene in California spreading hate and fear. Why in other parts of the state have black families been

attacked in their homes. Jewish community assaulted synagogues burned or defaced. In the next half hour we will examine this resurgence in bigotry and we will explore why it is happening here and now. I think racism certainly is on the rise. Let me put it this way. The absence of the morals that we witnessed say doing that can be used. Johnson Yes there's not that for us there to offset what may be a latent condition in this. The mask is off. We like to think of ourselves as a tolerant people in a nation based on principles of religious freedom justice and equality. But of course there is always been another side of America. Racism anti-Semitism bigotry in some periods of our history there have been very ill and violent outbreaks of bigotry. The extreme anti-Semitism of Father Coughlan and Henry

Ford in the Depression years where the lynchings of blacks in the wave of hostility against immigrants after the first world war. At times these social evils have been challenged by mass movements like the civil rights protests of the 60s. But now in the 1980s racial and anti-Semitic violence appears to be on the rise once again. The Anti-Defamation League of the neighbor risk has long been the main private organization in this country which closely monitors hate groups and the violence they perpetrate. There seems to be in the over the past couple of years an increase in overt manifestations. Of Semitism and bigotry. In terms of vandalism. News of the brazen this with which those who leave the Klan and other groups espouse their their opinions. David Lehre a lawyer for the ADL in Los Angeles links this revival of violent bigotry to economic hard times with high unemployment high

inflation. People are dissatisfied. They get frustrated and demagogues tend to to try and play off those fears and those frustrations and direct them in in two to facile remedies and to in ways which are. Destructive people are frightened and hurt economically. People are frightened about the role of the United States in the world and so for many kinds of insecurity as Robert McAfee Brown a Christian theologian at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley when you're in secure it's very good to find somebody you can blame for it. And whether it's the Jews or the blacks or the Hispanics or women or whoever. There are always groups around that can be targeted as causes for our present distress. In times of social stress and uncertainty demagogues and bigots have repeatedly scapegoated the Jews in late 1080 in early 81. There was a rash of anti-Semitic violence in the Los Angeles area which has a sizable and active

Jewish community. Vandals knocked over gravestones in a Jewish cemetery swastikas were spray painted on synagogues and Jewish schools in the worst incident. Two self-confessed members of a neo-Nazi group fire bombed Temple Beth David in the San Gabriel Valley causing more than $100000 in damages. Rabbi Allan Lockman precipitated I would say. Nothing less than 20 similar. Not similar but 20 acts of anti-Semitism in the following two months. This seemed to have been a catalyst for a snowballing of anti-Semitic acts in the community. Thank God none of them were serious or stance really is this. The day after it happened. It had nine year old Kimberly singer attends Temple Beth David with her family. She will never forget the fire. It made me pretty angry to see that they would do such a thing to us. Were you scared when you saw. That they were right. And I thought I had

cradles out my window I took them off because I thought that they might come to our house and make it on fire if I was Jewish. I got really scared. Sounds like some of my Jewish friends out for a run down. I shouldn't. But I do. At first Kimberly and her friends were frightened by the arson but their fears began to ease when they received hundreds of letters of sympathy and support from children all over Los Angeles. Some even sent donations to help rebuild the sanctuary. I know actual record I don't like so don't get me there. Come on my show minister let your guard down. There right. All right Rabbi Lockman held a special service to bury the prayer books which had been burned in the fire bombing a symbolic end to an ugly incident. A Jewish tradition preserved a sign that faith and spirit have not been destroyed by bigotry. Make us more cognizant of our power to make peace here on Earth. Not long after neo Nazis set fire to Temple Beth David the Ku Klux Klan

tried to stage a rally in downtown San Jose. The cluster of hooded clansmen provoked an outraged response. Police in riot gear had to escort them through an angry crowd and when the Klan tried to speak there was no one to listen. Instead of winning converts the Klan fended off coke bottles and beer cans. A few minutes after arriving they were treated under police guard. Twenty six militant protestors were arrested and the whole affair cost the city of San Jose. Twenty nine thousand dollars. Across town shocked by the sudden appearance of the KKK in their community a multiracial group gathered to reaffirm their commitment to racial equality and nonviolence. Do you. Mean. Are you concerned about groups like the Klan seeming to pop up now in California doesn't this seem like sort of a throwback for you to the 50s

60s. Yeah a lot of things in my life seem like a throwback to the 50s and 60s. Yeah it's scary. The danger is that we are so floating as a population that people will listen to what they plan to say that's why it's scary having me on the streets. Otherwise do a bunch of baboons of these things on their heads you know. Why bother. Baboons Coneheads the Klan has been called a lot of comical names and there is something pathetically funny about the KKK. Grown men and silly outfits. Ludicrous grandiose titles like Exalted Cyclops pot bellies. It would all be a farce if it were not for the fact that the Ku Klux Klan has a 100 year history of racist terror. The KKK was founded after the Civil War by ex Confederate army officers a secret white terrorist organization. Knight Riders using whips guns and ropes to stop newly emancipated blacks from achieving their full political

and economic rights. This early period of Klan history was romanticized and glorified in this 1915 film classic D.W. Griffith's Birth of a nation. Cinematically the most innovative movie of its time. It is thoroughly racist. The villains are blacks and radical white Northerners. The heroes are the clan who in this scene rescue Lillian Gish from rape by a black man. After a period of decline the KKK revived following World War One in the one thousand twenty years the Klan reached an all time membership high of five million and forty thousand Klansman marched brazenly down Pennsylvania Avenue in the nation's capital. The Klan had become an established political force but it remained unspeakably violent. Public revulsion and factional feuding gutted the clan but never

eradicated it. The clan reappeared in the south in the 50s and 60s to fight the growing civil rights movement. KKK members bomb churches murdered civil rights activists but could not turn back history. The Civil Rights Movement rolled over the Klan in the mid 70s the Klan slowly began to regroup trying a new clean cut media slick approach. Some called it buttoned down racism. The major change between yesterday's Klan and today's Klan is not so much in behavior they still murder and kill and shoot and intimidate and harass people. The major changes in the sophistication of their leadership which has discovered that it is no longer popular to shout racial epithets from the rooftops that they have tried to diminish what many know to be their anti black anti Semitic anti Catholic feelings and say instead that they're simply pro white. Well their behavior is exactly the same you can change the person's outward behavior and coloration but essentially this is the same clan that was

founded as a terrorist organization a hundred sixteen years ago. November 3rd one thousand seventy nine Greensboro North Carolina and anti Klan march by the Communist Workers Party is attacked by armed Klansmen. Five demonstrators were killed. Today. Various clan factions are conducting paramilitary training camps like this one in Texas run by Invisible Empire Grand Dragon Louis Beam who put on a special show for visiting reporters. The Klan has even ventured into foreign affairs although without much success this group of Klansmen was arrested by federal agents in New Orleans as they prepared to invade the Caribbean island of Domenico. They were caught with a boatload of guns explosives and a Nazi flag. The Born-Again clan in California began to make headlines and caused public alarm when a TV repairman from a San Diego suburb ran for Congress in 1900. The candidate was Tom Metzger the local Klan leader and he won the Democratic

Party nomination with a disturbing forty three thousand votes. I was a conservative once I was a liberal once I was a libertarian I got sick of these labels so even though I'm not too happy with labels I finally said Well I'm a racist. Metzger exploited the controversy over illegal aliens blaming them for unemployment problems and saying that Mexican should be shot when they try to slip across the border. Metzger was overwhelmingly defeated in the November elections but his clan faction still has potential for violence. Dressed in stormtrooper black uniforms and armed with knives guns chains bats and vicious dogs Metzger's followers were involved in a bloody confrontation with anti Klan protesters and police in Oceanside California. With. The dog. Spurred on

by Metzger's initial success. Another Klan leader with a reputation for violence is now trying to expand his operation in California. Bill Wilkinson the Imperial Wizard of the Invisible Empire Knights of the KKK. Based in Louisiana Wilkinsons group is the most aggressive and violence prone. Of the four main Klan factions in the country today. To make his debut in California Wilkinson and his organizers chose series a small town of 13000 people in the San Joaquin Valley near Modesto. It is farm country. Town leaders. That series is the capital of California. There is a sizable Chicano population mostly farm laborers but the town is mainly white and the majority are immigrants from the south. Poor whites from Arkansas and Oklahoma who came to make it in California's rich soil. Many have been successful but some have not. They are still poor and frustrated. Ceres is a conservative community

but the editor of the local paper says racism is not a hallmark of the town. I think you know there is racism here like there would be probably anywhere in the country we certainly have eradicated that problem. But I don't I don't see much greater than anywhere else. I sort of think that area more out of convenience than because of anything that's offered socially. It is true that most of the townspeople seem to have had better things to do that day in February in 1901 when the Imperial Wizard arrived with his suitcase full of Klan literature. This leafleting attracted only a handful of supporters and curiosity seekers. The local organizer Bill Alberts refused to discuss the number of Klan members in his chapter. A common ploy by the Klan to make themselves seem larger than they really are. How big is the Klan in this area. How long have you been active. Well we've been underground here for six years and cars been active we were there

started the last six months really coming out in the open. How many members do you have. I can't tell you that as a good survivor. While the clan is growing in California it is still believed to have no more than 500 members. Bill Wilkinson the national leader is more articulate than his local organizer here shrewder more accustomed to dealing with the press. Like one of his favorite topics is race war. He claims it's inevitable but we feel yes it down the line that will occur at such time as either the government starts responding to the majority of the people and starts putting an end to the affirmative action and forced busing we feel that the minorities will start rioting and looting and burning and killing. That afternoon Wilkinson and Albert has led the faithful to a rented cow pasture on the edge of town to hold a rally and cross burning. And armed Klansmen stood at the gate and. Police and onlookers clogged a nearby road.

At first not many Klan supporters could be found but by nightfall about 150 people had shown up to watch nearly 40 Klan members from around the state. With reporters present the Klan was on its best behavior. But Bill Alberts couldn't resist some vulgar racial slurs and talk about black culture. Well what is for the American people and those people over here they're old people sort of all of this still feel their ethical or James dreams of catching up with their sticks. Thank you. The Klan's racist message did not go unchallenged. At the same time as the Klan rally a few miles away some 350 concerned citizens packed into the Martin Luther King John F. Kennedy Community Center to demonstrate their opposition to the KKK and bigotry. The Klan is merely the most extreme and ugliest

form of racism it stands as a symbol of what we thought was. Sponsored by a multicultural coalition the anti Klan rally concluded with an outdoor celebration of cultural diversity. Meanwhile at the Klan rally the afternoon dragged on and the racist rhetoric heated up. That is one of the problems with other races the black race yellow races and the brown races. They don't care much about their own families. You're. Communism is on the money taken Zimbabwe

and they're coming into the United States of America. And then the climax the cross-burning the frightening symbol of Klan terror. The end of the rally was charged with tension and pent up violence. Minutes later it flared when a man fired a gun at the driver of a passing pickup truck. Police quickly subdued the suspect the night of hate. It was over. But troubling questions remain. Well. Certainly as the rally approached a force the entire community. Of Ceres to look at itself. We took a long hard look at ourselves asked the questions that you're asking me Are we a racist community. Valley residents are still coping with the trauma of the Klan rally. The Lion's Club fired the local Cub Scout leader when they found he had taken part in the cross burning and even family members of local Klan leader Bill

Alvar's have turned against him. As my uncle and. When it comes to choosing between him and the Klan and you know his stuff I don't want anything new. Has he ever tried to recruit you into the Klan. Yes and his rich try to recruit a lot of other people you know and I don't want to do it. People are preggers. You know and you know I'll say I'm not prejudiced against some people. But. You know. I'm going to keep to myself and I'm willing to get along with people if they're willing to go along with me. Three months after the cross-burning clan leader Bill Al Gore's announced he was quitting the Klan bill the last time I talked to you you were wearing a robe. Now you've quit the Klan. Why. All. You can say. Personal reasons political reasons. What kind of political reason to run for an office and maybe. On the. Independent Party. And you don't think the Klan robes would have helped. Well

you know people say road stuff. Don't get the wrong idea you know. Got it. Albert said he was tired of sending money back to Klan headquarters in Louisiana without getting anything in return. He said he also feared for his personal safety because of factional fighting within the Klan. One of the most violent factions of the KKK is active here in the suburbs of Contra Costa County across the bay from San Francisco. According to police who monitor the group it is made up of bikers and drug pushers who were involved in a shooting incident at a black housing project. Police say that the leader of the Ku Klux Klan in this area is Michael Mendonsa the owner of this tattoo parlor in downtown Richmond. Mendonsa the tattoo parlor is just down the street from Richmond High School where he has reportedly tried to recruit students. Klan attempts to sign up students nationwide have been sporadic. But they are common enough to worry the National Education Association which is preparing special materials for teachers

to combat the Klan in the classroom. We talked to a group of teachers and students at Richmond High to find out what impact the Klan has had on their school. Peter Manning has been a math teacher at Richmond High for 14 years and I my feeling is that there are racist groups in Richmond the whole time. The kids that I know my feeling always has been is that you know the dumber you are the more likely you are to be a member of one of these racist groups. James will whine teaches psychology and history teacher in my class in my history class they wrote papers quite a few people wrote papers about the Ku Klux Klan. One kid actually had interviewed a member of the Klan. He liked being in the Klan you like having people behind him. You felt better about the other people in the class of the new people in the class I think you lots of people. Then you have some of the leaders were less Radtke a computer science teacher fears that the clan a while now only on the periphery of the school will try to foment

racial turmoil among students. It's their working underground so you can oppose it openly. You can bring it out to the light. The worms that die in the sun they're underground. They're trying to slowly recruit. And they're playing off the kind of tensions that exist between the cracks that's what frightens me. But when the family does flourish it's just down to history it's been like when times are tough you know the economically socially you know people start to lose faith in the government the religion and whatever they believe in you know then they look to the clan and see this this you know this brotherhood what they don't really understand is the few people that are the few leaders who are pushing this big a bloc take Spanish a Chinese hate everybody that isn't like your brother here. Do you guess what Hitler played on you played on you know that he could blame the Jews for losing World War One day actually and that's what he did you know and so it's easy to find a scapegoat. What about the period a couple of months back when there were a series of racial attacks on black homes and Western Contra Costa area not right around here but in the

area. Was that discussed in the school. Did that raise concern or cause more attention knows. That what happened was very much attention. People were really disgusted disgusted about it. This fear and anger was provoked by events here in Tara hills a relatively affluent working class suburb on the north east side of the San Francisco Bay. Like other nearby neighborhoods it is mainly white but in the last few years some black families have begun to move in. Many have encountered petty harassment or the cold shoulder treatment from neighbors. Then last year violence broke out three black families were terrorized by white gangs. A shotgun blast was fired into one home the backyard fence of this home were set on fire. The resident Mary handy and her children have since moved away. A white teenager drove his car through what was a glass door into the living room of Otis and Gerald in Irelands house. The culprit an 18 year

old was sentenced to six months in county jail. The violent incident ended only after community activists church leaders and union members came to the defense of the besieged black families. David Cristiana was one of several hundred volunteers who guarded the homes 24 hours a day. One of the reasons that we're up there in the first place. Was that the families were quite concerned that the sheriff's department was not responding adequately to their calls for help. So that it often took over over an hour and sometimes two and three hours for the sheriff's department to respond to a call that they had made about an incident. When we were up there. After about several weeks of being out there we noticed that the sheriff's department markedly increased the amount of patrolling that they do. I urge you to join mass movements are disturbed by the racial incidents and what they considered inadequate police response. Indignant

members of the community formed a coalition against racism. Lawyers affiliated with the coalition set up a special task force to investigate. Their detailed report on racial violence in the suburbs was presented at a press conference attended by the end WCP and civil rights leader Julian Bond. Attorney Tom Meyers announced the findings. Some of the racial incidents were perpetrated by Klan members. Some were committed by persons with close associations to the Klan. Others appear to have been influenced indirectly by Klan rhetoric and tactics. The taskforce concludes that racism is a deep seeded and pervasive problem in Contra Costa County. The full dimensions of which have not been brought to the attention of the public. Bishop GW Ayres has been a minister in the county for 26 years. He is deeply troubled by the emergence of the Klan here and he is organizing other

ministers to actively oppose the Klan. Yes it's definitely a danger. And the reason I'm saying it because. I'm familiar with the Klan test tactics because I was. Born and raised in Alabama. I was in college after I came out of. The army. And every evening I would come home with the police force. Most of the members of the Klan. And they would stop me and harass me and ask me why am I going boy where you coming from. I said. I'm going from school. Ask me what school I came from I tell them the name of the college. So they said well you're big. And yet knows and things of that nature. The Klan is a violent organization and. I don't think. The Klan should be allowed to really operate not only in California but in any state. During the height of the violence in Contra Costa Ayres opened his church to a

coalition of labor community and religious groups. James Herman president of the Longshoreman's Union and a veteran civil rights advocate forcefully delivered the message of the coalition. Unless we take the beginnings of this new coalition assembled in this great church and march together as they did in Montgomery and in Selma. So know to them that they're not going to get away with being cowards. Throw a brick through the window of a family in fact because No. A brick through a window. A burning cross in a field. A fire bomb a synagogue a shotgun blast. These are the grossest forms of overt racial violence but there is also another kind of bigotry on the rise today. It is sometimes harder to identify and

more insidious a sophisticated kind of hate and prejudice. A glaring example of this kind of bigotry is a group calling itself the Institute for Historical Review founded in 1978 in Southern California. This group is trying to spread the idea that there was no Nazi policy of genocide against the Jews that the Nazis never exterminated millions of European Jews during World War 2. They claim that the Holocaust was a big lie Zionist plot. Here's the institute's director Tom Marcellus on a syndicated television program produced by Liberty Lobby a right wing group in Washington. There are tons and tons of documentary evidence this is true but this doctored documentary evidence does not prove what we are saying has never been proved and that is the existence of gas chambers the genocide policy and that sort of thing and the 6 million figure there are tons of evidence in the Nuremberg

transcripts the various statements of people but. But then again when you balance it against historical fact and fact that you can glean from from sources the actual camps and such nowadays you can you can find it. It was it was an unequivocal impossibility for this sort of thing to happen. Such a person might be dismissed as a crackpot with no influence like the cranks who insist that the world is really flat. But the Institute for Historical Review is no joke when it was launched by the well-heeled founder of Liberty Lobby Willis Carto. It claims to reach several thousand readers with its journal and books. It has attracted a great deal of publicity by offering a $50000 reward to anyone who can prove to the institute satisfaction that there was a Holocaust. And at one point the institute managed to secure an academic conference site from the University of California. However the university later canceled use of

that facility saying the institute had deliberately misrepresented itself and had used a false name in signing the contract. The Institute for Historical Review is really the finest example of that kind of that kind of sophisticated hate. They thought that by marketing themselves as an academic neutral group simply trying to find out the facts of history they could they could achieve the same goal they can achieve greater success than if they would betray what their real aim is and that is to to to spew forth bigotry and to form anti-Semitism and racism. You can't candy coat garbage and think people are going to buy it. I will say that they are of course not. And it's good to give historical review. You are nothing if I want to put it in the crudest form but I think that's most honest. Nothing but a bunch of anti-Semites. Lucy dabba Doggett's author of the war against the Jews. A leading expert on

the Holocaust. No historians not revisionists. It's not really you know to the Valley CA and it's a collection or a hodgepodge of hands of people. Who. Are fundamentally anti-Semites who have if you will concentrated their hatred of the Jews on denying what seems to me the most reputable facts of recent history Mr Mermelstein you were a prisoner at Auschwitz. Yes I was for a whole year. One year and you were brought there with your family. Yes my family my sisters my mother my father myself Brother and what became of them. Well I am the only survivor. My mother and my two sisters were immediately selected for the gas chamber at Auschwitz and my. Brother my father and myself we were selected for slave labor.

Mel Mermelstein was in the death section when the concentration camp was liberated by the Allies. Seriously ill with typhus and still frightened. He appears in this famous photograph of the camp taken by an American G.I.. His name is recorded on Nazi lists as having been processed for slave labor to assemble his own exhibit Mermelstein has gone back to Auschwitz many times to collect gruesome but important reminders. Human hair sheared off prisoners at the camps. The cyanide capsules used in the gas chambers. Mermelstein is a survivor and never wants the world to forget what happened. I want to bring back some a little bit of our service to this country and prove to them that that one a tyrant threatens to annihilate a people take him for his word. Was

true. The unspeakable horror of the Holocaust. The Institute for Historical Review would have you believe it never happened. In a personal letter to Mel normal Steen They hounded him to prove it. And I was even offered a $50000 reward to do so and that they would expose me to the mass media. This is not one of them do that. It was addressed to me privately and personally as a survivor. The only word really to describe what's happening here for me is the word obscene. I mean it is an attempt to tell people that they did not lose their families. It's attempt to say

those stories about the gas chambers you know perfectly well those were only showers just like the Nazis said. It's a total buying into the Nazi interpretation of the of the events of the Holocaust. Robert McAfee Brown is a member of the president's commission on the Holocaust. What does one do if you say well we'll enter debate and show that they're wrong. You have already legitimated their position. And people hear a debate and at the end they say well the truth is probably somewhere in between. You have legitimate on the other hand if you absolutely totally ignore them. You give the impression that what they're saying is quite acceptable when you're in the arena of the exchange of public opinion. Mel Mermelstein wrestled with this dilemma and then decided to challenge the Institute for Historical Review in court for breach of contract in their $50000 reward and for libel. I was there I saw it with my own eyes. I heard those cries of those men women and little children as they were led to the gas chambers I was there right there. So

what what more what better what better what this is do you want unless you want the Dead to come back and testify to prove that Jews were gassed at Auschwitz. See I didn't get this. I didn't put this tattoo on myself. This came from Auschwitz. They have to cover that. Jews are very vulnerable on the subject. If you didn't know is something that is central to your culture to your history to your group you are hearty. And therefore these anti-Semites a Happy to be hurting the Jews feel login Robert McAfee Brown believes that Christians and others who are not Jewish have a special responsibility to counter anti-Semitic groups like the Institute for Historical Review. So I think the main task that Christians or others that are not Jews have to take on is to help expose us in whatever way yes we can. It is not a very appropriate thing for a Jew to have to get up and

tell us that he really did suffer after all. We should take some responsibility for dealing with these people. Taking responsibility. That ultimately is what this documentary is about whether we are dealing with crude or sophisticated racism neo-Nazi violence or subtle anti-Semitism. The story is the same. Hate groups like the Klan expand and grow more dangerous when the police are lax. When politicians are indifferent when school administrators don't seem to care when people of good will stand back and do nothing. Bigots and hate groups thrive in times of uncertainty and economic stress we may be entering a period which will demand much more of us in resisting the revival of racism and anti-Semitism to sensationalize and overestimate the hate groups is to help promote them but to ignore them and hope they will go

away is self-delusion. After a decade of relative calm bigotry appears to be once more on the rise.

Cross burnings. Synagogues. The face attacks on black and Mexican-American families. I'm Steve Talbot. And I'll be exploring this rise in bigotry why it's happening and what we can all do to stop it. On Bad Moon Rising here on KQED. This cross was burned by the Ku Klux Klan in a small California Valley town.

It is one of many incidents with racial and anti-Semitic overtones that has surfaced in recent months. When you're in secure it's very good to find somebody you can blame for. And whether it's the Jews or the blacks or the Hispanics or women or whoever there are always groups around that can be targeted as a as causes for our present distress us. I'm Steve Talbot and I've been looking into the groups behind the violence and terrorism. I'll be examining why the Ku Klux Klan is sponsoring rallies and recruiting on high school campuses. Why vandals set fire to this synagogue and why one group denies that the Nazi war against the Jews ever took place. My report is called Bad Moon Rising. Look for it here on KQED. On.