ADL reports on Hate Group

Hate groups have been out of the news in recent months, but that doesn’t mean they are not exploiting recent events–including the tumult on the stock market and the Monica Lewinsky scandal–to expand their base.

That was the message in a new Anti-Defamation League report on the National Alliance, which the Jewish watchdog group called “the single most dangerous organized hate group in America today.”

The glossy 46-page report, released late this week in Washington, at a Van Nuys press conference on Thursday, described 16 active NA cells and membership in at least 26 states, with a concentration in Ohio, Florida, Michigan, New York, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia and New Mexico. In Southern California, the group has been linked to recent anti-Semetic incidents throughout the west San Fernando Valley.

The report suggested a link between the group and the April 19, 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh, who has been convicted of the crime. While the group was not directly implicated, the ADL argued that McVeigh “was a devoted reader of The Turner Diaries,” which the group described as “a violent and racist novel” written by William L. Pierce, the NA’s leader.

The report also pointed to the NA’s growing network of contacts with foreign extremist and neo-Nazi groups.

The ADL cited several reasons for the National Alliance’s growth, including its ability to appeal to a wide range of potential members and its effective use of information-age technologies, including short-wave radio broadcasts and the Internet.

“It maintains one of the most technologically sophisticated sites on the World Wide Web, exploiting the potential power of the Internet to showcase its racists and neo-Nazi ideology and peddle its wares,” said Howard P. Berkowitz, ADL’s National Chairman.

NA activists and sympathizers also infiltrate Internet discussion groups and chat rooms, Berkowitz said.

The NA Web site includes material “documenting” various Jewish plots to control the government and the media, historical anti-Semitic material–including writings by Henry Ford–and articles attacking the ADL as “America’s greatest enemy.”

The site also features NA radio broadcasts, which can be heard using several Internet audio formats.

A recent broadcast by Pierce, which opens with an announcer describing the National Alliance as “the world’s foremost organization working for the longterm interests of white Americans, and people of European ancestry wherever they may live,” describes a scandal-ridden Bill Clinton as “white trash.”

But Clinton’s downfall, Pierce said, is more related to the “powerful Jews” who supported Clinton in the past–but now that he has been embarrassed by a Jewish women, want him removed from office.