White Power, O.C. Style

Who knew that sunny Orange County, home of Disneyland and family values, was the "Mekka [sic] of National Socialist skinhead bands" and "the skinhead capitol [sic] of the world." But that’s what White Power rock group Extreme Hatred says on its Web site, and they seem to be a band with a growing fan base.

The next ‘N Sync they’re not. This is hard-core, hate-core, three-chord Oi! music. The fans are skinheads tattooed with swastikas; some turn up in Klan uniforms — steel-toed boots and white shirts with KKK patches sewn on as if they were Boy Scout badges. Record companies such as Resistance Records and Panzerfaust sell CDs and T-shirts promoting bands with names like Angry Aryans, Blue Eyed Devils, Aggravated Assault and Hate Crime. The artwork is all skulls and SS insignias; and a dumpy little restaurant in the Southland called The Shack has been successfully hosting them, and bands like them, for the last several months.

The Shack, in a seedy light-industrial area of north Anaheim, is listed in Let’s Eat OC as a family restaurant — the kind that serves burgers and hot dogs. In the evenings, the entertainment mostly ranges from hip-hop to punk to third-rate metal. Except on Sundays, when owners John Terbay and Bob Gibson rent out the premises for what they call "private parties." Increasingly, these Sunday afternoon parties offer neo-Nazis the opportunity to gather, guzzle beer and Sieg Heil.

"There’s nothing we can do about someone renting a place," says Joyce Greenspan, the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) regional director of Orange County. "We can be aware of it, we can expose it, but we can’t stop it."

John Terbay, a Lebanese Catholic born in Fullerton, shrugs, saying, "There’s a lot of them [neo-Nazis] I don’t like, but then there’s a lot of blacks I don’t like and a lot of Lebanese I don’t like." But white supremacists seem to be good for business. Terbay, who with his partner Gibson quit the construction business in February 1999 to take over the Shack, says the Sunday afternoon parties bring in good money on a day that would normally be dead.

And the crowd is well-behaved. "They’re very polite. These guys aren’t causing no damn trouble," Terbay says emphatically. According to him, the trouble comes from the picketers. "That doctor from the Jewish League had a little speaker and shouted ‘All towel heads should be dead’ and ‘Anaheim cops are Communist Nazis.’"

That doctor is Howard Garber, of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), and he says he had more than a ‘little speaker.’ "I have a loud bullhorn. My wife bought it for me. They don’t make a louder one. I was the loud one at the protest." But he didn’t like his fellow picketers because "some people waved the Red Flag, and we wanted to disassociate ourselves from that."

The JDL’s Irv Rubin was also among the group of protesters at two demonstrations held outside the club. One was so successful — with plenty of publicity, a crowd, Rubin says, of about 50 protesters (Terbay counted only 36) and law enforcement turning up in black-and-whites and unmarked vehicles — that the show had to be canceled. But on another occasion, the show did go on. "There were Klansmen entering the club with uniforms and crosses and teardrop tattoos, and they were ‘Sieg Heil’-ing us. They’re dedicated to Hitler."

Rubin says they need help in this project. "Why hasn’t the ADL been more involved? They should have been out there raising a clamor."

The violently racist music is worrying to the ADL. "White supremacist music is a matter of concern because the songs stay with you," Greenspan says.

Resistance Records, for example, is part of William Pierce’s National Alliance. Pierce, 71, author of The Turner Diaries, the book that inspired the acts of Timothy McVeigh — doesn’t listen to anything but classical music. But he recognizes that young people are drawn to loud rock and are likely to identify with rock bands. Greenspan explains how young people are recruited by Resistance Records and others: "They start as troubled kids who don’t fit in, who are from unstable homes, and they find "religion" and a cause. They’re susceptible to this kind of cult and can be nurtured."

Orange County used to be what Rubin describes as "a lily-white, Republican stronghold" but there are plenty of minorities there now. According to the ADL’s figures, Orange County is 35 percent Latino, and there are 70,000 Jews — about 2 percent of the population. Perhaps racist groups are growing because the change has happened so rapidly, or perhaps it’s because Orange County is so open to everyone. Whatever the reason, the Ku Klux Klan now has its headquarters there, as well as the Imperial Knights of America; the Institute for Historical Review, which moved there from Torrance; and the World Church of the Creator, an organization that preaches racial purity.

Greenspan says they’re nothing to worry about: "It’s a couple of people with a post office box in Newport Beach." The bigger worry, and more intangible, is the Internet. There’s no way of controlling or monitoring it, and no one wants to give up their privacy through legislation. So now, most of these neo-Nazis and white supremacists do all their recruiting and ranting not by leaflets, but by e-mail.

That’s the only way people hear about the Sunday shows going on at the Shack. There are no fliers, no publicity — it’s all done by e-mail and word of mouth. From Panzerfaust Records Web site, a review of a gig at the Shack describes one band’s set as "tighter than the grip a Jew has on his money."

Extreme Hatred’s Web site brags about beating up a gang of Mexicans, and quotes a band member as saying, "We have so much anger and hatred; we tend to write our songs about our everyday lives, and we mean what we say."