Throwing the book at racists

More than 15 years in the writing, it’s the culmination of a lifetime’s work documenting and analyzing the American political fringe that extends rightward from culture warrior Pat Buchanan to actual gunfighters, such as the 1980s domestic terrorist gang known as The Order.

Zeskind will discuss the book May 27 at the Plaza Library. (See below for details.)

The 644-page “Blood and Politics” is built on years of original research by Zeskind, sometimes with the help of undercover associates and/or defectors, who attended cow-pasture Klan rallies and pseudo-intellectual conferences at airport hotels, collecting an office full of files and records.

Besides serving as a source for countless journalists, Zeskind, 59, has written related articles over the years for Rolling Stone, The Forward and other leading magazines and newspapers. Back in 1998, he received a $295,000 MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” that allowed him to continue working on the book.

Leading characters
“Blood and Politics” highlights two figures Zeskind holds most responsible for supplying the movement’s intellectual and organizational heft: Willis Carto, founder of the Liberty Lobby think tank and its Spotlight newspaper, and William Pierce, author of “The Turner Diaries” (said to have inspired Oklahoma City bomber Tim McVeigh) and founder of the neo-Nazi National Alliance.

If Carto and Pierce were the behind-the-scenes powerhouses, the book also covers the more public faces of the racist subculture, including one-time Klansmen like peripatetic publicity hound David Duke and Stormfront’s Don Black. Black’s name made headlines just last week for being among 16 foreigners banned from Britain. (Ed note: The British list also includes Topeka, Kan., anti-gay hate monger Fred Phelps and his daughter, Shirley Phelps-Roper.)

Zeskind weaves a tapestry that includes everything from skinheads and Holocaust deniers to the esoteric legal theorists of the Posse Comitatus and militia movements to fringe political parties like the Populists.

He introduces the reader to colorful, if repellant, Midwestern characters such as Robert Millar, potentate of Oklahoma’s Elohim City, and James Ellison, leader of the Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord compound in southern Missouri.

KC readers will find lots of local and regional color in “Blood and Politics,” from its coverage of the 1980s farm-economy crisis to preparedness expos to radical meetings in state parks. (See excerpt below)

David Goldstein, the former executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Bureau/American Jewish Committee, to which Zeskind has served as an adviser for years, was pleased to see the book prominently displayed in a local store this week.

“It’s exciting that his book is being published so people universally will know the extent to which he is the most knowledgeable person in this field,” Goldstein said.

New and old ground
The book both breaks new ground and reminds readers of the litany of past crimes — actual and rhetorical — by white racists.

For instance, Zeskind’s book is the first to delineate the particularly peculiar “seedline” doctrine within the already peculiar Christian Identity philosophy that undergirds much racist mayhem. “One seeders” believe that today’s Jews are descendants of the biblical Esau, and that Jacob-Israel became the genetic father of the white Anglo-Saxons. “Two seeders” believe that Adam and the serpent both impregnated Eve, and thus Jews are descendants of the devil himself through Cain.

In addition, Zeskind reminds us that, apart from McVeigh, domestic terrorists like abortion-clinic bomber Eric Rudolph and the Order gang members who killed Denver radio talk-show host Alan Berg were influenced by this strain of thought.

In addition to famous, civil-rights-era Klan victims like Emmett Till and Goodman-Chaney-Schwerner, the book cites others who have died more recently at the hands of self-styled warriors for a white, Christian America: abortion doctors David Gunn and Barnett Slepian and Missouri Highway Patrolman Jimmie Linegar, to name a few.

Zeskind’s book argues that “vanguardists” like Pierce and “mainstreamers” like Carto and Duke are part of a single continuum of thought that laps up against the farthest-right fringe of the Republican Party, even today, in the person of Buchanan.

Zeskind writes that “during the first years of the 21st century, almost all the growth in the white nationalist world occurred inside the anti-immigrant movement.”

And while the Klan may be defunct and Duke a figure of ridicule, Zeskind noted in an interview last week that the authorities have already brought charges against a neo-Nazi cell whose members allegedly plotted to harm the nation’s first non-white president. In other words, the phenomenon remains dangerous and is unlikely to go away.

The wheel of history
Zeskind concludes the book with a prediction that “the next generation of activists will seek to establish a white nation-state, with definable economic, political and racial borders, out of the wreckage they hope to create of the United States.”

Zeskind told The Chronicle he knows their ideas about race-based enclaves, for instance, sound far-fetched, but the radicals he has made a career of studying actually believe they can turn the wheel of history in their direction.

“The thing that makes it believable for them is that they look back at American history and say ‘This was true once, we can make it true again.’ … It’s the same phenomenon that allowed Hitler to think of a Europe without Jewish citizenship,” Zeskind said. “Prior to the Enlightenment, the church ran the society, and we (Jews) weren’t a part of it. That’s the basis on which they can draw.

“And in the case of the United States, it becomes an imperative, rather than a look back. They are aiming at the future.

They believe that a multi-racial society cannot hold together; that there will be race war; and they are positioning themselves for the day that … white people become a minority in a nation of minorities. Then their day will be upon them, and they can carve up the place.

“There was a civil war in this country once, and it was over white supremacy. It’s just that the good guys won that one.”

An excerpt from the book
“Sept 25, 1982 …. At the Kansas City Expo, a table for a group calling itself the Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord demonstrated the case in point. Two men in fatigues stood at an exhibition display with only a couple of books and spare parts for assault rifles on it. A self-published manual gave 175 pages of practical advice on buying and shooting guns, knife fighting, home defense, and nuclear bomb shelters. ‘A double-edged knife is designed for killing,’ the text helpfully suggested. ‘If you believe you will use your knife as a weapon, we suggest you select a double-edged blade.’

“The books were for sale, but the gear was just for display. The two men were actually marketing a paramilitary training course taught back at their compound deep in the recesses of the Ozark Mountains. They had built an elaborate collection of wooden and stone structures called Silhouette City. For a fee, white (Christian) men could shoot machine guns at pop-up figures, knock down doors and battle around mock buildings while tires burned to simulate urban riots. Lessons included knife fighting and hand-to-hand combat too. In Kansas City that day, the Covenant group … tried to ladle some of that commercial gravy into its own small boat, just as it had been doing at gun shows around the Midwest.”

— Excerpt from Chapter 7, “Survivalism Meets a Subcultural ‘Christian Identity’ ”

Book talk May 27
Leonard Zeskind will discuss his new book, “Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream,” at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 27, at the Plaza Library, 4801 Main St. Call (816) 701-3407 for reservations. Books will be available for sale, courtesy of Barnes and Noble.

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