RAHOWA! . . . . Racial Holy War!
In December of 2003, the Montana Human Rights Network was contacted by a disgruntled member of the WCOTC. He said he was leaving the racist movement and had access to internal Church documents and a large supply of books the Church sold to support itself. He wanted to meet with the Network staff.
The Church of the Creator came screaming onto the national stage in 1999 when Ben Smith went on a shooting spree in Illinois, killing two people and wounding nine. His motive? Plain and simple, hate. Smith was a dedicated follower of the WCOTC. He was imbued with the racist doctrine espoused by the Church’s founder Ben Klassen. Though he is dead now, Klassen’s books have served to indoctrinate WCOTC followers across the country.
Unfortunately, Montana has had more than its share of WCOTC activity. Rev Rudy Stanko formed a splinter group of the Church when he moved to Billings in the early 1990s and began selling Klassen’s books through the mail. In Western Montana, Rev. Slim Deardorf began hosting the annual convention of the WCTOC every summer in Superior. Over the years WCOTC has disseminated literature in communities across the state in a effort to recruit new members.
In 2000 the national leader of WCOTC, Matt Hale, announced that he planned to move to Montana and practice law. Hale had been in Montana numerous times for the national meeting in Superior. The Montana Bar Associaition denied his application to sit for the Bar Exam. More recently, he was convicted of conspiring to murder a federal judge. He is currently serving a 40 year sentence in federal prison.
WCOTC has fallen on hard times due to Hale’s imprisonment and law enforcement response to the criminal activities of the group. Over the years the group has grown and collapsed several times over. Klassen’s books have always provided the ideological glue which held this small dedicated group of activists together. More importantly, the books have provided the group a consistent source of revenue for years. They are advertised in racist publications across the country for $10.00 apiece.
When the Network was contacted by the "Hasta Primus," or second in command, of the Northwest COTC, it was very interested in debriefing the individual and finding out what documents he was willing to part with. In addition to meeting with the Network, he agreed to meet with law enforcement and the media to talk about the group’s activities here in Montana. He also agreed to sell the Network the entire contents of a storage unit in Superior for a small fee.
After getting the combination to a storage unit from the defector and checking in with local police, Network staff immediately took two pickup trucks and a rented U-Haul to a remote area of northwest Montana. After two hours, the storage unit was empty and the Network had the largest known stock pile of WCOTC books. Given that each book sells for somewhere around $10, this represented about $40,000 in potential earnings for WCOTC to support proselytizing. The Network’s initial interest in the books was removing them from circulation and denying the WCOTC the income the books provided.
But now the Network had a nagging problem: what to do with the materials? Burning the books or destroying them seemed inconsistent for a group which espouses democratic values. A couple hundred books went to researchers, archivists and law enforcement personnel who monitor right wing groups. But the Network still had thousands of volumes sitting in its offices.
The book dilemma became a frequent topic of discussion among the staff in the office. The Network has been one of the few groups in the Northwest to view the threat of white supremacist groups in the context of broad democratic values, processes and institutions. The Network understands the threat of hate groups to be their ability to influence the body politic by establishing the parameters of acceptable political discourse. They speak the unspeakable, test market messages and innovate new communication strategies. And, if left free from challenge, they have the ability to move and shape mainstream political debate.
Perhaps there is no better example than David Duke. In the 1970’s Duke was the prototypical race-baiting extremist complete, with the white robe and hood of the Ku Klux Klan. Over the years Duke transformed himself into a coat-and-tie racist entering the mainstream through the political process at various levels and finding a remarkable level of success in Louisiana, not only among disaffected whites but also among educated professional people as well. This success occurred despite the fact that Duke’s ties to hard core racist groups were well documented and thoroughly exposed in the campaigns.
Many observers understood Duke’s success to be the result of a smart and smarmy politician who was really a curiosity in the political process. That is certainly true. But David Duke’s political agenda in the 1970s was ending affirmative action, implementing "immigration reform," and dismantling civil rights law. During the thirty years of David Duke’s bizarre career as a racist organizer and politician, the political center shifted and the ideas that Duke advocated from the fringes in the 1970s steadily migrated to the mainstream of political debate.
Duke and his ilk are able to enjoy some level of success because of unresolved issues at the core of American Democracy. First and foremost is the issue of race. The founders struggled with the race issue and slavery at the formation of the country and left it unresolved in order to form the Union. Again in the mid 19th Century, race was a central feature in the conflict over federalism and the form and structure of American government. Though the slavery issue appeared to be resolved with the victory of Union forces, the emergence of Jim Crow re-established the oppression which preceded the Civil War. Then again in the 1950s and 1960s the civil rights movement thrust the issue of race into the political spotlight and achieved many changes in law to guarantee equality. But somehow the Voting Rights Act, The Civil Rights Act of 1964, The Fair Housing Act, and other important civil rights legislation ultimately failed to deliver their promise full equality. While progress has been real and dramatic, the agonized faces of the victims of Hurricane Katrina remind us that race too often places people outside the safety and security of the American ideal.
The race issue is about citizenship. The controversy is really about who participates, who has rights, and who does not. The core concept of our egalitarian democracy is that everyone gets to participate, but the ideal has been far from realized and the controversy has not limited itself to race. The struggle of women for equality in American democracy is similar in many ways. And while great progress has been made, women still earn 60 cents on the dollar. The gay rights struggle also revolves around whether or not sexual minorities have the right to full participation in society without qualifying conditions or exceptions.
Hate groups would not be able to exist in any form if the issue of citizenship were settled. It is not. Hate groups understand that and trade upon it. They pull it from our collective subconscious, give it form, substance, and a voice. And every time the issue surfaces in the mainstream, they are there to cast their spin, reach into the unresolved resentment harbored by many in society, and organize those people for action.
This is the context in which the staff of the Network was trying to decide what to do with the books. It took a child of a staff member to suggest using the books as a medium to create art. At first the suggestion was dismissed, but as staff discussed the books they kept returning to the idea. The opportunity to reach people in a different way and to involve artists in presenting issues raised by hate groups, bigotry, and intolerance became more and more exciting. The Network began seeking project partners.
Summary: MHRN seeks support for a long-term project which incorporates art into its work advocating for social justice and opposing bigotry and intolerance. Specifically, MHRN will use the art project to:
Goals:
1. Expand its public education efforts using art as a medium to create awareness about public support for social justice issues and the dangers of racism and anti-Semitism.
2. Expand its base of support by reaching into new constituency groups which are currently involved in activities surrounding and supporting the arts.
3. Provide consistent program options for its local, community-based affiliate groups to use the arts as a vehicle for promoting social justice.
4. Work with coalition partners to encourage their use of the arts as a vehicle for conducting community education and proactive social change.
5. Learn from institutions and individuals who are working in the arts community about the concepts and principles of interpreting and using art to create understanding and bridge cultural differences.