Three human rights organizations have asked a federal appeals court here to rule against granting tax exempt status to a white supremacist Nazi group that advocates race extermination.
In an amici curiae (friends-of-the-court) brief filed last week, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, the American Jewish Congress and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People asserted that the Virginia-based National Alliance is not entitled to tax exemption because it is not an “educational and charitable” organization as it claims.
The basic issue, the three organizations said, is whether advocating racial hatred and the extermination of Jews and blacks constitute a charitable or educational activity.
The National Alliance was denied tax exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service in 1978 because the IRS found that the Alliance’s publications did not meet the agency’s definition of “educational” according to the IRS code.
The Nazi group, claiming that its exercise of free speech automatically qualified it as “charitable” and “educational,” appealed the IRS ruling in federal district court in Washington, D.C. The court ruled last May that the IRS regulation interpreting the “educational” standard of its rule was too vague and sent the case back to the IRS for further proceedings.
BACKGROUND OF THE CASE
Both the National Alliance and the federal government appealed the ruling in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The National Alliance’s appeal was based on its failure to get a declaratory judgment of tax exempt status. The federal government appealed because it did not receive a summary judgment refusing tax-exemption to the National Alliance.
In their brief, the ADL, the AJCongress and the NAACP argued that whatever standard is employed under the IRS rule to define “charitable” and “educational” activities, the National Alliance clearly fails that test.
The human rights organizations pointed out that the National Alliance’s main activity is the publication and distribution of a monthly newspaper called “Attack” and a bulletin title “Action,” and the sale of books and pamphlets.
VIEWS AND IDEOLOGY CITED
Among the views and ideology propounded are the following:
“there will be a worldwide pogram” against Jews; “oceans of blood” are the “only way to solve a biological problem when it comes down to the final implementation”; “far better the loss of a few million lives in a race war than the loss of everything through continued assimilation and miscegenation”; Martin Luther King was “a front man for the Reds;” and “Europe” lost World War II because “the Germans just weren’t brutal enough.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
