Klanwatch Report Calls Skinheads ‘domestic Terrorists of the 1990s’

Racist Skinheads could be “the domestic terrorists of the 1990s,” according to a report on their activity by Klanwatch, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The Montgomery, Ala., center, a legal service whose Klanwatch Project monitors racist activity, says that the violent, racist Skinheads have contributed to an upsurge in hate crimes in this country that points to their being considered terrorists.

“Skinheads were considered the radical upstarts of the 1980s, but they are on their way to becoming the domestic terrorists of the 1990s,” Morris Dees, center director, said at a news conference last month announcing the report.

The 46-page report, “Hate Violence and White Supremacy: A Decade Review, 1980-1990,” includes sketches of the prominent leaders of the hate movement and a chronicle of attacks and threats during the 1980s. More than half the incidents took place in the last two years.

The report holds the Skinheads to be “the most violent group of white supremacists this country has seen in a quarter century.

“Unobstructed by conscience or caution, they hold hatred as their only ideology and violence as their only tactic,” it warns.

The report cautions that it is necessary to reverse the past’s “simplistic view that hate violence is merely a crime problem,” and embark on “the more difficult task of counteracting the message of hatred spread by while supremacists.”

The study indicates that Skinheads and other racist groups are strengthened by their new, easy access to mass media, such as cable television.

SUCCESS INSIDE PRISONS

Extremist groups have also had success inside prisons, where new hate-filled groups have burgeoned, even as the traditional Ku Klux Klan has waned, the report says.

The exhaustive report, including chilling descriptions of paramilitary training and assaults, identified 230 organized hate groups in the country, including Skinheads, various Klan factions, assorted neo-Nazis, the Christian Identity movement and the Posse Comitatus.

The West Coast, from Southern California to the northernmost part of Washington, abounds most in the concentration of hate groups.

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s most recent case is the first civil suit against Skinheads in connection with a racial killing. It has been filed on behalf of relatives of an Ethiopian man who was beaten to death in November 1988 in Portland by Skinheads.

The charges of wrongful death and racial intimidation are filed against Skinheads Kenneth Mieske and Kyle Brewster; against both Tom and John Metzger of Fallbrook, Calif., leaders of the White Aryan Resistance; and against WAR itself.

The Metzgers, who are father and son, were charged individually and as leaders of WAR.

The complaint, filed jointly with the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, claims the Skinheads were influenced in their behavior by the Metzgers.

It also details contacts made by the Metzgers and the Skinheads, who are members of a group calling itself East Side White Pride.