EXPLOITING HATRED

Michigan white supremacists keep
hatred of Jews atop their agenda

SUSAN WELCH

.

Special to The Jewish News

DEATH!

to the Traitors

It's time for old-fashioned

American Justice

t was unreal. I thought at
first they were shooting a movie. To
see them here — in Birmingham! It's
the last place you'd expect them to
be," said a local teenager, shocked at
the sight of 13 neo-Nazi
demonstrators this spring wearing
camouflage fatigues and boots and
sporting a variety of swastika-
emblazoned shields and placards.
They were advocating "White Power"
and identified themselves as the SS
Action Group of Dearborn Heights.
The group's appearance in one of
the area's most chic and well-
insulated communities was
deliberately provocative. "We expect
most people there to hate us," one
member of the group said later. "We
are keeping the idea alive. We want
to show them that we exist."
The demonstration was also tim-
ed to remind the public of the con-
tinued existence in Michigan of the
white power movement, despite the
April arrest and federal indictment of
14 leaders, including "Aryan na-
tionalist" Robert E. Miles, former
Grand Dragon of the Michigan Ku
Klux Klan, who was arrested at his
Cohoctah farm near Howell and
charged with conspiring to overthrow
the U.S. government. Indicted at the
same time were two other prominent
figures in the movement; Richard G.
Butler, founder of the Aryan Nations
organization and Louis R. Beam, its
ambassador at large.
Federal officials have called the
indictments a "major blow" to a
white-power movement whose face

24

FRIDAY, JULY 3, 1987

Communism
and
Race Mixing
are JEWISH

For information. writs:

•

• *

• ******* **

11. •111.• ••• ** *•*•******* **

*

S.S. ACTION GROUP
P.O. BOX 67
DEARBORN HGTS., MI. 48127

A handout from the SS Action'Group in Dearborn Heights, courtesy of the Anti•Defamation League of B'nai B'rith.

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

and character have changed in recent
years. Measured by the number of
card-carrying members, the Klan's in-
fluence would seem to have declined.
Ku Klux Klan membership has fallen
dramatically to an estimated
6,000-6,500 nationwide, according to
spokesmen of the Anti-Defamation
League of B'nai B'rith, Widely regard-
ed as the leading monitor of hate
group activity. Organized neo-Nazi
cadres, whose trappings and insignia
have never had more than a minimal
appeal in the U.S., are few, with total
national membership estimated to be
under 600.
But the decline of the Klan has
spawned a proliferation of smaller
groups, many of them showing an in-
creased capacity for violence and acts
of terrorism, says Richard Lobenthal,
Michigan director of the ADL. More
loosely organized, their memberships
overlapping and less rigidly defined,
these groups are harder to monitor.
Aware of the government's increased
determination to take the threat of
white-power terrorism seriously, they
often camouflage their activities,
operating undercover until they erupt
on to the public scene in violent
episodes like the 1984 murder of Alan
Berg, an outspoken Denver radio talk-
show host who frequently ridiculed
racists on the air and who was gunn-
ed down outside his Denver home.
The list of groups is legion. "But
basically, what we have now," says
Lobenthal, "is a four-pronged hate
movement, with a violence-prone
center, held together and supported