TOM METZGER

'Tom Metzger' (born April 1938) is the founder of the White Aryan Resistance. Metzger has been incarcerated in Los Angeles County, California and Toronto, Canada, and has been involved in several government inquiries and lawsuits. He has participated in race discussions and interviews with CNN and Telemundo, as well as appearing in numerous documentaries about the White Power movement.

Contents

Early life

White Aryan Resistance

Post Oregon trial

Footnotes

External links

Early life

Metzger was born and raised in Indiana. ^[1] He served in the U.S. Army from 1961 until 1964 when moved to Southern California to work in the electronics industry.¹ For a short time, Metzger was a member of the John Birch Society and attended Anti-Communist luncheon meetings sponsored by the Douglas Aircraft Corporation.¹
Metzger served as a Barry Goldwater precinct worker in 1964, but by 1968 Metzger moved to Fallbrook, California and supported George C. Wallace for President.¹ Meztger stopped paying taxes in the 1970s and by 1972 his tax protest over the Vietnam War destroyed his thriving television business but introduced him to other tax protesters who, he said, were "atheist racists, Christian Identity racists, Nazis, all kinds of people."¹
During the 1970s he joined the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which was led by David Duke eventually becoming the Grand Dragon for the State of California. In summer 1979, Metzger organized a patrol to capture illegal Mexican immigrants south of Fallbrook, California. Metzger's Klan organization also had a security force which was involved in confrontations with anti-Klan protesters. Metzger's branch of the Klan split with Duke's organization in 1980 to form the "California Knights of the Ku Klux Klan."^[2] Metzger was also a minister in the Christian Identity movement.
In 1980, Metzger won the Democratic Party nomination for the U.S. House of Representatives with over 40,000 votes in a San Diego-area district.^[3] Metzger had changed his party registration from Republican to Democrat earlier in the year. The Democrats disavowed Metzger's candidacy, instead endorsing incumbent four-term Republican Clair Burgener.^[4] Metzger lost by over 200,000 votes in November to a several-term incumbent in a heavily Republican district.

White Aryan Resistance

Main articles: White Aryan Resistance

Metzger left the Klan after the election and formed the "White American Political Association" in order to promote "pro-White" candidates for office. Metzger ran for the United States Senate in 1982, winning almost 76,000 votes (and 2.8% of the vote) in the Democratic Party Primary. In 1983, Metzger changed the name of his group to "White Aryan Resistance" (WAR). WAR worked to recruit members in prisons, and rejected Christianity as a form of Judaism.
Metzger made numerous television appearences in addition to hosting his own cable access show. In November 1988, Metzger's son appeared on an episode of the Geraldo Rivera show in which a brawl broke out and Rivera's nose was broken after a chair was thrown at him.^[5]
The group was bankrupted as the result of a civil lawsuit centered on its involvement in the 1988 violent murder of Mulugeta Seraw, an Ethiopian man who came to the United States to attend college. In 1988, racist skinheads were convicted of killing Seraw and sent to prison. Metzger said the skinheads did a "civic duty" by killing Seraw.^[6] Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a civil suit against Metzger, arguing that WAR influenced Seraw's killers by encouraging their group East Side White Pride to commit violence.^[7][8]
At the trial, WAR national vice president Dave Mazzella testified how the Metzgers instructed WAR members to commit violence against minorities. Tom and John Metzger were found civilly liable under the doctrine of vicarious liability, in which one can be liable for a tort committed by a subordinate or other person taking instructions. The jury returned the largest civil verdict in Oregon history at the time—$12.5 million—against Metzger and WAR.^[9] The Metzgers' house was seized, and most of WAR's profits go to paying off the judgment. Subsequently, WAR gained more supporters including members of the US military.^[10]

Post Oregon trial

After losing the trial Metzger's home was sold to Seraw's estate for $121,500, and Metzger was allowed to keep $45,000 under California's Homestead Act.^[11] The SPLC and ADL came up with $45,000 need to pay Meztger for the home.¹¹ Metzger was warned that any damage left to the house would result in a lawsuit, and while he left the home a "mess" with cracked windows the home was left without serious damage.¹¹ As a result of the sale of his home Metzger was forced to move into an apartment and collect welfare.¹¹
In May 1991, Metzger had to agree to stop selling T-shirts of Bart Simpson in a Nazi uniform with the words "Pure Nazi Dude" and "Total Nazi Dude".^[12] Metzger was convicted in 1991 of burning a cross in 1983, and sentenced to six months in prison and 300 hours community service working with minorities.^[13] Metzger was released from prison 46 days into his sentence to be with his critically ill wife, who died after Metzger's home was seized.^[14] In 1992, Metzger and his son violated a court order not to leave the country and entered Canada to speak to the Heritage Front. Soon afterwards, he was arrested for violating Canadian immigration laws by entering the country to "promote racial hatred".^[15] He was summoned at US Treasury Department inquiries concerning racist messages on back side of fake dollar bills.
Metzger also in negotiations with the Black Panthers and Louis Farrakhan as well as race discussions in Tokyo twice (1993 and 1999).
Metzger appeared on a 2003 documentary by British social commentator Louis Theroux, titled "Louis and the Nazis". During the course of the film, Theroux shows that much of Metzger's importance may actually be inflated and romanticized by Metzger himself and his supporters. At one point the crew follows Metzger to a rally at which he is to be the key note speaker, but the rally turns out to be a gathering in the back yard of a local supporter. Later in the film, Theroux joins Metzger and his agent on a trip to Mexico, where Metzger supposedly has a strong following and is considered an "ambassador," although the trip descends into what Theroux describes as a "pub crawl." Towards the end of the film Metzger is seen going to his day job, as a television repairman. Metzger is then shown picking up a broken television from a customer who he considers a friend, despite the fact that the man is Peruvian.
In recent years, Metzger has advocated the "lone wolf" method of organization for white nationalist groups, which states that a person should not outwardly display his/her racist ideology, but must act covertly.^[16] Metzger hosts a weekly radio talk show called ''Insurgent Radio'', on the Internet-based Turner Radio Network (not affiliated with the Turner Broadcasting System) in Temecula, California.
Metzger still makes payments to Seraw's family.^[17]

Footnotes

'Further reading'

★ Morris Dees. ''Hate on Trial: The Case Against America's Most Dangerous Neo-Nazi''. Villard, (February 23, 1993) ISBN 067940614X (280 pages)^[18]

★ Elinor Langer. ''A Hundred Little Hitlers: The Death of a Black Man, the Trial of a White Racist, and the Rise of the Neo-Nazi Movement in America.'' New York: Henry Holt, 2003. ISBN 0-8050-5098-1

1. Extremist Finds Cable TV is Forum for Right-wing Views
2. "The Real David Duke," Newsweek, November 18, 1991, Pg. 24
3. Clair Burgener dies at 84
4. Democrats Disavow Nominee From Klan
5. Racist Violence
6. Making War on WAR
7. Sending a .5 Million Message to a Hate Group
8. Lawyer makes racists pay
9. Review/Television; Behind the Hate, With Bill Moyers
10. All You Need Is Hate
11. Metzger Leaves Former Home a Mess, bu its undamaged page f3
12. "Bart Used by Extremists, "The Washington Times" May 13, 1993
13. Supremacist Gets 6 Months in Cross Burning
14. "Klan leader let out of jail to be with critically ill wife," ''The Gazette'' (Montreal, Quebec), February 22, 1992
15. "White Aryan leaders deported Jewish groups applaud decision," ''The Globe and Mail'' July 3, 1992
16. Tom Metzger/White Aryan Resistance
17. Hate-crime case award will be hard to collect, experts say
18. The High Price of Hate

External links

★ White Aryan Resistance - WAR official site

★ Tom Metzger list on Southern Poverty Law Center's "40 to watch"

★ Tom Metzger profiled by the Anti-Defamation League