"Many American Right-Wing Racial Extremists Applaud Sept. 11 Attacks



By JIM NESBITT c.2001 Newhouse News Service 



With the towers of the World Trade Center fatally damaged but still standing, a leader in one of the many splinter groups of the Far Right fringe of American politics posted a Web site message praising the "Islamic freedom fighters" and hoping the terrorist attacks were the first shots in a racial holy war that would topple the U.S. government.



"May the WAR be started," wrote August Kreis, webmaster of the neo-Nazi Sheriff's Posse Comitatus group, based in Ulysses, Pa. "DEATH to His (God's) enemies, may the World Trade Center BURN TO THE GROUND! ... We can blame no others than ourselves for our problems due to the fact that we allow ... Satan's children, called jews today, to have dominion over our lives."



While many Americans are swept up in the patriotic fervor that has followed the Sept. 11 jetliner assaults on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, the loose and fractious network of neo-Nazis, skinheads, Klansmen, Christian patriots, neo-Confederates and white separatists have had a far different reaction. In newsgroup postings, Web site articles and Internet radio broadcasts,they have expressed everything from outright admiration for the Arab terrorists to more measured communiques. The latter condemn the terrorists, but blame the attacks on an American foreign policy that unabashedly backs Israel, calling for an "America First" shift toward isolationism.



The most hardcore response comes from groups that see themselves at war with the U.S. government, which they have dubbed the Zionist Occupation Government, or ZOG. Despite their racial and religious beliefs, they express solidarity with anyone who attacks what they see as the common enemy.



It is a sign of a pronounced generational shift of beliefs in the radical American Right and increased willingness to monitor international events to find philosophical allies in groups that an earlier wave of racists dismissed as "mud people."



War against ZOG -- the U.S. government -- is the ultimate target of America's racial revolutionaries and overrides all other considerations. ZOG is a tagline from "The Turner Diaries," a novel of racist revolution by neo-Nazi National Alliance leader William Pierce that has become a guidebook for many racists and anti-government zealots, including executed Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.



In a bulletin board message documented by KlanWatch, the investigative arm of the civil rights watchdog group, the Southern Poverty Law Center, National Alliance deputy Billy Roper wrote: "The enemy of our enemy is, for now at least, our friends. We may not want them marrying our daughter, just as they would not want us marrying theirs. We may not want them in our societies, just as they would not want us in theirs. But anyone who is willing to drive a plane into a building to kill jews is alright by me. I wish our members had half as much testicular fortitude."



On his daily Web site bulletin board, White Aryan Resistance (WAR) leader Tom Metzger wrote: "This operation took some long-term planning, and, throughout the entire time, these soldiers were aware that their lives would be sacrificed for their cause. If an Aryan wants an example of `Victory or Valhalla,' look no further."



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