Holding Terrorists Accountable?

Members of his terrorist organization and network have killedAmericans, on American soil. Those inspired by his message have engaged in amass atrocity: blowing innocent people out of their offices as the buildingwhere they worked crumbled to the ground.

He himself has called for total war against the enemy in aneffort to "cleanse" the United States. He has said that althoughinnocent people will die in such an effort, "it is necessary, and becauseit is necessary, it is good." Seven years ago he warned of potentialpending attacks when he wrote: "New Yorkers who work in tall officebuildings--anything close to the size of the World Trade Center--might considerwearing hardhats to work..."

Osama bin Laden? Not even close. And unlike bin Laden, who isnow a marked man despite little concrete evidence linking him to the attacks ofSeptember 11th, this individual has not been targeted for elimination by theUnited States government. No one is speaking of "bringing him tojustice," or holding him accountable for the actions attributable to hisassociates and devotees.

And unlike bin Laden, whose whereabouts are unknown, the addressof the person about whom I speak is well known. He is not in hiding, anddoesn’t move around. He’s so easy to find that 60 Minutes’ Mike Wallacesimply sauntered up to his home a couple of years ago and had a chat with him.His phone number is (304) 653-4600.

His name is William Pierce, and he lives in Mill Point, WestVirginia, with a P.O. Box at the post office in nearby Hillsboro. He is alongtime neo-Nazi who calls Hitler the "greatest man of our era" andadvocates the liquidation of all non-whites in the U.S.

His novel, The Turner Diaries (written under a pseudonym)apparently served as the inspiration for Timothy McVeigh’s attack on theMurrah Building in Oklahoma City, much the way we are told Osama bin Laden’swords have inspired Islamic terrorism, even if he is not directly involved inthe planning process.

In Pierce’s book, white "patriots" blow up a federalbuilding using the same materials as those used by McVeigh, packed in a trucklike the one McVeigh used, at the same time of day as the one exploded byMcVeigh. They then launch a race war, slaughtering non-whites,race-"mixers," gays, lesbians and Jews, before dropping nuclearweapons on Israel.

McVeigh was, according to former soldiers who served with him inthe Persian Gulf, obsessed with the book, and inspired by its author. In thedays before the bombing he sent clippings of the book to his sister, explainingthat "something big" was going to happen, and when arrested had copiesof Turner Diaries’ passages in his car.

Over the years, other followers of Pierce and members of hisgroup, the National Alliance, have engaged in armed robberies, shootouts withlaw enforcement, and murders in at least a half dozen states. They have plottedto commit mass murder in multiple bombings, foiled only by premature detonationof the devices in question.

The Order--a neo-Nazi gang that committed a series of robberiesand killed Denver radio talk show host Alan Berg in 1984--was led by Alliancemembers, including Robert Matthews who left Pierce $50,000 in life insurancebenefits after his death during a shootout with the FBI.

Pierce’s weekly radio broadcasts regularly call for theelimination of anyone who isn’t white, and his group encourages members toraid military bases in search of weapons and ammunition. Yet no one is callingfor him to be brought in "dead or alive" as President Bush recentlydid regarding bin Laden.

While President Bush and media pundits warn of bin-Laden’sassociates "living among us," the National Alliance has at least 16active cells nationwide, engaged in activity in at least 26 states, a membershiphovering around 1,000, and thousands more listening to their shortwave radiobroadcasts and reading the materials on their website.

On those broadcasts and the website, readers and listeners cansee and hear Pierce call for "a racially clean area of the earth for thedevelopment of our people," with "no non-whites in our livingspace." They can hear him speak of the mass slaughter that he terms the"final cleansing," and the need to eliminate all Jews and race"traitors." For these latter groups he says, "we must hunt themdown and get rid of them."

On August 15th of this year, Pierce broadcast the followingmessage: "We really have become too civilized and have forgotten one ofMother Nature's most basic rules: Two different types of animal cannotpermanently occupy exactly the same ecological niche. One eventually must drivethe other into extinction..."

"We must have exclusive possession of those portions ofthis planet which constitute suitable habitat for us...in order to obtain andmaintain that exclusive possession, we must be prepared to kill, to annihilate,any and all competitors."

But despite the open support for mass murder, and despite theactual violence carried out by Alliance members and Pierce acolytes over thepast two decades, few people are aware of this neo-Nazi terror network, nor doesthe President seem concerned about it.

One gets the impression that in the eyes of Americanofficialdom, some terrorists pose a threat to the country and others don’t.Some terrorist actions result in calls for racial or ethnic profiling of those"fitting the description" and others don’t.

After all, when have white guys ever been profiled just becausesome white guys like McVeigh, or Pierce, or others of their ilk committedatrocities, advocated murder, and engaged in criminal activity? The answer isnever, of course.

Profiling and war are things we offer to those who lookdifferent from us, speak differently than us, and are easy to identify withoutinconveniencing the dominant majority. Arabs, Muslims, and people of colorgenerally, make easy targets. Not so white guys. Not so William Pierce.

And homegrown white terrorists can’t be as effectively used tojustify huge military buildups, or new powers for the CIA, as a perceivedforeign threat can. For an Administration desperately in need of an enemy tojustify its desire for massive new military expenditures, only the dark,dangerous image of the outsider will do.

As for Pierce, like bin Laden, he has proclaimed his innocence.Regarding the Oklahoma City bombing, he insists he had nothing to do with it.But also like bin Laden, he has not only failed to condemn the action othershave sought to pin on him, but indeed he has all but praised it outright. AboutMcVeigh, Pierce says:

"He did what he did for an impersonal reason, for anideal...he has acted as a man of principle should act...He wanted to send thegovernment a message that its behavior would not be tolerated. And part of thatmessage would be the killing of the government's secret police agents--FBI andATF--who worked in the building."

"The fact that his bomb would kill not only secret policeagents but also civilians, including the 19 children in the day-care center, wasregrettable but unavoidable: collateral damage...however regrettable the killingof innocent civilians in that bombing, Timothy McVeigh is no monster. He is asoldier, and what he did was based on principle."

When Muslim fundamentalists say things like this about terrorismcarried out by their associates, we term it "giving aid and comfort"to the enemy, or "supporting terrorism." With Pierce, the samerhetoric is ignored, no matter what his loyal readers and listeners might do.

And while the media was quick to broadcast footage of selectPalestinians celebrating in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks, theysaid nothing about the spirited discussions on National Alliance message boards,where members of the group were expressing elation at the day’s events.

Within minutes of the World Trade Center’s collapse, Alliancemembers were logging on to the group’s chat room boards to say things like:"the World Trade Centers (and) the Pentagon have had their noses removedfrom Jewish rectums and smothered in the heap of shit they created! I’m surelike me you are all jumping out of your skin with excitement right now!"

Or this, from a member in New York at the time of the attacks:

"...there is extreme chaos everywhere. Many people arehelpless and in a state of panic. I am happy to have a reservoir of deepknowledge about this from all I have learned from the alliance...I AM STRONG,PREPARED AND IN CONTROL!!!"

Shortly after the attack, Billy Roper, the Deputy MembershipCoordinator for the Alliance wrote: "the enemy of our enemy is, for now atleast, our friends...we may not want them marrying our daughters...but anyonewho is willing to drive a plane into a building to kill Jews is alright by me. Iwish our members had half as much testicular fortitude."

Beyond merely pointing out that there are indeed white folksevery bit as fanatical and dangerous as the members of al-Qaeda, and that indeedsome of those were pleased with the most recent terrorist attacks on America,another point should be made.

If, as is likely, the renewed emphasis on "Arabterrorism" or "Muslim extremism" results in heightened suspicionand profiling of those who are Arab, Muslim, or appear to be, the result may bethat America will let down its guard to these other kinds of dangers. The TimMcVeighs and followers of Bill Pierce will fly below the radar of the nation’snew security apparatus. No one will be looking for them.

This is not to say that such groups should literally be bombed,their members arrested, and those who look like them profiled. Just as suchactions are ineffective and overbroad and authoritarian when applied to presumedArab terrorists, so too would they be when applied to white supremacists.

But the inconsistency is worth noting, as is the danger thatcould logically flow from that inconsistency. If a member of the NationalAlliance, or some other group seeking to foment a race war wanted to commit amajor terrorist attack, now would be the time to do it, as they would likelyevade suspicion and detection, so busy are folks looking for danger with darkskin, long beards and a turban.

It is in this sense that any kind of racial, ethnic, national orreligious profiling is an utter waste of time, and potentially capable ofincreasing the risks to innocent people, not to mention ethically unjust.

Terrorism has many faces, more than a few of which are white,just like those of most of the folks calling for war against Afghanistan. Andyet never have they called for war against West Virginia. Nor did they call forwar against Idaho when that state played host to the Aryan Nation’s compound:a place that had nurtured and inspired Buford Furrow, the individual who shot upa Jewish Community Center in Los Angeles and killed a Filipino postman two yearsago.

So when you hear the President speak of "bringing theterrorists to justice or bringing justice to the terrorists," just rememberthat although all terrorists are equal in the eyes of the law, some are moreequal than others.

(Tim Wise is an antiracist activist, writer and lecturer. Hecan be reached at tjwise@mindspring.com.By arrangement with Znet)