Tom Metzger
From Metapedia
Thomas Linton Metzger (born: April 9, 1938) is the founder of the White Aryan Resistance. Metzger has been incarcerated in Los Angeles County, California and Toronto, Ontario, and has been involved in several government inquiries and lawsuits. He has participated in race discussions and interviews with CNN and Telemundo, and has appeared in numerous documentaries about White nationalism.
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[edit] Early life
Metzger was born and raised in Indiana. He served in the U.S. Army from 1961 until 1964 when he moved to Southern California to work in the electronics industry. For a short time, he was a member of the John Birch Society and attended Anti-Communist luncheon meetings sponsored by the Douglas Aircraft Corporation.
Metzger served as a Barry Goldwater precinct worker in 1964, but by 1968 moved to Fallbrook, California and supported George C. Wallace for President. Metzger 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."
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, he 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." Also in 1979 he took Greg Withrow, of the White Student Union "under his wing," which later became the Aryan Youth Movement (AYM), for youth associated with White Aryan Resistance. He 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. He had changed his party registration from Republican to Democrat earlier in the year. The Democrats disavowed his candidacy, instead endorsing incumbent four-term Republican Clair Burgener. Metzger lost by over 200,000 votes in November to a several-term incumbent in a heavily Republican district.
In 1982 he sought the Democratic Party's U.S. Senatorial nomination, running against then-Governor Jerry Brown and author Gore Vidal. He received 3% of the vote.
[edit] 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. He 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, he 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 appearances in addition to hosting his own cable access show. In November 1988, his 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.
[edit] Civil lawsuit
The group was eventually bankrupted as the result of a civil lawsuit centered on its involvement in the 1988 murder of Mulugeta Seraw, an Ethiopian man who came to the United States to attend college. In 1988, white pride skinheads affiliated with WAR were convicted of killing Seraw and sent to prison. Kenneth Mieske said he and the two others killed Seraw "because of his race." Metzger declared that they did a "civic duty" by killing Seraw. Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a civil suit against him, arguing that WAR influenced Seraw's killers by encouraging their group East Side White Pride to commit violence.
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. The Metzgers' house was seized, and most of WAR's profits go to paying off the judgment.
[edit] Metzger now
Since the suit, WAR has never returned to being a true membership organization, and Metzger now advocates the "lone wolf" tactical concept. He speaks occasionally, traveling as far away as Japan. Metzger still puts out the WAR newsletter, and hosts a weekly radio talk show called Insurgent Radio from his home in Indiana.
[edit] Metzger on Barack Obama
“The corporations are running things now, so it’s not going to make much difference who's in there, but McCain would be much worse. He’s a warmonger. He’s a scary, scary person -- more dangerous than Bush. Obama, according to his book, Dreams Of My Father, is a racist and I have no problem with black racists. I’ve got the quote right here: ‘I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother’s white race.’ The problem with Obama is he’s being dishonest about his racial views. I’d respect him if he’d just come out and say, ‘Yeah, I’m a black racist.’ I don’t hate black people. I just think it’s in the best interest of the races to be separated as much as possible. See, I’m a leftist. I’m not a rightist. I hate the transnational corporations far more than any black person.” - Tom Metzger
[edit] External links
- www.resist.com Tom Metzger's website.
