In 1998 extremist groups in the US continued building their presence on the
Internet, which now has hundreds of sites promoting a variety of anti-Semitic
and racist philosophies. A 2.5 percent rise in anti-Semitic incidents was
reported to the ADL in 1998 after a three-year decline. A survey conducted
by the ADL and released in late 1998 revealed that the number of Americans
holding anti-Semitic views had dropped from 20 to 12 percent since 1992. A
number of right-wing extremists were convicted in 1998 of racially-motivated
crimes.

THE JEWISH COMMUNITY
The Jewish community in the United States today numbers nearly 5.6 million,
out of a total population of 270 million. Since 1918 American Jews have
constituted the largest concentration of Jews in the world. Jews presently
make up approximately 2.3 percent of the US population. Jews of East
European origin account for the great majority of American Jewry, and the
United States is also home to the largest number of Holocaust survivors
outside of Israel.
The bulk of American Jewry live in several large cities and their environs,
including New York (1.9 million), Los Angeles (almost 600,000) Miami
(500,000), and Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia and Baltimore-Washington (about
250,000 each), San Francisco (200,000) and Detroit (100,000). Jews live in
other cities and towns across the length and breadth of the United States.
There are more ultra-Orthodox Jews in the United States than in any country
except Israel. In recent years intermarriage has reached record levels and
today accounts for more than 50% of all unions involving a Jewish partner.
Leading national Jewish organizations include the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee (AIPAC), American Jewish Committee, American Jewish
Congress, American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Anti-Defamation
League (ADL), B'nai B'rith, Council of Jewish Federations, Hadassah, Zionist
Organization of America (ZOA), Jewish War Veterans (JWV) and many other
religious, fraternal and Zionist groups. The Conference of Presidents of Major
American Organizations acts as the foreign policy umbrella group for 48
leading associations. The United Jewish Appeal, the primary fund-raising/
social service group, is regarded as one of the most outstanding
philanthropic organizations in the entire country.
The United States is the most significant center of Jewish scholarship and
research outside of Israel. Most major universities feature courses, if not
chairs or even faculties, of Jewish studies, and there are several rabbinical
seminaries representing the major streams of Judaism in the United States.
There are also Jewish schools on every level and of every type. There is an
active Jewish press and almost every community with a large Jewish
population supports its own English-language weekly newspaper.

EXTREMIST ORGANIZATIONS AND GROUPS
Organized hate groups such as the various Ku Klux Klan factions, neo-Nazi
organizations and "Identity" churches remain unremitting sources of anti-Jewish
hostility, while much smaller extremist groups operating on the
Internet succeed in reaching an audience that is totally disproportionate to
their size. While most anti-Semitic activity in the US is limited to hate
propaganda, there are instances of violence and vandalism perpetrated by
members of extremist organizations and their associates.
Among the various organized extremist groups operating in the US today,
the National Alliance is the most dangerous. Led by veteran anti-Semite
and racist William Pierce, this neo-Nazi organization is also the most active,
with sixteen cells from coast to coast and a growing membership of over one
thousand. Several thousand additional Americans listen to its radio
broadcasts and browse its Internet site. The National Alliance's weekly half-hour
American Dissident Voices (ADV) radio broadcasts, in which Pierce
attacks blacks, Jews and other minorities, appear on the group's website on
the day of the broadcast. National Alliance members also operate over
twenty telephone hotlines across the country which serve as the
organization's propaganda centers.
Even more disturbing is the fact that some National Alliance leaders
instruct their members to keep guns and ammunition. National Alliance
members have been involved in plotting violent crimes and, in some cases,
the National Alliance's racist propaganda appears to have inspired others to
carry out robberies, bombings and even murder. In May 1998, police charged
several National Alliance members with allegedly planning to detonate pipe
bombs across central Florida as a diversion for bank robberies.
Two months earlier, federal authorities apparently thwarted a plot by an
East St. Louis, Illinois group, which modeled itself on The Order, the
infamous domestic terrorist gang of the 1980s. The so-called New Order,
was reportedly inspired by William Pierce's The Turner Diaries, which
depicts a race war ending with an Aryan takeover of the world. Officials
say the men had been plotting to bomb Jewish institutions and federal
targets.
Aryan Nations, a paramilitary neo-Nazi group, was re-organized in 1998.
After leading some of the group's few hundred followers in its annual march
through the streets of Coeur D'Alene, Idaho, Richard Butler, the 80-year-old
head of Aryan Nations, named Neuman Britton as his successor. Britton, 72,
a long-time member of Aryan Nations and chaplain of Butler's Church of
Jesus Christ Christian, preaches the pseudo-theological "Identity" philosophy
that Anglo-Saxons, not Jews, are the biblical Chosen People, that non-whites
are "mud people" on the level of animals, and that Jews are the "children of
Satan." In 1998 Aryan Nations received a significant donation from two
wealthy supporters of the "Identity" movement, Carl E. Story and R. Vincent
Bertollini, who work to promote "Identity" theology in general, and Aryan
Nations in particular. Their ministry, the 11th Hour Remnant Messenger, paid
for the production and mailings of a poster describing racist "Identity" beliefs
and of a videotaped interview with Richard Butler, both of which were
reportedly sent to 9,000 residents of Northern Idaho.
Aryan Nations has ties to Aryan Brotherhood, a violent white
supremacist prison gang that came to public notice in June 1998 after James
Byrd, Jr., a black resident of Jasper, Texas, was dragged to his death from the
back of a pickup truck, allegedly by three white men. At least two of the
men indicted on capital charges for Byrd's murder are believed to have been
associated with Aryan Brotherhood during their incarceration in a Texas
prison. The Brotherhood, which began in the 1960s at California's San
Quentin Prison but now has members in penitentiaries throughout the US,
exhibits an intense hatred of blacks and Jews, and reportedly engages in
extortion, drug operations, prostitution, and violence in prisons.
While Aryan Nations and Aryan Brotherhood manipulate Christianity to
preach a theology of hate, one white supremacy group on the rise rejects
Christianity altogether in favor of a "race-based," whites-only religion. The
World Church of the Creator (WCOTC), founded by Ben Klassen in 1973,
has recently been revitalized by a 27-year-old law school graduate, Matt
Hale. WCOTC preaches that the glorification of the white race is the supreme
goal. The resurrected WCOTC has a small but growing membership of
dedicated individuals involved in an aggressive campaign to disseminate its
"Creativity" propaganda and recruit new members.
These efforts have been accompanied by a resurgence of the violent
behavior that characterized WCOTC under Klassen's leadership. In August
1997, a father and son leaving a rock concert in Miami, Florida, were accosted
and viciously attacked by a group of racist skinheads distributing WCOTC
fliers. In April 1998, WCOTC Florida state director Jules Fettu and fellow
Creators Donald Hansard and Raymond Leone were arrested and charged
with the attack. Moreover, the police have classified the attack as a hate
crime, since Fettu allegedly yelled racial epithets and raised his hand in a
White Power salute during the beating. The group's southeast regional
director, Guy Lombardi, was charged with trying to intimidate a witness in
the case.
Leone and Hansard have also been charged in another WCOTC-related
crime in Florida. They and two other members of WCOTC were indicted on
hate crime conspiracy charges stemming from a March 1998 armed robbery
of a Hollywood, Florida, adult video store and the assault of its owner.
According to the indictment, the four chose the target "because the defendants
... believed that media outlets were controlled by 'Jews', and that it
was permissible to steal from the 'Jews'." The WCOTC members reportedly
modeled the robbery on a similar incident in William Pierce's The Turner
Diaries.
Liberty Lobby, an extremist group known for being the most influential
and active anti-Semitic propaganda organization in the United States,
declared bankruptcy in May. The group, founded in 1955, publishes The
Spotlight, a weekly tabloid filled with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, with
a circulation of roughly 85,000. Liberty Lobby apparently filed for bankruptcy
to avoid paying $10 million it owed to the Institute for Historical Review (see
below). Still, Liberty Lobby's considerable legal and financial difficulties do
not appear to have affected the organization's operations significantly,
especially since The Spotlight continues to be published weekly.
Today's Ku Klux Klan may be weaker and more fragmented than at any
time since World War II, but the group's many factions use the Internet to
create the impression of revitalization and to draw attention to themselves
and their traditional message of hatred for blacks, Jews and immigrants.
Some of these chapters have only a few members, but their racist sites reach
an audience many times larger. One Klan site works to maintain and defend
"the superiority of the White race," observing "a marked difference between
the White and Negro race," and seeks to educate "against miscegenation of
the races." Another site claims that Jews killed Jesus and describes them as
Satan's people (see also below).
Minister Louis Farrakhan, leader of the black separatist Nation of Islam
(NOI), continued his anti-Jewish and anti-white rhetoric in speeches and
appearances across the country. Farrakhan has taken pains to present
himself as a member of the political mainstream, but his anti-Semitic rhetoric
remains as obvious as ever (see below).
Other black extremists who have had ties to Farrakhan and consider him
a mentor, also made anti-Semitic accusations publicly. In September, Khalid
Muhammad and Malik Zulu Shabazz, both of whom have established records
of virulent anti-Semitism and racism, organized a Million Youth March
(MYM) in New York City. Muhammad, national director of the march, was
the NOI national spokesman until 1994, when Farrakhan dismissed him for
making anti-Semitic, anti-white and anti-Catholic statements during a speech.
Malik Zulu Shabazz, who served as national youth director and legal counsel
for the MYM, holds a law degree from Howard University, where he founded
Unity Nation, a student group for supporters of the NOI. Although MYM
organizers tried to emphasize that the purpose of the march was to empower
and improve the lives of black youths, anti-Semitism and racism were
nevertheless a prominent part of their message (see below).
In June, Khalid Muhammad led an armed patrol of 50 members of his
New Black Panther Party through Jasper, Texas, after the murder of James
Byrd, Jr. Muhammad's armed march has prompted an investigation by the
Joint Terrorist Task Force, made up of federal and state law enforcement
agencies.

ANTI-SEMITIC ACTIVITIES
Violence and Vandalism
In 1998, forty-two states and the District of Columbia reported 1,611 anti-Semitic
incidents to the ADL, marking an increase of 40 incidents over the
1997 total. This represents a 2.4 percent rise in anti-Jewish activity following
a three-year decline.
Anti-Semitic activity reported in 1998 consisted of acts of harassment
(intimidation, threats and assaults) and vandalism (light property damage as
well as arson, bombings and cemetery desecrations). As in the past, anti-Semitic
acts of harassment, threats or assaults against Jewish individuals or
institutions made up more than half of all anti-Jewish activity reported (56
percent) with a total of 896 incidents, down from 898 in 1997. Over 80
percent of these incidents were directed against individuals, while Jewish
institutions were the targets of the remainder.
Acts of anti-Semitic vandalism showed a small rise in 1998 after a
decrease in 1997. ADL recorded a total of 715 incidents of vandalism,
compared to 673 in 1997 -- an increase of 6 percent. Most incidents of anti-Jewish
vandalism were directed against private property (43 percent) and
public property (39 percent), while Jewish institutions were targets in the
remaining 18 percent of acts of vandalism. An example of the latter was the
defacement of two synagogues in California's San Fernando Valley on 30
July, apparently the work of the National Alliance, whose website address
was scrawled in red spray paint across an outside wall of the synagogues,
along with the words, "Stop murdering the White race."
New York, the state with the largest Jewish population, once again
recorded the highest number of anti-Semitic acts of any state. There were 324
such incidents in 1998, a decrease of 17 percent from last year, when the
state had the highest number of incidents on record. New Jersey registered
the second highest rate of anti-Semitic activity with 229, a 14 percent
increase from the year before. California had 223, up 19 percent from 1997;
Massachusetts recorded 107 incidents, an increase of 7.5 percent; and Florida
registered 102 incidents, down 12 percent.

Propaganda
National Alliance propaganda flooded the Los Angeles area in July, when
shoppers in local supermarkets discovered racist flyers inside packages of
food products. "Our culture and racial heritage have been destroyed ... by
this tribe of hateful control freaks," the leaflets read, and "Will we find the
courage to chain Steven Spielberg to the back of a pickup truck and drag
him down Sunset Blvd. before we are exterminated through interracial sex
and marriage?" Flyers bearing an identical message were also stuffed into
mailboxes in the greater Los Angeles area.
At NOI's annual Savior's Day celebration in February 1998, NOI leader
Farrakhan said, "Of course, they [the Jews] have a very small number of
people, but they are the most powerful in the world." He also claimed that,
"The Jews have been so bad at politics they lost half their population in the
Holocaust. They thought they could put trust in Hitler, and they helped him
get the Third Reich on the road." In October, he appeared on Meet the Press,
a nationally broadcast political news show, and continued his barrage of
anti-Semitic stereotypes, including the canard that Jews control the media.
The NOI leader declared that Jews "are the greatest controllers of black
minds, black intelligence. They write the scripts -- the foolish scripts on
television that our people portray. They are the movie moguls that feature
us in these silly, degrading, degenerate roles."
In an August 1998 television interview leading up to the Million Youth
March, Malik Zulu Shabazz rhetorically asked: "Are you going to deny that
the Jewish people have been substantially and significantly involved in the
African holocaust? They have and you can't deny that." Addressing the MYM
crowd, Shabazz said, "I don't care what the Jews say. You are the only
people that have been in bondage for 400 years. You are the true chosen
people of God, and it is not the so-called Jew." MYM director Khalid
Muhammad spoke in a similar vein: "Stop asking me about the Jews being
the bloodsuckers of the Black nation, the no-good bastards. They are the
bloodsuckers of the Black community!"

Internet. Hundreds of websites promoting a variety of anti-Semitic and
racist philosophies have proliferated on the Internet. Notable Klan groups
with an Internet presence include the many chapters of the Knights of the
White Kamellia (headquartered in Texas); the two factions of the Knights of
the Ku Klux Klan (one in Arkansas and the other in Indiana) and their
subsidiary chapters, the North Georgia White Knights and the Southern Cross
Militant Knights. Additionally, the number of websites for the white
supremacist National Association for the Advancement of White People
(NAAWP), which was founded by former Klan leader David Duke and often
described as a "Klan without robes," has grown significantly.
Duke may no longer be directly involved with the NAAWP, but visitors to
his website will find his racist beliefs to be very much in evidence.
Concerned that the "non-white birthrate," "massive immigration" and "racial
intermarriage" will "reduce the founding people of America into a minority,"
Duke boasts about the "genetic potential" of "our people," pointing out
"innate intellectual and psychological differences between whites and
minorities." Duke's site also markets his new book, My Awakening, fully a
third of which is devoted to "The Jewish Question."
Another white racist figure active on the web is Tom Metzger, whose San
Diego-based White Aryan Resistance (WAR) features crude caricatures of
blacks and Mexicans while applauding "racial and cultural separatism
worldwide." Fellow Californian Alex Curtis, who is in his 20s, is the creator
of the Nationalist Observer website which attacks Jews, blacks and
immigrants, and urges cooperation between "White nationalists, White
separatists, Skinheads, National Socialists, Ku Klux Klansmen and Identity
Christians." His "Tribute to Jewry" consists of a picture of "Jew York City"
decimated by an atomic bomb. Curtis also sends out daily e-mail newsletters
to over 1,200 subscribers, which have become very popular among extremists.
Many hate groups use it as a bulletin board to advertise upcoming rallies
and recruit new members.
Another element of the extremist movement with a significant presence
on the web is the "Identity" Church. The website of one of the leading
"Identity" groups, Aryan Nations, is full of anti-Semitic tracts: one calls Jews
"the natural enemy of our Aryan (White) Race," a "destroying virus that
attacks our racial body to destroy our Aryan culture and the purity of our
Race." The GOAL. (God's Order Affirmed in Love) Reference Library website
contains documents such as "The Talmud: Judaism's Holiest Book Exposed,"
which preaches that the Talmud sanctions violence against Christians. On
another site, James Wickstrom and August Kreis, leaders of the violent anti-government
"Identity" group Posse Comitatus, voice support for alleged
abortion clinic bomber Eric Robert Rudolph and claim that the "federal
government has grossly overstepped its bounds" because it is run by Jews,
"Satan's 'kids. '" In addition to these "Identity" sites, Be Wise as Serpents,
Kingdom Identity Ministries, The Lord's Work and many more are currently
available on-line.
Sharing the "Identity" view that non-whites are subhuman "mud people,"
the WCOTC website attacks Christianity, Judaism, blacks and immigrants
with equal vehemence. It blames the Jews for the black slave trade, accuses
them of manipulating the government and claims that blacks are
physiologically inferior and inherently criminal. WCOTC also presents a
number of other well-designed sites, many of which are adorned with
vicious drawings featuring Jews and blacks being attacked by Creators.
Particularly disturbing is its kids' website which features enticing graphics
intended to lure young web users; it offers simplified versions of WCOTC
documents, making them easier for children to understand. Next to an
idealized portrait of a white family, WCOTC affirms that, "the purpose of
making this page is to help younger members of the White Race understand
our fight." The WCOTC Women's Frontier website -- one of many catering
to female "activists" in the hate movement -- declares that the "White female
voice must be heard" if the Church is to "truly accomplish its goal of taking
back White territory worldwide."

Opinion Poll
In November, ADL released the results of its latest "Survey on Anti-Semitism
and Prejudice in America," which reported that the number of Americans
holding strongly anti-Semitic views had dropped from 20 percent to 12
percent since 1992. The national poll found that slightly more than one-in-ten
embraced a wide range of stereotypes about Jews, including "Jews have
too much power" and "Jews are more loyal to Israel than America." These
represented a segment of the population which tended to be over 65 years
of age and had a high school education or less.
The most significant reductions in classical anti-Jewish stereotypes
centered around the level of power and influence Jews were thought to
wield in American society. Those who believed "Jews have too much power
in the US today" declined to 11 percent from 31 percent in 1992, while those
agreeing that "Jews have too much control and influence on Wall Street"
declined to 16 percent from 27 percent. Moreover, the survey clearly showed
that more and more Americans were rejecting the charge that Jews exercised
too much control in the media and Hollywood: the proportion of Americans
who believed that "Jews have too much influence over the American news
media" was down to 12 percent from 17 percent in 1992. The public
overwhelmingly rejected the notion that programming decisions of network
executives were influenced by the fact that they might be Jewish.
The most disturbing finding of the survey was that the percentage of
African-Americans who fell into the most anti-Semitic category was almost
four times that of whites. Blacks continue to be significantly more likely than
white Americans to embrace anti-Semitic beliefs. Indeed, the decline in anti-Jewish
stereotypes has been considerably slower among blacks than whites,
expanding the racial gap in attitudes toward Jews.

ATTITUDES TOWARD THE HOLOCAUST AND THE NAZI ERA
Holocaust Denial
Since its inception in 1979, the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), a
California-based Holocaust denial organization founded by Willis Carto of
Liberty Lobby, has steadily promoted the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that
Jews fabricated tales of their own genocide to manipulate the sympathies of
the non-Jewish world. IHR distributes a vast number of books and
propaganda materials disseminating these and various other anti-Semitic
accusations, making it one of the leading suppliers of Holocaust denial
materials in the world. Moreover, anti-Semitic and Holocaust-denying articles
appear regularly in the organization's bi-monthly publication, The Journal of
Historical Review.
In March, IHR announced that it had been granted non-profit tax-exempt
status from the Internal Revenue Service, enabling supporters to deduct their
contributions to the organization from their taxes. In a strongly-worded letter
to the IRS, the chairmen of the Congressional Task Force Against Anti-Semitism
protested IHR's new tax status. At year's end, the matter was still
pending.
Bradley Smith and his Committee for Open Discussion of the Holocaust
Story (CODOH) continued an aggressive advertising campaign of Holocaust
denial in university newspapers across the country. CODOH's newest ad
attempts to entice readers with a promise of a $250,000 reward to whoever
can arrange a 90-minute, prime-time nationally televised Holocaust debate
between Smith and ADL. Smith has been running his "Campus project" for a
decade, but this year's "reward" is the highest ever. In the first half of the
1998-99 academic year, twenty-five campus newspapers printed his latest ad.
Smith, who may assume that no student will be able to fulfill the conditions
stipulated in the ad, since ADL has repeatedly refused to "debate" the
Holocaust, may be using a large reward as bait for students to learn more
about Holocaust denial via the CODOH website, which has a vast collection
of Holocaust-denial materials.

Holocaust Education/ Commemoration
In April, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC surveyed
over 1,500 Jews and non-Jews to determine how much they knew about the
Holocaust. The results, released the week of Holocaust Day, found that
experts had underestimated Americans' knowledge about the Holocaust,
even if respondents could not always relay specific details about the event.
Moreover, a majority of the sample stressed the importance of Holocaust
education as a means of preventing future incidents of persecution and
genocide, and a significant number of those surveyed also indicated that
they wanted to learn more about the Holocaust.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) held its first Holocaust
commemoration this year. The FBI displayed the poster exhibit, "The
Holocaust: 1933-45," provided by ADL, in FBI offices around the country as
a means of impressing upon the public (and FBI staff themselves) what can
happen when law enforcement and the laws themselves are corrupt and turn
against its citizens. In many cities where the exhibit appeared, the FBI held
Holocaust memorial services in conjunction with local Jewish communities.

RESPONSES TO RACISM AND ANTI-SEMITISM
Legislation
In recent years, Congress has provided broad, bipartisan support for several
federal initiatives that address hate crimes. These initiatives have led to
significant improvements in the response of the criminal justice system to
bias-motivated crimes. Currently, 40 states have penalty-enhanced hate crime
laws. Moreover, the Federal Hate Crime Statistics Act requires the Justice
Department to acquire data on crimes which "manifest prejudice based on
race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity" from law enforcement
agencies across the country and to publish an annual summary of the
findings.
Although no significant pieces of legislation combating hate crimes were
passed in 1998, one promising initiative is worth mentioning. The Hate
Crime Prevention Act would amend the current federal criminal civil rights
jurisdiction under 18 USC. 245, one of the primary statutes used to combat
racial and religious bias-motivated violence. The new legislation, which has
attracted support from a broad range of national civil rights groups, state and
local government associations and law enforcement organizations, would
amend the statute in two ways: it would provide new authority for federal
officials to investigate and prosecute cases in which the bias violence occurs
because of the victim's real or perceived sexual orientation, gender or disability,
and it would remove the restrictive obstacles to federal involvement
by permitting prosecutions without requiring proof that the victim was
attacked because he or she was involved in a federally protected activity.

Court Cases
Sam Bowers, former Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux
Klan was convicted in the summer of ordering the 1966 firebombing that
killed former National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) leader Vernon Dahmer. The case was reopened when a witness
who had stayed silent in the previous trials came forward and testified. The
KKK had targeted Dahmer, a 58-year-old farmer, sawmill operator and
former president of the Forrest County NAACP, in order to thwart his efforts
to register blacks to vote.
In another Klan case, a jury in Manning, South Carolina ordered the
Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, its Grand Dragon, Horace King, and
four other Klansmen to pay $37.8 million in damages for their involvement
in a conspiracy to burn a black church. It is the largest fine ever imposed on
an organized hate group, and may well put the organization out of business.
Dennis McGiffen, allegedly the ringleader of The New Order, and a
former Klansman and Illinois state leader of Aryan Nations, was sentenced
in September to a seven-year federal prison term in Missouri for acquiring a
machine gun that prosecutors said he had planned to use to start a race war.
In February the first federal trial involving hate speech on the Internet
came to a close. Richard Machado, a 21-year-old Los Angeles, California
man, sent a threatening e-mail signed "Asian Hitler" in September 1996 to 60
students, the majority of whom were of Asian decent. Machado was
convicted of violating a federal civil rights law and sentenced to one year in
prison. In addition, he was ordered to undergo psychiatric counseling and
tolerance training.
Louisiana saw its first conviction under the state's new hate crimes law,
which was passed in 1997. Brothers Frank and Patrick Palermo attempted to
set fire to black-owned automobiles, one of which was occupied by a three-year-
old child. Frank Palermo repeatedly used racist epithets against his
victims in the verbal and physical altercation which preceded the attack and,
as a result, was charged and convicted of two hate crimes. He faces up to
25 years in prison. His brother, who reportedly did not shout racial epithets,
was found guilty of placing a combustible object but acquitted on the hate
crime charge.

Public Activity
Groups such as the ADL, the American Jewish Committee and the Simon
Wiesenthal Center have, for years, been in the forefront of the struggle
against anti-Semitism. In 1998 ADL and the state of New Jersey each offered
a reward of $5,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of
those involved in the cutting of a 130-foot swastika in a cornfield in the latter
state. Further, the city of Los Angeles is offering a $20,000 reward for
information regarding arson attacks on two Orthodox synagogues during
Chanukah 1997.
When Aryan Nations planned its annual march through the streets of
Coeur D'Alene, Idaho, community members-- including the state's governor
and other elected officials-- banded together and pledged a total of about
$1,000 for each minute the racist group marched. The money was then
distributed among local human rights groups. Protesters outnumbered
marchers almost ten to one.
Racist events such as the Aryan Nations' parade prompted ADL to
produce a pamphlet entitled "Responding to Extremist Speech: 20 Frequently
Asked Questions," which helps communities prepare for rallies and
demonstrations organized by extremist groups. The pamphlet outlines how
city governments and police departments balance the issue of free speech
with the threat of violence that these extremist groups bring.