Anti-Racists View Metzger as a Top White Supremacist

Tom Metzger, a Fallbrook television repairman and former congressional candidate, has moved to “the center of the new national leadership” of the white supremacist movement, according to a new report by the Center for Democratic Renewal.

“Metzger has assumed national importance because of his innovative use of technology, his emphasis on young people, especially Skinhead Nazis, and a peculiar political approach known as the ‘Third Position,’ ” said the report from the Atlanta-based center, a national association that investigates and exposes white supremacist organizations.

Metzger in the 1970s was the leader of the California Ku Klux Klan and was an unsuccessful candidate for Congress in 1980. He has more recently been active in creating and leading the White Aryan Resistance (WAR) and promoting the Third Position, a traditional Nazi philosophy popular in Europe whose tenets include the denouncement of both the capitalist West and the communist East.

Computer System Network

Center officials said it has been determined that Metzger now has influence in 31 cities in 13 states and that he has developed an extensive computer system network to share his philosophy and activities among fellow members.

The center also identified his 18-year-old son, John, as the national leader of the Aryan Youth Movement, or Skinheads, which the center said has grown from four chapters two years ago to more than 20 chapters today.

The center said the elder Metzger has used the youth movement to build his own national following and that today, “Metzger and WAR have become the national axis of the Klan and neo-Nazi wing of the white supremacist movement.”

Attempts to reach Metzger Friday were unsuccessful. His wife, Kathy, said her husband was out of town to tape television programs.

However, she scoffed at the significance of her husband assuming such a high leadership status. “Oh, yeah,” she said sarcastically. “We heard about that report. That’s good news. It will double his salary from zero to zero.”

National Clearinghouse

The Center for Democratic Renewal is a major national clearinghouse for community-based efforts aimed at countering so-called hate-group activity. The organization closely monitors racist-inspired violence across the nation and provides victim assistance, educational projects and expert court testimony to combat the spread of extremism.

The center’s report said Metzger has cast himself as a national leader primarily through the use of his cable television program, “Race and Reason.” The report said he has produced 45 different half-hour programs for audiences across the country, using local racist activists to sponsor the shows. The programs have run on community access stations in 10 states.

Further propelling his prominence, the report said, is that other supremacist leaders have been “troubled by indictment and jail terms.”

“The coming months will determine whether (Metzger) can continue to fuse racist violence and technological sophistication,” the report said.

In a separate report, the center documented nearly 3,000 acts of bigoted violence between 1980 and 1986, and concluded that in the last year, the incidences of such violence in high schools and on college campuses have increased dramatically. California was listed as one of three states in the country with a high number of such incidents.

Douglas K. Seymour, a former San Diego police reserve officer who infiltrated the Metzger organization and is now special assistant to the center’s chairman, said Friday that he has monitored the growth of Metzger’s influence.

Father-Son Team?

“What we really have right now is a father-and-son team that has mesmerized the white supremacy movement,” said Seymour, who maintains a regional office for the center in Del Mar. “It’s evidenced by their appearances and their popularity.”

He said a recent poll conducted by the center at San Diego public high schools showed that of 18,911 students questioned, 80 identified themselves as Skinheads.

“The preponderance of Skinheads were in the more affluent schools,” he said. “And that’s interesting because Tom Metzger and his son, John, have advocated that they represent the working-class set of people.”

But, Seymour added, “youths joining them should be aware that behind all of this is just another sheet and the bottom line is white supremacy and the overthrow of the federal government as we know it. That is their goal.”

Morris S. Casuto, San Diego regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, said his group has maintained for “quite some time” that Metzger is at the top of the white supremacist movement.

“If you ask law enforcement officers who keep tabs on anti-American, white supremacist groups and ask them to list the top five leaders in the United States, Metzger would make that list,” he said.

“But when we talk leaders, we’re not talking about the usual definition. We’re talking about a pretty scuzzy group of individuals, a real cadre. And Metzger is about the most effective of a pretty pathetic group of people.”