White Supremacist TV Show Tentatively Scheduled on Cable

“Race and Reason,” a white supremacist cable television series denounced by some Torrance City Council members when it was shown in October, is scheduled to begin airing Tuesday on the city’s community access channel unless a last-minute review by city officials thwarts the broadcast.

The program was placed on the schedule by the city’s cable administrator last month after City Atty. Kenneth L. Nelson advised officials that the city must air the series.

However, City Manager LeRoy J. Jackson was reviewing that decision Friday. “I can’t assure you it will be on next Tuesday,” he said.

And Nelson said Saturday, after returning from vacation, that he will take another look at the issue as well. “I’ve not completed a whole review of the law on the thing. . . . When anything gets controversial, we want to take a reasoned and careful look,” he said.

Jackson, Nelson and Michael D. Smith, the cable administrator, will discuss the airing of “Race and Reason” on Monday. Mayor Katy Geissert said the council may discuss it in executive session Tuesday.

The series, hosted by Tom Metzger of the White Aryan Resistance, is scheduled to be seen daily on the public access channel, which is better known for shows about painting, cooking and the Torrance Symphony Orchestra.

Geissert said Nelson had told city officials last month that First Amendment guarantees of free speech require the city to air the show.

In response to the Metzger series, Geissert has submitted counter-programming produced for the Anti-Defamation League to be shown with it.

The Anti-Defamation League program is scheduled to be shown at 10:30 p.m., followed by the Metzger show at 11. Each show will be repeated daily for two weeks.

Geissert said she submitted the counter-programming tape as a resident to Torrance Community Television, Channel 59. The city is required to air any non-pornographic broadcast that is submitted by a city resident and that does not advocate violence, city officials said.

The “Race and Reason” series has been aired in at least 50 cities, including several in Orange County and the west San Fernando Valley, and was first broadcast in Torrance in October. After it ran for two weeks, the usual length of time that public access shows are aired, the council asked Nelson to explore whether it could prevent future broadcasts of it.

“Basically, (Nelson’s opinion) says we are restrained by the First Amendment,” Geissert said, adding that she hopes the Anti-Defamation League tape, “Crimes of Hate,” will prove to be an effective counterpoint.

“I have the right, just as any other Torrance resident does, to submit a videotape. I submitted this as a means of legally rebutting the message of the Metzger group,” she said.

Critics, including council members, say Metzger’s series supports violence toward minorities and Jews. And Councilman Dan Walker, who called the show “racist garbage,” said he told Jackson on Friday that the council should discuss the matter before “Race and Reason” airs. The council meets Tuesday evening.

However, a Torrance resident, who with her husband submitted the Metzger series to the cable station, defended the show. She said the series teaches about white culture, a culture she says is being lost.

“It’s an education,” said Katherine Beaton, whose husband, Paul, applied to have the tapes shown. “Metzger’s the only one who’s making tapes. If Hollywood or the media would make more pro-white tapes, maybe there wouldn’t be a need for ‘Race and Reason.’ ”

Geissert’s decision to seek counter-programming was applauded by Irwin Suall, the fact-finding director at the New York City headquarters of the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish human-rights organization connected with B’nai B’rith.

“I think that’s an absolutely appropriate response,” Suall said.

Suall characterized “Race and Reason” as “a vehicle for Tom Metzger and his invited guests to spew hate through the vehicle of television.”

Metzger is appealing a recent $12.5-million judgment against him, his son and their White Aryan Resistance group, stemming from the 1988 beating death of a black man in Portland, Ore., by skinheads who a jury found were incited by Metzger.

Paul Beaton asked that three “Race and Reason” tapes be shown over the next six weeks, according to records at the city Office of Cable Communications.

The submission includes a letter from the White Aryan Resistance in Fallbrook, Calif., signed by Metzger, authorizing the Beatons to show “Race and Reason.”

The October showing of a different “Race and Reason” segment was requested by Paul Smith, who has moved out of the area, Katherine Beaton said.

Paul Beaton, 42, a technician, said he had told Smith, a former roommate of the Beatons, when Smith moved out of Torrance that he would take over responsibility for airing the tapes. Paul Beaton said he hopes to keep “Race and Reason” running continuously in Torrance. The series has about 100 segments, which, if run for two weeks each, could continue for four years, he said.

He said he does not mind that the Anti-Defamation League tape will precede the series. “I didn’t know that, but I’ll be sure to catch it. . . . People can look at both sides of it, and right-thinking people can make up their own minds.”

Many of the “Race and Reason” shows are in a talk-show format, with Metzger discussing issues with guests, Katherine Beaton said. City officials declined requests last week to view the three tapes.

The first of the three latest segments, tentatively scheduled to premiere this week, is titled “Race and Reason No. 100, History of Rune Stones.” It deals with “Nordic races” and white culture, Katherine Beaton said.

“Race and Reason No. 101, Aryan Fest ‘90,” will probably be shown Jan. 22 to Feb. 5. And a third tape, No. 76, will probably appear Feb. 5 through Feb. 19.

Katherine Beaton described the tapes as educational, adding that the goals of those promoting white culture are misunderstood.

The public schools have stopped teaching white culture, replacing it with “other cultures, cultural diversity,” said Beaton, who said she has two children in the Torrance schools.

“There’s Black History Month. There’s Hispanic History Month. They teach them about Hanukkah in December. Where’s White History Month?”

“Crimes of Hate,” the tape submitted by the mayor, was made in 1990 by independent producer Matthew Barr, Suall said. It consists of three nine-minute segments, “Crime of Racism,” “Crime of Anti-Semitism” and “Crime of Gay-Bashing,” he said.

To date, “Crimes of Hate” has been shown in 30 cities, but not in the Los Angeles area, Anti-Defamation League officials said.

The coupling of the tape with “Race and Reason” in Torrance is “the way it should work,” said Tzivia Schwartz, a lawyer with the Anti-Defamation League in Los Angeles. “We absolutely believe that (Metzger) has the right to have it aired, but, at the same time, we’re happy we can avail ourselves of our right to produce counter-programming.”