Speaker at B’nai B’rith Convention Calls Hate Groups a Problem for All Americans

Last week’s arrest of eight suspected white supremacists in Southern California, the recent bombing of the World Trade Center and the bomb threats in tunnels in New York City show an unprecedented danger of domestic terrorism, Burton Levinson, honorary chairman of the Anti-Defamation League, said Monday night.

In his keynote speech to the Western Regional Convention of B’nai B’rith, the world’s largest Jewish organization, Levinson warned an audience of about 300 that white supremacists and Islamic fundamentalists threaten to disrupt “the very fabric of American society.”

“When these people enunciate attacks on any individual in society they are attacking the fabric of what makes America great,” said Levinson, 62, a lawyer from Encino. “We are not talking about a Jewish problem, we are talking about a problem for all Americans.”

The Anti-Defamation League has been studying the skinhead phenomenon since 1987, said Levinson, who was chairman of the Anti-Defamation League from 1986 to 1990. In the past six years, he added, the organization has distributed seven publications on skinheads. And in 1989 Levinson and other Anti-Defamation League leaders met with then-Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh to discuss the problem.

“There’s always going to be a segment of society that feels deprived,” Levinson said, describing skinheads as mostly men in their 20s who are out of the economic mainstream. “When they see a minority advancing . . . that is going to be a seed for hatred.

“All they need is to educate themselves and to enjoy the benefits of this society by work,” he said. “But the glue that holds them together is hatred.”

Levinson said there are 3,300 to 3,500 skinheads scattered in 40 states, through about 160 fluid organizations such as the Fourth Reich Skinheads. FBI officials who made last week’s arrests say they believe that group was plotting attacks on Rodney G. King and the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles.

Joking, Levinson noted that one skinhead group, Alabama’s Aryan Defense League, shares an acronym with his organization, and asked the audience not to confuse the two groups.

In his 45-minute address, Levinson also discussed a recent scandal involving the Anti-Defamation League’s San Francisco office, in which the organization has been accused of keeping secret files on politicians and activists, and infiltrating groups with paid informants.

“Why is it that according to the articles, the ADL spies and the FBI uses informants?” he asked rhetorically. “Many of (the FBI’s) informants have assisted the ADL.”

Levinson defended the practice of clipping newspaper articles about public figures and collecting other information as “that which Americans have the right to do” and said that disseminating information about political groups is crucial to the Anti-Defamation League’s operation.

“We battle for thoughts, we battle for words,” Levinson said, defining the mission of the 80-year-old Anti-Defamation League, which fights discrimination, particularly anti-Semitism, through a series of publications and public-relations campaigns. “We do not battle with guns and with weapons. Our ammunition is the English language.

“We’re strong, we’re resourceful, we are up to the fight,” Levinson said. “I wish someday I could give a speech and not use the word fight. . . . I want a time when hate groups don’t exist. But if any of you are naive enough to believe that is now, you are wrong.”