Baby Drive Wraps Infants in White Supremacy

Here’s some news to make you feel all warm and fuzzy about your world: White babies around the country are receiving white clothing from white people.

Thanks to the Aryan Baby Drive that operates from a Costa Mesa post office box, white supremacists are showing their generosity in wonderful ways. They even have a Web site that encourages others to give, give, give.

Who says you never read any good news?

Just listen to these testimonials:

“The failing global economy hit our family pretty hard. At about the same time, our toddler hit one of those amazing growth spurts and began to outgrow everything we had. Unsure of when our next paycheck was coming and not knowing what to do, the Aryan Baby Drive was right there to help us ... Thanks. Anonymous.”

Here’s another thank-you, this one from “the Bostwick Family” in an undisclosed community: “When I was carrying our third child, a good friend of mine gave my name and address to the Aryan Baby Drive and immediately she sent us more than enough to help prepare for our baby.... Today Valkyrie is 11 months old, and we still receive care packages for her. I feel good knowing that the things she sent came from good clean Aryan families.... I have sent all of my children’s clothing to the ABD when they outgrow them (I have to hug the memories out of them first).”

Almost enough to make you weep, isn’t it? One can only imagine the amount of love that could be sewn into clothing donated by white supremacists.

The Web site for the Baby Drive doesn’t contain any explicitly racist philosophy. But it does include a link to the Aryan Nations site--and, of course, you can’t call yourself “Aryan” anything without telling the world what you really stand for.

By e-mail I tried to reach the brains and heart of the Baby Drive movement. I received an e-mail from someone who declined to be interviewed but wrote, “I do not give you permission to print anything about the ABD in any newspaper, not until I find out what you intend to write, and please be exact.”

After replying that I couldn’t agree to that, this second e-mail arrived:

“The Aryan Baby Drive Web site was created for the sole purpose of enlightening the mass public to the unique, charitable project undertaken. There are countless white families out there who could use a helping hand, and that is what we are here for.”

I wanted to ask how Aryan clothing differs from non-Aryan. Even more puzzling to me is how the Baby Drive people know for sure that the clothing comes from committed white supremacists. What if some minority group member with a twisted sense of humor sent some booties or jammies? Would an alarm go off at Baby Drive headquarters? Finally--and this is almost too chilling to contemplate--what would happen if security were breached and an Aryan baby actually slipped into clothing previously worn by a non-Aryan?

The Baby Drive Web site has drawn the attention of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles--and not because it wants to donate. The center included the site on its latest CD-ROM spotlighting “hate” groups on the Internet.

Abraham Cooper, the center’s associate dean, concedes that the site is at the more benign end of a spectrum that includes online recruitment of suicide bombers, but that it was included on the 200 sites the center monitors to reflect the total context of the white supremacist movement.

Cooper says the Baby Drive site is a one-woman operation, but he declined to identify her. When I ask how he knows her identity, he says that part of the center’s work is to monitor the whole range of such movements around the world. The Wiesenthal Center is an international Jewish human rights organization.

The Baby Drive, Cooper says, “hearkens back to the Nazi ideology of the 1930s. It’s all a rip-off or an update of the Nazi mind-set and policies where a woman was encouraged to have as many children as possible for the state to preserve the Aryan race.”

Cooper isn’t of a mind to see much heart-tugging about the Aryan Baby Drive. “It’s not a laughing matter,” he says. “They’re not a mass movement, but there are thousands of people in the U.S. and elsewhere who really do see life through that prism. Now they’re raising their children in a certain way, making sure they don’t go to certain kinds of movies and isolating themselves in the most diverse ethnic pot [in Southern California], trying to keep themselves pure.”

And, at least with their babies, well-clothed.

*

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com.