In various leading papers such as the New York Times etc., one finds repeated variations of the following assertions:
"One of the fastest growing hate groups in the 1990s is the World Church of the Creator (WCOTC) based in East Peoria, Illinois, whose stated goal is 'making this an all-white nation and ultimately an all-white world.'"
Now that is sweeping, isn't it? In fact, so shrill is the hysteria around this group that the Jewish Defense Organization - which I assume is merely yet another name for the terrorist Jewish Defense League - has installed a hotline
". . . giving out the number of the Church of the Creator urging people to jam it, as well as contacting the phone company to demand the hate lines be discontinued permanently." (Letter to the Editor by Mordechai Levi, JDO, The Jewish Press, July 16, 1999)
For those who have the time and inclination, it might be worth to check the JDO material on the Net. This case has all the earmarks of an artificial witch hunt with designated actors playing according to a script, since I have heard several small, non-mainstream sources report that Matthew Hale, the leader of WCOTC, has a dues-paying membership of about 124. I can tell you that his name hardly comes up in so-called Right Wing or patriotic circles. Hale works out of his mother's bedroom. He is a one-man band, it seems - a brand new straw man on the block and hardly a danger to squirrels.
One learns a lot of strategy by listening to Jewish writers talk to other Jewish writers. By now we know that Alan Dershowitz, Publicity Hound par excellence, ostensibly offered for all of three minutes that he would defend the beleaguered "leader" of this "church" who, among others, has been denied admission to the Bar on grounds of a flawed character, even though he passed the Bar Exam. Were that criterion used generally, there would be very few lawyers admitted to the bar!
In "Spreading Hate on the Net", The Jewish Press, July 23, 1999 ran an interesting tidbit on Hale, stating that he
". . . transferred to the University of Indiana, where he started calling himself August Smith, not Benjamin, because it sounded too Jewish."
That in itself might raise some eyebrows - but be that as it may. Why would the venerable Mr. Dershowitz take on someone he claims to be despising with a passion?
Here Jason Maoz, in a July 16, 1999 Jewish Press article titled "Hatemonger to Attorney: Say Good Night, Alan" tells us that
". . . Dershowitz abhorred Hale's views - and said so frequently on . . . television shows - {but} he said those views were no reason to deny Hale his right to practice law."
In Dershowitz's own words:
"My position previously was that if it was pure ideology, if he was being kept out of the bar solely because of his views, that would raise fundamental First Amendment issues," Dershowitz told the Jerusalem Post. "I never represented him. I never supported him - I was in the process of thinking about representing him."
Talmudic talk? Who is to say? Remember that a man claimed to be Alan Dershowitz called Ernst Zundel in 1985 offering his services? Both Ernst Zundel and his lead attorney, Doug Christie, politely declined.
Here Dershowitz explains his feelings about Hale:
"I always said, if he were struck by lightning, I would shed no tears. But he wasn't struck by lightning, he was struck by a character committee. To me it was always the principle of whether or not we want to resurrect character committees, which were started in Pennsylvania explicitly to keep Jews out of the bar. My fear was that if he was kept out of the bar, members of the Jewish Defense League, or radical black activists, or radical feminists could be kept out of the bar too on the basis of ideology."
Dershowitz says that, after reflection, he declined to represent Hale because of his previous history of association with violence, and because one condition of his representation was that all fees from Hale would go to ADL, and other organizations that fight racism, which Hale would not agree to.
Writes Maoz:
"Dershowitz has a point, but surely he knows there are countless other lawyers - countless other Jewish lawyers - who are more than willing to represent characters like Hale, but whose involvement would not automatically mean heavy media exposure for their client and his views.
"In other words, Dershowitz could have easily decided to sit this one out and prevent what he certainly knew would be an undreamed-of publicity bonanza for Hale."
But what if that publicity bonanza was the main idea in the first place? Build up your straw man so you can knock him down?
To continue with Maoz:
"Dershowitz's handling of the Hale case was strange enough to begin with: "Before Dershowitz would agree to work for Hale . . . he had several stipulations, including that Hale sacrfice attorney-client confidentiality and allow Dershowitz to publicly attack Hale's news". {Italics in the article) (...)
"(I)s it just slightly odd that Dershowitz would insist on foregoing one of the core elements in an attorney-client relationship so that he could remain free to mount his ever-present media soapbox?
"Did Dershowitz agree to work with Hale out of a concern for the constitutional issues raised by the case - or out of a desire for fresh media exposure as a name-brand attorney with yet another controversial client? With this particular lawyer, one never quite knows."
And then comes the meat of the matter:
"What one does know is that Dershowitz has in recent years taken his share of hits in the media; journalists no longer treat him with the deference that once routinely came his way.
"Exascerbating the increasingly negative manner in which he is perceived is what one critic has described as Dershowitz's knack of self-aggrandizement that coexists with a moral exhibitionism which in its utter shamelessness fairly shouts, 'How dare anyone question my devotion to principle, my wisdom, my motives pure and true?'
"Nowhere does this attitude manifest itself more gratingly than in his self-commissioned crusade to save the Jews from assimilation and eventual oblivion, although his prescription for staving off disaster amounts to a hodgepodge of progressive and politically correct nostrums of precisely the sort that helped create the problem in the first place.
"Dershowitz no doubt means well when it comes to Jews and Jewish survival, but here too his ego tends to get in the way, and then he appears unable to distinguish between what's good for the Jews and what's good for Alan."
Not that the Zundelsite would dream of taking anybody's side in this odd mishmash of polemics and self-interest - but isn't it ever so odd that what is good for Alan Dershowitz and supposedly good for the Jews - "saving the Jews from assimilation and eventual oblivion" - should be so thoroughly offensive when Matthew Hale dares to claim the same for Whites?
Isn't that one more time the old Jewish double standard at work?
Ingrid
Thought for the Day:
"When a man says he approves of something in principle, it means he hasn't the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice."