Saturday March 6 1993 The Chronicle—Herald/The Mail-Star Page B 1
ENCOUNTER WITH THE KLAN
Byline: By Frank Boyd SPECIAL
KKK’s Canadian roots run deep
By Frank Boyd SPECIAL
Few Nova Scotians realize that the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan have a long history in Canada, although Confederate soldiers established the organization in the United States in 1805.
The early Klansmen formed as a social group; the name, from the Greek “Kuklos”, means circle. They saw themselves as a moral force upholding law and order. Their chief aim was to intimidate blacks into submission following the civil war and to drive the northern carpetbaggers out of the south.
Throughout the South and into the northern states, bands of nightriders, dressed in white robes and hoods, terrorized blacks as well as whites who did not toe the color line.
By the turn of the century the Klan had been officially disbanded, but continued to exist.
In 1915, William Joseph Simmons led a robust revival of the Klan. Early Klansmen were primarily anti-black; later followers also opposed Catholics, Jews, organized labor, Communism and foreigners in general.
Canada saw a sharp increase in membership in the early part of the century, especially in Saskatchewan and Alberta. Many prominent people joined the Klan, including David Mullin, later Social Credit minister of agriculture in Alberta, and former Progressive Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker.
Until the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on school desegregation became law in l954 and school busing became mandatory, the Klan’s membership had steadily declined. These laws, along with the l960’s civil rights movement gave new life to the Klan.
By the late l970’s, hard-core Klan members were estimated to be some 10,000 strong, with about 100,000 active sympathizers. There were more than 300 autonomous Klans in the U.S.
The three best known were the United Klans of America, Inc., led by Robert Shelton, the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, led by the David Duke, and the Invisible Empire of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, headed by Bill Wilkinson. Shelton’s, the largest, had an estimated membership of 3,500 to 4,000.
Former Louisiana governor hopeful David Duke has had the most impact on Canada’s Klan organizations; in l976 Duke claimed to have organized affiliated branches in Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver.
Duke referred to Canada as “the last bastion of white supremacy because it is already too late to save the U.S.”
In l977, Canadians James Alexander McQuirter, John Ross Taylor, and Wolfgang Droege went to New Orleans to meet with Duke.
Droege, now head of the new-Nazi Heritage Front, was charged last year with violating the Canadian Human Rights Act by communicating racial-hate messages over a phone-in line. The human rights tribunal hearing the case in Toronto is to reconvene at a date not yet set.
RISE OF RACIST RIGHT:
Throughout the west, white supremacist groups are on the rise. In Germany, where neo-Nazis have carried out thousands of attacks against foreigners in the past year, three members of a Turkish family were killed when neo-Nazis firebombed their home in November. In Ontario, Wolfgang Droege and his white supremacist heritage front groups are appearing before a human rights tribunal on charges of operating a phone-in hate line.
Closer to home, a youth pleaded guilty in February to promoting hatred for distributing Ku Klux Klan literature in a Bedford high school. Frank Boyd, a black freelance journalist, recently interviewed a Nova Scotia organizer of the Ku Klux Klan. The organizer agreed to the session on condition his name not be published.
I SET UP my recording equipment at the hotel and order a thermos of hot coffee. A knock strikes the door. I open it and there is Cyclop, whom I had met before, accompanied by his Knight Hawk, a stranger, who is dressed entirely in black, including tight—fitting, black leather gloves. He looks like a walk on the wild side. He is an enforcer, protection for Cyclop.
Cyclop is wearing his usual battle fatigues, with camouflage trousers tucked snugly into the top of long, black boots. Everything about them is militaristic; I suppose to strike fear into the hearts of their opposition.
Knight Hawk refuses coffee and is unable to relax. He is on duty, and if his only equipment is that pair of gloves, then I have little to worry about.
Cyclop shows me his membership certificate in the Klan. It says The Flaming Sword on one line and below it, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Grand Knight Hawk Hank Schaffner and Grand Dragon Andrew Jones sign it; I believe they are Klansmen officers of the New Jersey-based Flaming Sword.
As I read, Cyclop puts on his uniform over his fatigues. It is a mind game of a sort at my expense and it seems to have a cathartic effect on both of them.
The robe is white, except for two crests at breast height on either side of the front of the robe. The sleeves are long and flared toward the ends. At the cuff are wide black stripes or chevrons, indicating the rank of Grand Dragon. His hood is cone-shaped, with two eye slots that conceal Cyclops’s identity.
I feel a rush of adrenaline. Self-preservation is a powerful, primitive urge. I realize that I am ready for war with my enemies. The feelings pass. I remind myself that I need to talk on the record to Cyclop for many reasons: some personal, and others for the good of the community at large.
Q: Cyclop, you are sworn to protect the purity of the White Race in Nova Scotia.. .What are you protecting the white race from?
A: Everyone thinks that our sworn moral enemies are the blacks, and lately, well, a lot of people say Jews. These are not our sworn enemies. I have not sworn to hate these people. The media always has this thing that we want to kill and gas all these people. That’s not it. I’d say our major enemy would be the government that would implement policies that are inimical to both races that would want to force them together, when they don’t want to be.
Q: Most of the new immigration to Canada has been almost strictly non-European.. .How does this make you feel?
A: That goes back to the government. I would say that given a poll tomorrow, and there was one a couple of years ago, taken on the news about immigration and it came out a whopping 90 per cent against. I am sure those people who phoned in were not 100 per cent white people. Every job that you give away to an immigrant who comes to this country, that’s one job taken away from a white man, or black man who lives here or Indian or Asian, who are already born and raised here, first—class citizens.. .1 would personally like to see immigration cut down to needy people, people who are genuinely persecuted.
Q: If immigration were restricted only to needy people, what if those needy people all happened to be people of color?
A: Well, if these people were permitted to come in, I would also like to see a policy implemented, not exactly segregation, as in the old-fashioned sense of the word, but a geographical separation, where under a sincere program of help that these persecuted (people), if they were blacks and Asians, or what have you, would go into their own quarters, much like they have Chinatowns and Little Italies, much like they have already and their brethren and kinsmen would help them out.
Q: Why are you the local organizer of the KKK?
A: I’m not sure. All my life I know that going to school I was kind of picked on a little much by blacks and I started to see them in a very bad light. I don’t know what I ever did to them, but I was kind of a quiet, little child. So when I first heard about the Klan, and I believed all the stories that I was told, that they were going to night ride and we were going to whip them and put them back in their place and all that stuff, I thought, ‘‘Now that’s what I want to do.’’ I started out being what you might call a hatemonger, but after I got involved and really learned what it was all about, there were a lot of them told me hat this way was wrong. We want to do this in a progressive way, in a way that would be beneficial to both of us. Like I said, we are against mixing the races. We are not for violence against any one culture or creed . . .At first I thought it was an order that had died. . . Slowly I began to find out that it was an order that was still around. I thought it was so underground that I’d never be able to get in touch with it. But I made contact with people in Canada and I became a member. I’ve been a member for two years now.
Q: Last Halloween there were copies of the Klansman distributed in Halifax.. .Was your group involved?
A: My group was not involved in that at all. That was another group and they are a member of a different Klan that comes out of North Carolina.
Q: Are your views on the Holocaust similar to those of Ernst Zundel?
A: Similar, yes, not exactly. Things I’ve read from what is called the revisionist point of view, I haven’t exactly read anything by Ernst Zundel. I know what he stands for, I know what he believes. I believe that there were many internment camps, many people were killed and many just died. But I don’t believe in the Final Solution, so to speak. No!
Q: Do you think that 6 million Jews were killed?
A: No, not 6 million. There’s been different numbers from time to time. There was 5 and then I was taught in school 6. I even watched a documentary one time which first quoted a number like 9 and then another number of 5, and basically, when I sat down and added, it was like some ridiculous number like 15 million Jews in this documentary. I don’t think anyone who watches these actually adds these figures up.
Q: Are you saying that people are lying to us?
A: Yes, I say people are lying and there are also people who are misinformed for some reasons and who say they honestly believe it.
Q: Last year a survival camp was found in a wooded area in this province... and telltale signs of a military manoeuvre were present. What was happening at that time?
A: Well, I know where it is, if they did find shell casings, they didn’t come from us.. .If we want to shoot, we go to the range and do it legally.
Q: But you are not denying that it was your camp?
A: Well, we were there and I will say this, that the cross found there we used, but there was no camp, and there was no training and there was no shooting. They also mentioned cabins being built. Well, my Knight Hawk can tell you since he’s from the area that those foundations have been there for a good 15 years at least. We didn’t put them there.
Q: So what was the purpose of you getting together, was it a military manoeuvre then? A: Oh no, not a military manoeuvre. There is no military training, or anything like that. We get together there and we have a little fellowship.. .We have fellowships there.
Q: Why do you burn crosses? Why do you wear hoods?
A: We don’t burn crosses. Burning crosses implies a sense of destruction. In our ritual, and that’s what it is, we refer to it as lighting a cross, or the War Cross, and it has a history that goes back for generations. In Scotland they used to do that as a sign, like a lighthouse beacon, a sign that Vikings were coming to attack. Our symbolism in that is a religious symbol, a cross, the fire is as in the Bible in the Book of John that says Christ is the light of the world and he dispels the darkness from around us. We believe in that ritual and that’s what we’re doing: dispelling the darkness of this age from around us.
Q: What is the darkness, the enemies of the KKK?
A: Well, it wouldn’t be just our enemies. I’d say it’s the enemies of our entire civilization. I mean Canada and the whole Western world has gone downhill in the last 50 to 60 years in just about every respect you can think of. Our religion is failing us and we have thousands of youth walking around in zombie states. They don’t know what they are doing, they can’t get jobs, they turn to drugs, they turn to violence. I think it’s all personally a systematic plan.
Q: If it is a systematic plan, whom is behind it?
A: Well, for many years the Klan and other right-wing groups have pointed to and were saying that the Jews are. Now, I don’t personally think it’s quite that simple.. .1 know a lot of Jews are involved, but I think it’s the work of social planners, the left-wing intelligentsia of which a lot of Jews happen to be members.
Q: Is your organization a serious threat to your enemies?
A: Well, I really don’t know how to answer that.. .1 am not setting this up, and I don’t think a lot of us are setting this up with the actual intention that some day we are just going to rise up and seize power, or take over and do all those things that they like to show you in movies that we supposedly do. I am more interested in building a Christian fellowship amongst white men, who believe and think the same way that I do.
Q: How big is your group in Nova Scotia?
A: All totaled I’d say.. .it’s kind of a hard thing to answer ‘cause one number I could say and you’d say that’s too high and ridiculous, and another number would make me look insignificant. But all totalled, I would say... a hard-core group of supporters and not all paid members really, but a hard core group and paid members all put together, about, I’d say about 50 in the city alone. Outlying regions, there’s people we have in Cape Breton and the South Shore and whatever, that’s going to drive the number up to 90 or more.
Q: Last year, Cyclop, you attempted to get a firearms certificate and failed, didn’t you? Why? Is your group armed and organized?
A: Armed and organized. An! Like I said, I believe in the principle of bearing arms and arming oneself but the group itself is not armed; we’re not planning any coup d’etat. I’d rather do it by ballots, not bullets, to tell you the truth.
Q: Knight Hawk, did you have something you wanted to say on this? (Knight Hawk)
A: Most Klansmen are average people who like to hunt. So they like to have firearms to go hunting. So just because someone’s trying to obtain a firearms doesn’t mean that they want to kill someone or cause force upon someone else.
Q: You, Cyclop, the local organizer of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, have refused to be identified. Why not go public?
A: The easy answer to that is that I would fear reprisals from of course the first thing I would fear reprisals from would be the blacks. They would think, I don’t know, that they’re doing something for their race by wiping us out, or whatever. I think they’re wrong in thinking that, or from our own hostile white renegades, I call them, who see what they perceive as the Klan on television, or what they’ll read in books and newspapers. They think we’re some violent threat and we’ll want to pick a fight and that’s just one reason to do it. Also, we have plenty of genuine enemies who just hate us. They wouldn’t think twice, those like the JDL (Jewish Defence League) or the ADL (Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith) who have mailed letter bombs to comrades of ours in the States. They have done this for years. Stone their houses, get them fired from their jobs. The emotional strain on them is just too much. That’s why I wouldn’t want to go out of the closet. Plus we have tried to be a secret order anyway.
After this article was published the writer received a call from a man who introduced himeslf to the journalist as the Grand Dragon of the KKK in New Jersey. The called offered to make the journalist "an honourary White man." The caller said that the journalist had so fairly profiled the KKK and that had not ever been done before. The Journalist declined the honour.
ENCOUNTER WITH THE KLAN
Byline: By Frank Boyd SPECIAL
KKK’s Canadian roots run deep
By Frank Boyd SPECIAL
Few Nova Scotians realize that the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan have a long history in Canada, although Confederate soldiers established the organization in the United States in 1805.
The early Klansmen formed as a social group; the name, from the Greek “Kuklos”, means circle. They saw themselves as a moral force upholding law and order. Their chief aim was to intimidate blacks into submission following the civil war and to drive the northern carpetbaggers out of the south.
Throughout the South and into the northern states, bands of nightriders, dressed in white robes and hoods, terrorized blacks as well as whites who did not toe the color line.
By the turn of the century the Klan had been officially disbanded, but continued to exist.
In 1915, William Joseph Simmons led a robust revival of the Klan. Early Klansmen were primarily anti-black; later followers also opposed Catholics, Jews, organized labor, Communism and foreigners in general.
Canada saw a sharp increase in membership in the early part of the century, especially in Saskatchewan and Alberta. Many prominent people joined the Klan, including David Mullin, later Social Credit minister of agriculture in Alberta, and former Progressive Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker.
Until the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on school desegregation became law in l954 and school busing became mandatory, the Klan’s membership had steadily declined. These laws, along with the l960’s civil rights movement gave new life to the Klan.
By the late l970’s, hard-core Klan members were estimated to be some 10,000 strong, with about 100,000 active sympathizers. There were more than 300 autonomous Klans in the U.S.
The three best known were the United Klans of America, Inc., led by Robert Shelton, the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, led by the David Duke, and the Invisible Empire of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, headed by Bill Wilkinson. Shelton’s, the largest, had an estimated membership of 3,500 to 4,000.
Former Louisiana governor hopeful David Duke has had the most impact on Canada’s Klan organizations; in l976 Duke claimed to have organized affiliated branches in Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver.
Duke referred to Canada as “the last bastion of white supremacy because it is already too late to save the U.S.”
In l977, Canadians James Alexander McQuirter, John Ross Taylor, and Wolfgang Droege went to New Orleans to meet with Duke.
Droege, now head of the new-Nazi Heritage Front, was charged last year with violating the Canadian Human Rights Act by communicating racial-hate messages over a phone-in line. The human rights tribunal hearing the case in Toronto is to reconvene at a date not yet set.
RISE OF RACIST RIGHT:
Throughout the west, white supremacist groups are on the rise. In Germany, where neo-Nazis have carried out thousands of attacks against foreigners in the past year, three members of a Turkish family were killed when neo-Nazis firebombed their home in November. In Ontario, Wolfgang Droege and his white supremacist heritage front groups are appearing before a human rights tribunal on charges of operating a phone-in hate line.
Closer to home, a youth pleaded guilty in February to promoting hatred for distributing Ku Klux Klan literature in a Bedford high school. Frank Boyd, a black freelance journalist, recently interviewed a Nova Scotia organizer of the Ku Klux Klan. The organizer agreed to the session on condition his name not be published.
I SET UP my recording equipment at the hotel and order a thermos of hot coffee. A knock strikes the door. I open it and there is Cyclop, whom I had met before, accompanied by his Knight Hawk, a stranger, who is dressed entirely in black, including tight—fitting, black leather gloves. He looks like a walk on the wild side. He is an enforcer, protection for Cyclop.
Cyclop is wearing his usual battle fatigues, with camouflage trousers tucked snugly into the top of long, black boots. Everything about them is militaristic; I suppose to strike fear into the hearts of their opposition.
Knight Hawk refuses coffee and is unable to relax. He is on duty, and if his only equipment is that pair of gloves, then I have little to worry about.
Cyclop shows me his membership certificate in the Klan. It says The Flaming Sword on one line and below it, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Grand Knight Hawk Hank Schaffner and Grand Dragon Andrew Jones sign it; I believe they are Klansmen officers of the New Jersey-based Flaming Sword.
As I read, Cyclop puts on his uniform over his fatigues. It is a mind game of a sort at my expense and it seems to have a cathartic effect on both of them.
The robe is white, except for two crests at breast height on either side of the front of the robe. The sleeves are long and flared toward the ends. At the cuff are wide black stripes or chevrons, indicating the rank of Grand Dragon. His hood is cone-shaped, with two eye slots that conceal Cyclops’s identity.
I feel a rush of adrenaline. Self-preservation is a powerful, primitive urge. I realize that I am ready for war with my enemies. The feelings pass. I remind myself that I need to talk on the record to Cyclop for many reasons: some personal, and others for the good of the community at large.
Q: Cyclop, you are sworn to protect the purity of the White Race in Nova Scotia.. .What are you protecting the white race from?
A: Everyone thinks that our sworn moral enemies are the blacks, and lately, well, a lot of people say Jews. These are not our sworn enemies. I have not sworn to hate these people. The media always has this thing that we want to kill and gas all these people. That’s not it. I’d say our major enemy would be the government that would implement policies that are inimical to both races that would want to force them together, when they don’t want to be.
Q: Most of the new immigration to Canada has been almost strictly non-European.. .How does this make you feel?
A: That goes back to the government. I would say that given a poll tomorrow, and there was one a couple of years ago, taken on the news about immigration and it came out a whopping 90 per cent against. I am sure those people who phoned in were not 100 per cent white people. Every job that you give away to an immigrant who comes to this country, that’s one job taken away from a white man, or black man who lives here or Indian or Asian, who are already born and raised here, first—class citizens.. .1 would personally like to see immigration cut down to needy people, people who are genuinely persecuted.
Q: If immigration were restricted only to needy people, what if those needy people all happened to be people of color?
A: Well, if these people were permitted to come in, I would also like to see a policy implemented, not exactly segregation, as in the old-fashioned sense of the word, but a geographical separation, where under a sincere program of help that these persecuted (people), if they were blacks and Asians, or what have you, would go into their own quarters, much like they have Chinatowns and Little Italies, much like they have already and their brethren and kinsmen would help them out.
Q: Why are you the local organizer of the KKK?
A: I’m not sure. All my life I know that going to school I was kind of picked on a little much by blacks and I started to see them in a very bad light. I don’t know what I ever did to them, but I was kind of a quiet, little child. So when I first heard about the Klan, and I believed all the stories that I was told, that they were going to night ride and we were going to whip them and put them back in their place and all that stuff, I thought, ‘‘Now that’s what I want to do.’’ I started out being what you might call a hatemonger, but after I got involved and really learned what it was all about, there were a lot of them told me hat this way was wrong. We want to do this in a progressive way, in a way that would be beneficial to both of us. Like I said, we are against mixing the races. We are not for violence against any one culture or creed . . .At first I thought it was an order that had died. . . Slowly I began to find out that it was an order that was still around. I thought it was so underground that I’d never be able to get in touch with it. But I made contact with people in Canada and I became a member. I’ve been a member for two years now.
Q: Last Halloween there were copies of the Klansman distributed in Halifax.. .Was your group involved?
A: My group was not involved in that at all. That was another group and they are a member of a different Klan that comes out of North Carolina.
Q: Are your views on the Holocaust similar to those of Ernst Zundel?
A: Similar, yes, not exactly. Things I’ve read from what is called the revisionist point of view, I haven’t exactly read anything by Ernst Zundel. I know what he stands for, I know what he believes. I believe that there were many internment camps, many people were killed and many just died. But I don’t believe in the Final Solution, so to speak. No!
Q: Do you think that 6 million Jews were killed?
A: No, not 6 million. There’s been different numbers from time to time. There was 5 and then I was taught in school 6. I even watched a documentary one time which first quoted a number like 9 and then another number of 5, and basically, when I sat down and added, it was like some ridiculous number like 15 million Jews in this documentary. I don’t think anyone who watches these actually adds these figures up.
Q: Are you saying that people are lying to us?
A: Yes, I say people are lying and there are also people who are misinformed for some reasons and who say they honestly believe it.
Q: Last year a survival camp was found in a wooded area in this province... and telltale signs of a military manoeuvre were present. What was happening at that time?
A: Well, I know where it is, if they did find shell casings, they didn’t come from us.. .If we want to shoot, we go to the range and do it legally.
Q: But you are not denying that it was your camp?
A: Well, we were there and I will say this, that the cross found there we used, but there was no camp, and there was no training and there was no shooting. They also mentioned cabins being built. Well, my Knight Hawk can tell you since he’s from the area that those foundations have been there for a good 15 years at least. We didn’t put them there.
Q: So what was the purpose of you getting together, was it a military manoeuvre then? A: Oh no, not a military manoeuvre. There is no military training, or anything like that. We get together there and we have a little fellowship.. .We have fellowships there.
Q: Why do you burn crosses? Why do you wear hoods?
A: We don’t burn crosses. Burning crosses implies a sense of destruction. In our ritual, and that’s what it is, we refer to it as lighting a cross, or the War Cross, and it has a history that goes back for generations. In Scotland they used to do that as a sign, like a lighthouse beacon, a sign that Vikings were coming to attack. Our symbolism in that is a religious symbol, a cross, the fire is as in the Bible in the Book of John that says Christ is the light of the world and he dispels the darkness from around us. We believe in that ritual and that’s what we’re doing: dispelling the darkness of this age from around us.
Q: What is the darkness, the enemies of the KKK?
A: Well, it wouldn’t be just our enemies. I’d say it’s the enemies of our entire civilization. I mean Canada and the whole Western world has gone downhill in the last 50 to 60 years in just about every respect you can think of. Our religion is failing us and we have thousands of youth walking around in zombie states. They don’t know what they are doing, they can’t get jobs, they turn to drugs, they turn to violence. I think it’s all personally a systematic plan.
Q: If it is a systematic plan, whom is behind it?
A: Well, for many years the Klan and other right-wing groups have pointed to and were saying that the Jews are. Now, I don’t personally think it’s quite that simple.. .1 know a lot of Jews are involved, but I think it’s the work of social planners, the left-wing intelligentsia of which a lot of Jews happen to be members.
Q: Is your organization a serious threat to your enemies?
A: Well, I really don’t know how to answer that.. .1 am not setting this up, and I don’t think a lot of us are setting this up with the actual intention that some day we are just going to rise up and seize power, or take over and do all those things that they like to show you in movies that we supposedly do. I am more interested in building a Christian fellowship amongst white men, who believe and think the same way that I do.
Q: How big is your group in Nova Scotia?
A: All totaled I’d say.. .it’s kind of a hard thing to answer ‘cause one number I could say and you’d say that’s too high and ridiculous, and another number would make me look insignificant. But all totalled, I would say... a hard-core group of supporters and not all paid members really, but a hard core group and paid members all put together, about, I’d say about 50 in the city alone. Outlying regions, there’s people we have in Cape Breton and the South Shore and whatever, that’s going to drive the number up to 90 or more.
Q: Last year, Cyclop, you attempted to get a firearms certificate and failed, didn’t you? Why? Is your group armed and organized?
A: Armed and organized. An! Like I said, I believe in the principle of bearing arms and arming oneself but the group itself is not armed; we’re not planning any coup d’etat. I’d rather do it by ballots, not bullets, to tell you the truth.
Q: Knight Hawk, did you have something you wanted to say on this? (Knight Hawk)
A: Most Klansmen are average people who like to hunt. So they like to have firearms to go hunting. So just because someone’s trying to obtain a firearms doesn’t mean that they want to kill someone or cause force upon someone else.
Q: You, Cyclop, the local organizer of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, have refused to be identified. Why not go public?
A: The easy answer to that is that I would fear reprisals from of course the first thing I would fear reprisals from would be the blacks. They would think, I don’t know, that they’re doing something for their race by wiping us out, or whatever. I think they’re wrong in thinking that, or from our own hostile white renegades, I call them, who see what they perceive as the Klan on television, or what they’ll read in books and newspapers. They think we’re some violent threat and we’ll want to pick a fight and that’s just one reason to do it. Also, we have plenty of genuine enemies who just hate us. They wouldn’t think twice, those like the JDL (Jewish Defence League) or the ADL (Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith) who have mailed letter bombs to comrades of ours in the States. They have done this for years. Stone their houses, get them fired from their jobs. The emotional strain on them is just too much. That’s why I wouldn’t want to go out of the closet. Plus we have tried to be a secret order anyway.
After this article was published the writer received a call from a man who introduced himeslf to the journalist as the Grand Dragon of the KKK in New Jersey. The called offered to make the journalist "an honourary White man." The caller said that the journalist had so fairly profiled the KKK and that had not ever been done before. The Journalist declined the honour.
The Community Reacts to the Interview
The Chronicle-Herald/The Mail-Star Published: 03/06/93
Category: News
Page: B l
Keywords: Cult, Religion, Minority Correction:
Photo/Graphic:
Category: News
Page: B l
Keywords: Cult, Religion, Minority Correction:
Photo/Graphic:
BLACK, JEWISH COMMUNITIES OBJECT TO KKK INTERVIEW
Byline: By Joel Jacobson STAFF REPORTER
MEMBERS OF the Jewish and African-Canadian communities are concerned that interviewing a Ku Klux Klan leader gives the Klan more exposure and furthers its aim of developing a white supremacist society.
Lee Cohen, Atlantic Jewish Council regional chairman of community relations, says the above interview by Frank Boyd "is nauseating to me. It is a skilled exercise in public relations.
"The civility of the interview lulls conscientious objectors, who might otherwise speak out strongly, to respond in less probing and less critical ways, and that's dangerous," says Cohen, who was among several people whose views were sought before today's publication of the Klan article.
Wayne Adams, executive director of the Black Cultural Centre, is upset the Klan is getting any publicity at all. "I don't think they should be getting any press. Anything printed furthers their cause and that furthers the degradation of my people. Any reaction by me would give them credence.”
Dr. Bridglal Pachai, executive-director of the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission, said the stance taken by the Klan on immigration (separate communities for immigrants), "is the position of the hard-line people disposed to a white society in Canada. It is not a position open to reason or flexible to understand how demographics have changed.
"We can't survive by placing blinkers on or by placing boundaries in our country,” he says.
Cohen says the interview shows that nothing in the Klan's agenda has changed. It still targets minority groups, "but maybe their priorities shift from time to time. ' ,
Cohen says he knows Jews are principal targets in Nova Scotia and all across North America. "We have to be very concerned with anything that is said by the Ku Klux Klan.”
Cohen is aware of Klan activities by a small group in Nova Scotia, with a large group peripherally interested.
The growth of the latter group is causing the greatest concern, he says. That sector is made up of everyday people who may have had one experience with a minority group. They stumble on the KKK literature, read it and offer some support.
"That may be in the form of money which is used, first, by the core group to produce more literature which goes into the schools and pervades our children, and secondly, to buy guns.”
He says the above article "may seem non-offensive, but its basic message is to clean up the nonwhites.”
Joan Jones, a legal aid lawyer and a member of the Nova Scotia African Canadian community, says the interview "seems like the Klan is trying to make their purpose very palatable to Nova Scotians, and that scares me. Because of the economic times, their remarks about immigration, which is really separate but unequal, may sound like a not-so-bad idea to some people.
"In prosperous times, people could see right through the Klan's statements,” she says. Jones says the interview sounds like the Klan is trying to rearrange its original words.
