The Aryan Nation: A Cross to Burn
SBS TV
Monday, May 29, 11.55pm (11.25 in SA)
Reviewed by Norm Dixon
This short report, produced for a Utah news program, kicks off a week of programs on SBS that look into racist and far right groups and individuals in the US (see "On the Box", page 27). The recent terrorist bombing in Oklahoma City prompted US President Bill Clinton to lay the blame for the atmosphere in the US that allowed such an outrage to occur at the feet of right-wing radio commentators.
A Cross to Burn examines two related ultraright, racist, anti-government outfits active in the US north-west: the Aryan Nation and the Order. The Oklahoma bomber is said to have had links with the latter.
The Aryan Nation has a small but disturbing foothold in several small towns in Idaho and neighbouring states, areas with a lily white composition of the population. Its ideology is a hotchpotch of racism, anti-Semitism, Nazism, agrarian populism, religious fundamentalism and a virulent right-wing anarchism which is expressed most enthusiastically in their claimed right to carry the latest in automatic weapons. Its symbols include the swastika, the Bible, the KKK's white sheets and burning crosses, and the daggiest military camouflage attire. They are committed to the secession of the US north-west to form a whites-only state.
In the late 1980s, the Order sprang from the Aryan Nation dedicated to fomenting "revolution" against the "Zionist Occupation Government" of the US. They went on a spree of violence, bombings and robberies, murdering several people, including a liberal radio commentator. Within a few years, all known members of the Order were either in jail or dead.
A Cross to Burn follows the community debates in those towns about how to deal with these racist infestations. Two schools of thought do battle: ignore them and they will go away or confront them politically and, if need be physically, to defend the rights of minorities. The Aryan Nation have begun to respond to campaigns against their racist ideas with bombings and violence.
Despite the undoubted threat these small groups pose to communities, one can't help feeling that politicians like Bill Clinton and the US mass media are hyping the danger they pose out of all proportion to throw the spotlight off their own right-wing agendas. From the brief snippets presented of their activities and potential, the Aryan Nation and its offshoots seem more akin to the Illinois Nazis from the famous Blues Brothers film than a movement capable of achieving their stated goals. Of course, one cannot ignore their ability to perpetrate tragic and unpredictable acts of violence as occurred in Oklahoma City.
The real right-wing threat in the US is not disparate groups of kooks but the US capitalist system that creates the conditions in which lunatic groups thrive, and the ruling class that presides over it.
As surgeon Noah Klien — the only person to look deeper into the phenomena of the far right — points out in the doco, the policies of the Democratic and Republican parties have created a mood in which racist groups feel comfortable and have presided over a general religious fundamentalist push and relative economic depression. The greatest danger is that the establishment parties will tap this sentiment and shift US politics even further to the right, which may also involve utilising the US far-right at some point.
Asked if they are concerned about the Aryan Nation becoming established in their city, black activists from Salt Lake City reply that affirmative action is being rolled back and discrimination is rife in housing and credit. "The racists here don't wear hoods and burn crosses, they wear suits and carry briefcases."