Article 1
The Economic Basis of Racist and Sexist Scapegoating 

To hear U.S. business leaders and politicians talk, you'd think the United States was a poor country. Government at all levels calls for sacrifice in the face of "harsh fiscal realities." Firms announce layoffs daily, needed to survive in today's "tough competitive environment." Yet over the last decade, the U.S. economy grew by nearly a third, twice as fast as the population. Our economy's output last year amounted to some $21,000 worth of goods and services per person--an average income of $84,000 per year for a family of four. By any rational measure, the United States is a rich country: our economy is booming; our firms are profitable, our workers productive. Where has all the money gone?
            Well, it hasn't gone to most of the population. From 1989 to 1995, 80 percent of U.S. households lost income; hundreds of thousands lost pensions and health benefits. According to the government's own data, all the benefits of economic growth flowed into the pockets of the most affluent 10 percent of the population (average income-$107,500). Of that, the bulk went to the richest 5 percent (average income-$259,000). And no group benefited as greatly as the elite top 1 percent of U.S. families. If you were a member of this lucky group, your after-tax income doubled during the 1980s. As for your wealth--well, with high interest rates and a booming stock market, you probably have a cool $8 mil stashed aside. If you're the CEO of a large corporation, you may have earned $4 million last year alone. And why not? With productivity up and wages stagnant, corporate profits have risen more than 50 percent in the last three years.
            It is not simply that the rich are getting richer and the poor, poorer. The entire U.S. middle class is getting poorer. The U.S. economy has ceased to work for the majority of the population.
            What happened? How has the U.S. economy--the economy that practically invented the term "middle class"--been transformed into a vehicle for enriching a tiny minority, while impoverishing the majority? The simple answer is that U.S. economic policy has been hijacked by the corporate and financial elite. At least since Reagan's election in 1980, the U.S. government has been run by the rich, for the rich and has systematically ignored the needs of the poor, the working class, and even the middle class. Beholden to wealthy campaign donors, government at all levels promotes economic policies that are unabashedly probusiness and antiworker.

Aiding Runaway Corporations
            U.S. businesses, we are told, face tough competition from abroad. Slashing wages and jobs may seem hardhearted, but that's life in today's global economy. What we are not told is that "globalization" is a process initiated by large companies, pushed forward by politicians, and aided and abetted by government every step of the way. Under the banner of free trade, the U.S. government deliberately assists runaway corporations in relocating production abroad. When a U.S. company moves jobs to Mexico or Indonesia or Brazil, it's a safe bet that U.S. government officials have visited beforehand to smooth the way. Free,trade agreements like NAFTA and GATT lower tariffs and codify property rights, the better for businesses to move goods and money across borders. A recent study by the Economic Policy Institute blames NAFTA for the loss of 400,000 jobs in the United States (and many more in Mexico). Even when companies don't move jobs abroad, they threaten to, and the threat of moving, according to a study by economist Dani Roddick, severely weakens the power of workers to bargain for better wages or working conditions.
            In workplaces across the country, the new corporate refrain is "work harder for less or we'll move the work to Mexico (or India, or Thailand, or ...)."

Giving Wall Street a Raise
            While incomes stagnate for those of us who live by the sweat of our brow, those who live by lending money are doing exceedingly well. Banks and other financial firms raked in record profits over the last few years; their wealthy clientele amassed fortunes. Behind the prosperity of the financial class stands the Federal Reserve (the Fed), a quasi-governmental agency responsible for setting interest rates and printing money. The Fed is chartered by Congress to promote full employment. It's supposed to keep interest rates low enough to encourage economic growth and job creation. But low interest rates make it difficult for the financial elite, through the magic of compound returns, to grow wealthier. And so the Fed, beginning in 1980, raised interest rates, kept them high, and continues to press for higher rates on the flimsiest of pretexts. The real (after inflation) rate of interest on home mortgages and consumer loans is now double the rate that prevailed in the 1960s and is four or five times higher than 1970s rates.
            Largely as a result of Fed policies, the distribution of wealth in the United States is now shockingly skewed; a mere one-half of one percent of the U.S. population controls nearly 40 percent of all financial wealth. As William Wolman and Anne Colamosca put it in their new book (The Judas Economy), the Fed and similar central banks "have become the deadly enemies of those who earn their living from work." Labor unions and citizen groups protested the Fed's blatant efforts to give Wall Street a raise. In response, Congress did absolutely nothing. Well, not quite. Congressional Republicans just introduced legislation that would allow the Fed to ignore unemployment entirely and so raise interest rates more easily.

Abandoning the Unemployed
            After WWII, the federal government began using its prodigious borrowing authority to fight recessions. In a business downturn, taxpayers lose jobs, government tax collections fall, and the federal deficit rises. Until recently, the federal government would respond to the downturn by borrowing heavily to cover its deficit and to pay for public works and income-support programs (like welfare). The purpose of deficit spending is to keep money and income flowing through the economy during recessions and so prevent massive job loss. Running a deficit during a recession--what economists term expansionary fiscal policy--as not only routine practice in the United States for decades, but was mandated by full-employment bills passed in the 1940s and again in the 1970s.
            With the recent bipartisan balanced-budget deal, the federal government abandons its decades-long commitment to full employment. Now, federal officials must, in a recession, match each decline in tax collections with new spending cuts. Higher unemployment will translate into fewer, not more, dollars spent on welfare, education, construction and other, so-called "discretionary" programs. This is precisely how Herbert Hoover managed the economy at the onset of the Great Depression, with disastrous consequences. Of course, the corporate executives who clamored so loudly for a balanced budget aren't worried about another depression. Programs that benefit them--such "nondiscretionary" items as military contracts, savings and loan bailouts, and interest payments--won't be cut, budget deal or no budget deal.
            The message to working people is loud and clear. If the economy tanks, you're on your own. Offer to work for less pay and maybe, just maybe, someone will hire you.

Retreating from the Public Sector
            For more than a decade, U.S. government at all levels has been systematically dismantling the public sector. The retreat was spearheaded by supply-side Republicans in the early 1980s. Emboldened by their success, businesses pressed for "reforms" at the state and local levels, so that local officials throughout the nation have fallen into step. Government spending as a whole has not dropped. What has been cut are those goods and services that ordinary people actually use. Governments slashed budgets for libraries, parks, museums, schools, public colleges, housing, hospitals, legal aid offices and transportation systems, while raising spending on police, prisons, and the military. Progressives and liberals rightly decry the immorality of these budgets.
            Less noted is the invidious impact that public service cuts have on the power of working people. It is not the rich, after all, who rely on public libraries for books, on public beaches for swimming, or on public colleges for their education. A vibrant, well-equipped public sphere mostly benefits the middle classes and the poor, who by pooling resources through the tax system, enjoy services they could never afford individually. Moreover, public services are available in good times and bad, whether one is rich or poor, employed or unemployed.
            While public goods and services have never been as extensive in the United States as in Europe (where health services, child care, and, often, housing and transportation are publicly provided and cheap or free to all residents), even our limited stock of public goods constitute a kind of social wage that can supplement or even supplant job-based earnings. Public hospitals, transit systems, schools, and housing ensure even the destitute a minimum level of basic services. When governments cut public services or charge high fees for services that once were free, the consequences of losing one's job grow dire. If job loss means no recreation, no health care, no transportation, no education, then how can workers resist wage cuts or contest poor working conditions? What is there to fall back on if you lose your job?

Privatizing Work
            Public goods benefit working people in another way--they provide government jobs. And government jobs are good jobs, with decent wages and great benefits. Government jobs are union jobs. Though fewer than 10 percent of workers in the United States work for the government, more than 40 percent of unionized workers work for the government. Nearly half of government workers belong to unions, compared to just over 10 percent of private sector workers. Are government workers more likely to join unions because their working conditions are so poor? No. Government workers join unions because government work places are public property, where people enjoy the right to free speech. At government work sites, union organizers post notices and distribute literature right on the premises. Private sector workers have no comparable rights at work. Private employers can and have forbidden union members not only from handing out literature but even from wearing pins or hats with a union logo.
            It's little wonder then that unions regard the Republican push to "privatize" public services as a thinly disguised maneuver to undercut the labor movement's strongest base of support. Unions are strong in the public sector, because in the public sector the Constitution applies. Privatized workers aren't covered by the Bill of Rights, at least not while they're on the dock.
            The depressing economic news of recent years won't be reversed until progressives and friends of labor regain control of government and use it to pursue economic policies that serve the entire population. Americans must reclaim their government and renew the civic society that the corporate elite has worked so assiduously to dismantle. What are our prospects?
            Well, first the bad news. The one institution that truly belongs to the public--the only institution capable of standing between working people and the excesses of private corporations--is the government. Yet polls show that Americans' disgust with their government exceeds their distrust of private corporations. And corporate-sponsored politicians have worked cleverly and incessantly to foster this disgust.
            It is ironic, but hardly accidental, that pro-business politicians are most likely both to engage in corrupt practices and to rail against government as hopelessly corrupt. Conservatives cynically exploit each campaign finance scandal, every tale of waste, cupidity, and incompetence--even those they themselves created--to agitate for less government, lower taxes, more privatization. Is the National Forest Service selling off logging rights at bargain basement prices? Proof that the government can't make the simplest business deal. Is the Commerce Department using tax dollars to help runaway shops set up overseas? Proof that the government can't be trusted with your money.
            At the state level, supply-side governors like William Weld (R-MA) and Christine Todd Whitman (R-NJ) engage in an ingenious strategy I call death-by-a-thousand-cuts. State facilities are neglected, under-funded and mismanaged. When the inevitable complaints and exposes pour in, the facilities are closed or turned over (at fire sale prices) to private businesses.
            In this environment, how do we convince the voting and tax-paying public that more government control and more public goods might be their best hope? When I tell students about the extensive public services in other countries, they say such programs could never be instituted here--U.S. politicians are a bunch of crooks. As one student commented, "I wouldn't mind a Canadian-style health care system. I'd just want the Canadian government to run it."
            But there is good news. From around the country come hopeful signs that democratic government is being renewed. Progressive-labor coalitions (often in alliance with the New Party or the Greens) are scoring impressive victories in local elections and are using their success to make government work for the public good. From Los Angeles to St. Paul to New York City, coalitions of labor and community groups have succeeded in passing living-wage ordinances, preventing shutdowns of public hospitals, and restoring public service cuts. To be sure, municipalities in the United States have limited capacity to make or implement policy. But local victories are important and not only as springboards to state and national office. Cities and towns are where people live. When they are well run, they can be living testimony that government by the people is government for the people.
            The U.S. labor movement is also springing back. Under new leadership, the AFL-CIO is devoting much of its budget to organizing and agitating. Unions throughout the country are growing more militant and creative, building community ties to mobilize support for organizing drives, drawing on older workers' experience in organizing, and merging small unions to pool resources and pursue common goals. While membership dwindles in the old industrial unions, membership in unions representing workers in health care, education and leisure industries--the new face of the U.S. work force--is growing.
            Labor unions are vital in carving out some space for civic and participatory activity. Strong unions can limit working hours, freeing up time for community and family. Strong unions protect workers' right to speak freely in the workplace and, thereby, foster the growth of a self-confident citizenry. At their best, unions educate their members in policy and leadership. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine how democracy could be invigorated in the United States without a vibrant labor movement.
            Reversing the grim economic trends of recent years is possible. The United States is a rich nation, and our money has not flown away. We need only reclaim it by devising government policies that work to the benefit of all. It won't be easy. But nobody said democracy was. [....] In only 16 years the top 1% nearly doubled their share of the wealth. The next 9% also gained. The bottom 90% were very big losers.

1976
Wealthiest 1  Percent Owned  19%
Next 9  Percent Owned  30%
Bottom  90 Percent Owned 51%

1992
Wealthiest 1  Percent Owned 37%
Next 9  Percent Owned 35%
Bottom 90 Percent Owned 28%

Ellen Frank is an assistant professor at Massachusetts Bay Community College, staff economist with the Center for Popular Economics, and member of the editorial collective of Dollars and Sense magazine.
Copyright © 1997 Sojourner Feminist Institute

Young people are drawn into the white supremacist movement through many avenues, including the propaganda of Internet hate sites and racist rock ’n’ roll. But socioeconomic factors, including stark economic pressures on youths and young families, have played a major part in making the young -- particularly those in the working class and lower-middle class -- susceptible to messages of hate. Here, gathered from disparate sources, are a number of indicators reflecting these socioeconomic pressures, most of which have increased dramatically since the 1970s. Changing demographic trends, falling wages, rising child poverty, diminishing opportunities for the less educated, and high rates of both youth arrests and youth incarceration are among these factors. Finally, a recent survey seems to reflect the rise of ethnic nationalism, with young people of all races more willing than they have been in decades to accept separation of the races.

Income Inequality at Historic Levels

Income inequality -- a factor that can generate even more social resentment than actual economic losses -- has reached levels unprecedented since the Great Depression. Over the last 22 years, these disparities have reached a level where the total after-tax income of the top 1% of American households exceeds that of the bottom 20%. The gap in accumulated wealth between the rich and the poor is even greater, with the wealthiest 20% of households owning nearly 85% of the nation’s total wealth. Source: Congressional Budget Office/Center for Budget and Policy Priorities

Child Poverty Soars in Young Families

The economic environment in which American children are being raised has worsened radically over the last two decades, especially for young families. Between 1973 and 1994, the poverty rate for all children in young families more than doubled, with the worst rates experienced by the rapidly growing number of single-parent families. At the same time, young families headed by a high school dropout saw their median incomes cut by half. The median income for those headed by a high school graduate dropped by one third. Source: Center for Labor Market Studies/Children’s Defense Fund

Unemployment Way Up for Unschooled

While unemployment rates for young people have remained fairly steady over the last 30 years, the jobless rate for those with less education has risen sharply -- meaning that high school and college degrees are more important than ever. People who are aged 16-24 with only a high school degree suffer from unemployment levels more than twice those of college graduates, while the level for those who have not finished high school was about five times that of those who are college-educated. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Wages for Young Workers Plummet

Average hourly wages have declined precipitously since 1973, with by far the most dramatic decreases seen among young workers. These younger workers, who are aged between 20 and 29, have seen their real wages (measured here in constant 1996 dollars) fall by almost 22% -- a drop that may contribute to rising juvenile crime rates. According to an analysis by the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research, a 20% drop in wages is statistically correlated with a 12-18% increase in youth crime. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics/Children’s Defense Fund

Juvenile Arrests for Violent Crime Are Up

Arrests of juveniles for violent crimes skyrocketed 79% between 1987 and 1994 -- a period in which the population of juveniles in the United States rose just 7%. Since 1994, these arrest rates have declined somewhat, but they are still well above levels of the 1980s. Crimes committed by those under 18 years old also are more violent in the 1990s than they were earlier, with young people accounting for larger percentages of all murders, rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults than in the 1980s. Source: U.S. Department of Justice

Once Scolded, Kids Now Go to Prison

The number of incarcerated juveniles is at a historic high, having risen 35% during the 1990s alone. As a result, more young people are being exposed to the racist gangs that dominate penal institutions and, at least in some cases, are becoming hard-line racial supremacists in the process. In 1972, 45% of youths under 18 arrested were released by police, often after a good scolding. Today, as the public clamors for more punishment, that number has fallen by half, with far more juveniles referred to the courts. Source: U.S. Department of Justice

America’s White Majority on the Way Out

During the next half-century, the white majority that has long dominated American society will evaporate, with whites becoming a minority some time shortly after 2050. While the percentage of blacks in the population is expected to remain fairly steady, the number of Hispanics is growing rapidly, with Hispanics expected to be the nation’s largest minority group by 2005. These demographic changes are used frequently by hate groups to strike fear into whites’ hearts and to argue that America is not the country it once was. Source: U.S. Census Bureau

‘Separate But Equal’ Seen as Acceptable

The logic of the Supreme Court’s famous rejection of "separate but equal" doctrines has clearly been lost on much of the generation of Americans now aged 18-29. This is especially true for whites and the less educated, well over half of whom are not concerned with a segregated society, given equal opportunities. But almost half of younger blacks also share the view that racial separation is acceptable. This attitude is reflected, among other ways, in the stark segregation typically found in campus sororities and fraternities. Source: NAACP/Hamilton College

In cedar rapids, iowa, a 12-year-old boy distributes propaganda for neo-Nazi leader Matt Hale, a man whose one-time deputy murdered two people and wounded seven others last July. In Cleveland, a group of white 14- and 15-year-olds allegedly plans an October massacre of black students on homecoming day. And in Pasadena, Calif., four 13- and 14-year-olds, one of them fond of swastikas and similar symbols, are accused of drawing up plans in September to murder Armenians -- an ethnic group that the children’s leader had apparently decided was not truly white after reviewing stacks of hate literature.

Who are these children, these young white racists who have made newspaper headlines in the last few months? Where are they coming from?

As adults and parents, it is hard for most of us to fathom the motivations of such children, much less see them as the peers of our own offspring or those of our friends. But the fact is, these youths, along with many thousands of others like them, are not so different from the kid next door. They are part of an alienated new generation of white youths, young people who in many cases have been hit hard by socioeconomic changes and dislocations.

They are children facing tough times.

The ‘Intense Frustration’ of the Young

Just as plant closings and farm failures created fertile ground for recruiting by hate groups in the 1980s, newer types of social changes are now helping to shape another generation of haters. Globalization, a technological revolution and strong downward economic pressures on the middle class have all contributed to the rise of an underclass of working- and middle-class white youths -- a group of angry young people unusually susceptible to the pitches of organized hate.

In this issue’s special report on youth, the Intelligence Report takes a hard look at the objective conditions helping to fuel the rise of a violent generation. While it is true that many young people come into the organized white supremacist movement through no particular hardship, it seems clear that for many youths -- particularly those hanging on at the lower margins of the middle class and living in aging suburbs with changing racial demographics -- these kinds of conditions, along with changing family life, are key determinants.

Randy Blazak, an Oregon sociologist who has extensively investigated racist youth, says that although the young Skinheads he studied encompassed a wide range of personality types, they all shared the idea that the America they had grown up with was disappearing. A large part of that feeling, he believes, stems from socioeconomic changes.

"A lot of them had parents who had been laid off from the textile mill or downsized or whatever," Blazak says. "If they hadn’t directly experienced this, they knew other people who had. They were very cognizant of the fact that the American dream -- that everyone will be judged on the merits of their hard work and move up the ladder accordingly -- was shrinking, a fairy tale. ... These kids had this intense frustration."

Family Life, Music and Hate Groups

Armando Morales, a psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences professor at the ucla School of Medicine who has treated gang members for 40 years, notes another factor -- "emotional neglect caused by economic necessity requiring both parents to work two or more jobs in order to support two or three cars, a hefty mortgage, several large color tvs, vcrs, private school and college tuition." One result, Morales wrote in The Denver Post recently, has been a marked growth in middle-class gang members during the 1980s and ’90s.

But even such dislocations in economic and family life do not fully explain what is happening to this new and troubled generation. Today, hate groups are actively seeking to recruit these youths not only by playing on their angers and resentments, but also by using racist rock ’n’ roll. This music is remarkably effective in proselytizing to youth.

Now, as reported in this issue, America’s most important neo-Nazi -- William Pierce of the National Alliance -- controls the nation’s premier white power enterprise. Pierce’s acquisition of Resistance Records, which in the past has sold 50,000 racist CDs a year, puts him in a position to build an increasingly broad-based revolutionary movement.

There are no easy solutions to these problems. Much of what is shaping this new generation comes from powerful social forces that are still unfolding. Music and other forms of propaganda being used to recruit the young are clearly protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. But as parents and concerned members of the community, we owe it to our children to try -- to make an attempt to reshape the lives of the young within a more nurturing, tolerant and just society.

A sociologist who has investigated and worked with white supremacist youth discusses the roots of racism

Randy Blazak, a sociologist at Portland State University in Oregon, has spent eight years studying white supremacist Skinheads in the United States and Europe. Specializing in the connections between conceptions of masculinity, gang crime and hate group youth recruitment, Blazak has emphasized the socioeconomic and subcultural roots of youth hatred in his work. He has written on various aspects of the racist youth movement and is the co-author of a forthcoming book, Renegade Kids, Suburban Outlaws, about youth crime and Skinheads. In 1997, he created Oregon Spotlight (www.ospotlight.pdx.edu/), a small organization that monitors hate groups and provides resources to courts, parents and youths concerned about hate crime. The Intelligence Report asked Blazak about his views of the motivations and psychology of white supremacist youths and the social milieu that helps to produce them.

INTELLIGENCE REPORT How did you begin your research?

Blazak The first thing I did was look for a Skinhead population that I thought was fairly representative of what was happening in the country. I ended up spending 13 months hanging out with different cliques of Skinheads in Orlando, Fla., including a group called the Youth Corps Skins, which had ties to the Klan. I was going to meetings and drinking beer and slam dancing and doing all those things that Skinheads do.

IR: What attitude did you approach them with?

Blazak: An important part of it was seeing them as human beings and not as cartoon figures or caricatures of evil. They were really concerned kids who cared about social justice in a weird, warped sort of way. On a certain level, I admIired these kids because they were 17 years old, politically active and knew all about the changing economy. They could just as easily have wound up in the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade. But it was the right wing that had access to them. It was the Klan and [California neo-Nazi] John Metzger who gave them the analysis. And of course the analysis was ZOG [many white supremacists believe that the federal government -- which they term the "Zionist Occupational Government" (ZOG) -- is secretly run by Jews]. It’s all a big conspiracy.

IR: Were you surprised by what you found in Orlando?

Blazak: My initial theory going into the field turned out to be really off base. I had thought these were a bunch of bullies, or kids who had been bullied and were becoming bullies. What I found was a wide range of personality types.

But the one thing they had in common was this fear that the America they had grown up with -- or their image of America -- was disappearing. And that image was one that was based on straight white male supremacy. Of course, the big issue that also came in was the fact of economic downward mobility. A lot of them had parents who had been laid off from the textile mill or downsized or whatever. If they hadn’t directly experienced this, they knew other people who had. They were very cognizant of the fact that the American dream -- that everyone will be judged on the merits of their hard work and move up the ladder accordingly -- was shrinking, a fairy tale. Everybody gets excited about the Dow Jones being above 10,000. But another way of looking at that is how well corporate America is downsizing. It’s great for the investors, but for the middle class it’s often a nightmare.

These kids had this intense frustration. You know, if your dad works at a factory you can still go to college. It may not be Harvard, but you can go to college. Dad gets laid off, and you don’t go to college. Then you hear about affirmative action and what you perceive to be quotas or free rides and all of a sudden you see yourself as having been screwed. And it becomes the fault of the Jewish conspiracy. You could blame the multinational corporations and the economy, but it’s much easier to pick a certain scapegoat.

IR: Were objective conditions or subjective perceptions more important in forming the world view of these young people?

Blazak: The most hard-core kids had experienced some first- or second-hand downward mobility. But the propaganda around the changing face of the American Dream was just as powerful. The perception was that all white people are moving down, and all minority people are moving up: "The working-class white man is losing out on America, the country that he built." So it becomes a mythology that is based on reality.

When I started doing my research, all the bitching was about "The Cosby Show," which of course was the most popular show on TV at the time. They were like, "Look at what this nigger family has, and look what we have. He’s a doctor and she’s a lawyer. They have a brownstone in Brooklyn Heights. And I live in a trailer park." There was a study on the impact of the show that found that it had actually hurt race relations because it gave the impression that racism had been solved and that all black people live like that. To me, the show was clearly symbolic of a shift in the perception of race relations in America.

IR: What are some other reasons young people join hate groups?

Blazak: There are a number of factors that drive kids into hate groups. You have the kid who’s been laid off, the kid whose dad is in the Klan, and just the kid who’s pissed off at his parents and because they’re left, he’s going to go right -- the basic motivation of teenage rebellion. All of these kids can be drawn into the mythical world of hate groups, which is appealing because of its very simplistic world view, especially now with its presence on the Internet. The ideology is so taboo in this politically correct era that it has to be intoxicating to kids. And obviously, those kids who come from the more desperate situations are going to need something that gives them a sense that there’s a reason their lives are so screwed up. All subcultures offer some type of solution to a problem, whether it’s getting money or ending the war or whatever it is. The hate group subculture offers a solution on the media level: "I have a group now, a political voice that speaks for me."

IR: How deep did the racism of these recruits seem to you?

Blazak: I think their racism was an excuse or a pose. Ultimately, when they sat down and thought about it, they couldn’t defend it. But it gave them an excuse to be macho, to be righteous and take a stand on issues of justice. One of the big things I saw in Skinhead culture -- and I studied both racist and anti-racist Skinheads -- was the feeling that not only were they losing their status as economic citizens but they also were losing their gender status, their opportunity to prove their masculinity. The only difference between racist and anti-racist Skinheads I saw was racism. The anti-racist Skinheads were just as homophobic, just as sexist, and just as violent as the Nazi Skinheads.

IR: Can you give an example of the superficiality of Skinhead racism?

Blazak: I had a conversation with one anti-racist Skinhead who had previously been a very serious Nazi. He had joined up with the Youth Corps Skins, partly because he was really tired of his parents telling him what to do, and was doing some work with the Klan. But the Klan was even more authoritarian. He said, "It was bad enough that my dad was always telling me to take out the trash. But now the Klan guys were telling me what to do all the time." So he got out of it and became an anti-racist Skinhead -- purely to fulfill the need of having some autonomy. The racism was just a vehicle for other emotional needs.

Another example is how often the fliers you see are ancient, they’ve been copied so many times. The kids just regurgitate the party line. They don’t really think about it.

IR: How do you see organized hate groups recruiting young people?

Blazak: Well, there’s a couple different tracks. One of the more common ones that I found was racist groups going into areas that had experienced some type of economic or racial change. The Klan zoomed right in to my high school when we started receiving more minorities through a desegregation program. What I’ve seen is that often around a factory layoff there will be a lot of Klan or Skinhead or national socialist recruiting.

Another thing I’m watching right now in the Northwest is how Skinhead groups will have someone in the local school as a contact -- usually, it’s a little brother or a member -- who reports on the graffiti in the bathrooms. If there’s a lot of racist or homophobic graffiti, they know there are a lot of the people there who have the feelings but might not be expressing them openly. So they will target that area with fliers and try to get a foothold.

IR: What do the recruiters do then?

Blazak: The next step is to get the kids into the racist music, get them onto the mailing list of a distributor like Resistance Records [see story in this issue] and start getting them CDs that reflect some of those same things they’re writing on the bathroom walls.

This is a whole form of music and kids are always wanting to discover new things. For young people, music is also a strong reinforcement of feelings, because they are in such an inarticulate phase of their lives. It’s a way of expressing themselves.

Music also gives the movement legitimacy. It is a subculture just like hip hop is a subculture. When the bands play live, they get the hard-core followers but also the friends of those people and the girlfriends and the curious. It can be very seductive.

IR: What about recruiting in prisons and juvenile detention facilities?

Blazak: It’s become increasingly important. The majority of the recruitment that we see in the Northwest now is prison recruitment. For instance, Volksfront [a neo-Nazi Skinhead group] has a mailing list of "prisoners of war," and it gives those people a connection. You become a hero in the struggle, a martyr. You gain a name as a prisoner of war. You have people who write to you, lots of reinforcement, and protection inside the prison. And once you get out, you have a subculture to come home to. In fact, we get waves of Skinhead activity around the release of members of prison hate groups.

Many whites feel they don’t have a gang or a group to defend them in prison. We had a fellow here in Portland who was arrested for burning a cross in a black man’s yard. I actually got to know him pretty well. What had happened to him was he was in a juvenile detention center, and he was a white kid, and some black kid stabbed him with a fork. The Aryan Brotherhood [a racist prison gang] showed up right afterward and said, "Stick with us and we’ll protect you." He became the founder of Volksfront.

IR: How has multiculturalism affected these young people?

Blazak: One of the big issues is that these kids increasingly are born after the civil rights era. Kids born in the ’80s don’t really have a frame of reference, personal experience of the obvious manifestations of racism. They didn’t see segregation or busing or a lot of the other things that older people grew up with. And some of them feel they’re getting multiculturalism forced down their throats in school. They don’t get the context of why it’s important.

Now, all of a sudden, white kids see white people seeming like the enemies in history. We have all these black and Hispanic faces in our history books, and [minorities] even have their own history books. "And where is white history month?" That plays to their real simplistic notion of justice and fairness: "If you can do it, I can do it." There’s this lack of understanding that we have black history month because in the past we’ve excised black history from our history books. The context is gone.

IR: Why do you think that is?

Blazak: In the ’80s, as a society, we stopped talking about race. There was this illusion that the race problem had been solved. I’ve had students tell me that racism ended -- and they’ll pinpoint the date, 1965 -- and say that black people are just complaining now.

The component of the dialogue that we never got to was the notion of white privilege -- how all white people have benefited from racism, the idea that I should be guaranteed a certain status because of my whiteness -- or male privilege, or heterosexual privilege. That’s a discussion that’s been fiercely absent in our dialogue about race.

IR: Since you’ve been in Portland, you’ve taken some steps to try to deal with the problems we’ve discussed. Can you describe your efforts?

Blazak: We’ve formed an organization called Oregon Spotlight. It’s basically myself and two former racist Skinheads, Steven Stroud and Scott Britt. We’re working on three levels. We do a lot of monitoring of hate groups, focusing on Oregon. We also work with people who’ve been convicted of hate crimes, lesser offenses like vandalism, because one of the worst things you can do is put lesser offenders into detention facilities where they get more indoctrinated in racist ideology. We want to change these people.

But the main thing we do is talk to high school kids to try to give them the critical thinking skills to resist recruitment and to recognize that diversity is a lot more rewarding, that racism is inherently irrational. It’s such an easy ideology to deconstruct. All you have to do is ask the question, "Who is white?" For a lot of Nazis, if you don’t have blond hair and blue eyes, you’ve got Gypsy blood, you’re a lower rank. "How do you get black people back to Africa if they were born here?" "Should all Irish-Americans go back to Ireland because they’re hyphenated Americans as well?" It’s all just so silly.

Hate groups appeal to a really simplistic, black-and-white world view. You’re either loyal to the white race or you’re part of ZOG. "Why is there a black student union and not a white student union? How can that not be racist?" Well, let’s talk about the history of racism in this country. "Why is there gay pride and not straight pride?" Let’s talk about the history of homophobia. Conspiracy theories try to explain everything, but reality doesn’t work that way. It’s just not that simple. There’s no one explanation for everything -- things are not black-and-white. So we have to help kids with these shades of gray.