White supremacist groups go

public to seek members

White-supremacist groups are moving aggressively to recruit new members by promoting their violent, racist ideologies on billboards, in radio commercials and in leaflets tossed on suburban driveways.

Watching with mounting alarm, civil-rights monitors say these tactics stake out a much bolder, more public role for many hate groups, which are trying to shed their image as shadowy extremists and claim more mainstream support.

Watchdog groups fear increased violence as these organizations grow. But perhaps an even greater fear is that the new public-relations strategy will allow neo-Nazis to recast themselves as just another voice on the political spectrum — even when that voice might be advocating genocide.

"The concern is that this will bring them new members and money, and that they will get some real traction in mainstream politics," said Mark Potok, who tracks hate groups for the Southern Poverty Law Center. "We are completely in favor of the First Amendment. [But] they poison the public discourse with ideas like Jews are behind it all and need killing."

The National Alliance, which calls for ridding the land of minorities, has led the drive to raise the profile of white supremacists.

The local chapter spent $1,500 on MetroLink ads in St. Louis last month, plastering nearly every commuter train car in the city with a blue-and-white placard declaring "The Future belongs to us!" and listing the group's Web site and phone number.

The same chapter bought airtime on local talk radio last fall, urging whites to fight for the survival of "white America."

"We want to use mainstream advertising to say to the public: We're not a shadowy group. This is what we believe in, and we're proud of it," chapter leader Aaron Collins said. "We're trying to give people courage. We want to show them, if you stand up for what you believe in, you're not going to be crucified."

Other chapters of the National Alliance have posted billboards in Utah, Nevada and Florida. The group also has coordinated massive leaflet drops, distributing 100,000 fliers in a single night in states as diverse as New Jersey, Alabama and Nebraska.

The National Alliance even bought a membership list and mailing labels from the Florida Bar Association last year so it could send an eight-page recruitment letter, complete with anti-Semitic cartoons, to 2,500 criminal-defense lawyers.

"If we had the money to advertise during the Super Bowl, we'd try that, too," said Shaun Walker, the organization's chief operating officer.

Civil-rights monitors consider the National Alliance, founded in the 1970s, one of the most virulent neo-Nazi groups in the country. Its late founder, William Pierce, called for herding Jews and "race mixers" into cattle cars and abandoning them in old coal mines.

And although the group's Web site says it "does not advocate any illegal activity," National Alliance members have been convicted of scattered acts of violence over the past two decades, including armed robberies, bombings and murders. The FBI's senior counter-terrorism expert told Congress in 2002 that the National Alliance represented a "terrorist threat."

Public outreach is not new for white-supremacist groups. The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan have been picking up litter for Missouri's Adopt-a-Highway program for years.

But hate-group monitors say the latest recruitment campaigns are much broader than any they've seen previously.

Neo-Nazi organizations are not only putting up billboards, they're also instructing members to hide their tattoos and dress for rallies in conservative suits to avoid being dismissed as extremists.

Thomas Robb, national director of the Klan, urges his members to serve on community boards and in political parties so they can push their white-power agenda from positions of social respect.

The National Alliance, meanwhile, increasingly is tailoring its leaflets to current events. Local members seize on any racial tensions in their community as an excuse to blanket the area with articles explaining the white-power worldview.

As Walker put it: "The current powers-that-be constantly demonize us. But if we can get our message out to enough people, we'll gain legitimacy with the public."

Although no one offers hard numbers, white supremacists contend — and their sharpest critics agree — that the recruitment strategy is working.

Media reports about the Salt Lake City billboard drove 4,500 visitors to the National Alliance's local Web site in a single week, compared with average traffic of 100 hits a month, Walker said.

"What evidence we've seen indicates that real-world advertisement and promotion has far more impact on recruitment than online work does," said Devin Burghart, who monitors hate groups for the Center for New Community in Chicago.

"They reach a different demographic."

Hate groups recognize the power of that outreach. So they intend to keep at it.

"You know the old saying: It pays to advertise," Walker said. "Only we're not selling a product, we're announcing an idea."