

          (The following information was downloaded and excerpted
       on May 14th, from a BBS in Austin, Texas called Pair-O-Dice)
       *************************************************************



BIGOTRY AND VIOLENCE ONLINE/Neo-Nazi bulletin board services:


   The high-tech propaganda machine of the Radical Right, the electronic
bulletin board is being effectively utilized by fascists.  For years,
extremist groups across the political specturm have used bulletin board
systems to recruit and organize followers. And BBSs operated by skinheads
are actively promoting neo-Nazi ideology.

   Skinheads emerged in the seventies with their steel-toed Doc Martens
boots, swastika tattoos and their BBSs that spew the fascist line. They
meet one another online, share information, plan events and these BBSs
help skinheads turn ideology into action.

   The American Front, another skinhead BBS located in San Francisco, home
of the Bay Area Skinheads (BASH), carries several accounts under a file
called "Hall of Fame Heroics":

   --November 1988.  The beating to death an Ethiopian immigrant with
baseball bats, in Portland, Oregon.

   --August 1987.  Sacramento, California. The crucifixion of former White
Student Union organizer Greg Withrow. "Palms up, pierced with no. 8 spiker
nails," reads the police report.  [The White Student Union is a white-
supremacist group. Withrow, a former member who has openly denounced the
white-supremacy movement, had his hands nailed to a plank and was slashed
with a razor.]

  --Summer 1987. Chicago, Illinois.  The beating of a "turncoat" skinhead
by Clark Martell, leader of Romantic Violence.  [Romantic Violence is a
skinhead faction.  Martell sprayed the woman with mace, beat her until she
bled, and then painted a swastika on her wall with her own blood.]

   Besides the standard fare of racist rhetoric and violent fantasies,
skinhead boards typically post phone numbers and addresses of "enemies" to
harass, including Jewish business leaders and gay rights activists. Many
boards offer practical advice for random violence, suggesting, for
example, that beating homeless person with a baseball bat is more
effective than setting his clothes on fire.

   "We have debates, shares opinions, and network about what' s going on
with the cause," says Mike Miller, the systems operator (SYCOP) of a
popular neo-Nazi board located in Washington State. "It's just like any
other BBS." Sure it is!

   Miller's board recently hosted an online discussion about American
hostages being held in the Middle East. Comments included a typical mix of
racist violence: "If we'd destroy the Jews, there wouldn't be any need for
sand niggers to take hostages.  We should just wipe out the entire region
with tactical nukes and show them what America can really do."

   The same BBS regularly features online dialogue about strategies for
ousting the current U.S. government (called ZOG, or Zionist Occupation
Government) through armed rebellion, along with discussion of which "Jew-
loving lawmakers" should be executed when the new order is installed.

   Though skinhead BBSs spew more violence than other boards, their brand
of racism isn't unique. The Ku Klux Klan, the American Nazi Party, the
Order (a neo-Nazi organization), and dozens of splinter groups and
sympathizers have operated or currently operate bulletin boards. Knowledge
of the Radical Right's use of microcomputer telecommunications first came
to the forefront a few years ago, during the FBI's investigation of the
Berg murder.

    Berg hosted a late-night talk show on Denver's KOA radio. He had
received several death threats from the group.  On the evening of June 18,
1984, Berg was shot in the driveway of his Denver townhouse. Soon after
the assassination, the FBI moved in to arrest several known members of the
Order. When investigators learned that Robert Miles, one of the eventual
defendants in the Berg murder case, was a "computer wizard," the FBI
tracked his communications with other neo-Nazi groups. Later, by tapping
Mile's modem line, they discovered an intricate network of Neo-Nazi BBSs.

   The W.A.R. Board Neo-Nazi boards began springing up in the United
States as early as 1984, when a loose coalition of BBSs went online in
California, North Carolina, and Illinois.  One of the earliest, the W.A.R.
Board (an acronym for White Aryan Resistance), began in the semi-rural
town of Fallbrook, California, located halfway between Los Angeles and San
Diego.

   Tom Metzger, a blue-collar entrepreneur who owns and operates
 television repair shop in Fallbrook, started the W.A.R. Board from his
home in 1984 using a Commodore 64 and a 300 bps modem. Its single phone
line was constantly busy, indicating the high demand for online white-
supremacist material and the number of neo-Nazis with the technology to
access such information.

   Racist groups quickly hailed the W.A.R. Board as a technological
breakthrough, which helped spawn Metzger's reputation as the technology
godfather of the white-supremacy movement.  Today, W.A.R. has more than
2,000 members, many of them are skinheads.  He has become a figurehead,
helping provide leadeship to the loosely strung movement.

   Short and balding, Metzger is physically unimpressive, yet his prowess
as a master of white-supremacist rhetoric is legendary. he hosts his own
public-access TV interview show, "Race and Reason," a cable program
currently broadcast in Atlanta, Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco,
Raleigh and other U.S. cities.

  Metzger operates the latest W.A.R. Board on a multiuser 286-based AT
clone with a 40MB hard disk running fidoNet software.  (The developer of
FidoNet, Bay-area resident Tom Jennings, regrets the group's use of his
software.  "I don't like them using FidoNet," Jennings recently
complained, "but I suppose it's inevitable.") The W.A.R. Board claims
links with several other skinhead and neo-Nazi boards across the country
and hawks bumper stickers ("The Holocaust Is a Lie"), Aryan jewelry, and
videotapes of Metzger's TV show. It maintains several layers of password
security, making whole parts of the board accessible only to those who
know Metzger personally. Most skinhead BBSs are networked via customized
versions of FidoNet software. They use electronic mail systems and other
sophisticated software.

   Police linked a skinhead BBS operating in Gaithersburg, Maryland, to
the December 1988 deaths of four teenagers in nearby Bethesda. The youths
died from the explosion of a homemade bomb. According to police reports, a
17-year-old  SYSOP  was arrested in connection with a separate pipe-bomb
blast. The investigation led police officials to the youth's home, whee
they found a BBS that contained several files for making bombs. "We also
found an array of bomb-making chemicals, files containing the formulas for
making the bombs, and a printout with the names of about 1,100 other
users." Among the materials seized, investigators found several references
to skinheads in other states, though many of the names were aliases.

   Chicago Area Skinheads (CASH) have ties to Detroit Area Skinheads
(DASH) and the Confederate Hammer Skins of Dallas.  The Dallas faction is
networked with groups in Wisconsin and Oklahoma City. "This is a Klan
without robes," declares Leonard Zeskind, the research director for the
Center for Democratic Renewal, an Atlanta, Georgia-based nonprofit outfit
dedicated to opposing racist organizations.  He notes that electronic
networks represent a high-tech twist on the early white-sheet days of the
Ku Klux Klan.

   Computer communications may be a more effective propaganda tool than
printed materials. Unlike traditional extremist groups that rely on
newsletters, skinheads are discovering that BBSs political organizations
helping them reach nonskinhead neo-Nazis who might balk at openly
associating with them.

   A BBS lets whole groups of people share in a dialogue, a capability
missing from newsletters and voice-recording systems. BBSs also offer the
affinity that comes from belonging to a community, as any user group does.

   The Center for Democratic Renewal estimates that 3,500 skinheads in the
United States identify themselves as racist today, compared with only 300
three years ago. The W.A.R. Board's Tom Metzger scoffs at complaints that
the movement is steeped in violence.  "It's so overrated, I can't believe
anyone buys into it," he says.  "If the Jew-run newspapers would dig a
little into the Baptist church, they'd find a higher percentage of crime
among those church members than they would among skinheads."
   Metzger places tremendous faith in technology to further his cause.
"Electronic media is the only way to get to the white working class," he
suggested recently."

                            << END >>
  

HANK ROTH comments vis-a-vis the article from PAIR-O-DICE,
regarding violence, bigotry and fascism online:

The right wing, and especially the utlra, racist, right wing
utilizes technology and the First Amendment very effectively. We
must begin to harness the information age to counter their
hateful and dangerous fascist message. We must explain through
various progressive echo conferences and networks that ours is a
humane, anti-racist, pro-justice, multi-racial position. The
information age is upon us; it has been for some time, and we are
just now catching up. But networks like peacenet, nytransfer
news, NYOL and others are not enough by themselves to provide an
opposition to imperialism and class oppression. It takes all of
us. We have at our disposal the ability to communicate, to
present ideas that for some may appear subversive because they
have been spoon fed ideas about dissent, which is in itself anti-
American. Dissent is the mortar which binds a democracy
together. It is essential to have a plurality in a democracy. We
haven't had that in a long time. And that is what we're about;
that is what the left is saying today, that we are a valid pro-
democratic opposition. The mainstream press will not present a
balance because they are responsive to their commercial
advertisers and their bosses. We have no such restraints.  If we
point out what is wrong with America is it not because we hate
America, it is because we love America and want a better world
for our children and for us. It is because we care about truth
and when the truth has been injured we will attempt to cure it.
When fascists push their brand of intolerance, racism, and law
and order without also curing the causes of crime, and they claim
that is a working man's position they are the ones subverting
social justice and the truth. There is class struggle going on
and the rich keep getting richer, while everyone else loses. And
it is counter productive and unjust to scapegoat, to blame
the Jews, the Blacks, the gangs, the communists, the anarchists,
the gays or anyone else for this mess we're in. We have been in
this mess for longer than anyone has been alive because we allow
people to exploit other people for gain. The Left, if it has one
universal message, it is humane and it is, PEOPLE BEFORE PROFITS.

         Hank Roth, moderator P_NEWS echomail conference



  

