“LOS ANGELES (AP) — Tom Metzger, the notorious former Ku Klux Klan leader who rose to prominence in the 1980s while promoting white separatism and stoking racial violence, has died at age 82. Riverside County Department of Public Health spokesman Jose Arballo Jr. said Metzger died Nov. 4 at a skilled nursing facility in Hemet. The cause was Parkinson’s disease, Arballo said Thursday. The former grand dragon of the California chapter of the Ku Klux Klan became one of racism’s most prominent figures after he left that organization in the 1980s to form the White Aryan Resistance movement. He eventually was pushed into the shadows and financial ruin, however, for his organization’s role in the 1988 beating death of Ethiopian college student Mulugeta Seraw in Portland, Oregon. Seraw’s family won a $12.5 million judgment against Metzger, his organization and others in 1990 following a trial in which a recording was played of Metzger praising the killers for performing what he called their “civic duty.” Metzger lost his San Diego-area home, his television repair business and other assets. Although left penniless, Metzger continued to produce a racist newsletter for years and operated a racist hotline, taking calls personally. He posted regularly on his organization’s website until just a few months ago, according to a brief biography announcing his death on the website. Metzger’s death was first reported by the Times of San Diego. “Tom Metzger spent decades working against core American values as one of the most visible hardcore white supremacists in the country,” Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan A. Greenblatt told The Associated Press. “Throughout his life, he engaged in a wide range of hateful activities from spreading anti-Semitic and racist rhetoric to launching vigilante border patrols as a California Klansman to recruiting skinheads to the white supremacist cause.” The killing of Seraw left racial wounds in Portland that continue to this day, said Randy Blazak, a former sociology professor at Portland State University who has written extensively about hate groups. “We became known as Skinhead City. We had racist skinheads and anti-racist skinheads doing battle in the streets, which is sort of a precursor of antifa and the Proud Boys,” he said, referencing those involved in recent violence that have gripped the city. Born in Warsaw, Indiana, on April 9, 1938, Thomas Linton Metzger served in the Army from 1956 to 1959 before settling in California and a career as a TV repairman. He joined the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in the mid-1970s, rising to the role of grand dragon of California before leaving to form the White Aryan Resistance in the early 1980s. He ran for Congress from northern San Diego County in the early 1980s, winning the Democratic Party primary but losing by a landslide in the general election after Democrats and Republicans united against him. He became a prominent media figure during those years, appearing on TV talk shows, organizing white supremacist demonstrations and cross burnings and promising a white civil war that would result in “blood in the streets.” His son, John Metzger, and other white racists appeared on Geraldo Rivera’s TV talk show in 1988 and brawled with Roy Innis and other Black civil rights activists. Rivera suffered a broken nose during the televised mayhem, which created a national furor. Tom Metzger’s downfall began after he sent one of his White Aryan Resistance members to Oregon to organize a local Nazi skinhead group. Within a month, local skinheads had beaten to death the 28-year-old Seraw with a baseball bat. They later admitted they singled him out because he was Black. The civil judgment stemming from the killing was devastating for Metzger, said Elden Rosenthal, one of the attorneys who represented the Seraw family. “We chased him for 20 years. We collected money from him for 20 years, which is the limit under Oregon law,” Rosenthal said. “The goal of the case was to put him out of business and to impact his standing in the white supremacy movement — and we thought we accomplished both of those things.” Another attorney, James McElroy of San Diego, arranged the sale of Metzger’s house to a Latino family to help satisfy the judgment. “Poetic justice,” said McElroy, who went on to adopt Seraw’s 7-year-old son. Although Metzger has long been identified as a white supremacist, he actually shunned that term, saying he was a white separatist and didn’t have a problem with Blacks who did not interact with whites. Still, the racial hatred he fomented continues to this day, McElroy and Rosenthal said. “At the time, I looked at him as totally on the fringe,” Rosenthal said. “What we have unfortunately learned over the last 30 years is that there’s a whole lot of people who share his views. … At the time it seemed fringy, now it seems a bit frightening.” ___ Associated Press Writers Gillian Flaccus in Portland, Oregon, and Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this story.
Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera: Trump’s Not Speaking To Me Right Now
112 Views0 Comments0 Likes
["Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera said Tuesday that President Donald Trump isn’t speaking to him because he acknowledges the fact that President-elect Joe Biden won the election. The conservative commentator, who has describ...
Trump Administration Lowballs Unemployment Benefits In New COVID-19 Offer
144 Views0 Comments0 Likes
["The latest stimulus offer from the White House comes with one-time $600 payments for most Americans and a lump of coal for the unemployed. The new proposal offered by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin swapped the $3...
Biden Selects Marcia Fudge As Housing Secretary, Tom Vilsack For Agriculture
88 Views0 Comments0 Likes
["WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Joe Biden has selected Ohio Rep. Marcia Fudge as his housing and urban development secretary and former Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to reprise that role in his administration,...
Trump: Millions Of Americans Getting COVID-19 Is ‘Terrific’ And A ‘Powerful Vaccine’
130 Views0 Comments0 Likes
["President Donald Trump on Tuesday spun the high number of Americans who have been infected with COVID-19 as “terrific,” claiming falsely that all those cases serve as a “powerful vaccine.” “I think that the vaccine ...
How To Deal With The Co-worker Who Is Constantly Complaining
124 Views0 Comments0 Likes
[]["fizkes via Getty ImagesComplainers may go to you because they feel like they are not being heard anywhere else. Here's how to treat their grievances with compassion.Everyone encounters a constant complainer at som...
MSNBC Names Rashida Jones President, Making History For Major Cable News Networks
175 Views0 Comments0 Likes
["MSNBC has named Rashida Jones its next president, making her the first Black executive to run a major general news cable network, The Wall Street Journal reported. Jones, who currently serves as the senior vice pres...
Bill Nye Explains Why Masks Keep Viruses In Those Pesky ‘Droplets Of Spit And Snot’ At Bay
151 Views0 Comments0 Likes
["Bill Nye explained the science behind face masks in a TikTok video posted on Friday, stressing that their effectiveness in stopping the spread of the coronavirus “is not that hard to understand.” Nye shared two map...