#942: Tom Metzger

Thomas Metzger was the American founder of the White Aryan Resistance, and previously a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan for California – where he started Klan Border Watch – and a minister in the Christian Identity Movement (though he has later held a variety of religious positions). He has advocated murdering innocent blacks, for which he has been sued and lost. As a result he seems to be partially neutralized at the moment.

During his Ku Klux Klan days Metzger held strictly extreme-right views. When switching from the Klan to White Aryan Resistance, however, he shifted toward the extreme revolutionary left, and has praised the former Soviet Union as a “white workers state,” published cartoons attacking American conservatives for cheering for black U.S. athletes over white Soviet Bloc athletes in the Olympics, and proclaimed support for unions and for the hard green group Earth First! (Though in the two last cases it seems to have been because they were fighting against companies who happened to be owned by Jews.) Any political position Metzger has advocated has, however, been strictly racist, however, and his support for political positions or organizations seems to be strictly contingent on racism. He did, however, win a 1980 Democratic primary for U.S. Congress, though he lost 87% to 13% in the general election, after which he started advocating a “lone wolf” strategy, advising white racists against joining established groups. He tried to run again as an independent in 2010 in Indiana, but made little headway.

In his TV show “Race and Reason” from the 1980s he managed to bring together an otherwise ideologically diverse group over the common cause of racism, including the Klan, Aryan Nation, the racist wing of Asatru, Posse Comitatus members, and even Nation of Islam members.

Diagnosis: Seriously? The founder of White Aryan Resistance? Make up whatever you want as long as it questions his mental powers and character.