Front Man For Fascism: "Bo" Gritz and the Racist Populist Party A Background Research Report by People Against Racist Terror (PART), Burbank, California Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas. "Bo" Gritz and his supporters must know the truth of this bit of country common sense. Yet four years ago, Bo Gritz (rhymes with Knights) accepted a nomination to run for Vice-President of the United States on a ticket with "former" Ku Klux Klan grand dragon David Duke, from the Populist Party. And now, Bo is preparing to run as the Populist Party candidate for President in 1992. In 1988, Bo had the good sense to resign from the ticket and run for Congress from Nevada instead. But even as neo-nazi David Duke parlayed the credibility he got from his Populist presidential run into electoral success in Louisiana as a Republican, Bo Gritz has attached himself irrevocably to the Populist Party as its candidate for President. In recent years, Gritz has re-established a good deal of the credibility he lost several years ago after his naked self- promotion for an abortive "raid" on south-east Asia. He claimed he was going to find and free MIA's supposedly still held captive. Whereas then, Gritz directed most of his fund-raising efforts at the Hollywood right, like Clint Eastwood and William Shatner, he has recently been focusing his speaking and fund- raising activities in California and elsewhere around the country more at progressives and others concerned about George Bush and the New World Order. Gritz has been speaking out about his discoveries of CIA involvement in heroin trading in south-east Asia and his awareness while heading Green Beret counter-insurgency efforts in Latin America of similar involvement in cocaine dealing. As a result, he has been developing a wide audience, and to some degree a following, among opponents of U.S. intervention in the Third World. Leftists and even pacifists, who would otherwise be extremely suspicious of this militarist, have gone to hear him speak and been impressed by his exposes of government double-dealing and corruption. He has had substantial air-time on Pacifica radio; representatives of groups such as the Christic Institute have made joint appearances with him. Now, Gritz is trying to influence such people into supporting his Populist Party presidential bid. The Populist Party, in spite of its friendly, democratic sounding name, is an amalgamation of "former" Klansmen, nazis, and other racist far-right wingers that was cobbled together in 1984 with the support of Willis Carto, long considered an anti-Semite and Hitler apologist, and his Liberty Lobby. Carto was a member of the Populists' National Executive Committee from its inception. The Party's first presidential candidate in 1984, Rev. Bob Richards, virtually ceased campaigning in embarrassment over the racist nature of the party apparatus. Duke, its 1988 nominee, of course had no such misgivings. Its first chairman, Robert Weems, a former Mississippi KKK leader, described its strategy; "We Populists have adopted a tri-partisan approach... we share with Lyndon LaRouche..., within both major parties and through the Populist Party itself." (Lyndon LaRouche is another neo-nazi political figure backed by Carto who is now in federal prison.) Carrying out this strategy, the KKK/Populist David Duke ran in the Democratic Presidential primaries, then in the general election as a Populist, then in a special election in Louisiana as a Republican. He used the notoriety, name recognition, and national fund-raising base he built with the Populists to win a seat in the state legislature and espouse his "sanitized" racism. Even after winning office as a Republican in 1989, Duke met with the Populists, including such party stalwarts as Chicago nazi leader Art Jones. "Bo" has been following the same multi-party strategy. Even after he resigned from the Populist ticket with Duke in 19888, to run in the Republican primary in Nevada, he wrote to the party, "I intend to offer the Populist Party platform in my campaign, and carry it forward in public office." Luckily, he lost in the primary. What is the Populist Party platform and who are the Populist leaders? Racism and racists, only thinly disguised. Don Wassall, the Pennsylvania state chairman who became National Executive Director and now is locked in a power struggle with Carto--the latest in a series of faction fights over control of party finances--used the party's newspaper, the Populist Observer, to reprint explicitly racist material from the "National Democratic Front," an avowed white supremacist group based in Maryland. Ralph Forbes, who ran Duke's Populist Campaign, is another "ex" nazi and "ex" Klansman, who then switched parties to run for office in Arkansas. While with the Populists, he ran a "Christian Identity"-oriented radio ministry called "The Sword of Christ." He recently filed suit to prevent a medical school in his state from teaching about abortions. Forbes continues to be closely associated with the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan leader Thom Robb, who recently declared that the KKK intends to train "one thousand David Dukes." Van Loman, who chaired the Ohio chapter of the Populist Party, and ran under its banner for the Cincinnati City Council, was formerly the Grand Dragon of the Ohio Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Jerry Pope, once the state Populist chair in Kentucky, was an organizer of the National States Rights Party, the segregationist, anti-semitic grouping led by convicted Birmingham church bomber J.B. Stoner. (Interestingly, when Duke switched to the Republicans and won a seat in the Louisiana legislature, his opponent, endorsed by the "official" Republican apparatus from Reagan and Bush on down, had also been a member of the racist NSRP.) In Washington State, in 1989, the United Front Against Fascism held several successful demonstrations against the Populists, thwarting their efforts to obtain ballot status in one county. As a result, anti-racist organizers received death threats, The Christian Sons of Liberty, an "Identity" group central to Populist organizing there, put out viscous red-baiting and anti-gay attacks on UFAF leaders. The CSL published home addresses of UFAF organizers, in a clear attempt to foment violence. Locally in California, the Populist Part is cut from the same mold. California has always been one of the strongest state affiliates of the Populists. David Duke raised 11% of the funds for his Louisiana legislative race in California. Half the money for his gubernatorial campaign came from outside of Louisiana, much of it from California. Local leaders of the Populists have included former San Fernando/Simi Valley Klan leader Dennis Hilligoss, and Harbor-area nazi activist Joe Fields, an associate of Nazi party chieftain Stan Witek and Tom Metzger of WAR (White Aryan Resistance). Fields is, in fact, a member of the party's National Executive Committee. Behind the Gritz campaign, the Populists have become the most active neo-nazi group in southern California, and are successfully uniting a variety of racists in their ranks. This year, the Populists have sponsored several programs in Orange County, one featuring John Tyndall, leader of the neo-nazi National Front in England. Another spotlighted the impeached ex-governor of Arizona, Evan Mecham, whose reactionary forces have allied with fundamentalist preacher Pat Robertson to take over the Republican Party in his home state. Among the participants at the Populist parlay was Kim Badynski, head of the virulent Northwest Knights of the Ku Klux Klan based in Washington State. In Ventura County and up north to Alameda County, the California Populists have held party meetings to commemorate Aldolf Hitler's birthday. Such Populist organizing legitimizes the fear and hatred of the privileged for the oppressed that generates hate crime. The danger of the Populists and the Gritz campaign is not that he will win the presidency. As of this writing, the Populists have not yet achieved ballot status in any state; (although here in California, they will presumably run under the American Independent banner, a recognized state party still on the ballot since running George Wallace for President in the sixties). The real danger is that the Populists will succeed in further legitimizing racist and anti-semitic politics. They have a long-range goal, of unifying Christian rightists and Christian patriots, anti-abortionists and anti-semites, into an apparatus dominated by neo-nazis. With Gritz, they have the added bonus at the same time of coopting or at least disarming progressive forces that would have otherwise have exposed and opposed them. Unifying with Gritz would inevitably discredit the white left with the movements for immigrants rights, Black empowerment, women's liberation and gay and lesbian dignity. No one concerned about conspiracies and abuse of government power, about spiritual development or the survival of the planet, should offer the racist and fascistic oriented Populist Party a shred of legitimacy. The Ku Klux Klan has always been the number one racist conspiratorial group in U.S. history, seeking power to carry out its divisive and destructive program. The Populist Party is the latest hood these night riders have put on to mask their identities so they can win popular support for carrying out their racist terror. DON'T BE HOOD-WINKED! The problem with "Bo" Gritz's Populist candidacy is not merely one of guilt by association with neo-nazis. Gritz himself openly embraces the Populists' politics of anti-semitism, racism, anti-immigrant hysteria and anti-gay bigotry. As criticism has begun to emerge of the Populists, Gritz has claimed in his speaking engagements that he has "cleaned house" since the Duke days. But this is an outright lie. Joe Fields, for example, the open neo-nazi who heads the Populists in L.A., is also a current national officer of the Party. What's more, Gritz's connections to racists and anti-semites extend beyond the ranks of the Populist Party itself. For example, Gritz is a member of the board of the Populist Action Committee (PAC), established by Willis Carto of the Spotlight. Although Carto is on the outs with the current leadership of the Populist Party, accusing them of financial mismanagement, he supports Gritz, and Gritz in turn supports the PAC's approach of backing sympathetic Democrats and Republicans as well as Populists. While many of Gritz's southern California speaking appearances seem directed at progressives, the bulk of his organizing and speech-making is carried out through the apparatus of the "Christian Identity" movement, which preaches that Anglo-Americans are the true "chosen people" of the Bible, that Jews are satan-spawn, and that non-whites are "pre-Adamic," that is, sub-human. The Coalition for Human Dignity in Portland, OR has documented the involvement of the so-called "Christian Patriot" Identity churches in the Gritz campaign in that state, as well as participation by nazi skins. In particular, Gritz is closely tied to the Rev. Pete Peters, a national leader of Christian Identity based in Ft. Collins, CO. Gritz has spoken at Peters' "Scriptures for America" Rocky Mountain Bible Retreat, also attended by such noted anti- semites as "Col." Jack Mohr and by KKK defense attorney Kirk Lyons. Lyons' Patriotic Defense Foundation has represented nazi boneheads, the Order white supremacy underground sedition defendants, and is now coordination Tom Metzger's appeal of his liability for the nazi skin killing of an Ethiopian refugee. Gritz has spoken at similar Christian Identity gatherings in the northwest, in Nampa, Idaho, and in North Carolina, where he has shared the rostrum with neo-nazis. The connection to Mohr and Peters is particularly striking because the two were part of the incident which precipitated the murderous birth of the "Order" or "Bruder Schweigen," a neo-nazi underground, in the early 1980's. Richard Mathews and David Lane, the founders of this clandestine, para-military outfit, hooked up at Peter's La Porte based "church." And it was the humiliation of Jack Mohr, a guest of Peter's in Colorado, by Denver talk show host Alan Berg, which prompted the Order conspirators to execute Berg and initiate their reign of racist terror. (This incident was dramatized in the films "Talk Radio" and "Betrayed.") Mohr, meanwhile, has been promoting the Populist Party since its inception through his para-military network, the Christian Patriots Defense League. In a speech to Peter's retreat, Gritz acknowledged that the money to print his self-published campaign autobiography, "Called to Serve," came from Rev. Peters. "Called to Serve" spells out Gritz's own far-right views pretty clearly. He refers to the "Rockefeller/Rothschild" Federal Reserve System as being controlled by "seven Jewish families." This is not a momentary aberration or a slip of the tongue. At his "Call for Action '90" conference in Nevada, Gritz featured the anti-semitic views of Eustace Mullins in analyzing the Federal reserve, and he distributes the work of Mullins, who was a supporter of Erza Pound and the Italian fascists. Reflecting his Christian Identity beliefs, Gritz refers to America in "Called to Serve" as "the new Zion," and white Christians as "the gathering tribes of Israel." These views are also reflected and expressed in Gritz's own campaign literature for his Populist candidacy. In a four- page brochure signed and authorized by Gritz, the ex-Green Beret couches his program less in electoral than in revolutionist terms. "We can, we will, we must oust 'the' government and restore 'our' sovereignty. We need a second American Revolution." The racist nature of this revolutionism is evident in the rest of the platform he puts forward. Referring to his enemy as "seditious bankers" and "satanic globalists," Gritz pledges to "derail their plans and send them back into the abyss." The platform is full of xenophobia and racism. "It's time to return America to the Americans,... halt the illegal immigration that is turning America into a Third World country,... end affirmative action,... end this country's decedent, degenerate ways. I've spent my life fighting for America, and now it's time to fight again. Will you be a part of my grassroots army?" This militaristic rhetoric, wrapped in thinly-veiled code words for anti-Semitism, racism, sexism, and homophobia, is an invitation to his followers to engage in cross-burnings, gay- bashings and vandalism. Nor does Gritz try to separate himself from the party as a whole. He specifically tries to develop "coat- tails" in his campaign literature, calling on his backers to support other Populist candidates for state and local offices.