These Aren’t Isolated Acts of Violence

When violence is attributed to black or Latino street gang members, the authorities react with strike teams, increased expenditures for law enforcement, roundups of parole violators, as well as programs directed at prevention. So why the failure to similarly respond to the violence that arises from white male “Christian” hate groups in America?

In the wake of the Granada Hills shooting and similar tragedies, the governor or attorney general should appoint an official task force to recommend effective approaches to combating right-wing hate groups, paramilitaries and militias.

According to Kenneth Stern, the American Jewish Committee’s expert on hate groups, there has been a “lackluster local law enforcement response to the militias [because] of the willingness of many to write off militia activities as nuttiness or ‘isolated incidents.’ ”

The immediate tragedy this week at the Jewish community center in Granada Hills is about virulent anti-Semitism, coming weeksh after the synagogue burnings in Sacramento. At other times the violence is connected to racism or hatred of women, homophobia, even anti-environmentalism.

It is a dangerous denial to believe that these acts of violence are nothing more than the work of deranged and isolated individuals. Of course, there is no single conspiracy linking them. But there are supremacist ideologies, networks and armed groups that together create an atmosphere that stimulates and condones these violent eruptions.

There are 224 militia groups in America, according to a 1995 survey, 35 of them in California. But their reach is broader. In 1994, the National Rifle Assn. stated that while they were not creating militia groups, neither would they “contemplate discouraging the exercise of [this] constitutional right.” For legal reasons, supremacist groups consciously practice “leaderless resistance,” in which apparenty isolated acts of mayhem fulfill a larger agenda.

So intense are the simmering crevices beneath the benign surface of America that there is no center, no common understanding of reality. Most whites and blacks held utterly different understandings of the O.J. Simpson verdict. The all-white militias believe that they, not racial minorities, are the victims of economic downsizing and political correctness. While a large American majority supports gun control, the militia viewpoint is that gun control is the first step toward military occupation by either the federal government or the United Nations.

We need stronger steps to deter violence, such as a law enforcement task force on militias. But we must ask how this loss of trust in common ground could happen in a democracy with a free media and public education system. A task force should consider the following actions:

* Enact a law, as proposed by the Anti-Defamation League, banning paramilitary training of militias that advocate supremacist ideologies or taking up arms against the state. Such laws against private armies existed in 24 states by 1995--not including California--but there have been no prosecutions since the mid-1980s.

* Enact local or state ordinances requiring the disclosure of weapons arsenals owned by individuals. This was proposed after the 1997 North Hollywood shootout, only to die in Sacramento.

* Toughen programs to train law enforcement and administrators generally in understanding, detecting and deterring hate crimes and militias. Currently the required training is minimal.

* Review proposed “tolerance curricula” for their effectiveness in public schools and other civic institutions and consider mandating such an educational requirement.

* Assess whether it was coincidental that militias and hate groups surged in the 1990-95 period when economic downsizing was ripping through the industrial economy long dominated by white males. If so, what policies are needed to provide a sense of economic security for all during the transition to a multicultural society?

* Review whether television and films contribute in any way to the atmosphere of division, resentment and violence in our society, and what might be encouraged to promote public tolerance of diversity.

It is time to look in the mirror, not the other way.