White Supremacist Literature Left in Berkeley Neighborhoods

Bundles of documents and posters containing white supremacist and anti-Jewish material were left on dozens of doorsteps in two Berkeley neighborhoods by unknown distributors earlier this week.

Berkeley police Officer Ed Galvan said residents found the bundles early Tuesday morning at their residences on several streets in the Halcyon neighborhood in southeast Berkeley, as well as near University and San Pablo avenues in West Berkeley.

The bundles contained more than 20 pages of written material, including a newspaper published by self-proclaimed white supremacist Tom Metzger called “The Insurgent: The Newspaper for Discriminating White People!”.

Among the articles was material directed specifically against Hispanics, blacks, Jews, and Muslims, as well as a call for revenge for the “zebra murders,” a string of murders committed by a black supremacist group in 1973 in San Francisco.

The bundle also included an 11-by-14-inch poster with a skull and crossbones, a swastika, large print reading “Sniper! We Need You! Volunteer!”, and information about the “Aryan Peoples Insurgency.”

Much of the material would be easily downloadable from Web sites like the one Metzger advertised in the documents, so anyone could have distributed the materials, said Nancy Carleton, co-chair of the Halcyon Neighborhood Association.

“No one really knows who did this,” Carleton said. “It’s quite a packet to put together, and was probably expensive. Someone was really setting out to do this.”

Attempts yesterday to contact The Insurgent newspaper were unsuccessful.

Carleton said the material disturbed residents, one of whom contacted a Berkeley police officer Tuesday.

“It made the neighbors nervous, especially African American and Hispanic neighbors I talked to,” Carleton said.

Carleton said Jewish residents also said they felt personally targeted by the large amount of strong anti-Semitic material, especially because the bundles were distributed at the beginning of Passover, which began Monday night.

The distribution of the documents was not considered a hate crime because it did not direct specific threats toward individuals or groups, Galvan said.

Berkeley City Councilmember Kriss Worthington said he sent notices and copies of the documents to relevant organizations, such as the NAACP, the Anti-Defamation League and several local synagogues.

Rabbi Jane Litman of the Congregation Beth El, a synagogue in North Berkeley, said she thought the anti-Jewish material was part of a larger wave of anti-Semitism.

“There has been a climate created of hostility toward Jews, mainly because of confusion about politics in the Mideast,” she said.

Last year Alpha Epsilon Pi, a UC Berkeley Jewish fraternity, had its house vandalized with an anti-Jewish slur. In spring of 2002 Berkeley Hillel was also vandalized.

Jonathan Bernstein, director of the Central Pacific Region of the Anti-Defamation League, also said he thought the incident was related to a history of anti-Semitic literature distribution.

“It is a tactic of the white supremacists to one, gain media attention for themselves, and two, hope that people buy into their theories,” he said.

Because it would be hard to prosecute the distributors even if they were caught, Bernstein suggested an increase in pro-tolerance literature.

“The best approach might be to counter such propaganda with language that promotes respect and tolerance,” he said.

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