Obama's Candidacy Riles Hate Groups - NPR

Daniel Cowart

Election 2008



by Dina Temple-Raston

Audio for this story will be available at approx. 7:00 p.m. ET

Daniel Cowart, 20, of Bells, Tenn., is shown in a mugshot photo from Oct. 27, 2008. Crockett County Sheriff Office/Getty Images

All Things Considered, October 28, 2008 · The charges Monday against two neo-Nazi skinheads in Tennessee accused of plotting a shooting rampage and an attack on Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama drew attention to law enforcement's simmering concerns over how white supremacists would react to a black candidate.

The plan that Daniel Cowart of Bells, Tenn., and Paul Schlesselman, of West Helena, Ark., were hatching was fantastic in its scope, and authorities said Obama was never in any danger.

Federal agents said Cowart and Schlesselman planned to rob a gun store, target students at a largely African-American high school and then make an assassination run at Obama.

The two men did not expect to be successful, but they wanted to die trying, investigators said. Their plan was to drive as fast as they could toward Obama and shoot at him from the windows of their car. They had talked about dressing in white tuxedos and top hats for the occasion. The suspects are being held without bond on charges of possessing an unregistered firearm, conspiring to steal firearms and threatening a candidate for president.

This is the second white supremacist plot against Obama that authorities have revealed. In August, just days before Obama accepted the Democratic nomination in Denver, local police arrested three men with white supremacist ties for possibly threatening Obama's life.

While law enforcement officials say Obama was never in any danger in either the Denver episode or the incident that came to light on Monday, they are also quick to say that they cannot afford to take these cases lightly. They have been expecting new challenges from white supremacist quarters.

"There is a probable hypothesis that in the event that Obama becomes president that you could have a galvanization of these white supremacist groups," said John Karl, the officer in charge of the Los Angeles Police Department's Criminal Conspiracy unit. "Obviously, law enforcement needs to be prepared, and how do you prepare? You need to become as resourceful and comprehensively understand the groups and individuals involved."

Karl says the First Amendment ties law enforcement's hands. They cannot move in until and unless these groups actually commit a crime.

"If no crime has been committed, no activity has come up on the radar screen, we can't arbitrarily start rounding people up," he said. "There is a little problem with the constitution and things like that."

Supremacist Groups In California

Travel out of metropolitan L.A. — to Southern California cities further inland where supremacists have traditionally congregated — and it is clear that law enforcement is in a state of alert.

Chris Keeling is part of the FBI's hate crimes task force in Santa Clarita. As he sees it, Obama's effect on the hate movement is no longer theoretical. It has already happened.

"There is more on the Internet. There are more flyers — leaf-letting going out. Because now they have a target," he said. "Take Obama out of the situation, you're still going have leaf-letting. But having Obama in there and being a stone's throw from being the president has it increased the Internet activity? Absolutely, absolutely."

These days, Keeling works about six hate crime calls a week. Some of them are serious. A couple of months ago some skinheads beat up a customer at a local restaurant — just because he was black — and others are crimes of opportunity. Obama posters, for example, have become an easy target.

"Now you have Obama placards through people's businesses and homes, so if a guy has a certain view and now he defaces it, it made it a little easier," he says. "Other than that he had to find a wall somewhere and spray paint something on the wall."

The FBI set up a task force in Santa Clarita partly because racist skinhead gangs have long been a fixture in there. For years, the Antelope Valley had been a white enclave — a refuge from Los Angeles. When immigrants began moving in, hate groups saw their membership ranks grow as whites in the neighborhoods banned together. Keeling said Obama's candidacy is adding fear and uncertainty to an already volatile mix.

"This is different. This is new. This has never happened before," Keeling said of Obama's candidacy. "We're not doing anything extra but we're kind of being more cognizant of things."

Obama's Candidacy Fits Into Supremacists' Ideology

Part of the problem is that Obama is playing into the neo-Nazi and white supremacist narrative, said Brian Levin who studies hate and extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.

"So what they are saying is everything we warned about — Jews and blacks coming out of the urban areas are going to take over this white nation of ours has occurred," he said.

You only have to look to the Internet to see how white supremacist leaders such as David Duke are using Obama to rally their troops. David Duke has called Obama a "visual aid for hate groups."

He says an Obama presidency would provide indisputable proof that whites have lost control of America.

"This is a cultural and racial battlefront," said Levin. "Barack Obama is a symbol number one of the worst the future has to offer."

While Obama may be an easy focus of discussion for haters, he hasn't unified them. In fact, in many ways, he has managed to do just the opposite. He has divided the movement.

Obama Dividing Supremacists

Tim Zaal is a former white supremacist from Los Angeles who has renounced his racist past. He is in his old neighborhood in West Hollywood. As Zaal sees it, the split Obama has created is almost generational — between old-school Ku Klux Klan types who are viscerally against a black man running for president and a new wave of haters.

"You have the more — kind-of strange to say it — progressive white attitude: the worse it gets, the better," said Zaal. "Get a woman in there. Get a black man in there. Get people angry. And, in my eyes from that point of view, back in those days, great, great."

Zaal says the new generation is particularly focused on what they see as the coming race war. They have been trying to spark one for years. Some think, even hope, that an Obama presidency will do just that.

Zaal says some will actually vote for Obama under the understanding that it will send the country into a tailspin. "The worse it gets, the better," said Zaal. "The faster this country falls, the sooner white revolution will arise."

That mindset is all over the neo-Nazi Web sites. On one, a man with the pen name "LastOfMyKind" wrote, "Could it be that the nomination of Obama finally sparks a sense of unity in white voters? I would propose that this threat of black rule may very well be the thing that finally scares some sense back into complacent whites."

This is what worries the police and the FBI.