A Response to David Irving
by Annie Alpert Article "Neo-Nazi Group Calls Off Meeting in Elmwood Park" by Peggy
O'Crowley, staff writer Bergen Record, appeared in the Record on 09/18/96.
Reprinted by the kind permission of Ms. O'Crowley:
The
National Alliance,
a right-wing organization that advocates the
establishment of a, whites-only society, will not meet Friday in an
Elmwood Park hall as previously scheduled, the hall's owners said.
The owners, the Elmwood Park chapter of the Junior order of United
American Mechanics, said the National-Alliance had canceled its meeting
after an article Saturday in The Record described how several right-wing
groups and controversial speakers had been meeting there.
William Dunkerly, spokesman for the order, said the National Alliance
was moving, to an undisclosed site. The scheduled speaker for Friday's
meeting was David Irving, a World War II history writer whose
books-maintain that
Adolph Hitler
was not responsible for the Holocaust
and that gas chambers never were used to exterminate Jews at
concentration camps.
The National-Alliance is "the largest neo-Nazi group in America,"
according to Richard Baudouin of Klanwatch in Montgomery Ala. a group
that monitors activity of the extreme right.
The National Alliance's leader,
William L. Pierce,
was a former head of
the American Nazi Party and the author of "The Turner Diaries," a novel
about a right-wing uprising against the government. The book was a
favorite of Timothy McVeigh, one of the men accused of blowing up a
federal office building in Oklahoma City last year.
The West Virginia-based National Alliance has a
web site
that describes in detail the group's views that blacks, Jews, and
Hispanics should be segregated from whites, who should form an
"Aryan" society.
Browsers are invited to apply for membership, and members are
encouraged to recruit others in "-cells" and other small groups.
Efforts to reach members of the Alliance by telephone were
unsuccessful.
Dunkerly said the order had no idea about the organization's beliefs.
He said the order still would rent its hall to the alliance because it
is entitled to the constitutional rights of freedom of speech and
freedom of assembly.
"If they do something illegally following their beliefs, that would be
a concern. But taking action against them because we don't agree with
them, we consider that un-American," Dunkerly said. "As far as I can
see, they are harmless."
A local activist in liberal causes, Andrea Pason of Hackensack, said
she was going to organize a protest Friday if members of the alliance
appeared at the hall
Pason protested when a long-time leader of the white separatist
movement, E.R. Fields of the America First Party, appeared at the hall
in May. The order barred Fields from speaking, because members had not
been told that he would be speaking at a regular meeting of the
Constitutionists, a, right-wing group that meets there regularly.
Pason said she was upset by the material she viewed on the National
Alliance website. "They think there's an entire Jewish conspiracy going
on," said Pason, who is Jewish.
Dunkerly said his group would not tolerate protesters on the order's
property. "They can protest, but not on our property. I will got the
police and have them arrested if they are trespassing, "he said.
Dunkerly also objected to a description of the order in The Record's
article. He specifically referred to a quote from a 1980 reference book,
"The Grand Encyclopedia of American Institutions, Fraternal
Organizations." The book said the order's main emphasis in the late 19th
century was "protecting the United States from undesirable foreigners
such as Irish, Germans, and Roman Catholics."
Dunkerly said the order was never opposed to immigration of specific
groups.
"We have always maintained that immigration should be controlled to
prevent foreign countries from dumping their criminal or mental patients
here, or flooding our labor markets with cheap labor," Dunkerly said.
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(Part 2 of 3)
APPENDIX 1