COMMENTARY: The summer of our discontent

c. 1999 Religion News Service (Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.) UNDATED _ To quote Jerry Seinfeld:”What’s up with America this summer?” The robust economy is driving unemployment down as it provides more people with jobs, including young blacks. The midnight basketball leagues aimed at restless youngsters without […]

c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.)

UNDATED _ To quote Jerry Seinfeld:”What’s up with America this summer?” The robust economy is driving unemployment down as it provides more people with jobs, including young blacks. The midnight basketball leagues aimed at restless youngsters without jobs are disappearing. One observer explained:”The guys who used to play at night are now working. They need sleep for their jobs the next day.” While”hot button wedge-issue politics”are not dead, George W. Bush speaks of”compassionate conservatism,”and Al Gore, his possible Democratic presidential rival in 2000, declares his commitment to a more fair America.


Early this month, two Americans, Pete Sampras and Lindsay Davenport, won the Wimbleton singles championships, tennis’ most coveted prizes. And in a game that could not have been better scripted, 90,000 fans crammed the Rose Bowl to see the multiracial U.S. women’s soccer team win the world title by defeating the Chinese in a wondrous display of unselfishness and skill.

The war in Kosovo provided clear evidence that Americans have not abandoned their idealism. Even in a case where our national security (a k a”oil”) is not threatened, we are prepared to use U.S. armed forces to end brutal”ethnic cleansing”and other crimes against humanity.

But despite all this, it is a bitter summer of discontent for a growing number of Americans. Groups that track extremism in the United States note that the Ku Klux Klan, white supremacist churches, armed militias and similar groups have dramatically increased their memberships in the last few years, particularly among educated young people. Robert Burnham, the FBI’s section chief for domestic terrorism, has pointed out a sharp”rise in anti-government sentiments … and what we are starting to see entwined with that is religious extremists _ the Christian Identity movement.” In this summer of growing fanaticism and violence, it was no accident that Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, the 21-year-old former Indiana University student who went on a recent two-state shooting rampage, was deeply influenced by the teachings of the so-called World Church of the Creator. In a series of drive-by murders in Illinois and Indiana that began on a Friday night, Smith shot and killed former Northwestern University basketball coach Ricky Byrdsong, who was walking with his son and daughter. That same night Smith shot and wounded six Orthodox Jews in Chicago who were coming home from Sabbath services, and he also fired shots at two Asian-American men in a car in a nearby suburb.

The next day Smith wounded an Asian-American on the University of Illinois campus in Urbana, and on Sunday Smith returned to Indiana University where he killed Won-Joon Yoon, an IU student, as he entered a Korean Methodist church for worship services. Smith left a bloody trail, and that same day he killed himself while fleeing the police in a stolen van.

Matthew Hale, the self-proclaimed”pontifex maximus”(supreme leader) of the World Church of the Creator, is one of those”religious extremists”Burnham had in mind. The 27-year-old Hale is a law school graduate who runs his”church”out of his East Peoria, Ill., home. Hale’s group has 46 chapters in the United States. The”church”glorifies Adolf Hitler, and at times its members carry swastikas in parades. Hale teaches hatred of racial minorities, immigrants, Jews and Christians. Because Christianity grew out of Judaism, Christians are”tainted.” When informed that one of his disciples had killed two people and wounded nine others, Hale expressed surprise and cleverly recalled:”I was struck by his (Smith’s) sincerity, his dedication and actually his coolheadedness.”It is a description that Hitler could have accurately used to describe SS Chief Heinrich Himmler and his chief lieutenant, Adolf Eichmann.

Hale aggressively uses the Internet to attract followers, and his”church’s”symbol is a capital”W”and a red crown. He proclaims the white race supreme and his easily decoded battle cry is”RAHOWA,”a racial holy war that will usher in a”whiter and brighter world.” Unfortunately, some Americans still scoff at people like Hale and his”church.”But they do so at their own risk because Smith was shaped by the same dark forces that drove Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols to kill 168 people in their 1995 Oklahoma City attack. And according to law officers, those same ugly teachings drove members of Hale’s”church”in 1991 to kill a black victim in Florida and pistol-whip a Jewish store owner in the same state.

Sadly, the answer to Jerry Seinfeld’s flip question is not very funny.

DEA END RUDIN

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