I
t was August 1993, and 22-year-old Matt Hale was already three years into his quest to preserve the " white race" from contamination by blacks and Jews. He decided to hold one of his occasional rallies for the National Socialist White American Party at Mineral Springs Park in Pekin. A 99 percent white town on the Illinois River, Pekin had long been derided by some central Illinois wags for racist views. The town battled internally over changing its team name - the Chinks - until 1981.
But by 1993, Pekin's team had become the Dragons and the town was not as receptive to Hale's message as some might have expected. He was outnumbered 20-to-1, according to some news reports at the time. Two hundred people turned out to protest the 20 racists who attended the rally. Passing motorists yelled insults and taunted Hale and his white supremacist faction. Some spit out their windows to express disdain.
Unfazed, Hale retreated to the home his great-grandfather built in nearby East Peoria, already planning the next sortie in what he terms a battle for the future of the white race. Nearly as white bread as Pekin, East Peoria never shared the same reputation for narrow-mindedness. A blue-collar town dominated by Caterpillar Tractor Co. factories, it was a magnet for thousands of poor white southerners who needed jobs in the 1930s and 1940s, and it suffered along with the rest of central Illinois when the company cut back in the mid-1980s. The resurgent East Peoria is now better known for its riverboat casino and Christmastime Festival of Lights, but it still figures largely in Hale's plans.
" I'm sure the [city] council wouldn't like this, but I do plan to make East Peoria the haven of the white race," Hale says.
Six years after the Pekin debacle, he has been rejected by yet another group that sometimes has image problems: Illinois lawyers. The Illinois Supreme Court's Committee on Character and Fitness denied the now-27-year-old Hale a law license. Hale spent the spring appealing that decision - a battle that garnered more media attention when he sought the counsel of famed attorney Alan Dershowitz - and the result of that appeal is expected any day.
" The thing that damns him most is his modest intelligence," Dershowitz says, adding we must be very careful of the " aura of violence" that surrounds Hale and his followers.
In person, the slightly built Hale is a model of tightly controlled reason. He speaks carefully and quotably, if somewhat distantly, about the origins of his views. " Matt Hale as a little kid was a person who was very much interested in the world around him," Hale says when asked where his exclusionary views originated. To hear Hale tell it, he started reading such books as Mein Kampf at the age of 12. He compared those books with what he was being taught in school and concluded the school version - " The races are equal" - did not gibe with the facts. By his assessment, all the worthwhile books and inventions and music appeared to have been created by white men.
The pivotal moment, he says, came at a Shakey's Pizza Parlor during an " after hours" for teenagers. Hale was 13, he thinks, and out with his slightly older cousin, Russ Murphy, when they spotted some interracial couples: black men with white women. " It made me nauseous," Hale says.
His cousin does not remember this, though Hale says Murphy may be the person who knows him best. It seems to have been a fairly rare occasion, as well, because Hale is not a party kind of guy. He says he doesn't drink, doesn't do drugs and doesn't eat prepared foods because whole, raw foods are more natural. For entertainment, he prefers board games or " intellectual discussion" with his cousin. Murphy says they do play chess, but that hasn't given him insights into Hale's thinking. There was no obvious cause, no beating at the hands of black men, no insults or mistreatment by Jews.
" It has boggled our minds, too, the entire family. He wasn't raised that way. There were no Klansmen."
Nevertheless, Hale has doggedly pursued his agenda for 15 years. He started a " New Reich" club in junior high school. He lectured his high school classmates on white supremacy. " I was, of course, more serious than anyone else," Hale says. " Even then I told people I would be in the news, I would make history. It was my plan to do so, even at
30 / July/August 1999 Illinois Issues
31 / July/August 1999 Illinois Issues
32 / July/August 1999 Illinois Issues
33 / July/August 1999 Illinois Issues
Hate might be marginal in Illinois, but it's here
T
here's no Prairie State David Duke politicking from the Right in the corridors of the Capitol in Springfield. There's no homegrown Fred Phelps haranguing gay mourners at funerals in Chicago. But hate groups exist and persist in Illinois. 32 / July/August 1999 Illinois Issues Like Hale, Fred Phelps offers absolutes to people - in his case, those who may feel uncomfortable, confused or shocked by gays and lesbians. But the Kansas minister is more of a zealot. He picketed the funeral of gay torture victim Matthew Shepard, and demonstrated at the funerals of Barry Goldwater, whose son is a homosexual, gay journalist Randy Shilts and even Al Gore Sr., the former U.S. Senator whose son, Phelps believes, is part of a White House that is too cooperative with gays and lesbians. "Phelps is another kettle of fish altogether," Gordon says. "Phelps is much worse than Hale. Hale's only 27; maybe he's still learning. Phelps should know better." Effective responses to such hate are education and openness, says Jay Miller, executive director of the Illinois affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, which has 13 chapters statewide. "When hate groups spout hate speech, censorship is not the answer," Miller says. "The answer to bad speech is good speech. After all, if there's suppression, who's going to decide what's suppressed? Whoever has power, and that's usually the government." Hale has a narrow spectrum of ideas, he adds. "Government lies are much harder to filter." Miller says he has faith in Illinoisans. "Sure, you can fool some of the people some of the time, but given truth - which, granted, can be hard to determine - people usually will make good decisions. Truth usually will out in an open society." One wide-open marketplace of ideas is the Internet, where hundreds of Web sites have been identified as promoting hate by HateWatch, a Cambridge, Mass.-based resource group that monitors bigotry on the Web. Is hate one ideology? Phelps has said, "A sovereign God has been proposed to put a little restraint on these wild, promiscuous, anal-copulating beasts. That's what the Bible calls them." Hale has said, "I recognize the white race as the race which has created all worthwhile culture and progress on this planet. The niggers and other mud races, which are anti-civilization by nature, have been 'tolerated,' the result being that the civilization is gradually ceasing to exist. ... Those who reign, therefore, are responsible for the growing mayhem in our country. They are responsible for the growing destruction of the American civilization." Hale concedes philosophical divisions within much of the radical Right. "These factions will slip away, in a sense," he says. "I believe that will happen when times get bad enough in this country." Hale was appointed three years ago to replace World Church of the Creator head Ben Klassen, who committed suicide. Hale's title is Pontifex Maximus. The group, founded in 1973, has 46 chapters in 17 states, according to Intelligence Report. And some have been associated with criminal activity, according to Mark Monteyne, an Illinois State Police crime intelligence analyst who coordinates "threat groups" from his Springfield office. "Extreme beliefs are not cause for us to track activities," he adds. "We follow guidelines, and crime is the predicate. A group or individual has to have posed a potential threat, something tangible. And fortunately in this state, there's not a lot of that type of criminal activity tied to Hale's [group] or other hate groups." Bill Knight teaches journalism at Western Illinois University in Macomb. |
33 / July/August 1999 Illinois Issues