Justice: Scalping the Skinheads

Violent hatemongering can be an expensive hobby. That’s the message of a $12.5 million verdict handed down in Portland, Ore., last week against television repairman Tom Metzger, his son John, their national racist organization White Aryan Resistance, and two of the three partying skinhead punks who, incited by WAR, arbitrarily bludgeoned a 27-year-old Ethiopian man to death two years ago.

Victorious lawyer Morris Dees, whose Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center specializes in suing hate groups, vows to try to collect every penny in order to close down WAR, its newspaper, cable TV show, and 23 telephone hot lines. In a similar $7 million lawsuit in Alabama three years ago, Dees managed to bankrupt the United Klans of America for its role in instigating the shooting and hanging of a black youth. Said Dees of his latest victory: “The jury has spoken loud and clear that in this country the First Amendment guarantees the right to hate people and say what you want, but not the right to hurt people.”