Friday, Aug. 12, 2005 | 5:53 a.m.
Jon Ralston hosts the news discussion program Face to Face on Las Vegas ONE and publishes the Ralston Report. He can be reached at (702) 870-7997 or at [email protected].
WEEKEND EDITION
August 13-14, 2005
Michael O'Sullivan is a personable, good-looking, articulate man and an aspiring political leader. He also is the benign face of hate in Nevada.
O'Sullivan is trying to form The White Peoples Party, ostensibly to end government programs for minorities. But that purpose, while it may be offensive to some, is only a cover, much like O'Sullivan's visage, for something much more insidious and frightening.
The would-be party leader is using issues such as immigration and affirmative action to mask the real purpose, as stated on the Web site for a group O'Sullivan is associated with, the National Vanguard: "the preservation of racial differences in homogeneous, geographically defined separate nations." That is, O'Sullivan and those of his ilk would prefer to see minorities and Jews expelled from this country so that whites can live here free from racial pollution. It is sinister and sickening and it cannot go unchallenged.
He should not be dismissed so easily by groups such as the Anti-Defamation League, whose local chapter has so lost its way that it believes not giving men such as O'Sullivan any air time is the best way to smother him. The local ADL's Cynthia Luria chided us for giving O'Sullivan time on "Face to Face" last week and would have preferred to see the program censored. Smother the media, not the demagogue?
Some people may see O'Sullivan's views, they will relate to them and they will sign up, Luria's argument goes. Thus, more hate-mongers will be activated. I can understand that position -- but it is a position of weakness where strength is needed.
That thinking, to believe that by ignoring it you will destroy it, is the same kind of naivete that has allowed tyrants to rise throughout history.
The ADL apparently has forgotten the still-resonant words of Edmund Burke, O'Sullivan's fellow Irishman, who actually understood the tenets of this country, and who believed "all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." The world has changed dramatically since Burke's time, too. With the Internet fertile ground for the likes of O'Sullivan to spread their dream of an Aryan nation, the only solution is to awaken people here and elsewhere to the growing threat.
Burke knew that the kind of denial evinced by the ADL here sows the seeds of hatred, allowing it to flower in the darkness. In this horticultural reversal, the only way to kill this garden of evil is to tend to it.
And tend to Mr. O'Sullivan I did last week on "Face to Face," exposing him -- or letting him expose himself -- for the racist, anti-Semitic hate-monger he is. Some excerpts:
MO: Black kids going to a mixed school do worse than black kids going with their own mix.
JR: They should go to their own schools essentially? That would help?
MO: It would actually help them get a better education.
And later:
JR: How is Brown vs. Board of Education a negative change?
MO: Look at what it has done to the black literacy rate. It has gone down since then.
JR: You are blaming Brown vs. Board of Education? For people who don't know that is what integrated schools --
MO: Right.
JR: You are saying that that is what is responsible for the black literacy rate?
MO: Absolutely, amongst many other things.
JR: (Quoting from National Vanguard Web site) "Jews in such societies feel safer in asserting themselves, since instead of standing out in stark contrast to their host population, they become merely one of many racial minorities. This is the primary reason that Jewish interest groups have been at the forefront of nearly all the negative changes that have taken place in the white world during the last 100 years." What, did you plagiarize that from Mein Kampf? Where did that come from? This is anti-Semitic, hostile hatred.
MO: There is not one slander word in there. There is not one insult.
JR: Not one insult? "Have been at the forefront of nearly all the negative changes that have taken place in the white world?"
MO: The Jews are everywhere.
JR: What don't you blame the Jews for? I suppose 9/11 was the Jews, too? Right?
MO: There is an association there absolutely. Not that they did it because we know who did it. Those people went down with the planes and other people have been arrested. But clearly before the creation of Israel the Arabs didn't hate America or didn't hate white people. They do now because it is just primarily England and United States because we are the ones financing Israel.
And then this:
JR: Do you believe the Holocaust where Hitler killed six million Jews actually happened?
MO: I don't believe Hitler ever killed anybody in his life. The armies around -- JR: I am taking that as a no. You don't believe in the Holocaust?
MO: We can research that. That is a historical issue that I am not an expert to speak on. It is just beyond the scope of what I am involved in.
This is what The White Peoples Party is about. When I asked O'Sullivan to identify the phrase "Give me your tired, your poor," he told me it is on "that statue back East" that was "put there by a Jewish person who was not a citizen of the United States."
I would like to believe O'Sullivan is alone in spreading this kind of venomous message. But he isn't. And as the minority population grows in Nevada and the nation, and as debates over illegal immigration and affirmative action are used to conceal racism and intolerance, beware the benign face of hate.
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