Monday, March 7, 2005 | 10:54 a.m.
A white supremacist organization has stepped up recruitment efforts throughout the Las Vegas Valley in recent months, so much so that it will be the subject of a discussion at UNLV Tuesday night.
The Anti-Defamation League is holding a meeting at UNLV's Interfaith Student Center at 6:30 p.m. to discuss the activity of the National Alliance.
The National Alliance has distributed leaflets, stickers and other literature in almost every area in Southern Nevada, from Summerlin to Henderson to Boulder City.
The racist organization also won a legal battle in January to keep a billboard with the message "Stop Immigration" -- a billboard on Sahara Avenue several hundred feet from the Strip in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood.
Two weeks ago members stuck hundreds of leaflets and stickers around UNLV's campus that stated: "Say 'Hello' to Earth's most endangered species: The White Race."
The Nevada chapter of the National Alliance ascended to the status of "official unit" in October, meaning that the local arm of the group has been recognized as having a significant number of members and has a proven track record of increasing membership, National Alliance leaders said.
The group, which is based in Hillsboro, W.Va., has had members in the Las Vegas Valley for at least five years, authorities said.
"They started picking up steam in October and have reached much more diverse groups," said Det. Pete Calos of the Metro Police Gang Unit.
Metro currently doesn't have statistics showing how many members are enrolled with the group, and the National Alliance refuses to discuss membership numbers.
The National Alliance has done nothing illegal and has no links to criminal activity, Calos said, adding that "these guys aren't stupid."
"They are sophisticated," said Cynthia Luria, Nevada regional director for the Anti-Defamation League. "They are pushing the anti-immigration message rather than a white supremacist message. We do support the rights guaranteed under the First Amendment, and they have the right to put their message up. We just want people to know who they are and what they stand for."
The league considers the National Alliance to be a "potential threat" because it has become a more mainstream organization with a broader membership base in recent years.
The National Alliance calls for a separate, "all-white" nation and advocates anti-immigration policies.
It is one of the most organized separatist groups in America and regularly publishes books and magazines promoting its views. The group also produces and distributes music through its record label, Resistance Records.
Michael O'Sullivan, a local member of the National Alliance and a real estate broker in Las Vegas, said the group has conducted massive outreach programs in recent months, targeting middle-class white neighborhoods in the southwest, southeast and Henderson, but has attempted to cover the entire Las Vegas Valley.
He said members normally leave fliers advocating white pride on car windshields or hand them out personally in areas with a lot of foot traffic, such as malls.
In December the group distributed about 24,000 fliers, he estimated.
O'Sullivan said the National Alliance is not a hate group or a white supremacist group but only advocates the separation of races and an end to immigration.
"We advocate 'love your race,' " he said.
The national group's Web site, however, goes beyond that, promoting the idea that whites are superior to others.
Las Vegas is merely one piece of a larger strategy to recruit members throughout the western and southwestern United States, said Shaun Walker, chief operating officer for the National Alliance headquarters in West Virginia.
He said that until 2000, the group concentrated its recruitment drives in Eastern states such as New York, North Carolina or Ohio. Since then, it has attempted to make inroads in western and southwestern cities like Phoenix, Salt Lake City and Las Vegas because of their rapidly growing populations and the high numbers of "non-whites" moving into the areas.
It also started "proto-units"--affiliated but not official groups -- in Reno; Spokane, Wash.; and Boise, Idaho, recently. Las Vegas was a "proto-unit" for five years until October.
"There has been enormous growth in the West," he said, adding that any area with a high number of non-whites has high membership growth rates for the organization.
In Las Vegas, the group has 20 times the interest in the organization than just two years ago, Walker claims. He attributes this to the Las Vegas unit, which has "gotten its act together" in recent years. He refused to release statistics on enrollment, saying membership is confidential because people in sensitive positions may be retaliated against for belonging to the organization.
"Do we want more members in Nevada? Yes," he said, adding that the group often recruits members from college campuses like UNLV.
"The culture of a college campus is very liberal, but the average student is pretty mainstream," Walker said. "It's not difficult to recruit them."
Marla Scher, Hillel Director of Jewish Student Life at UNLV, said that National Alliance stickers and fliers were found throughout UNLV's campus two weeks ago.
While she upholds the principles of free speech, she said, "offensive speech needs to be addressed." The leaflets were taken down by campus security because the distributors did not gain prior approval for placing the fliers on campus.
Under UNLV's policy, no group can post fliers or informational material without prior approval from the school. Groups can only place the informational material in designated areas, such as on a poster board in the Student Union, library and elsewhere.
The university does not regulate content, an official said.
Luria said that community members must take a firm stance against groups like the National Alliance to counter its message, but did not advocate "running the group out of town."
"We want to say, 'We don't want hate groups spreading their messages in our communities.' We are encouraging the community to say, 'We don't believe this -- that's not what we are about in Las Vegas.' "
White supremacist and separatist groups have been in the news recently after the high-profile killing of Michael Lefkow and Donna Humphrey, the husband and mother of U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow of Chicago.
The victims were found shot to death in the family's home on Feb. 28.
In 2002 Judge Lefkow ordered a white supremacist, Matthew Hale of the World Church of the Creator, to pay $200,000 in a trademark infringement case involving an Oregon group of the same name. Hale was convicted last year of plotting to kill Judge Lefkow even though she originally ruled in his favor.
Hale has denied any involvement with the killings and denounced them March 3, according to the New York Times.
The National Alliance claims no affiliation with Hale or the World Church of the Creator, but postings on the group's Web site call for support for Hale.
"I'm going to show solidarity with Matt Hale because he is a white man incarcerated for standing up for his beliefs, even though I am not a member of his church and I've disagreed with him in the past," wrote Kevin Alfred Strom, host of the National Alliance's American Dissident Voices radio broadcasts, in 2003.
But O'Sullivan, the local voice of the group, said, "I totally condemn the killings, and we have no affiliation with them."
Allen Lichtenstein, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, said white supremacists groups have equal protection under the First Amendment -- as do critics of them.
"We believe in free speech," he said, "and the best antidote to bad speech is more speech."
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