Editorial: Deaf ears toward hate

Tuesday, March 8, 2005 | 9:10 a.m.

The National Alliance, a hate group, is circulating literature in the Las Vegas Valley, hoping to recruit new members. Its message is as simplistic as it is hateful. Christian white people of northern European heritage are superior and the only rightful inhabitants of the United States, its members preach. There is no point in engaging them in hours of conversation, or in reading through literature for sale on their Web site. This is their core belief.

In their view, all of our neighbors, friends, relatives, co-workers and fellow Nevadans and Americans who are not white and Christian should be ... what? Persecuted? Driven from the country? Segregated on reservations? Sent to death camps? These are some of the scenarios that suggest themselves when National Alliance members pine for the days before the "swarming hordes of officially favored minorities were declared equal." The quote is from their Web site, in a blurb promoting old history books that recount only the contributions of white people.

National Alliance members, however, have a huge gap in their knowledge of history. People of all races, nationalities and ethnic groups have helped build this country and have paid, often in blood, for all of our rights and freedoms. While the members of this racist group have a right to be ignorant, and a right to publicly display that ignorance through speech, the rest of us also have a right -- to shun them. We're confident that nearly everyone, once they know exactly what National Alliance members believe, will do just that.