A Hundred Little Hitlers; The Death of a Black Man, the Trial of a White Racist, and the Rise of the Neo-Nazi Movement in America

by Elinor Langer

• ISBN13: 9780805050981
• ISBN10: 0805050981
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2003-09-02
• Publisher: Metropolitan Books

Summary

On November 12, 1988, a group of Portland, Oregon, skinheads known as East Side White Pride met for an evening of beer and racist banter.Later that night, they encountered three Ethiopians; a street fight broke out and Kenneth Mieske brutally beat Mulugeta Seraw with a bat. In the early-morning hours, Seraw died. Drawing on more than ten years of original research, award-winning journalist Elinor Langer takes the Seraw case as the occasion for a thorough investigation of the Nazi-inspired racist movement in the United States. She vividly reconstructs the world of the skinheads, both in Portland and nationally: their origins in the punk scene, their basement shrines to Nazi power, their moments of glory on Oprah and Geraldo. She delves into the long-standing radical groups with which the skinheads became allied, tracking the progress of such powerful figures as white Aryan resistance leader Tom Metzger through the stations of the far right, from the Birch Society to Christian Identity to David Duke's Klan. In gripping detail, she follows ambitious civil-rights lawyer Morris Dees's efforts to prove Metzger responsible for the Portland killing-an ultimately futile campaign to curb the growth of neo-Nazism. Compelling, disturbing, and important, A Hundred Little Hitlers is both an epic account of racism and justice, and a close examination of social forces that loom ever more dangerously today.

Author Biography

Author of the acclaimed biography Josephine Herbst, Elinor Langer has written for The New York Review of Books , The New York Times, and The Nation, among other publications. A Hundred Little Hitlers was chosen as a finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Award for work-in-progress. Langer lives in Portland, Oregon.

Table of Contents

Prologue
Ifs	p. 1
History and Law	p. 2
About This Book	p. 6
The Death of Mulugeta Seraw
The Skinheads' Afternoon	p. 9
From Ethiopia to Portland	p. 14
Downtown	p. 22
"Girls' Night Out"	p. 26
An Ethiopian Farewell Party	p. 28
Back Where They Started	p. 30
The Death of Mulugeta Seraw	p. 31
Engedaw Berhanu Gets the News	p. 35
Underground
A Skinhead Apartment	p. 37
Skinheads, Power, Music, Violence	p. 42
Portrait: Ken Mieske	p. 54
Portrait: Kyle Brewster	p. 67
Portrait: Steven Strasser	p. 78
Movement Rising	p. 81
Earlier the Same Year	p. 90
Aryan Update
Aryan Update	p. 97
An Indiana Childhood	p. 100
Disenchantment	p. 108
Birth of a Racist	p. 117
"Gas 'Em All"	p. 137
Radical Racism	p. 149
A Hundred Little Hitlers
Alliance	p. 159
Fathers and Sons	p. 168
The Adventures of Dave Mazzella	p. 172
Vanguard	p. 181
The Personal and the Political	p. 192
Dave in Portland	p. 197
The Case at Law
Exclusion	p. 207
An Empty Theater	p. 219
Uproar	p. 223
In the Skinhead Camp	p. 227
Investigation	p. 232
A "Moral Panic"	p. 247
Cakes and Causes
"The Morris Dees Story"	p. 257
Engedaw Berhanu Honors His Nephew	p. 278
More Adventures of Dave Mazzella	p. 279
"I Relish It - Almost"	p. 284
Still More Adventures of Dave Mazzella	p. 294
"Metzger's Racism Goes on Trial"	p. 301
The Trial of Tom Metzger
The Setting	p. 303
The Bat That Started in Fallbrook	p. 306
The Plaintiff's Case	p. 309
Tom Metzger's Defense	p. 335
The Law and the Lawyers	p. 339
Decision	p. 344
Curtain Calls	p. 350
Epilogue
A Visit to Ethiopia	p. 353
History and Law Revisited	p. 359
Ifs	p. 361
Notes	p. 363
Acknowledgments	p. 383
Index	p. 387
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

From A Hundred Little Hitlers :

The home to which Kenneth Mieske returned the night of the killing is a low-ceilinged, pine-veneered basement he shares with Julie Belec in her mother and stepfather's house in a blue-collar area of southwest Portland. A collection of anti-black and antisemitic posters, leaflets, and fliers nearly covers one wall. Some, like the drawing of a microwave with the slogan "Jew Dwarfs! There is an oven in YOUR future," are standard issue in Ken and Julie's circle, but others reflect more of an individual search. On a table by the bed are a few well-thumbed books about their favorite Nazis-Mengele, his and Speer, hers. There is a swastika made of gum wrappers. Gory posters for Ken's own band, Machine, and the well-framed group photographs of East Side White Pride confirm that Ken and Julie are not outsiders to this world, children plastering their bedrooms with posters of stars they will never meet: they are members of it, they are in it, it is their world.

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Excerpted from A Hundred Little Hitlers: The Death of a Black Man, the Trial of a White Racist, and the Rise of the Neo-Nazi Movement in America by Elinor Langer
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