The Anti-Abortion/Neo-Nazi Connection 

Evidence Surfaces Linking Extremist Groups
 
By Tom Burghardt
Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights (BACORR)

(San Francisco - January 22, 1995) Startling new evidence of a
growing political convergence - and collaboration - among
far-right proponents of anti-abortion direct action and the
neo-Nazi movement in Canada and the United States, has recently
surfaced.
     According to an article in the Vancouver Sun, anti-racist
researchers have uncovered evidence of links "between elements of
the anti-abortion movement and the neo-Nazi racist right." (1)
     A 400 page report by B'nai B'rith Canada indicates that
"radical American right-wing groups may be camouflaging their
entry into Canada by infiltrating the anti-abortion movement."
(2)
     Professor Stephen Scheinberg, the report's author has said
that "Elements of the extreme right are moving into the
anti-abortion movement with a vengeance. Anti-Semitism is a
background to things that are taking place." (3)
     Anti-abortion leaders have denounced the report. Ted Gerk,
president of the Pro-Life Society of British Columbia said, "It's
time to release the supposed links between neo-Nazi and racist
groups and B.C.'s mainstream pro-life movement... to put up or
shut up." (4)
     Kim Bolan, a Vancouver Sun reporter, has uncovered several
of the links demanded by Mr. Gerk. According to Bolan, Ann
Molloy, the president of the Victoria Pro-life Society,
"acknowledged in an interview that she is a supporter of the
Canadian Free Speech League and was extremely upset when
Holocaust denier David Irving was hauled away from a Victoria
dinner she attended and later deported from Canada in 1992." (5)
     While Molloy denied there are any real links between
far-right anti-abortion organizations and the neo-Nazi movement,
she echoed a common theme of the racist right - that Hitler's
"final solution" and Holocaust against the Jewish people, is a
"myth" Molloy said, "The problem is there is a group trying to
give the whole world, but particularly the Germans and the white
Anglo-Saxons, a guilt trip for six million deaths that didn't
take place and that's primarily it." (6)
     While claiming that "there are not links" and that "This
far-right business is highly overrated", Molloy wrote about the
David Irving incident in The Interim, an anti-abortion newspaper
that portrayed Irving as a victim of "political correctness." (7)
     The phenomenon is hardly limited to Canada. In the United
States for example, Randall Terry, the founder of Operation
Rescue, has said that "We have tried to do outreach to the black
and Jewish communities", but admitted that those efforts have
largely failed, "...and that he is critical of the JEWISH
DOCTORS, who he believes perform a large number of abortions."
(8) (emphasis added)

     Tom Metzger, fuhrer of the Fallbrook, California-based,
White Aryan Resistance, has said, "Almost all abortion doctors
are Jews. Abortion makes money for Jews. Almost all abortion
nurses are lesbians. Abortion gives thrills to lesbians. Abortion
in Orange County is promoted by the corrupt Jewish organization
called Planned Parenthood... Jews must be punished for this
holocaust and murder of white children along with their perverted
lesbian nurses." (9)
     Meanwhile, the Denton, Texas-based anti-abortion
organization, Life Dynamics Incorporated claims that 26% of all
doctors who perform abortion are Jewish; an assertion that a
spokesperson for Planned Parenthood has called "ludicrous." (10)
     However, running with the theme of Jewish doctors
"controlling the "abortion industry", Life Dynamics Incorporated
has printed and distributed tens of thousands of copies of an
overtly-racist and anti-Semitic "comic book," Bottom Feeder. One
of Bottom Feeder's "jokes" implicitly favors Hitler over
physicians who perform abortion:

"Q: What would you do if you found yourself in a room with
Hitler, Mussolini and an abortionist, and you had a gun with only
two bullets?  A:  Shoot the abortionist twice." (11)

     Echoing the claims of the neo-Nazi movement, the
"mainstream" Catholic organization, Human Life International
(HLI), asserts that a "Jewish conspiracy" is the controlling
force behind the "abortion industry." (12)
     HLI's founder, Father Paul Marx, has written in his
autobiography, "Confession Of A Pro-Life Missionary:" "Notice how
many Jews led the infamous 1971 abortion-planning meeting in Los
Angeles which I exposed... note the large number of abortionists
(consult the Yellow Pages) and pro-abortion medical professors
who are Jewish." (13)
     Fr. Marx, however, does not stop there. Similar to the
propaganda claims of Holocaust Revisionist's, Marx asserts that
"a segment of the Jewish community... more or less led the
greatest holocaust of all time, the war on unborn babies." (14)
According to Planned Parenthood researchers, Karen Branan and
Frederick Clarkson, HLI "resurrect[s] that most vicious piece of
historical anti-Semitism: child-killing Jews." (15)
     Barry Wray, president of the local Pro-Life Society in
Melville, Saskatchewan, told a Vancouver Sun reporter that he is
an associate of Wolfgang Droege, the founder of the white
supremacist Heritage Front (HF). Wray has said he also attended a
1986 Aryan Nations meeting at Hayden Lake, Idaho; a leading
center of the white supremacist and Christian Patriot movement
throughout North America. (16)
     Denying that Hitler's genocidal campaign against Jews was a
central component of the German Reich's policy, the Aryan Nations
Liberty Net claimed ten years ago, "There must be nearly 15
million sheep here in the U.S. Those controlled not only by the
Jew media but are pushed by unthinking people through peer
pressure into killing their own children. We the enlightened
minority must show the docile mass why these murders are
happening. The word must be passed along, an alarm must be
sounded. Periodic disruptions of these murder parlors can only
slow down the real holocaust!!!!!" (17)
     Pro-Life Society president, Barry Wray, also boasts of his
close association with Ernst Zundel, one of the largest
publishers of neo-Nazi literature in the world. (18)
     Wray's brother Dan, a former leader of the British Columbia
chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, spoke at a public meeting of the
racist "white culture" group, Canada First. (19)
     The April 1989 meeting was co-sponsored by the anti-abortion
Life Gazette and supporters of American neo-fascist, Lyndon
LaRouche at East Vancouver's Croatian Cultural Center. The topic,
according to the Vanocuver Sun, was billed as "Satanism and
Bolshevism." (20)
     Sharing the platform with unadulterated neo-Nazis and
fascists, were Peggy Steacey of the anti-abortion group, REAL
Women; Elaine Stewart, of Concerned Citizens for Fetal Rights and
Dignity; and Dr. Wayne Poley, editor of Life Gazette. (21)
     Barry Wray, a frequent contributor to The Interim and The
Christian Info-News, wrote in the September 1994 issue of The
Christian Info-News, that he couldn't condemn Rev. Paul J. Hill's
brutal assassination of Dr. John Bayard Britton and clinic
escort, James Barrett, in Pensacola, Florida last July 29:

"If such an act cannot be condoned, can we as Christians condemn
it? Do we not in condemning it judge ourselves in greater
condemnation as individuals and collectively as a nation for
abortions to go on year after year?" (22)

     After the November 8 assassination attempt on the life of
Dr. Garson Romalis, in Vancouver, Allan Dutton, of the Canadian
Anti-Racism Education and Research Society, said there "is no
doubt" that anti-abortion and extreme right are overlapping
movements. (23)
     Dutton went on to say, "There is no question that arms are
circulating within the religious right and within the racist
right. It is an extreme element within the anti-abortion movement
that is linked to the far-right and the racist right." (24)
     Warren Kinsella, in his 1994 book, "Web of Hate", describes
another far-right outfit, the Northern Foundation, "as an
umbrella organization of racist groups, including the Heritage
Front." Ann Hartmann, a prominent leader of the Northern
Foundation, has also been active in REAL Women and gave an
anti-abortion speech to a REAL Woman convention in Ottawa in
April, 1989. (25)
     In the United States, the linkages between one of the most
extreme factions of the direct action anti-abortion movement,
Missionaries to the Preborn (MTP) and far-right political parties
associated with the burgeoning Christian Patriot movement, have
been established by progressive researchers.
     Rev. Matthew Trewhella, MTP's director, is a National
Committee member of the far-right United States Taxpayers Party
(USTP), chaired by Howard Phillips of The Conservative Caucus. 
Trewhella, an original signer of Rev. Paul Hill's Defensive
Action Declaration, is a leading member of both organizations in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin and nationally. (26)
     Andrew Burnett, director of Advocates For Life Ministries
(AFLM) and publisher of Life Advocate magazine, is another
individual with extensive ties to the USTP. On numerous
occasions, racist skinheads, members of the neo-Nazi American
Front, have blockaded women's clinics in Portland alongside AFLM
cadre.
     In June 1994, Trewhella and more than 20 MTP/USTP members,
participated in a weapon's training exercise at the rural farm of
MTP members, Robert and Mary Briedis. (27)
     At the May 1994 Wisconsin state party convention of the
USTP, Rev. Trewhella railed against "socialist elitists," and
abortion providers. During the convention, the 100-page,
"Principles Justifying The Arming And Organizing Of A Miltia",
was sold for $1 to participants. Published by The Free Militia,
the text is an amalgam of Christian Patriot doctrine on "biblical
inerrancy" as well as a practical guide for organizing
paramilitary combat cells. (28)
     The USTP is an extremist organization with ideological and
organizational links to the theocratic wing of the Christian
Right, the "dominion theology" or Christian Reconstructionist
strain of the movement. (29)
     The USTP's asserts that "all civic law should emerge from
biblical law", and that "The U.S. Constitution establishes a
republic under God, not a democracy." (30)
     Rousas John (R.J.) Rushdoony, the premier ideologist of
Christian Reconstructionism has written that democracy is a
"heresy" and that "Supernatural Christianity and democracy are
inevitable enemies." Rushdoony addressed the founding convention
of the United States Taxpayers Party. (31)
     The links between the anti-abortion movement, the armed wing
of the Christian Patriots, and anti-Semites, white supremacists
and neo-Nazis do not stop here, however.
     Iowa anti-abortion leader, David Shedlock, the
communications director of Operation Rescue of Iowa and National
Committee member of the USTP, led an overtly anti-Semitic
demonstration at the Temple B'nai Jeshrun in Des Moines, in
November 1992. Chanting, "Leave your religion, go to the true
religion", the mob accused Rabbi Steven Fink of being a
"murderer", an "accomplice to the American Holocaust." (32)
     Dr. Herbert Remer, an abortion provider and frequent target
for harassment by Shedlock's group, is a member of the
synagogue's congregation.
     Other prominent far-rightists who have joined the USTP
National Committee include:

     Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue. New Right fund-
raising specialist, Richard Viguerie. Convicted clinic bomber,
Defensive Action supporter and author of "A Time To Kill?", a
book which advocates the murder of abortion providers, Rev.
Michael Bray, the publisher of Capitol Area Chrisitian News in
Maryland. (33)
     Christian Reconstructionist ideologue, George Grant,
chairperson of the Taxpayers Party of Tennessee. Grant, the
author of "Grand Illusions: The Legacy of Planned Parenthood", is
a top advisor of D. James Kennedy, a prominent Christian Right
televangelist. (34)
     William K. Shearer, member, USTP National Committee, was a
member of the National Executive Committee of the racist Populist
Party, in 1984. (35)
     Byron Dale, a prominent far-right activist who lectured on
"The Problem of Our Debt Money System". Dale was a close friend
and adviser of Posse Comitatus leader, Gordon Kahl. (36)
     According to Planned Parenthood researchers, Dale sold The
Revelator, at USTP events. The Revelator is a publication that
rails against "Anti-Christ Banksters [sic] whose basic strategy
is to instigate war and finance both sides, especially if it
involves Christians killing Christians". (37)
     Sharing a literature table with Byron Dale at the May 1994
Wisconsin state USTP convention, was Dan Pilla of Tax Equity. At
the Christian Patriot Defense League's "white's only" Survival
Conference in Licking, Missouri in June 1984, Dan Pilla Sr. and
Jr. "delivered the tax resistance message". (38)
     The Christian Patriots Defense League (CPDL) describes
itself as a "corps of 'Christian soldiers'" who are "conducting
Bible classes while preparing for guerilla warfare" against a
"Christ-hating International Jewish conspiracy". The CPDL is a
prominent organization within the contemporary Christian Patriot
movement and various armed Citizen Militia groups. (39)
     Jeffrey Baker, Chairman of the USTP of Florida, declared at
the Wisconsin USTP convention, "Abortionists should be put to
death. They are murderers". Planned Parenthood investigators
identified Baker as a speaker on a recent conference program,
representing the "10th Amendment Militia, Church Status". (40)
     Baker, a prominent far-right activist, militia leader and
anti-abortion ideologue, represents the general viewpoint of many
within the movement that a vast conspiracy is taking over the
United States. Elements of their paranoid, conspiratorial
world-view include an obsession with the anti-communist "New
World Order" proclaimed by George Bush; frequent claims that the
country is on the verge of invasion by United Nations troops, and
that mysterious "black helicopters" are harassing citizens.
     Similar to the conspiracy theories of the John Birch
Society, Jeffrey Baker identifies the "liberal" pro-capitalist,
Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission, as
the leading players in a plot to destroy the United States.
     Unlike the John Birch Society, however, which at least
publicly, has renounced anti-Semitism and racism, Baker
identifies "The Star of David" as the best expression of the
presumed plot. (41)
     Other prominent Christian Patriots include the Trochmann
family from Noxon, Montana. John Trochmann, a "former" associate
of Aryan Nations leader, Louis Beam, is the self-styled commander
of the Militia of Montana (MOM). Taking Aim, the group's
newsletter, has an anti-abortion tilt.
     These connections are more than just theoretical. John
Salvi, accused of murdering two employees of women's clinics in
Brookline, MA, and wounding five others on December 30, 1995,
expressed interest in participating in a "camping trip" with a
Florida Militia group in 1992. (42)
     While there is no direct evidence linking Salvi to the
Christian Patriot movement, Salvi attended at least one meeting
of the Patriot Pro-Family Movement, last November, a few miles
away from Brookline clinics where the anti-abortion massacre took
place. Literature distributed at the meeting included instruction
in the use of the Ruger .22-caliber rifle, the weapon allegedly
used by Salvi. (43)
     Other books contained diagrams on how to build bombs and
incendiary devices, similar to those presented in the
anti-abortion, Army Of God, terrorist manual. Another book
available for sale was "Improvised Weapons Of The American
Underground." (44)
     According to progressive researcher, Chip Berlet, literature
seized from Salvi's home included posters that allegedly depict
aborted fetuses and brochures produced and distributed by Human
Life International. (45)
     What is significant about the political convergence among
various far-right, anti-Semitic, white supremacist and Christian
Reconstructionist factions is the ease with which conspiratorial
rhetoric slips over into violent attacks on women's clinics,
health care providers, racial minorities, queers, leftists and
the trade union movement. Such violence is indicative of growing
evidence that we are witnessing the creation of an armed fascist
nucleus throughout North America.
     Under the broad umbrella of the Christian Patriot movement,
groups such as Missionaries to the Preborn, Operation Rescue, the
Defensive Action "network", the United States Taxpayers Party,
Aryan Nations, the American Front and Canadian anti-abortion 
extremist groups with ties to the neo-Nazi Heritage Front, are
forging ideological and operational links.
     Unless challenged and confronted forcefully, those who
attack women's clinics, bash queers, murder blacks and other
minorities, and serve as operatives in union-busting goon squads,
will only be emboldened to step-up their attacks. While the
short-term goal of these groups, organizations and
seemingly-disparate movements, center on the destruction of
abortion access, their medium-term goal is the creation of a mass
fascist movement throughout North America.
     Ultimately, what unites the far-right is attaining political
power. Once they have seized the reins of the State they intend
to create a theocratic, totalitarian, white "Christian Republic"
in the service of capitalist exploitation and oppression:  the
original - and contemporary - meaning of the "New World Order."

No Fear! No Silence!
Reproductive Rights By Any Means Necessary!
The Struggle Continues...

Notes:

1. Kim Bolan, "Pro-Lifers and Nazis linked", Vancouver Sun,
reprinted, The Sun Times Of Canada, January 2, 1995, Tampa,
Florida, p.1
2. ibid.
3. ibid.
4. ibid.
5. ibid.
6. ibid.
7. ibid.
8. Newsweek, May 1, 1989; cited in Skipp Porteous,
"Anti-Semitism: Its Prevalence Within The Christian Right",
Freedom Writer, May 1994, p. 3. Institute for First Amendment
Studies (IFAS), P.O. BOX 589, Great Barrington, MA 01230 USA
9. Floyd Cochran and Loretta Ross, "Procreating White Supremacy: 
Women And The Far Right", Information Packet, August 1993, Center
for Democratic Renewal (CDR), P.O. Box 50469, Atlanta, GA
30302-0469 USA
10. Porteous, op.cit., p. 3
11. NA, "Bottom Feeder," 1993, Life Dynamics Incorporated,
Denton, Texas, p. 9
12. Karen Branan and Frederick Clarkson, "Extremism in Sheep's
Clothing: A Special Report on Human Life International", Front
Lines Research, Volume 1, Number 1, June 1994; Public Policy
Institute/Planned Parenthood Federation of America, FLR, 810 7th
Avenue, 14th Floor, New York, New York, 10019 USA
13. ibid., p. 1
14. ibid.
15. ibid.
16. Bolan, op. cit, p. 4
17. Cochran and Ross, op. cit.
18. Bolan, op. cit., p. 4
19. ibid.
20. ibid.
21. ibid.
22. ibid.
23. ibid.
24. ibid.
25. ibid.
26. John Goetz, "Missionaries' Leader Calls for Armed Militias",
Front Lines Research, New York, Volume 1, Number 2, August 1994,
pg, 3
27. Mike Mulvey, "Trewhella tied to 2 who held arms training. 
Pair are in abortion foe's church," The Milwaukee Sentinel,
August, 19, 1994, p. 1
28. Goetz, op. cit., p. 4
29. For background on the Christian Reconstructionist movement,
see: Frederick Clarkson, "Christian Reconstructionism: Religious
Right Extremism Gains Influence", Parts 1 & 2, March and June
1994, The Public Eye, Political Research Associates, 678
Massachusetts Avenue, Suite 702, Cambridge, MA 02139-3355 USA
30. Sandi DuBowski and John Goetz, "Bushwhacked! The USTP and The
Far Right", New York, Front Lines Research, Volume 1, Number 3,
November 1994, p. 1
31. ibid., p. 5
32. Chris Romans, "Rabbi blasts anti-abortion demonstration as
anti-Semitic", The Des Moines Register, November 8, 1992, p. 5
33. DuBowski and Goetz, op. cit., p. 4
34. ibid.
35. ibid.
36. ibid.
37. ibid.
38. ibid.
39. ibid.
40. ibid.
41. ibid.
42. Sarah Tipitt, "New Team: Anti-abortion activists and
militias. Salvi case evidence suggests link; books on bombs and
guns at recent meeting in Massachusetts", Reuters, reprinted, San
Francisco Examiner, Saturday, January 14, 1994, p. 1
43. ibid.
44. ibid.
45. Chip Berlet, "Clinic Violence, the Religious Right,
Scapegoating, Armed Militias & the Freemason Conspiracy", January
1995, Political Research Associates, Cambridge, MA