Counter-Currents
Tom Metzger, American Radical (April 9, 1938-November 4, 2020)
Jim Goad
Phil Eiger Newmann, Tom Metzger, 2020.
1,724 words
Terrible Tommy Metzger died the day after the election.
One night in the fall of 1989 I was a snot-nosed and cocksure wigger journalist who’d tooled the hundred miles or so south from my ratty apartment a half-block from Frederick’s of Hollywood to interview Metzger at his home in Fallbrook, CA.
At the time, Metzger, who made a living as a TV repairman, was the highest-profile face of white supremacy. . . or white nationalism. . . or white separatism. . . or at least unapologetic whiteness. . . in the country, soon to be eclipsed by David Duke, under whom Metzger had formerly served in the KKK. Duke didn’t start to snag national headlines on a large scale until his 1990 run for the US Senate in Louisiana.
It was also in 1990 that Morris Dees and his SPLC won a successful $12.5-million civil suit against Metzger, his son John, and Metzger’s organization White Aryan Resistance (WAR), blaming them for the beating death of an Ethiopian man named Mulugeta Seraw on the Portland streets by white-power skinheads in an incident that Metzger, to his death, insisted was a mere street fight gone bad rather than a deliberate racial attack on a colored fella who’d innocently been minding his own business walking around late at night as innocent colored fellas are wont to do.
The fact that Metzger did not know any of the killers did not impress the jury. Nor did the fact that he’d never told anyone to kill anyone. Nor was the fact that John and Tom Metzger were over 1,000 miles away from the incident when it happened. The sole piece of “evidence” that the SPLC used to bankrupt his organization was some vague message Metzger had left on his voicemail line about how he’d heard Portland skinheads were raising some hell up there and that he didn’t quite disapprove. Otherwise, there was absolutely no connection, direct or remote, between WAR and Seraw’s death.
That was 1990, and even back then the mere insinuation that someone was a violent racist Nazi was enough to prejudice a jury beyond all reason. Just like Vincent Bugliosi had convinced jurors in Charles Manson’s murder trial that Manson was guilty of murder simply because he had scary ideas, Mo Dees persuaded a group of sheltered Portlanders that Tom Metzger was responsible for murder even though he never even told anyone to kill anyone.
Although they never broke his spirit, Tom Metzger was one of the first to be targeted and bankrupted by the SPLC, which is why I see it as a minor tragedy that he was so forgotten and abandoned by so many of his ideological heirs, especially those who seek to aggressively distance themselves from whatever it was that they thought he did wrong and that they arrogantly assume they’re doing right these days.
Born in Indiana, which constantly vies with Nebraska as America’s bleakest state, Tom Metzger served in the US Army in the 1950s. He drifted toward anti-communism but by his own account felt alienated by the John Birch Society because they forbade the mere hint of Jew-naming. He achieved the rank of California’s Grand Dragon of the KKK until pivoting toward irreligious Third Positionism with a focus on reclaiming the streets that gradually earned him the unofficial role as paterfamilias of the American white-power skinhead movement.
In 1980, Metzger gained media prominence first by launching a successful campaign for the Democratic nomination for Congress in a district of Southern California despite being a proud former Klansman, a political coup that raised the ire of a young Maxine Waters.
The next time someone tries to tell you that we live in a “white supremacist” country, tell them that Tom Metzger languished in poverty and obscurity for the last 30 years of his life, while Maxine Waters lives in a million-dollar mansion and is still in Congress.
But even back in the early 1980s, Tom Metzger was desperately trying to spread the message that Republicans and Democrats were merely two arms on the same monster — and the message STILL hasn’t gotten across.
The Metzgers’ most famous moment in the spotlight was in 1988, a year before I interviewed Tom, on Geraldo when a group of skinheads cleared the stage with an explosion of violence the moment black activist Roy Innis tried choking Tom’s son John. Geraldo wound up with a broken nose.
Good optics or bad optics, those were certainly some powerful optics. I can’t recall any time since where a group of white people defended a white person against violence with such a breathtaking display of retaliatory violence. Instead, I’ve heard “Dissident Rightists” squabble among one another for 30 years about how people such as Metzger fucked up “the movement,” because under the new guidance, America is, um, in much better shape than it was in the 1980s, even though many of the prophesies Metzger made back then that seemed dystopian and schizophrenic have been fulfilled.
But despite his organizational skills and the fact that he seemed to have a thousand eager wolves on a leash at a moment’s notice, Metzger’s chief talent was as an unapologetic spokesman who could disarm people with a mien as gentle as a kitten’s. He was the absolute first guest on a short-lived late-night Whoopi Goldberg talk show in 1992, and look at how he has her eating out of his hand by the end of the show.
JDL thug Irv Rubin, incensed that Goldberg had given Metzger a platform, demanded equal time, which she granted him. This was shortly after 1992’s LA riots, and whereas Metzger had utterly charmed her, Whoopi was shooting daggers at the graceless and charmless Rubin after he spat out things such as “Jews don’t riot. What are we going to loot — libraries?”
After my interview with Metzger appeared in the Los Angeles Reader in late 1989 with the title “He Always Does the White Thing,” Rubin called me at the Reader demanding equal time. Unlike Whoopi, I was not so accommodating.
At one point during the interview I asked to use the Metzgers’ bathroom, and I remember being startled to see a copy of People magazine sitting there near the commode. A child of relentless media brainwashing just like any other American child, it didn’t occur to me that “Nazis” did anything but lynch blacks and throw darts at pictures of Jews. It seemed so disconcerting that one or more members of Tom’s family might want to read about the latest Kevin Costner movie or how the various members of Bon Jovi were handling rehab.
Like it or not, seeing People magazine there forced me to concede that, yes, the Metzger family was comprised of actual human beings who laughed, cried, and probably liked ice cream.
This is why they don’t allow you near people like the Metzgers anymore.
But it was Metzger’s response to a pointed question which I had considered a real “gotcha” that entirely flipped my egali-tarded worldview on its head. It was both the content of his response and the unconcerned manner in which he delivered it that changed the whole way I looked at the world. This was 31 years ago — more than half my life ago — and it was the last major ideological shift I’ve had; the first two involved tossing the script on Santa Claus and Jesus.
“You’re not big on equality, are you?” I arrogantly asked Metzger as if I’d cornered a rat.
“No,” he shrugged, “and neither is anyone in power. So when they say, ‘All men are created equal,’ I laugh, because no one in power believes that.”
I don’t think I uttered a response. Instead, I likely uttered a soft internal “Oh” and realized that he was right. No one in power feels equal to us — they obviously feel superior.
Metzger’s comment was not the only thing that shifted my perspective. I had started to gradually become disenchanted with Leftism because I am saddled with this unfortunate ability to notice patterns. Innate inequality has a way of inconveniently poking out its head no matter how violently they try to suppress it.
So do the egregious double standards. It was around this time, while flipping through the WAR newspaper, that I noticed Metzger was peddling VHS tapes of British white-power punk band Skrewdriver. This was back when I happened to realize that while major music corporations were pushing violent black racial radicalism in the form of bands such as Public Enemy, there was nothing remotely equivalent for white kids. NWA would start selling millions — mostly to disaffected white suburban teens — while Skrewdriver wallowed in complete obscurity. The powers that be were propping up entities such as Maxine Waters and Niggas Wit’ Attitudez while they squashed Skrewdriver and Tom Metzger like so many White Aryan cockroaches.
With rare relish, Tom Metzger played the role of the evil grinning white-power gnome throughout the 1980s. The powers that be stepped in and destroyed him in the early 1990s while allowing the relatively inarticulate shitheads from NWA to become near-billionaires. It’s clear who the true American radical was back then. Hint: It wasn’t Dr. Dre or Ice Cube.
One needn’t become a violent skinhead to see the truth in some of what Metzger was saying. With an impenitent smirk, he said many things that are simply common sense once you extricate them from the theatrics and how outrageous they seem in the broader cultural context — things such as “Fifty-five million people died in World War II, and all people wanna do is cry about the Jews; what about all the rest of the people that died in World War II?”
Tom Metzger was one of the few to realize how fruitless it is to worry about optics when the world is burning around you. He also had the rare ability to demolish entire worldviews with a simple shrug and a short, perfectly sensible answer to an emotionally loaded question.
It’s clear why they had to silence him.
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64 comments
Metzger held frame.
I used to be one of the people who were critical of David Duke and Tom Metzger ruining the image of white activism. The fact is, they treat Jared Taylor the exact same way.
God bless Tom Metzger for devoting his life to and sacrificing for our people.
One of the guilty pleasures of many California conservatives throughout the 1980’s
was tuning into news programs that featured a live interview with Metzger. This was
when they had just perfected remote hook ups, allowing them to stack the TV screen
with an array of talking heads for the purpose of debate. On every occasion that Tom
was interviewed, they would flank him with a motley assortment of local rabbis, liberal
activists, Marxist professors and the like, in the hopes of laying waste to his every
ideological utterance. But Tom was a force of nature and his most effective weapon
was his uncanny ability to let out a soft, “are-you-kidding-me?” chuckle when he would
challenge any of his opponent’s statements. His fixed smirk and clear, earnest method of expression would handily shut down each of his exasperated foes, who often would have
their faces twisted up in pious outrage. By the end of the exercise, the score was always,
Madman Metzger: 100, Defenders of Society: 0. I recall several occasions when I’d watch
these broadcasts with friends who weren’t very invested in political matters. After the show they would always declare, “Hell, I thought the guy they said was a racist made more sense than all those other people put together.” R.I.P., “Terrible Tommy”… TV debates will never again be as entertaining or enlightening as the golden days when you were the King of the California airwaves.
It would be nice if there was some way to order DVDs of the old ‘Race and Reason’ TV show that Tom Metzger hosted for a period of time.
I used to be a regular listener to his “War” podcasts, and while I did not always agree with his views on every topic – he sure as heck was right on the money about race and about the jews.
RIP, to the great Terrible Tommy Metzger. He will be missed.
Here you go – 7 episodes at https://archive.org/details/RaceReasonHenryCorey
Further – I do believe there are other episodes at the archive site – do a search and enjoy.
The whole optics debate following Charlottesville has put me off. While ragging on Spencer for saying “Heil Trump” might be fun, the frantic way in which “the movement” then became concerned with appeasing its enemies was entirely self-degrading. You don’t win wars by appearing totally inoffensive, and you don’t earn your enemy’s mercy by disarming yourself.
Metzger was certainly not on my radar as one of the “late greats” of white advocacy, not until Goad’s posts shed some light on him at least, which was apparently much needed.
For the millionth time, the optics debate was not about “appeasing enemies” but about making the movement more presentable to normal white people.
“Normal white people” have been thoroughly educated on what is and isn’t considered “presentable.” White advocacy, as they learn from kindergarten onward, can never be presentable, by virtue of it being pro-white, which is the greatest sin. Good luck politely convincing them that the greatest sin is actually the ultimate virtue. A little bit of shock is what’s needed to bring about such a profound conversion.
Most of all, I don’t believe there’s any one correct way to get the message out (letting reality speak for itself has always been the best method regardless of what we do). Let some white nationalists be shocking, let others be thoughtful, eloquent and reserved, it’s the diverse approach that I’m sure will reach the widest audience of normal white people. Our enemies will paint us as devils regardless of the tone we choose for ourselves.
Who is a better advocate for our ideas: Jared Taylor or Matt Heimbach?
The issue is where does ‘good optics’ end and cuckery begin? I don’t think anyone an instrument to measure that state-change.
Here’s a solid truth: The WWII generation is almost dead. They were the architects of Jewish dominance of America. Their kids, the Boomers, are dying off and their particular set of emphases are fading away. While the massive Boomer demographic bump moves on to their just rewards, a concomitant massive influx of incredibly alien non-Whites has been taking place.
Culturally, everything is unraveling and diffusing into gray muck of focus-group-tested pablum of images, slogans and ‘politics’ that passes for ‘culture’ in post-capitalist America.
I don’t think there’s any reason to think that softening the message to normal Whites is going to be less effective than shock-treatment in the long run. Jared isn’t more successful than Matt, not that I can tell, despite their differences.
People will hear the truth only when there is no other alternative.
The situation is really doing the job of making ‘optics’ less and less important every day.
I see people now saying ‘White Nationalism’ is too strong a position, we need something else, like ‘White Liberationism’. To me, that’s weak tea.
Be the strong horse.
There is an aspect of the Optics Question which gets overlooked.
There are some people who get into white nationalism BECAUSE it is considered anti-social. Not “in spite of” but BECAUSE. They just get off on playing society’s idea of the bad guy. They LIKE the fact that these ideas are upsetting to people.
If you have a scene where you can be as extreme and unoptical as you please and still enjoy the support and acceptance of the community, then your scene WILL eventually become overrun with sociopaths. Guaranteed. It will become a place where sociopaths can go and be praised for being their natural sociopathic selves.
The pre-Optics War Alt Right when “don’t punch right” and “anything goes as long as you are pro-white” was RIDDLED with sociopaths. Eli Mosely, Chris Cantwell, Sacco Vandal, etc.
One of the advantages of having some standards of optics is that it makes your scene less appealing to those types of people. People can’t just come here and live out their psychotic fantasies.
People give Nick Fuentes a lot of grief for playing up the Christian angle but I have a theory that one of the reasons he does that is to make his movement less unappealing to Jews. Rather than just go out and say “no Jews allowed”, he says “this Christian movement” and that by itself will make his thing unpalatable to 90% of Jews.
People give Fuentes grief because he’s a p*ssy who hangs around with catbois and threw Kyle Rittenhause under the bus. He deserves to be mocked mercilessly. Find a better example.
And for the millionth time, many of us remain convinced NOTHING is going to make the acceptance of inequality and reality acceptable to ‘normal White people.’ Just like all the purported ‘dissident rightists’ feverishly counting votes and senate seats when proof that the vaunted system and state is irretrievably broken has been smashed into their face multiple times. And despite credit to others for their years of activism, I have to take issue with the automatic accolades they get (see an earlier comment in this thread) – what, exactly, has Jared Taylor accomplished? The vast majority of his commentariat still insists they’re not rayciss, and any comment with a faint whiff of anything less than worshipful about Jews immediately gets banned.
“Game over, man. Game over.”
I would say this sentiment is what you and Ramzpaul seem to be implying. I remember last year when Woes interviewed JF Gariepy. JF was saying the white society is over. Woes was shocked. JF has proven correct so far. Remember when a character on Youtube I believe the channel was by John Mark kept saying if things get bad enough whites will rise up? I kept telling him he was full of shit. He is gone I am here.
If we continue to set back doing nothing but talking and trying to convince people we will continue to grow weaker and weaker.
The shit we are in now is not going away peacefully. I believe that is why Jim Goad has said there will be a race war or is a race war. Of course I wouldn’t call it a war. Whites seemed to have surrendered long ago. In defense of their hopelessness I agree our enemies are legion. Government, powerful billionaire Jews, Africans, and all others hate us and want us dead. That is tough to accept especially in light of our dwindling numbers.
No, I only see two choices slow death languishing in worsening conditions. Or violence resulting in most likely a quick death.
I spent 40 years in the military and working within the military structure. I watched with appalling swiftness the degradation of our military leadership during the Clinton ear only to have the degradation move to light speed under Obama. The military was the last bastion of whiteness and meritocracy. That is long go with the rest of Western goodness. All the talk in the world will not bring it back.
Jared has educated and redpilled a lot of people about racial realities, and he has kept alive the true conservative tradition, which always included a human-nature-realistic and therefore race-realistic perspective, as well as the belief that ethical obligation flows outward from the kinship unit; that is, that one owes a higher moral obligation of care to one’s family than to strangers; that in turn one’s owes greater concern for those genetically more closely than distantly related; and that more is owed to one’s race than to alien races. These incredibly important ideas are at the heart of authentic conservatism, but of course have been deliberately foresworn in the postwar era to accommodate diversity.
Trust me: I was avidly reading “conservative” publications like National Review and Human Events well before Jared started AR, and these standard aspects of conservatism (to which I had mostly reasoned my way on my own) had been completely discarded. The ONLY place you could read the truth in a way that was not completely offensive to anyone not an actual Nazi was in Instauration, which never reached very many people. Also, The Mankind Quarterly, which again, only reached small numbers. There was massive suppression of anything suggesting racial differences, especially inherited/genetic ones. Back in the 80s, people even danced around the issue of naming black street criminality, even though everyone knew that most street crime was black crime. Jared’s work has absolutely opened some doors for truth, even if with today’s cancel culture things seem worse – back then, people simply “self-canceled” on difficult racial issues. I mean people otherwise on the Right just didn’t discuss race, except maybe to criticize affirmative action. Jared imo definitely opened the “Overton Window” for non-skinhead types like me. I felt comfortable xeroxing pages of AR and giving them to non-racialist friends and acquaintances, something I would not do with Instauration except among the most trusted.
And I learned a hell of a lot from AR over the decades. Someone had to bring the scientists together with activists, and cops, and people from different walks of life. Jared kept responsible racialism and race-realism alive in the 90s. Skinheads and Nazis (and even brilliant but philosophically weird types like William Pierce) are never going to appeal to people like my family, whether the Christians, or even the more secular professionals. But clean-cut, well-spoken Ivy League Jared Taylor could and often did. He helped to make racial truth telling seem more reasonable and normal (which it is, inherently). I cannot emphasize this point enough. Nazi revisionism, skinheadism, Klanism, Cosmotheism, Evola-ism, Yockeyism, etc, are just never going to fly in Middle America. S0meone had to separate out the reasonable, unimpeachable aspects of white nationalist advocacy – interpreting plain, empirically verifiable truths in light of traditional Occidental logical standards and moral categories – from all the unnecessary (and highly questionable) metaphysical and sociological raiment in which so much prowhiteness gets covered and presented. Detailing the facts of black crime or mass immigration is a far easier and more useful sell than asking people to accept the outre opinions of Julius Evola, or to reconsider Alfred Rosenberg.
I think all prowhites, and even all conservatives, owe Jared Taylor a lot.
“Detailing the facts of black crime or mass immigration is a far easier and more useful sell than asking people to accept the outre opinions of Julius Evola, or to reconsider Alfred Rosenberg.”
Here, here, Lord Shang! For centuries, America and Britain went in a different direction, culturally and politically, than continental Europe, and for some good, defensible reasons. This is still reflected to a significant degree in small-c conservative Americans and Britons, who appreciate their history, and what developed organically in both nations.
Those of us who treasure Magna Carta, Shakespeare and the American Founding can still appreciate a tremendous amount of continental European history, but we aren’t in favor of “Nazi revisionism, skinheadism, Klanism, Cosmotheism, Evola-ism, Yockeyism, etc.,” as you put it. Very few Britons and Americans ever will be, and the “Dissident Right” needs to face that fact.
Jared has educated and redpilled a lot of people about racial realities, and he has kept alive the true conservative tradition, which always included a human-nature-realistic and therefore race-realistic perspective, as well as the belief that ethical obligation flows outward from the kinship unit; that is, that one owes a higher moral obligation of care to one’s family than to strangers; that in turn one’s owes greater concern for those genetically more closely than distantly related; and that more is owed to one’s race than to alien races. These incredibly important ideas are at the heart of authentic conservatism, but of course have been deliberately foresworn in the postwar era to accommodate diversity.
Trust me: I was avidly reading “conservative” publications like National Review and Human Events well before Jared started AR, and these standard aspects of conservatism (to which I had mostly reasoned my way on my own) had been completely discarded. The ONLY place you could read the truth in a way that was not completely offensive to anyone not an actual Nazi was in Instauration, which never reached very many people. Also, The Mankind Quarterly, which again, only reached small numbers. There was massive suppression of anything suggesting racial differences, especially inherited/genetic ones. Back in the 80s, people even danced around the issue of naming black street criminality, even though everyone knew that most street crime was black crime. Jared’s work has absolutely opened some doors for truth, even if with today’s cancel culture things seem worse – back then, people simply “self-canceled” on difficult racial issues. I mean people otherwise on the Right just didn’t discuss race, except maybe to criticize affirmative action. Jared imo definitely opened the “Overton Window” for non-skinhead types like me. I felt comfortable xeroxing pages of AR and giving them to non-racialist friends and acquaintances, something I would not do with Instauration except among the most trusted.
And I learned a hell of a lot from AR over the decades. Someone had to bring the scientists together with activists, and cops, and people from different walks of life. Jared kept responsible racialism and race-realism alive in the 90s. Skinheads and Nazis (and even brilliant but philosophically weird types like William Pierce) are never going to appeal to people like my family, whether the Christians, or even the more secular professionals. But clean-cut, well-spoken Ivy League Jared Taylor could and often did. He helped to make racial truth telling seem more reasonable and normal (which it is, inherently). I cannot emphasize this point enough. Nazi revisionism, skinheadism, Klanism, Cosmotheism, Evola-ism, Yockeyism, etc, are just never going to fly in Middle America. S0meone had to separate out the reasonable, unimpeachable aspects of white nationalist advocacy – interpreting plain, empirically verifiable truths in light of traditional Occidental logical standards and moral categories – from all the unnecessary (and highly questionable) metaphysical and sociological raiment in which so much prowhiteness gets covered and presented. Detailing the facts of black crime or mass immigration is a far easier and more useful sell than asking people to accept the outre opinions of Julius Evola, or to reconsider Alfred Rosenberg.
I think all prowhites, and even all conservatives, owe Jared Taylor a lot. I hope he has many more years ahead.
I’m for all approaches except for religious ones because the war is on the ground and not in the sky. Shock, erudition—there’s room for all of it. The big difference is that when a leftist acts like a tacky moron, the left doesn’t gnaw on his carcass for years. They sort of sweep it aside and keep marching.
Regarding Metzger, and this is as far as I’ll go down the endless rabbit hole of optics-debating:
He was known as irredeemable. Foul. Horrible. The most shocking thing on two legs.
Then he calmly said something to me that made perfect sense.
For me, that was the magic.
“The big difference is that when a leftist acts like a tacky moron, the left doesn’t gnaw on his carcass for years. They sort of sweep it aside and keep marching.”
It’s easy to do that when you are in power.
I’m for all approaches except for religious ones because the war is on the ground and not in the sky.
But if you’ve got religion, really got it, you are not scared to die because you believe that you will be with God or in the arms of J.C. (whatever that might mean to the individual involved). And fear of death is what is holding us back.
Growing up in the 80s, Metxger seemed to be around all the time. I was an idealistic lefty. His msg resonates w me more than ever. Rest well contrary old bastard. You were right . About everything.
Heck, I’ve been walking on air ever since I learned about ‘inequality’ from the BLM crowd, and how they consider the likes of me to be “Superior” and “Privileged”! I’ve worked all my life to get just a toe-hold in middle class comfort, and here these people give me a crown and scepter! BLM of course, includes the authors of the the many books shrieking about ‘White Privilege’ and how it must be stomped out — Robin DiAngelo has pages of lists we have to memorize so that we don’t offend even a black flea on the dog, and Van Jones is currently trying to guilt-trip us all with his ‘hurt feelings’ that 71 million of us have announced by our vote in the last election that we do not agree with his egalitarian fantasies.
I am sad to read of the horrendous lawsuit against Metzger those many years ago, and I barely remember his name, but we have to learn how walk through minefields ourselves in these day. Many people are losing their jobs or at least their promotional opportunities just for objecting to Ms. DiAngelo’s ‘information seminars’ and diatribes that they must sit through at work. JDL and SPLC are still our biggest organized enemies, and they kill through lawsuits. I would think a good many of us, especially the younger people, ought to take up law as the means of keeping all of us safe, as best they can. Major in Philosophy or English Literature or Medieval History, but take enough law prep courses to get you into Law School. If I were younger, I would at least get Paralegal training, which is a profession you can work at anywhere. Much as I absolutely love the appellation “White Aryan Resistance”, keep it in your heart but never announce your admiration publicly.
I remember that lawsuit very well. I have thought about it many times with regards to all the violent acts against white people, especially this year. As it is case law, why is it not invoked against all of these media types etc that spread anti white hate on a daily basis? Honestly, I don’t know how the families of victims on black-on-white crime keep it together.
This was Goad’s best article so far. Actual ‘personal journalism’.
Agreed.
Comparing someone to Charles Manson in order to make a case for his innocence is not particularly persuasive. That having been said, Tom Metzger was a hero.
That’s a huge sadness and loss.
I’d followed what I could of Tom Metzger for many years.
A tremendous figure, very tough, brave and serious.
It wasn’t that long ago you could still find those old Race and Reason episodes on youtube. I know he did a number of interviews with people on the Right in over the last 10 years or so.
RIP Tom.
I am embarassed to admit that I had never heard of Tom Metzger until today. Mention of White Aryan Resistance has triggered a memory, however. Years ago I listened to an interview by the late Christopher Hitchens of a gentleman from what was billed as WAR. To no one’s surprise, the Trotskyist Hitchens dripped venom on his guest and seemed on the verge of cutting him off when the man talked about his organization. The guest, whose name I do not recall, calmly corrected the host as to his entitlement to have his views heard. To his credit, Hitchens backed down. I now wonder if that guest was Metzger.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7R-X1CXiI8
I find George Lincoln Rockwell much more persuasive. See his address to Brown U. below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ikjbUVEdyM
Thank you
That was Tom Metzger’s son you watched. Christopher Hitchens was the interviewer, a more or less civilized but vitriolic host.
After his legal loss in Portland, Metzger insinuated that the skinheads would begin practicing good optics:
“The movement will not be stopped in the puny town of Portland. We’re too deep. We’re embedded now. Don’t you understand? We’re in your colleges. We’re in your armies. We’re in your police forces. We’re in your technical areas. Where do you think a lot of the skinheads disappeared to? They grew their hair out, went to college. …I just did my little bit along the way, like your great salmon. I got up there and laid the eggs and now, if I die, no problem.”
Metzger sounds here a lot like Tyler Durden in Fight Club and it may be that Chuck Palahniuk had caught some of Metzger in the early nineties. I just re-read a ten-year-old piece by JG about the now ended (?) fashion for posthumously pardoning past pariahs and wonder whether Metzger could ever receive a similar vindication in the future.
Speak softly and carry a big stick. That was Tom Metzger to me.
On a more positive note, The Redneck Manifesto should appear in my mailbox any day now.
R.I.P. Tom Metzger
The Goldberg interview is gold. Thank you, Jim, for directing me to it.
This article is the sort “Jim Let Loose” writing I was thinking about when you announced you were leaving Taki’s. Looking forward to more.
RIP Thomas Linton Metzger. The bloodsuckers descended; they seized your house and sold it to Beaners. They took over your post office box and siphoned all the cash out of it. But rest assured you will never be forgotten or cancelled, because Big Jew will place you in their trophy room along with Hitler, Haman, and The Christus.
One approach i use is simply , only in the eyes of God are all created equal. And the ideal is that we are all equal under the law, but of course we know that’s not remotely true.
I usually go into how everyone has different strengths & weaknesses emphasizing some of my own or theirs if it happens to be someone I know well. I’m just a regular old blue collar white guy. I’ve been able to get a few people to consider “equality” as something that dosen’t exist in nature.
I missed ever meeting Mr.Metzger, we are diminished.
The Goldberg interview seems surreal today. Whoopie is nice and respectful towards Tom from the very beginning, and does seem to ask genuine questions, not setting bad faith gotcha traps. Today even moderate conservatives face a much more hostile interview style. Why can’t we all get along and have polite conversations like Whoopie and Tom?
The hostility has its use. Whoopie being sweet to Tom might have eased the nerves of all the whites watching. “If a black woman and a white supremacist can sort out their differences peacefully, maybe there’s hope,” they might have thought, as they went back to grill and daydream of a harmonious multiracial future.
Today’s inhospitable discourse leaves no room for the delusions of racial harmony. Deep down everyone knows this is war. Whites can’t afford to retreat into fantasy anymore, sooner or later they’ll have to face reality.
Thanks for this tribute to Terrible Tommy, who stood strong through everything that was thrown at him. He had a way of presenting his views as simple, inarguable truths despite the fact that he associated himself with things that didn’t look good to the wider culture. I attended a few of his events in the 1980’s and always found him to be intelligent and convincing. Above all else, he was sincere and comfortable with himself and his views. That came through in his interviews. I never saw him back off or get flustered and defensive, even when others were screeching at him. The result was the radical Metzger wound up looking better than his accusers, although their views were much more acceptable to the mainstream.
My favorite Metzger moment was during an interview when someone went off on a self-righteous rant against him, ending with “there’s no room for people like you in this country”. His reply stuck with me ever since: “We’re making room”. We need more of that attitude as a people.
RIP, Tom Metgzer, and thanks for all you’ve done.
Metzger always had a political and media savvy. That was obvious. Just watch his Race and Reason shows, and his charismatic appearances on Oprah, Wally George, Louis Theroux, etc. Though his association of Skinheads may have inflicted “bad optics” on the Movement, his “Leaderless Resistance” phase was his greatest impediment to his charm and outreach. Like much of the rest of the White Nationalist scene, the militant preoccupation with collapse and balkanization—which never happened and will not happen in the years to come—as the prerequisite to a positive future for White America, is what hindered his own potential at mass appeal.
More of my thoughts here: https://www.stormfront.org/forum/t1323660/
where’s the local freikorp unit when a blm unit is burning/ looting/ murdering? the old walt disney quote, “the way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” apparently all the hollywood products have turned whitie too weak to act. where’s a single whitie orchestra conductor type? i play third chair baritone but we instrument players need a conductor to collect us and focus us and lead us in a concert performance. (what are leaders for, after all?) i’d gladly wash floors and clean toilets for a freikorp unit. i’m really very tired of typing comments after 10 years. “all talk and no do.”
“Just like Vincent Bugliosi had convinced jurors in Charles Manson’s murder trial that Manson was guilty of murder simply because he had scary ideas,”
Manson convicted himself at least for the Tate murders. Bugliosi’s gig was to show the jury that Manson controlled the girls sufficient to order them to kill and they did. To prove Bugliosi’s contention Charlie controlled all aspects of the trial telling the girls what to do and not to do. During the trial the girls followed what Manson wanted thus showing the jury he controlled them making Bug’s contention correct. Had Manson played it cool there was nothing to connect him to Tate and Cielo Drive’s other murders. There was not a lot of credible evidence he ordered the murders.
For the LaBianca murders the night after Tate’s, he had hands on with the two victims tying them up for Tex Watson and Krenwinkel to stab the two to death. He had hands on with the killing of Gary Hinman and Shorty Shae. Convicted because of his ideas? What ideas? He was a criminal who could write some catchy lyrics.
Was the Manson trial fair? No. Leslie Van Houten was lumped in with the Cielo Drive murderers and she wasn’t at the scene. Found guilty by association although she was guilty of the LaBianca murders the next night after Cielo.
Concerning Metzger. Years ago I had a brief conversation with him in which I expressed the idea that only some fifty percent of white people wished to save their race and culture. He scoffed and told me, ‘try ten percent’. I’m thinking ten percent may have been a little high. Metzger put in his dues for his race. Good job sir. You carried the torch.
Farewell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1EG_4IBzbA
I had no idea who he was. Amazing how far White nationalism goes back and how censored it continues to be. Whoopi clip was great.
It’s really great to play archeologist and discover all of the white advocates both past and present who are worthy of attention yet are buried by the system. This is a rich political lineage of outsiders who chose the hard path over the comfortable one, and CC is great for highlighting them.
I sincerely hope that CC will survive into the Biden era. This is war and there’s no glimmer of doubt that the forces dragged from the gutters into the executive will attempt to squash everything online to the right of – and perhaps including – Breitbart.
Your comparison between N.W.A and Skrewdriver ignores one fact: Skrewdriver is objectively terrible music. Politics aside, it had no chance of widespread popularity because it is simply not very good.
‘Nothing for white kids’ in the 1990s mainstream?
There was everything from Pantera to Morrissey.
I enjoy the singing of Saga, who has performed some Skrewdriver stuff. I tried listening to Skrewdriver – once. I much prefer their songs as performed by Saga.
Hard disagree. I pity those who don’t understand the soul of Ian Stuart. His voice was one part Louis Armstrong, one part crusty British gentleman and all parts larger than life.
Hail the New Dawn is God-tier Oi!. I refuse to let anyone dismiss Skrewdriver’s musical talents on account of their politics or perceived musical shortcomings. Jangly, sloppy, soulful, sentimental (but not cloying) Rock’n’Roll full of goosestepping drums, hard truths, rusty stabbed-in-an-alleyway production and basslines that’ll make you wonder what’s the big deal about every other plunky bassist everyone talks up from all the Post-Punk bands at the time.
Agree!
Skrewdriver were musically tight and his voice was that of a pissed off Englishman.
“Hail the new Dawn” live Germany 1993 is a must listen.
“Prayer for the Dying” is one heartfelt ballad for a man’s dying homeland.
If G.G. Allin hadn’t been mentally ill,he and Skrewdriver would’ve made a great tour together.(minus the shit flinging and bowel movement solos)
Who can forget that great occasion when Nikolas Schreck decorated Metzger with the Iron Cross on his show?
Schreck’s real name is Barry Dubin. He’s Jewish. He’s now some Buddhist version of Miss Cleo, dispensing his wisdom for $2.99 a minute. He’s also apparently pals with Joe Bernstein at BuzzFeed: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/the-surprisingly-mainstream-history-of-the-internets-favorit
Tom was a super nice guy. I listened to and corresponded with him up to the day he died. Last time I heard his voice on Lone Wolf Radio was November 2. He never quit, never backed down and never once stopped being classy. Also, he never, ever forgot to support white political prisoners. Losing Tom was a sad day for them.
There was a man who gave to the world unconditionally, with a smile on his face, whilst getting spit on and backstabbed. I sincerely believe he got the last laugh.
Why is it that people “high in the f scale” sperg out about dumb shit? This supppsed to be about Metzger and people are speeding out about lines about Ian Stuart and Charles Manson? It’s not optics we need to talk about, it’s de-sperging the altiright.
“Sperging out”
Excellent obituary! Back in the days before the internet, getting hold of reading material was a laborious process. I used to trawl the ‘ books for sale lists ‘ of many, many organizations and then send foreign currency in the post and hope for the best. I always found Metzger efficient and reliable. His self-published autobiography and his edition of Ragnar Redbeard’s ‘ Might is Right’ still grace my shelves.
The best WN to ever do it. Rest in Power.
Love your writing style JG. The way you write is like a grandfather telling stories. Glad to see Counter-Currents take you off the worlds shoulders. There loss.
RIP Tom Metzger. Looking at your old interviews decades after first hearing about you through YouTube I can see how far ahead you were for your time. Trying to unite all factions of the dissident right has been a nightmare for anyone whose been around long enough and he was trying to do it decades before there even was an Internet.
Tom was a good man. I Fell out of WN in my 20’s after the 90’s. I started coming back in my mid 30’s. I’m now in my 40’s watching the torch being passed to my generation…
Requiescat in Pace Thomas Metzger.
I always laughed when he offered the ubiquitous ,
“Did I offend you?”
He would ask this after thoroughly + politely dissecting the latest political or internet b.s. like Alex Jones,
Republicans,buying Gold,Free Trade,etc…
The media blacklisted Tom after the Geraldo debacle because he could think talk write open minds and physicaly fight back,all with severe tenacity.
“Pray for the Holy Souls in Purgatory.”
Last time I saw Tom Metzger I was with Adam Parfrey in a café in India Street, across from the premises of the San Diego Reader, which often gave Tom reasonably fair press. He was impressed that we welcomed him with halloos, didn’t make him feel like a fugitive. Tom had a tea, no lemon or milk, and I gladly paid.
Just a few years before, his wife had been sick and dying, and the press and gumshoes were gathered around Fallbrook on a kind of deathwatch. Really terrible.
Tom Metzger was more of a patriot and a true Leader of the Whites Awake movement and any White Pride Organization than any of these so called groups that exist today or back in the 80s he was a man’s man a father and a veteran who took his shots in life like a man not a sniveling coward. A true organizer and spokesman and sometimes it seemed a little carnival like as he gave all types of disenfranchised whites a place on race and reason but he knew his shit and never lost his point or got shook by the left wing scum . Today I hear this news a month to the day after his passing and I’m truly sad to hear of this. He really got dealt a shitty hand by this corrupt system and by the movement yes the movement if you could call it that. Tom Metzger had the movement backed him we might not be were we are today having our statues torn down and out history watered and edited by the left like he said the would. You were right Tom truly right. And you deserved to have that told to you by all these so called racialists pandering there bullshit today
You led the way .and probably are more responsible for any movement for whites even being here today and opened the eyes of many white people in the world myself being one calling your hot line in the 80s and hearing your voice say “this is WAR White Aryan Resistance” I felt someone was out there really working towards our goals as a White racially aware skinhead you reached out to us when no one else did not in a sleazy con man way they show on left wing tv but as mentor. Our race has truly lost a leader in your passing a true white man and visionary. SIEG HEIL TOM METZGER! may you find the peace you truly deserved.
Right now,there is no odinist or Christian,no kkk or Nazi…..just the color of our skin and the will to fight for our race our blood…for our children.we stand as proud white men or we fall like cowards. 14 words
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