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Shofar FTP Archive File: orgs/canadian/league-for-human-rights/heritage-front/american-connection


Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: [13/18] The American Connection
Summary: The League for Human Rights (B'nai Brith Canada) 1994
         report on the extremist organization The Heritage
         Front

Archive/File:
pub/orgs/canadian/league-for-human-rights/heritage-front/american-connection
Last-Modified: 1995/11/29

                  The American Connection

                  White Aryan Resistance

On Saturday June 28, 1992 the Heritage Front held a rally at 
which the keynote speakers were Tom and John Metzger, two leading 
American White supremacists. Tom Metzger is the leader of the 
California-based White Aryan Resistance (WAR) and his son John is 
a co-founder of the skinhead movement. Tom Metzger and two 
co-defendants were sentenced to six months in jail last December 
for participating in a cross burning in 1983. In 1990, both 
Metzgers were held liable in a civil suit for the murder of an 
Ethiopian immigrant beaten to death by skinheads in Oregon.  

The Heritage Front rally which the Metzgers addressed was attended 
by 175 people, mostly skinheads. It was not the first Heritage Front 
meeting which members of White Aryan Resistance have addressed. 
After the Metzgers were arrested the night of their speech, the 
Heritage Hotline referred to them as "imprisoned heroes." The 
Metzgers were deported for entering Canada to break the country's 
anti-hate laws.  

Upon their return to California, the Metzgers thanked "the Heritage 
Front, the COTC, and all the other groups and individuals that made 
our trip to Canada a rousing success, beyond our wildest 
expectations." WAR is probably the Heritage Front's closest 
American contact. In the December 1992 issue of the WAR newspaper, 
the Heritage Front's hotline number was listed as the White Aryan 
Resistance Toronto Phone Centre. It is also alleged that the Front, 
through Grant Bristow, passed information to WAR on Canadian 
anti-racist groups and Jewish leaders.  

                       Ku Klux Klan

Wolfgang Droege trained with David Duke's Knights of the Ku Klux 
Klan in Louisiana, and helped Duke in one of his early unsuccessful 
political bids. He invited him to speak in Toronto in 1977, and in 
1978 contacted residents of Vancouver who had acquired memberships 
in Duke's American Klan.  

Although Droege claims he finds Duke's current efforts dishonest, 
he still refers to him as a personal friend, and Duke's articles 
are published in _Up Front_. Although Droege labels the Ku Klux Klan 
as lacking the ideals of the Heritage Front, there was a Ku Klux 
Klan representative at the 1990 Martyr's Day Rally. Droege himself 
was reportedly the Heritage Front representative at the Klan's 
'Aryanfest '92' in Quebec. Furthermore, Droege recently spoke out 
in defence of the KKK's reputation in wake of the distribution of 
Klan propaganda in Peel Region, Ontario.  

                      Aryan Nations

In 1983 David Maxwell French, who would later become one of the 
founders of the Heritage Front, went to the Aryan Nations compound 
in Idaho. This facility, located in the town of Hayden Lake, is a 
sprawling armed camp devoted to training White "soldiers" for 
racial war.  

But French is not the only Front member to have ties with Aryan 
Nations; in fact it is believed that several Canadians affiliated 
with the HF have received paramilitary training in Hayden Lake. 
In addition, Sean Maguire, a senior member of Aryan Nations came 
to Toronto in 1991 and met with Heritage Front co-founder Grant 
Bristow. Both men were arrested in Scarborough for possessing 
illegal fireanns and electronic surveillance equipment. Maguire 
was deported, but Bristow never came to trial. In fact, Holocaust 
denier Ernst Zundel stated in August 1994 that when no charges 
were pressed against Bristow, he suspected that the HF security 
chief was a spy.  

~
The League for Human Rights of B'nai Brith Canada, 15 Hove
Street, Downsview, Ontario M3H 4Y8. 416-633-6224.

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