A magazine called “Resistance” shows a smiling blonde starlet above a headline: “Love Your Race.”
Music discs contain songs such as “Fire Up the Ovens.”
A National Socialist Movement video game features anti-Israel themes.
These are all examples of white supremacist propaganda that is evidence of growing efforts to recruit followers, a former member of the neo-Nazi group “The Order” said Monday during a visit to Denver.
After working for the FBI in the 1980s as an informant, Tom Martinez, 51, is supporting Anti-Defamation League efforts to monitor extremist groups.
“This is where it starts,” Martinez said, looking at the propaganda and recalling his recruitment into the Ku Klux Klan as a lonely, bullied teenager in Philadelphia.
Several events last month around Colorado, ranging from a neo-Nazi barbecue to a “sovereign citizen” seminar, raised ADL concerns.
The Nationalist Coalition, based in Denver, “is very active,” said Mark Pitcavage, ADL’s director of investigative research.
“We’re seeing a very vigorous attempt by white supremacist groups to try to exploit the immigration issue,” Pitcavage said.
“They say: ‘You don’t like immigrants? We don’t like immigrants either,”‘ he said.
FBI agents say they’re limited in what they can do.
White supremacists “can distribute literature, make comments under the the First Amendment of the Constitution. They can’t be investigated until there’s a criminal matter,” FBI spokeswoman Rene VonderHaar said.
The latest FBI figures, from 2005, show 125 hate-crime incidents in Colorado and 7,163 nationwide.
FBI investigations of people behind hate crimes are a top priority because hate crimes can set off entire communities, Denver-based FBI Supervisory Special Agent Matthew McPhillips said.
“You may have competing minority groups,” McPhillips said. “You may have blacks against Hispanics in a community. You may have a simple schoolyard fight that could escalate and wreak havoc.”
Martinez said recruiting wasn’t very sophisticated back in the 1970s when he was drawn in.
He’d seen KKK Grand Wizard David Duke on a TV talk show. He wrote to Duke. Duke wrote back, then called.
Martinez later met Bob Mathews, leader of The Order, and others involved in the 1984 murder of Denver radio host Alan Berg.
Arrested on counterfeiting charges that year, Martinez became an undercover informant.
Martinez served a sentence of three months’ probation.
“This stuff really screwed up my life,” he said. “It took away my life.”
Bruce Finley: 303-954-1700 or bfinley@denverpost.com
