by Marlena Elias
May 31, 2001
Back in October of 2000, Ethan and I watched an HBO special called "Hate.com". The point of this special was that the Internet is bringing racial hatred to more people than ever before. Morris Dees is a Southern lawyer who has been fighting these hate groups for years, so he was the main focus of the story. There were a multitude of disturbing facts as well as interviews with the leaders of these hate groups.
There are so many groups now that the names all run together. Names really don't matter when your main focus is hatred. One of the more well organized and financed leaders is Dr. William Pierce. He has a weekly web radio show, as well as a web site dedicated to advancement of the poor long suffering white race. He also wrote books under the name Andrew McDonald called The Turner Diaries and Hunter. The reason for mentioning these books is that most racial crimes in the past 8-10 years can be traced back to the geniuses that read this book. The books detail the life of a frustrated white man and how he took it upon himself to do something about race mixing, homosexuality, the Jews, and the Blacks. This book is truly a primer for hatred, specifically written for the poor white male.
On May 12, 2001 Ethan and I went to the Oklahoma City National Memorial. Words are going to fail me because the experience is beyond description. When you first see what is called the "gates of time", I stopped walking; on the East gate is 9:01 and across the reflecting pool to the West the gate says 9:03. Those times signify how long it took for the bomb to go off and change the lives of the people of Oklahoma City forever. The impact of seeing these enormous gates took my breath away. Once I stopped long enough to collect myself, I looked across the reflecting pool to the field of empty chairs. 168 people were killed, 19 of which were children. The symbolism of those chairs doesn't really hit you until you go inside the Memorial Center.
Great and painful detail was taken in constructing the center so they could show how April 19, 1995 started out as a normal day and then progressed into a nightmare. At 9:00 am that morning, there was a water board hearing that was being recorded in a building that was in the same block as the Murrah Federal Building. That recording is played at the beginning of the self guided tour and it is this recording that will change your view of that day forever. You can hear how the meeting started out as usual, but within two minutes you hear the explosion. They actually have a recording of when the bombs went off. The reaction of the people at the water board-meeting make the hairs on the back of your neck stand out. Once the recording is over, you go to various rooms and see the aftermath. Various articles of clothing, personal effects, damaged office equipment that will absolutely break your heart. What stopped me dead in my tracks was seeing this collection of children's shoes salvaged from the site of the bombing.
They also show interviews with the various survivors, FEMA employees, fire fighters, and medical personnel. I have no idea when the interviews were taken, but the effect of that day seems to still haunt the people on tape. Seeing bodies being taken from the rubble on stretchers, seeing blood spilled on the front of people and on the ground is a site I will never forget. Possible the most powerful and emotional display was a room that had professional photographs of the 168 people. With each picture was a personal effect of each of the deceased. Seeing the faces of the people who were killed absolutely knocked me over. I had to grab on to something to keep standing because what I was seeing defied logic. What Ethan and I both had just witnessed was something that shook us to our very core. It became emphatically clear why Timothy McVeigh is getting off easy with the death penalty. The fact that "someone" screwed up in the FBI is beyond unforgivable. Giving him a 30-day extension is wrong. Ethan and I had a rather heated discussion about this on Friday night before our trip. Once he saw the aftermath of this one person's actions, he also felt that the 30-day extension was maddening because of the people who suffered. I can't help but think you lose certain rights when you purposely kill and injure so many people.
The reason for mentioning Dr. Pierce and the books he wrote is McVeigh and every other loser who feels that the world is being taken over by "them" think of these books as a bibles. The supremacist movement considers The Turner Diaries as their primer for cleaning up the U.S. Details of how to make bombs, who to target, what time of the day will produce the most deaths is all clearly stated in that book. Considering who is being targeted, the book had to be simply written. The profiles for the members of most of these hate groups are young white males that dropped out of school and who are unemployed. The HBO special really does an amazing job of showing you how the leaders of these groups target this segment of the population and then stir up all their hatred and paranoia. By the way, these books are available online.
To attract younger kids, these leaders use the Bible and cartoon games to entice them to their web site. One site in particular uses the Bible verbatim to justify their hatred. They have no qualms about quoting verses to justify killing people who differ from themselves. Although it's rather ironic considering that the Aryans consider the only pure people to come from Europe and all of the people in the Bible - Jesus included - are from the Middle East which does not make them white. A minor point considering they are manipulating people by touting God's chosen ones as being white. This causes me to beg the difference then between any religion that does not tolerate people who are different and the Aryan leaders who basically are saying the same thing, just more directly. I still can't help but think this was not God's plan for us.
By the end of the HBO special I was in tears because of the conviction of the hatred of the people involved. I am still dumbfounded that people can justify hatred. I am overwhelmed with grief that Timothy McVeigh had no qualms about blowing up a federal building and killing 168 people. I am sickened by the fact that people validate their hatred by hiding behind religion.
After the explosion happened and all the smoke cleared, there stood a lone elm tree. If you had seen any of the rubble that was left after the explosion, you would understand why it's a miracle that the tree is still standing. That tree is still standing and a monument has been built around it to acknowledge all the people who came from around the country to help when the tragedy hit. It gave me goose bumps to say the least when you realize that people of all races and backgrounds and sexual orientations came together in the aftermath of such awful tragedy to offer help and support to the survivors. The tree stands as a monument to what happened on April 19, 1995 and it also stands in tribute to the people who were killed and the people who survived. <EM>
