Like any patriotic American, I was taught to despise racial prejudice and reject racial and ethnic militancy as an affront to democracy and the American way. As a proud American and admittedly chauvinistic New Yorker I gladly include Nazis and Klansmen on my list of despicable enemies. Also despicable enemies are the ever-increasing array of black militants that somehow gain overt applause from blacks and patronizing silence from whites despite their transparent bigotry and often-clownish interpretations of Islam (and the only thing more detestable than black racists are the whites who make excuses for them). I believe class, not race, is a bigger determining factor in people's lives and social status. Therefore, racial separatism and supremacy is needless and ultimately destructive to its practitioners. So it was most appropriate to speak with both black and white racists and let all the hate run amok.

I scheduled interviews with Tom Metzger, the founder of the White Aryan Resistance (WAR), and Akbar Bilal of the Million Youth March. Bilal stood me up and ignored subsequent calls and emails to reschedule, which I suppose is consistent with his black separatist beliefs. Tom Metzger took my call, as scheduled, so at least white racists are nothing if not punctual. And while I reject racial militancy and don't abide by his beliefs, I find Metzger infinitely less loathsome than so many two-faced whites who denounce racism until they're blue in the face but wouldn't live within ten miles of a minority neighborhood. Wealthy whites and most whites that live in well-off suburbs are every bit the racial separatist that Metzger is, but only in deed, not in word.

Metzger is somewhat of a white nationalist chameleon. One can almost trace the past three decades of militant white separatism by his career. He has been a member of the John Birch Society, a grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, and is now the director of the White Aryan Resistance. His views now reflect some leftist ideology and include strident denunciations of America's latest crop of corporate criminals. WAR's web site is pretty vile, with racist cartoons and nazi flags and other paraphernalia for sale. WAR believes that white people should subjugate all other concerns and fight for the preservation and survival of the white race, which WAR sees as endangered.

He has appeared on numerous television programs, as has his son John. It was John Metzger's scuffle with Congress of Racial Equality leader Roy Innis that touched off the infamous skinhead rumble on The Geraldo Rivera Show in 1988.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) successfully sued and bankrupted Metzger several years ago. The SPLC argued that Metzger and his group were responsible for the beating death of an Ethiopian immigrant in Oregon carried out by skinhead followers. A book, A Hundred Little Hitlers by Elinor Langer, was recently published about the case. Langer raises serious questions about the validity of the verdict against Metzger and advances the theory that the beating death was more likely the result of an out-of-control street brawl than a calculated racist attack. Metzger couldn't afford to hire a lawyer and was forced to defend himself against the well-financed civil rights group.

I spoke to Metzger in the hope that he might see things my way, even just a little. One of the best books written on race relations in the U.S. today is Jim Goad's The Redneck Manifesto, a must-read for anyone interested in the current state of race relations in the U.S. While far from being a racist or anti-Semite, Goad is a provocateur who saves his most vitriolic attacks for white liberal apologists of black militants and retrogrades. He makes the point compellingly that the black thug in the ghetto and the white redneck in the trailer park have far more in common with one another than they will ever be allowed to know. Metzger says he loves the book, so we have that in common, though he clearly hasn't taken many of its lessons to heart.

Tom Metzger didn't raise his voice and never uttered a racial slur, he didn't curse me or question my intelligence for disagreeing with him. He kept the subject matter as academic as possible. When I asked him how he arrived at his beliefs, he said it came from reading books on evolutionary science, citing Robert Ardrey's Territorial Imperative and Brian Skyrms' Evolution of the Social Contract.

Metzger also stressed his views that put him at odds with much of white nationalism. He is an atheist and complains that racial separatists are always pigeonholed as right-wingers, while many of his views are leftist. He opposes globalization. He mentioned his overtures to black nationalist groups like the New Black Panther Party for Self Defense and the Nation of Islam.

"When I addressed the Black Panther national convention in Austin, Texas a few years ago I got a standing ovation. I told them 'I hate the government the same as you do.' I get tagged with being a right-winger but anyone who reads much of what I'm into and what I've said over the years could hardly call me a right-winger," he says. "I also had on and off contact with the Nation of Islam. I did have a lot of respect for [late Nation of Islam leader and Million Youth March organizer] Khalid Mohammed. He was a strong militant black man and I respect that totally. And I don't care what he says about the white race. That's fine with me because we want separation. We don't care what another race thinks of us or what they say about us and they shouldn't care what we say about them as long as we're separate and masters of our own situation."

I thought he might tell an interesting anecdote that would explain how he became a racist. Maybe a black kid beat him up on his way to school when he was a kid or an illegal Mexican immigrant knocked up one of his daughters. But no, no interesting stories of that kind. What I thought was a hopeful sign that might give us some common ground was Metzger's views on amoral capitalism and his agreement with me to a degree of how class is a bigger influence on lives than race.

"Many things that my race has done have been judged as immoral where I simply say that that's the way it is and there's always that quest for power and territory. I believe that most of the injustices the non-white were not specifically to be laid at racism but at mercantilism," says Metzger. "Capitalism and mercantilism went into these countries not because they were racist but because they wanted to subdue whoever was there. Look at England and Ireland, where you have white Irish people but the English had no qualms about oppressing those people. As a racist, I'm not an oppressor. I just want to be separate. I don't want rule over people of other races. We have enough problems among our own race."

"Of course our main enemy is the non-Jewish, white, corrupt movers and shakers in big business and powerful positions. We call it that we're in a racial civil war and it's mainly people in our race that are screwing us," he says. "I agree they are not considering race at all because they don't care about race. All they do care about is profits and transnational gain."

I didn't really learn anything new from talking to Metzger, except how much I want to shake people like him by the lapels and get him to see beyond race as the only prism of looking at the world. He readily admits that it's white business leaders and rulers that are screwing his own white working class followers but he seems to ignore the use of race throughout history to divide the working class. "It seems like when it comes to race, no matter what else you say you're a right-winger," he says. "In this country we have a history of left-wing racism prior to World War II in the populist movement and so forth the working class racism was very strong. WWII and after it was sort of hijacked by the right." His more left-leaning beliefs appear to be sincere, but his past is so polluted with white supremacy it's certainly possible that his more left-leaning positions aren't mere philosophical gymnastics to justify the love affair with the swastika.

One thing that struck me is how similar it was to talking to a militant Jewish activist I spoke with a couple of years ago: Jewish Task Force chairman and former Jewish Defense League activist Chaim Ben Pesach (a.k.a. Victor Vancier). Both were incredibly polite and personable, and could talk about the most ludicrous and unrealistic ideas as if they were obvious truth. It was impossible to get either one of them to concede a point on anything. They had answers for everything and seemed to share many of the same views on blacks, Muslims, immigration, globalization. It's more frustrating than anything else to talk to people with such a one-track ideological focus.

Metzger sees the United States as a nation that's through and already becoming unglued. He sees the Oklahoma City bombing and the attacks of September 11th as signs that the country is breaking apart, unable to defend its borders or keep the peace between increasingly numerous and militant minority groups and the shrinking white American majority.

"The United States is through. It's going to break down into civil war type activity, warlord type activity, unconventional warfare and the like. California will be the first to go it looks like, and then it will gradually move East," he predicts. "Of course, the government will try to use police state tactics to try to stop this but as we've seen in Iraq, they certainly haven't stopped the Iraqis. And that's the way it will be here. And it will be an ongoing long, dirty, bloody war, right here in North America. It's started already."

While I may detest most of Metzger's ideas, speaking with him didn't fill me with any particular sense of loathing, only resignation. Because I share some of his left-leaning views on global economics and class, I thought maybe I could get him to see my point of view on the uselessness of racial militancy. But there's no point in talking to people like that, there's no way you can change their mind or get them to concede even the slightest point. I came away feeling indifferent about him: sure his views are bad, but he's a symptom of our country's racial strife, not a cause of it. Metzger says things that are forbidden by whites in polite society and does so without shame or remorse. He caters to valid white working class angst that has no viable political movement to call its own. His embrace of black separatism only serves to highlight society's double standards in its treatment of white and black racial militancy. When black racists like Robert Mugabe and Louis Farrakhan are as politically poisonous as Tom Metzger and David Duke, we'll be making progress in defeating the notions of racism and racial separatism. Until that time, people like Metzger will continue to attract followers.