Rep. Jack Metcalf’s credentials as a racist are impressive.
by Michael Elm
Metcalf has been featured several times in The Spotlight, a racist publication run by the Liberty Lobby’s Willis Carto. Carto is an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier who has written that: “There are 600 million Chinese and about 200 million Russians. All united in a determination to destroy the West. And we have been so misled that we live in a dream world - far away from reality. Hitler's defeat was the defeat of Europe. And America. How could we have been so blind? The blame, it seems, must be laid at the door of the international Jews. It was their propaganda, lies and demands which blinded the West as to what Germany was doing.” Indeed, one of the articles showed a photo of Metcalf in the Liberty Lobby’s offices.
The Spotlight itself has “attacked Martin Luther King, Jr., as a Communist and praised members of the Ku Klux Klan. It has memorialized Gordon Kahl, the leader of the right-wing-extremist group Posse Comitatus, who killed three [US] federal marshals and wounded a number of others before he was killed in 1983 in a shoot-out with federal agents."
(See: http://www.nizkor.org/faqs/ihr/ihr-faq-02.html)
Metcalf himself has been identified with the Christian Patriot movement, a far-right ideology of violence that demonizes people of color, gays and lesbians among others. As one of the racist websites that features him notes, “Representative Ron Paul (Texas) and Jack Metcalf (Washington State) are true Patriots.” These are just two of the far-right racist websites that kiss Metcalf’s ring:
It’s no wonder he is a hero to the nutty right: Metcalf is a conspiracy theorist who believes that the New World Order (where the US becomes a police state under the United Nations) is coming. In a WIRED Magazine story, he opined that during the coming Y2K problem, "President Clinton could see Y2K disruptions as a convenient excuse to call out the troops and declare martial law."
"That is my fear," replied Representative Jack Metcalf (R-Washington). "It seems to me that the only emergency that we might see coming is the Y2K. [With] a power-hungry president, who knows what he might do."
(See: http://wired.lycos.com/news/y2k/0,1360,20751,00.html)
How about Metcalf’s environmental record? Plainly speaking, it’s awful. The Sierra Club reports that “Rep. Metcalf has voted for almost every piece of destructive environmental legislation. Rep. Metcalf has voted to weaken our clean air and clean water laws, and has supported legislation that would have prohibited the Environmental Protection Agency from enforcing food safety laws.”
Rep. Metcalf's current League of Conservation Voters rating is 19 out of 100.
(See: http://www.sierraclub.org/chapters/wa/wilderness/library/congress/metcalf.html)
By way of contrast, he gets a ringing 100 percent score from the Christian Coalition.
(See: http://gemini.berkshire.net/~ifas/fw/9501/100percent.html)
Anti-whaling activists typically try to distance themselves from Jack and his ilk when talking to other left activists. But when Metcalf was a speaker at a "Town Hall Panel" on June 30, 1999 in Seattle, Sea Shepherd members called him a "stellar leader" and one of their supporters called him "a great public servant". Andrew Christie of Sea Shepherd speaks on the StopWhaleKill list about how Metcalf’s dad taught him to love whales, and how animal
issues cross party lines.
Yet Metcalf has consistently voted against funding for habitat protection – essential for all wild creatures – voted to exempt the mining industry from cleaning up its cyanide leach mine sites, and generally made an environmental villain of himself.
(See: http://scorecard.lcv.org/member.cfm?id=7743)
Now, no one expects SWK list members to care about Metcalf’s anti-Indian politics. On a list where anti-tribal sentiment goes unchallenged, his views are close to the norm. But here are just a few of his anti-Indian credentials:
- He is one of the founders of S/SPAWN, a group which evolved (devolved?) into the United Property Owners of Washington (UPOW). He is still on the UPOW list of supporters. UPOW is the group whose members threatened tribal members with violence after the Rafeedie decision justified shellfish harvest from private beaches. They also receive support from Wise Use groups (Report on Wise Use groups from the Clearinghouse on Environmental Activism and Research - CLEAR), including the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise. UPOW has led the fight against tribal shellfishing and other treaty rights, including a lawsuit in which the Defenders of Property Rights (DoPR) is co-counsel. DoPR is an extremist right wing group whose board members include James Watt, Ed Meese, Robert Bork, Sen. Orrin Hatch and Sen Larry Craig, and is associated with the Heritage Foundation, the Alliance for America and other far right wing organizations.
- Any gay rights advocates here? Remember, Metcalf ran against Grethe Cammermeyer, the war hero who is now out of the closet. He tried to play the anti-gay card hard and fast:“Republican Rep. Jack Metcalf ... has accused his rival of being a “spokesperson for the lesbian lifestyle.'' “She is the controversial lesbian Army National Guard colonel who was recruited by the Democrat (sic)
Congressional Campaign Committee, especially ultra-liberal Barney Frank, to move into our district and run against me,'' Metcalf wrote in a shrill four-page fund-raising letter.”
(See: http://www.gayusa.net/News/0998.html)
- Want more? Metcalf was fined in 1996 for a heinous violation of campaign finance law. Specifically, Metcalf had neglected to provide the employer name and occupation of over 70% of his 1996 contributors. Federal and Washington State law require that candidates make a "best effort" to attain this information. for all contributions above $200 per calendar year.
Anti-whaling activists won’t support Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund or practically any other environmental group – but they will support Jack Metcalf. What’s wrong with this picture?