The racist radio show host Hal Turner, who is organizing an August 4 white supremacist event in Kalamazoo, Michigan at which a variety of Ku Klux Klan members and others involved in the organized white supremacist movement, has issued a new "Message to NAACP and other Blacks in Kalamazoo" that makes his true feelings towards African-Americans clear. Rather than addressing his false "concern" over alleged "black crime" in Kalamazoo, Turner's latest website posting provides further proof that he is using the rally as an attempt to steer concern over crime in a racist direction.
In comments made on his website on July 10, Turner claimed that his rally has been successful in pushing the Kalamazoo to address "black crime." Turner has taken credit for the Kalamazoo City Manager's recent claims that Kalamazoo is at the crossroads of "civility and peace" and "full-scale gang violence." Turner has claimed that his rally is changing policy and that police are now willing to consider "stepped-up" law enforcement to address "crime"--some of which might result in the city being considered "racial profiling." Some white supremacists have even asserted that the police will be "on their side" at the rally, despite the fact that the Kalamazoo chief of police has made two public calls for the community to ignore Turner's rally.
Of course, Turner really has no concern for the citizens of Kalamazoo and is only interested in using his rally as a means of furthering the agenda of the white supremacist movement and brining in new recruits. In his July 20 "Message to NAACP and other Blacks in Kalamazoo," Turner says that the Kalamazoo Chief of Police is telling the NAACP and African-Americans to because "he knows your people cannot control themselves." In the statement, Turner goes on to refer to African-Americans using terms such as "animalistic," "savages," "sub-human," "beasts," and "bucks." Turner, who advocated "lynching" African-Americans in Kalamazoo to address the problem, has once again called for violence, stating:
We spay and neuter dogs and cats for that kind of rampant reproduction, maybe its time to treat you like animals and spay and neuter blacks!
Turner claims that he is going to Kalamazoo to "speak truth" to the community. Turner says that he and his fellow white supremacists are going to:
...stand up, in public, and tell everyone how we're tired of the animalistic savages the Black community has turned loose on the streets. We're going to look everyone right in the eye and talk about how we're tired of the crime, the drugs and the violence these sub-human beasts perpetrate!
Statements by Turner referring to African-Americans as "sub-human" or threatening violence continue to be ignored by the media in Kalamazoo. The first article appearing about the rally ignored these issues, as have subsequent articles. The most recent article to do this was "the Kalamazoo Gazette. In the article, reporter Kathy Jessup reduced the discussion of white supremacy to reporting it as dueling allegations, with Jessup writing "New Jersey radio talk-show host Hal Turner said he's staging the white-supremacist event in Kalamazoo in reaction to recent crimes here he attributes to black youths" and reporting that "Taylor's [sic] opponents say he advocates racial bigotry and violence, pitting whites against all other races." Aside from getting Hal Turner's name wrong, the article did not attempt to verify Turner's critics' assertion that Turner "advocates racial bigotry and violence." This could have been easily verified as there is considerable documentation of Turner's racism in a variety of sources. Reporting on Turner's racism is important, as a better understanding of what Turner advocates could shape how people in Kalamazoo address Turner's presence.
