Registered
as a personal and private organization, Tom Metzger, founder of
WAR, was able to gather enough money to fund his Neo-Nazi movement.
Making long speeches and recording updates on a hotline, Metzger
reported the Seraw case as a "civic duty" unrealized by the three
white males who killed him. John Metzger, who joined the KKK
at age 8 and who was the director of the White Aryan Youth, a
smaller organization under WAR, used the newspaper with Tom Metzger
as the primary tool of communicating to skinhead
youths about hate against non-Whites. He used his publishing company
to communicate to white supremacists about hate against non-Whites.
Cartoons and racial articles depicting mud, a derogatory word
used to describe mainly black people, as "subhuman" were part
of his newspaper, which he adamantly defended as a part of his
rights as a citizen. Although Tom Metzger said that he never instructed
Dave Mazzella to incite violence in Portland and yet admitted
to having the knowledge of such activity, he denied that he was
the cause of violence against the three Ethiopian males. Morris
Dees explained in his closing statement that encouraging violence
and failure to put a stop to it when having the knowledge of it
is one and the same. Rick Cooper, publisher of the National Socialist
Vanguard and Tom Metzger's only witness and personal friend, wrote
in a report for WAR in1988: "likewise almost immediately skinhead
activity increased in Portland with reports of increase assaults
on non-Whites, racially mixed couples, and race traitors". He
testified that he took his sources for writing this report in
part from newspapers, personal contacts and phone calls. However,
Cooper also wrote that "these assaults were noted by the police
department and tallied, but there was nothing in the news until
November 13". Lead counsel Morris
Dees caught Cooper lying on oath in his contradiction of using
the newspaper as a source although he himself wrote that there
were no reports on violence in the newspaper until November 13,
making Cooper "the best piece of evidence".
The jury found the defendant liable on all charges and awarded
a total of 12.5 million dollars in economic and punitive damages
to Seraw's family.
