Town Tells White Separatist Singers 'No Hate Here'
The girls, their mother, April, and stepfather Mark Harrington recently moved to Montana from Bakersfield, Calif., after April told "Primetime" that Bakersfield was "not white enough." Now Kalispell has put the family on notice, "Not in my backyard."
Last week a group of neighbors printed information sheets about the family and distributed them door to door.
"This letter is not written as a means to harass the family or to begin a witch hunt," the flier said. "We wish the family no harm. Our goal is to peacefully communicate that this kind of hate and ignorance will not be accepted here in our neighborhood where we live and raise our families."
Lamb and Lynx created the band Prussian Blue to communicate their white separatist views musically. The song "Sacrifice" praises Nazi leader Rudolph Hess, Adolph Hitler's deputy. The two have modeled T-shirts featuring Hitler smiley faces. They mostly appear at rallies for white nationalist causes and maintain a Web site with links to other white separatist organizations
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Rebecca Kushner-Metteer, one of the people who handed out the fliers, says the teens and their parents moved into her south Kalispell neighborhood a couple of weeks ago. At first, no one paid much attention until another neighbor showed a rerun of the "Primetime" broadcast. They then recognized their new neighbors.
Now Kushner-Metteer and other families say they have received threats.
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Kalispell Police Chief Frank Garner says all the threats have come from outside the region but are being investigated. He also says none contained death threats.
In the "Primetime" interview, Lynx who was 13 at the time, says she and her sister were "proud of being white."
"We want our people to stay white," she says. "We don't want to just be, you know, a big muddle. We just want to preserve our race."
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The Gaedes apparently want to be left alone. They have refused to answer their door or telephone.
However, the Kalispell Police Department has heard from the family. The police say they received a complaint that the family was being "harassed" by the neighbors posting the fliers.
In an irony not lost on many in the community, the officers had to explain that the neighbors' free speech rights made the fliers perfectly legal.
Just as legal as the free speech rights afforded Lynx and Lamb Gaede.
Although a date has yet to be set, the 1,400-member Montana Human Rights Network is planning a rally in Kalispell. Seems all area residents are now exercising their free speech rights in northwest Montana.
Montana may be white, but it is also fiercely devoted to individual freedoms. More info on the duo here and here.
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I've had the misfortune of hearing their music. Not only are their ideals reprehensible, but their music sucks.
I would add to this, "as long as your individual freedoms and religious feelings are in line theirs."
I've lived in southwest Montana since early 2004, and it is not an accepting place. Since being here I've heard more bigoted speech, I'm sorry to say, than any other place I've lived.
One of the more young and hip people in the town I live moved to Washington state a few months ago, so I was surprised to see him back at his old job recently. When I asked him why he came back he said, "Too many niggers there."
Gay slanders roll off tongues here as easily as recipes for apple pie, and people from other countries are often viewed with suspicion and wariness.
When friends from another country came to visit, people were reluctant to speak to them and treated them with visibly less respect than they do the locals.
I am convinced from what I've heard people say that if any significant minority population began to grow in any town in this state there would be problems.
Not long ago I sat in a restaurant and heard the owner join two of his regular beer drinkers at the bar saying ignorant and derogatory things about black people in New Orleans. I left without paying the tab (...and the meal barely touched. He can feed it to his pit bull).
"Then why do you stay there?" I'm sure you'll ask. Only because it was very cheap place to start a new business. But as the business has grown and is doing well I'll be relocating to Portland, a city that celebrates its diversity, when the first snow melts next year.
My business brings in a lot of revenue from the east and west coasts, but I intentionally put as little as possible into the local economy here, and will steal away like the Pied Piper in the spring.
Yes, of course there are good people here just as there are good people everywhere. But I certainly have come to believe from my own experience that this part of the country suffers from more intolerance and bigotry than all those "liberal cities and suburbs" in other parts of the country.
I'm sure the Gaedes researched all this. Why else would they have moved here?
I enjoy a good dose of comedy, pretty much almost daily. I've always enjoyed material released by Jeff Foxworthy, George Carlin and Weird Al Yankovic. Parodies, jokes, you name it.
Today I discovered "The Path We Choose" by Prussian Blue, after a news story came up on AOL.
This afternoon, I checked out their website to see what all the fuss is about.
I haven't laughed this hard in awhile!!
The website generously offers MP3 clips of Prussian Blue's music. Upon taking a listen to some of their song clips, I first heard slick production and rockin' guitar riffs. Then came the singing.
If you can call it "singing"!!
Not only were the lyrics just plain stupid, the girls' voices are enough to make American Idol judge Simon Cowell throw in the towel. I found it all so screechingly awful, I thought, "this has to be a joke!!"
There's absolutely nothing wrong with being proud of your race and heritage. Frankly, I'm proud to be who I am: Pacific Islander and Caucasian.
So if these girls want to be proud of who they are, I say that's the beauty of being American. Freedom to be who you want to be, and freedom of speech.
LeAnn Rimes was only 14 when she had a hit song that put her on the map. Lynx and Lamb, the "Hitler Twins", have no business making music, and that's why I find it all so hilarious. It's a lot like listening to American Idol reject William Hung. There is absolutely no comparison between LeAnn Rimes and Prussian Blue.
That's why I find it so amusing -- they think they're serious singers; I think they're just a big joke!!
Anonymous
classy. slam montana, but don't sign with even a handle?
Well, I'll stand up for Montana. I recently moved out of Bozeman, after living there for almost three years. About a year ago, we noticed a growing 'white power' movement starting in the state that was alarming quite a few people. A white supremicist even managed to get on the school board ballot in Bozeman, running under the 'traditional values' platform - until we found out just how 'traditional' he was. A record 6,000 citizens showed up to vote in the school board elections (the supremicist got about 60 votes). Usually, you only find 60 people voting in the first place.
After moving to South Carolina, I have to say I miss Montana. I'm much more concerned with the 'values' of people down here.
Yup. And it is out of fear of retribution, the kind I have personally seen inflicted upon those that take unpopular positions here.
Eri's post about the white power movement is a perfect example of the kind of stuff that goes on here. The fact the candidate got so few votes is barely reassuring when you know that far more people harbor similar sentiments they don't express because of all those "politically correct liberals" that would criticize them.
I speak from experience, Razib. You are speaking out of your ass.