In IREHR’s Special Report, Tea Party Nationalism, the leader of a Tea Party Patriots group in Woods County, Texas, Karen Pack, was cited on three counts: The first was the simple fact that the Woods County group was one among several others who had sponsored events featuring Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff who has become one of the main advocates for organizing armed militias. The second count pointed to Pack’s apoplectic view that Christianity was under attack by an unnamed, yet “evil” enemy. Her corollary belief that there is no separation of church and state in her obviously Christian America was also noted. A third count noted that Ms. Pack had once been listed by the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan as an “official supporter” and a subscriber to its tabloid, White Patriot.
In response, Ms. Pack has signed a letter that claimed there was a hole in the report’s story. She was 16 years old at the time she subscribed, she said. On this point her letter needs to be quoted: “I know that is no excuse for being involved with the KKK who, as you point out, tried to gear their message to a more Christian audience in the early 90s. At the mature age of 16, I should have easily read through the lines and known that a ‘Christian Patriot’ was a code term for the KKK.”
{jb_quoteright}I know that is no excuse for being involved with the KKK who, as you point out, tried to gear their message to a more Christian audience in the early 90s. At the mature age of 16, I should have easily read through the lines and known that a ‘Christian Patriot’ was a code term for the KKK. –Karen Pack{/jb_quoteright}
Actually, IREHR agrees with Ms. Pack on one point: there is no excuse for being involved with the KKK. As the accompanying graphic demonstrates, however, there were no “code” words involved, and no holes in the report’s story. The name of the Ku Klux Klan publication in question was “White Patriot,” not Christian Patriot. The Klan name was emblazoned front and center. And in the pictured edition, distributed in 1996 when Ms. Pack would have seen it, the Knights harken back to their founder, David Duke. An extended article inside this edition details Klan activity over the previous years. There is nothing obscure about what this Klan group was doing in the mid-1990s. Any 16 year old with enough savvy to subscribe to the White Patriot could see what they were getting in to.
In the end, however, it is not what Ms. Pack did in 1996 that rendered her into a subject in IREHR’s report, Tea Party Nationalism. What ultimately counts now is the vitriol that she has helped inject into the Tea Party bloodstream. It is a symptom of something much larger and more dangerous that needs to be opposed forthrightly by all people of good will. On this point, the silence of the Tea Party Patriots national organization is extremely telling.
