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Hate group pamphlets found on cars around Northwestern campus

EVANSTON, Ill. - Pamphlets authored by Matt Hale, the white-supremacist leader of the East Peoria-based World Church of the Creator, were distributed across Northwestern University's North Campus Sunday.

Entitled "Facts that the Government and the Media Don't Want You to Know," the pamphlets detail alleged Jewish conspiracies to control the media and U.S. government as well as claims that whites are superior to people of other races.

Benjamin Smith, who killed former Northwestern basketball coach Ricky Byrdsong and a Korean Indiana University graduate student while wounding nine others in a shooting spree July 7 before killing himself, was a member of the World Church.

At the end of the pamphlet, Hale hawks his two books, telling readers they "will one day act on these facts."

The pamphlets list names of Jews in the media and government while accusing them of "twisting America's foreign policy as well as its domestic policy to meet their ends and the ends of Israel." Copies were found on the doorsteps of fraternity houses and on cars parked outside the Sports Pavilion and Aquatic Center Sunday.

Northwestern's Vice President for University Relations Al Cubbage said such literature has "no place on Northwestern's campus." He added that distribution of pamphlets by a non-campus organization is illegal because the campus is private property.

"The sentiments that group has voiced are abhorrent, reprehensible and disgusting," Cubbage said.

University administrators will investigate the situation, he said, to ascertain whether a Northwestern student was involved in the distribution of literature.

"If it's someone from off-campus, we would probably make it clear to them that we don't tolerate this," he said.

Both Evanston Police Department and university police responded to complaints about the pamphlets, Lt. Glenn Turner said. Officers drove to the SPAC parking lot and around the city looking for the pamphlets but did not find any.

The pamphlets also attack African Americans, describing a "guerrilla war being waged against (whites) by blacks" and a "biological difference between the races," which cites research from as early as 1923.

One black student said he found a pamphlet on a friend's car Sunday afternoon.

"If you're going to pass out racist propaganda," said Tony Iweagwu, a Weinberg sophomore, "at least stand there and give people the option to not take it."

Students reading the pamphlets Sunday said they thought Hale's views were incorrect, "worthless and stupid." Others called the group "tasteless" for delivering the pamphlets to Northwestern, where Byrdsong used to coach.

The pamphlets were delivered Sunday morning to the porch of Delta Tau Delta, where Weinberg senior Matt Berde lives.

"They're obviously here to get attention," Berde said . "They obviously did it because our former basketball coach was shot by one of their members."