Last night, I caught “The Fire Next Time,” a riveting PBS P.O.V. special — about the effect of hate speech on community conflicts — that will reair this weekend. I could not take my eyes off the TV — Kalispell, just outside Glacier National Park, is a lovely small valley community I’ve visited, and I was stunned by the ugly, physically threatening behavior by too many of its citizens. Environmental advocates such as one harassed single mother and her teen daughters — the lug nuts on their car had been loosened, and their tires slashed — bought and learned how to use firearms.
Featured in the documentary, the U.S.’s answer to Rwandan hate radio: John Stokes [PHOTO ABOVE], host of the morning talk show on KGEZ Z-600 “The Edge” in Kalispell, Montana who’s infamous for his hate speech — “someone should burn down a Green Nazi’s house” — and separatist views. More below:
“Perhaps someone should burn down a Green Nazi’s house.” (Stokes calls all environmentalists “Green Nazis,” and burns green swastikas on Earth Day [PHOTO].)
“If you’re a greenie and want to protest my snowmobile riding, stand in front of me, so I can get a good target at you when I hit that throttle of that 800cc machine. Because your gonna [sic] be jumpin’ [sic] out of the way or get run over. One of the two.”
“I’m surprised no one’s been shot. I wouldn’t want to be wandering around here if I were with the Department of Ecology or any bureaucrat.”
“Before all the liberals in the city get all uppity about [secessionist campaigns], they ought to remember who controls the water supplies. One little 50-gallon drum of PCP in the reservoir out there and [city residents] are all fu**ed up.”
Sources: Over ten-year record of Stokes’ statements
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Over a stormy two-year period, “The Fire Next Time” follows a deeply divided group of Flathead Valley, Montana citizens caught in a web of conflicts intensified by rapid growth and the power of talk radio.
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FILM SYNOPSIS
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About the origins of the documentary — which is masterfully and fairly composed — aired on PBS’s P.O.V.:
It was the unmistakably rising tension in the town that led ex-police officer Brenda Kitterman to invite The Working Group to bring its grassroots anti-hate program, Not in Our Town, to Flathead Valley. Ever since the broadcast of its 1995 film, Not in Our Town, about the response of Billings, Montana, to a rash of hate crimes, The Working Group has been helping local communities deal with intolerance and violence by holding film screenings and community discussions. When O’Neill and crew got to Kalispell, however, they realized they had landed in the midst of a conflict too complex to be comprehended, much less soothed, by a few community meetings.
Visit a Kalispell, Montana community group’s record of how hate speech has affected the community.
In an update on the lives of the citizens portrayed in the film, the filmmakers talk about the community’s many efforts to resolve differences and to find rational, calm ways to address their conflicting priorities.
KGEZ, which still airs Stokes’ morning show, now features mostly FOX programming. What a fit.
See also: Alternet’s A Community Divided, July 7, 2005:
O’Neill is co-founder of The Working Group, which produced the community-building film “Not in Our Town,” and conducts a national program to help communities deal with intolerance by holding film screenings and community discussions. O’Neill was asked by a citizen of Flathead Valley to bring her program to the town of Kalispell, and “The Fire Next Time” arose out of her two subsequent years spent in the Valley, gaining the trust of locals to discuss their issues on camera.
In 2000, as loggers and mill workers faced lost jobs and rising living costs, right-wing extremist John Stokes bought a local radio station and began broadcasting messages blaming environmentalists and government officials for their woes. He announced the addresses of local environmentalists on his station, leading to death threats against them. In a particularly emotional passage, the daughter of a local activist learns how to shoot a gun after the lug nuts on her wheels were loosened, almost causing her to crash. Local politicians were also targeted; the mayor of Kalispell had three nail-induced flat tires in the period of one month.
Stokes also began broadcasting his own version of hate speech. (“Jewish Holocaust survivors … did nothing about the deeds or the actions that led to the slaughter of your people.”) In the midst of the turmoil, the local anti-government militia group Project 7 was discovered, along with a cache of guns and a hit list that included the police chief and sheriff. The news served to intimidate some activist citizens of the Valley into silence, and furthered the schism between Kalispell’s townspeople.
That’s when O’Neill’s group arrived. …
