February 2010: Tea Party Radio Hosts Invite Anti-Semitic, Anti-Government Author and Activist on Show

Tea party activists Dale Robertson and Laurie Roth, co-hosts of a radio talk show in Spokane, Washington, welcome Martin “Red” Beckman as their guest. Robertson is known for actively denying that tea party organizations condone racism, though he himself displayed a sign with a crude racial slur at a recent tea party event (see February 27, 2009). Roth has called President Obama a “socialist Communist,” a closet Muslim, and a traitor who wants to overthrow the US government in favor of an Islamist “caliphate.” According to the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights’s Devin Burghart, Roth and Robertson routinely invite “birthers and other bigots” on their show. Beckman is a well-known anti-Semite and militia supporter, who in 1994 was evicted from his property in Montana for refusing to pay taxes on the property. Robertson introduces Beckman by saying: “Red’s a great guy. He’s been actually leading this fight long before I probably was even born. Red has written many books, one is Walls in Our Minds, another is Why the Militia. And so you’ll find that he agrees with you, Laurie, wholeheartedly that owning a gun is a constitutional right. And he is an authority on the Constitution and what the government has done to undermine our authority as citizens.” Robertson concludes the interview by recommending that his listeners read Beckman’s books, saying, “Once you read them you’ll realize that we’ve definitely been deceived by our government and we need to do everything in our powers to take our nation back.” [Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, 10/19/2010; CDAPress (.com), 4/19/2011] Another anti-Semite invited onto Roth and Robertson’s show is John Weaver, a Christian Identity preacher (see 1960s and After) who has written numerous articles calling Jews the “spawn of Satan.” [Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, 10/19/2010]