The connection between Mel Gibsons' anti-Semitic cult and the Terry Schiavo case

from the La Crosse, Wisconsin Tribune

Hate Groups in America By GREG HANIFL

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which identifies and monitors racist hate groups in the United States, has named 844 active hate groups in the United States with 12 hate groups identified in Wisconsin. One such group, the "Christian Identity" movement, believe whites are the chosen people, Jews are the essence of evil and non-whites are soulless "mud people".

Recent letter writer Fred Ainslie, of Sparta, Wis., stated that no one in the pro-life cause "would ever endorse Christian Identity".

However, the facts would refute this claim. Christopher Ferrara, who was the lawyer for the family of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman whose feeding tube was removed in 2005 after a court battle, also writes for anti-semitic journals like the Remnant.

Ferrara recently stated that Pope Benedict XVI had "abased himself by entering a synagogue". He also works with Robert Sungenis, a violent anti-Semite, who staffs the "Apologetics Desk" at Ferraro’s legal organization.

The Southern Poverty Law Center lists as other Catholic extremists Mel Gibson and his father, Hutton Gibson, a known Holocaust denier who believes "a Masonic plot back-ed by the Jews" led to the Second Vatican Council reforms of the 1960s. Hutton Gibson is especially angry over the council’s declaration, Nostro Aetate, which condemns "all hatreds, persecutions and displays of anti-semitism leveled at any time or from any source against the Jews".

A three-year investigation by the Southern Poverty Law Center has determined the Catholic extremists, including Mel and Hutton Gibson, Christopher Ferrara and as many as 100,000 like minded individuals, may represent the largest population of anti-semites in the United States.