Extremist Paper Comes to Town
By Mary Carey
Daily Hampshire Gazette
December 5, 1997
Some residents are upset about the appearance of newspaper vending boxes in town dispensing The Spotlight, a national newspaper frequently faulted for racist, anti-Semitic views, and linked to extremist figures.
News boxes containing the weekly are located on North Pleasant Street [in the center of Amherst] and at the University of Massachusetts.
"It’s probably the most widely read extremist publication in America today," said Lauren Levin of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. "What I’m curious about is why they have suddenly cropped up in Amherst
The newspaper, which has an international circulation of about 90,000, is frequently criticized for its views, a spokesman said yesterday. "We’re not shy about pointing out the undue influence the Israeli lobby has on Congress," the spokesman, Michael Piper, said of the Washington, DC-based publication.
The Spotlight is published by the Liberty Lobby, founded in 1957 by Willis Carto. Carto is also the founder of the Institute for Historical Review, which distributes writings denying the Holocaust occurred, and the Populist Party in 1983, which in 1988 ran as its presidential candidate David Duke.
Levin, who is based in Boston, called the Liberty Lobby "one of the most prolific and influential anti-Semitic propaganda organizations in the country."
Piper said The Spotlight is primarily distributed in California and the Midwest. He said the Village Voice newspaper referred to it as "the Reader’s Digest of the Farm Belt."
In an unusual twist, the Spotlight vending machine that appeared in front of the Classe Café several weeks ago has been defaced with a spray-painted Star of David, a Jewish religious symbol.
Piper said The Spotlight does not distribute the newspapers directly, but sells multiple copies at reduced prices to anyone who wants them. From the vending machine, the paper costs 50 cents. He said the man who installed the vending machine in Amherst sent a photograph of the defaced box to Spotlight headquarters, writing that he intends to leave it there as a symbol of the kind of thing “that happens when you try and vary from the norm.” Piper also said that the man “issued a plea for his privacy.”
There is no record of who installed the box there or on the Haigis Mall on the UMass campus, because permits are not needed to install newspaper vending boxes.
Lisa Lipshire, of Northampton, a clerk at the Jones Library, said she was unaware of the point of view promoted by The Spotlight, until she bought and read a copy recently. One article called into question the notion of hate crimes, putting quotation marks around the word "racism." It questioned whether a Jewish woman who said her family had been subject to anti-Semitic attacks in Billings, Montana, was telling the truth.
“Basically the thinking is that the Jews are trying to take over the world,” Lipshire said.
Among some of The Spotlight's more infamous contents was a classified advertisement placed by Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh, who two years before the bombing had tried to sell a rocket launcher under the alias T. Tuttle. While it is true the newspaper ran the advertisement, Piper said, it was later discovered that the rocket launcher offered by McVeigh was, in fact, a toy.
Larry Goldbaum, director of the Office of Jewish Affairs at UMass, who has been disseminating information about The Spotlight since its presence in the community was called to his attention several weeks ago, said he just wants to make people aware of its bias.
“A lot of people I’ve talked to, one of their first concerns is, ‘Who put these (vending machines) up?’ I’m not advocating they be taken down, I don’t believe in censorship, but I do believe in the need to educate and inform people, and for us to condemn the racism, white supremacy, anti-Semitism and homophobia that this newspaper and these organizations represent and support.”
Goldbaum has been asked to speak about The Spotlight at the next meeting of the Amherst Civil Rights Commission next Tuesday [12/9/97].
The Spotlight will also be among the topics of conversation at a presentation of the Not In Our Town Coalition [on December 7th].
This article originally appeared on 12/5/97. It is reprinted by permission of Mary Carey and the Daily Hampshire Gazette.
Editor's note: Both newspaper vending boxes disappeared the week after Goldbaum's presentation to the Amherst Civil Rights Review Commission. Since the person responsible for them has chosen to remain anonymous, there is no way for us to know the actual reason for their disappearance. The Amherst Police Department does not have any reports of theft or vandalism, so we must presume that the person responsible for the vending boxes removed them voluntarily. Evidently sales were poor or the political opposition too great. In either case, we view the disappearance of The Spotlight as a testament to our own and others' efforts to inform the community about this pestilence, and to condemn this purveyor of racial and ethnic hatred.
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