Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 04:06, 24 December 2006

Harold "Hubert" Turner is an Internet radio talk show host from North Bergen, New Jersey, USA known for being a white supremacist and supporter of violence against minorities and government officials. His program, The Hal Turner Show, is broadcast from "Metropolitan New York, New York" via the internet on Wednesday evenings. He is also the owner and operator of the Turner Radio Network. Turner is married to Phyllis Turner, has one son, and identifies himself as Roman Catholic.

Hal from North Bergen

Turner is an independent media personality and occasional candidate in various state elections although he hasn't run since 2000. Before launching his own talk show, Turner was a regular caller (known simply as "Hal from North Bergen") to conservative Sean Hannity's and Bob Grant's talk shows on WABC radio in New York City.

In 2000, Turner sought the local Republican Party nomination for election in his local congressional district but lost to Democrat Robert Menendez and six other candidates (including another Republican, Theresa de Leon). Afterward, Turner had a reported "epiphany", deciding the political system was rigged against White American men (de Leon is Hispanic) and abandoning all ties to the mainstream.

Turner was also the campaign manager for Murray Sabrin, who is Jewish, in a number of campaigns in New Jersey in the 1990s according to various sources including Sabin's website: www.murraysabrin.com.

That same year, he started The Hal Turner Show by renting time on WBCQ and the Turner Radio Network to distribute programming by other white nationalists via satellite. Turner is no longer on WBCQ and does a live radio show from his living room once a week. Archives of the radio show are available for contributing members.

The Hal Turner Show

Turner's radio program originates from a studio in his home. It and his website both were shut down temporarily in 2004 due to personal financial difficulty, and the death of his mother. His website returned in November 2004, and he re-started his radio show in June 2005. His site received more than 2.8 million page loads in its first year back on the web.

Turner has been criticized by the Southern Poverty Law Center for saying, "I advocate using extreme violence against illegal aliens. Clean your guns. Have plenty of ammunition. Find out where the largest gathering of illegal aliens will be near you. Go to the area well in advance, scope out several places to position yourself and then do what has to be done."

Turner was interviewed by a number of news outlets in 2005 after it was revealed the FBI interviewed him following the murders of the mother and husband of federal district judge Joan Lefkow. Two years earlier, on his worldwide shortwave show, Turner stated that a decision made by Lefkow, which included an order to a racist "church" to burn its "Bibles", made her "worthy of being killed". After the judge's family was murdered, Turner posted a photo on his website of Judge Lefkow with the Headline "GOTCHA!".

Turner routinely goes after federal, state, and even local officials by exposing their home addresses and even publishing leaflets that citizens can print locally, to show their unhappiness with judges whose decisions they disagree with.

Turner comes from ethnic-Turkish and Persian stock, and often makes much of his ethnic background to defend against charges that he is a racist hate-monger whipping up racial tensions so as to further his flagging media career. Following allegations that Turner underwent extensive plastic surgery in 2003, including corrective penile ereticle dysfunction surgery, Turner denied these charges and offered to 'show the nation' his various body parts so as to prove his innocence.

"Rally against violence"

On November 19, 2005, Turner received a permit from the city of Kingston, New York granting him permission to stage a "Rally against violence". The rally was organized in response to the assault of a 14-year old white student, seriously injured by an older black student at Kingston High School. The white student's injuries required several reconstructive surgeries, and Turner made much of the suffering of the child on his radio show, often even engaging the child's mother on the air, to discuss her sadness and outrage; while Turner occasionally implied that the black boy "did not face any sanction" on his radio show, the 16-year old was in actuality charged as an adult with two felony counts, assault and attempted assault.

One of Turner's central assertions was that the attack was racially motivated, and that the local government was asymmetrically enforcing "hate crime" laws. According to the mother of the victim, the assailant referred to the victim as a "white nigger" prior to the assault. A grand jury investigated the incident, and found that race was not a factor in the assault. Nonetheless, Turner aggressively pursued his "Rally Against Violence" by appealing to "pro-whites" with unsubstantiated allegations of black students terrorizing white students throughout the high school in the town; Turner claimed to have received a barrage of emails from "students in that high school that tell me these things are so terrible that they are afraid to go to (school)", marketing the appeal of the rally jointly not only to white supremacists, but also to anyone who misperceived the rally as indeed a rally "against violence." While the victim's mother at first suggested that she would attend the event, she ultimately declined, indicating that she is "not a racist".

The anti-racist organization One People's Project, which has had numerous dealings with Turner, was brought in to help educate concerned residents about Turner. The Kingston School District and the mayor urged local citizens to stay home and avoid the rally. Anti-Racist Action, a militant youth anti-fascist organization, mobilized a few dozen antifas to confront Turner directly, and did so with the backing of dozens more from the community. A heavy police presence and federal agents throughout the city prevented the group from gaining direct contact with Turner, although later they did stage a mini-protest outside the home of a friend of Turner's, "Yankee" Jim Leshkevich of nearby Hurley, NY. Leshkevich was the one who first alerted Turner to the Kingston assault.

An after-school rally, organized by a 15-year old Kingston High School student, was planned to occur the Friday before the Rally against Violence. The county legislature unanimously passed a resolution "urging Participation in Tolerance Day" at its November 10 session.

Ultimately, about fifty supporters attended the rally. Others, including the mother of the victim whose injuries prompted the rally, complained they were not allowed access to the protest area although this is unconfirmed since she made a public statement stating she was not going to attend. Instead, they were directed to an area designated for counter-demonstrators. Accounts from the local media suggested anywhere from 300 to 400 counter-demonstrators. Despite threats to return if the black student never faced hate crime charges, Turner never came back to Kingston.

Fistfight with Former Jersey City Deputy Mayor Jaime Vazquez

In April 2006, Turner had a physical altercation with Jaime Vazquez, a former Jersey City Deputy Mayor and member of the Jersey City Council, and current Jersey City Commissioner of Veterans' Affairs. Commissioner Vazquez, a disabled, Purple Heart-awarded Vietnam veteran, was conducting a protest in front of Turner's house in response to Turner's hiring an airplane to carry a banner with an anti-Mexican slur over a political rally at Jersey City's Liberty State Park. Turner confronted Vazquez and a fight ensued, in which Vazquez won in the altercation.

Turner and Vazquez filed criminal charges against each other. A Municipal Court Judge of the North Bergen Municipal Court subsequently found neither man criminally liable.

Feud with prank callers

On December 20, 2006, during the call in portion of his talk radio show, Turner came under the barrage of numerous prank phone-in calls. Turner was under the impression that the attacks had originated from the popular IRC chatting network after an anonymous listener gave him a tip, though the callers were also Anonymous. Turner wrote on his web page that he would pursue the prank callers and take legal action if necessary. He had also vowed to post a list of phone numbers in which he believed belonged to the pranksters. Subsequent postings encouraged his regular listeners to use reverse phone directories to find the homes of these individuals and to use their own form of street justice on them.

Two days later on December 22, Turner posted a partial list of phone numbers of people who he believed were the prank callers. The fact that most of the phone numbers belonged to minors did not seem to deter Turner. Via the comments page, regular listeners began to translate the posted numbers into actual addresses.

Turner has since removed the partial list of phone numbers and any related comment pages. Some home addresses of pranksters can still be found in the most recent (as of now) comments on Turners web page. The reason for the removal is currently unknown.

References

1. (Election results)
10. Lemongello, Steven. "Radio host and Vazquez file charges", the Jersey Journal, April 18 2006.

External links

• The Hal Turner Show
• Turner Radio Network
• Anti-Defamation League article "Hal Turner in His Own Words"
• Anti-Defamation League report on Turner urging bombs and assassinations
• Anti-Defamation League report on Turner and his supporters issuing threats
• Southern Poverty Law Center report on Turner as host of hate
• Southern Poverty Law Center report on Turner calling for violence
• The Nation magazine article about Turner's alliance with Sean Hannity and his self-proclaimed recovery from homosexuality
• Orcinus blog entry on Turner, comparing him to Ward Churchill
• Article at MSNBC detailing Turner's stormy relationship with other White nationalists in the wake of the Lefkow killings
• One People's Project, Organized opposition to Hal Turner.
• Jersey Journal article about Vazquez & Turner

• Living people
• People from New Jersey