Speaking of hate

>> Former neo-Nazi T.J. Leydon and indomitable Nazi hunter Steven Rambam hit the Montreal talk circuit

by CHRIS BARRY

An ace recruiter and hero in the white power movement for close to 15 years, T.J. Leydon turned his back on the cause in 1997. As a former card-carrying member of Tom Metzger's infamous White Aryan Resistance movement, this bulky ex-Marine has beaten many a hapless Jewboy fag and his darkie co-conspirators into submission over the years. Leydon claims there were several factors that led to his ultimate defection.

For starters, the California native got sick of his brownshirt-loving wife's insistence that they only live in "white" communities like St. George, Utah. Although it's hard to believe that anyone could ever tire of living in rural Utah, Leydon also came to resent the Nazi mantra that his disabled mother, who suffered from polio as a child, was considered to be "surplus" with respect to the future of the Aryan race.

Sick of looking at his hate-filled bald wife every morning and concerned with the effect all their white power gobbledygook was having on the mental health of their children, in '97 a disillusioned Leydon worked up the courage to shed his stormtrooper persona and march on over to the Simon Weisenthal Center with his story. An act that still upsets his old skinhead buds to no end.

These days he says he spends his hours dodging the bullets of his former affiliates in the neo-Nazi movement and, in an effort to redeem himself from the violence and hatred of his former lifestyle, is being sponsored by the Weisenthal crowd to hit the lecture circuit and educate kids on the evils of intolerance.

Apparently Leydon's defection has been a pretty tense endeavour for all involved, and the Weisenthal gang are going to great lengths to ensure Leydon's safety--including not allowing him to speak to the media prior to his lecture in Montreal next week, for fear of providing clues as to where and when to blast him. Which is reasonable, I suppose, but maybe a little wacky when you consider the quarter page ad in the Suburban last week publicizing his upcoming Montreal appearance.

Death threats no big deal

On the other hand, celebrated Nazi hunter Steven Rambam is also in Montreal to speak (May 17 at Vincent Massey Collegiate) about some of the Third Reich cats he has apprehended and to publicly chastise the Canadian government for their miserable record in prosecuting war criminals. "Send Leydon's Nazi enemies my way," Rambam told me over the phone last week from his home in New York. "I'm armed and protected, and as far as I'm concerned it'll just mean there will be a few less Nazis in Canada when we're through with them."

Formerly a member of the Jewish Defense League and the head of a security company specializing in personal protection, it's safe to say that Rambam is more than capable of taking care of himself. "I've had over 2,000 death threats since I started investigating Nazi war criminals," he says cavalierly. "Big deal."

Rambam, who is primarily concerned with Nazis of the vintage variety, has investigated and interviewed close to 100 war criminals currently residing in Canada and is the man responsible for encouraging ex-Concordia professor and SS man Adalbert Lallier to come forward last year to testify against one of his former officers, Julius Viel. Lallier's testimony at Viel's German trial for the wartime murder of seven Jews in Czechoslovakia was the key element in securing Viel's guilty verdict and subsequent 12-year prison sentence.

Lack of will

But it's an uphill battle. Rambam claims there is simply a lack of political will in this country to aggressively prosecute Nazi war criminals. "The political class in Canada refuse to identify these people as the serial killers that they are," he says. "Do you think the Canadian government would have opened its doors to Son of Sam or John Wayne Gacy?

"Let me give you an example of what we're up against," he continues. "There is an individual living in Toronto whom I personally went undercover and investigated. I have him on tape boasting about his participation in the rounding up and slaughter of Jews in Eastern Europe and the guy even gave me a picture of himself in a collaborator's uniform. On top of that, there are probably close to 70 witness testimonies that name him personally. I even convinced this individual to pose for a photo as the proud soldier he once was, with the loaded shotgun that he always keeps in his living room. I turned all of my information over to the CJC and the RCMP and you know what they did? The police eventually went to his home and seized his shotgun. That's it. Frustration is not a strong enough word to describe how this sort of thing feels."

So given the reluctance of the authorities to prosecute this "human garbage" as he sees it, does he ever feel tempted to see justice metered out in the good old vigilante way?

"The first interview I ever did with a war criminal in Canada was in the middle of nowhere in B.C.," Rambam says. "I was in Seattle and on a whim I just decided to drive up and see if I could locate this guy. Nobody knew I was going. I knocked on his door and managed to talk my way in and sat down at the kitchen table with him and his wife and they bragged to me in unbelievable detail about how together they had participated in the murder of over 5,000 Jews. Frankly, I was sitting there thinking, 'Nobody knows I'm here. This man has killed 5,000 of my people and is bragging about it to me with no remorse, no hesitation. I could just kill these two--I'm familiar with how to do these things--and be gone and nobody would ever know about it.' It was like an out-of-body experience I was having. But in the end I decided not to kill them. I do my best to follow the law."