Militant Anti-Abortion Activist Appeared on White Nationalist Talk Show
Militant anti-abortion activist Michael Bray is reaching out to Kenyans on a new website targeting abortion providers and gay rights activists with ties to the country. In his endorsement of ProjectSEE.com, he rejects the view of “racists” who thought Africa was “hopelessly backwards because it was occupied by an inferior racial group.” Rather, Bray argues, the West’s cultural superiority resulted from its embrace of Christianity, which was only later introduced to Africa. “It [is] perhaps Africa which shall be the beacon for the world in the new century as Christianity’s influence is increased in contrast to its departure from the west,” he wrote. “ProjectSEE.com [SEE stands for Stop Exporting Evil!] exhorts Kenyans to resist the evil influences of an apostatizing West which has abandoned the Lord of Glory, the King above all kings.”
Bray’s rejection of racism might raise eyebrows in light of his appearance two years ago as a guest on “The Political Cesspool,” a shamelessly white nationalist radio talk show that often denigrates those of African descent. Prior to Bray’s interview, Cesspool host James Edwards had, for example, called blacks “heathen savages,” “subhumans” and “black animals” while discussing violent black-on-white crime. In an April 4, 2007, debut on CNN, Edwards told host Paula Zahn that “crime and violence follow African-Americans wherever they go.” In the month before Bray’s Oct. 12, 2007, “Cesspool” appearance, the show featured favorable interviews with former Klan attorney Sam Dickson, Holocaust denier Mark Weber, and former Klan leader and neo-Nazi David Duke, a “Cesspool” regular whom Edwards on his website described as “a Christian man above reproach.”
Bray’s “Cesspool” interview focused almost entirely on his legal troubles, according to archived audio of the show. He complained that federal agents, sheriff’s deputies and Planned Parenthood representatives had entered his Wilmington, Ohio, home 11 days earlier to remove household items. “[They] ransacked the house, basically,” Bray said.
The seizure resulted from a federal court order to take property that could be sold to satisfy a $1 million judgment against Bray, a defendant in a successful lawsuit brought by Planned Parenthood and several abortion doctors. The suit contended that the American Coalition of Life Activists had released a wanted-style poster listing the names and addresses of abortion providers. (In the Cesspool interview, Bray said he didn’t produce or circulate the sign and that he was only loosely affiliated with the group.) Also at issue in the case was the “Nuremberg Files,” an online listing of abortion providers and other supporters of abortion rights, with the names of those who’d been murdered crossed out and the names of those who had been wounded in gray. A federal jury in 1999 decided that the material constituted a “true threat” and ruled in favor of the plaintiffs; the full 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ultimately affirmed the verdict. During the “Cesspool” interview, Bray told Edwards it’s not only abortionists who will face Nuremberg-style trials, but also judges. “They are tyrants, and they need to be told they’re tyrants for acting lawlessly,” he said. “They violate not only the constitution, but they violate the laws of God.”
The interview briefly touched on Bray’s criminal history: He served four years in prison after being convicted in connection with a series of 1984 bombings in Maryland, Delaware and Washington D.C. The bombings targeted clinics, the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Abortion Federation, a trade association of abortion providers. Bray, 57, has repeatedly asserted that violence is justified to stop abortion and defended the 1993 killing of abortion doctor David Gunn in Pensacola, Fla.
ProjectSEE.com, the website Bray promotes, is controlled by Neal Horsley, creator of the “Nuremberg Files.” (Horsley was not a defendant in the lawsuit.) Horsley’s most recent venture in some ways resembles a toned-down version of his Nuremberg Files, with “not wanted” posters featuring the photos and, in some cases, contact information of gay rights activists and abortion providers working in Kenya.
Bray did not respond to a phone message on Wednesday seeking comment about his decision to be interviewed on “Cesspool.” Though Bray made no racial comments on air, Edwards was moved by his story and urged listeners to donate money to help his large family. After Bray hung up, Edwards said: “Any guy that will have 11 white children in this day and age, I tell you, I salute him.”
