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Undercover Racism

University of Guelph student Matthew Lauder researches racism from the inside

From The Ontarion

 

Matt Lauder receives merit.

(CUP) Racist. The very word conjures a
mental menagerie of grotesque carica-
tures. The steel-toed skinhead. The
sieg-heiling neo-Nazi. The Southern
sheeted Klan member. Inhuman crea-
tures on the periphery of civilization.

But for University of Guelpth student
Matthew Lauder, racists are socially
destructive, but they are people too.

"| think the most important thing to
understand about these individuals is
that they are human beings, but they’re
human beings who are operating from
inside a dramatically different world
view," he says.

And Lauder should know. For two
years, he did his best to see that world
view.

From 1999 until early 2001, Lauder
infiltrated the organized racist movement
in Canada. In a project code-named
Anschluss Kanada, he adopted the guise
of a converted racist in order to examine
the movement as an insider. As he
became a comrade to racists, he
gathered information on their numbers,
membership, gatherings, funding,
cross-border activities, and recruitment
strategies. He associated with such
leading figures in the movement as Paul
Fromm and Wolfgang Droege. He
developed and maintained movement

Web-sites. He wrote and posted articles
written from an extreme right-wing
perspective. He publicly defended and
supported bigots. He drove with them,
drank with them, shook their hands and
smiled. All the while, he was working for
a cause that was antithetical to theirs.
Lauder’s interest in anti-racism began
when he was a teenager. The environ-
ment in which he was raised taught him
to value diverse cultural backgrounds.
"My parents tried to give me an
understanding of respect for others... My
friends as well. We just grew up in a
community where there were differ-,
ences, but we understood and respected
those differences." When he was in high
school, Lauder became aware of the
Heritage Front, which was one of the
more prominent racialist organizations in
Canada. "| was just very concerned
about the impact it would have on our
community and society in general," he
says. He realized that he could not sit
idly by while racialist groups actively
promoted their agenda. He became
involved in anti-racist movement.

“It was then that the idea
of covert research
occurred to him. If he
could convince the
racists that their argum-
nts had won him over,
then he would become
privy to the tuth about
them... All he had to do
was become one of
them.”

Lauder’s involvement continued into
the academic world. As a psychology
undergrad, he studied deviant behaviour,
first in relation to religious cults. The

parallels he saw between cults and
organized racism drew him back to
studying the movement. For his master’s
degree, he did much research on the
subject, but it was purely text-based. By
the time he began his doctorate, the
focus of his research had shifted to
participant observation: he engaged in
personal contact and interviews with
members of the movement. After about a
year, he decided that even this form of
investigation was inadequate.

"What was going on was that they were
giving me information they wanted me to
have," he says, “I don’t think it was very
reflective of the movement itself. They
were too self-conscious. They were too
practiced in dealing with the media, and
that’s how they were treating me, as a
media representative."

Lauder reached what he describes in
his own writings as a breaking point.
He became frustrated with the role of
traditional researcher. He realized that
as long as the movement saw him as an
outsider, he would never really know how
it worked, thus he would never know how
to stop it. It was then that the idea of
covert research occurred to him. If he
could convince the racists that their
arguments had won him over, then he
would become privy to the truth about
them. He would have access to informa-
tion unavailable to any openly anti-racist
activist. He would have the means to
fight them more effectively. All he had to
do was become one of them.

Such a task would not be easy. They
already knew him as a researcher, as
well as a left-leaning person with a
socialist background. They didn’t trust
him. He would have to earn their trust.

"| had to allow the group to see me as
a convert," he explains, "| had to get
them to see | was buying their party
line." He slowly built a rapport with key
insiders, or entry points. He solidified his
reputation by also associating with fringe
dwellers, cover points. Lauder did not
recruit anyone himself, but his cover

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