Here Comes Trouble - Michael Moore [131]
Miles believed in violence and the separation of the races. He wanted the U.S. government to declare an “all-white” area where white people could go and live in peace: Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Oregon, and the state of Washington. He would give the Hispanics Arizona and New Mexico, and the blacks could have the states of the Deep South.
In order to pull off this revolution, he needed to gather together the disparate groups that made up the white supremacist movement and get them to agree to work together. So he put out a call for a convention of racists to take place on an April weekend in the spring of 1986 on his farm south of Flint. Everyone twisted and white, regardless of their differences, was invited: the various Klan groups, the Aryan Nations, the American Nazis, Christian Identity, the white power conclaves—you name it, if it was racist and nuts, it was going to be there.
Ridgeway had called me to see if I might be able to convince Grand Dragon Miles to let him and his crew into the gathering to film it. He was certain the answer would be no, but he wanted to see if I could give it a shot and try to convince them.
I hosted a weekly radio show on the rock station in Flint called Radio Free Flint. I had had Mr. Miles on my show a couple of times. I was exactly the type of vermin that he and his people wanted to rid the earth of, but he couldn’t have been nicer or more polite when he visited the radio station.
So I thought I could convince him to do this. I understood that when someone’s mind has taken a psychotic turn it’s hard to reverse that. Clearly, in his case, prison didn’t do the job. He had his beliefs set in cement: he saw white people as the chosen people, and everyone else was here to serve us. Not a bad setup if you’re the white guy, eh?
I called Bob and asked him if I could come out to his farm to ask him a favor. He was delighted to hear from me and invited me out to have lunch on a Friday afternoon. His wife, a gregarious and good-hearted woman, made a pot of Irish stew and homemade biscuits and some fresh-brewed ice tea. He sat and talked to me about his early years in New York City. As a teenager he joined a youth group whose main activity was to go down on weekends to Union Square and beat the crap out of socialists and communists. He went to George Washington High School, where Henry Kissinger was a year ahead of him.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Miles joined the Navy and fought for the duration of the war. When he got out, he and his wife moved to Michigan, where he became an insurance man. He would eventually rise to become the head of the Michigan Association of Insurance Executives. In those days, insurance men went door to door to convince people why they needed life insurance and a homeowner’s policy. It was hard work, as this new demographic known as “the middle class” were unfamiliar with the concept of giving someone their hard-earned money for something they might never use. To succeed in the insurance business back then, you had to be a smooth talker but also be able to possess the voice of reason—and of fear. You had to make a family fear all the possible what-ifs: what if my house burns down, what if my child gets sick, what if I die before my time and leave my family penniless. It wasn’t long before nearly everyone had someone whom they referred to as their own personal “insurance man.”
Bob Miles must have been great at it, and once he crossed over to the dark side of the Klan, he was the perfect recruiter for the Aryan Nations—your friendly insurance man selling you a simple policy to protect yourself from the crazy “mud people” who are coming to burn down your house, steal your daughters, and take your life. His pitch was gentle and it sounded reasonable. He had a skill set the average redneck didn’t possess, and he used it to build the Michigan Klan into one of the most potent racist groups in the country.
But on this Friday afternoon, as another pot of tea was brewing, Miles said he was more than happy to let my “Hollywood” friends come