God'll Cut You Down : The Tangled Tale of a White Supremacist, a Black Hustler, Amurder, and How I Lost a Year in Mississippi (9780698170537)

by Safran, John

  The ABC forbids the story from airing. Not a frame of Richard Barrett or Mississippi makes it to the show.

  That was that.

  One Year After Filming Richard Barrett, and Three Months After the Airing of Race Relations

  Johnny Cash is in my living room.

  What’s done in the dark will be brought to the light, says Johnny.

  Johnny Cash isn’t the only singer here. Cries float up the staircase and push under my door: “We want Moshiach! We want Moshiach now! We want Moshiach! We want Moshiach now!”

  Moshiach is the Messiah. A sect of black-hatted Jews are convinced their dead leader is the Moshiach. They sing for an hour a day, waving King Moshiach flags on the corner just outside my flat. They hope this will hasten his return to earth, at which time my fellow Jews and I will fly to Israel on clouds with wings of eagles.

  I’m slumped on the couch, poking around the Internet.

  I download conspiracy podcasts, spool through Scientology tweets, and search for exorcisms on YouTube. I punch in vanguardnewsnetwork.com, one of my white supremacist faves. No Jews. Just Right is their motto.

  A redheaded woodpecker swoops over the Vanguard News Network masthead.

  Beneath is the headline: MISSISSIPPI: WHITE NATIONALIST LEADER MURDERED; BLACKS CHARGED.

  Below that: Sad news, but what was Barrett thinking? White leaders usually avoid Blacks.

  Vanguard links to a Mississippi television report. Richard Barrett has been found, stabbed to death, in his burning house. A twenty-two-year-old, Vincent McGee, has confessed to the murder. Members of the McGee family have been arrested as accessories after the fact.

  “Yes sir, we interviewed him and he told us basically what happened,” Sheriff Pennington tells a reporter.

  The reporter asks if he knows the motive. Sheriff Pennington will not answer.

  I don’t notice I’m biting the inside of my cheek until it starts to sting.

  My E-mail to the Race Relations Crew

  I e-mail the Race Relations crew.

  On Sat, April 24, at 10:06 a.m., John Safran wrote:

  Jesus Christ. Richard Barrett murdered.

  The replies:

  Director Craig: Holy shit!

  Researcher Roland: Jesus Christ.

  My manager, Kevin: Cool. I’ll ring the ABC and see what this means about the footage. We can probably use it now.

  What Happened?

  People are punching in their opinions on message boards all over the Internet.

  Vincent McGee is a civil rights hero!

  I can only imagine the circumstances behind this, but I shake your hand, man.

  The racist guy got what he deserved. All racists should die . . . I’m sure the black guy was not a racist. He just was pissed off at some evil, pompous white guy who hated him without a just reason.

  It’s not all good reviews for the killer Vincent McGee.

  Will the black man be charged with a HATE crime?

  What if a white had killed a black activist???

  Just another day in a troubled country where the truth is spoken and the victim murdered, thus proving the truth. But there can never be a black supremacist, can there? That would be racist.

  It’s a hate crime, but who committed it? Richard Barrett, for being a white supremacist, or Vincent McGee, for hating someone with views other than his own?

  I hit refresh, refresh, refresh.

  Pretty soon more news blows out of Mississippi. Vincent’s stepfather has told a local paper Vincent did yard work for Richard. The day of the killing, Richard had paid Vincent twenty-six dollars for a whole day’s work. Vincent argued with Richard and the fight blew up.

  Now the murder’s about money as well as race.

  White supremacist hires black youth, pays him as if he were a slave, says who knows what when confronted . . . dispute ends badly.

  I hit refresh, refresh, refresh.

  Two days later a bulletproof vest is strapped on Vincent McGee. He is led from his cell to a courthouse in Rankin County, Mississippi.

  An investigator from the sheriff’s department walks to a podium, facing the judge. He tells the judge what Vincent has told investigators: He had been doing yard work at Richard’s Nationalist Movement headquarters. (The tiny house! I didn’t see the yard in the dark.) But he adds another element. Richard then drove him to Richard’s house in another part of Mississippi. Inside this house, Richard made a sexual advance.

  Vincent knifed Richard and lit his house on fire.

  So now the murder’s about race, money, and sex.

  The district attorney now speaks to Vincent. He tells Vincent he is being charged with capital murder. Capital murder is when you murder so you can commit another crime, like burglary. Does that mean the district attorney doesn’t believe Vincent’s story? Capital murder, rather than simple murder, means that Vincent could be put to death by lethal injection.

  Jesus. Richard Barrett—so careful, so evasive—managed to get himself killed in a race crime. Hater of, employer of, possible lover of, a black man. Vanguard was indeed just right: What was Richard Barrett thinking?

  In the Ghetto

  Here’s what I was thinking.

  I live in a flat up a stairwell. The walls of the stairwell are streaked with skid marks. I carried my bicycle up the stairs, often and badly, before it was nicked.

  I moved in here when my grandfather died ten years ago and kept most of my grandparents’ furnishings. Seventies wallpaper, cream and gold, rolls along the hallway and through most of the rooms. Grandma-needled tapestries stare at me whichever way I turn. An aristocratic woman plucking a harp, a gypsy patting a rabbit, a Dutch boy blushing before a windmill, and thirteen others. A dining room table for six stretches out in the dining room. And there’s one of me.

  The cupboards are squeezed full of crockery. The type of china you could whip out if the Queen dropped by; enough for the Queen to bring her family. Tucked among the china are shoehorns and wooden contraptions for stretching leather. My grandparents ran the shoe repair shop under the rail bridge on the same street as the flat. My high school rabbi, who taught me Torah, had his heels fixed there. Old Jews stop me in the street to tell me my grandparents did their shoes, too.

  If I turn right out the front of my apartment block, the first shop I hit is Glick’s Cakes & Bagels. Along the one-minute walk from my flat to Glick’s, I pass three Jewish prayer houses catering to slightly different sects of Orthodox Jews. Next to Glick’s is Daneli’s, a kosher deli. Next to that is Gefen Liquor, which carries kosher wines.

  The kosher certificate pasted on the window of Glick’s is signed by Rabbi Gutnick. He belongs to an Orthodox sect called Lubavitch. An even more Orthodox sect, Adass Israel, prefers something more stringent to Rabbi Gutnick’s kosher certifications. They buy their bagels across the street at Lichtenstein’s Bakehouse. Those bagels are certified by Rabbi Beck.

  Near Lichtenstein’s is Hadar Judaica, for all your bar mitzvah gift needs. Just down from that is Balaclava Jewish & Continental Deli, where the food is Jewish (gefilte fish, cholent, matzo ball soup) but not kosher. Not far is Melbourne Kosher Butchers, where all the recent Israeli arrivals buy their phone cards. Also nearby is La Cafe on Nelson, where the hottest recent Israeli arrivals are hired as waitresses.

  When I haul my rubbish bags to the lane at the rear of my block of flats, I see across the way B’nai B’rith, a Jewish organization that fights anti-Semitism. If I traipse thirty seconds up the lane I hit Yeshivah College, my old Jewish high school. Next to that is the synagogue, where the rabbis wear plastic bags on their hats on rainy days. Also within a short schlep is the headquarters of a Zionist youth group and a Kabbalah center.

  In summary: I live in the worst place in Australia you could live if you ever piss off the Jews.

  I pissed off the Jews.

  I
began to get greasy looks about two weeks before Race Relations aired, when some of the show’s content leaked. People began to keep their distance. Any Jew would recognize the signs: Why was I making trouble?

  My mother kept my scrapbook in better shape when she was alive. I still need to paste in the Race Relations clippings from the Australian Jewish News.

  SAFRAN CRUCIFIED OVER NEW SHOW

  Comedian John Safran’s new show has caused a public outcry, even though its debut on ABC TV is still a week away. The Australian Family Association last week hit out at the show, describing it as “filth.”

  In episode one of the series, in which Safran explores interracial attraction, the former Yeshivah College student donates sperm at a Palestinian sperm bank, while looking at a picture of US President Barack Obama. In a later episode, Safran is crucified as part of a religious ritual in the Philippines.

  But the scene that will likely generate the most controversy in the Jewish community involves Safran going to his mother’s grave with a shovel and Kabbalah prayer book to discover what she would think of him if he married a non-Jew.

  “Safran’s actions are to be deplored,” the Executive Council of Australian Jewry president told the Australian Jewish News. “They are extremely insensitive and not only bring disrepute on the Jewish people, but adversely affect interfaith relationships.”

  —ADAM KAMIEN

  The ABC has shamed itself with the showing of John Safran’s Race Relations program. He appears desperate for subject matter, having to resort to underpants stealing and sniffing (stealing is a crime—not a joke) and the degrading deceit of insulting both Jews and Palestinians by substituting each other’s sperm in sperm banks (also a crime—not a joke). The entire subject matter and execution is despicable, and no doubt more bad publicity has been showered on us Jews.

  —NOAH LEVIN, MALVERN, VIC, LETTERS

  Safran’s carnival approach to the Holocaust continued in last week’s episode when he mock-gassed Holocaust denier David Irving. Safran claimed he was following the lead of Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. Prior to “luring his prey” for the interview, Safran “rigs” the radio studio by inserting a pipe through the ventilation system so as to convert the room into a “gas chamber.” Taking pause from their chat, Safran walks out, jams the door with a broom, and opens a gas bottle while screaming at Irving through the glass: “You’re locked in a room and it’s filling with gas, and if you try and tell anyone, I’m going to deny it.” Safran not only distorts Wiesenthal’s message of justice, instead of revenge, but given that his own grandmother lost her family in the Holocaust, he should have known better.

  —DR. DVIR ABRAMOVICH

  And Then One Night

  As well as all of that, the theme blaring through Race Relations is that the Australian Jewish community bullies their young to marry Jewish and bullies their non-Jewish partners to back off.

  Not long ago, my Jewish friend Leah was preparing to marry a non-Jew named Ant. One afternoon Ant visited Leah’s family while Leah was out of town. Over an hour, one by one, Leah’s mother, father, and brother floated out of the living room. Ant sat alone, disconcerted. Finally a man Ant had never seen before strolled in.

  The man sat down and looked at Ant.

  “You’ll never be accepted here,” the man said.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re not Jewish.”

  Then the man stood up and left.

  As well as locking David Irving in a radio studio, in Race Relations I ran a yellow highlighter over little events like this. I learned people in small towns don’t like the man with the yellow highlighter pen.

  The afternoon before the first episode aired, I bought hundreds of dollars of food from the supermarket so I wouldn’t have to leave the flat for a while. Good decision. Even now, I try to avoid it. Months ago I gave up walking down the street. If I need to catch up for coffee, I catch up somewhere else. I do my grocery shopping a few suburbs up.

  • • •

  One night, well out of my Jewish ghetto, as my head sloshed with alcohol, a girl holding a plastic cup of wine drifted over.

  “Hello,” I said.

  Her face twisted to fury.

  “If you’re going to take my Jewish background,” she shrieked, “and put it up on the television, you better do better than sniffing Eurasian underpants!”

  All heads on the rooftop turned to us. The Jewess escaped down the stairs.

  That was an hour ago. Now I’m hunched over my laptop at my dining room table for six.

  I punch in the address I’ve been punching in for weeks: tripadvisor.com.au.

  I punch the words into the box I’ve been punching in for weeks: Jackson, Mississippi.

  Tonight I go one step further. I slap my wallet onto the dining room table. I slide out my credit card. I bash in the numbers and hit confirm.

  • • •

  How can I not get on a plane to Mississippi? I’m a Race Trekkie. I met the dead white supremacist. Why would God and/or Fate have arranged that if not for me to now get on that plane? I know that man at the book publisher sneered when I told him my idea. John, a book is a little more difficult than a comedy TV show. I know I have no book deal. But the trial’s not going to wait for me. There’s not going to be a second white supremacist who I hung out with murdered. This is my sweet spot, right? As well as race and money and sex and death, this thing with Richard Barrett is about small towns, tribalism, and old ways. I’m going to escape my ghetto, thank God, for a new one across the sea.

  2.

  MISSISSIPPI

  The Airport

  It’s winter in Mississippi and drizzling. My feet squelch on my untied shoelaces as I jerk my luggage across the parking lot at Jackson–Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport.

  Mississippi doesn’t waste any time. That Jackson is President Andrew Jackson, pro-slavery campaigner and master to three hundred slaves. That Medgar Wiley Evers was a black activist who collapsed and died outside his house in 1963 after a Klansman had shot him in the back. You land straight in a race war.

  And Mississippi wants to get something else out in the open, too. Tennessee Williams is looking down at me like I’m a piece of dirt. John Grisham wants to stab me. William Faulkner sneers.

  YES, WE CAN READ, says the headline on the welcome billboard. A FEW OF US CAN EVEN WRITE.

  Way to try to psych me out, Mississippi. Why not just put up a sign: John, a book is a little more difficult than a comedy TV show? All up, a dozen Mississippi writers scorn me from the billboard, glowing in the night, as I steer out of the airport.

  One Mississippi stereotype collapses as I drive into downtown Jackson. Jackson is the state capital, but from the little I can see, the Mississippi with white plantation mansions is somewhere else. I pull in to the motel, a hunk of concrete in a parking lot of concrete in a city of concrete.

  In the entrance, a black man in black is pacing with a thumping stick. I try to remember if motels usually have guards with thumping sticks out front.

  The man attending the front desk has a neck that flops over his collar. He looks at me as if an elf has just turned up on his doorstep. Overseas folk, I gather, don’t really stop by downtown Jackson. Or is that white folk? A gold Freemason ring, of all things, twinkles on his fat black finger as he signs me in.

  I’ll be the first person to stay in room twenty-two, he tells me. The motel fresh opened just two weeks ago.

  Glue fumes follow me through the lobby, up the elevator, down the hall, into my room, and into the shower. Those twenty hours of planes. Mr. Sandman has not only sprinkled sand in my eyes, but grouted over my nostrils and under my fingernails. I scratch the asthma tickle in my chest.

  I’m not going for the sympathy vote, but I can tell you I don’t really know what I’m doing. For weeks I’ve been reading true crime book after book after book for hints
. I’ve got a month before the trial starts. You can’t just rock up on the day of the trial and expect to be able to work out what’s going on. That’s what I learned from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: Arrive early and befriend the local yahoos. That’s how you paint a picture of the town, understand the context. Start getting an idea of what really happened.

  What have I got? I’ve got the names of the killer’s lawyers from the news reports: Chokwe Lumumba and Precious Martin. And what names they are. I don’t even know whether Precious is a man or a woman. And Chokwe? I’ve also got the number of a black journalist, Earnest McBride. And there’s this white separatist podcaster, Jim Giles.

  Out of the shower, I pace, one towel as a kilt, one towel as a cape. I wiggle my toes. The carpet feels like mini golf Astroturf. Everything here, from the bed headboard to the venetian blinds, is both brand-spanking-new and about to fall apart, like counterfeit Nikes at the market. You know, I saw on an Internet message board that John Berendt fudged the start of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

  John Berendt barely knew the killer Jim Williams; he had never met him at the time of the murder, and the entire first chapter of the book in which Williams’s violent lover comes in and throws a fit is made up (or at least is told in first person with Berendt as the observer when in fact he wasn’t there).

  The pedants are even after Truman Capote. Truman said he went to the house on Tuesday! It was Wednesday!

  And all those true crime books were written before the Internet. These days, you can’t get away with anything. Everyone has a Twitter account. Just hours after I was crucified (literally, by the way) in a tiny village in the Philippines for Race Relations, an Australian journalist had tracked down a local online to see if my version of events matched what he saw. I unpack my Flip video camera and my Zoom Dictaphone. I’ll get everything on tape, so none of my frenemies can trip me up later.