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At his rallies, Robb is a duplicitous huckster. When protesters in Dubuque, Iowa, toss eggs at him, he responds with a verbal sally. "They are hypocrites!" he shouts. "They are liars. They talk about peace, but there is no peace over there. They are being built up by hatred." Then he tells his fans that they are on a "mission of love" at a "white Christian revival." With his message goes a commercial tie-in. Besides the usual Klan caps and T shirts and stickers, these rallies offer pricey Klan kitsch, like a ceramic statuette of a hooded Klansman whose eyes glow an eerie red when you plug it into an electrical outlet ($25 at a rally or $20 for the mail-order version).
Those eager to catch a glimpse into Robb's weird world can find themselves at a rally listening to a fledgling neo-Nazi discuss with a robed Klansman the religious primacy of the white race. A few steps away, a young Kluxer-in- training, his eyes peering out through slits in his hood, explains the history of a camouflaged Klanmobile, a trashed-out Ford Grenada loaded with ham-radio equipment and emblazoned with slogans like WHITE POWER and PRAISE GOD FOR AIDS.
When outsiders are nearby, Robb is careful to avoid the word nigger, though he admits to an occasional lapse. He avoids directly denigrating blacks and other races, and he shies from embracing white-power hero Adolf Hitler. He stresses that the Klan, or at least his branch of it, does not advocate violence. "We're not night riders running around beating people up," he says, "but we're setting our sights on governmental power." Robb thinks the future of the Klan lies in politics, and to prove it, he is running for the Arkansas legislature. In speeches, he blames the U.S. government for the nation's ills, and he has adopted a platform he claims will return America to its former greatness. He wants, among other things, to post soldiers at the Mexican border to stop immigrants, quarantine all aids patients, kill drug dealers and put an end to affirmative action.
Robb and his followers imagine a Jewish conspiracy in almost everything from banking to the Federal Government. He advocates eventual separation of the races, perhaps by banishing blacks, with reparations, to Africa. "They'll never have justice in a white society," he says of blacks. "After all, they were brought over here against their will, which certainly was a benefit to them, much more a great benefit to them than to the slave owners. It put a burden on us.
"This is going to sound awful crude to say this, and maybe it will come out wrong," says Robb, "but at least during the time of slavery, they earned their keep. What benefit are they to us today, after food stamps and public housing and heating their homes and cooling their homes and caring for their children and taking them to the hospital and all the things that are done? Where's the appreciation for that, and what is the benefit to us?"