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Critics Claim Anti-Green Shock Jock Goes Too Far With His On-Air Antics
By JIM CARLTON
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
KALISPELL, Mont. -- Like a fair number of people in the mountain West, John
Stokes doesn't care much for environmentalists. He has even coined a term
for them: "Green Nazis."
But what sets Mr. Stokes apart is that he uses his radio station as a pulpit
to launch on-air tirades against environmentalists and other interest groups
he complains are ruining the country.
And that is what has a growing chorus of critics up in arms. Mr. Stokes,
they say, goes beyond simple venting to inciting his listeners into
lawlessness. For example, they say, last fall he broadcast plans by a
clandestine group to force open locked gates on closed national forest roads
around the area. Broken locks were later piled in front of his station in
seeming tribute.
Acts of vandalism also were committed after he publicized names of local
businesses that had contributed to an environmental group. One brewery
owner, for instance, found a green swastika plastered on his business. Mr.
Stokes believes someone other than his followers perpetrated those acts to
make him look bad.
Mr. Stokes last year held a green-swastika-burning party on the parking lot
of his radio station, on the outskirts of this breathtaking gateway to
Montana's Glacier National Park. The purpose: to publicize what he calls
parallels between the rise of Hitler's Third Reich and what he calls the
environmental "Fourth Reich"; supposed linkages, such as recruiting youths,
that environmentalists call nonsense.
"Let me tell you about the little brownshirts walking around in our valley,"
he cried to his listeners on a recent snowy morning here.
Of course, this isn't the first time environmentalists have come under fire
in the West. Violent confrontations flared between environmentalists and
loggers, for example, following forest closures in the Pacific Northwest a
decade ago. More recent dustups have broken out over everything from water
restrictions to oil and gas drilling.
But Mr. Stokes's antics have prompted even conservative politicians in
Montana to eschew appearances on his KGEZ-AM morning show, which leads its
time slot among young male listeners. "I have come to the conclusion that
there are times when you, in my opinion, have crossed the line by advocating
specific acts of violence and prejudice, even though sometimes in jest,"
Republican Gov. Judy Martz wrote Mr. Stokes in canceling her scheduled
appearance on his show last May.
Mr. Stokes says the governor was perhaps concerned, partly, by his flip
remark over the air several months beforehand that maybe someone should
phone in a bomb threat to get her out of a meeting so she could talk with
him for a scheduled interview then. "In hindsight, it was a tasteless joke,"
Mr. Stokes says.
But the 50-year-old shock jock is apologetic for little else, saying he
never advocates breaking the law and in fact has suffered vandalism of his
own property at the apparent hands of his enemies. In the case of opening
the road gates -- which, he adds, he personally supports -- he says he was
just passing along information he considered news. "I reported the story
and, bam, I got blamed for it," Mr. Stokes says, exhaling cigarette smoke as
he sits in his black-painted station wearing a black shirt and a black cap.
One of his regular callers was arrested recently after an armed standoff,
following an investigation into his alleged role as mastermind of an
assassination plot by a militia called Project Seven against the local
sheriff and police chief, among others. Although authorities say they found
a cache including 30,000 rounds of ammunition as part of that, Mr. Stokes
plays down the threat's seriousness. "It was just bar-room talk," he says.
Local environmentalists say the debate over land-use issues was fairly civil
until Mr. Stokes moved here in 1994 from the Seattle area, after tussling
with planning officials there over plans to build a housing development. It
has deteriorated to the point that bumper stickers have begun circulating
that ask: "Have you b---h-slapped an environmentalist lately?"
"This bitter, divisive vitriol was imported into this valley by John
Stokes," says Ben Long, a local environmental activist.
Mr. Stokes says he came here seeking peace but volunteered to help oppose
what he says were the same kind of antidevelopment pressures in Kalispell
that he had left in Seattle. He says he bought the radio station about two
years ago as a business proposition, but found himself on air by popular
demand. "Overall, I think a lot of Montanans agree with him," says local
resident Kathy Butterfield.
But many don't. Tiring of all the Nazi talk, retired schoolteacher Donna
Marx last year called Mr. Stokes's advertisers, asking them to drop their
support. Soon after, she says, he began attacking her on his show, airing
her name and telephone number. She says she found garbage and nails strewn
all over her driveway, in an incident that has helped to fuel his critics'
concerns that people in Kalispell will be afraid to speak out for fear of
being harassed.
"He's not about community debate; he's about name-calling," says Ken Toole,
a director of the Montana Human Rights Network, an anti-right-wing group
that Mr. Stokes derides as "nitwits." "This guy is like a naughty
two-year-old, and we ought to all say 'No, no, no' to him."
Write to Jim Carlton at jim.carlton@wsj.com
Updated March 15, 2002
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