On the evening of June 18, 1984, Alan Berg, an outspoken Denver talk-show host, was murdered in front of his home, shot in the face and torso twelve times as he emerged from his Volkswagen. The crime received a great deal of coverage and while it was surprising that the killing of a local radio personality would command network TV airtime and headlines across the United States, the media’s intuition about the death was right. The slaying had political, racial, religious, and historical overtones.
An irrepressible loudmouth, Berg would argue with anyone about anything at any time. The rude comic genius was operating in a new medium – talk radio – and presented himself as the West’s Last Angry Man, earning the highest ratings ever given to a talk-show host in his market. In one local survey, he won the award for being the most liked and most disliked media figure in Denver. His humor was always political, and he was merciless with sanctimonious right-wing Christians or Ku Klux Klan members who called his show, but could be just as nasty with knee-jerk liberals or self-righteous members of minority groups. He criticized without prejudice.
His death unleashed the FBI’s largest investigation into domestic terrorism in American history and the murder weapon was found four months after the murder in the home of Gary Lee Yarbrough of Sandpoint, Idaho. Yarbrough was a member of a heavily armed, neo-Nazi faction of young men, called the Order, who preached revolution against Jews, African-Americans, gays, feminists, and white people who supported progressive causes. Their first assassination target was Alan Berg.
Talke d to Death details the rise, growth, and influence of these organizations– self-acknowledged descendants of Hitler’s Nazi party — and shows how the opposing forces of a truth-telling Jewish radio commentator and a band of violent racists collided at the moment of Berg’s death. The book was the first to document the danger of groups like the Order and heralded darker events. In the 1990s, white rage surfaced again and again: in Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of an Oklahoma City federal building in 1995, which killed 168 people; in Mark Fuhrman’s racist role in the O.J. Simpson trial; in the recorded messages of the Columbine High School killers in 1999; and in the increasing intolerance broadcast on America’s airwaves and promoted in certain religions. The story in Talked to Death would repeatedly echo through our culture and in future books written by Stephen Singular, laying the foundation for much to come.
