"If you marry a non-Jew, you're finishing Hitler's work for him!" is how one rabbi put it to the class at my all-boys school. To be a Jew, according to the rabbis, your mother must be Jewish. And for her to be Jewish her mother had to be Jewish, rolling all the way back to the Hebrews plodding through the desert with Abraham.
DNA testing has made things awkward for the Jewish community. Now it's quite simple to check whether your mother's mother's mother's mother's mother was Jewish. Some folk who have lived their lives as Jews have popped off to take a DNA test and found out they are not.
An unaired episode of my television show Race Relations opens with me stomping out of my bedroom. "Jews make up 0.25 per cent of the world's population," I lisp aggressively to camera. "If I'm going to rule out 99.75 per cent of women on the pretext that Jews should only marry Jews, I'm going to make damn sure I am actually one."
Cut to my bathroom. I'm staring in the mirror, poking a little plastic rod in and out of my mouth. The rod is for scraping saliva from one's cheek.
"I'm going to the USA," I say, "to Family Tree DNA, the world's largest genetic testing firm. They send you out this kit."
I snap the head of the rod into a vial and twist on the lid.
Cut to my lounge room. My laptop is throwing blue light on my face.
I swivel my laptop around to the camera. The masthead across the webpage reads "White Pride Worldwide".
"Someone sent me a link to the American white-pride website Stormfront," I say. "Hey guys, seeing as I'm going to America for a DNA test, why don't I go get a DNA test done on one of you? How about the founder of the Nationalist Movement, Richard Barrett?"
My researcher had shot off emails to a dozen Klan-types and he's the one who got back to us. On his webpage, Barrett says he's also the founder of the American skinhead movement. He's 67 years old.
The Mississippi State Legislature is bright white and gorgeous, a bit Greek temple, a bit Gone With the Wind mansion. I trot up the steps and between the white pillars. A black state senator, Democrat Robert Johnson, meets me on one of the marble walkways.
"Can you tell us who Richard Barrett is?" I ask.
"Richard Barrett is an avowed racist and white supremacist, who believes the only true Americans are white Americans," Johnson says, his moustache bouncing up and down. "And he's one of the most outspoken white supremacists here in the state."
Coincidentally, my visit collides with a ceremony run by Richard Barrett.
"And what is the Spirit of America Day banquet?" I ask Johnson.
"It is an award ceremony," he answers, "that Richard Barrett alleges recognises athletes, male athletes, football players, who represent the best of what is America. But it's only for white students."
Fade down. Fade up.
It's night. A black pick-up truck speeds down a road in rural Mississippi. The moon must be somewhere but I can't find it and there are no streetlights, either. An old man with liver spots controls the wheel: Richard Barrett. I sit beside him. For the "founder of the American skinheads", he's sure trying hard to hide the fact that he's going bald. He has thin grey hair he's styled into a comb-over.
Barrett wears glasses but refuses to be filmed wearing glasses. He slides them off whenever the camera points his way. I also wear glasses but decide not to wear them, convinced they make me look Jewish.
Two blind phonies drive into the night.
"There was a coloured woman on television not long ago," Barrett tells me, "and they asked her what she thought of me." Barrett had been running for office. "And she said, 'When we had segregation, I didn't have the bullet holes you see in my house.' She said, 'I didn't have the syringes from the drug users on my front lawn.' And the reporter said, 'Do you think we would be better off with segregation?' And she said, 'I do.' Now, that coloured woman may be the sort of person that voted for me."
Barrett lost his election.
Barrett steers off the road and heads deep into a field. A red-brick wall rolls into the glow of the headlights. This is the Nationalist Movement headquarters. Inside, bookshelves tighten up an already tight hallway. We head down into a tiny study. The black night hid the fact that Nationalist Movement headquarters is in fact just a small house in rural Mississippi. In the study, green-spine law books colour-up one whole wall. Red-spine law books colour-up another.
Barrett points to a photo on the wall behind the photocopier. "This is where an anarchist attacked me, shouting, 'Kill, kill!" " The photo, in fact, seems to show Barrett grabbing a protester's T-shirt. "He was 19 years old and I'm quite a bit older. But I got him in a headlock. I used my skills from Vietnam. I stomped him on the ground and held him for the police."
In another photo he grins next to Miss America. A "Whites Only" sign is taped to the back of the study door.
"So what's this 'Whites Only' thing?" I ask. "So many young people today are a mixture of things. Like they'll have one Lebanese grandparent. So if you're an American with one Lebanese grandparent ..."
"You don't have that," Barrett interrupts.
"Yes, you do."
"Not really."
I find it odd that I have to argue the point that mixed-race people exist.
"Go to New York," I say.
"Sure, New York," Barrett chuckles. "You know what Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater said? He'd like to cut it off and let it float into the Atlantic."
Next to the "Whites Only" sign is a flag that looks incredibly like a swastika. "That's from South Africa," Barrett says. "Eugène Terre'Blanche's party." And next to the flag is a plaque: "Fag Free Zone."
"So you're not allowed to be gay in the Nationalist Movement?"
"Well, of course not," Barrett replies.
Leaving the study, I ask, "Why all the law books?"
Barrett tells me he's a lawyer. (Some of the hairsplitting begins to make sense.) Barrett says he grinds his enemies to dust with legal action. When a county in Georgia tried to charge Barrett for the extra police it put on to cover a protest he planned, he dragged the county through court after court, all the way to the US Supreme Court, until he won. He lawyered a black family out of a home in Jackson, Mississippi.
In the Nationalist Movement's lounge area, the first thing I notice is a rifle, propped up in the corner like a mop.
"What kind of gun is that?" I ask.
"A Chinese gun," Barrett replies, plucking it up by the barrel.
"A Chinese gun! Shouldn't you have an American one?"
"I do have American ones," he mutters. "And, in fact, did you notice the axe handle?" He perks up, pointing to an axe handle mounted on the wall. "The axe handle was given to me by Lester Maddox, who in Georgia was the one who took up the axe handle to keep the negroes out of his restaurant. And he was elected governor of the state because of it."
Next to that is a black-and-white photo, where (Christ, this is an embarrassing example of my postmodern education) he's dressed like the Illinois Nazis in The Blues Brothers.
"The Nazis in The Blues Brothers, they dress like that," I say.
"I don't know," he chuckles. "I'm trying to dress like that because it's reminiscent of the skinheads that we know from England. We have many here and it has, you know, a certain appeal."
It 's 1.30am. Barrett starts his round of the headquarters, flicking off each room light and desk lamp. "Okay, we're done here, yes?" Barrett asks me.
"Yes, I'll see you tomorrow," I say.
"I'll see you tomorrow," Barrett says.
(Later, the show's producer, John Molloy, will tell me that when we were packing, Barrett put his hand on Molloy's back and left it there too long. We agree that Mississippi's most prominent white supremacist gave off a bit of a gay vibe.)
The sun is trying hard to perk things up, but it can only do so much for the Budget Inn and Buffet car park. This is where Barrett will be hosting his whites-only sports awards, the Spirit of America Day banquet. I cross the lobby and push open the door to the Diplomat Ballroom. Balloons and bunting run from wall to wall. A Confederate flag hangs behind a raised stage.
Six helpers, including two black children, mope about. Should the black kids be here? The black kids are with a white man and a helium tank, inflating balloons. A white kid runs about, placing a small Confederate flag in the centre of each round dinner table. Up a ladder, a body is lost in a bundle of 30-odd balloons. Two legs poke out.
"Hello, Richard!" I shout up.
"Wuh, herlow!" he shouts down, muffled by the balloons.
I wag two uninflated balloons.
"Can we bother you for your time for 10 seconds?" I say. "The camera guy is saying it'll be a good shot if you and me are blowing up balloons together."
Barrett and I purse our lips to our floppy balloons, the raised stage behind us. The American football beefcake painted on the big Spirit of America Day crest looks down on us, as we huff, huff, huff.
Barrett ties a knot in his red balloon.
"How's that?" he asks.
I pluck the red balloon from his hands.
"Thank you, very much," I say.
I creep out of the Diplomat Ballroom.
The hinges squeak on the door of the motel lobby bathroom, as it swats shut behind me. I crouch on the floor, the urinals lined up behind, and paw through my backpack.
" This is the Family Tree DNA kit," I whisper to camera, ripping open the vacuum-sealed package. I hold up the plastic scraper in my left hand and the vial in my right.
Three stabs with the scraper bursts the balloon. The boom bounces wall to wall. I scrape Barrett's saliva off the shreds of red balloon.
Months earlier, the researcher and I had been slumping in a television production office, trying to figure out a way to thieve saliva from a white supremacist. Coffee cup? Toothbrush? Chewing tobacco?
When Barrett told the researcher I'd be arriving just as he was preparing his banquet - hanging streamers, blowing up balloons - I thought: God really wants me to do this.
I snap the head of the scraper into the vial and twist on the lid. I dart out of the motel lobby bathroom.
Bennett Greenspan, CEO of Family Tree DNA, rotates his laptop so I can see the screen. "Looking at your results," he says, "it's very clear you have a ... what we call an Ashkenazi background."
From a spit in a jar, he can tell that I'm an Ashkenazi Jew.
"Well, can we look at my friend's DNA?" I say. (Early that day I'd handed him a package of two vials.)
Bennett Greenspan types in a code and a new page pops up.
"The father's side is European," he says. "There's no question about that."
Greenspan spools down the page.
"On your friend's mother's mother's mother's side, your friend has African ancestry." I swivel a little happy swivel. "And so on your friend's mother's mother's mother's side, he descends from an African."
"My friend is really, really, really white," I say.
"Okay," he says. "That tells us that this event, this black marriage to a Caucasian, happened a long time ago."
"Wow. I cannot tell you how white this person is. And how white this person thinks they are."
"I cannot tell you how African they are, if they'll scratch the surface a little bit."
I'm pulling at the lapels of my best suit, stepping through the carpark of the Budget Inn and Buffet. Car headlights blind me, but I march on.
Richard Barrett is held together in a sharp suit, too. His fingers wriggle up and down a Casio keyboard, in the corner of the Diplomat Ballroom. The ballroom is even more coloured-in than this morning. Confederate battle flags are planted across the stage. Six white athletes march in to Barrett's Onward, Christian Soldiers.
The athletes' families are seated at round tables across the room. A candle has joined the Confederate battle flag in the centre of each. The local mayor and other special guests look down from a long dining table on the stage.
A pot-bellied man called Vince Thornton bends down until his lips nearly touch the microphone on the podium. "Please join me in welcoming the chairman of America's Foundation," he announces, "Richard Barrett."
Beauty queen Kimberly Page's tiara twinkles as Barrett passes behind her on his way to the podium's microphone.
"Thank you, Vince. American youth, because you are special, you deserve a special day," Barrett reads from his cards. "Ever since the days when youngsters were pressured towards long hair, loose living and drugs, the Spirit of America Day has showcased clean-cut, clean-living youth who are patriotic to the core."
Barrett tells us what makes Mississippi, Mississippi. He gushes over the mayor, the beauty queen and a local country singer in attendance. "At this time," he continues, "we'd like to thank Australian television, which is here covering the banquet and the Spirit of America appreciation. John, we'd be honoured to have you."
I walk from the back of the ballroom, straightening the Windsor knot on my tie. The stage lighting burns my eyes and the crowd turns to shadows. I lean down to the microphone.
"Um, well, thank you to the people of Mississippi and, um, congratulations to all the, er, participants in the Spirit of America Day awards."
I suck in a little air. I turn my head to Barrett and then turn back to the crowd.
"Now, this is a bit awkward. But, er, earlier when I interviewed you, Richard, I procured a saliva sample. And I took it to a DNA testing plant. And the results are in, as they say. And there's no real easy way to put this, but you have African DNA."
Perhaps three confused giggles arise from an otherwise silent ballroom.
"But don't worry," I continue, "it's not like you're black black. It's more you're white and a bit black. Like Barack Obama. But it doesn't really matter because we're, like, all mixed up. All of us. Anyway, thank you everybody and enjoy the Spirit of America Day banquet."
I turn my head to Barrett. He is pulling a smile so wide and so fake that I can see his decaying gums. "Ha, ha," mumbles Barrett with a clap, "very good."
It is a tribute to the politeness of Mississippians that I receive a light applause. Nevertheless, I dart out of the ballroom.
The next day, Barrett sends a registered letter to David Pendleton, Chief Operating Officer of the ABC, threatening legal action. The ABC is happy to defend us against defamation. That's a civil action and all part of the rough and tumble of this type of TV. However, Barrett is alleging fraud, and possibly therefore trespass, which are criminal offences.
American lawyers tell us Barrett-the-lawyer has a case. One he might well eventually lose, but a case nonetheless. The lawyers also mention Richard Barrett vs Oldsmobile Division General Motors Corporation and Richard Barrett vs Some Guy Who Came To Repair His Xerox Machine.
The ABC forbids the story from airing.
One year after filming Richard Barrett, and three months after the airing of Race Relations, 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 vanguardnewsnet-work.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."
Richard Barrett has been found, stabbed to death, in his burning house. A 22-year-old, Vincent McGee, has confessed to the murder.
I hit refresh, refresh, refresh.
Pretty soon more news blows out of Mississippi. McGee's stepfather has told a local paper McGee did yard work for Barrett. The day of the killing, Barrett had paid McGee $26 for a whole day's work. McGee argued with Barrett and the fight blew up. Now the murder's about money as well as race.
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 court what McGee has told investigators: he had been doing yard work at Barrett's Nationalist Movement headquarters. But he adds another element. Barrett then drove him to Barrett's house in another part of Mississippi. Inside this house, Barrett made a sexual advance. McGee knifed Barrett and lit his house on fire.
So now the murder's about race, money and sex. Jesus. Richard Barrett managed to get himself killed in a race crime. Hater of, employer of, possible lover of, a black man. Vanguard News Network was indeed just right: what was Richard Barrett thinking?
Edited extract from Murder in Mississippi by John Safran, published by Penguin this week.
Lead-in photographs by Germain McMicking; Getty Images; Corbis
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