Fifty for 150: White supremacists assassinate radio host Alan Berg in 1984

In an era of far-right extremism, rising antisemitism, political violence and outrage media, the story of Alan Berg’s murder bears many tragically familiar qualities.

This story is part of Colorado at 150. Each Fifty for 150 story focuses on an event that helped define Colorado over 150 years of statehood. Newsline is publishing one Fifty for 150 story every weekday in reverse chronological order until the sesquicentennial, Aug. 1, when the final of 50 stories, about the declaration of statehood, will appear.

Berg was a popular radio show host on KOA in Denver. He was a flamethrower before big-name provocateurs such as Rush Limbaugh entered the national conversation, one of the “shock jocks” of the 1980s. Unlike Limbaugh and many of the later crop of radio talkers, Berg was a liberal who often trained his rhetorical hostility on religion, white supremacy and other far-right causes.

Berg was born in Chicago in 1934. He came to Colorado at 17 as a University of Colorado Boulder student, though he bounced around several colleges before graduating, and he earned a law degree from DePaul University in Chicago, where he started a law practice. He and his wife, who was from Denver, later moved back to Colorado.

His gift for talking was known to his friends, one of whom hosted a show on KGMC and invited Berg to take a turn at the mic. Soon Berg settled into an aggressive on-air persona.

“The abrasiveness was merely his shtick, and it was quite often very humorous,” according to the Colorado Encyclopedia. 

By early 1984, Berg had become so popular that he was featured prominently in a “60 Minutes” segment on talk radio. 

“Like his counterparts throughout the country, his most important qualifications are an appetite for anger, an uncontrollable urge to expound on any subject, and the possession of a verbal version of a blunt instrument,” the segment said of Berg.

It’s said there was once a poll in Denver to crown the most liked and most disliked personality on radio, and Berg won both titles.

Berg, who was Jewish, caught the attention of national white supremacists, and they made no secret of their displeasure with him. In 1979, Colorado Ku Klux Klan leader Fred Wilkins went to the KWBZ station, where Berg was broadcasting at the time, and told Berg, “I’m Fred Wilkins, and you’re going to die.”

Members of a white supremacist group called The Order met in early 1984 in Boise, Idaho, and drew up a hit list, which included Norman Lear, the groundbreaking producer of Black-centered TV shows such as “Good Times” and “The Jeffersons”; Morris Dees, co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center; federal Judge Wayne Justice; and Berg.

Berg was the only one they got to.

On the evening of June 18, 1984, Order members Robert Jay Mathews, Richard Scutari, Bruce Pierce and David Lane staked out Berg’s home at 1445 Adams Street in Denver. He arrived home at 9:45, and as he exited his car he was gunned down in a hail of bullets fired from a MAC-10 submachine gun. He was 50.

The ensuing manhunt lasted almost two years. Mathews died during a standoff with FBI agents at a house near Seattle. Federal authorities eventually tracked down Scutari, Lane and Pierce in various parts of the country, and they were convicted and sentenced to decades in prison. Pierce, who pulled the trigger, was given a 100-year sentence.

Berg’s assassination continues to permeate culture. It was the basis of the 2024 movie “The Order,” starring Jude Law and featuring Marc Maron as Berg. The 1988 Oliver Stone movie “Talk Radio” starring Eric Begosian is loosely based on the book “Talked to Death: The Life and Murder of Alan Berg” by Stephen Singular.

In a 2024 remembrance of Berg, Denver attorney and podcast personality Craig Silverman remarked on the evolution of far-right extremism since the 1980s.

“The neo-Nazi types who silenced Berg are out of the shadows now, finding new life in MAGA, right-wing TV, AM radio and Steve Bannon podcasts,” Silverman wrote. 

There’s a chilling moment in the “60 Minutes” broadcast, which aired five months before Berg’s death. He was asked if the form of broadcasting he practiced was dangerous.

“There is a danger, I agree with you,” Berg said. “That’s the danger we exhibit in all rights of free expression … Hopefully my legal training will prevent me from saying the one thing that will kill me. And I’ve come awfully close.”