The Idaho Panhandle is the northern region of the U.S. State of Idaho that encompasses the ten northernmost counties of Benewah, Bonner, Boundary, Clearwater, Idaho, Kootenai, Latah, Lewis, Nez Perce, Shoshone. Residents of the panhandle refer to the region as North Idaho. The southern part of this region, from Moscow south, is sometimes referred to as North Central Idaho, with the rest as North Idaho. The panhandle is bordered by the state of Washington to the west, Montana to the east andBritish Columbia to the north.
Richard Girnt Butler (February 23, 1918 – September 8, 2004) was an American aerospace engineer for Lockheed, who later became the leader of the Christian Identity white supremacist group Aryan Nations.
Butler was born in Denver, Colorado, to Winfred Girnt and Clarence Butler. His father was of English ancestry, while his mother was ofGerman-Jewish ancestry.[1] He was raised in Los Angeles, California, and after graduating from high school in 1938, he became anaeronautical engineering major at Los Angeles City College. He was a co-inventor of the rapid repair of tubeless tires, for which he held both U.S. and Canadian patents.[2]
Butler was a former member of the Silver Shirts.[3]
While he was a member of a Presbyterian church he married Betty Litch in 1941, with whom he fathered two daughters.[4] Litch died on December 1, 1995 after 54 years of marriage. After Pearl Harbor, Butler enlisted in the Army Air Corps where he served stateside for the duration of World War II.
In 1946, Butler organized and operated a machine plant for the production and precision machining of automotive parts and engine assemblies for commercial and military aircraft in the United States, Africa, and India.[4] Butler was a marketing analyst for new inventions from 1964 through 1973. Butler later became a senior manufacturing engineer for Lockheed Martin in Palmdale, California.[4]
In the early 1970s, he moved with his family from Palmdale, California, to North Idaho, where he founded the Aryan Nations, also known as the Church of Jesus Christ–Christian, whose ideology is a mixture of Christian Identity and Nazism. The organization operated from a 20-acre (81,000 m2) compound in Hayden Lake, Idaho, a suburb of tourist town Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, which became the center of a U.S. neo-Nazi network with worldwide links. Butler was implicated in plots to overthrow the United States government beginning in the 1980s, and had ties to the neo-Nazi group known as The Order. His group often blanketed the community with fliers and mass mailings, and held an annual parade in downtown Coeur d'Alene, however the parade was a pariah since the Aryan Nations was condemned by the town of Coeur d'Alene. Locals responded almost immediately by forming the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, with legal battles often overshadowing the parades.
Butler organized yearly gatherings of white supremacists at his compound in Idaho which he termed the "Aryan Nations World Congress." At their height in 1984-86, several hundred people would attend including most of the well known leaders of the American far right, such as Klansman Louis Beam, White Aryan Resistance leader Tom Metzger, Gordon "Jack" Mohr, Robert E. Miles, Posse Comitatus leader James Wickstrom, Thomas Robb, Grand Wizard Don Black, and John Trochmann leader of the Militia of Montana.
In 1987, Butler was among fourteen far right activists "indicted for seditious conspiracy" by the U.S. Department of Justice,[5] and trial was held in federal court in Arkansas. However, "prosecutors failed to convince an Arkansas jury that Butler and several other prominent racists had conspired to start a race war."[6]
In 2000, Victoria and Jason Keenan, two Native Americans who were harassed at gunpoint by Aryan Nations' members, successfully sued Butler.[7] Represented by local attorney Norm Gissel and Morris Dees's Montgomery, Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, they won a combined civil judgment of $6.3 million from Butler and the Aryan Nations' members who attacked them.[8] Butler then sold the compound. In September 2000, fellow Sandpoint, Idaho millionaire Vincent Bertollini provided Butler with a new house inHayden, Idaho. The house was troublesome for neighbors; police were forced to respond to at least one domestic disturbance call, in which two Aryan Nation members were engaged in an altercation on his lawn.
From late 2003 until his death, his reputation within the Aryan Nations suffered; when Butler and his traveling companion attempted to board a plane at a Spokane, Washington airport, his companion, who turned out to be porn star Bianca Trump (famous for her explicit, interracial sex scenes), was arrested on an outstanding forgery warrant.[9]
Butler died in his home on September 8, 2004. A spokesman for the Aryan Nations stated that he died in his sleep from congestive heart failure. At the time of his death, the Aryan Nations had 200 members, Butler's World Congress in 2002 drew less than 100 people, and when he ran for mayor, he lost by about 2,100 votes to 50.[4]
For nearly three decades, "Reverend" Richard Butler led Aryan Nations and the Church of Jesus Christ Christian -- the nation's most well-known bastion of neo-Nazism and Christian Identity. During the past few years, however, Butler's tenure was fraught with upheaval and uncertainty. In the fall of 2000, with membership already on the decline, both he and Aryan Nations were bankrupted by a lawsuit (stemming from an assault by the group's guards). Butler was forced to relinquish the Aryan Nations compound, and the group's future appeared tenuous. Shortly thereafter, in September 2001, Aryan Nations announced that Butler had selected Harold Ray Redfeairn as his successor and that it would open an "office" in the Ulysses, Pennsylvania, home of August Kreis, its Director of Information. After several months of infighting and recriminations, though, both Kreis and Redfeairn broke off from Butler (and each other) and established separate factions. Although well into his 80s, Butler claimed to be re-organizing, and in 2003 he even ran for mayor of Hayden, Idaho. At the time of his death in September 2004, Butler remained a revered figure in the extremist world, and was a featured speaker at white supremacist gatherings around the country.
|
Early History
Butler Born in Colorado in 1918, Richard Butler moved to Los Angeles with his family after the start of the Great Depression. He studied aeronautical engineering at Los Angeles City College and served in the United States Armed Forces during World War II. He returned, according to the Aryan Nations Web site, "deeply troubled concerning the future of his nation….Governmental edicts seemed to be always contrary to the best interest of the nation, and of the White Race, in particular." He later worked as an engineer for Lockheed in Southern California, where he was introduced to Identity teachings by William Potter Gale, a retired colonel (and aide to General Douglas MacArthur in the South Pacific), leader of the para-military California Rangers, and a founder of the anti-government Posse Comitatus. By the mid-1960s, Butler had fully embraced Identity and served as National Director of the Christian Defense League, an organization founded by the most prominent popularizer of Identity - and grandiose anti-Semite - Wesley Swift.1 Butler worked under Swift for 10 years, until Swift's death in 1971, at which time Butler proclaimed his Church of Jesus Christ Christian to be the direct successor to Swift's ministry. Butler then moved his congregation to Northern Idaho, where it became, in his words, a "Call to the Nation," or Aryan Nations. Its goal, as a subsequent newsletter stated, was to form "a national racial state. We shall have it at whatever price is necessary. Just as our forefathers purchased their freedom in blood, so must we….We will have to kill the bastards."
Focal Point for the White Race
Today a frail octogenarian, Richard Butler remains one of the country's most prominent and longstanding proponents of white nationalism and religious racism. His ideology melds the fundamentals of Christian Identity with paramilitaristic, Nazi-like views and a high regard for Adolf Hitler. He has reportedly asserted that while Jesus Christ was the greatest man who ever lived, Hitler was a close second. It is no surprise, then, that he has always had associates across the spectrum of right-wing extremist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, the neo-Nazi National Alliance and anti-government militias.
In 1981, for example, Butler was linked closely with imprisoned German neo-Nazi Manfred Roeder, whom Butler hailed as "the truly Great Aryan Leader of Europe this day!" [sic] The connection to Roeder was significant in that it provided networking opportunities between Butler and other Roeder supporters - including James K. Warner, head of the New Christian Crusade Church in Louisiana, National Alliance boss William Pierce and anti-Semitic propagandist Willis Carto.
Shortly thereafter, in 1983, several of Butler's followers joined with members of the National Alliance and Ku Klux Klan splinter groups to form The Silent Brotherhood, known more widely as The Order, which planned to overthrow the United States government in hopes of establishing an Aryan homeland in the Pacific Northwest. To this end, The Order committed a series of violent crimes in 1983 and 1984 - including murder, bombings and armed robbery. Members of the group were eventually arrested and imprisoned, while its founder and leader Robert Mathews, an active recruiter for the National Alliance, was ultimately killed in a fire during a shootout with federal agents in December 1984.
Until quite recently, Butler's compound was arguably the closest substitute for the Aryan homeland Mathews and his colleagues had sought. Situated in the otherwise peaceful community of Hayden Lake, Idaho, it was long considered by many white supremacists to be the "international headquarters of the White race," as Butler dubbed it. To aid in recruitment efforts, build support and strengthen alliances among a range of far-right groups, Butler hosted annual white supremacist summer "festivals," known as the World Congress of Aryan Nations, that turned his 20-acre Northern Idaho digs into a central gathering point for extremists of all stripes. Patrolled by a security force of armed guards and dogs, Butler's property provided the dual advantages of being remote from potential intrusions by law enforcement officials, counterdemonstrators or media, while also providing an atmosphere of rugged, unspoiled outdoors commensurate with the survivalist and separatist sensibilities of many visitors.
At these conferences, which have attracted as many as 200 participants, Butler offered paramilitary training in urban terrorism and guerrilla warfare as well as, more generally, a chance for like-minded extremists to meet and discuss topics of mutual interest; he referred to his joint efforts with Klansmen and other hate-movement figures as an "interrelationship of people with the same beliefs and ideas." A July 1982 weekend gathering, for example, brought together members of at least 13 Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi and other racist groups. The organization has also hosted such mandarins of the far right as Klansman and "leaderless resistance" formulator Louis Beam, the influential (now deceased) organizer Robert Miles, Tom Metzger of White Aryan Resistance, Posse Comitatus leader James Wickstrom, Identity ideologue Gordon "Jack" Mohr, Grand Wizard (and later pioneering hate Webmaster) Don Black and representatives from such white supremacist organizations as the National Socialist Party of America and the National States Rights Party.2 John Trochmann, featured at the 1990 congress, later became leader of the Militia of Montana, one of the most active anti-government militia groups in the country.
Butler also expanded his reach by hosting youth activities at his rural headquarters. In the early 1980s, an "Aryan Nations Academy" was established to inculcate the group's philosophy in the minds of local youngsters. In 1982, an informational mailing claimed that the "academy" had 15 full-time students, preschool through grade eight. In addition, youth conferences attracting numerous skinheads were held in April to coincide with Hitler's birthday. Aryan Nations has also hosted white power skinhead rock bands, including Bound for Glory, Christian Identity Skins and Odin's Law, a Canadian group.
Since 1979, Butler's cadre has been engaged in active prison outreach as well; it corresponds with prison inmates and distributes the group's materials to them. In 1983, Beam, Butler's assistant at the time, wrote that "the ever increasing Prison Ministry of the Church of Jesus Christ Christian has begun to be felt throughout the state prison system as a major force." This effort became an important aspect of Butler's agenda during the 1980s given that so many members of The Order and Aryan Nations were serving long prison sentences as a result of major federal prosecutions between 1985 and 1987.
Late in 1987, Butler announced plans to expand Aryan Nations activities, opening a branch in neighboring Utah and launching a weekly radio broadcast called "The Aryan Nations Hour." When the program was quickly cancelled due to alleged death threats and advertising losses, its Aryan Nations host blamed the "liberal-Marxist-homosexual-Zionist coalition." This alleged coalition could not prevent Butler from opening more than a dozen state offices over the years, however, nor from designating regional "ambassadors" to oversee them.
Who's the Boss?
During the following decade, contention plagued Butler's inner circle, with several important Aryan Nations members leaving to form new groups. Carl Franklin, who had been Chief of Staff, left in the summer of 1993 as a result of disagreements with Butler, who had named Franklin his successor the year before. Wayne Jones, who had served as Security Chief at the compound since the late 1980s, departed with Franklin. Both resigned on the last day of the world congress, claiming in a letter to their former compatriots that neither had received a paycheck in more than two years. They and two other members moved to western Montana to form their own white supremacist group - the Church of Jesus Christ Christian of Montana.
Six months after these departures, in January 1994, two more key figures in Butler's inner circle, Charles and Betty Tate, who ran the organization's office and printing operation, left to join their son-in-law, Kirk Lyons; Lyons is a North Carolina-based lawyer who has called himself an "active sympathizer" with his white supremacist clients. In addition, Floyd Cochran, a one-time Aryan Nations official, quit the group and renounced anti-Semitism and racism.
Disunity among the leadership became even more apparent at the annual congress held at the compound for three days in July 1995. Although attendance - approximately 125 (including 25 skinheads, a good turnout) - was somewhat higher than in prior years, a fistfight broke out when it was alleged that the wife of Staff Leader Tim Bishop was stealing money from the organization. The fracas contributed to Bishop's decision to resign his post and return to Kansas, where he had previously been a Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon.
Months later, in December, Butler's wife, Betty, whom he married in 1941, died of cancer. Dispirited, the aging leader's health also declined, and the question of selecting a successor became increasingly relevant. At the time, it was thought that Louis Beam, the militant strategist who had been touted in the past as Butler's heir apparent, might step in. Former Texas Grand Dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s, Beam became involved with Butler in 1981, serving as Aryan Nations Ambassador-at-Large and purchasing property on the Northern Idaho panhandle, not far from Hayden Lake; he had delivered well-received speeches at the 1993 and 1995 world congresses that bolstered his standing as the most likely successor. However, after failing to attend the 1996 gathering Beam unexpectedly fell out of favor with movement radicals, allegedly for toning down his anti-Semitism.
For a time in 1997, Aryan Nations' Ohio chapter - one of the 18 "state offices" the organization now claims across the country - seemed to be positioning itself as a possible new headquarters upon Butler's demise. Members held rallies and pursued fundraising in several Ohio cities; they also distributed anti-black and anti-Semitic fliers, especially targeting local rabbis and synagogues throughout northern Kentucky and southwestern Ohio. However, the chapter suffered a setback in September 1997 when its state leader, Harold Ray Redfeairn of Dayton, was sentenced to six months in prison for carrying a concealed weapon.
Later in 1997, after leading some of the group's few hundred followers in its annual march through the streets of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, Butler named as his successor Neuman Britton, a longtime member and chaplain of Butler's Church known for his fiery oratory. Based in Escondido, California, Britton was the organization's California State Leader and regularly attended Aryan Nations events in Idaho, Tennessee, Pennsylvania and California. In August 2001, however, Britton died of cancer at the age of 75.
Recent Developments
In the past, Butler has managed to raise funds for Aryan Nations activities by encouraging congregants to make offerings and pay membership fees in addition to selling flags and tapes of his sermons. Butler also requires Church members to tithe 10 percent of their incomes. The group's financial prospects changed dramatically in 1998, however, when Carl E. Story and R. Vincent Bertollini, acquaintances of Butler who had become wealthy in the field of computer technology, donated a significant sum to his organization. Both recent transplants from California's Silicon Valley to Sandpoint, Idaho, they founded and lead the 11th Hour Remnant Messenger, an Identity ministry that shares the apocalyptic racism of Aryan Nations. The two men have underwritten several expensive propaganda efforts, including the distribution of a videotaped interview with Butler that was reportedly sent to 9,000 residents of Northern Idaho.
Butler's fortunes shortly took a negative turn, however, when Victoria and Jason Keenan filed a lawsuit against him and Aryan Nations; in 1998, the mother and son had momentarily stopped their car on a road in front of Butler's compound, whereupon they were assaulted, chased and shot at by Aryan Nations guards. In September 2000, a jury found Butler and the group guilty of negligence in the selection, training and supervision of the guards, and the Keenans, who were represented by the Southern Poverty Law Center, were awarded a $6.3 million judgment. Butler was forced to declare bankruptcy and have his assets liquidated in order to begin paying off the debt. The 20-acre Aryan Nations compound and the Aryan Nations name were legally handed over to the Keenans, and Butler renamed the organization, at least temporarily, the Aryan National Alliance. Bertollini purchased a new home for the Identity pastor in nearby Hayden, Idaho, where Butler vowed to continue running the group.
As the bankruptcy sale of the compound and the Aryan Nations name approached, some of Butler's followers began defecting to a newly-established Christian Identity church, the Church of True Israel, based in Noxon, Montana. Headed by a "council of prelates," instead of a single leader, the Church was founded in 1996 by five men with ties to Aryan Nations. During the 1995 Aryan World Congress, the Spokane Spokesman- Review reported, a faction of state Aryan Nations leaders attempted unsuccessfully to wrest power from Butler; soon afterward, two of the failed mutineers, John Burke and Charles Mangels, left Aryan Nations and founded the new church. Like its predecessor, it preaches white supremacy and racist theology, but it has distanced itself from Butler's glorification of Nazism. Although precise connections cannot be drawn, several of Butler's close supporters are rumored to have ties to True Israel.
Looking Forward
In January 2001, in the wake of these defections, Butler made an effort to rejuvenate Aryan Nations, appointing 21-year-old Shawn Winkler as Acting Staff Leader and Youth Activities Coordinator. Winkler already held permits for three marches for the upcoming year, in Sandpoint, Rathdrum and Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Butler also announced the start-up of a new telephone hot line, along with a new Webmaster, Pastor August Kreis III, who has also run a Web site for another Identity group, the Posse Comitatus. Based in Pennsylvania, Kreis serves as Ambassador to the seven states in Aryan Nations' northeast region. Butler also defiantly declared that the organization was reverting to its original name, Church of Jesus Christ Christian/Aryan Nations - a decision whose legality, or seriousness, is uncertain.
In a letter reporting these changes to followers, Butler wrote: "The loss of Home, Church, personal possessions and automobiles didn't hurt so much as the loss of those who claimed to be friends and comrades in the struggle to awake our people to the terrible fate they and their posterity face.…The Legal profession, courts, big business and media are united in the proposition that the White homogeneous population of North Idaho be mongrelized."
In late September 2001, Aryan Nations announced that Butler had chosen Ohio's Harold Ray Redfeairn as his successor. In a shuffling of titles whose effect remains to be seen, he also named August Kreis "Director of Information" and Shawn Winkler "Director of Aryan Nation Youth Corps." The announcement stated that the group would be opening an office and "church grounds" in Ulysses, Pennsylvania, where Kreis lives. Butler, the announcement said, "will continue to remain the rock and spiritual leader of Aryan Nations but will be taking a less active role in the everyday running of the Aryan Nations affairs."
1Swift made such statements as "all Jews must be destroyed" and "I prophesy that before November 1953, there will not be a Jew in the United States, and by that I mean a Jew that will be able to walk or talk." Gale's attitudes were comparable: "You got your nigger Jews, you got your Asiatic Jews and you got your white Jews. They're all Jews, and they're all the offspring of the devil."
2In April 1987, a grand jury in Ft. Smith, Arkansas, returned indictments charging Butler, Beam, Miles, and 11 others, including several members of The Order, with participating in a seditious conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government. In April 1988, a jury found the defendants not guilty (the charges against one defendant had already been dismissed).
Birth of ESAU Year 1901 BC 4000 yrs ago starting at verse 20 And Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebekah to wife, the daughter of Bethuel the Syrian of Padanaram, the sister to Laban the Syrian. 21 And Isaac intreated the LORD for his wife, because she was barren: and the LORD was intreated of him, and Rebekah his wife conceived.
22 And the children struggled together within her; and she said, If it be so, why am I thus? And she went to enquire of the LORD.23 And the LORD said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger. In this scripture it describes 2 different people and 2 different nations. Manner means=the prevailing customs, ways of living, and habits of a people, class, period,and looks.The 2 nations would be different in looks, the way they think, and customs. ONE PEOPLE WILL BE A STRONGER PEOPLE=ONE PEOPLE WILL BE MENTALY PHYSICALY STRONGER THAN THE OTHER NATION.the PROPHECY means the nation that came out first will, in the end serve the younger brother meaning slavery.24 And when her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold, there were twins in her womb. 25 And the first came out red, all over like an hairy garment; and they called his name Esau. The first came out RED=No pigmentation the blood shows through the skin,and hairy meaning this baby was born very hairy.EXAMPLE WHITE PEOPLE ARE MORE HAIRY NATURALY THAN NEGROES OR CHINESE,NATIVE AMERICANS etc.http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ gfXupHOEhH0/R7sJG9SVptI/AAAAAA AAA0E/LcU8f8-x_EY/s1600-h/hair y_man_copy.jpg http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_TMlQo_69v-0/RuqoNsH... NAME ESAU MEANS=ishah which means wasted.What was wasted his pigmentation.26 And after that came his brother out, and his hand took hold on Esau's heel; and his name was called Jacob: and Isaac was threescore years old when she bare them.Jacob was not discribed because he was normal looking.Ex black people can have a white looking no pigmentation baby.http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/306... is an example of what the scriptures are talking about.That is a form of Leprosy=Vitiligo here are the scriptures to prove this statement.Leviticus Chapter 13-9-11,24 9 When the plague of leprosy is in a man, then he shall be brought unto the priest;
10 And the priest shall see him: and, behold, if the rising be WHITE in the skin, and it have turned the hair WHITE, and there be quick raw flesh in the rising; examplehttp://2.bp.blogspot.com/_BBGqJK5AW9o/SlOJT1x...http://www.mugshots.com/IMAGES/Mugshot__johns...http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_RaOrchOImw8/SK3FsxN... 11 It is an old leprosy in the skin of his flesh, and the priest shall pronounce him unclean, and shall not shut him up: for he is unclean.24 Or if there be any flesh, in the skin whereof there is a hot burning, and the quick flesh that burneth have a white bright spot, somewhat REDDISH, or WHITE. BLONDE HAIR is a form of leprosy.30 Then the priest shall see the plague: and, behold, if it be in sight deeper than the skin; and there be in it a YELLOW thin hair; then the priest shall pronounce him unclean: White skin is a mutation as well as blue eyes
Scientists Find A DNA Change That Accounts For White Skin
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 16, 2005
Scientists said yesterday that they have discovered a tiny genetic mutation that largely explains the first appearance of white skin in humans tens of thousands of years ago, a finding that helps solve one of biology's most enduring mysteries and illuminates one of humanity's greatest sources of strife.
The work suggests that the skin-whitening mutation occurred by chance in a single individual after the first human exodus from Africa, when all people were brown-skinned. That person's offspring apparently thrived as humans moved northward into what is now Europe, helping to give rise to the lightest of the world's races.
Leaders of the study, at Penn State University, warned against interpreting the finding as a discovery of "the race gene." Race is a vaguely defined biological, social and political concept, they noted, and skin color is only part of what race is -- and is not.
In fact, several scientists said, the new work shows just how small a biological difference is reflected by skin color. The newly found mutation involves a change of just one letter of DNA code out of the 3.1 billion letters in the human genome -- the complete instructions for making a human being.
"It's a major finding in a very sensitive area," said Stephen Oppenheimer, an expert in anthropological genetics at Oxford University, who was not involved in the work. "Almost all the differences used to differentiate populations from around the world really are skin deep."
The work raises a raft of new questions -- not least of which is why white skin caught on so thoroughly in northern climes once it arose. Some scientists suggest that lighter skin offered a strong survival advantage for people who migrated out of Africa by boosting their levels of bone-strengthening vitamin D; others have posited that its novelty and showiness simply made it more attractive to those seeking mates.
The work also reveals for the first time that Asians owe their relatively light skin to different mutations. That means that light skin arose independently at least twice in human evolution, in each case affecting populations with the facial and other traits that today are commonly regarded as the hallmarks of Caucasian and Asian races.
Several sociologists and others said they feared that such revelations might wrongly overshadow the prevailing finding of genetics over the past 10 years: that the number of DNA differences between races is tiny compared with the range of genetic diversity found within any single racial group.
Even study leader Keith Cheng said he was at first uncomfortable talking about the new work, fearing that the finding of such a clear genetic difference between people of African and European ancestries might reawaken discredited assertions of other purported inborn differences between races -- the most long-standing and inflammatory of those being intelligence.
"I think human beings are extremely insecure and look to visual cues of sameness to feel better, and people will do bad things to people who look different," Cheng said.
The discovery, described in today's issue of the journal Science, was an unexpected outgrowth of studies Cheng and his colleagues were conducting on inch-long zebra fish, which are popular research tools for geneticists and developmental biologists. Having identified a gene that, when mutated, interferes with its ability to make its characteristic black stripes, the team scanned human DNA databases to see if a similar gene resides in people.
To their surprise, they found virtually identical pigment-building genes in humans, chickens, dogs, cows and many others species, an indication of its biological value.
They got a bigger surprise when they looked in a new database comparing the genomes of four of the world's major racial groups. That showed that whites with northern and western European ancestry have a mutated version of the gene.
Skin color is a reflection of the amount and distribution of the pigment melanin, which in humans protects against damaging ultraviolet rays but in other species is also used for camouflage or other purposes. The mutation that deprives zebra fish of their stripes blocks the creation of a protein whose job is to move charged atoms across cell membranes, an obscure process that is crucial to the accumulation of melanin inside cells.
Humans of European descent, Cheng's team found, bear a slightly different mutation that hobbles the same protein with similar effect. The defect does not affect melanin deposition in other parts of the body, including the hair and eyes, whose tints are under the control of other genes.
A few genes have previously been associated with human pigment disorders -- most notably those that, when mutated, lead to albinism, an extreme form of pigment loss. But the newly found glitch is the first found to play a role in the formation of "normal" white skin. The Penn State team calculates that the gene, known as slc24a5, is responsible for about one-third of the pigment loss that made black skin white. A few other as-yet-unidentified mutated genes apparently account for the rest.
Although precise dating is impossible, several scientists speculated on the basis of its spread and variation that the mutation arose between 20,000 and 50,000 years ago. That would be consistent with research showing that a wave of ancestral humans migrated northward and eastward out of Africa about 50,000 years ago.
Unlike most mutations, this one quickly overwhelmed its ancestral version, at least in Europe, suggesting it had a real benefit. Many scientists suspect that benefit has to do with vitamin D, made in the body with the help of sunlight and critical to proper bone development.
Sun intensity is great enough in equatorial regions that the vitamin can still be made in dark-skinned people despite the ultraviolet shielding effects of melanin. In the north, where sunlight is less intense and cold weather demands that more clothing be worn, melanin's ultraviolet shielding became a liability, the thinking goes.
Today that solar requirement is largely irrelevant because many foods are supplemented with vitamin D.
Some scientists said they suspect that white skin's rapid rise to genetic dominance may also be the product of "sexual selection," a phenomenon of evolutionary biology in which almost any new and showy trait in a healthy individual can become highly prized by those seeking mates, perhaps because it provides evidence of genetic innovativeness.
Cheng and co-worker Victor A. Canfield said their discovery could have practical spinoffs. A gene so crucial to the buildup of melanin in the skin might be a good target for new drugs against melanoma, for example, a cancer of melanin cells in which slc24a5 works overtime.
But they and others agreed that, for better or worse, the finding's most immediate impact may be an escalating debate about the meaning of race.
Recent revelations that all people are more than 99.9 percent genetically identical has proved that race has almost no biological validity. Yet geneticists' claims that race is a phony construct have not rung true to many nonscientists -- and understandably so, said Vivian Ota Wang of the National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda.
"You may tell people that race isn't real and doesn't matter, but they can't catch a cab," Ota Wang said. "So unless we take that into account it makes us sound crazy."
People with blue eyes have a single, common ancestor, according to new research.
A team of scientists has tracked down a genetic mutation that leads to blue eyes. The mutation occurred between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago, so before then, there were no blue eyes.
"Originally, we all had brown eyes," said Hans Eiberg from the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Copenhagen.
The mutation affected the so-called OCA2 gene, which is involved in the production of melanin, the pigment that gives color to our hair, eyes and skin.
"A genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the creation of a 'switch,' which literally 'turned off' the ability to produce brown eyes," Eiberg said.
The genetic switch is located in the gene adjacent to OCA2 and rather than completely turning off the gene, the switch limits its action, which reduces the production of melanin in the iris. In effect, the turned-down switch diluted brown eyes to blue.
If the OCA2 gene had been completely shut down, our hair, eyes and skin would be melanin-less, a condition known as albinism.
"It's exactly what I sort of expected to see from what we know about selection around this area," said John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, referring to the study results regarding the OCA2 gene. Hawks was not involved in the current study.
Baby blues Eiberg and his team examined DNA from mitochondria, the cells' energy-making structures, of blue-eyed individuals in countries including Jordan, Denmark and Turkey. This genetic material comes from females, so it can trace maternal lineages.
They specifically looked at sequences of DNA on the OCA2 gene and the genetic mutation associated with turning down melanin production.
Over the course of several generations, segments of ancestral DNA get shuffled so that individuals have varying sequences. Some of these segments, however, that haven't been reshuffled are called haplotypes. If a group of individuals shares long haplotypes, that means the sequence arose relatively recently in our human ancestors. The DNA sequence didn't have enough time to get mixed up.
- Don't miss these Health stories
- Surprise: New glasses may fix colorblindnessfeaturepics.com stock
People who suffer from a color vision deficiency, commonly known as colorblindness, are snapping up new glasses that were created by a neurobiologist to boost medical vision, but appear to have a surprising side effect of correcting for the genetic condition. - Why a 4-day workweek feels so long
- Red state Medicaid expansion no shock
- Stop calling yourself old, says new study
- Anti-abortion activists harness states' health policies
"What they were able to show is that the people who have blue eyes in Denmark, as far as Jordan, these people all have this same haplotype, they all have exactly the same gene changes that are all linked to this one mutation that makes eyes blue," Hawks said in a telephone interview.
Melanin switch The mutation is what regulates the OCA2 switch for melanin production. And depending on the amount of melanin in the iris, a person can end up with eye color ranging from brown to green. Brown-eyed individuals have considerable individual variation in the area of their DNA that controls melanin production. But they found that blue-eyed individuals only have a small degree of variation in the amount of melanin in their eyes.
"Out of 800 persons we have only found one person which didn't fit — but his eye color was blue with a single brown spot," Eiberg told LiveScience, referring to the finding that blue-eyed individuals all had the same sequence of DNA linked with melanin production.
"From this we can conclude that all blue-eyed individuals are linked to the same ancestor," Eiberg said. "They have all inherited the same switch at exactly the same spot in their DNA." Eiberg and his colleagues detailed their study in the Jan. 3 online edition of the journal Human Genetics. That genetic switch somehow spread throughout Europe and now other parts of the world."The question really is, 'Why did we go from having nobody on Earth with blue eyes 10,000 years ago to having 20 or 40 percent of Europeans having blue eyes now?" Hawks said. "This gene does something good for people. It makes them have more kids."
![[06.jpg.THE]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiJ8EXTdoRV1i1q1S2_4-ZLUtNRPbGI7SdpYo2VyuGCVMfMFKHXZ1MQsRP5zwKCqgfd0erdboDukABQHPsFo6MNRhx6JUBc8XhWBXKvVhjBchDRUBiq_cmbKojEg55RouRmLa8zhSb4Cg/s1600/06.jpg.THE)
JACOB AND ESAU
by Betty Rhodes
Two children struggled together within Rebekah; so she went to enquire of the LORD as to why they struggled within her womb. The LORD said unto her, TWO NATIONS are in thy womb, and two manners of peoples shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one race of people shall be stronger than the other race of people, and the elder shall serve the younger.
The Lord informed Rebekah that she had TWO NATIONS [i.e. two races] of people within her womb, and the firstborn would serve the second born. If the birth of Esau and Jacob is factual, then the Elohiym had implanted Rebekah with two separate embryos, so TWO very different nations would come out of this one ‘woman’ - and the master physician-scientist, Enki, was surely capable of doing such selective implantation.
When Rebekah reached the time to deliver her babies, indeed there were twins in her womb. The first came out hairy [‘red’ is incorrect – see the chapter on red-hair dreams] all over, like a hairy garment; and they called his name, Esau. Next came his brother out and his hand took hold of Esau's heel; and his name was called Jacob: and their father, Isaac, was threescore years old when his wife bore them.
The boys grew and Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field; and Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents. Isaac loved Esau because he did eat of his venison: but Rebekah loved Jacob most. Jacob sod pottage: and Esau came in from the field and felt faint, so Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint: thus Jacob served the pottage unto Esau, and therefore was Esau's name called Edom because of the red pottage.
In addition, Jacob said; sell me this day thy birthright. Esau said, Behold, I am at the point of death: and what profit shall this birthright do to me? Therefore, Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he swore unto him: and Esau sold his birthright unto Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of red lentils; and Esau did eat and drink, and rose up, and went on his way: thus, Esau despised his birthright.
The Lord had informed Rebekah that the older son, Esau, would serve the younger son, Jacob, all the days of his life and this servitude would continue all the days of his descendant’s lives.
The story of Jacob and Esau tells of two nations born to Isaac and Rebekah. The two ‘nations’ struggled before they were born, and they would, and will, struggle for all time – hating each other. It is doubtful the story depicts actual blood brothers, but its primary intent is to show a PATTERN, and with this pattern, truth becomes obvious - to those who have wisdom. In essence, the story is leaving a trail [a waymark] for us to follow.
Esau was the first-born ‘twin’, and Jacob was born shortly thereafter. However, Esau sold his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of red porridge, and so Jacob thereafter becomes the ‘first-born’ of Isaac. Esau would serve his brother, Jacob, who forever remains more powerful and influential in the world, than does Esau.
The older son serving the younger son is common in Scriptural history. Other incidence is the pattern of Ephraim and Manasseh, who were grandsons of Jacob. Jacob blesses the younger of the two brothers with the bigger blessing, which puzzles their father, Joseph, but nevertheless it is implemented and Ephraim receives over and above what his older brother, Manasseh, would receive. In addition, Ephraim - grandson of Jacob, has bestowed upon him the title of ‘first-born’ of the Israelite tribes, therefore, Jacob adopts Ephraim and thereafter becomes Jacob’s ‘first-born’. Both stories, Esau-Jacob, and Ephraim-Manasseh, are important because they reveal a pattern for detecting truth. Not any less remembered is the story of the two brothers, Cain and Abel. Jealousy arises and Cain ends up killing his brother, Abel. Remember, the same pattern was set forth much earlier with Enki and Enlil, the younger brother received more control and glory than his older brother – patterns repeat for purposes.
The pattern formulated in the Garden of Eden reflects throughout the entire Biblical history of the Hebrew people. Enki, portrayed as the serpent, [should be 'he who knows great wisdom'], entices the woman, Eve, who actually carries out the scheme to deceive Lord Enlil. In the story of Jacob and Esau, Rebekah plays the enticer. Jacob, and his mother, Rebekah, together, conspire to deceive Isaac; and Jacob, is the successful son in the conspiracy, just as Ephraim receiving greater blessings.
Understanding history becomes much easier when keeping in mind these important patterns. Patterns do not lie. It is obvious that Esau has always hated Jacob, not the other way around. It is also obvious that the Arabs have always hated the Jews, and not the other way around. These particular scenarios, [the Garden of E.din story, and the Esau/Jacob story], reveal the struggling between the Jews and the Arabs - the pattern speaks for itself in both cases. These are stories that reveal a pattern – it is up to us to figure out what the patterns mean.
And the research goes on......................
RETURN
Gen 12:1 Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee: 2 And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: 3 And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.
Gen 26:14 And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.Gen 24:60 And they blessed Rebekah, and said unto her, Thou art our sister, be thou the mother of thousands of millions, and let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate them.
No solid scientific explanation exists as to how or why Rh- blood came about. It is presumed to be the result of a random mutation. Have you ever felt you were weird or different? It may be due to your DNA … 85% of humans have the monkey gene (RH+) and 15% do not (RH-) and maybe have an alien gene instead. RH- people are characterized by higher IQs, sensitive vision, lower body temperatures, sensitivity to heat and sunlight, psychic power, ability to stop watches and electrical appliances and having extra vertebrae. This film explores the possibility that we were bred as a slave race for labor, since 97% of our genetic code is disabled, with only 3% left for us to survive.
People with RH-negative blood group have certain characteristics that seem to be common among the majority. Here is a brief list of the most common.
¨ Extra vertebra.
¨ Higher than average IQ
¨ More sensitive vision and other senses.
¨ Lower body temperature
¨ Higher blood pressure
¨ Increased occurrence of psychic/intuitive abilities
¨ Predominantly blue, green, or Hazel eyes
¨ Red or reddish hair
¨ Has increased sensitivity to heat and sunlight
¨ Cannot be cloned
¨ Alien Abduction and other unexplained phenomenon
¨ Extra vertebra.
¨ Higher than average IQ
¨ More sensitive vision and other senses.
¨ Lower body temperature
¨ Higher blood pressure
¨ Increased occurrence of psychic/intuitive abilities
¨ Predominantly blue, green, or Hazel eyes
¨ Red or reddish hair
¨ Has increased sensitivity to heat and sunlight
¨ Cannot be cloned
¨ Alien Abduction and other unexplained phenomenon
Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord
The Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord (CSA) is a militia-style organization predominantly located in northern Arkansas, southern Missouri, and western Oklahoma. This organization is loosely affiliated with other white supremacist organizations within the United States, such as the Aryan Nations, The Order, and the Militia of Montana. Between 1976 and 1985, the CSA was involved in various illegal activities such as weapons procurement, counterfeiting, arson, robbery, homicide, and terrorist threats.
The CSA was founded by Texas minister James Ellison in 1970 near Elijah, Missouri. In 1976, Ellison purchased a 220-acre farm near Bull Shoals Lake in Marion County, Arkansas (approximately seven miles southwest of Pontiac, Missouri), in order to establish a CSA compound known as Zarephath-Horeb. The CSA was true to its ideological rhetoric when selecting the name of their compound: Mount Horeb was the mountain to which Moses moved the Hebrews during the Exodus from Egypt, and Zarephath is listed in the Bible as the city to which God ordered Elijah to move in order to undergo a crucible for his faith. This isolated portion of the state was suitable for Ellison’s intentions because it is demographically concentrated with a predominantly white population, is secluded in rural terrain that makes monitoring by law enforcement agencies difficult, and is positioned on the border between two states, complicating jurisdictional responsibilities. The CSA was one of many militias that supported the American Christian Patriot Movement. Followers of this ideology support hostility against any form of government above the county level, vilify Jews and non-whites as children of Satan, obsess about achieving religious and racial purification of the U.S., believe in a conspiracy theory that regards Jewish leaders as controlling important financial and media positions within the U.S., and advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government.
By 1978, Ellison had transformed his farm into a guerrilla training camp, complete with firing ranges, stockpiles of supplies, and accommodations for hundreds of followers. During this period, Ellison explained the CSA mission as establishing an “Ark for God’s people” for the coming race war. Ellison viewed “God’s people” as white Christians. In 1982, at the height of the CSA’s activities, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) suspected that it had just over 100 active members.
In 1984, CSA member Richard W. Snell was stopped near De Queen (Sevier County) by Trooper Louis Bryant of the Arkansas State Police. During the traffic stop, Snell fatally shot Bryant and eventually was charged with capital murder and sent to prison. Snell was also suspected in the 1981 murder of a Jewish pawnshop owner in Texarkana (Miller County).
On April 21, 1985, after years of complaints by local citizens and informants, federal agents from the FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, as well as assorted state and local agencies, surrounded Zarephath-Horeb. After a three-day standoff, law enforcement officers entered the compound. This raid involved more than 300 law enforcement officers and resulted in the seizure of weapons, ammunition, explosives, gold, and thirty gallons of potassium cyanide. The CSA intended to use the potassium cyanide to poison the water supply of several large cities in order to expedite the coming of the second Messiah.
During the raid of Zarephath-Horeb, federal authorities obtained evidence supporting additional indictments on key members of the CSA. In these indictments, Ellison was charged with conspiring to overthrow the U.S. government. Although Ellison was not convicted of sedition, he was convicted of various illegal weapons charges and violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute. After a conviction and sentence of twenty years in prison, Ellison negotiated a reduced sentence by testifying against key leaders of the Aryan Nations of Idaho. The case against Ellison and other members of the CSA was prosecuted by Asa Hutchinson, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Arkansas during this period. Hutchinson later served as a third district congressman from Arkansas, as well as in executive positions within the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Department of Homeland Security.
Since the raid on Zarephath-Horeb in 1985, activity by the CSA has been almost non-existent. Richard W. Snell was executed by lethal injection on April 19, 1995, twelve hours after white supremacist Timothy McVeigh detonated a truck bomb destroying the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Many suspected that McVeigh selected April 19 as the day of his attack because of Snell’s execution and the anniversary date of the 1993 federal raid at the Branch Davidian Compound in Waco, Texas—an event that has become a central theme in anti-government rhetoric.
For additional information:
Barkun, Michael. Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.
Coppola, Vincent. Dragons of God: A Journey through Far-Right America. Atlanta: Longstreet Press, 1996. Online at http://archive.org/details/DragonsOfGod (accessed May 16, 2012).
“The Covenant, The Sword and the Arm of the Lord.” Federal Bureau of Investigation. http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/covenantswordarmlaw.htm (accessed December 17, 2008).
Haddigan, Michael. “Twisted 15-Year Path of CSA Winds to End as Leaders Convicted.” Arkansas Gazette. September 8, 1985, pp. 1B, 3B.
Levitas, Daniel. The Terrorist Next Door: The Militia Movement and the Radical Right. New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, 2002.
Noble, Kerry. Tabernacle of Hate: Seduction into Right-Wing Extremism. 2nd ed. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2010.
Stock, Catherine. Rural Radicals: From Bacon’s Rebellion to the Oklahoma City Bombing. New York: Penguin Books, 1996.
Van Zandt, Clint, and Clint Paisner. Facing Down Evil: Life on the Edge as an FBI Hostage Negotiator. New York: Putnam, 2006.
Wilson, Michael W., and Natalie Zimmerman, eds. A Kingdom at Any Cost: Right-Wing Visions of Apocalypse in America. Little Rock: Parkhurst Brothers, Inc., 2009.
HIGH UP IN the Idaho panhandle in the Pacific Northwest, majestic mountains rise above large forest-rimmed lakes. From the remote settlement of
Hayden Lake, a dirt road leads to a heavily armed compound where signs
warn “Whites Only” and German shepherd dogs patrol. Filled with Third
Reich memorabilia, the 20-acre compound resembles a military camp surrounded by high fences and razor wire. The dominant feature is a 29-foothigh wooden watchtower draped with a huge Nazi swastika flag. But this eerie
throwback to a concentration camp in Hitler Germany is actually home to
numerous families and couples who have pledged themselves to living in a
white world. Sympathizers live in nearby villages and meet each Sunday for a
religious service held at the church within the compound. The service is held
by the Reverend Richard Butler, who established this white racial utopia
known as Aryan Nations in 1974. He begins the service with an outstretched
right arm salute before launching into a sermon about the rising tide of color
and the “niggers” who are getting preferential treatment as whites become an
endangered minority in their traditional ethnic homelands.
Butler inveighs against the political class that is destroying the white race.
Americans have not been conquered by the Jews, blacks, Mexicans or Asians,
but they have been deceived by their own weakness and allowed nineteen million white babies to be butchered by abortion. Affirmative action, he claims,
effectively bars any white man from full citizenship in the United States. All
over the world, in Germany, England and Canada, the white race is declining
in numbers due to falling birth rates, and colored immigration is encouraged
to replace the population. Only whites have ever heeded calls to curb population growth, and white women have been neglecting child-bearing in favor of
careers and making money. Advertising, media images and television encourage white women to take black husbands, while education, books and memorials promote ethnic minorities to the detriment of white majority heritage
and culture. Butler ends his sermon with his rallying call: “As long as this alien
tyranny evil occupies our land, hate is our law and revenge is our duty.”1
232After the service, the families speak of their desire to escape the ethnic
swamping of their former home towns, where Latin American immigrants
began arriving in the 1980s to work for low wages in the local factories.“Mexicans and blacks overran the whites,” one young woman says.“You’re not supposed to mix races. The Bible says that. But people listen to nigger music, they
dance like niggers. Nobody cares anymore.” Her new husband adds: “Every
time you turn around you see white girls with niggers, slowly destroying our
pure race.” In the compound, children grow up in a secure, communal world
quite apart from multiracial metropolitan life. They hardly ever see a colored
face and are quite innocent of the political correctness and affirmative action
that dominates contemporary American society. Sexual roles at Aryan Nations are strongly traditional. Women cook and do the housekeeping, while
the men protect, respect and provide for the women and children. Due to past
attacks on the compound by opponents, men carry shotguns or assault rifles
and wear a paramilitary blue uniform.2
Aryan Nations rose to prominence on the white supremacist scene in the
mid-1970s, when the influence of the Ku Klux Klan was on the wane. Its advocacy of a white power revolution and call for a white racial homeland in the
Pacific Northwest set a new agenda for the racist far right that was increasingly concerned with viable responses to the rapid growth of multiracialism
in the United States. Richard Butler, an enthusiastic pastor of the racist, antiSemitic Christian Identity movement, preached a radical doctrine at his
Church of Jesus Christ Christian on the Aryan Nations compound. He told
his followers that Christian Identity gave whites “divine permission to hate.”
Adopting the symbols of Nazi Germany, Butler held an annual Aryan World
Congress at Hayden Lake that attracted a wide range of extremists, including
Klansmen, militant tax protesters, neo-Nazis and Identity believers from all
over the United States and even overseas. By the early 1980s, Aryan Nations’
sphere of influence included such notorious far-right leaders as ex-Texas
Grand Dragon Louis Beam, National Alliance leader William Pierce and
White Aryan Resistance founder Tom Metzger.
Aryan Nations became the theological college from which the most violent
racist radicals would graduate. In 1983 a group called the Brüders Schweigen
embarked on a campaign of robberies and assassination over an eighteenmonth period. Many members of the group had been Aryan Nations members and drew their inspiration from Butler’s preaching. The leader, Robert Jay
Mathews, was killed at a shoot-out with federal agents in December 1984,
while twenty-four members of the group were convicted of racketeering and
other offenses. Members of the Aryan Republican Army, another terrorist
group with ties to Aryan Nations, carried out some twenty-two bank robberies
CHRISTIAN IDENTITY AND CREATIVITY 233in the mid-1990s to fund a white supremacist revolution. Another terrorist
group, the New Order, was also associated with Aryan Nations. In 1998 four
members pleaded guilty to charges in connection with an alleged plot to blow
up the Southern Poverty Law Center, a watchdog monitoring U.S. hate
groups; kill its director Morris Dees; poison cities’ water supplies and bomb
state capitol buildings.
What was the content of Butler’s gospel that could motivate young men to
commit reckless acts of insurrection against the multiracial Leviathan? Why
could the racist right, so often characterized by pessimism and despair, embrace a vision of active millenarian combat against the hated political and social order of the United States? The answer to these questions lies in the
unique doctrine of Christian Identity that represents one of the most powerful doctrinal statements of the Nazi cult in contemporary society. Briefly
stated, Christian Identity regards the white Aryans as the descendants of the
biblical tribes of Israel who are on earth to do God’s work. By contrast, the
Jews are quite unconnected to the Israelites but rather the very children of the
Devil, the spawn of an illicit sexual relation between Satan and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Alongside these dualist notions, Identity doctrine is also vigorously millenarian by believing that the world is on the verge of a final apocalyptic battle between good and evil.
Christian Identity clearly reflects the global dominance of the AngloSaxon peoples in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The colonial
achievement of the British Empire and the rapid white settlement of the
United States posited the idea that the white European races were the “chosen
people” of biblical narrative. The corresponding elaboration of the Israelite
identity of the Aryans, matched by the relegation of the Jews, created an
Aryan mystique grounded in biblical Christianity. The universalism of the
New Testament is thus subordinated to the tribal covenant and racial exclusivity of the Old Testament, in which the Aryans claim God’s favor in lieu of
the Jews as God’s chosen people. This gospel is logically mirrored by virulent
anti-Semitism. The Jews are regarded as the cosmic arch enemy for they have
stolen this birthright and are bent on vanquishing the Aryans through economic enslavement, colored immigration and race mixing. The growth of
Christian Identity in the United States after the Second World War indicates
the Americans’ strong attachment to Christianity to guarantee their status as
pilgrims, pioneers and settlers of the promised land.
Christian Identity combines a contemporary appeal to white supremacism
with the two-thousand-year-old tradition of Christian anti-Semitism. The
notion that the Jews, together with the colored pre-Adamic races or “mud
people,” have conspired against the white Adamic peoples throughout all time
234 CHRISTIAN IDENTITY AND CREATIVITYis strengthened by the belief that the world is now almost entirely in the grip
of these anti-Aryan forces. The United States government is seen as the manifestation of this evil tyranny, generally known by Identity followers as ZOG
(Zionist Occupation Government). Christian Identity has no central organization but consists of numerous small churches, Bible study societies and associated political groups. Estimates of the number of people involved with
Identity are thus uncertain, though they range from two thousand to over
fifty thousand.3
Still, the marginal political status of Identity in American society belies its capacity to offer a theological rationale for militant opposition
to multiracial society that can erupt in acts of millennial violence.
Christian Identity traces its origins to British-Israelism, a sectarian religious movement originating in nineteenth-century England under such leaders as John Wilson (?–1871) and Edward Hine (1825–1891). In his Lectures on
Our Israelitish Origin (1840), Wilson claimed that the British were the lineal
descendants of the “ten lost tribes” of the northern kingdom of Israel, whose
religious election was illustrated by the increasing world dominion of the
Anglo-Saxon and Celtic peoples. The British were deemed to be the descendants of Ephraim, while the settlers of North America sprang from Manasseh.
However, the movement was itself originally philosemitic. The Jews themselves were deemed heirs of the two tribes in the southern kingdom of Judah,
whose destiny was linked to the British Israelites in a millennial vision of the
future. The reuniting of All-Israel, a prerequisite of the Last Days, required
that the ten tribes of Israel, namely the British, should once again join the descendants of the remaining tribes—that is, the Jews—in the Holy Land.
Throughout the early twentieth century, the joint enterprise of the AngloJewish resettlement of Palestine remained an important part of British-Israelite millennialism.4
British-Israelism spread to America through the activities of Lieutenant
Charles Totten of New Haven, supported by the missionary travels of Edward
Hine in the United States between 1884 and 1888. By the end of the 1920s,
British-Israelism acquired a national organization as the Anglo-Saxon Federation of America under the leadership of Howard B. Rand (1889–1991). Rand
was a vital link between British-Israelism and its later American variant,
Christian Identity, for he not only consolidated the movement in the United
States but also opened it to the right-wing and anti-Semitic influences that
became dominant in the postwar period.
A key figure in this development was William J. Cameron (1878–1955),
whom Rand involved in federation meetings in Detroit in 1930. Cameron was
a notorious anti-Semite who had begun his career as a writer for Henry Ford’s
weekly newspaper, the Dearborn Independent. He became its editor in 1921
CHRISTIAN IDENTITY AND CREATIVITY 235and ran a weekly series of anti-Semitic articles, later collected in a four-volume work under the title The International Jew. These articles introduced the
American public to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the czarist invention
that has become the most famous anti-Semitic book of the twentieth century.5
By the mid-1920s he was Henry Ford’s press relations manager, a position he held until the early 1940s. In 1933 Cameron was a member of the national executive committee and became president of the Anglo-Saxon Federation of America in 1937. He brought substantial resources to the movement,
including the prestige of his close relation with Henry Ford, media skills and
a high-powered network of business contacts. His combination of the myth
of Jewish world conspiracy with British-Israelism was a signal episode in the
rightward, anti-Semitic shift of its membership and discourse.
But early British-Israelism’s fraternal attitude toward the Jews often betrayed a patronizing tone. John Wilson had claimed that the Jewish tribes of
Judah had intermarried with spiritually inferior peoples known as the
Edomites.6
In 1934 Cameron took this disenfranchisement of the Jews a stage
further by elaborating on the “Esau race,” “an anti-Israel power that endures
to this day.” According to Cameron, this formerly separate Esau race had
“amalgamated with the Jews, and began their terrible work of corrupting the
Jewish religion from within.” The Esau people became the Edomites and later
the Idumeans, the ancestors of Herod. All this suggested that whatever remained of the tribes of Judah in the Jews had been corrupted by the blood of
the Esau race, until the Jews were biologically linked with Jesus’ persecutor.
Another British-Israelite writer, Frederick Haberman, described the Jews’ intermarriage with the Edomites, Idumeans and Syrians, causing them to acquire the dark complexion of these peoples, in marked contrast to the tall and
fair Israelites, “the cream of the Aryan race.”7
The geographical shift of British-Israelism toward the West was another
critical factor in its radicalization. In 1937 a Canadian group at Vancouver
broke its ties with Toronto and London and began cultivating contacts on the
West Coast, cemented by a series of annual conferences in Vancouver, Portland (Oregon) and Los Angeles between 1939 and 1947. Vancouver-based
writers embraced markedly conspiratorial and anti-Semitic ideas, which became a dominant influence in California. A pseudonymously authored novel,
When? A Prophetical Novel of the Very Near Future(1944), contained one of
the earliest statements maintaining that the Jews are the offspring of Satan.
Another apocalyptic tract, When Gog Attacks(1944), presented a number of
key Christian Identity ideas: Cain as the founder of the “synagogue of Satan”;
the “Turko-Mongol” origins of the Ashkenazic Jews; and the historical truth
of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. By 1947, Los Angeles had become the new
236 CHRISTIAN IDENTITY AND CREATIVITYcenter of the British-Israel movement, where its increasing radicalism intersected with the career of America’s best-known anti-Semitic agitator, Gerald
L. K. Smith, who had been Huey Long’s henchman in the 1930s. Smith cultivated close links with the California leaders of the movement, including
Bernard Comparet, William Potter Gale and Wesley Swift. Under his influence and their leadership, British-Israelism was finally transformed into
Christian Identity.8
The tendency of British-Israelism in America to diminish the ties between
the Jews and All-Israel was largely attributable to the factors of American Jewish immigration and political Zionism. British-Israelism absorbed the widespread nativist reaction to the high immigration levels of East European
Jewry from the late nineteenth century onward. Resented and perceived as
unassimilable, these Ashkenazic Jews provoked hostile theories concerning
their racial origins. Lothrop Stoddard, the leading racial theorist of the interwar period, had described two races of Jews. The “aristocratic” Sephardic
Jews, who had entered the Mediterranean world, were the genuine Semites.
However, the Ashkenazic Jews were a mixture of diverse bloods, whose features reflected intermarriage with the Hittites. These eastern Jews had migrated into southern Russia, where they then blended with the Khazars,
whom Stoddard regarded as a combination of Turkish and Mongoloid peoples.9
Although Stoddard had no connection with British-Israelism, the
movement readily adopted the Khazar identity of the Jews as a further means
of invalidating their claim to be the descendants of the biblical Hebrews.
By the 1960s, when Christian Identity was established as a force on the extreme right, the Khazar ancestry of the Jews was a firm article of faith. Two
books, widely read in this milieu, came to excercise a strong influence in this
regard. John Beaty’s Iron Curtain over America (1951) focused especially on
the roots of Russian Jewry. He claimed that the reforms of Czar Alexander II
gave the “Judaized Khazars,” who had converted in the seventh century, the
opportunity to infiltrate and corrupt Russia. Wilmot Robertson’s Dispossessed Majority (1972) repeated the Khazar thesis of Stoddard. Christian
Identity teachings readily seized on this negative reference to Russian Jewry,
but backdated Jewish intermarriage with the Khazars into biblical times. InA
Short History of Esau-Edom in Jewry (1948), the Vancouver writer C. F. Parker
had claimed that a tiny remnant of “true Judah” was pitted against a larger
group of Idumean-Hittites who masqueraded as the true seed of Abraham
and sought to expel the descendants of Jacob. These Esau-Hittites are the
Ashkenazim, concentrated in Eastern and Central Europe and America. The
old religious language also lent itself to new political contexts. Edom meant
“red,” and Parker hinted that most Russian communist revolutionaries were
CHRISTIAN IDENTITY AND CREATIVITY 237descendants of Esau-Edom, an association also repeated by others, including
Howard Rand and Wesley Swift.10
The hostility of British-Israelism toward Zionism also worked to associate
Jews with racial impurity. When the British Army invaded Palestine in 1917,
the famous Balfour Declaration was issued, promising that the British would
facilitate the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jews. In
1922 British-Israelite prophecy seemed again confirmed when the League of
Nations gave Britain a mandate to rule Palestine and secure that objective.
However, while Jewish settlement was necessary for divine fulfillment, the
concept of a sovereign Jewish state was anathema. Once Zionism articulated
its demand for an exclusively Jewish state, the withdrawal or expulsion of the
British would imply that Palestine would be left with Judah but Israel would
be absent. The novel When? describes an apocalyptic military climax to the
Second World War set in Palestine. After the British retreat from Jerusalem,
the city is captured by the evil forces of Gog, aided by Zionists—none other
than inauthentic Jews who are the descendants of ancient intermarriages with
impure races. One of the hero’s informants claims that the Sephardim are the
true Jews, while the Ashkenazim are not. “There was great animosity between
the real Semitic Jews and the greater part of the Zionists [who] were usurpers
of Gentile blood.”11
In 1948, the year of the creation of the state of Israel, C. F. Parker repeated
the view that there were two races of Jews. He considered the Zionists to be almost exclusively Ashkenazim and therefore “Esau-Edomites.” If the Sephardim were pious and apolitical, the Ashkenazic Zionists shamelessly mobilized
the financial and political influence of European and American Jewry to support their campaign for a sovereign state. “The newly declared Jewish State of
‘Israel’ is as ersatz and barren as its predecessor, the Herodian-Jewish nation,
for it still rejects Jesus Christ. . . . The Jews have seized the Holy Land from
the rightful owners [Israel-Britain].”12 Howard Rand also fulminated against
the new state, branding it the work of “renegade Jews,” not “true Israelitish
Jews.” He described these “renegades” as the same impostors who had led the
Russian Revolution thirty years earlier. In a later article, he identified the
Zionists with “a Great Conspiracy” and “programme of evil,” whereby the
Jews had deceived Christians, so that Jews appeared to be the rightful heirs
to the state of Israel. This grand deception, he argued, had extensive ramifi-
cations among the Nihilists, the Illuminati, the Fabians and the House of
Rothschild.13
Christian Identity doctrine progressively removed the Jews totally from
the domain of humanity. As we have seen, from the 1930s onward, movement
writings increasingly called into question the religious authenticity and racial
238 CHRISTIAN IDENTITY AND CREATIVITYhomogeneity of the Jews. Even the originally philosemitic English movement
limited the Jews to the tribes of Judah, while the Anglo-Saxon-Celtic tribes of
Israel assumed the senior partnership in the quest for Jewish conversion and
the millennial resettlement of All-Israel. Then it was suggested that Jews had
intermarried with the offspring of Esau to become the Edomites. Canaanite
and Hittite blood was supposed to have further compromised their racial
identity, until their Semitic inheritance was drowned in the Asiatic gene pool
of the Khazars. As Michael Barkun has observed, while the Anglo-Saxons
claimed for themselves the biblical role of Israel, the Jews’ claims were progressively delegitimated. First, they needed the protection of the European
Christian tribes of Israel; then they lusted after strange peoples to become
carriers of tainted and alien blood; finally, they were mere impostors masquerading as the heirs of a biblical people and credited with plots and revolutions compatible with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
14
However, British-Israelism went a stage further in the demonization of the
Jews. This worldview was based on nineteenth-century theories of a preAdamic race of inferior, bestial creatures quite separate from Adam, who was
regarded as the son of God and the first white man. But the Adamic race was
threatened by evil. In this narrative, the Devil assumed humanoid form as the
“serpent” and sexually seduced Eve. This primal sin not only resulted in the
first couple’s expulsion from Eden, but in the creation of a hybrid creature
called Cain. While Cain’s birth began a human “seedline” linking his descendants with satanic paternity, Cain himself was supposed to have fled eastward
to establish a colony together with colored pre-Adamite peoples. Here—a
preferred location was East Turkestan—Cain initiated his followers into the
Devil’s plan for earthly dominion. As the myth crystallized, the Jews were increasingly linked with Canaanites, the putative descendants of Cain, rather
than the Edomites. If the tribes of Judah were supposed to have intermarried
with Cain’s descendants, it followed that the Jews were the literal offspring of
the Devil through the original satanic seedline of the “serpent” as well as the
descendants of sundry black and brown pre-Adamic races.15
These ideas began to coalesce into a logical theology by the mid-1940s,
but the first full versions were not published until around 1960 by Conrad
Gaard, Betrand Comparet, William Potter Gale and Wesley Smith, who
represented the first generation of Christian Identity preachers associated
with Gerald L. K. Smith. Already in the novel When?, Cain was said to have
founded a secret society to do the Devil’s work on earth, which was continued by the Askhkenazim Jews.16 Conrad Gaard described the “serpent” as a
pre-Adamite acting on Satan’s orders to father Cain.17 William Potter Gale
was less ambiguous in his booklet, The Faith of Our Fathers(1963): “Satan
CHRISTIAN IDENTITY AND CREATIVITY 239seduced Eve and she had a son by him who was named Cain.” As Cain was
unacceptable to the Creator, he joined Satan’s hosts and became a member
of a pre-Adamite non-white society deriving from Lucifer and his fallen
angels who dwelled upon earth. Gale considered the Jews to be Cain’s descendants who had intermarried with Judah. Judah’s son by a Canaanite
woman produced Shelah, who “was of the mongrelized seed, some white
from Judah and the balance of Negro and Asiatic mixture.” He posited a
millennium in which the war between God and the Devil was enacted by
final conflict between the children of Adam and the Jews.18
Wesley Swift, the seminal influence upon Richard Butler, elaborated a
similar quasi-Gnostic anthropogeny involving the Adamic race as the direct spiritual offspring of God, created before the creation of the solar system. The non-white pre-Adamites also had an extraterrestrial origin in the
rebellion of Lucifer, who had come to earth with his fallen hosts from elsewhere in the galaxy. Swift asserted that Lucifer seduced Eve, who gave birth
to Cain, whose progeny, “the sons and daughters of Lucifer,”“are the people
you know today as Jews.” The Adamites were identified as the Aryans of
central Asia, whose divine vocation was to combat the Luciferians, whose
ranks included both the original pre-Adamite nonwhites and the demonic
seedline of Cain. Beset by fearful images of white submergence in a colored
flood, masterminded by satanic Jews, Swift’s identification of evil ultimately embraced the entire non-white world. The Jews themselves were
shape-shifters, a plastic form of evil in the most varied racial forms: “The
jews are Hittites and Amalekites and Canaanites. They are red, black, yellow, and brown, as well as off-coloured white.”19
Swift’s millennialism invoked a panorama of evil dominion based on the
whore of Babylon riding on a beast with seven heads and ten horns, as described in the seventeenth chapter of the Book of Revelation: “And the
woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and
precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: And upon her forehead was a
name written, mystery, babylon the great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.”20 Swift saw this apocalyptic
image as a metaphor for the Jewish world conspiracy. This system of “Mystery Babylon” was headed by Jewry, the direct descendants of Lucifer, who
had enslaved the white Aryan world by economic means. However, Swift already envisaged the coming millennium, when an uprising would finally
destroy this conspiracy and the terrible power of world Jewry. “When
Mighty Babylon falls, it will be the falling of the symbolic mystery system
that controls all pagan religions and false theology, and philosophies, and
240 CHRISTIAN IDENTITY AND CREATIVITYeconomic manipulation—all parts of the Luciferian kingdom, Great will be
the fall of that kingdom.”21
Wesley Swift (1913–1970) was the most important figure in the early postwar history of Christian Identity, and it was he who introduced Richard Butler to the movement. Born in New Jersey, the son of a Methodist minister,
Swift had come to California in the early 1930s and probably encountered
British-Israelism at the Kingdom Bible College in Los Angeles. He founded
his own church as the Anglo-Saxon Christian Congregation in Lancaster, California, in 1946, where he established himself as a gifted preacher. Alongside
his religious witness, he was also politically active through the Christian Nationalist Crusade of Gerald L. K. Smith, with whom he closely collaborated.
In 1956 he met William Potter Gale (1917–1988), with whom he founded the
Christian Defense League (CDL) in the early 1960s as a Christian Identity vehicle. The first president and national director of the CDL was Richard Butler, whom Gale had brought to Wesley Swift’s church. As Butler wrote, his
meeting with Swift was nothing short of a revelation:“He [Swift] was the total
turning point in my life. The light turned on. He had the answers I was trying
to find.”22
Richard Girnt Butler was born on 23 February 1918 in Bennett, Colorado,
the son of a machinist of German-English ancestry. As a youngster he was fascinated by the novel The Red Napoleon, serialized in Liberty Magazine, which
described the invasion and conquest of the United States by race-mixing Bolsheviks. In the Depression years, the family moved to Los Angeles, where Butler studied aeronautical engineering at the City College and took a part-time
job with the Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Company. Posted by the company
in 1941 to Bangalore to overhaul airplanes for the Royal Indian Air Force,
Butler was given the honorary rank of captain and a Hindu valet. In India,
Butler was deeply impressed by the caste system and its notion of racial purity. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Butler returned to Los Angeles and enlisted in the Army Air Corps, where he instructed mechanics but
saw no active combat.23 Given his anti-communist and racist sympathies,
Butler found it hard to accept Nazi Germany as America’s enemy. Later he
would recall how thrilled he was to see newsreels of marching Germans,
avidly sharing Hitler’s hatred of communists.
After the war, Butler’s politics matured into extremism. He was enthralled
by Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist hearings, supported his campaign, and became convinced that America was beset by “Jewish communism.” Forsaking his earlier American heroes, he now regarded Hitler as the
second greatest man to live after Jesus Christ. While organizing a signature
campaign of the California Committee to Combat Communism, Butler met
CHRISTIAN IDENTITY AND CREATIVITY 241William Potter Gale, a former senior officer on General Douglas MacArthur’s
staff, who had been ordained an Identity minister by Swift in 1956. Gale
brought Butler to Swift’s Anglo-Saxon Christian Congregation at Lancaster in
1961, whereupon Butler immersed himself in Identity teachings, studying intensively with Swift and absorbing the racist-millennial theology into his own
Nazi outlook. These religious and political milieus had already overlapped
when senior Identity figures collaborated with Lincoln Rockwell to launch the
National States Rights Party in 1958. Butler himself introduced Rockwell to
Christian Identity in the early 1960s. In June 1964, Rockwell met with Wesley
Swift to discuss a close working relationship, motivated by Rockwell’s view
that the American Nazi Party needed a pseudo-Christian theology to attract
more members.24
From 1946 to 1964 Butler organized and ran a plant for the manufacture
and machining of automotive engines and aircraft parts, alongside his presidency of the CDL and Identity preaching. In 1968 he became a senior marketing engineer with Lockheed Aircraft Company at Palmdale, California,
where he was involved in the production of the L-1011 jumbo jet aircraft. During this time he became the co-inventor of a rapid repair system for airplane
tubeless tires, royalties from which considerably boosted his financial position. Following Swift’s death in 1970, Butler took over as pastor at the Lancaster church, but the congregation began to dwindle. Butler felt that a new
start had to be made away from multiracial California. Holding a private
pilot’s license, he began making flights up to the Pacific Northwest and
thought of creating a white homeland in that part of the country. He retired
from Lockheed at age fifty-five and in 1974 moved to Hayden Lake near Coeur
d’Alene, Idaho, and purchased an old farmhouse. In 1977 he formed the
Church of Jesus Christ Christian with a political arm known as Aryan Nations.
Much Aryan Nations literature echoes the biblical concerns of British-Israelism since its transformation into modern Christian Identity. Butler’s
credo states that “the Bible is the true Word of God . . . the family history of
the White Race, the children of Yahveh placed on earth through the seedline
of Adam.” Adam is described as the father of the white race only. The credo
asserts that the true, literal children of the Bible are the Twelve Tribes of Israel, now scattered throughout the world and known as the Anglo-Saxon,
Teutonic, Scandinavian, Celtic, Basque, Lombard, Slavic and kindred peoples.
A chart shows how yesterday’s tribes of Israel correspond to today’s Aryan nations based on the traditional association of Great Britain with Ephraim,
Canada and the United States with Manasseh, Sweden with Asher, Dan with
Denmark, France with Zebulun, Italy with Gad and so on. In view of Jewry’s
242 CHRISTIAN IDENTITY AND CREATIVITYcomplete relegation, all twelvetribes are included, as the two Jewish tribes of
the southern kingdom, Judah and Benjamin, are now identified as the ancestors of Germany and Iceland. The credo repeats the charge that the Jews are
Satan’s spawn: “There are literal children of Satan in the world today . . . the
descendants of Cain, who was a result of Eve’s original sin, her physical seduction by Satan.”25
God’s intended purpose, according to the credo, was that “His racial kinsmen were to be in charge of this earth.” Christ’s redemptive work ended on
the cross, and the Aryan race was henceforth commissioned to fulfill his divine purpose and plans, which are presented in terms of a final millennium
to be established on earth. In his political manifesto, Butler outlines twelve
points for the establishment of a state for the Aryan racial nation. This begins
by stating that no such state of the “Adamic Aryan race” presently exists. Given
the duty of the Aryans to preserve their race, culture and people, it follows
that redemption consists in a return to the eugenic law, which alone guarantees the creative “life spirit” of the Adamic Aryan through the purity of the
blood of the race in the current generations. Only “the single united will of
the people of the racial nation” can produce the racial state, while there can
be no separation between “spiritual” worship and the political state. Aryan
Nations is described as a “White Racial ‘Theopolitical’ movement . . . a ‘geopolitical’ movement for the re-establishment of White Aryan sovereignty over
the lands of Aryan settlement and occupation.”26
The Aryan Nations catalog includes a wide range of Christian Identity literature, with numerous booklets and tracts by E. Raymond Capt, Wesley
Swift, Bertrand Comparet, and Howard Rand. The theme of Anti-Christ is
prominent in books on communism, the Illuminati, the Federal Reserve System, and the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, all illustrating the varied
assaults of the Jews in their cosmic war against the Adamite Aryans. A whole
section is devoted to the Third Reich and National Socialism, with eulogies of
Adolf Hitler and Reinhard Heydrich, glowing accounts of Nazi policy, art and
culture and Leon Degrelle’s Story of the Waffen SS. Holocaust denial also features with Richard Harwood’s Did Six Million Really Die? and the Auschwitz
titles of Wilhelm Staeglich and Thies Christophersen. The Aryan Warrior by
Richard Butler is required reading for all Aryan Nations members. Here, Butler describes Christianity and race as the twin foundation of “the will to
power and world leadership inherent in the soul of the seed of Adam.” The
pages devoted to the spiritual, mental and physical education of Aryan youth
are profusely illustrated with Third Reich posters from the 1930s promoting
the Hitler Youth and League of German Maidens. All land and industrial
CHRISTIAN IDENTITY AND CREATIVITY 243capital shall be subject to public control in the national and racial interest.
The financial system of international Jewish capitalism will be ended and
there will be no interest-bearing debt.
In 1981 Butler hosted his first annual Aryan Nations World Congress at
Hayden Lake, which drew numerous Identity and non-Identity white racialist
groups from all over America. Christian Identity millennialism was now in the
ascendant against a background of increased immigration, high non-white
birthrates, forced school busing and white urban flight. Groups such as Dan
Gayman’s Church of Israel (COI) and James Ellison’s Covenant, Sword and
Arm of the Lord (CSA) had adopted a survivalist stance by retreating to remote, rural compounds to await the impending cataclysm (a time of Tribulation preceding redemption of God’s chosen) away from the criminality and
racial chaos of large cities. At Schell City in Missouri, Gayman gathered a COI
congregation of some hundred in his plan to organize self-sufficient groups
upon the land. In 1974 Ellison had established the most fortified of all Identity settlements at the 224-acre CSA compound called Zarephath-Horeb beside Bull Shoals Lake on the northern border of Arkansas. By 1984 its increasingly militant stance against outside society led to confrontation with the authorities, which climaxed in an FBI raid in 1985. A huge stockpile of weaponry
was seized, and Ellison was sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment.27
Increased tension in relations with the Soviet Union under the Reagan presidency also played a part in the renewed millennialism of Identity in the early
1980s. In a manner similiar to the religiomilitary scenario of When?, Bernard
Comparet outlined a new Cold War version of the Last Days in 1982. The Russian Gog would form a grand coalition with the Islamic world, aided by “the
mixed breeds of Asia and Africa and India, who . . . will ally themselves with
anything which promises them that they can rape and pillage in the lands of
the White Man.” The multiracial forces of Gog will then attack on two fronts,
occupying the eastern Mediterranean and the Suez Canal to stop the supply of
oil before invading the United States across the Bering Strait, supported by
missile, submarine and aircraft. After the “Asiatic hordes roll in like a flood in
our northwestern States,” God will intervene with all manner of natural catastrophes to defeat the invaders. Here, the former British-Israelite focus on
Palestine gives way to an enormous conflict centered on the United States,
whose invasion by Asian forces is described as a multiracial inundation.28
Apocalyptic survivalism soon metamorphosed into outright millennial
insurrection. In September 1983 a militant racist sect called The Order was
founded at Metaline Falls, Washington. Also known as the Brüders Schweigen
or Silent Brotherhood, this terrorist group was led by Robert Jay Mathews (b.
1953), who had a long history of far-right links, including the John Birch So-
244 CHRISTIAN IDENTITY AND CREATIVITYciety and tax resistance. His plan was the creation of a small cell that had the
will and resources to attack and overthrow the “Zionist Occupation Government” (ZOG) of the United States. For this purpose he required funds to buy
arms for a guerrilla campaign against the state, which, it was expected, would
lead to a mass revolt of the white population. The Order began its operations
with large-scale counterfeiting and armed robbery, stealing $3.8 million from
a Brinks armored car in Ukiah, California, in July 1984. Other acts of violence included the assassination of Alan Berg, a Jewish radio presenter in
Denver known for his outspoken opposition to right-wing groups. Mathews
was killed by the FBI in a siege on Whidbey Island, Washington, in December 1984, while the remaining Order members were apprehended in 1985
and 1986.29
Mathews had discovered Butler’s church in early 1982. He had his adopted
son baptized there and encouraged friends to attend. During that year he conceived the “White American Bastion” and advertised in the right-wing press,
believing that if he could attract enough like-minded settlers, whites would
become the dominant political and economic force in the Pacific Northwest.
In June 1983 Butler held an Aryan Nations rally at Spokane, Washington,
where Mathews played a leadership role in deterring hostile protests. The following month he attended the annual Aryan World Congress at Hayden Lake,
where Louis Beam gave a moving address about white men securing the future for their children. During the various sessions, there was much talk of
“time for action” in establishing an Aryan homeland, but no one seemed
ready to act. In September 1983, at William Pierce’s National Alliance convention in Arlington, Virginia, Mathews delivered a rousing oration on Aryan
resurgence in the Pacific Northwest. He then returned home to Metaline Falls
and founded his own secret circle to secure that objective.
Mathews initiated his first nine members into The Order as they clasped
hands by candlelight in a circle around a participant’s baby daughter, symbolic of the white future, and pronounced the following oath: “I, as a free
Aryan man, hereby swear an unrelenting oath upon the green graves of our
sires, upon the children in the wombs of our wives, upon the throne of God
Almighty, sacred be His name . . . to join together in holy union with these
brothers in this circle and to declare forthright that from this moment on I
have no fear of death, no fear of foe; that I have a sacred duty to do whatever
is necessary to deliver our people from the Jew and bring total victory to the
Aryan race.” While Mathews’s own religious inclination was latterly more
Odinist than Christian Identity, a quarter of the Order’s recruits had Identity
associations with Aryan Nations and Church of Jesus Christ Christian. David
Lane, who drove the getaway car after the Berg murder, was an Identity
CHRISTIAN IDENTITY AND CREATIVITY 245church member and also founded the 14 Word Press, whose motto has become a mantra for white supremacist groups across the world (“We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”).30
Mathews was a charismatic and visionary leader, capable of inspiring
strong bonds of loyalty among his band, which grew from the original nine to
two dozen men, all subsequently indicted for their part in the criminal operations of The Order. Mathews’s apocalyptic despair and millennial fervor are
evident in his “declaration of war,” sent to leading newspapers throughout the
United States a few days before the siege in which he lost his life:
It is now a dark and dismal time in the history of our race. All around us lie
the green graves of our sires, yet, in a land once ours, we have become a people dispossessed....
While we allow Mexicans by the legions to invade our soil, we murder babies in equal numbers. Were the men of the Alamo only a myth? Whether by
force of arms or force of the groin, the result of this invasion is the same. Yet
our people do not resist.
Our heroes and our culture have been insulted and degraded. The mongrel
hordes clamor to sever us from our inheritance. Yet our people do not care.
Throughout this land our children are being coerced into accepting nonwhites for their idols, their companions, and worst of all their mates. A course
which is taking us straight to oblivion. Yet our people do not see....
All about us the land is dying. Our cities swarm with dusky hordes....
The water is rancid and the air is rank. Our farms are being seized by usurious leeches and our people are being forced off the land.
. . . We say: “Rise and join us! . . . The Aryan yeomanry is awakening. A long
forgotten wind is starting to blow. Do you hear the approaching thunder? It is
that of the awakened Saxon. War is upon the land. The tyrant’s blood will
flow.31
In a final open letter addressed to his local newspaper, Mathews described
the process of his own politicization. He recalled the profound impression
Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West and William Gayley Simpson’s Which
Way Western Man? had made on him, while he subscribed to numerous periodicals concerned with the decline of white America:
The stronger my love for my people grew, the deeper became my hatred for
those who would destroy my race, my heritage, and darken the future of my
children. By the time my son had arrived, I realized that White America, indeed my entire race, was headed for oblivion unless White men rose and
246 CHRISTIAN IDENTITY AND CREATIVITYturned the tide. The more I came to love my son the more I realized that unless things changed radically, by the time he was my age, he would be a stranger
in his own land, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Aryan in a country populated
mainly by Mexicans, Mulattos, Blacks and Asians. His future was growing
darker by the day.
I came to learn that this was not by accident, that there is a small, cohesive
alien group within this nation working day and night to make this happen. I
learned that these culture distorters have an iron grip on both political parties,
on Congress, on the media, on the publishing houses, and on most of the
major Christian denominations in this nation, even though these aliens subscribe to a religion which is diametrically opposed to Christianity....
Thus I have no choice. I must stand up like a White man and do battle.
A secret war has been developing for the last year between the regime in
Washington and an ever growing number of White people who are determined to regain what our forefathers discovered, explored, conquered, settled,
built and died for....
. . . I will leave knowing that I have made the ultimate sacrifice to ensure the
future of my children.
As always, for blood, soil, honor, for faith and for race.32
The cultural pessimism of Spengler, Simpson and Yockey are here directly
linked to the decline of the white Aryan race. Only the clarion call for an insurrection against ZOG can now restore a white world.
Mathews fell far short of his goal of inciting a white revolution and thus
unifying the radical right in a race war. His millennial challenge to ZOG was
answered by a hail of FBI bullets and his incineration in the house on Whidbey Island. Such failure is underlined by the arrest and conviction of his closest followers, who were indicted on major charges, and their imprisonment,
many for terms in excess of one hundred years. However, the war of the
Brüders Schweigen against ZOG had several important consequences. First, it
showed Identity Christians and other racial radicals that terrorist offensives
could be taken against a tyrannical establishment. Then, in consequence,
Mathews is now the principal hero and martyr of far-right folklore, while
other members of the Brüders Schweigen enjoy an emblematic status in underground magazines. At the same time, its example also divided the far right
with some groups endorsing such violence and terrorism, and others distancing themselves. Richard Butler stated that the men of the Silent Brotherhood “will become heroes to our grandchildren,” but defections and overwhelming state surveillance reduced the Aryan Nations to a shadow of its former strength by the late 1980s.
CHRISTIAN IDENTITY AND CREATIVITY 247Butler soon forged new alliances to restore Aryan Nations to its former
front-line role on the far right. Seeking to capitalize on the growing neo-Nazi
skinhead movement, Aryan Nations staged annual Aryan Youth Festivals at
the Hayden Lake compound between 1989 and 1996. Held on the weekend
closest to Hitler’s birthday, the prime attraction was bands playing white
power music. Butler has described the “skinhead phenomenon as a ‘natural
biological reaction’ of white teenagers banding together after being taught
that ‘non-white kids are great and white kids are scum.’”33At the same time,
Butler resumed his former diplomacy among far right groups to bring other
white supremacist groups within the Aryan Nations fold. In 1994 Aryan Nations formed an alliance with Gary Lauck’s National Socialist German Workers Party—Overseas Organization (NSDAP-AO) based in Lincoln, Nebraska.
As the most prolific worldwide distributor of neo-Nazi literature, NSDAP-AO
offered Aryan Nations access to international support that had previously remained beyond its reach. By 1995 Aryan Nations was operating in twenty-six
states and had established European chapters in Italy, Finland and Denmark.
Aryan Nations evidently presented Christian Identity racial theology within a
context that was acceptable to a broad spectrum of Nazi and other extremist
right-wing groups.
A further reversal in the fortunes of Aryan Nations occurred in October
2000, when Butler was compelled to surrender his Hayden Lake property to
satisfy part of a $6.3 million judgment against him as a result of a civil suit for
negligence brought by Victoria and Jason Keenan, who were shot at and assaulted by Aryan Nations security guards in 1998. Butler and his supporters
allege that damages were set at such an exorbitant level expressly in order to
bankrupt him and Aryan Nations. However, he still intends to remain politically active. He has since moved to a house provided by Vincent Bertollini, a
wealthy supporter, in nearby Hayden. Bertollini and his associate, Carl Story,
run an organization called the Eleventh Hour Remnant Messenger, which is
also committed to the anti-Semitic, Aryan supremacist theology of Christian
Identity. They have used wealth amassed from their Silicon Valley computer
ventures to finance mass mailings and other church activities. As the lawsuit
also stripped Butler of the right to use the name Aryan Nations, the organization is now known as Aryan National Alliance.34
Like Lanz von Liebenfels’s Ariosophy in prewar Austria and Germany,
Christian Identity embeds white Aryan nationalism and its reactionary fervor
within a fundamentalist Christian doctrine. From the perspective of the racist
right, the policies of the U.S. federal government are all working for the extinction of the Aryan race. Welfare programs and privileges for special interest (i.e., ethnic) groups are funding the promotion of a non-white America
248 CHRISTIAN IDENTITY AND CREATIVITYthrough the hard-earned taxes of the white majority. Identity Christians see
the unholy alliance of the Jews and the pre-Adamite “mud peoples” behind
the ceaseless advocacy of racial integration, race mixing, abortion and homosexuality in politics and the media. Government programs to subsidize drug
abusers, to offer welfare to immigrants and asylum seekers, and to provide
sexual education due to fear of AIDS are seen as conspiracies to debilitate and
debauch the American population to the point of total dependence on a Jewish sovereign elite presiding over a New World Order.
Identity Christians believe that liberal, multiracial society virtually outlaws
the discussion of racial inequalities such as black educational achievement,
criminal demography, and the relative ethnic percentages of the prison population. Any such inequalities are deemed evidence of white racism. Meanwhile, they condemn any reverse discrimination which grants black and other
ethnic groups special racial privileges. They see the authorities as indulging
the expression of ethnic racial identity and even antipathy toward whites
while imposing severe penalties on protagonists of white power and white
separatism. Identity Christians are inured to being held up as objects of scorn
and branded as bigots through the mainstream media, which constantly
preach a message of integration and race mixing, together with the acceptability of abortion and homosexuality. They see the permissiveness of democratic society as clear evidence of the Jewish conspiracy to lead the Adamic
Aryan people astray from God’s laws in order to enslave them. Identity Christians ultimately see the politics of liberalism and racial equality in terms of
demonic deception, for the underlying issue at stake is not so much white supremacism, but the threatened submergence of God’s chosen people, White
Israel, in the dark gene pool of the pre-Adamic “mud races.” Their Manichaean belief in a satanic antagonist is absolute and the defining feature of
their political outlook.
Although theologically quite distinct from Christian Identity, the Church of
the Creator (COTC) is motivated by similar fears for the survival of the white
race in an America subject to mass Third World immigration. To secure the
future of whites against racial submergence, the Church of the Creator calls
for a “Racial Holy War” against the colored races in the United States, together
with the Jews who are supposedly using the blacks, Hispanics and other
“mud” races to degrade the white race. The COTC rejects Christianity as a
“suicidal religion,” which the Jews originally introduced to demoralize and ultimately destroy the Roman Empire through race mixing and universalism.
The militant, anti-Christian, racist ideology of the COTC has proved a magnet to violent skinhead groups across the United States, with a result that the
CHRISTIAN IDENTITY AND CREATIVITY 249COTC has become a largely urban-based movement claiming some three
thousand members with overseas groups in Canada, South Africa, Australia
and Europe. A number of terrorist conspiracies to assassinate ethnic leaders
and violent racial killings have been linked to COTC members, inspired by its
crusade for a “whiter and brighter world.”35
The COTC was founded in 1973 by Ben Klassen (1918–1993), a wealthy
real estate developer, in order to promote “Creativity,” a new religion dedicated to the resurrection and redemption of the white race. The idea of a
racial religion was the culmination of Klassen’s odyssey through the American far right in search of solutions to the nation’s ills. Born into a large German-speaking Mennonite farming community in the Ukraine on 7 February
1918, Klassen spent his early years in a country ravaged by revolution, civil
war and a famine instigated by the Bolsheviks. In June 1924 the family decided to emigrate, first settling in Mexico before moving to Saskatchewan,
Canada, in December 1925, choices dictated by then prevailing restrictions on
immigration to the United States. During his youth, Klassen’s sympathies
were already with Germany. He read Hitler’s Mein Kampf in 1938 with approval, and intended to study engineering at Heidelberg. However, once war
intervened he enrolled at the University of Sakatchewan in Saskatoon from
1939 to 1943. After emigrating to the United States in 1945, he made a fortune
through the invention of an electric can opener and built up real estate companies in California, Nevada and Florida.36
The first stirrings of Klassen’s postwar political consciousness concerned
liberal attacks on Joseph McCarthy’s campaign in 1953–54 to expose communists in government. The forced racial integration by government troops
of schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957, a similar incident at the University of Mississippi in 1961, and Governor George Wallace’s defense of schoolhouse segregation in Alabama in 1962 awakened Klassen to the dangers of the
civil rights movement and revived his memories of Hitler’s racial creed.37 In
1963 Klassen joined a local Florida chapter of the John Birch Society. Initially
impressed by its diagnosis that communism was infiltrating the West, Klassen
soon noted that the Jews and the race question were taboo subjects in the
John Birch Society. In November 1966 he ran successfully for election as a Republican Florida state representative but found that his concern with the
“Jewish problem” and opposition to civil rights drew the fire of the press and
even criticism from fellow Birchers. After losing his seat the next year through
redistricting, Klassen next took a leading role in a third party seeking the election of George Wallace to the U.S. presidency as a segregationist in 1968.38
Klassen was repeatedly disappointed that none of his political affiliations
would recognize that it was the Jews rather than communists or liberals who
250 CHRISTIAN IDENTITY AND CREATIVITYwere at the root of the conspiracy to destroy America. Even though top
Birchers admitted as much in private, they took the view that charges of antiSemitism would finish the Society.39After exploring the Ku Klux Klan, Matt
Koehl’s National Socialist White People’s Party, Gerald L. K. Smith’s movement, and the National States Rights Party, Klassen founded his own Nationalist White Party (NWP) in November 1970. He initially defined his patriotic
third party as a movement of “White Christian people who conquered America [and] don’t intend to be relegated to second-class citizenship.”40The fourteen-point program of the NWP, tellingly described as a “creed,” claims that
the white race was created in the image of the Lord as his noblest and highest
creation. However, the white race is now in mortal danger of being “mongrelized and enslaved by a diabolical worldwide conspiracy,” as set forth in the
Jewish Talmud, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Karl Marx’s Communist
Manifesto.
The program evidently owed much to Klassen’s reading of The International Jewby Henry Ford:
The Jew has been a blood-sucking parasite on the backs of the White people
since the dawn of history, promoting the collapse and destruction of every civilization the White man has ever built. The White Race has now become the
most persecuted, abused, plundered and mistreated people on the face of the
earth . . . the White people of America alone, who have never known military
defeat, have been forced by their treacherous Jewish controlled government
under the pretext of foreign aid, welfare, and other hoaxes to pay more tribute
to hostile colored races at home and abroad than all the vanquished peoples
of the earth have paid to their conquerors. The White man has lost control of
his land, his government, his schools and his money.
Such traditional discourse of Jewish world conspiracy was updated through
the claim that the Jews were exploiting the colored races to undermine white,
Gentile Americans through the civil rights movement and rising levels of immigration:
Since the African Negroes were brought to America as slaves, largely by Jewish slave traders, they have been a serious problem to White America, and a
spreading cancer in our midst, greatly aggravated by the Jewish drive to
mongrelize the White Race. Their presence here in America is a dire threat to
the very survival of the White Race itself. Under the present course of events,
America will be a polluted brown mongrelized mass of riff raff and scum by
the end of the century, reduced to a level of degradation where our White
CHRISTIAN IDENTITY AND CREATIVITY 251civilization will collapse. We are determined that this must not happen to
God’s finest and noblest creation—the White Race.41
Despite Klassen’s initial focus on “white Christian” opposition to the Jews
and civil rights for blacks, he soon began to identify Christianity as a major
part of the problem. In his correspondence with potential NWP supporters
he noted that Christians were inhibited from criticizing the Jews in view of
their shared religious heritage. Klassen soon went further in a complete rejection of Christianity. He regarded Christ’s Sermon on the Mount with its
teachings “judge not,” “love your enemies,” “turn the other cheek,” “sell all
thou hast and give it to the poor,” and “resist not evil” (Matthew 5–7) as “suicidal” advice concocted by the Jews for Gentile consumption. By charging the
Jews with using Christianity to destroy Roman morale and civilization,
Klassen presents a simplistic, anti-Semitic version of Evola’s critique of Christianity’s effect on the Roman Empire. By ignoring its transcendent dimension, Klassen impugns Christianity as an anti-natural ideology that has ever
since weakened white European peoples by preventing them from acting effectively in a competitive natural world. Klassen decided that the white race
needed “a new religion based on the concepts of preserving the White race,
not a rehash of old Jewish shibboleths.”42This kind of “Aryan Judaism” for the
exclusive benefit of the white race would act as a counterpart to the tribal
identity and powerful influence of the Jews in their host societies.43
Accordingly, Klassen founded the Church of the Creator on 16 August
1973 in Lighthouse Point, Florida. By this time he had already published
Nature’s Eternal Religion (1973), the first text of his new religion of Creativity based on Darwinist ideas of natural selection and evolution. Here
Klassen sees all nature obeying the laws of the survival of the fittest. By
constantly subdividing species into subspecies and encouraging their competition, nature seeks to refine and upgrade superior species while allowing
inferior ones to decline and become extinct. As the white race is held to be
the crowning creation of nature, Creativity posits an ethical scheme in
which whatever is good for the white race is the highest virtue, and whatever is bad is the ultimate sin. Like earlier Aryan myths, Creativity holds
that the white race is the sole originator of all worthwhile culture and civilizations in world history, while the Jews have always acted as their deadly
enemy by preying as parasites on their white host societies. Klassen regards
both the Egyptian and Aryan Indian civilizations as proud creations of the
white race. Their eventual decline into multiracial chaos and squalor is a
fate that shortly awaits the United States unless it can resist race mixing by
adopting his new racial religion.44
252 CHRISTIAN IDENTITY AND CREATIVITYKlassen effectively deifies the white race (always capitalized in his writings)
as the crown of creation. The logo of the COTC shows a letter “W,” signifying
the white race, surmounted by a crown to symbolize its place in nature, above
this a halo to represent its holy status. Its destiny is to expand and repopulate
the whole world while shrinking the numbers and territory of its enemies—
the inferior, uncreative, colored races. Klassen has nothing but contempt for
blacks, whom he regards as shiftless, lazy and stupid. The black African, he
claims, invented nothing, domesticated no animals, and never produced a
written language. The Jewish-directed media foment black racial awareness
while constantly preaching “brotherhood” to whites. Black underachievement in modern American society is constantly countered by Jewish media
calls for more equality, enforced by the integration of housing and busing to
mixed schools. Klassen notes that schools have since become hotbeds of
crime, knifings, beatings, lawlessness and anarchy. The Jews are driving the
civil rights movement with the aim of promoting interracial marriage, as they
see the mongrelization of the white race as a crucial step toward achieving
Jewish dominance over a debased Gentile humanity.45
Klassen repeatedly pays tribute to Adolf Hitler as “the greatest leader the
White Race has ever produced.” Hitler, Klassen believes, struck a major blow
for the white race in his near-destruction of the Jewish conspiracy.46 But
Klassen also distinguishes Creativity from National Socialism. He sees nationalism and Pan-Germanism as divisive of the white race, while Creativity
should embrace all whites. Klassen also believes that the situation in contemporary America is quite different from Weimar Germany. Burgeoning colored
minorities, crime, welfare, and racial integration require a new religion based
on the white Volk, rather than a mere political ideology. Klassen sees the race
problem in a global context. He recalls that in 1920 the white race was outnumbered two to one in the world. It was outnumbered seven to one by 1973,
when the United Nations predicted that whites would be outnumbered fortynine to one in a further twenty years. Klassen conjures a terrible vision of the
future, when the colored races, “agitated and controlled by the Jews,” have
enough physical power to slaughter the white race in their own lands.47
By the early 1980s Klassen had published his second Creativity text, The
White Man’s Bible(1981), and a health book,Salubrious Living (1982), co-authored with Arnold DeVries. As early as 1974, Klassen had considering building a “world center” for the COTC. Disgusted by the increasing immigration
of Cubans, Haitians and Latin American refugees to South Florida, together
with its growing black and Jewish population, Klassen decided to purchase
land in North Carolina. On 10 March 1982 the new COTC center was
founded in a valley of the Blue Ridge Mountains near Otto, a few miles north
CHRISTIAN IDENTITY AND CREATIVITY 253of the Georgia state line. Klassen celebrated the American “winning of the
West” with its pioneering values of white colonization and the subjugation of
the native American Indians with a wooden building reflecting the architectural style of old Western towns in Colorado, Arizona and California. Together with a succession of editors, he published a periodical Racial Loyalty, a
populist inflammatory tabloid that attracted urban skinhead groups to the
COTC with its rhetoric of racial violence against the “mud” races now rapidly
colonizing American cities. Styling himself the Pontifex Maximus of his
church, Klassen established his mail-order ministry by recruiting ministers
for the COTC on a nationwide basis. Branches of the COTC were chiefly encouraged to spread the racial gospel through street actions involving leafleting, marches, banners and displays. An “Operation Skinhead” was specifically
mounted to attract white youth to its open challenge of ethnic groups in
American cities. A COTC initiative was also started in South Africa in an attempt to stave off black-majority rule.48
Using the term “Rahowa” (RAcial Holy WAr) as the COTC battle cry for
white world domination, Klassen’s apocalyptic vision is evident in his book
Rahowa! This Planet Is All Ours:
rahowa! In this one word we sum up the total goal and program of not only
the Church of the Creator, but of the total White Race, and it is this: We take
up the challenge. We gird for total war against the Jews and the rest of the godamned mud races of the world—politically, militantly, financially, morally
and religiously. . . . We regard it as a holy war to the finish—a holy racial war.
Rahowa! is inevitable. It is the Ultimate and Only solution.
Faced with the threat of racial inundation by blacks and other colored races,
the “racial holy war” against the “mud” races is the only road to the resurrection and redemption of the white race:
No longer can the mud races and the White Race live on the same planet and
survive. It is now either them or us. We want to make damn sure it is we who
survive. This planet is from now on all ours, and will be the one and only habitat for our future progeny for all time to come.49
Here Klassen’s militant prophecy uncannily recalls Lanz von Liebenfels’s call
in his pre-1914 völkisch Ariosophy for Aryans to wage a global race war
against the “apish” lower races.50
During the 1980s, Klassen sent out feelers to many leaders within the white
race movement including Tom Metzger, the founder of White Aryan Resis-
254 CHRISTIAN IDENTITY AND CREATIVITYtance in Fallbrook, California; Matt Koehl and his New Order; William Pierce
of the National Alliance; and DeWest Hooker, a close associate of George Lincoln Rockwell in the early years of the American Nazi Party. Klassen’s overriding concern was, however, to find a successor and financial patron to carry
on the leadership of the COTC. Between 1990 and 1992, Klassen appointed
three short-lived successors, Rudy Stanko, Charles Altvater and Mark Wilson,
before choosing Rick McCarty in January 1993. After Ben Klassen’s death in
August 1993, the movement floundered as a loose association of skinhead
groups until Matt Hale took over its remnants in 1996, renaming it the World
Church of the Creator (WCOTC).
Born on 27 July 1971, Matt Hale had already attracted notoriety by founding an American White Supremacist Party while a student in 1990. In 1992 he
started the National Socialist White Americans Party, achieving 14 percent of
the vote in city council elections in East Peoria, Illinois. After gaining a degree
in political science from Bradley University in 1993, Hale completed law
school and passed his bar examination in 1998. Besides publishing a periodical, The Struggle, Hale hosts a substantial website, appears regularly on talk
radio shows and markets an extensive range of WCOTC audiotapes, videos
and literature, including all of Klassen’s “holy books of Creativity.” His lead
editorials in The Struggle address flashpoint issues of immigration, rampant
black crime, and the discriminatory effects on whites of affirmative action.51
Website testimonials from converts similarly reflect their relief and newfound
sense of purpose in discovering a movement that challenges the media’s
ceaseless insistence on white guilt and multiculturalism. With his organizing
ability and intellectual leadership, Hale has successfully expanded the number of active WCOTC state chapters from eight to over thirty, with overseas
organizations in Belgium, France, Sweden, Canada and Australia.
Despite their doctrinal divergence over Christianity, Christian Identity
churches and the Church of the Creator indicate an important trend in the
development of the postwar white racial movement. As Jeffrey Kaplan has
shown in his several masterly discussions of these groups, they are distinct in
presenting themselves as religions, typically organized as sects and embracing
millenarian hopes of a white racial utopia.52 Despite the massive deligitimation of racial discrimination after the atrocities of the Third Reich, postwar
Nazi parties in America and Britain still sought a political platform on the far
right to denounce civil rights and colored immigration in the 1950s and
1960s. However, the advancing ascendancy of liberal elites in these societies
since then has systematically narrowed their political space through an ideological program of anti-racism, egalitarianism, and now multiculturalism in
education, media and government. Nationalist parties in Europe already risk
CHRISTIAN IDENTITY AND CREATIVITY 255a legal ban in those countries with specific laws against discrimination on
racial grounds, inciting racial hatred, anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.
Confronted by the entrenchment of multiculturalism and affirmative action in liberal society, certain white nationalists feel so embattled and disinherited that they can express their ideology only in terms of sacred, absolute
affirmations: hence their flight into sectarian “churches” underpinned with
racial theologies of white identity and supremacy. Their abandonment of political parties with the National Socialist label, indeed their avoidance of political activity as such in a liberal society profoundly hostile to their views,
suggests a certain historical parallel. The intellectual origins of National Socialism can be traced to the German völkisch groups and sects espousing nationalist and anti-Semitic doctrines in Austria and Germany at the turn of the
last century. Discouraged by liberal political establishments, these groups incubated reactionary ideologies of German racial identity, which then found
overt political expression after the privations and loss of the First World War.
It seems likely that these new religions of white identity in the United States
and other white nations facing growing ethnic minorities are performing a
similar incubatory function, all the more virulent for their political marginalization and repression.
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου