Roots of U.S. Far Right

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Roots of U.S. Far Right

Postby American Dream » Sat Dec 05, 2009 8:40 am

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelrep ... p?aid=1098

Books on the Right
Authors Probe Roots of U.S. Far Right



Defending the Master Race: Conservation, Eugenics, and the Legacy of Madison Grant
By Jonathan Peter Spiro
Burlington, Vt.: University of Vermont Press, 2009
$39.95 (hardback)

The Color of Fascism: Lawrence Dennis, Racial Passing, and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism in the United States
By Gerald Horne
New York: New York University Press, 2009
$22.00 (hardback)

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A bumper crop of works on influential early 20th century American racists, fascists and eugenicists has been hitting the bookshelves in 2009. Two of the most interesting are on Madison Grant (1865-1937), perhaps the most important conservationist of his time and so pernicious a racist and anti-Semite that he helped inspire Hitler's policies, and Lawrence Dennis (1893-1977), the biggest defender of fascism in the 1930s, who was, surprisingly, a black man passing for white.

Jonathan Peter Spiro's biography of Grant, a very rich member of the American WASP elite, is eye opening. It is astonishing to realize how many major American figures of the early 1900s were so rabidly racist and anti-Semitic — and perfectly willing to use the power of the state to sterilize those they saw as lesser beings. Spiro's book is fundamental to understanding how profoundly our nation has been shaped by racist and anti-Semitic ideas.

Grant was a member of Theodore Roosevelt's Boone and Crockett Club, an exclusive organization focused originally on big game hunting, and later big game protection, that included a few hundred of the 26th president's closest friends. A celebrated fixture in New York's prestigious private clubs, Grant was also the founder of several important institutions, including the Bronx Zoo.

From his perch in high society, Grant relentlessly advocated in favor of conservation, and he is largely responsible for saving California's redwoods as well as creating several of what are now prized national parks, including Glacier National Park in Montana. The world's tallest tree, a redwood, was named after Grant in 1931. But his central role as an early environmentalist has been obscured by his other, more odious legacy: Grant was the greatest propagandist of racism, anti-Semitism and eugenics of his time, and his ideas greatly influenced American elite opinion and profoundly affected the nation's history.

Grant's most important work, The Passing of the Great Race, was first published in 1916 by the elite Charles Scribner's Sons. Its basic thesis, still popular among American white supremacists today, is that miscegenation and immigration were destroying America's superior "Nordic" race. In their time, Grant's beliefs were popular, even meriting a mention in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (the celebrated author and Grant shared the same Scribner editor).

Presaging Hitler's infamous words, Grant called Nordics "the Master Race." To protect that race, Grant was quite clear that restrictions curtailing Jewish and Southern European immigration were necessary. Eugenics, too, were required. He wrote that the effort should begin by sterilizing the "criminals," the "insane" and the "diseased," followed by the "weaklings" and, ultimately, all "worthless race types."

Grant's ideas had momentous consequences, becoming commonplace among the American elite and resulting in concrete political change. From behind the scenes, Grant nearly single-handedly orchestrated passage of the racist 1924 Immigration Act. That bill, which remained in place until 1965, drastically cut immigration levels, excluded Asians, and largely restricted entry to Northern Europeans.

Through eugenics organizations he funded and founded, Grant influenced many states to pass coercive sterilization statutes under which tens of thousands of Americans deemed subpar were sterilized from the 1930s to the 1970s. Grant's ideas became the accepted law of the land in 1927, when the Supreme Court upheld sterilization laws and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes endorsed them, writing that "it is better for all the world if, instead of … let[ting] them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind."

It is undeniable that the Nazi genocide was based at least in part on these ideas. The theorists of the Third Reich read Grant's work and Hitler cited it in Mein Kampf. Holmes' opinion and Grant's book were both entered as evidence for the Nazi defense during the Nuremberg trials.

Another striking aspect of Spiro's book is the parallel between the lives of Grant and John Tanton, the founder of the modern nativist movement. Like Grant, Tanton has founded dozens of organizations. Like Grant's, Tanton has a long history of environmental activism. And like Grant, Tanton's efforts were backed by the Pioneer Fund, a long-time supporter of eugenics whose leaders were close to Grant. Indeed, Tanton's personal hero, John Trevor Sr., was a close friend of Grant's who was another key player in passing the 1924 act and openly promulgated racist and anti-Semitic views. (Trevor distributed pro-Nazi propaganda, drew up plans to crush uprisings of "Jewish subversives," and warned shrilly of "diabolical Jewish control" of America.)

American Fascist
Gerald Horne's The Color of Fascism is a much slimmer volume on the unlikely career as an American fascist of Lawrence Dennis, a far-right thinker who passed as white and whose ideas are still prized today by radical right activists, including veteran anti-Semite Willis Carto.

Dennis was an interesting character. He was born in Atlanta of a black mother and white father in 1893 and was a child prodigy. Before the age of 10, Dennis wrote a book on his Christian beliefs and preached his religion to massive crowds in the U.S. and Europe — never hiding his black mother, who shepherded him around the world. But as he grew older, the light-skinned Dennis made a decision to leave his far darker-skinned mother behind and to begin to pass for white. By the 1920s, he had achieved the unthinkable for a black man of the time, graduating from Exeter and then Harvard and going on to make careers for himself in the State Department and on Wall Street, where he was one of the few who predicted the 1929 stock market crash. That prediction led to a profitable run of speaking engagements for Dennis in the 1930s and vaulted him into the upper-class social circles of the far right, where he became particularly close to Charles and Anne Lindbergh.

By the 1930s, Dennis had evolved into the public face of American fascism, making connections with American extremists and traveling to Europe to meet with Mussolini, whom he later said he was "less impressed with" than Hitler. In 1941, Dennis was named "America's No. 1 Intellectual Fascist" by Life.

So what made Dennis an adherent of an ideology that most certainly would have oppressed him and other African Americans? Horne theorizes that Dennis may well have been attracted to fascism simply because it stood starkly opposed to American "democracy," which then so openly oppressed blacks living under Jim Crow. He wrote often and eloquently of the impending ascendancy of the fascist model, and regularly ascribed America's decay to its racist policies — a point that oddly seemed missed by his many racist allies.

Dennis's fascist run ended disastrously. In the fraught years leading up to World War II, the FBI investigated Dennis' fascist contacts and was told by a former girlfriend that he frequented Nazi events. In 1944, Dennis was tried for sedition, along with a bevy of co-defendants whom he would claim little connection to, after being charged with orchestrating "a three-year plot to incite mutiny in the armed forces, unseat the government and set up a Nazi regime." The trial was widely criticized as an incoherent farce and ended in a mistrial after the judge suffered a fatal heart attack. Regardless, Dennis' reputation was destroyed.

Not everyone abandoned Dennis in the wake of the trial. He remained close in the post-war years to Senator Burton K. Wheeler (D-Mont.), America Firster and retired Gen. Robert Wood, conservative publisher William Henry Regnery and "historian" Harry Elmer Barnes, whose Holocaust denial is popular in anti-Semitic circles to this day. But for the most part, Dennis was shunned, dying in obscurity in 1977, decades after fascism had been totally discredited as a political system.
Last edited by American Dream on Sun Dec 06, 2009 11:35 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby Sweet Tooth » Sat Dec 05, 2009 9:25 pm

VERY Interesting.

The people they're talking about in these new books are the HARD FAR Right... those who were generally wiped out after the twin shocks of the Depression and Fascism showed exactly where the Rightist mentality could (and may well invariably) lead.

The intellectuals who remained self-labelled "conservatives" after that referred to themselves as "The Remnant", and they were loosely centered around William F. Buckley, the single most important person involved in making conservative intellectual thought "respectable" to a certain segment of the chattering classes again, after the memory of those twin humiliation/abomintions began to fuzz.

There's a fantastic, unbiased (as far as I can tell) book about two of the most important and serious-minded individuals involved in re-building the conservative intellectual movement in the post-war era... these thinkers were Leo Strauss (who, when you scratch the surface of his scholarship, was VERY weird and occultish) and Eric Vogelin, one of the most ambitious political philosophers of the 20th century. Of the two, Vogelin was a serious, real-deal philosopher who created a body of work that raises questions that really require addressing.

There's a FANTASTIC book about these two men. It's entitled: Revolt Against Modernity: Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, and the Search for a Postliberal Order, and it was written by academic Ted V. McAllister.

He is a history professor at a midwestern university. He has written no other book, according to Amazon.com. I don't know if he's sympathetic to Vogelin and Strauss' worldviews or not, but he provides an undeniably valuable resource by explaining in exquisite detail the philosophical beliefs of Strauss (who didn't consider himself a philosopher, but a scholar of philosophy) and systems of Vogelin (who DID consider himself a philosopher, and whose life work I would say entitles him to the right to refer to himself as such, whether we agree with him or not).

Here's what a lot of smarter people than me have said about McAllister's

"McAllister traces an American counter-tradition in the work of thinkers for whom modernity was as much tragedy as triumph. An important contribution to our self-understanding as well as to the history of ideas."
--Jean Bethke Elshtain, author of Democracy on Trial

"A lively, nuanced, and insightful account of the two contemporary giants of political philosophy. Warmly recommended."
--Ellis Sandoz, Director, Eric Voegelin Institute for American Renaissance Studies and editor of Eric Voegelin's Significance for the Modern Mind

"A beautifully written book that lucidly examines the major works of Strauss and Voegelin for an understanding of the origins and nature of our modern predicament. It is 'must' reading for an appreciation of the theoretical foundations of modern American conservative thought which, as McAllister makes clear, owes so much to these two giants."
--George W. Carey, editor of The Political Science Reviewer

"McAllister has performed a real service in delineating so clearly the civic dimensions of Strauss's and Voegelin's thought."
--Washington Times

"This is a thoughtful book that not only usefully maps out some of the more obscure and neglected territory in twentieth-century intellectual history, but itself constitutes, to some extent, an inquiry into the problems and pathologies of modernity, and of contemporary American conservatism."
--Reviews in American History

"McAllister provides an insightful critique of the ambiguities and tensions that divide the modern American conservative movement into mutually antagonistic camps of cultural traditionalists, economic libertarians, and populists."
--Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science

"This book is fair and thoughtful. There is no ideological distortion in McAllister's readings; he illuminates rather than obscures."
--Stanley Rosen, author of The Ancients and the Moderns: Rethinking Modernity

"A lucid and powerful account."
--Kenneth L. Deutsch, coeditor of Leo Strauss: Political Philosopher and Jewish Thinker and The Crisis of Liberal Democracy

*** *** ***

One interesting side note, there is a book by noted Italian philosopher, occultist, "traditionalist" (that term being used in a very specific way) and racial theorist Julius Evola, entitled "Revolt Against the Modern World", which is in no way similar to McAllister's scholarly tome, but deserving of attention in its own right.

Names and titles worth wiki'ing from the post above:

Julius Evola
Revolt Against The Modern World
Leo Strauss
Eric Vogelin
Revolt Against Modernism
The Conservative Remnant
The Rise of the Counter-Establishment
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Postby American Dream » Sun Dec 06, 2009 12:02 am

From Virginia McCullough, regarding conspiracy author ("The Last Circle"), Cheri Seymour, aka "Carol Marshall":

I believe that in the past I have mentioned the first book that Cheri Seymour wrote and published in 1991. I consider it one of the most interesting books I have read about the far right groups. I have typed in the front and back of the book jacket so that readers can have an idea about the book’s contents. It was published by Camden Place Communications, Inc., 4859 Morningstar Lane, Mariposa, California 95338.


The “Identity Movement” originated in the post World War II McCarthy era when a handful of military officers joined the radical right and formed a loose coalition that declared war on “Z.O.G”, the Zionist Occupied Government. Their mission was to bring America back to the America of its founding fathers.

Decades later, that coalition would evolve into the Committee of the States. In 1984, representatives from twelve states assembled in Mariposa California to form a compact which called for the elimination of income taxes and the replacement of the Congress of the United States. The Compact was filed at the Mariposa County Recorder’s office where it lay, unnoticed, for two years. It was the first time in history that far right groups had united under one banner. To commemorate the occasion, silver coins (see cover) were privately minted in Sacramento and sold throughout the nation. Shortly afterward, Constructive Notices were sent out to the government officials informing them that anyone who interfered with the Committee would be indicted for treason and put to death by the Committee’s militia.

The Compact was signed on July 4, 1984 at the 100 acre ranch of Colonel William Potter Gales, a former staff officer of General Douglas MacArthur and director of guerrilla operations in the Philippines during World War II. Gale, identified as the founder of the Identity Movement by public media, had traveled the nation for twenty years preaching his doctrines on radio programs and training paramilitary organizations.

Unknown to the Committee of the States, a sleeping giant had awakened. Federal attorneys from California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Idaho and Alabama were already meeting in Seattle to form Operation Clean Sweep, a joint effort by the FBI, the IRS, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to arrest and convict targeted right-wing leaders. Colonel Gale and Committee members from Arizona and Nevada were subsequently swept up in a tide of arrests.

When investigative reporter Cheri Seymour was assigned to cover the October 23, 1986, arrest and trail of Colonel Gale, she embarked on a journey of discovery that would take her to the heart of the extreme right. She had not been briefed on Gale’s background and she reported just the circumstances of the arrest: dozens of FBI agents and federal marshalls, armed with shotguns and automatic weapons, swooped into Mariposa, a small town in California’s Sierra foothills, and arrested a frail, seventy-year-old Colonel for allegedly threatening the IRS.

Her unembellished news account led the reclusive “godfather of the far-right” to do something he had done only once before and vowed he would never do again: talk to the press. During the last year of his life, through his trial and conviction, Gale poured out his life story and the history of the Movement to Seymour. He introduced her to other right-wing leaders and gave her access to meetings, files, letters, mementos and documents.

Through Gale, Seymour uncovered the behind-the-scenes dynamics of the extreme-right underground and taped hundreds of hours of interviews with its members. For three years she amassed files of court documents, military records, press accounts and official reports from the IRS, the FBI and the state attorney general’s office. The resulting book, Committee of the States, is an unparalleled investigative report and oral history of one of the most organized and complex movements America has ever seen.

The Jacket photograph of a Committee of the States 1984 Articles of Confederation B221 is credited to: Stan Pierce, Mariposa Photographic Studio, Mariposa, California 95338.
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Postby American Dream » Sun Dec 06, 2009 10:20 am

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelrep ... p?aid=1109

A Decade of Defiance
A 10-Year Standoff in Texas Raises Thorny Issues
By Larry Keller


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Jonathan Gray performs sentry duty at his father's compound in Texas.



TRINIDAD, Texas — It was Christmas Eve 1999, but John Joe Gray wasn't consumed with the holiday spirit. When the car in which he was a passenger was pulled over for speeding by two Texas state troopers near Palestine, in Anderson County, he was packing a loaded handgun in a shoulder holster. He had no permit for it.

One of the troopers ordered Gray out of the car. He either refused or was slow to respond. When the troopers tried to remove him, Gray resisted, was handcuffed and a scuffle ensued. The cops said he bit one of them and tried to grab the other's gun.

"Somehow, his hand got in my mouth," Gray said in a radio interview eight months later. "I bit down and I wouldn't let go. They sprayed me with the pepper spray three times." He was arrested and jailed.

Two weeks later at a bail hearing, Gray promised the judge he would appear at future court hearings if he bonded out of jail. He denied or downplayed the prosecutor's questions about his purported involvement in antigovernment militias and a plot to bomb a Texas interstate highway. "I'm a member of the body of the Lord Jesus Christ, king of kings and lord of lords," he said.

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John Joe Gray

Judge Jim Parsons granted the lower bail, but with conditions. One was that neither Gray nor anyone in his family keep firearms on their 47-acre rural compound alongside the Trinity River just outside the town of Trinidad in Henderson County, the next county north of Anderson. "I don't want these officers to go out there and have to arrest him at this compound and be confronted by a bunch of firearms," the judge said.

Gray posted bail and went home. Two months later, the father of six with no prior criminal record sent a letter to authorities: If your deputies come onto my property, bring body bags. Gray had perhaps 16 other people, including several grandchildren, living at his modest home and outbuildings at the time. Armed family members, including Gray's wife, Alicia, took turns patrolling the property. That worried authorities — so much so that even when Gray began skipping court appearances, they didn't go arrest him.

"They were pretty well fixed up with weapons," recalls Howard "Slick" Alfred, the Henderson County sheriff at the time. "They had better weapons than we had. There was children in there. He was kind of hiding behind those kids. I didn't want another Waco kind of deal." And it's not as if Gray was a threat to the community, Alfred adds. "He's not hurting anybody over there."

Now approaching 10 years of self-imposed house arrest, Gray, 60, and various family members remain secluded in the verdant countryside outside this town of 1,100 in the undulating terrain of East Texas. The family has no electricity, no phone, no running water, and hasn't had for nearly a decade. Instead, they get by with wood-burning heaters, a generator, kerosene lamps, water drawn from the river — and occasional handouts from friends and sympathizers.

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Keith Tarkington lost his two sons, then aged 2 and 4, when his estranged wife Lisa Gray snatched them and took them to her father's compound in early 2000.


Not only has Gray escaped prosecution on a felony charge, he may also have helped a daughter defy a court order giving custody of her two children to her ex-husband. Gray's oldest son avoided a misdemeanor prosecution for hitting and kicking that ex-husband's truck, so fearful are authorities of a confrontation with the Gray clan. Gray also is several years delinquent on property taxes. The county has sued for payment and conceivably could sell his land to recover the money owed — but the sheriff's office finally quit trying to serve court papers on him after three attempts last year.

Gray poses a quandary for authorities: How do you arrest a heavily armed, government-hating religious zealot when trying to do so might cause a bloodbath? And what sort of message does it convey to not apprehend an accused lawbreaker? While tax-dodging, money-laundering "sovereign-citizen" extremists claiming they are subject only to God's laws are imprisoned across the nation, John Joe Gray remains free. He has thwarted four Henderson County sheriffs so far. "I see no reason right at this minute to storm a compound where officers could get killed," says the current sheriff, Ray Nutt. "My position is to sit and wait."

Shades of Gray
Even before his arrest and indictment on charges that included assaulting a trooper, Gray, who was a self-employed carpenter, was known as a fervently religious, far-right militiaman. He hosted gatherings of the Texas Constitutional Militia, an outfit formed on the first anniversary of the conclusion of the 52-day standoff between federal agents and heavily armed members of the Branch Davidian religious sect in Waco 78 miles away, which ended catastrophically in 1993 with 80 men, women and children dying in an inferno. He was involved with the secessionist group, Republic of Texas, which had its own seven-day standoff with Texas Rangers in 1997, after its leader and several followers kidnapped a neighbor couple at gunpoint. Gray left the group, he said at his 2000 bail hearing, because "they was not of God. They did not go of God's ways."
At that hearing, Anderson County District Attorney Doug Lowe asked Gray about documents found in the car he was riding in that included plans to make a bomb and place it on a Dallas interstate, as well as instructions on urban survival, including the use of terrorist bombs and booby traps. It belonged to the car's driver, Gray maintained. Lowe asked about him being arrested on the grounds of the Capitol in Austin for carrying a weapon. Didn't happen, Gray said. And those phone calls threatening an attack on the jail unless he was released? Somebody, Gray claimed, "is trying to set me up."

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Signs like this one, along with several that are more threatening, mark the perimeter of John Joe Gray's 47 acres in Henderson County, Tex. Many militia enthusiasts fear that vaccines are part of a murderous government conspiracy.



Gray also was affiliated with the Oregon-based Embassy of Heaven, which describes itself as a group of "peculiar people" who are citizens of heaven obeying the government of God, not secular authorities. The church opposes divorce and remarriage, lawyers and courtrooms. It shuns politics and elections and believes that the United States is a "pervert nation." The church issues business and driver's licenses, passports and license plates to be used instead of those offered by government. They aren't legal, of course, and before his felony arrest, Gray was cited for attempting to use an Embassy of Heaven driver's license and tag. He failed to show up for his court appearance on that, too. At the time of his arrest, neither he nor his wife, Alicia, had valid driver's licenses, his attorney told the judge in his criminal case.

Harold Colvin has been a barber in Trinidad for 51 years, and, before the dust-up with the law, John Joe Gray was one of his customers. He remembers a humorless man who grew increasingly odd. "At one time he was an average Joe Blow," says Colvin, an affable man with a full head of white hair who charges $7 for a haircut. "He had funny ideas. His were mostly religious. He said he wasn't going to pay any taxes … regardless of what the law said."

Gray's former son-in-law, Keith Tarkington, recalls Gray and other family members cutting up their Social Security cards and mailing the pieces to the Social Security Administration, advising that they no longer wanted to be part of the system. (So-called sovereign citizens, radical antigovernment activists, similarly claim to have no obligation to pay taxes or obey federal laws. Famous examples of such "sovereigns" include the Montana Freemen, who had their own 81-day standoff with federal authorities in 1996.) When he holed up on his land, Gray had lots of food stored. He began stockpiling earlier in 1999, Tarkington says, because like many in the militia movement, Gray believed that "Y2K" — the changeover of millennia on Jan. 1, 2000 — would produce cataclysmic events.

Today, Gray continues to stiff Henderson County on property taxes. He has been delinquent since 2004 on taxes on his home and land on Old River Road, which has a market value of $151,690, according to records. As of November 2008, he owed $10,149, according to the tax assessor's office. He also hasn't paid taxes since 1995 on an undeveloped parcel he owns elsewhere in the county, even though the bill is less than $6 a year. He is $176 in arrears, records show. "He's just a different kind of person," says former sheriff Alfred, 76, who retired in 2000. "He's got an entirely different philosophy than most of us."

No Regrets
In recent years, Gray and his family have lived in obscurity. It wasn't always so. In August 2000, Austin, Texas-based radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones told his audience he had received a tip that federal agents were preparing to attack Gray's compound in armored vehicles. Reporters from The New York Times, The Washington Post and other media outlets descended on tiny Trinidad for a confrontation that never came.
That same month, three armed men ventured into a neighboring pasture at dusk and destroyed a surveillance camera and video transmitter that authorities had placed in a horse trailer, before retreating to the Gray property. And later that year, Chuck Norris, martial artist, actor, right-wing Christian book author and fellow Texan, met with Gray at his ranch and offered to get him free legal representation in an attempt to end the standoff. "There's two people that family looks up to: Mel Gibson and Chuck," an intermediary said. But even Norris couldn't resolve the impasse.

"God's word is the sole guide for our family," Alicia Gray said in a press release in 2000. "Our faith in God is strong and unbending … [O]ur resolve is without compromise."

Her husband seconded those thoughts. "The Lord teaches to protect my property and family with every means I can, and that is what I will do," he told an interviewer.

Citing the Waco fiasco, Alfred opted to wait Gray out. "What I hope is, we get a call either from him or somebody close to him, saying he wants to surrender," his chief deputy, Ronny Brownlow, said at the time. "Time is on our side." Brownlow succeeded Alfred as sheriff, and now he, too, has retired.

So Gray is left alone. "I feel like everyone should abide by the same law," says Colvin, his former barber. "I don't like what the law has let him get away with. I could do the same thing. But most of us wouldn't go that far."

Doug Lowe, the district attorney, says he isn't concerned that the hands-off approach will encourage other antigovernment diehards to follow Gray's example. "I don't regret not having a Waco," he says. Authorities have declined to make a martyr of Gray in the eyes of other antigovernment zealots, he notes. "They get more press when police make the siege. Eventually, the law catches up to these people."

Stealing the Children
That approach has embittered Tarkington, who was married to one of Gray's daughters. Lisa Gray left Tarkington after less than four years of marriage and took their sons, aged 2 and 4 at the time, to her father's compound. "When we was dating, I knew he [Gray] was a little bit different," Tarkington, 43, says. "It took him two years to convince my wife she was better off living with him than me."
Tarkington visited the Gray compound in 1999 trying in vain to talk to his wife and see his sons. "Don't you worry about your wife and kids. We'll take care of them," he quotes his former father-in-law as telling him. During one visit in October 1999, John Joe Gray's eldest child, Jonathan, or "Bubba," vandalized his truck, Tarkington says. Jonathan Gray was charged with criminal mischief, a misdemeanor. But the charge was dropped nearly three years later. The reason given by the prosecutor? He couldn't obtain identifying information about Jonathan Gray such as his birth date and driver's license number. The court file, however, includes a document with Jonathan Gray's birth date.

Tarkington filed for divorce and got a court order for custody of the boys. There was one problem. With no proof that his children were living at the Gray compound, he couldn't get the Henderson County Sheriff's Department to serve the document authorizing them to remove the boys from their mother's custody. Since it was a civil matter, they couldn't go on Gray's land. They left the paperwork on a fence post.

Alfred, the former sheriff, says people friendly to law enforcement visited the Gray compound back then, but told authorities that they didn't see the children. "Nobody could ever find out if those kids were there," he says. The current sheriff, Ray Nutt, says he has no information of the whereabouts of Tarkington's boys.

Tarkington spends much of his time nowadays at his parents' home in Gun Barrel City, 16 miles from the Gray family compound, pestering law enforcement agencies to arrest Gray. "A troop of Boy Scouts could do a better job," he says with disgust. "The police have done everything they can to protect John Joe Gray." He and others believe that his ex-wife and sons are now likely living in another state.

Sheriff Nutt says he sympathizes. But he also implies that Tarkington has become obsessed with Gray. "Sometimes his focus is more on Joe Gray than his children," he says. "He wants someone to assault that compound."

'We Are Militia'
Old River Road deteriorates from asphalt to hard sand and rocks as you draw nearer to John Joe Gray's home. Pastures of tall grass behind barbed-wire fences line each side. Cattle graze, and a lone gray horse ambles homeward. A couple of dreary old trailers squat in the grass, and a red barn stands nearby. Gray's property is just ahead. Perhaps 20 goats belonging to him mill about the road, momentarily blocking a car's progress. Jonathan Gray, 37, is on sentry duty, sitting in a pasture near the road, keeping an eye out for any unwelcome visitors one day late in August. It is 100 degrees.

Soon, he comes down the road to investigate why somebody has stopped outside the entrance to the compound. He's wearing a baseball cap, gray T-shirt and jeans. A pistol — in violation of the nearly 10-year-old court order — is strapped to one hip, a knife hugs the other. With his beard and mustache and hazel eyes, he resembles his father. Minutes later, a brother, Timothy, 32, and a young woman appear at the fence to stare at the stranger.

Near the driveway leading to the house hidden beyond a grove of trees, are handmade signs: "We Are Militia And Will Live Free Or You'll Die," reads one. "Militias are the people," Jonathan Gray explains. "Thomas Jefferson said every 75 years the people need to rise up and straighten the government out."

Other signs proclaim: "Disobedience to Tyranny is Obedience to God!" and "Vaccinations Equal Annihilation." Hanging from a tree is a noose and yet another sign: "Solution To Tyranny."

Day after day, month after month, this is where John Joe Gray, his wife and others have hunkered down. Property records show that the two-story, three-bedroom main house contains about 1,300 square feet. There are two tiny residential outbuildings, and a barn with two add-ons.

Jonathan Gray declines to say how many people live on the property. (Sheriff Nutt's estimate is 10 or 11.) Nor will he say if his sister, Lisa, or her children are among those living on the property.

The Law Enforcement Conundrum
Although only John Joe Gray faces an outstanding felony charge, Jonathan Gray says no one in the family ventures off their land. He suggests they might be arrested and charged with aiding and abetting the family patriarch if they did. Some folks in these parts are skeptical — they suspect that John Joe Gray probably sneaks away from time to time. "He can cross the river and be in a different county," Tarkington says.
In fact, it probably would be easy for anybody to leave the compound to buy fuel, clothing or medicines. Sheriff Nutt says that since he took office in January, his deputies have not conducted surveillance on the property.

Not that there is much to entice Gray into Trinidad anyway. The two-block "business district" is all but dead. The bank — gone. Billie's Fried Pies -— closed. Trinidad General Store, John D's T.V., Food Mart — all empty. Not much is left other than the tiny City Hall and adjacent police department, plus Harold Colvin's barber shop, which is nothing more than a modest aluminum shed. If Gray got to craving a meal in a restaurant, the Dairy Queen on the highway would be the only game in town.

All but about 15 of the Grays' 47 acres flood from time to time, says Jonathan Gray between spits of tobacco juice. "We grow what we can." Two donkeys grazing nearby are used to plow what tillable land there is, he says. The family also has plenty of game to shoot — deer, rabbits and squirrels. And from time to time, he says, friends and sympathizers drop off food and other supplies.

If living without central heat and air or a modern home-entertainment system is a hardship, Jonathan Gray — a father of four — isn't admitting it. "Your body can get used to anything," he says. He and his brother Timothy seem surprised when asked what they do for fun. "What do you mean by fun?" Timothy asks. They do play an occasional game of dominos, Jonathan says. "Dad does a lot of listening to the shortwave," he adds.

The family does not miss attending church, or need to do so, Jonathan Gray says. "What is a church but a building? What do they do in church? Pray. That's all we gotta do here, is read the Word. We go by the Bible."

When the visitor asks to speak with John Joe Gray, Timothy Gray walks up the driveway and returns minutes later. His father would not talk, he says, because the Intelligence Report wrote in 2000 that the family members were terrorists. (This is untrue.) He also ordered his sons to say no more. But does John Joe Gray intend to live out his remaining years in isolation here? "For now," Jonathan says cryptically.

So the wait goes on. Sheriff Nutt concedes that perhaps Gray should have been nabbed early on. Alfred, the sheriff when the stalemate began, isn't so sure.

"I was in law enforcement for 42 years, and I always tried to do the right thing," he says. "His case has always been a snag on me. At the time, it just didn't seem the right thing to do because of the [potential] useless waste of life. I don't know if it was the right thing to do. I feel like it was."
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Postby American Dream » Sun Dec 06, 2009 11:48 am

And just to show that the roots are still bearing "fruit":

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelrep ... p?aid=1097

A New Racist Sister Act Underwhelms
By Sonia Scherr


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"Ministry of Music": The Pendergraft sisters, granddaughters of veteran Klan boss Thom Robb, have formed a singing-to-save-the-race group called Heritage Connection. But the reviews have been less than flattering.


Several years ago, pop-singing twin sisters Lynx and Lamb Gaede seig-heiled their way to international stardom, enthralling neo-Nazi crowds with their off-key odes to white power. Although the Gaedes are no longer on the neo-Nazi performance circuit, another sister act has emerged to take their place: 18-year-old Charity and 16-year-old Shelby Pendergraft, who form a group called Heritage Connection.
The Pendergraft sisters have not yet received the media attention that the Gaede bunch drew in their heyday, but they claim to have performed at white nationalist events nationwide since they formed Heritage Connection in 2003. They've also released two CDs, "Aryan Awakening" and "Standing Our Ground," and have shared the stage with a guitar-playing Derek Black, best known for his father's racist Stormfront.org Web forum and the brouhaha that followed Derek's election to the Palm Beach County, Fla., Republican Executive Committee.

The sisters' repertoire covers the standard range of perils facing whites, including race-mixing, ZOG (for the so-called Zionist Occupied Government), and "the great illegal flood." In a song titled "Living Nightmare," for instance, the teenagers lament in rhyme the destruction of their race: "You're living in a fog/you're siding with the ZOG." A livelier track called "Propagandized America" includes the lyrics, "When I say white pride worldwide/coming up from deep inside/they say I hate you/what am I to do?"

Fans will be glad to know that the Pendergrafts compose most of their own music and lyrics. They also provide their own accompaniment on guitar, violin, piano and drums. The result is "their own unique sound that the Pendergrafts jokingly refer to as Celtic/Country/Aryan/Folk/Rock," according to their website.

The blond, fair-skinned Pendergrafts come from a long line of Aryan activists. Their grandfather is veteran Klansman Thomas Robb, leader of the Arkansas-based Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and their mother, Rachel Pendergraft, serves as spokeswoman for the Klan group. But not everyone is enamored of the sisters' oeuvre; reaction to a YouTube posting of their song "Dying Fire" included some disparaging comments.

"This is hilarious!" wrote "Flankoa." "It sounds like it was recorded in an underwater bathroom onto a broken miniature cassette recorder."

Added "ivyshoots," "If anything is going to make me NOT feel proud to be white, it's two nasal, talentless chicks representing our race by droning off-key musical warnings about an imagined apocalyptic race war."

The sisters take umbrage at criticism of their vocal skill, disputing this writer's characterization of their voices as "quavering" in a previous blog posting. "[T]hose who have heard us sing live would agree that our music, lyrics and vocals are anything but ‘quavering,'" Charity Pendergraft insisted on the sisters' own blog.

Mostly, the blog offers a glimpse of the daily lives of the sisters, who are home-schooled in Harrison, Ark. Amid music lessons, schoolwork, church, chores and camping trips, the siblings find time to volunteer at their grandfather's Klan headquarters and to work on a display about illegal immigration for the White Christian Heritage Festival. They write about looking forward to using their Christmas gift cards ("Too bad the JCPenney's where we go is starting to look like a Mexican recruiting station!"), attending a music show in Eureka Springs, Ark. ("Sadly, this town has been overrun by queers"), and watching the movie "Stardust" ("It was a good movie except for the propaganda — that's in almost all movies — and the gay character in it.") And Charity, who blasts immigrants in "Alien Flood," reveals her fondness for Mexican cuisine. "We had enchiladas for dinner," she writes. "Yum! I love Spanish food."

Despite their questionable talent, the Pendergrafts have been performing for a dozen years and envision a bright future for their music. They will soon welcome their 9-year-old brother, Andrew, into the group. They're scheduled to appear at this fall's White Christian Heritage Festival in Pulaski, Tenn. And while they plan to pursue degrees in business and law, they intend to continue their "ministry of music" with the hope that it will "serve as a wakeup call to those who have forgotten their heritage. Our people deserve the best. Its [sic] time for an Aryan Awakening."

Don't forget the enchiladas.
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Postby compared2what? » Sun Dec 06, 2009 9:02 pm

"They were pretty well fixed up with weapons," recalls Howard "Slick" Alfred, the Henderson County sheriff at the time. "They had better weapons than we had. There was children in there. He was kind of hiding behind those kids. I didn't want another Waco kind of deal." And it's not as if Gray was a threat to the community, Alfred adds. "He's not hurting anybody over there."


Even before I read on to the part about the daughter who left her husband and whose heart evidently belongs to daddy, my response to that bolded sentence was, roughly: "I wouldn't be so sure about that."

Because I can't, off the top of my head, even think of any closed patriarchal religious communities that don't systematically abuse children, especially female children. With the possible exception of Fred Phelps, of the Westboro Baptist "God hates [****]" Church, about whom I've never heard anything like that. And probably others I'm forgetting too.

But it's not like it's just a dissident Mormon thing, it's a pretty standard phenomenon. For example, Amish and Lubavitcher communities get less publicity for it, but they're frequently the object of the same allegations. It's scary and sad to think upon. So I guess it's just as well that it's only conjecture, really. But still.

Thanks for the thread, AD.
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Postby JackRiddler » Mon Dec 07, 2009 1:38 am

Wow.

This is almost all new material to me. The OP especially floors. And I didn't even know about Buckley's entourage being called "The Remnant."

Thanks!
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Postby American Dream » Sun Jan 03, 2010 5:08 pm

From David Neiwert's In God's Country: The Patriot Movement and the Pacific Northwest, 1994:

The focus at Patriot meetings varies according to who’s talking, usually revolving around the keynote speaker. At Richard Mack meetings, the emphasis is on gun control and recruiting law-enforcement officers to the Patriot cause. Gene Schroder and Gary DeMott sessions revolve around ``constitutional law’’ and the ``common law’’ courts. And at MOM meetings and others like them, the emphasis is on confronting the New World Order by forming militias.

In all of them, though, the message remains essentially the same: The world is rotting at the seams. The American way of life, embodied in the Constitution, is threatened by forces conspiring to enslave the world. Only by forming an armed Patriotic resistance can their plans be thwarted.

By challenging the mainstream view -- that the world is essentially a safe place, that the nation is, in general, functional, even if it has problems -- the Patriots persuade their followers to place themselves outside the rest of society. Simultaneously, they offer a social structure of their own, drawn together by a Patriot sensibility that informs every aspect of the followers’ lives: legal, religious, even business behavior becomes an expression of their beliefs.

This is how people are drawn into the alternative universe of the Patriots, a world in which the same events occur as those that befall the rest of us, but all are seen through a different lens. Anything that makes it into a newspaper or the evening broadcast -- say, flooding in the Cascades, or the arrival of U.S. troops in Bosnia -- may be just another story for most of us, but to a Patriot, these widely disparate events all are connected to the conspiracy. Believers tend to organize in small local groups. They all have similar-sounding names -- Concerned Citizens for Constitutional Law, Alliance for America, and the like. They play host to the touring Patriots, the local leaders nervously introducing their admired guests. These groups operate out of the public limelight, on a low-level communications system: a combination of mailings, faxes and even Internet postings all advertise the meetings locally and regionally. Rarely does an announcement make the local mainstream press.

Most of the Patriots’ real recruiting takes place before the meetings, by word of mouth. It usually works like this:

John, a Patriot, tells Joe, a co-worker at his plant who’s going through a divorce, that he can find out ``what’s really going on’’ by attending a militia meeting. The Patriots, Joe is told, have answers to the moral decay that’s behind the way men get screwed in divorce cases.

Joe attends. He thinks the New World Order theories might be possible. He buys a video tape, maybe a book. It all starts to fit together. So this is why he hasn’t been able to get ahead in the world economically, he tells himself. He attends another meeting. Pretty soon he’s getting ``Taking Aim’’ in the mail.

Joe tells his neighbor Sam about the Patriots. Sam is dubious, but he’s been having a hell of a time paying his taxes, and Joe passes on what he knows about the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Reserve from the Patriot literature he’s read. Sam is intrigued. He reads some of Joe’s material. He goes to the next meeting with Joe. A month or two later, Sam starts drawing up papers to declare himself a ``sovereign citizen.’’

Sam goes to a picnic outing at his parents’ house. His older brother Jeff, an engineer at Boeing, asks Sam about the ``sovereign citizen’’ stuff. Sam explains. Jeff, too, is dubious, but he also happens to be a gun collector and sometime hunter, and he’s received mailings from the National Rifle Association that lead him to wonder if there isn’t something to this whole militia thing. When Sam starts talking about how the government is out of control, passing unconstitutional laws like the Brady Bill, Jeff tunes in. A month later, he, too, sits in on a Patriot town-hall meeting.

One by one it builds. Any of a number of vital issues -- land use, property rights, banking, economics, politics, gun control, abortion, education, welfare -- can serve as a drawing card. In many cases, they are deeply divisive, polarizing matters that the mainstream fails to adequately address.

Once recruits pass through any of these gateways into the Patriot universe, they are drawn further, inexorably. What once seemed like a screwed-up government has become monstrously, palpably evil. Then they learn about Patriot legal theories from people like the Freemen or from Schroder and DeMott:

* The Federal Reserve is bankrupt, a front for a phony system, run by private corporations, of printing money that really only helps keep rich bankers awash in cash.

* The Internal Revenue Service is illegal. Federal taxes actually are strictly voluntary.

* You can exempt yourself from paying federal taxes by filing a statement declaring yourself a ``sovereign citizen.’’ This ostensibly frees you from obligation to the United States -- which Patriots say is just an illegal corporation based in Washington, D.C. -- by nullifying your participation in the federal citizenship status established by the 14th Amendment.

* This distinction, arguing that only the 14th Amendment extends federal citizenship to minorities, forms the basis for the Patriots’ contention that only white male Christian property owners enjoy full citizenship under the ``organic Constitution.’’

* In fact, the only valid U.S. Constitution is this ``organic Constitution’’ -- that is, the main body of the Constitution and the first ten amendments, or the Bill of Rights. Patriots believe the remaining amendments either should be repealed or were approved illegally anyway. In any case, they would end the prohibition of slavery (13th Amendment); equal protection under the law (14th Amendment); prohibitions against racial or ethnic discrimination (15th Amendment); the income tax (16th Amendment); direct election of Senators (17th Amendment); the vote for women (19th Amendment); and a host of other constitutional protections passed since the time of the Founders.

* Establishing ``sovereign citizenship,’’ or ``Quiet Title’’ (which similarly declares a person a ``freeman’’), exempts a person from the rules of ``equity courts,’’ which means you don’t have to pay for licenses, building permits, or traffic citations, not to mention taxes.

* The only real courts with power are the ``common law’’ courts comprised of sovereign citizens, which have the power to issue rulings and liens against public officials they deem to have overstepped their bounds. If these officials fail to uphold the common-law courts, they can be found guilty of treason, and threatened with the appropriate penalty: hanging.

It is at this end of the Patriot universe that much of its deeper agenda is revealed. When Patriots talk about ``restoring the Constitution,’’ what they often have in mind is a campaign to roll back protections embodied in a wide range of amendments, as well as establishing a reading of the Second Amendment radically different from the one traditionally accepted by the U.S. court system.

It also is at this end of the universe that the charges of divisiveness and racism often leveled at the Patriots take on some weight. Plainly, the constitutional rollbacks would return the American system to a time when racial justice was not a considered concept. Not surprisingly, this is where the Patriots most closely resemble, and arguably are directly descended from, openly racist and anti-Semitic belief systems like those found in the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nations, and the Posse Comitatus.

Most of these views are often dismissed by the mainstream legal profession as simple nonsense promoted by crackpots. And for the most part, the Patriots’ legal theories completely disintegrate when factually examined in the cold light of day. Nonetheless, the movement’s ranks continue to grow, and the mainstream courts, particularly in rural jurisdictions, now are faced with a sudden deluge of ``common law’’ documents that throw an already overburdened system into a tangle.

All the same, there is no law against being a crackpot. Otherwise, hundreds of Elvis sighters and UFO abductees would be rotting in prison cells alongside the Patriots, most of whom also are quite free to spread their conspiracy theories. The concern, rather, is what happens when the agenda of the Patriots, constructed out of an insular, paranoiac view of reality, tries to assert itself in the mainstream world. If their form of ``republic’’ comes to be, most of society’s current protections against racial injustice would vanish. Believers’ attempts to effect this agenda is certain to come into real conflict with mainstream Americans. Moreover, when Patriots begin to threaten public officials with hanging and other kinds of bodily harm, the potential for violence enters into the picture.

``What is going on in our society when somebody can come up with an idea like this, and a package of materials like this, and attract 200 people to a community meeting?’’ wonders Ken Toole, director of the Montana Human Rights Network. Toole has attended many of the sessions.

``To me, it's almost like a canary in a coal mine, and it's very indicative of how negative and hostile we've become about ourselves -- that somehow these people have managed to objectify the government at all levels, blame it for all kinds of things, and look for a way to kind of focus that anger.’’
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Postby josey wales » Sun Jan 03, 2010 10:45 pm

First, how can a person that shares both a black and white parent be considered as 'passing for white'? They are, by definition, as much white as black. I suppose Spiro operates under the 'one drop' rule.

Secondly, Strauss is no conservative. He is a "neo-conservative". The broad brush that is generally applied to anyone that holds views outside the Left is no longer applicable. That fact has been brouhgt into sharp contrast during the reign of Bush II. That brush, I might add, is used here with regularity. There is a growing movement of anti-war, pro-liberty 'conservatives' that have the establishment RNC very worried.

And finally, most of this navel gazing about "Right" and "Left" and Fascism is a smoke screen to divert attention away from the fact that the people at the top play both sides and are only interested in power and maintaining the 'system'. One only has to look as far as Obama to see that principle at work.
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Postby operator kos » Sun Jan 03, 2010 11:47 pm

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Postby Sweet Tooth » Sun Jan 03, 2010 11:56 pm

I want to quickly address a few of your points, one paragraph at a time.

josey wales wrote:First, how can a person that shares both a black and white parent be considered as 'passing for white'? They are, by definition, as much white as black. I suppose Spiro operates under the 'one drop' rule.


There is no way anybody can deny that Barrack Obama is a man of color, and far too dusky to "pass", as the old chestnut goes. We're all some kind of mix, to a certain degree. Some of us have to dig deeper in the woodpile than others to find out. However, without getting into advanced genetic scrutiny and/or the detailed tracing of his family tree, the simple fact is that our new President is a BLACK MAN, who probably got called "nigger" at least a few times in his life. Any further bickering on this point is utterly useless. It's a ping-pong match.

josey wales wrote:Secondly, Strauss is no conservative. He is a "neo-conservative". The broad brush that is generally applied to anyone that holds views outside the Left is no longer applicable. That fact has been brouhgt into sharp contrast during the reign of Bush II. That brush, I might add, is used here with regularity.


Strauss isn't anything anymore. He died a long time ago. And, when he was alive, he was no neo-conservative, which is a very specific thing. He was a Straussian.

As a thinker, Strauss was pretty much siu generis, but it can be said that his politial philosophy, in which he rarely engaged. He refused the title "philosopher", prefering to be referred to as an academic professional; a researcher and a teacher.

If anything, the branch of political philosophy to which he can most closely be associated is the early 20th century European "Traditionalist" movement, which questioned the entire Enlightenment Project from an explicitly anti-democratic, elitist, Platonic point of view.

Neo-conservatism began in the 1960's, among a small group of formerly leftist (not liberal) New York public intellectuals and academics, who went through a collective Jeckyl and Hyde turn-around after the social upheaval in the wake of LBJ's launch of the "Great Society" programs. Some Straussians are neo-conservatives, but not all neo-conservatives are Straussians.

Your words lead me to believe you don't have quite as tight a grip on the concept of neo-conservatism as you might think. Simply reading the Wikipedia page on neo-conservatism will be a great tonic for this blind spot in your knowledge on the topic.

josey wales wrote:There is a growing movement of anti-war, pro-liberty 'conservatives' that have the establishment RNC very worried.


I wonder about this. I honestly think the establishment RNC is secretly more worried about the Birthers, anti-UN, burn-down-the-Federal-Reserve wing of their base who attend town hall meetings waving photocopies of Obama's "altered" birth certificate and making fools of both themselves and the quote/unquote "loyal opposition. Do you seriously think Olympia Snowe identifies in any way with this undiferentiated mass of spite-filled, anti-intellectual, gun-toting proud-white-trash, self-declared Real Americans?

josey wales wrote:And finally, most of this navel gazing about "Right" and "Left" and Fascism is a smoke screen to divert attention away from the fact that the people at the top play both sides and are only interested in power and maintaining the 'system'. One only has to look as far as Obama to see that principle at work.


In this, we are in total agreement.

Cheers!
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Re: Roots of U.S. Far Right

Postby 8bitagent » Mon Jan 04, 2010 7:09 am

American Dream wrote:

A bumper crop of works on influential early 20th century American racists, fascists and eugenicists has been hitting the bookshelves in 2009. Two of the most interesting are on Madison Grant (1865-1937), perhaps the most important conservationist of his time and so pernicious a racist and anti-Semite that he helped inspire Hitler's policies, and Lawrence Dennis (1893-1977), the biggest defender of fascism in the 1930s, who was, surprisingly, a black man passing for white.

Jonathan Peter Spiro's biography of Grant, a very rich member of the American WASP elite, is eye opening. It is astonishing to realize how many major American figures of the early 1900s were so rabidly racist and anti-Semitic — and perfectly willing to use the power of the state to sterilize those they saw as lesser beings. Spiro's book is fundamental to understanding how profoundly our nation has been shaped by racist and anti-Semitic ideas.

Grant was a member of Theodore Roosevelt's Boone and Crockett Club, an exclusive organization focused originally on big game hunting, and later big game protection, that included a few hundred of the 26th president's closest friends. A celebrated fixture in New York's prestigious private clubs, Grant was also the founder of several important institutions, including the Bronx Zoo.


Sadly, these are some of the same black and Jew hating eugenic elites
who not only worked through Darwinist/evolution intellectual circles, but formed the main drive and impetus of the American abortion movement.


Funny how full circle we've come, where the main extremists against abortion are, well usually racist white supremests.
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Re: Roots of U.S. Far Right

Postby American Dream » Fri Feb 05, 2010 10:36 am

Here's another old article, which may also be of interest:

http://www.publicgood.org/reports/belief/

Christian Patriots At War with the State

Paul de Armond

1996



The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City came as the latest in a series of rude shocks to America. Starting with the shoot-out at Ruby Ridge which killed a Deputy U.S. Marshal, the young son and the wife of white supremacist Randy Weaver, Christian Patriot white supremacists have been steadily escalating their endless war against American democracy. The battles fought with the Posse Comitatus and the Order a decade ago, are now being joined again with new strategy and tactics.
The formation of armed vigilante groups called "unorganized militias" was first viewed in the media as the ranting of a bunch of gun-nuts and crack pots. A year after the Oklahoma City bombing, the nation is still uninformed about what Christian Patriotism is and where it is leading people.

The long-standing failure of the FBI to arrest the Justus Township Freemen in Jordan, Montana on charges of fraud, forgery, and intimidation of public officials has focussed national attention on the individuals involved. However, the near-total absence of informed public discussion has left most Americans in the dark as to what was really going on with the Freemen, the militias and the Christian Patriot faction of white supremacy. Showing the Freemen as cardboard "extremists," the media has not explored the cohesive ideology and -- more importantly -- the theology that guides Christian Patriotism.

Christian Identity


Americans are amazingly tolerant of diverse religious beliefs. The federal Constitution incorporates the right of dissenting opinion as a basic prerequisite for a democratic republic. Respect for differing religious beliefs is a widely held core American value. Religious con men, charlatans, self-appointed messiahs, frauds, thieves, bigots, crack-pots and cranks have flourished in America as nowhere else. Consulting encyclopedias of religious sects show that America -- and the Los Angeles region in particular -- has produced more religions, sects and cults than any other region of the world. Some minority beliefs can become vastly more influential than mere numbers alone would suggest.
One such religion is Christian Identity. Incorporated in Los Angeles in 1948, Wesley Swift's Church of Jesus Christ Christian was initially an racist sect which became Christian Identity. The central belief in Identity doctrine is the existence of two races on earth: a godly white race descended from Adam and a satanic race fathered by Satan.

Swift, a Klan leader and preacher at Amy Semple McPherson's Foursquare Church in Los Angles, was never able to make much of a success out of his doctrine, but it attracted several people who became central to what was later named "Christian Identity": San Jacinto Capt, William Potter Gale and Richard Girnt Butler.

Capt was a California Klan leader and a believer in British Israelism, a doctrine which holds that the Israelites of the Bible are not the Jews, but rather Aryan/Anglo-Saxons. Gale was a stock-broker and former Army officer who briefly served on Gen. MacArthur's staff in the Philippines. Gale in turn recruited Butler to Swift's church during the 1950's. In 1970, Swift died, triggering a dispute between Gale and Butler. Ultimately, Butler assumed control and moved the church to Idaho, where he renamed it Aryan Nations - Church of Jesus Christ Christian.

The function of religion in the lives of these four men was to provide a theological justification for their racism and anti-Semitism. Stated another way, racism and anti-Semitism were their religion. William Gale claimed to have chosen the term "Christian Identity" in 1965, when it was adopted as the name of a newsletter. In Gale's mind, the Identity movement was the glue to hold together racist ideology in the United States. Though he died almost unnoticed in 1987, Gale is the central figure and inspiration for America's present white supremacist movement and Identity doctrine is his legacy to that movement.

Relying mostly on preaching, teaching, radio broadcasts and taped sermons, Gale never left much of a written record behind him. This has led to a consistent undervaluation of the central role William Potter Gale played in the formation of Identity, the Posse Comitatus, Aryan Nations, The Committee of the States, the Unorganized Militia and all the rest of the panoply of militant white supremacy in the United States today.

The War of Republic Versus Democracy


Baldly stated, the white supremacist movement seeks to undermine federal authority and bring about the collapse of the United States of America. The destruction of federal power is the prerequisite to establishing a new racial nationalist state. It is highly unlikely that such a thing is within the means of the small number of militant racists, but it is certain that they will continue to use all means at their disposal to pursue that unrealistic goal.
These means include bombings, sabotage, undermining discipline in the armed forces, counterfeiting, tax evasion, bank robbery, subversion of local governments and law enforcement, fraud, and attempts at nuclear, chemical, biological and psychological warfare. Instances of all of these acts have occurred and -- with the exception of an incident involving nuclear or chemical material -- each of these tactics have been employed in the last twelve months.

Two stories filed with the Associated press on April 6, 1996, "From Bombers To Fed-Fearing Freemen, Outlaws Seek Haven In Wild Northwest" and "Beyond Militias: Extremism's Many Faces Vex Anti-Terrorism Efforts" by AP writer David Foster list the following dozen incidents:

-A pipe bomb exploded outside an office of The Spokesman-Review newspaper in Spokane, Wash. Ten minutes later, gunmen robbed a nearby bank and set off a bomb as they left. No one was injured. The methods and a letter left behind bore similarities to past crimes blamed on white supremacists.

-A shed packed with explosives, ammunition and guns exploded 60 miles east of Portland, Ore., breaking windows in nearby homes. Shredded bomb-making literature rained down like confetti. A federal firearms charge was filed against the shed's owner, a self-described survivalist.

-Willie Ray Lampley called himself a "prophet of the most high' and vowed holy war against Jews, gays, abortion doctors and the government. Now Lampley, 65, is standing trial in Oklahoma, accused of plotting with three others to blow up abortion clinics, gay bars and the offices of civil-rights groups.

-Saboteurs derailed an Amtrak train near Phoenix in October, killing one person and injuring 78. No arrests have been made, but a note at the scene, signed by "Sons of the Gestapo," railed against federal heavy-handedness at Waco and Ruby Ridge.

-In December, a fertilizer bomb fizzled outside an Internal Revenue Service office in Reno, Nev. Two tax protesters were charged in the bombing attempt. One pleaded guilty, and the other faces trial in June.

-Two men accused in January of netting more than $250,000 from a string of Midwestern bank robberies may have used the loot to finance a white supremacist militia, officials said. In court papers, one defendant listed his occupation as "revolutionary" and called himself Commander Pedro of the Aryan Republican Army.

-The standoff that began March 25 between the FBI and Montana Freemen, anti-government activists who set up their own government, wrote millions of dollars in bogus checks and threatened to kill anyone who interfered.

-Right-wing extremists were suspected of stealing explosives in five states.

-A tax protester was charged with plotting to blow up an IRS center in Austin, Texas.

-A white supremacist in Ohio tricked a medical lab into mailing him vials of bubonic plague bacteria.

-And, of course, the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City.


The violence of the movement has frequently been ascribed to "loners" and their acts described as "isolated incidents." While the violence may be committed by small groups, and separate attacks are rarely coordinated by a central authority, the pattern of this violent attack upon society comes from a shared and consistent set of beliefs. White supremacy is not monolithic. It has factions and clear distinctions can be drawn between them. The largest and most active faction has adopted the name "Christian Patriotism."

Christian Patriotism


Christian Patriotism is the result of the confluence of the far-right tax resistance movement, regressive Populism, and Identity doctrine. The Christian Patriot branch of white supremacy traces its explosive growth back to the rise of William Potter Gale's Posse Comitatus, a virulently anti-Semitic paramilitary movement which began operating publicly in 1968. Founded on the principle of all-out resistance to federal authority -- which has marked all white supremacy since the rise of the Ku Klux Klan at the end of the Civil War -- the Posse carries the notion of anti-federalism to new extremes.
Most racist politics has its legal and philosophical roots in the "property rights" and "states rights" clauses in the Constitution. These sections of the Constitution were a compromise necessary to enlist the cooperation of the slave-holding states in replacing the unworkable Articles of Confederation with the federal Constitution. The exaltation of the rights of property over the rights of people is a common denominator of the entire right wing of American politics.

Right-wing political movements and establishments have been the norm, rather than the exception, in America since the founding of the Republic. The Anti-Masonic movement of the early 1800's spawned the modern school of history as conspiracy. Anti-Masonic theories -- particularly those which created the myth of the Bavarian Illuminatti's responsibility for nearly everything that has gone wrong for aristocrats, landowners, reactionary Christian hierarchies, and other inhabitants of the far right since the French Revolution -- mutated in the late 1800's from traditional Christian religious anti-Semitism into the virulent racist anti-Semitism which formed the core of international fascism's support for the Nazis rise to power.

The book which started the Illuminatti myth, John Robison's 1797 Proofs of a Conspiracy Against All the Religions and Governments of Europe, carried on in the Secret Meetings of Freemasons, Illuminatti and Reading Societies, is still popular fare among the politically paranoid. I have in my collection of right-wing literature several flyers promoting Robison's Proofs prepared and distributed in 1996 by Ben Hinkle, the leader of a Northwest Washington Populist Party splinter group called Citizens for Liberty.

Robison's fictional view of history as a Satanic conspiracy has become a paranoid pinball, banging around in history for over two hundred years and picking up momentum from the bumpers and flippers of each succeeding wave of reaction against social progress.

Towards the end of the 19th century, traditional religious anti-Semitism suddenly mutated to an explicitly racist form: the "two seed" theory. This theory is the central tenet of Identity doctrine and the basic justification for Christian Patriots' racism and anti-Semitism. The essence of the "two seed" theory is that there are two races on earth: one godly and one satanic.

In an anonymous document titled, "Our de jure county government," and attributed to the Justus Township Freemen, there is an example of "two seed" theory:

...one must understand that "Baal", is the false chief god of the Canaanities,[sic] the descendants of 'Cain', a.k.a., the "jews", none other than "Satan", the father of Cain.

According to the racist and anti-Semitic "two seed" theory, the white "Adamic" peoples descended from the union of Adam and Eve. But there was also another race beginning with Cain whose father was not Adam, but Satan -- who mated with Eve in the guise of a serpent. The descendants of Cain became known as the Jews. The Adamic peoples became the Aryans or Anglo-Saxons. The Pre-Adamic (non-white) races were not human at all, but descendants of the "beasts of the fields" described in Genesis, without souls and no more than cattle in the eyes of their Aryan betters. All three races could interbreed, but the non-Adamic blood acted like a poison to exterminate the Aryan race. In the eyes of white supremacists, race-mixing became a Satanic plot to exterminate God's chosen people, the white race.

By the "two seed" theory, Jesus was not a Jew, but an Aryan. The Adamic (Aryan) people were the lost tribes of Israel, fled to northern Europe and later became the Christian nations. There are many corollaries to the "two seed" theory which provide justification for racists to claim God's favor:

- Jesus was a Christian (Aryan), not a Jew.

- White superiority is ordained by God and slavery is not repugnant to His sight.

- The Jews are the literal "spawn of Satan" and intent on the extermination of all Christian (i.e. Aryan or Anglo-Saxon) peoples.


Needless to say, these opinions are in direct contraction to most established Christian doctrines.
The merging of the Illuminatti and "two seed" theories combined race and religion into a doctrine of hate and intolerance at a time that Western society was beginning to accept notions of cultural assimilation and cross-fertilization as normal and healthy. The conspiratorial viewpoint -- with the Satanic Jewish Illuminatti as the focus of fear and dread -- has spawned a substantial occult body of literature. These books are rarely seen or read outside of extreme right wing circles, but they continue to be circulated, quoted and adapted to the present day.

Nesta Webster, a British fascist and anti-Semite, revived Robison at the turn of the century and recast his book in explicitly anti-Semitic terms. At about the same time, the wholly fictitious The Protocals of the Elders of Zion also appeared. The Protocals are an anti-Semitic forgery which claims to provide details of a Jewish conspiracy for world domination. This short book continues to be a staple of anti-Semitic literature and is frequently included in neo-nazi and Christian Patriot books, such as Phillip Marsh's The Complete Patriot.

After the defeat of Nazism, the Jewish Satanic conspiracy was recast as anti-communism in a book by American Col. John Beatty, Iron Curtain Over America. Canadian writer William Guy Carr contributed Red Fog Over America and other conspiracy books which emphasized the role of the Illuminatti. In the 1960's the John Birch Society retold the tale in a sanitized version -- the Illuminatti are replaced with "Insiders" -- in Gary Allen's None Dare Call It Conspiracy. The third printing of Allen's book states that over 5,000,000 copies were printed.

These are only a few of the books, but these titles trace the literary descent from Robison to the present day. Most of these books, with the exception of Nesta Webster's which are quite rare, can be found in almost any town in America. They frequently show up at rummage sales and used book stores. Many of the titles in the anti-Semitic canon have never gone out of print.

The most recent resurgence of the Robison Illuminatti mythos is Rev. Pat Robertson's The New World Order, which draws on both Robison and the more explicitly racist anti-Semites Nesta Webster and Eustace Mullins. One of the more irresponsible statements contained in Robertson's tome is the claim that both Karl Marx and Frederick Engels learned of communism from a "communist rabbi" who was "linked" to the Illuminatti. This passage can be found on pages 69 and 70 in The New World Order. The only "link" mentioned in Robertson's book is that the "communist rabbi" was Jewish.

The "organic Constitution"

After Robison's Illuminatti, the next major advance in the right-wing mythos came in the aftermath of the Civil War. In seeking ratification of the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution, the victorious Unionists were confronted by the near insurmountable obstacle of Article V, which requires the consent of three quarters of the states in order to ratify an amendment to the Constitution.

The recently conquered Confederacy -- now rejoined to the Union -- possessed sufficient votes to block the amendments abolishing slavery, extending the full rights of citizenship to all people born in the United States and granting equal protection of the laws to all people within the United States' jurisdiction. The Unionists solution was to impose military occupation governments in a sufficient number of the former Confederate states long enough to ratify the new amendments. Immediately after ratification, the military governments were replaced with civilian ones.

This historical fact is little known outside of the South. The response to the forcible alteration of the Constitution was a conspiracy theory which asserts all amendments beginning with the 13th and 14th Amendments were never properly ratified and thus are not part of "the supreme Law of the Land" as described in Article VI. This conspiracy theory has become the central myth of Christian Patriot "common law" -- the "organic Constitution."

James Aho, a professor of sociology at the University of Idaho, points out the role of the organic Constitution in justifying disobeying the law:

Christian patriots distinguish between Law and legality, Morality and legalese. The former of these pairs is determined, respectively, by their readings of the so-called organic Constitution (the original Articles of Constitution plus the Bill of Rights) and selected edicts from the Pentateuch the first five books of the Bible). They believe they have little, if any, moral obligation to obey legal statutes inconsistent with Law or Morality. (The Politics of Righteousness: Idaho Christian Patriotism, University of Washington Press, 1990, p. 14)

The most widespread common law handbook is a little pamphlet titled Citizens Rule Book: A Palladium of Liberty. The Rule Book is a pocket-sized Constitution and guide to common law theory. The following quotation is from its index to the Constitution. The first twelve amendments are described as "adopted" and all amendments past that are described as "took effect." A footnote on page 25 explains the difference:

Took effect is used as there is a great deal of suspicion as to the nature of these amendments (common law vs equity), also whether these last 16 amendments are legal, how many were ratified correctly, do they create a federal constitution in opposition the original, etc. For further studies a good place to begin is with the article by the Utah Supreme Court on the 14th amendment, 439 Pacific Reporter 2d Series, pp 266-276, and Senate Doc. 240.

In its most concise form, the myth of the organic Constitution can be summarized as follows:

The Constitution is a divinely inspired document in which human agency is secondary to God's will. Only the original Constitution and Bill of Rights as signed by the Founders is the supreme Law of the Land and this law should be interpreted in the light of Biblical understanding. All later amendments, laws and regulations are "unconstitutional" in the sense that they "create a federal constitution in opposition to the original."

There are several corollaries to the myth of the organic Constitution which inform Christian Patriot "common law." In the following statements can be found much of the meaning of the catch-phrases and slogans of Christian Patriots:

-The organic Constitution is God's law and the only law of the land.

-"Natural rights" come from God, not the state. The rights enumerated in the divinely inspired organic Constitution are expressions of God's laws and can not be altered by the laws of men.

-The federal government is an "unconstitutional" tyranny and the Constitution must be "upheld" by resisting that tyranny.

-Because the 13th and 14th Amendments are unconstitutional, there are two or more classes of citizen, with only white Christian property-owning males possessing the natural rights of first class citizenship -- "sovereign citizenship." All others are "14th Amendment citizens" and possess inferior rights.

-These "sovereigns" are the only people empowered to interpret the organic Constitution as the law of the land.


The upshot of the myth of the divinely inspired organic Constitution is that Christian Patriot sovereigns can do whatever they want if they convince other sovereigns that such an action is "constitutional." According to the Christian Patriots, no other laws apply but the ones that they recognize.

Common Law

"Common law" as practiced by the Christian Patriots is not law in the sense that most people understand it. It is the arbitrary and capricious pronouncements of petty tyrants. The Christian Patriots frequently claim that common law descends from the Magna Carta. It does, but only in the sense that they see themselves as modern feudal lords whose sovereignty is granted by God, sealed by their "pure-bloodedness" and secured by their property. The "peers" of a common law jury are not peers in the ordinary sense of equals. They are peers in the sense of aristocratic lords in the earthly Kingdom of Heaven. As sovereigns, their word is law. Failure to obey that law is treason and punishable by death.

The hierarchy with the Christian Patriot sovereigns below God and above all others can be seen in this excerpt from the Justus Freemen's "Our de jure county government":

"Our" Lawful Chain of Command
1. Almighty God, pursuant to His Holy Scriptures, creator of all good and evil;
['So be it']
2. Adam, i.e., White race of Man/Israel, God's chosen People;
3. We the People [Adam] of the Posterity, obedient to the Laws of Almighty God, a.k.a., our 'Common Law';
4. Constitution(s), 1 States' then, 2 National, with limited powers....
5. which created public offices filled by our 'public officers/officials/agents/servants'....
6. 14th Amendment, creating a 'second class of citizens', and at the bottom of the chain, i.e., corporations, persons, subjects, and citizens of the United States, subject to its jurisdiction, Article 1, Section VIII, clause 17, and via the Fourteenth Amendment.


Attorneys are frequently baffled by common law practices, since the documents which the Christian Patriot sovereigns issue frequently look very similar to standard legal documents. Many Christian Patriots have spent considerable amounts of time studying legal language and procedure. As a result, Christian Patriot common law shares much of the form of law, but few of the basic assumptions and definitions. Most of the jail house lawyering done by Christian Patriots is learned by rote and believed with a religious fervor.

This can -- and frequently does -- lead to considerable confusion and shouting matches in courtrooms, as occurred when the Justus Township Freemen were arraigned.

The Christian Patriot claim that real courts do not have jurisdiction over them is the usual starting point for common law legal shenanigans. The peers of the Christian Patriot Republic refuse to be judged by anyone who is not a Christian Patriot sovereign. Only Christian Patriot common law courts with juries composed of sovereigns can sit in judgement of a sovereign. Should anyone disagree with the sovereign challenging jurisdiction, that disagreement -- even coming from the bench in a real courtroom -- is an "unconstitutional" act and thus proof of treason. Since the penalty for treason is death, the next step is usually a death threat against the judge, sheriff, prosecutor, county clerk or who ever dares to disagree with the sovereign.

The Banking Conspiracy


The final piece in the Christian Patriot puzzle is their attitude towards money and banking. Expressed -- as usual -- as a conspiracy theory, the Christian Patriot mythos describes "money" as only gold and silver. All paper currency and financial institutions (except their own) are fraudulent.

In the minds of Christian Patriots, the banks are all controlled by Satan through the Jews. It's not as fashionable these days to say Jews control the banks as it used to be, so the most common catch-phrase is "international bankers." The bigger the bank, the closer to the Prince of Lies. In the minds of Christian Patriots, the center of the entire conspiracy is housed in the Federal Reserve and the creation of the Federal Reserve was part of the Illuminatti conspiracy which also altered the Constitution by passing all those "unconstitutional" amendments to the organic Constitution.

Most conspiracy theories have this sort of internal logic in which everything is connected to everything else -- conclusions become assumptions which lead to conclusions which are the original assumptions -- in a dizzy circle of logic without reason.

The historical circumstances which gave rise to the banking conspiracy theory are many: Disraeli's self-aggrandizing novels, the introduction of "greenback" currency during the Civil War, the role of political corruption in the many railroad and banking scandals of the era surrounding the Civil War, wild swings of inflation and deflation during the boom and bust cycle of the last two decades of the 19th century, the appearance of racial anti Semitism, anti-immigrant hysteria, the rise of the Populist Party and most of all, the Free Silver issue.

Without going into the history of political theories about the "money issue" of the last four decades of the 19th century, suffice it to say that by the end of the 19th century the "banking conspiracy" theory was:

The United States -- and particularly the those states whose economies depended upon wheat, cotton or silver -- had been victimized by an international conspiracy to deflate the value of American goods by the "disappearance" of silver coinage. This conspiracy was directed from Britain by Jews and the House of Rothchild.

Those who grew up during this period were subjected to a political climate described by Richard Hofstadter as "the wave of almost unbelievable money mania." The impressions of childhood became the prejudices of later life. The 1920's saw William Jennings Bryan involved with the Klan; Thomas E. Watson cheerleading the lynching of Leo Frank; and Henry Ford publishing The Protocals of the Elders of Zion as The International Jew. The depth of feeling inspired by Populist "money mania" is indicated by Sen. Ashurst of Arizona's statement to Treasury Secretary Morganthou: "My boy, I was brought up from my mother's knee on silver and I can't discuss that with you any more than you can discuss your religion with me."

With the creation of the Federal Reserve system, the passage of the income tax and the final recognition of federal responsibility for the general welfare during the New Deal, the final stones of the foundation of the modern "banking conspiracy" theory were laid. Again, the generational lag postponed the superstitious hysteria past the end of WWII. At this time, the seeds of Identity began to take root through the actions of Wesley Swift, William Potter Gale, San Jancinto Capt and others under the cover of "anti-communism."

In its current form the Christian Patriot "international banking conspiracy" myth now goes:

The Jews who control international banking have centralized financial institutions into a monolithic conspiracy which is able to direct the affairs of governments by currency manipulation and expanding the national debt. The Internal Revenue Service, Federal Reserve, World Bank and a few other institutions now seek to control every individual by issuing tax-payer identification numbers, credit cards and, in the most recent twist, implanted "microchip" transponders. All of this is related to the Scriptural prophesy in Revelations 13:15-18 about "the mark of the Beast [666]." As "money" becomes separated from the real value of gold and silver by the use of paper currency, checks, electronic funds transfers and other forms, the resulting monetary system has become a fraud. This fraud works through all aspects of the system of taxation, licensing, banking and lending with the goal of enslaving the world population to the "international bankers."

The Christian Patriot World View

In their corner of American political opinion, Christian Patriots have collected all the conspiratorial baggage of American history and assembled it into a cohesive and comprehensive -- but fundamentally irrational -- explanation of the world. These beliefs commit them to revolutionary and frequently violent action. While not all Christian Patriots are believers in Identity doctrine, most -- if not all -- have adopted the assumptions of Identity as key beliefs:

- The Satanic/Jewish conspiracy;

- The role of whites as the chosen people of the "real" Nation/Race of Israel;

-a The central place of financial institutions in the conspiracy;


The Christian Patriot movement is driven much more by the theological world-view of Identity doctrine, rather than a political ideology. Because religion has only recently come to play a direct role in national politics, there is a blind-spot in most observers' picture of the outbreak of Christian Patriot militancy which began in 1992. This is no doubt partly due to the respect for and toleration of religious dissent in America. The result is that Christian Patriots -- such as the Justus Township Freemen in Montana -- have been labeled "kooks," "crack-pots" and "extremists" without a serious examination of the belief structures which have led them to their current situation.

Researchers and experts familiar with Christian Patriotism have adopted two complementary metaphors which capture the structural role of these beliefs:

- the "conveyor belt" or "funnel" by which the recruiting and indoctrination of Christian Patriots takes place; and

- the role of conspiracy theories and Identity doctrine as the "motor" which drives the Christian Patriot movement
.

Leonard Zeskind, an expert on Christian Identity and a active participant in opposing the Posse Comitatus in the 1980's described the belief structure as a "conveyor belt" at a research conference held in January 1992. The meeting was called by the Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment to discuss the current state of knowledge and implications of the militias. Over 40 participants from all over the nation attended.

As Zeskind explained the metaphor of the conveyor belt, people come into contact with political or religious groups looking for answers to the problems of society. Political affiliation is not tightly compartmented and there is always overlap with other groups.

The members of political/religious minorities draw upon larger groups for their recruits. One often sees these recruiters hanging around the fringes of meetings, seeking to make contact with people who might be sympathetic to their cause The recruiters frequently ask to speak before other groups so that they can give their opinions wider exposure. In this way, there is a chain of association that connects most groups across a wide range of opinion and belief. As a potential convert becomes dissatisfied with one group, there is usually a recruiter for another -- and perhaps more extreme -- set of opinions somewhere nearby.

According to Zeskind, this chain of association acts like a conveyor belt to carry susceptible people towards extreme actions and beliefs.

Ken Toole is director of the Montana Human Rights Network, the first civil-liberties group to come into direct confrontation with militias. Toole takes a slightly different view from Zeskind's, but the image of people being actively selected by their sympathy for particular beliefs is also present. In Ken Stern's recent book on the militias, A Force Upon the Plain, Toole explained how this works:

"It's like a funnel moving through space," said Toole. "At the front end, it's picking up lots and lots of people by hitting on issues that have wide appeal, like gun control and environmental restrictions, which enrage many people here out West. Then you go a little bit further into the funnel, and it's about ideology, about the oppressiveness of the federal government. Then, further in, you get into the belief systems. The conspiracy. The Illuminatti. The Freemasons. Then, it's about the anti-Semitic conspiracy. Finally, at the narrow end of the funnel, you've drawn in the hard core, where you get someone like Tim McVey popping out.... [T]he bigger the front end of the funnel is, the bigger the number that get to the core."

The notion of Christian Identity doctrine as the "motor" for militant white supremacy is widely shared among experts. Many of the most violent white supremacist groups of the last three decades have either been led by or composed of individuals who are Identity believers: Posse Comitatus; The Order; The Order Strike Force II; Phineas Priests; The Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord (CSA); Aryan Nations; Texas Emergency Reserve; Committee of the States; Christian Patriot Defense League; and the Justus Township Freemen, to name a few. Accepting Leonard Zeskind's metaphor of a conveyor belt or Ken Toole's image of a funnel moving through space, one then must ask, "What drives this mechanism?"
Among experts, the overwhelming majority agree that Christian Identity provides the "motor" for recruitment, propaganda and militant action by Christian Patriot white supremacists.

A mandate from God is a powerful thing to true believers.
"If you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything."
-Malcolm X
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Re:

Postby elfismiles » Fri Feb 05, 2010 11:42 am

American Dream wrote:http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=1109

A Decade of Defiance
A 10-Year Standoff in Texas Raises Thorny Issues
By Larry Keller


Image
Jonathan Gray performs sentry duty at his father's compound in Texas.

<snip>

No Regrets
In recent years, Gray and his family have lived in obscurity. It wasn't always so. In August 2000, Austin, Texas-based radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones told his audience he had received a tip that federal agents were preparing to attack Gray's compound in armored vehicles. Reporters from The New York Times, The Washington Post and other media outlets descended on tiny Trinidad for a confrontation that never came.

That same month, three armed men ventured into a neighboring pasture at dusk and destroyed a surveillance camera and video transmitter that authorities had placed in a horse trailer, before retreating to the Gray property. And later that year, Chuck Norris, martial artist, actor, right-wing Christian book author and fellow Texan, met with Gray at his ranch and offered to get him free legal representation in an attempt to end the standoff. "There's two people that family looks up to: Mel Gibson and Chuck," an intermediary said. But even Norris couldn't resolve the impasse.


This is one of the earliest incidents that created a schism among Alex's listeners / followers. Mainly because there were allegations that he screwed over the Gray family for money. Its also the incident that prompted Alex to call a friend of mine late at night and tell him how sorry he was for what he'd done while choking back tears.

Here is his former assistant / friend Mike Hanson (who accompanied him into BoHo Grove*) talking about the incident:


The Gray Standoff on ABC 20/20 Part 1 of 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtkK9pWWOlQ

The Gray Standoff on ABC 20/20 Part 1 of 2 From: MikeHansonArchives | June 03, 2008 | 8,633 views I Mike Hanson, answered the comment line and worked in Alex Jones office for many years.

Mrs. Gray sent letters and called for several years trying get me to talk Alex into going to East Texas to do a story for his TV and radio show for the Grays personal problems relating to a custody battle over their grandkids.

Alex didn't want to do a story on a personal problem but the Grays persisted in calling.

Later the custody battle turned into a standoff situation as a result of John Gray being stopped in his vehicle and refusing to go to court. Mrs. Gray called my cell phone with this new information about the standoff.

Alex and I went to the Gray Ranch to talk to the Grays and ended up staying off and on for the next several weeks. Mrs. Gray personally asked me to tape and air their story.

I stayed up 24 hours in a row editing the video which played on Public Access TV the next night after getting the footage. The same footage that was released to 20/20 was shown on Access TV at Mrs. Grays request before it was shown on 20/20. So the video was already in the public domain.

If I had known the way the Grays would turn on Alex and I, even as far as pulling a gun on us, I would not have spent so much time trying to help them, and would instead have spent the time with my wife and young children.

When 20/20 showed up at the Gray ranch I witnessed John Gray agree to do a televised interview with 20/20 and allowing them to use his family's images on national television. What John Gray didn't like was the way 20/20 used his son-in-law to get the other side of the story. I think 20/20 and his son-in-law are what John Gray was upset about. The piece that 20/20 did was a fair piece in my opinion and John Gray didn't like it.

With the interest that Alex generated with his Access TV and radio show I personally saw a 16 foot long shed filled to the roof with canned foods, dry foods, ammunition and guns, that were donated by listeners as a direct result of Alex telling their story on the air. Also Alex offered to pay the Grays past due electric bill which had been cutoff due to non-payment of the bill. They declined Alex's offer.

As to the money, I received 300 dollars from Alex several months later, to help recoup expenses I incurred for hotel rooms, gas, tapes, food etc... Which was far less what I spent.

In the next week or so Nate will be uploading the full version of "The Gray Standoff" video, produced by me and narrated by Alex Jones. Also the 20/20 video. It's easy to compare the two videos and why John Gray didn't like the 20/20 version. You can see that John Gray blamed his problems on everyone else without excepting his own responsibility. I find in my personal life that I have to accept responsibility for the mistakes I make. I see John Gray as making mistakes and blaming them them on others. Blaming his own misjudgments on Masons, Son-in-Law, courts, police, etc...

It was almost like John Gray wanted a confrontation with the police. Our goal was to remove a Waco scenario with more dead children. The Grays loved the attention they were getting from Alex's show but when the 20/20 piece aired with a different slant on the story then what Alex was talking about, they took it out on Alex.

I feel extremely hesitant to try and help anyone else in a standoff situation after the lessons learned from the Gray standoff. I felt like truth of what we tried to do has been twisted, mainly by John Gray himself and other So called Christian websites. Especially Alex has had his reputation tarnished by John Grays lies.

I know Alex and Alex has a good heart and tried to do the right thing in this situation.

God Bless
Mike Hanson
512-292-0070




The Gray Standoff on ABC 20/20 Part 2 of 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX78CRXdBlU

I Mike Hanson, answered the comment line and worked in Alex Jones office for many years.

Mrs. Gray sent letters and called for several years trying get me to talk Alex into going to East Texas to do a story for his TV and radio show for the Grays personal problems relating to a custody battle over their grandkids.
Alex didn't want to do a story on a personal problem but the Grays persisted in calling.

Later the custody battle turned into a standoff situation as a result of John Gray being stopped in his vehicle and refusing to go to court. Mrs. Gray called my cell phone with this new information about the standoff.

Alex and I went to the Gray Ranch to talk to the Grays and ended up staying off and on for the next several weeks. Mrs. Gray personally asked me to tape and air their story.

I stayed up 24 hours in a row editing the video which played on Public Access TV the next night after getting the footage. The same footage that was released to 20/20 was shown on Access TV at Mrs. Grays request before it was shown on 20/20. So the video was already in the public domain.

If I had known the way the Grays would turn on Alex and I, even as far as pulling a gun on us, I would not have spent so much time trying to help them, and would instead have spent the time with my wife and young children.

When 20/20 showed up at the Gray ranch I witnessed John Gray agree to do a televised interview with 20/20 and allowing them to use his family's images on national television. What John Gray didn't like was the way 20/20 used his son-in-law to get the other side of the story. I think 20/20 and his son-in-law are what John Gray was upset about. The piece that 20/20 did was a fair piece in my opinion and John Gray didn't like it.

With the interest that Alex generated with his Access TV and radio show I personally saw a 16 foot long shed filled to the roof with canned foods, dry foods, ammunition and guns, that were donated by listeners as a direct result of Alex telling their story on the air. Also Alex offered to pay the Grays past due electric bill which had been cutoff due to non-payment of the bill. They declined Alex's offer.

As to the money, I received 300 dollars from Alex several months later, to help recoup expenses I incurred for hotel rooms, gas, tapes, food etc... Which was far less what I spent.

In the next week or so Nate will be uploading the full version of "The Gray Standoff" video, produced by me and narrated by Alex Jones. Also the 20/20 video. It's easy to compare the two videos and why John Gray didn't like the 20/20 version. You can see that John Gray blamed his problems on everyone else without excepting his own responsibility. I find in my personal life that I have to accept responsibility for the mistakes I make. I see John Gray as making mistakes and blaming them them on others. Blaming his own misjudgments on Masons, Son-in-Law, courts, police, etc...

It was almost like John Gray wanted a confrontation with the police. Our goal was to remove a Waco scenario with more dead children. The Grays loved the attention they were getting from Alex's show but when the 20/20 piece aired with a different slant on the story then what Alex was talking about, they took it out on Alex.

I feel extremely hesitant to try and help anyone else in a standoff situation after the lessons learned from the Gray standoff. I felt like truth of what we tried to do has been twisted, mainly by John Gray himself and other So called Christian websites. Especially Alex has had his reputation tarnished by John Grays lies.

I know Alex and Alex has a good heart and tried to do the right thing in this situation.

God Bless
Mike Hanson
512-292-0070

http://www.mikehansonarchives.com

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Re: Roots of U.S. Far Right

Postby Hugo Farnsworth » Fri Feb 05, 2010 9:01 pm

I have clients in Palestine, Tyler, and Carthage, and I occasionally drive up to that part of the country to fix some problem they are having. On the back roads, there are small towns that have a "Stephen King novel" feeling about them, and one has doubts if the 20th century has touched them, much less the 21st.
Without traversing the edges, the center is unknowable.
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