Speaker 1: Hmm, what's talking too much about? Come my Cody's part
Speaker 1: two of my reading to my friends of the war
Speaker 1: on everyone. I have armed myself additionally with a fistful
Speaker 1: of plastic silverware packets. Sophie, No, I have to throw
Speaker 1: the cans. She's trying to take my cans, my pressure.
Speaker 1: I need all of these to throw now. Katie commented
Speaker 1: during the show break that the oranges I have are
Speaker 1: very soft and almost certainly bad. You're ready to burst
Speaker 1: you you could touch it, lightly needed explode. I'm so
Speaker 1: excited to throw those at the wall. So if you
Speaker 1: just give me a withering look, that's her excited look.
Speaker 1: That's her excited look. Look. Well, speaking of excitement, it's
Speaker 1: time for part two, Chapter two. Because this is an
Speaker 1: Adeo book, which is different from a seven part podcast
Speaker 1: for reasons. I'm glad that I'm finally recording an audio book.
Speaker 1: Maybe this will start my audiobook career, I think so.
Speaker 1: Thank you for narrating the Katie parts that I wrote
Speaker 1: ahead of time, he thought out loud. Chapter two, An
Speaker 1: American Fascist Faith. At nine fifty a m. On October eighteen,
Speaker 1: Robert Bowers entered the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: He carried a cult a R fifteen three glock handguns,
Speaker 1: chambered in three fifty seven six body armor, and a
Speaker 1: substantial amount of ammunition. Bowers proceeded to open fire during
Speaker 1: a Shabbat morning service. He killed eleven of the seventy
Speaker 1: five people worshiping at the synagogue that morning, and the
Speaker 1: hours and days that followed, journalists and researchers in the
Speaker 1: countering violent extremism community began to dig into Mr. Bowers's
Speaker 1: social media presence and Internet footprint. If you read or
Speaker 1: listen to any coverage about this, it probably focused on
Speaker 1: his use of the social media website gab, which is
Speaker 1: essentially Twitter for Nazis. Gab earned a lot of attention
Speaker 1: because it's where Bowers chose to announce his attack and
Speaker 1: his belief that a Jewish conspiracy was responsible. Sounds like
Speaker 1: a teen girl magazine. It is. Yeah, yeah, it should
Speaker 1: be in a sane world. Uh so, Yeah. Gab earned
Speaker 1: most of the attention, Like the media coverage in the
Speaker 1: wake of that attack. Gained attention for that attack mainly
Speaker 1: because it was seen as like the place that radicalized
Speaker 1: him um and it was, of course the place where
Speaker 1: he announced the start of his attack. But in addition
Speaker 1: to announcing the start of his attack on gab Robert
Speaker 1: Bowers said other things on the site stranger things. In
Speaker 1: various posts, he claimed that people of Anglo European descent
Speaker 1: were the chosen people, with Jews as their ancient enemy.
Speaker 1: He warned his fellow racists of a coming false flag
Speaker 1: attack that would be quote one of the final desperate
Speaker 1: attempts by the Jewish international oligarchy to maintain power in
Speaker 1: the face of collapsing public trust in the media, which
Speaker 1: he believed they controlled. On the profile page for his account,
Speaker 1: Bowers included a quote Jews are the children of Satan.
Speaker 1: A little more than two weeks before his rampage, he
Speaker 1: reposted to link to the Wikipedia page for Christian identity.
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of Christian identity? Yeah? Exactly, that's
Speaker 1: what we're getting into today. Uh So, he reposted a
Speaker 1: link to the Wikipedia page for Christian identity and wrote
Speaker 1: if the Jews hate it, then it must be truth. Now,
Speaker 1: if you haven't heard much about Christian identity, don't worry.
Speaker 1: Neither had I before Bowers went on his rampage. Um
Speaker 1: A friend of mine, actually a woman named Sarah, who's
Speaker 1: a CV researcher, is the person who like first said
Speaker 1: that you should start looking into this ship, and as
Speaker 1: soon as I did, I found that it connected to
Speaker 1: basically everything that's ever happened in American fascism after World
Speaker 1: War Two and kind of before it. Uh now. Christian
Speaker 1: identity theology is not widely known in modern America, and
Speaker 1: in fact, the vast majority of people who have been
Speaker 1: influenced by it have probably never actually heard the term.
Speaker 1: Bowers is sort of a rare figure in that he
Speaker 1: was aware of it. Um it's been around for so
Speaker 1: long and embedded itself so deeply in the consciousness of
Speaker 1: the far right that it's woven itself into the DNA
Speaker 1: of American facis M. Christian identity, however, did not begin
Speaker 1: in America. The origin of this philosophy traces back to Britain,
Speaker 1: in when a crazy person and retired navy man named
Speaker 1: Richard Brothers started having visions. Rather than writing these visions
Speaker 1: off as the result of bad can sardines or or
Speaker 1: got poisoned bread, he decided that these visions were God
Speaker 1: telling him that he had to lead the Jews back
Speaker 1: to Palestide. Now. He also decided that he was a
Speaker 1: descendant of the biblical King David, for reasons which are
Speaker 1: slightly less clear. Revelation followed revelation, as they often do
Speaker 1: for people with this sort of thing going on in
Speaker 1: their brain, and by the time Richard Brothers was done,
Speaker 1: he had concluded that the majority of Jewish people were
Speaker 1: actually hidden in Britain. This hidden Israel, as he called it,
Speaker 1: became one of the central tenets of British Israelism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all of the Jews are secretly British. Yeah, that's British
Speaker 1: Israelism in a nutshell. Now, Brothers was eventually declared insane
Speaker 1: by the state, which is probably fair. He was stuck
Speaker 1: in an institution, which is probably unfair, from sevent to
Speaker 1: eighteen o six. But in the four years before he
Speaker 1: got locked up, he earned himself some followers, and although
Speaker 1: his flock didn't stick together until he got out of
Speaker 1: the asylum, some of his ideas persisted for years amongst
Speaker 1: the fringes of British society. In eighteen forty, a writer
Speaker 1: named John Wilson wrote Lectures on Our Israelitish Origin and
Speaker 1: began lecturing across England and Ireland about the theory that
Speaker 1: the real Jews were basically everyone but actual Jewish people.
Speaker 1: According to the book Religion and the Right by Michael
Speaker 1: barkun quote, the lectures depended less on the interpretation of
Speaker 1: Biblical prophecy than on Wilson's attempt to demonstrate empirically that
Speaker 1: the Lost Tribes had in fact migrated from the Near
Speaker 1: East to Europe. Like many writers after him, one of
Speaker 1: his favorite techniques was to look for words in different
Speaker 1: languages that sounded the same, assuming, usually erroneously, that if
Speaker 1: the words sounds were similar in the languages and their
Speaker 1: speakers had to be connected this stuff. Yeah, yeah, since
Speaker 1: similar sounds often crop up in otherwise unrelated languages, they
Speaker 1: allowed Wilson claim and to believe that he had proved
Speaker 1: that quote, many of our most common English words and
Speaker 1: names of familiar objects are almost pure Hebrew. Yeah. It's
Speaker 1: one of those things when you when you read like
Speaker 1: early arguments as to why the Bible shouldn't be printed,
Speaker 1: like back when like they wouldn't give out copies of
Speaker 1: the Bible to people, like only the priest would have
Speaker 1: a copy of the Bible. The Internet makes me have
Speaker 1: a little bit more respect for those arguments. It's like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, maybe just letting everyone read everything is a
Speaker 1: bad Maybe maybe human beings naturally look for patterns and
Speaker 1: not all those patterns actually exists. Are irrelevant. I took
Speaker 1: a sip of tea and started laughing, though, And Sophie,
Speaker 1: can I have one of my Canada drives? I promise
Speaker 1: I won't throw it. I love professionalism. That's the best
Speaker 1: thing about podcasts is the professionals. And this one specifically
Speaker 1: is the most professional. This one specifically is the most professional.
Speaker 1: And as a mark of my professionalism, I'm gonna throw
Speaker 1: the sack of clement Clementine's everywhere ads We're back, We're back.
Speaker 1: There's oranges all over the floor, h Cody or any
Speaker 1: of them oozing. No, that's a shame, that's unfortunate. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna stomp on. Well, let's not remove them in the
Speaker 1: hopes that they get forgotten and begin to rot and
Speaker 1: dan All finds them. That's the dream, and it's a
Speaker 1: dream that could be a reality. Just leave it for
Speaker 1: a month and then you come back and there'll be
Speaker 1: a bunch of flying at like what happened at our
Speaker 1: office last night. I don't know if y'all remember but
Speaker 1: months ago when we did the Rockwell episodes, I tossed
Speaker 1: the coffee mate up on the ceiling of the poison rooms.
Speaker 1: Still there are you guys looking forward to making some
Speaker 1: coffee with that next year. So yeah, it's going to
Speaker 1: be a laxing, one pump, one shit cottage cheese. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're talking about British Israelism, the normal same concept of
Speaker 1: British realism. Yes, the idea that the British people are
Speaker 1: the Jews and the Jews are not the Jews all
Speaker 1: makes sense. Well, at this point the Jews are still
Speaker 1: the Jews, but also British people are secret Jews. That's
Speaker 1: British is Realism in a enough shehell. So British Israelism
Speaker 1: continued to evolve over the course of the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: Fella named he and added the assertion that Germans were
Speaker 1: really Assyrians because apparently those people had gotten lost to
Speaker 1: and wound up in Germany somehow. Hein claimed that the
Speaker 1: United States was also full of Israelites. Now, at this point,
Speaker 1: actual Jewish people, like real Jewish folks, were not seen
Speaker 1: as bad guys. They were considered part of a greater
Speaker 1: community called all Israel, which was made up of the
Speaker 1: House of Israel, which was Europe, and the House of Judah,
Speaker 1: which is actual Jewish people. Now, there was no evidence
Speaker 1: for any of this at any point in time. This
Speaker 1: was this was and I'm not using this was slow.
Speaker 1: It was all just the result of a guy's mental
Speaker 1: illness like that. That's what was going on, is this
Speaker 1: was a sick man who had a dream about leading
Speaker 1: the juice back to Palestine and read too much into that. Um,
Speaker 1: so that's where this starts. Now, A fellow named Joseph
Speaker 1: Wilde was the very first American British Israelite, or if
Speaker 1: he wasn't the first, he's the first guy who tried
Speaker 1: to popularize it here in the first one we have
Speaker 1: any records of. Wild was a pastor at the Union
Speaker 1: Congregational Church in Brooklyn. At this point, the theory or
Speaker 1: whatever you would call it, was fundamentally pretty harmless. But
Speaker 1: as it drifted through the United States from the frigid
Speaker 1: East to the also frigid Northwest, something funny happened. British
Speaker 1: Israelism turned racist as fuck. That's weird, weird, you know,
Speaker 1: weird weird that would happen surprising, Yes, surprising indeed now
Speaker 1: The man most responsible for this turn was an Oregonian
Speaker 1: named Reuben eight Sawyer. In the late nineteen teens, he
Speaker 1: started writing for a monthly magazine called The Watchman of Israel,
Speaker 1: which was dedicated to the idea that quote, the English
Speaker 1: speaking peoples of today are the lineal descendants of the
Speaker 1: lost ten tribes of Israel and must fulfill in these
Speaker 1: latter days the responsibilities decreed for them through the patriarchs
Speaker 1: and the prophets. So Reuben was the pastor of the
Speaker 1: East Side Christian Church in Portland, Oregon, and over the
Speaker 1: years he built up a sizeable British israel group in
Speaker 1: the city of Roses. In fact, he was so successful
Speaker 1: at this that he left his job as a pastor
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty one to lecture and write about British
Speaker 1: Israelism full time, well not quite full time. He did
Speaker 1: have one other side gig as a member of the
Speaker 1: Oregon Ku Klux Klass. There we go, and you know,
Speaker 1: I love talking about the nineteen Clans, that one beautiful
Speaker 1: wacky clan before I got back to being terrorists, back
Speaker 1: when they were still hanging out at the cool Coast
Speaker 1: hilarious losers dangerous. Yeah, not the mass murderers, um, although
Speaker 1: they still killed a lot of people. We probably shouldn't
Speaker 1: laugh at them as often as we do. But I
Speaker 1: mean the Cool Coast Camp and the christ Can you
Speaker 1: imagine the pitch meeting for the Cool Coast Camp. I
Speaker 1: can now that you mentioned, I think someone mentioned, someone suggested,
Speaker 1: and everyone else like, that's a great idea, idea we
Speaker 1: shouldn't so. Reuben was big into the clan for several years,
Speaker 1: and in fact he helped sell his fellow Portlanders on it,
Speaker 1: addressing six thousand of them on December two the municipal auditorium.
Speaker 1: He told them the KKK saw it quote a cleansed
Speaker 1: and purified Americanism, where law abiding citizens will be respected
Speaker 1: and their rights defended, irrespective of race, religion, or color.
Speaker 1: So long us they make an honest effort to be
Speaker 1: Americans and Americans only, So that's nice, regardless of race
Speaker 1: or color. Yeah, and that at this point this wasn't
Speaker 1: totally bullshit. The twenties clan was more of a pyramid
Speaker 1: scheme than a terrorist organization. It was racist, but not
Speaker 1: more racist than mainstream American society. When it came to
Speaker 1: skin color. They were, however, more racist than mainstream Americans
Speaker 1: about certain things. They hated the Catholic, the foreign born Asians,
Speaker 1: and of course Jews. This presented an issue. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: we were great on a curve in the twenties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so suggesting that like, when you create like a big group,
Speaker 1: inevitably you'll have a bunch of a bunch of our
Speaker 1: groups an increasing number of outs. Interesting now, Uh. The
Speaker 1: effect that KKK hated the Jews presented an issue for
Speaker 1: Reuben Sawyer because British Israelism loved the Jews, at least
Speaker 1: it traditionally did, right, Like that was part of the
Speaker 1: whole idea, was this kind of like veneer ration of
Speaker 1: Judaism that like all these British people wanted to be
Speaker 1: Jews as well. Um. So Reubens started out as like
Speaker 1: kind of being you know, on the side of Jewish
Speaker 1: people and like liking them, but over time and exposure
Speaker 1: to other anti Semites and the KKK, Reuben radicalized. In
Speaker 1: his first speech about the clan, he brought up the
Speaker 1: Jewish question, but made a point of noting that some
Speaker 1: Jews were of ancient and honorable faith, while only a
Speaker 1: few were objectionable according to the book Religion and the
Speaker 1: Right Quote. By ninety two, however, this inu window had
Speaker 1: been replaced by full blown anti Semitism that was as
Speaker 1: crude as it was open. Quote. Jews are either Bolshevists
Speaker 1: undermining our government, or are shylocks and financeer commerce who
Speaker 1: gained commanded control of Christians as borrowers or employees. It
Speaker 1: is repugnant to a true American to be bossed by
Speaker 1: a sheeny. And in some parts of America the Kikes
Speaker 1: are so thick that a white man can hardly find
Speaker 1: room to walk on the sidewalk. And where they are
Speaker 1: so thick, it is Bolshevism. They're talking Bolshevism and revolution.
Speaker 1: The transformation is so startling that one wonders at first
Speaker 1: if it is the same person speaking. This is back
Speaker 1: to a quote from the book. Yeah, out of my
Speaker 1: head listening to that. Yeah, that is a lot of
Speaker 1: racial slurs for Jewish people in like like a paragraph
Speaker 1: that's like all of them. Yeah, I've run out of yikes.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. Uh so yeah. He started out making a
Speaker 1: distinction between like good Jews and bad Jews. Uh and
Speaker 1: then eventually just decided that all Jews were terrible and
Speaker 1: ethic Jews. Yeah yeah, So Rubin became a major force
Speaker 1: for pushing his fellow American British Israelites towards anti Semitism.
Speaker 1: In the early and midnighteteen twenties, the Dearborn Independent, the
Speaker 1: newspaper funded by Henry Ford, began pushing even more extreme
Speaker 1: anti Semitic ideas on the wider American public. It's editor,
Speaker 1: William Cameron, was a British Israelite. Thanks to people like
Speaker 1: Reuben and Cameron, the category of good Jews shrank every year,
Speaker 1: and the dangers of the bad ones expanded to something
Speaker 1: resembling the all encompassing anti Semitic conspiracy theory that set
Speaker 1: Robert Bowers off on his rampage. From the late nineteen
Speaker 1: twenties to the nineteen thirties, Howard Ran, a British Israelite
Speaker 1: from New England, became a thought leader in the movement.
Speaker 1: His goal was to build it into a political organization.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty three, he formed the Anglo Saxon Federation
Speaker 1: of America, which claimed that actual Jewish people were not
Speaker 1: in fact descended from Judah. By the late nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: RAN's ideas had evolved to the point where he began
Speaker 1: to claim that Jewish people were literally the children of
Speaker 1: the devil. If you're curious about how this went down,
Speaker 1: here's an explanation from the website of a modern Christian
Speaker 1: identity group. Quote. Most that call themselves Jews today are,
Speaker 1: in fact the race of Lucifer through his son Kane.
Speaker 1: Kane was inherently evil from the beginning because he was
Speaker 1: of Lucifer's seed. Eve was beguiled by Lucifer and did,
Speaker 1: in the carnal sense, lay with him and begot Kane.
Speaker 1: It was a pair on the ground, not an apple
Speaker 1: on the tree. Eve was deceived by Lucifer and was
Speaker 1: led to believe that she was laying down with Yahweh God.
Speaker 1: That's the conspiracy theory that the devil tricked Eve and
Speaker 1: to fucking him and thinking that he was God. But
Speaker 1: it was really the devil. And that's where Caine comes from.
Speaker 1: And Caine is the father of the Jews. Well, that
Speaker 1: all makes sense. I love him history. Yeah, you can't
Speaker 1: not put quotation marks around it in that context. God.
Speaker 1: So Howard Rand was the very first person to use
Speaker 1: the term Christian identity, and his thinking had a big
Speaker 1: impact on a fella named William Dudley Pelley, who was,
Speaker 1: of course the founder of the American fascist Silver Shirts movement,
Speaker 1: who we also talked about on an episode of Behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards, really bringing all the hits yea like tour.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's all culmination. It's all called intersectional fascism.
Speaker 1: Intersectional fascism, we're coining it here. But the nineteen forties,
Speaker 1: the core of the Christian identity belief system was more
Speaker 1: or less formed. It includes three specific ideas. Number one,
Speaker 1: Arians are descendants of the biblical tribes of Israel. Number two,
Speaker 1: actual Jews are the result of the devil having sex
Speaker 1: with Eve in the garden of even Eden. And number three,
Speaker 1: the apocalypse is nigh and when it comes, Arians will
Speaker 1: have to go toe to toe with the worldwide Jewish
Speaker 1: conspiracy in order to save the planet. When he walked
Speaker 1: into the Tree of Life Synagogue that cold October morning,
Speaker 1: Robert Bowers saw himself as a soldier taking place in
Speaker 1: this great apocalyptic battle against the Jews. Now, Heart and
Speaker 1: his fellow Christian identity believers had to be careful during
Speaker 1: World War Two, since their belief system was essentially just
Speaker 1: Nazism without the swastika, but that didn't stop him from
Speaker 1: railing against FDR's appointment of the first Jewish Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: Justice Felix Frankfurter. It also didn't stop him from opposing
Speaker 1: the admission of Jewish refugees into the United States after
Speaker 1: ninety eight. Heart specific beliefs were always fringe, but they
Speaker 1: bled over into the mainstream American right wing due to
Speaker 1: the right subsessive fear of socialism. I like to quote
Speaker 1: next from a Great Tablet magazine article the Bloody History
Speaker 1: of America's Christian Identity Movement. Quote. The broader concern of
Speaker 1: Heart and his allies in the respectable wing of anti Semitism,
Speaker 1: liberal journalist Kasey McWilliams called them the armchair andy Semites
Speaker 1: of the right, was that liberal and socialist Jews were
Speaker 1: ultimately behind the hated New Deal and the corresponding transformations
Speaker 1: of in American society. These armchair anti Semites believe that
Speaker 1: admitting Holocaust survivors into the United States after World War
Speaker 1: Two would be the first step in dismantling the Immigration
Speaker 1: Act of nineteen to preserve the racial character of America.
Speaker 1: American Jews, many of whom supported easing immigration restrictions broadly,
Speaker 1: were the boogeyman of the nativist right, and since right
Speaker 1: wing nativists also often subscribe to Judeo Bolshevik conspiracy theories,
Speaker 1: opposing immigration was a way to strike a blow against
Speaker 1: communism as well as Judaism and preserve the white Christian
Speaker 1: character of the United States. I just hate this song.
Speaker 1: I hate the song. I hate that we have to
Speaker 1: play it, yeah all the time. It's the same song.
Speaker 1: It's not even catchy. It doesn't have a good hunt.
Speaker 1: It's not it's a bad song. It's just play it
Speaker 1: all the time, a big mushpot are you trying to say?
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, play encore, play it again. Let's let's
Speaker 1: keep complaining about how immigration is going to destroy the
Speaker 1: country like we have for two straight years, the inflation
Speaker 1: of like all this like anti semitism, and then like
Speaker 1: the communism and the socialism and the immigration, all these topics,
Speaker 1: it's all the same. Or actually, don't pick any of
Speaker 1: those lanes, don't pick any just get off, get off
Speaker 1: the highway. It's yeah, pull over, go to a rest stop.
Speaker 1: You need to sleep. Buring your car, burning your car,
Speaker 1: and burn your car taking nap in the pathroom. So
Speaker 1: from the beginning, Christian identity connected more with the dark
Speaker 1: and violet chunks of the far right than mainstream conservatism.
Speaker 1: This started with the silver Shirts in the KKK and
Speaker 1: continued into nineteen sixty four when this peculiarly American fascist
Speaker 1: cult met a little guy named George Lincoln Rockwell. And
Speaker 1: that's what we're going to talk about after this ad
Speaker 1: pivot pivot. Should I throw something? No, not yet, No no, no,
Speaker 1: not not yet. Products we're back. I rejected the urge
Speaker 1: to throw another thing, but I'm looking at I think
Speaker 1: I'm gonna throw this big fistful of silver ware packets.
Speaker 1: You showed your strength. Thank you in that moment. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you. Character counts the best. Yeah, these these seem safe.
Speaker 1: They're projectiles, but they're covered in plastics. At the amount
Speaker 1: of mess they're going to make, because that's really going
Speaker 1: to be a lot for Daniel lidial with. So if
Speaker 1: he says they have a cleaning staff, now, I don't
Speaker 1: want a cleaning staff to have to deal with it. No,
Speaker 1: just stantal well, the plastic, the plastic forks and knives
Speaker 1: will be all right. That's that's not like a mess.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't describe that as can I put a clean
Speaker 1: sign on the door. I'm gonna do that. Just a
Speaker 1: little agent of chaos over here, aren't you? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he didn't. Yeah a little bit. Shucks. I want to
Speaker 1: hear some more about some about some fucking George Lincoln
Speaker 1: Rockwell and the identity movement. I don't, but I will. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So in case some of the people listening haven't listened
Speaker 1: to the Three Party. On George Lincoln Rockwell's life and
Speaker 1: impact that we we talked about earlier, I'm going to
Speaker 1: summarize his life here. Rockwell was the founder of the
Speaker 1: American Nazi Party not much more than a decade after
Speaker 1: World War Two ended. He was the first post war
Speaker 1: Holocaust denier. He was the first fascist to make money
Speaker 1: by lecturing in American colleges and provoking fights with anti fascists.
Speaker 1: He invented the term white power, and was in general
Speaker 1: basically the Johnny apple Seed of Nazism in America. Now.
Speaker 1: Rockwall was an original thinker, a pioneer of the tactics
Speaker 1: that fashy folks still used today to get media coverage
Speaker 1: and play the victim. But he came into the game
Speaker 1: early enough that he never quite figured out how to
Speaker 1: hide his power level, which is a term modern fascist
Speaker 1: used for hiding their beliefs as garden variety conservatism. Rockwell
Speaker 1: was initially somewhat anti Christian, because you know, Jesus was Jewish,
Speaker 1: which is something that didn't exactly play well with nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties American conservatives. But in nineteen sixty four Rockwell met
Speaker 1: with Wesley Swift, leader of the Christian Identity Church. Rockwell
Speaker 1: instantly recognized what an opportunity Christian Identity represented for Nazis
Speaker 1: in America. As it stood at that point in the
Speaker 1: party's history, American Nazis and was basically just a cheap
Speaker 1: rip off of German fascism that was good for triggering
Speaker 1: Jewish War veterans and civil rights activists, but it didn't
Speaker 1: click with regular Americans in a way that would allow
Speaker 1: it to spread. American Fascism, Rockwell thought needed a spiritual core,
Speaker 1: something esoteric, a little occult, and thoroughly American. Wherever it
Speaker 1: arises in the world, fascism takes pieces of different spiritual
Speaker 1: traditions and hammers them together around its central authoritarian framework.
Speaker 1: This is part of what allows it to spread in
Speaker 1: different cultures. Umberto Echo identified this trait as syncretism. Quote,
Speaker 1: the Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist syncretistic occult elements.
Speaker 1: Most fluential theoretical source of the theories of the New
Speaker 1: Italian Right, Julius Avola, merged the Holy Grail with the
Speaker 1: protocols of the Elders of Zion alchemy with the Holy
Speaker 1: Roman and Germanic Empire. If you browse in the shelves
Speaker 1: that in American bookstores are labeled as New Age, you
Speaker 1: can find there even St. Augustine, who as far as
Speaker 1: I know, was not a fascist, but combining St. Augustine
Speaker 1: and Stonehenge, that is a symptom of her fascism. So
Speaker 1: obviously Echo didn't write his essay until decades after Rockwell's death.
Speaker 1: But G. L. R. Was such a natural fascist and
Speaker 1: such an instinctive fearer type that he instantly seemed to
Speaker 1: know that grafting Christian identity onto American Nazism was going
Speaker 1: to be critical if it was going to spread. So
Speaker 1: he appointed Ralph Forbes, head of the California branch of
Speaker 1: his Nazi Party, to be the party Christian Identity Minister.
Speaker 1: For race and nation. My favorite Rockwell biography says this
Speaker 1: about Forbes. His strident racial views, his flair for the dramatic,
Speaker 1: and his loyalty to Rockwell made Forbes the perfect man
Speaker 1: for the job. California was an ideal location. There were
Speaker 1: numerous identity ministry successfully operating there. Forbes would be the
Speaker 1: first Nazi officer to preside over a flock. By fusing
Speaker 1: Christian identity and national socialism, Rockwell hoped to maximize the
Speaker 1: synergies of the groups and broaden the potential membership for
Speaker 1: each group. Nazis could find religious justification and legitimization in
Speaker 1: the church. Identity members could find political expression for their
Speaker 1: theology in the A and P. A riot could now
Speaker 1: be expressed as religion under the guise of the identity Church.
Speaker 1: The push was on within the party to legitimize the cause,
Speaker 1: to de emphasize Nazism and push racial issues to the forefront.
Speaker 1: Racial issues could be easily exploited because they preyed upon
Speaker 1: nativist fears of the white population. Cool, yeah, good idea.
Speaker 1: So this is just more palatable, Yeah, yeah, it it.
Speaker 1: It makes it more palatable, more American, and kind of
Speaker 1: expands the breadth that it can reach because now there's
Speaker 1: a theology behind it after all that messiness in Germany. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thankfully for all of us. Rockwell was assassinated by one
Speaker 1: of his own men on August nine, sixty seven. We'll
Speaker 1: talk about what happened to the American Nazi Party after
Speaker 1: his death, and more detail in the next chapter. Right now,
Speaker 1: what's important is that Rockwell's iriage of American Nazis and
Speaker 1: with Christian identity took it spread throughout the fascist right.
Speaker 1: Richard Butler, the reverend who founded the Aryan Nations compound
Speaker 1: in Idaho, was a Christian identity preacher. Throughout the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties and nineteen ninties, the Aryan Nations acted as one
Speaker 1: of the lynch pins of American fascism, a place where
Speaker 1: every kind of violent right wing extremist would gather and
Speaker 1: meet and make connections with each other. From the Aryan Nations,
Speaker 1: Christian identity beliefs were able to make inroads not just
Speaker 1: among klansmen and neo Nazis, but into the American militia movement.
Speaker 1: Tanya Telfair Sharp, a researcher with the Journal of Black Studies,
Speaker 1: was one of the first academics to document the spread
Speaker 1: of Christian identity outside of explicit fascists and into the
Speaker 1: murkier world of American quote patriots. She documented evidence of
Speaker 1: Christian identity pamphlets and underground literature spreading in small local
Speaker 1: gun and knife shows throughout the country from nineteen to nine.
Speaker 1: It had, of course, been prominent in that world before nine.
Speaker 1: Christian identities focus on the inevitable apocalyptic battle between Arians
Speaker 1: and Satanic Jews met to well with the apocalyptic fetishism
Speaker 1: of the survivalist and militia communities. See it's like that.
Speaker 1: That's part of why it's so naturally American. Yeah. Gives
Speaker 1: them a reason. Yeah, it gives them arine like quote
Speaker 1: logic for there they're like feelings or desires and have
Speaker 1: these like especially once the Cold War is over and
Speaker 1: you don't have that sort of like secular reason to
Speaker 1: expect the apocalypse like now there's yeah. Yeah. As Tanya
Speaker 1: Sharp wrote, both groups were tied together by their belief
Speaker 1: that quote re establishment of white sovereignty depends on the
Speaker 1: use of organized aggression against the enemies of true Christians,
Speaker 1: all non whites and all non Protestants. The first two
Speaker 1: letters of racial Holy War make up the battle cry.
Speaker 1: Rahawa often used an identity speeches and publications. Christian identity
Speaker 1: literature regularly focused on preparing for this apocalyptic battle, which
Speaker 1: allowed them to subtly recruit preppers by focusing on not
Speaker 1: explicitly ideological tasks like acquiring dried food and weaponry, or
Speaker 1: building anti personnel traps in order to protect woodland compounds.
Speaker 1: White Ka was the gold mine for Christian identity. Fear
Speaker 1: of the year two thousand brought thousands of New Americans
Speaker 1: into the world of survivalist magazines, conventions, and online message boards.
Speaker 1: The worlds of the militia movement in the survivalist communities are,
Speaker 1: of course, closely tied into the world of conspiracy theorists.
Speaker 1: In the late nineteen nineties, guys like Alex Jones weren't
Speaker 1: preaching overt anti Semitic conspiracy theories. You'd never catch him
Speaker 1: claiming Jews were the spawn of Satan, for example, but
Speaker 1: Joan and his ILK were major proponents of the New
Speaker 1: World Order, the king of conspiracy theories. Throughout the nineties
Speaker 1: and early two thousands, the n w O took different
Speaker 1: forms in the mouths of different conspiracy theorists. The most
Speaker 1: mainstream and least racist version of the theory was that
Speaker 1: a secret world government of shadowy globalists was slowly taking
Speaker 1: over the federal government and the governments of the world,
Speaker 1: with the aim of enforcing total or welly in control
Speaker 1: over the populace and killing the majority of the world's population,
Speaker 1: particularly the Christians. The New World Order conspiracy was again
Speaker 1: not inherently anti Semitic or racist, but in practiced most
Speaker 1: expressions of the theory wind up focusing on beliefs that
Speaker 1: a Jewish led all of blacks, homosexuals, Hispanic immigrants, and
Speaker 1: liberals was trying to wipe out all straight white Christian Americans.
Speaker 1: Christian identity believers introduced the term Zionist occupied government or
Speaker 1: ZOG into the lexicon of American fringe politics. It took
Speaker 1: off like wildfire, leading countless Americans on the far right,
Speaker 1: or entering the vocabularies of countless Americans on the far
Speaker 1: right who would never have considered calling themselves a Nazi
Speaker 1: just Zog's Yeah, they would never, Yeah, they never do.
Speaker 1: At first, they never Taylor's old time guys, same thing
Speaker 1: over again. That connection quite that, that's where it's heading. Towards.
Speaker 1: That is where it all heads towards. That's where Alex
Speaker 1: Jones all heads towards. And he has had so many
Speaker 1: Christian identity preachers on his show. They never talk about
Speaker 1: Christian identity, but you look into a ton of these
Speaker 1: guys and it's like, Oh, he's a pastor of a
Speaker 1: Christian identity underlying. Yeah. Right, you present them on the platform,
Speaker 1: and then people watching eventually get into them, and then
Speaker 1: they don't realize what they actually preach, and then they
Speaker 1: get they absorb what they preach, and then yeah, brilliant
Speaker 1: Christianity beliefs happened to mesh perfectly with every other extremist
Speaker 1: belief in the United States. In the late nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: and early nineties, tax protesting became more common. Christian nitinity
Speaker 1: fit in with that too, arguing that paying taxes was
Speaker 1: really just paying for the demonic Jews to carry out
Speaker 1: their white genocide aims even faster. In nine William Luther Pierce,
Speaker 1: a former devotee of Rockwell and head of a Nazi
Speaker 1: group called the National Alliance, wrote this in a newsletter.
Speaker 1: The truth of the matter is that the New World
Speaker 1: Order people ultimately aimed to create a new world population
Speaker 1: of surfs for their global plantation, a homogeneous population of
Speaker 1: coffee colored surfs, a population of docile, predictable, and interchangeable surfs.
Speaker 1: And they definitely don't want any large reservoir of white
Speaker 1: people anywhere who might rebel. N Now, if you take
Speaker 1: the word white out of that sentiment, it almost word
Speaker 1: for word matches with any one of a thousand rants.
Speaker 1: Alex Jones has gone on Throughout the years under Rockwell.
Speaker 1: The American Nazi Party never numbered more than a few
Speaker 1: dozen real committed members, and its ideas never gained any
Speaker 1: kind of mainstream penetration. But the late nineteen nineties American
Speaker 1: fascists were no less hateful or violent than they'd ever been,
Speaker 1: but their rhetoric had evolved to fit with the deep
Speaker 1: conspiratorial undercurrents sweeping through American society. Rockwell had shotguned out
Speaker 1: hardcore racism, and as a result, he'd only been able
Speaker 1: to recruit a small number of the craziest people in America,
Speaker 1: or I shouldn't say craziest of the worst people in America.
Speaker 1: Uh new American fascism, blended with Christian identity, was capable
Speaker 1: of hiding out in more moderate spaces and luring in
Speaker 1: new believers without waiving a swastika in their faces. Perhaps
Speaker 1: the most potent weapon Christian identity added to the arsenal
Speaker 1: of American fascism was the idea of white genocide. If
Speaker 1: you spent much time studying neo Nazis, you're aware of
Speaker 1: the significance of the number fourteen that stands for the
Speaker 1: fourteen words we must secure the existence of our people
Speaker 1: in the future, for white children. This is the invention
Speaker 1: of David Lane, a neo Nazi bank robber and for
Speaker 1: decades a Christian identity believer. Uh wall Lane was has
Speaker 1: moved on from Christian identity to a weird sort of
Speaker 1: bastardized Norse mythology rip off. Turning this fucking Viking there now?
Speaker 1: Uh He and other Christian identity believers in the eighties
Speaker 1: and nineties were largely responsible for seating the fear of
Speaker 1: white genocide into American fascism. From Tanya Sharp's article quote,
Speaker 1: the identity literature is filled with negative images of white
Speaker 1: women caring for mixed race babies. Race mixing in and
Speaker 1: of itself is a cause for an organized and radical
Speaker 1: plan to separate the races. The National Vanguard magazine, a
Speaker 1: leading pron neo Nazi publication, suggests that the cult of misgenation,
Speaker 1: which according to them, has proliferated over the past thirty years,
Speaker 1: has placed the white race on the precipice of biological extinction. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: they argued that only radical action will end the morality
Speaker 1: of death. Now, the urge to protect white babies and
Speaker 1: ensure the future of the white race inspired a little
Speaker 1: guy named Eric Rudolph to bomb an Alabama abortion clinic
Speaker 1: in nine. Rudolph was a Christian identity believer, and his
Speaker 1: beliefs led him to bomb atlanta As Olympic Park the
Speaker 1: same year, along with a gay nightclub. Rudolph spent more
Speaker 1: than a year hiding in the woods eluding federal agents.
Speaker 1: He killed two and injured more than a hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty people over his almost two year long bombing spury,
Speaker 1: and as we talked about in the introduction to this,
Speaker 1: he also inspired that British bomber who's built a series
Speaker 1: of nail bombs that killed three people and injured dozens more,
Speaker 1: which also inspired the guy who killed Joe Cox. Almost
Speaker 1: like it's a chain reaction, yeah, exactly, Now, Eric Rudolph,
Speaker 1: as I just stated, was not the last person moved
Speaker 1: to violence by this picture of declining white race. Everyone
Speaker 1: listening to this will remember, of course, the two thousand
Speaker 1: nineteen christ Church massacre in which a fascist extremist murdered
Speaker 1: fifty one Muslim worshippers at a New Zealand mosque. That
Speaker 1: shooter did not identify as a Nazi, and a manifesto
Speaker 1: lacked the expected anti Semitic rambling, but he ranted at
Speaker 1: length about the threat of white genocide and what he
Speaker 1: called the great replacement. In between those two terrorists are
Speaker 1: dozens and dozens of other attacks with bits of Christian
Speaker 1: identity DNA coded into them. John Ernest, the Paway Synagogue shooter,
Speaker 1: did not identify himself as a follower of Christian identity theology,
Speaker 1: but accordinated Tablet magazine quote. The manifesto left behind by
Speaker 1: the Patway shooter reads like a hybrid of classical Christian
Speaker 1: anti semitism and contemporary white nationalism. He alternated, within paragraph,
Speaker 1: sometimes within sentences, from charging the Jews with responsibility for
Speaker 1: the death of Jesus and the early Christian Saints to
Speaker 1: declaring that Jews fund politicians and organizations who use mass
Speaker 1: immigration to displace the European race. The document is riddled
Speaker 1: with contradictions and as inarticulate even by white nationalist manifesto standards,
Speaker 1: as it moves between citing the Gospels and the Killer's
Speaker 1: love of Frederic Chopin with explosive hatred towards Jews. But
Speaker 1: what it does evince clearly is a grounding and a
Speaker 1: form of anti Semitism that's equally in debt to older
Speaker 1: Christian traditions and more modern secular variants centered on race
Speaker 1: and soil. Christian identities influence in the fascist rite is
Speaker 1: so deep and so well woven that attacks are now
Speaker 1: carried out by terrorists who have been inspired by its
Speaker 1: tenants without ever learning the words Christian identity. You'll be
Speaker 1: hearing about it regularly throughout the rest of this audio book,
Speaker 1: and I'll be sure to point out wherever groups or
Speaker 1: individuals we discussed or Christian identity believers. But it almost
Speaker 1: isn't necessary. Christian identity is now just part of the
Speaker 1: furniture of American fascism. No matter whether or not it's
Speaker 1: reference directly, it shows up everywhere. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: always the same, same, kind of shades the same means
Speaker 1: this is fascinating and horrifying. Of course, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: just like the groundwork. We need a delay to really
Speaker 1: get into the story because it's all this stuff that
Speaker 1: it's there, like you said, even they don't necessarily know
Speaker 1: where it came from. Or Robert Bowers is kind of rare,
Speaker 1: and that he actually did read in the Christian any philosophy.
Speaker 1: I don't think Ernest ever did. But it's there. That's
Speaker 1: how it's so insidious, Like people believe it, Like you said,
Speaker 1: they start listening to this person talk and like they
Speaker 1: don't on the surface understand that it has all of
Speaker 1: these different layers to it. But then as you get
Speaker 1: drawn in, then you're starting on subconsciously. It's like you
Speaker 1: you don't notice that, like Trump's references to sorrows funding
Speaker 1: the American Caramans and stuff, how that ties into like
Speaker 1: Christian identity, this idea that goes back to like the
Speaker 1: fucking thirties that the Jews are trying to like like
Speaker 1: replace with fund multiculturalism in order to replace all the
Speaker 1: all the nonsense. And if you don't you don't need
Speaker 1: to have read all of this too to like know
Speaker 1: that or believe in it. You just you're just like
Speaker 1: a piece in the the long thread that they got. There,
Speaker 1: my metaphor fell apart. Sorry, you just lost confidence. You
Speaker 1: should because we all turned and looked to you, and
Speaker 1: then I got Yeah, the pressure from being looked at
Speaker 1: by my familiars. Quick, throw some mayonnaise. I think I'm
Speaker 1: gonna throw this packet of silverware. So people, do you
Speaker 1: think I should throw it away from my dog? Uh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's ready. Actually, you just went straightforward. I was hoping
Speaker 1: it would all. It's among the oranges. Now it's the oranges. Well,
Speaker 1: we can use those eat the oranges. Quite a mess,
Speaker 1: quite a mess for Daniel. There's some tongs in there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some tongs on there. I think I threw a tong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we can use those to pick up the oranges. The
Speaker 1: oranges stay, okay, Daniel can use the dog stays. You
Speaker 1: guys want to plug some stuff More than anything in
Speaker 1: the world. I love plugging. Check out our podcast called
Speaker 1: even More News. Check out our Patreon dot com slash
Speaker 1: some more news. We are also we have shirts and
Speaker 1: and merch on t public. I believe probably dot com
Speaker 1: slash users slash some More News sounds right, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Look it up. Um, I'm on Twitter, Dr Mr Cody. Uh,
Speaker 1: we're also on Twitter Some more News? Are you going
Speaker 1: to say? Handed to Huh? And our YouTube shows called
Speaker 1: some more News And Katie Stole is the Twitter name
Speaker 1: for how you just spoke for me, all of it.
Speaker 1: I got all of it out there last time you
Speaker 1: were like, I don't want to do this, So here
Speaker 1: we are. I have nothing to plug. The episodes over
Speaker 1: is very proud of me. She's clapping. You can't hear it,
Speaker 1: but she's clapping for you on the inside. Oh no, wait,
Speaker 1: she's not clapping, she's slapping her head. I mistake these two.
Speaker 1: Regularly you can buy T shirts. Yeah, in general, just
Speaker 1: like go to a store and buy some T shirts,
Speaker 1: some T shirts. I'm a fan of the concept. Sophie,
Speaker 1: what do you want? She wants you to plug your
Speaker 1: te public store for Behind the Bastards. There's a t
Speaker 1: public store for Behind the Bastard there is. That's one
Speaker 1: of my favorite podcasts. So you guys should check that out. Robert,
Speaker 1: you should can't pick up some merch um. This audio
Speaker 1: book that he's releasing is something to plug. You're listening
Speaker 1: to it now. You're listening to it now, and you
Speaker 1: can go to the war and everyone dot com uh,
Speaker 1: and you can read or you can't read it, but
Speaker 1: you can listen to it without the jokes and digressions,
Speaker 1: if that's what you want. If that's what you want, Katie,
Speaker 1: I can't believe you gave me Gough for plugging your stuff,
Speaker 1: but then you plugged his stuff for plugging your stuff.
Speaker 1: She's a real stuff cover what stuff goffing over? Yet?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Episode