White Christian Supremacist Extremism Throughout American History
Our Current Moment in Historical and Sociological Context
INTRODUCTION
The following essay represents a mixture of work I have done over the years. I have been deeply interested in politics and related subjects for over three decades—ever since I was a young teenager. Throughout that time, I have dedicated many years to being a street-level activist engaged in a wide range of issues. I am also a Global War on Terror-era U.S. Army combat veteran who believes my oath to the Constitution never expires. Since retiring from the military, I’ve continued to study terrorism.
The terrorist attack at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017, and the immediate shocking response by the U.S. President at the time, shifted my focus to the rising fascist threat in America. President Trump’s attempted coup and the January 6th, 2021 Insurrection at the U.S. Capitol brought my life’s work into sharper focus and renewed my sense of purpose - serving and defending my fellow Americans.
This essay is a product of merging my personal interests with my academic career. Recently, I completed a senior independent research project under the guidance of a doctoral-level professor, which allowed me to draw on my years of personal study to inform the research I conducted. The project lasted only one semester, but it involved extensive reading of academic works and drew on insights from other college courses I have taken. This essay closely resembles the final paper I submitted for grading, which earned an ‘A’ and three college credits. However, this revised version restores material that had to be cut to meet the original paper’s guidelines, making it more complete than the graded version.
While this research paper is a serious academic attempt to explore a topic in the social sciences, I want to emphasize that it remains an undergraduate paper. It has not undergone rigorous peer review or formal publication, so I encourage readers to critically evaluate my work and verify any claims. That said - even if I have missed something or made mistakes, this sincere effort to engage with the subject matter academically far surpasses the kind of information-gathering that dominates today’s culture. I hope the reader will discern my attempt to be objective. I tried to follow, as opposed to leading, the data and evidence - and I would add that I did not always like what I learned, and have had to adjust some of my preconceptions and viewpoints as a result of this research. Rest assured, this published piece only represents a fraction of my notes. There is still much more that could ultimately be added herein, but one must draw the line somewhere for brevity’s sake.
Instead of intently studying the social sciences at the college level these last three years, I could have immersed myself in conspiracy culture or mysticism as a lens of observation. Had I spent my days and nights watching spooky YouTube videos from sketchy and questionable sources - rather than reading academic works, viewing reputable documentaries, and sharpening my knowledge on the whetstone of college pedagogues and fellow scholars - I would no doubt be in a much different headspace today with a far less informed outlook. It is worth bearing this in mind as the reader engages with the material herein and contrasts it with the news entertainment culture that dominates our time.
Your humble author trusts that you will find what follows to be engaging, important, and timely. May truth, love, peace, prosperity, liberty, and justice be with us all.
- Adam G. House, 12 Jan. 2025
WHITE CHRISTIAN SUPREMACIST EXTREMISM
White Christian supremacy has been with us since the first Europeans began to colonize the Americas. Some people have called this our country’s original sin and enduring burden. A historiographical look at this phenomenon and its violent fallout reveals that white Christian supremacy is indeed still with us today and as relevant as ever in American politics and wider society. Over the centuries, white Christian supremacy has been a force for radicalization, extremism, violence, and even terrorism. In modern times, white Christian supremacy has largely affiliated itself with the political right - consolidated into white Christian nationalism in its political form, and a para-militarized white power movement in its social form. Understanding the dynamics of this phenomenon and its evolution throughout American history is imperative to understanding the America we live in today. To begin our examination, let us first define some useful terms.
Our first sociological concept is called social identity theory, which says that people categorize themselves and others as members of competing social groups, creating ‘in-groups’ and ‘out-groups’ (Berger). The ongoing activities of white power social networks, their leaders, and public displays across decades qualifies white power as a social movement in sociological terms (Belew). The next term is uncertainty identity theory, which states that people are motivated to reduce uncertainty about their beliefs, attitudes, values, and more (Berger). “Uncertainty identity theory concludes that moments with great uncertainty may lead some individuals to be drawn to extremist groups for the rigidity and structure their ideologies provide” (Neumann, pg. 33). “In uncertainty identity theory, the person or group experiencing such a threat adopts defense mechanisms, creating a “worldview defense” in order to manage the uncertainty and restore a sense of group identity. Because “uncertainty is highly anxiety provoking and stressful – it makes us impotent and unable to predict and control our world,” and persons experiencing that uncertainty will sometimes resort to highly ambitious, even extreme measures, to set things in a right order again. That effort to compensate includes aggressively positioning the group vis-a-vis others in an effort to clarify group identity. In some cases, the “uncertainty-related self-integrity threat” leads to “intergroup bias and worldview defense effects” associated with violence and terrorism. It is possible to speak of “the context of uncertainty typical of most genocides,” and how a “collective angst” underlies intergroup violence that culminates in genocide. And, equally, it is possible to view colonial and postcolonial settings as hothouses of “epistemic uncertainties” and “epistemic anxieties.” The collective campaign to resolve uncertainty is driven by a complex of psychological processes that, “under certain circumstances, produce extremism out of uncertainty – transforming feelings about who we are into... violence. Religion plays a role in many such instances, as groups turn radically intolerant and construct theological platforms for holy war” (Corrigan, pg. 133). The next term to define is crisis solution construct, or the claim that an in-group crisis has been caused by an out-group, and that the in-group can solve the crisis through hostile action against the out-group (Berger). This brings us to entitativity, which is the property of a group, resting on clear boundaries, internal homogeneity, social interaction, clear internal structure, common goals, and common fate (Berger). Moving on to simpler terms, extremism is the political and/or religious ideology that pits in-groups against out-groups in an aggressive way commonly escalating toward violent actions that are understood as a vital element of the in-group's success (Berger). Extremism is fed by the process of radicalization, which is defined as the escalation of an in-group's extremist orientation in the form of increasingly negative views about an out-group or the endorsement of increasingly hostile or violent actions against an out-group (Berger, pg. 46). “The study of extremist recruitment practices suggests that individual radicalization is similar to any process of political mobilization but with an emphasis on identity and on crisis-solution constructs” (Berger, pg. 123).
This brings us to the subject of terrorism, for which we will look at multiple subject matter experts’ definitions. Terrorism is “a form of political violence designed to induce fear and thus destabilize the social order” - a term apparently coined during the French Revolution and importantly originally referred to acts carried out by the state against the people before evolving in contemporary usage to typically refer to acts carried out by individuals and small groups – and often against the state (Gage, pg. 4). Another definition of terrorism is public violence targeting noncombatants, carried out by non-governmental individuals or groups, in order to advance a political or ideological goal or amplify a political or ideological message (Berger). Yet one more definition defines terrorism as “the exercise of violence against noncombatants to promote political ideas/policies... to maximize their psychological and symbolic influence (via specific target or weapon selection), which in turn allows them to enhance the reach and impact of the violence on policy makers and the public” (Perliger, pg. 152). Homegrown terrorism is often called domestic terrorism. “Unlike with international terrorism, in the United States there is no legal definition of domestic terrorism, and thus government agencies do not have a procedure that allows domestic groups to be designated as terrorist organizations” (Perliger, pg. 151). Although civil libertarians and others caution against taking the step for American authorities to have a legal definition of domestic terrorism, the “FBI, and DHS have confirmed that white supremacist extremists are the most persistent and lethal threat. Antigovernment extremist attacks increased drastically in 2020-21, primarily from militia violent extremists and those targeting law enforcement” (Neumann, pg. 54). It is important not to confuse and conflate these terms, but rather to observe each of their nuances. Terrorism is a tactic, whereas extremism denotes a belief system (Berger). Radicalization is a process of change, not outcome (Berger). Moving on to a more complex understanding of the dynamics of terrorism, there is what is known as political opportunity structure – the notion that shifting dynamics in political power structures over time compel terrorist groups to adapt and seize their moment to strike when they perceive a maximized opportunity to exert influence in pursuit of their goals (Perliger). One example of how analysts can assess such a threat is found in geographical terrorism risk indicators – which have been found to often hinge on population density, rapid demographic change, political polarization, and election outcomes. There are other key concepts of which to be aware for this topic. One is social psychology, which leads the field of research into violent extremism; along with sociology, history, politics, religion, economics, and psychology, among others (Berger).
Researchers have identified certain elements of far-right violence that tend to be a constant across time and various extremist groups. One is the prevalence of revisionist histories. Popular examples of this culprit of radicalization are; Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu (Maurice Joly, 1864), Confederate Lost Cause (Edward Pollard, 1866) mythology, Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (1903), The Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith, 1915), Holocaust denial, and 2020 POTUS election denial narratives, etc. Going hand-in-hand with historical revisionism are rampant conspiracy theories, which tend to be effective propaganda that explains the world in binary terms comforting to individuals and groups awash in insecurity and/or uncertain times. Some examples of popular conspiracy theories in America are; that 9/11 was an inside job either planned by or allowed by the George W. Bush Presidential Administration, the pizza-gate conspiracy regarding child pornography and abuse, similar Q-Anon conspiracies, the great replacement theory claiming Democrats are trying to replace white Americans with immigrant minorities, that the Moon landing was faked, the JFK assassination involved a cabal of conspirators who were never identified, that lizard people secretly control the government, that George Soros is plotting the destruction of America and everything conservatives hold dear, that former President Barack Obama was born in Kenya and is secretly a Muslim, that Osama bin Laden still alive, that Bill and Hillary Clinton are responsible for a large body count of assassinated political opponents, that President Biden ordered a violent FBI raid at Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago residence, and that Paul Pelosi was actually attacked by a gay lover instead of a conspiracy-addled radical. Others center around Trump’s big 2020 POTUS election lie of denial, supported by ‘Stop the Steal’ rallies, a debunked “2,000 Mules” fabricated documentary propaganda movie, that Dominion Voting System machines flipped Trump votes to Biden – as well as conspiracies claiming that COVID-19 was a liberal/Democratic hoax, and that Haitian immigrants in America are eating their neighbors’ pets. Also, Illuminati conspiracies have long endured – bringing us to the related beliefs about ZOG (Zionist Occupational Government) and the NWO (New World Order). Along with Cold War conservatism that focused on anti-internationalism and apocalypticism, this flavor of propaganda became a unifying message for Klan, neo-Nazis, and Republican operatives alike (Belew, pg. 7, Perliger). Also prevalent in the far-right are anti-scientific and pseudo-scientific theories, such as that vaccines cause autism, wind turbines cause cancer, global warming and climate change don’t really exist, and the debunked narratives of race science / race realism/ race theory / biological racialism. Apocalyptic, dystopian, and crisis narratives - along with other alarmism about existential threats such as the I.C.C. (International Communist Conspiracy), white genocide, and End Times prophecy are also popular far-right tropes. Furthermore - important in far-right lore is the book titled The Turner Diaries, by William Luther Pierce, a.k.a. Andrew Macdonald (neo-Nazi National Alliance founder & chairman), 1978), which is a novel written as a diary published in the future about bombings of the FBI and Pentagon that leads to a successful revolution in which Aryan forces overthrow the U.S. government and create a white ethno-state. This publication is significant as a quintessential and popular white power movement text known to have heavily influenced white power terrorist groups The Order, the Aryan Republican Army, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, and the wider white power movement (Belew/Berger/Hamm/Neumann/Perliger).
A further indispensable topic to this conversation is the phenomenon of social media and online algorithms. “For extremists, access to social media was a game-changer. Extremists had been largely priced out of the broadcast revolution, but social media provided an inexpensive platform to reach massive audiences, emphasizing virality and controversy over social norms” (Berger, pg. 148). Social media algorithms have recently become a hot topic of controversy in terrorism studies and the wider body politic as their obvious influence has grown and continue to account for problems such as heightened political polarization. To wit, “homegrown and domestic violent extremists largely self-radicalize online and mobilize to violence sometimes in a matter of weeks or days” (Neumann, pg. 34). It is widely known in the American intelligence community that Russia has been engaged in information and cyber warfare with the United States since at least the 2010s – a primary target of which is American elections, as well as efforts to polarize and pit factions of the American electorate against one another (Neumann, pg. 88).
Some analysts partition right-wing extremist groups into three flavors – (1) racial/white supremacist, (2) anti-government/sovereign citizens, and (3) religious fundamentalist and anti-abortion extremists (Perliger). In order to better understand each threat, they study the far-right's choices for targeting. Racial minorities account for over half of all violent far-right targets – other common targets including the LGBTQ+ community, religious minorities, immigrants, political figures, jail/prison inmates, law enforcement, abortion-related targets, government buildings/property, banking/financial institutions, and critical infrastructure (Perliger, pg. 73). It is also important to study the strategies of far-right extremism. Leaderless resistance was openly embraced and advocated by white power movement activists after the Vietnam War as a way to avoid some of the problems terrorist organizations like the KKK (Ku Klux Klan) had in the past of becoming easy targets of investigations and lawsuits in the wake of violent attacks. It has seen much success in the white power movement “in protecting leaders from prosecution and by isolating cells infiltrated by informants (Belew, pg. 171). For both sides, terrorists as well as anti-terrorism and counter-terrorism forces, patient and disciplined reconnaissance has a history of being a recipe for fruitful endeavors (Hamm). Another key strategy is called glocalization, which can be summed up as utilizing leaderless resistance, especially at the national level, in favor of small local cells – but simultaneously utilizing the internet to connect with a global community of fellow extremists. “Most scholars emphasize that political violence is a phenomenon of collective action. Indeed, the majority of politically motivated violent acts are perpetrated by groups or by individuals who represent a wider operational entity. However, in the case of the American far-right, this trend seems to be reversed. Out of the 3,544 incidents in which perpetrators were identified [in one particular study], 57.6 percent were perpetrated by a single person, another 18.1 percent by two perpetrators, and the rest (24.3 percent) by a group. Thus, at least in the case of the American far-right, violence is not exclusively a collective action but frequently an individual expression” (Perliger, pg. 118). Glocalization has helped lead to the peculiar phenomenon of Aryan Jihad. For example, white power movement terrorist cell The Order purportedly reached out to attempt some dealings with foreign Islamic terrorist groups (Hamm). “But even more surprising is the tendency to use Islamic concepts in some of the racist groups’ propaganda efforts. An Aryan Nations publication, for example, calls for an “Aryan Jihad” against the “Judaic Tyrannical System,” and an Atom Waffen Division [a violent neo-Nazi group] publication released online depicts an AWD soldier with the hashtag #WhiteJihad” (Perliger, pg. 138). National Alliance (global neo-fascist network) ranking member Billy Roper is purported to have said sometime after 9/11 that “The enemy of our enemy is, for now at least, our friend... We may not want them marrying our daughters, but anyone who is willing to drive a plane into a building to kill Jews is alright by me” (Hamm, pg. 22). The tactics of far-right extremism are also worth exploring. We won’t delve deeply into all of them here – but the list of classic extreme right-wing tactics includes harassment, discrimination, segregation, hate crimes, oppression, terrorism, war, and genocide (Berger).
One specific influential religious doctrine is important to understand in this discussion. Christian Identity theology is a religious doctrine that teaches that modern Jews are not actually Israelites, with more extreme versions of the doctrine teaching that modern Jews are the literal descendants of Satan. Christian Identity further teaches that Aryans (white people) are the actual descendants of the so-called lost tribes of Israel. Christian Identity theology has been known to be the dominant religious persuasion of the modern far-right - but its influence goes well beyond the people, churches, and other groups who have made up its adherents in contemporary history (Neumann, pg. 69). “Evangelical conjoining of white supremacy with religion – in the present as well as in the past – is well documented by scholars, and especially in recent decades” (Corrigan, pg. 160). White Christian supremacist ideology and violence has shaped much of world history as well as the more recent history of the Americas. “The identification of Christianity with whiteness has ideologically underwritten the Crusades, the conquest of Native Americans, African enslavement, and the Holocaust” (Roberts/Yamane, pg. 219).
Now that we’ve touched on some key concepts, a short walk through a historical timeline can shed a lot of light on the topic of white Christian supremacist extremism. We begin with the Jewish Zealots and zealotry. Anti-Roman Jews in the first century C.E. engaged in coordinated assassinations and other clandestine missions to use violence for political purposes – birthing the modern notion of terrorism (Berger, pgs. 7-8 / Gage). Skip forward a few centuries and “Soon after the issuance of the Cunctos populos, John Chrysostom, a fourth century archbishop of Constantinople, delivered a series of speeches titled “Against the Jews” that criticized Christian sectarians who still observed Jewish practices and associated with Jewish communities. While his primary target was the ineligible in-group, he based much of his refutation on a condemnation of the Jewish out-group. Chrysostom detailed many lurid charges against Jews, including accusations that they sacrificed children to demons” (Berger, pg. 67). From these origins of blood libel and demagoguery against the Jewish people, as well as holding Jews responsible for murdering the Christian Messianic figure of Jesus - animus by Christians against Jews has continued to echo through the centuries. “In Protocols [of the Learned Elders of Zion], the critique is recast as a description of international crisis caused by a race-based Jewish conspiracy. The crisis are so diverse and wide-ranging that readers could readily associate them with worrisome developments in the real world. The prologue and appendix of the American edition frame the 1917 October Revolution of the Bolsheviks in Russia as a Jewish conspiracy, linking antisemitism to communism, a conceit later adopted by a variety of extremist movements. The conspiracy theories contained in Protocols were amplified and popularized by some of the biggest megaphones of the day, including the propaganda machine of Hitler and the Third Reich. Hundreds of articles based on Protocols were published in Henry Ford’s newspaper, the Dearborn Independent [1919-1927], helping to popularize antisemitism in the United States. The Protocols conspiracy theory played a critical part in the evolution of the relatively low-key British Israelist identity movement into Christian Identity, a virulent and violent racist religion. As British Israelist authors were exposed to Protocols, it shifted their perception of Jewish identity from a close alignment with Anglo-Saxony to deadly enmity... Today, the Protocols conspiracy is influential in a wide range of extremist movements, usually in its original antisemitic context but sometimes in vague language describing an out-group of “globalists” and “bankers” (Berger, pgs. 97-98).
As we move on in history, we see the American legacy of white Christian supremacy begin to take shape in the relations between the European colonists and native Americans. “Emergent U.S. Indian policy rested on the claim that “wars of extermination’ against resisting Indians were not only necessary but ethical and legal. And Christian leaders sometimes took a central role in engineering the violence... The religious justification of violence against Native Americans was drawn from scriptural passages and other Christian writings. At the outset of the hostilities with Metacom in 1675, with the horror of the Pequot War’s human furnace still fresh in their minds, the New England Confederation had determined to wage war on the Narragansetts by appeal to religion. The formal declaration stated that “It clearly appears That God calls the Colonies to a Warr” against an enemy who has joined their tribes together “as of ould Ashur, Amaleck, and the Philistines did confederate against Israel.” It appears to have been the first time that colonists justified war against Indians with reference to Amalekites, a people who, according to the Old Testament, had harassed and ambushed the Jews in the desert as they made their way to the Promised Land. Identified as kin to the Jews, the Amalekits raided the Jews continuously, until finally God commanded Moses to destroy them: “Now goe, and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, oxe and sheep, camel and asse” (I Samuel 15:3, KJV)... But once inserted into the conflict with Indians, the story became a standard way of characterizing the constant wars. Captain Samuel Appleton, a commander of the forces arrayed against the Narragansetts in 1675, wrote to a friend: “By the prayers of God’s people, our Israel in his time may prevail over this curse Amalek; against whom I believe the Lord will have war forever until he have destroyed them.”... Jonathan Edwards, Charles Grandison Finney, Alexander Campbell, Ellen Gould White, Robert Louis Dabney, and many other religious and civil leaders of the eighteenth century and nineteenth centuries wrote and preached about the Amalekites and their erasure. By the mid-nineteenth century, historians and journalists took it as a commonplace that Euro-Americans justified their wars against the Indians as an extermination modeled after the Jews’ destruction of the Amalekites. Putnam’s Magazine observed in 1857 that Christians in colonial North America treated Indians “as the Amalekites and Canaanites had been treated by the Hebrews.” George Bancroft, in his monumental History of the United States, discerned that New Englanders assumed that they had “a right to treat the Indians on the footing of Canaanites or Amalekites.” The North American Review, remarking on seventeenth-century English encounters with Indians in the Northeast, concluded: “Heathen they were in the eyes of the good people of Plymouth Colony, but nations of heathen, without question, as truly were the Amalekites.”... Indeed, in some cases Indians were thought to be actual descendants of the Canaanites, - the lost tribes myth still holding sway in the nineteenth century – and therefore a deserving target, “under the idea that they were the descendants of the Canaanites, who, by God’s commandment, were to be cut off from the face of the Earth”” (Corrigan, pgs. 19-22). Maybe just as relevant in those formative years of the American experiment were the Salem witchcraft trials and executions of 1692 in Massachusetts. “New Englanders felt an ever-rising sense of fear as the enemy, the most horrifyingly physical enemy possible -- angry Indians apparently armed by traitors at home and egged on by French Catholics -- seemed ever more potent. When young women in Salem began to show disturbing, though not all that uncommon, signs of diabolical affliction, New England felt it was being attacked on a second front. The demonic enemies (often described as resembling Indians) and the physical ones (often seen to be agents of the devil) were part of the same assault... In a colony that felt it was being judged by God, the leaders who could most expect to have themselves called to account were in a position to shift blame, to agree that Satan was present in the form of witches, not botched military campaigns, and they eagerly did so” (Aronson).
Another early formative American malfeasance was the practice of slavery. “In the colonial Americas, Virginia passed a law legalizing hereditary slavery, and other colonies soon followed, embedding the practice deeply in the economy and culture of the nascent United States. Disagreements over the morality of slavery slowly grew into a force strong enough to break a nation. The rise of the abolitionist movement in the early nineteenth century and its attacks on the legitimacy of what was called the “peculiar institution” led to the crystallization and codification of extremist proslavery ideologies” (Berger, pg. 13). Southern white slave-owners wielded Bible verses such as the Ephesians 6:5 admonition for slaves to obey their masters as justification and license for the subjugation of blacks and other racial minorities (Roberts/Yamane). As tensions grew in the young American Constitutional Republic between abolitionists and slavers, a violent mass confrontation increasingly seemed imminent. To wit, these tensions would result in what still stands as the deadliest war in American history – a war between the States, often characterized as a bitter war that literally pitted brother against brother.
Contrary to what is still a widespread and popular mythology of the Confederate Lost Cause, there are clear records detailing the reasons for the American Civil War. The secessionist states themselves listed their contentions with the Union and their aims for the new nation they wished to become in writing for public record. Every secessionist state issued Articles of Secession – with Texas, Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina further issuing a Declaration of Causes. Each state included a robust defense of slavery, and the Texas documents went so far as to explicitly state “The servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations” (Pierce). As the secessionist slave states crafted their new national Constitution - they included language that condemned what they saw as the godlessness of the Union’s secular Constitution, and blatantly embraced both white supremacy and Christian supremacy as the twin pillars of their new nation (Stout). In other words, American history’s most intimate and bloodiest conflict was driven by the desire of a large swath of the population to institute a theocratic ethno-state – a white Christian nation. This religiously-fueled racial ideology was ultimately responsible for the deaths of close to three-quarters of a million people by war’s end (a modern estimate of Civil War casualties) – all in the name of white Christian supremacy. It is a legacy that has continued to haunt the American experience.
After the abolition of slavery, another significant event helped shape the fabric of American society in fundamental ways. It was the creation of the Ku Klux Klan on December 24th, 1865 - formed by disgruntled Confederate veterans after the American Civil War in Pulaski, Tennessee. The KKK has the distinction of being the largest, most active, long-lasting, successful, and prolific terrorist organization in American history across its various iterations. “The declared goal of the first KKK Convention, which was held in 1867 in Nashville, Tennessee, reflects clearly the focus on racial superiority: “To maintain the supremacy of the White Race in the Republic” (Perliger, pg. 19). The first iteration of the Klan elected former Confederate Cavalry officer Nathan Bedford Forrest of Fort Pillow Massacre infamy as their illustrious leader, but the organization fizzled out around the time of the end of the Reconstruction era. The so-called second Klan was (re)born when former Methodist minister William J. Simmons burned a cross atop Stone Mountain, Georgia in 1915 in the wake of the popularity of the cinematic blockbuster “Birth of a Nation” - D.W. Griffith’s epic tale of the rise of the original Klan as a heroic group of southern avengers defending the honor of the South from Northern aggression. Membership peaked at around four million people in 1924 with a hefty representation of returning World War I veterans (Belew, pg. 36), and an estimated 30,000 Klan members marched through Washington D.C. on August 8th of 1925. The popular women’s group, Daughters of the Confederacy, erected monuments all across America during this time period before corruption and incompetence in the Klan leadership crippled and decimated the organizations (Engebretson). However, the Klan would experience another revival as veterans returned from World War II and President Truman’s Administration sought to integrate the armed forces with an Executive Order in 1948 whilst Americans once again began deploying to fight in the Korean War in the early 1950s (Belew). 1954s pro-racial-integration Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision came amid South Carolina U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond’s growing Dixiecrat movement – breathing new life into a third Klan as the country headed into the thick of the civil rights movement era of American politics. The Dixiecrat movement inspired a nearly successful Presidential campaign for Alabama Governor and rabid segregationist George Wallace in the elections of 1964, 68, and 72 - and gave rise to what political scientists have termed the ‘southern strategy.’ The southern strategy was employed by Republican Party operatives beginning with the Richard Nixon campaign for President in 1968 in an attempt to win over southern white Christian Democrats who were disgruntled with the successes of the Civil Rights movement. Republican activists sought to flip southern white Christian votes to the GOP (Grand Old Party (Republican)) on a platform of ‘family values,’ (Neumann, pg. 120) and ‘law and order’ - with a wink and a nod, and what are known as dog-whistles to those who wished to see law enforcement utilized to crack down on blacks, other minorities, and ultimately anyone affiliated with the counter-culture at war with the America tradition of white Christian supremacy. Republican partisans Paul Weyrich and Richard Viguerie are largely credited as successfully organizing the modern religious right – doing so around the issues of compulsory Christian prayers in public schools, opposition to legalized abortion/reproductive healthcare, and the lynchpin being opposition to the racial integration of Christian schools such as Bob Jones University (Steenland).
In another development after the Civil War, what’s known as Jim Crow began to rise as a white supremacist bulwark against black-friendly Reconstruction laws in America’s southern states. This is not to say that laws targeting blacks and other racial minorities for discrimination were exclusively limited to the states of the old Confederacy – as northern states were certainly guilty of their own reproaches. Segregation became the new order of the day for white supremacist activism, and the laws disenfranchising blacks were fortified by the Klan’s reign of terror for many decades after the Civil War. However, it was not always the Klan that was responsible for acts of racial violence against blacks and other minorities. The wider white Christian culture embraced a new dynamic of lynching and spectacle. Named for Revolutionary War era freelance judge Charles Lynch’s unconventional methods of meting out frontier justice - the practice of lynching involved horrors like hunting down blacks for such perceived offenses as flirting with white women, being more successful in business than average whites, or simply making a snide remark or giving a dirty look to a white person. For these transgressions against the superiority of the white race – blacks were whipped bloody, hung from a tree with a noose around the neck, nailed to wooden posts, ripped apart by packs of hunting dogs, clubbed to death, scalped, and much more. “Mass spectacle lynchings soon appeared. These were ritualistic mob scenes in which prisoners or even men merely suspected of crimes were often torn from the hands of authorities (if not captured beforehand) by large crowds and treated to beatings and torture before being put to death, frequently in the most horrifying fashion possible: people were flayed alive, had their eyes gouged out with corkscrews, and had their bodies mutilated before being doused in oil and burned at the stake. Black men were sometimes forced to eat their own hacked-off genitals. No atrocity was considered too horrible to visit on a black person, and no pain too unimaginable to inflict in the killing” (Neiwert, pg. 69). The religious element was often grotesquely apparent, as sometimes a black man would be choking to death with a noose around his neck and set on fire while still alive – all while white men, women, and even children would gather around the hanging tree to sing Christian hymns, pray, and praise God while they bore witness to the barbarism. Pictures would often be taken to make into keepsakes for private collections, and commonly became popular postcards to circulate for the entertainment of white Christian supremacists and as tokens of warning to blacks. “The violence reached a fever pitch in the years 1890 to 1902, when 1,322 lynchings of blacks (out of 1,785 total [reported] lynchings) were recorded at Tuskegee, which translates into an average of over 110 lynchings per year… continued into the 1930s, leading some historians to refer to the years 1880-1930 as the “lynching period” of American culture” (Neiwert). In the period from about 1890 to 1940, thousands of blacks were lynched across the country – ensuring that black people would know their subordinate place in America’s racial hierarchy (Wood). Although lynching then began to increasingly lose favor among the American people, it is a practice that has continued even to our modern era. Some more recent examples of what could still be classified as lynchings include James Byrd, Matthew Shepard, and Ahmuad Arbery.
The Palmer Immigration Raids of 1919-1920 was an effort in which Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer sought to round up foreign radicals mostly associated with the labor movement and ship them overseas in mass numbers. These hostile police actions bred outrage and inspired backlash that eventually came in the form of a bomb on Wall Street in the financial district of New York. Although this was ostensibly a leftist act of terrorism, it is a relevant event to the white power movement because it demonstrates the dynamic when combative right-wing policies are implemented by radicals who obtain significant government power – specifically the idea of mass deportations, and how such state-sponsored aggression can quickly breed a flurry of deadly responses. Considering our current era’s incoming Trump Administration promise to carry out the largest mass deportation effort in American history, this cautionary tale from our country’s past may hold new and foreboding relevance to our present. Another key concept most relevant to this piece of history was popularized by some pro-labor anarchists, employed by the Gaellinists (followers of Italian anarchist writer Luigi Galleani), and is known as the propaganda of the deed - “The theory that individual acts of terrorism, from bomb plots to assassination attempts, offered a vital way for the working class to liberate itself from the tyranny of capital.” A central theme of the concept is that a widely desired revolution can be sparked by the dramatic violent act of a single martyr (Gage, pg. 41). Translated into language modern far-right extremists might better understand and with which they might more easily identify, the idea bears an eerie similarity to the biblical passage of James 2:18 (KJV) - “Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works.”
Father Charles E. Coughlin was a Catholic priest who hosted the most widely listened-to radio show from 1926-1930, popularizing antisemitic ideas and promoting the formation of militias. His influence inspired the Christian Front, a paramilitary movement that included the Brooklyn Boys – who were arrested as part of a group of seventeen conspirators who aimed to overthrow the U.S. government. Coughlin was also influential on William Dudley Pelley’s Silver Legion of America (1933-1941), an American fascist organization that sympathized with the German Nazi movement (Maddow). Father Coughlin was known to regurgitate propaganda he consumed from German Nazi Joseph Goebbels, wrote fan letters to Italian fascist Benito Mussolini, and eventually had to cease broadcasting his popular show over backlash to his broadcast about Kristallnacht (Lapin). Soon after was the formation of the German American Bund (1936-1939). It began as the “Friends of Hitler” organization headed by German American Fritz Kuhn, who was ultimately convicted of embezzlement in 1939 and deported to Germany in 1945. Some 20,000 members of the organization gathered in Madison Square Garden on February 20th, 1939, displaying a large banner of George Washington flanked by swastikas and crowds dressed in Nazi attire (Taylor). While Klan members were invited and took part in some Bund social functions, relations between neo-Nazis and Klan members were rare and strained – neo-Nazis largely viewing Klan members as backwards rubes, and Klan members often suspicious of neo-Nazis who had ties to Catholicism and other backgrounds traditionally repugnant to white Anglo Saxon Protestantism. Around the time of the Bund’s eventual demise was the beginning of the America First Committee, founded in 1940 by Yale University students. Famous aviator Charles Lindbergh became a celebrity mouthpiece helping the organization to grow to an estimated 800,000 members – largely on a message of American isolationism. “After Lindbergh accused Jews of being “war agitators” in a speech at Des Moines, Iowa, on September 11, 1941, the America First Committee’s reputation changed significantly. Newspapers and magazines across the country denounced Lindbergh and the committee for promoting antisemitism and intolerance. Political cartoonists, including PM newspaper artist Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss), accused Lindbergh of spreading Nazi propaganda. America First Committee leaders denied the accusation, but the criticism continued. As soon as the United States entered World War II in December 1941, the committee disbanded.” (USHMM).
The world soon entered the era of the Cold War. In the post-World War II age of widespread radical anti-communism, opportunists such as President Dwight Eisenhower and Rev. Billy Graham took advantage to bolster their own careers. Apocalyptic rhetoric became the norm, and influential members of American society moved to fight the “godless communists” of the Soviet Union with the propaganda of God and freedom. “In God We Trust” was officially declared the national motto and added to the currency, and the words “under God” were added to the Pledge of Allegiance (Neumann, pgs. 112-113). The American Nazi Party was founded in 1959 by U.S. Navy veteran George Lincoln Rockwell as an anti-Jewish and anti-communist organization which relied heavily on conspiracy theory propaganda (Perliger, pg. 41). From the late nineteenth century and up to today, red scare propaganda has been an effective tool for the far-right.
It is also important to know that the history of the Confederacy and the southern strategy does not equate to relegation of white Christian supremacy to the American South. An example of how this stereotype is mistaken is found in the advent of the Northwest Imperative - a white separatist movement started by Harold Covington and others in the 1970s to promote the formation of a white ethno-state in the Pacific Northwest American states of Washington, Oregan, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Northern California. They even wished to expel all non-whites from the territory. The idea was used as the theme of Reverand Richard Butler’s Aryan Nations Congress in Idaho in 1986, with various white supremacist organizations from around America in attendance. The movement proves white power extremism is not strictly confined to America’s southern states. In fact, California and New York have seen the largest number of far-right attacks of all the United States since 1990 – Illinois, the state of Washington, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon, and Maryland being 5th through 11th respectively – with Florida and Texas being the only two southern states in the top ten, at 3 and 4 respectively. North Carolina is at number 12, but it is followed by Arizona, Ohio, Michigan, and Missouri respectively to round out the top fifteen transgressor states (Perliger, pgs. 108-109).
The influence of the Vietnam War is often overlooked in telling a history of white Christian supremacy in America, but it became a landmark event that shifted culture and politics in America in such a way as to radicalize much of the population and helped lay the groundwork for modern American society. After the Vietnam War, as after every major American military conflict since the Civil War, the country experienced a rise in domestic extremism and violence – always containing large participation by returning combat veterans. Combat veterans don’t necessarily represent an outsized portion of extremist groups, but terrorist attacks perpetrated by veterans do tend to be the most deadly. Vietnam War veteran and author of Essays of a Klansman, Louis Beam, became a leading figure in the white power movement. He helped lead the charge against Vietnamese immigrants who settled as fishermen in Seadrift, Texas, attempted to recruit for and participate in mercenary actions in support of clandestine American actions in Central America, and promoted anti-communist violence in America in an attempt to “bring the war home.” Beam once testified in open court that he believed it was his duty after the Vietnam War ended to continue to kill communists “foreign and domestic.” Anti-communist elements of the federal government had all but officially declared war on communism in these years, and other Vietnam War veterans involved in the paramilitarized white power movement believed they understood the assignment. One such operative, Don Black, sought to send a “Nathan Bedford Forrest Brigade” of 125 Klansmen trained at the morbidly-monikered “Camp Mai Lai” to aid Nicaraguan Contras (Belew).
Another tectonic shift in the dynamics of the American white power movement that is often overlooked is the Greensboro Massacre in North Carolina on November 3rd of 1979. Members of the National Socialist Party of America joined with members of the KKK in attacking a protest march of the Communist Workers Party, a leftist labor movement organization (Perliger, pg. 10 / Belew). It is significant as the first instance of unified violent action involving neo-Nazis and Klan into a joint radical white power movement in America. The trend has continued and “As recently as 2017, for example, the NSM (National Socialist Movement) has “signed” a cooperation treaty with some regional KKK groups” (Perliger, pg. 48). This helped set the stage for the Aryan Nations World Congress of 1983 in Hayden Lake, Idaho. A newly united white power movement held a secret meeting of key leaders at Richard Butler’s neo-Nazi compound in which they declared war on the U.S. government. An examination of individual and group associations reveals several straight lines that can be drawn from this movement to the so-called Alt-Right movement of today (Belew). Not long after, a series of high-profile standoffs further stirred the pot of chaos and violence across the country. The Farm Standoff of Northern Arkansas, April 19-22nd, 1985) had a small army of federal agents surrounding the CSA (The Covenant, Sword, & Arm of the Lord) compound for four anxiety-ridden days. Although it ultimately had a relatively peaceful ending, it led to a pattern of escalating tragedies. Then came the Ruby Ridge standoff in Northern Idaho from August 21st to 31st in 1992. Former Green Beret Randy Weaver and family had been making a wilderness home for themselves atop a mountain not far from the Aryan Nations compound – which they sometimes visited for church and social functions. When a federal agent convinced Weaver to illegally saw off some shotguns for a little much-needed money, the feds then had their pretext for an arrest – but Weaver didn’t show for his court date, which triggered an arrest warrant and a standoff when agents surrounded his family’s remote cabin. Weaver’s 14-year-old son Sam was the first of the family to be killed by federal agents in the confusion, followed by Weaver’s wife. Weaver and a young male friend who had been staying with the family were wounded. Federal agent W.F. Degan also died, and this set the situation ablaze both in the local area, as well as across the country as the media began reporting the story. Once Weaver finally surrendered with his remaining children, the damage had already been done. In the immediate aftermath of the Ruby Ridge fallout, white power movement leader Louis Beam and others began organizing to rally for lawsuits against the federal agents who took part in the standoff. They were joined by Christian Identity movement and White Patriot Party members at an emergency summit in Estes Park, Colorado in October to discuss how to further respond. The consensus was decidedly paramiltaristic – attendees donning camouflage attire, and publishing materials about survivalism. A popular idea coming out of the summit was to become tax protestors, and a popular response was to join or to stand up militias – which began experiencing unprecedented growth across the nation (Belew, pg. 201).
A subsequent standoff in the Central Texas town of Waco exacerbated the situation around the country. From February 28th to April 19th, 1993, self-proclaimed prophet David Koresh and the Branch Davidian sect of Seventh Day Adventists held off a large force of federal officers who wanted to arrest Koresh on various charges that later seemed to be bogus. Both sides suffered multiple deaths in a barrage of gunfire, and the siege ended when the compound erupted in a massive inferno. Some 76 people died as the flames were broadcast on national television. For all factions of the far-right, high-profile confrontations like Ruby Ridge and Waco became a radicalizing and rallying point of multiple elements – not least of which were the tactics and equipment utilized by the federal government that resembled those used in the wars that so many military veterans in far-right circles had themselves used and seen used in America’s foreign wars - further stoking an enraged backlash. “Agents used military helicopters, body armor and shields, armored personnel vehicles, Abrams M-1 series tanks, and M-60 combat engineering vehicles equipped with tear gas. They also used military strategies including psychological warfare.” The NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) 1033 Program - delivering surplus military equipment to civilian law enforcement across America at low to no cost since the 1990s - has been unpopular with the far-right, civil libertarians, and large swaths of the American public across the political spectrum ever since the Waco siege (Belew, pg. 189-190).
A Gulf War Army veteran named Timothy McVeigh had made a sort of pilgrimage to Waco during the standoff, watching events unfold while passing out far-right literature from his car on the road close to the Branch Davidian compound. Two years later in 1995, on the April 19 anniversary of the Waco compound fire - Timothy McVeigh murdered 168 people (including 19 children) with a massive truck bomb parked in front of the Oklahoma City Alfred P. Murrah federal building. McVeigh said that one primary goal of the attack was to maximize the body count so as to make as sensational of an impression as possible, garnering the attention of government officials and the wider public. The notion of maximizing body count as a metric of success harkened back to American strategy in the Vietnam War and subsequent emphasis of war veteran Louis Beam and other white power movement leaders in the closing decades of the twentieth century. Widespread use of body count as a marker of success tends to desensitize people to violence, making it easier to exterminate out-groups who are seen as “vermin” (Belew).
The far-right had jumped into action after Ruby Ridge and Waco, but another particularly ominous history foreshadowed the McVeigh attack. “Richard Wayne Snell was the man who had blown up a natural gas pipeline in Fulton, Arkansas in 1983, and killed a pawnshop owner and a pursuing black state trooper before hiding out in the CSA (Covenant, Sword, and Arm of the Lord) compound. He was arrested during the 1985 bust with [Louis] Beam’s Essays of a Klansman and three hand grenades in his trunk... Snell and [James] Ellison [leader of the CSA] had come up with the idea to bomb the Murrah Building some ten years earlier. In October 1983, during intense Order activity, the CSA considered using rocket launchers to destroy the building’s glass facade. Snell and Ellison had just attended the Aryan Nations World Congress, the meeting where Beam and others declared war on the state and laid out the strategy of leaderless resistance - and of targeting federal officials, institutions, and buildings. Kerry Noble, Ellison’s right-hand man, cased the building with Snell several times that summer. They found Kent Yates, a former U.S. Army munitions specialist who claimed to have devised a system to simultaneously launch twelve to sixteen rockets from the back of a van parked on the street. They planned to carry out the attack while people were inside. “We knew people would die,” Noble said. “But the war against the government meant nothing if people didn’t die.” They abandoned the plan when a rocket misfired, exploding in Yates’s hand and burning him. “Ellison interpreted this as a sign from God that it wasn’t what we were supposed to do,” said Noble... In the months leading up to the 1995 bombing, the government received specific warnings about Elohim City... Undercover informant Carol Howe reported... she heard leaders saying that a ‘cataclysm’ was pending in the Spring of 1995 and that federal buildings in Oklahoma City and Texas were being targeted for a bomb that would signal a ‘racial holy war’ in the United States. It would coincide, Howe later said, with the second anniversary of the Waco inferno on April 19, 1995” (Belew, pgs. 218-219). Chief of Staff of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) Lecia Brooks said in a 2020 interview that the SPLC had sent a letter to Attorney General Janet Reno about six months before the Oklahoma City bombing, warning of a rise in activity in the far-right anti-government movement that could point to a major terrorist event in the American homeland – but it is believed that this warning was largely shrugged off (ABC News). A similar warning was issued by former Department of Homeland Security Senior Analyst and domestic terrorism expert Daryl Johnson and Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism and Threat Prevention Elizabeth Neumann during the early days of the first Trump Administration, but it seems their warnings received a similarly icy reception. The Trump Administration withheld funding from planned anti-terrorism initiatives designed to prevent far-right terrorism, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions embarked on a crusade against so-called Black Identity Extremism, which was difficult for analysts to even define or of which to find examples (ABC News/AJ+). It just so happened that the day of the Oklahoma City bombing was the date that had been set for Snell’s execution. As McVeigh’s bomb had exploded in the morning, and Snell’s execution was later at night, Snell died with the satisfaction of knowing what had happened to the Murrah building and reportedly “spent the hours before his execution lying on his bunk and watching television coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing “smiling and chuckling.” As guards prepared to administer the lethal injection that night, Snell’s final words were of race war and a warning for the Arkansas Governor. “Look over your shoulder, justice is on the way,” Snell foretold. “I wouldn’t trade places with you or any of your political cronies. Hail His victory. I am at peace.” After the lethal injection at 9:10 PM, men from Elohim City collected his body. He was buried in the compound” (Belew, pgs. 226-227). Soon after, the white separatist-influenced Holocaust denier and anti-abortion crusader Eric Rudolph bombed the Olympics in Atlanta on July 27th, 1996 – followed by a series of abortion clinic and gay bar bombings in which he signed his work the “Army of God” over the course of the next few years until he was apprehended (Belew, pg. 233). One of the most infamous bombing terrorists in American history, Ted Kaczynski, a.k.a. the Unabomber, was essentially a lone-wolf terrorist during the last decades of the twentieth century. Although he was not infamous for any association with far-right groups and his politics was often characterized as a unique hodge-podge of ideas all over the political map, he was also known to ascribe to several common far-right conspiracy theories.
As we move into more recent history relevant to white Christian supremacist extremism and violence in America, we come to the fourth iteration of the KKK, under former Louisiana House of Representatives member David Duke. Duke had served as Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and is known for his rebranding of the old organization into a “Klean Klan.” Duke “Described this transition as a move from the “cow pastures” to the “hotel meeting rooms””... Duke would go on to found the NAAWP (National Association for the Adavancement of White People) and promote “white civil rights” (Perliger, pgs. 19, 45). Even more recently was the birth of the new America First under the leadership of Stephen Miller. Miller is a long-time political activist close to former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and has served as a speechwriter and senior advisor alongside Steve Bannon to President Trump, and is known for his role in such policies as immigrant family separation and the so-called Muslim ban. He was a fellow member of the Conservative Union at Duke University along with white nationalist Richard Spencer, and the two are known for popularizing the term “Alt-Right.” Miller founded America First Legal, the self-styled “long-awaited answer to the ACLU” that focuses on lawsuits challenging DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), civil rights, abortion rights, LGBTQ+ rights, voting rights, immigration, CRT (Critical Race Theory) and other causes the organization sees as “woke” or leftist ideas and initiatives. Miller is a known proponent of debunked right-wing conspiracies such as the Great Replacement Theory and that the Muslim Brotherhood had infiltrated the U.S. government. He was scheduled to speak at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville until the deadly terrorist actions of James Alex Fields cut the event short, and is on the record saying “America is for Americans and Americans only” (SPLC). Unite the Right was an event scheduled in Charlottesville, VA for August 12th 2017 with the intention of bringing the splintered segments of the political right together in a unified movement during the administration of a U.S. President they saw as friendly to their cause and that provided them an opportunity. “The strategic documents of the National Alliance and UNSKKK also include segments about the necessity to restore order to the streets of America. Indeed, the attention to issues of ‘law and order,’ and especially the implementation of stricter punishments, is echoed in many racist groups’ platforms. This includes calling for an expansion of the death penalty (which interestingly became an important point of discussion mainly on skinhead message boards) and providing harsher punishments to sexual offenses. It is important to note that since minorities are overrepresented among the American incarcerated population, these views may be perceived by far-right activists as an alternative and more “legitimate” way to “punish” members of minority groups. This rationale was being articulated in a post on a message board affiliated with Keystone United, in which a user calling himself “Steve Smith” highlighted President Trump’s tweet from 2013 in which he claimed, “Sadly, the overwhelming amount of violent crime in our major cities is committed by blacks and Hispanics – a tough subject – must be discussed.” This is not only the domain in which there seems to be a growing convergence between mainstream right and racist far-right rhetoric. Another is regarding the concept of “America First,” or the need of the United States to disengage from world politics and primarily focus on the welfare of Americans” (Perliger, pgs. 134-135). Unite the Right brought a lot of negative fallout for many of its participants, but it was ultimately a success in that it helped bring the white power movement together to reach for goals that would have previously been unrealistic for its ambitions. The public statement made by President Trump that there were “very fine people on both sides” (Gray) after James Fields rammed his car into a group of counter-protestors and killed Heather Heyer at the Charlottesville rally shook the nation to its core. The equivocation after a neo-Nazi terrorist event was a dramatic shift in traditional presidential rhetoric and it changed the equation in American politics in fundamental ways that continue to reverberate even today. The mantle of America First has also been taken up in recent years by far-right podcaster, Nick Fuentes. A self-avowed fascist, Fuentes named his podcast America First and uses his platform to promote fascism to a large audience of right-wing listeners across the country. Fuentes has gained much notoriety for his hateful and offensive antics and has become a key influencer in the MAGA (Make America Great Again) era of American politics.
At the end of the first Donald J. Trump Presidential Administration came the U.S. Capitol Insurrection on January 6th, 2021. By practically any measure, the January 6th Insurrection was a historic landmark victory for the far-right. All three major divisions of the far-right movement were represented in the riot – white supremacy, Christian extremism, and paramilitarism. High-profile far-right groups like the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and III%ers accomplished what the Confederate Army of old could never do – breach the U.S. Capitol, don the Southern Cross Stars & Bars of the old Rebel battle flag, and halt the proceedings of a major Constitutional mandate. A report about the role of white Christian nationalism in the Insurrection was released about a year afterward, saying that of the GOP voter base, white evangelicals were the most likely demographic to believe Trump’s election lies. Of that number, 73% believed Q-Anon conspiracies (generally, a belief that a satanic cabal of pedophile cannibal Democrats secretly govern our country and conspire to impose communism). Furthermore - of those who ascribed to the above, most also embraced classic anti-Semitic tropes. Insurrectionist William McCall Calhoun Jr. said “God is on Trump’s side. God is not on the Democrats’ side - and if patriots have to kill sixty-million of these communists, it is God’s will. Think ethnic cleansing, but it’s anti-communist cleansing” (Seidel). Although many Americans recoiled in horror and wished to close the book on the age of Trumpism, January 6th became a point of pride and fuel for a new chapter of the white power movement’s mainstreaming and rise inside the halls of government.
Journalists and other observers have detected a noticeable disconnect between the right-wing media culture and the mainstream media since the J6 Insurrection (Sharlet). While the mainstream media tends not to speak of the insurrectionists in favorable terms, the political right in America has elevated the thirty-six-year-old Air Force veteran who was killed while storming the halls of Congress to a beloved martyr. If paramilitarized white Christian nationalism was its own official organized religious denomination, Ashli Babbitt would likely be its chief saint. Something known as the Patriot Church movement had taken off during the recent COVID pandemic, and it continued to be influential after the J6 Insurrection. While there are only two official Patriot Church locations – Lenoir City (Knoxville), TN and Moses Lake (Spokane), WA – it is also representative of a wider insurgency in the American evangelical movement like at Global Vision Bible Church, Pastored by Greg Locke, in Mount Juliet, TN. Like the old Confederate States of America, the Patriot Church movement has a countenance towards openly embracing Christian nationalism in refutation of the Constitutional tradition of separation of church and state. A theological teaching commonly espoused in the movement is known as seven mountains dominionism - a doctrine stating that Christianity must be the dominant force in family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business, and government. Former American military General Michael Flynn has emerged as a sort of evangelistic leader within the movement, and his Reawaken America tour zigzagging and speaking to crowds of true believers all across America looks much like a recruitment campaign for a religious and political insurgency such as he once fought against in Muslim countries on behalf of America in the post-9/11 Global War on Terror (Rowley). Along with organizations like Turning Point USA and buttressed by a plethora of radicalized churches everywhere in the country, the white Christian nationalist movement has taken over much of evangelical America – with an eye toward taking over the U.S. government. “You can’t diminish what happened on January 6th from what’s happening in some sanctuaries on Sunday morning” - Michael Waters (BBC News). That observation seems all the more ominous when weighed with the statement by Georgia Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene that “We need to be the party of nationalism and I’m a Christian, and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists” (Hansen). Furthermore, a compatriot of Greene’s, former Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, said that “The church is supposed to direct the government” (BBC).
The angst and the conflict now felt by a polarized America is a story as old as the story of colonialism. “The American scene, where racism and religion are often co-conspirators in violent actions, I propose that groups are drawn to extremist ideologies for reasons having to do with affect. Emotions such as hate and anger, including collective hate and anger, can be built out of materials that include ideas about absolute good arrayed against absolute evil. But the starting point in my understanding of ongoing racial violence in America, and its connections to Christianity, is not ideology. It is a feeling, which we might in shorthand call anxiety, a core affect, arising from the power of repressed memory of white trauma, the trauma of the perpetrator, to discomfit the white social body” (Corrigan, pg. 8). The historical study of terrorism by David Rappaport and other scholars has led them to “argue that the “religious imperative for terrorism is the most important characteristic of terrorist activity today,” maintaining that “groups transform abstract political ideologies and objectives into a religious imperative. Violence is not merely sanctioned; it is divinely decreed”” (Corrigan, pg. 63). From the theological justifications of genocide of native Americans hundreds of years ago to the doctrine of seven mountains dominionism today, white Christians have always managed to adapt in whatever ways necessary in order to maintain societal superiority. “White anxiety about race is fundamental to understanding ongoing white antipathy to racial minorities” (Corrigan, pg. 10).
Far-right extremism’s move toward leaderless resistance has deteriorated its ability to martial large amounts of resources and personnel for effective large-scale terrorist events. However, “The relatively high lethality of Christian Identity groups corresponds with a global trend in which religious groups tend to engage in more lethal, mass-casualty attacks on average, in comparison to secular groups. Most scholars emphasize that the lack of necessity to mobilize support from communities of nonbelievers, the extreme dehumanization of rival groups or religions, and the tendency to adhere to an absolutist ideology (leaving limited space for negotiation or modifications) facilitate the tendency of religious groups to be more prone to maximize the number of casualties in their attacks” (Perliger, pg. 87). Current trendlines suggest that right-wing domestic terrorism is presently on the uptick and will continue to escalate into the foreseeable future. “Since 2016, the number of violent attacks by far-right activists has spiked. The SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center) a non-profit that research U.S. extremism, reported nine-hundred bias-related incidents against minorities in the first ten days after Trump’s election [2016] - compared to several dozen in a normal week – and found that many of the harassers invoked the president-elect's name. Similarly, the Anti-Defamation League, a non-profit that tracks anti-Semitism, recorded an 86 percent rise in anti-Semitic incidents in the first three months of 2017. The data collected for this book also reflect a rise in the volume of attacks by the American far-right since the 2016 elections. While in 2015 and 2016 the number of attacks was 265 and 230 respectively, in 2017 there was more than a 30 percent increase, to 326 attacks” (Perliger, pg. 90). Although left-wing violence has also risen since 2016 – it has not risen nearly as drastically as right-wing violence – and the targets tend to be buildings and structures as opposed to people, which analysts and experts contend is not an equivalent threat to the current targeting priorities of the far right and its affinity for maximizing body count (Neumann, pg. 55).
All of this leaves us with a desperate need to understand how to better prevent the radicalization of our fellow Americans. Although “there is no single driver of radicalization” (Neumann, pg. 32 & 143), “we are seeing organized white power and militia extremist groups attempt to intermingle with conservative political activists to recruit them into their extremist movements” (Neumann, pg. 106). “The increasing prevalence of New World Order conspiracy belief among evangelicals, together with the rising importance of social issues held in common between mainstream and fringe – opposition to immigrants, gay rights, and especially abortion – indicate a narrowing gap between white power activism and a large segment of the mainstream evangelical right” (Belew, pg. 193). Even politicians who have been elected to America’s highest offices now tend to parrot long-debunked conspiracy theories and extremist propaganda, such as former Republican Congressman from Florida Matt Gaetz – who “argued on FOX News that debates about how to understand America’s history are actually an “attempted cultural genocide” and that the left wants to “replace America” (Neumann, pg. 49). Self-identified neo-Nazis attended numerous rallies supporting a Mayoral candidate in Franklin, Tennessee in 2023 and the candidate posed with them for pictures she then posted to social media (Neumann, pg. 106). This trend grows ever more worrisome. “Usually, militias did not support mainstream Republicans. But that changed with Trump. They saw an outsider willing to disrupt the system, talking about things they cared about: shutting down immigration and banning Muslims. With the embrace of Trump, militias became more accepted in mainstream conservative culture. They even provided “security” at Trump rallies and for other Republican candidates” (Neumann, pgs. 78-79). On the day of the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, David Duke told the media that, “This represents a turning point for the people of this country. We are determined to take our country back. We are going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. That’s what we believed in. That’s why we voted for Donald Trump – because he said that we are going to take our country back, and that’s what we’ve got to do” (McEldowney). Not to be the only extremist voice in support of Donald Trump - infamous long-time neo-Nazi leader associated with Atom Waffen Division, James Mason, later said “With Trump winning that election [2016] by surprise, and it was a surprise – I now believe anything could be possible... As Trump says, and he has it printed right across the front of his hat – make America great again. And in order to make America great again, you’d have to make America white again. It’s interesting. We’re headed for interesting times” (Rowley). After the fallout of the January 6th Insurrection and the inauguration of President Biden in 2021, a poll performed by the University of Chicago in 2022 found that between fifteen and twenty million Americans believed that violence was justified in returning Donald Trump to the Oval Office (Neumann, pg. 14).
Experts claim that “the best way to prevent terrorism is to prevent people from radicalizing and moving toward violence in the first place” (Neumann, pg. 204). However, that piece of wisdom comes with a caution that “Well-intentioned policies designed to aid people who are suffering should not be conflated with policies to combat extremism. These are separate pursuits and should be pursued separately” (Berger, pg. 163). While social inequality has been largely debunked as a primary driver of radicalization, such real-world pressures are widely recognized by analysts and experts as exacerbating pre-existing extremist tendencies (Berger, Neumann). Diversified and comparative case studies help us to understand the phenomenon of extremism and terrorism from an objective viewpoint not skewed by the narrow lens of a single terrorist group or extremist ideology (Berger). Experts emphasize that race and affiliation with mainstream religions and political parties are among factors that should not distract analysts from more revealing indicators when making threat assessments (Hamm). “Two potential drivers of radicalization are supported by research... categorization and learning bias... simply understanding oneself to be part of an in-group correlates with a tendency toward discrimination or hostility against out-groups... and disruption to the status quo... uncertainty” (Berger, pgs. 132, 134). One of the most common dynamics people who are in the process of radicalizing have in common is disconnection – from respect, status, work, values, and especially from other people – driving a profound sense of loneliness. A study of the CSA (Covenant, Sword, & Arm of the Lord) group showed how the group went through a phase in which they cut themselves off from broader society while devoting themselves to intent study of the Christian Identity theology. In this phase of their group radicalization – they even went so far as to get rid of their TVs, their radios, any keepsakes from their lives before coming to the commune, and even the clothes from their old life. They were also required to donate all of their salaries to a pool for the support of the commune and its goals and sign a no-surrender pledge vowing to fight to the death for Jesus Christ. As they continued in their collective season of prayer, they created a whole new identity for themselves that included more paramilitary uniformity and Christian Identity symbology - completing their evolution into a separate identity totally estranged from the outside world (Hamm, pg. 93). Some members of the group left as a core element began to embrace polygamy and the doctrine of ‘plundering the Egyptians’ - a theological justification for stealing from anyone who was not a member or ally of their group. Another major risk factor for radicalization is victimization (Neumann, pg. 220). All of the aforementioned dynamics speak to the primal human needs of security, belonging, and significance. These are many of the same dynamics that make people vulnerable to drug abuse, gang membership, human trafficking, self-harm, and other unfortunate paths in life (Neumann, pgs. 144, 218).
As for the already radicalized - a RAND Corporation study found that people tend to leave extremist groups because of disillusionment, burnout, or intervention by other individuals and/or groups. Although there is no standard model for exiting extremism (Neumann, pg. 221), data seems to indicate that some of the most effective strategies against radicalization is to debunk conspiracy theories and extremist propaganda early and often, and to intervene in compassionate ways when a given individual is identified as being on the path of radicalization. Intervention can be successful if performed in an understanding and kind-hearted manner – but influential religious figures, former extremists, law enforcement, and other pressure sometimes perceived as punitive can further radicalize, isolate, and escalate extremism (Berger/Neumann). Furthermore, “Attacks on extremist legitimacy can provoke ideologues to craft counterarguments that lead the movement to radicalize even further” (Berger, pg. 159). On a societal level – some experts promote anti-radicalization training across the fields of education, social work, and mental health (Neumann, pg. 206). Understanding how to prevent radicalization is still not well understood, highlighting the urgent need for more research in the field (Neumann, pg. 216).
As for apprehension of terrorist operatives, “the most successful method of both detecting and prosecuting cases of terrorism is through the pursuit of conventional criminal investigations,” as evidenced by several case studies into the other criminal activities in which some high-profile terrorist groups have engaged in the last several decades (Hamm, pgs. 16, 221). Traffic violations, illegal immigration, document forging, mail fraud, racketeering, counterfeiting, credit card theft, narcotics smuggling, kidnapping, carjackings, bank robberies, serial burglary, hate crimes, terroristic threatening, illegal weapons stockpiling and trafficking, and many other criminal activities have presented more opportunities to detect terrorist activity than traditional counterterrorism investigations by intelligence services. U.S. officials identified Al-Qaeda's criminal connections as being possibly its greatest vulnerability – leading the National Security Council to make the connection between crime and terrorism its foremost priority (Hamm, pgs. 20, 221). At any rate, the U.S. government’s prosecution of a ‘war on terror’ seems to be at least a little wrong-headed, as “Terrorism is a tactic, and it is impossible to wage “war” against a tactic” (Hamm, pg. 222).
Just as Louis Beam slandered the Vietnamese immigrant “boat-people” as carrying malaria and other diseases to the United States in his xenophobic rhetoric in the 1970s and beyond, mainstream Republican politicians now spew similar accusations from America’s largest national stages in claiming that Haitian immigrants are eating the dogs, cats, and other pets of their neighbors. Contemporary efforts at civilian and paramilitary enforcement of America’s southern border echo an initiative of Klan Border Watch from decades gone by. Harkening back to the hysteria of the Salem Witch Trials and executions, and neo-Nazi leader Glenn Miller’s grand vision of taking over the government complete with tribunals to hang former leftist politicians and other officials in the 1990s (Belew) - the U.S. Capitol insurrectionists of January 6th similarly erected gallows outside the halls of Congress amid chants to hang Vice President Mike Pence in 2021. This also harkens back to the grand finale in The Turner Diaries in which those who resisted the Christian ethno-state were hung during the “day of the rope.” Echoing the last words of convicted murderer Richard Snell, rioter Jacob Chansley, a.k.a. the Q-Anon Shaman, left a note on Pence’s desk saying, “It’s only a matter of time, justice is coming.” Other similar notes and threatening chants were heard from the crowd of seditionists that day - directed at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former President Bill Clinton and his wife former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and President Joe Biden, among others (Dickinson). Just as at the same time the massive labor movement of the early twentieth century was ostensibly responsible for a spike in domestic terrorism while also elevating a political champion who was a real contender for the office of U.S. President named Eugene Debs – the modern white power movement is America’s current most pressing domestic terrorism threat while at the same time it has now twice elevated Donald Trump into the White House.
A call back to some idealized notion of simpler times from the past, when economic opportunity was seen as coming easier to white men - and nostalgia for the security and comfort of traditional values – have always been powerful tools for harnessing the passions of white Christian voters. The refrain of “Make America Great Again” was as successful for the Ronald Reagan Presidential campaign of 1980 as it was for the Donald Trump campaign in 2016. The politics and policies of Indian Removal, Chinese Exclusion, Jim Crow, the Palmer Raids, Japanese internment, McCarthyism, Muslim bans, immigrant family separation, mass deportations, and hostility to marginalized and vulnerable communities such as transgendered people are our enduring legacy as we now await the incoming second Trump Administration.
White Christian supremacy has been a constant in the American experience. Its propensity for extremism and violence has run as a ceaseless undercurrent and often crested in waves of terror across the American homeland. Its ebb and flow has pushed through, worked around, slid under, and climbed over all obstacles to remain a fact of American life. The thread of white Christian supremacist extremism and violence can be traced, unbroken, throughout American history as one of the few common experiences known by Americans from colonial times until today. In its modern manifestation, it is America’s own brand of rising fascism. It is reflective of the common refrain since the end of the Civil War that some day “the South will rise again.” A traditionally laughable statement to most, the sentiment has endured – and it has continued to evolve and re-emerge as a threat in ceaseless iterations. Millions of Americans throughout the generations have suffered, bled, and died to resist white Christian supremacy’s tyrannical threat – yet, even now we see its prevalence in American culture and politics. Considering the history and the evidence, one might even say that white Christian supremacy has only now finally achieved the goal of seizing the American government and levers of ultimate power. The second election of Donald Trump to President of the United States is certainly being interpreted by some white Christian supremacists as the fulfillment of their centuries-old vision to institute a Christian ethno-state. The promise of the second Trump Administration looms large for supporters and opponents alike. What we do know at the moment is that we have reached a new inflection point, and the time has come that either the better angels of our nature will once again rise to resist the ugliness of our old demons, or we may well lose the modern battle for the American soul. There is a quote sometimes attributed to Sinclair Lewis that seems to sum up our present state of affairs in America quite well. It goes, “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.” And so it is. The question for today’s Americans is – now, what are we going to do about it?
By: Adam G. House
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Addendum to the Bibliography:
https://youtu.be/3W-rUY0nDxo?si=3KW6ZquSMGgHAKGl
Relevant developments since OP publication:
https://youtu.be/cxjkkmGyFCQ?si=KVSBazayC3LpRBr6