Behind the Bastards

There’s a reason the History Channel has produced hundreds of documentaries about Hitler but only a few about Dwight D. Eisenhower. Bad guys (and gals) are eternally fascinating. Behind the Bastards dives in past the Cliffs Notes of the worst humans in history and exposes the bizarre realities of their lives. Listeners will learn about the young adult novels that helped Hitler form his monstrous ideology, the founder of Blackwater’s insane quest to build his own Air Force, the bizarre lives of the sons and daughters of dictators and Saddam Hussein’s side career as a trashy romance novelist.

Part Two: An American Fascist Faith

Part Two: An American Fascist Faith

Wed, 14 Aug 2019 10:00

Robert is joined by Katy Stoll and Cody Johnston for a reading of Chapter Two of Robert's. 'The War on Everyone.'

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Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams, let's break or handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Hey there, it's Ebony Monet, your co-host for the San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we're speaking with Doctor Jane Goodall about the fascinating journey that led to her impactful behavioural discoveries on chimpanzees. It wasn't until one of the chimpanzees began to lose his fear of me, but I began to really make discoveries that actually shook the scientific world. Survive on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. From Tenderfoot TV and iHeartRadio, this is La Monstra, a story of abomination and conspiracy. The story about the man who simply become known as. Lamaster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's talking too much about come Cody's? Yeah, behind the ******** and Part 2 of my reading to my friends of the war on everyone, I have armed myself additionally with a fistful of of plastic silverware packets. Sophie, no, I have to throw the cans. She's trying to take my cans, my pressure saying she cans. I need all of these to throw now. Katie commented during the show break that the the Oranges I have are very soft and they are almost certainly bad. They're ready to burst. You could you could touch it lightly and it explode. I'm so excited to throw those at the wall. So if you just give me a withering look, that's her excited look. That's her excited look. Look. Well, Speaking of excitement. It's time for Part 2, chapter 2 because this is an audio book which is different from A7 part podcast for. Reasons I'm glad that I'm finally recording an audiobook. Maybe this will start my audiobook career, I think so. Thank you for narrating the kadie parts that I wrote ahead of time, he thought out loud. Good at it, Chapter 2, an American fascist faith. At 9:50 AM on October 27th, 2018, Robert Bowers entered the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA. He carried a colt AR15, three Glock handguns chambered in 357 SIG body armor, and a substantial amount of ammunition. Bowers proceeded to open fire during a Shabbat morning service. He killed 11 of the 75 people worshipping at the synagogue that morning in the hours and days that followed, journalists and researchers in the countering. Violent extremism community began to dig into Mr Bower's social media presence and Internet footprint. If you read or listened to any coverage about this, it probably focused on his use of the social media website gab, which is essentially Twitter for Nazis. Gab and a lot of attention because it's where Bowers chose to announce his attack and his belief that a Jewish conspiracy was responsible sounds like a teen girl magazine. It should be. It should be in a sane world. So yeah, Gabe earned most of the attention, like the media coverage in the wake of that attack gain attention for that attack, mainly because it was seen as like the place that radicalized him. And it was, of course, the place where he announced the start of his attack. But in addition to announcing the start of his attack on Gab, Robert Bower said other things on the site. Stranger things. In various posts, he claimed that people of Anglo European descent were the chosen people, with Jews as their ancient enemy. He warned his fellow racists of a coming false flag. Attack. That would be, quote, one of the final desperate attempts by the Jewish international oligarchy to maintain power in the face of collapsing public trust in the media, which he believed they controlled. On the profile page for his account, Bowers included a quote Jews are the children of Satan. A little more than two weeks before his rampage, he reposted a link to the Wikipedia page for Christian identity. Have you ever heard of Christian identity? From you, yeah, exactly this we're getting into today. So he reposted a link to the Wikipedia page for Christian identity and wrote if the Jews hate it, then it must be truth. Now, if you haven't heard much about Christian identity, don't worry. Neither had I before Bowers went on his rampage. A friend of mine, actually a woman named Sarah who's a A CVE researcher, is the person who like first said that you should start looking into this ****. And as soon as I did, I found that it connected to basically everything that's ever happened in American fascism after World War Two and kind of before it now. Christian identity theology is not widely known in modern America, and in fact the vast majority of people who have been influenced by it have probably never actually heard the term. Bowers is sort of a rare figure in that he was aware of it. It's been around for so long and embedded itself. So deeply in the consciousness of the far right that it's woven itself into the DNA of American fascism. Christian identity, however, did not begin in America. The origin of this philosophy traces back to Britain in 1791, when a crazy person and retired Navy man named Richard Brothers started having visions. Rather than writing these visions off as the result of bad canned sardines or ergot poisoned bread, he decided that these visions were God telling him that he had to lead the Jews back to Palestine. Now. He also decided that he was a descendant of the biblical. King David, for reasons which are slightly less clear, revelation followed revelation, as they often do for people with this sort of thing going on in their brain. And by the time Richard Brothers was done, he'd concluded that the majority of Jewish people were actually hidden in Britain. This hidden Israel, as he called it, became one of the central tenets of British Israelism. OK, yeah, all of the Jews are secretly British. Yeah, yeah, that's British Israelism in a nutshell. Interesting. Now brothers was eventually declared insane by the state. Which is probably fair. He was stuck in an institution, which is probably unfair, from 1795 to 1806, but in the four years before he got locked up he earned himself some followers. And although his flock didn't stick together until he got out of the asylum, some of his ideas persisted for years amongst the fringes of British society. In 1840, a writer named John Wilson wrote lectures on our Israelitish origin and began lecturing across England and Ireland about the theory that the real Jews were basically everyone but. Actual Jewish people, according to the book religion and the right by Michael Barkun quote the lectures depended less on the interpretation of biblical prophecy than on Wilson's attempt to demonstrate empirically that the Lost tribes had in fact migrated from the Near East to Europe. Like many writers after him, one of his favorite techniques was to look for words in different languages that sounded the same, assuming, usually erroneously, that if the word sounds were similar, then the languages and their speakers had to be connected. This is this is like Q Anon stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Since similar sounds often crop up in otherwise unrelated languages, they allowed Wilson to claim and to believe that he had proved that quote. Many of our most common English words and names of familiar objects are almost pure Hebrew. Yeah, it's one of those things when you when you read like, early arguments as to why the Bible shouldn't be printed, like back when. Like, they wouldn't give out copies of the Bible to people. Like, only the priest would have a copy of the Bible. The Internet makes me have a little bit more respect for those arguments. It's like, Oh yeah, maybe just letting everyone read everything is about. Maybe. Maybe human beings naturally look for patterns, and not all those patterns actually exist are irrelevant. I took a sip of tea and started laughing, though. I'm dying, Sophie. Can I have one of my Canada dries? Promise I won't throw it. I love professionalism that's the best thing about podcasts is the professionalism and this one specifically is the most professional this one specifically is the most professional and as a mark of my professionalism. I'm going to throw this second Clementine. Clementines went everywhere ads. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month. Mint Mobile will give you the best rate whether you're buying one or for a family and at Mint. Family start at 2 lines. All plans come with unlimited talk and text, plus high speed data delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any mint mobile plan and keep your same phone number along with all your existing contacts. Just switch to Mint mobile and get premium wireless service starting at 15 bucks a month. Get premium wireless service from just $15.00 a month and no one expected plot twists at mintmobile.com/behind. That's mintmobile.com/behind. Seriously, you'll make your wallet very happy at Mint Mobile. Com slash behind my name is Erica Kelly and I am the host and creator of Southern Freight true crime. There are so many people that just have no idea about some injustices in the world and if you can give a voice to them you can create change. To be able to do it within podcasting is just such a gift. I believe it was 18 months after I got on with Spreaker that I was making enough that I could quit my day job. It was incredible. I always feel like an ambassador for speaker. But that's because I'm passionate about podcasting. It's really easy to use. I always tell people I am so not tech. Took me 5 minutes to get comfortable with spreaker, and when I find a new friend that has an incredible show, I want them to make money. I want them to be able to do what I did. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's break your handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Get paid to talk about the things you love. Spreaker from iheart. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. His unspeakable crimes and the incompetence or unwillingness of the police to stop him brought the entire country of Belgium to the brink of revolution. From Tenderfoot TV in iHeartRadio this is la Monstra. The story of abomination and conspiracy that led to the demise of the entire institution of Belgian federal police and rattled the foundations of its government. The story about the man who simply become known as La Monster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. Ohh gosh, we're back. There's oranges all over the floor, Cody. Are any of them oozing? That's a shame. That's unfortunate. I'm gonna stomp on under the couch. Well, let's not remove them in the hopes that they get forgotten and begin to rot and Daniel finds them. That's the dream. And it's a dream that could be reality. Just leave it for a month, and then you come back and they'll be a bunch of flying. Yeah, just like what happened at our office last night. I don't know if you all remember, but months ago when we did the Rockwell episodes, I tossed the the coffee-mate up on the the ceiling of the poison room. Still there. Are you guys looking forward to making some coffee with that next year? So, yeah, it's going to be a laxative. One pump, one **** cottage cheese. Alright, we're talking about British Israelism the normal same concept of British industrialism. Yes, the idea that the British people are the juice and the Jews are not the Jews. I follow. This all makes sense. Well, at this point, the Jews are still the Jews, but also British people are secret Jews, right? That's British Israelism in a nutshell. So British Israelism continue to evolve. Over the course of the 1800s, a fella named Hein added the assertion that Germans were really Assyrians because apparently those people had gotten lost. We wound up in Germany somehow. Heine claimed that the United States was also full of Israelites. Now, at this point, actual Jewish people, like real Jewish folks, were not seen as bad guys. They were considered part of a greater community called all Israel, which was made-up of the House of Israel, which was Europe, and the House of Judah, which is actual Jewish people now. There is no evidence for any of this at any point in time. This was no way. This was all just, and I'm not using this, was this was all just the result of a guy's mental illness. Like that. That's what was going on here. This was a sick man who had a dream about. Leading the juice back to Palestine and read too much into that. So that's where this starts. Now, a fellow named Joseph Wilde was the very first American British Israelite. Or if he wasn't the first, he's the first guy who tried to popularize it here, and the first one we have any records of. Wilde was a pastor at the Union Congregational Church in Brooklyn. At this point, the theory, or whatever you would call it, was fundamentally pretty harmless, but as it drifted through the United States from the frigid E to the also frigid northwest. Something funny happened. British Israelism turned racist as ****. Hmm. That's crazy. That's weird. How weird. How weird? Yeah, weird. Weird. That would happen. Surprising? Yeah. Surprising indeed. Now, the man most responsible for this turn was an Oregonian named Reuben H Sawyer. In the late 19 teens, he started writing for a monthly magazine called the Watchman of Israel, which was dedicated to the idea that, quote the English speaking peoples of today are the lineal descendants of the lost 10 tribes of Israel and must fulfill. In these latter days, the responsibilities decreed for them through the Patriarchs and the prophets. So Ruben was the pastor of the east side Christian Church in Portland, OR, and over the years he built up a sizable British Israel group in the City of Roses. In fact, he was so successful at this that he left his job as a pastor in 1921 to lecture and write about British Israelism full time well. Not quite full time. He did have one other side gig as a member of the Oregon Ku Klux Klan. Here it is. There we go. You see that smile come across Roberts face and you know where it's going. And I, you know, I love talking about the 1920s clan. You know that one beautiful, wacky clan before it got back to being terrorists. Back when they were still hanging out at the cool coast, right? The hilarious losers. Really dangerous losers. Yeah, not the mass murderers. So they still killed a lot of people and we probably shouldn't laugh at them as often as we do, but I mean the cool coast camp. There looking Christ. Can you imagine the pitch meeting for the Cool Coast camp? I can tell now that you mentioned it. I am, yeah. I think someone mentioned someone suggested and everyone else like, that's a great idea. It's a great idea. We should do. So. Ruben was big into the clan for several years and in fact he helped sell his fellow Portlanders on it. Addressing 6000 of them on December 22nd, 1921 at the Municipal Auditorium, he told them the KKK sought quote a cleansed and purified Americanism where law abiding citizens will be respected and their rights defended. Irrespective of race, religion or color. So long as they make an honest effort to be Americans and Americans only. So that's nice regardless of race or color. Yeah, yeah, and that at this point this wasn't totally ********. The 20s clan was more of a pyramid scheme than a terrorist organization. It was racist, but not more racist than mainstream American Society when it came to skin color. They were, however, more racist than mainstream Americans about certain things they hated the Catholic, the foreign born Asians, and of course. Jews, that's pretty racist. This presented an issue. Yeah. This is the 20s, like, so we we grade on a curve in the 20s. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So are you suggesting that, like, when you create like a big in Group, inevitably you'll have a bunch of a bunch of out groups? That's an increasing number of outgroups. Interesting. Now, the effect the KKK hated the Jews presented an issue for Ruben Sawyer because British Israelism loved the Jews at least it traditionally did. Right? Like that was part of the whole idea was this kind of like, veneration of Judaism that like all these British people wanted to be Jews as well. Yeah. So Reuben started out as like kind of being, you know, on the side of Jewish people, like liking them. But over time and exposure to other anti Semites in the KKK, Ruben radicalized in his first speech about the Klan, he brought up the Jewish question. But made a point of noting that some Jews were of ancient and honorable faith while only a few were objectionable according to the book religion and the Right quote. By 1922, however, this innuendo had been replaced by full blown anti-Semitism that was as crude as it was “Jews are either bolshevists undermining our government or our shylock's in finance or commerce who gain command and control of Christians as borrowers or employees. It is repugnant to a true American to be bossed by asheni, and in some parts of America the ***** are so thick. That a white man could hardly find room to walk on the sidewalk. And where they are so thick it is bolshevism they are talking bolshevism and revolution. The transformation is so startling that one wonders at first if it is the same person speaking. This is back to a quote from the book. Yeah. Just popped out of my head listening to that. Yeah. That is a lot of racial slurs for Jewish people and like sure is like a paragraph that's like all of them. Yeah. I've run out of Yikes. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, he he started out making a distinction between. Like good Jews and bad Jews. Interesting. And then eventually just decided that all Jews were terrible. Like religious Jews and ethnic Jews. Yeah, distinction there. Yeah. So Ruben became a major force for pushing his fellow American British Israelites towards anti-Semitism. In the early and mid 1920s, the Dearborn Independent, the newspaper funded by Henry Ford, began pushing even more extreme anti-Semitic ideas on the wider American public. Its editor, William Cameron, was a British Israelite. Thanks to people like Rubin and Cameron, the category of good Jews shrank every year, and the dangers of the bad ones expanded to something resembling the all-encompassing anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that set Robert Bowers off on his rampage from the late 1920s to the 1930s, Howard Rand, a British Israelite from New England, became a thought leader in the movement. His goal was to build it into a political organization. In 1933 he formed the Anglo-Saxon Federation of America, which claimed that actual Jewish people were not in fact descended from Judah by the late 1930s. Hans ideas had evolved to the point where he began to claim that Jewish people were literally the children of the devil. If you're curious about how this went down, here's an explanation from the website of a modern Christian identity group quote. Most that call themselves Jews today are in fact the race of Lucifer through his son Kane. Kane was inherently evil from the beginning because he was of Lucifer seed. Eve was beguiled by Lucifer and did in the carnal sense lay with him and begot Cain. It was a pair on the ground, not an apple on the tree. Eve was deceived by Lucifer. And was led to believe that she was laying down with Yahweh God. So that's the conspiracy theory that the devil tricked Eve into ******* him and thinking that he was God, but it was really the devil, and that's where Kane comes from and Kane is the father of the Jews. Well, that all makes sense. I love history, yeah. You you can't not put quotation marks around it in that context. So Howard Rand was the very first person to use the term Christian identity, and his thinking had a big impact on a fella named William Dudley Pelley, who was of course the founder of the American Fascist Silver Shirts movement, who we also talked about on an episode of behind the ******** really bringing in all the hits. On tour, I mean, it's all culmination. It's all intersectional fascism. Intersectional fascism. We're coining it here, but the 1940s, the core of the Christian identity belief system was more or less formed. It includes 3 specific ideas. #1 Arians are descendants of the biblical tribes of Israel's number 2. Actual Jews are the result of the devil having sex with EVE in the garden of even Eden and #3. The apocalypse is nigh, and when it comes, Arians will have to go toe to toe. With the worldwide Jewish conspiracy in order to save the planet, when he walked into the Tree of Life Synagogue that cold October morning, Robert Bowers saw himself as a soldier taking place in this great apocalyptic battle against the Jews. Now, Hart and his fellow Christian identity believers had to be careful during World War Two, since their belief system was essentially just Nazism without the swastika. But that didn't stop him from railing against FDR's appointment of the first Jewish Supreme Court Justice, Felix Frankfurter. It also didn't stop him from opposing the admission of Jewish refugees into the United States after 1938. Hart specific beliefs were always fringe, but they bled over into the mainstream American right wing due to the rights obsessive fear of socialism. I'd like to quote next from a great tablet magazine article. The bloody history of America's Christian identity movement quote the broader concern of heart and his allies and the respectable wing of anti-Semitism. Liberal journalist Casey McWilliams called them the armchair anti Semites of the right was that liberal and socialist Jews were ultimately behind the hated New Deal and the corresponding transformations of in American Society. These armchair anti Semites believe that admitting Holocaust survivors into the United States after World War Two would be the first step in dismantling the Immigration Act of 1924 to preserve the racial character of America American. Use, many of whom supported easing immigration restrictions broadly, with the boogeyman of the nativist right. And since right wing nativists also often subscribe to Judeo Bolshevik conspiracy theories, opposing immigration was a way to strike a blow against communism as well as Judaism, and preserve the white Christian character of the United States. I just hate this song. You hate this, I hate this. I hate that we have to play it all the time. It's the same song. It's not even catchy, doesn't have a good hook. It's not. It's a bad song, and we just play it all the time. What are you trying to say? It was like, yeah, play encore, play it again. Now let's let's keep complaining about how immigration is going to destroy the country like we have for 200 straight years. Conflation of like, all this, like anti-Semitism and then like the Communism and the socialism and the immigration, all these topics, Elaine, it's all the same. Or actually don't pick any of those. Get off the highway. It's yeah. Pull over. Go to a rest stop. You need to sleep in your car. Burn your ******* burn. Burn your car. Take a nap in the bathroom. Ohh, so from the beginning, Christian identity connected more with the dark and violent chunks of the far right than mainstream conservatism. This started with the silver shirts in the KKK and continued into 1964, when this peculiarly American Fascist cult met a little guy named George Lincoln Rockwell. And that's we're going to talk about after this ad. Pivot. Pivot. Should I throw something? No, not yet. Not yet. Not yet. Alerts. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month. Mint Mobile will give you the best rate whether you're buying one or for a family and at Mint. Family start at 2 lines. All plans come with unlimited talk and text, plus high speed data delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any mint mobile plan and keep your same phone number along with all your existing contacts. Just switch to Mint mobile and get premium wireless service starting at 15 bucks a month. Get premium wireless service from just $15.00 a month and no one expected plot twist at mintmobile.com/behind. That's mintmobile.com/behind. Seriously, you'll make your wallet very happy at Mint Mobile. Com slash behind my name is Erica Kelly and I am the host and creator of Southern Freight true crime. There are so many people that just have no idea about some injustices in the world and if you can give a voice to them you can create change. To be able to do it within podcasting is just such a gift. I believe it was 18 months after I got on with Spreaker that I was making enough that I could quit my day job. It was incredible. I always feel like an ambassador for speaker. But that's because I'm passionate about podcasting. It's really easy to use. I always tell people I am so not tech. Took me 5 minutes to get comfortable with spreaker, and when I find a new friend that has an incredible show, I want them to make money. I want them to be able to do what I did. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's break your handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Get paid to talk about the things you love. Spreaker from iheart. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. His unspeakable crimes and the incompetence or unwillingness of the police to stop him brought the entire country of Belgium to the brink of revolution. From Tenderfoot TV in iHeartRadio this is la Monstra. The story of abomination and conspiracy that led to the demise of the entire institution of Belgian federal police and rattled the foundations of its government. A story about the man who simply become known as La Monster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. I rejected the urge to throw out other thing, but I'm looking at, I think I'm going to throw this big fistful of a of silverware packets. You showed your strength. Thank you in that moment. Thank you, thank you. Character counts be best. Just. Yeah, these these seem safe. They're projectiles, but they're covered in plastics. They're just invited at the amount of mess they're going to make because that's really going to be a lot for Dan Lydia with. So if he says David Cleaning staff now, I don't want to cleaning staff to have to deal with it. No, just stanol, alright, alright. Well, the the plastic, the plastic forks and knives will be all right. That's that's not like a mess. I wouldn't describe that as a clean sign on the door. I'm going to do that. A little agent of chaos over here, aren't you? Yeah, yeah, he did. The most adorable little shrug. Yeah, little bit. Ohh heck. Ah shucks. I wanna hear some more. About some bugging that's some ******* George Lincoln Rockwell and the Christian identity movement. I don't, but I will, yeah. So in case some of the people listening haven't listened to the three parter on George Lincoln Rockwell's life and impact that we we talked about earlier, I'm going to summarize his life here. Rockwell was the founder of the American Nazi Party not much more than a decade after World War Two ended. He was the 1st post War Holocaust denier. He was the first fascist to make money by lecturing at American colleges and provoking fights with anti fascists. He invented the term white power and was in general. Basically the Johnny Appleseed of Naziism in America now. Rockwell was an original thinker, a pioneer of the tactics that Fashi folks still used today to get media coverage and play the victim. But he came into the game early enough that he never quite figured out how to hide his power level, which is a term modern fascists used for hiding their beliefs as garden variety conservatism. Rockwell was initially somewhat anti Christian because, you know, Jesus was Jewish, which is something that didn't exactly play well with 1960s American conservatives, but in 1964, Rockwell met with Wesley. Swift leader of the Christian identity Church, Rockwell instantly recognized what an opportunity Christian identity represented for Nazis in America as it stood at that point in the party's history. American Nazism was basically just a cheap ripoff of German fascism. That was good for triggering Jewish war veterans and civil rights activists, but it didn't click with regular Americans in a way that would allow it to spread. American Fascism, Rockwell thought, needed a spiritual core, something esoteric, a little occult, and thoroughly American wherever it arises in the world. Fascism takes pieces of different spiritual traditions and hammers them together around its central authoritarian framework. This is part of what allows it to spread in different cultures. Umberto Eco identified this trait as syncretism. Quote The knot synopsis was nourished by traditionalist syncretistic occult elements, the most influential theoretical source of the theories of the new Italian right. Julius Evola merged the Holy Grail with the protocols of the Elders of Zion Alchemy with the Holy Roman and Germanic Empire. If you browse in the shelves that in American bookstores are labeled as new Age, you can find there even Saint Augustine, who as far as I know was not a fascist but combining St Augustine and Stonehenge. That is a symptom of Earth fascism. So obviously ECHO didn't write his essay until decades after Rockwell's death. But GLR was such a natural fascist and such an instinctive fear type that he instantly seemed to know that grafting Christian identity. Onto American Nazism was going to be critical if it was going to spread. So he appointed Ralph Forbes, head of the California branch of his Nazi party, to be the party Christian Identity Minister for race and nation. My favorite Rockwell biography says this about Forbes. His strident racial views, his flair for the dramatic, and his loyalty to Rockwell made Forbes the perfect man for the job. California was an ideal location. There were numerous identity ministries successfully operating there. Forbes would be the first Nazi officer to preside over a flock by fusing Christian identity and National Socialism. Rockwell hoped to maximize the synergies of the groups and broaden the potential membership for each group. Nazis could find religious justification and legitimization in the church's identity. Members could find political expression for their theology in the A&PA riot could now be expressed as religion under the guise of the identity church. The push was on within the party to legitimize the cause, to deemphasize Nazism, and push racial issues to the forefront. Racial issues could be easily exploited because they preyed upon nativist fears of the white population. Cool. Yeah. Good idea. It's all adds up. So this is just more palatable? Yeah. Yeah. It it it makes it more palatable, more American, and kind of expands the breadth that it can reach because now there's a theology behind it. After all that messiness in Germany, thankfully, for all of us, Rockwell was assassinated by one of his own men on August 25th, 1967. We'll talk about what happened to the American Nazi Party after his death in more detail in the next chapter. Right now, what's important is that Rockwell's marriage of American Nazism with Christian. Then they took it spread throughout the fascist right. Richard Butler, the Reverend who founded the Aryan Nations compound in Idaho, was a Christian identity preacher. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the Aryan Nations acted as one of the linchpins of American Fascism, a place where every kind of violent right wing extremist would gather and meet and make connections with each other. From the Arian Nations, Christian identity beliefs were able to make inroads not just among Klansmen and Neo Nazis, but into the American militia movement. Tanya Telfair Sharp, a researcher. The Journal of Black Studies was one of the first academics to document the spread of Christian identity outside of explicit fascists and into the murkier world of American quote Patriots. She documented evidence of Christian identity pamphlets and underground literature spreading in small, local gun and knife shows throughout the country from 1995 to 1999. It had of course, been prominent in that world before 1995. Christian identity's focus on the inevitable apocalyptic battle between Arians and Satanic Jews meshed well with the apocalyptic fetishism of the survivalist. The militia communities, see, it's like, that's part of why it's so naturally American all. Yeah. Gives them a reason. Yeah. It gives them a reason, like quote logic for their their, like, feelings or desires. They have these like, you know, especially once the Cold War is over. And you don't have that sort of like secular reason to expect the apocalypse. Like now there's. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, as Tanya Sharp wrote, both groups were tied together by their belief that quote reestablishment of white sovereignty depends on the use of organized aggression against the enemies of true Christians, all non whites and all non Protestants. The 1st 2 letters of Racial Holy War make up the battle cry rahowa often used in identity speeches and publications. Christian identity literature regularly focused on preparing for this apocalyptic battle, which allowed them to subtly recruit preppers by focusing on not explicitly ideological tasks like acquiring dried food and weaponry or building antipersonnel traps in order to protect woodland compounds. Y2K was the goldmine for Christian identity. Fear of the year 2000 brought thousands of new Americans into the world of survivalist magazines, conventions, and online message boards. The worlds of the militia movement and the survivalist communities are, of course, closely tied into the world of conspiracy theorists. In the late 1990s, guys like Alex Jones weren't preaching overt anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. You'd never catch him claiming Jews were the spawn of Satan, for example. But Joan and his ilk were major proponents of the New World order, the king of conspiracy theories. Throughout the 90s and early 2000s, the NWO took different forms in the mouths of different conspiracy theorists. The most mainstream and least racist version of the theory was that a secret world government of shadowy globalists was slowly taking over the federal government and the governments of the world with the aim of enforcing total Orwellian. Control over the populace and killing the majority of the world's population, particularly the Christians. The New World Order conspiracy was again not inherently anti-Semitic or racist, but in practice most expressions of the theory wound up focusing on beliefs that a Jewish LED cabal of blacks, homosexuals, Hispanic immigrants, and liberals was trying to wipe out all straight white Christian Americans. Christian identity Believers introduced the term Zionist occupied government, or ZOG into the lexicon of American fringe politics. It took off like wildfire, leading countless. Americans on the far right are entering the vocabularies of countless Americans and the far right who would never have considered calling themselves a Nazi just zogs yeah, they would never. They never do it first. They never time guys. Same thing. Over and over again, that connection quite that, that's where it's heading towards. That is where it all heads towards. That's where Alex Jones all heads towards. And he has had so many Christian identity preachers on his show. They never talk about Christian identity. But you look into a ton of these guys and it's like, oh, he's a pastor of Christian identity underlying. Yeah, right. You present them on the platform and then people watching eventually get into them and then they don't realize what they actually preach. And then they get, they absorb what they preach and then they brilliant. Christianity beliefs happened to mesh perfectly with every other extremist belief in the United States. In the late 1980s and early 90s, tax protesting became more common. Christian identity fit in with that too, arguing that paying taxes was really just paying for the demonic Jews to carry out their white genocide aims even faster. In 1997, William Luther Pierce, a former devotee of Rockwell and head of a Nazi group called the National Alliance, wrote this in a newsletter. The truth of the matter is that the new world order people ultimately aim to create a new world. Population of surfs for their global plantation. A homogeneous population of coffee colored surfs a population of docile, predictable and interchangeable surfs. And they definitely don't want any large reservoir of white people anywhere who might rebel 1997 God. Now if you take the word white out of that sentiment, it almost word for word matches with any one of 1000 rants Alex Jones has gone on throughout the years. Under Rockwell, the American Nazi Party never numbered more than a few dozen real, committed members. And its ideas never gained any kind of mainstream penetration. By the late 1990s, American fascists were no less hateful or violent than they've ever been, but their rhetoric had evolved to fit with the deep, conspiratorial undercurrent sweeping through American Society. Rockwell had shotgunned out ******** racism, and as a result he'd only been able to recruit a small number of the craziest people in America, or I shouldn't say craziest of the worst people in America. New American fascism blended with Christian identity was capable of hiding out in more moderate spaces and luring. The New Believers without waving a swastika in their faces. Perhaps the most potent weapon Christian identity added to the arsenal of American Fascism was the idea of white genocide. If you spent much time studying Neo Nazis, you're aware of the significance of the number 14 that stands for the 14 words we must secure, the existence of our people and a future for white children. This is the invention of David Lane, a neo-Nazi bank robber and for decades, a Christian identity believer. Uh, while Lane was has moved on from Christian identity to a weird sort of bastardized Norse mythology. Rip off he and other yeah, yeah, he's carrying that ******* yeah, turning this ******* Viking nerd now. He and other Christian identity believers in the 80s and 90s were largely responsible for seeding the fear of white genocide into American fascism. From Tanya Sharpe's article quote, the identity literature is filled with negative images of white women caring for mixed race babies. Race mixing in and of itself is a cause for an organized and radical plan to separate the races. The national vanguard. Magazine, a leading pro neo-Nazi publication, suggests that the cult of miscegenation, which according to them has proliferated over the past 30 years, has placed the white race on the precipice of biological extinction. Furthermore, they argued that only radical action will end the morality of death. Now, the urge to protect white babies and ensure the future of the white race inspired a little guy named Eric Rudolph to bomb in an Alabama abortion clinic in 1996. Rudolph was a Christian identity believer and his beliefs led him to bomb Atlanta's Olympic Park the same year, along with a gay nightclub, Rudolph spent more than a year hiding in the woods, eluding federal agents. He killed 2 and injured more than 120 people over his almost two year long bombing spree. And as we talked about in the introduction to this, he also inspired that British bomber. Who's built a series of nail bombs that killed 3 people and injured dozens more, which also inspired the guy who killed Joe Cox. It's almost like it's a chain reaction. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Now, Eric Rudolph, as I just stated, was not the last person moved to violence by this picture of declining white race. Everyone listening to this will remember, of course, the 2019 Christchurch massacre, in which a fascist extremist murdered 51 Muslim worshippers at a New Zealand mosque. That shooter did not identify as a Nazi, and his manifesto lacked the expected anti-Semitic rambling, but he ranted at length about the threat of white genocide and what he called the great replacement. In between those two terrorists are dozens and dozens of other attacks with bits of Christian identity, DNA coded. Into them, John Ernest, the Poway synagogue shooter, did not identify himself as a follower of Christian identity theology. But according to tablet magazine quote, the manifesto left behind by the Poway shooter reads like a hybrid of classical Christian anti-Semitism and contemporary white nationalism. He alternated within paragraph, sometimes within sentences, from charging the Jews with responsibility for the death of Jesus and the early Christian Saints to declaring that Jews fund politicians and organizations who use mass immigration to displace the European race. The document. Was riddled with contradictions and is inarticulate even by white nationalist manifesto standards as it moves between citing the Gospels and the killer's love of Frederic Chopin with explosive hatred towards Jews. But what it does events clearly is a grounding in a form of anti-Semitism that's equally in debt to older Christian traditions and more modern secular variants centered on race and soil. Christian identities influence in the fascist right is so deep and so well woven that attacks are now carried out by terrorists who have been inspired by its tenants without ever learning the words Christian identity. You'll be hearing about it regularly throughout the rest of the audio book, and I'll be sure to point out wherever groups or individuals we discuss are Christian identity believers. But it almost isn't necessary. Christian identity is now just part of the furniture of American fascism. No matter whether or not it's referenced directly, it shows up everywhere. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's the same. Same kind of shades. The same. I mean, this is fascinating and horrifying, of course. Yeah. This was just like usual, the groundwork we needed to lay to really get into the story, because it's all this stuff that's there that, like you said, even they don't necessarily know where it came from. Or Robert Bowers is kind of rare in that he actually did read in the Christian any philosophy. I don't think Ernest ever did, but it's there. People believe that, like you said, they start listening to this person talk and like they don't on the surface understand that it has all of these different layers to it. But then as you get drawn in, then you're starting on subconsciously. It's like you don't notice that. Like Trump's references to Soros funding the Americans and stuff. How that ties into like Christian identity and this idea that goes back to like the ******* 30s that the Jews are trying to like, like replace with fund multiculturalism in order to replace. All the all the nonsense. And if you don't, you don't need to. Have read all of this to to like know that or believe in it. You just you're just like a piece in the the the the long thread that they got there. My metaphor fell apart. I'm sorry, you just lost confidence. I saw petering out because we all turned and looked at you. And then yeah, the pressure from being looked at by my familiars. Quick throw some mayonnaise. I'm going to throw this packet of silverware. So if you were anything, I should throw it away from my dog. The ceiling, huh? Yeah. It's raining. No, actually, just went straight forward. I was hoping it would all. It's among the oranges. Now it's it's among the oranges. Well, we can use those geese. Eat the oranges. Quite a mess. Quite a mess for Daniel. There's some tongs in there. Yeah, there's some songs on there. Yeah, I think I threw a Tong. Yeah, you can use those to pick up the oranges. Or just stay, OK? Daniel can use orange. Stay tongue. Stay. The dog stays. You guys want to plug some stuff? More than anything in the world. I love plugging? Check out our podcast called even more news. Check out our patreon.com/somemore news. We are also. We have shirts and merch on publicibelieveprobably.com/user. Slash some more news. Sounds right. I don't know. Look it up. I'm on Twitter. Doctor. Mr Cody. We're also on Twitter. Some more news. Are you gonna say my Twitter handle too, huh? And our YouTube shows called some more news, and Katie Stoll is the Twitter name for Katie. All of it. I got all of it out there. Last time you were like, I don't wanna do this, so here we are. I have nothing to plug the episodes over. I'm proud of me. She's clapping. You can't hear it, but she's clapping for you on the inside. Oh no, wait, she's not clapping. She's slapping her head against before I mistake those two regularly. You can buy T-shirts. Yeah, that's it. In general, just like, go to a store and buy some T-shirts. Buy some T-shirts? Yeah, I'm a fan of the concept. Sophie, what do you want? She wants you to plug your teepublic store for behind the ******** there's at public store for behind the ******** there is. That's one of my favorite podcasts, so you guys should check that out. Robert, you should get pick up some merch. This audio book that he's releasing is something to plug. You're listening to it now, you're listening to it now, and you can go to the war on everyone.com and you can read or you can't read it, but you can listen to it without the jokes and digressions. If that's what you want. If that's what you want. OK. I can't believe you gave me Garth for plugging your stuff. But then you plugged his stuff. Yeah, plug in your stuff. Umm, this is real stuff, buffer. What stuff? Guffey, it's over yet? I don't know. Episode. Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams, let's break your handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's espr E aker.com. Hey there, it's Ebony Monet, your co-host for the San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we're speaking with Doctor Jane Goodall about the fascinating journey that led to her social discoveries on chimpanzees. So, four, oh, months the chimps ran away from me. I mean, they take one look at this peculiar white ape and disappear into the vegetation. In wildlife, on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. From Tenderfoot TV in iHeartRadio this is La Monstra, a story of abomination and conspiracy. 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