I must admit, the first thing I thought when I heard the news was, is this kind of thing still going on? White-supremacist terrorism is so '90s! It’s hardly even made the news since Timothy McVeigh was executed. I thought America had moved on to newer and bigger and badder threats! I do recall reading a news report that the militia movements suffered an abrupt drop in recruiting and support after the Oklahoma City bombing; and we’ve hardly heard a peep out of them since 9-11-01. Most Americans, even ultra-far-right Americans, now seem to view the federal government as their most important protector, not a threat to their guns and freedom. Don’t they?
I guess the only issue for debate is: How important a threat, terrorist or otherwise, is radical white supremacism (or white separatism, whatever) in America today?
Correction to the above, with apologies: The “Church of the Creator” (http://www.churchofthecreator.org/) apparently is not a white-supremacist organization. The original Church of the Creator was founded in Oregon by Rev. Dr. Grace Marama in 1969. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Creator) The other, unconnected organization was founded in 1973 by Ben Klassen. The latter organization espouses a “Christian Identity” theology, descended by tortuous twists and turns from the 19th-Century “British-Israelite” movement. Its doctrine is that white gentiles are the true Biblical Israelites, and are the only true descendants of Adam and Eve. All non-white races are descended from soulless pre-Adamite “mud peoples.” Jews are literally the seed of Satan – that is, they are descendants of Cain, who was the son of Eve by her fornication with Satan in the form of the Serpent. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity_Movement (Makes David Koresh look like an Episcopalian!) After the original “Church of the Creator” won its trademark suit against the other, white-supremacist “World Church of the Creator,” the latter perforce changed its name to the “Creativity Movement.”
Yeah, read that statistic again. From one recorded web site in 1995 to more than 5,000 hate sites ten years later. However, to be accurate, the article does not state those 5,000 sites are just in the US. Still, the hate is more than out there.
I agree. We can’t gauge the level of racist feeling in America by counting racist websites; it costs little to set one up. A better indicator would be a rise or decline in membership in hate-groups, or in financial contributions to hate-groups, over the last ten years. But I can’t seem to find such statistics on the “Hatewatch” section of the website of the Southern Poverty Law Center (http://www.splcenter.org/intel/map/hate.jsp), nor the site of the Anti-Defamation League of B’Nai Brith (http://www.adl.org/combating_hate/). Does anybody know where such figures might be available, even as estimates?
My understanding is that Hale’s Creativity group is not “Christian Identity”. It may have had its roots in CI, but Hale’s “theology” is that the white race is the epitome of creation, through natural means. It’s an agnostic theology (if that phrase makes sense) that does not depend on God and does not recognize Christ. It’s more like a warped pantheism, where the sacred is found in the white race as a whole. I don’t have any cites for that at the moment, since I’m not at work.
With regard to the other part of the OP, I’ve seen articles indicating that although foreign terrorist threats make the news, many experts think that domestic terrorism is the greater threat, in terms of likelihood and numbers. For example, there was a fellow who was arrested in Texas in 2003 who had enough cyanide in a usable form to kill most of the people in a large building. The FBI caught him on a bit of a fluke - he sent something to a sympathizer, and the USPS, bless their little hearts, delivered it to the wrong address and the recipient called the cops. So you have a home-grown threat, with a weapon of mass destruction all ready to go, caught by a lucky mistake - you would think it would have got lots of attention, no? But since the fellow didn’t have any ties to “islamists” it’s not been much more than a blip in the media.
A somewhat confusing article in Wired initially claims that hate sites might actually not be helping their respective groups, but concludes with a statement professing their effectiveness. Some relevant quotes:
Regarding the crime statistics chart, and race versus religion, the data collections guidelines at the site suggest that Jews are included in religion rather than race. But as I understand it, the motivation for hating Jews is often more ethnically or culturally, than religiously, based. In other words, the rationale isn’t “They don’t believe in Christ (as a matter of faith), so kill them!” It’s more like, “They killed Christ (as a group), so kill them!” Some White Supremacists are atheistic or religiously noncommital anyway. At Stormfront, for example, even the mention of religion is not allowed. It is said to be “divisive”.
Just to flesh out other objections to web site as evidence: From internetworldstats.com, it seems over the same time period total number of internet users went from 16 million (0.4% world pop) to 817 million (12.7% world pop). A straight extrapolation I suppose would only expect 50 or so hate websites by now. That would ignore the fact that the internet’s nature allows for a sudden burst of long repressed radical ideas in a relatively safe/inexpensive fashion. Would a similar boom in fetish or gay sites indicate a rise in those activities? The web is (or was) too young for that to be reliable.
Update: The case apparently has been solved. The killer of Judge Lefkow’s husband and mother was Bart Ross, a 57-year old electrician against whom the judge had ruled in a medical-malpractice lawsuit. Ross shot himself dead when a police officer pulled him over for a broken taillight. He left a note admitting the murders. http://msnbc.msn.com/ID/7137455/
I guess the only lesson to draw from this is that you can’t be a judge without pissing off a lot of people – and some of them are dangerous.
Actually, the Klassen WCC/Creativity movement is NOT “Christian”, “Israelite” or even truly Theistic. The “Creator” is not a reference to God but to the Civilization-building “White Race” which they consider to be the epitome of evolution or the “Life Force”. William “Turner Diaries” Pierce’s “Cosmotheism” is a much loftier phrasing of the same ideas. Anyway, Klassen considered the Bible to be a giant con & any religion built off it, including racist Identity ones, to be thoroughly polluted & against the interests of the White Race.
Btw, original “British-Israelism” did not hold that non-whites were not Adamic nor that Jews were the “Serpent-Seed”. It just held that the peoples of the British Isles & NW Europe were descended from the Lost Tribes. The “mud people & Serpent Seed” nonsense was introduced in the late 1800s/early 1900s. I myself hold to a modilfied, pro-Jewish, inter-racial form of LostTribism (I believe the regathering is through the Christian faith primarily & secondarily through the worldwide expanse of the British Empire/Commonwealth and the melting pot of America".
You’re right, I confused the Creativity Movement with the “Christian Identity” movement – which does have more or less the doctrines I described, and which does derive from British-Israelism. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Identity
Errmmm . . . start a thread on that and we’ll see what happens . . . or something . . .
Yeah, doggone-it… but all was not lost. As the original theme of this thread indicates, the Left was not to be denied the opportunity to raise the specter of white racists running amok, threatening the peace and tranquillity of the beautiful mosaic of contemporary American society.
Hey, and lets not forget all those black churches that were burnt by Southern white racists.
Am I missing something here Razorsharp? Hale (white racist) is in jail for soliciting the murder of Judge Lefkow. People were posting the judge’s home address, photos of her, her kids, her husband, etc. on (white racist) websites and expressing that gosh they (white racists) would be happy as pigs in poop if something happened to the family.
Then her mother and husband are shot to death in their home.
If I were a member of some rabid Lefty group (like the Chicago PD and the FBI) I think it’d be pretty reasonable if my list of people to interview had neo-nazis up at the top.
Getting back to the OP, white supremacist terrorism will be a problem to the degree that the nation’s economy and culture produce alienated white people with few prospects, like the Charles County arsonists. Resentment against “outsiders” who are doing better than you are, like the black home buyers, or have more power than you do, like Jewish court officials, is inevitable, but people will only resort to violence when they’ve lost hope in the future.
Errmmm . . . start a thread on that and we’ll see what happens . . . or something . . .