Domestic terrorism is increasing in frequency and severity in the United States. In November 2022, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs released a report titled, “The Rising Threat of Domestic Terrorism”. In this document the Senate Committee states: “Domestic terrorism has been increasing over the last several years, surpassing international terrorism as the most significant terrorism threat to the United States.”[i] While it is true that there has been greater attention paid to domestic terror recently – as there have been more incidents, with increasing severity – the ideology behind these seemingly disconnected attacks is far from a new phenomenon. The Senate report goes on to state: “White supremacist extremists pose the primary threat among all domestic violent extremists.” [ii] What is new about this statement is not the fact that this statement is true, as can be easily verified, but the fact that this statement was made by the US Senate.
While it has been swept under the rug and obfuscated by the overwhelming majority of political leaders and media in the US for the entire history of the country, white supremacy and the violence carried out in furtherance of this ideology has been a founding, and institutionalized tenet of the United States. As described by Kathleen Belew: “White supremacy is a complex web of ideology, systems, privileges, and personal beliefs that create unequal outcomes along racial lines across multiple categories of life including wealth, freedom, health, and happiness.”[iii] As Belew suggests, the idea of white supremacy is not merely an ideology, but a structure of power that has been built into the foundation of institutions, society, and government.
The history of the United States is littered with examples of the enduring reality of white supremacy undergirding the vast majority of political policy and community decision making in nearly every aspect of life in the US. [iv] But this history has been white-washed to present a cheery, sanitized version that appeals to the “American Exceptionalism” fallacy. With this deception of exceptionalism baked into the US populous, the idea that racism exists in the US is directly at odds with this vision. A majority of the white American population cannot grapple with the cognitive dissonance that this contradiction entails. After the election of the first non-white President, Barack Obama in 2008, many saw this as proof that the US had triumphed over racism. But this idea rests on the fallacy of exceptionalism. In reality, the opposite outcome has been exposing itself. Hate crimes and terrorist violence have been increasing since Obama was elected. But the election of the first non-white President is merely one precipitant of the increase of terrorism. Undoubtedly, each of the varied precipitant events that have contributed to the rise in domestic terrorism should be examined to see what sorts of events set off this kind of violence. But in order to understand the pattern behind this phenomenon and the beliefs that inspire it, it is crucial to examine what Martha Crenshaw refers to as the preconditions, as opposed to the precipitants.[v] While white supremacy, and the various white power, neo-Nazi, Ku Klux Klan, and white nationalist groups that comprise it, is the primary ideological fabric of this movement, and that this belief is certainly a preconditioned element of the violence, the Christian Identity movement is arguably a precondition for white supremacy.
This paper attempts to analyze the Christian Identity movement as a central galvanizing feature of the more easily identifiable white power movement, and distinguish the origins and distinctive elements of this feature of the increasing violence in the US. Martha Crenshaws dichotomy[vi] between precipitants and preconditions provides a greater ability to differentiate between the seemingly secular racist elements of how white supremacy manifests as violence, with how they may have roots in Cristian Identity, whether the perpetrators are entirely aware of it or not. Ted Robert Gurr’s theory of “Social Facilitation” helps to explain how this Christian Identity ideology acts as a permission structure for justifying white supremacist terrorism. As Crenshaw describes it: “This concept refers to social habits and historical traditions that sanction the use of violence against government, making it morally and politically justifiable, and even dictating an appropriate form, such as demonstrations, coups, or terrorism. Social myths, traditions, and habits permit the development of terrorism as an established political custom.”[vii] It is important to keep in mind that Christian Identity is a very specific deviation from Christian theology and does not represent all Christianity, much in the same way that Jihadist Muslim terrorists do not represent Islam as a whole. This is a unique, and inherently bigoted interpretation of Christian Biblical teachings and while there is currently a concerning revival of this movement, there are crucial distinctions to be made between this ideology and other forms of American Christianity.
The Christian Identity movement can be traced back to England in the nineteenth century. A new theory of Biblical interpretation began to emerge. The “Anglo-Israelism” doctrine (or, “British-Israelism) asserts that the Anglo-Saxon people of Europe were in fact the “Chosen People” spoken of in Biblical texts, and not the Jewish people as is the common interpretation. This doctrine contends that the “white” Anglo-Saxon “race” are the descendants of the union of Adam and Eve and are therefore the “Chosen” and true Israelites among God’s creations. Anglo-Israelism further contends that the Jewish people are the descendants of the union between Eve and the snake in the Garden of Eden, meaning Jews are the descendants of the demonic offspring of woman’s corruption and the Devil. Therefore, under this doctrine, the Jewish people are demons. Finally, Anglo-Israelism holds that all other races, besides the “Chosen” white race, and the demonic Jewish race, were God’s initial creations before Adam and Eve and therefore are not truly people and have no souls.
For a long time, this was a very niche interpretation and had few adherents, most of them among British elites.[viii] But in the early twentieth century, Anglo-Israelism found its way to American shores, where Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company, became enamored of this new version of Christian theology and began to spread its “gospel”. The KKK was obviously keen to adopt this and incorporate this religious element into their crusade. The KKK being one of the earliest, and most enduring forms of US domestic terrorism, establish the precedent for this ideology as the precondition and justification for racist violence. While the KKK were generally publicly condemned by US institutions, the KKK adopting a specific religious justification for their terrorism that was – perhaps not coherent, but cohesive – creates a groundwork for others to follow in their footsteps. As political unrest swelled in the US during the 1970s, with the Civil Rights movement creating divisions on a domestic issue, and the Vietnam War creating divisions on an international issue,[ix] terms like “race war” and “apocalypse” began to emerge more frequently. As racial tensions mounted, the white, Christian majority had been groomed to adopt a religious doctrine that espoused a kind of bigotry that suited their fears. The Cold War further exacerbated fears of the coming apocalypse, with the threat of nuclear destruction foreshadowing what they believed would bring the Second-Coming of Christ, Armageddon, and the Judgement, followed by the Rapture, where God’s chosen would ascend to Heaven, while the non-believers would perish.
Here, another distinction needs to be made. An important differentiation needs to be made between the Anglo-Israelism doctrine at the heart of Christian Identity, and various other forms of Christianity. There are two distinct types of Millenarianism. Millenarianism is the idea of a thousand-year period of Christian rule on earth. The concept of a one-thousand-year period where the entire earth would be the “Kingdom of God” is common and generally part of the Christian soteriology. But the distinction that needs to be made is between “Pre-Millenarianism” and “Post-Millenarianism”. The more common belief among US Christians is “pre-millenarian,” which contends that Christ will return, the believers will be raptured, and a thousand years of Christian rule will descend upon the earth. The Christian Identity “post-millenarianism” contends that it is the duty of the believers, the “Chosen”, to rid the world of the non-believers (the Jews and all other races) and establish God’s Kingdom for one thousand years of Christian rule. Only after one thousand years of Christian rule will Christ come to bring Armageddon and rapture the believers to Heaven. Bruce Hoffman describes this doctrine using what is referred to as the “two seed” theory. “According to its modern-day American interpretation, the ‘two seed’ theory embraced by Christian Patriotism, there are two races on earth: one godly and one satanic – the former comprising white Anglo-Saxon Christians and the latter, Jews and all nonwhites.”[x] This is the Anglo-Israelite doctrines most consequential contribution to white supremacy’s fascination with the incitement of a race war.[xi]
This idea of an impending race war is at least partly a product of Anglo-Israelism. Considering that, while racism and bigotry based on differences has always existed in various forms, the distinctions that are the basis of the current race war concept are rooted in this doctrine. “Whiteness itself is a socially constructed category that has changed dramatically over the course of United States history…Not until the nineteenth century did racial pseudoscience introduce the idea of ‘white’ as a biological marker.”[xii] Regardless of whether the racial pseudoscience Belew refers to was the inspiration for the Anglo-Israelite doctrine, or the reverse, both came about at roughly the same time and were clearly based in the same racist ideas. But while one has been largely dismissed, as is evidenced by the wholesale rejection of pseudoscientific theories like phrenology by criminologists, the other has been rejuvenated by portions of the US population.
The adoption of these racial hierarchical beliefs is made even more alarming by their pairing with the apocalyptic post-millenarianism espoused by the Christian Identity movement. Together, these two beliefs establish a justification for violence. Adherents of this doctrine are instilled with the fervent belief that people who are different from them are either demons, or have no souls. This invokes the idea of dehumanization commonly associated with the stages that lead to genocide.[xiii] As if that were not concerning enough, this dehumanization is presented as urgent and critical to the ultimate goal of establishing their Kingdom of God in order to expedite the Second Coming of Christ and their admittance to Heaven.
The Christian Identity movement essentially amounts to a racist genocide-cult operating in the United States, today. But as mentioned previously, many of the groups who hold these views and act based on them do not appear religious on the surface. When one thinks of what a Neo-Nazi is, “religious” is not typically the first word that comes to mind. Right-wing militia groups, while perhaps one might assume they hold some forms of Christian belief, generally are organized around anti-government, “sovereign citizen”, and gun-rights. Anti-abortion extremists, as well as anti-LGBTQ extremists, while clearly based in versions of religious ideology, do not necessarily talk about being racist or expediting the Apocalypse in the way Christian Identity preachers would. But the post-millenarian, genocidal ideology can be found somewhere within the motivations of each of these groups. Hoffman groups them all under the label of “Christian Patriots” and suggests that the Aryan Nations acted as essentially an umbrella organization for these disparate groups, at least for a time.[xiv] But what makes this coalition so dangerous today is the idea of “leaderless resistance”.
This strategy of leaderless resistance is one reason the media does not refer to a “white supremacist terrorist group”, or “Christian Identity Terrorism”. The media has instead, played into the hands of this coalition by referring to each incident as a “lone wolf” attack. The Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 perpetrated by Timothy McVeigh, is one of the most devastating terrorist attacks in US history. In the aftermath of the bombing, which targeted an FBI headquarters, journalists did not follow the evidence which clearly showed that McVeigh had been radicalized through Christian Identity extremism and white power ideologies.[xv] Since then, it has become abundantly clear that the precipitant events of this attack were the disastrous confrontations at Waco, Texas and Ruby Ridge, Idaho in the preceding years.[xvi] But the preconditions that set the stage for the escalation were the Christian Identity and white supremacy movements on a larger level. More specifically, the fictional novel “The Turner Diaries”. “…written by the late William Pierce under the pseudonym Andrew MacDonald… has been cited as ‘the Bible’ of the Christian Patriots… The book describes a chain of events that begins with a white supremacist revolution in 1991 and culminates two years later in ‘an all-out race war’ and worldwide nuclear conflagration.”[xvii] This book is a catalyzing element for much of the Right-Wing violence we have seen, at least to some degree. And Timothy McVeigh’s terrorism was essentially torn from the pages of this book. “The Oklahoma City bombing stands as the fulfillment of the revolutionary violence waged by white power activists… Although militias and copycat crimes briefly surged following the Oklahoma City bombing, white power activism underwent an inescapable shift after 1995. In the late 1990s, the movement largely relocated into the online spaces it had begun to build more than a decade earlier.”[xviii]
There is so much more that needs to be addressed, and so many more incidents of terrorism, hate crimes, attacks on infrastructure, and institutionalized bigotry that can be tied to the white power and Christian Identity ideological extremism. In a longer paper, various individuals and incidents would merit examination on these grounds, such as: Dylan Roof’s attack on a Black church in South Carolina[xix], Anders Breivik’s massacre in Norway and the manifesto he left[xx], the 1988 failed trial of thirteen white supremacists in Fort Smith, Arkansas[xxi], and the January 6th attack on the US Capitol, to name only a few. But the goal of this paper is to demonstrate that American white supremacy is inextricably linked to the malignant ideology espoused by the Christian Identity movement. For the US Senate and some portion of the media, to publicly recognize white supremacy as the greatest threat to US national security, is a major development. But to neglect to recognize that Christian Identity is so undeniably enmeshed with white supremacist violence, is a form of social facilitation for what has been identified above as a critical preconditional element of US domestic terrorism.
Bibliography
- ADL (2017). Christian Identity. The Anti-Defamation League. https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounders/christian-identity?gclid=CjwKCAiAs8acBhA1EiwAgRFdwzmmNr5IjJiSD6K4KlleUL3gQzrbXvUPexho4T05UHpUVlZ2Vg1TFRoCIJYQAvD_BwE
- lexander, M. (2012). The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. The New Press.
- Alvarez, A. (1997). Adjusting to Genocide: The Techniques of Neutralization and the Holocaust. Social Science History, 21(2), 139-178. doi:10.1017/S0145553200017697
- Belew, K. (2018). Bring The War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America. Harvard University Press.
- Belew, K., & Gutierrez, R. A. (2021). A Field Guide to White Supremacy. University of California Press.
- Crenshaw, M. (1981). The Causes of Terrorism. Comparative Politics, 13(4), 379–399. https://doi.org/10.2307/421717
- US Senate HSGAC. (2022). The Rising Threat of Domestic Terrorism: A Review of the Federal Response to Domestic terrorism and the Spread of Extremist Content on Social Media. Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee Majority Staff Report. https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/221116_HSGACMajorityReport_DomesticTerrorism&SocialMedia.pdf
- Hoffman, B. (2017). Inside Terrorism (3rd ed.). Columbia University Press.
- Law, R. D. (2016). Terrorism: A History (2nd ed.). Polity Press.
- Mills, C. W. (1997). The Racial Contract. Cornell University Press.
- SPLC (2022). Christian Identity. The Southern Poverty Law Center. https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/christian-identity
[i] US Senate HSGAC, 2022. (pp. 7)
[ii] ibid
[iii] Belew & Gutierrez, 2021. (pp. 5)
[iv] Alexander, 2021.; Mills, 1997
[v] Crenshaw, 1981. (pp. 381)
[vi] ibid
[vii] Crenshaw, 1981. (pp. 382)
[viii] Law, 2016. (pp. 307)
[ix] Belew, 2018
[x] Hoffman, 2017. (pp. 118)
[xi] SPLC, 2022.; ADL, 2017.; Law, 2016
[xii] Belew & Gutierrez, 2021. (pp. 6)
[xiii] Alvarez, 1997
[xiv] Hoffman, 2017. (pp. 120)
[xv] Belew, 2018
[xvi] Hoffman, 2017. (pp. 107)
[xvii] Hoffman, 2017. (pp. 121)
[xviii] Belew, 2018. (pp. 236-237)
[xix] Law, 2016. (pp. 312)
[xx] ibid
[xxi] Belew & Gutierrez, 2021. (pp. 317)
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