Graduate Studies, College of (Okanagan)
DSpace
UBCO
Hodge, Edwin Glen
Master of Arts - MA
University of British Columbia
How white supremacists and other race-based extremist groups conceive of themselves is inextricably bound up with conceptions of masculinity – what it means to be a man within the movement. Masculine self-identification informs not only the shape of in-group association between members, but also how those members’ identities are constructed in opposition to the external Other. In the case of religious-based white supremacy movements, considerations of masculine identity are interlocked with religious identification. The primary argument of this paper is that intersections of gender and faith form a complex matrix of interlocking beliefs that provide the bedrock of social and political activity within those white supremacist communities that emphasise religion. This paper examines the beliefs of both Christian Identity and the Creativity Movement, focussing specifically on the configurations of masculinity within these movements. Through qualitative and discourse analysis, the rhetoric and philosophies of the two groups are interrogated and the importance of religious belief to conceptualizing and performing gendered behaviour is examined. The research conducted indicates that in communities with strong religious identities such as the Identity movement, masculinity becomes inextricably linked to religious practice. In organizations with weaker religious frameworks such as the Creativity movement, patterns of ‘acceptable’ masculinity become less rigid in practice and more reliant upon pre-existing social and political ideologies.
SOLDIERS OF A PALE GOD: MASCULINITIES AND RELIGIOSITY AMONG MEMBERS OF THE CHRISTIAN IDENTITY AND CREATIVITY MOVEMENTS by Edwin Glen Hodge B.A., The University of British Columbia, 2006 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in The College of Graduate Studies (Interdisciplinary Studies) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Okanagan) December 2011 ©Edwin Glen Hodge, 2011 ii Abstract How white supremacists and other race-based extremist groups conceive of themselves is inextricably bound up with conceptions of masculinity – what it means to be a man within the movement. Masculine self-identification informs not only the shape of in-group association between members, but also how those members’ identities are constructed in opposition to the external Other. In the case of religious-based white supremacy movements, considerations of masculine identity are interlocked with religious identification. The primary argument of this paper is that intersections of gender and faith form a complex matrix of interlocking beliefs that provide the bedrock of social and political activity within those white supremacist communities that emphasise religion. This paper examines the beliefs of both Christian Identity and the Creativity Movement, focussing specifically on the configurations of masculinity within these movements. Through qualitative and discourse analysis, the rhetoric and philosophies of the two groups are interrogated and the importance of religious belief to conceptualizing and performing gendered behaviour is examined. The research conducted indicates that in communities with strong religious identities such as the Identity movement, masculinity becomes inextricably linked to religious practice. In organizations with weaker religious frameworks such as the Creativity movement, patterns of ‘acceptable’ masculinity become less rigid in practice and more reliant upon pre-existing social and political ideologies. iii Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... ii Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgments........................................................................................................................... v 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 2 2. Methodology ............................................................................................................................... 6 2.1 Philosophical Worldview ...................................................................................................... 6 2.2 Strategy of Inquiry ................................................................................................................ 7 2.3 Durkheim ............................................................................................................................... 7 2.4 Connell and Masculinities ..................................................................................................... 9 2.5 Sources ................................................................................................................................ 11 2.6 Credibility and Validity ....................................................................................................... 12 2.7 Data Analysis ...................................................................................................................... 15 3. Literature Review...................................................................................................................... 21 3.1 General Overview ............................................................................................................... 21 3.2 Gender ................................................................................................................................. 22 3.3 Summary ............................................................................................................................. 33 4. Christian Identity ...................................................................................................................... 35 4.1 History of the Movement .................................................................................................... 35 4.2 Doctrine and Mythology ..................................................................................................... 38 4.3 Belief and Belonging: The Organization of Identity Religious Community ...................... 42 4.4 Christian Soldiers, Godly Manhood, and the Retrenchment of Essentialism ..................... 48 4.5 Warrior-Victims .................................................................................................................. 56 5. The Creativity Movement ......................................................................................................... 61 5.1 Ben Klassen and the Early History of Creativity ................................................................ 61 5.2 Building the Church of the Creator ..................................................................................... 63 5.3 Religious Doctrine and Community Organization .............................................................. 66 5.4 Gender and Creativity: What Does a Creator Man Look Like? ......................................... 74 5.5 Violence, Militarism, and Hypermasculinity ...................................................................... 79 5.6 Summary ............................................................................................................................. 84 iv 6. Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 86 Appendices .................................................................................................................................... 93 Appendix A: Transcript of a Lecture by Ben Klassen .............................................................. 93 Appendix B: Notes on Methodology ...................................................................................... 102 v Acknowledgments I am indebted to the members of my supervisory committee whose patience and perspective were instrumental to me completing this work. I owe thanks to Dr. Adam Jones for guiding my research in more fruitful directions, and for diplomatically informing me when my reach exceeded my grasp. I thank Dr. Shelley Pacholok for her deep insights, for her patience, and for ensuring that my research was firmly and practically grounded. Thanks to Dr. Hodge for reminding me that no work can be divorced from history and for providing me with a perspective I would not have found on my own. Special thanks are owed to my family. Thank you Sarah for supporting me more than I can say, and thanks to my parents: without their moral guidance and financial sacrifice, my education would never have been possible. 2 1. Introduction The first decade of the twenty-first century has seen a massive resurgence in the growth of hate-based organizations in the United States 1 . As of 2010, the Southern Poverty Law Center has recorded more than one thousand active hate movements organized around innumerable issues, from immigration to anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim ideology, to neo-Nazism and white racial separatism. 2 This resurgence has made the study of such groups extremely important as their existence is evidence of wide and deep tensions and ruptures in the social fabric of the United States. The growth of such movements south of the border is a subject that ought to concern Canadian researchers as well, as much of the violent rhetoric used by Canadian hate groups can be traced to online forums and websites that ignore national boundaries. Sites such as Stormfront or Blood and Honor are populated with racists from all over the world who share their stories of ‘racial oppression’ and resistance, and who offer each other tips to help build the profiles of local racist operations. Although the anonymity provided by the internet can help to shield the personal identities of the individuals involved in such sites, it has less success in hiding the genders of those involved. Of those hate groups listed, the vast majority are populated by white men. On the Stormfront website for example, there is a specific section of the forums devoted to ‘Stormfront Ladies Only’, and another to the topic of ‘homemaking’. This division conveys the sense that the 1 According to the Federal Bureau of Investigations, the definition of ‘Hate Group’ is “An organization whose primary purpose is to promote animosity, hostility, and malice against persons belonging to a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin which differs from that of the members of the organization, e.g., the Ku Klux Klan, American Nazi Party.” The Southern Poverty Law Center defines a hate group as the following: “All hate groups have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics… Hate group activities can include criminal acts, marches, rallies, speeches, meetings, leafleting or publishing.” 2 Southern Poverty Law Center, “Hate Map: Active Hate Groups in the U.S.”, 2010, http://www.splcenter.org/get- informed/hate-map 3 rest of the site – including all of the more ‘serious’ forum channels – are the domain of men.3 The subject of men and how men’s behaviour within the movement is gendered is therefore an important one for study. In undertaking my own study of the subject of men and white supremacy, I have chosen to examine a particular facet of racist life, the role that religion can play in the organization and reification of masculinities within the movement. While it is true that not all white supremacist movements are religious in nature, there are those that claim to base their ideology on the specific teachings of one faith or another, including the nominally Christian group known as Christian Identity, and the neo-Nazi affiliated ‘religion’ of Creativity. These two groups, while each claiming a faith-based foundation, exist in sharp opposition to each other, both temporally, and within the theological realm, even though both are working towards the same general goal of ‘liberation’ for whites. This study will show the important role that religious belief and religious doctrine can play in the formulation and maintenance of acceptable patterns of masculine behaviour within the white supremacy movement, through the examination of the beliefs and configurations of gender identity within both the Creativity movement and the Christian Identity movement. The primary focus of this study will be an in-depth examination of the doctrine and literature of these two movements, with a focus on the extent to which gendered discourses are linked to – and constructed by – religious ideology. The recognition of the importance of an understanding of gender within such movements is not new. Scholars such as Dobratz, Shanks-Meille, Burlein, and Ferber have done a great deal of work to illustrate the importance that religious and political rhetoric have played in dictating how women ought to behave in extremist movements, but 3 Stormfront.org, http://www.stormfront.org/forum/ 4 surprisingly little has been done to examine how those same social forces shape men’s behaviour. This rather startling gap in scholarship reflects a larger issue in the social sciences of often equating ‘gender studies’ with ‘women’s studies’ at the expense of examinations of men. The introductory chapter will be followed by a chapter on methodology, where I will present the conceptual frameworks that serve to guide my inquiry. In chapter three, I will provide a brief literature review of the scholarly works on the subject of white supremacy, focussing primarily on those dealing with gender. While there is a great amount of material on the subjects of gender, race, and religion, there are comparatively few that undertake any examination of the interplay between the three. Many scholars have examined the subject of gender within white supremacist movements, but few have examined the role of religion as it pertains to such gender patterns. This apparent gap in the literature is something I hope this study can begin to address. In chapter four, I turn to examine the Christian Identity movement. I begin with a brief history of its evolution from its earlier ancestor, the British-Israelist movement, before turning to a more in-depth study of Identity’s doctrine and liturgical practices. After introducing the primary structures of belief and practice within the movement, I examine the interplay between such practices and the project of establishing acceptable gender patterns within the movement. I show how the framing of masculinity as ‘Godly’ or ‘Divinely ordained’ works to establish certain patterns of masculinity in a hierarchy of gender which privileges them over other masculinities, as well as placing it in a position of near-absolute dominance over women within the community. 5 The ensuing chapter discusses the Creativity movement, an organization that sharply breaks from the more traditional Christian framework and moves instead into a wildly anti- Semitic atheist religion. This chapter engages with the rhetoric of Creativity in much the same way as the previous chapter on Identity but with a notable difference: since much of the Creativity doctrine appears to be little more than repackaged strains of neo-Nazi rhetoric, I examine how Creativity reaches outside of its scant doctrine in order to justify its particular beliefs regarding gender. The chapter reveals how, in the absence of religious doctrine, Creativity leaders will often adopt the gender practices of closely allied movements and then ‘reverse engineer’ them to fit their constructed mythologies. In the final chapter, I highlight areas of research that, while related to my initial research topic, were too divergent to be included in the main body of the discussion. I discuss possible avenues of research into other areas of gender research, including the study of femininities within white supremacy movements. As authors such as Kathleen Blee have noted, women occupy a rather strange position within racist organizations such as Identity or Creativity. On the one hand, they are generally expected to occupy subordinate social and religious positions within a static social hierarchy, one which frowns on dissent. At the same time, there appears to be an attempt to redefine the role of women in racist movements in a way that bizarrely parallels the early feminist projects of more mainstream North American society. Finally, I will briefly examine the nature of racist organizations within the gay, bi-sexual, lesbian, transgender (GBLT) communities – an area which has received little attention from scholars in any field. I will briefly outline the curious silence in the academic literature with regards to the nature of GBLT/queer actors as racists in a community already marginalized by heteronormative discourse. 6 2. Methodology 2.1 Philosophical Worldview I am approaching the research from within a postpositivist framework – more specifically from the critical realist perspective. This position holds that objectivity and a rational approach to the acquisition of knowledge are paramount. 4 Within the postpositivist framework, knowledge is understood to be conjectural in nature; there must be a recognition that human fallibility prevents researchers from ever reaching a state of ‘absolute Truth’ in the philosophical sense as such a concept would demand perfect knowledge. It is therefore imperative that research methods and the conclusions drawn from them are rigorously scrutinized for bias in order to ensure that readers have been presented with information that is as unclouded by personal ideology or belief as possible. The understanding that no findings can ever be absolutely certain brings with it the understanding that knowledge can always be improved upon, and that research that is as free from human error or ideological biases as possible is preferable to research built upon less rigorous standards. Researchers must constantly ask themselves, ‘how strong is the evidence in support of claim X?’ In other words, while arriving at an ultimate truth value may be beyond the scope of researchers, it is certainly within their power to develop rigorous standards of ‘believability’. Furthermore it is important to note that hypotheses according to this worldview are a work in progress. It is through a constant accretion of data that hypotheses are strengthened, refined, or challenged; any given hypothesis can be overturned at any time, in the event that evidence is presented which directly contradicts its foundational claims. 5 4 Cresswell, John W., “Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches, Third Edition”, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA, 2009, Pg. 7 5 There is a danger implicit in this worldview of falling into Solipsism, but whereas the solipsist would be forced to argue that nothing can be proven outside of the belief in the existence of the self, the postpositivist perspective offers a less extreme position on knowledge claims. The postpositivist perspective holds that there are things that 7 2.2 Strategy of Inquiry The blending of postpositivist and pragmatic philosophies in what Clive Seale calls a form of ‘subtle realism’6 makes it almost necessary to adopt a mixed methods approach which can allow for the use of several different theoretical lenses on a given research question. 7 In the first half of my research, I examine the general parameters of the specific sub-cultural groups I have chosen to study, focussing on history, beliefs, and the evolution of racial and gendered discourse within each. Once the general ideological, religious, and socio-political boundaries of the movements have been identified I can then begin to unpack their religious beliefs and practices, using their own written, oral, and visual artefacts as references. Finally, after this examination of beliefs and practices, I will utilize gender theory as a theoretical lens to inspect how these religious beliefs and practices serve to inform, inscribe, and reinforce accepted patterns of masculine behaviour within each group. 2.3 Durkheim In his work, The Elementary forms of Religious Life, Emile Durkheim formulated the conjoined concepts of the Sacred and the Profane. According to Durkheim the Sacred includes all those things that can be considered manifestations of the numinous or the transcendent: the rites, rituals, and beliefs that members of a community hold above everything else. The Sacred is the concept which embodies those thoughts and practices a community places in a state of can be known, observable facts, for instance, but that hypotheses formulated in light of such facts are falsifiable and fallible; only the existence of absolute ‘Truth’ is questioned (although what is meant by the term ‘truth’ is less clear, and not pertinent to the discussion at hand). 6 Seale, Clive, “Quality in Qualitative Research”, Qualitative Inquiry, 1999, Pg. 470-71 7 Ibid. Pg. 203-204 8 reverence or awe, and which often stands in stark opposition to the mundane details of the Profane world. 8 “In all the history of human thought there exists no other example of two categories of things so profoundly differentiated or so radically opposed to one another. The traditional opposition of good and bad is nothing beside this; for the good and the bad are only two opposed species of the same class, namely morals, just as sickness and health are two different aspects of the same order of facts, life, while the sacred and the profane have always and everywhere been conceived by the human mind as two distinct classes, as two worlds between which there is nothing in common.”9 Within the realm of the Sacred, Durkheim identifies two primary elements: beliefs and rites. Beliefs are notional: they drive action both in the Profane world, and in the Sacred. In particular beliefs are the impetus of rites – actions and ceremonies which reinforce the subordination of the worshipper to the belief. 10 In the Durkheimian philosophy, religious expression is merely the outward manifestation of the community of believers’ attempts to police the boundary that exists between the reverential objects of worship, and the pollution of the mundane world. Durkheim’s framework of Sacred/Profane dualism provides researchers with a powerful tool in the analysis of religious communities – especially ones as vehemently opposed to the broader, secular world as the Christian Identity movement and the Creativity Movement – as this framework highlights the use of religious rites to reinforce social beliefs and practices, such as the hard distinctions drawn by these movements between the different ‘races’ of humanity. Durkheim’s philosophy can also be used to help explain how masculinities have been included into the realm of religious belief and how the interactions of belief, rite, and social interaction 8 Durkheim, Emile, “The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life: Introduction by Robert Nisbet”, George, Allen, and Ulwen, London, UK, 1915, 1976, 1982, Pg. 9-11 9 Ibid. Pg. 11 10 Ibid. 9 have developed the particular forms of masculine behaviour found in both the Identity and Creativity movements. 2.4 Connell and Masculinities “To recognize diversity in masculinities is not enough. We must also recognize the relations between the different kinds of masculinity: relationships of alliance, dominance and subordination. These relationships are constructed through practices that exclude and include, that intimidate, exploit, and so on. There is a gender politics within masculinity.”11 R.W. Connell’s work on gender theory and masculinities is foundational. Examinations of gender, whether from a Marxist, structural-functionalist, or post-modernist approach must, at some point, address Connell’s work. Connell’s gender theory, when applied to discussions of racist, extremist hate movements becomes a powerful tool in analysing how masculinity is constructed, reinforced, and mobilized against ‘enemy’ masculinities such as Jewish men, black men, and so-called ‘race-traitor’ whites. Connell’s work effectively bridges a divide between the more materialist philosophies of Durkheim and the subjectivism of later sociological thinkers (e.g. Ben Agger, Gregor McLennon, Jessie Daniels). Connell argues that masculinities emerge out of the social interactions of bodies as both agents and objects of practice; bodies are the arenas of gendered actions, as well as the canvases upon which social symbols and hierarchies of power, subordination, inclusion and rejection are inscribed. 12 In the context of Christian Identity and Creativity teachings, bodies are seen as essential components of gender identity, in that to be biologically ‘male’ (and white) is to possess certain intrinsic characteristics – characteristics that belong to one gender alone. Being a white male means to possess very specific physical, mental, 11 Connell, R.W. “Masculinities”, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, United States, 1995, 2005, Pg. 37 12 Ibid. Pg. 59-61 10 and moral characteristics, distinct from (and superior to) the physical, mental, and moral characteristics of men of ‘lesser races’. Essential ‘male’ characteristics are also defined in part – and in opposition to – what are seen as essential ‘female’ characteristics perceived to be embodied in white women. These complex social interactions, in Connell’s view, define a certain kind – or pattern – of masculinity, a part of which is the belief in violence as a gender- reinforcing practice. Although the men of both the Identity Movement and the Creativity movement believe gender ‘roles’ to be essentialist (either God-given or genetic) in nature, Connell’s work can be effectively utilized to shed light on the social interconnectivity of gender formation, reification, and generational transmission, in spite of such claims of essentialism. Connell’s work on masculinity has highlighted how specific patterns of masculine behaviour can arise – at least in part – from communal practices of reinforcing accepted gender norms within a particular group. Connell shows how group practices in effect ‘police’ the boundaries of acceptable masculine behaviour, from sexual practices, to social rituals such as drunkenness, partying and, often violence. 13 The theme of masculinity as violence appears as a strong, recurrent meme in both Christian Identity and Creativity, but it is within the Creativity movement that ‘militarized’ masculinity becomes most pronounced. Creator men often engage in a form of ‘hypermasculinity’ that can involve violent attacks against non-whites, often grotesquely violent fantasies about large-scale genocides and a generally uncompromising stance of gender segregation that erects strong boundaries on the behaviour and activities of women. 13 Ibid. Pg. 104-106 11 2.5 Sources There are three primary species of sources that I will draw upon in this study, each representing a different perspective. The first and most important species consists of a large archive of audio and video recordings which represent many radio broadcasts, lectures, sermons, and round-table discussions by many of the most influential and important figures in the movements discussed – including a series of lectures given by the founder of the Creativity Movement, Ben Klassen. Additionally, this species contains several of the Creativity Movement’s ‘holy books’, written over several years by Ben Klassen. This collection provides first-hand descriptions of the primary beliefs and motivations of movement leaders, and is directed primarily towards the membership of both Creativity and Identity. They are, to use appropriate nomenclature, commandments directed at the faithful by the patriarchs instructing them in how to live according to religious precepts. The second species of material is composed of literature and other material published by the movements, and designed for distribution amongst the out-group population. This material takes the form of pamphlets, pocketbooks, novels, Role-playing games (both pen-and-paper, and electronic), and music (although the subject of white supremacist rock will not be discussed in any great detail in this study). This material has been specifically edited by its manufacturers to omit reference to much of the most of the more extreme ideological beliefs and practices of the movements. It is generally in pictorial form, and accompanied by short, declarative statements designed to draw the eye and engage the viewer. This species of literature is one of the primary vehicles by which movement ‘missionaries’ evangelize to the larger, unbelieving community. In other words, this is the species of literature the movements use to describe themselves to other people. 12 The third species is composed more generally of information written about these movements by other authors; it is secondary in many cases, while more abstract and theoretical in others. There is a great deal of information to be found within this category, including several interviews with movement members and leaders. I have chosen to include such interviews in this category of literature, rather than in one of the other two, because in these interviews, the subject and the interviewer are engaged in an interactive discourse where discussions of belief and ideology are selectively edited to fulfill the desires of both the subject and the interviewer; these discussions, given their nature, can bring with them problems of veracity on the part of the interviewee, who may be selectively editing their answers to put their message in a more positive or palatable light. These interviews are nevertheless important – perhaps because of these problems of self-censorship – because they serve to highlight a particular strategy of public relations, the ultimate end-goal of which is recruitment of new members. 2.6 Credibility and Validity Given the wide field of resources I am utilizing in this study, the problem of credibility arises. Credibility can best be understood as the extent that the research presented is plausible and hence, believable. 14 In the absence of an absolute and external Truth 15 to align one’s research with it becomes imperative to find alternative means by which to gauge the the credibility of the material presented. One of the primary ways the question of credibility will be addressed in this study is through the use of triangulation in order to maximise consistency. 14 Guba, Egan G., Lincoln, Yvonna S., “Epistemological and Methodological Bases of Naturalistic Inquiry”, Educational Communication and Technology, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Winter, 1982), Pg. 246 15 ‘Truth’ as an epistemological term is taken to mean an existent, external, and absolute form of philosophical knowledge, as distinguished from the lower-case use of the word ‘truth’ which in most cases simply refers to the sort of plausible and believable social or naturalistic facts one can observe. If I were to claim that the superiority of democracy over authoritarianism is True, I would be claiming that democracy shares in some unalterable and universal characteristic by which any dissenting opinion would be rendered false, be definition. 13 Triangulation involves drawing upon multiple different lines of evidence in order to build a picture that is as thorough as possible. 16 As a process which aids in improving validity through the interrogation of multiple lines of inquiry, triangulation aids in ensuring that no one perspective becomes the lens through which the research is seen. By drawing on primary sources such as sermons, secondary material in the form of pamphlets and letters, and by examining the works of other authors who are writing within the field I can establish a picture of the subject material that is as reflective of the beliefs of the movements I have chosen to study as possible. Ensuring the credibility of the research has the knock-on effect of improving its validity as well, by ensuring that the conclusions I have drawn from the research are as reflective of the truth as possible. The greatest challenge to the validity of this study has been that I conducted no interviews personally, nor engaged in any direct field-work. This is a problem in that for certain elements of this study, I am relying upon the intellectual and academic integrity of other researchers, and assuming that they have conducted their own due diligence in the work they have published. It is important for me to stress that I have every confidence that such steps were taken as to assure the highest quality work on their part, but I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge that my own research is indebted to the work of others. I made the decision to abstain from going into the field myself for a number of reasons. The most important reason for abstaining from direct contact with the followers of the subject movements was my lack of knowledge of the scope and subtlety of the field of white supremacy research. I had limited knowledge of the differences in philosophy of the many different sub- groups of the white supremacist movement in general and, had I decided to conduct interviews, I 16 Cresswell, Pg. 191 14 would have done so from a position of relative ignorance, which could have seriously hampered my ability to ‘ask the right questions’, for example. My own worldview stands, in many ways, in direct contradiction to most of the rhetoric advanced by the groups I have chosen to study, and without an adequate grounding in the theoretical and philosophical outlooks of the members of the subject groups, I would have been doing a disservice to any members who I interviewed as part of my research. In addition, the choice to devote my research time to archival and theoretical studies, gave me an opportunity to interrogate my own beliefs on the topics of racism, gender, and social activism. Another (though related) reason that I chose not to include interviews or field work into my research was due to concerns about my personal safety; Christian Identity and the Creativity Movement have been linked to several violent crimes against non-whites, as well as against some of their more outspoken critics. In other instances, researchers such as Raphael Ezekial, have related first-hand accounts of threats made against them while working with members of both of these movements and so I made the decision early on to avoid placing myself in similar situations until I felt that I had a better understanding of the groups I had chosen to study. In spite of these limitations, I feel confident that the information I will present in this study is both reflective of the beliefs of the groups I have chosen to study, and persuasive in its examination. While it is true that the interviews mentioned here are not directly related to my research question, such source material is of secondary importance. The core of my research is found in the archives of recorded audio and video that have been compiled and organized by some of the more devoted members of the movements discussed. The information found in these archives detail the sermons of many of the movements’ most influential figures, top speakers, and most important thinkers. The recordings I draw from are not tailored to any outside queries or 15 investigations, but are aimed squarely at their audience of followers. The message that these speakers relay to the outside world is of secondary importance to me because what truly matters for the purposes of this study is what they are saying (and leaving unsaid) to their congregations. In essence, I am most concerned with what these groups are saying to themselves. 2.7 Data Analysis Much of the information that is available on the substance of the beliefs of both Creativity and Christian Identity exists online in archives of radio broadcasts, recorded lectures, sermons, and discussions which are accessed by – and disseminated amongst – the active participants of these movements. In order to gather information about the nature of the target groups’ beliefs, it was necessary to listen to the archived audio and video and to pull from them the primary threads of doctrine, ideology, and epistemology that make up the core beliefs of the groups. Before I began this undertaking however, I first compiled and then read the most important ‘Holy books’ of the two movements, in order to understand the liturgy and doctrine which grounded much of the rest of the groups’ beliefs. I began by reading the books of the Creativity movement. In order to understand the Creativity movement’s primary beliefs, I read Nature`s Eternal Religion, The White Man`s Bible, Salubrious Living, and both compilations of The Klassen Letters. This selection totalled a little over a thousand pages of text, supplemented by several shorter works by the founder of the movement, including On the Brink of a Bloody Racial War, RAHOWA! This Planet is All Ours, and Building a Whiter, Brighter World. During the course of these readings, I took notes that focussed on discussions of gender in the texts, which I then grouped into two broad categories of ‘biological imperatives’ and ‘religious obligation’. I then 16 examined the dominant “roles”17 that Creativity men were expected to play, and categorized the two broad groups under the headings of ‘soldier/warrior’, ‘family man’, and ‘provider’, in order to gain some perspective on how the dominant ‘male roles’ were understood by the men of the movement as being either religiously mandated, or biologically determined. Once I felt I had gained an understanding of the foundations of the movement, I began to examine the websites of the movement, where I accessed articles, essays, and ‘informational pamphlets’ written by both active and former members of the movement. In addition, I accessed and downloaded dozens of hours of audio recordings produced by several of the current leaders of the movement. As I read the supplementary information I had accessed from Creativity websites, I scrutinized them for the sorts of gender-based messages I had found in the works of Ben Klassen, and sorted them accordingly. Once a thorough survey of the written material was mostly completed, I began to listen to the recorded archives, where I paid close attention to not only the substance of the rhetoric, but the tone in which it was said, as well as the types of imagery and word-choices used to convey it. While listening to the audio archives, I took notes on what was being said, and in cases where a particularly illuminating turn of phrase or word choice was used, I would copy the entirety of the statement verbatim, and label it with a ‘time stamp’ (e.g.: (TS 23:14) to allow it to be easily located. I did not use any specialized software for the purposes of transcription, as the quality of the recordings often swung wildly from high- quality to barely audible, and having little expertise in the use of audio-visual equipment and software, I was unsure if the quality of the recordings would reduce the usefulness of such programs. 17 Within both the Creativity Movement and the Christian Identity movement, gender is considered to be fixed and biological. When I use the term “role” with regards to gender, I am describing how members within the movements understand gender. While the study of gender has moved on (rightly so) from notions of fixed ‘gender roles’, these movements often operate in opposition to any such change. 17 After I had examined both the literature and the audio recordings, I cross-checked my notes against transcripts of interviews and discussions with movement leaders, in order to assess the extent to which my own observations reflected the stated beliefs of the leaders. Before beginning a closer analysis of the substance of their beliefs, I wanted to make sure that I had heard those beliefs correctly. Many of the audio recordings were of such poor quality there was a risk that I had incorrectly interpreted a garbled word or statement which might have resulted in an incorrect understanding of what the speaker was trying to convey. In instances where there was some disagreement, I referred back to my notes to ensure that I had accurately understood what had been said, before cross-referencing my notes with the findings of other scholars who had done similar studies of the movement. In most cases, the discrepancy was a result of not properly understanding the speaker due to poor audio quality. In other cases, the differences between what I had originally heard (or, more commonly in this case, read) and what I found in subsequent interviews or sermons, was the result of attempts by the people interviewed to ‘spin’ the substance of their beliefs, in order to present them in a more favourable light to outsiders. As mentioned earlier, it was often the case that what movement leaders said to their followers and what was said to the public or to potential converts were two different things, reflecting a strategy of using rhetoric and language selectively to appeal to disparate groups. The process by which I sought to analyse the rhetoric and beliefs of the Christian Identity movement followed a similar pattern to the process I used to analyse the Creativity movement’s beliefs and practices. Whereas the Creativity movement was built upon the ‘holy books’ written by Ben Klassen, much of Identity’s liturgical and doctrinal philosophies stem from the Christian Bible – the King James Version, to be precise. Identity preachers utilized the Bible in most of their sermons, but they interpreted it in a very specific way, by analysing key words and phrases 18 in the Bible as they were written in Hebrew or Greek. In order to do this, Identity preachers would utilize Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, a linguistic tool developed to enable biblical scholars to analyse the meanings of specific words as they appeared in the Hebrew version of the Bible; the word ‘Adam’ for example, is usually understood to be the name of the first man fashioned by God in Genesis (2:19), but in Strong’s Concordance, the word ‘Adam’ in Hebrew can mean either (or both) ‘the first man; humankind’18, or ‘ruddy, red or to show red’.19 The first step I took in the study of the Christian Identity movement was to re-familiarize myself with the King James Version of the Bible. This allowed me to recognize terms and phrases within the lectures and sermons that were drawn from biblical sources, and to recognize their context within the text. As with the study of the Creativity movement, my next step was to access the Identity websites, forums, and blogs found online, and research the written component of the Identity message. I read written sermons, essays, apologetics, and forum posts by active members of the Identity community, and took notes on what I identified as the dominant themes within the discussions of gender I found. As I had done with the work on Creativity, I separated the material into the two broad categories of ‘religious obligations/commandments from God’, and ‘biological imperatives’ that reflected the rationalization for the existence of the many ‘male roles’ discussed by Identity adherents. I then further separated the information into the dominant themes or categories of ‘manly roles and duties’ that I had observed: the ‘Soldier of God’, the ‘Family Man’, and the ‘Provider’. Once the examination of the written material was complete, I then turned to an analysis of the audio and video recordings of Identity sermons and discussions. 18 http://www.biblestudytools.com/lexicons/hebrew/kjv/adam-2.html 19 http://www.biblestudytools.com/lexicons/hebrew/kjv/adam.html 19 There are multiple archives of Identity recordings to be found online, although many of them feature duplicates of messages found on other sites. The most comprehensive collection of materials I located was hosted on the website of Kingdom Identity Ministries, an Identity ministry located in Harrison, Arkansas. The collection of audio and video recordings found on this website was extensive, and featured many original sermons by Identity founders such as Wesley Swift. As with my analysis of the Creativity movement, I took notes as I listened to the broadcasts, and transcribed verbatim any passages that I felt were foundational to my study. Once I had finished listening to just over twenty hours of audio and video, I organized my notes under the headings I had previously established. In some cases, some of the material I had listened to delved into topics that could not fit into any of the categories I had established, and so I placed those aside and determined which – if any – of these topics were pertinent to my overarching question. In order to verify the accuracy of my notes, I cross-checked them against recorded interviews and discussions involving both current and former members of the movement, in order to ensure that my understanding of the material was as reflective as possible of the beliefs of the members of the Identity movement. At the same time, I checked my notes against the observations made of Identity’s core beliefs by other scholars in the field, including those whose primary concerns were the theological dimensions of Identity’s beliefs, in order to verify that what I had observed was similar to the observations of others. In this way I attempted to provide confirmation that my own understanding of Identity’s beliefs were in congruence with both the stated beliefs of Identity’s members, and the analyses of other scholars, something I believe to be a necessary part of ensuring that my work is credible. 20 Once I had concluded the bulk of my analyses of the two movements, I cross-checked them against each other in order to identify any areas where the two groups shared common beliefs. Once such beliefs were identified, I sought to present an explanation for the similarities present or, in cases where there was notable divergence in the stated understandings of ‘male roles’, to highlight the ways in which such groups sought to differentiate their beliefs from the beliefs of others. At the core of my research methods was the belief in the importance of cross- checking my work against the findings of other scholars; by doing so, I was able to bolster the claims of my analysis to plausibility and validity. 21 3. Literature Review 3.1 General Overview The scholarship surrounding far right and white supremacy movements is quite extensive. Since the mid-1990s – especially in the years immediately following the bombing of the Oklahoma Federal building by Timothy McVeigh – the research detailing the formation and actions of various far right movements has provided readers with a fairly in-depth understanding of the topic. The literature dealing with the subject of explicitly racist organizations has generally approached the subject in a critical manner, addressing the subject in a way that leaves no doubt in the reader’s mind as to the motivations and personal opinions of the author. Most of it examines white supremacy from a singular perspective; ideological, theological, or focussed upon a more subtle element of the subject group’s identity. What is often missed, however, is a more complex approach, one which pursues multiple lines of inquiry and aims at developing a more nuanced understanding of the subject. While the current corpus of literature discussing the Creativity Movement or the Christian Identity movement generally provides readers with a well-rounded understanding of the particulars of each group’s history and theological configurations, it tends to be weaker in areas that discuss the role of gender – specifically discussions emphasising masculinities as a project within the context of the construction and maintenance of accepted group behaviours. There is little mention, for example, of how masculinities are configured within the Christian Identity movement, nor is there much discussion of how the particular theological doctrines inherent in this group affect and reinforce gender – or even if there is a connection. Furthermore, discussions of gender within the context of these movements are situated within a broader gender discourse which takes as given the belief in a relatively static and unproblematic notion of 22 gender. When the authors to be discussed speak of ‘masculinity’, they are often speaking only of a particular incarnation of masculinity. The following sections outline, in fairly broad strokes, the general state of the literature pertaining Christian Identity and Creativity theology and mythology, gender and the ‘racist right’, as well as examining how this subgroup of literature is situated within the broader framework of studies of the Far Right in the United States. I group the literature under the more broad headings of ‘Gender’ and ‘Religion and Religiosity’ for pragmatic reasons. Many of the authors of material dealing with the subjects of Christian Identity and the Creativity Movement (at least the work most pertinent to this project) frequently draw upon examples from both Identity and Creativity throughout their analyses. If this literature review were organized such that discussions of the literature about the Christian Identity and Creativity Movements were grouped by movement, there would inevitably be a certain amount of repetition in each section. By framing the review in terms of gender and religiosity, such repetitions can be minimized, in order to present a clearer view of the two dominant examination topics. 3.2 Gender There has been a great deal of research on gender within far right extremist movements, including those under the umbrella of ‘white supremacist’. Some of the most important work has been done by scholars like Ann Burlein, including her discussion of white masculinities in the Ku Klux Klan and other far right movements, in her book, ‘Lift High the Cross: Where White Supremacy and the Christian Right Converge”. Burlein notes that for many within white supremacist movements, religion provides tools to construct an alternative ‘countermemory’: a 23 racial and religious revision of personal and ethnic history that serves to frame their understandings of both self and Other. 20 By deploying this countermemory strategically, racist Christians are able to position themselves as the actual victims of oppression and violence – often at the hands of the government, which many white supremacists see as being in league with their racial enemies. As Rory McVeigh notes in his book “The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan: Right- Wing Movements and National Politics”, the federal government (in the American context) is seen as being a vehicle of social engineering and in the zero-sum world of populist racial activism, whenever the government acts in the interests of cultural, religious or ethnic minorities it is acting against the interests of whites. 21 It is a betrayal often vocalized through rhetoric designed to portray the government as an oppressive and oppositional force that must be resisted, changed, or destroyed. The discussion of countermemory and strategic repositioning does not consider how this countermemory is gendered, however. What seems to be less recognized by Burlein is that countermemory and the use of victimhood in group identity formation is an activity primarily engaged in by men. By repositioning themselves as members of an oppressed group, white supremacist men can deploy a form of masculinity that is violent, intolerant, wilfully ignorant, and steeped in martial and apocryphal symbolism. The racist Christian man grants himself a license, and is granted one by the racist community, to engage in a masculinity that is in many respects, a hyperbolic reflection of Connell’s hegemonic masculinity. 20 Burlein, Ann, “Lift High the Cross: Where White Supremacy and the Christian Right Converge”, Duke University Press, 2002, Pg. 5-7 21 McVeigh, Rory “The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan: Right-Wing Movements in National Politics”, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN, 2009, Pg. 171 24 This is not a new phenomenon, of course. Historically, hypermasculinity as a form of resistance to the ‘threat’ of the Other has been noted in the earliest fascist organizations of Germany in the interwar period of the 1920s and 1930s. One of the most important researchers in this field is Klaus Theweleit, who approached the topic of men and masculinity from a psychoanalytic perspective, and shed light on just how important violence against the Other is in developing masculine identity. Theweleit’s work on examining male identity within the Freikorps movement of interwar22 Germany highlights the role that the Other plays in the formation of masculinities, by examining the tensions that arise between the masculine Self and the unmanned and dehumanized Other. In particular, Theweleit focuses on how what he terms the ‘Soldier-male’ constructs his identity in opposition to the feminine. Anything women are alleged to be becomes everything that the soldier-male is not. As with many other actors in racist movements, Theweleit’s soldier-males construct both female identities and their own in essentialist terms which are both complementary and mutually exclusive. For example, Theweleit identifies a sort of feminine archetype – the White Nurse – who is the very embodiment of positive femininity (as opposed to the negative, corrosive femininity of enemy women): she is virtuous, noble, in need of protection, and ultimately unobtainable, as representing both the only true love-object for the soldier male, and his greatest source of weakness. 23 Not all women are viewed this way, of course. Theweleit notes that only those women who possess the noble qualities of the White Nurse are to be considered sacred (in the Durkheimian sense); those who fall outside of that group, or who are known to be members of the ‘enemy’ camps (Bolsheviks, for example), 22 The term, interwar in this context refers specifically to the years between the end of the First World War and the opening days of the Second World War. 23 Theweleit, Klaus, “Male Fantasies Vol. 1: Women Floods Bodies History”, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN, 1987, Pg. 109-110 25 become vessels for the most negative sexual characteristics. These so-called ‘Red Women’ are sluts and whores, grossly sexual and wanton, and threatening to sap the strength from the soldier- male. 24 This sexualized imagery is a recurrent theme within white supremacist discourse, and much as it did in pre-war Germany, this theme functions as one of the many boundaries which separates the racist man – and those he feels he must protect – from his enemies. If we accept Theweleit’s interpretations as legitimate, then we begin to see how groups founded in the memory of these early proto-fascist movements orient their own identities along gender lines, where to be a man is to be impervious, violent, and nationalistic. A man’s world is a world where women are silent unless serving the desires of men, and those men are fixated upon noble, manly violence in service of their goals. Many modern neo-Nazi movements incorporate this worldview and its romantic views on warfare and violence, which makes Theweleit’s observations of continuing significance. These themes are repeated often in both the rhetoric of the Creativity movement, as well as within Christian Identity literature. The analysis offered by Theweleit tends to focus more on a secular masculinity rather than one framed within a religious discourse. Still, given that many within both the Identity and the Creativity movement seem to be preoccupied with genocidal fantasies and violent opposition to non-whites, Theweleit’s approach is extremely useful. In contemporary American society, imagery of warrior-males can be found virtually anywhere, from television and movies to sports advertisements and other commercial appeals to patriotism. According to William Gibson, the American fascination with the warrior-male mystique can be traced to the Vietnam War or more specifically to the loss of that war by the 24 Ibid. Pg. 172-174 26 United States. 25 In his book “Warrior Dreams: Paramilitary Culture in post-Vietnam America”, Gibson argues that part of what makes the myth of the indestructible, undefeatable male so alluring is that it helps to assuage the battered national ego; the result of the American military losing a land war to a poor, underdeveloped and underequipped army in South East Asia. The shock of this loss manifested itself in the popular culture as a belief that even if America had lost, it shouldn’t have. America lost because of the incompetence of its politicians and other leaders who ‘sold out’ the noble American soldiers and left them to die in the mud of some Asian hellhole. 26 What emerged from this frustration was a romanticised image of the ‘American Warrior’ – a tough-as-nails Rambo able to single-handedly win a war if only he weren’t shackled by effete bureaucrats or two-timing politicians. The warrior-male is impervious to real harm (flesh wounds notwithstanding), but can be brought low by the only other enemy worth noting, women. In popular representations of the warrior-male, the hero is beset on all sides by faceless, gun-slinging enemies while simultaneously being weakened by women, usually strong, willful ‘Black Widows’ who are out to castrate the hero – metaphorically speaking.27 It is because of the threat of the ‘Black Widow’ that the image of acceptable femininity in warrior-male mythology becomes the submissive care-giver, a woman remarkably similar in both form and function to Theweleit’s ‘White Sister’. The White Sister does not threaten the masculinity of the man: she becomes the object that he must defend. These themes are reiterated throughout the 25 It should be mentioned here that Gibson’s thesis faces some trouble. Gibson’s argument that contemporary American warrior-male mythology arises in part from a perceived betrayal of American servicemen in Vietnam by weak and ‘effete’ politicians may be accurate, but it isn’t new. Gibson’s thesis is similar to the Dolchstoß often used by the Nazis to garner support. The Dolchstoß or ‘stab-in-the-back legend’ refers to the beliefs held by some right-wing groups in post-World War I Germany that the army didn’t actually lose the war, but that it was betrayed by civilian politicians – especially those who overthrew the monarchy. While Gibson’s thesis of the ‘New War’ is Germane to the topic of contemporary (nineteen-eighties) America, it is rooted in a deeper history. 26 Gibson, William, “Warrior Dreams: Paramilitary Culture in post-Vietnam America”, Hill & Wang, New York, NY, 1994, Pg. 34 27 Ibid. Pg. 56 27 discourse of the racist right, but it also finds purchase in the more mainstream philosophies of socially conservative Christianity. There are a number of excellent pieces of literature that discuss the topic of masculinity as it is understood by certain ‘mainstream’ Christian sects – particularly socially conservative Protestant sects. Within these movements, there has been a debate over the exact nature of ‘Godly manhood’ and how it ought to be expressed. Scholars such as Sally Gallagher and Sabrina Wood highlight the fundamental differences between the more traditional ‘responsible manhood’ archetype and the newer ‘slightly dangerous adventurer’ configuration propounded by John Eldredge, a former Focus on the Family member and therapist. 28 Gallagher and Wood show how the collapse of the Promise Keepers movement, which advocated a return to ‘Biblical values’ such as male headship of the family and submissive roles for women, created a vacuum which was quickly filled by a newer, more vibrant philosophy that categorized men as being essentially adventurous, slightly dangerous, and in need of a female ‘maiden’ to rescue.29 Rather than characterise men as peaceful leaders and providers as the Promise Keeper movement sought to do, Eldredge, in his book Wild at Heart, made sure his readers knew without doubt that a true Christian man was a warrior man, a dangerous man, and above all, a man who was ‘not nice’.30 The Christian man, argues Eldredge, is neither meek nor gentle; he is neither humble nor tender. The Godly man is ‘cunning’, ‘takes risks’ and ‘knows how to fight’.31 It is these traits that appear most strongly in the rhetoric of the Christian Identity movement as well. There are also faint echoes of Theweleit’s ‘soldier-male’ within this 28 Gallagher, Sally K., Wood, Sabrina L. “Godly Manhood Going Wild? Transformations in Conservative Protestant Masculinity”, Sociology of Religion, 2005, 135-137 29 Ibid. Pg. 140-141 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 28 discourse, although it is unclear if the Eldredge and others like him were aware of any similarities to the Freikorps-style paramilitarism of the past. What Eldredge and those like him were reacting to were the particular configurations of masculinity espoused by the Promise Keeper movement, which stated as its purpose the ‘reinstatement’ of men as dominant in the family and the church. As with Eldredge’s ‘wild men’, the men of the promise keepers were understood as essentialized in their character; men had ‘innate leadership qualities’ that made them the natural head of the household, as well as ‘innately responsible’ and thus, a prime candidate for shepherding a flock of parishioners.32 As with Eldredge’s ‘Wild Men’, the more traditional concepts of masculinity favoured by many within the Promise Keepers encompassed understandings of muscularity, toughness, and even a warrior mentality, of the kind that drove Jesus Christ to take up the scourge and drive the money- changers from the temple. 33 But some Promise Keeper thinkers advocated a less ‘muscular’ form of ‘Godly Manhood’, one that emphasised what many considered to be ‘feminized traits’, such as humility, compassion, tenderness, and sensitivity. 34 It was this configuration that Eldredge was eager to renounce. Whereas Eldredge’s ‘Wild Christian Men’ are encouraged to fight their ‘spiritual enemies’, the men of the Christian Identity movement are encouraged to fight more physical ones. “There’s a battle for the planet… Between us and the people who hate Jesus Christ, who spit every time they mention his name. The Jews!” says Tom Corsaut, a fervent Christian 32 Donovan, Brian, “Political Consequences of Private Authority: The Promise Keepers and the Transformation of Hegemonic Masculinity”, Theory and Society, Vol. 27, No. 6 (Dec., 1998), Pg. 825 33 Bartkowski, John, “Breaking Walls, Raising Fences: Masculinity, Intimacy, and Accountability among the Promise Keepers”, Sociology of Religion, 2000, Pg. 36 34 Ibid. Pg. 37-38 29 Identity follower in an interview with author Vincent Coppola. 35 This sentiment is shared by many within the movement, and is an integral part of the overarching religious doctrine of Christian Identity. Far from espousing any form of pacifism, the standard Christian Identity teaching is that Christians are soldiers of God, and must prepare themselves accordingly. It is taken for granted that the target audience of such rhetoric consists of men; women have their own part to play, but far more often than not, that role is a submissive and decidedly second-tier in comparison to males. Gender in the context of the Identity movement is both essentialist and militaristic in its configuration. Christian Identity adherents are not alone in this belief; many of the ways in which masculinity is acted out amongst Identity believers are replicated among the followers of the Creativity Movement as well. When the founder of the Creativity Movement, Ben Klassen, first articulated his philosophies in 1973, he did so in two books: Nature’s Eternal Religion, and The White Man’s Bible. While Nature’s Eternal Religion is an ostensibly gender-neutral title, The White Man’s Bible is explicitly gendered, and provides insight into the primary target of Klassen’s rhetoric. The vast majority of Creator literature is aimed at men, who are encouraged to adopt a highly martial stance; the ‘battle cry’ of the entire movement is ‘RAHOWA!’ or ‘Racial Holy War’, which cannot help but to conjure up images of ‘heroic’ Total War. ‘Creator’ men are portrayed as the defenders of racial purity, which of course makes women the ‘weakest link’; they are the ones who ‘betray their race’ through miscegenation and it is up to the men of the movement to prevent such transgressions. 36 Subsequent books released by Klassen, as well as materials printed by his followers, have reinforced this perceived gender division, and work by some of the 35 Coppola, Vincent, “Dragons of God: A Journey Through Far-Right America”, Longstreet Press, Marietta, GA, 1996, Pg. 22 36 Michael, George, “Theology of Hate: A History of the World Church of the Creator”, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, FL, 2009, Pg. 134 30 women members of the movement has emphasized distinctive male and female sex-roles. According to Liz Turner, a former member of the Creativity Movement and one-time ‘Women’s Information Coordinator’ of the movement, men and women are functionally different, with different roles and responsibilities, just as nature intended. 37 According to Turner, the primary role (and racial duty) of white women is to be mothers and caregivers to the white race, and of course, wives to white men. 38 This, of course, is unsurprising, given Creativity’s essentialist philosophies. What is more interesting is the lack of analysis of exactly how the religious doctrine of the Creativity movement has reinforced such attitudes. While much of the literature references the sharp delineation of gender-based roles, there is very little in the way of discourse analysis aimed at identifying how such gender divisions are structured and reified through religious or social ritual. Not all men in racist movements see themselves as warriors, however, and the literature does reflect how men and masculinities are sometimes portrayed in the paradoxical role of both repressor and repressed, warrior and victim. As Jessie Daniels points out in White Lies: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality in White Supremacist Discourse, white racialist men often position themselves as the warrior-caste of the racialist movement, while simultaneously bemoaning their victimization at the hands of minorities and the governments that support them through such ‘debilitating’ programs as desegregation and affirmative action.39 Beyond discussions of victimhood, other male figures in racist organizations are likewise exempt from martial considerations. Ben Klassen, for example, is generally lionized as a stern – yet benevolent – 37 Swain, Carol M, Nieli, Russ, “Contemporary Voices of White Nationalism”, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2003, Pg. 246 38 Ibid. Pg. 250 39 Daniels, Jessie, “White Lies: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality in White Supremacist Discourse”, Routledge, New York, NY, 1997, Pg. 36-37 31 patriarch, while others, like ‘Pastor Bob’ (an Identity minister who will be discussed later), are seen as ‘elder statesmen’, rather than as soldiers. Essentialist gender roles, it seems, have an expiry date: once a certain age is reached, a man no longer needs to be a warrior in order to retain the respect accorded to his gender. It is interesting that in the literature written both by members of these racialist movements and those who study them that a level of analysis is missing, whether by choice or due to a lack of awareness. While both perspectives seem to agree that members of Identity and Creativity perceive gender in essentialist terms even the racist man is constructing gender himself, in contradiction to his own claims of biological essentialism. By choosing to represent himself and other racist men in particular ways, the racist man valorises certain patterns of behaviour that are seen as noble within the broader community, and those virtues then become the property of the group and are denied to the group’s enemies. If for example it is an essential part of being a white man to be brave, honest, and forthright with one’s associates and family, then clearly a man’s racial enemies must not possess those virtues since they are the property of white maleness. If an example of a non-white man who possesses those virtues is presented, then it is argued that what is being seen isn’t “true virtue” but rather an example of a non-white aping his racial betters. It is another area of racist self-identification where cognitive dissonance plays a significant role. As noted above, how groups conceptualize their identities, while important must be supplemented by an analysis of how gender is imposed upon the Other by racist groups. In terms both subtle and vulgar, white supremacist organizations inscribe upon the ‘objects’40 of their 40 I use the term ‘Objects’ consciously, not because I have any desire to strip the subjects of racial hatred of their agency or humanity, but because such debriding is exactly the aim of racist organizations. From the perspective of 32 hatred many of the traits which they have come to see as evil. In the case of both Identity and the Creativity Movement, the Jew 41 becomes the vessel for all those traits which are hated by ‘Christian Men’ and ‘Creators’42 alike. Jews, as Abby Ferber notes in her book, ‘Home-grown Hate: Gender and Organized Racism’, paradoxically blend hypermasculine and effeminate characteristics. 43 They are hypermasculine in their ‘domination’ of global media, as well as in their supposedly ‘rabid’ sexual appetites, but effeminate in that they are stereotyped as “wimpy, small, nerdy, and utterly unmasculine”.44 While the motive of Identity followers and Creators for inscribing Othered bodies with these negative characteristics is fairly easy to understand, what is less intelligible is why those same bodies are also inscribed with traits seen as positive. If Jewish bodies are to be the dumping ground for every loathsome trait, then why are they also receptacles for strength? A possible answer could be that without a powerful opponent to confront in their existential battles, men in white supremacist movements might feel less justified in their feelings of persecution by powerful foes. If your enemy can only ever be effeminate and weak, then how can he still oppress you? Finally, there is the question of homosexuality amongst white supremacy movements. On this subject, the literature is deafeningly silent. Why is there no discussion of the role that homosexual men and women play within white supremacist discourse? It is taken as given that homosexuals are targeted by many white supremacist groups – including Identity and Creativity many within white supremacist communities, members of the target populations are less than human, less than animals, and many are almost entirely without agency. 41 Within most white supremacist movements, the term ‘Jew’ seems to mean both a literal person – someone of Jewish descent – as well as a more abstract concept, which can be applied to a person or group of people, as the racist sees fit. In some cases, political or theological rivals ‘become’ Jewish after a perceived betrayal of racist principles. After all, if, as the founder of the Creativity Movement believes, ‘Jew’ is synonymous with ‘Traitor’ or ‘Parasite’, then anyone who betrays their ‘racial principles’ must, be Jewish by definition. 42 The name that followers of the Creativity Movement have given to themselves. 43 Ferber, Abby, “Home-grown Hate: Gender and Organized Racism”, Routledge, New York, NY, 2004, Pg. 157-158 44 Ibid. 33 But where is the literature on homosexuals as racists? An analysis of the literature of psychology and Queer studies turns up a number of relevant pieces, but the majority of the discussion seems to focus on the subject of GBLT individuals as victims of racism, rather than as perpetrators – and if there is discussion of GBLT agents as perpetrators, then the subsequent discussion only acknowledges racist activity within a framework of Queer studies, rather than as relevant within the broader discussion of white supremacy in general. It is certainly not the case that white supremacist – or at least white nationalist – communities are free from experiences of homosexuals as racists; an article from The Guardian in the United Kingdom discusses the subject explicitly, for example. 45 It is unclear if there exists any sort of delineation with regards to which field of study ‘ought’ to examine this particular iteration of white supremacy, but it is certainly a topic in need of attention, perhaps as an example of a species of ‘subaltern’ racism. 3.3 Summary What the previous sections have shown is that while there is some discussion of gender within the broader study of white supremacy movements, there lacks a significant amount of focus on the patterns such gendered behaviour takes. It is taken for granted that the large majority of white supremacist membership is men (even though, as we shall see, the majority isn’t as large as some might think), but what is missing from such recognition is an understanding of just how men behave and define their positions within the groups to which they owe their allegiances. There is also little discussion of the intersection of gender and religion, curious considering that for both of the groups profiled here, religion and religious expression are the stated reason for their very existence. In other words, while discussions of masculinity 45 Puar, Jasbir, “To be Gay and Racist is no Anomaly”, guardian.co.uk, 2 June, 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/02/gay-lesbian-islamophobia 34 are common, there is less discussion of the role that religion plays in the formation of contested hierarchies of masculinity within the framework of white supremacist organizations. This weakness is puzzling, considering the central importance that ‘male identity’ and religious expression play in the configuration of white supremacist discourse. 35 4. Christian Identity “The message of the Bible, as taught by most of today's churches, is not Christianity at all; but a nameless, faceless, irreligious, Satanic philosophy. It is a liberal, one-world, one-race, Godless, sexless, homogenized hodgepodge of propaganda disseminated by the Anti-Christ and their millions of Christian lackeys who have had their brains dirtied and contaminated by the constant stream of vicious, soul destroying lies, half-truths and innuendoes fed to the public, twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. The only unforgiveable sin in the eyes of these liberals is discrimination, when actually, the inability to discriminate is a sure sign of feeble mindedness.”46(Sic) 4.1 History of the Movement Christian Identity is a relatively small religious movement based primarily in the United States (although several small congregations have sprung up in Canada and the United Kingdom), and one which has largely escaped notice by the broader society. Estimating the movement’s numbers is exceedingly difficult, given its secretive nature, but United States law enforcement puts the number of members at about 2000 individuals. 47 This number is, however, most likely unreliable. It likely fails to account for the disinclination of many of the members to self-report their religious affiliations, as well as the movement’s growing online presence, which gives it a reach and electronic ‘footprint’ disproportionate to the size of its physical membership. More recent estimates have placed the number of Identity members at roughly 50,000 in the United States. 48 Christian Identity emerged from out of the British-Israel movement of the late nineteenth- century. British-Israel held that the original inhabitants of the British Isles were in fact members of the Biblical Twelve Tribes of Israel and were, as a result, the true Chosen peoples of God. 46 O’brien, Thomas, “Verboten: Eleven Biblical Essays on Subjects Carefully Avoided by Todays Clergy”, The Church of True Israel, http://www.israelect.com/ChurchOfTrueIsrael/verboten/vb-01.html 47 Federal Bureau of Investigations, “Freedom of Information/Privacy Acts Section, Subject: Christian Identity Movement”, 1989, http://www.scribd.com/doc/49995125/Christian-Identity-Movement-FBI-Information 48 Barkun, Michael, “Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement”, The University of North Carolina Press, London and Chapel Hill, 1997, Preface, Pg. X 36 Early iterations of this philosophy assigned those of Jewish descent to the ‘Tribe of Judah’, while northern Europeans became the peoples of the Biblical nation of Israel. 49 This distinction allowed adherents of the British-Israel movement to claim that while Jews were mentioned in the Bible as the chosen people of God, they were not the ones destined to fulfill biblical prophecies. This articulation was to undergo several major modifications as the movement crossed the Atlantic Ocean and embedded itself in early twentieth-century Canadian and American culture. Once the British-Israel movement alighted North America, it quickly began to metamorphose into a new, more anti-Semitic form. Rather than asserting, as many early British- Israel adherents did, that Jews were an important – if not central – part of God’s plan for His Chosen, American British-Israel thinkers such as Howard Rand began to see the Jews as pretenders to the claim of Chosen – a shift in rhetoric that gained wide circulation, in large part thanks to the work of William J. Cameron, the one-time editor of Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent journal. 50 Through the Dearborn Independent, Cameron and other British-Israel thinkers rearticulated the original message, changing it from a rather philo-Semitic stance to one that quickly became anti-Semitic. 51 While Cameron’s access to the Dearborn Independent, and Rand’s fixation with the doctrine of British-Israelism, made them almost natural partners, the two found working together difficult and eventually parted ways, having largely failed to link their beliefs with broader movements in the United States. At roughly the same time, a new and radical form of British- Israelism had taken root and was flourishing on Canada’s west coast – in Vancouver, British 49 Barkun, 6-7 50 Quarles, Chester L. “Christian Identity: The Aryan American Bloodline Religion”, McFarland and Co. Ltd., Jefferson, NC, 2004, Pg. 55-56 51 Ibid. 37 Columbia, as well as several smaller communities in the provincial interior. After being cut off from some of the more established eastern British-Israel groups in the 1930s, the Vancouver- based British-Israel groups increasingly sought closer ties with their American counterparts – specifically those along the west coast and within the Pacific Northwest. As these ties developed, important figures in the movement such as Howard Rand and Reuben Sawyer, were able to establish lines of communication between the isolated Vancouver groups and those in California, Washington, and Oregon. 52 The Vancouver interpretation of British-Israelism was far more anti-Semitic and conspiratorial than its eastern counterparts, 53 and it quickly took root in those American groups with which its members developed ties. Not until this particular strand of the British-Israel movement was embraced by a man named Wesley Swift, however, did it metamorphose into what is now recognized as Christian Identity. According to Michael Barkun, Swift was a man driven by his own agenda, who saw in the fledgling Identity movement, a vehicle by which he could realize his own goals. 54 Through Swift, the message of British-Israelism had altered to the point where the two were only distantly related. Swift’s earlier years as a preacher had provided him with the right toolset to appeal to devout Christians on the far Right of American politics. It was Swift who popularised the ‘Two Seedline’ form of Christian Identity, which taught that Jews were literal descendants of Satan and, therefore, in no way eligible for any sympathy from God’s true ‘Chosen’ people. There is, according to Barkun, a fair amount of historical controversy over the origins of Swift’s Identity beliefs, and even about the details of his initial break with the more mainstream (though still 52 Barkun, Pg. 50 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid. 62-63 38 extremely conservative) Methodist church. But it is quite clear that the central tenets of modern Identity were drawn from Swift’s sermons.55 4.2 Doctrine and Mythology56 The best way to approach an overview of Identity beliefs is to begin with the more familiar territory of mainstream Christianity. In many respects, Identity is like other Christian denominations. Believers hold that Jesus Christ is the Messiah and Saviour of the world, for example. Identity is a Trinitarian 57 sect which believes the Bible (The King James Version) to be the revealed word of God and the font of all morality. Identity believers generally claim that the Bible is infallible; thus, they can be considered biblical literalists, 58 and are evangelical and charismatic in disposition. One merely needs to scratch the surface however, to see where the similarities end. The ‘white race’, according to Christian Identity, is also called the Adamic race; in Hebrew, it is claimed, the word ‘Adam’ can be translated as ‘ruddy of complexion, to show blood, to flush’.59 Only the White Man, it is claimed, is able to blush – to show blood – and it is by this sign, Christian Identity believers argue that Adam could only be a white man. The white 55 Barkun, Michael, “Essay: The Christian Identity Movement”, The Southern Poverty Law Center, Intelligence Files, http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/ideology/christian-identity/the-christian-identity- movement 56 There will be many occasions in this section when I use explicitly gendered terms and phrases. This is not an unconscious decision on my part; virtually every primary source I draw from tends to speak with a masculine voice. Women are rarely spoken of – except of course for when Identity pastors and other thinkers are discussing the Fall of Man. In these cases, the discussion of women revolves around Eve’s culpability due to her ‘sexual wantonness’. I hope, through the retention of this particular narrative style, to reinforce the absolute centrality of the masculine gender to the discourse of the Christian Identity movement. 57 A ‘Trinitarian’ sect is one which adheres to the Christian concept of the Trinity, that is, the belief in the tripartite nature of God as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Not all faiths which follow the Bible are such – the Jehovah’s Witnesses, for example do not share the same interpretation of the Godhead. 58 Literalists only in the sense that Identity believers tend to see the Bible as the written Word of God; how they choose to interpret that Word however, is part of what places Christian Identity outside of the constellation of mainstream Christian religions. 59 Kingdom Identity Ministries, Doctrinal Statement, http://www.kingidentity.com/doctrine.htm 39 race, therefore, is descended from Adam. But Adam was not the first man, at least not according to Identity. Identity holds that there were people in the world before the creation of the Adamic race; they were wretched and wicked people, ‘mud people’, more akin to the ‘Beasts of the Field’ (Genesis 1:24-25, KJV), than to the white race.60 God classified some ‘races’ of people as ‘animals’ and their nations as animalistic, because these races and nations were depraved and thus, inferior. 61 These nations were formed from the populations of the four, non-white races, namely the Blacks (negroid), Asian (Mongolian – yellow people), East Indian (brown people), and West Indian (red people). 62 In the dualistic universe of Christian Identity, these populations were lumped into the category of the ‘Pre-Adamic’ races, comprising non-white ethnic groups, and the ‘Adamic-race’, the white race. But one group is distinct from either of these categorizations in the sermons of the Identity Movement, and they are held by Identity followers to merit special attention: the Jews. There are generally two types of Identity churches. One is the relatively more moderate churches, who teach that the Jewish people are simply people of the Tribe of Judah, spoken of in the Bible, but not the ‘Chosen’ people of the God. In this configuration, the Jewish population is split into those who could be considered ‘true’ members of the House of Israel (namely the Hassidim, or Hassidic Jews), and those who merely ‘pretend’ to be Jewish, a group including moderate and Reform Jews. 63 This type of Christian Identity (or Christian Israelism, depending on which individual one is speaking with) deploys a curious blend of historical revisionism, Biblical interpretation, and imaginative speculation to oust the Jewish people from their 60 Kingdom Identity Ministries, Radio Broadcast, “Adam was NOT the First Human Being”, July, 2010, http://www.kingidentity.com/radioarchives/ 61 Ibid, (TS 25:55) 62 Martin, Barbara, “Chosen Race Definition”, Christian Identity Church.net, http://www.christianidentitychurch.net/chosen_race.htm 63 Gayman, Dan, Interviewed by Nieli, Keith “Contemporary Voices in White Nationalism in America: Edited by Carol M. Swain, and Russ Nieli”, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2003, Pg. 220-21 40 historical and Biblical narratives, and replace them with Caucasian characters. In this new configuration, Caucasians were the captive race in Egypt, Moses and the other Patriarchs were white, and ultimately Jesus Christ was a member of the white race. If Adam was the first white man, then it follows that his descendants were also white. Thus Abraham, Moses, and the other biblical descendants of Adam – and the members of the tribe to which they belonged – must be white. According to pastors such as Dan Gayman, a strong effort has been made to separate this strand from the more radical form of Christian Identity, namely the ‘dual Seedline’ doctrine. (It must be stated however, that Gayman’s claims must be taken with a grain of salt, as an examination of his own teachings show that it is more difficult to separate his beliefs from those of the dual Seedline doctrine than he has claimed. 64 ) The dual seedline doctrine is the species of Christian Identity more closely associated with many of the more radical racist organizations, such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations, and is also the species of Identity championed by figures such as Wesley Swift. In fact, this configuration first coalesced in large part around Swift’s sermons. Seedline Identity is virulently anti-Semitic – more so than any other iteration of Identity – as well as being heavily influenced by, and dependant on such fringe beliefs as the existence of the ancient continents of Atlantis and Mu, pyramidology, numerology, and even extraterrestrial contact. In many of his sermons, Swift (as well as other, later pastors) would cite the extraterrestrial origins of the white race and the existence of Atlantis as proof of an ancient white empire, and even the belief that 64 Anti-Defamation League, “Extremism in America: Dan Gayman”, http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/gayman.asp?xpicked=2&item=gayman 41 angels and demons – including the Archangel Michael and Lucifer – were in fact alien soldiers engaged in a cosmic battle between good and evil. 65 According to seedline doctrine, Jews are literally the offspring of Satan. In the Garden of Eden, Eve was seduced by Satan – in the guise of a human (or a humanoid serpent, depending on the source) – and bore his seed in the form of Cain, the first murderer.66 The dual seedline doctrine is able, in this interpretation, to deny not only the historical narrative of the Jewish people, but their very humanity as well. If Jews are no longer children made in the image of God, but rather are made in the image of Satan, then they are removed from the realm of God’s creations. Jews, as the literal spawn of Satan, become the nemeses of the sons of Adam – the children of God – and therefore Identity followers feel spiritually justified in positioning themselves as the mortal enemies of the Jewish people. 67 Both the dual seedline doctrine and the more traditional Christian-Israel doctrine agree on many points, however, most notably the belief that all civilization, art, culture, language, and science derives from the inherent intelligence and aptitude of the white race. In this area, Christian Identity beliefs mirror almost perfectly the beliefs of the Creativity Movement. Whether the Identity church in question believes that the white race arose in Atlantis or Mu, in the Garden of Eden, or somewhere else in the galaxy, there is no question that they believe the current state of human development is due to the natural talents of the white race alone. 68 65 Swift, Wesley, Recorded Sermons “Michael Prince of Space”, June, 2006, (TS 33:45), http://www.kingidentity.com/radioarchives/#player 66 Pastor Dan, “Basic Tenets of Christian Identity: Part 4”, Pastor Dan’s Community Call, http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkCast.jsp?masterId=25929&pageNumber=11&pageSize=15 (TS 55:10) 67 Ibid. (TS: 56:25) 68 Unknown Author “For Liberal Eyes Only: The Liberal Guilt Complex”, Kingdom Identity Ministries, http://www.kingidentity.com/lib.html 42 4.3 Belief and Belonging: The Organization of Identity Religious Community Christian Identity is unlike most other Christian denominations, due in no small part to the highly divergent nature of its teachings. Unlike many other Christian denominations, there is little in the way of established networks of communication; many Identity churches operate in relative isolation from one another, and from the broader society. 69 As such, much of the doctrine of Identity is found online, in website manifestos, archived radio broadcasts from movement leaders, or in podcasts which are updated weekly and streamed for online consumption. This type of programming and dissemination has a great deal of utility given the unregulated and free-wheeling natures of most Identity ministries, and its ease of access makes it highly appealing to, as one website put it, ‘… both above ground and underground Christian Identity Communities.’70 Religion, as Durkheim rightly pointed out, is an eminently social activity. 71 As an activity, religion serves to construct, bind, and maintain a group across time and space; it is the metaphysical construct by which group morality is first articulated, and then impressed upon the membership. The specifics of the belief system present within the religious community also serves to establish the boundaries of that community, by identifying not only those individuals who are eligible to join, but also those who are to be rejected – and in some cases, reviled. The act of coming together for the enactment of religious rites such as religious services or Bible studies, further enhance the feelings of belonging within the community, and it is through the combination of social rites and doctrinal belief that religious communities maintain social 69 Burlein, Ann “Lift High the Cross: Where White Supremacy and the Christian Right Converge”, Duke University Press, USA, 2002,Pg. 34-35 70 Forum Post, User ‘Obadiah 1:18’ “Big List of Christian Identity Podcasts”, October, 2010, http://www.thechristianidentityforum.net/smf/media-central/big-list-of-christian-identity-podcasts/ 71 Durkheim, Emile, “The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life: Introduction by Robert Nisbet”, George, Allen, and Ulwen, London, UK, 1915, 1976, 1982, Pg. 9-10 43 cohesion. In the 1980s for example, a group of Christian Identity followers under the leadership of John Millar, attempted to remove themselves as much as possible from the world by building what they called ‘Elohim City’, a tiny religious community of between 80 – 90 individuals brought together through ties of religion and racial politics. 72 Elohim City’s purpose was to be the location of a cohesive, physical community of believers, sequestered away from the profane and unbelieving society in which believers found themselves. Elohim City was to be a refuge from the secular world, a place where believers could raise their families surrounded by their own ‘kind’ and free from the threat of racial and spiritual mongrelisation at the hands of their spiritual and racial enemies. The attempt at removal – both physical and spiritual – from society can be seen as an attempt by the groups in question to police the boundaries of what Durkheim called ‘the Sacred’, by which he meant those elements of life concerned with realm of the religious or of the spirit, and counter to the Profane; those parts of life that have been polluted by material or mundane concerns. For Christian Identity groups, the two things which are held to be the most sacred in life are God, and Race, in that order. 73 Race, by being included into the realm of the Sacred, becomes worthy of reverence and protection – even if protecting one’s race comes at the cost of violence against non-whites and non-believers. By moving to distance themselves physically in the form of establishing compounds or communes, Christian Identity followers set up physical obstacles to the perceived threats of ‘race-mixing’ and miscegenation. By inculcating their racial discourse into the substance of their religious doctrine, and by vocalizing an uncompromising belief in racial separatism, believers can thereby advertise to the world at large their hostility to 72 Anti-Defamation League, “Extremism in America: Elohim City”, http://www.adl.org/learn/Ext_US/Elohim.asp?xpicked=3&item=13 73 Kingdom Identity Ministries, Radio Broadcast, “Mongrelization”, Jan, 2009, http://www.kingidentity.com/radioarchives/, (TS: 8:15 – 8:40) 44 the project of integration. The less-than-subtle subtext of such rhetoric is that they are hostile to the very notion of any compromise or dialogue that aims to destabilize the harsh binary structure of their racist beliefs – indeed such notions of compromise are antithetical to the beliefs and schema of the group, and even bordering on the criminal; there is no transgression worse in Christian Identity than that of racial treason. 74 “In the lighted areas one sees them everywhere. Even the street signs at intersections have been pressed into service, and at practically every street corner I passed this evening on my way to HQ there was a dangling corpse, four at every intersection. Hanging from a single overpass only about a mile from here is a group of about 30, each with an identical placard around its neck bearing the printed legend, "I betrayed my race." Two or three of that group had been decked out in academic robes before they were strung up, and the whole batch are apparently faculty members from the nearby UCLA campus.”75 This quote is drawn from the pages of “The Turner Diaries”, a white nationalist, genocide-fantasy novel which depicts a race war in where whites in America successfully attack and defeat the forces of the United Nations, liberals, blacks, and their Jewish overlords. The book was written by William Pierce, under the pseudonym of Andrew MacDonald, a white nationalist and devotee of the white supremacist religion of Cosmotheism. While Pierce was not personally a member of any Christian Identity Church (he is reported to have rejected its teachings), his book – or at least large parts of it – served as the blueprint for the American terrorist organization known as The Order (or the Silent Brotherhood), whose name was pulled directly from the Turner Diaries. The Order was responsible for a string of robberies in the early 1980s, as well as for the murder of a radio ‘shock jock’ Alan Berg in 1984. According to the Anti-Defamation League, fully half of the members of The Order were active members of 74 Downey, Mark, “What does Kinsman Redeemer Mean?”, Kinsman Redeemer Ministries, http://www.kinsmanredeemer.com/meaning.htm, Pg. 9 75 Pierce, William (aka MacDonald, Andrew), “The Turner Diaries”, National Vanguard Books, Hillsboro, WV, 1978, Pg. 134, http://nspcanada.nfshost.com/PDFs/TurnerDiaries.pdf 45 Identity Churches at the time of their arrests. 76 According to one of the members of The Order, Identity believer David Tate, his actions were not only tacitly sanctioned by his beliefs, but they were mandated by them, and excused by them. 77 The violence committed by Tate have, in some racist circles, elevated him to the status of martyr and have transformed him into a symbol around which Identity communities can come together in solidarity. Religious communities such as Elohim City and the existence of martyrs like Tate also serve to entrench believers in Identity eschatology. Identity, like many of the most conservative strains of Christianity, is an apocryphal sect, dedicated to the belief that the end times are fast approaching (if not already here), and that the faithful have a crucial role to play in how the end unfolds. Whereas the majority of Christian sects are dispensationalist – that is, they believe in and promote the notion that the faithful will be ‘raptured’ away bodily from the earth so as to avoid the conflict associated with Biblical end-times prophecy – most Identity believers counter that the faithful will instead remain behind to fight against the forces of Satan in a battle to decide control of the earth. 78 As Barkun points out, the Identity vision of the apocalypse is a militarized one, in which the Soldiers of God will physically confront and war against non- whites, race-traitors, treasonous governments, and of course, Jews. This assertion garners support from Arnold Kennedy – a Christian Identity pastor – in his essay, “Rapture Reflections: A Review of the Rapture Doctrine” where he asserts that the doctrine of the Rapture is one that has been implanted into mainstream Christianity by the Jews, through their agents in the Catholic 76 Anti-Defamation League, “Extremism in America: Christian Identity”, http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/Christian_Identity.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_A merica&xpicked=4&item=Christian_ID 77 Tate, David C., “An Open Letter to Pagans”, David Lane’s Pyramid Prophecy, and Der Bruder Schweigen Archives, 2001, http://www.davidlane1488.org/openlettertoallpagans.html 78 Barkun, 106-07 46 Church (namely, the Jesuits). 79 Kennedy further contends that Jesus told his followers that the meek shall inherit the earth, not that they would be taken away from it. If true believers wish to see the Kingdom of Heaven, they had best be prepared to fight for it. This militarization of eschatological doctrine has a dual purpose. The first is to reinforce in-group/out-group distinctions by separating the ‘true’ Christian soldiers who will fight for Jesus’ return, from the weak and beguiled cowards who will instead cling to the belief that they will be spirited away from danger; the second is to inculcate a sense of soldierly faith in believers – to bring them to the realization that as whites it Is their Godly duty to train and prepare for the day when they will take up arms against their biblical adversaries. When this doctrine is coupled with the belief that men are to protect their families and their faith, it becomes clear that the type of protection envisaged is of the physically violent sort. Violence, and violent imagery and rhetoric become rituals in the service of the faith. They bring together the belief that there are children of Satan loose in the world, and that their machinations must be countered, not solely due to concerns for racial survival, but because the struggle against Jews, non-whites, and race-traitors is a part of Biblical prophecy and therefore a part of God’s plan. David Tate (of The Order), and those like him, become martyrs to the cause, their crimes re-imagined as divinely inspired acts in the service of faith. To quote from Durkheim, speaking on the subject of religious rites, “There are words, expressions and formulae which can be pronounced only by the mouths of consecrated persons; there are gestures and movements which everybody cannot perform… (Sic)”80 If violence is used as a conduit through which Biblical edicts and prophecy are realised, then it follows that the agents of violence 79 Kennedy, Arnold, “Rapture Reflections: A Review of the Rapture Doctrine”, Christian Identity Ministries, http://www.christianidentityministries.com/Rapture_Reflections.pdf 80 Durkheim, Pg. 10 47 assume a role akin to the priests of a more mainstream congregation. Whereas a priest dispenses sermons designed to impart Biblical knowledge to the faithful – to prepare them for their roles and duties as believers – the Soldiers of the God of Identity engage in violent acts against their biblical adversary, in preparation for the larger battles to come. They are, to use Durkheim’s terminology, ‘consecrated persons’; they have been elevated above the rest of the community through their willingness to employ violence in furtherance of their stated eschatological aims. Christian Identity congregations and communities tend to be small and geographically isolated, and although they are often connected to larger-scale racist movements in their region (such as KKK or Aryan Nation-type organizations), their own numbers remain small. In this respect, their self-image is fairly accurate: they are besieged, isolated, and surrounded by enemies who they believe would see them destroyed. They are under threat of arrest, harassed by the authorities and by civil-rights groups, and constantly paranoid that they are being infiltrated by ‘the feds’, ‘liberals’, or ‘race-traitors’. In such an environment, group cohesion becomes powerfully important – not just for fellowship and company, but for the very survival of the community. In their own minds, they are alone, burdened with the knowledge that Judgment Day is fast approaching, and convinced that their racial heritage is nearing extinction. They stand against a raging river of illegal alien invaders, secular liberal elites, homosexuals and all the other dross and decadence of Babylon. It hardly seems surprising therefore, that they would adopt radical and extreme positions on race, religion, politics, and gender. In a world cut loose from its ethical and Biblical moorings, only the most resolute, the most righteous and Godliest men can stand in the face of the flood. 48 4.4 Christian Soldiers, Godly Manhood, and the Retrenchment of Essentialism The epistemological framework of Christian Identity believers is a binary one: good versus evil, white versus black (or non-white), right and wrong, man and woman. The concept of ‘manliness’ is – within Identity circles – a non-controversial one. To be a man is to possess certain intrinsic attributes that separates one from women. The boundaries between the genders (and there are only two, according to Identity doctrine) are religiously enforced; transgressions are seen as perversions. The rules of gender relations are relatively simple: men are the rulers, the guardians, and the lords of their families, while women are ‘to be like their forebears – like Sarah – who called Abraham “Lord”’.81 The concept of masculinity is a project within Identity communities that is as much communal as it is individual. It is, as Connell says, a form of ‘protest’ masculinity; it is ‘a collective practice and not something inside the person’.82 Masculinity is collective in that it is a work which requires not only personal action and internal articulation on the part of the man, but also external pressure to shape the boundaries of appropriate masculine behaviour. 83 Identity masculinity is ‘protest’ masculinity in that it features as a part of its definition the rejection of the ‘secular, liberal man’ that is the bane of true Christian manhood. 84 Identity men reject as blasphemous any concept of ‘man’ that is not rooted in scripture, and not dictated by biology. According to Identity doctrine masculinity is fixed; it is rooted in biology and ordered by God. The virtues (and vices) of men are seen as intrinsic and unchanging. While there might be 81 Brother Mike, Minister Jonathan Brown, “Plural Marriage”, Kingdom Identity Ministries, June, 2010, http://www.kingidentity.com/radioarchives/#player, (TS 2:04) 82 Connell, R.W., “Masculinities: Second Edition”, University of California Press, Berkley, CA, 2005, Pg. 111 83 It is important to reiterate that while Connell’s theoretical approach illustrates the contested and contextual nature of gender patterning, Identity (and later, Creativity) believers seem oblivious to the inherent contradictions of their beliefs about gender. While believing in the ‘essential’ and hence, internal nature of gender, they nevertheless engage in community-based gender construction which highlights the obviously social nature of their gender projects. 84 Ferber, Abby L., “Home-grown Hate: Gender and Organized Racism”,Routledge, New York, 2004, Pg. 149-50 49 some discussion as to just how martial, for example, a true Christian man should be, there is no question that he must become a warrior. 85 As Rachel Pendergraft says, in her address to her congregation, “… an Aryan warrior is a man who has a mission – you know if you’re a warrior, you need a mission – so what’s your mission? Your mission is… to follow your commands, the commands of the General. So if Jesus Christ is the general… then we [as born again Christians] become part of the army of God…”86 There is no question about whether or not men are to be warriors – they are; the discussion instead becomes about what shape the warrior role ought to take. Pendergraft asserts that the warrior-man’s role is two-fold: to protect his race, religion, and family from attackers or intruders, and to take the fight to the enemies of God. This articulation of manhood implies that women are to be defended (they can defend themselves, but only if there is no man present to do it for them), an implication that further establishes women as objects in need of rescue. There is a great deal of support for this understanding of the structure of masculinity amongst far-right racist organizations; work by scholars such as Klaus Theweleit, Abby Ferber, Ann Burlein, and Raphael Ezekial highlight the importance of this vision of women-as-vulnerable-objects to the psyche of conservative Christian men. In his book, “The Racist Mind: Portraits of American Neo-Nazis and Klansmen”, Ezekial recounts a scene from an Identity congregation’s sermon, to which he was a witness. The leader of this particular sermon (who was also a Klan leader from the area) led a group of men through an oath-taking ceremony in which they dedicated their lives to becoming soldiers of God. After the men completed their oath, a similar oath was administered to a small group of women. Part of the purpose was to shame other men into taking the oath, so as to obviate the apparent need for a woman’s protection. As the women’s oath 85 Pendergraft, Rachel, “A Tribute to Aryan Men”, Christian Identity Ministries, June, 2009, http://www.christianidentitychurch.net/wordoftrutharchives.htm, (TS 54:50) 86 Ibid. (TS 59:20) 50 concluded, the leader declaimed, “Women are not warriors! Men, you should be ashamed that women must step into the gap… let us pray that the women will never have to raise the sword!”87 In this example, women, although ostensibly being inducted into the ranks of the army of God, serve instead to shame men. Their actual service as ‘soldiers’ isn’t taken seriously; only their importance as tools of shaming and peer pressure is needed, to reaffirm and police the boundaries of acceptable masculine practice. Men who failed to take part in the rite were singled out as having shirked their manly duties, by allowing women to take their place. Women in the Identity movement, are first and foremost the mothers of future white generations; their traditional place is in the home, and their traditional roles include bearing children, educating them, and providing opportunities for their husbands and sons to practice being ‘heroes’ to women. 88 In her Father’s Day sermon, Rachel Pendergraft continues: ‘… I think one of the best things that young women can do is to find opportunities for, you know, the men around them and the boys around them to be heroes because, that helps train them to be heroes when it might not be just opening a door; it might be stopping an intruder into the home. It might be stopping an intruder into the nation. Women in this movement, if you’re smart enough and you look around and you see that, you know, the little white children in this country are minorities and there are hordes of non-whites coming into this nation, we’re going to need strong, manly men who will stand up and who will stop the intrusion into our nation, who will stop the intrusion into our houses of worship, who will stop the intrusion into all sectors of society… and so men need practice being heroes…(sic)’89 This belief in the centrality of heroism in the ‘male psyche’ finds resonance far outside of the Christian Identity movement, the Creativity Movement, and other racist organizations. A similar heroic warrior-male mythos has been a part of some of the more mainstream conservative 87 Ezekial, Raphael, “The Racist Mind: Portraits of American Neo-Nazis and Klansmen”, Penguin Books, New York, NY, 1995, Pg. 55 88 Pendergraft, (TS 53:25) 89 Pendergraft, (TS 54:45) 51 Christian churches for some time, that serves to illustrate the point that at least some of Identity’s rhetoric is not as alien to nonracist social movements as it may seem. Godly manhood as something ‘wild, slightly dangerous, and free90’ is not a product of the white supremacy movement, but rather of a particular project of masculinity within the broader religious community. Originally articulated by John Eldredge in his book ‘Wild at Heart’, this form of masculinity was seen as a protest against the masculine project promulgated by the Promise Keepers movement, in which Godly manhood was seen more as a pedestrian and rather boring interpretation of biblical manhood. Instead, Eldredge conceptualized Godly masculinity as vibrant, adventurous, and more closely resembling a warrior than a pacifist. Eldredge argued that men needed to be allowed to be what they truly are; slightly dangerous adventurers seeking the means to “free themselves from feelings of inadequacy and move westward into the wilderness”.91 Men are to be accountable to no one but God, and are to seek out ways to become heroes in their own lives. Women become objects to rescue – ‘beauties’ that must be pursued (and dominated?) by their paramours. 92 This particular interpretation of what it means to be masculine rather quickly spread into the churches of the white supremacist faiths as well. The adoption of the ‘Wild at Heart’ concept of Godly masculinity by the many Identity churches highlights the interplay between more mainstream conservative Christian beliefs and their more racist counterparts and suggests that, contrary to the common perception of white supremacist groups existing on the fringes of society – ‘out there’ – so to speak, they are instead deeply enmeshed within the broader cultural milieu. Just as opposition to say, homosexuality 90 Gallagher, Sally K, & Wood, Sabrina L., “Godly Manhood Going Wild? Transformations in Conservative Protestant Masculinity”, Sociology of Religion, 2005, Pg. 137 91 Ibid. Pg. 139 92 Ibid. Pg. 145-46 52 exists in many mainstream religious movements similarly anti-gay rhetoric can be found – though intensely magnified – throughout Identity literature. In some ways, the Identity hatred of homosexuals runs deeper than their hatred of non-whites. “If a man also lie with mankind as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them” (Leviticus 20:13). This passage is often taken by Identity pastors to justify their harsh stance on homosexuality. 93 Under biblical law, homosexuals are to be executed for the crime of existing, as their crimes are seen to be among the worst imaginable. This tone is especially interesting given that in many Identity broadcasts and writings, much of the rhetoric that centres on the subject of race seems more concerned with segregation than with execution; in fact, on numerous Identity websites, such annihilatory strategies are explicitly stated 94 . Thus it appears to be worse to be a homosexual than a non-white in the eyes of many Identity thinkers. As seen previously, this assertion is deeply rooted in religious doctrine, but there is another reason why homosexuality can be seen as deeply – perhaps even existentially – problematic. It represents an untenable transgression of established and essentialized gender ‘roles’ within Identity communities. Homosexuality is a threat to one of the pillars of Identity’s gendered order, and worse, it comes from within and is invisible. The threat presented by non-whites can be rather easily spotted and acted against, but the threat of white ‘sodomites’ is more difficult to root out. Identity doctrine holds that the threat of racial extinction through miscegenation can be effectively mitigated through segregationist policies which is why many Identity followers (both 93 Unknown Speaker, Radio Broadcast, “The Law of Sodomy”, Kingdom Identity Ministries, August, 2009, http://www.kingidentity.com/radioarchives/#player, (TS 15:13) 94 Unknown Author, “The Church of the Sons of YHVH”, http://www.churchofthesonsofyhvh.org/, Comparet, Bertrand L., “God Commands Racial Segregation”, http://www.curakkkk.com/RacialSegregation.htm, Pastor James, Eli, “My Resignation”, http://anglo-saxonisrael.com/site/node/365 53 those allied with KKK groups as well as non-allied congregations) fought so hard against the repeal of Jim Crow laws and subsequent programs of integration. By limiting exposure to non- white populations, Identity congregations attempt to limit the threat of ‘miscegenation’ and other forms of ‘race-mixing’, but even if absolute separation were to be accomplished, there would remain the ‘threat’ of homosexual activity within the white community. Homosexuality presents a dual problem: on the one hand, homosexuality as a configuration of masculinity destabilizes the traditional patterns of masculine behaviour expressed by the groups, while on the other, homosexuality as practice can be perceived as a threat to the reproductive obligations that are understood to be integral to the tradition role of men. The pattern of violent anti-homosexual rhetoric and activities within Identity communities is consistent with the ‘boundary policing’ by the dominant heterosexual male population described by Connell. Homosexual behaviour is seen as a threat to the ‘normal’ masculine pattern, and as such, must be countered so as to minimize its effects. 95 Furthermore, Identity men are commanded to become fathers, as a part of the fulfilment of their ‘natural male role’, and homosexuality runs counter to that obligation. Some pastors within the Identity movement have advocated the adoption of polygamy by their congregations so as to bind women to ‘good, white Christian men’ and provide their seed with ‘fertile ground’, so to speak, throughout the year. If a man has only one wife, then he cannot create more children while she is pregnant, but if he were to have multiple wives, he could manage their uteruses as he would manage a network of fields, such that he would always have a woman to impregnate. 96 In vilifying homosexual activity, Identity pastors and community members seek to reinforce the heteronormative practices in keeping with Identity’s essentialist 95 Connell, Pg. 82-83 96 Pastor Brown, Jonathan, “Plural Marriage” Kingdom Identity Ministries Radio Broadcast, http://www.kingidentity.com/radioarchives/#player (TS 20:15) 54 notions. The boundaries of masculinity therefore, become synonymous with the boundaries of religious faith. To be masculine is to be faithful. By establishing ‘appropriate’ masculine patterns of behaviour as being a part of living biblically, Identity communities clearly delineate their preferred configuration of masculine behaviour as being sacred and, therefore, removed from the profane and blasphemous world of the Other. To be a Godly man therefore, is to possess only those traits deemed to be divine gifts. At the same time, the traits that are thought to be immoral or wrong are not discarded, but rather are projected onto the bodies of their enemies. For example; the appropriate sexual appetites for a Godly man to possess are only those appetites that correspond to the duties of marriage; sex is therefore to be used as a tool of procreation, not simply for sexual gratification. 97 In a discussion about the merits of ‘plural marriages’ two Identity followers, Brother Mike, and Minister Jonathan Brown, discuss the relative merits of polygamy. During the course of the conversation, minister Brown discusses the ‘proper’ attitude Identity men should cultivate regarding sex – specifically how Identity men ought to conceive of marriage as being something distinct from ‘worldly lust’: ‘… [male sex drive] is placed within men in order to propagate and have many children. He [God] said to Adam “be fruitful and multiply”. And we know of these men such as Jacob who had twelve sons and they were spread out over four wives…’98 After a brief discussion of the purpose of testosterone in men’s bodies, Minister Brown returns to his topic of choice: ‘… You need to realize that Father [God] put this hormone into men… Father created us to be sexual beings, but only in the context of marriage. A man must be responsible, in other words, for the women that he has. Sure, a man could go out and have relations 97 Ibid. (TS 19:45) 98 Ibid. (TS 20:45) 55 with someone he never sees again, [but] that is not acceptable in Yahweh’s sight as the proper relationship of a man and a woman. (Sic)’99 To engage in wanton sexuality is therefore an act to be shunned by Identity men, and is quite often attributed to members of non-white groups. Oftentimes black men are portrayed as being hypersexual predators, constantly lusting after the virtue of white women; sexual deviants whose unparalleled sexual urges have resulted in extremely high birthrates which threaten the very existence of the white race. 100 This sentiment is not confined to Identity followers – the rhetoric of the ‘hypersexual black predator’ is a common theme in white supremacy circles, and the explicit use of the term ‘predator’ to describe them is indicative of the desire to dehumanize the racist’s object of scorn. On the website ‘Detroitiscrap.com’, a site dedicated to chronicling instances of violence crimes perpetrated by non-whites, a user called ‘N’ epitomized the kind of thinking that all too often shows up in racist thinking: ‘Daddy sperm ape is in maximum zoo custody( naturally ). She silverback [a black woman] is dead, so these ‘parents’ are collectors of some sort of gov cash for niglet raising. Just like in their wild state, a new, non sperm nigger male will kill the other niggers son, lest he grow strong and threaten his tribe of she apes. Of course if it was female it would of been used as a shot rag, after coming of age at 5, or what ever the tribal rules are. Anyway, I bet they all thought they could keep cashing those SS checks. Now the ape pair will be on total gov tit via the kriminal justice racket. Maybe the two ape males will meet up. (sic)’101 In another example, liberals are often portrayed as being effete and sympathetic to the ‘Gay Agenda’ which assures the ‘liberal’ position is opposed by Identity communities.102 99 Ibid. (TS 21:30) 100 Ridgeway, Pg. 148-49 101 Poster ‘N’, “Spanking Takes Too Much Effort: Throw Him in the Freezer!”, comment thread, Detroitiscrap, May, 2011, http://detroitiscrap.com/2011/05/spanking-takes-too-much-effort-throw-him-in-the-freezer/ 102 Williams, Ben, “Morality of American and Australian Youth”, Christian Identity Ministries Newsletter, http://www.christianidentityministries.com/189.pdf, 2001, Pg. 4 56 By attempting to divest themselves of ‘ungodly’ or negative moral (and in essentialist terms, biological) traits by projecting them on to the bodies of their enemies, Identity men have fashioned a rigid framework of acceptable ‘masculine’ characteristics which exist in opposition to the ‘unmanly’ traits of non-whites, while simultaneously attempting to conform to an idealized dominant role in relation to white women. This articulation however is problematic when viewed alongside another, hugely important element of the Christian Identity worldview – specifically the belief that white Christian men are victims of the evil machinations of their enemies. It is a paradox of the identity politics of Christian Identity men that they are – in their minds, at least – both racially superior warriors and powerless victims at the same time. This paradox is not new, nor is it confined to the world of Christian Identity; indeed the concept of ‘white-Christian-as-oppressed-minority’ is an old meme which has been present in the schema of many of the racist organizations of the past century. This meme’s utility is great, as it can be used to bind social groups together, and to justify truly monstrous acts. 4.5 Warrior-Victims “Practically every TV show you see, every article you read, even while the characters are white, relate directly or indirectly to the alien invasion. White autonomy is dead. We are told that the last clean air in America officially disappeared over Flagstaff, Arizona in the 1960s. Well, the last reasonably autonomous white community broke up somewhere in the Midwest in the early 1970s.”103 Much of the imagery of the white supremacy movement is dedicated to portraying white men as strong and powerful warriors. They appear in leaflets and books and on posters as being muscular and martial, and are often depicted bearing weapons of one form or another. Christian Identity is no different in this respect. But while the imagery portrays white men as indomitable 103 Unknown Author, “Tripoli’s Theory of Nordic Inferiority”, Instauration, Feb, 1980, http://www.instaurationonline.com/pdf-files/Instauration-1980-02-February.pdf, Pg. 14 57 warriors of the white racial cause, participants in the various racist movements are simultaneously bombarded with assertions that they are, in fact, victims. Whites are under attack, they are told; their birthrates are far lower than those of non-whites, they are being betrayed by race-traitors and miscegenists, while their ranks are being infiltrated by ‘liberal spies’, federal agents and sodomites. On all fronts, white racist men are being told that they are the victims of a ‘White Genocide’, and that it is their duty to stop it at all costs. 104 As Abby Ferber points out in her book, “White Man Falling”, the attacks on the ‘white race’ are perceived as being not only physical in nature, but spiritual as well; the programs of integration, race- mixing, and liberal tolerance have eaten away at the purity of the white race. 105 Much of the imagery corresponding to the assertions of white genocide reveals a preoccupation with the penetration of the male form by those who are perceived as enemies. Jews are caricatured as being ‘bloodsuckers’ and are depicted as mosquitoes or leeches; quite often non-whites (including Jews) are depicted as parasites, feeding off of the strong – yet weakened – white man. The imagery is that of the powerful and noble white warrior-male being drained of his life-force, or vital fluids by Jews or non-whites; they are tempted into miscegenation by the hyper-sexuality of non-white women, or brainwashed into sterilizing themselves so as to be unable to produce more ‘evil whites’. In a cartoon found on the Christian Identity website, Kinsmen Identity Ministries, a cartoon can be found which depicts a white man and woman, who are holding a black infant while parroting a message crafted by Jews. The message reads, 104 Miller, Christian, “The White Genocide Evidence Project”, Occidental Observer: White Identity, Interests, and Culture, Feb, 2011, http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2011/02/the-white-genocide-evidence-project/ 105 Ferber, Pg.80-81 58 ‘White Racists are evil. We hate White people. We hate our ancestors and our heritage. White Christians have enslaved and oppressed the great Black Race. They made Blacks live in Slums and designed IQ tests to make this dynamic Race of inventors, explorers, and builders of civilization seem stupid. We love the Blacks and their high culture! My wife and I had a doctor sterilize us so we couldn’t have any white-devil children. Now we are adopting Black kids to correct society’s injustices. Someday all people in the world will be one mixed race and love each other – like we do. Of course we’ll have to eliminate those Rotten Whites… (Sic) ‘106 Such imagery reflects obvious sexual fixation, but also a moral accusation that the enemies of whites refuse to ‘fight fair’. Since they cannot hope to defeat white men in honourable combat, the white man’s enemies instead cheat, through the use of dirty tactics, conspiracies, and brainwashing. In his book, “Male Fantasies”, Theweleit psychoanalysed such fears, and showed how combat, sexuality, and masculinity became intertwined to the point of inextricability. While much of his work focussed on the role that women played as objects of threat and abjection, it is quite easy to see how it can nevertheless be applied to modern racist discourse. There is too close a similarity between the racist’s fears of infiltration/penetration by the feds or other alien bodies, and the Freikorps’ fears of infiltration/penetration by Red Communists, to dismiss.107 The fears of infiltration/penetration, as well as the sexualized discussions of (blood)sucking and sexual wantonness (also as things to be feared) can also be examined through Connell’s discussion of body-reflexive practices, whereby concerns or fears of sexual ‘transgressions’ can be limited by rigidly proscribing ‘acceptable’ masculine behaviour.108 In this way any ambiguous gender practices can be scrutinized by comparing them to a pre-determined ‘litmus-test’ in order to evaluate their acceptability. Using this method of analysis, the tensions that exist within the warrior-victim identity can be shown to be gendered tensions between 106 Kingdom Identity Ministry, http://www.kingidentity.com/lib.html 107 Theweleit, Klaus, “Male Fantasies, Volume 1: Women, Floods, Bodies, History”, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN, 1987, Pg. 400-01 108 Connell, Pg. 175-76 59 ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ gender practices. Further, what defines the boundaries of acceptable gender practices in Christian Identity (and in other racist groups) is articulated in part by what the group sees as being unattractive qualities to possess. In most cases, the Other, in the form of non-white persons, Jews, or race-traitor whites is, in certain ways, feminized by removing from them any traits that are seen to be noble or virtuous – those traits associated with their own masculine practices. Since Identity men cherish the ‘masculine’ concepts of strength, nobility, and intelligence, they own them only by stripping them from the Other. After all, if both white men and their non-white or Jewish enemies possess the same qualities, then it makes little sense to differentiate ‘Adamic’ man from the men of the ‘mud races’. Christian Identity masculinity, as a specific pattern of masculine behaviour, uses religious values and teachings as one of its primary foundations. Identity articulates its ideals of Godly manhood through a series of discourses centred around the belief in the ‘white race’ as the dominant ethnic group on Earth. Identity men use their religious beliefs in order to establish their understanding of what constitutes manhood, and then reify this framework through continuous performances of body-reflexive practices such as regular trips to the firearm range to hone one’s ‘warrior skills’, or through aggressive, verbal and physical opposition to homosexuality or the condemnation of casual sex (casual sex is considered wanton and hence ungodly/unmanly) which are themselves obfuscated behind layers of ritual aimed at reaffirming a divine order that favours them above all others. These behaviours serve a dual purpose in that they illustrate both individual manliness and they send a message to other members of the group that the individual accepts and is willing to reproduce the appropriate gendered attitudes. As Connell argues, “Particular versions of masculinity are constituted in their circuits as meaningful bodies and embodied meanings. Through body reflexive practices, more than individual lives 60 are formed: a social world is formed.”109 It is a masculine pattern that is hyper-militarized, steeped in warrior mythology, and conceptualized as the pinnacle of acceptable masculine behaviour, but that nevertheless reproduces a victim mentality – one that valorizes extreme measures and even martyrdom. The contradictory binary found in the rhetoric of Christian Identity masculinity is remarkably similar to the way in which the movement more generally views the figure of Jesus Christ. Whereas many of the more mainstream Protestant faiths regard Christ as something of a pacifist, more concerned with the concepts of love, charity, and ‘turning the other cheek’, Christian Identity views him as a warrior and peacemaker. Christ, in addition to bringing to Man the New Testament of God, also brought with him the promise of racial justice at the end. “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.” (Matthew 10:34) 109 Ibid. Pg. 64 61 5. The Creativity Movement The Creativity Movement is an oddity amongst racist religious organizations. While the vast majority of racist religious groups are organized around existing religious doctrines or mythologies, Creativity sets itself apart. It is ostensibly atheist in nature; it recognizes no gods or supernatural entities of any kind. Its history is short: the movement was established only in the 1970s, and has existed in a fragmented and troubled form since. During that time however, it has undergone several important modifications that have given it a global reach that is disproportionate to its physical membership. Creativity’s message has eschewed the more traditional path of fledgling racist organizations by diving headlong into digital media. Whereas Identity was able, with a fair amount of success to graft itself onto existing conservative religious communities, Creativity instead sought to influence potential recruits through music, video games, and the dissemination of its ‘holy’ books in digital form throughout the World Wide Web. The modern face of the Creativity Movement is far different from that which its founder, Ben Klassen had originally envisaged. 5.1 Ben Klassen and the Early History of Creativity Bernhardt Klassen was born on February 7, 1918 in a small, largely Mennonite village in Ukraine. When he was six years old, Klassen’s family left their village and moved briefly to Mexico, along with a number of other Mennonite families. 110 Soon after their arrival in Mexico, and their subsequent failure to extract a living from the land there, Klassen’s family abandoned their settlement and headed north, eventually settling in Saskatchewan, Canada. 111 Klassen remained in Saskatchewan throughout his childhood and early adulthood, earning a degree in 110 Michael, George, “Theology of Hate: A History of the World Church of the Creator”, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, FL, 2009, Pg. 2-3 111 Ibid., Pg.3-4 62 engineering from the University of Manitoba, as well as a degree in arts and sciences from the University of Saskatchewan. 112 It was the beginning of World War II which sparked the beginnings of Klassen’s ‘politicization’.113 In his early years, he was apparently indifferent to religious belief, having concluded that the existence of gods could not be based in fact and was therefore unworthy of belief, 114 although he seemed to have identified somewhat with Christianity for at least part of his young life. Klassen’s letters indicated a certain allegiance to ‘white Christianity’ which he felt was facing attack by Jewish historical revisionism.115 Klassen was, however, less indifferent to the subject of ‘Jewish manipulation’, something that he had begun to see in every facet of social and political life. After Klassen married and relocated to the United States, he became active in various Far Right conservative organizations, including the John Birch Society, where he became a vocal – even militant – member.116 Klassen’s involvement with the Birchers was not to last however, as he began to see the organization as nothing more than a ‘smokescreen’ by which Jews manipulated their opponents and disarmed their attempts to uncover and resist Jewish machinations. 117 By the late 1960s, Klassen’s distrust of government and politicians in general had become apparent, together with his convictions that somehow ‘the Jews’ were behind everything he hated. His letters to associates and political rivals indicate a deep anti-Semitism, that coloured virtually every decision he made. In his own mind at least, Jews controlled the Communists as well as the Democratic Party; but they also controlled the Republican Party and 112 Ibid. 113 Klassen, Ben, “The Klassen Letters, Part One: Prelude”, 1987, http://creativitymovement.net/books.html, Pg. 6- 7 114 Michael, Pg. 3 115 Klassen, Pg. 33 116 Klassen, Pg. 15 117 Ibid., Pg. 16-17 63 much of the Conservative Movement (or what he called ‘Kosher Konservatism’).118 Klassen’s letters from this time reveal that as his disgust with mainstream politics grew, he began to associate more with the groups who clustered at the margins, such as the various National Socialist parties of the American Far Right. 119 Klassen’s letters also reveal that during this period of political radicalization, he identified himself as Christian – at least ostensibly. On numerous occasions, Klassen wrote letters wherein he attempted to defend ‘white Christianity’ against what he saw as plots and assaults against it by Jews or their ‘accomplices’.120 Eventually however, Klassen concluded that Christianity was another Jewish lie, perpetrated in order to convince whites that the greatest virtues in life were those that would ultimately lead to their enslavement. With this realization came the conviction that the white race needed a religion of its own, one which extolled the virtues of whites and placed them at the top of a racial hierarchy. To this end, he began to write what he termed the ‘the THREE BASIC BOOKS of our religious foundation, namely [Nature’s Eternal Religion], the White Man’s Bible, and Salubrious Living.’121 5.2 Building the Church of the Creator Followers of the Creativity movement (called ‘Creators’) generally acknowledge that their religion was founded in 1973, with the completion of Klassen’s first book, Nature’s Eternal Religion; in fact, ‘Creators’ even use a special calendar to mark that year. On the Creativity calendar, 1973 is denoted as AC 0 (After Creator), which would make the year 2011 AC 38. 122 At first, Klassen sought to develop ties with other racist religious organizations, such as Identity 118 Ibid., Pg. 23-25 119 Ibid., Pg. 27-28 120 Ibid., Pg. 30-33 121 Klassen, Ben, “The Klassen Letters, Part Two: Preamble”, 1989, http://creativitymovement.net/books.html, Pg. 5 122 The Creativity Alliance, “Creativity: A History”, 2010, http://creativityalliance.com/history.htm 64 or the Odinist/Wotanist religious groups, but quickly withdrew from them after sharply criticising the substance of their beliefs (as well as the organizational models of the groups). 123 Klassen again attempted to reach out to the neo-Nazi communities and to some of the more important figures in these groups such as William Pierce (author of The Turner Diaries), but again felt that their methods and beliefs were either unrealistic or unsustainable. Klassen increasingly felt that the only viable route open to him was to establish his own series of churches from which to promote his new racial religion. His series of false starts at establishing ties among the groups of the Far Right consumed much of the 1970s, and so it was not until 1980 in North Carolina that Klassen succeeded in founding the first Church of the Creator. 124 From the beginning, Klassen’s fledgling religion suffered from severe organizational difficulties. While Klassen bankrolled much of the day-to-day expenses himself (with funds drawn from his successful career as a real estate agent), he was constantly on the lookout for what he called a ‘financial angel’ who could help finance his goal of creating a global racist religion. 125 At the same time, Klassen was seeking an heir to his self-appointed role of ‘Pontifex Maximus’, someone who could expand the influence of the Church of the Creator. Klassen’s search proved problematic, however. Many of the individuals who initially attracted Klassen’s attention displayed character traits that he found to be distasteful, and so were rejected. Others, including Tom Metzger of White Aryan Resistance, and even William Pierce, were considered before ultimately being rejected for one reason or another. 126 The Church of the Creator foundered as a result of the lack of leadership, and it seemed as though the movement were 123 Michael, 64-65 124 Ibid., 70-71 125 Kaplan, Jeffrey, “Encyclopedia of White Power: A sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right”, Altamira Press, Oxford, England, 2000, Pg. 54 126 Michael, Pg. 98-99 65 destined to disappear entirely. Klassen had made many enemies on the Far Right, and few seemed willing to help his movement transcend its quagmire of internal conflict. In 1993, after the death of his wife and subsequent bouts of depression, Klassen committed suicide. It was thought by many that Klassen’s death would spell the end of the movement as a whole. Klassen’s financial holdings were passed on to his only child, who was accused by the movement’s titular leader, Rick McCarty, of refusing to continue to support her father’s organization. 127 In 1994, McCarty officially dissolved the organization in response to a lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Centre on behalf of the family of Harold Mansfield, a black sailor who was murdered by a member of the Church. 128 For a brief period, the Church of the Creator’s message lay dormant, until it was utilized by a Canadian racist named Eric Bruni, who used the ‘teachings’ of Klassen to fuel a white supremacist rock band called RAHOWA (Racial Holy War). Through Bruni, the Creativity message spread throughout North America, Europe, and the United Kingdom, where Bruni’s company, Resistance Records, marketed RAHOWA’s racially charged, Creativity-infused message to young skinheads and neo-Nazis. The success of Bruni’s music, however, never translated into a resurrection of Creativity as an organization among white supremacists, and the Creativity religion remained one among many failed attempts at white racial unity. Finally in 1995 a young law student in the United States named Matthew Hale assumed control of the moribund racist religion and began an aggressive campaign to revive the organization and reintroduce it into the racist circles of North America. 127 Ibid. Pg. 107 128 Southern Poverty Law Centre, “Intelligence Files: Church of the Creator”, 2011, http://www.splcenter.org/get- informed/intelligence-files/groups/creativity-movement 66 Under Hale’s leadership, the Church quickly gained followers, but a new legal challenge threatened the momentum of its growth. In Oregon, a ‘new-age Christian’ group called the TE- TA-MA Truth Foundation sued Hale’s organization in federal court, claiming that they possessed the right to the name ‘Church of the Creator’. Hale fought, but ultimately lost the case, and was forced to change the organization’s name to ‘The Creativity Movement’. In another legal setback, specifically the case of Connor v. Tilton in 2009, a federal court rejected the argument that the Creativity Movement was a religion, which stripped Hale’s organization of its ability to proselytise its faith in prisons. 129 Eventually, Hale was arrested and imprisoned for his attempt to solicit the murder of a federal judge 130 , and his organization once again foundered. In recent years however, the movement has experienced a resurgence, with new podcasts and online radio programs streaming new content from a small group of dedicated followers. There are currently several major strands of the Creativity Movement, most of which hold the others in contempt for any number of personal and professional slights and insults. The Creativity movement appears to be fractured and conflicted, but its message is nevertheless continuing to reach audiences around the world. 5.3 Religious Doctrine and Community Organization ‘We, the White Race, are that supreme species. We are Nature’s Crowning Glory. We bear a great honor and a tremendously important burden. It has taken millions of years for the White Race to evolve as a species to its present high pinnacle. It is up to us to carry on the promotion, propagation, perpetuation, advancement and expansion of this most elite of all of Nature’s wondrous species.’131 129 Friedman, Howard M. “Court says White Supremacist Movement is Not a Religion”, 2009, http://religionclause.blogspot.com/2009/12/court-says-white-supremacist-movement.html 130 Southern Poverty Law Centre, “Intelligence Files: Matthew Hale”, http://www.splcenter.org/get- informed/intelligence-files/profiles/matt-hale 131 Klassen, Ben, “Nature’s Eternal Religion”, The Creativity Movement, http://creativitymovement.net/books.html, 1973, Pg. 171 67 Creativity is an atheist religion; it acknowledges the existence of no deities, angels, demons, or afterlife. 132 Instead, Creativity seeks to understand the ‘eternal laws’ of nature, as found in ‘History, Logic, and Commonsense (sic)’.133 According to Klassen, nature’s laws dictate how each and every living thing functions, and of all nature’s imperatives, the most important is to look out for the benefit of one’s own kind. In the case of human beings, each ‘race’ of humanity needs to attend to itself above all others. Each race has attributes and abilities that set it apart from the other races of humanity, and in the case of the white race, those attributes include creativity, intelligence, and productivity. 134 According to Klassen, it is the attributes of the white race which allowed it to dominate the rest of the world; the civilizations of China, India, Peru, and North America are the direct result of the civilizing influences of whites. 135 Many of Klassen’s beliefs with regards to race seem to be derived from evolutionary theory – or rather, a distortion of evolutionary theory more akin to Spencer’s concept of ‘survival of the fittest’ – similar in form and function to Nazi Social Darwinism. In his first book, Klassen claimed that in nature there are always species that are superior, and therefore deserves to survive and prosper – often at the expense of those species considered ‘inferior’. In Klassen’s view, the white race is superior, and therefore deserving of all of the benefits of nature. 136 132 Klassen, Ben, “Survival of the White Race, Part Two”, Recordings, http://www.creativityalliance.com/downloads.htm, (TS 18:55) 133 Klassen, Ben, “Nature’s Eternal Religion”, The Creativity Movement, http://creativitymovement.net/books.html, 1973, Pg. 320 134 Ibid., Pg. 16 135 Ibid. 136 Ibid., Pg. 17 68 Klassen states that just as one never sees ducks and cattle mating in nature, one should not see humans mating outside of their own ‘narrow sub-species’.137 In order to justify this interpretation of ‘natural law’, Klassen then goes on to engage in a great deal of historical revision; he makes the point that before encountering whites, non-white nations had no culture, no art, and no technology. As an example: whenever one encounters historical examples of great thinkers or teachers, Klassen claims that they are describing a white person. When describing ‘Chinese civilization’ for example, Klassen asserts that ‘mongoloid’ Chinese were without culture until prehistoric white colonists mated with the Chinese to form a hybrid race which in turn ruled over their ‘inferior’ Chinese relatives.138 During this extended historical revisionist narrative, Klassen returns repeatedly to the subject most important to him: the Jews. Klassen describes Jews as beings with no culture, no real language or technology of their own, and feeding parasitically from the labours of their white ‘hosts’.139 Klassen believes that the Jews have been responsible for virtually every ill that has ever befallen the white race. The emergence of Christianity in the Roman Empire was the direct cause of the Empire’s collapse, according to Klassen. It was Jewish influence that incited European nations to attack Germany during World War I, and it was Jewish provocateurs that influenced those same nations to attack Hitler’s Germany in World War Two.140 Much of the rest of Klassen’s first book is concerned with his own interpretations of such works as The Communist Manifesto, which he claims is a Jewish invention. In addition, Klassen devotes a great deal of time to discussing the infamous 137 Ibid. 138 Ibid. Pg. 28 139 Ibid. Pg. 58 140 Ibid. Pg. 63 69 Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an anti-Semitic forgery that purported to lay out the Jewish plan for world domination. Life’s ultimate purpose, according to Klassen is to ‘propagate, advance, and expand the white race.’141 All other desires are secondary to this prime initiative. Anything that negatively affects this imperative must be opposed. Klassen’s philosophy is essentially a zero-sum game: in order for one party to prosper, another must lose out. Klassen goes on to define a list of sixteen ‘commandments’ that followers of Creativity are to follow, and they are laid out repeatedly in his holy books, as well as on numerous websites. Among the commandments are declarations that ‘inferior colored races’ are the natural enemies of whites and must therefore be opposed (Commandment Three). There are injunctions against ‘polluting’ the white race through interracial sexual relations, as well as commands to avoid socializing with non-whites whenever possible. Creators are to avoid having business dealings with non-whites, and are commanded to make at least one major and lasting contribution to the white race. Creators are to honour and uphold the sanctity of the nuclear family and to defend it from any outside influence. The ultimate aim of these commandments is to ensure the continued existence of the white race, and to ensure that in time, whites will control the entire planet. 142 In his next book, The White Man’s Bible, Klassen builds upon the stances he first articulated in Nature’s Eternal Religion, and includes the following rule: “What is good for the White Race is the highest virtue; what is bad for the White Race is the ultimate sin. We call this 141 Ibid. Pg. 171 142 Ibid. Pg. 173 70 our Golden Rule…”143 Klassen expands his allegations of Jewish interference and manipulation in the affairs of white culture, as well as delving into the realms of diet and fashion. Creators, Klassen argues, would be best served by eating a diet consisting entirely of raw, natural, organically-grown vegetables, and by engaging in moderate to heavy exercise every day. 144 Klassen also used his books to promote his views on the gender order of the ‘white race’. According to Klassen, men and women are of equal importance to the survival of the race, but each has their own role to fulfill. It is perhaps unsurprising that Klassen, as well as the later members of the movement viewed women’s primary roles as that of good wives and mothers.145 While there is an acknowledgement that women constitute fully half of the population, and as such are important members of the Creativity Movement, they are nevertheless expected to devote most of their time to producing new white children. In many respects, Klassen’s religious movement mirrors many of the elements and edicts of the religious organizations he once railed against. Assessing the structure and ritual of Creator communities is exceptionally difficult for the simple reason that there appear to be no such communities (outside of the relatively tiny online communities found in Creativity forums). Estimates of the movement’s numbers range anywhere from 2000-3000 members worldwide, to perhaps less than one-tenth that. As of 2009, the Southern Poverty Law Center stated that there were only fourteen active chapters of the Creativity Movement in the United States (and perhaps a few more from disparate, Creativity- based groups operating independently), but had little information on the numbers of people 143 Klassen, Ben, “The White Man’s Bible”, The Creativity Movement, http://creativitymovement.net/books.html, 1981, Pg. 7 144 Ibid. Pg, 34-37 145 Swain, Carol M., & Nieli, Russ, “Contemporary Voices in White Nationalism in America”, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 2003, Pg. 250 71 involved in each. 146 Like Identity, the Creativity Movement is not generally amenable to being counted, with most members and sympathisers instead choosing to converge and discuss issues online – and even online the numbers of active members is small. In the forums of one of the largest Creativity community websites, there were (as of this writing) fewer than four hundred forum members. 147 The Creativity Movement, for all of its declarations of racial solidarity, seems to lack any cohesive framework from which to launch such a project. The movement is heavily balkanized, to the point where in many cases meaningful dialogue between the various factions has become impossible. Part of the reason for this state of affairs lies with the personalities of those who would claim the mantle of leadership within these groups, but from a Durkheimian perspective, Creativity lacks the most basic mechanisms of a religion. As Durkheim pointed out, “A Society whose members are united by the fact that they think in the same way in regard to the sacred world and its relations with the profane world, and by the fact that they translate these common ideas into common practices, is what is called a Church. In all history, we do not find a single religion without a Church.(sic)”148 Durkheim’s definition of religion clearly asserts that there need not be any supernatural element involved in the forms of worship, as he cites numerous examples of ostensibly atheist and non-supernatural (as he understood them) religions. What all religions shared, however, was that its component groups belonged to an overarching superstructure that bound geographically, socially, and linguistically different communities together in solidarity. This sort of structure is not present in the Creativity Movement. Instead, the various sub-groups of Creativity attempt to graft themselves onto larger racist organizations, such as the neo-Nazis. 146 Southern Poverty Law Center, “Intelligence Files: The Creativity Movement”, http://www.splcenter.org/get- informed/intelligence-files/groups/the-creativity-movement-0 147 http://www.creativitymovement.net/forum/index.php?sid=4a08d01117d1be512bb4f47eb2ddc908 148 Durkheim, Emile, “The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life: Introduction by Robert Nisbet”, George, Allen, and Ulwen, London, UK, 1915, 1976, 1982, Pg. 13 72 Why have such overarching superstructures failed to materialize in the Creativity Movement? In part, the answer may lie in the cynicism displayed by some of the movement’s leaders. In an interview, Matt Hale once remarked, ‘Nothing gets to people’s hearts like religion. Politics is a transitory thing; religion is permanent. Religion’s what’s in people’s hearts.’149 By using the pretense of religion to attempt to bind together a community of activists within the white supremacist world, agents like Hale (and even Klassen) appear opportunistic rather than sincere. One of the reasons that religion is so foundational to Durkheim’s work is his assumption that religions grew organically out of the communal values and beliefs of the community, rather than constituting a set of rules and orders imposed from outside. Durkheim’s theory of organic versus mechanical solidarity, although originally developed in the context of examining social labour, 150 can relatively easily be adapted to provide a novel theoretical lens for the examination of racist religious practice. Another obstacle that prevents Creativity from becoming a larger religious organization is that, as Jeffrey Kaplan explains, the movement offers little in terms of original creed. Klassen spent a great deal of time attacking other faiths – especially Christianity and Judaism – and little time developing a religious doctrine of his own. The bulk of Klassen’s religious creed is found in sixteen ‘points’ or commandments, which for the most part simply recycle and reword many of his earlier statements. 151 As a person attempting to draft his own religion, Klassen apparently missed what made other religions so attractive in the first place, such as a clear and certain series 149 Dobratz, Betty A. “The Role of Religion is the Collective Identity of the White Racialist Movement”, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 40, No. 02, (June, 2001), Pg. 290 150 Merton, Robert K. “Durkheim’s Division of Labor in Society”, The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 40, No. 03, (November, 1934), Pg. 320 151 Kaplan, Pg. 56 73 of moral and ethical obligations, and a collection of socially (and spiritually) meaningful group rites. A primary factor of what made Identity successful as a religious movement was the relative ease by which already devout individuals could transition from their previous religious community to a new one more in tune with their racist beliefs. Since the religious framework was already present, and much of it accorded with the beliefs of the former community, the transition became one that originated not from outside the individual, but rather from a reconfiguration of existing patterns of belief. The Creativity Movement, on the other hand, attempts to re-imagine the nonreligious racial beliefs of existing social groups in ways that claim to be religious, and then to impose this new framework on the community. In other words, Creativity seeks to impose religiosity where none had existed, and in order to do so, it must attempt to graft a new and alien social framework onto the target group. This obviates any possibility that the group will develop such beliefs of their own accord. As a religion, Creativity is paradoxically anti-religious, and in most respects, more closely resembles a classic neo-Nazi group than a religious one. Lacking a social context that is open to the religious message of Creativity from which it could derive doctrine (and draw recruits), Creativity’s message has stagnated in recent years. But while its members may be less vocal than other racist religious groups, its message is just as strident. Creativity is a movement that is as steeped in gendered discourse as any other within the broader white supremacist community. Due to its potential for widespread dissemination in the online racist community, the Creativity Movement’s message to racist men is one that must be better understood. 74 5.4 Gender and Creativity: What Does a Creator Man Look Like? ‘These European White Men, then, with civilization in their blood and in their destiny, crossed the Atlantic and set up a new civilization on a bleak and rock bound coast. It was the White Men who drove north to Alaska and west to California; the men who opened up the tropics and subdued the Arctics; the men who mastered the African Veldts; the men who peopled Australia and seized the gates of the world at Suez, Gibraltar and Panama. (Sic)’152 When one reads the books of Ben Klassen, it quickly becomes apparent that in his mind, the history of the ‘White Race’ is the history of white men. In Klassen’s estimation, it was white men who discovered technology, language and culture; it was white men who crossed the oceans to colonize the New World, and it was white men who brought civilization to the ‘primitive’ non-whites. Much of the White Man’s Bible is written by a man, for other men. Women are mentioned, but generally only in sections which deal with motherhood and child-rearing, or with the sexualized threats posed by non-whites. 153 Klassen claims that women are at least as important as men to the white race, and he uses the terms ‘white race’ and ‘white man’ synonymously 154 - his assertion seems to indicate that for him, the term ‘Man’ is the same as saying ‘person’ – but his assertions seem weak in light of his numerous other claims regarding white women – most of which center around the victimization of white womanhood at the hands of Jewish or non-white men. 155 In terms of how white men ought to dress and behave, Klassen was quite specific. In the 2010 edition of ‘Racial Loyalty’, a Creativity newsletter, Klassen was referred to as harbouring a 152 Klassen, Ben, “Nature’s Eternal Religion”, Pg. 16 153 Ibid. Pg. 62 154 Klassen, “The White Man’s Bible”, Pg. 5 155 Klassen, Ben, “Building a Whiter and Brighter World”, Creativity Book Publisher, 1986, Pg. 71, Klassen, Ben, “On the Brink of a Bloody Racial War, with the White Race Targeted for Extinction”, 1993, http://www.creativityalliance.com/eBook-BenKlassen-OnTheBrinkOfABloodRacialWar.pdf, Pg. 65 75 desire that Creator men dress in the ‘Cowboy or Western Style’,156 in addition to having close- trimmed, clean hair. Klassen’s thoughts on the appropriate form of female fashion are less apparent, although he does state his preference for women to have long hair rather than short. The degree to which Klassen attempted to control even the personal grooming habits of his followers is not the only example of his broad desire to control those around him, but it highlights the extent to which he wanted to dictate even the most cosmetic forms of masculine behaviour. In the time since his death, Creativity groups have taken his desire for a dress code amongst his followers to heart, going so far as to lay out the ‘proper’ way to display one’s Creativity patches and badges on jackets and coats. Such attention to proper dress can quite clearly be seen as an outgrowth of Creativity’s neo-Nazi roots that, along with its rabid anti- Semitism brought with it a strong desire to emulate the heroic figures of Nazi officers – even to the point of emphasizing the importance of uniforms and standards of dress. The desire for uniformity among the (male) members of the Creativity movement is indicative of more deeply held beliefs in militarism, violence, and the role of men as builders, providers, and warriors – or in Creativity’s case, white holy-warriors in the coming Racial Holy War (RAHOWA). In its attempt to appeal to a younger and predominantly male audience, Creativity leaders have tailored their message and packaged it in media that are popular with that demographic group. Creativity’s message is blended into white supremacist music, which is generally of the punk, and metal varieties (both of which advocate the use of violence against one’s enemies), as well as First-Person-Shooter (FPS) style video games, such as the game, ‘RAHOWA: The Cold 156 Unknown Author, “Racial Loyalty #104”, http://www.creativityalliance.com/newsletter/RacialLoyalty104-2010- 12.pdf, Pg. 7 76 War’, a futuristic FPS where the player assumes the role of a white clone, bred for war against Jews and non-whites. The game is a curious mash of violent, ‘shoot-em-up’ action and awkwardly juvenile racist propaganda, and is available for download at the Creativity Alliance website 157 . As with the patterns of masculinity present within the Identity movement, Creator men are, to use Connell’s terms, enacting a specific type of ‘protest masculinity’, which rejects traits and behaviours deemed inappropriate by the group at large. To be a man in the Creativity movement is to not be a ‘Liberal’, or a race-mixer, or a multiculturalist. Creator men despise Christian men – in fact, knowing who to hate is part of what it means to be a good Creator.158 The Creativity movement is founded on hate – more so than other racist religious groups. Whereas both the Christian Identity Movement and the smaller neo-Pagan movements declare that they are for racial love and loyalty before anything else, Creativity explicitly demands of its followers that they define themselves and their race by what they hate. In his many books, Klassen reiterated time and again his conviction that, just as nature had intended certain species to live in opposition to one another, so too had nature designed the different ‘races’ of humanity to do the same. 159 Klassen’s followers were therefore only doing as their nature demanded by opposing and seeking to remove from their midst any threat to their ‘racial purity’ from outside influences – by violent means if necessary.160 By using the term RAHOWA as both a motto and a ‘battle cry’, the Creativity movement explicitly endorses the use of violence to further its aims, 157 http://www.creativityalliance.com/downloads.htm 158 Swain, Carol M, Nieli, Russ, Pg. 240 159 Klassen, “Nature’s Eternal Religion”, Pg. 17 160 Brother John, “In Klassen we Trust: Essence of a Creator”, March, 2010, http://www.creativitymovement.org/radio/, (TS 10:42) 77 while at the same time ensuring that its websites and members make outsiders aware that the movement, for legal purposes, rejects violence. Like many of the neo-Nazi groups that Creativity movement members associate with, a means of drawing in new recruits is through the use of pamphlets and ‘public outreach’. These points of interface become sites of resistance for Creativity men, as their own configurations of masculine behaviour come into contact – and conflict – with more socially acceptable practices of masculine behaviour. 161 During their leafleting campaigns, Creativity men are confronted by non-white men and women, as well as by other white men who express opposition to the claims made by the Creativity Movement. In these cases, the opposing men are labelled as ‘race-haters’ or ‘race-traitors’, or are otherwise dismissed as ignoramuses unable to grasp the ‘truths’ of racial struggle. Both Klassen and those who follow his message are explicit in their stated hatred of such people. Letters between Klassen and those with whom he disagreed are strongly worded, laced with insults and violent rhetoric, and clearly combative in nature. 162 In the years since his death, his followers have adopted a similar tone with respect to their own detractors and dissidents – especially those within the broader Creativity community.163 Creator men are encouraged to set themselves apart from the broader societies in which they live. They are, according to Klassen, ‘Nature’s Elite’, and will often attempt to hold themselves to a higher standard than white men not of their religion. In the time before Hale’s imprisonment, he had attempted to establish a policy within the movement that recruits would be sought primarily from the ranks of university students, who Hale believed to be the elite of 161 Brother Weston, “In Klassen we Trust Radio Broadcast: Update from Montana”, March, 2011, http://www.creativitymovement.org/radio/, (TS 3:17) 162 Klassen, Ben, “The Klassen Letters, Part Two”,1989, http://www.creativityalliance.com/downloads.htm, Pg. 60- 61) 163 Reverend Cailen Cambeul, “Matt Hale is NOT the Personification of Jesus”, 2009, http://creativityalliance.com/articles_hale_cult.htm 78 society. By placing such students at the top of his recruitment list, Hale was sending a message that other elements, such as criminals or high-school drop-outs, were of less importance to the cause. This policy of recruitment seems to have been of limited utility, however, as Creativity continued, at least up until the time of Hale’s imprisonment, to recruit new members from among the prison population. 164 But the idea of ‘setting oneself apart’ is not restricted to the intellectual or cultural realms. Creativity men are told that in order to truly be good ‘Creators’, they should also make preparations to physically remove themselves from the rest of the population. The suggestion that one ought to separate from society is something that Creativity masculinity shares with other patterns of masculine behaviour amongst far right males. For example, during a roundtable discussion on the mission and future of the Creativity Movement, one commenter declared that anyone who ‘relies on the government for anything – especially for your own survival, you are not Nature’s finest… you are not understanding the stakes of life out there…’165 It is the perceived dependence upon the government (hence, upon Jews) that is seen as being a point of weakness and something that excludes a man from the ranks of ‘Nature’s Finest’. Self-sufficiency is one of the more important goals of Creativity men. The ability to provide for oneself and one’s family is seen as a hallmark of a good Creativity man, just as the perceived lack of such ability is a failing quite often attributed to non-whites and Jews. 166 Klassen is often perceived as having held the concept of the ‘frontiersman’ to be the model of masculine virtue, and the goal of self-sufficiency is seen as helping to fulfill that role. Self- 164 Levin, Brian, “Radical Religion in Prison”, Southern Poverty Law Center, 2003, http://www.splcenter.org/get- informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2003/fall/radical-religion-in-prison 165 Brother Richard and Brother Vick, “In Klassen we Trust: White Power Hour with Brother Richard and Brother Vick”, March, 2010, http://www.creativitymovement.org/radio/ (TS 42:40) 166 Brother John, “In Klassen we Trust: Christ Insanity, with Brother Vick and Brother John”, August, 2010, http://www.creativitymovement.org/radio/, (TS 21:55) 79 sufficiency is also used to mark the extent to which a Creativity man can be seen as a builder and creator; being able to provide for one’s self is a measure of how well a man is able to use his creative faculties to achieve his aims. The act (and image) of carving a life out of the wilderness – of bringing culture to the wilderness – is a recurring theme in Klassen’s books, and is still seen as a noble pursuit by many of his followers. In this respect, the Creativity movement shares common themes with many of the survivalist and militia groups in the United States, who claim that autarky is one of the most important goals of any family. The ability to be productive and to provide for self and family is not, of course, a virtue limited to Creativity masculinity. The notion of man-as-provider is an old one. But in the Creativity movement, this trait is denied to non-whites and Jews, and used to establish a boundary between competing worldviews. In order for the concept of white-man-as- creator to withstand counterexamples, such as a black man building a home or a Jewish man writing a movie script, Creativity men deploy a strategy of de-legitimization whereby the fruits of ‘white’ labour become the fruits of creative expression, and the products of non-white labour become mere examples of ‘inferior peoples aping their betters.’167 5.5 Violence, Militarism, and Hypermasculinity Unlike the Identity Movement that takes pains to assert that it is at heart a non-violent, pro-white movement, the Creativity Movement seems to speak in contradictory terms about its relationship with violence. Some Creativity groups, such as ‘The Creativity Movement’(TCM),168 openly state their rejection of violence on their organization’s website,169 167 Klassen, “White Man’s Bible”, Pg. 92-93 168 ‘The Creativity Movement’ (TCM) is one of two major subgroups within the broader Creativity network. It, like its apparent nemesis, the Creativity Alliance, is formed of former members of both Klassen’s original church, as well as some of Matthew Hale’s original group of reverends. It has retained the use of the TCM name due to its 80 while other groups, such as the Creativity Alliance, leave plenty of room for interpretation in their ‘statement of practice’.170 Both of these Creativity sub-groups however, make it clear to anyone reading or listening to their material that they believe they are involved in a ‘racial holy war’ that can only end in ultimate victory for the white race. Klassen’s own writings on the subject illustrate his beliefs that white men ought to engage their racial enemies in any way they can in order to achieve victory. His ideas were most clearly articulated in his work, ‘On the Brink of a Bloody Racial War’, in which he states – among other things – that whites ought to stop at nothing less than the complete and utter annihilation of the ‘Jewish pestilence’.171 The Creativity movement’s preoccupation with all things Jewish often overlaps with more secular neo-Nazi rhetoric. This is unsurprising, considering that many Creators are also involved in the neo-Nazi movement – as Ben Klassen once was. One of the most recent Creativity-related crimes involved a young man named Allen Goff, who was accused of shooting a Latino youth in the leg at a party (he was acquitted of the crime, after pleading guilty to several lesser misdemeanors). 172 Goff, who was earlier named ‘Creator of the Year’ by a sub-group of the movement, is shown in pictures wearing neo-Nazi clothing and wielding pistols, and is reported by the Southern Poverty Law Center to be one of the ringleaders responsible for a resurgence of the Creativity Movement in the state of Montana. 173 Goff’s recognition by other Creators for his efforts, in spite of the negative attention directed at him after the shooting, association with Hale, and because the TCM was the primary group from which the Creativity Alliance broke away shortly after Hale’s imprisonment. For the purposes of this thesis, the term ‘Creativity Movement’ is used to refer to the broader category of groups based on the books of Ben Klassen, and not specifically the splinter group, TCM. 169 http://www.creativitymovement.net/index1.html 170 http://www.creativityalliance.com/about.htm 171 Klassen, Ben, “On the Brink of a Bloody Racial War”, 1993, http://www.creativityalliance.com/about.htm, Pg. 9 172 Keller, Larry, “Neo-Nazi Creativity Movement is Back”, (Southern Poverty Law Center 2010), http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/winter/from-the-ashes-neo- nazi-group-now-cal 173 Ibid. 81 indicates a willingness to endorse and indeed romanticise violent actions within the movement. Matt Hale’s attempt to solicit the murder of a judge, Goff’s violent criminal activities, and the obvious connections to more well-established – and violent – racist organizations such as the neo-Nazis highlight the important role that violence plays in the movement’s construction of its own brand of masculine behaviour. The attachment of Creativity to neo-Nazi organizations reveals a connection to historical patterns of violence that the movement finds acceptable. One cannot endorse neo-Nazi organizations without also endorsing the history of violence to which such groups are heirs. This includes not only the violence perpetrated by modern neo-Nazi groups, but also the violence perpetrated by their namesakes in the early twentieth century. It is no coincidence that Klassen (and his religion) shared his anti-Semitic beliefs with neo-Nazi parties. Klassen had long sympathised with the Nazi position – first because of the Nazis’ unyielding hatred of communism, and later, because of their position regarding Jews. 174 By his own admission, Klassen held the Nazis in high regard – he considered them exhilarating. Klassen’s hatred of Jews burned so brightly that it at times overwhelmed any other message that his books attempted to convey. Nor did this hatred die with him; listening to radio broadcasts and recordings by current members of Creativity is like absorbing a distillation of a lifetime of hate. In many of the recordings, this hatred lurks just beneath the surface; every now and again it boils over in angry denunciations of ‘Jewish plots’ or ‘Jewish control’ over society. In these discussions, Jews are held to be responsible for every ill that has ever befallen the ‘white race’; Jews are seen as an existential threat that must be faced down and ultimately expunged from the world. 174 Michael, Pg. 4 82 The kind of genocidal fantasies of the sort found in Klassen’s writings and in the works of modern Creativity men may be one of the few group ‘rituals’ enacted by Creator men as a means of bonding with each other. For the most part, Klassen’s ‘commandments’ to his followers deal with concepts concerned ultimately with isolation: from non-whites, from white unbelievers, from ‘Jewish influence’, and ultimately from society But there is little discussion of fellowship. In the absence of a communal history, and without a great deal of practice at banding together as Creators, there is little to bind movement members. One thing all Creators have in common, however, is their hatred of Jews and, if their broadcasts and written articles are any indication, it is a hatred that is passionately felt. A great deal of time in many episodes of ‘In Klassen We Trust’ (the broadcast of The Creativity Movement) is spent on the topic of how to best rid the white race of the influence of Jews 175 . In one radio broadcast, one of the commentators speculates on the most important way to undo the damage that has been done to the white race through the ‘Jewish invention’ of the Christian religion saying, “… I do think that that kind of idea – that for the Jews to see that White Europeans have a racial religion [Creativity] a white racial religion – the Jews would see that as an ultimate weapon for their [whites] existence, contrary to the Jewish existence.”176 According to the often disjointed ramblings of these commentators, the ultimate root of virtually every ill facing the white race, from sex slavery and drug addictions, to ‘multicultism’ and (somewhat ironically) religious indoctrination can be laid at the feet of Jews. Hatred, in this particular context isn’t just noble, it’s holy. On a program whose participants are separated by geography, language and culture, this hatred is the binding agent that keeps them together. It is 175 Brother Vick, Brother John, “In Klassen we Trust: Genocide of the White Race”, September, 2010, http://www.creativitymovement.org/radio/, (TS: 25:00) This particular moment in the radio broadcast is part of a particular tangent that occupies virtually the entire length of the broadcast, the subject of which is the role of Jewish influence in the degradation and destruction of the white race. 176 Brother John, “In Klassen we Trust: Christ Insanity, with Brother Vick and Brother John”, August, 2010, http://www.creativitymovement.org/radio/ (TS: 32:15) 83 more than a social bond however; it signals members’ acceptance of hatred as a positive aspect of masculine identity. In Connell’s book, ‘Masculinities’, she discusses the ways in which men in fascist Germany behaved: they ‘glorified irrationality’, they ‘thought with the blood’, and they wholeheartedly approved of the use of unrestrained violence in the service of their ideals. 177 After the Nazi defeat, this particular iteration of hegemonic masculinity – with its emphasis on a culture of violence – was redirected away from such extreme displays of physical violence.178 But it did not die. Instead, this hypermilitarized masculinity found new hosts among members of neo-fascist and neo-Nazi organizations around the world. The kind of masculinity that was valorized by the likes of Ben Klassen is one such manifestation of the hypermasculine ‘warrior- male’ discussed not only by Connell, but by Klaus Theweleit and William Gibson. Both Connell and Theweleit recognized the centrality of hate and the worship of violence implicit in this pattern of masculine behaviour. It is a racist and radicalized re-imagining of a ‘primal male’ mythos: a romanticised depiction of the noble, muscular warrior-male struggling against nature and at war with those who would try to weaken him or rob him of his goal of self-realization. In adopting this pattern of masculine behaviour, Creator men in some ways become echoes of men who fought and died more than a half-century before; but its enactment seems less a reflection of any true religious sentiment on the part of its adherents, a more an attempt to connect with fascist heroes from the past. 177 Connell, Pg. 193 178 Ibid. 84 5.6 Summary Although its members claim that Creativity is a religion, wishing does not make it so. By virtually any measure, Creativity fails to constitute a religious movement. Using Durkheim’s definition and understanding of the functions and components of religious life, there is little that can be recognized in Creativity; it lacks a shared culture or history, and possesses no routinely practiced doctrine. Creativity has only a tiny membership, scattered across a dozen nations on four continents, with a total number of dedicated adherents less than one might find in a single moderately-sized Christian congregation. There is no clear leadership or hierarchy, and those who claim to hold such positions have not released new sermons or messages in over a year. While new self-proclaimed members may crop up from time to time, they are, for the most part isolated and subsumed within the larger neo-Nazi and white supremacist communities. But Creativity, as a particular brand of neo-Nazism, does hold an appeal to some people. Creativity presents a compilation of anti-Semitic arguments and rhetoric that is attractive to many and it is presented for consumption in a conspiratorial package that is as common to human societies as the exclusionism it preaches. It offers an ideal ‘template’ of masculine behaviour (and feminine behaviours as well), which it buttresses with claims drawn from a biologically essentialist worldview. It purports to give men a purpose that is static and certain, and that often stands in stark contradistinction to the patterns of masculine behaviour that are more common in North American society – and are often considered to promote weakness and subservience to the demands of a hated minority. But the connection between Creator groups’ masculinity and their religious beliefs is tenuous at best. While Klassen’s books provide an idealised conception of masculinity, the extent to which they adopt this configuration appears to be related less to their beliefs in 85 Klassen’s works, and more to their identification with broader ‘neo-Nazi’ masculinities. Creativity seems a post-hoc attempt to rework neo-Nazi ideology as a religious conceptual framework than an organic evolution of religious principles based on neo-Nazism. This distinction may seem a subtle one, but it is important to any subsequent discussion of the causal relationships between masculinity as a practice and the Creativity movement. If the movement arose in part as a consequence of a racial ideology that was itself in part built upon hypermilitarized masculinity, then it becomes difficult to understand Creators’ masculinity as a function of their religious beliefs. Whereas Christian Identity clearly distinguished the biological ‘essences’ of masculinity from the divinely ordained roles that Christian men were to play, and nested such discussions within a broad and deep theological and epistemological history, Creativity masculinity is perhaps better seen as an example of a pre-existing heteronormative value-system that has been made the centerpiece of a rather shoddy, cobbled-together pseudo- religious philosophy. 86 6. Conclusion The subject of white supremacy is one that is accessible to any number of fields of study, and every scholar that examines the field sheds another ray of light on to one of the darker aspects of the human condition. This thesis has been an attempt to examine only one, arguably limited aspect of these movements – but, I would argue, an indispensable one. The examination of masculinities within two small, yet highly radicalized sub-groups within the broader constellation of racist discourse highlights the important role that religion can play in establishing acceptable parameters of masculine behaviour. This study highlighted the point that for groups with an established religious doctrine or creed as in Christian Identity, the project of masculine gender construction very easily became entrenched in religious discourse; the process of becoming an acceptable kind of man became synonymous with becoming an acceptable kind of Christian. As men and boys were indoctrinated into the faith, they were at the same time enfolded in a particular framework of gendered discourse, one replete with divine commandments, religious obligations, and essentialist, ‘Godly’ roles to fill. In many ways, to discuss masculinity is to discuss faith. What this study has also shown, through an examination of the atheistic religion of Creativity was that, in the absence of an established religious framework, the project of masculine construction relied instead upon pre-existing masculine stereotypes drawn from examples found in historical racist movements. In many ways the project of identifying and defining acceptable gender behaviour became a way of connecting with those historical figures that are viewed as heroes. Rather than build their understanding of gender from a foundation of religiosity and faith, Creativity men instead draw their perceptions of masculinity from what they perceive as the ‘laws of nature’. Religious dogma in the Creativity movement seems to have 87 been tacked on more as an afterthought; a close reading of the works of Ben Klassen indicates a man less interested in faith than in justifying his own deeply held beliefs in racial difference. Klassen’s desire to build a ‘racial religion’ seems less about connecting whites to a religious reverence with their own race, and more about attempting to undermine what he saw as an unhealthy Jewish influence in one of the more powerful forms of authority over whites – specifically the Christian church. Focussing almost exclusively on the topic of patterns of masculinity within two small sub-groups of the white supremacy movement – while fruitful and fascinating in its own right – necessarily overlooks whole constellations of gender research. The most obvious of these neglected fields is the study of patterns of femininity within both Identity and Creativity, but also within the white supremacy movement more broadly. In this area a great deal of work has been done by such scholars as Kathleen Blee, Betty Dobratz, and Elizabeth Shanks-Meile, all of whom have contributed a great deal to the discussion of women in racist organizations. In an article entitled “Women and Organized Racism”, Blee points out the strange position many women hold within such organizations. On the one hand, most racist organizations exhibit deeply entrenched misogynist sentiments that serve to limit the roles that women can play in the activities of the groups. On the other hand, Blee claims that recruitment into racist groups in recent years has been almost evenly split between male and female recruits. 179 In many instances, women are expected to conform to the familial roles set out for them by the movement leaders, but as Blee shows, the realities on the ground are more mixed, 179 Blee, Kathleen, “Women in Organized Racism”, in Home-Grown Hate: Gender and Organized Racism, ed. Abby L. Ferber, (Routledge, London, United Kingdom, 2004), Pg. 49 88 with women often engaging in tasks that traditionally have been performed by men. 180 A good example of this was mentioned earlier in the chapter on Christian Identity. During a ritual that involved the dedication of a group of men as Godly warriors, a group of women were inaugurated, and even though their induction was used as a means of shaming men, it is nevertheless illustrative of women asserting an uncharacteristic level of independence. By engaging in what could be seen as ‘gender-atypical’ practices, women within white supremacy movements are in effect renegotiating the terms of their gender. There is a tension within this negotiation however, not just between the women and those whose traditional roles are being encroached upon, but between the women and their own ideological stance on gender norms. Many women (and more than a few men) within racist communities revile the project of feminism in the broader society and so attempt to pattern their own behaviour in a way that is seen as resistant to feminist ideals. As one online commenter (with the user name ‘HellCat’) stated, in the forums of the white nationalist website New Nation News, ‘I have no problem with women feeling powerful but I think it's a disgrace when a woman wants to act like a man. Women have so many wonderful attributes and I hate it when those so called liberals try to destroy that. They are the first to say "I don't need a man, I can do anything a man can" but as soon as some nig attacks , they are screaming for a man's help. As a non liberal woman, I know that there are times when a man is quite handy to have around and at the first sign of nig trouble, I will have no problem defending myself. Isn't that odd how that works? (Sic)’181 Later, the commenter states that one of the greatest problems with ‘liberal’ women is that, in times of danger, they wouldn’t know how to properly handle and discharge a firearm in self defense. The irony of course is that while condemning the ‘liberal’ woman for her desire to be just like a man, the racist woman differentiates herself by adopting the martial attitude that is more commonly found in the warrior-male gender patterns of her own movement. 180 Ibid. Pg., 52-53 181 http://newnation.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=1439 89 The strategic repositioning of feminine gender patterns raises the question of just how racist women rationalise their choice to engage in activities that have been traditionally denied to them. In many ways racist women are engaging in a project of feminist emancipation from established ‘gender roles’ that mirrors the historical emancipatory movements they claim to despise. How is this seeming contradiction navigated, and how does this project play out in the broader community of racist groups? Does the project of gender re-negotiation cause new tensions within racist groups such as the Aryan Nations, Skinheads, Creativity or Christian Identity, and if so, how are such tensions expressed, and how are they navigated? As women become increasingly visible within the ranks of racist movements, the way that such movements are studied must be re-examined. As Kathleen Blee has noted; ‘… Women are [historically] seen as apolitical in their own right, attached to the racist movement only through the political affiliations of their husbands, boyfriends, or fathers.’182 Such implicitly gendered understanding of racist organizations leaves no room for the examination of women who have assumed atypical roles within the communities. If women are automatically considered to be agentless victims of the political ideologies of their ‘menfolk’, then where do discussions of feminine agency fit into the discussion? How, for example, does a traditionally masculinized discourse introduce and analyse the topic of warrior-females? Another area of gender research that is under-represented in studies of racism is that of ‘Queer’ racism, or racism within the LGBT community – not simply discussions of LGBT individuals as victims of racial discrimination, but also as perpetrators of racist violence. There is a great deal of literature discussing the role of white privilege within LGBT advocacy 182 Blee, Kathleen, “Becoming a Racist: Women in Contemporary Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi Groups”, Gender and Society, Vol. 10, No. 6, (December, 1996), Pg. 680-81 90 movements, but what about studies of organized racist activities by LGBT persons against other LGBT persons, as well as against more traditional targets of racism? The literature seems strangely silent on the topic of gay subjects as racists yet, as the Southern Poverty Law Center has asserted, such people do exist. 183 In chat rooms like Gays against Semitism (now defunct), or the Gay Racialist Network (also defunct), one could find quotes such as this one by a self- described lesbian poster (now found on the Southern Poverty Law Center site): “Even if you are gay and white, or retarded and white, YOU ARE WHITE. BOTTOM LINE! Instead of letting the white race go extinct because of worthless races such as the african [sic] race or the mexican [sic] race popping out literally millions of babies a day, we have to fight this fucked up shit they are doing. They are raping our country”184 That discussion of homosexuality and racism veer away from discussing homosexuals as racists, while surprising to some, is less so for others. Bloggers, such as Johann Hari from Huffington Post claim that part of the reason for this is lack of desire to open up queer communities to scrutiny for fear of finding something best left hidden. Hari argues that there has been a historical connection between authoritarian regimes and homosexuality that goes back at least as far as the Third Reich. “The twisted truth is that gay men have been at the heart of every major fascist movement that ever was - including the gay-gassing, homo-cidal Third Reich. With the exception of Jean-Marie Le Pen, all the most high-profile fascists in Europe in the past thirty years have been gay. It's time to admit something. Fascism isn't something that happens out there, a nasty habit acquired by the straight boys. It is - in part, at least - a gay thing, and it's time for non-fascist gay people to wake up and face the marching music.”185 Hari’s comments, though shocking, have an historical precedent that can be more closely interrogated. Returning to the works of Theweleit, one can find discussions of homosexual 183 Unknown Author, “Intelligence Report: The Fringe of the Fringe”, The Southern Poverty Law Center, 2000, http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2000/fall/the-fringe-of-the-fringe 184 Ibid. 185 Hari, Johann, “The Strange, Strange Story of the Gay Fascists”, Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-strange-strange-story_b_136697.html, October, 2008 91 behaviour that rested at the very core of the post-World War I Freikorps. In Theweleit’s case, his examination of homosexuality focusses upon its use as strategic tool in the maintenance of heteronormative behaviours, rather than as a separate topic in its own right, but what if there was more to the practice than control? There is no doubt that the subject is being discussed within the LGBT community, but scholarly attention – Theweleit notwithstanding – is made all the more glaring by its absence. Racism cannot involve only heterosexual perpetrators, any more than it can involve homosexual actors as victims only. There must be a space where this type of ‘sub-altern’ racism can be interrogated and understood by the academic community. When examined side by side, it is clear that religion is a powerful tool in building gendered identities, and although it is not necessary for the task of enforcing rigid gender patterns, it certainly makes the task much easier. Much of the history of the human species has been about individuals and societies attempting to connect with what they have perceived to be the Divine; its apparent value to the human condition grants it immense power. It is therefore unsurprising that people seek to claim its authority for themselves. The power of religiously derived authority becomes a potent weapon in the arsenal of racists and one that often leads to violent forms of expression. 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Kingdom Identity Ministries Newsletter. 2001. http://www.christianidentityministries.com/189.pdf (accessed October 2008). 93 Appendices Appendix A: Transcript of a Lecture by Ben Klassen The following is a transcript of a recording made by the founder of Creativity, Ben Klassen who is speaking on the subject of the survival of the ‘white race’. The original recording was made by Klassen in 1975. A copy of the original recording can be found online (source below). There is a second part to this lecture, but for the purposes of illustrating the nature of the Creativity message, the section presented here suffices. “What I have to say next forty minutes is probably going to shock you. It might even profoundly shaken up some of your most cherished superstitions and pet presumptions that you may have nurtured all your life without perhaps ever bothering to examine the validity or worthiness of those presumptions. This discussion is going to delve seriously into race and religion: two subjects which our “power establishment” tells us we must never discuss - unless of course you are a Jew or a black or some other so-called minority. Today we are going to defy the Jew controlled power structure and discuss race and religion from the white man's point of view. In particular, we are interested in examining whether we the white race are going to survive or whether we are going to be mongrelized and destroyed in a flood-tide of parasitical colored races. Therefore, I want you to decide early in his presentation whether you are interested in the survival of your own kind or whether you prefer to be a traitor to the white race and would just as soon see it wiped from the face of the earth and supplanted by niggers, blacks, yellow Semites another mud races. For make no mistake about it, the white race is a highly endangered species, a vanishing species, one that its enemies have decided must disappear from the face of the earth. If suicide of your own kind is what you wish to see, now is a good time to stop listening. If, on the other hand, you are loyal to their own kind and wish the white race to survive and prosper then you undoubtedly are not only interested in hearing about the Church of the Creator, 94 but also becoming a member of our religious movement. The creed and philosophy of our religion, called Creativity, is set forth in our book “Nature's eternal religion”. It is the white man's Bible and its basic goal is not only the survival of the white race but also its expansion and advancement. Since in this short dissertation it is impossible to give the full basis of our religion (even a short summary), we must continually refer you back to our Bible namely “Nature's eternal religion” a book consisting of 508 pages and 49 chapters. Why are we so concerned about the survival of the white race? Basically there are two overwhelming reasons: [first] the white race is rapidly shrinking into extinction and, [two] we are proud members of Nature's most distinguished, intelligent, productive, and creative species. We are talking about our own survival - the survival of the white race. There are many other reasons we could cite such as the preservation of civilization and everything else that is worthwhile in life, but all these other reasons become secondary; first and foremost we of the Church of the Creator are concerned about the survival, expansion and advancement of the white race for its own sake. This sum total of all our efforts and dedication revolve around that central issue. As soon as we begin to logically and calmly examine the impending destruction of the white race, our enemies immediately bristle and hurl at us all the timeworn clichés and invectives of “Racist! Fascist! Nazi!” and a host of others. It seems that if the Jews are loyal to Israel and to their race that is just wonderful; If the niggers organize for the sole interest of their race and shout “kill Whitey!” that too is highly commendable. If the Indians organize and commit atrocities, that too is to be praised, for isn’t the white man responsible for everybody else's shortcomings, stupidities and their inabilities to cope? To which I say loudly and emphatically no! We are not responsible for the shortcomings, defects and stupidities of the 95 niggers in their historical inability to create a civilization, nor to maintain it even when the white man is brought up to them, nor are we responsible for the colored mud races’ inability to cope with the problem of feeding themselves above a starvation level. In 6000 years of recorded history the blacks in Africa have never even so much as invented the wheel, a written alphabet or much of anything else. No, we are not responsible for that: nature made him dumb, shiftless and lazy. You can take the nigger out of the jungle, but you cannot take the jungle out of the nigger. It is not our responsibility to compensate for their defects, nor is it our duty to incorporate them into our society or into our race and thereby poison our own racial bloodstream. On the contrary, the highest law of nature commands us to make every effort for our own race to survive and expand and advance the genetic quality of our future generations. There is a sinister race on the face of the earth that is working feverishly for the mongrelisation and final liquidation of the white race. It is a tribe that is fanatically loyal to its own, and fiercely hostile to all other races. That tribe is the tribe of Judah. The Jewish race has frantically been striving for the last several thousand years towards its ultimate goal: the genocide of the white race. As far back as 3000 years ago, during the days of Solomon the rough outlines of a Jewish conspiracy were hatched in which the final goal was [the] enslavement of all the other peoples of this planet and the possession of all the wealth, riches and natural resources of the world. In the ensuing 3000 years the Jews have progressed steadily towards that goal and are now on the threshold of total success. For a more detailed history of the Jews and their conspiracy, read chapter six of “Nature's eternal religion”, entitled Masters of deceit: A short history of the Jews. How you might well ask, could the Jews possibly succeed in perpetrating such an outrage on the rest of the world? How especially on the white race which is highly 96 intelligent, creative and productive? Again, for the full story we must refer you to “Nature's eternal religion” but we can sketch of view of the significant factors in this limited discussion. For one thing the Jews would never be able to get to first base if it weren't for certain serious idiosyncrasies in the white race itself. The Jews are extremely skillful mind manipulators: they are tremendously expertise(sic) in spreading lies and compounding confusion. They are the historical Masters of deceit; in their conspiracy to confuse, deceive, and control the mind of the white man, they have had some incredible help from the white man himself. The best help the Jew has had are two suicidal weaknesses inherent in the white man's makeup: namely his gullibility and his susceptibility to superstition. It is one of these strange paradoxes of history that whereas the white man is the most intelligent, creative, and productive creature on the face of the earth, when it comes to being able to recognize his enemies and fight for his own survival, the white man is the most stupid creature on the face of the earth. And therein lies his Achilles' heel which the Jews have exploited to the hilt. There are other weaknesses from which the white man suffers that have been of tremendous help in the Jewish program of enslavement. Some of these are the white man's naïve sense of fair play, his sympathy for the underdog, his extraordinarily exaggerated sense of compassion, his inability to realize his own outstanding worth. But far more devastating has been the white man's fatal susceptibility towards superstition, gullibility, and a strange inability to recognize his mortal enemies. Let us remember these two words: superstition and gullibility. They go together. Superstition deals with believing in the supernatural: spooks, spirits, gods, devils, angels, witches, faeries, gremlins, ghosts, etc. Gullibility refers to foolishly believing in things that aren’t so, without bothering to check for evidence. 97 These two debilities of the mind - gullibility and superstition - are the basis of almost all religious faith that had ever been invented and perpetrated on a long-suffering humanity. If you can get people to believe in spooks in the sky then they are often more real to the believers than the real world. Furthermore, in their fantasy the spooks often become more important to people than the real world. They also become an extremely powerful weapon in the hands of con artists in controlling the masses of their gullible believers. It is very similar to scaring little children with the boogie man. If they believe, then they are as afraid of an imaginary bogeyman as if he were real. Believing in a fantasy makes the fantasy as real to the believer as reality itself and often even more so. The point is that the imposter who claims to be in with - and have influence with - the spooks in the sky as a powerful weapon in his hands with which to frighten and manipulate the minds of his gullible victims. And so it has been throughout the history of mankind. A book I have read, shows that people have invented more than 30,000 gods and goddesses that gullible and superstitious fools believed in even before the Jews invented their particular versions of Jehovah, YWVH (Yahweh), Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost, Satan and a host of other imaginary spooks. The Jews in their search of how to control and manipulate people's minds discovered early in their history what a powerful weapon “Spookcraft” (or religion) was. They utilized this discovery to its fullest in two directly opposite ways: [first] they invented Jehovah as their own private God to bind their own people together into a fanatic racial loyalty such as the world had never seen before or since. [Second] They invented Christianity with its built in suicidal teachings to confuse debilitate and destroy their enemies. How effectively they did so we shall soon see. During the early centuries in the rise of the great Roman civilization Rome fought and overcame its many surrounding enemies. As Rome expanded, one of the greatest threats and its 98 most dangerous rival was Carthage, who had established a powerful empire on the southern shores of the Mediterranean directly opposite from Rome. For one hundred and twenty years, these two rival nations intermittently fought each other in three major wars in a life-and-death struggle. Finally, when Rome triumphed they leveled Carthage to the ground killed every man and sold the women and children into slavery. Carthage was wiped from the face of the earth and was never again to rise as a threat to Rome. A few centuries later, in the years 70 A.D. the Jews of Judea rebelled against the Roman authorities. Emperor Vespasian sent General Titus to Jerusalem with a few legions. In a siege similar to Carthage, General Titus devastated the Jews; levelled Jerusalem to the ground and either dispersed, killed, or sold the population into slavery. Now we would think that an [fate] similar to Carthage, the Jewish threat would have been liquidated forever and wiped from the face of the earth. But not so. On the contrary, history shows the Jews survived and the Romans as a race perished. The Romans declined rapidly after they embraced Christianity while the imported slave populations multiplied rapidly and replaced the original Roman stock. By the year 476 A.D., the Roman Empire collapsed miserably and the original Roman racial stock for all practical purposes can be considered extinct. The Jews had their revenge. They had destroyed miserably and completely the Roman race the Roman Empire and the great Roman civilization, for all of which they harbored an intense and pathological hatred. How do they accomplish this? They knew they could not overcome the Romans in open combat in which the Romans excelled (and the Jews in any case are physically cowards). Being a parasitical race and the supreme Masters of deceit they decided to employ their special weapon: namely mine subversion. They decided to destroy the Romans by deranging their brains and they decided to employ religion as their most powerful weapon with which to work and cripple the Roman mind. They decided to take full advantage of those two weaknesses to which the 99 otherwise intelligent white man is so susceptible: namely gullibility and superstition. They invented and foisted on the Roman a new and suicidal religion: Christianity, a religion that has plagued and crippled the white man’s thinking to this very day. Its founder supposedly was one Jesus Christ who according to Luke 2:21 was a circumcised Jew. What is it about Christianity that is so devastating and suicidal as to cause the breakdown of the great Roman civilization and plunge the white race into the dark ages of superstition and ignorance, poverty, and misery for the next thousand years? If we examine the New Testament we don't have to go far from its original first few pages to find out. In the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew six, seven, and eight, we find a mythological Christ dispensing the following suicidal advice: “Sell all thou hath and give it to the poor. Love your enemies. Turn the other cheek. Resist not evil. Judge not.” There is more real, bad, and suicidal advice that if followed must surely lead to self-destruction and extinction of those that take such idiotic advice seriously. Let us examine a little more closely just how crazy and how destructive the above five teachings really are. Let us examine the idea of “sell all I have to give it to the poor”. If everyone was a so-called good Christian and followed that advice from their early youth, there would be no one that would ever build a business, build a home, or build a family. As soon as they had earned two dimes to rub together they would immediately transfer such to the freeloaders, parasites and the niggers, who would be there waiting to relieve the working white Christian of his hard earned savings. More likely still, the Jew who doesn't believe in such nonsense would beat the other parasites to the punch in relieving the foolish but gullible white man of his earnings and property. “A fool and his money are soon parted”; in any case if we were all good Christian chumps there would be no substantial citizenry left who could support the building of roads, 100 harbours, airports cities, homes, industry, factories, or anything else. We would in fact soon be reduced to a straggling horde of meandering bums, without money, without homes, without industry, without jobs, without food. Civilization would break down and be reduced to primitive barbarism. Or let’s take the idea of “loving your enemies”. If you haven't fallen for the first bad piece of advice of foolishly giving everything away to the freeloaders, but were gullible enough to succumb to the idea of loving your enemies, the end results would be the same: suicide and destruction of yourself. If instead of giving it away, you did manage to accumulate a home and some property, you would in short order the beset with thieves, pirates and robbers who would quickly relieve you of your money your home and any other belongings. Why wouldn’t they? You love them and especially since such victims would also be imbued with the stupid Christian idea of “turning the other cheek” and not resisting evil, the robbers would have a field day and you would be right back where you started with nothing. He might as well have stuck with the first suicidal concept and given it all away in the first place. The end result would be the same: you end up with nothing [and] the Jews and the parasites end up with the hard earned fruits of your labor. There is much more bad advice in the Sermon on the Mount. For a fuller examination read chapter 13 of “Nature's eternal religion” entitled The New Testament. Suffice it here to say that any reasonable and intelligent analysis of the bad poisonous advice that is interlarded and interlaced throughout the New Testament always leads to the same inevitable results. The end result is self-destruction and suicide. We might well ask: why would anyone be stupid enough to want to buy such a load of garbage? It is incredible that anybody would but we come back to those two mortal failings of the white man's mind namely, gullibility and superstition. And the 101 treacherous cunning Jew played on those weaknesses to the hilt Strange and incredible as it may seem, the Jews were successful in peddling the suicidal new religion to the Romans and their rapidly mongrelised and deteriorating offspring of imported slaves. History tells us that the Romans bought this garbage of Christianity from the Jews. In fact Emperor Constantine himself a treacherous criminal murdered his own wife and son among many others and was later canonized as one of the Saints of the Roman Catholic Church in the year 313 A.D. decreed that Christianity was now the official religion of the Roman Empire to the exclusion of all others.” Klassen, Ben. "Ben Klassen, The survival of the white race." The Internet Archive. 1975. http://www.archive.org/details/SurvivalOfTheWhiteRace_127 (accessed September 2011). 102 Appendix B: Notes on Methodology Gender ‘roles’ and the use of ‘traits’: Throughout this research, I make use of two rather contentious terms, namely ‘role’ and ‘traits’ when discussing issues of gendered behaviour. It is important to note that these words and their attendant concepts are being used consciously, rather than accidentally. Although contemporary gender theory has successfully destabilized the notion that there are such things as distinct gender roles, it is important to understand that both Identity and Creativity believers do not agree. Within Identity and Creativity, gender is understood in binary and essentialist terms, where saying that a man has a distinct role to play in the affairs of the family, is to say that such a role is based upon a perceived ‘essence’ of manhood. Due to the centrality of these beliefs to Identity and Creativity concepts of gender, it becomes important to make sure that their understanding of gender – particularly their emphasis on the use of ‘role’ language – is fairly and accurately represented. ‘Group Identities’ and ‘Gender Identities’: In Social Identity theory, subjects are understood to gain at least part of their concept of self through their ‘knowledge of their membership in a group (or groups) and that they place value and emotional significance on that group membership, with resulting perceptual and attitudinal biases. Individuals favor the in-group to which they belong, which they define against a relevant out-group.’186 In this framework, projects of self-identification rely – at least in part – upon concepts drawn from external frames of reference, such as political parties or ethnic groups. These groups feature as an element of their definitions another ‘out-group’ which is seen 186 Greene, Steven, “Understanding Party Identification: A Social Identity Approach”, Political Psychology, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Jun., 1999), Pg. 393 103 as standing in opposition to one’s own in-group. In short, at least a part of a person’s self- concept – their identity – is drawn from their membership to a social group. Examples abound of this phenomenon: from people who refer to themselves as ‘Democrat’ or ‘Liberal’ or ‘Catholic’, to people who identify themselves as ‘white’ or ‘racialist’. Their membership to these social categories help to define and communicate parts of a member’s self-concept, and can also serve to provide members with social status, such as a Christian conservative who might see themselves as different (and better) than a secular liberal. It is important to note here that these self-concepts are conditional and fluid in nature; which ‘facets’ of an individual’s self-concept is more relevant depends upon the social context. A person’s membership to a particular group – Catholics, for example – is less important when arguing mathematical principles among fellow mathematicians than it would be when discussing morality with an atheist philosopher. This framework is extremely useful in understanding why someone might wish to seek membership in a specific group – particularly if belonging grants one access to a clearly defined set of norms, prohibitions and values which can guide a person through life. Christian Identity, for example, has clearly defined rules for how a person ought to engage with the world around them: associate only with your own ‘kind’, look out for your own ‘kind’, pray to this god, in this fashion, and adhere to this set of moral principles. Avoid that ‘kind’ of person; reject those beliefs that trouble the ones endorsed by this group, see members of out-groups as inferior and unworthy of moral consideration. Christian Identity offers its adherents more than membership in an exclusive social group: it offers privilege, self-worth, and self-esteem. In studies of partisan social identity, researchers noted a positive correlation between partisanship and self- 104 esteem, which indicates a tangible pay-off to aligning oneself with one particular group over another. 187 What this means is that in groups such as Christian Identity, there exists both implicit and explicit social and personal payoffs to identifying with accepted group principles. Be a good Christian Identity believer for example, and the rest of the community will view you favourably, which can lead to a boost in self-esteem (perhaps even self-worth). This framework can be used to complement Connell’s theory of masculinity as well. Masculinity, in Connell’s work is both a personal and social project. It is an individual practice within a system of gender relations. 188 Connell’s work illustrates the complex series of interactions between different concepts and practices of masculinity, particularly how masculinities exist as deeply contested projects vying against each other in a hierarchy – or series of hierarchies – of dominance and subordination. Within this order, some expressions of masculinity are, at different times, more explicitly valorized than others, which would explain why men might choose to behave in one way rather than another. Since social identity theory holds that often particular social identities are framed in opposition to other competing social identities, and since it is also the case that different patterns of masculinity are often conceptualized in opposition to other patterns, it might be fruitful to consider what one theory may have to say about the other. It is clear that certain social movements, such as Christian Identity or Creativity, have explicitly defined concepts of ‘acceptable’ masculine behaviour. Identity masculinity is defined in large part by what it is not. Identity manhood is not ‘liberal’ or pacifist, nor is it shrewd or conciliatory. Identity manhood is strong, aggressive, honest, honourable, and plain-spoken; to 187 Ibid. Pg. 394 188 Connell, R.W. “Masculinities: Second Edition”, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 2005, Pg. 84 105 act otherwise is to transgress against the ‘accepted’ masculine pattern. If we input these patterns of gendered behaviour into the matrix of social identity theory, we find a great deal of congruence: Identity men derive at least part of their self-concept from knowledge of their membership in both Christian Identity, and Identity manhood, and they place a great deal of value and emotional significance on that membership. By appropriately fulfilling the group’s concept of masculinity, they are fulfilling their obligations to both the group and to God, which can then grant status and approval from the rest of the group. Identity men favour their own in- group of Identity men which they then define as existing in opposition to a relevant out-group, such as Jewish men, black men, or liberal men. Connell’s work can be seen as identifying how masculinities are formed and how they work in relation to each other (and to femininities), while social identity theory can assist in placing Connell’s masculinities into a broader tapestry of social group relations. Credibility and Validity In the context of this research project, validity can best be described as an attempt to ensure that the conclusion of the study is the best or closest approximation to the truth as is possible. One of the primary methods used to achieve this form of validity is triangulation which was discussed earlier in this study. Triangulation ensures, through the use of multiple lines of interlinking inquiry, that the conclusions of a study are of high quality and utility. 189 Validity in the social sciences is a contentious issue, as its close linkages with the concept of ‘truth’ places it at the center of an ongoing disagreement between positivist and post-positivist researchers and their more post-modern colleagues. In the context of the post-positivist, critical realist 189 Cresswell, John W., Miller, Dana L., “Determining Validity in Qualitative Inquiry”, Theory into Practice, Vol. 39, No. 3, Getting Good Qualitative Data to Improve Educational Practice (Summer, 2000), Pg. 126 106 framework, validity is best thought of as the project of ensuring that one’s research is as reflective of reality as possible.
Thesis/Dissertation
eng
Interdisciplinary Studies
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Attribution 3.0 Unported
Graduate
Soldiers of a pale god : masculinities and religiosity among members of the Christian Identity and Creativity movements
Text