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March 19, 2009

When Supremacism Uses a Religious Disguise – Islamism On the March (Part Two of Two)

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Lessons Learned from Other Supremacist Threats

In Idaho, Richard Butler's Nazi Aryan Nations organization maintained a 40 acre compound, where 300 to 400 Nazis joined Butler in his quest for a new "Aryan nation." In a 1999 report, the FBI said the goal of Aryan Nations was to forcibly take five states – Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Washington and Montana – and form an Aryan homeland. Some of the Aryan Nations members broke into small groups that "carried out string of bank robberies, murders and counterfeiting activities."

In a twisted move designed to gain further credibility for the Nazi organization, Richard Butler also created a "religious" organization for the Nazis called the "Church of Jesus Christ Christian." This shows the danger in interpreting our religious freedoms as providing superior, rather than equal rights. While Adolf Hitler may not have thought of using "religious" organizations to infiltrate America with Nazi hatred, Nazi Richard Butler did. The "religious disguise" of a Nazi organization claiming religious protection for hatred, intolerance, and incitement demonstrates the folly of ignoring supremacist threats in "religious" disguises. The fact that the Nazi Aryan Nations had relatively small recruitment and success in its supremacist goals does not make it any less of a lesson on why a "religious" disguise must never be tolerated to mask supremacism – whether it is Nazi supremacism, racial supremacism, or Islamic supremacism.As the people of Idaho were initially slow to respond, they paid a price for allowing supremacist hate and intolerance to grow in Idaho.

Marshall Mend, a member of Idaho Human Relations Task Force, said "There are still people who will not come to Idaho because they think it's a haven for hatred." Tony Stewart, a political science professor from NorthIdahoCollege, warns "Never, never take the position that because there are few of them, they will not do harm." Over time, the people of Idaho responded to this Nazi supremacist threat. The Aryan Nation Nazis eventually made a mistake, and when their security guards attacked a woman and her son, a court awarded a $6.3 million judgment against the Aryan Nations, bankrupting them and costing them their 40 acre compound in Idaho. The lawyer leading the lawsuit against the Aryan Nations, Norman Gissel, stated "Other than our professions and our families, that's all we did for 15 to 20 years was fight the Nazis."Idaho is still recovering from the stigma of supremacism. The press later reported that "[t]he compound has been renamed PeacePark, Mend said, but northern Idaho's image has not recovered." "'It's difficult to quantify the amount of the impact,' said Jonathan Coe, president of the Coeur d'Alene Chamber of Commerce. 'But I can tell you for a fact, we lost business because of them. Some vacationers didn’t visit, businesses didn't locate here, and people chose not to retire here.’"

But the people of Idaho have a message for you on the seriousness of supremacism: "Please, please never remain silent. Please do not confine yourselves to a counter-rally, and please commit your life to the dignity of others."

Other racial supremacists have tried the same tactics to gain credibility with a religious "disguise," ranging from the white supremacist "Christian Identity" hate group, the white supremacist "World Church of the Creator" hate group, and absurdly even a Ku Klux Klan group that calls itself the "Church of the National Knights." But the Indiana-based "Church of the National Knights" group didn't have the people of Indiana laughing with a five acre property designed to promote Ku Klux Klan white supremacism and hatred. The LA Times reported that "[r]esidents there can hear the gunshots, the shouts and the screech of the public-address system the Klan has used at some ceremonies. When the corn is low, several can see the cross burnings from their backyards. Property values in this modest neighborhood are shot. 'Our homes aren't worth a plug nickel now,' one resident said bitterly."

Some may ask what relevance such lessons have to such transnational challenges as Islamic supremacism. The relevance is not in the relative "legitimacy" of a "religious" disguise for supremacist hatred and intolerance. Nor is it in the degree to which such supremacism is widely adopted, accepted, or tolerated. The relevance is in what supremacists have in common and what those of us responsible for equality and liberty have in common.

Despite their differences and their different "religious" disguises, supremacists have one thing in common -- hate. This hate is always the same hate – whether it is a Neo-Nazi "church" calling for hatred against Jews, whether it is a white supremacist "religious group" calling for hatred against blacks, whether it is the so-called "Westboro Baptist Church" desecrating the funerals of soldiers and calling for the death of homosexuals, whether it is the "Nation of Islam" group sadly tolerated and accepted by some traditional human rights groups while its leaders spread hate, intolerance, racial bigotry, and Islamic supremacism – or whether it is Islamic supremacists calling for jihad, calling Jews apes and Christians pigs, and oppressing women around the world.

Hate is hate. No matter what its color, no matter what its brand, and no matter what its "religious" disguise. Such hatred, intolerance, and incitement to violence deserve no "religious" disguise and "religious" protection. In every case, and every permutation, such hatred against equality and liberty is wrong – and is an attack on our inalienable human rights of equality and liberty.

There are plenty of important lessons to be learned in looking at these things that supremacists have in common, regardless of whether they use a "religious" disguise or not to justify hate and intolerance. The Nation of Islam's Louis Farrakhan has been proud of being compared to Adolf Hitler, whom he calls "a great man." The Nazi Aryan Nation's later leader August Kreis has praised al Qaeda and has said that "I want to instill the same jihadic feeling in our peoples' heart, in the Aryan race." The Nazi Aryan Nations gladly promoted the hate-mongering rants of ex-Nazi David Myatt, now Jihadist Abdul-Aziz ibn Myatt. And the list of the common campaigns of hate among supremacists goes on and on and on.

Such campaigns of hate and division are why it is so essential to recognize the common characteristics and goals of supremacism. This is why it is so essential to acknowledge them as "supremacist." This is why it is vital that we do not allow "religious" characterizations to protect those who seek to promote hate, intolerance, and violence. While there are many who would employ euphemisms in describing supremacist organizations – such as calling racial supremacists as "nationalists," or calling Islamic supremacists as "Islamists" (as it has currently been re-defined by Washington policy wonks, not as previously defined by the 9/11 Commission) – such euphemisms simply shield supremacist ideologies from the bright light of the truth of equality and liberty.

This challenge is further compounded by those who believe that supremacism that claims a "religious" origin is automatically exempted from scrutiny, criticism, and challenge. If we accept the inalienable human rights of equality and liberty within the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the American Declaration of Independence, we must reject such false protections from those would turn our own freedom of conscience against us by claiming "religious" supremacism as an untouchable platform to promote hatred and the destruction of equality, liberty, and freedom itself. For Americans, we fiercely defend freedom of conscience and religion. But we also recognize that all citizens share both equal rights and equal responsibilities. The Free Exercise Clause of the American Constitution ensures that those claiming exercise of their religious beliefs are not singled out for discriminatory treatment – not that they have any superior rights or lesser responsibilities to the law from other citizens. We believe in equality for all.

For those religious individuals who worship a God of love, there should be no fear in challenging those who would leverage so-called "religious" beliefs as a safe haven and harbor for hate.

A New Hope - Our Common Bond of Humanity

Consistency in challenging supremacist organizations truly matters. Some traditional human rights communities have not grasped that challenging supremacist groups is the same problem -- whether they claim to be empowered to spread hatred, intolerance, and violence based on a "religious" claim -- or not. That must change. We must recognize the problem of supremacism itself as a monolithic threat to all of humanity's equality and liberty. We must defy those who would give supremacism any other name and allow it to fester in the darkness of public inattention.

What supremacists believe is that they can endless draw upon the weakest parts of humanity, on hatred, on differences, and on divisions. Supremacists are dependent on our inhumanity to others. They believe that the truths that we hold self-evident that all men and women are created equal is a lie. They count on you questioning it too. They depend on our unwillingness to seek out the true essence of the goodness and decency in humanity. They live to exploit the divisions among us. They count on our FEAR. They hope to manipulate our fear over our hope in human rights. They seek to leverage our fear to further divide us away from each other as human beings and to get us to deny our shared human rights in equality and liberty. They play upon on our fear to deny that those of us who are different from each other may not deserve the same human rights.

But the fears that we have as individuals are smaller than the hope that we can offer one another by our shared consensus in the inalienable human rights of equality and liberty. When we say the words that "all men and women are created equal," we tap into a force greater than ourselves as individuals by recognizing, just as supremacism has a common bond in hate, humanity has a common bond in the hope of equality and liberty for all.

Those responsible for equality and liberty have no choice but to oppose supremacism – to do otherwise we be to deny who we are as human beings and our common bond and destiny together.

This leads to the fundamental decision that all free people must make – you can't hold two different standards on equality and liberty. You either support these inalienable human rights or not. In the same way, you can't have two different standards in defying supremacists threatening equality and liberty – you are against them or you're not.

There are no "but not in this case" clauses in the American Declaration of Independence's support of the inalienable human rights of equality and liberty. There are no "exception rules" in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Everyone deserves equal rights, not just those who are like us, and not just people who we like. Everyone means everyone. The inalienable human rights of equality and liberty are for all of humanity. It is "ideological" to believe in the inalienable human rights of equality and liberty. It is the ideology of what humanity is all about.

The survival of our common bond of hope means setting aside our differences to stand united against the existential threat of supremacism. Supremacists of every kind share their common goal of spreading hatred and exploiting fear to divide and conquer all of humanity. The shared goal of supremacists is to enslave the human spirit and to crush the human rights of equality and liberty. Our responsibility for equality and liberty must be to defy supremacists and to deny them a safe haven or protection by using a "religious" disguise to spread hate and violence throughout society.

We have a new hope. That hope lies in a humanity that can reach out to each other and find the good and decent part within each other. That hope lies in our ability to remember the importance of respect and decency towards one another. That hope lies in humanity's ability to reject blind hate and deny those who would manipulate us with fear to ignore the threat of supremacism.

But most of all, that hope lies in our common bond within a humanity that defends the inalienable human rights of equality and liberty. It is this new hope that will demand that we...

Fear No Evil. Because We Are Not Afraid.

[Postscript – see also Sources documents for additional reading and background information.]

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Jeffrey Imm, formerly of the FBI, has his own counterterrorism research web site at UnitedStatesAction.com and is a part of the Anti-Jihad League of America. He also heads Responsible for Equality And Liberty.

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When Supremacism Uses a Religious Disguise – Islamism On the March (Part Two of Two)