10
Racial Politics

As is the case with other groups of religious believers, Christian Identity adherents vary greatly in the degree to which they have integrated their political behavior and their spiritual lives. There is no evidence that more than a minority have taken Identity beliefs to their logical political conclusions. Those who have, however, have often reached political judgments that skirt and at times cross the boundary separating legal from illegal conduct.

Forms of Political Action

Christian Identity doctrines have political corollaries, implied consequences for the structure and operations of political institutions. While not all Christian Identity authors and organizations have identified the same political implications, many have addressed issues of law, the distribution of power, and the rights of “non-Aryans.” These political orientations lie along a continuum of legally permissible behavior. At one end lie those behaviors that are unambiguously sanctioned by prevailing legal and political norms. At the other end are actions that are just as unambiguously prohibited. In the middle are activities whose acceptability is uncertain, which are in the penumbral area where behavior may be marginally acceptable but easily leads to unacceptable consequences. Thus, for example, participation in election campaigns is a clearly accepted form of political behavior, while seeking to overthrow the government by force just as clearly is not. But retreating to paramilitary communes has a more ambiguous status, for even if the members of such communities obey firearms regulations, their armed posture toward the larger society may well provoke violent confrontations with authority.

Christian Identity has given rise to at least six distinct forms of political action. Two lie clearly within the system’s norms, two outside them, and two in the penumbral area. The two clearly legitimate positions are campaigns to bring the American legal system into conformity with laws spelled out in the Bible and to garner support for political candidates whose positions are deemed compatible with Identity views. Two other activities lie in the gray area between the permissible and the prohibited. One is the organization of self-sufficient, “survivalist” communities whose members have minimal contacts with the larger society. To the extent that the members of such communities are armed and reject the legitimacy of the society they have fled, the potential for violent confrontation exists, for the likelihood that any group of people could wholly separate itself from the society around it is slight. At some point, that society will make claims on citizens, even if the latter wish only to be left alone. A second such problematic tactic is the development of local political groups as an expression of the radical right’s frequently expressed view that only local political institutions are legitimate. This, of course, implies that the state and national governments are illegitimate. While involvement in local government is surely no crime, it may lead to criminal activity if it carries with it an implied opposition to the requirements of state and federal law, such as the obligation to pay income tax, which many rightists oppose.

Finally, two Identity positions lie unambiguously outside the boundaries of acceptable political behavior. One consists of planning, organizing, and attempting to overthrow the federal government through campaigns of terrorism and guerrilla warfare. While rightists do not believe that insurgency alone will accomplish this end, some believe that it can serve as a catalyst for a popular uprising. A second proscribed form of behavior is territorial secession, widely advocated on the Identity right during the 1980s. Although there have been various schemes for dismembering the United States, all require that a large section of the country be broken off as an independent “Aryan nation.” Advocates of this quasi-nationalist option suggest that this will happen when “white supremacists” constitute a working majority in the putative homeland, but they fail to address the issue of why the federal government would permit territorial fragmentation, and what could be done, short of civil war, were the government to actively seek to prevent it. Let us now examine each in greater detail.

“Biblicizing” American Law

Identity’s goal of “biblicizing” American law—making it conform to the law presented in the Bible—must be distinguished from two related ideas. First, it is not the same as some concepts of natural law, according to which God’s revealed law provides a standard for measuring the adequacy of man-made statutes. This idea presumes the existence of two rule systems, one of divine and one of human origin, the latter subordinate to the former. When Christian Identity speaks of the Bible as an ultimate source of law, it looks to a future in which man-made law will not exist, having been displaced by the superior divine version. Second, Identity’s view is not the same as that of Protestant Fundamentalism, which accords to the Bible attributes of completeness, perfection, and inerrancy. While in principle Fundamentalists accord equal status to all segments of the biblical text as the inerrant word of God, they rarely urge the incorporation of detailed biblical rules of law into existing positive law. An important exception, however, is the “reconstructionist” or “theono-mist” position among some contemporary postmillennialists, which will be considered below. Their position, although strikingly similar to that of Christian Identity, was independently derived and represents the views of only a very small segment of Fundamentalism. Influential Identity writers regard the Bible as a sourcebook for rewriting positive law, which, particularly in the economic realm, must reflect biblical legislation in order to produce a righteous society.

This position received early attention from Howard Rand and William J. Cameron through the Anglo-Saxon Federation of America, and in Rand’s subsequent writings. Their demand for a wholesale restructuring of the American legal system gained momentum from the general dissatisfaction with American economic institutions during the Depression years, when the federation was most active. Indeed, Rand and Cameron advanced biblical ideas about law as a means for pulling the country out of its economic slump. In a more general way, however, ideas about biblical law have resonated in a distinctive manner within both British-Israelism and Christian Identity, for dependence upon biblical law may be shown to be a logical outcome of British-Israelism’s and Christian Identity’s central doctrine.

That doctrine is, of course, the belief that the biological descendants of Israel are peoples who live or whose forebears lived in the British Isles and/or parts of Western Europe. Traditionally, the church had portrayed itself as the “new Israel,” the nonbiological successor to the biological Israel as the carrier of God’s design in history. British-Israel, by insisting upon a biological criterion for identifying Israel, asserts a radical continuity between the biblical people and their putative contemporary descendants. Hence, it sees itself not as superseding biblical Israel but as continuing its mission, and therefore, biblical imperatives directed toward Israel are deemed to be directed toward the Anglo-Saxon-Celtic peoples as well, for they are Israel.’The temptation to interpret biblical laws metaphorically, or to view them as outmoded, is substantially neutralized, although for the most part British-Israel and Christian Identity regard the ritual ordinances as having been made unnecessary by Jesus’ mission. Nonritual rules, however, are regarded as in principle binding on “Israel” today as in the past. Hence, biblical law is taken to be rules specifically addressed by God to the Anglo-Saxon-Celtic peoples.

Howard Rand, a lawyer by training, first published his Digest of the Divine Law in 1943; it has been reprinted many times since. Reflecting the events of the Depression and the Second World War, Rand asserted that

Rand went no further in intimating who these individuals might be. However, his long-standing antipathy toward economic planning, Jews, and racial desegregation suggests that he had some liberal cabal in mind. By way of neutralizing the conspiracy, he offers divine legislation as “the only possible solution which will prevent ultimate economic chaos and political oblivion.”¹

The “divine law” Rand had in mind was not that handed to Moses at Mount Sinai. Regarding Moses as a mere codifier, Rand argued that divine law had existed “from the very beginning of human history.” Indeed, he traces its observance back to Job, “a few hundred years after the Deluge,” at the same time intimating that it was revealed even earlier as a way of preventing a repetition of the corruption that had provoked the Flood. Despite the alleged antiquity of these rules, heathen empires, beginning with Babylon, insisted on ignoring them, with predictably catastrophic consequences. Yet Rand regarded the punishments visited on law-breaking societies as edifying to the extent that they pushed humanity back toward a Bible-based legal system: “Our economic troubles and the difficulties and trials of the present are for the purpose of compelling a national awakening to this: our responsibility as His Kingdom People.” This view was shared by Rand’s associate in the Anglo-Saxon Federation, William J. Cameron, who insisted that biblical laws were intended “to be administered as the law of the land.”²

Rand’s and Cameron’s Christian Identity successors have continued to advance the same ideas. The Lord’s Covenant church, founded by the late Sheldon Emry, distributed a “concordance” of “the laws, statutes, and judgments of God.” It consists of an index of scriptural references from the New Testament as well as the Old under an elaborate series of headings and subheadings, ranging from “health laws” to “property laws.” Although the compilers do not seek the immediate implementation of the code, its study is enjoined, because “in the New Order Divine Law will become the law of the land.” An even stronger position was advanced by Pete Peters of the Church of LaPorte (Colorado), one of the largest and most active Identity churches. A project of Peters’s has been the “Remnant Resolves,” a statement of principles of governance for Identity believers. The Remnant Resolves Committee sought to register the statement with units of local government, a process that will be examined in a subsequent section of this chapter. For present purposes, however, what is more important is the concept of law articulated in the statement. God is “the Great Lawgiver.” His law is “binding … on all men, regardless of their political persuasion or personal beliefs.” As far as the function of government is concerned, “the role of Civil Authority is to administer God’s Law.” Since Identity Christians possess “unique access to the knowledge of God and His Truth, they have a responsibility to influence civil law to conform to God’s standards.”³

However, this professed fidelity to divine law carries the potential for violent confrontation with “civil authority.” Government, for example, may choose to ignore admonitions that it follow God’s law and may act contrary to it. At that point, it loses its legitimacy and, presumably, the claim of Christians to obey it: “Any man or group of men who seek to plunder under the cloak of law, or who seek to negate the Law of God, forfeit their authority, and becomes a despot and a tyrant. They are a ’terror to good works/ and must be exposed and resisted by whatever means Heaven has provided us.” “Resisted by whatever means Heaven has provided us” is both ambiguous and open-ended, suggesting anything from civil disobedience to armed uprising. The position in “Remnant Resolves” carries Rand’s and Cameron’s views forward to their logical conclusion, by stating that no secular authority can be wholly legitimate, that no legal system is valid unless it incorporates “God’s law,” and that believers have both the right and obligation to resist. Indeed, at a later point in the “Resolves,” the courts and prisons are condemned because they “are being used to hold many men and women without due process of law”—presumably, those who resisted authority. Belief in the Bible as the ultimate legislative authority may be variously regarded as a blueprint for the millennial age, a model to be gradually realized in mundane legal systems, or a source of claims overriding those of worldly government, with whatever political implications that implies.⁴

Although advocates of biblical law proclaim its encompassing character, they invariably concentrate upon its economic implications. This appears to stem from two main causes. First, much of the British-Israel literature that cast the longest shadow over Christian Identity was either published during the Great Depression or shortly thereafter. This was true not only of the work of Rand and Cameron but of David Davidson as well. By the Second World War, Davidson was inveighing against “the Money Power” with the fervor and seemingly the very language of late nineteenth-century American Populism. Second, as Richard Hofstadter has pointed out, economic panaceas have exerted a traditional fascination for the American right. The literature on gold, silver, paper currency, the Federal Reserve System, and related issues is vast, and much of it presumes the existence of a financial conspiracy to subvert American institutions. While the tradition of monetary cranks and economic plots long predates Christian Identity, its very prominence on the American right made it inevitable that its categories would fuse with Identity. Clearly, not all who believe in economic plots believe in Identity doctrines, but a very large proportion of Identity followers believe in economic plots, either because they believed in them before they found Identity or because Identity has facilitated their inclusion in broader right-wing networks.⁵

At the end of April 1933, William J. Cameron, in his address “The Economic Law of God,” argued that “Biblical economics” mandated individualism and at the same time produced social justice. It did so primarily through what Cameron saw as God-given principles of taxation and credit. Land, and by extension other forms of property, must not be taxed, nor must that part of the land’s produce that its owners consume. “Only the surplus over and above a livelihood was taxed, and that in slight degree.” As to credit, “Divine economics” requires that it be given without the payment of interest. “The creation of credit without the multiplication of debt is a masterpiece of economic legislation.” It is scarcely surprising that ideas such as these should have commended themselves to the desperate victims of a failing economy, nor is it surprising that Cameron, with his obsessive concern for Jewish financial plots, would have made an attack on usury central to his exposition of biblical economic law.⁶

These concepts reappeared in elaborated form in the subsequent writings of Howard Rand, who contrasted, as Wesley Swift was to do later, “the Israel standard” with “this Babylonian system.” Relying upon biblical laws concerning weights and measures, Rand concluded that God required a different monetary system, one in which there was “a fixed standard of value in relation to gold and silver.” The effect, he believed, would be price stability achieved by expansion in the money supply, the same prescription that had been offered in the late nineteenth century by the Populists. Like them, Rand condemned the demonetization of silver and what he regarded as excessive dependence upon gold. Nebuchadnezzar, he related, had convened “the first great economic conference of which we have any record,” and there instituted the gold standard as “the Babylonian system.” The answer must be new legislation that would allow silver along with gold to constitute money (for Rand, paper money was mere “currency”), assuring level prices.⁷

The same themes reappeared in exaggeratedly conspiratorial form among later rightists. The Federal Reserve “is the modern version of the 18th century ‘Illuminati’” still seeking “to get control of the monetary power of the major countries of Europe and thus enable the conspirators to create a One-World government.” Sheldon Emry, in his pamphlet Billions for the Bankers, advanced the same argument as Rand, urging expansion of the money supply in order to stabilize prices and tracing economic iniquities back to Babylon and its gold. Lest the reader miss the numerous cartoons of hook-nosed, bearded Jewish bankers, Emry took note of “the ‘almost hidden’ conspirators in politics, religion, education, entertainment, and the news media [who] are working for a Banker-owned United States in a Banker-owned world under a Banker-owned World Government.” Pete Peters’s “Remnant Resolves” similarly included a resolution for “return to a Biblical economic system” based on. “‘just weights and measures’” Instead, at present, America has been “enslaved” by an economic system that contradicts God’s law.⁸

Thus both British-Israelism and Christian Identity read the Bible as a mandate for a soft-money policy, excusing or prohibiting debt, and cheap money to place more purchasing power in the hands of individuals. As already noted, both approaches were part of a long-standing current of economic radicalism as likely to be couched in secular as in religious terms. A more volatile, but far less common, variety of economic protest lay in resistance to taxation. Here, too, Cameron and Rand laid the groundwork. Cameron’s “Divine system of taxation” rejected property taxes as “a form of piecemeal confiscation.” Instead, he read the Bible’s references to tithes and offerings as implying a tax only on the produce of the land beyond what was required for the owners’ subsistence. He also rejected any taxes imposed on goods during their passage from manufacturer to consumer, since that implied that some would be required to bear the tax burdens of others. Finally, and most curiously, a portion of biblically ordained taxes reverted back to the taxpayer as a fund to cover “vacation trips and attendance upon national and seasonal festivals by himself and family, and for the aid of those temporarily distressed.” Written at a point when the Depression was scarcely over, this concept of a divinely sanctioned tax rebate must have appeared particularly attractive.⁹

Howard Rand’s “Israel system of taxation” also claimed to be grounded on the biblical system of tithes. Rand’s views were similar to those of Cameron, although he drew some distinctive inferences from them. Thus, since property taxes were invalid, and taxes could legitimately be levied only upon “profitable increase,” no tax burden could properly fall upon the jobless or destitute, nor could a farm be seized for nonpayment. He noted that “tithe” as “one-tenth” needed qualification, so that it was clear the obligation was to pay one-tenth of earnings, although once that was uniformly done, Rand saw the tenth eventually increasing to a maximum of one-fifth, since the Bible referred to more than one tithe. The result would be a prosperity in which “all men will become capitalists.”¹⁰

Cameron and Rand advocated changes in tax policy but did not advocate resistance to existing tax policy, although they clearly regarded that policy as in violation of God’s law. Nonetheless, they were implicitly willing to acquiesce in the “Babylonian system” until increasing piety brought about the desired changes. In this sense, they continued to operate within the existing political and economic system, while advocating alterations to it. Indeed, Cameron, as a ranking Ford executive with many ties to the larger business community, had a vested interest in economic tranquility. However, others in Christian Identity who came after Cameron and Rand were often not content to leave the matter at a critique of existing tax laws. Thus, what some construed as working within the system could for others be a mandate for law violation.

This was certainly the case for Gordon Kahl, the North Dakota Identity farmer who killed two federal marshals and was subsequently himself killed in Arkansas by the FBI in 1983. Kahl ceased paying taxes in 1967, when he wrote the Internal Revenue Service that “he would no longer ‘pay tithes to the Synagogue of Satan’” In a statement Kahl wrote after fleeing the North Dakota murders, he concluded “that our nation has fallen into the hands of alien people…. These enemies of Christ have taken their Jewish Communist

Manifesto and incorporated it into the Statutory Laws of our country and thrown our Constitution and our Christian Common Law (which is nothing other than the Laws of God as set forth in the Scriptures) into the garbage can.” If Kahl was essentially a practitioner of Christian Identity tax resistance, its principal theoretician was William Potter Gale.¹¹

In addition to his activities as a Christian Identity preacher and writer, Gale was instrumental in organizing two related political organizations, the United States Christian Posse Association, one of several Posse Comitatus groups; and the Committee of the States, which sought to revive the governmental structure of the Articles of Confederation. Gale began with the proposition that the Articles of Confederation, which shaped the national government from 1781 until 1789, remained in effect even after the adoption of the Constitution. “These articles, being perpetual, remain in effect to this day. They’ve never been altered, amended nor repealed. They cannot be.” Further, in Gale’s mind, they were divine: “The source of the Articles of Confederation for a Perpetual Union is the Holy Bible…. It contains God’s laws for his people, for their nations and their governments…. The source is the Bible, otherwise known as the common law.” Gale’s ideas had a number of elements. First, they incorporated a political fundamentalism not unlike his religious fundamentalism, in the sense that he believed a complete, inerrant account of American government could be derived from the literal texts of charter documents. Second, since “Israel’VAmerica was God’s chosen people, God had revealed to it the political truths necessary for its governance. Third, this truth had been concealed or misrepresented by malevolent forces, so that a vast body of constitutional interpretation had obscured the eternal verities of the Articles of Confederation. These principles turned out to have considerable implications for the tax laws.¹²

Gale rejected the entire Internal Revenue Code as “a string of unconstitutional abuses which attempt to require a citizen’s consent to the repudiation and violation of his God-given and Constitutional rights.” Gale drew from this the ominous inference that all government officials who attempted to enforce the tax code should be “removed from office,” by the Posse Comitatus if necessary. Since the loose governmental system of the Articles of Confederation was deemed to still be in effect, Congress had overstepped its bounds in taxing: “The states are sovereign in this Republic…. By what authority do they bring any citizen in for willful failure to file a communist graduated income tax, when they, in fact, have no jurisdiction over that sovereign citizen, who is a citizen of a state and a county in a state.” Gale then turned his attention to reconstructing what he saw as the only valid governmental structure for the United States.¹³

Gale’s ideal polity revolved around two types of organizations, the Committee of the States and an enforcement body termed variously the Posse Comitatus and the Unorganized Militia. The committee was mentioned in the Articles of Confederation as a group appointed by Congress to manage the nation’s affairs when Congress was not in session. Gale, however, regarded it as a kind of superlegislature capable of overruling an errant Congress. Consequently, on July 4, 1984, largely at his instigation, a group of right-wing activists met at his California ranch to sign a “Compact,” subsequently filed with the county recorder, reestablishing “the Committee of States in Congress,” that is, themselves. They quickly concluded that the Congress in Washington, D.C., had overstepped its authority, particularly by taxation, and was in consequence “indicted.” For this purpose the Compact contained a provision called the Caveat: “Any interference or attempt to interfere with the functions and activities of this Committee of the States or its delegates by any person or agency of government shall result in the death penalty being imposed upon conviction by said Committee sitting as the Congress of the United States.” The enforcement of the penalties in theory devolved upon what Gale sometimes referred to as the Posse and sometimes as the Unorganized Militia (of which he was the chief of staff), consisting of the males in a community between fifteen and forty-five.¹⁴

Associates of Gale, many of whom had failed to file tax returns, began sending “indictments” and copies of the Caveat to those they regarded as having trespassed on local sovereignty. In October 1986, Gale and five associates were arrested and charged with interfering with the administration of the tax laws by mailing death threats to IRS employees and with threatening the life of a Nevada justice of the peace. On October 2, 1987, all were convicted on all counts. Gale was sentenced to a year and a day in jail with five years’ probation, fined five thousand dollars, and assessed four hundred dollars in charges and penalties. He died before the sentence could be carried out.¹⁵

Clearly, then, the desire to model the American legal system after the legal system supposed to have been authorized by God in the Bible in practice led to behaviors that ranged from advocacy and civil disobedience to attempts to disable the existing system through threats and violence. Examples of intimidation and threats of violence are exclusively found in Christian Identity, and appear never to have been present in British-Israelism itself. In this as in other cases, Christian Identity exhibits a far greater propensity for violence.

The theme of Bible-centered law cannot be left before examining one final element: the striking resemblance between the concept of Bible-centered law in British-Israelism and Christian Identity, on the one hand, and its counterpart among some contemporary evangelicals, on the other. These so-called “Reconstructionists” are part of the dominion theology movement that urges the reconstruction of society on Christian lines prior to the Second Coming. The Reconstructionists, including such figures as Rousas John Rushdoony, David Chilton, and Gary DeMar, consider biblical law binding and wish to see American law recast in biblical terms. There is, however, no evidence of any connection between the small but influential Reconstructionist movement and the British-Israel or Identity groups considered here. Indeed, there is no evidence that either is even aware of the other. Where British-Israelism drew legal inferences from its claim of Israelite ancestry, Reconstructionism reflects a quite different Calvinist tradition transmitted through Dutch Reformed scholars and institutions. Nonetheless, should Reconstructionism expand beyond its currently small coterie, it may create a climate of opinion from which similar Christian Identity doctrines will inadvertently benefit. Since Reconstructionist leaders are trained intellectuals (something Identity figures are certainly not), the rigor of their approach may confer a halo of respectability on all ideas of Bible-centered law, including Identity’s, despite the latter’ completely separate origins.¹⁶

Electoral Politics

Christian Identity has not directly entered the electoral arena. Nonetheless, three individuals with strong Identity connections—James Wickstrom, Tom Metzger, and David Duke—have done so. While Duke’s political career has been far more successful and widely reported, all three careers are worth examining because they partake of a process of opportunistic searching, seeking openings and interstices in the political system that may be exploited for larger ideological ends. They found, for example, that loose party organizations and the vagaries of the nominating process allowed individuals with no history of party participation to achieve surprisingly rapid advancement.

Of the three, James Wickstrom was the least successful. He ran for the U.S. Senate in Wisconsin in 1980 and lost but still gathered 16,000 votes; a run for the governorship two years later brought 7,700 votes. In 1974 or 1975 Tom Metzger was ordained as a minister of the New Christian Crusade church, an Identity church founded in 1971 by James K. Warner. As Reverend Tom Metzger, he directed the church’s “active arm,” the Crusaders, and by July 1976 was listed as a contributing editor of Christian Vanguard, the church periodical, where he contributed such articles as “Forming an Identity Sunday School.” By November 1977, however, about the time he left the church, he had been dropped from the masthead, and the following month, the church revoked all ordinations and required its clergy to seek new ordination certificates. That mandate appears to coincide with the period in which Metzger was seeking other organizational vehicles.¹⁷

At about the time Metzger joined the New Christian Crusade church, he had become acquainted with David Duke. He joined Duke’s Knights of the Ku Klux Klan about 1975, after he had met Duke at James Warner’s home. Metzger maintained simultaneous affiliations with Duke’s Klan and Warner’s New Christian Crusade church, but as his commitment to the Klan grew, his involvement in the church waned. In late 1979, he and Duke parted company, and Metzger founded a group of his own, the California Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. His falling out with Warner and the church thus occurred sometime between 1977 and 1979. Once he turned his attention exclusively to the Klan, he was no longer “Reverend” Metzger, and Identity themes disappeared from his rhetoric. Metzger’s Klan eventually metamorphosed into White American Resistance and then into his present organization, WAR, White Aryan Resistance.¹⁸

Shortly before Metzger broke with David Duke, he made his first foray into electoral politics. Metzger ran for San Diego County supervisor in 1978. He lost but still accumulated 11,000 votes. In June 1980, he sought the Democratic nomination for a congressional seat, which he won by polling 43,000 votes in the primary. Repudiated by the Democratic party, he lost in the general election. In 1982, Metzger entered the California state Democratic primary in search of a U.S. Senate nomination. While he secured only 2.8 percent of the vote, that nonetheless amounted to 75,593 votes at a time when Metzger’s racial views were scarcely a secret.¹⁹

David Duke’s political exploits, of course, received far greater attention, a result both of his greater success and his flair for media coverage. Unlike Metzger, Duke was never as clearly linked to Christian Identity. There is no evidence that he was ever a believer, but he maintained close ties with major Identity figures—ties he found it expedient to deny or minimize as his political ambitions grew. His relationship with James Warner was sufficiently close so that in 1975, Warner became director of information for Duke’s Klan. Warner provided new opportunities for Duke to build his reputation as a rising racist leader. When the New Christian Crusade church sponsored a “patriotic conference” in Los Angeles in 1975, the church’s (and Warner’s) newspaper hailed the appearance of the twenty-four-year-old Duke: “He already towers over everyone in the patriotic movement in his ability to speak, convince, debate, and inspire.” In 1980, when the post of national chaplain of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan fell vacant, Duke appointed an Identity preacher, Thorn Robb, later pastor of the Church of Jesus Christ and the Christian Identity Church, both in Harrison, Arkansas.²⁰

Duke’s political career fell into three segments: his activities in Louisiana in the late 1970s; his presidential candidacy in 1988; and his electoral races in Louisiana from 1988 to 1991. Duke ran for the Louisiana State Senate as a Democrat in 1975 and 1979. In the first race, he attracted 11,000 votes, one-third of the total. Four years later, he received almost as many votes, finishing second among four candidates, one of whom was the incumbent, Joseph Tiemann. While Tiemann could claim a two-to-one victory over Duke, Duke ran better against him than challengers had in the past.²¹

Duke ran as a minor party presidential candidate in 1988 on the Populist party ticket. The party had been organized in 1984 by Willis Carto, publisher of the Spotlight and head of the Liberty Lobby. As the best-funded anti-Semitic organizer in recent American history, Carto had the resources to try to create an umbrella organization for political efforts by both the Identity and non-Identity right. The 1984 Populist candidate, former Olympic athlete Bob Richards, rejected anti-Semitism, despite the prominence of anti-Semites in the party organization. When these associations became widely known, Richards “virtually quit campaigning.” Duke maintained his associations with Willis Carto. Indeed, later, when Duke ran as a successful candidate for the Louisiana legislature, the Populist party was a major source of campaign funds, and when he took office, Carto’s personal assistant became his legislative aide.²²

Four years later, Duke was himself the Populist party’s presidential candidate. His original running mate was the flamboyant former Green Beret officer Lieutenant Colonel James “Bo” Gritz, said to have been the model for Rambo. Although Gritz is a Mormon convert, he has had extensive Identity connections. In 1990, he spoke three times at an Identity “camp meeting” sponsored by Peter G. Peters’s Scriptures for America and attended by such well-known Identity figures as “Jack” Mohr and James K. Warner. In 1992, Gritz became the Populists’ presidential candidate. In an otherwise obscure campaign, Gritz secured national press coverage when he served as a go-between, mediating an armed standoff between law-enforcement officials and an Identity family on an Idaho mountaintop. In 1988, however, Gritz’s involvement with Duke turned out to be brief, for Gritz decided to withdraw in order to run (unsuccessfully) for a congressional seat. His place on the ticket was taken by an obscure New Mexican, Dr. Floyd Parker. The Duke-Parker ticket had difficulty securing a place on most state ballots and in fact appeared on only a dozen: Arkansas, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, and Wisconsin. They attracted write-in votes in seven others: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Missouri, and Oregon. Duke’s total national vote was 47,047, roughly .04 percent of the total. The state from which the largest number of votes came was, not surprisingly, Louisiana, where he drew 18,612. The next four, in descending order, were Arkansas (5,146), Kentucky (4,494), Mississippi (4,232), and Pennsylvania (3,444). By any standards, Duke’s vote was pathetically small.²³

Drawing what was perhaps the natural conclusion, that his political base, if any, lay in Louisiana, Duke devoted the rest of his energies to state office, and with some conspicuous success. In January 1989, he won the Republican nomination in a special primary election for a seat in the state House of Representatives from a district in economically depressed Jefferson Parish. He received 3,995 votes, one-third of the total, among seven candidates. His nearest rival managed only 19 percent of the vote. The general election a month later was far closer. Indeed, Duke won by only 234 votes out of 16,688. Narrow though it was, his victory as a major party candidate and his seating in the legislature was a major embarrassment to the Republican party and conferred the appearance of legitimacy on Duke.²⁴

While individuals associated with Christian Identity have generally fared poorly at the polls, the electoral process continues to be intermittently attractive to them. Duke’s ability not only to mobilize voters but to secure media attention suggests that persons with Identity connections can enter the political mainstream, as long as they avoid overtly religious appeals and soften the most controversial white-supremacist issue positions. Duke’s career also suggests that the major factor in electoral success is a candidate’s general attractiveness and articulateness rather than past political or religious affiliations.

On the other hand, an inevitable tension arises between the attractions of political success and Identity’s fundamentally millenarian character. If the world is believed to be entering the final phase of history, then normal politics becomes trivial and irrelevant. Like other millenarians, including the Fundamentalist-oriented New Christian Right, Identity adherents face a basic dilemma: to the extent that they continue to be committed to a belief in an imminent millennium, politics, with its compromises and its acceptance of the status quo, must be repudiated. On the other hand, if millennial change is delayed, the prospect of partial victories through the political process becomes more attractive, albeit at the price of watering down religious positions. Hence, should Christian Identity members move more decisively into the political arena, perhaps on Duke’s coattails, they can only do so by diluting the importance of their millenarian beliefs.

Survivalism

The political positions discussed thus far—reshaping law on a biblical basis and entering electoral politics—imply an active engagement with the political system through lobbying, campaigns, and other conventional modes of participation. As was pointed out at the beginning of the chapter, however, Identity figures have also sometimes opted for political orientations that lie in a gray area between permissible and impermissible behavior. Two will be discussed here—survivalism and an emphasis upon local sovereignty.

“Survivalism” has become an omnibus term for a life-style of physical withdrawal and self-sufficiency that has as its aim surviving some imagined future calamity. The survivalist writer Kurt Saxon, who claims to have coined the term in 1976, defines a survivalist as “one who anticipates the collapse of civilization and wants to save himself and his loved ones and bring something to the movement, if you would, which will contribute to the advancement of the next generation.” Survivalists include individuals with a broad array of beliefs. Some are secularists who believe themselves threatened by nuclear war, environmental pollution, or racial conflict. Some are religionists who adopt the so-called post-Tribulationist position, asserting that saved Christians will have to live through the Tribulation instead of being raptured off the earth for this period. Those in this camp, such as Jim McKeever, argue that Christians must be prepared to survive in a hostile and violent world until the Second Coming takes place. But there are also Christian Identity survivalists who anticipate imminent catastrophe and believe that as the self-identified remnant of Israel, they must withdraw from an increasingly dangerous world until such time as their enemies have been defeated. In its most strident form, this dread may be seen in William V. Fowler’s advice: “If you GET YOUR GUNS AND AMMUNITION NOW and prepare for war, you have nothing to lose.”²⁵

In theory, and often in practice, survivalists desire no quarrel with the existing political order. They wish only to be left alone in their rural enclaves, with their stockpiles of food, ammunition, medicine, and other essentials. They may despise their fellow citizens as Pollyannas, but they accept the existing governmental authorities as a fact of life. However, the act of radical withdrawal can engender a siege mentality, a sense that one is surrounded by enemies and that the battle is even now beginning. Thus survivalists are prey to the self-fulfilling prophecy, in the sense that their very preparations may lead them into actions that set them at odds with political authorities.

We can see the variations among Identity survivalists by examining three groups: those associated with Dan Gayman’s Church of Israel; John Harrell’s Christian-Patriots Defense League; and James Ellison’s Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord.

Although rejecting the violence of such groups as the Order (to be considered in the next chapter), Dan Gayman believes that disaster awaits America and that, as a result, “that small remnant of Germanic nordic peoples, the Israel of God,” must organize themselves “in self-sufficient groups upon the land and away from the cities. These people will maintain a defensive posture throughout the terror of the revolution.” Since the impending “red revolution financed by the anti-Christ money changers” will produce those traditional apocalyptic terrors, famine and pestilence, “families should settle in groups in isolated places across the country, principally west of the Mississippi River…. A return to the land is imperative! We must learn to become self sufficient. . . . Each group should provide for their own individual needs in addition to the group program.” This community-formation process will require acts of radical withdrawal but, in theory, can be accomplished without violence.²⁶

However, the boundary between detachment from government policies and potential conflict with the authorities is often a difficult line to mark out. Thus, the Church of Israel abjures the advocacy or use of violence and terror, but strongly supports the “Biblical right to keep and bear arms in defense of… lives and property.” They advocate strict racial segregation, separating the races “as much as is humanly possible to do … in a multiracial society.” They also oppose being “marked in any way by a government agency at any level of operation.” While not rejecting Social Security numbers as such, they reserve the right to reject them should they “become the universal number of identification.” Finally, they reject immunization on biblical grounds. Although it is not clear how willing church members would be to press these points against local authorities, the prohibitions are part of the church’s official Articles of Faith and therefore hold the potential for placing the church in confrontation with civil powers.²⁷

The church, however, has concentrated on increasing its self-sufficiency, likening itself to Noah, “build[ing] an Ark of Safety in this time of national and world travails.” The church seeks to free itself from dependence upon external institutions and upon the larger economy, advocating home birthing rather than hospital birthing, home schooling rather than public schooling, and self-employment. In addition, the church developed a two-hundred-acre organic farm. These enterprises are viewed as doubly beneficial, contributing not only to self-sufficiency but also reducing contact with institutions regarded as contaminating. Thus home birthing is considered safer, part of a larger Identity suspiciousness concerning conventional medicine. Home schooling will protect children “from sex education courses, inoculations, profanity, peer pressure, and one world anti-Christian information presented in the textbooks used in the public schools.” Organic farming will protect members from dangerous chemical fertilizers and pesticides.²⁸

Because the Church of Israel is a small, locally based organization, it has been able to implement projects that advance its survivalist program. However, survivalism has also been framed in broader terms, aimed at protecting a relatively large area in some future emergency. This approach was most conspicuously advanced by the Christian-Patriots Defense League and its founder, John Harrell. While Harrell himself is not known primarily as a Christian Identity spokesperson, his “minister of defense,” “Jack” Mohr, is a visible and prolific Identity writer. The CPDL and the affiliated Christian Conservative church see an America prey to “subversion, nuclear blackmail, nuclear attack, invasion, negotiated treaty, surrender, run-away inflation, famine, or a combination of any two or more.” John Harrell therefore proposed the creation of a secure area in the center of the country, “the Golden Triangle,” “that may be defended and remain free when the present governmental systems of Mexico, Canada, and the United States collapse or precipitate into an absolutely ruthless Communistic dictatorship.” While Harrell conceded that the size of the Triangle might have to be reduced if people are not available to fully defend it, he envisioned an area whose baseline would extend from Texas to northern Florida and whose sides would meet at the Canadian border. Thus the area to be defended would include virtually all of the South, most of the lower Midwest, and a significant part of the upper Midwest.²⁹

Unlike Dan Gayman’s modest efforts to detach his flock from the surrounding society, Harrell’s proposal implies a shadow system of authority over a large portion of the country, clearly beyond either the financial or legal capacities of a private organization. Notwithstanding problems of feasibility, Harrell made a number of proposals to begin implementation of the Golden Triangle plan. Those within its borders should stock up on food and other emergency supplies. They should condition themselves physically, mentally, and spiritually for the coming onslaught, and they should meet with like-minded individuals. To establish an infrastructure for the Triangle, Harrell claimed to have purchased, through an organization known as Outposts of America, rural sites to which the faithful could repair in time of emergency and which could be used for paramilitary and survival training until that time. He left no doubt concerning what he believed to be at stake: “Prepare now, begin this day— whether you be saint or sinner; the storm’s almost upon us. Believe it or not, We are in training for the Tribulation/ Time is exceedingly short. Remember, it wasn’t raining when Noah started building the Ark.” The retreatism he advocated goes beyond the creation of small, self-sufficient communities (although it is not incompatible with such efforts) to plan, however fragmentarily, the outlines of a rurally based, militarily potent, parallel structure of authority.³⁰

Harrell’s plans clearly had a far more substantial existence at the level of rhetoric than at the level of action, if only because of the number of people required to carry them out. A more modest but in the end more politically volatile approach was taken by James Ellison’s Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord (CSA), which combined the community-organization thrust represented by Gayman with Harrell’s paramilitary emphasis. CSA set up perhaps the most militarized of all Identity communal settlements, a place to which other rightists went for training in guerrilla warfare and related skills. Located in northern Arkansas, the community, called Zarephath-Horeb, was established by Ellison in 1976 on a 224-acre tract. Its life effectively ended in 1985, when it was raided by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. In a series of prosecutions, Ellison was convicted of the manufacture of automatic weapons and acts of bombing and arson. He received a twenty-year prison sentence, and the compound was eventually sold.³¹

The original CSA emphasis was upon developing the capacity to survive the Tribulation, because “those who endure to the end shall be saved.” They anticipated an imminent period in which “the planet earth is about to become the battleground between the forces of God, led by Jesus Christ, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, and the serpent, father of deceit, Satan and his seed, the satanic blood-line Jews and those who have been deceived or bought off.” However, the increasing involvement of CSA members and others living at Zarephath-Horeb in felonies, and the ensuing pressure by state and federal law enforcement agencies, led the group to move toward increasingly militant positions. By the late summer of 1984, it appeared to them that “it is inevitable that war is coming to the United States of America…. It is predestined.” The recommended response was to meet force with force: “Terror will succeed only until it is met with equal terror!.” By late fall, the mood was even more aggressive, and members were told “to attack the enemy at every opportunity.” The rhetoric increasingly suggested not merely actions to keep the community and its property intact, but the beginning of the apocalyptic battle itself. This was no longer a time for retreat from the larger society:

Before the two years were up, of course, the community had disbanded and its leader was in custody. In retrospect, the survivalist orientation and the expectation of an imminent Tribulation created a self-fulfilling prophecy. The Zarephath-Horeb population believed itself to be at war, behaved accordingly, and created in the authorities precisely the patterns of behavior the community had predicted, which were now used to justify additional acts of violence. While the story of Zarephath-Horeb was unusual because of its heavily militarized character, the path the community took suggests how unstable the retreatist/survivalist position can be.³²

Survivalists take steps to cut themselves off from the larger environment because they feel threatened by it. Often that sense of threat engenders nothing more than a desire for solitude and noninvolvement. However, the environment is sometimes characterized as dominated by active and expanding forces of evil, implying that each time separatists attempt to disengage, they will be assailed by these expanding forces of pollution and contamination, whether identified with Jews, blacks, or some other allegedly malevolent force. Those sensitized to see the world as the product of conspiracies easily interpret neutral or ambiguous data as validation of their fears, so that what others construe as innocent may strike them as proof of imminent danger. A world read according to conspiratorial and apocalyptic scenarios may thus lead to courses of action that are anything but retreatist, when a sense of survival and a millenarian view of history seem to demand active engagement with the putative forces of evil. When that occurs, the retreatist leaves his encampment and may violently assault whatever symbols of authority can be found.

Radical Localism

The movement’s emphasis upon self-sufficient communities prepared to survive a general calamity reflects a broader emphasis upon the primacy of local political units. This pervasive localism is the product of many elements: hostility toward the policies of the federal government, the inability to mobilize a mass following, and a highly romanticized vision of the past. Thus, many rightists, both Identity and non-Identity, picture a preindustrial past of free Aryan yeoman farmers, governing themselves under a common law that allegedly allowed no outside political intervention in these self-governing rural communities. This medieval dream was then followed, according to the usual scenario, by a long process of corruption in which political and economic centralization reduced the independence of local communities to the vanishing point; it is the aim of contemporary rightists to return to this earlier mythic time.³³

Identity leaders and groups have sought to assert local primacy in both symbolic and concrete ways. The former includes rhetorical statements of political, moral, and religious principles given the appearance of legality by being registered with county clerks. The latter has consisted of setting up local law-enforcement organizations deemed to be more legitimate than those of state and national governments. Both rest upon a naïve contractarianism that assumes politically and legally valid decisions may be taken by the mere fact of agreement, even if the agreement takes place outside constitutionally mandated channels.

On July 11, 1982, fifty-nine members of right-wing organizations met in northern Idaho to sign a document entitled the Nehemiah Township Charter and Common Law Contract. In certain respects it prefigured William Potter Gale’s 1984 Compact, but where the Compact attempted to resuscitate the Articles of Confederation, the Nehemiah Township Charter concentrated on the legal arrangements to be instituted in a local community of “Aryan Freemen.” Where Gale’s political fundamentalism was directed toward the text of the Articles, the charter adopted a legal fundamentalism in its attempt to reconstruct ancient Anglo-Saxon law. The document was replete with references to “socage,” “scutage,” and “wergild.” The signatories included figures well known in Identity circles, including Richard Girnt Butler, Thorn Arthur Robb, and Robert Miles. Randolph Duey, later a prominent member of the Order, and Carl Franklin, Jr., who eventually succeeded Butler as head of Aryan Nations, also signed. The charter drafters set a pattern repeated with the Compact and with the “Remnant Resolves” (considered below) by filing the document with the recorder of Kootenai County. This gave it the appearance of official recognition, while also connecting the charter with the one jurisdiction the Identity right has always acknowledged to be valid, the county.³⁴

The charter signers professed the desire to “covenant and combine ourselves together into a Civil Body Politic for our better ordering and preservation under and by GOD’S Law.” They did so in clear Identity fashion by invoking “our Father and God, YAHWEH, YAHSHUA, JESUS THE CHRIST, the only rightful originator of Law.” The polity envisioned was for “the preservation, protection and sustenance of our Aryan Race.” Only “white freem[e]n” could be members. Much of the document was devoted to describing the community’s legal system, which was to have sole jurisdiction over the conflicts among its members. While these provisions sometimes appeared to be no more than a private, alternative dispute-resolution mechanism, other articles made clear that the township’s courts would brook no opposition from existing units of government.³⁵

Any conflicts between the claims of Nehemiah Township and the county, state, and federal governments would have to be resolved in the township’s favor. Thus, the township would determine for itself whether and when it was “subject to ‘equity’ enforced by municipal governments or federal governments.” If these demands violated “GOD’S Law,” they would be rejected. The township would decide for itself whether the laws of any governmental unit would be enforced within its boundaries. “No member of this Association or Guilds shall be bound by State, Municipal, local, or Federal statute, ordinance, usage, or taxation except as he himself may will.” Lest this implied claim of sovereignty appear ambiguous, the charter gave the township the right to “conduct diplomacy for peace, [and] declare and wage war against the enemies of our Race and our God.”³⁶

Nehemiah Township consequently claimed for itself the prerogatives of a miniature state. Its instrumentalities for doing so were to be—as they would be later for William Potter Gale—the Posse Comitatus and the Militia. If the local sheriff agreed to command the Posse Comitatus for the purpose of enforcing God’s laws, he could function as its leader; if not, the Posse would choose its own officers. To the extent that the Posse and the Militia could be differentiated, the former “shall confine its activities to the Shire wherein it is chartered” (except in times of war or rebellion), while the Militia would be free to operate anywhere its services were required. Officials of other governments, particularly state and federal officials, were to be subject to trial in the township’s courts if their behavior warranted.³⁷

It is difficult to know how the charter was meant to be taken, whether merely as a solemn statement of ideal future political and legal arrangements or as the blueprint for an imminent challenge to authority. If the drafters intended to try to implement it in the immediate future, their timing was poor. Robert Mathews organized the Order in late September 1983, fourteen months after the charter was signed, and in the same area. As actual violence supplanted rhetorical violence, federal pressure on the Identity right in the Pacific Northwest increased dramatically, and greatly increased the risks of trying to implement a plan as confrontational as the Nehemiah Township Charter.

A similar but far less confrontational project was undertaken in the late 1980s by Pete Peters through the “Remnant Resolves,” an effort “to awaken and stimulate slumbering Christians to action as Christian soldiers.” The “Resolves” consisted of a series of positions on political, economic, legal, and moral issues which together constituted a “covenant … to establish the Lordship of the God of Israel.” Among the thirty-eight separate resolutions were statements asserting the submission of wives to husbands, the Christian character of America, the need for “scriptural” methods of taxation, opposition to abortion, “sodomy,” and interracial marriage, and opposition to Jews holding public office (“It is blasphemous to regard antichrists as ‘God‘s chosen people’ and allow them to rule over or hold public office in a Christian Nation”). In addition to the general aim of rousing Christians to action, the “Remnant Resolves” project sought to file the statement of principles “in every one of the 3,049 county courthouses in the nation…. This is an important action because it makes the Resolves a matter of public record—an official document, as it were. Furthermore, it does so at a level of government which is closest to the people.” The effort reflected Identity’s ambivalent attitude toward government, which is generally regarded as corrupt and controlled by a Jewish conspiracy but whose local manifestations continue to be idealized as a survival of a mythic Anglo-Saxon past. Nonetheless, even local governments might find themselves targeted if they fail to fulfill their duty. As one “Remnant Resolves” supporter put it, “When government officials ignore your Resolves, we must be ready with ‘Plan B’ which will serve notice that we intend to obtain our objectives UNLESS the Lord Himself stops us.”³⁸

“Plan B” was in fact already in existence in many areas in the form of the Posse Comitatus movement. Posse Comitatus groups were always fragmented, not only because they appear to have emerged at the same time at different sites but also because their ideology demanded fragmentation. “Posse Comitatus”—literally, the “power of the county”—technically refers to citizens summoned by a law-enforcement official in order to deal with lawbreak-ing. As interpreted by the founders of the Posse Comitatus movement, the Posse represents the only legitimate legal authority, since Posse Comitatus members reject any authority above the county level. Further, the ideology of Posse Comitatus holds that the adult males in a county may constitute themselves as a posse and enforce the law according to their lights.

Posse Comitatus organizations began to appear about 1969 and can claim two separate but almost simultaneous beginnings, one in Portland, Oregon, under Henry L. “Mike” Beach, and the other in southern California under William Potter Gale. While Posse Comitatus is not an Identity movement per se, Identity figures have been extremely prominent in it. The extent of Mike Beach’s Identity commitment is unclear. In the interwar period he had been a member of William Dudley Pelley’s Silver Shirts, and, as we have seen, Pelley was drawn to some elements of British-Israelism. During the 1970s, after Beach had established his Posse organization, the Citizen’s Law Enforcement and Research Committee, he reprinted material originally published in C. A. L. Totten’s Our Race series. William Potter Gale, of course, was one of the triumvirate of early Identity ministers in California, along with Bertrand Comparet and Wesley Swift. An Identity minister, James Wickstrom, was a highly visible Posse figure in Wisconsin, and Richard Girnt Butler led the Kootenai County, Idaho, Posse Comitatus from 1974 to 1976, when its members rebelled against what they considered his high-handed leadership.³⁹

Gale formed the United States Christian Posse Association as an offshoot of his Ministry of Christ church. Like other Posse supporters, Gale insisted that “the County Sheriff is the only legal law enforcement officer in the United States of America.” Like them, as well, Gale argued that the acts of higher governmental officials were often unconstitutional, null and void, particularly where taxation was involved, and that it was the duty of the sheriff and his Posse to oppose such state and federal actions. But Gale placed his distinctive stamp on the Posse by tying it directly to Identity theology. The United States “emerges as a direct result of the militant advance of the Kingdom of God, holding aloft a triumphant banner—the Name of Yhvh [sic] our Yashua, He whom we call Jesus the Christ.” Since the United States was, according to Gale, a Christian nation, its law-enforcement apparatus had to reflect its essentially religious character. Gale’s associate, Colonel Ben Cameron, expanded upon Gale’s ideas. According to Cameron, when the Bible required Israel to observe the Lord’s statutes and possess the land God had given to his people, Scripture was in fact referring to the legal obligations of Christians in “the NEW JERUSALEM, the United States of America.” “The People known today as Christians,” wrote Cameron, “are the People of the Bible and are literal descendants of the God of this nation, Jesus Christ.” In Cameron’s view “the PEOPLE are the Church,” and consequently, the people mobilized in the form of the Posse Comitatus is the church manifested as a governing body. In conjunction with the Compact and the Committee of States, which Gale oversaw in 1984, the Posse was part of a governmental scheme that was at once theocratic and radically decentralized. Constitutional arrangements, laws, and enforcement mechanisms were all traced directly to God. Thus, the Posse was doing the Lord’s work when it acted against evildoers. At the same time, by tying the Posse to his belief in the eternal, divine, and irrevocable character of the old Articles of Confederation, Gale conceived of a national government far different from the one that actually evolved. It would be more a shell than a government, with so many powers reserved to localities as to make them in fact and in name sovereignties accountable to no national institutions.⁴⁰

It was central to the Posse Comitatus movement, therefore, that every county organization was independent, a veritable law unto itself, subject only to its own understanding of what God required in a particular time and place. The danger lay in a group of heavily armed men acting as a vigilante band, for vigilantes too claimed to represent the true law as against its allegedly corrupt official representatives. Thus Gordon Kahl, the North Dakota farmer who killed two federal marshals in 1983, was an Identity believer who had organized a Posse chapter. Kahl also embraced radical localism in his efforts to set up Continental Township, a shadow government in the Medina, North Dakota, area that would preserve order when the expected political, economic, and social collapse occurred. The shootings occurred immediately after a meeting of the township’s supporters.⁴¹

Radical localism thus might take the essentially rhetorical form of such documents as the Nehemiah Township Charter and the “Remnant Resolves.” But it might also manifest itself as an armed force in potential opposition to the power of the state, as the Posse Comitatus chapters often did. Hence, Identity political strategies have had a way of slipping from permissible to impermissible spheres of conduct, and back again. Biblicizing American law might be advanced as no more than intellectual exercises or conventional lobbying, but by questioning the legitimacy of, for example, the state’s power to tax, might also create the rationale for illegal acts by others. Conversely, electoral politics might serve as an avenue of legitimation for those previously tainted by extremist associations, as was the case with David Duke. Retreatists in their survivalist enclaves might carry on their distinctive life-styles merely by restricting their contacts with nonbelievers, but they might also become so wedded to the belief that they constitute an encircled, besieged remnant that the use of armed force appears inevitable. In somewhat the same manner, the radical localists, insistent that only local government is legitimate, could by stages be drawn into violent confrontations with state and federal authorities.

Consequently, while all the political approaches discussed in this chapter can be utilized in legal, constitutionally protected ways (one could be a radical localist without being a member of Posse Comitatus), even those activities engaged in within the system have had a way of slipping into law violation. They have also sometimes fed more grandiose and manifestly illegal political designs—particularly plots to overthrow the federal government and proposals for outright territorial secession, ideas to which we turn in the following chapter.