Racial Protectionism and the Problem of Christianity in American White Nationalism

Blood Right: Racial Protectionism and the Problem of Christianity in American White Nationalism DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Damon T. Berry Graduate Program in Comparative Studies The Ohio State University 2014 Dissertation Committee: Professor Hugh B. Urban (advisor), Professor Michael Barkun, Professor Merrill Kaplan, Professor David G. Horn Copyright by Damon T. Berry 2014 Abstract As Betty Dobratz and others have noticed, Christian Identity, a racist and anti-Semitic form of Christian theology that argues that the European peoples are the true Israelites, is no longer the only religious influence in American white nationalism. New religious movements such as Creativity, Cosmotheism, racialized Norse paganism, or Odinism, racialized esotericism and Satanism, and even racist articulations of atheism have become more influential in the white nationalist milieu in the last thirty years. Since the 1970s an increasing number of those involved in white racist activism have rejected Christianity in favor of non-Christian, and often virulently anti-Christian, religious alternatives. I discuss this phenomenon and offer a theory to explain why this shift in religious outlook among American white nationalists has occurred by discussing the most influential persons within the movement. In an engagement with Bergson’s Two Sources of Morality and Religion and Appadurai’s Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger I argue that though the individual expressions differ, a growing number of white nationalists have come to see Christianity as a problem because they regard it as inhibitive of white racial survival because of its “alien,” Jewish origins, and because of its message, from their point of view, of universal love and brotherhood rather than exclusive love of one’s race. ii Dedication To my loving and supportive partner: Le prix d'Amour, c'est seulement Amour. And to our children: Anfangen ist leicht, beharren eine Kunst. iii Acknowledgments I am indebted to many people for this accomplishment, such as it is. To all the teachers I have had who have prepared me, encouraged me, and chastened me— thank you. To Dr. Barkun who was most gracious to agree to help me with this dissertation, thank you for your considerable input and wisdom, for allowing me to benefit from your experience. Your work continues to inspire. To Ruby Tapia, thank you for keeping me as your student through your move to Michigan and many changes in your life. Your kindness and good lessons will never be forgotten. To David Horn and Merrill Kaplan, thank you both for agreeing to help me so late in the process. Your lessons, both in the classroom and in our meetings, continue to influence me. I would also like to thank Dr. Leslie Moore who was asked by the graduate school to sit in on the defense process as a replacement, but who was such a good sport. And finally, thanks to Hugh Urban who advised me through my graduate student career. Special thanks to my teaching mentors, Professors Dan Reff, Tomas Kasulis, Brian Rotman, Nina Berman, and Allison Fish. I would also like to thank Professors Gene Holland, Ruby Tapia, again, Phillip Armstrong, and Barry Shank, who each served in department leadership while I was at OSU: thank you all for your guidance through the graduate student process. I owe a debt to Marge Lynd, Lori Wilson, Wen Tsai, and Liz Marsch for their support in all things administrative. To all my friends and colleagues in Comparative Studies and affiliated departments, thank you all so much for stimulating conversation, hard questions, controversy, support, drink, merriment, and shared sorrows. To my on- iv time coauthor Josh, thanks for always encouraging me to not give in to fear and doubt. To my future coauthor Mike, here’s to carving out some new ground. Finally, a word of gratitude to Dr. Neil Jacobs, a kind man who continues to be a mentor and friend. v Vita 2006................................................................B.A. Comparative Studies, Ohio State University 2009................................................................M.A. Comparative Studies, Ohio State University 2007 to present ..............................................Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of Comparative Studies, The Ohio State University Publications “Blood on the Tongue: Reading Abjection in Nationalist Blood Libels from Nazi Germany to Hamas and the British National Party.” Journal of Hate Studies. Vol. 10, No. (2012). 99-122. Fields of Study Major Field: Comparative Studies vi Table of Contents Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………ii Dedication………………………………………………………………………………...iii Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………..iv Vita………………………………………………………………………………………..v Introduction: Finding a Truly White Religion…………………………………………….1 Chapter 1: Revilo Oliver and the Emerging Racialist Critique of Christianity……..…...37 Chapter 2: William Pierce and the Cosmotheist Critique of Christianity………………..72 Chapter 3: Ben Klassen's Racial Holy War to Preserve the White Race…………..…...106 Chapter 4: Authentic Whiteness and the Protectionist Politics of Racialist Odinism in America…………………………………………………………………………………141 Chapter 5: Cultural Racism and the Racial Esoteric Critiques of Christianity…………177 Chapter 6: The North American New Right and the Question of Christianity…………215 Conclusion: Making Whiteness Strange and White Nationalism Familiar…………….249 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………272 vii Introduction: Finding a Truly White Religion This idea cuts straight across the old “national” divisions of the West. It is simply the soul, the mission, the ethical form, of a new Nation, a nation whose population and home territory are coterminous with those of the older “nation” formations of the West… It is a spiritual unity. –Francis Parker Yockey, Imperium1 Hitler demonstrated the truth of The Two Sources— Henri Bergson2 For historical reasons the phrase ‘Religious Right’ in America has mostly referred to those involved in politically conservative Christianity, especially in the wake of Reagan’s success in wooing evangelical support in the 1980 presidential election. Christianity and the political right in the United States have long shared space. The history of white racist religion in the U.S. in particular has also for some time followed the historical contours of the relationship between a white supremacist and Nativist political power structure informed by Protestant Christianity. The Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, for example, as Kelly Baker argues, sought to preserve Anglo-Protestant supremacy in the face of demographic and political changes of that decade.3 However, 1 Francis Parker Yockey. Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics (Costa Mesa, CA: Noontide Press, 1991), 610-611. 2 Jacques Chevalier, Entretiens avec Bergson (Paris: Librarie Plon, 1959), 215. 3 Kelly Baker, Gospel According to the Klan: The KKK’s Appeal to Protestant America, 1915-1930 (Lawrence, KS: University Of Kansas Press, 2011). 1 the assumption that racial mythologies informed by Christianity exclusively influence the racist right in America is one that can no longer be entertained. In her 2001 article “The Role of Religion in the Collective Identity of the White Racialist Movement,” Betty Dobratz demonstrated that Christian Identity is not the only theology of racism.1 She noticed that other religions, such as Odinism, a racialized Norse- inspired Paganism, and Creativity, a racialist new religious movement founded in the 1970s, were supplanting the former dominant position of Christian mythological tropes for an increasing number of American white nationalists. Some monographs on Odinism, racialist esoteric movements, and Creativity have been done by Matthias Gardell, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, and George Michael respectively in which they have discussed some aspects of this shift in religious preference. However, no one has to date done a study dedicated to describing and understanding why this shift in religious outlook among American white nationalists has taken place. By looking at statements about religion by some of the most important figures in American white nationalism, including William Pierce of National Alliance, author of The Turner Diaries, and Revilo Oliver, a co-founder of the John Birch Society and early articulator of white nationalism, I argue that a growing number of American white nationalists have come to regard Christianity as a problem because they view it as something that inhibits the exclusive preservation and expansion of the white race. This study is not however simply the investigation of the fringe figures in American society. It should rightly be regarded as a node of access to understand better 1 Betty Dobratz, “The Role of Religion in the Collective Identity of the White Racialist Movement.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. Vol. 40, No. 2 (Jun., 2001), 299. 2 the discourses that inform religiously and racially motivated hate and violence. I propose that through such a study we may gain a better understanding of the complicated and shifting religious terrain among the racist right in America discussed by Dobratz, but we also see how the internal logics that have produced the rejection of Christianity by white nationalists emerge from the same obligation to protect the white race that has and may yet still produce acts of racialized violence. Understanding well the dynamics of religious

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