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The sense of urgency is acute. At best, such communities hover on the fringes of legality. In
some cases, however, they are actively preparing terrorist campaigns and, ultimately,
secession from the US. A number of people have already proclaimed the ―Republic of Texas‖
as a separate nation, and maintain that lawful authority within the state is to be located
only within their compounds. (It should be pointed out that the Republic of Texas has also
attracted supporters from outside the tradition of the Christian Identity movement). Others
have argued that organizing insurgency now will spark a wider popular rebellion against
ZOG( Zionist Occupation Government). This fallacy is often repeated on the left in slightly
different forms.
Radical withdrawal in self-sustaining communities promotes a siege mentality. Enemies are
everywhere and the final battle for salvation has already begun. People become afraid to go
into the woods at night. We noted, earlier, how Identity theology leads in many cases to a
self-fulfilling prophecy. Survivalism is particularly prone to this outcome, promoting as it
does the very confrontation with authority from which its advocates have been theoretically
seeking to defend themselves. A number of such incidents have already occurred, such as
the Ruby Ridge siege in 1992. These events have entered the folklore of the far right as
further definitive proof of impending apocalypse.
The psychological effects are powerful, but contradictory. On the one hand, organizing
reduces uncertainty. Temporarily, the disempowered feel empowered. The presence of
others on country retreats, in public demonstrations, and in private confabs nourishes a
sense of absolute conviction. It promises redemption, triumph and public acclaim, when the
conspiracy is defeated. Certainty in the justice of The Cause increases. Yet such is the all-
embracing scope of the conspiracy that it can never be fully vanquished. Paranoia needs
enemies, as an infection needs diseased tissue. If one tentacle of the conspiracy is lopped
off another must be found immediately. The purpose of paranoia is paranoia. Thus, the fact
of struggling also increases uncertainty about the eventual outcome. The more one fights
against the conspiracy the more visible its agents become. The enemy is assumed to be
everywhere, aided and abetted by agents within the upper echelons of Government, the
major Churches, and even within other groups on the far right. The fevered imagination of
the right wing cultist is haunted by the specter of sell out and defeat. Thus, the struggle to
reduce uncertainty combined with its undying presence further inflames their sense of
righteousness, isolation, and peril, ensuring a constant recommitment to the certainties of
the struggle. Normal political action is quite compatible with question marks. For right wing
cultists, on the other hand, doubt is as welcome as daylight in a ghost story. Their rituals,
incantations, and monster stories are all designed to hold it at bay. Ideology is an important
part of this effort, and the main ideological wellspring seems to come from the Christian
Identity movement.
The Evolution of Christian Identity
Christian Identity is sometimes known as British Israelism, Israel identity, and Kingdom
message. Its origins lie in mid-19th century Britain. The most basic idea animating its
adherents is that white Christians are the true Israelites of the Old Testament and are God‘s
chosen people (see Bushart et al., 1998, for fuller discussion). In its modern, American
incarnation, Christian Identity argues that the US is the Promised Land spoken of in the
Bible. Identity supporters believe that ten lost tribes of Israel migrated to Europe, Great
Britain and eventually the USA. They argue that fundamental differences distinguish one
race from another and therefore that they should not co-mingle. Miscegenation is the
ultimate horror, threatening to dilute the pure bloodstock of the Aryan master race.
This prejudice is cast in Biblical mode. Non-whites were created with other animals before
Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden of Eden. Hence, they are not fully human. The
theory of different origins enables many believers to claim that they are not racists at all. In

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contradiction to the general thrust of their propaganda, they argue that the races are not
necessarily inferior or superior. They are just different, in the same way that cattle are
different to dogs or humans, and have different roles, rights, and entitlements. Tim Houser,
an Identity follower, has said:
Identity is not racist. Jews and blacks are what they are. God chose to ...
make blacks with the animals, we didn‘t. I have to believe God, and he
spelled it out clear in the Bible. I‘d give the shirt off my back to a black man
if he came to my door. But I can‘t make him the same as me (Cited by Dyer,
1998, p.94).
Nevertheless, it follows that American cities will go up in flames, as race war escalates, and
that Christian Identity followers will then reconstruct a new Israel in America (Zeskind,
1986 Katz &Popkin, 2000). Thus, the creation of in-groups versus out-groups is at the
very heart of Christian Identity theology. It is this dynamic, unleashed by the belief system,
which inherently points its proponents in the direction of cultic forms of organization.
Of course, the reluctance of many Identity followers to accept that their belief system is
racist, a term with powerfully negative connotations is a useful means of avoiding cognitive
dissonance. In essence, we are motivated to imagine that our feelings, attitudes, and
behavior are much more consistent with each other than they actually are (Cialdini, 2001).
When an apparent contradiction within this trinity arises we experience an unease that has
been described as dissonance (Festinger, 1957). For many supremacists an acceptance of
the term ―racist‖ would jar with their self-image as a righteous and God-fearing people,
creating dissonance. However, if they can avoid attaching racist labels to their belief system
it becomes possible to maintain two objectively contradictory positions at once --a racist
perspective, and a self-image as practicing Christians motivated by a love for humanity.
What Orwell memorably termed ―Doublethink‖ thrives precisely through such Olympian
displays of linguistic gymnastics. The disavowal of negative labels may also have the effect
of facilitating ever more extreme behaviors and attitudes, since the rejection of clear
linguistic categories ensures that nothing disturbs the person‘s positive self-image.
Within the Identity movement, Jews are regarded as having an even worse point of origin
than people of color. They are depicted as the direct biological offspring of the Devil. Either
the Devil or one of his underlings had sex with Eve in the Garden of Eden. Cain was the
progeny of this union, and Jews are viewed as his direct descendents. This means that they
have an unalterable capacity for evil. It is in their blood, and even conversion to Christianity
is not sufficient to change it. This strand of Identity theology has a long genealogy, but was
firmly in place by the early 1960s. Since then, it has become ever more dominant. As
Barkun (1994) has pointed out, it distinguishes the bigotry of Christian Identity from even
the most virulent plagues of anti-Semitism in previous periods of human history. In the
past, it was frequently argued that Jews were the products of interbreeding between people
and animals. Their continued existence would lead to the defilement and degradation of the
human race. Nevertheless, they were at least granted a common point of origin among the
species of this world. The distinctive contribution that Christian Identity makes to anti-
Semitic theory is viler and potentially more destructive than any of its racist precursors.
In the world of the far right, religion and politics are inseparably intertwined. For example, a
creedal statement produced by the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations and the tautologically challenged
Church of Jesus Christ Christian declares:
WE BELIEVE that there are literal children of Satan in the world today. These
children are the descendants of Cain, who was a result of Eve‘s original sin,
her physical seduction by Satan. We know that because of this sin, there is a
battle and a natural enmity between the children of Satan and the Children
of the Most High God ...