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J. Michael Luttig served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1991 to 2006. Prior to his time on the bench, Luttig was assistant counsel to the president under Ronald Reagan and clerked for then-judge Antonin Scalia and Supreme Court Justice Warren Burger. He also served as assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice and as counselor to the attorney general under President George H. W. Bush. The following interview was conducted by Mike Wiser for FRONTLINE on March 31, 2025. It has been annotated and edited for accuracy and clarity as part of an editorial and legal review. See a more complete description of our process here: https://to.pbs.org/4lVZKzA This interview is being published as part of FRONTLINE’s Transparency Project, an effort to open up the source material behind our documentaries. Explore the annotated transcript of this interview, and others, on the FRONTLINE website: https://to.pbs.org/44V0ZrL To access the annotated transcript here on YouTube, scroll below and click “Show Transcript.” Explore a collection of more interviews from “Trump’s Power & The Rule of Law” here on YouTube via this playlist: https://bit.ly/40ih9tV
Amendment I Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Author's Note: I am biased. I’ve been a journalist my entire adult life. I believe in my profession’s fundamental mission: to inform the public and hold the powerful to account. And based on my experience, I believe that most journalists—though we are by no means immune from mistakes—try to live up to that mission. Yet I recognize that not everyone agrees with me, and I have done my best in this book to understand and fairly portray these opposing perspectives. This book is based on a variety of sources. I interviewed more than two hundred people, including lawyers, judges, journalists, lawmakers, activists, and those whose reputations were harmed by what they perceived as false or unfair articles, books, and other published statements. I reviewed thousands of pages of court documents and obtained hundreds of pages of other materials through public records requests. And I relied on the previous work of countless journalists, academics, and others in newspapers, magazines, websites, books, podcasts, and elsewhere. Except in cases of people who spoke to me on a not-for-attribution basis, I have detailed my sources at the end of the book. I tried to talk to everyone who is featured in these pages. A few, told that I was working on a book about legal threats and intimidation, threatened to sue me, as I describe in more detail in the Epilogue. But most agreed to speak openly about their views and experiences. I am grateful for their help.
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I'm of an age that I remember news, books, and other media programs featuring "The Investigative Journalist" who breaks big stories of corruptions... I am thankful that there are many, like David Enrich, who have become "bias" in their work to ensure the creation of books that have been thoroughly researched, discussed and documented are still made available, even though banning of books has increased under this administration. I highly recommend this very readable book on, what I consider to be, the one most significant change that has evolved under the republican party and DJT--the loss of Truth in normal, as well as major political issues facing our world...
I hope you realize that for the last week or so, there has been little on the news except the release of the case against Epstein, a known child trafficker and rapist. It is NOT the issue per se, that has made this so significant. Rather it reveals the lies that Trump and republicans used to gain voters, but then are now changing their commitment because it has been found that DJT, Epstein's personal friend for at least 10 years, is included in that the case files multiple times... More is coming out daily!
Significance is that on every single subject, it has been Trump's process to lie during political campaigns, and then do nothing related to what he promised. So why is this any different. I would like to think that there are some of the Christian faith who were concerned about the rape of innocent children... But, it also could be that after what we saw Musk and Trump do to steal from the average citizens to gain money they would then be able to control, it has been revealed just how much corruption of the entire group that are republican and now in Congress or the administration, and that millions are becoming "woke" and protesting all over what they see is the unprecedented amount of corruption of our democracy...
It is also significant that a bad budget bill has been passed which, for just one major loss, will stop medicaid coverage for millions of Americans... Where are those who are not just as upset about this issue--or really should be even more concerned--that this bill passed so quickly was because of the total control over government due to how this was all arranged and publicly stated via Project 2025, and nobody took the time...to...care? I may not have read the entire book, but I do have a copy and I am fully aware that the actual individuals forcing all of this are those who have the financial power to ensure what they want is key to all goverrnmental actions at this time. Even the Supreme Court has been corrupted! And we who pay attention know this and ask... How is this happening that America has reached a point where corrupt politicians and their rich backers cannot be stopped?!
I may not be able to remember specific names, but I do have a great memory when I see how corruption has been brought forth and used against America. Consider, for instance, that the new president gave pardons to all those who had been convicted of crimes on January 6th when our Capitol was attacked. We all saw it! We've heard testimonies from those within the Capitol that day... We saw the rope hanging for Mike Pence because he finally chose to go against Trump... And, now, it is my opinion, that the ICE officers who wear masks are those who have been pardoned from January 6th--now are being paid with our tax dollars, and still beating up on people, hiding their actions, but following their cult leaders instructions. If I'm wrong, then give me a better reason to explain that, while in the heat of summer, men would willingly wear extreme face coverage while they arrest people who, have been proven, to have NO criminal records!
I am very aware that 3 women on the Supreme Court, has consistently voted against actions that are being guided by political power! I am also aware that Judge Thomas had been discovered to have NOT reported on the fact that he has accepted millions of dollars from rich men... This is and has been confirmed to be illegal by Senate members, but nothing has been done... All of the rest are "designated" as Conservative, or Right members and vote accordingly. When did Lady Justice remove her mask used to show blindness to political designation as key to studying the law and acting on best legal actions???
I think it is also important to point out that there is only one other woman on the bench now, who was appointed by Trump... She voted against Trump one time and, suddenly, she was ignored by Trump at public meetings... and we all saw her expression of... fear? disgust? or a realization to tow the republican line...?
Folks, the reason I use multiple videos is to ensure that I provide documentation about the issues/books that are being discussed (not reviewed). The last video, for instance, was not very informative, except for the cover! How did Donald Trump suddenly get in the middle of just about everthing that is happening in the world...while including a bright light encircles him... Does that mean, like in my opinion, that he has been pinpointed as the criminal he actually is?
There is so much regurgitation of the same issues, in my opinion on too many stations... While at the same time, are you aware that Trump's case regarding the New York Times of Wall Street Journal Epstein articles, also involved Murdock who also runs Channel 53, which was once a fully Trump supporter? Has something changed, or is this just another false conspiracy dual to take up time so that what Project 2025 is actually doing in the United States, such as the worst budget bill in history, except for the rich, is practically ignored?
The Truth is Indeed Being Murdered! I hope you will feel free enough to pinpoint some specifics in comments here or requests to cover a specific issue of concern to you, so that we can cover the really important issues that affect the average American! ... Because, by the way, for those who were raped by Epstein and his partners in crime, it is the victims who are now being forced to remember what happened to them each time they see Epstein's face or news about there being NO news as announced by the president...
"Be Joyful!" The implication that all this hate and violence must be done joyfully as to the Lord...NOT...
Imagine my surprise when, in the next portion of this book, MONEY, that I am reading, was an actual overview of many of those individuals, families, or organizations who actually provide what we now call "dark money." Meaning that "nobody" (i.e., those of us who don't have the technical skills) really can trace where the actual money that is funding political activities is coming from. Except of course from E. Musk who publicly advertises to give away money to buy elections or spending his money loudly and often in other ways... while having no problem firing and taking away money from we who actually need our income to daily live our lives.
Given the number of footnotes by this author, readers will discover that this book has been more than well researched! Can you imagine "following the money" back to the sources of the millions/billions of dollars that seem to be supplied routinely, especially to the MAGA side of our government? For me, losing a year of my life trying to ascertain how/when/where millions of dollars in capital money was spent and who got that money, I can tell you, it is mind-boggling and a major work effort. Thank you Katherine Stewart for this extraordinarily well written book and the effort it has to have taken to search out needed information and then to share it!
Because I was, and I believe also many readers. will be shocked to learn of the "whys" behind wanting to give money away to politics. They can be narrowed down to, in my opinion, wanting recognition, wanting power, and being lied into thinking you are doing something good...for whatever purpose you've accepted...
First, at the end of Part 1, I asked you to think about which group you might fit into... I realized that in reading that might have been a rhetorical question rather than a request... So, let me be clear, if you are NOT part of or support this plan (formally called Project 2025: Mandate for Leadership--and I just did a search! You can download a pdf copy for free if you care to do so), you are not part of the dark money investigation that was undertaken... You can be sure that I'll be referring to passages of Project 2025 in the future! Have you heard the word Mandate thrown around by Trump?! Well this is the mandate he is referring to! NONE of what is being done was the brainchild of the president of the United States... think about that! Further, as we have been finding out, NONE of what is being done by this administration is as reported are priorities for US--the Citizens of This Country! Instead it is a plan that was created by Trump supporters and other far right conservatives who...are...funders and supporters of what is happening right now!
Wallbuilders president (one of the formal groups) Tim Barton creates and provides "bogus" Christian National history to conservatives audiences. He quickly throws out facts and stats so as to imply that this is and has been a legitimate religion which just happens to be made up of MAGA supporters and all in support of Project 2025, including Funders. The intent of Barton is to make the audience believe what he is saying is true since he knows it so well and speaks fluently... Barton blames the decision by the Supreme Court for banning prayer in schools... Now if I remember correctly, at first prayer was not banned, it went to a silent moment of prayer, which would allow those of different faiths to act based upon their personal beliefs. In any event, I was there when the separation of church and state came into existence... After I thought about it, I realized that, while religion might be a part thought about, it was primarily to allow stores to remain open on Sundays (the Christian holy day) so that the millions of people who worked swing shifts could buy groceries, etc., on their days off...You know, those working in hospitals, cleaning staff who were required to work when the business was not open...school staffs at all levels... Many Christians are working in such jobs. And was it not Jesus who said to us put away the rules and simply love your neighbor? Something that never really happened since the Old Testament is still considered by many the Word of God, even though it has been translated from one language to another, edited by individuals who proofread it for content--you get the idea, especially since there have been many inconsistencies already discovered, questioned, and, simply, ignored by some...
The following might not be the song referenced, but it seemed appropriate since Christianity is being used by thousands of different groups who are calling themselves Christian Nationalists with goals of hate, action against non-white or minority people, and...violence...
Issue 1. This is what they have done,” Robert Busch writes to me with weary outrage as he forwards a photograph of a group of nuns, one of them wearing a STOP THE STEAL button, cheerfully joining President Trump’s rally outside the White House on the morning of January 6, 2021.1 Busch, who lives in Redwood City, California, recently formed a study group on economic justice within the Thomas Merton Center, which is affiliated with the St. Thomas Aquinas Parish in Palo Alto.2 Like most of his fellow study group members, he calls himself a Francis Catholic, in deference to Pope Francis. You could also call him a Nuns on the Bus Catholic, after the progressive Catholic group, which he supports, that advocates for a range of social justice issues. He is as earnest in person as he is passionate in his emails. He usually has at the tip of his tongue or typewriter a citation from any number of writings in the long tradition of Catholic social teachings. He remains personally opposed to abortion but rejects its political use as a wedge issue. Robert Busch reached out to me online just as I was returning from the March for Life, an annual gathering of antiabortion activists and their supporters that takes place every year on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. While the march draws in a religiously diverse crowd, it is heavily Catholic and includes hundreds of busloads of kids from Catholic schools, for many of whom attendance is all but mandatory. But many other Catholics are morally opposed to the politicization of the abortion issue and are horrified by the takeover of the Supreme Court. Busch and members of his study group are among them. They were determined not just to go on record with their opposition but also to do something to get their message and their vision of Catholicism out. Robert Busch works as an administrator in a development office at Stanford University. Edna Jamati, one more of the dozen-odd members of the Thomas Merton study group, is a retired nurse. Another member, Vicky Sullivan, is a grandmother who attends mass several times a week. Shannon Griscom is a retired teacher. Their group represents a cross section of the Catholic laity in their community, says Busch, which is to say that they are mostly middle-class, if rather whiter, older, and more educated than the median resident...
Editorial note: After the following few lines, I have reached the publishers limit on use within copyright restrictions. I will henceforth depend upon my own writing skills to discuss this book. I hope you will continue with me...and if you'd like any clarifications on what I share, please feel free to leave questions as comments and I will try to clarify sufficiently for you to understand my thoughts and response to the content...
I wanted to leave these few lines because this excerpt is from Chapter 2 of the book. As I said earlier, I was shocked with what I was reading... this was the most shocking for me... I'll explain after the following short excerpt...
Just a few miles up the road, in the bucolic wine country of Napa, is one of the luxury hotels managed by a company whose founder and CEO is a man named Timothy Busch—no relation to Robert. Timothy Busch is also a Californian...
Some of us--maybe many of us--who are protestants have from time to time wondered why there are so many different churched under the umbrella of protestants... Through reading a variety of books, one of which is The Book of Thomas with commentary, which I'll talk about soon... is that I'm discovering what is really meant when Jesus spoke...
But, prior to this time period, other than the ongoing sexual issues that have long been hidden and then began to be addressed within the Catholic Church, I had never thought that the Catholic Church could be "splintered..." Until Project 2025 and Trump and the Funders Group behind dark money... It seems that, now, in that church there is a wide division between those who support Pope Francis' teachings...and all the rest, who are now in the majority... If you want to know more, I urge you to consider buying the book--this is just one shocking issue that I discovered. Very specifically, my reading of this book states that there is now a divide of leadership within the Catholic Church who have chosen wealth and power over the program activities of Pope Francis, who, as you may know, had a recent major hospital stay, but is now back... Thank God...
Issue 2 The Secretary of Education in the former Trump Administration is from an extremely wealthy family and their source of wealth, at least from a professional job standpoint, is running private schools... Here's Project 2025 plans...
Issue 3 This is actually a part, but in my opinion, a very important part of what is happening related to public education. MAGA churches, groups, formerly created "topical" groups are encouraging members to not only run for school boards, but to cause friction and dissent at the meetings by members or just by attending meetings. There are many videos available at YouTube showing specific issues, such as bullying, prejudice against minority students of all kinds, as well as working to change control of curriculum and books to other than professional teachers, librarians and more... Velshi on MSNBC has been covering the banned books issue from the start and is a good place to learn about specific books, sometimes banned purely on the complaint of one or two individuals??? A great example was given on how banning can occur. The writer was visiting a meeting where one woman talked about a book in her local school. She referred to The Diary of Anne Frank. Stewart was surprised and sat thinking when the woman went on to say, I like the book, but it was the homosexuality inclusion that I could not tolerate... Ok, I'm not going to explain the rest of that conversation. But if any of you know the story about the young Jewish girl who had to hide from the Germans during WWII, and you can't remember anything to do with homosexuality...there's a reason to call these people...FAR Right!
I decided to include just one video where a young girl died because of what was happening in schools!
You are correct that the above video is not necessarily related to this book and actions now underway to destroy public education. However, doesn't that make it even worse? Because, NOW, we have an organized announced movement toward DEI in all manner of issues... including creating schools that will not be available for those with low income.
Issue 4 - Quickly, I want to highlight a son of immigrants who finished university and, during the depression, went into business selling electronics. When personal computers started to surge in sales, there was a concurrent almost insatiable demand for power strips, ultimately resulting in his being able to sell his main company for $1.65 billion dollars. His personal political view was “basic libertarianism.” But then this man was, shall we say, identified as a potential funder, with a capital F... An "adviser" took him under his wing, and then the now multi-billionaire made a $1,6B contribution to a trust controlled by Leonard Leo, the right-wing moneyman best known for stacking the Supreme Court via the Federalist Society. That is, he's the coordinator of all groups related to imposing a Christian Nationalist and right-wing agenda into existence (now happening under the republican administration.
The remaining part of the Money chapters very specifically provides names of donors of dark money, sometimes the why they donate, and people like Leonard Leo and others who work to influence, coordinate, and create false disinformation by which manipulation of former libertarians might be seduced of large chunks of money to give to "good" causes... making a name for themselves and surely going down in history of the time as a group of Funders decided they wanted to destroy democracy, the order of law, any regulations that reduced profits, and people who would prevent them... from... making... more... money... and, of course, to gt more tax breaks for the wealthy!
I don't know what the next section, Lies, will involve, so I thought I'd give you the latest--and catastrophic--set of lies that has come out of the republican administration... Perhaps you've heard of "Signalgate?" Days go by and still people are talking, upset and filing law suits... while lies or alternative news items are pushed, trying to get past the most dangerous security breach that has occurred by a president...
“I am the Way, the Truth and the Life…”, and “All who are of the truth listen to MY voice.” ?
If this is so, then is it not true that those eternally valuable truths… “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, and no one gets to the Father except through me.” "If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."
…have been drowned out … buried … LOST.
"You have heard that it was said, 'YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR and hate your enemy.' "But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. (Matthew 5:43-45)
(32) "And I, if I am lifted up from the earth,
will draw all men to myself."
"But who do you say that I am?" (16) Simon Peter answered, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." (17) And Joshua said to him, "Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. (18) "I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock(possibly pointing to the earth) I will build my church (my Family of people called out of the world); and the gates of Hades will not overpower it. (19) "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven."*40 (20) Then he warned the disciples that they should tell no one that he was the Messiah. *40 Many religious people and their leaders use this passage to say that Joshua made Peter his sole leader or representative on earth. This view is wrong for the following reasons. First, Joshua says that binding and loosing is available to all his disciples in Matt. 18:18-19.@ Second, Joshua says that only he is to be the leader of his followers (Matt. 23:8-12).@ Third, Peter failed to do what he ought to have done several times – denying Joshua for example. Peter is not the sinless Son of Man, and thus is an inadequate leader for men’s souls as is any man or woman. Only the Good Shepherd is worthy to be the leader of our souls and only He is He represents the owner of the sheep. (21) From that time Joshua began to show his disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the leaders of Israel (religious and political), and be killed, and be raised up on the third day. (22) Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, "God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to you." (23) But he turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are not setting your mind on God's interests, but man's." (24) Then Joshua said to his disciples, "If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me. (25) "For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. (26) "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits (loses or gives away) his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? *41 (27) "For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of his Father with his angels, and Will Then Repay Every Man According To His Deeds (what he has done). (28) "Truly I say to you, there are some of those who are standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man (Joshua’s favorite title for himself) coming in his kingdom (see the following verses)." *41 Sadly, people don’t value their souls because they have been deceived into thinking they don’t have one. All of the wealth and material things on the earth will be of no comfort to a person after a person leaves their body and they see what they threw away (Life Everlasting) in exchange for what they love in the world…a few years of pleasure, material comfort or money etc. (17:1) Six days later (after the saying of Joshua regarding seeing the Son of Man coming in His kingdom) Joshua took with Him Peter and James and John His brother, and led them up on a high mountain by themselves. (2) And He was transfigured (He changed appearance) before them; and His face shone like the sun, and His garments became as white as light (perhaps the preview of His coming in his kingdom). (3) And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Him. (4) Peter said to Joshua, "Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three tabernacles (small shelters) here, one for you, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah." (5) While he (Peter) was still speaking, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold, a voice out of the cloud said, "This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased; listen to HIM! *42 (6) When the disciples heard this, they fell face down to the ground and were terrified. (7) And Joshua came to them and touched them and said, "Get up, and do not be afraid." (8) And lifting up their eyes, they saw no one except Joshua Himself alone. (9) As they were coming down from the mountain, Joshua commanded them, saying, "Tell the vision to no one until the Son of Man has risen from the dead." (10) And his disciples asked him, "Why then do the bible experts say that Elijah must come first?" (11) And He answered and said, "Elijah is coming and will restore all things; (12) but I say to you that Elijah already came, and they did not recognize him, but did to him whatever they wished. So also the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands." (13) Then the disciples understood that He had spoken to them about John the Baptist. *42 The great error of mankind. The Creator Himself spoke and said, “Listen to my Son”. And yet humanity goes on its own way, rejecting that plea of our Designer, and substituting just about anything or anyone – a book, the bible; Moses; Paul, pastor so-and-so, etc. – for the one true Leader appointed by the Creator, the Light of the world. “And this is the condemnation, that humans love the darkness rather than the Light” – see John 3:19.@ (14) When they came to the crowd, a man came up to Joshua, falling on his knees before Him and saying, (15) "Lord, have mercy on my son, for he acts crazy and is very ill; for he often falls into the fire and often into the water. (16) "I brought him to your disciples, and they could not cure him." (17) And Joshua answered and said, "You unbelieving and corrupted generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring him here to Me." (18) And Joshua rebuked him, and the demon came out of him, and the boy was cured at once. (19) Then the disciples came to Joshua privately and said, "Why could we not drive it out?" (20) And He said to them, "Because of the littleness of your faith; for truly I say to you, if you have faith the size of a (small) mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you”. (22) And while they were gathering together in Galilee, Joshua said to them, "The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men; (23) and they will kill him, and he will be raised on the third day." And they were deeply grieved. (24) When they came to Capernaum, those who collected the fifty dollar tax came to Peter and said, "Does your teacher not pay the tax?" (25) He said, "Yes." And when he came into the house, Joshua spoke to Him first, saying, "What do you think, Simon? From whom do the rulers of the world collect tolls or taxes - from their sons or from strangers?" (26) When Peter said, "From strangers," Joshua said to him, "Then the sons are exempt. (27) "However, so that we do not give them cause to arrest us, go to the sea and throw in a hook, and take the first fish that comes up; and when you open its mouth, you will find a gold coin. Take that and give it to them for you and me." (18:1)
@Matthew:18: 8-9 Truly I say to you, whatever you [r]bind on earth [s]shall have been bound in heaven; and whatever you [t]loose on earth [u]shall have been loosed in heaven. Matthew 19: “Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them [v]by My Father who is in heaven.
Matthew 23: 8 But as for you, do not be called [a]Rabbi; for only One is your Teacher, and you are all brothers and sisters. 9 And do not call anyone on earth your father; for only One is your Father, He who is in heaven. 10 And do not be called [b]leaders; for only One is your Leader, that is, Christ. 11 But the greatest of you shall be your servant. 12 Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled, and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted.
John 3:19 And this is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the Light; for their deeds were evil.
The Light of the World is a book that I have been waiting for, it seems, all of my life! I don't know how many times, as I've been writing book reviews, I have thought about those that spoke about religion--of any kind. There are those who have moved into alternative experiences of a spiritual nature, which included astral projection and more of the supernatural experiences. I have read quite a few about agnosticism. I have read brilliant books by Stanislaw Kapuscinski delving deeper into the various Books of the Bible and/or moving beyond what was found there into new revelatory territories. I have also read dozens if not hundreds of fictional stories that honed in on a religious life... I have purchased a book by Thomas who recorded all of the words said by Jesus... But, as stated, it was nothing but the actual words recorded, so held little value for considering commentary in relation to those words.
The closest I ever got to finding what I wanted was How to Be a Christian without being Religious. That is, until I found a manuscript many years ago that I knew was what I'd been searching for... Quite recently, I was able to remember the name of the author and sought him out and have already read his other book, Christianity: A Successful Failure.
A God Incident where I recently woke up to hear the Holy Spirit say "Tim Speiss" was my direction to start seriously reading and sharing about The Light of the World. Given the frustration and worry that I have been going through since I learned that Evangelical Christians had endorsed Donald Trump, as you may have noticed, I've been reading a lot of nonfiction books trying to understand what happened... First, I listened to a video by Frank Schaeffer, author and son of the Evangelist Francis Schaeffer, who is now creating videos speaking out against the past president. In one of his videos I had learned that a "deal" had been struck between Trump and Evangelical leaders. It was at that point that Frank Schaeffer, who was at that meeting, chose to pull away from what had happened. Since then I've been reading many others who have written against that "Deal" and what has happened!
I began to feel better but still felt that something major had changed within the Christian and Republican Party. And I watched as my family was affected. I even told one of them that I loved her, but that I loved God more and we have not spoken since. Soooo, this seemed to be the perfect time for me to speak out about all that I have read and learned about Christianity through many different books... Some have talked about sexuality issues within the church as those individuals were being exposed and condemned. I had also watched how money was being spent within politics that literally blew my mind, especially from a Christian standpoint as Jesus spoke out against those who sought power through riches/money...
In other words, I was ready--anxious to read this book... But there was always another new book that came out that was also important to what is happening in America right now... It took a reminder from My Lord to what He wanted from me at this time...
In Part I, I talked about Tim Spiess' decision to call his movement, The Peaceful Revolution. I can understand why, and I will be joining that site after tomorrow's election when I can, hopefully, breathe a little better. You see, Jesus also conducted a peaceful revolution... Yes, since His mission was to reach all those who were lost, hurt, or estranged for one reason or another, He often told those He helped, to not talk about being healed... Of course that didn't always work, but He would continue moving on to others, never trying to gain credit for His work. Never seeking praise, thanks, or some type of payback...
I have worked with thousands of writers, authors, editors, and others who have been involved in publishing a book(s). During my early years, I fed on Christian-related books. But then, I started working at West Virginia University, where I met people from all races, religions, and sexual orientation. And, I've never saw any difference in any of them. What I mean is that, I never felt any form of discrimination or bias against anybody that I met. Even when I found a problem with somebody, I was able to move away, just as I learned Jesus did, so that disagreements would not often arise...
And, when I had symptoms of Job Burnout with high levels of stress-related symptoms, I pulled within to heal, rather than strike out in anger--at least as much as I could, which was not every time...
My point is that I and so many of us have seen more hatred and violence spewed since 2015, that we are working hard just to maintain some level of stability in our own lives... I listen to others worry and realize that I don't. It matters to me what has happened, but I must say that within my life, I have always found support from my best friend, Jesus...
Tim has bravely acted as I believe he was told to do by God Himself. What he has done was to take that final step that nobody ever has done before to say that, in toto, Christianity has indeed been a successful failure.There are millions of Christians all over the world. Many have been introduced to God through the many different sects or denominations...
In fact, having so many different sects or denominations should be your first warning, don't you think? Actually, I had not really gotten to the point where Tim had gotten before he started writing this book. So, if you hadn't thought a lot about exactly what has NOT occurred for over 2000 years, I think we all can be forgiven... But, you will find that Spiess has spotlight many of these issues that should have been questioned by this point in time...
For instance, once Jesus was born and died for all of us, shouldn't all of the old writings have gone into historical archives? Instead, all of the Old Testament was retained and a New Testament had been started. Now we do know that there were many who had already had religions so that some retention of their "religions" would have been retained. BUT, since at the point where those who had started following Jesus via his disciplines and teachings, a new testament could have been started and completed... More specifically. The Old Testament, The Life and Teachings of Jesus, and, all other peripheral writers who wrote books at that time... But only Tim Spiess, as far as I know, has taken the important and monumental step to say ONLY THE WORDS OF JESUS ARE ALL THAT WE NEED!
Tim Spiess has done the research--considerably MORE research than many of those who have written on the subject in more than 2000 years. Tim Spiess was free of bias, free of a religion that met his needs, and the drive to start asking questions and acting upon them! Again, very specifically, he pondered the issue and came up with a conclusion that should have been declared about 2000 years ago... The birth and death of Jesus and His life and Teachings should be in ONE Book... And so, he presents The Light of the World: The Life and Teachings of Jesus of Nazareth... as the One and Only book that we need to follow our Savior, Jesus Christ (better translation being Joshua. This book uses Joshua and I found in reading the actual teachings of our Lord, using Joshua actually helps in exploring our new and only book which will be used to guide our lives...
On the Other Hand... think about... Messenger
I have looked at my life and come to somewhat of a different conclusion. If indeed we have come to accept the teachings of Jesus, and since we have moved forward with so many WORLD changes during those two thousands years, would it not be appropriate that many of the parables used in those early days may need to be updated? But that's an idea for another page... The question is: Will a Quiet Revolution move us forward based ONLY upon the words of the Son of Man? I actually think so.
During the interim between 2015, and the present, when I first became involved and interested in politics, I have seen so many issues that were defined and explained in the Bible, but were ignored, questioned, or changed in meaning to meet the needs of a few; hence, for instance, the unlimited numbers of Protestant denominations...
After reading this book, I'd like to try. In fact, I have been using many of the words of Jesus in rebuttal of what has been happening in America. And, anybody paying attention, we can all clearly see that the individual running for Office who most closely attempts to respond to the words in The Light of the World, would never incite violence, hate, and division among our citizens... nor insurrection against the government of our country...
It will be my honor to continue to share with you about this book. In the meantime, I highly recommend you get your own copy and start reading. Spiess provides ongoing commentary and references to ensure you, too, begin to see all that He Spoke which was never followed... May we all find our way now, and begin our own quiet revolution...
I highlighted quite a bit of the preface by the two authors about writing this book... I want to start by sharing those highlights:
We began work on this book a month into the global COVID lockdown in April 2020. It was a dark, dangerous, and uncertain time. Conspiracy theories that had already gained widespread currency throughout the preceding years were now rampant across the internet and social media. The vilification of Jews, Asians, persons of color, and immigrants, among others, was reaching unprecedented levels. And I (Bruce Hoffman) had recently been the target of a serious hate crime. It was time to return to my analytical roots. Violent, far-right extremism was the first “account” I worked on as a young terrorism and counterterrorism analyst when I joined the RAND Corporation’s Security and Subnational Conflict Research Program in 1981. Everyone else in the program had already taken one of the more prominent left-wing and ethnonationalist and separatist terrorists active at the time, so I decided to focus on a threat that was receiving less attention. This resulted in my first professional publication and a series of additional reports and scholarly articles on the threat posed by neo-Nazi and neofascist groups in Europe.1 Shortly afterward, however, my research shifted to focus on a similar trend then unfolding in the United States. By the middle of the 1980s, the U.S. Department of Energy had become increasingly concerned about the rise of violent, far-right extremism and violence in this country. Because many of its nuclear-weapon research, production, and storage facilities were located in states where this activity was increasing, the department asked RAND to conduct a detailed threat assessment. Between 1986 and 1995 I led a number of research projects and was the author or coauthor of several reports and articles addressing the danger of far-right terrorism in the United States. One of these reports, published in 1988 and cited in this book, identified these terrorists as the most likely to perpetrate a major, future mass-casualty attack in the United States. And another, published just weeks before the 1995 bombing of a federal office building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people, again underscored the continuing threat from violent, far-right extremists in this country and offered policy recommendations on how to address it. The historical pattern and potential for future violence from far-right terrorism in the United States also featured prominently in the first edition of my book Inside Terrorism, published in 1998. But then the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks occurred. And, like most other terrorism analysts, my attention was diverted to al-Qaeda and then ISIS as well as their various affiliates and branches. Meanwhile, a succession of terrorist incidents in Oslo and Utøya, Norway, in 2011; in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 2018; and in Christchurch, New Zealand, Poway, California, and El Paso, Texas in 2019 clearly showed that the same sanguinary ideology and hateful mindset that had fueled far-right violence during the closing decades of the twentieth century had neither disappeared nor abated. I thus approached my friend and colleague at the Council on Foreign Relations, Jacob Ware, and proposed that we together write this book. The plot by a Michigan militia cell to kidnap and execute Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer uncovered in October 2020 and the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol infused our work with greater urgency. I was sixteen years old on the day a bloodthirsty white supremacist murdered dozens of children at an island summer camp near Oslo in Norway—an incident covered in these pages.--Hoffman
I was sixteen years old on the day a bloodthirsty white supremacist murdered dozens of children at an island summer camp near Oslo in Norway—an incident covered in these pages.As a citizen of a neighboring country who shared both an age and idealism with those murdered, the shooting shook me to the very core. This incident—coupled with my younger sister’s brush with jihadist terrorism during a school trip to Toulouse in France and my own experiences as one of the school-shooting generation’s earliest graduates—drove my desire to join the fight to make the world a safer and happier place and to rid our nation of the cancerous hate by which it has too often been defined. My early counterterrorism research, in graduate school at Georgetown University, focused on more youthful networks, often composed of men and boys who had grown up in the same era I had. Like Bruce, my first report, published some thirty-seven years later with the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism in The Hague, studied the far right, providing a threat assessment of the Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi group whose members were responsible for several murders in the United States. By the time 2019 arrived and the trajectory of the violent far right covered in this book reached an urgent stage with outbursts of violence at Christchurch, Poway, El Paso, and beyond, I was offered the opportunity to work under the legendary Bruce Hoffman—with this book project beginning shortly thereafter. --Ware
~~~
I had several false starts in writing this review... Like one of the video leaders for the Council, I found it both elucidating...and terrifying... Even more terrifying since I knew that the book was written by two researchers who were working with a think-tank type of organization (See Part 1 for full information). To me that meant that they were probably both totally dedicated as well as brilliant. Indeed the overall work on this book is outstanding and, in this way, even further reinforces the great concern for our nation!
President Biden first started talking about fighting for the soul of the nation. Indeed, he has stated that he chose to run for the presidency because of what he was seeing about those who are working against our democracy... Although I have read and already reviewed a number of nonfiction books which supported this belief, I found this book the most comprehensive, primarily because statistics and results of significant research has been included. Let's start with what I found to be the most terrifying:
In July 1983 the thirty-year-old Mathews was a rising star in the white power movement. He had both impressed Butler and was sufficiently integrated into the Aryan Nations family to have had the Christian Identity pastor baptize his adopted son. Mathews had also distinguished himself as the most proactive member of Butler’s personal security detail at an Aryan Nations rally held in Spokane, Washington, a month earlier. The muscular, boyish-looking Mathews was not tall, but he had a commanding presence and magnetic personality. He was “enormously charismatic,” one contemporary observer noted, and thus was well situated in the wake of Kahl’s killing to translate the movement’s hate-filled and seditious rhetoric into concrete action. Mathews was particularly moved by the exhortations of one speaker at the 1983 gathering—Louis Beam, the Aryan Nations’ “ambassador at large” and a former Grand Dragon of the Texas Ku Klux Klan. With the exception of Pierce, perhaps no one has had as great an influence on the modern white power movement as Beam. A decorated U.S. Army veteran who had served an extended eighteen-month tour as a helicopter door gunner in Vietnam, Beam had grown up in a segregated company town on Texas’s gulf coast. He was apparently already a committed racist while still in elementary school. Classmates recall Beam boasting in the fourth grade about being a member of the Ku Klux Klan and attempting to recruit them. Beam returned from Vietnam in 1968 disgruntled and disillusioned. He railed against flag-burning antiwar protestors and blamed the “communists” in the U.S. government for restraining the military in Vietnam and thus selling out him and his fellow warriors in an unwinnable war. He promptly joined the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. Years later, Beam would blame “Post Viet Nam Stress Syndrome” for his anger toward the government. “There is no relief, and can be none,” he ranted in one treatise. We are forever trapped in the rice paddies and skies of Vietnam. We can neither go back or go forward, but are suspended for eternity in the place that they put us.… I wonder if stress can be defined as wanting to machine gun all the people who sent us over there, along with the ones who spit on us when we returned. Or, is perhaps stress something more simple like crying out for justice in the name of the mangled dead, and not being heard? Or is stress more of a mathematical function, like trying to figure out how much blood 57,673 bodies can hold? In 1971 Beam was charged with the bombings of a progressive radio station and the Houston office of the Socialist Workers Party but escaped imprisonment. Thereafter, he organized a series of paramilitary training courses in Texas designed “to turn Klansmen into soldiers.” Beam ran at least four such facilities. At “Camp Puller,” a fifty-acre tract of swampland reminiscent of Vietnam’s rice paddies, both teenagers and children—some reportedly as young as eight years old—received instruction in “strangulation, decapitation using a machete, hijacking airplanes, and firing
automatic weapons.” As Beam ascended through the Klan ranks from Grand Titan to Grand Dragon, he also created two elite, special operations–type units for his fellow Klansmen—the Texas Emergency Reserve and anti-immigrant Klan Border Watch. Beam also organized Klan recruitment drives at Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas, and rallies featuring David Duke, the smooth-talking Louisiana-based founder and leader of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Duke represented a new kind of hatemonger. He wore a suit and tie, came across as educated and articulate, and claimed that he was not against blacks as much as he was an advocate for the rights of white Christians. This would prove to be a harbinger of a wider trend reflected in today’s alt-right, for example, the polo shirts and chinos worn by neo-Nazis at the 2017 Charlottesville demonstrations and other protests. Beam was again arrested in 1979 after trying to gain entrance to the Houston hotel where Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping of China was staying. He hoped to murder Deng and thereby avenge “the 100,000 GI’s” who perished because of the support China had provided to North Vietnam during the war. As the state’s preeminent Klan leader, Beam attracted widespread attention in February 1981 for his role in the Texas chapter’s sustained harassment of Vietnamese fishermen working the gulf waters off Galveston. Within months, however, a combination of a federal court ruling specifically prohibiting such activities along with Beam’s conviction on misdemeanor charges of conducting paramilitary exercises on federal land without a permit prompted him to resign as Grand Dragon and head to Idaho—supposedly on vacation. Two months later, Beam and his family were still there—living at the Aryan Nations’ Hayden Lake compound. His arrival had attracted the attention of the local FBI office in Coeur d’Alene, who would soon have him under surveillance. In 1982, Butler appointed Beam the Aryan Nations’ “ambassador at large.” This new role suited the energetic former Klansman well, and soon Aryan Nations chapters had been established in Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas. Beam claims to have opened a business in Hayden Lake selling survival and camping gear and spent most of his time drinking coffee and changing his infant daughter’s diapers. In fact, his time spent in Idaho would have a lasting effect not only on future white power violence but on the trajectory of modern terrorism. Beam’s lasting contribution was to rescue from obscurity the concept of clandestine, underground warfare known as “leaderless resistance.” Writing in a 1983 issue of the Inter-Klan Newsletter and Survival Alert, which he coedited, Beam explained the principles of an approach to warfare that a World War II veteran of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)—a forerunner of the CIA—named Colonel Ulius Louis “Pete” Amoss had developed. Exasperated by the Soviet bloc’s ability to penetrate and neutralize traditional, hierarchically organized partisan units and other resistance forces, the wartime spy and inveterate cold warrior concluded that “we do not need ‘leaders’; we need leading ideas. These ideas would produce leaders. The masses would produce them and the ideas would be their inspiration. Therefore, we must create these ideas and convey them to the restless people concerned with them.” This was music to Beam’s ears. He and his fellow white power leaders were continually frustrated by the ability of government informants and undercover agents to penetrate their movement. This concept, the Aryan Nations’ newly appointed ambassador-at-large now enthused, “is that any one cell can be infiltrated, exposed and destroyed, but this will have no effect on the others.… The efficient and effective operation of a cell system … of course, is dependent upon central direction which means impressive organization, [and] funding from the top.” Beam identified only one significant hurdle. “At first glance, such a type of organization seems unrealistic, because the natural question is, how are the cells to cooperate with each other, when there is not intercommunication or central direction?” By the time of the Aryan Nations Congress just weeks later, he would have a solution to that challenge, too. Gordon Kahl’s fate loomed large as the attendees gathered in Hayden Lake. In a stirring panegyric by Beam, the North Dakota farmer was hailed as a modern-day William Travis and Davy Crockett—akin to these brave warriors who had made the ultimate sacrifice in the fight against tyranny at the Alamo. Beam also glowingly described Kahl’s imagined ascent to heaven, complete with a Viking honor guard “standing at the gate to Valhalla—arms outstretched in salute.” Addressing the congress, Beam was just as blunt and unequivocal. “WE ARE AT WAR,” he declared. An attendee would later recall that Beam’s words brought tears to Mathews’s eyes. “I’m here to tell you that if we can’t have this country,” Beam continued, “as far as I’m concerned no one gets it. The guns are cocked, the bullets are in the chamber.… We’re going to fight and live or we’re going to die soon. If you don’t help me kill the bastards, you’re going to be required to beg for your child’s life, and the answer will be no.” In addition to the workshops, seminars, and plenary events, a small group of thirteen white power leaders and movement elders, along with their impatient youthful counterparts, met privately in Butler’s living room—surrounded by heavily armed guards. As Ellison later told Noble, the gathering agreed that it was “time for action.” The battle plan that emerged reflected both Beam’s leaderless resistance strategy and his proposal to utilize emerging computer networking technology to ensure the security of the movement’s internal communications and support the revolution that they had agreed to commence. Leaderless resistance fused with computerized bulletin board systems (BBSes) brought the movement unparalleled advantages of both real-time and clandestine connectivity—effectively concealing it from the prying eyes and attentive ears of federal authorities. It is difficult to appreciate just how singularly profound this development was. Typewriters were still a ubiquitous feature of offices everywhere, and facsimile transmission (fax) machines had only recently entered the workplace. Desktop computers were both mostly unknown and expensive to acquire. At the time, these primitive machines, with their limited memory and slow processing capabilities, were far from the must-have household item they would eventually become. An Apple IIe starter system with 64k memory, for instance, cost $1,260 in 1983—about $3,315 today. And modems (modulator-demodulators) to transmit BBS data over conventional telephone lines had only become affordable and hence somewhat accessible some two years earlier. The “Aryan Nations Liberty Net” that Beam created was therefore truly revolutionary and arguably marked the beginning of terrorist exploitation of digital communications for radicalization, recruitment, fundraising, the exchange of best practices, and the planning and execution of operations. In an era before the World Wide Web, much less the internet, and with primitive dial-up rather than wi-fi and broadband, Beam’s system ran on Apple network software, was text only, and used 300 baud dial-up modems over ordinary telephone lines to transmit information. The rate of transmission of data was described as “well below reading speed.” It took Beam nearly a year of work before his Aryan Nations Liberty Net was finally up and running. As he had intimated in his article on leaderless resistance, Beam announced this new development in the spring 1984 issue of the Inter-Klan Newsletter & Survival Alert. “It may very well be that American know-how has provided the technology which will allow those who love this country to save it from an ill deserved fate,” he gushed. Computers, once solely the domain and possession of governments and large corporations, are now bringing their power and capabilities to the average American.… It has been said that knowledge is power, which it most assuredly is. The computer offers, to those who become proficient in its use, power undreamed of by the rulers of the past.… Imagine, if you can, a single computer to which all leaders and strategists of the patriotic movement are connected. Imagine further that any patriot in the country is able to tap into this computer at will in order to reap the benefit of all accumulative knowledge and wisdom of the leaders. “Someday,” you may say? How about today? Such a computer is already in existence and operation. We hereby announce Aryan Nation Liberty Net. Dial 208-772-6134, listen to the computer talk. The article, titled “COMPUTERS AND THE AMERICAN PATRIOT,” also imparted helpful buyers’ advice and detailed log-on instructions. Beam provided a phone number and post office box for those who had additional questions. “At last, those who love God and their Race and strive to serve their Nation will be utilizing some of the advanced technology available heretofore only to those in the ZOG (Zionist Occupation Government) government [sic] and others who have sought the destruction of the Aryan people,” he promised. Sponsored by the Aryan Nations, the Aryan Nations Liberty Net served five key purposes. First, it sought to tap into a new demographic and build a broader white supremacist constituency by appealing to young computer “hackers”—a newly popularized term at the time. Second, it sought to obviate restrictions on the mailing of hate literature to Canada and European countries like West Germany. Third, it identified like-minded “patriotic groups” across the country to encourage and facilitate greater networking. Fourth, it was an innovative fundraising mechanism. “The Aryan Nations computer network is designed to bring truth and knowledge to our people on the North-American continent,” Butler explained in one such appeal for donations. “You may ask ‘why the computer . . technology?’ The answer is simple, because it is our Aryan technology just as is the printing press, radio, airplane, auto, etc., etc. We must use our own God-given technology in calling our race back to our Father’s Organic Law.” Finally, it was an inexpensive, quick, and easy way to spread the movement’s propaganda unhindered by government interference, intrusion, or monitoring. The site contained some repackaged material that had originally appeared in print along with files with titles like “Know Your Enemy,” which contained the addresses and telephone numbers of all the ADL offices in the United States, as well as those of the branches of the U.S. Communist Party and, even more menacingly, lists of the names of “race traitors” and “ZOG informers.” In perhaps the first warning about far-right exploitation of new online technologies, the ADL in 1985 cautioned that the networks were “[seeking] to spread their hate propaganda among young people, surely the most vulnerable to its influence.” The report also drew a direct link to violence. “More troubling,” the report noted, “the use of new technology to link together hate group activists coincides with an escalation of serious talk among some of them about the necessity of committing acts of terror.” As previously recounted, Beam’s call to battle at the 1983 congress had deeply resonated with Mathews. The former Klansman had been unequivocal. Violence was imperative if the white race was to save itself. Mathews departed Hayden Lake infused with a newfound sense of mission and purpose. Beam’s powerful words in addition to everything else Mathews had heard at the gathering and likely at the private meeting in Butler’s living room had convinced him, according to the journalist Stephen Singular,
that “it would be the young men who commenced the battle and won the war.” Mathews had in fact already reached this conclusion. Everything that he heard and saw during that visit to the Aryan Nations compound had only hardened his resolve. Earlier that year, for instance, Mathews had formed a new organization that he called the White American Bastion. Mathews recruited friends and acquaintances from the northern Idaho white supremacist milieu and with two companions had spent the summer building the group’s headquarters and a living quarters on his farm. In Mathews’s “Last Letter,” written over a year later, he explained the logic animating his decision to wage a terrorist campaign to overthrow the U.S. government. “I have no choice,” Mathews had declared. “I must stand up like a White man and do battle. A secret war has been developing for the last year between the regime in Washington and an ever growing number of White people who are determined to regain what our forefathers discovered, explored, conquered, settled, built and died for.” In September 1983, Mathews addressed the National Alliance’s annual conference in Washington, DC. His membership in and recruitment efforts on behalf of multiple white supremacist organizations was hardly atypical of the movement either then or now. As the journalist Peter Lake, who successfully infiltrated these groups, later explained, “It’s like the difference between the Army, Navy, and Marines—they all salute the same flag.” Indeed, unbeknownst to the conferees listening, Mathews’s message presaged the violent trajectory he was about to embark upon. “My brothers and sisters,” he began, from the mist-shrouded forested valleys and mountains of the Pacific Northwest I bring you a message of solidarity, a call to action, and a demand for adherence to duty as members of a vanguard of an Aryan resurgence and ultimately total Aryan victory. The signs of awakening are sprouting up across the Northwest, and no more than among the two-fisted farmers and ranchers.… The task is not going to be easy. TV satellite dishes are springing up like poisonous mushrooms across
the domain of the tillers of the soil. The electronic Jew is slithering into the living rooms of even the most remote farms and ranches. The race-destroying dogs are everywhere. In Metaline Falls, we have broken the chains of Jewish thought.… The future is now! So stand up like men and drive the enemy to the sea! Stand up like men and swear a sacred oath upon the green graves of our sires that you will reclaim what our forefathers discovered, explored, conquered, settled, built, and died for! Stand up like men and reclaim our soil! Look toward the stars and proclaim our destiny! In Metaline Falls we have a saying: Defeat, never! Victory forever! Three weeks later, nine men styling themselves as “Aryan Warriors” joined hands in a circle around a white baby girl meant to symbolize the Aryan race and its future. In appropriately reverential voices they pledged fealty to the white supremacist revolution proclaimed by Mathews. “I, as a free Aryan man, hereby swear an unrelenting oath,” they affirmed, upon the green graves of our sires, upon the children in the wombs of our wives, upon the throne of God almighty, sacred is his name, to join together in holy union with those brothers in this circle and to declare forthright that from this moment on, I have no fear of death, no fear of foe; that I have a sacred duty to do whatever is necessary to deliver our people from the Jew and to bring total victory to the Aryan race.
The FBI agent in charge of the Coeur d’Alene office, whose attention they soon attracted, found nothing particularly noteworthy about the group. They were people “much like your next door neighbor,” Wayne F. Manis observed. Indeed, the youngest person around the circle, Richard Kemp, age twenty, had been a star player on his Salinas, California, high school basketball team. Andrew Barnhill was a twenty-seven-year-old former seminarian who had joined and then left the CSA before ending up dealing poker in a Montana casino. Bruce Pierce (no relation to William), at age twenty-nine, was an impetuous drifter from Kentucky who had settled in Montana and discovered Identity theology only the previous year. An invitation to visit the Aryan Nations compound in March 1983 had sufficiently impressed him that he moved his family to Hayden Lake. Two months later, Pierce was among the bodyguards surrounding Butler at the same Spokane rally where Mathews had distinguished himself. Pierce decided then and there that Mathews was the leader that the white power movement had always been waiting for. Although the prematurely balding thirty-two-year-old Randy Duey looked like a “meek accountant,” he was a U.S. Air Force veteran who had studied history at Eastern Washington University, just across the Idaho state border. Duey had befriended Denver Parmenter, another mature student and a fellow veteran. Age thirty-one, Parmenter had served three years in the U.S. Army and was washing dishes and mopping floors to make ends meet when Duey introduced him to Mathews. Richard Scutari arguably had the most diverse career of the men who gathered that day at Mathews’s farm. In his mid-thirties, Scutari had been a U.S. Navy diver where he supposedly gained experience “with explosives training and [became an] instructor in hand-to-hand combat as well as assault rifle and combat pistol shooting.” Scutari then worked as a deep-sea diver in the North Sea oil fields, owned a construction company for a time, and became expert in several different martial arts. Through his friendship with Barnhill, Scutari had done some work for the CSA’s Jim Ellison and then had flown to Spokane from his home in Florida to meet Mathews and check out this new group. David Lane, age forty-three, was the eldest. An amateur golf champion who hailed from Aurora, Colorado, Lane had made a name for himself in white power circles as the state organizer for David Duke’s Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and later for the Aryan Nations. He was also an accomplished propagandist, having helped turn the innocuously titled Primrose and Cattlemen’s Gazette into a platform for his violently anti-semitic rants. Lane is also renowned as the author of the popular white supremacist credo known as the “14 Words,” which proclaims the following mission for white supremacists everywhere: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children.” It is frequently cited in contemporary white power memes, publications, and communications simply as “14.” The only person in the circle who had done time was a twenty-seven-year old from Arizona named Gary Lee Yarbrough. While AWOL from the U.S. Marines, Yarbrough was arrested for burglary and sentenced to a five-to-eight-year prison term at the Arizona State Penitentiary in Florence. It was there that he first read about the Aryan Nations and imbibed its literature. Yarbrough headed for Idaho upon his release and found work on Butler’s personal security detail and in the print shop producing hate literature. Although their ages and backgrounds varied, these men were united by the belief of an America gone wrong. Although, unlike Beam, they had not fought in Vietnam, they were patriots who were profoundly disillusioned with a government that had sent its young citizens overseas to fight a needlessly prolonged and increasingly pointless war. Their view, like Beam’s, was that spineless politicians had restrained the military and squandered an opportunity to stop the spread of communism. As white men in a demographically changing United States, they also felt alienated by a population that was becoming increasingly more diverse. They were especially opposed to affirmative action efforts and other such compensatory programs and themselves felt economically ignored or disadvantaged. “As adults, they came to view America as a land beset with dark forces of chaos in the forms of immigration, drugs, crime, and Ronald Reagan’s ‘trickle down’ economy,” the criminologist Mark Hamm explains. The Equal Rights Amendment, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1972, which would have constitutionally guaranteed legal gender equality for women and men had it been ratified by the requisite number of states, was also vehemently opposed by this movement. Feminism was regarded as emasculation and thus became a key dimension of white supremacism’s simultaneous advocacy that relegated women back to narrow, historically gendered roles as cook, cleaner, and mother. Accordingly, Hamm notes, “Masculinity and whiteness became entwined as never before—to be a ‘real’ white man was to be hyper-masculine. In this way, paramilitary mythology became the path to redemption.” Having sworn unremitting allegiance to the “sacred duty to do whatever is necessary” to ensure the triumph of the Aryan race, the eight men listened as Mathews outlined his plan. It was drawn entirely from The Turner Diaries. Although at that moment these men referred to themselves simply as “the Group” or “the Company,” they would soon adopt the name “the Order”—in homage to Pierce’s fictional creation. They also sometimes called themselves the Brüder Schweigen (German for the “Silent Brotherhood”). The book had in fact become Mathews’s “bible,” according to both Thomas Martinez, a later recruit and subsequent FBI informant, and Wayne Manis, the veteran FBI agent who had arrived in Coeur d’Alene that November to oversee the bureau’s investigation of this regional hub of white supremacist activism. That a novel should provide the “blueprint” for the real-life Order’s terrorist campaign underscores how unprepared the group was for so monumental a task as triggering an uprising that would overthrow
the U.S. government. “Many of Bob’s followers were in a state of shock to suddenly come to grips with the fact that they were about to leave their mundane day-to-day existence as law-abiding citizens and embark on a career of crime with the goal of overthrowing the United States government,” Manis marveled. “Clearly, this would entail taking up arms and killing people who were the object of their aggression and hatred.” But however fantastical the Order’s grandiose ambitions may have been, their fervent belief in the efficacy of violence to achieve them was completely serious. This would not be the last time that The Turner Diaries would fulfill the dual role of template and inspiration for violent insurrection. Accordingly, what the Order lacked in operational skills and experience was simply to be adopted from The Turner Diaries and grafted onto their six-step strategy. First was organizing themselves to prosecute this revolution. The next steps of amassing a “war chest”—and then resorting to armed robbery, if necessary—had been identified two months earlier in Butler’s living room. Robert Miles had persuasively argued that to have any chance of success, such a venture would require ample funds. A Grand Dragon of a Michigan KKK chapter, “Pastor Bob” was a well-respected elder statesman of the white supremacist movement. He had the bona fides and gravitas that a six-year prison stint for conspiring to bomb school buses in defiance of court-ordered school desegregation efforts inevitably bestows on the self-styled community of “Aryan Warriors” in which racists like Miles circulated. Like many of its other leading figures, Miles cloaked himself in clerical authority—presiding over the Mountain Church of Jesus Christ the Savior that he founded on his seventy-acre farm in rural Cohoctah, Michigan. It was in essence a Midwestern version of Butler’s Church of Jesus Christ Christian, performing a similar convening and coordinating function. The ADL described the church’s ethos as “violence, white supremacy, antisemitism, and racism, as
well as hostility to the federal government.” At Butler’s house that July, Miles had cited the success that left-wing terrorists in the Black Liberation Army along with remnants of the rebranded Weather Underground, now calling themselves the May 19th Communist Organization, had two years before in robbing a Brinks armored car of $1.6 million in Nyack, New York. “If we were half the men the leftists were,” the fifty-eight-year-old cleric had observed, “we’d be hitting armored cars, too.” Hence, Mathews and his band concluded the best way to build the “war chest” they required was through armed robbery. The fourth step was to recruit more members; fifth was to commence operations with the assassination of the movement’s most insidious enemies; and the sixth step would culminate in the “armed guerrilla operations” by a dedicated band of clandestine warriors depicted in The Turner Diaries. Less than fifteen months later, however, Mathews was dead. Twenty-four of his followers would soon be arrested. They were indicted on sixty-seven racketeering and conspiracy counts, and all but one was convicted. Of these, ten received prison sentences of between twenty years and life. None of the Order’s grand schemes to jumpstart their terrorist campaign with the assassinations of well-known Jewish persons such as former secretary of state Henry Kissinger; Elie de Rothschild, scion of the famous international banking family; and the renowned television producer Norman Lear; or gentiles like the prominent New York banker David Rockefeller or the civil rights advocate Morris Dees, the cofounder and chief trial counsel of the Southern Poverty Law Center, ever came to fruition. Instead, on June 18, 1984, the Order’s gunmen murdered Alan Berg, a controversial Denver radio talk show host, who was Jewish and had incurred the group’s wrath because of his combative on-air interviews of various white power advocates. Although no one was ever specifically convicted of Berg’s murder, David Lane and Bruce Pierce initially received prison sentences of forty and one hundred years, respectively, in one trial and an additional 150 years on other charges. Lane had been one of the enraged persons who would call in during Berg’s broadcasts. Even the group’s initial effort to acquire operational funds fell flat. The robbery of a Spokane video and pornography store netted only $369,177 and an exploding dye pack concealed in a bundle of cash Mathews had just stolen from a Seattle bank had blown up in his face and either ruined or permanently stained the bank notes. But by heeding Miles’s advice and focusing their attention on armored cars, the Order’s fundraising efforts grew more successful. Three such heists enabled Mathews and his band to accumulate over $4 million in cash.179 The single largest haul of $3.6 million came from the combined ambush and armed robbery of a Brinks armored car near Ukiah, California, in July 1984.180 After the seven gunmen each pocketed $40,000 themselves as combined salary and bonus,181 Mathews proceeded to distribute a portion of the loot to some of the white power movement’s leading personages. Dan Gayman, the pastor of the Church of Israel, outside Schell City, Missouri, and an exponent of the “two seed” theory, was given $10,000; Butler and the Aryan Nations received at least $40,000; William Pierce was reportedly gifted $50,000; Frazier Glenn Miller Jr., the founder and leader of the North Carolina–based White Patriot Party, got $200,000; and $300,000 was reputedly channeled to Californian Tom Metzger for his White Aryan Resistance group, with the same amount going to Miles for his Michigan parish. Even so, the bulk of the stolen cash was neither ever recovered nor fully accounted for. As much as two-thirds of it seems to have disappeared. As of 1997, for instance, the FBI had traced only $600,000 of the Ukiah haul. Mathews and other Order members appear to have variously spent, doled out, stashed, or laundered the rest of their haul into legitimate business ventures. Two government informants, for instance, maintain that Mathews gave a Denver lawyer at least $1 million and perhaps as much as $2 million to invest on behalf of the movement. An additional 10 percent of the stolen cash was supposedly donated to the Aryan Nations—in addition to the sum given to Butler after the Ukiah robbery. One of Mathews’s other followers claimed to have dug up $100,000 that had been secretly buried on a farm in the Pacific Northwest and to have handed it to Beam. And Mathews reputedly opened a surrogate mother program and sperm bank in Portland, Oregon, to promote the propagation of the Aryan race. It was the group’s counterfeiting scheme, however, that arguably led to its demise. Less than two months after the oath-taking ceremony, Bruce Pierce was arrested in Union Gap, Washington, trying to pass the group’s amateurishly produced initial run of $50 banknotes. Although he jumped bail and disappeared, the FBI now had Pierce firmly in their sights. A weapon inadvertently left behind by Mathews during the Ukiah armored car robbery that had been legally purchased by Andrew Barnhill in Montana provided another key lead. By September, more than a hundred FBI agents were deployed against the Order. Nearly half that number was assigned to the hitherto tiny Coeur d’Alene office, with some forty agents actively watching the last known residences of Mathews, Parmenter, and Yarbrough, among others. The following month, Yarbrough spotted a U.S. Forest Service vehicle on the backwoods dirt road leading to his house. Guessing correctly that it was the FBI in disguise, he opened fire on the truck, stopping the agents in their tracks. Although Yarbrough managed to flee, the search of his house netted important evidence. By this point, all the Order’s key personnel were on the run. In hopes of escaping the FBI dragnet closing in on them, Mathews, Yarbrough, Scutari, and Frank DeSilva, a recent recruit, fled to Oregon.190 Then, in November 1984, Thomas Martinez, whom Mathews had recruited to the group, was arrested in Philadelphia passing a phony banknote. He agreed to become an FBI informant and soon after flew west to meet with Mathews in Portland.191 The FBI raided the motel they were staying in on November 24, 1984. Mathews and Yarbrough tried to shoot their way out. Although Mathews escaped, Yarbrough was arrested. But the net around Mathews was tightening. In a desperate act of defiance, Mathews fired one last rhetorical salvo at the government that was relentlessly closing in. As Alan Berg’s biographer Stephen Singular observed of the document, “Earl Turner would have been proud.” The Order’s formal “Declaration of War,” dated November 25, 1984, attacked immigration from the Southern Hemisphere as well as legalized abortion. It decried capitalists and communists as well as bankers and Jews. Kahl’s heroism was lauded and the “Government agents” that “shot him in the back” decried. In words reminiscent of much contemporary discourse, Mathews proclaimed: We will resign ourselves no more to be ruled by a government based on mobocracy. We, from this day forward declare that we no longer consider the regime in Washington to be a valid and lawful representative of all Aryans who refuse to submit to the coercion and subtle tyranny placed upon us by Tel Aviv and their lackeys in Washington. We recognize that the mass of our people have been put into a lobotomized, lethargic state of blind obedience and we will not take party anymore in collective racial suicide! A similarly verbose “Open Letter to the U.S. Congress” was appended. It blamed the country’s elected representatives “for what has happened to America” and vowed ominously to hold each one responsible. Although neither Mathews nor Pierce nor Scutari nor Duey nor any of the three other signatories had ever served in Vietnam, they still pledged that they would exact revenge for the “betrayal of the 55,000 Americans who were sacrificed.” The “anti-American ‘Israel Lobby’ ” was castigated for its steady erosion of the Second Amendment. Fascinatingly, common cause was made with “our Arab friends,” whom the U.S. government was blamed for having turned “into enemies.” After citing the Vietnam War again, the letter concluded with an ominous warning. “When the Day comes, we will not ask whether you swung to the right or whether you swung to the left; we will simply swing you by the neck.… With these things said, let the battle begin.” It was over less than two weeks later. At 4:00 AM on December 7, about a hundred FBI agents converged on a two-story wood chalet on Whidbey Island—a vacation area at the mouth of Puget Sound in Washington State. The Seattle field office had received a tip that Mathews was hiding there. He had a 9mm Uzi submachine gun, thousands of rounds of ammunition, and a gas mask. An FBI negotiator tried to talk Mathews into surrendering. “I have been a good soldier, a fearless warrior,” the Order leader responded. “I will die with honor and join my brothers in Valhalla.” As the siege dragged on, the following afternoon the FBI resorted to tear gas, hoping to force Mathews out of the dwelling. More than 250 canisters were fired into its upper floor, where Mathews had taken refuge, with no result. An FBI SWAT team preceded by blindingly loud flash-bang grenades gained access to the ground floor but was met with a hail of machine-gun fire and forced to retreat. As darkness fell, the FBI summoned a helicopter to illuminate the scene—which attracted more gunfire from Mathews as he attempted to shoot it down. An illumination flare was then fired into the chalet’s ground floor in hopes of lighting the way for a more successful SWAT assault. The wood-frame house caught fire and was rapidly engulfed in flames. Mathews refused to leave and perished—just as he had promised. As Noble observed, “The right-wing now had its second significant martyr.”
~~~
I've told this short story before, but I want to share it again, today. I was born in 1945. When I was old enough to begin asking questions, I asked my widowed mother my nationality. She quickly said American and I could tell that was the end of the conversation. Both of my parents were of German descent. Perhaps it was too close to the past war that my mother chose not to tell me I was of German descent. After reading this book, I can honestly say that I have never before felt so much an American, a believer in our Constitution, and its being a melting pot for those who value freedom... Further, I believe in Jesus as my Savior and do not support the present use by some who claim their hate and violence are guided by their beliefs... as Christians...
We’re storming the Capitol, it’s a revolution! —Elizabeth from Knoxville, Tennessee
In the summer of 2020, the messaging across far-right American internet forums was jubilant. The one-two punch of the novel coronavirus pandemic, coupled with widespread protests and nationwide unrest triggered by the murder of another unarmed African American by police, had laid the country low. Yet in this moment of collective despair, America’s racists, bigots, antisemites, white supremacists, and anti-government extremists reveled in the newfound opportunities that had emerged throughout that year. Now was the time, their hateful posts on Telegram channels and seditious summons on Facebook proclaimed, to act decisively and bring the United States to its knees. On Facebook that April, President Donald Trump’s tweets to “liberate” various states from their governors’ COVID stay-at-home orders and defend Second Amendment rights had galvanized exponents of the “boogaloo”—the mass insurrection-initiated civil war meant to overthrow the U.S. government. “Yo the president is boog posting,” exclaimed one typical message. Until Facebook removed these friend groups and their posts from the platform at the end of June 2020, its author was among over 72,000 members of such Facebook groups devoted to “boogaloo.” Using other colloquialisms, such as “big igloo” and “big luau,” or referring to themselves as “boojahideen,” they explained how “We the people need to stand up to what’s right and revolt. We CAN NOT allow our freedoms to be stopped or silenced. Organize and get off our ASSES and let’s take back AMERICA!!” Another announced, “This Has Been A Long Time Coming: Stand-By For Instruction,” while a third showed a photograph of a loaded assault rifle with the message “I heard there was gonna be a Big Luau. Thought I’d dress appropriately.”
The book begins, rightly so, in my opinion, with the call for coming to the Capitol on January 6th. It is clear to most Americans who saw the devastation that it undoubtedly had been planned ahead and was incited by the past president of the United States. Many of those insurrectionists have already been placed in jail. The search continues for all of those involved. The authors then move backward, stopping to point out the attempt to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan. Following with historical references on those who support White Supremacy going back to 1980. At that time, a call for acceleration of their goals was made!
It clearly stated that only the overthrow of the government (and its people) could allow for a new white-dominated country--and a new order...
And that would require, of course, GUNS. Preferably those assault guns that could kill many at one time. Thus, America watched as more and more guns were sold. Watched while the republican representatives would never vote for some type of pull-back on guns. In fact, those who were/are involved indicated that when they started seriously talking about taking away guns, that was the time to act... We have seen attacks on Black and Jewish house of worship, the murder of Black men, in particular, through questionable actions by law officers, and, heightened with the death of George Floyd. The move by the past president to ban Muslims as soon as he took office...and more...
The movement into local church resulted in local community havens turning “into a violent, paramilitary, right-wing, white supremacist group.” The change was prompted by a self-proclaimed divine vision Ellison had of the Lord visiting retribution upon America’s cities because of the depravity and licentiousness that had “reached heights beyond that of the Tower of Babel.” In his retelling of the vision, Ellison claimed that “the only hope for America … is for Christians to leave the cities and organized churches..." Was that the beginning when the Evangelical Church hierarchy also began supporting Trump?
Did you know that there had been a law against military-type guns in 1994? We have learned that both Trump and Pence spoke at NRA conventions... And, certainly, we've known that the republicans have continued to prevent any gun laws reducing the numbers of guns... Slogans have been created to reinforce the ownership of guns: "Fear the Government That Fears Your Gun." Or, “A Man with a Gun Is a citizen, A Man Without a Gun Is a Subject.” Surely, we now know that the republican party in office right now are supporters of those who care nothing about murdering Americans... And, that the initiation of this need for guns is through those who look toward the overthrow of our government...
The thing is that even while all of this is happening, these individuals continue to lie about January 6th being a "peaceful protest." While vowing that "next time... Unfortunately, only one option remains when we return. We bring guns and take the Capitol building without intention of being peaceful. This ends with the government bombing their own people. I had hopes it wouldn’t. But here we are.”
Have you learned enough yet? Do you now understand why our President worries about Losing the Soul of the Nation?" If you haven't read enough from Part 1 and 2, I highly recommend you get this book and, hopefully, finally realize that there is a major divide within our country... And the other side from those who respect our Constitution and all of our citizens... are those White Supremacists who claim that God gave them America and they want to kill all of us who disagree and start over...
God Help Us Be Strong To Fight For America, Land of the Free... Land Where Democracy Survives Only By All Americans Working With And Not Against The Constitutional Laws Of The United States! The following conclusions are:
The United States today thus requires a comprehensive, wide-ranging, institutionalized strategy to effectively counter these threats—including measures to strengthen American civil society as well as those that specifically target violent extremist groups, their activists and supporters, their propagandists and sympathizers, and their recruiters and financiers. The policy recommendations that emerge from this examination and exegesis of the far-right terrorist threat in the United States fit into three categories: short-term measures to create a stronger regulatory framework, with relatively immediate effects; medium-term measures to strengthen civil society, with impacts over the next five to ten years; and, long-term measures to build national unity, which will break the cycle of recruitment and regeneration that has sustained this movement across multiple decades and therefore build resilience that will benefit future generations and inoculate them against the allure of extremist ideologies. All these efforts need to commence immediately and not unfold sequentially. They should be undertaken without delay but with the expectation that, while some can have more immediate effects, others will take years, if not decades, to achieve the desired impact. This range of measures, it should be emphasized, is applicable to both extremes of the political spectrum—left as well as right—and include, as the preeminent goal, restoring the integrity of and respect for the American political system. To implement this admittedly optimistic but nonetheless crucial goal, a series of equally critical additional steps is required, such as enacting legislation designed to address all manifestations of extremist violence, whether from the right or the left or any other section, and effectively counter the ideological and social appeal of extremism and conspiracy theories more generally.
By taking decisive action today, the United States can begin to make meaningful inroads against these highly corrosive and insidious threats to our democratic values and ensure the safety and security of our fellow citizens in a more secure and inclusive environment than currently exists.
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