October 20, 1999
White supremacist groups
inspiring individual acts
___By Jim Nesbitt
___Religion News Service
___ATLANTA (RNS)--In the decidedly Old Testament eyes of Walter Eliyah Thody, bank robberies, killings, bombings and other acts of crime and violence can be justified if they are committed to avenge a transgression against God's law or the U.S. Constitution.
___A gangly, bespectacled bank robber with the long, ragged beard of a prophet and a prison sentence that will keep him behind bars until the day he dies, Thody sees himself as a soldier of God, fighting a war against those bent on handing America over to a sataniccabal of one-world government conspirators.
WHITE SUPREMACIST Lawrence Russell Brewer was condemned Sept. 23 to die for dragging a black man to death near Jasper.
___"We're having to fight to keep our country," said Thody, interviewed in 1996 while serving time at one of America's toughest prisons, the federal penitentiary in Atlanta. "Killing is normally murder. ... Theft is theft. But if you're in warfare, then those same acts are acts of war. I'm at warfare against the enemies of my country."
___Thody, 60, is a believer of the racist theology known as Christian Identity and is one of the leading proselytizers of the Phineas Priesthood--a violent credo rooted in an interpretation of biblical vengeance gaining popularity among white supremacists, anti-government zealots and the extreme fringe of the anti-abortion movement.
___Experts on hate groups say there may be a connection between the Phineas Priesthood and Buford Furrow, the self-confessed suspect in the shooting spree at a Jewish community center in Los Angeles who reportedly told FBI agents he wanted to send a "wake-up call to America to kill Jews." Furrow also is charged with killing a Filipino-American postal worker in Los Angeles because of his race and government job.
___In a van believed to have been driven by Furrow at the time of the community center attack, authorities found a book written by Richard Kelly Hoskins, a Lynchburg, Va., leader of the Christian Identity movement who also wrote "The Vigilantes of Christendom," the prime text advocating commission of violent "Phineas actions" to restore the authority of "God's law."
___Whether Furrow styled himself a Phineas priest is still a matter of speculation, hate group experts caution. And it may be an academic question, because a broad variety of hate groups advocate violent acts against Jews, minorities, homosexuals and abortion clinics by "lone wolves" acting on their own initiative.
___"You can really craft your own philosophy from this extremist buffet," said Brian Levin, a criminal justice professor at California State University at San Bernardino and head of the Center on Hate and Extremism. "You don't have to stay married to one philosophy or another--you can pick and choose. You see a lot of morphing out there."
___The Phineas Priesthood is seen as the most dangerous credo of violence, a powerful combination of religious zealotry, racist ideology and almost-foolproof tactics.
___Less an organization than a call to action and a badge of honor, followers of this blood-stained faith strive to live up to the example of Phineas, who killed an Israelite and his heathen wife with a javelin for violating God's prohibition against consorting with women not of the Chosen People.
___According to the Old Testament Book of Numbers, Phineas' zealous action saved the people of Israel from a plague God loosed on the land and won this faithful servant and his descendants a perpetual priesthood.
JOHN WILLIAM "BILL" KING, 24, walks through the Jasper County Courthouse as final arguments got under way in his capital murder trial, Feb. 23. King is accused in the dragging death of James Byrd Jr. in Jasper.
(REUTERS)
___Today, this story is used as a justification for violent action by a diverse group of hard-line zealots. They include:
___Paul Hill, the anti-abortion activist who wrote an essay advocating the commission of "Phineas actions" a year before he was convicted of killing a Pensacola, Fla., abortion clinic doctor and his security escort.
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___Religion is a powerful motivator. Its use as a justification for murder and other criminal acts alarms experts who monitor the white supremacist and anti-government movements.
___"It is the American equivalent of the Islamic Jihad," said Mike Reynolds, a senior researcher with KlanWatch, the investigatory arm of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights watchdog group based in Montgomery, Ala. "You just can't overstate the power of the religious component in all of this. These folks are willing to step over that line and stay there. They're willing to die for what they believe."
___White supremacists see the Phineas story as an example of how to address one of their prime issues--race-mixing. They also see Phineas as a prime exemplar of what Aryan Nations leader Louis Beam has called "leaderless resistance"--an individual or small group taking independent, violent action to help foment racial revolution without orders from a larger, easily infiltrated movement.
___This strategy insulates the hate group from criminal prosecution or civil lawsuits, afavorite weapon of civil rights watchdog groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that has successfully sued and bankrupted several Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi groups. It also makes it virtually impossible for law enforcement to infiltrate and prevent the acts of "lone wolves" such as Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, whose recent deadly Midwest rampage against Jews, blacks and Asians killed two and wounded nine before he took his own life, or Eric Rudolph, the prime suspect in the deadly bombing of a Birmingham, Ala., abortion clinic who has eluded authorities for more than a year.
___Since many white supremacists follow the racist religious doctrine known as Christian Identity, which holds that whites of Celtic, Anglo-Saxon and Northern European descent are God's true Chosen People, the Old Testament zealotry of the Phineas doctrine is a natural fit.
___But as Hill so graphically illustrates, the Phineas credo isn't limited to the white supremacy movement. It is also popular among some anti-abortion activists.
___"They are choosing to engage in criminal activities and want some kind of justification for it," said Ann Glazier, Planned Parenthood vice president for research. "They can't get it from society, so they try to get it from religion."
___Although Glazier is careful not to suggest any hard links between the anti-abortion and white supremacy movements, she says both feature strong religious motivations, giving the story of Phineas a natural appeal to zealots in both camps.
___Thody, who now has been transferred from Atlanta to the federal prison at Beaumont, agrees.
___"It is simply a shared philosophy," he said. "Paul Hill didn't get any authorization from me. I didn't send him out to do the job."
___While Thody sees his actions as those of a holy warrior battling against an evil government, he views Hill's act as that of an Old Testament judge who would mete out bloody punishment to the people of Israel who transgressed against God's law.
___"I would call his killing of that murderer a judicial action. ... Paul Hill was a judge who stepped in and passed judgment--he was a Phineas Priest," Thody explained. "I don't know if he refers to himself as such, but that's what he is, in essence."
___No one knows how many Phineas Priests are out there, planning violent acts against government officials, financial institutions, abortion clinics or, another favorite target, homosexuals.
___"It's like an ion in a chamber," said Mark Thomas, a Pennsylvania Christian Identity minister who is an advocate of the Phineas example. "You can't see it, but you can see the trail. And you see a lot of trails criss-crossing about."
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