Hateland Read online

  The most unexpected trend between 2008 and 2016 was the growth of violent Black Nationalism. Groups embracing black separatism, nationalism, and related ideologies had experienced the largest growth of any hate group over the previous ten years. By 2016, a segment that had not been considered a serious threat since the 1970s represented a fifth of the entire hate sector.

  Broadly speaking, the process of radicalization was very similar for the three young men, even though they ended up associated with very different brands of extremism: Black Nationalist, Islamic extremist, white supremacist. But, historically, the numbers and level of activity for each of those groups has tended to rise and fall at different times. In the 1960s and 70s, left-wing and black militant groups were considered the biggest threats. While those groups waned in the 1980s and 90s, right-wing extremist groups had surges of activity. It wasn't until the 1990s that terrorism related to Islamic extremists became a top concern. But, by the time of the attacks in 2015 and 2016, there was an alarming increase in hate-driven radicalization in the United States across the political spectrum.

  So, perhaps Johnson, Abdulazeez, and Roof's acts could also be explained as part of a tidal wave of radical, ideological hate. But, if so, that asked an even bigger question: why was extremism expanding so rapidly across the political spectrum?

  On the morning of September 29, 1983, the president and the chief loan officer of Buffalo Ridge State Bank, Rudolf Blythe, Jr., and Deems Thulin, drove out to an abandoned dairy farm in southwest Minnesota. The property had been foreclosed on three years previously and, in the stark economic climate, Blythe and Thulin were having trouble unloading it. Unfortunately for them, the people they were meeting had no intention of buying the farm.

  James and Steve Jenkins, the bankrupt farm's previous owners, were waiting for them with shotguns. Full of angry despair at their shattered existence, the two men shot the bankers to death and fled south. Three days later, the younger Jenkins turned himself in to authorities in Paducah, Texas. He then took them to an abandoned farm where his father, Steve, lay dead. He'd shot himself in the head.

  The father-son murderers terrified farm families across the Midwest, but many of them were also facing the same sort of financial disasters as the Jenkins. By 1983, American farmers were losing their land at a rate unseen since the dustbowl of the 1920s and 1930s. Economic factors drove the farm crisis, including high debt for new, expensive machinery, overproduction, falling commodity prices, high oil prices and a strong dollar. But the worst costs were personal. In many areas, rates for alcoholism, divorce, and child abuse shot up, while the suicide rate among ex-farmers increased so rapidly that a system of rural prevention networks were set up.

  Psychologist Glen Wallace was a primary counselor on call for a suicide hotline run by a group called Ag-link. At the peak of the farm crisis, Wallace was being sent into the field to talk down suicidal farmers at a rate of nearly two hundred a year—and that was just in the state of Oklahoma. Some days, Wallace had to handle up to four farm suicide emergencies hundreds of miles apart.

  His extraordinary efforts were chronicled by a journalist named Joel Dyer. Dyer had begun traveling around with Wallace in an attempt to understand the high rate of suicides among the farm families, and its links to the ongoing crisis in the rural American economy. But he also, unintentionally, ended up getting a front row seat to the beginnings of a massive wave of radicalization across the country's heartland.1 Dyer's analysis of why right-wing extremism spiked in the 1980s and 90s might give us some insight into how extremism began rising across the political spectrum two decades later.

  The crisis-level rates of suicide and alcoholism reflected the disillusion of the famers’ families, employment, social networks, and future expectations during the 1980s. They often felt guilty, blaming themselves for their economic plight, even though it was rarely ever that simple.

  In this weakened, confused, and angry state, Wallace saw people choosing one of three options: counseling, suicide, or shifting their guilt to blame some other group. The Jenkinses, for example, had shifted blame to the bankers. The elder Jenkins had then committed suicide.

  Wallace was there to encourage farmers to accept his professional help. But during their farm visits, both Wallace and Dyer noticed other groups showing up. These people, including Christian Identitarians and the Posse Comitatus, were there to assuage the ex-farmers’ crushing feelings of guilt by shifting blame to others via their extremist ideologies.

  The Christian Identitarian theology begins with a familiar story: “The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” But, in their racist reinterpretation of the original Hebrew, the narrative quickly heads into unfamiliar territory.

  As Christian Identitarians have it, the Garden of Eden, is already crowded with “Negroid,” “Oriental,” and “Mongoloid” peoples before Adam is created. They had, in fact, already been in the garden for at least fifty thousand years. In this telling, Adam was no longer the first man; he was the original Caucasian—and thus the first person created in the image of God, who was apparently white. Because the pre-Adamic, nonwhite people were not intelligent enough to cultivate or store foods, they survived as hunters and gatherers. Adam retained the title as the first person to till the earth.

  Another well-known starting point veers further into hateful territory: “And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.” But, due to a reinterpretation of words including “eat” and “touch,” Eve was said to be seduced by Satan, who impregnated her. Eve then convinced Adam to have sexual relations with Satan. Not surprisingly, Adam and Eve were cast out by an angry God. Several days later, Adam impregnated Eve.

  Nine months after that, Eve gave birth to two boys, Cain and Abel. But they were half brothers: Cain was the son of Satan, while Abel was Adam's true son. As such, the brothers represented two bloodlines, one evil and one righteous. Cain eventually killed Abel, was cursed by God, and went off to the land of Nod where he began his own family. Cain's progeny were said to be the first Jews, making all Jews the literal spawn of Satan. Meanwhile, Eve gave birth to Seth, a Caucasian and, according to Christian Identitarians, a true Hebrew.

  This alternate Garden of Eden narrative is called “dual-seed” theory by its Christian Identity adherents but can't be described as the official theology of that religion. There is not any one unifying document or scripture. What all branches of Christian Identity, or CI, do share in common is racism and, even more so, a virulent anti-Semitism. Even for “single-seed” theorists, the more figuratively Satanic Jews control the New World Order with the intention of killing or imprisoning God's real chosen people: whites.

  Christian Identity has never had a huge number of dedicated followers. It isn't even considered Christianity by almost every other church. But it has been extremely influential on the radical right, and its adherents include leaders of the Ku Klux Klan, some neo-Nazis, and prominent figures in militias. In the 1980s, Christian Identitarians were actively recruiting among the desperate Midwestern farm families.

  Another group looking for new members at the same time and place was the Posse Comitatus. While many of its members also harbored anti-Semitic and white supremacist views, they were particularly distinguished by their extreme hostility toward legal authority, especially that exercised by the federal government. The founder of the Sheriff's Posse Comitatus, Henry Lamont Beach, declared grandiosely that government officials who violated oaths of office should be taken to the “most populated intersection of town and, at high noon, be hung by the neck, the body remaining until sundown as example of those who would subvert the law.”

  Although no such frontier justice hangings have been recorded, both the Posse and Christian Identitarians have been linked to multiple violent encounters and fatalities. In the early 1980s, at the same time as the Posse were recruiting farm families, a former Posse member and Chri
stian Identitarian named Gordon Kahl killed two federal marshals and a sheriff. Another Identitarian, David Tate, killed a Missouri State Highway Patrol officer while trying to reach a compound called The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord.

  Of course, when Posse members or representatives of Christian Identity approached the victims of the 1980s farm crisis, they didn't start by spouting off about the New World Order or bizarre racial theories—much less killing police officers. The extremists visited the stressed farmers and assured them their problems weren't their fault. They'd invite them to community events, dinners, prayer groups, kids’ activities. Like Bill Riccio's Alabama skinheads, the families were angry and full of despair—not ready-made extremists. Most probably had zero interest in anti-Semitic reinterpretations of the second and third chapters of Genesis. But, throughout the 1980s, Christian Identitarians and Posse Comitatus ended up being remarkably effective at radicalization.

  Skip forward to the early 1990s and the worst of the previous decade's farm crisis had passed, but the anger and despair across the heartland had not. Coupled with a new economic recession, membership in right-wing, anti-government groups exploded. As many as three million Americans were involved in some sort of extremist activity, in groups ranging from the Constitutionalists, Sovereign Citizens, militias, the Freemen, neo-Nazis, and various anti-immigrant groups along the Mexican border.

  The movement climaxed when Timothy McVeigh, a Gulf War veteran who had spent years immersed in conspiratorial, white supremacist, and anti-government communities, blew up the Oklahoma City Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168 people, including the 15 children in the building's day care center.

  After the 1995 bombing, author Joel Dyer set out across the farm belt again, this time looking for explanations for the spike in right-wing activity. Remembering how many victims of the farm crisis were being actively recruited by extremist groups, Dyer got back in touch with the families he had met the previous decade. The groups’ membership drives turned out to have been shockingly successful. Roughly 80 percent of the people Dyer had met on suicide watch during the farm crisis were now affiliated with some kind of extremist group.2

  Without realizing it at the time, Dyer had been witness to a classic radicalization process, but on a massive scale. First, the farmers’ economic and personal hardship had weakened or destroyed their inhibitors, including family, employment, social networks, and future goals. Many were affected by destabilizers, including anger, grievances, and isolation. In this state of personal crisis—weak inhibitors, strong destabilizers—they were extremely vulnerable to radicalization.

  By creating social events, personal relationships, and exposing farm families to propaganda and charismatic leaders, the Identitarians, Posse Comitatus, and other groups proved strong radicalizing forces. Eventually, as a good number of the ex-farmers became more radical, they had a new way of understanding their problems. They'd shift blame for their problems to blacks, Jews, immigrants, the Zionist Occupation Government (ZOG), international banking cartels, or other extreme right-wing bogeymen.

  Dyer even described the process as a funnel, an inverted cone. A huge number of nonradicalized “normal” people entered the broad top. At the funnel's bottom, a much smaller number of radicalized extremists dropped out.

  But Dyer's funnel had another dimension. While he still saw the personal psychological element described in the cone of radicalization—“some combination of stress, anger, misinformation, religion, fear and blame-shifting”—the process was initiated and driven by external factors that reached across huge numbers of people simultaneously.3 In this case, the economy was the biggest force manipulating the inhibitors and destabilizers of millions of people.

  At the time of their attacks, Johnson, Abdulazeez, and Roof each faced their own individual employment problems, losing preferred jobs or not working at all. But none of them was facing bankruptcy or complete financial collapse. What's more, in a depressed economy, people are more likely to take lower paying jobs, less meaningful work, or be unemployed. They go into debt more often and only see dim career prospects in their future. In short, an economic catastrophe negatively affects resistance to radicalization on a massive scale.

  Again, radicalization is too complex to make specific predictions. For example, the people who suffered the worst economically are not necessarily the most likely to embrace extremist ideas. But a catastrophe that destroys families and careers while frequently leaving people angry, confused, despondent, and aggrieved will certainly increase the overall chances of radicalization across a whole population or country.

  This exactly describes what happened to thousands of farm families across the country in the 1980s. External economic factors were influencing the internal psychological process of radicalization, eroding personal inhibitors on a massive scale. Though it was not the only factor, the economic devastation of the 1980s farm crisis sowed the seeds of the rage that blossomed in the early 1990s.

  In April of 2009, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a report entitled Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment. As the title suggests, the report warned that many of the same macro-conditions that led to extremist activity in the 1990s were evident in 2009.

  The document specifically warned that the “economic downturn” might play a similar role in present day right-wing radicalization as it did in the 1990s. Additionally, it pointed to a unique political event—“the election of the first African American president”—as another factor that could spur radicalization among members of the racist far right.4 Other potential drivers for radicalization included the return of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan “facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities,”5 and the anticipation among some people that President Obama, who had said he supported “common sense” gun laws, was going to crack down on Second Amendment rights. Together, the report concluded, these factors—economic, political, and societal—“present unique drivers for right-wing radicalization and recruitment.”6

  Because the report was a warning about possible future activity, most of the threats were largely theoretical. But DHS did cite a recent example. On April 4, 2009, two police officers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, responded to a domestic dispute between Margaret Poplawski and her twenty-two-year-old son Richard. The dispute began after the son's pit bulls had peed on Margaret Poplawski's carpet and she told him to get out of her house. But when the police arrived, the younger Poplawski, lying in wait with a bullet-proof vest, shot both police officers at the door.7 Those two officers, as well as a third officer who responded to the call, bled to death on the ground while Poplawski held law enforcement at bay for four hours with his AK-47 and several handguns.

  Richard Poplawski had a troubled background. Aside from a combative relationship with his mother, he had been kicked out of the Marines and was upset after recently losing his job at a glass factory. He had also apparently come into contact with some conspiratorial extreme right-wing propaganda. According to a friend who Poplawski called during the shootout, the gunman was unhappy about “the Obama gun ban that's on the way,”8 a baseless idea propagated by right-wing extremists including the burgeoning militia and Patriot groups. Over nine pages, the DHS report focused on two possibilities: that this tragic incident was spurred by the unique political and economic factors that the country was confronting, and that it might not be the last such event.

  For DHS analysts, the warning seemed prudent and evidence-based. The correlation between broad economic and political trends and radicalization was well-established among experts who monitor extremist groups. In hindsight, the warnings accurately predicted a sustained spike in right-wing extremism. At the time, however, the report was met with scorn and fierce resistance from conservatives.

  Writing in the Washington Times, syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin referred to the “piece of crap report” as a �
�sweeping indictment of conservatives.”9 For her, the fact that these far-right extremist threats were not specifically linked to named organizations—e.g., Ku Klux Klan or Ohio Defense Force militia—meant that the DHS report could be used to target any group with “right-wing” ideologies.

  She claimed the report “demonizes the very Americans who will be protesting in the thousands on Wednesday for the nationwide Tax Day Tea Party.”10 As a sarcastic rebuttal, Malkin suggested that attendees make signs for the Tea Party event reading: “Honk if you're a radicalized right-wing extremist” and “Guilty of right-wing extremist chatter.”11

  Malkin wasn't done, nor was she alone. Because the report warned about the danger posed by skinheads and violent neo-Nazis learning the art of warfare in US armed forces, Malkin accused the authors of left-wing antimilitary bias. She was joined by numerous prominent Republicans, including House minority leader, John Boehner, who described the report as offensive and demanded that the agency apologize to veterans. “To characterize men and women returning home after defending our country as potential terrorists is offensive and unacceptable,” he said.12 It was not, however, unfounded.

  The Aryan Nations compound was established in the 1970s by white supremacist, Christian Identity adherent, and pioneering American neo-Nazi Richard Butler. Set in a semi-rural, wooded area north of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, it had a summer camp look to it: low-slung buildings sat under towering pine trees. The fingers of nearby Hayden Lake stretched off toward the surrounding green hills.

  Butler used the compound as a center of his white supremacist operations for two decades. In the early 1980s, he invited farmers who lost their land in the farm crisis to live there in exchange for their participation in his movement. Much like at Riccio's Alabama WAR house, Butler's twenty acres was also home for teenagers and other young men who became neo-Nazi skinheads. In the mid-1980s, Butler also hosted some of the most important figures in the extreme right, including Klansman Louis Beam, Christian Identitarian Gordon Mohr, and white supremacist Robert E. Miles.