A serious question about Neo-Nazis and Fundies

[hyphenate]

Are they connected? Does anyone have any kind of information or research that can connect hate groups like the Neo-Nazis with the whacko radical religious right? Is there a crossover in membership?

I know that the Neo-Nazis don't like Jewish people, and that fundies want to make certain the Jewish retake the "holy city" along the way to armageddon, but I would think that a lot of the hatred that exists in one would also show up in the others.

I'm asking because tonight's repeat of L&O: Special Victims Unit is about a white supremacist group and a sniper attack on a grade school, and it occurred to me that there must be connections of which we are not even aware in the real world.

I'd be interested in any information on connections. Books or other publications would also be appreciated. :)

[porphyrian]

1. Many neo-nazi and white supremacist groups claim to be Christian.

That doesn't mean they are or aren't, and it isn't reflexive (Christianity isn't neo-nazi). For more info, check out this website:

http://tolerance.org/

[Kiouni]

2. i love that website

did you happen to read why they have to be based in canada? it has to do with america threatening to prosecute for hate speach...serious, if you haven't read that section you should.

[porphyrian]

3. That's crazy, but I'm not surprised.

I don't personally believe in making any speech illegal, though I don't have a problem with acknowledging hate crimes in peoples' deeds. No, I hadn't read that yet.

[ComerPerro]

4. but if they claim to be Christian, can we call them Christofascists?

[porphyrian]

6. If the shit fits, wear it. - n/t

[Wonk]

5. There's a noticeable overlap between the two

Try some googling, for example http://www.google.com/search?q=skinhead+christian and http://www.google.com/search?q=Christian+Nationalist+Crusade , but be forewarned, lots of the links you'll find with those searches are to very racist sites like stormfront or skinheadz.

edit: Here's a good link about it that's not a hate site http://www.publiceye.org/rightist/idennlns.html

[nealmhughes]

7. Let me put on my librarian's cap and I'll send you some fast links.

They aren't connected per se, as one can be a wacko fundamentalist, and actually a socialist! It is a religious discipline, not anything more or less, however, many of the fundamentalists also believe in a strong Israel, as they view all types of prophecy from Daniel and Revalations to be interpreted as such, and accordingly, they tend to follow the AIPAC line and associated people such as the NeoCons.

Neo-Nazis may be Odinists (as Himmler was trying to reestablish the pagan Germanic religions before he got his just rewards), most Nazis were vehenemently anti-Catholic (conflicting power bases with Rome and Berlin) and of course anti-Jewish. Some are also associated with the Christian Idenitity Movement, which has a big base of wacko ex-cons in Idaho that believe the exact opposite of Louis Farrakhan, in other words they invert NOI to be "white" and "Muslim" to "Christian." They do not yet have a spaceship, to me knowledge, lacking the basic requirements for a totally odd group (spaceships seem to be the one key factor in so many sects, now doesn't it? Or a magic planet that you need magic underwear to wear in order to travel there.).

Some Neo-Nazis are probably "run of the mill" Protestants, but I don't imagine they would fit in very well in any Protestant Church, to be true, so they probably gravitate towards Identity or paganism. Or even atheism, following Hitler's leanings.

I'll find some links and PM you in a while. That was a good LAOSVU, I hadn't seen it until tonight!

[hyphenate]

10. Thanks!

Yeah, re: the episode--I was blown away with the shootout. And just as blown away with a few of the other revelations (Marcia Gay Harden's character, for example). The final minutes, where you discover the whole truth was simply numbing. It really made its point--that somewhere along the line, money was the ultimate motive.

Thanks for the info--I look forward to the links!

[derby378]

8. One case study: The Covenant, Sword, and Arm of the Lord

This bunch started out as Zarephath-Horeb, a fundamentalist Christian congregation that made its home on the Arkansas/Missouri border in the mid-1970s. Led by Jim Ellison, at first Zarephath-Horeb was merely a refuge for those escaping from an increasingly materialistic society by seeking the quiet and solitude of the Ozark Mountains. But something snapped somewhere down the line, and Jim Ellison embraced the doctrine of Christian Identity, christened himself "King James of the Ozarks," and exhorted his commune to prepare for an impending race war. While Ellison networked with Klan leaders from the South and neo-Nazis all along the US/Canada border, his followers, now known as the Covenant, Sword, and Arm of the Lord, set up an illegal machine shop where they converted any gun they could get their hands on to full-automatic fire. They even built a training facility in the Ozarks, complete with fake office buildings and traffic intersections, where Ellison's shock troops practiced manuevers such as rappelling down buildings and shooting at imaginary black marauders with their illegal machine guns.

There's simply too much to cover in the space of this message. I encourage you to read up on these guys when you get a chance. They were truly scary.

[Perky]

My take is that there is very little cross-over

Fundie culture is very surburban, they tend to ignore pocerty issues but would not qualify as abjectly racist and anti Jewish. Though there arecertainly instance of idiocy. it would be difficult to paint them all with the same broad brush.

Neo-Nazis tend to hang out together and my guess is that they just could not get into the fundy vibe which emphasizes regular church attendance, Christian Music, and puritan virtue.

The Klan are typically church-going, but their faith is largely nominal, and indictative of what you see in the rural South. Largely apolitical, strong emphasis of salvation, but very compartmentalized. Churches would never endorse the Klan any more and their is little tolerance for that type of gross bigorty in Church leadership even though the Southern rural Church is as segregated as always.

[Perky]

9. My take is that there is very little cross-over

Fundie culture is very surburban, they tend to ignore pocerty issues but would not qualify as abjectly racist and anti Jewish. Though there arecertainly instance of idiocy. it would be difficult to paint them all with the same broad brush.

Neo-Nazis tend to hang out together and my guess is that they just could not get into the fundy vibe which emphasizes regular church attendance, Christian Music, and puritan virtue.

The Klan are typically church-going, but their faith is largely nominal, and indictative of what you see in the rural South. Largely apolitical, strong emphasis of salvation, but very compartmentalized. Churches would never endorse the Klan any more and their is little tolerance for that type of gross bigorty in Church leadership even though the Southern rural Church is as segregated as always.

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

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[hyphenate]

13. Welcome to DU

I was curious because there just seems to be so much similarity in justification for hatred, regardless of the subject of that hatred.

I tend to agree that Hitler was more left than right in his time, but what constituted National Socialism in Germany in the mid-29th century certainly isn't what liberalism constitutes today for the left.

It just seems to me that regardless of what motivation someone has, to hate someone or some group so much that you would wish total annihilation of them and theirs speaks a great deal more about about the current world in which we live than it does of past history.

As I've been involved with many discussions here at DU (and many of my own initial posts on the subject) about fundamentalism, I am coming into the discussion with a well-worn experience of just how nutso the radical religious right ("RRR") is, and how they seem to want to do away with those of us who don't mirror their beliefs.

It becomes even more intriguing to see that so many harbor such hatred and such loathing for others that to kill them is an obsession which is never diminished, only sublimated at times. I can see, though, that if some white supremacists were part of the fundie cult, it would be an interesting rapture that they would be imagining. Of course, a common topic is how the original Christ looked in reality, and the WASP that is often pictured in literature, art and sculpture belies the fact that he would have looked very middle-eastern and Jewish.

[IChing]

14. Popcorn anyone?

:popcorn: :popcorn:

[Wonk]

15. O Rly?

http://www.nobeliefs.com/speeches.htm

[Bluebear]

16. Racialism, fascism, and Christian Nationalism

A popular image of the Nazis is that they were fundamentally anti-Christian while devout Christians were anti-Nazi. The truth is that German Christians supported the Nazis because they believed that Adolf Hitler was a gift to the German people from God. German Christianity was a divinely sanctioned religious movement which combined Christian doctrine and German character in a unique and desirable manner: True Christianity was German and True German-ness was Christian.

http://atheism.about.com/od/adolfhitlernazigermany/p/NaziChristian.htm

But if it satisfies your simplistic reasoning to call them "far off the end nutty leftist", so be it.

[OregonDem]

19. National Socialism is a form of socialism but not what most people

think of when they think of socialism. Fascism practices corporatism a form of socialism where legislative power is given to business leaders in different industries who then set wages and prices. As an economic system it came about after the Great Depression when most of the world viewed capitalism as a failure, but conservatives who rejected capitalism didn't join the leftist socialism bandwagon (where the government was given control over the economy to supposedly help workers) instead they created a system where the government was given control over the economy to benefit corporations. Nazism is hardly a leftist form of government, one just has to look at who they sent to concentration camps to figure that out.
http://www.answers.com/topic/nazi-concentration-camp-badges

Communists, Gay men, Jews, Lesbians, the Homeless, Women who used birth control, people who mixed races, Jehovah's Witnesses(cause they were pacifists), Anarchists and Social Democrats were all sent there. These are groups that the right has problems with not the left.

A police state that is militarily aggressive, pratices censorship, is anti-democratic, racist and homophobic could not be labeled far left.

[porphyrian]

20. For the reasons you just listed, it isn't a form of socialism.

That was simply the name it was given in the euphemism/propaganda tradition of the nazis to fool the citizenry into believing nazi-ism was somehow "for the people," despite its blatant purge of a significant percentage of the population.

Socialism is a system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole. The nazi government was anything but this. Don't believe the hype.

[Contrary1]

17. Aw, Mom...can I keep him, please?

I've always wanted a pet Freeper.

[hyphenate]

18. Boy

He didn't last very long. Sheesh!!!

[LostinVA]

22. I almost always miss these posts -- damn!

[Jed Dilligan]

21. Don't mistake the fundie focus on Israel

for loving Jews... They, including the President, believe that no one can get to heaven until all Jews are either dead or converted.

Which makes the whole trying-to-start-a-world-war-with-Israel-as-main-ally thing the fuckers are doing seem, well, shall we say, a mite bit sinister.

[hyphenate]

23. Yes

I know. That's one of the reasons the whole Neo-Nazi/fundie connection-no connection bugs me. It's like they both have their reasons for hating Jews, but the reasons in each case are far from clear in the end run. Pure hatred and intolerance is likely the root cause in both, but how they play it out is eye opening.

I've seen my ex-friend try to pass judgement on Moslems all the time and say that their "god" is the anti-christ, and it always amazed me that someone intelligent could express such hatred without batting an eye. I think getting rid of her hypocritical judgement from my life is the best thing I could do, even though it took a long time for me to realize how much I was being used. No one with that kind of seething hatred should claim to be a "Christian" ever.