Apocalypse, Revolution and Terrorism

This book focuses on religiously driven oppositional violence through the ages. Beginning with the 1st-century Sicari, it examines the commonalities that link apocalypticism, revolution, and terrorism occurring in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam past and present.

It is divided into two parts, ‘This Was Then’ and ‘This Is Now,’ which together examine the cultural and religious history of oppositional violence from the time of Jesus to the aftermath of the 2016 American election. The historical focus centers on how the movements, leaders and revolutionaries from earlier times are interpreted today through the lenses of historical memory and popular culture. The radical right is the primary but not exclusive focus of the second part of the book. At the same time, the work is intensely personal, in that it incorporates the author’s experiences in the worlds of communist Eastern Europe, in the Iranian Revolution, and in the uprisings and wars in the Middle East and East Africa.

This book will be of much interest to students of religious and political violence, religious studies, history, and security studies.

Jeffrey Kaplan is Professor of Security Studies at the King Fahd Security College, Saudi Arabia. He is author or editor of many books on terrorism and religious violence, including Radical Religion and Violence: Theory and Case Studies (Routledge 2015).

Political Violence

Series Editor: John G. Horgan, Georgia State University, USA

Founding Editor: David Rapoport

This book series contains sober, thoughtful and authoritative academic accounts of terrorism and political violence. Its aim is to produce a useful taxonomy of terror and violence through comparative and historical analysis in both national and international spheres. Each book discusses origins, organisational dynamics and outcomes of particular forms and expressions of political violence.

Understanding Apocalyptic Terrorism

Countering the radical mindset

Frances L. Flannery

Understanding Terrorism Innovation and Learning

Al-Qaeda and beyond

Edited by Magnus Ranstorp and Magnus Normark

Terrorist Histories

Individuals and political violence since the 19th Century

Caoimhe Nic Dháibhéid

Secessionism and Terrorism

Bombs, Blood and Independence in Europe and Eurasia

Glen Duerr

Apocalypse, Revolution and Terrorism

From the Sicari to the American Revolt against the Modern World

Jeffrey Kaplan

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Political-Violence/book-series/SE0196

Apocalypse, Revolution and Terrorism

From the Sicari to the American Revolt against the Modern World

Jeffrey Kaplan

First published 2019

by Routledge

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© 2019 Jeffrey Kaplan

The right of Jeffrey Kaplan to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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‘Jeffrey Kaplan’s discussion of how ancient groups in the Jewish, Islamic and Christian religions have utilized the apocalyptic vision and how apocalyptic thought has affected contemporary American politics including the election of Donald Trump is fascinating and provocative.’

David C. Rapoport, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), USA

‘If you are a true believer in conspiracy theories, you should not read this book – your favourite theory why the world is in such a mess and who is to blame for it might be undermined by Jeff Kaplan’s detached dissection, separating facts from fantasies. His analysis of human folly and fanaticism, past and present, should be an eye opener for those who “feel too much and understand too little”, to cite a line from the author’s previous book.’

Alex P. Schmid, Editor-in-Chief, Perspectives on Terrorism

‘Jeffrey Kaplan’s Apocalypse, Revolution and Terrorism is the culmination of a lifetime’s worth of extraordinary scholarly achievements. At once deeply personal and meticulously annotated, this work ranges across continents and centuries to make sense of the nexus of terrorism, apocalypticism, and the revolutionary mindset. It is equally as relevant and useful for historians of the ancient and medieval world and for the contemporary policymaker.’

Randall D. Law, Birmingham-Southern College in Birmingham, Alabama, USA

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I This was then

1  Nothing is true, everything is permitted: premodern religious terrorism

2  America’s apocalyptic literature of the radical right

Part II This is now

3  Red Dawn is now: race vs. nation and the American election

4  Life during wartime: active measures in the microchip era

Conclusion

Index

Acknowledgments

As with every academic monograph, there are more people to thank for seeing so extended a project through to fruition than could possibly be listed in a single page. Given how severely I have abused the contractual word limit with this book, it would be politic to begin with my editor at Routledge, Andrew Humphrys. In my previous outing with the press, Radical Religion and Violence: Theory and Case Studies, the text was, for reasons too numerous and mundane to recount here, very, very late. I did not want to try Andrew’s patience and perseverance in the same way. His trust on this book – a two-millennia epic journey through history – was itself epic. Sample chapters were disjointed and skeletal, sent while on the move from the mountains of North Carolina to Changchun, China, near the North Korean border to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. I hope the book, only a week late, does not disappoint.

The book would not have been completed in so timely a fashion, and certainly not so well, without the help and advice of Prof. Randall Law of Birmingham-Southern College. His expertise on the history of terrorism and his careful and very timely reading of various drafts of the work were of invaluable assistance, although the errors that remain are, sadly, my own.

There are many academics who inspired this work: Martin E. Marty, Jonathan Z. Smith, Karl Weintraub, David C. Rapoport, Michael Barkun, and Alex Schmid to name a few whose friendship and guidance have had a decisive impact on my career. Others whom I know only through their writings and visions, men like Eric Hoffer, Howard Kaminsky, Norman Cohn, Richard Hofstadter, and especially Johan Huizinga, have shaped the ideas and approaches of this work and I am grateful to each.

Inspiration for this work came not only from academic colleagues. Perhaps the greatest of all, though he has read not a word of this book, is Colonel (Retired) Christopher P. Costa, a career US Army military intelligence officer who went on to become the Special Assistant to the President & Senior Director for counter-terrorism at the National Security Council (NSC) in the Trump White House. His experiences include stints as chief of human and counterintelligence for US Central Command and deputy director at the Naval Special Warfare Development Group. He received two Bronze Stars for intelligence work in Afghanistan, and is enshrined in the Commando Hall of Honor of the US Special Operations Command. Who even knew that there was a US Commando Hall of Fame? For his friendship and inspiration, I am most grateful.

Finally and most of all, my love and gratitude go to my wife, Sheron, who in the darkest days convinced me that I could still write and continued to have something to say that was worth reading. Her patience while I was locked away in a darkened office, music blaring and shaking the foundations of wherever we lived in three countries and four cities, is what really made this book possible.

Introduction

This book is not about terrorism, although there are terrorists by the score within its pages. Nor is it about apocalypse, although apocalyptic dreams are woven into its very fabric. And revolution? There are revolutions a plenty in this book – Umayyad and Abbasid, Hussite and Taborite, French and Russian and Iranian and more besides. But it is not about revolution either.

At its deepest level, it is about the religious consecration of the simple act of negation. Or in less rarified terms, it is about apprehending that the world is a fallen place, distant from the Word and Will of God, and in so seeing, refusing to either accept or condone its truths – its accepted modes of governance or its ways of life.

But this intellectual satori is only the first step. In the two millennia that is the span of this book; uncountable millions have reached precisely this conclusion, and yet they rose for work the next day, their lives unchanged. Their rejection of their world is kept in the inner recesses of heart and mind, to be shared perhaps with family or while in one’s cups with those most trusted, but not ever to be acted upon. For to this day, the wages of rebellion are ridicule, rejection, incarceration, torture, or death. Who would embark on such a path knowing that the chances of success, of victory, are nil given the contemporary balance of forces? And what would give a man hope in such a dire quest?

In each of the cases in these pages the answer is basically the same. While man’s truths are by their nature transitory and therefore false, God’s Truth is immutable, but it is also accessible to men if they search deeply enough and believe strongly enough. With the certainty that in the end, when times are darkest and hope all but gone, He will act and his faithful will find succor, victory, and, ultimately, terrestrial salvation: No obstacle is too great.

This book has adopted a simple metaphor to illustrate such truths. Attributed to the Old Man of the Mountain, Hassan i-Sabah via the novel Alamout, it is this: ‘Nothing is true, everything is permitted.’ In every case and every context, this means simply that no human truth is ultimately true, for Truth resides in God and in His Word. In pursing this truth in text and personal revelation, everything is permitted. That is, every form of textual interpretation, licit or, as in the case of the Sunni conception of Ijtihad, illicit, is permitted. In this pursuit of truth, selective retrieval of text is the norm and the personal inspiration of individuals or religious virtuosi is ever present. Very much in keeping with the examples offered in sacred text, once Divine Truth is understood by the True Believers every violent action is permitted.

In the end, genocide is the logical outcome of each of these struggles. Some will be saved, or in Jewish terms have a portion of the Hereafter, and others simply will not. Following this logic, what matters in this world how many lives are taken in the implementation of God’s Design when the immortal souls of the victims are already forfeit?

This belief gave the Sicari in the time of Jesus the faith to meet their deaths, either at the hands of fellow Jews in the streets or at their own hands as they and 900 others leapt to their deaths from the walls of Masada. The Sicari were the first, and the credit for the invention of terrorism as we understand it today belongs to them, for if they had predecessors they are lost to history. So many followed this path, Jews, Christians, and Muslims that this book can give only the barest of outlines of their numbers.

Yet each, however bloody their paths and however monstrous their violence, shared the central faith that they, and they alone, knew God’s Truth and that whatever actions they took were therefore not only in His name, but at His behest. Knowing this, what excesses might they undertake that were not in imitation of and obedience to the Word of God?

Each of the Peoples of the Book has clear instructions in sacred text as to the method of dealing with unbelievers and apostates. For the Jews:

10 When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. 11 If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. 12 If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. 13 When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. 14 As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies. 15 This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.

16 However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. 17 Completely destroy them – the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites – as the Lord your God has commanded you. 18 Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the Lord your God.

(Deuteronomy 20:10–18 NIV)

Christians for their part adopt the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, which has enough blood and Divine vengeance to sate any appetite. More overt violence is therefore largely left to parables and the Revelation of John which stands as perhaps the most beautiful, and frightening, apocalyptic text still extant.

The Qu’ran too is not lacking in surahs that recount Divine retribution on sinners:

2 [This is] a Book sent down unto thee – so let there be no constriction in thy breast because of it – that thou mayest warn thereby, and a Reminder for the believers. 3 Follow that which has been sent down unto you from your Lord, and follow not any protectors apart from Him. Little do you reflect! 4 How many a town have We destroyed! Our Might came upon them by night, or while they took their ease at midday. 5 Their plea, when Our Might came upon them, was but to say, “Truly we were wrongdoers.”

(Al-A’raf 2–5)

Nothing done by the believers in these pages surpasses the Wrath of God as recounted in inerrant text.

What is perhaps most remarkable in this book is the continuity between the ancient and the modern in their approach to text and to God’s Word. In the ancient and medieval worlds the distinction between sacred and secular had yet to be made. The world of the 20th and 21st centuries is more complex and far more rule driven. Modern states, each of which possesses overwhelming power over their citizens, take a dim view of radical religious movements who seek to overthrow the established order and institute a government based on God’s Will, often manifested in ethnic or racial terms. On occasion, these do take root and grow to cancerous proportions. The Serbian attempt to use rape as a tool of genocide against the Bosnians in the Yugoslavian conflict in the 1990s or the Lords Resistance Army’s use of similar tactics in 21st-century Uganda are two examples of how dangerous this can be.[1]

As the late Robert Mathews and his followers of the Bruders Schweigan, or the Order, found to their cost in the 1980s, the United States is a fallow field for growing a ‘divinely mandated’ race war.[2] Failing real revolution, what is left but to retreat into fictional fantasy, conspiratorial suspicion, or apocalyptic dreams? The second half of this book has plenty of both; the apocalyptic fiction of the radical right and the fantastic bricolage of fever dreams that is the Alt Right, the Christian Right, and the “Fox and Friends”–driven GOP populists.

Yet, as the 2016 election demonstrated, every now and then even the dreamers might have their day. That day was helped along mightily by Russia and as these words are being written in 2018, it is clear that, for all but Donald Trump and those who believe in him most fervently, either a new Cold War, or more to the point, a new phase of the Soviet-American Cold War, is unfolding and deepening before our eyes. These events concern the latter part of this book. They fit the pattern well. For the Alt Right, the Christian Right, and the populists who control much of the Republican Party, as well as the Soviet intelligence officers turned siloviki,[3] there is a shared perception of defeat, humiliation, and the need for redemption in a hostile world.

Each began with a simple act of negation – a refusal to accept the status quo of a popular African-American President for the Americans and the spectacle of a drunken and clownish Boris Yeltsin presiding over the dissolution of the Soviet system on the other. And each refused to accept that status quo and acted to change the world. The Americans, as is their wont, used a religious discourse having more to do with the Divine Will than manifest destiny. The Russians remain wedded to Cold War rhetoric and a political and security discourse; although they too have substantial backing from the Russian Orthodox Church that lends assurance to the faithful that Putin too is doing God’s Will in all that he does.[4]

That the two seemingly incongruous actors would come together to swing a close election in favor of Donald Trump is a remarkable enough story in and of itself. The later chapters will consider these ironies in depth, but for the academic readers of this book, there is another irony that has gone too long unremarked. Donald Trump, the Alt Right, the Christian Right, and many of the GOP populists are inveterate conspiracy theorists. Until the success of the X-Files television series, the intellectual elite that are the denizens of the academic institutions laughed at these conspiratorial beliefs and roundly ignored all but those with a strong racist or anti-Semitic content. Even in “X-Files” America, conspiratorial fantasies could perhaps be studied and taught in the classrooms, but only as examples of the fictive worlds of the less enlightened.

In 1971 I picked up a book, God knows why or where it came from, with the wonderfully emotive title None Dare Call it Conspiracy by Gary Allen. Later, I recalled little but the title and then even that was gone until I came across Richard Hofstadter’s “The Paranoid Style.”[5] Hofstadter does not mention Allen, who was a favorite of the Birch Society right of the late 1960s/early 1970s. None Dare Call it Conspiracy offers the usual set of conspirators; closet commies, pinko liberals, and the master conspirators of international institutions and American finance. But in its pages it offers occasional acute observations, one of which well illustrates the current irony in which academics, security professionals, mainstream media, and Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller see a clear conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence while Donald Trump and his supporters denounce the investigation as a witch hunt and a fake news crazy conspiracy theory. To quote Allen:

Why is it that virtually all “reputable” scholars and mass media columnists and commentators reject the cause and effect or conspiratorial theory of history? Primarily, most scholars follow the crowd in the academic world just as most women follow fashion. To buck the tide means social and professional ostracism. The same is true of the mass media. While professors and pontificators profess to be tolerant and broadminded, in practice it’s strictly a one way street – with all traffic flowing left. A Maoist can be tolerated by Liberals of Ivory Towerland or by the Establishment’s media pundits, but to be a conservative, and a conservative who propounds a conspiratorial view, is absolutely verboten. Better you should be a drunk at a national WCTU convention![6]

Indeed …

This then is the book that I hope you will continue to read. There is however one more issue that need be considered. Despite its breadth and the two thousand years that these pages seek to explore, this is an intensely personal book. That surprises no one more than it does the author.

In the 1980s and early 1990s my work centered to a considerable degree on violence in the world of new religious movements and the radical right. I did considerable fieldwork in these arcane Euro-American byways. In those days, there was a fashion among scholars to be self-referential. I suspect that the malady could be traced to literary criticism and the hyper-sensitive conclaves of the Modern Language Association of the time. The joke in those days was that, where other disciplines at the close of a hard day’s conferencing would repair to the bars for a night of discreet dissolution, the MLA faithful would by contrast repair to their rooms to cry.

But in dealing with issues of racism, anti-Semitism, and religious violence, especially when studied with a participant/observer methodology, there was a constant question of ‘how do you personally relate to what you see and write’? My methodology – a detached and as value-free-as-possible history replete with what the anthropologists would call ‘thick description’ – made the question of particular import to the curious. Then there was Waco in 1993 and the FBI began to recruit NRM scholars to give them background into violent religious milieus.[7] I politely declined to either place myself in my work or to assist the FBI. Colleagues at the time found this puzzling, but I talked about myself almost not at all, and while I had my reasons, I chose not to share them.

Where most career academics have been in school virtually their entire lives, it was for me a career fallen into more by accident than by design relatively late in life. Before returning fresh from Hebron/al-Khalil and Intifada I to the US to attend the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, I had spent almost the whole of my adult life abroad. Eastern Europe in the 1970s, the Middle East and South Asia in the late 1970s–1980s, with long detours in such locales as Indonesia and the Sudan (multiple times in peace and war), and many points between. I witnessed a good deal that I write about in this book, either directly or in the aftermath where I lived deeply connected to the people of each of these places.

Much of what I write about is therefore more than mere ‘book learning.’ Violence, warfare, revolution – these are emotional and passionate events and the emotion and passion is too often leached out of academic accounts. My work has always tried to convey dry facts with the intense feeling of those who acted or were acted upon in violent conflict. Yet this was always from the perspective of the close but invisible observer rather than the presence of the ghost in the machine. Why the change? Why go as far as I have in this book to place myself into events that I witnessed, from Karta 77 in Prague to the Iranian Revolution and much more besides?

This introduction is being written in an attempt to answer that question for myself. And while I have as yet no good answer, I suspect it has more than a little to do with age and mortality. This book was conceived in Changchun, PRC, and born in Riyadh, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where I currently reside and teach at an age when many of my colleagues have retired from academe or from life altogether. As I write these words, the Saudi Arabia I knew and loved in the late 1970s and early 1980s is being transformed, at least outwardly, beyond recognition. In the classroom I talk much about the Arabia of my students’ grandfathers’ time – a place they hardly recognize. I am therefore constantly asked which time I prefer, the Arabia of restrictions, of Mutawa (religious police) and maharams (male relatives without whom a woman could not walk the streets of much of the country) or now when the Mutawa have been removed from the scene and maharams are fast going the way of the dinosaurs. The answer is always the same: “Old men look back and young men look forward.”

The first part of this book looks back and the second part looks forward. Enshallah (if God Wills) there will be something here for all.

Notes

1  On the Yugoslavian conflict, see Lisa Sharlach, “Rape as Genocide: Bangladesh, the Former Yugoslavia, and Rwanda,” New Political Science 22, no. 1 (2000): 89–102. Doris E. Buss, “Rethinking ‘Rape as a Weapon of War’”, Feminist Legal Studies 17, no. 2 (2009): 145–163. On the LRA, Jeffrey Kaplan, “The Lord’s Resistance Army: Millennialism, Violence and the Timeless Dream,” Religious Studies and Theology, Special Edition on Security and Religion. Maeyam Razavy, and T. Butko, T. (eds.) 28, no. 1 (2009): 95–127.

2  Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt, The Silent Brotherhood: Inside America’s Racist Underground (New York: Free Press, 1989).

3  Of the siloviki – former KGB and other intelligence officers who now control much of the Russian government – we will have much to say later in the book. For a good introduction, see the review article Ola Cichowlas, “In Russia, It Is Deja-Vu All over Again: How Russians Fell Back in Love with the Kgb and Stalin,” The Polish Quarterly of International Affairs 22, no. 2 (2013): 111–124.

4  John Anderson, “Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church: Asymmetric Symphonia?” Journal of International Affairs (2007): 185–201.

5  Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, and Other Essays, 1st Vintage Books ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 2008). The title essay is available at https://blog.lix.cc/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Hofstadter-Paranoid-Style-American-Politics.pdf.

6  Gary Allen and Larry Abraham, None Dare Call It Conspiracy (1971), www.whale.to/b/allen_b1.html.

7  Michael Barkun, “Project Megiddo, the Fbi and the Academic Community” in Millennial Violence: Past, Present and Future, ed. Jeffrey Kaplan (New York: Routledge, 2002), 97–108. Catherine Wessinger, “Religious Studies Scholars, Fbi Agents, and the Montana Freemen Standoff,” Nova Religio 3, no. 1 (1999): 36–44.

Selected bibliography

Anderson, John. “Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church: Asymmetric Symphonia?” Journal of International Affairs (2007): 185–201.

Barkun, Michael. “Project Megido, the F.B.I. And the Academic Community.” Chap. 5 In Millennial Violence: Past, Present, and Future, edited by Jeffrey Kaplan, 97–109. London: Frank Cass & Co., 2002.

Buss, Doris E. “Rethinking ‘Rape as a Weapon of War.’ ” Feminist Legal Studies 17, no. 2 (2009): 145–163.

Cichowlas, Ola. “In Russia, It Is Deja-Vu All over Again: How Russians Fell Back in Love with the Kgb and Stalin.” The Polish Quarterly of International Affairs, no. 2 (2013): 111–124.

Flynn, Kevin, and Gary Gerhardt. The Silent Brotherhood: Inside America’s Racist Underground. New York: Free Press, 1989.

Hofstadter, Richard. The Paranoid Style in American Politics, and Other Essays. 1st ed. New York: Vintage Books, 2008.

Kaplan, Jeffrey. “The Lord’s Resistance Army: Millennialism, Violence and the Timeless Dream.” Religious Studies and Theology, Special edition on Security and Religion. Maeyam Razavy, and T. Butko, T. (eds.) 28, no. 1 (Spring 2009): 95–127.

Sharlach, Lisa. “Rape as Genocide: Bangladesh, the Former Yugoslavia, and Rwanda.” New Political Science 22, no. 1 (2000): 89–102.

Part I

This was then

1

Nothing is true, everything is permitted

Premodern religious terrorism

Introduction

In the age of the Islamic State, the mere mention of the word ‘terrorism’ instantly commands visions of murderous jihadists, of burka clad women, of sex slaves for the taking, and a golden post-mortem future filled with beautiful virgins eager to fulfill the slightest whims of the martyrs of the faith. Such is the New Orientalism – a violent fever dream unimagined by such gentle academics as Edward Said.[1]

Before the 18th century and the Age of Enlightenment, religion was an inherent component of every thought and every action. Secularity did not exist, but terrorism certainly did. David C. Rapoport was the first scholar of terrorism to demonstrate the historicity of religious terrorism, whose roots far predate Mohammad and the birth of Islam.[2] The first terrorist group in the modern sense of the word appeared in the Holy Land in the time of Jesus. The Jewish Sicari, named for the daggers which were their signature weapon, may be credited with the invention of terrorism as we understand it today in the 1st century CE. It ended rather badly, with the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE and the Diaspora – the exile of the Jewish people which would not officially end until 1948.

Terrorism is after all a court of last resort. It is always an action of those who perceive themselves to be weak against an enemy perceived to be infinitely stronger. What hope is there for the weak, even if they resort to terrorist violence? How can they possibly overcome the overwhelming might of their enemies? In the Western world, the answer is invariably the same: God. If it is always darkest before the dawn, goes the logic, we need only make our world hopelessly dark to induce God to at the last moment intervene in a process the rabbis came to call ‘Forcing the End.’ The Sicari knew this. Surrounded by the Roman legions, the final Jewish survivors in Masada were said to have dumped all their remaining water into the ground and burned the final provisions of food so as to hurry the Hand of God to smite their enemies and make their victory complete. God yet tarried and the first mass suicide – some 900 souls – followed. This is the power of religiously motivated terrorism.

Among Peoples of the Book – Jews, Christians, and Muslims – the apocalyptic promise and its denouement in a post-historical paradise has come couched in layers of metaphor and poetic mysticism. It speaks in the language of the near future and offers signs and symbols which offer the keys to paradise to any who could unravel their mysteries. Most are content to wait passively, hearing occasional sermons or khutba [3] or derashah [4] on the subject and perhaps visualizing scenes from such Hollywood films as “The Rapture” or “Coming of the Mahdi Malhama” as they listen.[5] What these believers have in common is that, regardless of their faith, they are content to wait.

In every generation from the time of the Sicari to the present day however, there are always a few for whom the music of apocalypse resonates in their very souls. These men and, in more recent epochs, women are eager to give their lives to the quest to unlock the keys to the apocalyptic dream and to hope that, without passing through the veil of death, they will be among the first to set foot on the promised paradise to come.

Each of the Peoples of the Book have distinctly different visions of the chiliastic paradise to come.[6] For Jews, the story is so old that it has been largely forgotten by all but the Haredim and Hasidic faithful, replaced by gauzy and deeply Christian visions of the Pearly Gates as depicted in the Hollywood chestnuts that are the traditional holiday fare of American network television. And small wonder as the Jewish texts depict multiple strands of belief, the most interesting of which are rendered in Raphael Patai’s timeless The Messiah Texts.[7] Picture if you will an immensely vast oaken table in which all of the men who remained true to the faith are seated. Each morning God will present them with a new letter that they will ecstatically study, learning both its intrinsic and esoteric meanings, before adding it to the ongoing project of writing a new Torah, one letter at a time. Women may wonder where they are while the men study so assiduously from morning to night, noting that in the texts they too are promised a portion of the Hereafter. Ancient Judaism was a patriarchal faith indeed, so their portion of the paradise to come may well be lived keeping house and raising children so that the men could study. Much like Haredi women live today in fact.[8]

The Christian image of the road to the apocalyptic paradise is best known in the West given the fascination Revelation has had over the centuries.[9] The Seven Seals of the Apocalypse, the first of which are the Four Horsemen (Antichrist, War, Famine and Death) as described in Revelation have always burned in the human imagination and are depicted in popular culture to this day. Less is known of the chiliastic kingdom where one thousand years of peace and plenty under the benevolent rule of Christ await the faithful. The Catholic Encyclopedia briefly describes its features:

- the early return of Christ in all His power and glory,

- the establishment of an earthly kingdom with the just,

- the resuscitation of the deceased saints and their participation in the glorious reign,

- the destruction of the powers hostile to God, and,

- at the end of the kingdom, the universal resurrection with the final judgment, after which the just will enter heaven, while the wicked will be consigned to the eternal fire of hell.[10]

Islamic eschatology is complex, and comes in two distinct though overlapping flavors, Sunni and Shi’ite. Their visions of apocalypse share much in common and in what follows the apocalyptic scenarios are virtually identical. As with so much in the Shi’ite/Sunni divide, the story is the same and only the cast of characters differ. First is the Dajjal.[11] The Dajjal is an Islamic anti-Christ figure. In the time of the Prophet, Dajjal was the lurking horror that could lie just beyond the light of the campfire, always waiting, always watching. Dajjal is not mentioned directly in the Qu’ran, but is assumed to be one of the Signs of the End. He is noted frequently however in the Hadith literature, believed by Muslims to be the words of the Prophet speaking as a man (i.e., when not revealing the Word of God):

that one day the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) mentioned in the presence of people about al-Masih al-dajjal. He said: Verily Allah (hallowed be He and High) is not blind of one eye. Behold, but the Masih al-dajjal is blind of right eye as if his eye is like a swollen grape, and the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) said: I was shown in a dream in the night that near the Kaabah there was a man fair-complexioned, fine amongst the white-complexioned men that you ever saw, his locks of hair were falling on his shoulders. He was a man whose hair were neither too curly nor too straight, and water trickled down from his head. He was placing his bands on the shoulders of two persons and amidst them was making a circuit around the Kaabah. I said: Who is he? They replied: Al-Masih son of Mary. And I saw behind him a man with intensely curly hair, blind of right eye. Amongst the persons I have ever seen Ibn Qatan has the greatest resemblance with him. He was making a circuit around the Kaabah by placing both his hands on the shoulders of two persons. I said: Who is he? They said; It is al-Masih al-dajjal.[12]

From this comes the image of the one-eyed Dajjal that would come down through the centuries. In the history of Dajjal belief, a distinct pattern emerges. In relatively good times, the Dajjal is a story often used to discipline recalcitrant children.[13] In less settled times however, the Dajjal is ever present and an avalanche of literature and films seek the identity of the Dajjal in the contemporary world with as much vigor as fundamentalist Christians seek the anti-Christ among liberals or the characters in The Omen films try to identify and neutralize the evil Damian.[14] Today, the Dajjal is ubiquitous, appearing in film, in the publications of both ISIS and Al Qaeda, and books, magazines, cartoons, and so much more from Pakistan to Palestine.[15]

The good news is that the appearance of Dajjal also heralds the coming of the messianic figures that will defeat Dajjal and bring an end to history. For Sunnis, it is Imam Mahdi who, with Jesus at his side, will lead the final battle and herald the universal judgment. Shi’ite eschatology is less certain given the fissiparous nature of the faith. But for the majority Twelver Shi’ites, Imam Mahdi will return in the form of Mohammad Al Mahdi, the Twelfth Imam who vanished as a young child and Jesus. In either case, the scenario is much the same. Islam does not posit a terrestrial interlude, be it a paradise or a study hall. Rather, in keeping with a faith born in the forbidding deserts of Arabia, the elect will dwell in the gardens of paradise as described at length in the Qu’ran.[16]

What all three Peoples of the Book share in common is the exclusiveness of the kingdom of the elect. Only those Jews who stayed true to the faith and resisted the allure of assimilation and miscegenation will find a seat at the table. Secular Jews need not apply in the Heredi view.[17] Christians on the whole tend to be more ecumenical in this regard, although in more conservative reaches of American Protestantism heaven remains somewhat sectarian. In the age of the World Council of Churches, which had its first gathering in 1948, heaven is more often seen as open to good Christians of every variety. Increasingly liberal theologians are arguing that there be no confessional barriers to salvation.[18]

Islamic views of salvation remain as bitterly divided between Sunni and Shi’a as is contemporary politics.[19] The Shi’ites are particularly sectarian in this regard – a logical reaction to centuries of persecution and discrimination.[20] Although most Sunnis are less focused on the issue than are the Shi’a, they too generally hold for the heavenly inadmissibility of Shi’ites.[21] As for non-Muslims, the Qu’ran itself is quite clear on this point, for Islam is the most ecumenical of salvific faiths:

And there are, certainly, among the People of the Book, those who believe in Allah, in the revelation to you, and in the revelation to them, bowing in humility to Allah: They will not sell the Signs of Allah for a miserable gain! For them is a reward with their Lord, and Allah is swift in account.

(3:199)

Despite this moment of textual tolerance, the point to be made is that for the Western faiths, the Day of Judgment is a time of terrible winnowing. Few will find their way to paradise, and those who do not will find an eternity of torment to be their sad lot. Religiously motivated violence, at the apex of which is millenarian and messianic terror, takes on much of this tenor. The logic of these movements is frankly genocidal, for such an exclusivist world is the prize for which they live, fight, and often die. This accounts for the levels of violence we will see in this book, and for the grandiosity of the millennial dream to which they aspire.

How old the dream might be is lost to the mists of history. The first of which we have historical record however began, fittingly enough, in the biblical Holy Land. Although the Jews did not invent monotheism, they were the first to perfect it.[22] So it is fitting that if the Jews did not invent terrorism as we understand it today, they certainly perfected it. For this story, we turn to the Sicari, the earliest recorded manifestation of terrorism in its modern form.

In the beginning, the Sicari and their successors

The 21st-century mind does not easily adapt to the warp and woof of the ancient world, where magic was everywhere, where the gods commonly had intercourse, verbal and physical, with humans, and where temples and their priests and priestesses vied for the favor of pharaoh or king with ever more elaborate rituals and stories. A simple matter of imperial expansion was for the defeated not simply an exchange of leaders and languages. Rather, pantheons took primacy over pantheons and civilizations either adapted or crumbled in the wake of the battles.[23]

The Roman conquest of Jerusalem brought emperor worship to a Jewish population deeply divided by the cultural primacy of Greek learning. By the 1st century CE Jew fought Jew as those who held fast to Talmudic learning and Semitic languages turned against Hellenized Jews who spoke Greek in their homes and whose sons were educated by Greek tutors.[24]

For Rome, the Jews were the most puzzling, stubborn, frustrating, and fascinating of the occupied nations that comprised the Roman Empire. Their intense religiosity, militant monotheism and the seemingly irrational faith in a distant and unseen god were so mystifying that the Romans hired history’s first true political consultant, Josephus, to try to explain the inexplicable to successive Roman consuls.[25] What we know of the Sicari is primarily from Josephus, whose accounts are not always entirely consistent.[26]

What is clear is that they were connected to the Zealots, who themselves were one of a welter of Second Temple era Jewish sects whose diversity and sheer number only became clear with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the first of which were found in 1946.[27] The Zealots were the most militant opponents of Roman rule. They appear in the New Testament several times, often urging Jesus to oppose Rome.[28] Simon the Zealot was an apostle of Christ, although Jesus in his famous declaration “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God” (Mark 12:17) not only rejected their council, but also laid the basis for the separation of Church and state which was enshrined in the US Constitution almost two millennia later.

The Sicarii demanded revolution now, and their actions would have dire consequences. The failure of the Sicarii terror campaign ended with the mass suicide at Masada in which more than 900 Jews lost their lives and the Diaspora.[29] The Jewish Second Temple was burned to the ground, ending the phase in which Judaism was based on Temple worship as administered by a hereditary priesthood and in which animal sacrifice was the primary ritual.[30] Failed religious terrorism may be costly.

There were three distinct phases of the Sicarii campaign,[31] and in them we see the emergence of terrorism as it is practiced today.[32] In the first phase, Sicarii fighters discovered the effect of random victimization in catalyzing a state of terror in a population. Sicarii fighters would enter the market on a Friday afternoon when it is most crowded with shoppers eager to get food before the Sabbath. They would then murder a victim at random and fade back into the crowd. Suicide terrorism was definitely not on the Sicarii agenda. The Sicarii thus discovered that the public could identify with a random victim, thinking ‘but for the Grace of God that could be me.’ Nothing could more terrify the public.

They soon discovered however, that inducing terror is easy, but recruitment is much harder. Undoubtedly with this in mind, the Sicarii entered phase two of their operations. Moving from random attacks to focused assassination, they brazenly stabbed the High Priest Jonathan to death. This intensified the loathing the public felt for the Sicarii, but sacrificed both the state of fear that they had engendered and any hope for a significant influx of recruits.

The final phase of the Sicarii campaign might be considered a foundational principle of terrorism as we understand it today: get the government to overreact so as to force people to make a choice rather than to remain passive spectators. To accomplish this end, the Sicarii for the first time directly attacked the Romans, killing a number of them and causing a literal military riot in which for three days and nights Roman soldiers killed a number of Jews in reprisal. That few Jews understood the motivation for the Roman violence considerably added to its impact. The Sicarii were now emboldened to stand up to both the Romans and the Temple priests, with unfortunate results. It is not for nothing that the rabbis would teach that messianism – forcing the End – was the greatest disaster that could befall the Jewish people![33]

Before leaving the subject of the Sicarii, it is important to reiterate the importance of the ethnic dimension to the Sicarii fight. By the time of the Maccabean Revolt (c. 165 BCE), there was a deep schism in the Jewish people – a schism that recurs throughout Jewish history. A significant number of Jews had become Hellenized, a recurrence of the problem of assimilation that has been a constant throughout Jewish history. Judaism is a demanding faith. Every Jew is obligated to obey no less than 613 laws (Halacha), many of which involve Temple service and are no longer required in the absence of a putative Third Temple.[34] By contrast, the Gentile, to be righteous, is expected to obey no more than the seven Noahide Laws.[35]

Indeed, a recurrent theme of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament is the violence that is often triggered by the threat of miscegenation. The primary model of sacred murder is the cautionary tale of Phinehas (Numbers 25:7–13), who ended one such passionate affair between an Israelite man and Gentile woman by the sexually redolent means of running them both through with the same spear, and in so doing averting the coming wrath of God against the Israelites.[36] The modern-day Phinehas Priesthood that arose among the American radical right in the 1980s and among the Israeli settlement movement to this day is based on this model.[37]

Islam from the Kharajites to the Old Man of the mountain

Critics argue that terrorism is inherent in the Islamic faith, often pointing to the life of Mohammad and the content of the Qu’ran, which was in part revealed to the Prophet during the internecine war between the Muslims and the pagan Meccans.[38] In his Four Waves theory, David C. Rapoport posits Islam as the epicenter of terrorism’s fourth or religious wave.[39]

Whatever the merit of the claim regarding the fourth wave, the historian must note that terrorism in its contemporary forms have been a marked part of Islamic history from the time of ‘Ali, the fourth and last of the Rightly Guided Imams who succeeded Mohammad (656–661 CE). Since that time, the Islamic world has been marked by oppositional groups for whom terrorism has been the only recourse to surrender or death.

The very survival of Islam came into question in the immediate aftermath of the death of Prophet Mohammad in 632 CE.[40] The Prophet’s death came as a catastrophic shock to the new Muslims. Many believed that, like prophets of the Hebrew Bible, he would live for centuries. Instead, he survived only two years from the conquest of Mecca and the consecration of the Qa’ba to the One God. On a deeper level, Mohammad’s teachings were always two-fold; he had one foot firmly planted in Arab tribal tradition and the other in a visionary future in which all Muslims would form one great tribal umma (community) in which differences of tribe, skin color, language, and gender would disappear.

There is no better known or oft-written about religious leader in the world than Mohammad. Even in the age of TMZ and paparazzi journalism, more is known of Mohammad’s public and personal life than any modern celebrity or any historical religious leader. The Sunna records his actions in given situations and the hadith, a part of the Sunna, records his words as attested by his family and his companions as recorded in each hadith’s Chain of Transmission (isnad). We thus know Mohammad as man and, through the testimony of A’isha, his youngest wife, as a lover.[41]

For all but a few Muslims however, Mohammad was seen in purely tribal terms in which men bound themselves to him through the bay’a (oath of allegiance) which was freely given and could just as freely withdrawn. The death of a tribal chief dissolved the bay’a and upon Mohammad’s death many departed for their homes and families. Abu Bakr, the first successor to Mohammad returned the arif (lost camels) to the fold and the faith survived. The bay’a relationship too survived and would surface again in ‘Ali’s time. The resulting divisions mark Islam to this day.

The tribes rose against ‘Ali, led by Muawiya, a man of the tribes, having emerged from the Kalb rather than the wealthy and powerful tribe of the Prophet, the Quraysh. His revolution was many sided, but he would emerge as the first dynastic ruler in Islamic history, bringing to an end the chaotic but inherently democratic succession by shura (consensus). His violent opposition to ‘Ali and the death of ‘Ali’s sons Hassan and Hossein mark the genesis of Shi’ite history.[42]

Terrorism was not a part of the violent struggle between the followers of Muawiya and his son Yazid and ‘Ali and his progeny. These battles were conventional in nature. Rather, terrorism entered Islamic history in the wake of the Battle of Sifin (657 CE) in which ‘Ali’s mercy for the defeated forces of Muawiya (which against law and precedent included the Prophet’s widow Aisha, the Mother of the Faithful). After his clear victory, he allowed his enemies to depart unharmed. They would return with greater force to defeat first the forces of ‘Ali and later those of Hossein at Kerbela in Southern Iraq.

‘Ali’s decision to pardon his enemies split his followers, with an embittered minority recalling their bay’a and swearing enmity against both ‘Ali and Muawiya, Shi’ite, and Sunni alike. These radical dissenters, the Kharajites,[43] repaired to the hinterlands of Syria and Iraq where they constructed fortifications and successfully waged war, primarily through terrorism rather than set piece battles, until they were finally dislodged and wiped out by the invading Mongols in the 13th century CE.[44]

Although the Kharajites as a movement disappeared in the wake of the Mongol conquest, their ideas lived on and come to us in this day through the teachings of ai al-Din Ahmad Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328). Ibn Taymiyya’s views, formed by the chaos and destruction of the Mongol invasions, were no more welcome by the leaders of his time than they are by contemporary kings, princes and presidents. Thus he was duly imprisoned and tortured – a fate of radical Islamists to this day.[45] Ibn Taymiyya’s writings are vital sources for all modern Islamist movements.[46]

What emerged from the Battle of Sifin was a Three Party Thesis, holding that there will always be three contending forces in the Islamic Umma. The majority Sunnis (about 87–90% of Muslims today) are seen as content to compromise with kings, however corrupt, in the interest of peace, prosperity, protection, and stability. Theirs is al-Ghazzali’s ‘Devil’s Bargain’ in which a king, however dissolute and corrupt, must be obeyed so long as he protects the borders, enforces shari’a law and respects the ulamma (men of religion).[47]

The Shi’a (about 10–13% of Muslims today)[48] carry with them the twin burdens of historic guilt at having abandoned Hossein to his fate at the hands of Yazid, the hated son of Muawiya, and the pain of historic persecution at the hands of the Sunnis. Shi’ites have their own set of rituals, holidays and an eschatology that reflects both their guilt and their hope of eschatological expiation. The Sunni/Shi’a divide is as bitter today as ever, as the Iraqi civil wars in the wake of the American invasion, as well as the engagement of Hezbollah and Iran against the Islamic State and the forces seeking to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria, well demonstrate.

What both parties, Sunni and Shi’a alike must share however, is the eternal enmity of the Kharajites and their modern successors. The Kharajites then and now are small in number but may best be seen as radical purists who have pledged their lives and eternal souls to restore the Islamic Umma to the timeless dream of the Prophet as a global, mutually supportive tribe in which distinctions of race, language, and gender would be erased. Their seemingly quixotic quest to return Islam to a putative Golden Age purity is as timeless as it is futile. These ‘neo-Kharajites’ are of many kinds, belong to many often bitterly oppositional organizations, or act as individual seekers whom we today refer to as lone wolves. But since the battle of Siffin, they have been a permanent feature of the Islamic world and have thus been a force to contend with for the last 1,500 years.[49]

The Kharajite campaign of assassination and violence had a remarkably long run of more than 200 years. Their history overlaps that of the classic Islamic empires, the Damascus-based Umayyads and the Baghdad-based Abbasids. The former was Sunni; the empire founded by Muawiya which saw the dramatic rise of Islam as an empire and as a faith. The Abbasids by contrast began as a revolution that had heavy Shi’ite influences, reportedly even asking the great sixth Imam of Shi’ite Islam, Jaʿfar al-Sadiq, to assume power should the uprising succeed. It did succeed, al-Sadiq refused and would, like the first eleven of the Twelver Shi’ite Imams, suffer violent death at the hands of the state. His refusal was prescient: “Whoever seeks leadership shall perish. Cursed is he that begins to lead and cursed is he that resolves to lead.”[50]

The Twelfth Imam apparently avoided this fate, disappearing as a young child (or infant in some traditions). Thus began the Lesser Ghuyba, the time of occultation, which today is the Greater Ghuyba with the murder of the Babis (doors) who for a time channeled the wishes of the departed Imams to the Shi’ite faithful. Today, the Twelfth Imam waits at the side of God for the appointed time when, with Jesus at his side, he will return to bring an end to history.[51]

The Abbasid Caliphs soon turned the empire back to the stability of Sunnism. The brunt of the Kharajite attacks were therefore born disproportionally by the Sunni states, although Shi’ites were also struck. As noted though, the Kharajite legacy of violent opposition to the powers that be, whoever they may be, lived on and thrives in the modern world.

The legend of the Old Man of the Mountain and the Eaters of Hashish

No narrative in the history of terrorism is more epic or more often romanticized than that of Hassan i-Sabbah, the Old Man of the Mountain, whose assassins were said to be trained from early childhood in the beliefs of the Shi’ite derived Nizari Ismailis, a medieval Shi’ite sect that survives today in a much more benign incarnation. Shi’ism is a notoriously fissiparous faith. Literally hundreds of sectarian groups grew from the tree of what would become normative Twelver Shi’ism. Many of them are extinct, and many more still thrive. None is more celebrated than the myth of the Old Man of the Mountain.[52]

In its popular form, the tale goes like this. The name Hassan i-Sabah, the Old Man of the Mountain, for centuries struck terror in the hearts of Sunni and Shi’a alike. The Crusades too learned to fear and hate Old Man of the Mountain. From his impregnable mountain fastness, the leader, believed by most to be centuries old, sent his hashishin – hashish eaters or assassins – to plunge their daggers into his widely scattered enemies.

Born to violence, the hashishin, are trained from early childhood to accomplish their deadly task. When the time comes they are given their targets. Before they are sent forth to hunt down their enemies, they are given a taste of the Paradise of the shahid (martyr). They are taken to a secluded garden, offered the delights of hashish and it is said alcohol as well, and allowed to partake of the delights of the houris, the doe-eyed beauties who bestow their favors on the shahid throughout the night. Unlike mere mortal women, they are gone by morning light, only to return the following evening with their virginity miraculously restored. Then, with the taste of paradise on their lips, the assassins are sent forth to seek out and often befriend their intended victim until such time as a messenger from the Mountain gives them the code word, activating their deadly mission imperative.

The paradise of the martyr suras (verses) of the Qu’ran are much noted, by such would-be shahid as 9/11 leader Muhammad Atta whose notes were filled with references to the doe-eyed virgins to come, and by such Islamophobic sources as the cartoons published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. The so-called Mohammad cartoons featured God greeting the still smoking souls of suicide terrorists with the exhortation: “Stop, stop we have run out of virgins.”[53] The paradise imagery runs several times in the Qu’ran and retains its powerful poetic imagery even in translation:

Chapter 44 Surah Dukhan verses 51–57:

51 As to the Righteous (they will be) in a position of Security

52 Among Gardens and Springs;

53 Dressed in fine silk and in rich brocade they will face each other;

54 So; and We shall join them to companions with beautiful big and lustrous eyes.

55 There can they call for every kind of fruit in peace and security;

56 Nor will they there taste death except the first death; and He will preserve them from the penalty of the Blazing Fire

57 As a Bounty from thy Lord! That will be the Supreme Achievement!

Chapter 55 Surah Rahmaan verses 56–59:

56 In them (Paradise) will be (maidens) chaste restraining their glances whom no man or Jinn before them has touched

57 Then which of the favors of your Lord will ye deny?

58 Like unto rubies and coral.

59 Then which of the favors of your Lord will ye deny?

60 Is there any Reward for Good other than Good?

61 Then which of the favors of your Lord will ye deny?[54]

In a culture where marriage and children are the marks of adulthood and social status, the hashishin and too many of today’s terrorists, militia fighters and lone wolves lack access to the long negotiations and contractual obligations that constitute traditional marriage in the Muslim world. Rather, they tend to be young and without the means in terms of family and wealth to contract for wives.[55] Children raised in relative isolation, as in the popular images of the killers sent forth by the Old Man of the Mountain, would be even farther removed from the hope of wedded bliss. The houris therefore, are all the more alluring.

In the popular imagination of the time, the Old Man of the Mountain perpetuated a reign of terror perpetrated from Alamut and its sister redoubts in Syria and Persia. It is a scene that lives in our cultural memory and became a Hollywood hit in the film The Manchurian Candidate.[56]

The legend has deep historical roots in both East and West. Given the Nizari success, there was no shortage of invective cloaked as myth in the Islamic world. The Christian Crusaders evinced for the most part little interest in the world they were entering, but the Old Man of the Mountain certainly caught their attention and the stories filtered West through them. The story appears to have entered European consciousness through the journals of Marco Polo in the late 13th century.[57] Polo’s accounts added the most appealing parts of the legend, including the garden of delights and hashish for the faithful.[58] From its medieval sources the legend of the Assassins entered the romantic world of the 19th-century Orientalists where it joined the lurid (and no less titillating) fantasies of the Turkish harem, the magic of the Genie in the Bottle eager to grant three wishes to whoever would free him by softly rubbing his lamp until he emerged from the spout, and so much more.

Contemporary Nizari scholars complain that even Western scholars of the late 20th century such as Bernard Lewis and Marshall Hodgson used the term ‘Assassin’ rather than Nizari in describing the tale.[59] Hodgson’s book came first, though considerably after Lewis’ bibliographical article of 1952, and save for the use of the term ‘Assassin’ it wins high praise for scholarly objectivity. Lewis rarely gets such praise, but even Farhad Daftary was moved to quote from Lewis’ The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam:

the Assassins differs radically both from the lurid rumours and fantasies brought back from the East by mediaeval travellers, and from the hostile and distorted image extracted by nineteenth-century orientalists from the manuscript writings of orthodox Muslim theologians and historians, whose main concern was to refute and condemn, not to understand and explain. The Assassins no longer appear as a gang of drugged dupes led by scheming impostors, as a conspiracy of nihilistic terrorists, or as a syndicate of professional murderers. They are no less interesting for that.[60]

The truth behind the legend is more prosaic but no less interesting.[61] Nizari history flows from the time of the great Sixth Imam of normative Shi’ism, Ja’afar al-Sadiqh. The Sixth Imam established the system of Shi’ite Islamic law (Ja’afari), the core doctrine of taqqiyah (dissimulation) that allowed the Shi’a to survive in conditions of persecution, and alone of the Shi’a Imams had a following of students from both Sunni and Shi’a backgrounds.[62] When al-Sadiqh met the fate of all Shi’ite Imams – martyrdom – his successor Imam Musa ibn-Ja’afar faced immediate sectarian divisions, especially over the issue of Nås (infallibility) which Ja’afar as-Sadiqh could claim, and the far less accomplished Musa in the view of many Shi’ites could not. Many Shi’ites supported Musa’s brother Ismail and yet another split was born between two rivals for the Imamate – the Seventh in the line of Twelve.[63]

The followers of Ismail took the name Ismailis and in 909 CE. Ubaydulla, an Ismaili, captured a small North African redoubt which would serve as the beginning of the Ismaili conquest of Egypt and the foundation of the Fatimid dynasty there. The name reflects Ubaydulla’s genealogical claim to have sprung from the dynasty of Ali through his wife Fatima.[64]

What is most important for our purposes however are the eschatological excitements of the time. The Sixth Imam lived at the time of the revolt against Ummayads which would result in the triumph of the Abbasids and the foundation of the eponymous empire in 750 CE. The Abbasid revolution had strong Shi’ite currents and championed the cause of the ‘New Muslims,’ primarily Persians and others who were isolated in distant military commands (especially in Southern Iraq) where they lived in angry disillusionment over the unfulfilled promises of equality and brotherhood within the Islamic Umma.

Needless to say, the Fatimids were no less fissiparous than any other sect of Shi’ite Islam, which is where Nizar, spiritual patriarch of the Nizaris, enters the picture.[65] After a rare period of stability under the 60-year reign of Caliph Mustansir, his eldest son, the 50-year-old Nazir was outmaneuvered by the champions of his 20-year-old brother Ahmad. Thus was born the Naziri and Ahmadi Ismai’ilis. Nizar’s revolt however was short-lived and he was soon captured and killed.[66] His followers fell back to the now legendary castle of Alamut in present day Iran, which is where Hassan i-Sabbah at last enters the picture.[67]

Once established at Alamut castle, i-Sabbah and the Nizari faithful were impregnable. As the movement expanded to other fortifications, the legend of the Old Man of the Mountain and his band of assassins grew apace, coming into its final form in the journals of Marco Polo, who was as enraptured by the tales as he was credulous.

The evolution of the popular image of the Assassins in the West has been yet more imaginative. If Marco Polo was credulous, Bernard Lewis is, in the view of many Muslims, predatory.[68] But al-Sabbah’s impact on the European imagination, and in particular on the nightmares of the Crusaders, was originally not as unreasoningly fearful as is currently believed. The stories are indeed ferocious. In one instance, for example, the Old Man of the Mountain was said to have demonstrated the extent of his power by ordering several of his men to commit suicide before a visiting noble:

As Count Henry was returning home, a desire to go see the Lord of the Assassins seized him, and he went there. The Old Man welcomed him with great honor, let him throughout his land, and showed him all of his castles. It happened one day that they were in one of his castles where there was a very high tower at each crenel of which stood a man dressed in white. The Old Man said to the count, “Lord, your men would not do for you what mine do for me.” The count answered, “Lord this may well be.” Then the Old Man cried out to two of those men who were on the tower. Those two through [sic] themselves down and broke their necks. The count was astonished and said to the Old Man that, truly, he had no man who would do such a thing for him. The Old Man, for the honor paid him by the count, took him under his protection … and gave him precious jewels. Then the count left, returning to his land.[69]

In short, the chronicles are rife with descriptions of the Old Man of the Mountain as being a courteous host, a man of refinement and education, a brilliant conversationalist, and a bloodthirsty killer.

And if little of the legend is literally true, what of that? Human history teems with examples of men living and dying in the name of fantasies that historians or scientists eventually prove to be wrong. This section has sought to include both the historical and the popular, arguing for the vital importance of the popular perceptions of a case which may have little to do with the historicity of the issue. In the age of the War on Terror, a time where a video game like Assassin’s Creed will be opened more times in a day than the complete works of Farhad Daftary or Bernard Lewis will in a lifetime, there are no shortage of cultural mediums where the legend of the Old Man of the Mountain can take root and grow. It is a process first illustrated by the great historian Johan Huizinga who, in his classic The Waning of the Middle Ages (also called The Autumn of the Middle Ages), demonstrated that even as cultural epochs wane – become ever more fantastic or grotesque – certain forms adapt and live on.[70] Huizinga’s observations perfectly encapsulate the continued prevalence of the myth of the Old Man of the Mountain:

The aggregate of all knowledge has not yet become culture in us. Rather it would seem as if, with the progressive scientific penetration and dissection of reality, the foundations of our thinking grow ever more precarious and unstable.[71]

How precarious and unstable, and yet how fecund? Examples are numerous, from the novel Alamut – a must for avid readers of fantasy and sword and sorcery epics – to the performances of the 1960s era psychedelic band Hawkwind which is still going strong half a century on. Listen to their songs “Assassins of Allah” and “Hasan i-Sabah,” and watch the music videos replete with dancers doing a somewhat credible imitation of the dances of the Dervishes of al-Kindi. The Old Man of the Mountain approaches a millennium of appeal to the world, East and West alike.[72] Hear too the tone poem “Hashishin” by Buffy Saint-Marie and Rye Cooder which was featured on the soundtrack recording of the 1970 cult film Performance which starred Mick Jagger and James Fox.

The Hussite/Taborite/Adamite trinity and the birth of the modern world

Every author should eschew his or her prejudices when engaged in academic writing. Failing that, one should at least acknowledge the existence of marked biases. In that spirit, I will say only that I lived for some time in Prague – the most beautiful city in Europe – during the dark ages of the 1970s when Gustav Husak served the Soviet Empire as the head of Party and state in the aftermath of the 1968 Prague Spring. Staying with Charles University students, we decided one cold and dark night in the dead of a Czech winter to hold a séance, although none of us really knew what such a thing would entail. What else was there to do on a Friday night in communist Prague? My suggestion was to channel the shades of Jimi Hendrix and Janice Joplin. The idea was met with tolerant scorn. Instead, it was decided that the most interesting spirit with whom to converse was Jan Hus, an early 15th-century theologian of whom I knew nothing. Not even his name. Such was the hold that a man five centuries in his grave had on young Czechs.

The Czech Communist party made occasional abortive attempts to co-opt Hus’ legacy, for, in times of trouble, Czechs would gather at his statue at the Mala Strana in the medieval Old Town section of Prague. His ideas however were less easily coopted as those of his successors, the revolutionary Taborites. The Taborites practiced what the Party referred to as ‘early communism’ in their radical egalitarianism and establishment of communal distribution of resources in their seven cities, all named Tabor.[73]

Indeed, from the beginning of communist control, the shades of Hus and the great one-eyed general Jan Žižka were duly trotted out on patriotic holidays as examples of the forerunners of modern communism. Klement Gottwald, who rose rapidly to power beginning as Deputy Premier (1945–1946), Premier (1946–1948), and President (1948–1953) began the tradition. It was an obvious choice, and a very conscious one.[74] On 28 October 1938 when Nazi Germany seized control of the nation, the citizens spontaneously manifested at the statue of Hus in Old Town to lay flowers of mourning at his feet.[75] Communist partisan groups took the names of Hus and Žižka for their units after the German withdrawal but this did little to hide the fact that they served Moscow as another foreign occupation took root.[76]

Most searing of all, and very much in the memory of Charles University students, was the tragic death of Prague Spring under Soviet tanks. In a doomed protest, very much inspired by Buddhist monks in Vietnam who set themselves aflame to protest the hopeless slaughter of that war, a group of Czech students immolated themselves in 1968 at the base of the Hus statue.[77] One died, Jan Palech, who was still discussed and whose memory haunted the Karta 77 democratization movement that was ongoing during my residence in Prague.[78] Jiří Návrátil, who knew Palech at the time, had this to say about the man and the time:

I have to say he was a very, fine, nice and intelligent young man. It was the beginning of 1968. We were all full of hope. That was naturally very naïve of us, because it is not possible to make a better communism. But this generation from the 1960s was of the opinion that it is possible to do something with this stupid idea.[79]

What have we learned?

If this chapter is about anything it is about this: By all objective forms of analysis, the movements chronicled in these pages are a parade of seemingly stupid ideas held by idealists, fools, and fanatics who dreamed that, with God at their side, they could bring perfection to a fallen world. Most, like Jan Hus and Jan Palech, lived a short life and suffered a fiery demise. A few for a moment succeeded. They, like the Egyptian Fatimids or, on a grander scale, the Abbasids before them, were invariably faced with the dawning realization that if their success was due to the Hand of God, once in power they were pretty much on their own. In each case, idealism gave way to the pragmatic exigencies of power and they accommodated to the ways of the world, joining the Sunni majority and basking in the license granted by al-Ghazzali’s Devil’s Bargain which allowed them to hold power for its own sake, unopposed so long as they performed the three minimal tasks enjoined upon them.

Yet in every generation there are idealists; radical purists whose faith is undimmed by the compromises and failures of the past. And so it was in the Czech lands at the turn of the 15th century. Hussite reforms were crushed but gave birth to the Taborite Revolution. With the death of their greatest leaders and the frustration of their ambitions, the Taborites eventually returned to their towns. Despite this apparent failure, Hussites and Taborites together planted the seeds for every social movement that followed.

Jaroslav Hašek’s national epic, The Good Soldier Schweik (the first English language book I was given after having taken residence in Prague), lived and breathed the hopelessness of hope, the power of a small nation to endure under occupation while cheerfully sabotaging the occupiers with every clumsy step taken on their behalf.[80]

All of these sources planted the seeds for Prague Spring which was crushed in 1968, but which in turn brought forth Karta 77. This too failed in its turn, and the intellectuals who supported it were jailed in the worst case, or given humble labor in the best cases. It was not for nothing that Czechs of the time joked that the superiority of Czech education was demonstrated by the remarkable number of Czech garbage men holding Ph.Ds. Yet one of Karta 77’s leaders, Vaclav Havel, fresh from his infatuation with CBGBs in New York, returned to become the first post-communist democratic President and took up bemused residence in Hradčany Castle, over the Charles Bridge at the base of the Vltava River.[81] I lived for a time in a sub-cellar of Hradčany – a cold water flat with no available running water in a day when the hopes of Karta 77 were fading. The first blush of a seemingly impossible triumph giving way to the mundanity of business as usual was to be Havel’s lot as well as the Velvet Divorce which separated the Czech Republic from Slovakia occurred in 1993, his first year in office. Some patterns of history are immutable.

Which brings us back to the novel Alamut. It’s most famous passage, oft repeated and attributed to the Nazari Ismailis, is that nothing is true, everything is permitted, for:

More and more I began to see the supreme wisdom of the Ismaili dais. Truth is unattainable to us, it doesn’t exist for us. What then is the proper response? If you’ve concluded that you can know nothing, if you don’t believe in anything, then everything is permitted, then follow your passions.[82]

It is a refrain taken up by the American junky poet Jim Carroll in the 1980s, who in the song “Nothing is True” applied the maxim to a girl who, like us all, got nothing back for all she gave, just an eternity in a spacious grave.[83]

All in this chapter share something else, however. Truth may be unattainable, it is surely the province of God alone, but to attain even a glimmer of that truth, to build a world that is perfectly in harmony with the Word and Will of God, absolutely anything is permitted. In the ancient and medieval worlds, death on the grand scale would follow each of the movements chronicled in these pages. And this spirit will take even deeper root in the modern world when technology would at last meet aspiration, and together they would give birth to genocide, which is the ultimate logic of apocalypse.

It is a hard truth that, although few seem to apprehend it, radicalisms intersect. There are no good and bad religious revolutionaries just as it is a fallacy that freedom fighters are the terrorists we like. Each seeks to cleanse the world, and, in such an endeavor, everything is permitted. The Taborites not only inspired Howard Kaminski and his academic heirs, they inspired Italian fascism and German National Socialism as well.[84] Even in our day, of course, genocide remains beyond the means of terrorists. It remains the province of states alone. But even for such as they, in dreams everything is permitted. The Serbs in the 1990s and the tribal fighters in Africa today understood this, and found in rape the ideal tool of racial genocide, believing that mixing the blood of tribe or race would accomplish what their meager technological resources could not.[85] In genocide too, nothing is true and everything is permitted.

Today the unlamented communists are gone, but Hus remains. His statue still stands and many events of the democratization movement took place at his feet. I returned to the now Czech Republic to fulfill a long-time dream of my own; to lay a bouquet of flowers at the feet of one of my own heroes, Jan Žižka, in modern-day Tabor. Žižka virtually invented guerilla warfare, the battle tank, and the art of popular warfare which may be credited with putting a full stop to the decaying medieval world, while marking for the first time the triumph of popular forces over the power of Church and state. They defeated waves of crusaders sent by the Church to bring them to heel. It would not be until the widespread availability of the Kalashnikov rifle to indigenous forces that popular warfare would enjoy such an era of success. I am partial to the Hussite/Taborite revolution, although less so to the successor movement – the anarchic Adamites with their dedication to nudity, free love (often during church services), and their insistence on liberating whatever they fancied at the moment in the name of God and the people. They, in any case, they were long forgotten by the 20 something generation who were my peers in that gray and distant time.

Hussite reform and Taborite revolution

The religious issue which catalyzed the Hussite revolution in the waning years of the 15th century seems hopelessly esoteric today. Utraquism, allowing the laity to have both the bread and the wine, the body and the blood of Christ, was the leading demand in Jan Hus’ reformist teachings.[86] It was an idea that had widespread support among the nobility, if not the crown, and increasingly vocal popular support among the laity as well. It was only when Hus opposed indulgences – holy get out of purgatory free documents – that Pope John XXIII moved against him. The money was needed after all to pursue the Pope’s crusade against rival Pope Gregory XII.[87]

Howard Kaminsky, still the greatest historian and chronicler of all things Hussite, puts it well:

Hussitism is seen as beginning with a movement for reform, which then became a revolt; both then became wider and deeper, the reform passing into reformation, the revolt into revolution… . No single act can be taken as the revolution, not the utraquist revolt of 1414, nor the Prague insurrection of 1419, nor the Pan-Hussite defense of the Emperor Sigismund in 1420, nor finally the chiliast social revolution of that same year.[88]

The model of frustrated reform, revolution, and ultimate synthesis that was demonstrated by the Hussites and Taborites would repeat itself throughout history thereafter.

Hus, like the later Martin Luther whom he deeply influenced, was a university- based theologian, giving him considerably more latitude than was enjoyed by Catholic prelates. He appeared at a time when the Church was deeply mired in scandal and when popular revulsion toward all aspects of the institutional Church was at its height. The spectacle of dueling Popes had been at the time of the Avignon Papacy a profound shock to the world of the Western Church.[89] That was at the turn of the 14th century, nearly a century before the Hussite revolt. What had been a traumatic shock was now, sadly enough, business as usual and people turned from the institutional Church with disgust.

The reforms championed by Hus were originally supported by the weak King Wenceslas IV, who backed away from his support when the Church imposed an interdict on Prague.[90] Hus was excommunicated by the Pope in 1411, which forced the King’s hand.[91] Hus’ popularity only grew however, and the situation continued to destabilize until, in an apparent compromise, Hus was promised safe passage to offer his views to the Council of Constance in 1415. There however, he was seized, tortured, and ultimately burned at the stake when he refused to abjure his views.[92] The news caused an explosion in Prague which the King was ill prepared to either accommodate or suppress.

The sudden popular radicalization in the wake of the burning of Jan Hus engendered the first of what would become numerous splits in the ranks of the Hussites. For all their passion, the Hussites were essentially a reformist movement, seeking to reform both the Church and crown. Faced with stalemate and a failed attempt by the King to restore the religio-political status quo, by 1419, the movement split into two primary factions: The reformist Hussites and the revolutionary Taborites. The Hussites essentially had no program beyond the reform of the Church, and no intention to go beyond working with authorities toward changes that clearly were not going to happen. This opened the door for more radical voices and more violent actions.[93]

That action came in the form of the first Defenestration of Prague in 1419. Meaning literally to throw out the window, an angry mob stormed the royal council chambers and did just that – they threw seven of the King’s councilors out the window. In reality, this was a second-story window and in ordinary circumstances the fall would have hurt only the royal dignity. However, the combination of skillfully placed pikes and the presence of an enraged crowd resulted in the death of all seven of the royal personages. King Wenceslas’ reaction was apoplectic, as a result of which he soon died, and in the resulting vacuum the Taborite revolution was well and truly on.[94]

The decision to withdraw from the cities and to establish independent enclaves also grew out of the violence of 1419. Again Howard Kaminsky describes it best:

In south Bohemia, long the most active center of popular heresy and then of radical Hussitism, the radical priests organized congregations outside the parish system, on open hilltops, where they gave utraquist communion and preached vigorous evangelical sermons against the Roman system. The spirit of these congregations was a conscious imitation of evangelical and apostolic Christianity, with an emphasis on Christian pacifism, brotherly love, and such practical acts as the sharing of food. As groups of regular, perhaps even permanent, congregants took shape there emerged the rudiments of a really new life, one held together by love rather than by institutions based on force. The effect was to create a new social foundation for the radical party; those who felt alienated from the established social system and whose religious ideas constituted a rejection of that system in principle had now taken the final step of building a kind of social existence wholly outside the feudal order. The center of these mass congregations was a hill near Bechynë castle that the radicals renamed “Mt. Tabor,” after the mountain in Galilee where Jesus was supposed to have spoken with his disciples and to have appeared to them after his death. The congregants themselves became known as Taborites.[95]

The Taborites created, at first, a fascinating social experiment.[96] Goods were held in a common pot in the town square, and were apportioned free to each according to his need. Residents were mutually a supportive and lived in what in a later day would be called an ideal state of spiritual communism.[97] Under the military leadership of Jan Žižka, each of the seven Tabors became impregnable. Successive internal crusades were sent against the Taborites and each was crushed with such an excess of violence that by the third anti-Taborite Crusade, the crusaders had only to hear the Taborite battle song to throw down their weapons and flee in terror.[98]

Violence was a Taborite vice, and if their idealized ‘spiritual communism’ within Tabor is to be admired in the context of the 15th century, not so their tactics. It is here that the element of terrorism emerges most clearly. Estates were burned and the families that owned them put to the sword, man, woman, and child. At first, the Taborites were exceedingly kind to the peasantry, whom they claimed to liberate from the oppression and toil of the estates. But Tabor had little need of them and after a time the dues paid to their former masters were rendered to Tabor upon pain of death. For the peasantry, little had changed and Taborite terror now ran unchecked throughout the lands at their control.[99] The irony of the movement that in effect ended the Middle Ages is that, in the end, they very much accepted the threefold aspects of medieval society – those who fought, those who prayed, and those who toiled.[100] They rejected both rival popes and despoiled what monasteries they could reach, while assuming seigneurial rights outside of Tabor.[101]

Howard Kaminsky quotes a rabidly anti-Taborite source of the time, Master John Přĭbram on the Taborite evolution toward violence, finding his account credible:

The people, thus seduced [by the chiliast summons to leave everything, congregate, and pool their money], saw how they had evidently been deceived and how they had been deprived of their estates. And, seeing that nothing had come or was coming of the things that their prophets had prophesied, and suffering hunger, misery, and want, they began to grumble and complain greatly against the prophets. At this point the false seducers thought up a new lie somehow to console the people, and they said that the whole Christian church was to be reformed in such a way that all the sinners and evil people were to perish completely, and that only God’s elect were to remain on the earth – those who had fled to the mountains. And they said that the elect of God would rule in the world for a thousand years with Christ, visibly and tangibly. And they preached that the elect of God who fled to the mountains would themselves possess all the goods of the destroyed evil ones and rule over all their estates and villages. [They would enjoy a superabundance of wealth and would not have to pay dues or rents, or render services.]

Then the seducers, wanting to bring the people to that freedom and somehow to substantiate their lies, began to preach enormous cruelty, unheard-of violence, and injustice to man. They said that now was the time of vengeance, the time of destruction of all sinners and the time of God’s wrath … in which all the evil and sinful ones were to perish by sudden death, on one day… . And when this did not happen and God did not bring about what they had preached, then they themselves knew how to bring it about and again thought up new and most evil cruelties …, that all the sinners were to be killed by the afflictions described in Ecclesiasticus [xxxix, 35-36]… . And again those cruel beasts, the Taborite priests, wanting to excite and work up the people so that they would not shrink from these afflictions, preached … that it was no longer the time of mercy but the time of vengeance … so that the people should strike and kill all sinners.[102]

Peter Chelčický, another contemporary who was very much in sympathy with Taborite ideals, was also appalled by the antinomian violence of which they were capable. Mathew Spinka notes:

Peter Chelčick, although he refers to this extreme of the Taborites as “our brethren,” was also repelled by immoralities and the fanaticisms of this group. The antinomian features of their ethics, and their denial of the real presence the Lord‘s Supper, blinded him to their basic principles which he, as a strict biblicist, should have shared.[103]

In the end, even for the Taborites, nothing was true; for the return of Jesus was but a distant dream in whose pursuit everything, every brutality, was permitted.

The evolution from dreamy idealism to antinomian violence that is the common currency of each group examined in these pages was now all but complete. The Taborites, who had at first protected and supported peasants after killing or frightening off their feudal lords, came to replace those lords and exact payments no less onerous than the lords they displaced. Spiritual communism came to be replaced by a surfeit of goods taken from raids on peaceful towns and villages. Jan Žižka died in 1424 of plague rather than in battle, and the Taborites never recovered from his loss. In the end though, the Taborites fell victim to the malady of every popular revolution that does not witness the apocalypse and the millenarian/messianic drama to follow; the believers got tired, discouraged, and homesick. Most eventually took up offers of amnesty and an agreement to allow individual churches to serve both parts, the body and the blood, if they wished, thus eliminating the utraquist issue and offering an honorable way out to all but the most determined of the true believers. The model of pardon and reintegration into society has changed hardly a whit in the modern world.

In 1434 a final battle took place. The Taborite army, commanded by Prokop the Great and Prokop the Lesser, were crushed at Lipany and both commanders were killed. The Taborite Revolution was now at an end, leaving the field to a group of Free Spirit Adamite believers.[104] The Free Spirit Adamites were convinced that Jesus was indeed on the Earth and thus the believers should revert to the life of the Garden of Eden before the sin of Eve led to the Fall. Their sexual adventures and ritual nudity plagued the later Taborites, but time and the Czech winter accomplished for the nudists what Lipany had done for the holdout Taborites and the Czechs returned to their towns and villages.

Conclusion

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it. [105]

For each case presented, nothing they had previously believed proved to be true, and for them, for a season, everything was permitted. The quote from Omar Kayyam itself was perhaps once true, but it was the product of a simpler, more credulous time. The legacy which each movement, Sicari and Taborite, Kharajite and Nizari, have left behind is a blank slate upon which all can write. The Czech communists and the young democracy dreamers wrote their dreams on the Hussites and Taborites, young Westerners and Muslim extremists found a model in Hassan i-Sabah, and the interpretations of Ibn Taymiyyah are as many as there are dreamers in the Islamic world.

With this sad commentary, the author too comes full circle. Memories of the séance (you have no idea how dead the time is in the deep winter in communist Czechoslovakia) where a room full of 20-something Charles University students struggled with English while trying to evoke the shade of Jan Hus, the catacombs under Tabor that so powerfully evoked the greatness of Jan Žižka, standing at a crusader castle in rural Syria and talking to local people about Hasan i-Sabah and the Crusaders, hearing Ibn Taymiyyah‘s name from young and old alike in so many places in the Middle East … these moments in time suffuse this history.

The history of these movements alone would be a dead academic thing, done better by others long ago, without the cultural heritage in which it is wrapped. One man’s terrorist is certainly not another’s freedom fighter, but their legacies are an invitation for all to write and live their dreams.

Yet for each case presented, nothing they believed proved to be true for the Lord tarries still, and, for a season, everything was permitted. Antinomian violence, murder on the grand scale, and a systematic violation of the ideals and visions which originally drew the hearts of men to each movement in turn appears to have been their common lot. Perhaps Norman Cohn’s vision of dazed medieval millennialists, moved to fits of passion and violence, repentance, and expiation, has more to say of us than we would like to credit.[106]Certainly it was Cohn’s book, discovered quite by accident on a back shelf of the library of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, that set the course of my own academic journey.

Perhaps in the end we left to merely shrug, reminding ourselves of the wisdom of Matthew 7:15-20, who presciently warns:

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. 16 You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? 17 Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Therefore by their fruits you will know them.

(King James Version)

And what are their fruits? The Sicarii’s mass suicide at Masada marked the end of Temple Judaism and a presaged nearly two millennia of Diaspora. The Kharajites leave behind only a legacy of blood and a path for other radical purists to follow. Blood on blood. The Fatimids and the Abbasids survived by becoming everything that they once professed to hate and vowed to destroy. The Nizaris and their much mythologized leader Hasan i-Sabah? They remain a tablet on which all contemporary Nizari believers, Islamophobes, and teenage boys dreaming of power may draw. And the Hussite-Taborite-Adamite triumvirate? They are the emotional heart of this meditation, and the author’s admiration of them remains undimmed even if their reality turns out to be considerably bloodier then their posthumous reputation in the Czechoslovakia of yesterday or the Czech Republic of today would admit.

For together, for good or ill, it was they, not the huddled masses cowering before the powers that be, that created the modern world. Together, they blazed a trail which the movements of today, the Al Qaedas and the ISIS’s of our world slavishly follow. You know them by their fruits, and their fruits, like those of their ancient forbearers, have been death while the powers of this world, following Matthew, vainly seek to burn them out of existence, root and branch.

But even if the logic of their actions is genocidal, the overweening hope that powers their quests is not to be despised. Each saw the ills, the evils, of their time and sought to rectify rather than to reform. Who has not had such a dream? Who has not listened in skepticism or awe in synagogue or church or mosque to sermons promising exactly this surcease of terrestrial woe? Most who do return to their homes on Friday or Saturday or Sunday and live their lives as if nothing had been said, devoting themselves to family or football or more private pursuits. But in every generation of which we have historical record, some listened, a few heard, and a bare handful acted.

If genocide is the unspoken dream, it need not be an ill-mannered one. From the 1970s, a remarkable meeting of the minds, hearts, and souls has been quietly taking place in the twisting lanes of Jerusalem, the farmlands of TEx, and the overpriced suburbs of Southern California as Christian fundamentalists and messianic Jews have joined together in the Third Temple Movement. Between them there is great good fellowship, and money flows like wine into the coffers of such as the Temple Institute as it seeks to recreate a priesthood replete with authentic reproductions of the instruments of Second Temple Service.[107] It is not for nothing that the sage Maimonides decreed that the Temple should not be rebuilt by human hands until after the return of the Messiah, for it stands on the site of the Dome of the Rock and to lay hands on that sacred site would set the region on fire.[108]

Unspoken is the certainty on both sides that when the Judgment is upon us, the wrong religion, Jew or Christian, will be excluded from the promised paradise. The dream is frankly genocidal, but infinitely polite nonetheless. The Third Temple activists are few – their numbers as paltry as their chiliastic dreams are grand, but their goals are no less chiliastic than those of the Sicari and all who followed.

We should therefore not judge the groups and individuals that these pages have sought to chronicle too harshly. They are not in essence different from their global progeny of today whose own dreams were once as grandiose as those of today’s Third Temple seekers. Great dreams have great costs. The eschatological imperatives of all three Peoples of the Book after all are not for the timid, but they each offer visons of ultimate purity and utter perfection. Is the realization of this Divine Promise not worth any price, and, in striving for imminent redemption, should everything not be permitted?

Afterword

Long ago, I opened my Encyclopedia of White Power with a little noticed Sufi quote. That quote will close this discourse for nothing has changed; nothing of this world is true and in the antinomian siren song, everything will always be permitted. Quoting Sultan Bahu:

Seekers of this world are like dogs,

wandering from door to door in wonder

Their attention is riveted on a bone,

their lives wasted in bickering

Short on intelligence and unable to understand,

they set out in search of water

Apart from recollection of the Lord, Bahu,

all else is idle chatter[109]

Notes

1  Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979).

2  David Rapoport, “Fear and Trembling: Terrorism in Three Religious Traditions,” American Political Science Review 78, no. 3 (1984): 658–677. For a consideration of Rapoport’s many contributions to the study of ancient and modern religious terrorism, see Jeffrey Kaplan, “David Rapoport and the Study of Religiously Motivated Terrorism” in Terrorism, Identity and Legitimacy: Four Waves Theory and Political Violence, ed. Jean Rosenfeld (New York: Routledge, 2011), 66–84.

3  Abu Amina Elias, “Khutbah Al-Hajah: How to Begin a Khutbah Sermon in Arabic and English,” Daily Hadith Online, December 26, 2011, http://dailyhadith.abuaminaelias.com/2011/12/26/khutbah-al-hajah-how-to-begin-a-khutbah-sermon-in-arabic-and-english/.

4  Rabbi Louis Jacobs, “History of the Synagogue Sermon: The Rabbi’s Sermon has Seen Many Changes Throughout Jewish History,” My Jewish Learning, www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-synagogue-sermon/.

5  The Rapture (1991) features Mimi Rogers in a remarkably erotic portrayal of Christian eschatology while “Coming of the Mahdi Malhama” is a heavily ISIS-inspired portrayal of the coming of the Dajall (Islamic anti-Christ figure) and the destruction of a world dominated by the evil of America. On The Rapture, www.imdb.com/title/tt0102757/. IMDB does not yet list “Coming of the Mahdi Malhama” in its database, however it is offered in full on Dailymotion, www.dailymotion.com/video/x2ii7cv.

6  J. Harold Ellens, Heaven, Hell, and the Afterlife: Eternity in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam [3 volumes]: Eternity in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (ABC-CLIO, 2013).

7  Raphael Patai, The Messiah Texts (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1979).

8  Kimmy Caplan, “The Internal Popular Discourse of Israeli Haredi Women,” Archives de sciences sociales des religions (2003): 77–101.

9  Michael St. Clair, Millenarian Movements in Historical Context, Garland reference library of social science v 763 (New York: Garland Pub., 1992); Marjorie Reeves and Ann Williams, Prophecy and Millenarianism: Essays in Honour of Marjorie Reeves (Essex: Longman, 1980); Kenneth G. C. Newport and Crawford Gribben, Expecting the End: Millennialism in Social and Historical Context (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2006).

10  “Millennium and Millenarianism,” New Advent, www.newadvent.org/cathen/10307a.htm.

11  Perhaps the best classical source of Dajjal belief is from a Shi’ite source, ʻAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad Najm al-Dīn Rāzī, The Path of God’s Bondsmen From Origin to Return, trans. Hamid Algar (Delmar, NY: Caravan Books, 1982). For the less intellectually ambitious, see Steven Wasserstrom, “The Moving Finger Writes: Mughira b. Sa’Td’s Islamic Gnosis and the Myths of its Rejection,” HR 25(1985): 1–29. A good contemporary Pakistani source is Muhammad Sharif Chaudhry, March towards the Doomsday: Signs of the Doomsday, Advent of al-Mehdi, Emergence of Dajjal, 1st ed. (Lahore: Burhan Education Foundation, 2004).

12  Sahih Muslim, 1:324, transcribed from Ahadithco.uk, http://ahadith.co.uk/searchresults.php?q=dajjal.

13  I well recall an evening in Tehran in 1977 when the threat of the Dajjal got the family’s two children to finally go to bed, lest the Dajjal get loose from the closet to punish them.

14  Of the liberal candidates for the role of the Antichrist, none was so reviled as Bill Clinton. For a 50-second rundown of why, hear Denver-based radio exorcist Bob Larson, “Bill Clinton Is the Antichrist!,” https://soundcloud.com/cringe-audio/bob-larson-bill-clinton-is-the-antichrist-1996-radio-rip. For a more contemporary audience, Hillary Clinton once again breaks the glass ceiling and becomes perhaps the only woman to be suspected of the role. Alexandra Petri, “The Hideous Diabolical Truth about Hillary Clinton,” Washington Post, October 14, 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2016/10/14/the-hideous-diabolical-truth-about-hillary-clinton/?utm_term=.ea0e0d00cc23. Petri notes that should she not be man enough for the role of the Antichrist, she must certainly be a witch, a lesbian, and, according to one commentator, a lizard in human form. The Omen series began with the eponymous 1976 film about the Antichrist born to the American Ambassador to England, www.imdb.com/title/tt0075005/.

15  As the Islamic State’s prospects faded in 2017, Dajjal made an appearance as the cover story in Dabiq, “The Rafidah: From Ibn Saba’ to the Dajjal,” Dabiq, issue 13, https://clarionproject.org/factsheets-files/Issue-13-the-rafidah.pdf.

16  Jerry L. Walls, “The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology,” in Oxford Handbooks (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), ch. 7.

17  Nurit Stadler, “Is Profane Work an Obstacle to Salvation? The Case of Ultra Orthodox (Haredi) Jews in Contemporary Israel,” Sociology of Religion 63, no. 4 (2002): 455–474. As with so much in Israel, the Haredim are finding ways to accommodate and perhaps save the secular majority by opening up the Haredi education system to secular Jews. Eliav Taub, “The Opening of the Haredi Educational System to the Secular and Its Transformation from a Peripheral Factor to a Central Factor in Israeli Society,” Jewish Political Studies Review (2009): 109–131.

18  John Hick, “Religious Pluralism and Salvation,” Faith and Philosophy 5, no. 4 (1988): 365–377.

19  For a good, diverse discussion, see the anthology Mohammad Hassan Khalil, Between Heaven and Hell: Islam, Salvation, and the Fate of Others (Oxford University Press, 2013).

20  One of the best texts on the subject remains Abdulaziz Abdulhussein Sachedina, Islamic Messianism: The Idea of Mahdi in Twelver Shi’ism (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1981). Cf. the anthology Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Hamid Dabashi, and Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, Shi’ism: Doctrines, Thought, and Spirituality (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1988).On a popular level, “Can Sunnis Go To Heaven?,” Shiachat.com, www.shiachat.com/forum/topic/234941248-can-sunnis-go-to-heaven/.

21  “Sunnis vs. Shia,” Discovering Islam, www.discoveringislam.org/sunnis_vs_shia.htm.

22  The earliest monotheist of which we have record is the 18th Dynasty Pharaoh Akhenaten (c. 1330 BCE). James K. Hoffmeier, Akhenaten and the Origins of Monotheism (Oxford University Press, 2015). For a more general history, see Jonathan Kirsch, God against the Gods: The History of the War between Monotheism and Polytheism (Penguin, 2005). And for the most accessible history, Karen Armstrong, A History of God (New York: Random House Digital, Inc., 1994).

23  Ancient Hinduism from the time of the Aryan conquest is a classic example of such religious imposition. Patrick Olivelle, Language, Texts, and Society Explorations in Ancient Indian Culture and Religion, Cultural, Historical and Textual Studies of Religions (London: Anthem Press, 2011).

24  “Ancient Jewish History: Hellenism,” Jewish Virtual Library, www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/hellenism.html; “Ancient Jewish History: The Bar-Kokhba Revolt,” Jewish Virtual Library, www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/revolt1.html. For those with the ambition and love of learning, see Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in their Encounter in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981).

25  Flavius Josephus and William Whiston, The Works of Josephus: Complete and Unabridged, New updated ed. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1987).

26  This history is recounted in brief in Randall D. Law, Terrorism: A History (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2016), ch. 1.

27  Richard A. Horsley, “The Zealots. Their Origin, Relationships and Importance in the Jewish Revolt,” Novum Testamentum 28, no. Fasc. 2 (1986): 159–192. Michael O. Wise, Martin G. Abegg, and Edward M. Cook, The Dead Sea Scrolls-Revised Edition: A New Translation (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2005). The literature that has grown up around the find is immense. They remain something of a mystery however because of the practice of assigning portions of them to particular scholars who in turn anointe chosen graduate students as successors to their portion of the treasure.

28  For an excellent introduction, see “Zealots and Sicarii,” Jewish Virtual Library, www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0021_0_21428.html.

29  The literature on these events is immense and varied. One of the earliest and perhaps the best is Solomon Zeitlin, “Masada and the Sicarii,” The Jewish Quarterly Review 55, no. 4 (1965): 299–317. For monographic treatments, see Mladen Popović, The Jewish Revolt against Rome: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Supplements to the Journal for the study of Judaism (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2011); Alfred H. Tamarin and Flavius Josephus, Revolt in Judea, the Road to Masada: The Eyewitness Account by Flavius Josephus of the Roman Campaign against Judea, the Destruction of the Second Temple, and the Heroism of Masada (New York: Galahad Books, 1975). The topic remains deeply controversial. See Louis I. Rabinowitz, “The Masada Martyrs According to the Halakhah,” Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought 11, no. 3 (1970): 31–37.

30  Jonathan Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple: Symbolism and Supersessionism in the Study of Ancient Judaism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

31  Much of this discussion is drawn from Josephus, which accords well with the fine coverage of the Jewish Virtual Library’s “Zealots and Sicarii.” There are several other sources which should be noted. A valuable monographic source can be found in Mark Andrew Brighton, The Sicarii in Josephus’s Judean War: Rhetorical Analysis and Historical Observations, Early Judaism and its literature (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009). A more focused historical and religious study can obtained from International Organization for Qumran Studies. Meeting (5th. 2004: Groningen Netherlands), Florentino García Martínez and Mladen Popović, Defining Identities: We, You, and the Other in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Proceedings of the Fifth Meeting of the IOQS in Gröningen, Studies on the texts of the desert of Judah (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2008). A much more controversial take is William W. Moore, The Sicarii (Dallas, TX: Penumbra Pub. Co., 1990).

32  David C. Rapoport was the first to note the Sicarii’s importance in the history of terrorism, and his 1980s articles on the subject remain paradigmatic today. Rapoport, “Fear and Trembling: Terrorism in Three Religious Traditions.” David C. Rapoport, “Why does Messianism Produce Terror?” in Current Research on Terrorism (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1987), 72–88. Cf. Donothan Taylor and Yannick Gautron, “Pre-Modern Terrorism: The Cases of Sicari and the Assassins” in The Routledge History of Terrorism, ed. Randall D. Law (New York: Routledge, 2015), 28–45.

33  Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality (New York: Schocken Books, 1995). Efraim Elimelech Urbach, The Sages, Their Concepts and Beliefs (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).

34  The Third Temple is a fascinating story in itself. It is the fascination of a very small number of Jews and a surprisingly large number of American Fundamentalist and Evangelical Christians. The Jews for their part are forbidden to rebuild the Second Temple, or even to step on the grounds of the site that now houses the third most sacred site in Islam, the Dome of the Rock. There is nonetheless the Temple Institute in Jerusalem who are recreating the artifacts of temple service and training a new priesthood. The ideas catalyzed a frightening plot to blow up the Dome of the Rock on the part of the Jewish terrorist group dubbed by the press the Jewish Underground. On the Third Temple, see Motti Inbari, Jewish Fundamentalism and the Temple Mount: Who Will Build the Third Temple? Suny Series in Israeli Studies (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009). From the perspective of the Temple Institute, see Israel Ariel and Chaim Richman, The Odyssey of the Third Temple (Jerusalem?: G. Israel Publications & Productions: Temple Institute, 1993). For an insider’s perspective on the plot to destroy the Dome of the Rock, the excellent memoir Haggai Segal, Dear Brothers: The West Bank Jewish Underground (Woodmere, NY: Beit Shamai Publications, 1988). See Era Rapaport and William B. Helmreich, Letters from Tel Mond Prison: An Israeli Settler Defends His Act of Terror (New York: Free Press, 1996).

35  Aaron Lichtenstein, The Seven Laws of Noah (New York: Rabbi Jacob Joseph School Press; Z. Berman Books, distributor, 1981).

36  John J. Collins, “The Zeal of Phinehas: The Bible and the Legitimation of Violence,” Journal of Biblical Literature 122, no. 1 (2003): 3–21.

37  Danny W. Davis, The Phinehas Priesthood: Violent Vanguard of the Christian Identity Movement (ABC-CLIO, 2010). See “Phineas Priesthood,” in Jeffrey Kaplan, Encyclopedia of White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right (Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 2000), 242–244.

38  For the most intolerant view of Islam, see Robert Spencer, The Truth about Muhammad: Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion (Washington, DC: Regnery Pub., 2006). Spencer is one of the intellectual guiding lights of the Counter-Jihad movement which is most influential in Europe and the American Trump Administration.

39  David C. Rapoport, “The Four Waves of Modern Terror: International Dimensions and Consequences,” in An International History of Terrorism:Western and Non-Western Experiences (London: Routledge, 2013), 17.

40  For a broad one stop shop on Islamic history, see Ira M. Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, 2nd ed. (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002). The University of Chicago fundamentalist in me however, strongly recommends the classic series on Islamic history by the great historian Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, 3 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974).

41  Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Prophet For Our time (New York: Atlas Books/HarperCollins, 2006).

42  For an intensely partisan Shi’ite perspective in textual terms, see “Muawiyah and Abusing Imam Ali (as),” Islam.org, www.al-islam.org/shiite-encyclopedia-ahlul-bayt-dilp-team/muawiyah-and-abusing-imam-ali. One of the best introductory texts on Shi’a Islam is Moojan Momen, An Introduction to Shi’i Islam: The History and Doctrines of Twelver Shi’ism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).). For a more academic introduction, see S. Husain M. Jafri, The Origins and Early Development of Shi’a Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). None however is better than the classic Marshall C. Hodgson, “How Did the Early Shi’a Become Sectarian?,” JAOS, no. 75 (1955), 1–13.

43  A highly recommended discussion of the contemporary impact of the Kharajites may be found in Hussam S. Timani, Modern Intellectual Readings of the Kharijites, American university studies Series VII, Theology and religion (New York: Peter Lang, 2008). For a remarkably good discussion of the impact of the Battle of Siffin and the emergence of the Kharajites, see the unpublished essay:

Sümeyra Yakar, “What was the influence of battle of Siffin over Kharijites’ doctrine and why did they separate themselves from the Muslim community?,” Academia, www.academia.edu/5646053/What_was_the_influence_of_battle_of_Siffin_over_Kharijites_doctrine_and_why_did_they_seperate_themselves_from_the_Muslim_community.

44  Ahmed E. Souaiaia, Anatomy of Dissent in Islamic Societies: Ibadism, Rebellion, and Legitimacy (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

45  Donald P. Little, “The Historical and Historiographical Significance of the Detention of Ibn Taymiyya,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 4, no. 3 (1973): 311–327.

46  Yossef Rapoport and Shahab Ahmed, Ibn Taymiyya and His Times (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2015).

47  al-Gazzali, Counsel for Kings, trans. F. R. C. Bagley (London: Oxford University Press, 1964).

48  “Mapping the Global Muslim Population,” Pew Research Center, www.pewforum.org/2009/10/07/mapping-the-global-muslim-population/.

49  The original Kharajites were not as monolithic as is often believed today. For an interesting example, see Adam R. Gaiser, “What Do We Learn About the Early Khārijites and Ibāḍiyya from Their Coins?,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 130, no. 2 (2010): 167–187. Similarly, early Shi’ism was remarkably fluid, which, given the secrecy and the decentralized nature of the early faith, was inevitable. Maria Massi Dakake, The Charismatic Community: Shi’ite Identity in Early Islam (Albany, NY: SUNY, 2007).

50  Denis McEoin, “Aspects of Militancy and Quietism in Imami Shi’ism,” Bulletin (British Society for Middle Eastern Studies) 11, no. 1 (1984): 19.

51  For a solid background on Islamic apocalyptic traditions, see Jean-Pierre Filiu, Apocalypse in Islam (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011).

52  For a good background on the Hasan i-Sabah legend, see Farhad Daftary, The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Ismaʻilis (London ; New York: Tauris, 1994). For a thrilling introduction to the impact of the Assassins legend on the modern world, see the novel Alamut by Vladimir Bartol. Named for the strongest Ismaili Nazari castle, the book serves as the inspiration for the popular video game Assassin’s Creed. Vladimir Bartol, Alamut, trans. Michael Biggins (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2007).

53  Nerina Rustomji, “American Visions of the Houri,” The Muslim World 97, no. 1 (2007): 79. The cartoons themselves can be found at http://middleeast.about.com/od/religionsectarianism/ss/the-muhammad-cartoons-complete-set.htm.

54  www.islamhelpline.net/node/4313. These are but two of the relevant suras.

55  For a brief review of the traditions, see Hoda Rashad, Magued Osman, and Farzaneh Roudi-Fahimi, Marriage in the Arab World (Population reference bureau (PRB), 2005), http://auth.prb.org/pdf05/MarriageInArabWorld_Eng.pdf. Marriage is even more expensive and difficult in Mohammad Atta’s Saudi Arabia. Mona AlMunajjed, Women in Saudi Arabia Today (London: Springer, 1997).

56  A fine description of the houris can be found in “The Hoor Al Ayn of Jannah Paradise,” Islam the True Religion of One God, July 15, 2011, https://islamreligion1.wordpress.com/2011/07/15/the-hoor-al-ayn-of-jannah-paradise/. The popular story of the Assassins was translated to contemporary academia primarily through the 1967 book by Bernard Lewis which was released in a new edition in 2003 after 9/11 rekindled interest in terrorism and in so doing gave birth to a generation of newly minted ‘terrorism experts.’ Bernard Lewis, The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam (New York: Basic Books, 2003). The 1962 version of The Manchurian Candidate in all its Cold War glory and its defanged and overlong 2004 version with Denzel Washington, are well worth watching. Also not to be missed is the television docudrama purporting to convey the story of Hasan i-Sabah in all its largely fictional glory. “Hasan Bin Sabbah” The Founder and The Spritual (Sic) Leader of Shia Nizari Ismailis “The Hashishins,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=16A_NibfBgs.

57  Daftary, The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Ismaʻilis. Farhad Daftary, “The ‘Order of the Assassins’: J. von Hammer and the Orientalist Misrepresentations of the Nizari Ismailis (Review article),” Iranian Studies 39, no. 1 (2006): 75.

58  Daftary, “The ‘Order of the Assassins’: J. von Hammer and the Orientalist Misrepresentations of the Nizari Ismailis (Review article),” 74–75. This source adds additional levels of disappointment in the tale with the suggestion that the intrepid traveler probably heard the tales in Italy rather than on his travels.

59  Daftary, The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Ismaʻilis: Introduction.The reference is to Marshall G. S. Hodgson and Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Secret Order of Assassins: The Struggle of the Early Nizârî Ismâʻîlîs against the Islamic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005); Lewis, The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam.

60  Daftary, “The ‘Order of the Assassins:’ J. von Hammer and the Orientalist Misrepresentations of the Nizari Ismailis (Review article),” 81.

61  There are a number of sources for a more historicist view. A surprisingly good source is the self-published Ali Mohammad Rajput, Hasan-i-Sabbah: His Life and Thought (Xlibris, 2013). More focused and far more academic sources which were primarily used for this section are Daftary, The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Ismaʻilis: ch. 10; Farhad Daftary, Mediaeval Ismaʻili History and Thought (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Bernard Lewis, though much vilified in the field, offers a very useful article on the topic, see Bernard Lewis, “The Sources for the History of the Syrian Assassins,” Speculum 27, no. 4 (1952): 475–489.

62  Taqiyyah mandated that, in conditions of danger, the faithful were enjoined to dissimulate (or lie in plain terms) to protect the faith. It was a lesson that scholars of Shi’ism wish George W. Bush had been aware during his professions of trust with the Shi’ite governments of Iraq after the American invasion.

63  Farhad Daftary, The Ismāʻı̄lı̄s: Their History and Doctrines, 2nd ed. (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

64  Ibid.

65  Farhad Daftary, “A Major Schism in the Early Ismāʿīlī Movement,” Studia Islamica, no. 77 (1993): 123–139.

66  W. B. Bartlett, The Assassins: The Story of Medieval Islam’s Secret Sect (The Mill, Brimscombe Port: The History Press, 2001), ch. 2.

67  The site remains to this day, and continues to excite historians and would-be historians alike. See for example Anthony Campbell, The Assassins of Alamut (Lulu, 2008). Campbell, who first visited in 1966, is a wonderful example of where the enthusiast and historian come together.

68  The heated reaction to Bernard Lewis and all his works in recent years speaks more to the fructuousness of the academy than to Lewis’ alleged biases. For a reasoned discussion of an often unreasoning controversy, see Andrew G. Bostom, “What Went Wrong With Bernard Lewis?” American Thinker, March 17, 2013, www.americanthinker.com/articles/2013/03/bostom_interview_what_went_wrong_with_bernard_lewis.html.

69  Meriem Pagès, From Martyr to Murderer: Representations of the Assassins in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-century Europe (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2014), 106.

70  Johan Huizinga and Frederik Jan Hopman, The Waning of the Middle Ages, A Study of the Forms of Life (London: E. Arnold & co., 1924).

71  Johan Huizinga, In the Shadow of Tomorrow (New York: W. W. Norton, & CO, INC., 1936), ch. 6.

72  Bartol, Alamut. On Hawkwind, see www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgpoyLoekv8. This version of “Assassins of Allah” also a male dancer and fire eaters symbolizing the Djinn, the fire spirits from whom the Western conception of the genie is derived.

73  Karl Kautsky, Communism in Central Europe in the Time of the Reformation (New York: Russell & Russell, 1959), ch. 2, “The Taborites”. Hus’ story has inspired Czechs through the ages. Plays for example were written and performed to dramatize his life and death as early as the German Reformation in the 16th century. Phillip Haberkern, “ ‘After Me There Will Come Braver Men’: Jan Hus and Reformation Polemics in the 1530s,” German History 27, no. 2 (2009): 177–195.

74  Peter Morée, “Not Preaching from the Pulpit, but Marching in the Streets: The Communist Use of Jan Hus,” The Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice 6(2007): 297–306.

75  Josef Korbel, The Communist Subversion of Czechoslovakia, 1938–1948: The Failure of Co-existance (London: Princeton University Press, 1959), 4–5. On Gottwald, see the concise biography on the Prague Castle site, www.hrad.cz/en/president-of-the-cr/former-presidents/klement-gottwald.

76  Ibid., 96.

77  Galia Golan, “Youth and Politics in Czechoslovakia,” Journal of Contemporary History 5, no. 1 (1970): 21–22.

78  His memory has not faded. Radio Praha did a show on him recently in fact. The English MP3 and a detailed account of his story may be found at Coilin O’Connor, “Jan Palach – The Student Whose Self-immolation Still Haunts Czechs Today,” Radio Praha, January 21, 2009, www.radio.cz/en/section/czechs/jan-palach-the-student-whose-self-immolation-still-haunts-czechs-today.

79  Ibid.

80  Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier: Schweik, trans. Paul Selver (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran and Company, inc., 1930).

81  John Keane, Vaclav Havel: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts (New York: Basic Books, 2008). Keane takes a historicist view that fails to capture Havel’s charismatic humor and sense of irony. For that, see Vaclav Havel, Vaclav Havel, or, Living in Truth: Twenty-two Essays Published on the Occasion of the Award of the Erasmus Prize to Vaclav Havel, trans. Jan Vladislav (London: Faber, 1986). Living in Truth includes his key essays.

82  Bartol, Alamut, 110.

83  Jim Carroll, “Nothing Is True,” Genius Lyrics, https://genius.com/The-jim-carroll-band-nothing-is-true-lyrics. With apologies to the late, great poet for bowdlerizing a great song to avoid the bad copyright fairy.

84  Erik R. Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, “The Bohemian Background of German National Socialism: The D.A.P., D.N.S.A.P. and N.S.D.A.P,” Journal of the History of Ideas 9, no. 3 (1948): 339–371. See Pavel Helan, “Mussolini Looks at Jan Hus and the Bohemian Reformation,” The Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice (2002), www.brrp.org/proceedings/brrp4/helan.pdf.

85  Jeffrey Kaplan, Terrorist Groups and the New Tribalism: Terrorism’s Fifth Wave (London: Routledge, 2010).

86  Thomas A. Fudge, Jan Hus: Religious Reform and Social Revolution in Bohemia (London: IB Tauris, 2010), 147–156.

87  John M. Klassen, “The Czech Nobility’s Use of the Right of Patronage on Behalf of the Hussite Reform Movement,” Slavic Review 34, no. 2 (1975): 341–342.

88  Howard Kaminsky, A History of the Hussite Revolution (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1967), 3.

89  Thomas Renna, The Conflict between the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire during the Early Avignon era, 1300–1360 (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2013). See Yves Renouard, The Avignon Papacy, 1305–1403 (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1970).

90  C. S. Molnar Enrico, “The Liturgical Reforms of John Hus,” Speculum 41, no. 2 (1966): 297–303.

91  Kaminsky, A History of the Hussite Revolution: 73.

92  For the best available recent biographical treatment of Hus and the Council of Constance’s treatment of the great reformer, see Thomas A. Fudge, The Trial of Jan Hus: Medieval Heresy and Criminal Procedure (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). Thomas A. Fudge, Jan Hus between Time and Eternity: Reconsidering a Medieval Heretic (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016).

93  Howard Kaminsky, “Chiliasm and the Hussite Revolution,” Church History (1957): 43–71.

94  The Defenestration of 1419 was only the first such event which appears to have become something of a Czech national sport. The Defenestration of 1619 is far better remembered and the event was reprised for old times’ sake with the death of Jan Masaryk in 1948. “Prague, Defenestration of,” Encyclopedia.com, www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Defenestration_of_Prague.aspx. For a more detailed discussion, see Kaminsky, A History of the Hussite Revolution, 278–280.

95  Kaminsky, “Chiliasm and the Hussite Revolution,” 44–45.

96  Robert W. Scribner and Trevor Johnson, Popular Religion in Germany and Central Europe, 1400–1800 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996). Thomas A. Fudge, Jan Hus: Religious Reform and Social Revolution in Bohemia, International library of historical studies (London: I. B. Tauris, 2010).

97  We have an abundance of records from the time, but perhaps the most remarkable was from the mission of a senior Church prelate, Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, who would later become Pope Pius II. He was much taken with what he saw, and his communications to the Church serve as remarkable records to this day. Howard Kaminsky, “Pius Aeneas among the Taborites,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 28, no. 3 (1959): 281–309.

98  Thomas A. Fudge, The Crusade against Heretics in Bohemia, 1418–1437: Sources and Documents for the Hussite Crusades, Crusade texts in translation (Aldershot; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002). Cf. Victor Verney, Warrior of God: Jan Žižka and the Hussite Revolution (London: Frontline Books, 2009). The Verney book is interesting, but contains numerous errors and inaccuracies. See the review by Alfred Thomas, Speculum 86, no. 2 (Apr. 2011): 565–566. Cf. “Hussite Wars,” New World Encyclopedia, www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Hussite_Wars.

99  R. R. Betts, “Social and Constitutional Development in Bohemia in the Hussite Period,” Past & Present, no. 7 (1955): 46.

100  J. H. Elliott, “Revolution and Continuity in Early Modern Europe,” Past & Present, no. 42 (1969): 43.

101  Betts, “Social and Constitutional Development in Bohemia in the Hussite Period,” 73–106.

102  Kaminsky, “Chiliasm and the Hussite Revolution,” 55–56.

103  Matthew Spinka, “Peter Chelčický: The Spiritual Father of the Unitas Fratrum,” Church History 12, no. 4 (1943): 280.

104  For a good introduction to the heresies of the time, see J. K. Zeman, “Restitution and Dissent in the Late Medieval Renewal Movements: The Waldensians, the Hussites and the Bohemian Brethren,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion (1976): 7–27. On the Free Spirit heresy, no better book has been written than Robert E. Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1972).

105  The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam, 1859. Full text at https://archive.org/details/movingfingerofom00dinsrich. For a brilliant application to Islamic eschatology, Wasserstrom, “The Moving Finger Writes: Mughira b. Sa’Td’s Islamic Gnosis and the Myths of its Rejection.”

106  Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (London: Pimlico, 2004).

107  From the Head of the Temple Institute, Ariel and Richman, The Odyssey of the Third Temple. For a more academic perspective, Inbari, Jewish Fundamentalism and the Temple Mount: Who Will Build the Third Temple? And from the Christian view, Peter Clements, The Third Temple (Durham, CT: Strategic Book Group, 2009). The real meat of the story, however, is best told by Lambert Dolphin, an American physicist, Bible believer, and apocalypticist of the first order. See his powerful book, Ron Graff and Lambert Dolphin, Connecting the Dots: A Handbook of Bible Prophesy (USA: Xulon Press, 2010). Cf. Lambert Dolphin’s Library for the apocalyptic motherload on all things Third Temple, http://ldolphin.org/.

108  Kenneth Seeskin, The Cambridge Companion to Maimonides, Cambridge companions to philosophy (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

109  Sultan Bahu, Death Before Dying, trans. Jamal J. Ellias (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998). Cf. Khatam Sharif, “In Honour of the Venerable Sultan Bahu,” www.noorulislam.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Final_Article_Sultan_Bahu_140411.pdf.

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Davis, Danny W. The Phinehas Priesthood: Violent Vanguard of the Christian Identity Movement. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2010.

Ellens, J Harold. Heaven, Hell, and the Afterlife: Eternity in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam [3 Volumes]: Eternity in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2013.

Filiu, Jean-Pierre. Apocalypse in Islam. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.

Fudge, Thomas A. The Crusade against Heretics in Bohemia, 1418–1437: Sources and Documents for the Hussite Crusades. Crusade Texts in Translation. Aldershot; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002.

———. Jan Hus: Religious Reform and Social Revolution in Bohemia. International Library of Historical Studies. London: I. B. Tauris, 2010.

———. The Trial of Jan Hus: Medieval Heresy and Criminal Procedure. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

———. Jan Hus between Time and Eternity: Reconsidering a Medieval Heretic. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016.

Gautron, Donothan Taylor and Yannick. “Pre-Modern Terrorism: The Cases of Sicari and the Assassins.” In The Routledge History of Terrorism, edited by Randall D. Law, 28–45. New York: Routledge, 2015.

Golan, Galia. “Youth and Politics in Czechoslovakia.” Journal of Contemporary History 5, no. 1 (1970): 3–22.

Haberkern, Phillip. “ ‘After Me There Will Come Braver Men’: Jan Hus and Reformation Polemics in the 1530s.” German History 27, no. 2 (2009): 177–195.

Hašek, Jaroslav. The Good Soldier: Schweik. Translated by Paul Selver. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran and Company, Inc., 1930.

Helan, Pavel. “Mussolini Looks at Jan Hus and the Bohemian Reformation.” The Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice (2002): 309–316.

Hodgson, Marshall G. S. “How Did the Early Shi’a Become Sectarian?” JAOS, no. 75 (1955): 1–13.

———. The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization. 3 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974.

———. The Secret Order of Assassins: The Struggle of the Early NizâRî IsmâʻîLîS against the Islamic World. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005.

Hoffmeier, James K. Akhenaten and the Origins of Monotheism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Horsley, Richard A. “The Zealots. Their Origin, Relationships and Importance in the Jewish Revolt.” Novum Testamentum 28, no. Fasc. 2 (1986): 159–192.

Huizinga, Johan, and Frederik Jan Hopman. The Waning of the Middle Ages, a Study of the Forms of Life. London: E. Arnold & co., 1924.

Huizinga, Johan. In the Shadow of Tomorrow. New York: W. W. Norton, & Co, Inc., 1936.

Jafri, S. Husain M. The Origins and Early Development of Shi’a Islam. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Josephus, Flavius, and William Whiston. The Works of Josephus: Complete and Unabridged. New updated ed. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1987.

Kaminsky, Howard. “Chiliasm and the Hussite Revolution.” Church History (March 1 1957): 43–71.

Kaminsky, Howard. “Pius Aeneas among the Taborites.” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 28, no. 3 (1959): 281–309.

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———. “Messianic Sanctions for Terror.” Comparative Politics 20 (1988): 195–213.

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2

America’s apocalyptic literature of the radical right

Perhaps more than any nation in the world, America may best lay claim to the heritage of revolutionary millenarianism and apocalyptic dreams. It’s earliest colonial roots as, in Governor John Winthrop’s words, a ‘city on a hill,’ were frankly millenarian and it was seen a golden beacon to mankind in those, the last days:

For wee must consider that wee shall be as a citty upon a hill. The eies of all people are upon us. Soe that if wee shall deale falsely with our God in this worke wee have undertaken, and soe cause him to withdrawe his present help from us, wee shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. Wee shall open the mouthes of enemies to speake evill of the ways of God, and all professors for God’s sake. Wee shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause theire prayers to be turned into curses upon us till wee be consumed out of the good land whither wee are a goeing.[1]

Yet its flirtation with apocalyptic violence has been intermittent at best. Such violence however does occur, and remains a pattern throughout American history. This is remarkable given the dire experiences in other places and other times throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.

German National Socialism had both distinctly occult roots and a frankly stated millennial dream.[2] The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia/Kampuchea drank deeply of the waters of millenarian racial apocalypse. Pol Pot declared the capture of Phnom Penh the Year Zero and set about the project of creating a pure Khmer race while killing all who were not of pure blood.[3] African movements such as the Lords Resistance Army in Uganda and Boko Haram in Nigeria share the dream from a tribal perspective.[4] For each of the movements the millennial dream is so great that no price is too high for its attainment.

America however, for all its apocalyptic fantasies and millennial pretensions, has never suffered genocidal violence stemming from terrorist movements and no such movement has yet come to power. It could be argued that, following Norman Cohn, such movements are the response to crisis and America – still quite young among nations – has rarely endured a crisis of sufficient magnitude to bring the violent fringe into the mainstream.[5] The Second Era Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, born of subversion fears brought about by the rapid influx of Catholic and Jewish immigrants and fed by the cinematic magic of D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation for a time made racism and Klan membership fashionable. Yet for all its rhetoric, the level of violence attributed to the Second Era Klan did not match that of its Reconstruction Era predecessor in the American South.[6]

The American radical right has proven over the course of the last two centuries to be particularly susceptible to the seductive dream of apocalypse, Divine judgment and ultimate triumph as a post-apocalyptic ‘righteous remnant.’[7] In this, it carries on the tradition of such 19th-century movements as the First Era Ku Klux Klan and its 20th-century successors, as well as those of the Depression era populists and racist leaders such as Gerald L. K. Smith, William Dudley Pelly, Gerald Winrod, and many more.[8]

In some cases, the apocalyptic dream has turned violent, claiming numerous victims among racial, religious, and ethnic minorities. Others, constrained by their historical circumstance or by the resistance of the White populations to their jeremiads, remained, as Gerald L. K. Smith once described himself, as merely gifted with a “ superabundance of wind.”[9] Others still, despairing of both national salvation and the will of the White man to resist what they saw as the abominations of ‘race mixing’ and ‘internationalism’ urged withdrawal from mainstream society into protective enclaves. Occasionally, as with Richard Butler’s Aryan Nations and James Ellison’s Zarapath Horeb redoubt for the Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord, these escapist dreams became all too real.[10]

Whatever the real world outcome, the revolutionary and genocidal dreams of the American faithful have largely been lived out in the pages of books. Many of these texts were self-published, some to wide audiences but more passing hand to hand through the magic of mail order and the availability of a mimeograph or Xerox copier. A few had great impact while most remained on the fringes. And so it would have stayed until the appearance of Microsoft’s Windows 95. With this marvelous tool, the marginal became, if not mainstream, at least ubiquitous.[11]

20th-century apocalyptic: An overview

With this we turn to the apocalyptic literature of the American radical right. The works included in this text make no claims to being exhaustive. They are rather selected as accessible examples of a particular approach or outcome as desired by the author or by his (always his, never her) readers. Some are particularly violent, urging the faithful to revolt in mass or to undertake lone wolf actions. Some were intended as dire warnings to Americans to change the course of the nation while there is still time to avert God’s Righteous Wrath. Others, despairing of race and nation, describe a post-apocalyptic world that has already suffered God’s just chastisement. Both literary forms, dire warnings and post-apocalyptic fantasies, share a dream of White racial awakening. Similarly, some urge violent action, others quietist withdrawal, both of which exemplify the intense action/quietist withdrawal pattern that has typified the radical right since the latter part of the 20th century.

America produced innumerable novels on the topic of apocalyptic millenarianism in the 20th century. World War I saw an upsurge in apocalyptic texts,[12] although World War II did not arouse much millenarian interest for the American radical right, surprisingly enough. The 1960s saw a vast profusion of apocalyptic texts and sermons which marked the emergence of the first nuclear era survivalists who created End Time enclaves; a process that would flourish in the 1980s with such as Aryan Nations; Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord; and Elohim City.[13] What they shared was the belief that cities were dangerous. In the Cold War, cities were seen as prime targets for Soviet nuclear missiles, which joined the historic aversion to cities as racial and ethnic melting pots where foreign immigrants and non-White rural migrants drawn. By the mid-1980s core elements of the radical right fled the cities with the dream of ‘a whiter brighter world’[14] in the hinterlands.[15]

The year 2000 brought more than its share of apocalyptic material, driven by intense media speculation and the dreaded Y2K bug that was, it was believed, about to bring an end to technical civilization as we know it.[16] Bill Gates giveth, and Bill Gates taketh away. The event passed without incident, save for a failed Islamist attack in Seattle.[17]

For all of their differences there is a core of received knowledge that underlies every apocalyptic work produced by the radical right. Of these, none is more important than The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. The Protocols is second only to the Bible itself as a source of inspiration and enlightenment for the radical right. In years of fieldwork with the radical right, particularly of the Christian Identity, National Socialist and Odinist flavors, if an actual copy or printout of the Protocols was not physically present, its influence in the areas of anti-Semitism and millennia-old conspiratorialism was ever present. Identity Christians wove it into their biblical hermeneutics, emerging with the image of the Jew as the eternal enemy of the White Christian ‘race,’ and indeed they went farther, finding the Jew as the literal offspring of the Devil himself; the result of a vile Edenic coupling of the wily serpent and Eve.[18] National Socialists found in it the all the proof they needed for their racial theories and, next to Mein Kampf, it constituted a sacred text for the NS faithful.[19] Odinist leaders such as Else Christianson and later Steve McNallen and Michael Murray knew the text and it had its influence, but they were less text driven than others in the radical right. Their wisdom was passed on in song and story, and at blotes around the campfire for the free and in prison yards for the incarcerated.[20]

The Ur text: The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion [21]

Although not of American vintage, no discussion of the revolutionary apocalyptic literature of the 20th century would be complete without some discussion of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. The Protocols impacted the nation as has no other apocalyptic text and its influence can be detected in the anti-Semitism and conspiratorialism of the texts discussed in this chapter.[22] In this classic apocalyptic scenario, a group of rabbis meet in a Prague cemetery every century to further the eons-old global Jewish conspiracy to rule the world. The Protocols turned out to be a Russian forgery whose history remains nebulous. But the story itself was timeless – so much so that conspiratorial forgeries that strongly resemble the Protocols scenario can be found in Russia, Napoleonic France, and in a variety of esoteric literature.[23] The Protocols appeared in America in 1920, with Victor Marsden credited as translator. It was rereleased in the following year under the title The Cause of World Unrest.[24]

The text was thorough going. It dissected every important institution of the time, seeing the hidden hand of the dread figure of the ‘International Jew’ behind events. In this view, the Jews were said to bend the laws of the nations and control the minds of their citizens in accordance with their malign will:

We [Jews] appear on the scene as alleged saviours of the worker from this oppression when we propose to him to enter the ranks of our fighting forces – Socialists, Anarchists, Communists – to whom we always give support in accordance with an alleged brotherly rule (of the solidarity of all humanity) of our social masonry. The aristocracy, which enjoyed by law the labour of the workers, was interested in seeing that the workers were well fed, healthy and strong. We are interested in just the opposite – in the diminution [sic], the killing out of the GOYIM.[25] …

By want and the envy and hatred which it engenders we shall move the mobs and with their hands we shall wipe out all those who hinder us on our way.

When the hour strikes for our Sovereign Lord of all the World to be crowned it is these same hands which will sweep away everything that might be a hindrance thereto.[26]

The audience for the forged text was wide indeed. Henry Ford read them and established a newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, which Americanized the Protocols and serialized them under the title “The International Jew.”[27] The intense anti-Semitism that flows from the Dearborn Independent series has been recycled constantly. One of the most effective of Ford’s early acolytes was the inter-War zealot Gerald L. K. Smith, who was never one to bypass an opportunity for publicity. He put out a volume of The International Jew under his own name after Ford publicly repented of the whole affair.[28] In 2011, Willis Carto’s Noontide Press republished the book along with the “International Jew” newspaper series in one massive comprehensive online volume.[29]

The impact of the series is very much tied to its time. In the 1920s – a period in which Jewish and Irish Catholic immigration reached a peak[30] and the Second Era Ku Klux Klan was reborn – [31]the newspaper was distributed through Ford dealers across the nation (in a time when cars meant Ford). Ford hired William J. Cameron, a Canadian employee, to edit the paper and the series would include much of the Protocols’ original text (suitably simplified and Americanized) as well as such purely American fascinations as the article on “Jews in Hollywood.”

The Protocols, and the “International Jew” series makes the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion the most influential revolutionary apocalyptic text ever to appear in America,[32] and arguably throughout the world with texts appearing in Japanese and Chinese where few if any Jews are known to reside. The Protocols in fact are perhaps most mainstream in South and East Asia, where it serves as an anti-Semitic touchstone in such unlikely places as Indonesia and Malaysia.[33]

With this background then, we turn to a discussion of the works themselves.

Literature of the crossroads – there is still time

Works which would fall under this heading are of two kinds; those that have a clearly religious apocalyptic message and those that see a cataclysm ahead of apocalyptic proportions but do not make explicit reference to the biblical apocalypse. This literature is reformist in nature, urging change and renewal, but it makes no direct call for violence. Of the latter, the most influential example of the ‘secular apocalypse’ was the Clansman series by Thomas Dixon Jr.

Apocalypse of race and nation: The Clansman/Birth of a Nation

The first 20th-century text to create an indelible impact on the American people was the appearance in 1905 of the first edition of The Clansman by North Carolina writer Thomas Dixon Jr. Dixon published a number of Reconstruction era novels,[34] but none had the impact of The Clansman. Dixon took as his ‘signs of the times’ the very real feelings of oppression felt by southerners at the hands of the Reconstruction Era (1865–1877) ‘Carpetbaggers’ of the post-Civil War northern occupation. The Clansman warned of a racial apocalypse in which African-Americans, who were portrayed as stupid, lustful, and bestial creatures, and of the Carpetbaggers who were loosed to prey upon innocent White womanhood:

The bestial figure of a negro – his huge black hand plainly defined – the upper part of the face is dim, as if obscured by a gray mist of dawn – but the massive jaws and lips are clear – merciful God – yes – it’s Gus![35]

The penultimate moment in the novel occurs when one such flower of the South is menaced on a cliff by the lust maddened Gus. The only defense against the predations of the ‘bestial niggers’ and the rapacious Carpetbaggers was to create a terrorist group, the ‘Clan,’ which was entirely based on the first era Ku Klux Klan.[36] Dixon writes:

“Success, not failure,” he answered firmly. “The Grand Dragons of six States have already wired victory. Look at our lights on the mountains! They are ablaze – range on range our signals gleam until the Fiery Cross is lost among the stars!”

“What does it mean?” she whispered.

“That I am a successful revolutionist – that Civilization has been saved, and the South redeemed from shame.”[37]

Dixon’s books were models of the literary call to action while there was still time to avert an apocalyptic catastrophe. The South and the White race were seen as endangered and only the actions of men and the favor of the Lord could save them from imminent destruction. Success on the other hand, was pictured in almost millenarian terms; the return to an imagined ‘Golden Age’ when the world was as God created it and all God-fearing White men and women would live in this reconstituted paradise with happily servile African-Americans to perform the kind of menial service tasks to which they were by nature suited. The book successfully impacted its target audience: Literate southerners for whom Reconstruction was still a living memory. As the Civil War generation faded from the scene however, so too did Dixon’s literary popularity.

Today his books are all but forgotten by contemporary readers, but The Clansman would be translated with seismic impact onto the silver screen when legendary director D. W. Griffith immortalized the story under the title Birth of a Nation.[38] In this form, the nuances of Reconstruction were lost as the film focused primarily on the peril of a White woman at the hands of rampaging ex-slaves. Birth of a Nation was one of a trilogy of technically great films which includes Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925) and Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935) that catalyzed their nations into radical action.

With Birth of a Nation, the genre of racial apocalypse in America in the 20th century took flight. The Second Era Ku Klux Klan exemplified the American mobilization against the threat to race and nation. In this period a number of northern White men joined the robed crusade, including such figures as one of the architects of the Supreme Court’s civil rights majority in the 1960s Hugo Black and seemingly eternal speaker of the Senate Robert Byrd.[39]

Apocalypse of the nation: The John Franklin Letters [40]

The radical right, including the Ku Klux Klan, dwindled in the years of the Depression (1929–1942) as it was swept up by the broader allure of American populism.[41] The Second Era Klan withered and fell away, exposed as a business scam huckstered by corrupt and dissolute leaders.[42] With the end of the War, the US prospered as never before. The country suddenly had seemingly limitless resources and a bright future. By 1948 that had all changed. The first wave of the anti-Communist crusade had begun.

The public face of this anti-communism panic was the witch hunt led by Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI), giving rise to the term ‘McCarthyism.’ McCarthy’s power emerged from the fully fledged moral panic which impacted every phase of American life in the 1950s and early 1960s. McCarthy’s crusade came to a bad end in the nationally televised Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954.[43] Meanwhile, the government reacted on a global basis through the passage of the National Security Act of 1947 which created the CIA.[44]

Voices on the far right and in the military were already suggesting that the Cold War was an unnecessary conflict. A budding star on the circuit, Gen. Curtis Lemay, who would run as George Wallace’s American Independent Party Vice Presidential candidate in the year of global upheaval in 1968, presciently suggested a thermonuclear solution to the Russia problem in 1949, when the US had a monopoly of nuclear weapons.[45]

As the nation mobilized for the fight against communism, the far right had little to rally around save for even more extreme anti-communism which focused on the dangers of internationalism as personified by the United Nations and the issue of race. The country’s largest anti-communist right-wing group was the John Birch Society, founded by juice magnate Robert Welch.[46]

By the late 1950s, with the early stirrings of the Civil Rights movement, the organization, like the nation itself, soon found itself deeply torn by the issue of race. While the majority of the Birch Society thought race a divisive distraction from the real issue of fighting the global communist conspiracy, racist true believers were being drawn to the organization. Welch and the national leadership resisted the racist faction, issuing a declaration in the 1963 book The Neutralizers, which explicitly denounced racism and anti-Semitism.[47] It was at this time that the anonymously authored John Franklin Letters emerged.

The book brings us closer to the apocalyptic literature of revolution, but its dogged faith in America and its Constitution brings its readers no further than nuclear apocalypse. There is insurgency rather than revolution and the targets are Soviet foreign occupation troops and their allies, who were operating under a UN mandate reminiscent of the one that brought the US into the Korean War in 1950. More important, a future millennial paradise is nowhere to be found in these pages. Americans need do no more to cure their ills than to rid the nation of the communist and internationalist foe and restore constitutional government. When the dust cleared, the reconstituted United States so meticulously followed the constitutionally mandated line of succession that the book ends with the swearing in of an African-American President.[48] From the perspective of the second decade of the 21st century, this seems hopelessly naïve – a good reason that the novel has all but disappeared – but in the last years of the Eisenhower presidency, it perfectly fit the times.

The John Franklin Letters included no publishing information and gave no hint of authorship. It just seemed to just appear in 1959. William Pierce believes that Revilo P. Oliver, an old-style segregationist known for a name that forms a perfect palindrome and for his dry intellectual prose is the author. He recalls that he received a copy of the text from Oliver, and that the introduction to the work is credited to the pseudonymous Prof. Harley Ogden from Oliver’s own University of Illinois.[49] Oliver, described as a brilliant University of Illinois classicist, was a gadfly who wrote a very great deal about race and anti-communism in America for a very long time.[50]

Ironically Oliver, a founding member of the Birch Society, was one of the first to be expelled for his increasingly outspoken racism and anti-Semitism. Oliver’s moment on the national stage was as a reviewer for William F. Buckley’s National Review where he made national headlines by refuting the Warren Commission’s Report on the Kennedy Assassination. He was soon expelled by the National Review as well. His anti-Semitism and apparent paranoia made him persona non grata in the respectable right.[51]

One assumes that Oliver eventually found that the racially harmonious denouement of the John Franklin Letters to be a bit of an embarrassment, but it was where the Birch Society was headed as the purge of the racist right was already in its nascent stages. Despite its adherence to constitutionalism over race, Oliver’s animus toward African-Americans shows through, albeit couched in the dogma of much of the radical right which saw African-Americans as indolent and somewhat malevolent, but essentially innocent pawns of the Jews:

One third of the nation’s crime is committed by Negroes, mostly in Northern cities – home of enlightenment and integration, you’ll notice. The Liberals cry, scarlet with rage, “Well what do you expect? They live in substandard conditions.” And I add, those rapists, killers, and thieves are behaving in a substandard manner. In another letter, Franklin refers to blacks as a “tax-supported proletariat …”

As bad as blacks are, you can’t criticize them because of the Javitts hate literature law, [Jacob Javitts was a Jewish senator from New York at that time] which prevents what is considered to be unfair propaganda against minority groups[52]

The John Franklin Letters were largely unknown to the mainstream culture. However, within the milieu of the far right, the book had a deep impact. Reportedly, one of the readers most inspired by the form if not the substance of the text was William Pierce himself. Pierce, who in the early 1960s had given up a comfortable sinecure at the Oregon State University where he taught Physics to follow the American Fuehrer, George Lincoln Rockwell, was reportedly impressed by the potential of the apocalyptic novel to attract followers to the racist cause. Shortly after reading The John Franklin Letters, Pierce was moved to take up his typewriter and begin his own magnum opus, The Turner Diaries.[53] If for no other reason, this alone gives The John Franklin Letters an important place in the American apocalyptic literary hall of fame.

Both The Clansman and the John Franklin Letters addressed a widely perceived social crisis: Reconstruction for the former and anti-communism for the latter. The prose in both was despairing, but neither gave in to despair. Rather, they posited clear ways forward – an awakening of the White masses and a set of simple actions that would redress their grievances. Neither made much of a real-world impact. But both were important for what was to come. The Clansman’s lionization of the First Era Klan was beautifully translated to film by D. W. Griffith, and the national-wide impact of the resulting film, Birth of a Nation, for a time brought racism into the mainstream and helped to give the Klan a powerful foothold in the North. The John Franklin Letters went unnoticed in the wider world, but in the insular world of the radical right became both controversial and, for William Pierce, inspirational. Just as The Clansman inspired Birth of a Nation, the John Franklin Letters would inspire the most successful invitation to racial violence to emerge from the literature of the radical right: The Turner Diaries.

The post-apocalyptic literature of revolution

The post-apocalyptic literature of revolution is, depending on one’s point of view, either more optimistic or hopelessly pessimistic than is the literature at the crossroads. Where crossroads literature maintained a stubborn faith that there is still time to rectify the course of the nation within the framework of conventional history, post-apocalyptic literature evinces no such idealism. The nation, and thus the world, is lost. The horrors of the tribulation to come are inevitable. In the end, however, after unspeakable suffering and with almost superhuman perseverance, the surviving righteous remnant will be rewarded with the millennial paradise to come.

The literature which we will examine is heavily influenced by Christian eschatology, but differs from it in one vital respect. Whereas Christianity, in common with all ‘Peoples of the Book’ (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), envisions a resurrection of the dead and a Divine Judgment on all, American revolutionary apocalyptic literature is more selective. It relegates those who fell in pursuit of the cause to the roles of lost martyrs. Theirs however is not the Kingdom of the elect, for this literature gives no attention to the afterlife beyond heroic panegyrics that evince more of the atmosphere of Valhalla than the vaults of heaven.[54]

The last great apocalypses of race: The Turner Diaries and Hunter [55]

We know “Armageddon,” which many (we included) believe is the biblical word for race war, will climax a tribulation period at which time the bankers will close their doors. What we have been attempting to determine now is a possible trigger incident that will cause the bankers to close their doors.

(Ricky Cooper)[56]

This apocalypticism is typical of American National Socialists. Some remain passive, dreaming of a mass White awakening. Others, following the “pray for victory and the not the end of slaughter” teachings of Joseph Tommasi and the few who followed him in the 1960s-era National Socialist Liberation Front,[57] want to take action hoping to force a race war NOW, warning that Whites in the United States will soon lose their majority status.[58] All however, are apocalyptic millenarians, awaiting the End of Days when the Fuhrer’s spirit will lead them to a racial paradise. In this, they hold true to the prognostications of the founder of the American Nazi Party, the Commander, George Lincoln Rockwell.[59]

William Pierce’s reading of the Franklin Letters was key to what would follow. The book appeared at a time when the John Birch Society was being torn apart over the issues of race and anti-Semitism – a topic on which Pierce had definite views. Yet Pierce was, in stark contrast to so many of his contemporaries in the radical right, both astute and observant. He saw that the impact of the John Franklin Letters was seismic in the milieu of the far right but garnered attention nowhere else. The apocalyptic format was demonstrably effective in America – far more so than in European far right circles.

After the assassination of George Lincoln Rockwell in 1967, and as the ANP’s successor, the National Socialist White People’s Party, fell under the bumbling and divisive leadership of Matt Koehl,[60] Pierce formed the most effective Nazi organization to date: The National Alliance.[61] The Alliance brought together the remnants of the Nazi underground in America, and successfully reached out to a strong youth base by acquiring Resistance Records, the premier White Power music label in the country, and the eponymous glossy magazine that went with it.[62] Under Pierce’s leadership, three generations of Nazi true believers were linked under one umbrella.

The Turner Diaries follows the quest of Earl Turner, one of the last of the true, proud White Men through the depths of an apocalyptic race war. In the midst of the violence, Turner joins the Organization and, at last, having won the trust of the group for his heroic exploits in battle, he is allowed to read the Holy Book, which was clearly Mein Kampf. The experience sets his soul flying and he realizes the truths of this world in a moment of National Socialist satori which is clearly based on Rockwell’s first experience reading the tome. Suitably enlightened, he dies heroically, knowing that, through his example, others would follow.

What I had read – it amounted to a book of about 400 typed pages – had lifted me out of this world, out of my day-to-day existence as an underground fighter for the Organization, and it had taken me to the top of a high mountain from which I could see the whole world, with all its nations and tribes and races, spread out before me. And I could see the ages spread out before me too, from the steaming, primordial swamps of a hundred million years ago to the unlimited possibilities which the centuries and the millennia ahead hold for us.

The book placed our present struggle – the Organization and its goals and what is at stake-in a much larger context than I have ever really considered before. That is, I had thought about many of the things in the book before, but I had never put them all together into a single, coherent pattern. I had never seen the whole picture so clearly… .

For the first time I understand the deepest meaning of what we are doing. I understand now why we cannot fail, no matter what we must do to win and no matter how many of us must perish in doing it. Everything that has been and everything that is yet to be depend on us. We are truly the instruments of God in the fulfillment of His Grand Design. These may seem like strange words to be coming from me, who has never been religious, but they are utterly sincere words.[63]

The text is set posthumously; the war is over and Turner is lionized as a martyr for his race.

The Turner Diaries and its follow-up volume Hunter were the last influential apocalyptic books to emerge from the American radical right. Their popularity resounds to this day. Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, was much taken with The Turner Diaries and used to pass it around at gun shows throughout the US.[64] Today, it is more easily accessible than it was in the days before Windows 95 opened the world of computers to the race movement internationally.[65]

The Turner Diaries appeared first in serialized form in 1975 in Attack!, a publication of a no longer so young William Pierce in his incarnation as the leader of the National Youth Alliance which began under the sponsorship of Willis Carto in 1969.[66] The story was well written and caught on very quickly among the tiny circle of Attack! readers and members of the National Alliance, the somewhat grown up version of the National Youth Alliance (American National Socialists are primarily young and overwhelmingly male).[67] It was published in book form in 1976 under the pseudonym Andrew McDonald and translated widely into a number of languages. It has since become a movement staple. The story updates the apocalyptic struggle motif of the John Franklin Letters with race consciousness rather than anti-communist fears and adds in a good deal of George Lincoln Rockwell – always a hero of the author – as well as the kind of Hitler cultism endemic in the post-War generations of youth National Socialism.

Hunter was the eagerly awaited follow up to The Turner Diaries. It appeared a decade later, with a 1989 paperback publication date. By then, much had changed in the race movement. The apocalyptic dream, if not over, was indefinitely postponed as it had become clear that there would be no National Socialist awakening, nor would there be a right-wing rising. National Socialist Liberation Front leader Joseph Tommasi had argued as far back as 1969 that National Socialists needed to stop waiting for the time when the movement could build a revolutionary mass party and would seize the moment with boldness and unbridled violence. He had a pronounced gift for rhetoric and the spirit of one of his surviving texts, “Building a Revolutionary Party,” and their signature poster, “THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THE FEW OF US WILLING TO GET OUR HANDS DIRTY. POLITICAL TERROR: It’s the only thing they understand,” lives on in Hunter.[68] He was very much a creature of William Pierce in this early period and he would, like Rockwell, die a violent death on the streets at the hands of a rival National Socialist true believer.

His National Socialist Liberation Front, based on the left-wing rhetoric and organizational models of the early 1970s, never amounted to much in membership terms. Its emphasis on violence saw its core members, Karl Hand and David Rust, imprisoned for acts of senseless violence and with Tommasi’s death, the NSLF was defunct.[69] But Tommasi’s legacy would survive in both Pierce books, especially Hunter.

If Joseph Tommasi was the spirit of Hunter, the prototype for the protagonist Oscar Yeager was the racist serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin to whom later editions of the work are dedicated. George Michael quotes the author on both books:

GM: In your novel Hunter, the protagonist, Oscar Yeager, is a lone wolf who employs the notion of leaderless resistance. Moreover, you dedicated the book to Joseph Paul Franklin, who would seem to have exemplified this approach. Is Hunter meant to be read as an advocacy of the leaderless resistance approach?

WP: No it’s not. In the first place when I wrote the book, I might have heard the term leaderless resistance, but it’s nowhere mentioned in the book, and I certainly was not advocating that. The big difference between Hunter and The Turner Diaries is that I hope I learned something from the reaction to The Turner Diaries . . .

Oscar Yeager was a lone wolf when he started, but he changed fairly early in the book and came to the conclusion that was no way two get things done. It was therapeutic for him. He was doing this for selfish reasons. But if you really wanted to have an effect, it would have to be in an organizational context and that’s completely contrary to the leaderless resistance thesis.[70]

Pierce’s nuancing of Yeager appears more concerned with legal repercussions than literal truth. Pierce had definitely heard of leaderless resistance; the term was well known in movement circles and became ubiquitous in the movement from its original publication in Klansman Louis Beam’s Seditionist in 1992.[71] More to the point, the American radical right was aware of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s specialty of filing ruinous legal actions based on words rather than deeds.

Like Franklin, Yaeger was a National Socialist serial killer whose coast-to-coast killing spree lasted more than a decade.[72] Franklin’s victims were impressive, ranging from interracial couples jogging in the park in Seattle to such high profile figures as Vernon Jordan, a civil rights leader who would become a key figure in the Clinton Administration, and Hustler publisher Larry Flynt whose pictures of interracial sex made him a natural target for Franklin. He was executed in Missouri in 2013 when he refused to carry on with the appeals process.[73]

Pierce’s protestations are belied by the front matter of the novel, which virtually defines the term ‘leaderless resistance’:

How should an honorable man confront evil?

Should he ignore it, with the excuse that it is not his responsibility?

Should he ally himself with the evil, because that’s where the “smart money” is?

Or should he take up arms against it and fight it with all his strength and without regard for the personal consequences, even though he must fight alone?

Oscar Yeager, a former combat pilot in Vietnam, now a comfortable yuppie working as a Defense Department consultant in the Virginia suburbs of the nation’s capital, faces this choice. He surveys the race mixing, the open homosexuality, the growing influence of drugs, the darkening complexion of the population as the tide of non-White immigration swells. He finds that for him it really is no choice at all: he is compelled to fight the evil which afflicts America in the 1990s; his conscience will not let him ignore it, and joining it is inconceivable.

He declares war on the corrupt and irresponsible politicians who are presiding over the destruction of his race and his country, the scheming media masters who are the principal architects of that destruction, and the spiritually sick adherents of “diversity” who are their willing collaborators. And when Oscar Yeager is on the warpath, you’d better not be in his way![74]

Yeager’s first killings – an interracial couple – so closely mirror Franklin’s Seattle killings that there can be no mistaking either the act or the author’s intent:

In another five seconds he was opposite the couple again. He stopped the car with a jerk, inadvertently killing the engine. Damn! And in the rearview mirror he saw a fat woman, two bags of groceries in her arms and a small child trailing her, walking down the lane, about 60 yards away. Both the bushy-haired mulatto and his rather dumpy, pasty-faced female companion stopped talking and turned to look directly at him. They were about eight feet from his open window.

An instant calm fell over Oscar, the expected calm for which he had been waiting. With a smooth motion, neither too hurried nor too slow but precise and deliberate, he lifted the rifle from beneath the blanket on the seat beside him, raised it to his shoulder, and, left elbow braced against the door, carefully squeezed off two shots.

The ear-shattering reports echoed through the huge lot, but Oscar remained calm as he put the rifle down, restarted his engine, and accelerated smoothly toward the exit ramp. As he turned at the end of the lane, he paused to glance back toward the van. The mulatto’s body was sprawled out into the roadway; the woman apparently had fallen backward, beside the van, and was not visible. Both shots had been head shots, and Oscar was quite certain both the man and the woman were dead. He had seen their skulls literally explode into showers of bone fragments, brain tissue, and blood as the high velocity projectiles struck them.[75]

Yaeger continues his one man crusade, gaining a girlfriend and a few adherents along the way, while stirring up violence between Blacks and Whites which moved the Congress to pass a Jewish-sponsored anti-racism legislation, thus stirring up greater chaos. Yeager though realizes that this is not creating the revolutionary majority he seeks. Bowed but not broken, he and his girlfriend decide at the end to retreat to rural Iowa where her grandfather and a few others would agree with their ideas.[76] This was hardly the chiliastic triumph promised by The Turner Diaries.

The sad denouement of Hunter, carrying on the fight in the name of God and race even as the White Man sleeps, is an ancient motif in apocalypticism. It is eerily paralleled in Judaism where the perils of messianic excitements and the long wait for the messiah have evolved the idea of the messianic process rather than the sudden, sharp break in history resulting from the appearance of a messiah. This is best exemplified by the Israeli settlement movement where Gush Emunim (the Bloc of the Faithful) in the 1970s created the concept of gradual redemption whereby every centimeter of biblical patrimony recovered by the Jewish people is a centimeter closer to redemption.[77] The pattern places the apocalyptic dream into the future, but mandates the believers to take action, not to passively wait for the time and the place. Hunter should best be understood in this spirit. It is an apocalyptic text which takes care to avoid any mention of the apocalypse, but nonetheless carries on the millennial dream.

Both the Turner Diaries and Hunter perfectly exemplify forms of post-apocalyptic literature which sees no alternative to the End, and therefore embraces the inevitable cataclysm in the faith that the millennial future will bring at long last perfect peace and terrestrial perfection. Its call for revolution now was taken seriously by its readers, a few of whom acted upon it. Timothy McVeigh’s inspiration led him down the path that would eventuate in the Oklahoma City bombing. Robert Mathews and the core members of the Order in the 1980s came closest to embodying the revolutionary movement to which Earl Turner dedicated his life. Their spree of killings, armored car robberies and their doomed battle against the FBI tried to live the dream that the Turner Diaries embodied.[78]

Hunter went farther. The Order’s demise, along with the subsequent FBI crackdown on the violent enclaves such as that of the Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord[79] despaired of popular revolution, instead embracing lone wolf actions to resist the all-pervading power of the state and the direction of the culture which has increasingly made expressions of overt racism unacceptable in the public square. In this it was prescient, as lone wolf attacks with makeshift tactics spun by untrained activists who are often armed with little more than a motor vehicle or the sharper implements drawn from their tool sheds or kitchen drawers has increasingly replaced high profile attacks by the like of Al Qaeda or Daesh (ISIS) in the Western world.

The best of the rest: The Green Day Prophesies

While The Turner Diaries and Hunter are the most influential of what we have termed the post-apocalyptic literature of revolution, they are far from alone. One of the most interesting post-Hunter texts to emerge is The Green Day Prophesies: A Novel of Global U.N. Terror by D.A. Hänks.[80] What makes the text so remarkable is that it harks back to The John Franklin Letters by way of the 1990s militia groups in its suspicion of the United Nations and global government, and it contains strong anti-communist themes as well. Its publisher, Patriot Publications of Charlotte, North Carolina, specializes in texts associated with survivalism, weapons manuals, food growth and storage, and the like, which partially account for the Green Day of its title. The novel focuses on the conflict between the Authority – a name for oppressive government that is borrowed from both zombie and science fiction books and films with a good deal of the Turner Diaries thrown in for good measure – and the few remaining free men able and willing to fight against the Authority’s tyranny. The book’s Preface makes this explicit:

On May 14th, 2014, the final legislation was enacted to combine all the world’s resources, population, and laws, into one global power known as the Authority. Based on Green ideas and communist socialization, the Authority has decided that the world is overcrowded and must be protected at any cost, including human lives and liberties. The day this came into being, was announced as “Green Day,” and celebrated as a world holiday on each anniversary thereafter. It also marked the day of the beginning of the largest genocide our planet had ever witnessed.[81]

The Green Day Prophecies takes these ideas – and pieces of legislation already proposed – and implements them into a plausible chronological order, where the America we know today ceases to exist. Fully one half of the United States is now off limits to any human intervention – deemed as “wilderness reserves” and barred from our lives – or so we are led to believe.

The Authority – the all-seeing, all-knowing network of enforcers, overseers, and directors – has taken away all decision making from the individual.[82]

Before the novel begins, the author speaks directly to the audience about the politics behind the novel, bringing the ecology movement and green legislation into his sights along with world government, the UN, and John Franklin Letters style anti-communism. The discussion, replete with profuse illustrations and lists, strongly recalls the militia movement literature of the 1990s.[83]

The best of the rest: Phinehas: A novel in the tradition of Andrew MacDonald

Lacking a clear author beyond the enigmatic National Socialist-sounding arbeiter88 (88 being the movement shorthand for Heil Hitler, the 8th letter in the alphabet, and arbeiter being the German term for worker) – no doubt a lame reference to Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers’ Party or NSDAP – Phinehas: A novel in the tradition of Andrew MacDonald has been for good reason overlooked within the movement. Given its dearth of either publication information beyond arbeiter88’s email address, or of literary merit, it would be overlooked in these pages as well if it were not for the enigmatic title. Surely more by chance than design, our intrepid author’s choice of title has tapped into a mother lode of apocalyptic violence!

Phinehas was an Israelite who appears in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible in the role of a holy vigilante who acts to prevent the mating of a Midianite woman and an Israelite man. Miscegenation was an act that was abhorrent in the eyes of Yahweh, and the consummation of the act would have brought down God’s wrath on the Israelite people. Indeed, at the time of the prospective coupling, Yahweh had already afflicted the Israelites with a plague, possibly in the knowledge that the act would soon be attempted, but more likely in recognition that the Israelites, rather more commonly than would be admitted, succumbed to the charms of Gentile women. He makes clear that if not for Phinehas, he would have done away with His chosen people altogether.

Sadly for the star-crossed couple, their disappearance into a tent was witnessed by Moses and others, causing great weeping and lamentations on the part of all. Rather than passively wailing and beating his breast while the lovers rutted, however, Phinehas seized a spear and in an act whose sexual implication is inescapable, fatally penetrated them both with the shaft of the weapon, joining them together in coital bliss for eternity. In the New International Version, the text reads:

6 Then an Israelite man brought into the camp a Midianite woman right before the eyes of Moses and the whole assembly of Israel while they were weeping at the entrance to the tent of meeting. 7 When Phinehas son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the priest, saw this, he left the assembly, took a spear in his hand 8 and followed the Israelite into the tent. He drove the spear into both of them, right through the Israelite man and into the woman’s stomach. Then the plague against the Israelites was stopped; 9 but those who died in the plague numbered 24,000.

10 The Lord said to Moses, 11 “Phinehas son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the priest, has turned my anger away from the Israelites. Since he was as zealous for my honor among them as I am, I did not put an end to them in my zeal. 12 Therefore tell him I am making my covenant of peace with him. 13 He and his descendants will have a covenant of a lasting priesthood, because he was zealous for the honor of his God and made atonement for the Israelites.”[84]

The covenant of a lasting priesthood for Phinehas, like all sacred texts, is subject to a wide range of interpretations. In the 19th century, Phinehas appears in the literature as a source of sage council, arguing against Darwinism and the new science.[85] In earlier times, for Jews and Christians alike, the example of Phinehas has been neither so subtle nor so intellectual. Rather, it was an unambiguous call to violence.[86]

Before the 1990s, when Phinehas did enter the literature of the American radical right, it was most often as an example of Jewish violence and perfidy.[87] It was not until Richard Kelly Hoskins’ Vigilantes of Christendom that the figure of Phinehas came into vogue in Christian Identity circles and the Phinehas Priesthood was soon to follow.[88] Identity preachers like Ovid Need jumped on the term, as did those of a more violent rhetorical temper.[89]

The Phinehas Priesthood concept hit the Identity movement in the late 1990s when it was at its lowest ebb. The Order and the Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord were dead, the Aryan Nations was dying and about to be put permanently out of business by an SPLC law suit, and the radical right itself was increasingly turning away from the rural biblicism of Christian Identity.[90]

It was not long after the appearance of Vigilantes of Christendom that many on the far right began to style themselves Phinehas Priests. To prove their membership, many obtained patches suitable for cammy fatigues or weekend paint ball sessions while others sported the symbol on the orange baseball caps favored by radical right-wing duck hunters. Soon would-be Phinneas Priests began to proliferate like particularly unpalatable fast food franchises. As is their wont, watchdogs and scholars soon followed, and a mini boom in publications filled with dire warnings of the Phinehas Priesthood threat to all that was good and true.[91]

Violent incidents occurred and those who went to trial sometimes mentioned their involvement in the Phinehas Priesthood,[92] but there was never either an organization or a vision involved in any of these. The Phinehas Priesthood was simply another flavor of leaderless resistance.

Which brings us back to arbeiter88’s exceedingly minor contribution to the Phinehas legacy. The text itself is poorly written and read in a wasted hour, but it pays explicit homage to William Pierce’s pseudonym in the subtitle and ends almost identically with Hunter on which it is slavishly modeled:

Foxy leaned close to him and, catching his eye, winked at him. “I hear that the niggers in southern California are getting uppity again! And you know what? I only threw out TWO of my bulbs in Richmond!“

Doc’s face lit up like a kid on Christmas morning. “Go call the little fat girl!” he exclaimed as he jumped out of his chair. “We’re going to California!”[93]

Foxy, Doc, and the little fat girl at least takes us in the right direction as this section will end with the best prose and, save for Phinehas: A novel in the tradition of Andrew MacDonald, possibly the least impact of any work in this section. Harold Covington’s dream of a White homeland in the American northwest is of long standing in the movement, and in recent years he set his considerable literary talents on the creation of his Northwest Trilogy, a set of apocalyptic novels set around the fictional creation of a White Homeland in America.

The best of the rest: The Northwest Trilogy + 1

Harold Covington has long been a contentious figure in the American radical right. From the 1977 march through Skokie, the Jewish suburb of Chicago to the shootout with communist activists in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1979, Covington was on or very near the scene. Indeed, Covington often took the blame for the movement’s many fiascos, either on the grounds of proximity or through the widespread conviction that he bought his freedom by reporting to the feds on the doings of the movement. Whether this latter charge is true or not is a matter of speculation, but the penetration of the American radical right by police, federal agents, and private watchdogs was so pervasive in these years that it would have been more difficult to find someone not reporting to someone in authority than someone who was.

That said, Covington has always raised more ire than virtually anyone in the exceedingly divisive world of American National Socialism.[94] The explanation for this remarkable distinction is probably the fact that Harold Covington has a rare talent with a pen, which he wields like rapier. A classic of the genre would be his mocking eulogy to Ben Klassen, founder of the World Church of the Creator, which he produced for the September 1993 issue of Resistance, a publication of Resistance Records which was then owned by none other than William Pierce. It begins:

“Nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it …” -Macbeth, Act I, Scene 4

Benny Klassen is dead, and it’s a Whiter and Brighter world without him. The founder of the “Church of the Creator” sodomy cult, the man whose deviate sexual lifestyle was so notorious that American Skinheads nicknamed him “Old Benny Buttfuck,” the self-proclaimed greatest Aryan genius who ever lived – most likely a rabbi’s son from Vilna – came crawling back to his cult’s ashram in Otto, North Carolina in the last week of July. Over a year ago he had fled into hiding, in fear of prosecution for a cult-related killing in Florida.

In the early morning hours of August 7th, Klassen swallowed the contents of four bottles of sleeping pills. The Macon County sheriff reports that the quondam Maximum Pontoon left a rambling and incoherent suicide note on a yellow legal pad by his bedside. Considering Klassen’s wonted verbosity, the sheriff was lucky he didn’t decide to turn it into another lengthy, excruciatingly boring book. One account states that Klassen changed his mind after he had taken the pills and crawled into the bathroom trying to make himself vomit, and was subsequently found dead with his head stuck in the toilet. If so, there is something very Zen about his death.

For twenty years, Benny Klassen performed one gigantic act of psychological and political sodomy on us all. He never had any real religious or political message. It was all a gull, warmed-over classical anti-clericalism framed in the manner of Talmudic responsa, mixed with crude race-baiting and pseudo-scholarship, garnished with soft-core pornography and served up on a bed of crap. To paraphrase Mark Twain, Klassen’s works are both good and original, but the parts that are good are not original and the parts that are original are not good.[95]

Even William Pierce did not have Covington’s lethal facility with prose. No one else in the movement could combine in a few short paragraphs quotes from Shakespeare and Mark Twain and historical insight into anti-clericalism, replete with witty asides referencing Asian religions and even wittier references to the stylistics of Talmudic discourse, all mixed with a mocking reference to Klassen’s own ‘whiter brighter world’ slogan and his silly self-styled title of Pontifex Maximus for good measure. Klassen’s works were indeed interminably long and deadly dull, saying nothing either interesting or original, and doing so at excruciating length.[96]

No one on the receiving end of Covington’s bombastic wit emerged unscathed, and none would ever forgive the Nazi Bard. The widespread anti-Covington animus may be a big part of the explanation for why his Northwest Trilogy has not, despite its comparative literary merit, met with a greater movement response.

A deafening silence did indeed meet the publication of the novels in the series. The original trilogy of Hill of the Ravens (2003), A Distant Thunder (2004), and A Mighty Fortress (2005) was supplemented by a fourth novel (a quadrilogy?), The Brigade, which appeared in its more than 500+ page glory in 2007.[97] Together they document the adventures of an intrepid band of White survivors who come together to create from the rubble of American civilization a White Republic in the American Northwest.

For those not involved in the vicious internecine struggles that have marked American National Socialism – and the wider race movement – since the 1970s, the lack of response to Covington’s books is puzzling. Michael O’Meara puts this best:

H. A. Covington’s Northwest Trilogy of novels – Hill of the Ravens (2003), A Distant Thunder (2004), and A Mighty Fortress (2005) [A fourth novel, The Brigade (2007) appeared after this essay was written – Ed.] – now represents the most authoritative treatment of white separatism in the English language. Both as popular fiction and political tract, it is a remarkable work. But most remarkable of all is the utter silence that surrounds it. If not for a VNN “commentator” (the wise and judicious “New America”), I might never have heard of it.

I’m not quite certain why this is. Covington’s Trilogy is infinitely more readable and convincing than William Pierce’s Turner Diaries (now one of our classics), but has probably sold only a fraction as many copies. Part of the problem with its reception might lie in the fact that Covington, a veteran of the NS movement, has made not a few enemies within “the racially conscious community,“ evident in his numerous critical references to William Pierce, as well as to Matt Koehl, Ben Klassen, Tom Metzger, David Duke, Martin Webster, John Tyndall, and others.

Without any actual knowledge of Covington’s personal history or of the sectarian squabbles that have alienated him from other racial nationalists, there may be, for this reason, a subtext to his Trilogy that eludes me.

I only know the Trilogy as a work of political fiction.

On this basis, though, I can categorically say that Covington is a great talent and that his work speaks, as no other does, to the burning question of our age.[98]

Harold Covington would not be Harold Covington if he did not project himself into the story. He therefore duly appears as the Old Man, who advises the protagonists of the revolution against ZOG’s [Zionist Occupation Government][99] control of a United States; reduced by the 21st century to an apocalyptic ruin in the wake of the struggle between the White race and the Jewish-controlled others. The role is perfect for Covington, who has been through the wars himself over the last four decades and thus qualifies as both an old man and a repository of considerable movement history. He begins with an observation that transcends the race movement:

Old Man: “One of the problems under ZOG was that there was no longer any penalty attached to being an asshole. There needs to be.”[100]

Covington notes his hard-won experience in his own explanation of the novels:

Bear in mind that I am uniquely qualified to do this, because I have actually lived, as a local and not a tourist, in societies where revolution has been accomplished within living memory,[101] where attempted revolution was ongoing, and where I could observe events up close and first hand. I know what the picture on the box should look like, because I’ve seen the real thing. Virtually no one else in the Movement has. No brag, guys, just fact.

In the year 2000, as a consequence of the atrocious Morris Dees legal assault on Pastor Richard Butler, I decided that I would write a novel depicting what a future sovereign, independent Aryan nation in the Pacific Northwest would look like, and how such a new nation might come about. This was a challenge because rather than create some work of pure science fiction, I tried to predict and portray exactly how a White revolutionary movement of Northwest independence might succeed, based on the reality of what we have to work with today – on the admittedly far-fetched premise that we ever do get our act together.

The result was The Hill of the Ravens, which came out in September of 2003. The novel is set in the middle of the 21st century, around forty years after the successful Northwest War of Independence. In addition to describing a number of aspects of the contemporary Northwest American Republic, including technological advances and a realistic form of authoritarian but participatory government that might actually arise in such a situation, the book deals with events that took place during the guerrilla War of Independence. Unlike The Turner Diaries, it actually has a plot, being a whodunnit dealing with the betrayal of a Northwest partisan column forty years before and the identity of the traitor [was discovered].[102]

The other works followed suit, and in the process Covington says more than most about life in the world of American National Socialism from the 1970s to date:

I deliberately chose to re-tell the story [A Distant Thunder] of this fictional future rebellion in the Northwest from the viewpoint of a bottom-rung Volunteer because I wanted to emphasize something that must – let me repeat that, must occur within the Northwest movement itself, that is that form must follow function and that the Party must be created from the bottom up, not the top down. No more self-appointment, no more letterhead organizations, no more of this “if you build it, they will come” crap. In everything else we have ever tried, we set up somebody as Grand Panjandrum with a post office box, a letterhead, and (later) a web site, and then sat back and waited for the bodies to appear and flesh out the empty framework. It’s never worked worth a damn. This time we have to get the real world, physical bodies on the ground first. This is one of the things I try to show in A Distant Thunder.[103]

Conclusion

With the Northwest Trilogy plus 1, we come to an end of sorts. Covington’s work – in many ways the best of the American post-apocalyptic literature of the radical right – is also so far the last works of note to appear from the movement. More will surely come as apocalypticism is inherent in the world of the American radical right. Some works will find a following and, perhaps, real-world followers as well. For how many times has the seeming imminence of the End set fire to the minds and hearts of men,[104] only to awake in the cold light of day to find that the world has changed not a whit?[105]

America after all has ever been uniquely susceptible to apocalyptic narratives. From colonial days to the present, dystopian novels, films, graphic novels, and the like commonly bombard the American public with a strong diet of End Time scenarios. Some, like the Left Behind series are quietist in nature, urging faith alone in the context of everyday life and, knowing neither the day nor the hour, waiting passively for the Lord to act.[106] Others like the works detailed in these pages take a different path. Some urge violent action to force the End by fulfilling the Divine contract and acting, Phinehas-like, in His name. The Turner Diaries and Hunter are the best known works which personify violence – the former as a post-apocalyptic panegyric to its hero Earl Turner and the latter as a despairing lone wolf who pledges his life and soul to preparing the ground for the apocalyptic denouement which he knows he will surely not live to see. Covington’s ‘quadrilogy’ fits here as well, but is both too idiosyncratic and, perhaps if truth be told, too literate for an audience honed on the spare prose and rapid action of the Turner Diaries or Hunter.

Other texts seek to warn the nation that apocalypse – religious or secular – is on the horizon but there is still time to change the path we are on. The Clansman and The John Franklin Letters personify this dichotomy. The former warns of the danger to come while The John Franklin Letters uniquely presents a secular outcome to the apocalypse with the restoration of Constitutional order.

The American apocalypse has always been a siren song to a few, a matter of faith to most, and an inspiration in times of ultimate travail to sectarians, radicals and revolutionaries throughout the ages. And so it will remain in the world of the American racialist right.

Notes

1  The full text of the speech can be found as “John Winthrop’s ‘City upon a Hill,’ 1630,” www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline-pdfs/Winthrop%27s%20City%20upon%20a%20Hill.pdf.

2  The best source remains James M. Rhodes, The Hitler Movement: A Modern Millenarian Revolution (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1980). A study that brilliantly brings German National Socialist millennialism and occultism into the present day is Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity (New York: NYU Press, 2003). For a more esoteric approach, Dusty Sklar, Gods and Beasts: The Nazis and the Occult (New York: T. Y. Crowell, 1977).

3  Ben Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975–79 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). See Francois Ponchaud, Cambodia: Year Zero (Henry Holt & Company, 1978). Patrick Raszelenberg, “The Khmers Rouges and the Final Solution,” History & Memory 11, no. 2 (2005): 62–93.

4  One of the best insider reports into the LRA dream for a ‘New Acholi’ is Human Rights Watch/Africa and Human Rights Watch Children’s Rights Project, The Scars of Death: Children Abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1997), www.hrw.org/en/reports/1997/09/18/scars-death. The literature of the LRA is vast, but on the specific aspects of tribal millenarianism, see Jeffrey Kaplan, Terrorist Groups and the New Tribalism: Terrorism’s Fifth Wave (London: Routledge, 2010). Cf. Jeffrey Kaplan, “The Lord’s Resistance Army: Millennialism, Violence and the Timeless Dream,” Religious Studies and Theology, Special edition on Security and Religion. Maeyam Razavy, and T. Butko, T. (eds.) 28, no. 1 (2009): 95–127. On Boko Haram, a good journalist background is Andrew Walker, ‘Eat the heart of the infidel’: the Harrowing of Nigeria and the Rise of Boko Haram (London: Hurst & Company, 2016). Cf. Jideofor Adibe, Nigeria without Nigerians?: Boko Haram and the Crisis in Nigeria’s Nation-building (London: Adonis & Abbey, 2012). For insider testimony, Mausi Segun, Samer Muscati, and Human Rights Watch (Organization), “Those terrible weeks in their camp”: Boko Haram Violence against Women and Girls in Northeast Nigeria ([New York, N.Y.]: Human Rights Watch, 2014), www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/nigeria1014web.pdf. On the ‘New Tribalism’, see Kaplan, Terrorist Groups and the New Tribalism: Terrorism’s Fifth Wave.

5  Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (London: Pimlico, 2004). Cf. Michael Adas, Prophets of Rebellion: Millenarian Protest Movements against the European Colonial Order (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979). Michael Barkun, Disaster and the Millennium (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986). Clarke Garrett, Respectable Folly: Millenarians and the French Revolution in France and England (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975). Sylvia L. Thrupp, Millennial Dreams in Action: Studies in Revolutionary Religious Movements (New York: Schocken Books, 1970).

6  Thomas R. Pegram, One Hundred Percent American: The Rebirth and Decline of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2011). Cf. Kathleen M. Blee, Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991).

7  On the radical right’s perception of themselves as a righteous remnant as described in the Bible, see Jeffrey Kaplan, Radical Religion in America: Millenarian Movements from the Far Right to the Children of Noah (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997), xiii–xv.

8  The best introduction to this era remains David Harry Bennett, The Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History, 2nd Vintage Books ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1995).

9  Glen Jeansonne, Gerald L. K. Smith, Minister of Hate (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988).

10  These radical right-wing intentional communities will be examined later in the chapter. On the need by religious communities to isolate themselves from the mainstream, see perhaps the most perceptive examination of the subject by the Israeli scholar Emmanual Sivan; Emmanuel Sivan, “The Enclave Culture” in Fundamentalisms Comprehended, ed. Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 11–68.

11  Jeffrey Kaplan, “Transnational Aspects of Social Media 1900–1967: Influence, Signals and False Flags” in Godiac: The Anthology (Stockholm: Polisen, 2015). On the travails of a decidedly non-computer literate movement before 1995, see Klansman Louis Beam, “Computers and Patriots,” The Seditionist 10 (1991): 8–10.

12  Otto Friedrich, The End of the World: A History (New York: Fromm International Pub. Corp., 1986), 215–278.

13  To meet this generation of survivalists up close and personal, see the wonderfully tongue-in-cheek 1982 BBC documentary “The Survivalists,” which includes an early visit to the Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord compound, www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb5bppuyKhs&t=191s. Cf. the brief Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Hoarders, Doomsday Preppers, and the Culture of Apocalypse (New York: Springer, 2014). For a view from a decidedly unusual perspective, see the Apocalypse Culture series: Adam Parfrey, Apocalypse Culture (Port Townsend, WA: Feral House, 1990). Adam Parfrey, Cult Rapture: Revelations of the Apocalyptic Mind (Port Townsend, WA: Feral House, 1995).

14  The term is borrowed from Ben Klassen who wrote a number of tediously long and repetitive texts in establishing his Church of Creativity. For the greatest hits of his long-running newspaper Racial Loyalty, see https://creativityalliance.com/eBook-BenKlassen-BuildingAWhiterAndBrighterWorld.pdf. For academic insight, see George Michael, Theology of Hate: A History of the World Church of the Creator (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2009).

15  The literature of the survivalist movement is diverse. The earliest was the journalistic but very useful James Coates, Armed and Dangerous: The Rise of the Survivalist Right (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995). An insider view from the same era is Duncan Long and Larry Combs, Apocalypse Tomorrow: The Survival Scene (El Dorado, AR: Desert Publications, 1994). Cf. Richard G. Mitchell, Dancing at Armageddon: Survivalism and Chaos in Modern Times (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). For a general review of these redoubts from a variety of ideological flavors, Peter Fitting, “Utopias Beyond Our Ideals: The Dilemma of the Right-wing Utopia,” Utopian Studies 2, no. 1/2 (1991): 95–109. Cf. Jerrold M. Post, Keven G. Ruby, and Eric D. Shaw, “The Radical Group in Context: 2. Identification of Critical Elements in the Analysis of Risk for terrorism by Radical Group Type,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 25, no. 2 (2002): 101–126. Michael Barkun, Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement, Rev. ed. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997); Kaplan, Radical Religion in America: Millenarian Movements From the Far Right to the Children of Noah.

16  For reports at the time by the security services of the US, Israel, and Canada, and a scholarly exploration of the themes presented in the Y2K panic, see Jeffrey Kaplan, Millennial Violence: Past, Present and Future (London: Frank Cass & Co., 2002).

17  Joanna McGeary, “New Year’s Evil? Federal Agents Are Scrambling to Stop a New Y2K Worry: Terror,” CNN, December 27, 1999, http://edition.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/time/1999/12/27/new.year.html.

18  Barkun, Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement.

19  Frederick J. Simonelli, American fuehrer: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999). Jeffrey Kaplan, “The Post-War Paths of Occult National Socialism: From Rockwell and Madole to Manson” in The Cultic Milieu, ed. Jeffrey Kaplan and Heléne Lööw (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Publishers, 2002), 225–264.

20  Mattias Gardell, Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003). Jeffrey Kaplan, “The Reconstruction of the Asatru and Odinist Traditions” in Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft, ed. James R. Lewis (New York: SUNY Press, 1996), 193–236.

21  The English translation which swept the United States was Victor Marsden, The Protocols of Zion. The English language original, complete with anti-Semitic cartoons, can be downloaded from the Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/TheProtocolsOfTheLearnedEldersOfZion_201510. The book would be a steady staple of the radical right for many years. For example, the highly influential in its day Elizabeth Kirkpatrick Dilling, The Plot against Christianity (n.p., 1953). The Internet Archive, which attempts to preserve as much of human and web culture as possible, is a go-to source for the kind of radical literature and samizdat that once could only be found at such highly specialized archives as the Laird Wilcox Collection at the University of Kansas at Laurence. The Wilcox collection still holds infinitely more and better material. The best available online source for anti-Semitic and National Socialist–oriented material with a considerable selection of other radical right texts is provided by JR at www.jrbooksonline.com/.

22  A point best made by Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America (Berkeley, CA: Univ of California Press, 2013), 145–149.

23  A good, brief analysis of the theories on the genesis of the Protocols is Michael Hagemeister, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: Between History and Fiction,” New German Critique 103, Vol. 35, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 83–95. Cf. Debra R. Kaufman, From the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to Holocaust Denial Trials: Challenging the Media, the Law, and the Academy (London; Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2007). Stephen Eric Bronner, A Rumor about the Jews: Antisemitism, Conspiracy, and the Protocols of Zion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

24  The Cause of World Unrest (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1920). The text can be downloaded from the Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/causeofworldunre00newyiala. Cf. Leonard Dinnerstein, Antisemitism in the United States, American problem studies (New York: Holt, 1971), 80.

25  The term Goyim is ubiquitous in both internal Jewish discourse and anti-Semitic screeds. It is thus worth defining. According to the Urban Dictionary, “1. A Hebrew word used in the Jewish Scriptures (a.k.a. the Old Testament). The word literally means ‘nations,’ and is always used within these scriptures to refer to the nations of the world… . 2. In the Old Testament, the Jews were called to be a nation separate from the other nations, which were all Pagan. And so, colloquially, all non-Jewish nations came to be called ‘goyim.’ … 3. A word used by some Jews to refer to Gentiles (non-Jews). The word can have derogatory connotations.” www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=goyim. The samizdat of the radical right commonly translates the term as meaning ‘cattle’.

26  Marsden, The Protocols of Zion, 131–132.

27  Henry Ford, The International Jew, the World’s Foremost Problem (Dearborn, MI: The Dearborn Publishing Company, 1920). The full 500-page compendium of the text is at https://archive.org/details/TheInternationalJew. A number of abridged editions and foreign language translations are available at the Internet Archive as well. Cf. James C. Foust, “Mass-Produced Reform: Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent,” American Journalism 14, nos. 3–4 (1997): 411–424.

28  Gerald L. K. Smith, The International Jew; The World’s Foremost Problem (Los Angeles,: Christian Nationalist Crusade).

29  https://archive.org/stream/TheInternationalJewTheWorldsForemostProblemhenryFord1920s/TheInternationalJewTheWorldsForemostProblemhenryFord1920s_djvu.txt.

30  Charles Jaret, “Troubled by Newcomers: Anti-Immigrant Attitudes and Action during Two Eras of Mass Immigration to the United States,” Journal of American Ethnic History (1999): 9–39.

31  William Rawlings, The Second Coming of the Invisible Empire: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 2016).

32  Dinnerstein, Antisemitism in the United States, 80–83. Cf. Jeffrey Kaplan, “The Context of American Millenarian Revolutionary Theology: The Case of the ‘Identity Christian’ Church of Israel,” Terrorism and Political Violence 5, no. 1 (1993): 32–81.

33  Blake Smith, “Indonesians Hate the Chinese, Because They Are Jewish,” Tablet Magazine, www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/257183/indonesians-hate-the-chinese-because-they-are-jewish?utm_source=tabletmagazinelist&utm_campaign=1130516d99-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_04_17&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c308bf8edb-1130516d99–207342589.

34  Three of his most influential novels can be found from Noontide Press, a small right-wing book publisher in the US founded by Willis Carto. Thomas Dixon, The Reconstruction Trilogy (Newport Beach: Noontide Press, 1984). The trilogy, The Clansman, The Traitor and The Leopard’s Spots can be downloaded from the Internet Archive, https://archive.org/search.php?query=thomas%20dixon%20novels, or from the Project Guttenberg, www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26240. For the text in its original form, see Thomas Dixon, The Clansman (New York: Doubleday, Page & company, 1906).

35  Ibid., 401.

36  There are a number of good texts on the Klan, but for a brief and accurate summation, see the ex-Klansman turned evangelical preacher Johnny Lee Cleary, “History of the Ku Klux Klan,” www.johnnyleeclary.com/files/page.php?p=21. For a wider history, Wyn Craig Wade, The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987). Michael Newton, White Robes and Burning Crosses: A History of the Ku Klux Klan from 1866 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2014).

37  Thomas Dixon, The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan (New York: Doubleday, Page & company, 1905), 481.

38  Tom Rice, White Robes, Silver Screens: Movies and the Making of the Ku Klux Klan (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015). For a frame by frame dissection of the film, see Robert Lang, The Birth of a Nation: D.W. Griffith, director, Rutgers films in print (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994). For its cultural significance, see Everett Carter, “Cultural History Written with Lightning: The Significance of the Birth of a Nation,” American Quarterly 12, no. 3 (960): 347–357. The film can be seen in its entirety at www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3kmVgQHIEY.

39  Patsy Sims, The Klan (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1996), 31–32, 129–134.

40  The text today is sometimes difficult to obtain. Sellers on Amazon.com at times offer it. It does not appear to be archived online. For a good discussion of its importance, see Michael Standaert, Skipping towards Armageddon: The Politics and Propaganda of the Left Behind Novels and the LaHaye Empire (Brooklyn, NY: Soft Skull Press, 2006), 83–84. For an examination in context, see Jeffrey Kaplan, Encyclopedia of White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right (Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 2000), 367–372.

41  Lawrence Goodwyn, Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976). Cf. Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, The Politics of Unreason: Right-Wing Extremism in America, 1790–1977, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978).

42  Rawlings, The Second Coming of the Invisible Empire: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s. Cf. Blee, Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s.

43  Robert Shogan, No Sense of Decency: The Army-McCarthy Hearings: A Demagogue Falls and Television Takes Charge of American Politics (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2009).The hearings can be viewed on YouTube. Start with www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylquIHQo0Pc. The go-to book for a great overview of the 1950s is David Halberstam, The Fifties (New York: Villard Books, 1993).

44  Roy Ranelagh, The Agency: The Rise and Fall of the CIA (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), 110–116.

45  Ward Wilson, Five Myths about Nuclear Weapons (Houghton: Mifflin Harcourt, 2013), 14. Cf. Warren Kozak, LeMay: The Life and Wars of General Curtis LeMay (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2011). David Alan Rosenberg and William Brigham Moore, “ ‘Smoking Radiating Ruin at the End of Two Hours’: Documents on American Plans for Nuclear War with the Soviet Union, 1954–55,” International Security 6, no. 3 (1981): 3–38.

46  G. Edward Griffin, The Life and Words of Robert Welch, founder of the John Birch Society (Thousand Oaks, CA: American Media, 1975). For an overview, see David R. Farber and Jeff Roche, The Conservative Sixties (New York: P. Lang, 2003). For available works by Robert Welch, including the Society’s foundational hagiography, see Robert Welch, The Life of John Birch: In the Story of One American Boy, the Ordeal of His Age (Boston; Los Angeles: Western Islands, 1960); Robert Welch, A Brief Introduction to the John Birch Society (Belmont, MA: John Birch Society, 1962).

47  Jeffrey Kaplan and Leonard Weinberg, The Emergence of a Euro-American Radical Right (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgters University Press, 1998), 104–105. For the original document, see Robert Welch, The Neutralizers (Belmont, MA: The John Birch Society, 1963).

48  Kaplan, Encyclopedia of White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right, 368–369. Cf. Martin Durham, “From Imperium to Internet: the National Alliance and the American Extreme Right,” Patterns of Prejudice 36, no. 3 (2002): 50–61. George Michael, “The Revolutionary Model of Dr William L. Pierce,” Terrorism and Political Violence 15, no. 3 (2003): 62–80. For a taste of how seriously the text was taken at the time of its publication, see the review in both the highly respected National Review of William F. Buckley and the far right journal The American Mercury. The Review was later not so sanguine about the attention it gave the novel as the review is the only piece in the January 16, 1960 issue not available in PDF. www.unz.org/Pub/NationalRev-1960jan16. The May 1960 American Mercury review, titled “A Fantasy Which May Happen,” by John Lines is available at www.unz.org/Pub/AmMercury-1960may-00151?View=PDF.

49  Robert S. Griffin, The Fame of a Dead Man’s Deeds: An up-close Portrait of White Nationalist William Pierce (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2001), 139. The text includes a chapter on Oliver.

50  Oliver’s collected writings can be found in Revilo P. Oliver, America’s Decline: The Education of a Conservative (London: Londinium Press, 1981). He wrote a very great deal more than could be encompassed in a single volume, but it is a starting point.

51  Gary Wills, Outside Looking In: Adventures of an Observer (New York: Viking, 2010), ch. 3.

52  Griffin, The Fame of a Dead Man’s Deeds: An Up-close Portrait of White Nationalist William Pierce, 139–140.

53  Ibid., 141. Coates, Armed and Dangerous: The Rise of the Survivalist Right, 48–49. On Pierce, see Kaplan, Encyclopedia of White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right, 244–250.

54  The Valhalla imagery is pervasive in movement literature. For an amusing illustration of why, see the excellent animated video “The Saga of Bjorn” which contrasts the Hall of Heroes and their feasting, drinking and fighting to the deadly gray boredom of the Christian heaven, www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV5w262XvCU.

55  The best coverage of both texts remains George Michael, “Blueprints and Fantasies: A Review and Analysis of Extremist Fiction,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 33, no. 2 (2010): 49–70. For a good elucidation of the millenarian aspects of the Turner Diaries, see Renee Brodie, “The Aryan New Era: Apocalyptic Realizations in The Turner Diaries,” Journal of American Culture 21, no. 3 (1998): 13–23. Dr. Brodie is unaware that the pseudonym Andrew McDonald stands for none other than William Pierce, but he does know his millenarianism. For a view of the book in the context of the radical right, see Jeffrey Kaplan, “The Post-war Paths of Occult National Socialism: From Rockwell and Madole to Manson,” Patterns of Prejudice 35, no. 3 (2001): 41–67. One need look no further than the ever helpful Internet Archive for the full text of The Turner Diaries, https://archive.org/details/TheTurnerDiariesByAndrewMacdonald. The audiobook, a favorite of racists in 18 wheelers, is at https://archive.org/details/TheTurnerDiariesAudiobook1978.

56  Quoted in Kaplan, Radical Religion in America: Millenarian Movements From the Far Right to the Children of Noah, 58.

57  Kaplan, “The Post-War Paths of Occult National Socialism: From Rockwell and Madole to Manson,” 225–264.

58  Sabrina Tavernise, “Whites Account for Under Half of Births in U.S.,” New York Times, May 17, 2012. www.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/us/whites-account-for-under-half-of-births-in-us.html?pagewanted=all. On the National Socialist activist/passivist split, see Kaplan, “The Post-War Paths of Occult National Socialism: From Rockwell and Madole to Manson,” 225–264. The best insider account remains Gardell, Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism.

59  Rockwell’s one unmediated opportunity to state his beliefs came in a 1966 Playboy Magazine interview conducted by the future author of Roots, Alex Haley, “Playboy Interview: George Lincoln Rockwell: A Candid Conversation with the Fanatical Fuhrer of the American Nazi Party,” http://solargeneral.org/wp-content/uploads/library/playboy-interview-george-lincoln-rockwell-old.pdf. For a scholarly account, see Simonelli, American Fuehrer: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party; William H. Schmaltz, Hate: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party, 1st ed. (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1999). And for the FBI’s view, United States, Federal Bureau of Investigation, American Nazi Party Monograph, ([Washington, D.C.]: Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2003), https://archive.org/details/AmericanNaziParty.

60  On Koehl and all his malign works, the most acute source is Goodrick-Clarke, Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity, 7–23. Kaplan, Encyclopedia of White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right, 153–157, 224–228. Cf. Frederick J. Simonelli, “Preaching Hate with the Voice of God: American Neo-Nazis and Christian Identity,” Patterns of Prejudice 30, no. 2 (1996): 43–54. Koehl died in 2015 in Wisconsin, still true to his life-long adulation of Hitler. See NSM Michagan, “A Brief History of American National Socialism,” www.nsm88.org/articles/AmericanNSHistory2016.pdf.

61  The modern National Alliance literature can be found at www.natvan.com/. For a decidedly less enthusiastic if seldom accurate view, see Anti-Defamation League’s take on Pierce and the Alliance, which can be found at www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/Pierce.asp. On Pierce, see Griffin, The Fame of a Dead Man’s Deeds: An Up-close Portrait of White Nationalist William Pierce.

62  Robert Futrell, Pete Simi, and Simon Gottschalk, “Understanding Music in Movements: The White Power Music Scene,” The Sociological Quarterly 47, no. 2 (2006): 275–304.

63  Andrew (William Pierce) MacDonald, The Turner Diaries (Hillsboro, WV: National Vangaurd Books, 1976), http://solargeneral.org/ebooks/.

64  “Turner Diaries Introduced in McVeigh Trial,” CNN, April 28, 1997. http://articles.cnn.com/1997-04-28/us/9704_28_okc_1_timothy-mcveigh-mcveigh-trial-oklahoma-state-trooper?_s=PM:US. Mervyn F. Bendle, “The Apocalyptic Imagination and Popular Culture,” The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 11, no. 1 (2005): 717–718.

65  Jeffrey Kaplan, Radical Religion and Violence: Theory and Case Studies, Routledge studies in extremism and democracy (New York: Routledge, 2015), 3. Louis Beam, a TEx Klansman whose own claim to fame was secured by his opus “Leaderless Resistance,” was among the first to urge computer literacy in the age of the Commodore 64. Beam, “Computers and Patriots,” 8–10. Cf. Kaplan, Encyclopedia of White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right, 17–22. For Beam’s most important writings, Louis R. Beam, Essays by a Klansman: Being a Compendium of Ku Klux Klan Ideology, Organizational Methods, History, Tactics, and Opinions, with Interpolations by the Author (Hayden Lake, ID: A.K.I.A. Publications, 1983).

66  Kaplan, Encyclopedia of White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right, 248. Although it criminally does not include the original Turner Diaries, see, for a flavor of the times, Kevin Alfred Strom, The Best of Attack! and National Vangaurd Tabloid (Arlington, VA: National Vangaurd Books, 1984), www.solargeneral.org/wp-content/uploads/library/best-of-attack-and-national-vanguard-tabloid-kevin-alfred-strom.pdf.

67  For various views of the text, see Renee Brodie, “The Aryan New Era: Apocalyptic Realizations in The Turner Diaries,” The Journal of American Culture 21, no. 3 (1998): 13–22. Brad Whitsel, “The Turner Diaries and Cosmotheism: William Pierce’s Theology,” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 1, no. 2 (1998): 183–197. M.S. Waltman and M.J. Davis, “How to be a Proper Racist: Mythic Representations in The Turner Diaries,” Journal of Intergroup Relations 32 (2005): 19–39.

68  The flier can be found at https://archive.org/details/TheFutureBelongsToTheFewOfUsStillWillingToGetOutHandsDirty_630. The best introduction to Tommasi’s thought is his “Building the Revolutionary Party” booklet, https://archive.org/details/BuildingTheRevolutionaryParty_479. On all things Tommasi, see James Mason, Siege! (Denver, CO: Storm Books, 1992). A page honoring Tommasi, probably put up by James Mason, includes odes to the National Socialist visionary from leaders like Tom Metzger and others, and it also includes the full text of the relevant portions of The Emergence of a Euro-American Radical Right, complete with footnotes, www.angelfire.com/rebellion2/aiwsf/tommasi_tribute.html. See also, Kaplan and Weinberg, The Emergence of a Euro-American Radical Right. For more on Tommasi, see Kaplan, Encyclopedia of White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right, 301–306.

69  Kaplan, “The Post-war Paths of Occult National Socialism: From Rockwell and Madole to Manson,” 59.

70  Michael, “Blueprints and Fantasies: A Review and Analysis of Extremist Fiction,” 157–158.

71  The original can be found at www.louisbeam.com/leaderless.htm,

72  Two biographies of Franklin have emerged in recent years. Mel Ayton, Dark Soul of the South: The Life and Crimes of Racist Killer Joseph Paul Franklin (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2011); Carole Townsend, Blood in the Soil: A True Tale of Racism, Sex, and Murder in the South (New York, NY: Skyhorse Publishing, 2016). For a briefer biography, Kaplan, Encyclopedia of White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right, 112–114. For a good chronology of his doings up to 2010, see Sam Brauer, Ryan A. Bruch, and Ashleigh Benois, “James Clayton Vaughn Jr. AKA Joseph Paul Franklin,” http://maamodt.asp.radford.edu/psyc%20405/serial%20killers/Franklin,%20Joseph%20Paul.pdf.

73  Lateef Mungin, “Serial Killer Joseph Franklin Executed after Hours of Delay,” CNN, November 21, 2013, http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/20/justice/missouri-franklin-execution/.

74  Andrew (William Pierce) MacDonald, Hunter (Hillsboro, WV: National Vangaurd Books, 1989).

75  Ibid., 3–4.

76  Ibid., 173–178.

77  The best source for Gush Emunim is Gideon Aran, “Jewish Zionist Fundamentalism: The Bloc of the Faithful in Israel (Gush Emunim),” Fundamentalisms Observed 1 (1991): 265–344. David Newman, The Impact of Gush Emunim (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985). Ironically, the actual dimensions of the biblical patrimony remain undetermined. This is hardly a problem to the messianic mindset. God knows when the recovery is complete and His approval will be shown in the bliss of the messianic era.

78  Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt, The Silent Brotherhood: Inside America’s Racist Underground (New York: Free Press, 1989).

79  On CSA, see the fine insider account by Kerry Noble, the second in command of the group who gave up racism and violence and now speaks on behalf of anti-racist organizations: Kerry Noble, Tabernacle of Hate: Seduction into Right-wing Extremism, 2nd ed. (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2010).

80  D.A. Hänks, The Green Day Prophesies: A Novel of Global U.N. Terror (Charlotte, NC: Patriot Publications, 2007).

81  Ibid.

82  Ibid., Preface.

83  The best reference to the militia movement of the 1990s is Darren Mulloy, American Extremism: History, Politics and the Militia Movement (New York: Routledge, 2004). See, for a legal analysis, David C. Williams, “Militia Movement and Second Amendment Revolution: Conjuring with the People,” Cornell Law Review 81(1995): 879–952.

84  www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers+25%3A6-13.

85  Anon., Phinehas: Or Scripture Paramount (London: Partridge & Co., 1860). The inscription on the volume is “And the Plague was staid, Numbers xxv.8.”

86  John J. Collins, “The Zeal of Phinehas: The Bible and the Legitimation of Violence,” Journal of Biblical Literature 122, no. 1 (2003): 13–21.

87  Dilling, The Plot against Christianity.

88  Richard Kelly Hoskins, Vigilantes of Christendom: The Story of the Phineas Priesthood (Lynchburg: Virginia Publishing Company, 1997).

89  Ovid Need, “Christian Identity and the Phinehas Priesthood,” The Biblical Examiner. Bentonville, VA: The Biblical Examiner Library (1997). For the debate between those urging violence and those opposed, see Danny W. Davis, The Phinehas Priesthood: Violent Vanguard of the Christian Identity Movement (ABC-CLIO, 2010).

90  For this history, see Barkun, Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement. For the best available eye witness to the decline and fall of Aryan Nations, see Robert W. Balch, “The Rise and Fall of Aryan Nations: A Resource Mobilization Perspective,” Journal of Political and Military Sociology 34, no. 1 (2006): 81–113. An earlier draft of the piece has much less resource mobilization and much more delightful behind the scenes looks at chaos, drunkenness, and incompetence that was the definition of the latter-day realm of Pastor Richard Butler. It was the text that every fieldwork scholar of the radical right wanted to write but didn’t quite dare. At least not yet. On the case itself, Michael F. Leavitt, “Keenan v. Aryan Nations: Making Hate Groups Liable For the Torts of their Members,” Idaho Law Review 37(2000): 603–640.

91  Today the watchdog organizations do not reflect the fears of the 1990s, which they did much to spread. The Anti-Defamation League’s website has a brief note about them and the Southern Poverty Law Center has an accurate capsule history of them. See ADL, “Phineas Priesthood,” www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/phineas-priesthood; and SPLC, “PHINEAS PRIESTHOOD,” www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/phineas-priesthood. Cf. Kaplan, Encyclopedia of White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right, 242–244.

92  Davis, The Phinehas Priesthood: Violent Vanguard of the Christian Identity Movement, 6.

93  arbeiter88, Phinehas: A Novel in the Tradition of Andrew MacDonald, 238–239.

94  For his tragicomic history, co-authored by Covington himself, see Kaplan, Encyclopedia of White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right, 65–80. The piece ends with Covington opening his apartment door to find a bag of human excrement left on his threshold by a young rival National Socialist. Taking it into the house and contemplating its implications, Covington muses that this perfectly encapsulates his life from leaving his family and squandering his inheritance on a fly by night NS organization in Chicago, which was led by a soon to be convicted pedophile, to that excremental morning. Yet he cannot and will not abandon his allegiance to the example of the Fuehrer and the National Socialist dream in pursuit of which he gave so much and harvested a bag of excrement and little more in return.

95  Harold Covington, “Say Good Night, Hot Shot! Sayonara to a Sodomite,” https://ia800204.us.archive.org/25/items/CovingtonsCommentsOnBenKlassensDeath/CovingtonOnKlassensDeath.pdf.

96  See as exhibit number 1, his magnum opus Ben Klassen, Nature’s Eternal Religion (Milwaukee, WI: Milwaukee Church of the Creator, 1992). See his whiney autobiography, Ben Klassen and Church of the Creator, Against the Evil Tide: An Autobiography (Otto, NC: Church of the Creator, 1991). For a scholarly take on Creativity and its Pontifex Maximus, see Michael, Theology of Hate: A History of the World Church of the Creator.

97  All of the books can be found at archive.org. Start with Hill of the Ravens, https://archive.org/details/HillOfTheRavens-haroldCovington.

98  Michael O’Meara, “The Northwest Novels of H. A. Covington,” November 8, 2010, https://counter-currents.com/2010/11/the-northwest-novels-of-h-a-covington/. For a sharp consideration of the movement’s separatist literature, see Michael O’Meara, “Toward a White Republic,” The Occidental Quarterly 10, no. 3 (2010): www.toqonline.com/archives/v10n3/TOQv10n3OMeara.pdf.

99  ZOG has been for a generation the ubiquitous epithet for the American government among the cognoscenti of the American radical right. See Jeffrey Kaplan, “Real Paranoids Have Real Enemies: The Genesis of the ZOG Discourse in the American National Socialist Subculture” in Millennialism, Persecution and Violence, ed. Catherine Wessinger (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 299–322.

100  From Harold A. Covington, “Hill of Ravens,” (2007), https://ia800503.us.archive.org/3/items/HillOfTheRavens-haroldCovington/HillofRavens.pdf.

101  The reference is to Covington’s ill-starred appearance in Rhodesia in the waning stages of the white government’s losing struggle with ZANU PF.

102  Harold A. Covington, “Author of the Novels,” Northwest Front, https://ia800503.us.archive.org/3/items/HillOfTheRavens-haroldCovington/HillofRavens.pdf.

103  Ibid.

104  James H. Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1980).

105  For a meditation on precisely this, see Jeffrey Kaplan, “Nothing Is True, Everything Is Permitted: Premodern Religious Terrorism,” Terrorism & Political Violence 29, no. 4 (2017): 1–26.

106  The massively profitable series can be purchased as a single volume. Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, The Left Behind Collection (Carol Stream, IL: NavPress, 2014).

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Part II

This is now

3

Red Dawn is now

Race vs. nation and the American election

Happy days

In the dying days of the 1950s, the venerable patriarchs of anti-communism, better known as the John Birch Society, were locked in a struggle for the soul of the American right. The challengers were a ragtag, largely southern, group whose racism threatened to bring the Society into a doomed battle against the growing Civil Rights Movements. These were the days when Martin Luther King was derided on the streets, by more than would admit to it today, as Martin Luther Coon, and the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover had added King to the list of targets in the covert war of dirty tricks that was called COINTELPRO.[1] Racism was a cause whose time seemed to have come and, as we have seen at some length in the previous chapter, the Birch Society was the doyen of the respectable fringe of the right. The response of Birch Society founder Robert Welch and those around him, however, was icy at best and with the 1963 publication of his The Neutralizers – the most explicit denunciation of racism to come out of the far right of the time – the purge of avowed racists was undertaken in earnest.[2]

The most telling salvo however, as we have seen, came in the form of a little-remembered book with the less than scintillating title The John Franklin Letters that was published in 1959.[3] Like the teenaged heroes of the 1984 movie Red Dawn who defeated not only Soviet invaders, but also their sidekick stooges from Cuba and Nicaragua, John Franklin and his compatriots cleansed America’s pristine shores of the commie taint. The US returned to a constitutional republic, albeit one who had learned the hard way the truth of Thomas Jefferson’s observation that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.[4]

Red Dawn was only the tip of the paranoid iceberg. Soviet invasion scenarios were many and varied in Western art and media in the 1980s. The best may have been Invasion USA, which was a remake of a very obscure eponymous film from 1952. In the 1985 remake, martial arts action hero Chuck Norris repels the Soviets single handed! Not to be outdone, the television miniseries Amerika, starring incredibly enough Kris Kristofferson and Mariel Hemingway, depicted American perseverance a decade after the Soviet conquest.[5] It is in keeping with the temper of the times, or perhaps is something peculiarly American, but in an interview with the star a decade after Amerika was aired, Kristofferson finds that America was somehow responsible for the Soviet menace.[6]

In a sense, the domestic side of the story of the 2016 American Presidential election metaphorically begins where The John Franklin Letters ended; with the election of an African-American President. There is a long-standing joke in the United States that goes something like this. An old Jew was once praying in the style of Fiddler on the Roof’s Tevia. First the man asks God when there will be a Jewish President. “Not in your lifetime” he is assured. Well, what about a woman President? “Not in your children’s lifetime!” The sage nods wisely and in the style of Talmudic discourse where each pronouncement is topped by a more seemingly outlandish rejoinder, God is asked about the prospects for an African-American President: “Not in MY lifetime” thunders the Lord. Barack Obama was elected twice, and overwhelmingly at that, and there is no evidence of the death of God as a result. However, in contrast to the days when the Birch Society chose anticommunism over race, this was not acceptable to the 21st-century right, Alt, radical or traditional. Not at all.

The bizarre Birther conspiracy theories and the Grail-like quest for the President’s birth certificate in Kenya and the US was one of the first overt aspects of this reaction.[7] It was a movement made to be divisive and hurtful, but it had a more serious purpose – to delegitimize the Obama Presidency and, with it, the electoral process itself. To a considerable extent, it succeeded and the bizarre election of Donald Trump is a symptom of this reaction. Yet Trump’s election was merely this – a symptom. Far deeper is the ongoing struggle between race and nation in the radical right. At this writing, the race warriors, grouped under the more mainstream Alt Right moniker, are in the ascendant. This was made possible by the Russian ability to market itself as a champion of the transnational extreme right, allowing the American right to identify with the Kremlin on the basis of race just as the European right is invited to see them as a champion of nation against a threatening tide of swarthy Muslim immigrants. John Franklin would be turning in his grave if he were to see it while the Red Dawn teenagers would grab their .22 squirrel rifles and take to the hills.

Red Dawn redux: The siloviki

In the pre-microchip stone age of Cold War politics, the fear of nuclear war cloaked the intense sense of insecurity that has always been a part of the American body politic. Subversion fears have, since the days of the Revolution, been rife in the land. It is these near apocalyptic fantasies that fed The Franklin Letters, both Red Dawns, and The Turner Diaries, not to mention such cinematic classics as The Earth Dies Screaming and Night of the Living Dead. Subversion fears powered the anti-communist paranoia of the American right throughout the Cold War.[8] And little wonder. A generation of American children were raised on Bert the Turtle who helpfully demonstrated how to duck and cover in case of nuclear attack.[9] Fears of subversion remain very much alive in the US even as fantasies of imminent military invasion and occupation faded. The message that the Cold War was over and that the US had won was broadcast to the public. Triumphalism infested the academy as well.[10] The 2016 American election was a case in point that the notices of the death of the Cold War were decidedly premature.

Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, and with him came other senior KGB and GRU figures.[11] Putin, a career KGB officer, faced an immense challenge in resuscitating the Soviet intelligence services. The KGB and its FSB (Federal Security Service) successor in particular suffered massive defections from within and a withering assault from without by the turn of the millennium. We will look more closely at this period later in the chapter. For now, it is enough to set the stage:

When Putin was elected president in 2000, the Russian secret services were in an extremely difficult situation. They had been left behind in the pell-mell rush toward market reforms and democracy of the 1990s. Their ranks had been thinned by the lure of big money that the best of them could make in Russia’s turbulent and often violent new capitalism. For those who remained, there were daunting new challenges on fronts they had never faced before: the festering war in Chechnya, the increased frequency of hostage taking, and the rise of terrorism spawned by the war in Moscow and other cities far from the Chechen battlefield. The FSB faced pressures of corruption that far exceeded what could have been imagined in Soviet times. It suffered, too, from deep public distrust, a legacy of both the Soviet KGB’s activity and the chaotic first decade of Russia’s post-Soviet experience. It struggled with turf wars and open rivalry for power and resources with former KGB colleagues, now in other, separate organizations, all vying for power and limited resources from the state. On top of all this, Putin gave the FSB a new, even riskier role. The FSB was charged with protecting the stability of the political regime – Putin’s own rule – and the country.[12]

A cadre of top intelligence officers followed Putin into the halls of power, both in government and into the largely unregulated shadow world of private enterprise in the Russian Federation. So thorough has this transformation from commissar to oligarch on the part of former security personnel become under Putin that a term, siloviki, has been coined to describe the new post-Soviet power elite. The term is drawn from silovye ministerstva – literally ‘the ministries of force’ – which neatly sums up their origins, training, and outlook.[13] The academic literature that has grown up around the siloviki is staggering and growing exponentially. Andrei Illarionov offers a very brief popular introduction to this new commissar cast:

At the peak of this caste are current and former secret-police operatives. First among equals are the FSB agents, followed by agents of the KGB-spinoff Federal Protective Service (FSO) and the Prosecutor- General’s Office. Although members of military intelligence (GRU) and the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) play a role in the caste, they occupy a somewhat lower position in the power hierarchy. It is hard to find anyone among major political decision makers in Russia today with a background in the Interior Ministry or the Ministry of Defense (apart from the GRU): The positions of these ministries and their personnel are clearly subordinate. The real power belongs instead to the operatives and veterans of the secret-police, political-intelligence, and internal law-enforcement bodies. This is important because the professional training, ethical principles, interests and assumptions (regarding friends, colleagues and allies, as well as foes) of this key subset of the siloviki must form a major object of study for those who wish to understand Russian politics today.

The members of “Siloviki Incorporated” (SI) share a strong sense of allegiance to the group; an attitude of relative flexibility regarding short- and medium-term goals; and rather strict codes of conduct and honor, including the ideas of “always taking care of one’s own” and not violating the custom of omert’a (silence). As one might expect in a group with roots in the secret-police and intelligence services, members place great emphasis on obeying superiors, showing strong loyalty to one another, and preserving strict discipline. There are both formal and informal means of enforcing these norms. Those who violate the code are subject to the harshest forms of punishment, including death. Those who belong to SI see themselves as an elite. Their training instills in them a feeling of being superior to the rest of populace, of being the rightful “bosses” of everyone else. For those who remain on active duty, their perquisites of office include two items that confer real power in today’s Russia: the right to carry and use weapons, and an FSB credential (known as a vezdehod) that acts as a carte blanche giving its owner the right to enter any place, office, building, or territory whatsoever, public or private.[14]

While estimates of their number and influence are matters of debate, there is no doubt about the power and influence of many of their number:

Igor Sechin, who had served in military intelligence, became a deputy prime minister and chairman of Rosneft, the huge state-owned oil company. Sergei Ivanov, who had served in the foreign intelligence branch of the KGB, became deputy prime minister. Former KGB agent Viktor Ivanov became deputy chief of administration of the Kremlin when Putin was president and later was named to head the anti-drug agency. Vladimir Shults, a former deputy director of the FSB, is now part of the leadership of the Russian Academy of Science. The telecommunications business of the huge Russian business empire Alfa Group was headed by former deputy director of the Federal Protective Service Anatoly Protsenko. A former Soviet intelligence officer in New York, Vladimir Yakunin, became president of Russian Railways, one of the world’s largest railroad networks. Yuri Zaostrovtsev, the former head of the FSB’s Economic Security Department, was appointed vice president of Vneshekonombank, the main institution used by the government to manage Russian state debts and pension funds.[15]

Not all sources take such a dim view of the siloviki. Ian Bremmer and Samuel Charap make a close examination of major officials and note that not all come from the security services. However, the officials they note who are not from a security background, men such as Sergei Bogdanchikov, president of state-owned oil company Rosneft, seem more the exceptions who prove the rule. So much so that, despite their reservations, Bremmer and Charap adopt the term siloviki as the title of their article.[16]

In a fine review article, Ola Cichowlas sums up the thesis of this chapter perfectly with his title: “In Russia, It Is Deja-vu All Over Again: How Russians Fell Back in Love with the KGB and Stalin.”[17] After their ignominious removal from seven decades of autocracy, communist memorabilia is again fashionable in Russia.[18] The process of reinvention of a difficult history was well underway in the early years of the 21st century and the rise of Putin and the siloviki has only further accelerated it as Russia aspires to the global power once wielded by the Cold War Kremlin. From the fictional days of Ivan Denisovich and the Gulag Archipeligo all the way down to Svetlana Aleksievich’s Secondhand Time, at least to outside observers, nothing in the Russian soul seems to ever change.[19]

Red Dawn redux: The return of active measures

Stung by the collapse of the empire, the perceived humiliation of a marginalized Russia, as well as American interference in the Caucasus, Ukraine, and Georgia, Putin fell back on traditional Soviet methods with a decided tech savvy twist.[20] Specifically, the Soviet Active Measures campaign, which began in roughly 1948, has been modernized and unleashed on a global scale. Active Measures had a hiatus from the Yeltsin to the Putin periods, but had never really ended.[21]

The odd and winding history of the Active Measures campaign and its role in the current Hybrid Warfare campaign will be the focus of the following chapter. However, the Russian impact on the American election and the ascendance of Donald Trump necessitates a brief introduction to the topic here.

In its classic sense, the Active Measures campaign employed numerous channels to speak in a single voice, emphasizing elements of Soviet policy in an effort to persuade a vast and varied set of global audiences that the Soviets were on the side of the angels and the West served a more infernal master who could be characterized as rapacious, greedy, racist, oppressive of the working class and the poor, and a vicious warmonger to boot.[22]

At the apex of the effort was the struggle over the word ‘peace,’ over which the Soviets eventually gained a remarkable degree of control in the Cold War.[23] There were peace committees (or, in Western parlance, front groups), peace priests (largely intelligence agents or those suborned by intelligence agencies in state-controlled churches), newspaper columnists, and writers of letters to the editor (often agents of influence or useful idiots all).

The key was univocality and persistence. Speaking in one voice is possible only for totalitarian states, giving the Soviets a decided propaganda advantage. This advantage was maximized by the combination of modalities; White channels were overt and open, gray channels mixed overt and covert message modalities such as the use of agents of influence who were ostensibly independent opinion makers but in reality were controlled by Soviet intelligence, and the black channels included the use of forgeries and various forms of disinformation that often had little obvious connection to Soviet policy.[24]

A highly relevant example was a series of racist cartoons that strongly resembled those of Tom Metzger’s WAR (White Aryan Resistance) newspaper that featured racist portrayals of African-Americans, with the heading “Olympics for White’s Only,” replete with a generic KKK symbol that actually resembled the symbols of none of the then-extant Klan branches. The forgery prominently featured a monkey hanging from a noose with the sign “Hang the Niggers” on it. The document promised a warm reception in Los Angeles for non-Whites. The Soviets were clearly motivated by their irritation at President Carter who banned them from the Olympics in reprisal for their 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.

As Russian forgeries go, it was hardly the Protocols of Zion and it had no impact whatever, but it was an early indication that the Russians were ready to embrace the radical right as well as the radical left to accomplish its ends. Active Measures, after all, have no ideology. They were designed to impact global perceptions, but in the pre-microchip era their reach far exceeded their grasp.

The Soviet Union in this era was like a dinosaur seeking a tar pit into which to peacefully sink while the Wall fell, the empire crumbled, and a besotted Boris Yeltsin rose to power. But if Soviet communism died, the Active Measures campaign lived on, waiting only the right Svengali to remember its allure and to release the genie, in modern form, from the bottle.

Subversion panics redux

Let us leave the exciting world of Russian covert action for a moment and look at the more prosaic American context. The radical right was once the locus of racist and anti-Semitic opposition to the electoral status quo. It took the emergence of the Alt Right to move into the mainstream of electoral politics. The Obama presidency was certainly an important driver of the nascent movement, but much more vital was the naked fear which the cycles of American subversion panics have always engendered.

America has always seen itself as a ‘city on a hill,’ a beacon unto nations: An apocalyptic enclave awaiting God’s promised New Day. Yet with that hope there has always been fear. First it was fear of the primeval forests, dark and foreboding. Scant years after the American Revolution, rumors of a Catholic/Masonic conspiracy reached American shores and a full-blown subversion panic followed.[25] There would be a new national subversion panic in each generation to follow, some having great impact, some not. In my own lifetime there was the McCarthyite Red Scare of the 1950s and early 1960s, the cultural fragmentation of the Vietnam War, and the Muslim/terrorist paranoia that followed 9/11.

Those appalled by the election of Donald Trump would have been even more offended by the rise of the aptly named Know Nothings in the 19th century. They too reacted to American fears of immigration, of the subversion that the immigrants brought with them. Disease metaphors, physical and spiritual, were rife at the time.[26]

In words that would perfectly echo in Trump’s America, President Abraham Lincoln presciently warns:

I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we begin by declaring that “all men are created equal.” We now practically read it “all men are created equal, except negroes.” When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read “all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.” When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy.[27]

Even in Lincoln’s time, Russia was a fitting place for Know Nothings to find sanctuary among like-minded folk.

From the 1840s to the Immigration Reform Act of 1924, a massive wave of immigration, most tellingly Catholics from Ireland and Jews from Russia/Eastern Europe, swept into the Eastern cities, before eventually departing for points west.[28] The reaction was electric. Not only were governorships and mayoral races captured by the No Nothings, but even the social gospelers – temperance and revivalists who took the message to sinners in their own dens of iniquity – denounced immigrants as bringers of loathsome diseases and foreign ideas.[29]

Legislation in profusion soon followed. If the 2001 Patriot Act, often used but never actually read even by those who voted it into law, seems to contrast with the ideals of liberty which Americans claim to cherish, it fits perfectly into the pattern of reaction to subversion panics through the ages. As legal scholar Kevin R. Johnson notes:

Oddly enough, for a nation that trumpets its deep commitment to political freedom, the United States has a long history of excluding and deporting political subversives. In the earliest days of the republic, Congress, for partisan political reasons, passed two laws of dubious constitutionality: the Alien Enemy Act, which allowed the President to deport “alien enemies” and other noncitizens who were “natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of a hostile nation or government,” and the Alien Act, which authorized the President to deport aliens reasonably suspected of “treasonable or secret machinations against the government.” Though the acts were rarely invoked, the laws still may have resulted in “the mass exodus of frightened foreigners.” These acts marked the beginning of a pattern in which domestic political tensions provoked responses directed at “foreigners.”[30]

The Alien Act of 1798, passed in response to the dangers posed by the Catholics and their Masonic cat’s paws in the newly minted American Republic, was simply the Patriot Act for a simpler time.

Educated observers of the 2016 Trump campaign noted that the term Know Nothings need not be lost to history.[31] The term suddenly appeared in the New York Tribune in 1853 describing a Whig electoral slate and was soon attached to all member of the Order of the Star Spangled Banner, a nativist secret society pledged to Protestantism, Americanism and opposition to immigration who were enjoined to say they ‘knew nothing’ if questioned about the Society.[32] The difference of course is that the Know Nothings of the 19th century were enjoined to silence by their vows to a secret society. Their present-day counterparts, from the top of the ticket down, were not feigning ignorance, evolving instead the wonderfully evocative sobriquet ‘alternate facts’ to market fantasy as a more palatable form of reality.[33]

This is not intended as a mere political observation, however. Rather, it brings us back to a discussion of how the American radical right and the Kremlin could come together to facilitate the ascendancy of race over nation on the American right. In what was intended as my farewell to the study of the American radical right, I noted that my fascination for the milieu, and enjoyment of fieldwork undertaken among their number in Europe and the US, mystified many of my colleagues and appalled not a few others. The denizens of the radical right, united by their anti-Semitism, racism and adherence to conspiracy theories of every description, frightened the academy which up to that time relied almost exclusively on the research of the Anti-Defamation League. However, I found that they were not the hateful demons that the watchdog literature portrayed them to be:

Far from monsters, these strange and isolated people seemed, if anything, to feel too much and understand too little. In their words and deeds they harmed mainly themselves and their families.[34]

This observation has not changed in the more than 20 years since I moved away from the radical right as a research focus. Much else has changed however and with the results of the 2016 election, much harm has been done to the nation. The emergence of the Alt Right and the mainstreaming of conspiratorial thinking from the margins to the center of American politics is beyond our present scope.[35] The confluence of Russia with the race warriors of the radical right is a much more interesting and far less visible story. The racialists, marginalized during the Cold War’s mobilization against communism, returned in force with the election and reelection of Barack Obama, and proved receptive to manipulation of the election from Moscow.

The pattern is time tested in American history. For a generation, in the aftermath of the pyrrhic victory of the Scopes Trial in 1928, American fundamentalists focused on their churches and communities, leaving ‘the world’ to take care of itself. The Civil Rights Movement and the 1963 Supreme Court decision banning school prayer roiled the community, but resulted in greater distance from the mainstream rather than greater engagement. It took a sense of imminent threat in the world after the Iranian Revolution combined with the opportunity provided by the emergence of leader and an organization – Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority – combined with the perception of the tacit approval of the new grandfatherly President Ronald Reagan, to bring them in numbers into the public square to engage against the evils of secular society.[36]

Such a confluence of circumstances brought the would-be race warriors in from the cold as well. These included the following:

- the pervasive influence of Fox News and the opinion shows that power the ratings;

- the emergence of Breitbart News and its ilk to mainstream conspiratorial thinking;

- the candidacy of the least appealing presidential candidate (next to Donald Trump himself) in recent history in Hillary Clinton;[37]

- a sense of existential threat from ISIS;

- subversion fears at home from “illegal Mexican rapists and killers” and “radical Islamic terrorists”;[38]

- the emergence of a candidate who used White supremacist and conspiracy websites as his primary source of news;[39]

- a field of Republican candidates whose own cowardice and divisiveness allowed the Trump campaign to succeed without ever approaching a majority;[40]

- and the success of the Soviet Active Measures campaign cum Hybrid Warfare.

These strands of belief came together to both change, and threaten, the world with a Trump presidency.

In the world of unfake journalism and popular opinion, all of this seems unprecedented. Yet it is hardly anything new to the American scene. Only the names change, the existential terrors have remained the same from the earliest days of the colonial enterprise to the emergence of the Trumpistas to appall and embarrass the American literati.[41]

For all of its post-War power, America has too often presented a face to the world that has more than a hint of grease paint while sporting vastly oversized clown shoes. Western European broadcast media for example made a regular staple of film clips of President George W. Bush flailing helplessly at coherent speech while running a picture of the President holding a telephone to his ear upside down.[42] Yet even when the Iraq invasion was at its chaotic worst, the venom directed at Bush paled to the hatred directed at Donald Trump. Moreover, for the first time since the Vietnam era, that anger and opprobrium is being directed at America itself. At the end of one of his best satirical messages to Donald Trump, former Mexican President Vicente Fox signs off with the words, “I have a busy day of not being hated by the vast majority of my country. Do svidanya Comrade.”[43] With the bastardized version of the Soviet era fraternal greeting, ‘do svidaniya tovarisch,’ Fox perfectly encapsulates the two aspects of the problem; fantasy as news and the fraternal feelings Trump has for a certain hostile foreign power.[44]

The issue of fake news and the choice of alternative facts over unpalatable realities is much discussed these days and is of interest to us primarily for the confluence of Russian Hybrid Warfare and the gullibility of the American electorate. That discussion is passionate and often erudite, but is markedly lacking in historical perspective; at least if one’s perspective consists primarily of the distant fringes of popular culture. To paraphrase Rod Serling, “You’re traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That’s the signpost up ahead – your next stop, the Cultic Milieu!“[45]

Subversion panics that never die: old scratch, pizzas, and the 2016 election

In the cultic milieu, as in the netherworld of American subversion fears, nothing is ever lost or forgotten. This befits the cultic milieu which is defined as a repository of hidden and suppressed knowledge. Ideas merely wait, passed from hand to hand, mind to mind, only to be changed, reshaped, and adapted to a new time and changed circumstances, before emerging full blown on an unsuspecting mainstream world. The mainstream is always unsuspecting simply because, in America, as in so many places, history is lived and forgotten.

Thus when Alex Jones and his alternative facts news site, InfoWars, released a video alleging child sexual abuse by Hilary Clinton, her campaign chairman John Podesta, and unnamed Wall Street Bankers, the great days of the Satanism Scare of the 1980s came back to life like an interminable Jerry Springer marathon on cable television. It had all the ingredients: Secret videos in the hands of the police that were shown to Jones and his cohorts, childish drawings that looked more like UFO abductee testimony than child sexual abuse, a host reduced to tears of helpless indignation, and warnings of imminent apocalypse and Divine retribution.

Looking into the camera, overcome with emotion, Jones intones:

I’m very sad to have to bring you this news but we knew what was going on from our sources and now it’s out in the open, hard core Satanism, blood rituals, Alistair Crowley stuff. WikiLeaks has released it, Google has had to authenticate it. WikiLeaks has come out and linked to sites reporting on child trafficking … as a father, as an American, I’m very ashamed of this country.[46]

With this, new players – actors like WikiLeaks who will have a starring role in the following chapter – emerge. Jones notes that in ‘uncovering’ (so to speak) this story, he was concentrating on Satanism. But then came the news, allegedly contained in a video shared with him by New York police, that children six and seven years old being used in hot tubs for entertainment. Jones asserts that police who watched the tape cried, not at the doings in the hot tubs apparently, but rather at the mess left in the room afterwards. On this point, the fastidious Jones and his partner, named Joe, become emotional and Jones again bursts into tears. Whether it is the condition of the room or the fate of the children that so moves them however is not clear.

Doug Hagman then comes on screen behind a mock news anchor desk. At the bottom of the screen runs a news service-like banner lending authenticity to his words by listing his news service credentials as coming from INFOWARS.COM, PRISONPLANET.COM, and PRISON.TV.COM. Suitably credentialed, Hagman makes the circle complete:

It was back in 1987 that I was first exposed to Satanic Ritual Abuse and attendant crimes … I have seen some things I just can’t believe. I have not shown this to anyone before and I debated whether I should show you this, but with your permission.[47]

Hagman then shows censored picture of what might have been a naked child, but the flash is too quick and too heavily redacted to be sure. It is immediately replaced with a black screen saying “forced to censor due to illegal image of minor.” But we are assured that we would be horrified if we saw it. Unnamed Wall Street Bankers we are told have these on their computers. Should the Bankers’ pedophilic predilections become public Jones assures us, it would cause Wall Street to collapse and a civil war to follow. These miscreant bankers thus would be well advised to invest in cyber security lest the nation be imperiled by their unmasking.

All this is followed by a series of drawings that we are invited to assume were drawn by child survivors. Some look like aliens with wire devices that may be whips that seem to come more from UFO abductee testimony than Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) victims. An amateur drawing of a shirtless little boy suspended by chords from the ceiling is next, followed by more horrific drawings based on the Satanism scare materials of the 1980s. But for hard core veterans of the occult byways of the 1960s, the pièce de résistance is a photograph from what is clearly a satanic ritual of the time based on the model of Anton Levey’s Church of Satan but looks more like a scene from a meeting of the Process Church of the Final Judgment of that era.[48] The participants are nude (and one may be a little boy with back to camera), although the picture is posed in such a way as to suggest nudity without showing anything the pruriently inclined would hope to see. In true Church of Satan fashion, the participants are seated on the floor and earnestly discussing something that no doubt sounded more profound on acid than it did in the cold light of day.

Finally, we are shown a painting of what may be a satanic ritual with a huge fire on the alter, but is actually taken from the Bohemian Grove, a much older source. Jones clearly drew it from a group of websites which neatly bring together Satanic and anti-Semitic imagery drawn from the fever dreams of the Protocols of Zion. The Cult of Saturn is a good source for the curious.[49] Those with stronger constitutions are directed to “Pedophilic Yehudim Satanists From Hell,” which makes its anti-Semitic message clearer and from which Jones was able to draw the connection between Satanism, Judaism, and pedophilia without overly straining his already fevered imagination.[50]

In more genteel form the Bohemian Grove in the 1970s was a focus of conspiracy theories centered on the American elite. There was more than a hint of Satanism involved, and a great deal of sexual content spiced up the readings that dwelt on the doings at the Grove. But it did not contain much in the way Satanism, anti-Semitism, or pedophilia. According to William G. Domhoff:

“Bohemians” of the 1970s and 1980s include such personages as President Ronald Reagan; Vice President George Bush; Attorney General William French Smith; Secretary of State George P. Schultz; former President Richard Nixon; former President Gerald Ford; Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart; Herbert Hoover, Jr.; Herbert Hoover III; newspaperman William R. Hearst, Jr.; five members of the Dean Witter family of investment bankers; entertainers Art Linkletter and Edgar Bergen; presidents and chairmen of several oil companies such as Marathon Oil and Standard Oil; the president of Rockefeller University; officers of Anheuser-Busch breweries; the president of Kaiser Industries; bank presidents from California to New York; the president and chairman of Hewlett-Packard Co.; and many other representatives of American industry, finance, government, and entertainment. When these participants arrive for the annual “campout,” and elaborate ritual called the Cremation of Care welcomes them and instructs them to leave all cares behind while they join together for two weeks of lavish entertainment, fellowship, and “communion with nature.”[51]

That the Cremation of Care became an alter to Satanic pedophilia for the spiritual benefit of the Democrats and their Wall Street banker cronies speaks to the temper of a time in which a Donald Trump could be elected to the highest office in the land. The Bohemian Grove itself is quite real. It was historically less than the elitist conspiracy it became in the 1970s and light years from the pedophilia, anti-Semitism, and Democratic Party Satanism that InfoWars peddles. For example, the text of a play performed at the Grove was published in 1913. The edition notes that 180 persons performed in the production.[52] These published productions included a 1957 production of “Diablo,” and with that the popular suspicions of secret societies and the fears of explicit Satanism came together. The image of the Bohemian Grove as a den of satanic iniquity would grow over time.[53]

The darker imagery of the satanic sexual abuse of children is drawn directly from the 1980s Satanic Ritual Abuse literature. This is a typical sampling of the fare that was born into the extreme Christian recesses of the cultic milieu:

[Satanic] criminal activities further focus on animal and human mutilation and sacrifice, which include the ritual murder of infants, as many as 60,000 or more each year, during black masses and related sacrificial ceremonies. Many infant victims are born to cult members, so there are no records of their births or deaths.[54]

And:

There is no doubt in my mind that America is sliding into a period of fragmentary extremism and that the recent growth of Satanism is part of that general trend… . Radical right-wing and leftist conspiratorial groups wield much unseen power in the political spectrum; extremist racial groups, odd religious sects, and bizarre sex cults flourish, meeting and planning action in homes across the country. The prevalence of witchcraft and Satanic covens are a part of the overall proclivity toward cultishness, rather than unique phenomena in themselves.[55]

The imagery that powers the allure of the InfoWars video is drawn from a number of sources. The most important was ‘witness’ testimony. Lauren Stratford and Michelle Smith were the best known of these informants.[56] Arguably Lauren Stratford was the more important given her tireless advocacy and ubiquity on Christian Broadcasting in the 1990s. Her stories defied credulity and, quite often, the laws of physics, but in the atmosphere of the Satanism Scare, that was hardly an impediment to widespread belief. Stratford, along with Michelle Smith and Mike Warneke, author of The Satan Seller, became the superstars of the Satanic Ritual Abuse industry.[57]

It was at this point that the husband and wife evangelical team of Bob and Gretchen Passantino along with Jon Trott began a series of investigative articles for Cornerstone Magazine. The magazine was the outreach of the Cornerstone Church in Chicago – an outgrowth of the 1970s Jesus People that emerged from the wreckage of the counter culture of the 1960s. Cornerstone Ministries may be best known today for its production of some of the earliest Christian Music Festivals which today are big business in the summers in the American Midwest. Cornerstone unmasked Warnke as a knowing fraud, and Stratford as a deeply disturbed woman who has a long history of inventing fantastic stories of victimization at the hands of sinister ‘others.’[58] Warnke eventually confessed to his deceptions and begged forgiveness of the Christian community, which was soon forthcoming. Stratford by contrast doubled down on her accusations.

The evolution of Stratford’s story is of considerable interest to this chapter in that she neatly ties together the disparate pieces of the story that InfoWars rebranded into the conspiratorialism surrounding the 2016 American election. Jon Trott and the Passentinos tell the tale best:

As it turned out, none of it was true. There was no documentation, corroboration, or evidence. Careful research, by us and Cornerstone editor Jon Trott, revealed that author Lauren Stratford was actually Laurel Rose Willson, a troubled woman from Washington State who spent most of her teen and adult life fabricating horrendous stories of victimization by a variety of people in a variety of settings. She repeatedly threatened suicide and practiced self-mutilation. In the mid-1980s, when the scare about ritual child abuse in daycares gained momentum, she produced a new story incorporating SRA’s most sensational features. That story metamorphosed over three years to become the story of Satan’s Underground …

Although the evidence was overwhelming and the original publisher and Lauren even admitted that she repeatedly said things that were not true, some continued to believe her. Another publisher reissued Satan’s Underground and her two subsequent books, I Know You’re Hurting and Stripped Naked. Although she never enjoyed the same fame or fortune, she continued to speak in churches and before other groups, to participate in support groups and SRA survivor advocacy groups, and to counsel… . In Stripped Naked, she tried to compare the SRA survivors’ lack of evidence with the clandestine nature of Nazi atrocities …

This and other references to the Holocaust in Stripped Naked have turned out, in retrospect, to foreshadow the next incredible story of abuse told by Lauren Stratford.

From Lauren Stratford to Laura Grabowski, Jewish Holocaust Survivor: In the years since the discrediting of Satan’s Underground, Lauren developed a new story that put her in the midst of another survivor support community this one for actual survivors of a massive horror shamefully hidden by its perpetrators, but chillingly documented by overwhelming amounts of both eyewitness and historical evidence.

Lauren Stratford became Laura Grabowski, child survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau, a Polish Jew who was experimented on by the infamous Dr. Joseph Mengele, liberated to a Krakow orphanage at the end of the war, brought to the United States, and adopted by a Gentile couple at age nine or ten.[59]

In this pre-internet age, it was talk shows, not websites that spread disinformation. Geraldo Rivera was the best known and the most credulous, but it was Bob Larson, a Denver-based radio evangelist, writer, and enthusiastic free-lance exorcist that would bring the Satanic panic to new heights.[60] Larson continues to forge ahead in his battle against the Old Enemy. In addition to his many and varied videotaped exorcisms,[61] he has now opened an exorcism school to better carry on the war against the demonic hordes. Fittingly enough for the focus of this book, his latest venture is an exorcism school for demon-possessed Russians![62] The list of his Russian students, and even better of their patients, is to die for.

Where the Satanism Scare and the law intersected was most famously with the McMartin Preschool case in Los Angeles. In March 1984, seven nursery school teachers were brought to trial on a range of charges dealing with the sexual and ritual abuse of children. The charges ranged from the bizarre to the impossible without somehow bending the laws of time and physics. The trial, still the longest and most expensive to date, ranged over 100 counts of child abuse. The accused included 76-year-old owner Virginia McMartin, her son, and seven young female teachers. The exceptionally lurid trial lasted over six years. No one was convicted and the charges were eventually dropped. The trial included testimony aplenty from therapists asserting that we should “believe the child,” even though what the children had to say turned out to be nothing more than what the therapists badgered them into saying. Charges were dropped in 1990, and in the resultant backlash the Satanism Scare was over.[63] Satanic Ritual Abuse as a concept quietly returned to the cultic milieu where it was cherished only by the most extreme churches and, of course, Bob Larson.[64] And there it would remain until the viral video unleashed by Alex Jones and company.

What is most remarkable about the credulity of the public when confronted with the 1980s Satanism Scare and the 2017 Pizzagate fiasco is the dearth of evidence offered in support of the allegations. The wild tales of satanic bacchanals in which children were sodomized and sacrificed were found believable despite the fact that medical examinations invariably found the children among the living and with the girls’ virginity miraculously restored. Satan is a cunning fellow. Just as medical exams found no signs of abuse, the tales of satanic sabbats that colored the Satanism Scare were just as difficult to comprehend. How could children be forced to attend diabolic rites in different cities at different times and still be ready for their mothers to pick up at the close of the school day? Satan’s followers were credited with the ability to bend the laws of time and space in remarkable ways.

Disconfirmation of the 1980s panic was not restricted to common sense alone (although that should have been sufficient). Kenneth Lanning, the FBI agent whose grim task it was to investigate these occult crimes, could find zero evidence, either physical or investigative, of the truth of any of these allegations. Rebecca Brown’s explanation of the diabolic cleanup squad who tidied the scenes of human sacrifice for example was unaware of the forensic impossibility of sanitizing a murder scene. Nor could the FBI find a credible explanation for how the horrifically graphic descriptions of child abuse offered in the Satanism Scare survivor literature could leave no physical signs of trauma.[65] None of this mattered however once the panic reached the mainstream. Like all of the previous subversion panics, the fever simply had to run its course and then be forgotten until it was again released in slightly different form from its cultic crypt.

The Pizzagate descriptions of the sexual abuse of children, like the pictures offered by Alex Jones in support of the allegations, were lifted entirely from the Satanism Scare literature of the 1980s. They were presented with the same emotional fervor, even if they lacked the imaginative verve that invented relatively new scenarios and sought to reconcile the dearth of physical evidence with the belief that children must be believed regardless of the implausibility of their tales. What Jones and InfoWars added however was significant: An Alt Right political agenda and the bold accusation that Hillary Clinton, a politician whose career began as a child advocate, was involved in the sexual molestation of children. That the accusation was found credible by many is worthy of note.

Truth be told, many people who voted for Clinton did so only because Donald Trump was the even more unpalatable alternative. But even for the legions of non-Clintonistas in America, a headline like “Is Hillary Clinton the Antichrist or an Illuminati Witch?” might seem a bit much.[66] A simple Google search however will demonstrate that, as they say in the nonfake news business, the story had legs.

Dame Magazine helpfully gathers some of the anti-Hillary headlines that were also found to have legs, adding that, in addition to these revelations, the popular perception that she is a lesbian is so ingrained that revelatory headlines were unnecessary:

- The WikiLeaks disclosures reveal a woman with dark and sinister skills

- 10 Dark Secrets of Hillary Clinton.

- 8 Actual Hillary Quotes That Reveal How Evil and Psychotic She Truly Is

- Hillary Clinton Is a Witch.

- Four in 10 Donald Trump supporters think Hillary Clinton “is an actual demon”

- Salman Rushdie, the author of the Satanic Verses, comes to defend her.[67]

The American Mirror chimes in with the revelation, according to one of Bill Clinton’s many former paramours, that Hillary is not only a lesbian, but has had several abortions.[68] Given how widespread the ‘Hillary is a lesbian’ perception is in America, one wonders why Bill Clinton’s affairs are so excoriated by the American right? What is a poor boy to do as the song goes? And if Hillary’s Sapphic proclivities are not enough of an explanation, Texe Marrs chimes in with the fruits of his research.

Marrs is an old time doyen of the cultic milieu who offers a potent bricolage of ideas that include fundamentalist and charismatic Protestantism, a prophesy ministry, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of some vintage and some with a decidedly New Age twist, UFO and abductee beliefs, a whole lot of Bob Larson–style Satanism, and so much more. He is a prolific author from the days when books were printed and sold and not foisted on a defenseless public for free on the internet.[69]

Always open to graduate students seeking an interview, he is, in ‘off camera’ situations, fun to talk to. Most of all, in the pre-internet days, he had an antennae for the ideas that floated through the cultic milieu like none other. It arguably was Marrs who did the most to demonize the Bohemian Grove bonfire photo with strong accretions of Protocols-like anti-Semitism.[70] His take on Hillary? When she was the First Lady, she was a feminist and thus bad.[71] Further research however has revealed that she is also an extraterrestrial lizard from outer space. The idea is borrowed from conspiracy theorist and UFOologist David Icke, whose bipartisan belief is that Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich are also lizard people.[72] Marrs is more politically discerning and focuses on Hillary.

In America, even this idea has a certain degree of vitality. Atlantic Magazine estimates that there are about 12 million believers in the lizards from space conspiracy.[73] The Washington Post, as is their elitist wont, merely sneers at the idea in their tongue-in-cheek coverage of all of these revelations about Hillary.[74]

If a significant number of American citizens find the lizards from space conspiracy convincing, why should a torture chamber for children patronized by Democrats and plutocrats hidden under an otherwise innocuous pizza parlor be a hard sell? InfoWars has been on the case for a long time. In an article that features a picture of Hillary with a comical conical witch’s hat straight out of the original Wizard of Oz:

Following shocking news Friday that Clinton campaign chair John Podesta participates in weird occult rituals involving semen, breast milk and menstrual blood, it’s important to revisit information relayed by Clinton insider Larry Nichols last year in which he claimed Hillary regularly attended witch gatherings during Bill’s presidency.

In a mini-documentary shot exclusively by Infowars dubbed “The New Clinton Chronicles,” Nichols commented on Hillary’s fascination and participation with the Satanic occult.[75]

The Pizzagate tape was merely a continuation of the InfoWars effort to recycle Satanism Scare material into the Alt Right’s political crusades. The details of how the Pizzagate rumors spread are an interesting tale, but need not detain us here. Suffice to say that after a North Carolina man entered the Comet Ping Pong Pizza restaurant in Washington, DC armed with an illegal assault weapon which he fired on the premises, the legal position of Alex Jones and InfoWars became perilous. The North Carolinian vigilante journeyed north to investigate the InfoWars claims that the establishment acted as a front for the Democratic Party power elite to conduct satanic rituals and operate a child pornography ring. The story, already going viral, was given international credibility by the involvement of WikiLeaks. After the violence and with the prospect of ruinous legal action pending, Jones retracted the story and apologized to the business’ owner James Alefantis. In his retraction on InfoWars, Jones states:

One of the persons mentioned in many of the stories in the media was a Washington, D.C. restaurant owner named James Alefantis, and his pizza restaurant Comet Ping Pong. It is fair to say that Mr. Alefantis is a prominent individual who has been mentioned as a power player in Washington. Mr. Alefantis and his restaurant were mentioned in many stories published by a lot of different outlets. Mr. Alefantis was quoted in many subsequent stories, and he denied any involvement in such child sex rings. These denials were reported in national media and many other media outlets and news websites.

The volume of stories was substantial, generated national headlines and came to be known across the country as “Pizzagate.” We at Infowars became a part of that discussion. We broadcast commentary about the allegations and the theory that the emails contained code words. We raised questions about information in Mr. Podesta’s emails and the Comet Ping Pong restaurant. We believed at that time that further investigation was necessary. In December 2016 we disassociated ourselves from the “Pizzagate” claims and theories, a position we reiterated last month after being contacted by Mr. Alefantis.[76]

Links to the Pizzagate stories remain on InfoWars, but the videos that powered them have all been deleted and today can are preserved mainly through the good offices of Anonymous. In the cultic milieu, nothing ever dies or disappears. Like the Satanism Scare that came before it, the contagion that went viral and then global is already fading from the public consciousness and we too will let it recede into the background. What this book takes away from the whole sorry episode are the contributions of InfoWars and Wikileaks in destabilizing the American political scene – InfoWars in pursuit of a partisan agenda and Wikileaks in support of something more global in nature.

Convergence

The Soviet Union is gone, but not unlamented and certainly not forgotten. Active Measures is hardly spoken of these days, but it goes on in modern form and will be the focus of the next chapter. Messages were sent to the Ukraine before it was invaded, they are sent to the Czech Republic which has known Soviet invasion in the recent past, and they were sent to the US during the election. The technology was new, but the song remained the same. In the US, Russian military intelligence conducted a campaign of successful espionage. The data harvested was assessed, organized and disseminated through Julian Assange from his basement redoubt in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Acting as a classic agent of influence, Assange disseminated the material to discredit Hillary Clinton, who to be fair needed little help in this regard. She has always been seen to be embroiled in the sleaze that has always surrounded Bill Clinton.[77] Disseminating stolen emails and materials from the Democratic Party were gray area operations, meaning that Wikileaks provided the operation as a cardboard cutout between the Russians and their audience, but the material itself was quite real. Wikileaks also engaged in black area operations, disseminating the Hillary is a witch and Satan worshiper calumny with no basis in reality and no obvious author.

Russia and Vladimir Putin got not so much as a footnote of credit from either Assange or his once prestigious WikiLeaks organization for the material. Damaging material on Russia – busily engaged in the piecemeal reconstitution of the Soviet Empire – is nowhere to be seen from WikiLeaks.[78] This is classic Active Measures applied to the computer age, and applied brilliantly. Meanwhile, Russia maintained covert contacts with the Trump administration in waiting, most notably with former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, whose conversations with Ambassador Sergey Kislyak could no longer be denied.[79] By June of 2017, Flynn finds himself at the center of multiple scandals involving acting as an agent for a foreign power, perjury, and, most telling of all, as the man whose case dragged Donald Trump from mere incompetence into a possible charge of obstruction of justice and possible impeachment.[80]

There was a day when much less than this would have mobilized the American radical right, when voices from the right would have been raised in righteous indignation warning of prison camps awaiting patriots (once thought to have been prepared by FEMA in the late 1970s when FEMA was still thought to be competent enough to organize anything),[81] and demanding the ‘constitutionally mandated’ death penalty for traitors like Donald Trump. The American right has long believed that American law mandates death for treason after all, and one can hardly escape the formulation in their publications over the years.[82] In reality, the penalty for treason is far less:

18 U.S. Code § 2381 – Treason

Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 807; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, § 330016(2)(J), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2148.)[83]

Another quote from Thomas Jefferson, this time in a 1787 letter to William Stephens Smith, may capture the spirit of the times to come for the American radical right:

the people can not be all, & always, well informed. the part which is wrong […] will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. if they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty … what country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? let them take arms. the remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. what signify a few lives lost in a century or two? the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it’s natural manure.[84]

The voices raising alarms about treason emanate primarily from a confluence of liberal and traditional conservative security hawks in the American mainstream.[85] Most of the voices from the far right are muted, so far content with Breitbart’s liberal conspiracy of the day and fascinated with the possibilities afforded by the Administration.

On a deeper level, the race warriors are now dominant and Trump’s earliest Executive Orders, building an estimated $20 billion border wall with Mexico that he assures all that Mexico will eventually pay for and beginning a process of restricting access to the United States by Muslims, makes concerns that he that he is a useful idiot for the Kremlin irrelevant for them.[86] The creation of a racial and religious ‘Fortress America’ is after all a dream that is as old as the American radical right. Moreover, the radical right will for a brief season extend the hand of friendship to foreign despots on the basis of shared ethnicity, race, and nation. Witness William Dudley Pelley and his Silvershirts’ fawning acceptance of Mussolini before the US entered World War II.[87]

In the end, these transatlantic flirtations did not last, and it is virtually certain that this one will be no different. It remains a world of states, not races, and state interests invariably conflict. That is even more so with the US/Russian relationship.[88] The far right voices of nation are already out there and will gather greater voice over time as they always have.

Red Dawn is now

When the preliminary research for the article was underway in 2017, the Red Dawn moniker was only beginning to take shape on the internet.[89] In the nearly six months following that research, Red Dawn pages are becoming ubiquitous. They are largely right wing, but Antifa knows a good line when it sees it and the left is picking it up as well. Here too is a fascinating convergence. The fringes of left and right are increasingly meeting at the realization that the Trump presidency must be ended by any means possible. Our brief here, however, is the far right alone. For most, by the early summer of 2017, Red Dawn is not yet now, but soon.

Red Dawn redux

Has anyone seen Red Dawn? Is it any good? The original was one of my favorites dies[sic] this live up to it?

Donald Trump Jr., Tweet from November 5, 2012.[90]

Ironies abound the Trump administration, and most revolve around the strange fascination that the President evinces with Twitter. It is therefore fitting that before Donald Trump dreamed of running for president, Red Dawn – hardly a cinematic classic – was on the mind of his son, aka his most extreme apologist. To answer the question, yes, many have seen it and the original was much better. So much so that its day has come again it seems.

Red Dawn redux on the far right comes in several flavors that weirdly mirror the stages of grief: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Denial is the first, and the hardest to overcome. The American far right in the 21st century is much akin to the crazy uncle in the attic room that the family must bear in private but cringe when he accompanies them to church for fear of what he might say in front of their friends. The previous chapter followed this evolution from the 1920s when the Second Era Klan was mainstream and the Know Nothings who actually knew a few things but were sworn to secrecy, to the present day when the President and his most ardent followers hardly need to feign ignorance.

The Obama years were the darkest for these true believers in more ways than one. Unable to discredit the President on the grounds of either foreign birth or mental instability as demonstrated by his support of the Paris climate accords, they retreated into a world of Fox talk shows and increasingly Russian-supported fake news sites. They were, to borrow a Cold War phrase, useful idiots waiting to be put to use.[91] Those uses will be considered at length in the following chapter. Here we need only note that the Trump campaign was to these true believers what the Prague Spring of 1968 was to those who lived under the Soviet yoke in Eastern Europe. That he was actually elected was a dream few dared to credit. But now in power, the restructuring of America, which was Trump’s promise and their dream, quickly became mired in clutches of the ‘deep state.’ The torrent of leaks from both the White House and, most tellingly, from the intelligence agencies gives ever more credence to the fear of the deep state.

The deep state concept was the subject of a book by Mike Lofgren and was widely publicized in the shadow world of Breitbart News by Steve Bannon, who became a close advisor to Donald Trump.[92] In their telling, the deep state is composed of a cabal of power holders and secret societies that conspire to keep America in the hands of traditional elites who exert power and influence in their own interests.[93] It is the creation of the Alt Right in that it recasts such traditional conspiracy theories as the Protocols of Zion in modern form. That is, they are shorn of overt expressions of racism or anti-Semitism – although these are often implicit – and come with a bricolage of ideas borrowed from a bewildering array of sources.

Yet for all its mainstream scorn, there is something to the idea of a traditional American elite who have always dominated the foreign policy and intelligence services in America. That this stereotype has become first cliché and then a parody does not dampen the popular image of those institutions.[94] Both were founded by elites from Ivy League colleges and wealthy families. Conspiracy theories are never viable if constructed of whole cloth. They thrive in the world of popular conceptions, fears, and suspicions, which are best nourished in a culture of secrecy and classified knowledge.[95] As the X Files television program illustrated so well, ‘the truth is out there’ in the world of hidden and suppressed knowledge. One need only persevere long enough to find it.

The image of the Trump Administration as hostage to, and perhaps servants of, Vladimir Putin’s Russia would be incendiary in the American far right were it not for the twin currents of hope for a new America and fears of the deep state from whence the unending flood of leaks are emerging. It is therefore logical that many of the true believers who are the backbone of Donald Trump’s hardcore support in the US have been unable to move beyond denial, the first stage of grief.

The second stage, anger, has always been a vital cog in the zeitgeist of the far right. The third stage, bargaining, is to come. As in Watergate before it, with the appointment of a Special Prosecutor, those highest in the administration have already retained council and are preparing for the possible plea bargaining to come.[96] Depression, the fourth stage of grief, has already begin to set in as the scandals surrounding the Trump Administration grind the man and the agenda into an increasingly isolated place in the American body politic.[97] The fear of being pushed back into the family attic, having brought disgrace on the family, is real and what could be more depressing?

While most of the Trump faithful struggle with fear and anger, others have already found acceptance and, with it, the realization that the Russian threat is real and must be resisted at all costs. The Red Dawn image is as appealing to them as it is evocative, and the Red Dawn tide is already rising on the American far right.

As always, rage and resignation build first on social media with Twitter being the most accessible. There, the Red Dawn and Trump as Traitor theme has been building for some time. That Trump is a traitor and Russian agent rather than the savior of the American right is trending on a number of threads.[98]

One of the better meditations on the Red Dawn is Now theme is offered on Colin Beaven’s blog. Here, the idea is considered and the specter that the left is surely behind it is duly noted. As a transition stage from anger to depression, his formulation is first rate:

The movie Red Dawn is a guilty pleasure of mine and I watch it every few years. I’m talking about the original 1984 film, not the shitty 2012 remake. The premise of Red Dawn, where Cuban troops, backed by the Soviet Union, suddenly invade the heart of America via Mexico, is preposterous, although people who lived in that time period and analyzed military strategy would love to tell you the sequence of events portrayed at the very beginning of the film and the attack vectors used by the invading troops were entirely plausible.

I find the ridiculousness of it mainly to be that the invasion happens without warning with the town’s residents seemingly oblivious to the fact that Mexico and the rest of central America became communist states and NATO had basically been dissolved in their timeline. Then there’s the fact that high school students help lead the resistance to the communist invasion magically learning war strategy and technology along the way and finding the time to write WOLVERINES all over everything before heading back to the mountains to camp. As one review at the time put it, “for too much of its running time, it’s just a childishly simplistic masturbatory fantasy for right-wing hebephrenics …”

But it’s still an entertaining movie and it’s one the left loves to hate. The recent hyperbolic hyperpartisan hyperventilation tm about Trump and his staff’s links to Russia makes me long for the days of the 1980s where the ridiculousness of Red Dawn pales in comparison to the current narrative of the mainstream media and the left. To review, the left believes that Russia has effectively performed a coup d’état of the United States without the use of military force by turning Trump and his staff. This isn’t a straw man argument given the articles and headlines I’ve read. The recent resignation of Flynn and Sessions[99] being in the news is all the left needs as proof that this has happened. This is remarkable news for a couple of reasons, because under this theory:

1. A) the United States no longer exists, and

2. B) it represents the greatest intelligence failure or silent corruption, of any country’s intelligence community, ever[100]

Perhaps the best microcosm of the evolution from denial to acceptance is from Dave Hodges. As Donald Trump took office, he was hailed as a savior. The Red Dawn theme was still there, but his original Red Dawn vison was of an already extant Chinese invasion of America. In a wonderfully ironic twist, his jeremiad begins with the observation that the Chinese have “bought off senior government officials, particularly in the Clinton administration.”[101] In fact, the Chinese have used financial inducements to assure a dearth of discontent over corruption and human rights abuses at home. The strategy has been even more blatant, and successful, in turning Donald’s Trump’s scathing campaign criticism of China into an amen corner of international amity. It cost only a $4 billion real estate deal for Jared Kushner and highly lucrative trademarks for Ivanka Trump.[102]

Unlike the bribes to the Trump family, Hodges assures us, the Clinton bribes were explicit quid pro quo, Chinese money for American assets. Donald Trump is urged to forget his border wall and to fight the more pressing threat of Chinese invasion:

Part of the bribes included the selling of Long Beach port to the Chinese along with the loss of nearly 18,000 American jobs. Multiple military sources around the country have quietly warned about the growing menace posed by the buildup of Chinese Communist forces in many of our California ports now controlled by the Chinese. President Trump, this is more important and immediate [sic] than “the Wall.”[103]

From this hopeful beginning which envisioned Donald Trump as savior, Dave Hodges has reached the acceptance stage. It was not easy. During the election, he saw the election of Hilary Clinton in apocalyptic terms.[104] Even in victory, his outlook on America remains bleak, writing “Trump Is Inheriting An America That Has Been Conquered from Within (Pt 1),” Hodges avers that the communist conspiracy has already conquered America and there is nothing Trump can do about it:

What conspiracy am I speaking about? I am speaking about a multi-faceted and multi-layered set of communist influences that have taken this country down the path of socio-cultural, political and military suicide. A significant number of long-standing representatives in the House of Representatives and in the Senate have been compromised by Communist front groups. Before you think I am having cold-war flashbacks, consider the fact that before this series is concluded, I will name names of political representatives and members of the media who are involved. And key Russian defectors tells us the very same thing in their own words. My body count in Congress has reached over 80 members of the House and Senate who have clear financial ties and who have publicly proclaimed allegiances to Communist front groups.[105]

It is a small jump from members of Congress and American elites having ties to communist Russia to Trump and his inner circle who have even deeper ties to their “communist” masters. Putin is hardly George Washington after all, for as Hodges notes:

Have you wondered why Putin, who has been so very patient with Obama’s apparent provocations for war, has not reacted militarily.

The answer is simple…

BECAUSE PUTINS ZIONIST MASTERS/HANDLERS HAVE INSTRUCTED HIM TO NOT DO SO JUST YET.[106]

The Zionist/communist conspiracy is the backbone of the Cold War radical right for whom race will ever be a distraction from the serious work of keeping America safe from subversion. Is Red Dawn now? Dave Hodges again is at the cutting edge, asserting that “America Will Be Invaded from Seven Simultaneous Directions – The Red Dawn Phase Is Ready to Commence (Part 1).”[107] Hodges subtitles his site “Freeing America One Enslaved Mind at a time,” and broadcasts his message on a signature app, a radio show on the Republic Broadcasting Network, and apparently public access television.[108] His site is linked to various cultic milieu figures from the worlds of conspiracy, apocalyptic spirituality, alternative health, and much more.

Jonah E.R. Loeb takes up the cry at his site:

I doubt that even Kevin Reynolds[109] could have imagined that just 32 years later, Russia would be launching an invasion into America, claiming state after state like a red stain across the map. The only difference is that instead of paratroopers, tanks, AK-47’s, helicopters, missile launchers, bazookas, dogs, gulags, P.O.W. brainwashing records playing day and night over flimsy stadium speakers, or any of that. Instead, the 2016 version of the Russian Invasion was launched in the form of one man, Donald J. Trump. Sure he has the backing of an army of hackers, two international media organizations, and a ground game provided by a small population of morally bereft political relativists who hijacked a political party by steering its agenda into incoherent platitudes that serve no purpose other than selling countless books on the subject.[110]

As the ‘Red Dawn is Now’ hue and cry builds on the radical right, it is echoed in mainstream media. Witness the Red Dawn edition of the Slate podcast![111] This opens a fascinating development – the convergence of the radical right of nation with the American mainstream in defense of a country that is perceived as having come under Moscow’s sway. But in this view the mainstream intellectualizes and plots electoral remedies. Members of the American security services in this view must weigh whether their loyalties to their oath of service outweighs their loyalty to the nation. Should they perhaps prepare for an American Night of the Long Knives?

From mainstream media, Red Dawn has made its appearance in the global context of wargaming – computer-based games of the sort that made World of Warcraft ubiquitous among a global generation of boys. The Red Dawn hilariously projects the term onto a replay of the 1917 Russian Revolution:

To summarise, Red Dawn is a Megagame created by veteran gamer Bernard Ganley to mark the centennial of the October Revolution. Starting in the Winter of 1917/18, the newly in-charge Bolsheviks (Reds) would have to fight for supremacy against the old Imperialist (White) forces, a myriad of Cossack, regional & anarchist forces vying for independence (Greens) and intervening Great Powers like Germany, France & America (Blues). This was a map-based game at the quasi-Operational/Strategic level, but there was also a heavy political element. There were more political players on the Reds team than there were operational players, as an example.[112]

A Facebook account now promotes a ‘training’ event for paint ball enthusiasts which will take place on 7 April 2018. Called the Red Dawn Paintball Scenario 2018, it offers a somewhat less drastic solution than that of the 1984 classic:

Russian Forces have invaded the United States and are meeting heavy resistance in Lewiston, ID. Lewiston is the farthest Inland port in the Inland Northwest and a vital asset for troop transports. The Russians have a plan to deploy an Air Assault unit near Orofino, ID. their objective is to use their Artillery Cannon to destroy the Dam from far away. If the Dam was to fail it would release enough water to flood Lewiston And wipe out any resistance!

American Militia Men have been ordered to eliminate that gun at all cost becuse [sic] if the Russian succeed then the Inland Northwest may be lost.[113]

Canadian paintballers are no less ready for the Russian Red Dawn:

Traditionally a near sell-out since the inaugural event in 2006. Red Dawn has become more than just the kick-off event of the paintball season in Ontario – It’s become a sporting spectacle, with players often dressed in authentic Russian Winter camouflage and Rebel attire as they try to blend into the snow covered terrain. This year Red Dawn 13 “BEHIND ENEMY LINES” will be no different. The battle begins with the Communist Forces firmly entrenched in the City and Military Outpost, the young Rebel Militia must launch a two pronged attack. We are now recruiting warriors, beginners or seasoned veterans for this annual epic winter battle.

This series is based loosely on the original 1985 fictional movie of the same name, after a Russian, Cuban, Chinese and North Korean lead invasion of the United States. This winter series big game pits two Super Powers together as they face off to see who will gain dominance for the day and bragging rights for the year. Scores for Big Games are based on player eliminations and territory domination. As always our two favourite Behind the Bunker celebrity generals will be leading the forces, Josh “ZUBY” Zubrickas for the Wolverines/Rebels and Gavin “ZEE“ Sharma for the Communists.[114]

Away from the world of virtual reality and paint ball mayhem, the Red Dawn concept has definitely gone both mainstream and global. Writing from Estonia, Cezary Jan Strusiewicz warns that “Red Dawn Could Happen Here”:

Red Dawn (No, we’re not talking about the remake. What are you, simple?) focuses on a surprise Russian invasion of the U.S. via Mexico. Hendrik lives in Estonia, a small nation bordering Russia, and pretty much figures the only fictional part of Red Dawn was the location. See, in 2014, the nation of Ukraine broke out in civil war. Russia basically slapped Ukraine around for a bit while chanting, “I’m not hitting you!” and then tired of the game and annexed Crimea.[115]

Indeed, such is the growing fervor of the Red Dawn is Now awakening that the cheesy classic film is being given a Collector’s Edition rerelease. In Blu-Ray no less!

Few films released in the ’80s captured the Cold War paranoia felt in the United States as well as Red Dawn. The 1984 cult-classic tells the story of the Soviet Union – aided by Nicaragua and Cuba – paratrooping into a small town in Colorado and placing the townsfolk in prison camps. What the invaders don’t count on is a group of high school students, including brothers Jed and Matt Eckert (Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen), leading a resistance to World War III and Russian occupation.

Next month Shout! Factory, who have been spoiling fans of the pastel-colors-and-coke-vials decade in recent years with expansive releases of guilty pleasures like Road House, Nighthawks and the Bill & Ted films, have announced the North American collector’s edition of Red Dawn. Out March 14 on Blu-ray and coming out as part of the Shout! Select arm of the company, it will feature new interviews and archival material including:

‘A Look Back At Red Dawn’ featuring brand-new stories from co-star Doug Toby, casting director Jane Jenkins, production designer Jackson DeGovia and editor Thom Noble.

Archival featurettes include:

- ‘Red Dawn Rising’

- ‘Training For WWIII’

- ‘Building The Red Menace’

- ‘WWIII Comes To Town’

- Original Theatrical Trailer

- And as an added bonus, those who pre-order Red Dawn through the Shout! Factory site will get the Blu-ray two weeks early, and it will come with an 18″ x 24″ poster of the artwork newly commissioned for this release.[116]

And what of the more action-oriented radical right? Following The John Franklin Letters rather than The Turner Diaries, will they make note of the homes of Trump’s neighborhood campaign organizers for later action? Most have children after all whom they would presumably miss. Will (with apologies to Billie Holiday) white bodies be swaying from the poplar trees?[117] Lynching was once a tried and true method of keeping order in the lawless Western US where it carried no uncomfortable racial baggage whatever.[118] Will Donald Trump’s family be treated to summary justice and his estates and properties reduced to ashes? Will there be popular trials for his henchmen and the death penalty for treason for all? Indeed, will there be a civil war in America in which the words of Joseph Tommasi, “Pray for victory and not an end to slaughter,” can at last ring true as America frees itself of neo-Soviet domination? And will the despairing offspring of the Trumpenistas follow the advice of Dennis Leary and kill the boys in the Republican party, their parents whose votes allowed the Red Dawn to happen, and then themselves so that even the seed of the guilty will be expunged from the earth? Such calls will emerge as the anti-subversionists confront the race warriors in the American radical right.

Most telling of all, will the American version of Antifa (Anti-fascist Action) along with the streetfighters of the Black Bloc and their leftist and anarchist milieu join in a tacit alliance with the nationalists of the radical right to redeem in blood what was lost in the 2016 election? Indeed, is this to be the fifth wave of international terrorism as Europeans perceiving the same pattern of Russian meddling on the one side and the rise of pro-Russian forces on the other follow the lead of the potential American version of fusion terrorism?

The outcome will be as unpredictable as the election itself. Stay tuned, for the revolution will most definitely be televised.[119]

Notes

1  “Findings on MLK Assassination,” United States Government Printing Office, www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/part-2d.html. Cf. Nelson Blackstock, Cointelpro: The Fbi’s Secret War on Political Freedom (New York: Anchor Foundation: Distributed by Pathfinder Press, 1988). Finally, see Selma Mayor Joseph Smitherman accidentally say “Martin Luther Coon, er King” in 1965 at www.youtube.com/watch?v=thJXKW43pnM. On COINTELPRO itself, see the massive watchdog text with a heaping helping of primary source texts: Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, The Cointelpro Papers: Documents from the Fbi’s Secret Wars against Dissent in the United States, vol. 8 (South End Press Cambridge, MA, 2002). Two excellent academic articles cover COINTELPRO’s attacks on the Civil Rights Movement and on the radical right. Kristen Hoerl and Erin Ortiz, “Organizational Secrecy and the Fbi’s Cointelpro – Black Nationalist Hate Groups Program, 1967–1971,” Management Communication Quarterly 29, no. 4 (2015): 590–615. John Drabble, “The Fbi, Cointelpro-White Hate, and the Decline of Ku Klux Klan Organizations in Alabama, 1964–1971,” Alabama Review 61, no. 1 (2008): 3–45.

2  Robert Henry Winborne Welch, The Neutralizers (Belmont, MA: John Birch Society, 1963). Robert Welch, Blue Book (Western Islands, 1961). Cf. Kaplan, Encyclopedia of White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right, 203.

3  The John Franklin Letters (New York,: Free Enterprise Publication distributed by The Bookmailer, Inc., 1959).

4  Unlike the John Franklin Letters, the 1984 version of Red Dawn is readily available. Beware however of the 2012 remake in which the invaders are North Korean and the actors are old enough to know better than to sacrifice their careers to this bomber. On the veracity of the now ubiquitous eternal vigilance quote, see the wonderful Jefferson Monticello site, www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/eternal-vigilance-price-liberty-quotation.

5  “Avenge Me!: American Catharsis in 1980s Soviet Invasion Fantasies,” We Are the Mutants, https://wearethemutants.com/2018/03/01/avenge-me-american-catharsis-in-1980s-soviet-invasion-fantasies/.

6  The snippet from the interview and the series itself can be seen at www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLgfVhLb-5g.

7  Using Richard Hofstadter’s classic Paranoid Style as format, see Jaclyn Howell, “Not Just Crazy: An Explanation for the Resonance of the Birther Narrative,” Communication Monographs 7, no. 4 (2012): 428–447.

8  Richard Orr Curry and Thomas M. Brown, Conspiracy: The Fear of Subversion in American History (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972); David Brion Davis, The Fear of Conspiracy: Images of Un-American Subversion from the Revolution to the Present, vol. 113 (Cornell: Cornell University Press, 1971). Cf. Jeffrey Kaplan, “History and Terrorism,” The Journal of American History 98, no. 1 (2011): 102–103.

9  Younger readers MUST check out the film that was shown in schools throughout the nation. As a historical footnote, the children in my own classes didn’t believe for a second that one could turtle up and survive a nuclear attack, and it is doubtful that other children were more gullible. See the 1951 classic at www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKqXu-5jw60. For an academic take on all this, see Bo Jacobs, “Atomic Kids: Duck and Cover and Atomic Alert Teach American Children How to Survive Atomic Attack,” Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies 40, no. 1 (2010): 25–44, www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert_Jacobs15/publication/236749496_Atomic_Kids_Duck_and_Cover_and_Atomic_Alert_Teach_American_Children_How_to_Survive_Atomic_Attack/links/55c5e87a08aebc967df4ea8e.pdf.

10  Douglas E. Streusand, Norman A. Bailey, and Francis H. Marlo, The Grand Strategy That Won the Cold War: Architecture of Triumph (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2016).

11  Aaron Bateman, “The Kgb and Its Enduring Legacy,” The Journal of Slavic Military Studies 29, no. 1 (2016): 23–47.

12  Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the Kgb (New York: PublicAffairs, 2011).

13  Andrei Illarionov, “The Siloviki in Charge,” Journal of Democracy 20, no. 2 (2009): 69.

14  Ibid., 69–70.

15  Soldatov and Borogan, The New Nobility.

16  Ian Bremmer and Samuel Charap, “The Siloviki in Putin’s Russia: Who They Are and What They Want,” The Washington Quarterly 30, no. 1 (2007): 86.

17  Ola Cichowlas, “In Russia, It Is Deja-Vu All over Again: How Russians Fell Back in Love with the Kgb and Stalin,” The Polish Quarterly of International Affairs no. 2 (2013): 111–124.

18  On my last trip to Russia, for example, I was gifted with more than a dozen newly minted reproductions of Stalinist-era Russian propaganda posters. These were all available for viewing during the Soviet era in scarcely visited museums of Party history. They are definitely back in fashion, as are stores featuring Soviet-era memorabilia of all kinds.

19  For the early stirrings of the fashion, see BOYM Svetlana and Svetlana Boym, Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 215–292. For one of the best books on the Russian spirit since One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, see Svetlana Aleksievich, Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (London: Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2016). Anyone who has not read the brilliant original should put down this book and better employ their time with Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenit︠s︡yn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (New York: Macmillan, 1971). Suitably informed, then proceed to The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, 1st Perennial Classics ed. (New York: Perennial, 2002).

20  Peter Pomerantsev and Michael Weiss, “The Menace of Unreality: How the Kremlin Weaponizes Information, Culture and Money,” The Interpreter 22 (2014): www.interpretermag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/The_Menace_of_Unreality_Final.pdf.

21  Steve Abrams, “Beyond Propaganda: Soviet Active Measures in Putin’s Russia,” Connections: The Quarterly Journal 15, no. 1 (2016): 5–31. Robert Seely, “Russia’s New Warfare Tools and the Link to Soviet Active Measures,” Georgia Review (2015), https://it4sec.org/system/files/15.1.01_abrams.pdf. Of course, the starting place for all things Active Measures remains Richard H. Shultz and Roy Godson, Dezinformatsia: Active Measures in Soviet Strategy (Washington: Pergamon-Brassey’s, 1984).

22  Perhaps the most complete available Western report comes from the US Congress and is sourced to the multiagency Active Measures working group. See United States, Department of State, Active Measures: A Report on the Substance and Process of Anti-U.S. Disinformation and Propaganda Campaigns, Department of State Publication (Washington, DC: The Department, 1986), http://jmw.typepad.com/files/state-department – a-report-on-the-substance-and-process-of-anti-us-disinformation-and-propaganda-campaigns.pdf.

23  Frederick Charles Barghoorn, Soviet Foreign Propaganda (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015).

24  Shultz and Godson, Dezinformatsia.

25  Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, and Other Essays, 15–18. Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America, 137–140. Cf. Mark W. Cannon, “The Crusades against the Masons, Catholics, and Mormons: Separate Waves of a Common Current,” Brigham Young University Studies 3, no. 2 (1961): 23–40.

26  Howard Markel and Alexandra Minna Stern, “The Foreignness of Germs: The Persistent Association of Immigrants and Disease in American Society,” The Milbank Quarterly 80, no. 4 (2002): 757–788. Gerald V. O’Brien, “Indigestible Food, Conquering Hordes, and Waste Materials: Metaphors of Immigrants and the Early Immigration Restriction Debate in the United States,” Metaphor and Symbol 18, no. 1 (2003): 33–47. Howard Markel and Alexandra Minna Stern, “Which Face? Whose Nation? Immigration, Public Health, and the Construction of Disease at America’s Ports and Borders, 1891–1928,” American Behavioral Scientist 42, no. 9 (1999): 1314–1331.

27  August 24, 1855: Letter to Joshua F. Speed, www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/knownothingparty.htm. All spellings as in the original.

28  For an excellent, comprehensive discussion of the issue from the time of the Anarchist fears of the 19th century through the 1990s from a legal perspective, see Kevin R. Johnson, “The Antiterrorism Act, the Immigration Reform Act, and Ideological Regulation in the Immigration Laws: Important Lessons for Citizens and Noncitizens,” St. Mary’s Law Journal 28 (1996): 833–882.

29  Nancy Tomes, The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women, and the Microbe in American Life (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999). The best book on this era remains David Harry Bennett, The Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988). Bruce Levine, “Conservatism, Nativism, and Slavery: Thomas R. Whitney and the Origins of the Knownothing Party,” The Journal of American History 88, no. 2 (2001): 455–488. Daniel J. Tichenor, Dividing Lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America, Princeton Studies in American Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002). The literature of the Social Gospel is vast, but a good brief introduction is offered in Thomas C. Leonard, “Religion and Evolution in Progressive Era Political Economy: Adversaries or Allies?,” History of Political Economy 43, no. 3 (2011): 425–469.

30  Johnson, 844. On the Patriot Act, John W. Whitehead and Steven H. Aden, “Forfeiting Enduring Freedom for Homeland Security: A Constitutional Analysis of the USA Patriot Act and the Justice Department’s Anti-Terrorism Initiatives,” American University Law Review 51 (2001), http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1149&context=aulr.

31  Erik B. Alexander, “Whither the Whigs? Donald Trump, the Know-Nothings, and the Politics of the 1850s,” Muster, September 26, 2016, http://journalofthecivilwarera.org/2016/09/whither-whigs-donald-trump-know-nothings-politics-1850s/; Laura Reston, “Donald Trump Isn’t The First Know Nothing to Capture American Hearts,” New Republic, July 31, 2015, https://newrepublic.com/article/122427/donald-trump-isnt-first-know-nothing-capture-american-hearts, and many more.

32  Tyler Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850’s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 21–22. For all you ever want to know about the group and its milieu, Frank L. Klement, Dark Lanterns: Secret Political Societies, Conspiracies, and Treason Trials in the Civil War (Baton Rouge, LA: LSU Press, 1989). Cf. David Luhrssen, Secret Societies and Clubs in American History (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2015), 23–28.

33  ‘Alternate facts’ is attributed to Kellyanne Conway, whose defense of Trump on CNN was replete with frequent moments of blank incomprehension on matters of history and policy to the amusement of the cognoscenti.

Rebecca Sinderbrand, “How Kellyanne Conway Ushered in the Era of ‘alternative facts’,” Washington Post, January 22, 2017, www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/22/how-kellyanne-conway-ushered-in-the-era-of-alternative-facts/?utm_term=.7b615acb5753. For an academic take, see Michael Barkun, “President Trump and the ‘Fringe’,” Terrorism and Political Violence 29, no. 3 (2017): 437–443. For a broader discussion between Michael Barkun, George Michael, and myself, see Anis Shivani, “The Alt-Right Is the Modern, Hideous Face of White Supremacy a Panel of Scholars Discusses the Historical Roots of Modern White Supremacy – and Its Most Recent Reinvention,” Salon, June 11 2017, www.alternet.org/right-wing/understanding-contemporary-white-supremacy-alt-right-really-something-new. The hideous title is Anis Shivani’s.

34  Kaplan, Radical Religion and Violence: Theory and Case Studies, 10.

35  One need only check the daily headlines of Breitbart News for chapter and verse, www.breitbart.com/. The flood of academic articles on the Alt Right are yet in publication, leaving the watchdog movements ADL and Southern Poverty Law Center to set the agenda. “Alternative Right,” SPLC, www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/alternative-right; “Alt Right: A Primer about the New White Supremacy,” ADL, https://adl.org/resources/backgrounders/alt-right-a-primer-about-the-new-white-supremacy.

36  The best encapsulation of the time and place remains Ammerman, 1–65. Cf. George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). The pro-life rescue movement too followed this pattern, with the move to deadly force the product of a slow evolution which emerged with both opportunity in the killing of Dr. David Gunn and the perception that the Reagan Administration tacitly favored their actions. Jeffrey Kaplan, “America’s Last Prophetic Witness: The Literature of the Rescue Movement,” Terrorism and Political Violence 5, no. 2 (1993): 58–77. “Absolute Rescue: Absolutism, Defensive Action and the Resort to Force,” 128–163.

37  Harry Enten, “Americans’ Distaste For Both Trump And Clinton Is Record-Breaking,” FiveThirtyEight, May 5, 2016, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-distaste-for-both-trump-and-clinton-is-record-breaking/.

38  The quotations fare from Trump campaign rhetoric. See, Dolia Estevez, “Debunking Donald Trump’s Five Extreme Statements about Immigrants and Mexico,” Forbes, September 3, 2015, www.forbes.com/sites/doliaestevez/2015/09/03/debunking-donald-trumps-five-extreme-statements-about-immigrants-and-mexico/#79ee2c9f1e81; and CNN Newsroom, “Trump: We Will Keep Radical Islamic Terrorists the Hell Out, CNN, CPAC 2017,” http://edition.cnn.com/videos/politics/2017/02/24/trump-terrorists-hell-out-cpac.cnn/video/playlists/cpac-2017/. Cf. Lizzie Dearden, “Donald Trump’s Victory Followed by Wave of Hate Crime Attacks against Minorities across US – Led by His Supporters Muslim Women Report Hijabs Being Ripped Off by Men Shouting Support for President-Elect,” Independent, November 11, 2016, www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-elections/donald-trump-president-supporters-attack-muslims-hijab-hispanics-lgbt-hate-crime-wave-us-election-a7410166.html.

39  Sarah Posner and David Neiwert, “How Trump Took Hate Groups Mainstream: The Full Story of His Connection with Far-right Extremists,” Mother Jones, October 14, 2016, www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/donald-trump-hate-groups-neo-nazi-white-supremacist-racism.

40  Janet Hook and Monica Langley, “How Trump Won – and How the GOP Let Him,” Wall Street Journal, May 5, 2016, www.wsj.com/articles/how-trump-wonand-how-the-gop-let-him-1462390833.

41  This is ironic in that candidate Trump vowed to get the world to stop laughing at the US Instead, America has become for the first time a global punch line. David Nakamura and Anne Gearan, “Trump Said Foreign Leaders Wouldn’t Laugh At the U.S. Now they’re Laughing at Him,” Washington Post, June 15, 2017, www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-said-foreign-leaders-wouldnt-laugh-at-the-us-now-theyre-laughing-at-him/2017/06/15/de82a340–51da-11e7-be25–3a519335381c_story.html?utm_term=.905d967b7276. See for example the hilariously tragicomic take of Vincente Fox, former President of Mexico, www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYZKrn7Bbl8.

42  Jason Zengerleaug, “Television; The State of the George W. Bush Joke,” New York Times, August 22, 2004, www.nytimes.com/2004/08/22/arts/television-the-state-of-the-george-w-bush-joke.html?_r=0. Daniel Kurtzman, “The 50 Dumbest Bush Quotes of All Time a Compendium of Idiotic and Maniacal Utterances by President Bush, 2000–2008,” ThoughtCo, June 8, 2017, www.thoughtco.com/dumbest-bush-quotes-of-all-time-2734076.

43  “Another Message for Donald Trump from Former Mexican President Vicente Fox,” Youtube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYZKrn7Bbl8.

44  Gordon Lubold, “Joint Chiefs Chairman Nominee Says Russia Is Top Military Threat,” Wall Street Journal, July 9, 2015, www.wsj.com/articles/joint-chiefs-chairman-nominee-says-russia-is-top-military-threat-1436463896.

45  It was actually The Twilight Zone, but he did say ‘of the imagination’ which I took as license. The quote and many more are found at “The Twilight Zone (1959 TV Series),” Wikiquote, https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Twilight_Zone_(1959_TV_series). On the cultic milieu, Jeffrey Kaplan and Heléne Lööw, The Cultic Milieu: Oppositional Subcultures in an Age of Globalization (Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 2002). The collection includes Colin Campbell’s original cultic milieu essay.

46  “Alex Jones #Pizzagate.” www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9FkSn5q630. The YouTube videos posted by InfoWars have all been withdrawn. We can thank Anonymous for preserving them for posterity under the pseudonym Anonymous Rebels United. Their massive trove of videos, channels, and playlists can be found at www.youtube.com/channel/UCcMrYyMfjowPAHVp_2l5g4w.

47  “Alex Jones #Pizzagate.” www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9FkSn5q630.

48  Timothy Wyllie and Adam Parfrey, Love, Sex, Fear, Death: The inside Story of the Process Church of the Final Judgment (Port Townsend, WA: Feral House, 2009).

49  “Cult of Saturn aka Satanism or Synagogue of Satan,” www.pinterest.com/debzerda/cult-of-saturn-aka-satanism-or-synagogue-of-satan/.

50  “Pedophilic Yehudim Satanists From Hell – Part 2,” http://goyimgazette.com/pedophilic-jew-2/. The news value of the site is attested by its name, “The Goyim Gazette.”

51  G. William Domhoff, “The Bohemian Grove and Other Retreats,” A Study in Ruling Class Cohesiveness. NY (1974), http://nvsocioman.com/The%20Bohemian%20Grove.pdf.

52  Rufus Steele, The Fall of Ug; A Masque of Fear (San Francisco: J. Howell, 1913). Similar volumes appeared even earlier. Herman George Scheffauer, Arthur Weiss, and Bohemian Club (San Francisco Calif.), The Sons of Baldur, A Forest Music Drama (San Francisco: Press of the Hansen Co., 1908). Charles K. Field, William Johnston McCoy, and Bohemian Club (San Francisco Calif.), The Cave Man: A Play of the Redwoods (San Francisco, CA: Bohemian Club, 1910); Porter Garnett and Bohemian Club (San Francisco Calif.), The Green Knight; a Vision (San Francisco, CA: Priv. print. for the Bohemian club, by some of its members, 1911).

53  Frank R. Denke et al., Diablo: The Fifty-Second Grove Play of the Bohemian Club of San Francisco as Performed by Its Members in the Bohemian Grove, Sonoma County, California, on the Twenty-Seventh Night of July, 1957, under the Direction of William D. Pabst (San Francisco, CA: Bohemian Club, 1957).

54  Dr. Alan H. Peterson, He American Focus on Satanic Crime Volume I (Millburn, NJ: American Focus Publishing Co., 1988), III.

55  Arthur Lyons, The Second Coming; Satanism in America (New York: Dodd, 1970), 147–148. In those innocent days, the far right and the far left were both seen as extreme; both deviations from the American cultural norm.

56  Michelle Smith and Lawrence Pazder, Michelle Remembers, 1st ed. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980). Lauren Stratford, Satan’s Underground (Gretna: Pelican Pub. Co., 1991).

57  Mike Warnke, Dave Balsiger, and Les Jones, The Satan-Seller (New Jersey: Logos International South Plainfield, 1972).

58  Michael Hertenstein and Jon Trott, Selling Satan: The Tragic History of Mike Warnke (Chicago: Cornerstone Press, 1993). Gretchen Passantino, Bob Passantino, and Jon Trott, “Satan’s Sideshow,” Cornerstone 18 (1990): 24–28.

59  Bob and Gretchen Passantino and Jon Trott, “Lauren Stratford: From Satanic Ritual Abuse to Jewish Holocaust Survivor,” Cornerstone Magazine, https://web.archive.org/web/20110629062853/http://www.cornerstonemag.com/features/iss117/lauren.htm.

60  His most respectable book is Bob Larson, Satanism: The Seduction of America’s Youth (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Incorporated, 1989). Larson’s ministry leaves a bad taste in even the most conservative reaches of American Christianity. See Steven Parks, “An Examination of the Teachings of Bob Larson,” Christian Research Institute, www.equip.org/article/an-examination-of-the-teachings-of-bob-larson/.

61  If you cannot afford a trip to Denver to exercise your demons, do not despair. Bob Larson will now conduct exorcisms via Skype. Scott Bixby, “My $295 Skype Exorcism,” Daily Beast, February 6, 2014, www.thedailybeast.com/my-dollar295-skype-exorcism.

62  Interested Russian-speaking readers are encouraged to visit http://internationalschoolofexorcism.org/russian/, which is property of Bob Larson’s International School of Exorcism® in Denver, Colorado.

63  Academic post-mortems were many, and some fine work came from it. See for example the most important work at the time, James T. Richardson, Joel Best, and David G. Bromley, The Satanism Scare (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1991). Jim Richardson, another new religious movement scholar, took a more legalistic approach. James T. Richardson, “The Social Construction of Satanism: Understanding an International Social Problem,” The Australian Journal of Social Issues 32, no. 1 (1997): 61–85.

64  For a fine overview of how the Satanism Scare impacted the day care schools that were new in the 1980s, see David Finkelhor, Linda Meyer Williams, and Nanci Burns, Nursery Crimes: Sexual Abuse in Day Care (Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1988). Nursery Crimes makes the convincing case that the panic was particularly acute due to the feelings of guilt felt by the first generation of mothers who were forced by economic necessity to leave their young children in the care of strangers while they went to work. The interviewing techniques in which the children’s testimony was manufactured came under particular scrutiny. Sena Garven et al., “More Than Suggestion: The Effect of Interviewing Techniques from the Mcmartin Preschool Case,” Journal of Applied Psychology 83, no. 3 (1998): 347–359. Mary Ann Mason, “The Mcmartin Case Revisited: The Conflict between Social Work and Criminal Justice,” Social Work 36, no. 5 (1991): 391–395.

65  In retrospect, one may wonder whether Lanning’s thankless task – to disabuse the true believers of something they want to believe – was not more of a career message than a choice assignment. In any case, see Kenneth V. Lanning, Satanic, Occult, Ritualistic Crime: A Law Enforcement Perspective (Quantico, MD: National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, FBI Academy, 1989), 9. Author interview with Kenneth Lanning, August 2, 1991. For depth and detail, see Child Sex Rings: A Behavioral Analysis for Criminal Justice Professionals Handling Cases of Child Sexual Exploitation (National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, 1992).

66  Jennifer Leclaire, “Is Hillary Clinton the Antichrist or an Illuminati Witch?” Charisma News, August 11, 2016, www.charismanews.com/opinion/watchman-on-the-wall/59185-is-hillary-clinton-the-antichrist-or-an-illuminati-witch. For the answer, the reader is directed to the video on the site.

67  Paula Young Lee, “With Hillary Clinton, We’ve Seen This Witchhunt Before,” Dame, November 1, 2016, www.damemagazine.com/2016/11/01/hillary-clinton-weve-seen-witchhunt#sthash.O8p8FC0A.dpuf.

68  Kyle Olson, “Bill’s Former Lover: Hillary Clinton a Lesbian, ‘had several abortions’,” The American Mirror, March 29, 2016, www.theamericanmirror.com/hillary-had-several-abortions-kept-chelsea-for-political-appearances-bills-former-lover-says/comment-page-2/. The accompanying video (there is always a video) changes several abortions to multiple abortions and notes that Chelsea survived only because of her utility for political appearances.

69  A representative sampling: Texe W. Marrs, Mystery Mark of the New Age: Satan’s Designs for World Domination (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1988). Texe Marrs, The Destroyer: The Antichrist Is at Hand, 1st ed. (Austin, TX: RiverCrestpubishing, 2016). Texe W. Marrs, Robot Alchemy: Androids, Cyborgs, and the Magic of Artificial Life (Austin, TX: RiverCrest Publishing, 2013). And his magnum opus, Mysterious Monuments: Encyclopedia of Secret Illuminati Designs, Masonic Architecture, and Occult Places (Austin, TX: RiverCrest Pub., 2008).

70  Texe Marrs, Holy Serpent of the Jews: The Rabbis’ Secret Plan for Satan to Crush Their Enemies and Vault the Jews to Global Dominion (Austin, TX: RiverCrest Pub., 2016). Cf. Mike Hanson, Bohemian Grove: Cult of Conspiracy (Austin, TEx: RiverCrest Publishing, 2012). Hanson is probably a Marrs pseudonym given that he is published on Marrs’ home publishing label.

71  Texe W. Marrs, Big Sister Is Watching You: Hillary Clinton and the White House Feminists Who Now Control America—and Tell the President What to Do (Austin, TX.: Living Truth Publishers, 1993).

72  David Icke, The David Icke Guide to the Global Conspiracy (and How to End It) (David Icke, 2007). Cf. Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013). David G. Robertson, Ufos, Conspiracy Theories and the New Age: Millennial Conspiracism (New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016).

73  Philip Bump, “12 Million Americans Believe Lizard People Run Our Country,” The Atlantic, April 2, 2013, www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/04/12-million-americans-believe-lizard-people-run-our-country/316706/. Philip Bump, “How to Spot the Reptilians Running the U.S. Government,” The Atlantic, October 13, 2013, www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/10/how-spot-reptilians-runing-us-government/354496/.

74  Alexandra Petri, “The Hideous, Diabolical Truth about Hillary Clinton,” Washington Post, October 14, 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2016/10/14/the-hideous-diabolical-truth-about-hillary-clinton/?utm_term=.2e624c017108.

75  Adan Salazar, “Hillary ‘Regularly’ Attended Witch’s Church, Clinton Insider Claims,” InfoWars, November 4, 2016, www.infowars.com/hillary-regularly-attended-witchs-church-clinton-insider-claims/. For the news about Johan Podesta’s taste for a concoction of male semen, breast milk, and menstrual blood, see Paul Joseph Watson, “ ‘Spirit Cooking’: Clinton Campaign Chairman Practices Bizarre Occult Ritual,” InfoWars, November 4, 2016, www.infowars.com/spirit-cooking-clinton-campaign-chairman-invited-to-bizarre-satanic-performance/.

76  Alex Jones, “A Note to Our Listening, Viewing And Reading Audiences Concerning Pizzagate Coverage,” InfoWars, March 24, 2017, https://seekingthetruth.info/a-note-to-our-listening-viewing-and-reading-audiences-concerning-pizzagate-coverage/. Cf. Rebecca Hersher, “Webpages Linked to Pizzeria Shooting Go Dark Even As Prosecution Moves Forward,” NPR, December 14, 2016, www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/14/505577985/webpages-linked-to-pizzeria-shooting-go-dark-even-as-prosecution-moves-forward.

Eli Rosenberg, “Alex Jones Apologizes for Promoting ‘Pizzagate’ Hoax,” New York Times, March 25, 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/03/25/business/alex-jones-pizzagate-apology-comet-ping-pong.html.

77  James S. Robbins, “Hillary Clinton Revives Hibernating ’80s ‘sleaze factor’,” USA Today, May 5, 2015, www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/05/05/sleaze-factor-2016-elections-hillary-clinton-column/26653627/v. This space in this issue would not permit even a partial list of articles in the right-wing media tagged ‘sleaze factor’.

78  “Declassified Report Says Putin ‘ordered’ Effort to Undermine Faith in U.S. Election and Help Trump,” Washington Post, January 6, 2017, https://washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/intelligence-chiefs-expected-in-new-york-to-brief-trump-on-russian-hacking/2017/01/06/5f591416-d41a-11e6-9cb0-54ab630851e8_story.html?utm_term=.7b772f79ed61. On the typically tepid Obama reaction, Missy Ryan, Ellen Nakashima and Karen DeYoung, “Obama Administration Announces Measures to Punish Russia for 2016 Election Interference,” Washington Post, December 29, 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-administration-announces-measures-to-punish-russia-for-2016-election-interference/2016/12/29/311db9d6-cdde-11e6-a87f-b917067331bb_story.html?utm_term=.80f7cfdb0235&wpisrc=al_alert-COMBO-politics%252Bnation. Russia for their part, did not deign to react.

79  Julie Pace, “Top Trump Aide in Frequent Contact with Russia’s Ambassador,” Associated Press, January 13, 2017, https://boston.com/news/politics/2017/01/13/top-trump-aide-in-frequent-contact-with-russias-ambassador.

80  Emmarie Huettemanjune, “Where They Stand: Inquiries Into Trump’s Team and Russian Meddling,” New York Times, June 16, 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/06/16/us/politics/congress-trump-russia-investigations.html. Nicholas Confessore, Matthew Rosenberg and Danny Hakim, “How Michael Flynn’s Disdain for Limits Led to a Legal Quagmire,” New York Times, June 18, 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/06/18/us/politics/michael-flynn-intel-group-trump.html?ribbon-ad-idx=5&rref=politics&module=Ribbon&version=context&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Politics&pgtype=article.

81  That FEMA was preparing prison camps for Patriots became ubiquitous in the Patriot movement of the 1990s. Jeffrey Kaplan and Tore Bjørgo, Nation and Race: The Developing Euro-American Racist Subculture (Lebanon, NH: UPNE, 1998), 63.

82  For easily accessible examples, Robert L. Hilliard and Michael C. Keith, Waves of Rancor: Tuning into the Radical Right (New York: Routledge, 2016).

83  Legal Information Institute, Cornell University Law School, www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2381?qt-us_code_temp_noupdates=1#qt-us_code_temp_noupdates.

84  http://tjrs.monticello.org/letter/100. The extract is reproduced without editing.

85  For a selection of this strain of commentary, see Chauncey Devega, “Is Donald Trump a Traitor? His Path to the White House Suggests a Pattern of Profound Disloyalty,” Salon, December 22, 2016, www.salon.com/2016/12/22/is-donald-trump-a-traitor-his-path-to-the-white-house-suggests-a-pattern-of-profound-disloyalty/; Kathleen Parker, “If Obama Is a Muslim, Is Trump a Russian Spy?,” Washington Post, January 6, 2017, www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/if-obama-is-a-muslim-is-trump-a-russian-spy/2017/01/06/26fe7128-d45c-11e6-a783-cd3fa950f2fd_story.html?utm_term=.c4ffd35380d0; Rnuse, “Leading GOP Strategist Labels Trump and His Supporters Traitors,” Politicus, January 2, 2017, www.politicususa.com/2017/01/02/leading-gop-strategist-labels-trump-supporters-traitors.html; John Shattuck, “Donald Trump Raises Specter of Treason,” Boston Globe, December 16, 2016, www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/12/16/trump-raises-specter-treason/zdwgXRuJBMChEXmX5kchhP/story.html; Eric Owens, “Harvard Law Professor (Laurence Tribe): Trump May Have Committed TREASON By Urging Russia To Wage Cyberwarfare,” The Daily Caller, July 30, 2016, http://dailycaller.com/2016/07/30/harvard-law-professor-trump-may-have-committed-treason-by-urging-russia-to-wage-cyberwarfare/.

86  Julie Hirschfield Davis, “Trump Blocks Syrian Refugees and Orders Mexican Border Wall to Be Built,” New York Times, January 25, 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/us/politics/refugees-immigrants-wall-trump.html.

87  John McIntyre Werly, “The Millenarian Right: William Dudley Pelley and the Silver Legion of America” (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1972). Beekman. For a consideration of a number of American fans of German and Italian fascism, see Kaplan and Weinberg, ch. 4. On the process, see the brilliant Paul Hollander, Political Pilgrims: Western Intellectuals in Search of the Good Society, 4th ed. (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1998).

88  For various views, see Angela E. Stent, The Limits of Partnership: Us-Russian Relations in the Twenty-First Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015). David J. Kramer, “Resetting Us – Russian Relations: It Takes Two,” The Washington Quarterly 33, no. 1 (2010). Jeffrey Mankoff, Russian Foreign Policy: The Return of Great Power Politics, vol. 295 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009). And of course, the must read background John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy During the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

89  Jeffrey Kaplan, “Red Dawn Is Now: Race Vs. Nation and the American Election,” Terrorism and Political Violence 29, no. 3 (2017): 1–14.

90  https://twitter.com/donaldjtrumpjr/status/272809716537765888?lang=en.

91  The ‘useful idiot’ term, originally attributed to Lenin, will be considered more fully in the next chapter. That said, it is often a term used by intellectuals to discredit ideas they dislike. See Richard Landes, “From Useful Idiot to Useful Infidel: Meditations on the Folly of 21st-Century ‘Intellectuals’,” Terrorism and Political Violence 25, no. 4 (2013): 621–634.

92  Mike Lofgren, The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government (New York: Viking, 2016). On Bannon’s ideas, see the remarkably neutral Niall Stanage, “THE MEMO: Is Trump a Victim of the ‘deep state’?,” The Hill, June 5, 2017, http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/336178-the-memo-is-trump-a-victim-of-the-deep-state.

93  John Light, “The Deep State, Explained,” Moyers & Company, March 31, 2017, http://billmoyers.com/story/the-deep-state-explained/. Sonam Sheth, “Right-wing Media Blames Reports that Trump Leaked Classified Information to Russia on the ‘deep state’ – Here’s Where that Idea Came From,” Business Insider, May 15, 2017, www.businessinsider.com/trump-deep-state-bannon-cia-fbi-breitbart-fox-news-2017-5. For the red meat of the Deep State V. Donald Trump, see the multipart series on Breitbart that begins with Virgil, “Virgil: Opposition Research – A Guided Tour of the Deep State’s Covert Resistance to Trump,” Breitbart News, March 6, 2017, www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/03/06/virgil-opposition-research-a-guided-tour-of-the-deep-states-covert-resistance-to-trump/.

94  See for example the history of the CIA, John Ranelagh, The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the Cia (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987). Or on foreign policy, Richard A. Harris and Daniel J. Tichenor, A History of the U.S. Political System: Ideas, Interests, and Institutions, 3 vols. (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2010).

95  For cases in point, see Kaplan and Lööw. Cf. for more detail, Peter Knight, Conspiracy Nation: The Politics of Paranoia in Postwar America (New York: New York University Press, 2002). Conspiracy Culture: From the Kennedy Assassination to the X-Files (London ; New York: Routledge, 2000).

96  For chapter and verse, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, All the President’s Men, 40th anniversary edition, Simon and Schuster trade paperback edition. (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 2014).

97  Chris Riotta, “Trump’s Approval Ratings Are Even Plunging In Right-Leaning Poll Reports,” Newsweek, May 30, 2017, www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-approval-ratings-impeachment-odds-white-house-russia-scandal-617650. Indeed, no better evidence might be offered than the election of a Democrat to the US Senate by the great state of Alabama. Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin, “Once a Long Shot, Democrat Doug Jones Wins Alabama Senate Race,” New York Times, December 12, 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/12/12/us/politics/alabama-senate-race-winner.html. Alex Pappas, “Doug Jones Certified as Winner of Alabama Senate Race,” Fox News, December 28, 2017, www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/12/28/judge-rejects-roy-moores-suit-in-alabama-senate-race.html.

98  https://twitter.com/search?q=red%20dawn%20is%20now&src=typd; https://twitter.com/search?q=red%20dawn%20trump&src=typd;

https://twitter.com/search?q=traitor%20trump&src=typd;

https://twitter.com/jackie_r_c.

99  Attorney General Jeff Sessions did not in fact resign, although such a resignation would not have been unwelcome in the Oval Office. Jenna Johnson and William Branigin, “Trump Renews Twitter Attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions,” New York Times, July 25, 2017, https://washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-renews-twitter-attacks-on-attorney-general-jeff-sessions/2017/07/25/003d15ca-7124-11e7-8839-ec48ec4cae25_story.html?utm_term=.d46aa4940386.

100  Colin Beaven, “Putin Would be the Top, Trump Would be the Bottom, or Something,” http://colinbeaven.com/index.php/tag/red-dawn/. The site as of June 2018 however is no longer extant.

101  “The Red Dawn Invasion of the US Has Just Taken a Huge Step Forward,” Government Slaves, January 28, 2017, http://govtslaves.info/the-red-dawn-invasion-of-the-us-has-just-taken-a-huge-step-forward/. Government Slaves is a mirror site which sells access to any whose ideology is compatible with conspiracy theories of the moment. The article is actually from Dave Hodges.

102  Jill Disis, “China OKs trademarks for Ivanka Trump’s Company on Day She Met with Xi,” CNN Money, April 19, 2017, http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/18/news/ivanka-trump-trademarks/index.html. Vishaka George, “Kushner Family Stands to Get $400 Million from a Chinese Firm in ‘Unusually Favorable’ Deal,” Time, March 14, 2017, http://time.com/4700612/jared-kushner-anbang-deal/. Mark Landler, “China Learns How to Get Trump’s Ear: Through Jared Kushner,” New York Times, April 2, 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/04/02/us/politics/trump-china-jared-kushner.html.

103  Dave Hodges, “The Red Dawn Invasion of the US Has Just Taken a Huge Step Forward,” The Common Sense Show, n.d., http://www.thecommonsenseshow.com/the-red-dawn-invasion-of-the-us-has-just-taken-a-huge-step-forward/.

104  Dave Hodges, “If Trump Is Done, America Is Done! We Must Stop Hillary Clinton!,” The Common Sense Show, April 7, 2016, http://www.thecommonsenseshow.com/if-trump-is-done/.

105  Dave Hodges, “Trump Is Inheriting an America That Has Been Conquered from Within (Pt 1),” The Common Sense Show, http://www.thecommonsenseshow.com/?s=Trump+Is+Inheriting+an+America+That+Has+Been+Conquered+from+Within+%28Pt+1%29.

106  Ibid.

107  Dave Hodges, “America Will Be Invaded from Seven Simultaneous Directions the Red Dawn Phase Is Ready to Commence (Part 1),” The Common Sense Show, www.thecommonsenseshow.com/2016/04/01/america-will-be-invaded-from-seven-simultaneous-directions-the-red-dawn-phase-is-ready-to-commence-part-1/. The link to this story is no longer extant in June 2018.

108  www.thecommonsenseshow.com/about/.

109  Star of the execrable 2012 remake of the classic Red Dawn film.

110  Jonah E.R. Loeb, “RED DAWN (1984) was a PROPHECY of the RED DON of 2016,” www.jonaherloeb.com/blog-1/2016/11/5/red-dawn-1984-was-a-prophecy-of-the-red-don-of-2016.

111  Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz, “The “Red Dawn” Edition,” Slate Podcast, www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/gabfest/2016/12/russia_hacking_rex_tillerson_and_ta_nehisi_coates_on_obama_on_the_political.html.

112  Joe Robinson, “Red Dawn: A Russian Civil War Megagame Aar [Part 1],” WARGAMER, October 24, 2017, www.wargamer.com/articles/red-dawn-a-russian-civil-war-megagame-aar-part-1/. The retro application of the Red Dawn title to a discussion of the Russian Revolution popped up in India as well, Sidin Vadukut, “Red Dawn Over India: The Long Shadow of the Russian Revolution,” livemint, March 16, 2018, www.livemint.com/Opinion/CAWAAaEwnGddwQS1ioyTGK/Red-dawn-over-India-the-long-shadow-of-the-Russian-Revoluti.html.

113  The spirit is willing but the spelling and grammar are weak. See “United State [sic] VS Russia,” Facebook, www.facebook.com/events/322016471617537/.

114  “Red Dawn 13 ‘Behind Enemy Lines’,” Flag Raiders Paintball Games, https://flagraiders.com/red-dawn-winter-big-game/. With the completion of the event the announcement was pulled from the net, but for the videos of the event, see https://youtube.com/watch?v=SWATrCK3tJ4.

115  Cezary Jan Strusiewicz, “5 Dark Realities When Putin Wants To Invade Your Country,” Cracked, March 6, 2017, www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-2464-i-live-where-red-dawn-could-become-reality-tomorrow.html.

116  Michael Christopher, “Wolverines: Cold War Classic ‘Red Dawn’ Getting Definitive Collector’s Edition Blu-Ray Release in March,” Vanyaland. Music and Beyond, February 7, 2017, www.vanyaland.com/2017/02/07/wolverines-cold-war-classic-red-dawn-getting-definitive-collectors-edition-blu-ray-release-march/.

117  For anyone who has not heard Billie Holiday’s rendition of “Strange Fruit,” you should, www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnlTHvJBeP0. That Black lives actually do matter in America remains a rather novel idea in American law and US culture.

118  Michael James Pfeifer, Rough Justice: Lynching and American Society, 1874–1947 (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2004). Ken Gonzales-Day, Lynching in the West, 1850–1935 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006).

119  With apologies to the brilliant poet Gil Scott Heron whose song “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” (1970) may have been the worst revolutionary prognostication ever made. Everything is televised! www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGaoXAwl9kw.

Selected bibliography

Abrams, Steve. “Beyond Propaganda: Soviet Active Measures in Putin’s Russia.” Connections: The Quarterly Journal 15, no. 1 (2016): 5–31.

Aleksievich, Svetlana. Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets. London: Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2016.

Barghoorn, Frederick Charles. Soviet Foreign Propaganda. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.

Barkun, Michael. “President Trump and the ‘Fringe.’ ” Terrorism and Political Violence 29, no. 3 (2017): 437–443.

Bateman, Aaron. “The Kgb and Its Enduring Legacy.” The Journal of Slavic Military Studies 29, no. 1 (2016): 23–47.

Bennett, David Harry. The Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History. 2nd ed. New York: Vintage Books, 1995.

Bernstein, Carl, and Bob Woodward. All the President’s Men. 40th anniversary edition, Simon and Schuster trade paperback edition. ed. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 2014.

Blackstock, Nelson. Cointelpro: The Fbi’s Secret War on Political Freedom. New York: Anchor Foundation: Distributed by Pathfinder Press, 1988.

Bremmer, Ian, and Samuel Charap. “The Siloviki in Putin’s Russia: Who They Are and What They Want.” The Washington Quarterly 30, no. 1 (2007): 83–92.

Cannon, Mark W. “The Crusades against the Masons, Catholics, and Mormons: Separate Waves of a Common Current.” Brigham Young University Studies 3, no. 2 (1961): 23–40.

Cichowlas, Ola. “In Russia, It Is Deja-Vu All over Again: How Russians Fell Back in Love with the Kgb and Stalin.” The Polish Quarterly of International Affairs, no. 2 (2013): 111–124.

Drabble, John. “The Fbi, Cointelpro-White Hate, and the Decline of Ku Klux Klan Organizations in Alabama, 1964–1971.” Alabama Review 61, no. 1 (2008): 3–47.

Finkelhor, David, Linda Meyer Williams, and Nanci Burns. Nursery Crimes: Sexual Abuse in Day Care. Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1988.

Gaddis, John Lewis. Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy During the Cold War. Rev. and expanded ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Gonzales-Day, Ken. Lynching in the West, 1850–1935. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006.

Hilliard, Robert L, and Michael C Keith. Waves of Rancor: Tuning into the Radical Right. London: Routledge, 2016.

Hoerl, Kristen, and Erin Ortiz. “Organizational Secrecy and the Fbi’s Cointelpro – Black Nationalist Hate Groups Program, 1967–1971.” Management Communication Quarterly 29, no. 4 (2015): 590–615.

Howell, Jaclyn. “Not Just Crazy: An Explanation for the Resonance of the Birther Narrative.” Communication Monographs 7, no. 4 (2012): 428–447.

Illarionov, Andrei. “The Siloviki in Charge.” Journal of Democracy 20, no. 2 (2009): 69–72.

Jacobs, Bo. “Atomic Kids: Duck and Cover and Atomic Alert Teach American Children How to Survive Atomic Attack.” Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies 40, no. 1 (2010): 25–44.

Johnson, Kevin R. “The Antiterrorism Act, the Immigration Reform Act, and Ideological Regulation in the Immigration Laws: Important Lessons for Citizens and Noncitizens.” St. Mary‘s Law Journal 28 (1996): 833–882.

Kaplan, Jeffrey, and Tore Bjørgo. “America’s Last Prophetic Witness: The Literature of the Rescue Movement.” Terrorism and Political Violence 5, no. 2 (Autumn 1993): 58–77.

———. “Absolute Rescue: Absolutism, Defensive Action and the Resort to Force.” Terrorism and Political Violence 7, no. 3 (Autumn 1995): 128–163.

———. Nation and Race: The Developing Euro-American Racist Subculture. Lebanon, NH: UPNE, 1998.

———. “History and Terrorism.” The Journal of American History 98, no. 1 (2011): 101–105.

———. “Red Dawn Is Now: Race Vs. Nation and the American Election.” Terrorism and Political Violence 29, no. 3 (2017): 411–424.

Kaplan, Jeffrey, and Heléne Lööw. The Cultic Milieu: Oppositional Subcultures in an Age of Globalization. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 2002.

Klement, Frank L. Dark Lanterns: Secret Political Societies, Conspiracies, and Treason Trials in the Civil War. Baton Rouge, LA: LSU Press, 1989.

Knight, Peter. Conspiracy Nation: The Politics of Paranoia in Postwar America. New York: New York University Press, 2002.

Landes, Richard. “From Useful Idiot to Useful Infidel: Meditations on the Folly of 21st-Century ‘Intellectuals.’ ” Terrorism and Political Violence 25, no. 4 (2013): 621–634.

Lanning, Kenneth V. Satanic, Occult, Ritualistic Crime: A Law Enforcement Perspective. Quantico, MD: National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, FBI Academy, 1989.

Levine, Bruce. “Conservatism, Nativism, and Slavery: Thomas R. Whitney and the Origins of the Knownothing Party.” The Journal of American History 88, no. 2 (2001): 455–488.

Lofgren, Mike. The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government. New York: Viking, 2016.

Luhrssen, David. Secret Societies and Clubs in American History. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2015.

Mankoff, Jeffrey. Russian Foreign Policy: The Return of Great Power Politics. Vol. 295. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009.

Markel, Howard, and Alexandra Minna Stern. “The Foreignness of Germs: The Persistent Association of Immigrants and Disease in American Society.” The Milbank Quarterly 80, no. 4 (2002): 757–788.

Marsden, George M. Fundamentalism and American Culture. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

O’Brien, Gerald V. “Indigestible Food, Conquering Hordes, and Waste Materials: Metaphors of Immigrants and the Early Immigration Restriction Debate in the United States.” Metaphor and Symbol 18, no. 1 (2003): 33–47.

Pfeifer, Michael James. Rough Justice: Lynching and American Society, 1874–1947. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2004.

Richardson, James T. “The Social Construction of Satanism: Understanding an International Social Problem.” The Australian Journal of Social Issues 32, no. 1 (1997): 61–85.

Richardson, James T., Joel Best, and David G. Bromley. The Satanism Scare. Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1991.

Shultz, Richard H., and Roy Godson. Dezinformatsia: Active Measures in Soviet Strategy. Washington, DC: Pergamon-Brassey, 1984.

Soldatov, Andrei, and Irina Borogan. The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the Kgb. New York: PublicAffairs, 2011.

Solzhenit︠s︡yn, Aleksandr Isaevic. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Translated by H. T. Willetts. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005.

Streusand, Douglas E., Norman A. Bailey, and Francis H. Marlo. The Grand Strategy that Won the Cold War: Architecture of Triumph. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2016.

Svetlana, Boym, and Svetlana Boym. Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.

Thomson, Graeme. I Shot a Man in Reno: A History of Death by Murder, Suicide, Fire, Flood, Drugs, Disease, and General Misadventure, as Related in Popular Song. New York: Continuum, 2008.

Tichenor, Daniel J. Dividing Lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America. Princeton Studies in American Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002.

Werly, John McIntyre. The Millenarian Right: William Dudley Pelley and the Silver Legion of America. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1972.

Wyllie, Timothy, and Adam Parfrey. Love, Sex, Fear, Death: The Inside Story of the Process Church of the Final Judgment. Port Townsend, WA: Feral House, 2009.

4

Life during wartime

Active measures in the microchip era

Introduction

Life was a simple thing in 1984. The Reagan Administration had determined that the Soviet Union had outlived its usefulness and National Security Directives 75 and 77 decreed that what President Reagan referred to as the ‘Evil Empire’ would be brought to heal and disposed of as publicly as possible.[1] It was in these years that the film Red Dawn, written by Kevin Reynolds and starring Patrick Swayze, thrilled American teenage boys with its depiction of young guerilla fighters rolling back the Soviet occupation of the United States. Where Czechoslovakia would brood over the failures of Prague Spring in 1968 and Karta 77 in 1977,[2] and Hungary recalled the failed American promises of support in 1956,[3] American confidence was at its zenith in Reagan’s Morning in America.[4]

By 2017 that optimism was gone; the 2016 presidential campaign shocked and awed a nation for its hateful and willfully ignorant tone, a Russophile populist President sits in the White House, and a Special Prosecutor investigates the ties of both Donald Trump, his family, and his inner circle to Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The early policy proposals and the unending stream of acrimonious tweets emanating from the President appalled the world, and after a brief flirtation the European far right too has made its disdain for Donald Trump increasingly clear.[5]

The chaos emanating from the US in 2017 and 2018 harks back to the naiveté of Red Dawn and to a time in Eastern Europe when troops and communist satraps[6] formed the bones and sinews of foreign occupation. In the age of the microchip and the Russian use of hybrid warfare to conduct its war on the Western world, however, troops are passé. Disinformation and old-fashioned espionage helped to achieve by electoral means what Soviet might failed to achieve in the Cold War.[7] Is it a moment for the passive resistance of the Good Soldier Schweich, or is it time for the “Street Fighting Man” to emerge and reclaim America one bullet at a time in the model of Patrick Swayze’s intrepid teenaged patriots?[8]

In the fears engendered by the Cold War, Sen. Joseph McCarthy stepped forward to lead what is now considered a witch hunt to find the hidden hand of international communism in America. Those suspected of communist sympathies, be they Hollywood writers or university professors, were singled out and often harried from their posts.[9] But in 21st-century America, the extreme polarization of the electorate has spawned no messianic politicians, little violence, and, as the extent of Russian interference in the 2016 American elections becomes better documented, no “Red Dawn” zealots to target local Trump supporters who appear ‘squishy soft’[10] on the Russian threat. Instead, constitutionalism, the legal process in the form of a Special Prosecutor, and the electoral process appear to be making, however belatedly, necessary corrections in the political process. It seems that 2018 America has no more place for a street fighting man than did 1969 London.

The one strand that links the anti-communism of the Cold War to the present day however is the threat presented by Russia. Declared the greatest threat to the United States by the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the dawn of the Trump era, Russia’s struggle with the United States for global dominance survived the collapse of the Soviet state and today defines the American security environment no less than it did in the nuclear confrontation of the Cold War.[11]

The siren song of the historian is how did this happen? As any practitioner of the field will answer, there is no single reason and a cottage industry has already arisen of those seeking to more fully answer the query. This chapter will look at only one aspect of the larger issue, contending that the Cold War never ended, it simply entered a new phase which on the Russian side is under much the same rebranded management. In that battle, Moscow is now in the ascendant. To achieve its current dominance, the Kremlin employed many weapons, but none more effectively than the venerable Active Measures (Aктивные мероприятия) campaign whose origins go back to 1948. And herein lies a tale.

Beginnings

I think there are many times when it would be most efficient to use nuclear weapons. However, the public opinion in this country and throughout the world throw up their hands in horror when you mention nuclear weapons just because of the propaganda that has been fed to them.[12]

(Gen. Curtis LeMay)

The Cold War developed quickly, settling by the early 1950s into a pattern of hard polarity. Hopes that the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe would end in Potsdam and Yalta, the American Red Scare had begun, McCarthyism was on the rise, and containment was the only operant element of American foreign policy.[13] The Americans owned a nuclear monopoly in the first flush of the Cold War and by the end of the 1950s the American nuclear arsenal still dwarfed that of the Soviet Union.

So vast was the gap that Gen. Lemay assured appalled American planners that Russia could be obliterated without the loss of a single American life.[14] Given the vast nuclear imbalance of the time, it was doable, and at the cost perhaps of one of the most unthinkable acts of mass murder in a foreign country during peacetime in human history, the sudden disappearance of major Russian cities would have brought the Cold War to a conclusion before it ever really started. While the Americans at the time greatly overestimated Soviet nuclear capabilities, the Kremlin was not so sanguine. The answer, adopted first under Khrushchev, was simple: Strategic deception.[15] Empty bunkers were built like a shell game on a New York City street corner, opening occasionally to show waiting satellites a missile, or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof. This presumably gave the Soviets space and time to build, but at the cost of committing them to a ruinous militarization process that their economy could not hope to support – a fact that was not lost on the Reagan Administration of the 1980s.

This was the era when American nuclear planning envisioned a MAD scenario, that is, Mutually Assured Destruction.[16] To most at the time, MAD seemed to live up to its name – an apocalyptic dénouement that had the potential to destroy all life on earth which only a madman would dream of putting into practice. Implicit in this scenario was the certainty that what nuclear weapons and radiation could not accomplish, the resultant dust storms would in what came to be called nuclear winter. Nuclear winter was posited to be an extinction event along the lines of that which doomed the dinosaurs.[17]

MAD rested on the assumption that by employing the full force of the nuclear triad – intercontinental ballistic missiles, conventional airplanes, and submarine launched ballistic missiles – the potential destruction would be so great that any rational enemy would be deterred.[18] MAD targeted both cities and military targets, hoping to destroy a sufficient degree of an enemy’s nuclear weapons before they could be launched, making the exchange survivable. In its most extreme formulation, MAD worked precisely because it was based on MAR; Mutually Assured Rationality.[19] No rational man would undertake to end the world or to kill millions, if not billions, of his fellow human beings. It is a sense of shared rationality that the world of 2017 most sorely lacks, and what made the ascension of Donald Trump most worrisome to many.[20]

MAD typified what many took to be the madness of nuclear thinking. Perhaps the best artifact of the time is the brilliant 1964 film by Stanley Kubrick, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, starring Peter Sellers.[21] In this brilliant satire, a mad general, Jack D. Ripper, who has more than a passing resemblance to Curtis LeMay, launches a nuclear attack on Russia in retaliation for the dreaded communist fluoridation plot which seeks to drain the vital fluids of the American male. This triggers Armageddon.[22] A secret Russian-enhanced radiation device brilliantly mimics nuclear winter, which turns the unintended attack on Russia from an event which, if pursued to its MAD max, would cost only about 20 million American lives to mutually assured genocide. What struck those who in those years had some knowledge of nuclear policy was the accuracy of Kubrick’s knowledge of nuclear strategy which was already in transition from the MAD approach to the more malleable flexible response doctrine championed by President Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara.[23]

Flexible response was a retooling of the entire American defense posture, both nuclear and conventional, that took place under Sec. McNamara.[24] In conventional terms, it allowed the US the flexibility to respond to Soviet aggression at a time and place of its choosing. A change of regime in one part of the world could result in a similar US move elsewhere. A classic example of the doctrine in action was the overthrow of Ethiopian Emperor Hailie Selassie by the Soviet supported military force that came to be known as the Derg in 1978. This was quickly countered by a US-supported takeover of Somalia.[25] This allowed both Russian and American personnel the opportunity to switch countries and in passing at airports regale the other side with horror stories of what awaited them in their new port of call. In retrospect, the US got a Soviet-built, deep-water port and unending tribal conflict in Mogadishu while the Soviets got an infinitely nicer but strategically challenged perch on the Horn of Africa. A good time was had by all in those years, for it was a time when the Cold War had unwritten rules and an unspoken gentlemen’s agreement that gave opposing sides a degree of camaraderie and assistance when needed.[26]

The nuclear aspect of flexible response was more problematic. Rather than the all or nothing, use it or lose it posture of MAD, flexible response posited a measured nuclear exchange that could at first eschew targeting major cities and would spare the leadership of each side under the theory that, eminently rational men that they were, the leaders could halt the conflict before it became too onerous.[27] Under flexible response, nuclear war was theoretically winnable and had we known then what we know now, it might have been won had the US taken the irrational step of initiating a nuclear conflict. The theory was almost tested in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, but the Russians backed down and missiles failed to fly.[28]

Enter perhaps the most acute observation made in Dr. Strangelove, whereby the Soviet Ambassador, when asked why the Russians would construct a doomsday device, answered that the Russians simply could not afford to keep up the arms race, the space race, and the peace race with the US when the Russian people keep whining that they just want refrigerators in their apartments. It was the economic burden rather than a conflict of arms which eventually brought down the Soviet Union.

Which brings us back to Gen. Curtis “Bombs Away” LeMay. As Gen. LeMay lamented, what the Soviets were good at was propaganda and this is what they dispensed with a reasonable degree of success. Deception after all was practiced from the earliest days of Lenin’s rule, with the literature of the time filled with descriptions of Potemkin villages, model factories whose luxuries were disassembled and set up at the next factory on the itinerary of the latest group of western political tourists.[29] Words after all are cheaper than nuclear bombs and infinitely less expensive than delivery systems for a nuclear arsenal. Moreover, in the immediate post-War world, the Soviet Union had only words. The United States controlled the world’s nuclear weapons while the almost unimaginable destruction that World War II wrought on Russia left them with little in the way of conventional weapons with which to face the Western democracies. So it was to words and the covert support of the party faithful in the Western world that Stalin turned.[30]

The origins of the active measures campaign

Active Measures was at the heart of Soviet policy as it confronted the West in an era when nuclear war was much feared but increasingly unlikely to occur.[31] It made a virtue of weakness as the myriad of Eastern European political jokes of the era attested. Why do the Five-Year Plans seek to catch up to the West but not to surpass it? So they won’t see the holes in our clothes was the knowing answer. Political jokes were rife in Eastern Europe at the time. For planners however, if economic and military parity is beyond reach, deception is the only logical step.

Active Measures were the ultimate creature of the Soviet system.[32] Its primary hallmark is univocality – every official voice saying the same thing in the same way. This was true whether in times of crisis or just another day in the bureaucratic salt mines and it requires a level of coordination and discipline impossible in democratic countries.[33] Its objectives were grandiose given the means at hand: To influence global discourse in favor of Soviet positions at the expense of the West. One of its practitioners in the 1980s, Gen. Oleg Kalugen minimized the impact of Active Measures, and in this he was certainly correct at the time:

None of these active measures had a determining effect on the outcome of the cold war, but they were a nuisance for the United States and played a role in our ongoing propaganda battle.[34]

But they formed a model that would be exploited brilliantly by the Putin regime in a time where the technology to marry ends to means does exist.

The first stirrings of the Active Measures campaign was tentative at best, with pieces of what would become a centralized program parceled out to different parts of the intelligence apparatus. For example, the key disinformation (Дезинформация) component was tasked to the Information Committee (Комитет по информации), a doomed marriage of the civilian KGB (Комите́т госуда́рственной безопа́сности or Committee on State Security) and the military GRU (Гла́вное разве́дывательное управле́ние or Main Intelligence Agency – shorthand for military intelligence) Foreign Intelligence Directorates from 1947–1951.[35] Military and civilian agencies seldom cohabit well together, but the presence of the GRU in a mission for which it was ill suited suggests the importance of the nuclear imbalance in the Active Measures program.

By 1959, the KGB’s First Chief Directorate, responsible for foreign intelligence, had seized control of the program, both centralizing it and devoting considerably greater resources to the effort. General Ivan Agayants took control of what had become known as Department D in the 1960s and the Active Measures campaign as we understand it today was well and truly born.[36]

Structure

Active Measures were difficult for the West to counter for a number of reasons, but first and foremost was their structure. They were by design and definition covert actions – actions not intended to be traced directly to their origin – but they skillfully mixed overt (white), mixed (gray), and covert (black) messages through a variety of channels designed to convey a single message. The process is neatly illustrated in Figure 4.1.[37]

The Active measures programs, despite such notable successes as the anti-neutron bomb campaign during the Carter Administration of the 1970s, were of marginal impact during the Cold War in the West. The Soviet campaign against the neutron bomb did not come cheap. The US estimates that the Soviets spent more than US$100 million over three years on the effort, which included the mobilization of international Communist Parties, front organizations, and agents of influence.[38] The anti-neutron bomb campaign worked so well that the theme was perfectly satirized by the acute punk band the Dead Kennedys’ Kill the Poor which assured their listeners that the neutron bomb was ideal for doing away with the enemy without damaging property in the process.

Flushed with this success, the Soviets in 1979 unleashed an even wider Active Measures campaign against the deployment of the new generation of SS-20 Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles. Where the neutron bomb campaign focused its opprobrium primarily on the United States, the campaign against the SS-20s targeted all of Western Europe, especially NATO nations. In this case however, the Soviet’s reach far exceeded its grasp. It not only failed to dissuade deployment of the system, it brought the Active Measures program to Western attention and Western nations began to bring the Active Measures program to the light of public scrutiny. Uncharacteristically, the Carter Administration failed to cave in to Soviet pressure and for the first time the Active Measures campaigns rose to the level that the West deemed it necessary to counter them on both the overt and covert levels.[39]

Active Measures had more impact in the less developed countries of Africa, Latin America and in the always conspiracy-minded Middle East, but these successes were transient at best.[40] This does not minimize the impressive breadth and persistence of the campaign which in retrospect was remarkable.[41]

By the mid-1970s, the Active Measures campaign was reaching its zenith and after 1975 the integration of the white, gray, and black strands had become virtually seamless.[42] This was helped in no small amount by the Western revulsion against the Vietnam War, the publication of the “Pentagon Papers” by Daniel Ellsberg and such tell all books as Phillip Agee’s anti-CIA epic rant Inside the Company which was published in 1975.[43] For those of the age to remember the Vietnam era, popular disgust with America and all of its works did not originate with the election of Donald Trump. Rather, it is a cyclical process that is peculiarly American.

Figure 4.1A typology of active measures themes, messages, and techniques

Campaigns

Active Measures campaigns were many and varied, but by the 1970s they had taken on the same deadening sameness that was the hallmark of Soviet life.[44] The process had been bureaucratized, the ideas stilted, and the campaigns took on the flavor of factory work, which is what they were.[45] Clearly, assignment to Department D was a dire career message for all concerned.[46] But if creativity was at a minimum, breadth and ambition were not lacking. A partial table of contents from an August 1987 State Department report on Soviet Active Measures suggests the scope of such operations:

- Chapter II. Soviet Religious Organizations as a Tool of Influence

- Chapter III. The Soviet Peace Committee

- Chapter IV Recent Anti-American Forgeries

- Chapter V. The U.S.S.R.’s AIDS Disinformation Campaign

- Chapter VI. Soviet Disinformation on Chemical and Biological Warfare

- Chapter VII. The Soviet Propaganda and Active Measures Campaign on Afghanistan

- Chapter X. Soviet Active Measures in the United States[47]

Of these, several are of particular interest for what would follow in the Putin era as they illustrate not only the persistence of the Active Measures campaign, but also its ability to combine tools, means, and modalities to interrelate campaigns (комбинация or the art of combinations). The earliest and perhaps most successful examples were the peace campaigns and the ecumenical religious front groups.

Religion, Russia, and the World Council of Churches

By the 1980s, the Soviets had achieved a near monopoly on the word ‘peace’ (мир).[48] There were peace committees in myriad countries, a well-meaning few of whom were not actually front groups. There were disarmament groups and anti-nuclear groups, just as there were local groups and international groups. What they had in common was a perception of the Soviet Union as champions of peace and the United States and its allies as war mongers.[49] The peace program combined neatly with the religious program whereby the officially atheist Soviet state and its Warsaw Pact allies deployed a small army of ‘peace priests’(мирных священников) – a ragtag collection of idealists, intelligence operators, and agents of influence who were able to infiltrate the ecumenical movements that were inevitable at the conclusion of World War II.

The appearance of the peace priests and the Soviet foray into global ecumenism came at a time of increasing pressure on religion within the Soviet Union. Nikita Khrushchev – he of the famed 1956 ‘Secret Speech’ that became for a season the Holy Grail for which Western intelligence agencies strived – was engaged in a destalinization policy that allowed Alexander Solzhenitsyn to publish the stunning account of life in the gulag with One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.[50]

On the religious front, however, Khrushchev’s view was more that of the Marxist fundamentalist. Communism and religion could not coexist, and so an intensive drive against faith was launched in 1959. It did not abate until Khrushchev’s removal in 1964.[51] During that time, churches and mosques throughout the Soviet Union were closed and the monastic institutions were decimated. The gulag archipelago was soon newly populated with believers who were too stubborn to abjure their faith, even if only for official consumption.[52]

The pressure on Russian religious communities was ramped up in 1961. The primary target was the Russian Orthodox Church, the spiritual heart of Russian society. Numerous churches were closed, and in 1961 the Monastery of the Caves (Киево-Печерская Лавра) in Kiev was shuttered as well.[53] Founded in 1051, the monastery and cave complex suffered considerable damage in the communist era but remains today a leading attraction for the faithful and tourists alike in the Ukraine.[54] Jehovah’s Witnesses, the True Orthodox Church, Baptists of various denominations, and Pentecostals were also restricted by 1961. By the time of Khrushchev’s fall, only 6,000 places of worship remained open in the Soviet Union.[55]

Khrushchev’s persecution of religion within the Soviet Union was however not reflected in the regime’s attempts to infiltrate the post-War ecumenical movement with a particular focus on the World Council of Churches (WCC).[56] In the post-War Western European religious landscape, two approaches to the Soviet threat emerged. Pope Pius XII fully supported the United States, endorsing the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan.[57] In keeping with Catholic historical tradition, the Pope was wary of ecumenism and thus the Catholic Church would have no involvement in the WCC. The WCC for its part held that religion should not be identified with any particular political or religious system. Rather, it could act as a unifying force in a world that was already polarized between East and West.[58]

The first WCC gathering took place in Amsterdam in 1948. It consisted of churches from the United States and both sides of the European divide. The Russian Orthodox Church was not among their number. American Ambassador to Russia Walter Bedell Smith offers an explanation for the decision. First and foremost was Soviet opposition to the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church did not attend either, but at the time of the decision this was not yet clear. Second, and perhaps more ironic, was Russia’s outrage over the implication that the Soviet government, through the Russian Orthodox Church, dominated the churches of satellite states. This was revealed in a secret telegram from Smith to Secretary of State George Marshall:

Opening speech by Russian patriarch largely historical but concluding paragraphs noted and vehemently denied charges by “enemies of orthodoxy” and “of Russian people“ that Russian Church attempts “subject sister churches to its influence, direction and domination.”[59]

Such suggestions were made in Amsterdam, but if it was of any consolation to Patriarchs Christopher of Alexandria and Alexander of Antioch, these were not made by the churches of satellite states.[60]

The verbal battles between East and West were joined by dueling elites from each system, but the WCC in 1948 cleaved to neither East nor West, neither capitalism nor communism. In this it followed the great Protestant theologian Karl Barth:

Let us not join in this conflict! It doesn’t concern us as Christians. It is not a genuine, necessary or interesting conflict. It is purely a conflict over power. We can only warn of the much greater sin of wanting to sort out this conflict by means of a third world war. All we can do is make use of the fact that we [i.e. as Swiss] are geographically ‘in between’ to address any easing of tension, any remnant of reason that mankind, notoriously irrational, may yet retain. All we can do is walk between the two hostile giants with the Gospel in our hearts and on our lips, pleading: ‘Deliver us from evil!’ … The following question stands as a warning to us: Since the opposition between East and West consists simply in this battle of giants, how can it be Christian from any point of view to come out in support of either East or West? Is it not the case that the path of the community of Jesus Christ at present has to take its own alternative, third direction.[61]

This neutrality was reflected in the final document issued by the WCC at the conclusion of the Amsterdam Assembly. In “The Church and the Disorder of Society,” a careful examination of the attraction to communism was made and attempts to bridge the gap between Christianity and communism were proffered. The document was carefully phrased and is worth some examination in light of what would happen later as Soviet influence over the WCC increased:

Christians should ask why communism in its modern totalitarian form makes so strong an appeal to great masses of people in many parts of the world. They should recognize the hand of God in the revolt of multitudes against injustice that gives communism much of its strength. They should seek to recapture for the Church the original Christian solidarity with the world’s distressed people, not to curb their aspirations towards justice, but, on the contrary, to go beyond them and direct them towards the only road which does not lead to a blank wall, obedience to God’s will and His justice.

Christians should realize that for many, especially for many young men and women, communism seems to stand for a vision of human equality and universal brotherhood for which they were prepared by Christian influences. Christians who are beneficiaries of capitalism should try to see the world as it appears to many who know themselves excluded from its privileges and who see in communism a means of deliverance from poverty and insecurity. All should understand that the proclamation of racial equality by communists and their support of the cause of colonial peoples makes a strong appeal to the populations of Asia and Africa and to racial minorities elsewhere. It is a great human tragedy that so much that is good in the motives and aspirations of many communists and of those whose sympathies they win has been transformed into a force that engenders new forms of injustice· and oppression, and that what is true in communist criticism should be used to give convincing power to untrustworthy propaganda.[62]

The report went on to consider the conflict between Christianity and Marxism:

1) The communist promise of what amounts to a complete redemption of man in history; (2) the belief that a particular class by virtue of its role as the bearer of a new order is free from the sins and ambiguities that Christians believe to be characteristic of all human existence; (3) the materialistic and deterministic teachings, however they may be qualified, that are incompatible with belief in God and with the Christian view of man as a person, made in God’s image and responsible to Him; (4) the ruthless methods of communists in dealing with their opponents; (5) the demand of the party on its members for an exclusive and unqualified loyalty which belongs only to God, and the coercive policies of communist dictatorship in controlling every aspect of life.[63]

Capitalism too came in for criticism:

The Church should make clear that there are conflicts between Christianity and capitalism. The developments of capitalism vary from country to country, and often the exploitation of the workers that was characteristic of early capitalism has been corrected in considerable measure by the influence of trade unions, social legislation and responsible management. But (1) capitalism tends to subordinate what should be the primary task of any economy the meeting of human needs-to the economic advantages of those who have most power over its institutions. (2) It tends to produce serious inequalities. (3) It has developed a practical form of materialism in western nations in spite of their Christian background, for it has placed the greatest emphasis upon success in making money. (4) It has also kept the people of capitalist countries subject to a kind of fate which has taken the form of such social catastrophes as mass unemployment. responsibility of Christians to seek new, creative solutions which never allow either justice or freedom to destroy the other.[64]

Why was the 1948 discussion of capitalism and communism so even handed and, in retrospect, reasonable, even though many of the American delegates found the criticism of capitalism offensive? Much of the answer lay in the absence of the Russian churches. This was rectified in 1961 – the height of the Khrushchev crusade against religion in Russia – when the Russian Orthodox Church joined the WCC. With them came the Georgian Orthodox, Armenian, Estonian Lutheran, Latvian Lutheran, and Baptist Churches, and with them too came a cadre of KGB operatives. The KGB contingent in the Russian delegation grew with each subsequent Assembly.[65] The influx of Russian churches and their KGB compatriots changed the Assembly’s voting pattern and enforced a far more rigid control of Soviet Bloc churchmen than was possible in Amsterdam. Thus, each subsequent Assembly would reflect to ever greater degrees Soviet propaganda themes.

Today the politicization of religion is taken for granted. It was not always so. Before the ‘fundamentalist phenomenon’ of 1979, religion was a private matter in the United States.[66] The trend toward fundamentalist withdrawal from public affairs stems from the pyrrhic victory of the Tennessee Scopes Trial in 1925 in which a Tennessee teacher, John Thomas Scopes violated state law by teaching evolution in his classroom. The resulting show trial brought the best legal minds in the country to bear on a case in which Scopes was convicted. The resultant furor however, caricatured religious fundamentalists in particular and Southerners in general as backwards, ignorant, and just plain silly. H. L. Mencken’s coverage of the trial is not to be missed for its satirical elegance.[67]

This induced fundamentalist Protestants to unconsciously follow the lead of the Catholic Church of the day and to withdraw to the greatest extent possible from mainstream culture, centering their lives on the church/parish community and keeping their children from the hands of Satan by educating them in religious schools for Catholics and homeschools for Protestants.[68] Protestant fundamentalists would therefore watch appalled from the sidelines as first the Supreme Court removed prayer from public schools in 1962 and then legalized abortion in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.[69] It was not until the 1979 emergence of the Moral Majority lead by Virginia pastor Jerry Falwell that the religious right as an electoral factor fully emerged onto the American public square.[70]

This history of separation between state, religion, and political action is what made Pres. Truman’s initiative so bold. Religion in the public square in America in the 1940s was a polite, largely elitist affair conducted by intellectuals from the Mainline Protestant denominations. Such men dominated the State Department and the newly minted CIA, and it was their voices heard most loudly in Amsterdam in 1948. This elite concern for matters of faith is what made the Truman initiative possible.

The problem the West faced in its conflict with communism was the appeal of Marxism to social and economic justice. The capitalist record in these areas was, and is, a weak point. Religious faith has traditionally been the bulwark against reform. This made religion a natural defense against precisely the kind of critique of capitalism as was offered by the WCC in Amsterdam. At least in the religion-rich United States. In Western Europe – a more secular culture that even then was on its way to what today might be called post-Christian – the answer was less convincing.[71]

The European scene was quite different from that of the US. There, Protestant religious activism was channeled into parliamentary politics via Christian Democratic parties while the Catholic Church engaged in a protracted and ultimately losing battle against secularism in Catholic countries like Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal.[72] The signal event in the fundamentalist phenomenon was of course the Iranian Revolution in 1979, but that is a story for another time and another place. The widespread interest in the WCC’s ecumenical approach appeared to bridge the gap, offering an America that needed no convincing of the evils of communism and a crisis-ridden and demoralized Western Europe engaged in 1948 in the rebuilding of a war-ravaged continent, a middle way.

The elitist Protestant nature of the American governmental Brahmins was reflected in their confidence that Pope Pious XII’s pro-American and strongly anti-communist stance would be a good base on which to build. Myron C. Taylor, an industrialist and formerly President Roosevelt’s envoy to the Pope, suggested that a religious bulwark against communist expansion could be constructed from a religio-ideological alliance with the Papacy.[73] The problem however was that the Pope’s standing among Catholics in Western Europe was not commensurate with the way he was perceived by Americans. Moreover, the Catholic Church was far from the bastion of American ideals that the President and the Protestant intellectuals around him believed it to be. In the 1940s, a great deal of scholarly ink was spilled arguing the pros and cons of Pope Leo XIII’s 1899 encyclical Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae which made what he dubbed ‘Americanism’ a heresy of the Church.[74]

Read today, the encyclical is as puzzling as the Hussite utraquism controversy five centuries previous. Based more on contemporary French politics than on anything in America, the ruling is based on what many critics in the 1940s deemed a misreading of the autobiography of Isaac Thomas Hecker, the 19th-century founder of the Paulist Fathers.[75] The bulk of the encyclical centers on points of doctrine of interest to few in the present day, but is important for two primary points. First, it reasserts the doctrine of papal infallibility, itself still a novel doctrine in Catholicism.[76] Second and most to the point, it condemns the American habit of turning religion into a kind of spiritual smorgasbord in which people are empowered to pick and choose the doctrines of their liking, leaving the rest on the table for others to deal with:

All of this is in keeping with the Church’s withdrawal from American public life, which began in the 1890s and reached its zenith in the 1920s. In the economic and political realities of the post-War world however, the zeal of the Church to guard the moral purity of its flock was already antiquated. Yet it was still a matter of passionate debate within the Church. In Truman’s era, the Pope’s unwavering support was perhaps heartening, but in the global battle against communism, Stalin’s too-oft quoted quip “and how many divisions does the pope have” seems apropos.[77] For Truman, the way forward would have to be via the long and twisting path of Christian ecumenism.

Truman’s own view was of the sort that the heresy of Americanism sought to condemn: Simplistic, eclectic, and deeply millenarian.[78] In keeping with American habit and tradition, he saw the world in stark Manichean terms. There was good and there was evil. Democracy and capitalism are good. Dictatorship and communism are evil. One is godly and the other atheistic. The world is an arena for struggle, for conflict between good and evil, but the light at the end of the tunnel is the eschatological promise that good will eventually triumph, that there will be a Judgment and that in the end, America is the nation of destiny, the coat to which all men will cleave. Taylor no doubt agreed, but he was so closely identified with the Vatican that the Protestant intellectuals concerned with the WCC saw him with suspicion.[79]

Enter State Department Officer J. Graham Parsons, a Protestant of the first order assigned to Taylor’s staff. His observation of the situation was acute: “[the prospect of the] head of the Church of Rome … sitting on his tiny little island in the centre of the city surrounded by a Red Sea of Communist Italy … sort of boggled the mind.”[80] The State Department itself was of little help in the effort to coordinate an anti-communist Catholic/Protestant coalition. For example, to the idea that the US could recognize the WCC as the same sort of sovereign state of Protestantism that is accorded the Vatican, the Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs George Walbridge Perkins, Jr. informed Secretary of State Dean Achison on 16 February 1950 in a cable stamped ‘secret’:

Subject: Relations with the Holy See and with Leaders of Protestant Faiths

In response to your inquiry, it would not be practicable to parallel establishment of diplomatic relations with the Holy See by the appointment of a corresponding emissary to a Protestant agency such as the World Council of Churches. The World Council is an association of denominations without reference to nationality and not a sovereign entity like the Holy See. Mr. Taylor looked into this question and reported to the President that the Council would not accept representatives of governments.

If it were decided to establish diplomatic relations with the Holy See, American Protestant opposition might be mitigated through designation of a Special or Personal Assistant to the President for the specific purpose of maintaining contact with faiths other than Roman Catholic. A less controversial solution would be for the President to designate a single person as his personal representative in dealings both with the Holy See and with other faiths.[81]

Perkins goes on to point out, with what in the staid world of bureaucracy could pass for a tongue planted firmly in cheek, that Taylor’s already Herculean labors had born little success in bridging the Protestant/Catholic divide:

The latter course was essentially that followed with Mr. Taylor, who did meet frequently with Protestant groups and devoted considerable effort with limited success in promoting cooperation between them and the Catholic Church. It would probably be desirable that this aspect of the work of a successor to Mr. Taylor be given more emphasis and be more widely publicized than was the case in the past. Bishop Oxnam, one of the leading critics of Mr. Taylor’s mission to the Vatican, advised Mr. Taylor that opposition would be greatly lessened if his designation were changed to “Representative to the Religious Peoples of the World.”[82]

Protestant leaders indeed demurred to be part of any organization or initiative that would link Protestants to Catholics, even in the eventuality of war with the Soviet Union. This appalled Taylor of course,[83] but was in keeping with American history and temperament. The Protestant/Catholic divide in America dates to colonial times and in some parts of the country is yet to be breached. In fact, it was not until Will Herbert’s 1950 best seller Protestant-Catholic-Jew that the idea of Mainline Protestantism sharing the American public square with other faiths was actually seriously broached.[84]

Undaunted by such difficulties, Taylor approached the WCC in much the same way he had the Vatican with the overall objective of forming a religious alliance against communism in Western Europe.[85] The difficulty of such an undertaking was obvious – Protestants have no equivalent of the papacy. WCC Secretary General Visser ‘t Hooft was an influential theologian and tireless advocate of religious ecumenism, but, in his world, influence did not amount to authority.[86]

Nor do Protestants enjoy any particular sense of unity. This was less clear to such Brahmins as Parsons in his day. Then, there were the Mainline Churches who had long since personified the American religious balance, and then there was the “great unwashed”of schism-happy Baptists, ever-smiling Evangelicals, angry, withdrawn fundamentalists, and the strange and wondrous world of the Pentecostals and Holiness churches, to name but a few. And that was in America alone.[87] Add to that the European schisms of language, history, and ethnic enmity, all stewing in the wreckage of World War II and threatened by an aggressive Stalinist enemy to the East, and the naiveté of the American approach becomes obvious.

The Russian decision to forgo the Amsterdam meetings was reasonable given the predominance of Western, and in particular American, influence over the organization. John D. Rockefeller provided a good deal of the financial support that made the Amsterdam Assembly possible and so much of the organizational influence in this early period was American.[88] The drive against organized religion in the Soviet Union had not yet begun, but of greater importance, the Active Measures campaign was still in its formative stage. The value of religion as a propaganda tool was not yet obvious to the Soviet state.

Despite this influence, what the Americans were selling was not altogether palatable even to Christian churchmen in Europe. The US, at a loss as to how to handle a wartime ally with whom peacetime coexistence was far from assured, were operating on the basis George Kennan’s famous “Long Telegram” and the policy of hard containment that grew from it. The document is today consigned to the history books, but elements of it are certainly applicable to the post-Soviet Russia of today. Kennan’s analysis, by chance or design, mirrored much of the WCC’s analysis of both capitalism and Soviet communism, while pointing a way forward in the emerging polar world of 1948. Summarizing the Soviet view of the West, Kennan states:

(f) It must be borne in mind that capitalist world is not all bad. In addition to hopelessly reactionary and bourgeois elements, it includes (1) certain wholly enlightened and positive elements united in acceptable communistic parties and (2) certain other elements (now described for tactical reasons as progressive or democratic) whose reactions, aspirations and activities happen to be “objectively” favorable to interests of USSR These last must be encouraged and utilized for Soviet purposes.[89]

This observation would be a guiding principle of the Active Measures campaign, and would govern the Soviet approach to the WCC after the Russian Orthodox Church and the state churches of other Soviet satellites joined in 1961.

Kennan goes on to analyze the sectors of Soviet society, including the Russian Orthodox and other Eastern Churches that would be brought to bear in the struggle between East and West. In his concluding exhortations to US policy, Kennan’s view proved to be prescient to what would follow in our own day with the fall of the Soviet state and the emergence of Putin’s Russia. It urged the Americans to adopt something that the 2016 elections proved once again to be ultimately beyond its means: An informed and educated electorate capable of steady policy formulation and a flexible response to the opportunities presented by the manifold weaknesses of the Soviet system. The conclusion of the Long Telegram is thus worth preserving in these pages, if only as a historical sigh for what America could have been, given education and opportunity:

(2) Gauged against Western World as a whole, Soviets are still by far the weaker force. Thus, their success will really depend on degree of cohesion, firmness and vigor which Western World can muster. And this is factor which it is within our power to influence… .

(4) All Soviet propaganda beyond Soviet security sphere is basically negative and destructive. It should therefore be relatively easy to combat it by any intelligent and really constructive program… .

(1) Our first step must be to apprehend, and recognize for what it is, the nature of the movement with which we are dealing. We must study it with … courage, detachment, objectivity… .

(2) We must see that our public is educated to realities of Russian situation. I cannot over-emphasize importance of this. Press cannot do this alone. It must be done mainly by Government, which is necessarily more experienced and better informed on practical problems involved. In this we need not be deterred by [ugliness?] of picture. I am convinced that there would be far less hysterical anti-Sovietism in our country today if realities of this situation were better understood by our people. There is nothing as dangerous or as terrifying as the unknown (3) Much depends on health and vigor of our own society.

World communism is like malignant parasite which feeds only on diseased tissue. This is point at which domestic and foreign policies meets Every courageous and incisive measure to solve internal problems of our own society, to improve self-confidence, discipline, morale and community spirit of our own people, is a diplomatic victory over Moscow worth a thousand diplomatic notes and joint communiqués. If we cannot abandon fatalism and indifference in face of deficiencies of our own society, Moscow will profit – Moscow cannot help profiting by them in its foreign policies.

(5) Finally we must have courage and self-confidence to cling to our own methods and conceptions of human society. After all, the greatest danger that can befall us in coping with this problem of Soviet communism, is that we shall allow ourselves to become like those with whom we are coping.[90]

Kennan in the end, though born in Milwaukee, was a highly educated American elite whose internationalist outlook stemmed from his time at Oxford while his faith was deeply rooted in the Mainline Protestantism of his day.[91] America, by contrast, was born amid subversion panics – a recurring malady – and was saddled an education system that well serves a few and disserves the many. It has never been of a temper to study, understand, and deal with challenges that require both steadfast resolution and tactical flexibility. What emerged then from the “Long Telegram” was exactly what Kennan warned against: A panic that would give birth to the anti-communist hysteria of the 1950s at home and a policy of rigid containment abroad. And it was precisely this policy which the Americans urged on the WCC.

The hard line anti-communist policy was delivered to WCC Secretary General Willem Visser ‘t Hooft by Myron C. Taylor, where it was received with some suspicion, given the American identification with the Vatican coupled with the determination among many of the WCC’s members to tilt to neither East nor West, but to God. In ‘t Hooft’s recollection, the US position: “expressed the conviction that all who believed in God and in freedom should be brought together to fight communism” and the US simply wanted the WCC to “invite to the Assembly representatives of national governments engaged in this fight.”[92]

What followed typified the difficulties faced by Truman’s religious appeal. Anti-communism as a general principle was not a hard sell to European churchmen. But as ‘t Hooft pointed out, with some irony, that the WCC was based first and foremost on the principle of the separation of church and state.[93] This is a principle that was not unfamiliar to the Americans, but in the current crisis such legal niceties could be conveniently overlooked. Taylor stressed that American Protestant ministers were fully behind taking a very hard line against communism, which was certainly true, but not of great relevance to the ecumenical mission of the WCC.

Taylor did not mention the strident anti-Catholicism reflected by many Mainline American ministers and espoused with passion in non-mainline churches throughout America in this period. Nor did pointed references to the manifest benefits of the Marshall Plan and the undeniable fact that WCC financing, like the Marshall Plan itself, was the result of American largess, move the WCC leadership. The WCC held fast to their founding principle of independence from government control.[94] It would hold to that principle from 1948 until 1961.

In the end, the WCC Assembly in Amsterdam took place, to US consternation, without the Roman Catholic Church. The Pope, whose wholehearted support of the American position on containing Soviet communism motivated Truman’s involvement in the first place, declined to attend given the strong anti-Catholic feelings of the Protestant delegates. An invitation was extended to the Russian Orthodox Church, despite the WCC’s awareness that it was by 1948 operating largely as an arm of the Soviet government. That invitation was declined as well. Stalin was clearly not about to participate in a forum where the outcome could not be fully controlled from Moscow. This was, as events would show, a miscalculation that Khrushchev would rectify. As we will see, the participation of the Russian Church and its satellites would turn American public perception of the WCC from an ecumenical organization free of government control to that of a subsidiary of the Soviet propaganda machine.

Truman’s initiative thus ended in failure. A good part of the blame could be laid at the door of what the Catholic Church might call Americanism, but what might more properly be called parochialism. Truman and those involved with the program operated from the perception that the Mainline Protestant denominations and the Roman Catholic hierarchy were the only significant players and that both shared a broad perception of the world; that atheistic communism was antithetical to religion and that capitalism, whatever its defects, was the only bulwark against communist subversion.

Further, the Catholic/Protestant divide was only in the process of being healed in the United States – an achievement that made Will Herbert’s Protestant-Catholic-Jew an unlikely best seller. That the divisions were far deeper in Europe given the bloody religious history of the continent did not occur to the Americans until it was too late. Moreover, from the relative security of America – economically vital after the War and holding a monopoly of nuclear weapons – the need to preserve some distance between church and state in Europe was not readily apparent. America after all had no state church tradition. It was this factor in particular that made the need to preserve a viable space between churches and governments imperative.

But if Truman’s initiative was a failure, it was a noble one. Truman recognized religion as an important aspect of the struggle against Soviet communism and sought, however imperfectly, to achieve a broad international coalition in support of Western ideals. It was the last such effort from an American Administration. As the Cold War grew frigid, American churchmen turned inward. The WCC was demonized as a Soviet puppet and was thus caught up in the McCarthy-era Red Scare.

How deeply this impacted the image of the WCC in the United States after 1948 can be seen in the flavor of press clippings from the time. The Amsterdam Assembly and its relatively even handed treatment of the communist/capitalist controversy was at first taken with caution the United States. In 1949 for example, the Federal Council of Churches (FCC), a body representing “twenty-three Protestant and four Eastern Orthodox denominations” warned against acquiescing to the repression of religion in communist countries, but warned also of the danger of fascism to the freedom of religion. The FCC vowed to send a delegation to meet with the WCC. What makes the FCC statement most remarkable however is that it urges the Senate to delay ratification of the NATO treaty until “the American people have had adequate opportunity to understand it fully.”[95]

By 1954 the ambiguity was gone and the WCC was pictured in the same way as such Soviet-owned and -operated front groups as the World Peace Council and the Christian Peace Conference. An article in the New York Times screams “Bishop Denies He is a Red,” which runs alongside of a two-column width picture of Ilona Massey, a Hungarian-born actress, who in congressional testimony will “Tell of Life Under Hungarian Reds.” In the piece, Bishop John Peter of the Reformed Church of Hungary asserts that “ ‘in no sense of the word’ could he be called a communist” although Christianity and Communism are fully compatible.[96]

What follows is the kind of slashing, no-holds-barred interview that is so lamentably missing today. Most telling is Bishop Peter’s denial that he is an informer who was responsible for the “entrapment, imprisonment or execution” of fellow churchmen.[97] This charge stems from accusations made by Bela Fabian, described as a refugee leader of the dissolved Hungarian Democratic Party in a magazine article which was read into the Congressional Record. When asked the same question by a reporter from the Chicago Daily Tribune, however, the Bishop was more evasive in his answers.[98]

At this point, Representative Alvin M. Bentley, “chairman of a subcommittee of the House Committee on Communist Aggression” then got into the national press spotlight by inviting Bishop Albert Bareczky, head of the Hungarian delegation to the WCC’s Second Assembly in Evanston, Illinois, and the much-maligned Bishop Peter to testify before his subcommittee. The Congressman asserted that four of the five member Hungarian delegation were “all thorough going collaborationists.” Of the fifth member, Congressman Bentley could not say. The invitation was much ado about nothing beyond headlines, however. Both the congressman and the gentlemen from The Times were well aware that the Hungarians’ visas did not permit them to travel anywhere other than the sites of WCC activities or living quarters.[99] But it made for good Cold War theater.

The Evanston Assembly which took place from 15–31 August 1954 was a risk for the WCC who already were being perceived in America as a front group. It was an even bigger risk for the United States given the strictures of the McCarran Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950 which sought to control communist activities in the United States through the newly established Subversive Activities Control Board and the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 that revised US immigration laws to prevent the entry of communists into the United States.[100] Members of the Eastern European church delegations who were known to be communist agents or sympathizers should not, under the strictures of these acts, have been permitted to attend the Evanston Assembly.

This not only included the Hungarian delegation who rose to press scrutiny, but to members of other delegations who were not yet known to the American public. The Czech theologian Josef Hromádka, a founding member of the WCC and later president of the Christian Peace Council – a fully controlled Soviet front group – managed to so irritate Secretary of State John Foster Dulles that, in a private conversation with the British Ambassador Sir Roger Makins and Gen. Douglas MacArthur about the 1955 Bandung Conference, he compared the speech of India’s President Jawaharlal Nehru at Bandung to the one made by Hromádka at the Amsterdam WCC Assembly seven years earlier! “Hromadka had taken the general line that Western civilization had failed and that some new type of civilization was necessary to replace it. Nehru’s speech had the same general ring.”[101]

How great a concern this was to the Administration is reflected in the record of a meeting of the National Security Council on 24 March 1955 which centered primarily on the WCC Assembly. The tenor of the discussion revealed that the issue was primarily one of appearances rather than of national security:

Secretary Humphrey inquired whether the granting of admission permitted these aliens to go anywhere they liked in the United States. The Attorney General responded in the negative, stating that their travels were to be very carefully supervised and controlled.

The Attorney General then asked Mr. Allen Dulles [Director of the CIA] if he was going to make a report on what those people who had been permitted entry previous to this time actually said and did when they returned to their home lands. Mr. Dulles replied in the affirmative,[102] … among other things some of the representatives from iron curtain countries who attended the recent Evanston Assembly of the World Council of Churches made the following accusations or complaints when they went back behind the iron curtain: (a) They were put under surveillance by U.S. secret police; (b) they – and even the Archbishop of Canterbury – were fingerprinted in the same manner as Chicago gangsters; (ç) there was a crime wave in Chicago; (d) Bishop Peter referred to an Evanston memorial to World War II dead which bears the inscription “December 7, 1941 – blank,” and charged that the failure of local officials to insert the second date was proof that the war had not ended so far as the United States was concerned. Mr. Allen Dulles pointed out in this connection that in some instances the governments of these people probably compelled them to make such charges when they returned home.

The Secretary said that he … was happy that such a great organization as the World Council of Churches wasn’t driven away, for he thought it would have been scandalous if the World Council had been forced by our policies to hold its meeting outside the United States.[103]

The portrait of the as WCC as fellow traveler if not an actual Soviet front group dominated the press coverage of the group throughout the Red Scare, and, indeed, much of its post-1961 history. This was not without some justification. The US government shared this suspicion to a degree, but did not let this prevent them from engaging in a range of contacts with the WCC, and on occasion enlisting their assistance in various ways. In its formative years, the WCC and the Truman Administration appear to have harbored the same dream of Christian unity which could be expressed in both political and religious terms – ideally through a United States of Europe that could provide a bulwark against Soviet expansion. State Department officer Edwin McCammon Martin recalls that the initiative actually came from the WCC rather than originating with the Americans.[104]

In the aftermath of the 1956 Suez Crisis – a time in which the United States made the fateful choice of focusing on the Middle East and its oil supplies rather than to keep its promises to support the Hungarian uprising – Secretary of State John Foster Dulles turned to the churches domestically and to the WCC internationally to call for support, prayers, and friendly sermons.[105] By 1967, the Johnson Administration, which even then was drowning in a sea of blood and discord over Vietnam, returned to an old chestnut: Catholic/Protestant amity and the WCC’s role in promoting this felicitous if ahistorical outcome.

The occasion was Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Populorum Progressio (On The Development of Peoples), which was issued on 26 March 1967.[106] The encyclical was in fact a remarkably progressive document which emerged in the wake of Vatican II, which revolutionized the Catholic Church.[107] Populorum Progressio is wide ranging, but its key passage might be this: “The hungry nations of the world cry out to the peoples blessed with abundance. And the Church, cut to the quick by this cry, asks each and every man to hear his brother’s plea and answer it lovingly.”[108] The text and the wider sentiment mirrored precisely the calls which had come out of each WCC Assembly for social justice.

While the American solicitude for the Vatican had not changed, the times certainly had. The Cold War was still very much on, but the US concern by 1967 was becoming more absorbed in the effort to create support for the Vietnam misadventure, leaving other aspects of foreign policy to run on autopilot. Vice President Hubert Humphrey was a man who was considerably more than Lyndon Johnson’s puppet and apprentice warmonger that the 1960s generation viewed him to be. A deeply religious populist from Minnesota, he was among the early supporters of the civil rights movement and held the lonely progressive fort during the worst of the McCarthyite period.[109]

In a conversation with Monsignor Joseph Gremillon, Executive Director of Papal Commission on Peace and Justice, Monsignor Marvin Bordelon, Executive Secretary of National Secretariat on Justice and Peace, and John E. Rielly, Assistant to the Vice President on 11 May 1967, Vice President Humphrey reveals much of the interests of American Cold War policy as balanced against his own sorely tried moral stance. It is a window into the time and place that is worthy of consideration:

The Vice President opened the conversation by commenting on what a powerful document the Pope’s encyclical on “The Development of Peoples” was. He had discussed it with the Pope and he had been thinking about how one could best translate this into action. We should not be content just to have it discussed for a few weeks then dropped… .

The Vice President wondered whether the energies of Vietnam could be redirected and rechanneled into positive development avenues after the war was over. He hoped this would be so but was not sure.

Monsignor Gremillon explained that the whole effort to arouse and educate the consciences of people to the problem of development must be strictly ecumenical. He explained that he was in regular contact with his colleagues in the World Council of Churches and only three weeks ago had visited Eugene Carson Blake in Geneva. Blake was coming to Rome next week for further meetings. It turned out that they were also cooperating regularly with the Russian Orthodox Church. The Archbishop of Leningrad invited a group of 30 leaders from the World Council of Churches and from the Catholic Church to come to a meeting in the Soviet Union sometime this year to discuss the whole theory and doctrine of development. The Archbishop said not only would this be very worthwhile world-wide, but would be immensely helpful to them in Russia.[110]

In the end, this led to nothing much. The Catholic Church did not join the WCC, Protestant/Catholic relations beyond the rarified strata of religious elites in Europe and the US was not significantly affected, American foreign aid patterns did not change as Johnson’s guns and butter policies could not stand up to the costs of a distant hot war in Vietnam, and Lyndon Johnson himself did not run for reelection. Humphrey’s presidential campaign could not escape the shadow of Vietnam, allowing Richard Nixon to at last assume the presidency. Ironically in the US, the noble sentiments of Pope Paul VI’s encyclicals would have less lasting public impact than that of Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI’s encyclical on the sacredness of human life that forbade birth control and abortion.[111] Yet its window into the time, the place, and the continuing hope that the WCC could reach at least a working relationship with the Vatican and buttress the Western riposte to Marxism is important to recall at a time in which the popular view of the WCC in the US was decidedly negative.

The Soviets meanwhile, continued their efforts to guide if not control the WCC. A signal success in 1969 was documented in the KGB archives:

August 1969

The agents ‘Svyatoslav,’ ‘Adamant,’ ‘Altar,’ ‘Magistr,’ ‘Roshchin’ and ‘Zemnogorsky’ travelled to England to take part in the work of the CC of the World Council of Churches. The agents were able to counter hostile activity and to promote agent ‘Kuznetsov’ to a leading post in the WCC.[112]

The Nixon Administration advanced arms control agreements with the Soviet Union, created the opening to China in 1972, and maintained its domestic religious credentials primarily through the ‘pastor to presidents,’ Dr. Billy Graham. Interestingly, it saw the WCC in more practical political terms than did the previous administrations from Truman to Johnson, and thus found more concrete support from the WCC than was apparent previously. For example, concerned about the rise of Liberation Theology in Latin America, a 1969 intelligence memorandum notes:

Although Protestantism throughout the world is highly factionalized, the World Council of Churches has helped to moderate these differences in Latin America and has promoted cooperative missionary programs. Today, a number of ecumenically-minded Protestant churchmen are cooperating with one another and with progressive Roman Catholics in support of social reform programs.[113]

Similarly, on the question of Jewish prisoners of conscience in the Soviet Union, Billy Graham enlisted National Security Advisor and soon to be Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to solicit both President Nixon and the WCC in support of the issue, and in particular to support the daughter of one Mrs. Rivka Alexandrovich, who Graham asserts is the youngest such prisoner in the Soviet Union. Kissinger promises to do just this, although whether he followed up on the promise is lost to history.[114]

For the American public however, the WCC continued to be seen as either a Soviet front or at best a fellow traveler. This perception would continue throughout the Cold War period. As American government records indicate however, successive Presidents saw the organization in much more nuanced terms and as a productive channel of communication throughout the Cold War period.

For their part, the Russians treated the WCC with suspicion as they did all organizations that they did not fully control. At the same time, the WCC presented them with an opportunity to advance whatever initiatives the Active Measures campaign of the moment required. The persistence of the Russian Orthodox Church and its satellite churches after they joined the WCC 1961 greatly aided in the endeavor. This allowed the Soviets to maintain at least the aura of ecumenism in a neutral political environment. It also allowed the Soviets to rebroadcast WCC initiatives as gray area support for the Active Measures program. In the 1980s for example, (Western) disarmament remained a concern and was a prominent strand of the Soviet Active Measures campaigns. After the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan, the ability of the Soviet Union to pose as champions of peace was on even shakier ground than usual.

In a report to the 1983 Vancouver WCC Assembly submitted to the Communist Party Central Committee (CPSU-CC), these successes were detailed. The Russian delegation to Vancouver contained no less than 47 intelligence agents, making the pretense of independence by the Orthodox Church and its Eastern European satellite churches more a matter of fiction than fact.[115] The report states:

DOCUMENT 172. COPY NO. I

To the CPSU CC

Secret

On the Results of the VI General Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Vancouver (Canada)

Attempts were undertaken to create around the assembly and at it [was] the most anti-soviet sensation, to arouse distrust among participants towards the peace-loving policy of our state, to blacken the position of the churches of the USSR, portraying them as a propagandist instrument of the Soviet government and agents of the KGB which do not speak up in defence of the rights of believers in the USSR.[116]

Having established the good work of the agents assigned to the WCC meeting, the report then goes into the efforts made to combat specific aspects of anti-Soviet propaganda.

For this purpose representatives of many anti-soviet centres, such as ‘christian solidarity international’ (Geneva [sic]), the so-called ‘Club of life’ created in the USA half a year before the beginning of the work of the assembly, the reactionary ‘International council of churches’ (USA) and others, gathered in Vancouver.

So-called ‘Yakunin readings’ (Yakunin is serving a term of punishment for anti-soviet activity) were specially organised.[117] Slanderous leaflets, photo-documents, brochures and provocative letters were circulated among the delegates and guests of the assembly. There was strong pressure on the leadership of the WCC with the aim of directing the work of the assembly into anti-soviet channels.

As a result of the active work of the delegations from churches of the USSR and the socialist countries and the support for their positions from progressive circles of the assembly, attempts by anti-soviets were unsuccessful and its work took on a clearly expressed anti-imperialist and antiAmerican character. In the speeches of many delegates was heard a sharp criticism of the aggressive policy of the USA and its allies. Thus, one of the delegates from the FRG, U. Tukhrov, declared “… that supporters of the arms race are pushing mankind to a more dangerous crisis than existed in the years of Nazism.”[118]

The report then moves to the final documents published by the WCC at the conclusion of the conclave,

The assembly spoke out against the siting of American nuclear missiles in Europe and for the declaration that weapons of mass destruction were illegal.

‘We call on the churches,’ … to convince their governments of the necessity of reaching agreement and turning away … from the plans to site additional or new forms of nuclear weapons in Europe and quickly to begin cutting back on them with the aim of subsequently completely liquidating the nuclear forces present. The Declaration contains a call for a freeze on nuclear weapons, the renunciation of further research, production and siting of weapons in space and a ban on the development and production of all forms of weapons of mass destruction.

The Declaration also contains calls for the attainment of positive results in the Geneva talks on limiting and reducing strategic weapons. The assembly also adopted a declaration condemning the policy of the USA in Central America; a declaration condemning apartheid in South Africa; a resolution on the Pacific region in support of the struggle of the people living there, for political and economic independence and for a Pacific ocean free from nuclear weapons; a resolution on the Middle East with the demand for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from all territory they occupy and a call to the churches to support the UN conference on the Palestinian question; a declaration on human rights directed mainly at support for the struggle of peoples for social and economic equality.

The results of the assembly evoked a large, positive response among the international public. Right wing circles, especially in the USA and the FRG, acknowledge with unconcealed irritation that the assembly did not proceed in accordance with the scenario they had worked out – the adoption of resolutions hostile to the Soviet Union. And in this, it must be noted, a great part was played by the delegation of the Russian orthodox church.

The Council for religious affairs attached to the USSR Council of Ministers considers it expedient to increase the co-operation of the churches of the Soviet Union with the World Council of Churches, ensuring that its activity in the sphere of the practical resolution of the problems of international security and disarmament will become more effective. In this connection it would be desirable to hold one of the regular sessions of the central committee of the WCC in the USSR.[119]

As the Yuri Andropov–era document indicates, by the 1980s, the Soviets were largely able to influence if not actually control the stances of the WCC on issues in which they had an interest. The issues raised by the Western churches in this regard were not so much in opposition to the political stances that the WCC adopted – most were then standards of liberal orthodoxy – but the one-sided nature of the resolutions given the Soviets’ woeful record on human rights and religious freedom both at home and in the nations under their occupation, as well as the carnage in which it was engaged in Afghanistan. But the Soviets had all the votes needed to pass resolutions in their interest and, unlike the Western churches, could present a united front in writing and debating the “Faith and Order” documents adopted by the WCC Assemblies.

But as useful as the WCC could be to the Soviets, attending a meeting of an organization that was not actually a Soviet Front was no easy matter. Khrushchev it will be recalled first gave the go ahead in 1961 at the height of the anti-religious campaign domestically. By 1981 however, the Soviet Party was in flux. Leonid Brezhnev was dying and would pass from the scene in 1982, to be succeeded by Andropov, a former KGB Director who would in turn die only two years after assuming power.[120]

The Soviet success with the WCC did not go unremarked throughout the communist world. Fidel Castro, in a 1980 meeting with East German leader Erich Honecker, enquired somewhat wonderingly:

Fidel Castro: Is it correct, that you have so many Protestants in your country? Are they indeed religious?

Erich Honecker: They are church members, and of course they are religious, otherwise they were not members. I had conversations with the bishops. This was the first time ever in the history of the GDR. They said: We don’t want to be partisans of the West. We are GDR citizens. The members of our congregation work for socialism. We conceive of ourselves as a church within socialism. I couldn’t say anything against that. The vast majority of the people feel attached to their state, to socialism, and the leaders of the church are smart, they take that fact into account. They exert an influence on the churches in the Federal Republic and in the USA.

At the World Council of Churches, they have introduced a resolution calling for the continuation of detente and disarmament. It has been presented to the governments of all countries. The Protestant churches of the GDR and the USA have issued a common statement calling for the continuation of detente. Hence, certain changes become apparent here.

Of course, the church does not want to join together with us completely. This is evident, they can’t do that. However, it is still better to have a church that is loyal to the socialist state than one that works against it. In the USA, too, there are quite a lot of people who oppose the policy of confrontation, otherwise [Secretary of State Cyrus] Vance would not have had to go. He was against the military adventure in Iran. What you said about [former Secretary of State Edmund] Muskie confirms our information that Muskie indeed wants to act more independently. We have to exploit that.[121]

In Active Measures terms, Andropov was an ideal candidate for leadership as his KGB tenure from 1967–1982 saw the rapid development and massive implementation of the campaign.[122] Andropov upon assuming power portrayed himself to Western circles a kind of closet liberal who would make changes in the stodgy Brezhnev era intransigence, or more specifically, to the Brezhnev Doctrine which locked in the borders of the Eastern European Soviet Empire as stable and unchanging.[123] It may be safely assumed Andropov’s approval marked the outcome of the Sofia Consultation that took place in the Bulgarian capital from 22–31 May 1981.

The Sofia Consultation was held to decide on the participation of Eastern Orthodox churches in the WCC, with the Vancouver Assembly of particular importance. The main topics on the Agenda were:

I

The Orthodox understanding of ecumenism and participation in the WCC;

II

Orthodox experiences and problems in the WCC;

III

Perspectives of Orthodox contributions to the activities of the WCC;

IV

“Jesus Christ – the Life of the World.”  [124]

The decision to maintain its WCC participation was a foregone conclusion, but there was some concern with maintaining tight control of what was said by members of the church delegations, with the centralization of authority under the control of the Central Committee (implying the CCs of both Church and Communist Party), and that the final positions taken by the WCC reflect Soviet interests:

1. 9 The Orthodox members in the various WCC bodies and consultations should actively participate in the drafting of WCC documents from the early stages, through the discussions and in the preparation of the final text. The WCC should give attention that such participation is actually sought and made effective.

2. 10 More Orthodox speakers, advisers and experts should be involved in various meetings of the WCC and in positions of leadership.

3. 11 It was recognized that there is a need to change the procedure and methods of the final adoption of the emerging ecumenical consensus on doctrinal issues. This problem deserves serious attention from the constituency of the WCC. The consultation invites the General Secretary of the WCC to initiate an ecumenical discussion on this issue. Concrete proposals have been made by the Russian Orthodox Church. Final solutions to this problem and procedural provisions should be the subject of study and proper formulation in consultation between the General Secretariat and the Units and Sub-units concerned.

4. 12 The members of the consultation heard with gratitude reports from Orthodox members of the WCC staff about the efforts made until now to bring Orthodox thinking into the activities of the WCC and encourage them to persevere in their efforts. The members of the consultation pledge to report to their respective Churches about the activities of the various Units and Subunits of the WCC and to request increased cooperation and responsible material support wherever necessary.

5. 13 The consultation considers it essential that during the General Assemblies and meetings of the Central Committee contact should be maintained between the Orthodox representatives in order to make a better contribution of the Orthodox to these meetings. It would be desirable to have special consultations in preparation for the work of the Central Committee.

6. 14 Special attention was given to the Orthodox preparation for the Sixth Assembly in 1983. The Orthodox Churches represented at the Consultation understand the Sixth Assembly of the WCC in Vancouver as a very privileged opportunity for them and are determined to bring on this occasion a full contribution to the ecumenical dialogue and community. They consider their consultation in Sofia with the leaders of the WCC as an integral part of the preparation for this ecumenical event. They expect that every effort will be made by the WCC leadership and the host churches in Canada to secure full participation of all Orthodox delegates in conditions excluding external interference and leading to fruitful work.[125]

By 1998 the Russian relationship with the WCC had matured to the point that the WCC Central Committee was invited to hold its meetings in Moscow, which was duly done. The results from the KGB point of view were more than satisfactory:

July 1989

In accordance with the plan confirmed by the leadership of the USSR KGB, agent-operational and organisational measures were enacted to guarantee state security for the duration of the preparation and holding of events of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Moscow, in which more than 500 foreign religious figures took part. As a result of the enacted measures, the executive committee and CC of the WCC adopted public statements (8), and messages (3), conforming to the political line of the socialist countries. Agent and operational-technical measures were conducted in relation to 29 objects of operational interest to the organs of the KGB and external surveillance was conducted on 9 objects. A positive influence was exerted on the foreigners via our agents, and additional confirmatory and personal data were received, as well as reports on their political views and positions held in their own countries. Numerous interviews useful to us were conducted. In order to resolve organisational and operational questions meetings (2) of KGB operational groups were held.

Head of the 4th department of the 5th Directorate of the USSR KGB colonel V.I. Timoshevsky[126]

The appearance of these KGB documents in the West helped to perpetuate the image of the WCC as a Soviet pawn, even after the formal demise of the Soviet Union. A prime example was an article in that ultimate bastion of Americana, The Reader’s Digest which appeared in 1993. The Reader’s Digest was founded in 1920 to condense and simplify news and articles deemed of interest to Americans who might be either too busy or too educationally or intellectually limited to read books, journals or quality newspapers for themselves. Its remarkable commercial success speaks many condensed volumes about American intellectual history in the twentieth century.[127] In an article that would rocket around the country, and would draw ironic commentary from more elite religious journals, The Digest published an article entitled “The Gospel According to Marx.” In it, it repeated much of what we have said here of the group’s pro-Soviet positions, but in smaller words and with the clear suggestion that the WCC is simply a Soviet front group, which it was not (quite).[128] The Reader’s Digest would publish attacks on the WCC no less than three times after 1993 on its pro-communist leanings.

True Soviet front groups such as the World Peace Council and the Christian Peace Council were of a different nature altogether. Their individual stories are important pieces in both the evolution of the Active Measures program and in the history of the religious aspects of the Cold War. Although both initially tried to present themselves as independent organizations composed of an international coalition of like-minded progressive thinkers, the facade could not be maintained for long. The Soviet system was too clumsy and all pervasively obsessed with control for that. Soon, the language of the front groups came to closely mirror that of Soviet propaganda, which limited their appeal in the West all the more.

Their roles in the global war of ideas that Active Measures sought to influence was nonetheless significant. Their similarity is such that they often shared membership and governing boards. It will thus suffice to look briefly at their histories.

The World Peace Council and the Christian Peace Conference

Although the Soviet Union was slow to recognize the opportunities presented by the ecumenical movement and the World Council of Churches, its propaganda and political actions were robust and took place on a variety of other fronts. The Soviet political program was unveiled in the United Nations General Assembly on 18 September 1947 as a riposte to the American announcement of the Truman Doctrine that pledged material and other aid to democratic nations, with particular reference to Greece and Turkey.[129] The resolution, “Measures to be Taken Against Propaganda and the Inciters of a New War,” singled out the US as an inciter of war, a spreader of lies, and a threat to Greece and Turkey as well as the entire world. Indeed, the resolution demanded that all forms of American-style war propaganda should be criminalized in all UN member states. Specifically the Soviet resolution charged that:

- Reactionary circles in a number of countries, particularly in the United states, Greece and Turkey, were carrying on an organized campaign for war against the Soviet Union, using lies, slander and incitement to aggression;

- This war propaganda was designed to support US military preparations; and

- US monopolies and cartels, closely linked to the German trusts before the war and subsequently engaged in reestablishing their connections, were resisting attempts to outlaw the manufacture of atomic weapons and reduce armaments generally.[130]

The resolution was passed in the General Assembly and the Soviets quickly followed with domestic legislation and an array of propaganda undertaken as part of a massive Active Measures campaign.

Peace and disarmament were of greatest Soviet concern in the late 1940s. The US nuclear monopoly made Soviet survival dependent entirely on isolating the voices that, like Gen. LeMay, counseled a swift and permanent nuclear resolution to the conflict between East and West. The lead role in forming a popular front of peace and disarmament groups who could be relied upon to oppose American policy fell to the World Peace Council (WPC).

The WPC presented a fascinating problem for the West. On the one hand, the membership rolls of the WPC included the cream of Soviet literary and artistic circles, giving it a certain aura of star power which suggested the possibility for a greater degree of artistic freedom than was realistic in Stalinist Russia. On the other hand, the WPC was the same stereotypically Stalinist organization as the First Directorate itself, speaking in the same phrases as those of the Soviet state. It was, in short, a glittering collection of apparatchiks who worked through the same tired channels – national Communist Parties (CPs), long discredited front groups, and marginal agents of influence who publicized their efforts with the same wooden prose as Radio Moscow’s deadening foreign language broadcasts. In short, their cause was palatable but they were not discrediting the term ‘peace’ even among western intellectuals and religious leaders.[131]

The history of the WPC can, according to Günter Wernicke’s authoritative article, be broken into three distinct phases:

I

from the first peace congress of writers and other intellectuals in 1948 in Wroclaw (Poland) via the first world congress of Partisans for Peace in Paris 1949 to the Peoples’ Congress in Vienna in 1952, a phase determined by reaction to World War II and a determination to resist the mutual destruction of peoples in the nuclear age;

II

from 1953 up to the mid-sixties, a period during which the Peace Councils acquired a more integrated function within the consolidated structures of Eastern Europe;

III

from the mid-sixties until the demise of the nominally socialist countries in Eastern Europe in 1989–1991, a period complicated by the ramifications of non-European politics, including armed liberation struggles in the Third World (notably the Vietnam War), but also the Helsinki process and detente in Europe.  [132]

The WPC began as Partisans for Peace, founded in Paris in 1949. The timing was key, given the Berlin Crisis of 1948–1949 and the communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1948. The Partisans for Peace became the less Francophile-sounding World Peace Conference in 1950. Its headquarters remained firmly fixed in Paris and it made no secret of its absolute commitment to Soviet Policy. It remained under the direction of the International Department of the Soviet Communist Party and was thus fully a creature of its policies and directives.[133] Its inaugural action was the 1950 Stockholm Peace Appeal which called for a ban on all nuclear weapons. The response across Europe was heartening, but in the end did nothing to either convince the US to abandon its small nuclear arsenal or to significantly impact Cold War polarity, which became fixed with the formations of NATO in the West and Cominform (later the Warsaw Pact) in the East in 1947.[134]

The basic dilemma that the WPC initially faced was its open subservience to Moscow on the one side and the genuine appeal of its rhetoric centering on (Western) nuclear disarmament and world peace on the other.[135] The 1950s it must be recalled was a period of genuine and widespread fear of a nuclear holocaust and even after the Russian acquisition of nuclear technology the United States enjoyed a considerable ‘missile gap’ to use a favorite catchphrase of the era. This made the US the natural target for peace movements across Europe – many of whom in the Stalinist era kept the WPC at arm’s length.[136] The WPC’s appeal was further weakened in 1961 when the Soviet Union dented its anti-nuclear image by unilaterally resuming nuclear testing.[137]

Official Western responses to the WPC at first were tepid. Phillip Agee in his tell-all account of his years in the CIA notes that the Agency acted against the WPC by having it expelled from Paris to Prague in 1961.[138] Although the organization moved to Vienna in 1954, the move neither changed the perception of the group as a fully controlled Soviet front organization nor excited much else in the way of ‘covert action’ against it. This does not mean however that it went unnoticed in Washington.

Undaunted by Western suspicions, the WPC and the national Communist Parties that served as its local cadre soon established an international network of peace councils, holding assemblies in Moscow and around the world and endeavoring to attend the gatherings of peace and disarmament groups wherever they might be found.[139]

By the 1980s, the WPC had branches in an estimated 141 nations worldwide. Its methods in the United States were typical. In 1979 it formed the United States Peace Council (USPC), which closely coordinated with the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). As late as 1985, the USPC letterhead reflected its affiliation with the WPC, making its claims of independence somewhat farcical – especially given the presence of USPC figures at the WPC headquarters in Helsinki.[140]

Although the burgeoning number of WPC branches and affiliates appears impressive on the surface, WPC support throughout most of the Cold War was primarily restricted to CP members and, to use another wonderful phrase of the era, fellow travelers. The destalinization period following the dictator’s death in 1953 appeared to offer an opening, but this soon faded throughout the 1960s. The Cuban Missile Crisis showed Soviet nuclear weakness and forced it to admit to the kind of proliferation of the WPC condemned only the United States.[141]

In common with Soviet fronts around the world, the USPC greatly overclaimed its influence and activities, but in a 12 June 1982 memorandum, the primary goal of having as many like-minded fronts as possible was made clear:

It is important for us to join with others who are building local peace councils. The Peace Council plays a special role in the peace movement. It is the only peace organization which consistently links the struggle for peace with the struggle against US military intervention, and it takes principled positions with respect to anti-Soviet propaganda of the Reagan administration. Every new peace council which comes into existence improves the ideological health of the peace movement.[142]

How slavishly pro-Soviet was the WPC? Little more need be noted than their endorsement, against all logic and common sense for a peace group, of the Soviet downing of the Korean airliner, KAL 007, in 1983.[143]

The Christian Peace Conference

The focus on peace and disarmament was supplemented by a religious outreach which may be the most ironic yet most successful aspect of the Active Measures campaign. The Christian Peace Conference (CPC) is the religious fun house mirror of the WPC, reflecting a call for peace in priestly cassocks and the conservative black suits favored by the dour Lutherans of the time. It was founded in 1958, headquartered in Prague, and led by the irrepressible Czech theologian Josef Hromádka.

Hromádka was a fascinating figure. To cynics, he was a Lutheran pastor who had abandoned religious principles to lead the socialist good life – a passport and constant foreign travel, a seat at banquets around the world, hard currency, and access to the Tuzex stores where capitalist dreams were lived in Prague’s gray socialist winters.[144] He maintained his membership in the WPC as well.[145] His most sympathetic biographer, Doris Leroy, writes:

Professor Josef Hromádka was an ordained Czech Lutheran pastor, who had served also as chaplain during the First World War. Extensive theological studies saw him become a leading theologian in his own country, holding teaching positions at the Protestant Theological Faculty of the Charles University in Prague – from 1920 to 1966. During World War II he escaped to the United States where he held the position of visiting Professor, Theology, at Princeton Theological Seminary until 1946. He also was supportive of socialist ideology. On his return to Czechoslovakia after the war he became a member of an Action Committee for the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren set up in 1948 which welcomed the new communist government, anticipating that it would “preserve the deepest traditions of freedom and justice” in Czechoslovakia … Hromádka “advocated dialogue with the Marxists, arguing that the Marxist revolution was a revolt against unjust social orders, not against God.”[146]

Hromádka paved the way for the creation of a front group focused on the ecumenical movement with his 1948 appearance at the first World Council of Churches conclave in Amsterdam. There and in subsequent WCC Assemblies religious battles were fought between the peace priests and their state sponsors and the American elites – good Protestants all – who were at the top echelons of the US foreign policy and intelligence establishments. The Dulles brothers, John Foster of State Department fame and Alan of the nascent Central Intelligence Agency waged these intellectual battles in impassioned articles and from the floor in Amsterdam,[147] locking rhetorical horns with Hromádka and his fellow prelates from the Eastern churches over issues of peace and justice and the benign nature of religious life in the Soviet bloc.[148]

The CPC conclaves were more overtly political affairs. Paul Stefanik, who visited Czechoslovakia 15 times and attended several CPC Assemblies noted that such gatherings attracted “a strange group of well-wishers that included [Soviet Premier Alexei] Kosygin, [Cuban President Fidel] Castro, [GDR CC General Secretary] Honecker, and [PLO Chairman Yasser] Arafat, through their representatives.”[149] Stefanik’s mordant observation on this anomaly:

Thus the gathering of Christians – mostly theologians – receiving greetings and “good wishes” from some who are bent on destroying them, and bitterly denouncing those whose role they do not comprehend.[150]

Yet like Hromádka’s Australian biographer Doris Leroy, Stefanik sees value in the group’s message if not always in its messengers. That the CPC is a front group bothers him more than it does Leroy, but their published histories share a complexity that would be lost on the Americans during the Cold War. By the 1980s, the aged Hromádka had passed from the CPC scene, replaced by the Hungarian Bishop Károly Tóth.[151] Tóth, a product of the socialist system was far more ideological than the worldlier Hromádka.[152] He too was a member of the Presidential Committee of the WPC, and under his leadership the two organizations became virtually indistinguishable.[153] In a December 1981 edition of the World Marxist Review, Tóth made his alignment clear:

For 23 years our Christian Peace Conference has been active in opposing the nuclear war threat and the arms race… . Acting on our religious convictions and in the name of Christian humanism we have joined the antiwar movement. Christianity teaches that life is a gift to the human being from above. To defend it, to uphold the right of people to life we are prepared to cooperate with all forces, regardless of their ideology and world view. I should like to accentuate the fact that the standpoints of Christians and Communists coincide on this question.[154]

And:

The Christian Peace Conference is no mere pacifist organization; it is contributing by its specific activity toward maintaining peace and toward efforts for disarmament. That is why it fully supports L. Brezhnev’s latest proposals, which are a significant step toward halting feverish armament and preventing the emergence of a world nuclear conflict. [CPG President Károly Tóth, Rude Pravo, March 26, 1982][155]

Under Hromádka’s leadership, the CPC made some progress in the United States. Both Hromádka and Tóth made numerous visits to the US, but Tóth’s outspoken Marxism played rather badly to the American market. Where in 1964 the very conservative American Baptist Foreign Mission Society was moved to send a delegate to the CPC’s Prague Assembly,[156] the Tóth-led CPC of the 1980s was not viewed with such equanimity. The 1987 publication of a State Department report, “Soviet Influence Activities: A Report on Active Measures and Propaganda” brought a very strong reaction in right-wing American Christian circles.[157]

This became very public when Dr. Carl McIntire, who at remarkable expense took out full-page ads in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal: “’86-’87 FBI Report Exposes Soviet’s Sinister Use of Religion – Naming Names and Churches.”[158] The article was accompanied by an editorial from Dr. McIntire whose title, quoting Hosea 4:6 was “My People are Destroyed for Lack of Knowledge.” The denunciation was full throated if not always accurate. The report which the minister claims to have photocopied was actually from the State Department, not the FBI, while the organization which the editorial claims he led, the International Council of Churches, was neither international nor a council. It was a vehicle which Dr. McIntire created during an inspired sermon offered to the Bible Presbyterian Church of Charlotte (North Carolina) to oppose the World Council of Churches on the occasion of their 1948 Amsterdam meeting in whose echoes he heard the definite hoof beats of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.[159] McIntire actually journeyed to Amsterdam to deliver a document exhorting the Assembly to adopt the American fundamentalist reading of both scripture and ecumenism. He notes that the WCC declined to accept the document.

In the end, the CPC’s original promise as an ecumenical vehicle to promote Soviet interests withered in the light of the Western revelations about the Soviet Active Measures campaign and Bishop Tóth’s preference for the Dialectic over the Gospels. So it was for the Active Measures campaign overall. It had high points certainly, such as the neutron bomb campaign. But such successes were limited to campaigns where a single issue could be isolated and demonized. Ecumenism was a more amorphous beast altogether.

What happens to a Soviet front group when the Soviet Union is no more? Rob Prince, an officer of the WPC, offers a wonderful account of the wraith-like existence of such a group. Of greater interest to this chapter however, is the fact that the death of the Soviet Union did not interrupt Russian financing, or Russian control of the group. His three-part series, “The Ghost Ship of Lönnrotinkatu: The Catabolism of the World Peace Council – Part I,”[160] “Following the Money Trail at the World Peace Council,”[161] and “The Last of the WPC Mohicans … or, Ghost Ship of Lonnrotinkatu, Part 3”[162] are must reads for their ironic humor as well as their contribution to the historical record.

His despairing farewell to the hopes and dreams of the organization make a fitting conclusion to this chapter. The WPC headquarters on Lönnrotinkatu (Lönnrotin Street) had long since lost its purpose even before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Prince notes that after the Soviet collapse, the rump of the group continues to exist in a quasi-vegetative state under the control of the Greek Communist Party which rested control of the twitching corpse and its bounty in fax machines and mailing lists from the French CP.[163] Today it rails against NATO and whatever conflict involves the West, while continuing to hold Executive Committee meetings and occasional congresses which bring together an international cadre of the usual suspects who meet in the relative luxury of interhotels around the former communist world.[164]

In hindsight: After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian support for the WPC largely dried up. As the Russian contribution amounted to more than 90% of the group’s budget, that in itself was a near death blow. But the ghost of the WPC still served a useful financial purpose – this time as a vehicle for moving money out of Russia, becoming one of many channels through which assets were transferred from Russia to safer climes in Europe and the US.[165]

As with other Soviet front groups of the era, the Soviet collapse occasioned a mad scramble for control of the organization. Ideology, faith in the cause, personal grandiosity or simple lower case greed was on full display as claimants for the vacant throne came and went through the doors. In rapid succession, two new General Secretaries, Ray Stewart from New Zealand and Sadham Mukerjee from India, arrived to preside over the rubble and, in the process, to seize whatever might be worth grabbing. Stewart stayed long enough to decorate his office with Persian rugs and a luxurious new desk, both of which went with him when he departed, as did the WPC’s bank accounts. Mukerjee made less of a splash, disappearing from the scene completely on his departure.[166]

Marx’s observation that historic tragedy soon gives way to farce could not be better demonstrated than with the appearance of the pseudonymous ‘Sasha Svinya’ on the scene. This is the author’s in-joke. Speakers of Slavic languages will quickly recognize that the author has borrowed the term ‘svinya’ meaning ‘pig.’ The Animal Farm reference is unmistakable. Svinya’s previous experience with the WPC made quite a splash as well, this time literally. His greatest triumph for the cause of world peace involved getting a sailboat that was to take a Balkan cruise for peace, liaising with local peace groups at each stop. In reality, his liaisons were of a more interesting if less political nature. He loaded the boat with booze and brought female employees and hangers on for what Prince describes as a “ vacation of debauchery floating on the Baltic.”[167] Great work if you can get it. Svinya’s purpose at the end was more prosaic, gathering documents, destroying some and taking the rest with him to Moscow.[168]

With ‘Svinya’s’ departure and the subsequent sale of two of the three floors that had once comprised the WPC’s Helsinki offices, all that was left were some mementos that were deemed so lacking in value that none of the three Secretary General’s had considered them worth removing and, curiously enough given the mania for records that typified the communist states of Russia and Eastern Europe, the financial and personnel files! The latter contained intimate details of all who served in the Helsinki office, taken clearly from intelligence reports of which the employees themselves had been unaware. The personal files were particularly interesting to Prince, if not to historians, containing intimate details of the personal and work lives of every employee of the organization, as well as the records of anyone who for any reason walked through the Lönnrotinkatu doors. Prince and a friend destroyed these files.[169]

What now?

We have now come full circle. The question of what to do now becomes particularly acute. Before the election, when the issue was simply the revival of Active Measures whose primary impact was ‘somewhere else,’ in the distant Ukraine or some other victim of geography as the Kremlin sets about the piecemeal reconstitution of its former Empire, it was a matter of policy recommendations. One of the best such lists comes from US Army Foreign Area Officer Steve Abrams.[170] But how to implement recommendations when the power you are seeking to contain has influenced not only a US election, but has gained effective control of American power plants and other key infrastructure?[171] It is a new and humbling position for the Americans. The last successful incursion onto American soil dates to the War of 1812 when the British put the US capital to the torch. In America, that event has long faded from either memory or history classes. So what to do indeed?

A beginning is to recognize what has happened and act accordingly. Interference in the American election, using an updated Active Measures campaign to elect a candidate favored by the Kremlin is an act of war, and should be treated as such. The aggression is more mannered than that of the Ukraine or Crimea and less Hollywood than the Soviet invasion of Red Dawn vintage. The combination of ignorance of all things foreign combined with racism and xenophobia has brought the US to this impasse, and it will only be resolved in stages, like the layers of an onion, in a mainstream parallel to the conflict on the American far right between the race warriors who populated the Trump campaign and the unreconstructed cold warriors who see Russia as unchanged from the communist days is already beginning.[172]

War between nuclear powers was unthinkable after 1962, and so the conflict was conducted through proxies around the globe who were given access to a carefully limited selection of the tools of war and allowed to pursue equally circumscribed regional objectives, largely through proxy actors. In the globalized age of the internet, the war fighters’ palate is much fuller, with the ability to subject the other side to a technological Armageddon based on attacks on computer and other infrastructure now readily at hand. Indeed, Russia has already preempted the US in cyber warfare.[173] Can such a confrontation go nuclear? Throughout the campaign, Donald Trump broached the possibilities of nuclear solutions to problems privately and it may be that in his wake the barriers to nuclear confrontation are not as high as they once were.[174] Elections have costs.

The process of peacefully removing a sitting president is complicated. The system worked after a fashion in the Watergate fiasco that saw President Nixon resign after an overwhelming election victory in 1973. But that was strictly an internal affair. Russian involvement means that the process that will inevitably bring down the Trump Administration will be less mannered. In 1973 it was a single sitting president and a bare handful of his cronies that were brought low. The American Constitution, the basis of law and governance in the US, did not foresee the involvement of a hostile foreign power, nor that significant numbers of Americans would be indifferent to the actions of that foreign power.

What is to come? It is impossible to know for certain, but the concluding chapter will delve into this question more deeply.

Notes

1  Fletcher Schoen and Christopher J. Lamb, “Deception, Disinformation, and Strategic Communications: How One Interagency Group Made a Major Difference” in Strategic Perspectives (Washington, DC: Institute for National Strategic Studies 2012), 55. The report is available at http://ndupress.ndu.edu/portals/68/documents/stratperspective/inss/strategic-perspectives-11.pdf. The Presidential Order that made it possible can be found at http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB177/03_NSDD-77.pdf. NSDD 75 is available at https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsdd/nsdd-75.pdf.

2  Karta 77 was already failing in 1977 and much discussion among young people in the taverns and wine cellars harked back to the hopes of Prague Spring – an event that occurred when many were small children. Trever Hagen, “From Inhibition to Commitment: Politics in the Czech Underground,” EastBound Journal of Media Studies (2012), https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/bitstream/handle/10871/17271/Hagen_From%20inhibition%20to%20Commitment.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.

3  Johanna Granville, “ ‘Caught with Jam on Our Fingers’: Radio Free Europe and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956,” Diplomatic History 29, no. 5 (2005): 811–839.

4  Compare the uplifting tone of a ‘Morning in America’ ad from the 1984 campaign to the vitriol of the 2016 Trump campaign, www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU-IBF8nwSY.

5  Ishaan Tharoor, “Trump Is Ruling America with the Agenda of Europe’s Far Right,” Washington Post, January 31, 2017, www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/01/30/trump-is-ruling-america-with-the-agenda-of-europes-far-right/?utm_term=.0b921c364863. Richard Wike, Bruce Stokes, Jacob Poushter and Janell Fetterolf, “U.S. Image Suffers as Publics Around World Question Trump’s Leadership,” Pew Research Center, June 26, 2017, www.pewglobal.org/2017/06/26/u-s-image-suffers-as-publics-around-world-question-trumps-leadership/. Ishaan Tharoor, “A Year Ago, Trump was the Hero of Europe’s Far Right. Not Anymore,” Washington Post, November 10, 2017, https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?e=a2FwbGFuQHV3b3NoLmVkdQ%3D%3D&s=5a054018fe1ff6361c79e56b.

6  A brief look at the communist leaders of Eastern Europe is provided by Antony Polonsky, The Little Dictators: The History of Eastern Europe since 1918 (London; Boston: Routledge & K. Paul, 1975).

7  II Schnaufer and A. Tad, “Redefining Hybrid Warfare: Russia’s Non-Linear War against the West,” Journal of Strategic Security 10, no. 1 (2017): 17–31. Bastian Giegerich, “Hybrid Warfare and the Changing Character of Conflict,” Connections: The Quarterly Journal 15, no. 2 (2016): 65–72.

8  J. Hasek and P. Selver, The Good Soldier Schweik (London: Penguin, 2000). Rolling Stones, “Street Fighting Man,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHugEELD8o8.

9  Joel Kovel, Red Hunting in the Promised Land: Anticommunism and the Making of America (New York: Basic Books 1994).

10  Unashamedly borrowed from Richard Nixon’s Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, who, whatever his financial foibles that cost him his office, had writers who could turn a phrase. Richard Reeves, President Nixon: Alone in the White House (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001), 147.

11  Dan Lamothe, “Russia Is Greatest Threat to the U.S., Says Joint Chiefs Chairman Nominee Gen. Joseph Dunford,” Washington Post, July 9, 2015, www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2015/07/09/russia-is-greatest-threat-to-the-u-s-says-joint-chiefs-chairman-nominee-gen-joseph-dunford/?utm_term=.50a095a4bb09.

12  Ward Wilson, Five Myths about Nuclear Weapons (Houghton: Mifflin Harcourt, 2013), 14. His suggestion of a nuclear solution to the nascent Cold War in 1948 is of interest in light of recent events. On his life, see Kozak. Rosenberg and Moore, 3–38.

13  John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy During the Cold War, Rev. and expanded ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

14  Henry W. Brands, “The Age of Vulnerability: Eisenhower and the National Insecurity State,” The American Historical Review 94, no. 4 (1989): 982, n.32.

15  Michael Mihalka, “Soviet Strategic Deception, 1955–1981,” The Journal of Strategic Studies 5, no. 1 (1982): 40–93.

16  By far the best place to start on the history and strategic conception of MAD is Henry D. Sokolski and Army War College (US.). Strategic Studies Institute, Getting Mad Nuclear Mutual Assured Destruction, Its Origins and Practice (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, 2004), http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS60565.

17  R. P. Turco et al., “Climate and Smoke: An Appraisal of Nuclear Winter,” Combustion 4 (1983): 166–176.

18  For a beautifully illustrated discussion of the strategic arsenal and its delivery systems, see Norman Polmar and Robert S. Norris, The US Nuclear Arsenal: A History of Weapons and Delivery Systems since 1945 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2009).

19  For a good discussion on the strange intersection of deterrence and rationality in the Cold War, see Patrick M. Morgan, Deterrence Now (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 42–79.

20  Judd Legum, “9 Terrifying Things Donald Trump Has Publicly Said About Nuclear Weapons,” ThinkProgress, August 4, 2016, https://thinkprogress.org/9-terrifying-things-donald-trump-has-publicly-said-about-nuclear-weapons-99f6290bc32a.

21  Scott Tobias, “9 Movies About Nuclear War,” New York Times, www.nytimes.com/watching/lists/best-nuclear-war-movies-streaming. Tobias suggests that Fail Safe, also released in 1964, was both more accurate and far more plausible. After a close look at both in 2017s, Tobias has a point. But Fail Safe is grim stuff and a successful film about our deepest fears is more resonant as satire than jeremiad. Dr. Strangelove better stands the test of time.

22  Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, www.imdb.com/title/tt0057012/. Gen. Ripper, like Gen. LeMay, has been much maligned for his marginal zeitgeist. For a spirited defense of Gen. Ripper’s position of fluoridation, see Gar Smith, “Fluoride, Toothpaste and the a-Bomb,” Earth Island Journal (2011), http://frontierweekly.com/archive/vol-number/vol/vol-44-2011-12/vol-44-4/flouride-44-4.pdf.

23  Robert S. McNamara, “The Military Role of Nuclear Weapons: Perceptions and Misperceptions,” Foreign Affairs 25, no. 6 (1983): 261–271. For the best introduction to the thinking of the nuclear planners of the time, as well as to the wit and wisdom of Gen. LeMay, see the brilliant documentary The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, IMDB, www.imdb.com/title/tt0317910/. In it, McNamara quotes Gen. LeMay as saying that if World War II had turned out differently, they would be in the dock for war crimes stemming from the bombing of Japan.

24  Jane E. Stromseth, The Origins of Flexible Response: Nato’s Debate over Strategy in the 1960s (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988).

25  Edmond J. Keller, “Drought, War, and the Politics of Famine in Ethiopia and Eritrea,” The Journal of Modern African Studies 30, no. 4 (1992): 609–624. Peter Schwab, “Cold War on the Horn of Africa,” African Affairs 77, no. 306 (1978): 6–20. For context for both cases, see Jeffrey A. Lefebvre, Arms for the Horn: Us Security Policy in Ethiopia and Somalia, 1953–1991 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992).

26  This was made clear even to civilians like myself who were kindly (more or less) taken, sick and injured from Djibouti to Sophia via Moscow after some African misadventure or other. The Djibouti Aeroflot Airline office in those days was located at a table set comfortably under the shade of a tree in the courtyard of the Russian embassy. Therein lies a tale that will be left untold save that for a nominal cost I did make my way to Sofia and much-needed medical treatment after some days as a reluctant guest of the Soviet state in Moscow.

27  Francis J. Gavin, Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America’s Atomic Age (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012). Shaun Gregory, Nuclear Command and Control in Nato: Nuclear Weapons Operations and the Strategy of Flexible Response (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996). On the Soviet side of the doctrinal debate, see Kimberly Zisk Marten, Engaging the Enemy: Organization Theory and Soviet Military Innovation, 1955–1991 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).

28  Alice L. George, The Cuban Missile Crisis: The Threshold of Nuclear War (New York: Routledge, 2013). Sheldon M. Stern, The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory: Myths Versus Reality (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012).

29  Harrison Salisbury, whose visits to Mao’s China were more credulous than his tours of the Soviet Union, points out that the Potemkin village concept employed by the Soviets had been practiced in tsarist Russia for over 200 years. Hollander, Political Pilgrims, 394–395.

30  On the Party faithful, see the remarkably neutral Finnish source Tauno Saarela and Kimmo Rentola, Communism National & International, Studia Historica (Helsinki: SHS, 1998). On the Party in America, see another wonderfully neutral source, Guenter Lewy, The Cause That Failed: Communism in American Political Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). For a recent, epic-length meditation on the Cold War that finds that the US was primarily at fault and that Stalin’s Russia were a basically amicable lot forced into confrontation by the rapacious American capitalists, see Odd Arne Westad, The Cold War: A World History (New York: Basic Books, 2017).

31  Kenneth N. Waltz, “Nuclear Myths and Political Realities,” American Political Science Review 84, no. 03 (1990): 730–745.

32  For one of the best brief introductions to means, methods, and intent, see Dennis Kux, “Soviet Active Measures and Disinformation: Overview and Assessment,” Parameters 15, no. 4 (1985): 19–28. For what is still the best monograph on the subject, see Shultz and Godson, Dezinformatsia.

33  One example of crisis from the 1980s that comes to mind was the Soviet destruction of Korean Airlines Flight 007 by a Soviet fighter in 1983. I was in Jakarta at the time and the airwaves were bombarded with a recorded message from Radio Moscow denying culpability, which played on an endless loop. On the case, Farrel Corcoran, “Kal 007 and the Evil Empire: Mediated Disaster and Forms of Rationalization,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 3, no. 3 (1986): 297–316.

34  Oleg Kalugin and Fen Montaigne, The First Directorate: My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage against the West (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 103–104. Kalugin’s view is echoed by more recent excavations of the KGB archives, Vladimir Pechatnov, “Exercise in Frustration: Soviet Foreign Propaganda in the Early Cold War, 1945–47,” Cold War History 1, no. 2 (2001): 1–27.

35  Max Holland, “The Propagation and Power of Communist Security Services Dezinformatsiya,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence 19, no. 1 (2006): 24, n. 20.

36  Ibid., 5. Cf., for another interesting take, Abrams, “Beyond Propaganda: Soviet Active Measures in Putin’s Russia,” 5–31.

37  United States Information Agency, “Soviet Active Measures in the ‘Post-Cold War’ Era 1988–1991,” (1992), http://intellit.muskingum.edu/russia_folder/pcw_era/.

38  Roy Godson, Dirty Tricks or Trump Cards: US Covert Action and Counterintelligence (New York: Routledge, 2017), ch. 1.

39  Ibid.

40  Jolanta Darczewska and Piotr Żochowski, “Active Measures. Russia’s Key Export. Osw Point of View 64, June 2017,” (2017): 16, www.osw.waw.pl/sites/default/files/pw_64_ang_active-measures_net_0.pdf. USIA, “Soviet Active Measures in the Era of Glasnost: A Report to Congress by the United States Information Agency,” (1988), 71–85, http://insidethecoldwar.org/sites/default/files/documents/Soviet%20Active%20Measures%20in%20the%20Era%20of%20Glasnot%20March%201988.pdf.

41  United States Department of State Bureau of Public Affairs, “Soviet ‘Active Measures’ Forgery, Disinformation, Political Operations – Cia,” in Special Report No. 88 (Washington, DC, 1981), www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP84B00049R001303150031-0.pdf. This brief report recounts the neutron bomb campaign, as well as Soviet Active Measures in Egypt and El Salvador.

42  Holland, “The Propagation and Power of Communist Security Services Dezinformatsiya,” 10.

43  “The Pentagon Papers,” parts of which were published by the New York Times, are massive and may be had at the US National Archives, www.archives.gov/research/pentagon-papers. Philip Agee, Inside the Company: Cia Diary, American ed. (New York: Stonehill, 1975).

44  Lest we forget what that meant, Aleksievich. That many whom Aleksievich interviews feel that it was better then says all that needs to be said of the Russia of today where money has replaced both ideology and the sense of community that was the hallmark of the communist era.

45  The current troll factories that are at the center of the current Russian disinformation campaign are nothing more than the privatization of the hackwork that characterized the work of Department D. Jolie Myers, “Meet The Activist Who Uncovered The Russian Troll Factory Named In The Mueller Probe,” Parallels, March 15, 2018, www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/03/15/594062887/some-russians-see-u-s-investigation-into-russian-election-meddling-as-a-soap-ope. Nil MacFarquhar, “Inside the Russian Troll Factory: Zombies and a Breakneck Pace,” New York Times, February 18, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/02/18/world/europe/russia-troll-factory.html.

46  Schoen and Lamb, “Deception, Disinformation, and Strategic Communications: How One Interagency Group Made a Major Difference,” 19.

47  United States, Department of State., “Soviet Influence Activities: A Report on Active Measures and Propaganda,” in Dept of State Publication (Washington, DC: The Department: Supt. of Docs., U.S. G.P.O., 1987), http://jmw.typepad.com/files/state-department – a-report-on-active-measures-and-propaganda.pdf.

48  For very considerable detail, see Barghoorn, Soviet Foreign Propaganda.

49  For an interesting point of view, see Cecelia Lynch, Beyond Appeasement: Interpreting Interwar Peace Movements in World Politics (Cornell University Press, 2007).

50  Aleksandr Isaevic Solzhenit︠s︡yn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, trans. H. T. Willetts (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005). The race for the Secret Speech was actually won by the Israelis, who sagely gave the coup to a young CIA agent named James Jesus Angleton. Yossi Melman and Dan Raviv, “The Journalist’s Connections: How Israel Got Russia’s Biggest Pre-Glasnost Secret,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counter Intelligence 4, no. 2 (1990): 219–225. It made his career and he would rise to become the chief of counterintelligence for the Agency in the 1960s. His obsession with the presence of a mole in the upper echelons of the Agency, while undoubtedly true, led to an internal witch hunt that arguably did more damage than any mole could have. David Robarge, “Moles, Defectors, and Deceptions: James Angleton and Cia Counterintelligence,” Journal of Intelligence History 3, no. 2 (2003): 21–49. Cf. Milton Bearden and James Risen, The Main Enemy: The inside Story of the Cia’s Final Showdown with the Kgb (Presidio Press, 2004), 19–24.

51  Andrew B. Stone, “ ‘Overcoming Peasant Backwardness’: The Khrushchev Antireligious Campaign and the Rural Soviet Union,” The Russian Review 67, no. 2 (2008): 296–320.

52  Michael Bourdeaux, The Politics of Religion in Russia and the New States of Eurasia, vol. 3 (New York: ME Sharpe, 1995), 5–6.

53  Felix Corley, Religion in the Soviet Union: An Archival Reader (London: Macmillan, 1996), 184.

54  “Monastery of the Kiev Caves,” Orthodox Wiki, https://orthodoxwiki.org/Monastery_of_the_Kiev_Caves.

55  Corley, Religion in the Soviet Union: An Archival Reader, 184–185. The history of the penetration of the WCC and the Vatican is detailed in the KGB archives and available as “By the Church Gates: Folder 1: The Chekist Anthology,” Wilson Center Digital Archive, June 2007, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/113349.pdf?v=dadda1a4229af3804918ec65aa768392.

56  On ecumenism, see Jonas Jonson and Norman A. Hjelm, Wounded Visions: Unity, Justice, and Peace in the World Church after 1968 (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2013).

57  Dianne Kirby, “The Churches and Christianity in Cold War Europe,” in A Companion to Europe since 1945 (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2009), 190.

58  Ibid., 191.

59  861.404/7–2248: Telegram, “The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Smith) to the Secretary of State,” Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, Eastern Europe; The Soviet Union, Volume IV, July 22, 1948–6 p.m., https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v04/d604.

60  The Patriarchate would have an increasingly close connection with the KGB throughout the Cold war. “Russian Patriarch ‘was KGB spy’,” The Guardian, February 12, 1999, www.theguardian.com/world/1999/feb/12/1.

61  Lukas Vischer, “The World Council of Churches and the Churches in Eastern Europe During the Time of the Communist Regimes: A First Attempt at an Assessment,” Religion, State and Society: The Keston Journal 25, no. 1 (1997): 62. On Barth’s importance to the Assembly, see Edward Duff, The Social Thought of the World Council of Churches (New York: Association Press, 1956), 45.

62  R. W. Howard, “The Report of the First Assembly,” The Churchman 63, no. 3 (1949): 154–155.

63  Ibid., 155.

64  Ibid., 155–156. The American press focused on the political neutrality of the event rather than its religious significance. George Dugan, “Report Urges Churches to Reject both Communism and Capitalism,” New York Times, September 3, 1948, 1.

65  Corley, Religion in the Soviet Union: An Archival Reader, 291.

66  Nancy Ammerman, “North American Protestant Fundamentalism,” in Fundamentalism Observed, ed. Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, The Fundamentalism Project (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 1–65.

67  Henry Louis Mencken, A Religious Orgy in Tennessee: A Reporter’s Account of the Scopes Monkey Trial (Brooklyn, NY: Melville House Pub, 2006).

68  Patrick W. Carey, Catholics in America: A History (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004), 104. Protestants too were wary of mainstream culture, but their retreat, which began in the wake of the Scopes trial, accelerated greatly after 1979 when fundamentalists returned with passion to the political process but sought to shield their children from the corrosive aspects of American modernity. Susan D. Rose, Keeping Them out of the Hands of Satan: Evangelical Schooling in America (New York: Routledge, 2017).

69  Philip B. Kurland, “The Religion Clauses and the Burger Court,” Catholic University Law Review 34 (1984): 1–18. Cf. David J. Garrow, Liberty and Sexuality: The Right to Privacy and the Making of Roe V. Wade (New York: Open Road Media, 2015).

70  On the history of American fundamentalism, no better source exists than Ammerman, 1–65. On American Catholicism, see Dolan.

71  Dick Houtman and Stef Aupers, “The Spiritual Turn and the Decline of Tradition: The Spread of Post-Christian Spirituality in 14 Western Countries, 1981–2000,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 46, no. 3 (2007): 305–320.

72  Stathis N. Kalyvas, The Rise of Christian Democracy in Europe (Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996). Tom Buchanan and Martin Conway, Political Catholicism in Europe, 1918–1965 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). Eric O. Hanson, The Catholic Church in World Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014).

73  Dianne Kirby, “Harry S. Truman’s International Religious Anti-Communist Front, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the 1948 Inaugural Assembly of the World Council of Churches,” Contemporary British History 15, no. 4 (2001): 37–38.

74  The text of the encyclical is available in English as “TESTEM BENEVOLENTIAE NOSTRAE: Concerning New Opinions, Virtue, Nature and Grace, With Regard to Americanism,” www.ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/l13teste.htm.

75  For a flavor of this criticism, see for example the nearly indignant (if a 1940s-era Catholic intellectual could be so deemed) Thomas T. McAvoy, “The Great Crisis in American Catholic History, 1895–1900,” Regnery 170, no. 522 (1957): 67–93. More measured but no less critical is Thomas T. McAvoy, “Americanism and Frontier Catholicism,” The Review of Politics 5, no. 3 (1943): 275–301. For those unmoved by intra-Catholic controversies of an antiquarian nature, see the excellent contextualization by Michael W. Hughey, “Americanism and Its Discontents: Protestantism, Nativism, and Political Heresy in America,” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 5, no. 4 (1992): 533–553. On the document itself, see “TESTEM BENEVOLENTIAE NOSTRAE: Concerning New Opinions, Virtue, Nature and Grace, With Regard to Americanism.”

76  Papal infallibility became official doctrine only in 1870 and was still deeply controversial within the Church, making its repetition in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae almost as controversial as the Americanism heresy itself. For a comprehensible review of the doctrine, see Dan Graves, “Pope’s Infallibility Declared, Old Catholics Split,” Christianity.com, www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1801-1900/popes-infallibility-declared-old-catholics-split-11630554.html. The Church’s own take is neither brief nor particularly comprehensible to the laity, but it seen in all its magisterium at “Infallibility,” New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia, www.newadvent.org/cathen/07790a.htm.

77  Joseph Stalin, Wikiquote, https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin. According to this source, the origin of the quote is as follows: “Said sarcastically to Pierre Laval in 1935, in response to being asked whether he could do anything with Russian Catholics to help Laval win favour with the Pope, to counter the increasing threat of Nazism,” as quoted in The Second World War (1948) by Winston Churchill vol. 1, ch. 8, p. 105.

78  Kirby, 38.

79  On Taylor and the Vatican in this period, see John S. Conway, “Myron C. Taylor’s Mission to the Vatican 1940–1950,” Church History 44, no. 1 (1975): 85–99. George J. Gill, “The Truman Administration and Vatican Relations,” The Catholic Historical Review 73, no. 3 (1987): 408–423.

80  Kirby, 41.

81  120.265A/2–1650, “Memorandum by the Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs (Perkins) to the Secretary of State,” Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950, Western Europe, Volume III, February 16, 1950, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1950v03/d738.

82  Ibid.

83  Kirby, 43.

84  Will Herberg, Protestant—Catholic—Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983).

85  Kirby, 44.

86  For the WCC take on all this, see Douglas Pratt, The Church and Other Faiths: The World Council of Churches, the Vatican, and Interreligious Dialogue (Bern: Peter Lang, 2010).

87  Martin E. Marty, Modern American Religion, Volume 3: Under God, Indivisible, 1941–1960, vol. 3 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). On popular intellectual perceptions of this American religious diversity, hear Lenny Bruce, the brilliant comic of the 1950s, “Lenny Bruce – ‘Religions Inc.’,” Youtube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQacnto7wAM.

88  Kirby, 45.

89  George F. Kennan, “The Long Telegram,” National Security Archive, February 22, 1946, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/coldwar/documents/episode-1/kennan.htm.

90  https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/coldwar/documents/episode-1/kennan.htm.

91  George F. Kennan, Sketches from a Life (New York: WW Norton & Company, 2000).

92  Kirby, 54.

93  Ibid.

94  Ibid., 54–55.

95  George Dugan, “Unity Against Reds Urged on Churches,” New York Times, March 16, 1949, 29. The contrast between the article’s title and content, as well as the fact that it is buried on page 29, suggests that the Times was aware that a Cold War was going on, but the churches were yet to get the memo.

96  George Dugan, “Hungarian Bishop Denies He Is a Red,” New York Times, August 24, 1954, 13.

97  Ibid.

98  Clay Cowran, “Hungarian Bishop Refuses to Say if He’s a Soviet Agent,” Chicago Daily Tribune, August 17, 1954, 2. In the same edition of the paper however, the WCC, then engaged in its Second Assembly in Evanston, Illinois, gets quite positive coverage on page 1.

99  Charles Grutzner, “Hungarian Bishop Invited to Testify,” New York Times, August 26, 1954, 12.

100  Michael J. Ybarra, Washington Gone Crazy: Senator Pat Mccarran and the Great American Communist Hunt (Hanover, NH: Steerforth Press, 2004).

101  “Memorandum of a Conversation, Department of State, Washington,” April 7, 1955, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, China, Volume II, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1955-57v02/d193.

102  This statement would be of interest to historians in that the CIA was not in these years permitted to operate domestically. Such a report would have been in the purview of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, who were rather zealous in maintaining bureaucratic boundaries vis other intelligence organizations.

103  “Memorandum of Discussion at the 242d Meeting of the National Security Council, Washington, March 24, 1955,” Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, Soviet Union, Eastern Mediterranean, Volume XXIV, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1955-57v24/d93.

104  Theodore A. Wilson interview with Edwin McCammon Martin, July 6, 1970, Paris, www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/martinem.htm.

105  “Memorandum of a Telephone Conversation Between the Secretary of State in Washington and Dr. Roswell Barnes in New York, February 22, 1957, 11:45 a.m.,” Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, Arab-Israeli Dispute, 1957, Volume XVII, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1955-57v17/d133.

106  The full text can be found at “On the Development of Peoples, Populorum Progressio: Encyclical Letter of His Holiness Pope Paul VI Promulgated on March 26, 1967,” Papal Encyclicals Online, www.papalencyclicals.net/Paul06/p6develo.htm.

107  No one could hope in a lifetime to wade through the literature of the conclave (God knows earnest grad students have tried). A good brief discussion can be had with John W. O’Malley, “Vatican II: Did Anything Happen?,” Theological Studies 67, no. 1 (2006): 3–33.

108  “On the Development of Peoples, Populorum Progressio: Encyclical Letter of His Holiness Pope Paul VI promulgated on March 26, 1967.”

109  No friendlier biography can be offered than Carl Solberg, Hubert Humphrey: A Biography (Minneapolis: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2003). In the interests of full disclosure, I am a charter member of the 1960s generation and my memory of the man is of his support of the Vietnam War. A half century later, it is still an unforgivable sin.

110  “Memorandum of Conversation,” Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XXXIV, Energy Diplomacy and Global Issues, Washington, May 11, 1967, 11 a.m., https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v34/d288.

111  The text of Humanae Vitae can be found at http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae.html.

112  Corley, Religion in the Soviet Union: An Archival Reader, 362.

113  “Intelligence Memorandum 2609/69, Washington, October 9, 1969,” Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume E – 10, Documents on American Republics, 1969–1972, Washington, October 9, 1969, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76ve10/d13.

114  “Transcript of a Telephone Conversation Between the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) and Billy Graham of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association,” Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XIII, Soviet Union, October 1970–October 1971, May 24, 1971, 6:50 P.M., https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v13/d231.

115  Corley, Religion in the Soviet Union: An Archival Reader, 291.

116  Corley (1996, 291).

117  The reference is to a letter written by Lev Regelson, born Jewish but later converted to Orthodoxy, and Fr. Gleb Yakunin decrying the persecution of religion in Eastern Europe. It was brought at great risk to the authors to the 1975 WCC Assembly in Nairobi. The letter reflected the text of a book credited to Regelson, but co-written by Yakunin. Lev Regelson, The Tragedy of Russian Church 1917–1945 (Paris: IMKA-PRESS, 1977).

118  Corley (1996, 291–94).

119  Corley, Religion in the Soviet Union: An Archival Reader, 291–294.

120  Archie Brown, “The Soviet Succession: From Andropov to Chernenko,” The World Today 40, no. 4 (1984): 141–164.

121  “Transcript of Conversation between Cuban Premier Fidel Castro and East German leader Erich Honecker, Havana, (excerpt),” Wilson Center Digital Archive, May 25, 1980, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/111220.pdf?v=9e8618bf2cbf04a539a233add66278fa.

122  Shultz and Godson, Dezinformatsia, 186.

123  Matthew J. Ouimet, The Rise and Fall of the Brezhnev Doctrine in Soviet Foreign Policy (Chapel Hill: Univ of North Carolina Press, 2003).

124  “Sofia Consultation,” World Council of Churches, May 31, 1981, www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/wcc-programmes/ecumenical-movement-in-the-21st-century/member-churches/special-commission-on-participation-of-orthodox-churches/first-plenary-meeting-documents-december-1999/sofia-consultation. Cf. Todor Sabev, The Sofia Consultation: Orthodox Involvement in the World Council of Churches:[Meeting Organized by the World Council of Churches, Held in Sofia May 1981] (World Council of Churches-Orthodox Task Force, 1982).

125  “Sofia Consultation.”

126  Corley, Religion in the Soviet Union: An Archival Reader, 383. For the structure and member churches of the WCC by 1989, see From Harare to Porto Alegre 1998–2006, (Geneva: World Council of Churches).

127  For an excellent and in many ways unique study of The Readers Digest, see Joanne P. Sharp, Condensing the Cold War: Reader’s Digest and American Identity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001).

128  The text of “The Gospel According to Marx” can be found at www.pravoslavieto.com/docs/eng/gospel_accord_marx.htm. It is a theme to which the Digest would return no less than three times, which such more intellectually inclined Protestant journals as The Christian Century found to be ironic and, given the pro-Gorbachev climate current at the time in the West, less than timely. See “Reader’s Digest Attacks Wcc Again,” The Christian Century 110, no. 3 (1993): 78–80.

129  John Lewis Gaddis, “Was the Truman Doctrine a Real Turning Point?,” Foreign Affairs 52, no. 2 (1974): 386–402.

130  David Hertzberg, Moscow Campaigns against War Propaganda (Washington, DC: Department of State, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, 1982), 6, available at http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a145448.pdf.

131  April Carter, Peace Movements: International Protest and World Politics since 1945 (London: Routledge, 2014), 33. By far the best available coverage of this history may be found in this source.

132  Günter Wernicke, “The Communist-Led World Peace Council and the Western Peace Movements: The Fetters of Bipolarity and Some Attempts to Break Them in the Fifties and Early Sixties,” Peace & Change 23, no. 3 (1998): 268.

133  United States, Department of State., “Soviet Influence Activities: A Report on Active Measures and Propaganda,” viii.

134  Wernicke, “The Communist-Led World Peace Council and the Western Peace Movements,” 268–269.

135  The most in-depth Western examination of the history of the WPC’s actions is Herbert Romerstein, “The World Peace Council and Soviet ‘Active Measures’,” (Hale Foundation, c. 1981), www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP90-00806R000200720005-5.pdf. Beyond this and Günter Wernicke’s article, which focuses heavily on the German peace movement in the Cold War, what remains are bits and pieces in books on the Cold War, the Peace Movement, and government reports. A full history has yet to be written.

136  Wernicke, “The Communist-Led World Peace Council and the Western Peace Movements,” 275.

137  Ibid., 282.

138  Agee, Inside the Company, 60–61.

139  Carter, Peace Movements, 75–77.

140  United States, Department of State, Active Measures: A Report on the Substance and Process of Anti-U.S. Disinformation and Propaganda Campaigns, 26–27. The document is available at http://jmw.typepad.com/files/state-department-a-report-on-the-substance-and-process-of-anti-us-disinformation-and-propaganda-campaigns.pdf.

141  Historical ironies abound even here. Khrushchev’s motivation for basing missiles in Cuba stemmed in part from the American Jupiter missiles based on the Russian border in Turkey. These were quietly removed as part of the agreements that saw the Soviets pull missiles and personnel from Cuba, although little of this was made public. “The Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962,” Milestones, Office of the Historian United States Department of State, https://history.state.gov/milestones/1961-1968/cuban-missile-crisis.

142  United States, Department of State, Active Measures: A Report on the Substance and Process of Anti-U.S. Disinformation and Propaganda Campaigns, 27.

143  United States State Department, Soviet Active Measures Christian Peace Conference (Washington, DC: United States State Department, 1985), 1.

144  For a tongue in cheek history of the Tuzex dream, Czech speakers are directed to www.youtube.com/watch?v=rl1pfJp0OtM.

145  Doris LeRoy, “Worker for Peace from Behind the Iron Curtain” in Proceedings of the 14th Biennial Labour History Conference (Melbourne: Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, 2015), https://labourhistorymelbourne.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/worker-for-peace-from-behind-the-iron-curtain-lh-proceedings2.pdf.

146  Ibid.

147  Mark G. Toulouse, The Transformation of John Foster Dulles: From Prophet of Realism to Priest of Nationalism (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1985). John M. Mulder, “The Moral World of John Foster Dulles: A Presbyterian Layman and International Affairs,” Journal of Presbyterian History (1962–1985) 49, no. 2 (1971): 157–182.

148  Alan A. Brash, Amsterdam 1948, Being a Report on the First Assembly of the World Council of Churches, August 22–September 4, 1948 (Christchurch, NZ: Presbyterian Bookroom, 1948).

149  Paul Stefanik, “The Christian Peace Conference—Propaganda? … Or Prophecy?,” Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe 5, no. 3 (1985): 46.

150  Ibid.

151  Tóth’s admiration for Hromádka shines through in his homage to his mentor. Károly Tóth, “The Heritage of Jl Hromadka for the Prophetic Ministry of the Church in East and West, Today and Tomorrow,” ibid., 10, no. 2 (1990), http://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1493&context=ree.

152  Árpád Welker, “The Christian Peace Conference and Its Connections with the Communist State: The Case of Hungarian Churches in the Early 1960’s,” Valahian Journal of Historical Studies, no. 20 (2013): 197–214.

153  United States. Department of State, Active Measures: A Report on the Substance and Process of Anti-U.S. Disinformation and Propaganda Campaigns, 30.

154  Department, 2.

155  Ibid., 1. Rude Pravo was the official organ of the Czech Communist Party and the largest daily in the country in the 1970s. It ran from 1920–1995. www.loc.gov/newspapers/?fa=subject%3Anewspapers%7Cpartof%3Arude+pravo.+%28praha+%3A%29+1920-1995&all=true&c=25&dates=1994&st=list.

156  The move was criticized in remarkably temperate language by the American Baptist Convention, which pointed out that Dr. Hromádka had stated that communism is compatible with Christianity, which is definitely not the position of the American Baptist Convention. “Prague Christian Peace Conference,” www.garbc.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/prague-christian-peace-conference-1964.pdf.

157  United States. Department of State., “Soviet Influence Activities: A Report on Active Measures and Propaganda.”

158  “’86-’87 FBI Report Exposes Soviet’s Sinister Use of Religion—Naming Names and Churches,” Wall Street Journal, Jun 6, 1988, 19.

159  Dr. Carl McIntire, “History of the ICCC,” www.iccc.org.sg/.

160  http://peacemagazine.org/archive/v08n3p16.htm.

161  http://peacemagazine.org/archive/v08n6p20.htm.

162  https://robertjprince.net/2011/08/01/the-last-of-the-wpc-mohicans-or-ghost-ship-of-lonnrotinkatu-part-3/.

163  Ibid.

164  www.wpc-in.org/.

165  https://robertjprince.net/2011/08/01/the-last-of-the-wpc-mohicans-or-ghost-ship-of-lonnrotinkatu-part-3/.

166  Ibid.

167  Ibid.

168  Ibid.

169  Ibid.

170  Abrams, “Beyond Propaganda: Soviet Active Measures in Putin’s Russia,” 27–31.

171  Nicole Perlroth and David E. Sanger, “Cyberattacks Put Russian Fingers on the Switch at Power Plants, U.S. Says,” New York Times, March 15, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/03/15/us/politics/russia-cyberattacks.html.

172  On this aspect, see Kaplan, “Red Dawn Is Now: Race Vs. Nation and the American Election.”

173  Josef Schrofl, Bahram Rajaee, and Dieter Muhr, “Hybrid and Cyber War as Consequences of the Asymmetry,” Frankfurt, Peter Lang (2011). Cf. Nicole Perlroth and David E. Sanger, “Cyberattacks Put Russian Fingers on the Switch at Power Plants, U.S. Says.”

174  Matthew J. Belvedere, “Trump Asks Why US Can’t Use Nukes,” MSNBC, August 3, 2016, www.cnbc.com/2016/08/03/trump-asks-why-us-cant-use-nukes-msnbcs-joe-scarborough-reports.html.

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Conclusion

Those who are responsible

Will be held accountable

(Anonymous)

In these pages, we have met many people, visited many times. All are Peoples of the Book, Jews, Christians, and Muslims. They share much and have more similarities than differences, but if there are two threads that bind them most tightly, it is these: ‘Those who are responsible will be held accountable’; and ‘Nothing we have been told is true, and in rectifying the wrongs of the world, everything is permitted.’ Some for a day succeeded. Others failed in their quest and their stories are written on these pages in blood. And until 21st-century America, this too they shared – they spilled blood on the grand scale and their blood was shed in return.

We live perhaps in a more genteel time, but our history is yet to be written. The pattern of violence recorded in these pages is inescapable. The involvement of a hostile foreign power in the internal doings of the American polity may yet make Thomas Jefferson’s words as true today than they were in his own time: “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it’s natural manure.”[1]

With the words of the idealistic hackers of Anonymous and the observation attributed to Hassan i-Sabah via Alamut in mind, let us review briefly each of the groups in these pages. In so doing, let us take one more aphorism as our own. Those we study fought and died to meet out justice to those whom they wished to hold accountable for the ills of their time. For they, in believing nothing that they had been raised to think was true, knew no boundaries in their fight for rectification.

Let us by contrast take for ourselves the spirit of Spinoza from Tractatus Theologico-Politicus:

I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.[2]

The Sicari

It may fairly be said that, through trial and error, the Sicari invented modern terrorism.[3] If they had predecessors, they are lost to history. They were but one of many dissident sects in the waning days of Second Temple Judaism.[4] Yet where most confined their ideas to messianic rhetoric and Temple politics, the Sicari expressed their ideas in the language of violence. They held both Rome and the Temple Priesthood, and indeed all Jewish religious authorities, political elites, and Hellenized Jews as responsible for the malaise, and to the best of their ability, thy sought to hold them accountable and deal with them accordingly. The assassination of the High Priest Jonathan was one of the first and most significant acts of, from their point of view, ‘revolutionary justice’ for which they were responsible.[5]

In the Sicari view, the Roman desecration of the Temple cult – the beating heart of Second Temple Judaism – effectively obviated the authority of the Priesthood while elevating the Romans to a position that should be accorded to God alone.[6] Truth was therefore held by the Sicari alone and in their pursuit of that truth, everything was permitted.

The ultimate costs of the Sicari campaign – an end ironically that they barely survived to have a hand in – were incalculable. The Second Temple was razed, ending a stage of Judaism where Temple-based animal sacrifice constituted the central ritual.[7] Worse, the more than 900 deaths at Masada, and the expulsion of the Jews from the Holy Land, ushered in the era of Diaspora and the emergence of a decentralized rabbinical Judaism that emphasized the primacy of text over the primacy of priests. In a very real sense, early Judaism died with the Sicari.

The Kharajites

Despite the later diffusion of Kharajite ideas throughout the Middle East and North Africa, the early Kharajites found the world to be a remarkably simple place. Ali’s rationalizations and compromises and Muawiya’s lust for power both fell outside the Din (way of life) as commanded by God in the Qu’ran and as explicated by Prophet Mohammad in the Hadith and Sunna. They were to blame and they and their followers were to be held accountable. Thus the Kharajites were at war with Sunni and Shi’a alike and this struggle would carry on in the Middle East for the better part of two centuries and in North Africa for much longer.

With the Kharajites, terrorism entered the history of Islam at a time when the Prophet was still a living memory. From the Battle of Siffin, Islam has not known a period when terrorist violence was not present, creating an Islamic three-party thesis that sees Sunni and Shi’a Islam eternally in conflict with each other and with a small but active population of radical purists who damn both for their accommodations with modernity – bida (innovation) – and their failure to maintain an Islamic polity that conforms to the model of the Prophet and the Four Rightly Guided Ones who followed. Or some of the four anyway. The struggle is absolute and existential in that it can brook no compromise, for who can compromise the Word of God? The struggle is eternal for a resolution to conflict within the confines of historic time can never be lasting. Until the eschatological End, the struggle continues. Indeed, later radical Islamist groups have frequently been called neo-Kharajites given the similarity of beliefs and actions that these groups have manifested through time.[8]

Despite their admiration for certain scholars, Ibn Taymiyya in the waning days of the Abbasid Empire or perhaps Sayyid Qutb in Nasser’s Egypt, Kharajites, and neo-Kharajites alike find truth only in sacred text.[9] For them, if nothing men say is ultimately true, everything with regard to text must be permitted. For the original Kharajites, this was not too great of an obstacle as the Gates of Ijtihad were still open.

In Islam, there are distinct categories of textual interpretation. Tafsir (commentary) represents a surface level examination of text.

Tafsir places the meaning of the Qu’ran in historical context, using grammar, the ahadith, plain meaning, logic and reason. Ta’wil is allegorical, intuitive, meditative and poetic.[10]

Both are licit, although Ta’wil is favored by the Sufis, and Sufis enjoy varying degrees of acceptance in the Islamic world and no acceptance at all among Islamists who find their political passivity suspicious and their reverence for the tombs of saints to be haram (forbidden). It is the third level of exegesis however that concerns us here. Ijtihad (lit. exertion or personal reasoning) has, many scholars assert, long been forbidden since it was decided that sufficient interpretation had been done for legal purposes (fiqh) and the Gates of Ijtihad were closed.[11] In popular parlance, it might be thought of the interpretation of current events by textual analogy. Quoting Joseph Schacht:

By the beginning of the fourth century of the hijra (about A.D. 900), however, the point Had been reached when the scholars of all schools felt that all essential questions had been Thoroughly discussed and finally settled, and a consensus gradually established itself to the effect that from that time onwards no one might be deemed to have the necessary qualifications for independent reasoning in law, and that all future activity would have to be confined to the explanation, application, and, at the most, interpretation of the doctrine as it had been laid down once and for all. This ‘closing of the door of ijtihad,’ as it was called, amounted to the demand for taklid, a term which had originally denoted the kind of reference to Companions of the Prophet that had been customary in the ancient schools of law, and which now came to mean the unquestioning acceptance of the doctrines of established schools and authorities. A person entitled to ijtihad is called mujtahid, and a person bound to practice taklid, mukallid.[12]

The closing of the Gates of Ijtihad has had far reaching implications for the Islamic world. What had been a progressive and evolving legal system which provided women, religious minorities, and ordinary believers with the greatest degree of legal rights and protections extant in the early medieval world was effectively frozen in time. Arguably, the disasters of defeat, occupation, and Western imperialism, as well as issues with the status of women, had its roots in the stasis that followed.

From a Kharajite or neo-Kharajite perspective, closing the Gates of Ijtihad meant a stasis that went far beyond the legal system. Political systems, unjust leaders and a turning away from religion, from shari’a and from the men of religion (ulama):

You are (the) best (of) people raised for the mankind – enjoining the right and forbidding [from] the wrong and believing in Allah. And if believed (the) People (of) the Book surely would have been good for them. Among them (are) [the] believers, but most of them (are) defiantly disobedient.

(AYAH al-Imran 3:110) [13]

For the Kharajites and their successors, as for states like Saudi Arabia whose religious police (Muttawa) took this passage as their motto, this was a call to action. If truth was not to be had from men, it would be found in the pages of the Qu’ran and Sunna. The question however, was who was to do the interpreting – who was qualified to perform ijtihad? The answer to the peril of the Islamic world, and in recent years the entire world, has been men of passion and belief, but little formal training in the Islamic sciences. Qutb, like the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood Hassan al-Bannah, were the products of a secular education system, as are most of the Islamist fighters of today. From them come such doctrines as takfir – judging who one deems apostate and warning or killing them. If nothing but ijtihad can produce truth, one’s personal interpretations of text, however idiosyncratic, permits virtually any action.

The Old Man of the Mountain

What then can be said of Hassan i-Sabbah and the Nizaris? With the Old Man of the Mountain, the historical, the mythical and the purely fanciful come together to provide a cornucopia of traditions and beliefs. What can be said of it all is this: Hassan i-Sabbah held the power holders of his day as responsible, though precisely what they were responsible for is a matter of interpretation. His answer however was clear enough – targeted assassination in ways that struck fear in the hearts of Sunni and Shi’a alike. To the mix was added Christian Crusaders, to whom he was sometimes the assassin or attempted assassin, at other times their vassal. All are grist for the mill of the legend that was born in his time and came West in the writings of Marco Polo and the imaginations of Orientalists, novelists, rock bands, film directors, and gamers alike.

Despite the admirable efforts of Daftary, of Lewis, and of Jeff Kenney in our day, too little of what we know of i-Sabbah himself may be true and thus almost everything that could be said of him is permitted. He has become more an archetype than a historical figure, and thus we shall respectfully allow the many strands of history and legend to stand for themselves. For of all of the ancient figures in these pages, Hassan i-Sabbah is best remembered and most venerated. For like the sacred tortoise in the wisdom of Chuang tzu, we can venerate his bones and his deeds, but woe unto those who seek to follow in his path:

Chuang Tzu with his bamboo pole

was fishing in the Pu river

The prince of Chu sent two vice-chancellors

with a formal document:

We hereby appoint you prime minister

Chuang Tzu held his bamboo pole still.

Watching the Pu river, he said:

“I am told there is a sacred tortoise offered

and canonized three thousand years ago,

venerated by the prince, wrapped in silk,

in a precious shrine on an altar

in the temple.

What do you think?

Is it better to give up one’s life

and leave a sacred shell

as an object of cult

in a cloud of incense

for three thousand years,

or to live as a plain turtle

dragging its tail in the mud?”

“For the turtle,” said the vice-chancellor,

“better to live and drag its tail in the mud!”

“Go home!,” said Chuang Tzu.

“Leave me here

to drag my tail in the mud.” [14]

Jan Žižka and the Taborites

The Taborites without equivocation held the institutional Church and their noble supporters responsible for the sadly fallen state of the world and of the spirit at the fin de siècle 15th century.[15] The Church then was a fallen thing. The Avignon Papacy and the Great Schism destroyed the myth of the Western Church Universal. Corruption, venality and violence tainted the papacy and degraded the Church.[16] The betrayal and death of Jan Hus at the Council of Constance and the disastrous Catholic Restoration undertaken by King Wenceslaus IV gave the Hussites and Taborites alike a rich tapestry of the men and institutions to be held responsible.[17] Where the Hussites sought reform and compromise, the Taborites took up arms to hold those who were responsible accountable to man and God.

Rejecting the truths of Church and King, the Taborites turned to biblical text and to the military genius of Jan Žižka. From the disciplined irregular warfare of Žižka, however, the Taborites, flushed with success and sudden wealth, increasingly turned to an antinomian path. The peasantry that they championed was soon returned to vassalage as onerous as it had been under the nobility. The ferocity that had been unleashed on the crusading forces of the Church came to be shown to all who were not of Tabor. Against all outsiders, everything came to be permitted. With Jan Žižka’s death, Tabor turned to unrestrained violence which burned bright for a season, and then passed from the scene as men grew weary of the fight, as the promised Parousia – which they had been assured had already occurred – failed to eventuate.

Yet the teachings and example of Hus, and the success of the Taborites, helped to drive the final stake through the heart of the Church Universal. Luther followed Hus just as Calvin followed Tabor, and the Reformation completed the dissolution of the medieval world.

Whatever their excesses, the modern world owes much to the Taborites, just as modern popular warfare owes an enormous debt to Jan Žižka. It is for this that they may best be remembered.

The American radical right

In one form or another, two chapters deal with the American radical right. As we have seen in their predilection for apocalyptic literature, the radical right has had no dearth of objects of blame. For those appalled or bewildered by a changing world, the most appealing intellectual safe harbors are conspiracy theories or apocalyptic fantasies. In this, the radical right is far from alone. For those of an age to remember, the Jefferson Airplane/Starship wrote songs of American apocalypse (“Wooden Ships”) or longing for escape from the earth (“Have You Seen the Stars Tonight?,” “Have You Seen the Saucers?“) from the dying days of the 1960s counter culture. The Starship’s “Blows Against the Empire” album encapsulated the hopelessness and rage of the time.

For the 1960s left, the enemies were Amerika, always spelled with a ‘k,’ the War in Vietnam, and those politicians who waged that doomed struggle. The radical right weathered the 1960s when the New Left was tres chic, but its list of enemies to whom it apportioned blame shifted over time from communists to liberals, and from Russia to American institutions and the majority of Americans with the appearance of the Alt Right.

The radical right however – decidedly unstylish after the 1920s – were more consistent. Above all others, there is the Jew, aka the International Jew. Invested with an undying hatred of the White Christian man, from the Christian Identity view since Eden literal children of the Devil, the Jew is seen as the hidden hand behind all of the ills of the world. From this springs the epithet ZOG, Zionist Occupation Government.[18] African-Americans, Latinos, and others of the non-Caucasian persuasion form a secondary tier of enemies, although their guiding light is the Jew, without whom the non-White races are seen as having neither the intelligence nor the initiative to pose a threat. The faces of the enemy changed over time, from Martin Luther King to Black Lives Matter, but the hermeneutic is the same.

In contrast to the ancient groups and individuals who have passed through these pages, the American radical right, while finding that nothing they have been told in the Churches or in the public square is true, have been greatly constrained from violent action. Increasingly for them, nothing is permitted, from overt public expressions of racism to overt violence. Hate crimes continue, and occasional killings take place. But the force of the US government coupled with the easy penetration of the radical right by private watchdog groups, have necessitated a retreat into leaderless resistance – a form of lone wolf violence that can never threaten the status quo.[19]

The rise of the Alt Right, however, for a time changed the board.[20] For this diverse group of racists, fantacists, anti-Semites, Islamophobes, and frustrated conservatives, the question of who is responsible is long and rather tedious, truth be told. Jews, Muslims, Hollywood, the media, intellectuals, universities, immigrants – just about everyone at some time or other. How do we hold all of them responsible? The answer is creative and ultimately deadening: We ignore them and replace what they have to say with alternative facts or just plain lies. The approach is what some intellectuals have called the post-truth era. In the post-truth era, nothing need be true and thus everyone’s truth, no matter how fantastic, is permitted.[21]

The Alt Right reverses course on the radical right of the post-War era. In their focus on race and religion, they betray the anti-communism and political nationalism that was previously the central focus of the entire spectrum of the American right. Thus comes the susceptibility to the blandishments of Vladimir Putin, a career KGB officer currently embarked on reconstituting the former Soviet Empire while waging a so far unilateral Cold War against the West.[22] By contrast, other elements of the American radical right, often adopting the banner of Red Dawn in homage to the 1984 movie of that name, decry what is seen as a successful Russian invasion of the United States: Not by troops and tanks, but by ideas and an unending supply of American useful idiots.[23]

What next?

With the 2016 election and the chaotic presidency of Donald Trump, combined with the transformation of a significant portion of the traditional Republican Party into a pathetic group of pandering sycophants, we are faced with a situation that is unprecedented in America, but, as we have seen, has many precedents in Europe and the Middle East. What happens when a heretofore marginal revolutionary movement actually achieves power? In all previous cases, if the movement manages to hold power, they do so by moderating their beliefs and in the end taking on the trappings of the ancien régime. Left to its own devices, the overwhelming likelihood is that this would take place in the 21st-century United States as well. But in a globalized world, none are left to their own devices.

By March 2018 when these words are being written, the work of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller grinds on, going ever deeper and wider into the web of collusion with Russia and old-fashioned corruption on the grand scale as practiced by President Trump and his family which day by day is revealed in ever greater clarity. Meanwhile, the electoral process grinds on, with Democratic victories in overwhelmingly Republican states and districts from Alabama to Virginia to Pennsylvania.

But in a globalized world and in conditions of a new and deeper Cold War, the US is not left to sort out its own chaos and it is here that the greatest contrast with the historical cases is made manifest. By collusion, treason, or simple incompetence, Russia has taken a commanding position in its war with the West. That is, if the West is even a meaningful concept in the contemporary world. In a brilliant historical analysis, career CIA officer and current academic David B. Kanin suggests that two Wests have emerged, the United States and the European Union. He argues that the West is not only in decline, but that today there are two Wests, and both are in decline. The United States, whose leadership in the aftermath of World War II was inevitable, has through its “fumbling of its hegemonic moments,” forced the European Union to take the world stage as the center of a very different West with a vastly different creation myth, cosmology, and sociopolitical ethos. While both are declining from their mid-20th century preeminence, collapse is neither imminent nor inevitable.[24]

With both Wests in decline and Russia in strategic ascendance with a decided edge in the weaponization of information technology, the question to quote Lenin’s 1901 pamphlet, is “What is to be done?”[25] The pamphlet provides an ironic echo of the present day with its first section which discusses ‘freedom of criticism,’ which the Alt Right and the Putin regime has turned into a weapon of war, for nowhere in Lenin’s pamphlet, or in much of his later writing, need criticism correspond with truth.

The ideologues of this world, left and right, are certain of their ideas and actions. The true believer’s fanaticism is unchanging, even as his ideas may leap from certainty to certainty with the passing of time and the changing of fashion.[26] It has always been so. Quoting Eric Hoffer:

Though there are obvious differences between the fanatical Christian, the fanatical Mohammedan, the fanatical nationalist, the fanatical Communist and the fanatical Nazi, it is yet true that the fanaticism which animates them may be viewed and treated as one. The same is true of the force which drives them on to expansion and world dominion. There is a certain uniformity in all types of dedication, of faith, of pursuit of power, of unity and of self-sacrifice. There are vast differences in the contents of holy causes and doctrines, but a certain uniformity in the factors which make them elective. He who, like Pascal, finds precise reasons for the effectiveness of Christian doctrine has also found the reasons for the effectiveness of Communist, Nazi and nationalist doctrine. However different the holy causes people die for, they perhaps die basically for the same thing.[27]

Lacking the certainty of the True Believer, what follows are in the form of questions meant to elicit reflection rather than action. Again following Hoffer, I would warn that: “I can do no better than quote Montaigne: ‘All I say is by way of discourse, and nothing by way of advice. I should not speak so boldly if it were my due to be believed.’ ”[28]

Proposition 1: Can a democracy remain viable when the education system serves the few and disserves the many?

It is remarkable that the impact of Russian information warfare can be so decisive in the United States but fail utterly in other states, most notably Finland. Why have the Finns been so successful? One might start with their education system, which has been rated as the best in the world.[29] The American system by contrast might politely be called a disaster,[30] which opens the question of whether a democracy can survive with a significant percentage of the population who are educationally and temperamentally unable to focus on anything save the netherworld of fake news and alternative facts of the “Fox and Friends” or the Breitbart News Network sort.[31]

It is not our brief to debate the one child left behind policy, or the deplorable state of inner city schools, but the ascendance of the post-truth era does not come from nowhere. In the current series of the X-Files, the lead characters lament that their roles in uncovering the truth which heretofore was believed to be out there is an anachronism in an age where each has his or her own truth, however farcical that truth may be. In such a world, why would the election of a Donald Trump be surprising in a country where a significant number of people believe that American elites of the non-Trumpian variety are actually conspiratorial lizard people from outer space?[32]

Of course, only 4%(!) of Americans believe in the great lizardian conspiracy. The point is made by Joseph E. Uscinski of the University of Miami and is well taken.[33] But the Alt Right is awash in conspiratorial thinking. Indeed, they provide a Smörgåsbord of conspiratorial delights to choose from. If one doesn’t go for alien lizards running the world, how about Pizzagate, or the Hillary Clinton as lesbian witch and avid Satan worshiper? The demonization of rationality is no longer simply the province of mimeographed newsletters as in the pre-microchip era or the wacko websites that proliferated after the introduction of Windows 95. Rather, they feature prominently on the plethora of Fox News[34] commentary shows, which together make Fox the most watched network in the land.[35]

In the movie Terms of Endearment, Jack Nicholson is asked how he writes about women so truthfully. It’s easy he replies, I just think of a man and I take away reason and accountability and I have a woman.[36] Had this trenchant observation been made in 2018 America, he might have said that both women and men have proved to be so lacking in rationality that all must be held accountable for the 2016 election and what followed.

This raises the most taboo question of all. Should voters who are ill-educated or addicted to fantasy be part of an electoral system at all? This raises historical specters of racially based literacy tests or the restriction of the franchise to the land owning or elite classes. No one should wish to release any of these from the historical pit in which they are interred. The question is raised because at some point it must become a conversation that escapes the private offices of academe and sees the light of day. However, investing in the education system seems a far better answer than disenfranchisement.[37]

In Finland, cultic beliefs remain on the margins and despite some flirtation with the rebranded True Finns, now the more respectable populist Finns Party, sanity reigns supreme. Russian attempts at destabilization through information have failed utterly.[38] It all begins with education.

Proposition 2: Is the US electoral system broken beyond repair?

The question of how razor thin popular votes that characterized such recent elections as Bush-Gore and Trump-Clinton can result in the election of presidents who actually lose the popular vote is best left to pundits and political scientists. What more interests us here is the susceptibility of such a system and the highly polarized electorate it disserves to Russian meddling. In the election process, Russia played its hand in a masterly fashion. From obtaining and disseminating via WikiLeaks Democratic emails and utilizing an old-fashioned agent of influence in Julian Assange to harvesting and weaponizing the data on social networks such as Facebook,[39] the Russians succeeded in influencing the 2016 election. In the close electoral vote, Russia certainly tipped the balance in favor of their preferred candidate Donald Trump.

Trump in the end proved to be a weak vessel.[40] Too unstable to sustain a thought much less a policy, so riven with vanity that every issue becomes personal, and certainly corrupt to the core as the Mueller investigation is painstakingly demonstrating, why the Russian preference for Trump in the first place? Oceans of ink are being spilled to answer this question, but two issues concern us most fundamentally. On the tactical level, Donald Trump’s adoration of, and gratitude to, Vladimir Putin has hobbled the US response to Russian aggression, both in terms of territorial expansion and in the strangle hold that Russian information warfare has taken in key sectors of the US economic infrastructure.[41]

But of greatest concern to this proposition is strategic: The doubt and distrust that has been sewn in the American electorate about the viability of both the American electoral system and American democracy itself. It is this that has been the greatest success of the Russian information warfare campaign against the US, and it is precisely this that may in historical hindsight be the telling blow in the new phase of the Cold War between Russia and the two Wests, American and European.

Proposition 3: Is Donald Trump paving the way to a Christian America?

Given Donald Trump’s assertion that women are available to the rich and famous (“Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”) and what in Clintonian times would have been called a bimbo explosion as porn stars and Playboy pinups give high-profile interviews about his predatory behavior, many would be excused for thinking that having Donald Trump as the head of a crusade for a Christian America is in the realm of absurdity occupied by adherents of the Lizard People Rule the World theory.[42] In contemporary America however, it makes perfect sense.[43]

America of course has seen this before, but never quite like this. In the past, issues and causes stirred Christian participation in the electoral system. Whether it was race and immigration in the 1920s, Prohibition in the 1930s, the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s, or Supreme Court decisions in the 1960s and 1970s, Christians responded to threats to the perceived status quo of what they hold to be a Christian Nation. Populist candidates reaped some of this support, but as Gerald L. K. Smith attests, not enough support to make much of a national dent in electoral politics.

This would change with the rise of the Moral Majority in 1979. A new generation of politically sophisticated preachers and Evangelical leaders – first and foremost Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority, coupled with the rise of Christian Broadcasting on cable television, connected Christian passion to particular, mainly Republican candidates. Politics has always made for strange bedfellows, and the political couplings often failed to meet the common sense test. In particular, Christian support for Richard Nixon – hardly a model of Christian rectitude – which was championed by the Rev. Billy Graham and Falwell himself is a case in point.[44]

But what is different today is that Nixon, and other candidates supported by what was coming to be called the Christian Right, were almost invariably mainstream politicians. The Christian Right carefully eschewed what in that day was called the lunatic fringe of racists, anti-Semites, ultra-nationalists, conspiracy theorists, or adherents of the Texe Marrs–style bricolage of wackiness.

To outsiders, the Christian embrace of Donald Trump would seem to demean Christianity itself, but the view from the inside is more complex. None would deny that Trump is a flawed man, but American Christianity has a long history of offering the hand of forgiveness to some of the most deeply flawed of their own number. Witness Jimmy Swaggert’s fall from grace in the 1980s. In those pre-internet days, he was not only arrested in a motel room with a prostitute, but the woman gave an interview to Penthouse with all the grisly details:

Prostitute Debra Murphree says evangelist Jimmy Swaggart was ‘kinky and cheap too’ during their 20 liaisons, having sex with her only once but demanding that she perform a variety of obscene acts in his Lincoln Town Car.

Murphree told Penthouse magazine that she rejected Swaggart’s entreaties to bring her 9-year-old daughter to their sex sessions, telling him, ‘Not my daughter! If you want to do it with someone else and it turns you on, fine. But not my daughter!’

‘To me, he was kind of perverted,’ Murphree said in the interview, which features 18 black-and-white photographs of her nude. ‘I don’t think he should be teaching children in Sunday school.’

The disclosures of Murphree’s encounters with Swaggart led the Assemblies of God to defrock its most popular minister. Swaggart has admitted only ‘moral failure,’ and previous media reports said the television evangelist never had sexual intercourse with the prostitute but watched her perform obscene acts instead.

But Murphree said in the interview that he briefly had intercourse with her on one occasion… .

‘God, what a freak! Kinky! Here he is up there preaching for all this money and when I see him, he’s kinky and cheap too… . He was so cheap,’ she said. ‘He would call and try to get me to get him off over the phone. He’d say he’d pay me the next time.’[45]

After a short time in the wilderness, Swaggert gave a famous mea culpa in a packed church. His “I have sinned” sermon certainly goes down in history alongside Richard Nixon’s ‘Pat’s good Republican cloth coat’ Checkers speech for effectiveness and he quickly returned to his historic and profitable ministry.[46] Compared to Jimmy Swaggert, Donald Trump is hardly beyond the pale of Christian mercy.

There is a saying in America to the effect that the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t. Donald Trump may not be the kind of man you would care to find in your congregation, but he is seen as a bulwark against the ‘International Muslim,’ who in the demonology of the American psyche is even more threatening than was the International Jew in the 1920s.[47] But there is much more than simple Islamophobia at play.

What has been called Christian Nationalism has many strands. Opposition to abortion, gay marriage, Islam, and what is dimly understood to be shari’a law, communism, and liberalism broadly defined according to the Christian Nationalist Party.[48] Put more positively:

The Christian Nationalist Alliance affirms the following:

1. 1 Jesus Christ is the Son of God and savior of man.

2. 2 All life, from conception until death, is sacred and the right to life is paramount.

3. 3 These United States of America were founded by Christian men upon Christian tenets. Freedom of Religion is not an excuse to divorce the American culture from it’s origins. We will defend our rights as Christians in all aspects of American life.

4. 4 Marriage is an institution sanctioned by God between one man and one woman.

5. 5 There are two genders and all attempts to claim otherwise are an attempt to further pervert the glory of the Creation.

6. 6 The family is the cornerstone of Western Civilization and should be protected from government intrusion and manipulation.

7. 7 Every American has the right to practical self-defense and the right to bear arms is as important as any of our other liberties.

8. 8 Capitalism is the best system for social development and Christian Charity the world has ever known. It must be preserved and promoted as the solution to the social and economic problems caused by Communism.

9. 9 Strong borders are a necessity for a safe and prosperous society.

10. 10 Islam is a heretical perversion of the Judeo-Christian doctrine and must be recognized and treated as a threat to America and Western Civilization as a whole.[49]

To this is added a healthy layer of conspiratorial thinking and Satanism Scare derived hysteria. For a cook’s tour, one need look no further than the headlines on the Christian Nationalists Party top page:

- “Witches plan to curse Trump: We will counter with prayer.”

- “Satanists march against President Trump.”

- “Islam is a threat to Christianity.”

- “The War of Attrition: Muslim Demographics in the US.”

- “Sympathy for the Devil: Western media enabling ISIS.”

- “After Birth Abortion: The Next Frontier In the Pro-Choice Movement”

- “I had an Abortion because I wanted to.”

- “The Left is a Death Cult”

- “A Tale of Two Nations: Examining the Culture War in America.”

- “Communist agitators assault man on his way to work.”

- “Adventures in Liberalism: Flying with Hillary supporters.”

- “Madeleine Albright stands with the enemy.” (with a picture of PM Albright standing with Yasser Arafat who died in 2004)

- “The Left In Their Own Words: Women’s March” (with a young woman holding a sign reading “The Future is Nasty”)

- “Linda Sarsour arrested in publicity stunt.” (“Linda Sarsour was arrested while attempting to use American women as pawns in her attempt to turn America into an Islamic-Socialist hell.”)

- “Christian Nationalism and charity.” (with a picture of Ronald Reagan who would likely turn over in his grave to be included with these headlines)

- “Christian Nationalists stand with the Front National.” (with picture of the French national Front’s campaign sign)

- “President Trump was right about Sweden.” (with a graph purporting to be Swedish rape statistics with rapists understood to be immigrants)

- “Let Us Pray: The Trump Family’s Declaration of Holy War.“ (“A fight is brewing over Melania Trump’s recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. A fight we have been waiting for.”)

- “Austrian Veil Ban Highlights the Difference Between Globalism and Nationalism.”[50]

The cohabitation of the Religious Right with Christian Nationalism in support of Donald Trump states all that needs to be said as to why Donald Trump is as good as anyone – anyone at all – to champion the drive to create a ‘Christian America.’

Proposition 4: If we are at war, why don’t we act like it?

The United States has proved to be extremely vulnerable to Russian political and cyber attack. In this, it is not alone. The GLOBSEC Policy Institute, headquartered in Bratislava, Slovakia, recently published what it calls a “Vulnerability Index: Subversive Russian Influence in Central Europe.”[51] It covers only the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and of course the European winner of subversion vulnerability is Hungary by a very long way.[52] The GLOBSEC model however would be a good start in assessing the problem in the United States. The categories that they examine are these:

- Public Perception

- Political Landscape

- Media

- State Countermeasures

- Civil Society

- Best Practices[53]

Yet while vulnerability assessment is important, the issue is of far greater magnitude. Russia is practicing what has come to be called Hybrid Warfare against the world, with cyber warfare being only one aspect of the problem. There is no need here to recap the basic tenants of Hybrid War beyond its utilization of a combination of tools to address a particular policy objective. What concerns us here is the question of what is to be done, for unless the denial aimed at buttressing the questionable legitimacy of the 2016 election is overcome, the gaping window of vulnerability will never be closed. By 2018, pieces of the problem are becoming obvious, the latest being the revelation that Cambridge Analytics, connected of course to the Trump campaign and the Russians as well, harvested data from 87 million Facebook users for use in the efforts to subvert the American election.[54] Facebook was a prime forum for Russian disinformation operations during the election.[55]

Until the manifest deficiencies in the US response to Russian Hybrid Warfare can be systematically addressed – a near impossibility with the Trump Administration still clinging to power – what to do in the near term is of greatest concern. The news that Russian cyberattacks have resulted in effective Russian control of US power plants moves this from a theoretical discussion to, potentially, one of national survival.[56]

While the Trump Administration is being dragged kicking and screaming into piecemeal sanctions and such Cold War nostalgia as tit for tat diplomatic expulsions, nothing is apparently being done systematically to either close the windows of vulnerability to Russian aggression or to deter further Russian operations.[57] Moreover, the longer that Donald Trump remains in power, the wider the gap grows between Russian dominance and American defense. Where the missile gap of Cold War vintage proved to be illusory in the end, the contemporary cyber warfare gap, while harder for the public to understand, is all too real. Assuming however that the sands in the hourglass are running out on the Trump Administration, what to do?

First, having recognized both the magnitude of the threat and the reality of Russian aggression, the US must at minimum adopt and implement a Hybrid Warfare model of its own. One with both credibility and very large teeth. Diplomacy is a basic part of the toolkit, although the State Department after Rex Tillerson’s chaotic tenure as Secretary of State is at best a weak reed.[58] Here too, the damage to US institutions under the Trump Administration will not be quickly undone.

Diplomacy however is of minor importance in the crisis. The bulk of the response must be carried by the military and the Intelligence agencies. The options are many, and many hark back to a simpler time in the early Cold War when the US and the Soviet Union engaged in a Berlin-centered game of ‘The Wild West’ in the immediate aftermath of t World War II and in the early days of the CIA. In those distant days, the intelligence agencies waged a war of covert action while the emerging nuclear standoff made a direct conventional military confrontation almost impossible.[59]

US strength continues to lie in its economy, military, and intelligence capabilities, but these need to be used in a far more aggressive way than they have been in recent years. Rather than fighting high-cost losing wars in the Middle East, or obsessing about the alleged dangers posed by migrants at the Mexican border, US capabilities need to be refocused on Europe and the confrontation with Russia first and foremost, with a rising and increasingly bold China as a secondary concern. There is nothing new about this. Gen. Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said this in 2015.[60] This assessment has not changed in 2018, although American strength is, according to Pentagon officials, steadily eroding.[61]

The erosion of strength and the dearth of credibility must both be reversed – if reversal is still possible, but it will entail a good deal of risk. In an age of a globalized economy, sanctions are of limited, and largely short-term, utility.[62] But they have always been slow and unreliable. Cuba’s loss of the American cigar market did little to erode communism there for example. It only further impoverished the people. Moreover, where geography favors Russia’s muscular use of economic pressure in parts of the Former Soviet Union, such as Georgia and Crimea among others, the US has no such geostrategic advantage over Russia.[63] Economic warfare would hurt both. It would arguably damage Russia more, but Americans after World War II have shown little stomach for policies that would impact their luxuries or modes of entertainment. That will surely not change now.

The key is credibility. American actions will draw a response, but American action must not be deterred. A full menu of covert actions – the sub rosa aspect of Hybrid Warfare – could be implemented on an asymmetric basis. Responses need not be keyed to particular events or Russian actions, but must be understood to be part of an implacable policy of opposition to Russian Hybrid Warfare actions against the US. In this, nothing should be off the table, for fear of what might be done is invariably more powerful than concern at what will be done.

Russian troll factories for example have particular addresses where contract workers labor to produce a far more sophisticated disinformation product than their KGB predecessors could create for the Active Measures campaign.[64] Buildings sometimes explode. When workers are in the building, it is both a tragedy and message to those who might take their places. Particular oligarchs or Russian officials are involved in the disinformation campaigns, or in Hybrid Warfare actions against the United States? If targeted economic sanctions on these individuals do not work – and they have not – targeted assassination sends a sterner message.[65]

In a word, if we are at war, act like it.

Which brings us to the unutterable apex of the Hybrid Warfare tree: Nuclear war. With the harrowing exception to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, nuclear conflict has been off the table – left to Gen. Curtis LeMay’s dreams, apocalyptic literature, and Hollywood cinema. Ideally, this will remain the case. However, a credible threat must be made, and made publicly, that a Russian cyber attack on American power plants or other infrastructure will draw a nuclear response. An exchange of cyber attacks on the respective economic or security infrastructures of Russia and the United States puts the US at a decided disadvantage, and violates the tenets of asymmetric conflict. Russian capabilities make a cyber response a weak deterrence attempt. A threatened nuclear strike however, draws a clear line in the sand that makes any Russian objectives in its cyber warfare campaign against the US pale into insignificance.

And if deterrence fails and a nuclear exchange eventuates? Elections have costs, and elections manipulated by a hostile foreign power have greater costs yet. Great sacrifices were made to protect the American people during the Cold War, and greater sacrifices still were made on their behalf in a 20th century beset by global and regional conflicts. Does the election of Donald Trump and all that we have detailed in these pages that have made the US susceptible to Russian Hybrid Warfare make this unthinkable scenario conceivable? Have a significant number of Americans proven themselves so unworthy of these sacrifices as to make nuclear warfare possible? In the rarified cloisters of the classroom, or the technological wonderland of the War Room to use a wonderful Strangelovian expression, abstracts like these with such euphemisms as ‘collateral casualties’ or the more recent ‘addition by subtraction’ of the US population can be debated. In the real world, the decisions are more terrifying. For this reason, the overwhelming likelihood is that, given rational actors in both the White House and the Kremlin, deterrence will hold.

For its part, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in its annual threat assessment believes that deterrence in the form of cyber retaliation should be sufficient to check Russian or other cyber attacks on US infrastructure:

We assess that concerns about US retaliation and still developing adversary capabilities will mitigate the probability of attacks aimed at causing major disruptions of US critical infrastructure, but we remain concerned by the increasingly damaging effects of cyber operations and the apparent acceptance by adversaries of collateral damage.[66]

The assessment however is over optimistic, carrying with it an admission of weakness in noting that potential adversaries are ready to accept ‘collateral damage.’ Fighting on the virtual battleground of the enemy’s choosing has never been the best path to victory. In The Art of War, Sun Tzu stated this elegantly: “Knowing the place and the time of the coming battle, we may concentrate from the greatest distances in order to fight.”[67] Asymmetrical warfare is nothing new.

Proposition 5: Loyalty to the oath or loyalty to the nation?

If there is one unutterable question among American security service professionals it might be this: Which is greater, loyalty to one’s oath or loyalty to the nation? However compromised by Russia, unbalanced, or corrupt Donald Trump may be, he remains Commander and Chief, a position that demands loyalty to the Office regardless of the individual who may occupy that position at a given time. Yet if one is convinced that a sitting President is a threat to National Security – what then?

During the 2016 presidential campaign, against all precedent, retired officials – almost all Republican – warned that Donald Trump presented a threat to National Security.[68] The Mueller investigation and the optics since then have shown the warning to be prescient. No secret shared with President Trump is too sensitive for Russian ears while the US intelligence agencies remain suspect, demonized by the President and his Fox News amen corner.[69] How did we get here and what to do?

The former question is easier to address. Shortly after the election, in January 2017, Donald Trump sought to calm the fears of the intelligence community by making a speech at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. The spectacle was held in the emotive heart of the building by the wall which memorializes the men and women who gave their lives for their nation during the Cold War. It did not go well.[70] The monolog primarily consisted of boasts, lies, the smooth assurance that 100% of those in the room voted for him, and the kind of bizarre behavior that was to become a norm for the Trump presidency. The 800-pound elephant in the room – Russian involvement in the US election – remained unremarked throughout the event. What was said was certainly … unusual. Starting with specious claims that everyone in the room voted for him:

You know, the military and the law enforcement, generally speaking, but all of it – but the military gave us tremendous percentages of votes. We were unbelievably successful in the election with getting the vote of the military. And probably almost everybody in this room voted for me, but I will not ask you to raise your hands if you did. (Laughter.) But I would guarantee a big portion, because we’re all on the same wavelength, folks. (Applause.) We’re all on the same wavelength, right? He knows. It took Brian about 30 seconds to figure that one out, right, because we know we’re on the same wavelength.

Having established that all in the room were of one mind, the President segued to an aside about policy which was seen as a simple matter of good vs evil:

But we’re going to do great things. We’re going to do great things. We’ve been fighting these wars for longer than any wars we’ve ever fought. We have not used the real abilities that we have. We’ve been restrained. We have to get rid of ISIS. Have to get rid of ISIS. We have no choice. (Applause.) Radical Islamic terrorism. And I said it yesterday – it has to be eradicated just off the face of the Earth. This is evil. This is evil. And you know, I can understand the other side. We can all understand the other side. There can be wars between countries, there can be wars. You can understand what happened. This is something nobody can even understand. This is a level of evil that we haven’t seen. And you’re going to go to it, and you’re going to do a phenomenal job. But we’re going to end it. It’s time. It’s time right now to end it.

But it wasn’t long before the most pressing issue – the famous Trump ego and his war with the press took center stage. It was to hold the spotlight for the rest of the event.

And the reason you’re my first stop is that, as you know, I have a running war with the media. They are among the most dishonest human beings on Earth. (Laughter and applause.) And they sort of made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence community. And I just want to let you know, the reason you’re the number-one stop is exactly the opposite – exactly. And they understand that, too.

In the Trump zeitgeist, even God attended the Inauguration, regardless of what the press or the Park Service had to say on the subject.

And I was explaining about the numbers. We did a thing yesterday at the speech. Did everybody like the speech? (Applause.) I’ve been given good reviews. But we had a massive field of people. You saw them. Packed. I get up this morning, I turn on one of the networks, and they show an empty field. I say, wait a minute, I made a speech. I looked out, the field was – it looked like a million, million and a half people. They showed a field where there were practically nobody standing there. And they said, Donald Trump did not draw well. I said, it was almost raining, the rain should have scared them away, but God looked down and he said, we’re not going to let it rain on your speech.

In fact, when I first started, I said, oh, no. The first line, I got hit by a couple of drops. And I said, oh, this is too bad, but we’ll go right through it. But the truth is that it stopped immediately. It was amazing. And then it became really sunny. And then I walked off and it poured right after I left. It poured. But, you know, we have something that’s amazing because we had – it looked – honestly, it looked like a million and a half people. Whatever it was, it was. But it went all the way back to the Washington Monument. And I turn on – and by mistake I get this network, and it showed an empty field. And it said we drew 250,000 people. Now, that’s not bad, but it’s a lie. We had 250,000 people literally around – you know, in the little bowl that we constructed. That was 250,000 people. The rest of the 20-block area, all the way back to the Washington Monument, was packed. So we caught them, and we caught them in a beauty. And I think they’re going to pay a big price.

Divine protection from the rain established, the address meanders further into, well, this:

We had another one yesterday, which was interesting. In the Oval Office there’s a beautiful statue of Dr. Martin Luther King. And I also happen to like Churchill, Winston Churchill. I think most of us like Churchill. He doesn’t come from our country, but had a lot to do with it. Helped us; real ally. And, as you know, the Churchill statue was taken out – the bust. And as you also probably have read, the Prime Minister is coming over to our country very shortly. And they wanted to know whether or not I’d like it back. I say, absolutely, but in the meantime we have a bust of Churchill.[71]

It went downhill from the whopper about the inaugural crowd.

Some in the intelligence community simply voted with their feet.[72] The more common reaction was more covert. Shortly after the speech, the first rivulets of what would become an avalanche of leaks to the press and later to the Special Prosecutor began to fly over the transom. Arguably, this will prove to be the more telling response to both the Langley speech and the Trump presidency. This of course is roundly denied by one and all in the Intelligence community, but has in some cases been documented.[73]

None of this however amounts to a Night of the Long Knives. Military commanders and the intelligence community may have been involved in precipitating the Death of Thousand Leaks strategy, but none have shown signs of taking more resolute or violent action. The fabric of the Republic holds, even as it is under siege from the President, the populist wing of the Republican Party, the Alt Right, and of course Fox News. It is a pattern that we have seen in the context of the apocalyptic literature of the radical right. How many have simply given up on news, on politics and, indeed, on America rather than face the daily recap of chaos, lies, and video tape?

Which brings up the greatest question of all.

Proposition 6: Is America still worth fighting for?

That the question would be asked, even rhetorically, is both a perfect metaphor of the state of the nation in 2018 and a fitting place to close this book. Some Americans did vote with their feet. Perhaps a few million moved to Canada.[74] The more historically minded recalled Sweden’s open welcome to American deserters and draft dodgers from the Vietnam War in the 1960s and hoped to try their luck there. Despite some welcome, they found that Sweden, one of the top three recipients of refugees from the Middle East and Africa, had belatedly amended its laws to make immigration there slightly more difficult. New Zealand too got its share, but Australia didn’t, interestingly enough.[75] The list of countries to welcome American political refugees brings another wave of nostalgia to those who remember the Cold War days of the 1960s–1970s when these countries offered a welcoming safe harbor for those not wanting to go to Vietnam or, having been there, not wanting to either go back or return to the US.[76]

But most who vowed to leave in the end did not. This included Hollywood stars, academics, and other trend setters and opinion makers. Each has his or her own story as to why they remained in America – career, family, and friends of course. But there is something deeper that speaks to the heart of the issue. Whatever their disgust with American politics, too little in their lives has actually changed to make the doings in Washington or Moscow of existential import compared to the mundane routines of daily life.

This book holds again and again the proposition that for the denizens of these pages, ancient and contemporary, nothing is true and therefore everything is permitted. But there is a deeper meaning here. No human truths, no received wisdom, can be held to be true. This necessitates a deeper quest – a search for the immutable truth of God. Each of the groups and individuals in this book made such a search, and each found to his or her own certainty that Divine Truth, that timeless mandate, could be discerned and, with God’s blessing, acted upon. In pursuing that greater truth, and in battling against the powers that be and those who blindly follow them, anything, absolutely anything, is permitted for can there be a greater sin than compromising the Word of God?

So …

Is America still worth fighting for? Is redemption from the current malaise either possible or desirable? If the findings of this book are to be believed, the answer is probably yes. Every movement in these pages embarked on a religious quest of global import, but started with local and regional conflicts. Most perished by the sword, others like the Taborites ultimately succumbed to malaise, and a few actually rose to power as did the Alt Right and populists in the US after 2016. Each of these triumphs ended the same way however. For, in the end, they did little to change the world and were forced to adapt to a version of what had been the existing status quo or to perish themselves. The truth that was the Will of God proved as elusive to the True Believers who based their lives on the certainty that they had apprehended correctly and completely the Divine Will as it had to those they deposed. And surely so it will be again.

This book thus ends where George Orwell’s Animal Farm closed generations ago, for in art as in politics as in life, nothing in the last two millennia has really changed:

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.[77]

Notes

1  http://tjrs.monticello.org/letter/100.

2  www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1850355-tractatus-theologico-politicus.

3  Rapoport, “Fear and Trembling: Terrorism in Three Religious Traditions,” 658–677. Horsley, “The Sicarii: Ancient Jewish ‘Terrorists’.”

4  Bandits, Prophets, and Messiahs: Popular Movements at the Time of Jesus.

5  Mark Andrew Brighton, The Sicarii in Josephus’s Judean War: Rhetorical Analysis and Historical Observations (Society of Biblical Lit, 2009), 56–57.

6  Regev Eyal, “The Temple Cult, Romanization, and the Rebels: The Roman Setting for the Rebels’ Religious Ideology,” Journal of Ancient Judaism 5, no. 1 (2014): 40–60.

7  Jacob Neusner, “Judaism in a Time of Crisis: Four Responses to the Destruction of the Second Temple,” Judaism 21, no. 3 (1972): 313–327.

8  Kenney, 51.

9  Qutb was executed in 1966, but his thought has influenced every Islamist thinker and group to follow. His reworking of the term Jahaliyya (pre-Islamic ignorance or darkness) to describe every current regime in the Islamic world is ubiquitous in the world of Sunni Islamists to this day. His most widely read work internationally is Sayyid Quṭb, Milestones, trans. S. Badrul Hasan, 1st ed. (Birmingham: MAKTABAH, 1981), www.kalamullah.com/Books/Milestones%20Special%20Edition.pdf. Cf. Sayyid Quṭb and Albert Bergesen, The Sayyid Qutb Reader: Selected Writings on Politics, Religion, and Society (New York: Routledge, 2008). On his use of the term Jahaliyya, William E. Shepard, “Sayyid Qutb’s Doctrine of Jāhiliyya,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 35, no. 4 (2003): 521–545.

10  L. Ali Khan, Contemporary Ijtihad: Limits and Controversies: Limits and Controversies (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 20.

11  For an accessible discussion, see Steven Masood, “The Concept of Ijtihad in the History of Islamic Jurisprudence,” www.stevenmasood.org/article/concept-ijtihad-history-islamic-jurisprudence. Cf. for different views David A. Jordan, “The Dark Ages of Islam: Ijtihad, Apostasy, and Human Rights in Contemporary Islamic Jurisprudence,” Washington & Lee Race & Ethnic Ancestry Law Journal 9 (2003): 55–71. Carool Kersten and Susanne Olsson, Alternative Islamic Discourses and Religious Authority, Contemporary Thought in the Islamic World (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Pub. Company, 2013). The Gates of Ijtihad were never closed for the Shi’a, although it must be performed only by the most senior mujtahids. Hasan Rezaee Haftador and Azam Khodaparast, “Ijtihad in Quranic Exegesis,” Asian Social Science 11, no. 27 (2015): 3–41.

12  Hallaq, 3.

13  Islam Awakened, http://islamawakened.com/quran/3/110/default.htm.

14  Sofo Archon, “Inspirational Taoist Quotes and Stories by Chuang Tzu,” The Unbounded Spirit, https://theunboundedspirit.com/inspirational-taoist-quotes-and-stories-by-chuang-tzu/.

15  On these events and their impact on Czech history and culture, see the indispensable Andrew Lawrence Roberts, From Good King Wenceslas to the Good Soldier Švejk: A Dictionary of Czech Popular Culture (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2005).

16  Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Poets, Saints, and Visionaries of the Great Schism, 1378–1417 (University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 2010).

17  Kaminsky, “Chiliasm and the Hussite Revolution,” 44–45.

18  Kaplan, “Real Paranoids Have Real Enemies: The Genesis of the Zog Discourse in the American National Socialist Subculture,” 299–322.

19  The first discussion of leaderless resistance, and the first use of the term ‘lone wolf’ to describe the action, was Jeffrey Kaplan, “Leaderless Resistance,” Terrorism and Political Violence 9, no. 3 (1997): 80–95. Much more has followed. On the radical right, the best of these is George Michael, Lone Wolf Terror and the Rise of Leaderless Resistance (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2012).

20  Their rise was meteoric and their crash no less sudden and spectacular. Terrence McCoy, “ ‘Imploding’: Financial Troubles: Lawsuits: Trailer Park Brawls: Has the Alt-right Peaked?,” Washington Post, April 20, 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/imploding-lawsuits-fundraising-troubles-trailer-park-brawls-has-the-alt-right-peaked/2018/04/20/0a2fb786–39a6–11e8–9c0a-85d477d9a226_story.html?utm_term=.f5223e9bfa89&wpisrc=al_trending_now__alert-national&wpmk=1.

21  For a good review of the literature, see Kevin Marsh, “Living Post-Truth Lives … but What Comes After?,” Defence Strategic Communications 3 (2017): 196–206. Marsh examines four books that were published in 2017, but the problem has far deeper roots. See the 2004 warning of Ralph Keyes, The Post-Truth Era: Dishonesty and Deception in Contemporary Life (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2004).

22  The best extant coverage of this flirtation is George Michael, “Useful Idiots or Fellow Travelers? The Relationship between the American Far Right and Russia” in Russia and the World: A New Phase of the Cold War or a New World Order? ed. Jeffrey Kaplan (Special Issue of Terrorism & Political Violence, forthcoming 2018). Much more has been written about Putin’s use of the European far right. See for example the anthology Marlene Laruelle, Eurasianism and the European Far Right: Reshaping the Europe – Russia Relationship (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015). Cf. Antonis Klapsis, An Unholy Alliance: The European Far Right and Putin’s Russia (Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies, 2015). Alina Polyakova, “Putinism and the European Far Right,” Institute of Modern Russia 19 (2016), https://imrussia.org/images/stories/Russia_and_the_World/Putin-Far-Right/alina-polyakova_putinism-european-far-right.pdf.

23  Jeffrey Kaplan, “Red Dawn Is Now: Race Vs. Nation and the American Election,” Terrorism and Political Violence 29, no. 3 (2017): 411–424.

24  David B. Kanin, “The Wests: Decline Management and Geopolitics” in Russia and the World: A New Phase of the Cold War or a New World Order? ed. Jeffrey Kaplan (Special Issue of Terrorism & Political Violence, forthcoming 2018).

25  Vladimir Ilʹich Lenin and SV Utechin, What Is to Be Done? (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901), www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/download/what-itd.pdf.

26  Which defines the Cultic Milieu as conceived by Colin Campbell and later developed by Kaplan and Lööw. Colin Campbell, “The Cult, the Cultic Milieu and Secularization. A Sociological Yearbook of Religion in Britain, Scm Press London, 1972,” A Sociological Yearbook of Religion in Britain 5 (1972): 119–136. Kaplan and Lööw.

27  Hoffer, The True Believer; Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, Preface.

28  Ibid.

29  Steven Louis Paine and Andreas Schleicher, What the Us Can Learn from the World’s Most Successful Education Reform Efforts, vol. 14 (New York: McGraw-Hill Research Foundation New York, 2011). Wayne D’Orio, “Finland is #1!: Finland’s education success has the rest of the world looking north for answers,” scholastic.com, www.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3749880. LynNell Hancock, “Why Are Finland’s Schools Successful?,” Smithsonian Magazine, September 2011, www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are-finlands-schools-successful-49859555/.

30  Pedro Noguera, City Schools and the American Dream: Reclaiming the Promise of Public Education, vol. 17 (New York: Teachers College Press, 2003); Kenneth J. Saltman, Schooling and the Politics of Disaster (New York: Routledge, 2010). Elizabeth E. Heilman and Paul Shaker, Reclaiming Education for Democracy: Thinking Beyond No Child Left Behind (New York: Routledge, 2010). John Hood, “The Failure of American Public Education,” Foundation for Economic Education, February 01, 1993, https://fee.org/articles/the-failure-of-american-public-education/. Joel Klein, “The Failure of American Schools,” The Atlantic, June 2011, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/06/the-failure-of-american-schools/308497/.

31  For a sad comparison of Finland’s success and American woes, see Heinz-Dieter Meyer and Aaron Benavot, Pisa, Power, and Policy: The Emergence of Global Educational Governance (Oxford: Symposium Books Ltd, 2013).

32  Olga Oksman, “Conspiracy Craze: Why 12 Million Americans Believe Alien Lizards Rule Us,” The Guardian, April 7, 2016, www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/apr/07/conspiracy-theory-paranoia-aliens-illuminati-beyonce-vaccines-cliven-bundy-jfk. Philip Bump, “How to Spot the Reptilians Running the US Government,” The Atlantic, October 31, 2013, www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/10/how-spot-reptilians-runing-us-government/354496/.

33  Joseph E. Uscinski, “How Playing on Conspiracy Theories Can Be Key to Electoral Success,” USApp – American Politics and Policy Blog (2016), http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/67226/1/blogs.lse.ac.uk-How%20playing%20on%20conspiracy%20theories%20can%20be%20key%20to%20electoral%20success.pdf.

34  Ralph Peters, “Why I Left Fox News,” Washington Post, March 30, 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/why-i-left-fox-news/2018/03/30/d1224648-32bb-11e8-8bdd-cdb33a5eef83_story.html?utm_term=.4c0ca480ed2e.

35  A. J. Katz, “November 2017 Ratings: Fox News Is Basic Cable’s Most-Watched Network for 17 Months,” TVNewser, November 29, 2017, www.adweek.com/tvnewser/fox-news-is-basic-cables-most-watched-network-for-the-17th-straight-month/350264.

36  www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g9_wfkYjfo.

37  But when has modern America found better answers? Dana Goldstein, “Their Pay Has Stood Still. Now Oklahoma Teachers Could Be the Next to Walk,” New York Times, March 20, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/03/20/us/oklahoma-teachers-strike.html. Dana Goldstein, “Fighting Poverty, Drugs and Even Violence, All on a Teacher’s Salary,” New York Times, March 6, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/03/06/us/west-virginia-teachers-strike.html.

38  On the variety of non-mainstream beliefs in Finland, see Jeffrey Kaplan, Beyond the Mainstream: The Emergence of Religious Pluralism in Finland, Estonia and Russia (Helsinki: SKS, 2000). On the failure of the Finns Party, see “Finland’s Populist Party Has Cracked in Two,” The Economist, June 14, 2017, www.economist.com/news/europe/21723371-timo-soinis-moderate-wing-will-stay-government-while-radicals-go-back-being-protest. On the original True Finns, which was an explicitly National Socialist party with a good deal of occult trappings, see “The Finnish New Radical Right in Comparative Perspective” in The New Radical Right in Finland, ed. Kyösti Pekonen (Kopijyvä, Jyväskylä: Finnish Political Science Association, 1999), 216–230. And on Finnish resistance to Russian information warfare, see Katri Pynnöniemi, “The Asymmetric Approach in Russian Security Strategy: Implications for the Nordic Countries” in Russia and the World: A New Phase of the Cold War or a New World Order?, ed. Jeffrey Kaplan (Special Issue of Terrorism & Political Violence, forthcoming 2018).

39  Sheera Frenkel and Katie Benner, “To Stir Discord in 2016, Russians Turned Most Often to Facebook,” New York Times, February 17, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/technology/indictment-russian-tech-facebook.html.

40  Matt Kwong, “ ‘The Kremlin has to be Confused’: U.S. Expels Russians Despite Trump’s Warm Words for Putin,” CBC, March 27, 2018, www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-russia-diplomats-sanctions-1.4594350. Jonathan Lemire and Vladimir Isachenkov , “Trump Congratulates Putin, Gets Backtalk From Republicans,” Associated Press, March 20, 2018, www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2018-03-20/kremlin-shrugs-off-white-house-refusal-to-congratulate-putin.

41  Peter Baker, “Trump Declines to Add Sanctions Against Russians, Contradicting Haley,” New York Times, April 16, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/04/16/us/politics/trump-rejects-sanctions-russia-syria.html.

42  “Transcript: Donald Trump’s Taped Comments About Women,” New York Times, October 8, 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/10/08/us/donald-trump-tape-transcript.html. The article includes the video tape in question. Anderson Cooper, “Stormy Daniels Describes Her Alleged Affair with Donald Trump,” 60 Minutes, March 28, 2018, www.cbsnews.com/news/stormy-daniels-describes-her-alleged-affair-with-donald-trump-60-minutes-interview/. Eli Rosenberg and Beth Reinhard, “Former Playboy Model Gives Emotional Account of Alleged Affair with Trump, Apologizes to Melania,” Washington Post, March 23, 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2018/03/23/former-playboy-model-gives-emotional-account-of-alleged-affair-with-trump-apologizes-to-melania/?utm_term=.1be3ae765ff7. The video of the interview is included here as well.

43  Andrew L. Whitehead, Joseph O. Baker and Samuel L. Perry, “Despite Porn Stars and Playboy Models, White Evangelicals Aren’t Rejecting Trump. This Is Why,” Washington Post, March 26, 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/03/26/despite-porn-stars-and-playboy-models-white-evangelicals-arent-rejecting-trump-this-is-why/?utm_term=.fed18af50b6e.

44  Daniel K. Williams, God’s Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

45  “Prostitute says Swaggart ‘kinky and cheap too’,” UPI, May 25, 1988, www.upi.com/Archives/1988/05/25/Prostitute-says-Swaggart-kinky-and-cheap-too/2208580536000/.

46  “Jimmy Swaggart I have Sinned,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWkVa-_sd24. “Richard Nixon-Checkers Speech (9/23/1952),” www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqjwBDH-vhY.

47  Andrew L. Whitehead, Joseph O. Baker and Samuel L. Perry, “Despite Porn Stars and Playboy Models, White Evangelicals Aren’t Rejecting Trump. This Is Why.” Gary Silverman, “How the Bible Belt Lost God and Found Trump,” Financial Times, April 13, 2017, www.ft.com/content/b41d0ee6-1e96-11e7-b7d3-163f5a7f229c. Cf. Samuel L. Perry and Andrew L. Whitehead, “Christian Nationalism and White Racial Boundaries: Examining Whites’ Opposition to Interracial Marriage,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 38, no. 10 (2015): 1671–1689.

48  www.christiannationalism.com/.

49  “About Christian Nationalism,” www.christiannationalism.com/about-christian-nationalism/.

50  www.christiannationalism.com/. For the relationship challenged, the page includes a link to a Christian singles site.

51  GLOBSEC Policy Institute, “Vulnerability Index: Subversive Russian Influence in Central Europe,” www.globsec.org/publications/vulnerability-index-subversive-russian-influence-central-europe/.

52  D. Hegedus, “The Kremlin’s Influence in Hungary: Are Russian Vested Interests Wearing Hungarian National Colors,” DGAP Kompakt 8, no. 1 (2016): 1–11.

53  GLOBSEC Policy Institute, “Vulnerability Index: Subversive Russian Influence in Central Europe.”

54  Cecilia Kang and Sheera Frenkel, “Facebook Says Cambridge Analytica Harvested Data of up to 87 Million Users, New York Times, April 4, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/technology/mark-zuckerberg-testify-congress.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news.

55  Sheera Frenkel and Katie Benner, “To Stir Discord in 2016, Russians Turned Most Often to Facebook,” New York Times, February 17, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/technology/indictment-russian-tech-facebook.html. Peter Kafka, “The U.S. Government Says Russia Infiltrated Facebook with Fake Users, Accounts and Groups Supporting Donald Trump,” Recode, February 16, 2018, www.recode.net/2018/2/16/17021048/robert-mueller-russia-facebook-social-media-donald-trump-presidential-campaign-2016-hillary-clinton.

56  Nicole Perlroth and David E. Sanger, “Cyberattacks Put Russian Fingers on the Switch at Power Plants, U.S. Says,” New York Times, March 15, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/03/15/us/politics/russia-cyberattacks.html. Brennan Weiss, “US Security Officials Say Russian Hackers Could Shut Down Nuclear Power Plants and Electric Facilities in America,” Business Insider, March 16, 2018, www.businessinsider.com/us-accuses-russia-of-hacking-energy-sector-to-gather-intel-for-attacks-2018-3. Alina Polyakova, “The Next Russian Attack Will Be Far Worse than Bots and Trolls,” Brookings, March 22, 2018, www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2018/03/22/the-next-russian-attack-will-be-far-worse-than-bots-and-trolls/.

57  John Hudson, Josh Dawsey and Shane Harris, “Trump Administration to Impose Fresh Sanctions against Russia,” Washington Post, April 4, 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-administration-to-impose-fresh-sanctions-against-russia/2018/04/04/bc09e0b8-3851–11e8-b57c-9445cc4dfa5e_story.html?utm_term=.0ceac61ea208. Ellen Nakashima, “Trump Administration Hits Russian Spies, Trolls with Sanctions Over US Election Interference, Cyberattacks,” Washington Post, March 15, 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-administration-sanctions-russian-spies-trolls-over-us-election-interference-cyber-attacks/2018/03/15/3eaae186–284c-11e8-b79d-f3d931db7f68_story.html?utm_term=.00fa77bb4cc3. Josh Lederman, “Trump Expels 60 Russian Diplomats in Response to Ex-Spy Poisoning,” Time, March 26, 2018, http://time.com/5215331/us-expels-russian-diplomats/.

58  Daniel W. Drezner, “The Sooner Rex Tillerson Resigns as Secretary of State the Better,” Washington Post, October 18, 2017, www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/10/18/the-sooner-rex-tillerson-resigns-as-secretary-of-state-the-better/?utm_term=.9f2320f95cf5. Dan De Luce, Robbie Gramer, “U.S. Diplomat’s Resignation Signals Wider Exodus From State Department, Foreign Policy, December 9, 2017, http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/12/09/u-s-diplomat-resigns-warning-of-state-departments-diminished-role-diplomacy-national-security-tillerson-africa-somalia-south-sudan/. Zack Beauchamp, “Rex Tillerson has been Fired: Experts Say He Did Damage that Could Last ‘a generation’,” Vox, May 13, 2018, www.vox.com/world/2018/3/13/16029526/rex-tillerson-fired-state-department.

59  Trevor Barnes, “The Secret Cold War: The Cia and American Foreign Policy in Europe, 1946–1956. Part I,” The Historical Journal 24, no. 2 (1981): 399–415.

60  Leo Shane III and Staff, “Incoming Joint Chiefs Chairman Calls Russia, China Top Threats,” MilitaryTimes, July 9, 2015, www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2015/07/09/incoming-joint-chiefs-chairman-calls-russia-china-top-threats/. Tom Bowman, “U.S. Military Advantage Over Russia and China ‘Eroding,’ Pentagon Says,” NPR, January 19, 2018, www.npr.org/2018/01/19/579088536/u-s-military-advantage-over-russia-and-china-eroding-says-pentagon.

61  Helene Cooper, “Military Shifts Focus to Threats by Russia and China, Not Terrorism,” New York Times, January 19, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/01/19/us/politics/military-china-russia-terrorism-focus.html.

62  For considerable evidence, see the case studies in the anthology David Leyton-Brown, The Utility of International Economic Sanctions (New York: Routledge, 2017). Again there is nothing new in this. See Robert A. Pape, “Why Economic Sanctions Do Not Work,” International Security 22, no. 2 (1997): 90–136.

63  Viljar Veebel, “Political Risks of Economic Dependence from Russia: The Evidence from Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia and Georgia,” Aktual’ni Problemy Ekonomiky= Actual Problems in Economics, no. 192 (2017): 6–17. Sergi Kapanaże, Georgia’s Vulnerability to Russian Pressure Points (European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), 2014), www.ecfr.eu/page/-/ECFR106_GEORGIA_MEMO_AW.pdf.

64  Jolie Myers, “Meet The Activist Who Uncovered The Russian Troll Factory Named In The Mueller Probe.”

65  Tamara Keith and Rachel Martin, “U.S. Announces New Sanctions on Russians,” NPR, March 15, 2018, www.npr.org/2018/03/15/593931721/u-s-announces-new-sanctions-on-russia. Jessica Durando and Oren Dorell, “U.S. Plans to Impose New Sanctions on Russia: Reports,” USA Today, April 4, 2018, www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/04/04/u-s-plans-sanction-russian-oligarchs-reports/487957002/. Gardiner Harris, “Trump Administration Imposes New Sanctions on Putin Cronies,” New York Times, April 6, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/04/06/us/politics/trump-sanctions-russia-putin-oligarchs.html?emc=edit_na_20180406&nl=breaking-news&nlid=28460055ing-news&ref=headline. What makes this article particularly interesting is that it uses the words ‘Russian aggression,’ which is unusual in the press: “The Trump administration imposed new sanctions on seven of Russia’s richest men and 17 top government officials on Friday in the latest effort to punish President Vladimir V. Putin’s inner circle for interference in the 2016 election and other Russian aggressions.”

66  Daniel R. Coats, “Statement for the Record: Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community,” Director of National Intelligence, February 13, 2018, www.hsdl.org/?abstract&did=808818&utm_source=snapshots&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=snapshots_2018-04-06&utm_content=FEMA_Strategic_Plan.

67  Su tzu, The Art of War, 6:19, https://suntzusaid.com/book/6.

68  Carol Morello, “Former GOP National Security Officials: Trump Would be ‘most reckless’ American President in history,” Washington Post, August 8, 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/group-of-50-former-gop-national-security-officials-trump-would-be-most-reckless-president-in-american-history/2016/08/08/6715042c-5d9f-11e6-af8e-54aa2e849447_story.html?utm_term=.560668211f6c.

69  Greg Miller and Greg Jaffe, “Trump Revealed Highly Classified Information to Russian Foreign Minister and Ambassador,” Washington Post, May 15, 2017, www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-revealed-highly-classified-information-to-russian-foreign-minister-and-ambassador/2017/05/15/530c172a-3960-11e7-9e48-c4f199710b69_story.html?noredirect=on. James Bamford, “Anti-Intelligence: What Happens When the President Goes to War with His Own Spies?” New Republic, March 19, 2018, https://newrepublic.com/article/147366/anti-intelligence.

70  Andrea Mitchell and Ken Dilanian, “Ex-CIA Boss Brennan, Others Rip Trump Speech in Front of Memorial,” NBC News, January 22, 2017, www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ex-cia-boss-brennan-others-rip-trump-speech-front-memorial-n710366. Jeff Pegues, “Sources Say Trump’s CIA Visit Made Relations with Intel Community Worse,” CBS News, January 23, 2017, www.cbsnews.com/news/sources-say-theres-a-sense-of-unease-in-intel-community-after-trump-cia-visit/.

71  “Trump CIA Speech Transcript,” CBS News, www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-cia-speech-transcript/.

72  “Disgusted By Trump, A CIA Officer Quits. How Many More Could Follow?” NPR, February 23, 2017, www.npr.org/2017/02/23/516850237/disgusted-by-trump-a-cia-officer-quits-how-many-more-could-follow. Edward Price, “I Didn’t Think I’d Ever Leave the CIA. But because of Trump, I Quit,” Washington Post, February 20, 2017, www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-didnt-think-id-ever-leave-the-cia-but-because-of-trump-i-quit/2017/02/20/fd7aac3e-f456–11e6-b9c9-e83fce42fb61_story.html?utm_term=.d2b56aa06b97.

73  Julian Sanchez, “Republicans and Democrats Are Both Wrong about Leaks from Intelligence Agencies,” Washington Post, May 26, 2017, www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/05/26/republicans-and-democrats-are-both-wrong-about-leaks-from-intelligence-agencies/?utm_term=.b1a5f5f63b59. Matt Apuzo, “Andrew McCabe’s Firing: Here’s What We Know,” New York Times, March 19, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/us/politics/andrew-mccabe-fbi-firing-explained.html.

74  Paul Singer, “Trump’s First 100 Days: More Americans Moved to Canada, But It’s no Stampede,” USA Today, May 3, 2017, www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017/05/02/trump-first-100-days-more-people-moved-to-canada/101196100/.

75  Feliks Garcia, “How to Move to Sweden: Hundreds of Americans Want to Move to Scandinavia after Donald Trump’s Election,” The Independent, November 11, 2016, www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-elections/how-to-move-to-sweden-from-us-permanently-scandinavia-hundreds-apply-a7412301.html. Jules Older, “Want to Move to New Zealand Post Election? We Did,” Baltimore Sun, November 23, 2016, www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-new-zealand-20161123-story.html. Terry Boyd, “EmigrateMe: Norway Reaching out to Americans Looking for an Alternative to Trump Madness,” Dispatches Europe, November 16, 2016, https://dispatcheseurope.com/emigrateme-norway/. Josh Butler, “Trump Didn’t Make Americans Move to Australia After All,” Huffpost, June 13, 2017, www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2017/06/13/trump-didnt-make-americans-move-to-australia-after-all_a_22139055/. Although spurned by American immigrants, Australians could console themselves with having won the 2017 World Cup of Rugby, which is probably fine with the Aussies. And finally, for those who, having read these pages, choose to reconsider the migration option, see the suggestions proffered in the fittingly named Elite Daily: Alec MacDonald, “Where Americans Can Move to Instead of Canada After the Presidential Election,” Elite Daily, November 9, 2016, www.elitedaily.com/news/politics/countries-to-move-to-instead-of-canada-after-election/1685049.

76  David S. Churchill, “An Ambiguous Welcome: Vietnam Draft Resistance, the Canadian State, and Cold War Containment,” Histoire Sociale/Social History 37, no. 73 (2004), https://hssh.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/hssh/article/viewFile/4372/3570. Fredrik Logevall, “The Swedish-American Conflict over Vietnam,” Diplomatic History 17, no. 3 (1993): 421–446.

77  George Orwell, Animal Farm (New York: Random House, 2010).

Selected bibliography

Barnes, Trevor. “The Secret Cold War: The Cia and American Foreign Policy in Europe, 1946–1956. Part I.” The Historical Journal 24, no. 2 (1981): 399–415.

Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate. Poets, Saints, and Visionaries of the Great Schism, 1378–1417. University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 2010.

Campbell, Colin. “The Cult, the Cultic Milieu and Secularization. A Sociological Yearbook of Religion in Britain, SCM Press London, 1972.” A Sociological Yearbook of Religion in Britain 5 (1972): 119–136.

Churchill, David S. “An Ambiguous Welcome: Vietnam Draft Resistance, the Canadian State, and Cold War Containment.” Histoire sociale/Social History 37, no. 73 (2004).

Eyal, Regev. “The Temple Cult, Romanization, and the Rebels: The Roman Setting for the Rebels’ Religious Ideology.” Journal of Ancient Judaism 5, no. 1 (2014): 40–60.

Finkelhor, David, Linda Meyer Williams, and Nanci Burns. Nursery Crimes: Sexual Abuse in Day Care. Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1988.

Haftador, Hasan Rezaee, and Azam Khodaparast. “Ijtihad in Quranic Exegesis.” Asian Social Science 11, no. 27 (2015): 3–41.

Hegedus, D. “The Kremlin’s Influence in Hungary: Are Russian Vested Interests Wearing Hungarian National Colors.” DGAP Kompakt 8, no. 1 (2016): 1–11.

Jordan, David A. “The Dark Ages of Islam: Ijtihad, Apostasy, and Human Rights in Contemporary Islamic Jurisprudence.” Washington and Lee Race and Ethnic Ancestry Law Journal 9 (2003): 55–71.

Kanin, David B. “The Wests: Decline Management and Geopolitics.” In Russia and the World: A New Phase of the Cold War or a New World Order? edited by Jeffrey Kaplan: Special Issue of Terrorism & Political Violence, forthcoming 2018.

Kaplan, Jeffrey. “Leaderless Resistance.” Terrorism and Political Violence 9, no. 3 (1997): 80–95.

———. “The Finnish New Radical Right in Comparative Perspective.” In The New Radical Right in Finland, edited by Kyösti Pekonen, 216–230. Kopijyvä, Jyväskylä: Finnish Political Science Association, 1999.

Kersten, Carool, and Susanne Olsson. Alternative Islamic Discourses and Religious Authority. Contemporary Thought in the Islamic World. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Pub. Company, 2013.

Keyes, Ralph. The Post-Truth Era: Dishonesty and Deception in Contemporary Life. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2004.

Khan, L Ali. Contemporary Ijtihad: Limits and Controversies: Limits and Controversies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011.

Klapsis, Antonis. An Unholy Alliance: The European Far Right and Putin’s Russia. Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies, 2015.

Laruelle, Marlene. Eurasianism and the European Far Right: Reshaping the Europe – Russia Relationship. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015.

Leyton-Brown, David. The Utility of International Economic Sanctions. New York: Routledge, 2017.

Marsh, Kevin. “Living Post-Truth Lives … but What Comes After?.” Defence Strategic Communications 3 (2017): 192–206.

Michael, George. Lone Wolf Terror and the Rise of Leaderless Resistance. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2012.

———. “Useful Idiots or Fellow Travelers? The Relationship between the American Far Right and Russia.” In Russia and the World: A New Phase of the Cold War or a New World Order? edited by Jeffrey Kaplan: Special Issue of Terrorism & Political Violence, forthcoming 2018.

Neusner, Jacob. “Judaism in a Time of Crisis: Four Responses to the Destruction of the Second Temple.” Judaism 21, no. 3 (1972): 313–327.

Orwell, George. Animal Farm. New York: Random House, 2010.

Pape, Robert A. “Why Economic Sanctions Do Not Work.” International Security 22, no. 2 (1997): 90–136.

Pynnöniemi, Katri. “The Asymmetric Approach in Russian Security Strategy: Implications for the Nordic Countries.” In Russia and the World: A New Phase of the Cold War or a New World Order? edited by Jeffrey Kaplan: Special Issue of Terrorism & Political Violence, forthcoming 2018.

Quṭb, Sayyid. Milestones. Translated by S. Badrul Hasan. 1st ed. Birmingham: Maktabah, 1981.

———. The Sayyid Qutb Reader: Selected Writings on Politics, Religion, and Society. Translated by Albert Bergesen. New York: Routledge, 2008.

Roberts, Andrew Lawrence. From Good King Wenceslas to the Good Soldier Švejk: A Dictionary of Czech Popular Culture. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2005.

Shepard, William E. “Sayyid Qutb’s Doctrine of Jāhiliyya.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 35, no. 4 (2003): 521–545.

Whitehead, John W., and Steven H. Aden. “Forfeiting Enduring Freedom for Homeland Security: A Constitutional Analysis of the USA Patriot Act and the Justice Department’s Anti-Terrorism Initiatives.” American University Law Review 51 (2001): 1081.

Williams, Daniel K. God’s Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Index

9/11 20, 85

1956 Secret Speech 126

Abbasid Empire 170

Abbasids 19, 22, 25

Abrams, Steve 154

Abu Bakr 17

Achison, Dean 132

Action Committee for the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren 150

Active Measures 83–84, 87, 96–97, 123–126, 133–134, 141, 144–147, 150–152, 154, 183

Adamites 27, 30

Afghanistan viii, 84, 126, 141, 143

Africa 122, 124, 128, 143, 169

African-Americans 49–50, 52, 84, 174

Agayants, General Ivan 123

Agee, Phillip 124

Agents of influence 84, 96, 124, 126, 148, 177

Ahmadi Ismai’ilis 22

A’isha 17

‘Ali 17–18

Alabama 106, 175

Alamut (Place) 21–22

Alamut (novel) 37n52, 168

al-Bannah, Hassan 171

Alefantis, James 95

Alexandrovich, Rivka 141

Alfa Group 83

al-Ghazzali 18, 25

Alien Act 86

al-Khalil 5

Allen, Gary 4, 6

Al Mahdi Mohammad 14

Al Qaeda 13, 58

Alternative facts 88, 174, 176

Alt Right 3–4, 80, 84, 87, 94–95, 99, 173–176

American Baptist Foreign Mission Society 152

American Independent Party 51

Americanism 86, 131, 136

American Mirror, The 94

American National Socialism 62–65

American Nazi Party 54

American Protestantism 14

American Revolution 85

Amerika 173

Amsterdam Assembly 127–128, 130, 133, 136, 138, 150–152

Andropov, Yuri 143

Anheuser-Busch 90

Animal Farm 153, 188

Anonymous 96, 168

anti-communism 51–53, 79, 120, 135, 174

Anti-Defamation League 86

Antifa 98, 105

anti-neutron bomb campaign 124

antinomian 173

anti-Semitism 5, 47–48, 51–52, 54, 86, 90–91, 95, 99

Apocalypse 1, 12–13, 45–46, 49–51, 53, 58, 88, 173

Arafat, Yasser 180

Arbeiter 88, 59–61

Arif 17

Armenian Church 129

Army-McCarthy hearings 51

Aryan Nations 46–47

Assange, Julian 96, 177

assassin 19–23, 171

assimilation 14, 16

Atlantic Magazine 95

Atta, Muhammad 20

Attack! 55

Australia 187

Avignon Papacy 172

Babis 19

Bandung Conference 138

Bannon, Steve 99

Baptist Church 129

Baptists 127, 133

Bareczky, Bishop Albert 137

Barkun, Michael 6

Barth, Karl 128

Battle of Lipany 30

Battle of Sifin 18

Battleship Potemkin 50

bay’a 17

Beam, Louis 56

Beaven, Colin 100

Bela, Fabian 137

Bentley, Alvin M. 137

Bergen, Edgar 90

Berlin Crisis 149

Bernard, Ganley 103

Bible Presbyterian Church of Charlotte (North Carolina) 152

Bida (innovation) 169

Birch Society 4, 51–52, 54, 79–80, 106

Birther conspiracy theories 80

“Birth of a Nation” 46, 49

Black, Hugo 50

Black Bloc 105

Black Lives Matter 174

Blake, Eugene Carson 140

Blows Against the Empire 173

Bogdanchikov, Sergei 83

Bohemian Grove 90–91, 95

Boko Haram 45

Bordelon, Monsignor Marvin 139

Bosnians 3

Breitbart News 87

Bremmer, Ian 83

Brezhnev, Leonid 143

Brezhnev Doctrine 144

Brown, Rebecca 93

Bruders Schweigan 3

Buckley, William F. 52

Bush, George W. 88

Butler, Richard 46

Byrd, Robert 50

Cambodia 45

Cameron, William J. 49

Canada 142, 146

capitalism 81, 128–131, 133, 136, 180

Carpetbaggers 49

Carroll, Jim 126

Carter, Jimmy 84, 124

Carto, Willis 48, 55

cartoons 13, 20, 84

Castro, Fidel 144

Catholic Church 27, 85–86, 127, 143

Catholic Church (and WCC) 129–141

Catholic Encyclopedia, The 12

Catholic immigrants 46, 48–49

Catholic/Masonic conspiracy 85–86

Caucasus 83

Cause of World Unrest 48

CBGBs 25

Changchun 6

Charap, Samuel 83

Charles Bridge 25

Charles University 24

Chechnya 81

Checkers speech 179

Chelčický, Peter 30

Chicago Daily Tribune 137

Chiliasm 12, 27, 33, 58

China 101, 140

Christian Democratic parties 130

Christian fundamentalism 14, 32, 36n34, 87, 94, 130, 133, 152

Christian Identity 47, 173

Christian Nationalism 179

Christian Nationalist Alliance 179

Christian Peace Conference (CPC) 137, 147, 150–152

Christian Right 3–4, 178

Christians 2–3, 12–14, 47, 128–129, 168, 178, 180

Christianson, Else 47

Chuang tzu 172

“Church and the Disorder of Society, The” 128

Churchill, Winston 186

Church of Satan 92

CIA 51, 70, 76, 124, 130, 138, 175

Cichowlas, Ola 6, 83

City on a hill 45, 85

Civil Rights movement 51, 79, 87, 106, 139, 178

Clansman, The 49, 53

Clinton, Bill 13, 34n14, 56, 94, 95, 96, 101, 178

Clinton, Hillary 87–88, 94–96, 101, 176, 177

Club of life 142

Cohn, Norman 46

COINTELPRO 79, 106

Cold War 51, 80, 81, 84, 104, 119, 120–124, 136, 137, 139, 147, 157n30, 182–183, 185, 187

Cold War (anti-communism) 87, 102, 120

Cold War (nuclear weapons) 47, 120–121, 148, 182

Cold War (phase II) 3, 120, 174, 178, 182

Cold War (religious) 147, 149, 151

Cold War (rhetoric) 4, 99

Combinations (комбинация) 126

Comet Ping Pong 95–96

Cominform 148

Coming of the Mahdi Malhama 12

Communist Party USA (CPUSA) 149

Congressional Record 137

Cooder, Rye 23

Cooper, Ricky 53

Cornerstone Church 91

Cornerstone Magazine 91

Cornerstone Ministries 91

Costa, Christopher P. vii

Council of Constance 172

Covenant Sword and Arm of the Lord (CSA) 46–47, 58, 61

Covington, Harold 61–65

Cremation of Care 90

Crowley, Alistair 89

Crusades 19, 95

Cuban Missile Crisis 122

Cultic Milieu 88, 91, 93–94, 96, 102

Cult of Saturn 90

Cyrus Vance 144

Czech Communist Party 24

Czech Republic 25, 96

Daesh 58

Daftary, Farhad 21, 23

Dajjal 13–14

Dame Magazine 94

David, Rust 56

Day of Judgment 14

Dead Kennedys 124

Dead Sea Scrolls 15

Dearborn Independent 48

deep state 99–100

Defenestration of Prague 28, 40n94

DeGovia, Jackson 105

Department D (KGB) 123, 126

Derg 122

Diaspora 11, 15, 169

Disinformation (Дезинформация) 84, 92, 119, 123, 126, 182–183

Dixon, Thomas Jr. 49

Dome of the Rock 32, 36n34

Domhoff, William G. 90

Dr. Strangelove 121–122

Dulles, Allen 138, 150–151

Dulles, John Foster 138–139

Dunford, Joseph 182

“The Earth Dies Screaming” 81

Eastern European political jokes 123

ecumenism 126–127, 131, 133, 141, 144

Eisenhower, Dwight D. 51

Eisenstein, Sergei 50

Ellison, James 46

Ellsberg, Daniel 124

Elohim City 47

Encyclopedia of White Power 33

Estonian Lutheran Church 129

Evanston Assembly 137–138

Facebook 103, 177

Falwell, Jerry 87, 130, 178

Fatima 22

Fatimid dynasty 22

Fatimids 22, 25

FBI 5, 58, 79, 93, 152

Federal Council of Churches (FCC) 136

Federal Protective Service 82–83

FEMA 97

Fiddler on the Roof 80

Finland 176–177

Finns Party 177

Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy 5

Flynn, Michael 97

Flynt, Larry 56

Ford, Gerald 90

Ford, Henry 48

Former Soviet Union (FSU) 183

Four Horsemen 12

Four Waves theory 17

Fox, James 23

Fox, Vicente 88

Fox and Friends 3, 176

Fox News 87, 176

France 48, 103, 130

Franklin, Joseph Paul 56

French Revolution 1

Front groups 84, 102, 126, 137, 146–147

FSB (Federal Security Service) 81

Gates, Bill 47

Gates of Ijtihad 170–171

Genie in the Bottle 21

Genocide 2–3, 6–7, 14, 45–46, 121

Georgia 83

Georgian Orthodox Church 129

German National Socialism 45

Ghuyba 19

GLOBSEC Policy Institute 181

Good Soldier Schweik 25

Google 89, 94

GOP see Republican Party

“Gospel According to Marx, The” 146

Gottwald, Klement 24

Goyim 68n25

Grabowski, Laura 92

Graham, Billy 140–141, 178

Greece 147

Greek Communist Party 133

Green Day Prophesies 58

Greensboro, North Carolina 62

Gremillon, Monsignor Joseph 139

Griffith, D. W. 46, 50, 53

GRU 81–82, 123

Gulag archipelago, The 127

Gush Emunim 58

Hadith 13, 17, 169

Halacha 16

Hand, Karl 56

Hänks, D.A. 59

Haram (forbidden) 170

Haredim 12

Hašek, Jaroslav 25

Hashishin 20, 23

Hasidic 12

Hassan 1, 17, 19, 22, 168, 171–172

Hate crimes 174

Havel, Vaclav 25

“Have You Seen the Stars Tonight?” 173

Hawkwind 23

Hearst, William R. Jr. 90

Hebrew Bible 3, 16–17

Hebron 5

Hecker, Isaac Thomas 131

Hellenized Jews 15, 169

Hemingway, Mariel 80

Herbert, Will 133, 136

Hewlett-Packard Co. 90

Hezbollah 18

Hijra (migration) 170

Hitler, Adolf 55, 59

Hodges, Dave 101–102

Hodgson, Marshall 21

Hoffer, Eric 175

Hofstadter, Richard 4, 6, 106

Holiday, Billie 105

Hollywood 12, 21, 49, 120, 174

Holocaust 92

Honecker, Erich 144

Hooft, Visser ‘t 133, 135

Hoover, Herbert III 90

Hoover, Herbert Jr. 90

Hoover, J. Edgar 79

Horn of Africa 122

Hoskins, Richard Kelly 61

Hossein 17–18

Houris 20–21

Hradčany Castle 25

Hromádka, Josef 137

Huizinga, Johan 23

Humanae Vitae 140

Humphrey, Hubert 139

Humphrys, Andrew vii

Hungarian Democratic Party 137

Hungary 119, 137

Hunter 55–56, 58

Hus, Jan 24–25, 27–28, 31

Husak, Gustav 24

Hussites 1, 24–25, 26–30, 31–32, 131, 173

Hustler 56

Hybrid Warfare 83, 87–88, 119

Ibn Taymiyyah 18, 170

Icke, David 95

Ijtihad 2, 170–171

I Know You’re Hurting 92

immigration 48, 57, 85–86, 137, 178

Immigration Reform Act 85

Info Wars 88–89, 91–92, 94–96

Inside the Company 124

International Department (CPSU) 148

International Jew 48–49, 173, 179

“Invasion USA” 79

Iran 18, 22, 144

Iranian Revolution 6, 87, 130

Iraq 18, 22, 88

i-Sabah, Hassan 1, 19, 168

“Is Hillary Clinton the Antichrist or an Illuminati Witch?” 94

ISIS 13, 58, 87, 180

Islam 11, 14, 17–19, 21–22, 53, 169–170, 179–180

Islamist movements 18

Ismail 22

isnad 17

Israeli settlement movement 16, 58

Italy 130, 132

Ivanov, Viktor 82

Jagger, Mick 23

Jane, Jenkins 105

Jefferson, Thomas 79, 97, 168

Jefferson Airplane/Starship 173

Jehovah’s Witnesses 127

Jerusalem 15

Jesus 2, 11, 14–16, 33, 91, 128, 144, 179

Jewish conspiracy 48, 174

Jewish immigrants 46, 85

Jewish prisoners in Soviet Union 141

Jews 2, 11, 12, 14–16, 36n34, 47, 52, 60, 61, 64, 86, 168, 174

Jews in Hollywood 49

Jiří Návrátil 24

John Birch Society 51, 54, 79, 106

John Franklin Letters 51–53, 55, 79–80, 105–106

Johnson, Kevin R. 86

Johnson, Lyndon 139–140

Johnson Administration 139

Joint Chiefs of Staff 120

Jonathan (High Priest) 16, 169

Jones, Alex 88, 93–95

Josephus 15

Jyllands-Posten 20

Kaiser Industries 90

KAL 007 150, 157n33

Kalashnikov rifle 26

Kaminsky, Howard vii, 27–29

Kampuchea 45

Kanin, David B. 175

Karta 77 6, 24–25, 119

Kayyam, Omar 31

Kennan, George 133

Kenney, Jeff 171

Kerbela 18

KGB 6–7, 81–83, 123, 129–130, 140, 142–144, 146, 174

KGB’s First Chief Directorate 123

Kharajites 17–18, 37, 169–171

Khmer Rouge 45

Khrushchev, Nikita 121, 126–127, 129, 136, 143

“Kill the Poor” 124

King, Martin Luther 79, 174

Kislyak, Sergey 97

Kissinger, Henry 141

Klassen, Ben 62–63

Know Nothings 85–86, 99

Koehl, Matt 54

Korean War 51

Kosygin, Alexei 151

Kristofferson, Kris 80

Kubrick, Stanley 121

Ku Klux Klan 46, 49–50, 106

Kushner, Jared 101

Lanning, Kenneth 93

Larson, Bob 93–94

Latin America 124, 141

Latvian Church 129

Law, Randall vii

Leaderless resistance 56, 61, 174

Leary, Dennis 105

Left Behind 81, 176

Lemay, Gen. Curtis 51, 120–122, 147, 183

Lenin, Vladimir 113n91, 122, 175

Leroy, Doris 150–151

Levey, Anton 90

Lewis, Bernard 21–23

Liberation Theology 141

Lincoln, Abraham 85

Linkletter, Art 90

Literacy tests 177

Lizard people 95, 176, 178

Loeb, Jonah E.R. 102

Lofgren, Mike 99

Lone wolves 18, 20

Long Telegram 133–135

Lords Resistance Army 3, 45

lunatic fringe 178

Luther, Martin 79, 106, 174

MacArthur, Douglas 138

Maccabean Revolt 16

MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) 121

Mahdi 12, 14

Maimonides 32

Mainline Protestant denominations 130, 136

Makins, Sir Roger 138

Mala Strana 24

“Manchurian Candidate, The” 21

MAR (Mutually Assured Rationality) 121

Marathon Oil 90, 178

Marsden, Victor 48

Marshall, George 127

Marshall Plan 127, 135

Martin, Edwin McCammon 139

Marty, Martin E. vii

martyrdom 22

Marxism 129–130, 140

Masada 2, 11, 15, 169

Massey, Ilona 137

Mathews, Robert 3, 58

McCarran-Walter Act 137

McCarthy, Joseph 51, 120

McDonald, Andrew 55

McIntire, Carl 152

McMartin, Virginia 93

McMartin Preschool 93

McNallen, Steve 47

McNamara, Robert S. 122

McVeigh, Timothy 55, 58

Mecca 17

Mein Kampf 54

Mencken, H. L. 130

Mengele, Joseph 92

Messiah Texts, The 12

Messianic Jews 32

messianism 16

Metzger, Tom 84

Michael, George 56

Middle East 5, 37, 124, 139, 143, 169, 174

Militia movement 59

Modern Language Association 5

Mohammad 11, 13, 17–18, 169–170

Monastery of the Caves 127

Mongols 18

monotheism 14–15

Montaigne 176

Moral Majority 87, 130, 178

Morning in America 119

Muawiya 17–19, 169

Mueller, Robert 4, 175

Mujtahid 170

Mukerjee, Sadham 153

Murphree, Debra 179

Murray, Michael 47

Musa 22

Muskie, Edmund 144

Muslim Brotherhood 171

Muslims 2, 12–14, 17–18, 22, 98, 168, 174

Nås 22

Nasser, Gamal Abdel 170

National Alliance 54–55

National Review 52

National Security Act 51

National Security Council viii, 138

National Security Directives 119

National Socialism 47, 54–56

National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDP) 59

National Socialist Liberation Front 54–56

National Socialist White People’s Party 54

National Youth Alliance 55

Nazi Germany 24

Need, Ovid 61

Nehru, Jawaharlal 138

Neo-Kharajites 18, 170

Neutralizers, The 79

“New Clinton Chronicles, The” 95

New Left 173

New York Times 137, 152

New York Tribune 86

New Zealand 153, 187

Nichols, Larry 95

Nicholson, Jack 177

“Night of the Living Dead” 81

Nixon, Richard 90, 140–141, 154, 178–179

Nixon Administration 140

Nizari Ismailis 19–22, 31–32, 171

Noahide Laws 16

Noble, Thom 105

None Dare Call it Conspiracy 4

Noontide Press 48

Norris, Chuck 80

North Africa 169

Northwest Trilogy 61–65

nuclear weapons 51, 120–122, 136, 142–143

Obama, Barack 80, 87

Obama Presidency 80

Odinist 47

Old Man of the Mountain 1, 17, 19, 21–23, 171

Old Testament 3, 16

Oliver, Revilo P. 52

“Omen, The” 13

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich 126

Order (Bruders Schweigan) 3, 58, 61

Order of the Star Spangled Banner 86

Orientalism 11, 21, 171

Orwell, George 188

Pakistan 13

Palech, Jan 24–25

Palestine 13

Parsons, J. Graham 132

Partisans for Peace 148

Party Central Committee (CPSU-CC) 141

Passantino, Bob 91

Passantino, Gretchen 91

Patai, Raphael 12

Patriarch Alexander of Antioch 127

Patriarch Christopher of Alexandria 127

Patriot Act 85–86

Patriot Publications 59

Paulist Fathers 131

peace councils 148–149

peace priests 84, 126

Pedophilia 90

Pedophilic Yehudim Satanists From Hell 90

Pelley, William Dudley 98

Pennsylvania 175

Pentagon Papers 124

Pentecostals 127, 133

Penthouse 179

Peoples’ Congress in Vienna 148

Peoples of the Book 2, 12, 14, 53, 168

“performance” (movie) 23

Perkins, George Walbridge Jr. 132

Peter, Bishop John 137

Phinehas 16, 60–61

Phinehas: A novel in the tradition of Andrew MacDonald 59, 61

Phinehas Priesthood 16, 61

Phnom Penh 45

Pierce, William 51–53, 55–56

Pizzagate 93–96, 176

Podesta, John 88, 95

polarity 120

Polo, Marco 21–22, 171

Pol Pot 45

Pope Gregory XII 27

Pope John XXIII 27

Pope Leo XIII 131

Pope Paul VI 139–140

Pope Pius XII 127

Populorum Progressio 139

Portugal 130

Post-Christian 130

Post-truth era 174, 176

Potemkin villages 122, 157n29

Prague 6, 24–25, 27–28, 48, 149, 150

Prague Assembly (CPC) 152

Prague Spring 24–25, 99, 119, 155n2

PRC (People’s Repubic of China) 6

Přĭbram, Master John 29

Prince, Rob 152–154

Process Church of the Final Judgment 90

Prohibition 178

Prokop the Great 30

Prokop the Lesser 30

propaganda 52, 84, 107n18, 120–121, 123, 126, 129, 130, 134, 147, 152

propaganda (anti-Soviet) 133, 136

propaganda (religious) 133, 136

propaganda (UN Resolution) 147

Prophet see Mohammad

Protestant-Catholic-Jew 133, 136

Protestant fundamentalists 130

Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion 47–48

Protsenko, Anatoly 83

Putin, Vladimir 81, 97, 100, 119, 174, 177

Qa’ba 17

Qu’ran 3, 13–14, 17, 20, 169–171

Quraysh 17

Qutb, Sayyid 170

racism 5, 46, 51–53, 58, 79, 86, 99, 154, 174

Rapoport, David C. 11, 17

“The Rapture” 12

Reader’s Digest 146

Reagan, Ronald 87, 90

Reagan Administration 119, 121

Reconstruction 46, 49–50, 53

Red Dawn (metaphor) 83, 98–106, 120

“Red Dawn” (movie) 79, 80, 106n4, 98–106, 120

Red Scare 85, 120, 136, 138

Reformed Church of Hungary 137

Religious Right 130

Republican Party 3–4, 105, 174

Republic Broadcasting Network 102

Resistance (magazine) 62

Resistance Records 54, 62

Revelation of John 3

Reynolds, Kevin 119

Riefenstahl, Leni 50

Rielly, John E. 139

Rightly Guided Imams 17, 169

Ripper, Jack, D. 121

Rivera, Geraldo 92

Riyadh 6

Rockefeller, John D. 133

Rockefeller University 90

Rockwell, George Lincoln 52, 54–55

Roe v. Wade 130

Romans 11, 15–16, 169

Rosneft 82–83

Rude Pravo 151

Rushdie, Salman 94

Russia 51, 81–83; see also Soviet Union

Russia (2016 US election) 3–4, 83, 96–97, 100–103

Russia (Abraham Lincoln view) 85

Russia (and demon possession) 93

Russia (and far right) 80, 84, 87, 98–100

Russian Academy of Science 83

Russian Federation 81

Russian invasion games 102–104

Russian Orthodox Church 4, 127, 129, 134, 136, 140–141, 143, 145

Russian Railways 83

Russian Revolution 103

Said, Edward 11

Saint-Marie, Buffy 23

Satan 130, 176

Satanic Ritual Abuse 90, 91, 93

Satanic Verses 94

Satanism 88, 91, 93–96, 180

Satanism Scare 88, 91, 93–96, 180

Satan Seller, The 91

Satan’s Underground 92

Saudi Arabia 6, 171

Schacht, Joseph 170

Schmid, Alex vii

Schultz, George P. 90

Scopes, John Thomas 130

Scopes Trial 87, 130

Second Era Ku Klux Klan 46, 50

Second Temple 11, 15, 169

Secretary of State 90, 127, 132, 138–139, 141, 144

Seditionist 56

Selassie, Emperor Hailie 122

Sellers, Peter 121

Serbs 26

Serling, Rod 88

Seven Seals 12

shahid 20

Shari’a 18, 171, 179

Sheen, Charlie 104

Shi’ite Islam 13–14, 17–19, 21–22

Shults, Vladimir 83

shura 17

Sicari 2, 11–12, 15, 169

Siloviki 82–83

Simon the Zealot 15

Skokie March 62

Slate Magazine 86

Slovakia 25

Smith, Gerald L. K. 46, 48, 69, 178

Smith, Jonathan Z. vii

Smith, Michelle 91

Smith, Walter Bedell 127

Smith, William French 90

Smith, William Stephens 97

Sofia Consultation 144–145

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander 126

Somalia 122

Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) 56, 61

Soviet Influence Activities: A Report on Active Measures and Propaganda 152

Soviet Union 84, 119–122, 133, 141, 153, 182; see also Russia

Soviet Union (arms control) 140

Soviet Union (in fiction) 100

Soviet Union (nostalgia for) 96

Soviet Union (religious policy) 126–127, 133, 139, 143, 146–149, 152

Spain 130

Spinka, Mathew 30

Spinoza 168

Springer, Jerry 88

SS-20 Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles 124

Stalin, Joseph 83, 123, 131, 136, 157n30, 160n77

Standard Oil 90

State Department 126, 130, 151, 152, 182

Stefanik, Paul 151

Stewart, Potter 90

Stewart, Ray 153

Stratford, Lauren 91–92

Stripped Naked 92

Strusiewicz, Cezary Jan 104

Subversive Activities Control Act 137

Subversive Activities Control Board 137

Suez Crisis 139

Sufis 33, 170

Sultan Bahu 33

Sunna 17, 169, 171

Sunni Islam 2, 13–14, 18, 21, 25, 169, 171

Supreme Court 50, 87, 130

Svinya, Sasha 153

Swaggert, Jimmy 178–179

Swayze, Patrick 104, 119

Syria 18, 21

Tabor 24, 173

Taborites 24–25, 172–173

Tafsir 170

Takfir 171

Ta’wil 170

Taylor, Myron C. 131, 135

Temple Institute 32, 36n34

“Terms of Endearment” 177

Terrorism 1, 11, 81, 105

Terrorism, (fusion) 105

Terrorism (history of) vii, 2, 11

Terrorism (Islamic) 17–19, 185

Terrorism (Jewish) 15–16, 36n34, 169

Terrorism (religious) 12, 15

Terrorism (Taborite) 29–30

Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae 131, 160n76

Third Temple 16, 32–33, 36n34

Tillerson, Rex 182

Timoshevsky, V.I. 146

Toby, Doug 105

Tommasi, Joseph 54–56, 105

Torah 12

Tóth, Károly 151–152

Tractatus Theologico-Politicus 168

Treason 97–98, 105, 175

“Triumph of the Will” 50

Trott, Jon 91–92

true believer 2, 30, 51, 54, 56, 99–100, 111n65, 175–6, 188

True Finns 177

True Orthodox Church 127

Truman, Harry S. 130–131, 135–136, 139–140

Truman Doctrine 127, 147

Trump, Donald 3–4, 80, 83, 85, 87–89, 99, 105, 121, 124, 174–176, 177

Trump, Donald (and Christians) 178–181

Trump, Donald (election campaign) 86–87, 94, 184–185

Trump, Donald (and intelligence community) 120, 184–187

Trump, Donald (and nuclear weapons) 121, 154

Trump, Donald (and racism) 98, 154

Trump, Donald (and Red Dawn) 98, 100–103, 120

Trump, Donald (and Russia) 4, 88, 97, 100–101, 119–120, 154–155, 175, 177, 182

Trump, Donald Jr. 98

Trump, Ivanka 101

Trump Administration viii, 98, 100–103

Trump as Traitor 97, 100

Turkish harem 21

Turner Diaries 52–56, 58, 59, 63, 65–66, 81, 105

Tuzex 150

Twelfth Imam 14, 19

Twelver Shi’ites 14

Ubaydulla 22

UFO abductee 88–89

Ukraine 83, 96, 104, 127

ulamma 18

Umayyads 19

umma 18, 22

United Nations 51, 147

United Nations General Assembly 147

United States Peace Council (USPC) 149

Uscinski, Joseph E 176

US Constitution 15

useful idiots 84, 99

utraquism 27–30, 131

Valhalla 53

Vancouver WCC Assembly 141

Vatican II 139

Velvet Divorce 25

Vietnam War 85, 124

Vigilantes of Christendom 61

Virginia 57, 93, 130, 175

Vneshekonombank 83

Waco 5

Wallace, George 51

Wall Street Bankers 88–89

Wall Street Journal 152

Waning of the Middle Ages, The 23

WAR (newspaper) 84

Warneke, Mike 91

War of 1812 154

War on Terror 23

Warren Commission Report 52

Warsaw Pact 126

Washington Post 95

WCC Central Committee 146

Weintraub, Karl vii

Welch, Robert 51, 79, 106

Wenceslas IV 27–28

Wernicke, Günter 148

Western Europe 124, 130–131, 133

White Aryan Resistance 84

WikiLeaks 89, 94–97, 177

Willson, Laurel Rose 92

Windows 95 46, 55, 176

Winrod, Gerald 46

Winthrop, John 45

Witter, Dean 90

Wooden Ships 173

World Church of the Creator 73

World Council of Churches (WCC) 127, 146

World of Warcraft 103

World War I 47

World War II 47, 98, 104, 126, 133, 138, 148, 151, 175, 182, 183

“X Files” 99

Y2K 47

Yakunin, Vladimir 83

Yakunin readings 142

Yazid 17–18

Year Zero 45

Yeltsin, Boris 4, 84

Zaostrovtsev, Yuri 83

zealots 15, 120

Žižka, Jan 24, 26, 29–31, 172–173

ZOG 174