Racists Can Justify Anything, Even Child Murder

How could a man shoot innocent children? What could motivate such hateful and cowardly actions? It doesn’t make any sense. Or does it in some warped vision of the world?

People who are committed to killing for racist reasons don’t pick up ideas from the ether. What drives them are ideologies and theologies that provide an internally logical explanation for the world’s problems and a blueprint for action to solve them.

When he gave himself up Wednesday, Buford Furrow explained his motivation for shooting three small children, a teenager and a 68-year-old woman at the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills. Furrow reportedly said that he “wanted the shooting to be a wake-up call to America to kill Jews.”

Enough is known about Furrow to connect the dots. They go back to June 18, 1984, when members of the terrorist group calling itself “The Order” assassinated radio talk show host Alan Berg, a Jew, in Denver. That shooting, and this one 15 years later, are linked through a world view that not only vilifies Jews and minorities but glorifies their destruction.

The line connecting these two events passes through the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, the recent synagogue arsons in Sacramento and Benjamin Smith’s shooting rampage in the Midwest last month that targeted African Americans, Asian Americans and Jews, killing two and wounding eight.

Christian Identity is the most prominent organization espousing this racist and anti-Semitic ideology, with about 90 “ministries” in 34 states. It distorts Genesis to preach that people of color are a pre-Adamic creation, like beasts, and that God later created Adam and Eve, who gave birth to Abel, whose descendants are white, Nordic, Aryan types, i.e., the “real” chosen people. According to this racist interpretation of Genesis, Eve was later impregnated by Satan, producing Cain, and his descendants are the Jews.

Christian Identity thus presents a neat theological package in which minorities are not even human and Jews are literally the sons and daughters of Satan. Therefore, any assault on pre-human “mud people” or demonic Jews is not only desirable but divine. Minorities, who are depicted as responsible for crime and other social ills, are seen as the tool of the Jew-devils in their war against the white Aryans. Nothing less than survival of the white genotype is at stake.

The Aryan Nations compound in Idaho is a major Christian Identity center. (It even sports a portrait of Adolf Hitler with the caption, “When I come back, no more Mr. Nice Guy.”) In 1984, The Order, an Aryan Nations offshoot, robbed banks and murdered Berg as part of a racist and terrorist plot. The Order’s leader, Robert Matthews, died in a shootout with federal officials. According to the Spokane Spokesman Review, Furrow had a relationship with Matthews’ widow, Debbie, and may even have been married to her. He also had worked as a security guard at the Aryan Nations compound, and Christian Identity literature was found in his van.

While Christian Identity adherents learn that violence against Jews and minorities will serve God, others in the far right learn that such violence is necessary for natural or eugenic reasons, to protect white people. Some, like many in the militia movement, primarily target the federal government (which many call “ZOG” for “Zionist Occupied Government”) for strategic or political reasons. But despite doctrinal differences, the literature of the far right, which is now easily accessible over the Internet, comes out at the same point: Jews and minorities must be targeted as “self defense” for whites.

Neo-Nazi William Pierce’s novels, “The Turner Diaries” and “Hunter,” glorify terrorism and assassination. His works inspired the creation of The Order, and served as a literal blueprint for Timothy McVeigh’s attack on the Murrah federal office building in Oklahoma City.

When Smith, of the racist and anti-Semitic World Church of the Creator, went on his frampage, he reportedly said, “To want to live in a world where blacks have power over whites, where Jews are in control, I think that’s a sickness, and I’d like to eradicate that sickness. In some ways it’s inevitable--racial holy war.”

And on June 18, 1999--the 15th anniversary of Berg’s assassination--three Sacramento synagogues were burned. Prime suspects in the arsons reportedly have connections to Christian Identity; a search of one of their homes produced both Identity and World Church of the Creator literature.

Issues such as gun control and violence on television are important parts of the national discussion in the wake of recent tragedies. At the same time, there is a larger problem here. While our nation has made great strides combating racism and anti-Semitism, there is a growing American fringe movement that is not only justifying but glorifying violence against Jews and minorities. We as Americans must face up to the consequences of this ominous phenomenon.

Columbine school officials apparently were not alarmed when some of its students were praising Hitler. The rest of us must learn not to dismiss these ideas as simply vile and silly (what bigotry isn’t?). As has been demonstrated again and again--with injured and dead children and adults--they have real power.