Nazi ter­ror­ism isn’t like it was a gen­er­a­tion ago. It’s worse. Or at least more nihilis­tic.

There isn’t just one kind of Nazi. It’s a weird­ly diverse ide­ol­o­gy, at least on the sur­face. Sure, bru­tal white suprema­cism may serve as the unit­ing core ele­ment, but Nazism comes in all sorts of awful fla­vors, from Chris­t­ian, to Hin­du, and even Satan­ic forms of Nazism. Some sort of twist­ed the­ol­o­gy is typ­i­cal­ly found at the heart of a Naz­i’s ide­ol­o­gy. And while Nazi ter­ror from the 1970s, 80s, and 90s were typ­i­cal­ly car­ried out by Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty ter­ror groups likes the Aryan Nations, today’s Nazi ter­ror­ist is far more like­ly to fol­low one of many strains of “accel­er­a­tionist” Nazism that have flour­ished in the online era. The teach­ings of James Mason — whose 1993 nov­el Siege cel­e­brat­ed mass mur­der­ers like the Man­son fam­i­ly as mod­els to be fol­lowed in imple­ment­ing a chaos-fueled Nation­al Social­ist rev­o­lu­tion — real­ly have won the hearts of minds of the next gen­er­a­tion of white pow­er extrem­ists, lead­ing to the pro­lif­er­a­tion of accel­er­a­tionist groups like like Atom­waf­fen that aren’t just will­ing to deploy ter­ror­ism but actu­al­ly pri­or­i­tize vio­lent­ly col­laps­ing soci­ety as the top pri­or­i­ty. And then there’s move­ments like the Satan­ic Order of Nine Angle (O9A). While O9A itself might be decades old, it’s a lot more pop­u­lar than it used to be these days. Nihilis­tic Satan­ic Nazism is shock­ing­ly pop­u­lar these days. Or per­haps it’s not that shock­ing. But it hap­pened.

Nazism in the online era real­ly has got­ten worse. Amaz­ing­ly. And it did­n’t just hap­pen. Sure, the explo­sion of online cul­ture played a crit­i­cal role, but as we’re going to explore in this post, the pop­u­lar­iza­tion of accel­er­a­tionist strains of Nazism did­n’t just spon­ta­neous­ly hap­pen. Peo­ple have been work­ing to make it hap­pen. Some­what sur­pris­ing peo­ple in some cas­es, for years.

The CNP’s Biblical Reconstructionists, the League of the South, Doug Wilson, and the Ongoing Neo-Confederate Theocratic Revival

At the same time, we should­n’t assume the forces behind the Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty-ori­ent­ed strains of white suprema­cy have just fad­ed away. On the con­trary, they are arguably more pow­er­ful than ever. The cur­rent Trump admin­is­tra­tion is effec­tive­ly a fusion of MAGA and Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism, with the brutish cult of per­son­al­i­ty built around Don­ald Trump play­ing the pub­lic fac­ing role while the actu­al poli­cies and army of polit­i­cal oper­a­tives are large­ly sup­plied by the Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist net­works led by the pow­er­ful Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP). As we’ve seen, the CNP is not only the enti­ty that played a key still-under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed role in the schem­ing that led up to the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion, but it’s also the cen­tral orga­niz­ing enti­ty behind the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 cur­rent­ly under­way under the ‘DOGE’ umbrel­la. And, of course, there’s the ongo­ing CNP-backed efforts to com­plete­ly over­haul the US Con­sti­tu­tion into some sort of far right fever dream. Orga­nized Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism is hav­ing a polit­i­cal hey­day through­out the US’s demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions, despite, or because of, years of grow­ing theo­crat­ic mil­i­tan­cy.

And while the Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist strains pro­mot­ed by CNP mem­bers does­n’t exact­ly fall under the “Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty” Nazism umbrel­la, it’s pret­ty adja­cent. After all, CNP mem­ber­ship includes fig­ures like Mike Per­out­ka of the League of the South, a neo-Con­fed­er­ate orga­ni­za­tion that views the Con­fed­er­a­cy as the pin­na­cle of a bib­li­cal­ly-based soci­ety, slav­ery and all. And then there’s rad­i­cal Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ists found on the CNP mem­ber­ship ros­ters like the now-deceased RJ Rush­doony and his son-in-law Gary North, both lead­ing Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ists. As we’re going to see, the kind Recon­struc­tion­ism they advo­cate is shock­ing­ly seg­re­ga­tion and slav­ery-friend­ly. These may not be Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty move­ments pre­cise­ly in the sense that they don’t explic­it­ly declare Aryans to be the ‘real chil­dren of Israel’, in keep­ing with the kinds teach­ing we might find in groups like the Aryan Nations. But the the­olo­gies guid­ing move­ments like the League of the South and Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ism more or less have the same end goals: the rise of a white suprema­cist theoc­ra­cy. When key Project 2025 oper­a­tive Russ Vought was tapped to first lead Trump’s Office, and even­tu­al­ly take over DOGE, a major theo­crat­ic project got under­way. And while the CNP has­n’t exact­ly been upfront about its long-term agen­da, we’ve got­ten clues. Like when Her­itage Foun­da­tion Pres­i­dent Kevin Roberts — the per­son for­mal­ly lead­ing the Project 2025 efforts — warned the pub­lic that a “Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion” was under­way, which would only remain blood­less “if the left allows it”. That kind of clue. He was­n’t just talk­ing about a polit­i­cal agen­da. He was talk­ing about a major theo­crat­ic project. And it’s no longer just a warn­ing. It’s hap­pen­ing.

And, again, while it would­n’t be accu­rate to char­ac­ter­ize Project 2025 as an overt­ly Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty polit­i­cal project, it’s not an entire­ly inac­cu­rate char­ac­ter­i­za­tion either. After all, how do we explain the real­i­ty that one of the lead­ing theo­crat­ic fig­ures in the US today, pas­tor Doug Wil­son, has been coor­di­nat­ing direct­ly with the key Project 2025 fig­ures like Russ Vought. In fact, both Vought and Wil­son spoke at a 2024 event host­ed by Vought’s Cen­ter for Renew­ing Amer­i­ca (CRA), one of the many enti­ties spawned by the Con­ser­v­a­tive Part­ner­ship Insti­tute (CPI) in the post-2020 polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment in prepa­ra­tion for Project 2025. As we’ve seen, Wil­son isn’t just some ran­dom fire­brand pas­tor. He’s the leader of the Com­mu­nion of Reformed Evan­gel­i­cal Church­es (CREC), a net­work of con­gre­ga­tions scat­tered across the US with an explic­it­ly Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist ori­en­ta­tion. A grow­ing net­work at that includes a con­gre­ga­tion near Nashville, Ten­nessee, where none oth­er than the cur­rent Sec­re­tary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, is a mem­ber. But the polit­i­cal influ­ence of the CREC move­ment does­n’t end with the Sec­re­tary of Defense. In fact, Wil­son has a city already picked up for his new church: Wash­ing­ton DC. Yep. The polit­i­cal influ­ence of Doug Wilson’s CREC move­ment is growing...in Wash­ing­ton DC.

Again, yes, the CREC net­work of con­gre­ga­tions isn’t exact­ly a Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty move­ment. But it’s not far off. As we’re going to see, Doug Wilson’s extrem­ist his­to­ry includes the fact that he actu­al­ly co-authored a book back in 1996 with a lead­ing League of the South fig­ure, Steven J. Wilkins, that defend­ed the Con­fed­er­a­cy as a paragon of Bib­li­cal virtues. Slav­ery was­n’t the bru­tal sys­tem we’ve all been taught. No, no, it was a vir­tu­ous Bible-based moral insti­tu­tion. Those are the kinds of the­o­log­i­cal teach­ings Pas­tor Wil­son has been pro­mot­ing for decades now. And look where it’s tak­en him: he’s now coor­di­nat­ing with the orga­niz­ers behind Project 2025 and launch­ing a con­gre­ga­tion in DC. And the cur­rent Sec­re­tary of Defense is a fol­low­er. Pro-slav­ery neo-Con­fed­er­ate Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism is hav­ing a real polit­i­cal moment. It might be a large­ly stealth moment that few rec­og­nize but it’s hap­pen­ing. Project 2025 is, for all prac­ti­cal pur­pos­es, being orches­trat­ed by the League of the South’s well orga­nized con­fed­er­ates.

That incred­i­ble par­al­lel rise — the polit­i­cal ascen­dance of neo-Con­fed­er­ate Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism and the pop­u­lar­iza­tion of accel­er­a­tionist, often Satan­ic, Nazi ter­ror­ism — is what that we’re going to be exam­in­ing in this post. It’s a more dis­turb­ing sto­ry than one might guess. Start­ing with the fact that con­tem­po­rary Satan­ic Nazi ter­ror­ism does­n’t just involve a Siege-inspired cel­e­bra­tion of chaos-induc­ing polit­i­cal vio­lence and soci­etal col­lapse. Rape and child sex­u­al abuse are also ele­vat­ed as almost vir­tu­ous, noble acts. It’s real­ly that dement­ed. Books pop­u­lar­iz­ing Satan­ic rit­u­al child abuse have been cir­cu­lat­ing on online for years, tak­ing their place along­side Siege on the man­tel of lead­ing Nazi lit­er­a­ture, with groups like Atom­waf­fen even mak­ing the books required read­ing for new mem­bers.

Joshua Caleb Sutter’s Journey from Christian Identity Terrorist to Satanic Nazi Publisher and Child Abusing Cult Leader. And Hare Krishna Nazi Cult Leader. And Jonestown/Juche Cult Leader. Sponsored by the FBI

But the embrace of Satan­ic child abuse isn’t just some sort of per­verse lit­er­ary fetish found in Satan­ic Nazi lit­er­a­ture. Real child abuse is hap­pen­ing. And being cel­e­brat­ed in online com­mu­ni­ties that specif­i­cal­ly set out to tar­get and lure chil­dren and teens into sit­u­a­tions where they can be black­mailed and exploit­ed in some of the most hor­rif­ic man­ners pos­si­ble. Online groups like 764 and COM now exist for those exact pur­pos­es: lur­ing young peo­ple into a dark dement­ed world where they are black­mailed into increas­ing­ly depraved acts. Black­mail often in the form of threats to expose to the world the nude pho­tos of them­selves they were con­vinced to send to the group. It’s a kind of online trau­ma-based con­ver­sion into a ‘black-pilled’ nihilis­tic world­view, where extort­ing the youths into increas­ing­ly depraved acts begins includ­ing demands for not just acts of self-harm but vio­lence against oth­ers.

Adding to the dis­turb­ing nature of net­works like 764 and COM is how resis­tant they appear to be from law enforce­ment actions. Mem­bers are arrest­ed. But the net­works per­sist. Even when lead­ers are tak­en down like Angel “Gore­butch­er” Almei­da, a high school dropout from Ocala, Flori­da, one of the orig­i­nal mem­bers of 764. By Sep­tem­ber of 2021, the FBI was informed about Almei­da’s crimes includ­ing post­ing pic­tures of chil­dren in bondage gear, ani­mal abuse and muti­la­tion videos, issu­ing death threats, meet­ing up in-per­son with a 16 year old, and tar­get­ing oth­er minors. Almei­da was arrest­ed in Novem­ber 2021 and charged with using Face­book and Insta­gram to groom an under­age girl between July and Decem­ber 2021. A time­line that sug­gest the online groom­ing some­how con­tin­ued briefly even after the arrest?! This was a month after the arrest of 764’s Texas teen founder, Bradley Caden­head. 764 per­sists to this day.

We are told that Almei­da’s Novem­ber 2021 arrest result­ed in the FBI’s first glimpse into the 764 net­work, a detail that itself is rather remark­able giv­en that we are also told the Dis­cord online plat­form alert­ed law enforce­ment about 764’s activ­i­ty in Jan­u­ary of that year. 764’s activ­i­ty on Dis­cord was so preva­lent that the plat­form has admit­ted in a 2024 report that it had already blocked 130 groups and 34,000 accounts linked to 764 alone since 2021. That does­n’t include oth­er groups like COM that are oper­at­ing in the same man­ner. This is a mas­sive ongo­ing online crim­i­nal cul­ture.

Almei­da’s 2021 arrest­ed did­n’t just take down one of the lead­ing mem­bers of 764. Almei­da was a promi­nent mem­ber of anoth­er group: the Tem­pel ov Blood, an 09A off­shoot with a heavy focus on the cel­e­bra­tion of rape and child sex­u­al abuse. As we’re going to see, an inter­est in both Satan­ic Nazism and child abuse/rape mul­ti­ple extrem­ist groups is very com­mon in these cir­cles. At one point, Almei­da even post­ed a pho­to on social media pos­ing with a hand gun next to a Tem­pel ov Blood flag along­side a Nazi flag and com­put­er screen with the mes­sage “I’m addict­ed to child pornog­ra­phy”, while wear­ing a shirt with the slo­gan “kid­die fid­dler.” He was­n’t exact­ly sub­tle about his inter­ests.

All of those dis­turb­ing details brings us to what is arguably the most dis­turb­ing part of Angel Almei­da’s pros­e­cu­tion: the fig­ure who has spent over two decades pro­mot­ing and pop­u­lar­iz­ing Satan­ic Nazism and a cel­e­bra­tion of child sex­u­al abuse hap­pened to be a paid FBI infor­mant dur­ing that entire peri­od. Yep. The explo­sion of extrem­ist inter­est in Satan­ic Nazism over the past cou­ple of decades has­n’t just been a prod­uct of the inter­net and the dement­ed online cul­tures it fos­ters. A paid FBI infor­mant has been play­ing a cen­tral lead­er­ship role in mak­ing this hap­pen.

And as we’re also going to see, that paid FBI infor­mant — Joshua Caleb Sut­ter — has a very inter­est­ing back­ground him­self, in part because he got his start as a Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty white pow­er domes­tic ter­ror­ist, or at least an attempt­ed ter­ror­ist. It was Feb­ru­ary of 2003 when Sut­ter was arrest­ed in Philadel­phia on weapons charges for pur­chas­ing ille­gal auto­mat­ic pis­tols with their ser­i­al num­bers scraped off. Those weapons pur­chas­es were, in turn, part of a larg­er plot by the Aryan Nations to blow up abor­tion clin­ics. Sut­ter was sen­tenced to two years in prison, but was released the fol­low­ing year. By the time Sut­ter emerged from prison in 2004 he was an FBI infor­mant.

Sut­ter was­n’t just a mem­ber of the Aryan Nations at the time of Sut­ter’s arrest. He was a promi­nent mem­ber of the orga­ni­za­tion, hav­ing adopt­ed the alias Wul­fram Hull, High Coun­sel of Aryan Nations. Sut­ter was liv­ing at the rur­al Penn­syl­va­nia Aryan Nations head­quar­ters at the time, owned by his men­tor and the head of the Aryan Nations August Kreis. Sut­ter was also serv­ing as the Aryan Nation­s’s “Min­is­ter for Islam­ic Liai­son”, a role he took fol­low­ing the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks with a goal of build­ing rela­tion­ships with jihadist groups. Yes, the Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty Aryan Nations had a kind of jihadist liai­son. Josh Sut­ter.

In addi­tion to his Aryan Nations roles, Sut­ter also served as a preach­er for the Church of the Sons of Yaweh, a white suprema­cist “Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty” church with links to the Ku Klux Klan. It’s per­haps the least sur­pris­ing of all of Sut­ter’s extrem­ist roles giv­en that his father, David Sut­ter, is a well known white suprema­cist South Car­oli­na preach­er. In fact, both father and son hap­pen to man­aged the South­ern Patri­ot Shop, a store ded­i­cat­ed to Con­fed­er­ate and racist mem­o­ra­bil­ia. But the Sut­ters did­n’t own the South­ern Patri­ot Shop. The League of the South owned it. In fact, the shop served as a League of the South club­house.

That’s Joshua Caleb Sut­ter’s back­ground that led him to the point of get­ting thrown in jail. Sut­ter was young ris­ing star in the world of Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty white pow­er. Both High Coun­sel and Min­is­ter for Islam­ic Liai­son of the Aryan Nations. Preach­er for the Church of the Sons of Yaweh. And the son of a racist preach­er and part of a fam­i­ly-run League of the South club­house. This is some­one who was deeply immersed in the Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty white pow­er move­ment back when he was arrest­ed while plot­ting attacks on abor­tion clin­ics. And then he went on to spend the fol­low­ing decades as the lead­ing pro­pa­gan­dist for the Tem­pel ov Blood, an O9A off­shoot with an excep­tion­al­ly twist­ed embrace of child sex­u­al abuse, while serv­ing as a paid FBI infor­mant, accru­ing rough­ly $140,000 in pay­ments from the FBI in return for his ser­vices.

Adding to the twist­ed nature of this sto­ry is the fact that Sut­ter’s lega­cy as a lead­ing Satan­ic Nazi child abuse advo­cate includes the fact that he was first out­ed as an FBI infor­mant by his own Aryan Nations col­leagues all the way back in 2005. Fol­low­ing his release from prison, Sut­ter moved back to his fam­i­ly’s prop­er­ty in Lex­ing­ton, South Car­oli­na, and start­ed work­ing in the South­ern Patri­ot Shot. He also resumed his Wul­fram Hull role in the Aryan Nations and, in April 2005, August Kreis bought a piece of prop­er­ty in Lex­ing­ton and relo­cat­ed the Aryan Nations head­quar­ters there. But just months lat­er, all men­tion of Sut­ter was removed from the Aryan Nations web­site and Kreis accused Sut­ter of work­ing for the FBI.

That break with Kreis appears to mark the end of Sut­ter’s direct involve­ment with the Aryan Nations. But that’s not when he first start­ed branch­ing out into non-Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty white pow­er move­ments. In fact, it was upon his release from prison that Sut­ter from the Rur­al Peo­ple’s Par­ty, a bizarre polit­i­cal enti­ty ded­i­cat­ed to fol­low­ing the offi­cial Juche state ide­ol­o­gy of the gov­ern­ment of North Korea and Jim Jones’s Peo­ples Tem­ple. In addi­tion, we are told the Tem­pel ov Blood was start­ed in 2003 and Sut­ter had direct com­mu­ni­ca­tions with O9A founder David Myatt in 2004. And in Feb­ru­ary 2005, Sut­ter post­ed on the Aryan Nations web­site, “We spit upon the erro­neous sanc­ti­ty of the cross – and all the mean­ing­less relics of orga­nized reli­gion which is but anoth­er way to enslave us and con­trol us, to keep us from real­iz­ing the poten­tial that we pos­sess as a race.” Sut­ter was still a mem­ber of the Aryan Nations when he emerge from prison in 2004 to work at a League of South club house, and very much fix­at­ed on extrem­ism. But he clear­ly had ambi­tions that went beyond the Aryan Nations. As a paid FBI infor­mant.

Sut­ter appears to have increased his focus on the bizarre Juche/Jim Jones group in the years fol­low­ing his 2005 break with the Aryan Nations. It was this peri­od when he met Jil­lian Hoy, who would become his wife and, for the most part, part­ner in online extrem­ist lead­er­ship. They mar­ried on Novem­ber 18, 2008, the anniver­sary of the Jon­estown mas­sacre. The Rur­al Peo­ple’s Par­ty Juche cult actu­al­ly estab­lished con­tact with the North Kore­an gov­ern­ment and was, for a time, serv­ing as a kind of US-based North Kore­an pro­pa­gan­da out­fit. Albeit, a pro­pa­gan­da out­fit with lit­tle to no reach out­side of the white pow­er com­mu­ni­ty. And com­pe­ti­tion from anoth­er equal­ly obscure group, the U.S. Songun Study Group, which also hap­pened to be found­ed by a white suprema­cist. In fact, at one point, Hoy pre­tend­ed to become roman­ti­cal­ly inter­est­ed in the leader of the U.S. Songun Study Group, John Paul Cupp, only to poi­son him in 2009, Cupp alleged at one point. In Novem­ber 2009, Sut­ter pub­lished a biog­ra­phy of the Rur­al Peo­ple’s Par­ty under an alias in the San Diego University’s Cen­ter for Reli­gious Stud­ies, the world’s largest archive of Jon­estown-relat­ed mate­r­i­al. The Rur­al Peo­ple’s Par­ty become inac­tive over the fol­low­ing year.

2009 was also the year Sut­ter and Hoy formed a new Hin­du cult ded­i­cat­ed to the wor­ship of Kali, the Hin­du god­dess of destruc­tion. The New Bihar Mandir ded­i­cat­ed itself to ush­er­ing in the Kali Yuga, an epoch of dark­ness and dis­in­te­gra­tion seen as part of a cos­mic cycle of death and rebirth. As we’ve seen, an ush­er­ing in of the Kali Yuga is at the core of anoth­er apoc­a­lyp­tic Hin­du cult with racist and fas­cist under­pin­nings: The Hare Krish­na sect. So it should come as lit­tle sur­prise that Sut­ter actu­al­ly wrote to the head of North Car­oli­na-based Hare Krish­na tem­ple in 2008. “In ret­ro­spect I can see just how much my life has been enriched by your work,” Sut­ter wrote. “[My wife] is now hav­ing some of the hap­pi­est times I have seen her have since our mar­riage because of the enrich­ing poten­cy of Krish­na con­scious­ness.” We also should­n’t be sur­prised to learn that the New Bihar Mandir’s small mem­ber­ship rolls con­sist­ed of a num­ber of notable white pow­er per­son­al­i­ties includ­ing James Por­raz­zo — the for­mer leader of the Amer­i­can Front — along with his girl­friend Emi­ly Put­ney and fel­low Amer­i­can Front mem­ber Chris Hayes. Rex Mor­gan, who had a his­to­ry of Satan­ic Nazism, was also a mem­ber.

And while Sut­ter may have bro­ken with the Aryan Nations, he was report­ed­ly involved with local Chris­t­ian through­out this whole peri­od, includ­ing Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty church­es and even some pre­dom­i­nant­ly black church­es. And while Sut­ter’s involve­ment with pre­dom­i­nant­ly black Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ties might seem com­plete­ly incon­gru­ous with every­thing else we’ve seen about him, keep in mind one of the more O9A teach­ings that appears to play a promi­nent place in the kind of accel­er­a­tionist activism fig­ures like Sut­ter and Mason advo­cate: engag­ing in “insight roles”, an O9A term for effec­tive­ly going under­cov­er in soci­ety in some sort of posi­tion that is the com­plete oppo­site of your inner Satan­ic Nazi self. So if you want to burn every­thing down become a fire­man. If you want to com­mit crime every­where, join the police. Or the mil­i­tary. Which makes this a good time to recall the high dis­turb­ing 2021 sto­ry of Ethan Melz­er, who joined the US Army as part of how own O9A “Insight Role” where he became trained in mil­i­tary intel­li­gence and began shar­ing troves of clas­si­fied data on an online extrem­ist forum. He even attempt­ed to make con­tact with jihadists in the hopes of coor­di­nat­ing an attack on his own mil­i­tary unit while they were deployed in the Mid­dle East in fur­ther­ance of the goal of spark­ing a response by the US that keeps war rag­ing in the Mid­dle East for as long as pos­si­ble. Melz­er viewed the risk of dying him­self dur­ing the attack as worth it. More war was the end goal to a ter­ror plot Melz­er was try­ing to inflict on his own unit. It’s a kind of dis­til­la­tion of the accel­er­a­tionist agen­da. And an exam­ple of what an “Insight Role” can entail. Was Sut­ter’s asso­ci­a­tions with Black Chris­t­ian con­gre­ga­tions part of an O9A insight role? Join­ing a black con­gre­ga­tion sounds like a good oppo­site fit for a Nazi Satanist. The FBI pre­sum­ably has an idea.

Sut­ter’s immer­sion into the world of Satan­ic Nazism back in 2004 went beyond an alleged meet­ing with David Myatt. That was the year of the first Tem­pel ov Blood pub­li­ca­tion by Fin­land based Ixax­aar Occult Pub­li­ca­tions, made in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Angle­ton Imprints. Avail­able evi­dence indi­cates Angle­ton Imprints was an ear­ly pub­lish­er of extrem­ist con­tent run by Sut­ter. In 2014, Sut­ter and his wife, Jil­lian Hoy, launched a new pub­lish­ing enti­ty, Mar­tinet Press, which pub­lished a work of fic­tion that has become one of the most influ­en­tial tracts for the con­tem­po­rary accel­er­a­tionist Nazis: Iron Gates, a kind of accel­er­a­tion ana­log to the Turn­er Diaries or Ser­pen­t’s Walk nov­el that cel­e­brates a dystopi­an future run by Satan­ic child abus­ing Nazis. Josh Sut­ter has become one of the lead­ing online pub­lish­ers of Satan­ic extrem­ist con­tent. As a paid FBI infor­mant.

Blue­bird, a sequel to Iron Gates, had also become required read­ing for Atom­waf­fen mem­bers at one point. It’s worth recall how Project Blue­bird was also the name of one of the post-War pre­cur­sors to the CIA’s MKUl­tra mind con­trol project. It’s a his­tor­i­cal echo that makes the name Angle­ton Imprints an inter­est­ing name choice for Sut­ter’s ear­ly efforts at extrem­ist pub­lish­ing giv­en the keen inter­est James Jesus Angle­ton — the CIA’s long-time head of counter-intel­li­gence — had in the CIA’s mind con­trol efforts. Notably, Sut­ter him­self has writ­ten about the Tem­pel ov Blood as a kind of mind con­trol exper­i­ment. “This Tem­pel is in many ways a social pro­gram­ming exper­i­ment,” Sut­ter has writ­ten. “While we do cre­ate fanat­ics, we must make the ‘fake’ adher­ents entries look as if it is obvi­ous­ly their will and good for them to serve the ToB. It has to be sub­tle. In the lat­er stages it becomes more overt and at that point is too late for them to change. They become so alien­at­ed from human­i­ty that, well, haha, if they tried to go back they will still cause so much dis­rup­tion.” Again, don’t for­get that groups like 764 and COM seem to use extreme gore videos and expo­sure to child abuse con­tent as a kind of desen­si­ti­za­tion process for new recruits. It’s not at all a stretch to view what these net­works are doing as a kind of live online exper­i­ment in extrem­ist psy­chol­o­gy. They are lit­er­al­ly attempt­ed to indoc­tri­nate young ter­ror­ists.

By 2014, Sut­ter and Hoy launched Mar­tinet Press, pub­lished Iron Gates and lat­er Blue­bird, and spent the fol­low­ing decade pop­u­lar­iz­ing Satan­ic accel­er­a­tionism online, lead­ing up to Sut­ter’s 2017 invi­ta­tion to join Atom­waf­fen. Found­ed in 2015 on the accel­er­a­tionist teach­ings of James Mason’s Siege, Atom­waf­fen did­n’t always have a Satan­ic ori­en­ta­tion. That was Sut­ter’s accom­plish­ment. And the FBI’s accom­plish­ment, in a way. If pop­u­lar­iz­ing Satan­ic Nazism and child abuse among the next gen­er­a­tion of online extrem­ists was one of the FBI’s goals for Sut­ter it cer­tain­ly worked. Was it a goal? He seemed to get immersed in Satanism upon release from prison in 2004. It was one of the first things he did upon becom­ing a paid FBI infor­mant, along with start­ing the Rur­al Peo­ple’s Par­ty. Cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence cer­tain­ly points in the direc­tion of the pro­mo­tion of Satan­ic accel­er­a­tionist Nazism as some­thing the FBI was imme­di­ate­ly inter­est­ed as a path for­ward in the extrem­ist world for their new infor­mant. And not a bad deci­sion tac­ti­cal­ly, giv­en how he was out­ed as a pos­si­ble infor­mant in 2005 by August Kreis. But how about strate­gi­cal­ly? Was giv­ing some­one like Sut­ter a kind of legal umbrel­la for all these years while he pro­mot­ed accel­er­a­tionist Satan­ic Nazism a good idea? Was the idea to make the move­ment so extreme no one would want to join? Because that did­n’t work.

And while it’s unclear how much mon­ey Sut­ter and Hoy have made over the years from their online extrem­ist pub­lish­ing busi­ness­es, we do know how much Sut­ter earned from the FBI for his work as an under­cov­er infor­mant: rough­ly $140,000. The num­ber emerged in court in 2021 as part of the fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tion of mem­bers of Atom­waf­fen. James Mason declared Atom­waf­fen was no more in Sep­tem­ber 2020. The move­ment was rebrand­ed as the Nation­al Social­ist Order (NSO). Atom­waf­fen real­ly was heav­i­ly tak­en down by author­i­ties, with Sut­ter’s help pre­sum­ably play­ing a sig­nif­i­cant role. And it was dur­ing that process that Sut­ter’s FBI infor­mant sta­tus was con­firmed for the world. August Kreis was cor­rect back in 2005. Sut­ter has indeed been involved in the take down of extrem­ist groups. It’s unde­ni­able at this point. The big ques­tion loom­ing of this sto­ry is whether or not the ben­e­fits he has pro­vid­ed to the FBI out­weighs the incred­i­ble dam­age he has per­pe­trat­ed over two decades at this point as the world’s lead­ing pros­e­ly­tiz­er of pro-child rap­ing Satan­ic Nazi ter­ror­ism. On the one hand, he helped take down Atom­waf­fen. On the oth­er hand, he also helped cre­ate them and rad­i­cal­ize them fur­ther. He was invit­ed to join in 2017, at which point Iron Gates and Blue­bird became manda­to­ry read­ing for mem­bers. And quite a few mur­ders were com­mit­ted by Atom­waf­fen dur­ing that peri­od.

The Satanic Front, the Maniac Murder Cult, and the Online Child Abuse Networks Turning Abuse Victims into Terrorists

Was Sut­ter’s FBI infor­mant work a net-pos­i­tive? It’s a ques­tion that gets all the more sor­did when we intro the case of Anton McK­ay Blenzig. The 27 year old who lived with schiz­o­phre­nia died in April of 2024 in what police are call­ing a sui­cide. Some fam­i­ly mem­bers sug­gest he was coerced to kill him­self and pos­si­bly even mur­dered, by mem­bers of the Tem­pel ov Blood. Blenzig joined the ToB at the age of 18, spend­ing 5 years in the group that brought him to the point where his online “Com­man­dant Cul­tus” Satan­ic per­sona became the kind of ToB pub­lic face for the inter­net. Keep in mind Josh Sut­ter was the per­son mak­ing these ToB staffing deci­sion. It was Sut­ter, and Hoy, who made Blenzig an obscure kind of celebri­ty for the online Nazi Satanist under­ground. And then, in 2020, Blenzig joined the Satan­ic Front, a kind of ToB sis­ter orga­ni­za­tion. Sut­ter gave Blenzig and Satan­ic Front his whole heart­ed bless­ing. In fact, it was Novem­ber 18, 2020 — the anniver­sary of Sut­ter and Hoy’s wed­ding and the Jon­estown mas­sacre — when Mar­tinet Press endorsed “Com­man­dant Cul­tus” as the offi­cial online dis­trib­u­tor for the ToB, when Blenzig was already in Satan­ic Front at this point.

But some­thing changed in mid-2022. Satan­ic Front issued online state­ments about inter­act­ing per­son­al­ly with mem­bers of the ToB and con­clud­ing that they are “not in align­ment” with Satan­ic Front and take an “arm­chair approach to occultism.” It’s unclear what exact­ly led to this breakup but keep in mind that Sut­ter’s FBI infor­mant sta­tus was con­firmed in court in 2021 in the Atom­waf­fen case. It’s not hard to imag­ine Satan­ic Front felt a need to dis­tance itself.

It’s two years lat­er that Blenzig was found dead under cir­cum­stances that offi­cials called a sui­cide but some fam­i­ly mem­bers sug­gest may have been a ToB hit of some sort. And while the ques­tions still swirling around Blenzig’s death and what role the ToB, and Sut­ter in par­tic­u­lar, may have played in that death, con­tin­ue to loom large over this sto­ry, there’s anoth­er part of the sto­ry to keep in mind: Blenzig was a lead­ing mem­ber of COM, the twist­ed online child abuse net­work. In fact, a study found Blenzig’s Com­man­dant Cul­tus per­sona was among the top 10 posters in over fifty COM mes­sage groups. Blenzig was­n’t just dis­trib­ut­ing Satan­ic abuse pro­pa­gan­da. He was immersed in twist­ed world of COM and 764. Which is part of what we should­n’t be sur­prised to learn anoth­er Satan­ic Front mem­ber include Angel Almei­da. Satan­ic Front was immerse in the world of child sex­u­al abuse mate­r­i­al (CSAM). And one of its promi­nent mem­bers rose to promi­nence thanks, heav­i­ly, to the endorse­ment of Josh Sut­ter though the ToB. While Sut­ter was a paid FBI infor­mant.

Incred­i­bly, or per­haps pre­dictably, it sounds like Sut­ter con­tin­ues to more or less do exact­ly the same thing today, as of a Feb­ru­ary 2025. He uses var­i­ous online per­sonas and alias, per­haps sig­nal­ing an ongo­ing sen­si­tiv­i­ty about that FBI infor­mant sta­tus. But the mis­sion is ongo­ing and goal is still the same: pro­mot­ing Satan­ic Nazism and run­ning a Satan­ic Nazi pub­lish­ing house. That’s still hap­pen­ing.

Some­thing else is still hap­pen­ing, despite the take­down of Atom­waf­fen’s mem­ber­ship: accel­er­a­tionist ter­ror attempts. For exam­ple, recall that tru­ly dis­turb­ing sto­ry about a US teenag­er, Niki­ta Cas­ap, who mur­dered his par­ents at their home in Illi­nois back in Feb­ru­ary and the took the fam­i­ly car on a cross coun­try trip guid­ed by a neb­u­lous online group that was coax­ing him down the path to mur­der the entire time. An online group oper­at­ing out of East­ern Europe who instruct­ed Cas­ap to trav­el to a loca­tion in Okla­homa, where he was to meet some­one who would give him fake license plates. He was, at that point, sup­posed to dri­ve to Cal­i­for­nia and meet some­one who would assist him in obtain­ing a drone that could be used for an assas­si­na­tion attempt against Pres­i­dent Trump. Cas­ap appeared to be oper­at­ing under the assump­tion that his pres­i­den­tial assas­si­na­tion plot was one of ten such plots that were under­way by the group designed to bring about the col­lapse of soci­ety. Cas­ap also appeared to believe he was going to be assist­ed in flee­ing to Ukraine where he could live out the rest of his life with fel­low like-mind­ed extrem­ists. He was arrest­ed before reach­ing Okla­homa. The Niki­ta Cas­ap sto­ry could have eas­i­ly been a lot worse.

And per­haps it is worse. Maybe there real­ly are nine oth­er teens in on this plot as Cas­ap was told. It sounds almost prob­a­bly at this point that there are oth­er youths in the US rad­i­cal­ized into Satan­ic accel­er­a­tionist ter­ror­ists and fol­low­ing the lead of this neb­u­lous online group. We don’t know. But it’s very notable that this neb­u­lous group that rad­i­cal­ized Cas­ap into this pres­i­den­tial mur­der plot sounds an awful lot like anoth­er group we have to men­tion: the Mani­ac Mur­der Cult, also known as MKY. The online net­work oper­ates in a very sim­i­lar man­ner to 764 and COM, lur­ing in online youths with extreme con­tent and then pro­ceed­ing to attempt to coerce and extort them into a life of nihilis­tic vio­lence. Found­ed in the Ukrain­ian city of Dnipro and oper­at­ing pri­mar­i­ly out of East­ern Europe, the group works in a man­ner that sounds iden­ti­cal to the net­work guid­ing Niki­ta Cas­ap through his domes­tic ter­ror spree. In fact, the leader of the group, Geor­gian nation­al Michail Chkhikvishvili, aka “Com­man­der Butch­er,” was arrest­ed Chișinău, Moldo­va, in July of 2024 for con­spir­ing to solic­it attacks on home­less peo­ple, Jews, and oth­er racial minori­ties in New York City, as well as dis­trib­ut­ing explo­sives-mak­ing instruc­tions. As we’re going to see, it sounds like Chkhikvishvili was effec­tive­ly try­ing to con­vince an under­cov­er FBI agent to car­ry out attacks that would be “big­ger action than Breivik,” a ref­er­ence to Nor­we­gian neo-Nazi Anders Breivik’s 2011 ter­ror attack. As we should expect, MKY and 764 have a num­ber of promi­nent over­lap­ping mem­bers.

Josh Sutter’s Fellow Travelers: The ‘Mainstream’ White Power Plot to Introduce the Next Generation of Extremist to Jame Mason’s Siege Accelerationism

Satan­ic Nazism with a fix­a­tion on child abuse and desen­si­tiz­ing trau­ma real­ly has become an ascen­dant form far right extrem­ism over the past cou­ple of decades, thanks heav­i­ly to the efforts of a long-time paid FBI infor­mant who has been ded­i­cat­ed to fur­ther rad­i­cal­iz­ing the white pow­er sub­cul­ture. It’s the kind of sto­ry that should­n’t be true. But it is. Not that Josh Sut­ter did all of this on his own. The explo­sion of online cul­ture and venues where sadis­tic preda­tors could inter­act with ran­dom youth unim­ped­ed was cer­tain­ly a nec­es­sary ingre­di­ent. But as we’re going see, Josh Sut­ter has­n’t been the only neo-Nazi with the goal of pop­u­lar­iz­ing James Mason’s accel­er­a­tionist ide­ol­o­gy along with David Myat­t’s Order of Nine Angles Satanism and Hin­du-inspired Nazism. As was revealed in a 2024 report by the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter, it turns out that two fair­ly ‘main­stream’ white suprema­cists set out with the same goal back in the ear­ly 2000s: back in 2003, a sec­ond edi­tion of Mason’s Siege was pub­lished by Black Sun Pub­li­ca­tions, the pub­lish­ing house for the Foun­da­tion for Human Under­stand­ing (FHU), a Geor­gia-based non­prof­it found­ed in 1973 with a mis­sion of pro­mot­ing racist pseu­do­science and financed by the forces behind the Pio­neer Fund. But Black Sun did­n’t just repub­lish Siege. Mason and two of the fig­ures run­ning FHU were in reg­u­lar com­mu­ni­ca­tion from 2001 to 2003. Those activists, Greg John­son and Ryan Schus­ter, had plans to pop­u­lar­ize not just Mason’s work with the next gen­er­a­tion of extrem­ists but also those of Sav­i­t­ra Devi, a promi­nent fig­ure in the devel­op­ment of Hin­dut­va-infused Nazism, and O9A founder David Myatt. This was all hap­pen­ing at rough­ly the same time Josh Sut­ter was arrest­ed as a Aryan Nations Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty ter­ror­ist and emerged from prison a Satan­ic Nazi FBI infor­mant who went on to declare his devo­tion to the Hare Krish­na cult and found­ed the New Bihar Mandir cult that would have been very much aligned with Sav­i­t­ra Devi’s teach­ings. We don’t have evi­dence that Sut­ter was direct­ly work­ing with Schus­ter or John­son, but it’s a remark­able coin­ci­dence.

It’s also worth not­ing that, while the League of the South’s dis­turb­ing pro-slav­ery the­ol­o­gy thank­ful­ly does­n’t have the same kind of overt cel­e­bra­tion of child abuse that we find in these nihilis­tic Satan­ic Nazi move­ments, that does­n’t mean these theo­crat­ic move­ments aren’t engaged in sys­tem­at­ic child abuse. Beyond the obvi­ous exam­ple of the Catholic church, the mas­sive South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion’s lead­er­ship has spent decades in a series of major sys­tem­at­ic sex abuse coverups, includ­ing abus­es and coverups by some major CNP fig­ures. Sys­temic child abuse isn’t lim­it­ed to Satan­ic Nazis.

The League of the South’s Plot to Turn Southern Congregations into White Power Recruitment Pools

And that brings us to one last remark­able coin­ci­dence for around this peri­od: back in March of 2001, the SPLC ran a report on a dis­turb­ing plot tar­get­ing US Chris­t­ian con­gre­ga­tions. A Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ist plot led by the League of the South’s Steven J. Wilkins to infil­trate and take over Chris­t­ian con­gre­ga­tions with a goal of turn­ing the con­gre­ga­tions into recruit­ing grounds for white suprema­cist orga­ni­za­tions like the League of the South. As we’re going to see, it was the Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­st ide­ol­o­gy of promi­nent CNP mem­bers RJ Rush­doony and his son-in-law Gary North that was serv­ing as the kind of the­o­log­i­cal play­book Wilkins was work­ing from. “Oth­ers need to know what they are fac­ing,” as one mem­ber of a con­gre­ga­tion that was expe­ri­enc­ing this kind of takeover warned at the time. “What I want peo­ple to under­stand is they believe in a hier­ar­chy of indi­vid­u­als. Equal­i­ty is Satan­ic, democ­ra­cy is Satan­ic. They preach this from the pul­pit.…

Equal­i­ty is Satan­ic, democ­ra­cy is Satan­ic. That’s what was being taught in the con­gre­ga­tions that were being tak­en over by these neo-Con­fed­er­ate theo­crat­ic move­ments. For decades now. And the influ­ence of these move­ments has only grown. We were warned but those warn­ings clear­ly weren’t heed­ed. Again, Doug Wil­son, Wilkin­s’s co-author in that 1996 book defend­ing slav­ery and con­fed­er­a­cy, is about to open a new con­gre­ga­tion in Wash­ing­ton DC in a sign of the grow­ing polit­i­cal influ­ence of his CREC net­work of Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ist con­gre­ga­tions. Influ­ence that now includes join­ing in on the CNP’s Project 2025 strate­giz­ing and hav­ing the cur­rent Sec­re­tary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, as a CREC con­gre­ga­tion mem­ber. The polit­i­cal insti­tu­tion­al rise of a Con­fed­er­a­cy-friend­ly form of mil­i­tant Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism just hap­pened to over­lap with a shift away from Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty-based ter­ror as Satan­ic Nazism flour­ished in the online era. And it’s still hap­pen­ing.

Article Summary

Ok, first, here’s a review of the arti­cle excerpts we’ll be explor­ing in this post:

* March 28, 2024: How a Main­stream Racist Group Revived the Ter­ror­is­tic Tome ‘Siege’

Start­ing off, we’re going to take a look at that intrigu­ing 2024 report from the SPLC’s Hate­watch on the plans to pop­u­lar­ize both James Mason’s Siege and Sav­i­t­ra Devi’s Hin­dut­va-inspired forms of eso­teric occutism for a new gen­er­a­tion of extrem­ists. The ‘main­stream’ white nation­al­ists behind this effort — Greg John­son and Ryan Schus­ter — hap­pened to run the Foun­da­tion for Human Under­stand­ing (FHU) and its Black Sun Pub­li­ca­tions pub­lish­ing house. Mason was in direct com­mu­ni­ca­tions with John­son and Schus­ter dur­ing this peri­od and a sec­ond edi­tion of Siege was pub­lished by Black Sun in 2003.

* Octo­ber 23, 2018: Something’s Brew­ing in the Deep Red West

Next, we’re going to take a look at a 2018 report in Rolling Stone about the grow­ing Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist mil­i­tan­cy in the Pacif­ic North­west. The kind of mil­i­tan­cy embod­ied by then-Wash­ing­ton State rep­re­sen­ta­tive Matt Shea, a Repub­li­can politi­cian who man­aged to repeat­ed win elec­tions despite being caught effec­tive­ly plot­ting some sort of Chris­t­ian domes­tic ter­ror cam­paign against his per­ceived polit­i­cal ene­mies. And as we’ve also seen, Shea isn’t some lone rad­i­cal politi­cian. For exam­ple, Shea was the founder of the Spokane chap­ter of ACT for Amer­i­ca, an anti-Mus­lim group found­ed by CNP mem­ber Brigitte Gabriel. And yet, as the arti­cle also points out, the Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty move­ments like the Aryan Nations that were much more preva­lent in the Pacif­ic North­west in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s have large­ly fad­ed from the scene. Recall how Wash­ing­ton State was one of the main stomp­ing groups for Atom­waf­fen. Accel­er­a­tionist ter­ror groups like Atom­waf­fen have sup­plant­ed lega­cy Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty groups at the same time mil­i­tant Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ists like Shea have only become more insti­tu­tion­al­ly embed­ded in the GOP.

* August 1, 2024: He Was an FBI Informant—and Inspired a Gen­er­a­tion of Vio­lent Extrem­ists

In August 2024, Wired pub­lished the kind of sto­ry that should have shocked the world, but was instead large­ly ignored as such sto­ries usu­al­ly are. Although Greg John­son and Ryan Schus­ter were no doubt aware of this sto­ry since it’s about some­one who was pur­su­ing many of their same goals. That would be the sto­ry of Joshua Caleb Sut­ter’s two-decade-long career as the lead­ing online pro­pa­gan­dist and pub­lish­er of accel­er­a­tionist Satan­ic Nazism and a cel­e­bra­tion of rape and sex­u­al child abuse, all the while serv­ing as a paid FBI infor­mant, earn­ing rough­ly $140,000 from the FBI for his ser­vices. Sut­ter has­n’t just the last two decades pop­u­lar­iz­ing James Mason’s Siege to the next gen­er­a­tion of extrem­ists. He’s been lead­ing the Tem­pel ov Blood, an Order of Nine Angles (O9A) Amer­i­can branch (or “Nex­ion”, in O9A terms). It’s a sto­ry filled with so many depraved annd dement­ed details it’s almost unbe­liev­able, yet very real. For over two decades. And still ongo­ing.

* June 5, 2022: The Satanist Neo-Nazi Plot to Mur­der U.S. Sol­diers

A look back at that dis­turb­ing sto­ry from 2022 about Ethan Melz­er, the US sol­dier who was liv­ing out the O9A call to live out “insight roles”, where some­one inten­tion­al­ly choos­es a career or life sit­u­a­tion that is anti­thet­i­cal to their inner Satan­ic Nazi con­vic­tions. A form of going under­cov­er in the soci­ety you are out to destroy. That was Melz­er’s gen­er­al objec­tive, which he appar­ent­ly decid­ed to accom­plish by leak­ing troves of clas­si­fied mil­i­tary intel­li­gence to fel­low extrem­ist in online and attempt­ing to arrange a jihadist attack on his own mil­i­tary unit while it was sta­tioned in the Mid­dle East. Why arrange for a jihadist attack on his own unit? The hope that such an attack would spark a larg­er region­al con­flict and keep the US enmeshed in a mil­i­tary occu­pa­tion of the Mid­dle East for even longer than oth­er­wise would have hap­pened. Foment­ing war was the goal. A goal Melz­er expressed a will­ing­ness to die for, view­ing such a death as worth it.

* March 13, 2024: There Are Dark Cor­ners of the Inter­net. Then There’s 764

It’s not an illu­sion. The dark­est cor­ners of the inter­net real­ly are get­ting worse. Or at least more depraved. More sadis­tic. And increas­ing­ly dan­ger­ous for the impres­sion­able young minds who are lured into these dark cor­ners and into com­mu­ni­ties like 764 and COM, ded­i­cat­ed to black­mail­ing and extort­ing them into a world filled with child pornog­ra­phy, self-harm, mur­der, and even acts of ter­ror. And as this Wired report from March of 2024 describes, these sadis­tic online com­mu­ni­ties are very much a part of this larg­er sto­ry about the rise accel­er­a­tionist Satan­ic Nazism, with lead­er­ship in these groups often over­lap­ping with the Satan­ic Nazism. For exam­ple, promi­nent 764 mem­ber Angel “Gore­butch­er” Almei­da also hap­pens to be a Tem­pel ov Blood. And as we’re going to see, Anton McK­ay Blenzig — who became one of the most promi­nent mem­bers of the Tem­pel ov Blood before branch­ing out into the Satan­ic Front — was one of COM’s most pro­lif­ic mem­bers.

* July 17, 2024: Alleged ‘Mani­ac Mur­der Cult’ Leader Indict­ed Over Plot to Kill Jews

It might seem like groups like 764 and COM are as dark and depraved as it gets. And then there’s the Mani­ac Mur­der Cult, aka MKY/MKU, an online net­work based out of East­er Europe that appears to be par­tic­u­lar­ly focused on using the same tech­niques of black­mail and extor­tion cel­e­brat­ed by 764 and COM to cre­ate new white suprema­cist ter­ror­ists. And while we haven’t yet received con­fir­ma­tion that Niki­ta Cas­ap — the Illi­nois teen who mur­dered his par­ents at their home in Illi­nois back in Feb­ru­ary and the took the fam­i­ly car on a cross coun­try trip guid­ed by a neb­u­lous online group that was coax­ing him down the path to mur­der the entire time with a goal of using a drone to assas­si­nate Pres­i­dent Trump — was serv­ing the goals of this group, the cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence strong points in that direc­tion. And as we should expect, one of the lead­ers of 764 — a Ger­man man who went by “Tob­bz” — is a mem­ber too.

* May 23, 2025: Head of inter­na­tion­al neo-Nazi group that inspired Anti­och school shoot­er extra­dit­ed to US

In a high­ly dis­turb­ing exam­ple of the influ­ence of these groups, we’re going to take a look at the role the Mani­ac Mur­der Cult played in inspir­ing a 17 year old high school stu­dent in Nashville Ten­nesee to car­ry out a deady attack at his high school that result­ed in the death of the shoot­er and one oth­er stu­dent. The shoot­er, who was African Amer­i­can, declared the attack to be in sup­port of the Mani­ac Mur­der Cult’s white suprema­cist ide­ol­o­gy.

* Feb­ru­ary 6, 2025: MYSTERIOUS DEATH SPOTLIGHTS SATANIC NAZI TERROR NETWORK

The this long and details report by Left Coast Right Watch, we’re going to fur­ther explore the bizarre and, at times inex­plic­a­ble, his­to­ry of Joshua Caleb Sut­ter’s rise as not just the leader of the Tem­pel ov Blood and a lead­ing online cham­pi­on of accel­er­a­tionist Satan­ic Nazis. After his 2005 break with the Aryan Nations over sus­pi­cions of his FBI infor­mant sta­tus, Sut­ter when on to focus on his bizarre Rur­al Peo­ple’s Par­ty out­fit ded­i­cat­ed to the offi­cial Juche ide­ol­o­gy of the North Kore­an gov­ern­ment. But he had com­pe­ti­tion from anoth­er Juche cult group that also hap­pened to be found­ed by a white suprema­cist. And then there’s the New Bihar Mandir, a Hare Krish­na-inspired cult that wor­ships Kali, Hin­du god­dess of destruc­tion, and cel­e­brates com­ing Kali Yuga. But they aren’t just wait­ing for the Kali Yuga. True to Sut­ter’s accel­er­a­tionist lean­ing, the cult believed foment­ing destruc­tion and chaos would help ush­er it in. At the same time, Sut­ter’s immer­sion in the Tem­pel ov Blood and Satan­ic Nazism was already well under­way, with Sut­ter report­ed­ly direct­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ing with O9A found David Myatt in 2004. In 2014, Sut­ter and his wife, Jil­lian Hoy, found­ed Mar­tinet Press, which went on to pub­lish works of fic­tion like Iron Gates and Blue­bird. In 2017, Sut­ter joins Atom­waf­fen, with Iron Gates and Blue­bird becom­ing manda­to­ry read­ing for new mem­bers. With­in a few years, a Tem­pel ov Blood off­sheet, the Satan­ic Front, emerged with promi­nent Tem­pel ov Blood mem­ber Anton McK­ay Blenzig join­ing, ini­tial­ly with Sut­ter’s bless­ings. But things got com­pli­cat­ed in 2021 when the tri­als of Atom­waf­fen mem­bers result­ed in the pub­lic con­fir­ma­tion of Sut­ter’s long-time FBI infor­mant sta­tus. By mid-2022, Blenzig and the rest of the Satan­ic Front had bro­ken with the Tem­pel ov Blood. Blenzig, who was also one of the most promi­nent mem­bers of COM, end­ed up dead in an appar­ent sui­cide in 2024. Anony­mous fam­i­ly mem­bers sug­gest Sut­ter and the Tem­pel of Blood had some­thing to do with it.

* May 6, 2013: White Pow­er and Apoc­a­lyp­tic Cults: Pro-DPRK home­grown U.S. ter­ror­ist groups are Pyongyang cho­sen favorites

In this 2013 piece by jour­nal­ist Nate Thay­er, we get a detailed look at Joshua Caleb Sut­ter’s first decade as an accel­er­a­tionist FBI infor­mant and pro­po­nent of alter­nate strains of white pow­er extrem­ism. Details like the fact that Sut­ter’s 2003 arrest was­n’t sim­ply for pur­chas­ing gun silencers and an auto­mat­ic pis­tol with its ser­i­al num­bers scratched off from an under­cov­er fed­er­al agent. He was mak­ing the pur­chase as part of an Aryan Nations ter­ror plot tar­get­ing abor­tion clin­ics and polit­i­cal oppo­nents. In addi­tion to his lead­er­ship role in the Aryan Nations, Sut­ter was also serv­ing as a preach­er for the Church of the Sons of Yaweh, a Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty church with ties to the KKK. Sut­ter was deeply immersed in the worlds of Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty. But at the same time, he was pro­mot­ing Satan­ic Nazism, Hin­du Nazism, some kind of white pow­er North Kore­an cult. All while serv­ing as a paid FBI infor­mant.

* Octo­ber 14, 2005: League of the South Offers ‘Her­itage’ for Sale at South­ern Patri­ot Shop

At this point we’re shift­ing the focus away from the pop­u­lar rise of accel­er­a­tionist Satan­ic Nazism among the next gen­er­a­tion of white pow­er ter­ror­ists, and back to the rise of insti­tu­tion­al polit­i­cal pow­er by mil­i­tant neo-Con­fed­er­ate Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ists like the League of the South and their many fel­low trav­el­ers who are now in the Trump White House exe­cut­ing Project 2025. And in this Octo­ber 2005 piece by the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter, we learn how Joshua Caleb Sut­ter and his father were both run­ning South­ern Patri­ot Shop, a store ded­i­cat­ed to racism that hap­pened to be owned by the League of the South. We can add the League of South to Josh Sut­ter’s extrem­ist affil­i­a­tions.

* March 21, 2001: League of the South Works to Take Over Church­es

Next, we take a look at an SPLC piece from back in 2001 about white suprema­cist plot tar­get­ing Chris­t­ian church­es in the US South. A League of the South plot that viewed church­es as poten­tial­ly ripe recruit­ing grounds for the League of the South theo­crat­ic neo-Con­fed­er­ate ambi­tions. As the arti­cle describes, while the plot was being orches­trat­ed by the League of the South, they had some impor­tant fel­low trav­el­ers: Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ists fol­low­ing the teach­ings of CNP mem­bers RJ Rush­doony and Gary North. Rush­doony was report­ed­ly a mem­ber of the CNP board of gov­ern­ers in the ear­ly 1990s. North hap­pens to be Rush­doony’s son-in-law. The pair pub­lish The Chal­cedon Report, a Bib­li­cal Recon­struc­tion­ist pub­li­ca­tion with an out­look very much aligned with the League of the South. The church takeover plot was effec­tive­ly imple­ment­ing a strat­e­gy espoused by Gary North involv­ing both secre­cy but also a legal­is­tic approach to tak­ing over the lead­er­ship of con­gre­ga­tions. The Decem­ber 2000 issue of The Chal­cedon Report ded­i­cat­ed the entire issue to the top­ic of “The Civ­il War Revived: Sec­u­lar­ism vs. the South.” The issue includ­ed an arti­cle by League of the South co-founder Steven J. Wilkins argu­ing that slav­ery abo­li­tion­ists were “ter­ror­ists”. Oth­er ‘inter­est­ing’ teach­ings of Wilkins includes the pre­dic­tion that the gov­ern­ment was going to col­lapse, fol­lowed by end-times anar­chy and race wars. In 1996, the book South­ern Slav­ery, As It Was, co-authored by Wilkins, made the case that the Con­fed­er­ate South was the ide­al soci­ety from a Bib­li­cal Recon­struc­tion­ist stand­point.

* April 20, 2004: Doug Wilson’s Reli­gious Empire Expand­ing in the North­west

Delv­ing furthing into the polit­i­cal rise of neo-Con­fed­er­ate pro-slav­ery strains of Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy, we’re going to take a look at a 2004 SPLC piece about Doug Wil­son, a Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ist preach­er who has seen his own star rise sig­nif­i­cant­ly in recent decades. The Con­fed­er­a­tion of Reformed Evan­gel­i­cal Church­es (CREC) he start­ed con­tin­ues to grow in num­bers and influ­ence and now includes Sec­re­tary of Defense Pete Hegseth as a mem­ber. Wil­son also hap­pened to be Steve Wilkin­s’s co-author on South­ern Slav­ery, As It Was.

* June 11, 2014: Rum­blings of Theo­crat­ic Vio­lence

Flash­ing for­ward a decade in our look at the rise of the League of the South’s neo-Con­fed­er­ate theo­crat­ic influ­ence, we’re going to take a look at a June 2014 report in Polit­i­cal Research Asso­ciates by Fred­er­ick Clark­son. The report is a kind of expand­ed look at the range of theo­crat­ic forces inter­min­gling and orga­niz­ing a decade ago around the shared Dominionist/Biblical Recon­struc­tion­ist goal of seiz­ing pow­er and impos­ing their theo­crat­ic vision on soci­ety at large. As we’ve seen, the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project (ARP) has long been play­ing a lead­ing role. It’s the ARP that ele­vat­ed for­mer North Car­oli­na Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Mark “Some Folks Need Killing!” Robin­son into a lead­ing spokesman for the move­ment. And as Clark­son’s piece lays out, the ARP’s Domin­ion­ist goals are essen­tial­ly the same goals as that of the neo-Con­fed­er­ate Recon­struc­tion­ism of Doug Wilson’s CREC and the League of the South. Domin­ion­ism and Bib­li­cal Recon­struc­tion­ism may not be iden­ti­cal, but they are in prac­tice the same under­ly­ing move­ment with the same end game vision.

* March 19, 2024: Trump II Archi­tect Russ Vought Embraces A Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist Vision For Amer­i­ca

Next, we’re going to jump for­ward anoth­er decade to a March 2024 Talk­ing Points Memo report on the Project 2025 prepa­ra­tions ongo­ing on that time, led by key CNP strate­gist Russ Vought, the fig­ure now serv­ing as the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s point man for using Project 2025 as pres­i­den­tial pow­er grab. And as we’re going to see in this report, Vought’s Project 2025 schem­ing includ­ed a Sep­tem­ber 2023 for Amer­i­can Moment — one of the many enti­ties spawned by the Con­ser­v­a­tive Part­ner­ship Insti­tute post-2020 to pre­pare for a sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion — where Vought gave a speech on the “Chris­t­ian Case for Immi­gra­tion Restric­tion.” The event was held in the base­ment of the US Senate’s Dirk­sen Office build­ing in Wash­ing­ton DC. Oth­er speak­ers at the event includ­ed Pas­tor Doug Wil­son. Yep. Doug Wil­son isn’t some iso­lat­ed neo-Con­fed­er­ate preach­er. He was in DC, rub­bing elbows with the fel­low theocrats and author­i­tar­i­ans now exe­cut­ing Project 2025.

* March 22, 2025: An Out­spo­ken Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist Pas­tor Expands His Sway In Trump’s DC

In our final arti­cle excerpt, we’re going to take a look at a Talk­ing Points Memo piece from back in March 2025 with anoth­er update about the rise of Pas­tor Doug Wilson’s neo-Con­fed­er­ate reli­gious empire. Because Doug Wil­son has grow­ing ambi­tions that now include open­ing up a CREC con­gre­ga­tion in Wash­ing­ton DC. It appears Wil­son envi­sions his DC con­gre­ga­tion as a kind of nation­al CREC hub, where like-mind­ed pas­tors will trav­el to DC to fundraise and preach. Again, the cur­rent Sec­re­tary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, is a mem­ber of CREC con­gre­ga­tion. Are more polit­i­cal con­nect­ed CREC mem­ber­ships on the way? Time will tell, but Doug Wil­son is clear­ly bet­ting on it. And why not? He’s part of the theo­crat­ic elite cur­rent­ly reshap­ing and cap­tur­ing the US fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. It’s a great time for theo­crat­ic influ­ence ped­dling.

That’s deep dive into con­tem­po­rary extrem­ism we’re going to be explor­ing below. The rise of accel­er­a­tionist Satan­ic Nazism among the next gen­er­a­tion of far right white pow­er extrem­ists, large­ly replac­ing the Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty ter­ror­ism of pri­or decades. Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty ter­ror has­n’t gone away entire­ly, But does­n’t hold the same place in extrem­ists spaces it had decades ago. At the same time, the US fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is cur­rent­ly being torn apart by a Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist move­ment with heavy neo-Con­fed­er­ate ties that is oper­at­ing at the high­est lev­els of gov­ern­ment. Project 2025 isn’t sim­ply a ‘MAGA’ ini­tia­tive. It’s a theo­crat­ic project with the kind of a end goals that are clear­ly in line with the long-term vision of neo-Con­fed­er­ate fig­ures like Pas­tor Doug Wil­son. Extrem­ism has under­went quite an evo­lu­tion over the past few decades, espe­cial­ly in the US. It’s a hell of a sto­ry.

Revealed: The Decades-old ‘Mainstream’ White Power Plot to Popularize Accelerationism for the Next Generation of Extremists

Ok, start­ing off, let’s take a look at a report pub­lished by the SPLC back in 2024 about white suprema­cist plot hatched decades ear­li­er. A plot the pop­u­lar­ize the accel­er­a­tionist ter­ror advo­cat­ed in James Mason’s Siege along with the Hin­du-inspired fas­cist thought of Sav­i­t­ra Devi and even David Myatt. The pair white nation­al­ist behind the plot, Greg John­son and Ryan Schus­ter, ran the Foun­da­tion for Human Under­stand­ing (FHU) — a Geor­gia-based non­prof­it found­ed by pro­po­nents of ‘race sci­ence’ in 1973 — and its Black Sun Pub­li­ca­tions pub­lish­ing house. It turns out the pair were in direct com­mu­ni­ca­tions with Mason dur­ing this peri­od and even pub­lished the sec­ond edi­tion of Siege in 2003. As we’re going to see, 2003 was also the year Joshua Caleb Sut­ter was sent to prison for charges relat­ed to an Aryan Nations ter­ror plot, only to emerge from the prison ear­ly the fol­low­ing year as a paid FBI infor­mant who not only spends the next two decades pro­mot­ing Satan­ic accel­er­a­tionism but also start­ed a white pow­er Hin­du-inspired cult. So while we don’t have evi­dence of Sut­ter work­ing direct­ly with John­son and Schus­ter dur­ing this peri­od, it’s clear that they end­ed up with the same goals, albeit in Sut­ter’s case it’s dif­fi­cult to dis­tin­guish between his per­son­al goals and those of the FBI. That’s the con­text of this 2024 report. Accel­er­a­tionist Nazism had a remark­able rise in the online era. But we can’t attribute that all to the pow­er of the inter­net. The rise of soci­ety-desta­bi­liz­ing accel­er­a­tionist ter­ror­ism was a ‘main­stream’ white nation­al­ist goal. And it worked:

South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter

How a Main­stream Racist Group Revived the Ter­ror­is­tic Tome ‘Siege’

Han­nah Gais, Spencer Sun­shine
March 28, 2024

A foun­da­tion that sought to main­stream racist pseu­do­science and pro-seg­re­ga­tion­ist view­points estab­lished a pub­lish­ing house that pro­duced and pro­mot­ed lit­er­a­ture encour­ag­ing neo-Nazi ter­ror­ism, Hate­watch found.

Hate­watch reviewed a cache of let­ters from 2001-03 between James Mason, a promi­nent neo-Nazi writer and advo­cate for rev­o­lu­tion­ary racial vio­lence, and two white suprema­cist activists affil­i­at­ed with the Foun­da­tion for Human Under­stand­ing (FHU), a Geor­gia-based non­prof­it found­ed by pro­po­nents of racist pseu­do­science in 1973. The let­ters reveal that FHU owned a neo-Nazi pub­lish­ing house called Black Sun Pub­li­ca­tions, which released a sec­ond edi­tion of Mason’s ter­ror­is­tic mag­num opus, Siege, in 2003 and res­cued the book from obscu­ri­ty. Greg John­sonand Ryan Schus­ter, the two activists, detailed their plans to use FHU and Black Sun to pro­mote oth­er works of Mason and those of a World War II-era Nazi spy and eso­teri­cistnamed Sav­it­ri Devi for a younger gen­er­a­tion of extrem­ists.

The com­mu­ni­ca­tions are part of a larg­er col­lec­tion of Mason’s per­son­al papers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kansas.

Hate­watch found that John­son, now the edi­tor-in-chief of the white nation­al­ist web­site Counter-Cur­rents, and Schus­ter repeat­ed­ly praised Mason and his ter­ror­is­tic world­view through­out their cor­re­spon­dence. In the for­ward that Schus­ter wrote for Black Sun’s 2003 edi­tion, he described Siege as “a cook­book and guide.” In the same sec­tion, he encour­aged oth­ers to “act in a man­ner com­men­su­rate to Tim­o­thy McVeigh of Okla­homa City fame,” refer­ring to the 1995 bomb­ing of a fed­er­al build­ing that left 168 peo­ple, 19 of whom were chil­dren, dead.

Mason’s involve­ment in the neo-Nazi move­ment dates to the 1960s. He first pub­lished Siegeas a newslet­ter between 1980 and 1986. The text pro­mot­ed a dystopi­an vision of racial ter­ror­ism that ele­vat­ed ser­i­al killers, mass mur­der­ers and guer­ril­la war­fare. Mason also advo­cat­ed that the now-deceased cult leader and con­vict­ed mur­der­er Charles Man­son become a neo-Nazi leader.

Since its orig­i­nal release in book form in 1993, neo-Nazi activists reprint­ed Siege in 2003, 2015, 2018, 2021 and 2023, dis­trib­ut­ing it via online book­sellers and as a PDF on white suprema­cist online forums. It has arguably emerged as one of the most pop­u­lar and influ­en­tial texts on the glob­al white suprema­cist move­ment along­side William Luther Pierce’s The Turn­er Diaries and Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. In the mid-2010s, a range of white nation­al­ist and neo-Nazi groups with ties to acts of real-world vio­lence, such as Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion and The Base, embraced the book to jus­ti­fy their ter­ror­is­tic world­view and dis­tance them­selves from oth­er wings of the move­ment that embraced more tra­di­tion­al polit­i­cal action. More recent­ly, a mass shoot­er who mur­dered three Black peo­ple in Jack­sonville, Flori­da, in sum­mer 2023, cit­ed Siege in a screed explain­ing his moti­va­tions for the attack.

FHU’s own­er­ship of Black Sun, as well as the cor­re­spon­dence between John­son, Schus­ter and Mason, shows how seem­ing­ly diver­gent wings of the rad­i­cal right can find grounds for coop­er­a­tion. Though John­son has not pub­licly acknowl­edged his con­nec­tion to Mason or Schus­ter, he has described white suprema­cist ter­ror­ism as an inevitable reac­tion to mul­ti­cul­tur­al, mul­tira­cial soci­eties in mul­ti­plepostson Counter-Cur­rents after attacks in the Unit­ed States and else­where. Johnson’s web­site also offered copies of Black Sun’s Siege for sale for $20, plus ship­ping and han­dling, between 2012 and 2019, accord­ing to inter­net archives. Counter-Cur­rents describedthe book as “a tool for men­tal self-lib­er­a­tion and per­haps even a guide­book for liv­ing near what we hope is the end of the present Dark Age.”

...

Tying Black Sun Pub­li­ca­tions to FHU

In their com­mu­ni­ca­tions with Mason, Schus­ter and John­son repeat­ed­ly described them­selves as affil­i­at­ed with the Foun­da­tion for Human Under­stand­ing, the Geor­gia-based racist pub­lish­ing house.

Found­ed in 1973, FHU lit­er­a­ture den­i­grat­ed racial inte­gra­tion and pro­mot­ed pseu­do­sci­en­tif­ic beliefs about race and its rela­tion­ship to intel­li­gence. Between 1973 and 1994, FHU received $348,700, or rough­ly $1.34 mil­lion in today’s dol­lars, from the pro-eugen­ics Pio­neer Fund, accord­ing to an archive of the fund’s grantees from 1997 at Fer­ris University’s Insti­tute for the Study of Aca­d­e­m­ic Racism. In addi­tion to sup­port­ing more niche orga­ni­za­tions pro­mot­ing eugen­ics and oth­er forms of racist pseu­do­science, the Pio­neer Fund has donat­ed mil­lions of dol­lars to promi­nent uni­ver­si­ties and aca­d­e­mics to sup­port research that bol­ster their big­ot­ed beliefs.

The fund’s tax returns from 2000 to 2003 do not indi­cate that the orga­ni­za­tion gave FHU any fund­ing in that peri­od. In 2000, Robert Travis “R.T.” Osborne, one of FHU’s found­ing mem­bers and a pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Geor­gia, joined the Pio­neer Fund’s board in 2000 as a direc­tor, per tax records.

...

On May 16, 2001, John­son, iden­ti­fy­ing him­self as a phi­los­o­phy stu­dent prepar­ing for his dis­ser­ta­tion defense, wrote to Mason and said, “I and a friend are cre­at­ing a pub­lish­ing imprint. … to trans­fer some of the intel­lec­tu­al ener­gy and vision of the Euro­pean right to the Eng­lish-speak­ing world.” John­son named sev­er­al writ­ers they planned to trans­late, includ­ing Ital­ian fas­cist the­o­rist Julius Evolaand French eth­no-nation­al­ist Alain de Benoist.

In a let­ter dat­ed June 18, 2001, Schus­ter referred to “Dr. Gre­go­ry John­son,” whom he described as his “col­league,” and acknowl­edged Johnson’s pri­or cor­re­spon­dence with Mason. Schus­ter told Mason that “our pub­lish­ing imprint Black Sun is owned by a 501©3 tax-exempt edu­ca­tion cor­po­ra­tion known as the Foun­da­tion for Human Under­stand­ing.” He wrote that the FHU had “publish[ed] numer­ous books on race and intel­li­gence (most notably Baker’s Race) but has since fall­en into com­plete inac­tiv­i­ty.”

Mul­ti­ple tax returns and doc­u­ments from Georgia’s Depart­ment of Cor­po­ra­tions iden­ti­fied the FHU as 501©3 non­prof­it. FHU pub­lished numer­ous books and pam­phlets through­out the 1970s and 1980s, includ­ing reis­su­ing John R. Baker’s 1974 book Race in 1981, which argued that racial dif­fer­ences deter­mined civ­i­liza­tion­al devel­op­ment. By the late 1990s, the group’s activ­i­ties were lim­it­ed. A 1999 tax fil­ing for FHU list­ed the fair mar­ket val­ue of all assets owned by the com­pa­ny that year as $782 and its gross prof­it on book sales as $60.

In the same June 18, 2001, let­ter, Schus­ter said he and John­son intend­ed to trans­form FHU into a “con­ducive medi­um with which to trans­fuse some of the more poignant Euro­pean reac­tion­ism of thought onto these shores.”

Mon­tana cor­po­rate records indi­cat­ed that Schus­ter reg­is­tered Black Sun Pub­li­ca­tions in that state on Nov. 9, 2001. The records did not spec­i­fy an explic­it con­nec­tion with FHU. Yet in a Nov. 21, 2001, let­ter to Mason, he referred to “FHU / Black Sun” as if the two com­pa­nies were the same enti­ty. Black Sun’s now-delet­ed web­site also cit­ed many of the same authors that Schus­ter and John­son ref­er­enced in their cor­re­spon­dence with Mason as fig­ures they hoped to pro­mote through FHU.

John­son and Schuster’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with FHU appears to have con­tin­ued into at least 2002. On Jan. 2, 2002, John­son offered Mason “copies of any FHU and Black Sun books that inter­est you” in exchange for some pho­tographs of neo-Nazis. Then, on June 10, 2002, Schus­ter wrote to Mason express­ing frus­tra­tion with the company’s finan­cial state.

“So to not swift­ly exhaust the cap­i­tal set aside to fund oth­er Black Sun projects, I think it wise to solic­it tax-deductible dona­tions through the FHU. But I may be kid­ding myself. The last FHU fundrais­er Greg orches­trat­ed received a whop­ping $2,000.00. Kind of makes you sick…” Schus­ter wrote.

...

‘Many young per­sons … would ben­e­fit from read­ing SIEGE’

Despite the con­nec­tions that FHU once had to more main­stream racist groups, cor­re­spon­dence between Schus­ter and Mason shows that Black Sun saw it as a means to pro­mote Siege, as well as Mason’s more eso­teric works, for a new gen­er­a­tion.

In a phone con­ver­sa­tion with Hate­watch, Mason con­firmed that he worked with Schus­ter to pro­duce the sec­ond edi­tion of Siege and met with him mul­ti­ple times in per­son.

Fol­low­ing Schuster’s ini­tial let­ter to Mason on June 18, 2001, in which he described his and Johnson’s plans to revive FHU, he turned his cor­re­spon­dence with the neo-Nazi leader toward dis­cussing the group’s pub­lish­ing plans.

In a let­ter from Sept. 11, 2001 — the same day that the dead­liest ter­ror­ist attack on U.S. soil left near­ly 3,000 peo­ple dead — Schus­ter sug­gest­ed to Mason that he issue a sec­ond edi­tion of Siege. The new text, Schus­ter said, would be “replete with a new intro­duc­tion, re-designed cov­er, added appen­dix­es, and per­haps inclu­sive pho­tos dif­fer­ent from the orig­i­nal edi­tion.” On Oct. 3, he told Mason that copies of the first edi­tion were sell­ing for up to $150 online.

“What seems so obvi­ous­ly appar­ent, is that many young per­sons con­nect­ed to myr­i­ad fringe cir­cles of resis­tance who would most ben­e­fit from read­ing SIEGE, can­not now obtain copies because of scarci­ty and price,” Schus­ter told Mason.

On Nov. 21, 2001, Schus­ter hint­ed that the attack might impact print­ing the book.

“In the wake of the Sept. 11th clean-up job, you can just about write-off what­ev­ers small per­cent­age of Amerikan [sic] print­ing facil­i­ties might have been coerced into re-print­ing Siegewith­out cen­sor­ship harass­ment,” he wrote to Mason.

Schus­ter want­ed to pub­lish some of Mason’s oth­er books as well. On Nov. 30 he wrote Mason to con­firm an oral agree­ment they had made regard­ing Black Sun’s agree­ment for the rights to four of Mason’s books. Schus­ter offered $2,000 for Siege and $500 each for three oth­er books.

These includ­ed two texts, The Theo­crat and Revis­it­ing Rev­e­la­tion, that Mason had self-pub­lished upon his release from prison in 1999 for threat­en­inghis 16-year-old ex-girl­friend and her Lati­no boyfriend. The Theo­crat jux­ta­posed pas­sages from Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the Bible. Revis­it­ing Rev­e­la­tion explained Mason’s idio­syn­crat­ic ver­sion of Chris­tian­i­ty, which he had devel­oped in prison and incor­po­rat­ed bla­tant anti­semitism and UFOs. Mason pro­posed the third book, a pic­to­r­i­al his­to­ry of Amer­i­can Nazi Par­ty founder George Lin­coln Rock­well, dur­ing his ear­li­er cor­re­spon­dence with Schus­ter.

Per the Nov. 30 let­ter, Schus­ter sent Mason half of the funds, total­ing $1,750, up-front. In a phone con­ver­sa­tion with Hate­watch, Mason said he did not recall Schus­ter pay­ing him for the titles.

...

On Feb. 10, 2002, Schus­ter told Mason that he was con­sid­er­ing chang­ing Black Sun’s imme­di­ate pub­lish­ing plans to fea­ture an all-neo-Nazi ros­ter, nam­ing Mason, Sav­it­ri Devi and David Myatt. Myatt is the alleged founder of the Order of Nine Angles, a Satanist umbrel­la group that became inter­twined with lat­er neo-Nazi groups enam­ored by Siege, such as Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion.

On Aug. 23, Schus­ter sent Mason a check for $1,600, which includ­ed the remain­ing amount due for all the books. Schus­ter exclud­ed $250 for Revis­it­ing Rev­e­la­tion, which he had decid­ed not to pub­lish.

Black Sun released Siege in sum­mer 2003 as a lim­it­ed edi­tion, with a print run of 500 copies. Some appear to be auto­graphed by James Mason, accord­ing to list­ings with online book­sellers. Schus­ter reprint­ed the 1993 ver­sion of Siege, albeit with notable addi­tions, includ­ing a new pref­ace from Mason and an intro­duc­tion from Schus­ter lion­iz­ing the neo-Nazi ide­o­logue. Schus­ter also includ­ed pho­tos, a page from Anton LaVey’s The Satan­ic Bible with a hand­writ­ten ded­i­ca­tion to Mason, and an appen­dix with news­pa­per clip­pings and let­ters. The book’s cov­er fea­tured a pho­to of the wreck­age of the World Trade Cen­ter after the 9/11 attacks.<

John­son col­lab­o­rat­ed with Mason to pro­mote neo-Nazi eso­teri­cist

The cor­re­spon­dence also sheds light on a hith­er­to unknown col­lab­o­ra­tion between Mason and John­son to revive the work of World War II-era Nazi spy and fas­cist eso­teri­cist Sav­it­ri Devi.

Sav­it­ri Devi Mukher­ji, born Max­imi­ani Julia Por­tras, was a French-born Nazi sym­pa­thiz­er and spy who devel­oped an elab­o­rate syn­the­sis of Hin­du the­ol­o­gy and Nordic racial ide­ol­o­gy. In her 1958 book “The Light­en­ing and the Sun,” she presents Hitler as the last avatar of the Hin­du god Vish­nu. Sav­it­ri Devi’s trans­for­ma­tion of World War II-era Nazism into what aca­d­e­m­ic Nicholas Goodrick-Clarkedescribed as “a reli­gious cult of cos­mic sig­nif­i­cance” won her favor among post­war neo-Nazi groups in the Unit­ed States and Europe.

Through­out 2001 and 2003, John­son request­ed Mason send him and Schus­ter pho­tos, let­ters and oth­er mate­ri­als relat­ed to Sav­it­ri Devi. In his first let­ter to Mason, John­son explained he received the neo-Nazi’s address from Michael Moyni­han, a musi­cian and edi­tor of Siege’s first edi­tion in 1993.

John­son described him­self and Schus­ter as “admir­ers” of the deceased neo-Nazi eso­teri­cist. WhoIs records for the web­site SavitriDevi.com, where John­son now hosts work asso­ci­at­ed with a Counter-Cur­rents-fund­ed archive of her work, indi­cate that Schus­ter first reg­is­tered the domain on July 25, 2001, using a P.O. box in Boze­man, Mon­tana, asso­ci­at­ed with Black Sun.

“We under­stand that she car­ried on a far-flung cor­re­spon­dence with the lead­ing peo­ple of the post-war move­ment. We think that it would be a tragedy if her let­ters were lost to the teeth of time,” John­son wrote to Mason on May 16, 2001.

John­son also expressed sym­pa­thy for Mason’s vio­lent dystopi­an vision.

“I want to tell you how much I admire both you and your work,” John­son wrote to Mason in the same May 16, 2001, let­ter. He added, “I have also read Siege and find myself in com­plete sym­pa­thy with your eval­u­a­tion of Charles Man­son & the world sit­u­a­tion in gen­er­al.”

Mason told Hate­watch that he did not recall cor­re­spond­ing with John­son, nor was he famil­iar with Counter-Cur­rents, the web­site that John­son found­ed in 2010.

...

Johnson’s deep­en­ing engage­ment with the white suprema­cist move­ment coin­cid­ed with his appar­ent effort to build a career in acad­e­mia. In a let­ter to Mason dat­ed Jan. 2, 2002, John­son lists a mail­ing address at the Pacif­ic School of Reli­gion, a pro­gres­sive Chris­t­ian sem­i­nary in Berke­ley, Cal­i­for­nia, in his sig­na­ture. In anoth­er let­ter, dat­ed Oct. 3, 2003, John­son wrote to Mason using the school’s let­ter­head.

A spokesper­son with the Pacif­ic School of Reli­gion ver­i­fied that John­son worked as a vis­it­ing assis­tant pro­fes­sor at the school’s Cen­ter for Swe­den­bor­gian Stud­ies from 2002 to 2005 but declined to com­ment on specifics around his depar­ture.

“We affirm that both PSR and the Cen­ter for Swe­den­bor­gian Stud­ies vehe­ment­ly denounce White nation­al­ism, anti-Semi­tism, racism, and dis­crim­i­na­tion in all its forms,” Hal­lie Fryd, PSR’s direc­tor of com­mu­ni­ca­tions, told Hate­watch in an email.

John­son, under the pseu­do­nym “R.G. Fowler,” released And Time Rolls On: The Sav­it­ri Devi Inter­views in 2005 through Black Sun. Though John­son offered his thanks to sev­er­al promi­nent neo-Nazi lead­ers, includ­ing Turn­er Diaries author William Luther Pierce, he does not ref­er­ence his cor­re­spon­dence with Mason in the acknowl­edg­ments.

Cen­ter­ing FHU in Atlanta’s white nation­al­ist scene

Cor­po­rate records for the FHU indi­cate that mem­bers of the group’s lead­er­ship were deeply involved in oth­er white nation­al­ist caus­es as well.

Hate­watch reviewed 1988 arti­cles of incor­po­ra­tion that FHU filed with the state of Geor­gia, as well as tax returns for the group from 1999, 2004 and 2005. The doc­u­ments indi­cate that the group under­went a series of per­son­nel changes some­where between 1988 and 1999 that brought it clos­er to a net­work of white pow­er activists active in the greater Atlanta area, includ­ing the lat­er head of the secre­tive Charles Mar­tel Soci­ety(CMS), Mar­tin O’Toole.

Greg John­son, who said he col­lab­o­rat­ed with O’Toole’s group, FHU, in the ear­ly 2000s, pre­vi­ous­ly served as the edi­tor for CMS’s pub­li­ca­tion, The Occi­den­tal Quar­ter­ly, between 2007 and 2010.

O’Toole, a Geor­gia-based attor­ney and spokesper­son for Atlanta’s Sons of Con­fed­er­ate Vet­er­ans’ chap­ter, appears in FHU tax doc­u­ments as the organization’s direc­tor in 1999, 2004 and 2005, as well as an annu­al reg­is­tra­tion doc­u­ment filed in 2007. Atlanta Antifa, an antifas­cist col­lec­tive, doc­u­ment­ed O’Toole’s exten­sive ties to the racist right, includ­ing to Sam Dick­son, one of the found­ing mem­bers of CMS and a for­mer lawyer for the Ku Klux Klan, as well as to Nebras­ka-based neo-Nazi Gary “Ger­hard” Lauck, who served mul­ti­ple prison sen­tences in Ger­many on charges relat­ed to smug­gling Nazi pro­pa­gan­da through Europe.

Richard Spencer, who became involved with CMS in the late 2000s but who left the group for­mal­ly in 2018, described O’Toole as the “Sam Dick­son fan club pres­i­dent” in a con­ver­sa­tion with Hate­watch. Since the 1970s, O’Toole and Dick­son have col­lab­o­rat­ed on a range of racist and anti­se­mit­ic caus­es, includ­ing a book pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny that pro­mot­ed the works of David Irv­ing, a self-styled his­to­ri­an whom mul­ti­ple Euro­pean coun­tries have con­vict­ed of Holo­caust denial.

O’Toole first became involved with CMS in a lead­er­ship capac­i­ty in 2011 and served as the group’s pres­i­dent and chair­man from 2015 through 2021, per tax records. In 2022, racist radio per­son­al­i­ty James Edwards replaced O’Toole as CMS’s pres­i­dent and chair­man, though O’Toole has remained on its board.

...

Found­ed in 2001, CMS bills itself as “the intel­lec­tu­al home of West­ern Nation­al­ism.” Through its web­site Occi­den­tal Observ­er and mag­a­zine Occi­den­tal Quar­ter­ly, CMS cloaks its dreams of a white nation­al­ist eth­nos­tate in the guise of qua­si-aca­d­e­m­ic rhetoric.

Spencer described the orga­ni­za­tion as besieged by infight­ing and inter­nal dra­ma. In a con­ver­sa­tion with Hate­watch, he described the group as “very cliquish” and said, with regards to the group’s activ­i­ties, that there was a “fud­dy-dud­dy qual­i­ty to the whole thing.”

‘He was talk­ing about sell­ing drugs to fund the move­ment’

Though John­son remained involved with the white nation­al­ist move­ment, going from CMS to found­ing Counter-Cur­rents in 2010, Schuster’s tra­jec­to­ry is murki­er.

Black Sun, the pub­lish­ing house that Schus­ter reg­is­tered in Mon­tana, fell into inac­tiv­i­ty after releas­ing the Sav­it­ri Devi col­lec­tion. Montana’s sec­re­tary of state office, which requires busi­ness­es to peri­od­i­cal­ly file paper­work regard­ing their activ­i­ties, first reg­is­tered Black Sun as inac­tive after Schus­ter failed to file the req­ui­site paper­work on Nov. 9, 2006, accord­ing to busi­ness doc­u­ments obtained by Hate­watch

Mul­ti­ple data­bas­es indi­cate that Schus­ter remained in Mon­tana until at least 2017, when he relo­cat­ed to Ida­ho. Mason told Hate­watch that he tried to reach out to Schus­ter some­time pri­or to the start of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic but was unable to reach him.

“He seems to have dropped out of sight,” Mason said.

...

Travis McAdam, a cur­rent South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter staffer who has been track­ing hate and extrem­ism in Mon­tana for over 20 years, told Hate­watch that he recalled see­ing “ref­er­ences to [Schuster’s] Black Sun Pub­li­ca­tions in var­i­ous hard­core white nation­al­ist spaces,” but few ref­er­ences to Schus­ter in par­tic­u­lar.

Scott Ernest, a for­mer white suprema­cist who once served as a recruiter for the Mon­tana-based Pio­neer Lit­tle Europe Kalispell, told Hate­watch that he “nev­er met him while involved in extrem­ist Mon­tana pol­i­tics.”

...

Richard Spencer recalled meet­ing Schus­ter in March 2011 at a restau­rant in White­fish, Mon­tana, around the time Spencer became pres­i­dent of the white nation­al­ist Nation­al Pol­i­cy Insti­tute. Data bro­kers indi­cate that Schus­ter was liv­ing in Mis­soula at the time. Spencer said that he “didn’t know who he was real­ly” but agreed to meet up.

“He was big into Siege, and he was talk­ing about sell­ing drugs to fund the move­ment,” Spencer told Hate­watch.

“He dropped it when my reac­tion was like, ‘What?’” Spencer con­tin­ued.

Dur­ing their meet­ing, Schus­ter gave Spencer a copy of Siege. Hate­watch sent Spencer a pho­to of the 2003 edi­tion of Siege, and he con­firmed that it was the same ver­sion of the book that Schus­ter gave him. Spencer said that he looked at the book at the time but found it “incom­pre­hen­si­ble and dis­gust­ing.”

The role of SIEGEin the white suprema­cist move­ment

From the Ku Klux Klan’s cam­paigns of ter­ror in the 1800s to the dead­ly 2017 “Unite the Right” ral­ly in Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia, vio­lence has always marked the white suprema­cist move­ment. For decades, its pro-ter­ror­ism wing looked to William Luther Pierce’s race war fan­ta­sy The Turn­er Diaries, which helped inspire Tim­o­thy McVeigh to com­mit the 1995 Okla­homa City bomb­ing.

In recent years, a new gen­er­a­tion of activists turned to Siege for guid­ance. These extrem­ists, many of whom were young, saw Spencer and oth­er white nation­al­ists who aimed to lever­age more main­stream polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions in ser­vice of build­ing a white eth­nos­tate as inad­e­quate­ly rad­i­cal. Among them were users on the web­site Iron March, who formed new neo-Nazi groups that pro­mot­ed racial ter­ror­ism. The most impor­tant of these was the Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion, whose mem­bers have been linked to numer­ous crimes, includ­ing mul­ti­ple mur­ders.

While Black Sun’s edi­tion of Siege res­cued the book from obscu­ri­ty, it was Iron March’s third, 2015 edi­tion that gave it the promi­nence it has today. Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion mem­bers were required to read it. One called it the group’s “Bible,” while anoth­er said, “Mein Kampf is great, but SIEGE is more rel­e­vant to our strug­gle,” accord­ing to inter­nal chat logs from the group obtained by the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter.

Siege’s delayed pop­u­lar­i­ty stems in part from Mason’s still-con­tentious rela­tion­ship with the broad­er white pow­er move­ment. Though Mason’s involve­ment with the neo-Nazi move­ment began in 1966, when he joined the Amer­i­can Nazi Par­ty at the age of 14, by the 1980s his fel­low neo-Nazis almost entire­ly dis­missed him. It was not until the 2010s, after Siege had been released in two more edi­tions and heav­i­ly pro­mot­ed online by mem­bers of Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion and oth­er like-mind­ed vio­lent groups, that it became a defin­i­tive text with­in the move­ment.

Mason wal­lowed in extremes, as did his new gen­er­a­tion of fol­low­ers. His fans have embraced fan­tasies of grotesque sex­u­al vio­lence and have been accused of shar­ing child pornog­ra­phy. They ven­er­at­ed mass mur­der­ers as “saints” and reject­ed struc­tured polit­i­cal groups in favor of pro­mot­ing ter­ror attacks. To Mason’s self-styled acolytes, the vio­lence at 2017’s “Unite the Right” was insuf­fi­cient. In addi­tion, the scruti­ny that its orga­niz­ers faced from jour­nal­ists, activists and politi­cians, as well as the legal chal­lenges that await­ed them, proved the neo-Nazi leader’s dis­taste for polit­i­cal activism. Only extreme vio­lence — or to drop out of soci­ety alto­geth­er, his oth­er rec­om­men­da­tion — remained as options.

“When the shit hits the fan, these fakes are going to run for the hills. And we need to be there to guide those who will prove to be worth­while in this strug­gle,” Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion leader James Cameron Den­ton, aka “Rape,” wrote of “Unite the Right” orga­niz­ers on Aug. 15, 2017, three days after the ral­ly, accord­ing to the group’s inter­nal chat­logs that SPLC obtained. By the end of 2018, SPLC iden­ti­fied 27 Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion chap­ters active through­out the Unit­ed States in its annu­al audit of hate groups.

...

Through­out the late 2010s, accel­er­a­tionists found­ed sev­er­al groups in the Unit­ed States and abroad, includ­ing The Base (U.S.), Son­nenkreig Divi­sion (Britain), Feuerkrieg Divi­sion (Esto­nia), and Antipodean Resis­tance (Aus­tralia). On Telegram, a social media app pop­u­lar with accel­er­a­tionists, Mason’s fans dis­trib­uted his work and dis­cussed ways to imple­ment his vio­lent vision in a loose net­work of chan­nels known as “Ter­ror­gram.” Neo-Nazi activists pub­lished three more edi­tions of Siege in 2018, 2021 and 2023. Ver­sions of the text have been trans­lat­ed into numer­ous lan­guages.

Still, the groups that looked to Mason as a guide were not immune to the same pres­sures that caused more main­stream white pow­er groups to col­lapse. Five senior mem­bers of the group faced fed­er­al charges stem­ming from their involve­ment. Oth­ers, includ­ing for­mer lead­ers and key mem­bers Devon Arthurs, Bran­don Rus­sell and Samuel Wood­ward, were already in prison await­ing tri­al on oth­er charges.

Then, in 2020, Mason announced in a short video clip that some­one shared to mul­ti­ple file shar­ing sites that Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion was dis­band­ing amid rumors of the U.S. gov­ern­ment des­ig­nat­ing the group a for­eign ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion.

Since then, a court in Rus­sia found that Siege is “extrem­ist mate­r­i­al” and “pro­hib­it­ed dis­tri­b­u­tion [of the text] with­in the ter­ri­to­ry of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion,” accord­ing to an Aug. 14, 2023, arti­cle in the state-owned out­let TASS. James Mason him­self is barred from enter­ing Cana­da.

Spencer Sun­shine is a long­time researcher of the far right. His book Neo-Nazi Ter­ror­ism and Coun­ter­cul­tur­al Fas­cism: The Ori­gins and After­life of James Mason’s Siege will be released in May 2024.

———–

“How a Main­stream Racist Group Revived the Ter­ror­is­tic Tome ‘Siege’” by Han­nah Gais, Spencer Sun­shine; South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter; 03/28/2024

“Hate­watch reviewed a cache of let­ters from 2001-03 between James Mason, a promi­nent neo-Nazi writer and advo­cate for rev­o­lu­tion­ary racial vio­lence, and two white suprema­cist activists affil­i­at­ed with the Foun­da­tion for Human Under­stand­ing (FHU), a Geor­gia-based non­prof­it found­ed by pro­po­nents of racist pseu­do­science in 1973. The let­ters reveal that FHU owned a neo-Nazi pub­lish­ing house called Black Sun Pub­li­ca­tions, which released a sec­ond edi­tion of Mason’s ter­ror­is­tic mag­num opus, Siege, in 2003 and res­cued the book from obscu­ri­ty. Greg John­sonand Ryan Schus­ter, the two activists, detailed their plans to use FHU and Black Sun to pro­mote oth­er works of Mason and those of a World War II-era Nazi spy and eso­teri­cistnamed Sav­it­ri Devi for a younger gen­er­a­tion of extrem­ists.”

A lit­er­al James Mason pop­u­lar­iza­tion cam­paign. A cam­paign to pop­u­lar­ize Mason’s Siege for a new gen­er­a­tion of Nazis. That’s what this pair of white suprema­cist ‘aca­d­e­mics’, Greg John­son and Ryan Schus­ter, had in mind for their Black Sun pub­lish­ing house back in the ear­ly 2000s. And it’s hard to argue they did­n’t wild­ly suc­ceed. Siege went from near­ly for­got­ten to one of the most influ­en­tial mod­ern extrem­ists books avail­able and the ide­o­log­i­casl blue­print for accel­er­a­tionist groups like Atom­waf­fen. It’s a dis­turb­ing reminder of the pow­er of pub­lish­ers. But also note how Schus­ter lit­er­al­ly encour­aged oth­ers to “act in a man­ner com­men­su­rate to Tim­o­thy McVeigh of Okla­homa City fame,” in the 2003 edi­tion of Black Sun fea­turig Siege. Keep in mind that McVeigh was moti­vat­ed by a white suprema­cist ide­ol­o­gy of a Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty nature. McVeigh was­n’t a Satanist. That dis­tinc­tion is an impor­tant piece of this over­all sto­ry: by heav­i­ly pro­mot­ing con­tent like Siege and fig­ures like David Myatt, John­son and Schus­ter set out to pro­mote white suprema­cist Satan­ic accel­er­a­tionist ter­ror. It was simul­ta­ne­ous­ly an invest­ment in the pro­mo­tion of white pow­er ter­ror­ism but under a very dif­fer­ent kind of the­o­log­i­cal brand­ing from the high pro­file Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty white pow­er ter­ror­ism of the 1990s:

...
Hate­watch found that John­son, now the edi­tor-in-chief of the white nation­al­ist web­site Counter-Cur­rents, and Schus­ter repeat­ed­ly praised Mason and his ter­ror­is­tic world­view through­out their cor­re­spon­dence. In the for­ward that Schus­ter wrote for Black Sun’s 2003 edi­tion, he described Siege as “a cook­book and guide.” In the same sec­tion, he encour­aged oth­ers to “act in a man­ner com­men­su­rate to Tim­o­thy McVeigh of Okla­homa City fame,” refer­ring to the 1995 bomb­ing of a fed­er­al build­ing that left 168 peo­ple, 19 of whom were chil­dren, dead.

Mason’s involve­ment in the neo-Nazi move­ment dates to the 1960s. He first pub­lished Siegeas a newslet­ter between 1980 and 1986. The text pro­mot­ed a dystopi­an vision of racial ter­ror­ism that ele­vat­ed ser­i­al killers, mass mur­der­ers and guer­ril­la war­fare. Mason also advo­cat­ed that the now-deceased cult leader and con­vict­ed mur­der­er Charles Man­son become a neo-Nazi leader.

Since its orig­i­nal release in book form in 1993, neo-Nazi activists reprint­ed Siege in 2003, 2015, 2018, 2021 and 2023, dis­trib­ut­ing it via online book­sellers and as a PDF on white suprema­cist online forums. It has arguably emerged as one of the most pop­u­lar and influ­en­tial texts on the glob­al white suprema­cist move­ment along­side William Luther Pierce’s The Turn­er Diaries and Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. In the mid-2010s, a range of white nation­al­ist and neo-Nazi groups with ties to acts of real-world vio­lence, such as Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion and The Base, embraced the book to jus­ti­fy their ter­ror­is­tic world­view and dis­tance them­selves from oth­er wings of the move­ment that embraced more tra­di­tion­al polit­i­cal action. More recent­ly, a mass shoot­er who mur­dered three Black peo­ple in Jack­sonville, Flori­da, in sum­mer 2023, cit­ed Siege in a screed explain­ing his moti­va­tions for the attack.

FHU’s own­er­ship of Black Sun, as well as the cor­re­spon­dence between John­son, Schus­ter and Mason, shows how seem­ing­ly diver­gent wings of the rad­i­cal right can find grounds for coop­er­a­tion. Though John­son has not pub­licly acknowl­edged his con­nec­tion to Mason or Schus­ter, he has described white suprema­cist ter­ror­ism as an inevitable reac­tion to mul­ti­cul­tur­al, mul­tira­cial soci­eties in mul­ti­plepostson Counter-Cur­rents after attacks in the Unit­ed States and else­where. Johnson’s web­site also offered copies of Black Sun’s Siege for sale for $20, plus ship­ping and han­dling, between 2012 and 2019, accord­ing to inter­net archives. Counter-Cur­rents describedthe book as “a tool for men­tal self-lib­er­a­tion and per­haps even a guide­book for liv­ing near what we hope is the end of the present Dark Age.”

...

Mon­tana cor­po­rate records indi­cat­ed that Schus­ter reg­is­tered Black Sun Pub­li­ca­tions in that state on Nov. 9, 2001. The records did not spec­i­fy an explic­it con­nec­tion with FHU. Yet in a Nov. 21, 2001, let­ter to Mason, he referred to “FHU / Black Sun” as if the two com­pa­nies were the same enti­ty. Black Sun’s now-delet­ed web­site also cit­ed many of the same authors that Schus­ter and John­son ref­er­enced in their cor­re­spon­dence with Mason as fig­ures they hoped to pro­mote through FHU.

John­son and Schuster’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with FHU appears to have con­tin­ued into at least 2002. On Jan. 2, 2002, John­son offered Mason “copies of any FHU and Black Sun books that inter­est you” in exchange for some pho­tographs of neo-Nazis. Then, on June 10, 2002, Schus­ter wrote to Mason express­ing frus­tra­tion with the company’s finan­cial state.

...

Despite the con­nec­tions that FHU once had to more main­stream racist groups, cor­re­spon­dence between Schus­ter and Mason shows that Black Sun saw it as a means to pro­mote Siege, as well as Mason’s more eso­teric works, for a new gen­er­a­tion.
...

And as we can see, it’s not as if the Foun­da­tion for Human Under­stand­ing (FHU) was known for push­ing accel­er­a­tionist-style Nazism. Instead, it appears to have been designed to give an aca­d­e­m­ic pati­na to white suprema­cy, which is why we should­n’t be sur­prised to find that it was heav­i­ly financed by the Pio­neer Fund, an enti­ty known for the pro­mo­tion of eugen­ics and ‘race sci­ence’. So while the accel­er­a­tionist ter­ror­ist strains of Nazism might seem like a new devel­op­ment in extrem­ism it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that it was more ‘tra­di­tion­al’ and ‘aca­d­e­m­ic’ white suprema­cists that orches­trat­ed in ris­ing of accel­er­a­tionism. Which isn’t real­ly very sur­pris­ing. Accel­er­a­tionist ter­ror­ism is basi­cal­ly the next step for an extrem­ist move­ment that has already con­clud­ed that it’s not going to win through pub­lic per­sua­sion alone:

...
In their com­mu­ni­ca­tions with Mason, Schus­ter and John­son repeat­ed­ly described them­selves as affil­i­at­ed with the Foun­da­tion for Human Under­stand­ing, the Geor­gia-based racist pub­lish­ing house.

Found­ed in 1973, FHU lit­er­a­ture den­i­grat­ed racial inte­gra­tion and pro­mot­ed pseu­do­sci­en­tif­ic beliefs about race and its rela­tion­ship to intel­li­gence. Between 1973 and 1994, FHU received $348,700, or rough­ly $1.34 mil­lion in today’s dol­lars, from the pro-eugen­ics Pio­neer Fund, accord­ing to an archive of the fund’s grantees from 1997 at Fer­ris University’s Insti­tute for the Study of Aca­d­e­m­ic Racism. In addi­tion to sup­port­ing more niche orga­ni­za­tions pro­mot­ing eugen­ics and oth­er forms of racist pseu­do­science, the Pio­neer Fund has donat­ed mil­lions of dol­lars to promi­nent uni­ver­si­ties and aca­d­e­mics to sup­port research that bol­ster their big­ot­ed beliefs.

...

On May 16, 2001, John­son, iden­ti­fy­ing him­self as a phi­los­o­phy stu­dent prepar­ing for his dis­ser­ta­tion defense, wrote to Mason and said, “I and a friend are cre­at­ing a pub­lish­ing imprint. … to trans­fer some of the intel­lec­tu­al ener­gy and vision of the Euro­pean right to the Eng­lish-speak­ing world.” John­son named sev­er­al writ­ers they planned to trans­late, includ­ing Ital­ian fas­cist the­o­rist Julius Evolaand French eth­no-nation­al­ist Alain de Benoist.

In a let­ter dat­ed June 18, 2001, Schus­ter referred to “Dr. Gre­go­ry John­son,” whom he described as his “col­league,” and acknowl­edged Johnson’s pri­or cor­re­spon­dence with Mason. Schus­ter told Mason that “our pub­lish­ing imprint Black Sun is owned by a 501©3 tax-exempt edu­ca­tion cor­po­ra­tion known as the Foun­da­tion for Human Under­stand­ing.” He wrote that the FHU had “publish[ed] numer­ous books on race and intel­li­gence (most notably Baker’s Race) but has since fall­en into com­plete inac­tiv­i­ty.”

...

In the same June 18, 2001, let­ter, Schus­ter said he and John­son intend­ed to trans­form FHU into a “con­ducive medi­um with which to trans­fuse some of the more poignant Euro­pean reac­tion­ism of thought onto these shores.”
...

Notably, it appears it was the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks that cre­at­ed an obsta­cle for these Siege pop­u­lar­iza­tion plans. Which is an under­stable obsta­cle con­sid­er­ing the con­text. They were plan­ning on pro­mot­ing Nazi domes­tic ter­ror­ism, after all, some­thing that would­n’t have had much pop­u­lar appeal in the wake of 9/11:

...
In a phone con­ver­sa­tion with Hate­watch, Mason con­firmed that he worked with Schus­ter to pro­duce the sec­ond edi­tion of Siege and met with him mul­ti­ple times in per­son.

Fol­low­ing Schuster’s ini­tial let­ter to Mason on June 18, 2001, in which he described his and Johnson’s plans to revive FHU, he turned his cor­re­spon­dence with the neo-Nazi leader toward dis­cussing the group’s pub­lish­ing plans.

In a let­ter from Sept. 11, 2001 — the same day that the dead­liest ter­ror­ist attack on U.S. soil left near­ly 3,000 peo­ple dead — Schus­ter sug­gest­ed to Mason that he issue a sec­ond edi­tion of Siege. The new text, Schus­ter said, would be “replete with a new intro­duc­tion, re-designed cov­er, added appen­dix­es, and per­haps inclu­sive pho­tos dif­fer­ent from the orig­i­nal edi­tion.” On Oct. 3, he told Mason that copies of the first edi­tion were sell­ing for up to $150 online.

“What seems so obvi­ous­ly appar­ent, is that many young per­sons con­nect­ed to myr­i­ad fringe cir­cles of resis­tance who would most ben­e­fit from read­ing SIEGE, can­not now obtain copies because of scarci­ty and price,” Schus­ter told Mason.

On Nov. 21, 2001, Schus­ter hint­ed that the attack might impact print­ing the book.

“In the wake of the Sept. 11th clean-up job, you can just about write-off what­ev­ers small per­cent­age of Amerikan [sic] print­ing facil­i­ties might have been coerced into re-print­ing Siegewith­out cen­sor­ship harass­ment,” he wrote to Mason.
...

And then we get some addi­tion­al cru­cial con­text for the accel­er­a­tionist pub­lic rela­tions casm­paign Schus­ter and John­son had in mind. They weren’t just keen on pop­u­lar­iz­ing Siege for the next gen­er­a­tion of Nazis. They were also planned to pub­lish two oth­er books Mason self-pub­lished fol­low­ing his 1999 release from prison: The Theo­crat and Revis­it­ing Rev­e­la­tion, where Mason attempts to frame his Nazi ide­ol­o­gy in the con­text of the Bible and UFOs. Beyond that, Schus­ter and Mason weren’t just intent on pop­u­lar­iz­ing Mason. They want­ed to pro­mate Davit­ri Devi and David Myatt too. This was as plan to pro­mote occul­tic-infused accel­er­a­tionist Nazism to a new gen­er­a­tion of extrem­ists:

...
Schus­ter want­ed to pub­lish some of Mason’s oth­er books as well. On Nov. 30 he wrote Mason to con­firm an oral agree­ment they had made regard­ing Black Sun’s agree­ment for the rights to four of Mason’s books. Schus­ter offered $2,000 for Siege and $500 each for three oth­er books.

These includ­ed two texts, The Theo­crat and Revis­it­ing Rev­e­la­tion, that Mason had self-pub­lished upon his release from prison in 1999 for threat­en­inghis 16-year-old ex-girl­friend and her Lati­no boyfriend. The Theo­crat jux­ta­posed pas­sages from Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the Bible. Revis­it­ing Rev­e­la­tion explained Mason’s idio­syn­crat­ic ver­sion of Chris­tian­i­ty, which he had devel­oped in prison and incor­po­rat­ed bla­tant anti­semitism and UFOs. Mason pro­posed the third book, a pic­to­r­i­al his­to­ry of Amer­i­can Nazi Par­ty founder George Lin­coln Rock­well, dur­ing his ear­li­er cor­re­spon­dence with Schus­ter.

...

On Feb. 10, 2002, Schus­ter told Mason that he was con­sid­er­ing chang­ing Black Sun’s imme­di­ate pub­lish­ing plans to fea­ture an all-neo-Nazi ros­ter, nam­ing Mason, Sav­it­ri Devi and David Myatt. Myatt is the alleged founder of the Order of Nine Angles, a Satanist umbrel­la group that became inter­twined with lat­er neo-Nazi groupsenam­ored by Siege, such as Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion.

On Aug. 23, Schus­ter sent Mason a check for $1,600, which includ­ed the remain­ing amount due for all the books. Schus­ter exclud­ed $250 for Revis­it­ing Rev­e­la­tion, which he had decid­ed not to pub­lish.

Black Sun released Siege in sum­mer 2003 as a lim­it­ed edi­tion, with a print run of 500 copies. Some appear to be auto­graphed by James Mason, accord­ing to list­ings with online book­sellers. Schus­ter reprint­ed the 1993 ver­sion of Siege, albeit with notable addi­tions, includ­ing a new pref­ace from Mason and an intro­duc­tion from Schus­ter lion­iz­ing the neo-Nazi ide­o­logue. Schus­ter also includ­ed pho­tos, a page from Anton LaVey’s The Satan­ic Bible with a hand­writ­ten ded­i­ca­tion to Mason, and an appen­dix with news­pa­per clip­pings and let­ters. The book’s cov­er fea­tured a pho­to of the wreck­age of the World Trade Cen­ter after the 9/11 attacks.

John­son col­lab­o­rat­ed with Mason to pro­mote neo-Nazi eso­teri­cist

The cor­re­spon­dence also sheds light on a hith­er­to unknown col­lab­o­ra­tion between Mason and John­son to revive the work of World War II-era Nazi spy and fas­cist eso­teri­cist Sav­it­ri Devi.

Sav­it­ri Devi Mukher­ji, born Max­imi­ani Julia Por­tras, was a French-born Nazi sym­pa­thiz­er and spy who devel­oped an elab­o­rate syn­the­sis of Hin­du the­ol­o­gy and Nordic racial ide­ol­o­gy. In her 1958 book “The Light­en­ing and the Sun,” she presents Hitler as the last avatar of the Hin­du god Vish­nu. Sav­it­ri Devi’s trans­for­ma­tion of World War II-era Nazism into what aca­d­e­m­ic Nicholas Goodrick-Clarkedescribed as “a reli­gious cult of cos­mic sig­nif­i­cance” won her favor among post­war neo-Nazi groups in the Unit­ed States and Europe.

Through­out 2001 and 2003, John­son request­ed Mason send him and Schus­ter pho­tos, let­ters and oth­er mate­ri­als relat­ed to Sav­it­ri Devi. In his first let­ter to Mason, John­son explained he received the neo-Nazi’s address from Michael Moyni­han, a musi­cian and edi­tor of Siege’s first edi­tion in 1993.

John­son described him­self and Schus­ter as “admir­ers” of the deceased neo-Nazi eso­teri­cist. WhoIs records for the web­site SavitriDevi.com, where John­son now hosts work asso­ci­at­ed with a Counter-Cur­rents-fund­ed archive of her work, indi­cate that Schus­ter first reg­is­tered the domain on July 25, 2001, using a P.O. box in Boze­man, Mon­tana, asso­ci­at­ed with Black Sun.

“We under­stand that she car­ried on a far-flung cor­re­spon­dence with the lead­ing peo­ple of the post-war move­ment. We think that it would be a tragedy if her let­ters were lost to the teeth of time,” John­son wrote to Mason on May 16, 2001.

...

Black Sun, the pub­lish­ing house that Schus­ter reg­is­tered in Mon­tana, fell into inac­tiv­i­ty after releas­ing the Sav­it­ri Devi col­lec­tion. Montana’s sec­re­tary of state office, which requires busi­ness­es to peri­od­i­cal­ly file paper­work regard­ing their activ­i­ties, first reg­is­tered Black Sun as inac­tive after Schus­ter failed to file the req­ui­site paper­work on Nov. 9, 2006, accord­ing to busi­ness doc­u­ments obtained by Hate­watch
...

Also note one of the oth­er extrem­ist fig­ures Greg John­son want­ed to ele­vate: Charles Man­son:

...
John­son also expressed sym­pa­thy for Mason’s vio­lent dystopi­an vision.

“I want to tell you how much I admire both you and your work,” John­son wrote to Mason in the same May 16, 2001, let­ter. He added, “I have also read Siege and find myself in com­plete sym­pa­thy with your eval­u­a­tion of Charles Man­son & the world sit­u­a­tion in gen­er­al.”

Mason told Hate­watch that he did not recall cor­re­spond­ing with John­son, nor was he famil­iar with Counter-Cur­rents, the web­site that John­son found­ed in 2010.
...

Part of the con­text of this ini­tia­tive by Schus­ter and John­son to main­stream accel­er­a­tionist occul­tic Nazism is the fact that the FHU was also a col­lab­o­ra­tor with groups like the Charles Mar­tel Soci­ety, the pub­lish­er of Occi­den­tal Quar­ter­ly. Recall the 2020 rev­e­la­tions about how con­ser­v­a­tive mega-donor Robert Rotel­la — who has donat­ed heav­i­ly to groups like the Cato Insti­tute, the Rea­son Foun­da­tion, and Turn­ing Point USA — also made dona­tions to groups like Richard Spencer’s Nation­al Pol­i­cy Insti­tute (NPI) and the Charles Mar­tel Soci­ety. Inter­est­ing­ly, Rotel­la’s char­i­ty also made dona­tions to a num­ber of groups focused on top­ics like UFOs, remote view­ing, and psy­chic phe­nom­e­na. Also recall how it was pub­lish­er Richard Reg­n­ery who found­ed the Charles Mar­tel Soci­ety in 2001 and, the NPI in 2005, and the HL Menck­en Club in 2008, all with the goal of main­streamin­ing white nation­al­ism. In oth­er words, the same white nation­al­ist net­work that has been focused on main­stream­ing white nation­al­ism to the pub­lic has also been focused on main­stream­ing occultism accel­er­a­tionism to extrem­ists:

...
Cor­po­rate records for the FHU indi­cate that mem­bers of the group’s lead­er­ship were deeply involved in oth­er white nation­al­ist caus­es as well.

Hate­watch reviewed 1988 arti­cles of incor­po­ra­tion that FHU filed with the state of Geor­gia, as well as tax returns for the group from 1999, 2004 and 2005. The doc­u­ments indi­cate that the group under­went a series of per­son­nel changes some­where between 1988 and 1999 that brought it clos­er to a net­work of white pow­er activists active in the greater Atlanta area, includ­ing the lat­er head of the secre­tive Charles Mar­tel Soci­ety(CMS), Mar­tin O’Toole.

Greg John­son, who said he col­lab­o­rat­ed with O’Toole’s group, FHU, in the ear­ly 2000s, pre­vi­ous­ly served as the edi­tor for CMS’s pub­li­ca­tion, The Occi­den­tal Quar­ter­ly, between 2007 and 2010.

O’Toole, a Geor­gia-based attor­ney and spokesper­son for Atlanta’s Sons of Con­fed­er­ate Vet­er­ans’ chap­ter, appears in FHU tax doc­u­ments as the organization’s direc­tor in 1999, 2004 and 2005, as well as an annu­al reg­is­tra­tion doc­u­ment filed in 2007. Atlanta Antifa, an antifas­cist col­lec­tive, doc­u­ment­ed O’Toole’s exten­sive ties to the racist right, includ­ing to Sam Dick­son, one of the found­ing mem­bers of CMS and a for­mer lawyer for the Ku Klux Klan, as well as to Nebras­ka-based neo-Nazi Gary “Ger­hard” Lauck, who served mul­ti­ple prison sen­tences in Ger­many on charges relat­ed to smug­gling Nazi pro­pa­gan­da through Europe.

Richard Spencer, who became involved with CMS in the late 2000s but who left the group for­mal­ly in 2018, described O’Toole as the “Sam Dick­son fan club pres­i­dent” in a con­ver­sa­tion with Hate­watch. Since the 1970s, O’Toole and Dick­son have col­lab­o­rat­ed on a range of racist and anti­se­mit­ic caus­es, includ­ing a book pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny that pro­mot­ed the works of David Irv­ing, a self-styled his­to­ri­an whom mul­ti­ple Euro­pean coun­tries have con­vict­ed of Holo­caust denial.

O’Toole first became involved with CMS in a lead­er­ship capac­i­ty in 2011 and served as the group’s pres­i­dent and chair­man from 2015 through 2021, per tax records. In 2022, racist radio per­son­al­i­ty James Edwards replaced O’Toole as CMS’s pres­i­dent and chair­man, though O’Toole has remained on its board.

...

Found­ed in 2001, CMS bills itself as “the intel­lec­tu­al home of West­ern Nation­al­ism.” Through its web­site Occi­den­tal Observ­er and mag­a­zine Occi­den­tal Quar­ter­ly, CMS cloaks its dreams of a white nation­al­ist eth­nos­tate in the guise of qua­si-aca­d­e­m­ic rhetoric.
...

And when we see how Greg John­son moved on to found the white nation­al­ist pub­li­ca­tion Counter-Cur­rents in 2010, keep in mind the recent rev­e­la­tion that Cyn­thia Hugh­es — the founder of the Patri­ot Free­dom Project who has referred to her­self as the “adop­tive aunt” to jailed Hitler-lov­ing insur­rec­tion­ist Tim­o­thy Hale-Cusanel­li — gave an exten­sive inter­view to Counter-Cur­rents back in 2022. The Patri­ot Free­dom Project, of course, has exten­sive ties to MAGA-world and the sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion, with mul­ti­ple Trump offi­cials hav­ing served as board mem­bers for the group. It’s anoth­er exam­ple of how wild­ly main­stream these move­ment have become over the past cou­ple of decades:

...
Though John­son remained involved with the white nation­al­ist move­ment, going from CMS to found­ing Counter-Cur­rents in 2010, Schuster’s tra­jec­to­ry is murki­er.
...

And as we can see with the pro­lif­er­a­tion of accel­er­a­tionist ter­ror out­fits in the late 2010s, this ‘main­stream­ing accel­er­a­tionism’ agen­da real­ly was a suc­cess in the sense that there real­ly was a pro­lif­er­a­tion of accel­er­a­tionist gruops around the globe. Made all the more remark­able by the fact that they did­n’t just main­stream the con­cept of soci­ety-col­laps­ing ter­ror attacks. They also main­streamed a cel­e­bra­tion of the vile behav­iors like the shar­ing of child pornog­ra­phy:

...
Mason wal­lowed in extremes, as did his new gen­er­a­tion of fol­low­ers. His fans have embraced fan­tasies of grotesque sex­u­al vio­lence and have been accused of shar­ing child pornog­ra­phy. They ven­er­at­ed mass mur­der­ers as “saints” and reject­ed struc­tured polit­i­cal groups in favor of pro­mot­ing ter­ror attacks. To Mason’s self-styled acolytes, the vio­lence at 2017’s “Unite the Right” was insuf­fi­cient. In addi­tion, the scruti­ny that its orga­niz­ers faced from jour­nal­ists, activists and politi­cians, as well as the legal chal­lenges that await­ed them, proved the neo-Nazi leader’s dis­taste for polit­i­cal activism. Only extreme vio­lence — or to drop out of soci­ety alto­geth­er, his oth­er rec­om­men­da­tion — remained as options.

“When the shit hits the fan, these fakes are going to run for the hills. And we need to be there to guide those who will prove to be worth­while in this strug­gle,” Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion leader James Cameron Den­ton, aka “Rape,” wrote of “Unite the Right” orga­niz­ers on Aug. 15, 2017, three days after the ral­ly, accord­ing to the group’s inter­nal chat­logs that SPLC obtained. By the end of 2018, SPLC iden­ti­fied 27 Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion chap­ters active through­out the Unit­ed States in its annu­al audit of hate groups.

...

Through­out the late 2010s, accel­er­a­tionists found­ed sev­er­al groups in the Unit­ed States and abroad, includ­ing The Base (U.S.), Son­nenkreig Divi­sion (Britain), Feuerkrieg Divi­sion (Esto­nia), and Antipodean Resis­tance (Aus­tralia). On Telegram, a social media app pop­u­lar with accel­er­a­tionists, Mason’s fans dis­trib­uted his work and dis­cussed ways to imple­ment his vio­lent vision in a loose net­work of chan­nels known as “Ter­ror­gram.” Neo-Nazi activists pub­lished three more edi­tions of Siege in 2018, 2021 and 2023. Ver­sions of the text have been trans­lat­ed into numer­ous lan­guages.
...

But that suc­cess was­n’t just man­i­fest­ed in the spread of accel­er­a­tionist ter­ror groups and pro­pa­gan­da. As we’re about to see, accel­er­a­tionism effec­tive­ly replaced the Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty-brand­ed white suprema­cist ter­ror asso­ci­at­ed with groups like the Aryan Nations that was much more promi­nent through­out the 70s, 80s, and 90s.

Matt Shea and in Political Institutionalization of the Christian Identity Movement

Which is not to say that Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty move­ment fad­ed away. On the con­trary, such move­ments are arguably more pow­er­ful than ever under the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, an admin­is­tra­tion that could be thought of as a MAGA mul­let: Trump­ism in the front, and the orga­nized Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism of the pow­er­ful the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) in the back. It was the CNP that helped to orches­trate the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion. It’s the CNP that has been fun­da­men­tal­ly behind the years-long strate­giz­ing that led up to the ongo­ing Project 2025 far right purge of the gov­ern­ment, cur­rent­ly being exe­cut­ed under the “DOGE” umbrel­la by key CNP mem­ber Rus­sell Vought. The same Rus­sell Vought whose Project 2025 plan­ning includ­ed “inflict­ing traum­ing” on the fed­er­al work­force and strate­giz­ing how best to empow­er a sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion to deploy the mil­i­tary domes­ti­cal­ly with an eye on crush­ing quelling protests mil­i­tar­i­ly. Rus­sell Vought is the liv­ing man­i­fes­ta­tion of what mil­i­tant Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism looks like when oper­at­ing at the high­est lev­els of pow­er. He isn’t plot­ting some ter­ror attack on abor­tion clin­ics. He’s plot­ting how to sic the US mil­i­tary on pro­tes­tors. It’s high­ly orga­nized, dis­ci­plined, next lev­el mil­i­tant Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism.

But as we’ve repeat­ed­ly seen, when it comes to the under­ly­ing ide­ol­o­gy dri­ving Rus­sell Vought and his CNP fel­low trav­el­ers, there is an immense amount of over­lap with the Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty white suprema­cist ide­ol­o­gy that ani­mat­ed groups like the Aryan Nations before accel­er­a­tionism became the new far right fad. An over­lap exem­pli­fied by the many CNP con­nec­tions to the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, a decades-old Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist orga­ni­za­tion with a his­to­ry of advo­cat­ing a Dominionist/Christian Recon­struc­tion­ist over­throw of the gov­ern­ment and the forced impo­si­tion of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist rule.

And as we’ve also seen, that over­lap between the mil­i­tant Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty move­ment and the Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist pow­er pol­i­tics of the CNP is also man­i­fest­ed by anoth­er very noto­ri­ous fig­ure: for­mer Wash­ing­ton State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Matt Shea. Recall how Shea, a for­mer Repub­li­can state rep­re­sen­ta­tive for an area of Wash­ing­ton state bor­der­ing Ida­ho, was revealed to be in con­ver­sa­tions on the encrypt­ed Sig­nal app with with far right mil­i­tants about prepa­ra­tions for a civ­il war fought along Domin­ion­ist theo­crat­ic lines. Those who sup­port abor­tion and homo­sex­u­al­i­ty are to be killed, accord­ing to Shea, who tried to brush it off as tongue in cheek. One of the par­tic­i­pants the chat was Antho­ny Bosworth, who par­tic­i­pat­ing in the 2016 occu­pa­tion of the Mal­heur wildlife refuge report­ed­ly at Shea’s request. When that report­ing came out on Shea’s vio­lent plans, Shea respond­ed to the arti­cle by link­ing to an arti­cle crit­i­cal of the jour­nal­ist who wrote it, the Guardian’s Jason Wil­son. The arti­cle was from the Aus­tralian white nation­al­ist web­site XYZ.net.au.

And as an exam­ple of Shea’s ties to this broad­er CNP-backed theo­crat­ic net­work, don’t for­get how Shea was the founder of the Spokane chap­ter of ACT for Amer­i­ca, an anti-Mus­lim group found­ed by CNP mem­ber Brigitte Gabriel. Act for Amer­i­ca has held a num­ber of ral­lies over the years that serve as mag­nets for the far right. For exam­ple, recall how Act for Amer­i­ca orga­nized nation­wide “Anti-Islam­ic Law” ral­lies on June 10, 2017, that includ­ed neo-Nazi leader Justin Run­do and oth­er “Rise Above Move­ment” (RAM) mem­bers as par­tic­i­pants. RAM mem­bers took part in vio­lent attacks at the RAM event.

Also recall how Act for Amer­i­ca hap­pened to have one of its cam­paigns orga­nized by freeroots.com, a web­site owned by CNP oper­a­tive Eric Berg­er that played a very inter­est­ing role in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s fever­ish attempts to come up with a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for block­ing the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the 2020 elec­tion. It was freeroots.com that was used in the behind-the-scenes email cam­paign to lob­by state leg­is­la­tors to nul­li­fy their state’s vote over charges of fraud or what­ev­er. As we saw, that orga­niz­ing was led by none oth­er than CNP-mem­ber Gin­nie Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Jus­tice Clarence Thomas. On Nov. 13, 2020, Thomas work­shop fea­tur­ing, among oth­er speak­ers, Cle­ta Mitchell. After that work­shop, the group cir­cu­lat­ed guid­ance to focus efforts on leg­is­la­tors in Penn­syl­va­nia, Geor­gia and Ari­zona. The guid­ance advised vis­it­ing the web­site everylegalvote.com “to report fraud and take action.” Vis­i­tors to the site could click a but­ton and be tak­en to freeroots.com to email state leg­is­la­tors. Thomas, her­self, used freeroots.com to email Ari­zona leg­is­la­tors includ­ing the speak­er of the Ari­zona House about nul­li­fy­ing the vote. The fact that freeroots.com was used for an Act for Amer­i­ca cam­paign is con­sis­tent with the broad­er pat­tern of CNP enti­ties work­ing in coor­di­na­tion, all towards a com­mon Domin­ion­ist goal. Act for Amer­i­ca is part of the CNP con­stel­la­tion of enti­ties all work­ing togeth­er. And Matt Shea start­ed the Spokane chap­ter. And the guy is a mil­i­tant lunatic who has talked about doing the kind of thing Vance Boel­ter just did.

And then we saw how the everylegalvote.com web­site ini­tial­ly said it was pro­duced in part­ner­ship with Unit­ed in Pur­pose, wlich has host­ed lun­cheons where Gin­ni Thomas presents her “Impact Awards”. But the ref­er­ence to Unit­ed in Pur­pose was replaced with a ref­er­ence to three “found­ing spon­sors” includ­ing the Texas secu­ri­ty firm Allied Secu­ri­ty Oper­a­tions Group (ASOG). As we also saw, ASOG is owned by CNP mem­ber Rus­sell Ram­s­land, who was in the “com­mand cen­ter” at the Willard Hotel with oth­er fig­ures who led the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s plan­ning ahead of Jan­u­ary 6 for block­ing the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the vote.

But there’s an oth­er part of Shea’s back­ground that puts him in close prox­im­i­ty to the events of Jan­u­ary 6: Recall how Shea was the founder of the Wash­ing­ton State Prayer Cau­cus, the state branch of the Con­gres­sion­al Prayer Cau­cus, the group that oper­ates as the par­ent orga­ni­za­tion for Project Blitz. One of Shea’s asso­ciates, pas­tor Ken Peters, has a mis­sion to estab­lish “Patri­ot Church­es” around the US. Peters spoke at the “Stop the Steal” ral­ly in DC held on Jan­u­ary 5 thanks to the last minute gen­eros­i­ty of Mike Lin­dell, who flew Peters there on his pri­vate plane. Shea also hap­pens to be pret­ty close to the Oath Keep­ers and was actu­al­ly at a 2013 found­ing meet­ing of the for the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Sher­iffs and Peace Offi­cers Asso­ci­a­tion (CSPOA). Oh, and he pals around with fig­ures like Michael Trewhel­la, who was one of three dozen sig­na­to­ries to a state­ment that declared that the mur­der of abor­tion providers is “jus­ti­fi­able”. Matt Shea is some­one who net­works with influ­en­tial mil­i­tant extrem­ists.

And as the fol­low­ing 2018 Rolling Stone arti­cle describes, Matt Shea keeps get­ting reelect­ed despite all of that extrem­ism. Or per­haps because of it. Matt Shea’s mil­i­tant Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist extrem­ism is increas­ing the GOP main­stream, at least in Shea’s dis­trict in rur­al Spokane Wash­ing­ton along the bor­der with Ida­ho.

But as the ADL’s Mark Pit­cav­age also observes, the Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty white pow­er ter­ror that was much more preva­lent in the region in the 70s, 80s, and 90s had, by 2018, large­ly fad­ed away. So at the same time Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism is more main­stream than ever in the Repub­li­can par­ty’s pol­i­tics, the Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty white pow­er ter­ror has adopt­ed new fla­vors like Atom­waf­fen or O9A accel­er­a­tionism. Which sounds like a form of ‘mis­sion accom­plished’ for Greg John­son and Ryan Schus­ter’s decades-old mis­sion:

Rolling Stone

Something’s Brew­ing in the Deep Red West

Rep. Matt Shea has been try­ing to cre­ate a lib­er­tar­i­an utopia in the Pacif­ic North­west, a 51st state called Lib­er­ty. And he keeps get­ting re-elect­ed.

By Leah Sot­tile
Octo­ber 23, 2018

When Wash­ing­ton state Rep. Matt Shea looks out before him, he sees a most­ly male crowd in mili­tia T‑shirts smil­ing back. Gath­ered across an expanse of sub­ur­ban grass, they hold yel­low Don’t Tread on Me flags. A hand­ful car­ry AR-15s and are dressed in tac­ti­cal cam­ou­flage vests loaded up with ammu­ni­tion. It’s a hot August Sat­ur­day at a pub­lic park in Spokane, Wash­ing­ton. Wild­fire smoke blurs the sun.

“I’m gonna speak from the heart today,” Shea says into the micro­phone.

Here, despite being the only one in a blaz­er, this state leg­is­la­tor is just Matt: Matt who places a hand on a man’s shoul­der, Matt who bows his head in prayer moments before step­ping to the mic, Matt who tells one man, “Be blessed,” as they part ways.

“Our hope is not in man, our hope is in Jesus Christ. Can I get an ‘amen’?”

(He gets an amen.)

I’m on the ground at the “Lib­er­ty or Death” ral­ly —a protest of 100 or so peo­ple aim­ing to draw atten­tion to a pack­age of state gun-con­trol mea­sures under con­sid­er­a­tion, ones this crowd sees as a clear sign of gov­ern­ment tyran­ny.

A man hold­ing an AR-15 push­es a stroller with one hand through the crowd, stop­ping next to me as his kid reach­es a fat fist for a sip­py cup just inch­es from the gun’s bar­rel. All around, peo­ple wear T‑shirts and fly flags bear­ing eagles and declar­ing that “Free Men Don’t Need Per­mis­sion” to bear arms. The mood here —through the mes­sag­ing and the speak­ers and the lit­er­a­ture being sold at tables — is that there is a prob­lem in America,a sick­ness, a dis­ease only these peo­ple have opened their eyes wide enough to see.

Shea, 44, tells the crowd that, as a “stu­dent of his­to­ry,” he knows how the com­mon theme of both Marx­ism and tyran­ny is “always to dis­arm the peo­ple.” They nod along. He men­tions his mil­i­tary ser­vice (he served in both Iraq and Bosnia), but stays away from his expen­sive edu­ca­tion at near­by Gon­za­ga Uni­ver­si­ty.

...

He directs his gaze toward a few reporters and yells, “I’m tired of the media! And I’m tired of those on the left say­ing God-giv­en inalien­able rights don’t seem to mat­ter.”

“Let’s hold ’em account­able!” a guy from the crowd yells.

Shea agrees. Yes, let’s, he says. “Let’s call it out pub­licly! They’re the ones defend­ing tyran­ny!”

Amen.

“A lot of peo­ple in the media, some peo­ple even here today have come out pub­licly and tried to smear oth­er peo­ple, OK? Tried to tell in the media that cer­tain indi­vid­u­als are not who they say they are. Try to smear them with­out any facts,” he says. He’s spit­ting his words now. “And I want to tell you some­thing about that: We can’t become those dirty, god­less, hate­ful peo­ple.”

In the weeks after this moment, edi­to­r­i­al boards around the state will ques­tion how Shea —chair of the state Repub­li­can cau­cus —saw no con­se­quences for these words. “Spokane law­mak­er gets free pass on press-bash­ing. Why?” aske­da Taco­ma edi­to­r­i­al. Even Wash­ing­ton Gov. Jay Inslee tweet­ed that Shea’s words “should dis­qual­i­fy him” from his role on the legislature’s pub­lic-records task force.

But Shea —a five-term elect­ed offi­cial now run­ning for a sixth —rarely sees any blow­back for the things he says or for the fact that in his nine years in office he has allied with some of the most high-pro­file con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists and anti-gov­ern­ment extrem­ists in the Amer­i­can West: from Cliv­en Bundy and his sons to a neo-Con­fed­er­ate Ida­ho preach­er to the head of the Oath Keep­ers, an extrem­ist group that believes “the Unit­ed States is col­lab­o­rat­ing with a one-world tyran­ni­cal con­spir­a­cy called the New World Order.”

“I don’t think that the extent of [Shea’s] con­nec­tions are wide­ly known,” says Rep. Mar­cus Ric­cel­li, a three-term Demo­c­rat in the state leg­is­la­ture who rep­re­sents Spokane. “It’s a real state­ment of the Repub­li­can Par­ty that some­one with his extreme views has risen in the ranks of lead­er­ship.”

Long before Pres­i­dent Trump deemed the press the “ene­my of the peo­ple,” Matt Shea was refus­ing to speak with the media and air­ing his con­cern over con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries like FEMA camps with InfoWars’ Alex Jones. Shea also orga­nized the Spokane chap­ter of the anti-Mus­lim ACT for America,which the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter clas­si­fies as a hate group. And for the past few sum­mers, Shea has spo­ken at a secre­tive reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty run by a man who was a foun­da­tion­al fig­ure in the Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty move­ment, which, accord­ing to the Anti-Defama­tion League, believes white Euro­peans to be the lost tribes of Israel and con­sid­ers Jews to be the off­spring of Eve and Satan.

Then there are the accu­sa­tions about Shea’s tem­per. His first wife accused him of abuse, say­ing in divorce fil­ings that she “belonged to him as a pos­ses­sion,” “could not get out of bed before him,” and that dur­ing two argu­ments “he grabbed me hard enough to leave bruis­es on my arms.”

She also said Shea believed he would one day be pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, that he would be assas­si­nat­ed and that he “pre­dicts a civ­il war.”

In 2012, Shea faced a firearms charge after he alleged­ly pulled a loaded gun from his glove com­part­ment dur­ing a road-rage alter­ca­tion. He was charged for hav­ing an expired con­cealed-weapons per­mit (it was lat­er dropped; he report­ed­ly made a deal with pros­e­cu­tors for it to be dis­missed if he went a year with­out break­ing the law). Lat­er, when his Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­nent remind­ed vot­ers of the inci­dent in cam­paign mail­ers, Shea retal­i­at­ed by post­ing pic­tures of him­self to Face­book in front of her home, list­ing the near­est inter­sec­tion.

And yet he was re-elect­ed that year with 56 per­cent of the vote; in 2016, he won with an even big­ger mar­gin, 64 per­cent.

“What I hear from peo­ple is, ‘We don’t care about his char­ac­ter, he votes the way we want him to,’ ” Spokane Coun­ty Sher­iff Ozzie Kne­zovich tells Rolling Stone the after­noon before the park ral­ly. Kne­zovich endorsed Shea in 2008 and 2010, but hasn’t since. “I should have stuck with my gut,” he says. “When I first met him I had this bad vibe about him.” Shea and Kne­zovich have feud­ed in the ensu­ing years, most notably when Shea alleged a local sheriff’s deputy’s gun was used in a triple mur­der. (Shea is being sued for defama­tion for those remarks.)

But the Spokane Coun­ty GOP still endors­es Shea (the group did not return e‑mail requests for com­ment), and even U.S. Rep. Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers —the high­est-rank­ing Repub­li­can woman in the House who is in a neck-and-neck race this fall —has accept­ed his endorse­ment.

...

***

For sev­er­al years, Shea has pro­posed the same ini­tia­tive in the State­house: A place named “Lib­er­ty” — a 51st state that would sev­er the rur­al, arid and deep-red east­ern half of Wash­ing­ton from the urban, forest­ed, blue coastal region. A place where God and guns won’t be reg­u­lat­ed. A place where Shea says, con­se­quent­ly, there will be more free­dom.

It might come as a sur­prise that a leg­is­la­tor in the famous­ly pro­gres­sive North­west could have a career espous­ing far-right fringe ideas. But that image of the region is par­tial­ly dri­ven by media cov­er­age, says Cor­nell Clay­ton, direc­tor at Wash­ing­ton State University’s Thomas S. Foley Insti­tute of Pub­lic Pol­i­cy and Pub­lic Ser­vice. “With­in the state there’s what we call the Cas­cade Cur­tain. Every­thing on the west side of the state votes blue, and the east side of the state tends to vote red,” Clay­ton says.

The big excep­tion is Spokane,a city that in the 2016 elec­tion was a bright island of blue in a field of red. Spokane has become a haven for peo­ple priced out of the Northwest’s larg­er cities, a place where artists, writ­ers and musi­cians can live com­fort­able lives. Even so, all over the North­west, it’s regard­ed as a back­wa­ter bas­tion of right-wingers and mem­bers of the Patri­ot move­ment, which the Anti-Defama­tion League describes as a set of groups “whose ide­olo­gies cen­ter on anti-gov­ern­ment con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries.” Shea rep­re­sents near­by Spokane Val­ley, a 98,000-person city with no dis­cernible down­town — whiter, rich­er and more edu­cat­ed than the state aver­age — extend­ing almost all the way to the Ida­ho bor­der.

Peo­ple have been talk­ing about hack­ing off the east­ern part of Wash­ing­ton — from the Cas­cades to Ida­ho — since at least 1915. But recent­ly, cre­at­ing a bas­tion of God-fear­ing, gun-tot­ing, canned-food eat­ing white­ness where con­ser­v­a­tives can sur­vive the End Times has been embraced by sur­vival­ists and dubbed the Amer­i­can Redoubt — an idea that’s gained enough inter­est­ed par­ties to demand an actu­al cor­ner of the real estate mar­ket. Though Shea’s Lib­er­ty idea hasn’t gained much trac­tion in the State­house, it’s red meat for anti-gov­ern­ment extrem­ists at a time when some Amer­i­cans real­ly are view­ing this area of the coun­try as the last remain­ing hold­out for the type of Amer­i­ca they think can be great again.

Kne­zovich, who recent­ly pro­duced a three-part pod­cast about white suprema­cy in East­ern Wash­ing­ton and North Ida­ho (no one calls it North­ern), remind­ed me that there’s an old strain of hate that runs through the veins of this region. A big part of his job as sher­iff, he says, is deal­ing with white nation­al­ist groups — Iden­ti­ty Evropa, the Ku Klux Klan, mili­tias and hold­outs from when Aryan Nations was head­quar­tered over the bor­der in Hay­den, Ida­ho.

In 2011, author­i­ties dis­cov­ered a bomb plant­ed by a white suprema­cist on the route of Spokane’s Mar­tin Luther King Day parade. At the time, I was the Spokane week­ly paper’s music edi­tor — but sto­ries about white hate groups would seep into that world, too. Punks told me about shows in the ’90s flood­ed with skin­heads dressed in their trade­mark red sus­penders and com­bat boots tied with red laces. Spokane is where I first learned about Ruby Ridge, a 1992 Ida­ho stand­off between the Weaver fam­i­ly — sep­a­ratists with Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty beliefs — and U.S. Mar­shals. It end­ed in three deaths and fur­ther fueled anti-gov­ern­ment ideas in the region.

“There’s a deep divide with­in the Spokane Coun­ty Repub­li­can Par­ty between its main­stream wing and its more con­sti­tu­tion­al­ist wing,” Clay­ton says. “The con­sti­tu­tion­al­ist wing is heav­i­ly influ­enced by Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists and some white-suprema­cist elements…they have a par­tic­u­lar view of the Con­sti­tu­tion and it’s all steeped in this idea of lib­er­ty. It’s anti-sta­tism. It’s anti-gov­ern­ment.”

...

****

Sur­round­ed by men in boots and cow­boy hats, on a blue-skied day in the spring of 2014, Shea stood in a patch of dust and grav­el, speak­ing toward a cam­era.

“This is a war on rur­al Amer­i­ca,” he said. Behind him, Amer­i­can flags unfold­ed in the wind.

Shea had dri­ven to Bunkerville, Neva­da, to sup­port ranch­er Cliv­en Bundy, but also to announce the debut of the Coali­tion of West­ern States (COWS) —a group of politi­cians and activists hop­ing to see fed­er­al­ly man­aged pub­lic lands trans­ferred back to state hands.

Bundy had neglect­ed to pay 20 years’ worth of fees to the Bureau of Land Man­age­ment, required to graze his herd on the fed­er­al lands around his ranch. After Bundy defied sev­er­al court orders to pay up, BLM agents came to repos­sess his cat­tle —and they were met by hun­dreds of Patri­ot move­ment pro­test­ers who’d come to Bundy’s side, many car­ry­ing long guns on horse­back, and sev­er­al in sniper posi­tions on a near­by over­pass. Out­num­bered, the fed­er­al agents backed away —and the Patri­ots called it a vic­to­ry.

By Decem­ber 11th, 2015, press releas­es on COWS let­ter­head (list­ing Shea as its chair­man), declared sup­port for two Ore­gon ranch­ers, Dwight and Steven Ham­mond, who were being resen­tenced to prison time for ignit­ing fires on fed­er­al land. “This bureau­crat­ic ter­ror­ism must stop,” the release read. (The Ham­monds were par­doned by Trump in July.)

Less than a month lat­er, Shea vis­it­ed the Bundys dur­ing yet anoth­er stand­off, when Bundy’s sons, Ammon and Ryan, led a 41-day armed takeover of the Mal­heur Nation­al Wildlife Refuge in Oregon,during which a man was killed by police.

Ore­gon Pub­lic Broad­cast­ing report­ed that COWS might have even been involved with the plan­ning of the occu­pa­tion and that the group nego­ti­at­ed on behalf of the occu­piers.

“COWS had been a par­ty to the plan­ning in some degree,” retired Har­ney Coun­ty Judge Steve Grasty tells me. “I don’t know if that was a lot or a lit­tle.” Grasty says Shea and sev­er­al oth­er leg­is­la­tors demand­ed to meet him at the cour­t­house dur­ing the first days of the occu­pa­tion. “They nev­er, ever dis­closed they were part of this,” he says. “They had rela­tion­ships with Bundy pri­or to the occu­pa­tion. Nev­er dis­closed that.

...

The Bunkerville stand­off and the Mal­heur occu­pa­tion, in some ways, seem to have giv­en Shea a new audi­ence beyond his dis­trict. By June of 2016, at a place called Mar­ble Coun­try, a reli­gious com­pound in the far north­east­ern cor­ner of Wash­ing­ton, Shea was in the spot­light.

Mar­ble Coun­try was estab­lished in the 1990s by Bar­ry and Ann Byrd. Bar­ry Byrd was one of 14 sign­ers of “Rem­nant Resolves,” a foun­da­tion­al doc­u­ment of the Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty move­ment, signed by some of its most promi­nent fig­ures. The doc­u­ment is “about this notion that Amer­i­ca was intend­ed to be Chris­t­ian and need­ed a prop­er Chris­t­ian gov­ern­ment,” Mark Pit­cav­age, a senior research fel­low at the Anti-Defama­tion League, explains.

It’s writ­ten in “Rem­nant” that “the right to defend one’s life, lib­er­ty and prop­er­ty is a God-giv­en right, sup­port­ed by scrip­ture,” and any­one who pre­vents the arm­ing of men is “an ene­my of God’s peo­ple.” In addi­tion: “Abor­ti­cide is mur­der. Sodomy is a sin against God and nature. Inter­ra­cial mar­riage pol­lutes the integri­ty of the fam­i­ly. Pornog­ra­phy destroys the puri­ty of the mind…and defiles the con­science of the nation.”

On the final page, there’s a black-and-white por­trait of the document’s framers. Bar­ry Byrd, tall and gan­g­ly, is in the back row of the pho­to, in front of a ban­ner that reads, “We are Israel.”

Pit­cav­age tells me that well into the 1990s, Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty was one of the most active seg­ments of the white suprema­cist move­ment. “Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty was huge. There were whole Klan groups that were Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty. There were whole Neo-Nazi groups that were Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty. The Aryan Nations was a Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty group. If you look at many of the vio­lent acts and plots of white suprema­cists in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, over and over you will see they were acts of Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty.” But by the 2000s, its lead­ers start­ed to die off.

“A lot of peo­ple who are Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty live in rur­al and remote areas, they are more reclu­sive — peo­ple like the Weaver fam­i­ly. They reced­ed back into the wood­work,” he says.

In the past cou­ple of decades, “Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty has been a lot qui­eter. It’s been small­er, less orga­nized and less active than it was for much of the past 30 or 40 years,” Pit­cav­age says. “But it hasn’t dis­ap­peared entire­ly.”

A lot can hap­pen in 30 years, he notes. There’s no proof beyond the 1990s that Byrd —who Shea has appeared along­side for at least three years at Mar­ble Coun­try —still sub­scribes to Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty beliefs. (The Byrds didn’t return mul­ti­ple e‑mails and calls for com­ment.)

For the 2016 God and Coun­try fes­ti­val (where Shea host­ed a spe­cial, invite-only meet­ing with the Byrds), Ann Byrd explained in an e‑mail to invi­tees that it was “large­ly focused on build­ing a Resis­tance to the glob­al­ists’ relent­less assault on our lib­er­ty in the Unit­ed States.” Shea gave a work­shop for kids: “An exer­cise in field skills for youth, includ­ing (but not lim­it­ed to): field strip and reassem­ble assigned weapon; ori­en­teer­ing, field dress­ing wounds, fol­low­ing orders, PT, shoot­ing skill, etc.” After din­ner, he gave anoth­er work­shop called “Going Under­ground.”

One source I spoke to, who grew up at Mar­ble and asked to remain anony­mous due to fears about safe­ty, said the group has tak­en a par­tic­u­lar­ly apoc­a­lyp­tic turn recent­ly: “Their whole thing is, ‘The world is evil and the gov­ern­ment is evil.’ [They want] to get back to Puri­tan Amer­i­ca.”

And estab­lish­ing Lib­er­ty, the source says, is cen­tral to their plans: “They have a Con­sti­tu­tion. They have a song they have their kids sing now.… They are 100 per­cent on board and they think it’s going to hap­pen soon.”

...

———–

“Something’s Brew­ing in the Deep Red West” By Leah Sot­tile; Rolling Stone; 10/23/2018

“Long before Pres­i­dent Trump deemed the press the “ene­my of the peo­ple,” Matt Shea was refus­ing to speak with the media and air­ing his con­cern over con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries like FEMA camps with InfoWars’ Alex Jones. Shea also orga­nized the Spokane chap­ter of the anti-Mus­lim ACT for America,which the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter clas­si­fies as a hate group. And for the past few sum­mers, Shea has spo­ken at a secre­tive reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty run by a man who was a foun­da­tion­al fig­ure in the Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty move­ment, which, accord­ing to the Anti-Defama­tion League, believes white Euro­peans to be the lost tribes of Israel and con­sid­ers Jews to be the off­spring of Eve and Satan.”

For­mer Wash­ing­ton State rep­re­sen­ta­tive Matt Shea isn’t just anoth­er Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist politi­cian advo­cat­ing for the cre­ation of a new 51st state in East­ern Wash­ing­ton. He’s a vocal advo­cate of the kind of the­ol­o­gy found Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty white suprema­cist move­ments. The kind of move­ments that ani­mat­ed groups like Aryan Nation­als in the Pacif­ic North­west for decades. And yet, not only had Shea repeat­ed­ly won reelec­tion, but he con­tin­ued to get the endorse­ment of the Spokane Coun­ty GOP:

...
In 2012, Shea faced a firearms charge after he alleged­ly pulled a loaded gun from his glove com­part­ment dur­ing a road-rage alter­ca­tion. He was charged for hav­ing an expired con­cealed-weapons per­mit (it was lat­er dropped; he report­ed­ly made a deal with pros­e­cu­tors for it to be dis­missed if he went a year with­out break­ing the law). Lat­er, when his Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­nent remind­ed vot­ers of the inci­dent in cam­paign mail­ers, Shea retal­i­at­ed by post­ing pic­tures of him­self to Face­book in front of her home, list­ing the near­est inter­sec­tion.

And yet he was re-elect­ed that year with 56 per­cent of the vote; in 2016, he won with an even big­ger mar­gin, 64 per­cent.

“What I hear from peo­ple is, ‘We don’t care about his char­ac­ter, he votes the way we want him to,’ ” Spokane Coun­ty Sher­iff Ozzie Kne­zovich tells Rolling Stone the after­noon before the park ral­ly. Kne­zovich endorsed Shea in 2008 and 2010, but hasn’t since. “I should have stuck with my gut,” he says. “When I first met him I had this bad vibe about him.” Shea and Kne­zovich have feud­ed in the ensu­ing years, most notably when Shea alleged a local sheriff’s deputy’s gun was used in a triple mur­der. (Shea is being sued for defama­tion for those remarks.)

But the Spokane Coun­ty GOP still endors­es Shea (the group did not return e‑mail requests for com­ment), and even U.S. Rep. Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers —the high­est-rank­ing Repub­li­can woman in the House who is in a neck-and-neck race this fall —has accept­ed his endorse­ment.
...

And that GOP sup­port was sus­tained despite the role Shea played in the Bundy clan armed stand­offs. Recall how, when Shea was caught par­tic­i­pat­ing in con­ver­sa­tions about prepar­ing for a Bib­li­cal civ­il war on the encrypt­ed Sig­nal app, one of the par­tic­i­pants the chat was Antho­ny Bosworth, who par­tic­i­pat­ing in the 2016 occu­pa­tion of the Mal­heur wildlife refuge report­ed­ly at Shea’s request. Shea’s polit­i­cal career in root­ed in prepar­ing for some sort of civ­il war:

...
Shea had dri­ven to Bunkerville, Neva­da, to sup­port ranch­er Cliv­en Bundy, but also to announce the debut of the Coali­tion of West­ern States (COWS) —a group of politi­cians and activists hop­ing to see fed­er­al­ly man­aged pub­lic lands trans­ferred back to state hands.

Bundy had neglect­ed to pay 20 years’ worth of fees to the Bureau of Land Man­age­ment, required to graze his herd on the fed­er­al lands around his ranch. After Bundy defied sev­er­al court orders to pay up, BLM agents came to repos­sess his cat­tle —and they were met by hun­dreds of Patri­ot move­ment pro­test­ers who’d come to Bundy’s side, many car­ry­ing long guns on horse­back, and sev­er­al in sniper posi­tions on a near­by over­pass. Out­num­bered, the fed­er­al agents backed away —and the Patri­ots called it a vic­to­ry.

By Decem­ber 11th, 2015, press releas­es on COWS let­ter­head (list­ing Shea as its chair­man), declared sup­port for two Ore­gon ranch­ers, Dwight and Steven Ham­mond, who were being resen­tenced to prison time for ignit­ing fires on fed­er­al land. “This bureau­crat­ic ter­ror­ism must stop,” the release read. (The Ham­monds were par­doned by Trump in July.)

Less than a month lat­er, Shea vis­it­ed the Bundys dur­ing yet anoth­er stand­off, when Bundy’s sons, Ammon and Ryan, led a 41-day armed takeover of the Mal­heur Nation­al Wildlife Refuge in Oregon,during which a man was killed by police.

Ore­gon Pub­lic Broad­cast­ing report­ed that COWS might have even been involved with the plan­ning of the occu­pa­tion and that the group nego­ti­at­ed on behalf of the occu­piers.

“COWS had been a par­ty to the plan­ning in some degree,” retired Har­ney Coun­ty Judge Steve Grasty tells me. “I don’t know if that was a lot or a lit­tle.” Grasty says Shea and sev­er­al oth­er leg­is­la­tors demand­ed to meet him at the cour­t­house dur­ing the first days of the occu­pa­tion. “They nev­er, ever dis­closed they were part of this,” he says. “They had rela­tion­ships with Bundy pri­or to the occu­pa­tion. Nev­er dis­closed that.
...

And then we get to this very impor­tant obser­va­tion from the ADL’s Mark Pit­cav­age: while Matt Shea is clear­ly close to Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty lead­ers like Bar­ry and Ann Byrd — who have been described as Shea’s “spir­i­tu­al advi­sors” — the fact of the mat­ter is that the Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty move­ment has been much small­er and less orga­nized in recent decades than it was through­out the 70s, 80s, and 90s:

...
The Bunkerville stand­off and the Mal­heur occu­pa­tion, in some ways, seem to have giv­en Shea a new audi­ence beyond his dis­trict. By June of 2016, at a place called Mar­ble Coun­try, a reli­gious com­pound in the far north­east­ern cor­ner of Wash­ing­ton, Shea was in the spot­light.

Mar­ble Coun­try was estab­lished in the 1990s by Bar­ry and Ann Byrd. Bar­ry Byrd was one of 14 sign­ers of “Rem­nant Resolves,” a foun­da­tion­al doc­u­ment of the Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty move­ment, signed by some of its most promi­nent fig­ures. The doc­u­ment is “about this notion that Amer­i­ca was intend­ed to be Chris­t­ian and need­ed a prop­er Chris­t­ian gov­ern­ment,” Mark Pit­cav­age, a senior research fel­low at the Anti-Defama­tion League, explains.

It’s writ­ten in “Rem­nant” that “the right to defend one’s life, lib­er­ty and prop­er­ty is a God-giv­en right, sup­port­ed by scrip­ture,” and any­one who pre­vents the arm­ing of men is “an ene­my of God’s peo­ple.” In addi­tion: “Abor­ti­cide is mur­der. Sodomy is a sin against God and nature. Inter­ra­cial mar­riage pol­lutes the integri­ty of the fam­i­ly. Pornog­ra­phy destroys the puri­ty of the mind…and defiles the con­science of the nation.”

On the final page, there’s a black-and-white por­trait of the document’s framers. Bar­ry Byrd, tall and gan­g­ly, is in the back row of the pho­to, in front of a ban­ner that reads, “We are Israel.”

Pit­cav­age tells me that well into the 1990s, Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty was one of the most active seg­ments of the white suprema­cist move­ment. “Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty was huge. There were whole Klan groups that were Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty. There were whole Neo-Nazi groups that were Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty. The Aryan Nations was a Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty group. If you look at many of the vio­lent acts and plots of white suprema­cists in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, over and over you will see they were acts of Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty.” But by the 2000s, its lead­ers start­ed to die off.

“A lot of peo­ple who are Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty live in rur­al and remote areas, they are more reclu­sive — peo­ple like the Weaver fam­i­ly. They reced­ed back into the wood­work,” he says.

In the past cou­ple of decades, “Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty has been a lot qui­eter. It’s been small­er, less orga­nized and less active than it was for much of the past 30 or 40 years,” Pit­cav­age says. “But it hasn’t dis­ap­peared entire­ly.”
...

So while we don’t know what over­all impact the efforts of Greg Joh­son and Ryan Schus­ter’s to pro­mote accel­er­a­tionist white pow­er ide­olo­gies on the next gen­er­a­tion of extrem­ists, the evi­dence would indi­cate that goals were real­ized. Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty white suprema­cist ter­ror real­ly has been at least par­tial­ly replaced with accel­er­a­tionist groups like Atom­Waf­fen and oth­er strains of Nazism with a dis­tinct­ly non-Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty fla­vor. And yet, in the end, they’re all still very anal­o­gous forms of Nazism with inhu­mane white suprema­cy at their core. And as we’re about to see, the pop­u­lar­iza­tion of accel­er­a­tionist Nazism over the last cou­ple of decades was­n’t the sole result of John­son and Schus­ter’s Mason-pro­mot­ing efforts. They had help. Decades of help now, from a paid FBI infor­mant with the same mis­sion.

Joshua Caleb Sutter: the FBI’s Nazi Hindu Satanist Accelerationist Publisher

We can hard­ly expect the fig­ures who inspire extrem­ists to be of decent char­ac­ter, although we should­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly expect them to be FBI long­stand­ing infor­mants. But that’s what we find at the heart of this sto­ry. For all the impact John­son and Schus­ter’s pro­mo­tion of the works of James Mason, David Myatt, and Sav­i­t­ra Devi may have had, it’s hard to argue that had more impact than the over two decades Joshua Caleb Sut­ter has spent as an aggres­sive pro­mot­er of these same ide­olo­gies. Pro­mo­tion­al work that includes per­son­al­ly join­ing groups like Atom­waf­fen where Sut­ter could pop­u­lar­ize the Satan­ic O9A ide­ol­o­gy direct­ly. But Sut­ter did­n’t just join these groups. He worked to make the extrem­ist tracts pro­duced by his pub­lish­ing hous­es into manda­to­ry read­ing for the group’s mem­bers. Yes, it’s not an exag­ger­a­tion to say Sut­ter per­son­al­ly cre­at­ed Atom­waf­fen’s book club. Books that cel­e­brate Satan­ic mur­der and sac­ri­fice, rape, pedophil­ia, and pret­ty much the worst moral frame­work one could imag­ine. And, of course, James Mason’s Siege. Beyond pub­lish­ing extrem­ist con­tent, Sut­ter also formed a US branch of David Myat­t’s Order of the Nine Angles satan­ic out­fit called the “Tem­pel ov Blood”. Infus­ing the accel­er­a­tionist ide­olo­gies of Atom­waf­fen with the vio­lent satan­ic con­tent of the Order of Nine Angles has been one of Sut­ter’s big ‘accom­plish­ments’ over the last decade.

But Sut­ter isn’t just a key fig­ure in the emer­gence and evo­lu­tion of groups like Atom­waf­fen and the many copy­cat groups that have sprung up in its like­ness. He’s also played a lead­ing role in emer­gence of groups like “764”, an online net­work of sociopaths that exists to entrap youth in world of black­mail, sex­u­al trau­ma and pedophil­ia, all with a goal of coerc­ing these youth into com­mit­ting ter­ror­is­tic acts. As we’re going see, these groups inten­tion­al­ly sub­ject mem­bers to the most vio­lent and depraved con­tent they can find for the pur­pose of desen­si­tiz­ing them. Sut­ter has even writ­ten how “This Tem­pel is in many ways a social pro­gram­ming exper­i­ment.” That’s the hor­rif­ic over­ar­ch­ing con­text of this sto­ry of Joshua Caleb Sut­ter: he makes extrem­ists more extreme.

And he’s done this all while serv­ing as an under­cov­er FBI infor­mant, a role Sut­ter has had since he was released from prison in 2004. Sut­ter has report­ed­ly received at least $140k from the FBI. Not that Sut­ter was­n’t already an extrem­ist before becom­ing an FBI agent. He was leader in the Aryan Nations, in fac­sees and was arrest­ed in 2003 on gun charges that took place as part of a larg­er Aryan Nations plot to blow up abor­tion clin­ics. But he was­n’t yet one of the lead­ing pro­mot­ers of satan­ic Nazism and fas­cist child abuse. That all came after he become an infor­mant, although he formed the Tem­pel ov Blood in 2003 which means that may have hap­pened while he was prison and already an infor­mant.

Instead, as we’re going to see, Sut­ter was immersed in Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty white suprema­cist pol­i­tics at the time of his 2003 arrest, and not just the Aryan Nations. It turns out both Sut­ter and his father, David Sut­ter, him­self a well known South Car­oli­na white suprema­cist preach­er, worked at the South­ern Patri­ot Shop, a out­let for neo-Con­fed­er­ate mer­chan­dise that was owned by the League of the South (LOS) and served as a LOS club house. It’s anoth­er key piece of con­text in this sto­ry. Because as we’re also going to see, the League of the South and the neo-Con­fed­er­ate move­ment behind it is arguably more influ­en­tial than at any point since the civ­il rights move­ment. That neo-Con­fed­er­ate influ­ence is large­ly due to the fusion of MAGA with the Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism of the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP), the key orga­niz­ing force behind the unprece­dent­ed Project 2025 agen­da cur­rent­ly being imple­ment­ed. The extent of the LOS prox­im­i­ty to the high­est lev­els of pow­er in DC is also part of what we’re going to be look­ing at. Because That’s part of the con­text of the sto­ry of Joshua Caleb Sut­ter. It’s not just that the fig­ure being the pop­u­lar­iza­tion of satan­ic accel­er­a­tionist Nazism has been a FBI infor­mant since 2003. There’s also the fact that the neo-Con­fed­er­ate white nation­al­ist ide­ol­o­gy that he was pop­u­lar­iz­ing at the time of his 2003 arrest has heav­i­ly pop­u­lar­ized too. Pop­u­lar­ized and pro­found­ly empow­ered. This is a sto­ry with Joshua Caleb Sut­ter at the cen­ter, but it’s a much a big­ger sto­ry than just Sut­ter’s shock­ing career:

Wired

He Was an FBI Informant—and Inspired a Gen­er­a­tion of Vio­lent Extrem­ists

Joshua Caleb Sut­ter infil­trat­ed far-right extrem­ist orga­ni­za­tions as a con­fi­den­tial FBI infor­mant, all while pro­mot­ing hate­ful ide­olo­gies that influ­enced some of the inter­net’s most vio­lent groups.

By Ali Win­ston and Jake Han­ra­han
Secu­ri­ty
Aug 1, 2024 10:50 AM

The Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion has a long and check­ered his­to­ry of let­ting con­fi­den­tial infor­mants run wild. Boston mob­ster James “Whitey” Bul­ger famous­ly used his pro­tect­ed sta­tus to knock off New Eng­land under­world rivals. COIN­TEL­PRO-era provo­ca­teur Gary Thomas Rowe Jr. was involved in mul­ti­ple civ­il rights atroc­i­ties. To catch crim­i­nals and extrem­ists, you have to play dirty.

Joshua Caleb Sut­ter firm­ly fits into this frame­work. A long­time occultist and neo-Nazi, Sut­ter became an FBI infor­mant rough­ly 20 years ago after being sent to prison for try­ing to buy a silencer and a defaced Glock .40 pis­tol from an under­cov­er fed in Philadel­phia. At the time of his arrest, Sut­ter was liv­ing on an Aryan Nations com­pound in Penn­syl­va­nia. Since then, he’s earned at least $140,000 infil­trat­ing a range of far-right orga­ni­za­tions, most noto­ri­ous­ly the Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion (AWD) start­ing in 2017. Details of Sutter’s involvement—which the gov­ern­ment has yet to offi­cial­ly confirm—emerged in 2021 dur­ing the fed­er­al tri­al of AWD leader Kaleb Cole, infor­ma­tion first revealed that August.

Being out­ed as a fed­er­al infor­mant did not force Sut­ter into the shad­ows. Sut­ter kept pub­lish­ing extrem­ist books through his Mar­tinet Press imprint, which helped fuel the ascent of the Order of Nine Angles (O9A), a mur­der­ous blend of Satanism and neo-fas­cism that is now per­va­sive in the glob­al far right and has inspired vio­lence in Rus­sia, Great Britain, the Unit­ed States, Cana­da, and else­where, a WIRED inves­ti­ga­tion found. The con­se­quences of Sutter’s vir­u­lent extreme right pro­pa­gan­da con­tin­ue to unfold, spawn­ing new vari­eties of ultra­vi­o­lent ter­ror­ism and vio­lence in the dark­est cor­ners of the inter­net that now involve sys­temic child sex­u­al abuse mate­r­i­al (CSAM) and oth­er forms of child abuse.

Despite this, it’s unclear what, if any­thing, the FBI is doing with regard to Sutter’s con­duct over decades. While the FBI declined to com­ment on Sutter’s sta­tus as an infor­mant, tes­ti­mo­ny from a con­fi­den­tial human source in the 2021 tri­al of Kaleb Cole, while redact­ing Sutter’s name, revealed his rela­tion­ship with the bureau through details about his 2003 con­vic­tion on gun-relat­ed charges. A for­mer far-right mil­i­tant who also met Sut­ter face to face dur­ing this peri­od also con­firmed he was an FBI infor­mant.

This spring, WIRED found evi­dence of Sutter’s exten­sive influ­ence on and pro­mo­tion of an inter­na­tion­al child abuse net­work that goes alter­na­tive­ly by “com” or “764.” Sutter’s con­tin­ued involve­ment in the most extreme cor­ners of the far right, which engage in homi­ci­dal vio­lence and sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly abuse minors, raise ques­tions about how the FBI selects their infor­mants, how they hold them to account, and what degree of blow­back the bureau is will­ing to tol­er­ate in order to make cas­es against vio­lent extrem­ists.

The Com­pa­ny You Keep

As a one-time leader of the Aryan Nations, Sutter’s links to extrem­ism are expan­sive. He’s pledged feal­ty to North Korea, oper­at­ed a Hin­du sect, and cre­at­ed the Tem­pel ov Blood (ToB), a “nex­ion” or cell of the Order of Nine Angles, an infa­mous neo-Nazi Satanist cult for which Sutter’s Mar­tinet Press act­ed as a pub­lish­ing house and pro­pa­gan­da vehicle—a jour­ney doc­u­ment­ed by late inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ist Nate Thay­er. In recent years, O9A has become ever-present in the most vio­lent cor­ners of the con­tem­po­rary far right.

These extrem­ist enti­ties and others—the Tem­pel ov Blood, the Rur­al People’s Par­ty, New Bihar Mandir—were based at or near Sut­ter’s rur­al prop­er­ty in cen­tral South Car­oli­na. Sut­ter tes­ti­fied in late 2017 that his inter­est in occultism and key role in ToB led him to meet John Cameron Den­ton, a senior fig­ure in the Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion who went by “Rape” in the neo-Nazi ter­ror­ist group; in one court doc­u­ment filed after his arrest in 2020, US pros­e­cu­tors said two cocon­spir­a­tors claimed Den­ton pos­sessed CSAM.

In the past few years, Sut­ter active­ly pro­mot­ed the child abuse and extor­tion net­work 764 and some of its affil­i­at­ed groups. 764, as WIRED report­ed in March along with The Wash­ing­ton Post, Der Spiegel, and Recorder, is the tar­get of an inter­na­tion­al law enforce­ment inves­ti­ga­tion, with more than a dozen mem­bers arrest­ed in the Unit­ed States, Europe, and Brazil.

...

Par­tic­i­pants in 764 and its affil­i­at­ed splin­ter groups like CLVT, 7997, H3ll, and Harm Nation extort minors into sex­u­al­ly exploit­ing or harm­ing them­selves. They orga­nize on online plat­forms such as Telegram and Dis­cord, and find minors via Insta­gram, Roblox, Minecraft, and oth­er pop­u­lar games and social media apps where chil­dren con­gre­gate online. One par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­turb­ing prac­tice is urg­ing vic­tims to carve the user­names of their exploiter into their flesh, known with­in the net­work as a “cut­sign.” Par­tic­i­pants in this net­work have also been accused of rob­beries, in-per­son sex­u­al abuse of minors, kid­nap­ping, weapons vio­la­tions, swat­ting, and mur­der.

The US Depart­ment of Jus­tice is pur­su­ing fur­ther charges against alleged mem­bers of these groups through fed­er­al grand jury pro­ceed­ings, accord­ing to court records filed ear­li­er this year in the case of Harm Nation founder Kyle Spitze. A young Eng­lish par­tic­i­pant in 764 also faces ter­ror­ism charges for alleged­ly plot­ting to kill a home­less man. The net­work is also con­nect­ed to MKU, a nihilist East­ern Euro­pean skin­head crew whose mem­bers are accused of a series of ran­dom attacks and killings in Ukraine and Rus­sia.

Sutter’s influ­ence on 764 is read­i­ly appar­ent in the facts sur­round­ing some of the group’s most vio­lent par­tic­i­pants, par­tic­u­lar­ly the pos­ses­sion of O9A texts pub­lished by Sutter’s Mar­tinet Press imprint, tat­toos and flags of the Tem­pel ov Blood’s insignia, and his con­sis­tent pro­mo­tion of it on social media and in new­er pub­li­ca­tions. Alleged mem­bers of the exploita­tion net­work include Angel Almei­da, who is cur­rent­ly fac­ing a max­i­mum penal­ty of life on fed­er­al charges of coerc­ing a minor to com­mit sex­u­al acts and pos­ses­sion of CSAM and a firearm, and a Roman­ian nation­al con­vict­ed of pos­sess­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing CSAM and had Tem­pel ov Blood indi­cia or tat­toos of the group’s tri­dent emblem.

The con­nec­tions don’t end there. After 2022, Sut­ter moth­balled Mar­tinet Press as a pub­lic enti­ty and fired up a new­er “pub­lish­ing” project, Agony’s Point Press, post­ing on Twit­ter (now X) and Sub­stack and sell­ing orig­i­nal occult titles via Ama­zon and even Barnes & Noble. Agony’s Point Press adver­tis­es itself as “the hor­ri­fy­ing voice of Wamphyrism, pre­miere Satan­ic The­o­ry and preda­to­ry spir­i­tu­al­i­ty,” all themes that refer back direct­ly to the­o­ries of O9A prac­tices first fleshed out in titles pub­lished by Mar­tinet Press.

One of the Agony’s Point titles, vol­ume one of the Drums of Tophet zine, fea­tures an inter­view with “Com­man­der Butch­er” of MKU, a lethal East­ern Euro­pean skin­head group that has sig­nif­i­cant over­lap with 764. In July, US author­i­ties unveiled 20-year-old Geor­gian nation­al Michail Chkhikvishvili as Butcher’s alleged true iden­ti­ty after he was arrest­ed on an inter­pol war­rant in Moldo­va on fed­er­al charges for plot­ting a mass casu­al­ty attack in New York City. In the inter­view with Sutter’s jour­nal from last fall, Chkhikvishvili describes his own rad­i­cal­iza­tion and char­ac­ter­ized the ethos of his group as “reli­gion mur­der,” com­ple­ment­ed by a pho­to mon­tage of pur­port­ed MKU attacks.

...

Accord­ing to vic­tims of 764 mem­bers, “Tob­bz,” a trou­bled young Ger­man con­vict­ed of killing an elder­ly woman and stab­bing a man in 2022, was in the orig­i­nal 764 Dis­cord serv­er along with Almei­da and Bradley Caden­head, 764’s teenage founder who is serv­ing decades in a Texas prison for CSAM offens­es. Tob­bz also had a Tem­pel ov Blood tri­dent tat­too and had joined MKU, accord­ing to report­ing from Der Spiegel and Recorder.

The sec­ond issue of Drums of Tophet, which its authors describe as “designed for the dark war­riors of a doom now immi­nent on the near hori­zon,” con­tin­ues in the same vein with fea­tures Q309, an occult sado­masochis­tic, self-described “art project” that bor­ders on CSAM and promi­nent­ly fea­tures Order of Nine Angles themes and a lengthy inter­view with a founder of the Satan­ic Front, a south­ern occultist orga­ni­za­tion.

In com­mu­ni­ca­tions with a for­mer Tem­pel ov Blood mem­ber viewed by WIRED, Sut­ter open­ly dis­cussed view­ing CSAM with oth­er mem­bers of his nex­ion, and seemed obsessed with con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries like Project Monarch that involved child abuse. The for­mer ToB mem­ber also not­ed Sutter’s fas­ci­na­tion with the case of Bel­gian ser­i­al killer, rapist, and pedophile Marc Dutroux. Short­ly before tak­ing the Agony’s Point Press X account offline in March of this year, the account post­ed a pho­to of an occult altar fea­tur­ing a blood-smeared pho­to of Dutroux next to human and ani­mal skele­tal remains, as well as a sev­ered doll’s head inked with light­ning bolts and a swasti­ka, on top of a flag fea­tur­ing a Nazi death’s head and the Nazi slo­gan “Meine ehre ist meine treue” (my hon­or is my alle­giance).

On sev­er­al occa­sions in the past year, the Agony’s Point Press account on X post­ed videos and pho­tos high­light­ing 764 and its off­shoots, par­tic­u­lar­ly MKU and the group’s grow­ing inter­est in the Order of Nine Angles. The account also rou­tine­ly post­ed about 764 and com, occa­sion­al­ly adopt­ing a faux jour­nal­is­tic tone to laun­der posts from the CSAM dis­tri­b­u­tion and extor­tion net­work. Around Christ­mas 2023, @agonyspoint post­ed a graph­ic of MKU’s hock­ey goalie mask insignia with a ToB tri­dent embla­zoned in its fore­head.

All this took place as the FBI’s inves­ti­ga­tion into 764 expand­ed and new arrests, includ­ing those of alleged mem­ber Kyle Spitze and Richard Dens­more, who plead­ed guilty in mid-July, were made in the ear­ly months of 2024. More­over, there is an active FBI inves­ti­ga­tion on MKU that stems direct­ly from its ties to 764, accord­ing to a law enforce­ment source with knowl­edge of the mat­ter.

...

“A Deal With the Dev­il”

The FBI has nev­er addressed Sutter’s role in fuel­ing vio­lent far-right ide­ol­o­gy. But the blow­back from Sutter’s actions over the past decade is a fea­ture, not a bug, of Amer­i­can law enforcement’s use of con­fi­den­tial infor­mants, says Alexan­dra Nat­apoff, a pro­fes­sor at Har­vard Law School who has stud­ied the top­ic exten­sive­ly for more than 15 years. “The infor­mant mar­ket is run on this tac­it, uncom­fort­able under­stand­ing that the cure some­times might be worse than the dis­ease,” Nat­apoff tells WIRED. By uti­liz­ing peo­ple with crim­i­nal or extrem­ist his­to­ries to infil­trate hard-to-pen­e­trate milieus like gangs, orga­nized crime, or ter­ror­ist groups, she explains, the US gov­ern­ment rewards such peo­ple for con­tin­u­ing to swim in the same waters.

“Baked into that arrange­ment is the well-under­stood, avoid­able phe­nom­e­non that these indi­vid­u­als are going to com­mit crim­i­nal acts,” Nat­apoff says. “The FBI has autho­rized crim­i­nal and unau­tho­rized crim­i­nal activ­i­ty by con­fi­den­tial human sources, and the mere fact that those guide­lines have those def­i­n­i­tions is a recog­ni­tion about the nature of infor­mants.”

Accord­ing to a New York Uni­ver­si­ty Law School study, 41 per­cent of all fed­er­al ter­ror­ism cas­es after 9/11 involve the use of a con­fi­den­tial source. Per a for­mer FBI oper­a­tive quot­ed in Natapoff’s mile­stone study of infor­mants, Snitch­ing, “You can’t get from A to B with­out an infor­mant.” It’s an arrange­ment Nat­apoff calls “a deal with the dev­il.”

Is Sut­ter still an FBI infor­mant? We don’t know: The bureau refused to answer ques­tions about him in 2022 and for this arti­cle. How­ev­er, Sutter’s engage­ment with the US gov­ern­ment more broad­ly dates back fur­ther than it first appears. With the help of researcher Vic­tor Mihail, WIRED was able to deter­mine that Sut­ter briefly enrolled him­self in the US Navy in 2000, serv­ing from June through July of that year, accord­ing to mil­i­tary records. It was short-lived as he failed out of basic train­ing, but it pre­dates the 2003 arrest when he alleged­ly was first recruit­ed as a fed­er­al infor­mant.

There’s also evi­dence that Sut­ter was per­haps active in the Order of Nine Angles much ear­li­er than pre­vi­ous­ly thought. In old online Satanist texts, a man under the alias “Wul­fran Hall” is cred­it­ed as con­tribut­ing to some of the orig­i­nal O9A rit­u­al music in 1997. This was along­side ear­ly mem­bers includ­ing Richard Moult, aka “Chris­tos Beest.” Wul­fran Hall is known to be an alias used by Sut­ter short­ly after he began to col­lab­o­rate with fed­er­al offi­cials in the ear­ly 2000s.

Sut­ter was also focused heav­i­ly on music while run­ning Tem­pel Ov Blood. As part of this far-right Satan­ic move­ment, Sut­ter had a music project named “Gulag,” which ran along­side his Mar­tinet Press. Both of these projects pro­mot­ed ultra­vi­o­lence, demon­ic Satanism, rit­u­al­is­tic tor­ture, and pedophil­ia.

While the Agony’s Point Press X account is now gone and his infor­mant sta­tus remains unclear, Sut­ter may reemerge after this burst of atten­tion dies down. Mean­while, the influ­ence of ToB and the books he pub­lish­es remains appar­ent on Telegram, where the com and 764 net­work is once again coa­lesc­ing in new chan­nels.

———–

“He Was an FBI Informant—and Inspired a Gen­er­a­tion of Vio­lent Extrem­ists” By Ali Win­ston and Jake Han­ra­han; Wired; 08/01/2024

“Joshua Caleb Sut­ter firm­ly fits into this frame­work. A long­time occultist and neo-Nazi, Sut­ter became an FBI infor­mant rough­ly 20 years ago after being sent to prison for try­ing to buy a silencer and a defaced Glock .40 pis­tol from an under­cov­er fed in Philadel­phia. At the time of his arrest, Sut­ter was liv­ing on an Aryan Nations com­pound in Penn­syl­va­nia. Since then, he’s earned at least $140,000 infil­trat­ing a range of far-right orga­ni­za­tions, most noto­ri­ous­ly the Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion (AWD) start­ing in 2017. Details of Sutter’s involvement—which the gov­ern­ment has yet to offi­cial­ly con­firm—emerged in 2021 dur­ing the fed­er­al tri­al of AWD leader Kaleb Cole, infor­ma­tion first revealed that August.”

Joshua Caleb Sut­ter isn’t just a lead­ing online neo-Nazi with an exten­sive his­to­ry of pub­lish­ing extrem­ist con­tent. He’s also a long-time FBI infor­mant who has earned at least $140,000 since rough­ly 2003 for his work infil­trat­ing far right orga­ni­za­tions. Lit­er­al­ly right around the time John­son and Schus­ter were try­ing to pop­u­lar­ize James Mason-style accel­er­a­tionism and occultism Nazism. What a remark­able coin­ci­dence.

And yet, amaz­ing­ly, being out­ed as an FBI infor­mant dur­ing the 2021 tri­al of Atom­waf­fen leader Kaleb Cole does­n’t appear to have end­ed Sut­ter’s extrem­ist pub­lish­ing activ­i­ties. Instead, his Mar­tinet Press kept on pro­mot­ing groups like O9A and oth­er groups that com­prise a glob­al net­work of Nazis, ter­ror­ists, and child abusers. The enor­mous growth of O9A’s pop­u­lar­i­ty in recent years did­n’t just spon­ta­neous­ly hap­pen. So how has the FBI han­dled the fact that their long-time infor­mant is also one of the biggest pro­mot­er of groups like the Order of Nine Angles? That’s unclear. Just as it’s unclear whether Sut­ter is still an infor­mant since the FBI refus­es to answer. Although that refusal is kind of a hint:

...
Being out­ed as a fed­er­al infor­mant did not force Sut­ter into the shad­ows. Sut­ter kept pub­lish­ing extrem­ist books through his Mar­tinet Press imprint, which helped fuel the ascent of the Order of Nine Angles (O9A), a mur­der­ous blend of Satanism and neo-fas­cism that is now per­va­sive in the glob­al far right and has inspired vio­lence in Rus­sia, Great Britain, the Unit­ed States, Cana­da, and else­where, a WIRED inves­ti­ga­tion found. The con­se­quences of Sutter’s vir­u­lent extreme right pro­pa­gan­da con­tin­ue to unfold, spawn­ing new vari­eties of ultra­vi­o­lent ter­ror­ism and vio­lence in the dark­est cor­ners of the inter­net that now involve sys­temic child sex­u­al abuse mate­r­i­al (CSAM) and oth­er forms of child abuse.

Despite this, it’s unclear what, if any­thing, the FBI is doing with regard to Sutter’s con­duct over decades. While the FBI declined to com­ment on Sutter’s sta­tus as an infor­mant, tes­ti­mo­ny from a con­fi­den­tial human source in the 2021 tri­al of Kaleb Cole, while redact­ing Sutter’s name, revealed his rela­tion­ship with the bureau through details about his 2003 con­vic­tion on gun-relat­ed charges. A for­mer far-right mil­i­tant who also met Sut­ter face to face dur­ing this peri­od also con­firmed he was an FBI infor­mant.

...

As a one-time leader of the Aryan Nations, Sutter’s links to extrem­ism are expan­sive. He’s pledged feal­ty to North Korea, oper­at­ed a Hin­du sect, and cre­at­ed the Tem­pel ov Blood (ToB), a “nex­ion” or cell of the Order of Nine Angles, an infa­mous neo-Nazi Satanist cult for which Sutter’s Mar­tinet Press act­ed as a pub­lish­ing house and pro­pa­gan­da vehi­cle—a jour­ney doc­u­ment­ed by late inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ist Nate Thay­er. In recent years, O9A has become ever-present in the most vio­lent cor­ners of the con­tem­po­rary far right.

These extrem­ist enti­ties and others—the Tem­pel ov Blood, the Rur­al People’s Par­ty, New Bihar Mandir—were based at or near Sut­ter’s rur­al prop­er­ty in cen­tral South Car­oli­na. Sut­ter tes­ti­fied in late 2017 that his inter­est in occultism and key role in ToB led him to meet John Cameron Den­ton, a senior fig­ure in the Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion who went by “Rape” in the neo-Nazi ter­ror­ist group; in one court doc­u­ment filed after his arrest in 2020, US pros­e­cu­tors said two cocon­spir­a­tors claimed Den­ton pos­sessed CSAM.

...

Is Sut­ter still an FBI infor­mant? We don’t know: The bureau refused to answer ques­tions about him in 2022 and for this arti­cle. How­ev­er, Sutter’s engage­ment with the US gov­ern­ment more broad­ly dates back fur­ther than it first appears. With the help of researcher Vic­tor Mihail, WIRED was able to deter­mine that Sut­ter briefly enrolled him­self in the US Navy in 2000, serv­ing from June through July of that year, accord­ing to mil­i­tary records. It was short-lived as he failed out of basic train­ing, but it pre­dates the 2003 arrest when he alleged­ly was first recruit­ed as a fed­er­al infor­mant.

...

While the Agony’s Point Press X account is now gone and his infor­mant sta­tus remains unclear, Sut­ter may reemerge after this burst of atten­tion dies down. Mean­while, the influ­ence of ToB and the books he pub­lish­es remains appar­ent on Telegram, where the com and 764 net­work is once again coa­lesc­ing in new chan­nels.
...

Also note how Sut­ter’s work as an extrem­ist pub­lish­er was­n’t lim­it­ed to print­ing books. In 2022, he seem­ing­ly moth­balled Mar­tinet Press and start­ed Agony’s Point Press, which involved post­ing on Twit­ter, Sub­stack and even sell­ing occult titles via Ama­zon and even Barnes & Noble. As we’re going to see, evi­dence points towards Sut­ter’s extrem­ist pub­li­ca­tion his­to­ry going back to 2004, around the same time he become an FBI infor­mant. So this is some­one with decades of expe­ri­ence serv­ing as an extrem­ist pub­lish­er FBI infor­mant:

...
The con­nec­tions don’t end there. After 2022, Sut­ter moth­balled Mar­tinet Press as a pub­lic enti­ty and fired up a new­er “pub­lish­ing” project, Agony’s Point Press, post­ing on Twit­ter (now X) and Sub­stack and sell­ing orig­i­nal occult titles via Ama­zon and even Barnes & Noble. Agony’s Point Press adver­tis­es itself as “the hor­ri­fy­ing voice of Wamphyrism, pre­miere Satan­ic The­o­ry and preda­to­ry spir­i­tu­al­i­ty,” all themes that refer back direct­ly to the­o­ries of O9A prac­tices first fleshed out in titles pub­lished by Mar­tinet Press.
...

But Sut­ter’s his­to­ry as an extrem­ist pub­lish­er who pro­mot­ed groups like O9A while serv­ing as an FBI infor­mant is just part of what makes this sto­ry so dis­turb­ing. There’s also the fact that Sut­ter appears to be deeply involved with an inter­na­tion­al child abuse net­work, “764”, or “com”, that has been the tar­get of an inter­na­tion­al inves­ti­ga­tion that has already result­ed in more than a dozen arrests in the US, Europe, and Brazil. In oth­er words, there is a high like­li­hood Sut­ter has been allowed to engaged in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of child pornog­ra­phy as part of his work as an FBI infor­mant. And this child abuse net­work also has close tied to MKU, an East­ern Eruo­pean skin­head crew accused of ran­dom attacks and mur­ders in Ukraine and Rus­sia, which sure sounds like the kind of group that Niki­ta Cas­ap may have been inter­act­ing with while plan­ning his assas­si­na­tion attack on Pres­i­dent Trump. Which is also a reminder that the extrem­ist net­work Sut­ters has been allowed to aggres­sive­ly pro­mote for years while work­ing as an FBI infor­mant prob­a­bly has enor­mous over­lap with the same net­work that recruit­ed Cas­ap for the planned ter­ror attack:

...
This spring, WIRED found evi­dence of Sutter’s exten­sive influ­ence on and pro­mo­tion of an inter­na­tion­al child abuse net­work that goes alter­na­tive­ly by “com” or “764.” Sutter’s con­tin­ued involve­ment in the most extreme cor­ners of the far right, which engage in homi­ci­dal vio­lence and sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly abuse minors, raise ques­tions about how the FBI selects their infor­mants, how they hold them to account, and what degree of blow­back the bureau is will­ing to tol­er­ate in order to make cas­es against vio­lent extrem­ists.

...

In the past few years, Sut­ter active­ly pro­mot­ed the child abuse and extor­tion net­work 764 and some of its affil­i­at­ed groups. 764, as WIRED report­ed in March along with The Wash­ing­ton Post, Der Spiegel, and Recorder, is the tar­get of an inter­na­tion­al law enforce­ment inves­ti­ga­tion, with more than a dozen mem­bers arrest­ed in the Unit­ed States, Europe, and Brazil.

...

The US Depart­ment of Jus­tice is pur­su­ing fur­ther charges against alleged mem­bers of these groups through fed­er­al grand jury pro­ceed­ings, accord­ing to court records filed ear­li­er this year in the case of Harm Nation founder Kyle Spitze. A young Eng­lish par­tic­i­pant in 764 also faces ter­ror­ism charges for alleged­ly plot­ting to kill a home­less man. The net­work is also con­nect­ed to MKU, a nihilist East­ern Euro­pean skin­head crew whose mem­bers are accused of a series of ran­dom attacks and killings in Ukraine and Rus­sia.

...

One of the Agony’s Point titles, vol­ume one of the Drums of Tophet zine, fea­tures an inter­view with “Com­man­der Butch­er” of MKU, a lethal East­ern Euro­pean skin­head group that has sig­nif­i­cant over­lap with 764. In July, US author­i­ties unveiled 20-year-old Geor­gian nation­al Michail Chkhikvishvili as Butcher’s alleged true iden­ti­ty after he was arrest­ed on an inter­pol war­rant in Moldo­va on fed­er­al charges for plot­ting a mass casu­al­ty attack in New York City. In the inter­view with Sutter’s jour­nal from last fall, Chkhikvishvili describes his own rad­i­cal­iza­tion and char­ac­ter­ized the ethos of his group as “reli­gion mur­der,” com­ple­ment­ed by a pho­to mon­tage of pur­port­ed MKU attacks.

...

On sev­er­al occa­sions in the past year, the Agony’s Point Press account on X post­ed videos and pho­tos high­light­ing 764 and its off­shoots, par­tic­u­lar­ly MKU and the group’s grow­ing inter­est in the Order of Nine Angles. The account also rou­tine­ly post­ed about 764 and com, occa­sion­al­ly adopt­ing a faux jour­nal­is­tic tone to laun­der posts from the CSAM dis­tri­b­u­tion and extor­tion net­work. Around Christ­mas 2023, @agonyspoint post­ed a graph­ic of MKU’s hock­ey goalie mask insignia with a ToB tri­dent embla­zoned in its fore­head.
...

As we can see, Josh Sut­ter has spent mul­ti­ple decades now pro­mot­ing orga­nized child abuse. As a paid FBI infor­mant. It’s a trou­bling sto­ry on many lev­els.

Ethan Melzer’s “Insight Role” O9A Terror Plot. As a US Military Intelligence Insider

And that brings us to the next high­ly trou­bling chap­ter in this sto­ry: Ethan Melz­er’s Mid­dle East ter­ror plot. A plot by a mem­ber of O9A who joined the US Mil­i­tary to ful­fill the man­date of O9A ide­ol­o­gy to take roles or jobs one would­n’t nor­mal­ly do in order to acquire strate­gi­cal­ly desired skills and expe­ri­ences. With a role in the mil­i­tary being an obvi­ous exam­ple. Melz­er, already an O9A adher­ent rad­i­cal­ized online, joins the US Army and then attempt­ed to orches­trate a jihadist ter­ror attack on his own unit. He even express­es a will­ing­ness to die in the attack, see­ing it as worth it. What makes dying in a jihadist attack on his own unit ‘worth it’? The hope that such an attack would spark a broad­er con­flict in the Mid­dle East. Ethan Melz­er just want­ed to watch the world burn. Raw nihilism as a cause, fueled by the same accel­er­a­tionist Nazi Satan­ic ide­ol­o­gy Joshua Caleb Sut­ter has been pro­mot­ing and devel­op­ing as an FBI infor­mant since 2004. And Melz­er was will­ing to die for that cause.

Part of what makes the Melz­er case so dis­turb­ing in the con­text of Josh Sut­ter’s pro­pa­gan­da career is the fact that Sut­ter him­self has char­ac­ter­ized his Tem­ple ov Blood as a “social pro­gram­ming exper­i­ment”, adding “While we do cre­ate fanat­ics, we must make the ‘fake’ adher­ents entries look as if it is obvi­ous­ly their will and good for them to serve the ToB. It has to be sub­tle. In the lat­er stages it becomes more overt and at that point is too late for them to change. They become so alien­at­ed from human­i­ty that, well, haha, if they tried to go back they will still cause so much dis­rup­tion.” That dement­ed ‘social exper­i­ment’ Josh Sut­ter has been run­ning since 2004 is a big part of the sto­ry of Ethan Melz­er.

Inter­est­ing­ly, as the fol­low­ing 2022 Rolling Stone piece also notes, jour­nal­ist Nick Lowles, who has writ­ten about David Myatt’s rise in the late 1990s, found evi­dence that Sut­ter and O9A founder David Myatt have had direct com­mu­ni­ca­tions as far back as 2004. So Sut­ter and Myatt were in direct con­tact the year he emerged from prison as an FBI infor­mant. As Lowles put it, “What was, if any, the FBI’s inter­est in the satanist stuff? Was Sut­ter gen­uine­ly into this ide­ol­o­gy and allowed to be involved in it as long as he spied on what they con­sid­ered to be the real threats?” It’s a good ques­tion. And we still don’t have an answer:

Rolling Stone

The Satanist Neo-Nazi Plot to Mur­der U.S. Sol­diers

A rogue G.I.’s tri­al expos­es the depths of a mur­der­ous far-right ide­ol­o­gy — and the FBI’s com­plic­i­ty in spread­ing hate

By Ali Win­ston
June 5, 2022

Ethan Phe­lan Melzer’s secret life of hate ran deep. The 24-year-old pri­vate in the 173rd Air­borne Brigade appeared to be just anoth­er young sol­dier, try­ing to find his way through mil­i­tary life at Fort Ben­ning, Geor­gia. How­ev­er, in his pri­vate time, pros­e­cu­tors allege, Melz­er had anoth­er, sin­is­ter side: He said he liked to per­form macabre blood rit­u­als; read obscure, grue­some tracts about tor­ture and child abuse; col­lect­ed vio­lent iconog­ra­phy; and found like minds in the depths of Telegram, an encrypt­ed mes­sag­ing app so favored by extrem­ists of all stripes that it is often referred to as “Ter­ror­gram.” His han­dle was “Etil Reg­gad” — a near anadrome for “Elite Dag­ger.”

By Melzer’s own account, enlist­ing in the Army was a ruse — on the encrypt­ed app, he wrote that he had joined up sole­ly to gain knowl­edge of mil­i­tary weapon­ry and tac­tics. “It’s great for train­ing,” he wrote, adding a cryp­tic remark about his base. “All of these places the vast major­i­ty deserve to be burned.”

Melz­er repeat­ed­ly trash-talked the Army and described it as mere­ly a means to hone his vio­lent skills. “I’m not patri­ot­ic for shit,” he wrote to anoth­er rad­i­cal who was con­sid­er­ing enlist­ing in the Marines. Telegram chats dis­closed by the gov­ern­ment in court fil­ings reveal his efforts to mask his true beliefs: “I fly under the radar already, act com­plete­ly nor­mal around oth­er peo­ple out­side and don’t talk about my per­son­al life or beliefs with any­one.”

The young para­troop­er said he was con­duct­ing what he called an “insight role” — both infil­trat­ing and sub­vert­ing an insti­tu­tion, one of the core tenets of the Order of Nine Angles, a secre­tive, nihilis­tic, blood­thirsty satanist-Nazi sect, to which, pros­e­cu­tors allege, Melz­er swore alle­giance.

Once con­fined to the most obscure occultism, “O9A” ide­ol­o­gy has spread like wild­fire via the inter­net and the glob­al fas­cist resur­gence of the 2010s. Its cells, known as “nex­ions,” have cross-pol­li­nat­ed with the mil­lenar­i­an neo-Nazi world­view pop­u­lar­ized by the wannabe 21st-cen­tu­ry Tim McVeighs of the Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion, a group of Amer­i­can extrem­ists who cel­e­brat­ed the 1995 Okla­homa City bomb­ing, ven­er­at­ed ter­ror­ists like Anders Breivik and psy­chopaths like Charles Man­son, and have been con­nect­ed to five mur­ders and numer­ous bomb plots.

The key evan­gel­i­cal for O9A, the fig­ure who facil­i­tat­ed this macabre wed­ding of apoc­a­lyp­tic death cults, is Joshua Caleb Sut­ter, a 41-year-old ex-con­vict, pro­lif­ic satanist, pub­lish­er of man­u­scripts advo­cat­ing mur­der, tor­ture, rape, and child abuse — and a paid FBI infor­mant since 2004.

...

Indeed, for his part, Melzer’s indoc­tri­na­tion seemed com­plete. “Fas­cism is more the law of nature than any­thing, [its] world­view is that by caus­ing absolute chaos, anar­chy, what­ev­er you want to call it, the law of nature will nat­u­ral­ly take over once again,” Melz­er wrote on a Telegram chan­nel devot­ed to satanism.

In spring 2020, Melz­er learned of the 173rd Air­borne Brigade’s upcom­ing deploy­ment from Camp Eder­le in Vicen­za, Italy, to a base in Turkey. Pros­e­cu­tors allege that Melz­er passed on high­ly clas­si­fied details of his unit’s forth­com­ing assign­ment to fel­low satanists on Telegram, and to a per­son he believed was a mem­ber of Al Qae­da. The intel­li­gence was sent with the intent of hav­ing the 173rd ambushed by ter­ror­ists and trig­ger­ing a “mas­cal” — mil­i­tary speak for a “mass casu­al­ty” event, pros­e­cu­tors say.

In the back and forth over a num­ber of days in May 2020, accord­ing to the evi­dence pre­sent­ed by fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors, Melz­er and his alleged Al Qae­da and satanist co-con­spir­a­tors dis­cussed the loca­tion of the base, the pre­cise num­ber of per­son­nel sta­tioned there, and the unit’s defen­sive capa­bil­i­ties. Melz­er also alleged­ly shared satel­lite images of the outpost’s lay­out. The pro­posed car­nage appar­ent­ly didn’t both­er Melz­er in the least. In fact, he rev­eled in the poten­tial fall­out from a mas­sacre of Amer­i­can sol­diers by jihadis, even if that meant los­ing his own life.

“Anoth­er 10 year war in the Mid­dle East would def­i­nite­ly leave a mark,” Melz­er mes­saged a fel­low satanist. “I would’ve died suc­cess­ful­ly.”

Pvt. Melz­er was arrest­ed by mil­i­tary inves­ti­ga­tors at the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary base in Vicen­za on May 30, 2020, right before the 173rd Airborne’s expect­ed deploy­ment to Turkey. The young sol­dier was brand­ed “the ene­my with­in” by the Unit­ed States attor­ney for the South­ern Dis­trict of New York, when his indict­ment was made pub­lic on June 22, 2020. Melz­er has plead­ed not guilty to all charges, and his tri­al is expect­ed to start on July 5. His attor­neys declined requests for com­ment.

...

In Pvt. Melzer’s case, the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary alleged­ly came close to suf­fer­ing a home­grown attack, which would have been the ulti­mate blow­back of an 18-year under­cov­er-infor­mant oper­a­tion. Joshua Sutter’s role as the chief Amer­i­can pros­e­ly­tiz­er of Melzer’s satan­ic ide­ol­o­gy is com­pli­cat­ed by the fact that Sut­ter was also enjoy­ing life on the FBI pay­roll, while pub­lish­ing thou­sands of words of blood-cur­dling pro­pa­gan­da that rad­i­cal­ized a grow­ing move­ment of dan­ger­ous extrem­ists.

“If you’re giv­ing $140,000 to a guy you recruit­ed, and to not check in on the mate­r­i­al he’s pub­lish­ing, which pro­motes mur­der­ing chil­dren and pedophil­ia, that’s not doing your fuck­ing job,” says Jake Han­ra­han, an Eng­lish jour­nal­ist and founder of the inde­pen­dent media firm Pop­u­lar Front who has tracked the Order of Nine Angles’ grow­ing influ­ence for a decade.

If Melzer’s beliefs are a “dia­bol­i­cal cock­tail of ide­olo­gies,” as the Depart­ment of Jus­tice alleged, char­ac­ter­iz­ing his beliefs as “neo-Nazi,” “anar­chist,” “pro-jihadist,” and “white suprema­cist,” then don’t the U.S. gov­ern­ment and the FBI have to reck­on with their own com­plic­i­ty in allow­ing the insid­i­ous beliefs to fes­ter and spread?

The lin­eage of Sut­ter and Melzer’s hate is doc­u­ment­ed. Alleged­ly cre­at­ed by octo­ge­nar­i­an Eng­lish­man David Myatt in the 1970s, and once con­fined to the most obscure cor­ners of occultism, O9A ide­ol­o­gy has expand­ed in the inter­net age. Myatt was a key fig­ure in the Eng­lish far right and was heav­i­ly involved in the mil­i­tant skin­head orga­ni­za­tion Com­bat 18 in the 1980s and 1990s. Over the years, his writ­ings have been high­ly influ­en­tial with­in extrem­ist cir­cles: Myatt’s pam­phlet “A Prac­ti­cal Guide to Aryan Rev­o­lu­tion” is clas­si­fied as a ter­ror­ist man­u­al by the British gov­ern­ment, and his writ­ings were found in the pos­ses­sion of David Copeland, who set off a series of nail bombs tar­get­ing London’s Black, South Asian, and LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ties in 1999, and Germany’s Nation­al Social­ist Under­ground, which assas­si­nat­ed nine peo­ple of Turk­ish, Greek, and Kur­dish her­itage and a police offi­cer between 2000 and 2007.

Adher­ents to the Order of Nine Angles strive for the down­fall of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion. In order to accel­er­ate that col­lapse, they seek to sow chaos, death, and destruc­tion wher­ev­er pos­si­ble. Decep­tion, mur­der, vio­lence, sex­u­al assault, and fraud are all deemed accept­able meth­ods in O9A texts. While firm num­bers on O9A dis­ci­ples are hard to come by, occult researchers esti­mate there are rough­ly 2,000 adher­ents scat­tered around the world, with hard­core mem­bers iden­ti­fied in the Unit­ed States, Great Britain, Italy, Moldo­va, Rus­sia, Aus­tralia, and else­where.

“The pop­u­lar­i­ty of the Order of Nine Angles has explod­ed as it’s got­ten picked up in these Atom­waf­fen-esque far-right cir­cles,” says Spencer Sun­shine, a long­time researcher of the far right who is writ­ing a book about James Mason, the author of Siege, Atomwaffen’s ide­o­log­i­cal lodestar. “Clear­ly, there’s a big turn toward the occult, satanism. Some­times it’s more present in the pro­pa­gan­da and dis­course than the white nation­al­ist, racist pol­i­tics — any­thing to over­throw the sys­tem — that’s why all the ser­i­al killers, mas­sacres, and so on.”

The Telegram chan­nel where Melz­er con­tact­ed his oth­er O9A adher­ents was one of the most poi­so­nous chan­nels on Ter­ror­gram: Rape­Waf­fen, which the founder (dubi­ous­ly) claimed was a splin­ter group of the Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion. The chan­nel pro­mot­ed blood­shed and the need to dehu­man­ize, shar­ing videos of women being sex­u­al­ly assault­ed, mur­der, and extreme vio­lence. RapeWaffen’s alleged founder, who went by the moniker “Sin­is­terius,” open­ly called for “culling,” the prac­tice of human sac­ri­fice that is one of O9A’s dark­est fea­tures. Chan­nel mem­bers were assigned a read­ing list, includ­ing Iron Gates, Liber 333, and Blue­bird — books authored by an Amer­i­can O9A “nex­ion,” called the Tem­pel ov Blood, and dis­trib­uted by Mar­tinet Press, a pub­lish­ing house run by Sut­ter.

O9A is elas­tic in its death mythos, weav­ing togeth­er dif­fer­ent ele­ments of fas­cism and var­i­ous world reli­gions. “The real thing is that these attacks and mass shoot­ings are noth­ing but Kal­ki doing an eth­ic and eth­nic cleans­ing on the world,” Sin­is­terius wrote in one 2019 post, refer­ring to a Hin­du deity often cit­ed in O9A and prais­ing recent mass killings by right-wing mil­i­tants. “When we cel­e­brate those attacks, we are cel­e­brat­ing Kalki’s Will becom­ing man­i­fest on this world.” Anoth­er post says: “Rape also serves like a mag­ick prac­tice that make [sic] you attain a high­er con­scious state.”

At first glimpse, talk of culling and “heil rape” may seem like vile hyper­bol­ic pos­tur­ing. How­ev­er, there are real-world exam­ples of such killings by O9A devo­tees: Guil­herme Von Neutegem, a Cana­di­an O9A adher­ent, is fac­ing mur­der charges in the killing of a man out­side of a Toron­to mosque in 2020. In the Unit­ed King­dom, two sis­ters were stabbed to death in a Lon­don park in June 2020 by a young man who, under the influ­ence of a Utah O9A pros­e­ly­tiz­er, claimed to have made a pact with a demon that required him to spill blood. There have been a num­ber of oth­er ter­ror­ism pros­e­cu­tions and con­vic­tions in Great Britain linked by law enforce­ment to the Order of Nine Angles, and Par­lia­ment has been lob­bied to ban the satan­ic cult as a domes­tic ter­ror group.

The rise of O9A among young mil­len­ni­al and zoomer rad­i­cals is part of a par­a­digm shift in the right-wing uni­verse and its extrem­ism, experts say, and dri­ven by the inter­net. Nick Lowles, the chief exec­u­tive of Hope Not Hate and a long­time jour­nal­ist who has writ­ten about David Myatt’s rise in the late 1990s for Search­light mag­a­zine, explains why the once-mar­gin­al satanist iden­ti­ty rose to such promi­nence that some British law­mak­ers have sought to ban the pos­ses­sion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of its pro­pa­gan­da out­right.

Oth­er O9A adher­ents have been cen­tral to far-right extrem­ist groups banned by the British gov­ern­ment, includ­ing con­vict­ed Eng­lish neo-Nazi Andrew Dymock, who was charged with 15 counts of ter­ror­ism and hate-relat­ed crimes. Ryan Flem­ing, anoth­er mil­i­tant, has been con­vict­ed twice and jailed repeat­ed­ly for sex­u­al­ly abus­ing and groom­ing minors. Flem­ing, accord­ing to reports by the BBC, active­ly pro­mot­ed the Order of Nine Angles and pub­lished satan­ic lit­er­a­ture through Sutter’s Tem­pel ov Blood cell.

“Twen­ty to 30 years ago in the U.S. and U.K., to be ‘hard’ on the far right meant you had to be a good fight­er — it was a drink­ing, fight­ing cul­ture,” Lowles says. “Amongst this new­er gen­er­a­tion, fights don’t hap­pen and a lot of peo­ple don’t leave their bed­rooms. To become a known face in this world, you have to be extreme online.”

That’s where the appeal of the Order of Nine Angles, with its empha­sis on tor­ture, degra­da­tion, blood rit­u­als, and human sac­ri­fice, comes in. “Putting out the most extreme con­tent you can find makes you tough, makes you scary, makes you edgy in this world now,” Lowles says. In par­tic­u­lar, he points out the haunt­ing, almost inde­ci­pher­able videos, grat­ing indus­tri­al music, and shock­ing texts churned out by Sutter’s Amer­i­can Tem­pel ov Blood nex­ion. Sutter’s twist­ed online ser­mons, Lowles says, epit­o­mized the aes­thet­ic that would give young extrem­ists cred­i­bil­i­ty and heft in the wildest cor­ners of the dig­i­tal far right: “That’s the appeal of ToB in par­tic­u­lar — it was so far beyond any­thing else out there.”

Pvt. Melz­er is not the first Amer­i­can sol­dier charged with plot­ting crimes inspired by satanism. In 2019, Spc. Jar­rett William Smith was arrest­ed at Kansas’ Fort Riley and charged by pros­e­cu­tors with dis­trib­ut­ing explo­sives man­u­als; he also report­ed­ly dis­cussed plans to kill anti-fas­cists and car-bomb­ing a news out­let “for the glo­ry … of his reli­gion of anti-kos­mik satanism.” In 2019, Smith dis­cussed attack­ing the head­quar­ters of a major news net­work with an FBI infor­mant and an under­cov­er agent. Smith plead­ed guilty to the charges against him and was sen­tenced to 30 months in prison; he was released last Novem­ber on three years’ pro­ba­tion. (Smith did not respond to requests for com­ment.)

...

The true wild card in the fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tion of Melz­er, how­ev­er, is its man on the inside of O9A. In fil­ings last year, pros­e­cu­tors iden­ti­fied O9A’s pri­ma­ry Amer­i­can “affil­i­ate” as the Tem­pel ov Blood, the South Car­oli­na-based nex­ion run by Joshua Caleb Sut­ter, a mori­bund son of a racist preach­er who, since his con­vic­tion for pur­chas­ing a defaced firearm from an FBI agent in 2003, has been a gov­ern­ment infor­mant. Despite his work spread­ing the word of O9A, Sut­ter has earned well into the six fig­ures for his assis­tance in rolling up right-wing extrem­ists across the Unit­ed States, includ­ing the Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion. After his arrest on the gun charges, Sut­ter began explor­ing fringe ide­olo­gies on polar ends of the spec­trum, mov­ing back to a wood­ed prop­er­ty owned by his par­ents in Lex­ing­ton, South Car­oli­na, and becom­ing deeply involved in a bizarre North Kore­an orga­ni­za­tion called the Songun Pol­i­tics Study Group USA. Sut­ter trans­formed him­self into that group’s main pro­pa­gan­dist before migrat­ing to Hin­du eso­teri­cism with a woman named Jil­lian Hoy, whom he mar­ried.

Through his pub­lish­ing house, Mar­tinet Press, which he co-found­ed with Hoy, Sut­ter is one of the most pro­lif­ic pro­pa­gan­dists for the Order of Nine Angles. In using Sut­ter as a paid infor­mant while he con­tin­ues to run his Tem­pel ov Blood nex­ion and pub­lish­ing imprint, the FBI has, in effect, bankrolled one of the most extreme, per­verse, and lethal ide­olo­gies to emerge from the fever swamp of the inter­net-dri­ven neo-fas­cist revival of the ear­ly 21st cen­tu­ry. (Sut­ter did not respond to Rolling Stone’s emailed requests for com­ment.)

“It’s shock­ing,” says Lowles of Hope Not Hate, who not­ed com­mon­al­i­ties between Sut­ter and David Myatt in their use of aggres­sive far-right mil­i­tant groups to advance their O9A beliefs — Com­bat 18 in Myatt’s case, Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion in Sutter’s. (Myatt has claimed to have renounced extrem­ism in 2013, though many O9A researchers remain skep­ti­cal of his sup­posed change of heart.)

Lowles main­tains that by employ­ing Sut­ter, the dis­trib­u­tor and author of texts that pro­mote not only ter­ror­ism but also pedophil­ia, human sac­ri­fice, and child abuse, the FBI has giv­en its infor­mant way too long a leash, and inno­cents have paid a price.

“In the 21st cen­tu­ry, peo­ple don’t have the Turn­er Diaries any­more, they have Iron Gates and Liber 333,” Lowles says, refer­ring to Tem­pel ov Blood books pub­lished by Sut­ter. In the open­ing scene of Iron Gates, a des­per­ate post-apoc­a­lyp­tic mob kills and devours a child, a chill­ing exam­ple of this brand of satanism. Blue­bird dwells on the theme of pedophil­ia and rape. These are not idle words: Chil­dren as young as 14 have been groomed by Tem­pel ov Blood adher­ents, who have gone on to be con­vict­ed for their offens­es, includ­ing sex­u­al­ly assault­ing minors.

...

Lowles has tracked Sutter’s involve­ment with O9A and direct com­mu­ni­ca­tions with Myatt as far back as 2004, when Sut­ter began work­ing as a con­fi­den­tial infor­mant for the FBI. The tim­ing of that con­tact and Sutter’s sub­se­quent tra­jec­to­ry, Lowles says, rais­es a whole new raft of ques­tions: “What was, if any, the FBI’s inter­est in the satanist stuff? Was Sut­ter gen­uine­ly into this ide­ol­o­gy and allowed to be involved in it as long as he spied on what they con­sid­ered to be the real threats?”

Inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ist Nate Thay­er sur­faced com­mu­ni­ca­tions between Sut­ter and anoth­er satanist where­in Sut­ter labeled him­self “Mas­ter of the Tem­pel,” and Hoy the “Blood-Mis­tress,” and out­lined his inten­tion to rad­i­cal­ize fol­low­ers through repeat­ed expo­sure to lurid mate­r­i­al and texts to the point of desen­si­ti­za­tion. It’s the equiv­a­lent of cre­at­ing human IEDS: peo­ple who are wired for vio­lence and dis­con­nect­ed enough from moral­i­ty that they have no com­punc­tion about abuse, tor­ture, pedophil­ia, or any of the oth­er prac­tices out­lined in the Tem­pel ov Blood texts.

“This Tem­pel is in many ways a social pro­gram­ming exper­i­ment,” Sut­ter has writ­ten. “While we do cre­ate fanat­ics, we must make the ‘fake’ adher­ents entries look as if it is obvi­ous­ly their will and good for them to serve the ToB. It has to be sub­tle. In the lat­er stages it becomes more overt and at that point is too late for them to change. They become so alien­at­ed from human­i­ty that, well, haha, if they tried to go back they will still cause so much dis­rup­tion.”

Over the ensu­ing years, Sut­ter used Mar­tinet Press to spread O9A and the Tem­pel ov Blood in the hid­den cor­ners of occultism and extrem­ism. This even­tu­al­ly led to him becom­ing a mem­ber of the Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion under the moniker “swiss­dis­ci­pline.” In spring 2017, he had been con­tact­ed by John Cameron Den­ton, a young Tex­an fas­ci­nat­ed with Nation­al Social­ist black met­al, Siege, Charles Man­son, and the Order of Nine Angles. Accord­ing to a for­mer Attomwaf­fen mem­ber who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, Den­ton knew of Sutter’s rep­u­ta­tion in the occult through Tem­pel ov Blood, and invit­ed him to join the ter­ror­ist group.

Dur­ing Atom­waf­fen mem­ber Kaleb Cole’s tri­al in Sep­tem­ber 2021, Sut­ter tes­ti­fied that, on the direc­tion of his FBI han­dler, Spe­cial Agent Bill Moser of the Colum­bia, South Car­oli­na, field office, Sut­ter became part of the under­ground mil­i­tant group. Sut­ter par­tic­i­pat­ed in at least two of the group’s “Hate Camp” train­ings near Washington’s Mount Rainier and Death Val­ley in Neva­da in August 2017 and ear­ly 2018, respec­tive­ly. At these train­ings, the Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion mil­i­tants marched in the North­west­ern woods and the Neva­da desert, shot pro­pa­gan­da footage, fired off dozens of rifle rounds, and got plas­tered while dis­cussing the com­ing race war and obscure Nazi the­o­ry late into the night. In Neva­da, Sut­ter, Cole, and two oth­er Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion mem­bers posed for pho­tos out­side the Alien Cathouse broth­el while giv­ing the Sieg heil! salute.

Sut­ter also attend­ed Atomwaffen’s 2019 “Nuclear Con­gress” gath­er­ing in a Las Vegas hotel room with sev­er­al high-rank­ing mem­bers and James Mason, the author of Siege, who urged the cre­ation of a new fas­cist regime through mur­der, small “lone wolf” ter­ror attacks, and relent­less war against the gov­ern­ment. Sut­ter had remained a free man as law enforce­ment rolled up his fel­low neo-Nazis in 2019 and 2020 dur­ing a nation­wide series of arrests and pros­e­cu­tions cul­mi­nat­ing with a raid on a sub­ur­ban home in Con­roe, Texas, where Den­ton, Cole, and two oth­er mem­bers of the Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion were arrest­ed.

Accord­ing to the for­mer mem­ber of Atom­waf­fen, Sut­ter repeat­ed­ly vis­it­ed the house in Con­roe and intro­duced under­cov­er FBI agents into Atomwaffen’s inner cir­cle. In the sparse­ly fur­nished house, where Nazi flags hung from the walls and elec­tron­ics lit­tered plas­tic fold­ing tables, Sut­ter would speak late into the night with Den­ton and Cole about oper­a­tional secu­ri­ty and a plot to dox jour­nal­ists who the group felt had maligned them, the for­mer mem­ber says.

Sutter’s influ­ence over Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion was appar­ent soon after he joined: Den­ton and Cole had tak­en over lead­er­ship of the group from its impris­oned founder, Bran­don Rus­sell, who was serv­ing fed­er­al prison time for an explo­sives-pos­ses­sion con­vic­tion. Mar­tinet Press titles were intro­duced as required read­ing for new O9A recruits.

“He real­ly just act­ed in the back­ground, through the oth­ers, stuff like push­ing the O9A sen­ti­ments, the books like Iron Gates,” says the ex-Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion mem­ber who left the group years ago and has renounced his for­mer beliefs. In late 2017, Atomwaffen’s pro­pa­gan­da began to fea­ture more graph­ic images of tor­ture, and Charles Man­son became cen­tral to the aes­thet­ic. How­ev­er, the intro­duc­tion of satan­ic beliefs and texts caused dis­sent, par­tic­u­lar­ly among Atom­waf­fen mem­bers with more tra­di­tion­al Nation­al Social­ist or Chris­t­ian-iden­ti­ty views. “As the occult and the Man­son gim­mick start­ed to be pushed more and more, a lot of those new peo­ple dropped out because that was a bit much for even them to han­dle,” says the for­mer mem­ber.

Sutter’s work for the FBI was sub­stan­tial and under­pinned the ear­ly 2020 indict­ments that dec­i­mat­ed the Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion. While Den­ton and sev­er­al oth­ers plead­ed out, Cole plead­ed not guilty to con­spir­a­cy charges over doxxing sev­er­al reporters and went to tri­al. Last August, Cole’s lawyers filed a bomb­shell motion to sup­press evi­dence from the search of the Atom­waf­fen house in Con­roe on the basis that Sut­ter was a snitch for the FBI — and had been since 2004. “The CI is a con­vict­ed felon and cur­rent­ly owns and oper­ates a pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny that dis­trib­utes white-suprema­cist writ­ings,” reads the Aug. 13, 2021, motion by Cole’s attor­neys. “The CI began his long career as a pro­fes­sion­al infor­mant in exchange for con­sid­er­a­tion regard­ing his sen­tence on a fed­er­al con­vic­tion for pos­ses­sion of a firearm with an oblit­er­at­ed ser­i­al num­ber and an unreg­is­tered silencer. He has con­tin­ued this work for pay.”

Despite the alle­ga­tions about work­ing with law enforce­ment, Sut­ter main­tained cachet with­in the extreme right wing, in large part because Tem­pel ov Blood and Mar­tinet Press pro­duced graph­ic, ultra­vi­o­lent lit­er­a­ture pop­u­lar with the extrem­ist crowd.

How­ev­er, the 2021 alle­ga­tions about Sut­ter had sub­stance: Cole’s defense attor­neys based their pre­sen­ta­tion on dis­cov­ery mate­ri­als dis­closed by pros­e­cu­tors in Seat­tle. More­over, the gov­ern­ment lawyers admit­ted that Sut­ter was on their books and vouched for his reli­a­bil­i­ty: “The fact that the FBI repeat­ed­ly chose to pay the infor­mant for infor­ma­tion over many years is a reflec­tion of the fact that the FBI con­sis­tent­ly found the informant’s infor­ma­tion proved reli­able,” Assis­tant U.S. Attor­ney Thomas Woods wrote in a fil­ing last August.

While the gam­bit to get the evi­dence against Cole tossed failed, and he was sen­tenced to sev­en years’ incar­cer­a­tion (includ­ing pri­or time served) after a jury con­vict­ed him in Jan­u­ary, it revealed a huge prob­lem for the FBI. In his court tes­ti­mo­ny, Sut­ter gave his occu­pa­tion as “pub­lish­er,” refer­ring to Mar­tinet Press, his occult-book imprint.

...

FBI snitch­es have long come under scruti­ny for com­mit­ting crimes while work­ing as gov­ern­ment infor­mants, most notably Whitey Bul­ger and Stephen Flem­mi, Boston gang­sters who com­mit­ted more than a dozen mur­ders while on the fed­er­al pay­roll. Roy Frankhouser, a long­time neo-Nazi and fix­ture on the far right, signed on as an FBI infor­mant to feed the bureau infor­ma­tion on Black nation­al­ists and left-wing mil­i­tants in the 1970s. Mike Ger­man, a for­mer FBI agent who spent years infil­trat­ing white-suprema­cist move­ments in the 1990s, points to Bulger’s case and Sutter’s years of satanist pros­e­ly­tiz­ing as exem­plars of “gross mis­man­age­ment” by the country’s pre­mier law-enforce­ment agency. “The con­fi­den­tial infor­mant has been mis­man­aged for decades — that’s a very fraught enter­prise, the idea that you’re going to go out and find peo­ple with first­hand knowl­edge of crim­i­nal activ­i­ty and to the extent they’re coop­er­at­ing with you, it’s because they’re betray­ing their col­leagues,” Ger­man tells Rolling Stone. “Where the FBI gets in trou­ble all the time is ignor­ing the crimes the infor­mants are com­mit­ting.”

Ger­man notes the FBI’s rela­tion­ship with Proud Boy leader Enrique Tar­rio, cur­rent­ly fac­ing fed­er­al charges in con­nec­tion with the Jan. 6 insur­rec­tion (he has plead­ed not guilty), as well as right-wing radio host Hal Turn­er in the ear­ly 2000s, anoth­er pro­pa­gan­dist like Sut­ter whose role as a paid infor­mant emerged dur­ing a fed­er­al tri­al. “Orig­i­nal­ly, they must’ve thought sign­ing up a pro­pa­gan­dist who agreed not to engage in crim­i­nal activ­i­ty was appeal­ing,” Ger­man says of the FBI’s ratio­nale for employ­ing Sut­ter. Bureau rules bar agents from retain­ing infor­mants who engage in vio­lent crimes, and pro­pa­gan­dists often net­work among like-mind­ed extrem­ists while not get­ting their hands dirty. How­ev­er, Ger­man not­ed that the same attrib­ut­es can be dan­ger­ous: “To the extent that this guy is send­ing this ide­ol­o­gy into the ether for every­one to absorb — how many oth­ers are fol­low­ing through and act­ing on it?”

...

For his part, Joshua Sut­ter has faced no con­se­quences for his role in spread­ing Order of Nine Angles dog­ma. Mar­tinet Press con­tin­ues to pub­lish and dis­trib­ute books, and its web­site remains up and run­ning. How­ev­er, his rep­u­ta­tion is bad­ly dam­aged in many far-right cir­cles. The Atom­waf­fen Division’s rem­nants have writ­ten a num­ber of self-absolv­ing screeds against him and what they per­ceive as FBI entrap­ment. Sut­ter also nev­er paid tax­es on the $140,000 he earned as an infor­mant, or the $4,378.60 in trav­el expens­es giv­en to him by the FBI. Satanists appar­ent­ly don’t care much for the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice.

———-

“The Satanist Neo-Nazi Plot to Mur­der U.S. Sol­diers” By Ali Win­ston; Rolling Stone; 06/05/2022

“In Pvt. Melzer’s case, the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary alleged­ly came close to suf­fer­ing a home­grown attack, which would have been the ulti­mate blow­back of an 18-year under­cov­er-infor­mant oper­a­tion. Joshua Sutter’s role as the chief Amer­i­can pros­e­ly­tiz­er of Melzer’s satan­ic ide­ol­o­gy is com­pli­cat­ed by the fact that Sut­ter was also enjoy­ing life on the FBI pay­roll, while pub­lish­ing thou­sands of words of blood-cur­dling pro­pa­gan­da that rad­i­cal­ized a grow­ing move­ment of dan­ger­ous extrem­ists.”

Yes, some sort of dead­ly attack on US troops in the Mid­dle East orches­trat­ed by a trai­tor­ous satanist who was rad­i­cal­ized by O9A con­tent would indeed be quite the blow­back for what was then an 18-year long under­cov­er-infor­mant oper­a­tion. Although the planned assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Trump by O9A devo­tee Niki­ta Cas­ap that was part of a much larg­er soci­ety-desta­bi­liz­ing ter­ror plot would have arguably been even worse blow­back. But Ethan Melz­er’s satan­ic plot was indeed hor­rif­ic, espe­cial­ly had it suc­ceed­ed in deep­en­ing the US’s mil­i­tary involve­ment in the Mid­dle East. And as experts who have been track­ing the explo­sive growth of O9A ide­ol­o­gy in extrem­ist cir­cles warn, the fact that a long-time FBI infor­mant is the per­son lead­ing the pro­duc­tion and dis­sem­i­na­tion of O9A pro­pa­gan­da — even join­ing groups like Atom­waf­fen to fur­ther spread the ide­ol­o­gy — is an obvi­ous legal chal­lenge in these cas­es. And eth­i­cal chal­lenge, real­ly. And yet, remark­ably, despite Sut­ter being out­ed as a long-time FBI infor­mant who played key roles in mul­ti­ple inves­ti­ga­tions, his pub­lish­ing work is still ongo­ing and still the domi­nent ide­ol­o­gy in these extrem­ist cir­cles. It points to the incred­i­ble pow­er of this type of pro­pa­gan­da on the dam­aged minds that grav­i­tate towards these move­ments. Nazi-mind­ed indi­vid­u­als appear to eas­i­ly rev­el in vio­lent Satanism. Imag­ine that:

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“If you’re giv­ing $140,000 to a guy you recruit­ed, and to not check in on the mate­r­i­al he’s pub­lish­ing, which pro­motes mur­der­ing chil­dren and pedophil­ia, that’s not doing your fuck­ing job,” says Jake Han­ra­han, an Eng­lish jour­nal­ist and founder of the inde­pen­dent media firm Pop­u­lar Front who has tracked the Order of Nine Angles’ grow­ing influ­ence for a decade.

If Melzer’s beliefs are a “dia­bol­i­cal cock­tail of ide­olo­gies,” as the Depart­ment of Jus­tice alleged, char­ac­ter­iz­ing his beliefs as “neo-Nazi,” “anar­chist,” “pro-jihadist,” and “white suprema­cist,” then don’t the U.S. gov­ern­ment and the FBI have to reck­on with their own com­plic­i­ty in allow­ing the insid­i­ous beliefs to fes­ter and spread?

...

Sutter’s work for the FBI was sub­stan­tial and under­pinned the ear­ly 2020 indict­ments that dec­i­mat­ed the Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion. While Den­ton and sev­er­al oth­ers plead­ed out, Cole plead­ed not guilty to con­spir­a­cy charges over doxxing sev­er­al reporters and went to tri­al. Last August, Cole’s lawyers filed a bomb­shell motion to sup­press evi­dence from the search of the Atom­waf­fen house in Con­roe on the basis that Sut­ter was a snitch for the FBI — and had been since 2004. “The CI is a con­vict­ed felon and cur­rent­ly owns and oper­ates a pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny that dis­trib­utes white-suprema­cist writ­ings,” reads the Aug. 13, 2021, motion by Cole’s attor­neys. “The CI began his long career as a pro­fes­sion­al infor­mant in exchange for con­sid­er­a­tion regard­ing his sen­tence on a fed­er­al con­vic­tion for pos­ses­sion of a firearm with an oblit­er­at­ed ser­i­al num­ber and an unreg­is­tered silencer. He has con­tin­ued this work for pay.”

Despite the alle­ga­tions about work­ing with law enforce­ment, Sut­ter main­tained cachet with­in the extreme right wing, in large part because Tem­pel ov Blood and Mar­tinet Press pro­duced graph­ic, ultra­vi­o­lent lit­er­a­ture pop­u­lar with the extrem­ist crowd..

How­ev­er, the 2021 alle­ga­tions about Sut­ter had sub­stance: Cole’s defense attor­neys based their pre­sen­ta­tion on dis­cov­ery mate­ri­als dis­closed by pros­e­cu­tors in Seat­tle. More­over, the gov­ern­ment lawyers admit­ted that Sut­ter was on their books and vouched for his reli­a­bil­i­ty: “The fact that the FBI repeat­ed­ly chose to pay the infor­mant for infor­ma­tion over many years is a reflec­tion of the fact that the FBI con­sis­tent­ly found the informant’s infor­ma­tion proved reli­able,” Assis­tant U.S. Attor­ney Thomas Woods wrote in a fil­ing last August.

While the gam­bit to get the evi­dence against Cole tossed failed, and he was sen­tenced to sev­en years’ incar­cer­a­tion (includ­ing pri­or time served) after a jury con­vict­ed him in Jan­u­ary, it revealed a huge prob­lem for the FBI. In his court tes­ti­mo­ny, Sut­ter gave his occu­pa­tion as “pub­lish­er,” refer­ring to Mar­tinet Press, his occult-book imprint.
...

Adding to the trou­bling ques­tions regard­ing the FBI’s deci­sion to effec­tive­ly ampli­fy O9A con­tent is the real­i­ty that O9A isn’t new. It was cre­at­ed by Nazi Satanist-turned-Islamist David Myatt in the 1970s. But it was­n’t until the age of the inter­net that this ide­ol­o­gy explod­ed in extrem­ist cir­cles. But it was­n’t the inter­net. It was Joshua Sut­ters prolof­ic now-decades-long efforts to pro­mote this con­tent that real­ly led to this explo­sion in pop­u­lar­i­ty. O9A would­n’t be where it is today with the enor­mous efforts of a long­time under­cov­er FBI infor­mant. It was­n’t just the inter­net:

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The lin­eage of Sut­ter and Melzer’s hate is doc­u­ment­ed. Alleged­ly cre­at­ed by octo­ge­nar­i­an Eng­lish­man David Myatt in the 1970s, and once con­fined to the most obscure cor­ners of occultism, O9A ide­ol­o­gy has expand­ed in the inter­net age. Myatt was a key fig­ure in the Eng­lish far right and was heav­i­ly involved in the mil­i­tant skin­head orga­ni­za­tion Com­bat 18 in the 1980s and 1990s. Over the years, his writ­ings have been high­ly influ­en­tial with­in extrem­ist cir­cles: Myatt’s pam­phlet “A Prac­ti­cal Guide to Aryan Rev­o­lu­tion” is clas­si­fied as a ter­ror­ist man­u­al by the British gov­ern­ment, and his writ­ings were found in the pos­ses­sion of David Copeland, who set off a series of nail bombs tar­get­ing London’s Black, South Asian, and LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ties in 1999, and Germany’s Nation­al Social­ist Under­ground, which assas­si­nat­ed nine peo­ple of Turk­ish, Greek, and Kur­dish her­itage and a police offi­cer between 2000 and 2007.

Adher­ents to the Order of Nine Angles strive for the down­fall of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion. In order to accel­er­ate that col­lapse, they seek to sow chaos, death, and destruc­tion wher­ev­er pos­si­ble. Decep­tion, mur­der, vio­lence, sex­u­al assault, and fraud are all deemed accept­able meth­ods in O9A texts. While firm num­bers on O9A dis­ci­ples are hard to come by, occult researchers esti­mate there are rough­ly 2,000 adher­ents scat­tered around the world, with hard­core mem­bers iden­ti­fied in the Unit­ed States, Great Britain, Italy, Moldo­va, Rus­sia, Aus­tralia, and else­where.

“The pop­u­lar­i­ty of the Order of Nine Angles has explod­ed as it’s got­ten picked up in these Atom­waf­fen-esque far-right cir­cles,” says Spencer Sun­shine, a long­time researcher of the far right who is writ­ing a book about James Mason, the author of Siege, Atomwaffen’s ide­o­log­i­cal lodestar. “Clear­ly, there’s a big turn toward the occult, satanism. Some­times it’s more present in the pro­pa­gan­da and dis­course than the white nation­al­ist, racist pol­i­tics — any­thing to over­throw the sys­tem — that’s why all the ser­i­al killers, mas­sacres, and so on.”

...

The rise of O9A among young mil­len­ni­al and zoomer rad­i­cals is part of a par­a­digm shift in the right-wing uni­verse and its extrem­ism, experts say, and dri­ven by the inter­net. Nick Lowles, the chief exec­u­tive of Hope Not Hate and a long­time jour­nal­ist who has writ­ten about David Myatt’s rise in the late 1990s for Search­light mag­a­zine, explains why the once-mar­gin­al satanist iden­ti­ty rose to such promi­nence that some British law­mak­ers have sought to ban the pos­ses­sion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of its pro­pa­gan­da out­right.

Oth­er O9A adher­ents have been cen­tral to far-right extrem­ist groups banned by the British gov­ern­ment, includ­ing con­vict­ed Eng­lish neo-Nazi Andrew Dymock, who was charged with 15 counts of ter­ror­ism and hate-relat­ed crimes. Ryan Flem­ing, anoth­er mil­i­tant, has been con­vict­ed twice and jailed repeat­ed­ly for sex­u­al­ly abus­ing and groom­ing minors. Flem­ing, accord­ing to reports by the BBC, active­ly pro­mot­ed the Order of Nine Angles and pub­lished satan­ic lit­er­a­ture through Sutter’s Tem­pel ov Blood cell.

“Twen­ty to 30 years ago in the U.S. and U.K., to be ‘hard’ on the far right meant you had to be a good fight­er — it was a drink­ing, fight­ing cul­ture,” Lowles says. “Amongst this new­er gen­er­a­tion, fights don’t hap­pen and a lot of peo­ple don’t leave their bed­rooms. To become a known face in this world, you have to be extreme online.”

That’s where the appeal of the Order of Nine Angles, with its empha­sis on tor­ture, degra­da­tion, blood rit­u­als, and human sac­ri­fice, comes in. “Putting out the most extreme con­tent you can find makes you tough, makes you scary, makes you edgy in this world now,” Lowles says. In par­tic­u­lar, he points out the haunt­ing, almost inde­ci­pher­able videos, grat­ing indus­tri­al music, and shock­ing texts churned out by Sutter’s Amer­i­can Tem­pel ov Blood nex­ion. Sutter’s twist­ed online ser­mons, Lowles says, epit­o­mized the aes­thet­ic that would give young extrem­ists cred­i­bil­i­ty and heft in the wildest cor­ners of the dig­i­tal far right: “That’s the appeal of ToB in par­tic­u­lar — it was so far beyond any­thing else out there.”
...

Impor­tant­ly, note how Sut­ter has­n’t just been ampli­fy­ing Myat­t’s O9A ide­ol­o­gy. Inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Nick Lowles has tracked com­mu­ni­ca­tions between Sut­ter and Myatt as far back as 2004, the year Sut­ter became an FBI infor­mant. It’s as if he agreed to become an O9A pro­pa­gan­dist as part of his recruit­ment by the FBI. Which is an obvi­ous com­pli­ca­tion for any pros­e­cu­tions that rely on Sut­ter’s tes­ti­mo­ny. But also a obvi­ous­ly eth­i­cal com­pli­ca­tion. What exact­ly has the FBI’s log­ic been in foment­ing vio­lent satanism to dam­aged minds over the inter­net? How is this help­ing? Could­n’t under­cov­er infor­mants who aren’t ser­i­al satan­ic pro­pa­gan­dists be recruit­ed instead?

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The true wild card in the fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tion of Melz­er, how­ev­er, is its man on the inside of O9A. In fil­ings last year, pros­e­cu­tors iden­ti­fied O9A’s pri­ma­ry Amer­i­can “affil­i­ate” as the Tem­pel ov Blood, the South Car­oli­na-based nex­ion run by Joshua Caleb Sut­ter, a mori­bund son of a racist preach­er who, since his con­vic­tion for pur­chas­ing a defaced firearm from an FBI agent in 2003, has been a gov­ern­ment infor­mant. Despite his work spread­ing the word of O9A, Sut­ter has earned well into the six fig­ures for his assis­tance in rolling up right-wing extrem­ists across the Unit­ed States, includ­ing the Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion. After his arrest on the gun charges, Sut­ter began explor­ing fringe ide­olo­gies on polar ends of the spec­trum, mov­ing back to a wood­ed prop­er­ty owned by his par­ents in Lex­ing­ton, South Car­oli­na, and becom­ing deeply involved in a bizarre North Kore­an orga­ni­za­tion called the Songun Pol­i­tics Study Group USA. Sut­ter trans­formed him­self into that group’s main pro­pa­gan­dist before migrat­ing to Hin­du eso­teri­cism with a woman named Jil­lian Hoy, whom he mar­ried.

Through his pub­lish­ing house, Mar­tinet Press, which he co-found­ed with Hoy, Sut­ter is one of the most pro­lif­ic pro­pa­gan­dists for the Order of Nine Angles. In using Sut­ter as a paid infor­mant while he con­tin­ues to run his Tem­pel ov Blood nex­ion and pub­lish­ing imprint, the FBI has, in effect, bankrolled one of the most extreme, per­verse, and lethal ide­olo­gies to emerge from the fever swamp of the inter­net-dri­ven neo-fas­cist revival of the ear­ly 21st cen­tu­ry. (Sut­ter did not respond to Rolling Stone’s emailed requests for com­ment.)

“It’s shock­ing,” says Lowles of Hope Not Hate, who not­ed com­mon­al­i­ties between Sut­ter and David Myatt in their use of aggres­sive far-right mil­i­tant groups to advance their O9A beliefs — Com­bat 18 in Myatt’s case, Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion in Sutter’s. (Myatt has claimed to have renounced extrem­ism in 2013, though many O9A researchers remain skep­ti­cal of his sup­posed change of heart.)

Lowles main­tains that by employ­ing Sut­ter, the dis­trib­u­tor and author of texts that pro­mote not only ter­ror­ism but also pedophil­ia, human sac­ri­fice, and child abuse, the FBI has giv­en its infor­mant way too long a leash, and inno­cents have paid a price.

“In the 21st cen­tu­ry, peo­ple don’t have the Turn­er Diaries any­more, they have Iron Gates and Liber 333,” Lowles says, refer­ring to Tem­pel ov Blood books pub­lished by Sut­ter. In the open­ing scene of Iron Gates, a des­per­ate post-apoc­a­lyp­tic mob kills and devours a child, a chill­ing exam­ple of this brand of satanism. Blue­bird dwells on the theme of pedophil­ia and rape. These are not idle words: Chil­dren as young as 14 have been groomed by Tem­pel ov Blood adher­ents, who have gone on to be con­vict­ed for their offens­es, includ­ing sex­u­al­ly assault­ing minors.

...

Lowles has tracked Sutter’s involve­ment with O9A and direct com­mu­ni­ca­tions with Myatt as far back as 2004, when Sut­ter began work­ing as a con­fi­den­tial infor­mant for the FBI. The tim­ing of that con­tact and Sutter’s sub­se­quent tra­jec­to­ry, Lowles says, rais­es a whole new raft of ques­tions: “What was, if any, the FBI’s inter­est in the satanist stuff? Was Sut­ter gen­uine­ly into this ide­ol­o­gy and allowed to be involved in it as long as he spied on what they con­sid­ered to be the real threats?”
...

And when we see how Melz­er thought he was pass­ing along clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion about his unit’s forth­com­ing assign­ment to some­one he believed was a mem­ber of Al Qae­da, keep in Myat­t’s con­ver­sion to Islam, which is also a reminder that the ide­olo­gies that moti­vate a num­ber of vio­lent jihadist Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ist move­ments is going to have a lot of over­lap with O9A. And as we can see in the case of Melz­er, just as jihadists are will­ing to die for their cause, so was Melz­er. Which is a grim reminder that O9A does­n’t just pro­mate a vio­lent sadis­tic satan­ic Nazi ide­ol­o­gy. It’s a vio­lent sadis­tic sui­ci­dal satan­ic Nazi ide­ol­o­gy. Melz­er had the men­tal­i­ty of sui­cide bomber:

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Indeed, for his part, Melzer’s indoc­tri­na­tion seemed com­plete. “Fas­cism is more the law of nature than any­thing, [its] world­view is that by caus­ing absolute chaos, anar­chy, what­ev­er you want to call it, the law of nature will nat­u­ral­ly take over once again,” Melz­er wrote on a Telegram chan­nel devot­ed to satanism.

In spring 2020, Melz­er learned of the 173rd Air­borne Brigade’s upcom­ing deploy­ment from Camp Eder­le in Vicen­za, Italy, to a base in Turkey. Pros­e­cu­tors allege that Melz­er passed on high­ly clas­si­fied details of his unit’s forth­com­ing assign­ment to fel­low satanists on Telegram, and to a per­son he believed was a mem­ber of Al Qae­da. The intel­li­gence was sent with the intent of hav­ing the 173rd ambushed by ter­ror­ists and trig­ger­ing a “mas­cal” — mil­i­tary speak for a “mass casu­al­ty” event, pros­e­cu­tors say.

In the back and forth over a num­ber of days in May 2020, accord­ing to the evi­dence pre­sent­ed by fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors, Melz­er and his alleged Al Qae­da and satanist co-con­spir­a­tors dis­cussed the loca­tion of the base, the pre­cise num­ber of per­son­nel sta­tioned there, and the unit’s defen­sive capa­bil­i­ties. Melz­er also alleged­ly shared satel­lite images of the outpost’s lay­out. The pro­posed car­nage appar­ent­ly didn’t both­er Melz­er in the least. In fact, he rev­eled in the poten­tial fall­out from a mas­sacre of Amer­i­can sol­diers by jihadis, even if that meant los­ing his own life.

“Anoth­er 10 year war in the Mid­dle East would def­i­nite­ly leave a mark,” Melz­er mes­saged a fel­low satanist. “I would’ve died suc­cess­ful­ly.”
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Dis­turbing­ly, as inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ist Nate Thay­er — who did impor­tant work on Sut­ter’s bizarre biog­ra­phy — observed, one of the par­al­lels we’re see­ing with all of these forms of rad­i­cal­iza­tion which is espe­cial­ly easy in the inter­net age is the rad­i­cal­iza­tion of fol­low­ers through repeat­ed expo­sure to lurid mate­r­i­al and texts to the point of desen­si­ti­za­tion. As Sut­ter him­self has writ­ten, “This Tem­pel is in many ways a social pro­gram­ming exper­i­ment”. Which rais­es the very grim ques­tion giv­en his FBI infor­mant sta­tus: Whose exper­i­ment? Sut­ters? The FBI? Some oth­er nation­al secu­ri­ty agency?

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Inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ist Nate Thay­er sur­faced com­mu­ni­ca­tions between Sut­ter and anoth­er satanist where­in Sut­ter labeled him­self “Mas­ter of the Tem­pel,” and Hoy the “Blood-Mis­tress,” and out­lined his inten­tion to rad­i­cal­ize fol­low­ers through repeat­ed expo­sure to lurid mate­r­i­al and texts to the point of desen­si­ti­za­tion. It’s the equiv­a­lent of cre­at­ing human IEDS: peo­ple who are wired for vio­lence and dis­con­nect­ed enough from moral­i­ty that they have no com­punc­tion about abuse, tor­ture, pedophil­ia, or any of the oth­er prac­tices out­lined in the Tem­pel ov Blood texts.

“This Tem­pel is in many ways a social pro­gram­ming exper­i­ment,” Sut­ter has writ­ten. “While we do cre­ate fanat­ics, we must make the ‘fake’ adher­ents entries look as if it is obvi­ous­ly their will and good for them to serve the ToB. It has to be sub­tle. In the lat­er stages it becomes more overt and at that point is too late for them to change. They become so alien­at­ed from human­i­ty that, well, haha, if they tried to go back they will still cause so much dis­rup­tion.”
...

And as Mike Ger­man, him­self a for­mer FBI agent would went under­cov­er, this whole sto­ry is a reflec­tio nof “gross mis­man­age­ment” by the FBI. And giv­en the real­i­ty that Sut­ter is still out there pump­ing out this mate­r­i­al and rad­i­cal­iz­ing indi­vid­u­als like Niki­ta Cas­ap, it’s hard to see how this isn’t gross mis­man­age­ment or worse:

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FBI snitch­es have long come under scruti­ny for com­mit­ting crimes while work­ing as gov­ern­ment infor­mants, most notably Whitey Bul­ger and Stephen Flem­mi, Boston gang­sters who com­mit­ted more than a dozen mur­ders while on the fed­er­al pay­roll. Roy Frankhouser, a long­time neo-Nazi and fix­ture on the far right, signed on as an FBI infor­mant to feed the bureau infor­ma­tion on Black nation­al­ists and left-wing mil­i­tants in the 1970s. Mike Ger­man, a for­mer FBI agent who spent years infil­trat­ing white-suprema­cist move­ments in the 1990s, points to Bulger’s case and Sutter’s years of satanist pros­e­ly­tiz­ing as exem­plars of “gross mis­man­age­ment” by the country’s pre­mier law-enforce­ment agency. “The con­fi­den­tial infor­mant has been mis­man­aged for decades — that’s a very fraught enter­prise, the idea that you’re going to go out and find peo­ple with first­hand knowl­edge of crim­i­nal activ­i­ty and to the extent they’re coop­er­at­ing with you, it’s because they’re betray­ing their col­leagues,” Ger­man tells Rolling Stone. “Where the FBI gets in trou­ble all the time is ignor­ing the crimes the infor­mants are com­mit­ting.”

Ger­man notes the FBI’s rela­tion­ship with Proud Boy leader Enrique Tar­rio, cur­rent­ly fac­ing fed­er­al charges in con­nec­tion with the Jan. 6 insur­rec­tion (he has plead­ed not guilty), as well as right-wing radio host Hal Turn­er in the ear­ly 2000s, anoth­er pro­pa­gan­dist like Sut­ter whose role as a paid infor­mant emerged dur­ing a fed­er­al tri­al. “Orig­i­nal­ly, they must’ve thought sign­ing up a pro­pa­gan­dist who agreed not to engage in crim­i­nal activ­i­ty was appeal­ing,” Ger­man says of the FBI’s ratio­nale for employ­ing Sut­ter. Bureau rules bar agents from retain­ing infor­mants who engage in vio­lent crimes, and pro­pa­gan­dists often net­work among like-mind­ed extrem­ists while not get­ting their hands dirty. How­ev­er, Ger­man not­ed that the same attrib­ut­es can be dan­ger­ous: “To the extent that this guy is send­ing this ide­ol­o­gy into the ether for every­one to absorb — how many oth­ers are fol­low­ing through and act­ing on it?”

...

For his part, Joshua Sut­ter has faced no con­se­quences for his role in spread­ing Order of Nine Angles dog­ma. Mar­tinet Press con­tin­ues to pub­lish and dis­trib­ute books, and its web­site remains up and run­ning. How­ev­er, his rep­u­ta­tion is bad­ly dam­aged in many far-right cir­cles. The Atom­waf­fen Division’s rem­nants have writ­ten a num­ber of self-absolv­ing screeds against him and what they per­ceive as FBI entrap­ment. Sut­ter also nev­er paid tax­es on the $140,000 he earned as an infor­mant, or the $4,378.60 in trav­el expens­es giv­en to him by the FBI. Satanists appar­ent­ly don’t care much for the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice.
...

Also keep in mind that while Sut­ter’s sta­tus as a paid con­fi­den­tial FBI infor­mant has been pub­licly revealed exten­sive­ly in recent years, and yet it’s not at all clear that he still isn’t being paid by the FBI. Sure, his infor­mant sta­tus isn’t “con­fi­den­tial” at this point. And yet, some­how, Sut­ter con­tin­ues to play his Tem­pel ov Blood lead­er­ship role. Mar­tinet Press is still in oper­a­tion. Is the FBI still pay­ing Joshua Caleb Sut­ter? We don’t know.

764, COM, and the Online Satanic Child Abusing Extortion Terror Factory

Those ques­tions about the nature of the FBI’s rela­tion­ship with Joshua Caleb Sut­ter brings us to the fol­low­ing Wired piece from May 2024 about what is prob­a­bly the worst part of this entire sto­ry: the inter­na­tion­al online net­works of Satan­ic child abusers. Mul­ti­ple inter­na­tion­al net­works of Satan­ic child abusers deeply influ­enced by the nihilis­tic ide­ol­o­gy Sut­ter has been pro­mot­ing for decades. But these net­work aren’t just acquir­ing and trad­ing child pornog­ra­phy. They are active­ly recruit­ing chil­dren online into nihilis­tic sub-cul­tures, often using extreme gore-focused online con­tent, with a goal of indoc­tri­nat­ing the youths into the 09A ide­ol­o­gy and bul­ly­ing them into hand­ing over com­pro­mis­ing mate­ri­als (like send­ing porno­graph­ic pic­tures of them­selves) and then using that mate­r­i­al to extort them into even more extreme behav­ior. It real­ly is like a Satan­ic project to entrap, dom­i­nate, and utter­ly destroy ran­dom kids online.

And in some cas­es, that destruc­tive end stage of this extor­tion-based indoc­tri­na­tion comes in the form pres­sur­ing them to com­mit acts of vio­lence and ter­ror. Recall how the case of Niki­ta Cas­ap and his Pres­i­dent Trump assas­si­na­tion plot has all the hall­marks of being a prod­uct of a child-extort­ing group exact­ly like this, with Cas­ap report­ed­ly oper­at­ing under the assump­tion that his plot was just one part of a a much larg­er ter­ror plot being orches­trat­ed by the mys­te­ri­ous online group he was work­ing with.

It also turns out that these net­work have been par­tic­u­lar­ly focused on recruit­ing their teen vic­tims via online plat­forms like Dis­cord. Which is more or less what we should have expect­ed. As we’ve seen, Dis­cord has long been a focus for extrem­ist groups look­ing for recruits, in part because they’ve had so much free reign on that plat­form. At the same time, it’s not as if there’s been no polic­ing of these groups by plat­forms like Dis­cord. In fact, the com­pa­ny claims it blocked 130 groups and 34,000 accounts linked to 764 in 2023 alone. That’s the high­ly dis­turb­ing pic­ture that emerges from this sto­ry: law enforce­ment knows groups like 764 and COM are aggres­sive­ly oper­at­ing and yet, oth­er than a few arrests, author­i­ties don’t seem to be able to real­ly do any­thing about it:

Wired

There Are Dark Cor­ners of the Inter­net. Then There’s 764

A glob­al net­work of vio­lent preda­tors is hid­ing in plain sight, tar­get­ing chil­dren on major plat­forms, groom­ing them, and extort­ing them to com­mit hor­rif­ic acts of abuse.

By Ali Win­ston
Secu­ri­ty
Mar 13, 2024 8:00 AM

WIRED col­lab­o­rat­ed with Der Spiegel, Recorder, and The Wash­ing­ton Post on this report­ing. Each wrote sep­a­rate sto­ries that the news orga­ni­za­tions agreed to pub­lish in tan­dem. This sto­ry con­tains descrip­tions of abuse, self-harm, mur­der, and sui­cide. Read­er dis­cre­tion is advised.

It sounds like a cheap true-crime con­spir­a­cy: An inter­na­tion­al net­work of preda­tors steeped in Satanism lure chil­dren from seem­ing­ly harm­less online plat­forms like Dis­cord, Minecraft, and Roblox and extort them to sex­u­al­ly exploit and griev­ous­ly harm them­selves. Some vic­tims are even pushed to sui­cide.

Except it’s true.

A report­ing con­sor­tium includ­ing Der Spiegel, Recorder, The Wash­ing­ton Post, and WIRED has unearthed a sprawl­ing ecosys­tem that has tar­get­ed thou­sands of peo­ple and vic­tim­ized dozens, if not hun­dreds, of chil­dren using some of the internet’s biggest plat­forms. Law enforce­ment believes the “com” net­work encom­pass­es a swath of inter­lock­ing groups with thou­sands of users, includ­ing hun­dreds of hard­core mem­bers who vic­tim­ize chil­dren through coor­di­nat­ed online cam­paigns of extor­tion, dox­ing, swat­ting, and harass­ment.

This report­ing con­sor­tium has obtained and ana­lyzed more than 3 mil­lion mes­sages from more than 50 chat groups on Dis­cord and Telegram. The mes­sages expose mul­ti­ple com sub­groups and thou­sands of users in near­ly a dozen coun­tries on three con­ti­nents. Our inves­ti­ga­tion found ample evi­dence of preda­to­ry con­duct and a per­sis­tent pres­ence across apps includ­ing Telegram and Dis­cord, while WIRED also found com activ­i­ty on Insta­gram, Sound­Cloud, and Roblox. The plat­forms are aware of these groups, but they have yet to suc­cess­ful­ly erad­i­cate them.

...

“Their main aim is to trau­ma­tize you,” says Anna, a young woman groomed and vic­tim­ized by 764, one of the most noto­ri­ous groups under the com umbrel­la. “They want to make you suf­fer. And for you to take your own life. They real­ly are very sadis­tic peo­ple.”

The non­prof­it Nation­al Cen­ter for Miss­ing & Exploit­ed Chil­dren received hun­dreds of reports of minors extort­ed into hurt­ing them­selves in 2023, says NCMEC’s Cyber­Ti­pline direc­tor Fal­lon McNul­ty, a sharp rise over pre­vi­ous years. The orga­ni­za­tion, which routes reports from social media com­pa­nies and the pub­lic to law enforce­ment, still receives dozens each month, she says.

“From 2022 into last year, espe­cial­ly, the scale of what’s com­ing through seems like it’s con­tin­u­ing to grow,” McNul­ty says, adding that in 2022 NCMEC only saw “a hand­ful” of such extor­tion reports.

These online groups, she says, are respon­si­ble for “some of the most egre­gious online entice­ment reports that we’re see­ing in terms of what these chil­dren are being coerced to do.”

The FBI issued a for­mal warn­ing about the broad­er com net­work in Sep­tem­ber 2023 but did not answer spe­cif­ic ques­tions regard­ing its inves­ti­ga­tions into the com/764 extor­tion net­work.

Since mid-2021, inves­ti­ga­tors have launched crim­i­nal cas­es against more than a dozen peo­ple linked to com groups in the Unit­ed States, Great Britain, Ger­many, Roma­nia, and Brazil. The US Depart­ment of Jus­tice is pur­su­ing fur­ther charges through fed­er­al grand jury pro­ceed­ings. The com net­work is also con­nect­ed to a nihilist East­ern Euro­pean skin­head crew whose mem­bers are accused of a series of ran­dom attacks and killings in Ukraine and Rus­sia.

US pros­e­cu­tors have cit­ed Telegram and Dis­cord as the pri­ma­ry means by which mem­bers of 764 oper­ate. The group used these plat­forms “to desen­si­tize vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions through shar­ing extreme gore and child sex­u­al abuse mate­r­i­al,” pros­e­cu­tors wrote in a crim­i­nal case against Kalana Limkin, an alleged 764 mem­ber charged in Hawaii with the dis­tri­b­u­tion of child sex­u­al abuse mate­r­i­al.

“Child abuse and calls to vio­lence are explic­it­ly for­bid­den by Telegram’s terms of ser­vice,” says a Telegram spokesper­son. “Telegram has mod­er­at­ed harm­ful con­tent on our plat­form since its cre­ation.” As of this writ­ing, dozens of Telegram chan­nels used by the extor­tion net­work remain active.

Dis­cord says it has worked to shut down com activ­i­ties on its plat­form for more than two years. A spokesper­son for Dis­cord, who asked not to be named for their own safe­ty, says dis­man­tling the group is a top pri­or­i­ty, high­light­ing the company’s close work­ing rela­tion­ship with the FBI and oth­er law enforce­ment. In 2023 alone, the com­pa­ny says, Dis­cord blocked 130 groups and 34,000 accounts linked to 764.

Insta­gram accounts linked to the extor­tion net­work are still active, despite par­ent com­pa­ny Meta imple­ment­ing bans on com- and 764-relat­ed accounts. Sound­Cloud host­ed self-harm and Satanism-relat­ed playlists, which remain online as of this writ­ing. “We strict­ly pro­hib­it any con­tent that includes or sug­gests child sex­u­al abuse or groom­ing on our plat­form and uses a com­bi­na­tion of human mod­er­a­tion and tech­no­log­i­cal tools to iden­ti­fy and remove infring­ing con­tent,” a Sound­Cloud spokesper­son says.

On Roblox, user-cre­at­ed skins for 764-themed char­ac­ters with the group’s insignia and open ref­er­ences to CSAM were abun­dant­ly avail­able. Roblox spokesper­son Juli­et Chaitin-Lef­court tells WIRED the com­pa­ny is aware of the com net­work, works proac­tive­ly to find and ban such con­tent, and is in con­stant con­ver­sa­tion with law enforce­ment and oth­er plat­forms. “We take the safe­ty of our users incred­i­bly seri­ous­ly, espe­cial­ly giv­en our users include young chil­dren,” she says.

Minecraft, where 764 mem­bers are known to be active, has a “vari­ety of sys­tems” for remov­ing harm­ful con­tent from its offi­cial servers, includ­ing “chat fil­ter­ing, in-game report­ing, parental con­trols,” and has “ded­i­cat­ed teams for review and mod­er­a­tion,” accord­ing to a spokesper­son for Microsoft, which owns Minecraft’s devel­op­ment stu­dio. “On pri­vate servers that are unman­aged by Minecraft, we will take action to inves­ti­gate report­ed vio­la­tions and apply enforce­ment mech­a­nisms as need­ed.”

The network’s mem­bers, how­ev­er, have shown enough tech­ni­cal pro­fi­cien­cy to evade what­ev­er mea­sures plat­forms take to ban them.

The FBI and oth­er for­eign law enforce­ment agen­cies are inves­ti­gat­ing 764 for both CSAM offens­es and ter­ror­ism because of a con­nec­tion to Order of Nine Angles, a once-obscure Satanist cult from Great Britain that has become ever-present in online “edge lord” and mil­i­tant neo-Nazi cir­cles over the past decade. Swastikas, Nazi memes, and accel­er­a­tionist pro­pa­gan­da glo­ri­fy­ing homi­ci­dal mem­bers of white suprema­cist groups like the Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion fre­quent­ly appear in the extor­tion group’s Telegram chan­nels. While many users appear unfa­mil­iar with O9A dog­ma, the sect’s sym­bols, texts, and aes­thet­ic have been wide­ly co-opt­ed with­in the group for shock val­ue. The prac­tice of urg­ing vic­tims to injure them­selves with “cut­signs” also bears a strik­ing resem­blance to O9A rit­u­als.

A law enforce­ment offi­cial with knowl­edge of the inves­ti­ga­tion into 764 and com, speak­ing on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, notes that the asso­ci­a­tion with com has dras­ti­cal­ly increased O9A’s vis­i­bil­i­ty. “There’s a far larg­er pool of recruits and peo­ple inter­est­ed in child abuse and pedophil­ia than an obscure Satanist sect,” they say. “In a way, it’s genius.”

The per­pe­tra­tors of com’s and 764’s abuse have for years oper­at­ed behind the masks of user­names and pro­file pic­tures. A detailed look at the lead­er­ship and core mem­bers of this com­mu­ni­ty reveal for the first time cru­cial details about the steps lead­ing them to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly vic­tim­ize chil­dren, how the pre­da­tion net­work func­tions, how they have con­tin­ued to evade ban attempts by major plat­forms and per­sist despite ongo­ing crim­i­nal investigations—and how they con­tin­ue to spread a mali­cious ethos world­wide.

Accord­ing to inter­views with vic­tims, law enforce­ment sources, and court records, 764 begins with Bradley Caden­head, a teenag­er from the Dal­las exurb of Stephenville, Texas.

Cadenhead’s prob­lem­at­ic behav­ior start­ed ear­ly, from watch­ing online porn at age 8 to devel­op­ing a fas­ci­na­tion with “vio­lent tor­ture pic­tures and video, as well as gore,” accord­ing to court records. Writ­ten state­ments from oth­er chil­dren reveal that Caden­head post­ed exten­sive­ly on social media about vio­lence.

Caden­head was placed on juve­nile pro­ba­tion for dis­cussing shoot­ing up a mid­dle school when he was 13. The next year, he was briefly sent to a juve­nile deten­tion facil­i­ty for vio­lat­ing terms of his parole, and rou­tine­ly watched ultra-vio­lent “gore” con­tent online.

Pro­ba­tion records show Caden­head, while under court super­vi­sion, large­ly refused to par­tic­i­pate in coun­sel­ing ses­sions, repeat­ed­ly left home with­out per­mis­sion, assault­ed his moth­er, and ingest­ed dan­ger­ous amounts of Tylenol and cough syrup, requir­ing him to be briefly hos­pi­tal­ized.

Cadenhead’s online activ­i­ties also went unre­strict­ed. While play­ing Minecraft, he met anoth­er user who deep­ened his inter­est in “gore,” he told pro­ba­tion offi­cials. Research pro­vid­ed by Discord’s secu­ri­ty team indi­cates that Caden­head learned to groom chil­dren on a sex­tor­tion serv­er called “CVLT.” Caden­head then start­ed a Dis­cord serv­er called “764,” after the first three dig­its of Stephenville’s zip code.

Caden­head and dozens of oth­ers would use the 764 Dis­cord serv­er and Telegram to dis­trib­ute CSAM and seek out vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren to vic­tim­ize. Using the han­dles of “Felix” and “Brad764,” Caden­head mod­er­at­ed the serv­er, which received hun­dreds of videos and pho­tographs of extreme vio­lence, ani­mal tor­ture, and CSAM, some of which Caden­head uploaded him­self. “How-to” guides on sex­u­al­ly exploit­ing and extort­ing minors online were cir­cu­lat­ed in their chan­nels. The serv­er repeat­ed­ly evad­ed bans from Dis­cord, which says it first iden­ti­fied 764 and its hun­dreds of users in Jan­u­ary 2021, and report­ed it to law enforce­ment that year.

Begin­ning in June 2021, Dis­cord flagged Cadenhead’s online con­duct 58 times for shar­ing “images of pre­pu­bes­cent females [and] males engage[d] in sex­u­al acts, or in var­i­ous pos­es nude.” The com­plaints, ref­er­enced in court doc­u­ments, includ­ed a num­ber of Cadenhead’s Dis­cord user­names and an Inter­net Pro­to­col address locat­ed in Stephenville, Texas. Accord­ing to a Dis­cord spokesper­son, Caden­head used 58 dis­tinct accounts in each one of the report­ed inci­dents.

Late that August, offi­cers from Stephenville Police seized Cadenhead’s cell phone. Law enforce­ment would lat­er find a cache of more than 20 files of CSAM, as well as pho­tographs fea­tur­ing “Brad is a pedo” and “764” carved into the flesh of unknown per­sons.

“I’ve nev­er seen any indi­vid­ual get as many com­plaints against him as Bradley,” says Cap­tain Jere­my Lanier of the Stephenville Police Depart­ment, who helped con­duct the foren­sic analy­sis of Cadenhead’s devices. “This wasn’t run-of-the-mill child porn, this was a lot dark­er. There was one video of a woman being held down and stabbed. This case was awful. It was the worst stuff I’ve ever looked at in six years of work­ing CSAM.”

Caden­head and oth­er mem­bers of his serv­er would lure young women into video chats and extort them into cut­ting them­selves, per­form­ing live sex­u­al acts, or harm­ing them­selves. “Eve,” a teenage girl from the Mid­west, was vic­tim­ized in this man­ner pri­or to spring 2021 when she was a young teenag­er.

In an inter­view, Eve’s moth­er recount­ed her daugh­ter being drawn into the exploita­tion net­work through “gore” servers on Dis­cord, where chil­dren would watch ultra-vio­lent con­tent. “What 764 would do is they would go in and drop videos in these groups and try to start pulling kids out of that to their serv­er,” she says. The mod­er­a­tor of the 764 serv­er, who went by “Brad”—one of the alias­es con­nect­ed to Cadenhead—“groomed” her daugh­ter through false shows of affec­tion and con­vinc­ing her to send them nude pho­tographs of her­self.

Once they estab­lished a degree of trust, Caden­head and the extorters threat­ened to harm Eve’s ele­men­tary-school-aged broth­er or release her explic­it pho­tographs. On video calls, they would urge her to kill her­self and con­vince her to carve their user­names into her skin. They pres­sured her to stran­gle her cat, and even to behead her pet ham­ster on cam­era. “Bite the head off, or I’ll fuck your whole life up,” a user named “Felix” told Eve on video. Dur­ing the police inves­ti­ga­tion, Felix was an alias asso­ci­at­ed with an IP address linked to Caden­head.

Eve did all this in her bed­room clos­et.

Things took a turn for the worse when Eve deeply cut her­self one night in the bath, to “turn the water red” like one of her extorters had request­ed. They also swat­ted the family’s house and began call­ing her school and telling her prin­ci­pal she’d tried to mur­der ani­mals, prompt­ing school offi­cials to file a report with local police.

...

Accord­ing to her moth­er, the FBI did not reach out to Eve until Decem­ber 2023. The Stephenville Police Depart­ment was not aware of Eve’s vic­tim­iza­tion by Caden­head, and he was not charged with her abuse. Accord­ing to Lanier, the FBI only asked him for the con­tents of Cadenhead’s devices in Novem­ber 2023, two years after his arrest. Eve’s moth­er said FBI agents con­tact­ed her the fol­low­ing month and asked her for details about her daughter’s abuse. The agents did not say why they were inquir­ing about Eve’s ordeal, and she learned from this report­ing con­sor­tium that her daughter’s abuser had been arrest­ed.

...

An inter­view Caden­head gave with pro­ba­tion ser­vices con­firmed the gen­er­al details of Eve’s sto­ry. “Bradley did admit to the group’s use of the serv­er to do sex­tor­tion of indi­vid­u­als,” the report read. “They would do this for mon­ey and some­times just for pow­er over the indi­vid­u­als.” Caden­head admit­ted urg­ing users in the serv­er to carve his ini­tials into their bod­ies as a form of homage, described his serv­er as a “cult,” and said many of the par­tic­i­pants ven­er­at­ed him as a cult leader.

Last spring, Caden­head plead­ed guilty and was sen­tenced to 80 years in prison. Now 18 years old, he is cur­rent­ly incar­cer­at­ed at Estelle State Prison in Huntsville, one of Texas’ high­est-secu­ri­ty cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ties. Caden­head and his par­ents did not respond to mul­ti­ple requests for com­ment, though a fam­i­ly attor­ney indi­cat­ed they may appeal his con­vic­tion.

...

The FBI’s inter­est in 764 appears to have begun with a core mem­ber of Cadenhead’s serv­er who went by “Duck” or “Gore­butch­er.” Vic­tims described him as aggres­sive, sadis­tic, and cliquish, refus­ing to inter­act with under­age girls he deemed unat­trac­tive and run­ning an invite-only chat ded­i­cat­ed to the Order of Nine Angles. “He did­n’t like me because I was­n’t pret­ty enough. He made that very clear,” says “Sophia,” a young Cana­di­an woman vic­tim­ized by 764 for years.

Gore­butch­er alleged­ly is Angel Luis Almei­da, a high school dropout from Ocala, Flori­da, with a vio­lent past and a long rap sheet. By 19, Almei­da had racked up sev­er­al arrests in the cen­tral Flori­da town, accused of car theft, domes­tic assault, vehi­cle bur­glar­ies, and armed rob­beries. He served time in 2019 for steal­ing sev­er­al cars.

At some point after his release in March 2020, Almei­da moved to a relative’s apart­ment in Queens, New York. His social media posts on Insta­gram and Face­book from that era show a young man enam­ored with firearms, drugs, threats of vio­lence, the Order of Nine Angles, and child abuse. In sev­er­al posts, he pos­es shirt­less with a friend while tot­ing a shot­gun, wears a skull mask bal­a­cla­va asso­ci­at­ed with mur­der­ous neo-Nazi groups, and bran­dish­es a hand­gun at the cam­era while smok­ing what appears to be nar­cotics from a glass pipe.

In late Feb­ru­ary 2021, accord­ing to court records, Almei­da post­ed a pho­to­graph of a bound, gagged, and half-dressed young girl with the cap­tion: “Life’s always been shit still I see the past through rose col­ored lens­es.”

Almeida’s online activ­i­ty grew alarm­ing enough that a warn­ing about his con­duct made its way to the FBI by Sep­tem­ber 2021, accord­ing to FBI records. A tip­ster warned the Bureau that Almei­da had alleged­ly post­ed pic­tures of chil­dren in bondage wear, threat­ened to kill oth­er users, had met up with a 16-year-old in per­son, and was poten­tial­ly tar­get­ing oth­er minors sex­u­al­ly.

In Octo­ber 2021, as 764’s noto­ri­ety online grew fol­low­ing Cadenhead’s arrest, the FBI received anoth­er tip about Almeida’s pri­or crim­i­nal con­duct and alleged pos­ses­sion of firearms: “He con­sis­tent­ly posts ani­mal abuse mate­r­i­al and has even post­ed images of him­self hav­ing abused an ani­mal by chop­ping it in half. He is extreme­ly dan­ger­ous. He open­ly admits what he wants to do to chil­dren, posts his drug use online, and even posts child abuse mate­r­i­al.”

That fall, the Feds allege, Almei­da post­ed images on Insta­gram of him­self pos­ing with a hand­gun next to a flag of Tem­pel ov Blood—an Amer­i­can off­shoot of O9A run by long­time FBI infor­mant Joshua Caleb Sut­ter—and a pho­to of him­self in front of a Nazi flag and a com­put­er screen read­ing, “I’m addict­ed to hard­core child pornog­ra­phy,” while wear­ing a shirt embla­zoned with “kid­die fid­dler.” Telegram posts recov­ered by an FBI employ­ee showed Almei­da pos­ing with a hand­gun and more O9A indi­cia, includ­ing a flag, and a book, The Sin­is­ter Tra­di­tion.

Almeida’s appar­ent pos­ses­sion of a firearm was enough to sub­stan­ti­ate ini­tial fed­er­al crim­i­nal charges against him, and the Bureau of Alco­hol, Tobac­co and Firearms took him into cus­tody fol­low­ing a Novem­ber 2021 raid on the Queens apart­ment. A 9‑mm hand­gun, ammu­ni­tion, the skull mask bal­a­cla­va, four elec­tron­ic devices, and an Order of Nine Angles “blood pact” were seized from Almeida’s room. Inves­ti­ga­tors say his devices held hun­dreds of thou­sands of dig­i­tal files, includ­ing reams of CSAM and com­mu­ni­ca­tions with oth­er mem­bers of 764. This is the first pub­lic doc­u­men­ta­tion of the FBI’s glimpse into the child abuse net­work Caden­head had found­ed, despite Discord’s report about the group to the Bureau in 2021.

...

The Feds allege that, using Face­book and Insta­gram, Almei­da groomed an under­age girl between July and Decem­ber 2021, send­ing her explic­it images of him­self and con­vinc­ing her to pro­duce and send CSAM of her­self. His dig­i­tal traces, the Feds claim, also show Almei­da groom­ing anoth­er minor from Feb­ru­ary 2020 through Novem­ber 2021 over “cell­phone mes­sages” and in per­son. He alleged­ly con­vinced this sec­ond girl to pro­duce CSAM of her­self, engage in sex­u­al acts with him, and worse: “The defen­dant held Jane Doe‑2 at gun­point while pos­ing for a pho­to­graph, and he con­vinced Jane Doe‑2 to cut her neck to allow the defen­dant to drink her blood. The defen­dant instruct­ed Jane Doe‑2 to study 764 doc­trine and to dis­trib­ute CSAM to oth­ers.”

Accord­ing to a Meta rep­re­sen­ta­tive, the com­pa­ny began inves­ti­gat­ing com and 764 in ear­ly 2023 and has since banned the group and its var­i­ous splin­ters from its plat­forms, but describes these efforts as an “ongo­ing fight.” Almeida’s accounts were dis­abled in 2021, and his data was turned over to law enforce­ment pur­suant to a court order, says the Meta spokesper­son.

“Child exploita­tion is a hor­rif­ic crime, and we’ve spent years build­ing tech­nol­o­gy to com­bat it and to sup­port law enforce­ment in inves­ti­gat­ing and pros­e­cut­ing the crim­i­nals behind it,” the spokesper­son says. “We’ve banned these groups from our apps, and con­tin­ue to proac­tive­ly work to find and remove their accounts.”

Almei­da faces life in prison if con­vict­ed. He has been held in fed­er­al jails since his arrest in fall 2021.

Amid the inves­ti­ga­tions against Caden­head and Almei­da, a new era of 764 began to emerge. One par­tic­u­lar­ly vio­lent mem­ber of 764’s “New Gen­er­a­tion” was “Tob­bz,” a young Ger­man based in Roma­nia, who joined 764 when Caden­head still ran the serv­er. After Cadenhead’s arrest, accord­ing to vic­tims and court doc­u­ments, the group was run by a Roman­ian nation­al who went by the han­dle “Riley,” whose true name is Francesco.

Sophia, who was pulled into 764’s orbit around the age of 15 from servers that were ini­tial­ly ori­ent­ed toward hack­ers and sim swap­pers, says that Tob­bz was pop­u­lar among the core 764 mem­bers, par­tic­u­lar­ly Caden­head.

...

Born in west­ern Ger­many and raised by a fos­ter fam­i­ly in Roma­nia, Tob­bz even­tu­al­ly fell into 764’s world, joined the group, daubed the group’s name on the wall of his room, and inked it on his fore­arm. Tob­bz also devel­oped an intense inter­est in the Order of Nine Angles, down­load­ing O9A pro­pa­gan­da and tat­too­ing him­self with the Satanist cult’s sep­ta­gram sym­bol.

In March 2022, Tob­bz attacked an 82-year-old man, caus­ing severe injuries that hos­pi­tal­ized the vic­tim for a fort­night. Two weeks lat­er, he fatal­ly stabbed an elder­ly woman he sus­pect­ed of Roma or Jew­ish ances­try, stream­ing the lethal knife attack on Dis­cord and lat­er upload­ing the video to Telegram. After the mur­der, Tob­bz post­ed: “I feel like God.”

When Tob­bz was arrest­ed in April 2022, inves­ti­ga­tors uncov­ered CSAM mate­r­i­al, and “a lot of mate­r­i­al with vio­lence in every imag­in­able form, behead­ings, bomb­ings, abused chil­dren,” accord­ing to court records. He was con­vict­ed of aggra­vat­ed mur­der in August 2023 for killing the elder­ly woman and sen­tenced to 14 years in prison.

Riley was far more charis­mat­ic than Tob­bz. Sophia, his long­time vic­tim who spent a few years in the group’s clutch­es, describes Riley as charis­mat­ic, flu­ent in Eng­lish, and hyper­ac­tive in grow­ing 764 after Cadenhead’s arrest.

“Riley gets more girls because he’s more attrac­tive,” she says. Riley would encour­age 764 par­tic­i­pants to gen­er­ate con­tent from their vic­tims. “Fan­signs and stuff, like peo­ple step­ping on birds, crush­ing them, and peo­ple killing ani­mals. Real­ly. He would post a lot of ani­mal killing,” Sophia alleges. Riley was also enam­ored with the Order of Nine Angles and the Tem­pel ov Blood. Riley tat­tooed the Tem­pel ov Blood insignia, a tri­dent topped with “333,” on his fore­arm, the same insignia Angel Almei­da dis­played on a flag in his bed­room.

Accord­ing to child ser­vices records and police reports, Sophia had been sex­u­al­ly abused by her uncle before she reached ele­men­tary school, and had a his­to­ry of men­tal health prob­lems and sub­stance abuse. Sev­er­al 764 mem­bers would talk to Sophia about carv­ing their han­dles into her skin, over and over again. She was also coerced to cut a Swasti­ka into her skin. They would fat-shame her con­stant­ly in chats; she devel­oped an eat­ing dis­or­der and shed 60 pounds. She says she was present in the serv­er for some of the group’s most noto­ri­ous moments, includ­ing the livestream where more than a dozen watched Eve behead her ham­ster.

Sophia also wit­nessed peo­ple seri­ous­ly harm them­selves in “red room” livestreams, which were nor­mal­ly car­ried out on dark-web sites and shared in 764 chats. The expe­ri­ences were trau­mat­ic. “I watched a girl hang her­self from her clos­et,” Sophia says, adding that the girl sur­vived. “I saw some­body shoot them­selves. Right in the face.”

...

Vic­tims who pro­vid­ed CSAM and self-harm videos were reward­ed with atten­tion and praise from the extor­tion group. In turn, the mem­bers who are able to coerce more mate­r­i­al from their vic­tims gain sta­tus with­in the group. “The more con­tent they pro­vide, the high­er they are in their hier­ar­chy,” says Anna, a young West­ern Euro­pean woman who was groomed by 764.

When­ev­er she resist­ed his requests to pro­duce “con­tent,” Riley would threat­en to send her pri­or images of self-harm to her par­ents. Like Anna, oth­er vic­tims who didn’t com­ply with the group’s demands were derid­ed, mocked, threat­ened, and extort­ed.

“I was a prize. You know, that’s what the girls are,” says Sophia. “They are prizes. They’re lit­tle show ponies. And even­tu­al­ly, they turned on me and every­thing went to shit. And I tried to kill myself and severe­ly muti­lat­ed myself.” She bears the phys­i­cal and men­tal scars to this day.

Riley was charged with pos­ses­sion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of CSAM in the sum­mer of 2023. He was con­vict­ed in June 2023 and sen­tenced to three years in prison.

The abuse was sys­tem­at­ic, and even cod­i­fied in writ­ing. A user with the alias “Con­vict” cir­cu­lat­ed a how-to guide to groom­ing poten­tial vic­tims that iden­ti­fies minors with men­tal dis­or­ders and ill­ness­es as the most sus­cep­ti­ble to manip­u­la­tion. The detailed instruc­tions doc­u­ment how to feign affec­tion and draw vic­tims into influ­ence, then turn that atten­tion into neg­a­tive enforce­ment and sow self-doubt in order to bring that per­son to the edge of a “bor­der-line episode.” The guide reads, “When they hit an episode, con­tin­ue to break them down until they seem defeat­ed.”

Sophia was also vic­tim­ized by 764 mem­ber Kierre Antho­ny Cut­ler, a young man from Win­ston-Salem, North Car­oli­na, who went by the han­dle “MK Ultra” in 764. Sophia says that Cut­ler would rou­tine­ly rep­re­sent Nazi imagery despite being Black, main­ly for shock val­ue. “I think it was more the pow­er that it stood behind and not so much the actu­al racism and white suprema­cy,” Sophia says.

Sophia says Cutler’s behav­ior fol­lowed the 764 groom­ing man­u­al to the let­ter. Cut­ler would rou­tine­ly “love-bomb” Sophia and oth­er girls in 764’s orbit with affec­tion to build a rap­port, and then turn on them with abuse and sadis­tic demands. Videos show that Cul­ter forced one of his vic­tims to eat her father’s ash­es on video chat, and anoth­er to cut her thighs and write his user­name on the floor in her blood.

Cutler’s con­duct was brought to the atten­tion of the FBI in Octo­ber 2022, when Dis­cord alert­ed the NCMEC that an account had uploaded sus­pect­ed CSAM to that plat­form. Detec­tives from the Win­ston-Salem Police Depart­ment traced the account back to Cut­ler, who, accord­ing to a court fil­ing was pre­vi­ous­ly inves­ti­gat­ed for CSAM dis­tri­b­u­tion. The cops locat­ed Cut­ler out­side a local home­less shel­ter, arrest­ed him, and seized his devices. Cut­ler admit­ted to down­load­ing CSAM mate­ri­als and going by the user­name MK Ultra.

Foren­sic reviews of Cutler’s phone turned up “count­less images of graph­ic self-muti­la­tion by unknown per­sons, images and videos of ani­mal tor­ture, images and videos of unknown per­sons com­mit­ting sui­cide, some of whom were juve­niles,” includ­ing imagery of cut­signs fea­tur­ing Cutler’s han­dles, reads a state­ment of facts filed by fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors in his crim­i­nal case.

Detec­tive Abra­ham Bas­co did the analy­sis of Cutler’s phone, turn­ing up “700 images of the worst child exploita­tion he has observed in his career,” accord­ing to court records. “Near­ly every image of child sex­u­al exploita­tion showed the child to be bound or restrained and in many cas­es an ele­ment of sadism was observed.”

Cut­ler was charged with fed­er­al CSAM-relat­ed offens­es last sum­mer. He has plead­ed guilty and is set for sen­tenc­ing on March 20.

By 2022, the FBI’s inves­ti­ga­tion into 764 and com had sig­nif­i­cant­ly widened from Angel Almeida’s orig­i­nal case to sus­pects in the Unit­ed States and beyond. At the 2022 Europol con­fer­ence that fall, an FBI team gave a pre­sen­ta­tion to Euro­pean law enforce­ment agen­cies that kick-start­ed crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions in Ger­many and France. Inter­pol was also brought in to help coor­di­nate case­work.

Crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions of 764 and com mem­bers increased sig­nif­i­cant­ly in 2023, with cas­es filed in the Unit­ed King­dom, Ger­many, and sev­er­al US juris­dic­tions. How­ev­er, 764 and com have per­sist­ed, reemerg­ing and splin­ter­ing into dozens of new Dis­cord servers and Telegram group chats that fre­quent­ly change iden­ti­fy­ing infor­ma­tion to stay ahead of the plat­forms and law enforce­ment.

Thomas-Gabriel Rüdi­ger, head of the Insti­tute for Cyber Crim­i­nol­o­gy at the Bran­den­burg Police Uni­ver­si­ty, assumes that most offend­ers feel safe online. “Par­tic­u­lar­ly in a glob­al con­text, the pres­sure by law enforce­ment on the inter­net can only be con­sid­ered very low,” he says. This remains true, he says, “even if indi­vid­ual groups are repeat­ed­ly tak­en down.”

Recent cas­es brought by the FBI against US-based mem­bers of com illu­mi­nate the sheer vol­ume of servers and groups that com­prise the network’s “New Gen.” In Decem­ber, a Hawaii Joint Ter­ror­ism Task Force arrest­ed Kalana Limkin and charged him with CSAM dis­tri­b­u­tion and solic­it­ing minors through the Cultist Dis­cord serv­er. Court records show sev­er­al reports were filed against Limkin for uploads of CSAM fea­tur­ing the abuse of infants.

In late Jan­u­ary, FBI agents arrest­ed 47-year-old Richard Dens­more at his grandmother’s house in Kale­va, Michi­gan. An Army vet­er­an who’d com­mit­ted a sex­u­al offense in 1997, Dens­more alleged­ly went by the han­dle “Rabid” online, took part in “New Gen” com/764 cir­cles, and ran his own Dis­cord serv­er called “Sew­er,” where he would alleged­ly solic­it and dis­trib­ute CSAM of young girls. Dur­ing a deten­tion hear­ing for Dens­more, fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors high­light­ed his affil­i­a­tion with 764, which they labeled “an emerg­ing threat.”

Most recent­ly, fed­er­al law enforce­ment arrest­ed 24-year-old Kyle Spitze of Friendsville, Ten­nessee, on child sex­u­al exploita­tion charges. Fed­er­al agents seized Spitze’s phone in mid-Feb­ru­ary fol­low­ing a series of chaot­ic events dur­ing which his mother’s boyfriend shot him in the ear, and cul­mi­nat­ing in his mother’s death in late Jan­u­ary. On Spitze’s phone, accord­ing to court records, fed­er­al agents found CSAM of a minor vic­tim under a fold­er labeled with her name, and a Telegram account under the user­name “Crim­i­nal,” which Spitze alleged­ly used to dis­trib­ute the young girl’s CSAM to oth­er users. The vic­tim was also iden­ti­fied and inter­viewed by the FBI, and stat­ed that she was 12 years old when Spitze alleged­ly vic­tim­ized her.

Chloe, one of his ex-girl­friends who met Spitze as an adult, says she found out about his alleged pedophil­ia after they broke up. “He was already mak­ing me upset dur­ing our rela­tion­ship by post­ing revenge [porn] of me, and sell­ing those images behind my back,” she says. Since she broke up with him last sum­mer, Chloe learned through Spitze’s online pres­ence that he alleged­ly abused sev­er­al oth­er chil­dren, many of whom she’d spo­ken to, with ages rang­ing from 17 to 10 years old. “He ran this serv­er on Dis­cord and Telegram, Slit­bun­nies. It was full of CSAM, cut­signs, and ani­mal crush,” Chloe claims.

...

Spitze is cur­rent­ly detained in a coun­ty jail in Ken­tucky. He has not yet entered a plea, and his lawyer declined a request to com­ment.

Since Angel Almeida’s Novem­ber 2021 arrest, he has tat­tooed an Order of Nine Angles sep­ta­gram onto his chest, hurled racist and anti­se­mit­ic invec­tive at the pre­sid­ing judge in his case, and twice lashed out in court appear­ances last year, attempt­ing to attack both a DOJ employ­ee in the audi­ence dur­ing a June hear­ing and his own defense attor­ney at a pro­ceed­ing last fall.

Even as the ex-con­vict stares down a poten­tial life sen­tence in fed­er­al prison, com con­tin­ues to pro­lif­er­ate online and seek out new vic­tims, with “Free Duck” mes­sages and stick­ers of Almeida’s pho­to still preva­lent in the network’s Telegram chan­nels. As of this writ­ing, com accounts and chan­nels were still vis­i­ble on Insta­gram, X, Roblox, Sound­Cloud, and Telegram.

At the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Deten­tion Cen­ter in Brook­lyn, Almei­da man­aged to obtain access to a con­tra­band phone and post­ed a bare chest­ed self-por­trait while brand­ing a home­made shank and blud­geon in each hand. Sev­er­al weeks ago, he was relo­cat­ed to a fed­er­al jail in Chica­go, where he under­went a psy­chi­atric eval­u­a­tion to deter­mine if he is fit to stand tri­al. The Fed­er­al Bureau of Prison’s inmate loca­tor shows him back in Brooklyn’s Met­ro­pol­i­tan Deten­tion Cen­ter as of this writ­ing.

...

———–

“There Are Dark Cor­ners of the Inter­net. Then There’s 764” By Ali Win­ston; Wired; 03/13/2024

“A report­ing con­sor­tium includ­ing Der Spiegel, Recorder, The Wash­ing­ton Post, and WIRED has unearthed a sprawl­ing ecosys­tem that has tar­get­ed thou­sands of peo­ple and vic­tim­ized dozens, if not hun­dreds, of chil­dren using some of the internet’s biggest plat­forms. Law enforce­ment believes the “com” net­work encom­pass­es a swath of inter­lock­ing groups with thou­sands of users, includ­ing hun­dreds of hard­core mem­bers who vic­tim­ize chil­dren through coor­di­nat­ed online cam­paigns of extor­tion, dox­ing, swat­ting, and harass­ment.”

An inter­lock­ing net­work of thou­sands of users, includ­ing hun­dreds of hard­core mem­bers who vic­tim­ize chil­dren through coor­di­nat­ed online cam­paigns of extor­tion, dox­ing, swat­ting, and harass­ment. That’s what was uncov­ered by a con­sor­tium of media out­lets. And while it’s great that the media is uncov­er­ing such vile net­works, the fact that we’re told tha the FBI and oth­er for­eign law enforce­ment agen­cies are inves­ti­gat­ing 764 for both CSAM offens­es and ter­ror­ism because of the ties to O9A rais­es some rather dis­turb­ing ques­tions giv­en the FBI’s long­stand­ing role as the pro­tec­tor of O9A’s shad­ow pub­lish­er. And why is a tie in to O9A nec­es­sary for the law enforce­ment action? Isn’t a glob­al online child abuse net­work rea­son alone? This is a sto­ry that is dis­turb­ing on many lev­els:

...
The non­prof­it Nation­al Cen­ter for Miss­ing & Exploit­ed Chil­dren received hun­dreds of reports of minors extort­ed into hurt­ing them­selves in 2023, says NCMEC’s Cyber­Ti­pline direc­tor Fal­lon McNul­ty, a sharp rise over pre­vi­ous years. The orga­ni­za­tion, which routes reports from social media com­pa­nies and the pub­lic to law enforce­ment, still receives dozens each month, she says.

“From 2022 into last year, espe­cial­ly, the scale of what’s com­ing through seems like it’s con­tin­u­ing to grow,” McNul­ty says, adding that in 2022 NCMEC only saw “a hand­ful” of such extor­tion reports.

...

The FBI issued a for­mal warn­ing about the broad­er com net­work in Sep­tem­ber 2023 but did not answer spe­cif­ic ques­tions regard­ing its inves­ti­ga­tions into the com/764 extor­tion net­work.

...

The FBI and oth­er for­eign law enforce­ment agen­cies are inves­ti­gat­ing 764 for both CSAM offens­es and ter­ror­ism because of a con­nec­tion to Order of Nine Angles, a once-obscure Satanist cult from Great Britain that has become ever-present in online “edge lord” and mil­i­tant neo-Nazi cir­cles over the past decade. Swastikas, Nazi memes, and accel­er­a­tionist pro­pa­gan­da glo­ri­fy­ing homi­ci­dal mem­bers of white suprema­cist groups like the Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion fre­quent­ly appear in the extor­tion group’s Telegram chan­nels. While many users appear unfa­mil­iar with O9A dog­ma, the sect’s sym­bols, texts, and aes­thet­ic have been wide­ly co-opt­ed with­in the group for shock val­ue. The prac­tice of urg­ing vic­tims to injure them­selves with “cut­signs” also bears a strik­ing resem­blance to O9A rit­u­als.

A law enforce­ment offi­cial with knowl­edge of the inves­ti­ga­tion into 764 and com, speak­ing on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, notes that the asso­ci­a­tion with com has dras­ti­cal­ly increased O9A’s vis­i­bil­i­ty. “There’s a far larg­er pool of recruits and peo­ple inter­est­ed in child abuse and pedophil­ia than an obscure Satanist sect,” they say. “In a way, it’s genius.”
...

But when it comes to insti­tu­tions seem­ing­ly turn­ing a blind eye to online child abuse net­works, the FBI and law enforce­ment isn’t the only kind of insti­tu­tion with a role to play. Online plat­forms like Dis­cord or Roblox — which is high­ly pop­u­lar with kids — or social media plat­forms like Insta­gram appear to be fight­ing a los­ing bat­tle too. And part of what makes that los­ing bat­tle so dis­turb­ing is that, as we’ve seen, these plat­forms, espe­cial­ly Dis­cord, have been los­ing that bat­tle for many years now when it comes to oth­er forms of extrem­ism like forums that cel­e­brate school shoot­ers and effec­tive serve as future-mass mur­der­er recruit­ment tools. So when we see how Joshua Caleb Sut­ter has referred to his pro­pa­gan­diz­ing efforts as a kind of ‘social pro­gram­ming exper­i­ment’ keep in mind that a lot of oth­er online ‘social pro­gram­ming exper­i­ments’ of a sim­i­lar nature have been going on for years thanks, in part, to the fail­ure of these plat­forms to police them­selves. Which, again, rais­es the dis­turb­ing ques­tion: whose exper­i­ment is this?

...
US pros­e­cu­tors have cit­ed Telegram and Dis­cord as the pri­ma­ry means by which mem­bers of 764 oper­ate. The group used these plat­forms “to desen­si­tize vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions through shar­ing extreme gore and child sex­u­al abuse mate­r­i­al,” pros­e­cu­tors wrote in a crim­i­nal case against Kalana Limkin, an alleged 764 mem­ber charged in Hawaii with the dis­tri­b­u­tion of child sex­u­al abuse mate­r­i­al.

...

Dis­cord says it has worked to shut down com activ­i­ties on its plat­form for more than two years. A spokesper­son for Dis­cord, who asked not to be named for their own safe­ty, says dis­man­tling the group is a top pri­or­i­ty, high­light­ing the company’s close work­ing rela­tion­ship with the FBI and oth­er law enforce­ment. In 2023 alone, the com­pa­ny says, Dis­cord blocked 130 groups and 34,000 accounts linked to 764.

Insta­gram accounts linked to the extor­tion net­work are still active, despite par­ent com­pa­ny Meta imple­ment­ing bans on com- and 764-relat­ed accounts. Sound­Cloud host­ed self-harm and Satanism-relat­ed playlists, which remain online as of this writ­ing. “We strict­ly pro­hib­it any con­tent that includes or sug­gests child sex­u­al abuse or groom­ing on our plat­form and uses a com­bi­na­tion of human mod­er­a­tion and tech­no­log­i­cal tools to iden­ti­fy and remove infring­ing con­tent,” a Sound­Cloud spokesper­son says.

On Roblox, user-cre­at­ed skins for 764-themed char­ac­ters with the group’s insignia and open ref­er­ences to CSAM were abun­dant­ly avail­able. Roblox spokesper­son Juli­et Chaitin-Lef­court tells WIRED the com­pa­ny is aware of the com net­work, works proac­tive­ly to find and ban such con­tent, and is in con­stant con­ver­sa­tion with law enforce­ment and oth­er plat­forms. “We take the safe­ty of our users incred­i­bly seri­ous­ly, espe­cial­ly giv­en our users include young chil­dren,” she says.

Minecraft, where 764 mem­bers are known to be active, has a “vari­ety of sys­tems” for remov­ing harm­ful con­tent from its offi­cial servers, includ­ing “chat fil­ter­ing, in-game report­ing, parental con­trols,” and has “ded­i­cat­ed teams for review and mod­er­a­tion,” accord­ing to a spokesper­son for Microsoft, which owns Minecraft’s devel­op­ment stu­dio. “On pri­vate servers that are unman­aged by Minecraft, we will take action to inves­ti­gate report­ed vio­la­tions and apply enforce­ment mech­a­nisms as need­ed.”

The network’s mem­bers, how­ev­er, have shown enough tech­ni­cal pro­fi­cien­cy to evade what­ev­er mea­sures plat­forms take to ban them.

...

The per­pe­tra­tors of com’s and 764’s abuse have for years oper­at­ed behind the masks of user­names and pro­file pic­tures. A detailed look at the lead­er­ship and core mem­bers of this com­mu­ni­ty reveal for the first time cru­cial details about the steps lead­ing them to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly vic­tim­ize chil­dren, how the pre­da­tion net­work func­tions, how they have con­tin­ued to evade ban attempts by major plat­forms and per­sist despite ongo­ing crim­i­nal investigations—and how they con­tin­ue to spread a mali­cious ethos world­wide.
...

And then we get to the Amer­i­can teen who set up the 764 Dis­cord serv­er in the first place: Bradley Caden­head of Stephenville, Texas, who appar­ent­ly estab­lished his sadis­tic child abuse net­work on Dis­cord at the same time he was under court super­vi­sion. But it was­n’t just Caden­head. Dozens of oth­ers used the 764 Dis­cord serv­er too to entrap youths. Caden­head was just the founder and leader of the group. And as we can see, Caden­head was even­tu­al­ly arrest­ed by the police in late August 2021, but it was only after Caden­head had his con­duct flagged 58 times for CSAM mate­r­i­al start­ing the pri­or month. Which rais­es the grim ques­tion: what if he had only been flagged once? Or maybe 29 times instead of 58? Would he still have been arrest­ed?

...
Accord­ing to inter­views with vic­tims, law enforce­ment sources, and court records, 764 begins with Bradley Caden­head, a teenag­er from the Dal­las exurb of Stephenville, Texas.

...
Pro­ba­tion records show Caden­head, while under court super­vi­sion, large­ly refused to par­tic­i­pate in coun­sel­ing ses­sions, repeat­ed­ly left home with­out per­mis­sion, assault­ed his moth­er, and ingest­ed dan­ger­ous amounts of Tylenol and cough syrup, requir­ing him to be briefly hos­pi­tal­ized.

Cadenhead’s online activ­i­ties also went unre­strict­ed. While play­ing Minecraft, he met anoth­er user who deep­ened his inter­est in “gore,” he told pro­ba­tion offi­cials. Research pro­vid­ed by Discord’s secu­ri­ty team indi­cates that Caden­head learned to groom chil­dren on a sex­tor­tion serv­er called “CVLT.” Caden­head then start­ed a Dis­cord serv­er called “764,” after the first three dig­its of Stephenville’s zip code.

Caden­head and dozens of oth­ers would use the 764 Dis­cord serv­er and Telegram to dis­trib­ute CSAM and seek out vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren to vic­tim­ize. Using the han­dles of “Felix” and “Brad764,” Caden­head mod­er­at­ed the serv­er, which received hun­dreds of videos and pho­tographs of extreme vio­lence, ani­mal tor­ture, and CSAM, some of which Caden­head uploaded him­self. “How-to” guides on sex­u­al­ly exploit­ing and extort­ing minors online were cir­cu­lat­ed in their chan­nels. The serv­er repeat­ed­ly evad­ed bans from Dis­cord, which says it first iden­ti­fied 764 and its hun­dreds of users in Jan­u­ary 2021, and report­ed it to law enforce­ment that year.

Begin­ning in June 2021, Dis­cord flagged Cadenhead’s online con­duct 58 times for shar­ing “images of pre­pu­bes­cent females [and] males engage[d] in sex­u­al acts, or in var­i­ous pos­es nude.” The com­plaints, ref­er­enced in court doc­u­ments, includ­ed a num­ber of Cadenhead’s Dis­cord user­names and an Inter­net Pro­to­col address locat­ed in Stephenville, Texas. Accord­ing to a Dis­cord spokesper­son, Caden­head used 58 dis­tinct accounts in each one of the report­ed inci­dents.

Late that August, offi­cers from Stephenville Police seized Cadenhead’s cell phone. Law enforce­ment would lat­er find a cache of more than 20 files of CSAM, as well as pho­tographs fea­tur­ing “Brad is a pedo” and “764” carved into the flesh of unknown per­sons.
...

But Caden­head­’s ques­tion­able inter­ac­tions with law enforce­ment don’t end there. When it came to his exploita­tion of “Eve” who had been vic­tim­ized in the spring of 2021, the FBI did­n’t reach out to Eve about Caden­head­’s abuse until Decem­ber 2023. And even then, he was­n’t charged with her abuse and the FBI only asked for the con­tents of his devices. A month lat­er, the FBI reached out to Eve’s moth­er, and yet even then they did­n’t say why they were inquir­ing about her daugh­ter’s abuse and the moth­er only learned about Caden­head­’s 2021 arrest from the jour­nal­ists who con­tact­ed her for this arti­cle. It’s a bizarrely tepid approach to Caden­head­’s pros­e­cu­tion. Are we look­ing at anoth­er Joshua Caleb Sut­ter sit­u­a­tion?

...
Caden­head and oth­er mem­bers of his serv­er would lure young women into video chats and extort them into cut­ting them­selves, per­form­ing live sex­u­al acts, or harm­ing them­selves. “Eve,” a teenage girl from the Mid­west, was vic­tim­ized in this man­ner pri­or to spring 2021 when she was a young teenag­er.

In an inter­view, Eve’s moth­er recount­ed her daugh­ter being drawn into the exploita­tion net­work through “gore” servers on Dis­cord, where chil­dren would watch ultra-vio­lent con­tent. “What 764 would do is they would go in and drop videos in these groups and try to start pulling kids out of that to their serv­er,” she says. The mod­er­a­tor of the 764 serv­er, who went by “Brad”—one of the alias­es con­nect­ed to Cadenhead—“groomed” her daugh­ter through false shows of affec­tion and con­vinc­ing her to send them nude pho­tographs of her­self.

...

Accord­ing to her moth­er, the FBI did not reach out to Eve until Decem­ber 2023. The Stephenville Police Depart­ment was not aware of Eve’s vic­tim­iza­tion by Caden­head, and he was not charged with her abuse. Accord­ing to Lanier, the FBI only asked him for the con­tents of Cadenhead’s devices in Novem­ber 2023, two years after his arrest. Eve’s moth­er said FBI agents con­tact­ed her the fol­low­ing month and asked her for details about her daughter’s abuse. The agents did not say why they were inquir­ing about Eve’s ordeal, and she learned from this report­ing con­sor­tium that her daughter’s abuser had been arrest­ed.
...

l
And then we get to Joshua Caleb Sut­ter’s inevitable entry into this sto­ry: it turns out the FBI’s inter­est in 764 did­n’t start with Caden­head. It start­ed with anoth­er core mem­ber of the group Angel Luis Almei­da. Now, the fact that the FBI first got inter­est­ed in some­one oth­er than Caden­head isn’t the odd part here. The odd part is that the FBI appar­ent­ly only learned about Almei­da in Sep­tem­ber of 2021, after Caden­head­’s arrest by police. And yet Almei­da him­self was­n’t arrest­ed until Novem­ber of 2021 and that appears to be the first arrest of any­one in 764 by the FBI despite Dis­cord inform­ing the FBI about the group ear­li­er in the year. And it just hap­pens to be the case that Almei­da was also enmeshed in the Tem­pel ov Blood, the O9A off­shoot run by FBI infor­mant Sut­ter. So while it’s good to see the FBI even­tu­al­ly inves­ti­gat­ed mem­bers of 764, there are still a lot of dis­turb­ing ques­tions about what the FBI knew about this net­work and when they knew it:

...
The FBI’s inter­est in 764 appears to have begun with a core mem­ber of Cadenhead’s serv­er who went by “Duck” or “Gore­butch­er.” Vic­tims described him as aggres­sive, sadis­tic, and cliquish, refus­ing to inter­act with under­age girls he deemed unat­trac­tive and run­ning an invite-only chat ded­i­cat­ed to the Order of Nine Angles. “He did­n’t like me because I was­n’t pret­ty enough. He made that very clear,” says “Sophia,” a young Cana­di­an woman vic­tim­ized by 764 for years.

Gore­butch­er alleged­ly is Angel Luis Almei­da, a high school dropout from Ocala, Flori­da, with a vio­lent past and a long rap sheet. By 19, Almei­da had racked up sev­er­al arrests in the cen­tral Flori­da town, accused of car theft, domes­tic assault, vehi­cle bur­glar­ies, and armed rob­beries. He served time in 2019 for steal­ing sev­er­al cars.

...

Almeida’s online activ­i­ty grew alarm­ing enough that a warn­ing about his con­duct made its way to the FBI by Sep­tem­ber 2021, accord­ing to FBI records. A tip­ster warned the Bureau that Almei­da had alleged­ly post­ed pic­tures of chil­dren in bondage wear, threat­ened to kill oth­er users, had met up with a 16-year-old in per­son, and was poten­tial­ly tar­get­ing oth­er minors sex­u­al­ly.

In Octo­ber 2021, as 764’s noto­ri­ety online grew fol­low­ing Cadenhead’s arrest, the FBI received anoth­er tip about Almeida’s pri­or crim­i­nal con­duct and alleged pos­ses­sion of firearms: “He con­sis­tent­ly posts ani­mal abuse mate­r­i­al and has even post­ed images of him­self hav­ing abused an ani­mal by chop­ping it in half. He is extreme­ly dan­ger­ous. He open­ly admits what he wants to do to chil­dren, posts his drug use online, and even posts child abuse mate­r­i­al.”

That fall, the Feds allege, Almei­da post­ed images on Insta­gram of him­self pos­ing with a hand­gun next to a flag of Tem­pel ov Blood—an Amer­i­can off­shoot of O9A run by long­time FBI infor­mant Joshua Caleb Sut­ter—and a pho­to of him­self in front of a Nazi flag and a com­put­er screen read­ing, “I’m addict­ed to hard­core child pornog­ra­phy,” while wear­ing a shirt embla­zoned with “kid­die fid­dler.” Telegram posts recov­ered by an FBI employ­ee showed Almei­da pos­ing with a hand­gun and more O9A indi­cia, includ­ing a flag, and a book, The Sin­is­ter Tra­di­tion.

Almeida’s appar­ent pos­ses­sion of a firearm was enough to sub­stan­ti­ate ini­tial fed­er­al crim­i­nal charges against him, and the Bureau of Alco­hol, Tobac­co and Firearms took him into cus­tody fol­low­ing a Novem­ber 2021 raid on the Queens apart­ment. A 9‑mm hand­gun, ammu­ni­tion, the skull mask bal­a­cla­va, four elec­tron­ic devices, and an Order of Nine Angles “blood pact” were seized from Almeida’s room. Inves­ti­ga­tors say his devices held hun­dreds of thou­sands of dig­i­tal files, includ­ing reams of CSAM and com­mu­ni­ca­tions with oth­er mem­bers of 764. This is the first pub­lic doc­u­men­ta­tion of the FBI’s glimpse into the child abuse net­work Caden­head had found­ed, despite Discord’s report about the group to the Bureau in 2021.
...

But then we get this insane detail: despite a Novem­ber 2021 raid on Almei­da’s apart­ment, the FBI alleges that, using Face­book and Insta­gram, Almei­da groomed an under­age girl between July and Decem­ber 2021. So he was some­how still able to groom this girl for a lit­tle while even after that raid:

...
The Feds allege that, using Face­book and Insta­gram, Almei­da groomed an under­age girl between July and Decem­ber 2021, send­ing her explic­it images of him­self and con­vinc­ing her to pro­duce and send CSAM of her­self. His dig­i­tal traces, the Feds claim, also show Almei­da groom­ing anoth­er minor from Feb­ru­ary 2020 through Novem­ber 2021 over “cell­phone mes­sages” and in per­son. He alleged­ly con­vinced this sec­ond girl to pro­duce CSAM of her­self, engage in sex­u­al acts with him, and worse: “The defen­dant held Jane Doe‑2 at gun­point while pos­ing for a pho­to­graph, and he con­vinced Jane Doe‑2 to cut her neck to allow the defen­dant to drink her blood. The defen­dant instruct­ed Jane Doe‑2 to study 764 doc­trine and to dis­trib­ute CSAM to oth­ers.”
...

And here’s anoth­er rather insane detail: while Almeida’s accounts on Meta’s plat­forms (like Insta­gram and Face­book) were dis­abled in 2021, pre­sum­ably in response to a court order, Meta did­n’t begin inves­ti­ga­tion com and 764 until some time in “ear­ly 2022”. Let’s hope “ear­ly 2022” means Jan­u­ary 1, 2022 and not, say, April 2022. Either way, how did that inves­ti­ga­tion not begin right after a court order shut­ting down Almei­da’s accounts?

...
Accord­ing to a Meta rep­re­sen­ta­tive, the com­pa­ny began inves­ti­gat­ing com and 764 in ear­ly 2023 and has since banned the group and its var­i­ous splin­ters from its plat­forms, but describes these efforts as an “ongo­ing fight.” Almeida’s accounts were dis­abled in 2021, and his data was turned over to law enforce­ment pur­suant to a court order, says the Meta spokesper­son.

“Child exploita­tion is a hor­rif­ic crime, and we’ve spent years build­ing tech­nol­o­gy to com­bat it and to sup­port law enforce­ment in inves­ti­gat­ing and pros­e­cut­ing the crim­i­nals behind it,” the spokesper­son says. “We’ve banned these groups from our apps, and con­tin­ue to proac­tive­ly work to find and remove their accounts.”

Almei­da faces life in prison if con­vict­ed. He has been held in fed­er­al jails since his arrest in fall 2021.
...

Then we get to the ‘new era’ of 764 that began fol­low­ing the arrests of Caden­head and Almei­da, with two new ‘lead­ers’ — “Tob­bz” and “Riley” — both based out of Roma­nia. And in keep­ing with the over­all theme of this gross sto­ry, Tob­bz, like Almei­da, was also infat­u­at­ed with O9A pro­pa­gan­da. Because of course he was. It’s lit­er­al­ly pro­pa­gan­da filled with satan­ic jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for child abuse. Sadis­tic child abusers like Tob­bz are the O9A tar­get demo­graph­ic:

...
Amid the inves­ti­ga­tions against Caden­head and Almei­da, a new era of 764 began to emerge. One par­tic­u­lar­ly vio­lent mem­ber of 764’s “New Gen­er­a­tion” was “Tob­bz,” a young Ger­man based in Roma­nia, who joined 764 when Caden­head still ran the serv­er. After Cadenhead’s arrest, accord­ing to vic­tims and court doc­u­ments, the group was run by a Roman­ian nation­al who went by the han­dle “Riley,” whose true name is Francesco.

...

Born in west­ern Ger­many and raised by a fos­ter fam­i­ly in Roma­nia, Tob­bz even­tu­al­ly fell into 764’s world, joined the group, daubed the group’s name on the wall of his room, and inked it on his fore­arm. Tob­bz also devel­oped an intense inter­est in the Order of Nine Angles, down­load­ing O9A pro­pa­gan­da and tat­too­ing him­self with the Satanist cult’s sep­ta­gram sym­bol.

...

Riley was far more charis­mat­ic than Tob­bz. Sophia, his long­time vic­tim who spent a few years in the group’s clutch­es, describes Riley as charis­mat­ic, flu­ent in Eng­lish, and hyper­ac­tive in grow­ing 764 after Cadenhead’s arrest.

...

Riley was charged with pos­ses­sion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of CSAM in the sum­mer of 2023. He was con­vict­ed in June 2023 and sen­tenced to three years in prison.
...

So how many mem­bers of 764 has law enforce­ment appre­hend­ed thus far? “More than a dozen”, accord­ing to this report, scat­tered across the Unit­ed States, Great Britain, Ger­many, Roma­nia, and Brazil. Which isn’t real­ly that much if you think about it. Don’t for­get the scale of this abuse net­work that we saw above: “Law enforce­ment believes the “com” net­work encom­pass­es a swath of inter­lock­ing groups with thou­sands of users, includ­ing hun­dreds of hard­core mem­bers who vic­tim­ize chil­dren through coor­di­nat­ed online cam­paigns of extor­tion, dox­ing, swat­ting, and harass­ment.” Hun­dreds of “hard­core” mem­bers are into this stuff. So, yay, more than a dozen of these hard­core child abusers have been tak­en down but that’s hard­ly a dent. Which is why we should­n’t be sur­prised that the 764 and com have per­sist­ed and these jour­nal­ists were able to find com accounts and chan­nels vis­i­ble on Insta­gram, X, Roblox, Sound­Cloud, and Telegram as of the pub­li­ca­tion of this arti­cle. It’s not a great sta­tus quo for law enforce­ment, espe­cial­ly giv­en the real­i­ty that the spir­i­tu­al leader of the O9A’s child-abus­ing ide­ol­o­gy is Joshua Caleb Sut­ter, a long­time FBI infor­mant:

...
Since mid-2021, inves­ti­ga­tors have launched crim­i­nal cas­es against more than a dozen peo­ple linked to com groups in the Unit­ed States, Great Britain, Ger­many, Roma­nia, and Brazil. The US Depart­ment of Jus­tice is pur­su­ing fur­ther charges through fed­er­al grand jury pro­ceed­ings. The com net­work is also con­nect­ed to a nihilist East­ern Euro­pean skin­head crew whose mem­bers are accused of a series of ran­dom attacks and killings in Ukraine and Rus­sia.

...

Crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions of 764 and com mem­bers increased sig­nif­i­cant­ly in 2023, with cas­es filed in the Unit­ed King­dom, Ger­many, and sev­er­al US juris­dic­tions. How­ev­er, 764 and com have per­sist­ed, reemerg­ing and splin­ter­ing into dozens of new Dis­cord servers and Telegram group chats that fre­quent­ly change iden­ti­fy­ing infor­ma­tion to stay ahead of the plat­forms and law enforce­ment.

Thomas-Gabriel Rüdi­ger, head of the Insti­tute for Cyber Crim­i­nol­o­gy at the Bran­den­burg Police Uni­ver­si­ty, assumes that most offend­ers feel safe online. “Par­tic­u­lar­ly in a glob­al con­text, the pres­sure by law enforce­ment on the inter­net can only be con­sid­ered very low,” he says. This remains true, he says, “even if indi­vid­ual groups are repeat­ed­ly tak­en down.”

Recent cas­es brought by the FBI against US-based mem­bers of com illu­mi­nate the sheer vol­ume of servers and groups that com­prise the network’s “New Gen.” In Decem­ber, a Hawaii Joint Ter­ror­ism Task Force arrest­ed Kalana Limkin and charged him with CSAM dis­tri­b­u­tion and solic­it­ing minors through the Cultist Dis­cord serv­er. Court records show sev­er­al reports were filed against Limkin for uploads of CSAM fea­tur­ing the abuse of infants.

In late Jan­u­ary, FBI agents arrest­ed 47-year-old Richard Dens­more at his grandmother’s house in Kale­va, Michi­gan. An Army vet­er­an who’d com­mit­ted a sex­u­al offense in 1997, Dens­more alleged­ly went by the han­dle “Rabid” online, took part in “New Gen” com/764 cir­cles, and ran his own Dis­cord serv­er called “Sew­er,” where he would alleged­ly solic­it and dis­trib­ute CSAM of young girls. Dur­ing a deten­tion hear­ing for Dens­more, fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors high­light­ed his affil­i­a­tion with 764, which they labeled “an emerg­ing threat.”

Most recent­ly, fed­er­al law enforce­ment arrest­ed 24-year-old Kyle Spitze of Friendsville, Ten­nessee, on child sex­u­al exploita­tion charges. Fed­er­al agents seized Spitze’s phone in mid-Feb­ru­ary fol­low­ing a series of chaot­ic events dur­ing which his mother’s boyfriend shot him in the ear, and cul­mi­nat­ing in his mother’s death in late Jan­u­ary. On Spitze’s phone, accord­ing to court records, fed­er­al agents found CSAM of a minor vic­tim under a fold­er labeled with her name, and a Telegram account under the user­name “Crim­i­nal,” which Spitze alleged­ly used to dis­trib­ute the young girl’s CSAM to oth­er users. The vic­tim was also iden­ti­fied and inter­viewed by the FBI, and stat­ed that she was 12 years old when Spitze alleged­ly vic­tim­ized her.

...

Even as the ex-con­vict stares down a poten­tial life sen­tence in fed­er­al prison, com con­tin­ues to pro­lif­er­ate online and seek out new vic­tims, with “Free Duck” mes­sages and stick­ers of Almeida’s pho­to still preva­lent in the network’s Telegram chan­nels. As of this writ­ing, com accounts and chan­nels were still vis­i­ble on Insta­gram, X, Roblox, Sound­Cloud, and Telegram.
...

Arrests are hap­pen­ing. And yet, as we can see, these arrests appear to be hard­ly mak­ing a dent in the oper­a­tions of these net­works. COM and 764 are still very much in oper­a­tion. Which, again, makes this a good time to ask: what role has Josh Sut­ter played in the take­down of these net­works? Because it’s not as if the FBI does­n’t have a paid infor­mant who is quite influ­en­tial in these cir­cles. How are COM and 764 still seem­ing­ly unas­sail­able?

Meet 764/COM’s Fellow Travelers: MKU, aka, MKY, aka The Maniac Murder Cult. An International Cult with a Focus on the US Because of All the Guns

It might seem like it can’t get worse than groups like 764 and COM. And that might be true, but they have com­pe­ti­tion when it comes to sadis­tic nihilis­tic ter­ror­ism. Com­pe­ti­tion from their close allies in the Mani­ac Mur­der Cult (MKU/MKY), a group based out of East­ern Europe led by Michail Chkhikvishvili, oth­er­wise known as “Com­man­der Butch­er,” “Michael,” and “Mish­ka.” Chkhikvishvili is no longer on the streets after a July 2024 arrest in Moldo­va by Inter­pol. The charges include con­spir­ing to solic­it attacks on home­less peo­ple, Jews, and oth­er racial minori­ties in New York City, dis­trib­ut­ing explo­sives-mak­ing instruc­tions, and mak­ing vio­lent threats in online con­ver­sa­tions with an under­cov­er FBI employ­ee. But Chkhikvishvili did­n’t just share ter­ror plans with an under­cov­er employ­ee. He was active­ly try­ing to incite the agent into car­ry­ing out attacks of their own using edged weapons or molo­tov cock­tails. We’ve also learned that Chkhikvishvili spent time in the US in 2022, includ­ing a stay with his grand­par­ents in Brook­lyn which involved work­ing in a rehab facil­i­ty tak­ing care of an elder­ly Ortho­dox Jew­ish patient. Chkhikvishvili bragged to a fel­low extrem­ist asso­ciate how he was effec­tive­ly tor­tur­ing the patient on a dai­ly basis. He cur­rent­ly in US cus­tody faces mul­ti­ple charges. And, of course, as we just saw, Chkhikvishvili isn’t the only MKY mem­ber to be arrest­ed in recent­ly arrest­ed. ‘Tob­bz’, the promi­nent Ger­man mem­ber of 764 who was charged with stab­bing a woman, also hap­pened to be a mem­ber of MKY. It’s an inter­na­tion­al nihilis­tic vio­lence cult. Although, as we’re also going to see, Chkhikvishvili had been par­tic­u­lar­ly focused on cul­ti­vat­ing his cult in the US...because of all the guns, of course. It’s a lot eas­i­er to seduce and extort online strangers into acts of mass ter­ror with all these mass ter­ror tools lying around:

Wired

Alleged ‘Mani­ac Mur­der Cult’ Leader Indict­ed Over Plot to Kill Jews

US pros­e­cu­tors have charged Michail Chkhikvishvili, also known as “Com­man­der Butch­er,” with a litany of crimes, includ­ing alleged attempts to poi­son Jew­ish chil­dren in NYC.

Ali Win­ston
Secu­ri­ty
Jul 17, 2024 6:02 PM

Fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors in Brook­lyn on Tues­day unsealed a sweep­ing felony indict­ment against the 20-year-old they say is the head of a vio­lent East­ern Euro­pean skin­head gang impli­cat­ed in a num­ber of assaults and attacks abroad, some of them fatal. The gang, known as Mani­ac Mur­der Cult or MKY, is con­nect­ed to the com/764 pedophil­ia net­work, with at least one killing in Roma­nia direct­ly con­nect­ed to MKY.

Michail Chkhikvishvili, oth­er­wise known as “Com­man­der Butch­er,” “Michael,” and “Mish­ka,” was arrest­ed on an Inter­pol war­rant on July 6 in Chișinău, Moldo­va, for alleged­ly con­spir­ing to solic­it attacks on home­less peo­ple, Jews, and oth­er racial minori­ties in New York City, dis­trib­ut­ing explo­sives-mak­ing instruc­tions, and mak­ing vio­lent threats in online con­ver­sa­tions with an under­cov­er FBI employ­ee. One plot pros­e­cu­tors say he con­coct­ed with the under­cov­er fed involved poi­son­ing Jew­ish chil­dren by hand­ing out taint­ed can­dy while dressed as San­ta Claus on New Year’s Eve 2023.

...

The feds allege that Chkhikvishvili tried to incite the under­cov­er agent into addi­tion­al attacks with either edged weapons or molo­tov cock­tails and that he claimed that the planned attack would be a “big­ger action than Breivik,” refer­ring to Anders Breivik, the Nor­we­gian neo-Nazi who killed 77 peo­ple in 2011.

Accord­ing to the FBI, MKY adheres to a “neo-Nazi accel­er­a­tionist ide­ol­o­gy and pro­motes vio­lence and vio­lent acts against racial minori­ties, the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, and oth­er groups it deems “Unde­sir­ables.” Much like oth­er accel­er­a­tionist mil­i­tants such as the Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion and The Base, MKY seeks to desta­bi­lize soci­ety through vio­lence and ter­ror­ism. It was found­ed in the Ukrain­ian city of Dnipro by Yegor Kras­nov and is accused of many homi­cides and assaults in both Rus­sia and Ukraine. In their Telegram chan­nels, MKY mem­bers lion­ized in-per­son vio­lence and dis­trib­uted how-to guides on com­mit­ting vio­lent assaults and shoot­ings, caus­ing max­i­mum harm to vic­tims, and how per­pe­tra­tors could cov­er their tracks. Com­mit­ting and doc­u­ment­ing such an attack is the cri­te­ria for admit­tance to MKY.

There are exten­sive ties between MKY and 764. That alliance was devel­oped by Chkhikvishvili him­self, par­tic­u­lar­ly through con­tact with two 764 mem­bers who went by the han­dles of “Xor” and “Kush,” both of whom remain uniden­ti­fied. “Tob­bz,” a trou­bled young Ger­man who killed an elder­ly woman and stabbed a man in 2022, had also joined MKY, accord­ing to report­ing by Der Spiegel and Recorder.

...

Chkhikvishvili, a Geor­gian nation­al, was present in the Unit­ed States in 2022, accord­ing to an affi­davit by FBI spe­cial agent Eri­ca Dobin of the New York City Joint Ter­ror­ism Task Force. US author­i­ties say he vis­it­ed his girl­friend in Cal­i­for­nia in March and April of that year, infor­ma­tion the FBI learned after inter­view­ing the young woman about her vir­u­lent neo-Nazi social media posts. Short­ly there­after, Chkhikvishvili trav­eled to Brook­lyn, where he stayed with his grand­par­ents and worked in a rehab facil­i­ty tak­ing care of an elder­ly Ortho­dox Jew­ish patient. “I’m work­ing in rehab cen­ter pri­vate­ly in Jew­ish fam­i­ly,” he mes­saged anoth­er neo-Nazi in July 2022, accord­ing to the crim­i­nal com­plaint. “I get paid to tor­ture dying jew, I think I almost killed him today.” The gov­ern­ment says Chkhikvishvili sent mul­ti­ple images of the patient to his fel­low extrem­ist. The patient died lat­er that year, though the gov­ern­ment does not allege that Chkhikvishvili caused his death.

It is unclear when Chkhikvishvili left the Unit­ed States. Fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors give his place of res­i­dence as Tbil­isi, Geor­gia, even though he was arrest­ed in a Balkan coun­try on the oppo­site side of the Black Sea.

In alleged­ly urg­ing the under­cov­er fed to com­mit acts of vio­lence and record them, Chkhikvishvili repeat­ed­ly empha­sized the lethal lev­el of vio­lence MKY mem­bers employed in their attacks, pros­e­cu­tors say. “We mur­der they larp,” he alleged­ly wrote to anoth­er extrem­ist while com­par­ing MKY to anoth­er neo-Nazi group, refer­ring to “live action role play.” Even while alleged­ly plan­ning the mass poi­son­ing scheme with the under­cov­er FBI agent, pros­e­cu­tors say, Chkhikvishvili did not shy away from the poten­tial “heat” the under­cov­er agent warned it would bring on MKY: “That’s what we exact­ly want,” he wrote in reply.

———–

“Alleged ‘Mani­ac Mur­der Cult’ Leader Indict­ed Over Plot to Kill Jews” by Ali Win­ston; Wired; 07/17/2024

“Michail Chkhikvishvili, oth­er­wise known as “Com­man­der Butch­er,” “Michael,” and “Mish­ka,” was arrest­ed on an Inter­pol war­rant on July 6 in Chișinău, Moldo­va, for alleged­ly con­spir­ing to solic­it attacks on home­less peo­ple, Jews, and oth­er racial minori­ties in New York City, dis­trib­ut­ing explo­sives-mak­ing instruc­tions, and mak­ing vio­lent threats in online con­ver­sa­tions with an under­cov­er FBI employ­ee. One plot pros­e­cu­tors say he con­coct­ed with the under­cov­er fed involved poi­son­ing Jew­ish chil­dren by hand­ing out taint­ed can­dy while dressed as San­ta Claus on New Year’s Eve 2023.”

Michail Chkhikvishvili, aka “Com­man­der Butch­er,” was arrest­ed on an Inter­pol war­rant on July 6 in Chisin­au, Moldo­va, for what sounds like a Nazi ter­ror spree, but not one he would be com­mit­ting him­self. Instead, he was Moldo­va on more of a Nazi ter­ror education/outreach mis­sion with the goal of solic­it­ing oth­er peo­ple to car­ry out the attacks on Jews and oth­er minori­ties in New York City. That’s accord­ing to the under­cov­er FBI agent he was in con­tact with who Chkhikvishvili was try­ing to incite. It’s a sto­ry with enor­mous par­al­lels to the East­ern Euro­pean net­work that manip­u­lat­ed Niki­ta Cas­ap, who was born in Moldo­va before immi­grat­ing to the US with his mom, into an assas­si­na­tion attempt on Pres­i­dent Trump and flee to Ukraine. And Cas­ap was told his attack was to be just one in a much larg­er num­ber of soci­ety desta­bi­liz­ing attacks being orches­trat­ed by this net­work. Is Chkhikvishvili part of the same net­work? Let’s hope so, because oth­er­wise there are mul­ti­ple East­ern Euro­pean satan­ic ter­ror net­works try­ing to recruit peo­ple to car­ry out attacks in the US:

...
The feds allege that Chkhikvishvili tried to incite the under­cov­er agent into addi­tion­al attacks with either edged weapons or molo­tov cock­tails and that he claimed that the planned attack would be a “big­ger action than Breivik,” refer­ring to Anders Breivik, the Nor­we­gian neo-Nazi who killed 77 peo­ple in 2011.

...

In alleged­ly urg­ing the under­cov­er fed to com­mit acts of vio­lence and record them, Chkhikvishvili repeat­ed­ly empha­sized the lethal lev­el of vio­lence MKY mem­bers employed in their attacks, pros­e­cu­tors say. “We mur­der they larp,” he alleged­ly wrote to anoth­er extrem­ist while com­par­ing MKY to anoth­er neo-Nazi group, refer­ring to “live action role play.” Even while alleged­ly plan­ning the mass poi­son­ing scheme with the under­cov­er FBI agent, pros­e­cu­tors say, Chkhikvishvili did not shy away from the poten­tial “heat” the under­cov­er agent warned it would bring on MKY: “That’s what we exact­ly want,” he wrote in reply.
...

Anoth­er detail that might tie into the Niki­ta Cas­ap sto­ry is the fact that Chkhikvishvil­i’s US girl­friend lived in Cal­i­for­nia. Recall how Cas­ap was giv­en instruc­tions by his online provo­ca­teurs to trav­el to Eure­ka, Cal­i­for­nia, after he man­aged to make it to a loca­tion in Okla­homa where he could get fake license plates. But then we get to these wild details about how Chkhikvishvili trav­eled to the US in 2022, vis­it­ing his girl­friend in Cal­i­for­nia, and then trav­el­ing to Brook­lyn, where he stayed with his grand­par­ents and worked in a rehab facil­i­ty tak­ing care of an elder­ly Ortho­dox Jew­ish patient. Chkhikvishvili even bragged to a fel­low extrem­ist about tor­tur­ing and almost killing the guy and, sure enough, the patient died lat­er that year. And US author­i­ties appar­ent­ly don’t when he left the US, sug­gest­ing he was not on their radar at the time:

...
Chkhikvishvili, a Geor­gian nation­al, was present in the Unit­ed States in 2022, accord­ing to an affi­davit by FBI spe­cial agent Eri­ca Dobin of the New York City Joint Ter­ror­ism Task Force. US author­i­ties say he vis­it­ed his girl­friend in Cal­i­for­nia in March and April of that year, infor­ma­tion the FBI learned after inter­view­ing the young woman about her vir­u­lent neo-Nazi social media posts. Short­ly there­after, Chkhikvishvili trav­eled to Brook­lyn, where he stayed with his grand­par­ents and worked in a rehab facil­i­ty tak­ing care of an elder­ly Ortho­dox Jew­ish patient. “I’m work­ing in rehab cen­ter pri­vate­ly in Jew­ish fam­i­ly,” he mes­saged anoth­er neo-Nazi in July 2022, accord­ing to the crim­i­nal com­plaint. “I get paid to tor­ture dying jew, I think I almost killed him today.” The gov­ern­ment says Chkhikvishvili sent mul­ti­ple images of the patient to his fel­low extrem­ist. The patient died lat­er that year, though the gov­ern­ment does not allege that Chkhikvishvili caused his death.

It is unclear when Chkhikvishvili left the Unit­ed States. Fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors give his place of res­i­dence as Tbil­isi, Geor­gia, even though he was arrest­ed in a Balkan coun­try on the oppo­site side of the Black Sea.
...

Then we get to the exten­sive ties to 764, which includes promi­nent 764 leader “Tob­bz” also being a MKY mem­ber. It’s not hard to see why there might be so much com­mon inter­ests between the groups. Not only do they share an under­ly­ing Nazi ide­ol­o­gy but both groups are appar­ent­ly focused on recruit­ing oth­er peo­ple to car­ry out ter­ror attacks on their behalf. And 764’s pat­tern of exort­ing its vic­tims into com­pli­ance has an obvi­ous dark syn­er­gy with MKY’s goals:

...
Accord­ing to the FBI, MKY adheres to a “neo-Nazi accel­er­a­tionist ide­ol­o­gy and pro­motes vio­lence and vio­lent acts against racial minori­ties, the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, and oth­er groups it deems “Unde­sir­ables.” Much like oth­er accel­er­a­tionist mil­i­tants such as the Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion and The Base, MKY seeks to desta­bi­lize soci­ety through vio­lence and ter­ror­ism. It was found­ed in the Ukrain­ian city of Dnipro by Yegor Kras­nov and is accused of many homi­cides and assaults in both Rus­sia and Ukraine. In their Telegram chan­nels, MKY mem­bers lion­ized in-per­son vio­lence and dis­trib­uted how-to guides on com­mit­ting vio­lent assaults and shoot­ings, caus­ing max­i­mum harm to vic­tims, and how per­pe­tra­tors could cov­er their tracks. Com­mit­ting and doc­u­ment­ing such an attack is the cri­te­ria for admit­tance to MKY.

There are exten­sive ties between MKY and 764. That alliance was devel­oped by Chkhikvishvili him­self, par­tic­u­lar­ly through con­tact with two 764 mem­bers who went by the han­dles of “Xor” and “Kush,” both of whom remain uniden­ti­fied. “Tob­bz,” a trou­bled young Ger­man who killed an elder­ly woman and stabbed a man in 2022, had also joined MKY, accord­ing to report­ing by Der Spiegel and Recorder.
...

But per­haps the MKY/Maniac Mur­der Cult sto­ry that best cap­tures the reach of this group’s twist­ed ide­ol­o­gy can be found in Nashville, Ten­nessee, where a 17 year old high school stu­dent opened fired at Anti­och High School, killing one stu­dent before turn­ing the gun on him­self. The shoot­er, Solomon Hen­der­son, expressed in writ­ings his sup­port for the white suprema­cist MKY ide­ol­o­gy and declared that he was com­mit­ting the attack in sup­port of MKY, which is all the more remark­able by the fact that he was African Amer­i­can. It’s a pow­er­ful exam­ple of the poten­tial reach of this kind of online pro­pa­gan­da. And as Chkhikvishvili admits, he focused his ter­ror efforts on the Unit­ed States for one sim­ple rea­son: easy access to all those guns:

The Ten­neessean

Head of inter­na­tion­al neo-Nazi group that inspired Anti­och school shoot­er extra­dit­ed to US

Evan Mealins
Nashville Ten­nessean
May 23, 2025, 4:26 CT

Key Points

* The 17-year-old Anti­och High School shoot­er said before the attack he was act­ing on behalf of MKY.
* The leader of MKY, a Geor­gian nation­al, was extra­dit­ed to the U.S. and arraigned in new York on May 23.
* The charges relate to Michail Chkhikvishvil­i’s alleged­ly train­ing an under­cov­er agent how to car­ry out a mass poi­son­ing.

The teen who fatal­ly shot a fel­low stu­dent and him­self at Anti­och High School this year was inspired by an inter­na­tion­al neo-Nazi group whose leader orches­trat­ed dead­ly attacks around the globe, accord­ing to fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors.

The ter­ror­ist group’s leader, 21-year-old Michail Chkhikvishvili, of the nation of Geor­gia, was extra­dit­ed from Moldo­va on May 22 after he was arrest­ed in July. He was sched­uled to be arraigned in Brook­lyn on May 23, accord­ing to the U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice.

...

Chkhikvishvili tar­get­ed the U.S. as a site for more attacks because of the ease of access­ing firearms.

He told an under­cov­er law enforce­ment employ­ee, “I see USA as big poten­tial because acces­si­bil­i­ty to firearms and oth­er resources,” in an elec­tron­ic mes­sage sent Sept. 8, 2023, court fil­ings show.

Chkhikvishvili has been indict­ed in the U.S. Dis­trict Court for the East­ern Dis­trict of New York on four counts includ­ing solic­i­ta­tion of vio­lent felonies. The charges stemmed from Chkhikvishvili’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions with an under­cov­er law enforce­ment employ­ee in which he trained and encour­aged the under­cov­er agent to car­ry out a mass attack against Jew­ish peo­ple and minori­ties.

The man’s arrest came before the dead­ly attack at Anti­och High School on Jan. 22, 2025. How­ev­er, pros­e­cu­tors in the New York fed­er­al court linked the Anti­och shoot­ing to Chkhikvishvili’s solic­i­ta­tions of vio­lence in a court fil­ing on May 23.

...

Accord­ing to the pros­e­cu­tors, the 17-year-old attack­er claimed he was tak­ing action on behalf of MKY and at least one oth­er group in an audio record­ing post­ed online before the shoot­ing.

It is not clear if the shoot­er was a mem­ber of MKY or had con­tact with Chkhikvishvili or oth­er mem­bers of the ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion. Chkhikvishvili said the group asks for video of bru­tal beat­ings, arson, explo­sions or mur­ders to join the group, adding that the vic­tims should be “low race tar­gets.”

Chkhikvishvili’s name also appeared in the doc­u­ment the DOJ char­ac­ter­izes as the Anti­och shooter’s man­i­festo — a 300-page doc­u­ment in which the shoot­er espoused mis­an­throp­ic White suprema­cist and Nazi ide­olo­gies. The shoot­er also referred to the founder of MKY and said he would write the founder’s name on his gun, accord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors.

Jos­selin Corea Escalante, 16, died after the 17-year-old shot her with a pis­tol in the cafe­te­ria of Anti­och High School. Anoth­er stu­dent was injured dur­ing the attack. The shoot­er then shot and killed him­self.

———-

“Head of inter­na­tion­al neo-Nazi group that inspired Anti­och school shoot­er extra­dit­ed to US” by Evan Mealins; The Ten­neessean; 05/23/2025

“The man’s arrest came before the dead­ly attack at Anti­och High School on Jan. 22, 2025. How­ev­er, pros­e­cu­tors in the New York fed­er­al court linked the Anti­och shoot­ing to Chkhikvishvili’s solic­i­ta­tions of vio­lence in a court fil­ing on May 23.”

It’s a dis­turb­ing exam­ple of the pow­er of the mind con­trol Michail Chkhikvishvili was exert­ing over his tar­gets: Chkhikvishvili was arrest­ed in July of 2024. Anti­och High School shoot­er Solomon Hen­der­son car­ried out his sui­ci­dal attack on Octo­ber 18, 2024. But pros­e­cu­tors charge Chkhikvishvili with solic­it­ing the attack. And while pros­e­cu­tors don’t know of Solomon was for­mal­ly a mem­ber of MKY, the fact that video of bru­tal beat­ings, arson, explo­sions or mur­ders is required to join the group sug­gests he’s a mem­ber in spir­it. Which is all the more remark­able giv­en that Solomon is African Amer­i­can. This is very pow­er pro­pa­gan­da for the recep­tive audi­ences:

...
Chkhikvishvili has been indict­ed in the U.S. Dis­trict Court for the East­ern Dis­trict of New York on four counts includ­ing solic­i­ta­tion of vio­lent felonies. The charges stemmed from Chkhikvishvili’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions with an under­cov­er law enforce­ment employ­ee in which he trained and encour­aged the under­cov­er agent to car­ry out a mass attack against Jew­ish peo­ple and minori­ties.

...

Accord­ing to the pros­e­cu­tors, the 17-year-old attack­er claimed he was tak­ing action on behalf of MKY and at least one oth­er group in an audio record­ing post­ed online before the shoot­ing.

It is not clear if the shoot­er was a mem­ber of MKY or had con­tact with Chkhikvishvili or oth­er mem­bers of the ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion. Chkhikvishvili said the group asks for video of bru­tal beat­ings, arson, explo­sions or mur­ders to join the group, adding that the vic­tims should be “low race tar­gets.”

Chkhikvishvili’s name also appeared in the doc­u­ment the DOJ char­ac­ter­izes as the Anti­och shooter’s man­i­festo — a 300-page doc­u­ment in which the shoot­er espoused mis­an­throp­ic White suprema­cist and Nazi ide­olo­gies. The shoot­er also referred to the founder of MKY and said he would write the founder’s name on his gun, accord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors.

Jos­selin Corea Escalante, 16, died after the 17-year-old shot her with a pis­tol in the cafe­te­ria of Anti­och High School. Anoth­er stu­dent was injured dur­ing the attack. The shoot­er then shot and killed him­self.
...

And then we get to this chill­ing reminder for US res­i­dents about the about dan­gers of mak­ing guns read­i­ly acces­si­ble to almost any adult: Chkhikvishvili tar­get­ed the US as a site for more attacks because of all the guns. And while he may not have specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned men­tal ill­ness, there’s plen­ty of that too. The US is the best oppor­tu­ni­ty soci­ety for the Mani­ac Mur­der Cult’s dement­ed ide­ol­o­gy. This is a glob­al threat. But it’s a much big­ger threat for soci­eties that grant ready access to lethal hard­ware designed for killing:

...
Chkhikvishvili tar­get­ed the U.S. as a site for more attacks because of the ease of access­ing firearms.

He told an under­cov­er law enforce­ment employ­ee, “I see USA as big poten­tial because acces­si­bil­i­ty to firearms and oth­er resources,” in an elec­tron­ic mes­sage sent Sept. 8, 2023, court fil­ings show.
...

Chkhikvishvili is pre­sum­ably not going to be in a posi­tion to lead the Mani­ac Mur­der Cult going for­ward. But that does­n’t mean we should expect the group to dis­solve. As we’ve seen with groups like 764, they per­sist and splin­ter as long as there are plat­forms where they’re allowed to fes­ter.

A Timeline of Josh Sutter’s Other Political Projects: The Rural People’s Party, New Bihar Mandir, and the Satanic Front

Now let’s take a clos­er look at the time­line of Joshua Caleb Sut­ter’s career as a extrem­ist provo­ca­teur extra­or­di­naire. A time­line that includes the fact that the Tem­pel ov Blood was formed in 2003, the year of Sut­ter’s arrest and jail­ing. So it would appear the Tem­pel ov Blood start­ed while Sut­ter was still in prison, the place where he flipped to becom­ing an FBI infor­mant. So while we don’t know if the Tem­pel ov Blood formed before or after Sut­ter became an infor­mant, we do know this would rough­ly around the same time.

But Josh Sut­ter isn’t just a sales­man for Satanism. He’s dis­played a weird­ly diverse array of reli­gious inter­ests. Often simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. With unhinged extrem­ism as the com­mon thread con­nect­ing it all, from the Rur­al Peo­ple’s Par­ty ded­i­cat­ed to the cult of North Kore­a’s state ide­ol­o­gy to the New Bihar Mandir Hare Krish­na cult. Recall how, as we saw above, the pop­u­lar­iza­tion of eso­teric fig­ures like Sav­it­ri Devi was one of the goals of Greg John­son and Ryan Schus­ter back in 2003 in addi­tion to the pro­mo­tion of David Myat­t’s Satanism and James Mason’s accel­er­a­tionism. Josh Sut­ter real­ly has been the liv­ing embod­i­ment of those ambi­tions.

Anoth­er com­mon thread in all of this is the pres­ence of Sut­ters girlfriend/wife Jil­lian Hoy. It’s unclear what, if any, rela­tion­ship Hoy has with the FBI. Sut­ter and Hoy even helped pro­mote an alter­na­tive Satan­ic orga­ni­za­tion in recent years, the Satan­ic Front, some time around 2020. Promi­nent Satan­ic Front mem­bers include Angel Luis Almei­da of 764. The leader of the Satan­ic Front, Anton McK­ay Blenzig, died in 2024 in appar­ent sui­cide. His fam­i­ly blames his death on Sut­ter’s Tem­pel ov Blood with play­ing a role in Blenzig’s death. As we’re going to see, Blenzig became quite close to Sut­ter and Hoy and even became a kind of online pub­lic face for the Tem­pel ov Blood at the same time he helped launch the Satan­ic Front. And then, in mid-2022, the Satan­ic Front pub­licly dis­avowed the Tem­pel ov Blood for being “not in align­ment”. By that point, Blenzig and Sut­ter had fall­en out, so Blenzig’s April 2024 death was rough­ly two years after that fall­out. Keep in mind that Sut­ter’s role as a paid FBI infor­mant was out in pub­lic by the end of the Atom­waf­fen tri­als in 2021 so fall­outs in Sut­ter’s rela­tions a with oth­er Satanists were to be expect­ed in 2022. But it sounds like it was the kind of fall­out that fes­tered and a poten­tial­ly dead­ly way. “Peo­ple in the Tem­ple [sic] ov Blood want­ed him dead,” accord­ing to a fam­i­ly mem­ber, who also sug­gest­ed he may have been mur­dered.

And yet, despite all of that, Joshua Caleb Sut­ter con­tin­ues to oper­ate as an online extrem­ist pro­pa­gan­dist as of the date of the fol­low­ing report, Feb­ru­ary 2025. He’s still offer­ing print-on-demand pub­lish­ing ser­vices. Sut­ter might be using dif­fer­ent edgy alias­es these days but he’s still doing the same thing. In 2025. After the 2021 court expo­sure and the 2024 Wired piece all about him. After every­thing, Joshua Caleb Sut­ter is still one of the inter­net’s lead­ing online accel­er­a­tionist influ­ences:

Left Coast Right Watch

MYSTERIOUS DEATH SPOTLIGHTS SATANIC NAZI TERROR NETWORK

Feb­ru­ary 6, 2025 by JENNEFER HARPER

This arti­cle dis­cuss­es net­works of online child exploita­tion. If you or some­one you know is a vic­tim of online exploita­tion, there is help. The Nation­al Cen­ter for Miss­ing and Exploit­ed Chil­dren (NCMEC) has a Cyber Tipline: learn more by vis­it­ing their web­site here. NCMEC has an app called “Take It Down” to assist in remov­ing nude, par­tial­ly nude, or sex­u­al­ly explic­it online pho­tos and videos of minors. Learn more about the Take It Down app by vis­it­ing its web­site here.

CORRECTION 16 FEBRUARY 2025 6:30PM PST

New research indi­cates the Telegram account using the han­dle “@commandantcultus” with the user name “Sam,” pre­vi­ous­ly thought to be Anton Blenzig, was oper­at­ed by dif­fer­ent per­son.

Anton McK­ay Blenzig died of a gun­shot wound to his head in the very ear­ly hours of 22 April 2024. A Tar­rant Coun­ty prosector—the offi­cial who per­forms autop­sies—declared his death a sui­cide. He was 27 years old. The day after Blenzig died, some­one claim­ing to be a fam­i­ly mem­ber took to the social media plat­form Telegram look­ing for answers.

“Peo­ple in the Tem­ple [sic] ov Blood want­ed him dead,” the sup­posed fam­i­ly mem­ber claimed, sug­gest­ing that Blenzig was encour­aged to kill himself—or even mur­dered.

BLENZIG’S RADICALIZATION PATH

Anton Blenzig, blonde-haired and blue-eyed, was born on Decem­ber 1996 and grew up in a small fam­i­ly in New York. As a young boy, he attend­ed the parochial school St. Paul’s Epis­co­pal School in Col­lege Point. The pri­vate school enrolled less than 100 stu­dents and its annu­al tuition ran about $3,000 in 2002 when, in that April, a storm blew the roof off his school, leav­ing it in sham­bles and caus­ing its per­ma­nent clo­sure. The near­by Immanuel Luther­an Church opened its doors and took his class­mates and him in.

...

Accord­ing to LCRW sources, Blenzig lived with schiz­o­phre­nia and became involved with a satan­ic Nazi cult called the Tem­pel ov Blood when he was a teenag­er. There is a lot we don’t know about Blenzig’s expe­ri­ence liv­ing with schiz­o­phre­nia, but accord­ing to Johns Hop­kins Med­i­cine, the men­tal dis­or­der usu­al­ly first appears in men dur­ing their late teens or ear­ly 20s. About 1% of U.S. res­i­dents live with schiz­o­phre­nia and about 1 in 4 adults, aged 18 and old­er, live with some form of a diag­nos­able men­tal dis­or­der in gen­er­al. Sta­tis­ti­cal­ly, liv­ing with any men­tal chal­lenge doesn’t pre­dis­pose some­one towards vio­lent extrem­ism. But, when some­one is liv­ing with a con­di­tion that makes nav­i­gat­ing their emo­tions and impuls­es hard­er, they’re more vul­ner­a­ble to abuse, manip­u­la­tion, and oth­er tac­tics that cults and recruiters for vio­lent, hate­ful ide­olo­gies use.

Infor­ma­tion on Blenzig’s upbring­ing and what led him towards satan­ic Nazism is sparse and we don’t know how reli­able of a nar­ra­tor Blenzig was. From what LCRW researchers were able to gath­er, Blenzig start­ed out his young life with a tra­di­tion­al­ly reli­gious based edu­ca­tion. Around age 18, he found him­self involved in one of the most con­tro­ver­sial neo-Nazi occult groups in the U.S., the Tem­pel ov Blood.

Like many extrem­ists, Blenzig moved between groups and test­ed out dif­fer­ent ide­olo­gies to see what fit his vio­lent desires best. After at least 5 years with the Tem­pel ov Blood, he became asso­ci­at­ed with anoth­er Satanist group—this one called the Satan­ic Front.

TEMPEL OV BLOOD’S PHILOSOPHICAL ORIGINS

To under­stand the group Blenzig joined and how they oper­ate, it’s impor­tant to under­stand its ori­gins. “The Tem­pel ov Blood” is just one in a long line of big­ot­ed groups that seek to blend their prej­u­dice with the occult. From the time the Nazi par­ty rose to pow­er through the present day, a sec­tion of Hitler’s fol­low­ers have always couched their hatred in mag­ic and mys­ti­cism.

The Thule Soci­ety was a Ger­man eth­no-nation­al­ist occultist group obsessed with the mys­ti­cal ori­gins of the “Aryan” race. The group and their mem­bers fund­ed the pre­de­ces­sor to the Nazi par­ty and many lat­er joined the Nazi par­ty. Max­imi­ani Julia Por­tas was a French-born fas­cist and Hitler sup­port­er who, in 1932 (about age 27), trav­eled to India, con­vert­ed to Hin­duism, and changed her name to Sav­it­ri Devi Mukher­ji. Known sim­ply as “Sav­it­ri Devi,” she wrote sev­er­al books which heav­i­ly influ­enced Nazi occultism and con­tin­ue to influ­ence neo-Nazism today.

James Mason has been an ide­o­log­i­cal men­tor for neo-Nazis for decades. He was almost for­got­ten, but unfor­tu­nate­ly was res­ur­rect­ed by the Iron March forums when Gabriel Sohi­er Cha­put edit­ed and pub­lished a dig­i­tal copy of Siege for the plat­form in 2015. Then, a cou­ple years lat­er, Ryan Hat­field (who joined the neo-Nazi ter­ror group Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion at age 16) ini­ti­at­ed a “friend­ship” with Mason. This led to John Cameron Den­ton from the Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion (AWD) going on to repub­lish Siege in book for­mat.

...

THE ORDER OF NINE ANGLES

One of the Tem­pel ov Blood’s biggest and most direct influ­ences is the Order of Nine Angles (O9A). O9A is a satan­ic cult orig­i­nat­ing in the Unit­ed King­dom. It’s uncer­tain when the group formed, but it was like­ly in the late 1960s or ear­ly 1970s.

O9A’s ide­ol­o­gy has roots in Eso­teric Hit­lerism. This “spir­i­tu­al” cult was formed by an “imag­i­nary mys­te­ri­ous woman” and a neo-Nazi named David Myatt who self-iden­ti­fied as a Satanist and lat­er con­vert­ed to Islam for a lit­tle over 10 years. Myatt is a writer, as are many of the Nazis we dis­cuss in this arti­cle, and has been described as sup­port­ing pedophilia—in part based on a short fan­ta­sy sto­ry he once wrote. This is a theme that runs through­out O9A affil­i­at­ed “lit­er­a­ture.”

...

Fol­low­ers of the Order of Nine Angles are, among oth­er things, encour­aged to adopt ‘insight roles’—a prac­tice where O9A adher­ents put them­selves into posi­tions which chal­lenge their beliefs and ways of life in order to gain knowl­edge and spir­i­tu­al awak­en­ing. For exam­ple, one adher­ent known as “Dark Gno­sis” post­ed an auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal essay online on 29 Jan­u­ary 2022 which describes three insight roles he has tak­en on: 1) “I decid­ed to go from book­ish intro­vert to become a sup­pli­er of drugs. I start­ed fre­quent­ing bars and clubs. Enjoy­ing par­ties. Tak­ing intox­i­cants and sell­ing them.” 2) “a Com­mu­nist dis­si­dent to build char­ac­ter after a long time spent as a Nation­al Social­ist” and 3) “the mil­i­tary to obtain train­ing and to live oppo­site to the way of a crim­i­nal who was dis­obe­di­ent to author­i­ty.”

These are “roles that rad­i­cal­ly chal­lenge their com­fort zones,” as explained in a 2023 arti­cle by Shanon Shah, Jane Coop­er, and Suzanne New­come from King’s Col­lege Lon­don titled Occult Beliefs and the Far Right: The Case of the Order of Nine Angles pub­lished in Stud­ies in Con­flict & Ter­ror­ism. By doing so, the arti­cle elab­o­rates, fol­low­ers gain “acqui­si­tion of knowl­edge through adver­si­ty and expe­ri­ence;” fol­low­ers believe this will help them gain “evo­lu­tion­ary supe­ri­or­i­ty” and help bring on what they refer to as “Aeon­ic change” lead­ing to a bet­ter point in time where Aryans reign over the world in supe­ri­or­i­ty in what they describe as “Imperi­um.” This con­cept is com­pa­ra­ble to the Hin­du con­cept of “Kali Yuga”—a peri­od of advanced enlight­en­ment after a very long time of strug­gle and mis­ery. Fol­low­ers of the Order of Nine Angles, or “Nin­ers” for short, encour­age anti-social and even anti-human activ­i­ties as a means to speed up this process. For this rea­son, they are con­sid­ered accelerationists—individuals sub­scrib­ing to the ide­ol­o­gy of “accel­er­a­tionism,” who want to induce soci­etal and sys­temic col­lapse, often com­mit­ting or incit­ing acts of destruc­tion and vio­lence, in order to reach their goals.

Fol­low­ers, or adher­ents, of the Order of Nine Angles orga­nize in small groups called “nex­ions.” Ide­al­ly, accord­ing to prac­ti­tion­ers, a nex­ion would be, at min­i­mum, two people—one man and one woman. The Tem­pel ov Blood is one such nex­ion.

OVERVIEW OF TEMPEL OV BLOOD

The Tem­pel ov Blood is a U.S. “nex­ion”, or branch, of the Order of Nine Angles.

Formed in 2003 in the U.S. state of North Car­oli­na, the Tem­pel ov Blood (ToB) gained mem­bers and sup­port­ers ear­ly on in Cana­da, the Unit­ed King­dom, Aus­tralia, Italy, and Brazil. In late 2004, the group estab­lished its head­quar­ters in rur­al South Car­oli­na where white suprema­cist Joshua Caleb Sut­ter, his soon to be wife Jil­lian Scott Hoy and oth­er key fig­ures would encour­age extrem­ism and dis­trib­ute ter­ror-inspir­ing pro­pa­gan­da over the next twen­ty years.

Some asso­ciates of ToB have described it as an eclec­tic art col­lec­tive whose mem­bers include writ­ers, musi­cians, and artists—all who share an affin­i­ty for cre­ativ­i­ty and flair. But oth­er com­mon inter­ests among mem­bers includ­ed Nazism, the occult, role play­ing, and test­ing the bound­aries of every­thing. Uncon­firmed rumors of “trau­ma induced pro­gram­ming” and tor­tur­ing of small ani­mals to death con­tin­ue to cir­cu­late. The Tem­pel ov Blood’s adher­ents act as agents of chaos, infil­trat­ing and dis­rupt­ing oth­er groups and some­times push­ing them towards the kind of vio­lence they wish to see. The Tem­pel ov Blood has sig­nif­i­cant­ly influ­enced the inter­na­tion­al rise of far-right mil­i­tant accel­er­a­tionism. The ToB’s doc­u­ment­ed neo-Nazi and antin­o­mi­an (being against laws and soci­etal norms) ide­olo­gies desen­si­tize, psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly pro­gram, and train prospec­tive extrem­ists in prepa­ra­tion for ter­ror. The per­sis­tence of the cult’s orga­niz­ing, lit­er­a­ture pro­lif­er­a­tion, and shared ide­ol­o­gy is a seri­ous threat.

While Joshua Sut­ter and Jil­lian Hoy were not the only two to start up and grow this ter­ror cell, over a short time their per­son­al­i­ties dom­i­nat­ed the niche scene. Sut­ter, who is now in his 40s, grew up with a bla­tant­ly racist father and got tan­gled up with the law at an ear­ly age. LCRW was able to trace Sutter’s involve­ment with Tem­pel ov Blood to before he was incar­cer­at­ed for an ille­gal firearms pos­ses­sion con­vic­tion. He was released from prison in 2004. Hoy, who is now in her late 30s, describes her child­hood as one of pover­ty. She grew up in the rur­al back­woods, like Sut­ter, but with­out a father—one child of many. She post­ed online that she dropped out of school but even to this day, she enjoys writ­ing and read­ing. The sui­cide death of her broth­er in 2014 still seems to haunt her.

The Tem­pel ov Blood pro­duced occult pro­pa­gan­da, online and offline, often includ­ing sex­u­al­ly provoca­tive images or words and Nazi ref­er­ences. They com­piled and pub­lished short mag­a­zines and then books which they would soon sell under the label “Mar­tinet Press.” Mem­bers con­struct altars which are pho­tographed and shared on social media. What can be con­sid­ered an ear­ly form of “cut signs” or “fan­sign­ing” appeared in the form of ToB mem­bers self-harm­ing and smear­ing their blood on pages of Tem­pel ov Blood-relat­ed books and mag­a­zines, some­times inside a ToB or O9A book on the title page, or on paper with draw­ings of aliens, or, odd­ly, print­ed-out pho­tos of half-naked young women being spanked.

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Martinet Press & Its Influence

The Tem­pel ov Blood has become noto­ri­ous for their in-house pub­lish­er Mar­tinet Press which became a reg­is­tered enti­ty by the sum­mer of 2014, list­ing ToB mem­ber Jil­lian Hoy as a con­tact. Tem­pel ov Blood’s Mar­tinet Press would go on to pub­lish around 20 texts.

TEMPEL OV BLOOD’S PUBLISHING HISTORY

The first to pub­lish ToB mate­r­i­al in 2004 was the Fin­land based Ixax­aar Occult Pub­li­ca­tions in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Angle­ton Imprints (whose Yahoo address is list­ed as the email for Mar­tinet Press’s busi­ness reg­is­tra­tion).

The Black Press and Black Light Dis­tri­b­u­tion print­ed ToB mate­r­i­al between 2008–2012. Accord­ing to IP address analy­sis reviewed by jour­nal­ist Nate Thay­er in ear­ly 2013 before the web­site went offline, the Black Press’s British Colum­bia, Cana­da IP address was reg­is­tered to Daniel Bark­er, a neo-Nazi heavy met­al musi­cian and Tem­pel ov Blood mem­ber who used the alias Com­mis­sar NSK, among oth­ers. Bark­er lat­er went on to orga­nize as the Tem­pel ov the Black Vam­pire (TOBV) whose sym­bol he has tat­tooed on his upper chest along­side his Tem­pel ov Blood sig­il. The Black Press announced on their web­site in 2008 that they were the only autho­rized pub­lish­er for Tem­pel ov Blood.

The same IP address was shared with New Bihar Mandir, a Hare Krish­na group formed in 2009 which also shared mem­ber­ship with ToB lead­ers.
By sum­mer 2014, Mar­tinet Press became a reg­is­tered enti­ty list­ing ToB mem­ber Jil­lian Hoy as a con­tact. Tem­pel ov Blood’s Mar­tinet Press would go on to pub­lish around 20 texts.

In Octo­ber 2014, Mar­tinet Press released one of the most influ­en­tial books to far-right mil­i­tant accel­er­a­tionism: Iron Gates. This anony­mous­ly authored fic­tion­al book is described by jour­nal­ist Jake Han­ra­han as being about a “waste­land roamed by a bru­tal satan­ic cult” whose open­ing begins with “an infant child being mur­dered for sport.”

Neo-Nazis often pub­lish their visions for the kind of world they want to create—and the vio­lent steps they want to take to get there—as fic­tion. The most famous exam­ple is The Turn­er Diaries by William Luther Pierce. Pierce’s nov­el depicts a guer­ril­la war fought by a white nation­al­ist para­mil­i­tary called ‘The Order’ which even­tu­al­ly suc­ceeds in top­pling the U.S. gov­ern­ment, tak­ing over the U.S. and even­tu­al­ly purg­ing the world of non­whites. Iron Gates and its sequel Blue­bird are a con­tem­po­rary ana­log.

Arguably, Mar­tinet Press’s most known pub­li­ca­tions are Iron Gates and Blue­bird—a two part fic­tion series set in a post nuclear apoc­a­lyp­tic world full of glo­ri­fied immoral acts and vio­lence. These two texts were heav­i­ly pushed in neo-Nazi accel­er­a­tionist cir­cles when Joshua Sut­ter joined AWD under the alias “swiss­dis­ci­pline.” Ryan Hat­field, an AWD mem­ber from Col­orado, often post­ed links to pur­chase the books in ear­ly AWD chats.

Kaleb Cole was the one time co-leader of AWD. He was sen­tenced in Jan­u­ary 2022 to 7 years for threat­en­ing jour­nal­ists. In ear­ly Jan­u­ary 2018 AWD chats under the alias “Khi­maere,” he explained why he made Iron Gates required read­ing for the noto­ri­ous group:

“I made it required read­ing for a rea­son. Not only to desen­si­tize you, but when dooms­day comes; it will be cru­el and unfor­giv­ing and we will have to be the same way. And might as well *enjoy* it,” Cole wrote.

John Cameron Den­ton, anoth­er one time co-leader of AWD, was released from prison in late Decem­ber 2022 after also serv­ing time relat­ed to harass­ing jour­nal­ists. The pros­e­cu­tor in the case alleged that Den­ton had par­tic­i­pat­ed in shar­ing child pornog­ra­phy.

“I just have one ques­tion. Every time they ‘expose AWD’ They NEVER men­tion Iron Gates. That’s bull­shit. So why arent [sic] they men­tion­ing Iron Gates??? THEY SHOULD,” Den­ton wrote in ear­ly AWD chats.

The spread of neo-Nazi accel­er­a­tionism went world­wide and along with it, Mar­tinet Press lit­er­a­ture. Soon, there were copy­cat groups form­ing in the UK, Aus­tralia, and the Baltic, and then snow­balling into small fac­tions all over the globe.

Son­nekrieg Divi­sion was one such group which formed in the UK after the rise of AWD to infamy. Andrew Dymock was a leader in this group.

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That same year, Dymock was ques­tioned by police regard­ing alleged sex­u­al offens­es he com­mit­ted against a teenage girl, includ­ing carv­ing a swasti­ka into her body, tak­ing nude pho­tos of her, and cir­cu­lat­ing them on the inter­net. He was found guilty of 15 ter­ror­ism charges in 2021 and sen­tenced to 7 years.

TIMELINE OF TOB-RELATED PUBLICATIONS

2004, Tem­pel ov Blood: Dis­ci­pline of the Gods/Altars of Hell/Apex of Eter­ni­ty, First edi­tion. Pub­lish­er and Edi­tor: Ixax­aar Occult Pub­li­ca­tions, Lay­out: A.I. (Angle­ton Imprints)/Ixaxaar, Copy­right: Tem­pel Ov Blood. This print­ing had a lim­it­ed edi­tion of 333 copies. This ear­ly com­pi­la­tion includes foun­da­tion­al essays describ­ing ide­olo­gies and philoso­phies which shape Tem­pel ov Blood. The book­let out­lines what Tem­pel ov Blood does and why. Although all authors are not­ed by alias­es, Joshua Sut­ter makes up the bulk of the writ­ing under the alias “Czar Azag-kala.” The piece titled “Apex of Eter­ni­ty” was writ­ten by Amer­i­can satanist Michael Lawrence under the alias “Drill Sargeant 333” (he’s most known by the alias “E.A. Koet­ting”).

Pre-2008, False Prophet – Inter­nal Jour­nal of the TOB – Issue 1. The orig­i­nal release had a red cov­er and was put togeth­er by the “Hin­ter­lands nex­ion” and then reprint­ed by Black Light Dis­tri­b­u­tion which was oper­at­ed by Cana­di­an satanist Daniel Bark­er. This “inter­nal jour­nal” would con­tin­ue to pro­duce addi­tion­al issues through 3 June 2020. Pub­lish­ing of the jour­nal rotat­ed among Daniel Barker’s Black Light Dis­tri­b­u­tion and The Black Press, Jil­lian Hoy’s Angle­ton Imprints and Mar­tinet Press, and Anton Blenzig as “Com­man­dant Cul­tus.” In Vol­ume 1 Edi­tion 5 pub­lished in Novem­ber 2015, there is an image of a knife sit­ting upon blood splat­tered pages fea­tur­ing a par­tial­ly nude young woman being spanked with “Vm32,” writ­ten across the top and bot­tom of the blood splat­tered com­put­er print papers. “Vm32” is one of Blenzig’s ear­ly alias­es. Edi­to­r­i­al con­trol of the jour­nal would be hand­ed over to Blenzig five years lat­er.

2008, Liber 333 (Full title- Liber 333: The Direc­tives of Wamphyrism/Vampirism In Accor­dance with the MSS of the Amer­i­can TEMPEL OV BLOOD, A lim­it­ed Dis­tri­b­u­tion for Mem­bers of the Tem­ple of THEM, Aus­tralian Nex­ion.) Liber 333 is a com­pi­la­tion of the group’s foun­da­tion­al essays, rit­u­al and chant instruc­tions and dark fic­tion, much of which can be found in pre­vi­ous ToB texts dat­ing back to 2004. The spe­cif­ic con­tents of the dif­fer­ent edi­tions vary, but are in a sim­i­lar vein. Inter­est­ing­ly, Liber 333 was nev­er pub­lished by Mar­tinet Press. The 2011 edi­tion was pub­lished by the Black Glyph Soci­ety (anoth­er Aus­tralian nex­ion) and includes two pieces authored by the Amer­i­can satanist Michael Ford. In 2022, Anton Blenzig, as “Com­man­dant Cul­tus,” repub­lished the title in paper­back and hard­back. The 2013 edi­tion is 183 pages longer than the orig­i­nal 2008 edi­tion and includes an essay titled “Tak­ing the Offen­sive” in which the author, writ­ing under the alias of “Com­mis­sar Tyran­nous,” sug­gests that we read James Mason’s Siege as a way to ready one­self to use “mag­ick to kill.”

2010, Iron Gates, Author: Anony­mous, Copy­right: Tem­pel ov Blood; Pub­lish­er: Mar­tinet Press (2014). Iron Gates, the sec­ond title pub­lished by Mar­tinet Press, is a post-apoc­a­lyp­tic, sci­ence fic­tion hor­ror nov­el full of glo­ri­fied immoral acts and vio­lence. One online retail­er describes it as night­mar­ish and bru­tal and “not suit­able for read­ers under 18” due to “extreme graph­ic con­tent.” Accord­ing to one source, the book was writ­ten over the course of 4 years between 2010 and 2014. It is con­sid­ered one of the most influ­en­tial texts to far-right mil­i­tant accel­er­a­tionism. Excerpts from Iron Gates were first pub­lished in 2010 on a now delet­ed Tum­blr account called “Night­mover.” iron­i­cal­ly named after a 1995 book by David Wise about the CIA dou­ble agent Aldrich Ames. But, it’s with Mar­tinet Press’s 2014 full pub­li­ca­tion in book form for the first time and then, a few years lat­er, its book sales pro­mo­tion among AWD mem­bers when we see its recog­ni­tion and influ­ence soar among niche neo-Nazi accel­er­a­tionist cir­cles.

2014, 28 April, Ven­om & Hon­ey Author: Jay­alali­ta Devi Dasi (Jil­lian Hoy), Pub­lish­er: ‎Cre­ate­Space Inde­pen­dent Pub­lish­ing Plat­form; repub­lished by Mar­tinet Press on 18 July 2016. Ven­om and Hon­ey is an auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal mus­ing by Jil­lian Hoy writ­ten under her—as jour­nal­ist Nate Thay­er described—”Hindu priest­ess” alias, Jay­alali­ta Devi Dasi. In it, Hoy com­pares her­self to Kali, the Hin­du god­dess asso­ci­at­ed with death and destruc­tion who she wor­ships, and blunt­ly lays out her adver­si­ty to moth­er­hood: “I’d soon­er bear a weapon and take down life than bear life with­in me.” One sec­tion lists Hoy’s pri­ma­ry inter­ests as: sex, vio­lence, and library books. She shares a fan­ta­sy she has where she is a “hag­gard old woman seduc­ing the teenage Krish­na.”

2014, 13 July, The Devil’s Quran, Pub­lish­er: Mar­tinet Press This is the first title pub­lished by Mar­tinet Press. This book is sup­posed to be a trans­la­tion of some man­u­scripts from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kar­bala in Iraq, writ­ten in Ara­bic. Mar­tinet Press’s claim is that a free­lance jour­nal­ist sent them pic­tures of the man­u­script and so they were pur­chased, trans­lat­ed, and pub­lished. How­ev­er, some read­ers claim this is all a sham and the text is all made up. Accounts on social media claim­ing to be the founder of the Order of Nine Angles have post­ed insti­gat­ing mes­sages ques­tion­ing who the author of The Dev­ils’ Quran real­ly is.

2015, Octo­ber, Choron­zon Vol­ume 1 Edi­tion 1, Pub­lish­er: Mar­tinet Press. Choron­zon is the “offi­cial jour­nal” of Mar­tinet Press, and as one descrip­tion puts it, is “a vehi­cle of sin­is­ter art, prose, and devo­tion­al texts.” Between 2015 and 2019, 4 Vol­umes of Choron­zon would be pub­lished. The first two vol­umes were edit­ed and pub­lished by Mar­tinet Press where­as the last two vol­umes were edit­ed by Amer­i­can satan­ic artist Eri­ca Frev­el and pub­lished by Mar­tinet Press.

2017, 18 April, Album title: Prin­ci­ple of Hate and Glob­al Exter­mi­na­tion, Artist: Divi­sion Omega, Label: Mar­tinet Press Audio. (The album was orig­i­nal­ly released in 2015.) Prin­ci­ple of Hate and Glob­al Exter­mi­na­tion was released by Mar­tinet Press about two years after they released the “Black Lodge Dis­ci­pline Cen­ter” album by the artist “Gulag.” Gulag and Divi­sion Omega are both artist alias­es used by Daniel Bark­er. Accord­ing to the Mar­tinet Press web­site, Divi­sion Omega is “mar­tial indus­tri­al” music and incor­po­rates the themes of mass geno­cide and ultra-total­i­tar­i­an regimes. The music, the web­site goes on to say, is meant for the “shock troops of the apoc­a­lypse.” The project’s theme is anti-life, anti-mankind, and total­i­tar­i­an mis­an­thropy. The music was devel­oped with “heavy empha­sis on fas­cist and Nazi total­i­tar­i­an lean­ings.”

2017, April 15, Blue­bird, Copy­right: Tem­pel ov Blood, Pub­lish­er: Mar­tinet Press. Blue­bird is the sequel to Iron Gates, a post-nuclear apoc­a­lyp­tic tale reviewed by one account on Insta­gram as “much more graph­ic in many ways than the first” and about “find­ing the lines of moral­i­ty and break­ing it.”

Pre-2012 (some­time pri­or to Octo­ber 2012), Preda­tor: TOB Restrict­ed Cir­cu­lar Issue 1. Issue 1 has for­mer AWD mem­ber John Cameron Den­ton on the cov­er and describes the Tem­pel ov Blood uni­form require­ments. Issue 3 has a pic­ture of Jil­lian Hoy mim­ic­k­ing a dom­i­na­trix pose with her black gloved hand grip­ping a hood­ed fig­ure who is in all black garb and bound with his hands behind his back and sen­so­ry deprived wear­ing a hood and noise can­cel­ing head­phones.

Anton Blenzig used the slo­gan AWD popularized—“Iron Gates Now” —as his inspi­ra­tion for a Tem­pel ov Blood blog site he main­tained from mid-2020 to ear­ly 2021. Using the alias “Vm32,” Blenzig post­ed over 30 images of Tem­pel ov Blood pro­pa­gan­da includ­ing pho­tos of the book itself, him­self wear­ing an Iron Gates book cov­er print t‑shirt while hold­ing a knife, and pages from the book soaked with blood. Blenzig uploaded sev­er­al pho­tos of him­self to this blog site along with satan­ic Nazi pro­pa­gan­da fea­tur­ing Jar­od Hayes Choate and Bren­nan Jacob Wal­ters- two far-right extrem­ists who orga­nized with Blenzig as Tem­pel ov Blood and then soon after as Satan­ic Front.

Q309: THE ITALIAN PORNAGRAPHERS

In May 2018, Mar­tinet Press announced a forth­com­ing title by Ital­ian pornog­ra­ph­er and Tem­pel ov Blood sup­port­er Mar­co Malat­tia, who oper­ates under the brand­ing of Q309 Tem­ple, Cur­rent Q309, and most cur­rent­ly, the Q.309 Net­work. Malattia’s book has been described as a “visu­al gri­moire” rep­re­sen­ta­tive of their expe­ri­ence and meth­ods film­ing and pho­tograph­ing pornog­ra­phy. Like a cou­ple oth­er announced forth­com­ing titles, Q309’s book was nev­er pub­lished by Mar­tinet Press, but instead, is fea­tured as an install­ment in Choron­zon, the “offi­cial jour­nal” of Mar­tinet Press, named after a demon. Accord­ing to 2024 social media activ­i­ty, Q309 con­tin­ues to use Nazi imagery in their work and main­tained con­tact with fed­er­al infor­mant Joshua Sut­ter through a sub­se­quent occult Nazi front, Agony’s Point Press.

THE PIES SUTTER AND HOY HAD THEIR FINGERS IN

Mem­bers of groups like Tem­pel ov Blood rarely stick to one orga­ni­za­tion at a time. Most frat­er­nize and recruit in a milieu of extrem­ist groups with vary­ing focus­es. Joshua Sut­ter was involved in sev­er­al extrem­ist groups along­side Tem­pel ov Blood, includ­ing white pow­er groups, Com­mu­nist North Korea Juche sup­port groups, and a Hare Krish­na group. Sutter’s wife, Jil­lian Hoy, was also a mem­ber of some of these groups.

ARYAN NATIONS

The Aryan Nations was a major neo-Nazi orga­ni­za­tion in the U.S. found­ed in the 1970s, oper­at­ing under the guise of a church. Richard But­ler led this group out to Ida­ho where they set­tled onto a 20-acre com­pound intend­ed as the start of their white eth­nos­tate. But, in 2001, they even­tu­al­ly lost the land in a law­suit rep­re­sent­ed by the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter. After that, But­ler moved out to Penn­syl­va­nia to live in a house one of his sup­port­ers bought for him. Joshua Sut­ter was a mem­ber of the Aryan Nations and, by 2003, became a leader with­in the group. For some time he lived at its head­quar­ters in Penn­syl­va­nia along­side August Kreis, Aryan Nations’s web­mas­ter, “Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion & Pro­pa­gan­da,” and ulti­mate­ly “Region­al Ambas­sador for the North­east.” Kreis had what seemed to be a con­tentious opin­ion with­in the white suprema­cist group: he was inter­est­ed in build­ing alliances with Jihadists. At the age of 22 and under Kreis’ lead­er­ship, Joshua Sut­ter became the “Min­is­ter for Islam­ic Liai­son.” Lat­er, Kreis would move into a trail­er in Lex­ing­ton, South Carolina—not far from the League of the South’s racist mem­o­ra­bil­ia shop that Joshua Sut­ter and his father David both worked at. Joshua Sut­ter was involved in a lot of projects at this time includ­ing act­ing as a preach­er deliv­er­ing ser­mons for the Church of the Sons of Yaweh. He was active in the mes­sag­ing forums on the Aryan Nations web­site under the alias “Wul­fran Hall” and, in 2005, he pub­lished an inter­view with David Myatt, founder of the Order of Nine Angles, on the Aryan Nations web­site.

Things went sour when Sut­ter was accused by anoth­er Aryan Nations Pas­tor of being a “gov­ern­ment snitch.” In Feb­ru­ary 2014, August Kreis was charged with six counts of sex­u­al­ly abus­ing chil­dren.

RURAL PEOPLE’S PARTY

In Novem­ber 2004, Joshua Sut­ter formed the Rur­al People’s Par­ty (RPP). Sut­ter described it years lat­er in a biog­ra­phy (using the alias James Williams) about the Rur­al People’s Par­ty that was sub­mit­ted and then pub­lished by San Diego University’s Cen­ter for Reli­gious Stud­ies as hav­ing the focus of a “very straight-for­ward aim to pro­mul­gate and put into prac­tice the the­o­ret­i­cal advance­ments of the (now defunct) Maoist Inter­na­tion­al­ist Move­ment (MIM).” In essence, this group was a Com­mu­nist, North Korea (DPRK), and People’s Tem­ple sup­port­ing “study group” mod­eled after the activ­i­ties of cult leader and preach­er Jim Jones who in 1978 con­vinced over 900 of his mem­bers to par­tic­i­pate in mass sui­cide. Jil­lian Hoy was also a mem­ber of RPP, hold­ing the posi­tion of “com­mit­tee mem­ber.” Their small group com­mu­ni­cat­ed with an offi­cial con­tact in North Korea who sent them pro-DPRK pro­pa­gan­da.

An aspir­ing poet and often unhoused rad­i­cal liv­ing in Port­land, Ore­gon named John Paul Cupp trav­eled to South Car­oli­na in 2007 with a Pales­tin­ian-Amer­i­can from Cal­i­for­nia to meet Sut­ter and Hoy. Cupp had his own pro-DPRK “study group” and had even odd­ly been flown to North Korea by offi­cials for a vis­it.

In short, there was a bit of a love tri­an­gle among Cupp, Hoy, and Sut­ter. Per­haps unre­lat­ed, Cupp end­ed up in the hos­pi­tal and the next year Sut­ter and Hoy were mar­ried. John Paul Cupp changed his name to Walid and con­vert­ed to Islam.

18 Novem­ber is a sym­bol­ic date—it’s the anniver­sary date of the People’s Tem­ple mass mur­der and sui­cide and also the date Joshua Sut­ter and Jil­lian Hoy were mar­ried. Events from their wed­ding are cit­ed in the report Sut­ter authored under an alias for SDSU read­ing: “At the peak of the RPP’s involve­ment in local Pen­te­costal and Apos­tolic cir­cles, two mem­bers of our orga­ni­za­tion were mar­ried in a cer­e­mo­ny at a local Apos­tolic church on Novem­ber 18th, the anniver­sary of the Peo­ples Tem­ple mar­tyr­dom.”

The Rur­al People’s Par­ty group seemed to become more focused on Jim Jones and the People’s Tem­ple, at this point. In Novem­ber 2009, Sut­ter used an alias to write a biog­ra­phy about the Rur­al People’s Par­ty, and then had it pub­lished by San Diego University’s Cen­ter for Reli­gious Studies—a repos­i­to­ry for the largest archive of mate­ri­als relat­ed to Jon­estown and the People’s Tem­ple.

The Rur­al People’s Par­ty became inac­tive around 2010.

NEW BIHAR MANDIR

The New Bihar Mandir, a group based on the Inter­na­tion­al Soci­ety for Krish­na Con­scious­ness (ISKCON) move­ment, formed in 2009 by Joshua Sut­ter with branch­es in Cana­da, Brazil, and in the U.S. with head­quar­ters at Sut­ter and Hoy’s home in Lex­ing­ton, South Car­oli­na. ISKCON was pre­vi­ous­ly known as the Hare Krish­na Move­ment and was found­ed by a man in his late 60s who sailed from India to the U.S., land­ing in New York City where, in 1966, ISKCON was estab­lished, attract­ing youth and the new­ly emerg­ing coun­ter­cul­ture of the hip­pies. Some cri­tiques have described ISKCON as a cult. Today, ISKCON boasts about one mil­lion mem­bers world-wide.

The New Bihar Mandir shared mem­ber­ship with sev­er­al ToB lead­ers. Daniel Bark­er, a satanist, white suprema­cist, heavy met­al musi­cian, and ear­ly ToB mem­ber who also pro­mot­ed the brand “Tem­ple of the Black Vam­pire,” led the Cana­di­an branch. Sut­ter and Hoy housed its head­quar­ters in the U.S. New Bihar Mandir describes itself as a world­wide move­ment begin­ning to bring about the prophe­cy of the Kali Yuga. The Kali Yuga is “the Dark Age of Hin­du mythol­o­gy,” a 432,000-year age of con­flict, death, and destruc­tion that will ush­er in a new and bet­ter age at its con­clu­sion. The con­cept of the Kali Yuga became pop­u­lar in neo-Nazi cir­cles in part because of Sav­it­ri Devi, the Nazi mys­tic whose books heav­i­ly influ­enced Nazi and neo-Nazi occultism.

THE BLACK LODGE DISCIPLINE CENTER

The Cana­di­an Tem­pel ov Blood mem­ber, Daniel Bark­er, oper­at­ed The Black Lodge Dis­ci­pline Cen­ter (BLDC) which func­tioned as a ToB sex and tor­ture cham­ber. The BLDC’s activ­i­ties were pur­port­ed to trans­gress con­ven­tion­al con­sen­su­al BDSM, accord­ing to an inter­view giv­en by “Com­mis­sar NSK” (an alias of Barker’s) to Mar­tinet Press in a Novem­ber 2015 issue of False Prophet. That year, an audio project called Gulag, com­prised of elec­tron­ic sounds and record­ings from with­in the BLDC, with tracks such as Rape and Pun­ish­ment, was re-released by the Mar­tinet Press Audio label. Orig­i­nal­ly released one year ear­li­er, Gulag’s Black Lodge Dis­ci­pline Cen­ter album has been described as the sound­track to Iron Gates.

The New Bihar Mandir fla­vor of spir­i­tu­al prac­tice incor­po­rates altars and shrines rem­i­nis­cent of those con­struct­ed for the Tem­pel ov Blood. They almost always have a framed pho­to of Sut­ter, neo-Nazi imagery, and some­times firearms and knives. Sim­i­lar to the con­cept of the Kali Yuga, the Tem­pel ov Blood embraces the con­cept of “Aeon­ic change,” act­ing as accel­er­a­tionists try­ing to speed up this process by pro­mot­ing and par­tic­i­pat­ing in acts they per­ceive will bring about the most evil.

ATOMWAFFEN DIVISION

The Tem­pel ov Blood has become noto­ri­ous for its affil­i­a­tion with the neo-Nazi ter­ror orga­ni­za­tion Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion.

Joshua Sut­ter joined AWD in 2017 at the invi­ta­tion of a Tex­an named John Cameron Den­ton. Sut­ter would lat­er, in 2020, intro­duce Den­ton to an FBI agent. Dur­ing Sutter’s tenure with the group, AWD pro­mot­ed Tem­pel ov Blood’s books. Near the end of 2019 and ear­ly 2020 after sev­er­al mur­ders and plots, AWD final­ly implod­ed, end­ing in mul­ti­ple high pro­file arrests, includ­ing both lead­ers of the group: Wash­ing­ton state native Kaleb Cole and John Cameron Den­ton. Den­ton used the alias “Rape” and was accused by fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors in 2020 of shar­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing child pornog­ra­phy.

While Joshua Sut­ter was a mem­ber of all these groups, he was work­ing as a fed­er­al infor­mant. Upon release from prison in 2004, Joshua Sut­ter began accept­ing pay­ments from the FBI in exchange for infor­ma­tion on his fel­low white suprema­cists and cult fol­low­ers.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF SUTTER BEING AN FBI INFORMANT

Despite voiced con­cerns in the ear­ly 2000s that Joshua Sut­ter was a fed­er­al infor­mant, he seems to have expe­ri­enced few con­se­quences from his fel­low extrem­ists aside from hav­ing his access revoked and dig­i­tal foot­print erased from the Aryan Nations web­site. Lat­er, in 2021, after Sut­ter was clear­ly out­ed as an infor­mant in his tri­al tes­ti­mo­ny in Kaleb Cole’s case, he was heav­i­ly ridiculed by both antifas­cists and neo-Nazis. Today, Joshua Sut­ter is memed all across the inter­net, yet he still man­ages to pen­e­trate groups and orga­nize with oth­er extrem­ists.

In 2016, a man named William White, who was incar­cer­at­ed, learned of Sutter’s 2003 arrest and filed a FOIA request for the doc­u­ments regard­ing the case. In addi­tion, White request­ed doc­u­ments on 48 oth­er indi­vid­u­als includ­ing Jil­lian Hoy. These requests were denied after efforts on his and his lawyer’s part. In motion doc­u­ments, which are now pub­licly avail­able, White claims that upon Sutter’s release from fed­er­al prison in 2004, Sut­ter “went to work for the FBI as a fed­er­al infor­mant cross-tasked to both domes­tic ter­ror­ism, and, for­eign counter-intel­li­gence, inves­ti­ga­tions.”

In his legal doc­u­ments, White includes a long list of griev­ances and claims, some of which have been con­firmed and many of which haven’t. For exam­ple, LCRW was unable to con­firm his claim that Jil­lian Hoy is an infor­mant or that Joshua Sut­ter stole White’s iden­ti­ty and con­spired to mur­der him. White also claims, and LCRW is unable to con­firm, that, in 2007, Sut­ter and James Por­raz­zo, a neo-Nazi and for­mer Amer­i­can Front leader, “attempt­ed to mur­der a man named John Paul Cupp as part of their oper­a­tions against North Korea.” Por­raz­zo now spends his time dis­sem­i­nat­ing pro-Rus­sia pro­pa­gan­da after being named by the far-right Russ­ian Defense League as their “Ambas­sador” to the U.S. in 2013. In legal doc­u­ments, White claims that David Lynch, a leader of the Amer­i­can Front who was mur­dered at his home in March 2011, was anoth­er “tar­get” of Sut­ter and Porrazzo’s, and sug­gests that Lynch’s mur­der allowed Sut­ter and Por­raz­zo to take over the group. In legal doc­u­ments, White sug­gests that Sut­ter “aid­ed and abet­ted the mur­der of David Lynch.” LCRW could not con­firm Sut­ter or Por­raz­zo were involved in Lynch’s mur­der.

Despite all this, Joshua Sut­ter was allowed to join the noto­ri­ous AWD at the invi­ta­tion of John Cameron Den­ton in 2017. Den­ton, with the help of Kaleb Cole, took over lead­er­ship of the group after founder Bran­don Rus­sell was incar­cer­at­ed fol­low­ing his room­mate Devon Arthurs hav­ing mur­dered two oth­er AWD mem­bers who shared the same res­i­dence with Rus­sell and Arthurs in Flori­da.

As a mem­ber of AWD, Joshua Sut­ter was allowed into their com­mu­ni­ca­tions along­side oth­er high pro­file mem­bers, ini­ti­ates, and sup­port­ers (many of whom would lat­er be arrest­ed or pub­licly iden­ti­fied) whose num­bers reached towards 200 in some Dis­cord serv­er chats. Despite being an embed­ded fed­er­al infor­mant in this group, Joshua Sut­ter was unable to pre­vent the bru­tal mur­der of Blaze Bern­stein by AWD mem­ber Samuel Wood­ward with whom Sut­ter was active in chats with.

Some of the activ­i­ties Sut­ter par­tic­i­pat­ed in while a mem­ber of AWD include a 2018 meet­ing in Neva­da, a Death Val­ley, CA “Hate Camp” that same year, and 2019’s “Oper­a­tion Erste Saule” – a harass­ment and swat­ting cam­paign against jour­nal­ists and oth­er tar­gets. In Jan­u­ary 2020, Sut­ter was in Con­roe, Texas at a home meet­ing with Kaleb Cole and John Cameron Den­ton.

LCRW learned that Joshua Sut­ter, using the alias “swiss­dis­ci­pline,” also had con­tact with the leader of the Base, Rinal­do Naz­zaro, who he reached out to in mid-Jan­u­ary 2020, feed­ing him infor­ma­tion on Richard Tobin, a then-18 year old, dual AWD and Base mem­ber who sought to absorb the Amer­i­can mem­bers of the Feuerkrieg Divi­sion and who was arrest­ed on charges relat­ed to con­spir­ing with oth­er Base mem­bers in van­dal­iz­ing syn­a­gogues in mul­ti­ple states.

In late Sep­tem­ber 2021, all doubts of Joshua Sut­ter being a fed­er­al infor­mant were dis­pelled when he tes­ti­fied for the State against AWD leader Kaleb Cole.

Between 2017 and 2019, it was almost impos­si­ble to avoid any ref­er­ence to the Tem­pel ov Blood, the Order of Nine Angles, or any of Mar­tinet Press’s pub­li­ca­tions, in praise or crit­i­cism of, in asso­ci­a­tion with AWD. Some groups and indi­vid­u­als vocal­ly reject­ed the asso­ci­a­tions point­ing out, as Jar­rett Smith, a for­mer Feuerkrieg Divi­sion mem­ber, did in 2019 in response to read­ing Iron Gates and Blue­bird, writ­ing that “Both books sucked. They’re just vile child rape fan­tasies mas­querad­ing as a Com­mie-type satan­ic mili­tia orga­ni­za­tion.” This pro­pa­gan­da and influ­encer trend reached beyond this one neo-Nazi group, and in fact spread inter­na­tion­al­ly as the accel­er­a­tionist and Order of Nine Angles-curi­ous aes­thet­ic inspired copy­cat groups over the next sev­er­al years unto today such as: Son­nenkrieg Divi­sion, Feuerkrieg Divi­sion, Totemwaf­fen, Rape­Waf­fen Divi­sion and even The Base.

SATANIC FRONT

LCRW was unable to deter­mine how Anton Blenzig first got involved with the Tem­pel ov Blood or exact­ly how his life changed after­wards, but it obvi­ous­ly wasn’t for the bet­ter. New York has a larg­er per­cent­age of known O9A mem­bers than oth­er U.S. states and is a hub for Tem­pel ov Blood and O9A affil­i­at­ed activ­i­ty. As such, it is pos­si­ble he made some per­son­al con­tacts while liv­ing there. From the frag­ments we were able to piece togeth­er, indi­ca­tors sug­gest that Blenzig spent a lot of time “on the dark web.”

...

2020 was a busy year for Blenzig. That June, at age 23, he pub­lished an edi­tion of False Prophet and then, in Novem­ber, he was endorsed by Mar­tinet Press. On the last day of that year, an email address for a new group called “The Satan­ic Front” opened.

THE SATANIC FRONT FORMS

Much infor­ma­tion about how Satan­ic Front formed isn’t clear. Both online Nazis and researchers have spec­u­lat­ed on the rea­sons for the group’s gen­e­sis. LCRW ana­lysts believe it’s like­ly that Jar­od Choate sim­ply parked the web­site in 2018 and start­ed to reach out to and net­work with oth­er satanists, online and local­ly. This led to a small group form­ing in Texas with a few, scat­tered affil­i­ates across the U.S. and a cou­ple announced alliances with known inter­na­tion­al ter­ror net­works.

By at least Octo­ber 2020, Anton Blenzig was stay­ing in Texas and even­tu­al­ly set­tled in a small town called Azle, a few miles north­west of Fort Worth, where he orga­nized as the Satan­ic Front with Jar­od Choate, who lived in the same town. Choate is a U.S. Army vet­er­an who was in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with con­vict­ed Feuerkrieg Divi­sion mem­ber Jar­rett William Smith dur­ing the sum­mer of 2019.

In a July 2021 inter­view with Jar­od Choate (who uses the alias Satanae Manibus), he described Satan­ic Front’s num­ber one objec­tive as estab­lish­ing a “world­wide cult of the Dev­il” and pos­si­bly one day estab­lish­ing “an inde­pen­dent ‘Satan­ic’ state.” The group is described by Choate as being a “home for Satanists com­plete with a phys­i­cal tem­ple for wor­ship among oth­er tasks.” He said they offer sev­er­al forms of train­ing “from rit­u­al work (cer­e­mo­ni­al mag­ic) to phys­i­cal skills that can be used in, let’s say, hos­tile and kinet­ic envi­ron­ments.” Satan­ic Front believes “the Dev­il deserves bet­ter.”

From what LCRW was able to deter­mine, the Satan­ic Front had no more than 15 affil­i­ates at any giv­en time. Despite the small num­ber, some high pro­file arrests took place.

Angel Luis Almei­da, an adher­ent of the ToB and the Satan­ic Front was charged with sex­u­al exploita­tion of a child in 2023. Pho­tos cir­cu­lat­ed online of Almei­da pos­ing with a copy of Iron Gates. When law enforce­ment searched his res­i­dence, they found a satan­ic covenant signed in blood with a state­ment by Jar­od Choate’s alias “Satanae Manibus,” read­ing: “A covenant signed in blood. May the dev­il walk with you always. – Satanae Manibus.”

Oth­er known mem­bers of the Satan­ic Front include Samuel Orel­lana, who was released from prison in 2021 after serv­ing time relat­ed to the offense of “Lewd or las­civ­i­ous acts with a child under 14 years of age,” Christo­pher Pack, who pro­duces pro­pa­gan­da for the group and Bren­nan Wal­ters, a Nazi from Col­orado and for­mer mem­ber of the Nation­al Social­ist Order (a group formed in 2020 made up of remain­ing AWD mem­bers). The Satan­ic Front made alliances in Brazil and Rus­sia, includ­ing with Egor Kras­nov from Mur­der Mani­acs Cult (often referred to as “MKY”).

The Satan­ic Front main­tained a web­site which, accord­ing to domain reg­istry infor­ma­tion, was cre­at­ed in Decem­ber 2018. The site once host­ed dozens of blog posts but have since been removed. When the site was live, it fea­tured posts start­ing in Decem­ber 2021 about the “Satan­ic Preda­tor,” two entries writ­ten by Bren­nan Wal­ters using the alias “Bar­tok Lycus,” a link to Anton Blenzig’s eBay account where one could pur­chase The Satan­ic Hand­book, and awk­ward­ly-writ­ten blog posts about how best to be a Satanist. LCRW’s analy­sis sug­gests Jar­od Choate, using the alias “Satanae Manibus,” was the only one to upload posts to the site.

Mean­while, the iden­ti­ty behind the Satan­ic Front-affil­i­at­ed alias “Com­man­dant Cul­tus” was exposed on 4chan, the noto­ri­ous image board web­site, in Feb­ru­ary 2022 as Anton Blenzig.

The tone of the Satan­ic Front web­site took a turn in mid-2022 when Satanae Manibus post­ed a note called “False Orders Dis­avowed.” In it, he acknowl­edged the Satan­ic Front’s affil­i­a­tion with the Tem­pel ov Blood and admit­ted they have “admired cer­tain aspects of their work and approach in the past.” But, Choate went on, they “have found upon direct work with their mem­bers” that their ide­ol­o­gy was “not in align­ment.” The blog post con­tin­ued to berate the O9A describ­ing it as an “arm­chair approach to occultism” which had com­plete­ly col­lapsed. Choate described the Tem­pel ov Blood as hav­ing implod­ed.

About the time the Satan­ic Front’s web­site was erased, a new Satanist occult project on the same site took its place. Choate, using a new alias, began post­ing again.

Jar­od Choate is alleged to have col­lab­o­rat­ed with Joshua Sut­ter on mul­ti­ple Satan­ic themed projects, includ­ing dur­ing sum­mer 2024 when Sut­ter, under his assumed alias “Mal­ice Moab,” pub­lished two blog posts on a web­site admin­is­trat­ed by Choate. LCRW is declin­ing to name Choate’s web­site. Social media posts show Joshua Sutter’s sock accounts boost­ing Satan­ic Front pro­pa­gan­da.

The details of Anton Blenzig’s fall­out with the Satan­ic Front remain unclear.

COM GROUPS AND THE IMPERSONATOR CONTENT WARNING: CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE, SELF-HARM

This sec­tion talks about online child exploita­tion. More infor­ma­tion on resources for com­bat­ing child exploita­tion and abuse are avail­able at the top of this arti­cle.

Nefar­i­ous online com­mu­ni­ty groups, or “COM” for short, bleak online social net­works where peo­ple can anony­mous­ly share extreme­ly dis­mal sub­ject mat­ter such as gore, ani­mal abuse, self-harm, and child sex­u­al abuse mate­r­i­al – often ille­gal sub­ject mat­ter includ­ing extor­tion and sex­tor­tion. Most of us wouldn’t become aware of COM groups until ear­ly 2024 when some of the first report­ing on 764, an online child sex abuse extor­tion­ist cult, was pub­lished.

There are numer­ous, doc­u­ment­ed reports of chil­dren being groomed in the groups and extort­ed to self-harm by cut­ting them­selves, often made to carve their extortioner’s name into their bod­ies and writ­ing their extortioner’s name in blood on sur­faces such as their bed­room or bath­room wall. Pic­tures of such acts are col­lect­ed by extor­tion­ers and even trad­ed like base­ball cards. Some minors are coerced into tak­ing nude or par­tial­ly nude pho­tos of them­selves, and oth­ers pres­sured into com­mit­ting acts of vio­lence against them­selves or oth­ers, some­times even against their own pets, result­ing in their deaths. Sui­cides have tak­en place in real time dur­ing group live-streamed events, with an audi­ence.

Extrem­ist pro­pa­gan­da from Islamists, neo-Nazis, and the Order of Nine Angles is cir­cu­lat­ed in these spaces and con­tributes to the desen­si­ti­za­tion of its mem­bers.

Tem­pel ov Blood imagery, ref­er­ences, and texts can be found in these sex­tor­tion and gore COM groups and relat­ed niche net­works. Some user accounts have even named them­selves after ToB mem­bers in a copy­cat, glo­ri­fy­ing fash­ion.

CHILD EXPLOITATION

Poten­tial recruits to the Tem­pel ov Blood are rou­tine­ly exposed to sex­u­al assault and child exploita­tion sce­nar­ios, both real and rep­re­sen­ta­tive; they are encour­aged to car­ry out uneth­i­cal and ille­gal activ­i­ties. Pub­lished writ­ings and images in ToB asso­ci­at­ed texts, blogs and social media posts describe and pro­mote child sex­u­al abuse. An exam­i­na­tion of six issues of False Prophet (Tem­pel ov Blood’s inter­nal jour­nal), four issues of Choron­zon (Mar­tinet Press’s offi­cial jour­nal) and eight issues of Preda­tor (a restrict­ed cir­cu­lar pub­lished by ToB), shows over forty depic­tions of child­hood sex­u­al assault, incest, tor­ture, mur­der or necrophil­ia. False Prophet includes over ten short sto­ries con­tain­ing these ele­ments and Choron­zon pub­lished at least ten images with these themes.

Mul­ti-media art­work, includ­ing sketch­es, col­lages, pho­tog­ra­phy and videog­ra­phy asso­ci­at­ed with the Tem­pel ov Blood pro­mote sex­u­al vio­lence. One piece called “With­out My Gun I wouldn’t Be Able to Quench My Thirst For The Blood Of Children’s Gen­i­talia” by a Turk­ish shock artist liv­ing in the UK call­ing them­selves Chaos­cunt, is fea­tured along with three oth­er sex­u­al­ly graph­ic and Islam­o­pho­bic pieces in Choron­zon III. In an inter­view with this artist, print­ed in the same issue, Chaos­cunt, whose real name is Emir Toğrul, explains they believe “art is a free realm and that there are no lim­its”. This includes, they argue, being able to “talk about rap­ing chil­dren as you’d do it and make fun of it”. This ratio­nale is cen­tral to ToB’s teach­ings of push­ing the lim­its of all bound­aries and is summed up in their slo­gan: “No Lim­its Evil”.

In Jan­u­ary 2023, a brief his­to­ry of COM titled “Mem­o­ra­bil­ia” was pub­lished to a web­site describ­ing the ear­ly ori­gins of this extor­tion cult—from 2017 on the mes­sag­ing plat­form KiK to a migra­tion to Dis­cord in 2019. Extor­tion­ists lured girls from Insta­gram, Tik­Tok, Roblox, Omegle, and Snapchat to groom. This activ­i­ty increas­ing­ly migrat­ed to Telegram between 2020 to 2022, where it con­tin­ues to this day.

“Mem­o­ra­bil­ia,” impor­tant­ly, includes the his­to­ry of the COM com­mu­ni­ty “Cvl­tivists,” whose name was lat­er changed to “Cultists.” This group was formed around March 2021 by Kalana Limkin, a teenag­er liv­ing in Hawaii who used the alias “Vore.” Limkin is the youngest child of six in his fam­i­ly. His moth­er strug­gles with men­tal ill­ness and iden­ti­fies as a “Tar­get­ed Indi­vid­ual” (a per­son who thinks they’re being stalked by large, orga­nized groups of peo­ple). Accord­ing to his moth­er, Limkin lived in four dif­fer­ent fos­ter homes in four years’ time. In May 2023, the FBI in Hon­olu­lu opened an inves­ti­ga­tion into him. On 13 Decem­ber 2023, the FBI exe­cut­ed a fed­er­al search war­rant and detained Limkin, who con­fessed to being the cre­ator of this group. He was sub­se­quent­ly charged with pos­ses­sion of child pornog­ra­phy and remains incar­cer­at­ed.

An account on Telegram mim­ic­k­ing one of Blenzig’s well-known alias­es, “Com­man­dant Cul­tus,” was among the top ten posters in over fifty COM groups exam­ined by a col­lec­tive of jour­nal­ists, accord­ing to Roman Höfn­er who inves­ti­gates this type of activ­i­ty. The account accu­mu­lat­ed over twen­ty thou­sand mes­sages post­ed in child abuse extor­tion­ist groups. One of the names this account went by was “Sam.”

In the year before Anton Blenzig’s death, sev­er­al high pro­file arrests were made of men involved in these spaces.

“Rabid,” whose real name is Richard Antho­ny Rey­na Dens­more, was sen­tenced to 30 years in prison for sex­u­al­ly exploit­ing chil­dren.

On 23 Jan­u­ary 2024, some­one using the alias “Sam” post­ed in a Telegram chan­nel called “Sam’s Lega­cy” about the “Cultists group.” The account said that anoth­er group of theirs called “303 Nex­ion,” aka “Cvl­tivists,” which formed in Feb­ru­ary 2022, would be “the con­tin­u­a­tion of Vore’s [Kalana Limkin’s] Cultists” group after “he got fed­ded.” In posts made on Telegram in 2024, “Sam” said that before he formed 303 Nex­ion in Feb­ru­ary 2022, he “ran a gen­er­al chat called ‘rapecast.’”

RAPEWAFFEN DIVISION

Sex­u­al vio­lence is an inter­sect­ing sub­ject among many niche extrem­ist ide­olo­gies. The theme heav­i­ly appears in Tem­pel ov Blood lit­er­a­ture and pro­pa­gan­da which has trans­lat­ed onto oth­er far-right accel­er­a­tionist groups’ pro­pa­gan­da and into casu­al ban­ter among neo-Nazis. The obses­sion with pro-rape cul­ture became so great among some accel­er­a­tionist neo-Nazis that a “Rape­Waf­fen Divi­sion” Telegram net­work was cre­at­ed around 2019. This group became known after one of its mem­bers, Ethan Phe­lan Melz­er, who was active­ly serv­ing in the U.S. Army, was arrest­ed at the age of 22 for plan­ning an attack on his own mil­i­tary unit while deployed in Turkey. The group described itself as a “loose­ly con­nect­ed net­work of nex­ions of the O9A.” The Rape­Waf­fen Divi­sion chan­nel boost­ed a “Rape Man­i­festo,” titled “RapeKrieg,” a five page screed writ­ten on 9 Novem­ber 2019. The admin­is­ter of the Rape­Waf­fen Divi­sion Telegram chan­nel claimed the RapeKrieg Man­i­festo was bet­ter than “The Rape Anthology”—a 261 paged anthol­o­gy also pub­lished in 2019 (by The Chaos Press) which includ­ed the short essays from the Anthol­o­gy of RapeCast and Chron­i­cles of Sodomy (2018 Word­Press blogs), and Augur of the Apoc­a­lypse. As if that wasn’t enough, the Rape­Waf­fen Divi­sion admin cre­at­ed their own “Rape book” and post­ed that it might be pub­lished by Mar­tinet Press.

BLENZIG IS ENDORSED BY MARTINET PRESS

On 18 Novem­ber 2020, Joshua Sut­ter and Jil­lian Hoy’s 12th wed­ding anniver­sary date—and the 42nd anniver­sary date of the People’s Tem­ple mass mur­der and suicide—the Mar­tinet Press web­site pub­lished an announce­ment endors­ing long time adher­ent “Com­man­dant Cul­tus,” who we now know as Anton Blenzig. Blenzig was not quite 24.

By this time, come 2020, how­ev­er, Jil­lian Hoy was on her way to pair­ing up with anoth­er man, Jew­ish by birth, with whom she would spend the next four years and have two chil­dren with.

With the Mar­tinet Press endorse­ment, Anton Blenzig became the offi­cial dis­trib­u­tor for the Tem­pel ov Blood and began to sell ToB, Mar­tinet Press, Satan­ic Front and Tem­ple of the Black Vam­pire brand­ed books and prod­ucts on the inter­net, includ­ing made-to-order shirts with his “Com­man­dant Cul­tus” alias. A new “Com­man­dant Cul­tus” web­site was cre­at­ed to pro­mote these goods. The web­site includ­ed a “Cul­tus Forum” for dis­cus­sion and post­ing, but by the time it was tak­en offline it had not yet gen­er­at­ed much activ­i­ty. Accord­ing to archives dat­ing between 3 May 2021 and 20 Feb­ru­ary 2023, only two accounts used the forum: an account pur­port­ed to belong to Blenzig used a Word­Press-account linked to “Vm32” and a Word­Press account linked to “night­mover” using the alias “mas­ter­a­haz,” alleged to belong to Joshua Sut­ter. There were less than 10 (unim­pres­sive) posts between them. Forum posts include a “Gen­er­al Dis­cus­sion” thread (with only 2 com­ments), three thread posts with the titles: “Tantra & Vamachara,” “Demon­ic Evo­ca­tion and Pacts,” and “Tal­is­mans and Amulets.” Joshua Sutter’s post seems to be a short fic­tion­al piece about “Wamphyrism” (which he wrote under a new­er alias “Court of Ahaz’). It reads like an 8^th grade cre­ative writ­ing assign­ment:

“Our black hand is upon you. Cross the bar­ri­er, step through the pas­sage, embrace that hith­er­to for­bid­den. Immor­tal­i­ty awaits in world aflame.”

With the Novem­ber 2020 endorse­ment, Anton Blenzig was giv­en edi­to­r­i­al con­trol over False Prophet, ToB’s inter­nal jour­nal, in which he went on to pub­lish anoth­er issue as Vol­ume 2 Edi­tion 1. In July 2022, Com­man­dant Cul­tus inde­pen­dent­ly pub­lished an “autho­rized” hard­back edi­tion of the Tem­pel ov Blood’s Liber 333 – a com­pi­la­tion of the group’s foun­da­tion­al essays, rit­u­al and chant instruc­tions and dark fic­tion, much of which can be found in pre­vi­ous ToB texts dat­ing back to 2004. Inter­est­ing­ly, Liber 333 was nev­er actu­al­ly pub­lished by Mar­tinet Press, per­haps due to inter­nal con­flict between Daniel Bark­er, who seems to hold copy­right con­trol of the text, and the enti­ty oper­at­ing as Mar­tinet Press. By 2022, Blenzig pub­lished two new issues of Preda­tor, the restrict­ed cir­cu­lar pub­lished by ToB. While Mar­tinet Press has not pub­lished a new title since 2020, their texts are still sold through con­ven­tion­al out­lets. ToB man­u­scripts are eas­i­ly found on the inter­net.

WHERE ARE THINGS NOW?

While LCRW was able to con­firm Anton Blenzig’s death, we were unable to con­firm the sta­tus of any open inves­ti­ga­tion into it. There are few known answers about the cir­cum­stances around his death. The peo­ple who rad­i­cal­ized him are still out there. A memo­r­i­al fund in his hon­or was cre­at­ed by The Bar­tow-Pell Man­sion Muse­um in New York. In the fund’s announce­ment, he is described as hav­ing “had a library of rare books, dozens of cer­e­mo­ni­al masks from around the world, and sev­er­al stere­o­graphs with a large col­lec­tion of stere­o­graph­ic prints.”

As of Feb­ru­ary 2025, just over ten years after Mar­tinet Press was estab­lished, Jil­lian Hoy remains list­ed as Mar­tinet Press’s con­tact. She is still mar­ried to Joshua Sut­ter but now resides in the vicin­i­ty of Yale Uni­ver­si­ty with her new part­ner, a man who is active in online Ratio­nal­ist dis­course spaces who some­times uses the alias “Ben­quo.”

Posts on Twitter/X show Ben­quo and Hoy inter­act­ing with an account pur­port­ed to belong to Ophe­lia Bauck­holt, a mem­ber of a small group referred to as the “Zizians” (a cult which splin­tered from the broad­er Ratio­nal­ist com­mu­ni­ty) and who was killed on 20 Jan­u­ary 2025 dur­ing a shootout in Ver­mont which involved a U.S. Bor­der Patrol agent. Offline, Jil­lian and Ben­quo some­times par­tic­i­pate in events with­in the Ratio­nal­i­ty com­mu­ni­ty.

Jil­lian Hoy is now a moth­er of two small chil­dren with this man despite once writ­ing in her auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Mar­tinet Press title ‘Ven­om and Hon­ey:’

“I do not wor­ship Kali as a moth­er. Kali has no chil­dren. Her body is not a ves­sel of repro­duc­tion; it is a tool for ter­ror and destruc­tion. I wor­ship Kali because I feel an affin­i­ty for Kali, I feel a desire with­in me to be among Her witchy cohorts who slaugh­ter, laugh play­ful­ly and ter­ri­bly, and inspire fear. I’d soon­er bear a weapon and take down life than bear life with­in me. For me, Kali is about vio­lence, wrath, and lust, but I love Her all the more that She may also con­vinc­ing­ly play the moth­er while Her blade hov­ers threat­en­ing­ly.”

It’s unknown whether Hoy’s rela­tion­ship with Ben­quo is a sign that she’s put her neo-Nazi past behind her or if she’s tak­ing on an ‘insight role.’

...

Joshua Sut­ter con­tin­ues attempts at blog post­ing under var­i­ous edgy alias­es, self-pub­lish­ing through print-on-demand ser­vices and pro­mot­ing neo-Nazi, satan­ic, and cult extrem­ist pro­pa­gan­da on the inter­net.

It is unknown how many vul­ner­a­ble and dis­af­fect­ed young peo­ple were groomed by affil­i­ates of the Tem­pel ov Blood cult but LCRW esti­mates that at least hun­dreds were involved with Tem­pel ov Blood and thou­sands more were exposed to their pro­pa­gan­da.

“There was some­one else in his apart­ment,” the Telegram account claim­ing to be a fam­i­ly mem­ber of Anton Blenzig made sure to men­tion as they reached out to strangers in a fringe Telegram group chat. They added, “it is still an open inves­ti­ga­tion.”

Research by Tris­tan Lee, data sci­en­tist at Belling­cat, con­tributed to this arti­cle.

This arti­cle is ded­i­cat­ed to the mem­o­ry of Nate Thay­er.

————-

“MYSTERIOUS DEATH SPOTLIGHTS SATANIC NAZI TERROR NETWORK” by JENNEFER HARPER; Left Coast Right Watch; 02/06/2025

“Mem­bers of groups like Tem­pel ov Blood rarely stick to one orga­ni­za­tion at a time. Most frat­er­nize and recruit in a milieu of extrem­ist groups with vary­ing focus­es. Joshua Sut­ter was involved in sev­er­al extrem­ist groups along­side Tem­pel ov Blood, includ­ing white pow­er groups, Com­mu­nist North Korea Juche sup­port groups, and a Hare Krish­na group. Sutter’s wife, Jil­lian Hoy, was also a mem­ber of some of these groups.”

Josh Sut­ter may be a lead­ing Satanist. But he’s not some­one to be pigeon­holed as just a Satanist. The guy has been a mem­ber of white pow­er Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty church­es, a Hare Krish­na group, and even a bizarre North Kore­an “Juche” sup­port group. All while also being a Satanist. And all while being an under­cov­er paid FBI infor­mant. Although, as we’ll see, Sut­ter was deeply involved with white pow­er Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty church­es at the time of his 2003 arrest which ulti­mate­ly led to his FBI infor­mant sta­tus. But all of these oth­er religious/political ‘inter­ests’ emerged only after Sut­ter’s FBI infor­mant sta­tus. In fact, the “Rur­al Peo­ple’s Par­ty” — the North Kore­an Juche sup­port group — was found­ed by Sut­ter in 2004, the year of his release from prison as an FBI infor­mant. At the same time, note how, before he was an infor­mant and serv­ing as a leader in the Aryan Nations, Sut­ter lived with August Kreis, the group’s “Region­al Ambas­sador for the North­east.” And it was Kreis who expressed an inter­est in net­work­ing with Jihadists, result­ing in Sut­ter, then 22, becom­ing the group’s “Min­is­ter for Islam­ic Liai­son.” So when Sut­ter was arrest­ed in 2003 and then approached by the FBI serve as an under­cov­er infor­mant, you have to won­der if his sta­tus as the Aryan Nation’s “Min­is­ter for Islam­ic Liai­son” was part of what inspired the FBI to recruit him in the first place. Was Sut­ter explic­it­ly recruit­ed by the FBI to serve as some sort of post‑9/11 pan-reli­gious extrem­ist provo­ca­teur?

...
ARYAN NATIONS

The Aryan Nations was a major neo-Nazi orga­ni­za­tion in the U.S. found­ed in the 1970s, oper­at­ing under the guise of a church. Richard But­ler led this group out to Ida­ho where they set­tled onto a 20-acre com­pound intend­ed as the start of their white eth­nos­tate. But, in 2001, they even­tu­al­ly lost the land in a law­suit rep­re­sent­ed by the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter. After that, But­ler moved out to Penn­syl­va­nia to live in a house one of his sup­port­ers bought for him. Joshua Sut­ter was a mem­ber of the Aryan Nations and, by 2003, became a leader with­in the group. For some time he lived at its head­quar­ters in Penn­syl­va­nia along­side August Kreis, Aryan Nations’s web­mas­ter, “Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion & Pro­pa­gan­da,” and ulti­mate­ly “Region­al Ambas­sador for the North­east.” Kreis had what seemed to be a con­tentious opin­ion with­in the white suprema­cist group: he was inter­est­ed in build­ing alliances with Jihadists. At the age of 22 and under Kreis’ lead­er­ship, Joshua Sut­ter became the “Min­is­ter for Islam­ic Liai­son.” Lat­er, Kreis would move into a trail­er in Lex­ing­ton, South Carolina—not far from the League of the South’s racist mem­o­ra­bil­ia shop that Joshua Sut­ter and his father David both worked at. Joshua Sut­ter was involved in a lot of projects at this time includ­ing act­ing as a preach­er deliv­er­ing ser­mons for the Church of the Sons of Yaweh. He was active in the mes­sag­ing forums on the Aryan Nations web­site under the alias “Wul­fran Hall” and, in 2005, he pub­lished an inter­view with David Myatt, founder of the Order of Nine Angles, on the Aryan Nations web­site.

Things went sour when Sut­ter was accused by anoth­er Aryan Nations Pas­tor of being a “gov­ern­ment snitch.” In Feb­ru­ary 2014, August Kreis was charged with six counts of sex­u­al­ly abus­ing chil­dren.

RURAL PEOPLE’S PARTY

In Novem­ber 2004, Joshua Sut­ter formed the Rur­al People’s Par­ty (RPP). Sut­ter described it years lat­er in a biog­ra­phy (using the alias James Williams) about the Rur­al People’s Par­ty that was sub­mit­ted and then pub­lished by San Diego University’s Cen­ter for Reli­gious Stud­ies as hav­ing the focus of a “very straight-for­ward aim to pro­mul­gate and put into prac­tice the the­o­ret­i­cal advance­ments of the (now defunct) Maoist Inter­na­tion­al­ist Move­ment (MIM).” In essence, this group was a Com­mu­nist, North Korea (DPRK), and People’s Tem­ple sup­port­ing “study group” mod­eled after the activ­i­ties of cult leader and preach­er Jim Jones who in 1978 con­vinced over 900 of his mem­bers to par­tic­i­pate in mass sui­cide. Jil­lian Hoy was also a mem­ber of RPP, hold­ing the posi­tion of “com­mit­tee mem­ber.” Their small group com­mu­ni­cat­ed with an offi­cial con­tact in North Korea who sent them pro-DPRK pro­pa­gan­da.

An aspir­ing poet and often unhoused rad­i­cal liv­ing in Port­land, Ore­gon named John Paul Cupp trav­eled to South Car­oli­na in 2007 with a Pales­tin­ian-Amer­i­can from Cal­i­for­nia to meet Sut­ter and Hoy. Cupp had his own pro-DPRK “study group” and had even odd­ly been flown to North Korea by offi­cials for a vis­it.

In short, there was a bit of a love tri­an­gle among Cupp, Hoy, and Sut­ter. Per­haps unre­lat­ed, Cupp end­ed up in the hos­pi­tal and the next year Sut­ter and Hoy were mar­ried. John Paul Cupp changed his name to Walid and con­vert­ed to Islam.

18 Novem­ber is a sym­bol­ic date—it’s the anniver­sary date of the People’s Tem­ple mass mur­der and sui­cide and also the date Joshua Sut­ter and Jil­lian Hoy were mar­ried. Events from their wed­ding are cit­ed in the report Sut­ter authored under an alias for SDSU read­ing: “At the peak of the RPP’s involve­ment in local Pen­te­costal and Apos­tolic cir­cles, two mem­bers of our orga­ni­za­tion were mar­ried in a cer­e­mo­ny at a local Apos­tolic church on Novem­ber 18th, the anniver­sary of the Peo­ples Tem­ple mar­tyr­dom.”

The Rur­al People’s Par­ty group seemed to become more focused on Jim Jones and the People’s Tem­ple, at this point. In Novem­ber 2009, Sut­ter used an alias to write a biog­ra­phy about the Rur­al People’s Par­ty, and then had it pub­lished by San Diego University’s Cen­ter for Reli­gious Studies—a repos­i­to­ry for the largest archive of mate­ri­als relat­ed to Jon­estown and the People’s Tem­ple.

The Rur­al People’s Par­ty became inac­tive around 2010.

NEW BIHAR MANDIR

The New Bihar Mandir, a group based on the Inter­na­tion­al Soci­ety for Krish­na Con­scious­ness (ISKCON) move­ment, formed in 2009 by Joshua Sut­ter with branch­es in Cana­da, Brazil, and in the U.S. with head­quar­ters at Sut­ter and Hoy’s home in Lex­ing­ton, South Car­oli­na. ISKCON was pre­vi­ous­ly known as the Hare Krish­na Move­ment and was found­ed by a man in his late 60s who sailed from India to the U.S., land­ing in New York City where, in 1966, ISKCON was estab­lished, attract­ing youth and the new­ly emerg­ing coun­ter­cul­ture of the hip­pies. Some cri­tiques have described ISKCON as a cult. Today, ISKCON boasts about one mil­lion mem­bers world-wide.

The New Bihar Mandir shared mem­ber­ship with sev­er­al ToB lead­ers. Daniel Bark­er, a satanist, white suprema­cist, heavy met­al musi­cian, and ear­ly ToB mem­ber who also pro­mot­ed the brand “Tem­ple of the Black Vam­pire,” led the Cana­di­an branch. Sut­ter and Hoy housed its head­quar­ters in the U.S. New Bihar Mandir describes itself as a world­wide move­ment begin­ning to bring about the prophe­cy of the Kali Yuga. The Kali Yuga is “the Dark Age of Hin­du mythol­o­gy,” a 432,000-year age of con­flict, death, and destruc­tion that will ush­er in a new and bet­ter age at its con­clu­sion. The con­cept of the Kali Yuga became pop­u­lar in neo-Nazi cir­cles in part because of Sav­it­ri Devi, the Nazi mys­tic whose books heav­i­ly influ­enced Nazi and neo-Nazi occultism.
...

Also note the tim­ing on the for­ma­tion of the first Tem­pel ov Blood “Nex­ion”: it was formed in 2003 in North Car­oli­na, and in late 2004 the group set up its head­quar­ters at Josh Sut­ter’s South Car­oli­na home. Keep in mind that Sut­ter was arrest­ed on Feb­ru­ary 12 of 2003, Assum­ing Sut­ter was involved with the orig­i­nal cre­ation in 2003, so either Sut­ter like­ly start­ed this “Nex­ion” while in prison or some­one else start­ed it and Sut­ter soon assumed con­trol after his 2004 release. But con­sid­er­ing that Sut­ter was already serv­ing as the “Min­is­ter for Islam­ic Liai­son” for the Aryan Nations, it’s not a stretch to imag­ine he was already play­ing some sort of ‘Min­is­ter for Satan­ic Liai­son’ role for the Aryan Nations too. Which, again, rais­es the ques­tion: did the FBI recruit Sut­ter specif­i­cal­ly for this mis­sion of pro­mot­ing pan-reli­gious extrem­ism? Or did Sut­ter just kind of fall into that role after accept­ing his FBI infor­mant sta­tus?

...
The Tem­pel ov Blood is a U.S. “nex­ion”, or branch, of the Order of Nine Angles.

Formed in 2003 in the U.S. state of North Car­oli­na, the Tem­pel ov Blood (ToB) gained mem­bers and sup­port­ers ear­ly on in Cana­da, the Unit­ed King­dom, Aus­tralia, Italy, and Brazil. In late 2004, the group estab­lished its head­quar­ters in rur­al South Car­oli­na where white suprema­cist Joshua Caleb Sut­ter, his soon to be wife Jil­lian Scott Hoy and oth­er key fig­ures would encour­age extrem­ism and dis­trib­ute ter­ror-inspir­ing pro­pa­gan­da over the next twen­ty years.

Some asso­ciates of ToB have described it as an eclec­tic art col­lec­tive whose mem­bers include writ­ers, musi­cians, and artists—all who share an affin­i­ty for cre­ativ­i­ty and flair. But oth­er com­mon inter­ests among mem­bers includ­ed Nazism, the occult, role play­ing, and test­ing the bound­aries of every­thing. Uncon­firmed rumors of “trau­ma induced pro­gram­ming” and tor­tur­ing of small ani­mals to death con­tin­ue to cir­cu­late. The Tem­pel ov Blood’s adher­ents act as agents of chaos, infil­trat­ing and dis­rupt­ing oth­er groups and some­times push­ing them towards the kind of vio­lence they wish to see. The Tem­pel ov Blood has sig­nif­i­cant­ly influ­enced the inter­na­tion­al rise of far-right mil­i­tant accel­er­a­tionism. The ToB’s doc­u­ment­ed neo-Nazi and antin­o­mi­an (being against laws and soci­etal norms) ide­olo­gies desen­si­tize, psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly pro­gram, and train prospec­tive extrem­ists in prepa­ra­tion for ter­ror. The per­sis­tence of the cult’s orga­niz­ing, lit­er­a­ture pro­lif­er­a­tion, and shared ide­ol­o­gy is a seri­ous threat.

While Joshua Sut­ter and Jil­lian Hoy were not the only two to start up and grow this ter­ror cell, over a short time their per­son­al­i­ties dom­i­nat­ed the niche scene. Sut­ter, who is now in his 40s, grew up with a bla­tant­ly racist father and got tan­gled up with the law at an ear­ly age. LCRW was able to trace Sutter’s involve­ment with Tem­pel ov Blood to before he was incar­cer­at­ed for an ille­gal firearms pos­ses­sion con­vic­tion. He was released from prison in 2004. Hoy, who is now in her late 30s, describes her child­hood as one of pover­ty. She grew up in the rur­al back­woods, like Sut­ter, but with­out a father—one child of many. She post­ed online that she dropped out of school but even to this day, she enjoys writ­ing and read­ing. The sui­cide death of her broth­er in 2014 still seems to haunt her.

The Tem­pel ov Blood pro­duced occult pro­pa­gan­da, online and offline, often includ­ing sex­u­al­ly provoca­tive images or words and Nazi ref­er­ences. They com­piled and pub­lished short mag­a­zines and then books which they would soon sell under the label “Mar­tinet Press.” Mem­bers con­struct altars which are pho­tographed and shared on social media. What can be con­sid­ered an ear­ly form of “cut signs” or “fan­sign­ing” appeared in the form of ToB mem­bers self-harm­ing and smear­ing their blood on pages of Tem­pel ov Blood-relat­ed books and mag­a­zines, some­times inside a ToB or O9A book on the title page, or on paper with draw­ings of aliens, or, odd­ly, print­ed-out pho­tos of half-naked young women being spanked.
...

But when it comes to Sut­ter’s role in the pro­mo­tion of extrem­ist ide­olo­gies, it’s the Tem­pel ov Blood­’s in-house pub­lish­er, Mar­tinet Press, that has been play­ing a lead­ing role for over two decades now. A role that start­ed in 2004 with the pub­li­ca­tion of the first Tem­ple of Blood mate­ri­als in col­lab­o­ra­tion with “Angle­ton Imprints”, which appears to be an ear­li­er incar­na­tion of Mar­tinet Press. This was in 2004, the year Sut­ter was released from prison. So lit­er­al­ly the same year Sut­ter gets released from prison as an under­cov­er FBI infor­mant he begins his Satan­ic pub­lish­ing career. A decade lat­er, in 2014, Mar­tinet Press is a reg­is­tered enti­ty with Sut­ter’s then-wife Jil­lian Hoy list­ed as the con­tact. And it was in 2014 when Mar­tinet Press pub­lish­es Iron Gates, which has become one of the most influ­en­tial books for accel­er­a­tionist Nazi move­ments like Atom­waf­fen. But it’s not like Sut­ter and Hoy were sim­ply pub­lish­ing this con­tent. It was being aggres­sive­ly pushed on groups like Atom­waf­fen too. Pushed by Sut­ter. All while Sut­ter is work­ing for the FBI. It’s almost as if the cre­ation and pro­mo­tion of Iron Gates was some­thing the FBI intend­ed to hap­pen:

...

Martinet Press & Its Influence

The Tem­pel ov Blood has become noto­ri­ous for their in-house pub­lish­er Mar­tinet Press which became a reg­is­tered enti­ty by the sum­mer of 2014, list­ing ToB mem­ber Jil­lian Hoy as a con­tact. Tem­pel ov Blood’s Mar­tinet Press would go on to pub­lish around 20 texts.

TEMPEL OV BLOOD’S PUBLISHING HISTORY

The first to pub­lish ToB mate­r­i­al in 2004 was the Fin­land based Ixax­aar Occult Pub­li­ca­tions in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Angle­ton Imprints (whose Yahoo address is list­ed as the email for Mar­tinet Press’s busi­ness reg­is­tra­tion).

The Black Press and Black Light Dis­tri­b­u­tion print­ed ToB mate­r­i­al between 2008–2012. Accord­ing to IP address analy­sis reviewed by jour­nal­ist Nate Thay­er in ear­ly 2013 before the web­site went offline, the Black Press’s British Colum­bia, Cana­da IP address was reg­is­tered to Daniel Bark­er, a neo-Nazi heavy met­al musi­cian and Tem­pel ov Blood mem­ber who used the alias Com­mis­sar NSK, among oth­ers. Bark­er lat­er went on to orga­nize as the Tem­pel ov the Black Vam­pire (TOBV) whose sym­bol he has tat­tooed on his upper chest along­side his Tem­pel ov Blood sig­il. The Black Press announced on their web­site in 2008 that they were the only autho­rized pub­lish­er for Tem­pel ov Blood.

The same IP address was shared with New Bihar Mandir, a Hare Krish­na group formed in 2009 which also shared mem­ber­ship with ToB lead­ers.

By sum­mer 2014, Mar­tinet Press became a reg­is­tered enti­ty list­ing ToB mem­ber Jil­lian Hoy as a con­tact. Tem­pel ov Blood’s Mar­tinet Press would go on to pub­lish around 20 texts.

In Octo­ber 2014, Mar­tinet Press released one of the most influ­en­tial books to far-right mil­i­tant accel­er­a­tionism: Iron Gates. This anony­mous­ly authored fic­tion­al book is described by jour­nal­ist Jake Han­ra­han as being about a “waste­land roamed by a bru­tal satan­ic cult” whose open­ing begins with “an infant child being mur­dered for sport.”

Neo-Nazis often pub­lish their visions for the kind of world they want to create—and the vio­lent steps they want to take to get there—as fic­tion. The most famous exam­ple is The Turn­er Diaries by William Luther Pierce. Pierce’s nov­el depicts a guer­ril­la war fought by a white nation­al­ist para­mil­i­tary called ‘The Order’ which even­tu­al­ly suc­ceeds in top­pling the U.S. gov­ern­ment, tak­ing over the U.S. and even­tu­al­ly purg­ing the world of non­whites. Iron Gates and its sequel Blue­bird are a con­tem­po­rary ana­log.

Arguably, Mar­tinet Press’s most known pub­li­ca­tions are Iron Gates and Blue­bird—a two part fic­tion series set in a post nuclear apoc­a­lyp­tic world full of glo­ri­fied immoral acts and vio­lence. These two texts were heav­i­ly pushed in neo-Nazi accel­er­a­tionist cir­cles when Joshua Sut­ter joined AWD under the alias “swiss­dis­ci­pline.” Ryan Hat­field, an AWD mem­ber from Col­orado, often post­ed links to pur­chase the books in ear­ly AWD chats.
...

And as the arti­cle reminds us, while Sut­ter and Hoy have per­son­al­ly played sig­nif­i­cant roles in the pop­u­lar­iza­tion of Satan­ic strains of Nazism over the past two decades, they weren’t the first to fuse Nazism with occul­tic beliefs. Fig­ures like Sav­it­ri Devi had already done that in the 1930s, with Devi her­self being a Hin­du con­vert. And O9A, start­ed in the late 1960s, sim­i­lar­ly embraces a kind of “Aeon­ic change” the­ol­o­gy that appears to be inspired by the Hin­du con­cept of “Kali Yuga”. That’s also part of the con­text of the bizarre New Bihar Mandir Hare Krish­na cult start­ed by Sut­ter and Hoy: They were repli­cat­ing this estab­lished pat­tern of Hin­du-inspired Satan­ic Nazi occultism:

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TEMPEL OV BLOOD’S PHILOSOPHICAL ORIGINS

To under­stand the group Blenzig joined and how they oper­ate, it’s impor­tant to under­stand its ori­gins. “The Tem­pel ov Blood” is just one in a long line of big­ot­ed groups that seek to blend their prej­u­dice with the occult. From the time the Nazi par­ty rose to pow­er through the present day, a sec­tion of Hitler’s fol­low­ers have always couched their hatred in mag­ic and mys­ti­cism.

The Thule Soci­ety was a Ger­man eth­no-nation­al­ist occultist group obsessed with the mys­ti­cal ori­gins of the “Aryan” race. The group and their mem­bers fund­ed the pre­de­ces­sor to the Nazi par­ty and many lat­er joined the Nazi par­ty. Max­imi­ani Julia Por­tas was a French-born fas­cist and Hitler sup­port­er who, in 1932 (about age 27), trav­eled to India, con­vert­ed to Hin­duism, and changed her name to Sav­it­ri Devi Mukher­ji. Known sim­ply as “Sav­it­ri Devi,” she wrote sev­er­al books which heav­i­ly influ­enced Nazi occultism and con­tin­ue to influ­ence neo-Nazism today.

James Mason has been an ide­o­log­i­cal men­tor for neo-Nazis for decades. He was almost for­got­ten, but unfor­tu­nate­ly was res­ur­rect­ed by the Iron March forums when Gabriel Sohi­er Cha­put edit­ed and pub­lished a dig­i­tal copy of Siege for the plat­form in 2015. Then, a cou­ple years lat­er, Ryan Hat­field (who joined the neo-Nazi ter­ror group Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion at age 16) ini­ti­at­ed a “friend­ship” with Mason. This led to John Cameron Den­ton from the Atom­waf­fen Divi­sion (AWD) going on to repub­lish Siege in book for­mat.

...

One of the Tem­pel ov Blood’s biggest and most direct influ­ences is the Order of Nine Angles (O9A). O9A is a satan­ic cult orig­i­nat­ing in the Unit­ed King­dom. It’s uncer­tain when the group formed, but it was like­ly in the late 1960s or ear­ly 1970s.

O9A’s ide­ol­o­gy has roots in Eso­teric Hit­lerism. This “spir­i­tu­al” cult was formed by an “imag­i­nary mys­te­ri­ous woman” and a neo-Nazi named David Myatt who self-iden­ti­fied as a Satanist and lat­er con­vert­ed to Islam for a lit­tle over 10 years. Myatt is a writer, as are many of the Nazis we dis­cuss in this arti­cle, and has been described as sup­port­ing pedophilia—in part based on a short fan­ta­sy sto­ry he once wrote. This is a theme that runs through­out O9A affil­i­at­ed “lit­er­a­ture.”

...

Fol­low­ers of the Order of Nine Angles are, among oth­er things, encour­aged to adopt ‘insight roles’—a prac­tice where O9A adher­ents put them­selves into posi­tions which chal­lenge their beliefs and ways of life in order to gain knowl­edge and spir­i­tu­al awak­en­ing. For exam­ple, one adher­ent known as “Dark Gno­sis” post­ed an auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal essay online on 29 Jan­u­ary 2022 which describes three insight roles he has tak­en on: 1) “I decid­ed to go from book­ish intro­vert to become a sup­pli­er of drugs. I start­ed fre­quent­ing bars and clubs. Enjoy­ing par­ties. Tak­ing intox­i­cants and sell­ing them.” 2) “a Com­mu­nist dis­si­dent to build char­ac­ter after a long time spent as a Nation­al Social­ist” and 3) “the mil­i­tary to obtain train­ing and to live oppo­site to the way of a crim­i­nal who was dis­obe­di­ent to author­i­ty.”

These are “roles that rad­i­cal­ly chal­lenge their com­fort zones,” as explained in a 2023 arti­cle by Shanon Shah, Jane Coop­er, and Suzanne New­come from King’s Col­lege Lon­don titled Occult Beliefs and the Far Right: The Case of the Order of Nine Angles pub­lished in Stud­ies in Con­flict & Ter­ror­ism. By doing so, the arti­cle elab­o­rates, fol­low­ers gain “acqui­si­tion of knowl­edge through adver­si­ty and expe­ri­ence;” fol­low­ers believe this will help them gain “evo­lu­tion­ary supe­ri­or­i­ty” and help bring on what they refer to as “Aeon­ic change” lead­ing to a bet­ter point in time where Aryans reign over the world in supe­ri­or­i­ty in what they describe as “Imperi­um.” This con­cept is com­pa­ra­ble to the Hin­du con­cept of “Kali Yuga”—a peri­od of advanced enlight­en­ment after a very long time of strug­gle and mis­ery. Fol­low­ers of the Order of Nine Angles, or “Nin­ers” for short, encour­age anti-social and even anti-human activ­i­ties as a means to speed up this process. For this rea­son, they are con­sid­ered accelerationists—individuals sub­scrib­ing to the ide­ol­o­gy of “accel­er­a­tionism,” who want to induce soci­etal and sys­temic col­lapse, often com­mit­ting or incit­ing acts of destruc­tion and vio­lence, in order to reach their goals.

...

The New Bihar Mandir fla­vor of spir­i­tu­al prac­tice incor­po­rates altars and shrines rem­i­nis­cent of those con­struct­ed for the Tem­pel ov Blood. They almost always have a framed pho­to of Sut­ter, neo-Nazi imagery, and some­times firearms and knives. Sim­i­lar to the con­cept of the Kali Yuga, the Tem­pel ov Blood embraces the con­cept of “Aeon­ic change,” act­ing as accel­er­a­tionists try­ing to speed up this process by pro­mot­ing and par­tic­i­pat­ing in acts they per­ceive will bring about the most evil.
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The remark­able nature of this sit­u­a­tion isn’t lim­it­ed to the fact that Sut­ter some­how man­ages to main­tain his influ­en­tial role in these scenes despite repeat­ed­ly being accused — or out­ed — as a fed­er­al infor­mant. There’s also the fact that Sut­ter does­n’t seem to be play­ing a role in pre­vent­ing actions like the bru­tal mur­der of Blaze Bern­stein by an Atom­Waf­fen mem­ber that was cel­e­brat­ed by the larg­er group. Sut­ter was active­ly chat­ting with Bern­stein’s mur­der­er. Giv­en the high­ly inflam­ma­to­ry role Sut­ter has played in all oth­er aspects of this sto­ry, you have to won­der what if the top­ic of mur­der­ing Bern­stein ever came up in those chats and what Sut­ter said. Because it does­n’t seem like mod­er­at­ing extrem­ists is a role Sut­ter is expect­ed to play as an FBI infor­mant. Quite the oppo­site:

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Despite voiced con­cerns in the ear­ly 2000s that Joshua Sut­ter was a fed­er­al infor­mant, he seems to have expe­ri­enced few con­se­quences from his fel­low extrem­ists aside from hav­ing his access revoked and dig­i­tal foot­print erased from the Aryan Nations web­site. Lat­er, in 2021, after Sut­ter was clear­ly out­ed as an infor­mant in his tri­al tes­ti­mo­ny in Kaleb Cole’s case, he was heav­i­ly ridiculed by both antifas­cists and neo-Nazis. Today, Joshua Sut­ter is memed all across the inter­net, yet he still man­ages to pen­e­trate groups and orga­nize with oth­er extrem­ists.

In 2016, a man named William White, who was incar­cer­at­ed, learned of Sutter’s 2003 arrest and filed a FOIA request for the doc­u­ments regard­ing the case. In addi­tion, White request­ed doc­u­ments on 48 oth­er indi­vid­u­als includ­ing Jil­lian Hoy. These requests were denied after efforts on his and his lawyer’s part. In motion doc­u­ments, which are now pub­licly avail­able, White claims that upon Sutter’s release from fed­er­al prison in 2004, Sut­ter “went to work for the FBI as a fed­er­al infor­mant cross-tasked to both domes­tic ter­ror­ism, and, for­eign counter-intel­li­gence, inves­ti­ga­tions.”

In his legal doc­u­ments, White includes a long list of griev­ances and claims, some of which have been con­firmed and many of which haven’t. For exam­ple, LCRW was unable to con­firm his claim that Jil­lian Hoy is an infor­mant or that Joshua Sut­ter stole White’s iden­ti­ty and con­spired to mur­der him. White also claims, and LCRW is unable to con­firm, that, in 2007, Sut­ter and James Por­raz­zo, a neo-Nazi and for­mer Amer­i­can Front leader, “attempt­ed to mur­der a man named John Paul Cupp as part of their oper­a­tions against North Korea.” Por­raz­zo now spends his time dis­sem­i­nat­ing pro-Rus­sia pro­pa­gan­da after being named by the far-right Russ­ian Defense League as their “Ambas­sador” to the U.S. in 2013. In legal doc­u­ments, White claims that David Lynch, a leader of the Amer­i­can Front who was mur­dered at his home in March 2011, was anoth­er “tar­get” of Sut­ter and Porrazzo’s, and sug­gests that Lynch’s mur­der allowed Sut­ter and Por­raz­zo to take over the group. In legal doc­u­ments, White sug­gests that Sut­ter “aid­ed and abet­ted the mur­der of David Lynch.” LCRW could not con­firm Sut­ter or Por­raz­zo were involved in Lynch’s mur­der.

Despite all this, Joshua Sut­ter was allowed to join the noto­ri­ous AWD at the invi­ta­tion of John Cameron Den­ton in 2017. Den­ton, with the help of Kaleb Cole, took over lead­er­ship of the group after founder Bran­don Rus­sell was incar­cer­at­ed fol­low­ing his room­mate Devon Arthurs hav­ing mur­dered two oth­er AWD mem­bers who shared the same res­i­dence with Rus­sell and Arthurs in Flori­da.

As a mem­ber of AWD, Joshua Sut­ter was allowed into their com­mu­ni­ca­tions along­side oth­er high pro­file mem­bers, ini­ti­ates, and sup­port­ers (many of whom would lat­er be arrest­ed or pub­licly iden­ti­fied) whose num­bers reached towards 200 in some Dis­cord serv­er chats. Despite being an embed­ded fed­er­al infor­mant in this group, Joshua Sut­ter was unable to pre­vent the bru­tal mur­der of Blaze Bern­stein by AWD mem­ber Samuel Wood­ward with whom Sut­ter was active in chats with.

Some of the activ­i­ties Sut­ter par­tic­i­pat­ed in while a mem­ber of AWD include a 2018 meet­ing in Neva­da, a Death Val­ley, CA “Hate Camp” that same year, and 2019’s “Oper­a­tion Erste Saule” – a harass­ment and swat­ting cam­paign against jour­nal­ists and oth­er tar­gets. In Jan­u­ary 2020, Sut­ter was in Con­roe, Texas at a home meet­ing with Kaleb Cole and John Cameron Den­ton.
...

But anoth­er part of what makes the two decade-long role as Satan­ic Nazi pedophile pro­mot­er-in-chief Joshua Caleb Sut­ter has played while serv­ing as a con­fi­den­tial FBI infor­mant is the fact that Sut­ter real­ly has been mak­ing extrem­ist ide­olo­gies more extreme. As vile as they are, Nazi accel­er­a­tionist ide­olo­gies don’t have to include Satanism and pedophil­ia. Sure, mem­bers of groups like Atom­waf­fen are a pret­ty obvi­ous tar­get mar­ket for the Satan­ic sadis­tic child rape plot lines of Iron Gates and Blue­bird. But there were also Nazis like Jar­rett Smith who decried how “both books sucked. They’re just vile child rape fan­tasies mas­querad­ing as a Com­mie-type satan­ic mili­tia orga­ni­za­tion.” That’s the role Sut­ter was play­ing here. Over two decades now of mak­ing Nazis even more sadis­tic and depraved. And it’s not like Sut­ter has­n’t been suc­cess­ful. As the arti­cle describes, from 2017 to 2019 (a peri­od that over­laps with the pre-Pan­dem­ic first Trump admin­is­tra­tion), it became almost impos­si­ble for extrem­ists to avoid ref­er­ences to ToB/Martin Press con­tent and Atom­waf­fen. And this was also a peri­od when Atom­waf­fen copy­cat groups popped up around the world. Sadis­tic child rape fan­ta­sy Nazi move­ments turned out to be catchy inside this com­mu­ni­ty. That’s also part of the con­text of Jar­rett Smith’s crit­i­cisms of the Iron Gates and Blue­bird. The online nature of con­tem­po­rary extrem­ist com­mu­ni­ties serves as the per­fect dis­tri­b­u­tion medi­um for books like that to all sorts of extrem­ists who would­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have grav­i­tat­ed towards that kind of con­tent. Sadis­tic child rape fan­ta­sy nov­els were the new ‘cool’ in accel­er­a­tionist cir­cles.

This is also a good time to recall how Jar­rett Smith was very much accel­er­a­tionist Nazi him­self. The FBI arrest­ed Smith in Sep­tem­ber of 2019 for plan­ning domes­tic ter­ror attacks and dis­trib­ut­ing infor­ma­tion relat­ed to explo­sives and weapons of mass destruc­tion. And not only was Smith in con­tact with the Azov Bat­tal­ion, but it appears he had an Amer­i­can Nazi ‘men­tor’ who had him­self trav­eled to Ukraine to fight. That Amer­i­can Nazi men­tor hap­pened to be Craig Lang, who joined Right Sec­tor and lat­er the Geor­gian Nation­al Legion. Lang had actu­al­ly been try­ing to recruit Smith to join Right Sec­tor in 2016, while also warn­ing him that he might be asked to mur­der peo­ple on behalf of Right Sec­tor if he joins. Lang end­ed up return­ing to the US and com­mit­ting a dou­ble mur­der in Flori­da in April 2018. Amaz­ing­ly, despite being sought by author­i­ties over the mur­ders in Flori­da, Lang some­how man­aged to elude arrest in the US and fly back to Ukraine four months after the mur­ders. Lang even left Ukraine for Venezuela at one point and was allowed back into Ukraine and allowed to rejoin the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary. Lang spent years fight­ing in Ukraine before being extra­dit­ed back to Flori­da in June of 2024 fol­low­ing a Novem­ber 2023 rul­ing by the Euro­pean Court of Human Rights. Lang end­ed up receiv­ing two life sen­tences. It’s unclear what Craig Lang’s reviews are for Iron Gates and Blue­bird, but we can be pret­ty con­fi­dent he’s read them. Because appar­ent­ly that’s just how big they are in the accel­er­a­tionist Nazi ter­ror­ist com­mu­ni­ty, large­ly thanks to the efforts of Joshua Caleb Sut­ter. It’s a wild sit­u­a­tion:

...

LCRW learned that Joshua Sut­ter, using the alias “swiss­dis­ci­pline,” also had con­tact with the leader of the Base, Rinal­do Naz­zaro, who he reached out to in mid-Jan­u­ary 2020, feed­ing him infor­ma­tion on Richard Tobin, a then-18 year old, dual AWD and Base mem­ber who sought to absorb the Amer­i­can mem­bers of the Feuerkrieg Divi­sion and who was arrest­ed on charges relat­ed to con­spir­ing with oth­er Base mem­bers in van­dal­iz­ing syn­a­gogues in mul­ti­ple states.

In late Sep­tem­ber 2021, all doubts of Joshua Sut­ter being a fed­er­al infor­mant were dis­pelled when he tes­ti­fied for the State against AWD leader Kaleb Cole.

Between 2017 and 2019, it was almost impos­si­ble to avoid any ref­er­ence to the Tem­pel ov Blood, the Order of Nine Angles, or any of Mar­tinet Press’s pub­li­ca­tions, in praise or crit­i­cism of, in asso­ci­a­tion with AWD. Some groups and indi­vid­u­als vocal­ly reject­ed the asso­ci­a­tions point­ing out, as Jar­rett Smith, a for­mer Feuerkrieg Divi­sion mem­ber, did in 2019 in response to read­ing Iron Gates and Blue­bird, writ­ing that “Both books sucked. They’re just vile child rape fan­tasies mas­querad­ing as a Com­mie-type satan­ic mili­tia orga­ni­za­tion.” This pro­pa­gan­da and influ­encer trend reached beyond this one neo-Nazi group, and in fact spread inter­na­tion­al­ly as the accel­er­a­tionist and Order of Nine Angles-curi­ous aes­thet­ic inspired copy­cat groups over the next sev­er­al years unto today such as: Son­nenkrieg Divi­sion, Feuerkrieg Divi­sion, Totemwaf­fen, Rape­Waf­fen Divi­sion and even The Base.
...

And that all brings us to Anton Blenzig, the schiz­o­phrenic co-founder of the Satan­ic Front who died in an appar­ent sui­cide in April 2024 under cir­cum­stances that has left the fam­i­ly point­ing fin­gers at the Tem­ple of Blood, sug­gest­ing he was encour­aged to kill him­self. Which cer­tain­ly sounds plau­si­ble. That’s the kind of psy­chot­ic bul­ly­ing dynam­ic that groups like 764 and COM have been inflict­ing on teens they lure into these extrem­ist worlds. And note how Blenzig spent 5 years in ToB before becom­ing involved with Satan­ic Front. 5 years is a long time for groups like this. And then it appears Blenzig dis­tanced him­self from the ToB and now his fam­i­ly sus­pects it had some sort of hand in his death:

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Anton McK­ay Blenzig died of a gun­shot wound to his head in the very ear­ly hours of 22 April 2024. A Tar­rant Coun­ty prosector—the offi­cial who per­forms autop­sies—declared his death a sui­cide. He was 27 years old. The day after Blenzig died, some­one claim­ing to be a fam­i­ly mem­ber took to the social media plat­form Telegram look­ing for answers.

“Peo­ple in the Tem­ple [sic] ov Blood want­ed him dead,” the sup­posed fam­i­ly mem­ber claimed, sug­gest­ing that Blenzig was encour­aged to kill himself—or even mur­dered.

...

Accord­ing to LCRW sources, Blenzig lived with schiz­o­phre­nia and became involved with a satan­ic Nazi cult called the Tem­pel ov Blood when he was a teenag­er. There is a lot we don’t know about Blenzig’s expe­ri­ence liv­ing with schiz­o­phre­nia, but accord­ing to Johns Hop­kins Med­i­cine, the men­tal dis­or­der usu­al­ly first appears in men dur­ing their late teens or ear­ly 20s. About 1% of U.S. res­i­dents live with schiz­o­phre­nia and about 1 in 4 adults, aged 18 and old­er, live with some form of a diag­nos­able men­tal dis­or­der in gen­er­al. Sta­tis­ti­cal­ly, liv­ing with any men­tal chal­lenge doesn’t pre­dis­pose some­one towards vio­lent extrem­ism. But, when some­one is liv­ing with a con­di­tion that makes nav­i­gat­ing their emo­tions and impuls­es hard­er, they’re more vul­ner­a­ble to abuse, manip­u­la­tion, and oth­er tac­tics that cults and recruiters for vio­lent, hate­ful ide­olo­gies use.

Infor­ma­tion on Blenzig’s upbring­ing and what led him towards satan­ic Nazism is sparse and we don’t know how reli­able of a nar­ra­tor Blenzig was. From what LCRW researchers were able to gath­er, Blenzig start­ed out his young life with a tra­di­tion­al­ly reli­gious based edu­ca­tion. Around age 18, he found him­self involved in one of the most con­tro­ver­sial neo-Nazi occult groups in the U.S., the Tem­pel ov Blood.

Like many extrem­ists, Blenzig moved between groups and test­ed out dif­fer­ent ide­olo­gies to see what fit his vio­lent desires best. After at least 5 years with the Tem­pel ov Blood, he became asso­ci­at­ed with anoth­er Satanist group—this one called the Satan­ic Front.

...

While LCRW was able to con­firm Anton Blenzig’s death, we were unable to con­firm the sta­tus of any open inves­ti­ga­tion into it. There are few known answers about the cir­cum­stances around his death. The peo­ple who rad­i­cal­ized him are still out there. A memo­r­i­al fund in his hon­or was cre­at­ed by The Bar­tow-Pell Man­sion Muse­um in New York. In the fund’s announce­ment, he is described as hav­ing “had a library of rare books, dozens of cer­e­mo­ni­al masks from around the world, and sev­er­al stere­o­graphs with a large col­lec­tion of stere­o­graph­ic prints.”

...

“There was some­one else in his apart­ment,” the Telegram account claim­ing to be a fam­i­ly mem­ber of Anton Blenzig made sure to men­tion as they reached out to strangers in a fringe Telegram group chat. They added, “it is still an open inves­ti­ga­tion.”
...

And, of course, when we’re talk­ing about Anton Blenzig’s rela­tion­ship with the ToB, we’re pri­mar­i­ly talk­ing about his rela­tion­ship with Joshua Sut­ter and Jil­lian Hoy, who appear to have played impor­tant roles in the rise of Blenzig in the Satan­ic Nazi com­mu­ni­ty. It was in 2020, on their 12th wed­ding anniver­sary, when Mar­tinet Press endorsed “Com­man­dant Cul­tus,” mak­ing Blenzig the offi­cial dis­trib­u­tor for ToB, Mar­tinet Press, and oth­er relat­ed mer­chan­dise. He was also giv­en edi­to­r­i­al con­trol over False Prophet, ToB’s inter­nal jour­nal. Blenzig’s Com­man­dant Cul­tus per­sona was a kind of brand­ing face for the ToB:

...
On 18 Novem­ber 2020, Joshua Sut­ter and Jil­lian Hoy’s 12th wed­ding anniver­sary date—and the 42nd anniver­sary date of the People’s Tem­ple mass mur­der and suicide—the Mar­tinet Press web­site pub­lished an announce­ment endors­ing long time adher­ent “Com­man­dant Cul­tus,” who we now know as Anton Blenzig. Blenzig was not quite 24.

By this time, come 2020, how­ev­er, Jil­lian Hoy was on her way to pair­ing up with anoth­er man, Jew­ish by birth, with whom she would spend the next four years and have two chil­dren with.

With the Mar­tinet Press endorse­ment, Anton Blenzig became the offi­cial dis­trib­u­tor for the Tem­pel ov Blood and began to sell ToB, Mar­tinet Press, Satan­ic Front and Tem­ple of the Black Vam­pire brand­ed books and prod­ucts on the inter­net, includ­ing made-to-order shirts with his “Com­man­dant Cul­tus” alias. A new “Com­man­dant Cul­tus” web­site was cre­at­ed to pro­mote these goods. The web­site includ­ed a “Cul­tus Forum” for dis­cus­sion and post­ing, but by the time it was tak­en offline it had not yet gen­er­at­ed much activ­i­ty. Accord­ing to archives dat­ing between 3 May 2021 and 20 Feb­ru­ary 2023, only two accounts used the forum: an account pur­port­ed to belong to Blenzig used a Word­Press-account linked to “Vm32” and a Word­Press account linked to “night­mover” using the alias “mas­ter­a­haz,” alleged to belong to Joshua Sut­ter. There were less than 10 (unim­pres­sive) posts between them. Forum posts include a “Gen­er­al Dis­cus­sion” thread (with only 2 com­ments), three thread posts with the titles: “Tantra & Vamachara,” “Demon­ic Evo­ca­tion and Pacts,” and “Tal­is­mans and Amulets.” Joshua Sutter’s post seems to be a short fic­tion­al piece about “Wamphyrism” (which he wrote under a new­er alias “Court of Ahaz’). It reads like an 8^th grade cre­ative writ­ing assign­ment:

“Our black hand is upon you. Cross the bar­ri­er, step through the pas­sage, embrace that hith­er­to for­bid­den. Immor­tal­i­ty awaits in world aflame.”

With the Novem­ber 2020 endorse­ment, Anton Blenzig was giv­en edi­to­r­i­al con­trol over False Prophet, ToB’s inter­nal jour­nal, in which he went on to pub­lish anoth­er issue as Vol­ume 2 Edi­tion 1. In July 2022, Com­man­dant Cul­tus inde­pen­dent­ly pub­lished an “autho­rized” hard­back edi­tion of the Tem­pel ov Blood’s Liber 333 – a com­pi­la­tion of the group’s foun­da­tion­al essays, rit­u­al and chant instruc­tions and dark fic­tion, much of which can be found in pre­vi­ous ToB texts dat­ing back to 2004. Inter­est­ing­ly, Liber 333 was nev­er actu­al­ly pub­lished by Mar­tinet Press, per­haps due to inter­nal con­flict between Daniel Bark­er, who seems to hold copy­right con­trol of the text, and the enti­ty oper­at­ing as Mar­tinet Press. By 2022, Blenzig pub­lished two new issues of Preda­tor, the restrict­ed cir­cu­lar pub­lished by ToB. While Mar­tinet Press has not pub­lished a new title since 2020, their texts are still sold through con­ven­tion­al out­lets. ToB man­u­scripts are eas­i­ly found on the inter­net.
...

And then we get to Blenzig’s role with the Satan­ic Front. As we can see, he was co-orga­niz­ing Satan­ic Front in Texas by Octo­ber of 2020, a month before the big ToB endorse­ment, along­side Jar­od Choate, a US Army vet­er­an who was in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Jar­rett William Smith. So Blenzig co-launch­es Satan­ic Front and then gets ele­vat­ed inside ToB over the course of Octo­ber-Novem­ber 2020 after first join­ing the ToB in 2018, with Josh Sut­ter and Jil­lian Hoy clear­ly help­ing to ele­vate him into a lead­er­ship role:

...
2020 was a busy year for Blenzig. That June, at age 23, he pub­lished an edi­tion of False Prophet and then, in Novem­ber, he was endorsed by Mar­tinet Press. On the last day of that year, an email address for a new group called “The Satan­ic Front” opened.

THE SATANIC FRONT FORMS

Much infor­ma­tion about how Satan­ic Front formed isn’t clear. Both online Nazis and researchers have spec­u­lat­ed on the rea­sons for the group’s gen­e­sis. LCRW ana­lysts believe it’s like­ly that Jar­od Choate sim­ply parked the web­site in 2018 and start­ed to reach out to and net­work with oth­er satanists, online and local­ly. This led to a small group form­ing in Texas with a few, scat­tered affil­i­ates across the U.S. and a cou­ple announced alliances with known inter­na­tion­al ter­ror net­works.

By at least Octo­ber 2020, Anton Blenzig was stay­ing in Texas and even­tu­al­ly set­tled in a small town called Azle, a few miles north­west of Fort Worth, where he orga­nized as the Satan­ic Front with Jar­od Choate, who lived in the same town. Choate is a U.S. Army vet­er­an who was in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with con­vict­ed Feuerkrieg Divi­sion mem­ber Jar­rett William Smith dur­ing the sum­mer of 2019.

In a July 2021 inter­view with Jar­od Choate (who uses the alias Satanae Manibus), he described Satan­ic Front’s num­ber one objec­tive as estab­lish­ing a “world­wide cult of the Dev­il” and pos­si­bly one day estab­lish­ing “an inde­pen­dent ‘Satan­ic’ state.” The group is described by Choate as being a “home for Satanists com­plete with a phys­i­cal tem­ple for wor­ship among oth­er tasks.” He said they offer sev­er­al forms of train­ing “from rit­u­al work (cer­e­mo­ni­al mag­ic) to phys­i­cal skills that can be used in, let’s say, hos­tile and kinet­ic envi­ron­ments.” Satan­ic Front believes “the Dev­il deserves bet­ter.”
...

Then, in mid-2022, a rift appears to emerge between the Satan­ic Front and ToB with a post on the Satan­ic Front web­site by Jar­od Choate declar­ing they “have found upon direct work with their mem­bers” that their ide­ol­o­gy was “not in align­ment.” And yet Choate and Sut­ter appear to have con­tin­ued to col­lab­o­rate and Sut­ter con­tin­ues to boost Satan­ic Front with his social media sock pup­pets. What caused the mid-2022 rift? That’s unclear, but the fact that was Blenzig’s iden­ti­ty as Com­man­dant Cul­tus was exposed on 4chan in Feb­ru­ary of 2022 seems like a like­ly fac­tor. And let’s not for­get the 2021 rev­e­la­tions in the Atom­waf­fen case detail­ing how Sut­ter had been paid $140,000 by the FBI up to that point. A pub­lic rift with ToB and Satan­ic Front in 2022 is hard­ly unex­pect­ed giv­en that Sut­ter and How are ToB for all prac­ti­cal pur­pos­es. Blenzig’s fam­i­ly has alleged that ToB could be involved with Blenzig’s death. So if we assume Blenzig had his falling out with Sut­ter and Hoy in 2022, this was poi­soned rela­tion­ship that was fes­ter­ing for a cou­ple of years before Blenzig died under mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances:

...
Mean­while, the iden­ti­ty behind the Satan­ic Front-affil­i­at­ed alias “Com­man­dant Cul­tus” was exposed on 4chan, the noto­ri­ous image board web­site, in Feb­ru­ary 2022 as Anton Blenzig.

The tone of the Satan­ic Front web­site took a turn in mid-2022 when Satanae Manibus post­ed a note called “False Orders Dis­avowed.” In it, he acknowl­edged the Satan­ic Front’s affil­i­a­tion with the Tem­pel ov Blood and admit­ted they have “admired cer­tain aspects of their work and approach in the past.” But, Choate went on, they “have found upon direct work with their mem­bers” that their ide­ol­o­gy was “not in align­ment.” The blog post con­tin­ued to berate the O9A describ­ing it as an “arm­chair approach to occultism” which had com­plete­ly col­lapsed. Choate described the Tem­pel ov Blood as hav­ing implod­ed.

About the time the Satan­ic Front’s web­site was erased, a new Satanist occult project on the same site took its place. Choate, using a new alias, began post­ing again.

Jar­od Choate is alleged to have col­lab­o­rat­ed with Joshua Sut­ter on mul­ti­ple Satan­ic themed projects, includ­ing dur­ing sum­mer 2024 when Sut­ter, under his assumed alias “Mal­ice Moab,” pub­lished two blog posts on a web­site admin­is­trat­ed by Choate. LCRW is declin­ing to name Choate’s web­site. Social media posts show Joshua Sutter’s sock accounts boost­ing Satan­ic Front pro­pa­gan­da.

The details of Anton Blenzig’s fall­out with the Satan­ic Front remain unclear.
...

And then we get to these details about Belzig’s online activ­i­ties dur­ing this peri­od when he was deeply involved in the ToB and Satan­ic Front: An account on Telegram mim­ic­k­ing Blenzig’s “Com­man­dant Cul­tus” alias was among the top ten posters in over fifty COM child abuse groups, with over 20 thou­sand mes­sages. So assum­ing it was Blenzig behind those posts, it appears he was an extreme­ly active “COM” mem­ber. Which isn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly sur­pris­ing giv­en his ToB lead­er­ship role. But, again, let’s not for­get he was being ele­vat­ed in the Satan­ic com­mu­ni­ty by none oth­er than FBI paid infor­mant Joshua Sut­ter:

...
Nefar­i­ous online com­mu­ni­ty groups, or “COM” for short, bleak online social net­works where peo­ple can anony­mous­ly share extreme­ly dis­mal sub­ject mat­ter such as gore, ani­mal abuse, self-harm, and child sex­u­al abuse mate­r­i­al – often ille­gal sub­ject mat­ter includ­ing extor­tion and sex­tor­tion. Most of us wouldn’t become aware of COM groups until ear­ly 2024 when some of the first report­ing on 764, an online child sex abuse extor­tion­ist cult, was pub­lished.

...

Extrem­ist pro­pa­gan­da from Islamists, neo-Nazis, and the Order of Nine Angles is cir­cu­lat­ed in these spaces and con­tributes to the desen­si­ti­za­tion of its mem­bers.

Tem­pel ov Blood imagery, ref­er­ences, and texts can be found in these sex­tor­tion and gore COM groups and relat­ed niche net­works. Some user accounts have even named them­selves after ToB mem­bers in a copy­cat, glo­ri­fy­ing fash­ion.

...

In Jan­u­ary 2023, a brief his­to­ry of COM titled “Mem­o­ra­bil­ia” was pub­lished to a web­site describ­ing the ear­ly ori­gins of this extor­tion cult—from 2017 on the mes­sag­ing plat­form KiK to a migra­tion to Dis­cord in 2019. Extor­tion­ists lured girls from Insta­gram, Tik­Tok, Roblox, Omegle, and Snapchat to groom. This activ­i­ty increas­ing­ly migrat­ed to Telegram between 2020 to 2022, where it con­tin­ues to this day.

...

An account on Telegram mim­ic­k­ing one of Blenzig’s well-known alias­es, “Com­man­dant Cul­tus,” was among the top ten posters in over fifty COM groups exam­ined by a col­lec­tive of jour­nal­ists, accord­ing to Roman Höfn­er who inves­ti­gates this type of activ­i­ty. The account accu­mu­lat­ed over twen­ty thou­sand mes­sages post­ed in child abuse extor­tion­ist groups. One of the names this account went by was “Sam.”

In the year before Anton Blenzig’s death, sev­er­al high pro­file arrests were made of men involved in these spaces.
...

And that brings us to one of the more noto­ri­ous ToB/Satanic Front mem­bers who was charged with child exploita­tion in 2023: Angel Luis Almei­da, the promi­nent 764 mem­ber who was even­tu­al­ly charged with the FBI. Which, again, is the kind of gross detail that rais­es the ques­tion: how aware was the FBI about the child exploita­tion that fig­ures like Almei­da and oth­ers were engag­ing in in the years lead­ing up to their arrests? Because it’s not like they did­n’t have an under­cov­er infor­mant play­ing a lead­ing role in this com­mu­ni­ty:

...
From what LCRW was able to deter­mine, the Satan­ic Front had no more than 15 affil­i­ates at any giv­en time. Despite the small num­ber, some high pro­file arrests took place.

Angel Luis Almei­da, an adher­ent of the ToB and the Satan­ic Front was charged with sex­u­al exploita­tion of a child in 2023. Pho­tos cir­cu­lat­ed online of Almei­da pos­ing with a copy of Iron Gates. When law enforce­ment searched his res­i­dence, they found a satan­ic covenant signed in blood with a state­ment by Jar­od Choate’s alias “Satanae Manibus,” read­ing: “A covenant signed in blood. May the dev­il walk with you always. – Satanae Manibus.”

Oth­er known mem­bers of the Satan­ic Front include Samuel Orel­lana, who was released from prison in 2021 after serv­ing time relat­ed to the offense of “Lewd or las­civ­i­ous acts with a child under 14 years of age,” Christo­pher Pack, who pro­duces pro­pa­gan­da for the group and Bren­nan Wal­ters, a Nazi from Col­orado and for­mer mem­ber of the Nation­al Social­ist Order (a group formed in 2020 made up of remain­ing AWD mem­bers). The Satan­ic Front made alliances in Brazil and Rus­sia, includ­ing with Egor Kras­nov from Mur­der Mani­acs Cult (often referred to as “MKY”).

The Satan­ic Front main­tained a web­site which, accord­ing to domain reg­istry infor­ma­tion, was cre­at­ed in Decem­ber 2018. The site once host­ed dozens of blog posts but have since been removed. When the site was live, it fea­tured posts start­ing in Decem­ber 2021 about the “Satan­ic Preda­tor,” two entries writ­ten by Bren­nan Wal­ters using the alias “Bar­tok Lycus,” a link to Anton Blenzig’s eBay account where one could pur­chase The Satan­ic Hand­book, and awk­ward­ly-writ­ten blog posts about how best to be a Satanist. LCRW’s analy­sis sug­gests Jar­od Choate, using the alias “Satanae Manibus,” was the only one to upload posts to the site.
...

And that high­ly dis­turb­ing ques­tion about what the FBI has known about the seri­ous online crimes that were being sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly com­mit­ted by an extrem­ist net­work pop­u­lar­ized by an FBI infor­mant brings us to sad real­i­ty that Joshua Caleb Sut­ter’s online activ­i­ties appear to be con­tin­u­ing unabat­ed. Beyond that, Jil­lian Hoy is still active online too, although she appears to have left Sut­ter for a new roman­tic part­ner: a “Ratio­nal­ist” who goes by Ben­quo online. And as we can see, both Ben­quo and Hoy have an online his­to­ry of inter­act­ing with Ophe­lia Bauck­holt, one of the mem­bers of that utter­ly bizarre Ziz­ian cult that made the news ear­li­er this year when cult mem­bers engaged in a shootout with a U.S. Bor­der Patrol agent in Ver­mont. Sut­ter and Hoy are both still very active extrem­ists online ampli­fiers:

...
As of Feb­ru­ary 2025, just over ten years after Mar­tinet Press was estab­lished, Jil­lian Hoy remains list­ed as Mar­tinet Press’s con­tact. She is still mar­ried to Joshua Sut­ter but now resides in the vicin­i­ty of Yale Uni­ver­si­ty with her new part­ner, a man who is active in online Ratio­nal­ist dis­course spaces who some­times uses the alias “Ben­quo.”

Posts on Twitter/X show Ben­quo and Hoy inter­act­ing with an account pur­port­ed to belong to Ophe­lia Bauck­holt, a mem­ber of a small group referred to as the “Zizians” (a cult which splin­tered from the broad­er Ratio­nal­ist com­mu­ni­ty) and who was killed on 20 Jan­u­ary 2025 dur­ing a shootout in Ver­mont which involved a U.S. Bor­der Patrol agent. Offline, Jil­lian and Ben­quo some­times par­tic­i­pate in events with­in the Ratio­nal­i­ty com­mu­ni­ty.

Jil­lian Hoy is now a moth­er of two small chil­dren with this man despite once writ­ing in her auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Mar­tinet Press title ‘Ven­om and Hon­ey:’

“I do not wor­ship Kali as a moth­er. Kali has no chil­dren. Her body is not a ves­sel of repro­duc­tion; it is a tool for ter­ror and destruc­tion. I wor­ship Kali because I feel an affin­i­ty for Kali, I feel a desire with­in me to be among Her witchy cohorts who slaugh­ter, laugh play­ful­ly and ter­ri­bly, and inspire fear. I’d soon­er bear a weapon and take down life than bear life with­in me. For me, Kali is about vio­lence, wrath, and lust, but I love Her all the more that She may also con­vinc­ing­ly play the moth­er while Her blade hov­ers threat­en­ing­ly.”

It’s unknown whether Hoy’s rela­tion­ship with Ben­quo is a sign that she’s put her neo-Nazi past behind her or if she’s tak­ing on an ‘insight role.’

...

Joshua Sut­ter con­tin­ues attempts at blog post­ing under var­i­ous edgy alias­es, self-pub­lish­ing through print-on-demand ser­vices and pro­mot­ing neo-Nazi, satan­ic, and cult extrem­ist pro­pa­gan­da on the inter­net.

It is unknown how many vul­ner­a­ble and dis­af­fect­ed young peo­ple were groomed by affil­i­ates of the Tem­pel ov Blood cult but LCRW esti­mates that at least hun­dreds were involved with Tem­pel ov Blood and thou­sands more were exposed to their pro­pa­gan­da.

...

Should we even be sur­prised to find direct ties between Hoy and the Zizians? Or is this what we should have come to expect? It’s hard to say at this point.

Nate Thayer’s Deep Dive on Josh Sutter’s Extremist Early Years

And as we’ll see in the fol­low­ing excerpt from Nate Thay­er’s 2013 exposé about Josh Sut­ter, the first major piece cov­er­ing this bizarre biog­ra­phy, filled with details about Sut­ter’s many dif­fer­ent activ­i­ties over the decade from 2003–2013. Includ­ing a very impor­tant detail for under­stand­ing the role Sut­ter was play­ing as a leader in the Aryan Nations at the time of his 2003 arrest: Josh Sut­ter was­n’t just arrest­ed for pur­chas­ing gun silencers and an auto­mat­ic pis­tol with its ser­i­al num­bers scratched off from an under­cov­er fed­er­al agent. He report­ed­ly made these pur­chas­es as part of a broad­er Aryan Nations plot to blow up abor­tion clin­ics and kill polit­i­cal oppo­nents. In fact, at the time of his arrest, Sut­ter was also a preach­er for the Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty Church of the Sons of Yaweh, which has ties to the Ku Klux Klan, a role that had him fol­low­ing the foot­steps of his father, David Sut­ter, a fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­t­ian preach­er well known as a white suprema­cist leader. Josh Sut­ter was­n’t just an Aryan Nations leader. He was leader in the broad­er Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty move­ment and active­ly plan­ning domes­tic ter­ror.

And yet, as we saw above, the Tem­pel ov Blood was formed in 2003 and Sut­ter’s immer­sion with O9A was already ful­ly under­way upon his release from prison in 2004. Josh Sut­ter real­ly was a Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty Satanist. And, who knows, he might still be a Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty adher­ent today had he not been pub­licly accused of being an FBI infor­mant by his fel­low Aryan Nations mem­bers back in 2005. That’s also part of the con­text of Sut­ter’s role as a paid FBI infor­mant: it was those accu­sa­tions of being an FBI infor­mant by his fel­low white suprema­cists back in 2005 that appear to have caused Sut­ter to embrace all of these oth­er forms of extrem­ism:

NateThay­er

White Pow­er and Apoc­a­lyp­tic Cults: Pro-DPRK home­grown U.S. ter­ror­ist groups are Pyongyang cho­sen favorites

by Nate Thay­er, May 6, 2013

NK News Inves­tiga­tive Cor­re­spon­dent
(This sto­ry appeared in NKNews.org. Please check out the excel­lent NK News Pro news ser­vice launched in May, 2013 pro­vid­ing in depth, qual­i­ty, com­pre­hen­sive cov­er­age for those seri­ous about under­stand­ing North Korea at http://www.nknews.org/white-power-and-apocalyptic-cults-pro-dprk-americans-revealed/ or http://pro.nknews.org/)

WASHINGTON D.C. – In Sep­tem­ber 2003, John Paul Cupp, the 22 year old son of a fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­t­ian preach­er from Indi­ana received a mes­sage from the gov­ern­ment of North Korea.

“Upon the autho­riza­tion of the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee” it read, Pyongyang “extends mil­i­tant greet­ings to you who extend warm sup­port and sol­i­dar­i­ty to the Songun pol­i­cy of our respect­ed Mar­shal Kim Jong Il, trea­sure sword of our nation.”

The “for­ma­tion of the Songun Pol­i­tics Study Group USA has been report­ed to our Cen­tral Com­mit­tee and, through it, to the Work­ers Par­ty of Korea….Now your orga­ni­za­tion has been intro­duced to the entire Kore­an nation in the south and the north We are very pleased to have a rev­o­lu­tion­ary orga­ni­za­tion and com­rades like you in the land of the Unit­ed States, the bul­wark of impe­ri­al­ism and deter­mined to fur­ther the rela­tion­ship with you in depth,”

Rodong Sin­mun, the offi­cial voice of the rul­ing Kore­an Worker’s Par­ty (KWP), report­ed the news on Sep­tem­ber 11, the two year anniver­sary of the ter­ror­ist attacks on the World Trade Cen­ter in New York.

The mes­sage from Pyongyang promised to send fur­ther infor­ma­tion “by DHL” to the address of “Com­rade John Paul Cupp.” What North Korea didn’t men­tion was at the time was John Paul Cupp had no address because he was home­less and liv­ing in a tent under a high­way in Port­land, Ore­gon.

...

JOSHUA CALEB SUTTER: PREACHER’S SON, NEO-NAZI, FEDERAL PRISONER

Joshua Caleb Sut­ter has one of the more col­or­ful resumes in fringe Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. Also the son of a fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­t­ian preach­er, David Sut­ter, a well-known South Car­oli­na white suprema­cist leader, Joshua Sut­ter was primed for the world of extrem­ist pol­i­tics from a young age.

He began dab­bling in white racist pol­i­tics as a teenag­er and rose rapid­ly through the ranks to become a nation­al leader of the Aryan Nations, a white suprema­cist neo-Nazi group which advo­cat­ed the armed over­throw of the U.S. gov­ern­ment in order to impose a whites-only racial­ly pure state in its place.

Sut­ter lived at the head­quar­ters com­pound of the Aryan Nations in Penn­syl­va­nia until his arrest by under­cov­er fed­er­al agents in Feb­ru­ary 2003 for pur­chas­ing ille­gal auto­mat­ic pis­tols with their ser­i­al num­bers scraped off, and pos­ses­sion of silencers in a foiled plot to launch bomb attacks in a domes­tic U.S. ter­ror cam­paign.

At the time, Sut­ter was also a preach­er for the Church of the Sons of Yaweh, a white suprema­cist “Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty” church with links to the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

After the Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001 World Trade Cen­ter bomb­ings in New York, Sut­ter assumed the title of the Aryan Nations “Min­is­ter for Islam­ic Liai­son”, tasked with build­ing alliances with inter­na­tion­al Islam­ic jihadist groups. Sut­ter caught the atten­tion of fed­er­al author­i­ties in 2002 after he released a “mes­sage of sol­i­dar­i­ty and sup­port” to Sad­dam Hus­sein after Sept. 11 pre­dict­ing that “the evil regime of the Unit­ed States … shall be utter­ly wiped off the face of the earth.”

Among oth­er alias­es, Sut­ter used the name Wul­fran Hall, High Coun­sel of Aryan Nations, while liv­ing at the rur­al Penn­syl­va­nia Aryan Nations head­quar­ters owned by Sutter’s men­tor, Aryan Nation’s head August Kreis.

On the Aryan Nations web­site, after lead­ing a large White Suprema­cist, anti-Semit­ic ral­ly in Wash­ing­ton D.C., Sut­ter wrote: “Skin­heads, Aryan Nations and Iden­ti­ty, Nation­al Alliance, Cre­ators all march­ing side by side with one ene­my in mind – the jew,” cit­ing as a “poignant exam­ple” the slo­gan of the demon­stra­tion: “Ros­es are red, vio­lets are blue – for every dead Arab, anoth­er dead jew!” Call­ing whites “the true cho­sen race”, Sut­ter wrote ‘Yes, oh yes… and it shall be much worse this time. Jew – all of your plan­ning, schem­ing and attempts and pre­pared­ness shall not save you from that fate­ful day, for no man knows the hour….But a lit­tle bird told a friend of a friend of a friend who told me that it “shan’t be too far off”…”

Sut­ter was arrest­ed in Feb­ru­ary 2003 for pur­chas­ing gun silencers and an auto­mat­ic pis­tol with its ser­i­al num­bers scratched off from an under­cov­er fed­er­al agent. The arrest was part of a sting oper­a­tion which foiled attempts by Sutter’s White Suprema­cist extrem­ist com­rade to use explo­sives and weapons to blow up abor­tion clin­ics and kill polit­i­cal oppo­nents.

Sen­tenced to two years, Sut­ter was released from a Geor­gia fed­er­al prison on Nov. 9, 2004 and moved back to his home­town in rur­al Lex­ing­ton Coun­ty, South Car­oli­na.

THE RURAL PEOPLE’S PARTY AND THE JIM JONES JUCHE CARAVAN

That is when Sut­ter began a twist­ed web of sharp u‑turns in his ideas, veer­ing off to remote side roads of polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy, and formed a new under­ground polit­i­cal organization–the Rur­al People’s Par­ty (RPP)–which embraced both Kim Il Sung’s Juche ide­ol­o­gy and that of Jim Jones as its twin polit­i­cal men­tors.

In doc­u­ments com­piled by the Depart­ment of Reli­gious Stud­ies at San Diego State Uni­ver­si­ty (which has an exten­sive archive of the Jim Jones People’s Tem­ple orga­ni­za­tion), a mem­ber of the Rur­al People’s Par­ty sub­mit­ted a biog­ra­phy of the his­to­ry of the par­ty. Doc­u­ments and oth­er evi­dence obtained by NK News show that the author of the RPP biog­ra­phy was Joshua Sut­ter and the arti­cle was sent from Joshua Sutter’s prop­er­ty in South Car­oli­na.

“The Rur­al People’s Par­ty (RPP) was offi­cial­ly rat­i­fied into exis­tence in 2004 when our founder was released from fed­er­al prison after serv­ing a sen­tence on weapons charges,” the doc­u­ment says, reveal­ing details which mir­ror the biog­ra­phy of Joshua Sutter.“Other com­rades on the out­side had already scout­ed out and pur­chased a rur­al loca­tion for the found­ing of a com­mune,” said the RPP doc­u­ment.

Accord­ing to Lex­ing­ton Coun­ty title records, on Aug 19 2003, David and Lau­ra Sut­ter, Joshua’s par­ents, pur­chased 3.61 acres of land and a mobile home on 480 Sher­wood Dri­ve for $75,000 –the same loca­tion of the head­quar­ters of the Rur­al People’s Par­ty, accord­ing to mul­ti­ple doc­u­ments obtained by NK News dur­ing this inves­ti­ga­tion.

A pho­to­graph on the offi­cial RPP web­site shows a sin­gle wide mobile home with a North Kore­an flag fly­ing on a flag­pole in a wood­ed area and is cap­tioned: “ Cen­tral People’s Com­mune of the Rur­al People’s Par­ty: Mil­i­tant Juche Songun and Jim Jones thought Com­mu­nism North Amer­i­ca.”

But Sut­ter didn’t aban­don his far right, extrem­ist white suprema­cist pol­i­tics when he was released from the pen­i­ten­tiary at the end of 2004.

Upon release from prison, Sut­ter began work­ing at the South­ern Patri­ot Shop, a White Suprema­cist retail out­let man­aged by Sutter’s father, Pen­te­costal preach­er David Sut­ter. The shop sells racist para­pher­na­lia and is owned by the League of the South, an estab­lished hate group.

While it was on the date of his release from fed­er­al prison that Sut­ter found­ed the Rur­al People’s Party—it was also in the fol­low­ing months that, Sut­ter using alias’s includ­ing Wul­fran Hall, active­ly resumed his lead­er­ship role in the white suprema­cist ter­ror orga­ni­za­tion Aryan Nations.”We can become more than sim­ple domes­ti­cat­ed pawns in the games of jew­ish com­merce. We spit upon the false sanc­ti­ty of the ‘flag’ – of what­ev­er coun­try,” wrote Sut­ter in Feb­ru­ary 2005 on the Aryan Nations web­site. “We spit upon the erro­neous sanc­ti­ty of the cross – and all the mean­ing­less relics of orga­nized reli­gion which is but anoth­er way to enslave us and con­trol us, to keep us from real­iz­ing the poten­tial that we pos­sess as a race.”

Sut­ter also pro­vid­ed an approved list of books which he pos­i­tive­ly reviewed. They includ­ed “A Prac­ti­cal Guide to The Strat­e­gy and Tac­tics of Rev­o­lu­tion” which demon­strates four ways to “under­mine/over­throw/dis­rup­t/de-sta­bi­lize the present anti-Aryan Sys­tem, and thus cre­ate or pro­voke a rev­o­lu­tion­ary sit­u­a­tion”.

The book lists four meth­ods for rev­o­lu­tion: “(1) assas­si­na­tion of indi­vid­u­als; (2) ter­ror bomb­ing (includ­ing tar­gets where civil­ian casu­al­ties are prob­a­ble); (3) sab­o­tage of the infra­struc­ture of the Sys­tem – such things as roads, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, tele­vi­sion trans­mit­ters, air­ports, rail­ways, pow­er sta­tions, food sup­plies, busi­ness­es, shops, finan­cial insti­tu­tions and so on; (4) ter­ror cam­paigns direct­ed at our ene­mies – indis­crim­i­nate or oth­er­wise.”

Also, Sut­ter pro­vid­ed help­ful tips and instruc­tions on killing per­ceived ene­mies. “The best types of soft tar­get in this respect are: (1) ene­mies of Aryan free­dom” and “politi­cians who have spo­ken-out against Aryan groups or who have done things harm­ful to our race and our free­dom (such as sup­port­ing some new anti-Aryan law or encour­ag­ing race-mix­ing). On the prac­ti­cal lev­el, the orga­ni­za­tion must col­lect intel­li­gence on suit­able tar­gets, acquire suit­able weapons and pre­pare state­ments for after the action. Indi­vid­ual covert cells can then be sup­plied with a list of tar­gets, and armed with suit­able weapons.” Instruc­tion for ter­ror­ist attacks and spark­ing a race war are also detailed by Sut­ter.

By April 2005, the Aryan Nations leader and Sutter’s men­tor, August Kreis, moved the group’s nation­al head­quar­ters to a dou­blewide trail­er in Lex­ing­ton Coun­ty to be near Sut­ter. On April 9 2005 Aryan Nations leader Kreiss bought a .732 acre piece of land, with a mobile home, at 160 Maple­wood dri­ve, Lex­ing­ton SC for $18,000.

But the fol­low­ing month, Louisiana based Aryan Nations leader and preach­er of the White Suprema­cist hate church Sons Of Yaweh Mor­ris Gulett wrote from the Louisiana West Mon­roe Cor­rec­tion Cen­ter on May 12, 2005 accus­ing Joshua Sut­ter of being an under­cov­er gov­ern­ment informer. “Broth­er Charles Thorn­ton from Alaba­ma and myself are in fed­er­al cus­tody here in Louisiana charged with Con­spir­a­cy to Com­mit Armed Bank Rob­bery. We were set up by one of the church’s old­est mem­bers, Joshua Caleb Sut­ter.”

“Let me say that this entire deba­cle was an FBI set up from the very begin­ning. There would be no alleged crimes, were it not for an FBI informant/agent provo­ca­teur, one Joshua Caleb Sut­ter, a now for­mer mem­ber of the Church of the Sons of YHVH/Legion of Saints.”

With­in days, Kriess removed a pho­to of Sut­ter pos­ing in a black tur­ban and face mask, and arti­cles he wrote from the Aryan Nations Web site, and Sut­ter went under­ground. The fol­low­ing years, Joshua Sut­ter focused on sup­port­ing the gov­ern­ment and Juche ide­ol­o­gy of North Korea using a vari­ety of alias­es

...

FROM JUCHE CARAVAN TO HINDU TEMPLE: A NEW GOD IN LEXINGTON COUNTY

On Novem­ber 18, 2008 Joshua Sut­ter and Jil­lian Hoy (aka Com­rade Mor­ri­son and Cupp’s erst­while ex-fiancé) mar­ried at a South Car­oli­na Apos­tolic Pen­te­costal church “on the anniver­sary of the People’s Tem­ple mar­tyr­dom” to the tune of the song “Hold On, Broth­er” from the People’s Tem­ple album “He’s Able”, and “March­ing to Zion” used for the movie Guyana Tragedy: The Sto­ry of Jim Jones, accord­ing to Lex­ing­ton Coun­ty, South Car­oli­na pro­bate Court records.

By 2009, both the RPP and the U.S. Songun Pol­i­tics Study Group vied for con­trol over the offi­cial­ly-sanc­tioned U.S. sup­port group for North Korea. In doing so, both groups veered far­ther into extrem­ist white suprema­cist and apoc­a­lyp­tic reli­gious pol­i­tics.

“The RPP con­tin­ues to work with­in reli­gious cir­cles in line with the exam­ple giv­en to us by Jim Jones and Peo­ples Tem­ple,” said the RPP in a Novem­ber 2009 biog­ra­phy writ­ten for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at San Diego Cen­ter for Reli­gious Stud­ies,

Also in 2009, Joshua Sut­ter, Jil­lian Hoy, and oth­er lead­ers of the clan­des­tine U.S. White Pow­er move­ment cre­at­ed anoth­er reli­gious organization—a Hin­du sect wor­ship­ping an apoc­a­lyp­tic Hin­du Deity, Kali.

Tak­ing on the alias­es of a Hin­du priest and priest­ess, Sut­ter and Hoy estab­lished the New Bihar Mandir Tem­ple at the same rur­al South Car­olin­ian loca­tion as the Rur­al People’s Par­ty head­quar­ters and where the U.S. Songun Study Group rep­re­sent­ed by Cupp and the Pales­tin­ian Amer­i­can activist Ziad secret­ly trav­elled months ear­li­er to for­mal­ize their polit­i­cal alliance.

Sut­ter adopt­ed an addi­tion­al new iden­ti­ty of a Hin­du Hare Krish­na priest call­ing him­self Shree Shree Kal­ki-Kali­ka Mandir. Sutter’s bride, Jil­lian Hoy, took on the name Jay­alali­ta devi dasi, and billed her­self as a Hin­du priest­ess.

While osten­si­bly clan­des­tine in its for­ma­tion using alias­es and oth­er tac­tics to obfus­cate who was in fact behind the new Hin­du tem­ple, the New Bihar Mandir Hin­du Tem­ple used the same mail­ing address and phone num­bers used for the RPP. Pub­lic recruit­ment notices in local news­pa­pers and in new age cir­cles list­ed the phys­i­cal address as that of the Sut­ter owned prop­er­ty and Joshua Sut­ter was giv­en as the con­tact per­son to call for direc­tions to wor­ship ser­vices.

New Bihar Mandir’s Myspace page, cre­at­ed in 2009, says “A new god has come to rur­al Lex­ing­ton Coun­ty, South Car­oli­na: Their Lord­ships Shree Shree Kal­ki-Kali­ka.” Adding “Lord Kal­ki will appear as the “Killer Avatar” to cleanse the earth as the piv­otal fac­tor in a world­wide anni­hi­la­tion, from which, like a phoenix aris­ing from the ash­es, will come a new Gold­en Age (or ‘Satya-yuga.’)”

The New Bihar Mandir pro­claimed “Lord Kal­ki is our com­man­der, ulti­mate mas­ter and final author­i­ty life after life.” Accord­ing to ancient Hin­du scrip­tures, his­to­ry is divid­ed into four epochs: now is the ‘Kali Yug’, the Age of Kali, an epoch of dark­ness and disintegration…New Bihar Mandir, a world­wide move­ment of devo­tees and tem­ples, is begin­ning to bring this prophe­cy into fruition.”

‘Shree Shree Kal­ki-Kali­ka Mandir’ and ‘Jay­alali­ta devi dasi’ both list their mar­riage dates on My Space as Novem­ber 18, 2008, the same date list­ed on Sut­ter and Hoy’s mar­riage license in Lex­ing­ton Coun­ty pro­bate court records. In keep­ing with their affin­i­ty for vio­lent apoc­a­lyp­tic reli­gious sects with a polit­i­cal agen­da, The New Bihar Mandir Tem­ple heav­i­ly pro­motes Velupil­lai Pirab­hakaran, the head of the Sri Lankan LTTE ‘Tamil Tigers’ armed guer­ril­la group, who was a devot­ed fol­low­er of the same Kali sect of Hin­du and respon­si­ble for cre­at­ing sui­cide squads of teenage girls dis­patched to explode dead­ly ter­ror­ist bomb­ings and assas­si­nate polit­i­cal lead­ers, includ­ing the May 21, 1991 killing of Indi­an Prime Min­is­ter Rajiv Gand­hi in the south­ern state of Tamil Nadu, home to India’s Tamils.

“New Bihar Mandir of Lex­ing­ton, South Car­oli­na has as its fore­most mis­sion pro­vid­ing the facil­i­ties for per­sons in our area hith­er­to unfa­mil­iar with ancient Vedic wis­dom to engage in this bhak­ti-yoga (devo­tion­al yoga) and com­mune per­son­al­ly with Lord Kal­ki and God­dess Kali,” reads the New Bihar Mandir MySpace pro­file.

The New Bihar Mandir Tem­ple Face book page, used the slo­gans “Where Worlds Col­lide” and “I have become death, the destroy­er of worlds “and invites the pub­lic to “Con­tact us to learn how to get involved in NBM.”

The pre­vi­ous year Sut­ter had pro­fessed loy­al­ty to the Hare Krish­na sect of Hin­duism. “In ret­ro­spect I can see just how much my life has been enriched by your work,” Sut­ter wrote in a let­ter to the head of a North Car­oli­na-based Hare Krish­na tem­ple.

“[My wife] is now hav­ing some of the hap­pi­est times I have seen her have since our mar­riage because of the enrich­ing poten­cy of Krish­na con­scious­ness,”

By 2010, in addi­tion to pro­claim­ing loy­al­ty to Pyongyang and their Juche ide­ol­o­gy Sut­ter and the RPP simul­ta­ne­ous­ly assert­ed their devo­tion to white racist Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty church­es; the Jim Jones reli­gious cult; a Hin­du apoc­a­lyp­tic sect wor­ship­ping “the God­dess of Destruc­tion”; a most­ly black South Car­oli­na fun­da­men­tal­ist Pen­te­costal church, and the more main­stream Hare Krish­na Hin­du sect – all with­in a mat­ter of sev­er­al years.

A biog­ra­phy of the RPP pub­lished by the Uni­ver­si­ty of San Diego in 2010, and writ­ten by Sut­ter, explains the rea­son­ing behind the dis­cor­dant affil­i­a­tions.

Dur­ing 2008, the Rur­al People’s Par­ty “covert­ly insert­ed our­selves into var­i­ous reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions in the rur­al Lex­ing­ton Coun­ty area,” wrote Sut­ter for the archives of Jim Jones’s People’s Tem­ple. “Many com­mu­nists might look upon our activity…as sus­pect, due to what – in our opin­ion – is a naive belief… that all polit­i­cal activ­i­ty must by default pri­mar­i­ly be “above-ground.” These same peo­ple seem to for­get that Joseph Stal­in began his polit­i­cal activ­i­ty at Tiflis The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary as a sem­i­nar­i­an, and that Kim Il Sung orga­nized many pre-rev­o­lu­tion­ary anti-impe­ri­al­ist activ­i­ties while an accom­plished organ­ist at his par­ents’ Pres­by­ter­ian church in Korea….at the peak of the RPP’s involve­ment in local Pen­te­costal and Apos­tolic cir­cles, two mem­bers of our orga­ni­za­tion were mar­ried in a cer­e­mo­ny at a local Apos­tolic church on Novem­ber 18th, the anniver­sary of the Peo­ples Tem­ple mar­tyr­dom.”

THE NEW BIHARD MANDIR WHITE SUPREMACY CONNECTION

The mem­bers of the New Bihar Mandir tem­ple include a ver­i­ta­ble who’s who of North Amer­i­can white pow­er activists. They include a ‘Min­is­ter Black’ iden­ti­fied as ‘Works at New Bihar Mandir’ and a for­mer white pow­er activist; James Por­raz­zo the for­mer leader of the Amer­i­can Front, once the largest white pow­er neo Nazi group in the U.S.; ‘Emi­ly Put­ney, Porrazzo’s girl­friend in Mass­a­chu­setts and con­vict­ed of an anti-Semit­ic assault and hate crime on an elder­ly Jew­ish man in 2010; ‘Jay­alali­ta Devi Dasi of Lex­ing­ton, South Car­oli­na’ who is Jil­lian Hoy of the Rur­al People’s Par­ty and Joshua Sutter’s wife; ‘Rex Mor­gan’ a white pow­er activist with a his­to­ry of involve­ment in Satan­ic cults; and Chris Hayes a long time white suprema­cist activist with the Amer­i­can Front.

The group all using numer­ous alias­es. are affil­i­at­ed with white suprema­cist groups, Satan­ic cults, and under­ground polit­i­cal groups who call for the vio­lent armed over­throw of the U.S. gov­ern­ment.

On James Porrazzo’s web site “OPENREVOLT” he post­ed an arti­cle “NOTES ON THE BHAGAVAD-GITA” on August 22, 2011 which begins: “We assume, quite jus­ti­fi­ably, I think, that the Bha­gavad-Gita sets forth Aryan phi­los­o­phy. The Aryan is white and noble in con­tradis­tinc­tion to the black and igno­ble. This book then, if Aryan, must give us a noble sys­tem of phi­los­o­phy and ethics.”

The arti­cle con­cludes with: “This post is ded­i­cat­ed to his Divine Grace A.C Bhak­tivedan­ta Swa­mi Prabu­pa­da, my anony­mous Krish­na Con­scious Spir­i­tu­al Advi­sor (you know who you are) and my broth­ers and sis­ters at New Bihar Mandir.”

On July 4, 2012, on the white sep­a­ratist web site run by Por­raz­zo “Amer­i­can Front”, there is a graph­ic labeled as the art­work of New Bihar Mandir ded­i­cat­ed to the mil­i­tary unit of sui­cide bombers of the Sri Lankan LTTE, list­ed as a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion by the U.S., the EU and oth­ers.

...

—————

“White Pow­er and Apoc­a­lyp­tic Cults: Pro-DPRK home­grown U.S. ter­ror­ist groups are Pyongyang cho­sen favorites” by Nate Thay­er; NateThay­er; 05/06/2013

“Sut­ter was arrest­ed in Feb­ru­ary 2003 for pur­chas­ing gun silencers and an auto­mat­ic pis­tol with its ser­i­al num­bers scratched off from an under­cov­er fed­er­al agent. The arrest was part of a sting oper­a­tion which foiled attempts by Sutter’s White Suprema­cist extrem­ist com­rade to use explo­sives and weapons to blow up abor­tion clin­ics and kill polit­i­cal oppo­nents.”

When Joshua Caleb Sut­ter was arrest­ed in 2003, it’s not like he was ran­dom­ly caught pur­chas­ing a pis­tol from an under­cov­er fed­er­al agent with its ser­i­al num­bers scratched off. The arrest was part of a sting oper­a­tion tar­get­ing a plot by Sut­ter’s Aryan Nations com­rade to blow up abor­tion clin­ics and kill polit­i­cal oppo­nents. Sut­ter was already white suprema­cist domes­tic ter­ror­ist when he became an FBI infor­mant. But it was domes­tic ter­ror­ism that was of a dis­tinct­ly Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty nature. Not that he was exclu­sive­ly oper­at­ing as a Chris­t­ian extrem­ist. Recall how Sut­ter was already the Aryan Nations “Min­is­ter for Islam­ic Liai­son” and the Tem­pel ov Blood first formed in 2003, like­ly by Sut­ter after his Feb­ru­ary 2003 arrest. He was dab­bling with a vari­ety of extrem­ist reli­gions already by the time he became an FBI infor­mant. The fact that Sut­ter was also a preach­er for a Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty church at the time, the Church of the Sons of Yaweh, is per­haps the least sur­pris­ing detail in his biog­ra­phy. Espe­cial­ly giv­en that he was the son of a well known white suprema­cist fun­da­men­tal­ist preach­er father:

...
Joshua Caleb Sut­ter has one of the more col­or­ful resumes in fringe Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. Also the son of a fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­t­ian preach­er, David Sut­ter, a well-known South Car­oli­na white suprema­cist leader, Joshua Sut­ter was primed for the world of extrem­ist pol­i­tics from a young age.

He began dab­bling in white racist pol­i­tics as a teenag­er and rose rapid­ly through the ranks to become a nation­al leader of the Aryan Nations, a white suprema­cist neo-Nazi group which advo­cat­ed the armed over­throw of the U.S. gov­ern­ment in order to impose a whites-only racial­ly pure state in its place.

Sut­ter lived at the head­quar­ters com­pound of the Aryan Nations in Penn­syl­va­nia until his arrest by under­cov­er fed­er­al agents in Feb­ru­ary 2003 for pur­chas­ing ille­gal auto­mat­ic pis­tols with their ser­i­al num­bers scraped off, and pos­ses­sion of silencers in a foiled plot to launch bomb attacks in a domes­tic U.S. ter­ror cam­paign.

At the time, Sut­ter was also a preach­er for the Church of the Sons of Yaweh, a white suprema­cist “Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty” church with links to the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

After the Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001 World Trade Cen­ter bomb­ings in New York, Sut­ter assumed the title of the Aryan Nations “Min­is­ter for Islam­ic Liai­son”, tasked with build­ing alliances with inter­na­tion­al Islam­ic jihadist groups. Sut­ter caught the atten­tion of fed­er­al author­i­ties in 2002 after he released a “mes­sage of sol­i­dar­i­ty and sup­port” to Sad­dam Hus­sein after Sept. 11 pre­dict­ing that “the evil regime of the Unit­ed States … shall be utter­ly wiped off the face of the earth.”
...

Also notice how Sut­ter imme­di­ate­ly returned to his Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty white suprema­cist com­mu­ni­ty upon leav­ing prison in 2004 but also imme­di­ate­ly start­ed that bizarre North Kore­an Rur­al People’s Par­ty (RPP) group. Which might be Sut­ter’s first extrem­ist action as an FBI infor­mant. Although, again, per­haps that first action hap­pened while Sut­ter was still in prison with the 2003 found­ing of the Tem­pel ov Blood. That’s unclear. But Sut­ter wast­ed no time at all found­ing the RPP as a new­ly freed FBI infor­mant. An orga­ni­za­tion that seem­ing­ly fused the ide­olo­gies of both Kim Il Sung’s Juche and Jim Jones. Hav­ing a white suprema­cist preach­er found such an orga­ni­za­tion almost seems like the FBI trolling North Korea. At the same time, Sut­ter returned to South­ern Patri­ot Shop, the store run by his white suprema­cist preach­er father and owned by the neo-Con­fed­er­ate League of the South. And he even resumed his “Wul­fran Hall” Aryan Nations lead­er­ship per­sona. And that points towards one of the dark twists in this entire sto­ry: it feels like the FBI was using Sut­ter’s out­ward­ly odi­ous char­ac­ter as a mem­ber of the Aryan Nations as means of cre­at­ing oth­er out­ward­ly odi­ous extrem­ist front groups. But the end result has been the pop­u­lar­iza­tion of Satan­ic child abuse con­tent among the kind of extrem­ist com­mu­ni­ties that, two decades ago, would have like­ly grav­i­tat­ed by default towards the kind of Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty orga­ni­za­tions that Sut­ter was already involved with at the time of his arrest. In oth­er words, the FBI took a mon­ster, made him into a big­ger, more grotesque, mon­ster, and the mon­ster got more pop­u­lar and influ­en­tial. Mis­sion accom­plished?

...
Among oth­er alias­es, Sut­ter used the name Wul­fran Hall, High Coun­sel of Aryan Nations, while liv­ing at the rur­al Penn­syl­va­nia Aryan Nations head­quar­ters owned by Sutter’s men­tor, Aryan Nation’s head August Kreis.

On the Aryan Nations web­site, after lead­ing a large White Suprema­cist, anti-Semit­ic ral­ly in Wash­ing­ton D.C., Sut­ter wrote: “Skin­heads, Aryan Nations and Iden­ti­ty, Nation­al Alliance, Cre­ators all march­ing side by side with one ene­my in mind – the jew,” cit­ing as a “poignant exam­ple” the slo­gan of the demon­stra­tion: “Ros­es are red, vio­lets are blue – for every dead Arab, anoth­er dead jew!” Call­ing whites “the true cho­sen race”, Sut­ter wrote ‘Yes, oh yes… and it shall be much worse this time. Jew – all of your plan­ning, schem­ing and attempts and pre­pared­ness shall not save you from that fate­ful day, for no man knows the hour….But a lit­tle bird told a friend of a friend of a friend who told me that it “shan’t be too far off”…”

...

Sen­tenced to two years, Sut­ter was released from a Geor­gia fed­er­al prison on Nov. 9, 2004 and moved back to his home­town in rur­al Lex­ing­ton Coun­ty, South Car­oli­na.

THE RURAL PEOPLE’S PARTY AND THE JIM JONES JUCHE CARAVAN

That is when Sut­ter began a twist­ed web of sharp u‑turns in his ideas, veer­ing off to remote side roads of polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy, and formed a new under­ground polit­i­cal organization–the Rur­al People’s Par­ty (RPP)–which embraced both Kim Il Sung’s Juche ide­ol­o­gy and that of Jim Jones as its twin polit­i­cal men­tors.

...

Accord­ing to Lex­ing­ton Coun­ty title records, on Aug 19 2003, David and Lau­ra Sut­ter, Joshua’s par­ents, pur­chased 3.61 acres of land and a mobile home on 480 Sher­wood Dri­ve for $75,000 –the same loca­tion of the head­quar­ters of the Rur­al People’s Par­ty, accord­ing to mul­ti­ple doc­u­ments obtained by NK News dur­ing this inves­ti­ga­tion.

...

But Sut­ter didn’t aban­don his far right, extrem­ist white suprema­cist pol­i­tics when he was released from the pen­i­ten­tiary at the end of 2004.

Upon release from prison, Sut­ter began work­ing at the South­ern Patri­ot Shop, a White Suprema­cist retail out­let man­aged by Sutter’s father, Pen­te­costal preach­er David Sut­ter. The shop sells racist para­pher­na­lia and is owned by the League of the South, an estab­lished hate group.

While it was on the date of his release from fed­er­al prison that Sut­ter found­ed the Rur­al People’s Party—it was also in the fol­low­ing months that, Sut­ter using alias’s includ­ing Wul­fran Hall, active­ly resumed his lead­er­ship role in the white suprema­cist ter­ror orga­ni­za­tion Aryan Nations.”We can become more than sim­ple domes­ti­cat­ed pawns in the games of jew­ish com­merce. We spit upon the false sanc­ti­ty of the ‘flag’ – of what­ev­er coun­try,” wrote Sut­ter in Feb­ru­ary 2005 on the Aryan Nations web­site. “We spit upon the erro­neous sanc­ti­ty of the cross – and all the mean­ing­less relics of orga­nized reli­gion which is but anoth­er way to enslave us and con­trol us, to keep us from real­iz­ing the poten­tial that we pos­sess as a race.”
...

Anoth­er part of Sut­ter’s extrem­ist activ­i­ties in these ear­ly years that was clear­ly ampli­fied dur­ing his decades as an FBI infor­mant is the cre­ation of read­ing lists and ‘help­ful tips’ on top­ics like how to kill per­ceived ene­mies. Recall how Sut­ter’s involve­ment in extrem­ist pub­lish­ing start­ed in 2004 under the “Angle­ton Imprints” label, which was pre­sum­ably also right after his Novem­ber 2004 release from prison (or per­haps while in prison if he had access to email). Sut­ter was serv­ing as a domes­tic ter­ror­ism infor­ma­tion clear­ing­house from the begin­ning of his FBI infor­mant career:

...
Sut­ter also pro­vid­ed an approved list of books which he pos­i­tive­ly reviewed. They includ­ed “A Prac­ti­cal Guide to The Strat­e­gy and Tac­tics of Rev­o­lu­tion” which demon­strates four ways to “under­mine/over­throw/dis­rup­t/de-sta­bi­lize the present anti-Aryan Sys­tem, and thus cre­ate or pro­voke a rev­o­lu­tion­ary sit­u­a­tion”.

The book lists four meth­ods for rev­o­lu­tion: “(1) assas­si­na­tion of indi­vid­u­als; (2) ter­ror bomb­ing (includ­ing tar­gets where civil­ian casu­al­ties are prob­a­ble); (3) sab­o­tage of the infra­struc­ture of the Sys­tem – such things as roads, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, tele­vi­sion trans­mit­ters, air­ports, rail­ways, pow­er sta­tions, food sup­plies, busi­ness­es, shops, finan­cial insti­tu­tions and so on; (4) ter­ror cam­paigns direct­ed at our ene­mies – indis­crim­i­nate or oth­er­wise.”

Also, Sut­ter pro­vid­ed help­ful tips and instruc­tions on killing per­ceived ene­mies. “The best types of soft tar­get in this respect are: (1) ene­mies of Aryan free­dom” and “politi­cians who have spo­ken-out against Aryan groups or who have done things harm­ful to our race and our free­dom (such as sup­port­ing some new anti-Aryan law or encour­ag­ing race-mix­ing). On the prac­ti­cal lev­el, the orga­ni­za­tion must col­lect intel­li­gence on suit­able tar­gets, acquire suit­able weapons and pre­pare state­ments for after the action. Indi­vid­ual covert cells can then be sup­plied with a list of tar­gets, and armed with suit­able weapons.” Instruc­tion for ter­ror­ist attacks and spark­ing a race war are also detailed by Sut­ter.
...

And as we can see, it was­n’t real­ly until Sut­ter was accused of being an FBI infor­mant in May of 2005 by the oth­er mem­bers of the Aryan Nations crew who were arrest­ed on gun charges that Sut­ter seem­ing­ly moved away from the the Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty move­ment. Instead, he seem­ing­ly leaned into the RPP Juche group, pre­sum­ably while also pro­mot­ing the Tem­pel ov Blood:

...
By April 2005, the Aryan Nations leader and Sutter’s men­tor, August Kreis, moved the group’s nation­al head­quar­ters to a dou­blewide trail­er in Lex­ing­ton Coun­ty to be near Sut­ter. On April 9 2005 Aryan Nations leader Kreiss bought a .732 acre piece of land, with a mobile home, at 160 Maple­wood dri­ve, Lex­ing­ton SC for $18,000.

But the fol­low­ing month, Louisiana based Aryan Nations leader and preach­er of the White Suprema­cist hate church Sons Of Yaweh Mor­ris Gulett wrote from the Louisiana West Mon­roe Cor­rec­tion Cen­ter on May 12, 2005 accus­ing Joshua Sut­ter of being an under­cov­er gov­ern­ment informer. “Broth­er Charles Thorn­ton from Alaba­ma and myself are in fed­er­al cus­tody here in Louisiana charged with Con­spir­a­cy to Com­mit Armed Bank Rob­bery. We were set up by one of the church’s old­est mem­bers, Joshua Caleb Sut­ter.”

“Let me say that this entire deba­cle was an FBI set up from the very begin­ning. There would be no alleged crimes, were it not for an FBI informant/agent provo­ca­teur, one Joshua Caleb Sut­ter, a now for­mer mem­ber of the Church of the Sons of YHVH/Legion of Saints.”

With­in days, Kriess removed a pho­to of Sut­ter pos­ing in a black tur­ban and face mask, and arti­cles he wrote from the Aryan Nations Web site, and Sut­ter went under­ground. The fol­low­ing years, Joshua Sut­ter focused on sup­port­ing the gov­ern­ment and Juche ide­ol­o­gy of North Korea using a vari­ety of alias­es
...

And yet, while Sut­ter had to dis­tance him­self from the Aryan Nations and the Sons Of Yaweh Mor­ris church after that FBI infor­mant accu­sa­tion, he did­n’t leave Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ism entire­ly. As we can see, when Sut­ter and Hoy were mar­ried in 2008 the cer­e­mo­ny was at a South Car­oli­na Apos­tolic Pen­te­costal church. And, bizarrely, in 2010, not only did Sut­ter assert his devo­tion to Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty church­es but so did the RPP. It’s an impor­tant detail in terms of under­stand­ing the nature of the RPP. It was­n’t just a bizarre Juche cult. It was a fusion of Juche ide­ol­o­gy and Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty fun­da­men­tal­ist white suprema­cy:

...
On Novem­ber 18, 2008 Joshua Sut­ter and Jil­lian Hoy (aka Com­rade Mor­ri­son and Cupp’s erst­while ex-fiancé) mar­ried at a South Car­oli­na Apos­tolic Pen­te­costal church “on the anniver­sary of the People’s Tem­ple mar­tyr­dom” to the tune of the song “Hold On, Broth­er” from the People’s Tem­ple album “He’s Able”, and “March­ing to Zion” used for the movie Guyana Tragedy: The Sto­ry of Jim Jones, accord­ing to Lex­ing­ton Coun­ty, South Car­oli­na pro­bate Court records.

...

By 2010, in addi­tion to pro­claim­ing loy­al­ty to Pyongyang and their Juche ide­ol­o­gy Sut­ter and the RPP simul­ta­ne­ous­ly assert­ed their devo­tion to white racist Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty church­es; the Jim Jones reli­gious cult; a Hin­du apoc­a­lyp­tic sect wor­ship­ping “the God­dess of Destruc­tion”; a most­ly black South Car­oli­na fun­da­men­tal­ist Pen­te­costal church, and the more main­stream Hare Krish­na Hin­du sect – all with­in a mat­ter of sev­er­al years.

A biog­ra­phy of the RPP pub­lished by the Uni­ver­si­ty of San Diego in 2010, and writ­ten by Sut­ter, explains the rea­son­ing behind the dis­cor­dant affil­i­a­tions.

Dur­ing 2008, the Rur­al People’s Par­ty “covert­ly insert­ed our­selves into var­i­ous reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions in the rur­al Lex­ing­ton Coun­ty area,” wrote Sut­ter for the archives of Jim Jones’s People’s Tem­ple. “Many com­mu­nists might look upon our activity…as sus­pect, due to what – in our opin­ion – is a naive belief… that all polit­i­cal activ­i­ty must by default pri­mar­i­ly be “above-ground.” These same peo­ple seem to for­get that Joseph Stal­in began his polit­i­cal activ­i­ty at Tiflis The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary as a sem­i­nar­i­an, and that Kim Il Sung orga­nized many pre-rev­o­lu­tion­ary anti-impe­ri­al­ist activ­i­ties while an accom­plished organ­ist at his par­ents’ Pres­by­ter­ian church in Korea….at the peak of the RPP’s involve­ment in local Pen­te­costal and Apos­tolic cir­cles, two mem­bers of our orga­ni­za­tion were mar­ried in a cer­e­mo­ny at a local Apos­tolic church on Novem­ber 18th, the anniver­sary of the Peo­ples Tem­ple mar­tyr­dom.”
...

Sim­i­lar­ly, when Sut­ter and Hoy found­ed their Hare Krish­na sect, New Bihar Mandir, in 2009, this was an overt­ly white pow­er-ori­ent­ed Hare Krish­na orga­ni­za­tion. Not that we should be par­tic­u­lar­ly sur­prised to see white pow­er activists get­ting involved with a Hare Krish­na cult. As we’ve seen, the Hare Krish­na the­ol­o­gy is high­ly amenable to racist ide­olo­gies. Start­ing a Hare Krish­na cult was kind of the next log­i­cal step for some­one with Sut­ter’s inter­ests in pan-reli­gious extrem­ism. But, again, let’s not for­get who else was keen­ly inter­est­ed in pro­mot­ing fas­cist strains of Hin­duism: Greg John­son and Ryan Schus­ter, the duo set out to pop­u­lar­ize James Mason, Sav­i­t­ra Devi, and David Myatt. The cre­ation of New Bihar Mandir real­ly was a fur­ther­ing of those ambi­tions:

...
By 2009, both the RPP and the U.S. Songun Pol­i­tics Study Group vied for con­trol over the offi­cial­ly-sanc­tioned U.S. sup­port group for North Korea. In doing so, both groups veered far­ther into extrem­ist white suprema­cist and apoc­a­lyp­tic reli­gious pol­i­tics.

“The RPP con­tin­ues to work with­in reli­gious cir­cles in line with the exam­ple giv­en to us by Jim Jones and Peo­ples Tem­ple,” said the RPP in a Novem­ber 2009 biog­ra­phy writ­ten for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at San Diego Cen­ter for Reli­gious Stud­ies,

Also in 2009, Joshua Sut­ter, Jil­lian Hoy, and oth­er lead­ers of the clan­des­tine U.S. White Pow­er move­ment cre­at­ed anoth­er reli­gious organization—a Hin­du sect wor­ship­ping an apoc­a­lyp­tic Hin­du Deity, Kali.

Tak­ing on the alias­es of a Hin­du priest and priest­ess, Sut­ter and Hoy estab­lished the New Bihar Mandir Tem­ple at the same rur­al South Car­olin­ian loca­tion as the Rur­al People’s Par­ty head­quar­ters and where the U.S. Songun Study Group rep­re­sent­ed by Cupp and the Pales­tin­ian Amer­i­can activist Ziad secret­ly trav­elled months ear­li­er to for­mal­ize their polit­i­cal alliance.

Sut­ter adopt­ed an addi­tion­al new iden­ti­ty of a Hin­du Hare Krish­na priest call­ing him­self Shree Shree Kal­ki-Kali­ka Mandir. Sutter’s bride, Jil­lian Hoy, took on the name Jay­alali­ta devi dasi, and billed her­self as a Hin­du priest­ess.

While osten­si­bly clan­des­tine in its for­ma­tion using alias­es and oth­er tac­tics to obfus­cate who was in fact behind the new Hin­du tem­ple, the New Bihar Mandir Hin­du Tem­ple used the same mail­ing address and phone num­bers used for the RPP. Pub­lic recruit­ment notices in local news­pa­pers and in new age cir­cles list­ed the phys­i­cal address as that of the Sut­ter owned prop­er­ty and Joshua Sut­ter was giv­en as the con­tact per­son to call for direc­tions to wor­ship ser­vices.

New Bihar Mandir’s Myspace page, cre­at­ed in 2009, says “A new god has come to rur­al Lex­ing­ton Coun­ty, South Car­oli­na: Their Lord­ships Shree Shree Kal­ki-Kali­ka.” Adding “Lord Kal­ki will appear as the “Killer Avatar” to cleanse the earth as the piv­otal fac­tor in a world­wide anni­hi­la­tion, from which, like a phoenix aris­ing from the ash­es, will come a new Gold­en Age (or ‘Satya-yuga.’)”

The New Bihar Mandir pro­claimed “Lord Kal­ki is our com­man­der, ulti­mate mas­ter and final author­i­ty life after life.” Accord­ing to ancient Hin­du scrip­tures, his­to­ry is divid­ed into four epochs: now is the ‘Kali Yug’, the Age of Kali, an epoch of dark­ness and disintegration…New Bihar Mandir, a world­wide move­ment of devo­tees and tem­ples, is begin­ning to bring this prophe­cy into fruition.”

‘Shree Shree Kal­ki-Kali­ka Mandir’ and ‘Jay­alali­ta devi dasi’ both list their mar­riage dates on My Space as Novem­ber 18, 2008, the same date list­ed on Sut­ter and Hoy’s mar­riage license in Lex­ing­ton Coun­ty pro­bate court records. In keep­ing with their affin­i­ty for vio­lent apoc­a­lyp­tic reli­gious sects with a polit­i­cal agen­da, The New Bihar Mandir Tem­ple heav­i­ly pro­motes Velupil­lai Pirab­hakaran, the head of the Sri Lankan LTTE ‘Tamil Tigers’ armed guer­ril­la group, who was a devot­ed fol­low­er of the same Kali sect of Hin­du and respon­si­ble for cre­at­ing sui­cide squads of teenage girls dis­patched to explode dead­ly ter­ror­ist bomb­ings and assas­si­nate polit­i­cal lead­ers, includ­ing the May 21, 1991 killing of Indi­an Prime Min­is­ter Rajiv Gand­hi in the south­ern state of Tamil Nadu, home to India’s Tamils.

“New Bihar Mandir of Lex­ing­ton, South Car­oli­na has as its fore­most mis­sion pro­vid­ing the facil­i­ties for per­sons in our area hith­er­to unfa­mil­iar with ancient Vedic wis­dom to engage in this bhak­ti-yoga (devo­tion­al yoga) and com­mune per­son­al­ly with Lord Kal­ki and God­dess Kali,” reads the New Bihar Mandir MySpace pro­file.

...

The pre­vi­ous year Sut­ter had pro­fessed loy­al­ty to the Hare Krish­na sect of Hin­duism. “In ret­ro­spect I can see just how much my life has been enriched by your work,” Sut­ter wrote in a let­ter to the head of a North Car­oli­na-based Hare Krish­na tem­ple.

“[My wife] is now hav­ing some of the hap­pi­est times I have seen her have since our mar­riage because of the enrich­ing poten­cy of Krish­na con­scious­ness,”

...

The mem­bers of the New Bihar Mandir tem­ple include a ver­i­ta­ble who’s who of North Amer­i­can white pow­er activists. They include a ‘Min­is­ter Black’ iden­ti­fied as ‘Works at New Bihar Mandir’ and a for­mer white pow­er activist; James Por­raz­zo the for­mer leader of the Amer­i­can Front, once the largest white pow­er neo Nazi group in the U.S.; ‘Emi­ly Put­ney, Porrazzo’s girl­friend in Mass­a­chu­setts and con­vict­ed of an anti-Semit­ic assault and hate crime on an elder­ly Jew­ish man in 2010; ‘Jay­alali­ta Devi Dasi of Lex­ing­ton, South Car­oli­na’ who is Jil­lian Hoy of the Rur­al People’s Par­ty and Joshua Sutter’s wife; ‘Rex Mor­gan’ a white pow­er activist with a his­to­ry of involve­ment in Satan­ic cults; and Chris Hayes a long time white suprema­cist activist with the Amer­i­can Front.
...

A ver­i­ta­ble who’s who of North Amer­i­can white pow­er activists. That’s who we find behind this Hare Krisha move­ment. Sut­ter and Hoy weren’t build­ing this move­ment alone.

Josh Sutter’s Christian Identity Roots and the League of the South. A Much More Mainstream League of the South Today

And yet, for all of the years of orga­niz­ing Sut­ter and Hoy invest­ed in main­stream­ing Satan­ic Nazism and white pow­er Hare Krish­na ide­olo­gies, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that the extrem­ist move­ment Sut­ter start­ed in — white pow­er Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty — has expe­ri­enced a main­stream­ing of its own. White Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism is one of the most potent forces in con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­ca, after all, with groups like the pow­er­ful Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) play­ing lead­ing roles as orga­niz­ing forces inside the Trump admin­is­tra­tions. You almost can’t get more ‘main­stream’ than the CNP in terms of the wield­ing of real polit­i­cal pow­er. And yet, despite all that main­stream, it’s not like the CNP agen­da has at all mod­er­at­ed. Quite the oppo­site. It was the CNP that played a key orga­niz­ing role behind the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion, after all. It’s the CNP that has been spend­ing years plan­ning Project 2025 and orga­niz­ing enti­ties like Amer­i­can Renew­al Project that ele­vat­ed fig­ures like Mark “Some Folks Need Killing!” Robin­son to posi­tions of nation­al lead­er­ship insid­er the Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist move­ment. And it’s the CNP behind the push to re-write the US Con­sti­tu­tion that is shock­ing­ly close to com­ing to fruition. Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism is hav­ing more than just a moment in Amer­i­ca. Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism on the cusp of total vic­to­ry. That’s a key piece of con­text to keep in mind when read­ing the fol­low­ing 2005 SPLC piece about the role Josh and David Sut­ter played as the staffers run­ning the South­ern Patri­ot Shop, a racist nov­el­ty store owned by the League of the South that dou­bled as a League of the South club­house. Sut­ter even had the title Wul­fran Hall, the High Coun­sel of the Aryan Nations. Before Sut­ter ful­ly immersed him­self in the world of alter­na­tive white pow­er ide­olo­gies and before he was accused of being an FBI infor­mant, this was the life he was liv­ing: as a Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty white suprema­cist leader, co-man­ag­ing a League of the South store along­side his father:

South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter

League of the South Offers ‘Her­itage’ for Sale at South­ern Patri­ot Shop

David Holt­house
Octo­ber 14, 2005

The ‘Con­fed­er­ate’ shirt was made in Haiti. One clerk is a long-time neo-Nazi. Wel­come to the League of the South’s South­ern Patri­ot Shop.

On the bumper stick­er, a rebel bat­tle flag flies over the White House. Under it, the slo­gan reads, “I Have a Dream.”

“I get a kick out of that one,” said David Sut­ter, man­ag­er of the South­ern Patri­ot Shop. He then point­ed to anoth­er favorite, “NAACP: Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Always Com­plain­ing Peo­ple.”

“Those are two of our top sell­ers,” Sut­ter said. “We do real well with those.”

Sit­u­at­ed near a busy strip mall in Cayce, S.C., the South­ern Patri­ot Shop is owned by the League of the South, a neo-seces­sion­ist hate group of which Sut­ter is a promi­nent mem­ber. Its inven­to­ry includes Con­fed­er­ate Army repli­ca swords; episodes of the 1959–1961 TV show “The Rebel” (about a Con­fed­er­ate army pri­vate who roams the Wild West after the Civ­il War like a knight with­out a king); rebel flag switch­blades and boot knives; pro-slav­ery, anti-Lin­coln revi­sion­ist his­to­ry tomes; copies of Lit­tle Black Sam­bo; and a ver­i­ta­ble Stars-and-Bars cor­nu­copia of “Free the South” rebel flag stick­ers, “Go Home Yan­kee” rebel flag beer cozies, and “Made in the Con­fed­er­ate States of Amer­i­ca” rebel flag t‑shirts which, iron­i­cal­ly enough, are made in Haiti.

For­mer­ly a Hud­dle House restau­rant and then a pawn shop, the 1,800-square-foot brick build­ing the LOS pur­chased last year for $158,000 is in a prime retail loca­tion, just off a major state high­way and two inter­states. Near­ly 60,000 motorists per day pass by the store and its gar­gan­tu­an Con­fed­er­ate flag, which at 20 by 30 feet is big­ger than the foot­print of most stu­dio apart­ments. It’s mount­ed atop a 90-foot pole.

...

The South­ern Patri­ot Shop dou­bles as a club­house for local LOS mem­bers like Eddie, whose cell phone rings “Dix­ie.” Eddie stopped by on a Sun­day after­noon in late July to help Sut­ter mow the grass. Tak­ing a break, he leaned back in a chair inside the shop and held forth on slav­ery.

“Peo­ple today mis­un­der­stand what slav­ery was all about,” he said. “Slav­ery is a nat­ur­al part of man. It explains that in the Bible. And that’s what real­ly sep­a­rat­ed the North from the South, is that the South rec­og­nized the Bible as the true word of God when it came to slav­ery.”

...

David Sut­ter alter­nates shifts at the South­ern Patri­ot Shop with his 24-year-old son, Joshua Caleb Sut­ter, who’s bet­ter known in the neo-Nazi under­world as Wul­fran Hall, the High Coun­sel of Aryan Nations.

Josh Sut­ter is not the only Aryan Nations enthu­si­ast to live in the Cayce area. In May, the group’s “nation­al direc­tor” August Kreis moved its “world head­quar­ters” from Sebring, Fla., to a dou­blewide trail­er in semi-rur­al Lex­ing­ton, rough­ly 15 miles from the South­ern Patri­ot Shop. Kreis pur­chased his trail­er and the land it sits on for $24,000.

...

Short­ly after Kreis moved, he removed all of Sutter’s writ­ings from the Aryan Nations Web site, along with a pho­to of Sut­ter pos­ing as Wul­fran Hall in a black tur­ban and face mask. Ear­li­er that month, Aryan Nations Pas­tor Mor­ris Gulett had accused Sut­ter of being a gov­ern­ment snitch. In a let­ter, Gulett wrote, “Broth­er Charles Thorn­ton from Alaba­ma and myself are in fed­er­al cus­tody here in Louisiana charged with Con­spir­a­cy to Com­mit Armed Bank Rob­bery. We were set up by one of the church’s old­est mem­bers, Joshua Caleb Sut­ter.”

Kreis did not respond to repeat­ed inter­view requests from Intel­li­gence Report. Reached by phone at the South­ern Patri­ot Store, Josh Sut­ter declined to com­ment.

“I have cus­tomers,” he said.

———–

“League of the South Offers ‘Her­itage’ for Sale at South­ern Patri­ot Shop” by David Holt­house; South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter; 10/14/2005

“Sit­u­at­ed near a busy strip mall in Cayce, S.C., the South­ern Patri­ot Shop is owned by the League of the South, a neo-seces­sion­ist hate group of which Sut­ter is a promi­nent mem­ber. Its inven­to­ry includes Con­fed­er­ate Army repli­ca swords; episodes of the 1959–1961 TV show “The Rebel” (about a Con­fed­er­ate army pri­vate who roams the Wild West after the Civ­il War like a knight with­out a king); rebel flag switch­blades and boot knives; pro-slav­ery, anti-Lin­coln revi­sion­ist his­to­ry tomes; copies of Lit­tle Black Sam­bo; and a ver­i­ta­ble Stars-and-Bars cor­nu­copia of “Free the South” rebel flag stick­ers, “Go Home Yan­kee” rebel flag beer cozies, and “Made in the Con­fed­er­ate States of Amer­i­ca” rebel flag t‑shirts which, iron­i­cal­ly enough, are made in Haiti.”

That’s right, the South­ern Patri­ot Shop where Josh Sut­ter and his father David both worked was­n’t just a store that spe­cial­ized in racist pro-Con­fed­er­ate mer­chan­dise. The shop is owned by the League of the South, where David Sut­ter is a promi­nent mem­ber. It even serves as a local League of the South club house:

...
For­mer­ly a Hud­dle House restau­rant and then a pawn shop, the 1,800-square-foot brick build­ing the LOS pur­chased last year for $158,000 is in a prime retail loca­tion, just off a major state high­way and two inter­states. Near­ly 60,000 motorists per day pass by the store and its gar­gan­tu­an Con­fed­er­ate flag, which at 20 by 30 feet is big­ger than the foot­print of most stu­dio apart­ments. It’s mount­ed atop a 90-foot pole.

...

The South­ern Patri­ot Shop dou­bles as a club­house for local LOS mem­bers like Eddie, whose cell phone rings “Dix­ie.” Eddie stopped by on a Sun­day after­noon in late July to help Sut­ter mow the grass. Tak­ing a break, he leaned back in a chair inside the shop and held forth on slav­ery.

“Peo­ple today mis­un­der­stand what slav­ery was all about,” he said. “Slav­ery is a nat­ur­al part of man. It explains that in the Bible. And that’s what real­ly sep­a­rat­ed the North from the South, is that the South rec­og­nized the Bible as the true word of God when it came to slav­ery.”
...

And as we can see, the fact that Josh Sut­ter was a leader in the Aryan Nations at the time was­n’t an issue for the League of the South at all. And why would it be? The League of the South and the Aryan Nations share the same Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty ide­ol­o­gy:

...
“I get a kick out of that one,” said David Sut­ter, man­ag­er of the South­ern Patri­ot Shop. He then point­ed to anoth­er favorite, “NAACP: Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Always Com­plain­ing Peo­ple.”

...

David Sut­ter alter­nates shifts at the South­ern Patri­ot Shop with his 24-year-old son, Joshua Caleb Sut­ter, who’s bet­ter known in the neo-Nazi under­world as Wul­fran Hall, the High Coun­sel of Aryan Nations.
...

It rais­es the ques­tion: Was Josh Sut­ter’s role as the High Coun­sel for the Aryan Nations seen as a plus by the League of the South? And more gen­er­al­ly, what actu­al­ly dis­tin­guish­es the League of South’s ide­ol­o­gy from the white suprema­cist Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty world­view of the Aryan Nations?

Steven J. Wilkins and the League of the South’s Stealth Congregation Takeover Plot

And that ques­tion about what dis­tin­guish­es the ide­ol­o­gy of Aryan Nations from that of the League of the South rais­es a more polit­i­cal­ly salient ques­tion: how much over­lap is there between the League of the South (LOS) and the pow­er­ful CNP? Well, as we’ve seen, the CNP mem­ber­ship lists includes LOS mem­ber Mike Per­out­ka. Recall how, back in 2017, Per­out­ka had to pub­licly denounce the state­ments made by LOS pres­i­dent Michael Hill after Hill pledged “to be a white suprema­cist, a racist, an anti-Semi­te, a homo­phobe, a xeno­phobe, an Islam­o­phobe and any oth­er sort of ‘phobe’ that ben­e­fits my peo­ple”. Per­out­ka — who was serv­ing on Maryland’s Anne Arun­del Coun­ty Coun­cil at the time — described the com­ments as “out­ra­geous” and “inap­pro­pri­ate”. Yep, long-time League of the South mem­ber Mike Per­out­ka only both­ered to dis­tance him­self from the League of the South in 2017, after he start­ed serv­ing of the Anne Arun­del Coun­ty Coun­cil, putting him­self in a posi­tion where pledges “to be a white suprema­cist, a racist, an anti-Semi­te, a homo­phobe, a xeno­phobe, an Islam­o­phobe and any oth­er sort of ‘phobe’ that ben­e­fits my peo­ple” are clear­ly polit­i­cal­ly unten­able.

And as we’re going to see, the ties between the CNP and the League of the South are much more foun­da­tion­al than Mike Per­outka’s dual mem­ber­ship. Notably, CNP mem­ber RJ Rush­doony — who was report­ed­ly a mem­ber of the CNP board of gov­ern­ers in the ear­ly 1990s — long espoused an ide­ol­o­gy of Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ism that is effec­tive­ly a merg­er of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism with the neo-Con­fed­er­ate move­ment. Join­ing Rush­doony in this recon­struc­tion­ist agen­da is his son-in-law and fel­low CNP mem­ber, Gary North. And, lo and behold, it turns out the Con­fed­er­ate South was the ide­al soci­ety as envi­sioned by this Bib­li­cal Recon­struc­tion­ist world­view. So we should­n’t be be sur­prised to learn that Rush­doony and North were very much aligned with the League of the South. In fact, back in Decem­ber of 2000, the The Chal­cedon Report, a Recon­struc­tion­ist jour­nal pub­lished by Rushdoony’s Chal­cedon Foun­da­tion, ded­i­cat­ed the entire issue to the top­ic of “The Civ­il War Revived: Sec­u­lar­ism vs. the South.” The issue includ­ed an arti­cle by LOS co-founder Steven J. Wilkins argu­ing that slav­ery abo­li­tion­ists were “ter­ror­ists”.

But part of the sig­nif­i­cance of that Decem­ber 2000 The Chal­cedon Report issue is the fact that Wilkins was, at this point, lead­ing a kind of stealth takeover cam­paign tar­get­ing Chris­t­ian church­es. In par­tic­u­lar, the mem­ber con­gre­ga­tions of the Pres­by­ter­ian Church in Amer­i­ca (PCA), a con­ser­v­a­tive South­ern US denom­i­na­tion found­ed in 1973. A takeover cam­paign that appears to have begun in the late 1990s and focused heav­i­ly on stealth. As we’re going to see, Wilkins and the LOS were effec­tive­ly imple­ment­ing a strat­e­gy espoused by Gary North involv­ing both secre­cy but also a legal­is­tic approach to tak­ing over the lead­er­ship of con­gre­ga­tions. Crit­ics decribed it as an effort to turn church­es into LOS recruit­ment pools.

Observers also warn that Wilkin­s’s teach­ing includ­ed warn­ings that the gov­ern­ment was going to col­lapse, fol­lowed by end-times anar­chy and race wars. Keep in mind that, as we saw above, the trig­ger­ing of the col­lapse of soci­ety and race wars is kind of the pri­ma­ry goal of groups like Atom­waf­fen and their accel­er­a­tionist brethren who have been indoc­tri­nat­ed in the teach­ings of James Mason. Joshua Caleb Sut­ter — who got his start as a leader in the Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty Aryan Nations while run­ning a LOS book­store — has spent over two decades now pro­mot­ing Satan­ic ide­olo­gies inspired by Mason. And in doing so, he’s been fur­ther­ing that LOS end-times vision:

South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter

League of the South Works to Take Over Church­es

March 21, 2001

Ani­mat­ed by extrem­ist the­ol­o­gy, a group of neo-Con­fed­er­ate zealots are seek­ing con­trol of South­ern church­es.

Key mem­bers of a white suprema­cist orga­ni­za­tion, the League of the South (LOS), are mov­ing to take con­trol of con­ser­v­a­tive church­es around the South, prompt­ing a pos­si­ble split in a major Pres­by­ter­ian denom­i­na­tion.

The cen­tral play­er in this lit­tle-noticed dra­ma is the Rev. Steven J. Wilkins, pas­tor of the Auburn Avenue Pres­by­ter­ian Church in Mon­roe, La., and a founder and cur­rent board mem­ber of the neo-Con­fed­er­ate LOS. Wilkins is an advo­cate of Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion, a the­ol­o­gy that seeks to impose dra­con­ian Old Tes­ta­ment law on civ­il soci­ety.

The League’s goal, Wilkins has said, is to save Amer­i­ca from “pagan­ism” and restore it as “the last bas­tion of Chris­ten­dom” — a Chris­ten­dom that, in Wilkins’ view, sees slav­ery as “per­fect­ly legit­i­mate.”

Last sum­mer, Wilkins almost caused a rup­ture with­in the Pres­by­ter­ian Church in Amer­i­ca (PCA), a con­ser­v­a­tive South­ern denom­i­na­tion found­ed in 1973 that has more than 300,000 North Amer­i­can mem­bers.

Per­suad­ing 10 church­es to join him, Wilkins called a meet­ing of the PCA’S Louisiana Pres­bytery to con­sid­er the pos­si­ble depar­ture from the PCA of those with “theo­nom­ic” views — the idea that the Bible, not man-made civ­il law, should form the legal basis of soci­ety.

Although the debate was tem­porar­i­ly tabled, PCA offi­cials say that a schism may be immi­nent.

Theon­o­mists, and espe­cial­ly Recon­struc­tion­ists, know their views are an anath­e­ma to most Amer­i­cans. Recon­struc­tion­ist ide­o­logue Gary North, in fact, has writ­ten that Recon­struc­tion­ists need “the noise of con­tem­po­rary events” to hide their goals.

“If [non-believ­ers] ful­ly under­stood the long-term threat to their civ­i­liza­tion that our ideas pose, they … would be wise to take steps to crush us.”

Wilkins and oth­er LOS lead­ers have put a par­tic­u­lar­ly South­ern spin on Recon­struc­tion­ism, meld­ing theo­nom­ic ide­ol­o­gy with the view that dur­ing the Civ­il War, the North was ani­mat­ed by “rad­i­cal hatred of Scrip­ture.” For them, the idea is to recon­struct the South accord­ing to their hard-line view of Chris­tian­i­ty — a view that sees gov­ern­ment as nec­es­sar­i­ly an exten­sion of God­ly rule.

...

No Room for Com­pro­mise

At the moment, Wilkins is fight­ing a two-front war. On the one hand, he is mobi­liz­ing church­es to join with him in the pos­si­ble split. On the oth­er, he is putting pres­sure on more lib­er­al PCA church­es to con­form to his rigid the­ol­o­gy.

The pas­tor of one of the PCA’S largest church­es told the Intel­li­gence Report that Wilkins and two LOS mem­bers from South Car­oli­na have repeat­ed­ly brought eccle­si­as­ti­cal charges against him for espous­ing rel­a­tive­ly lib­er­al the­o­log­i­cal posi­tions.

John Wood, who leads the 5,000-member Cedar Springs Pres­by­ter­ian Church in Knoxville, Tenn., said the charges result­ed in inves­ti­ga­tions by the PCA’S Stand­ing Judi­cial Com­mit­tee for fail­ing to fol­low rules about the role of women. (Wood allowed a woman to give a pre­sen­ta­tion from the pul­pit.)

Exhaust­ed by the repeat­ed charges, Wood said Cedar Springs may well join a “sis­ter” black church, with which his con­gre­ga­tion works close­ly, in enter­ing a more lib­er­al denom­i­na­tion. He said the black church would “find it too hard … to go into the PCA.” [In late 2000, Cedar Springs joined the Evan­gel­i­cal Pres­by­ter­ian Church.]

If Wilkins fails to change the PCA, he has made it clear that he is seri­ous about split­ting away. And he would prob­a­bly not be alone. The Rev. Kennedy Smartt, mod­er­a­tor of the PCA’S 1998 Gen­er­al Assem­bly, says that the PCA could lose “25 to 30 church­es” pas­tored by men with “theo­nom­ic views.”

“You have to believe as they do or you are wrong,” Rev. Smartt told the Intel­li­gence Report about these theon­o­mists, men whose views he char­ac­ter­ized as “extreme.”

Even Dominic Aquila, the offi­cial spokesper­son for the PCA, says that Wilkins’ church appears to be the “moth­er church” to this theo­nom­ic move­ment. Wilkins, he said, “is very aggres­sive.”

Aquila added that when “pul­pits were with­out pas­tors” Wilkins and oth­ers who agreed with his reli­gious views have tried to con­vince con­gre­ga­tions to hire peo­ple “who thought like they did.”

Wilkins did not return phone calls seek­ing com­ment.

In Alaba­ma, A Move­ment Begins

The first evi­dence of a church take-over by League-linked theon­o­mists came to pub­lic atten­tion in 1998, when a court bat­tle erupt­ed over the con­trol of a small church in the sleepy West Alaba­ma town of York. York Pres­by­ter­ian Church was orig­i­nal­ly part of the PCA, but depart­ed for a more con­ser­v­a­tive denom­i­na­tion as key League mem­bers began to take con­trol of the church.

In 1997, Pas­tor Mar­tin Mur­phy — a man the York con­gre­ga­tion had paid to put through sem­i­nary school in the late 1980s — joined the League of the South.

In the next year, new faces came to dom­i­nate the pews, includ­ing four lead­ing League mem­bers. The most promi­nent of these was LOS Pres­i­dent Michael Hill, who had to com­mute 120 miles to attend ser­vices each Sun­day.

At the same time, Murphy’s office filled with Con­fed­er­ate sym­bols, includ­ing a por­trait of Gen­er­al Robert E. Lee and a toy Con­fed­er­ate sol­dier hold­ing a bat­tle flag on the pastor’s desk.

“It was a slow­ly devel­op­ing rela­tion­ship,” con­gre­gant Aubrey Green recalled. Pas­tor Mur­phy “approached me and my wife to join [LOS] and we, of course, turned him down. … The next thing we knew Mur­phy had the nation­al [LOS] pres­i­dent, the state pres­i­dent and the Sumter coun­ty chap­ter pres­i­dent, all of ’em in our church.”

Soon, League rhetoric was being preached from the pul­pit. “He open­ly advo­cat­ed seces­sion from the Unit­ed States and all kinds of crazy ideas,” said Green, who ulti­mate­ly brought suit with anoth­er long-time church mem­ber, J. Everett Cobb, to wrest con­trol of the church back from Pas­tor Mur­phy and the League.

In the end, Judge Eddie Hard­away ruled that LOS adher­ents “were admit­ted to [church] mem­ber­ship before the local con­gre­ga­tion real­ized that the true intent and pur­pose of these new mem­bers was to pro­mote the League of the South.”

The church, he added, was used “as a stag­ing ground for an increased mem­ber­ship for the League of the South and for pro­mot­ing its pur­pos­es and mis­sions.”

...

At around the same time, the League’s Mis­sis­sip­pi state leader, John Thomas Cripps, was build­ing up his own hard-line con­gre­ga­tion. For at least the last year, Cripps’ Con­fed­er­ate Pres­by­ter­ian Church has been locat­ed in his Con­fed­er­ate States Research Cen­ter in Wig­gins, Miss., the same one-sto­ry, gray store­front build­ing from which his cam­paign for gov­er­nor is being waged. Like Pas­tor Mur­phy, Cripps preach­es the virtues of South­ern seces­sion and a form of theon­o­my.

Recon­struc­tion to the Fore

In recent years, Wilkins has been build­ing up his Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ist cre­den­tials. He began to pub­lish in a num­ber of Recon­struc­tion­ist jour­nals in the late 1990s, speak­ing as well to sev­er­al the­o­log­i­cal con­fer­ences on the top­ic.

Wilkins also joined the edi­to­r­i­al board of The Coun­sel of Chal­cedon, a jour­nal pro­duced by a theon­o­mist and for­mer PCA min­is­ter, Joseph Moore­craft.

Moore­craft was “encour­aged to leave” the denom­i­na­tion because of his Recon­struc­tion­ist views, accord­ing to Rev. Smartt. And in ear­ly 2001, Wilkins spoke to the con­ven­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion Par­ty, which until last year was the anti-abor­tion U.S. Tax­pay­ers Par­ty.

The Con­sti­tu­tion Par­ty has vir­tu­al­ly the same plat­form and reli­gious ideas as the for­mer par­ty, and it is run most­ly by the same men, many of whom are Recon­struc­tion­ists.

As Wilkins’ impor­tance in Recon­struc­tion­ist cir­cles devel­oped, so too did his inter­est in remak­ing the PCA. Final­ly, last April, Wilkins told Chris­t­ian Renew­al that “the denom­i­na­tion is unre­formable” and that after years of work to turn it in a more “reformed” direc­tion “things have only got­ten worse.” He also dis­trib­uted a memo to his church mem­bers decry­ing a whole host of injus­tices, par­tic­u­lar­ly the lack of “true jus­tice” for those who are “TR (tru­ly reformed) and theon­o­mists.”

Last August, Wilkins spon­sored the meet­ing in which the 10 church­es of the Louisiana Pres­bytery dis­cussed leav­ing the PCA because of these and oth­er sim­i­lar con­cerns.

...

Recon­struc­tion and Death by Ston­ing

Dri­ving all of these events is the lit­tle-known the­o­log­i­cal doc­trine of theon­o­my — and, more specif­i­cal­ly, its par­tic­u­lar­ly hard-line vari­ant, Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion. Recon­struc­tion arose out of con­ser­v­a­tive Pres­by­te­ri­an­ism in the ear­ly 1970s.

Its found­ing text is Rousas John Rushdoony’s 1973 book The Insti­tutes of Bib­li­cal Law, an 800-page expli­ca­tion of the Ten Com­mand­ments, the Bib­li­cal case law that sup­pos­ed­ly derives from them and their appli­ca­tion today.

Recon­struc­tion is opposed to mod­ern notions of equal­i­ty, democ­ra­cy and tol­er­ance. A theo­crat­ic soci­ety — in which one brand of reli­gion rules — would be estab­lished and the Con­sti­tu­tion over­turned since, in North’s view, it is “a legal bar­ri­er to Chris­t­ian theoc­ra­cy.”

North says that “plu­ral­ism will be shot to pieces in an ide­o­log­i­cal (and per­haps even lit­er­al) cross­fire.” Those who do not believe as Recon­struc­tion­ists do would find them­selves in a pre­car­i­ous sit­u­a­tion.

“Any­one viewed as Bib­li­cal­ly incor­rect is hereti­cal at best and sub­ject to exe­cu­tion at worst,” said Fred­er­ick Clark­son, an expert on the the­ol­o­gy.

Indeed, exe­cu­tion­ers would be busy in a “recon­struct­ed” soci­ety. North has called pub­licly for the exe­cu­tion of women who have abor­tions. Ston­ing, he has said, would be the prefer­able method because “the imple­ments of exe­cu­tion are avail­able to every­one at vir­tu­al­ly no cost.”

Accord­ing to Clark­son, Rush­doony, who is North’s father-in-law, also sug­gests the death penal­ty be used to pun­ish those guilty of “apos­ta­sy (aban­don­ment of the faith), heresy, blas­phe­my, witch­craft, astrol­o­gy, adul­tery, ‘sodomy or homo­sex­u­al­i­ty,’ incest, strik­ing a par­ent, incor­ri­gi­ble juve­nile delin­quen­cy, and in the case of women, ‘unchasti­ty before mar­riage.’”

Non-cap­i­tal crimes would be sanc­tioned with whip­ping, inden­tured servi­tude or slav­ery.

...

Stealth Cam­paigns and ‘Rahab’s Lie’

Recon­struc­tion­ism has an explic­it strat­e­gy for infil­trat­ing and tak­ing over church­es. In Crossed Fin­gers: How the Lib­er­als Cap­tured the Pres­by­ter­ian Church, ide­o­logue Gary North pro­vides a road map for how to install the the­ol­o­gy into denom­i­na­tions.

The book exam­ines how “lib­er­als” in the 1930s used the judi­cial struc­tures of the main­line Pres­by­ter­ian Church (PCUSA) to marked­ly change that denom­i­na­tion.

North sug­gests that Recon­struc­tion­ists now use the same judi­cial struc­tures to reverse this lib­er­al vic­to­ry — just as Wilkins and the oth­er League mem­bers did in the case of Pas­tor Wood by bring­ing charges against him through the PCA’S Stand­ing Judi­cial Com­mit­tee. The abort­ed church takeover in York, Ala., also comes to mind when con­sid­er­ing North’s influ­ence on the League.

“That North spent years study­ing the ‘lib­er­al tri­umph’ in main­line Pres­by­te­ri­an­ism illu­mi­nates the scale of what is at stake,” writes Lewis C. Daly in A Moment to Decide, The Cri­sis in Main­stream Pres­by­te­ri­an­ism, pub­lished in May 2000.

“His vision of the future of church his­to­ry is one in which suc­ces­sive main­line denom­i­na­tions are recap­tured using polit­i­cal strat­e­gy and judi­cial pow­er.”

An impor­tant tool of the move­ment is stealth. Theon­o­mists jus­ti­fy this strat­e­gy with a Bib­li­cal sto­ry, “Rahab’s Lie,” of a young woman who lies to pro­tect the lives of Israelite spies in Jeri­cho. In an arti­cle post­ed on the web site of Wilkins’ church, Dea­con Kevin Bran­son prais­es Rahab as “a spir­i­tu­al hero” because “she deceived the wicked who sought to kill God’s own peo­ple.”

Bran­son said he writes about Rahab because “some of us don’t have a clue about hon­or­able and nec­es­sary decep­tion of the wicked.” His con­clu­sion is that “some­times God requires that we offer by way of our right hand a sweep­ing sword, and from our lips decep­tion, that the wicked might fail, and Christ and His Bride might flour­ish.”

South­erniz­ing Reli­gion

League thinkers offer their own dis­tinc­tive spin on theon­o­my and Recon­struc­tion. They invoke a par­tic­u­lar­ly South­ern view of his­to­ry that is increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar in Recon­struc­tion­ist pub­li­ca­tions, espe­cial­ly The Coun­sel of Chal­cedon.

In these arti­cles, Wilkins, among oth­ers, argues that the South was the only part of the Unit­ed States to remain true to the Bible. The North, he says, aban­doned true Chris­tian­i­ty and became a hereti­cal soci­ety.

It was this the­o­log­i­cal divide, and not slav­ery, that led to the Civ­il War, Wilkins argues. He also sees slav­ery as sanc­tioned by the Bible. Besides, “Amer­i­can slav­ery was per­haps the most benev­o­lent slav­ery that has ever exist­ed in the his­to­ry of the world,” Wilkins told The Coun­sel of Chal­cedon in 1997.

“Their pur­pose [North­ern­ers] was not mere­ly to destroy slav­ery and its evils but to destroy South­ern cul­ture,” he alleged. “There was a rad­i­cal hatred of Scrip­ture and the old the­ol­o­gy, which they felt were so bad for the coun­try. They saw the South as the embod­i­ment of all they hat­ed. Thus, the north­ern rad­i­cals were try­ing to throw off this Bib­li­cal cul­ture and turn the coun­try in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion.”

Wilkins also dis­cussed LOS, then known as the South­ern League.

“We believe the South was the last bas­tion of Chris­ten­dom,” Wilkins said in the journal’s inter­view. “We want the prin­ci­ples upon which the South stood to be embraced again by the entire coun­try. We want, not only the South, but the whole union to rise again from the pagan­ism that present­ly pre­vails.”

“Our goal is to rebuild on the ruins and see this lost civ­i­liza­tion restored again by the grace of God. This is the goal of the South­ern Her­itage Soci­ety [an arm of Wilkins’ Auburn Avenue church] as well as the South­ern League.”

‘A Boil on the Body of Christ’

Wilkins’ church is a key focal point for this move­ment. He push­es Recon­struc­tion­ist and League ideas from the pul­pit and else­where.

In Decem­ber, The Chal­cedon Report, the lead­ing Recon­struc­tion­ist jour­nal that is pub­lished by Rushdoony’s Chal­cedon Foun­da­tion, devot­ed an entire issue, includ­ing a Wilkins piece attack­ing abo­li­tion­ists as “ter­ror­ists,” to “The Civ­il War Revived: Sec­u­lar­ism vs. the South.”

Wilkins’ church hosts semi-annu­al con­fer­ences and Con­fed­er­ate balls that bring to Mon­roe men like LOS Pres­i­dent Hill and Joseph Moore­craft, the Recon­struc­tion­ist the­olo­gian.

Dur­ing these events, Wilkins report­ed­ly demand­ed that con­gre­gants pro­vide lodg­ing for the church vis­i­tors. “They got real pushy about us not putting peo­ple up,” says Kathy Hol­land, a for­mer con­gre­gant.

“They were glar­ing at us from the pul­pit. Wilkins said we were a boil on the body of Christ that sticks out, pops out, pokes out and squirts.”

Wilkins, add some for­mer and present church mem­bers, spends much time dis­cussing the com­ing end-times anar­chy, a sit­u­a­tion that will involve a gov­ern­ment crash or even a race war. They say that church elders in late 1999 were so con­cerned about a Y2K crash that they stocked the church base­ment with sup­plies.

It is per­haps no coin­ci­dence that one of the country’s major founts of Y2K para­noia was none oth­er than Gary North, the Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ist ide­o­logue.

Race War and Chil­dren

“They believe either a race war will hap­pen or the gov­ern­ment will col­lapse,” Michael Hol­land, a for­mer Auburn Avenue mem­ber who has left the con­gre­ga­tion, said in an inter­view. “They said you have to fight for what you believe in.”

The church actu­al­ly want­ed con­gre­gants to become phys­i­cal­ly pre­pared for the end-times bat­tle, adds Roger Carter, a dis­grun­tled con­gre­gant. “They liked the idea of a strong body, in case we’d ever have to fight.”

Accord­ing to Michael and Kathy Hol­land, oth­er chil­dren at the church taunt­ed the Hol­lands’ young­sters because the Hol­lands refused to allow their chil­dren to train to fight, fear­ing they’d be hurt. The Hol­lands say that led to more trou­ble.

The elder Hol­lands say knives were held up to their kids’ throats. They say one son was stuffed in a trash can head­first, while their youngest, then 6, was thrown down a flight of church steps, leav­ing him with a back injury.

Matthew Hol­land, 8 at the time of the report­ed 1999 inci­dents, said oth­er kids in the con­gre­ga­tion “pulled at me and tried to shut a door on my fin­gers. They pulled Elijah’s head back­wards and yelled some stuff at him. When they pulled his head back, they said there were going to stick it up his bot­tom. They said they were going to cut our heads off.”

When the Hol­lands stopped attend­ing the church for fear of the children’s safe­ty, they were put up for excom­mu­ni­ca­tion.

“The elders hold the key to heav­en and the gates of hell. When they excom­mu­ni­cate, they do it to the whole fam­i­ly,” says a dis­tressed Michael Hol­land. “If you believe, then this is like say­ing that you are going to hell. It’s the Bib­li­cal equiv­a­lent of hold­ing a gun to your head.”

...

‘Watch Out’

Today, thanks to Wilkins and few com­pa­tri­ots in the League of the South, extrem­ist inter­pre­ta­tions of the Bible are spread­ing in the South. Already, there is a very real chance of a reli­gious split in the PCA denom­i­na­tion that could result in the for­ma­tion of a hard-right group of theo­nom­ic church­es.

In Louisiana, Wilkins is already spread­ing the ide­ol­o­gy of Recon­struc­tion from the pul­pit and his web site. In Mis­sis­sip­pi, John Thomas Cripps is pur­su­ing a sim­i­lar course. And the League and its lead­ers seem clear­ly to have embraced theon­o­my as their the­o­log­i­cal base.

As the activ­i­ties of these men and the jour­nals they write for picks up, there is a real dan­ger that their ide­ol­o­gy will spread. And that scares Michael Hol­land.

“Oth­ers need to know what they are fac­ing,” Hol­land said of the appar­ent­ly spread­ing move­ment. “What I want peo­ple to under­stand is they believe in a hier­ar­chy of indi­vid­u­als. Equal­i­ty is Satan­ic, democ­ra­cy is Satan­ic. They preach this from the pul­pit… . If League of the South is on the ban­ner, then watch out.”

————

“League of the South Works to Take Over Church­es” by Intel­li­gence Report; South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter; March 21, 2001

“The cen­tral play­er in this lit­tle-noticed dra­ma is the Rev. Steven J. Wilkins, pas­tor of the Auburn Avenue Pres­by­ter­ian Church in Mon­roe, La., and a founder and cur­rent board mem­ber of the neo-Con­fed­er­ate LOS. Wilkins is an advo­cate of Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion, a the­ol­o­gy that seeks to impose dra­con­ian Old Tes­ta­ment law on civ­il soci­ety.”

League of the South co-founder and board mem­ber Steven J. Wilkins had big plans for the group back in the late 90s/early 2000s. A plan to engage in the under-the-radar cap­ture of Chris­t­ian church­es, with a par­tic­u­lar focus on the Pres­by­ter­ian Church in Amer­i­ca denom­i­na­tion. A plan that has some very inter­est­ing syn­er­gy when paired with the par­al­lel plot by Greg John­son and Ryan Schus­ter to pop­u­lar­ize accel­er­a­tionist white pow­er ide­olo­gies and fig­ures like O9A and David Myatt to a new gen­er­a­tion of extrem­ists. At the same time the Bib­li­cal­ly-ori­ent­ed League of the South was focused on cap­tur­ing church­es, very non-Chris­t­ian white pow­er ide­olo­gies were being pro­mot­ed to the next gen­er­a­tion of young, online white suprema­cists who would be the most inclined to engage in high-pro­file acts of domes­tic ter­ror. We don’t know if there was any coor­di­na­tion in the devl­op­ment and deploy­ment of these par­al­lel strate­gies, but it’s a notable coin­ci­dence that they were hap­pen­ing at rough­ly the same time:

...
The League’s goal, Wilkins has said, is to save Amer­i­ca from “pagan­ism” and restore it as “the last bas­tion of Chris­ten­dom” — a Chris­ten­dom that, in Wilkins’ view, sees slav­ery as “per­fect­ly legit­i­mate.”

Last sum­mer, Wilkins almost caused a rup­ture with­in the Pres­by­ter­ian Church in Amer­i­ca (PCA), a con­ser­v­a­tive South­ern denom­i­na­tion found­ed in 1973 that has more than 300,000 North Amer­i­can mem­bers.

Per­suad­ing 10 church­es to join him, Wilkins called a meet­ing of the PCA’S Louisiana Pres­bytery to con­sid­er the pos­si­ble depar­ture from the PCA of those with “theo­nom­ic” views — the idea that the Bible, not man-made civ­il law, should form the legal basis of soci­ety.

Although the debate was tem­porar­i­ly tabled, PCA offi­cials say that a schism may be immi­nent.
...

And as we can see, this was­n’t just a League of the South plot. This was a Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ist plot fol­low­ing the theo­crat­ic teach­ings of RJ Rush­doony and his son-in-law Gary North. Both promi­nent ear­ly mem­bers of the pow­er­ful Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP). RJ Rush­doony’s 1973 book, The Insti­tutes of Bib­li­cal Law, is basi­cal­ly the recon­struc­tion­ist play­book. Includ­ing a vision for a theo­crat­ic future were those accused of every­thy­ing from heresy, blas­phe­my, witch­craft, astrol­o­gy, adul­tery, homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, or even sex before mar­riage will all face the death penal­ty. Less severe crimes will face pun­ish­ments range from whip­ping to inden­tured servi­tude and slav­ery:

...
Theon­o­mists, and espe­cial­ly Recon­struc­tion­ists, know their views are an anath­e­ma to most Amer­i­cans. Recon­struc­tion­ist ide­o­logue Gary North, in fact, has writ­ten that Recon­struc­tion­ists need “the noise of con­tem­po­rary events” to hide their goals.

“If [non-believ­ers] ful­ly under­stood the long-term threat to their civ­i­liza­tion that our ideas pose, they … would be wise to take steps to crush us.”

...

Dri­ving all of these events is the lit­tle-known the­o­log­i­cal doc­trine of theon­o­my — and, more specif­i­cal­ly, its par­tic­u­lar­ly hard-line vari­ant, Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion. Recon­struc­tion arose out of con­ser­v­a­tive Pres­by­te­ri­an­ism in the ear­ly 1970s.

Its found­ing text is Rousas John Rushdoony’s 1973 book The Insti­tutes of Bib­li­cal Law, an 800-page expli­ca­tion of the Ten Com­mand­ments, the Bib­li­cal case law that sup­pos­ed­ly derives from them and their appli­ca­tion today.

Recon­struc­tion is opposed to mod­ern notions of equal­i­ty, democ­ra­cy and tol­er­ance. A theo­crat­ic soci­ety — in which one brand of reli­gion rules — would be estab­lished and the Con­sti­tu­tion over­turned since, in North’s view, it is “a legal bar­ri­er to Chris­t­ian theoc­ra­cy.”

North says that “plu­ral­ism will be shot to pieces in an ide­o­log­i­cal (and per­haps even lit­er­al) cross­fire.” Those who do not believe as Recon­struc­tion­ists do would find them­selves in a pre­car­i­ous sit­u­a­tion.

“Any­one viewed as Bib­li­cal­ly incor­rect is hereti­cal at best and sub­ject to exe­cu­tion at worst,” said Fred­er­ick Clark­son, an expert on the the­ol­o­gy.

Indeed, exe­cu­tion­ers would be busy in a “recon­struct­ed” soci­ety. North has called pub­licly for the exe­cu­tion of women who have abor­tions. Ston­ing, he has said, would be the prefer­able method because “the imple­ments of exe­cu­tion are avail­able to every­one at vir­tu­al­ly no cost.”

Accord­ing to Clark­son, Rush­doony, who is North’s father-in-law, also sug­gests the death penal­ty be used to pun­ish those guilty of “apos­ta­sy (aban­don­ment of the faith), heresy, blas­phe­my, witch­craft, astrol­o­gy, adul­tery, ‘sodomy or homo­sex­u­al­i­ty,’ incest, strik­ing a par­ent, incor­ri­gi­ble juve­nile delin­quen­cy, and in the case of women, ‘unchasti­ty before mar­riage.’”

Non-cap­i­tal crimes would be sanc­tioned with whip­ping, inden­tured servi­tude or slav­ery.
...

Anoth­er fig­ure of note in this plot is for­mer PCA min­is­ter Joseph More­craft, pro­duced The Coun­sel of Chal­cedon recon­struc­tion­ist jour­nal. Recall how More­craft co-authored a book in 2011 with none oth­er than CNP mem­ber Roy Moore, argu­ing that women should­n’t run for office and crit­i­cized the wom­en’s suf­frage move­ment. The recon­struc­tion­ists are well rep­re­sent­ed at the CNP:

...
In recent years, Wilkins has been build­ing up his Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ist cre­den­tials. He began to pub­lish in a num­ber of Recon­struc­tion­ist jour­nals in the late 1990s, speak­ing as well to sev­er­al the­o­log­i­cal con­fer­ences on the top­ic.

Wilkins also joined the edi­to­r­i­al board of The Coun­sel of Chal­cedon, a jour­nal pro­duced by a theon­o­mist and for­mer PCA min­is­ter, Joseph Moore­craft.

Moore­craft was “encour­aged to leave” the denom­i­na­tion because of his Recon­struc­tion­ist views, accord­ing to Rev. Smartt. And in ear­ly 2001, Wilkins spoke to the con­ven­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion Par­ty, which until last year was the anti-abor­tion U.S. Tax­pay­ers Par­ty.

The Con­sti­tu­tion Par­ty has vir­tu­al­ly the same plat­form and reli­gious ideas as the for­mer par­ty, and it is run most­ly by the same men, many of whom are Recon­struc­tion­ists.

...

In Decem­ber, The Chal­cedon Report, the lead­ing Recon­struc­tion­ist jour­nal that is pub­lished by Rushdoony’s Chal­cedon Foun­da­tion, devot­ed an entire issue, includ­ing a Wilkins piece attack­ing abo­li­tion­ists as “ter­ror­ists,” to “The Civ­il War Revived: Sec­u­lar­ism vs. the South.”

Wilkins’ church hosts semi-annu­al con­fer­ences and Con­fed­er­ate balls that bring to Mon­roe men like LOS Pres­i­dent Hill and Joseph Moore­craft, the Recon­struc­tion­ist the­olo­gian.

Dur­ing these events, Wilkins report­ed­ly demand­ed that con­gre­gants pro­vide lodg­ing for the church vis­i­tors. “They got real pushy about us not putting peo­ple up,” says Kathy Hol­land, a for­mer con­gre­gant.

“They were glar­ing at us from the pul­pit. Wilkins said we were a boil on the body of Christ that sticks out, pops out, pokes out and squirts.”
...

As the piece warned, a key ele­ment of this Recon­struc­tion­ist roadmap is stealth. An embrace of the “hon­or­able and nec­es­sary decep­tion of the wicked”. Which is a reminder that we should­n’t expect to read fol­low up reports about the League’s suc­cess­es:

...
Recon­struc­tion­ism has an explic­it strat­e­gy for infil­trat­ing and tak­ing over church­es. In Crossed Fin­gers: How the Lib­er­als Cap­tured the Pres­by­ter­ian Church, ide­o­logue Gary North pro­vides a road map for how to install the the­ol­o­gy into denom­i­na­tions.

The book exam­ines how “lib­er­als” in the 1930s used the judi­cial struc­tures of the main­line Pres­by­ter­ian Church (PCUSA) to marked­ly change that denom­i­na­tion.

North sug­gests that Recon­struc­tion­ists now use the same judi­cial struc­tures to reverse this lib­er­al vic­to­ry — just as Wilkins and the oth­er League mem­bers did in the case of Pas­tor Wood by bring­ing charges against him through the PCA’S Stand­ing Judi­cial Com­mit­tee. The abort­ed church takeover in York, Ala., also comes to mind when con­sid­er­ing North’s influ­ence on the League.

“That North spent years study­ing the ‘lib­er­al tri­umph’ in main­line Pres­by­te­ri­an­ism illu­mi­nates the scale of what is at stake,” writes Lewis C. Daly in A Moment to Decide, The Cri­sis in Main­stream Pres­by­te­ri­an­ism, pub­lished in May 2000.

“His vision of the future of church his­to­ry is one in which suc­ces­sive main­line denom­i­na­tions are recap­tured using polit­i­cal strat­e­gy and judi­cial pow­er.”

An impor­tant tool of the move­ment is stealth. Theon­o­mists jus­ti­fy this strat­e­gy with a Bib­li­cal sto­ry, “Rahab’s Lie,” of a young woman who lies to pro­tect the lives of Israelite spies in Jeri­cho. In an arti­cle post­ed on the web site of Wilkins’ church, Dea­con Kevin Bran­son prais­es Rahab as “a spir­i­tu­al hero” because “she deceived the wicked who sought to kill God’s own peo­ple.”

Bran­son said he writes about Rahab because “some of us don’t have a clue about hon­or­able and nec­es­sary decep­tion of the wicked.” His con­clu­sion is that “some­times God requires that we offer by way of our right hand a sweep­ing sword, and from our lips decep­tion, that the wicked might fail, and Christ and His Bride might flour­ish.”
...

And as we can see, the ide­al Bil­bi­cal soci­ety of these recon­struc­tion­ists just so hap­pened to be the Con­fed­er­ate South. In fact, “Amer­i­can slav­ery was per­haps the most benev­o­lent slav­ery that has ever exist­ed in the his­to­ry of the world,” accord­ing to Wilkins. The Civ­il War was­n’t about slav­ery. It was about the North’s hatred of Scrip­ture. That’s the nature of this stealth move­ment to take over Chris­t­ian church­es. The goal of not just recre­at­ing the Con­fed­er­a­cy but impos­ing that kind of soci­ety on the entire Unit­ed States:

...
League thinkers offer their own dis­tinc­tive spin on theon­o­my and Recon­struc­tion. They invoke a par­tic­u­lar­ly South­ern view of his­to­ry that is increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar in Recon­struc­tion­ist pub­li­ca­tions, espe­cial­ly The Coun­sel of Chal­cedon.

In these arti­cles, Wilkins, among oth­ers, argues that the South was the only part of the Unit­ed States to remain true to the Bible. The North, he says, aban­doned true Chris­tian­i­ty and became a hereti­cal soci­ety.

It was this the­o­log­i­cal divide, and not slav­ery, that led to the Civ­il War, Wilkins argues. He also sees slav­ery as sanc­tioned by the Bible. Besides, “Amer­i­can slav­ery was per­haps the most benev­o­lent slav­ery that has ever exist­ed in the his­to­ry of the world,” Wilkins told The Coun­sel of Chal­cedon in 1997.

“Their pur­pose [North­ern­ers] was not mere­ly to destroy slav­ery and its evils but to destroy South­ern cul­ture,” he alleged. “There was a rad­i­cal hatred of Scrip­ture and the old the­ol­o­gy, which they felt were so bad for the coun­try. They saw the South as the embod­i­ment of all they hat­ed. Thus, the north­ern rad­i­cals were try­ing to throw off this Bib­li­cal cul­ture and turn the coun­try in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion.”

Wilkins also dis­cussed LOS, then known as the South­ern League.

“We believe the South was the last bas­tion of Chris­ten­dom,” Wilkins said in the journal’s inter­view. “We want the prin­ci­ples upon which the South stood to be embraced again by the entire coun­try. We want, not only the South, but the whole union to rise again from the pagan­ism that present­ly pre­vails.”

“Our goal is to rebuild on the ruins and see this lost civ­i­liza­tion restored again by the grace of God. This is the goal of the South­ern Her­itage Soci­ety [an arm of Wilkins’ Auburn Avenue church] as well as the South­ern League.”
...

Last­ly, as we prob­a­bly should have expect­ed, anoth­er big part of this the­ol­o­gy is the pre­dic­tion of the col­lapse of gov­ern­ments, race wars, and end-times anar­chy. Which makes this a good time to recall that the over­ar­ch­ing goal of accel­er­a­tionist groups like Atom­waf­fen is to trig­ger the col­lapse of gov­ern­ments, race wars, and gen­er­al fas­cist anar­chy. The syn­er­gy is hard to ignore:

...
Wilkins, add some for­mer and present church mem­bers, spends much time dis­cussing the com­ing end-times anar­chy, a sit­u­a­tion that will involve a gov­ern­ment crash or even a race war. They say that church elders in late 1999 were so con­cerned about a Y2K crash that they stocked the church base­ment with sup­plies.

It is per­haps no coin­ci­dence that one of the country’s major founts of Y2K para­noia was none oth­er than Gary North, the Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ist ide­o­logue.

Race War and Chil­dren

“They believe either a race war will hap­pen or the gov­ern­ment will col­lapse,” Michael Hol­land, a for­mer Auburn Avenue mem­ber who has left the con­gre­ga­tion, said in an inter­view. “They said you have to fight for what you believe in.”

The church actu­al­ly want­ed con­gre­gants to become phys­i­cal­ly pre­pared for the end-times bat­tle, adds Roger Carter, a dis­grun­tled con­gre­gant. “They liked the idea of a strong body, in case we’d ever have to fight.”
...

So how suc­cess­ful was this stealth cam­paign to cap­ture the con­gre­ga­tions of the PCA? Well, Wilkin­s’s cam­paign to cap­ture the PCA turned to be rather con­tro­ver­sial for the denom­i­na­tion and, by 2008, Wilkin­s’s the­ol­o­gy was deemed to be out of step with the teach­ings of the PCA. That year, his con­gre­ga­tion, Auburn Avenue Pres­by­ter­ian Church, vot­ed to leave the PCA while keep­ing Wilkins as their pas­tor. Instead, they joined the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Reformed Evan­gel­i­cal Church­es (CREC).

CREC: Doug Wilson’s Pro-Slavery Religious Empire

Take a guess what the the­olog of CREC. It’s not a dif­fi­cult guess. The Con­fed­er­a­tion of Reformed Evan­gel­i­cal Church­es is essen­tial­ly the denom­i­na­tion Steven Wilkins was try­ing to turn the PCA into. A recon­struc­tion­ist and pro-slav­ery the­ol­o­gy. That the the­ol­o­gy ani­mat­ing the still-grow­ing reli­gious empire of Doug Wil­son, an Ida­ho-based pas­tor behind CREC, a denom­i­na­tion with con­gre­ga­tions around the US, includ­ing a con­gre­ga­tion near Nashville, TN, where cur­rent Sec­re­tary of Defense Pete Hegseth is a mem­ber. Yes, the cur­rent Sec­re­tary of Defense of the Unit­ed States hap­pens to be a mem­ber of Doug Wilson’s Con­fed­er­a­tion of Reformed Evan­gel­i­cals, a reli­gious move­ment that is effec­tive­ly the man­i­fes­tion of the League of the South’s neo-Con­fed­er­ate Recon­struc­tion­ist Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist ide­ol­o­gy.

Wilson’s influ­ence does­n’t end with Sec­re­tary of Defense Hegseth. As we’re going to see, Wil­son was even invit­ed to give a speech back in Sep­tem­ber 2023 in Wash­ing­ton DC at an event that also includ­ed a speech by none oth­er than Russ Vought, the key CNP archi­tect behind the Project 2025. Recall how Vought noto­ri­ous gave speech­es at his own Project 2025 ‘think tank’, the Cen­ter for Renew­ing Amer­i­ca, where he described his desire to use Project 2025 to “inflict trau­ma” on the fed­er­al work­force. Vought has since replaced Elon Musk as the head of the Depart­ment of Gov­ern­ment Effi­cien­cy (DOGE). That’s who Doug Wil­son shared the stage with in 2023. This is a move­ment with its hands on the high­est levers of pow­er.

And as the fol­low­ing SPLC piece from 2004 describes, Doug Wil­son has­n’t hid his gross racist Chris­t­ian ide­ol­o­gy at all. In fact, he co-authored a book, South­ern Slav­ery, As It Was, with Steven Wilkins, where Wil­son and Wilkins argue that the Con­fed­er­a­cy was actu­al­ly liv­ing in accor­dance with the Bible. Also, slav­ery was­n’t just per­fect­ly accept­able. It was har­mo­nious. And all in keep­ing with the teach­ings of the Bible. That’s Doug Wilson’s the­ol­o­gy. A bib­li­cal defense of slav­ery, pub­lished in 1996. In oth­er words, Wil­son and Wilkins were already close work­ing allies dur­ing the peri­od the LOS attempt­ing its PCA takeover. That takeover may not have suc­ceed­ed. But, near­ly three decades lat­er, with Wil­son giv­ing speech­es in DC in front of the audi­ences that are now lead­ing Project 2025, it’s hard to argue they failed.

But, again, this isn’t just impor­tant back­ground infor­ma­tion for under­stand­ing the nature of the pow­er net­work oper­at­ing at the high­est lev­els of the sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion. The rise of Doug Wilson’s League of the South-inspired reli­gious empire is key con­text for appre­ci­at­ing the larg­er sto­ry of Joshua Caleb Sut­ter’s dement­ed role as the world’s lead­ing Nazi Satan­ic pub­lish­er. Because, as we just saw above, when Sut­ter was arrest­ed in 2003 he was arrest­ed for plot­ting a Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty domes­tic ter­ror attack. An attack that, had it suc­ceed­ed, would have been the lat­est in a string of Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty-based domes­tic ter­ror attacks that includ­ed the 1995 Okla­homa City Bomb­ing and the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bomb­ing. Right-wing domes­tic ter­ror in the US was pri­mar­i­ly Chris­tian­i­ty-based. But not any­more, thanks, in part, to the efforts of Josh Sut­ter. Along with Greg John­son, Ryan Schus­ter, and the rest of the white pow­er fig­ures who set out to pop­u­lar­ize accel­er­a­tionist nihilis­tic Satan­ic Nazism. A par­al­lel rise of accel­er­a­tionist Nazi domes­tic ter­ror at the same time the neo-Con­fed­er­ate theocrats allied with the League of the South engage in a his­toric pow­er grab in DC in part­ner­ship with the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. That’s the over­ar­ch­ing sto­ry we’re going to be look­ing at in the rest of this post. The rise of Doug Wilson’s CREC is dou­bles as the long-term vic­to­ry of the League of the South and their CNP Recon­struc­tion­ist fel­low trav­el­ers:

South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter

Doug Wilson’s Reli­gious Empire Expand­ing in the North­west

While host­ing a con­fer­ence fea­tur­ing his defense of South­ern Slav­ery, Dou­glas Wil­son expos­es the rad­i­cal­ism of his grow­ing ‘Chris­t­ian’ empire.

Mark Potok
April 20, 2004

MOSCOW, Ida­ho — The fliers showed up one day last fall, scat­tered around the sprawl­ing cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ida­ho at Moscow and look­ing for all the world like a rou­tine adver­tise­ment for a cou­ple of vis­it­ing schol­ars.

“Meet the Authors!” the one-page announce­ments shout­ed, refer­ring read­ers to an upcom­ing Feb­ru­ary con­fer­ence on cam­pus that would be fea­tur­ing speak­ers Dou­glas Wil­son and Steven Wilkins, the co-authors of South­ern Slav­ery, As It Was. There fol­lowed five excerpt­ed “high­lights” from their book.

“Slav­ery as it exist­ed in the South ... was a rela­tion­ship based upon mutu­al affec­tion and con­fi­dence,” the excerpts read in part. “There has nev­er been a mul­tira­cial soci­ety which has exist­ed with such mutu­al inti­ma­cy and har­mo­ny in the his­to­ry of the world. ...

“Slave life was to them [slaves] a life of plen­ty, of sim­ple plea­sures, of food, clothes, and good med­ical care.”

This fli­er was no adver­tise­ment. It was a call to arms.

In the months that fol­lowed, sparked by the fliers anony­mous­ly dis­trib­uted by antiracist activists, an uproar erupt­ed that con­vulsed the cam­pus, the town, and even the com­mu­ni­ty around Wash­ing­ton State Uni­ver­si­ty, anoth­er huge school some eight miles away in Pull­man, Wash.

Before it was over, the pres­i­dents of both uni­ver­si­ties had con­demned Wil­son and Wilkins’ book in unspar­ing terms, dozens of news­pa­per arti­cles, edi­to­ri­als, adver­tise­ments and let­ters to the edi­tor had been print­ed, major demon­stra­tions had been held, new antiracist groups had formed, and a whole array of counter-events had been orga­nized for the Wilson/Wilkins event.

...

The rea­son for the pow­er­ful reac­tion was­n’t just that the two men had writ­ten a repul­sive apolo­gia for slav­ery and the ante­bel­lum South. More impor­tant was the fact that one of them, Doug Wil­son, had been in Moscow for 30 years.

And dur­ing those three decades, large­ly beneath the radar of his neigh­bors, Wil­son had built a far-flung, far-right reli­gious empire that includ­ed a col­lege, an array of low­er schools, an entire denom­i­na­tion of church­es, and more.

At the same time, with long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor Wilkins, Wil­son was devel­op­ing a the­ol­o­gy that mar­ried an enthu­si­as­tic endorse­ment of the ante­bel­lum South with ideas of reli­gious gov­ern­ment — an ide­ol­o­gy now at the cen­ter of the neo-Con­fed­er­ate move­ment.

...

Back to the Future

The racism and sor­ry schol­ar­ship that informed South­ern Slav­ery, As It Was — and that set off the recent hul­la­baloo in Ida­ho — did not spring full-blown from the minds of Doug Wil­son and Steve Wilkins. In fact, these ideas were born long before.

Dur­ing the 1960s, as part of a back­lash against the civ­il rights move­ment, a the­olo­gian named Gregg Singer redis­cov­ered the work of Robert L. Dab­ney, the chap­lain to Civ­il War Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jack­son. Soon, he was joined by anoth­er far-right the­olo­gian, Rousas John Rush­doony, who also came across Dab­ney, a man who had spent the 30 years after the Civ­il War pop­u­lar­iz­ing the idea that the “god­ly” South had been vic­tim­ized by god­less Yan­kees.

Both Singer and Rush­doony admired Dab­ney’s ideas, which includ­ed a view of the South as a reli­gious­ly ordered soci­ety, an “ortho­dox” Chris­t­ian rem­nant in a nation increas­ing­ly over­tak­en by ratio­nal­ist and anti-reli­gious thought.

Dab­ney’s vir­u­lent racism — he saw blacks as a “moral­ly infe­ri­or race,” a “sor­did, alien taint” marked by “lying, theft, drunk­en­ness, lazi­ness, waste” — also sup­port­ed Rush­doony’s dis­like for the civ­il rights move­ment and ongo­ing deseg­re­ga­tion. Dab­ney explic­it­ly defend­ed slav­ery as god­ly, a theme Wil­son and Wilkins would lat­er repeat.

In 1973, Rush­doony pub­lished Insti­tutes of Bib­li­cal Law, a book that estab­lished him as the found­ing thinker of a rad­i­cal the­ol­o­gy that came to be known as Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion.

The book fleshed out Rush­doony’s vision of a soci­ety “recon­struct­ed” along Old Tes­ta­ment lines — a world in which reli­gious gov­er­nors would mete out bib­li­cal pun­ish­ments like the ston­ing to death of gays, adul­ter­ess­es, “incor­ri­gi­ble” chil­dren and many oth­ers. Rely­ing on a lit­er­al read­ing of the Bible, Rush­doony espoused a soci­ety of class­es with dif­fer­ing rights, opposed inter­ra­cial mar­riage, and scoffed at egal­i­tar­i­an­ism.

Even Ralph Reed, then the high­ly con­ser­v­a­tive exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Chris­t­ian Coali­tion, warned that Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion rep­re­sent­ed a threat to the “most basic lib­er­ties ... of a free soci­ety.”

Rush­doony also devel­oped a strate­gic plan. The most effec­tive way of imple­ment­ing his vision, he said, would be to devel­op Chris­t­ian home­school­ing and pri­vate schools in order to train up a gen­er­a­tion to take the reins of soci­ety. So vig­or­ous was his pur­suit of this strat­e­gy that Rush­doony would even­tu­al­ly come to be known to many as the father of the Chris­t­ian home­school­ing move­ment.

It was an excit­ing time for Rush­doony. Some of his prin­ci­pal co-reli­gion­ists and fol­low­ers became active in the 1970s, and his influ­ence began to extend to some of Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing evan­gel­i­cal church­es.

And it marked the start of an impor­tant col­lab­o­ra­tion between peo­ple who viewed them­selves as “ortho­dox Chris­tians” and “Con­fed­er­ate nation­al­ists,” a merg­ing of the theo­crat­ic idea of reli­gious gov­ern­ment and a view of the 19th-cen­tu­ry Con­fed­er­ate cause as fun­da­men­tal­ly right.

Build­ing a Move­ment

In Moscow, Ida­ho, a South­ern-born recent grad­u­ate of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ida­ho was work­ing as song leader in the town’s Christ Church. In 1977, just as Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion was pick­ing up momen­tum nation­al­ly, Doug Wil­son gave a ser­mon for the for­mer pas­tor at his church, who had just moved away. That ser­mon led to a per­ma­nent job, and Wil­son to this day remains leader of Christ Church.

Over the fol­low­ing decades, Wil­son built up an empire. He cre­at­ed the Logos School in Moscow, a pri­vate Chris­t­ian acad­e­my that is a tem­plate for Wilson’s “clas­si­cal schools” move­ment and instructs stu­dents in Greek and Latin.

He formed the Asso­ci­a­tion of Clas­si­cal and Chris­t­ian Schools as a kind of accred­it­ing agency for such schools and, since then, some 165 schools with cur­ricu­lums sim­i­lar to that of Logos have been start­ed around the coun­try.

Many of them, along with thou­sands of home­school­ers, order their books from yet anoth­er Moscow-based Wil­son cre­ation, Canon Press. The firm has pub­lished and sells 31 books by Wil­son.

Wil­son also helped start the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Reformed Evan­gel­i­cals (CRE), the denom­i­na­tion that includes Christ Church and some 20 oth­er church­es with sim­i­lar ideas. At his own church, Wil­son cre­at­ed a three-year train­ing pro­gram for min­is­ters, Greyfri­ars Hall.

Grad­u­ates, who must promise to engage in “cul­tur­al ref­or­ma­tion,” have start­ed sev­er­al church­es around the coun­try.

And, in 1994, Wilson’s Christ Church found­ed New Saint Andrews Col­lege, a Moscow insti­tu­tion that teach­es Wilson’s brand of Chris­tian­i­ty and now has an enroll­ment of about 120 stu­dents. (On its Web site, the col­lege treats Rush­doony and Dab­ney as foun­da­tion­al thinkers on the order of Pla­to and Aris­to­tle.)

Many Moscow res­i­dents say the col­lege, like Wilson’s Logos School and Christ Church, also has shown a strong taste for the Con­fed­er­a­cy, with paint­ings of Civ­il War Con­fed­er­ate heroes and the like. Some par­ents have report­ed that Logos School cel­e­brates the birth­day of Gen. Robert E. Lee, anoth­er hero in the Con­fed­er­ate pan­theon.

The same year that Christ Church kicked off New Saint Andrews, anoth­er orga­ni­za­tion with a lik­ing for things Con­fed­er­ate was in the works. In Alaba­ma, a col­lege pro­fes­sor named Michael Hill found­ed what would come to be called the League of the South. The league quick­ly adopt­ed rad­i­cal posi­tions such as call­ing for a sec­ond South­ern seces­sion as dis­putes over the Con­fed­er­ate bat­tle flag heat­ed up around the South.

With Hill, a found­ing league direc­tor was Steven Wilkins, a man who already had been host­ing Con­fed­er­ate her­itage con­fer­ences for years (and still runs the R.L. Dab­ney Cen­ter for The­o­log­i­cal Stud­ies out of his church).

It was­n’t long before the League of the South became more or less open­ly racist. Hill said his aim was the “revi­tal­iza­tion of gen­er­al Euro­pean hege­mo­ny” in the South. The league went on record as offi­cial­ly oppos­ing inter­ra­cial mar­riage.

...

The league was theo­crat­ic from the start, with Hill argu­ing pub­licly for a restruc­tur­ing of the South as a “Chris­t­ian repub­lic” — a place where oth­ers might live, but only if they acknowl­edged and obeyed the rules of his reli­gion.

He assert­ed that the South was fun­da­men­tal­ly “Anglo-Celtic” and ought to remain that way. And he explic­it­ly reject­ed egal­i­tar­i­an­ism as “Jacobin” and argued for a soci­ety com­posed of class­es with dif­fer­ing legal rights — all ideas extreme­ly sim­i­lar to those of Rush­doony.

Devel­op­ing these con­cepts, and adding his rev­er­ence for Dab­ney to the mix, was Wilkins, the pas­tor of Auburn Avenue Pres­by­ter­ian Church in Mon­roe, La., and a close friend to Hill — some­thing empha­sized by Hill’s move to Mon­roe for sev­er­al years end­ing in 2003.

With his sym­pa­thy for the Con­fed­er­a­cy, his admi­ra­tion of Dab­ney’s ideas, and a bent toward theoc­ra­cy, Wilkins became a lead­ing reli­gious ide­o­logue of the league — a group that today claims 15,000 mem­bers orga­nized into 87 chap­ters in 16 states — and the larg­er neo-Con­fed­er­ate move­ment.

By the mid-’90s, Wilkins also had become a close col­lab­o­ra­tor and fel­low ide­o­logue of Wilson’s.

“Col­lab­o­ra­tion between the Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ist move­ment and the League of the South has ... increased,” wrote schol­ars Edward Sebesta and Euan Hague in a 2002 study of Dab­ney and the neo-Con­fed­er­ates, “evi­denc­ing a grow­ing over­lap in the his­tor­i­cal, polit­i­cal and the­o­log­i­cal per­spec­tives of par­tic­i­pants in both orga­ni­za­tions.

“This indi­cates a con­fla­tion of con­ser­v­a­tive, neo-Con­fed­er­ate and Chris­t­ian nation­alisms into a potent rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of Unit­ed States his­to­ry, one cen­tered upon the the­sis that the Con­fed­er­ate states were a bas­tion of ortho­dox Chris­tian­i­ty stand­ing in the face of the hereti­cal Union states.”

...

But Are They Recon­struc­tion­ists?

As the Ida­ho con­tro­ver­sy reached a fever pitch, Wil­son flat­ly denied that he was a Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ist. That move­ment, he told a reporter, was “dead.”

But while Wil­son may have slight dif­fer­ences with one or anoth­er Recon­struc­tion­ist, it is false that the move­ment is dead — and not true that Wil­son is no part of it.

In fact, Wilson’s the­ol­o­gy is in most ways indis­tin­guish­able from basic tenets of Recon­struc­tion. And, going back to the 1990s, both he and co-reli­gion­ist Steven Wilkins have been tight­ly linked to Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing Recon­struc­tion­ists.

In the ear­ly 1990s, Wilkins began host­ing annu­al Con­fed­er­ate her­itage con­fer­ences in Mon­roe. With­in a few years, Wil­son was a reg­u­lar speak­er.

These con­fer­ences also fea­tured some of the lead­ing lights of Recon­struc­tion, includ­ing Otto Scott; George Grant, a lead­ing speak­er at Wilson’s 2004 con­fer­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ida­ho; Lar­ry Pratt, a gun rights rad­i­cal who had to step down as co-chair of Pat Buchanan’s 1996 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign because of his links to white suprema­cists; Joe More­craft III; and Howard Phillips, founder of the U.S. Tax­pay­ers Par­ty, rein­car­nat­ed as the Con­sti­tu­tion Par­ty in 2000, both of them shot through with strong Recon­struc­tion­ist ele­ments.

Sim­i­lar­ly, Wil­son and his jour­nal, Credenda/Agenda, began host­ing “his­to­ry” con­fer­ences in the mid-1990s that high­light­ed Wilkins and Recon­struc­tion­ists like Grant. (Grant is a Ten­nessee anti-abor­tion activist and for­mer state leader of the U.S. Tax­pay­ers Par­ty.)

...

In 1996, the two men wrote their South­ern Slav­ery, As It Was — a full-throat­ed endorse­ment of the views of Dab­ney and the Recon­struc­tion­ists on slav­ery and the Civ­il War.

Credenda/Agenda is also linked to the Coali­tion on Revival (COR), a far-right Chris­t­ian group, formed in 1982, that has mixed key Recon­struc­tion­ist ide­o­logues like Rush­doony, Gary North (Rush­doony’s son-in-law), Gary DeMar, David Chilton and More­craft with more main­stream Chris­t­ian Right hard-lin­ers.

COR’s Web site still car­ries links to Credenda/Agenda — which was inau­gu­rat­ed as a Christ church min­istry in 1988 — and a num­ber of Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ist Web sites.

‘Over­throw­ing Sec­u­lar­ism’

Wilkins and Wil­son have togeth­er prob­a­bly done more than any oth­ers to con­struct the the­ol­o­gy now ani­mat­ing much of the neo-Con­fed­er­ate move­ment. But there is more to their ide­ol­o­gy than a defense of the South and slav­ery.

In his volu­mi­nous and often tedious writ­ings, Wil­son lays out an array of hard-right beliefs, many of them relat­ed to fam­i­ly and sex­u­al mat­ters. Over­all, he told con­gre­gants last year, his goal is “the over­throw of unbe­lief and sec­u­lar­ism.”

The world as Wil­son sees it is divid­ed not by race but by reli­gion — bib­li­cal Chris­tians ver­sus all oth­ers. As he says in one of his books, “[I]f nei­ther par­ent believes in Jesus Christ, then the chil­dren are foul — unclean.”

“Gov­ern­ment schools” are god­less pro­pa­gan­da fac­to­ries teach­ing sec­u­lar­ism, ratio­nal­ism, and worse. Wilson’s con­gre­gants are instruct­ed to send their chil­dren to pri­vate Chris­t­ian schools (like the one he start­ed) or to home-school them.

Woman “was cre­at­ed to be depen­dent and respon­sive to a man,” Wil­son writes. Fem­i­nists seek “to rob women of their beau­ty in sub­mis­sion.” Women should only be allowed to date or “court” with their father’s per­mis­sion — and then, if they are Chris­t­ian, only with oth­er Chris­tians.

If a woman is raped, the rapist should pay the father a bride price and then, if the father approves, mar­ry his vic­tim.

Homo­sex­u­als, Wil­son says, are “sodomites,” “peo­ple with foul sex­u­al habits.” But the bib­li­cal pun­ish­ment for homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is not nec­es­sar­i­ly death, Wil­son says in try­ing to dis­tance him­self from Recon­struc­tion. Exile is anoth­er pos­si­bil­i­ty.

Curs­ing one’s par­ents is “deserv­ing of pun­ish­ment by death,” Wil­son adds. “Parental fail­ure is not a defense.” And Chris­t­ian par­ents, by the way, “need not be afraid to lay it on” when spank­ing, he says.

Indeed, “god­ly dis­ci­pline” would include spank­ing 2‑year-old chil­dren for such “sins” as whin­ing. (On a sim­i­lar note, Dab­ney called oppo­si­tion to whip­ping wrong­do­ing slaves “God­less human­i­tar­i­an­ism.”)

Scrip­ture does not for­bid inter­ra­cial mar­riage, Wil­son says. But “wise par­ents” will care­ful­ly weigh any union involv­ing “extreme­ly diverse cul­tur­al back­grounds.”

Wilkins summed up many of his and Wilson’s ideas in 1997, when he told The Coun­sel of Chal­cedon, a Recon­struc­tion­ist jour­nal edit­ed by More­craft, that he want­ed “the prin­ci­ples upon which the South stood” rein­stat­ed.

These ideas, tak­en togeth­er with the unusu­al his­tor­i­cal views expressed by Wilkins and Wil­son, are crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant. Recon­struc­tion­ist com­men­ta­tor James Wes­ley Stiv­er said as much in a recent essay, describ­ing Wil­son, Wilkins and George Grant — the three main speak­ers at Wilson’s Uni­ver­si­ty of Ida­ho con­fer­ence this Feb­ru­ary — as part of a “Celtic sun­rise” with­in Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion.

Here Comes the Sun

Is Doug Wil­son work­ing toward a theoc­ra­cy?

Cer­tain­ly, some of his close friends are. George Grant, the Ten­nessean who Wil­son has repeat­ed­ly invit­ed to give speech­es at his his­to­ry con­fer­ences, once described his goals as “world con­quest,” accord­ing a 1998 arti­cle in the jour­nal Rea­son.

...

As the Feb­ru­ary con­fer­ence approached, Wil­son tried hard to dis­tance him­self from sug­ges­tions that he was inter­est­ed in such a “takeover” of soci­ety, not­ing that his the­ol­o­gy favored the “regen­er­a­tion” of per­sons first and say­ing that he was not inter­est­ed in sec­u­lar pow­er.

He told a reporter that only far in the future, per­haps “500 years” from now, could he envi­sion any kind of Chris­t­ian repub­lic.

That may be. But there is no ques­tion that Wil­son is work­ing toward his the­o­log­i­cal goals right now, with deter­mi­na­tion and in very sub­stan­tial ways.

Today, Wil­son and Christ Church are expand­ing, buy­ing up prop­er­ties around down­town Moscow, and many in the region fear that it will soon become a dom­i­nant force in the area.

The church, with a con­gre­ga­tion that has now reached about 800, also hosts sev­er­al major con­fer­ences every year — includ­ing “his­to­ry” con­fer­ences such as the one that attract­ed almost 850 peo­ple this Feb­ru­ary.

...

Wil­son, whose shod­dy schol­ar­ship in South­ern Slav­ery, As It Was had ear­li­er been attacked by two Uni­ver­si­ty of Ida­ho his­to­ri­ans in a paper enti­tled “South­ern Slav­ery, As It Was­n’t,” mocked “into­lerista” aca­d­e­mics at his Feb­ru­ary con­fer­ence.

Wil­son also offered a tepid crit­i­cism of Dab­ney’s racism, but watered even that down by assert­ing North­ern racism was worse than that of the South. “I con­demn the racism of Dab­ney,” he added sar­cas­ti­cal­ly, “and the racism of Abra­ham Lin­coln, [Planned Par­ent­hood founder] Mar­garet Sanger, Charles Dar­win and Ted Kennedy.”

Out­side the Stu­dent Union where Wilson’s con­fer­ence was held, some 350 stu­dents and oth­ers demon­strat­ed against the gath­er­ing. Uni­ver­si­ty offi­cials host­ed antiracist speak­ers, and antiracist lit­er­a­ture was dis­trib­uted. Radio sta­tions, stu­dent news­pa­pers and media from as far away as Seat­tle came to cov­er the events.

Wil­son was defi­ant through­out, por­tray­ing his crit­ics as small-mind­ed and inca­pable of hon­est schol­ar­ly inquiry. What he did not do was make clear exact­ly what his goals are as he con­tin­ues to expand his reli­gious empire.

But he offered a sub­stan­tial clue last Dec. 28, when, in the midst of the con­tro­ver­sy, he gave a ser­mon dis­cussing evan­ge­lis­tic “war­fare” to his con­gre­ga­tion.

Good Chris­tians, he said, need­ed to look for “deci­sive points” in soci­ety, places that are both “strate­gic and fea­si­ble” tar­gets to be “tak­en.” New York City, for instance, is strate­gic but not fea­si­ble — too many god­less lib­er­als. Oth­er places are fea­si­ble but not strate­gic — unim­por­tant places in the the­o­log­i­cal wars that Wil­son fore­sees.

“But,” Dou­glas Wil­son added in an upbeat note that day, “small towns with major uni­ver­si­ties (Moscow and Pull­man, say) are both.” And that, say many res­i­dents of the Palouse, is what has them so fright­ened.

———–

“Doug Wilson’s Reli­gious Empire Expand­ing in the North­west” by Mark Potok; South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter; 04/20/2004

“At the same time, with long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor Wilkins, Wil­son was devel­op­ing a the­ol­o­gy that mar­ried an enthu­si­as­tic endorse­ment of the ante­bel­lum South with ideas of reli­gious gov­ern­ment — an ide­ol­o­gy now at the cen­ter of the neo-Con­fed­er­ate move­ment.”

Doug Wil­son and long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor Steve Wilkins weren’t just co-devel­op­ing a Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ist the­ol­o­gy. They were mar­ry­ing that the­ol­o­gy to the neo-Con­fed­er­ate move­ment. That’s the key con­text of their pub­li­ca­tion of South­ern Slav­ery, As It Was. This was neo-Con­fed­er­ate Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ism and effec­tive­ly a call for a return to white suprema­cy and slav­ery. And as this 2004 SPLC report describes, the pub­li­ca­tion of South­ern Slav­ery, As It Was was seen as par­tic­u­lar­ly threat­en­ing to the res­i­dents of Moscow, Ida­ho, since that’s where Wil­son has been build­ing a Recon­struc­tion­ist empire since the 1970s. And this report is from over two decades ago. Wil­son has been build­ing this theo­crat­ic empire for five decades at this point. Back in 2004, the short-term goal was tak­ing con­trol of small col­lege towns like Moscow, Ida­ho. As we’re going to see, those short-term goals have expand­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly under the sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion:

...
“Meet the Authors!” the one-page announce­ments shout­ed, refer­ring read­ers to an upcom­ing Feb­ru­ary con­fer­ence on cam­pus that would be fea­tur­ing speak­ers Dou­glas Wil­son and Steven Wilkins, the co-authors of South­ern Slav­ery, As It Was. There fol­lowed five excerpt­ed “high­lights” from their book.

“Slav­ery as it exist­ed in the South ... was a rela­tion­ship based upon mutu­al affec­tion and con­fi­dence,” the excerpts read in part. “There has nev­er been a mul­tira­cial soci­ety which has exist­ed with such mutu­al inti­ma­cy and har­mo­ny in the his­to­ry of the world. ...

“Slave life was to them [slaves] a life of plen­ty, of sim­ple plea­sures, of food, clothes, and good med­ical care.”

This fli­er was no adver­tise­ment. It was a call to arms.

In the months that fol­lowed, sparked by the fliers anony­mous­ly dis­trib­uted by antiracist activists, an uproar erupt­ed that con­vulsed the cam­pus, the town, and even the com­mu­ni­ty around Wash­ing­ton State Uni­ver­si­ty, anoth­er huge school some eight miles away in Pull­man, Wash.

Before it was over, the pres­i­dents of both uni­ver­si­ties had con­demned Wil­son and Wilkins’ book in unspar­ing terms, dozens of news­pa­per arti­cles, edi­to­ri­als, adver­tise­ments and let­ters to the edi­tor had been print­ed, major demon­stra­tions had been held, new antiracist groups had formed, and a whole array of counter-events had been orga­nized for the Wilson/Wilkins event.

...

The rea­son for the pow­er­ful reac­tion was­n’t just that the two men had writ­ten a repul­sive apolo­gia for slav­ery and the ante­bel­lum South. More impor­tant was the fact that one of them, Doug Wil­son, had been in Moscow for 30 years.

And dur­ing those three decades, large­ly beneath the radar of his neigh­bors, Wil­son had built a far-flung, far-right reli­gious empire that includ­ed a col­lege, an array of low­er schools, an entire denom­i­na­tion of church­es, and more.

...

As the Feb­ru­ary con­fer­ence approached, Wil­son tried hard to dis­tance him­self from sug­ges­tions that he was inter­est­ed in such a “takeover” of soci­ety, not­ing that his the­ol­o­gy favored the “regen­er­a­tion” of per­sons first and say­ing that he was not inter­est­ed in sec­u­lar pow­er.

He told a reporter that only far in the future, per­haps “500 years” from now, could he envi­sion any kind of Chris­t­ian repub­lic.

That may be. But there is no ques­tion that Wil­son is work­ing toward his the­o­log­i­cal goals right now, with deter­mi­na­tion and in very sub­stan­tial ways.

Today, Wil­son and Christ Church are expand­ing, buy­ing up prop­er­ties around down­town Moscow, and many in the region fear that it will soon become a dom­i­nant force in the area.

The church, with a con­gre­ga­tion that has now reached about 800, also hosts sev­er­al major con­fer­ences every year — includ­ing “his­to­ry” con­fer­ences such as the one that attract­ed almost 850 peo­ple this Feb­ru­ary.

...

Wil­son was defi­ant through­out, por­tray­ing his crit­ics as small-mind­ed and inca­pable of hon­est schol­ar­ly inquiry. What he did not do was make clear exact­ly what his goals are as he con­tin­ues to expand his reli­gious empire.

But he offered a sub­stan­tial clue last Dec. 28, when, in the midst of the con­tro­ver­sy, he gave a ser­mon dis­cussing evan­ge­lis­tic “war­fare” to his con­gre­ga­tion.

Good Chris­tians, he said, need­ed to look for “deci­sive points” in soci­ety, places that are both “strate­gic and fea­si­ble” tar­gets to be “tak­en.” New York City, for instance, is strate­gic but not fea­si­ble — too many god­less lib­er­als. Oth­er places are fea­si­ble but not strate­gic — unim­por­tant places in the the­o­log­i­cal wars that Wil­son fore­sees.

“But,” Dou­glas Wil­son added in an upbeat note that day, “small towns with major uni­ver­si­ties (Moscow and Pull­man, say) are both.” And that, say many res­i­dents of the Palouse, is what has them so fright­ened.
...

But it’s impor­tant to note that the fusion of Bil­bli­cal Recon­struc­tion­ism and the neo-Con­fed­er­ate move­ment was­n’t some­thing new. Wil­son and Wilkins were basi­cal­ly extend­ing the the­ol­o­gy pre­vi­ous­ly espoused by fig­ures like ear­ly CNP board mem­ber RJ Rush­doony. Recall how Rush­doony and his son-in-law Gary North (also a CNP mem­ber) are both open advo­cates of the con­cept of Bib­li­cal slav­ery. So it should come as no sur­prise to read how Rush­dooney admired the works of Robert L. Dab­ney, the chap­lain to Civ­il War Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jack­son:

...
The racism and sor­ry schol­ar­ship that informed South­ern Slav­ery, As It Was — and that set off the recent hul­la­baloo in Ida­ho — did not spring full-blown from the minds of Doug Wil­son and Steve Wilkins. In fact, these ideas were born long before.

Dur­ing the 1960s, as part of a back­lash against the civ­il rights move­ment, a the­olo­gian named Gregg Singer redis­cov­ered the work of Robert L. Dab­ney, the chap­lain to Civ­il War Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jack­son. Soon, he was joined by anoth­er far-right the­olo­gian, Rousas John Rush­doony, who also came across Dab­ney, a man who had spent the 30 years after the Civ­il War pop­u­lar­iz­ing the idea that the “god­ly” South had been vic­tim­ized by god­less Yan­kees.

Both Singer and Rush­doony admired Dab­ney’s ideas, which includ­ed a view of the South as a reli­gious­ly ordered soci­ety, an “ortho­dox” Chris­t­ian rem­nant in a nation increas­ing­ly over­tak­en by ratio­nal­ist and anti-reli­gious thought.

Dab­ney’s vir­u­lent racism — he saw blacks as a “moral­ly infe­ri­or race,” a “sor­did, alien taint” marked by “lying, theft, drunk­en­ness, lazi­ness, waste” — also sup­port­ed Rush­doony’s dis­like for the civ­il rights move­ment and ongo­ing deseg­re­ga­tion. Dab­ney explic­it­ly defend­ed slav­ery as god­ly, a theme Wil­son and Wilkins would lat­er repeat.

In 1973, Rush­doony pub­lished Insti­tutes of Bib­li­cal Law, a book that estab­lished him as the found­ing thinker of a rad­i­cal the­ol­o­gy that came to be known as Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion.

The book fleshed out Rush­doony’s vision of a soci­ety “recon­struct­ed” along Old Tes­ta­ment lines — a world in which reli­gious gov­er­nors would mete out bib­li­cal pun­ish­ments like the ston­ing to death of gays, adul­ter­ess­es, “incor­ri­gi­ble” chil­dren and many oth­ers. Rely­ing on a lit­er­al read­ing of the Bible, Rush­doony espoused a soci­ety of class­es with dif­fer­ing rights, opposed inter­ra­cial mar­riage, and scoffed at egal­i­tar­i­an­ism.

Even Ralph Reed, then the high­ly con­ser­v­a­tive exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Chris­t­ian Coali­tion, warned that Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion rep­re­sent­ed a threat to the “most basic lib­er­ties ... of a free soci­ety.”

Rush­doony also devel­oped a strate­gic plan. The most effec­tive way of imple­ment­ing his vision, he said, would be to devel­op Chris­t­ian home­school­ing and pri­vate schools in order to train up a gen­er­a­tion to take the reins of soci­ety. So vig­or­ous was his pur­suit of this strat­e­gy that Rush­doony would even­tu­al­ly come to be known to many as the father of the Chris­t­ian home­school­ing move­ment.

It was an excit­ing time for Rush­doony. Some of his prin­ci­pal co-reli­gion­ists and fol­low­ers became active in the 1970s, and his influ­ence began to extend to some of Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing evan­gel­i­cal church­es.

And it marked the start of an impor­tant col­lab­o­ra­tion between peo­ple who viewed them­selves as “ortho­dox Chris­tians” and “Con­fed­er­ate nation­al­ists,” a merg­ing of the theo­crat­ic idea of reli­gious gov­ern­ment and a view of the 19th-cen­tu­ry Con­fed­er­ate cause as fun­da­men­tal­ly right.
...

And as we’ve seen, Doug Wilson’s theo­crat­ic empire isn’t lim­it­ed to Moscow, Ida­ho. The Con­fed­er­a­tion of Reformed Evan­gel­i­cals (CRE/CREC) has church­es around the US, includ­ing one in the prox­im­i­ty of Nashville, TN, that includes none oth­er than Sec­re­tary of Defense Pete Hegseth as a mem­ber. Again, Doug Wil­son has been build­ing this empire since the 1970s. He’s made a lot of progress:

...
Over the fol­low­ing decades, Wil­son built up an empire. He cre­at­ed the Logos School in Moscow, a pri­vate Chris­t­ian acad­e­my that is a tem­plate for Wilson’s “clas­si­cal schools” move­ment and instructs stu­dents in Greek and Latin.

He formed the Asso­ci­a­tion of Clas­si­cal and Chris­t­ian Schools as a kind of accred­it­ing agency for such schools and, since then, some 165 schools with cur­ricu­lums sim­i­lar to that of Logos have been start­ed around the coun­try.

Many of them, along with thou­sands of home­school­ers, order their books from yet anoth­er Moscow-based Wil­son cre­ation, Canon Press. The firm has pub­lished and sells 31 books by Wil­son.

Wil­son also helped start the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Reformed Evan­gel­i­cals (CRE), the denom­i­na­tion that includes Christ Church and some 20 oth­er church­es with sim­i­lar ideas. At his own church, Wil­son cre­at­ed a three-year train­ing pro­gram for min­is­ters, Greyfri­ars Hall.

Grad­u­ates, who must promise to engage in “cul­tur­al ref­or­ma­tion,” have start­ed sev­er­al church­es around the coun­try.
...

And as we can see, in 1994, the same year Wil­son found­ed his New Saint Andrews Col­lege, the League of the South (LOS) was formed by Alaba­ma col­lege pro­fes­sor Michael Hill, a fig­ure we’ve seen show up in a num­ber of sto­ries over the years, espe­cial­ly in rela­tion to promi­nent LOS mem­ber Mike Per­out­ka and Per­outka’s attempts to pave a ‘main­stream’ polit­i­cal path as a Repub­li­can. Recall how the shoot­er behind 2014 attack on the Mary­land news­pa­per The Cap­i­tal Gazette, Jar­rod Ramos, was influ­enced by the League of South’s ide­ol­o­gy. An ide­ol­o­gy that includ­ed Michale Hill’s calls for the for­ma­tion of death squads tar­get­ing jour­nal­ists, elect­ed offi­cials, and oth­er mem­bers of ‘the elite’. Hill described such a domes­tic ter­ror cam­paigg as “fourth-gen­er­a­tion war­fare” in his essay “A Bazooka in Every Pot”. Then, Back in Jan­u­ary 2015, a bill­board dis­play­ing the mes­sage “Diver­si­ty means chas­ing down the last white per­son #whitegeno­cide” was post­ed in St. Clair Coun­ty, Alaba­ma. Observers at the time not­ed the sim­i­lar­i­ty between that bill­board and a sim­i­lar one that popped up in Birm­ing­ham, Alaba­ma, in 2013 with the mes­sage “Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white.” Michael Hill claimed respon­si­bil­i­ty for the 2013 bill­board. Per­out­ka pre­vi­ous­ly broke with the LOS in 2014 dur­ing his run for the Anne Arun­del Coun­ty Coun­cil. The LOS went on to help orga­nize the 2017 “Unite the Right” ral­ly ion Char­lottesville, VA. In 2017, CNP mem­ber Mike Per­out­ka had to pub­licly denounce the state­ments made by Michael Hill after Hill pledged “to be a white suprema­cist, a racist, an anti-Semi­te, a homo­phobe, a xeno­phobe, an Islam­o­phobe and any oth­er sort of ‘phobe’ that ben­e­fits my peo­ple”. Per­out­ka — who was serv­ing on Maryland’s Anne Arun­del Coun­ty Coun­cil at the time — described the com­ments as “out­ra­geous” and “inap­pro­pri­ate”. It was quite a shift from Per­outka’s pri­or pub­lic stances on Hill’s ide­ol­o­gy. For exam­ple, when Per­out­ka spoke at the LOS annu­al con­ven­tion in 2012, he show­ered Hill with praise while enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly con­cur­ring with Hill’s con­clu­sion that the US is “beyond reform”. In 2022, Per­out­ka ran in the GOP pri­ma­ry for Mary­land Attor­ney Gen­er­al but lost with just under 35% of the pri­ma­ry vote. As the arti­cle describes, Hill was effec­tive­ly argu­ing for the kind of soci­ety RJ Rush­doony had been call­ing for decades ear­li­er:

...
And, in 1994, Wilson’s Christ Church found­ed New Saint Andrews Col­lege, a Moscow insti­tu­tion that teach­es Wilson’s brand of Chris­tian­i­ty and now has an enroll­ment of about 120 stu­dents. (On its Web site, the col­lege treats Rush­doony and Dab­ney as foun­da­tion­al thinkers on the order of Pla­to and Aris­to­tle.)

Many Moscow res­i­dents say the col­lege, like Wilson’s Logos School and Christ Church, also has shown a strong taste for the Con­fed­er­a­cy, with paint­ings of Civ­il War Con­fed­er­ate heroes and the like. Some par­ents have report­ed that Logos School cel­e­brates the birth­day of Gen. Robert E. Lee, anoth­er hero in the Con­fed­er­ate pan­theon.

The same year that Christ Church kicked off New Saint Andrews, anoth­er orga­ni­za­tion with a lik­ing for things Con­fed­er­ate was in the works. In Alaba­ma, a col­lege pro­fes­sor named Michael Hill found­ed what would come to be called the League of the South. The league quick­ly adopt­ed rad­i­cal posi­tions such as call­ing for a sec­ond South­ern seces­sion as dis­putes over the Con­fed­er­ate bat­tle flag heat­ed up around the South.

...

The league was theo­crat­ic from the start, with Hill argu­ing pub­licly for a restruc­tur­ing of the South as a “Chris­t­ian repub­lic” — a place where oth­ers might live, but only if they acknowl­edged and obeyed the rules of his reli­gion.

He assert­ed that the South was fun­da­men­tal­ly “Anglo-Celtic” and ought to remain that way. And he explic­it­ly reject­ed egal­i­tar­i­an­ism as “Jacobin” and argued for a soci­ety com­posed of class­es with dif­fer­ing legal rights — all ideas extreme­ly sim­i­lar to those of Rush­doony.
...

And as we can see, one of Michael Hill’s co-founders at the LOS was none oth­er than Steve Wilkins. It’s anoth­er piece of con­text for the pub­li­ca­tion of Wil­son and Wilkin­s’s South­ern Slav­ery, As It Was: one of the authors was a found­ing LOS direc­tor:

...
With Hill, a found­ing league direc­tor was Steven Wilkins, a man who already had been host­ing Con­fed­er­ate her­itage con­fer­ences for years (and still runs the R.L. Dab­ney Cen­ter for The­o­log­i­cal Stud­ies out of his church).

...

Devel­op­ing these con­cepts, and adding his rev­er­ence for Dab­ney to the mix, was Wilkins, the pas­tor of Auburn Avenue Pres­by­ter­ian Church in Mon­roe, La., and a close friend to Hill — some­thing empha­sized by Hill’s move to Mon­roe for sev­er­al years end­ing in 2003.

With his sym­pa­thy for the Con­fed­er­a­cy, his admi­ra­tion of Dab­ney’s ideas, and a bent toward theoc­ra­cy, Wilkins became a lead­ing reli­gious ide­o­logue of the league — a group that today claims 15,000 mem­bers orga­nized into 87 chap­ters in 16 states — and the larg­er neo-Con­fed­er­ate move­ment.

By the mid-’90s, Wilkins also had become a close col­lab­o­ra­tor and fel­low ide­o­logue of Wilson’s.

“Col­lab­o­ra­tion between the Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ist move­ment and the League of the South has ... increased,” wrote schol­ars Edward Sebesta and Euan Hague in a 2002 study of Dab­ney and the neo-Con­fed­er­ates, “evi­denc­ing a grow­ing over­lap in the his­tor­i­cal, polit­i­cal and the­o­log­i­cal per­spec­tives of par­tic­i­pants in both orga­ni­za­tions.

“This indi­cates a con­fla­tion of con­ser­v­a­tive, neo-Con­fed­er­ate and Chris­t­ian nation­alisms into a potent rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of Unit­ed States his­to­ry, one cen­tered upon the the­sis that the Con­fed­er­ate states were a bas­tion of ortho­dox Chris­tian­i­ty stand­ing in the face of the hereti­cal Union states.”
...

Also note some of the oth­er famil­iar names we see show­ing up in this Recon­struc­tion­ist orbit in addi­tion to Per­out­ka: Lar­ry Pratt, and Howard Phillips, who both show up on the CNP mem­ber­ship list. Both were attend­ing these Con­fed­er­ate her­itage con­fer­ences along with Recon­struc­tion­ist fig­ures like Joe More­craft III. Recall how More­craft co-authored a study course on ‘law and gov­ern­ment’ in 2011 with CNP mem­ber Roy Moore. It may not have been the best course on law and gov­ern­ment, but it’s illus­tra­tive of the net­works oper­at­ing here:

...
As the Ida­ho con­tro­ver­sy reached a fever pitch, Wil­son flat­ly denied that he was a Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ist. That move­ment, he told a reporter, was “dead.”

But while Wil­son may have slight dif­fer­ences with one or anoth­er Recon­struc­tion­ist, it is false that the move­ment is dead — and not true that Wil­son is no part of it.

In fact, Wilson’s the­ol­o­gy is in most ways indis­tin­guish­able from basic tenets of Recon­struc­tion. And, going back to the 1990s, both he and co-reli­gion­ist Steven Wilkins have been tight­ly linked to Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing Recon­struc­tion­ists.

In the ear­ly 1990s, Wilkins began host­ing annu­al Con­fed­er­ate her­itage con­fer­ences in Mon­roe. With­in a few years, Wil­son was a reg­u­lar speak­er.

These con­fer­ences also fea­tured some of the lead­ing lights of Recon­struc­tion, includ­ing Otto Scott; George Grant, a lead­ing speak­er at Wilson’s 2004 con­fer­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ida­ho; Lar­ry Pratt, a gun rights rad­i­cal who had to step down as co-chair of Pat Buchanan’s 1996 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign because of his links to white suprema­cists; Joe More­craft III; and Howard Phillips, founder of the U.S. Tax­pay­ers Par­ty, rein­car­nat­ed as the Con­sti­tu­tion Par­ty in 2000, both of them shot through with strong Recon­struc­tion­ist ele­ments.
...

And this review of Doug Wilson’s orga­niz­ing was from 2004, over two decades ago. He’s done quite a bit more orga­niz­ing since then. Along with some very influ­en­tial allies...

Doug Wilson and Steven Wilkins’s Many Fellow-travelers. Including David Lane and the American Renewal Project

As we’ve seen, when it comes to stealth theo­crat­ic move­ments, the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project (ARP) has long been play­ing a lead­ing role. It’s the ARP — led by long-time Repub­li­can polit­i­cal strate­gist David Lane — that ele­vat­ed for­mer North Car­oli­na Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Mark “Some Folks Need Killing!” Robin­son into a lead­ing spokesman for the move­ment, after all. A move­ment that, by the 2010s, appeared to have giv­en up on gain­ing pow­er through democ­ra­cy and arrived at the con­clu­sion that vio­lent theo­crat­ic rev­o­lu­tion may be nec­es­sary. And a move­ment with the exten­sive back­ing of the pow­er­ful CNP. And as the fol­low­ing Polit­i­cal Research Asso­ciates piece from 2014 makes clear, the Domin­ion­ist the­o­log­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy dri­ving the ARP is very much aligned with the neo-Con­fed­er­ate Recon­struc­tion­ism of Doug Wilson’s CREC and Steve Wilkin­s’s League of the South. These real­ly are ide­o­log­i­cal­ly aligned author­i­tar­i­an move­ments prepat­ing to seize pow­er one way or anoth­er. If it does­n’t hap­pen at the bal­lot box, bul­lets and bombs will have to do:

Polit­i­cal Research Asso­ciates

Rum­blings of Theo­crat­ic Vio­lence

Fred­er­ick Clark­son
June 11, 2014

The Pub­lic Eye, Sum­mer 2014

Some Chris­t­ian Right activists have lost hope that a Chris­t­ian Nation can be achieved in the Unit­ed States through the for­mal polit­i­cal process—including a high-lev­el GOP oper­a­tive. They are call­ing for mar­tyrs and think­ing about reli­gious war.

“If the Amer­i­can exper­i­ment with free­dom is to end after 237 years,” wrote Repub­li­can cam­paign strate­gist David Lane in an essay pub­lished on a pop­u­lar con­ser­v­a­tive web­site in 2013, “let each of us com­mit to brawl all the way to the end.” Quot­ing Win­ston Churchill from the dark­est days of the Ger­man bomb­ing of Britain dur­ing World War II, Lane added that “upon this bat­tle depends the sur­vival of Chris­t­ian civ­i­liza­tion.”¹

Such rhetoric is so com­mon on the far­ther reach­es of the Right that it can be easy to dis­miss. But some­thing has changed in recent years. Such dis­turb­ing claims are appear­ing more fre­quent­ly, more promi­nent­ly, and in ways that sug­gest that they are expres­sions of deeply held beliefs more than provoca­tive polit­i­cal hyper­bole.² What’s more, there are pow­er­ful indi­ca­tions in the writ­ings of some Chris­t­ian Right lead­ers that ele­ments of their move­ment have lost con­fi­dence in the bright polit­i­cal vision of the Unit­ed States as the once and future Chris­t­ian nation—and that they are des­per­ate­ly seek­ing alter­na­tives.

The 59-year-old Lane, who gen­er­al­ly keeps a low media pro­file, epit­o­mizes the trend. Lane has been a key strate­gist in the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment and a behind-the-scenes pow­er bro­ker and advis­er to GOP pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates for two decades.³ His main vehi­cle has been “Pas­tors’ Pol­i­cy Brief­in­gs,” in which con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian cler­gy and their spous­es are pro­vid­ed expens­es-paid trips to (usu­al­ly) closed-door, invi­ta­tion-only con­fer­ences. Speak­ers at these events includ­ed top GOP politi­cians and office hold­ers, as well as Chris­t­ian Right ide­o­logues such as David Bar­ton and experts in the mechan­ics of church-based elec­toral mobi­liza­tion. Dur­ing the 2010 midterm elec­tions, such events were held in six states (Neva­da, New Hamp­shire, Ohio, South Car­oli­na, Ten­nessee, and Iowa). The elec­tions swept unprece­dent­ed num­bers of Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives into state leg­is­la­tures and the Con­gress, large­ly under the rubric of the Tea Par­ty, help­ing cat­alyze the suc­cess­ful effort to oust three pro-mar­riage equal­i­ty jus­tices of the Iowa Supreme Court.⁴

The Iowa Renew­al Project, which host­ed a brief­ing in Octo­ber 2013, is one of sev­er­al state-lev­el units of the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project—which is, in turn, a polit­i­cal devel­op­ment and mobi­liza­tion project of the Mis­sis­sip­pi-based Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion. Its most promi­nent fig­ures are founder Don Wild­mon and the abra­sive radio host Bryan Fis­ch­er. Lane told the Dal­las Morn­ing News that the goal of the event, which fea­tured Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee Chair­man Reince Priebus and U.S. Sens. Rand Paul (R‑KY) and Ted Cruz (R‑TX),⁵ was the same as the oth­ers: “the mobi­liza­tion of pas­tors and pews to restore Amer­i­ca to our Judeo-Chris­t­ian her­itage and re-estab­lish a Chris­t­ian cul­ture.” Lane said: “We’ve been in 15 states now, large­ly under the radar, and we’ve had 10,000 pas­tors plus spous­es that we’ve put up overnight and fed three meals. The pur­pose is to get the pastors—the shep­herds in America—to engage the cul­ture through bet­ter reg­is­tra­tion and get out the vote.”⁶

In one sense, lit­tle has changed since the meth­ods that have defined the Chris­t­ian Right were devel­oped in the lat­ter part of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. But the hey­day of high-pro­file, medi­a­genic lead­ers like Jer­ry Fal­well, James Dob­son, Pat Robert­son, and Phyl­lis Schlafly—and their nation­al organizations—is long gone. Their lega­cy is a gen­er­a­tion of hands-on polit­i­cal oper­a­tives who now sus­tain a more decen­tral­ized Chris­t­ian Right. No one now qual­i­fies as the “leader” of the Chris­t­ian Right. Instead, a con­stel­la­tion of small­er, elec­toral­ly focused orga­ni­za­tions has emerged, and oth­ers have evolved.

...

Like many oth­er evan­gel­i­cals, espe­cial­ly those influ­enced by the Neocharis­mat­ic move­ment known as the New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion,⁹ Lane is count­ing on a revival—another Great Awakening—to sweep Chris­tians of the right sort into posi­tions of pow­er. This would result in the kind of Chris­t­ian nation that he and his close ally, the his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ist (and accused fab­u­list) David Barton—whose books and inter­pre­ta­tions are influ­en­tial among con­ser­v­a­tive evangelicals—believe was intend­ed by the nation’s founders. Bar­ton is well known, for exam­ple, for his claim that the con­sti­tu­tion­al doc­trine of sep­a­ra­tion of church and state is a “myth,” as well as the vari­a­tion that the wall is “one direc­tion­al,” that is, intend­ed only to pro­tect the church from the state.¹⁰ A Bar­tonesque Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism is the vision that ani­mates Lane’s work across the elec­tion cal­en­dar.¹¹

But for all the ener­gy he invests in tra­di­tion­al elec­toral work, Lane clear­ly is not con­vinced that his shin­ing vision of Amer­i­ca is likely—or even pos­si­ble. Hence his doubt-filled essay about “the Amer­i­can exper­i­ment with free­dom” pos­si­bly end­ing. The piece, “Wage War to Restore a Chris­t­ian Nation,” was pub­lished on World Net Dai­ly (WND), a lead­ing and influ­en­tial news site of the far­ther sec­u­lar and reli­gious Right. WND quick­ly removed the essay in June 2013 after blog­gers called atten­tion to it,¹² but Lane soon demon­strat­ed that it was not an aber­ra­tion. He told con­ser­v­a­tive Iowa radio talk show host Steve Deace the fol­low­ing month that “car bombs in Los Ange­les, Wash­ing­ton, D.C. and Des Moines, Iowa” would be mer­ci­ful pun­ish­ment from God for legal­ized abor­tion and for “homo­sex­u­als pray­ing at the Inau­gu­ra­tion [of Pres­i­dent Obama’s sec­ond term].” With­out such divine mer­cy, Lane sug­gest­ed, Amer­i­ca might “get judg­ment like Nazi Ger­many.”¹³

Lane’s appar­ent lack of con­fi­dence that the Chris­t­ian Right’s efforts to estab­lish theo­crat­ic gov­er­nance can suc­ceed by using the tools of democ­ra­cy epit­o­mizes his belief that mar­tyr­dom and elec­tions are not mutu­al­ly exclu­sive, and that hor­rif­ic con­fronta­tions lie ahead. Indeed, Lane opened his WND essay with a quote from a lead­ing thinker who does not believe that the U.S. can be sal­vaged via con­ven­tion­al pol­i­tics: the the­olo­gian Peter Lei­thart, 55, a Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ist (hard­line theo­crat) who makes even David Bar­ton seem meek and mild by com­par­i­son.¹⁴ “Through­out Scrip­ture,” Lei­thart declared in a pas­sage from his 2012 book Between Babel and Beast, “the only pow­er that can over­come the seem­ing­ly invin­ci­ble omnipo­tence of a Babel or a Beast is the pow­er of mar­tyr­dom, the pow­er of the wit­ness to King Jesus to the point of loss and death.”¹⁵

...

Lane’s essay is a clar­i­on call for a con­tem­po­rary reli­gious war against the sup­pos­ed­ly pagan gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States. And his notion of war is not just a metaphor for pol­i­tics. He even called for a con­tem­po­rary “Gideon” and a “Rahab the Har­lot” to rise to the occa­sion. Gideon is the Bib­li­cal fig­ure who leads an Israelite army in an eth­nic cleans­ing of the Mid­i­an­ites who were both oppres­sors and wor­shiped false gods. The sto­ry of Rahab turns on how she shel­tered two Israelite spies in prepa­ra­tion for the sack­ing of the city of Jeri­cho by Joshua’s army, result­ing in the mas­sacre of every­one but Rahab and her fam­i­ly. One does not invoke Gideon and Rahab in this way if one is sim­ply call­ing for reli­gious revival, or seek­ing to advance a leg­isla­tive agen­da.¹⁶

Com­ing from a top GOP oper­a­tive, such exhor­ta­tions to reli­gious war are extra­or­di­nary. Lane’s artic­u­la­tion demon­strates an alarm­ing degree of mil­i­tan­cy at a high lev­el of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. As such, it is a bell­wether of an ide­o­log­i­cal reor­ga­ni­za­tion, or at least recon­sid­er­a­tion, now tak­ing place with­in the Chris­t­ian Right. It sounds like an expres­sion of the cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance expe­ri­enced by a man whose job is to mobi­lize polit­i­cal con­stituen­cies toward com­mon goals—but who doubts that the enter­prise can suc­ceed.

As a result, at least some of the his­toric cul­ture war­riors of the Chris­t­ian Right seem to be con­sid­er­ing an osten­si­bly unlike­ly coali­tion with the Neo-Con­fed­er­ate move­ment. The coali­tion would lead their fol­low­ers in reli­gious and polit­i­cal direc­tions in which vio­lence is as like­ly as the out­comes are uncer­tain. It is an unlike­ly coali­tion, not nec­es­sar­i­ly because the Chris­t­ian Right and most Neo-Con­fed­er­ates dif­fer much on issues, but because Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism is so fun­da­men­tal­ly at odds with the notion of frac­tur­ing the nation due to a loss of hope and faith in the role of the Unit­ed States in God’s plan.

Wit­ness Against Amer­i­ca

The accel­er­at­ing advance of LGBTQ rights, espe­cial­ly mar­riage equal­i­ty, has become a flash­point for the Chris­t­ian Right’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary impuls­es. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s strik­ing down part of the Defense of Mar­riage Act in Unit­ed States v. Wind­sor in 2013, Peter Lei­thart took to the influ­en­tial blog of the jour­nal First Things (found­ed by the late neo­con­ser­v­a­tive Catholic thinker Richard John Neuhaus) to declare that the deci­sion “presents Amer­i­can Chris­tians with a call to mar­tyr­dom.”¹⁷

Lei­thart is the for­mer dean of grad­u­ate stud­ies at New Saint Andrew’s Col­lege, whose founder and emi­nence grise is Dou­glas Wil­son. (Lei­thart remains an adjunct fel­low at the school, which is based in the uni­ver­si­ty town of Moscow, Ida­ho.) In 2012, Lei­thart struck off on his own, found­ing a small school and relat­ed think tank, Trin­i­ty House, in Birm­ing­ham, AL. It seeks to serve as a cen­ter for a new Reformed Protes­tantism, called Fed­er­al Vision, whose lead­ing lights include Neo-Con­fed­er­ate authors Wil­son and Steven Wilkins.¹⁸

Togeth­er, Wil­son and Wilkins have prob­a­bly done more than any­one to con­struct the the­ol­o­gy now ani­mat­ing much of the Neo-Con­fed­er­ate move­ment. Wilkins was one of the founders of the League of the South, the lead­ing orga­ni­za­tion of con­tem­po­rary Neo-Con­fed­er­atism.¹⁹ As schol­ars Edward Sebesta and Euan Hague have writ­ten, the League views the Civ­il War as a “the­o­log­i­cal war” that con­tin­ues in con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­ca. The heart of their argu­ment is that the old Con­fed­er­a­cy was an ortho­dox Chris­t­ian nation fight­ing for the future against the hereti­cal and tyran­ni­cal Union states. Sebesta and Hague also report that that New York Times best-sell­ing author Thomas E. Woods, a tra­di­tion­al­ist Catholic and a founder of the League, has argued that “strug­gles against lib­er­al­ism, big gov­ern­ment and the New World Order com­prise ‘Christendom’s Last Stand.’”²⁰

Wil­son and Wilkins are noto­ri­ous for a book­let they pub­lished that claimed that slav­ery was not so bad. Nick Gier, a pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus of phi­los­o­phy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ida­ho, observes that they made a num­ber of his­tor­i­cal­ly inac­cu­rate but ide­o­log­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant claims, notably that, “By the time of the [Civ­il] War, the lead­er­ship of the South was con­ser­v­a­tive, ortho­dox, and Chris­t­ian,” and that the lead­er­ship of the North had become “rad­i­cal and Uni­tar­i­an.” While the Con­fed­er­ates were right­eous, “the abo­li­tion­ists in the North were ‘wicked’ and ‘dri­ven by a zeal­ous hatred for the Word of God.’”²¹

In his First Things piece, Lei­thart avoids call­ing too direct­ly for Chris­tians to risk their lives (per­haps because of the flap over David Lane’s essay). But his call to mar­tyr­dom is clear enough. “In Greek, mar­tyr­ia means ‘wit­ness,’ specif­i­cal­ly, wit­ness in a court,” he wrote. “At the very least, the deci­sion chal­lenges Amer­i­can Chris­tians to con­tin­ue to teach Chris­t­ian sex­u­al ethics with­out com­pro­mise or apol­o­gy. But Wind­sor presents a call to mar­tyr­dom in a more spe­cif­ic sense. There will be a cost for speak­ing the truth, a cost in rep­u­ta­tion, oppor­tu­ni­ty, and funds if not in free­doms. [Supreme Court Jus­tice Antonin] Scalia’s ref­er­ence [in Wind­sor] to the pagan Roman claim that Chris­tians are ‘ene­mies of mankind’ was prob­a­bly not­for­tu­itous.”

“The only Amer­i­ca that actu­al­ly exists,” he con­tin­ued, “is one in which ‘mar­riage’ includes same-sex cou­ples and women have a Con­sti­tu­tion­al right to kill their babies. To be faith­ful, Chris­t­ian wit­ness must be wit­ness against Amer­i­ca.”²²

“If Amer­i­ca is to be put in its place—put right,” he con­clud­ed (in David Lane’s hair-rais­ing invo­ca­tion of a pas­sage from Leithart’s book Between Babel and Beast), “Chris­tians must risk mar­tyr­dom and force Babel to the crux where it has to decide either to acknowl­edge Jesus an imper­a­tor and the church as God’s imperi­um or to begin drink­ing holy blood.”²³

In Between Babel and Beast, Lei­thart declared that Chris­tians must respond to the heresy of “Amer­i­can­ism,” by which some con­flate the nation with Chris­tian­i­ty itself. He called for repent­ing of Amer­i­can­ism and begin­ning to cul­ti­vate “believ­ers who are mar­tyrs in the orig­i­nal sense of ‘wit­ness’ and in the lat­er sense of men and women ready to fol­low the Lamb all the way to an impe­r­i­al cross.”²⁴

Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, Lei­thart has also pro­posed “the end of Protes­tantism” in a way that sug­gests a grow­ing affin­i­ty for the kind of Catholi­cism expressed by George Weigel—a U.S. Catholic cul­ture war­rior, neo­con­ser­v­a­tive, sign­er of the Man­hat­tan Dec­la­ra­tion, and fel­low First Things blog­ger. Lei­thart also pro­pos­es the relat­ed notion of a “Refor­ma­tion­al Catholi­cism,” which fore­sees a Rome-based Chris­t­ian uni­ty.²⁵ He envi­sions this mutu­al accom­mo­da­tion as a kind of Chris­t­ian matu­ri­ty nec­es­sary for Chris­ten­dom not only to sur­vive but to pre­vail.

Leithart’s make-or-break vision would either end what he describes as anti-Chris­t­ian tyran­ny or, fail­ing that, build a new Chris­t­ian nation—or nations. He is less con­cerned with the ups and downs of sin­gle issues than with the long-term advance of Chris­ten­dom. This is con­sis­tent with the rev­o­lu­tion­ary visions of an influ­en­tial Catholic thinker, Father C. John McCloskey, who believes that region­al Amer­i­can strong­holds of con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tian­i­ty may be nec­es­sary in light of the cul­ture of reli­gious plu­ral­ism and the con­sti­tu­tion­al doc­trine of sep­a­ra­tion of church and state.

End­ing the Tyran­ni­cal Regime

McCloskey, a 61-year-old priest in the con­ser­v­a­tive order Opus Dei, is best known for his role in the reli­gious con­ver­sions of Gov. Sam Brown­back (R‑KS), Supreme Court Jus­tice Clarence Thomas, and var­i­ous oth­er promi­nent and influ­en­tial con­ser­v­a­tives, includ­ing Newt Gin­grich, Robert Bork, econ­o­mist Lawrence Kud­low, financier Lewis Lehrman, and the late jour­nal­ist Robert Novak.

McCloskey told colum­nist Ter­ry Mat­ting­ly in July 2013 that “the Unit­ed States is no longer a Chris­t­ian coun­try.” Because this is so, he explained, tra­di­tion­al­ists will need to clus­ter in states that are more con­ge­nial to their views on such mat­ters as abor­tion, mar­riage, par­ents rights, and home­school­ing. “No one in this coun­try has ever real­ly suf­fered for their faith in any mean­ing­ful way,” McCloskey said. “Those days are end­ing, espe­cial­ly in cer­tain states … Among Catholics, we may soon find that many are Amer­i­cans more than they are Catholics.”²⁶

McCloskey pre­dict­ed in 2001, and again in 2012, that con­ser­v­a­tive Catholics and evan­gel­i­cals would need to band togeth­er in a civ­il war of seces­sion. The “seces­sion of the ‘Cul­ture of Life’ states,” he pre­dict­ed, would empha­size “the fun­da­men­tal issues of the sanc­ti­ty of mar­riage, the rights of par­ents, and the sacred­ness of human life,” and that the seces­sion would pre­cip­i­tate “a short and bloody civ­il war” that would break the coun­try into what he calls “the Region­al States of Amer­i­ca.”²⁷ He repeat­ed this gen­er­al view in an essay in Jan­u­ary 2014, in which he dis­cussed sep­a­rat­ing from the “tyran­ni­cal regime” in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.²⁸ McCloskey, a fel­low at the Wash­ing­ton, D.C.-based Faith and Rea­son Insti­tute, has not said how he thinks this might hap­pen, but he has said that the civ­il war may be all over by 2030. (Unsur­pris­ing­ly, McCloskey has favor­ably reviewed one of the books of the promi­nent Catholic Neo-Con­fed­er­ate Thomas E. Woods, a founder of the League of the South.²⁹)

...

McCloskey finds encour­age­ment in nul­li­fi­ca­tion­ist activ­i­ty in the Red states against what he con­sid­ers “unjust laws” that pro­tect abor­tion rights and access. He points to Kansas Gov. Sam Brown­back,³¹ who in 2013 signed leg­is­la­tion that defined life as begin­ning at con­cep­tion as part of a bill that severe­ly restricts, but doesn’t ban, abor­tion.³² Brown­back has pro­mot­ed nul­li­fi­ca­tion as a strat­e­gy of resis­tance to what is viewed as fed­er­al intru­sions on state sov­er­eign­ty regard­ing, among oth­er things, gun con­trol.³³

“The red state/blue state dichoto­my could—perhaps soon­er than we might think—result in states opt­ing to pull out of the union,” McCloskey wrote in Jan­u­ary 2014. He won­dered about what seces­sion might mean for a super­pow­er such as the Unit­ed States, and about how the armed forces might react.“[B]ut ulti­mate­ly,” he con­clud­ed, “the pro­tec­tion of inno­cent life trumps any tyran­ni­cal regime.”³⁴ McCloskey has said he hopes that it will not come to the vio­lence he has pre­dict­ed, but for more than a decade he has open­ly said that a con­flict with what he calls “the athe­is­tic Amer­i­can Herods” is prob­a­bly inevitable.³⁵

This kind of think­ing is not new with­in the far­ther reach­es of the reli­gious and polit­i­cal Right. The Chris­t­ian Right the­o­rist and pro­lif­ic author Gary North, for exam­ple, wrote about the long-term rev­o­lu­tion­ary impli­ca­tions of what he and oth­ers were doing. North object­ed to the 1994 assas­si­na­tion of a Flori­da abor­tion provider and his escort by a fel­low Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ist, Paul Hill, who had also authored a man­i­festo in which he called for Chris­t­ian mili­tias to rise up against the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment.³⁶ North argued that the assas­si­na­tion was pre­ma­ture and that the foun­da­tion for theo­crat­ic Chris­t­ian rev­o­lu­tion had not been prop­er­ly laid. Nev­er­the­less, North felt that some­thing seri­ous was already under­way. “For the first time in over 300 years,” he wrote in 1987, “a grow­ing num­ber of Chris­tians are start­ing to view them­selves as an army on the move. This army will grow.” He con­clud­ed: “We are self-con­scious­ly fir­ing the first shot.”³⁷

It is not clear that the Chris­t­ian Right is any more ready to revolt now than it was in 1994—a peri­od that was marked by a wave of arsons, bomb­ings, and assas­si­na­tions against abor­tion providers, as well as the rise of the mili­tia move­ment. (Post 9/11, these vio­lent move­ments were large­ly neu­tral­ized by fed­er­al law enforce­ment.) But as the 2009 Man­hat­tan Dec­la­ra­tion and oth­er com­pacts cre­at­ed between Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives in recent decades have shown, the reli­gious wars that have pit­ted Chris­t­ian fac­tions against one anoth­er for mil­len­nia, polit­i­cal­ly and mil­i­tar­i­ly, are being resolved in favor of strate­gic alliances against the cul­ture and con­sti­tu­tion­al struc­ture of reli­gious plu­ral­ism, and against the alleged­ly “tyran­ni­cal” fed­er­al gov­ern­ment.³⁸ Thus the Catholic/evangelical con­ver­sa­tion may be tak­ing a sur­pris­ing turn.

It may be more a mat­ter of how, rather than when, the con­ver­sa­tion about seces­sion unfolds. Some see restor­ing the Chris­t­ian nation (which arguably nev­er was) as a hope­less cause. Oth­ers hope that a revival-pow­ered wave of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism will pro­pel a pro­found cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion. But if such a trans­formed Amer­i­ca is not to be, a coali­tion with the avatars of Con­fed­er­ate revival­ism will become more appeal­ing, and will be well-aligned with McCloskey’s vision of the seces­sion of con­ser­v­a­tive states.

The­ol­o­gy of Neo-Con­fed­er­atism

Those who have long lived at the inter­sec­tions of the Chris­t­ian Right and the Neo-Con­fed­er­ate move­ment will find much in com­mon with the cul­ture war­ring, seces­sion­ist, vio­lent vision­ary sen­si­bil­i­ties of Lane and McCloskey, if vari­a­tions on the the­ol­o­gy of Neo-Con­fed­er­atism gain fur­ther trac­tion. Pas­tor David Whit­ney, 56, who leads the small Cor­ner­stone Evan­gel­i­cal Free Church in Pasade­na, MD (near Wash­ing­ton, D.C.), may epit­o­mize the trend.

Though not wide­ly known, Whit­ney is a well-con­nect­ed fig­ure on the Far Right. He is chap­lain of the Mary­land chap­ter of the League of the South and is a sig­na­to­ry of the “Covenant” of the six-year-old South­ern Nation­al Con­gress, which open­ly seeks an “inde­pen­dent repub­lic.”³⁹ He trav­els the coun­try as the senior instruc­tor at the Insti­tute on the Con­sti­tu­tion, which offers theo­crat­ic inter­pre­ta­tions of U.S. his­to­ry, and he is a peren­ni­al can­di­date for polit­i­cal office who has run on the Repub­li­can and Con­sti­tu­tion Par­ty tick­ets. In 2014 he ran in a Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry for coun­ty coun­cil.

Like Lane and McCloskey, Whit­ney is reveal­ing him­self to be increas­ing­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary.⁴⁰ He declared on Inde­pen­dence Day 2010, for exam­ple, that if gov­ern­ment does not con­form to God’s law, “the peo­ple have a right to secede” from the “wicked regime in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.” and its “despi­ca­ble and evil tyran­ny.” He believes that we there­fore may even­tu­al­ly have to make the “same dif­fi­cult deci­sion which our fore­bears reached on that hot July day in Philadel­phia.”⁴¹

Whit­ney has become only more overt­ly mil­i­tant since then. In Feb­ru­ary 2011, he threat­ened seces­sion in tes­ti­mo­ny before the Judi­cial Pro­ceed­ings Com­mit­tee of the Mary­land State Sen­ate. For exam­ple, he claimed that pas­sage of mar­riage-equal­i­ty leg­is­la­tion would dele­git­imize the state gov­ern­ment, such that state laws should not be obeyed; that the state courts and exec­u­tive branch have no author­i­ty; that tax­es should not be paid; and that “we should from this point for­ward con­sid­er it as our Founders con­sid­ered King George III.” If the leg­is­la­tion passed, he said, “mul­ti­tudes” would want to secede from the state.⁴² While there is no obvi­ous seces­sion­ist upris­ing seek­ing to frac­ture Mary­land in the wake of the pas­sage of mar­riage-equal­i­ty leg­is­la­tion, that issue is hard­ly Whitney’s only concern—and his seething sen­si­bil­i­ty has tak­en a turn to vig­i­lan­tism.

In a June 2013 ser­mon, he jus­ti­fied the mur­der of abor­tion providers. In dis­cussing a Christian’s duty to defend life, he said that this includ­ed the pre­ven­tion of “the mur­der of the unborn” and that “we need to under­stand that there is such a thing as Bib­li­cal­ly jus­ti­fi­able homi­cide.”⁴³ This places him in a dis­tinct lin­eage of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for mur­der that goes back at least to Paul Hill and was specif­i­cal­ly reject­ed as a legal defense by the Flori­da courts. Hill had advo­cat­ed the notion of jus­ti­fi­able homi­cide for more than a year before he decid­ed to take action him­self.⁴⁴

A May 2013 ser­mon helps to estab­lish the con­text for Whitney’s notions of extra­ju­di­cial killings. “When you talk to peo­ple about God’s law being restored in Amer­i­ca,” he declared, “they say, ‘Awww, you’re some aya­tol­lah. Awww, you want a theoc­ra­cy.’” He explained that, “Well yes, I want obe­di­ence to God’s law because that is where lib­er­ty comes from. Lib­er­ty comes from God’s law. Tyran­ny comes when God’s law is reject­ed by a soci­ety as it has been reject­ed in our day.” He went on to say that any law that “con­tra­dicts God’s law… is not law at all.”⁴⁵

Con­sis­tent with his deeply theo­crat­ic bent, Whit­ney wrote in Feb­ru­ary 2014 that we should “restrict cit­i­zen­ship” to Chris­tians of the right sort: Chris­tians who—whether vot­ing or serv­ing as jurors, gov­ern­ment offi­cials, or “in the Militia”—operate accord­ing to “God’s Law.”⁴⁶ In Octo­ber 2013, he preached that “God’s word is wise in how to struc­ture a human civ­il gov­ern­ment. Because if a human civ­il gov­ern­ment allows a tyrant to con­trol an army, you are going to lose your free­dom. It’s only when you, the peo­ple, are armed in a mili­tia struc­ture that you can pre­vent that kind of tyran­ny from over­whelm­ing the coun­try.”

In a ser­mon in March 2014, Whit­ney called for impre­ca­to­ry prayer against the White House staff (pre­sum­ably includ­ing Pres­i­dent Oba­ma), appar­ent­ly because of the Afford­able Care Act. “There are many ene­mies that we could pray against them that God would do unto them what they are seek­ing to do unto us,” he told his con­gre­ga­tion. “There are those, includ­ing those in the White House, through their death pan­els, who intend to kill us. May God do to them what they intend to do to us.”⁴⁷

...

End­notes

1. David Lane, “Wage War to Restore a Chris­t­ian Nation,” World Net Dai­ly, June 6,2013.
2. This is also dif­fer­ent than, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly mutu­al­ly exclu­sive with, “elim­i­na­tion­ist” rhetoric as described in David Nei­w­ert, The Elim­i­na­tion­ists: How Hate Talk Rad­i­cal­ized the Amer­i­can Right, (PoliPointPress,2009).
3. Grace Wyler, “10 Evan­gel­i­cal Power­bro­kers Behind Rick Perry’s Prayer Ral­ly To Save Amer­i­ca,” Busi­ness Insid­er, Aug. 5, 2011, www.businessinsider.com/here-are-the-masterminds-behind-rick-perrys-pra….
4. Eric Eck­holm, “An Iowa Stop in a Broad Effort To Revi­tal­ize the Reli­gious Right,” New York Times, Apr. 3, 2011, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9806E5DF1E30F930A35757C0…; Grace Wyler, “10 Evan­gel­i­cal Power­bro­kers Behind Rick Perry’s Prayer Ral­ly To Save Amer­i­ca,” Busi­ness Insid­er, Aug. 5, 2011, www.businessinsider.com/here-are-the-masterminds-behind-rick-perrys-pra….
5. Bruce Wil­son, “Ted Cruz Anoint­ed by Pro-Reli­gious War, Anti­gay Pas­tors,” Talk to Action, Oct. 11, 2013, www.talk2action.org/story/2013/10/11/173533/73.
6. Wayne Slater, “Ted Cruz head­ed to Iowa to speak with influ­en­tial con­ser­v­a­tive pas­tors,” Dal­las Morn­ing News, June 6, 2013, www.dallasnews.com/news/columnists/wayne-slater/20130606-wayne-slater‑t…; David Brody, “EXCLUSIVE: Evan­gel­i­cal Pas­tors Ready to Mobi­lize for 2014 Elec­tion, Say ‘Amer­i­ca Has Left God,’” The Brody File, CBN, Feb. 25, 2013, http://blogs.cbn.com/thebrodyfile/archive/2013/02/25/exclusive-evangeli….
7. David Brody (guest host for Glenn Beck), inter­view with David Lane, “David Lane on Glenn Beck Show,” The Blaze, Dec. 3, 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wRBJZF8vKw.
8. Huck­abee was also fea­tured at the Feb­ru­ary 2014 Pas­tors’ Pol­i­cy Brief­ing in North Car­oli­na. See Sarah Pos­ner, “The Revival of the Pas­tors’ Pol­i­cy Brief­in­gs,” Reli­gion Dis­patch­es, Mar. 1, 2011. www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/sarahposner/4320/the_revival_of_t…’_policy_briefing.
9. Rachel Tabach­nick, “Spir­i­tu­al War­riors with an Anti­gay Mis­sion: The New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion,” Pub­lic Eye, Mar. 22, 2013, www.politicalresearch.org/2013/03/22/spiritual-warriors-with-an-antigay….
10. Rob Boston, “Sects, Lies and Videotape:David Barton’s Dis­tort­ed His­to­ry,” Church & State (April 1993). For more on Bar­ton and Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism, see also, Fred­er­ick Clark­son, “His­to­ry is Powerful:Why the Chris­t­ian Right Dis­torts His­to­ry and Why it Mat­ters,” Pub­lic Eye, Spring 2007, https://www.politicalresearch.org/2007/03/05/history-is-powerfulwhy-the….
11. David Brody, “Revival in Amer­i­ca? Time to Get off the Side­lines!” Chris­t­ian Broad­cast­ing Net­work, Aug. 1, 2013, www.cbn.com/cbnnews/politics/2013/July/Time-to-Get-Off-Sidelines-Iowa‑P….
12. Denise Oliv­er Velez, “Rand Paul’s out­reach coor­di­na­tor declares ‘holy war’ on us,” Dai­ly Kos, June 16, 2013, www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/16/1214807/-Rand-Paul-s-outreach-coordin….
13. Bri­an Tash­man, “David Lane Pre­dicts Car Bomb­ings in LA, DC and Des Moines over Gay Inau­gu­ra­tion Prayers,” Right Wing Watch, July 23, 2013, www.rightwingwatch.org/content/david-lane-predicts-car-bombings-la-dc‑a….
14. Fred­er­ick Clark­son, “Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ism: Theo­crat­ic Domin­ion­ism Gains Influ­ence,” Pub­lic Eye (March/June 1994), www.publiceye.org/magazine/v08n1/chrisrec.html.
15. Lane, “Wage War to Restore a Chris­tian­Na­tion.”
16. Lane often calls for the rise of Gideons and Rahabs in his pub­lished writ­ings, notably in David Lane, “Will a Gideon or the Har­lot please stand?” Chris­t­ian Response Alerts, Oct. 17, 2012, www.christianresponsealerts.com/2012/10/will-a-gideon-or-the-harlot-ple….
17. Peter J. Lei­thart, “A Call to Mar­tyr­dom,” First Things, July 2, 2013, www.firstthings.com/blogs/leithart/2013/07/02/a‑call-to-martyrdom.
18. Leithart’s father, Paul Lei­thart, is a long­time leader of the John Birch Soci­ety, includ­ing cur­rent mem­ber­ship on the Nation­al­Coun­cil.
19. Mark Potok,“Doug Wilson’s Reli­gious Empire Expand­ing in the Northwest:A reli­gious empire based in Ida­ho is part of the far-right the­o­log­i­cal move­ment fuel­ing neo-Con­fed­er­ate groups,” Intel­li­gence Report (Spring 2004), www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/20…; Nick Gier, “Dou­glas Wil­son, South­ern Pres­by­te­ri­ans, and Neo-Con­fed­er­ates,” Talk to Action, Jan. 11, 2008, www.talk2action.org/story/2008/1/11/191549/134.
20. Edward H. Sebesta and Euan Hague, “The U.S. Civ­il War as a The­o­log­i­cal War: Con­fed­er­ate Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism and the League of the South,” Cana­di­an Review of Amer­i­can Stud­ies (2002),270.
21. Nick Gier, “Dou­glas Wil­son, South­ern Pres­by­te­ri­ans, and Neo-Con­fed­er­ates,” Talk to Action, Jan. 11, 2008, www.talk2action.org/story/2008/1/11/191549/134.
22. Peter J. Lei­thart, “A Call to Mar­tyr­dom,” First Things, July 2, 2013, www.firstthings.com/blogs/leithart/2013/07/02/a‑call-to-martyrdom.
23. David Lane, “Wage War to Restore a Chris­t­ian Nation,” World Net Dai­ly, June 6, 2013, cit­ing Peter J. Lei­thart, Between Babel and Beast: Amer­i­ca and Empires in Bib­li­cal Per­spec­tive (Cas­cade Books, 2012),152.
24. Lane, “Wage War to Restore a Chris­t­ian Nation,” cit­ing Lei­thart, Between Babel and Beast,xiii.
25. Peter J. Lei­thart, “The End of Protes­tantism,” First Things, Nov. 8, 2013, www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2013/11/the-end-of-protestantism. Inter­est­ing­ly, David Lane orga­nized a pri­vate din­ner for cler­gy with Gov. Bob­by Jin­dal (R‑LA) so they could hear his sto­ry of con­ver­sion from Hin­duism to “evan­gel­i­cal Catholicism”:Tom Ham­burg­er, “Bob­by Jin­dal, raised Hin­du, uses Chris­t­ian con­ver­sion to woo GOP base for 2016 run,” Wash­ing­ton Post, May 12, 2014, www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bobby-jindal-raised-hindu-uses-christia….
26. Ter­ry Mat­ting­ly, “John Paul II and the death of Chris­t­ian Amer­i­ca,” Press-Repub­li­can, July 8, 2013, www.pressrepublican.com/0205_columns/x881892943/John-Paul-II-and-the-de….
27. C. John McCloskey III, “2030 Revis­it­ed,” The Catholic Thing, Mar. 15, 2012, www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/2030-revisited.html; Fred­er­ick Clark­son, “God is My Co-Bel­liger­ent: Avatar Priests, Hijacked The­olo­gians, and Oth­er Fig­ures of Right-Wing Revolt,” Reli­gion Dis­patch­es, July 23, 2012, www.religiondispatches.org/archive/politics/6207/god_is_my_co_belligere… more on McCloskey, see Frank L. Cocozzel­li, “The Pol­i­tics of Schism in the Catholic Church,” Pub­lic Eye, Fall 2009, www.publiceye.org/magazine/v24n3/politics-schism-catholic-hurch.html.
28. C. J. McCloskey, “Hope for the Pro-life Move­ment,” Truth and Char­i­ty Forum (2014), www.truthandcharityforum.org/hope-for-the-pro-life-movement. See also Frank Cocozzel­li, “Opus Dei Priest’s Seces­sion­ist Roadmap to Theoc­ra­cy,” Talk to Action, Apr. 1, 2014, www.talk2action.org/story/2014/4/1/142834/8120.
29. C. John McCloskey, “Bat­tle for Mar­riage Heats Up in Cal­i­for­nia,” Nation­al Catholic Reg­is­ter, Sept. 4, 2005, www.ncregister.com/site/article/battle_for_marriage_heats_up_in_califor….
30. C. J. McCloskey, “Hope for the Gospel of Life in Amer­i­ca,” Truth and Char­i­ty Forum, June 12, 2013, www.truthandcharityforum.org/hope-for-the-gospel-of-life-in-america.
31. C. J. McCloskey, “Hope for the Gospel of Life in Amer­i­ca,” Truth and Char­i­ty Forum, June 12, 2013, www.truthandcharityforum.org/hope-for-the-gospel-of-life-in-america.
32. Katie McDo­nough, “Kansas Gov. Sam Brown­back signs sweep­ing anti-choice bill into law,” Salon, Apr. 22, 2013, www.salon.com/2013/04/22/kansas_gov_sam_brownback_signs_sweeping_anti_c….
33. Rachel Tabach­nick and Frank Cocozzel­li, “Nul­li­fi­ca­tion, Neo-Con­fed­er­ates, and the Revenge of the Old Right,” Pub­lic Eye (Fall 2013), www.politicalresearch.org/2013/11/22/nullification-neo-confederates-and….
34. C. J. McCloskey, “Hope for the Pro-life Move­ment,” Truth and Char­i­ty Forum, Jan. 13, 2014, www.truthandcharityforum.org/hope-for-the-pro-life-movement.
35. Quote is from C. J. McCloskey, “The 40th Anniver­sary of Roe v. Wade and Dr. Nathanson the Prophet,” Truth and Char­i­ty Forum, Jan. 14, 2013, www.truthandcharityforum.org/the-40th-anniversary-of-roe-v-wade-and-dr-…. Also see C. J. McCloskey, “2030: Look­ing Back­wards,” CatholiC­i­ty (May 2000),www.catholicity.com/mccloskey/2030.html.
36. Fred­er­ick Clark­son, Eter­nal Hos­til­i­ty: The Strug­gle Between Theoc­ra­cy and Democ­ra­cy (Com­mon Courage Press, 1997),141–142.
37. Gary North, “What Are Bib­li­cal Blue­prints?” in Gary DeMar, Ruler of the Nations: Bib­li­cal Blue­prints for Gov­ern­ment (Domin­ion Press, 1987),270.
38. Fred­er­ick Clark­son, “Chris­t­ian Right Seeks Renew­al in Deep­en­ing Catholic-Protes­tant Alliance,” Pub­lic Eye (Sum­mer 2013), www.politicalresearch.org/christian-right-seeks-renewal-in-deepening-ca….
39. “The South­ern Nation­al Covenant,” South­ern Nation­al Con­gress, www.southernnationalcongress.org/Southern_National_Covenant.
40. Fred­er­ick Clark­son, “Two Neo-Con­fed­er­ate Lead­ers Join Repub­li­can & Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ties to Run For Office,” Polit­i­cal Research Asso­ciates, Feb. 27, 2014, www.politicalresearch.org/2014/02/27/two-neo-confederate-leaders-join‑r….
41. Clark­son, “Two Neo-Con­fed­er­ate Lead­ers Join Repub­li­can & Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ties to Run For Office.” The ser­mon was tak­en down after PRA exposed it. How­ev­er, the rel­e­vant audio clip of Whitney’s July 4, 2010, ser­mon sur­vives: see “David Whit­ney on the God-giv­en right to secede,” YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn3O0-n5chY.
42. David Whit­ney, “Pas­tor Whit­ney tes­ti­fies before Mary­land Sen­ate Judi­cial Pro­ceed­ings Com­mit­tee,” Amer­i­can View, Feb. 23, 2011, www.theamericanview.com/pastor-whitney-testifies-before-maryland-senate….
43. Adele M. Stan, “Anti-Choice Pro­po­nent of ‘Jus­ti­fi­able Homi­cide’ Vies for Spot on Demo­c­ra­t­ic Coun­cil,” RH Real­i­ty Check, Feb. 28, 2014, http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2014/02/28/anti-choice-proponent-just…. The church has tak­en down this ser­mon (and oth­ers) since PRA ran the orig­i­nal sto­ry, but we have a copy.
44. Clark­son, Eter­nal Hos­til­i­ty.
45. David Whit­ney, “The Price of Lib­er­ty,” Ser­mon, May 5, 2013.Retrieved fromhttp://cornerstone.dnsalias.org:8000/Cornerstone/CEFC.htmThe link to this ser­mon is no longer avail­able, but PRA has the excerpt post­ed on YouTube. See “David Whit­ney says if it’s not God’s law, it’s ‘pre­tend law,’” YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAV_Deg7Cfw.
46. David Whit­ney, “Rethink­ing Cit­i­zen­ship,” West­ern Jour­nal­ism Cen­ter, Feb. 21, 2014, www.westernjournalism.com/rethinking-citizenship.
47. David Whit­ney, “The Amer­i­can View Ser­mon Series — March 16, 2014,” Mar. 16, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z_HzA20Z6s.

————

“Rum­blings of Theo­crat­ic Vio­lence” by Fred­er­ick Clark­son; Polit­i­cal Research Asso­ciates; 06/11/2014

“But for all the ener­gy he invests in tra­di­tion­al elec­toral work, Lane clear­ly is not con­vinced that his shin­ing vision of Amer­i­ca is likely—or even pos­si­ble. Hence his doubt-filled essay about “the Amer­i­can exper­i­ment with free­dom” pos­si­bly end­ing. The piece, “Wage War to Restore a Chris­t­ian Nation,” was pub­lished on World Net Dai­ly (WND), a lead­ing and influ­en­tial news site of the far­ther sec­u­lar and reli­gious Right. WND quick­ly removed the essay in June 2013 after blog­gers called atten­tion to it,¹² but Lane soon demon­strat­ed that it was not an aber­ra­tion. He told con­ser­v­a­tive Iowa radio talk show host Steve Deace the fol­low­ing month that “car bombs in Los Ange­les, Wash­ing­ton, D.C. and Des Moines, Iowa” would be mer­ci­ful pun­ish­ment from God for legal­ized abor­tion and for “homo­sex­u­als pray­ing at the Inau­gu­ra­tion [of Pres­i­dent Obama’s sec­ond term].” With­out such divine mer­cy, Lane sug­gest­ed, Amer­i­ca might “get judg­ment like Nazi Ger­many.”¹³″

Yes, as we’ve seen, the polit­i­cal orga­niz­ing of Repub­li­can polit­i­cal oper­a­tive David Lane took a rather alarm­ing turn in 2013 when he penned an essay in World­Net­Dai­ly effec­tive­ly call­ing for Chris­tians to aban­don democ­ra­cy and embrace a Domin­ion­ist ethos where polit­i­cal pow­er is seized through any means nec­es­sary. And as this piece sad­ly observes: such rhetoric has become so com­mon on the fringes of the Right that it can be easy to dis­miss (and this was 2014). But that would be a mis­take when you have oper­a­tives as influ­en­tial as David Lane veer­ing into this anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic space. The guy found­ed the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, a major polit­i­cal orga­niz­ing enti­ty for con­ser­v­a­tive pas­tors with exten­sive links to the CNP. The rad­i­cal­iza­tion of David Lane real­ly should be seen as sym­bol­ic of a much deep aban­don­ment of democ­ra­cy on the Chris­t­ian Right that had been fes­ter­ing for decades. The kind of rad­i­cal­iza­tion that puts this kind of polit­i­cal orga­niz­ing much more in line with the goals of fig­ures like Doug Wil­son and his LOS fel­low trav­el­ers:

...
“If the Amer­i­can exper­i­ment with free­dom is to end after 237 years,” wrote Repub­li­can cam­paign strate­gist David Lane in an essay pub­lished on a pop­u­lar con­ser­v­a­tive web­site in 2013, “let each of us com­mit to brawl all the way to the end.” Quot­ing Win­ston Churchill from the dark­est days of the Ger­man bomb­ing of Britain dur­ing World War II, Lane added that “upon this bat­tle depends the sur­vival of Chris­t­ian civ­i­liza­tion.”¹

Such rhetoric is so com­mon on the far­ther reach­es of the Right that it can be easy to dis­miss. But some­thing has changed in recent years. Such dis­turb­ing claims are appear­ing more fre­quent­ly, more promi­nent­ly, and in ways that sug­gest that they are expres­sions of deeply held beliefs more than provoca­tive polit­i­cal hyper­bole.² What’s more, there are pow­er­ful indi­ca­tions in the writ­ings of some Chris­t­ian Right lead­ers that ele­ments of their move­ment have lost con­fi­dence in the bright polit­i­cal vision of the Unit­ed States as the once and future Chris­t­ian nation—and that they are des­per­ate­ly seek­ing alter­na­tives.

The 59-year-old Lane, who gen­er­al­ly keeps a low media pro­file, epit­o­mizes the trend. Lane has been a key strate­gist in the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment and a behind-the-scenes pow­er bro­ker and advis­er to GOP pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates for two decades.³ His main vehi­cle has been “Pas­tors’ Pol­i­cy Brief­in­gs,” in which con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian cler­gy and their spous­es are pro­vid­ed expens­es-paid trips to (usu­al­ly) closed-door, invi­ta­tion-only con­fer­ences. Speak­ers at these events includ­ed top GOP politi­cians and office hold­ers, as well as Chris­t­ian Right ide­o­logues such as David Bar­ton and experts in the mechan­ics of church-based elec­toral mobi­liza­tion. Dur­ing the 2010 midterm elec­tions, such events were held in six states (Neva­da, New Hamp­shire, Ohio, South Car­oli­na, Ten­nessee, and Iowa). The elec­tions swept unprece­dent­ed num­bers of Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives into state leg­is­la­tures and the Con­gress, large­ly under the rubric of the Tea Par­ty, help­ing cat­alyze the suc­cess­ful effort to oust three pro-mar­riage equal­i­ty jus­tices of the Iowa Supreme Court.⁴

...

Lane’s essay is a clar­i­on call for a con­tem­po­rary reli­gious war against the sup­pos­ed­ly pagan gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States. And his notion of war is not just a metaphor for pol­i­tics. He even called for a con­tem­po­rary “Gideon” and a “Rahab the Har­lot” to rise to the occa­sion. Gideon is the Bib­li­cal fig­ure who leads an Israelite army in an eth­nic cleans­ing of the Mid­i­an­ites who were both oppres­sors and wor­shiped false gods. The sto­ry of Rahab turns on how she shel­tered two Israelite spies in prepa­ra­tion for the sack­ing of the city of Jeri­cho by Joshua’s army, result­ing in the mas­sacre of every­one but Rahab and her fam­i­ly. One does not invoke Gideon and Rahab in this way if one is sim­ply call­ing for reli­gious revival, or seek­ing to advance a leg­isla­tive agen­da.¹⁶

Com­ing from a top GOP oper­a­tive, such exhor­ta­tions to reli­gious war are extra­or­di­nary. Lane’s artic­u­la­tion demon­strates an alarm­ing degree of mil­i­tan­cy at a high lev­el of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. As such, it is a bell­wether of an ide­o­log­i­cal reor­ga­ni­za­tion, or at least recon­sid­er­a­tion, now tak­ing place with­in the Chris­t­ian Right. It sounds like an expres­sion of the cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance expe­ri­enced by a man whose job is to mobi­lize polit­i­cal con­stituen­cies toward com­mon goals—but who doubts that the enter­prise can suc­ceed.
...

And that brings us to the ongo­ing role played by Doug Wilson’s Recon­struc­tion­ist empire in foment­ing this style of mil­i­tant theoc­ra­cy: the Supreme Court’s 2013 rul­ing enshrin­ing the right to gay mar­riage elicit­ed a rather trou­bling response from Peter Lei­thart, the for­mer dean of grad­u­ate stud­ies at Doug Wilson’s New Saint Andrews Col­lege who went on to start the Trin­i­ty House orga­ni­za­tion where the neo-Con­fed­er­ate vision of Wil­son and Wilkins plays a lead­ing role. Lei­thart a piece char­ac­ter­iz­ing the rul­ing as a “call to mar­tyr­dom” for Amer­i­can Chris­tians. Not that this was the first time Lei­thart used such lan­guage. David Lane’s 2013 World Net Dai­ly piece that called for mar­tyr­dom even starts with a para­graph from Lei­thart’s 2012 book, Between Babel and Beast, that includes the state­ment, “If Amer­i­ca is to be put in its place—put right” Chris­tians must risk mar­tyr­dom and force Babel to the crux where it has to decide either to acknowl­edge Jesus an imper­a­tor and the church as God’s imperi­um or to begin drink­ing holy blood.” It’s hard to inter­pret that as a call for peace­ful activism:

...
The accel­er­at­ing advance of LGBTQ rights, espe­cial­ly mar­riage equal­i­ty, has become a flash­point for the Chris­t­ian Right’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary impuls­es. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s strik­ing down part of the Defense of Mar­riage Act in Unit­ed States v. Wind­sor in 2013, Peter Lei­thart took to the influ­en­tial blog of the jour­nal First Things (found­ed by the late neo­con­ser­v­a­tive Catholic thinker Richard John Neuhaus) to declare that the deci­sion “presents Amer­i­can Chris­tians with a call to mar­tyr­dom.”¹⁷

Lei­thart is the for­mer dean of grad­u­ate stud­ies at New Saint Andrew’s Col­lege, whose founder and emi­nence grise is Dou­glas Wil­son. (Lei­thart remains an adjunct fel­low at the school, which is based in the uni­ver­si­ty town of Moscow, Ida­ho.) In 2012, Lei­thart struck off on his own, found­ing a small school and relat­ed think tank, Trin­i­ty House, in Birm­ing­ham, AL. It seeks to serve as a cen­ter for a new Reformed Protes­tantism, called Fed­er­al Vision, whose lead­ing lights include Neo-Con­fed­er­ate authors Wil­son and Steven Wilkins.¹⁸

Togeth­er, Wil­son and Wilkins have prob­a­bly done more than any­one to con­struct the the­ol­o­gy now ani­mat­ing much of the Neo-Con­fed­er­ate move­ment. Wilkins was one of the founders of the League of the South, the lead­ing orga­ni­za­tion of con­tem­po­rary Neo-Con­fed­er­atism.¹⁹ As schol­ars Edward Sebesta and Euan Hague have writ­ten, the League views the Civ­il War as a “the­o­log­i­cal war” that con­tin­ues in con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­ca. The heart of their argu­ment is that the old Con­fed­er­a­cy was an ortho­dox Chris­t­ian nation fight­ing for the future against the hereti­cal and tyran­ni­cal Union states. Sebesta and Hague also report that that New York Times best-sell­ing author Thomas E. Woods, a tra­di­tion­al­ist Catholic and a founder of the League, has argued that “strug­gles against lib­er­al­ism, big gov­ern­ment and the New World Order com­prise ‘Christendom’s Last Stand.’”²⁰

...

In his First Things piece, Lei­thart avoids call­ing too direct­ly for Chris­tians to risk their lives (per­haps because of the flap over David Lane’s essay). But his call to mar­tyr­dom is clear enough. “In Greek, mar­tyr­ia means ‘wit­ness,’ specif­i­cal­ly, wit­ness in a court,” he wrote. “At the very least, the deci­sion chal­lenges Amer­i­can Chris­tians to con­tin­ue to teach Chris­t­ian sex­u­al ethics with­out com­pro­mise or apol­o­gy. But Wind­sor presents a call to mar­tyr­dom in a more spe­cif­ic sense. There will be a cost for speak­ing the truth, a cost in rep­u­ta­tion, oppor­tu­ni­ty, and funds if not in free­doms. [Supreme Court Jus­tice Antonin] Scalia’s ref­er­ence [in Wind­sor] to the pagan Roman claim that Chris­tians are ‘ene­mies of mankind’ was prob­a­bly not­for­tu­itous.”

“The only Amer­i­ca that actu­al­ly exists,” he con­tin­ued, “is one in which ‘mar­riage’ includes same-sex cou­ples and women have a Con­sti­tu­tion­al right to kill their babies. To be faith­ful, Chris­t­ian wit­ness must be wit­ness against Amer­i­ca.”²²

“If Amer­i­ca is to be put in its place—put right,” he con­clud­ed (in David Lane’s hair-rais­ing invo­ca­tion of a pas­sage from Leithart’s book Between Babel and Beast), “Chris­tians must risk mar­tyr­dom and force Babel to the crux where it has to decide either to acknowl­edge Jesus an imper­a­tor and the church as God’s imperi­um or to begin drink­ing holy blood.”²³

In Between Babel and Beast, Lei­thart declared that Chris­tians must respond to the heresy of “Amer­i­can­ism,” by which some con­flate the nation with Chris­tian­i­ty itself. He called for repent­ing of Amer­i­can­ism and begin­ning to cul­ti­vate “believ­ers who are mar­tyrs in the orig­i­nal sense of ‘wit­ness’ and in the lat­er sense of men and women ready to fol­low the Lamb all the way to an impe­r­i­al cross.”²⁴
...

Intrigu­ing­ly, 2013 also brought a call by Lei­thart to ‘end Protes­tantism’ and a new Rome-based Chris­t­ian uni­ty that he sees as nec­es­sary for Chris­ten­dom to pre­vail. It’s a reminder that Domin­ion­ists aren’t just plan­ning on impos­ing their Domin­ion­ist forms of Chris­tian­i­ty on non-Chris­tians. Non-Domin­ion­ist Chris­tians will be forced to sub­mit to the ‘Bib­li­cal­ly cor­rect’ form of Chris­tian­i­ty too. Which is why per­haps we should­n’t be sur­prised to see lead­ing Domin­ion­ists call­ing for a kind of new uni­fied ver­sion of Chris­tian­i­ty (that the Domin­ion­ists get to define). Hav­ing one ‘uni­fied’ ver­sion of Domin­ion­ist Chris­tian­i­ty would extreme­ly con­ve­nient when the time comes for a theo­crat­ic cabal to impose its will on soci­ety at large. That cabal is going to need to be in theo­crat­ic agree­ment, Protes­tant and Catholic Domin­ion­ist alike. Gilead can’t have com­pet­ing theo­crat­ic par­ties. So when we read how Lei­thart’s con­cept of a “Ref­or­ma­tion Catholi­cism” puts him in align­ment with the rev­o­lu­tion­ary visions of Father C. John McCloskey, keep in mind that under­ly­ing theo­crat­ic prac­ti­cal­i­ty. Also recall how McCloskey promi­nent­ly ran the Catholic Infor­ma­tion Cen­ter, the DC-based Opus Dei-owned orga­ni­za­tion that also had Leonard Leo on its board (until McCloskey left his DC post fol­low­ing sex­u­al harass­ment alle­ga­tions in 2003). McCloskey was­n’t some obscure Catholic the­olo­gian. He was a kind of celebri­ty Catholic ambas­sador in DC:

...
Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, Lei­thart has also pro­posed “the end of Protes­tantism” in a way that sug­gests a grow­ing affin­i­ty for the kind of Catholi­cism expressed by George Weigel—a U.S. Catholic cul­ture war­rior, neo­con­ser­v­a­tive, sign­er of the Man­hat­tan Dec­la­ra­tion, and fel­low First Things blog­ger. Lei­thart also pro­pos­es the relat­ed notion of a “Refor­ma­tion­al Catholi­cism,” which fore­sees a Rome-based Chris­t­ian uni­ty.²⁵ He envi­sions this mutu­al accom­mo­da­tion as a kind of Chris­t­ian matu­ri­ty nec­es­sary for Chris­ten­dom not only to sur­vive but to pre­vail.

Leithart’s make-or-break vision would either end what he describes as anti-Chris­t­ian tyran­ny or, fail­ing that, build a new Chris­t­ian nation—or nations. He is less con­cerned with the ups and downs of sin­gle issues than with the long-term advance of Chris­ten­dom. This is con­sis­tent with the rev­o­lu­tion­ary visions of an influ­en­tial Catholic thinker, Father C. John McCloskey, who believes that region­al Amer­i­can strong­holds of con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tian­i­ty may be nec­es­sary in light of the cul­ture of reli­gious plu­ral­ism and the con­sti­tu­tion­al doc­trine of sep­a­ra­tion of church and state.

End­ing the Tyran­ni­cal Regime

McCloskey, a 61-year-old priest in the con­ser­v­a­tive order Opus Dei, is best known for his role in the reli­gious con­ver­sions of Gov. Sam Brown­back (R‑KS), Supreme Court Jus­tice Clarence Thomas, and var­i­ous oth­er promi­nent and influ­en­tial con­ser­v­a­tives, includ­ing Newt Gin­grich, Robert Bork, econ­o­mist Lawrence Kud­low, financier Lewis Lehrman, and the late jour­nal­ist Robert Novak.

McCloskey told colum­nist Ter­ry Mat­ting­ly in July 2013 that “the Unit­ed States is no longer a Chris­t­ian coun­try.” Because this is so, he explained, tra­di­tion­al­ists will need to clus­ter in states that are more con­ge­nial to their views on such mat­ters as abor­tion, mar­riage, par­ents rights, and home­school­ing. “No one in this coun­try has ever real­ly suf­fered for their faith in any mean­ing­ful way,” McCloskey said. “Those days are end­ing, espe­cial­ly in cer­tain states … Among Catholics, we may soon find that many are Amer­i­cans more than they are Catholics.”²⁶

McCloskey pre­dict­ed in 2001, and again in 2012, that con­ser­v­a­tive Catholics and evan­gel­i­cals would need to band togeth­er in a civ­il war of seces­sion. The “seces­sion of the ‘Cul­ture of Life’ states,” he pre­dict­ed, would empha­size “the fun­da­men­tal issues of the sanc­ti­ty of mar­riage, the rights of par­ents, and the sacred­ness of human life,” and that the seces­sion would pre­cip­i­tate “a short and bloody civ­il war” that would break the coun­try into what he calls “the Region­al States of Amer­i­ca.”²⁷ He repeat­ed this gen­er­al view in an essay in Jan­u­ary 2014, in which he dis­cussed sep­a­rat­ing from the “tyran­ni­cal regime” in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.²⁸ McCloskey, a fel­low at the Wash­ing­ton, D.C.-based Faith and Rea­son Insti­tute, has not said how he thinks this might hap­pen, but he has said that the civ­il war may be all over by 2030. (Unsur­pris­ing­ly, McCloskey has favor­ably reviewed one of the books of the promi­nent Catholic Neo-Con­fed­er­ate Thomas E. Woods, a founder of the League of the South.²⁹)
...

That’s our look back at the grow­ing vio­lent ten­den­cies of the US’s lead­ing theo­crat­ic move­ments back in 2014. But as we’re going to see, this move­ment did­n’t need to give up on pol­i­tics. The Trump admin­is­tra­tions were yet to come.

Doug Wilson, Russell Vought, and Project 2025

Flash for­ward a decade, when the archi­tects of Project 2025 were fever­ish­ly work­ing on the CNP’s agen­da for the sec­ond Trump term. And who do we find work­ing along­side those Project 2025 archi­tects but Doug Wil­son. Yes, it turns out Wil­son was invit­ed to give a speech at a Sep­tem­ber 2023 event for Amer­i­can Moment, one of the many enti­ties spawned for the Project 2025 agen­da fol­low­ing Trump’s first term in office. The speech took place in the base­ment of the US Senate’s Dirk­sen Office build­ing in Wash­ing­ton DC. It was part of a series called the “The­ol­o­gy of Amer­i­can State­craft.” Pre­ced­ing Wil­son was none oth­er than key Project 2025 fig­ure Russ Vought. Vought’s speech was devot­ed to the “Chris­t­ian Case for Immi­gra­tion Restric­tion.” For his part, Wil­son char­ac­ter­ized immi­gra­tion as “one skin botch (sic) among many on a dis­eased body.” In response to ques­tions by TPM about the speech, Wil­son insist­ed that he isn’t inter­est­ed in cre­at­ing a “Handmaid’s Tale sit­u­a­tion”, explain­ing, “What I’m try­ing to do is get back to Amer­i­ca in 1892 when there was a Supreme Court deci­sion say­ing that Amer­i­ca was a Chris­t­ian nation.” Wil­son also explain to TPM his view that sec­u­lar­ism had failed and it’s just a mat­ter of deter­min­ing which faith-based moral sys­tem will replace it. And yes, that faith-based moral sys­tem will nec­es­sar­i­ly lead to exclu­sion, but every sys­tem is exclu­sion­ary. As one Bap­tist pas­tor observed, “They didn’t mat­ter, but now they mat­ter because the con­ver­sa­tion has moved in their direc­tion. And I think Trump has a lot to do with that, but it’s not only him”:

Talk­ing Points Memo

Trump II Archi­tect Russ Vought Embraces A Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist Vision For Amer­i­ca

By Josh Koven­sky
March 19, 2024 7:00 a.m.

One of the key archi­tects of Don­ald Trump’s plans for a sec­ond admin­is­tra­tion has been quite pub­lic about the dri­ving force ani­mat­ing that rad­i­cal agen­da: a “cold civ­il war” to be won by those will­ing to use “bib­li­cal prin­ci­ples” to “instruct gov­ern­ment” to do what the MAGA right wants.

Russ Vought, a head of the Office of Man­age­ment and Bud­get in Trump’s first term and a big play­er in the plan­ning for a poten­tial sec­ond Trump term, made the case for this Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist vision of Amer­i­ca in a lit­tle-noticed speech on Capi­tol Hill last year. The grow­ing empha­sis in pro-Trump cir­cles on a strict con­ser­v­a­tive view of Chris­tian­i­ty com­bined with an aver­sion to plu­ral­ism define not only what poli­cies a future gov­ern­ment should adopt, but Amer­i­can nation­hood itself. It does so at the explic­it exclu­sion of oth­er faiths and some Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tions.

Vought gave the speech last Sep­tem­ber as part of a series called the “The­ol­o­gy of Amer­i­can State­craft.” The speech was devot­ed to the “Chris­t­ian Case for Immi­gra­tion Restric­tion.”

There, Vought laid out the litany of extreme Trump bor­der poli­cies and pro­pos­als that have now become famil­iar: fam­i­ly sep­a­ra­tion, mass depor­ta­tion, cur­tail­ing legal immi­gra­tion. But he did so in explic­it­ly Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist terms, at one point mak­ing an Old Tes­ta­ment ref­er­ence to argue that the Unit­ed States should mod­el its immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy on the Tribe of Israel, wel­com­ing new­com­ers “so long as they accept­ed Israel’s God, laws, and under­stand­ing of his­to­ry.”

He gave the Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism talk at one of a series of events held by Amer­i­can Moment, a right-wing non­prof­it that lists among its top pri­or­i­ties fam­i­lies “root­ed in faith and tra­di­tion,” law and order, and immi­gra­tion restric­tion. Amer­i­can Moment has been hold­ing the “The­ol­o­gy of Amer­i­can State­craft” series since 2022, com­posed of events tar­get­ed at fus­ing var­i­ous forms of Chris­tian­i­ty with Trumpian right-wing pol­i­tics.

Vought him­self is a heavy hit­ter in Trump world. After over­see­ing the OMB for the final years of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, he now runs the Cen­ter for Renew­ing Amer­i­ca, where he’s play­ing a key role in draft­ing a poten­tial agen­da for Trump II.

...

He’s risen the ranks in Trump­world since then. As OMB direc­tor, he draft­ed a memo rail­ing against diver­si­ty train­ing, and, once ensconced at his think tank, cir­cu­lat­ed an anti-crit­i­cal race the­o­ry orga­niz­ing guide. There, Vought has played a key role in devel­op­ing Project 2025, the ambi­tious plans for a sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion laid out by a group of peo­ple around the GOP can­di­date. In that capac­i­ty, Vought is advo­cat­ing for civ­il ser­vice pro­tec­tions to be abol­ished; he sug­gest­ed to the New York Times last year that most con­ser­v­a­tive attor­neys were too timid for a sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion, say­ing “the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety doesn’t know what time it is.”

Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists are play­ing an increas­ing­ly influ­en­tial role in the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment, and appear poised to exert a huge amount of influ­ence if Trump wins the Novem­ber elec­tion. Vought is at the van­guard of that effort. In the speech, whose exis­tence Politi­co report­ed in a sto­ry this month, he drove home a key point: The most extreme bor­der pro­pos­als in a future Trump admin­is­tra­tion would be cast as “Chris­t­ian-based.”

...

Dou­glas Wil­son, an extreme­ly con­tro­ver­sial right-wing pas­tor from Moscow, Ida­ho, fol­lowed Vought as a speak­er at the same event in the base­ment of the Senate’s Dirk­sen Office build­ing.

Wil­son likes to adopt a just-ask­ing-ques­tions tone when writ­ing about top­ics that are most like­ly to draw fierce blow­back. He’s writ­ten that abor­tion is “at least as great an evil as slav­ery was” as part of a way to ask a broad­er ques­tion which many will see as need­less­ly provoca­tive: If we are unwill­ing to fight a civ­il war to end abor­tion now, should we accept that the Union was right to fight to end slav­ery in the 1860s?

Wil­son has writ­ten in sep­a­rate fora that “sodomy” is worse than “slav­ery” and that the coun­try should con­sid­er intro­duc­ing blas­phe­my laws. Wil­son told TPM in a phone inter­view that he regards the Amer­i­can state as the “biggest blas­phe­mer,” and that it’s an elab­o­rate metaphor to argue for laws restrict­ing fed­er­al pow­er. When TPM asked why he insist­ed on using that metaphor, Wil­son replied that as a pas­tor, he thinks “in the­o­log­i­cal cat­e­gories.”

At the The­ol­o­gy of Amer­i­can State­craft lec­ture, Vought pre­sent­ed a vision of a coun­try fac­ing a holy strug­gle. The nation is beset on one side by a left that, in Vought’s descrip­tion, “per­verts God’s stan­dard of jus­tice” by refus­ing to enforce bor­der laws, and on the right by well-mean­ing co-bel­liger­ents too weak “to occu­py the moral high ground.”

Wil­son fol­lowed up Vought by cast­ing the immi­gra­tion issue as “one skin botch (sic) among many on a dis­eased body.”

Vought went fur­ther in train­ing Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist rhetoric on the immi­gra­tion issue. Towards the end of the speech, he brought up what’s long been an aim of many on the Trump­ist right – reduc­ing legal immi­gra­tion – and cast it again in life-or-death, reli­gious terms.

The coun­try is mired in a “cold civ­il war,” Vought said. And just as a “com­pas­sion­ate fam­i­ly does not gen­er­al­ly adopt a child in the midst of cri­sis,” so the Unit­ed States can­not con­tin­ue to accept immi­grants. He dis­missed that view as “com­pas­sion to a dis­em­bod­ied neigh­bor,” and instead that the right needs to adopt the prin­ci­ple of “dis­cern­ment.”

Vought pushed back against the view among some evan­gel­i­cals that immi­gra­tion is a means to “reverse sec­u­lar­iza­tion in the Unit­ed States.”

He described it as an attempt to “frame out a dis­po­si­tion that wel­comes end­less immi­gra­tion instead of think­ing about the effects of polit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty in which we live.”

It’s part of a broad­er call for lim­it­ing legal immi­gra­tion; a pol­i­cy of “restric­tion” that Vought based explic­it­ly on a read­ing from the Old Tes­ta­ment, that “out­siders could join Israel so long as they accept­ed Israel’s God, laws, and under­stand­ing of his­to­ry.”

He added, by anal­o­gy, that “a church doesn’t accept mem­ber­ship for peo­ple who don’t accord to their state­ment of faith.”

David Gushee, a Bap­tist pas­tor who oppos­es Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism, told TPM that he found the pro­pos­al shock­ing and self-evi­dent­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry.

“The fact that a lot of the immi­grants that come from Latin Amer­i­ca are Chris­tians, Catholic, or what­ev­er, doesn’t seem to mat­ter to those who are opposed to it,” Gushee said. “And so then if it’s not about reli­gion, it must be about some­thing else.”

Vought brought up oth­er episodes from Trump-era bor­der enforce­ment dur­ing the lec­ture. At one point, he hit out at evan­gel­i­cal preach­er Franklin Gra­ham for crit­i­ciz­ing the Trump admin­is­tra­tion for imple­ment­ing its fam­i­ly sep­a­ra­tion pol­i­cy. Vought jus­ti­fied the pol­i­cy as run-of-the-mill crim­i­nal law enforce­ment: “Not unlike when a par­ent com­mits a crime and goes to jail, it leads to a trag­ic sep­a­ra­tion of fam­i­lies.”

The appear­ance of Wil­son, the con­tro­ver­sial Ida­ho pas­tor, remains remark­able. Wilson’s views have led to him being dis­in­vit­ed from uni­ver­si­ty con­fer­ences over the course of his career, and report­ed­ly to the defeat of one state Sen­ate bill whose draft­ing was tied to an orga­ni­za­tion that Wil­son found­ed.

...

Wil­son told TPM that he had only ever met Vought at the Amer­i­can Moment event. He defend­ed Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism in broad terms, say­ing that, in his view, sec­u­lar­ism has failed and that what was left to deter­mine is which faith-based moral sys­tem will become the vic­tor in the pub­lic square. That will nec­es­sar­i­ly lead to exclu­sion, he said.

“Every sys­tem is exclu­sion­ary,” he said. “It’s not whether you exclude, it’s who you exclude and on what basis.”

“I’m not try­ing to get us into a Handmaid’s Tale sit­u­a­tion,” Wil­son added. “What I’m try­ing to do is get back to Amer­i­ca in 1892 when there was a Supreme Court deci­sion say­ing that Amer­i­ca was a Chris­t­ian nation.”

Gushee, the Bap­tist pas­tor, remarked that Wil­son and those like him had become less “fringe” over the years.

“They didn’t mat­ter, but now they mat­ter because the con­ver­sa­tion has moved in their direc­tion. And I think Trump has a lot to do with that, but it’s not only him,” Gushee said.

————

“Trump II Archi­tect Russ Vought Embraces A Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist Vision For Amer­i­ca” By Josh Koven­sky; Talk­ing Points Memo; 03/19/2024

“Vought gave the speech last Sep­tem­ber as part of a series called the “The­ol­o­gy of Amer­i­can State­craft.” The speech was devot­ed to the “Chris­t­ian Case for Immi­gra­tion Restric­tion.””

The “The­ol­o­gy of Amer­i­can State­craft”. That was the title for the series of talks back in Sep­tem­ber of 2023 by Russ Vought and oth­er key strate­gists behind Project 2025. It’s not exact­ly a sub­tle title. Nor is “Chris­t­ian Case for Immi­gra­tion Restric­tion,” the title for Vought’s spe­cif­ic talk that laid down the Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist case for exact­ly the kind of mass immi­gra­tion crack­down now play­ing out under the sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion. And this all hap­pened at Amer­i­can Moment, one of the many MAGA orga­ni­za­tions that formed around the goal of flesh­ing out a Project 2025 agen­da in antic­i­pa­tion of a sec­ond sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion. Recall how Amer­i­can Moment was focus­ing on the task of recruit­ing the thou­sands (poten­tial­ly tens of thou­sands) of ide­o­log­i­cal­ly vet­ted can­di­dates to fill all of the roles they were plan­ning on open­ing up in the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment after the ini­tial planned mass fir­ings. Also recall how Vought noto­ri­ous gave speech­es at his own Project 2025 ‘think tank’, the Cen­ter for Renew­ing Amer­i­ca, where he described his desire to use Project 2025 to “inflict trau­ma” on the fed­er­al work­force. And keep in mind that when we are talk­ing about Project 2025, we’re talk­ing about a scheme large­ly con­coct­ed by the pow­er­ful Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP), the same Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist orga­ni­za­tion that played a key role in the plan­ning that led up to the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion. That’s the con­text of this report about the Sep­tem­ber 2023 appear­ance of Doug Wil­son at this Amer­i­can Moment event where Russ Vought was lay­ing down the Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for immi­gra­tion crack­downs. Doug Wil­son was invit­ed into the same halls of pow­er where Project 2025 was being con­ceived to share his Domin­ion­ist vision. Because it’s a shared vision:

...
There, Vought laid out the litany of extreme Trump bor­der poli­cies and pro­pos­als that have now become famil­iar: fam­i­ly sep­a­ra­tion, mass depor­ta­tion, cur­tail­ing legal immi­gra­tion. But he did so in explic­it­ly Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist terms, at one point mak­ing an Old Tes­ta­ment ref­er­ence to argue that the Unit­ed States should mod­el its immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy on the Tribe of Israel, wel­com­ing new­com­ers “so long as they accept­ed Israel’s God, laws, and under­stand­ing of his­to­ry.”

He gave the Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism talk at one of a series of events held by Amer­i­can Moment, a right-wing non­prof­it that lists among its top pri­or­i­ties fam­i­lies “root­ed in faith and tra­di­tion,” law and order, and immi­gra­tion restric­tion. Amer­i­can Moment has been hold­ing the “The­ol­o­gy of Amer­i­can State­craft” series since 2022, com­posed of events tar­get­ed at fus­ing var­i­ous forms of Chris­tian­i­ty with Trumpian right-wing pol­i­tics.

...

He’s risen the ranks in Trump­world since then. As OMB direc­tor, he draft­ed a memo rail­ing against diver­si­ty train­ing, and, once ensconced at his think tank, cir­cu­lat­ed an anti-crit­i­cal race the­o­ry orga­niz­ing guide. There, Vought has played a key role in devel­op­ing Project 2025, the ambi­tious plans for a sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion laid out by a group of peo­ple around the GOP can­di­date. In that capac­i­ty, Vought is advo­cat­ing for civ­il ser­vice pro­tec­tions to be abol­ished; he sug­gest­ed to the New York Times last year that most con­ser­v­a­tive attor­neys were too timid for a sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion, say­ing “the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety doesn’t know what time it is.”

Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists are play­ing an increas­ing­ly influ­en­tial role in the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment, and appear poised to exert a huge amount of influ­ence if Trump wins the Novem­ber elec­tion. Vought is at the van­guard of that effort. In the speech, whose exis­tence Politi­co report­ed in a sto­ry this month, he drove home a key point: The most extreme bor­der pro­pos­als in a future Trump admin­is­tra­tion would be cast as “Chris­t­ian-based.”
...

And as we can see, Wilson’s mes­sage was, unsur­pris­ing­ly, that abor­tion is “at least as great an evil as slav­ery was” and that if the US is unwill­ing to fight a civ­il war to end abor­tion then should­n’t we accept that the Civ­il War was an unjust act by the Union? Yep, that was his mes­sage. A pret­ty ‘on brand’ mes­sage for some­one who co-authored a book defend­ing slav­ery. The kind of mes­sage one could have expect­ed from Wil­son, although keep in mind that Roe was over­turned in 2022 and Wil­son was giv­ing this speech in Sep­tem­ber of 2023:

...
Dou­glas Wil­son, an extreme­ly con­tro­ver­sial right-wing pas­tor from Moscow, Ida­ho, fol­lowed Vought as a speak­er at the same event in the base­ment of the Senate’s Dirk­sen Office build­ing.

Wil­son likes to adopt a just-ask­ing-ques­tions tone when writ­ing about top­ics that are most like­ly to draw fierce blow­back. He’s writ­ten that abor­tion is “at least as great an evil as slav­ery was” as part of a way to ask a broad­er ques­tion which many will see as need­less­ly provoca­tive: If we are unwill­ing to fight a civ­il war to end abor­tion now, should we accept that the Union was right to fight to end slav­ery in the 1860s?

Wil­son has writ­ten in sep­a­rate fora that “sodomy” is worse than “slav­ery” and that the coun­try should con­sid­er intro­duc­ing blas­phe­my laws. Wil­son told TPM in a phone inter­view that he regards the Amer­i­can state as the “biggest blas­phe­mer,” and that it’s an elab­o­rate metaphor to argue for laws restrict­ing fed­er­al pow­er. When TPM asked why he insist­ed on using that metaphor, Wil­son replied that as a pas­tor, he thinks “in the­o­log­i­cal cat­e­gories.”

At the The­ol­o­gy of Amer­i­can State­craft lec­ture, Vought pre­sent­ed a vision of a coun­try fac­ing a holy strug­gle. The nation is beset on one side by a left that, in Vought’s descrip­tion, “per­verts God’s stan­dard of jus­tice” by refus­ing to enforce bor­der laws, and on the right by well-mean­ing co-bel­liger­ents too weak “to occu­py the moral high ground.”

Wil­son fol­lowed up Vought by cast­ing the immi­gra­tion issue as “one skin botch (sic) among many on a dis­eased body.”
...

It’s also worth not­ing how Vought’s argu­ment for why the US should dras­ti­cal­ly restrict immi­gra­tion is because the US is mired in a “cold civ­il war” and a “com­pas­sion­ate fam­i­ly does not gen­er­al­ly adopt a child in the midst of cri­sis.” Keep in mind that ‘cold civ­il wars’ tend to last decades. Which makes this a good time to recall that high­ly dis­turb­ing speech giv­en by Her­itage Foun­da­tion pres­i­dent Kevin Roberts — him­self a key Project 2025 oper­a­tive — back in July of 2024 when he declared they were plan­ning on a “Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion”. One that would “will remain blood­less if the left allows it to be.” And as Roberts made clear, this ‘rev­o­lu­tion’ was going to take decades to com­plete. It was a call for a decades-long pow­er grab. Which is also a reminder that part of the rea­son­ing behind the push to effec­tive­ly end all immi­gra­tion into the Unit­ed States for the fore­see­able future might be the plans for what will ulti­mate­ly not be a “blood­less” Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion. In oth­er words, if you’re plan­ning on a decades-long author­i­tar­i­an crack­down across soci­ety, immi­gra­tion isn’t real­ly going to be com­pat­i­ble which that future. They’re plan­ning on a soci­ety-wide purge, after all:

...
Vought went fur­ther in train­ing Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist rhetoric on the immi­gra­tion issue. Towards the end of the speech, he brought up what’s long been an aim of many on the Trump­ist right – reduc­ing legal immi­gra­tion – and cast it again in life-or-death, reli­gious terms.

The coun­try is mired in a “cold civ­il war,” Vought said. And just as a “com­pas­sion­ate fam­i­ly does not gen­er­al­ly adopt a child in the midst of cri­sis,” so the Unit­ed States can­not con­tin­ue to accept immi­grants. He dis­missed that view as “com­pas­sion to a dis­em­bod­ied neigh­bor,” and instead that the right needs to adopt the prin­ci­ple of “dis­cern­ment.”

Vought pushed back against the view among some evan­gel­i­cals that immi­gra­tion is a means to “reverse sec­u­lar­iza­tion in the Unit­ed States.”

He described it as an attempt to “frame out a dis­po­si­tion that wel­comes end­less immi­gra­tion instead of think­ing about the effects of polit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty in which we live.”

It’s part of a broad­er call for lim­it­ing legal immi­gra­tion; a pol­i­cy of “restric­tion” that Vought based explic­it­ly on a read­ing from the Old Tes­ta­ment, that “out­siders could join Israel so long as they accept­ed Israel’s God, laws, and under­stand­ing of his­to­ry.”

He added, by anal­o­gy, that “a church doesn’t accept mem­ber­ship for peo­ple who don’t accord to their state­ment of faith.”

...

Vought brought up oth­er episodes from Trump-era bor­der enforce­ment dur­ing the lec­ture. At one point, he hit out at evan­gel­i­cal preach­er Franklin Gra­ham for crit­i­ciz­ing the Trump admin­is­tra­tion for imple­ment­ing its fam­i­ly sep­a­ra­tion pol­i­cy. Vought jus­ti­fied the pol­i­cy as run-of-the-mill crim­i­nal law enforce­ment: “Not unlike when a par­ent com­mits a crime and goes to jail, it leads to a trag­ic sep­a­ra­tion of fam­i­lies.”
...

And as Bap­tist pas­tor David Gushee warns, the kind of theo­crat­ic think­ing exem­pli­fied by fig­ures like Doug Wil­son aren’t a “fringe” as they used to be. And while Pres­i­dent Trump’s embrace of theocrats has cer­tain­ly played a role, that suc­cess is also implic­it­ly, due to the suc­cess Wil­son and his the­o­log­i­cal fel­low trav­el­ers have had in pro­lif­er­at­ing Domin­ion­ist and Recon­struc­tion­st con­gre­ga­tions around the US:

...
David Gushee, a Bap­tist pas­tor who oppos­es Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism, told TPM that he found the pro­pos­al shock­ing and self-evi­dent­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry.

“The fact that a lot of the immi­grants that come from Latin Amer­i­ca are Chris­tians, Catholic, or what­ev­er, doesn’t seem to mat­ter to those who are opposed to it,” Gushee said. “And so then if it’s not about reli­gion, it must be about some­thing else.”

...

“I’m not try­ing to get us into a Handmaid’s Tale sit­u­a­tion,” Wil­son added. “What I’m try­ing to do is get back to Amer­i­ca in 1892 when there was a Supreme Court deci­sion say­ing that Amer­i­ca was a Chris­t­ian nation.”

Gushee, the Bap­tist pas­tor, remarked that Wil­son and those like him had become less “fringe” over the years.

“They didn’t mat­ter, but now they mat­ter because the con­ver­sa­tion has moved in their direc­tion. And I think Trump has a lot to do with that, but it’s not only him,” Gushee said.
...

And, obvi­ous­ly, this Sep­tem­ber 2023 speech took place before it was clear Trump was return­ing to office. In oth­er words, from a pow­er stand­point, Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism is A LOT less ‘fringe’ than it was even a year ago. Project 2025 is very much a Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist agen­da, and that’s the agen­da dri­ving DC today. Doug Wil­son and his fel­low trav­el­ers like Russ Vought won big.

Doug Wilson’s Religous Empire Expands Its Presence in DC

So after hav­ing accrued all of that polit­i­cal suc­cess and the influ­ence that comes with it, we should­n’t be sur­prised to learn that Doug Wilson’s ambi­tions are much more DC-cen­tric these days. Wil­son is plan­ning on adding a new con­gre­ga­tion to CREC. This time in DC. As Wil­son explained in the fol­low­ing report from May 2025, he envi­sions the DC con­gre­ga­tion serv­ing as a hub for his brand of evan­gel­i­cal­ism, where pas­tors from his CREC net­work of con­gre­ga­tions will trav­el to DC to fundraise and preach. Which makes this a good time to recall how the cur­rent Sec­re­tary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, is a mem­ber of CREC con­gre­ga­tion. How many more polit­i­cal elite mem­bers will Wilson’s con­gre­ga­tions cul­ti­vate after he’s estab­lished a per­ma­nent DC pres­ence? But also keep in mind that, had Don­ald Trump lost the 2024 elec­tion, Wilson’s the­ol­o­gy would have been very open to the kind of insur­rec­tion the CNP helped orches­trate on Jan­u­ary 6. Because Wilson’s the­ol­o­gy is the League of South’s the­ol­o­gy. A recon­struc­tion­ist anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic reac­tionary the­ol­o­gy that has an alarm­ing num­ber of fel­low trav­el­ers who have long occu­pied the halls of pow­er. A neo-Con­fed­er­ate the­ol­o­gy real­ly has won con­trol of DC. The easy way, elec­toral­ly. But this is a neo-Con­fed­er­ate the­ol­o­gy that is more than will­ing to win pow­er the hard way. And it’s just get­ting start­ed:

Talk­ing Points Memo

An Out­spo­ken Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist Pas­tor Expands His Sway In Trump’s DC

Ida­ho pas­tor Doug Wil­son is bring­ing his church to DC, and says he met with Sec­re­tary of Defense Pete Hegseth in recent weeks.

By Josh Koven­sky
May 22, 2025 10:50 a.m.

Ida­ho pas­tor Dou­glas Wil­son can be provoca­tive. He once wrote that “slav­ery pro­duced in the South a gen­uine affec­tion between the races.” He’s said that “sodomy” is worse than “slav­ery”; abor­tion, he’s writ­ten, is “as great an evil as slav­ery” due to what he sees as its abil­i­ty to spark a civ­il war. He told me last year that he regards the Amer­i­can state as the “biggest blas­phe­mer” of them all.

But beneath the provo­ca­tions is a vision of a remade — and Chris­tian­ized — Amer­i­ca: One in which the gov­ern­ment aggres­sive­ly pro­motes and enact the pref­er­ences of the evan­gel­i­cal right.

Now, months into the sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion, Wil­son sees a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty. Now, months into the sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion, Wil­son sees a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty. Last year, as TPM first report­ed, he shared a stage with now-OMB Direc­tor Russ Vought. Wil­son told TPM this week that he recent­ly met with Sec­re­tary of Defense Pete Hegseth while deliv­er­ing a ser­mon at Hegseth’s Ten­nessee church. A video of the ser­mon appears to show the two shak­ing hands and talk­ing. Asked about the meet­ing, which has not pre­vi­ous­ly been report­ed, a Pen­ta­gon spokesper­son told TPM that Hegseth is an admir­er of the pas­tor. A video of the ser­mon appears to show the two shak­ing hands and talk­ing. Asked about the meet­ing, which has not pre­vi­ous­ly been report­ed, a Pen­ta­gon spokesper­son told TPM that Hegseth is an admir­er of the pas­tor.

Wil­son believes that he has key allies atop and through­out the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment, and, like many before him, is try­ing to secure access and influ­ence to advance his ideas. To do that, Wil­son is seek­ing to expand his reli­gious empire —already capa­cious —into the cap­i­tal. He’s launch­ing a new church in Wash­ing­ton this sum­mer.

At the same time, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has begun to take actions that appear to ben­e­fit Wil­son and his move­ment. On Tues­day, the DOJ civ­il rights divi­sion sued an Ida­ho town for deny­ing a land use per­mit to Wilson’s church. Hegseth held a prayer ser­vice in the Pen­ta­gon on Wednes­day where he praised Pres­i­dent Trump as an instru­ment of God while stand­ing along­side his own, Nashville-based pas­tor, who is him­self a long­time mem­ber of the Com­mu­nion of Reformed Evan­gel­i­cal Church­es (CREC), the move­ment that Wil­son found­ed.

...

Friends in high places

Hob­nob­bing with pow­er­ful con­ser­v­a­tives isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly any­thing new for Wil­son. His Sep­tem­ber 2023 speech along­side Vought took place on Capi­tol Hill in the base­ment of the Senate’s Dirk­sen Office build­ing. It was ded­i­cat­ed to mak­ing the “Chris­t­ian Case for Immi­gra­tion Restric­tion,” and was deliv­ered as part of the “The­ol­o­gy of Amer­i­can State­craft” series.

Wil­son spoke with TPM this week about his plans to “plant” a church in D.C., which were first report­ed by Moth­er Jones. The church, he said, would serve as a hub for his brand of evan­gel­i­cal­ism: pas­tors from Wilson’s Moscow, Ida­ho-based net­work would use fundraised mon­ey to fly in to D.C. and preach to the con­gre­ga­tion. Oth­er pas­tors from Wilson’s net­work, CREC, will also fly in from across the coun­try, Wil­son said.

He envi­sions this as part of a strat­e­gy to spread his beliefs with­in the gov­ern­ment. The Trump admin­is­tra­tion is full of evan­gel­i­cals, he said, mean­ing that they’re what Wil­son described as “cul­tur­al­ly engaged”: using their posi­tion to advo­cate for poli­cies that many con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cals sup­port.

“We think that cul­tur­al engage­ment needs a the­o­log­i­cal foun­da­tion, and we’re gonna be seek­ing to pro­vide that,” Wil­son told TPM.

Wil­son told TPM that he met with Hegseth ear­li­er this month dur­ing a ser­mon he deliv­ered at Pil­grim Hill Reformed Fel­low­ship, a church out­side of Nashville, Ten­nessee that Hegseth attends.

Pil­grim Hill is small, and new: it opened in 2021, and counts itself among Wilson’s bur­geon­ing CREC umbrel­la of church­es. For Wil­son, the D.C. church, CREC, and high-lev­el con­nec­tions to Hegseth and Vought are part of an expand­ing counter-cul­tur­al king­dom: there’s a pod­cast plat­form, a col­lege, a net­work of schools that offer clas­si­cal edu­ca­tion, and a pub­lish­er that recent­ly print­ed a much-debat­ed book on the online Chris­t­ian right, The Case for Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism. That book rails against the “gynoc­ra­cy,” legal gay mar­riage, and the end of lim­its on immi­gra­tion by nation­al ori­gin. It calls for a “mea­sured and theo­crat­ic cae­sarism.”

By all accounts, Hegseth is an enthu­si­as­tic mem­ber of the com­mu­ni­ty that Wil­son has helped forge. He once said that he would be will­ing to pay for his kids to attend Wilson’s col­lege —New St. Andrews —but not Har­vard. (The list of schools he’d be hap­py for his chil­dren to attend also includ­ed Lib­er­ty Uni­ver­si­ty; Hegseth said that he kept a run­ning list on his iPhone.)

Wil­son told TPM that he been vis­it­ing Pil­grim Hill for a con­fer­ence that the church put on in ear­ly May, he said. He por­trayed the meet­ing with Hegseth and his wife, Jen­nifer, as “a hap­pen­stance.”

...

Storm­ing the beach­es

Julie Inger­soll, a pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Flori­da who has stud­ied Wil­son and the move­ment, told TPM that CREC requires its mem­bers to pass a “the­o­log­i­cal grilling” before join­ing. That means a check to make sure that lay mem­bers agree with CREC’s stat­ed beliefs, which include oppos­ing female com­bat troops and believ­ing that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is sin­ful. Sen­a­tors grilled Hegseth dur­ing this con­fir­ma­tion hear­ing over his state­ments on a pod­cast last year, dur­ing which he clar­i­fied that he was “straight up just say­ing we should not have women in com­bat roles.”

“I don’t think you can be a mem­ber of these church­es and dis­agree on these posi­tions,” Inger­soll said.

Wil­son denied to TPM that he would use the D.C. church for par­ti­san ends, say­ing that he intend­ed to found it to “rep­re­sent Christ, not Trump.”

Still, Wil­son sees the ini­tia­tive as a huge oppor­tu­ni­ty. He’s vis­i­bly excit­ed about it. He titled a blog post announc­ing it “a mis­sion to Baby­lon,” and pro­posed a few bib­li­cal metaphors for the D.C. church project. One was rebuild­ing “the walls of a ruined Jerusalem;” anoth­er was “rebuild­ing the walls of Chris­ten­dom.” Anoth­er was some­what more aggres­sive: “per­haps the task is more like an effort to bring Baby­lon into the New Jerusalem.”

Dur­ing the ser­mon he gave at Pil­grim Hill, Hegseth’s church, Wil­son toyed with anoth­er metaphor. This time, it was far more mar­tial, and had to do with Joshua lead­ing the cho­sen peo­ple to con­quer Canaan.

There, he asked the audi­ence to con­sid­er a phrase they might see on posters sold at Chris­t­ian book­stores: “I will nev­er leave thee or for­sake thee.”

The phrase, Wil­son mused, is typ­i­cal­ly embla­zoned next to a “pic­ture of a bas­ket of kit­tens.” But he cau­tioned the crowd that the impli­ca­tions don’t con­cern cats so much as they do spir­i­tu­al war­fare: the phrase comes from the por­tion of the Hebrew bible that deals with the inva­sion of Canaan.

“What that poster ought to be is a panoram­ic view of Nor­mandy beach, with amphibi­ous craft about ready to hit the beach,” He said. “I will nev­er leave you or for­sake you. That’s the con­text. You are going into con­flict.”

————

“An Out­spo­ken Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist Pas­tor Expands His Sway In Trump’s DC” By Josh Koven­sky; Talk­ing Points Memo; 05/22/2025

“Wil­son believes that he has key allies atop and through­out the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment, and, like many before him, is try­ing to secure access and influ­ence to advance his ideas. To do that, Wil­son is seek­ing to expand his reli­gious empire —already capa­cious —into the cap­i­tal. He’s launch­ing a new church in Wash­ing­ton this sum­mer.”

Doug Wil­son might pos­sess a num­ber of delu­sion­al beliefs. Sad­ly, the belief that he has key allies atop and through­out the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment is not one of those delu­sions. The CNP’s Project 2025 has been con­ceived and exe­cut­ed by Doug Wilson’s theo­crat­ic fel­low trav­el­ers, of which Russ Vought is just one. Along with Sec­re­tary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who isn’t just a the­o­log­i­cal­ly aligned Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist. Hegseth is a mem­ber of a church that is part of Wilson’s Com­mu­nion of Reformed Evan­gel­i­cal Church­es (CREC). And as we can see, Wil­son has big plans to expand on that polit­i­cal influ­ence by open­ing up a new church in DC. Plans that ulti­mate­ly result in the impo­si­tion of “mea­sured and theo­crat­ic cae­sarism”, as Wil­son put it in his book The Case for Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism. Doug Wil­son does­n’t hide his author­i­tar­i­an ambi­tions. Which is a big part of why his embrace by the CNP and the Trump admin­is­tra­tion is so dis­turb­ing. This is mask-drop­ping behav­ior:

...
Now, months into the sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion, Wil­son sees a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty. Now, months into the sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion, Wil­son sees a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty. Last year, as TPM first report­ed, he shared a stage with now-OMB Direc­tor Russ Vought. Wil­son told TPM this week that he recent­ly met with Sec­re­tary of Defense Pete Hegseth while deliv­er­ing a ser­mon at Hegseth’s Ten­nessee church. A video of the ser­mon appears to show the two shak­ing hands and talk­ing. Asked about the meet­ing, which has not pre­vi­ous­ly been report­ed, a Pen­ta­gon spokesper­son told TPM that Hegseth is an admir­er of the pas­tor. A video of the ser­mon appears to show the two shak­ing hands and talk­ing. Asked about the meet­ing, which has not pre­vi­ous­ly been report­ed, a Pen­ta­gon spokesper­son told TPM that Hegseth is an admir­er of the pas­tor.

...

At the same time, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has begun to take actions that appear to ben­e­fit Wil­son and his move­ment. On Tues­day, the DOJ civ­il rights divi­sion sued an Ida­ho town for deny­ing a land use per­mit to Wilson’s church. Hegseth held a prayer ser­vice in the Pen­ta­gon on Wednes­day where he praised Pres­i­dent Trump as an instru­ment of God while stand­ing along­side his own, Nashville-based pas­tor, who is him­self a long­time mem­ber of the Com­mu­nion of Reformed Evan­gel­i­cal Church­es (CREC), the move­ment that Wil­son found­ed.

...

Wil­son spoke with TPM this week about his plans to “plant” a church in D.C., which were first report­ed by Moth­er Jones. The church, he said, would serve as a hub for his brand of evan­gel­i­cal­ism: pas­tors from Wilson’s Moscow, Ida­ho-based net­work would use fundraised mon­ey to fly in to D.C. and preach to the con­gre­ga­tion. Oth­er pas­tors from Wilson’s net­work, CREC, will also fly in from across the coun­try, Wil­son said.

He envi­sions this as part of a strat­e­gy to spread his beliefs with­in the gov­ern­ment. The Trump admin­is­tra­tion is full of evan­gel­i­cals, he said, mean­ing that they’re what Wil­son described as “cul­tur­al­ly engaged”: using their posi­tion to advo­cate for poli­cies that many con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cals sup­port.

“We think that cul­tur­al engage­ment needs a the­o­log­i­cal foun­da­tion, and we’re gonna be seek­ing to pro­vide that,” Wil­son told TPM.

Wil­son told TPM that he met with Hegseth ear­li­er this month dur­ing a ser­mon he deliv­ered at Pil­grim Hill Reformed Fel­low­ship, a church out­side of Nashville, Ten­nessee that Hegseth attends.

Pil­grim Hill is small, and new: it opened in 2021, and counts itself among Wilson’s bur­geon­ing CREC umbrel­la of church­es. For Wil­son, the D.C. church, CREC, and high-lev­el con­nec­tions to Hegseth and Vought are part of an expand­ing counter-cul­tur­al king­dom: there’s a pod­cast plat­form, a col­lege, a net­work of schools that offer clas­si­cal edu­ca­tion, and a pub­lish­er that recent­ly print­ed a much-debat­ed book on the online Chris­t­ian right, The Case for Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism. That book rails against the “gynoc­ra­cy,” legal gay mar­riage, and the end of lim­its on immi­gra­tion by nation­al ori­gin. It calls for a “mea­sured and theo­crat­ic cae­sarism.”
...

Will “mea­sured and theo­crat­ic cae­sarism” be the new law of the land by the time Pres­i­dent Trump leaves office? We’ll see. But as should be clear by now, it would be a huge mis­take to dis­count the pos­si­bil­i­ty when forces this orga­nized and ambi­tious are behind it. After all, just look at what Doug Wil­son alone has accom­plished over the past three decades: in 1996 he co-authors a book argu­ing the Con­fed­er­a­cy was the Bib­li­cal ide­al soci­ety. That did­n’t end his career as a the­olo­gian. On the con­trary, his CREC net­work of extreme con­gre­ga­tions is poised to open up a branch in DC and extend his influ­encer even fur­ther and Wil­son even got to co-strate­gize along­side fig­ures like Russ Vought over how to imple­ment Project 2025. The guy is cur­rent­ly liv­ing the Domin­ion­ist dream of a theo­crat­ic cap­ture of gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tions and this pow­er grab is far from com­plete. As Kevin Roberts warned the pub­lic back in July 2 of 2024, a “Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion” is under­way and will only remain blood­less “if the left allows it”. A Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion that would take decades to com­plete­ly And the peo­ple exe­cut­ing this ‘Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion’ are very much Doug Wilson’s fel­low trav­el­ers. We’ve been warned.

And yet, it’s hard to argue that fig­ures like Joshua Caleb Sut­ter, Jil­lian Hoy, Greg John­son, Ryan Schus­ter, and the rest of the white nation­al­ists who have spent years pro­mot­ing the rise of accel­er­a­tionist Nazism aren’t also fel­low trav­el­ers. The shared white suprema­cy at the core of all of these move­ments is one area of obvi­ous over­lap. But there’s also the strate­gic align­ment with all of these move­ments. White suprema­cy has­n’t sub­sided. Quite the oppo­site. But the Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty ter­ror events of decades past like Okla­homa City or the Atlanta Olympic bomb­ings real­ly are far less like­ly these days. Not gone entire­ly, as Vance Boel­ter’s recent Min­neso­ta polit­i­cal mur­der spree makes clear. But far less like­ly, with accel­er­a­tionist ter­ror attacks — where there’s no coher­ent ide­ol­o­gy beyond white suprema­cy and a desire to col­lapse soci­ety — becom­ing almost the default ter­ror motive of the cur­rent age. Accel­er­a­tionist Nazism, with seem­ing­ly noth­ing more than a desire to col­lapse soci­ety as soon as pos­si­ble, and Con­fed­er­ate Bib­li­cal Recon­struc­tion­ism real­ly are syn­er­gis­tic plots. One white suprema­cist plot to tear soci­ety down. The oth­er to cap­ture what’s left and rebuild it in a Con­fed­er­ate image. The rise of Satan­ic Nazism real­ly has worked out remark­ably well for the Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist intent on car­ry­ing out a “Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion”. And, in turn, worked remark­ably well for the increas­ing­ly law­less Pres­i­dent Trump who is steadi­ly paving the way for that shared author­i­tar­i­an vision. All of this mad­ness — some chaot­ic bloody mad­ness and some high­ly orga­nized mad­ness — is work­ing out incred­i­bly well for aspir­ing author­i­tar­i­ans. The syn­er­gy is unde­ni­able. Fun­ny how that works.