Jos 4:21-2 And he spake unto the children of Israel, saying, When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What [mean] these stones?
Then ye shall let your children know, saying, Israel came over this Jordan on dry land.
By now all are aware of the events of June at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in which James von Brunn, an elderly Holocaust denier and well known anti-Semite, shot Stephen Tyrone Johns, on a busy visitor day at the Memorial Museum.
The security officer died, and von Brunn remained in serious condition following the exchange. Needless to say no one expected the violent interchange, on a quiet summer morning when thousands of tourists flock the streets of the Capitol to see the sites, and the great portion of honor goes to the other security guards and police officers who responded with immediacy and dignity to avoid a much more tragic scenario, though the incident is hardly unremarkable.
To some extent, although few will breathe it out loud, it is far more surprising that many more such incidents have not already occurred. USHMM, partially federally funded, partly privately funded more than any other nationally visible symbol, or 'Ebenezer' speaks of the Shoah and the Jews more than any other ensign, (more even than the Wiesenthal Center) just by being there, by being in existence. Terrorists like to target symbols, and those involved in 'hate industries' are no exception. James von Brunn had been known to make symbolic gestures before, serving time for the attempted 'citizen's arrest' of members of the Federal Reserve some years back. (Not that a lot of us might not want that honor one day, from all backgrounds-pardon the black humor.)
James von Brunn is a little 'showier' than many anti-Semites and holocaust deniers, but his rhetoric on the net is vile and open : racial epithets fly on his 'holywesternempire.com' site, decrying world Jewry, denouncing Obama for being controlled by his 'Jew' bosses, etc. (I wish Obama would listen to those folks a little more, maybe the world would run more smoothly. ahem.) One cannot though underestimate the sentiments and beliefs of many of the 'true believers' of Anti-Semitism, and dismissing them as crazy, or imbecilic will not work. For all the time spent in teaching tolerance, these folks are often not listened to nor understood, and that just fuels the fire for future tragic incidents, targeting 'representative' organizations.
Vicious Anti-Semites
I must begin by saying that it should be self-evident that I am not condoning any act of hate, certainly not the senseless shooting death of the USHMM guard. Yet in our swift efforts to condemn the action, we need to understand how we polarize people into corners leaving them no release for even expressing their views which may very well lead later to hate crimes. The anatomy of a hate crime usually has a lengthy process: there are first years and years of inculcating the hate, through family members, schools, unfortunate incidents, and later literature , groups, and 'admission' to 'secret knowledge', often a temptation to pride in which those of a certain lodge, society or other group knows something the rest of the world does not. Reinforced by many others of similar beliefs, hatred and bigotry to racial or creed groups grows, but as long as the society is generally stable and comfortable, confrontations stay mainly verbal.
Later in the process though, events may reinforce and enhance hatred: run-ins with the objects of hate, e.g. young Jewish students who yell back, or an Afro-American who they perceive cheats them in a business deal, fuel the fire and become self-fulfilling prophecies, of 'see, I told you 'they' were like that'. Tolerance organizations more often polarize anti-Semites instead of seek dialogue. I have been around both kinds of people a great deal in the past, and I have heard the expression 'vicious anti-Semite' as often as I have heard 'nigger' or 'kike' from the other side. Liberal persons characterize these men and women as stupid, ignorant, uneducated, backwoods, paranoid, and even insane. That is also untrue: education level runs the gamut across Anti-Semitic, and so does background these days, in colors from University-Based pro-Palestinian all the way to White Aryan groups and politicized churches. The hatred though, is very real, and foments over time, and while deniers and others seldom seek out or wish interaction or dialogue with those they consider controlled by Jewish interests, tolerance folks also very rarely venture out to initiate real discussion instead of argumentative and incendiary debates.
There is no naivete here: it is highly unlikely that dialogue will change the minds of these folks, anymore than tolerance people would change to the opposite point of view. What might be changed though is an education on both sides as to the human status of both sides. One cannot underestimate the danger involved in practiced and organized hatred, but it almost always comes from a failure to identify the humanness of the person hated.
Beliefs of Anti-Semites
There are dozens of varieties of Anti-Semitic belief. Some are anti-Semitic out of a lack of education or exposure to Jewish people: they speak awkwardly and even repeat epithets and myths they have heard, because they do not know any differently. In one Sunday school many years ago, I gave a copy of a coloring book out called "Jesus was Jewish" that taught the very young very simply about what it meant to be Jewish. One parent expressed surprise that her little girl did not even know what a Jew was. It was an opportunity for learning. In churches I have confronted 'ignorant anti-Semitic' in doctrine, truisms, beliefs or adages, not from people who hate the Jews, but from those who see only differences. This first realm of Anti-Semitic is the most educable. When people who have ideas which are wrong but who do not hate received information which corrects those beliefs, they grow and many problems are averted.
Portals Into Hate
There is a more difficult level though, and the group is growing, of persons who did not start out Anti-Semitic, or hateful, but fall into the snares of very real organized propaganda. In the early 1990s, I attended a small Baptist Church in the Midwest, which looked for all the world like most others. They had a bus ministry for kids, potluck suppers, preaching etc, and while the preacher was from a country background, he appeared a pleasant and polite man. One Sunday though, quite by surprise he began to preach about the Jews being the most wicked people in the world. Later we discovered many anti-Semitic pamphlets and literature on the tables in the Church foyer. After a few months we were invited to a large church meeting in Indianapolis, in the days following the Ruby Ridge incident, and not knowing who we were dealing with, discovered about 500-1000 pastors, families and other worshipers dealing not with the Gospel but with politics, world Jewry, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and one of the main speakers was Bo Gritz, who had just been at Ruby Ridge negotiating the end of the crisis. We had been led to believe that the meeting was mostly about Homeschooling and church-state issues, church and school registry etc, but we were baptized into a whole different culture than I had seen up close: the group was not just Baptists, but a diverse group including even some Mormons and an orthodox Episcopal priest. They really were very circumspect and suspicious, but with some reason: many had been investigated by agencies such as ATF, the FBI, and the IRS, and a few jailed. A short time later the Church where the meeting was held was closed down for tax evasion. The literature out on the tables in the lobby and the persons hosting tables were an array of real hardcore anti-Semitism and racial hatred: exaggerated drawings, leaflets inciting the overthrow of the Jews, the government and so on, mixed with information on survivalist issues, and the featured speaker, Gritz, had come with videotapes from the foot of the mountain the Weavers were on.
One may think that given those beliefs that the group was a hardcore unkind bunch of haters, but that is really not the case. Am I trying to say that these anti-Semites were really very lovely people? No: I have spent years and years trying to get the church to understand a right and loving perspective towards Israel and the Jews, but to really understand and confront the problem, we can't throw the baby out with the bathwater. There really were very lovely people there: not unlike others I had gone to church with elsewhere. A number like us, were 'unregistered' homeschoolers, a legal status, but there to get information on legal defenses. Many were not even anti-Semitic but believed as we do that the Church should be separate from the State, and were keeping up on issues and legal concerns. Many more though could not separate the issues, and they indeed were hateful and saw the Jews as responsible for all problems in the world: all: money problems, political problems, religious problems and even their own life problems. They believe that if the Jews were gone, their lives and the world would be better. They espoused doctrine I know now had its genesis in the DC, the Reich Church, although most would be hard pressed to know its origin. Some really were dangerous and advocated militant overthrow of the government and the Jews, which they did not differentiate. And the Federal Reserve, an arm of what they saw as World Jewry because of the Jewish names of many of the bankers.
While we left the little church in our home city when we got home, flabbergasted at what the whole thing had been about, the point is not that I was ignorant and had fallen into an unsuspected situation, but that even with my background, education, and at that time in 1992 8 years in bible study, I did not detect the whole 'process' for a few months. There is a subtle and growing indoctrination process, not of a lot of little old nazified men ranting and raving many picture, but of kind and nice church people, inviting people from the periphery of issues which many people share even in holocaust studies such as Church and Synagogue independence, tax-free status for churches, or non-state affiliated religious schools, to the more virulent and offensive issues including anti-Semitic stance and doctrines, often not promoted or addressed until a person is well into very tight-knit groups. By the time they are in 'inner circles' of these folks, hatred begets hatred, and it is even plausible that persons with no ill feelings towards other racial groups can be groomed and trained into it.
The Spotlight
More to the point: Anti-Semitism, and anti-Semitic groups are growing significantly with more and more mainstream conservative people joining at the periphery and being led into the center of prejudice. Back in the late 80s and early 90s, one of the main publications of the Patriot movement and similar movements was a paper called "The Spotlight". The first time I saw it I was appalled: it carried stories of 'heroes' handing out the protocols of the Elders of Zion (from the Nazi era) in German airports and getting arrested, ads for buying and selling gold, rants against the secret council of Jews that ran the world, etc, in short it was an identifiable fringe newspaper of the White Aryan variety. A few years later, in Illinois, I found it in a middle class public library, and it had changed its timbre and look: it carried conservative columnists and issues, articles on homeschooling, back to nature issues, church state controversies, mixed in with the former junk. It also had greatly, even geometrically increased readership. One could tell that they were 'boiling the frog', or warming up converts. By the year 2001, there was some sort of controversy which had shut down "The Spotlight". However, one must understand keenly that within 10 years, they had gone, with their related groups, from being a fringe rag, echoing the Volkische Beobachter, to a 'Conservative Christian Newspaper' with some fringe issues, without changing hands greatly. The reason many Christians were deceived, and also courted, was because of the twisting of scripture and doctrine, accompanied by the comfort of companions, clean living, church activities, and comradery mixed with a fervent 'true belief'.
Numbers and Hate
ADL has published numbers which I have quoted before in SeditionAct regarding the number of members in the Militia organizations, but their numbers are underestimates. One cannot get at the real numbers because many will not even keep membership lists and if they do, they are 'high security'. They know there are Feds in their midst, and they do get paranoid, although some with good reason, such as a couple some years back whom we met after they were investigated by the IRS. They had their credit card records checked, their family and friends called, and any number of uncomfortable occurrences. The constant fear also drives people further into those kinds of beliefs. The man who walked into USHMM and fired his gun, had been for years involved in that kind of life, including imprisonment for the Federal Reserve incident. While the Gospel teaches "Perfect Love casteth out Fear", the converse is true also: Perfect Fear casteth out Love. Love and Tolerance become for these folks seen as 'soft', namby-pamby' ideas meant to weaken an individual, or even as 'plots' to overthrow the conservative stable 'American' way of life. The subtle indoctrinations, coupled with Church proselytizing, coupled with overlapping issues such as ecclesiastical-state issues, coupled with a trained us-them mentality, painted with fearfulness, portrays a scenario in which many hate crimes will occur in the future under the guise of protecting a way of life.
If the number of persons actively involved were really tallied combined with those who will look the other way, it would be frightening. The SA in Germany by 1933 contained 2.5 million para-military members, about 3.8% of the population then. We have close to 70 million who claim to be conservative Christians, who will certainly not all even be tempted to the agenda, but provide a fertile ground for the propaganda. The Militia may number close to a million, the Patriot movement more. White Aryan nation groups or 'Identity' groups number in the hundreds of thousands or more. The influx of persons from the Southern border is bringing many persons with prejudice and religious-anti-Semitism, and that is not to mention the overflowing move on college campuses toward Pro-Palestinianism and even acts of violence, or other groups such as some brands of Islam which espouse and use the same hate literature and propagandizing as the other groups.
The USHMM as an Ebenezer Target
When in the Book of Samuel, the men of Israel fight the Philistines, and win, Samuel the prophet places a stone called 'Ebenezer' between Mizpeh and Shen to denote the Lord's help in battle. Ebenezer means 'stone of help', and marked a victory and a remembrance of what the Lord had done. Now, the USHMM is partly federal so I cannot perfectly equate the two, but the Museum was a great victory when it was proposed in 1980 and dedicated in 1993, as a 'stone of remembrance' and victory. While most rejoice at the Museum which has mostly sensitively and tenderly carried out its mission, and provided the strong leadership and cohesion the Holocaust Studies and Education field needed (as well as resources, scholarships, education, archives etc), not everyone in this country is happy with the institution. Some want it changed into an 'all people-all genocides' organization which while a worthy cause, betrays the reason for it. Others want it to be more Federally controlled, which cannot be done and retain its purpose, character, or demeanor, and which I believe would lead to its use as a propaganda tool to ameliorate the US role in the Shoah. There was a small inkling of that flavor recently when representatives from the Military marched into the President's speech. Far too many though, do not want it there at all: the massive support and number of visitors gives a pollyana-ish hope that there will be no problems, but we can see why there can be and has been.
USHMM is a symbol, a stone of remembrance. For most of us, that is a good and even great thing. To those who are fearful, it is seen as a banner of those they hate. Most anti-Semites will not go so far as to commit hate crimes beyond rhetoric, but harassment, confusion, and even overthrow are not beyond possibility. There is either some form of understanding and dialogue, or massive education campaign within and by the church and conservative groups, or the tragic shooting of this past week will be only a portal.
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