NCJ Number
115445
Journal
e/sa forum-131 Dated: (June 1987) Pages: 20-23
Date Published
1987
Length
4 pages
Annotation
Across the midwestern part of the United States, rural radical-right organizers have used the despair and frustrations of the region's family farmers and the crisis in rural communities as the foundation on which to build an infrastructure for a racist, anti-Semitic movement.
Abstract
On the surface these groups focus on theology and politics. Beneath this surface lies racist violence, with stockpiling of weapons and calls to prepare for battle. One such group is Posse Comitatus, a secretive network organized in northwest Kansas in the early 1980's. The group combined racist religious beliefs of a group called 'Christian Identity' with arcane notions of the Constitution. The organizers told farmers in the midwest that they were victims of an international Jewish conspiracy to steal Christian land. Posse organizers offered distressed farmers hope for keeping their farms. They also told followers that the United States was a 'Christian Republic,' not a democracy and that income taxes and the Federal Reserve System were unconstitutional. Other groups include Barristers Inn, Patriots Information Network, the Populist Party, and Pete Peters and his Church of Christ. Arrests and convictions for murder and other offenses have fragmented the Posse Comitatus. However, the re-emergence of the Ku Klux Klan in parts of Kansas demonstrates the existence of a movement that threatens to put communities into a destructive cycle of fear and hatred.