Aryan Nations


Aryan Nations

The Aryan Nations have issued a declaration of independence from the United States and declared Anglo-Saxons as the true “chosen people.”

Aryan Nations is a paramilitary group that was founded in the mid-1970s by Rev. Richard Grant Butler and structured around his Church of Jesus Christ Christian, one of numerous churches associated with the Christian Identity movement. Originally headquartered near Hayden Lake, Idaho (the “international headquarters of the White race”), Butler preached the Identity doctrine that Anglo-Saxons, not Jews, are the Bible’s true “chosen people”; African Americans are “mud people,” more animal than human; and Jews are the offspring of Satan. Although Aryan Nations is primarily a Christian Identity group, Butler’s anti-Semitism and his calling for the establishment of a white racist state undeniably reflected a Nazi-like philosophy.

During the 1980s a number of Aryan Nations members joined followers of the neo-Nazi National Alliance and some Knights of the Ku Klux Klan to form a secret organization called the Silent Brotherhood, also known as the Order, which plotted to overthrow the U.S. government. The Order planned to raise cash to fund the revolution by counterfeiting, robbing banks, and hijacking armored cars, but those drastic methods came to a halt with the death of its founder, Robert J. Matthews, in a shootout with federal agents in December 1984, and the subsequent imprisonment of many of its members.

As Richard Butler’s health began to fail, the Aryan Nations Ohio chapter began positioning itself as a possible new headquarters for the group. On February 16, 1997, the Church of Jesus Christ Christian (also New Vienna Church of Christ) in New Vienna, Ohio, and the KKK organized a rally at the state capitol in Columbus to protest Black History Month. In September 1997 Ohio’s Aryan Nations leader, Harold Ray Redfaeirn, was sentenced to six months in prison for carrying a concealed weapon.

Carl Franklin, chief of staff for Aryan Nations, whom Richard Butler had named as his successor, left the group in 1993 as a result of disagreements with Butler. Wayne Jones, security chief at the Aryan compound since the late 1980s, departed along with Franklin. Franklin, Jones, and two other members formed their own white-supremacist group called the Church of Jesus Christ Christian of Montana.

In steadily declining health, Butler underwent a crisis in his leadership after the departure of Franklin. In December 1995 Butler’s wife’s death added to his depression and inability to lead the group.

In August 1999 Aryan Nations member Buford Furrow shot and wounded four children and one adult at a Jewish community center in the Los Angeles suburb of Granada Hills. Not yet satisfied with his kill, Furrow drove to nearby Chatsworth and shot and killed a Filipino American postal carrier.

Aryan Nations was forced to sell its compound in Hayden Lake in 2000 after losing a civil suit brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Richard Butler died on September 8, 2004, and the number of active Aryan Nations chapters fell to fifteen. After the headquarters was relocated to Lincoln, Alabama, and Charles Juba assumed leadership, a splinter group, claiming to be the true Aryan Nations, led by August Kreis moved the base to Sebring, Florida, early in 2005. Kreis will not state how many members the Aryan Nations has at the present time.

Aryan Nations Declaration of Independence from the United States: In 1996 Aryan Nations published a “Declaration of Independence” that accused the “Zionist Occupied Government of the United States of America” of repeated injuries and of having “an absolute tyranny over these [United] states; moreover throughout the entire world.” The declaration continued:

Therefore, the representatives of the Aryan people, in council, appealing to the supreme God of our folk for the rectitude of intentions solemnly publish and declare that the Aryan people in America, are, and of rights ought to be, a free and independent nation; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the United States of America, and that all political connection between them and the Federal government thereof, is and ought to be, totally dissolved, and that as a free and independent nation they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce and to perform all other acts which independent nations may of right do.

The Aryan “Declaration” concludes: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children.”

Activities: In 2005 August Kreis offered sincere congratulations and best wishes to al-Qaeda and all Islamic terrorists groups who wage a holy war against the West. In addition, he has proposed an alliance with the neo-Nazis and Islamic radicals to fight their common enemies, the Jews and the American government.