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Bertrand Lewis Comparet (c1900-1983) was an influential figure in the development of the Christian Identity movement. [1]
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Bertrand Lewis Comparet (c1900-1983) was an influential figure in the development of the Christian Identity movement. [1]
Bertrand Comparet was born in San Diego.
Early in life, he was involved in debate. While in high school in 1919, he won the silver medal in the championship of the Southern California Debating League. [2] After high school, he attended Stanford, where he was also a member of the debate team. [3] [4]
After being educated at Stanford, he became a lawyer. [5] : 26 He acted as deputy district attorney of San Diego county from 1926 to 1932 and as deputy city attorney of San Diego from 1942 to 1947. [6] : 60 [5] : 406
Comparet joined with Wesley Swift to form the Anglo Saxons Christian Congregation. Swift served as president, with Comparet as vice president. [6] : 63 The congregation began meeting in 1945, but was not incorporated until 1948. [5] : 405 That same year, Comparet also incorporated "Dr. Wesley Swift's Ministry, Inc." of which he and Swift were directors. [5] : 405
Comparet served as lawyer for several Christian Identity organizations, including the Christian Defense League. [6] : 67 He was also involved with the Christian Nationalist Crusade. [7] In the 1954 election, Comparet provided legal representation to the Christian Nationalist Party to conduct a write-in campaign for Douglas MacArthur for president and Senator Jack B. Tenney for vice-president, with the hope that the Republican and Democrat candidates would be so close, neither would have a majority, leading to a vote in the House of Representatives, which could then elect MacArthur. [8]
When Marcellus Baxter was tried for selling academic degrees, Comparet represented him, with the defense that the degree was not being sold but rather conferred. The course and instruction was sold, and that completion of the course was on the honor system. [9] Ultimately, Baxter pleaded guilty and received two years probation. [10]
Following the 1964 arrest of Christian Defense League member William H. Garland for weapons charges, Comparet handled his legal defense. [5] : 93 [11]
Comparet provided representation for members of the Minutemen militia group. In 1964, he represented Harold Schlapia who was found with 11 rifles and 20,000 rounds of ammunition in his car. He was charged with carrying a concealed weapon. [12] In 1965, Comparet handled the defense of Dennis Patrick Mower, another Minuteman member and a minister[ clarification needed ] who stood trial on charges related to the illegal transfer of an automatic weapon. [13]
Comparet was part of Christian Identity's emergence from British Israelism. He taught that the Jews had never been Israelites, but were instead Canaanites who intermarried with Israelites. [6] : 130 He later taught a twist on the Khazar theory by proposing that the Edomite Jews were the ancestors of the Khazars. [6] : 144
Comparet also taught a pre-Adamism that resembled that of Charles Carroll in which the serpent was black pre-Adamite. [6] : 179
British Israelism is the British nationalist, pseudoarchaeological, pseudohistorical and pseudoreligious belief that the people of Great Britain are "genetically, racially, and linguistically the direct descendants" of the Ten Lost Tribes of ancient Israel. With roots in the 16th century, British Israelism was inspired by several 19th century English writings such as John Wilson's 1840 Our Israelitish Origin. From the 1870s onward, numerous independent British Israelite organizations were set up throughout the British Empire as well as in the United States; as of the early 21st century, a number of these organizations are still active. In the United States, the idea gave rise to the Christian Identity movement.
Christian Identity is an interpretation of Christianity which advocates the belief that only Celtic and Germanic peoples, such as the Anglo-Saxon, Nordic nations, or people of the Aryan race and people of kindred blood, are the descendants of the ancient Israelites and are therefore God's "chosen people". It is a racial interpretation of Christianity and is not an organized religion, nor is it affiliated with specific Christian denominations. It emerged from British Israelism in the 1920s and began to take shape during the 1940s-1970s. Today it is independently practiced by individuals, independent congregations, and some prison gangs.
The Kuzari, full title Book of Refutation and Proof on Behalf of the Despised Religion, also known as the Book of the Khazar, is one of the most famous works of the medieval Spanish Jewish philosopher, physician, and poet Judah Halevi, completed in the Hebrew year 4900 (1139-40CE).
Booker Tyrone Edgerson is an American former professional football player who was a cornerback in the American Football League (AFL) and National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Western Illinois Leathernecks. He became a cornerstone of the AFL's Buffalo Bills' defense in the mid-1960s, at left cornerback.
Richard Girnt Butler was an American engineer and white supremacist. After dedicating himself to the Christian Identity movement, a racialist offshoot of British Israelism, Butler founded the neo-Nazi group Aryan Nations and would become the "spiritual godfather" to the white supremacist movement, in which he was "a leading figure". He has been described as a "notorious racist".
The Plowshares movement is an anti-nuclear weapons and Christian pacifist movement that advocates active resistance to war. The group often practices a form of protest that involves the damaging of weapons and military property. The movement gained notoriety in the early 1980s when several members damaged nuclear warhead nose cones and were subsequently convicted. The name refers to the text of prophet Isaiah who said that swords shall be beaten into plowshares.
The doctrine of the serpent seed, also known as the dual-seed or the two-seedline doctrine, is a controversial and fringe Christian religious belief which explains the biblical account of the fall of man by stating that the Serpent mated with Eve in the Garden of Eden, and the offspring of their union was Cain. This event resulted in the creation of two races of people: the wicked descendants of the Serpent who were destined for damnation, and the righteous descendants of Adam who were destined to have eternal life. The doctrine frames human history as a conflict between these two races in which the descendants of Adam will eventually triumph over the descendants of the Serpent.
The Minuteman Project is an organization which was founded in the United States in August 2004 by a group of private individuals who sought to extrajudicially monitor the United States–Mexico border's flow of illegal immigrants. Founded by Jim Gilchrist and Chris Simcox, the organization's name is derived from the name of the Minutemen, militiamen who fought in the American Revolution. The Minuteman Project describes itself as "a citizens' Neighborhood Watch on our border", and it has attracted the attention of the media due to its focus on the issue of illegal immigration.
James Walter Gilchrist Jr. is an American political activist and the co-founder and president of the Minuteman Project, an activist group whose aim is to prevent illegal immigration across the southern border of the United States.
Steve Foley is a former professional American football linebacker in the National Football League (NFL). He was selected in the third round of the 1998 NFL Draft.
This is a list of topics related to racism:
Christian Nationalist Crusade was an American political advocacy organization founded by Gerald L. K. Smith in 1947. It nominated Smith for President in 1948 and Douglas MacArthur in 1952.
Wesley A. Swift was a minister from Southern California who was known for his white supremacist views and was a central figure in the Christian Identity movement from the 1940s until his death in 1970.
Jack Breckinridge Tenney was an American politician who was noted for leading anti-communist investigations in California in the 1940s and early 1950s as head of the California Senate Factfinding Subcommittee on Un-American Activities ; earlier, he was a song-composer, best known for "Mexicali Rose".
The Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry, often called the Khazar myth by its critics, is a largely abandoned historical hypothesis that postulated that Ashkenazi Jews were primarily, or to a large extent, descended from Khazars, a multi-ethnic conglomerate of mostly Turkic peoples who formed a semi-nomadic khanate in and around the northern and central Caucasus and the Pontic–Caspian steppe. The hypothesis also postulated that after collapse of the Khazar empire, the Khazars fled to Eastern Europe and made up a large part of the Jews there. The hypothesis draws on medieval sources such as the Khazar Correspondence, according to which at some point in the 8th–9th centuries, a small number of Khazars were said by Judah Halevi and Abraham ibn Daud to have converted to Rabbinic Judaism. The scope of the conversion within the Khazar Khanate remains uncertain, but the evidence used to tie the subsequent Ashkenazi communities to the Khazars is meager and subject to conflicting interpretations.
Thomas Linton Metzger was an American white supremacist, neo-Nazi skinhead leader and Klansman. He founded White Aryan Resistance (WAR), a neo-Nazi organization, in 1983. He was a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s. Metzger voiced strong opposition to immigration to the United States, and was an advocate of the Third Position. He was incarcerated in Los Angeles County, California, and Toronto, Ontario, and was the subject of several lawsuits and government inquiries. He, his son, and WAR were fined a total of $12.5 million as a result of the murder of Mulugeta Seraw, 28, an Ethiopian student, by skinheads in Portland, Oregon, affiliated with WAR.
William Potter Gale (1916-1988) was a political activist who was involved with several white supremacist groups, including Christian Identity and the Posse Comitatus. He had connnections to the Church of Jesus Christ–Christian, Aryan Nations, the sovereign citizen movement, and the militia movement.
The Christian Defense League was founded as a white supremacist activist organization in California, and it later moved to Louisiana. According to the Anti-Defamation League, it also had a paramilitary function.
San Jacinto Capt was an influential figure in the formation of Christian Identity. He was a former klansman, pyramidologist, and an advocate of Anglo-Israelism.
Conrad Gaard was a Anglo-Israel minister and a key figure in the emergence of Christian Identity from British Israelism. He was one of the first to incorporate the serpent seed doctrine into Christian Identity teaching.