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The Phineas Priesthood, also called Phineas Priests, are American domestic terrorists who adhere to the ideology which was set forth in the 1990 book Vigilantes of Christendom: The Story of the Phineas Priesthood by Richard Kelly Hoskins. [1]
The Phineas Priests are not an organization, and it has no discernible leadership or institutional structure. For ideological adherents, a "Phineas Priest" is someone who commits a "Phineas action" – meaning the person follows the example of Phineas, a Hebrew man who was rewarded for killing an interfaith couple by God, according to the Old Testament. The term "Phineas action" is broadly used by white supremacists, as a term for murders of interracial couples and as a term for attacks on Jewish people, members of other non-white ethnic groups, "multiculturalists," and anyone else who they consider their enemy. [2]
The ideology which is set forth in Hoskins's book includes Christian Identity beliefs which oppose interracial relationships, the mixing of races, homosexuality, and abortion. It also is marked by anti-Semitism and anti-multiculturalism.
The Phineas Priesthood is not considered an organization because it is not led by a governing body, its members do not hold gatherings, and it does not have a membership process. One simply becomes a Phineas Priest by adopting the Priesthood's beliefs and acting upon them. Adherents of the Phineas Priesthood ideology are considered terrorists.
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), "Many people mistakenly believe that there is an actual organization called the Phineas Priesthood, probably because there was a group of four men in the 1990s who called themselves Phineas Priests. The men carried out bank robberies and a series of bombings in the Pacific Northwest before being sent to prison. But there is no evidence that their organization was any larger than those four individuals."[ citation needed ]
In 2012, Drew Bostwick renamed a splinter faction of the neo-Nazi group Aryan Nations the "Tabernacle of the Phineas Priesthood-Aryan Nations" when he replaced August Kreis as the group's leader. [2]
Their crimes include numerous abortion clinic bombings in 1996, the 1996 bombing of The Spokesman-Review newspaper in Spokane, Washington bank robberies, and plans to blow up FBI buildings. [3] Four men who professed to follow the "religious philosophy of Phineas priests" were convicted of crimes that included bank robberies and bombings, and each of them was (initially) sentenced to life in prison in 1997 and 1998. [4]
A copy of Hoskins's book, War Cycles, Peace Cycles, was found in a van that was driven by Buford Furrow when he killed one person and wounded five others in an attack on a Jewish Community Center in California in 1999. [5] Although that book is about economics, Michael Reynolds of the Southern Poverty Law Center noted that Furrow's actions were consistent with the Phineas Priesthood as described by Hoskins in Vigilantes of Christendom. [6]
On November 28, 2014, 49-year-old Larry Steven McQuilliams fired more than 100 rounds at a federal courthouse, a Mexican consulate building (which he also tried to set on fire), and a police station in Austin, Texas; he was killed by return fire from police. [7] A copy of Hoskins's book was found in McQuilliams's home. [8]
The Phineas Priesthood is named after the Israelite Phineas, grandson of Aaron (Numbers 25:7). According to Numbers 25, Phineas personally executed an Israelite man and a Midianite woman while they were together in the man's tent, ending a plague which had been sent by God in order to punish the Israelites for intermingling both sexually and religiously with Baal-worshipers. Phineas is commended for having stopped Israel's fall into idolatrous practices that were introduced to it by Moabite women. God commends Phineas as zealous through Moses, gives him a "covenant of peace," and grants him and "his seed" an everlasting priesthood. This passage was cited in Hoskins's book as a justification for using violent means against people who have interracial relationships and practice other forms of alleged immorality.
Aryan Nations is a North American antisemitic, neo-Nazi and white supremacist hate group that was originally based in Kootenai County, Idaho, about 2+3⁄4 miles (4.4 km) north of the city of Hayden Lake. Richard Girnt Butler founded Aryan Nations in the 1970s.
William Luther Pierce III was an American neo-Nazi, white supremacist, and far-right political activist. For more than 30 years, he was one of the highest-profile individuals of the white nationalist movement. A physicist by profession, he was author of the novels The Turner Diaries and Hunter under the pen name Andrew Macdonald. The former has inspired multiple hate crimes including the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Pierce founded the white nationalist National Alliance, an organization which he led for almost 30 years.
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 Turner Diaries is a 1978 novel by William Luther Pierce, a neo-Nazi and the founder and chairman of National Alliance, a white nationalist group, published under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald. It depicts a violent revolution in the United States which leads to the overthrow of the federal government, a nuclear war, and ultimately a race war which leads to the systematic extermination of non-whites and Jews. All groups opposed by the novel's protagonist, Earl Turner—including Jews, non-white people, "liberal actors," and politicians—are murdered en masse.
The Zionist occupation government, Zionist occupational government or Zionist-occupied government (ZOG), sometimes also referred to as the Jewish occupational government (JOG), is an antisemitic conspiracy theory claiming Jews secretly control the governments of Western states. It is a contemporary variation on the centuries-old belief in an international Jewish conspiracy. According to believers, a secret Zionist organization is actively controlling international banks, and through them governments, to conspire against white, Christian, or Islamic interests.
The Order, also known as the Brüder Schweigen and Silent Brotherhood, was a Neo-Nazi terrorist organization active in the United States between September 1983 and December 1984. The group raised funds via armed robbery. Ten members were tried and convicted for racketeering, and two for their role in the 1984 murder of radio talk show host Alan Berg.
White Aryan Resistance (WAR) is a white supremacist and neo-Nazi organization in the United States which was founded and formerly led by former Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon Tom Metzger. It was based in Warsaw, Indiana, and it was also incorporated as a business. In 1993, the group expanded into Canada.
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 Fourteen Words" is a reference to two slogans originated by David Eden Lane, one of nine founding members of the defunct white supremacist terrorist organization The Order, and are accompanied by Lane's "88 Precepts". The slogans have served as a rallying cry for militant white nationalists internationally.
The Nation of Yahweh is predominantly a Black Hebrew Israelite religious movement which was founded in 1979 in Miami by Hulon Mitchell Jr., who went by the name Yahweh ben Yahweh. Its goal is to move African Americans, who it believes are the original Israelites, to Israel. The group accepts Yahweh ben Yahweh as the Son of God. In this way, its beliefs are unique and distinct from those of other Black Hebrew Israelite groups.
Leo Vincelette Felton is an American white supremacist of African American descent who was convicted of bank robbery and plotting to build a bomb in Boston to attack Jewish-Americans, colloquially referred to as the 2002 white supremacist terror plot. Felton was released from prison in 2019 after serving 17 years.
In the United States, domestic terrorism is defined as terrorist acts that were carried out within the United States by U.S. citizens and/or U.S. permanent residents. As of 2021, the United States government considers white supremacists to be the top domestic terrorism threat.
On August 10, 1999, at around 10:50 a.m. PT, American white supremacist Buford O. Furrow Jr. walked into the lobby of the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills and opened fire with an Uzi sub machine gun, firing 70 bullets into the complex. The gunfire wounded five people: three children, a teenage counselor, and an office worker. Shortly thereafter, Furrow murdered a mail carrier, fled the state, and finally surrendered to the authorities.
This is a list of topics related to racism:
Quilliam was a British think tank co-founded in 2008 by Maajid Nawaz that focused on counter-extremism, specifically against Islamism, which it argued represents a desire to impose a given interpretation of Islam on society. Founded as The Quilliam Foundation and based in London, it claimed to lobby government and public institutions for more nuanced policies regarding Islam and on the need for greater democracy in the Muslim world whilst empowering "moderate Muslim" voices. The organisation opposed any Islamist ideology and championed freedom of expression. The critique of Islamist ideology by its founders―Nawaz, Rashad Zaman Ali and Ed Husain―was based, in part, on their personal experiences. Quilliam went into liquidation in 2021.
Anti-miscegenation laws are laws that enforce racial segregation at the level of marriage and intimate relationships by criminalizing interracial marriage and sometimes, they also criminalize sex between members of different races.
Kinism is the belief that the divinely ordained social order is tribal and familial as opposed to imperial and propositional. The term is often used to refer to a "movement of anti-immigrant, 'Southern heritage' separatists who splintered off from Christian Reconstructionism to advocate that God's intended order is 'loving one's own kind' by separating people along 'tribal and ethnic' lines to live in large, extended-family groups."
The 11th Hour Remnant Messenger was an American antisemitic Christian Identity organization established in Sandpoint, Idaho, by wealthy retired entrepreneurs Vincent Bertollini and Carl E. Story. The sect was located in proximity to the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations compound and cooperated with a number of Aryan Nations members. Bertollini and Story had ultimately selected the city of Sandpoint on account that roughly 98% of the area's residents were non-Jewish Caucasian Americans.
The Nationalist Front is a loose coalition of radical right and white supremacists. The coalition was formed in 2016 by leaders of the neo-Nazi groups National Socialist Movement (NSM) and Traditionalist Worker Party (TWP). Its aim was to unite white supremacist and white nationalist groups under a common umbrella. Originally the group was named the Aryan Nationalist Alliance and was composed of neo-Nazi, Ku Klux Klan and White power skinhead organizations.