Many Patriots sincerely disavow racism and anti-Semitism, and denounce such groups as the Liberty Lobby as un-American. Others, however, embrace racism and anti-Semitism and construct their political program on that basis. I encountered these currents of racist anti-globalism when, at an anti-NAFTA rally primarily organized by and for Syracuse-area unionists, local neo-nazis circulated through the crowd distributing audio cassettes. I was handed a recording of the radio program American Dissident Voices, featuring William Pierce. Pierce is the leader of the neo-nazi National Alliance and pseudonymous author of The Turner Diaries, the notorious novel of white supremacist guerilla war which allegedly inspired the Oklahoma City bombing. On the taped radio program, Pierce (1992) speaks of long-term decline of the US economy which he represents as the result of basic forces "which any high school drop-out can understand" - the impenetrable mumbo-jumbo of academic economists notwithstanding. According to Pierce, internationalization of production and deindustrialization of the US are two sides of the same coin and have for the last 45 years been the deliberate policy of a "power elite." Pierce described this elite as "New World Order schemers" seeking to "permanently fasten their grip on the power and wealth of the world". There are, he told listeners, "men in Washington and New York and London and Tel Aviv who are behind the policies which are exporting American jobs to Mexico and Hong Kong because they want to create a one-world economy in which Mexicans and Chinese and white Americans will have the same living standard". None too cryptically, Pierce described members of this hidden elite as "the eternal outsiders, the eternal parasites whose strength always has been in their ability to manipulate and deceive rather than in their ability to build things." Stealthily, they control the media, public opinion, and the agendas of both major political parties in the US. They are "hell-bent" on creating "a world without national boundaries or even national distinctions, a world in which every national economy has been submerged in a global economy, a world with a single homogenized labor force and a uniform standard of living". The inevitable result of global economic integration, according to Pierce, is racial integration and leveling, the mongrelization of the US work force and a corresponding loss of racial/national identity among white American workers, declining harmony and vigor in the workplace, lowered productivity, and growing social costs for the support of "non-productive" elements in society.

To stop their impoverishment and subordination into an interdependent and mongrelized New World Order, Pierce urged white Americans to educate themselves about their racial identity and interests and to organize accordingly, whereupon, he chillingly suggested, "you can be sure that we'll have a national cleaning day". What he has in mind here may resemble an episode described in Pierce’s now infamous novel, The Turner Diaries: after “Aryan” forces secure politico-military control of southern California, they immediately drive non-whites into the desert and annihilate those whose racial identity appears ambiguous. Then, during what Pierce calls “the day of the rope”, tens of thousands of white “race traitors” who may have supported a political agenda of social equality or been involved in trans-racial relationships are hanged from lamp posts, trees and traffic lights all over the city (Pierce/Macdonald, 1980: 153-56, 160-69).

Once white Americans regain control of their own destiny, Pierce envisions a world in which racially and religiously similar nations might be united under a single political authority which Pierce calls "the Aryan World Order" (Pierce, n.d.). And what of the rest of the world? To prevent third world overpopulation from endangering the global ecosystem and thus the racial living spaces of white nations, Pierce explicitly advocates genocide on a global scale. Without equivocation he calls for "the radical depopulation of the non-White world" using "modern chemical and biological means" (Pierce, n.d.). This horrifying vision of a white supremacist response to globalization - a final solution in the US, to be followed by global genocide and an "Aryan World Order"- illustrates the extremes to which the scapegoating tendencies implicit in conspiratorial narratives so readily lend themselves.

Some versions of Christian Patriot ideology are grounded in an obscure racialized theology known as Christian Identity. Identity doctrine teaches that white Anglo-saxons are the true chosen people of God and the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. Jews are understood to be the direct biological descendants of Satan, fraudulantly presenting themselves as the chosen people but actually offspring of Cain, spawned in the liason between Eve and the Satanic serpent, the product of original sin. Jews are seen as the primary agents of an ancient Satanic Conspiracy to destroy the chosen people and frustrate God's design. Pawns in this Conspiracy are "pre-Adamic"peoples, "non-whites" who are said to have been created prior to Adam and who are understood to be not fully human. In this racialized view of genesis, "race mixing" between Adamic peoples - whites - and others is seen as profoundly evil insofar as it undermines the identity of God's chosen people and corrupts their bloodlines with those of inferior and evil races allied with Satan (see Barkun, 1994 and Ridgeway, 1995). Among the most prominant evangelists of Identity doctrine are Richard Butler of Aryan Nations, but Christian Identity has a much broader influence within the Patriot movement and in citizens' militias.

Regardless of whether their arguments include implicit or explicit racism or anti-Semitism, the conspiratorial logic of far-right political discourse leads to scapegoating. If America's problems are the result of evil forces plotting to harm us, then the solution must be to identify and neutralize those sinister individuals or groups. While only a small segment of the Patriot movement explicitly calls for something like a "final solution" in America, most Patriot groups see the world in terms of a conspiratorial narrative which invites its audience to identify and attack those identified as outsiders, enemies, or traitors. As one caller to a Patriot-oriented radio talk show put it: "The problem we have right now is who do we shoot?" (quoted in Stern, 1996: 223). Talk of rough justice and the "execution" of "traitors" is commonplace within the Patriot movement. To see an example, click here.

http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/maxpages/faculty/merupert/Research/far-r...