Christianity is only part of right-wing ideology.
Shortly after midnight on June 29, 1968, a special assignment team of Meridian, Mississippi, Police Department sharpshooters and FBI agents opened fire on Thomas A. Tarrants, III, as he was about to place a bomb at the home of a prominent Jewish businessman. Tarrants, the leader of the Ku Klux Klan terrorist activities in Mississippi during the mid-1960s, ran through a hail of gunfire and fled from the scene of the attempted entrapment but was captured after a wild chase and bloody gun battle. His arrest and conviction brought to an end a reign of terror by Mississippi’s White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the most violent right-wing terrorist organization in the United States. For several years Tarrants and his cohorts had waged terrorist war on Jews and blacks who spoke out for integration. They had bombed synagogues, the residences of NAACP officials, and the houses of Jewish leaders in the deep South.
After Tarrants’s conviction he was sentenced to thirty years in Parchman State Penitentiary, known as one of the worst prisons in the United States. When he escaped he was recaptured several days later and placed in maximum security—on death row in fact. There he continued to read right-wing philosophy and other literature, including Hegel, Nietzsche, Count Arthur DeGobineau, and Francis Parker Yockey, the basic philosophers who influenced Fascist thought. A student at a Christian college in Mobile, Alabama, and a church member, Tarrants also began to reread the Bible, a book that he had often used to fortify his racism.
Gradually the words of the New Testament began to reveal to him the sinfulness of his life. He became a Christian in the summer of 1970. The changes were immediate and dramatic. Tarrants publicly renounced his right-wing involvements and beliefs as incompatible—in his own words “diametrically opposed”—to true Christianity. On December 13, 1976, he was placed on a work release program in Oxford, Mississippi, where he continued his college education at the University of Mississippi. Will Norton, Jr., a free lance writer, interviewed Tarrants on the various aspects of terrorism in today’s world, and how it impinges on a Christian world and life view.
Question: How would you describe your right-wing radical associates?
Answer: Ideologically, I would describe them as neo-Nazi. They were anti-Semitic, anti-Negro, anti-Communist, embraced a conspiratorial theory of history, and were prone to action rather than reflection. They, of course, would own these views, but would prefer to describe themselves as “Christian American patriots,” which, in all fairness, is the way they see themselves.
Q: What was their theology?
A: The great majority were fundamentalists.
Q: Born-again fundamentalists?
A: No. Definitely not. They held many of the doctrines of fundamentalism and had a form of religion, but they did not have a living, personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Their Christianity was nothing more than a religious component of their right-wing ideology. Christianity is not an ideology nor a component of an ideology; it is a relationship with Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. However, it must be said that they really believed themselves to be Christians.
Q: What did radicals of the right read, Tommy?
A: The rank and file read the organizational papers and magazines. An example is The Fiery Cross, a periodical published by the National States’ Rights Party. Then there are books that are advertised in these periodicals: for example, The International Jew by Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Co., The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, purported to be the minutes of a meeting of a group of international Jews whose avowed purpose is to dominate the world and gain ultimate power, White America by Ernest Cox, who builds a case for integration being the cause of the decline of powerful nations of antiquity, and The Inequality of the Races by Arthur De-Gobineau. There is a whole body of literature on the alleged Jewishness of communism, on the inferiority of blacks, and on Communists in the U.S. government.
Q: What about the leaders?
A: They read everything the rank and file read, as well as such works as Mein Kampf by Adolph Hitler, Imperium by Francis Parker Yockey, and Hegel, Nietzsche, and others.
Q: What were some of the personality traits of right-wing radicals?
A: They were not Jekyll and Hyde people. They had a mind-set that was apparent at all times if you knew what to watch for. Disenchantment is the best word to describe them. They were frustrated. They often lacked success, excitement. Many of them were suspicious of people. As a rule, the rank and file were high school graduates or less, but the leaders often were fairly well educated.
Q: Did they all show a capacity for the explosive anger that has been the stereotype for “rednecks”?
A: Yes. There seems to be a psychological base for a radical, and, though individuals may differ, the capacity for explosive hostility is basic to all radicals, right or left, no matter how well educated. Even the leaders, when frustrated by racial matters, would become extremely angry about an apparent triviality.
Q: What kind of equipment did you have for terrorist activities?
A: As far as weapons go: Army issue automatic rifles, Thompson submachine guns, M-3 submachine guns, hand grenades, large supplies of ammunition and explosives. Surplus military equipment was very common. To be more specific: combat boots, fatigues, army tents, rations. There were other weapons that were not U.S. military surplus: shot guns, Winchester rifles, scoped rifles for assassinations. For example, we had a 22 calibre rifle equipped with a silencer that was carefully engineered. Special loads of ammunition were used so that even if you could hear the click of the trigger, the projectile would travel silently because it traveled slightly slower than the speed of sound. The projectile was drilled in the tip and a deadly poison inserted that would insure death.
One of my weapons was a Manlicher Schonauer, custom made in Austria. I could hit a target the size of a man’s head at 600 yards with little effort. Also, we had mortars, bazookas, machine guns, primacord, dynamite, and cyanide stored in various caches around the country. Many of these weapons were stored in cosmoline, a preservative grease, to keep them as good as new until that great day for which the radical right is waiting.
Q: Were you an expert marksman?
A: Marksmanship was one of my hobbies. Some people play tennis or golf; I practiced shooting. I spent a great deal of money on ammunition and weapons.
Q: Frank Watts, the FBI man who led the special team that apprehended you, told me that he knew you were an expert marksman because when you opened fire with a submachine gun at the Meridian police, your bullets did not rise.
A: I had considerable practice with submachine guns. I got to be quite good.
Q: We have talked about some of the equipment used by radicals. I’m sure these items were important, but what was the most crucial element for a successful terrorist operation?
A: Secrecy. The terrorist operates from a posture of secrecy. He makes plans without anyone knowing what he is going to do. In almost any given situation there are a large number of attractive, low-risk targets that the terrorist can select. Because of this it is virtually impossible for police to have stakeouts that would prevent this sort of thing. | There is no way to guard every possible place where he might want to strike. Thus, the terrorist has virtually free reign. When I first became involved in terrorist activities, I operated alone. No one knew my plans. So it was I impossible for lawmen to anticipate where I would strike next. More important, no one could inform the authorities of my activities.
Q: So how were you apprehended?
A: When I was operating in Meridian, Mississippi, two persons who were not a part of the inner circle of our terrorist organization helped us plan the bombing of the home of Meyer Davidson, an outspoken Jewish leader. They were informers and secretly conveyed the plans to the FBI. As a result my terrorist career was brought to an end by a police ambush.
Q: Earlier you had been forced underground when you were apprehended possessing a submachine gun. How did you elude capture and continue to operate?
A: Dedicated right-wingers assisted me. One of them here in Mississippi owned a secluded lodge out in the country, which he made available to me. Also, there were people in the Klan who were known only to one or two leaders. So the FBI did not know who they were. They would make their homes open to people who needed shelter. Then, in North Carolina there was a safe haven where I was able to stay. It was a sanctuary for people who were conducting clandestine activities. Often when the pressure got great in Mississippi, I drove to the mountains of North Carolina and lived as if I were visiting friends or relatives.
Q: Why did the Klan become dormant for five or six years?
A: It suffered a number of serious setbacks in the 1960s. Right-wing extremists were convicted for the murders of Colonel Lemuel Penn in Georgia, Mrs. Viola Liuzzo in Alabama, and the three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the firebombing of the home of Vernon Dahmer, and my arrest. These defeats were systematic blows to the very roots of the Klan’s strength. People began to understand that the Klan was a violent organization—some of the members of the Klan hadn’t fully realized that, people who were recruited and vocally expressive against blacks, Communists, and Jews. They didn’t understand that the leadership meant violent business. As these cases arose and were successfully prosecuted, it was proven that the Klan leadership was responsible for encouraging and even planning violence. It weakened the Klan from within by turning away a lot of Klan people who were not seriously committed to violence.
Also, it showed that the Klan was a vulnerable organization. It broke the secrecy and mystique of it. In the past it was a highly secret, mystical, underground organization. Through these trials people were able to see what the Klan was like and to see that it was not invincible or ubiquitous.
The strength began to wane with the successive prosecutions. Then, the social climate changed in the U.S. The Viet Nam War ended, and rioting in the streets subsided. Integration was tolerated more. There was less social intensity for the Klan to exploit. The issues of concern that had prompted Klan action were largely diffused. Sociologically, you might describe the Klan as a bacterium. When the temperature goes below a certain point, a bacterium becomes dormant. Then, when the temperature rises, the bacterium becomes active and begins to multiply. This is the way the Klan works. When social conditions are just right, the Klan begins to thrive and develop. When the necessary conditions are no longer present the Klan becomes dormant. The Klan never ceases to exist, but it goes through cycles of being dormant and active.
Q: What is the future of the Klan?
A: Unfortunately, the future of the Klan seems to be good. Time magazine ran an essay on the Klan last June. The Klan is experiencing significant growth. The social conditions that incline people to listen to the Klan—social and economic insecurity—are evident, both in our society and in the world. There continues to be population growth and food shortages throughout the world, dramatic instability in the global climate is again part of our lives, and the attitude toward human life has deteriorated. Moreover, technology has increased the possibility for terrorism geometrically.
We’re seeing growing oppression of the middle class by excessive government taxation—and the resulting tax revolt. The American military decline has concerned many. The increasing polarization of the races because of integration and busing, white resentment at civil rights abuses, and, in some cases, civil rights advances by the blacks. All these issues are beginning to press on the middle class. There is increasing distrust of government and our leaders. So people tend to accept the kind of things the new Klan has to offer.
Q: What does the Klan have to offer?
A: This is a complex age and people feel more secure when they can explain, or at least understand, what is going on around them. This causes people to be more inclined to accept simple answers. That’s what the Klan offers. It already is beginning to exploit these major areas of concern. Klan leaders have realized the futility of using outright violence to gain their objectives now. So they have developed new strategies. They have shifted their approach to appeal to middle-class Americans as a political group that is willing to work within the system. David Duke is a prime example. He is a graduate of Louisiana State University. He is articulate and personable in his leadership of the new Klan. In fact, a black civil rights lawyer and liberal sociologist recently told me that they were absolutely enthralled by Duke when they saw him on television. He has great charisma, which appeals even to those who do not appreciate his perspective.
So the new Klan is more subtle, and its appeal is much greater than it was in the 1960s. The real power base in America is the middle class. So as the Klan begins to tap into that power, it will grow. At heart, however, the Klan is still the same organization. If it were to gain power today, its leaders would not continue to advocate the same nonviolent approach, but would probably begin to use violence again. The only thing that keeps them from being violent now is that it is not expedient.
Q: What specific public policy should Christians advocate?
A: First, a sophisticated and well-governed intelligence system is needed in the hands of the FBI. It used to have this authority, but many people are afraid of such things and have outlawed most infiltration, investigation, and electronic surveillance. Yet, I believe abuse of the system can be avoided with proper supervision.
There are a number of well-meaning people in the government who want to institute protective policies in the name of democracy or libertarianism. However, these policies almost insure great damage to democracy. We must be careful to not be so preoccupied with democracy as an abstraction that we create conditions that will damage the concrete, practical outworking of it in the real world.
You see, we’re in a very dangerous situation today because Congress has practically emasculated the FBI. So investigations of radical groups are extremely difficult. The radical right and the radical left have not yet realized that the FBI does not have the authority to infiltrate their organizations with informers. When they come to this realization they will become more inclined toward acts of violence. That was one of the main factors that restrained the radical right during the 1960s. There would have been a lot more bombings and political assassinations if it had not been for the well-developed FBI intelligence system. Our constant concern was the possibility of being monitored by electronic equipment or informed on by undercover agents that the FBI had. This hindered acts of terrorism that we would not have hesitated to pursue.
Second, a good research program is needed to identify the social factors that are giving rise to the climate in which the radical right and the radical left can thrive.
Q: You have outlined some possible solutions to terrorist activities. However, the preponderance of literature indicates that we are moving more toward an authoritarian society in which an elite can control the activities of all people. If that is the case and we are at the same time giving bugging, surveillance, and infiltration rights to the FBI, won’t we be helping to create an extremely monolithic society?
A: There certainly is some truth in that, but there are not many options. If terrorism is allowed to increase, counter-terrorist action eventually will be produced by the government. This will give rise even more rapidly to an authoritarian society.
One of the greatest dangers in dealing with terrorism is overreaction. My proposal is an attempt to prevent such an overreaction. Men of integrity who are well supervised are vital for the survival of such a program.
Q: Did the churches play a role in the Klan?
A: Not so much by what they did as by what they did not do. I believe it was Edmund Burke who said, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” That same principle applies to Christianity: All that is necessary for Satan to triumph is for God’s people to remain silent in the face of evil. Unfortunately, this has sometimes been unwittingly fostered by the evangelical tendency to emphasize the personal aspects of the Gospel to the exclusion of its social aspects. This is especially true of the church in the South regarding the race issue.
Only a few ministers spoke out; even fewer condemned racial pride. God’s people, especially those in leadership positions, need to take a strong, clear position that racism is sin and racist organizations are un-Christian. The failure to do this has allowed the Ku Klux Klan to go largely unchallenged in its claim to be a Christian organization. In fact, every Klavem (the Klan term for a local chapter, the basic organizational unit) has a chaplain who, not infrequently, is a Baptist minister.
The Klavern meetings are held in a room with an American flag and an altar. A Bible is on the altar open to the thirteenth chapter of Romans. The Klan considers that chapter to be its code. The meetings are opened and closed with prayer.
Q: How do you see the churches involved in the Klan today?
A: There is entirely too much of an affinity between conservative politics and evangelical Christianity. I call this unholy alliance “the religion of Americanism.” Christianity cannot and should not be aligned or identified with conservatism, liberalism, or any other “ism.” Unfortunately, in many circles the terms Christian or evangelical are seen as synonymous with conservative or reactionary. By tolerating this alliance we make it easier for ideologists to claim to be Christian. This clothes the “isms” with a certain respectability that can easily blur the radical distinction between the Kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world, and leads to a tolerance of the more extreme forms of “isms.” Thus, the churches, by not diligently maintaining a nonpolitical stance, play into the hands of ideologists and ideologies. There is a need to be distinctly Christian in the fullest and truest sense.
Q: What is the average Christian’s responsibility concerning terrorism?
A: At its roots, terrorism is a spiritual problem. It is a symptom of a godless philosophy of life. As such it is merely another tool that Satan uses to create confusion in the world. As a Christian realizes that terrorists are often influenced by evil forces, it becomes clear that spiritual warfare is involved. If terrorism becomes an active force in a community, Christians should certainly speak out against it. But more importantly we should pray, first for the victim and second for order and justice and peace in the land. Through the intercession of God’s people, the rulers can then prevail. I believe Christians can do more on their knees to combat terrorism than can be done by anyone else in any other way.
Correction: In the original printed version of this article, Will Norton Sr. was shown. The interview was in fact conducted by Will Norton Jr.
