Introduction
As I've mentioned elsewhere, I got involved back in 2006 in helping with research on the murder of US Senator Robert Kennedy, which led to exploring the Far Right and the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King. I soon became intrigued by the lack of information available on Wesley Swift, the original leader of what became the Aryan Nations. Three books at the local library mentioned Swift in the indexes, but each text had the same minimal, virtually identical information. I found this curious at first, but later even more so as I learned how significant Swift's preaching had been, back in the day, to folks of a Ku Klux Klan persuasion. His "sermons" were broadcast on radio and taped on cassettes for distribution in the mail to select audiences. I eventually found more information about him on the internet and read and listened to his sermons at a website dedicated to making his brand of inspiration available to the general public. I copied many sermons that were relevant to my research on President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. In mid-2014, I posted most of these on a blog, with explanatory and critical commentary. I'm now going to re-post them here -- somewhat reluctantly, as it means I have to wade back through the filthy ravings of a man who imparted a Nazi message through the language of Christianity. But what Swift was preaching then needs to be known, especially now that his spiritual heirs have (re-)surfaced as the so-called "alt-right" in the United States of America.
Of biographical information on Wesley Swift, there's not a lot that can't be found by the usual methods. More will emerge in the presentation of the sermons. Going from memory, Swift originally was a Methodist and a Klansman that subscribed to the theory of "British (or Anglo-) Israelism," a notion that "the ten lost tribes of Israel" in ancient times had run off to the British Isles and become white and Anglo-Saxon. That explains the original title for Swift's followers, the "Anglo-Saxon Christian Congregation." The seemingly redundant later title ("Church of Jesus Christ, Christian") was adopted to emphasize that Jesus was not Jewish -- therefore, "Jesus Christ, Christian" rather than "Jesus Christ, Jew" (and no, I'm not kidding). That also reflects the fact that, in some circles, British Israelism took a turn for racial superiority in the extreme, with doctrines amenable to a Nazi interpretation of life and history. In the United States, that branch would come to be known as "Christian Identity."
I recall being surprised to find that Swift did not look like what I expected: not very tall, somewhat portly and round, soft-looking. I was reminded of the phrase "the banality of evil," as you could easily envision him being the owner of a used-car lot. But he did have a compelling speaking style; the clipped, precise articulation of what he had to say -- sort of a rat-a-tat-tat delivery -- probably lent itself to the idea of him having an air of authority. (That, and the fanaticism.)
Swift's base of operations was in Lancaster, California, although the church where he preached was in Los Angeles (specifically, Hollywood). Upon Swift's death, Richard Girnt Butler took over as leader of the congregation, which would become known as the Aryan Nations. Below is Butler's request for assistance for a troubled patriot, including information about the kinds of harassment poor Reverend Swift had to endure.
In closing, I should point out that the choice of sermons presented here and their editing by me was dictated mainly by their relevance to what Swift said about President Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy. (As that was what I was exploring at the time.) Initially, I was concentrating on sermons Swift had delivered in 1968, which led to checking into what he had to say in earlier years, for a variety of reasons.
One was to see what he was saying during Robert Kennedy's tenure as Attorney General in his brother's administration; as anticipated, Swift was saying plenty and expressing great hostility for "little Bobby Kennedy." An underlying assumption in that exploration was the likelihood of there being indications of anti-Catholic prejudice, due to a long tradition in Protestantism that associates "Papism" with the Antichrist and "the End Times." Once a Catholic had become the most powerful man on earth, a good deal of anxiety was to be expected in certain circles.
Another reason to explore the earlier sermons was that I had yet to find Swift making any direct reference to Martin Luther King, Jr. That seemed odd, but I eventually concluded that he probably thought of King as beneath contempt, unworthy of mention. Since Swift considered black people as little more than animals, the idea of what he saw as an "ape" bearing the same title as himself ("Reverend Doctor" -- for Christian ministers who had earned a PhD.) must have been revolting to him. Alongside his revulsion toward the Civil Rights movement as such, this would have made a degree of silence on the subject of Dr. King very fitting.
The most important reason to review Swift's sermons of earlier years was to try to determine where he was coming from, the ideas and arguments that made up his ideology. The white supremacy beliefs shared by many, and the Bible prophecy beliefs shared by many others, were no surprise. What turned out to be odd were Swift's delving into more arcane areas, the least curious of which was astrology. And the most significant finding was that Swift had drawn definite conclusions about the times in which he was living: he believed -- and so preached -- that various signs meant "the End Times" had arrived.
That is by way of explaining that while I pretty thoroughly scoured the sermons Swift delivered during the Kennedy Administration and into 1964, I mostly only skimmed through those of later 1964 through 1966. I assume this is understandable, given the enormity of the task and the severe drawbacks of exposure to the material (unpleasant reading, to say the least). Anyway, the point is that there may well be significant information in sermons of the mid-60s, and my work here should not be considered comprehensive and complete by any means.
An indispensable introduction to the general subject is Raphael S. Ezekiel's The Racist Mind: Portraits of American Neo-Nazis and Klansmen (New York: Viking Penguin, 1995). Professor Ezekiel focused on fieldwork and interviews, and had a lot more balls than most people. One of the chapters provides a brief profile of Richard G. Butler.
Finally, I should note that the website's dates for the transcribed sermons were not always reliable, and only occasional references to contemporary events in the text could confirm them. The importance of such issues will become more apparent as we proceed.
[The original version of this introduction was posted as "Oh What A Joy" on my blog, disposable property, on 25 May 2014.]
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