Aryan Nations

Aryan Nations, prominent Christian Identity-based hate group founded in the United States in the 1970s. In the 1970s and ’80s the Aryan Nations developed a strong network comprising neo-Nazi, skinhead, Ku Klux Klan (KKK), white supremacist, and militia groups, many of which congregated and networked at the Aryan Nations compound in Hayden Lake, Idaho.

The Aryan Nations was rooted in the Christian Identity movement in the United States, which grew in popularity in the mid-20th century. Christian Identity adherents believed that white Aryans were the “chosen people,” that Africans were subhuman, that Jews were descendants of the Devil, and that the world was moving toward race war. In 1970 American Christian religious leader and white supremacist Richard Girnt Butler, newly ordained by the American Institute of Theology (AIT), which reflected Christian Identity beliefs, took over a large Christian Identity congregation in Lancaster, California, after its leader, Wesley Swift, died. In 1973 Butler moved the congregation to a compound in Hayden Lake, Idaho, and created the Church of Jesus Christ Christian. In 1978 Butler founded the church’s political arm, the Aryan Nations.

Over the following years, Butler often referred to Hayden Lake as the “international headquarters of the White race.” In 1979 he began holding annual conferences that attracted members of various white supremacist groups, especially neo-Nazis and the KKK. The Aryan Nations even offered courses in guerrilla warfare and urban terrorism. By 1989 Butler had added Aryan Youth festivals as well, held on the weekend nearest to Adolph Hitler’s birthday (April 20).

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The Aryan Nations gained significant public attention in the 1980s because of the actions of a splinter group called The Order. In a series of dramatic bank robberies, The Order stole more than $4 million to fund the overthrow of the U.S. government and a race war, borrowing ideas from William Pierce’s 1978 novel, The Turner Diaries. The Order collapsed in 1985 when 25 of its members were sent to prison.

In 1987, with many of its former members in jail, the Aryan Nations began to publish a prison newsletter called The Way. The newsletter was used to spread Christian Identity beliefs and to connect the Aryan Nations with its prison faction, a prison gang known as the Aryan Brotherhood. It was also used to recruit new members, a growing concern for the organization because its membership had begun to decline. In the early 1990s several key members left the Aryan Nations. At that time the Aryan Nations had only three chapters in the United States.

Despite infighting, the Aryan Nations began to actively recruit neo-Nazis and skinheads in an effort to increase membership. By 1994 the hate group had chapters in 15 states, and by 1996 it was active in 27 states. The activity of the Aryan Nations surged in the late 1990s. In 1997 members held rallies in several Ohio cities and distributed antiblack and anti-Semitic fliers throughout northern Kentucky and southwestern Ohio.

On July 1, 1998, security guards at Hayden Lake viciously attacked Victoria Keenan and her son, Jason, when they stopped briefly in front of the compound. Two of the guards, John Yeager and Jesse Warfield, the group’s security chief, received jail sentences for their roles in the attack. The ensuing civil suit destroyed the Aryan Nations. On September 7, 2000, a jury found the Aryan Nations and Butler negligent in connection with the selection, training, and supervision of the security guards and ordered the Aryan Nations to pay $6.3 million in damages to the Keenans. After Butler declared bankruptcy, the 20-acre compound at Hayden Lake as well as the Aryan Nations’s intellectual property—including the names “Aryan Nations” and “Church of Jesus Christ Christian”—were awarded to the Keenans. In March 2000 the Keenans sold the property for $250,000 to the Carr Foundation, a human rights group. Carr provided seed money to build a human rights centre in nearby Coeur D’Alene in order to counter the legacy of the Aryan Nations compound and of white supremacist movements in northern Idaho; the Human Rights Education Institute opened in 2006.

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Following the loss of the Hayden Lake compound, Butler moved into a house in nearby Hayden, Idaho. In July 2000 Neuman Britton of Escondido, California, was appointed the new leader of the Aryan Nations. He died the following year, however, leaving the group leaderless once again. In October 2001 Harold Ray Redfaeirn of the Ohio Aryan Nations chapter was appointed the new leader. Redfaeirn appointed August B. (“Chip”) Kreis III as the group’s minister of information. Redfaeirn and Kreis escalated the rhetoric of violence and hatred associated with the Aryan Nations. The Aryan Nations lauded the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, as retribution for U.S. support of Israel.

Under Redfaeirn’s leadership, the Aryan Nations began to fragment. Redfaeirn expelled Butler from the organization in January 2002 and moved the group to Potter county, Pennsylvania. In May 2002 Redfaeirn fired Kreis and returned command of the Aryan Nations to Butler. Kreis, however, insisted that he was still the true leader. Redfaeirn died in 2003, and Butler died the following year. Butler’s death accelerated the splintering of the group. Though many groups continued to use the name “Aryan Nations,” none of them gained the influence or membership of the original group.