Abstract
This article explores the discourses of Minister Wesley Albert Swift (1913–1970), one of the original and leading proponents of Christian Identity, a racial theology movement which emerged in the United States after World War II. It is not the aim of this study to analyze the discourse of Christian Identity as an isolated element, but to understand its interrelation with the political-religious culture of the country during the 1950s and 1960s. Christian Identity rhetoric may be understood based on its socio-historical context. During the formulative years of Christian Identity, nuclear anxieties, along with the fear of Communist infiltration, were deeply present within the white supremacist and their anti-Semitic views. At the same time, the civil rights movement of African Americans stimulated violent white supremacy politics and rhetoric by the extreme right. Combining the white hegemonic fear of minority advances in American society, Christian Identity was created as a cult for the racist right. As such, it attempted to legitimized white supremacy and perpetuate the Judeo-Communist Conspiracy myth. Race — as a biological issue that reflects the spiritual essence of a person — is the central element of anthropology built by Christian Identity, which claims the white race was literally created in the image of God. Therefore, they argue, it is the only race predestined for salvation. As an expression of an extreme Calvinist world view, Wesley Swift constructed a Christian theology that ideologically unified different political strategies of the postwar extreme right, which continues to this day.
Highlights
Since the mid-1940s, Christian Identity as imagined by Minister Wesley Swift has played a key role in this process, shaping what can only be described as a racist, anti-Semitic cult-like theology
QAnon conspiracy theories have become dominant among the discourse of American white supremacists, who combine contempt for opposition to Trump with their traditional conspiracy ideas, such as anti-Semitic, Satanist, nativist, anti-LGBTQ theories and, currently, others related to the coronavirus pandemic, which they consider an instrument of the deep state conspiracy to eliminate individual freedoms, reduce population and overthrow Trump
Wesley Swift’s Paranoid Style and Present-day Politics Wesley Swift adapted different Hebrew and Euro-American Jewish-Christian traditions along with an eclectic set of racist writings of different types and origins. In pursuing his objective of becoming a state cult, he built a theopolitical doctrine that remains within the system of significance imposed by the common sense of white Americans, the hegemonic sector of the country
Summary
This article explores the discourses of Minister Wesley Albert Swift (1913–1970), one of the original and leading proponents of Christian Identity, a racial theology movement which emerged in the United States after World War II. It is not the aim of this study to analyze the discourse of Christian Identity as an isolated element, but to understand its interrelation with the political-religious culture of the country during the 1950s and 1960s. Combining the white hegemonic fear of minority advances in American society, Christian Identity was created as a cult for the racist right As such, it attempted to legitimized white supremacy and perpetuate the Judeo-Communist Conspiracy myth. As an expression of an extreme Calvinist world view, Wesley Swift constructed a Christian theology that ideologically unified different political strategies of the postwar extreme right, which continues to this day
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