By Jay Reeves
Associated Press
11-30-2007
BIRMINGHAM — A church formed by followers of the old neo-Nazi Aryan Nations group in Idaho has ditched swastikas and Hitler worship since moving to Alabama, but members haven’t shed the anti-Semitic theology that made their movement infamous.
A leader of the church says the switch away from Nazi symbols was partly to make his message more palatable to would-be members, a change viewed as troubling by a Jewish group that says it could make hate more attractive.
Known as Aryan Nations when based in Idaho, followers of the late white supremacist leader Richard Butler this year renamed their small group the United Church of YHWH, with a mailing address in the east Alabama city of Talladega.
Jonathan Williams, who is described as pastor of the group, said he banned the use of Nazi uniforms, red arm bands and similar regalia because they were an instant turnoff to people who otherwise might be open to the church’s key tenets, including the belief that white Anglo-Saxons — not Jews — are God’s chosen in the Bible.
“We don’t like the swastikas, we don’t like the negativity. The majority of people see all that as pure evil,” Williams said in a recent interview.
The regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, Bill Nigut, said the group was attempting to “sanitize hatred.”
“It is an increasingly popular ploy by these terrorist groups to make themselves seem more mainstream,” Nigut said. “We find it very disturbing. They can begin a conversation now with people they could not have before. They can get in the door.”
With Butler as its leader, Aryan Nations was once the nation’s best known neo-Nazi organization. He was part of a group acquitted in 1989 on charges of attempting to create a new Aryan country through assassinations, robberies, guerrilla bands and a race war.
But Butler lost a $6.3 million judgment in 2000 for an attack that occurred two years earlier on a mother and son outside his Aryan Nations compound in Hayden, Idaho. Butler was forced to declare bankruptcy and had to give up his property.
Followers have been mostly quiet since relocating to the South in 2004 after Butler died.
Other organizations still use the Aryan Nations name, complete with Nazi symbolism. But the ADL, which monitors anti-Semitic groups, describes the one in Alabama as the most direct descendent of the old Aryan Nations headed by Butler.
The FBI said it keeps track of such organizations but declined comment on the United Church of YHWH, which says it also has contacts abroad in Germany, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
“In general terms the FBI is aware of any type of white supremacist group,” said Paul Daymond, an FBI spokesman in Birmingham. “We stay abreast of what’s going on as far as those groups are concerned.”
The group held a meeting in the north Alabama town of Athens that attracted a handful of followers in September — photos on its Web site show only seven people — and it maintains an Internet site that includes rants against Judaism.
“We detest the Jewish faith as it goes against all Christian tenets ...,”’ it states.
Williams says the church is small and doesn’t have a building but meets in the homes of followers, much as the earliest Christians did. The group only has a few core members, he said, but it has “several hundred” adherents worldwide.
The group doesn’t advocate a separate nation for whites, as Butler did, but it believes members of different races shouldn’t date or marry.
“Not dating someone doesn’t mean hating them,” said Williams. “The only people we hate are people who hate Christ.”
The group describes Jews as “enemies of Christ,” and the ADL official said it doesn’t really matter that the group no longer uses Nazi symbolism to get its point across.
“He might say he doesn’t like the Nazi stuff, but he is still anti-Semitic,” said Nigut.
