The hate next door, p.11
The Hate Next Door, page 11
There were, I found, already fifty-plus local known members.
I’d never heard of this Washitaw Nation group, and I had lived in the valley for twenty-plus years. How was that even possible?
Easy. Even though the SCAT team worked down the hall, they’d never once mentioned them to the other investigation squads. But we were all guilty of that. Each team, even mine, was territorial. Even in a post-9/11 world, no one was talking to each other. Every department, even teams within the same building, had its own concerns, budgets, and—most importantly—egos and turf. We were all too busy, haughty, or foolish to help the other crews.
And, on top of that, members of the church were your typical “neighbors next door,” people you wouldn’t ever consider being a threat. They were bank tellers and car salespeople and hairdressers. Not one I later looked up had a criminal record. Not one. At neo-Nazi gatherings, 70% of the crowd had been arrested at some point.
This group had, I soon learned, first appeared on authorities’ radar in 1996 when supporting a Montana militia known as the Montana Freemen—one of the largest and most famous in the country—during its infamous eighty-one-day standoff with federal agents.ii During the standoff, supporters of the Montana group had come to Phoenix to purchase large SUVs using counterfeit money orders and driving them back to Montana to aid in the militia’s cause. The SUVs were to be used as escape vehicles for when the government decided to raid. Further, these guys genuinely believed the government was soon to collapse, putting the militias in charge, and the SUVs would prove crucial for the new militia-run America. Arizona-supplied money orders would also cover guns and ammo as needed. I couldn’t believe this type of activity was going on in Mesa.
I knew enough about militias and antigovernment groups then to know they often also attracted White supremacists. Oklahoma City Bombing’s Timothy McVeigh, Ruby Ridge’s Randy Weaver, and Robert Mathews, leader of the Order, were “militia members” who’d also dabbled within the National Alliance and Aryan Nations. There was good cause to at least check this Washitaw group out.
My cover story this time was simple enough. I called a few days prior just to make sure the Bible-study class was still happening and spoke directly to the church pastor, Pekrul. He confirmed the day and time of the class and then asked who I was. I told him I was Patrick and had just moved my family into the neighborhood because I was looking for a better place for my kids to grow up. I claimed I was from Aravaca, an extremely small southern Arizona town that undocumented immigrants and cartels use as a “watering hole” on their way up north from the border. I suspected just mentioning the town would catapult me right where I needed to be with this guy, and anyone else who was remotely antigovernment or anti-immigration would understand why I’d want to get my family out. I’d suspected right.
Once again, I was welcomed right into their little hate club.
“Brother Patrick,” the pastor said, “I look forward to meeting you.”
* * *
After dinner, Tawni had good-humoredly prepared me by singing some old gospel tunes before I readied to “go to church.” Then she got more serious. “Don’t let them get in your head,” she said.
The concern, I thought then, was absurd.
“It’s often a slow and steady road to Hell,” she clarified. “And these people are most likely on it.”
Pulling into the church parking lot, I thought about her parting words. A lot.
Thanks to the photographs, I could perfectly visualize the barricades and orange barrels the church members had recently used to practice urban warfare. I wondered where they kept them. There were six portable trailers behind the church, and I was later told they were used as extra classrooms for Bible school on Sundays. (Another one, next to the church, was—I found out later—full of guns, ammo, and explosives.)
The parking lot was scattered with a dozen more vehicles, half with Washitaw Nation license plates.
On most undercover operations, we would normally “four point” the building, having a full team set up early to grab plates and pictures and a rescue team set in a van in full entry gear waiting for the call if something went wrong. For me, I had John in a car across the street from the church in a school parking lot, updating workstation files and reading reports. At least he was there.
I parked my red Chevy pickup and headed for church.
Taped on the front doors of the church were papers stating the church was “on sovereign land” and “no law enforcement” would be allowed on the property; “only the local sheriff” had legal jurisdiction over them.
Then, another sign: “THIS CHURCH IS PROTECTED BY GOD AND HIS .357.” My thoughts ran to feeling the weight of the Glock on my ankle and the blue Ford Taurus with John, my backup, across the street.
Inside, I’d hoped to get a chance to look around by myself. Instead, at least ten men and women were already there for the Bible study. It almost felt like I was in my own church-except half these guys had guns on their hips in full exposure.
“Hello, Patrick?”
I turned to my right to be greeted by a gentleman in his fifties wearing brown slacks and a yellow shirt. He stretched out his hand. “It’s good to have you here,” he said. “Let me show you where Bible Study is.” It was Pekrul, of course, and he clearly knew I was the guy he’d spoken to on the phone.
I simply said, “Thank you, sir… I feel like I’m home,” and then we walked to the left down a short hall to a classroom. There, about fifteen people, more men than women, were already seated in metal chairs and making small talk until Mert walked back in with a cup of coffee from the hallway table and said, “We ready to start?”
He first introduced a younger man who stood to offer a short prayer. In the prayer, this guy gave thanks to God for “being who we are,” and I tried not to read too much into it but soon understood fully.
After the prayer, Mert Pekrul presided over the study. We started with readings from the book of John, and Pekrul was on his soapbox, the sermon well on its way. I grabbed a loaner Bible and soon found myself confused. Overly confused. Typical Bible talk had quickly shifted to other topics, which were being presented as if Pekrul were reading them directly from the New Testament.
I double-checked the pages for the words “mud peoples” and “serpent seeds” and “lazy Jews” knowing I wouldn’t find them in the text. Meanwhile, the others in attendance merely nodded and agreed with the sermon, shouting out their own views and hatred toward, mostly, Jewish people. Comments also flew of how the government was destroying the Constitution with no care for its true citizens and that Black people were the lowest form of society.
There wasn’t a shaved head or showing tattoo in the room. Yet, for the next hour, I might as well have been at a Klan rally, or a Skin show in The Nile Theater.
As if my first militia meeting weren’t enough, I was now also formally meeting an offshoot of the Christian Identity movement.
* * *
While there are a hundred blends of Christianity with White supremacy, corrupting organized religion to reinforce and endorse discrimination, Christian Identity is a good keystone to start from. To understand them is to understand the other ninety-nine.
Some things to know:
They believe the Bible, when connected to other apocryphal texts, “proves” White Europeans (“Adamites”) are God’s chosen people, direct descendants from Abel. This idea has its origins in British Israelism, a centuries-old pseudo-archaeological belief that Brits are “genetically, racially, and linguistically the direct descendants” of the Ten Lost Tribes of ancient Israel. Some devotees even claim the Virgin Mary was raised in the British Isles and returned again with Jesus after giving birth in Bethlehem.
They believe, in turn, that Jewish people are the cursed offspring of Cain (an idea with roots going back to the Middle Ages), who was conceived when Eve lay with the snake/Satan; thus, Jewish people are often called the “serpent seed” or “two-seedline” theory. They believe there was also an inferior race on Earth before Adam and Eve, “beasts” of the field—which the religion teaches is the Black race—which God eventually put Adam and Eve in charge of.
Christian Identitarians also believe, as most Christians do, that Jesus will one day return to reign over a new Heavenly Kingdom on Earth. A “Golden Age” or “World to Come”—a special time (promised in Revelation) in which Heaven on Earth occurs for a thousand years before the Final Judgment. In the Christian Identitarian version of Heaven on Earth, however, adherents add the belief that Whites will again “assume their rightful place” and all non-Whites will be exterminated or enslaved to serve Whites, who are the only ones who may ultimately enter paradise.
Some other beliefs include that God finds interracial marriages a sin and the Bible shows dozens of injunctions against it; European nations were founded by the Ten Lost Tribes of ancient Israel; a state of racial purity must be achieved in the U.S.; the government is controlled by Jewish people and seeks to thwart this plan via systemic White replacement; political change can only be achieved through force, but an armed insurrection against the current government would fail; creation of a “White Aryan bastion” or ethno-state of pure Whites somewhere in the U.S. is the first step.iii
Americans developed most of these beliefs starting in the 1940s via the KKK and throughout the 1970s and ’80s via the Aryan Nations, The Order, and various militia and isolationist groups.
There is no one “leader” connected to these beliefs, nor are they attached to any one organization or Christian denomination. They are simply touted, shared, and legitimized by individuals, White supremacist sects, and fringe Protestant congregations spread across the whole country.
And, principally, in prisons—where Whites are outnumbered two to one and often looking for some lifeline of hope and “impending command.”iv
Adherents could also assert the Catholic Church itself as “supporting” their beliefs. In 1493, Pope Alexander VI issued Inter Caetera, an edict that included the Doctrine of Discovery, which gave European explorers the right to confiscate any non-Christian lands they “discovered” on behalf of their Christian Monarchs.v Those non-Christians already living in such lands could be converted, enslaved, or killed. Thus, God’s voice on Earth had given official permission to subjugate non-Europeans (non-Whites) in lands throughout Africa, The Americas, and the Pacific—permission exercised with abundance for the next four hundred years.
What was White supremacy, argued Christian Identitarians, if not a continuation of such doctrine?
The most dangerous adherents to these ideas call themselves the Phineas Priesthood.
Phineas appears in the Old Testament in Exodus, an Israelite who murders an Israelite man and his Midianite wife for intermingling two tribes and is, in certain interpretations of the scriptures, rewarded by God for adopting an early stand against interracial couples. (How a Jewish guy became the namesake for antisemitic White racists is an ironic mystery.)
Their symbol is the letter P with a horizontal line through it, representing the spear Phineas drove through the offending spouses.
In the early and mid-1990s, this group was connected to multiple bank robberies and bombings from the Pacific Northwest and Oklahoma. But part of what makes them dangerous is that there is no collective group. No meetings. No leader. No dues.
They scheme and act alone, chosen “by God” to protect God-sanctioned racial purity. Over time, I learned to identify these individuals and quickly reevaluate their position with an investigation knowing they are no joke. They believe wholeheartedly they are doing the will of God and can make head-shaved Hammerskins look like Cub Scouts. They are zealots completely willing to kill, and die, for the cause of God-sanctioned White supremacy.
* * *
Mert Pekrul was now telling the story of Jesus and the Syrophoenician (says Mark) or Canaanite (says Matthew) woman who asks Jesus to help her daughter who is possessed by a demon. Jesus refuses, telling the woman his mission is for the children of Israel and that he will not give his “children’s” food to “dogs.” Dogs.
Those in the pews around me nodded in agreement.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I didn’t remember this Bible passage at all and opened the Bible to the section Pekrul was working from. In the very next lines, the Gentile woman persists, and Jesus tells her to go home where her daughter is already healed. These passages were not read tonight. Later, I’d learn that the “dog/children” wording is more like “puppy/children” and a metaphor for who will be saved first—the implications being that all will be saved in time, but Christians first. (Still not a flawless message, but I guess Matthew and Mark were writing for a specific audience.) Pekrul had simply skipped this part entirely.
Instead, we’d moved on to some more generic praising of the Lord, singing a song and saying a traditional prayer. I couldn’t help but think of the million-plus paintings of blue-eyed, fair-skinned Jesus—an image that’d hung in my own house growing up. The casual propagation of a “White Jesus” and a “White God” that I hadn’t really considered, or admittedly questioned, until just now.
The meeting ended. I stuck around and spent time bouncing back and forth from the hall to the classroom trying to hear everything being said. I’d worked my way into a conversation with the man who gave the opening prayer who was now talking about the ham radio at his home and the doomsday-type “podcast” he put out on it, which revolved around preparing for the government’s collapse and the impending religious End Days. He was also spouting his beliefs that the influx of immigrants was planned and funded by the “Jew government” with plans to take over neighborhoods and cities.
It was the same language I heard around bonfires with skinheads. But this guy looked more like a geometry teacher. He’s nuts, I thought, foolishly dismissing him. But no one else thought so and, rather, all nodded in agreement at every sentence.
My time was quickly running out, and my main objective became to find Pekrul to talk with him again. I thought that if I could schedule a “counseling” session with him (as advertised on the sign out front), I’d be able to develop a relationship and get more information. But he was gone. Snuck out right after the prayer. I focused back on the “Ham radio man” and, testing the waters, told them I’d heard about some kind of training they were doing out back.
My knowledge of their training didn’t make them nervous at all. In fact, they were excited to tell me all about it. It was training for the End-of-Days Rapture or the government’s impending collapse, or both. America, they assured me, had quickly become “a lawless welfare state” and it was only a matter of time before Western Civilization buckled under the mobs of “godless, uneducated, and lazy Blacks, Mexicans, and Jews.”
What really piqued my interest was when they proudly told me that several of the trainings had been conducted by Bo Gritz.
Gritz was a nationally known veteran and antigovernment activist who’d run for president of the United States several times and now offered training across the country in paramilitary and survivalist skills. This Green Beret was also famous for his negotiations at Ruby Ridge (where a White separatist, someone who believes the races should live apart, and members of his family were killed in a standoff with federal agents), and his rumored White nationalist ties were hard for anyone working this stuff to ignore. To hear his name connected with this crew was beyond interesting.
I’d seen and heard enough, called my one-man cover team, and we both went home. I was exhausted. I tried to explain what had happened to Tawni, but it was still hard at first to process, let alone talk about.
The old gospel standards Tawni sang earlier were now replaced with questions of faith and doctrine. She always asked the hard questions, the ones I would rather escape. I knew I’d be back to the grind at my own church, a real church, on Sunday. A church with no open-carry guns and no teaching that Jewish people are the spawn of Satan. We got into bed and opened our King James Bibles together and read from John. We ended the night together in prayer. Something we probably should have done a whole lot more often.
* * *
According to a study conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute in 2020, 72% of evangelical White Protestants believe police shootings of Black people are isolated incidents instead of a pattern, where only 30% of religiously unaffiliated Whites say the same.vi And, close to 80% of Catholics see Confederate monuments as “symbols of Southern heritage.” Non-religiously affiliated Whites were recorded at 45%.vii
In 2001, 87% of Christian churches in the United States were completely segregated between only White or Black parishioners.viii According to the Equal Justice Initiative, 86% of churches in the nation still have no significant racial diversity.
* * *
I’d like to claim my visit to Mesa Bible began a serious investigation into their activities as a militia with supremacist ties. But I can’t.
In real life, there are budgets and managers and limited resources. And a major piece of the story of the rise of White supremacy in America is the fact that we simply didn’t, and don’t, commit the resources to this issue that we should. And no matter how much I screamed or begged, other matters were deemed more grievous and took precedence.
Instead, I got busy with other investigations—murder for hire, gangs, long-term surveillances on child and drug trafficking cases, and more gangs—and tried to keep up my contacts with Pekrul. But I never had the chance to attend any more Bible meetings. (I try and tell myself it would have only been more of the same. But I wonder, and it bothers me still today.)
Sources, I found later, claimed actual guns, not only the paintball or BB kind, were stored at the church for the “Final Days” and a standoff with government entities. Later, I learned of vehicles with bogus registrations and license plates driving all around Mesa, all associated with Pekrul and the church. I eventually found myself crossing paths with many of the Washitaw Nation members in other places and organizations.
