For several decades, earlier in my academic career, I followed the evolution of white supremacy and its numerous manifestations. I have two bookshelves devoted to studies of white supremacy and antisemitism. I turned my attention to other matters over time; however, the rise of antisemitism has brought me back to the subject, and recent interactions on social media knocked off some of the rust on my knowledge base.
One strand of white supremacy I have encountered lately is Christian Identity (not to be confused with Christian nationalism or evangelical Christianity). In this essay, I briefly explore Christian Identity and its affinity with Nazism, as well as its affinity with Islam. Considering the threat Islam poses to Christianity, observers may find it odd that some Christians would align their politics with those of Muslims. The heart of the convergence is virulent antisemitism.
Before turning to the Christian Identity worldview, it is useful to note where one is most likely to encounter Christian Identity adherents. Christian Identity is mostly found in the Pacific Northwest, especially Idaho and neighboring areas (Northern Idaho became a major center through Richard Butler’s Aryan Nations compound). However, it is also found in the Ozarks and the Midwest, including parts of Arkansas, Missouri, and surrounding states, where Identity churches and ministries have operated. Christian Identity adherents also dwell in Appalachian and Southern regions. Small groups have been documented in states such as Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
What is Christian Identity doctrine? Emerging in the United States during the twentieth century from earlier British Israelism, the movement teaches that white Europeans and their descendants, rather than Jewish people, are the true heirs of the biblical Israelites. Its adherents claim that the ancient Israelite tribes migrated into Europe and that biblical promises concerning Israel therefore apply to white people.
Within this worldview, Jews are falsely identified as God’s chosen people, and this alleged deception is often attributed to Satan. Some adherents identify Jews with the biblical tribe of Judah while denying that they are the legitimate heirs to God’s promises; others reject the claim that Jews descend from the ancient Israelites altogether. The doctrine thus constructs a racial and theological opposition between white Europeans, portrayed as the true Israelites, and Jews, portrayed as impostors or enemies of God’s plan.
Where do Christian Identity adherents get this idea? Careful Bible readers will recall that, in 1 Kings 12, the ancient Kingdom of Israel split into separate kingdoms around 930 BC, following the death of King Solomon. Most of the northern tribes rejected Solomon’s heir, Rehoboam, and established a separate kingdom, known as the Kingdom of Israel, under King Jeroboam I. The southern kingdom, known as the Kingdom of Judah, remained under the House of David, with Jerusalem as its capital, and was associated primarily with the tribes of Judah and Benjamin.
Christian Identity doctrine takes the biblical account and builds a racial narrative around their separate histories. After Assyria conquered the northern kingdom around 722–720 BC, biblical tradition came to know the northern tribes as the “lost tribes of Israel.” Christian Identity adherents claim that these tribes migrated across Europe and eventually became the ancestors of white Anglo-Saxons and other northern Europeans.
Christian Identity is ideological, not historical. Whereas Judaism and mainstream Christianity understand the biblical narratives within their historical (and theological) contexts, Christian Identity adherents use them to construct a racial hierarchy. This hierarchy must presume that Jews are not white. It must also reject the Jewish people’s historical connection to ancient Israel. To reach these conclusions, adherents reinterpret biblical passages to establish the supposed superiority of white people over other racial groups.
The involvement of Jews in civil rights and other liberal causes is interpreted as a plot to corrupt the white race. As readers will know, Christians of this persuasion associated Jews with the evils of communism. This is one of the things that separates far-right antisemites from the antisemites in the popular progressive movement, who associate Jews with the evils of capitalism. These differences do not obviate the political convergence of the far right and far left. Antisemitism is the strong core that unites them.
Readers will note the significant ideological connection between Christian Identity and Nazism, particularly through racial antisemitism and the belief that Jews are the enemies of the white Christian world. What distinguishes Nazism from other forms of fascism is the centrality of antisemitism and the belief that Jews constituted a racial enemy responsible for Germany’s supposed decline. The America Firsters who reject the populist-nationalism of the MAGA movement work from this assumption. Some America Firsters are Christian Identity, but all of them are antisemites.
Antisemitism is also the source of Nazism’s historic affinity with Islam. Like Hitler and the Nazis, Muslims blame Jews for the problems in the Arab Muslim world. This brought them into a coalition with the Third Reich. Christian Identity carries forward Hitler’s vision of a Jew-free world. To clarify, Christian Identity did not originate with Nazism; it preceded National Socialism. And, of course, antisemitism in the Islamic world preceded Nazism. But all that is neither here nor there, since all three forms of hatred are founded upon anti-Jewish hatred—and the structure and content of that hatred are essentially identical. The convergence is organic.
Obviously, Christian Identity beliefs do not reflect mainstream Christian theology. Nor do these beliefs accurately depict biblical history. To put the matter bluntly, Christian Identity is cracked; one can easily debunk its claims. The claim that white Europeans are the true Israelites is not established by biblical references to the twelve tribes (or variations in their number), by the history of the word Jew, or by credible historical evidence. But historical accuracy is not important to white supremacists (nor is scientific accuracy with respect to the race question). The distinction between ancient Israelite identity and later Jewish identity is necessary to a racialized narrative that denies Jewish historical belonging and privileges white ancestry—a narrative that must deny Jewish whiteness or the fact of Jewish ethnicity (Jews are racially Caucasian and a distinct ancestral group organized by matrilineage).
Consequently, the movement must be understood not simply as an alternative interpretation of Christianity, but as a form of religiously framed white supremacy. One can suspect Christian Identity belief in the fact that its adherents promote conspiracy theories about Jewish influence over financial institutions, governments, and the media. This is what knocked the rust off my white supremacy knowledge base. I am seeing conspiracy theories about Jewish influence everywhere on social media. To be sure, conspiracy theories about Jews also indicate other worldviews—Islam and Nazism being two obvious examples. Isolating Christian Identity belief comes by paying attention to the specific Biblical interpretation the antisemite is working from. Once enough has been revealed through interrogation, then a diagnosis can be made.
As noted at the outset of this essay, one of the more interesting pieces of today’s antisemitic frenzy is the affinity between some Christians and Muslims. The point of overlap arises most clearly with Islamist political movements that define Jews or Zionism (i.e., Jewish nationalism) as a fundamental enemy. Christian Identity and Islam converge in their shared hostility toward Jews, Israel, and what they portray as Jewish influence in world affairs. This aligns them with street-level progressivism, which is profoundly antisemitic, a sentiment deepened by left-wing Islamophilia. Antisemitism makes for strange bedfellows!
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I cannot leave this essay without noting a specific historical example of the affinity between Christian Identity and Islam in the United States: The Nation of Islam (NOI). NOI is a black nationalist religious movement that promotes racial separatism and antisemitic teachings that closely resemble Christian Identity’s claims about Jews, Satan, and illegitimate Jewish identity. Cameron Rowlett’s 2019 article, “In God’s Own Image: Race, Politics and Millennialism in the Nation of Islam and Christian Identity Movement,” explicitly compares the two movements, identifying racial separatism, racialized religious identity, and apocalyptic expectations as areas of overlap.
Although the connection here is more about shared belief, there are direct points of contact between white supremacists and NOI. The American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell was invited to speak at a Nation of Islam Saviours’ Day convention. Tom Metzger attended a Nation of Islam rally in San Diego and donated money to NOI on behalf of his organization. Years ago, some 200 white supremacists gathered on a farm roughly 50 miles west of Detroit and expressed support for the Nation of Islam. The event followed contact between NOI leader Louis Farrakhan and Metzger. Readers should know that Metzger founded White Aryan Resistance (WAR). He moved in the same circles as Aryan Nations, led by Richard Butler, which was closely associated with Christian Identity theology.
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Perhaps not incidentally, in antiquity, arya, meaning “noble” or “dignified,” was a cultural and linguistic self-identifier used by ancient Indo-Iranians, including the people of the Vedic sub-continent and ancient Persia. The word Iran literally translates to “land of the Aryans.” It might strike the reader as odd that white supremacists would adopt Aryan for their identity. Ironically, it is an admission that Irans are, in fact, white. Since Jews originate in the Middle East, why are they not also considered white? White supremacists twist themselves into knots attempting to reracialize the Jews. It is an attempt to turn the religious differences between Jews and Christians into a genetic reality. It also enhances the affinity between far-right Christians and Muslims. Thus, the hatred of Jews by some Christians and almost all Muslims becomes a war between Caucasians and the common racial enemy—the Jews. This is an earthly manifestation of the spiritual war between God and Satan.
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It is troubling that, all these years later, we find the convergence achieving broad-based support for anti-Jewish antipathy not only on the far right, but on the far left. It is also troubling that, while the mainstream right understands the problem and has purged its ranks of antisemites, the mainstream left, either explicitly or implicitly, by failing to condemn the antisemites in its ranks, has not followed suit.
Just last night, in a debate between Democratic candidate for Senate, Abdul El-Sayed, and his Republican opponent Mike Rogers, El-Sayed refused to acknowledge that Iran poses a greater threat to world peace than Israel. The correct response would have been to correct the premise of the question: Israel presents no threat to world peace. A nuclear-armed Iran is an existential threat. Iran seeks terrible weapons to bring about the apocalypse. El-Sayed dismissed the question altogether. Yesterday, this would have immediately disqualified him as a candidate for high office in a free country. Today, he is leading Rogers in public polling.
