As a graduate student concentrating on sub-state violence and terrorism I usually focus my attention outside the borders of the US. But in a recent assignment I decided to focus on domestic terrorism and in particular the rising threat from Christian Identity-based movements - like the Phineas Priesthood. This is a brief on the Priesthood, but I'll write two additional diaries before the end of the year. One will focus on an action of the Priesthood and one will focus on the counter-terrorism operation facing both the Christian Identity movement and the Phineas Priesthood.
I want to say that in preparation for my research I've read numerous pieces of white supremacist literature, all of which advocate mass genocide against "race traitors," GLBT people, non-whites, academics and more. In addition I monitor Christian Identity websites and share research with the Southern Poverty Law Center.
"Today it finally began! After all these years of talking – and nothing but talking – we have finally taken our first action. We are at war with the System, and it is no longer a war of words" The Turner Diaries
The Phineas Priesthood draws its name from a priest in the Old Testament named Phineas, who took it upon himself to enforce God’s Law ("The Law") upon an Israelite named Zimri who had violated The Law by sleeping with a female member of another clan. Phineas had taken this role upon himself after seeing that this violation of The Law was a plot to destroy the Israelites by violating The Law against intermarriage and intercommunal relations.
One of the children of Israel came and brought a Midiantish woman and when Phineas saw it he rose up amongst the congregation and took a javelin in his hand and thust it through both of them... And the Lord spake... saying "Phineas has turned my wrath away from the children of Israel... that I consumed not the children of Israel... Behold I give him my covenant of peace... and his seed after him, even the covenant of an everlasting priesthood because he was zealous for his God and made atonement for the children of Israel" Num 25 6:13
It is from this story that the modern-day Phineas Priesthood take their cue. Drawing lineage from Phineas through the ancient tale of St. George slaying the dragon (the dragon being a metaphor for evil) through colonization of the Americas (subjugation of the weak and non-Christian) to the Civil War (an attempt by world Jewry to subvert Anglo-Saxon Protestantism) to the present – the book "Vigilantes of Christendom: The Story of the Phineas Priesthood" by Richard Hoskins, a former member of the US Nazi Party who later converted to the Christian Identity movement after befriending now-deceased Klan leader Byron De La Beckwith, clearly lays out the organization’s motives and seeks to base them in a historical context.
The Phineas Priesthood is part and parcel of the wider Christian Identity movement in the United States – a movement which lays claim to white, Anglo-Saxon people being God’s chosen people and which abhors race-mixing, as the following quote from Hoskins makes clear:
"When a race which produces original thought breeds with a race which produces little or no original thought, the resulting breed is a failure."
It is not possible to separate the Phineas Priesthood from other violent groups based on Christian Identity thought as all are based on the same set of principles, which in addition to the distaste for "race mixing" as referenced above, includes an abhorrence of abortion, of equality between the sexes, a hatred of Jews and homosexuals and a belief in an all-encompassing Jewish conspiracy stretching back to the time before Richard the 1st. Whereas groups like the Aryan Brotherhood and the Aryan Republican Army are traditional hate/terrorist groups with a defined leadership the Phineas Priesthood is not. In this aspect it is highly resistant to penetration by law enforcement because there is no organization to penetrate.
The concept of the Phineas Priesthood is based on leaderless resistance to "The System." Using Robin Hood as an example of one who acted as a Phineas Priest, Hoskins describes him and his "merry band of outlaws" as acting in defiance of King John thusly:
"Richard, the King of England, was away on a crusade. His brother John ruled in his stead. Richard required money for his military adventure. To get the money, John used the crown’s ancient practice of allowing the Jews to lend at usury, bankrupt the followers, with the Crown taking half the gain"
Because King John was acting unjustly and was in-league with Jews practicing usury it thus fell on Robin Hood to act on The Law (forbidding usury) and so he "rob[bed] government officials and tax collectors, and share[ed] his gains with the people." His was a case of enforcing The Law against one’s own lawless and unjust kinsmen.
Another example of leaderless resistance to "The Establishment" was the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth. The Phineas Priesthood views the Civil War as an attempt to subjugate white Anglo-Saxon people and enforce race-mixing – thus it is a violation of The Law. As Hoskins states "It is always frightening to one who has outlawed himself by causing the undeserved deaths of others, to find himself in the same room with someone who uphold’s God’s Law.... Those who disobey are outlawed by God. God has specified the outlaw’s punishment. The Phineas Priests administer the judgment and God awards them with an everlasting Priesthood." John Wilkes Booth is considered a Phineas Priest in the tradition of those who enforce The Law themselves.
A modern-day Phineas Priest will use the examples given previously and others from the more recent past to justify acts of terrorism, robbery and sabotage. Based on a fundamentalist interpretation of the Old Testament of the Bible a Phineas Priest would consider himself justified in any act of murder, including the killing of abortion doctors (Paul Hill, convicted and executed in 2003 for killing an abortion doctor, considered himself a Phineas Priest) as well as the murder of gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered people and interracial couples. The membership of the Phineas Priesthood would be entirely white and almost entirely male (there has been no case of a Phineas Priestess, but Hoskins doesn’t rule out the possibility).
Anyone involved in Phineas Priesthood activities will probably have connections with other extremist groups simply by virtue of the fact that the literature and propaganda around the Phineas Priesthood is produced and controlled by a tightly-knit network of white supremacists who move in the same circles. An example would be Hoskins, the author of what is considered "The Bible" of the Phineas Priesthood (referenced above). Hoskins is a known anti-Semite who runs a white supremacist publishing house in Virginia. His literature has been found on other extremists convicted of crimes the Phineas Priests would consider justified, including Aryan Republican Army members Richard Guthrie and Peter Langan; Buford Furrow, who fired on a Jewish daycare center in Los Angeles in 1999 and scattered at the scene of a series of a series of politically-motivated robberies and bombings in Spokane, WA in the 1990s.
In summary: The Phineas Priesthood is a leaderless, geographically-dispersed non-cell based organization which adheres to a biblically-based, white supremacist, fundamentalist interpretation of the Old Testament that commands its followers to uphold "The Law." In the interpretation of the The Law held by the Priesthood those who practice race-mixing, abortion, usury or homosexuality are subject to the death penalty and any Phineas Priest is justified in imposing it. For carrying out the penalty for defiance of "The Law" a Phineas Priest will be given an everlasting covenant by God and rewarded in Heaven after. Phineas Priests despise Jews and government officials, who they consider in thrall to ZOG – the Zionist Occupied Government. A Phineas Priest can be anyone, anywhere.
As a side note - here is the text of a review of Hoskin's book on Amazon:
The Holy Spirit sat at the side of Richard Kelly Hoskins as he wrote this defining work of modern Reformed Christianity. Here is revealed how Satan has captured the establishment Christian churches and God's plan for dislodging and finally vanquishing the evil tribe that has lurked in our midst for so many years.
Hoskins sets forth the fundamental Biblical Truth of the Third Millenium: The Saxon is the blessed child of Almighty God and the sole inheritor of the Abrahamic Covenant. If anyone should doubt the divine creation of the Saxon, who are the sole decendents of Adam, who was made by God in His Image, the mater is settled and placed beyond debate. Hoskin's book will soon rank and far exceed in influence Augustine's City of God or even the Summa Theologica of St. Aquinus. Devinely inspired, Hoskin's book is beinghanded from hand to hand among the Saxon Warriors where it is leaving an indelible impression upon them and providing the inspiration tomove into action against th eenemies of God's People.
For every book published, tens are copied and passed from hand to hand in our nation's prisons wherefrom we can expect the Phineas Priests to emerge. Woe onto those who oppose the Word! Their time on this earth is numbered. We cannot lose this struggle for we are guided and protected by God Himself. Hoskins is the St. Paul of our Age, and his message is being heard and acted upon by tens of thousands throughout the world.
Hoskins makes the book available free on his website for this very purpose.