In less than a year, two different attacks on Jews were inspired by a ‘Christian identity’ movement that fuses white nationalism and medieval anti-Semitism

Scholars, journalists, and activists who cover the far-right beat have long been aware of the centrality of the Christian identity movement to white nationalism in America. Yet the movement and its ties to contemporary anti-Semitism have remained largely unknown among the general public even as the violence it inspires has become an unavoidable reality.


Christian identity grows out of a mystical form of Protestantism with roots in British religious movements of the 19th century. It reemerged in its American form in the mid-20th century led by people like California preacher and former Ku Klux Klan organizer Wesley Swift, who held that white “Caucasians,” not “Asiatic” Jews, were in fact the true descendants of the 10 tribes of Israel. Christian identity commanded a small, but dedicated following at its height in the 1950s. Swift was able to draw audiences in the thousands and drew from the same religious zeal in the greater Los Angeles area that had made radio preacher Aimee Semple McPherson one of the most popular ministers in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s .

Since its emergence in America, Christian identity theology has been tied to dozens of white nationalist terrorist attacks over the past 50 years, including the 1968 bombing of a synagogue in Meridian, Mississippi, and the murder of Jewish radio personality Alan Berg in Denver in 1984. And most recently it shaped the delusional thinking of the killer who murdered 11 congregants at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, and the 19-year-old killer he inspired who walked into a Chabad in Poway, California, six months to the day after the Pittsburgh attack, and murdered 60-year-old Lori Gilbert-Kaye. Clearly, the ideology of Christian identity is a key conduit for violent anti-Semitism in America but the problem is larger than one extremist faction.


https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-new...ntity-movement


And trump has tapped into this