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Canada: Racist convention shut down

The Guardian October 20, 1999

by David Lethbridge

Last month, the Canadian British-Israel Association was to hold its 43rd
Annual Convention in London, Ontario. Militant anti-fascist activity
succeeded in shutting it down.

British-Israelism is a religious doctrine first elaborated in the 19th
century as a justification for British colonialism. It claimed that the
English Anglo-Saxons were one of the so-called "ten lost tribes of Israel",
and that the British monarch was the direct descendant of "the throne of
King David".

In short, the British were "God's Chosen People". The movement spread to
Canada and the US [and Australia] at the turn of the century.

The Canadian British-Israel Association (CBIA), through its Internet
website, sells a wide variety of white racist and anti-Jewish religious
propaganda. At least 40 of its books are by Howard Rand and Destiny
Publishers.

Rand was the major figure in establishing British-Israelism in the USA in
the 1920s and '30s, weaving extreme right political influences into its
religious ideology. His position was that black people are soul-less
animals, literally "beasts of the field", created by God to be the servants
of the white race.

Destiny Publishers was a joint project between Rand and William Cameron,
author of the viciously anti-semitic diatribe, The International
Jew, distributed by the Ford automobile company.

Henry Ford was openly friendly to fascism, and Cameron himself was intimate
with Kurt Ludecke, the official representative to the US of the German Nazi
government.

Speakers at this year's Canadian CBIA convention were to include Ernestine
Young, pastor of the Church of the Covenants, from Nampa, Idaho; and
Stephen Jones, founder of God's Kingdom Ministries, from Fridley,
Minnesota.

Both Young and Jones have spoken at America's Promise, a prominent
Christian Identity compound in Sandpoint, Idaho, run by Dave Barley.
Christian Identity is a religious and political outgrowth of the British-
Israel movement.

At the America's Promise 1991 conference, Young spoke on the same platform
with prominent US white supremacists like Eustace Mullins. Several members
of the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations, including its leader Richard Butler, were in
attendance.

America's Promise sells Holocaust-denial literature, as well as the classic
anti-Jewish forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Stephen Jones has spoken at America's Promise with Everett Ramsey and Pete
Peters, leading figures in the racist Identity movement. Material by Jones
is sold by both America's Promise and the Canadian British-Israel
Association.

More recently, Jones spoke at a 1998 Identity conference in La Porte,
Colorado, sponsored by Pete Peters. A Peters conference held in 1992 is
credited with laying the groundwork for the contemporary right-wing armed
militia networks.

Peters' vicious anti-semitism is legendary, as is his homophobia; he is the
author of Death Penalty for Homosexuals Prescribed in the Bible.

At the 1998 conference, Jones spoke of the "centuries long battle between
the descendants of Jacob (the white people, or Israelites) and the
descendants of Esau (the Jews)".

Organised British-Israelites commonly claim they are neither racist nor
anti-Jewish, and that they are merely promoting the religious belief that
"Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, and Germanic Peoples" are uniquely God's chosen
covenant people, and the literal descendants of Adam, Abraham, and Jacob.

However, British-Israelite bookstores and websites sell literature that is
openly demeaning and hostile to Jews and people of colour, and increasingly
peddle the more virulent Identity literature. As the Canadian British-
Israel Association website says, "The Bible is the story of the Adamic race
and none other."

The Bethune Institute for Anti-Fascist Studies, after monitoring the CBIA
website, alerted the hotel venue where the convention was to take place,
and called upon them to refuse CBIA the use of their premises. The hotel
management contacted the Canadian Jewish Congress, in Toronto, for further
information and then immediately cancelled their contract with CBIA.

The hotel has also decided to amend its contract policy to refuse service
to any group associated with racism and anti-semitism. Swift, militant
action by the Bethune Institute resulted in serious disruption to the
British-Israelite plans.

Christian origins, conflicts, and key players.

 

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