Posse Comitatus

FOR FINAL/DEFINITIVE VERSION SEE: Aaron Winter (2011), ‘Posse Comitatus’, Religion and Violence: An Encyclopedia of Faith and Conflict, ed. J. I. Ross, Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, pp. 575-580. Posse Comitatus Aaron Winter, University of Abertay Posse Comitatus was an explicitly anti-Semitic, anticommunist, antigovernment, and antifederalist populist organization, which was founded in 1969 in Portland, Oregon, by Henry Mike Beach and came to national attention at the height of the farm crisis in the early 1980s. Structurally, the Posse was a national umbrella organization, which was composed of numerous small semi-autonomous state or locally run chapters, or “posses,” across the country. Posse comitatus is a Latin term meaning “power of the county,” or more aptly, according to Chip Berlet (2000), power of the citizenry. The name was taken from the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibited the U.S. military from civilian law enforcement on American soil. The Posse believed that the publicly elected, representative, and thus accountable county sheriff was the highest authority and the Constitution represented the highest law, while the federal government and its laws were illegitimate and had no jurisdiction within the states. The Posse’s politics and activism, which included tax protest and vigilante law enforcement, were based on a combination of Christian Identity theology and constitutional patriotism. Posse Comitatus has been labeled in various ways, most commonly as Christian Identity, Christian patriot, constitutional patriot, or, according to James Aho (1995), “Christian Constitutionalist.” When Beach, a former member of the fascist Silver Shirts, founded Posse Comitatus in 1969, the American extreme Right was at a crossroads. At that point, following desegregation, the Voting Rights Act, and the Civil Rights Act, the battle by the Ku Klux Klan, the National States Rights Party, the American Nazi Party, and other traditional extreme Right organizations to preserve their objective of white supremacy had been lost. Since 1962, newer and more radical groups had started to emerge from within the larger and more traditional white supremacist and white nationalist organizations. These groups included the Minutemen, founded by ex–John Birch Society member Robert DePugh, and the California Rangers and Christian Defense League, formed by former members of the Klan who were also affiliated with the Anglo-Saxon Christian Congregation (a Christian Identity–based theo-political organization). These groups rejected the traditional hegemonic white supremacy, nationalism, and Christianity of their predecessors, as well as their predecessors’ mainstream strategies—particularly electoral activism—in favor of the advocacy of assassination, terrorism, revolution, and the violent overthrow of the government. As indicated by the name Minutemen, taken from the Revolutionary era citizen militias, like Posse Comitatus after them, their point of political reference was Revolutionary era American history and the anti-imperialist, antifederalist Republican tradition. It was from a combination of this ideological strand and the anti–Judeo-Christian Christian Identity theology espoused by the California Rangers and others that Posse Comitatus emerged and developed its own ideology and activism. The Posse provided both a new vehicle and organizational continuity for Christian Identity– affiliated members of the Klan and other organizations, including Richard “Girnt” Butler, Connie Lynch, and William Potter Gale, as well as introducing Identity to a wider audience for whom it would eventually become a unifying theology. The Identity influence over the Posse would be solidified in 1971, when Gale took over leadership from Beach. By 1975, Butler had formed his own Posse in Idaho, solidifying the Posse’s presence in the Pacific Northwest. This was the beginning of a period of expansion for the Posse. By 1975 the FBI estimated that the Posse had seventy-eight chapters in twenty-three states and between twelve thousand and fifteen thousand members. By the early 1980s, James Wickstrom, leader of the Wisconsin Posse and director of counterinsurgency and an Identity-adherent, established his own Possebased constitutional township in Tigerton Dells, Wisconsin. Influence of Christian Identity Although Posse Comitatus is widely viewed as a Christian Identity organization, that is based mostly on the fact that many of its prominent leaders and members were Identity adherents. While Identity played a role in the Posse’s belief system, its ideological foundations and points of reference were primarily historical and legal. The literature of Posse Comitatus consisted primarily of writings on American history, constitutional law, common law, and taxation. For the Posse, history and the Constitution allowed it to claim and assert political and legal authority and legitimacy, while Christian Identity theology provided it with both divine guidance and authority, which superseded that of human political institutions and authorities. The Posse produced two newsletters, The Upright Ostrich and Wickstrom’s Posse Noose Report, numerous statements, and a formal manifesto. The manifesto, published in 1983, was entitled Posse Comitatus: The Real Power of the County. This document included the organization’s mandate and aims, as well as sections on the history of the Posse Comitatus law, constitutional and common law, a historical treatise, a handbook for county sheriffs, and, more practically, a tear-out citizens’ arrest warrant for use by members. After over ten years of development, the Posse mobilized, gained national attention, and became a significant political movement in the early 1980s. This was specifically due to the farm crisis, which lasted from approximately 1981 to 1987 and was caused by ten years of agricultural and farm expansion, land and machinery investment, and inflated crop prices encouraged by the government. When America was hit with a recession and increased interest rates were imposed, that forced crop prices and land value to drop and left many farmers unable to pay for the expansion and investment required, resulting in mass farm foreclosures. As well as fueling the wider extreme Right, the farm crisis was of particular relevance to the Posse, which had its base within the rural midwestern and Pacific Northwestern states and now had a perfect outlet for its populism, antigovernment enmity, and anti-Semitic scapegoating. When the farm crisis occurred, the Posse emerged from its base to compete with the various agricultural and farming unions and communist organizations in an attempt to represent small local farmers. It actively defended both local farmers and its own membership against government agricultural policies and farm and property foreclosure and repossession, as well as more general state intervention within its communities. It was during this period that the Posse hit the headlines on numerous occasions as its members became involved in protests against and confrontations with IRS and state and law enforcement officials. The best example of the American farmer’s predicament being used as a political platform by the Posse is the essay “The American Farmer 20th Century Slave”, which was written by James Wickstrom in 1978 and distributed as a pamphlet. It was also republished in Aryan Nations’ Calling Our Nation at the height of the farm crisis in the mid-1980s. In the essay, Wickstrom outlined what he believed to be the plight of the American farmer. He began by detailing the American farmer’s hard work to provide food for his family and the nation, his predicament of dealing with regulation, interest rates, and taxation and fighting farm foreclosures, stating, “The White Christian American now stands as a SERF on upon [sic] the soil his forefathers fought, bled, and died to give him so he could have life, liberty, and property in the pursuit of happiness.” Strategies and Activities In addition to propaganda, the Posse’s activism took many other forms. While frequently violent, the Posse’s strategies and activities primarily took the form of protest, resistance, and self-defense against government intervention into the lives of members or its target constituency of white farmers. The Posse’s program included vigilante law enforcement, constitutional and common law practice, farm and property defense, tax protest, counterfeiting, kidnapping, murder and terrorism, arms and supply stockpiling, and paramilitary training, all of which were viewed as politically necessary, legally justified, and, through Christian Identity, divinely sanctioned. The majority of the strategies and actions typically began with the issuing of an arrest warrant to a “suspect” and were supposed to end in a Posse court, although the latter rarely occurred. This was primarily because, in spite of the legal arguments to the contrary, the Posse and its courts had no legal status, authority, or legitimacy in the eyes of the government, law enforcement agencies, its “accused,” or the public in general. In some cases, the Posse court convicted the accused even before the warrant was served; in others, the accused were convicted and sentenced in absentia, as a warrant could not be served. The alleged offenders included all levels of the official legal system and law enforcement, from local sheriffs to judges, as well as IRS officials collecting unpaid taxes. Examples include a case in 1983 in which the Kansas Posse distributed letters to no less than 105 county sheriffs demanding the arrest of ten local judges convicted by the Posse’s Citizens Grand Jury of Kansas for unlawfully seizing personal property, or repossession. The same year, the Citizens Grand Jury of Kansas sentenced a local Johnson County sheriff and under-sheriff to death for the crime of unlawful repossession of property, a sentence that could only be carried out once the local Posse secured their arrest. Along with citizen’s arrests, at the forefront of the Posse’s strategies was farm and property defense. This strategy represented a specific response to the conditions of the farm crisis. Farm and property defense usually involved Posse members attempting to prevent local sheriffs and IRS officials from serving a warrant or attempting to repossess a member’s property and possessions. This was typically done by creating a human blockade or setting up a perimeter around the property, as well as threatening or actually assaulting the officials. At the height of the farm crisis the cases were too numerous to mention; one of the more prominent examples was a 1982 case in which forty Posse members formed a human blockade around a member’s farm in Wallace County, Kansas, in an attempt to prevent the local sheriff from repossessing his farm equipment. In another case, in 1985, the Nebraska Posse, led by Larry Humphries, traveled across state lines to Georgia to assist in the perimeter defense of a member’s farm that was about to be repossessed. Perhaps the most infamous case of farm defense occurred a year earlier when Nebraska farmer and Posse member Arthur Kirk threatened to shoot local sheriffs sent to repossess his farm. In response, a SWAT team was brought in to the site, and Kirk was killed in a shoot-out with them, leading to his canonization as a Posse martyr. As well as farm and property defense, Posse Comitatus engaged in protests in which members attempted to block or physically disrupt official hearings or proceedings that related to their political concerns or other members. Such events included trials and sentencings of their members and hearings concerning agricultural policy. The most prominent example of this strategy, which illustrates the scale on which it took place, occurred in 1974. In this case, Thomas Stockheimer, the chairman of the Wisconsin Posse, led 100 other members in a mass demonstration and disruption of a Department of Natural Resources hearing in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Another prominent site of such protests were auctions where, when farm defense strategies failed, members’ repossessed farms and assets were being sold to repay the bank or the IRS or to pay off fines they had incurred. Although such auctions and their disruption were quite frequent during this period, one example at the height of the farm crisis occurred in 1983, when members of the Colorado Posse attempted to block the auction of a local member’s farm. Besides these activities, which involved heated confrontations and potential violence, Posse Comitatus advocated and made explicit threats of violence against IRS and law enforcement officials, in many cases leading to assaults against them. In two cases directly related to a tax protest, IRS officials were the targets of such threats and assaults. One of the first and most significant examples was a 1975 death threat made by Posse members against Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. By the start of the farm crisis, these violent threats and acts only increased. In 1982, police uncovered a plot by seven Posse members to blow up the IRS headquarters in Denver, Colorado, and murder federal judges. Another example of this escalating violence involved Thomas Stockheimer, who, in the same year in which he led his demonstration, assaulted an IRS official and was later convicted and sentenced to prison. The following year, in the case discussed earlier concerning the Kansas Posse’s attempt to secure the arrest of a local sheriff and under-sheriff for unlawful repossession, members threatened to bomb a local Johnson school unless the accused turned themselves in for their own execution. One of the most notable cases was in 1985, when, following a one-year investigation of Posse member Mike Rulo for suspected murder, the FBI raided his Nebraska farm. The FBI found Rulo with the bodies of the two people he had murdered, a stash of Posse literature, illegal weapons, and survival supplies. Finally, in 1987, Posse leader William Gale issued a formal call to all his followers to threaten and assault IRS officials, an act for which he was arrested. In the early 1980s, the Posse followed the direction of other Identity-based groups and underwent paramilitarization. The first official Posse Comitatus paramilitary training camp was established in 1981 by the Kansas-based Posse. In 1983 James Wickstrom, in a strategic extension of his constitutional township, attempted to build a training camp; the camp was never completed, however, as the local police arrested Wickstrom and closed down his illegal compound. Another, less violent, activity in which the Posse was involved was counterfeiting. In 1980 several members were found to be in possession of counterfeit bills traced to presses at the Michigan Posse base. In another case, in 1988, James Wickstrom was arrested and convicted for plotting to distribute counterfeit bills at an Aryan World Congress. In a form of fraudulent fundraising the same year as Wickstrom’s arrest, Thomas Stockheimer, also of the Wisconsin Posse, created the Family Farm Preservation Society. This was a con designed to sell approximately $185 million in fake money orders, a crime for which Stockheimer was later convicted. By far the most significant event in Posse history, which brought Posse Comitatus to the attention of the nation, was the 1983 murder of law enforcement officials by Gordon Kahl’s Posse and his own death the same year. After years of tax evasion and public tax protest, even on television, Kahl was arrested in 1977, convicted and imprisoned. When he failed to file his taxes upon his release in 1980, a warrant was issued for his arrest in Texas. When he refused to turn himself in to state or federal officials, he became a fugitive. In February 1983, federal marshals in Medina, North Dakota, attempted to arrest him and a shootout ensued between Kahl, his son Yorie, and several other Posse members. Two federal marshals were killed, and three officers were wounded; Gordon Kahl was the only one among his Posse to escape. On June 3 of the same year, Kahl was killed in a shoot-out with federal marshals attempting to arrest him in Arkansas, and this made him a martyr to the Posse, the wider movement, and the cause. Development and Decline As the Posse was a somewhat fragmented and grassroots network of local posses, lacking a centralized leadership and power structure, its precise lifespan is somewhat difficult to determine. Although its ascent and infamy came about by virtue of the actions of an individual posse or member such as Gale, Wickstrom, or Kahl, the death or defection of a single member or closure of an individual posse did not signal its decline. In spite of his notoriety and the link established between them, Richard Butler’s tenure in the Posse was short lived. In 1976, he had a falling out with William Gale over the legacy of their Christian Identity mentor, the founder of the Anglo-Saxon Christian Congregation (ASCC), Wesley Swift, who died in 1970. As a result, Butler left the Posse, which Gale now led. In 1977, Butler purchased a large piece of land at Hayden Lake in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, where he reestablished Swift’s ASCC as the Church of Jesus Christ Christian (CJCC) and founded its political wing, Aryan Nations. While the Posse carried on without Butler, Aryan Nations, and later The Order, quickly overshadowed the Posse. With Butler gone, Gale was the last major link to the Posse’s founding and Swift’s legacy. But on October 2, 1987, in prison awaiting an appeal for his conviction for inciting followers to threaten IRS officials, Gale passed away. Upon his death, the Posse faded from public view. The last significant player in the group was James Wickstrom, who provided a link to Aryan Nations, to which he also belonged, and attempted to reconcile the two organizations in 2001. Following numerous attempted coups and a civil suit by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which bankrupted Butler in 2000, Aryan Nations members August Kreis III and Harold Ray Redfeairn, who had broken ties with Butler, joined with Wickstrom and formed a new (and competing) Aryan Nations–Posse Comitatus based at Kreis’s home in Ulysses, Pennsylvania. This new organization represented an attempted symbolic reconciliation of the two organizations and a potential revival. Yet at this point in history, the new group was politically insignificant and failed to live up to the legacy and influence of either Aryan Nations or Posse Comitatus at their peaks. Bibliography Aho, James A. The Politics of Righteousness: Idaho Christian Patriotism. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995. Barkun, Michael. Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. Berlet, Chip, and Matthew N. Lyons. Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort. New York: Guilford Press, 2000. Corcoran, James. Bitter Harvest: The Birth of Paramilitary Terrorism in the Heartland. New York: Penguin Books, 1995. Diamond, Sara. Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States. New York: Guilford Press, 1995. Dobratz, Betty A., and Stephanie L. Shanks-Meile. The White Separatist Movement in the United States: “White Power, White Pride!” Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. Posse Comitatus. Posse Comitatus: The Real Power of the County. Medford, Oregon: ABS, 1983. Ridgeway, James. Blood in the Face: The Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, Nazi Skinheads, and the Rise of the New White Culture. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1990. Southern Poverty Law Center. “Aryans, Interrupted.” SPLC Intelligence Report (Summer 2002). Available: http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=88 ————. “Aryans Without a Nation.” SPLC Intelligence Report 100 (Winter 2000): 30–34. ————. “Bombs, Bullets, Bodies: The Decade in Review.” SPLC Intelligence Report 97 (Winter 2000): 8–29. ————. “Elder Statesman.” SPLC Intelligence Report (Summer 1998). Available: http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/1998/summer/elder-statesman ————. “The Last Outpost.” SPLC Intelligence Report (Spring 2001). Available: http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=234 Stock, Catherine McNichol. Rural Radicals: Righteous Rage in the American Grain. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996. Wickstrom, James. “The American Farmer 20th Century Slave.” Calling Our Nation 43 (n.d.): 5–7.