WfI, dominionism, and "Christian Patriot" militias

(Note: Much of this is a repost from a recent post on dark_christian (Dark Christianity is an online forum concerning the topics of dominionism, "Christian Reconstructionism", and the "religious right" in general); I have removed the contents of the post here noted, and included links to other posts on Dark Christianity on the subject of "Warriors for Innocence". Redistribution and linkage to this post is widely encouraged.)

There are quite a number of bits of info of concern in regards to the group "Warriors for Innocence", including connections to dominionist groups and (more recently) notes that visits to the site are being logged and tracked back as well as the site doing "drive by spyware" downloads on PCs (of note, this has not yet been confirmed but if true is yet another black mark).

The initial reports on Dark Christianity were for a request for info from researchers on the group as to whether the group did have connections to dominionist groups. Initial reports did show links to a Christian Reconstructionist presidential candidate who is running on a write-in platform as well as homophobic spiels that are typical of dominionist groups.

(OK, a brief glossary as to the terms above and below:

("Dominionism" refers to the modern "religious right" (the same groups that are not-so-kindly referred to in some cirles as "Talibangelicals") movement--it's more accurately termed "dominionism" as the stated claim of its proponents is to "claim dominion" over the entire US, and ultimately the world--and not in the sense of the "wars against powers and principalities", but in literally converting the US and other countries into fundamentalist and/or neo-pentecostal theocracies. (Guatemala, in particular, has had especially unfortunate experiences with dominionist groups in the past twenty years or so.)

("Christian Reconstructionism" is a subset of dominionism (popular among fundamentalist Baptists in particular) which states that Jesus cannot come back until the "kingdom of God" is established here--meatspace, with guns if necessary, and with the use of Levitican/Mosaic law (save the regulations on kosher food) as the law of the land.

("Joel's Army" is a separate strain of dominionism that is largely popular in pentecostal and neopentecostal churches (in particular, the Assemblies of God, Foursquare, and "independent" neopentecostal megachurches) that states the US must be taken over--forcibly, if necessary--to not only convert a critical mass of people to dominionist Christianity (non-dominionist faiths are not seen as "Christian" enough) but to ensure God keeps blessing the US; "Joel's army" theology in particular has close links to "name it and claim it"/"Prosperity Gospel" (just watch darned near any televangelist for examples) and "deliverance ministry" movements (many of which are linked to fairly severe types of spiritual abuse); examples of "Joel's Army" in the media include the movie "Jesus Camp" (held at an Assemblies church linked to the "Joel's Army" movement) and Marguerite "I'M A GOD WARRIOR!" Perrin; the "Left Behind" book series (and movie, and video game, and so on) is a fictionalisation of how "Joel's Army" theology concerning the end of the world.)

(If you are interested in learning more, come to dark_christian, Theocracy Watch, or Talk2Action.)

Anyways, as I am wont to do, I did a bit of research. Among other things, I ended up (through reports on Dark Christianity and friends' lists) here, found the original post in regards to stuff pointing to neo-confederate and "right-wing kook" stuff...

...Uh oh. I'm a survivor of "Joel's Army" spiritual abuse and also am active in anti-racist groups. This is starting to set off some major alarm bells to me.

So I donned my Internet wet-suit and went exploring. Folks, the rabbit hole goes far deeper than just "Warriors for Innocence"...

I hit the Blogspot guide in question and, needless to say, there was much to give me real cause for concern.

Firstly, the name of the group itself is somewhat triggering to me--partly because the name itself sounds suspiciously "Joel's Army"-esque (and of the *really* bad kind, too; the "Missionaries to the Preborn", "Christian Patriot", "Army of God"-style God-warriors-with-guns type of stuff).

(For those unfamiliar with the history of these groups--"Missionaries to the Preborn" is a group that was linked to calls for doctors performing abortions to be assassinated and its leader (Matthew Trewhella) actively promoted forming dominionist "Christian Patriot" militia groups--essentially "Tribulation Force" in real life. The "Army of God" is also a dominionist domestic terror group linked to assassinations of doctors and clinic workers, compiling an infamous hitlist ("The Nuremburg Files") containing personal info of doctors and clinic workers for hitmen, and bombings of women's clinics and LGBT nightclubs as well as Olympic Park during the Olympics in 1996; they produced a terrorism manual, and members of the Army of God include Eric Rudolph (the "Olympics bomber"), Paul Hill (executed for killing a women's clinic OB/GYN), and others. The group I escaped actively promoted stuff from "Missionaries to the Preborn" and expressed sympathy for Army of God terrorists.)

First off, she links to a write-in campaign for Cary Cartter for the 2008 presidential race; a bit of digging around shows Cartter is explicitly dominionist and may in fact be linked with the "Christian Patriot" militia movement. At the very least, he is definitely part of the "Joel's Army" movement; his blog includes links to a plethora of fellow "Joel's Army" bloggers (including one named "Third Wave Dave"; "Third Wave" is a codeword for Joel's Army theology in the Assemblies and other neopente churches) and a number of dominionist correspondence-school bloggers (as well as at least one explicitly Christian Reconstructionist journal called "Sovereign Joy").

("Sovereign Joy" is itself a sort of codeword for "dominionist friendly" or "Christian Patriot friendly" stuff; there is a movement that, among other things, claims that people who became US citizens via the 14th Amendment (or an act of Congress in 1936, for Native Americans) are essentially "second class citizens" and the only "real" US citizens are "sovereign citizens (white, landowning males); "sovereign citizen" stuff has been promoted by the Minutemen and many racist militia groups. Christian Reconstructionists use it in a different light--in reference to God as "Sovereign".)

The "Redneck Mafia" seems to be a collection of neo-Confederates and neo-Confederate sympathisers; the Blogspot site not only hosts essentially a webring of neo-Confederate sympathisers, but also a Texas-secessionist webring and an anti-UN webring; the Texas secessionist webring in turn also hosts a neoconservative webring and a secondary neo-Confederate sympathiser webring ("Children of the Confederacy"). Pretty much all of the members are almost identical between these Blogspot webrings.

(A note to readers who are of Southern US extraction or had ancestors in the Confederate States. There is a very real difference between merely flying the Confederate flag or having "Southern Pride" and the neo-confederate movement. The latter is frankly secessionist (yes, they want to reform the CSA), wish to remove all civil rights laws, and several have even called for the re-establishment of slavery; many neo-Confederate groups have close links to Christian Reconstructionists as well as racist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and even neo-Nazi groups (who promote the idea of Southern secession as a chance to establish a "white homeland"). In some cases, neo-Confederate groups have hijacked legitimate Confederate memorial societies (the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a group that was formerly a Confederate veteran's memorial society, was recently hijacked by racist neo-Confederates); the Southern Poverty Law Center maintains a list of known racist neo-Confederate groups.)

In fact, almost *all* the blogs cross-link to each other (acting as essentially a web-ring of "Joel's Army" folks connected to the owner of TexasFred, which is registered via DomainsByProxy (a service used to anonymise whois registration, and commonly abused by spammers and other miscreants; warriorsforinnocence.com itself is also registered via DomainsByProxy). The main "Texas Fred" site includes a Java game entitled "Shoot The Wetback" and is a major promoter of the Minutemen militia group (which itself has extensive ties to "Christian Patriot" dominionist militia groups, racists, and in particular the Constitution Party (itself a de jure Christian Reconstructionist party and a de facto "Militia Party" to boot)). Other fun blogs in the same general "network" include "Beast Media" (which is a particularly obnoxious neocon site that actually makes "Mallard Fillmore" look humorous in comparison, a guy calling himself "Minuteman1776" (whose website links in turn to other parts of the "TexasFred" network including a site called "Radioactive Liberty"--which literally calls for war for oil--as well as a group calling itself "Marine Mom Militia". Almost all of these sites seem to be out to out-Ann Coulter Ann Coulter. One page even contains a frank racial slur ("Yidwithlid").

Of all of these, the only page that has any identifying info is with "Minuteman1776"; the webpage for minuteman1776.com is registered to

Administrative Contact:
Lindsay, Lisa freedom.or.death1776@gmail.com
7807 - 143 ave
Edmonton, -- T5C 2R3
CA
(780) 476-0160 Fax: 000-000-0000

Technical Contact:
Manager, Domain hostmaster@startlogic.com
919 E Jefferson St.
Suite 100
Phoenix, AZ 85034
US
+1.8007258064


Registration Service Provider:
StartLogic, Inc., hostmaster@startlogic.com
1-800-725-8064
http://www.startlogic.com

As best as can be determined, this does belong to a private individual.

There is apparently another Blogspot site, Absolute Zero United, which literally claims that people who are protesting their actions are in fact paedophiles (despite there not being the action of child rape involved, and despite many of the online communities being removed being things like molestation survivor support groups, fanfiction sites, LGBT communities not involving child molestation at all, etc.):

Live Journal one of the original blogging sites has been simply infested with pedophiles and pedo-activists. We wrote about it a couple of times HERE and HERE

Some people wonder what AZ and the other ANTI blogs do besides writing about pedofreaks on our blogs. One thing we do is monitor these blogger sites like Live Journal. We watch these perverts invading spaces that kids hang out. We watch them spouting off pedo-crap, puffing each other up with pedo-pride and above all LYING. We work to rid the internet of these dangerous places. Sometimes they go down fast and easy, other times it takes a bit of creativity. But, like I always say "there's more than one way to skin a cat"

Take a look at some recent fallen Live Journals, several communities as well. Live Journal finally snapped to attention and decided to be responsible. Yeah, pedo blogs are dropping like flies over on Live Journal.

Inform
Expose
Silence


And to all you nodding pedoheads responding on WFI with statements like:

Its a free world! If a person do not want to view those contents they do not have to go into the site. Just because you guys do not like it does not mean the whole world doesn't. please respect other people's interest and choices

and

I suppose it's a lot easier to crusade around having fanfiction groups deleted off LJ than it is to contribute time and effort to groups that are trying to change laws and actually...you know. Protect children.

and

Freedom of speech should always trump over zealous fanaticism like this site's.

and

You do realize that by deleting their LJs and letting them know they're watched, the REAL criminals are only going to be more careful next time.

and

Words on a page don't hurt people. People hurt people. And you, my friends, are hurting people by taking away their freedom to write the fiction they please

and

As much as I have deep problems with pedophilia, I have even deeper problems with people who trample freedom of speech as easily as you do. Do you ever give the consequences of your actions any thought?

Every single one of you are indeed pedophiles. Nasty, filthy, stinking pedophiles. You all preface your statements with "I'm not a pedophile myself BUT"

The truth of the matter is that the only person who would value free speech more than the safety of a child is a person who WA LA endangers children. You're all clueless and every single one of these statements prove it.

So, like I said to ZLurker once upon a time..........keep watching.

Are you watching?

The same site also confirms something that a lot of folks have suspected--they are, in fact, simply searching Google for specific keywords (no matter the actual content) and sending complaints directly to Six Apart based on what they are finding on Google without any attempt to verify the actual content of sites. (As an aside, this could put Dark Christianity in danger--we actually have a "child abuse" tagline in our community, and have posts (searchable on Google) in regards to religiously motivated child abuse as well as sexual scandals (including paedophile pastors in dominionist denominations and the almost complete lack of policing in these denominations) that do come up on Google searches.)

Almost all of the activity indicates we're not even dealing with garden-variety dominionists or "right wing nutters"; most Focus on the Family members, for instance, don't post stuff supporting militia groups in public (maybe on FreeRepublic, but not on Blogspot et al). Not only this, but they're trying to get a preferred dominionist (and frankly Christian Reconstructionist) candidate in office, and in their blogs have literally declared a dominionist jihad on the rest of us.

In other words, with the "Warriors for Innocence" scandal, we may actually be dealing with part of a fairly extensive network of neo-Confederate, militia-sympathiser (if not flat out militia-member) "Christian Patriot" God-warriors-with-guns "Joel's Army" nutcases on our hand...one that potentially makes Focus on the Family or even the American Family Association look like the friggin' Society of Friends in comparison.