"That's what the Bible is talking about in the story of the devil offering Eve the apple," Williams said. "Someday, the blinders will fall off Judeo-Christians."
Examples of supposedly false beliefs by "Judeo-Christians" were explained by congress speaker Mike Lawrence, with the Christian Guard Ministries in Lakeland, Fla. "The Sermon on the Mount has been misinterpreted, perverted. It should be [understood as] how to treat each other," meaning the exclusive club of those with pure Aryan lineage. Lawrence, sweating profusely in a dark suit and tie, also had a novel spin on the biblical ban on fornication. "It's about race-mixing and homosexuality," he declared, apparently clearing the way for hearty humping among unmarried, heterosexual white folks.
Christian Identity also contends that Jesus — Yahshua, as the Aryan Nations folk call him — "was NOT a Jew," Williams asserted. Christ was one of a small group of true white children of Adam and Eve who remained in the Middle East after most of the real Israelites endured a diaspora that ended with them becoming Europeans. Only one of the 12 disciples — Judas Iscariot, of course — was actually a Jew, Williams added.
"There are many out there we want to reach with a message that's not watered down," Williams said. "Our heritage is the true Israel. 'Jew' is the name of a mixed-race people. The biggest lie besides the Holocaust is that Jews are the chosen people. Satan is their father."
And, according to the Aryan Nations leader, non-white races were created before Adam, and are the sub-human "beasts of the field" referred to in Genesis 2:19. "It's clear they have lower intelligence," Williams said. "Blacks are soulless mud people who never had Yahweh's breath of life."
Rick Spring is the dapper Aryan, one of the few remaining confidants of the late Richard Butler. Clad in black jacket and pants, the only signal of what Spring is about is his elegantly embroidered red, gold and powder blue Aryan Nations armband.
He has a knack for explaining things. For example, about those swastikas on fluttering flags and tattooed on his colleagues' arms and heads, Spring opined, "They're just good luck signs. Some people say they're Nazi symbols, but that's not what I see."
And, on violence? "Aryan Nations is the whipping boy," he said. "True, in the past ..." He tapered off and then cranked back up, "You've heard of people 'going postal,' but have you ever heard of someone 'going Aryan Nations,' like, I mean, violent? The only time we're violent is when violence is brought to us."
Two decades ago, many Aryan Nations members teamed up with other racists to form "The Order" — which is still memorialized on the Aryan Nations website. The Order robbed banks, counterfeited money, ambushed armored cars — and murdered — to finance a planned overthrow of the U.S. government. The group's leader, Robert Matthews, was killed in 1984 in a shootout with government agents.
Since then, many Aryan Nations members, ex-members and associates have been nailed for violent crimes. One associate was convicted of three homicides and another was accused of the 1999 shooting at a Los Angeles Jewish center and the murder of a Filipino-American postal worker. In the early 1990s, the American Front, a youth group with strong ties to Aryan Nations, bombed NAACP offices in Tacoma, Wash., and Sacramento, Calif. Then came the Idaho assault by Aryan Nations guards on the mother and son that cost the group its stronghold.
Attending the group's congress was Mike McLaughlin, a New Jersey freelance photographer who is compiling a book on white supremacists. Three years ago, while camping in Idaho, Aryan Nations members — thinking McLaughlin was a federal snoop or, even worse, a Jew — attacked him in his tent and stole his camera and film. "I thought about not coming this year," McLaughlin said. "But here, in a town, it seemed safe enough. I guess there won't be any of the usual cross and swastika burnings, however."
The scariest of the Aryan Nations speakers was Ryan, who wouldn't disclose his full name but who lives in South Carolina. He vowed to kill the "dogs of ZOG."
"You better hope I don't come in your bedroom window," Ryan said to FBI informants he suspected were in the audience. "Warriors kill and break things. We're warriors in waiting."
Ryan, whose biceps were adorned with 8-inch Nazi "SS" tattoos, capped his speech with a dance across the stage, a la Mick Jagger, and a bellowed challenge: "You want to see blood in the streets? I DO!"
Armed with a loopy theology, and not averse to a good brawl, where do the white supremacists go next? Their longed-for race conflict lacks a "when" and "how." Holding up as a model Christian terrorist Eric Robert Rudolph — now serving a life sentence for bombings, including the one at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta — Aryan Nations' speakers touted "leaderless resistance" and "lone wolf" tactics.