Dear Ex-Mormons,
I need help researching Mormon ties to white supremacist, white separatism and militia group involvement in America.
I lived in Northern Idaho for several years. I bought a home next door to a white separatist group that was involved with the Militia of Montana and the Christian Identity groups. The main culprits had family members in the KKK.
I was harassed by them for two years. During this time I recorded and report their activities to law enforcement, State and Federal officials. The situation was so horrible and I wrote a book about my experience. Because I exposed the activities that I witnessed, I am getting sued for slander by my former neighbors. Just so you know, slander isn't slander if it's the truth and you have video evidence to prove your statements. My former neighbors and their associates claim they are not anti-government nor white separatist, etc. The majority of those involved are members of the LDS Church. I have found some startling information about the Ku Klux Klan, Masonic Lodge, Nazis and Mormons. I'm looking for independent information to ties all these groups together.
To be honest with you, I am a former third generation Mormon on my mother side and sixth or seventh generation on my father side of the family. I remember waking up one morning as a young man and realised I was in a cult. I do not recommend any fourteen year old going to his bishop and telling him that fact, especially in Orem, Utah during the mid-70's.
I remember how I was raised to be paranoid of non-Mormons and how I was trained to hate our government because I was taught that Mormon's are being persecuted by Gentiles and the American government was corrupt.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

You're asking a question with a complicated answer, Bedeviled. There were in fact several clearly "supremacist" groups deriving from Mormonism. In fact, they did not "derive" from Mormonism, but were in fact a definite part of mormonism.

The easiest to find might be the group headed by Dan Gayman. He may still be alive. They put out a rather nice looking newsletter. I forget the name of it, and my copies are unfortunately in storage just now. I never got really clear answers to my questions about his relationship to the Elijah Message people, but what I have read elsewhere says that he somehow came from Thomas Nerren's group. I haven't heard anything about Nerren being supremacist or even racist. He was one of the claimants to be successor to Otto Fetting. Fetting was the fellow who started getting messages from "John the Baptist resurrected", maybe in the '20s or '30s. He got 12, the last calling for rebaptism of everyone. What had led up to this was that the RLDS church and the Temple Lot church had an agreement that they recognized one another's baptisms. So if a person wanted to transfer membership, he didn't have to be rebaptized. Fetting's messages were most appealing to those RLDS who had joined the TL. The RLDS themselves, and the TL who had not "transferred" from the RLDS, for the most part rejected his messages. So he got a message they everyone should be rebaptized, and with that a new denomination of mormonism came into being. Fetting got about 18 more messages. Then he died. Several men in his group claimed to receive messages after his death. Nerren had been one of the apostles in Fetting's church. I think another apostle was also one who received messages. McCumber. There may have been a third. They had followings for a while. Nerren was located in Denver or in the Rockies, from what I've been able to figure out. Apparently Dan Gayman was involved with Nerren's group. I don't see how Gayman's later beliefs could have come from Nerren. He may have just built his own kingdom independently of what Nerren taught; or maybe Nerren did go to an extreme in his teachings. There are three volumes of Nerrens messages, but I have never seen them, so can't say what they contained. Gayman was headquartered at Halley's Bluff. His group split People wore pistols to church. They was a gunfight, or more than one. Then things calmed down. When I visited a few decades ago, there was the main church, and on the hill above it, a small church, painted white like so many churches were back then (East Gudgell, Temple Lot, East Temple Lot, Cutlerite, etc.). I don't know if the smaller church is still there. Gayman's monthly was named, I believe, Watchman of Zion, or Zion's Watchman. They celebrate various Jewish Holidays, like Feast of the Tabernacles, Passover, etc. Law enforcement, the sheriff, maybe FBI, had to come in during the worst of it. I don't recall what happened, I'm sure a couple of people went to jail. By the way, when I did start looking into that group, I received a couple of threatening phone calls. So if anyone wants to look into this branch of mormonism, don't ask too many questions about gun-fights and arrests, until you can figure out if those are still "sore spots" with some of the people there.

Earlier, there had been another fellow. I can't remember his name. In the 1800s, I think. He taught that the black race was descended from Satan. I doubt he had even a hundred followers, and if his church lasted as long as he did, it did not last any longer. Virtually no one knows about his group, but I think there is a paper about it, or a booklet from it, at the RLDS (Community of Christ) library in Independence. I don't know if his ideas came from Smith or from Young, but they such racist views are not incompatible with what either Young or Smith taught, now are there?

There may have been a couple of people from the RLDS church who got into racism and supremacist ideas. I could imagine that those ex-RLDS who tried to reintroduce polygamy and murdered a couple of people, also had some race-favoring/race-depricating views. I know this isn't much, as far as "supremacist mililtias" go; I hope it at least gives a clue and suggests the tone of mormon-style "racial supremacist" mind-set. Personally, I don't think mormonism is much worth looking into in detail any more, and certainly not these kinds of people. I avoid them twice as much as I avoid the more peaceful version of mormons. If mormon theology and attitudes are "sick", these peoples' are downright ghoulish.

Thanks Abinadi for the quick reply.

Dan Gayman's community is considered a part of the Christian Identity. When I lived in Idaho, I would see Dave Barley of the America's Promise Ministries, on a daily basis. That man is full of hatred and lies. I heard him threatening President Obama in Red's Barber Shop in Sandpoint. There was Bonner County deputy present during the conversation. The deputy simply laughed. During one of my conversation with Pastor Barley, he stated 60% of his followers are or were members of the Mormon Church. I don't know how to confirm his statement. Which brought me to this website.

Southern Poverty Law Center takes credit for suing Richard Butler and destroying the Aryan Nations. The Aryans simply went underground. One of the problems that I'm facing is people believe the Aryans were dissolved and they repented, when Butler was bankrupted. That's not true. The Aryans were absorbed into the Christian Identity or Militia of Montana movements. They are now insurgents in our communities. The lies spread by the Aryans and Dave Barley in Sandpoint and Bonners Ferry, are now being spoken during national political rallys!

Louis Beam, Richard Bertollini, Carl E. Story, Richard Butler, David Lane, Randy Weaver and the Kehoe brothers are former residents of North Idaho. My former neighbors, their attorneys, the Boundary County officials including the Sheriff, Commissioners, Prosecutor, Coroner and Bonners Ferry city attorney, claim no anti-government hate groups exist or have existed in Boundary County, Idaho. The Sheriff claims no polygamist live in Boundary County. We all know that is a false statement.

The hardest part about my situation, is the people suing me are Mormons. The attorneys are Mormons. The Judges hearing the cases are Mormons. One of my attorneys is a Mormon. When he found out my former neighbors are Mormons, he started acting very strange and withdrew. I'm not only fighting an anti-government hate group, but an entire theocratic political system. You would be hard pressed to convince me there is a separation of Church and State in Idaho or Utah.

When I was looking for an attorney to provide me with fair representation in a Utah Court for a bogus contempt of court accusation, mine told me that I would NOT find a judge in Idaho or Utah, that is NOT LD$!

Fortunately for myself, the evidence was overwhelming, charges were dismissed, and I didn't get any jail time.

_________________
"When authority masquerades as a power, a simple question will unmask it."

"Just because you think, feel, or believe something is true, doesn't make it true!"

"The doubt of your faith, is not God testing you, but truth trying to emerge and free you."

Thebedeviled:

One of the best sources for information on Aryan type groups is stormfront.org. Not "com", but "org".
They have a religion section, and I think you can read it,
but to post in it, you have to apply for, like, "posting membership".
If questions are not religious oriented, like if you want to know the genealogy and relationships of various groups, and which ones are still active, you would go to another forum. They have a history forum, and I think they have an ideology forum. You could poke around there and see if there's anyone who can help with information.

Of course, if you give a clue that you are Jewish or non-aryan, some of the posts directed your way may contain distracting ad hominems regarding your parentage and intelligence. Good luck, if you go there.

You can find biographical information and a little about splits at the anti-defamation league site, http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/default.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=1&item=0. Personally, some of the rhetoric at ADL and Southern Poverty Law Center comes close to being as vicious as that of the extremist "Aryans". I suspect you have either already seen these sites, or sites as informative as them.