Hella Nation - Evan Wright [57]
ON SATURDAY NIGHT, Butler and about a hundred of his followers stage a triple cross burning by the hill outside the compound. Crosses made from thirty-foot-tall trees are wrapped in burlap and soaked in kerosene. In the flickering light and intense heat thrown off by the fires, Pastor Butler performs the marriage ceremony of two young followers from Pennsylvania.
The bride, a petite twenty-one-year-old nursing student with long blond hair, wears a white Victorian dress purchased at a thrift store. The groom, a lanky twenty-two-year-old with a protruding Adam’s apple, wears an SS uniform, complete with Sam Browne belt and a swastika armband. Pastor Butler performs traditional vows and pronounces them “Aryan man and Aryan wife.”
Kevin, the groom, is an “aquatic technician,” or pool cleaner, currently unemployed since losing his job as a result of what he calls “religious persecution.”
Rebecca, the bride, elaborates: “His boss told him he was fired because he dropped a radio in a pool, but we know the real reason. They fired him because he talked about his religion, Christian Identity.”
Kevin credits his interest in the Nazis to a childhood fascination with World War II, which he thinks occurred sometime in the 1950s. He never graduated from high school because, he claims, he was expelled by a “Jew principal.”
“I got tired of my teachers always trying to make me look dumb in front of the other students,” Kevin says with a weary sigh. The chance discovery of an Aryan Nations pamphlet prompted Kevin to make a For-rest Gumpian journey of walking across America. When he arrived at the Aryan Nations compound, he was dismayed to learn that there was only a handful of followers living on the premises. Someone had told him there would be a community of thousands. He nevertheless stayed on for a year, putting his education in the hands of Pastor Butler and working as a “grounds supervisor.” Upon his return to Pennsylvania, Kevin met his bride-to-be.
At that time, Rebecca was going through a troubled period. Describing herself back then as “a spoiled Catholic school girl, with multicultural parents,” Rebecca was floundering in her sophomore year of nursing school. “I was lost.”
Rebecca hesitates before revealing a painful secret. “I was hanging out with an older man named Mouthy.”
“He was black,” states Kevin, as if discussing a detail from a crime.
“It’s not like I was a wigger myself,” Rebecca says. “I was only with him for a month before I came to my senses.”
A chance meeting with Kevin turned her life around. Romance blossomed. Kevin moved into Rebecca’s parents’ house with her and converted her to Christian Identity.
Since Rebecca’s parents are currently paying for her college education and are opposed to both her beliefs and the idea of her getting married, Rebecca and Kevin plan to keep the wedding a secret.
“My family has a lot of problems,” Rebecca explains. “They’re very multicultural.”
“Her brother goes out with a Jew,” Kevin, the new son-in-law, says with thinly veiled contempt.
“She’s a Russian communist Jew, and she’s ugly.” Rebecca scrunches her face with distaste. “She goes against her people all the time. She never goes to synagogue and she practices Christmas.”
“Doesn’t that sound like a Jew,” Kevin adds. “They want the best of both worlds.”
“She just preys on my brother like a parasite,” Rebecca says.
“See, it’s a basic, scientific fact,” Kevin lectures, showing off some of the learning he acquired from Pastor Butler during his year of study. “The Jewish bloodline cannot exist without an Aryan host. After three generations of Jew breeding with Jew, they produce defects, blood disorders, Tay-Sachs—they come out all messed up. It’s a proven fact they need to breed with us, Aryans,