Swift, Wesley 1913–1970

Wesley Swift was born in New Jersey in 1913, the son of a Methodist minister. He himself became a Methodist clergyman by the age of eighteen, but he abandoned his faith and adopted Christian Identity theology after moving to California to attend the Kingdom Bible College in Los Angeles in the early 1930s. Smith traveled and preached throughout Southern California before eventually settling in the Antelope Valley outside Los Angeles. By 1944, Smith had left his job as an auto–supply salesman to become politically active, and he began organizing for the Ku Klux Klan the following year.

Between 1946 and 1948 Swift established two organizations, the Great Pyramid Club and the Anglo–Saxon Christian Congregation. The name of the former group was derived from his belief that mathematical calculations could be used to correlate measurements of the Egyptian pyramids with biblical texts. According to Swift, the pyramids had been constructed by “Aryan” descendants of Adam. Swift used the Pyramid Club to identify individuals with strong anti–Semitic beliefs who could then be recruited into the Klan, while the chief goal of his Anglo–Saxon Christian Congregation was to build support for the Christian Identity movement. Although Swift’s congregation first began meeting in 1945, it was not formerly incorporated until August 1948, and eight years later he changed the name to the Church of Jesus Christ, Christian.

Consistent with his Christian Identity beliefs, Swift denounced Jews, railed against “racial mongrelization,” and alleged that “motion–picture heroes and heroines are not only dope fiends and sex perverts, but are conscious agents of the Soviet Union.” While his sermons and speeches were vigorously criticized by Jewish groups, Swift benefited from high levels of anti–Jewish attitudes among the general public. By 1944, for example, 24 percent of Americans saw Jews as a “menace” to the country—up from 15 percent only two years earlier. By 1945, 58 percent of all Americans said Jews “had too much power,” compared to 36 percent in 1938 (Dinnerstein 1994, Ch. 7).

Swift capitalized on these sentiments by preaching regularly to Identity groups and other gatherings of self–described “Christian Nationalists” throughout California, including approximately 200 of his own followers who were meeting weekly in Los Angeles by 1948. In an effort to further broaden his audience, Swift also launched a regular ten–minute morning radio broadcast called “America’s Destiny.” Swift’s message was extended even further through numerous recordings of hundreds of his sermons and speeches, which were printed and distributed in tabloid newsletters and pamphlets across the United States.

Swift’s prominence in right–wing political and religious circles was enhanced by his close personal and professional relationship with Gerald L. K. Smith, the leader of the Detroit–based Christian Nationalist Crusade. The two first met in 1945, when Smith visited California to preach and recruit supporters. For the next twenty years, Swift helped to raise money and organize meetings for the Crusade, and he even acted as Smith’s personal bodyguard when Smith visited California. Along with other major Christian Nationalists of the World War II period, including Father Charles Coughlin, the Rev. Gerald Winrod, and William Dudley Pelley, Swift was instrumental in spreading anti–Semitism through the ranks of ultraconservative and anticommunist organizations. Swift’s leadership of the California Anti–Communist League in the early 1950s provided him with yet another vehicle through which to gain political legitimacy as an anticommunist, while disseminating anti–Semitic beliefs and conspiracy theories.

Swift’s influence also was heightened by those he converted to Identity theology, especially Richard Girnt Butler, a World War II veteran and the future founder of the neo–Nazi group Aryan Nations. Butler was personally introduced to Swift by William Potter Gale around 1962, when Butler was working as an aeronautical engineer and living in Whittier, California. Although Gale’s father was Jewish, he had embraced Identity and was ordained by Swift in 1956. He parted ways with his theological mentor on bitter terms, however, some ten years later. A retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, Gale went on to found the right–wing paramilitary group, the Posse Comitatus in 1971.

Other notable followers and associates who helped connect and promote Swift to an array of right–wing groups include San Jacinto Capt, James K. Warner, and Bertrand L. Comparet, an Identity preacher and Stanford–educated lawyer with an undistinguished former career as a San Diego assistant city attorney. Comparet also helped manage Swift’s legal affairs. Capt, former Klansman and devoted pyramidologist, converted William Potter Gale to Christian Identity. Warner later assumed control of the Christian Defense League (CDL), an Identity group, and founded the New Christian Crusade Church of Metairie, Louisiana. He considered himself to be Swift’s spiritual heir and was responsible for reprinting many of Swift’s sermons and speeches.

Swift died on October 8, 1970, at the age of fifty–seven, after collapsing in the waiting room of a Mexican clinic while awaiting treatment for kidney disease and diabetes. Four years after Swift’s death, Butler relocated what remained of Swift’s congregation to Idaho, where he constructed a chapel large enough to seat 100 people and began holding regular church services. The group later evolved into The Church of Jesus Christ Christian, Aryan Nations.

SEE ALSO Christian Identity; Ku Klux Klan; Neo-Nazis.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barkun, Michael. 1994. Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Dinnerstein, Leonard, 1994. “Anti–semitism at High Tide:

World War II (1939–1945).” Chapter 7. In Antisemitism in America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Levitas, Daniel. 2002. The Terrorist Next Door: The Militia Movement and the Radical Right. New York: Thomas Dunne.

Urban Archives Center, Oviatt Library, California State University, Northridge. 2007. “Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles, Community Relations Committee Collection.” Available from http://library.csun.edu/spcoll/.

Daniel Levitas