-Caveat Lector-
Fort Worth, Texas gunman linked to fascist group
By Martin McLaughlin
22 September 1999
Use this version to print
The gunman who murdered seven people at a Fort Worth church September 15 had
ties to extreme-right-wing groups in Texas, according to reports first
published in the Houston Chronicle. Larry Ashbrook, 47, killed four teenagers
and three adults before taking his own life.
Writer John Craig is co-author of a 1997 book, Soldiers of God, which
examines white supremacist and Christian fascist organizations in America. He
told the newspaper that he had spoken to Ashbrook in 1997 while interviewing
members of the Ku Klux Klan for the book. Ashbrook told him he was a member
of the "Phineas Priests," one of the far-right tendencies which are
collectively known as "Christian Identity."
The Phineas sect is named after a Biblical high priest who murdered a Jewish
prince for taking a non-Jewish lover. Its membership consists of
self-appointed "race warriors" who pledge to kill Jews, racial minorities,
gays, abortion providers and whites who marry across racial or religious
lines. The fascist gunman Buford Furrow, who attacked a Jewish community
center in Los Angeles last month and later murdered an Asian-American postal
worker, was also associated with the Phineas Priests.
Craig suggested that Ashbrook may have targeted the Westbrook Baptist Church
for violence because the Southern Baptist Convention, to which Westbrook is
affiliated, recently announced a campaign to convert Jews to Christianity.
While this campaign was criticized by Jewish groups, the announcement was
denounced by violent anti-Semitic elements as well. "To a Phineas priest or
white supremacist that is the ultimate blasphemy," Craig said, "because they
believe that they are the children of Israel."
According to the Klanwatch Project, which monitors ultra-right-wing activity,
the Phineas Priests are not so much an organized group as a title assumed by
individual terrorists who operate like the Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy
McVeigh, or Benjamin Smith, who went on a shooting rampage against Jews,
blacks and Asians in Illinois and Indiana over the July 4 weekend. "To become
a Phineas Priest means to commit armed robbery, arson, sabotage, kidnapping
and murder," a spokesman for Klanwatch said. "It is a commitment to a holy
war."
In 1997 four men calling themselves Phineas Priests were convicted in
Spokane, Washington of a series of bombings and bank robberies during the
previous year, including bomb attacks on the offices of Planned Parenthood
and the Spokesman-Review, the Spokane daily newspaper. Three were sentenced
to life in prison and one to a term of 55 years.
Craig said he had notified the FBI after his interview with Ashbrook and
other supporters of right-wing terrorism in 1997, and that he called the Fort
Worth police department "repeatedly" in the days after the Westbrook
killings, but neither agency has shown any interest in evidence that
right-wing politics may underlie the massacre.
FBI officials said they had no plans to pursue Craig's story and Fort Worth
police spokesman David Ellis was unaware Craig had even called the
department. Another city spokesman dismissed interest in this aspect of the
case, indicating that with Ashbrook's suicide, there was no point in looking
into his background. "We're not doing a biography on this subject," he said.
There is no question that Ashbrook was a deeply disturbed individual, likely
a schizophrenic, from descriptions of his behavior by neighbors. The
unemployed Navy veteran lived at home with his elderly parents and was
socially isolated after their deaths—his mother in 1990, his father two
months ago. His conduct was increasingly erratic, and included agitated
letters to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and even a visit to the newspaper's
office, where he met the city editor, as well as a telephone conversation
with a writer at the alternative FW Weekly in which he claimed, "My life has
been destroyed by these people—Air Force personnel, Tarrant County sheriff's
deputies, the Klan."
The fact of his derangement does not, however, render irrelevant the
political connections which he seems to have formed during the last years of
his life, and which certainly contributed to the homicidal form of his mental
breakdown.
Despite the report in the Houston Chronicle, later amplified by the Los
Angeles Times and Reuters news agency, the fascist connections of the Fort
Worth gunman have been generally ignored by the mass media, including the
television networks and the New York Times. Instead, there has been an effort
to utilize the Fort Worth tragedy to win sympathy for Christian
fundamentalist groups and portray them as the target of hate crimes—the slant
taken by both weekly newsmagazines Time and Newsweek.
While Time quotes the Reverend Jerry Falwell declaring that Christian
fundamentalists are under siege in America, it appears that the deranged
gunman was motivated by a more extreme version of Falwell's own ultra-right
ideology.
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic
screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters
and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright
frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects
spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
