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Bo Gritz
| Some dare call it |
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| WhatTHEY don't want you to know! |
| Sheeplewakers |
“”I can assure you that if I was ever convinced that it was God's Will for me to commit an act of violence against the laws of our land, I would hesitate only long enough to, like Gideon, be certain. I would then do all within my power to accomplish what I felt he required of me. … If God does call me into thePhineas Priesthood  … my defense will be the truth as inspired by the messiah. |
| —2000 Fellowship of Eternal Warriors recruitment letter[1] |
James Gordon "Bo" Gritz (last name rhymes with "frights") (1939–) is anAmerican former Green Beret officer. He served during theVietnam War, and made a name for himself in the 1980s by conducting severaljoyrides private missions to locatePOW-MIAs purportedly held inVietnam andLaos. He went on to become a significant figure infar-rightconspiracy theorist circles.
He ran for the office of vice president withklansmanDavid Duke in 1988 on thePopulist Party ticket, but pulled out of the race early and publicly distanced himself from Duke. He was the Populist Party presidential nominee in 1992. His slogan was "God, Guns and Gritz", and included such well-informed policies as opposing theglobal government andNew World Order, ending all foreign aid, abolishing the federal income tax and the Federal Reserve System, and fixing the national debt by just printing money.[2] And you thought the2016 clowns were ludicrous.
Guns[edit]
His early 1980s missions under such names as Velvet Hammer, BOHICA,[note 1] and Operation Lazarus have no shortage of critics accusing him of being a huckster and his missions mostly shams, but he was able to woo some high-profile donors like Clint Eastwood andH. Ross Perot. During a 1986 mission he interviewed thedrug kingpin Khun Sa inBurma, who convinced him of heavyCIA involvement in Southeast Asiaheroin trafficking. Armed with a videotape of the Khun Sa interview, Gritz returned promoting aconspiracy theory that the U.S. government was deliberatelycovering up the continued existence of live U.S. POWs in Southeast Asia in order to cover up its involvement in the drug traffic there. In 1989 when returning from another of his POW-MIA missions, he was arrested for using a false passport; Gritz claims he was told thatGeorge H.W. Bush himself had given the order to "get Bo Gritz". He gained a brief inexplicable following on the left[note 2] due largely to the CIA drug trafficking allegations coming out of the Khun Sa interview, which were also promoted by the Christic Institute.[note 3] Another brief alliance circa 1988 was between Bo Gritz andNevada industrialist Paul Fisher (of Fisher Space Pen fame) promoting Fisher's idea for a graduated asset tax on the wealthy. His actual political leanings however were already lurching hard in the other direction.
God[edit]
At some point during the late 1980s he gravitated toward the extreme right wing. He began promotingNew World Order conspiracy theories, spoke alongsideDavid Barton atBible conferences sponsored byPeter J. Peters, ran forpresident in 1992 on the Populist Party ticket (a party founded in 1984 byWillis Carto whose1988 presidential candidate had beenDavid Duke), taught a course onsurvivalism skills for theend times — SPIKE (Specially Prepared Individuals for Key Events), and perhaps most famously was the mediator between the government and Randy Weaver during theRuby Ridge standoff. During this time Gritz was nominally still aMormon, but as those associations indicate he was increasingly close to theChristian Identity religion. He was later booted out of the L.D.S. church and converted openly to Christian Identity.
Gold[edit]
His 1992 presidential campaign manifesto (the "Bill of Gritz") regurgitated nearly every conspiracy theory of the far right in vogue at the time:FEMA concentration camps; fear that bar codes are themark of the beast; Clinton, Bush and Perot were all pawns of theCouncil on Foreign Relations andTrilateral Commission;Kennedy was assassinated because he was about to abolish theFederal Reserve and have the Treasury Department begin printing United States Notes. His campaign literature featured prominent use of the termsheeple, and a ludicrous plan to have the Treasury Department mint a single $4 trillion coin and pay it to the Federal Reserve, which would both instantly pay down the federal debt and because the coin would be hyper-inflationary and ultimately worthless, force the Fed into insolvency. (What effect his plan tomagically extinguish the national debt and abolish the Fed at the same time might have on the rest of the economy wasn't mentioned.)
Groceries[edit]
His subsequent activities included attempting to start a "covenant community" inIdaho dubbed Almost Heaven which featured heavily in aLouis Theroux documentary.[note 4] Founded in 1994, by 1999 Almost Heaven had floundered and was described as looking "a lot like a trailer park" with old vehicles sitting in weeds, laundry flapping in the wind, and "no trespassing" signs.[3] Gritz himself had already left and returned to Nevada after adivorce and failedsuicide attempt.[4] He also twice tried to repeat the success he had as a negotiator with Randy Weaver, first as a mediator during the standoff with the Montana Freemen in 1996, then attempting a search to find fugitive Atlanta Olympics bomberEric Rudolph in 1998. Both failed.
See also[edit]
- The Citadel: A more recent "covenant community" attempt in Idaho. They should note that this has already been tried, and failed.
- Mary Stewart Relfe, one of Bo Gritz's go-to sources for authoritative information on the Mark of the Beast
- Eustace Mullins, another of his favorite go-to sources
Notes[edit]
- ↑"Bend Over, Here It Comes Again." Yes, really.
- ↑A 1991 speech of his in Palo Alto, CA ison YouTube in four parts where he seems to recognize this, and flips back and forth between speaking to the concerns of the left-wingers and right-wingers in the audience.
- ↑The Christic Institute was a 1980s group, part of theCentral America solidarity movement opposed toReagan Administration policy towardNicaragua and El Salvador. They increasingly got caught up in pursuing allegations the CIA was funding the Contras by trafficking in drugs, and finally in allegations of a grandiose conspiracy theory about a "shadow government" led by, among others, Oliver North. See alsoWhat is the Christic Institute? archived from the original at skeptictank.org, 19 October 1990.
- ↑Loius Therous Weird Weekends: Survivalists, doco features interview with Bo Gritz and various other residents, including the armed morning patrol looking out for UN troops and some roller disco, watch herehttp://topdocumentaryfilms.com/louis-theroux-survivalists/
References[edit]
- ↑Bo Gritz at theSouthern Poverty Law Center.
- ↑James "Bo" Gritz profile, Extremism In America, adl.org.
- ↑Nicholas K. Geranios.Almost Heaven is paradise for patriots Idaho "covenant community" no radical hotbed.Deseret News. 1999 November 6.
- ↑Anthony DeBartolo.A Warrior Brought Down By Love.Chicago Tribune, January 1, 1999.