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Citation: Maclean's May 8 1995, v108, n19, p39(1)
Author: Wood, Chris
Title: 'Aryan of the year:' a white supremacist campaigns in
British Columbia.(Charles Scott)(Cover Story) by
Chris Wood
------------------------------------------------------------------------
COPYRIGHT Maclean Hunter (Canada) 1995
Charles Scott, "colonel" of the white-supremacist Aryan Nations and
"pastor" of its racist offshoot, the Christian Identity Church of Christ in
Israel, is 29. He is of average height, and when he is not laughing, which he
does frequently, his blue eyes hide behind half-drawn lids. He wears loose
sport tops that conceal a large spare tire. He recently became a father for
the second time: on Easter Sunday, his wife, Leanne, 30, bore a son, Seth, a
brother for daughter Kaelee, who will be 3 next month. Last week, Kaelee's
green tricycle lay on its side in the cluttered dog run next to the family's
rented house in Chilliwack, B.C., while her father talked to a reporter out in
the unmown yard. Seated on a weathered lawn chair, Charles Scott expounded a
doctrine that he insisted was not simply one of hatred. It was sometimes
difficult to see the distinction. "Absolutely, Jews are evil," he said
earnestly at one point, squinting into the warm April sun. "They are the
literal line of Satan on Earth."
Whatever it is that Scott is purveying, it is easy to believe him when he
says that his parents, a lifetime federal civil servant and a child
psychologist, "don't support my views whatsoever." Born in Fort Saskatchewan,
Alta., Scott had established himself in Edmonton by the age of 20, working as
a private investigator, snooping on other people's failed marriages. In 1992,
he and Leanne moved to Hayden Lake, Idaho, to study the bizarre
white-supremacy theology of Aryan Nations leader Richard Butler. Scott
returned to Canada a year later, moving his young family to the lower B.C.
mainland. There, he has had trouble keeping the occasional jobs he has found
as an agricultural laborer and jujitsu teacher, a problem he blames on
reaction to his views. He is now unemployed.
But not idle. Since returning to Canada, Scott has worked to spread the
virulent mixture of biblical prophecy, militant racism and subversion that he
absorbed in Idaho. He is Canadian director of the Posse Comitatus, an
anti-government paramilitary movement founded in Oregon in 1969. He is also
Canadian director--with the rank of colonel--of Aryan Nations, and Butler has
ordained him as a pastor of its church. In Aryan Nations, he has connected
himself with what Linda Tindal of the Montgomery, Ala.-based watchdog agency
Klanwatch calls "one of the fastest-growing groups that we monitor. It is a
major player in hate." And Scott is a major player in Aryan Nations: at its
congress in July he is to be proclaimed "Aryan of the Year."
One man who has Scott's admiration is Militia of Montana leader John
Trochmann, who claims that a proposed international park straddling the border
between British Columbia and Washington state is a cover for a UN effort to
control the world. "It's being used for a number of different things," says
Trochmann. "The transfer of foreign troops and equipment is definitely one of
them. Electromagnetic weather control is definitely another one of them." Says
Scott of Trochmann: "I think he's a great guy. I have a lot of respect for
him."
In person, Scott rails against Jews, homosexuals, the United Nations and
"those sons of Lucifer in Ottawa." Last week, the message on a telephone
hotline that he maintains began with a gloating declaration blaming the
Oklahama City bombing on the U.S. federal government: "The beast has inflicted
a wound upon itself in the heartland of America."
Scott claims to be making gains in a region of Canada where the Bible, guns
and right-wing politics frequently go hand-in-hand. The Chilliwack area is
home as well to a thriving branch of the seven-year-old Christian Heritage
Party of Canada, which disavows racism but places biblical law above that of
Parliament. In recent months, the towns around Chilliwack also have been the
scene of several angry public meetings to denounce proposed new federal
gun-registration requirements. Amid what he says is fertile soil for
recruitment, Scott asserts: "I have a congregation. I have trained militias
here in Canada." Active supporters, he says, number "30 Christians and 20
non-Christians."
But Scott's claim is disputable. A source within the RCMP confirmed to
Maclean's last week that Scott "is being monitored," but added that "so far he
hasn't done anything criminal." The RCMP also puts the number of his disciples
closer to six than 50. Scott himself, meanwhile, cited reasons of "security"
for refusing to allow a Maclean's reporter to confirm his claims of support by
attending one of the periodic training sessions that he says he holds for his
troops.
In fact, there is reason to believe that U.S.-style apocalyptic militarism
will prove a poor transplant even to a conservative corner of Canada. "If you
listen to Scott," says political scientist Bruce Foster of the University of
Victoria, "he sounds indistinguishable from any number of American right-wing
extremists." Foster says that gives Scott only limited appeal to the typical
moderate right-wing Canadian, "who is uncomfortable with the changes that have
taken place in Canada over the past 10 years, but who still respects the
political institutions in the country." Underlining that difference, Foster
adds: "Just as you can't draw a beeline from the NDP to Pol Pot, you can't
draw a beeline from the Reform party to Charles Scott." That distinction is
important for the vast majority of Canadians who are trying to handle their
affairs within the traditional political framework.
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