Robert E. "Pastor Bob" Miles (January 28, 1925 – August 16, 1992) was a

white supremacist White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White s ...

theologist and religious leader from

Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and t ...

Biography

A major " dualist" religious leader, Miles allied himself with various groups that constituted the

racist Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism ...

and

anti-Semitic Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...

political-religious movement known as Christian Identity, including

Aryan Nations Aryan Nations is a North American antisemitic, neo-Nazi, white supremacist organization that was originally based in Kootenai County, Idaho, about miles (4.4 km) north of the city of Hayden Lake. Richard Girnt Butler founded the group in ...

, founding the Mountain Church of Jesus Christ the Savior on his property. Miles saw Earth as the site of a battle between a true God and a false god, with

Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

acting as agents of the false God against the true "chosen people" that would be "white Aryans". According to the political scientist

Michael Barkun __NOTOC__ Michael Barkun (born April 8, 1938) is an American academic who serves as Professor Emeritus of political science at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, specializing in political and religious ext ...

, his dualistic theology was important despite its idiosyncrasies, and "the avuncular Miles functioned as a kind of elder statesman of the racial movement". In 1971, Miles, former

Grand Dragon Ku Klux Klan (KKK) nomenclature has evolved over the order's nearly 160 years of existence. The titles and designations were first laid out in the original Klan's prescripts of 1867 and 1868, then revamped with William J. Simmons's '' Kloran'' of ...

of the Michigan

Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Cat ...

(KKK), was arrested for conspiring to bomb school buses in an attempt to stop the forced busing in Michigan. The media billed it as a "Klan trial" even though Miles had not been associated with the KKK for some time. He was later convicted and served his sentence. Following the Greensboro Massacre where anti-Klan communist activists were killed, "a number of previously antagonistic White Supremacist groups, including the

Posse Comitatus The ''posse comitatus'' (from the Latin for "power of the county/community/guard"), frequently shortened to posse, is in common law a group of people mobilized by the conservator of peace – typically a reeve, sheriff, chief, or another speci ...

and various

Neo-Nazi Neo-Nazism comprises the post–World War II militant, social, and political movements that seek to revive and reinstate Nazi ideology. Neo-Nazis employ their ideology to promote hatred and racial supremacy (often white supremacy), attack ...

and Klan factions, began having discussions about how they could formulate a common ideology. These different groups also conducted joint activities and even began establishing informal means of communication including computer bulletin boards and cable TV programs. Many of these groups embraced Christian Identity. Gradually, a White racist alliance emerged. Centers of this movement included Miles' Michigan farm, as well as the

compound in Hayden Lake, Idaho, the site of Identity Pastor Richard Butler's Church of Jesus Christ Christian. In the early 1980s, Miles endorsed the

Northwest Territorial Imperative The Northwest Territorial Imperative (often shortened to the Northwest Imperative or simply known as the Northwest Front) is a white separatist idea that has been popularized since the 1970s–80s by white nationalist, white supremacist, white se ...

in his seminar ''Birth of a Nation''. According to him, White Americans constitutes a separate racial nation and urged white nationalists to establish a separate white state in the Pacific Northwest. "Let us go in peace", he wrote, "let us be considered a Racial Nation of Aryans." Coupled with his increasingly anti-US government position, he was referred to as a "Klanarchist".Kaza, Greg. 1987. "Hitler's Klanarchist". ''Fifth Estate'', #326 (vol. 22, #2), Summer 1987. pp 16, 28.
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References

Christian Identity Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragons 1925 births 1992 deaths People from Michigan {{US-crime-bio-stub