Interview with James P. Wickstrom
Reprinted many years ago in a right-wing publication which was also featured on the Sheriff's Posse Comitatus website.
INTRODUCTION:
James P. Wickstrom has been a leader in political dissent in this country for more than two decades. He comes from the post-World War II generation, grew up in the 1950s and served in Vietnam. He says he "came home in 1966 to a different world."
By all accounts, the dissident group Wickstrom is most associated with, Posse Comitatus, struck a special kind of fear among the establishment in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The Posse still lives on today. though mostly in secret. Their small community-based anti-tax message is still aggressively scrutinized by the federal government. The group was attacked judicially and politically for about a decade until their ranks were decimated by dozens of arrests and a handful of high profile armed confrontations. The Posse became legendary upon the death of Arthur Kirk, Gordon Kahl and others who refused to submit to the authority of federal law enforcement. Wickstrom was the Posse's National Director for Counterinsurgency at the time of his arrest in 1982 for creating a "Constitutional township" in Wisconsin. Despite spending most of the last decade either in prison or on parole. Wickstrom remains defiant. As a veteran dissident, he notes the newer members of the patriot community tend to lack the "fierce and forcible thrust that is needed within themselves to totally succeed. They need direction, and only Yahweh gives that needed strength." Wickstrom was home schooling two decades ago. He started a nationwide paramilitary militia in the late 1970s, which still exists today, and he has been involved with openly hostile dissent against the "New World Order" since 1969.
At its height in the mid-1980s, the Posse had the support of retired military generals, several publications and many mainstream politicians. Their agenda was very similar to the constitutional fundamentalism of the modern day patriot. What happened to Wickstrom as a result of what he believed then, and what he believes today, may provide insights for citizens who question government and are prepared to organize to resist those in power in Washington. He was contacted and interviewed during a speaking engagement at an Identity Church seminar in the southeastern United States earlier this summer.
You are one of the most talked about dissident leaders in America in this century. Why are you considered by many in the establishment to be an "enemy of the state" and a serious threat to the federal government?
I believe that I speak and teach the ultimate truth that the people are seeking in both the ancient and historical happenings and exposing the falsity of modern day politics and organized religion. Race is the answer and race will be the victory. It has been since the time of Adam.
Can you describe significant aspects or events of your youth?
I can remember when I was a boy, when we moved into our home, where I grew up and where I still live today. It was Halloween night of 1945, I just turned three years old. I can remember that night just like it was yesterday. I went to kindergarten when I was four. My teacher was Amy Leece. I can remember how we had little glass jars of milk and we had to shake the bottles to mix the cream and we each took a nap on our own rug. The thing I remember most distinctly is how warm and decent and gentle this teacher was. She said to us "children, never lie, always tell the truth, no matter what happens."
I remember that and it was kind of brought into me. It was taught to me in our home also. To lie was considered a form of stealing. We were also taught a work ethic and a moral ethic to never look down on people, no matter what work they did to earn money to support their family.
Back then we had teachers who valued the importance of their job, more so than their compensation or how many coffee breaks they got. We had a higher quality, older teacher and a much higher moral ethic being taught to children in the 1940s. There was prayer in school and the reading writing and arithmetic were essential tools taught along with the knowledge of the difference between right and wrong. Today, faith is not permitted in school and the three R's taught seem to be 'rape, rob and riot.'
At what point in your life did you see something seriously wrong with this country?
I suppose it started when I became a parent. I came back from southeast Asia in 1966, and after watching the greatest nation on earth attacked from within over the war, I came home stunned. The most powerful military force on earth was not allowed to engage the enemy on the battlefield. And a new social enemy was taking over college campuses and making cowards of our children. But what really affected me was the way our young children were being molded by a new agenda of de-education and indoctrination in this country's primary schools.
By the late 1960s and early '70s I started to note that school books were being altered. Historical facts of the founding of this nation were being removed from the teachings of our children. Basic skills were also being ignored.
For example, it stunned me that children were expected to bring a calculator to class to learn math. And without one, they could not attend. My teachers used blackboards and note paper to teach us essential math skills. In a phrase often heard today, our children's education became so-called 'outcome based,' in other words, the answer was important, not the process of thinking required to conclude facts in math, science, history and geography.
The removal of phonics in spelling pronunciation quickly resulted in the inability of the children to comprehend and create sentences from their imagination. School became a place of indoctrination and also a potentially dangerous place to be. In the local high school in Racine, Wisconsin by the mid-70s, we started to have police officers and security personnel patrol the hallways because of violent juvenile crime and a type of moral decay that I also noted in the rest of American society.
To illustrate how far we have fallen from teaching our children basic skills needed to function in this country, a government report out recently suggested that a high school diploma obtained just 20 years ago was equivalent to a bachelors degree today, in the level of education the individual has attained.
How did you first react to these issues?
Being who I am and how I am, I got extremely angry and frustrated. I started writing to congressmen and senators demanding answers on the war in Vietnam, and on the crumbling education infrastructure. I knew most corruption was economically driven so I also wanted to know from my congressman who was controlling the money in this country. At that time, William Proxmire [D-Wis.] was the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, and he gave me the full run around. He would refer me to one agency, which would refer me to another, and finally, one would tell me to contact my senator again.
My questions were not being answered and I started to wake up. I started to see that classes of people in our society were intentionally being brought against each other in this mass confusion. Between the civil rights movement, the war, anti-American teachings by college professors, all of it was by design. Not only was our moral and educational integrity under attack, our normal American pattern of circling the wagons and helping one another through these national problems was also being degraded and attacked.
When did you start to organize and educate others?
I first started quietly talking to friends and neighbors about these issues. This was not easy. Many people don't realize that we did not openly talk and argue as much back then as we all seem to today. We were a much more socially polite society.
Most of my generation were raised not to start discussions or arguments over certain things. Growing up in the 1940s and 50s there were three things we were taught not to discuss; religion, politics and sports. Well, that was and still is part of the problem in this country. It is extremely easy for outside forces to take hold in a polite society that does not want to discuss even local issues. Most folks in the fifties and sixties had their political opinions formed at the dinner table, not from talk radio.
I also learned that no one wanted to talk about race. It was obvious to everyone in the 60's and 70's that the leadership in the student movement, for example, like Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, political leaders in foreign policy who betrayed us, like Henry Kissinger, just to name a few, were all Jewish.
Then, when I went back and looked at history, the Rockefellers, Armand Hammer and a handful of others of the Jewish race had their hands in the subversion of this country. They did it gradually, and everyone knew it. No one said a word for fear of being singled out by them. They even created groups to attack anyone who questioned their agenda, like the Anti-Defamation League.
And the Jewish Defense League, the JDL, was absolutely brutal in the 60's and 70's. They took over our national press and they already had Hollywood. They basically had control over the flow of information. Any comments critical of them are still attacked and deemed unfit for dissemination and consumption.
What are your most significant accomplishments as a leader in this movement?
History shows that our group and our people were never intimidated by anyone. By the early 1980's Posse had become a national force. Because of the media attacks, which we openly encouraged, Posse Comitatus became literally a household word.
In 1981, I was interviewed by BBC, leading European magazines, every major newspaper in the United States and hundreds of radio and television talk shows. Despite the attacks, the Posse was growing like wildfire.
I suppose I am most proud of the fact that while I was appearing on "Larry King Live" and the "Donahue Show," I was also traveling around the country participating in paramilitary training exercises in small towns throughout America. We offered classes and books and sent out mobile training teams whose instructors were former Army Special Forces Green Berets and Airborne Rangers.
We were not only training these selected members to be military leaders, we were also sharing the racial Identity message with them. We were basically preparing these men to be men and equipping them for the oncoming physical assault that has been planned for many years out of the District , of Columbia and several state capitals via a United Nations ,' decree to destroy the United States from within, and to bring it into a precept one world government.
They have to eventually come in and round up the guns and the gunfighters. They know it. We know it. The battle against globalism is not new. We were warning about this and preparing to fight it more than a decade ago. We were also a lot more secretive about it than these kids are today.
Your Tigerton, Wisconsin home was destroyed by bulldozers and back hoes over government regulatory conflicts in 1985. What other price have you paid for your direct engagement of this regime?
Not much really. I have been dragged around in government chains. I live with almost constant death threats against me and my children. In the past 12 years, or in the past 144 months, I have spent 131 and a half of those months either incarcerated or on a supervised parole arrangement with the county, state and federal prison system.
I suppose I learned the hard way. Trying to work within the so-called system. They first really came down on me after I ran on the Constitutional Party ticket in Wisconsin in 1980 for the United States Senate. I got about 30,000 votes, scared a lot of politicians and created a lot of enemies.
Then I ran for governor in 1982 on the same ticket and exposed vote fraud in the system. We caught them faking election returns. In fact several people on the Wisconsin Election Commission were ultimately dismissed as a result.
Posse Comitatus was extremely powerful in the Midwest by then and of course, the Gordon Kahl incident in June of 1983 brought a lot of pressure on the entire organization. I was lecturing at that time on the Jewish influence in politics, and the ADL and the JDL and the FBI came after me.
The last time I was in jail was for being convicted of conspiracy to counterfeit and distribute currency on a federal sting operation in Pennsylvania. It took them two years and a handful of criminal informants to take me down on a charge they never were really able to prove in court.
They have been coming after me for about a dozen years. My first actual arrest was in late 1983. I spent 13 and a half months in solitary in a county lock-up for establishing the constitutional township of Tigerton Dells, in Shawno County, Wisconsin. I was teaching racial Identity and they had to do something to shut us up.
They have learned one thing about us. They can lock us up, but they can't shut us down. They have tried without success to break my spirit many times. I was even locked up in maximum security psychiatric facility in the basement of the Milwaukee County Jail for about a month. At that time, I was the National Director of Counterinsurgency for Posse and several of us ultimately ended up being killed or incarcerated. Despite all of this, Posse is still alive and growing once again. I am still somewhat active in this movement, but other leaders are coming up, and many have learned from my mistakes.
More so than ever before, Americans are expressing anger and distrust toward the federal government. How do you feel about this emerging dissident community of patriots, militia leaders, common law students etc.?
When people fear their alleged government, there is no government. The children of Waco and the Weavers Gordon Kahl and others have taught us that a Vietnam situation is now in America, and there are no so-called soft targets for this regime.
When they burn down churches and murder women with babies in their arms, they are sooner or later going to come for anyone who is deemed politically incorrect or socially unacceptable. Any organization, any group, any individual who objects will be rewarded in the same fashion as Vicky and Sammy Weaver. There is a great awakening in this country. It cannot be stopped. These various groups are part of an awakened public's response to the continued criminal acts of the federal government.
Americans are responding with rage to these dictatorial acts and unlawful rules, regulations and bills coming out of the District of Columbia. Even if I do not approve of or applaud some of these groups ideologically, I do appreciate the fact that they are getting involved and, on at least an entry level, attempting to take a stand and take their communities back.
Friends and enemies agree your message has been consistent and unwavering for a generation now. What, in your view, is the single most important step we as a people need to take to restore this country to its former greatness?
We are in a time of major changes in this country. Many if not most social upheavals in history are attributable to a single man, a leader who becomes a hero to a people. This is a mistake. We do not need to find such a leader. They will strike him down before he gets on his feet. We have enough martyrs.
We simply need to follow the First Commandment which states we shall worship no man before Yahweh. We must stick with our principals and proceed with the conviction that doing what is right for our people is our fundamental duty as men.
The biggest problem I see is that we do not have enough real men out there who have true faith in their hearts and no fear in their eyes. The biggest step we need to take is to once again begin breeding and raising this type of man.
The increasing militancy of the Constitutionist movement, recently manifested for example, in the formation of militias, etc., is again something you saw and indeed organized in the 1970s and 1980s. Is this paramilitary organizational structure and development indicative of a larger trend among ordinary Americans to perhaps express a more aggressive hostility towards government?
Yes, but the spirit of fear of the big bad daddy government on all levels must be removed among these groups. The spirit of fear has no purpose among those who chose to stand and resist. The fear being imposed on these dissidents through Waco and Weaver type incidents can be seen in their eyes.
They whisper hostility towards a corrupt and evil regime, but they are afraid of telling anyone their name or speaking their mind. They stand up to their television sets, but cower in their communities. We must once again make government fear us more than we fear them.
These new leaders must teach this and demonstrate this with their deeds every day. When the spirit of fear is gone, it will be replaced by a total commitment to themselves and their people. Some will fall by the wayside through apathy and the inability to manage fear. But many will not.
Governments know from experience that the strong courageous men and women who are in this final group can be expected to fight to the death if need be. It will take some time, but know this, once Washington witnesses the complete lack of any spirit of fear among millions of ordinary Americans, their secret government agents and their lackeys will be the ones who will surely be afraid to tread through the heartland of this country.
A century ago, no government man from Washington would dare walk through middle America demanding half of the fruits of anyone's labor. It can be that way again if we choose to be men who show no fear.
Pastor James P. Wickstrom and the late Pastor Neuman Britton.
Clearly, there is a wider audience for this attitude and a growing discontent in this country. What mediums do you personally feel are the most effective in getting your particular message out?
We have learned that a basic multi-media approach is important. Use the same mediums your opponents use to reach the same people. The internet, for example is proving to be very useful. We now have a fairly popular web page and people seem to respond to the format. Radio is now very powerful.
I will be coming up on shortwave again in October. (Through "Herald of Truth's" Kingdom Identity Ministries program). My video tape ministries are growing all the time. We are now featured each week on a few public access cable channels in Minnesota and we are looking at several others. My most popular video is known as "Children of Light versus Children of Darkness."
We also stick to the basics. My audio tape ministry is probably the most controversial and has also probably been the most successful. Our most popular tape is an audio cassette called "True History of America." It's about three hours long. It is a speech I gave in 1982 in Grand Island, Nebraska. I suppose we have shipped and made copies of about 100,000 of them in the past 14 years. (available for $16 from P.O. Box 784, Munising, Mich., 49862.) My second biggest seller, and probably my most controversial is another speech I gave called "Communism is Jewish" (available at same address).
We have learned to communicate with an increasingly apathetic audience using mediums they are already comfortable with. Once they come to the Identity message, they tend to be hungry for Scripture and more likely to seek out information on their own.
One final question, as a leader and a dissident with decades of experience, you have probably been where many of our readers are today. What advice would you give a newcomer to this community of citizens who question the government and who seek to challenge the role government has in their day to day lives?
First of all, do not be afraid to express your beliefs. We do not need to apologize for being in disagreement with those in power today. When they accuse you of being anti-government, tell them you are anti-corruption.
When your views are labeled extremist, ask them to look at the record. Compared to our opponents, we are not extremists.
They are. How many women have we shot in the face? How many churches full of children have we burned to the ground? How many undeclared wars have we sent our own young men and women off to die for on behalf of a small group of international bankers? How many babies have we aborted and how many children have we indoctrinated to be dependent on a socialist agenda that teaches them that Christianity is a mental illness, and government has all the answers? Our views are not at all extreme compared to what this system is doing to our children and our future.
My advice is simply this. If one does not totally commit himself, in all ways, in this very dangerous time in which we live, which history will show was a most critical time to our individual and national freedoms, then stay home.
Unless they are men and women who are ready to protect themselves and their families for the coming hardship, and if necessary, are prepared to use whatever physical force is needed, I would respectfully suggest they sit down, shut up and stay home. Get out of the way and let the rest of us get on with our work.
I ignore those who suggest we must be calm and work within this so-called system. The fact is, their votes are not even being counted in this corrupt process. I know this from hard-earned experience. They have not had a fair election in this country for more than a generation. They can call all the talk shows and send all the faxes they want. Their voice is never going to be heard unless they toe the party line.
If you want to make things change, you must be prepared to change them. This new generation of Christian patriots has some very good ideas. Most of these issues are not new, and the opposition is now much more powerful. There is a fight ahead. Let it be us. Let it be now. If they want to be with us, they must simply be prepared and willing to die for the truth which is written on their hearts for Yahweh, as did Gordon Kahl and Arthur Kirk and many others.
No matter what I have ever been accused of, even by my worst enemies, I have always stood up and spoken exactly what I believe. No man walks this earth forever. I feel strong and safe enough to say that I can stand before almighty Yahweh and my western European race and say, 'Father, I have done the best I could for you, and for our people, to serve you and our race with humility and honor.'
To be able to say that I am so very proud to have had the opportunity to stand with real honest and truthful men, some still living and some now who have died in various ways, I am not ashamed. From Yahweh I did come, for Yahweh I did fight, and to Yahweh I shall return. So be it."
