Unsettling Mormonism
an archive of unsettling histories, mythistories, and mystories
from U.S. & Mormon settler colonialism, white supremacy, and imperialism
from U.S. & Mormon settler colonialism, white supremacy, and imperialism
 collage by nicholas b jacobsen, feat. Washington County statue of Robert D. Covington I grew up in so-called “Utah’s Dixie” (Nuwu land). Until I started this unsettling I’d never had an Indigenous, Black, or Brown Mormon-affiliated friend. I think these two facts are related. Many of my fellow settlers from Utah's Dixie will argue til red in the face that Utah's use of Dixie isn't about enslavement or the Confederacy, but strictly about the mission to grow cotton in these Nuwu lands in the Mojave Desert. But, one, this argument ignores the fact that the association between the word Dixie and cotton IS about enslavement, no matter when the Confederacy rose. And, two, even if the roots of Utah's Dixie weren't about enslavement and the Confederacy (they were) they grew to become associated, especially during the civil rights era when this church spoke in open defiance of the rights of Black people / Africans in the U.S.  Gary Staheli, right, donates Confederate flag to Student body President Mel Bowler, left, and Doug Schmutz, D-Day general chairman Dixie College’s Civil Rights era yearbooks feature images mock enslavement-auctions, white students in Blackface, and the Student Body Pres. receiving a Conf. Battle Flag. (The number of things named/built to memorialize the Confederacy spiked during Civil Rights Era)  Info from 2016 Southern Poverty Law Center study In 1952, Brown vs. Board of Education is being argued In 1952, Dixie Junior College’s sport teams start calling themselves Dixie “Rebels” In 1954, based on Brown vs. Board of Education, the supreme court rules that racial segregation in public schools in unconstitutional. In 1955, Emmett Til was brutally murdered and Rosa Parks is arrested for riding a bus. In 1956, The school makes a Confederate soldier its mascot and other white supremacists in the U.S.'s Dixie bomb four Black churches and the homes of civil rights leaders King, Ralph Abernathy, and E.D. Nixon. In 1960, Dixie begins flying the Confederate flag as a school symbol and Ruby Bridges starts attending a formerly segregated school in New Orleans. In 1992, people in Los Angeles rebelled after the cops who were caught on tape beating Rondey King were acquitted. In 1994, Dixie officially drops its use of the Confederate flag as a school symbol. In 2008, while I was at student, Dixie College changed their Confederate mascot to a "Red Storm." In 2012, Dixie removed their multi-figure bronze Confederate soldier statue in 2012. In 2021 they're dropping the name entirely. As Utah historian Will Bagley said, "The name Dixie reflects the sympathy that the southern Utah and the Mormon people felt for the Confederacy."  Bronze statue of Utah's Dixie founder Robert D. Covington Robert Dockery Covington was called by Brigham Young in 1857 to lead settlers to Nuwu lands (Washington, UT) and grow cotton. Covington was chosen because he had experience in the field. Before Utah, he owned people and forced them to grow cotton for him in Mississippi.
The Sheriff of Utah's Dixie Albert Washington Collins enjoyed entertaining fellow settlers with sharing stories about how he whipped and raped the people his family used to own, breed, and profit from. Both men were vocal Confederate sympathizers. Covington’s statue stands in the Washington City Museum courtyard in a round of statues depicting founders of Utah's Dixie, right next to the park I grew up playing in, and to the chapel I went to church in. Washington City Museum also has a statue of John D. Lee, the man held responsible for the Mountain Meadows Massacre, but brought that statue inside the Museum. Why is Lee's statue hidden inside and not Covington's? Why do we white people seem to be able to be justly ashamed of ourselves for white on white crime but never the for the violences we enact on Indigenous, Black, Brown, and Asian peoples.
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 Archeology has its roots in religious treasure hunting and colonization. So does Mormonism. In 1827, Joseph said he unearthed the Gold Plates (the Book of Mormon source material) in a magical dig. The year prior Joseph was arrested for defrauding locals with his mystic buried treasure seeking. For both of these digs he used a magical seer stone which he also found while digging for treasure. Seven years later Joseph is desecrating graves as he and his paramilitary are “wandering over the plains'' of the Osage, Sauk and Meskwaki, Peoria, Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, Myaamia, Kiikaapoi, Kaskaskia, and Bowéwadmi. Joseph tells his followers that they are “roving over the mounds of (the Nephites), picking up their skulls and their bones, as a proof of (the Book of Mormon’s) divine authenticity.” Mormons believe the bones buried in this Indigenous Mound belong to a white Lamanite named Zelph. But Lincoln said these Mounds were filled with the bones of an ancient race of giants. So 🤷🏼 (see: moundbuilder myth and vanishing indian myth) Because Mormons believed this racist moundbuilder myth, some non-Mormon settlers played a prank. Settlers engraved six small brass plates, called the Kinderhook plates, with some unusual characters. They then buried them in an Indigenous Mound and later “discovered” them there in 1843. Joseph taught that these were written by a Jaredite, one of the descendants of Ham: (who Mormons believe was Black-skin-cursed ancestor of African Peoples). Many Mormons believe the Olmec were these Black/African Jaredites. There are 24 articles about this on the Book of Mormon Archeology Forum website. 119 years after (1962) this “discovery,” church-owned Improvement Era magazine stated the Kinderhook plates were authentic. By 1981, Church stated that the plates were a hoax, and asserted "There is no evidence that the Prophet Joseph Smith ever took up the matter with the Lord, as he did when working with the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham." The Book of Abraham was also an archeological hoax. But this time the document was authentic, and the translation was made up. In 1835, Joseph Smith bought 4 Egyptian mummies and some papyri that were stolen by one of Napoleon’s “antiquities excavators.” Joseph taught that “one of the [papyri] contained the writings of Abraham, another the writings of Joseph of Egypt” From one of these he made the Book of Abraham which contains some of the more fantastic Mormon cosmology like Premortal Existence, God lives on Kolob, and matter existed before God. This papyri was lost and later found in the archeological-treasure-filled Met. In 2014, an Egyptologist found them to be funerary texts. Yet, this Church continues to hold the Book of Abraham as scripture because God works in mysterious ways. Maybe God just told Joseph what to write? Like when Joseph “translated” the Book of Mormon by looking at a rock in a hat.  Joseph Smith dictating the Book of Mormon. His seer stone is inside the hat telling him what to say. Maybe both are hoaxes from a fraudulent treasure seeker?
If Joseph was a hoaxter, he had a hoaxian-descendant in the famous Mormon forger, Mark Hofmann. Hofmann exploited this Church’s obsession with its history by forging and selling Church history documents to them–like the Salamander letter. This letter said that the Angel Moroni was in fact a white salamander. Five years after this Church knew the Kinderhook plates were fake, this Church released this letter as authentic, even sending it to seminary teachers. Hofmann reminds me of Smith in that they both exploited cultural obsessions with mythistories. In the 19th century U.S., many colonists wondered how Indigenous People and the Americas fit into the Bible, as the Bible is BAE. One popular theory was that Indigenous Peoples were of the lost ten tribes of Israel. Because of white-supremacy, it was also a pop-culture to theorize about an extinct race of white People or giants or ancient Isrealis who built the Indigenous architectures of this land. Then amid these absurd and racist curiosities came the Book of Mormon, some hoax plates in a desecrated burial mound and some papyri that was only in the U.S. because colonial desecration of graves. Colonization, white-Christian-supremacy, and desecration is why and how Mormonism exists.  "DezNat is an far-right, white nationalist hashtag and movement first seen as #DeseretNationalist in 2017 leading up to the white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia and used mainly by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) on Twitter. It is short for Deseret Nationalist, Deseret Nation, or Deseret Nationalism." - DezNat Exposed Deseret, or the State of Deseret, was a provisional state of the United States, proposed in 1849 by settlers from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City. The provisional state existed for slightly over two years and was never recognized by the United States government. The name derives from the word for "honeybee" in the Book of Mormon The stated goal of Deseret Nationalism is to create a Mormon ethnostate ruled by a theodemocracy. This was also the goal of the state of Deseret & is still a required antecedent for the Second Coming of Jesus.  Meet Logan Starr Smith, the so-called founder of the DezNat hashtag, with his wife, Antoinette Wright Smith, aka J.P. Bellum & SisterBellum, of Pocatello, Idaho. Logan Smith said he was first drawn to Deseret Nationalism after hearing about it from Mormon white nationalist & Identity Evropa member, Ayla “Wife With A Purpose” Stewart. Logan claims reading an article on Stewart is what "finally drove [him] to join twitter and start participating in the discussions to explore a movement [he] felt drawn to." Now what ties the Unite the Right rally (white-supremacists carrying tiki torches to protest the removal of a statue of someone willing to die to protect his ppl's right to own other racialized humans) to Mormonism beside that Ayla was supposed to be a guest speaker? One) Monuments to white-supremacist leaders as monuments are just symbols of white power & this is what these white-supremacists are aboutt: white power.” An article titled, “What the Removal of Confederate Monuments Means for Utahns” from the Deseret Nationalist Association reads: “Mormonism is dying in Salt Lake City, but still has a firm grasp on Utah's rural areas. This is primarily due to disparities in the racial demographics of the two areas. Salt Lake City is only 67.2% white while rural Utah is well known for its overtly white, Mormon, conservative culture. White Utahns who enjoy Utah's more conservative, Mormon culture will have to embrace ethno-nationalism if they want it to survive. If we don't fight to defend our White majority here in Utah we will lose the Mormon identity that has been the defining characteristic of this state for generations.” “Within the next three years, the Mormon share of Utah's population is expected to hit its lowest level since The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints started keeping membership numbers. And if current trends continue, LDS residents no longer will constitute a majority by 2030. Mormonism in Utah is dying, and the driving force of this is Utah's growing nonwhite population. The vast majority of immigrants coming into Utah aren't Mormon, and are diluting our implicitly white, Mormon culture.”  "What will happen in your country with the changes that are occurring? The declining population and the influx of an increasing number of immigrants will eventually make you a minority in your own land.” - L. Tom Perry, "What Seek Ye" General Conference, 2005 posted by Ayla Stewart under her screen name "WifeWithAPurpose" Ayla is a self-described "TradWife" who once considered herself a liberal, feminist, pagan who master's thesis was on homebirth. “Tradwives and white nationalists share core objectives (more babies), myths (America's moral decline), and iconography (happy heterosexual families). Such close proximity, particularly on social media, makes the exchange of ideas a straightforward prospect. When a tradwife mentions threats to "European culture" and "Western civilization," she's borrowing euphemistic language from white nationalists. When she talks about protecting her children from multiculturalism and black-on-white crime, she's all but reading from the hate movement's proverbial handbook.” - SEYWARD DARBY, SISTERS IN HATE: AMERICAN WOMEN ON THE FRONT LINES OF WHITE NATIONALISM Speaking of "more (white/Mormon) babies": "Women's reproductive labors-both in a literal & a social sense were central to these processes.” - Margaret D. Jacobs While white women were asked to “make more settlers” settlers were sterilizing Indigenous women w/o informed consent thru the 1920s & 30s.  Some of Ayla's favorite verses from the Book of Mormon ban interracial reproduction.  Brigham Young even suggested if a white-Mormon "mingle their seed with the seed of Cain" (old Christian belief about Black people being cursed by Bible God) then Blood-Atonement via decapitation & murdering the rest of the mixed family would be a blessing unto that white-Mormon. Which brings us back to the white/Mormon-nationalism of ethnostate of Deseret sought by folks in the DezNat movement. “White Utahns who enjoy Utah's more conservative, Mormon culture will have to embrace ethno-nationalism if they want it to survive. If we don't fight to defend our White majority here in Utah we will lose the Mormon identity that has been the defining characteristic of this state for generations.” "I'm ok with being called a Deseret Nationalist. It's like being called a Kingdom of God nationalist." - Logan Smith as JPBellum Reminder that one of the founding members of the DezNat community is an assistant Atorney General for Alaska, goes by the name of First Presidency member, active anti-semite/Nazi-ally, & namesake of BYU's law school: JReubenClark Clark had effusive praise for Hitler and the society he was creating. This is in spite of the numerous reports he had concerning Nazi death camps. He even "suppressed" the anti-Nazi writings of a former mission president to Czechoslovakia which contained pictures of prisoners in a German concentration camp and did so after yet more reports from death camps such as Auschwitz. The FBI had secret files which detailed how Nazi agents received the private encouragement of J. Reuben Clark. Clark is also co-author of this Proclamation to the World & on April 17, 1949, the First Presidency published this proclamation: THE NEGRO A PROCLAMATION TO THE WORLD  Clark used his church position to obstruct what he perceived as "Jewish influence." After Nazi Germany's annexation of Austria, Clark denied desperate pleas by Austrian Mormon converts from Judaism who sought the church's help in emigrating to safety.
"On August 13, 2017, Church leaders released an official statement in response to the violence seen at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Ayla Stewart, one of the scheduled speakers, praised the statement, retweeting it with the comment, "The #LDS church teachings are clear, you cannot be anti white and a follower of Christ. We are ALL God's children!" "Wheat & Tares" wrote a blog post featuring Ayla's statement, arguing that this Church's statements on race tend to have a purposeful ambiguity, making them virtual Rorschach tests, which is exactly what they've done w/ their white-supremacist settler colonialism creation of "The Lamanite." There is a lot here & I could go on & on about DezNats as they are the logical result of the histories I study & share here. They are the definition of my oft repeated: "These histories have histories" but i will leave you with the words of Asst. Attorney General of Alaska, Matthias Cicotte & DezNat twitter troll under the username: JReubenClark. Asst. Attorney General of Alaska, Matthias Cicotte, aka JReubenClark: Mormonism is "not compatible with the 'Hitler Did Nothing Wrong' contingent of the alt right." But when people like Ayla "cite The Book of Mormon or the Bible to support nationalist ideas, they aren't wrong."  “The John Birch Society (JBS) is an American right-wing political advocacy group. Founded in 1958, it supports anti-communism and social conservatism and opposes collectivism, big government, one-world government, and a New World Order. Critics and academics have called the JBS an ultraconservative, radical right, or fár-right organization.” Politico has asserted that the JBS began making a resurgence in the mid-2010s, while the JBS has argued that it shaped the modern conservative movement and especially the Trump administration. Huffington Post called the JBS "the intellectual seed bank of the right." Right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, called Trump a "John Birch Society president" and claimed Trump was "more John Birch Society than the John Birch.” The JBS opposed the 1960s civil rights movement and claimed the movement had Communists in important positions. In the latter half of 1965, the JBS produced a flier titled "What's Wrong With Civil Rights?" and used the flier as a newspaper advertisement. Here’s a video in which the JBS lays out this conspiracy theory.  Here's what the John Birch Society thought the communists' USA takeover plan was in 1966 & how the Civil Rights movement fit into it. Ezra Taft Benson echoed these anti-Black/African conspiracy theories in his 1967 General Conference speech, “Civil Rights: Tool of Communist Deception.” The John Birch Society, along with other conservative groups such as the Eagle Forum and the Christian right, successfully opposed the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s. JBS accused the ERA's supporters of subversion, asserting that the ERA was part of a Communist plot "to reduce human beings to living at the same level as animals.” In their 1980 Ensign article, “The Church and the Proposed Equal Rights Amendment: A Moral Issue” this church also took a stand against the Equal Rights Amendment stating that it could “endanger time-honored moral values by challenging laws that have safeguarded the family and afforded women necessary protections and exemptions.” and “extend legal protection to same-sex lesbian and homosexual marriages, giving legal sanction to the rearing of children in such homes.” The John Birch Society also campaigned against the ratification of the Genocide Convention, arguing it would erode U.S. national sovereignty. Now why would a Genocide Convention erode the sovereignty of the genocidal US settler-colonial project? Benson's activities within the John Birch Society came under the scrutiny of the First Presidency of the LDS Church for using its meeting houses for recruiting and political meetings, issuing a statement in January 1963 directly condemning the activities of the Birch Society. Ezra Taft Benson complained to McKay that the statement seemed to be directed against him, and "his son, Reed, and Brother Skousen," McKay confirmed that it was. The LDS Church called Ezra Taft Benson on a mission to Europe in late 1963 in the hopes that his political zeal would subside. In July 1965 the NAACP called for all Third World nations to refuse to grant visa to missionaries of the LDS Church for its "doctrine of non-white inferiority," and planned to protest the churches October general conference. In response, Benson wrote a memo to all Birch Society chapters instructing them to spread rumors that the protesters planned violent riots. Benson gave this speech after the first presidency condemned the John Birch Society. In 1968, the John Birch Society made an effort to nominate Benson as a presidential candidate, with segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond as Vice President, for which Benson sought and obtained approval from LDS Church president David O. McKay. Several months later, Benson flew to Alabama to meet with segregationist Alabama Governor George Wallace, who asked Benson to become his vice presidential running mate for the presidency. This time McKay refused Benson's request, even after Wallace himself wrote to McKay. Benson's son Reed Benson, along w other Birchers, spied on BYU students & faculty hoping to out potential communists on campus.  Ezra wrote a letter while mission president in Europe (where he was sent to discourage his extremism) to his friend J. Edgar Hoover expressing his gratitude for all the anti-commie work Hoover has done in the FBI. He marked this letter "Personal-Confidential" Hoover was currently operating COINTELPRO, the illegal program thru which the FBI spied on feminists, homosexuals, Black people, civil rights organizers, anti-war activists, & any other leftists. Oh & a lil bit on the KKK. Of this work, Benson wrote, “I realize that only in the next life will we fully appreciate all you have done to preserve freedom In this country. - am most grateful for your exposure of the communist conspiracy and for the wonderful organization you have established in the F.B.I, I pray that your courage will continue and that your hand will be blessed and prospered in all that you do to preserve our Constitutional Republic.” Just Being Black Was Enough to Get Yourself Spied on by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI COINTELPRO, far right, Christian, militant, & End-Times conspiracy theorists all have in common a fear of a supposed "New World Order" which has deep roots in anti-Communism & anti-semitism “Before the early 1990s, New World Order conspiracism was limited to two American countercultures, primarily the militantly anti-government right, and secondarily the part of fundamentalist Christianity concerned with the end-time emergence of the antichrist scenarios. Political scientists are concerned that mass hysteria over New World Order conspiracy theories could eventually have devastating effects on American political life, ranging from escalating lone-wolf terrorism* to the rise to power of authoritarian ultranationalist demagogues.” *Lone-wolf is code for acts of terror inducing violence by white men New World Order is anti semitism is anti-communism is Red Scare is anti-union is anti-immigrant
A Red Scare is the promotion of a widespread fear of a potential rise of communism, anarchism or other leftist ideologies by a society or state. It is often characterized as political propaganda. “During the Second Red Scare, both secular and Christian-right American agitators increasingly embraced and spread dubious fears of Freemasons, Illuminati and Jews as the alleged driving forces behind an ‘international communist conspiracy.’” “The threat of ‘Godless communism’ in the form of an atheistic, bureaucratic collectivist world government, demonized as the ‘Red Menace’ became the focus of apocalyptic millenarian conspiracism. The Red Scare came to shape one of the core ideas of the political right in the United States. First Red Scare Fueled by labor unrest and the anarchist bombings, and then spurred on by the Palmer Raids – attempts by United States Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer to suppress radical organizations–the First Red Scare was characterized by exaggerated rhetoric, illegal search and seizures, unwarranted arrests and detentions, and the deportation of several hundred suspected radicals and anarchists. In addition, the growing anti-immigration nativist movement among Americans viewed increasing immigration from Southern Europe and Eastern Europe as a threat to American political and social stability. In April 1920, concerns peaked with J. Edgar Hoover telling the nation to prepare for a bloody uprising on May Day. Police and militias prepared for the worst, but May Day passed without incident. Soon, public opinion and the courts turned against Palmer, putting an end to his raids and the First Red Scare. J. Edgar Hoover had been lying & hunting leftists for decades before COINTELPRO This “first” Red Scare really more of a second red scare as noted in Nick Estes’s, Original Red Scare: The Criminalization of Indigenous Resistance, in which he shows how the settler-project focused on breaking up collective land stewardship practiced by many Indigneous nations turning the land into private property through the Dawes Act and reservation system. Even Dr. William F. Russell acknowledges communism in Indigenous cultures in his “"How to Tell a Communist, and How to Beat Him,” in which he writes, “There have been forms of Communism since earliest times, even in America. Note the tribes on the Indian reservations” So back to the so-called First Red Scare. This Scare led to the popularization of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the Western Hemisphere. This text, which J. Reuben Clark handed out on his mission in Germany, also appeared in the 1919 Philadelphia Public Ledger newspaper. Called the “Red Bible,” it took “Protocols” and replaces all references to "Jews" with references to Bolsheviki (Leninist communism). Similarly, David D. Cole has written that the Patriot Act "in effect resurrects this philosophy, simply substituting 'terrorist' for ‘communist.’” The Second Red Scare, or McCarthyism, was characterized by heightened political repression and persecution of left-wing organizers along with a campaign to spread fear of alleged communist and socialist influence on American institutions. After the mid-1950s, McCarthyism began to decline, mainly due to Joseph McCarthy's gradual loss of public popularity and credibility after several of his accusations were found to be false.  Suspected homosexuality was also a common cause for being targeted by McCarthyism. The hunt for "sexual perverts", who were presumed to be subversive by nature, resulted in over 5,000 federal workers being fired, and thousands were harassed and denied employment. Many have termed this aspect of McCarthyism the "lavender scare" Homosexuality was classified as a psychiatric disorder in the 1950s. However, in the context of the highly politicized Cold War environment, homosexuality became framed as a dangerous, contagious social disease that posed a potential threat to state security. As the family was believed to be the cornerstone of American strength and integrity, the description of homosexuals as "sexual perverts" meant that they were both unable to function within a family unit and presented the potential to poison the social body. This era also witnessed the establishment of widely spread FBI surveillance intended to identify homosexual government employees. So from the first red scare, to J. Reuben Clark, to McCarthyism, to Benson & Skousen, to Civil Rights & New World Order, to COINTELPRO–the US, leaders of the Mormon Church, the FBI, & J. Edgar Hoover have essentially made it deathly illegal to be a leftist (or homosexual, Black, Indigenous, Brown, Muslim, Communist, Jewish, etc) & these connections & collaborations are ongoing Why Mormons Make Great FBI Recruits “The F.B.I and C.I.A. recruit heavily from the Mormon population because they are usually cheaper to do a security clearance on, they often speak another language from their mission trips and they usually have a low risk lifestyle.” “But there's at least one place in American society where Mormons have found an unusual degree of acceptance--in agencies like the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and the CIA, which see Mormons as particularly desirable recruits and have a reputation for hiring a disproportionate number of people who belong to the church. There have been Mormon FBI agents since early in the bureau's history. Some accounts allege that J. Edgar Hoover had a particular interest in recruiting Mormon agents: one well known Mormon leader, J. Martell Bird, served in Hoover's heyday, from the 1940s through the end of the '60s” “But it Wasn't until the 1970s that outsiders started paying close attention and turning up connections between prominent Mormons and the CIA, Watergate conspiracy, and other government activities. One 1975 report on. the CIA, for instance, included the tidbit that one Mormon-owned PR firm made some "overseas offices available…as cover for Agency employees operating abroad." And in the 1980s a BYU professor told the authors of The Mormon Corporate Empire, a 1985 social science study on the church and its power, that "we've never had any trouble placing anyone who has applied to the CIA." Similarly, when Mormons aren't allowed to proselytize in certain nations they'll usually go in as English teachers instead Not long before Miller's Soviet dalliance came to light, Perez, a Latino FBI agent, had filed his first discrimination complaint with the equal employment opportunity office. In the course of the next few years, he, along with more than 300 other agents, would file a class action suit against the FBI for racial and religious discrimination. Part of their complaint was that their Mormon higher-ups had favored agents of their own religion, which isn't known for its diversity. Even after its Hispanic officers won that discrimination case and after other lawsuits over similar issues of hiring practice, most people working for the FBI are white men. What is known is that agencies like the CIA and FBI still recruit at BYU, looking for students with language skills and an interest in public service, although even the university doesn't know how many… Often, after a long career in the FBI, agents will join the Latter Day Saints' Security Department. Bird, the FBI agent who worked with Hoover, became head of church security; Richard Bretzing, the L.A. bureau chief who was so key in the spread of the idea of a Mormon Mafia, left the bureau in 1988-and became managing director of the same office. This church is also invested in private land in so-called Central and South America through AgReserves. AgReserves' three divisions operate in more than 30 states and international operations in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The three divisions include Cattle, Permanent Plantings, and Row Crops . These are 3 of the main causes of deforestation in so-called Central & South America.  And this church has been politically involved in establishing imperialist policy via The Clark Memorandum on the Monroe Doctrine or Clark Memorandum, written on December 17, 1928 by undersecretary of state and Mormon President, J. Reuben Clark, concerned the United States' use of military force to intervene (i.e. overthrow democratically elected socialist governments in favor of capitalism) in Latin American nations.” The Clark Memo is a piece of U.S. imperial policy which basically says the U.S. can “coup whoever we want” as this is the right of the U.S. to “protect” its “sovereignty.” Which really means the U.S. can destroy any country on this continent because it views its hemespheric dominance as an extension of its sovereignty “The Clark memorandum rejected the view that the Roosevelt Corollary was based on the Monroe Doctrine. However, it was not a complete repudiation of the Roosevelt Corollary but was rather a statement that any intervention by the U.S. was not sanctioned by the Monroe Doctrine but rather was the right of America as a state.” I wonder how much the myth of the Lamanite & the centrality of so- called Latin America has to do w/ the white supremacist Clark writing constitutional legislation on the US's right to distrust those nations? Even tho John Birch Society & Ezra Taft Benson (in his private letter to J. Edgar Hoover) called Eisenhower a tool of the Communist conspiracy, Benson worked as Sec. of Ag. in the Eisenhower admin. which led to the major shift to industrialized ag & monocrops (see also: AgReserves by the LDS church) Dwight D. Eisenhower promised to take a harder line against communism and made good on his promise by allowing the Central Intelligence Agency to engage in covert actions, such as the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état, and the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba. This Guatemalan coup was enacted by the CIA (wit's Mormon agents) in support of the United Fruit Company (Chiquita Bananas) of which Dulles, the head of the CIA, was on the payroll. “The links that his staff members John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles had to the UFC also predisposed them to act against the Guatemalan government. Additionally, with its power being challenged by the new democratic government, the United Fruit Company looked to the US government for support. Luckily for the company, the Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles' law firm represented the UFC. In addition, his brother Allen Dulles was the director of the CIA and owned shares of the UFC and formerly sat on its Board of Trustees. —--------- With all this in mind, I want to note the Geneva Office of Human Rights Education which is owned & run by this Church thru the J. Reuben Clark BYU law school's International Center for Law & Religious studies seems very suspicious & dangerous. I certainly don’t think this church, with its history of fighting nearly every civil rights movement in this country in the last century, should be teaching anyone about human rights.  Thus U.S. imperialism & its ongoing global extractive-capitalist violences that led us to the collapse of the climate & biological life IS MORMON DOCTRINE
—-------- Now for some resistance: JUVENILE INSTRUCTOR Boycotting General Conference 40 Years Ago: The Lamanite Generation, the American Indian Movement, and Temple Square “In 1973, a group of over one hundred members of the American Indian Movement boycotted the church’s annual conference, beating drums and demanding that the church donate one million dollars to Indian social programs. The event was covered in local newspapers like the Salt Lake Tribune and the Church News and in national outlets like the New York Times. The following year members of AIM issued a challenge from the gates of Temple Square to the Mormon Church to donate ten million dollars to Indian self-help programs and to return native skulls from the church’s history museum.” Remembering Black Protests of the 1960s-70s "By the 1960s Utah civil rights activists started to demonstrate against the Mormon church itself, in their efforts to secure favorable civil rights legislation…. The Utah legislature did repeal the state’s long-standing antimiscegenation law, but failed to enact other desired legislation. In response, the NAACP decided to organize a protest against the Mormon church leaders, whom they perceived as blocking civil rights measures in the state legislature. "The Salt Lake NAACP chapter made tentative plans to picket Temple Square during the LDS General Conference in the fall of 1963. In addition, NAACP chapters across the country announced plans to picket local Mormon mission headquarters in support of the Salt Lake chapter.12 The threatened NAACP demonstrations, however, were averted when Apostle Hugh B. Brown of the Church First Presidency released a statement outlining the “position of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on the matter of civil rights.” This statement let it “be known that there is in this Church no doctrine, belief, or practice that is intended to deny the enjoyment of full civil rights by any person regardless of race, color, or creed.” “In lashing out at black priesthood denial these advocates initially concentrated their fire on the church-owned Brigham Young University. Militant black and white protesters demonstrated during athletic contests between Brigham Young and other colleges and universities. In the spring of 1958, eight members of the University of Texas-El Paso track team refused to compete against Brigham Young University because of their belief that the Mormons considered “blacks…inferior and…disciples of the devil.”” “By January 1970, Sports Illustrated observed that ‘“the protests [against BYU] have grown in intensity to the point where they have almost transcended all else.’” ------ Even Putin's youth think this church is an oppressive totalitarian org “Young supporters of Russian President Vladimir Putin have staged several protests this month outside Mormon meeting houses, claiming that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is an "authoritarian sect" with connections to the CIA and FBI. The protesters are members of the Young Guard, a youth organization of Putin's United Russia Party. They insist their actions have nothing to do with Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate and Mormon who called Russia the "No. 1 geopolitical foe" of the U.S.” ------------- FINAL THOUGHTS: These white-supremacists are very well organized. Find an abolitionist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, anti- imperialist organization in your area & work with them. find the radical BIPOC-led orgs in your area & learn if/how you can be an accomplice in their work. DO THE WORK. LEARN FROM THOSE WITH THE MOST EXPERIENCE RESISTING & EXISTING BEYOND THE US SETTLER-EMPIRE  Brother of Jared seeing the finger of the Lord The Jaredites (named for the Book of Mormon character Jared) emigrated to this continent aboutt 1,500 yrs before the Nephites in little M&M shaped boats lit with small stones that glow cause God touched them
There have been several theories about who they would be in ancient Indigenous culture both as descendants of Ham and the People called Olmecs “Descendants of Ham: Some early Latter Day Saints, including Apostle Parley P. Pratt believed the Jaredites were descendants of Ham, based on the group’s origins near the Tower of Babel, and initial migration into the Valley of Nimrod, an area associated with the descendants of Ham.” “Olmecs: Some Mormon apologists have argued for substantial parallels between the Jaredites and the Olmecs. For example, one scholar asserted that writings an ancient Native American historian, Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxochitl, wrote about a group of people who came from the great tower to Mesoamerica.” “22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. 24 And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. 25 And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.” Ham's descendants were cursed cause they got Noah drunk and "saw the nakedness of his father.” “You must not think, from what I say, that I am opposed to slavery. No! The negro is damned, and is to serve his master till God chooses to remove the curse of Ham.” - Prophet Brigham Young, New York Herald, May 4, 1855, as cited in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Spring 1973 Brigham Young and many other Christians used these verses to justify enslavement of Africans as divine. The theory that Olmecs came from African peoples is shared by others as well “Olmec alternative origin speculations: Some writers suggest that the Olmecs were related to peoples of Africa - based primarily on their interpretation of facial features of Olmec statues.” |
AuthorI am nicholas b jacobsen, an artist, researcher, historian, educator, and organizer. I am a trans-non binary Euro-settler raised in the Nuwu lands of so-called Utah. My family has been Mormon and Utahn for as long as either of those concepts have existed. My ancestors sacrificed everything--their identities, homelands, jobs, health, & safety to become Mormon, Utahn, U.S. American, & white--to settler their Zion. I take it as my personal responsibility to unsettle what my ancestors settled. and to help my fellow settlers do the same through writing, art, and community building. ArchivesCategories
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