[8] Swift was originally exposed to British Israelism while at the Angelus Temple[9] through the teachings of visiting minister Gerald Burton Winrod.
[9] Combining British Israelism, extreme antisemitism, and political militancy, Swift later founded his own church in California in the mid-1940s known as the Anglo-Saxon Christian Congregation.
[13]: 110 Swift quickly converted Butler, who was an admirer of Adolf Hitler and Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy, to Christian Identity.
[14][15]: 298 After moving to Idaho, Butler founded Aryan Nations as a paramilitary wing of the church with an ideological mixture of Christian Identity and Nazism.
[citation needed] From 1974 until 2001, the Aryan Nations headquarters was located in a 20-acre (8.1 ha) compound 1.8 miles (3 km) north of Hayden, Idaho.
Following Neuman's death in August 2001,[17] Butler appointed Harold Ray Redfeairn of Ohio to lead Aryan Nations as his successor;[18] he had been agitating for control of the organization since the mid-1990s.
In September 2000, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) won a $6.3 million judgment against Aryan Nations from an Idaho jury, who awarded punitive and compensatory damages to plaintiffs Victoria Keenan and her son Jason.
The two Native Americans had been beaten with rifles by Aryan Nations security guards in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho in July 1998.
[23][24] The woman and her son were driving near the Aryan Nations compound when their car backfired, which the guards claimed to misinterpret as gunfire.
Two of the assailants, Aryan Nations security chief Edward Jessie Warfield and guard John Yeager, were prosecuted for the attack.
A jury found that Butler and Aryan Nations were grossly negligent in selecting and supervising the guards, and awarded the Keenans $6.3 million.
[28] In February 2001, the group's Hayden Lake compound and intellectual property, including the names "Aryan Nations" and "Church of Jesus Christ Christian", were transferred to the Keenans.
In 2002, Juba's group was based on a 10-acre (4.0 ha) compound in the rural town of Ulysses in Potter County, north central Pennsylvania; it hosted the 2002 Aryan Nations World Congress.
Kreis established a new headquarters in Lexington, South Carolina, and he eventually moved it close to Union City, Tennessee.
[33] In 2005, the Holy Order of the Phineas Priesthood, previously in association with the faction which was led by Kreis, seceded and formed Aryan Nations Revival,[citation needed] based in New York City.
[39] The Order's mission was to overthrow the Zionist Occupational Government and establish the Northwest Territorial Imperative through an orchestrated plot to commit acts of domestic terrorism which would include murder, arson, armed robbery, theft, counterfeiting, and extortion between 1983 and 1984.
Buford O. Furrow, Jr., who was convicted of the Los Angeles Jewish Community Center shooting and the murder of Filipino American postal worker Joseph Ileto, had previously worked as a security guard at the Aryan Nations compound for some time.