Before Matthew Heimbach, there was this scumbag who couldn’t practice what he preached and ran off with his friend’s wife. Not before he influenced others to kill and be killed. Rot in Hell indeed!

James Paul Wickstrom, the former Snap-On Tools salesman who went on to become a preacher of the racist and anti-Semitic theology of Christian Identity, lead the neo-fascist Posse Comitatus movement has died reportedly after suffering a fall on March 24, leading to his death the following day. He was 75 years old.

Feb. 13 was the 35th anniversary of the deaths of U.S. Marshal Kenneth Muir and Deputy Marshal Bob Cheshire, killed by Christian Identity follower and Posse Comitatus member Gordon Kahl, who shot and killed both after they attempted to arrest him on a parole violation in Medina, North Dakota. Wickstrom was Kahl’s biggest defenders while he was a fugitive and used the incident to promote Posse Comitatus movement, whose adherents believe they are the true children of Israel, that Jews actually serve Satan and help him destroy civilization, that there is no legitimate form of government above that of the county level and that there is no higher law authority than the county sheriff. Wickstrom became very prominent as he made media appearances on behalf of Kahl’s cause, including appearances on Phil Donahue’s program, refusing to urge Kahl to surrender saying his civil rights were violated. On June 4, 1983, Kahl was tracked down in Arkansas  and was killed in a shootout with law enforcement which also saw the death of  Lawrence County, Arkansas, Sheriff Gene Matthews.

Wickstrom was prominent in neo-Nazi circles as he routinely called for the extermination of Jews, and even as his profile waned he continued to preach in the 2000s. He had a regular radio show on White Supremacist Hal Turner’s radio network and was still maintaining one on shortwave radio, his last show appearing to be on March 11. He was close to Aryan Nations, and when that group fell apart in 2000 after a devastating lawsuit was ruled against them, Charles Juba, a leader in one of the Aryan Nations factions that surfaced in the wake of Aryan Nations fall, appointed Wickstrom as his faction’s chaplain. “I have a dream!” he once said in a speech at a 2003 bonehead gathering. “If that goddamn nigger can have a dream, I can have a dream, too. I have a dream that in the days to come there won’t be anyone who isn’t white that’s gonna be in America!”

2003 was also the year Wickstrom ran off with the wife of another long-time Christian Identity preacher, Keith Kallstrom, a close friend of his for 30 years.  Kallstrom, who vowed to cut off Wickstrom’s head and place it on his mantle, was arrested two years later after driving from Oklahoma to Michigan in a pickup that contained four homemade hand grenades, an assault rifle, a shotgun, a 9 mm pistol, a ski mask and a pair of handcuffs, seeking to kill Wickstrom.  Kallstrom died in federal prison in 2007, and Wickstrom, whose doctrine refused to recognize the authority of government officials beyond the county level, and called for the death of those in state and federal government, saw fit to praise the FBI and Michigan State Police, who, he said, “have done an outstanding job.” 

As the Southern Poverty Law Center noted, even though he had the influence of figures like George Lincoln Rockwell, Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler and National Alliance founder William Pierce, he was the only of among them who actually served prison time, convicted in 1984 on two counts of impersonating a public official and sentenced to 13 ½ months in prison, and again in 1990, convicted of counterfeiting currency and illegally possessing firearms and sentenced to 38 months.

Wickstrom died the same day as fellow Christian Identity Pastor Mark Downey of the Fellowship of God’s Covenant People who gained some notoriety for urging Donald Trump as he went to the White House to “crack down on Jews”. Downey suffered from a long bout with cancer.