Going Rouge by Richard Kim, Betsy Reed Read Free Book Online Page A

of separation from the United States.”
    This has meant rubbing shoulders and forging alliances with outright white supremacists and far-right theocrats, particularly those who dominate the proceedings at such gatherings as the North American Secessionist conventions, which AIP delegates have attended in recent years. The AIP’s affiliation with neo-Confederate organizations is motivated as much by ideological affinity as by organizational convenience. Indeed, Chryson makes no secret of his sympathy for the Lost Cause. “Should the Confederate states have been allowed to separate and go their peaceful ways?” Chryson asked rhetorically. “Yes. The War of Northern Aggression, or the Civil War, or the War between the States—however you want to refer to it—was not about slavery, it was about states’ rights.”
    Another far-right organization with whom the AIP has long been aligned is Howard Phillips’s militia-minded Constitution Party. The AIP has been listed as the Constitution Party’s state affiliate since the late 1990s, and it has endorsed the Constitution Party’s presidential candidates (Michael Peroutka and Chuck Baldwin) in the past two elections.
    The Constitution Party boasts an openly theocratic platform that reads, “It is our goal to limit the federal government to its delegated, enumerated, Constitutional functions and to restore American jurisprudence to its original Biblical common-law foundations.” In its 1990s incarnation as the U.S. Taxpayers Party, it was on the front lines in promoting the “militia” movement, and a significant portion of its membership comprises former and current militia members.
    At its 1992 convention, the AIP hosted both Phillips—the USTP’s presidential candidate—and militia-movement leader Colonel James “Bo” Gritz, who was campaigning for president under the banner of the far-right Populist Party. According to Chryson, AIP regulars heavily supported Gritz, but the party deferred to Phillips’s presence and issued no official endorsements.
    In Wasilla, the AIP became powerful by proxy—because of Chryson and Stoll’s alliance with Sarah Palin. Chryson and Stoll had found themselves in constant opposition to policies of Wasilla’s Democratic mayor, who started his three-term, nine-year tenure in 1987. By 1992, Chryson and Stoll had begun convening regular protests outside city council meetings. Their demonstrations invariably involved grievances against any and all forms of “socialist government,” from city planning to public education. Stoll shared Chryson’s conspiratorial views: “The rumor was that he had wrapped his guns in plastic and buried them in his yard so he could get them after the New World Order took over,” Stein told a reporter.
    Chryson did not trust Palin when she joined the city council in 1992. He claimed that she was handpicked by Democratic city council leaders and by Wasilla’s Democratic mayor, John Stein, to rubber-stamp their tax-hike proposals. “When I first met her,” he said, “I thought she was extremely left. But I’ve watched her slowly as she’s become more pronounced in her conservative ideology.”
    Palin was well aware of Chryson’s views. “She knew my beliefs,” Chryson said. “The entire state knew my beliefs. I wasn’t afraid of being on the news, on camera speaking my views.”
    But Chryson believes she trusted his judgment because he accurately predicted what life on the city council would be like. “We were telling her, ‘This is probably what’s going to happen,’ ” he said. “ ‘The city is going to give this many people raises, they’re going to pave everybody’s roads, and they’re going to pave the city council members’ roads.’ We couldn’t have scripted it better because everything we predicted came true.”
    After intense evangelizing by Chryson and his allies, they claimed Palin as a convert. “When she started taking her job seriously,” Chryson said, “the people