They never terrorized me, even though they hated my second novel. It always makes me laugh.
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Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista review by the Southern Poverty Law Center
Books on the Right: A Nativist’s Paranoid Vision by Susy Buchanan
July 2007
In 1973, a Frenchman named Jean Raspail wrote a bitter and paranoid novel about the “invasion” of his native land by starving Third World refugees. The book was a racist vision of the consequences of non-white immigration, aided and abetted, in the author’s view, by the weak-minded liberals who failed to resist it. For almost 35 years, The Camp of the Saints has been a Bible to the radical right.
Now, courtesy of former Navy SEAL Matthew Bracken, comes the American version — a portrait of the apocalypse Bracken fears will overtake America thanks to undocumented immigration from the south. The book is a fictionalized version of the Aztlan conspiracy theory — the idea that Mexico is secretly planning a “reconquista” (reconquering) of the seven states of the Southwest — that now animates large swaths of the anti-immigration movement. It’s being plugged on extremist websites, in gun magazines and similar electronic venues, and on immigrant-bashing radio shows like Peter Boyles’ program on KHOW-AM in Denver.
This isn’t the first angry, self-published novel from Bracken. His new book, Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista, is the second in a series that began with another paranoid fantasy about gun control and evil agents of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, a favorite bête noire of the extreme right. His latest book, marked by an enthusiastic interest in busty women, is a xenophobe’s racy vision of hell.
[A long detailed plot summary with numerous “spoilers” is snipped here. It can be read at the SPLC link.]
Domestic Enemies plods along between the over-the-top action sequences. Bracken oversexualizes his gun-loving heroine, devoting as much prose to her breasts as he does her weapons — which is a lot — and many minor players come off as one-dimensional caricatures. But a sexy heroine shooting guns of varying calibers at liberal, communist, open-borders villains in a world destroyed by immigration and multiculturalism is an irresistible fantasy for the audience this genre of fiction attracts – no matter the novel’s numerous flaws.
Of course, this fictionalization is hardly necessary, even for those given to this kind of thing. All one need do is listen to real-life zealots like Glenn Spencer, head of the hate group American Border Patrol, who puts it like this: “Our country is being invaded by Mexico with hostile intentions. When it blows up, they can’t say we didn’t tell them, when the blood starts flowing on the border and in L.A. We’re [talking] about la reconquista.”
Turns out I agree with the SPLC on something! (I may have to rethink) Hey, Travis, how goes it?
Make no mistake folks, the SPLC is probably one of
the largest domestic intelligence gathering operations
in the country. Should Obama succeed in building his
own organs of internal security, the SPLC will play a
major role.