Goodness, I have read all of the books and had no idea there was a political message. Just had them on my "reading for pleasure list". Anyway, good reading and for an old guy who hasn't kept up with technology, a lot of good information.
Posted on 06/09/2012 7:07:21 PM PDT by Travis McGee
Years after the racism of The Turner Diaries inspired Timothy McVeigh, the Patriot Movement has embraced a new bestselling series. J.M. Berger reads closely to see what they say about race and government in America.
An American Nazi Party volunteer recently produced a three-minute online video promoting the group’s platform. It spotlighted issues like the national debt, gas prices, domestic oil drilling, and America’s wars.
Almost as an aside, it mentions affirmative action. And despite some provocative imagery, the video never mentions the words Jew or black, or any related ethnic slurs. A white nationalist blogger praised the video for not “spamming people with inane Holocaust statistics or endless dry arguments over whether or not gas chambers existed.” Many militia groups now explicitly tell would-be members that they can’t also belong to a hate group. Racism just doesn’t sell like it used to.
The paint is peeling on the mythical age of white hegemony that once provided a strong backbone for the Patriot movement, a diverse collection of loosely connected anti-government groups and ideologies that motivated Timothy McVeigh and many others.
Groups under the Patriot umbrella have often, but not always, embraced racial politics. The movement’s origins were heavily influenced by racist activists such as white nationalist William Pierce, author of the infamous 1978 novel The Turner Diaries, a dystopian novel about a racist revolution, which inspired a slew of imitators and successors.
Since the 1990s, some within the movement have tried to sideline or redefine its racial politics—whether out of sincere conviction or to avoid an inconvenient stigma—and focus on other issues such as gun rights, survivalism, individual liberties, traditional morality, and Constitutional hyper purity.
This process has gone far enough to suggest the outlines of what a post-racial Patriot movement might look like. Consider Enemies Foreign and Domestic, a Patriot-themed novel self-published by former Navy SEAL Matthew Bracken in 2003. Known to fans as EFAD, it’s the first in a trilogy of political thrillers. The plot goes like this: A rogue ATF agent stages a terrorist attack and blames it on an alleged racist militia (which turns out to be neither racist nor a militia). The attack is used as a pretext for repressive gun seizures by misguided liberals, while the ATF villain foments more trouble, killing innocent gun owners, and framing them as racist terrorists. In response, a series of individuals and small groups rise up to carry out acts of resistance and/or terrorism, culminating in a direct confrontation with the villain.
While spotlighting several Patriot memes, the first book in the trilogy has an almost militant multicultural drumbeat. EFAD’s heroes come from almost every imaginable ethnic background—white, black, Arab and Jewish. Between its serviceable writing and self-inoculation against charges of racism, EFAD is probably as close to a mainstream recruitment tool as the Patriot movement could hope for.
During February and March of this year, Bracken made the book available for free as an Amazon Kindle e-book, and several Patriot blogs and Twitter feeds spent significant time promoting it, resulting in a brief stint as the No. 1 free Kindle book on Amazon. The idea was to break into the mainstream of conservative media (talk radio and the like). That effort fell short, but an online posting by organizers said more than 30,000 copies were downloaded.
EFAD represents a sharp break from its Patriot Lit forefathers, most infamously Pierce’s The Turner Diaries. That book has inspired at least dozens of admirers who tried to realize its concept of a revolution born from a campaign of terrorism, Timothy McVeigh among them. Told from the first-person perspective of a terrorist named Earl Turner, “Diaries” drips with racial animus from its opening pages, in which “negroes” armed with baseball bats forcibly disarm white Americans to enforce a repressive gun control bill. This inspires a general uprising targeting the government, Jews, and blacks and culminates in the use of nuclear weapons to ethnically cleanse New York, Washington, D.C., and Tel Aviv. White encampments are constructed in what remains of the United States; “race traitors” (such as those who intermarried with minorities) are summarily lynched.
In short, it is not a pleasant book, either for its values or its mind-numbing prose, reading more like a nasty after-action report than a story. Despite its limitations, The Turner Diaries spawned a legion of badly written dystopian future tales of race war, which are distributed online and in self-published tomes. Unlike EFAD, The Turner Diaries and many of its imitators preach exclusively to the racist choir, aiming to inspire existing racists to action rather than trying to attract new blood for a broader anti-government movement. But EFAD’s depiction of a racially egalitarian, pro-gun, anti-government groundswell may be more evolution than revolution. The trilogy’s second and third books Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista released around 2006 and Foreign Enemies and Traitors in 2009—continue to separate racial hate and love for liberty, but they do so while drawing ever deeper from the well of white racial paranoia.
Book two describes the takeover of the American Southwest by illegal immigrants, specifically Hispanic racists out to reclaim their historic lands from the “gringos.”
This dramatic shift toward racial politics is offset by the fact that the book’s major protagonists are all brown people, from a Lebanese Arab heroine to a half-Cuban FBI agent to a crypto-Jewish-Hispanic-American former journalist. (The author’s olive branch to people of color does not, incidentally, extend to Muslims, gays, college professors, or people with piercings).
Book three, featuring a corrupt president who invites foreign mercenaries to run rampant on U.S. soil, sees Bracken’s continued stipulations against racism slowly but surely shouted down by the arrival of Earl Turner’s world. After an earthquake demolishes Memphis, black refugees turn into a seething mob of gang-rapists and cannibals—characterizations that feature memorably in The Turner Diaries—while urban blacks loot a path from Baltimore to Washington, D.C., where they demand and receive a new Socialist constitution engineered by a thinly veiled caricature of President Obama. The narrative disclaimers continue—one character condemns white racist killings in the chaos after the quake, and a battle-weary white racist girl near the end of the book accepts a hand of comfort offered by a black Army medic. But these and other moments of individual race grace are hard pressed to counterweight the vivid, lengthy depiction of African-Americans en masse as cannibal rapists directly responsible for destroying America’s Constitution.
EFAD perhaps illustrates both how far and how not-far the Patriot movement has come over the years. Inasmuch as the movement coheres, it has shifted from fairly open and aggressive racism to a more ambivalent, conflicted posture. It’s not uncommon for Patriot movement members to vehemently deny they are racists, even as they speak in hushed, reverential tones about Turner author William Pierce. Bracken doesn’t have that particular problem. In response to an email requesting an interview, he called The Turner Diaries a “racist screed” and insisted it brooks no comparison to his series, angrily declining to answer questions.
On the other hand, in a recent online posting, Bracken advised people who want to be safe from a possibly impending civil war to analyze where they live based on a spectrum of rich vs. poor, urban vs. rural—and lighter skin vs. darker skin.
Racism has been the Achilles’ heel of efforts to unify the Patriots for as long as the movement has existed, with different factions embracing wildly different views about whether to embrace it and to what degree. The Patriot subset that declines to accept racism continues to cope with the issue unevenly and defensively. As in mainstream politics, those who wish to participate or influence the direction of the movement face pressure to cater to the radical base.
The result is a muddled message in which racism may be vocally condemned, but race war is deemed inevitable. Traditional racist language is avoided as taboo, but racial stereotyping is seen as “facing facts.” It is a rarified vision of a non-racist “realism” that can alienate white nationalist insiders while looking to outsiders like a distinction without a difference.
Goodness, I have read all of the books and had no idea there was a political message. Just had them on my "reading for pleasure list". Anyway, good reading and for an old guy who hasn't kept up with technology, a lot of good information.
I don’t think we’ll ever get through to folks like Burger. But some of his readers might just be curious enough to check out my books, so it’s all good.
I have a Nook, which is a Barnes and Noble reader.
Are your books sold by B & N?
You mean those things don't even come with a search/browse feature?
What a rip!
BTTT
I’ll just say this, I’ve known you for what... 12 years now? Your books are not racist in any way nor are you. The author of that tripe about your book with his lame comparison to the Turner Diaries owes you an apology and needs he needs to be taken behind the wood shed for a lesson in manners.
Don’t let the leftist pinheads get under your skin bro. They aren’t worth the stress.
Does anyone remember a guy named DePugh? He formed a number of anti-Communist groups who were prepared to fight a Communist takeover of the country.
I remember reading a book about him back when I was in high school. This would have been sometime in the early 60s. I recall the government really went after him and I thought he helped them by having a lot of unregistered fully automatic weapons.
I agreed with him that we should have the right to own them, but why not just use semi-automatics until you could own them legally?
I have no idea what ever happened to him or his organization tho I know he went to prison over gun charges.
Nope, no B&N Nook. Amazon, the 500# gorrilla still, gives us extremely favorable royalty terms if we give them exclusives. But you can download the free Kindle reader app to most platforms, and read them that way.
The only things lacking in that photo are a hound dog and a jug of ‘shine. You must have cropped them out to avoid stereotypes, I’m thinking.
To these fully indoctrinated Manhattan PC drones, if you do not loudly support “anti-racism,” (affirmative action forever, reparations etc) then you are a racist. They see racism in every face they do not like. In Burger’s case, he’s trying to make a very slim living out of being sort of a stringer for the likes of the SPLC, hoping to get somebody to read your words and pay for a new column or book.
IMO, the best e-reader is a Galaxy Tablet ...
Install the Kindle app, the Nook app, the Kobo app ...
and you’re good to go.
Yeah, but your books deal with things like the worst results of corruption of Government and the like. If that’s racism, then I’ll wear the badge. Fortunately, it isn’t and any person with an IQ higher than room temperature in a walk in freezer knows it.
The race card is being thrown so much by the left now, it’s a joke. It has lost any legitimacy in the real world due to how often it’s abused by the leftists.
I believe that welfare should be turned into workfare. I believe that big Government is a disaster. I believe in personal responsibility. If that makes me a racist, then so be it.
I don't see the rationale behind the decision to "run off to the western states". My attitude is, if the woman makes me happy, she could be a Martian with purple tendrils sprouting from her head.
One other point too. Your book EFAD, was almost prophetic in nature. Fast and Furious is frighteningly close to a lot in that book. Dealers are being framed in Texas to be the fall guys for the ATF in F&F. People have died over it and all for a political agenda.
This is why idiots like the author of that article are up in arms right now. They know that we, the people like you and I who have stated in the past that things like this would happen are right and that we are both vindicated and justified. They fear that people will take up arms as described in your book and others... and they know that we’ll win if it happens. That scares the hell out of them.
Naw, someone actually stole my dog, at least I think that is what happened to her. Also possible a rattler got her as she loved to kill them.
Looking at the picture it is hard to remember that I once was a young athlete in great shape. I was a sprinter and hurdler in college. Also sometimes threw the javelin, discus and put the shot. I held the Troy University record in the 120 yard (same as 110 meter) high hurdles for 28 years. I was also on the record holding 440 relay team but that record didn’t last long at all.
Back in 1993 a five foot tall, 100 lb. little cutie challenged me to a 50 yard dash. I am sorry to say she beat me quite easily.
J.M. Berger is a journalist who writes about homegrown extremism. He is the author of Jihad Joe: Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam and a recent New America Foundation policy paper on the FBI’s infiltration of the Patriot movement.
Awwwww... only four comments on the site.
Poor J.M.
He must be crying himself to sleep.
My favorite part...
Book three, featuring a corrupt president who invites foreign mercenaries to run rampant on U.S. soil, sees Bracken’s continued stipulations against racism slowly but surely shouted down by the arrival of Earl Turner’s world. After an earthquake demolishes Memphis, black refugees turn into a seething mob of gang-rapists and cannibals—characterizations that feature memorably in The Turner Diaries—while urban blacks loot a path from Baltimore to Washington, D.C., where they demand and receive a new Socialist constitution engineered by a thinly veiled caricature of President Obama.
Gee Matt, I thought FEaT was a novel.
I didn't realize you were doing hard news reporting.
:-)
.
In reply to the writer:
Racism has been the Achilles’ heel of efforts to unify the Patriots for as long as the movement has existed, with different factions embracing wildly different views about whether to embrace it and to what degree.
Funny how those who play identity politics don't have that problem, but then, they are not motivated by love for their country, but by what's in it for them.
The Patriot subset that declines to accept racism continues to cope with the issue unevenly and defensively.
Yep. 'Cause even if you aren't racist, personally, that won't stop those who disagree with you on one precept or another from accusing you of being one, nor will it stop you from being subject to the enmity of others who are. Since those with selfish or evil motivation have great difficulty imagining what is like to be unselfish or good, they project their own rationale on others, and Patriots frequently find themselves on the defensive as a result.
As in mainstream politics, those who wish to participate or influence the direction of the movement face pressure to cater to the radical base.
Only on the left, apparently. 'Radical' Conservatives have spent more time under the right-wing bus than being catered to, even counting the primary season suck-up in an election year (promptly forgotten).
Essentially, though, no one who believes in fundamental God-given Rights will cater to anyone who would diminish those Rights by denying them to anyone without just cause.
The result is a muddled message in which racism may be vocally condemned, but race war is deemed inevitable.
When you are not racist, but find yourself opposed by others who are increasingly and openly racist, it is those who hate you who will draw the battle lines. You don't have to be a racist to be embroiled in a race war, just be the ones attacked by those bent on having one.
I would ask the author just who is most racist in this country, openly and unabashedly so? If the writer is honest, it is not the KKK, it isn't the Stormfront crowd, but those who hide their hate in plain sight with the daily denigration of those they have chosen to hate over verifiable genetics. What's worse, these tidings of hatred are scantily clad in the politics of victimhood, carefully worded to foment more hatred.
No, racism, unfortunately, is being fomented by agitators in a community which has bought into the excuses, divisions, and hatreds they claim to decry in others, with the full cooperation of mass media, even to the point of preying on their own for acting like 'those people'.
Underneath that is an ideology to which groups of people have been subjected, who perhaps were more vulnerable to the seductive mindsets which absolved them of responsibility for their own success and increasingly blamed those who tilted the playing field first to level and then in their favor, the whole while using the blame of those others as an excuse for the decay of their own (sub)culture from within.
The seminal point which evades the author is that the Patriot movement centers around one thing: Love of our country, our Constitution, and our founding principles--that God-given Rights are given to all.
That is an equal opportunity love, open to people of any race or creed who would place Rights for all over the privileges of a few, who value equality in opportunity, not demand equality in outcome. With the Right to prosper comes also the Right to fail, and any decision of the prosperous to share their provender with those less fortunate lies with the prosperous, and not the mob nor those who would allegedly represent the allegedly downtrodden by forcibly removing that prosperity for the purpose of exchanging it for power, thus treading on the Rights of others.
It is those people who will stand for these Rights whom I would gladly call brother or sister, regardless of the color of their skin.
It is principle, not some superficiality, which is the deciding factor in who is a Patriot.
That may be difficult to capture in a sound-byte, it may be hard to package in a tidy wrapper, because Patriots come from virtually all walks of life, backgrounds, and ethnicity, with varying degrees of education, and from a wide variety of trades. Trying to pack all into one mold is like herding cats; it defies the triviality of modern commentary.
Only you can say, Johnny, but if you were comfortable with her and she with you, you should have brought her with you. (jmho)
You dodged a bullet and no divorce lawyers are in your future....good job..:O)
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