Blood Memory

In white nationalist fiction, ‘blood memory’ is related to the racial spirit of a particular individual. While some, though not all, white nationalist authors will admit that other races have a ‘racial spirit,’ in white nationalist fiction, whites have the highest form of racial spirit and awareness. This spirit is inside all whites, according to the writings of various white racialist theoreticians, and it only takes a spark or small event to awaken it. ‘Blood’ or ‘racial’ memory has been an important trope in various forms of American literature, ranging from white nationalist to American Indian to various ‘ethnic’ novels. It is interesting to note that while many scholars have accepted that American Indians can have an ‘ethnic’ memory or ‘blood memory,’

they scoff at such ideas being present in any other culture besides American Indian.¹³²

The novels of white nationalism are based on a succinct understanding of race and one’s racial spirit. In contemporary white nationalist fiction the best example of the idea of having a racial or blood memory, the memory of one’s blood and how that racial memory reacts in times of crisis is the second novel in Covington’s Northwest Novels series, A Distant Thunder, which was published in 2004. In the novel, a future historian of the NAR (Northwest American Republic—the all-white country established in the Pacific Northwest by white racial separatists) is recording the reminisces of Shane Ryan, a former guerrilla fighter in the NVA (Northwest Volunteer Army) and his experiences during the fight for freedom that eventually saw the formation of the NAR, a white racial homeland and independent nation, in the states of Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming and the western third of Montana. Ryan is attached to a ‘crew’ of resistance fighters that operate in cells; however, they also can combine for a major operation.

One such operation involves the killing of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, a so-called

‘BK’ (‘Burger King’ or ‘Big Kike,’ used in Covington’s Northwest Novels to indicate a Jewish member of the ruling class), Sammy Rothstein. During the operation, Rothstein and his black

132 On ‘blood’ or ‘genetic’ memory, see http://tpcjournal.nbcc.org/examining-the-theory-of-historical-trauma-among-native-americans/.

bodyguard escape from the ambush and attempt to hide in the forest. Shane Ryan narrates the scene:

The black was in charge, and he feared the Northern forest. He didn’t understand it. If he’d just had sense enough to run and hide in the woods until help came, then he and Rothstein might both have made it. Hell, I wasn’t Daniel Boone. What was I going to do? Track them by their scent? But in moments of stress, racial and genetic instinct always comes to the fore. This wasn’t Africa. This was the ancient landscape of my people, not his. Homey knew in his soul he was in De White Folks’ House, and it overwhelmed him. The black man dared not face an Aryan warrior in the green forest of the Northland from which I and all of mine had sprung. It was in his very blood to avoid that. Instinctively, probably not even realizing what he was doing or understanding why, he was heading back to what he knew. Asphalt and concrete (Covington 2004, 39).

As authors, Covington and other American National Socialist authors, like KD Rebel author David Lane have a particular way of presenting racial memory. In essence, racial memory appears in combat or times of stress. While the theory is that each white person (who is ‘truly’

white and not an admixture of other races), has a racial memory, it does not surface until one is under immense psychological pressure, for instance, the ‘fight or flight’ mechanism. This aspect flows into the theory of redemption and also of being ‘bewitched’ by progressivism or liberalism with its accompanying ideologies of “cultural Marxism.” While only some whites experience the essence of blood memory in the novels, it appears to be one of the most important aspects within the novels that all whites can experience if they could only reject the conditioning that modern society has subjected them to.

One of the ways in which blood memory asserts itself is by rejecting the ‘Jewish’-inspired religion of Christianity and returning to the pagan gods of the ancient Teutons and Norse. In O. T. Gunnarsson’s 1993 novel Hear the Cradle Song, one of the main characters, Don Saxena explains the problem with Christianity and its concept of ‘winning by losing’:

“Well let’s see, we imported them [immigrants] into our countries from the third world, then we gave up our territory for their benefit, then we provided them with housing paid for by our tax dollars! But we didn’t stop there, oh no! Then we gave them an education paid for by our tax dollars, and we made sure they had advantages for being hired in the job place over us through those affirmative action guidelines[…]We let them turn our neighborhoods into slums, our cities into crime-ridden wastelands, our schools in to jungles and we kept forgiving and understanding and sacrificing more and more! Why, we sacrificed our whole culture and background with it’s [sic] traditions and promoted their primitive, tribal monkey-shines and we adapted to their needs in our own countries. We became last so they could be first! We practiced the Savior’s recommendation of ‘give to every man that asketh of thee’ until now, we don’t have a country anymore (Gunnarsson 1993, 156).

Since Christianity is the dominant religion of most whites, it is thought by many white nationalists that a return to the ancient pagan religions of Europe, particularly Scandinavia will

place the white race back in touch with its racial heritage.¹³³ In a further part of the book when the last community of whites and Jews in California is in danger of being overrun by Aztlan forces (the expanded Mexican state which has taken over California and the American Southwest) forces, another main character, Styrbjorn Tagesson reinforces the belief in blood memory through his speech to his men before the battle:

“Remember, in the myths Thor fights and slays enemies for the protection and well-being of the other gods and goddesses as well as for progress and expansion! Are you going to keep fighting until the last threat is destroyed?! Until the last alien is driven out of our territories starting with this community?! Will you find that invisible thread that reaches back through the distant corridors of time and connects you with those mighty heroes of old?! And will you let their power flow into you, their descendants, though that great thread, and laugh in the face of death […]” (Gunnarsson 1993, 275).

In the next paragraph, the ideology of the present permutations of pagan white nationalism harken back to the post-World War One German Freikorps and their rejection of modernist ideology:

The men were now whipped into a complete state of warlike fury. As they stood there in front of their Chief, clutching their weapons and breathing hard with eyes aflame, they felt a mixture of enthusiasm and melancholy for those of their race who were now part of the past. They would not be fighting for the Stars and Stripes, or for George Washington’s vision, or for the Constitution. They would enter into battle fighting for future, as yet unborn generations and with a desire to do honor to those of their race who had won glory and renown in the heroic ages long ago. Modernism and all of its distorted and limp components didn’t treat consideration in the minds of Syrbjorn’s warriors. They saw no value in the current way of living and felt they [sic] there was nothing worth salvaging in it—to them everything worthwhile hinged on connecting with the power of those who had long since passed and with those yet to appear in an atmosphere of progress, cleanliness, and happiness, and nothing short of physical annihilation would stop them (Gunnarsson 1993, 275-276).

It is this rejection of modernism and its accompanying “race destroying” ideologies that weigh heavily on white nationalist authors. Within the novels, the hero or heroine normally comes to the realization slowly and it starts with a worrying thought or minor incident that grows into a realization that the races are not the same and that they have been out of touch with their “true”

heritage and soul for years. This idea hits hard with the hero of Ward Kendall’s 2001 dystopian novel, Hold Back This Day. In the novel, the omnipotent World Gov controls everything and everyone. It has enforced miscegenation, sometimes at the point of the bayonet and has attempted to wipe out all traces of the different races but in particular, the white race.

133 See Mattias Gardell, Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), particularly Chapter 4: “Wolf-Age Pagans: The Odinist Call of Aryan Revolutionary Paganism” and Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity (New York: New York University Press, 2002), namely Chapter 13: “Nordic Racial Paganism”.

Jeff Huxton, the hero of Hold Back This Day, experiences an inkling of discomfort that will become a rebellion against World Gov when he and his family are traveling through Africa on a monorail,

[…]scanning the dark faces rowed behind him. Not one even remotely resembled his own, he realized. Not one stared back at him with eyes other than dark, or had skin other than brown. It was not so strange when one remembered that this was a monorail passing through the dark heart of Africa—until one realized that this journey had originated in Europe, and that these passengers on holiday were mostly native-born residents of that region. For a moment, Jeff felt an uneasiness stir within him, as if every dark eye behind him were fixed against his own blue ones in one remorseless implacable scrutiny (Kendall 2011 [2001], 2).

Jeff Huxton’s ‘uneasiness’ would grow into a remorseless revolt at the omnipotent World Gov and eventually, he would find himself on Mars where the last refuge of the white race had fled to escape World Gov and its forced miscegenation.

The last few remaining pure whites had taken refuge in the Avalon colony, which had been established by the United States in 2073 on Mars. As he approaches the colony, the trope of racial memory comes to the fore and reinforces several other ideas commonly found in the genre.

Hence, the book will be quoted at length:

Ahead, the towers of Avalon beckoned.

Beckoned to every gene and fiber in his body, like some ancient call to one’s earliest beginnings. He was coming home at last, a wayward son of his Race now returning to fight a last battle against extinction.

There would be others like him, sturdy men of Anglo- Saxon and Teutonic and Scandinavian heritage, men with a thousand years of unmatchable courage coursing through their veins. And beside them would stand other men; men whose ancestors had risen along the halcyon shores of the Mediterranean, descendants of those who had pondered the universe and forged the foundation of all the world’s knowledge. They too, side by side with their Northern brothers, would wage their last battle against the extinction of their common Race.

And against them would stand the mongrelized hordes of a multiculturalized humanity, those nineteen billion who had stolen the glories of a civilization they themselves could neither equal nor achieve.

For such was the alpha and the omega of his people, Jeff realized, here upon these alien red sands. And if this was so, then what greater honor could he ever know than to die here at their side (Kendall 2011 [2001], 184-185)?

This quote illustrates several points that are important in understanding the defeated culture of contemporary American white nationalism. While it reinforces the idea of the “calling of one’s blood,” it also buttresses the argument that all European descended peoples are of one race, that the white race has been the progenitors of civilization to the exclusion of other races and that that race is under threat of extinction. In that sense, this quote serves as simultaneously a warning and a lamentation. The warning comes from those naysayers that say that multiculturalism is a good thing for everyone, including whites, and a lamentation for the idea that so many whites are prodigal sons and daughters, forgetting about their family—the white race.

Gregory Kay’s neo-Confederate The Third Revolution cycle features two major instances of blood memory. In the first novel, the paramilitary white Southern revolutionaries, the Confederate Army Provisional or CAP are being tracked by the paramilitary forces of the FBI, BATFE (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives—commonly, ATF) and DHS (Department of Homeland Security). When their farm hideout is attacked, one of the main characters, former reporter Samantha Norris flees with another revolutionary, a big biker named Billy. As they approach a roadblock, Billy makes the decision to ram it:

“Hang on!” he shouted. “We’re going through!” Then he threw his head back and let out an inarticulate primordial battle cry that would not have been out of place on a Viking raid, a band of painted Celts sweeping down on a Roman legion, or rising from the Southern Armies [sic!] during Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg. Samantha was startled to hear a similar cry coming involuntarily from her own throat like a previously unknown yet irrepressible atavistic racial memory as their truck slammed into the roadblock at nearly seventy miles an hour (Kay 2004,283).

The “atavistic racial memory” always seems to take over when in battle, according to most white nationalist authors. Furthermore, the main character of the novels, former police officer Frank Gore, seems to have a ‘romantic’ and ‘pagan’ feeling about his ancestors. In the second of Kay’s Third Revolution cycle, The Third Revolution II: The Long Knives, Gore is talking to a rough and tumble former special forces soldier, Rob, about the path that the revolution has taken and the problems that might occur when it turns into a race war between blacks and whites:

“If it’s any comfort, Frank, nobody else really likes it either, not even the hard core racists like Hodges and some of the other skins [skinheads] when you really get down to it. It’s just one of those things, like in nature: sometimes one thing has to die so something else can live. Lord knows they’ve been killing us piecemeal long enough.”

“I know; that’s why I can accept it, regardless of how abhorrent it is. Like you said it’s nature, survival of the fittest. I don’t hate colored people as individuals, Rob; some of them, like Jennie May Summers, I loved almost like my own family. Still, as a race they’re among the enemies of my people, and it’s my own people I’m responsible to first. I’ve got to see to it that they live, whatever the cost to those outside. […]

“Besides standing before God, some day [sic!] I’ll have to face my people that have gone on before. This may sound heathenistic, but I firmly believe they’ll ask me what I did with their legacy, and what I did to keep our line and the dreams they fought for while alive. I reckon I’d better have a good answer ready, because a man who won’t fight for his own isn’t a man at all” (Kay 2006, 376-377).

The point that is buttressed with this quote is not only the idea of racial memory but that all whites are part of one racial family and that one must continue to honor their memory. In the neo-Confederate novels in particular, one’s actions must reflect the honor the sacrifices of those Confederates who fought during the American Civil War. Racial memory is present but it takes a time of stress, like battle, for it to come to the forefront of one’s personality. However, once they

‘remember’ their racial heritage, the act of redemption follows, and it is to that theme that this work turns.