Present-Day White Nationalist Right (1980–2015) in Light of Current Research

Current research into the American white nationalist movement has tapered off somewhat from its heyday in the mid-late 1990s. The reasons for this are unclear, despite the fact that the mid-late 1980s saw the rise of a resurgent and more militant KKK, a new white nationalist movement came to the fore in the early 1990s, the militia movement, with two other movements taking up when the militia movement petered out after the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995—

62 J. M. Berger, “Mongol Hordes Take Manhattan,” Foreign Policy, Nov. 21, 2012, http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/11/21/mongol-hordes-take-manhattan/ (access: 08.16. 2015).

the white separatist movement and the neo-Confederate movement. At present, scholars appear to have abrogated research into the movement to various nonacademic entities, though academic works on the various aspects of white nationalism have appeared from time to time. Today, the white separatist movement is basically centered in the Pacific Northwest—the states of Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming, with the Neo-Confederate movement concentrated in the states that made up the former Confederacy.

Of the only two studies of the Neo-Confederate movement, Euan Hague, Heidi Beirich and Edward H. Sebesta’s Neo-Confederacy: A Critical Introduction (2008) and James W.

Loewen and Edward H. Sebesta’s The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader: The “Great Truth” about the “Lost Cause” (2010), only the former one features a chapter on literature. Yet, while the chapter—written by Kevin Hicks—examines a few of the older works, it completely ignores the revolutionary titles of Gregory Kay and his Third Revolution quartet. Furthermore, only one of the two studies references the leading publication of the Neo-Confederate movement, Southern Partisan. While not fiction, this journal was extremely influential in defining the ideology of the neo-Confederate movement and what the movement was fighting for, this idea being echoed in the handful of novels produced by supporters of the movement. While not specifically mentioned in the novels of the neo-Confederacy movement, Southern Partisan, through its articles and editorials reinforced the ideology advocated in the novels of the neo-Confederate movement, and, to a certain extent, the white nationalist movement as a whole.

Moreover, by the time the above two works had been published, Southern Partisan had issued an anthology of what the editors considered its best articles in 1993 and entitled it So Good A Cause: The First Decade of the Southern Partisan.⁶³ Interestingly, while focusing on what they considered to be the ‘documents’ of the neo-Confederate movement, the editors of The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader ignored the Southern Partisan and any novel associated with the neo-Confederate movement, thus reinforcing the need for the present study.

Besides the first flowering of white nationalist fiction in the first half of the 20^th century, no other period in the history of American literature has produced more white nationalist fiction than the first two decades of the 21^st century. The election of Bill Clinton in 1992 saw the collapse of the old Christian Right and the rise of a new, ‘militant militia’ and white separatist

63 Oran P. Smith, So Good A Cause: A Decade of Southern Partisan (Columbia, SC: Foundation for American Education, 1993).

movements, which had been festering on the fringes of American politics since the early 1980s⁶⁴. The victory of the political correctness movement and various rights movements, first on college campuses, then in American society overall, coupled with changing demographics, led to the rise of white nationalist concerns over the rights of the white majority being ‘trampled on’ by an overbearing Federal government.⁶⁵ The white separatist movement grew out of the old, ‘hard’

Christian (Protestant) Right and dovetailed quite nicely with the militia movement in the Great Plains. As with many racist right movements, the old ‘hard’ Christian right, to use Ribuffo’s terminology, and the militia movement in the Great Plains, come from the same milieu—that of the traditional, ultraconservative wing of the American Protestant faith. Both groups took an extremely hard line against communism and socialism in the United States, and both were highly suspicious of federal involvement with enforcing certain aspects of social engineering—the old Protestant Right with enforcement of the Civil Rights Act and Brown vs. Board of Education, the militia movement with enforcement of various environmental regulations, bussing and affirmative action.

The first book to explore the explosion of violence by the Great Plains militiamen against various law enforcement agencies was written by a journalist, James Coates. In 1987, he released the work Armed and Dangerous: The Rise of the Survivalist Right.⁶⁶ Coates’ study, along with Rural Radicals: From Bacon’s Rebellion to the Oklahoma City Bombing by Catherine Stock McNichol, could provide the basis for any study of the farm crisis in the Plains states and the resulting rise of the Posse Comitatus and associated militia groups. Other scholars, admittedly,

64 Conservatives and the far right view political correctness as a ‘movement’ that wants to destroy American culture and society. In particular, the writings of Richard Rorty, Gramsci, and other postmodernists/politically correct advocates seem to point to a movement to reshape American society in the image of Marxist philosophy as

interpreted by the French New Political left—Derrida, Foucault , and other “paragons of virtue and diversity”. Since all of them are Marxists, including the members of the Frankfurt School, as observed by various Conservative commentators, including Stephen R. C. Hicks, author of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (Tempe, AZ: Scholargy, 2004), the far right is particularly suspicious of its usage in history.

65 See Flyover Nation: You Can’t Run a Country You’ve Never Been To by Dana Loesch (New York: Penguin, 2016).

For more background on the Farm Crisis of the 1980s, see Osha Gray Davidson, Broken Heartland: The Rise of America’s Rural Ghetto (New York: Doubleday, 1991), Brian Mann, Welcome to the Homeland: A Journey to the Rural Heart of America’s Conservative Revolution (Hanover, NH: Steerforth Press, 2006), Maryanne Vollers, Lone Wolf: Eric Rudolph and the Legacy of American Terror (New York: Harper, 2006), and finally, James Corcoran’s aforementioned work on Gordon Kahl and the Posse Comitatus. See as well, James C. Coates, Armed and Dangerous: The Rise of the Survivalist Right (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995). Originally published in 1987.

Catherine Stock McNichol, Rural Radicals: From Bacon’s Rebellion to the Oklahoma City Bombing (New York:

Penguin, 1997). Originally published by Cambridge University Press, 1996.

66 James C. Coates, Armed and Dangerous: The Rise of the Survivalist Right (Hill and Wang, 1995). Originally published in 1987. Catherine Stock McNichol, Rural Radicals: From Bacon’s Rebellion to the Oklahoma City Bombing (New York: Penguin, 1997). Originally published by Cambridge University Press in 1996.

were slow to catch on to the growing power of both the militia movement and the white separatist movement, but by the late 1990s several new studies (mentioned below) that plotted the course of the movement and the reasons behind it had been published. Both Coates and McNichol do an exacting job of examining the milieu of the rise of the right in the Plains states during the late 1970s and early 1980s. While Coates’ work is more of a detailed study of the underground politics and worldview of the Posse Comitatus and associated groups, McNichol takes a broader approach and looks at the roots of rural discontent.

In general, the studies emerging over the past thirty years, from 1984 to 2015, can be divided into several interconnected but independent groups: studies on the militia movement that serve as warnings; monographs on specific events, groups or leaders; and studies that attempt to analyze the roots of the movement. Among the first set of books, many were published after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, and shed light on the growing discontent of the majority white populations of the Great Plains and Pacific Northwest states regarding the ways in which they feel the federal government has treated them with the most recent eruptions being the 2016 Bundy Ranch standoff over federal land grazing rights and the 2017 Wildlife Refuge Standoff which resulted in the death of Levoy Finicum. The most frequently cited works include Kenneth S. Stern’s A Force Upon the Plain: The American Militia Movement and the Politics of Hate (1996), James Aho’s The Politics of Righteousness: Idaho Christian Patriotism (1999), and Richard Abanes’ American Militias: Rebellion, Racism and Religion (1996).⁶⁷ Stern’s and Abanes’ studies both follow the same path, as they track the story of the white supremacist militia movement to warn the American reading public about the dangers of these groups. None of these studies, however, examine any fiction other than the one novel that inspired the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Pierce’s The Turner Diaries. Moreover, they only allude to Pierce’s work to show how Timothy McVeigh and the other conspirators drew inspiration from the novel while preparing their attack. Indeed, neither Stern nor Abanes examine any of the historical precedents that influenced the formation of the movement, the books that inspired the author of The Turner Diaries nor any of the fiction that the movement had produced up to that point. Aho’s book is a sociological study on the members of some of the Christian Patriot (militia) groups,

67 Kenneth S. Stern, A Force Upon the Plain: The American Militia Movement and the Politics of Hate (New York:

Simon and Schuster, 1996), James A. Aho, The Politics of Righteousness: Idaho Christian Patriotism (Seattle, WA:

University of Washington Press, 1995), paperback edition, Richard Abanes, American Militias: Rebellion, Racism and Religion (Downers Grove, IN: InterVarsity Press, 1996).

KKK, neo-Nazi and other assorted organizations in the state of Idaho. As a sociologist, Aho is meticulous in examining the members’ socio-economic backgrounds and other factors that motivated them to join the groups under study; however, like most of the researchers cited in this chapter, he does not examine any of the novels produced by the Aryan Nations or associated organizations, though he does examine The Turner Diaries, yet the Aryan Nations did publish one novel and distributed various others. Being based in Idaho, the Aryan Nations provided a focal point for the white separatist movement that is actively working for the establishment of a whites-only homeland in the Pacific Northwest, with Covington’s aforementioned Northwest Novels constituting the major mythos. Admittedly, Aho’s and the other books mentioned in this section do not concentrate on novels; however, their exclusive examination of The Turner Diaries reveals a one-sided approach to white separatist fiction.

Indeed, while white separatism has been the subject for various studies, however, none of them specifically examine white nationalist fiction within it. The first academic study of the modern white separatist movement in the United States was Betty A. Dobratz and Stephanie L.

Shanks-Meile’s “White Power, White Pride!”: The White Separatist Movement in the United States.⁶⁸ As with many studies of this sort, the monograph provides a satisfactory overview of the white nationalist movement in the United States, with chapters covering gender relationships, historical background, important personalities and groups, etc., but it entirely neglects white nationalist fiction. Focusing on the Pacific Northwest white separatist movement, two books have been produced—David A. Neiwert’s In God’s Country: The Patriot Movement and the Pacific Northwest and 2006’s Aryan Cowboys: White Supremacists and the Search for a New Frontier, 1970-2000 by Evelyn Schlatter.⁶⁹ As with other works in this section, the only piece of fiction mentioned in these studies is Pierce’s ubiquitous The Turner Diaries. While Neiwert had very little fiction to examine mainly because the white separatist movement had not yet really caught on within white nationalist circles, in her study of the Aryan Cowboys Schlatter had the opportunity to address at least ten different novels, but ignored them, hence reinforcing the need for the current project. However, one book published in the mid-1990s had an overwhelming impact on the way many scholars looked at the problem of white nationalism in the United

68 Betty A. Dobratz and Stephanie Shanks-Meile. “White Power, White Pride!”: The White Separatist Movement in the United States (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1997).

69 David A. Neiwert, In God’s Country: The Patriot Movement and the Pacific Northwest (Seattle, WA: Washington State University Press, 1999), Evelyn A. Schlatter Aryan Cowboys: White Supremacists and the Search for a New Frontier, 1970–2000 (Austin, TX: University Press of Texas, 2006).

States, namely James Gibson’s Warrior Dreams: Violence and Manhood in Post-Vietnam America.

In Warrior Dreams, Gibson examined men’s adventure novels of post-Vietnam America and the gun culture prevalent in rural and small-town America.⁷⁰ The book had a tremendous impact on other researchers, as it is documented by the bibliographies of most works on the white nationalist movement published after 1994, and while Gibson studied the pulp paperbacks of a particular genre, namely the men’s adventure novels that were published in the post-Vietnam era 1975–1995, to a certain extent his analysis is applicable to the present work. Namely, he examines novels as cultural artifacts that mirror a particular subculture’s beliefs and fears.

Furthermore, his sociological approach has informed the present work’s historical stance in examining the “culture of defeat” though this work expands upon Warrior Dreams by taking it into a more revolutionary genre. Taking their cues from Gibson, two authors published books that took a feminist approach to the study of white nationalism, Jessie Daniels’ White Lies: Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality in White Supremacist Discourse (1997) and Abby L. Ferber’s White Man Falling: Race, Gender and White Supremacy (1998).⁷¹ While both of those books, along with the Michael Kimmel’s 2013 study Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era, were influenced by Gibson’s research, unlike him, they take the approach that the changing demographics have forced white heterosexual men to ‘take a back seat’ in America’s political and social life. Therefore, their reaction to this state of affairs might take the form of listening to “rage radio,” but it might also push some to drift into the ranks of the white nationalist/white supremacist/white separatist militia groups. Daniels’ book mostly examines the small ‘party’ newspapers that were distributed on the basis of miniscule mailing lists. For her part, Ferber’s analysis is based more on third wave feminist theory and Freudian analysis of homoeroticism than is Daniels’; however, neither of the authors analyses any form of white

‘supremacist’ fiction. Furthermore, their analysis of the militia movement within the United States and white nationalism in general lacks a solid grounding in the U.S. history, as in their respective argumentations the they both fail to include the importance of the sense of grief, loss and trauma experienced by certain sectors of the white population, in the context of the dilemmas

70 James Gibson, Warrior Dreams: Violence and Manhood in Post-Vietnam America (New York: Hill and Wang, 1994).

71 Jessie Daniels, White Lies: Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality in White Supremacist Discourse (New York:

Routledge, 1997), Abby L. Ferber, White Man Falling: Race, Gender and White Supremacy (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999). Paperback edition. Originally published in 1998.

related to some of the already mentioned socially progressive issues. In general, Daniels’ and Ferber’s books are worthy introductions to the study of white nationalism, if used cautiously:

some of their conclusions as to why American white nationalism attracts its followers seem to be overly grounded in feminist theory alone, and hence, in the context of the present work, their explanatory power is limited. Kimmel’s study, on the other hand, is an interesting overview of the problems that white men face at the dawn of the second decade of the 21^st century. However, like Daniels and Ferber, Kimmel denounces that with which he disagrees without scrutinizing the historical basis of the belief, though his book is better balanced in dissecting the root psychological causes of the phenomena of the ‘angry white male’ than either Daniels’ or Ferber’s. In general, all three books concentrate on the critique of what they see as racist and non-Progressive without examining the roots of the ideology. Kimmel, in particular, disagreeing with everything that appears to define contemporary white nationalist culture—love of guns, taking pleasure in associating exclusively with members of the white race, and advocating more traditional gender relationships—seems to express his own weltanschauung, rather than delve into the psychological, cultural and material roots of the phenomena he describes.

As the above overview demonstrates, within the space of modern American white nationalism, the only author who has garnered some scholarly and critical attention is the author of The Turner Diaries, William L. Pierce—(nom de plume ‘Andrew MacDonald’). Indeed, it seemed that Pierce enjoyed the notoriety and never shunned the opportunity for an interview, as is apparent in 2003’s Contemporary Voices of White Nationalism in America in which Pierce conducted a lengthy interview with the authors.⁷² While basically a collection of interviews, the book offers a section on Pierce, in which the authors provide some insight into his motivation for writing The Turner Diaries. The above notwithstanding, the editors do little to provide background material on the development of white nationalism up to the time of writing and fail to sufficiently explain the impact of the novel on other writers.

The only biography of Pierce, Fame of A Dead Man’s Deeds by Robert S. Griffin, which made its appearance in 2001,⁷³ tracks the writer’s life and work within white nationalist circles.

In such a context, creating chapters on The Turner Diaries and Hunter (Pierce’s 1985 ‘lone wolf’

72 Carol M. Swain and Russ Nieli, editors, Contemporary Voices of White Nationalism in America (New York:

Cambridge University Press, 2003).

73 Robert S. Griffin, Fame of A Dead Man’s Deeds: An Up-Close Portrait of White Nationalist William Pierce (No place of publisher: No Publisher, 2001).

novel), Griffin presents Pierce as one of those writers who served as a conduit for some of the older ideas among the ‘hard Christian Right’ of Pelley, Smith and Winrod as examined by Ribuffo and the ‘new’ white nationalist right of Rockwell and Covington, as analyzed by Leonard Zeskind.

Lastly, the 2009 publication by longtime anti-racist activist and famed researcher Leonard Zeskind Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream includes several chapters on Pierce.⁷⁴ However, for all of Zeskind’s monumental work (the book covers the emergence of the modern American white nationalist movement from the mid-1950s to 2004 in 542 pages), he only examines The Turner Diaries. Although more than 20 titles representing the genre had been published between 1990 and 2004, including the first volume of Gregory Kay’s Neo-Confederate revolutionary quartet The Third Revolution (2004), Covington’s Fire and Rain (2000), Slow Coming Dark: A Novel of the Age of Clinton (2000), and The Hill of the Ravens (also known as T. H. O. R.—2003), along with late Order member David Lane’s KD Rebel (2004), Zeskind omits them in his study. Likewise, even though Zeskind classifies Pat Buchanan as a white nationalist, Buchanan is more of a Christian conservative, or, more accurately a conservative American nationalist. If Buchanan is a Christian conservative then Zeskind could have made reference to the two Christian Patriot novels by Larry Burkett—

The Illuminati (1993) and The Thor Conspiracy: The Seventy-Hour Countdown to Disaster (1995), or mentioned the myriad of other pro-Christian and/or anti-establishment novels, such as John Ross’ Unintended Consequences: A Novel, which is essentially a pro-2^nd Amendment ‘guns

The Illuminati (1993) and The Thor Conspiracy: The Seventy-Hour Countdown to Disaster (1995), or mentioned the myriad of other pro-Christian and/or anti-establishment novels, such as John Ross’ Unintended Consequences: A Novel, which is essentially a pro-2^nd Amendment ‘guns