Cycle Three: The Threat of Tribulation. The First Red Scare and Yellow Peril novels (1878–1944)

From the period of 1941 to the publication of The Turner Diaries in book form in 1978, almost no white nationalist novels were written, though two ‘British Israel’ novels were published. The idea of ‘British Israelism’ transmogrified into the current faith of Christian Identity and the novels were published by the British Israel Association of Greater Vancouver.¹¹⁶ Basically, this era was overshadowed by World War Two, the Cold War (the fight against communism both at home and abroad), the first stirrings of the civil rights movement, and finally, the triumph of the civil rights movement and the ‘second Reconstruction.’ For the first part of this era, nascent white nationalists would have been considered part of the ‘hard’

Christian right. However, their views would not have been out of sync with most white Americans at that time, though they might have expressed themselves in more radical ways.

Therefore, the only novel of substance and one that would play an important role in the writing of The Turner Diaries was the anonymously written novel The John Franklin Letters. Basically, this novel purports to be the letters of one John Franklin to his uncle. Franklin was a member of the ‘Patriots,’ an armed group of resisters to the Communist takeover of the United States.

Essentially, William L. Pierce took the structure and format of The John Franklin Letters for his novel—The Turner Diaries. The John Franklin Letters is an anti-communist novel that warns of

116 Both novels were written by H. Ben Judah and entitled Mog and Magog (Vancouver, BC: British Israel

Association of Greater Vancouver, 1942) and When?: A Prophetical Novel of the Very Near Future (Vancouver BC:

British Israel Association of Greater Vancouver, 1944).

the dangers of the ‘fifth column’ of communists and other ‘subversives’ present in the United States. It cannot be considered a white nationalist novel because at the end of the novel, a black former ‘Patriot’ is elected president of the U. S. and no white nationalist would write this into his novel unless it was to tear the character down and show him as corrupt, stupid, or a pawn in the hands of the Jews.

In general, while modern white nationalist fiction started with The Turner Diaries, written by William L. Pierce and published in 1978 in book form, there have been other cycles and influences upon the themes of the novels as mentioned above. Subsequently, the first cycle of modern white nationalist fiction can be viewed as responding to, not only the defeat of the Confederacy, but more importantly the triumph of the black civil rights movement and integration of the public schools of the early-mid 1970s, along with the general loosening of morality and the various social upheavals that the United States experienced in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The publication of The Turner Diaries did not raise much of a stir among what was becoming the racist/racialist right, the embryonic white nationalist movement. It was not until the early 1980s when The Order violently burst onto the scene in the Pacific Northwest that law enforcement, academics, and the underground racialist right took note of this soon-to-be underground classic. The Order, also known as The Silent Brotherhood engaged in a string of armored car robberies and murder in the early 1980s. One of its members, the David Lane, would become something of a sage to American and later, worldwide white nationalism with his famous 14 Words and 88 Precepts. It is the Order’s actions, taken from the novel and later, Timothy McVeigh’s obsessive compulsion regarding the novel that has brought it notoriety.¹¹⁷ 3.2.4 Cycle Four: The Peril of Perfidy. American White Nationalism Finds Its Voice (1975–

2001)

The next cycle of novels to appear would start with the publication of Hunter in 1985 and end with the publication of Ward Kendall’s Hold Back This Day in 2001, the most well-known of the ‘racist science fiction’ sub-genre. During this period, white nationalism started to stake out its territory and define its beliefs, along with pushing the boundaries of free speech and good taste.

Novels such as Serpent’s Walk (Randolph Calverhall—1991, Hear the Cradle Song (O. T.

117 The best book on The Order is by Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt, The Silent Brotherhood: The Chilling Inside Story of America’s Violent, Anti-Government Militia Movement (New York: Penguin Books, 1990). For Timothy McViegh and the Oklahoma City bombing, see Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing (New York: HarperCollins, 2001).

Gunnarsson—1994), The Savaged States of America (Kevin Beary—1998), which is more of an anti-Political Correctness novel, and Children of the Ice (authored by Joseph Walthers—1992) would only be read by white nationalists, while most scholars of the movement concentrated on its erstwhile leaders or various groups including the growing Posse Comitatus movement in the Plains states and the ‘militia’ movement. The novels during this time period show a mounting distrust of central authority, a definite hatred of urban life and a rejection of materialism and cosmopolitanism. During this time as well, a few novels were published that struck cords with the embryonic ‘neo-Confederate’ movement, including The Unlifted Curse by Emory Burke (1992).

The influence of neo-Nazism, represented by George Lincoln Rockwell’s American Nazi Party, along with the scriptural support given by Christian Identity, once known as British Israelism, gave members of the Posse Comitatus an almost religious vision of who their enemies were—‘Jewish’ bankers, ‘traitorous’ politicians, the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies. This era culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing of April 17, 1995. While Timothy McVeigh and others of his ilk looked upon the confrontation between federal law enforcement officers and various individuals and groups like Randy Weaver in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, and Gordan Kahl in the Plains states as evidence of the federal government’s nefarious intentions, it was The Turner Diaries from which he took inspiration for the bombing that killed over 150 people.¹¹⁸ Furthermore, it was The Order, also known as The Silent Brotherhood, that also took inspiration from the novel to ‘wage war’ against the federal government in the Pacific Northwest and attack other forces that were perceived as enemies of the ‘white’ race.

Basically, the novels written in this era fall into two categories—political polemics disguised as novels or novels with racial elements that have a racial message hidden in the text.

Admittedly, there is a lot of overlap and the distinctions are not quite as clear cut as it first might appear. For instance, the anti-Political Correctness novel written by Kevin Beary, The Savaged States of America is full of lampooning barbs directed at the ‘idiocies’ of political correctness

118 For more information, see James Corcoran, Bitter Harvest: Gordon Kahl and the Posse Comitatus: Murder in the Heartland (New York; Penguin Books, 1991), Osha Gray Davidson, Broken Heartland: The Rise of America’s Rural Ghetto (New York: Doubleday, 1990), Brian Mann, Welcome to the Heartland: A Journey to the Rural Heart of America’s Conservative Revolution (Hanover, NH: Steerforth Press, 2006), and Catherine McNicol Stock, Rural Radicals: From Bacon’s Rebellion to the Oklahoma City Bombing (New York: Penguin Press, 1997). Originally published by Cornell University Press, 1996.

taken to its extremes. However, the novel is not as racially charged as others published during the same time period like Children of the Ice, which was written by Joseph Walthers and published in 1992. Walthers’ novel is a story of lost innocence regained by whites finding their ‘racial destiny,’ with the title of the novel being an allusion to the Nazi belief that the ‘Aryan’ race developed in the Artic north in the ancient past.¹¹⁹ The novel was published under the auspices of the Church of Jesus Christ Christian Aryan Nations—better known simply as ‘Aryan Nations,’ so its message should not be surprising. However, what might be surprising is the fact that no scholar of the racist right mentions the novel at all, nor any other novel besides The Turner Diaries. This is the sad state of research on novels of the white nationalist right in the United States. As has been shown with Timothy McVeigh and The Order, ignoring the message of these novels and their appeal to certain groups and individuals is perilous.

Another novel published during this period, Hear the Cradle Song, written by O. T.

Gunnarsson and published in 1993 brings the message of racial separation to the fore but also adds a heady dose of social Darwinism to the plot as well. As the United States collapses into ethnic strife and chaos, a band of white revolutionaries sets out to rescue a group of whites trapped in the suburbs of Los Angeles. In the group are the parents of a physically handicapped boy who are forced to choose between their lives and the life of their son as the gangs of

‘Mexican’ thugs are closing in. The main character mentions that being “kind to this child is actually what killed them. […] It would have been better to abort the child to save him pain and the parents untold grief when he is finally killed” (Gunnarsson 1993, 82, 154). While this idea of aborting the mentally and physically handicapped is abhorrent to modern sensibilities, it dovetails perfectly with the ways in which National Socialist-inspired novels view humanity and the ways in which humans (read ‘Aryans’/’whites’) can improve their lives and the life of their race.

The last novel of this period is the aforementioned novel by Ward Kendall, Hold Back This Day. Described by H. A. Covington, one of the most outspoken advocates of racial separation, as “A white man’s 1984,” Hold Back This Day contains all the tropes mentioned thus far: namely redemption, the ‘hypocrisy’ of the progressive political left, the supposed inferiority of non-whites, the nefarious nature of the opponents of white nationalism but it also reengaged a

119 For more information on this topic, see the current author’s article “The Riddle of Thule: In Search of the Crypto-History of a Racially Pure White Utopia” in Alicja Bemben, Rafał Borysławski, et al, eds. Cryptohistories (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015), pp. 127-142.

‘lost’ trope—‘cosmic revelation.’ This trope was used for the first time in William R. Twiford’s Sown in the Darkness, 2000 A.D. but Kendall revised the trope and it has become a mainstay of white nationalist fiction since.

3.2.5 Cycle Five: Fight or Die—No Surrender, No Retreat. The Contemporary Separatist Cycle of White Nationalist Novels (2003-Present).

The present stage of white nationalist fiction started in 2003. In this year, two novels were published that would set the basis for the mythos of white racial separation in the neo-Confederate movement and the Pacific Northwest; those novels being the first part of Gregory Kay’s ‘Third Revolution’ cycle entitled The Third Revolution and the first novel in H. A.

Covington’s Northwest saga, entitled The Hill of the Ravens (2003). While both novels were published in the same year, and both are the first in a series of novels that describes the ethnic breakup/ balkanization of the United States, Covington’s novel is actually the last in the series timeline-wise. Kay’s The Third Revolution starts at the beginning of the struggle and moves through three more novels to reach its conclusion. Covington’s novel starts about 50 years after the establishment of the NAR—Northwest American Republic—the ‘homeland’ for all whites worldwide that was established at the point of the gun by a small band of racial revolutionaries.

The other novels in Covington’s Northwest cycle—A Mighty Fortress (2005), A Distant Thunder (2006), The Brigade (2008) and Freedom’s Sons (2013) take the reader on a journey that sees how a revolutionary organization could be established and how a colonial-style war could be waged to break off a part of the United States. Kay’s novels: The Third Revolution (2004), The Third Revolution: The Long Knives (2006), The Third Revolution: The Black Flag (2008), and The Third Revolution: The Warlord (2010) do much the same thing as Covington’s novels, taking the reader from revolution to the establishment of a neo-Confederacy on the territory of the old Confederacy. Unlike Covington’s novels, however, Kay sticks to the ‘big man’ theory of history because the main character is the one with the overriding will to see the New Confederacy come into being.

While Gregory Kay’s novels are the most revolutionary of the neo-Confederate subgenre within white nationalist fiction, one scholar, the aforementioned Kevin Hicks included Franklin

Sanders’ 1986 Christian Patriot novel Heiland, within the neo-Confederate subgenre. This subgenre, which embraces the aforementioned Third Revolution cycle and Lloyd Lennard’s The Last Confederate Flag (2001), along with Emory Burke’s The Unlifted Curse (1992) provide differing views that also espouse and reinforce the major beliefs of the neo-Confederate movement. Burke’s The Unlifted Curse was self-published in 1992 and is a novel about the errors of miscegenation (race mixing) and the tribulations that the United States will undergo because it has strayed from ‘God’s law,’ as regards race, homosexuality, and the punishment of crime. In essence, Burke’s novel is a novel that advocates a return to Old Testament law and the pre-1861 U. S. Constitution, which is something that white nationalists of all stripes agree upon but in particular, neo-Confederates. The ‘curse’ in the novel’s title refers to the ‘curse’ of African slavery, which in the words of the author:

We were cursed from the very moment that slavery became involved in the life, history and destiny of our People [read ‘white people’], and we are going to continue to be cursed until the curse is lifted by the Negroes being freed and repatriated to homelands of their own in their African Fatherland. (Burke 1992, iii)

Burke’s novel caused nary a whisper at the time and is little known today, even among supposed

‘experts,’ such as Kevin Hicks of Alabama State University and author of the chapter ‘Literature and Neo-Confederacy’ in Neo-Confederacy: A Critical Introduction.¹²⁰

Lennard’s novel seems to have predicted the current controversy surrounding the removal of the Confederate flag and associated monuments in the South in the wake of the June 17^th, 2015 Charleston church shooting. Published in 2001, The Last Confederate Flag is one of the few neo-Confederate novels that reinforce the ‘Heritage Not Hate’ message of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Its message of support for the symbols of the Confederacy contradict the prevailing sentiment at present and support the neo-Confederate contention that their symbols, way of life, morality, and attitudes are under attack from outside forces—again, buttressing the belief that ‘the white race’ itself is under attack, as whites cannot feel proud of their ancestors,’ while African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Hispanic/Latino-Americans and LGBT Hispanic/Latino-Americans can celebrate their ‘pride’ without anyone lifting an eyebrow.¹²¹

120 Euan Hague, Heidi Beirich, and Edward H. Sebesta, eds. Neo-Confederacy: A Critical Introduction (Austin, TX:

University of Texas Press, 2008).

121 If used cautiously, the two neo-Confederate readers are useful in examining the worldview of the movement. The books are: Euan Hague, Heidi Beirich, and Edward H. Sebesta, eds. Neo-Confederacy: A Critical Introduction (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2008) and James W. Loewen and Edward H. Sebesta, eds., The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader: The “Great Truth” about the “Lost Cause” (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2010). However, for a neo-Confederate perspective, one can do no better than: Michael A. Grissom,

This position is reinforced by the statement by Rev. Bob Slimp quoted in the Introduction. While this work does not advocate this idea; it takes the position that the novels under discussion reveal the trauma and the beliefs underlying the ideology stated by the authors. Following this brief overview of the various cycles of white nationalist fiction, this work now turns to the personal level to examine the ways in which fear, humiliation, shame and trauma turn into revolution.

3.3 Fearing the Political left: Texts of the Latest Cycle and the Re-Triggering of Shame

“Hold on to what you believe because they can’t take that away”¹²²—this brief quotation from a Lynyrd Skynyrd song appears to recapitulate the essence of the psychological defense that the white nationalist groups have adopted. Holding on to what you believe requires both: the celebration of group memory and the capability to selectively elevate the constitutive values underlying the white nationalist metanarrative while repressing others, including those responsible for the collective tragedy of countless African and African American slaves.

However, in order to explore the mechanisms that today retrigger the memory of the collective trauma (which always affects one more than the trauma one has inflicted upon others) and intensify the sense of shame, it seems helpful to resort to leave theoretical investigations aside for a moment and to concentrate on the clues that can be derived from texts functioning in the public space. The words of some contemporary neo-Confederates will shed a better light on what they and other white nationalists feel is at stake and, more importantly, how they feel their opponents view themselves and their ideas. In his 1989 article, “A Long Farewell: The Southern Valedictories of 1860-1861,” M. E. Bradford elaborates on the level of discourse aimed at the white nationalist right or, indeed, any assertion of white ethnicity by its erstwhile enemies:

They care nothing for legal means, only for ends-purposes-that reinforces the moral presuppositions of their world. Yet in a free society the law cannot be maintained or interpreted against the will of a whole people, by compulsion and abuse: what Lee meant when he spoke disparagingly of a Union held together by nothing but bayonets. […] For if you attack your countrymen as not merely mistaken but evil you are not proceeding politically or at law. Instead you represent an authority higher than statute or process and imply an intimacy with God’s plan thusward [sic]. This strategy is called rhetorically oraculum—speaking for the gods. It is incompatible with the stable rule of law. (Bradford 1993, 25)

The Last Rebel Yell (The Rebel Press, 1991) and James R. Kennedy and Walter D. Kennedy, The South Was Right: A Southern Perspective on the American Civil War (New Orleans: Land and Land Publishing Division, 1991).

122 Lynyrd Skynyrd, Can’t Take That Away, Atlantic Records, 1993.

In essence, Bradford states what many white nationalists have come to see as their persecution for not believing the way that progressive, multicultural American society constantly reinforces they must believe. Furthermore, many white nationalists, who are the intellectual inheritors of the founders of the Confederacy, look at their opponents as more delusional or bewitched than evil. However, in his 1985 article, Forrest McDonald points out the culture crusade that many Social Justice Warriors seem to be engaged in to eradicate any whiff of apostasy from the current politically correct society are anathema to the American system; hence his ideas are quoted at length:

That is the first thing to understand about the Yankee: he is a doctrinal puritan, characterized by what William G. McLaughlin has called pietistic perfectionism. Unlike the Southerner, he is constitutionally incapable of letting things be, of adopting a live-and-let-live attitude. No departure from his version of Truth is tolerable, and thus when he finds himself amidst sinners, as he invariably does, he must either purge and purify the community or join with his fellow saints and go into the wilderness to establish a New

That is the first thing to understand about the Yankee: he is a doctrinal puritan, characterized by what William G. McLaughlin has called pietistic perfectionism. Unlike the Southerner, he is constitutionally incapable of letting things be, of adopting a live-and-let-live attitude. No departure from his version of Truth is tolerable, and thus when he finds himself amidst sinners, as he invariably does, he must either purge and purify the community or join with his fellow saints and go into the wilderness to establish a New