Christopher Dorner, Robert Jay Mathews, & the Power of Myth

Robert Jay Mathews [1]

Robert Jay Mathews

2,331 words

Czech translation here [2]

Two men take up arms against the System. Both claim that they have been forced into this action. Both are involved with violence against nonwhites. Both characterize their deeds as acts of warfare, with political ends. In both cases, law enforcement makes the choice that the offender will not be taken alive. Both are burned into ashes after being vastly outnumbered and surrounded.

One receives mainstream media sympathy and careful understanding. “Root causes” are discussed. He is even proclaimed a “hero [3]” on social media, and this is given a respectful airing by certain outlets. The merits of his manifesto are disscussed in polite society. Elements of both the Left and Right express anger that he was not given due process before being killed. Demonstrations are held in his honor. He is even compared [4] to the “heroic” protagonist of Hollywood blockbusters. In the end, officialdom responds to the killing of its servants by holding an investigation to look into his grievances.

The other is widely despised. He goes unmentioned in popular culture except as a figure of absolute evil. None dare express sympathy except the already marginalized. His ideas are mocked, his surviving friends put on trial for sedition. Rather than resulting in an examination of “root causes,” his example serves to justify even greater crackdowns against people who agreed with his ideas. His very existence is used as proof of the evil of his creed.

One man is the late Christopher Dorner. The other is Robert Jay Mathews of The Order.

Christopher Dorner killed four people. Sheriff’s Deputy Jeremiah McCay [5] of the San Bernadino Sheriff’s Department (not the LAPD), a white man, leaves behind a wife, a seven year old daughter, and a four month old son who will grow up without his real father. Officer Michael Crain [6] of the Riverside Police Department (not the Los Angeles Police Department) was a former rifleman in the United States Marine Corps who survived duty in the Middle East only to be murdered once he returned home to what used to be his country. He also leaves behind a family.

Dorner’s other two victims were an interracial couple. Monica Quan, 28, was an Asian woman, the daughter of the first Chinese-American captain in the Los Angeles Police Department. Her father was among those named in Dorner’s manifesto as responsible for his dismissal. Mr. Dorner made sure to call Monica Quan’s father to taunt [7] him about the death. Needless to say, she was not in the LAPD herself. Her fiancé, Keith Lawrence, was a black man who was working as a public safety officer for the University of Southern California (not with the LAPD). We can be reasonably certain that the late Mr. Dorner is directly responsible for all of these deaths, none of whom had anything to do with his ostensible target.

The Brüder Schweigen, in total, can be linked to two murders. Some members were charged with violating the “civil rights” of the one person they are widely accepted to have murdered, Jewish talk show host Alan Berg. Alan Berg was a caustically anti-white provocateur who enjoyed using sexual and vulgar taunts against his interlocutors. He was gunned down in his driveway allegedly by members of The Order, thus becoming an immortal martyr against “hate,” with movies and plays written about him and his brave fight against the powerful Nazis. He leaves behind an ex-wife who now travels around the country making speeches condemning racism [8]. The second murder was committed by David Tate, who killed Missouri Trooper Jimmie Linegar [9] when he was about to be detained. Linegar was a faithful Christian who left behind a loving family. He is all but forgotten.

Robert Jay Mathews may have been a lookout in the shooting of Alan Berg. He was obviously completely uninvolved in the shooting of Trooper Linegar.

Dorner’s manifesto [10] is a remarkable document, revealing a true man of the people. It is confused, shallow, obsessed with references to ephemeral pop culture, and filled with spelling mistakes, poor grammar, and ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. He claims that he was called a “nigger” when he was a kid, and that police officers used the forbidden word, and he regrets he didn’t punish them all with death immediately. Dorner, a former officer in the Naval Reserve, litters his work with military jargon and specialized terms but commits the common Negro fallacy of using words he doesn’t really understand. As the conservative media has pointed out and the mainstream media has done its best to conceal, Dorner is a fervent Democrat who uses his manifesto to threaten the life of the head of the NRA. He supports his case for gun control with a quotation from Mia Farrow.

Like Alexis de Tocqueville’s prophecy [11], Dorner’s manifesto reflects the contemporary American’s endless fascination with himself. Dorner blames the LAPD’s culture of institutional racism for his dismissal. As Jared Taylor’s devastating deconstruction [12] points out, Dorner’s charges appeared only after he was given poor performance reviews. Dorner outlines how police officers of all different races are equally “high value targets” because they do not militantly enforce a creed of egalitarianism. (Interestingly, Dorner also criticizes black officers for discriminating against white men and thus creating new racists, though this has been downplayed.) Finally, Dorner makes it personal. He did not get to have a family, so no one else will either. It is the classic case of taking his own misery and trying to inflict it on the world.

In contrast, The Order is remembered for generating two political creeds. The first is the fourteen words of David Lane – “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” Whatever one thinks of his later writings, the fourteen words are an elegant summation of the goals of White Nationalism.

The second is Bob Mathew’s famous speech before the National Alliance the year that he was killed. Whatever one thinks about the politics or the concrete actions proposed, it is a well-crafted, eloquent, and passionate call to duty [13] that makes far more logical sense than vague complaints about racism and references to Charlie Sheen. It appeals to the primordial traditions of warriors and casts the Order’s action as a political mission, not a petty quest for violent revenge. There is a world of difference between “Stand up like men, and drive the enemy into the sea” and “I never got the opportunity to have a family of my own, so I’m terminating yours.”

As of this writing, the Occupy movement (which receives adoring press from the media) has already held a demonstration in honor of Dorner [14]. The LAPD has announced it is going to hold an investigation into charges of racism. On twitter and on CNN, Dorner has been compared to the protagonist from Django Unchained [15], the “real life Django” who is using ruthless violence against the racist white America that in its heart, knows it deserves it. The popular black news site News One (among others) is filled with comments praising Dorner as a hero, with little sympathy for their “brother” Keith Lawrence, who, presumably, had it coming. There’s even been a video game released calling him a “True American Hero,” though it’s more of an exercise in trolling [16] that has the usual affirmative action academics all upset. Still, the only real problem that the media seems to have with the game is that it is supposedly racist against blacks.

Even conservatives, libertarians, and white racialists (from my admittedly unscientific survey on Facebook) have expressed concern or outrage over Dorner’s demise. Although he supposedly committed suicide, evidence suggests the LAPD may have pulled a Waco and deliberately set his cabin [17]on fire [17]. While most people have obviously expressed anger about Dorner’s tactics, it is taken for granted that Dorner’s cause is inherently just and that he was fundamentally on the side of good, just misguided. As with the shooting of the “innocent” Trayvon Martin, no evidence is advanced and none is needed. Dorner will live in as a symbol of leftist and useful idiot “libertarian” rebellion against the oppressive racist state. Expect T-shirts with his image on them by next week.

Outside the White Nationalist movement, the Order is all but forgotten. There are no college students wearing Bob Mathews T-shirts as symbols of anti-government rebellion. The only direct cinematic treatment of the Order, Brotherhood of Murder, is a particularly ham-handed piece of propaganda explicitly designed to people to denounce neighbors they suspect of being “racist.” (Don’t believe me? Check out my full review here [18].) There’s also Betrayed (review forthcoming) which features white community-wide “hunts” of random black people, the inability of the FBI to figure out what “ZOG” stands for, and White Nationalist moles in Congress. As for the movie and play Talk Radio, both focus on the anti-racist martyr Alan Berg, rather than the Order. The only people outside the movement that remember the Order are anti-racist groups, where it serves as a convenient justification for ever greater funding and donations.

Objectively, the Order committed less violence. They were motivated by idealistic, political ends that some people may regard as evil. But they were certainly not motivated by purely personal grievances. Dorner killed people who had little or nothing to do with his supposed target, gloated over his victims, had a flimsy (and evidence suggests false) rationalization for taking action, and killed more people (and more minorities) than the most legendary white resistance group in American history. Nonetheless, Dorner is a misunderstood hero, and the Order constitute the blackest of villains.

As Alex Kurtagić has demonstrated [19], the heart of the case for white extermination has nothing to do with empirical evidence but with a moral vision, impervious to evidence. It is now the mainstream, conventional opinion that all whites are beneficiaries of “white privilege” and that all the institutions of society serve their interests in some sense. Violence, while regrettable, is simply an excessive (but understandable) reaction to inequality. It’s worth noting that media concern over racism in Django Unchained was not about blacks being incited to slaughter white people (including women) but whether whites were laughing at inappropriate moments or whether people were saying “nigger” too much.

What this suggests is that concern trolling by White Nationalists about extreme or even violent elements in the movement is misplaced. To a certain extent, Christopher Dorner shows that tactics don’t even matter when it comes to public relations. The larger narrative that we are fighting simply shapes the specific facts and evidence to fit what egalitarians think the story should tell, rather than what it does tell. Has Christopher Dorner hurt the cause of anti-racism or gun control through his violent actions? Is there any, literally any, conceivable action committed by “antifa” or nonwhites that could hurt that cause? If gunning down interracial couples and taunting grieving fathers don’t do it, I’m hard pressed to say what could.

Michael O’Meara writes in “Cù Chulainn in the GPO [20]” about the Easter Rising that “the Uprising itself was a work of art,” a “blood sacrifice” that would turn defeat into victory. Ireland’s independence was realized because the Rising fit into a larger romantic, anti-modernist, and above all mythic cultural vision of the nation rising to self-realization. Every act of white resistance, from the occasional (and usually misguided) act of violence to the most erudite commentary is doomed to fail unless there is a larger mythic vision, a romantic worldview that people will believe in because they want to believe in it.

In contrast, the egalitarian Left has a myth. The working man striking out against white privilege and institutional racism resonates in this society. The fact that Dorner committed horrifically evil and sadistic acts matters less in the public mind than how he fits into the egalitarian myth. The fact that he was a stereotypical failure, fired from his job, dumped by his wife, and resentful of people with happy families matters not at all. In a society such as ours, it is not surprising that Dorner is seen as Django. What is surprising is that there is not more behavior like this.

As for whites, acts of violent resistance like that of Robert Mathews and his comrades are doomed to failure unless they have a cultural movement behind them. No act of propaganda of the deed, however courageous or terrifying, heroic or evil, has any significance unless it can be fit into a larger narrative that society can internalize. Much of the reason violent white resistance is a mistake (aside from ethical considerations) is because it easily fits into a narrative of weak and reactionary losers impotently lashing back at a world passing them by. The cultural work of building a counter-narrative is the critical first step to any revolutionary movement, including the movement for the great dream of The White Republic [21]. Ideally, if that narrative is created and accepted, violence isn’t even necessary.

But all that said, let’s not kid ourselves. Let’s not adopt the narratives of the enemy. When a sadistic black murders innocents (of all races) in cold blood and is hailed as a hero by the powerful and privileged, the society is sick beyond saving. Let’s not cringe and cower when one of “our own” makes us look bad [22]. While we should control our image all we can, we are going to be denounced as violent and dangerous no matter what we do. There is no double standard, as the message from all the organs is the same – whites are dying out, and they should. In the face of that, I am less concerned about being made to look “scary” and more concerned about being made to look weak.

One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, one man’s murderer is another man’s avenging angel, and one man’s “racist” is another man’s patriot. In a world gone mad, reason will not save us. Our redemption will lie in Myth [23].