White Nationalism 1.0

2,602 words

Kathleen Belew
Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018

“The influence of key veterans upon the white power movement, therefore, is part of the longer story about veterans’ claims on society, and about the expansive aftermath of modern war.”– Kathleen Belew

Kathleen Belew’s book Bring the War Home is the best book I’ve read about any form of white advocacy from an academic hostile to pro-white ideas since I became a writer for Counter-Currents. The book is a fast-paced read, and other than some sugary phrases about “white female bodies,” [1] [1] it is mostly delightfully free of the silly vocabulary of the academic Left.

Professor Belew focuses her work on the pro-white paramilitary movement that used violence as it existed from the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 until the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. She calls this specific social force the “White Power” movement.

Belew argues that the Vietnam War was a major factor in creating the White Power movement. The lingo of the conflict migrated into the vocabulary of White Power adherents. The sense of betrayal by The Establishment of the Vietnam Veterans fed into anti-government attitudes. The War in Vietnam also changed the way White Power members saw each other. For example, in the years following World War II, those sympathetic to National Socialism faced groups like the Klu Klux Klan that were utterly opposed to them. Indeed, the Deep South was the American region most eager to go to war with Germany after 1933. After the Vietnam War, White Power groups like the Klan and the neo-Nazis came together.

The book’s central narrative congeals around the white advocate Louis Beam. He served as a helicopter door gunner in “The Nam” and organized Texas fishermen against Vietnamese refugees after the conflict. Veterans in the White Power movement knew how to handle weapons, give and follow orders, and work as a team. Louis Beam’s work served as an example for others to follow.

White Power activists knew how to fight. On November 3, 1979, blacks and Communists (many Jewish) at the Greensboro, North Carolina Morningside Homes public housing project held a widely publicized “Death to the Klan” rally. White Power activists in the Klan decided to stage a counter-protest. To make a long story short, things became violent, shots were fired, and the Klan won.

Initially, the affair was front-page news, but the Iran hostage crisis overwhelmed both the media narrative and the floundering Carter administration, so the public quickly forgot. Meanwhile, the whites arrested were found not guilty. Professor Belew argues that this event caused the White Power movement to grow considerably for the next few years.

Professor Belew points out an obvious truth. Groups like the Klan support civilization maintenance, law and order, tax payments, etc, while those blacks and Communists at a housing project cannot maintain civilization in any form. Those in the White Power movement would go on in the 1980s to support American objectives in Central America.

White Power Paramilitaries in Central America & Ronald Reagan

In 1979, it really appeared that Communism was on the final stretch to victory. Then Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980. Today, President Reagan is seen as a grandfatherly President who ruled over a prosperous and happy land. He’s the well-spoken old-timer that gently gave Communism the final push to the dust bin of history. However, in 1980, there were many very powerful Anti-anti-Communists in the mainstream media, Congress, etc. that were all loudly against Reagan. They thought he was the second coming of Hitler. Reagan had serious resistance to his presidency from day one, even regarding issues once seen as basic — such as enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine.

The Monroe Doctrine mattered in the 1980s. Soviet-backed Communist revolutions were ongoing in Central America, but most of Congress and the general public were opposed to involvement in yet another jungle war so shortly after Vietnam. At the same time, however, the general public viewed Soviet inroads in Latin America with terror. Due to this impasse, the Reagan administration waged a clandestine conflict in Nicaragua and other places in Central America. According to Belew, many of those in the White Power movement participated.

The conflict in Central America had an ongoing, but subtle, impact on American culture at the time. For example, many of the plots in the TV show MacGyver took place in a Central American setting. The actor Ed Asner (Jewish) was vocally opposed to American action there, and he thinks his show Lou Grant was canceled as a result. The central issue in the Iran-Contra Scandal was American support for anti-Communists in Nicaragua. White Power advocates with military training and few prospects at home proved to be very capable clandestine mercenaries and the non-Communist side won.

Part of the difference in the jungle war of Vietnam vs. the jungle wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua was that the American participants in the latter conflicts did not believe in “civil rights.” In Vietnam, the “civil rights”-believing Johnson administration got tripped up in lies and self-deception and thereby failed to explain basic problems to the public such as the fact that the Ho Chi Minh Trail was running through neutral territory. Meanwhile, the Americans in Central America had no “civil rights” lie to uphold, so they were free to assess their strengths, weaknesses, and overall strategy with the philosophical presupposition of seeking objective truth to reach victory. The mercenaries in Central America also had no black troops or black officers to babysit.

Leaderless Resistance

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Belew doesn’t mention this, but implied in the Ronald Reagan victories in 1980 and 1984 was a rejection of the “civil rights” structure. There were two revolutions in the 1960s; the first was in the early part of the decade, and it led to the illicit second constitution that is the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The second revolution in the late 1960s was a white spiritual revolution which contained within it a white reaction against “civil rights” that continued on deep into the 1970s and was fully mature by Reagan’s election.

However, Reagan didn’t dismantle the “civil rights” structure. He opted for a policy to use debt and shell games to make everyone happy except for far-seeing radicals on the political Right. Professor Belew argues that between 1981 and 1983, the frustrated White Power movement adopted a policy of leaderless resistance where small cells of activists would wage war against their enemies with no contact or support with each other.

One of these cells came to be called The Order. They had a transmittable set of ideas, and went out robbing pornography shops and armored bank cars. They were led by Robert Matthews. Within the group was David Lane. He coined the 14 words. After some considerable illegality, including murder, Matthews was killed in a police shootout and David Lane was imprisoned for life.

In 1988, Louis Beam would get tripped up in by law enforcement as well, but he was found not guilty at a highly publicized trial in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Meanwhile, the White Power Movement continued to build followers. In the early 1990s, federal law enforcement was involved in two high-profile disasters. The first was at Ruby Ridge in Idaho, and the second at the Branch Davidian Compound in Waco, Texas. As a result of these actions, a veteran named Timothy McVeigh blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

Professor Belew believes that the Murrah Building was targeted by the White Power movement since 1983. She further believes that the building’s actual bomber, Timothy McVeigh, was part of the White Power movement. Although McVeigh was involved in the White Power scene, he shouldn’t be considered a white advocate.

He was not part of the generation that was in the Vietnam War, unlike the rest of the White Power movement. He was too young. Instead, he was part of the generation that grew up with the Reagan-era “dog whistles” regarding race. He never claimed to be a white advocate or have racial motivations. He did believe he didn’t get a job because of affirmative action policies, but this was not an uncommon stance at all.

Instead, McVeigh was clearly wrapped up in the implicit whiteness bunch of nonsense regarding “big government.” Therefore, he carried out his evil bombing of midgrade government employees in the heartland while he fled in a getaway car filled with tracts of Thomas Jefferson’s idiot sayings about “patriot blood” as Miracle-Gro for “liberty shrubs,” or whatever. I don’t believe any white advocate of any particular type praised McVeigh’s bombing then or since. McVeigh moved in White Power circles, was inspired by William Luther Pierce, but was not really of the same ideological group.

In the end, McVeigh targeted the building because of federal law enforcement’s actions at Waco and Ruby Ridge.

Although Belew does argue that federal law enforcement became far less violent towards American citizens in the wake of the OKC Bombing, the bombing was a big disaster for America in general and white advocacy in particular. It gave liberal-minority activists the set of tools needed to dismantle white advocate networks while serving as a smokescreen for rising Islamist terrorism.

I’ll add that attacks on Waco and Ruby Ridge by Federal Law Enforcement agencies were driven by the fact that the FBI, in particular, had become a semi-competent Praetorian Guard which started to act as an unaccountable political actor for its own ends. The FBI needed spectacular public relations coups against a marginalized group of White Power activists who were the designated “Bad Guys” in the American social narrative post-“civil rights.” The FBI crossed the line to being a political actor when its Deputy Director became the shadowy source “Deep Throat” during the Watergate coup d’état.

Are White Power Paramilitaries Worthwhile?

The problems with violent paramilitaries need to be addressed. Organizing white paramilitaries and stockpiling stolen weapons is a foolish way to advance white interests. More critical than the fact that such behavior is illegal and usually ineffective; it misses addressing the central dilemma of whites.

That dilemma, the Afro-Jacobin “civil rights” movement that culminated in the early 1960s, achieved a social victory so complete that even mild criticism of the vast and manifest problems of that victory is forbidden in most social circumstances. In other words, the true fight is over ideas — not just ideas, but the central idea in the narrative structure explaining American society since 1964.

There are other problems. Time spent building an illegal arsenal to use against blue-collar white cops in some final shootout is time not spent gaining real social power. Again and again, Belew describes White Power activists utterly stunned that one federal judge after another issued draconian judgments against them. Why not focus on becoming a federal judge themselves? Why not focus on pro-White versions of the Southern Poverty Law Center that attempt to bankrupt, say, violent groups involved in Antifa or Black Lives Matter?

White Power in the Military

Much of the book also looks at the connection between the military, veterans, and the White Power movement. Belew gives a good, but warped, account of the White Power movement in the service up to the 1990s. Having served in the 1990s (and thus known many others who also served at that time) I can state that there is very little White Power activism then, or (I suppose) now. In fact, the day-to-day problem of violence, theft of supplies, racial problems, and other forms of criminality is almost entirely fueled by blacks.

Part of my own unfortunate story of becoming a white advocate was a personal reflection upon my (somewhat limited) involvement in a witch hunt against “racists” in a paratrooper unit, contrasted later with an ugly series of investigations I was far more intimately involved with regarding a horrifying series of violent crimes perpetrated by black junior NCOs in my battalion.

This problem can’t even be dismissed as pertaining only to junior enlisted soldiers. A considerable number of Africans of all ranks are involved in criminality or are incompetent. Additionally, many Military Police “stings” against what Belew would call White Power adherents are deliberately constructed falsehoods to give senior leaders cover to arrest and discipline a large group of misbehaving blacks somewhere else. [2] [2]

There are many deadly serious consequences related to this problem. There is an epidemic of rape in the military — mostly carried out by black junior NCOs upon female soldiers under their command. There is also ordinary crime, mentioned above. But the most serious problem consists of a culture in which those that ignore or misread the data surrounding this set of circumstances get continually promoted. If one misinterprets data involving Africans, all other interpretations of events can become warped also. Indeed, this is most likely why the Department of Defense has created a culture of lackluster senior leaders like, James “Mad Dog” Mattis, Stanley McChrystal, etc.

Paramilitaries are a Result of Black Crime

Professor Belew remarks on the striking fact that both those in the White Power paramilitaries and the federal agents they squared off against wore the same style of military camouflage. However, she doesn’t mention — or realize — that both parties were upping their game due to the increasing danger of blacks. From the time the illicit 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed until the 1994 Crime Bill, blacks went on a rampage of destruction. Cities like Detroit and Newark became African-owned ruins, no different from Haiti or Zaire. In the late 1980s, one could hear automatic weapons fire on every East Coast City day and night.

Indeed, Sub-Saharan pathology is the central dilemma of American civilization. No amount of “taking a knee,” apologizing for slavery, or repeating the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King’s plagiarized quotes will change the fact that blacks, as a group, are both a dangerous menace and burden upon civilization. Deep down, everyone knows this truth.

Professor Belew argues that White Power adherents were close to the mainstream in the 1980s, but mainstream White Americans don’t come to the pro-white ideas because of Louis Beam’s oratory.

They come to those ideas because they objectively see the evidence for themselves.

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Notes

[1] [5] The phrase does hint at an appalling increase in hostility towards white women on the part of the Left and the non-white world since 2016.

[2] [6] I wish to offer up several anecdotes regarding this. One Military Police officer serving in the late 1960s told me the military was able to downplay racial problems by the MPs arresting and then booking black rioters individually for “disorderly conduct” and releasing them to their Company Commanders. Another event, relayed to me by a General’s Aide in Korea, was that a group of dangerous blacks needed to be dealt with, so the General invented a “KKK problem” and arrested several random whites first so that they could arrest the actual black offenders later. Along those same lines, in the mid-1990s, the military reacted to a problem of black NCOs raping female trainees at Aberdeen Proving Ground by having the Military Police throw against the wall and frisk an entire group of mostly white and newly commissioned Second Lieutenants also training there.