Author: Connor

This book is one of the mere three books on this classes’ reading list that are explicitly fictional. This is a manifesto of sorts, but Andrew Macdonald’s The Turner Diaries is hoping to do more than just spread a message; it’s author wanted to ignite a revolution.

If one were to Google Andrew Macdonald, they wouldn’t find the image of a redneck hillbilly in the backwaters of rural America they might be expecting. Instead, they might find that Andrew Macdonald doesn’t exist at all; the name is a pseudonym. The real author of the book, Dr. William Luther Pierce, presumably realized that the text he was righting was (to put it lightly) inflammatory. This shows the author was not a moron, he was at the very least attempting to be careful. Pierce was college educated, with a PhD in Physics from the University of Colorado. He was an avid reader, tall and thin, with thick-rimmed spectacles. He was almost predestined to hate; the man was a descendant of Thomas Watts, the Attorney General of the Confederacy.

It is no surprise, then, that he turned out to lead one of the most powerful White Supremacist groups in the United States: The National Alliance. It was while he was leading the National Alliance that he penned Diaries, a book about a secret collective of White Supremacists rising up against a tyrannical government. The novel is unquestionably upsetting, yet at the same time it’s almost a little ridiculous. The entire thing reads like a child’s racist fantasy. The main character is an obvious author stand-in, with little to no character flaws and always managing to justify each and every brutal action he commits. Without fail, every villain, wrongdoer, and stand-in for Pierce’s own frustrations is inevitably a minority or related to a minority in some way. The Equality Police are all black, the governments are all run by Jewish people, and everything else is thrown in the blender as some combination of races. Before or shortly after each act of violence, the narrator is sure to mull over the many reasons why America is rotten, or why every black person must die, or why these white people had been traitors to their race.

In thinking over Saturday’s events, what surprises me is that I feel no remorse or regret for killing those two White whores. Six months ago I couldn’t imagine myself calmly butchering a teen-aged White girl, no matter what she had done. But I have become much more realistic about life recently. I understand that the two girls were with the Blacks only because they had been infected with the disease of liberalism by the schools and the churches and the plastic pop culture the System churns out for young people these days. Presumably, if they had been raised in a healthy society they would have had some racial pride.

Pierce, 46

A few paragraphs earlier, it should be noted the narrator knows these girls are under the age of eighteen. The despicability of the novel is present throughout, but what could be seen as more striking is the utter lack of subtlety. Pierce’s own son, who has since renounced his father, said of the book:

“They were direct reflections of fantasies that he had, about actions that he wished he could carry out himself,” Pierce said of the stories in the book.

ABC News

The novel, despite it’s total lack of quality, was influential enough to inspire real life terrorism. Most notably, many copies of the book were found in possession of Timothy McVeigh, who had highlighted several phrases in the book.

In all, the book is garbage, it is devoid of any literary merit or poignant societal commentary. The only reason the book is still relevant is because people choose to believe the false view of the world it supports.

The end times are coming. Either be prepared, or be left behind.

The Anarchist Cookbook was written at a time of crossroads for America. It was penned by William Powell, an anti-war activist who hoped that the text would:

stir some stagnant brain cells into action.

Powell, 27

He was nineteen at the time of writing. Controversy is baked into the text’s DNA, but controversy does not necessarily contradict value. The book contains extensive sections detailing drug manufacturing, bomb-making, and bank-robbing. The author of the book, William Powell, regrets creating it, believing it led to mass death and the rise of domestic terrorism.

On top of being controversial from a public safety perspective, the book also has enemies in the field of education. The book is full of factual errors; errors that could save lives, or end them.

Content

In the introduction, Powell says this,

Read this book, but keep in mind that the topics written about here are illegal and constitutes a threat. Also, more importantly, almost all the recipes are dangerous, especially to the individual who plays around with them without knowing what he is doing. Use care, caution, and common sense. This book is not for children or morons.

Powell, 30

Abandon hope yadda-yadda… ye who enter here yadda-yadda…

The book then delves into the many different kinds of drugs. We are taught how to grow pot and make LSD, and warned against cocaine and heroin. The book is starting to sound less like a vehicle for terrorism and more like a cool uncle if you ask me…

We are then given a crash course in sabotage and espionage, where the author warns against stealing from small businesses but advocated for robbing large banks and conglomerates. Remind me again why this book is so terrible?

Weaponry

Oh.

The book details self-defense, which is good, and then talks about how to kill with pins, knives, and batons; which is bad. Pistols, rifles, and machine guns. The author offers advice on shooting to kill, but counsels against

cowboys and hotshots.

Powell, 88

Millions of dollars are being spent every year to find new ways to control the people who supposedly control the government.

Powell, 108

The book then details poison gasses and injecting poison through needles. Ostensibly, it is meant to educate, but there is also consistent talk of the “revolution”.

Explosives

What follows is probably the most controversial section of the book. Making explosives is, generally, frowned upon.

This chapter is going to kill and maim more than all the rest put together, because people just refuse to take things seriously. The formulas and recipes in here are real, they can be made by almost anyone, and they can be performed in the kitchen.

Powell, 112

If you are not absolutely sure of what you ae doing, do not do it. The revolution has too many God-damn martyrs as it is.

Powell, 112

This section of the text pertains to the making and setting off of bombs for revolutionary purposes. This is not inherently evil if you believe revolution to be a worthy and moral cause. But then again, that depends on who you’re revolting against. The book details many, many different ways to make all sorts of explosives. Why anyone would need all these goddamn explosives of different flavors, I have no idea. What scares me is that they’re all so easy. Anyone with a basic understanding of chemistry and some know-how could make these anywhere.

I am beginning to understand why this book is banned.

The book goes on and on. There are many different ways to blow shit up, apparently. Homemade bombs are in great multitudes in this section, along with “helpful” diagrams. The text then goes over many different ways to set off the bombs. One of my favorites has to be the book trap, but that’s just my personal macabre sense of humor.

Conclusion

The book concludes with a lengthy post-script lamenting the revolution that has not yet begun. Whether or not you think the book should be available, it’s important to note that some of the recipes and “facts” in here are not so stable and factual as they claim, so keep that in mind.

Regardless of your opinion on the revolution that is supposedly coming, you have to admit this book is quite fascinating.

Mein Kampf is much like the Bible, in my opinion. Mostly because everyone who claims to love it probably hasn’t read it. It is more of a symbol than a text, but one can’t exist without the other, so it’s worth diving into the text to see what it actually says. In many respects, it sounds eerily similar to rhetoric we still hear today.

The book is massive, so today I will only be exploring the text from chapters 10-14 in the second volume. The three questions I will be answering today are as follows:

• What did you find surprising?
• What reminds you of today?
• What are the major elements of thought?

Most Dangerous Enemy

First of all, there were many things I found surprising. One of the most principal things is also one of the most obvious. It’s stupid, but I was shocked at how anti-Semitic the text was.

Yes, I am a moron, I know.

I guess a better way to phrase it is that I was shocked at the sheer density of it. So many of the points he is trying to make with this text inevitably tie back to ‘its all the Jews’ fault!’. For example, one page into the first chapter I was to read, Hitler says,

Let Bavaria fight against Prussia and Prussia against Bavaria as much as they wanted, the more the better! The hottest struggle between the two meant the securest peace for the Jews.

Mein Kampf, 506

The places Hitler refers to (Prussia and Bavaria) are the northern and southern sections of Germany, respectively. It surprised me how what seems to be a local and cultural conflict relating to tension after the loss of World War I could even be comprehendingly tied to the Jews at all. Hitler is utilizing the classic strategy of Scapegoating here. Scapegoating is when a culture decides (sometime at the instruction or propaganda of a dictator) to blame all of societies problems on a marginalized group. Because this marginalized group is usually small and has little political power, the group is either forced out of the country or killed.

I also wanted to note here the parallels to the current American political divide between the North and South, and how pundits here use the same strategy as Hitler did. They scapegoat people that their base does not understand, and blames all the country’s problems on them. It worked then, and it works now.

Hitler is obviously looking to employ this Scapegoating strategy when he is writing Mein Kampf, but that isn’t what surprises me. It surprises me that it works. The fact that people fell for this, despite having little to no actual evidence of this being the case, is baffling. The entire book feels juvenile in this respect, and the idea that hundreds of thousands of Germans were able to convince themselves that Jewish people were somehow all collectively apart of a cabal to destroy the world is saddening and sobering.

Keep in mind, these were not ancient people, separated from ‘enlightened’ modern minds by poor education and living conditions, these were modern day people. Losing the war obviously influenced the collective German psyche, but the idea that Hitler pulled such a simple trick, and that it worked, is sad…

Deutschland zuerst.

There is another interesting parallel to contemporary American politics in the ramblings of Mein Kampf. A few years ago, when Donald Trump was running for President, one of the slogans he used was ‘America First’. He would talk of how America needed to reign in its costly foreign interests, and focus on problems at home. He wanted to disband the alliances and trade deals we had with other countries, citing that they were, “unfair”. In Mein Kampf, we see Hitler doing the same thing.

Can a power which seeks in an alliance an aid for carrying out offensive aims of its own, ally itself with a state whose leaders for years have offered a picture of the most wretched incompetence, of pacifistic cowardice, and the greater part of whose population, in democratic-Marxist blindness, betray the interest of their own nation and country in a way that cries to high heaven?

Kampf, 566

Here, Hitler says that because Germany surrendered in the war, no nation will dare ally itself with it. He hates this, and implies that if Germany were to take a more offensive stance, they would have allies with which to trade and foster power with. He rages at the ‘incompetence’ of the leadership, and to the people who ‘betray’ the country. Were the leadership and people to put Germany first, they may finally be able to dig their way out of the economic hole they are in.

Both Hitler and Trump seek to put the initiative in their Fatherland, compelling the people to put their country first. This appeal to Nationalism is old and tired, but it is still used today, especially when trying to incite aggression.

Conclusion

In all, Mein Kampf is both inane and prophetic. It seeks to call out a people who have done nothing wrong, and to incite aggression in a country that imploded because it was too aggressive. It is both a relic of the past, and a playbook for the future.

Hate begets hate. At the end of World War I, everyone hated Germany.

Unfortunately, the wrong man happened to be around at just the right time to capitalize on that hate.

Adolf Hitler (actually spelled Heidler) was born in Austria, 1889, in a tavern on the river Inn. He was born to an adulterous father and a doting mother. Throughout his youth he is continually described by teachers as,

in no way untalented, but simply lazy.

Watt, xiv

He is a smart boy, but ends up repeating grades, moving schools, and generally languishing due to his lack of motivation. After his father dies when Adolf is 13, he begins pursuing art as a career. Life is good for a while, living under the loving eye of a mother who treated him very well (a stark contrast to his father, according to him). Mere months after turning eighteen, Adolf is denied entry into art school and loses his mother.

If he wasn’t literally Hitler, I might feel bad.

He spends the following years burning through a dwindling inheritance; but once he’s out, it’s the streets or bust for our intrepid genocidal maniac. After spending about a year sleeping in and out of homeless shelters and camping on park benches, Hitler has had enough. He moved into a hostel for working men in the spring of 1910, and it is through the people he met there that he entered the world of politics.

When Hitler was still getting an education, he picked up some very pro-Germany nationalist ideas from a history teacher by the name of Dr. Pötsch. It’s here that perhaps the seeds of some of his defining ideas began to germinate, but in his late teens, the ideas bloomed.

Then, the war began. Hitler joined the army at the height of the pro-war fever that spread across Europe like a plague.

As a soldier Hitler seems to have been as unlike the traditional Tommy as can be imagined . The camaraderie, the, to him totally unfamiliar, sense of membership of a community which the regiment and the army provided, and the purpose of war combined with the isolation and responsibility of his particular job to give him a sense of fulfillment, security and order, in short a reason for existence, which had been totally lacking to him before.

Watt, xix

Many of his admirations for militarism and order came undoubtedly from his time spent in the army. He was named a hero and given multiple medals for valor and “cold-blooded courage” (Watt, xix). He was injured close to the end of the war, and was distraught when he learned of Germany’s unconditional surrender. It is here where the roots of his anti-Semitism and ferocious nationalism began to take hold.

He attended political meetings and observed political parties at work. They fascinated him. It was here that he started the political part that would define him: the National Socialist Party, or, the Nazis.

Germany at the time was going through a brutal recession. Economic downturn and job loss is a dangerous combination for any society, much less one as violent and bitter as the Germans after World War I. The harsh reparations and territory loss left the German people feeling betrayed by their Government. The people wanted something different, something subversive.

One man was all too happy to fill those shoes.

Hitler and his growing Nazi party had been spending the past four years causing trouble. They hated Jews, Gypsies, the disabled; basically anyone they could easily scapegoat all of Germany’s problems onto. The two forces: the dissatisfied Germany and the rapidly rising Hitler, collided at just the right time for a terrible change to occur. Ostensibly, the German government did not support Hitler, but the people did. Hitler knew this, and capitalized on his popularity through fiery speeches and brazen acts. Hitler was reaching for power, but perhaps he was getting too close to the sun.

It was from one of his brazen oversteppings of German law that Hitler, for lack of a better phrase, ‘fucked around and found out’. After attempting to overthrow the Government in the infamous Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison.

It was here that he would write Mein Kampf, one of the most important and influential books of the last hundred years…

Bambi comes to life amid the sounds and wonders of nature. He does not know the full extent of the horrors and joys that await him.

The Original Bambi: The Story of a Life in the Forest by Felix Salten and Jack Zipes is not a happy story. It is a beautiful story, yes, but it sets out to explore the full breadth of emotion, not merely happiness and joy. Bambi is born in a forest in the heart of a spring thicket Almost from the first second he is able to form thoughts, Bambi is amazed. He is amazing by the sounds, the sights, the smells, and all the living things that surround him.

Bambi seems almost connected to nature from the onset. He has an intrinsic understanding of the way certain things work, while also being mystified by other things. He speaks with other animals, too. Some are friendly, commenting on how strong of a prince he will one day be. Others are curt, rude even. He is not the most respected animal in the forest, but he often doesn’t notice how rude the other animals are truly being.

Bambi has opened his eyes in an Eden, ready to explore all it has to offer him.

All good things must end, however.

Bambi is overcome with joy throughout this first spring and summer. He makes friends, meets a doe he will later marry, Faline. He also meets older male deer, and is amazing by their large horns and splendid confidence. Soon, winter comes, as it always does.

Bambi is taught a hard lesson, one he is smart to never forget. The lesson is this: fear Him.

Bambi’s mother is killed. She is killed by a hunter, a human. The splendor and wonder of the forest fade away, all Bambi can do is run. The story is not a happy one, and many animals are killed that day by the pitiless, systematic hunters. Many of the friends Bambi made are dead or presumed dead, and Bambi is left with only the pale snowflakes for comfort.

After this brutal winter, the novel skips forward in time. Now learning to live without his mother, Bambi is a young adult. He marries Faline, moves on with his life. Sometimes the forest can still be wonderful, other times he is reminded of nature’s unfeeling apathy. Wen the thunderbolt comes, however, animals die. He is still out there. Bambi slips into a melancholy, learning things from the Old Prince, a stag he has known and respected since childhood.

Gobo, a dear friend of Bambi’s, is shot by a hunter after being cocky. Gobo dies in his friend’s arms. Two dogs fight to the death over whether or not to be subservient to the hunter. The Old Prince says this after the fight,

They hate Him and themselves. …They kill themselves for His sake.

Bambi, 150

Bambi ages, beginning to value solitude more than anything else. He was once bright eyed to the world, but that world has chewed him up and spat on his dreams. Bambi is not unhappy, but he is not happy either.

At the end of the novel, Bambi is doing an accidental and rather haunting impression of his mother. He scolds two young deer for not being able to be alone. He get angry that they cannot handle solitude, despite he himself not being able to handle it either at that point in his life. Bambi is reminded of himself and Faline.

And then, without another word, Bambi walks off into the forest and disappears…

The forest holds many evils and many graces, but Bambi ends the novel ready to face whatever might await him.