(Adapted from an Article in NATIONAL VANGUARD Number 83)
What is one element that binds together those recent victims
of government terrorism, the "Branch Davidians" and
Randy Weaver; which also binds together such victims of
government murder squads as Gordon Kahl and John Singer? It
certainly isn't their religious or philosophical ideas, which are all
quite different. I say that quite apart from these people's
involvement in various social or political "movements," they
are united by a common feeling that the current political and
economic establishment can no longer be relied upon to protect or
provide for its citizens. In other words, these people were or
are "survivalists." You may be surprised to find out
that more and more Americans are coming to similar conclusions,
are losing the feeling of trust they once had in a government
that more and more of us are perceiving as being "out of
control." Let's take a close look at this phenomenon, next, on
American Dissident Voices.
__________________
There's an interesting psycho-social syndrome which has been
quietly growing in America for the past several decades, which
has finally caught the attention of the establishment and the
controlled mass media: it is "survivalism."
Actually, that term covers a fairly wide range of phenomena.
The end of the survivalist spectrum usually seized on by the
media, and usually presented in a very distorted way, is the
"grab your guns and head for the hills" end, because it
lends itself most easily to a sensationalistic treatment.
At the other end of the survivalist spectrum are the timid
folks who wouldn't dream of grabbing a gun, under any
circumstances, and are far too citified to survive in the hills
anyway, but who have quietly laid in a two-year supply of
dehydrated foods. And there are all sorts of offshoots of this
attitude: for example, the retired couple who have made up their
minds to sell the family home and move into a condominium, but who
are only looking at ads for places which offer a high wall all
around with electronically controlled gates, closed circuit TV
surveillance, and an armed security patrol on the grounds. Or
they may be looking at small-town or rural real estate instead,
on grounds of the personal safety to be found in the parts of
this country most resembling the Old America.
Of course, many people are attracted by real estate
advertisements which stress security features, simply because
they are aware of the rising crime statistics and want to feel
secure in their own homes. Perhaps they shouldn't be classified
as full-blown survivalists, any more than the fellow who keeps a
sock full of gold coins hidden under his mattress - just in case.
For many, however, it goes deeper than that. Among the real
estate customers looking for impregnable security are a few - a
growing few - who feel a sick fear in the pit of their stomachs,
the consequence not only of the soaring burglary statistics but
also of the conviction that burglaries will keep on increasing,
year after year, and that the police and the government will
never again be able to offer any real protection to law-abiding
citizens.
These few have concluded that, if they want to be safe in
their homes, they're going to have to ensure their own safety.
They know they can't count on the police or the government for
their protection any longer. These people are survivalists.
And among those who are laying in a long-term supply of
dehydrated food or converting part of each paycheck into gold
coins, there are also a growing few who are convinced that some
day - they don't know exactly when, but some day in the next few
years - they're actually going to have to eat their dehydrated larder,
because the supermarket shelves will have been stripped bare by
angry mobs, or they're going to need those gold coins to purchase
the necessities of life, because Federal Reserve notes will be
worthless. These people, too, are survivalists of a sort.
There is one element which is common to the entire survivalist
spectrum. It is a loss of faith in the System.
There has always been a certain amount of paranoia in the
population, a certain number of people who deeply distrust the
government and are sure that something awful is bound to happen
soon. The survivalist syndrome is much more than that, however.
It is today affecting probably millions of ordinary Americans, not
just right-wing gun nuts or conspiracy cranks. More and more
perfectly normal people are simply looking very carefully at what
is going on around them in America, and the sight is raising the
hairs on the backs of their necks.
They are schoolteachers and truck drivers and physicians and
government clerks who have to work in America's cities alongside
hostile gangs and undisciplined minorities who are noticeably
more numerous and noticeably more aggressive with each passing
year, and they have said - possibly only to themselves - "My God,
things can't continue to go on this way!"
Having also observed that their government not only is not
doing anything to stem the Third World flood into this country
but is leaving no stone unturned in its efforts to increase it,
they don't waste their time writing letters to their Congressmen.
(That's a little bit like a European villager writing to Genghis
Khan asking him to do something about the rape and pillage
problem!) Instead many of them begin thinking seriously about the
relative merits of rifles or shotguns for defense of their homes
and families against the likes of the Los Angeles rioters.
Even some liberals are beginning to take note of what the
policies they have mindlessly advocated for the past 50 years
have done to the world, and it scares the Hell out of them.
Although they would never admit it to the other liberals they rub
elbows and snort coke with at fashionable cocktail parties in Washington
and New York, a few of them have also been quietly laying plans
for a quick getaway when the day of reckoning comes.
My older listeners may well remember the fallout shelter
debate of the 1950's: the Cold War era when the government was at
least dabbling in civil defense preparations, and many citizens
were taking the idea of a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union
quite seriously. Cellars were stocked, Geiger counters were purchased, and
much hand-wringing was wasted on the ethical problem of the
grasshopper and the ant. Many of the so-called "ants" - those
who had prepared and stocked fallout shelters for their families
- indicated that they would not hesitate to shoot any
improvident, grasshopper-type neighbors who came pounding on the
doors of their shelters after an attack alert. Predictably, the
media pundits were horrified and were very much on the side of
the grasshoppers.
Some of the "ants" of that era might properly be
considered survivalists, but the majority of them were by no means
alienated from the System. Many, in fact, were political
conservatives who liked things the way they were and thought of
the System as a bulwark against Communism and chaos. That was
before JFK, LBJ, the opening of our borders, and the "civil
rights" revolution, of course.
Today, the all-out survivalist usually looks at the government
as a primary threat to his survival. Far from wanting to keep
things as they are, he finds conditions increasingly intolerable.
He is intelligent enough, or has good enough instincts, to
realize that the policies the U.S. government has been following
for the last few decades are inevitably leading to disaster. He
finds himself in a surrealistic, almost nightmare situation, in which
he sees the people all around him blithely marching to their own
destruction.
He does not know whether he is the only sane person in a world
gone mad, but he does know that he does not intend to be
destroyed along with everyone else, if he can help it. He has
become totally alienated from the suicide-bent society in which
he lives, and he is looking desperately for a way to get off the
boat and far enough away from it so he won't be sucked under when
it goes down.
So, one can recognize three distinguishing traits in the
survivalist: a sturdy sense of personal identity, which allows
him to think independently and choose a course separate from that
of the herd; a strong will to survive; and alienation from the
present society and the System which rules it. In addition, many survivalists have
a fourth trait: an intuitive, spiritual rejection of modern
society which goes beyond mere political alienation.
This last trait - which many who don't call themselves
"survivalists" also share - manifests itself in various ways.
In some it is expressed as a desire to "get back to
Nature;" in others it takes the more negative form of
hostility to modern technology. It is based on a feeling or
intuition that the modern, urban-industrial "produce and
consume" lifestyle is unnatural and unhealthy, as well as
personally unsatisfying and even repugnant.
Thus, one finds among survivalists many with unusual dietary
notions and a prejudice in favor of natural foods; a strong
interest in useful, pioneer-type arts and crafts; and a tendency
to distrust the medical profession with all its drugs and
technology.
These attitudes are partially related to the survivalist's own
interest in becoming more self-sufficient. But they are also an
expression of a deep-seated - even subconscious - feeling having
more to do with instinctive behavior patterns than with rational
thought about modern technology. At root, it is not the jet engine,
the computer, or "designer drugs" which the
"back-to-nature" streak in the survivalist is rebelling against;
rather it is the laws, regulations, customs, and constraints of
our faceless mass society that rub him the wrong way.
For tools - even very complex tools - are not unnatural to
Western man, who has been a tool maker and a tool innovator for a
much longer time than he has been man. What is unnatural is the
way in which our creative instinct, our fighting instinct, our
adventurous instinct, our mating instinct, and our territorial
instinct have all been more or less frustrated by modern society.
Who is to blame for this? To a great extent, we have made our
society a prison for ourselves. We have grown in knowledge and
techniques far faster than we have grown in the wisdom necessary
to best make use of that knowledge. We have concentrated too much
on the short-term, economic, consequences of our decisions - and
all too often, we have ignored the long-term, national and
biological consequences of those decisions. In addition, our
refusal to face the unpleasant fact that aliens and traitors have
seized effective control of many of our nation's institutions has
led us down a path that can only be described as suicidal. What
nation that wants to survive allows an invasion of millions of
aliens to cross its borders without a shot being fired? What
nation that wants to survive promotes monstrosities like the
North American Free Trade Agreement which promises only to
equalize the living standards of American and Mexican workers
while enriching a few financiers and schemers in New York,
London, and Tel Aviv? What nation that wants to survive teaches
its children that their own culture is evil and oppressive and
that they must accept government-mandated multiculturalism? America's
enemies and our own sense of apathy and refusal to face unpleasant
facts have put us on this road to national suicide, this road to non-survival.
Looking at it in that way, it becomes clear that those few
American patriots who dare to speak out against these evils are
survivalists, too, in a way. They want their nation and its
people to survive, regardless of how they have arranged their
personal affairs.
The fully developed survivalist syndrome might be personified
by a man who is convinced that very hard times are ahead for
Western civilization; who believes that with a little ingenuity
and luck - and a lot of determination, hard work, and careful
planning - he can personally avoid those hard times and survive physically
while the blood runs ankle deep in America's cities; and who
really won't be sorry to see the blood start running (whether
he'll admit it or not), because he is alienated from the present
System, feels threatened by it, and is looking forward to being
rid of it.
In real life, of course, there are many survivalists who don't
go so far in their actions or their thinking, who are not so
"fully developed." Even among those that are, there are
still relatively few who have carried their survivalism beyond
the hobbying and daydreaming stage: a study of the lore, a stash of
weapons, tools, and food, an occasional visit to a
still-undeveloped home site in the mountains. Their survivalism
is mostly a mental life preserver, something that helps them
alleviate the sense of drowning in the chaos that modern America
is becoming.
Nevertheless, it is reassuring to see the survivalist
phenomenon growing by leaps and bounds from year to year, just as
it is reassuring to see the booming growth of the
"underground economy." Both are direct consequences of
the growing loss of faith in the System by people from every socioeconomic
level. Both are hopeful signs that the days of America's enemies
are numbered.
What is less reassuring is the largely individualist approach
to survivalism taken by most of those presently involved.
Realistically, family-sized groups are entirely too small to
weather what is coming. If and when governmental authority breaks
down, new groupings will move to fill the political and power
vacuum. We have already seen, in the wake of the Black violence
in Los Angeles, governments negotiating with and acceding to the
demands of, minority gangs that have become de facto governments
in certain "no-go" areas of the city. Individuals and
families, no matter how well prepared, would be no match for
these or similar gangs of marauders, who would certainly spread
well beyond the borders of our major cities during any major breakdown
of the food supply network.
An intelligent approach to survivalism would recognize, that
while individual efforts and skills are important, it is vital
for patriotic Americans to survive as a group and that for such
survival, in-depth organization will be necessary.
We now know, after seeing what has happened to Randy Weaver
and his family, who clearly broke no real laws and who clearly
had harmed no one, and after seeing what has happened to the
Branch Davidians, who, despite many dubious after-the-fact
accusations, also clearly were innocent of any serious lawbreaking,
that the government, for reasons of its own or at the behest of
anti-American forces within the government, is willing to use massive
force against those seen as maintaining an existence or a set of
beliefs independent of the System. This should be a lesson to all
patriots. Firstly, it should disabuse you of the illusion that
the government is always on the side of right. Unfortunately,
many government agencies are clearly in the hands of those who
hate our country and everything it stands for, and others are
simply out of control, willing to do anything to hang on to their
power and privileges. Putting your trust in such a system is clearly
not in your personal best interest or in the best interests of
our nation. Secondly, it should make you think very seriously
about the strategy for national and personal survival which is
most likely to succeed.
I suggest that decent White Americans ought to organize for
their self-interest and survival, as we have a right to do and
which many other groups have done. Since we are not motivated by
hate or by a desire to do harm to others, and since we still
constitute the great (though shrinking) majority in this country,
I suggest that if we organize in sufficient numbers, the lies of
the controlled media about us will have little effect. Our resources,
both in terms of skills and money, will probably be second to
none once we are more united. We will develop our own media
outlets, to present our point of view to all our fellow Americans,
of which this radio program is just a bare beginning. We will
abandon the public school systems, which are corrupting our children
with One World, multiracial, and homosexual propaganda; and we
will begin educating them ourselves: first, at home with
resources from the children's section of our National Vanguard
Books catalog, and ultimately in our own educational
institutions. We will help each other and patronize each other's businesses.
We will form a social, national, and racial colossus so large that
the system will fear to suppress us, just as they fear to suppress
other racially-organized interest groups.
The first phase of this rational program for racial, national,
and personal survival is the educational phase. No people can
survive on planet Earth unless they have a clear sense of who
they are, where they came from, and where they are going. It is
precisely these vital areas of knowledge that the enemies of
America are denying us. Through control of the mass media and the
educational bureaucracy, the haters of America have sought to
destroy our history, our traditions, and our folkways. They have
sought to make us historyless, faceless serfs in their "New
World Order." It's not only the independence and freedom of White Americans
that these schemers seek to destroy, of course. Many in other
racial communities will be victims, too. But it is the spirit and
intelligence of we Americans that they fear the most. That is why they
work overtime trying to convince us to hate our own traditions
and values, to denigrate our European heritage, to abort our
babies in the womb, to accept homosexuality and racial mixing,
etc., etc., etc. The good news is that more and more Americans
are waking up to their plan.
Several years ago I was asked by the editor of the patriotic
newspaper National Vanguard to select the very best articles from
that newspaper, and its predecessor, published over a period of
twelve years, and assemble them in book form. The result was a
book which is spreading like wildfire among patriotic Americans,
called The Best of Attack and National Vanguard. I believe that
there is no better book that you could read to help you understand
what has gone wrong with our society, and the patriotic steps needed
to ensure our survival. I devoted a year of my life to the
editing and production of this book, and I want every listener to
this program to read it. If all patriotic Americans were armed
with the knowledge contained in this huge, 217-page,
tabloid-sized volume, then the prospects for America's future -
and indeed the future of Western civilization itself - would be
1000 per cent. brighter. This book is available to you now as our
Radio Offer Number 4. Don't pass up this educational opportunity
of a lifetime. Send a donation of $25 or more to keep this
program on the air, and ask for Radio Offer Number 4. Our address is
National Vanguard Books, Department R, PO Box 90, Hillsboro, WV
24946 USA. I'll repeat that address in a moment.
With thanks for your attention, and hoping to hear from you
this week, this is Kevin Alfred Strom saying goodbye until next
week's American Dissident Voices.
at
the Battle of Cowpens, S. Carolina, 1781