A Mighty Fortress

by H. A. Covington

  “I told you about those two kids I sent in to suss out that one bunch of holy rollers in Bellevue, to see what was up with that, if anything,” Dortmunder reminded him.

  Barrow sighed. “I’m starting to get it. Jesus Christ, if you’ll pardon the expression! I had hoped that somehow we could avoid that particular corpse bobbing to the surface.”

  “I think we all wish it would just go away,” said Anderson gloomily. “For years the Old Man practically did handstands to keep the whole issue completely out of the Northwest Migration, and now we have to somehow find a way to keep the lid on at this most crucial juncture in the Northwest enterprise. We must keep it away from these negotiations!”

  “I’m from Northern Ireland,” said Brennan somberly. “I can tell you, gentlemen, what a religious divide can do to an Aryan community. I can also tell you what happens when a revolutionary movement is divided among itself at this crucial juncture. In 1921 Michael Collins was painted into a corner, with the result being that the Irish War of Independence was followed by another year of civil war over the Treaty that left more bitterness than the battle against the British did, and which split Ireland in two forever. We can’t allow it to happen here.”

  Morehouse took it up again. “Look, Frank, I’ll give you a rundown. To make a long story short, like all armies, most of the NVA’s rank and file Volunteers originally got into the Northwest movement for their own individual motivations, mostly having to do with personal revenge for wrongs done to themselves and their loved ones by the government or by the assorted non-white minorities that the government turned loose on America. That’s just human nature. But a lot of them did previously possess certain ideological motivations, or else they have acquired them over the past five years. Like every other political and social movement in history, Northwest Migration isn’t a monolith. There are factions and tendencies and ideological divisions within our ranks. Diversity, if you’ll pardon my using the term. Now, that doesn’t mean that we can’t build our own nation out of all kinds of diverse trends and elements, so long as there is a basic common ground of nationhood and racial welfare at the core of it all. Francisco Franco created such a revolutionary movement and such a nation in Spain, and it lasted for two generations before it was corrupted.”

  “Franco didn’t have a religious problem,” said Barrow.

  “Actually, he did, a bit, although not like ours. Look, we all know that here in the Pacific Northwest, we are fighting for a Homeland for all Aryan peoples the world over, but it wasn’t always like that. Since the very beginning, when it was just the Old Man sitting all alone in a flophouse in Olympia with a battered personal computer, raving into cyberspace, there has been constant pressure for him personally and for the Northwest Movement collectively to come down on one side or the other of the religious divide. He always avoided it and stood up for a home for all our people with maximum personal liberty of the kind which can only be achieved in a monoracial state. He always stood for a movement and a community based on blood, not on faith.”

  “He would do,” said Barrow. “The Old Man is a National Socialist. That’s what National Socialism means, the concept of one Aryan racial nation transcending all the artificial boundaries that the Jews have set up to divide us on lines of state or religion or politics.”

  “Yes, so am I. But that viewpoint has not always been a majority within the Party,” said Morehouse in a worried voice. “In fact, although there’s no way to tell since we don’t do opinion polls, it may not be in the majority now. Allow me to grossly oversimplify this down to a first grade level. There are three main ideological currents or tendencies within the white separatist movement in the Northwest. The first of these are the Christian fundamentalists of various kinds, primarily but not exclusively the various Christian Identity sects, with a fair number of fundamentalist Mormons thrown in, especially in Idaho. I think it’s fair to say that there is a significant minority in the ranks of the Party and the Northwest Volunteer Army, including the upper echelons and the officer corps, who expect the coming Northwest Republic to be a kind of high-tech Puritan New England, complete with blue laws, religious indoctrination in schools, witch-burnings, scarlet letters, and lengthy sermons by cramped and crabby divines, with maybe a little polygamy thrown in depending on which brand of CI you follow. Then on the opposite end of the spectrum, there are the anti-Christians of various kinds. Some are merely violent atheists whose main gripe against Christianity seems to be that their parents made them get up early on Sunday morning, dress up in scratchy uncomfortable clothes and tight hard shoes, and go to church instead of watching cartoons or playing Nintendo. But there are also people who genuinely hold to different religious faiths, Odinists and a few Wiccans, self-proclaimed Druids, you get the idea. They want everybody to dress up in bear skins and horned helmets and dance around bonfires on the solstice drinking mead from cow horns and goblets and whatnot, plus a little polygamy as well.”

  “Yeah, I’ve known some of these neo-pagan types,” agreed Barrow. “Uh, Red, let’s be honest. These comrades aren’t bad people and some of them are sincere. I don’t question that. But I actually happen to know a little history. Those so-called religions in their present-day form aren’t the original deal from thousands of years ago, no matter what their proponents claim. Other than a few interesting local legends and customs scattered around Europe, all the old pagans died out centuries ago. In most cases we don’t really even know what they believed.”

  “Sure there’s a few bona fide old survivals, like the Wren Boys going from house to house on St. Stephen’s day in Ireland,” put in Brennan. “They play musical instruments and dance around the house three times, and ask for money to bury the wren. But it’s empty mummery. There’s no oral or folklore connection with the past, it’s just something ye do every day after Christmas. It was obviously once some kind of pagan ritual, but no one in Ireland has any idea any more what it originally meant. Probably something horrible altogether having to do with grisly human sacrifice or some such. Nowadays the Wren Boys just collect the money and take it to the nearest pub.”

  “Most of the so-called pagan religions our people now practice are very modern inventions, less than a century old,” continued Barrow, nodding his head. “So-called Wicca has nothing to do with medieval European witchcraft or what went on in Salem in 1692. It was invented by a guy named Gerald Gardner after the Second World War. Asatru is basically a collection of old Norse myths and sagas, which are legitimate but were never intended to be organized into a formal religion. Like I said, they’re not bad comrades, but to what degree do you think these people actually believe all that Odin and Earth Mother stuff?”

  “The important thing with most anti-Christians is not the degree to which they believe in whatever cult or theology they have chosen to try to replace Christianity,” explained Morehouse. “The important consideration for our purposes is the degree to which they hate Christianity. Just as we have comrades who are like Cromwell’s Fifth Monarchy Men, and believe they’ve been fighting for the past five years to build the New Jerusalem and establish the reign of King Jesus on earth, we have among us certain fanatics who consider that they have been fighting for the past five years not against the Jews, but to overthrow the Christian religion. You know, the type of people who used to go around before the war passing out literature calling Jesus Christ a dead Jew on a stick.”

  “Like you said, I wasn’t really involved in the Movement before the war,” said Barrow.

  “I was,” said Joe Dortmunder in a sour voice. “I remember some of that anti-Christian literature that some of our people used to pass out before. I never understood why. What the hell did they hope to accomplish? In what way was any of that stuff relevant to Jug-Ears shipping every job in sight to the Third World while he ran wild slaughtering brown people in Iraq? There just never seemed to me to be any reason to get all hot and bothered about a problem which is basically insoluble. I mean, okay, you can argue all you want about relig
ion in church or in a bar, but for God’s sake, no pun intended, how can you expect to win people over to a new political movement when you start out by insulting their religion? I mean, gimme a break!”

  “This is one reason that we want you to head the delegation, Frank,” said Morehouse. “Getting back your own orientation, there’s that third tendency in our movement I mentioned. The National Socialists, some of whom are Christian, some not, and some of whom simply don’t give a damn, but who have already made a personal commitment to a doctrine in which blood trumps faith. You’re a Rockwellian American National Socialist, which frankly in my view is the most sensible thing to be, but that’s something which I would probably not say in public or even in private in a meeting of the Army Council, for fear of giving offense. Well, as bizarre as it would have seemed to Rockwell and to Adolf Hitler himself, National Socialism has actually become something of a force for moderation and balance within the white racial resistance movement. We believe the best way to keep the Christians and the anti-Christians from rending one another’s entrails during this crucially sensitive time is to use the Nazis as a kind of fulcrum or balance to keep the two extremes in equipoise. You will have at least one person on your delegation who is known to represent both views.”

  “Who?” asked Barrow keenly. “Anybody I know? If I’m going to try this, Red, I don’t need to be fighting on two fronts, the enemy in front of me and the kooks on my own team behind me yelling about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin!”

  “They won’t be kooks,” Anderson assured him. “They will be sharp minds and dedicated political soldiers like you, and the only thing their religious views will have to do with their presence is an unspoken signal to the rest of the Northwest movement that we acknowledge the contribution of all of our Volunteers, and we will not be excluding anyone from the bargaining table. The Republic will be inclusive, although frankly there are some who aren’t going to like that message. As to your delegation to this conference, if there’s anyone you feel uncomfortable with, you get a veto.”

  Morehouse chuckled. “Don’t worry, Frank, we understand this is too damned important. No kooks need apply. Most likely there will be Major John McCausland from the Sawtooth Flying Column, who is not only a damned fine officer and guerrilla fighter, but a well known Identity pastor and something of a theologian. Before the war he was holding his own as a Biblical scholar at Gonzaga University in Spokane, before the government decided his Scriptural interpretations constituted hatecrime and arrested him. He was one of the Walla Walla escapees, and he followed Winston Wayne to Coeur d’Alene and the 10/22 rising, the First Republic and then on into the Sawtooth. From the non-Christian bag, we’re looking at Captain Robert Gair from the Portland Special Operations Unit. He’s third generation Odinist. He’s also one of the bravest and smartest guys we have in the NVA, in my view, although truth to tell, we’re all pretty special. We haven’t been able to contact him yet. He’s doing the resurrection shuffle at the moment, since the late governor of Oregon had his little mishap a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Okay, moving right along here, who else will I have with me?” asked Barrow with a sigh. “Me, John C. here to pound on the table and act the heavy…”

  “It ain’t no act,” growled Morgan. “I really do want to keep on killing those bastards just for the sheer hell of it!”

  “McCausland, Gair, who else? How big is this delegation going to be, anyway?” asked Barrow.

  “About twenty people,” said Anderson. “Six to eight accredited delegates, each delegate to have an aide to serve as a gopher, plus a few extras like a press secretary, a security officer, so forth and so on. You can pick anyone you like, except Joe here who like I said earlier is being promoted to field command of the Third Brigade, but I strongly suggest that you leave your best combat teams and field commanders.”

  “I can’t see Sammy Feet or Bobby Bells being much use at a shindig like this,” agreed Barrow.

  “Mixed into the delegation will be some of the Third Section’s better operatives, to try and keep you fully up to speed on everything, including a couple of techie types who will hopefully be able to detect and circumvent the inevitable Federal attempts at electronic surveillance. You will be the delegation’s chairperson, and you will report on a daily basis to the Army Council on your progress, and receive our instructions. That’s the official version; in real life we simply have to assume that despite the best we can do, your communication with the Council will be bugged in some way by the Feds. Therefore, one of the delegates or if possible a Third Section op we can slip into the proceedings somehow will also be in communication with command, and in a pinch his or her directives will override anything you get over the official channel, which we may have to massage for our Federal listeners. If he or she is also bugged or intercepted, then we’re screwed. Don’t ask me who it is, because we don’t know yet. Third Section is working on it.”

  “When do these festivities start?” asked Barrow.

  “It will be within a couple of weeks after the announcement by the President of the cessation of hostilities and the beginning of negotiations,” said Morehouse. “We suggested July Fourth as an appropriate date for Chelsea to address the nation, but for some reason the Feds failed to see the humor. Actually, we can use some time to get ready ourselves.”

  “Okay,” said Barrow with a sigh, still stunned by the whole thing. He waved his hands in the air abstractedly. “Guys, what the hell am I supposed to do once I get in there with the Feds sitting across the table staring at me? Do I pull a rabbit out of a hat? How do I play it? Let John C. pound on the table and yell at them to get the hell out? Read them passages from White Power? What exactly is the basis for the talks? How do we define victory here?”

  “Mmm…I’d say you start off by letting them do most of the talking,” said Morehouse, chewing his thumb. By now the chicken and hot dogs and burgers were ready, and several of the women came over and began piling up paper plates and buns. The men moved off under a tree with their plates. “Try to figure out just where they’re coming from. Remember, this whole damned thing could still turn out to be a gull. Treat their delegation like a used car salesman who’s trying to sell you a very dubious vehicle. From what I know of Walter Stanhope and what I see of him on TV, he will be quite a silver-tongued salesman for whatever deal it is they’re pitching. I assume they have some kind of deal in mind, or else they wouldn’t have agreed to talk.”

  “Now, here is the second major problem you’re going to face, Frank,” said Brennan. “We haven’t actually gotten a look yet at what they’re going to try and sell us, but it’s as certain as God made wee green apples that something less than straight independence will be offered, and these people will bend heaven and earth to try to get you to agree to some kind of gerrymandered, condominium set-up that falls short of an actual sovereign nation for white people. A return to pre-statehood territorial status, the creation of some kind of big white Puerto Rico, a Northwest legislature that doesn’t really have any power, some blethers like that. They’re going to want to keep control of the Homeland’s foreign relations, they’re going to want to keep military bases here, they’re going to want to appoint some kind of viceroy from D. C. with veto power over our government, they’re going to want to make us fly that bloody red, white and blue Masonic dishrag in our sky, they’re going to want some kind of oath of allegiance to the feckin’ Jewnited States, on and on and on. Above all, they’re going to want to sneak the mud people back in somehow, and the bloody kikes as well. From their viewpoint, us pale-skinned peasantry can’t possibly be allowed to have a country all our own without the wee Jewboy over there in the corner to listen and make faces and slip a few things into his pocket now and then. Frank, you must resist this, no matter what blandishments are offered, no matter what threats are made! Remember what happened in Ireland in 1921! You must not try to come back with anything short of the Republic, the whole Republic, and nothing but the Republic!”
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  “It would not only cause a civil war between the NVA as effectively as religion may do if it’s allowed to get out of hand, but it would be a betrayal of the whole purpose of what we’re doing, and it wouldn’t work anyway,” said Morehouse. “Some people might advocate that we accept some kind of half a loaf as a springboard for something better in the future, but history proves that doesn’t work with ZOG. With liberal democracy, you start at a certain level of moral and decent existence and then everything decays from there, kind of like radioactive half life. The United States started at an exalted level in 1783 and it decayed from that point on. Anywhere there are Jews, things only go downhill. The only hope that our people have for any kind of continued existence is the absolute removal of the Jew and everything the Jew has created from our lives, our consciousnesses, our hearts and our souls. We’re like the wolves, the buffalo, the damned spotted owls. We’re an endangered species. White people have to have their own safe habitat, clean and uncontaminated, if we are raise our young, build up our numbers and thrive once again.”

  “A nature reserve for white people,” chuckled Anderson.

  “Pardon me if I give us all a quick history lesson, gentlemen, but it’s germane,” said Morehouse in an urgent and intense voice. “You know why we speak English today, Frank? You know why England became the great mercantile and vibrant colonizing nation it did? Because in the year 1290, King Edward the First expelled the Jews from England, and they weren’t allowed back until 1652 when Oliver Cromwell financed his revolution with money borrowed from the Jews of Holland, and in lieu of repayment he opened the door once again to the plague. That was the longest time period free of Jews that any nation in the modern world has ever enjoyed. This meant that during the crucial period of England’s national development, from the medieval through the Renaissance, the Elizabethan era and on into the modern age, the British people were allowed to grow strong and wise and healthy, straight upward and outward, without suffering from a massive national tapeworm like the rest of Europe. That’s why the English were always one jump ahead of everybody else who tried to settle here. We have to create that kind of healthy and vigorous home where we must raise many, many children. That’s what you have to bring back from Longview, Frank. You have to bring back a hundred million white children who aren’t even born yet.”