A Mighty Fortress

by H. A. Covington

  “Jew?”

  “No. Just a sorry white bastard, and no he didn’t do to me what I think those Jew girls did to you. He wasn’t into nookie, he was into money. Grandma got a big junk of my father’s estate and stepdaddy wanted to speed up the process of my mother inheriting it. We could never prove anything, but Grandma went into the hospital for hip surgery and forty-eight hours later a certain Doctor Singh gives her the hot shot. They said it was a mistake in the paperwork, the silly doc was new in the country and had trouble with his English, so he mistook her for some old woman who was a charity patient on the next ward, the one he was supposed to kill. An error I presume he rectified. We got a really nice letter of apology from the hospital. My Mom found some funny calls on stepdaddy’s cell phone bill to Singh’s private number on the two days in question. She’s not a total idiot. She threw the son of a bitch out and told him if he kicked up a fuss she’d call the cops and the news media. Exit stepdaddy.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” she said, looking at him. “When I knew Grandma was gone, that this horrible unfeeling monster had simply ground up her bones like she was so much garbage, that was when I knew the world had to change. I did an archive search on the internet until I found a seven year-old Party e-mail address in an old chat room that by accident more than anything else was still valid. By the grace of God I was able to hook up with the NVA, Deadly Nightshade was born, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

  The NVA delegation weren’t imprisoned. There was in fact a trickle of travel back and forth between the Volunteers in the hotel and the outside world, via special helicopter runs under the aegis of the UN peacekeepers. Barrow was allowed to send messengers out, and also to receive couriers from the Army Council. About two weeks after the press conference wherein the Los Angeles Times reporter had let the Aztlan cat out of the bag, they received a visit from now Captain Nigel Moore of SS military intelligence. The NVA delegates had taken to holding conferences in the capacious bathrooms of the suites, trusting at least to a limited degree in the Secretary of State’s promise that they were not electronically monitored, since they didn’t really have any other choice. After Moore’s arrival the primaries assembled for one of these special hot tub sessions, and Cody was allowed to squeeze in. Captain Moore gave his presentation standing in the shower, to a packed john.

  “Right,” said Moore, “Here’s what we’ve been able to piece together. As most of you are probably aware, the Mexicans have been trying to get the American Southwest back ever since the end of the Mexican-American war of the 1840s. For almost a century it never went anywhere, despite a few incidents such as Pancho Villa raiding into Texas and New Mexico, so forth and so on. But then in the 1950s, American agriculture began to be transformed, from white-owned family farms and ranches into what is now known as agribusiness, and that created a huge demand for cheap labor at the very moment when the American economy was improving and the availability of the old-style poor white Okies who used to pick all the fruit and the lettuce and whatnot dried up. Understandable, I suppose. No one wants their kids to be doing stoop labor in the fields when they could be going to college on the GI bill and working in an air-conditioned office, but since somebody has to do the stooping, it created the beginning of the immigration crisis.

  “You all know what happened over the next seventy years, as the United States ceased to enforce its immigration laws and large parts of the North American continent became part of the Third World due to massive and unchecked immigration. The bulk of that immigration was Hispanic and mestizo, the Feds stopped even trying to send them back, the cities became huge barrios, and by modern times huge sections of the Southwest had become de facto part of Mexico, with the added advantage of American welfare benefits. The political move for a separate Hispanic nation in the Southwest was an entirely logical outgrowth of this capitalist policy, and it actually pre-dates our own independence movement here in the Northwest. The Mexicans call the territory that they claim Aztlan, since according to their legends the Aztecs were originally a nomadic people who came from that part of North America. The Aztlan movement has been increasing in strength and influence for many years, especially since Hispanic politicians began to get elected and essentially take over first local and then state-level governments and the judiciary in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and especially California, as well as the southern half of Florida. Spanish has replaced English as the primary language in most of those areas now, the language of the courts and legal documents, the street signs, so forth and so on. The Frente de La Raza eventually became an umbrella group for all the various disparate elements that wanted independence from the United States under some kind of condominium arrangement which would still give them access to the American welfare and medical systems.”

  “They want to have their cake and eat it too,” said Barrow.

  “Precisely,” agreed Jack Flash. “And they may well get it. Actually, a system of the sort has long since been put in place since Bush the First, under the guise of NAFTA. Mexicans have been for all practical purposes a kind of honorary American since the 1980s. But in the past five years, with white men actually fighting for a nation of their own in the Northwest, the demand for a Hispanic nation in the Southwest has reached a point where ZOG simply can’t ignore it any more. From what we can gather, their own demographics and economics people told the Federal government a long time ago that the Hispanification of the Southwest had progressed beyond the point where it could be reversed, and that some kind of formalization of the Hispanic character of at least five states was inevitable.

  “The Federal government reacted in the same way they always react to bad news. At first they classified all the reports top secret and hid them away. Then when the evidence of the Southwest’s changing demographics became too public to ignore and they could no longer bury the issue, they tried to spin it and co-opt the Mexicans into the system by giving them an increasingly large slice of the American pie, which worked for a time. Then we came along, and at some point it became obvious that the Northwest insurrection could not be suppressed either, and that one way or the other, the hated gringos were going to get a slice of America back. Needless to say, the spics have now ratcheted up their own demands for independence from Washington, D.C. although not from the Federal gravy train, using the FdLR as the political vehicle. Apparently the rumors of this coming conference here at Longview were afloat some months around the water coolers in D.C. before we ever knew of it. Several months ago, a coalition of Hispanic politicians more or less forced their way into the appropriate offices and told the Federals flat out that if the evil gringos of the Northwest got a country of their own in North America, then they were damned well getting a country of their own. Now, bear in mind that we’ve been forced to patch all this out with a great deal of speculation, once we were tipped off by that odd question from Ramirez.”

  “You know, I think that may be one of the reasons why we’re getting this odd deer in the headlights reaction from the Americans,” said Barrow. “Crunch time has finally come, and the United States is getting hit from all sides. I honestly don’t think they can wrap their minds around human beings who are motivated by anything other than their own self-interest. It’s like we really don’t speak the same language.”

  “So all of this affects us how?” prompted McCausland.

  “The corporate faction within the American power structure has apparently decided that it is time to cut their losses and come to some sort of economic and business arrangement with both white and Hispanic separatism, so long as the multinationals continue to exercise looting rights over both the Southwest and Northwest. Their dedication to the old manifest destiny idea as to how the North American continent absolutely must be united under one empire has been replaced by economic multi-nationalism. Hillary Clinton wants one more stint in the White House, and she has negotiated a deal with them. She will instruct her daughter to sign off on whatever treaty comes out of this conf
erence, and go along with the creation of some kind of Hispanic NAFTAland or whatever in the Southwest as well, in exchange for a Supreme Court decision declaring the Twenty-Fourth Amendment to the Constitution invalid.

  “She already has a Congressional resolution to that effect, but since she doesn’t want to go through the Constitutionally mandated process of approval by the states, so she wants a Supreme Court declaration as well as an additional fig-leaf when she goes for a third term. This decision will be rendered on a test case she has had one of her flunkies file in New York state, and which is now working its way through the judicial system. That will allow her to run again, and with conservative white votes and conservative Hispanic votes as well eliminated, she’s pretty much certain to win. In essence, the red-stater corpos have agreed to cut their own electoral base out from under them in order to save money, and Hillary is on board as well because she would rather preside over a rump segment of the U.S.A. one more time than finally admit the Baby Boomers’ time has passed. Which is one of the more peculiar episodes I’ve come across in a lifetime of studying political science, but it seems to me that everyone in power has pretty much decided that the old ways are obsolete and it’s time to flush them anyway. However, for obvious reasons, this deal is a bit too cynical for public consumption and she doesn’t want it coming out, hence their consternation when that Spanish reporter asked the question in the press conference.”

  “So, you’re telling us that both factions have come here to Longview with the full intention of actually letting us go?” asked Barrow incredulously.

  “Oh, it’s much more complex than that,” said Moore. “For one thing, the Zionist faction of the American power structure is fighting the breakup of the continent tooth and nail, as witness Mr. Weintraub’s unilateral attempt to create Biblical death squads as a counterrevolutionary force against us. For another thing, even the corpos and Hillary have no intention at all of letting us go in the economic sense. They fully intend to hang onto our Northwest timber, our minerals and ore deposits, what coal and petroleum we have, our cattle and wheat and protein crops, our commercial fishing, our rivers with their hydroelectric potential, our manufacturing and industry, our deep water ports and our water resources that they want to transfer to the parched Southwest that the Mexicans have ruined. Alaska has oil, and there’s no way in hell we’re getting that. But it never rains, but it pours. In addition to all of the problems involved in the breaking up of the continental empire, they face cataclysm overseas.”

  “Israel is about to go down,” said Barrow.

  “Israel is about to go down,” agreed Moore. “There’s no doubt. The Arab armies are massing once again. This time they’re trained and battle-hardened by three generations of war, they’re armed with everything up to and including nuclear weapons, there are millions of them, and this time the rest of the world has decided at long last to stand aside and let nature take its course regarding the great Zionist experiment. The only hope for Israel’s survival is a full court press American military intervention, with American ground troops taking on the entire Muslim world and maybe in the end the Russians and Chinese as well. The Protestant evangelicals may yet get their Armageddon, only it won’t make Jesus come back, no disrespect, Major McCausland. Depending on how deeply America gets involved, it will only unleash hell on earth. We need to get out of it.”

  “No offense taken, Captain” said McCausland. “Christian Identity has always taken the view that the Armageddon referred to in the Bible was symbolic for the destruction of the Adamic race, the white peoples of the earth, by the forces of Satan, the Jews.”

  “Red state or blue state, the Zionists have an iron grip on both. The great Middle Eastern oil empire begun under Bush Two has turned out to be a disaster, economic and social and military, and the Jews are using every trick in their playbook to hang onto their effective control of America’s Israel First foreign policy. Controlling interests in major corporations, interlocking directorates on every board, control of the media, control of Congress, infiltration of the intelligence agencies and every level of government, control of the money supply through the Federal Reserve, Late Great Planet Earthery among the peasantry’s evangelical sects, and in some cases good old-fashioned sexual entrapment of key American influentials through a regiment of Monica Lewinskys and Susan Horowitzes. Plus naked violence of the kind Mr. Regenthal and his little chapel were planning. The Jews are frantic, and I imagine men like Oliver Lodge and Walter Stanhope are pulling their hair out in private. They are watching the whole world they have grown up in and served all their lives fall apart before their very eyes.”

  “So, Captain, if I understand what you’re saying here….?” said Barrow slowly.

  “I am saying, General, that the United States of America is reeling, on the ropes, on the verge of collapse,” said Moore with a grin. “This is their last attempt to salvage something out of a situation that has been rendered completely untenable. Oh, I’m sure they still have some nasty tricks up their sleeves, but anything they threaten is just bluff. You comrades can get our Republic, if you will simply stay strong, keep your eye on the prize, and continue saying no until they hear it and accept it.”

  Moore had to go back to Olympia that night, but before he left he had a quick supper in the Sockeye Grill with Cody and Nightshade and brought them up to date on their old company. He also told them “I’m happy to be able to report that Kelly Shipman and her family appear to have decided to remain in the Republic.” Cody picked up on the fact that this meant Moore had seen Kelly recently, but he didn’t pursue the matter.

  August became September. While the Song of the Jabberwock went on and on in the corridors of the Lewis and Clark Hotel, outside the conference in the real world, the Party and the newly christened Northwest Defense Force were quickly and efficiently assembling the form and apparatus of the coming state. Barrow and Morehouse estimated that at any given moment during the War of Independence, there had been possibly two thousand Volunteers on active service throughout the Homeland and elsewhere, with maybe twice as many supporting personnel, active sympathizers, and assets. This force of around six thousand irregulars had effectively tied down and baffled over a million Federal troops, Marines, FBI, FATPOs, Homeland Security operatives, Secret Service, National Guard, state police and Highway Patrol, local police, prison guards, bureaucrats and administrators, and forced the government that employed them to the conference table. In the purely military sense, the accomplishment of the NVA was stunning and impressive.

  Within the first month of open recruiting for the Northwest Defense Force, there were fifty thousand men and women under arms in the fledgeling Republic’s forces. Barracks, training depots, and fortified positions were springing up all over the Northwest, often side by side and riding herd on the Federals in their own installations, including a ring of rebel positions in the streets, buildings, and woodlands around Fort Lewis. By the end of September there were a hundred thousand NDF troops and a newly born navy and air force. The navy consisted of yachts and fishing vessels and tugboats hastily armed and transformed into gunboats and torpedo boats, with homemade weaponry almost as dangerous to the sailors as their opponents. The air force was a motley of chopped aircraft ranging from captured American helicopter gunships, to jet airliners converted into bombers, to small private planes with machine guns rigged to fire through their propellers like World War One biplanes. There was also one B-52 which was seized by a team of SS commandos, plus a squadron of microlights attached to infantry units and used for close-in reconnaissance. Given the chance to do so with the full social approval which his twentieth century-bred psyche craved above all else, the white man was once again responding to the ancient call to arms. The pioneers had done their job.

  Civil administration was appearing in most of the small towns and counties outside the six or seven main metropolitan areas still held by the Americans. Local police in hundreds and then thousands were changing sides and putting on the khaki
uniform of the new Northwest Civil Guard, a nationwide paramilitary police force designated to handle routine law enforcement, crime detection, and community protection duties. Many of the men who a month before had been on the opposite side and potential targets for NVA bombs and bullets were now taking the oath of loyalty to the Republic and going back on their old beats. Tricolor flags now flew over police stations, fire stations, city halls, post offices, and government offices. Black-robed Federal and state judges, the few who were left, were fleeing from the Pacific Northwest like rats leaving a sinking ship, and they were being replaced on their benches by locally elected members of the community who sat on the bench dressed like everyone else and who knew little of law but much of justice. In some cases these new judges had nothing in front of them but the Bible and/or a copy of the old United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights, Founding Fathers’ version, yet they managed just fine and to the satisfaction of the communities they served.

  Courthouses were cleaned out, and massive bonfires of old tax records, civil lawsuits, and criminal cases involving the oppression of the weak by the strong went up in smoke and flame to the starry Northwest sky. Lawyers were being hunted down and killed like plague rats. Prisons were broken open, including the hellhole at Walla Walla. Cody was notified that his father had been freed, but reluctantly decided that he did not want to call him or conduct a conversation with him on a telephone circuit that was certainly tapped by the Federals. “That’s my private business,” he told Barrow when the latter offered to arrange a phone conference. “ZOG had already had entirely too much to do with my family and I’m not letting them have anything more to do with me and mine. We’ve waited for ten years and we can wait a bit longer, so I can meet my dad when we are both free men.”

  Land was being re-distributed out of the hands of the multi-national corporations and developers and being returned to farmers, foreclosed homes returned to their owners, and confiscated wealth in every form returned to the people who had created it. Nursing homes full of sick and elderly white people were opened, and their tormented residents heaped up with blankets, medicine, clothing, decent mattresses and mountains of delicious real food instead of the slop they had been fed by America, as local residents formed volunteer duty rosters to care for them while the Nigerian and Filipino orderlies who had tortured and abused their elderly white patients were chased down the street and lynched, or else taken for rides out into the woods from which they never returned.