Hatewatch Tweets
Hatewatch is managed by the staff of the Intelligence Report, an investigative magazine published by the Alabama-based civil rights group Southern Poverty Law Center.
Longtime Neo-Nazi Activist Steven Speece Penned Racist Novel Jack’s War
Steven Speece, author of the popular racist novel “Jack’s War: Through the Gates of Hell”One of the more popular novels in racist circles is Jack’s War: Through the Gates of Hell, published last year. A crazy racial revenge story, the novel was put out under the pseudonym C.C. Conrad. Turns out C.C. Conrad is the Mobile, Ala.-based Steven Speece, a longtime neo-Nazi activist.
Speece was for years a key member of the National Alliance, which until the early 2000s was the most important and dangerous neo-Nazi group in the country (for a list of its members’ crimes, read here). Speece distributed the group’s literature and attended its leadership conference in April 2000 (right). He was at one time involved in White Aryan Resistance and various Klan groups.
Speece’s self-published book tells a vicious tale of “when inner city savages” [meaning black people] “brutally rape and murder [Jack Corr’s] beautiful fiancée.” Corr comes to realize that it was his mistake to have talked to his fiancée’s attackers, who as minorities, he comes to realize, could never be trusted. The justice system fails Corr, so he decides to take matters into his own hands and “make war.” The resulting violence, which includes a bombing and murders, is brutal.
Repeated requests by phone for comment from Speece were not returned.
This is just one in a long stream of racial revenge novels, the most notable being The Turner Diaries, that have been put out by white supremacists. Penned by William Pierce, the founder of the National Alliance who died in 2002, The Turner Diaries proved inspirational to Timothy McVeigh, who based his 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City on a scene from the book.
Jack’s War was edited by Kevin Alfred Strom, who played a key role for years in the National Alliance, creating and hosting the group’s shortwave radio show “American Dissident Voices” and editing its publication National Vanguard. Strom ultimately rose to become Pierce’s favorite aide. Strom also designed the cover of Jack’s War (right). Strom says of the work on his personal website: “C.C. Conrad will sweep the action-loving reader off his feet with intense scenes of anti-White murder – and righteous White vengeance.” Strom also praises the book in a blurb on the back cover.
What’s not mentioned on the back cover, where Strom’s work on the book is credited, is his criminal history. On Jan. 4, 2007, federal agents arrested him near his home in Stanardsville, Va. Strom was charged with possessing and receiving child pornography, enticing a minor to perform sex acts and intimidating a witness, sending shock waves through the white supremacist world. In 2008, Strom was convicted on federal charges of possessing child pornography and sent to prison. He was released later that year and is again posting white supremacist materials on his two websites.
The other fan of Jack’s War, according to his back cover blurb, is “Horus the Avenger.” He calls the work a tale of “justice obtained” as “Jack Corr hunts down and destroys the monsters who murdered his sweetheart and destroyed his life plans.” Long a mysterious figure on the web, Horus was recently unmasked by my colleague Ryan Lenz as Timothy Gallaher Murdock, 43, of Dearborn Heights, Mich. An avowed anti-Semite and one-time day trader, Murdock is single and lives in the basement of his parents’ home, where, he says, he cares for his terminally ill mother and dedicates his time to building up “Horus the Avenger’s Follow the White Rabbit,” an online allegory designed to expose “white genocide” and patterned after Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
It’s not surprising that Murdock is a fan of Jack’s War. It explicitly endorses Murdock’s idea that a white genocide is occurring and repeats one of his favorite sayings, including a specific part of what he calls “the mantra” that includes the line “‘anti-racist’ is a code word for anti-white.” In fact, it’s not until Jack Corr hears these words from a white supremacist that his racist epiphany is triggered and he realizes he must go on his killing spree. No wonder Speece’s book earns Murdock’s high praise.
on July 30th, 2013 at 2:38 pm
Ah, yeah, The Mantra of the White Rabbit. Kiwi, you have my permission to tell all.
on July 30th, 2013 at 3:38 pm
Add “Crimes Against Literature” to the list…
on July 30th, 2013 at 4:34 pm
Is the SPLC aware that this book is openly sold on Amazon? Have there been any efforts to stop the sale of this book?
on July 30th, 2013 at 5:01 pm
Why stop the sale of the book? I’d be interested to read it, if only as a curiosity…always looking to censor views you disagree with
on July 30th, 2013 at 5:04 pm
Mark not sure how you can stop the selling of a book just because someone doesnt like the title or name of it. after all this is america where last time i looked, we do have freedom of speech. the best way to show your disgust is to simply not buy the book.
i wonder if SPLC would be screaming racism if in the book the roles were reversed? im willing to guess they would not be saying anything
on July 30th, 2013 at 5:49 pm
Notice how Speece has a full head of hair, no noticeable tattoos and is wearing a suit. The new face of racism.
on July 30th, 2013 at 5:58 pm
I have to admit a morbid curiosity about how this book is written…given that the book’s editor is a convicted sex offender with a “thing” for little girls and witness intimidation, I’d like to know how old the hero’s girlfriend is.
I also have to wonder about the character development, story arcs, dialogue, plotting, and narrative tone. Probably first-person. Obviously the hero goes through a glorious epiphany.
I would expect a good deal of wooden passages of political manifesto, particularly in the dialogue.
“C.C. Conrad,” wow, that’s clever. A play on the “Council of Conservative Citizens.” And on Josef Conrad, the novelist. I don’t think “C.C.” came from Yankee pitcher C.C. Sabathia.
I’ll dig up my earlier notes on “Horus the Avenger” and re-post them here.
I love it…he got a glowing endorsement from a pseudonymous anti-Semite who lives in his parents’ basement and his own editor. I don’t think Kirkus or The New York Times will touch this outpouring. I wonder if he sent them review copies?
on July 30th, 2013 at 6:05 pm
I am really surprised at some of the crap that is allowed to be sold in America.
We don’t need materials that incite war, hate and civil unrest in this country.
on July 30th, 2013 at 6:07 pm
Here’s my comment on the eminent Mr. Murdock:
“Mr. Murdock is grinding the shopworn penknife of anti-Semitism, and seventh-rate ideas.
Mr. Murdock is the usual sad advertisement for Aryan supremacy, of course…as I commented to him, he is sitting in the basement of his parents’ house at age 43, single, spending his days bravely fighting for his idiotic cause on the internet.
I pointed out to him repeatedly that no government agency is storming into his basement and forcing him to marry a black woman, and of course, he did not respond. Sure enough, that seems to be the case.
Mr. Murdock thinks he’s waging a great battle to raise awareness of the plight of the white race and save it from extinction, peddling a silly idea from an even sillier source, a drug-addicted liar.
In truth, Mr. Murdock is acting out his inner torments (anti-Semitism, living in his parents’ basement at age 43, lack of importance) by being a keyboard commando, playing the usual internet ‘I’ve got a secret’ game.
He’s just another internet troll with the usual stupid ideas, and thinks that he’s therefore important and a great thinker.
In actuality, he’s just a waste of talent, who will be forgotten long before his death…I’m saddened and amused by him.
However, he certainly fits the stereotype of the basement-dwelling neo-Nazi, who has achieved nothing in his life, and regards himself as being superior to the rest of the world by virtue of the melanin content of his skin. Very sad. What a horrific waste.”
I guess “Horus the Avenger” will take orders for this classic novel…it’s beginning to remind me of the “Proletarian Novels” of the 1930s, like “Joe the Engineer,” in which the working stiff rallies the other guys on the assembly line with anti-capitalist and Communist rhetoric, they go on strike, overturn the plant’s leadership, and the hero and the boss’s comely daughter, both in overalls, stride out of the plant at the head of the workers’ army, to organize all the other industrial laborers into the CIO.
Only I don’t think “C.C. Conrad” has the same ending. Probably it ends with him whacking his fiancee’s killers, and then leading an army of like-minded junior Fascists off to cold-bloodedly butcher all the Jews.
I’ll wait for Murdock to do the movie. It might make a vehicle for Mel Gibson. April Gaede can play his fiancee. Harry Edgerton can be the leader of the guys who kill April. Michael Richards as the humorous sidekick. We just need Ed Wood to direct it.
on July 30th, 2013 at 6:32 pm
I would strongly oppose and advise against any efforts to persuade Amazon to de-list this novel. Not only will they refuse, but those who make the effort will look poorly for have attempted such censorship. Similar efforts were made against The Turner Diaries years ago to convince bookstores not to carry the novel. They not only failed, but helped persuade Lyle Stuart at Barricade Books to issue a new edition. Stuart despised racism and anti-semitism. He believed in airing racism out for criticism rather than suppressing such writings. Engage, criticize, and excoriate racist novels and racism generally. Silencing and censorship are the wrong way to go.
on July 30th, 2013 at 10:54 pm
Wo. Thanks, Mark. I’m not sure where Amazon’s censorship line is, but it sure sounds like this should cross it.
on July 30th, 2013 at 11:09 pm
You can’t request the book not be sold. Although the premise is paranoid fantasy, it is not illegal. I think you could probably find all kinds of unwholesome things on Amazon if you looked.
It’s better to have it out in the open where it can be rightly mocked than hidden away in the basement with Horus the Avenger and his equally odd friends.
on July 31st, 2013 at 6:01 am
It’s fitting that his book carries the endorsement of a pedophile.
“when inner city savages” [meaning black people] “brutally rape and murder [Jack Corr’s] beautiful fiancée.”
Statistically, Jack’s fiancee had a far greater chance of being raped by…Jack. A lot of the racist obsession with rape can be linked to the common myth about stranger rape, that is that rape is typically something that happens when a stranger attacks a woman in an alley, park, or some other “dangerous place.” In reality most rape victims know their attackers, who are often intimate partners or friends.
“Corr comes to realize that it was his mistake to have talked to his fiancée’s attackers, who as minorities, he comes to realize, could never be trusted.”
Yes, because if a person of a particular group commits a crime, the entire group gets credit for it. Note that these are the same people who love saying things like, “BUT MY ANCESTORS DIDN’T OWN SLAVES! Or: “MAYBE THEY DID, BUT I DIDN’T OWN ANY SLAVES!”
So which is it, White Nationalists? Collective punishment is good or bad?
“The justice system fails Corr, so he decides to take matters into his own hands and “make war.” The resulting violence, which includes a bombing and murders, is brutal.”
Judging from sentencing statistics it’s hard to believe that the fictional rapists would have got off lightly. Typically rapists who get off with a slap on the wrist are white, college athletes with wealthy parents.
on July 31st, 2013 at 9:11 am
Ruslan, i wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out white college students (you can leave out the athlete part) with wealthy parents only get convicted of rape in Law and Order: SVU episodes. Ironically the victims in those cases are generally white college students with wealthy parents, but it helps to remember that many of the most elite clubs in this country still refuse to admit women as members. That is to say that mysogny is more important than class.
And of course, those rape cases are almost never reported to authorities. One of the more bizarre complaints of the Men’s Rights Activists is that especially on college campuses is that often times colleges pursue discimplinary charges against male students who are acussed of sexual assault or rape. They complain about the lack of due process in those hearings withour realizing that those hearings are in fact a powerful symbol of male supremacy. See, colleges use those hearings – and often their campus “police”/security forces to get around having to report to the Department of Education (and of course, perspective students) of the real number of students raped on campus. That is to say that colleges use these processes to bury rape charges. Those college hearings are often kangeroo courts which are driven by class bias – which is to say that if the accused has wealthy parents those charges will quickly disapear leaving the female student no recourse (since the local police force/prosecutors isn’t going to do .anything to upset the college which after all is a big employer – and often a local prosecutor isn’t even going to try with a “he said/she said” case anyway – and there is still a large stigma esepcially in those date rape cases where victims are routinely called vengeful sluts who are seeking revenge through rape charges even by the police – attached to being a rape victim many women report their experiences with bringing rape charges to our judicial system as being raped a second time). It is little wonder that faced with a college disciplinary and judicial system that has little interest in protecting women from being raped and views “date rape” accusations with extreme suspicion that the vast majority of women don’t even bother with telling anyone but their friends that they were raped.
Of course, being a mean girl i have to turn my attention now to mocking this novel:
the entire “plot” of this “novel” is basically a riduculous white nationaliast fantasy – starting with their rather creepy obsession with black men having sex with white women. Of course, because they want to pretend that they hate it and are not turned on by it, they talk about rape [and truthfully they being insecure little boys are probably obsessed with wanting to rape women as well - i mean, does anyone seriously believe that D.C. Stevenson was the only white supremacist to ever violently rape a white woman???] In fact, they are so creepily obsessed with the idea that one could get the impression that either they really secretly wish that they were black because in their fevered minds they think that white women are obsessed with sex with black men and they believe that if they were black they’d be able to have tons of white woman wanting to have sex with them or they themselves want to have sex with black men (or maybe black women, but i wouldn’t be surprised given the extreme homophobia of the white nationalists if many are also in fact closet cases so i suspect they secretly want to themselves have sex with black men.)
i also wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the rape scene is described in salalious details lifted right out of the finest oopsie, i meant sleaziest pornographic movies that a 43 year old man who lives in his mommy’s basement can download from the internet. and i also suspect that many of the white nationalists who read this garbage are so horrified by the salicious description of the black penises violating the white woman that they are inspired to visit Onancock by it.
And if that wasn’t stupid – and ultimately revealing in ways that they are likely not nearly smart enough to understand – enough they go for an even stupider white nationalist fantasy – see, the “hero” wasn’t inspired to randomly massacre black people by the rape and murder of his “beautiful fiancee” – or even her attackers getting off in the criminal justice system (wait a second, in the real world people who rape and murder beautiful white women tend to wind up on death row or with LWOP – of coruse, these white nationalist idiots probably long for the days of a good old fashionde lynch mob). No it wasn’t that which led Jack to rage the racial Jihad (more irony, these losers hate Moslems too) – no, it was hearing the insane mantra. Yes, while most everyone else hears the mantra and responds with fits of derisive laughter or perhaps if they are a more sympathetic type pity at the ignorance and stupidity of the person posting it – their “hero” is inspired to kill black people. Ironically, a course of action which in the real world will assure that he can’t find another “beautiful white fiancee” and instead get cut down in a hail of bullets from the government (who if the mantra was true would be secretly encouraging gangs of black men to run aroung impregnating white women (you know, to destroy the white race and all) and um, would be you know, against killing white women. The lack of logic here is stunning – Kiwiwriter is right, this needs to be made into a movie by Ed Wood. i mean, this actually makes Jack T. Chick’s “Lisa” seem logical and well though out by comparison.). If i wasn’t too busy laughing at this stupidity the attempt to undue the maze created by a sheer lack of logic here would give me a headache.
What maroons. What losers. What fools. Why ban this thing when it serves as exhibit one of just how stupid the mantra chanting idiots really are.
on July 31st, 2013 at 9:44 am
I admit, I read “The Turner Diaries” out of forensic interest, and it was so badly written that my co-author thought it was a send-up. I’d probably read this one for the same reason, if I could get it in some way where the author couldn’t make money.
on July 31st, 2013 at 10:36 am
As it happens, Strom’s amateur radio license is currently under administrative review at the FCC. There are two open files: 0005819184, which is an administrative update, and 0005860495, which has been “offlined for alert list review” and “offlined for Enforcement Bureau action.”
Details on what was being investigated were not posted. The majority of Enforcement Bureau actions related to amateur radio are taken in response to technical violations – operating without a license, broadcasting on an unauthorized frequency, boosting broadcast power above the legal limit, deliberately interfering with other people’s broadcasts, etc.
It’s possible, however, that if the FCC isn’t aware that Strom is a registered sex offender with connections to hate-inciting, violence-inciting organizations, they might be interested in learning those facts.
The broadcast airways are considered the common property of the citizenry, and we have a right to prevent them from being abused. That’s the basis of the W. Bush administration’s crusade against “indecency” on TV. Shortwave radio signals are capable of travelling halfway around the world, enabling U.S. residents or organizations to communicate with people in virtually any country on Earth. It’s hard to imagine anything more indecent than the spewing of violent hatred throughout the ionosphere.
(Note that the vast majority of amateur, or “Ham,” radio operators are very nice people who take their responsibilities seriously, and many of them provide valuable services to the community during emergencies.)
on July 31st, 2013 at 4:35 pm
I can think of one reason to buy this novel, but Charmin is cheaper.
on July 31st, 2013 at 6:24 pm
Its hardly surprising there’s another racists propaganda novel out there. Whats really scary is the possibility that this book will inspire actual violence like the Turner Diaries did. I doubt it will happen but I really hope Steven Speece comes to understand just how stupid his bigoted views really are before passes away and denounces his own work.