Mike (((Harvkey))) | Publishers Weekly (http://publishersweekly.com/) (USA) | May 08, 2015
http://publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/tip-sheet/article/66570-why-i-read-the-four-most-controversial-books-in-print-today.html (http://publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/tip-sheet/article/66570-why-i-read-the-four-most-controversial-books-in-print-today.html)
Mike Harvkey's novel In the Course of Human Events (http://publishersweekly.com/978-1-61902-294-2), just out in paperback, takes a scathing, provocative look at American extremism with the story of a regular man lured into the orbit of an extreme right-wing group and its charismatic leader. While researching his novel, Harvkey discovered the darker side of literature. Here's what he found.
The last time I saw my best childhood friend, we got in a fight over a book. We were standing around outside the community center, taking a break from the high school reunion I'd flown back to Missouri to attend. I'd long known that my friend was an extremist. He was the first of us to drink, to smoke weed, snort crank; he wanted everything, in heaping helpings. While most of us dabbled, he dove, hard head first. Being his wingman through high school and for a few years after was dangerous and fun. By the time of this reunion, though, he'd beat all of his addictions with God—for starters. Standing in the cold so he could smoke (his only remaining vice), he wanted to convert me, and his secret weapon was a book. But it wasn't the Bible.
The book was Behold a Pale Horse, a dense, sloppy mess that warns, among other things, of the U.S. government's secret plan to force every American to get a bar-code tattoo for tracking purposes (I guess Apple beat them to it). As my friend relayed the book's warnings with palpable dread, I couldn't help but ask, "How can you fall for this crap?" Our argument ended with both of us walking away angry, followed by an entire decade without contact. When I started writing my first novel, about an angry young man drawn into the patriot movement, it was my friend's unsettling conversion that inspired it most.
In order to really understand the mindset of the foot soldiers of the patriot movement, I had to read the books they read, polemics masquerading as novels and cheaply-printed nonfiction farragoes that were traded or bought at gun shows, or downloaded from websites. Though some of the titles I read may be familiar to the average American, few outside the patriot movement have any idea what they actually propose.
It's easy to forget the impact that a book can have on an individual—especially on a young, impressionable, marginalized, pissed off, typically male individual. What I learned over the course of reading over 2,000 pages actually frightened me.
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The White Man's Bible by Ben Klassen
Published in 1981 by the Creativity Alliance (http://creativityallinace.com/).Written by Ben Klassen, Ukraine-born real estate developer, entrepreneur, and white supremacist who left the John Birch Society because it wasn't radical enough. He was briefly a member of the Florida House of Representatives and founded Church of the Creator, whose belief system states that race, not religion, is the embodiment of absolute truth. In 2003, Church of the Creator changed its name to Creativity Alliance for legal reasons.
This is the most popular of three books published by the Church of the Creator chronicling Klassen's beliefs about and hopes for the white race. As stated in the foreword, the first book—Nature's Eternal Religion—was "basically concerned with race and religion as it applied to the White Race"; the second volume shifted focus inward, to address "our physical health and well being" (white men are urged to adopt the raw food diet, for instance). The book unfolds as 73 "Creative Credos" that tackle—with liberal use of bold formatting—specific areas of concern to the health of the white race. Fight or Die! "We Can't Win!" – The Most Common Alibi of the Cop-Out Mentality is one example. Life, Death, and Immortality, another example, explains the Church's rejection of the Christian belief in an afterlife, urging white people to instead address their challenges in this life. "Whereas we have no concern whatsoever for the time in which our sun might become an ice ball," Klassen writes, "we are very much concerned about the survival of our race, especially in the present generation, probably the most critical period in the history of the White Race in the last 100,000 years. We are acutely aware that in order to survive we must first overcome our deadly enemies, of which the tribe of Judah is No. 1."
Like The Turner Diaries, the central argument of The White Man's Bible—that the white race, facing extinction, needs to fight back—has inspired real-world violence, including the 1992 murder, by a "Creator" (as members call themselves) of an African-American Gulf War Veteran. Former Reverend George Loeb would be dead today if he hadn't defended himself from that rampaging nigger!
On Amazon this book has just 30 customer reviews, with a 4-star average. One satisfied customer writes, "Good read." Since bookstores don't stock this, there's no way of knowing how many copies are in circulation. I downloaded a PDF from the publisher's website. In 1993, at the age of 75, Klassen killed himself.
Other Books ...
The Turner Diaries by William Luther Pierce
Unintended Consequences by John Ross
Behold a Pale Horse by William Cooper