Douglas MercerEssays

The John Franklin Letters

Revilo P. Oliver (left) and William L. Pierce

by Douglas Mercer

WHEN WILLIAM PIERCE was frustrated, back in the 1970s, that his message was not getting out, it was Revilo Oliver who suggested that he try his hand at fiction, telling him that the audience he was trying to reach might not read an essay, but they loved stories full of action and violence. Oliver then gave Pierce an anonymous 1959 novel called The John Franklin Letters as a model that he might consider and emulate.

In advocating fiction, scholar, student of history, and bibliophile Oliver knew what he was talking about. And it has long been suspected that Dr. Oliver had a part in creating The John Franklin Letters. Judging by themes, details which correspond to Oliver’s personal history, and certain sections of the book, that much seems certain. He might have edited the book, and even written some parts of it himself. Doubtless one or more of his Birch Society or other paleo-conservative associates collaborated with him.

The copy of The John Franklin Letters that Will Williams obtained for the William Pierce Memorial Library

The John Franklin Letters is comprised of a series of letters penned by the character John Franklin to a relative detailing the depredations visited on America — and his activities in an underground movement of patriots which seeks to overthrow the tyrannical American government.

At the book’s opening Franklin lays out the situation in America as he sees it. He says that though most are blind to it, the country is in the midst of a civil war:

I suggest to you that we already have a condition of civil war in our large northern cities. For what is it but civil war when people are savagely killed every day and peaceful folk who would like to be considered noncombatants are in literal fear for their lives if they even venture into public parks?”

He gives a racial aspect to this crime, noting that one third of it is committed by Negroes. He says that the “social engineers” will say that those Negroes are living in sub-standard conditions, but he adds that the killers and rapists are behaving in a sub-standard manner, and he adds that the relatives of anyone killed by Negro and Puerto Rican hoodlums will not care what the social engineers have to say about it.

He says that this unleashed violence is part of a communist takeover, intended to demoralize ordinary people and make them too scared to make a stand.

As for policing, he says the police are more concerned with what the media and politicians say than the safety of the people “whose arm they are supposed to be.” In his view the police have been infected by “group relations theory” which, translated, means going easy on the poor helpless Blacks and browns. He further notes that the enemy’s strategy is to “take over the police” and make them a tool of the System’s oppression rather than a defense of regular people.

You watch in the next few years, you will see police standing back more and more, and you can hardly blame the police for standing aloof when they feel nothing back of them.

This is the “Ferguson Effect,” anticipated.

William Pierce’s first great novel

Franklin also lists a series of Supreme Court rulings which make it possible for citizens to be arrested on mere suspicion, and lead the way for international bodies to have sovereignty within our borders so that the “civil authority of the USA is set aside,” with the result that “international authorities began to exercise control of the country.” Thus he paints a picture very similar to the one Pierce does in his great novel, where the government is exercising dictatorial powers at the expense of traditional freedoms.

Franklin then writes a letter in which he says he was in Germany after the collapse of the National Socialist government and witnessed the ending of the OSS and the beginning of the CIA. He says that he interviewed Bill Donovan and that from the beginning the CIA engaged and enlisted reporters and the media in an attempt to “mould public opinion” though it had no charter for that purpose. He says that the CIA has been engaged in a massive campaign to influence domestic opinion in America. He says this makes no sense unless “some mastermind has divined that the American people are an enemy of the U.S. government unless they are properly indoctrinated.”

So some mastermind did, and so they are.

According to Franklin it is this indoctrination and propaganda which has softened up the populace for an eventual revolution.

In another letter he shows how the demonization of Joe McCarthy meant that the last effort of Old America to reveal the crimes of the post-1933 establishment was thwarted, and the criminals got off scot free. He notes with irony how this establishment painted the defense of America as “un-American.” He calls the people who fell for this truly anti-American treachery the “educated blind.”

The crucial event in the book’s alt-history is what happened to the “Dayton Defendants.” A group of businessmen in Dayton, Ohio circulated articles which promoted “good old-fashioned American views.” As a result the “World Court” issues an indictment of the businessman, setting up a final breach of American sovereignty. The businessmen were taken from their homes by marshals of the World Court and held in an undisclosed location. And so international organizations break over national boundaries, and this epochal event leads Franklin to join underground forces in an attempt to overthrow the government.

At this point Franklin declares himself and those who think like him as “exiles in our own land” — that is, internal dissidents. This group of patriots form a “resistance movement to an alien government” — a government so alien that “UNESCO coupons” replace the “good old American dollar.” At this point Franklin gets to the central issue of how a once-proud nation fell so far:

It was the fatal failure among U.S. intellectuals and politicians when confronted with the fantasies of universal brotherhood.

Indeed, “all men are created equal” means dead in the cradle.

Because of its alleged “racist” past, the World Government places America under “indefinite administrative penalty.” Chief among America’s supposed sin is its “historic psychological genocide against the Negro Race.”

This really is the rising tide of color having its revenge against the White world.

The only solace at this point is Franklin’s glee at knowing that “high-minded liberals” will be the first to be executed and they will go to their deaths without understanding why.

The dissidents set up a military organization, a method of internal correspondence, and physical training. They call themselves the “Rangers” and they fight against those whom they call the “Buros” a word derived from bureaucrats — the faceless bureaucrats of the New World Order which is descending upon them.

Franklin pays homage to gun rights, to the yeoman’s work done by the National Rifle Association. He said without this cardinal liberty their defense would have been impossible; a free people must first of all be an armed people.

As the underground takes to guerilla actions the government repression ramps up. Franklin says there is a prison with the Orwellian name of “People’s Democratic Corrective Institution” which he describes as a concentration camp for patriots. One man was serving ten years for the crime of having been “discourteous to a Negro” and that this was “regarded as a form of genocide since it could do psychological damage to a minority element.” The commission which had sentenced this man was the “New York City Commission on Intergroup Relations” which found the man guilty of having been president of a country club which excluded Negroes. Franklin says that the body of law which allowed such atrocities came under the “Warren-Myrdal” Supreme Court decisions.

Here the date of the book’s writing (1959 or before) shows itself. Just five years previously the Warren court decided the Brown case which forced integration on America. Leftist Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal was the author of the Carnegie-funded book An American Dilemma (1944). His book purported to be a “study” of race relations in America and said America was a “racist” country. An American Dilemma heavily influenced the Brown case despite Myrdal’s total lack of qualification to even discuss the subject.

The John Franklin Letters is thus saying that White America could not withstand such “anti-racist” assaults; that its entire legal apparatus would be geared toward extirpating White people.

The book makes it perfectly clear that the war being waged between the Rangers and the Buros is a race war.

At the “Corrective Institution” mentioned above people are “re-educated” — that is, a reconstruction is underway.

Soon the Rangers find themselves in combat with the military arm of the government, which is called the “People’s Anti-Fascist Defense.” As the book nears its close Franklin details several daring raids made by the Rangers. He also elaborates on how, as the guerilla war intensifies, there is a breakdown of law and order: Cities become unlivable lawless jungles; elections stop; normal people are sent to the “Great American Desert” where they are exterminated. Such is the hatred and jealousy of the rest of the world for White people.

And then, just as the terror mounts, Franklin is able to write the following sentence:

Rangers appeared in Washington just before dawn….

This is the final victory which he had been hoping for: when the usurpers are removed — the great and triumphant day when America is once again placed under American control.

The rear cover (click to enlarge and read) of the new edition of The Turner Diaries gives some hint of the scope and power of the book. The new version’s Afterword gives the author’s own thoughts on the effect the book has had.

From the foregoing one can easily see how Pierce and his great novel were influenced by The John Franklin Letters. An oppressive government attempts to subdue the American White population; heroes form an underground guerilla movement to combat this; Politically Correct institutions of government enforce “racial justice” by means of terror and repression — a story full of action and violence, and the in the end the rebels restore the rightful order.

That being said, The Turner Diaries is the better book: It is more expansive, more up-to-date with our present concerns, and even more focused on the paramount issue of race. The author(s) of the Letters still had something of a Cold War mindset, and from our perspective he is still too much concerned with “liberty” as the bulwark which will save our race.

Most importantly we can see how the fateful relationship between the two titans of the 20th century White resistance, and the casual suggestion of one to the other, led directly to the most justly famous, the most urgently needed, and the most prophetic book of our time.

Truly in those days giants really did walk the Earth, and the fame of their deeds will live forever.

* * *

Source: Author

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Tucker
Tucker
7 July, 2020 9:17 am

Is The Franklin Letters collection still in print and available to purchase?

William White Williams • Chairman, National Alliance
William White Williams • Chairman, National Alliance
7 July, 2020 10:46 am

I’m pleased to see Doug Mercer’s important review of The John Franklin Letters. More here on how the book was rediscovered. http://whitebiocentrism.com/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=4105.

Even 60 years after it was written, I could see that Dr. Oliver’s inimitable hand was all through the book, even though he did not take credit for its authorship. The John Franklin Letters, as well as a large body of Dr. Oliver’s work is now secured for inclusion in our soon-to-be-built William Luther Pierce Memorial Library and research center.

There is one used copy of this rare book available on Amazon.com currently for $100, but the cover is separated from the rest of the book. The copy in our library is in very good condition.

brian boru
brian boru
12 July, 2020 3:00 am

That was 60 years ago when America was still 90% white. Now it’s about 60% white and those whites are rapidly aging. Despite all the warnings the agenda has not been slowed in the slightest, and is indeed speeding up. Other than the brief effort of Matthews and the Order there has been almost no resistance by whites at all. One wonders if there ever will be any physical resistance to the regime or whether whites and their civilisation will go quietly to the Gulag and death? Western Europe seems to be, if anything, even further along the road to terminal decline. It seems that all white countries are heading in that direction and the white youth, the people who should be the ones leading the resistance, are the ones… Read more »

Will W. Williams * National Alliance Chairman
Will W. Williams * National Alliance Chairman
Reply to  brian boru
11 October, 2020 1:37 pm

brian boru says: [W]hite youth, the people who should be the ones leading the resistance, are the ones who have been most brainwashed to embrace their own destruction.. — The ones leading the resistance are the followers of Drs. Oliver and Pierce, Brian, and plenty of them are youthful, racially responsible Whites who have committed to the cause of the National Alliance. These young people have come to accept our necessary truths despite what they and their peers have had their heads packed with by their schools, their churches, the news and entertainment media, and even their parents, if unwittingly. These are our leaders of tomorrow, but we need Whites of all ages to support NA as re build for those future leaders. To help deprogram our people, young and… Read more »

mercyme
mercyme
24 July, 2020 11:23 pm

A projection into the future back then which is realized now! People must have a special reverence for people who can predict the future; skip the Biblical prophets, we have our own prophets here and now.