The new possibility for the future lay in Saul, of course. Through him Oscar had the ears of millions; through him those millions might be stirred into decisive action at a critical moment. Even before that moment Saul could be used — carefully — as a medium for constructive ideas, a medium with much greater carrying potential than anything else he or the League might reasonably hope to develop with their present resources. For weeks he had been thinking about the ideas which might be propagated through Saul, considering not only strategic feasibility — i.e., which ideas might be slipped past the Jews without alarming them and causing them to sever Saul’s connection to his audience — but also intrinsic value: Which were the ideas that it was really important to get into the public mind, or into that segment of it to which Saul had access?
He talked with Harry about ideas too. Toward the end of June, with the business end of Saul’s operation more or less under control, they had time for several discussions. One of these took place in Oscar’s house on a Sunday afternoon after they, together with Adelaide, Colleen, and Saul, had previewed the tape of Saul’s sermon which would be broadcast that evening. Oscar had suggested that the time had come to begin using the sermons to raise the racial consciousness of Saul’s audience.
Harry was skeptical: “What’s the point? I mean, what do you want to accomplish by that?”
The question irritated Oscar, and his irritation showed in his tone. “The point is that our race is going down the drain, and one of the biggest reasons is that White people have such a low level of racial consciousness. We should do whatever we tan to rectify that situation.”
Harry sighed as if he were about to explain something for the tenth time to a slow learner. “Sure. Our aim is to keep the race from going down the drain, if we can. More than that, it’s, to get the race back on an upward path again, to get it back to work preparing the way for a higher race to come. Consciousness is one of the prerequisites for doing that. But consciousness must be based on knowledge, and Saul’s audience is singularly unknowledgeable. I don’t know that it’s even feasible to try to do anything about that. I mean, these are Christian Fundamentalists. They’re excitable, certainly — but educable? Barely if at all, I think. It seems to me we should try to take advantage of their excitability and forget about trying to educate them.”
“I guess I don’t share your pessimism,” Oscar replied. “I know there are a lot of superstitious dimwits out there, but surely it’s possible to teach them something. After all, most of them have learned a certain amount about the Bible, so we should be able to teach them a little about racial history and the present racial situation. One thing that I’m unclear about, though, is your distinction between knowledge and consciousness.”
“Knowledge is a collection of data — organized data, presumably — in someone’s mind, together with a system for making sense of it. Knowledge is what one acquires when one studies French or learns how to operate a computer — or hears a lecture on the history of the race. If one has the capacity for it, then one also acquires a certain degree of understanding along with the raw data.
“But consciousness is a higher state of development. Consciousness is knowledge plus awareness plus motivation. Knowledge involves only the mental faculty; consciousness involves a coupling of the mental and spiritual faculties. Knowledge resides in the mind, in the depths; consciousness becomes a part of the personality; it resides on the surface as well as in the depths; it permeates the being.
“If I study the history of my race, then after a while I may be racially knowledgeable. I may be able to quote you a lot of facts, to tell you the ethnic makeups of the opposing armies at the Catalaunian Fields in 451 and at Tours in 732, or list two dozen genetically based differences between Blacks and Whites besides skin color. But that does not make me racially conscious. There are many racially knowledgeable people on the faculties of our universities, but virtually no racially conscious ones. To become racially conscious one must elevate one’s racial knowledge to such a degree that it actually governs one’s thoughts and behavior; one must have a constant awareness of it; one must feel it. One can gain knowledge from reading books or listening to sermons, but achieving and maintaining consciousness generally involves changing the way one lives.”
“Wow!” Oscar responded. “You must have given that little lecture before.” He reflected for a moment on what Harry had said, then continued. “I guess I agree with your distinction, but I still don’t see why we shouldn’t try to illuminate Saul’s audience and gradually bring at least a portion of them around to some level of racial consciousness. They may not be everything we could hope for in the way of pupils, but they’re what we have to work with. The Identity preachers have re-educated exactly the same kind of people and then built a consciousness of sorts in them. Why can’t we work a few lessons about race into Saul’s sermons and then prod his audience into taking them to heart enough so that they become what you would call ‘conscious’? We wouldn’t have to say anything about the Jews at all. They might decide that Saul is a ‘racist,’ but so long as there was no direct threat to them they probably wouldn’t go so far as to shut him down.”
“Oscar, one doesn’t give people consciousness so easily. The Jews aren’t as conscious as they are just from studying the factual history of their people. What makes and keeps them conscious is the constant tension between themselves and the non-Jewish world. Most of what they are taught about Jewish history — by their families, their rabbis, their Jewish periodicals and books — is calculated to increase that tension. It’s a deliberately distorted history: for example, their famous ‘gas chamber’ myths of the Second World War. What they’re taught is that the world is out to get them, and that the only way for them to survive is to get the world first. The theme that they hammer into their kids over and over again is persecution, persecution, persecution. The history they’ve concocted is a record of how they survived one persecution after another by getting the better of the host peoples among whom they lived; their principal holidays are celebrations of the survival of one persecution or another — and the way in which they got revenge on the alleged persecutor involved. Young Jews grow up regarding the Gentiles around them as enemies who must be outsmarted — or else. They are taught that the world hates them. And, of course, with such attitudes, their worst suspicions and fears tend to come true.
That’s what gives them their consciousness. That’s what makes it so strong.
“And the Identity Christians, to the extent that they have a consciousness, get it in a somewhat similar way. That is, they, like the Jews, regard themselves as the ‘chosen people,’ the heirs of the ancient Israelites who made the deal with Yahweh. They believe that they have been cheated out of their inheritance by the Jews, who are the minions of Satan. The Jews in turn have used the mass media to denigrate the Identity people; they’ve sicced the government on them; they’ve tried to make pariahs of them. That has put them on the defensive and made them feel like a persecuted minority-at least to some degree, although certainly not as much as the Jews. And from the resulting tension has come a degree of consciousness. It worked the same way for the Mormons, at least in the beginning. It works the same way for every group of true believers, if they manage to make themselves unpopular enough.
“But it’s hard to make that work for the majority — and Saul’s audience feels itself a part of the majority. They may feel that they’re surrounded by sinners to a certain extent, but they don’t feel persecuted, they don’t have the awareness of hostility and danger that it takes to build group consciousness.”
“Well, what about us?” Oscar blurted out, frustrated. “How did we develop our racial consciousness?”
Harry laughed. “Sure, we do have some degree of consciousness. I only wish it came near to being as strong as that of the Jews! Our consciousness, instead of being based on a feeling of personal danger, of personal threat, depends on our capacity for abstraction. We perceive the threat to everything which
is beautiful and good in the world. Some of us might state that a little differently, perhaps a little more personally, and say that we perceive in the mindless push toward an ever more inclusive egalitarianism, an ever more debased democracy, and all the consequences those things entail — more and more ugliness, more and more disorder, more and more racial degradation — a threat to the meaning of our existence. We’re not threatened personally and physically, but the thing we identify with, the thing which gives meaning and purpose to our lives, is threatened. We identify with our race, with an idealization of our race — more than that, with the process of which our race is the principal agent, the process of higher organization, the process which is the active principle of God.”
Harry blushed ever so slightly, perhaps because he had bared his soul to his listeners more than he intended. Oscar looked at him intensely and then said quietly, “I didn’t realize that you were a religious man, Harry.”
Harry laughed again, this time to cover his embarrassment. “There are no atheists in this fight, to paraphrase what someone else said.” Then he continued, in a serious tone again: “1 don’t want to imply that the people who watch Saul’s broadcasts aren’t capable of developing some degree of racial consciousness, even without feeling personally threatened. I just believe that it will be a very hard job and the result won’t be enough to make a decisive difference. Remember, this used to be Caldwell’s audience. Their religion is not based on idealism, it’s based on the idea of getting into heaven, of getting a share of the pie in the sky, by and by. They’ve been taught that Jesus hates racists, that racists don’t go to heaven. You would not only have to turn that belief around, but you would have to make idealists out of people who are essentially self-indulgent materialists.
“And there’s more to it than that. To serve our cause effectively, people need more than knowledge and consciousness; they also need discipline. There’s no way Saul can give discipline to people who have grown up without it. Self-discipline, self-control, comes from a lifelong process, a process which requires not only the self-training of the will, but which in nearly every case requires growing up in an environment which imposes a certain degree of external discipline. Without discipline, people may want to serve a cause, but they don’t have sufficient control over their own resources to be able to do it effectively.
“What all of this leads to is that Saul’s viewers can be used in certain ways naturally and easily — namely, in the ways which suit their nature. They can be persuaded to vote for a certain candidate: the candidate that Jesus wants them to vote for. They might be persuaded to boycott certain products in the stores. They might be persuaded to write a flood of letters to Washington opposing or supporting some legislation that Saul tells them Jesus feels strongly about. They might even be provoked into causing some sort of civil disorder, if Jesus spoke to them through Saul in forceful terms.
“But to try to change them and make them do things which are not easy and natural for them — that’s a task of an entirely different magnitude. We need to know what we want to do with the power Saul has. Do we want to swing an election? Or do we want to build an army of warriors for the White race? Before we try to do the latter, let’s be sure that it makes sense, that it fits into our overall strategy.”
There was silence for more than a minute. Oscar found himself amazed once again by the striking similarity between the things two men as different as William Ryan and Harry Keller had said to him. Reflecting on it, however, he also had a strong feeling that there was an important difference between the views of the two men: a difference that he couldn’t quite put his finger on, but which made it easier for him to swallow what Harry said than to accept the same, or a very similar, truth expressed by Ryan.
“All right,” Oscar finally said. “All right. Maybe I do get a little ahead of myself sometimes. I guess the thing I worry about is that in the long run we have to change the public’s ideas; we have to build a sense of racial consciousness in the average citizen. Otherwise, swinging an election or starting a riot can’t have a lasting effect.”
“You’re right, of course,” Harry replied. “But remember that the Jews have spent decades swinging public attitudes around to what they are now, and to do that they’ve had a much bigger input than a single television program once a week. In order to give the public a new orientation we’ll need a comparable input ourselves. Perhaps if we use Saul wisely we can gain a bigger input. Perhaps eventually we can gain a big enough input to compete effectively with the Jews for the hearts and minds of our people. My concern is about using him for a small and ineffective input now and maybe losing our chance of getting a much bigger and more effective input later.”
“Other than the experience we’re gaining now with the use of the television broadcast medium, how do you think we can use Saul’s broadcasts to gain a bigger input to the public?”
“I don’t know. I can think of several possibilities, but right now I believe we have to feel our way along and be ready to take advantage of new opportunities which may arise. The fact that so much money is coming in from Saul’s broadcasts promises to give us more ability to do new things than we’ve ever had before. We could easily have $100 million in the bank a year from now if things keep going the way they are. Then we could think seriously about buying a couple of big-city newspapers. But it’s a tricky business. We might spend $100 million on newspapers and then find ourselves losing $50 million a year on them if the Jews got wise to us and launched an advertising boycott against our papers. We’d end up having to sell out at an enormous loss. The advantage they have is that they’re organized in depth. Before they took over the media, they established a firm hold on the sources of the largest part of the media’s advertising revenue. We can’t hope to duplicate that.”
“Which, it seems to me, is why we should be working to get our ideas out to the public now,” Oscar replied. “We can’t do things the way the Jews did it. We can’t do it with money alone. But we might be able to do it with ideas, with inspiration. I understand, of course, that we’re getting ideas out to individuals now with our books and videotapes. I understand the importance of that; the people we’re reaching now are more intelligent, better educated, and better able to participate in our efforts than any of the people in Saul’s audience. But we can’t afford to continue letting the public drift in the direction the Jews have got them headed.”
He paused for a moment, then leaned forward as the glimmerings of a plan began to take shape in his mind. “Suppose we start with something that’s subtle enough that it can’t pose any danger to Saul’s program, but which begins to lay a basis for more obvious ideas later on. For instance, we might get them to thinking about roots. We might begin countering the Jewish line that everyone is nothing but an individual, with no roots and no responsibility except to himself.”
Saul, who had been only a listener until now, suddenly spoke up. “Like this?” he asked, and then began declaiming: “Brothers and sisters, is a man only an atom? Are you adrift in this world all by yourself? No, my brothers and sisters, you are not. God teaches us in the Bible that a man is like a link in a chain. You are the link which joins the past to the future. You are the link between all the generations which have gone before and those which will come after. You are what you are because of what your ancestors were and the way they behaved, the way they chose their wives and husbands. What your descendants are like will depend on the way you behave now. In other words, brothers and sisters, God gave us the responsibility for determining what the world will be like in the future. He expects us to take this responsibility very seriously. Because God loves the world, and he wants us to take care of it for him. Yes, he does, brothers and sisters. In the Bible Jesus himself tells us, ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.’ That’s what Jesus said. And so when we bring our own children into the world, we’d better pay attention to what we’re doing. We’d better make sure that they appear fair in the eyes of the Lord, t
hat they’re the kind of children that’ll please God and make him feel that we’re taking our responsibility seriously.”
“Exactly, Saul, exactly!” Oscar responded excitedly. “That bit about appearing ‘fair’ may raise a few squawks from the race-mixers and the darker-hued brethren, but I think we can get by with anything that’s no less subtle than that.”
“Of course, I’ll have to whip up a mess of parables to illustrate that message. The brothers and sisters can’t understand anything unless it’s got plenty of parables in it. But I like the basic idea. You know, I grew up in the Fundamentalist milieu. Those people tend to be simple, but they’re not bad people. I felt a little uncomfortable with treating them all like a herd of animals that we’d stampede in a certain direction when the right time came. I feel much better about including them in the race along with the somewhat more advanced folks we sell our books to. I’m sure that with sufficient time and patience we can undo a lot of the damage that’s been done to them and bring their better instincts to the fore again. It’s just a shame that we have to use a Jewish religion and Jewish scriptures to do it, instead of pulling them up out of that mire altogether.”
“Well, first things first, Saul,” Oscar replied. “Before they can free themselves from a lifetime of alien superstition, they have to learn to think along new directions. We have to give them a new framework for viewing the world and themselves. We have to help them gain a sense of racial identity, a better understanding of their relationship to the rest of the cosmos, and a sense of purpose in their lives.”
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