The John Franklin Letters

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Will Williams
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The John Franklin Letters

Post by Will Williams » Thu Jun 27, 2019 2:46 pm

I was reading the biography of William Pierce the other day, chapter nine on Dr. Revilo P. Oliver, in The Fame of a Dead Man's Deeds. Available here for $24: https://cosmotheistchurch.org/product/t ... s-griffin/

It can be read online here: http://www.robertsgriffin.com/Fame.pdf

Excerpt from pages 138-143:


...Pierce told Oliver at the lunch meeting that he was finding it hard
getting a response out of people to the message he was trying to get
across. Oliver asked him whether he had ever thought of writing fiction.
Oliver told Pierce that many of the sorts of people who would respond to
his ideas—those toward the bottom or on the margins of society with less
stake in the existing arrangements and less to lose—simply don't read the
kind of non-fiction material he was generating. If they read anything at
all, Oliver said, it is fiction, and particularly light, action-filled
recreational fiction.
“No, I hadn't thought about writing fiction,” Pierce told Oliver. “It
does sound like a good idea, though. But I really wouldn't know where
to start doing something like that—I've never done any of it.” Oliver told
Pierce that when he got back home in Illinois he would mail him a book
that the John Birch Society had published. It was the kind of fiction that
he had in mind for Pierce to think about writing.
A couple of weeks later, Pierce received a photocopy of the book
Oliver had talked about in the mail. It was called The John Franklin
Letters,
and had been published back in 1959.28 Pierce told me he didn't
read the book carefully but that he looked through it enough to get an
idea of how he could do something like that. The "something like that"
turned out to be The Turner Diaries, a book that has sold over three
hundred thousand copies without the aid of a commercial publisher and
bookstore distribution and has become arguably the most infamous book
of our time.
Pierce still has the photocopy of the book Oliver gave him, and I
went through it. The John Franklin Letters is made up of
chronologically arranged fictional letters from one John Semmes
Franklin to his ninety-three-year-old uncle. They span a two-year period,
from 1972 to 1974. (Recall that the book was written in 1959 and thus
its events transpire in the future.) Pierce told me that the letters format
on The John Franklin Letters inspired the idea of a fictional diary, which
Pierce decided would be a good format for writing a first novel. With
diary entries, he would just have to look at the world through the eyes of
one person, Earl Turner. He wouldn't have to put himself in the place of
a number of characters or assume the position of an omniscient observer.
No author is listed for The John Franklin Letters. The preface is
written by a fictional Harley Ogdon, who identifies himself as a
professor of American history at the University of Illinois. He informs
us that Franklin's letters to his uncle record the ousting of the "Buros"
(Bureaucrats) by the Rangers, an underground patriotic military force
Franklin helped form. The Rangers, Ogdon writes, represented the
resistance to the excesses of state control of every facet of American life...
[...]
Guided by the example of The John Franklin Letters, Pierce began
writing what came to be called The Turner Diaries as installments for his
tabloid Attack!. The early installments received an enthusiastic response
from readers, so he kept them going. As with The John Franklin
Letters
, the basic situation is a revolt against those in control of America
in a future time. Instead of the Rangers, in Pierce's book it is the
Organization.
---

Interesting. So, on a whim I searched Amazon.com to see if by chance there is still a copy of The John Franklin Letters floating around out there and available sixty years after it was written. There was! A single copy for $20 plus $2.99 shipping. I ordered it for the William Luther Pierce Memorial Library. It has been shipped and will arrive at the National Office in a few days.


Image

There was even a 5-star review of The Franklin Letters on Amazon:

Michael R. Wilson
5.0 out of 5 stars
Proof that the old books are sometimes the best
April 9, 2013
Format: Paperback
I think the forward of this book copyrighted in 1959 states things better than I could ever do, excerpt follows:

Ours is a nation enfeebled by political maternalism. Our voters have been conditioned to vote themselves largess out of the public treasury; to rely upon "government" to provide them jobs, security, ease.

But government cannot give of itself; what government gives to one - either an individual or a pressure group - it must take from others. And the public treasury is guarded by only the public conscience.

If the public conscience tolerates taking from some, to give to others, grasping men will exploit the frailty. Our politicians have done so.

Both parties in Washington are distinguished by men who seek to give their constituency what that constituency wants; tax money, which has been taken from someone else's pocket.

A public which makes such demands upon its officials precludes responsible men holding public office. That those in Washington can compromise with Atheistic Communism is not surprising. To oppose it would require vigor and sacrifice on the part of their constituents.

A continuation of this atmosphere can only bring disaster.....
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Wade Hampton III
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Re: The John Franklin Letters

Post by Wade Hampton III » Fri Jun 28, 2019 12:23 am

This is excellent. However, neither Leonardo da Vinci nor Chancellor Hitler penned fiction.
I am not looking down upon it. Sometimes a simple life-changing event can appear in the
form of an undramatic tract like "Who Rules America." That was all I needed. Have to start
somewhere.

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Will Williams
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Re: The John Franklin Letters

Post by Will Williams » Fri Jun 28, 2019 11:33 am

Wade Hampton III wrote:This is excellent. However, neither Leonardo da Vinci nor Chancellor Hitler penned fiction.
I am not looking down upon it. Sometimes a simple life-changing event can appear in the
form of an undramatic tract like "Who Rules America." That was all I needed. Have to start
somewhere.
Dr. Pierce wrote just two novels, the first inspired by Dr. Oliver's fictional The John Franklin Letters. Everything else both of these two giants wrote, which is considerable, was non-fiction. Pierce only had a photocopy of Franklin's Letters. Now we will have the actual book, which in my mind is historical. The Turner Diaries has effectively awakened to reality to some degree well over a million readers now, so Oliver's suggestion that Pierce could reach more people with his ideas through a fiction worked out well, I'd say. WLP's second novel, Hunter, does this even more more effectively but doesn't yet have the notoriety of The Turner Diaries. viewtopic.php?f=32&t=326--

Again, to make my point...

Pierce told Oliver at the lunch meeting that he was finding it hard
getting a response out of people to the message he was trying to get
across. Oliver asked him whether he had ever thought of writing fiction.
Oliver told Pierce that many of the sorts of people who would respond to
his ideas—those toward the bottom or on the margins of society with less
stake in the existing arrangements and less to lose—simply don't read the
kind of non-fiction material he was generating. If they read anything at
all, Oliver said, it is fiction, and particularly light, action-filled
recreational fiction.
“No, I hadn't thought about writing fiction,” Pierce told Oliver. “It
does sound like a good idea, though. But I really wouldn't know where
to start doing something like that—I've never done any of it.” Oliver told
Pierce that when he got back home in Illinois he would mail him a book
that the John Birch Society had published. It was the kind of fiction that
he had in mind for Pierce to think about writing.
A couple of weeks later, Pierce received a photocopy of the book
Oliver had talked about in the mail. It was called The John Franklin
Letters, and had been published back in 1959. Pierce told me he didn't
read the book carefully but that he looked through it enough to get an
idea of how he could do something like that. The "something like that"
turned out to be The Turner Diaries...
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Will Williams
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Re: The John Franklin Letters

Post by Will Williams » Wed Jul 08, 2020 11:01 am

More here about the Oliver/Pierce connection to The John Franklin Letters: https://nationalvanguard.org/2020/07/th ... n-letters/
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Wade Hampton III
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Re: The John Franklin Letters

Post by Wade Hampton III » Wed Jul 08, 2020 9:53 pm

This item would be a valuable addition to WLP's library. All the more
reason to see the Library exist in its completed state. I hope my recent financial
contribution will bring a reality to this project!

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Jim Mathias
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Re: The John Franklin Letters

Post by Jim Mathias » Thu Jul 09, 2020 12:55 am

Wade Hampton III wrote:
Wed Jul 08, 2020 9:53 pm
This item would be a valuable addition to WLP's library. All the more
reason to see the Library exist in its completed state. I hope my recent financial
contribution will bring a reality to this project!
Your contribution is appreciated, Wade!

Others can follow Wade's lead, whether members or not, by sending donations to the new library at:

National Alliance
PO Box 4
Mountain City, TN 37683
Activism materials available! ===> Contact me via PM to obtain quantities of the "Send Them Back", "NA Health Warning #1 +#2+#3" stickers, and any fliers listed in the Alliance website's flier webpage.

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Will Williams
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Re: The John Franklin Letters

Post by Will Williams » Thu Jul 09, 2020 8:32 am

Wade Hampton III wrote:
Wed Jul 08, 2020 9:53 pm
This item would be a valuable addition to WLP's library. All the more
reason to see the Library exist in its completed state. I hope my recent financial
contribution will bring a reality to this project!

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.

That's from the comment I made yesterday at NV,org, linked above. We have recently received a second big shipment of Dr. Oliver's papers, audiotapes and other materials of his for his own section in the WLP Memorial Library.

Your donation, made to NA, went toward NA operating expenses: staff salaries, office overhead, Cosmotheist Books purchases and expenses, etc. The WLP Library building fund is separate and designated for construction of the library facility.

I got lucky and purchased the only available copy at the time of of The Franklin Letters for $20 on Amazon.com. As I wrote in the June BULLETIN, last month we purchased 64 newly published titles, mostly hardback editions that will fit nicely with the collections we have of older books, many rare, that Dr. Pierce and others had collected. That purchase was over $1,000, and includes multiple copies of a half dozen of those titles that we will list for sale at our expanding online bookstore: https://cosmotheistchurch.org/shop/
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Grimork
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Re: The John Franklin Letters

Post by Grimork » Sat Jul 11, 2020 9:16 am

Will Williams wrote:
Thu Jun 27, 2019 2:46 pm
...Pierce told Oliver at the lunch meeting that he was finding it hard
getting a response out of people to the message he was trying to get
across. Oliver asked him whether he had ever thought of writing fiction.
Oliver told Pierce that many of the sorts of people who would respond to
his ideas—those toward the bottom or on the margins of society with less
stake in the existing arrangements and less to lose—simply don't read the
kind of non-fiction material he was generating.
If they read anything at
all, Oliver said, it is fiction, and particularly light, action-filled
recreational fiction.
This really was a great idea from Oliver and I'll tell you why I think it's smart.. People who feel that the world is hopeless and/or are pushed to the bottom of society a lot of times cope using escapist tactics. A person that is distraught and sick of the world the way it is who might not at the time have the mental fortitude to look toward non-fiction as a source for change. They will a lot of times gravitate towards fiction, drugs, or mindless entertainment. A new world that isn't necessarily the real one they feel oppressed by. That way they can "leave" the reality they're experiencing for awhile. This lets them decompress and de-stress. Dr. Pierce by using fiction as a vehicle for his message is an awesome way to reach those marginalized people, who otherwise may never read anything he wrote.

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Will Williams
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Re: The John Franklin Letters

Post by Will Williams » Sat Jul 11, 2020 12:14 pm

Grimork wrote:
Sat Jul 11, 2020 9:16 am
Will Williams wrote:
Thu Jun 27, 2019 2:46 pm
...Pierce told Oliver at the lunch meeting that he was finding it hard
getting a response out of people to the message he was trying to get
across. Oliver asked him whether he had ever thought of writing fiction.
Oliver told Pierce that many of the sorts of people who would respond to
his ideas—those toward the bottom or on the margins of society with less
stake in the existing arrangements and less to lose—simply don't read the
kind of non-fiction material he was generating.
If they read anything at
all, Oliver said, it is fiction, and particularly light, action-filled
recreational fiction.
This really was a great idea from Oliver and I'll tell you why I think it's smart.. People who feel that the world is hopeless and/or are pushed to the bottom of society a lot of times cope using escapist tactics. A person that is distraught and sick of the world the way it is who might not at the time have the mental fortitude to look toward non-fiction as a source for change. They will a lot of times gravitate towards fiction, drugs, or mindless entertainment. A new world that isn't necessarily the real one they feel oppressed by. That way they can "leave" the reality they're experiencing for awhile. This lets them decompress and de-stress. Dr. Pierce by using fiction as a vehicle for his message is an awesome way to reach those marginalized people, who otherwise may never read anything he wrote.

Very good, Grimork. I have never read a lot of fiction, preferring to educate myself with facts from a White perspective, particularly history and biographies of people who interest me. But when I read Dr. Pierce's novel, Hunter, 30 years ago I was blown away by how educational it is in such a subtle way. Even "those toward the bottom or on the margins of society" will grasp what he teaches in a fictional format. :D It was as if Hunter was written directly to me. I had to meet the author, and a couple of months later drove up to WV and did meet with him for three days. He sent me on my way with copies of his Cosmotheist pamphlets, Which Way Western Man? and The Best of Attack and National Vanguard. Later that year, after I'd absorbed that material, he invited me to come work with him. He wrote to me that he needed my help "because the Jew and his collaborators still live!"

And they still do.


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Grimork
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Re: The John Franklin Letters

Post by Grimork » Sat Jul 11, 2020 2:42 pm

Will Williams wrote:
Sat Jul 11, 2020 12:14 pm

Very good, Grimork. I have never read a lot of fiction, preferring to educate myself with facts from a White perspective, particularly history and biographies of people who interest me. But when I read Dr. Pierce's novel, Hunter, 30 years ago I was blown away by how educational it is in such a subtle way. Even "those toward the bottom or on the margins of society" will grasp what he teaches in a fictional format. :D It was as if Hunter was written directly to me. I had to meet the author, and a couple of months later drove up to WV and did meet with him for three days. He sent me on my way with copies of his Cosmotheist pamphlets, Which Way Western Man? and The Best of Attack and National Vanguard. Later that year, after I'd absorbed that material, he invited me to come work with him. He wrote to me that he needed my help "because the Jew and his collaborators still live!"

And they still do.


https://cosmotheistchurch.org/product/h ... macdonald/
Image
Did Hunter come first or was it The Turner Diaries?
I used to read a lot of fiction as a kid, but once I got into my twenties non-fiction seemed a lot more interesting and useful. I have yet to have a fantasy book teach me anything I could apply to real life. :p

I'm glad you got to meet Dr. Pierce, sounds like quite the adventure! I will have to read both books eventually. Yes the work is unfinished still. There is lots to be done.

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