Heartland Active Club dan repost
“Hey man. I want you to hear it from me first. Jason’s dead.”
Silence for a moment. I waited for my old platoon sergeant to say it was a joke. I had just had a conversation with Jason the day before online. We had complained to each other about how lonely our society was for men who had spent years sweating, crying and bleeding alongside each other. About how ‘soft’ the so-called men we worked alongside as civilians were. About how society in general had no place left for warriors. Jason wasn’t dead. He was having a hard time, but we all were… right?
“I didn’t want you to see it online. His family is going to have the service this week. They wanted us to feel free to come for a memorial service over the holiday weekend this month.”
I thanked my old sergeant and hung up the phone. Leaned over my kitchen countertop and let the emotions wash over me. For the first time in a long time, I sobbed.
At the memorial service, a dozen-odd roughly dressed men made a circle in the church parking lot. Cigarettes and beers passed covertly. We recounted memories, stories and conversations with Jason. Every one of us could remember a time we depended on him for something; a mood lift, a joke, our sanity or even our lives.
Jason was a year shy of thirty. He left behind a grieving girlfriend, heartbroken parents and a brother who blamed himself. He left behind a group of men who had laughed and cried and fought with (and against) him. He was the first of the men I had forged a bond in fire with to pass on from wounds not of his body but his spirit. The first, but not the last.
I’ve been asked what radicalized me. It wasn’t the time five black males beat me to the ground until I passed out before they went through my pockets. It wasn’t the time two hispanic boys held guns at my head and took my phone, backpack and wallet. It wasn’t the time I had a frozen water bottle and a beer can lobbed into the back of my head at a political event where I went without being a supporter, just wanting to hear out a candidate. It was the looks on my brother’s faces as the rifles fired over a flag-draped casket. It was the despair I saw in a dozen war-worn White faces as men watched a brother laid to final rest, born down by the weight of a world who rejected his very existence.
Our opponents love to paint our movement as one of hatred, of reactionary opposition to “difference”. The reality is, our fight is one of love for our racial brothers and sisters. Of honor for our forefathers who secured our future through their labor and pain. Of hope for our children, and the future we shall leave as their inheritance. We don’t fight because we hate those different from us. We fight because we love our own Folk.
One Folk. One Nation. Hail victory! ✋🏻
Silence for a moment. I waited for my old platoon sergeant to say it was a joke. I had just had a conversation with Jason the day before online. We had complained to each other about how lonely our society was for men who had spent years sweating, crying and bleeding alongside each other. About how ‘soft’ the so-called men we worked alongside as civilians were. About how society in general had no place left for warriors. Jason wasn’t dead. He was having a hard time, but we all were… right?
“I didn’t want you to see it online. His family is going to have the service this week. They wanted us to feel free to come for a memorial service over the holiday weekend this month.”
I thanked my old sergeant and hung up the phone. Leaned over my kitchen countertop and let the emotions wash over me. For the first time in a long time, I sobbed.
At the memorial service, a dozen-odd roughly dressed men made a circle in the church parking lot. Cigarettes and beers passed covertly. We recounted memories, stories and conversations with Jason. Every one of us could remember a time we depended on him for something; a mood lift, a joke, our sanity or even our lives.
Jason was a year shy of thirty. He left behind a grieving girlfriend, heartbroken parents and a brother who blamed himself. He left behind a group of men who had laughed and cried and fought with (and against) him. He was the first of the men I had forged a bond in fire with to pass on from wounds not of his body but his spirit. The first, but not the last.
I’ve been asked what radicalized me. It wasn’t the time five black males beat me to the ground until I passed out before they went through my pockets. It wasn’t the time two hispanic boys held guns at my head and took my phone, backpack and wallet. It wasn’t the time I had a frozen water bottle and a beer can lobbed into the back of my head at a political event where I went without being a supporter, just wanting to hear out a candidate. It was the looks on my brother’s faces as the rifles fired over a flag-draped casket. It was the despair I saw in a dozen war-worn White faces as men watched a brother laid to final rest, born down by the weight of a world who rejected his very existence.
Our opponents love to paint our movement as one of hatred, of reactionary opposition to “difference”. The reality is, our fight is one of love for our racial brothers and sisters. Of honor for our forefathers who secured our future through their labor and pain. Of hope for our children, and the future we shall leave as their inheritance. We don’t fight because we hate those different from us. We fight because we love our own Folk.
One Folk. One Nation. Hail victory! ✋🏻