How to save a thousand lives.
by Kirby Ferris
Jews For The Preservation of Firearms Ownership (www.JPFO.org) March, 2012
Would you like to perhaps save a thousand innocent lives? Maybe more? I want you to read one book, and then, more importantly, make sure you circulate that book aggressively amongst your “birds of a feather” friends, family and neighbors.
The book is Matt Bracken’s novel “Enemies Foreign and Domestic.”
No, this isn’t some advertising gimmick. JPFO, because of this article, will not be selling Bracken’s book. (But we’ll link you to his website. HERE)
What each of you out there has within reach is a means by which you can pull the rug out from one of the few remaining “false flag” schemes “gun control” orchestrators can launch with any chance of success.
What’s neat about a novel, a work of fiction, is that it can say things that you, yourself, might be hesitant (or even unwise) to utter. “Ahh! It’s just one of those action conspiracy novels!”
Under the cover of a good read, with believable (both likable and detestable) characters, and a thoroughly plausible plot, all you need do is read Bracken’s novel and pass it along to a friend with a question: “Do you think this is possible?”
That’s all you have to do. Unless you choose to wade in and start making some noise on your own. But, even the quiet, mousy introvert can pass this book along with a sincere frown and that question: “Do you think this is possible?”
The premise of “Enemies Foreign and Domestic?” A sniper fires three magazines (90 rounds) into a jam-packed football stadium with a semi-automatic “assault rifle.” But in the panic ten times more than ninety die. The slaughter is meant to at first appear to be the work of your classic “lone gunman.” A shooter is conveniently killed at the scene of the sniper?s nest. Let’s tick off the predictable characteristics of the now identified sniper:
1. He’s white.
2. He’s a Southerner. (Yeah, and a racist.)
3. He’s a combat vet.
4. He’s been having emotional problems.
5. He’s been seen hanging around a local “militia” group. This creates the further implication of a “right wing conspiracy.”
6. And last but not least, he used a deadly “assault rifle” semi-auto to perpetrate the horrific deed.
7. Oh yes, and he’s now quite dead and can’t tell anyone why he committed this atrocity. Actually, Bracken spins an even more intriguing can of worms. I’m just laying out the rough agenda here.
And who comes to the rescue, to save America from the millions of bone head, red-necked, racist, inbred, armed “right wing gun-nuts” out here in the hinterland of our nation? Why it’s that chivalrous, squeaky clean, brilliant group of rocket scientists, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives!
And, of course, Congress, driven by the frenzied lemmings that many Americans have now become, passes a total ban on all semi-automatic rifles, even .22s. Americans are given a short “amnesty period” during which they can simply deposit their semi-auto rifles into conveniently placed (and guarded) dumpsters. At the end of the amnesty period you are looking at guaranteed hard prison time and an absurd fine on top of that. Big reward for snitches. Just like the IRS.
Could it happen?
Now here is where Bracken really gets down and dirty. He MUST have had a run in with the Gun Goons at one time or knows someone who did. He’s got the type down cold. Written in 2003, during the Bush administration, and well before “Operation Fast and Furious” was a wriggling little maggot in Eric Holder’s mind, the author rolls out a cast of BATFE characters that flawlessly portrays the list of moral afflictions so well represented in the BATFE today.
Really rotten bad guys are vitally important in action novels. You gotta really hate the bad guys. Near the end of Bracken’s novel you find yourself trying to decide between battery acid, piranhas, or gut shooting as the just deserts for utterly foul BATFE Agent George Hammet. And none of those punishments are even on Bracken’s pages!
The President of the United States is a buffoon. And the Attorney General of the State of Virginia just might get what he’s got coming to him, as he rides public hysteria for the vanity and benefit of his political aspirations. I won’t go into spoilers here. “Enemies Foreign and Domestic” is a good solid thriller with a history-changing hook. The fact that Bracken wrote this before “Fast and Furious” is very eerie.
Oh yeah, minor detail, not all Americans go along with the absurd and unconstitutional gun-prohibition scheme. Quite a few of them don’t. Bracken describes some very creative potential scenarios, that, quite frankly, I don’t want to talk about here.
If word of Bracken’s imagined stadium massacre can spread far enough and deep enough into heartland America, the gun confiscators (who have now certainly proven their moral fiber with the hundreds of dead from “Fast and Furious”) might have to abandon what would have almost certainly been an extremely effective “false flag” operation meant for our near future.
So save a thousand lives. Prevent a stadium slaughter. Matt Bracken has turned the lights on in the roach-filled rooms of those who would rule us.
Frequent JPFO contributor and strategist, Kirby Ferris, collaborated intensively with Aaron Zelman over the last two years of Aaron’s life. Ferris is currently the Research Director of JPFO.
Enemies Foreign And Domestic review in GUNS Magazine, November 2005
“A stadium massacre leads to the banning of all semi-automatic rifles,” the teaser on the jacket reads.
“But who really fired the fatal shots, and why?”
The answer, we learn, involves nothing less than a modern day Reichstag fire, engineered and instigated by an evil and ambitious ATF supervisor and his squad of violent agency misfits. The political fallout of the stadium shooting is a national ban on “assault weapons.” With free rein to create more “domestic terror” incidents, and with unprincipled politicians and a complicit media, gun owners are easily demonized as a manipulated public demands more “security.”
All Brad Fallon wanted to do was restore his vintage sailboat, Guajira, take his savings from three years of working the ANWR oil fields, and cruise the world. He hadn’t counted on his interest and proficiency in shooting being used to entrap him, or being ultimately forced into covert rebellion against rogue federal agents.
But back a man into a corner with other men — all proficient in modern weaponry, and all unbending believers in liberty — make it clear that you mean to destroy them, and a most dangerous type of resistance is born: a competent one.
Author Matthew Bracken has written a thrilling first novel (did I mention this is also a passionate love story?), one that engages, grips and doesn’t let up. He avoids the proselytizing that can plague the liberty genre, and delivers a solid, exciting tale with deep and believable characters. Bracken’s background with UDT and SEAL Teams, and as the designer/builder of a cutter that he soloed from Panama to Guam, adds credibility to the technical and tactical details he weaves into the plot. I can’t wait for the sequel, scheduled for release early in 2006.
David Codrea, GUNS Magazine, and The Examiner,
as well as “The War On Guns – Notes From the Resistance”
John Ross review of Enemies Foreign And Domestic
I have several complaints about most thriller novelists. First, their protagonists are too often 100% virtuous with no humanizing flaws. Second, the protagonists let their enemies live when you KNOW the bad guys are going to come back and murder their kids etc. Third, everything the government does (hi-tech weapons, military & police tactics, criminal investigations, etc.) functions flawlessly. Fourth, too many stories have all the brilliant thinking and brave actions done by government employees (Special Forces, policemen, Intelligence operatives, etc.) Lastly, some novels have a basic premise that is just not believable. (Clancy’s RAINBOW SIX is a prime example.)
Novelist Matthew Bracken has avoided these sins almost entirely in his excellent debut novel ENEMIES FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC.
It is a challenge for any writer to come up with a plot that is at once plausible enough to have the reader accept it but also unlikely enough that it has not actually happened yet in real life. EFAD’s dramatic concept is this: Wally Malvone, a lone mid-level ATF executive, engineers (with one accomplice) a long-range shooting into a football stadium and successfully arranges for an addled, destitute veteran to take the blame and be killed in the process.
Malvone does this because he needs an emergency that will encourage the President to embrace a plan he has put together: Forming a secret “hit squad” comprised of overaggressive ATF agents with disciplinary problems. This squad’s duty is to be proactive: identify domestic terrorists (“militia members”) and kill them during raids. The trial is in the media, when the cameras see the (planted) contraband retrieved from the slain terrorist’s dwelling. Malvone wants to have this hit squad for the obvious reasons: funding, power, and prestige.
Naturally, some of the victims drawn into Malvone’s web of treachery decide they have no choice but to fight back.
At each point in the storyline, as the good guys and bad guys acted and reacted, I kept asking myself if what was happening was plausible. How would *I* rewrite it to make it more believable? In some cases I thought that I would have had the parties react a bit differently, but I had to admit my alternate scenario was not necessarily more likely.
The fact is that when you get into the realm of serious, institutionalized government abuse of power in an environment with lots of resourceful, angry, well-armed people and the near-instant information flow of the Internet, you’re in uncharted waters.
One critic said the female lead was an adolescent fantasy (21 years old, beautiful, motorcycle rider, expert shot, virgin) and I would have given her more edginess, but hey, a lot of readers like their heroes untainted.
Anyway, EFAD is an action-packed read, with most of the skill and creativity being demonstrated by the private sector, which is IMO 100% realistic.
Send a copy to your favorite Senator or Congressman…
John Ross is the author of “Unintended Consequences”
A sniper opens fire on a crowded football stadium on the first day of the season. The crowd panics and stampedes. A thousand people die … and the federal government immediately goes not only into gun-banning mode, but into a post-911-type security frenzy that ultimately brings the country FIST (Firearm Inspections Stop Terrorism) checkpoints and brutal demonization of gun owners. The alleged (and quickly deceased) sniper has conveniently used a “military-style assault weapon,” and conveniently fits the profile every anti-gunner loves to hate. The loss of freedom looks unstoppable. But is it?
And that’s merely the opening of Enemies Foreign And Domestic, the first novel by Matthew Bracken, a self-described “freedom addict.” Unlike most freedom-movement novels, this one is loaded with action and populated by characters you’ll believe, like, and identify with.
Claire Wolfe, author of “101 Things to do ‘Til the Revolution” and “Don’t Shoot the Bastards (Yet)”
Enemies Foreign and Domestic is an outstanding novel. The author manages to weave a lot of useful facts into a fictional storyline. The tale is compelling, the scenario is plausible, the writing is well-crafted, the characters are believable, and most importantly the story is unquestionably VERY thought provoking.
I highly recommend that you buy a copy of Enemies Foreign and Domestic. Strike that! Buy at least two copies–because if you buy just one you’ll lend it out and it will get passed on and on, and never return!
As an author myself I can appreciate the tremendous effort that obviously went into writing Enemies Foreign and Domestic. Matt Bracken’s attention to detail is outstanding. He manages to meld the “micro” details with the “macro” scenario almost seamlessly. That is a rare gift. Enemies Foreign and Domestic is indeed a “must read” for every American gun owner. It belongs on the bookshelf of everyone that loves liberty.
James Rawles, author of “Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse”
The shooting culture and freedom movement have too little good fiction to enjoy, so it was a real treat to read “Enemies Foreign and Domestic” by Matthew Bracken. An exciting, plausible and well-written story about the ATF versus gun-owning Americans who just want to be left alone. Fine fiction doubling as potential prophecy, from an unapologetic defender of our right to keep and bear arms. I highly recommend it! Buy a copy for your gun-phobic family and friends, to clue them into the true patriot’s mindset.
Boston T. Party, author of “Boston’s Gun Bible” and “Molon Labe!”
In the opening pages, the reader is thrust into a football stadium packed with 80,000 fans on a pleasant September day. As the game is starting, small waves of activity begin erupting from areas all through the stadium. It is soon apparent that people are being shot and no one knows where the bullets are coming from. As the crowd begins to realize what is going on, panic spreads throughout the entire stadium and pandemonium erupts. In a panicked effort to flee their seats, people meet their fate being trampled by the stampeding crowd. Others plummet to their deaths by being pushed by the fleeing crowds from the upper reaches of the stadium. In the end, over 1,000 people have perished.
The alleged shooter, a disabled Desert Storm veteran, was located almost 1,300 yards from the stadium, on a perch overlooking the stadium with an old SKS rifle. He was immediately dispatched by the tactical team looking for the source of the incoming fire.
That same evening, the President appeared on television to address the nation about the tragedy that has been playing over and over for hours on every broadcast network. With the scoped SKS rifle by his side, the President proclaimed that the nation needed to move to ban military-style rifles to prevent anything like this from happening again in the future. He pleads with Congress to immediately take up the issue. In a knee-jerk reaction move, typical of so many liberals in office, the possession of all semi-automatic “assault weapons” was outlawed, and the public had one week to turn in their now prohibited firearms to the nearest police station for immediate destruction. All semi-automatic rifles are included in the ban, including the common and popular .22LR firearms.
It is soon realized that there are a few “low people in high places” orchestrating events to compound on the stadium tragedy in order to take advantage of the momentum of anti-gun sentiment in the misled general public. In the following pages the reader is introduced to a cast of characters who happen to meet by a series of related incidents in the days following the sweeping ban. Previously unaware of each other’s existence, events following the gun ban would create a bond they would have the remainder of their lives. As they begin to understand what is happening, it is time for retaliation and the tide slowly turns against those who have perpetrated the horrific events that would scar the nation for years to come.
I found this book to be a great read. I usually don’t spend much time reading works of fiction but within one chapter, this book not only caught my interest, but also retained it through the remaining 570 pages. This is not a typical good guy vs. bad guy, or “hero against the out-of-control government bad guy” type of read. It is also not a “goober manual” loaded with far-reaching, underlying conspiracy theories. Many of the events discussed in this book are historically accurate and while the storyline is full of twists and turns it remains believable and not too far-fetched.
It is obvious that the author has a background involving firearms from the numerous references that are indeed realistic. Firearms mentioned range from the H&K 10mm MP-5s, used by special-ops teams, to the effective and compact Thompson Contender pistol, threaded for a sound suppressor. The characters you meet are interesting and complex, and the storyline has several major events running parallel to each other. The last chapter leaves the reader waiting for the sequel. This writer will be anxiously waiting for its release.
Jeff Zimba, “Small Arms Review,” April 2005
If you’ve read John Ross’ book, Unintended Consequences, you will love Enemies Foreign And Domestic. As the blurb on the cover states, “A stadium massacre leads to the banning of all semi-automatic rifles. But who really fired the fatal shots, and why?”
This well-written novel takes place in the foreseeable near future. The plot is expertly developed by the author, Matthew Bracken. While this may be Mr. Bracken’s first novel, the plot is complex, yet easy to follow. The characters are numerous, but easy to remember. For me, the book was almost impossible to put down! The author’s extensive military background assures us that all of the firearms references are flawless. You will not read about pistols with “clips” and revolvers with magazines in Enemies Foreign And Domestic. The most shocking aspect of this book was the chilling believability of the story.
The author, Matt Bracken, is a self-described freedom addict who loves ocean sailing above all for the pure freedom it often permits. He is a Constitutional hardliner who believes in the original intent of the Founding Fathers of our country. Matt believes that the clear interpretation of the Second Amendment is a pass-fail litmus test regarding the state of freedom in America., and that we may be on the verge of faling that test. He has worked as a welder, boat builder, sailboat rigger and charter boat captain. This is his first novel and he has many more waiting impatiently to be put on paper. He lives in the San Diego area with his wife and two children. Matt is currently working on the sequel, called “Domestic Enemies.”
Concealed Carry Magazine, April 2005
Enemies Foreign And Domestic is as compelling a novel about liberty and the 2nd amendment as you will ever read. It is packed with real life issues right off today’s headlines and the political camps on both sides of the issue. It is also just a good, old-fashioned barnstorming novel that you can’t put down. In his first at bat, Matthew Bracken has hit one out of the park.
Jeff Head, author of the “Dragon’s Fury” series of WW3 novels.
Recommended Writer: Matthew Bracken. If the sample chapters are any indication, the upcoming “Enemies Foreign And Domestic” will be an incredible book, a combination of the best aspects of Unintended Consequences (which was an important but weakly written book), R.A. Heinlein’s Free Men and much original thought.
Oleg Volk, “VolksStudio,” owner of The High Road internet firearms forum.
Editorial Review of Castigo Cay on Western Rifle Shooters, January 2012
Entertaining in the extreme. Equally essential. At least for anyone interested in successfully navigating the New Amerikkan Police State and its obstacles.
Matt Bracken’s latest introduces readers to Dan Kilmer, a former Marine scout sniper with recent experiences in the Islamic wars who, upon separation, sails off to sea for freedom, adventure, and profit, wherever possible. His freebooting life is disrupted when a former girlfriend runs into trouble, and Dan decides to come to her rescue.
From there, the reader is taken on a full-throttle blast through the near-future Neo-Depression South Florida, where DHS and local police are full-gear everywhere, the Haves live magnificently, and the Have-Not normal people are reduced to Third World poverty, corruption, and squalor.
Particularly noteworthy is how Matt chose to make his protagonist, as he executes his rescue mission, subject to the same kind of human errors and fallibilities that afflict us all. Dan Kilmer, for all his skills and experience, is NOT a Clancy superhero. And Castigo Cay is all the more plausible and enjoyable for that decision.
A free sample of Castigo is on his website, but do yourself a favor and order the whole book from Matt, or via Amazon or on Kindle. While you’re at it, get the entire Enemies Foreign and Domestic trilogy as well, if you don’t already own them.
Where else can you get a series of can’t-put-it-down tales filled with a wealth of tips on how to deal with kinetic and potentially kinetic situations? Highly, highly recommended.
David Codrea radio interview, July 5, 2011
Matthew Bracken, this is a guy, I just love his books. I love fiction, and I very rarely anymore get a chance to read it, and I did reviews on his Enemies trilogy, it was Enemies Foreign And Domestic, Domestic Enemies, and Foreign Enemies And Traitors. In his very last, FEAT, he wrote to me and he said, “David, this is my best effort, it’s all I can give. I hope it makes a difference.” And that put a lot of pressure on me, because I’d given good reviews to his first two books, and I was thinking, oh my goodness, what if I don’t like this one? Because my policy is I will not write a bad book review, I figure it’s not my place to step on somebody else’s dream, and I hate snotty critics who just can’t wait to tear somebody down. There were no worries on that, that was just a brilliant book as his others were. And now he’s got a new book out called Castigo Cay, and again I was a little concerned, what if I don’t like this one either, and I started reading it and I sent him an email and I said Matt, I have a bone to pick with you: I am busier than a one-armed paper hanger right now and now I can’t put your book down. I finished it, and all I can say is wow! Matthew Bracken, welcome to the War On Guns, Notes From the Resistance.”
- David Codrea writes the “Rights Watch” section of GUNS Magazine.
- He also runs the “War On Guns: Notes From the Resistance” blog.
- And he writes for the National Examiner.
Along with Mike Vanderbaugh, David Codrea broke the Gunwalker story to the national audience.
“Bracken nails the target again!”
Five star Amazon review by W. Dickinson, June 21, 2011
In Castigo Cay, Matt Bracken delivers with a sound foundation for his next series. If you enjoyed his Enemies trilogy, then you’ll find your hours of sleep dwindling as you sit in bed breaking the promise to yourself that you’ll only finish one more section and then turn out the light. The book is action-packed and that hard to put down. The details within this new novel still reveal that the author is a passionate mariner and most certainly a member of the gun culture, though his writing style is instructional and as a reader, you don’t need to be an expert sailor or a competitive marksman to keep up with the terminology.
Now onto the story. Without spoiling any of the plot, let me say Bracken has painted another very scary, yet very plausible, not-too-distant future of these United States where privacy, civil liberties, and basic freedoms have been surrendered for the government’s undelivered promise of security. The characters are very real and I especially appreciated that, unlike in some novels where the main character is the smartest person in the world, an expert at everything, and executes every mission with 007 flawlessness, Castigo Cay’s characters’ best-laid plans don’t always play out the way they had hoped. This adds an element of realism and page-turning anticipation as the characters improvise, adapt, and (usually) overcome.
This is a fun read that’s not only entertaining, but informative as well. You might as well pick up at least two copies to qualify for the free shipping, because you’ll undoubtedly end up wanting to give a copy to a friend.
“You will savor this book like a fine vintage.”
Five star Amazon review by R. Hilligoss, June 29, 2011
Dan Kilmer is a former Marine sniper who has been living as a boat bum since leaving the service after tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. His 60 foot schooner is essentially stranded at anchor in the Bahamas with his two-man crew and his voluptuous Venezuelan girlfriend of the last six months.
Dan has been making his living through odds and ends and off-the-books salvage jobs both legal and not so legal. He’s not a pirate or thief, but he’s not above the occasional con job. You see, Dan Kilmer is an “illegal.” He doesn’t have the paperwork to work legally in the many ports of call that he now calls home. He also cannot return to his home in the US because of the many Patriot Act “improvements” and IRS tax laws that have come into being since the massive terrorist attacks in the not too distant future.
America has become something of a police state, and a return to the US for Dan would likely result in his immediate detention for lack of up-to-date ID papers and chips. He doesn’t even have a valid driver’s license anymore.
Cori, Dan’s beautiful young girlfriend, is restless and anxious to relocate to Miami, where she pictures herself as a news reader or some other kind of TV personality. Her beauty pageant good looks and confident ambition lead her to meet the owner of a huge 110 foot luxury yacht passing through Dan’s Bahamas’ port on his way back to the US, who promises her transport to Miami in the style to which she would like to become accustomed.
Soon after her leaving, Dan hears some troubling news about the yacht Cori has left on. So troubling that Dan feels it necessary to set off on a trek that will lead to more trouble than he could have imagined.
Matt Bracken’s fourth book is a top notch action thriller set in a near future worldwide economic depression. The United States has changed greatly, but is still recognizable. The laws have become oppressive, the crime is out of control and shanty towns that are filled with the newly homeless are growing all over the country.
Castigo Cay is not part of the “Enemies” series, and doesn’t share the dystopian nightmares that make up those classic libertarian books. It stands alone as a more mainstream effort. Bracken’s books are very well developed. He doesn’t edit them down to the standard 375 pages that most best selling author’s struggle to fill with their formulaic plots and superhuman lead characters. Bracken takes the time to develop his characters and the ensuing action sequences develop naturally and believably.
The Enemies List: review of Foreign Enemies And Traitors by David Codrea
I have a rule I tell every author who sends me a book to review: I only write good ones. If I don’t care for it, I’ll decline to say anything. I figure it’s not my place to crush someone else’s labor of love. So I ventured into Matthew Bracken’s latest offering, “Foreign Enemies and Traitors”, with a bit of trepidation. After all, I’d written reviews in this magazine for the two prior volumes in his trilogy, Enemies Foreign and Domestic (Nov. 2005) and Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista (Feb. 2007). I called the former “a thrilling first novel, one that engages, grips and doesn’t let up,” and the latter “a brave book [that] nails the probability of near-future disintegration of the Republic with terrifying prescience.”
And then there was Matt’s handwritten note to me on the cover page of his latest: “This is my best effort, it’s all I can give. I hope it makes a difference.”
What if I didn’t care for it? What if I was let down because it couldn’t match the expectations the first two books instilled in me? No worries. This is the best of the bunch, and that’s saying a lot. As always, Bracken writes a page-turner involving main characters you care about deeply or hate to their evil cores. This third volume is mainly Phil Carson’s story, the Viet Nam veteran we met as a major supporting character in the first two novels. A hurricane has shipwrecked him in Mississippi while smuggling cargo from Central America into a vastly different country than the one he was born into.
It’s the Greater Depression. Following massive earthquakes, the Deep South is under the military rule of a general who is an authority unto himself. The federal government is hopelessly corrupt, presided over by a charismatic subversive who has placed fellow Marxist travelers in key positions of great power. The Northeast and Midwest reflect his socialist centralized federal control. Tennessee has been in rebellion, and the president, anxious to subdue the insurrection so he can turn his attention to the resource-rich Free States of the Northwest, has brought in foreign mercenaries.
But it’s not my place to tell you Matt’s story. I want you to watch it unfold for yourself.
It reads like a movie. Bracken paints scenes with a master’s touch, so you can see where his characters are. You can feel their emotions. And when it comes to technical details, explanations of weapons systems, military protocols, intelligence capabilities–nobody does it better.
Still, it’s not an easy book. The details require us to pay attention. And there’s much ugliness: the degradation of some, the racism, the evil (and tell me Bob Bullard, the soulless, ambitious “Director of Rural Pacification,” doesn’t qualify as a great villain!).
If you haven’t read the first two novels, don’t let that stop you from getting this one. It reads well as a standalone book, and I can’t think of a better introduction and inducement to discover the earlier works.
You’ve given enough, Mr. Bracken. Your best is superb. Well done, sir.
A review of Foreign Enemies And Traitors, by Nelson Hultberg (Dallas, TX United States)
Will America survive the upcoming years as a “sovereign nation,” or will the hideous dream of one-world government be our fate? This is the paramount issue facing America in the 21st century; it transcends all other concerns.
In Foreign Enemies and Traitors, Matt Bracken has created a brilliant Atlas Shrugged-like narrative of how this issue might play out amidst the economic meltdown now consuming us. Conservatives and libertarians throughout America will take to this tale like the colonists took to Tom Paine in 1776.
As the story begins, the Second Great Depression (what Bracken has dubbed the “Greater Depression”) rages throughout America. The country is splitting up geographically with several secessionist movements in response to a radical leftist administration recently ushered into power in Washington. But the country is also splitting up geologically due to a once-in-a-century earthquake that levels Memphis, TN and the surrounding Mississippi River valley. This causes massive panic made all the worse by hordes of refugees, pillaging war lords, and the inevitable reversion to barbarism that such societal collapses bring.
In response to the chaos derived from the depression, the secessionist movements and the earthquake, America’s President has invited “foreign troops” under the aegis of U.N. control into the country to try and suppress the rebels and re-establish a centralized government under Washington’s grip.
Mr. Bracken thrusts into this mix a cast of heroic characters with names like Boone Vikersun and Phil Carson (think Daniel and Kit if your historical memory is sluggish) — to fight a guerrilla war in, of all places, the state of Tennessee against the overweening powers of a grotesquely corrupt Washington. Pure gold! Boone and Carson in the 21st century fighting for the Republic.
The female lead, Jenny McClure, is a winsome, feisty teenager — just waking up to the cruelty of an adult world turned upside down — and about as courageous as humans get. Upon reading of her trials and how she measures up to them, the emotion felt is twofold: immense awe and the hope that if life’s tribulations ever presented such dilemmas to ourselves, our reactions would be equally as spirited in manner.
The plot is tension-racked unfolding with startling surprises right up to the end. There are countless scenes in which courage, patriotism, and honor come into play in such riveting ways as to bring that tingling sensation up and down one’s spine and the nape of one’s neck.
At stake is a clash of governing philosophies between the socialist left and the free-enterprise right, between the “new Constitution” illegally rammed through in a panicky Constitutional Convention and the “old Constitution” which spawned America from the beginning and was the law of the land for 125 years until collectivists degraded it into a “living document” to be reinterpreted with Mad Hatter’s logic.
Overlying all this is the defense backbone of the nation — our military forces — and what side they must choose in this epic clash between the treasonous forces of the new-world order in Washington and the loyalist forces of freedom amidst the patriotic states. The former trumpets the “new” Constitution and its implementation, while the latter fights for the “old” Constitution and its restoration. Which Constitution do we uphold? The military’s leading generals must decide which to defend, and it makes for a crackerjack story that will keep you reading late into the night as Bracken’s trio of Americanist heroes — Boone, Carson, and Jenny — pull off one escapade after another to defend the rebellious states and attempt to take the country back from a quisling President and his perverse entourage of socialist apparatchiks.
Bracken writes vividly and integrates all the subtle nuances of today’s leftist media / academy brainwash into the dialogue. His grasp of all their pernicious semantic twistings is impeccable. Moreover the didacticism of the book is integrated into the scenes perfectly. No long-winded lectures to take away from the pace of the story; but numerous pithy and powerful expressions of what freedom, the Constitution, and America are all about come forth from his characters.
Foreign Enemies and Traitors could be one of those “turning point” books of American history. I only hope that someone like Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh or Patrick Buchanan will read it. It is a book that would take off like wildfire if they started promoting it. Of course, the political left will come down on this tome like a blitzkrieg to try and kill the message of its talented author if it looks like widespread popularity is coming his way. But that goes with the territory when one writes of patriotism and honor in an era that worships acquiescence and popularity.
This is a book that all red-blooded Americans will enjoy immensely — not just because it is a terrific political accounting of what America’s problems are and what the military’s proper response to the constitutional implications must be, but also because it is a splendid, scintillating story. The author has combined the two areas of “message” and “plot” together in a most persuasive and entertaining manner. Move over Tom Clancy.
Nelson Hultberg is a freelance writer in Dallas, Texas. His articles have appeared in publications such as The Dallas Morning News, the San Antonio Express-News, Insight, The Social Critic, Ideas on Liberty, FinancialSense.com, and Gold-Eagle.com.
Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista review by the Southern Poverty Law Center Books on the Right: A Nativist’s Paranoid Vision by Susy Buchanan
July 2007
In 1973, a Frenchman named Jean Raspail wrote a bitter and paranoid novel about the “invasion” of his native land by starving Third World refugees. The book was a racist vision of the consequences of non-white immigration, aided and abetted, in the author’s view, by the weak-minded liberals who failed to resist it. For almost 35 years, The Camp of the Saints has been a Bible to the radical right.
Now, courtesy of former Navy SEAL Matthew Bracken, comes the American version, a portrait of the apocalypse Bracken fears will overtake America thanks to undocumented immigration from the south. The book is a fictionalized version of the Aztlan conspiracy theory, the idea that Mexico is secretly planning a “reconquista” (reconquering) of the seven states of the Southwest, that now animates large swaths of the anti-immigration movement. It’s being plugged on extremist websites, in gun magazines and similar electronic venues, and on immigrant-bashing radio shows like Peter Boyles’ program on KHOW-AM in Denver.
This isn’t the first angry, self-published novel from Bracken. His new book, Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista, is the second in a series that began with another paranoid fantasy about gun control and evil agents of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, a favorite bete noire of the extreme right. His latest book, marked by an enthusiastic interest in busty women, is a xenophobe’s racy vision of hell.
[A long detailed plot summary with numerous “spoilers” is snipped here. It can be read at the SPLC link.]
Domestic Enemies plods along between the over-the-top action sequences. Bracken oversexualizes his gun-loving heroine, devoting as much prose to her breasts as he does her weapons, which is a lot, and many minor players come off as one-dimensional caricatures. But a sexy heroine shooting guns of varying calibers at liberal, communist, open-borders villains in a world destroyed by immigration and multiculturalism is an irresistible fantasy for the audience this genre of fiction attracts, no matter the novel’s numerous flaws.
Of course, this fictionalization is hardly necessary, even for those given to this kind of thing. All one need do is listen to real-life zealots like Glenn Spencer, head of the hate group American Border Patrol, who puts it like this: “Our country is being invaded by Mexico with hostile intentions. When it blows up, they can’t say we didn’t tell them, when the blood starts flowing on the border and in L.A. We’re [talking] about la reconquista.”
David Codrea review of Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista, GUNS Magazine, February 2007
Matthew Bracken’s latest novel is a brave book. It’s brave because it’s a sequel, and expectations from a readership that embraced his first book, Enemies Foreign And Domestic, are high. It’s brave because he believes in the grand purpose of the right to bear arms, and that runs against the mindset of mainstream publishers. And it’s brave because Bracken makes a harsh prediction of where this country is headed should the unchecked flow of illegal immigration not be halted and reversed.
That the protagonist is a female of part Arab descent, and that she is joined in her quest by Americans from all heritages, will not matter to those who usurp the banner of diversity to promote intolerance of dissent. And those will be many if sales show DETR is being widely read.
And it should be widely read, because the potential for events to unfold as described seems inevitable based on current trends. Bracken nails the probability of near future disintegration of the Republic with terrifying prescience. In his words:
“Reconquista begins five years after the end of EFAD, with a leading character from the first book in a detention camp for suspected terrorists … this allows the reader to experience a significant deterioration of the state of freedom in American. The plot takes that character on a journey across the Southwest, which is then in the opening stages of a low-intensity civil war.”
Bracken’s latest page-turner takes us down dark paths. Their twists fill us with dread. But through this he manages to instill hope — in his characters and his readers — that if we can summon up the courage to say, “No more!” and to act, we can once more win back the right to consider ourselves the land of the free and the home of the brave.
John Ross Review of Domestic Enemies
I’ve long felt that one of the most difficult tasks for a novelist to pull off is creating the willing suspension of disbelief in the mind of the reader. It is for this reason that, with very few exceptions, the genre of Science Fiction leaves me cold. Almost always, I find myself feeling that the author is just spewing out an endless stream of whatever made-up nonsense came into his mind.
The exception to this is when the story asks its audience to accept a single impossibility (or near-impossibility) as fact, and the writer then weaves a ‘What if’ tale in which all the characters behave logically and consistently in the face of the one anomaly: What if a man somehow became invisible? (This has been done successfully several times.) What if a twelve-year-old boy found himself in a thirty-year-old body? (The movie Big, with Tom Hanks.) What if the South Africans developed a time machine that could take them and their equipment back to a date in the middle of the Civil War, but no earlier? (Harry Turtledove’s Guns of the South.) Stephen King, of course, is the master of making his readers fall into a story with a central premise that is impossible.
Writers of political novels have considerably less leeway in what they can reasonably ask their readers to accept as a given. Political novels can’t ask us to believe something we think is impossible. The further they stray from existing conditions, the more likely the reader (this one, at least) will be unable to accept the imagined situation that the author lays out. In one infamous, racist (and excruciatingly boring) ‘novel,’ the author gave us an America where, for racial reasons, rape was no longer a crime. Yeah, right.
In Unintended Consequences, set in the present day, the readers are asked to accept that a principal player in the BATF would arrange to plant evidence so as to invoke the asset forfeiture laws. Since BATF has been dinged in court before for doing just this, there should have been no suspension of disbelief there. Then readers had to accept that the BATF agent might have had the bad luck to schedule these illicit efforts when someone with skills and intelligence was watching, unseen, from nearby. Unlikely? Yes, but worlds away from impossible.
In Matthew Bracken’s first novel, Enemies Foreign and Domestic (also set in the present day), he asked us to accept that a principal player in the BATF would engineer a mass shooting at a football stadium and frame a homeless man for the crime, so as to increase nationwide antigun outrage and pave the way for his own BATF strike team with sweeping powers. Though asking us to believe a government agent would engineer premeditated mass murder for political advancement is a bit of a stretch, the evil and overreaching government agent is a common (and to my mind, perfectly acceptable) antagonist in the world of fiction.
Bracken’s sequel to EFAD, Domestic Enemies: the Reconquista, is set about five or six years in the future. Domestic Enemies’ underlying theme is the retaking of the Southwest by Hispanics who view this region as rightfully theirs. This is not a new concept for me; when I was in college in 1978, a Hispanic campus group calling itself La Causa espoused these same goals. My chief memory of them was that they seized control of and ‘occupied’ the school’s snack bar to increase awareness of their plight. (They were unamused when I then told them, okay then, no cheeseburgers; fix me a couple of burritos with hot sauce instead.)
Domestic Enemies: the Reconquista doesn’t just ask us to accept that Hispanics want to retake the Southwest. It asks us to accept that in a few years they will have nearly completely achieved this goal. In Domestic Enemies, we are shown a New Mexico with a milicia to enforce existing fictional ‘Spanish only’ and ‘land reform’ laws. Storefronts with signs printed in English are regularly razed, and large estates owned by gringos are seized and turned over to formerly illegal aliens. All of this is done with official state sanction. The entire state of Arizona is a nightmare where the lack of a similar milicia means a constant state of siege between Arizona residents and invading hordes of thugs, similar to those Mel Gibson battled in Mad Max II: the Road Warrior, but with different accents. Citizens in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona regularly abandon their homes and take only what they can carry in their vehicles to the ‘free states’ of Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. Got the picture?
Domestic Enemies asks us to assume an America circa 2011 that has secret detention camps for ordinary citizens, an America with hyperinflation (gold $7000/ounce, gasoline $30/gallon), an America that has replaced the old paper currency with new ‘blue bucks’ at a 1-for-10 exchange rate, an America where lawlessness in the big cities and political corruption everywhere exceeds anything seen in real third-world hellholes in 2006. Is this too much to swallow? You be the judge.
The protagonist in Domestic Enemies is Ranya Bardiwell, the heroine of Bracken’s first novel. The story begins with Ranya escaping from an indefinite sentence at a detention camp after she learns that the son she gave birth to (and that was taken from her) upon her incarceration was adopted as a newborn five years ago by FBI agents in Albuquerque. Thus begins Ranya’s odyssey to track down and reclaim her son, and this is the central storyline of the book, set against the hellish backdrop of the Reconquista.
The Ranya of EFAD, Bracken’s first book, was a bit too saccharine for my taste (Snow White is who she reminded me of.) Five years of hard labor in the detention camp has tempered her considerably, and in Domestic Enemies, I found myself cheering Ranya’s pragmatism, inventiveness, and cunning. Without throwing any spoilers out, let’s just say she and Cindy Caswell would likely be kindred spirits.
Finding her son is Ranya’s main mission, and Bracken wisely avoids having Ranya singlehandedly stop the Reconquista. Instead, she picks her shots where she finds them, and manages to throw a few major monkey wrenches into the works of a corrupt government as she pursues her goal of reclaiming her son.
The second (and lesser) protagonist in the story is Alex Garabanda, the FBI agent who is the boy’s adoptive father. Alex has considerable domestic problems of his own, along with a growing alarm at what he sees in New Mexico, and the FBI’s unwillingness to do anything about it. Bracken strikes just the right tone with Alex, and with five-year-old Brian as well. Coping with these intolerable conditions are a diverse group of supporting characters who will likely remind you of friends you know; regular folks making the best of an awful situation.
Bracken gives us a great crop of antagonists, from Basilio Ramos, a note-perfect rendering of the archetypal vain Latin heartthrob who has discovered the joys of absolute power, to Homeland Security honcho Bob Bullard (carried over from EFAD), to the real-life bad guys you love to hate: billionaire socialist hedge fund operator Peter Kosimos, bipartisan socialist U.S. Senators Kelly and Montaine, and socialist former U.S. President ‘Weasel Dave’ Whitman.
A couple of the minor bad-guy characters are a bit over-the-top, such as the Reconquista-loving college professor from New England, and the adoptive mother’s steroid-fueled bulldyke girlfriend (an IRS asset seizure agent), but I’d say they fall within the accepted realm of artistic license. There is one very minor character whose presence is so ludicrous and unrealistic that I think Bracken should delete him altogether from future printings of the novel, but maybe that’s just me.
The action in Domestic Enemies is exciting, and as plausible as you will find in works of fiction. The technical details, at least the ones where I have any expertise, are dead on. The question remains: Is the America of a few years’ hence portrayed in Domestic Enemies believable? This book addresses in fictional form a serious problem deserving of our attention: the problem of illegal immigration, anchor babies, and the long-term effects of a massive influx of people to our country who have no interest in adopting America’s culture of individualism. My fear is that the nightmare conditions Bracken asks us to imagine for 2011 America are so far from what we have now, that mainstream readers (and reviewers) will dismiss his book as delusional ranting. That would be a grave error.
John Ross, author of “Unintended Consequences”
Sierra Times review of Domestic Enemies by “Lady Liberty” Sep. 7, 2006
Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista is the sequel to Bracken’s well received Enemies Foreign and Domestic (though The Reconquista can stand alone, Bracken suggests and I agree that the first book offers an important foundation to the events in the second). The first book was good enough that I was anxious for the sequel; after waiting two years, I’m delighted to say that The Reconquista was worth the wait.
Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista begins almost exactly five years after the conclusion of Enemies Foreign and Domestic. Ranya Bardiwell is back in the United States, but the country is one she can barely recognize.
Secret work camps have been established in various parts of the country where political dissidents are imprisoned and must endure forced labor. An out-of-control national debt in combination with such sky high expenses as entitlement programs and the War on Terror have resulted in rampant inflation, and the actions taken by the Federal Reserve to temper the problem have only made it worse. Cameras, spies, and domestic surveillance are everywhere. And the politically correct treatment of illegal aliens in the recent past has resulted in an effective takeover of the US southwest by Mexican and other south-of-the-border nationals.
Ranya doesn’t care about these things other than as the obstacles they represent in pursuit of her primary goal: she wants her son back. The child, who was taken from her as an infant, has been adopted by government agents who live in New Mexico. Alexander Garabanda is an FBI agent, and his wife Karin works for the IRS. Together, they’ve been raising Brian as their own at least until Karin leaves Alex for another IRS agent. But even as Karin works to take Brian from Alex in the throes of a vicious divorce, Ranya begins her trek to New Mexico where she fully intends to recover her son or die in the attempt.
Everything is complicated, of course, by government surveillance and a determination by the authorities to silence any who might know more than they should about the deep-seated corruption that reaches the highest places. Even worse for Alex and Ranya, though, is the fact that New Mexico is effectively under control of the Mexican milicia which has made the American authorities titular at best. Danger abounds for any who don’t subscribe to the goals of the so-called Reconquista and aren’t the most militant of socialists, and it’s only a matter of time until Alex and Ranya both get caught up in circumstances well beyond their individual control.
Meanwhile, treason and betrayals of causes large and small abound, and the viciousness of those who would gain and hold control knows virtually no bounds. Former ATF agent Bob Bullard is back and, holding true to the Peter Principle, has been promoted to the level of serious incompetence. But even he’s making plans to escape the inevitable when was used to be the United States of America is parceled and distributed to those whose demands will be met in the name of expedience and entitlement.
When survival of the very Republic is in question, how can one woman rescue her son from the powers that be on either side of the political divide? Will Alex remain true to his oath to uphold the Constitution, or will the system chew him up and spit him out if he refuses to go along with the new status quo? Most important of all, will freedom survive? Or will those who believe the promises of anyone in authority help them, either actively or via their inaction, to effectively enslave the civilian population once and for all?
I really liked Enemies Foreign and Domestic. I thought it was well written, especially for a first novel, and rang entirely true to reality albeit a reality I wasn’t keen on facing. But if anything, Matthew Bracken’s writing abilities have improved in this second effort, and that’s saying something; far more important, his virtual prescience concerning illegal immigration and its inevitable effect if it’s not brought under control is terrifyingly realistic. That’s just background, though, despite the framework being integral to the action.
Bracken’s primary focus is on the main characters, and those characters are well realized enough that I ached for Ranya; was angry for and with Alex; and even empathized with a little boy who just wanted to know where his Daddy was. While a couple of the characters were just a little stereotypical (a certain judge and one IRS agent among them) in both their described appearances and their rhetoric ? the point, I think, could have been made a little less vehemently), on the whole, Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista is a must read for those who would like to see our country survive intact and including its freedoms past this generation.
The side plots almost don’t deserve to be relegated to the side. They’re important, too, from the machinations of high-placed federal officials to the nauseating sycophants who side with those they believe will, by hook or by crook, win the battle for the southwestern US. It’s telling that Bracken, who formerly resided in San Diego, has only recently relocated elsewhere. It’s clear that he believes at least some of what he’s written, and he’s done a good enough job in the creation of this near-future scenario that I do, too.
