Serpent’s Walk

2,298 words

Randolph D. Calverhall
Serpent’s Walk
Hillsboro, W. Va.:  National Vanguard Books, 1991

After I read The Turner Diaries in the early 1990s, I looked for other examples of White Nationalist literature. At around this time I also began listening to American Dissident Voices, Dr. William Pierce’s series of weekly radio broadcasts for the National Alliance. When I received their catalog, I was immediately taken by the beautiful, defiant cover of Serpent’s Walk and immediately ordered a copy. The author’s name was Randolph D. Calverhall, although when I later read Harold Covington’s “A Revolution in Fiction,” he asserted that the author’s name was in fact Michael Hoffmann, and that he had also written the White Nationalist novel Hear the Cradle Song under a different pseudonym. Neither of these claims were accurate, however.

I tried to find out more about this author but found nothing until I read an article at the National Vanguard site earlier this year by Kevin Alfred Strom, “The Gift: Serpent’s Walk,” which was a very warm tribute to a man originally named Phillip Barker. Barker, who was born in 1929 and passed away in 2012, had been an expert in Asian cultures and languages who had taught at McGill University and the University of Minnesota. Barker was drawn to the literatures of India and the Middle East, and especially the Islamic mystics and poets. He eventually converted to Islam and took the name Muhammad Abd-al-Rahman Barker. Barker had indulged his love of fantasy by creating Tekumel (officially titled Empire of the Petal Throne: The World of Tekumel), a role-playing game similar to Dungeons and Dragons except that it is set in a world based on the Middle East and the Indian Subcontinent. He likewise published several novels set in the Tekumel universe.

Barker was a White Nationalist of sorts, and took a break from the world of Tekumel and his teaching to write Serpent’s Walk, which was published by National Vanguard Books in 1991. It is a novel set in the future about a long power struggle between the SS, which went underground after the Second World War, and the Jews. The book’s publication came after Barker had enthusiastically corresponded with William Pierce.

In the book the SS, after going underground, slowly builds its resources through corporate investments to prepare for a return engagement. The idea of the SS continuing in secret after the war has been taken up in countless thrillers, but Barker depicts them as the good guys. The novel’s hero is Alan Lessing, a mercenary from a nondescript background who is a veteran of the 2041 Baalbek War, a typical Middle Eastern dust-up. Lessing is, as Harold Covington pointed out, an almost stereotypical character for this genre:

A lone white man raised under political correctness and surrounded by liberal and multi-cultural madness experiences some kind of racial epiphany, an awakening, and then he either joins or begins some form of active resistance. He either fails and perishes gloriously, or he succeeds through some kind of deus ex machina. You might say Pierce’s Turner Diaries incorporates both those denouements.

The story begins with Lessing leading a team that is carrying out a heist in Arizona at a supposedly abandoned military base. They have no idea what they are stealing, but Lessing discovers that it is Pacov, a highly dangerous biological weapon. Members of his team then start to be assassinated, and Lessing realizes that he’s next on the list. He is based in India, and here Barker uses his knowledge of the country to good effect, depicting very realistic and exotic scenes of Indian life. It adds a cosmopolitan flavor to the usual White Nationalist settings.

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Lessing’s sexy and clever girlfriend is an Indian woman, Jameela. He is torn over marrying her or not, as she is casteless in highly caste-conscious Indian society. Barker shows us that love alone is not enough. But Lessing’s major flaw is his social neutrality. He is every inch a determined soldier, but has, as many point out in the book, the typical Western inability to show loyalty or devotion.

Lessing’s progression from a neutral Westerner to a dedicated National Socialist is a long, well-painted study of human development. Each chapter is preceded by epigraphs taken from a wide variety of sources, especially from Mein Kampf. When I first read the novel, it was my intellectual introduction to Adolf Hitler’s ideas. I’d read Mein Kampf before, but Barker vividly illustrates the need for an Aryan state. It was here that I first read a coherent rebuttal to the continual tirade of Western propaganda against Hitler. Although some of the book’s epigraphs, which communicate Barker’s view of White Nationalism, are not from literary or historical sources but are the thoughts of some of the novel’s characters.

A common problem with White Nationalist novels is how to cope with the long, explanatory bits about the white cause itself. Ayn Rand accomplished this via long, impassioned speeches by her characters explaining the need for human freedom as opposed to unrestrained capitalism. Barker is a much better writer, however, and seasons his prose with humor, warmth, and drama.

The SS eventually becomes what is called the Party of Humankind, which attempts to convince the world of the necessity for an Aryan state for continued human progress — as well as its very existence. This is very different from The Turner Diaries. It is not only a racialist manifesto but a depiction of suppressed realities that need to be addressed. As Alex Linder has said, it is about a war between Team White and Team Jew.

Barker is more subtle. Serpent’s Walk is about human progress, education, and action. In the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna pleads with Krishna that he cannot lead an army against evil, but Krishna convinces him that only he can do it. Similarly, in Serpent’s Walk a host of characters tell Lessing that only he can take charge of the revolution. Lessing is an Arjuna who needs a lot of convincing, and where Pierce has Earl Turner go immediately and unhesitatingly into battle, Lessing must be shown and educated — and in the end, he must learn to love, for without love, one cannot fight evil.

Lessing encounters a series of teachers. The Party of Humankind’s leaders at times seem unheroic, at times they seeming like quarrelsome adolescents who don’t fit the mold of cold, fearless ideologues. But their humanity makes their arguments all the more compelling. Lessing can be a stubborn pupil because of his refusal to commit, but he listens:

“We’re in competition, Lessing. We win, it’s our genes that survive and our Western heritage — our Aryan culture, if you like — that provides the model for how people will live on this planet for the next millennium. If we lose and the Israelis win, then they run the bagel shop their way, exactly what they’ve been trying to do for centuries. If both of the above lose, then the Chinese, the Japanese, or some new booga-booga ‘power’ in the Third World gets to pilot the ship on the cruise down to Hell. As a White man, I wouldn’t want to live in such a mongrel world!”

. . . ”Oh, sure. And while we’re at it, just what do you have in mind for the Jews and the Blacks? More gas chambers?”

“I told you: there never were such things. None. That was wartime propaganda that the Jews kept going in order to gain sympathy, support, and money for Israel. We don’t hate other races or ethnic groups; we just love our own people more. Our civilization is best fitted to run this ball of mud, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to slaughter all of our fellow inhabitants. If they cooperate, they’ll be a damned sight better off than they are right now.”

After India, Lessing ends up in South Africa, where he meets Mrs. Delacroix, an older woman who demonstrates the Party of Humankind’s civilizing influence. The party leaders snipe at each other, but in the end, the truth comes out. It’s a far more entertaining and well-rounded depiction of political struggle than we get in Ayn Rand’s heroic but long-winded episodes.

Interestingly, many of the arguments in favor of National Socialism are put into non-white mouths. The party uses the island of Ponape in the Pacific as a training center. Abu Talib, a Syrian, offers a humane and historic view of National Socialist doctrine, deconstructing Allied propaganda and demonstrating that the so-called ignorant Arabs are quite aware of the nature of the world. He explains to Lessing that humans like to be selectively blind, but that history demands proof. As he sardonically remarks, “You haven’t lived, Mr. Lessing, until you’ve been ‘protected’ by the Israelis.”

Lessing is approaching satyagraha, or enlightenment, but this is postponed when the Israelis attack the island and massacre everyone they find, including Jamaala, and haul Lessing off as a captive. Serpent’s Walk has many twists and turns and consists of clues, puzzles, and blind alleys. When Lessing finally becomes enlightened and deals with the Jews, the book is in effect unmasking their secret power and strength. As in Barker’s other fiction, Serpent’s Walk is a kind of game, full of deceptions, traps, and hidden assassins.

Part of Lessing’s initial passivity is the result of a lack of familial love in his checkered past. Jamaala is his initial opening, but his real love interest is Annaliese Meisinger. Like Lessing, she is blonde, of German descent, and also a mercenary of sorts — that is, a former prostitute, as in the novel’s world, whites are frequently reduced to becoming tools of the ruling class. Annaliese was brought up by a black family before being sold off. She speaks in a halting manner, rarely completing full sentences, but she is never dull and always astute, and thus becomes a valued worker for the Party of Humankind. It takes a long time for her and Lessing to unite. They finally confront each other late in the book, and Annaliese demands that he commit:

“You: no bargain.” She did smile; between her fingers he could see the corners of her mouth quirk up. “Alan Lessing: nothing . . . nobody . . . wasted talent.”

“Right. Big and gawky. Waddles like a rhinoceros, sings like a duck.”

She giggled, low in her throat; her control was coming back. “Yes. You. Fixated in adolescence. Never grew up. Can’t relate to closeness. Bad childhood. Sex limited to groping in the movies, quickies in cars, banging in the bushes after the senior prom.” She must have picked those things up from one of his doctors. Or from Eighty-five! Some bastard talked too much.

“Thanks a lot. I never even went to the senior prom.”

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They verbally fence, probe, and finally spend the night together. Their love is a series of tests or ordeals, yet in the end they realize that they must unite, and Lessing comes to understand that the party and humankind, not to mention his race, needs his commitment and strength. Barker depicts passivity and indecision as major enemies of the white race.

Then, a biological war breaks out using Pacov that devastates much of the world in a pandemic resembling COVID. The SS uses its many corporate branches around the world to seize as much power as they can, beating the Jews to it. The struggle for racial survival finally puts an end to the West’s endless dithering. As Annaliese puts it in her odd manner: “Better to be one-sided than too-many-sided. Democracy . . . everybody’s opinion equal . . . sounds fine. But too many real inequalities. Everybody is not equal. Too much talk, nothing done.”

Serpent’s Walk is not a dull read. Although it doesn’t feature as much action as The Turner Diaries, Barker builds the story through mystery and education. Barker, who was an enthusiastic supporter of eugenics, includes a lengthy section in which the party outlines its need for eugenics. Barker deals a lot with racial purity,. As Lessing realizes near the end:

The Party’s foes did not see its policies as “love” of course, especially its racial policies and the exclusivity of the ethnos. Yet love was the essence: love of one’s people, love of one’s heritage, love of those with whom one empathized and identified. The Party of Humankind offered love — love in the societal sense — the only type of love that made survival sense.

The party’s enemies, especially the Jews, prefer inaction and division. Here, even the blacks want eugenics on their own terms, as expressed by Kalifa, a black Muslim who calls for a black homeland. He even has black geneticists working on a Pacov vaccine to protect his people before they return to Africa. As eloquent and forceful as Kalifa is, I found him a bit dated. At the time, the Natinal Alliance and other White Nationalist groups sought to reach an understanding with the Black Nationalists so that a peaceful racial separation could occur. But alas, this is fairy cake. Only a small portion of the black community supports such an idea — basically the same as the percentage of White Nationalists among us. And why should the blacks want separation? As things stand they’re living well and getting concessions of all kinds.

Barker was very prescient about where Western civilization was heading, however. Much of what he depicted as fantasy in 1991 has now become reality. An omniscient computer and virtual reality are featured, as is transsexualism: the Jews force neo-Nazi men to take hormone injections so that they become women, which is their way of torturing their enemies.

Barker’s writing skills and literary maturity make Serpent’s Walk an absorbing novel that is far more than mere polemics. Unlike the nuclear showdown that ends The Turner Diaries, Serpent’s Walk ends on a happier note. As the blurb on the back cover says, the good guys win sometimes.

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