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Bruder Schweigen
Story of the Silent Brotherhood.
- GenresHistory
388 pages, Paperback
First published July 24, 2013
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41 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 29, 2014
This Work, brings to light, all the background information (as much as possible) that a reader would need to know and learn, before heading into the complete Story of the 'Silent Brothers'.
In any given story, events and circumstances, are the nature of the telling, and when it comes to human lives, the interaction, serrendipity, synchronisity, destiny or Fate, plays the major role. So has it always been in the lives of Men and Women.
Many have told, in their own fashion, what were the reasons and situations in the nation-at-large, which precipitated and fostered the seeds of defense and action, from individuals dedicated, and proud, of what they considered their way of life, and that of their Tribe...their 'Folk-Community'.
It is a story of transformaton, a process, which marks, indelibly, the nature of Man. This process affects individuals from every race, from every nation on the earth, and will continue long after each of us are long gone.
This is a story of courage and honour, of tradition and evolution.
It is a true story of Life.
It is hoped, that you consider it, a good read.
In any given story, events and circumstances, are the nature of the telling, and when it comes to human lives, the interaction, serrendipity, synchronisity, destiny or Fate, plays the major role. So has it always been in the lives of Men and Women.
Many have told, in their own fashion, what were the reasons and situations in the nation-at-large, which precipitated and fostered the seeds of defense and action, from individuals dedicated, and proud, of what they considered their way of life, and that of their Tribe...their 'Folk-Community'.
It is a story of transformaton, a process, which marks, indelibly, the nature of Man. This process affects individuals from every race, from every nation on the earth, and will continue long after each of us are long gone.
This is a story of courage and honour, of tradition and evolution.
It is a true story of Life.
It is hoped, that you consider it, a good read.
January 29, 2022
Pairs well with Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
The Silent Brotherhood is the quixotic endeavor of a group of K-selected, freedom-minded patriots to extricate themselves from the thorny grip of foreigners and r-selected liberals who hold antipodal values and are a net resource drain on the societies they parasitize.
These are ordinary people with ordinary cares and lives who happen to be race conscious and see how their kin gradually grow dispossessed, marginalized, and persecuted, in their own society, on tribalistic and racial grounds. The men orbit around the ethno-nationalist idea but they vary between themselves, in body, mind, and ideology, and so they struggle to cohere into an effective resistance to what they perceive as a widespread gargantuan system with an inexhaustible fountain of resources at its disposal to hound and persecute them.
Some want proactive militant action, some want to change minds through preaching and discourse. They can do neither, for they lack funding and public support. Such it is, one cannot wage war on the battlefield while simultaneously manning a household and working to secure resources. It feels as if the whole world is against them--even their own kin, turned into golems by the industrial media-educational complex. But they cannot do nothing, either. It is not an option.
Unbeknownst to the Brothers, who are ignorant of biology, their recurrent struggle is futile and misguided, in the form that they give it, for they carry in them the seeds of future liberals and traitors.
R-selection is a psychology of sexual selection that is contingent on environmental conditions, primarily resource scarcity. The Brothers’ idea of a territorial imperative is only half the solution and left incomplete is merely kicking the can down the road, so to speak. For if they start fresh with a new environment, and then they proceed to live the same lives and do the same things that had brought the foreigner/liberal hegemony from which they fled in the first place, then they will have accomplished nothing. A mere re-volution of history.
Liberal psychology is engendered by gene response to environmental stimuli. Even if one were to start a clean slate colony, say, on Mars. And seed it with a starting population of ultra right wing, Übermensch Aryan phenotypes, seven generations down the line traitorous liberal offspring would still emerge from the midst of them, and they would have to deal with it.
Our genome is adapted to triggering a liberal psychology in response to a glut in the ecosystem, so every time there is prosperity and a high quality of life, there will emerge unproductive liberals to absorb the excess. The only solution to the liberal problem is [REDACTED] suppression with extreme prejudice.
Tangent:
DeSilva doesn’t speak much about his personal beliefs but what I can infer from reading between the lines is--he, like William Pierce who was pagan, and many others from his milieu-- fail to understand the fundamental nature of their enemy. This ethnicity is Luciferian--their god is Lucifer. And they embody a perfect inversion of everything that is Godly. From morals, down to the metaphysical actualization of perceived reality (Isaiah 5:20). Despite being a fervent [REDACTED] opponent, W. Pierce never fully understood his enemy. He never understood that [REDACTED] are diametrically and explicitly opposed to Christianity in the particular. To be antisemitic and also anti-Christian is foolishly paradoxical. The war between [REDACTED] and Christians is the perennial conflict between the forces of Good and Evil. The Christ and the Antichrist. They are simply a flesh interface for Satan on Earth and they will never be defeated by secularism. All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light from a single candle. And man alone, an earthly being, cannot abate the darkness of Satan if he doesn’t shine forth the Light of the Creator.
Will our children learn from their parents’ mistakes? If history is any indication, yes and no, but mostly no.
+3 stars for the chronicle work
- DeSilva does a good job of cramming much information into a tight space. He has some of the prosaic élan reminiscent of Adolf Hitler, that could make an Excel spreadsheet pleasant to read.
+1 star for the White Nationalist message
-1 star for pagan/atheist (i.e. satanic) bias
- had I a say, spelling God’s name with a lowercase initial would be a class A felony.
P.S.
I don’t usually criticize covers but this one is flawed in elementary ways. The title is halfway illegible because it is written in borderless white font and overlaps with the white icon, which shouldn’t happen. This can be easily avoided by placing one beneath the other. The icon is low resolution as well. I can see jagged edges comprised of individual pixels. Some effort was taken to ameliorate this by blurring the image but this is not a good solution. Now instead of a fully pixelated image you have a blurred, semi-pixelated image. The obvious and costless solution would’ve been to shrink the icon and place it under the title but it would’ve been even better to use vector graphics as it is commonly done for book covers.
The back cover is shoddily designed as well. The text is very small and can be very hard to read for visually impaired persons. Unnecessary elements use up the already inefficiently allocated space. I mention this because these are mistakes at the level of common sense, that someone entirely ignorant of graphic design should still be expected to notice.
There were also some typos sprinkled in the last 100 pages which I now regret not jotting because they ended up accumulating to well over 10 by the end of the book.
The Silent Brotherhood is the quixotic endeavor of a group of K-selected, freedom-minded patriots to extricate themselves from the thorny grip of foreigners and r-selected liberals who hold antipodal values and are a net resource drain on the societies they parasitize.
These are ordinary people with ordinary cares and lives who happen to be race conscious and see how their kin gradually grow dispossessed, marginalized, and persecuted, in their own society, on tribalistic and racial grounds. The men orbit around the ethno-nationalist idea but they vary between themselves, in body, mind, and ideology, and so they struggle to cohere into an effective resistance to what they perceive as a widespread gargantuan system with an inexhaustible fountain of resources at its disposal to hound and persecute them.
Some want proactive militant action, some want to change minds through preaching and discourse. They can do neither, for they lack funding and public support. Such it is, one cannot wage war on the battlefield while simultaneously manning a household and working to secure resources. It feels as if the whole world is against them--even their own kin, turned into golems by the industrial media-educational complex. But they cannot do nothing, either. It is not an option.
“Western civilization, deprived of their national will, sucked dry by those always ready to open the gates of their hosts, and let their enemies in, were now entrenched, just as they had been in Europe, in our o w n country.(p.279)
Would good men do nothing?
The consensus was unanimous, and in the affirmative: good men had to do something.“
Unbeknownst to the Brothers, who are ignorant of biology, their recurrent struggle is futile and misguided, in the form that they give it, for they carry in them the seeds of future liberals and traitors.
R-selection is a psychology of sexual selection that is contingent on environmental conditions, primarily resource scarcity. The Brothers’ idea of a territorial imperative is only half the solution and left incomplete is merely kicking the can down the road, so to speak. For if they start fresh with a new environment, and then they proceed to live the same lives and do the same things that had brought the foreigner/liberal hegemony from which they fled in the first place, then they will have accomplished nothing. A mere re-volution of history.
Liberal psychology is engendered by gene response to environmental stimuli. Even if one were to start a clean slate colony, say, on Mars. And seed it with a starting population of ultra right wing, Übermensch Aryan phenotypes, seven generations down the line traitorous liberal offspring would still emerge from the midst of them, and they would have to deal with it.
Our genome is adapted to triggering a liberal psychology in response to a glut in the ecosystem, so every time there is prosperity and a high quality of life, there will emerge unproductive liberals to absorb the excess. The only solution to the liberal problem is [REDACTED] suppression with extreme prejudice.
Tangent:
DeSilva doesn’t speak much about his personal beliefs but what I can infer from reading between the lines is--he, like William Pierce who was pagan, and many others from his milieu-- fail to understand the fundamental nature of their enemy. This ethnicity is Luciferian--their god is Lucifer. And they embody a perfect inversion of everything that is Godly. From morals, down to the metaphysical actualization of perceived reality (Isaiah 5:20). Despite being a fervent [REDACTED] opponent, W. Pierce never fully understood his enemy. He never understood that [REDACTED] are diametrically and explicitly opposed to Christianity in the particular. To be antisemitic and also anti-Christian is foolishly paradoxical. The war between [REDACTED] and Christians is the perennial conflict between the forces of Good and Evil. The Christ and the Antichrist. They are simply a flesh interface for Satan on Earth and they will never be defeated by secularism. All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light from a single candle. And man alone, an earthly being, cannot abate the darkness of Satan if he doesn’t shine forth the Light of the Creator.
Will our children learn from their parents’ mistakes? If history is any indication, yes and no, but mostly no.
+3 stars for the chronicle work
- DeSilva does a good job of cramming much information into a tight space. He has some of the prosaic élan reminiscent of Adolf Hitler, that could make an Excel spreadsheet pleasant to read.
+1 star for the White Nationalist message
-1 star for pagan/atheist (i.e. satanic) bias
- had I a say, spelling God’s name with a lowercase initial would be a class A felony.
P.S.
I don’t usually criticize covers but this one is flawed in elementary ways. The title is halfway illegible because it is written in borderless white font and overlaps with the white icon, which shouldn’t happen. This can be easily avoided by placing one beneath the other. The icon is low resolution as well. I can see jagged edges comprised of individual pixels. Some effort was taken to ameliorate this by blurring the image but this is not a good solution. Now instead of a fully pixelated image you have a blurred, semi-pixelated image. The obvious and costless solution would’ve been to shrink the icon and place it under the title but it would’ve been even better to use vector graphics as it is commonly done for book covers.
The back cover is shoddily designed as well. The text is very small and can be very hard to read for visually impaired persons. Unnecessary elements use up the already inefficiently allocated space. I mention this because these are mistakes at the level of common sense, that someone entirely ignorant of graphic design should still be expected to notice.
There were also some typos sprinkled in the last 100 pages which I now regret not jotting because they ended up accumulating to well over 10 by the end of the book.
January 8, 2014
U_25x33
Frederich This was a very interesting read.
It appears that this volume is the build-up to the rest of the story, and its detail, the heart-felt commentary was deep and emotional.
The historical background was fascinating, and overall, I would recommend it to the serious student of American iconography, and national history; the political and nationalist discussion is deep, and it remains to be seen if this has a intellectual following.
I purchased two copies, and have shared with others.
May 30, 2025
Bruder Schweigen (The Black Book) is a clear, detailed, and remarkably grounded account of the Silent Brothers – or "The Order" as they came to be called by media – a militant nationalist group active during the early 1980s in the United States. The book tracks the group’s formation, actions, ideology, and eventual collapse, offering one of the most comprehensive treatments of the subject currently in print.
The core events are covered: it's the story of the captivating personality of Robert J. Mathews, his beliefs, his transformation and ideological journey, and the convictions that shaped the group's mission – from secession and defense of farmers in the rural Northwest, to the use and influence of underground literature, deliberate rejection of mainstream activism in favor of direct action, the attempts at financing activism through armored car robberies, to ideological tensions – all the way to the federal operations that eventually brought down the house (agents literally burned it down). The timeline is carefully laid out and easy to follow. The book is generous with footnotes explaining various concepts for better comprehension, especially useful for details that may have been "common knowledge" at the time, but come off as 'foreign' to younger or non-American readers (a prime example of this being "busing" of students) thus providing for an comprehensive introduction to modern American political history.
What separates this book from others is its grasp of ideological context and its portrayal of the individuals involved. The wider political and subcultural backdrop is very well presented – a particular strength of the book is the contextual depth. The author effectively situates The Silent Brothers within the broader ideological currents of the time, linking its origins to the dissident-right and survivalist subcultures of the 1970s and 1980s, including survivalist circles, Christian Identity movements, anti-tax activist groups. The discussion includes meaningful connections between various figures, fringe publications, and ideological networks, offering readers a broader understanding of how such movements formed and operated.
The prose itself deserves recognition. The writing is crisp, deliberate, and often strikingly elegant. Physical settings are brought to life with vivid detail, particularly the rugged forests, secluded compounds, and cold, remote landscapes of the Pacific Northwest. These scenes are rendered with such clarity that they become more than background—they become part of the story’s emotional atmosphere – and are pleasant to read especially for anyone familiar with California, Washington State, or Idaho.
The author generally avoids rhetorical excess and poetic flourish, and the book avoids moral signaling (which I personally find liberating, to say the least) but still succeeds in humanizing its subjects, without excusing them. Too often, accounts of radical groups flatten their subjects into simplistic villains, leaving out the ideological context and human depth. Here, the individuals involved are portrayed as fully developed characters, rather than characters. The author presents these men as they were: radical, flawed, committed, divided, with deep love for their families and people – for the folk. Their ideas are not endorsed, but explained, and their motivations made understandable, if not justifiable. Personal histories, internal conflicts, and ideological motivations are presented with care and nuance. This approach lends the narrative a greater sense of depth and authenticity, making it not only informative but also psychologically compelling—and this alone makes it a more honest work than many of its counterparts.
The prose is spare yet evocative. The writing is factual and purpose-driven; descriptive passages are presented with well-chosen details, without "overpainting" or embellishing, though the physical settings are rendered with an impressive clarity! The forests, cabins, and rural backroads are described without melodrama, but with enough texture to make them real. The treatment of the legal aftermath—including trials, plea bargains, and sentencing—is both accessible and precise, providing a valuable overview without sacrificing complexity.
It is clear that the author writes with lived experience and understanding not just of what happened, but of how people in these circles think, speak, and operate. That familiarity lends credibility to the account and gives it an internal coherence most outsider-written books lack.
In short, Bruder Schweigen is one of the most informative, even-handed, and well-written accounts available on this subject. It brings a difficult and often misunderstood chapter of American political history into focus, without noise or fanfare. Highly recommended and essential reading for anyone interested in American dissident-right or nationalist politics, federal-state conflict, or the anatomy of underground movements.
I read this book (The Black Book) before I read both parts of The Red Book Bruder Schweigen: The Story of The Silent Brothers and Bruder Schweigen: The Story of The Silent Brothers ~ Volume II: Hardback Edition (Two Parts): Book II by the same author and on the same topic. The Black Book laid the historical foundations, I got to know the characters and their ideological framing, which was nice to have before reading The Red Book (which was more "in the moment" of the story and less of the historical context). I absolutely recommend reading all of them, in that order!
The core events are covered: it's the story of the captivating personality of Robert J. Mathews, his beliefs, his transformation and ideological journey, and the convictions that shaped the group's mission – from secession and defense of farmers in the rural Northwest, to the use and influence of underground literature, deliberate rejection of mainstream activism in favor of direct action, the attempts at financing activism through armored car robberies, to ideological tensions – all the way to the federal operations that eventually brought down the house (agents literally burned it down). The timeline is carefully laid out and easy to follow. The book is generous with footnotes explaining various concepts for better comprehension, especially useful for details that may have been "common knowledge" at the time, but come off as 'foreign' to younger or non-American readers (a prime example of this being "busing" of students) thus providing for an comprehensive introduction to modern American political history.
What separates this book from others is its grasp of ideological context and its portrayal of the individuals involved. The wider political and subcultural backdrop is very well presented – a particular strength of the book is the contextual depth. The author effectively situates The Silent Brothers within the broader ideological currents of the time, linking its origins to the dissident-right and survivalist subcultures of the 1970s and 1980s, including survivalist circles, Christian Identity movements, anti-tax activist groups. The discussion includes meaningful connections between various figures, fringe publications, and ideological networks, offering readers a broader understanding of how such movements formed and operated.
The prose itself deserves recognition. The writing is crisp, deliberate, and often strikingly elegant. Physical settings are brought to life with vivid detail, particularly the rugged forests, secluded compounds, and cold, remote landscapes of the Pacific Northwest. These scenes are rendered with such clarity that they become more than background—they become part of the story’s emotional atmosphere – and are pleasant to read especially for anyone familiar with California, Washington State, or Idaho.
The author generally avoids rhetorical excess and poetic flourish, and the book avoids moral signaling (which I personally find liberating, to say the least) but still succeeds in humanizing its subjects, without excusing them. Too often, accounts of radical groups flatten their subjects into simplistic villains, leaving out the ideological context and human depth. Here, the individuals involved are portrayed as fully developed characters, rather than characters. The author presents these men as they were: radical, flawed, committed, divided, with deep love for their families and people – for the folk. Their ideas are not endorsed, but explained, and their motivations made understandable, if not justifiable. Personal histories, internal conflicts, and ideological motivations are presented with care and nuance. This approach lends the narrative a greater sense of depth and authenticity, making it not only informative but also psychologically compelling—and this alone makes it a more honest work than many of its counterparts.
The prose is spare yet evocative. The writing is factual and purpose-driven; descriptive passages are presented with well-chosen details, without "overpainting" or embellishing, though the physical settings are rendered with an impressive clarity! The forests, cabins, and rural backroads are described without melodrama, but with enough texture to make them real. The treatment of the legal aftermath—including trials, plea bargains, and sentencing—is both accessible and precise, providing a valuable overview without sacrificing complexity.
It is clear that the author writes with lived experience and understanding not just of what happened, but of how people in these circles think, speak, and operate. That familiarity lends credibility to the account and gives it an internal coherence most outsider-written books lack.
In short, Bruder Schweigen is one of the most informative, even-handed, and well-written accounts available on this subject. It brings a difficult and often misunderstood chapter of American political history into focus, without noise or fanfare. Highly recommended and essential reading for anyone interested in American dissident-right or nationalist politics, federal-state conflict, or the anatomy of underground movements.
I read this book (The Black Book) before I read both parts of The Red Book Bruder Schweigen: The Story of The Silent Brothers and Bruder Schweigen: The Story of The Silent Brothers ~ Volume II: Hardback Edition (Two Parts): Book II by the same author and on the same topic. The Black Book laid the historical foundations, I got to know the characters and their ideological framing, which was nice to have before reading The Red Book (which was more "in the moment" of the story and less of the historical context). I absolutely recommend reading all of them, in that order!
February 19, 2022
This is a great book, read The Silent Brotherhood, but this is much more interesting hearing it from the man himself. I just hope the second volume comes out soon !
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews