Pre-Trumpialites Erwache!

Before our recent return to domestic comb-over authoritarian blowhard populist demagogues in the form of a certain thick-fingered-vulgarian-who-shall-not-be-named the last serious attempt by white people outside Louisiana to create a Pure and True Aryan Nation took place in, of all places, southern California at a place called Murphy's Ranch.

This thing was, supposedly, going to be the SoCal Berghof for the American Leaders of the Aryan race back in the day. Maybe. The story isn't exactly clear:

"...(LA) county records say a Jessie M. Murphy purchased the property in 1933...(however) there is no other record of her, and no one in the area ever saw her. The name Murphy Ranch, however, stuck.

Norman Stephens was an engineer with silver mining interests in Colorado, and apparently financed the operation. His wife, the daughter of a wealthy industrialist, had a strong belief in metaphysical phenomena, and apparently fell under the spell of (a mysterious but persuasive German named Herr) Schmidt, who claimed to have supernatural powers.

Schmidt convinced the Stephenses that once Europe collapsed and Germany emerged victorious in the war, anarchy would break out across the country, and law and order would break down. His plan was to create a command center in which the National Socialist community would wait out the war. They could then emerge from their mountain retreat and impose order on society."

Needless to say, this plan had...ummmm...a few flaws.

But pieces of this California Alpenfestung remain, and you can wander through them today. It sounds like a fairly surreal experience, even for southern California.

In Oregon, I'm afraid, our homegrown fascists are both less imaginative and a lot less photogenic.