Hateland

by Bernard O'Mahoney, Mick McGovern

Only a month after his arrest for planting bombs which killed three and mutilated scores, Nazi nailbomber David Copeland began a passionate correspondence with a delightful young English rose called Patsy. As he awaited trial, Copeland bombarded Patsy with letters detailing his disturbed background, crackpot beliefs, and most intimate feelings. But Copeland wasn't writing to a petite 20-year-old blonde, but in fact a burly 40-year-old nightclub bouncer named Bernard O'Mahoney, who in the past had used the same means to coax confessions from two child-killers. O'Mahoney's earlier hoaxes helped secure life sentences, and so too did his correspondence with Copeland when the letters surfaced at the nailbomber's Old Bailey trial. But the remarkable story of how O'Mahoney snared Copeland is only a small part of Hateland's larger, more remarkable story. For the book is primarily the narrative of O'Mahoney's own gradual transition from Nazi thug to Nazi opponent. It marks his public renunciation of the hate-filled world he left behind.

336 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2004

Reviews

[Clifford Nelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book really helped me understand better what is tearing the United States apart. The internet has been a recent major factor in that it provides a way for jaded people, which is primarily men, to find an outlet for their dissatisfaction. This was already happening before the internet, but it seems like the internet has just made it much easier, and so one of the reasons we appear to be seeing a rise of violence from hate. And it also provides a validation. Trump has been a big enabler of this validation, and a beneficiary from the frustration of so many people. It does make one wonder how good it is to allow the sort of freedom of media for spreading the messages that enable this hate. Maybe such freedom of speech and press is not so good. Definitely we see a lot of abuse with too many lies or unsubstantiateable or unsubstantiated statements, and allowing too much invasion of privacy in the United States, and too much fraud.

Another problem that the book points out is that guns are just too easily available. Almost every other country have much strong controls on guns than the United States, and I have long questioned the easy availability of guns, and it is only getting worse. Seems like the United States needs very much severely restrict access to firearms like most other countries

Another serious problem is the overemphasis on foreign threats in the United States when the real threat is internal. The terrorist actions, the many mass shootings, are dismissed as just a few crazies. This seems to be because the United States does not want to admit it has an serious internal problem. There are a lot of people that are struggling in the United States, struggling emotionally with dealing with life. That is a hard problem to solve. There has been attempts to direct this hate extremally much like was done in the past to external enemies like Japan and Germany. Today this is China and Russia, and Islam. This does not appear to be unifying the country like it was able to in the past. This is my own observation, not one of the authors.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Im currently also reading a book called the secret barrister, and comparing and contrasting this book and that one whilst I read both was a real experience. Seeing the law from both sides, from both perspectives, was quite something .

I wouldn’t say reading this book is particularly enjoyable. A lot of the books content can be incredibly graphic, however I was taken by a sort of morbid curiosity to keep reading.

On top of this, I found that whilst the prose and vocab was consistently basic. The stories were interesting and the book was overall very easy to read. I found myself quickly chewing through pages.

Lastly, I’ll say that it was notable that the narrator may very well be unreliable in the telling of the spider web of stories that make up his life. I actually appreciated this. It made me analyse each chapter and come to my own conclusions.

[Lisa-Jaine · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of repetition from the other books I’ve read.