Soldier of Fortune Magazine, P.O. Box 693, Boulder CO 80306, Tel:
303-449-3750, Subs: 800-877-5207. $28/year (12 issues).
Soldier of Fortune (SOF) is a magazine that's dead-set to push
people's buttons. Each month, SOF features gung-ho first-person accounts
of the world's ongoing dirty little wars, plus admiring reviews of the
latest in custom-made Bowie knives and semiautomatic pistols with 30-shot
magazines. Advertisements offer mail-order mayhem manuals and books on how
to avoid paying taxes. (The notorious ads from would-be mercenaries led to
lawsuits, and have disappeared.) Editorials by founder-editor Robert K.
Brown push a hard-core right-wing agenda: e.g., warning George Bush to
rein in "Gestapo-like" agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms, or lose pro-gun votes.
Brown is SOF's Hugh Hefner or Malcolm Forbes. According to published
accounts, he was briefly pro-Castro in the 50s, then anti-Castro, then a
combat Vietnam vet, and then a publisher of guerrilla-war books. SOF's
success, Brown himself admits, has generated still uglier clone publications
and attracted some disturbed hangers-on. But he defends his core readership
as military history buffs, vets, and cops -- right-wing "libertarians"
rather than fascists. Without the rationale provided by the Cold War, it's
hard to say where Brown and his readership may end up.
-- Steve Badrich
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