Gary Brecher
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Gary Brecher is the author of The War Nerd, a (mostly) monthly column discussing current wars and other military conflicts, published in the the eXile. Brecher analyzes military strategy, tactics, and contexts of ongoing and past conflicts. While Brecher lacks military experience or formal training in war, he has credited himself as self-educated out of a personal, life-long obsession with warfare. He has also described himself as fat slob who spends approximately 8 hours a day on the internet searching for war news. Brecher describes himself as a "war nerd."
Brecher the Man
To date all evidence for or against Brecher's existence as a real person remains circumstantial and unverifiable. The only non-eXile source of these details is the interview (conducted exclusively via email) with Brecher published by Steve Sailer for United Press International.[#endnote_upi]Brecher was born in 1965. After high school, Brecher attended community college but dropped out before graduating.[#endnote_sin]
Brecher claims to be employed as a data entry clerk in Fresno, California and deeply unsatisfied with his job [#endnote_brecher-3]. At this time he met Mark Ames, editor of the Moscow-based, English language newspaper the eXile, who offered Brecher a column. He wrote in his first eXile column that residence in Fresno is a "death sentence" and that he spends 15 hours a day in front of a computer ("6 or 7 hours entering civilian numbers for the paycheck and the rest surfing the war news"). The War Nerd has since established a large following of its own, and Brecher's work is a regular subject in the eXile's letters to editor.
No one outside of the eXile has proved any direct interaction with Gary Brecher. Brecher's reclusive nature and the lack of information about him have raised speculation (e.g. during his email interview with Sailer) that Brecher is a pseudonym for another eXile contributor. The use of invented characters is not unprecedented for the eXile. [link]
A Dec. 14, 2005 Buffalo Beast [review] of eXile editor John Dolan's novel Pleasant Hell states that "a faithful eXile reader [would] have to be as dense as young John Dolan not to realize you’re reading about the birth of 'Gary Brecher,' nome [sic] de guerre of the famed 'War Nerd'." In the memoir, Dolan writes of obsessively studying military history and Jane's manuals while binging on junk food in the basement of the UC Berkely library building in the mid-seventies.
Also, one should note [CLEANSE THE WORLD] eXile article - it was written by John Dolan, there he openly admits of being a 'war-nerd': "Oh, my poor naive war-nerd brothers, how could you ever have dreamed that Bush...".
The image representing Brecher at the top of each War Nerd column is that of Roger Edvardsen of the Norwegian rhythm & blues band Ehem.
War Nerd writings
Every two weeks, Brecher publishes his The War Nerd column in eXile. In each installment, Brecher offers his idiosyncratic analyses of armed conflict from a military, political, or rarely, social standpoint. In his first eXile column, Brecher declared that The War Nerd was to be "a column on how all the wars are going, kind of a war reviewer." He has acknowledged an aesthetic or perhaps even fetishistic pleasure in the study, observation, and intimate knowledge of armed conflict (again from his first column):- American peace truly sucks. (That's what I live in and work in: American peace. Fresno. Townhouses in a dry riverbed. Scrub acreage with fancy British names. America the hot and stupid.)
- That's why we need a war now and then. You can drain your dick at every bondage site on the web, but you can't really drain your head there, it takes something bigger like a decent war and some of those guncamera shots. I figure about one a year. Which is why this was already a good year.
In the September 9, 2005 of "the eXile," the editors announced that the War Nerd would be suspended without pay for one issue as a result of his article 'Victor Hanson: Portrait of an American Traitor'.
The editors of the eXile have announced in their replies to readers' letters that Brecher is currently at work on his first book.[link][link] The first such announcement came in October of 2004.
On June 24, 2006, Newsday columnist James Pinkerton appeared on Fox News and referenced Gary Brecher's analysis of the alleged Haditha massacre, in which he took the view that, in any war, Haditha-like events are to a great degree unavoidable, as a position held by a distinct "minority" of commentators, but nevertheless "correct".[link]
Notes
↑ Steve Sailer interviews Gary Brecher, March 2003 [link]↑ War Nerd Column, April 2002 [link]
↑ Conceived in Sin: The Online Audience and the Case of the eXile, John Dolan, April 2005 Apr[link]
See also
External links
- [Archive] of Brecher's columns
- [The Insurgency: Neighborhood Watch], an article of Brecher's appearing on AlterNet.
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