![]() ![]() Highlights include Paladin’s greatest contributor, Ragnar Benson with “Survival Poaching”, as well as a few other gems like “Secret Weapons of the Third Reich” by Leslie Earl Simon, “Black Medicine” by N. Unsurprisingly given Brown’s connection with Paladin Press even after he sold out of it, multiple page advertisements for Paladin made its way into every issue I physically had. I believe my point has been fairly well presented so far, but just to hammer the point home, here are a few shiny gems I found tucked away in my examples that to me, play out much like what a /k/ thread catalog would look like, had it been circa 1982: Reading List I poured over them, taking in articles of particular note but also just enjoying the unabashed, unapologetic, and unrelenting 80’s aesthetic that the pages of the magazine can barely contain. The lot of 8 issues that I found followed a rough timeline between March of 1981 to June of 1983 and unsurprisingly appeared to have not been touched since they were put on the shelf. I wanted to comb them over and get the full experience. In order to more closely research the connection between the connection though, I thought it would be best to visit my local used bookstore in an attempt to find some physical copies. They were a hidden and non-mainstream subculture that was a lot edgier and a lot weirder than the norm (sound familiar?) My Comparison ![]() The vast majority of readers were simply normal US gun owners who didn’t fit in with the majority of the shooting culture who participated in things like competition shooting, hunting, and their local chapter of the American Legion or NRA sponsored events. While this was the vision, it didn’t really represent the reality of SOF’s readership outside of daydreams. There was an element of anti-Marxism to it, and to a lesser extent money (although Brown disclaims that in most cases the mercenary was receiving no more money than a normal soldier would), but above all the goal was adventure: to travel to a foreign land, feel the rush of shooting people and being shot at, the esprit de corps, and all other elements of being in the military that these people craved, without the dull, repetitive, garrison duties of a peacetime soldier in the US. In the interview with Brown I mentioned earlier he tries to explain this further. This was true for the non-veteran subscribers too, who while not having served, had a deep abiding respect for combat and what combat represents. But these veterans were not straight laced paragons of virtue from the Greatest Generation, they were angry and ostracized soldiers who rejected the counter culture aspects (read: Marxism) that they felt had lost America the war and held a similar distrust and disrespect of the Federal government, especially federal law enforcement (read: BATF). From the Founder Himselfīrown said in an interview that the purpose of SOF was to be a publication for Vietnam veterans who deserved recognition for their service and weren’t getting it due to the attitudes about the war at home. It certainly set the tone for what the magazine was, and who had subscribed to it throughout its history, especially in its early years. Whether this event was the catalyst for him founding SOF, or had been planned before his stake in Paladin was bought out, I can’t be sure. His shares in the firm were bought out 5 years later and he used the funds to start Soldier of Fortune, hot on the heels of the Fall of Saigon which ended the Vietnam War. An interesting figure himself, Brown was an Army intelligence officer, gun runner, and combat correspondent before settling in Boulder Colorado and co-founding Paladin Press (also a very /k/ minded, pre-internet publication I plan on covering more deeply in a later article). What is Soldier of Fortune? The Basicsįor those who don’t know what I’m talking about, Soldier of Fortune (the “journal of professional adventurers”) was a magazine first published in 1975 by Lt. So that’s what I wanted to touch on here: The lineage of culture between this periodical for bitter Vietnam vets, paramilitary larpers, weebs, and a few serious self defense/training enthusiasts doomed to inhabit the weapons board of an online Mongolian basket weaving forum until they are finally granted the sweet release of death. It seemed like every article, picture, and detail I found in the pages of SOF was like a thread, reply, or an image post from the infamous forum (if it existed in the 80’s). To be honest, I hadn’t discovered Soldier of Fortune until I first visited /k/, and even then didn’t know anything about SOF in earnest until I reached enough time on the image board for this comparison to really jump out at me. ![]()
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