William Pierce, The National Alliance, and the Dream of an All-White World

Chapter 1 The Enduring Influence of William Pierce

William Luther Pierce, the founder and leader of the National Alliance (NA), died at his mountain home on July 23rd, 2002. His death was noted by many. Those in the white supremacist community mourned the loss of an important theoretician and leader. Victor Gerhard, an NA member writing for the racist skinhead group Hammerskin Nation, called Pierce “America’s most famous and influential pro-White activist” (Gerhard 1), and noted that “ The [National] Alliance became known for its professional approach to White activism, for energetic recruiting and innovative ways of spreading the Alliance’s message” (Ibid. 4). Billy Roper, Pierce’s main spokesperson, idolized his deceased leader: “Although he died of natural causes, I am convinced that if there is a Valhalla, there is a bench waiting for him there.” (Roper 1). Others in the white racist movement for the most part voiced similar sentiments.
Civil rights organizations, as might be expected, were not as admiring in their reports. Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center declared: “He was an evil man. This is a man who made mass murder dinner conversation. He created a group that over the last 25 years has left a trail of blood across this country. The National Alliance is an organization that has spawned bombings, mass murder, and all matter [sic] of mayhem” (Teaching Tolerance 1). The Anti-Defamation League released a press report voicing a similar opinion, saying, “Pierce’s legacy is one of anti-Semitism, racism, and terror that reaches beyond the membership of the National Alliance” (ALD Obituary 1).
The mainstream news organizations attempted to remain somewhat more objective, concentrating their obituaries on the predicted effects of Pierce’s passing rather than examinations of his character. The New York Times observed that “[Pierce] died as the leader of another racist group, Richard Butler of the Aryan Nations, is seriously ill, leaving a leadership void in the small but violent world of racist organizations” (Johnston 1). The Washington Post quoted a Southern Poverty Law spokesperson as saying: “Mr. Pierce’s death is a significant development because the group has no clear heir apparent…The problem for this group is that it is a group that is built around one man, William Pierce” (AP 2).
Some might consider it ironic that for all the attention given to him, William Pierce was a rather unassuming figure. He was a tall man, standing at six feet three inches, but was gangly and bookish in appearance. He wore thick glasses, and his unkempt hair gave him a disheveled look. He was by all accounts a poor orator, speaking in a monotone that would occasionally spike into a shrill pitch when he attempted to hammer home an important point. Pierce was also known as an introvert. His biographer, Robert Griffin, related a story in which he and Pierce were invited to dinner at the home of a young couple. About halfway through the meal, Griffin became annoyed at the silence of his friend, and turned to give him a reproachful look. Griffin said Pierce looked “shrunken and vulnerable”, unsure of how to take part in the conversation (Griffin 2002 9). This hardly seems to be the type of man described by Pierce’s supporters: a heroic, astute figure leading the white race to its inevitable victory. Nor does it gel with the picture of Pierce as a screeching demagogue, inciting his followers to acts of hatred and violence. Pierce lacked the charisma of his idol, Adolph Hitler. In fact, he could be a difficult person to relate to on a personal level. But his writings had a logical, consistent, and almost academic tone about them. These are rare qualities in the world of the American far right.
The most influential of Pierce’s written works is by far The Turner Diaries, a tale of race war and the coming apocalypse. The novel has served as a blueprint for many white supremacist groups’ violent activities, and its influence on the American racist right can hardly be overstated. In particular, one NA member took The Turner Diaries as a literal manual for action, with ultimately fatal results.
In the early 1980’s, a young man of some promise made himself known in the ranks of the NA. This man, Robert Mathews, was handsome, physically fit, and possessed a forceful personality that drew in those around him. He quickly became one of the NA’s top recruiter’s in the Pacific Northwest, and caught the attention of Pierce. Mathews addressed the NA annual conference in 1983, receiving the only standing ovation given to a speaker that year (Flynn and Gerhardt 95). Mathews was particularly drawn to The Turner Diaries, and came to feel that the time was ripe for the beginning of a racial war in the United States. In late 1983, Mathews began to assemble a team of men from the ranks of the NA, the Aryan Nations, the John Birch Society, and various Ku Klux Klan groups. Mathews dubbed his new organization the Order, after an elite group of racial warriors depicted in The Turner Diaries. Over the next several months, the Order would carry out a series of robberies. Most spectacularly, the group mounted several successful armored car heists, netting approximately four million dollars in cash. A portion of the robbery loot was allegedly distributed to various white supremacist groups, including the NA (Ibid. 272). The Order was also responsible for a murder. A Jewish radio talk show host from Denver, Alan Berg, was killed apparently because of anti-racist statements he made on the air. Mathews himself was killed during an F.B.I. raid on his hideout in late 1984. The Order then rapidly collapsed. Today, those in the American neo-Nazi movement look at Mathews as a martyr and hero. The Order came closer than any other organization to literally fulfilling the racist fantasy of The Turner Diaries. But others have also taken inspiration from the book, and with much more devastating consequences.
While serving as a soldier in the U.S. Army, Timothy McVeigh became engrossed with The Turner Diaries. He poured over the book constantly, and often tried to get other soldiers on his base to read it (Michel-Herbeck 59). After his discharge from the army, McVeigh was drawn into the shadowy world of the militias. He absorbed the paranoid anti-government teachings of the movement, and was enraged at the incineration of the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, a tragedy he blamed on the federal government. After hatching his plan to destroy the federal office building in Oklahoma City, McVeigh made three phone calls to a NA representative in Arizona. He was planning to ask the NA for refuge after the attack. But the NA member was not at home at the time of McVeigh’s calls, and he was unable to make contact with the group (Ibid. 205). Many investigators have speculated that a passage in The Turner Diaries in which F.B.I. headquarters is destroyed with a fertilizer-based bomb directly inspired the bombing in Oklahoma City. Pierce himself denied such a link, pointing out that the bomb described in his book is of a different construction than the one McVeigh used, and that the fictional bombing in the novel is committed in an attempt to destabilize the government, not as an act of retribution (Griffin 2001 168). When McVeigh was pulled over and arrested shortly after the blast, an envelope containing several photocopied pages was found lying on the front seat of his car. Among them were excerpts from the Declaration of Independence, the writings of Samuel Adams, and The Turner Diaries. This, of course, brought quite a lot of attention to Pierce and the NA. Pierce denied any link to the bombing, and publicly distanced himself from the crime (Ibid. 170). But one wonders if he was not secretly pleased with the media attention his group received, along with the opportunity to further spread his message of racial separation.
A more recent act of murder that made national headlines can also be linked to Pierce’s writings. On June 7, 1998, three white men picked up a black hitchhiker, James Byrd, in Jasper, Texas. Two of the three white men were former convicts who had been associated with white supremacist gangs while in prison. After driving to a secluded road just outside of town, the three men beat Byrd, taunted him with racial slurs, and spray-painted his face black. They then chained him to the back bumper of their pick up truck, and proceeded to drag him to death along an asphalt road. The next day, Byrd’s remains were discovered, strewn out along several miles of the road. Police soon picked up the three killers, who confessed to the crime. One of the men, John William King, was sentenced to death. During the trial, one of King’s co-defendants mentioned a statement King had made to him just before the commission of the crime: “We’re starting The Turner Diaries early” (SPLC 1999 2).
The atrocities described above are only the most well known of the crimes Pierce’s writings have inspired over the years. Countless acts of vandalism, assault, and occasionally murder have been inspired at least partially by The Turner Diaries or other works of Pierce’s. His books and articles are considered to be essential reading by many in the far right, even by those who may disagree with some elements of Pierce’s ideology. Members of the Aryan Republican Army, which committed a string of bank robberies and bombings across the Midwest in the mid-1990’s, were required to read The Turner Diaries as part of their initiation into the group (CNC 24). In March of 1998, Federal authorities in East St. Louis, IL, raided the homes of members of a group calling themselves “The New Order”. The government claims that the men had made contact with both the Aryan Nations and the NA, seeking support for a planned string of robberies and bombings (Ibid. 23). If one combs the online bulletin boards of white supremacist organizations, they will find common references made to the “Day of the Rope”. This is an event depicted in The Turner Diaries in which Jews, judges, civil rights activists, and other “race traitors” are hung from lampposts by the thousands in areas that have been occupied by white supremacist forces. Racist skinheads seem to be particularly drawn to this image, as it fulfills the brutality and violent tendencies of their subculture.
Pierce maintained that the NA was a legal, non-violent organization. From the early 1980’s on, he publicly discouraged illegal acts by his members, saying that the time was not yet right for such action (Griffin 2001 223). In fact, the NA bars persons serving time in prisons or jails from joining the NA, except in “extraordinary circumstances” (NA recruitment flyer 2). However, some NA members have not followed Pierce’s advice and have violated the law in their efforts to forward their political ideals. As already mentioned, Robert Mathews and several other members of the Order were also members of the NA. Todd David Vanbiber was invited to attend a leadership conference for NA members in 1996. The next year, police arrested Vanbiber after a pipe bomb he had been working on exploded in his face, seriously injuring him. While it is unclear what exactly Vanbiber intended to do with his bombs, authorities believed he was associated with a shadowy group called The League of the Silent Soldier, which intended to wage a guerrilla campaign against the government (SPLC 1997 [1] 4-5). NA members are regularly arrested for minor crimes associated with their political activities. For instance, on December 7, 2001, two NA members were arrested and charged with ethnic intimidation, vandalism, and several other misdemeanors after they were caught placing NA stickers on public and private property (CNC 26).
Before preceding any further, we must address the question of the relevance of Pierce’s writings and activities. It might be at first tempting to dismiss him as a crank, so far removed from mainstream discourse as to render him irrelevant. The lengthy list of crimes detailed above is meant to convince the reader that many persons have in the past taken the writings of William Pierce quite seriously, and have committed horrendous offenses in attempts to turn his ideological visions into reality. To understand why these crimes have been committed, and to gauge the likelihood of similar crimes being committed in the future, we must first try to understand Pierce’s worldview. We must understand what goals he worked towards, and how he intended to achieve them. We must also consider how individuals in the white supremacist subculture will interpret and attempt to implement these goals. In the course of this examination, I intend to substantiate the following statement: William Pierce believed that contemporary Western society was irredeemably corrupt, and sought to create an all-white world through the use of terrorist and genocidal means.

Chapter 2: Pierce’s Life and Accomplishments

Before we attempt to comprehend William Pierce’s ideology, it is probably necessary to have some understanding of the man’s life: How he was raised, how he was educated, and what dominate forces shaped his political beliefs. Pierce was a unique specimen in the white supremacist movement: He was highly educated, and at one time a tenured college professor. These experiences gave Pierce an intellectual background that most of his contemporaries lacked.
William Pierce was born on September 11, 1933 in Atlanta, Georgia. He was the first child in his family, having a single sibling, a brother. When Pierce was eight years old, his father, an insurance salesman, was struck and killed by an automobile. Pierce had to help his mother make ends meet as a child, and he later claimed that these hard times helped him to develop a tough, self-motivating attitude that greatly influenced his development: “I think this external discipline; this external control—being forced over a long period of time to do things I didn’t want to do but that were necessary to do—helped me develop self-discipline. A lot of children these days never learn that. It’s amazing how many adults can’t do that. They can’t stick at a job they don’t want to do” (qtd. in Griffin 2001 29). Pierce was shuttled around to the homes of various relatives across the South during his childhood. He mentioned that his family, being southern, was segregationist, and that he often saw African-Americans performing menial tasks around his neighborhoods (Ibid. 28). Pierce had an early interest in science, particularly chemistry. He claimed to have done well in school throughout his childhood. For his last two years of high school, Pierce was sent to a military academy in Texas. He described it as a maturing experience that further enhanced his self-discipline (Ibid 33). After graduating from school, Pierce was accepted to Rice University in Houston, Texas. He received his Bachelor’s Degree in physics in 1951. After working a series of jobs in the field of physics, Pierce returned to college at the University of Colorado in Boulder. In 1957, he married Patricia Jones, a mathematician whom he had met while in Los Angeles. It was to be the first of five marriages for Pierce. Pierce received his PhD in physics from the University of Colorado in 1962. That same year, he accepted a job at Oregon State University as an assistant professor of physics. He was granted tenure three years later (Ibid. 38).
During his career as a college professor, Pierce for the first time began to examine the issues of politics and race. It remains unclear what exact event (or events) sparked his interest in racial politics. Pierce saw several things on his own college campus that dismayed him. By the mid 1960’s, the civil rights movement was in full swing, with the accompanying relaxation of attitudes towards interracial associations and dating. This new openness may have been offensive to Pierce, who had been raised in a segregationist culture. Pierce’s background had also given him a strongly anti-Communist outlook; he mentioned that the emerging anti-war movement, along with its occasional pro-Communist statements, was deeply troubling to him (Griffin 2001 62).
During this time, Pierce read two works that were to have a profound effect on his political attitudes. The first was a short play by George Bernard Shaw entitled Don Juan Goes to Hell. In the play, the title character travels to hell and has a long discussion with the Devil (who appears in the form of a Jewish man). The Devil tries to tempt Don Juan into a life of personal gratification. Don Juan refuses, arguing that all men should devote themselves to the great purpose of the universe. Pierce later said that this play inspired him to reject individualism and embrace an ideology of self-sacrifice (Griffin 2001 51). This same work would also provide the basis for Cosmotheism, a pantheist religion created by Pierce. Cosmotheism would provide the ideological backbone for Pierce’s political ideals.
The second book that greatly influenced Pierce in this period of his life was Adolph Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Pierce first admired Hitler’s character: He believed that some great personal force must have indeed been at work for a disabled, homeless veteran to rise in the space of twenty-five years to the position of Chancellor of Germany (Griffin 2001 64). The book also provided Pierce with the basis for his political outlook. He embraced the National Socialist position on elitism and the failure of democracy. He also adopted Hitler’s obsession with race, and the protection of the purity of white blood. And Hitler provided Pierce with a collective enemy to which all of the problems of the white race could be ascribed: the Jews.
Pierce’s first move into organized political activity came in 1962 when he joined the local chapter of the John Birch Society. The Society, which still exists today, is a far right organization that focuses itself on vast conspiracy theories, usually involving Communist plots. Although a small organization today, in the early 1960’s it was still a powerful force in the American Right. The Society has often been accused of harboring subtle racist and anti-Semitic dogmas (Lipset and Rabb 266-67). Apparently, these dogmas, if they existed, were entirely too subtle for Pierce: “If the Bircher’s were going to stress the communist aspect of the civil rights movement, why were they unwilling to look at exactly who these communists were? I said to them, ‘Why don’t we deal with the fact that so often these people are Jews?’...Why, I asked them, are the columnists in the newspapers who are sympathetic to the civil rights agenda so often Jewish?” (qtd. in Griffin 2001 85). Disgusted with the lack of racial consciousness within the Society, Pierce quit the organization after only a few months (Ibid.).
Later in 1962, Pierce saw a news broadcast which covered a tumultuous speech given by George Lincoln Rockwell, the head of the American Nazi Party (ANP). Impressed with Rockwell’s brazen presentation of National Socialist ideals in the face of jeering crowds, Pierce wrote him a letter. Several weeks later Pierce received a response, and the two men began a lengthy correspondence (Griffin 2001 87). In 1964, Pierce attended a convention of physicists in Washington, D.C. The ANP’s headquarters was in nearby Alexandria, Virginia, and Pierce traveled there to meet Rockwell in person. The next year, 1965, Pierce made the decision to leave academia and pursue his political activities. He resigned his tenure at the University of Oregon and moved his family to Connecticut, where he took a job as a senior research scientist at an aerospace firm. His wife found work as a math teacher. Pierce made weekly trips to Alexandria to observe how Rockwell ran the ANP, although he claimed he never officially become a member (Ibid. 113).
Rockwell was himself an interesting figure. He had founded the ANP in the late 1950’s, after a long career in the military and a failed effort at working as an independent graphic designer. Brash and quick-witted, Rockwell seemed to thrive on controversy and media attention. The ANP often held public demonstrations in which Rockwell and his men would wear brownshirts and swastika armbands while waving Nazi flags. Rockwell seemed to enjoy addressing hostile crowds, verbally sparing with the audience while attacking the civil rights movement and the supposed Jewish control of the media. His headquarters in Alexandria was usually occupied by several of his “storm troopers”, who acted as his personal security force and worked on ANP projects.
Pierce remarked that he was not greatly affected by Rockwell’s ideology (Griffin 2001 101). While he admired Rockwell’s bravery, Pierce felt that the ANP was far too sensational to ever become a serious political force in the United States. In 1966, Pierce approached Rockwell with the idea of publishing a scholarly journal of National Socialist thought. Rockwell approved of the idea, and suggested the title National Socialist World (NSW). Using ANP printing equipment, Pierce edited and released the first issue of National Socialist World in the summer of 1966. The journal was interesting in that it was clearly modeled after professional academic journals. Pierce described it as an intellectual journal of National Socialism (NSW vol.1 1). The journal contained a letters column, featured articles, and book reviews. It certainly bore a striking difference to the thuggish image put forth by the ANP’s public demonstrations. Meant as a quarterly, six issues were published, the last in 1968.
National Socialist World was a unique publication. No American white supremacist group, before or since, has attempted to publish a journal that was intended to be taken seriously as a tool of academic research. Its uniqueness was reflective of its editor, a man with a strong academic background who attempted to bring an intellectual element into the normally semi-literate field of American National Socialist thought.
Pierce’s push for a more professional ANP may have had some impact on Rockwell. In early 1967, the group changed its name to the less confrontational National Socialist White People’s Party (NSWPP). Around the same time, Pierce wrote that the new organization would shift its focus from publicity seeking to cadre building (NSW 5 33). Rockwell himself would not live to see the new organization develop. On August 25, 1967, he was shot to death in a laundry-mat parking lot by a disgruntled former member of the NSWPP (Griffin 2001 112).
Control of the organization passed to Rockwell’s second in command, Matt Koehl. After Rockwell’s death, Pierce officially joined the NSWPP and contributed a colum to the Party’s newspaper entitled “Lessons from Mein Kampf”. But friction soon developed between Pierce and Koehl. Pierce continued his push to change the Party into a professional National Socialist organization. Koehl was something of a Nazi fundamentalist, preferring to dress in Third Reich regalia while basing his political decisions almost wholly on what he read in Mein Kampf (Griffin 2001 115). Pierce may have also grown tired of working under the direction of others. He quit the Party in 1970, and became associated with an organization called the National Youth Alliance (NYA), which would eventually be transformed into the NA.
In 1968, Willis Carto, leader of the ultra-conservative (and most would say anti-Semitic) Liberty Lobby founded Youth for Wallace, a group aimed at mobilizing support for George Wallace’s presidential campaign on college campuses. In 1969, Carto rechristened the group as the National Youth Alliance, and turned its operations over to Louis Byers, a young man from the Washington, D.C. area. The stated goal of the NYA was to oppose the activities of subversive leftist groups on college campuses, particularly the Students for a Democratic Society (FBI #1 8). Many of the group’s members quit after Byers’ took the NYA in a more overtly white supremacist direction (Ibid. 14). Byers showed himself to be an ineffective leader, and by 1970 the group was $40,000 in debt (FBI #3 20). Pierce, having recently left the NSWPP, made contact with Byers and took over the publishing of the NYA organ, Attack! Pierce quickly became the primary leader of the organization, and Byers had ceased active participation in the NYA by 1972 (FBI #4A 29). Pierce severed the group’s connection to Carto, but took Carto’s mailing list for his own use. Carto sued both Pierce and Byers for the alleged theft, though the case was eventually dismissed (FBI #10 92).
In these early years, Pierce’s writings had a violently revolutionary tone, reflecting the insurrectionist feeling common among young persons in the tumultuous period of the late 1960’s. He ran a series of articles in Attack! entitled “Revolutionary Notes”, in which he detailed subjects such as urban guerrilla tactics and the manufacture of explosives. This brought the NYA to the attention of the FBI, who began monitoring the group in 1970 (FBI #2B 17). By this time, Pierce had quit his regular job to devote himself completely to the NYA. He lived off of his wife’s income, plus the donations from the group’s supporters and revenues generated by the sales of Attack! Pierce slept at the NYA headquarters in Washington, only driving home to see his family on the weekends (Griffin 2001 119).
In 1974, Pierce decided that he should move away from a youth-oriented approach and attempt to build a solid, professional adult organization. To that end, he shortened the group’s name from the National Youth Alliance to the National Alliance and opened it to adult membership. He also toned down the militant rhetoric of the group, adopting a strategy of cadre building in the hopes of eventually assembling a solid core of men and women who could function as disseminators of NA propaganda. In 1978, Pierce changed the name of the NA organ from Attack! to National Vanguard (NV) to reflect his continuing move away from sensationalist, vigilante rhetoric. The NA had been a small group to begin with, but throughout the 1970’s its membership steadily dropped. By 1977, the group was estimated to have approximately 100 members. Given the small size of the group and its move away from the advocacy of immediate armed revolution, the FBI closed its investigation of the NA in that same year (FBI #12A 10).
The one event that gave Pierce some level of fame in far right circles in this period (as well as much-needed funds) was the publication of The Turner Diaries in 1978. The book (written by Pierce under the pseudonym of Andrew Macdonald) was originally published in serial form in Attack! and National Vanguard. Pierce later said he felt the story was written in a rush, and that it did not represent his best writing (Griffin 2001 147). Regardless, it proved to be a seminal work for the American far right. The book details the exploits of the Organization, a group of white Americans who secretly organize themselves against the perceived Jewish-controlled government in Washington. The Organization launches a campaign of terrorism meant to disrupt the lives of white Americans and force them to chose sides. In the end, the Organization’s worldwide revolution is a success, and an all-white world is created. The book is written in rather pedestrian prose, but those who study military topics will probably take interest in the detailed descriptions of bomb manufacturing and urban warfare tactics. The Turner Diaries remains Pierce’s best-known work, and its popularity gave him a level of respect in the white supremacist community that few others could rival.
In the late 1970’s, Pierce began to formulate his own set of religious beliefs, which he called Cosmotheism. The NA held weekly political discussion meetings in Washington, D.C., and Pierce noticed that some of the attendees seemed to be searching for a spiritual basis for their political ideology. He began to hold separate meetings for these persons, and the twenty or so individuals involved began to refer to themselves as the Cosmotheist Community Church (Griffin 2001 187). Pierce was always quite careful to keep his religious and political activities separate, at least in public. No mention was made of Cosmotheism in the pages of Attack! or National Vanguard, and the Cosmotheist pamphlets Pierce wrote in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s were published anonymously.
In 1982 Pierce’s long-suffering wife, Patricia, divorced him, taking their two sons with her. Pierce said he had very little contact with his children after the divorce (Griffin 2001 39). Pierce quickly remarried, to a NA member named Elizabeth Prostel. The marriage lasted three years. After his second divorce, Pierce began to write to women who had placed classified ads in Eastern European magazines, a system sometimes referred to as “mail order brides”. He would marry three of these Eastern European women. Each marriage would last a couple of years before the women would grow tired of Pierce’s unusual lifestyle and leave him. (In addition, one must wonder if their achievement of full U.S. citizenship may have made their marriages to Pierce unnecessary.) Pierce’s fifth wife left him shortly before his death in 2002 (Griffin 2002, 9).
In 1984, Pierce purchased approximately 350 acres of land near Hillsboro, West Virginia, and moved the NA’s headquarters there the next year. Pierce paid $95,000 in cash for the property. Many persons have maintained that the money used for the purchase of the land was given to Pierce by Robert Mathews, and had come from the armored car robberies committed by the Order (CNC 18). Pierce denied this, claiming the money had been donated by a wealthy anonymous member (Griffin 2001 216). Pierce intended the new headquarters to function as an intentional community, a place where persons could come to live free of the corrupting effects of modern society: “There will actually be a place which we may think of almost as a very small country, less than a square mile in size, where some of our people can begin living in accord with our values and our principals 24 hours a day, every day; where children can be raised in accord with those values and principals. We’ll have a little country which is ours spiritually as well as physically” (qtd. in ADV 11/30/02 2). Pierce intended the new community to be a Cosmotheist one: “Our community on the mountain, on our little island, will be governed by the spiritual values that it is our mission to preserve. So it will be, essentially, a religious community” (Ibid. 5).
This attempt at constructing an intentional religious/racial community failed. As Pierce noted: “I thought people would come out here with me, or if not that, they would come along later...But it turned out that the rest of the world was not as ready for the move as I was, so the population has remained small out here” (qtd. in Griffin 2001 226). Rather than functioning as a small village for white supremacists, the property became the home of the five or six persons who formed the central core of the NA. The buildings on the property initially consisted of several small houses and trailer homes, as well as an office building and meeting hall. There have been allegations that paramilitary training has occurred on the site, but no strong evidence has been produced to back up these claims (Whitsel 126).
Buoyed by the popularity of The Turner Diaries and the increasingly sophisticated operation at the NA’s headquarters, the group experienced significant growth throughout the late 1980’s: By 1992, total NA membership was estimated at 1,000 persons (ADL 1988 1). In 1989, Pierce published his second novel, entitled Hunter. The book describes the exploits of Oscar Yeager, a vigilante who stalks and murders interracial couples in the Washington, D.C. area. Yeager eventually makes contact with a white supremacist group called the “National League”. Through the League, Yeager works towards the racial consciousness-raising of the white public through peaceful means, while still carrying out his terrorist campaign with the help of a racist FBI official. At the end of the book, Yeager learns of a nationwide plot by black militants to carry out a pogrom against the white population. Yeager does nothing to stop the attacks, knowing that the thousands of white deaths that will result will help to ignite racist feelings among white Americans, and thus help to hasten the coming race war.
Hunter is a difficult book to get through. Unlike The Turner Diaries, which for the most part functions as an military adventure novel, Hunter is mostly comprised of long-winded speeches given by the characters on the proper course the white revolution must take. Given Pierce’s unremarkable prose, the resulting work is quite tedious. (Pierce, however, felt that it was a much better written book than The Turner Diaries [Griffin 2001 247].) Hunter has never achieved the great popularity of Pierce’s first novel. But in some respects it is more chilling, in that it seems to advocate the random murder of interracial couples and other “undesirables”, as opposed to complex schemes of revolutionary terrorism. It is perhaps telling that Pierce dedicated the first edition of the book to Joseph Paul Franklin, a racist serial killer (and former NSWPP member) who is currently on death row in Missouri (Teaching Tolerance 1).
Although he saw the NA as being the only organization capable of leading the white people of the world to their proper destiny, Pierce would occasionally work with foreign and domestic groups whose aims he felt were compatible with those of the NA. This trend became more noticeable as the 1990’s wore on. David Duke, the prominent former Klansman from Louisianan, addressed several NA meetings (ADL 1998 17). The NA hosted rock music events in partnership with the Hammerskin Nation, a violent skinhead group based in Springfield, MO (CNC 20). Pierce had even friendlier relations with some overseas white supremacist groups, particularly the British National Party (BNP) in the United Kingdom and the National Democratic Party (NPD) in Germany. Both of the group’s web sites are listed on the NA’s site’s links page. In November of 1995, Pierce traveled to England to address a BNP gathering. Approximately 150 persons attended the event. After the trip, Pierce was officially banned from entering the United Kingdom (Ibid. 19). In 1999, Pierce traveled to Germany to attend a NPD conference and discuss business arrangements with the group (Ibid.). It is also worth noting that Pierce’s anti-Zionist writings have been popular in some circles in the Muslim world. Apparently unaware of Pierce’s wish for the destruction of all non-white cultures, his speeches are portrayed by these groups as being an honest American’s description of Jewish influence on culture and governments around the world. Hezbollah, the Shiite guerilla army operating in southern Lebanon, has posted several of Pierce’s speeches on its web site (ADL Update 1).
In 1999, Pierce purchased the struggling white power music distributor Resistance Records. It was a shrewd move on several levels. Together with NA member Eric Gliebe, who acted as Resistance’s manager, Pierce built the label into the largest distributor of white power music in the U.S. (CNC 10). In 2002, the Resistance catalog offered 610 different CDs (Ibid.). It provided a large, steady source of income, something the NA had never had before. In 2002, Resistance was estimated to have made $1.3 million in after-tax profit (Ibid. 9). Resistance deals mostly in “oi” music, a variant of the punk rock genre aimed at skinheads (Resistance also sells some folk, heavy metal, and country western CDs). The label’s companion magazine, also called Resistance, caters to a skinhead audience as well. This gave Pierce quite a bit of influence among the skinheads, a group the NA had little contact with before. And finally, Resistance gave Pierce another medium by which to introduce young persons to the white supremacist movement. While a teenager might be put off by the theoretical writings common in NA propaganda, he or she would be much more likely to accept a rock CD that contained white supremacist themes.
Pierce got off to a rocky start with the skinhead audience he was trying to woo with his acquisition of Resistance. The NA has always prided itself on being the most professional National Socialist organization in the United States. NA members favor suits and ties, rather than the robes of the Ku Klux Klan or the fascist uniforms of the World Church of the Creator. In the first issue of Resistance Magazine to be published under NA ownership, an article penned by an NA member had some harsh words for skinhead culture:
If Skinheads as they currently exist are the future of White resistance to Jew inspired barbarization of the Aryan race then we are doomed. You could best help the rest of us by committing suicide, thus putting you out of our misery. We don’t need you. You are useless latecomers and ignorant pretenders. Either join us grown-ups and accept adult supervision, or go away and quit screwing us over. Your current “help” is killing us (Peiper 9).
There was a predictable uproar in the skinhead community over these remarks, and Eric Gliebe eventually published an editorial apologizing to his readers, noting “Skinheads are a bright hope for the confused youth of today and we are here to help steer todays’ kids in the right direction” (Gliebe 2).
The incident was indicative of a dilemma Pierce faced throughout his career as a political organizer. Pierce clearly believed that the NA was the only group in the United States capable of saving the white race from the plots of the Jews. In addition to the ideological differences he had with other American white supremacist groups, Pierce felt that they were uniformly unprofessional and in many cases counterproductive to the cause. He maintained that the failure of the ANP (and Rockwell’s assassination itself) was the result of the “defective” persons that had been allowed to join the group (Griffin 2001 109). Shortly before his death, Pierce gave a speech at the NA headquarters during which he allegedly stated:
... the Alliance has no interest at all in the so-called “movement”. We're not interested in uniting with the movement, and we're not interested in competing with the movement for members. If anything, we should be grateful that the movement is out there to soak up a lot of the freaks and weaklings who otherwise might find their way into the Alliance and make problems for us. In this regard, I was sorry to note Aryan Nations and the Church of the Creator have, for all practical purposes, died in the last few weeks. I hope one or two replacement groups spring up to draw away from us the defectives (qtd. in SPLC 2003 1).
But despite his personal low estimation of other organizations in the American white power movement, Pierce occasionally found it advantageous to partner himself with some of them. As has been noted, the NA has worked with individuals such as David Duke for publicity purposes, and has associated itself with the Hammerskin Nation for logistical help in organizing rock concerts. To maintain these alliances, Pierce was forced to restrain his public criticisms of the white supremacist movement in public, while privately holding that his group was the only one capable of true victory.
In the spring of 2002, Pierce noticed that he was feeling weaker and more fatigued than he had in the past, and those around him commented that he looked thinner and more drawn than usual (Gerhard 4). A trip to a hospital in early July found that Pierce had developed cancer of the liver. He was admitted to a hospital in Beckley, West Virginia, where he underwent surgery and other treatments (Ibid. 1). After a brief period of improvement, it was discovered that the cancer had spread into his kidneys. Pierce decided to spend the last days of his life at his compound, and returned there on July 20th (Ibid.). He spent his remaining time composing a final will and testament, and advising other members of the NA on how he would like the group to proceed after his passing. Pierce died on July 23rd. There was some question as to whether the group would be able to avoid factional splits after the death its founder and only leader (ADL Obituary 1). Possible successors included Kevin Strom, a longtime NA member and friend of Pierce’s; Billy Roper, the NA’s media spokesman; and Eric Gliebe, the manager of Resistance Records. After a private funeral on July 29th, a tribunal of NA leaders selected Gliebe as the new director of the group (CNC 7). The predictions of the disintegration of the NA upon Pierce’s death seemed to have been premature: the group, at least initially, rallied around its new leader (Roper 1).
Today, the NA is a well-organized and well-financed group. Total membership in 2002 was estimated to be between 1,500 (SPLC Fall 2002 3), and 2,500 (CNC 4) persons. There are active “units” or “proto-units” in forty-three cities in the U.S., with five more in Canada (Ibid.). The demographic make up of the Alliance is varied. While obviously all white, the membership reflects a multitude of age groups and economic classes. Robert Griffin described the leadership of the NA as being predominantly persons in their thirties and forties, working class (often independent contractors), soft-spoken, introverted, and about 90% male (Griffin 2001 395-396). It is more difficult to get a clear picture of the makeup of the rank-and-file membership, but it appears that young persons are represented in greater numbers there. Pierce claimed that approximately 20% of NA members are women (Ibid.). Since the NA acquired Resistance Records, skinheads have been joining the group in larger numbers.
The NA enjoys an annual after-tax revenue of well over a million dollars (CNC 9). In 2002, the group employed twenty-one persons full-time, as well as a few part workers (Ibid. 12). With the increase in available monies as a result of the acquisition of Resistance Records, the infrastructure of the compound in West Virginia has been considerably expanded. There are currently eight main buildings on the site: four homes, a storage building, two office buildings, and a warehouse for Resistance Records, complete with a loading dock (Ibid. 8). One of the office buildings is equipped with a full recording studio, a video production room, and video duplicating faculties (Ibid. 10). There are also apparently several smaller structures on the property that serve as temporary lodgings for visitors to the compound (Whitsel 126). In addition to the previously mentioned Resistance Magazine, the NA continues to publish National Vanguard, an irregular journal detailing the Alliance’s ideology. The NA also maintains websites for Resistance, the Cosmotheist Community Church, and the Alliance proper. The NA website contains basic membership information along with an extensive collection of articles taken from National Vanguard. Pierce recorded a weekly radio show entitled “American Dissident Voices ” (ADV), consisting of Pierce’s own commentary. Today, the weekly addresses are handled by Kevin Strom of the NA, and are broadcast over short-wave radio as well as a few AM stations (SPLC 2001 4). Current ADV broadcasts are also archived on the NA website. Using these sources, as well as the older methods of flyers and public rallies, the NA has a wide variety of ways to expose the public to its racist message.

Chapter 3: The Nature of the Universe and Human History

William Pierce constructed an encompassing worldview that was unusual in the white supremacist movement both for its complexity and its comprehensiveness. This discussion will, for the sake of clarity, be divided into three chapters. The first (chapter three) will deal with Pierce’s understanding of the nature of the universe, and how human history has fit into it. The second (chapter four) will describe Pierce’s understanding of the contemporary Western world, and his strong objections to its mores. The third (chapter five) will describe Pierce’s proposed methods to purify the corruptions of the modern world, and the utopian existence he foresaw for the white race after this purification had been achieved.
The basis for all of Pierce’s ideological concepts can be traced back to his self-created religion, Cosmotheism. Cosmotheism, as previously mentioned, was based to a large extent on a play by George Bernard Shaw, and its tenets were set down in writing by Pierce in the 1970’s and 1980’s (though he had been developing its concepts since at least the mid-1960’s). It is a pantheist religion, holding that an animating force connects all life in the universe, and that that force has a definite purpose. There is no external God in the universe, only this force. Pierce wrote in one of Cosmotheism’s holy texts: “There is but one Reality, and that Reality is the Whole. It is the Creator, Self-created. The Material manifestation of the Creator is the tangible Universe, with all its non-living and living things, including man. The spiritual manifestation of the Creator is the Urge towards the One Purpose. The Urge lies at the root of all things and is manifested in the relations between all things” (qtd. in Cosmotheist 1 1). In this religion, evolution is not an accidental occurrence; the development of progressively more advanced forms of life serves a deliberate purpose. Pierce described that purpose in a speech given at a NA meeting in 1976: “...it is the task, the one task, assigned to us by the creator. That is the task of achieving full consciousness and oneness with the whole, achieving full consciousness that we are part of the creator and our destiny is to achieve the single purpose for which the universe exists—the self-realization of the creator” (qtd. in ADV 7/27/02 9).
So the entire universe exists to fulfill this one purpose, the self-realization of the Creator. Pierce believed that the white race has shown itself, through its technological advances and cultural complexity, to be the most advanced species on earth. Therefore, it is the pinnacle of evolutionary progress, and the only race on earth capable of advancing to the next stage in the process (Griffin 2001 196). When the white race, through purification and education, becomes fully aware of its oneness with the Creator, the Creator itself will become self-aware. At that point, the white race will transcend its physical form and become gods (Whitsel 186). Hence the Cosmotheist affirmation:
My purpose is the Creator’s purpose. My path is the Path of the Creator’s self-realization. My path is the Path of Divine Consciousness. My destiny is Godhood (qtd. in Cosmotheist 1 13).
Cosmotheism remains a somewhat vague religion. Pierce wrote only three short pamphlets on the faith, and dedicated a few speeches to the subject. We are therefore left little material from which to gain a deeper understanding of the religion. This vagueness may have been at least partially intentional. Pierce apparently did not see himself as a religious prophet privy to great spiritual enlightenment; rather, he formed his Cosmotheist believe system from his readings of George Bernard Shaw and his own logical deductions regarding the nature of the universe (Griffin 2001 202). Although clearly reflecting a spiritual view of the world, Cosmotheism existed in Pierce’s mind primarily as an ethical basis for his political beliefs. Thinking of himself as a political theorist rather than a religious leader, Pierce may have felt that his time was better spent organizing the NA rather than attempting to launch a religious movement.
At this point, it might be useful to try to determine to what extent Pierce actually subscribed to these religious beliefs. Pierce at one time attempted to claim the entire NA compound as church, thus gaining tax-exempt status for the property. The government rejected the claim (CNC 8). This has led some to speculate that the entire Cosmotheist religion was designed as a tax shelter (Kaplan 249). It is the position of this paper that Pierce was in fact a devoted believer in his self-created faith. If one examines Pierce’s writings as a whole, one sees the tenants of Cosmotheism often expressed, though sometimes not explicitly. For instance, in The Turner Diaries, the title character is inducted into and elite group of white revolutionaries called the Order. As a part of this induction, Turner is given a religious text to read that is simply called “The Book”. After reading it Turner is awestruck, and comments that “We are truly instruments of God in the fulfillment of His Grand Design” (Macdonald 1990 71). Although here the word “God” is substituted for “Creator”, the underlining theology of Cosmotheism is quite apparent. And although Pierce produced no significant Cosmotheist writings after the mid 1980’s, the NA continues to maintain the Cosmotheist Community Church website, and in 1998 Pierce expressed interest in writing a book on the subject of Cosmotheist theology (Griffin 249).
Despite his apparent adherence to Cosmotheism, Pierce downplayed the religious elements of his belief systems when composing his political writings, and never mentioned Cosmotheism by name in them. There are probably several reasons for this. Many of the persons Pierce wanted to attract to the NA were Christians, and he probably saw no reason to offend their religious sensibilities and risk alienating potential members. As he put it, he did not want “a war with the Christians” (qtd. in Griffin 143). Also, if the NA was known as a religious organization, it might have taken on the appearance of a cult to outsiders. It was safer to portray the NA as a secular political organization rather than one based on strong religious teachings. Pierce apparently believed that after the success of the social revolution (which did not necessitate the conversion of the masses to his religion), the tenants of Cosmotheism could be more successfully transmitted to the white population.
If we look at William Pierce as not just a political man, but as a religious one as well, we can better understand the extremism and rigidity of his ideology. Pierce did not believe that the political platform of the NA was the best one by default; he believed in fact that it was the only one that could fulfill the purpose of the universe. This belief system, monism, is characteristic of extremist ideologies (Lipset and Rabb 12). If Pierce had thought that there might be more than one way to serve the Creator’s purpose, he might have been more willing to work with other like-minded persons or organizations. He might have even been willing to moderate his own positions in the interests of gaining some additional converts. But Pierce was a fanatically religious man. He felt that any deviation from his core system of beliefs would have been a betrayal of the purpose of the universe itself.
This monism extended into Pierce’s political writings as well. The Cosmotheist website features a question and answer section that contains the following exchange: “Q: With what single aim should men who are members of the Cosmotheist Community shape their institutions and structure their society? A: Their single aim should be service of the Creator’s purpose. Every other thing which men may consider desirable in their society—justice, tranquility, security, happiness, wealth, liberty—must all be subordinated to this aim” (qtd. in Cosmotheism Q&A 1). This total abandonment of a moral code outside the satisfaction of the Creator’s purpose gave Pierce an ethical license to commit any atrocity, no matter how egregious, in its pursuit.
Pierce’s monism also gave his writings a very high level of internal consistency, making his core beliefs relatively easy to grasp once the tenants of Cosmotheism are understood. Political theorist Michael Freeden noted that all political ideologies incorporate both rational and non-rational elements, reflecting the mental processes of the humans who created them (Freeden 29). Cosmotheism, with its faith-based promise of Godhood, is clearly based on emotional, non-rational appeals. From this non-rational base, Pierce was able to construct a logical and comprehensive description of the past, present, and possible future of the human race.
We might also note that like many extremist ideologies, Cosmotheism (which functions here both as a religion and a program for political action) promises a utopian world after the old one has been burned away. The fictional character of Earl Turner describes the post-revolutionary world as being idyllic:
My most profound impression comes from the fact that every face I saw in the fields was White: no Chicanos, no Orientals, no Blacks, no mongrels. The air seems cleaner, the sun brighter, life more joyous. What a wonderful difference this single accomplishment of our revolution has made!
All the workers feel different too, whether they are ideologically with us or not. There is a new feeling of solidarity among them, of kinship, of unselfish cooperation to complete a common task. (Macdonald 1990 171).
And beyond the end of strife and petty selfishness, Cosmotheism offers a final reward that few other utopian ideologies can match: Godhood itself.
As should be obvious by now, Pierce believed that racial differences among humans were much more than skin deep. In opposition to contemporary scientific research findings, he held that the various ethnic groups of humanity constituted sub-species, with vastly different characteristics and talents: “Only the fool or the mischief-maker can claim that the same soul dwells in the breast of the Negro, the White, and the Jew. Body and soul are interdependent, and the face more often than not reveals the essence of the inner nature. Every man instinctively knows this, but the false propaganda of racial equality has confused and misled many Americans” (qtd. in Strom 157). Pierce felt that these racial differences were unalterable: “One fundamental [truth] is that people do not change their nature, any more than the leopard changes its spots” (Resistance 16 24). Given these inherent differences, people will naturally choose to associate with others of their own kind, only mixing with other ethnic groups if they are forced to (Griffin 2001 326).
In Pierce’s worldview, miscegenation (inter-racial sexual relations) is the greatest crime a human being is capable of committing. The reason is two-fold. First, as described above, the purpose of the Creator can only be achieved by the continuing evolution of the white race. An impure, racially corrupted white population will be unable to make the transition (Cosmotheist 1 12). Secondly, each of the racial variants of humanity constitutes a separate, unique species. When one disappears, it is a tragedy: “There are no worse bigots than the advocates of miscegenation. It is ironic that these are the very bigots who raise the cry of ‘genocide’ whenever any proposal is made for dealing more strictly with Negro rioters or even for cutting back on welfare handouts. What could be more genocidal than interracial marriage?” (Attack! 20 6). However, Pierce clearly believed that the preservation of the white race was of the up most importance, and the welfare of the other races was a secondary consideration at best.
This obsession with racial defilement and the maintaining of the purity of the race can of course be traced back to the writings of Hitler himself: “Blood sin and desecration of the race are the original sin in this world and the end of a humanity that surrenders to it” (Hitler 249). Political ideology aside, there may be deeper psychological issues involved. Researcher Abby Ferber has suggested that the unusual amount of attention given by white supremacists to this topic may be a reflection of their own fear of the sexual potency of black males. She observes that in almost all of the negative depictions of interracial sex given by these groups, the image is of a black male “defiling” a white female. The subject of white men having sex with black woman is rarely, if ever discussed (Ferber 103). The reasons for this are two-fold. First, white woman are considered to be the most attractive females on earth to these groups. Women of other races are not as alluring, and therefore it is logical that more black men will be drawn to white women than vice-versa (Ibid. 108). Second, the image of the potent, muscular, and overall more anatomically impressive black male is a threatening image to many white men, and their pathological fear may be expressed in a rage towards this perceived violation of “their” women.
In considering the phenomena of racism in general, we might note that persons who become involved in racist groups always seem to be members of that organization’s perceived master race. Even if the NA allowed Jews to join its group, it is difficult to imagine they would (except perhaps in a few cases involving mental illness). The reason is obvious: It would be quite detrimental to one’s self-esteem to belong to a group that preached your own wretchedness. Whether consciously or not, groups such as the NA probably play a self-affirming role in their members’ lives. No matter how bad life seems to have become, one can still be proud of being a member of the only race destined for Godhood.
In their model of political extremism, Seymour Lipset and Earl Raab suggest that in addition to monism, one of the key elements of any extremist doctrine is the perceived existence of a an evil, worldwide conspiracy (Lipset and Raab 14). The identity of the persons behind the conspiracy varies from one extremist group to the next. For some it is the Bavarian Illuminati, for others, the Catholic Church. In more recent times many American far right groups have placed the blame for societies’ ills on a vast Communist conspiracy. For William Pierce, the great villains of the world are undoubtedly the Jews. He sees their influence in almost every part of Western society. They are the great enemy of the white race, and therefore the enemy of the Creator himself. It is the Jews that Pierce described as his main adversaries, and he saw their destruction as the key to fulfilling the white races’ destiny.
Pierce used the same evolutionary approach to describe the origins of the Jews as he did the other races of the earth. According to Pierce, the Jews were originally a large tribe of nomads, roaming the deserts of the Middle East, with no set home of their own. They mixed with the other tribes they came into contact with, giving them an unsavory mongrel bloodline (ADV 11/30/02 2). They also came to have a bad reputation among the other tribes in the region on account of their dishonest business practices. The Jewish people were driven out of many areas by other tribes because of their duplicity. When the ancient nation of Israel was founded, the Jews for the first time possessed their own country. It was here, Pierce claimed, that the Jews developed the one trait that guaranteed their survival as a people: Their strong sense of racial pride, along with its accompanying refusal to mix with other tribes and the urge to support one another regardless of the circumstances (Ibid. 3). Even after the Roman Diaspora, the Jews kept this strong sense of identity. They continued to work for the interests of their own race, though now they relied on guile and manipulation rather than military force to achieve this end (Ibid. 4).
Given the above description of the Jewish people, one might think that Pierce would have had at least a grudging respect for them. After all, they embody much of what Pierce aspired to: They have a strong sense of racial loyalty, do not engage in miscegenation, and put the welfare of their own people above all else. Pierce’s hatred of the Jews stemmed from the way in which they sought to forward their interests, not those interests themselves. In an article published in Attack!, Pierce described the Jews as being analogous to the parasites found in the insect world:
Thus, one never sees a Jewish bricklayer or a Jewish pipefitter, a Jewish lumberjack or a Jewish dirt farmer. Jews do not create—they consume; they manipulate; they buy and sell; they pander; they peddle pills; they mimic; they scheme and shuffle their papers; they sit in their office and give advice (for a price); they advertise; they strut and prate before the TV camera (their TV cameras); they scribble lies for the newspapers; they flood our libraries and book stores with worthless or poisonous books (which we foolishly praise to the skies); they sicken our children’s minds in the schools; they whisper advice into the ears of the politicians; they incite riots and lead demonstrations for “equality”; they judge us in our courts; they reveal our military secrets to our enemies; they own; they rent; they lead; they undermine; they subvert; they destroy (qtd. in Strom 81).
So the Jews do not honorably seek to forward their interests by competing fairly with other groups; they survive only through the manipulation and exploitation of other races.
This need for an overreaching conspiracy theory also explains why Pierce (and other American white supremacists) chose to make the Jews the main focus of their criticisms, rather than a more obvious target such as African-Americans. White Americans might be more personally afraid of blacks than Jews, but it would be much more difficult to construct massive conspiracy theory which claimed the black population secretly controls the functioning of the United States government.
Although he believed the white race still has the potential to achieve a higher state of evolutionary development, Pierce felt that the race as a whole has been in decline for quite some time. A part of this decline can be traced to the elimination of the process of natural selection that occurred as civilization emerged:
I think we reached our peak sometime around 10,000 B.C. when we moved into the Neolithic Age and lived a settled existence and farming became the basis of our subsistence rather than hunting and gathering...[Then] we built more permanent dwellings and started living in settled communities and there was a much more elaborate division of labor and we began to see large-scale social and governmental structures and we accumulated surpluses. The result of all of that was that those who simply would not have survived in Paleolithic times could now stay alive and breed. So I think that we began to see some dysgenics around that time, and evolution slowed down (qtd. in Griffin 2001 351-352).
Pierce believed that a system of eugenics implemented by the state would ultimately be required to speed the evolutionary process back up again (Ibid.).
In addition to the detrimental effects of modern civilization in general, Pierce saw Christianity as being one of the key historical factors that has stood in the way of the progress of the white race. One of his objections was the perceived non-Aryan origin of the religion. In a critique of the American conservative movement, he wrote: “The root of the problem...is that the religion of the Moral Majority is of alien origin. It grew out of a Jewish sect, and it was exported to Europe and Asia” (qtd. in Strom 203). Given Pierce’s belief in the parasitic and manipulative nature of the Jewish race in general, it is easy to understand why he would be distrustful of any faith that sprang from Judaism. It is safe to assume that Pierce would have also objected to whites practicing any religion that was not Aryan in origin; he would for example have likely criticized any white person who adhered to Buddhism or Islam.
In addition to its suspect origin, Pierce objected to Christianity on the basis of its theological precepts as well. Pierce, being a supporter of eugenics, found Christianity’s acceptance of the weak to be distasteful. He noted this disturbing element of the faith in his description of the Allied liberation of the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau:
To be sure however, in addition to the effects of the specific anti-SS propaganda concocted for indoctrinating the troops, there was a certain predisposition on the part of the Americans to identify with the inmates at Dachau rather than with the SS guards; both democracy and Judeo-Christianity inclined them that way...those who have taken to heart the Sermon on the Mount...are bound to value the homely and botched over the handsome and fit, the petty and mediocre above the noble and accomplished, the mongrel above the purebred, the mean-spirited above the idealistic (qtd. in Resistance 12 27).
The Biblical prediction of the last being first in the final days did not appeal to Pierce; in his worldview the strong will rule the earth, and the weak will disappear under the strict law of eugenics.
Pierce also felt that Christian theology contained elements that were inherently anti-racist:
And then there is the universalistic message of Christianity. That we are all alike, that fundamentally there is no difference among people, that the only thing that counts is whether you are in or out of Jesus’ flock. It’s the “we are all one in Christ Jesus” [sic] idea—man and woman, white and black, Greek and Jew...All of that is fundamentally opposed to the evolutionary view that I have and which I think is necessary to progress (qtd. in Griffin 2001 261).
Pierce, being a pantheist, also disagreed with the monotheist conception of reality. In Pierce’s view, we are all connected to the universe itself, and therefore have a responsibility to try to improve the great whole we are a part of. Pierce believed that monotheism, with its separate God and its promise of a great reward in the afterlife, encouraged persons to withdraw from the physical world and prepare themselves for heaven (Ibid.). This clearly contradicted Pierce’s activist ideology, which stresses action to change the world, rather than waiting for the Almighty to set things right in the final days.
Although Pierce was clearly quite anti-Christian in his views, he downplayed the issue in his writings and speeches. He did not dedicate entire columns to the dangers of the Christian faith, as he did for issues such as liberalism or democracy. One can only assume that Pierce realized that a large number of Americans still consider themselves to be Christians, and that he would only succeed in alienating them immediately if he strongly attacked their faith. In fact, Christians are allowed to join the NA. Pierce claimed that approximately twenty to twenty-five percent of NA members are Christians (Swain and Nieli 273). If this is true, one can only assume that these members are unaware (or perhaps willing to excuse) Pierce’s obvious anti-Christian bias.
Pierce held that with the modernization of Western society and the increased luxury that came along with it, another defect emerged in the white race: individualism. As he put it: “...whereas 50 years ago most persons at least felt obligated to accept and pay lip service to society-centered, nation-centered, or race-centered mores, today there is often no comprehension or even awareness of any viewpoint but one of extreme individualism. Society, in the eyes of far too large a portion of the current generations of Westerners, exists to serve the needs of the individual, and that is all” (qtd. in Strom 191). Pierce further believed that this trend was not only damaging to society, but showed a lack of maturity on the part of the person in question: “There is in each of us a combination of infantile urges and more mature desires and needs. The infant seeks only to gratify himself and avoid pain. The well-developed man or woman has a more inclusive concept of ‘self’ than that of the infant. He is concerned not only about his own needs but also about the needs of his family, his community, his clan, his nation, and his race” (qtd. in Free Speech 2). Given the tenants of Cosmotheism and the political demands of National Socialism, it is perhaps not surprising that Pierce would strongly reject individualism. In his post-revolutionary world, there would be no room for self-gratification at the expense of the needs of the Creator.
Those who favor the simple left/right dichotomy as a means of classifying political ideologies might be surprised to learn that William Pierce was a strong critic of the capitalist system. Pierce acknowledged that capitalism had done much to forward the technological advancement of the West (Strom 14). But he suggested that capitalism would be an unsuitable economic system in a post-revolutionary world, given that it placed the self-interest of the individual businessperson above the well being of the race: “The butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker, of course, also have the all-too-human tendency of viewing the world in the light of their own parochial interests. The butcher’s feelings about what the price of pork chops ought to be are not half as likely to be based on what’s good for the community as they are on what’s good for his own pocketbook” (Ibid.). Pierce was of course also a rabid anti-Communist, but not out of economic concerns:
The evil in communism was not that it took property away from those who had earned it or inherited it and gave it to those who had not; the evil was not that it discouraged individual initiative or that it eventually made an economic basket case out of every nation on which it was imposed. The evil of communism was that it preached egalitarianism. It denied the differences in human quality among individuals and among races. Worse, it inverted the natural rankings of human beings. It appealed to the worst to bring down the best (qtd. in ADV 7/14/01 5).
Although Pierce (consistent with his fascist roots) considered a corporatist system to be ideal (Strom 15), he clearly believed that any economic system would suffice so long as it was made to serve the interests of the white race. He was not so much concerned with the material well being of the population, but with creating an economy that would be conducive to their racial purification and spiritual awakening.
Given Pierce’s adoration of Hitler, whom he once referred to as “the greatest man of our era” (qtd. in Resistance 11 23), it should come as little surprise to discover that he felt the Second World War had been won by the wrong side. The Third Reich, Pierce believed, had offered humanity its best hope for achieving the purpose of the Creator (Ibid.). Pierce saw the destruction of Nazi Germany as a turning point in human history. After the war, racial ideologies in general fell into disrepute, and National Socialism in particular was received with almost universal repugnance. Despite this defeat, Pierce felt that Hitler’s memory would live on to provided a positive role model for future whites: “...what will count in the long run in determining Adolph Hitler’s stature is not whether he won or lost the war, but whether it was he or his adversaries who were on the side of the Life Force, whether it was he or they who served the cause of Truth and human progress. We only have to look around us today to see that it was not they” (Ibid. 27).
Clearly, Pierce felt that the current state of human affairs was not tenable, and that the Third Reich’s political and racial policies would some day be vindicated.
In the world of the American far right, extreme patriotism is still the norm. Across the spectrum of the movement, from the Ku Klux Klan to the John Birch Society, the American flag is waved proudly, and America is held up as being the greatest of the word’s nations. Pierce set himself apart from most of his far right contemporaries by rejecting the historical image of America as being a paragon of moral virtue. He took the risk of alienating many potential supporters when he made statements such as the following, which described America’s involvement in the Second World War:
There were a lot of decent Americans who fought in the war in Europe, anti-Communist Americans, and many of them don’t want to think about the fact that they fought on the wrong side...I believe that knowing the truth...is far more important than protecting our carefully nurtured belief that we were on the side of righteousness. I believe that understanding how we were deceived in the past is necessary if we are to avoid being deceived in the future (qtd. in Griffin 2001 274-275).
Pierce did not see the U.S. as being the potential leader of a new, bright future, but looked to the white race worldwide for his inspiration.
While he may have differed with many of his far right colleagues on the issue of patriotism, Pierce agreed with them on a point of historical interpretation that is almost universally accepted in the movement: Holocaust denial. Pierce acknowledged that large numbers of Jews were executed during WWII by the Nazi regime in retaliation for acts of sabotage or insurrection. But he steadfastly denied that there had been any organized program to systematically murder the Jews of Europe (Griffin 2001 282). He wrote extensive articles explaining how the labor camp of Auschwitz was designed to process oil and rubber from coal, and that the deaths among the prisoners that did occur there were mainly caused by disease (Strom 158). Pierce also alleged that The Diary of Ann Frank was a forgery, and in fact had been written by the girl’s father after the war (Ibid. 198). Pierce believed that the false account of the Holocaust had been concocted by the Jews for three reasons. First, it helped to provide a moral rationale for the formation of the state of Israel. Second, it gave the Jews grounds to request large reparation payments from governments and companies who were allegedly involved in the atrocities committed against them. And finally, the memory of the Holocaust could be used to grant the Jewish people a victim’s status, deflecting attention away from their dishonest and manipulative practices (Griffin 2001 284).
Of course, the great irony in Pierce’s denial of the Holocaust is that even if he had acknowledged it to be a historical fact, he would have had no moral objection to it. Pierce believed that any act, no matter how horrific, was morally correct if it was necessary to forward the purpose of the Creator. Pierce saw the Jews as being the main impediment to the white race’s progress in modern times; their extermination would have therefore been quite permissible. Writing about the concentration camp at Dachau (which confined Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and other “undesirables”), Pierce noted:
It is to be regretted that Dachau was not really the “extermination camp” Jewish propaganda claimed it to be, and that the staff had not exterminated the 32,000 vermin incarcerated there before the Americans arrived to turn them lose on the world again (qtd. in Resistance 12 27).
In William Pierce’s mind, traditional history and morality were inverted. The Holocaust did not happen. But it should have.

Chapter 4: The Present World and Jewish Domination

It is no exaggeration to say that William Pierce held the Jewish people of the world responsible for virtually every misfortune the white race faced in the post-WWII period. An American Dissident Voices listener once wrote Pierce and asked why he seemed to be so fixated on the Jews and their supposed misdeeds. Pierce replied:
You know, the reason I speak so often about Jews is not that Jews are my favorite topic; it is that the Jews, through their domination of our news and entertainment media, have a more powerful influence on public opinion and therefore our government than any other coherent group. Well, there’s more to it than that. Jews are not only more powerful than any other group, they are special in other ways as well: cleverer, more deceptive, more malevolent. Anyway, we cannot solve our other problems without first solving our Jewish problem. That is a fact. That is why I talk so much about Jews. (qtd. in ADV 12/11/99 1)
Pierce felt that the ultimate goal of the Jewish conspiracy was the extermination of the Aryan race. It was only the Aryans, with their unsurpassed intelligence and spiritual nobility, who posed any real threat to the Jewish desire for world domination:
The idea, of course, is to exterminate us, to wage genocide against us, to leave us no opportunity to be among our own kind, no opportunity to feel a sense of kinship and belonging among our own people, no opportunity to organize and defend ourselves. They [the Jews] want to be the one and only self-conscious group on the earth able to act intelligently in promoting their group interests, and then the world will belong to them. They’ve been pretty successful so far in their campaign against us (qtd. in Griffin 2001 307).
Pierce believed that the aim of the Jews was to spiritually weaken whites, making them less likely to perceive the deliberate plot that was being enacted against them. Miscegenation would be the Jew’s final and ultimate weapon, destroying the white race through interbreeding with other ethnic groups (Attack! 20 6). With the white race annihilated, there will be no way for the Creator to become self-aware, and the Jews will rule over a world of docile, mixed-raced persons. Pierce saw the Jews as evil personified, and their existence provided a counterforce of unredeemable darkness to his vision of white purity and goodness.
Of course, Pierce believed that the Jews would never mount this attack on the white race by open or honorable means: “The motto of Mossad, Israel’s principal agency for state-sponsored terror and assassination, is ‘By way of deception shalt thou do war’ but, in fact, that is the principal that governs the relations of Jews as a whole with the non-Jewish world” (qtd. in Resistance 16 23). In fact, the conspiracy is so deeply hidden that even many Jews are not fully aware of it. When the protagonist of Hunter protests that his kindly Jewish dentist could not possibly be involved in such an evil plot, another character corrects him:
Your Jewish dentist pays his taxes too, with his contributions to the United Jewish Appeal. He may not be in the front lines with the fellows from B’nai B’rith, but you can bet that he does his part on the home front in lots of little ways. He votes for politicians who vote for your taxes to be sent to Israel. He writes letters with the right slant to the editor of the Washington Post...
Or maybe your dentist is one of those really rare Jews who doesn’t pay a bit of attention to what B’nai B’rith tells him and doesn’t even buy Israel Bonds. He still thinks of himself as a member of the Jewish people, and the Jewish people—the Jewish nation, the Jewish race, whatever you want to call the damned thing—is at war with our people, make no mistake about it (Macdonald 1998 72-73).
All of this makes the Jews in some ways a rather convenient enemy. If the problems of the modern world could be traced to a more general cause, such as the alienating effects of technology or a basic character flaw in the nature of all of humanity, the correction of the underlying problem might seem insurmountable. In Pierce’s worldview, the solution to the world’s problems is straightforward and relatively easy to remedy. If the Jews are removed from white society (and preferably from the world as a whole), humanities’ (and the Creator’s) major obstacles will disappear with them.
“Who Rules America?”, a thin booklet issued by Pierce through his National Vanguard book company, is the key recruiting text of the NA. If one orders products or simply requests information from the group, this booklet is always included in the reply. It is periodically updated, and focuses its attention on the alleged Jewish control of the Western media. The booklet’s introduction describes the huge amount of influence the owners of major media outlets have on public opinion. It is claimed that these individuals for the most part hail from the same ethnic group:
And who are these all-powerful masters of the media? As we shall see, to a very large extent they are Jews. It isn’t simply a matter of the media being controlled by profit-hungry capitalists, some of whom happen to be Jews. If that were the case, the ethnicity of the media masters would reflect, at least approximately, the ratio of rich Gentiles to rich Jews. The preponderance of Jews in the media is so overwhelming, however, that we are obliged to assume that it is due to more than mere happenstance (NA 2000 3).
The main body of the text is an exhaustive listing of the owners and managers of the major newspaper, magazine, and television companies in the United States. All the individuals mentioned are, of course, Jewish. Pierce believed that this gave the Jews a tremendous amount of power over the opinions of white America: “The mass media gives us our image of the world and then tells us what to think about that image. Essentially everything we know—or think we know—about events outside our own neighborhood or circle of acquaintances comes to us via our daily newspaper, our weekly news magazine, our radio, and our television” (Ibid. 2). Given the evil nature of the Jews and their quest for world power at the expense of the white race, Pierce considered the control of the media by the Jews to be the most threatening problem facing whites today: “My point is that the media are in fact destructive of our values and our society and our civilization. My point is that the media, because they are dominated by Jews, work to advance the Jew’s interests, not our interests, and that their interests are opposed to ours. That’s supremely important. That’s the most important thing of which our people should be aware” (qtd. in ADV 3/23/02 4).
In this belief, Pierce is applying one of the classic strains of extremist thought: nothing happens by accident. The obvious interpretation of the American media is that it exists to serve its own interests. If a media source slants a news story in a certain direction, it is doing so because it believes that that is what its audience wants to see, or perhaps what its corporate owners and advertisers would like to see. If the personal bias of a media owner or manager does slip into the reporting, it is more likely to reflect that individual’s political viewpoints rather than an explicitly racial ideology. But to Pierce, all Jewish persons operate from a racial viewpoint. They do not represent their own personal interests, but the interests of the Jewish people in general. Therefore, the slanting of news stories is not a random or personalized event, but part of a great plan of action. There are powerful forces at work in the universe, some acting for good, others for evil. The media, like everything else, is a part of that tremendous struggle. The fact that it is (in his mind) controlled by the forces of evil was intolerable to Pierce.
Much of what Pierce tried to accomplish with the NA was to provide a media outlet for white Americans that was not corrupted by the influence of the Jews. To that end, he established a newspaper and a radio program that spread what he considered to be news important to white persons. Pierce also dabbled in other media in an attempt to spread his pro-white message. As noted, he saw Resistance Records as being a potentially powerful tool to transmit National Socialist ideals to young persons. Near the end of his life, Pierce produced a recruitment video for the NA, complete with dramatic music and slick computer graphics. One can suppose it was meant to be shown by NA recruiters to persons who did not have the time or inclination to read Pierce’s books or articles. The NA even produced a comic book intended for distribution to high school students. It relates the story of “White Will”, an Aryan teenager who stands up to the Jewish influence at his school.
Pierce saw the Jewish influence in American culture as extending beyond the limits of the news-reporting organizations. In his view, Jewish interests either directly or indirectly controlled all of the major entertainment outlets in the U.S. This manipulation of the entertainment industry enables the Jews to control which artists gain prominence, and also control what those artists produce:
Even though the majority of the “artists” on the pop-culture scene are still White Americans, they are employees of an industry which is completely dominated by Jews and which, for reasons of its own, has chosen to selectively promote trends and fads which are foreign to the American majority.
The net effect of this alien influence has been cultural chaos. It has largely alienated [white] Americans from the great cultural heritage handed to them by their ancestors in Western Europe and left them culturally rootless—a people, in fact, with no true culture, particularly the generation born since World War II (qtd. in Strom 34).
This form of Jewish control is viewed as being particularly insidious in that it targets young whites who most likely do not yet read the newspaper or watch the evening news. Their young, impressionable minds are corrupted at this early age, making them more docile for further manipulation as they grow older.
One of the most repulsive Jewish corruptions of popular culture, in Pierce’s view, could be seen in the music industry. Commenting on the efforts of Sumner Redstone (the owner of the cable music channel VH1) to promote rap music, Pierce wrote:
Redstone’s aim—and the aim of the Jewish media bosses generally, whether they’re in Hollywood or on Madison Avenue, is to alienate young White people, to uproot them, to destroy their sense of racial identity, to confuse them, to make them forget their traditions and history, and to persuade them to mix with Blacks and other non-Whites. That’s why Redstone promotes rap music so heavily. His ultimate aim is to destroy our people, our race. And because I’m trying to counter that with Resistance Records, he calls me a “hater” and calls the music I distribute “hate rock” (qtd. in ADV 3/2/02 1).
Pierce believed that the efforts by the Jews to cause young whites to look at black persons as being “cool” would lead to them adopt black culture, and would legitimize miscegenation.
Pierce saw this Jewish influence as extending even into supposedly independent artistic areas such as painting and sculpture. Pierce, like his idol Adolph Hitler, considered modern trends in the fine arts to be degenerate: “Western man’s artistic sense, once soaring and uplifting, seems to have withered, darkened, and become cancerous in the twentieth century. His urge towards beauty and truth seems to have degenerated into a morbid fascination with ugliness, an irresistible desire to be distracted, amused, deceived” (qtd. in Strom 34). Pierce would have liked to have seen white artists return to more classical and uplifting subjects, such as landscapes and portraits, which he felt had a positive effect on the race (Ibid.).
It is interesting to contrast Pierce’s interpretation of the bias in the American media and the decline in popular culture with that of the American conservatives. They too see a conspiracy at work in the media, but ascribe it to a political bias (liberalism) rather than a racial one. Some on the fringe of the conservative movement even ascribe a deliberate plan to the degradation of popular culture in the U.S. They describe it as “cultural Marxism”, an attempt by the left to break down the traditional moral values of the nation and reduce individualism, thus making the imposition of Marxist economic policies more palatable to the masses (Berkowitz 5). Most conservatives, however, still consider the decline in artistic standards to be simply a matter of bad taste on the part of liberals. Consistent with his extremist mindset, Pierce could not accept the idea that this decline was occurring as a result of something as random as personal preferences. He saw it as being a part of the great struggle for the soul of the universe. And so of course, the decline must be caused by the source of all evil and discord in the modern world: the Jews.
In Pierce’s conception of an ordered universe, men and women have their distinct roles to play. Men are the explorers and innovators; women should enjoy a protected and isolated status, staying at home to raise the children (Griffin 2001 355). Pierce believed that if one tampered with these natural inclinations, a dysfunctional society would result. (It is of course rather ironic that Pierce lived off of his wife’s income for several years.) Pierce held that white men in the United States had become much too feminine in their orientation, and that their freedom had suffered as a result: “When I’ve talked about this subject in the past, I’ve characterized the freedom-lovers as masculine and the security-lovers as feminine because under natural conditions men are a bit more willing to take chances and try new things and want to keep their options open, and they are also a bit more concerned with general principals, and women are a bit more concerned with the security of home and hearth...”(qtd. in ADV 7/28/01 1). Even more dangerous is the threat of feminism. Pierce saw the women’s rights movement as being potentially fatal to the white race:
...I have pointed out that the reason feminism is important is not that it has made many women neurotic and has made many men as well as many women unhappy, but that it is race-threatening...Feminism has drastically lowered the White birthrate: it is now well below the replacement rate, and the race will die out if the birthrate is not raised once again above the replacement level...Feminism takes women out of the home and puts them into the workplace. Feminism leads women to choose careers other than motherhood. Feminism, all by itself, will destroy us unless we stamp it out the way we would an epidemic of hoof-and-mouth disease: ruthlessly and thoroughly (qtd. in ADV 7/14/01 2).
Behind the feminist movement, Pierce saw the familiar instigator: “...every time I’ve talked about feminism at any length I have pointed out that the principal promoters of this ideology have been Jews...the feminist movement would have remained on the fringes of our society, populated mostly by lesbians, if it had not been for the enthusiastic and continuing support of the Jewish mass media, which made feminism Politically Correct on college campuses” (Ibid.). Once again, Pierce attempts to tie any social movement he considers to be detrimental to the purpose of the Creator to the Jews. In his mind, the feminist movement could never have arisen from the legitimate wishes of women to achieve a more equitable society. It is instead a part of the great conspiracy, deliberately instigated by the Jews to forward their own nefarious interests.
Pierce’s views on the roles of women and men in a properly functioning society were reflected in the structure of the NA. Pierce stated that the group’s membership was twenty percent female, but women were noticeably absent from the leadership ranks of the organization. If one skims through the back issues of Attack! and National Vanguard, it can be seen that almost every original article or colum was written either by Pierce or by a male NA member. The women who were employed at the NA compound performed such menial work as secretarial services or typesetting for Resistance and National Vanguard. This exclusion of women was consistent with the culture of American National Socialism, in which female leaders are virtually unknown, and women who are members of such groups are expected to stay silent and keep a low profile. The state of gender relations in the NA has not changed since Pierce’s death.
Although he excluded them from any position of responsibility or leadership the NA, Pierce did make use of women from both inside and outside of his organization when it suited his purposes. The early issues of Attack! were replete with images of nude white women, usually for the stated purpose of displaying the beauty of the white body. The practice had been dropped by the time Pierce changed Attack! into the more respectable National Vanguard. When Pierce took control of Resistance Magazine, he added a color center section featuring photos of “Proud Aryan Women”. The pictures are typically of young, attractive ladies, often sporting skinhead tattoos and clothing. The flirtatious element of these photos is fairly obvious. Pierce, like many other extremists, would sometimes resort to the implied promise of access to attractive women in an effort to woo male converts.
Pierce saw human sexuality as a positive thing, so long as it occurred between a man and a woman of the same race (NV 89 16). He was not particularly attached to traditional mores regarding sexual conduct: The protagonists in both The Turner Diaries and Hunter are depicted as engaging in premarital sex within committed relationships. But Pierce felt that the concept of sexual pleasure had been perverted by Jewish interests in the West through their control of popular entertainment, education, and the pornography industry (Attack! 4 2). When criticizing Sol Gordon, the author of a sex education book aimed at young persons, Pierce wrote:
In his view, since the sole purpose of sex is personal pleasure, anything which may titillate a jaded hedonist is A-O.K.—anything at all.
He subliminally puts across the idea that the individuals involved in a sexual relationship have no responsibility beyond themselves. The interests of society simply don’t count. Sol would probably have a stroke if anyone suggested to him that the primary function of sex is the breeding of the race and that purely personal considerations ought to be subordinate (qtd. in Strom 48).
Pierce believed that the institution of marriage had been similarly corrupted by the Jewish-implanted concept of individualism: “The problem was that our people had already accepted most of the basic Jewish premises. Our criterion for choosing a marriage partner was happiness—happiness!—either ours or our children’s” (qtd. in ADV 7/27/02 5). Given that sex exists to serve the purpose of the Creator, it is a sacred duty, not an activity to engage in simply for ones’ own pleasure. Marriage should be looked at in a similar light, being arranged in the interests of propagating valuable genetic lines rather than being concerned with the compatibility of the partners. Although he did not directly address the subject in his published wittings, we can assume that Pierce would have disapproved of divorce, preferring to place the integrity of the white family above the needs of the individuals involved. Given Pierce’s five failed marriages and his failure to produce children after the first, these beliefs take on a rather ironic tone.
Pierce saw the increasing societal acceptance of miscegenation and homosexuality as being the ultimate expressions of this slide into sexual decadence. Pierce’s loathing of miscegenation has already been described. He objected to homosexual behavior (at least among whites) for the same reason: As gays and lesbians produce no children, they do not advance the Creator’s purpose, and lower the already declining numbers of white persons on the planet. Pierce objected to these perceived perversions for moral as well as practical reasons:
The act of a man and a woman intended to engender a healthy, White child should be viewed as a sacramental act...Even when a sex act is not specifically sacramental—i.e., not intended to produce children—it ought not to be of a nature which clashes with sacramental sex or which tends to undermine or distort the basic view of sexual activity.
Thus, bestiality and homosexuality are beyond the pale, just as interracial sex with a sterile partner (or involving contraception) is. Such acts cannot engender defective or mongrel offspring directly, but they must inevitably poison the ethos of a people which permits them—and this will lead in turn to the abandonment of the primary taboo and then to racial decline (qtd. in NV 89 16).
Evidence of homosexual conduct was considered to be grounds for dismissal from the NA (NA membership application, 2).
This strong stated aversion to homosexuality is common in the American far right. In fact, accusations of homosexual behavior are often used in white supremacist circles in attempts to discredit personal rivals. (Such accusations were made against Pierce himself in The Deguello Report, an essay penned by an anonymous white supremacist in 1976 [Kaplan 402]). It is probably best not to address the subject of homosexual activity in the white supremacist movement here. Sufficed to say that the occurrence of secretly gay men joining white racist groups is far from unknown (Ibid. 62).
Pierce held that the result of this Jewish-inspired cultural slide has been the moral softening of American whites. He remarked that: “[White] American men and women today are softer, weaker, less reliable, less willing to accept responsibility, less patriotic, less able to endure discomfort and hardship, less willing to postpone gratification, and more willing to tolerate weakness and corruption in others than they were in the past” (qtd. in Free Speech 9). This weakness prevents whites from taking the hard stands they need to in order to stave off their race’s demise. For instance, Pierce often advised his white South African friends that they needed to either sterilize or expel the black population of their country in order to maintain their power. Pierce said that his friends rejected this advice, calling it too cruel. Pierce saw this as a weakness, brought on in this case by the universalist teachings of the Christian faith (ADV 8/18/01 4).
Pierce of course believed that the white race was genetically the most disciplined and hardest working one on earth. He held that the source of the current weakness afflicting whites could be traced to the Jewish-inspired soft parenting techniques that became popular in the post-WWII years. Even more disturbing, this terrible system of child raising was being passed on to the younger generations: “The raising of children in America has become feminized, softened. Spankings and other forms of corporal punishment are out. In fact, the prevailing attitude among White parents today is that any sort of punishment or denial is a bad thing. Disobedience no longer merits a whipping or the withdrawal of an allowance. Disrespect to a parent no longer earns a hard slap across the face and being confined to one’s room for a few days. Self-indulgence in children actually is encouraged today” (qtd. in Free Speech 4). Pierce perceived each generation as being a bit more lackadaisical than the last; he foresaw this downwards spiral as ending with the total debasement of the white race, and its eventual extinction.
Pierce, like Hitler, saw the modern world as a reflection of nature. Just as animals struggle with one another for their survival, the different races of humanity struggle against each other towards the same end. To emerge victorious in this great battle, a people must be ready to act ruthlessly towards their opponents. In a 1929 speech, Hitler made his violent ambitions clear: “If men wish to live, they are forced to kill others. The entire struggle for survival is a conquest of the means of existence which in turn results in the elimination of others from these same sources of subsistence. As long as there are people on this earth, there will be nations against nations and they will be forced to protect their vital rights in the same way as the individual is forced to protect his rights” (Cohen 410). Pierce shared Hitler’s social Darwinism. He feared that the white race as it currently exists lacks the strength and the brutality to survive against the onslaught of the Jews and their non-white puppets. Many of the policies he advocated within the NA were designed to produce a vanguard of mentally and physically fit persons; men and women who would be strong enough to take control of the crumbling social order when the time came.
This softening of discipline among the white population helps to explain why the revolution has not occurred already. Most whites, even if they were able to perceive the reality of the current situation, would prefer to retain their personal comfort rather than risk their own well being by joining a revolutionary group. As the character of Earl Turner notes: “Life is uglier and uglier these days, more and more Jewish. But it is still moderately comfortable, and comfort is the great corruptor, the great maker of cowards” (Macdonald 1990 64). This level of comfort will dissuade whites from taking any sort of moral stand against their oppressors, even if that oppression becomes extreme:
What is really precious to the average [white] American is not his freedom or his honor or the future of his race, but his pay check. He complained when the System began busing his kids to Black schools 20 years ago, but he was allowed to keep his station wagon and his fiberglass speedboat, so he didn’t fight...
That, unfortunately, is our average White American. We can wish that it weren’t so, but it is. The plain, horrible truth is that we have been trying to evoke a heroic spirit of idealism which just isn’t there any more. It has been washed right out of 99 per cent of our people by the flood of Jewish-materialist propaganda in which they have been submerged practically all of their lives (Ibid. 101).
Turner questioned whether a revolutionary movement could ever be forged from such a people: “...how could our people—how could White Americans—be so spineless, so crawling, so eager to please their oppressors? How can we recruit a revolutionary army from such a rabble?” (Ibid. 79). Pierce came to the conclusion that the majority of whites could never be awakened by rational appeals. He felt that the only way to force the white population to join his cause would be through the revocation of their comfort, and the destruction of their materialist way of life.
As should be clear from the quotations above, Pierce had little respect for the average white American. His hatred extended not only to Jews and racial minorities, but to most whites as well. He often referred to them in his essays as “lemmings”, “Joe Sixpacks”, or “Sally Soccermoms”. Pierce considered them to be unworthy of the liberty he sought to give them. As the character of Turner put it: “If the freedom of the [white] American people were the only thing at stake, the existence of the Organization could hardly be justified. [White] Americans have lost their right to be free. Slavery is the just and proper state for a people who have grown as soft, self-indulgent, careless, credulous, and befuddled as we have” (Macdonald 1990 33). This is an interesting point of view that sets Pierce apart from most of his white supremacist contemporaries. Traditionally, groups such as the Ku Klux Klan portrayed themselves as being maintainers of the status quo who acted in the material interests of the white community as a whole. Even today, more mainstream racists such as Pat Buchanan couch their appeals in terms of benefiting the white majority, using such issues as illegal immigration and affirmative action as their selling points. Pierce was not interested in improving the lives of the majority of white Americans. He was set on fulfilling the purpose of the Creator. Pierce did believe that the lives of whites would improve after the revolution, but this was of secondary importance. He rejected the white utilitarianism of most of the racist right in favor of a program of religious fulfillment, even if that fulfillment made the lives of whites considerably more unpleasant in the short term. Given this stance, perhaps Pierce should not have been surprised that his organization was never able to expand its membership past a small number of devoted followers.
When one considers his belief in the complete Jewish control of the media and the moral weakness of whites in contemporary America, Pierce’s objection to democracy becomes fairly obvious:
The influence of the mass media on this more feminine and impressionable electorate—an influence which has become overwhelming in this century with the development first of radio and then of motion pictures and television—has made a mockery of the whole concept of democracy as a system of government by the mass of the people who make their choices on the basis of their own innate values and attitudes. The masters of the mass media can and do manipulate the emotions and the opinions of the public on every issue of importance to themselves. They can and do set the political fashions of the day. They can and do form the image in the mind of the public of every candidate for public office...What we really have is an oligarchy, and the oligarchs are the people who own and control the mass media. Through the manipulation of public opinion and the images of candidates, the mass media constrain the flow of public policy within boundaries chosen by their masters (qtd. in Griffin 2001 383).
But even if the Jewish control over the media were to be broken, democracy would still be a farce: “...democracy is a hoax. The majority never has ruled and never will. A minority always rules, because only a minority of men have the capacity for independant thought and action; the rest are capable only of thinking and acting with the herd” (qtd. in NV 112 4).
This belief in the aristocratic principal (that is, that only a select few have the competency to rule) is central to the ideology of National Socialism. It holds that just as some races are more intellectually advanced than others, some men (and when discussing leadership positions it is always men) are more morally and intellectually gifted than the majority. At the top of the hierarchy is the Leader, a man so ethical and wise that he naturally rises to the apex of society and justly rules from there. Hitler of course thought of himself in these terms. It is likely that William Pierce did so as well.
Democracy was distasteful to Pierce for another reason. He was a monist, a religious fanatic. In his mind there was only one truth in the universe, the truth of Cosmotheism. All other belief systems, even those that preached racial separation, were in error. One of the key elements in a functioning democracy is the competition of differing ideologies in the political process. But if Cosmotheism is in fact the only ideology based on reality, than why should other beliefs be allowed expression? Why should lies be tolerated? Pierce believed in free speech, but only for “the truth” (qtd. in NV 87 5). As he and his followers were the only persons who fully understood the purpose of the Creator, was it not just that they should suppress all other voices? Democracy, with its pluralist structure, is inherently detrimental to this purpose, and therefore would not be permitted to exist in the new order. Rather, it would be replaced with an organic state, a state that exists only to fulfill the destiny of the universe.