Chapter 5: The Need for a Revolutionary Future

Pierce clearly believed that if current cultural trends continue, the white race will disappear from the planet. This was his ultimate nightmare: “If we do nothing, then our people will die. Our race will become extinct, and the earth will be inherited by the savages and degenerates of the non-White world...So we really have no choice in the matter. We either start having and raising more healthy White babies or we die. Our race dies. We die” (qtd. in Griffin 2001 361). It is interesting to note that Pierce, unlike many other millennalists, did not consider the success of the revolution to be assured. In his view, there was a distinct possibility that the Jews would be triumphant, and the purpose of the Creator would never be fulfilled. This gave Pierce and his followers a certain sense of urgency in their mission. They could not rely on events to naturally work themselves out. If they were weak, or made faulty decisions, the enemy might be victorious, and the universe will have failed to achieve its designed purpose.
So an alteration of the existing social order is clearly needed. But what form should this alliteration take? Pierce rejected all variants of reformism, even those that were based on racial principals. In the late 1970’s he noted that some white racists still believed that white supremacy could be restored through a military coup or by the election of a segregationist president such as George Wallace. Pierce pointed out the folly in these fantasies: “No revolution can be carried through successfully which leaves the nation’s legislators, teachers, preachers, labor leaders, business leaders, newsmen, and the leading members of every other segment of society unchanged, still loyal to the old order, still under the influence of old ideas” (qtd. in Strom 141). In Pierce’s view, Western society had become irredeemably corrupt. The only way the white race could be saved was through a total revolution, one that completely redesigned the structure of white civilization.
As Pierce made clear in both his novels and his non-fiction writings, violent revolution was the only realistic option for the white race to obtain its freedom from Jewish domination. Rather than working towards peaceful change, Pierce advocated a doctrine of terrorism:
We must think instead in terms of assassinating federal judges, of burning the stores of businessmen who act as if they are more interested in what’s good for business than what’s good for White America, of dynamiting the TV transmitters and newspaper presses of the alien news manipulators, of harshly punishing Whites—male or female—who fraternize sexually with non-Whites, of putting the fear of terrible retribution into every treacherous politician and System-serving editor, advertiser, bureaucrat, or other public person (qtd. in Attack! 7 7).
These strikes will be made against some government targets, but this will not be enough to achieve victory in itself. The government is too powerful, and it is unlikely that it would ever fall as the result of such terrorist strikes (Ibid.). Attacks must also be carried out against the population as a whole, including whites. Pierce explains the rationale behind such attacks: “The basic purpose of political terror is to undermine the confidence of the masses in the existing regime. When no one is sure when or where the next bomb will explode; when snipers take a daily toll on the streets of the large cities; when sabotage causes the repeated breakdown of public transportation, electrical power distribution, water, gas, or sewer systems; and when the authorities lack either sufficient will or strength to restore order—the public will begin to withdraw its support from those authorities” (qtd. in Attack! 13 6). In addition to lowering the public’s confidence in the government, these attacks will serve as a warning to the white population that collaboration with the system may be detrimental to their self-interest: “Going along with the System isn’t going to be as easy and as painless as you thought. There will be chaos, turmoil, physical danger, and material loss for you as long as you stay with the System, because we will raise continual hell. You might even get killed” (qtd. in Attack! 7 7).
A reasonable person might think that such random attacks would alienate the white population from the revolutionaries and increase support for the existing government. Pierce rejects this idea: “The public has a feminine mentality and will gradually incline itself to the force displaying the greatest ruthlessness and determination. Utterly fickle, the masses of people will watch the contest between terrorists and authorities and will begin making reservations concerning their commitment to the authorities if it does not appear that the terror campaign can and will be promptly suppressed” (qtd. in Attack! 13 6). As the state and the public come under increasingly intense attack from the revolutionaries, the insurgents will be in a better position to recruit fresh converts. The system, hampered by its corruption and the presence of racial minorities in its ranks, will be unable to effectively deal with the crisis. The system will eventually collapse, and the revolutionaries will step in, ready to create a new, all-white nation.
This millennalist vision is consistent with most other white supremacist ideologies. Although some racists (such as those who supported George Wallace’s presidential campaigns) have held that the transformation of society can be brought about peacefully, most foresee a period of chaos and bloodshed as being essential to the establishment of the new order (Ridgeway 42). This belief is in many cases inspired by the Book of Revelations, which predicts a period of turmoil and death before the Second Coming. Pierce was of course not a Christian, yet his upbringing may have left a subconscious mark on his thinking. Like the Christians, Pierce believed that much of this diseased world would be burned away in a holy flame. And from the ashes of the old system, a fresh, new world would be created.
To achieve this goal of a complete restructuring of the system, Pierce felt that a vanguard party structure was an absolute necessity. First, the existing government will have to be toppled through a disciplined campaign of terrorist attacks. And after the old system has been smashed, the party will have to have a group of trustworthy, experienced individuals on hand to replace the disposed bureaucrats and other public workers. If the revolutionary government is unable to maintain order and deliver basic services such as health care and food distribution, chaos will result and the revolution may fail. Pierce dedicated himself to forming the NA into a group of talented individuals who would have the experience and maturity to run society in the post-revolutionary period (NA 2000 5). Pierce attempted to attract professional persons as NA members; perhaps he believed that the recruitment of individuals for terrorist duties would be comparatively easier, and could therefore be temporarily put off. (His proselytizing to skinheads through Resistance Magazine may have been a first step in the direction of the recruitment of these rougher types.) Given that the revolution would have to be conducted in a highly disciplined and organized fashion, a strongly centralized party apparatus would be required. Pierce, of course, saw the NA as the only organization capable of fulfilling this role.
This attraction to a vanguard party style of organization reflected Pierce’s belief in the aristocratic principal. Many far right groups see themselves as grassroots organizations; they build their support from the bottom up, seeking to push the masses into independent action. Pierce, with his low opinion of the average white person, rejected this concept. He believed that only those exceptional men who were gifted with a high intelligence and possessing a noble character could be trusted to make important decisions. Pierce designed the NA to be a top-run organization: Orders would flow down to the members from the leadership, and no actions would be taken without their approval. In this way, any important decisions would be made by the individual most capable of making sound choices (read: Pierce), and there would be no danger of unqualified members committing counterproductive actions in the name of the organization.
This stance put Pierce at odds with much of the contemporary American far right. Observing that the downfall of many American far right (and far left) organizations was the result of government infiltration and disruption, a white supremacist named Louis Beam penned an article entitled “Leaderless Resistance” in the early 1990’s. Beam suggested that the current government could be overthrown through an increasingly intense series of attacks carried out by autonomous terrorist cells. As these cells have no direct contact with one another, it will be very difficult for the state to detect their presence, let alone to infiltrate them. Beam’s essay was adopted as a plan of action by much of the far right, especially by those in militia movement (Dees 175).
To Pierce, this was a completely unworkable scenario. The system cannot be destroyed piecemeal: “The lesson is that when the time finally comes to deal with traitors, we will deal with them collectively and finally, not by picking off one or two of them with harebrained ‘leaderless resistance’ schemes” (qtd. in CNC 21). In an article which appeared in Resistance, an NA member suggested that those engaged in leaderless resistance activities might be motivated by personal rather than revolutionary desires: “Nothing defines the blatant ineptitude and rank incompetence of the radical racialist resistance than the concept of so-called ‘leaderless resistance’ (hereafter, LR). By its very nature LR amounts to little more than anarchy and, as demonstrated by some of the most recent examples, very rapidly degenerates into simple banditry” (Hollyoak 14). The same article suggests that properly organized white supremacist groups have little to fear from government infiltration, as they will possess counter-intelligence programs capable of rooting out informers (Ibid. 18).
In addition to faulting the overall strategic approach of the leaderless resistance adherents, Pierce believed that they were moving to engage the system prematurely. The character of Turner noted why the Organization delayed its attacks on the government for some time: “For one thing, the Organization just wasn’t well disciplined enough for waging terror against the System. There were too many cowards and blabbermouths among us. Informers, fools, weaklings, and irresponsible jerks would have been our undoing” (Macdonald 1990 6). Pierce likely felt that the NA faced similar problems. It is important to understand that Pierce had no moral objections to the violent activities of these leaderless resistance groups. He simply felt that the time was not yet right: “We have always been morally justified in killing traitors and enemies of our people, but we must not actually do that until it is tactically justified” (qtd. in NA Bulletin 9).
A key component of Pierce’s vision for the post-revolutionary world was a genocidal campaign against those perceived to be enemies of the Creator’s purpose. The first phase of this genocide will be the “Day of the Rope”. This event, which Pierce had mentioned as early as 1967 (NSW 5 68), was fully described in The Turner Diaries. Shortly after revolutionary forces take control of southern California, Organization death squads sweep through residential areas, rounding up persons who are known to have engaged in miscegenation. Their punishment is swift:
Today has been the Day of the Rope—a grim and bloody day, but an unavoidable one. Tonight, for the first time in weeks, it is quite and totally peaceful throughout all of southern California. But the night is filled with silent horrors; from tens of thousands of lampposts, power polls, and trees throughout this vast metropolitan area the grisly forms hang...each with an identical placard around its neck bearing the printed legend “I betrayed my race” (Macdonald 1990 160-61).
Along with the miscegenists, other persons are hanged, including: “...the politicians, the lawyers, the businessmen, the TV newscasters, the newspaper reporters and editors, the judges, the teachers, the school officials, the ‘civic leaders’, the bureaucrats, the preachers, and all the others who, for reasons of career or status or votes or whatever, helped promote or implement the System’s racial program. The System has already paid them their 30 pieces of silver. Today we paid them” (Ibid. 162). These mass killings of whites serve two purposes: They eliminate unsavory persons who might later cause trouble, and they serve as an example to those who would dare to oppose the new government. Concurrent with the Day of the Rope, all Jews and persons of mixed race (who might later try to pass themselves off as white) are rounded up and taken to isolated rural areas, where they are summarily shot (Ibid.). Blacks and other racial minorities are forcibly expelled from the Organization’s zone of control, thus ensuring a pacified, all-white area for the Organization to operate from.
The final fate of the world’s non-white population under Pierce’s revolutionary plan remains somewhat unclear. The Jews would undoubtedly face total extermination. But Pierce sometimes suggested that so long as white supremacists are allowed their own racial enclaves in Europe and North America, the rest of the planet can be left to its native populations (Strom 46). The Turner Diaries suggests a darker end for humanity’s other races. After the final victory of the revolutionary forces in America and Europe, the Organization uses weapons of mass destruction to “sterilize” all of Asia of human population (Macdonald 1990 210). While the status of non-white persons in Africa and South America remains unexplained, Pierce’s dream of an “all-white world” may have been meant to be taken quite literally in this scenario.
In Pierce’s revolutionary plan, the majority of the world’s white population will not be spared in the conflagration that annihilates the Jews and non-whites. In truth, the fact that most whites will not survive the revolutionary period may be beneficial from a eugenic viewpoint: “The problem is not to cull out the mongrels, the Judaized, the degenerates, the moral prostitutes from a healthy mass, so that the cull can be destroyed and the mass saved. The problem is to pick the few who embody the best of what the West once was and to take the necessary measures to see that which they embody does not perish with the mass” (qtd. in Strom 182). Once again, it is important to remember that Pierce was not a white utilitarian. He was in no way concerned with saving the race as a whole; rather, he wanted to ensure that the genetic elite of the white race was preserved, so that their sacred DNA could be purified and used to fulfill the Creator’s purpose.
It is likely that these genocidal plans were designed in part to satisfy the violent tendencies in Pierce’s own psyche. While he certainly disapproved of miscegenation and the perceived Jewish control of white culture for political and religious reasons, Pierce clearly had a strong personal hatred for his enemies as well. He mentioned that one of the reasons he had left Washington, D.C. and moved to West Virginia was to escape from his own potential for violence: “...the truth is I had just sort of OD’d on blacks in Washington. I was reacting in a very negative way to the sight of all of them around everywhere. I was doing some things back in Washington that if I’d been caught it would have gotten me put in jail for the rest of my life. So I figured that I had better get out of this town, and I did” (qtd. in Griffin 2001 225). Seen in this light, fictional events such as the Day of the Rope take on a special personal significance. Pierce, who felt he could not allow himself the pleasure of killing those he hated, could satisfy his violent cravings vicariously through describing their deaths in his written works.
Pierce imagined that after the revolutionaries had consolidated their hold on power, a campaign of eugenics would be established with the purpose of advancing the evolutionary path of the white race. In The Turner Diaries Pierce mentions that as this program is implemented, a last sweep of the white population will occur: “Then, of course, came the mopping-up period, when the last of the non-White bands were hunted down and exterminated, followed by the final purge of undesirable racial elements among the remaining White population” (Macdonald 1990 209). It can be assumed that these “undesirable racial elements” would include any white persons suspected of having even a small amount of Jewish or non-white heritage. Although the method of their elimination is also left unexplained, it is probable that Pierce imagined that these persons would be either killed, or perhaps sterilized to prevent them from reproducing.
After the surviving white population has been adequately purified of non-Aryan traits, those persons possessing exceptional physical and mental abilities will be encouraged to marry and produce as many children as possible. Those with less desirable traits will be discouraged from having offspring. Pierce imagined that in his utopian post-revolutionary world, this could be accomplished in a relatively gentile manner:
...you don’t have to compel people either, tell them that if they are “alpha-plus” they must live in a particular neighborhood or something like that. What you can do is simply modify social arrangements so that the best people are encouraged, are more likely on the average, to get together and have more children than the less capable. You can alter the way you collect taxes or disburse tax revenues, for instance. You can pay attention to dysgenic influences like the welfare system, which for thirty years and more has encouraged the least fit among us to propagate...You might not design a perfect system, but if you keep eugenics in mind you can make a positive impact on future generations (qtd. in Griffin 2001 352).
In Pierce’s theology, this program of eugenics will speed up the naturally occurring evolutionary development of the white race. Ultimately, this will produce perfect human beings, capable of achieving godhood.
Pierce held that all persons of European decent could take part in his movement, including those of Spanish, Italian, Greek, or Slavic heritage (NA membership application 2). Pierce, of course, married three different Slavic women, displaying his own lack of bias on the issue. This goes against the teachings of traditional National Socialism, which held that only persons of northern European lineage (namely those whose ancestors hailed from Germany, the Netherlands, the British Isles, and Scandinavia) could be considered true Aryans. Hitler had a particular hatred of the Slavs, referring them to them as an alien presence in his country (Hitler 123). The savage campaign waged by the Nazis against the eastern European peoples attested to this hatred. It is interesting to note that this is the only significant subject on which Pierce parted with Hitler’s ideology. To some extent, this may have been due to practical considerations. Given the ethnic mixing that has occurred among whites in the United States, barring membership to the NA based on some Slavic or Greek ancestry on the part of the applicant would have greatly restricted membership to what was an already small organization. It is also possible that Pierce, having grown up in a much more ethnically diverse community than Hitler, had through his personal experiences gained a certain amount of tolerance for these other European peoples. It is often said that the melting pot of American society produces persons who are more understanding and tolerant of cultures different from their own. Ironically, the American experience may have succeeded in making William Pierce into a more tolerant National Socialist.
Pierce rejected the old conception of nationalism as a divisive force within the white supremacist movement. He instead embraced a pan-Aryan view, holding that all white persons should put aside their past differences and work towards a common goal:
We in the National Alliance are not nationalists in the old-fashioned sense, in the sense of geographic nationalism. We don’t belong to the “USA, right or wrong” crowd, which considers any featherless biped claiming U.S. citizenship, regardless of race, color, or creed as a compatriot. Our nationalism is really racial nationalism. Our compatriots are our fellow White men and women, our fellow Europeans, everywhere: in America, in Europe, in South Africa. Nationalism in our sense—racial nationalism—is still a relatively new thing as a political ideology, although it is based on instincts much older than any ideology (qtd. in Griffin 2001 377).
Pierce certainly felt no allegiance to America as a nation. It is probably revealing that the Resistance Records catalog sells Nazi and Confederate flags, but no U.S. ones. In Pierce’s mind, all of the former divisions that have existed in the past between different white nations were outdated, and needed to be discarded so that the race could present a united front against the threat of the Jews.
This indifference towards modern nation-states puts Pierce at odds with most of the American far right, who consider themselves to be staunchly patriotic. This is reflective of the deeper ideological differences that separated Pierce from many of his contemporaries in the far right movement. Groups such as the militias and the John Birch Society are at their core reactionary: They seek to recreate America as it once existed, a segregated society in which the federal government stayed out of the affairs of the states. Pierce saw little use in returning America to the pre-civil rights movement era. He instead looked forward, to a time when an entirely new order could be established, one that existed only to serve the interests of the Creator. As a revolutionary, Pierce rejected any attempt to preserve outdated concepts such as geographical nationalism that might stand in the way of this goal.
Pierce saw his post-revolutionary society as being one that rejects both the individualist excesses of capitalism and the egalitarian teachings of Marxism. Describing capitalism as being “raceless, with loyalty to none but itself” (qtd. in NV 101 5-6), Pierce believed that free market policies would lead to social divisions and disharmony, even within a white community: “The overly rigid social stratification resulting from unrestricted capitalism can lead to endemic class hostility and even to class warfare. It can slow racial progress by making the ability to acquire and hold capital the supreme survival trait” (NA 2000 4). In opposition to self-centered capitalism, Pierce envisioned an economic system which combined the best elements of both the free market and socialism, creating an economy that exists with the primary purpose of forwarding the upward development of the white race:
We need an economic system that, in contrast to Marxism, allows individuals to succeeded in proportion to their capability and energy, but that, in contrast to capitalism, does not allow them to engage in socially or racially harmful activity, such as stiffening competition or importing non-white labor. We need to structure our economic system so that it cannot fall prey to the instability of capitalism. We need to maintain social flexibility, so that capable and energetic individuals always have the possibility of rising. We need to ensure that capital does not have the possibility of changing society’s rules to fit itself. The way to achieve and maintain an economic system that meets these criteria is to design and govern the system subject to the supreme principal: the ultimate aim of all economic policy is racial progress (Ibid.).
Pierce believed that the corporatist policies he advocated would have the effect of lowering the material standard of living of the average white person. This would especially be true for working class families, who would have to learn to subsist on only one person’s income with the virtual disappearance of the working mother (Griffin 2001 360). The elimination of cheap imported products from non-white countries would also make consumer goods more expensive. Pierce also advocated the elimination of the credit and debit system, feeling that it encouraged whites to buy luxury products that they could not afford (Ibid.). This decline in the standard of living among whites would not have been considered to be a negative occurrence by Pierce. One of his key criticisms of the white population was its spoiled, feminine nature. This return to a more simple, rugged existence would have been positive in that it would have forced whites to become tougher, and more accustomed to hard work. In his social Darwinist view, Pierce would have seen this a sign that the white race had become more competitive, and therefore more likely to survive the struggles that lay ahead.
One might think that advocating the imposition of an economic system that will significantly lower the material standard of living of the average white person would not be an attractive selling point when trying to recruit individuals to a racist organization. Given the average American’s over-indulgent taste for expensive consumer goods and entertainment, this assumption would probably be correct. But Pierce did not believe that it was necessary to convince the majority (or even a sizeable minority) of the white population that the NA was a group they should give their support to. After the chaos of the coming civil war, the surviving whites will be willing to accept the leadership of any group who can guarantee their safety, even if they do experience a drop in their standard of living. Those individuals who complain too much regarding the new state of affairs will not be around to complain for long.
Pierce held that the post-revolutionary society will be inherently religious in its nature. In fact, he believed that a secular state was in many ways a contradiction in terms:
Many Americans have the naive idea that religion and politics can and ought to be kept separate from one another. Such an arrangement is neither natural nor, in the long run, feasible. Sophisticated people who pretend to believe otherwise generally have an ulterior motive, and they are able to persuade large numbers of the less-sophisticated only in times when either religious beliefs or politics has lost its vitality.
The fact is that, for any healthy people—which is necessarily a physically and psychically homogeneous people—both religion and politics are inseparable, organic components of a cultural whole. This has been the case at most times and places in the past, and it will be the case again when a new order eventually rises from the present decay (qtd. in Strom 203).
Given this view of the nature of the state, Pierce naturally favored a system of government that would be “more like a holy order than like any existing secular government today” (qtd. in SPLC 1998 2). In the question and answer section of the Cosmotheist website, Pierce described the religious nature of his envisioned state:
Q: Does the Community provide for the separation of church and state, of religious and secular matters, in the guidance of its members?
A: No, the Community is both church and state, and it does not separate these two aspects of its being. It does not separate guidance in striving for knowledge from guidance in raising consciousness or building character. It does not separate religious and moral training from other training. It guides each member towards knowledge, consciousness, and discipline through the same institutions.
Q: Why must the Community have order and structure? Why can it not merely be a collection of men and women of good will living together?
A: The Community does not exist for its own sake; it exists only to serve the Creator’s Purpose, and it gains the strength to do so effectively only by coordinating all of its components (Cosmotheism 2 1).
Within this theocratic state, Pierce imagined that society would be organized into four essential and all-encompassing institutions: “...the family, by which the Community breeds and builds itself; the academy, by which it trains itself and grows in knowledge; the corps of guardians, by which it defends itself; and the hierarchy, by which it governs and guides itself” (qtd. in Griffin 2001 200). Pierce felt that an all-white society, governed by the communal principals outlined above, was the only way in which the Creator could achieve his purpose of self-realization.
This theocratic orientation was not unusual among Pierce’s contemporaries. Many scholars have noted that National Socialism is, at its core, a religious ideology (Kaplan 305). Pierce, through Cosmotheism, simply elaborated on the spiritual tendency already inherent in his political outlook. It was therefore quite proper for him to strive to create a state that would seamlessly merge both the dictates of Hitler’s political theories and his own need for spiritual advancement.