Counter-Currents
3,784 words
Graphic by Harold Arthur McNeill
The following document is the original prospectus for the organization that later became the National Alliance. It contains a great deal of sound thinking about political organizing and goes to refute some of the witless parodies of “vanguardism” being bandied about. Some questions that come to mind: How closely does this prospectus correspond to the actual National Alliance? Do the divergences represent failures to implement this prospectus or changes in plan or both?
August 31, 1970
Introduction
America today — and, more specifically, the American people — face the most serious and deadly menace which has arisen in their entire history. This menace far overshadows that posed by any war we have fought, any economic catastrophe through which we have passed, or any previous domestic strife which has torn us. For today we are faced not just with a threat to our territorial integrity, or to our material possessions, or to our way of life, or even to our own lives, but to something far dearer. Today all that we ever have been and all that we ever might be — our race itself — is threatened with extinction.
Everyone to whom this is addressed is already fully aware of that grim fact and, furthermore, understands the reasons why. Yet, despite this fairly widespread recognition of the threat — a recognition which has been present for many years now — virtually no effective defensive measures have been undertaken by any segment of the American people — neither by the racially oriented “radical right” nor by “responsible” right wingers nor by anyone else.
Certainly none of the presently existing conservative or right-wing or anti-communist or racist organizations in America, regardless of the militant stance and revolutionary pretensions of a few of them, can by any reasonable stretch of the imagination be seriously considered as a basis for building the sort of large-scale revolutionary movement we must build within the very near future if we are to maintain our racial integrity and survive as a people. This is not because none of these organizations espouse good principles or have proper goals; many do. They simply are not constituted in such a way and do not work in such a way that it is feasible for them to achieve their goals. Their long-established and unbroken record of failure is the best evidence of this fact.
About the only good thing which can be said of all these little groups is that they do generate quite a flood of pamphlets, leaflets, bulletins, newsletters, and other printed materials which express some excellent sentiment. But even here it is largely an incestuous sort of affair, in which the propaganda — and the sentiment — are circulated largely within the same vaguely defined “movement” in which they were born. Any real contact or rapport with the general population is absent. And this lack of contact with the public is not due simply to problems of distribution or a lack of access to the mass media. Most movement literature would fail to evoke a sympathetic response front “the masses” even if it could be placed regularly in their hands. It is, for the most part, too esoteric, too introverted, and too “kooky” to strike a responsive chord among the general public.
Instead of genuine political organizations the groups which constitute “the movement” are, in most cases, clubs, cliques, societies, or cults. They each tend to have quite narrow and specific organizational personalities to which they require every new member to conform. They each have a unique “way to do it,” which they insist is the only correct path to salvation. As a matter of fact, these various programs for victory seldom have much to do with reality. They are based more on daydreams and theory than on hardheaded political thinking.
Above all, each group or party at least subconsciously regards itself as an end rather than merely as a revolutionary and expedient means. Belonging to the group, carrying a membership card, attending meetings, and learning to parrot the group’s slogans and the “party line” serve as a fulfillment for most members, with relatively little worry being wasted about the meaning or relevance of the group’s abilities and the lack of any real political progress.
It may be said of the major (i.e., successful) political parties that they consist almost entirely of men devoid of principles or ideals, of men governed completely by materialism, opportunism, and selfishness. But, at least, these men are adults who know what they want and know how to go about getting it. Politics is not a game or a diversion for them, but a deadly serious business.
The movement, on the other hand, is filled with overgrown children whose main occupation is talking about what things will be like “when we come to power.” This escapism and lack of maturity extends from the ranks on up to the highest levels. There is a superabundance of talk and wishful thinking and virtually no constructive action to bring the dreamed—about power any closer to realization.
Idealism, of course, is an essential ingredient of any movement which hopes to secure the future of our race. But the idealism must go hand-in-hand with clear-sighted realism — not escapism.
One evidence of the lack of realism among the leaders of the radical right (including National Socialist and other racially oriented groups) appears whenever their failure to recruit more than a relative handful of followers is mentioned. The standard defense is: “Yes, but we have a ‘hard core’ who are really dedicated to our particular goals. Numbers aren’t really important; what counts is quality, etc.” Usually this is nothing but self-deception, for there is nothing about having a large number of followers which precludes selecting front that following a hard core of the most capable and most dedicated. But without real masses of people there will never be any real power. And more often than not, where the following is tiny the “hard core” doesn’t exist either; it is more a clique of especially persistent misfits or crackpots than the makings of a functional cadre.
If the appeal of a group is narrow, only a narrow response can be expected from the public. If certain aspects of a group’s appeal limit public response by creating a crankish, redneck, or unrealistic image, then those aspects should be curtailed or eliminated — regardless of how dear they may be to the hearts of the “hard core.”
The overall state of affairs confronting us in the movement is certainly sad, although perhaps not unnatural or surprising.
The standard remedy, which has been repeatedly put forth, is a coalition to harness and synchronize the randomly directed organizational energy which does exist. Such a coalition has not worked in the past. Furthermore, it will not work in the future, because the various groups making up the movement will not co-operate through any common sense of idealism. Their particular idealisms are simply too narrow, in general, to overlap. Jealousy and organizational loyalties in the long run defeat every serious plan for large-scale collaboration.
And even if these difficulties could be overcome by convincing representatives of the various organizations that it would be to their advantage to collaborate, it is doubtful whether anything useful would emerge from such collaboration. For one does not create strength simply by joining a number of weaknesses. A new approach is needed which avoids from the beginning the pitfalls which have rendered present and past organizations ineffective.
Criteria for a new effort:
The first thing which must be clearly defined is the goal of any new political effort. Our political goal must be nothing more or less than the building of a power base for a White people’s revolution led by National Socialists. Keeping this single objective always in mind, we must be prepared to use whatever methods and take whatever path will lead us most surely to that objective.
In particular, ideology must never be used to establish tactical criteria. Anything which brings us closer to our goal, which enhances our political strength, is acceptable. If respectable tactics are called for, then no fear of being labeled bourgeois must deter us. Likewise, if illegality and terrorism are called for, no charge of “bolshevism” must be allowed to cause us to hesitate.
This doesn’t mean, of course, that we should not apply our experience and our judgment in establishing tactical guidelines; it simply means that those guidelines should not be influenced by doctrinal considerations.
In most cases now the wrong tactics are being used simply because they are not based on a thorough understanding of and an intimate contact with the public to be influenced and recruited. It may be depressing and discouraging to realize what that public is like, what is important to them, and what it takes to move them, but only from such knowledge can proper tactical decisions and consequent revolutionary progress come. Decisions made on a theoretical basis, in isolation — or only in contact with other members of the movement — will almost certainly be wrong. We can at this time, however, establish at least two criteria for tactics to be used in a new effort: one pertaining to the utilization of leadership personnel and one pertaining to the recruiting of members and supporters.
In the first case, we must recognize that there is a dearth of capable leaders in the movement. Mature, experienced, and capable revolutionary leaders — on our side — are almost non-existent. And, yet, we cannot sit back and wait for Providence to send us another Adolf Hitler to unify our people. We must do what needs to be done now, without any great and charismatic leader, but using as best we can the presently available leadership material.
Actually, there is more good human material in the movement which is simply floating loose, without any strong organizational attachments, than is definitely bound to the various groups. If we simply round up the best of this material and launch another party, however, then this new party will very quickly find itself one among many in the rat race, competing with others for the money and brains and bodies in the right wing and neglecting the development of a genuine mass movement. This is what happens despite the best of prior intentions, for, once in the day-to-day struggle to keep a small party afloat, the waves become so big that even the most farsighted of leaders tends to lose sight of the ocean.
The above considerations should not discourage us from starting new organizations, but they should instead encourage us to invent some new ways of going about things so that we make better use than heretofore of our scarcest resource — leadership.
A second criterion follows from a look at the extraordinarily successful tactics of our enemies. They are achieving their aims in America with the collaboration of a substantial portion of the American people — and, yet, the American people remain firmly anti-communist in sentiment. The secret lies in the use of fronts.
Consider as an example the massive anti-Vietnam demonstrations of the past two years. These demonstrations have been planned, organized, and led by people — racially alien, for the most part — whose avowed aim is to destroy America and the American people. Yet, probably fewer than five percent of the participants in these demonstrations have been hardcore communists. Probably no more than 15 or 20 percent of them have been Jews (excepting campus demonstrations, where Jewish participation is generally between 40 and 60 percent). Almost none of them have been Negroes. The overwhelming majority of them have been ordinary, essentially decent Americans — our own people — who don’t even realize that the clenched-fist salute they have mindlessly raised in these demonstrations is the long-established trademark of an alien, Bolshevik cult which has butchered tens of millions of our people and enslaved hundreds of millions more. When they march in one of these demonstrations, they do not think of themselves as furthering the cause of communism, but as merely showing opposition to an unpopular war.
And what has worked for undermining American morale in the Indochina war has also worked for a hundred other projects. The enemy is able to coordinate a huge amount of activity without any single, rigid, formalized structure which can be readily counter-attacked. And he is able to do this with relatively small numbers of hard-core leadership personnel. But, most importantly, he is able to enlist for his purpose great masses of the American public, because he does not insist that everyone who helps his cause along must swear allegiance to Mao Tse-tung and carry a Communist Party card, or some other unnecessary foolishness.
For his one unholy end he mobilizes brainwashed collegiate liberals, who believe they are working for more individual freedom; parlor pinks, who believe they are struggling for “social justice”; alienated kids, who are looking for excitement and a chance to smash something; frustrated women, who think they need to be liberated; pacifists, who believe they are working for peace; priests, who believe they are helping “humanity”; and lots of plain, old-fashioned materialists and opportunists, who believe they see in a Judaized, bolshevized, and mongrelized world the “wave of the future.”
The enemy works his will through thousands of separate groups, very few of which appear on the Attorney General’s list of Subversive Organizations. Each group, whether the Ad Hoc Committee to Free the Catonsville Nine or the Kerner Commission or the Ripon Society, has its own particular rationale, but each in its own way is “coordinated” into the overall effort. This coordination is seldom something so dramatic or direct as receiving a sealed and coded packet of orders each month from New York or Tel Aviv, but it exists, nevertheless. And it exists without most of the rank and file really being conscious of it most of the time, even though it is no real secret.
One or the lessons for us in this is that the American people, for the most part, are not interested — or as interested — in the great, vital, world-historical issues of our time as they are in more mundane, parochial, immediate, and personal issues. Even when they do become emotionally involved in a vital issue, the involvement will nearly always be peripheral and personal. For example, the average American who is concerned about the race issue today is deeply concerned only about some highly particular aspect of the issue: Negro vandalism in his neighborhood, or racial fights in his child’s junior high school, or the effect of Negro welfare programs on his property taxes. But he does not relate his specific concerns to the more general problem. He may respond to an appeal to do something about Negro vandalism in River City, but not to an appeal to put a permanent and worldwide end to the threat of miscegenation. Since we have neither the time nor the resources to educate them and change them now, we must begin by taking our fellow men as they are and moving them by means of the handles that are already on them.
Another lesson for us in the enemy’s use of the “united front” strategy is that a diversity of people with a diversity of interests — sometimes even conflicting interests — can be directed toward a single goal, not so much by presenting that goal, as such, to everyone concerned, but rather by representing (or even misrepresenting) the goal in a particular way to each particular element of the united front.
Thus, when we are attempting to organize policemen, who have learned to hate all “revolutionaries,” we should not talk about building a revolution — even a “White people’s revolution” — but, instead, about fighting bolshevism and anarchy, perhaps about building White solidarity. On the other hand, when talking to radicalized university students we can speak much more freely of smashing the System and building a new order, although we might wish to be more discreet in talking about racial matters to students than to policemen.
That is what we must carefully consider and then to use – not ignore – the prejudices and special interests of each element in the population to which we wish to appeal. This does not mean that we cannot go much further and be much more frank with promising individuals in any group than with the group as a whole. This further development of selected individuals — of policemen who can understand and accept the need for revolution, of students who are racially as well as socially motivated — is absolutely necessary, in fact, to provide reliable leadership for the various groups.
We must always remember that our immediate aim is power — the capability for mobilizing and directing the energies of large masses of people. In order to do this we don’t have to compete with the Democrats and Republicans for blandness or mediocrity. But we do have to avoid isolating ourselves from the public with programs and images so radical that only a small fraction of one percent will respond.
We must attract quantity — in which alone the power lies — and then extract from that quantity those individuals suitable for a cadre. We need both the masses and the cadre — neither alone will suffice.
A final lesson from the united front is that, properly operated, it allows the most efficient use of human resources. A relatively small number of top-echelon people — planners, tactical specialists, liaison men — are able to coordinate and guide, even if indirectly, the activities of hundreds of thousands of individuals in thousands of separate organizations. The day-to-day affairs of the various organizations are handled by members of the organizations themselves; the coordination and general guidance, on the other hand, is provided by leaders who do not become entangled in these affairs and, thus, are able to exercise their skills freely and effectively.
A National Front
What suggests itself, then, to meet our two criteria of mass recruitment and effective use of leadership personnel, is a National Socialist analogue of the Reds’ united front. This would involve, instead of simply forming another party, the building of a two-level political structure.
First, there would be formed a political superstructure, consisting solely of a working staff of experienced leaders — organizers, propagandists, fund raisers, and persons of demonstrated competence in a few other essential areas — and totally dedicated to the single Job of guiding and aiding the building of a White people’s revolution in America.
The immediate task of this superstructure would be to spark the formation of a political infrastructure, based on the broadest possible spectrum of White Americans: liberals and conservatives, longhairs and hardhats, policemen and student radicals, truck-drivers, businessmen, and housewives.
The infrastructure would necessarily consist of many organizations, rather than one. The reason for this is that a single party is expected to have a single, well-defined character; it cannot behave one way in Chicago and another way in Detroit. But an infrastructure consisting of a number of separate groups, linked only through the superstructure, is ideally geared to exploit a variety of situations. A National Front could, for example, coordinate the activities of one group of middle-class property owners in New Jersey, for whom “respectability” might be a prime consideration, with another group of blue-collar workers in Michigan, for whom rough-and-ready activism night be the keynote.
Whereas a party, by its nature, needs a more specific program than merely White solidarity and revolutionary change and also binds its leaders to that specific program, a National Front would allow its talent to be used on a broader front, to exploit a wider range of possibilities, and to mobilize more people through a variety of appeals.
A National Front can form and coordinate more-or-less permanent groups: the East Side Citizens’ Association, the National Policemen’s League, or Students for a New Order; and it can also quickly exploit new opportunities with strictly ad hoc groups: Cleveland Citizens for Impeaching Stokes, Committee for Justice in Palestine, or Richmond Mothers to End Terror in Our Schools. – And it can do both these things at the same time, while keeping its eye on the single, continuing task of building the revolution. While individual parties and groups have their ups and downs, some dying and the best surviving, the National Front maintains its continuity of purpose.
This prospectus is too brief to describe in detail the various activities to be expected of a National Front staff. Only a few suggestive examples can be offered here: In addition to providing regular counseling, outlining of monthly group projects, and so on, National Front organizers can solve for local groups such specialized problems as those involved in holding successful Street demonstrations or public rallies; in opening and operating a political bookstore; in setting up a revolutionary print shop; in installing and operating a recorded-message telephone service; and, in the case of the largest groups, in producing a local party newspaper. Monthly, or even twice-monthly, workshop sessions for each local group, with National Front staffers training local organizers, would provide an enormous boost to the capabilities of the local groups and at the same time generate a fresh supply of the best local talent for recruiting into the National Front staff.
Services of this sort would require National Front organizers to keep on the move, spending a day or two each month (more if necessary in special cases) with each group. Other staff services could be provided with relatively little travel. If three or four of the local groups are large enough to print monthly tabloids, for example, much of the content can be provided by the National Front propaganda staff: all the national and international news items, editorial cartoons, feature articles, and even some of the local news stories. A service of this sort would not only make it enormously easier for a local front organization to have its own propaganda organ, but would maintain the essential thread of unity of purpose among all groups affiliated with the National Front.
Ultimately, some single party, with an undisguised National Socialist program, may very well become the bearer of the revolution. But, without a leader of extraordinary capability, that is not likely in the near future. We must act now, and we must choose a mode of operation which allows us to build the largest possible power base with the greatest possible speed. The two-level operation suggested here, with an infrastructure of organizations designed to recruit a mass base and a superstructure which coordinates these organizations from an überparteilich standpoint, offers a number of advantages over previous efforts.
Enjoyed this article?
Be the first to leave a tip in the jar!
17 comments
This piece is amazing. But clearly, something went wrong with Pierce’s plan because he never achieved his goals, or at best had limited success, by using front groups and other tactics designed to win mass support. WN should pay close attention to Pierce’s argument that political power requires mass support and that obtaining mass support requires using appeals that will resonate with the masses.
Although the conservatives have been losing for 50 years, at least the conservatives have been in the game to lose. WNs have not only lost for 50 years, they haven’t even been in the arena. So if the conservatives aren’t right, WNs clearly are not right either. WN need to devote more time to analyzing their own failures to make headway against the enemy, while keeping in mind that making significant headway will require substantial mass support.
If Conservatives spend 50 years using the same strategy and losing the whole time, you shouldn’t just praise them for sticking to it, you should question their intelligence, their sanity, and the seriousness of their commitment to their professed values.
But it is false to say that American WNs have been absent from the political arena for the same time. American WNs have been trying a number of strategies since WW II, and although nobody has hit on a winning formula yet, a variety of approaches and experiments is a good thing.
Leave the parodies at OD, where standards are low, talk is cheap, and truth does not matter.
I didn’t consciously intend any parody, or any praise of consevatives beyond noting they are in the arena, or suggest there is something wrong with a variety of approaches. I actually had in mind HAC’s critique of WN when I wrote what I wrote, not OD. HAC says WN have completely wasted the last 50 years. Wasted is his word, not mine, and he is a lifelong National Socialist. That’s a strong indictment of American WN from a non-conservative.
Pointing out that both WN and conservatism have a record of failure is the truth not parody. Have WNs learned their lessons where the conservatives have failed? It’s still an open question.
I think HAC is exaggerating. There have been a lot of different experiments by WNs. We know what doesn’t work. That is progress in itself. Folly enters in when people insist on repeating things that do not work.
Greg Johnson: “I think HAC is exaggerating.”
—
HAC exaggerate? You’re joking, right? I won’t be reading defendant Covington’s critique of WN unless someone informs me I’m mentioned in it. There’s little I’ve read from him over the years that is *not* exaggerated, nor is most of his stuff original. “50 years,” huh, LEW?
Many C-C readers will be familiar with the writings of Dr. Revilo P. Oliver who was one of the founders of the the National Youth Alliance — predecessor to Dr.Pierce’s National Alliance — 40 years ago. That’s how long ago it’s been since Dr. Oliver wrote the following (think “after 90 years” as you read):
—
After Fifty Years
BY REVILO P. OLIVER, PH.D.
“HALF A CENTURY, generation after generation, large numbers of Americans have worked hard and sometimes desperately to avert the subversion and capture of their nation. And they have failed — utterly.
“Since 1920, they have formed at least ten thousand “Conservative” and “Anti-Communist” organizations, large and small, that, like the flowers of spring, have bloomed for a season, faded away, and been forgotten. Even well-informed Americans today might find it difficult to identify precisely even the greatest of these: the once large and imposing American Defense Society, the International Legion Against Communism, which once had branches in London and Paris, or Colonel Hadley’s Paul Reveres, which once had many chapters in every state from Maine to California.
“Each organization had its idiosyncrasies, and many spent much of their effort in squabbling with one another, but all of them, large and small, genuine and fraudulent, have used the same basic formula. Read R. M. Whitney’s Reds in America, published in 1924, and you will find it all there, from “atheistic Communism” to Bolshevik butcheries; from subversion in public schools and churches to treason in the armed forces and government; from the names arid crimes of Communist agents to hints about the mysterious power of the International Conspiracy. And the solution? Awaken the American people; show them their danger! Defend Christianity! Defend the Constitution!
[…]
“…Only the biological fact of race, the yet discernible vestiges of our culture, and the yet fresh memories of what we were not long ago. Those are all that we have left from which to create, if we can, a new nation to replace what we lost.
[…]
“Young America
“The young, it is true, have a freedom of action that is denied to their parents, who, after all, must live to make the next payment on the mortgage and on the “income tax,” but the young in the schools will nevertheless face the subtle and devious hostility of the whole Establishment. The “educators” will try to trap them in an endless net of ambiguous rules and pettifogging regulations. Great idealists, who beam benignly when young Americans are beaten or knifed on the campus, will turn purple with rage at the slightest slight to the fauna of their academic jungles. And, of course, the pet curs of the press will bark “Fasheest,” “Nat-see,” and “Aunteye-Seemeetic,” the three sounds that should infallibly make well-conditioned Americans dive under the bed faster than frightened cats. And, equally of course, members of the National Youth Alliance will suddenly be surrounded by “responsible conservatives,” recently retired from the C.I.A. or A.D.L., eager to point out the virtues and profit of “moderation” and “democratic procedures,” with a bonus of whatever sexual bait seems most likely to hook the fish. Lastly, young Americans are uncertain what they should do to attain what they instinctively want; they are made hesitant by their own deficiencies. They have been passed through our public brain-washing machine, and they know that they have received, not a liberal education, but an “education” by “Liberals.” They have since the first grade been sloshed about in the standard detergent: one ounce of fact dissolved in a gallon of hogwash. They have so much to unlearn!
“The Prospect
“I do not venture to predict the future of the National Youth Alliance. It has great potentiality, but it will therefore be the target of open and stealthy assaults delivered with a fury and cunning surpassing all that we have seen thus far. And the tune in. which any action will still be possible is perilously short. I merely say that American youth is our last hope, and that at long last an effort is being made to rally it. The most that one can affirm is that the youth movement, with adequate support and guidance, has a chance of success.
“If we choose to support it, let us not deceive ourselves. If this movement is not somehow frustrated at its very inception, if it ever gets under way, it will move forward with the gathering momentum of an avalanche. All that we can now foresee is the general direction in which the avalanche will move; that can be inferred from the pages of Imperium. That, as I pointed out years ago, may startle or even dismay conservatives of the older generations.
“I wonder, however, whether the older generation has a right to tell young Americans how far they should go. The light will be theirs. We may help them with our money and advise them; we may try to give them the advantage of what knowledge we have gleaned from history and our own experience. But let us remember that although you and I may personally have done all that we could — I hope we did — we nevertheless, belong to a generation that was too inept and too fatuous to keep what it had. Let us not try to impose the sentimentality and squeamishness that was fatal to us on our successors. The future, if there is one, is theirs.”
http://www.williscarto.net/html/after_50_years.html
Greg,
Don´t you think Rockwell hit the right strategy? I believe that if he hadn´t been killed, he would have gone far (maye he would not have won completely, but he was far more successful than anything else we have seen in WN post WWII).
That said, we should naturally not copy his strategy – we don´t have anyone with his kind of talent. It takes a Hitler to use Hitler´s strategy, and it takes a Rockwell to use Rockwell´s strategy. You need a certain charisma to do what they did. But still, I think Rockwell did the right thing.
This is an excellent document by William L. Pierce. However, instead of commenting on this particular document, I would like to express some reflections of mine concerning these types of documents. White nationalist publications relating to strategy, tactics, and activist techniques are often of mediocre quality. Manifestos and manuals are often produced hastily and often pillage material from previous documents. Such documents are often produced for new organizations. This explains why, to use the language of manufacturing and marketing, the authors of such documents are more concerned with product differentiation–with distinguishing their product from their competitors–than with manufacturing and marketing a product that is genuinely and comprehensively superior. Yet, despite the flaws of such publications, nothing is done to improve them over time. Nothing is done to revise them where appropriate, to clarify ambiguities, to address difficulties, to elaborate on items requiring elaboration, to identify and correct errors, or to incorporate new facts and ideas. Nothing is done to make them more up to date, comprehensive, accessible, clear, practical, and authoritative.
I remember reading a booklet titled Party of the Working Class by the Jewish communist Laurie Aarons. One thing which impressed me about this booklet is that its language, ideas, and arguments came across as having been informed and molded by long experience. It came across as the product of a serious, active, and seasoned political movement. It described organizational practices in a way that indicated that they were an integral part of the organizational culture, and not just part of the written constitution. It was tailored to its target audience. White nationalist literature on activism should have similar qualities.
Organizations which have radical ends and which use radical means must take the ideological and practical education of their members extremely seriously. Creating a healthy militant culture requires long, patient, and conscientious work. I have previously remarked that effective metapolitics requires a combination of “think tanks” as well as “irrigation systems.” The latter is an important subject to which I should return.
Ulf Larsen: “[I]t takes a Rockwell to use Rockwell´s strategy. You need a certain charisma to do what [he] did. But still, I think Rockwell did the right thing.”
—
GLR did the best he could with the hand he was dealt in the 1960s. His strategy evolved. When he died his plan was to run for POTUS in 1972, and win. You might gain some new insight into GLR at this fine American NS blog:
http://national-socialist-worldview.blogspot.com/2010/06/george-lincoln-rockwell-vs-english.html
White Republican: “This is an excellent document by William L. Pierce. However, instead of commenting on this particular document, I would like to express some reflections of mine concerning these types of documents. White nationalist publications relating to strategy, tactics, and activist techniques are often of mediocre quality. Manifestos and manuals are often produced hastily and often pillage material from previous documents…”
—
You’ve got that right, WR.
I’ve seen somewhere at C-C discussion of drafting a new manifesto, but to my way of thinking we don’t need to reinvent the wheel; we need only to tell the “pure, unvarnished truth,” steel our will, and refine the best of what’s already out there that has worked. Update, revise, clarify, correct mistakes, etc., like you said, is all that’s really needed.
Greg asks if this prospectus corresponds to the actual National Alliance? Not the present shell of the National Alliance that Dr. Pierce built, it doesn’t. I could write a book about why the Alliance failed, but won’t. I’ll defer to LEW since he seems to know so much about Dr. Pierce’s “failures.”
To put this 1970 prospectus in perspective I would refer the reader to one of my favorite articles by Dr. Pierce, “The Radicalization of an American”: http://www.amfirstbooks.com/IntroPages/ToolBarTopics/Articles/Featured_Authors/pierce,_william/william_pierce_works/william_pierce_NV.Archive.1970-1980/William_L._Pierce_1978_NV_No._61_The_Radicalizing_of_an_American.html?id=1228
This is a concise autobiography by Dr. Pierce, telling how he evolved from his teen years when he was a typical all-American boy, delivering newspapers, mowing lawns, devouring science fiction novels; a Christian and a science nerd who was shipped off to military school at 15, then on to loftier halls of academia where he had his head buried so deep in his physics and mathematics books through his 20s that he barely had a political thought in his head until 1963 — just seven years before writing up this prospectus. That he had such a grasp of the big picture in such a short time back then is remarkable enough.
There’s an even earlier document by Dr. Pierce, an unpublished letter that he wrote, I believe in 1968, which was a sort of “lessons learned” critique, and “where do we go from here,” based on his first hand experiences with GLR from 1965. Dr. Pierce was the last man to talk to Commander Rockwell before he was assassinated.
Dr. Pierce fleshed out his ideas in the Alliance’s Attack! tabloid which morphed into National Vanguard tabloid. Much from those periodicals can be found in the tabloid-sized book with the familiar blood-red cover, _The Best of Attack! and National Vanguard_ — 1970-1982, reviewed quite favorably at length here: http://www.amazon.com/Attack-National-Vanguard-Tabloid-1970-1982/dp/0937944033/ref=sr_1_cc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1294346470&sr=1-1-catcorr
Grab a rare, used copy while you can, if you can afford one. Five are presently available at Amazon from $30 to $94.39 + p&h.
By 1993 Dr. Pierce’ had been focused on what needs to be done to renew our people for 30 years, not just seven like with when he authored this already excellent document. It was that year that he wrote the 140-page National Alliance Membership Handbook, which is manifesto enough for a primer on how to go about effectively organizing our race. It needs updating and revising to include considerations of the Internet, legal issues, DNA scientific advances and other technologies and social trends that were to impact on our struggle since then. But that little book still holds up for the most part. John Tyndall was so impressed with it that with Dr. Pierce’s blessing he adopted the NA Members Handbook for British Nationalist Party cadre in 1995.
I can attest to the effective use of numerous front groups by the old National Alliance. Maybe later.
“There’s an even earlier document by Dr. Pierce, an unpublished letter that he wrote, I believe in 1968, which was a sort of “lessons learned” critique, and “where do we go from here…”
———————————————-
Could you please post it, or a summary of the lessons learned?
I’ve always been an admirer of Dr.Pierce and always try to learn something new from or about him.
———————————————-
“It was that year that he wrote the 140-page National Alliance Membership Handbook”
———————————————-
Any possibility of reading it somewhere?
Another classic by Dr. Pierce. Isn’t it ironic that in 1970 Pierce, the quintessential vanguardist, diagnosed the shortcomings in organizational strategy of right wing and racialist oriented groups that still plague us in the present day. I thought only milquetoast mainstream types possessed the foresight and wisdom to render such a critique since vanguardists are too busy getting more swastika tattoos and alienating everyone around them.
Without a doubt, the masses must be reached. But this is achieved by a variety of means and to boldly claim that conservatism is the only vehicle in which to do so is false and misleading. Conservatives have proven to be very hostile (at least publicly) to the ideology and principles espoused by white nationalists. Even worse, they immediately apologize and cry mea culpa following actions or statements that promote the interests of white people.
I just don’t see any common ground between us and the conservative establishment.
Will Williams: I’ll defer to LEW since he seems to know so much about Dr. Pierce’s “failures.”
Will, What I know is that Dr. Pierce himself made these statements.
WLP: “We must always remember that our immediate aim is power — the capability for mobilizing and directing the energies of large masses of people.
WLP: “But without real masses of people there will never be any real power.”
WLP: “We need both the masses and the cadre — neither alone will suffice.”
WLP: “We must attract quantity — in which alone the power lies — and then extract from that quantity those individuals suitable for a cadre.”
It seems to me that if WNs had drawn the right lessons from their failure to attain power, they would be putting more emphasis on what Dr. Pierce himself suggested — finding ways to make WN appealing to the masses.
This does not appear to be happening, however.
Greg and CC are working on the cultural angle; HAC is trying to mobilize people for seccession; who in the WN world is working on strategies, tactics, messages and appeals for mobilizing the masses? The answer, as far as I can tell, is no one. This is a problem.
LEW makes a good point. I would like to know about Pierce’s thoughts on mass outreach. That is out great problem still.
I think it has been noted before that ‘art’ is the way to reach the masses. Today, that means Movies. Make a good movie that touches people, and the entire dynamic changes. Ayn Rand did it with books. We can do it with movies. One movie can change everything.
LEW: “Will, What I know is that Dr. Pierce himself made these statements…”
“Greg and CC are working on the cultural angle; HAC is trying to mobilize people for seccession; who in the WN world is working on strategies, tactics, messages and appeals for mobilizing the masses?
Those are all good quotes by Dr. Pierce, LEW. I can play dueling Pierce quotes with you, but I’d rather match you quote for quote from your political guru, Covington. I’ve got some real doozies from him, but this isn’t the venue for that. Has HAC mobilized you for secession, LEW?
Go read Dr. Pierce’s Our Cause speech that Greg put up here: https://counter-currents.com/2011/01/our-cause/comment-page-1/#comment-3599
To sum up Our Cause in 12 words, Dr. put it like this: “Now we need a philosophical and spiritual basis for our political struggle.”
That’s the part that got me the first time I heard the speech back in 1991. Dr. Pierce and I and lots of others agreed that our people need a new religion, a philosophy that’s geared for the preservation and advancement of our race. He had plenty to say about strategy and tactics and culture and reaching the masses also, but behind all that was always his consistent race-centered, Nature-based world view: the spiritual basis. That’s why he founded his Cosmotheist religion. I believe Greg has posted another of Dr. Pierce’s essays that explains that somewhat. There is also a chapter devoted to it in _The Fame of a Dead Man’s Deeds_, Dr. Griffin’s biography of WLP.
Covington is no Christian, and he’s no better than the avowed atheist “Hunter Wallace” when he tells his followers that “the way for the movement to go is Christian Identity.” We mustn’t criticize Christianity, they say. That’s some thin soup for nourishment.
Some things that should be understood in debates about “what is to be done?”:
1. The long-term nature of this work must be properly understood. A revolution is not the work of a day, but of an era. White nationalists should have long attention spans, a knowledge of history, and the imagination and open-mindedness to think intelligently about the future and prepare for it.
2. White nationalists need to think and act in voluntarist terms. As Denis Gabor elegantly put it: “The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented.”
3. Success needs to be measured in relative and incremental terms rather than absolute and immediate terms. There are no quick, simple, and easy solutions to the problems we face. One occasionally hears people categorically dismiss particular approaches to activism because they have not delivered epochal victories. I don’t think that there is any approach, or combination of approaches, that will deliver such victories any time soon, and we should stop hoping or thinking that there is one. We are in an era of racial war. We will never receive victory as a windfall. We can win this war only by winning many long and difficult struggles.
4. A combination of approaches is necessary. The National Democratic Party of Germany has a “three tiers strategy” that combines cultural, community, and electoral activism. The precise forms, relationships, and priorities of these forms of activism are proper subjects of debate, but all of these forms of activism have a legitimate place in White nationalist activism.
Individual White nationalists will inevitably find some forms of activism more congenial than others due to their particular interests, skills, and experience. They should work in the areas in which they work best whenever this is possible. They should not think that the forms of activism which they favour as individuals are the only effective and acceptable forms of activism for the movement.
5. With regard to legality, William L. Pierce is right: “Anything which brings us closer to our goal, which enhances our political strength, is acceptable. If respectable tactics are called for, then no fear of being labeled bourgeois must deter us. Likewise, if illegality and terrorism are called for, no charge of ‘bolshevism’ must be allowed to cause us to hesitate.” A revolutionary movement must use both legal and extra-legal methods. The front is everywhere, and all appropriate means should be used.
Some people may criticise these statements concerning the use of extra-legal methods. They might think that they are untimely, reckless, or wrong. Be assured that I am no agent provocateur, that I do not idolise extra-legal methods, and that I have no desire to incite readers to break the law. But I regard the following propositions are axiomatic: It will be impossible to change the system without breaking its laws. We are already the target of legal and extra-legal methods on the part of the system. We are already defeated if we treat the laws of the system as absolutely binding upon us. We already live under a regime of “anarcho-tyranny,” to use the term of Samuel Francis. In the long run, if we do not break the law, we will be broken by the law.
6. White nationalists should not make a fetish of respectability. A craving for respectability betrays both weakness of judgment and character. Those who crave respectability seem to hope that our enemies or the public will give it to them and thereby empower them. Our enemies will not view us as respectable because we and they are mortal enemies. Our people will not view us as respectable because we are weak. Respectability follows rather than precedes power.
Of course, we need to make ourselves presentable and we need to expand our influence, but we should not think that we can secure power by courting respectability or popularity. We should clearly recognise that our cause is destined to be unrespectable and unpopular for a long time, and that there is no quick and easy way to change this. As Maurice Bardèche wrote, “the new ideas must be carried at the beginning by the strong: they alone can cause the rupture of habits and interests, they alone can accomplish the hard work of the pioneers.” There is no other way. We should not make respectability or popularity the desideratum of White nationalist politics.
True White nationalists view politics in terms of the state rather than society. On this matter, I refer readers to Julius Evola’s Men Among the Ruins, particularly his observation:
“The political domain is defined through hierarchical, heroic, ideal, anti-hedonistic, and, to a degree, even anti-eudemonistic values that set it apart from the order of naturalistic and vegetative life. Authentic political ends are mostly autonomous ones (i.e., not derived from something else): they are connected to ideas and interests different from those of peaceful living, pure economics, and physical well-being, pointing to a higher dimension of life and a separate order of dignity.”
Of course, this conception of politics is “un-American” and “anti-American.” It will not be understood by the Simple Simons and Witless Wallaces of our time. It will have to be, to a large extent, imposed upon our people. The decadence of our people is so extensive that I think it will be necessary to follow the formula of Italian Fascism rather than that of German National Socialism: it is not the people that creates the state, but the state that creates the people. The creation of such a state will require the creation of what Jean Thiriart called a “historical party.”
A good assessment of the nature of the struggle, WR. As regards necessary extra-legal activity, what comes to mind here is the racial attitude of most Negroes regarding legality, to wit: “Those laws are made for White people, not us”! I use this comment verbatim at times with certain clueless Whites, to bring home the ironic point, and hope that some racial switch in their noggins finally gets tripped.
Comments are closed.
If you have a Subscriber access,
simply login first to see your comment auto-approved.
Note on comments privacy & moderation
Your email is never published nor shared.
Comments are moderated. If you don't see your comment, please be patient. If approved, it will appear here soon. Do not post your comment a second time.
Paywall Access
Lost your password?Edit your comment