2,921 words
His footpath to the heights is almost invisible now, overgrown with timothy grass and mountain laurel, tenanted by bees heavy with nectar and pollen instead of by a man heavy with the future.
Morning after morning, for almost two decades, William Luther Pierce would take this path and ascend to the highest point on what he simply called “The Land.” At the summit, he would look out, all the way to the horizon, upon a creamy, ever-shifting ocean of fog from which the higher mountain peaks, especially his, jutted upward abruptly like widely-separated cliff-islands in some Hyperborea of dreams.
Clarity was possible here in the West Virginia mountains; so different from Washington, DC, whence he had come. Here he was far from the posturing, prostituted politicians; from the buying and selling; from the filthy streets; from the getting and hoarding; from the stinking, unbreathable air; from the lying and pretense; from corrupted, demanding, materialistic women; from the sham authority of hollow men; from the staring, waiting, growing non-White mobs; from the crazed pursuit of popularity, status, shekels, junk, and Jesus. Here the doe could be found lying down with her fawn in the dappled sunshine; here the eagle soared a thousand feet above titanic, dramatically slanted forest canopies;
here even the hottest Summer days had a cool evening breeze and a night of ten million stars. Here, one could easily imagine, the lawyer and the huckster would just naturally shrivel and blow away, never to be seen again. A place where authentic men and women might thrive and live noble lives. A place to find The Way again. And teach that Way to others.
The move from the old National Alliance headquarters in Arlington (where the door was still lettered “National Youth Alliance” when we moved out) was a tremendous effort. Dr. Pierce made many trips on his own, shuttling his library, office, and possessions to the barns and barely-inhabitable farmhouse that were then the only structures on The Land, and I made at least a dozen trips to help, driving my old Dodge van or Dr. Pierce’s deathtrap high-cube truck we dubbed “The Truck from Hell” for its rattles readable on nearby seismometers, exposed seat springs, rust on a continental scale, and its tendencies to come dangerously close to boiling over on every hill and emit smoke instead of heat from its vents. There were a few other volunteers who helped with the move, but very few.
And moving was just the bare beginning. Next there were the farmhouse repairs and the installation of two old trailers as “temporary” living quarters. (They were to become permanent. Dr. Pierce never did build the home he had planned for so long; something else was always more urgent.) Then the huge job of building and finishing the office, warehouse, garage, and other outbuildings, and the complex electric, security, and communications lines between them. The latter involved digging six-foot trenches over many hundreds of feet through soil that was 50 per cent. stones. In all of this, no one did more labor than Dr. Pierce himself.
After the first few years, though, the move to The Land began to look like a huge mistake.
Without the energizing presence of Dr. Pierce in Arlington, and the convenience of his always-open 23d Street office (for years he slept on a cot there), many of the people who had attended his meetings and helped out with his mailings and other projects in the Washington area found other things to do, and travelling 200 miles into the remotest of West Virginia mountains wasn’t one of them.
The handful of families who had promised to come and make his community a reality dropped out one by one. Some took a look, saw the challenges of separating themselves from any hope of financial prosperity and from the conveniences the Great Satan has to offer, and quickly made their excuses. Even Dr. Pierce’s wife, Liz, refused to come — and divorced him.
Some never even bothered to take a look. A tiny few made a real attempt at life on The Land, lasting weeks or months or years. Don Trainor came — and went through two marriages and ready-made families — in a gargantuan effort to make it work, and in the process radically modernized the Alliance’s computer system.
Women found the isolation especially difficult. The nicer locals didn’t understand you and thought you were vaguely “odd” or “foreign” in some way, and a few opportunists (like county sheriff Jerry Dale, a brilliant intellect who once publicly accused Dr. Pierce of being an associate of “George Norman Rockwell”) were openly hostile.
Among those who stayed and really helped, and I salute them all, there was often a bond between Dr. Pierce and themselves, but not, with a few exceptions, between one another.
There was at least as much jealousy, and I am sure it looks very petty now even to those who then felt it, as there was a sense of community. They were the jealousies of those who have sacrificed very much, fueled by the frustrations of giving their all in a cause that sometimes seemed hopeless: the feeling that the others weren’t sacrificing as much — the wondering why they have an apartment in town, while we must live in a broken-down trailer; or the wondering of the other party why they get a free trailer while we must pay for this apartment on the same minuscule salary.
Petty, yes — but such thoughts can loom large in a small, isolated group when things are difficult and forward progress undetectable, especially for the least idealistic and philosophically motivated partner in a marriage.
William Pierce was immensely deep and worthy, and I think we all loved him. But he was very much the lone philosopher on the hill, who bonds with his adepts one by one as they enter his mountain fastness, but whose urgent work and solitary contemplations leave little time for the laughter, feasting, and ceremony that might prevent rifts.
One Winter when my wife and I came to visit him, a couple of years before I made the move to The Land, Dr. Pierce was utterly alone with the ravens in his snowy hills. There was no one else there. There was no community. All who had come had left. And his membership list, he said, was at an all-time low. He was gaunt, and I don’t think he was eating much.
Yet, he smiled a beguiling smile of real gladness when we arrived, cooked a very good vegetarian meal for us on a broken-down stove he’d rescued from a junkyard and was in the middle of repairing — he was always doing things like that — and spoke only of hope. He told us about a few men and women who might be joining him if all went well, and what they could add to his efforts. He spoke of the ignorant complacency induced by the sitting Republican administration, and how recruiting would improve when it finally came to an end.
He spoke of the 1960s, when he had just begun his political work, sending a copy of his intellectual journal to every member of Congress and to hundreds of officials and opinion leaders in Washington — with exactly zero response. And, after an initial shock and readjustment to reality, exactly zero discouragement too. It had been then that he had thrown down his coat, put on his gloves, and begun those 18-hour days that continued until Infinity reclaimed him.
One reason Dr. Pierce was glad we were there was his wish that we would constitute an audience for a discussion of Cosmotheism he had scheduled for the benefit of the editor of the local paper, the Pocahontas Times. The editor, a man named William McNeel, had heard the media claims that Cosmotheism was nothing but a “tax dodge” and wanted to see for himself. Dr. Pierce, McNeel, a guest brought by McNeel, my wife, and I sat in the gathering twilight on folding chairs in the dusty, unfinished upper floor of the new office building and listened to recorded excerpts from Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman, after which Dr. Pierce told the story of how the play, along with Nietzsche’s philosophy, had influenced the development of his religion. I think McNeel was expecting a somewhat slicker than average bigoted bumpkin with overtones of con man and Imperial Lizard. What he got was closer to a living Pythagoras.
Dr. Pierce’s optimism, like that of many energetic and dedicated men, proved justified. Things did improve on The Land not too long after my Winter visit. Fred and Marta Streed, Will Williams, Ron McCoskey, Herbert Horton, Hadding Scott, Robert Pate, Joe Pryce, Evelyn Hill, Jerry Abbott, Bob DeMarais, and many others made a real impact with their help. American Dissident Voices was begun, then the Free Speech newsletter. Books, audio tapes, and videos multiplied. New buildings were going up, new projects begun, and the subscriber and membership lists began growing again.
William Pierce had a never-give-up spirit that was almost beyond understanding. It served him well. Its source, I think, was his deep belief that he was one of a very few men who fully understood the cosmic stakes of the fight for White survival, and that he had an absolute responsibility to strive without ending, no matter what the odds, to do his considerable part — a task that no one else could do for him — to win that fight.
Those stakes went far beyond the concerns to which he often appealed in his writings and broadcasts. Far more important than safe neighborhoods and lower VD rates and decent schools was the evolving consciousness of the Universe, of which a small but inseparable subset of our race was the vanguard, and which might be snuffed out in an instant of cosmic time if organized Jewry had its way.
True, he made his appeals on the basis of the issues of the moment in his radio broadcasts — because he was dealing with a mass audience which he wanted to move in his direction. But behind it all, behind everything he did, and overshadowing every other consideration, was the necessity for our race to begin ascending what he called the Upward Path once again. Just three years before his death, Dr. Pierce made the fateful decision to purchase Resistance Records, a label and distributor which specialized in skinhead music. Dr. Pierce told me privately that he found most of the music unlistenable, even repellent, and that it for the most part embodied every exaggerated “hater” stereotype that the Jews had gleefully tried to fasten on anyone who wanted his children to marry someone of the same race and the opposite sex.
National-Socialism-as-cult (something that Dr. Pierce strongly disliked) was everywhere at Resistance — lurid scenes of SS-men in battle, repurposed WWII posters and uniforms (or absurd parodies of uniforms), references to “throwing people into ovens,” and more Maltese crosses than the Hell’s Angels ever dreamed of. And where the cornball aesthetic tapered off, the skinhead aesthetic — an aesthetic of ugliness, utterly alien to men and women who appreciate Breker and Canova, Parrish and Waterhouse, St. Gaudens and Phidias — took over. The graphic artists who designed the CD covers also apparently thought that the purpose of white space was to allow a higher density of swastikas.
I may be exaggerating the visual sins of Resistance — a little. But not only do I not have to exaggerate the depravity of much of the music, I believe it would actually be impossible to do so. Some of the “music” promoted by Resistance was so disgusting that it can hardly be believed. It is only with difficulty that I can write about the worst of it. From songs that gleefully describe chainsaw decapitations (and the storage of the severed body parts of supposed enemies in a freezer), to bands with names like “Anal Cunt” and “Vaginal Jesus,” the list goes on and on. Only the sociopathic could be attracted to such garbage.
Now, to be sure, some worthwhile music was sold by Resistance. And there were and are very noble men and women who have come up through the skinhead subculture. I have met some. And that subculture was impressive in that it had developed an ethos of resistance to White genocide quite independently. But, on the whole, it was loaded with a substantial percentage of appallingly ignorant people who had joined it for all the wrong reasons: those who couldn’t possibly be accepted, or find a mate, anywhere else; those whose anger at society was expressed by purposely violating every standard and every moral value in order to punish and outrage the hated “normals”; and those who were actually drawn to the controlled media’s “Nazi” image of sadistic brutes who delighted in crushing innocents’ skulls, putting out cigarettes in babies’ eyes, and similar manly and heroic acts.
To be fair to Dr. Pierce, the very worst CDs weren’t issued under his watch (I helped to form the National Alliance Executive Committee that tried to excise the garbage later, before I and all its members were expelled by the successor leadership of the Alliance, whose understanding of Dr. Pierce’s vision could be folded up in a clover leaf and still leave room for Micheal Chertoff’s heart) — but there was still plenty of dross that was.
If I had to speculate about the percentage of the Alliance’s membership, before the merger with Resistance, who truly understood the cosmic implications of our struggle, I would say that it might have been as high as 30 per cent. But of the new recruits who came to us through Resistance, I would say it was only a tenth of that — at best.
It’s important to remember that after Dr. Pierce’s death, a large fraction of the Alliance’s new leadership had its roots in Resistance or the “scene” that surrounded Resistance. And, after those who objected to the worst elements of that new leadership were expelled, the membership itself consisted almost entirely of those who were willing to accept such leaders — or who, hoping for better times to come, were as crazily optimistic as those who’ve actually seen Los Angeles, yet still believe we can “restore America.” I apologize for my role in encouraging such optimism.
Dr. Pierce acknowledged most of these concerns at the time. But he wanted results, he said, and embracing the skinhead music scene brought thousands of new people into our circle. (Many men, perhaps especially great men who are engaged in causes that most would regard as lost, abandon some of their usual prudence as they approach the end, wanting to see dramatic progress before they die.) The Alliance could, he thought, selectively recruit the best of these people into our ranks, and effectively and powerfully influence all of them. Instead, they influenced the Alliance — right into the ground.
Need I count the ways? — the nearly-illiterate post-2005 broadcasts; the public meetings where spitting and shirtlessness (especially among people who ought never go shirtless) became common; the young men with dilated pupils who most urgently wanted to discuss with you the finer points of the Day of the Rope and how they related to an especially beloved curbside scene in American History X; the official Alliance publication that referred to a certain famous structure in Italy as, I kid you not, the “Leaning Tower of Pizza.” It’s too depressing to go on.
His microphone is silent now, though a faithful and talented few make sure his voice is heard by a new generation on YouTube and elsewhere. His greatest works remain relatively obscure, whereas his off-the-cuff entertainment for beginners is still famous. An effort is, however, now being made (http://www.williamlutherpierce.blogspot.com/) to make his writings available in a coherent, reliable form.
The Land, and the many hundreds of thousands of dollars in investments and infrastructure that William Pierce gave his lifetime to bring into being — and bring to bear in the battle for our race’s survival — has been inherited by the unworthy, the befuddled, the merely ambitious, and the incompetent. Much more worthwhile writing and publishing is done by former staffer Jerry Abbott in his nearby mountain homestead in one week than has been produced on The Land in the last seven years.
Though his organization — for which he inexplicably failed to choose a successor when he knew he was dying — has effectively expired, William Pierce opened the minds of thousands of men and women to what is truly real in this unfolding Universe. Most of us are still alive. And, thanks to him, we do not have the excuse of ignorance for inaction. Our people’s fate, and the advancement of the only cause that really matters, is entirely up to us.
The Sun has burned away the sea of fog this morning, and, looking at the fields and woods below me, I think that maybe what seemed like the hidden paradise beyond Ultima Thule to me is really just plain old West Virginia after all. Perhaps the locals are right: Maybe what Dr. Pierce called The Land should revert to its old name, Turkey Buzzard Flats. Maybe I should get out of here, too — the current occupants would surely have never given me permission, so I didn’t bother to ask. Maybe I should head down the hill, skirting south into the woods near the trailers, even though I doubt they rise before ten.
I should go down now — but no. There’s another path, with the footprint of a tall man still visible there. It leads up.
28 comments
Strom is a brilliant writer. I hope he comes back.
Ditto.
Thank you, Jan and Chechar. I am encouraged.
I had long hoped for the day when a wiser, more mature, Kevin Alfred Strom, hardened by the Refiner’s Fire, returned to us as the intellectual and spiritual heir to all that William Gayley Simpson and William Luther Pierce embodied, would return to us, providing painfully needed Light into an all to preeminent Darkness.
Three quick comments:
One, Mr. Strom has proofed a new novel by a “C. C. Cochran” called “Jack’s War.” We are told it is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Might it be possible for Mr. Strom to take some time and explain this book, and review it, for counter-currents?
Two, I think Cosmotheism has found its Voice in the Outer World. I believe Kevin Alfred Strom might want to involved himself in this endeavor, and develop the Cosmotheist Community Church. Further, books available on Cosmism, might be useful in clarifying and extending his thinking in this area.
Three, in “I Remember Dr. Pierce,” Kevin Alfred Strom has given us one of the most moving pieces I have ever read. This might make an excellent podcast for Mr. Strom to offer.
Thank you for the confidence you place in me. My voice will be heard more often in the future, and Jack’s War will be reviewed on http://nationalvanguard.org/ in the near future.
That was a lovely tribute. It’s a very different perspective than what I have previously read.
I now kind of understand the loyalty, dedication and respect people have for him as a person and not just his ideas. Thank you for writing this.
Thanks, Rhondda. As I see it, Dr. Pierce was the polar opposite of the inflated frauds and small-minded sociopaths who typically inhabit boardrooms and executive suites (and too many racialist operations) these days. If the human material he had to work with had possessed on average just half his quality, things would have worked out quite differently.
Kevin,
What was Pierce’s primary goal in moving to the countryside of West Virginia? Did he simply need the security that the isolation of a farmstead affords? How would families who moved there have supported themselves? How did he and everyone else support themselves before they began selling music through Resistance records? Did they survive through donations?
Fisherman in blockquote:
In his address to the National Alliance, Pierce made it clear that the goals were safety and security – “peace,” in one word. His lecture on this was called “White Zion,” and is available from Solar General – if they are still around.
Not “simply,” as it offered opportunities for those who wished to join the enterprise.
The same way they do anywhere – someone gets jobs where they can, while the Family remains safe at home.
Asked and answered. See above.
Asked and answered. See above.
Thank you for the reference to “White Zion” which I had never heard of. I was hoping that this article was written for Counter-Currents’ Pierce memorial and that Kevin who actually knew the man reads this site and would answer candidly — not with a repetition of public pronouncements. Having talented, skilled professionals follow you to rural W. Va where they may or may not be able to find work to support the organization seems self-defeating unless he intended those following him there to be paid employees/farm hands. Members who are functional in the society who have the skills necessary to recreate a new one are needed not woodland recluses.
I think that, more than any other one thing, he felt a spiritual need to be close to Nature and far away from the corruption and ugliness of the city.
He also believed 1) that others would grow, personally and ideologically and spiritually, if they committed themselves to live in an explicitly racialist and Cosmotheist community; 2) that a real community would take root and grow, perhaps even to the size of a largely self-sustaining village in his lifetime; 3) that the potential for persecution by the System was at least somewhat reduced by distance and difficulty of access.
Even before the purchase of Resistance, we were collecting dues and donations and selling books and magazines and tapes and videos and, through being an almost supernaturally frugal man over two decades, he had a few income-producing investments.
Families who came to live and work on The Land were paid a small salary. It was enough to buy groceries and go for a drive now and then.
I think in my article that I failed to emphasize how much hard work over many long years that Fred Streed contributed to make everything possible there. His hours and his dedication were second to no one’s except William Pierce’s.
Thanks for the reply Kevin. I admire your dedication in the service of the cause. I am awed by the level of idealism and devotion and sacrifice that you and Pierce were able to elicit. And the insight that you had regarding the racial roots of the system’s hostility is really astounding. That you had anyone follow you to W. Va in the materialistic 1980s is a bit of a shock. In 1984 when you and Pierce were moving to W. Va I was just beginning my university education and when I reflect on my own and my friends’ attitudes, I remember feeling vaguely that the system was against us, but I figured it was just really the consequences of capitalism and I was smart enough to get around the obstacles. I remember participating in several after school discussions of articles in the New Republic (?) with my high school history teacher and a few friends discussing PACS and the influence of money. It seemed to me then that money was corrupting everything. The deeper racial reality completely eluded me. I think I must have been more than a little dull.
Anyway, you’re a fantastic writer and having listened to some of your broadcasts I think you have an excellent voice as well. I look forward to reading more of your writing and hope that your personal difficulties have been overcome.
All the best!
Very nice tribute. KAS had a lot of good radio addresses and I remember “East wind rain” most of all. Really demolished my bogus-patriotic WW2 narrative.
btw, yes I like Augustus St Gaudens, any coin collector or sculptor knows that name and likewise Adolph A. Weinmann, his eminent predecessor, working in the same elegant neoclassical style.
Yes, Weinman was a master. His designs for the “Mercury” dime and Walking Liberty half are art, so rare for American coins.
It was a different world. The yahoos didn’t deserve it or understand it or care about it enough — so they lost it.
Glad you liked the broadcast.
Great article! I’m glad you’re back. Have you thought about doing biographical works on Revilo P. Oliver and William L. Pierce? I would love to see all their works come out in hardback. Again thanks for the great article!
You’re a great writer, KAS. I remember first hearing Dr. Pierce. I was 17 years old and he sparked my imagination and influenced me greatly.
I agree with everything that has been said, Strom is a writer of high talent. He has the rare skill of providing condensed information in an interesting, titillating and non-verbose way. Nothing is redundant or out of place, which is often the case with exposition and descriptions. He writes certainly better than a lot of hacks at the NYT or Wpost.
If there are lessons we can draw from the ultimate failure of the National Alliance to garner support and growth, it’s that truth alone does not guarantee victory in political endeavors.
“If there are lessons we can draw from the ultimate failure of the National Alliance to garner support and growth, it’s that truth alone does not guarantee victory in political endeavors.” As Carl Schmitt pointed out, politics does not observe the rules of a debating society, so why should victory go to those with the best arguments? The greatest crime in politics is not being wrong or wicked, it is being weak.
Some people seem to attribute to truth a power that it does not has. I think we should be less sentimental and more realistic. There is such a thing as truth, but not “the truth” conceived as some kind of “mandate from heaven” or “miracle weapon” (Wunderwaffe). The former is a matter of knowledge, the latter is a matter of faith. “The truth” is in fact a god term.
Telling truths is necessary for legitimizing our cause and delegitimizing that of our enemies. However, we must politicize truths to do this, which means we must turn them into what Jacques Ellul called “political facts.” As Ellul remarked, “it can be said that a fact does not become political except to the extent that opinion forms around it and it commands public attention. A fact that does not command attention and does not become a political fact ceases to exist even as a fact, whatever its importance may be.” (I intend to discuss the idea of “political facts” in detail later. Ellul’s book The Political Illusion, which develops this idea, is relatively hard to get and quite densely written.)
Ellul explained why information — regardless of how significant, consequential, and truthful it is — is not enough to create political facts:
“First of all, information is not enough to give the fact it concerns the character of a political fact. When the information is conveyed, the fact is forgotten. It has not become a serious concern. One item of information drives out the other, even if it lives for five or six days. The public is not affected by one exposure, which it does not understand very well and to which it does not gear its attention. We have innumerable examples of facts of which the public was informed, but which did not penetrate into public opinion or attitudes. . . .
“The second obstacle is that information never produces public opinion on a subject. A thousand informed people do not constitute a ‘public opinion.’ Rather, public opinion obeys mysterious rules, secret motives, and forms and deforms itself irrationally, whereas information is of the order of clear knowledge, lucid consciousness, reason and pure intellect.
“Information itself has not sufficient duration or intensity to create a public opinion even after having interested the people. Precisely because there is such a great diversity of information, a single item does not suffice to polarize attention. To accomplish that it would be necessary for the great majority of individuals to pay attention at the same moment to the same fact, but that is inconceivable. . . .”
Information can inform politics, but information does not create politics. We must do more than publish information and express opinions. We must create political facts.
Two quick comments.
White Republican in blockquote:
I think he is using “information” in the sense that we use the word “data,” as a neutral expression. What turns “data” into “(useful) information” is relevance. The Old Right in America provided all manner of data, and some information, but did not use for any other than most narrow and provincial ends.
“Political fact(s),” absent a metapolitical context, fail to transform a political system. We see that fifty years of the Conservatives complaining about illegal immigration has accomplished nothing, simply because the data did not ride to the level of political effectiveness to be called “information,” much less acquire the vitality to help define political facts.
So, if you wanted to create an organization that could be used to act as a lightning rod for a certain political perspective, simply make sure it provides data, and some information, but lacks the transmission belt to achieve political ends with it. The example of Pierce’s “National” Alliance comes to mind.
A great deal has been learned about transforming public opinion. Bernays did it with techniques that can be learned, and mastered. The technology of manipulation has advanced far beyond the time of Bernays.
Note a critical distinction Ellul might be making.
For the Democracy, information requires a degree of abstract thought, with developed conceptual models, that is beyond them. For the Aristocracy, information is a means to an end, and appreciated and used as such.
It is the difference between people who (passively!) watch the Dow on their television, and those who realize hidden value in the market the Dow only grossly reflects. The former use CNBC, the latter use Bloomberg Professional Terminals.
The former follow manufactured illusions, the latter don’t.
Pierce manufactured all manner of data, and quite a bit of information, thanks to the brilliant guiding hand of his co-host, co-writer, and editor, Kevin Alfred Strom. A more direct focus might well have led to the foundation of political effectiveness, by the active establishment of political facts.
That takes us to Harold Covington, but that’s for another time.
Deviance in blockquote:
There are many lessons to be “drawn from the ultimate failure of the National Alliance.”
If you will look at the Loren T. Byers thread on this site, you will see some useful ideas for discussion. With the sole exception of Bob Whitaker’s site, nowhere else in WN websites can these issues be remotely discussed. I think this is supported by Greg Johnson’s hypothesis concerning the nihilists who are attracted to White nationalism. Pierce was seen by them as all White nationalism had to offer, and Pierce is all they knew that was remotely tolerable in the Outer World.
White Republican makes the point concerning Carl Schmitt. Yet. the track record of a century of bitter failure, and an absolute unwillingness to even discuss this (save for us, Whitaker, and Harold Covington), makes a mockery of aspiring to meet the aspirations of Carl Schmitt.
Somehow, the organic pattern of Cause, Movement, and Organization seems to be short-circuited at all points. Until we finally read from the same sheet music on these issues, perhaps we should redouble our efforts in contributing to counter-currents, each and every month, without fail.
Abiove all, to those who criticize Dr. Pierce as having “failed” at the development f the National Alliance as a political force, let me simply state the cold, unquestionable truth:
Dr. Pierce succeeded in doing EXACTLY what he wanted to do.
The Dreams we may have projected onto the Vision he defined were just that; no more, and no less.
The Adult counterpoint is this:
All too many were all too willing to let Dr. Pierce do, not just the intellectual heavy lifting, but ALL of the lifting.
In doing so, they avoided their responsibility to do much of, well, anything at all.
It’s what I call Covington’s Conundrum: AFTER the Northwest Republic is established, and the thorium reactors are running full force, and there are massive surpluses of all, for all; then, AND ONLY THEN, will people do what they should have done, a century ago.
Sending money to counter-currents helps to make up for lost time, time we are all but out of.
“All too many were all too willing to let Dr. Pierce do, not just the intellectual heavy lifting, but ALL of the lifting.” I’ve previously expressed interest in adapting the ideas of Pierre Chateau-Jobert’s Doctrine d’action contrerévolutionnaire and Jean Ousset’s L’action to White nationalism. Both strongly emphasize such things as the importance of putting work within the view and the reach of people, of generating a high average level of activism and competency, and of forming cadres.
I think the following guidelines would be useful for properly understanding, adapting, promoting, and implementing the ideas of these works:
1. It is necessary to develop a body of thought that is highly practical and realistic, and to study and elaborate these things in breadth and depth. In these matters, one should not be a smatterer or an enthusiast, promoting ideas that are poorly worked out or understood. As Baltasar Gracián advised:
“Think things over, especially those that are most important. All fools come to grief from lack of thought. They never see even the half of things and, as they do not observe their own loss or gain, still less do they apply any diligence to them. Some make much of what matters little and little of much, always weighing in the wrong scale. . . . There are matters that should be observed with the closest attention, and thereafter kept well in mind. The wise person thinks over everything, but with a difference, most profoundly where there is some profound difficulty, suspecting that perhaps there is more in it than he first thought.”
This work will involve pursuing particular objectives and tasks, developing particular knowledge and skills, and assimilating a set of paradigms, heuristics, and measures, all of which should have a highly practical orientation.
In these matters, one needs a complex set of tools and skills, and to constantly improve them.
2. The ideas of these works should be put into their historical context in order to properly adapt them to our own context. Both were written from a Catholic counter-revolutionary perspective rather than a White nationalist perspective, and were written in the context of France in the 1960s and 1970s. It is necessary to identify precisely what items require revision and how they should be revised.
One can often better understand and adapt ideas if one knows their history. Raphaëlle de Neuville’s Jean Ousset et la cité catholique might be worth reading in this context.
A knowledge of history can help give one a better idea of what is possible and probable, of the relative importance of things, and of how things best work together, how they can work against each other, and how they can fall apart.
It can be instructive to study the biographies of individuals and the histories of organizations and movements. This can help one properly understand one’s own work by putting it into perspective and understanding its true scale, complexity, difficulty, and unpredictability. Things rarely develop in a straightforward manner or according to one’s plans, expectations, and hopes. If one simply considers individual thinkers and their ideas, as distinct from political movements or schools of thought, it can be seen that the process of intellectual formation, maturation, and diffusion is often slow, irregular, and restricted.
3. An inquisitive, open-minded, and consultative approach is appropriate for this work. As Gracián advised, “Keep auxiliary wits around you.” Everyone has their blindspots — that is to say, areas of ignorance, inexperience, and incompetence — and the larger one’s field of view, the more blindspots one has. If one considers the NPD’s typology of activism (cultural, community, and political activism) and David Ronfeldt’s typology of organizations (tribes, institutions, markets, and networks), it should be obvious that all of us have blindspots in these matters.
I should identify my own blindspots and try to compensate for them as best I can.
4. Not only should the ideas of these works be adapted to our context, these ideas should be formulated so that they are open to constructive revision, adaptation, and extension (this is not to take an attitude of “anything goes” or “do what thou wilt be the whole of the law”). I want a body of thought and action that can grow, that can be adapted, that can be corrected. Some ideas should be revised, added, or discarded; some should be emphasised or clarified to avoid misunderstanding; some should be developed to make them more useful. Theory should be regarded as a work in progress, and it should be open-ended in many respects. Texts should be subject to revision, and be regarded as introductions rather than as conclusions.
Some ideas from writers such as Eric S. Raymond, Eric von Hippel, and John Robb on open source innovation and innovation communities may be pertinent to this work.
5. The task is ultimately one of education and formation more than prescription. It is a matter of creating a collective understanding, capacity, and will among people more than setting regulations and giving orders.
The focus should be on developing ideas, processes, and mechanisms that are widely used throughout a movement because they are genuinely useful.
Everett M. Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations might be useful in this context.
6. I should pay particular attention to specialized cadres and structures, such as those involved in the Front National’s Délégation Générale and those of a general staff system. Such cadres and structures should maximize the effectiveness of ordinary cadres.
I want a movement in which people are justly confident in their cause, in their leaders, in their colleagues, in themselves, in their work.
7. I should address the interrelated concerns of trust and security. Bruce Schneier’s works might be useful in this context.
I’ll need to properly think these things through before seriously working on such a project. Defining its objectives and methodology is extremely important, and the above is only a very rough sketch. I’m not sure that I should undertake such a project as it will involve a lot of work and I doubt that it would be truly worthwhile. Perhaps it’s something to start next year.
A modest suggestion.
I think it would be well worth your while to place certain organizational structures in a metapolitical context.
I suggest Ellul’s writings on the transformation of Christianity might be a useful starting place.
It seems you are all but defining the foundation of The Next Civilization, from a more appropriate Christian foundation.
Two quick thoughts:
One, Ronfeldt’s typology is pretty basic. The larger issue, which he misses entirely, is that Collapse functions have as their hallmark massive disintermediation. Stafford Beer, a man well ahead of his time in terms of technology and its applications to society, wrote on how the logic of technology moves inevitably to stronger centralization. Ronfeldt admits his limits in what seems to be a trite formulation. The Internet – which is no longer linked to desktops or mainframes -is creating synthetic organizations at an amazing pace. New “nations” – communities of common Interest – are forming and reforming faster than any central authority can track, even with the excellent software available. The Central State will not become irrelevant directly; it will transform itself into a facilitator of a few functions, and a remarkable loose hand in most other areas. Peter Drucker wrote of this with a most astute insight.
2. This implies a new economic system, starting with a new financial system. More on some ideas concerning this later, but look closely at what Keynes actually proposed at Bretton Woods. We can see it coming together on the margins, but that is ONLY the monetary component of the financial sector. To my mind, the economy that must emerge, in time, will be based on ecological economics. This requires new modes of thought that, frankly, make my head hurt. However, any system of local social services should follow the models of the Catholic Church. This could go so far as to incorporate something like Social Credit, with synthetic currencies like the Ithaca HOURS program.
3. Your Point (5) is your entire position in one point; I think you are asking, “What Would Ellul Do?” In this case, a Reformation of what Christianity has become along more transparent lines of communication seems strongly implied. Edgar Cayce saw a New Civilization being formed in Russia, out of a Christian-defined model of what he saw as “Brotherly Love.” That might be what is called for to counter the coming Dark Age, if “only” to lay the Living Foundation for what must develop on the Other Side.
4. Each socioeconomic system bears within its Instrument of Expansion the seeds of its destruction. Rather than get overly attached to any particular Form, it might be useful to look at the governing constitutions of successful religious Orders for the common thread that allows them to pursue metapolitical ends with temporal means.
Anyway, that’s my suggestion. Start with Ellul’s analysis and critique of Christianity, and build the Living Foundation from there.
That will keep you busy for the next several lifetimes!
A few comments:
1. I’m concentrating more on organizational and cultural forms appropriate for a “culture of resistance” rather than the foundations for a new social order.
2. As I’m an atheist, I’m not interested in reforming Christianity.
3. Of course, David Ronfeldt’s typology is very basic on the level on which I mentioned it, which was comparable to simply saying that capitalism is about making money or that communism is about class warfare. It leaves a lot unaddressed. Ronfeldt has developed his ideas on tribes, institutions, markets, and networks at length in several works, and has collaborated with John Arquilla on works addressing “netwar” (i.e. fourth generation warfare). As an abstract for Ronfeldt’s In Search of How Societies Work states:
“Ronfeldt maintains that societies advance by learning to use and combine all four forms, in a preferred progression. What ultimately matters is how the forms are added and how well they function together. They are not substitutes for each other; they are complements. Historically, a society’s advance — its progress — depends on its ability to use all four forms and combine them into a coherent, well-balanced, well-functioning whole.”
Ronfeldt’s ideas may therefore tie in with the three tier strategy of cultural, community, and political activism. These forms of activism obviously require several forms of organization. They might also tie in with organicist or decentralist thought, to which I am sympathetic.
4. When you mentioned Peter Drucker, were you alluding to his book Post-Capitalist Society? He wrote many books and my guess is that you’re referring to this one; I haven’t read it myself.
5. I should perhaps look at the literature on Kaizen in relation to the mundane applications of metis. We need a culture of continuous incremental improvement. (This is one of the strengths of Japanese industry. According to one book I’ve seen, one Japanese manufacturer receives an average of sixty to seventy suggestions per year from each employee; a comparable U.S. manufacturer receives an average of one suggestion per year from each employee. Which manufacturer does the best job of aggregating and using the distributed knowledge of its employees? Which manufacturer has the best developed and most widely distributed problem-solving skills among its employees? Which manufacturer applies the most intelligence, knowledge, and skill to its work? The answer is obvious.)
The work before us is very complex and difficult. We need to make full use of the intelligence of our people, in all areas and at all levels of work.
6. Appropriately adapting the ideas I have mentioned to White nationalism will require a great deal of work because of their diversity. They have been drawn from the realms of psychology and sociology, science and technology, politics, commerce, and warfare. I think it would be best to work on creating a set of tools rather than writing a master plan.
Mr. Strom are you the arthor of “Serpent’s Walk?” If you are not do you know if the author is still alive? I think it is a good book and I wish the writer would continue his excellent work!
Serpent’s Walk was written by a college professor in a sensitive position under a pen name. I am sorry to say that I was never in touch with him.
Thank you, Peter, and Deviance and Casey, for your suggestions and encouragement. I need to become more productive!
Come Kevin, when are you going to resume your broadcasts (National Vanguard) from 4, 5 or 6 years ago after you left the National Alliance? We want you to start up again & soon!
I remember listening to Dr. Pierce via shortwave in the mid-90s. In the short-wave listening guides, his show was listed as terrible bigoted tripe, which only piqued my curiosity to tune in. Of course, the publishers were only trying to scare away any newcomers to the truth spoken by the prescient Doctor. I was immediately smitten by Pierce’s words of wisdom.
As to the the “music” of Resistance Records…
I studied piano and was trained in Classical music – Bach & Beethoven being my all time favorites. I also played drums at an early age – Led Zeppelin being an influence in that genre. Music is so diverse and varied… however, there is definitely a limit that must be placed around any art which can be deemed “acceptable”. The vulgar nonsense and crude “musicianship” of much of the noise sold at Resistance must be called what it is – garbage. It is so sad that our youth today are not exposed to the great works of our race and instead fancy themselves as artisans on the cutting edge of a “revolution”. Of course, time will weed out the rot of all art… and declare what is truly “great” by its mere presence in the future.
We must strive to expose our children to all of the great art of our antecedents as well as enlightening them to their true history and place therein.
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