4,472 words
William Pierce, the founder and head of the National Alliance, was a singularly important ideologist, organizer, and leader in the white nationalist movement.
His energy, commitment, drive, intelligence, and—given the sinister forces arrayed against us—accomplishments, are truly remarkable. Like George Lincoln Rockwell, David Duke, and a few others, he was a Superman. It is difficult to comprehend the powerful life force and capabilities such men incarnate.
Pierce was a prolific author. A collected edition of his writings, including personal correspondence and speeches, would run to many, many volumes.
Most of his enormous output was not in the form of books, however, but rather essays, articles, organizational guides, membership bulletins, speeches, correspondence, and weekly American Dissident Voices radio/Internet broadcasts.
His written work is thus highly fragmented, scattered, and not easily accessible in one or a few books. His enormous contribution to the cause of white survival will suffer greatly as a result, disappearing down the memory hole in relatively short order.
It is crucial that we build upon the past accomplishments of our best thinkers rather than continuously striving to reinvent the wheel every generation as people die, are murdered, jailed, or otherwise silenced.
There are five extended works by Pierce, two (or perhaps three) of which are effectively unavailable.
His two novels, The Turner Diaries (1978) and Hunter (1989).
A historical overview of the white race called Who We Are, originally published as a series of articles in National Vanguard tabloid (May 1978-May 1982) before it switched to magazine format.
This series has never been published in book form. Several years ago the National Alliance announced plans to issue such a volume, but it did not materialize. The series can be found in electronic format on a handful of websites. (See, e.g., the 225-page PDF version here and an HTML version here.)
As a consequence, Who We Are has probably been read by only a handful of people who followed every installment in the tabloid thirty years ago, and a few enterprising contemporaries inclined to read online books in an inconvenient electronic format. Of course, potential readers also need to know the book exists, and possess a desire to read it.
To these volumes must be added the underappreciated anthology The Best of Attack! and National Vanguard Tabloid, 1970-1982 (1984) compiled by former National Alliance member Kevin Alfred Strom. It is a fascinating, indispensable book that is historically significant and substantively engaging. Virtually the entire contents were written by Pierce, with the exception of a few major articles by Ted O’Keefe and others.
Unfortunately, the volume is out of print. A new copy currently sells for $258 on Amazon. Four used copies are more reasonably priced, ranging from $66-$133. A PDF copy of the book is available online, but the file is very large and difficult to read.
Finally, there is the National Alliance Membership Handbook, which is not publicly available.
Other than these works, Pierce’s vast output, which, though multifaceted, is nevertheless highly coherent, exists only in fragmented form. It is impossible to grasp holistically unless the reader is already thoroughly familiar with the man and his work—which, of course, most people are not.
These facts, coupled with Jewish and government obsession with the two novels, particularly The Turner Diaries, tend to give Pierce’s fiction a larger place in his oeuvre than it objectively warrants.
The Novels
Had I discovered his novels first, I doubt that I would ever have explored the main body of his work.
Still, the novels are instructive.
First, they constitute an important element of Pierce’s overall production and are perhaps more widely known, possibly even more widely read, than the bulk of his work.
I do believe that the most important people who have been intellectually influenced by Pierce were primarily drawn to his other writings. The novels, however, were especially influential among radical activists.
Second, I was greatly surprised to discover soon after I read them how popular the books were. I would never have guessed that. Whites are psychologically very heterogeneous compared to Jews, who have been likened to a hive or, more flatteringly, a “herd of independent minds”—emphasis on herd.
Third, and most importantly, the novels provide a window into Pierce’s true psychology and values that cannot be obtained from his nonfiction, no matter how angry or violent the rhetoric sometimes is.
My initial reaction to the novels was puzzlement as to why the Jews and government wanted to censor them, or even close normal channels of marketing and distribution to them.
To me, the books were self-refuting. I naively assumed other readers would feel the same way. I thought the author had shot himself, and his cause, in the foot, so to speak.
I was certainly wrong about that. So that was a valuable lesson to learn as well.
Not everyone thinks alike.
The Turner Diaries
Pierce published both novels under the pseudonym “Andrew Macdonald.”
Somewhat like the pseudonymous 1940s mystery novelist “Ellery Queen” (the joint pseudonym of two Jewish cousins) whose books starred a detective also named Ellery Queen, a pseudonymous character in The Turner Diaries named Andrew Macdonald writes the Foreword and Epilog to the diaries in the year 2099. The diaries themselves were written by protagonist Earl Turner in the 1990s.
Thus, the book’s overall chronological framework is somewhat complex.
Pierce wrote the book in the 1970s. The setting for most of it, related by Earl Turner, are the years 1991-1993.
The book’s Preface and Epilog are set 100 years after the end of the Great Revolution, which began in September 1991. But the diary ends with Turner dying a martyr’s death in 1993.
The result of the Revolution is not the creation of a tiny white ethnostate, nor even reconquest of the United States and Europe, but total global victory. (Recall the title of George Lincoln Rockwell’s 1963 autobiography This Time the World.) A white government seizes control of the entire planet on the 110th anniversary of the “Great One’s” birthday—April 20, 1999.
Following the Revolution, the calendar is renumbered, beginning with 1 NE (New Era). Macdonald’s Foreword and Epilog were written in “New Baltimore” in 100 NE (our year 2099). Turner’s historically significant diaries have just been discovered in excavations of the “Washington ruins.”
Prior to its publication in book form by Pierce’s National Vanguard Books (the publisher of both novels), The Turner Diaries was serialized between 1975 and 1978 in successive issues of the National Alliance tabloid Attack!, the forerunner of National Vanguard.
I read The Turner Diaries, which I checked out of a university library, in book form in the 1980s, when Pierce was nowhere near as well-known as he later became. The book was not catalogued under his real name, nor had it been pencilled in on the title page by a librarian. They probably didn’t even know it at the time.
Shortly after Hunter appeared in 1989, I read it. Hunter was not serialized.
The books, especially The Turner Diaries—which I believe has significantly outsold Hunter—were highly popular. The sales figure I have usually seen for The Turner Diaries is 300,000 sold by 2001, which makes it a bestseller by conventional publishing standards. But this figure was achieved in the face of complete blockage from normal sales and distribution channels.
So much for “free speech.”
For a brief period the late maverick Jewish publisher Lyle Stuart’s Barricade Books published it, albeit with a preface by Stuart stating that he found the book reprehensible. Even so, the SPLC effectively ordered the three largest bookstore chains in America not to carry it.
Stuart had not had similar scruples concerning the many pornographic, and even Left-wing terrorist, books he’d previously published, like William Powell’s The Anarchist Cookbook (1971). The latter book “tells you how to make Molotov cocktails and blow up police stations,” Stuart nonchalantly told the Washington Post in 1978.
That was OK with the Jewish/Left-wing Establishment.
After his side won the culture war, gung-ho Cookbook terrorism advocate William Powell converted to Left-wing Anglicanism and disowned the book, even trying to suppress it. He has no desire to see the contemporary totalitarian state toppled!
Lyle Stuart issued The Turner Diaries in 1996. The year before he’d been sued by (mob-connected?) Jewish casino tycoon Steve Wynn over allegations in another Stuart-published book that Wynn had connections to organized crime. The publisher was forced into bankruptcy after being ordered to pay Wynn a $3.1 million judgment. At that time the rights to The Turner Diaries reverted to Pierce. After 9 more years of litigation, the judgment against Stuart was overturned and the case settled out of court.
The Turner Diaries influenced several activists. The two most important were former National Alliance member Robert Mathews, and non-racialist Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.
Mathews and his group The Order, named after an elite cadre within the novel, in 1984 conducted a robbery spree in the Pacific Northwest netting roughly $4 million. It also murdered two people: a white man, Walter West, whose name is almost never mentioned in accounts of the group, and a Jewish radio talk show host whose name is always mentioned. The Feds burned Mathews to death during a fiery shootout in Washington state.
Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was also apparently a big fan of the novel, which he’d formerly sold at gun shows and given to friends.
According to Pierce, McVeigh’s bomb was not modeled after the bomb in the novel. McVeigh’s was far more sophisticated and operated by a different trigger mechanism.
The bomb in the novel was an ammonium nitrate fertilizer and fuel oil bomb, while McVeigh’s was an ammonium nitrate fertilizer and nitromethane bomb. Nitromethane is a powerful liquid explosive used as a rocket and racing fuel. It is unstable like nitroglycerine, but less sensitive.
Of the Oklahoma City bombing, Pierce said:
I feel as sorry as anyone else if a little white kid gets killed in one of these things. For that matter, I feel bad if a white kid gets killed in an automobile accident. But I don’t advocate that we ban automobiles because people get killed in them, including innocent people who might have grown up to be great scientists or poets. In the same way, I am not in favor of calling off a war because some border incidents or battles take innocent lives. Actually, the sooner the war to save our people takes place the better, because even more innocent lives will be lost if we wait. The sooner such a war, the cleaner it will be. It’s going to be a mess later on. (Robert S. Griffin, The Fame of a Dead Man’s Deeds: An Up-Close Portrait of White Nationalist William Pierce, 2001, p. 172)
Pierce modeled The Turner Diaries after an obscure anti-Communist epistolary novel, The John Franklin Letters (New York: The Bookmailer, 1959). The book was given to him in 1974 by Revilo Oliver, who suggested fiction to Pierce as a medium for conveying whites’ message, since most people don’t read the kind of nonfiction published by the NA.
Interestingly, the anonymous author of The John Franklin Letters, though not a racialist, presciently anticipated Jewish hate speech laws as early as 1959.
According to Hamilton Barrett, creator of the Pioneer Little Europe concept [85-page prospectus by the author], another inspiration for The Turner Diaries was the Establishment’s own Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla (1969) written by part-Negro, part-Italian Brazilian Communist Carlos Marighella.
Pierce wrote The Turner Diaries, one chapter per issue of Attack!, over a three-and-a-half year period. He was careful to include at least one scene of violence or heightened action per installment to keep readers hooked. He wrote the episodes quickly because deadlines were short.
In my mind I wasn’t writing a book. It was a series of installments of a story for Attack!. It was just an experiment. I thought, let’s see how this goes. I didn’t have a detailed theory about the impact of fiction or the plot planned out. I just thought I’d put some messages in fictional form and see if that would make it more accessible to some types of people, and off I went, one episode per issue. I never imagined it would become a book. (Griffin, p. 246)
Had he known the book would receive as much attention as it did, he said, he would have attempted to do a better job in the writing. He didn’t think The Turner Diaries was well written or possessed literary merit. In Pierce’s view, Hunter was much the better book.
I’m no blind adherent of the “show-don’t-tell,” anti-narrative dogma of fiction writing, but in my estimation Hunter is nevertheless marred by excessive ideological didacticism.
Of course, both novels are written like that. Biographer Robert Griffin characterized The Turner Diaries as composed of alternating sets of “mini-lectures” and “increasingly horrifying [scenes] of violence.” And Pierce himself admitted, though evidently not perceiving it as a fault, “You have a lot of long [ideological] monologues both in The Turner Diaries and Hunter.”
Despite my liberality when it comes to use of narrative, Pierce was too heavy-handed on that score. Subtlety would have been better: more showing, less preaching.
The Turner Diaries tells the story of a future white revolutionary group called the Organization. It is written in the form of diary entries by the protagonist, Earl Turner. The Organization ultimately wages a full-scale war against the Jewish-dominated US government, defeating the anti-white forces in the end.
A scene in the novel made famous by the media is the bombing of the FBI building in Washington, DC, an action in which Earl Turner participates.
Shortly after the incident, Turner becomes a probationary initiate to a select inner circle of the Organization called the Order. Dressed in a monk’s robe and standing in a circle with five other Organization members, Turner swears an oath to the Cause and allegiance to his fellows. Thereafter his life belongs wholly to the Order.
The initiation ceremony “shook me to my bones and raised the hair on the back of my neck,” Turner wrote in his diary. “Today, I was, in a sense, born again. I know now that I will never again be able to look at the world or the people around me or my own life in quite the same way.”
Another famous scene in the novel is the “Day of the Rope,” in which thousands of white traitors, including those who have engaged in interracial sex with non-whites, are hung from trees and lampposts.
Nuclear blasts staged by the Organization kill 14 million people in New York City, with another 5 million expected to die from aftereffects.
The view is expressed that the “millions of White people who died, and who have yet to die before we are finished” are not really “innocents” because they allowed themselves to be subjugated by Jews in the first place. “In the Creator’s account book,” that is the way things are reckoned.
During the course of the action Earl Turner is captured by government forces. Tortured by a member of Israeli military intelligence, he reveals crucial information about the Order rather than killing himself with a cyanide capsule he’d been issued to prevent such an eventuality. His information causes substantial damage to the Organization.
After escaping his captors, Turner is placed on trial by an Order tribunal and convicted.
But he is offered a reprieve. He can remain on probationary status with the Order if he agrees to carry out an important mission “whose successful completion can reasonably be expected to result in your death.”
Turner accepts the proposal, and two days before his mission receives the rite of Union making him a full member of the Order. He describes his fellow participants in the ceremony as “real men, White men, who are now one with me in spirit and consciousness as well as in blood.”
Alone, he flies an old cropduster carrying a nuclear bomb into the Pentagon in a suicide mission that destroys the System’s military command center. Ultimately, this enables the rebels to triumph. After the Revolution, Turner’s name is inscribed in the “Record of Martyrs.”
In the book’s Epilog it is explained that the triumphant Organization resorted to a combination of chemical, biological, and radiological means over a period of four years to effectively sterilize “16 million miles of the earth’s surface, from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific and from the Arctic Ocean to the Indian Ocean,” thereby creating the “Great Eastern Waste.”
The Waste remained a threat for a century thereafter as the poisons slowly dissipated, and would remain dangerous for perhaps another hundred years due to “bands of mutants” roaming the wastelands. They would have to die before “White colonization” could again establish a human presence throughout the vast area.
Hunter
Pierce wrote the first chapter of Hunter in 1984, and finished the rest of the book in a single year, 1989. Both Tim McVeigh and his associate Terry Nichols owned copies of Hunter.
After the success of The Turner Diaries, Pierce became convinced that he could do a much better job with a second novel.
With Hunter, Pierce felt he had accomplished his objective: “I do think I was a much better writer of fiction with [Hunter] than with The Turner Diaries. I see it as ironic that The Turner Diaries has had such a big impact and, at least so far, Hunter hasn’t. But I think that is not related to the quality of the two books.” (Griffin, p. 247)
In particular, The Turner Diaries had had no character development. “Earl Turner,” Pierce said, “sprang full-blown into the world in the beginning of the story and he didn’t change throughout the whole novel.” (George Michael, “The Revolutionary Model of Dr. William L. Pierce,” Terrorism and Political Violence, 15 [Autumn 2003]: 62-80.)
Therefore, in the second book protagonist Oscar Yeager (the German word for “hunter” is “Jäger”) starts off, according to Pierce, “as a typical idiot conservtive who can see the niggers but cannot see the Jews, because the Jews are much less visible. So he learns as he goes. And the idea is that maybe the reader of the book will learn as he goes too by identifying with Oscar Yeager” (Michael, 71).
Fiction really can be a powerful medium for getting ideas across. I thought about how other people, including those who see things in the opposite way from how I see them, have used this medium so effectively. I formulated an explanation, which I am sure is not original, as to why fiction if it is done right has such a powerful impact on people. Simply, the reader—or television watcher or movie viewer or playgoer—comes to identify with the protagonist. And once that happens, you’ve got the person where you want him. He vicariously experiences the action and comes to care about the protagonist. The reader develops a kind of rooting interest in how things turn out for the protagonist. If something is well-written, the reader starts to think as the protagonist does and—the most powerful thing of all—if the protagonist learns something or comes to believe in something, if he changes his ideas, the reader tends to do the same thing, he changes too. You have a powerful teaching tool, a persuasive tool. (Griffin, p. 246)
Biographer Griffin refers to the bloody violence in Pierce’s novels as “cathartic” or “therapeutic” (Pierce’s own word) for the author. Many readers of both novels must have felt the same way.
After all, in real life it’s wrenching to see decent people always losing and evil people always winning: imprisonments, tortures, assassinations, totalitarianism, wars, mass slaughters, genocide. The perpetrators, the criminals, always win.
In Pierce’s world, in stark contrast, the sanctimonious, star-studded “People’s Committee Against Hate,” pressing an over-eager Congress and media to pass the Horowitz Bill outlawing all organizations that restrict membership on the basis of race, banning all books and printed matter that might “promote racial hatred,” and imprisoning for 10 years anyone who verbally denigrates members of other races or criticizes an anti-racist member of his own race, are blown to bits while meeting in a church.
Hunter tells the story of Oscar Yeager, a former combat pilot in Vietnam who is now a yuppie Defense Department consultant living in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC. Disturbed by the race mixing, homosexuality, drugs, non-white immigration, and declining white population, he feels compelled to fight the evils afflicting America in the 1990s. He declares personal war on the media, liberals, and the corrupt and irresponsible politicians presiding over the destruction of his race and country.
In a totalitarian system where freedom of speech and association and genuine democracy no longer function, there is a potential revolutionary spectrum: lone wolf (one person)—leaderless resistance (small, isolated cells)—organization/s. Yeager begins as a lone wolf but evolves to more of an organizational perspective after joining a National Alliance-type group called the National League.
Pierce explained that Hunter was not an endorsement of the lone wolf/leaderless resistance approaches. And while he was clearly committed, philosophically, to the organizational approach, subconsciously or otherwise he did not dismiss out of hand the other methods.
For example, he honored Robert Mathews, spoke respectfully of Timothy McVeigh, dedicated Hunter to Joseph Paul Franklin, a murderer of interracial couples, and in the last sentence of the book has Yeager contemplating returning to “hunting.”
The climax of Hunter occurs when Yeager has a showdown with William Ryan, a ruthless FBI anti-terrorism official he secretly works for.
Pierce described Ryan as a conservative: “a very strong and free-thinking, independent sort of conservative,” “basically pro-government,” “not fundamentally a racist” (Griffin, p. 248).
Although Ryan is unquestionably anti-Semitic according to ADL/SPLC/government/media standards, in the book he is willing to ally with Jews.
In contrast to Yeager, Ryan rejects thoroughgoing anti-Semitism and racism, desiring instead to manipulate the System, undemocratically and unlawfully to be sure, to achieve his objective of creating social order.
Ryan perceives himself as aligning with the forces of history rather than combating them. He speaks of “the forces of history” and “historical inertia”:
If you had made a serious study of history like I have you might have recognized certain general facts of historical development. History has enormous historical inertia. It moves tectonically, like a crustal plate in the earth. It has built up its motion over a long period of time. That motion is driven by historical forces. There is simply no turning such a development around. The most one can hope to do is understand its dynamics and learn how best to adapt to it. That’s what I intend to do. You, on the other hand, want to ignore the laws of history and charge head-on into the forces that are carrying America in the direction she’s going. In particular, you want to tackle the Jews head-on. You can’t win that way.
Yeager ultimately ends the impasse by putting a bullet in Ryan’s head.
Conclusion
Some readers will understand my surprise, decades ago, when I learned there was a large and enthusiastic audience for the way of thinking expressed in these novels.
In my view, it confirms my hypothesis about why the Jews are worshiped—or one reason they’re worshiped. That is, their incredible brutality, criminality, and utter contempt for non-Jewish life. Many people admire brutality no matter who’s dishing it out, or to what ends.
Pierce’s novels provided insight into a mindset I had not suspected when I read his nonfiction. I immediately understood that I was peering directly into his mind, his true soul, and that both were far different from my own.
I knew this also from reading his clearly written and very interesting Cosmotheism essays, his seminal lecture “Our Cause,” and so forth. But nowhere near as forcefully as from the novels.
Pierce told Robert Griffin that he was both Earl Turner and Oscar Yeager. “Actually I put myself in the place of every character in the book when I am dealing with him. I asked myself what I would say and how I would respond to something that was happening to him” (Griffin, 248).
From the standpoint of fiction technique this resulted in excessive flatness or one-dimensionality in his characters.
Pierce was especially inept, in my view, at portraying romantic and sexual relationships.
At any rate, it is clear that a certain mindset and spirit pervaded the novels, a mindset and spirit I found quite alien.
The novels, he acknowledged, are “going to get a more sympathetic reading from people with a similar mentality to mine, I understand that.” All the “bloodshed and suffering and violence” aren’t there because “I’m bloodthirsty [he clearly was] or an anarchist or just trying to shock. It’s there because that’s the way I think history works.”
Some people read The Turner Diaries, Pierce continued,
and it knocks them off their chair. They really relate to the book. [This is clearly true—in spades.] “Damn, this makes sense!” they think—and the ideas stick in their minds, and it’s not just a momentary thing.
So while some people read The Turner Diaries and are horrified, there are many others who are deeply affected by the book. And contrary to what the “horrifieds” believe, these others and I are not their inferiors. If these horrified people are really going to understand the ideas and incidents in the book, they are going to have to come to grips with the fact that their reaction to these incidents has to do with the limits in their mentality as much or more than the limits they attribute to my mentality or that of the people who like the book. (Griffin, pp. 163-64)
None of this, however, vitiates the importance of Pierce’s writings. One can study his nonfiction without embracing the man’s peculiar values and psychology as exposed in the novels.
Indeed, so much intelligence, insight, and guidance is contained in the nonfiction (even in the fiction, for that matter) that it would be foolhardy for whites unsympathetic to the novels to ignore his work or fail to examine it because of their opinions of Pierce the man. (For I am afraid that Pierce’s fiction really does provide an open window into his soul.)
My own mind works independently. I don’t swallow anyone’s ideas whole. I am not even particularly ideological, because facts, circumstances, and context are always determinative. I accept things or reject them based upon morality and my understanding of the facts.
By “morality” I do not mean an excuse for doing nothing, or failing to take a stand. On the contrary, morality imposes obligations.
For example, if facts demonstrate that a certain gang of evil haters are bent upon the destruction of freedom in order to commit genocide and establish a global dictatorship, morality does not permit one to bow down to them, serve them, worship them—or even do nothing.
It compels one to act. That is moral obligation. Truth and morality, moreover, compel hard choices.
The worse the enemy, the more powerful, the more evil and criminal, the more fevered his hatred and determination, the harder the choices become.
But they never go away.
21 comments
One would expect that the “People’s Committee Against Hate” from Pierce’s novel Hunter would rather meet in a synagogue than in a church, for it looks like a copy of the ADL.
For the rest, I repeat what I have said about Pierce elsewhere : I admire his intelligence but condemn his morals.
His “Cosmotheism” too was a creation he was spiritually unfit for.
The People’s Committee was meeting in a Congregational church. It was a coalition of the leaders of 30 or 40 groups, “replete with cardinals, bishops, rabbis, and right reverends.”
On the platform were two governors, three Congressmen, a Senator, an Irish Catholic cardinal and a prominent rabbi (joint heads of the “National Judeo-Christian Interfaith Council”), two bishops, a TV talk show host, two leading Hollywood actors, a much-acclaimed feminist writer, the head of a homosexual rights organization, and the president of the NAACP.
“Barry Shapiro” of the ADL was master of ceremonies.
Pierce had the liberals down cold. He understood them completely and didn’t like them. He was no conservative.
Andrew Hamilton is right to comment: “It is crucial that we build upon the past accomplishments of our best thinkers rather than continuously striving to reinvent the wheel every generation as people die, are murdered, jailed, or otherwise silenced.” This isn’t simply a problem for White nationalists in America. In France, the influence of luminaries like François Duprat, Maurice Bardèche, and Jean Thiriart has practically evaporated. They may have a few readers and admirers here and there, but they have no real students or heirs.
Hamilton’s comment on Pierce’s work are also true of the thinkers I have mentioned: “Pierce’s vast output, which, though multifaceted, is nevertheless highly coherent, exists only in fragmented form. It is impossible to grasp holistically unless the reader is already thoroughly familiar with the man and his work — which, of course, most people are not.” Assembling a substantial collection of their works can be very difficult, time consuming, and expensive.
The fact is that the work of these men was not properly appreciated either during or after their lifetimes. Indeed, I believe that Francis Parker Yockey remarked that his writings were valued more by his enemies than by his friends.
We need to make the best use of our best thinkers during and after their lifetimes. The question is, why don’t we do this? Why don’t we give men of great ability the recognition and support they deserve, why don’t we follow their lead, why don’t we build upon their works?
White Republican in blockquote:
1. “We” don’t do this because all of these “activities” operate outside of a greater organizational framework. Where is the sequel to “The Turner Diaries?” There just might be a better version of this out, called “Jacks War,” authored by C. C. Cochran, (thankfully!) edited by Kevin Alfred Strom, and available from Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
The model for finally getting some comprehensive solution together is Harold Covington’s Northwest Republic, which seems to overwhelm all but the best of us even from the safe distance of an intellectually solid analytical model.
Pierce conspicuously avoided all attempts at political organization, and my speculations concerning this are a matter of record. Metapolitical formulations require temporal bridges, and effective temporal bridges require political organization, starting at the Family level. All such formulations were never formulated by Pierce.
2. We don’t “give men of great ability the recognition they deserve simply” because our foundational postures have the virtues of intellectual correctness, and organizational ineffectiveness. Remember Sam Francis, who had the best answer he could derive from his conservative political foundation. The simplest of organizations – his publisher’s shunning him – was enough to reduce him to abject destitution I repeat destitution, and all but total psychological and personal invalidation from those whose favor he so ardently desired. He simply could not conceptualize the fact that he loved an Ideal, while missing the FOUNDATION of that “Ideal,” at its best.
3. We don’t “follow their lead” because either they lead us to a place greater than we can comprehend (for many of us, the Northwest Republic as a Racial Homeland), or they “lead us” nowhere. The example of Pierce comes to mind.
4. We don’t “build upon their works” because White Nationalism has historically defined itself in terms of what it was AGAINST. Fighting against something is good for one election cycle, two at the most, before The Opposition simply reframes and redefines the issue, making a nullity of our single issue. Our issue is the illegals? Define “legal” as a matter of law, and redefine them legally as “legals.” How many more times does Charlie Brown want to lead with his jaw?
And, to what end are we building upon these works? “Imperium” is a masterful work of philosophy, and the Northwest Republic is the only vehicle adequate for its expression. With no end to pursue, we are reduced to chasing our tails like helpless little puppies.
And, “building upon their works” requires cash. I am heartened that Counter-Currents has made the money it has during its current fund raiser. I contribute monthly, regardless, but more has been contributed than ever before, from a handful of people who recognize the magnitude of the seemingly insurmountable opportunities before us. That’s more than Yockey, Oliver or Francis ever had, and is heartening, indeed. The Management at Counter-Currents knows how little their supporters have, and how faithful they are in giving what they can.
THAT is the mustard seed faith we need.
We just need more of it, and my profound gratitude is extended to those who contribute regularly.
A few comments by way of a response:
1. I occasionally use the term “we” as shorthand for “White nationalists in general” or “people on our side,” although “we” is not really appropriate for a collectivity or category of people lacking cohesion.
2. I believe the “organizational framework” we need requires what the National Democratic Party of Germany calls the “three tiers” of cultural, community, and political activism. I also believe that these forms of activism require a variety of organizational structures, which David Ronfeldt categorizes as tribes, institutions, markets, and networks, and that these structures should work with each other rather than against each other.
Cultural, community, and political activism can support and interpenetrate each other in such a way as to create resilient and expansive networks.
Too many people think of activism and organization in exclusive, centralist, and subjectivist terms. They view things in zero-sum terms. They think that the only forms of activism and organization that are valid are those that interest and engage them as individuals. They regard other forms of activism and organization as intrinsically unproductive and wasteful. They regard resources (money, time, skill, effort) invested in projects other than their own as fungible and best invested in their own projects.
However, resources invested are projects are not as fungible as people sometimes seem to think they are — not even money. I don’t have much money to give, but if I did, I would donate more money to forms of activism that interest me, that engage me, that I understand. I believe the best way for me to work is according to my interests and abilities, and that I should accordingly devote my time, skill, and effort to cultural rather than community or political activism. We all have our particularisms. We all have our particular place, our particular skills, our particular interests. We should respect these things and make the most of them. What we should not do is turn our particularisms into subjectivisms.
Comparing forms of activism and organization can be like comparing apples and oranges. Among other things, they involve different economies, timeframes, risks and hazards, and performance measures. Some forms of activism and organization may be more expensive, more time consuming, more dangerous, and more difficult than others, but this does not mean that they should be rejected or scorned.
3. We need to take the cultural and practical formation of White nationalists much more seriously. I believe we need something like the structures of the Front National described by Christopher Flood:
“For its part, the FN has created increasingly sophisticated organizational structures for developing and communicating its ideology . . . Since 1988 this area of the party’s activity has been coordinated by the Délégué Général and his staff. The Délégation Générale includes a number of different sections. The propaganda section produces posters, tracts, leaflets, audio and video cassettes, etc. There is a section responsible for organizing major demonstrations, commemorations, festivals, public meetings, and so forth. A training section runs the Institut de Formation Nationale (IFN) to educate activists and organize conferences, series of evening lectures, etc. The study section produces reports and brochures to provide arguments for use by the president and the movement. The communication section deals with press releases and monitors the media. . . . There is a section devoted to spreading the FN’s intellectual influence. This includes the Conseil Scientifique, which brings together the party’s leading intellectuals. It produced the theoretical journal Identité . . . The journal has served as a laboratory and showcase of ideas which can subsequently be distilled into the party’s manifestos.”
In short, the Front National has sections responsible for (a) producing propaganda, (b) organizing events, (c) educating and training members, (d) producing media for educating members, (e) public relations, and (f) developing and promoting ideology at a high intellectual level. These are the kind of structures that a modern political movement needs if it is to put its members to constructive work.
4. As I have previously remarked, we should organize our work so that it is both inclusive (every person who is fit to work should do work commensurate with their abilities) and anagogical (it should raise the average quality and quantity of work). As Friedrich Nietzsche said, “Each individual, according to his gifts, must be so placed that he does the best that it is in him to do.” And we should ask ourselves James C. Scott’s question: “To any planned, built, or legislated form of social life, one may apply a . . . test: to what degree does it promise to enhance the skills, knowledge, and responsibility of those who are a part of it?” We should favor forms of activism and organization that are conducive to the development of metis at all levels. We should also do more to put work within the view and the reach of people, we should have a policy of full and appropriate employment.
This is very helpful. Mike P. and I try to do all of the FN functions outlined above, plus other things too. Naturally, they can accomplish more because they have more people, more money, and have people focus on their talents. Jean-Marie Le Pen does not, for instance, also empty the PO box, run errands, do accounting, and package books for shipment
Enabling people to focus on their talents is extremely important. Some organizers and activists are reduced to a state of mediocrity because they have to do too many things to do and too much work to do. They are not in a position to work effectively or efficiently. They cannot work on developing their strengths. They are trapped in routine — which, as Jean Ousset said, is the death of action — or management by crisis. Their work has many missing or defective links because they have to be jacks of all trades.
To make better use of people of above average talents, it is necessary to make better use of people of average talents.
Napoleon Bonaparte once effectively remarked that the quality of an army is determined by the quality of its officer corps. We might likewise observe that the value of a nationalist organization is determined by the quality of its cadres. Of course, there are many things that determine the quality of an organization, but it is appropriate to emphasize the importance of cadres. Nationalists need to put a lot more work into developing cadres.
Maurice Bardèche’s conception of the fascist ethic is pertinent in this context:
“Fascists do not believe that man is naturally good, they believe neither in progress nor in the irreversible meaning of history. They have this ambitious idea that men have the power to make, at least partially, their destiny. They think that the revolutions of history certainly have causes and preparations of all kinds, but that they have been finally determined and led by the energy of a man or of a group, without which these revolutions would not have taken place. They therefore regard the victories and the defeats as the result of a mixture of distant causes, of momentary chances, and of the stubborn will of men that one cannot put into an equation, and they do not despair that man can, by force of prudence and energy, resist events. They notably believe that it is up to those responsable for an action to develop in their people the qualities that will enable it to survive and not to yield before adversity.
“The goal of the fascist state is therefore to form men according to a certain model. Contrary to democratic states, fascist states do not hesitate to teach a morality. The will and the energy of which the nation disposes appears to them as its most precious capital, they place it at the premier rank, and they cultivate the collective qualities which forge the national energy and protect it. They therefore seek to develop as national qualities discipline, the taste for order, the love of work, and the sentiment of duty and honor. In the performance of everyday tasks, these principles of national morality are expressed by the sense of responsibilities, the sense of solidarity, the consciousness of the duties of command, and the sentiment of being in one’s place in an accepted order and in an important task. These sentiments are not taught in schools by phrases written on a blackboard. . . . Discipline is born in action neither by a magic wand nor in response to any grandiloquent appeal: it is a mark of esteem that the people gives to those who lead it, and a regime must earn it everyday by the seriousness of its action and the sincerity of its love for the country. The discipline of a nation is a weapon which is forged like the discipline of an army, it is said, it is a treasure that must be protected, but it is also and it is above all the reward of men who give themselves entirely to their task and who are themselves the example of courage, of unselfishness, and of honesty.” (Qu’est-ce que le fascisme? [Paris: Les Sept Couleurs, 1961], pp. 188-190.)
This is the ethic that should animate nationalist cadres.
I’m planning to put together some ideas relating to structures that can direct and support work of an “agitprop” nature.
Great man! I do not see how anybody in the White Nationalist movement can critisize him. I wish his books would come out in hardback editions.
Unless sooner or later we got handy editions of Pierce’s complete works under a single cover on very thin paper like the Bible (just as I have the complete works of Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde and Dostoyevsky at home).
“The books, especially The Turner Diaries—which I believe has significantly outsold Hunter—were highly popular. The sales figure I have usually seen for The Turner Diaries is 300,000 sold by 2001, which makes it a bestseller by conventional publishing standards. But this figure was achieved in the face of complete blockage from normal sales and distribution channels.”
Another measure of the popularity of The Turner Diaries is the number of languages into which it has been translated. It appears to have been translated into German, French, Portuguese, Czech, Swedish, and Greek. Needless to say, The Turner Diaries is banned in many countries.
How feasible would it be for CC to publish The Complete Works of William Pierce? I know it’s easier said that done. I have no idea how much work would be involved in a project like that.
This would be a tragedy.
His enormous contribution to the cause of white survival will suffer greatly as a result, disappearing down the memory hole in relatively short order.
If CC can’t do it, if somebody out there with access to Pierce’s source material did nothing but dump the raw text in a Word doc or InDesign with minimal formatting, that would be better than nothing.
I don’t think it is possible, simply because the rights belong to the National Alliance.
Why doesn’t the National Alliance publish “The Best of Attack! and National Vanguard Tabloid” again? It has been out of print for quite some time now.
“The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.”
Therefore, I assume the answer to your question is lack of financial wherewithal, probably the same reason the Who We Are book never materialized. The latter project was announced in 2008.
Also, The Best of Attack! and National Vanguard Tabloid has a unique, oversized format designed to convey the look and feel of the original tabloid, which it does very successfully. It contains many illustrations from the original articles. It is no doubt difficult and costly to reproduce.
The American racialist right, indeed the American hard right, has always been starved for money. Those in power understand that money is oxygen to any movement, so they make certain there is none.
I offered to publish both Who We Are and an anthology of Pierce’s best essays (actually, I was thinking of two collections, one call Our Cause, containing philosophical writings, and the other The Measure of Greatness, containing portraits of great men, e.g. Hitler, Rockwell, Dostoevsky, Savitri Devi, Kipling, “The Men of the Alamo,” and other such writings, which are among Pierce’s best), for which I offered what I thought was a fair (and negotiable) deal, financially speaking, given our very limited capital. There was no interest, so I think that the problem is more than just lack of money.
I have had an experience similar to Greg’s. When I have contacted them (about books such as the one mentioned above) they have simply not answered.
It is most reprehensible that many important books have not been reprinted or published. With modern, low cost, print-on-demand technology available today, I don’t think that it is so much an issue of funding, as it is a lack of will, or purpose. Just look at what Greg Johnson has accomplished in this regard. The IHR, under Weber, for example, is always soliciting for donations, yet won’t put Hoggan’s important book THE FORCED WAR back into print, when it could inexpensively make money doing so. The same applies to the NA, with their rights to the excellent publication BEST OF ATTACK & NATIONAL VANGUARD, and Pierce’s collected articles and upublished works. Overall, in this regard, I think that Griffin’s biography of Pierce is a very good expostion of his thoughts and ideas, yet, even it is not being sold here @ counter-currents.
1. The IHR is moving toward putting its out of print books back into print with print on demand.
2. The Griffin book is readily available from Amazon.com. We don’t stock a lot of books, because we don’t have the capital and space to maintain stocks, and we spend enough time packaging and shipping our own books, and the books we do stock. So we are hesitant to take on new titles. We have to reserve most of the little capital we do have for producing our own books.
Junghans:
Solar General might still be online, and might have a useful variety of Pierce writings in PDF.
Just an idea.
William Ryan represent the modern American white conservative, the people that Pierce considerated his main obstacle because they sided with the jews.
I must be a bad person I have no-problem with using biological, nuclear or conventional weapons to destroy the enemy. The jews will stop at nothing to destroy us. Remember, you can’t play-by-the-rules with the jews you’ll lose everytime.
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