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The Revolutionary Model of Dr William L. Pierce

Article  in  Terrorism and Political Violence · October 2003

DOI: 10.1080/09546550312331293137

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The revolutionary model of Dr William L. Pierce

George Michael

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 153tpv05.qxd 30/01/2004 12:30 Page 62

The Revolutionary Model of

Dr William L. Pierce

GEORGE MICHAEL

This essay explores the revolutionary model propounded by the late Dr William L.
Pierce, the founder of the National Alliance. Pierce was keenly aware of the opposition
arrayed against his movement and thus outlined a strategy that he saw as viable under
current conditions. Although his National Alliance organization was large by
American far right standards, it still constituted a relatively small movement.
Furthermore, Pierce assumed that the mainstream media were generally hostile to his
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message. Thus Pierce developed a revolutionary strategy to take these and other
factors into account. Although no previous single source fully captured his
revolutionary strategy, this essay surveys his previous writings and broadcasts so that
his model comes into clearer focus.

Introduction
The late founder and leader of the National Alliance, Dr William L. Pierce
(1933–2002), was arguably the most influential revolutionary theorist that
the American far right ever produced. His novel, The Turner Diaries, gained
him considerable notoriety and was even thought to have inspired several
episodes of right-wing violence including the campaigns of the Order and
the Aryan Republican Army, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the London
bombing spree of David Copeland.1 His sequel, Hunter, was alleged to have
contributed to the popularity of the ‘leaderless resistance’ approach favored
by some right-wing advocates of terrorism.
In the fractious milieu of the American far right, Pierce was seen as
somewhat of the elder statesman. He was obviously a man of considerable
intelligence – he was once employed as part of a research team at the Los
Alamos Scientific Laboratory in New Mexico as well as by a Jet Propulsion
laboratory in California. He later earned a PhD in physics from the
University of Colorado and went on to become a tenured professor at the
University of Oregon. However, he soon tired of academe and in 1966 went
to work as the editor of National Socialist World – a journal published by
the late George Lincoln Rockwell’s American Nazi Party. By 1970 Pierce
broke with that organization to join the National Youth Alliance under the

Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol.15, No.3 (Autumn 2003), pp.62–80

PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON
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T H E R E V O L U T I O N A RY M O D E L O F D R W I L L I A M L . P I E R C E 63
tutelage of Willis Carto. The group soon collapsed, but out of its remnants,
Pierce created the National Alliance in 1974, an organization that he would
continue to lead until his death in 2002. Pierce is best known for his
authorship of The Turner Diaries – a fictional story often characterized as a
‘blueprint for revolution’.
Despite the often sensationalist images of instigated race war and
impending societal collapse evoked in his novels, in practice, Pierce
harbored no illusions of a scenario (at least in the near future) in which
mobs of disaffected whites would flock to his movement and overthrow the
government in a mass revolutionary upheaval. Indeed, Pierce was a keen
reader of his times and realized that, at least in the present political and
social climate, the overwhelming majority of his targeted audience (white
gentiles) would ignore, or worse, be hostile to his message. Therefore, he
repeatedly articulated a strategy that would concentrate on reaching out to,
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what he referred to, as ‘the perceptive minority’.

In recent years both scholars and journalists have given a considerable
amount of attention to Dr Pierce. For example, both Brad Whitsel and
Renee Brodie have examined the eschatological and metaphysical aspects
of Dr Pierce’s contrived theology, ‘cosmotheism’.2 More recently, Robert
Griffin wrote an excellent biography, which focused on the development of
Pierce’s Weltanschauung.3 However, there still remains much confusion as
to where Pierce stood on the topics of revolution, propaganda and terrorism.
What is more, inasmuch as Pierce attained a veritable cult of personality
among the transnational racialist right, which highly regarded his authority,
it behooves scholars and other interested observers to gain a better
understanding of his revolutionary analysis. To do otherwise would be
remiss to one of the most significant contributions to radical right
revolutionary theory. This essay explores the revolutionary model as
propounded by the late Dr Pierce. Although Pierce never really fully
articulated his complete strategy in a single source, it is hoped that by
gleaning through his novels, selected American Dissident Voices
broadcasts,4 miscellaneous writings, and a video titled ‘America is a
Changing Country’ – released by National Vanguard Books (the publishing
arm of the National Alliance) not long before his death – that a clearer
picture of Pierce’s revolutionary model comes into focus.
However, to do so, requires the reader to develop at least a somewhat
phenomenological understanding of Pierce’s worldview. This is not
intended as endorsement or excusal, but rather to seek clarity and
comprehension. Therefore, this essay first explains the racial dynamics of
Pierce’s worldview and how it impinged on his revolutionary model.
Second, the significance of the Second World War and its consequences
are briefly discussed so that the reader can gain a better understanding of
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64 TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE

how Pierce saw that this epic struggle affected the contemporary era for
which his revolutionary model was constructed. Third, the central role of
the media in his model is explained. The fourth section examines Pierce’s
critique of contemporary right-wing terrorism. Pierce’s organizational
strategy is outlined and explained in the fifth section. The sixth section
briefly mentions the millennial vision, which Pierce endeavored to create.
Finally, the conclusion speculates on the future and significance of
Pierce’s model.

The Racial Dynamics of Pierce’s Worldview

Race dominated the worldview of William Pierce. He defined race in broad
terms to include not only the physical definition of race but also more
subjective elements as well including culture and spirituality. He viewed the
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various European-derived peoples as the evolutionary apex of the human

species. Counterpoised against them were Jews, whom Pierce saw as a
virtual monolithic and cohesive enemy which worked against whites to
prevent the latter from fulfilling its racial destiny. Pierce believed that each
race traveled on its own evolutionary trajectory. Although various non-
white racial groups may in some historical epochs clash with whites, Pierce
did not necessarily see them as inevitable enemies. However, Pierce
believed that Jews, as a group, constituted an implacable enemy and
existential threat to white gentiles. Furthermore, he argued repeatedly that
Jews in the post-Second World War era sought to mobilize non-whites in a
veritable race war against whites. To make his case, he frequently cited the
involvement of various Jewish individuals and groups in areas such as the
Civil Rights movement, immigration policy, and hate crime legislation.
Inasmuch as Pierce clearly believed that his race was threatened with
extinction, he saw his exhortation to revolution as defensive in order to
create a society that would secure its survival.5
Rejecting the tradition of American individualism, Pierce tended to see
politics through the prism of group dynamics and group competition. He
expressed numerous times the hubris of ‘individualists’ who refused to see
the role groups played in history. Furthermore, Pierce believed that some
prominent Jewish intellectuals, such as Ayn Rand, deliberately extolled
individualism to white gentiles as a way to diminish their ability to compete
with Jews.6 In his estimation America had become an atomized society in
which individuals selfishly pursued their self-interests without a sense of
responsibility to anything larger than themselves. In social science parlance,
one could say Pierce sensed a pervasive anomie in contemporary America.
Pierce challenged whites not to think of themselves as mere spectators, but
rather as participants in a historical process.
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T H E R E V O L U T I O N A RY M O D E L O F D R W I L L I A M L . P I E R C E 65
We need to look beyond our bank accounts and our personal hobbies
and our immediate circle of friends in order to find purpose. We need
to see ourselves set in a larger context. We need to understand how our
own lives are important as a part of the world around us: not just the
world of here and now, but also the world of the future and the world
of the past. We need to see our own lives as a part of the historical
process.
When we do this, when we see ourselves in context, then we begin
to understand our responsibility, our purpose. We begin to understand
what’s really important in our lives. We see that we have a
responsibility to the people who came before us and made it possible
for us to live, the people whose genius and work and sacrifice built our
world for us, built our civilization for us, gave us our culture. We have
a responsibility to ensure that their toil and sacrifice were not in vain.7
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According to Pierce, the individual only attains meaning within the

context of the group to which he belongs. In his novel Hunter, Pierce
expressed the notion that whites, unlike other racial and ethnic groups, were
not really fully aware of the dynamics of racial competition as one character
in the novel explained:
Progress comes when all the competitors in the game struggle for
survival, and the most fit wins. Our race isn’t struggling. It’s lying
down and dying. Our job is to wake it up. When it’s trying to survive,
it’ll whip all the other races with its hands tied behind its back.8
In order to meet this challenge, Pierce exhorted whites to face squarely
the danger they faced in a globalized multicultural world. Consistent with
this analysis, Pierce saw Jews as a powerful self-interested group, not
merely a collection of individuals who happened to share a particular
religion. Therefore it was sheer folly to attack only individual Jews as
explained by the character William Ryan in Hunter:
Now you can convince me that there were lots of German dentists and
newsstand operators and university professors who didn’t hate
Americans and who weren’t conspiring against us. They were just
ordinary Germans whose hands were full earning a living and raising
their families. Some of them may not have agreed with the policies of
the government. Is it fair to say that all these Germans were our
enemies?
[…] They thought of themselves as members of the German nation,
and we were at war with the German nation.
Your Jewish dentist pays his taxes too, with his contributions to the
United Jewish Appeal. He may not be in the front lines with the
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66 TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE

fellows from B’nai B’rith, but you can bet that he does his part on the
home front in lots of little ways. He votes for the politicians who vote
for your taxes to be sent to Israel …
Or maybe your dentist is one of those really rare Jews who doesn’t
pay a bit of attention to what the B’nai B’rith tells him and doesn’t
even buy Israel bonds. He still thinks of himself as a member of the
Jewish people – the Jewish nation, the Jewish race, whatever you
want to call the damned thing – is at war with our people, make no
mistake about it.9
According to Pierce, the racial struggle between whites and Jews reached its
zenith during the Second World War.

The Significance of the Second World War and its Consequences

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The Second World War loomed very large in the mind of William Pierce.
He viewed this epoch as the most critical watershed in the history of the
modern West, the consequences of which are still being felt to this day.
Like many other observers, he saw it as an ideological struggle in which
democracy triumphed over fascism. This however, according to Pierce, did
not redound to the favor of the West, but rather its possible destruction. The
war was a defining experience for what has been lionized in popular
parlance in recent years as ‘the greatest generation’. Furthermore, the
victory over fascism came to characterize the American nation in the
postwar era and added legitimation to its image as a defender of democratic
values in the realm of international relations. However, as Pierce saw it,
insofar as Hitler’s Third Reich extolled nationalism and racialism, white
Americans are now ideologically hamstrung from defending their racial
self-interests. According to Pierce, subsequent generations of western men
will have to pay for this as they no longer have an ideological basis on
which to defend their nations from harmful policies (e.g., massive third
world immigration) that will lead to their diminution and ultimate racial
extinction. To do otherwise is to repudiate the struggle against fascism and
hence the legitimacy of the American mission in the post-war era. For
Pierce, the cultural revolution of the 1960s, which so profoundly changed
the west, is a natural and direct consequence of the Axis defeat in the
Second World War.10 In his view the rise of the counterculture, which
commenced in the 1960s, was no mere spontaneous response to
contemporary conditions, but rather a calculated Kulturkampf to destroy
the underpinnings of Western civilization. As Pierce opined, the anti-war
and civil rights movements of this era set the country on a destructive
course from which it has yet to recover.11 The key factor in these
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T H E R E V O L U T I O N A RY M O D E L O F D R W I L L I A M L . P I E R C E 67
movements, which determined their success, according to Pierce, was the
support they received from the mass media.

The Centrality of the Media in Pierce’s Revolutionary Model

Perhaps no other strategic factor figured more prominently in Pierce’s
revolutionary model than that of the media. He repeatedly ascribed great
significance to the mass media of news and entertainment in his weekly
American Dissident Voices broadcasts. In the media age he saw the media
as, well, all powerful. According to Pierce, the media exert enormous
influence over the perceptions and the thought processes of their audience.
This can range from blatant propaganda to subtle advertising messages,
which encourage certain attitudes and lifestyles. What is more, Pierce
asserted that politicians and leaders are not immune from the influence of
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the media either. He contended that although they generally are not as
credulous as the masses, they nonetheless fear the power of the media, and
as a result, tailor their policies and opinions to conform to popular media
messages. To do otherwise would be to risk reprisals such as very negative
coverage in the media that could destroy a career.
Furthermore, according to Pierce, the media are not politically neutral in
that they only seek to maximize ‘the bottom line’. Rather they deliberately
work for the destruction of whites in all nations of the West and the United
States in particular. To make his point, National Vanguard Books has long
published an essay entitled ‘Who Rules America’, which asserts that the
mass media of news and entertainment are disproportionately owned and
managed by Jews.12 Furthermore, it is asserted that Jews, as a group, are
generally hostile to whites and seek to marginalize them, eventually to
extinction, but not through gulags or concentration camps. Allegedly more
subtle mechanisms are being employed such as, inter alia, encouraging
homosexuality, birth control, miscegenation, and non-white immigration.13
Why would whites willingly comply with such a putatively diabolical
plan against their own interests? According to Pierce, the vast majority of
whites – roughly 95 to 98 per cent – are not independent thinkers and will
go along with just about anything as long as they perceive it as popular and
fashionable. Ironically, Pierce often spoke derisively of ‘average’ white
Americans as he often referred to them as ‘couch potatoes’, ‘ball game
fans’, ‘Sally soccer moms’, ‘Joe six packs’, and ‘lemmings’. To Pierce,
most white Americans are biologically inclined to conform and obey
authority, regardless of what form it may take. This, he argued, developed
as part of the evolutionary process and enabled the western man to work
together in common endeavors and build complex societies. However,
Pierce warned that this predisposition to conform also entailed perils. If
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68 TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE

opportunistic leaders, who did not have the interests of their subjects at
heart, rose to the helm, the people were disinclined to resist as long as they
thought that others would follow as well. Pierce stressed this theme time
and again to which he referred it as the lemming factor:
In deciding what to believe, the lemming is interested only in what the
other lemmings believe – or in what he thinks they believe. It doesn’t
do any good at all to try to change a lemming’s opinion by showing
him factual evidence or by appealing to his ideals. The only way to
change a lemming’s opinion is to trick him into believing that all of
the other lemmings have changed their opinions.14
As Pierce saw it, the mass media were used to ‘morally disarm’ the
white population from mounting any effective resistance by inculcating
them with a profound sense of guilt and self-doubt through efforts such as
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Holocaust education programs, emphasizing white racism in the news, and

promoting the multiculturalism paradigm, which is often very critical of the
West. Moreover, as Pierce saw it, these media also foisted frivolous
diversions – ballgames, MTV, escapist movies – upon the masses to keep
them in a state of torpidity and apathetic to important issues. Pierce believed
that it was futile to try to influence such people as long as ‘aliens’
maintained an iron grip on the major media. In a sense, Pierce’s analysis
was not unlike a Marxian critique, which holds that the masses (whites for
Pierce, the proletariat for Marx) suffered mentally from ‘false
consciousness’ i.e., they identify with the group interests of their exploiters
and oppressors (a coalition of hostile non-whites and liberals led by Jews for
Pierce, the capitalist or bourgeois class for Marx). According to Pierce, this
false consciousness or ‘moral disarmament’ as he put it, was instilled by the
news and entertainment industry.

Pierce’s Critique of Contemporary Right-Wing Terrorism

The reckless image of him that his detractors depicted notwithstanding,
Pierce approached the issues of terrorism and revolution in a sober and
calculated manner. Although it may be fair to assume that he felt little
remorse about right-wing terrorism motivated in part by his writing, he
maintained a clear and realistic view of the subject and believed that the
societal conditions conducive to such activity had not yet arrived.
Commenting on Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing, Pierce
explained.
If one is waging a war against the government, civilians are going to
be killed. But you have to look at the bigger picture…Under a
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T H E R E V O L U T I O N A RY M O D E L O F D R W I L L I A M L . P I E R C E 69
circumstance like that, if it were part of a war, then a bombing of the
Oklahoma City sort is morally justified. But if you are going to
engage in a war you have to meet certain requirements. One of them
is you have to have a plausible strategy, a plan that can be reasonably
argued will get you what you want to achieve. If McVeigh was
throwing a single punch to send a message, then its moral justification
is debatable. You might well say that this was an overly expensive
message in that case.15
Pierce often spoke disparagingly about several ‘lone wolf’ right-wing
terrorists. Although he may have agreed with them on the basis of ideology
and shared goals, he remarked that their efforts were usually at best
ineffectual and at worst counterproductive.
Knowledge and discipline, those are the keys to our survival as a
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people: knowledge of what is really happening in the world and why,

and the self-discipline to deal collectively and effectively with the
very real threats to the future of our people, rather than expressing our
frustration in foolish and undisciplined acts of premature violence.
And if our knowledge leads us to anger, to rage of the sort that I felt
while living in Washington and of the sort that Benjamin Smith [On
the July Fourth weekend of 1999, Benjamin Smith, a former member
of the World Church of the Creator who had recently resigned from
the organization, embarked on a shooting spree in Illinois and Indiana
that left two dead and several injured] presumably felt while attending
the very Politically Correct University of Indiana, let us direct that
rage not at the random Black or Asian on the street, but rather at the
evil creatures who planned the government policies which are putting
more and more Blacks and Asians on our streets, policies which are
leading America into becoming a non-white country in the next few
decades.16
[…] Again, if you are angry at America’s internal enemies, do not
indulge yourself with a foolish, premature, and ineffective act of
violence. Control yourself. Don’t break laws. Don’t even talk about
breaking laws. In America today many people are serving long prison
terms for simply talking about committing illegal acts without having
actually done anything. They are prosecuted under the government’s
conspiracy laws.
You know, some people who are angry at the government actually
applaud acts such as Buford Furrow’s shooting up the Jewish
community center in Los Angeles. They believe that other people will
do similar things, independently, and the government won’t know
how to deal with it. I mean, if many angry men, who don’t even know
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70 TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE

one another, all do their shootings and bombings independently and

unpredictably, what can the government do to stop them?
Listen, don’t kid yourself! The government is perfectly capable of
countering illegal violence with illegal violence, and if there’s one
thing the government is good at its violence….
The monster [US government] is at war against America, against
our people, against our freedom, against our traditions, against our
children’s future, and it is a war to the death. So far the monster is
winning that war. If we want to change that, if we want to begin
winning instead of losing, then we must fight the monster with
intelligence and self-discipline, not with childish daydreams of
victory through drive-by shootings.17
Pierce is often associated with the notion of leaderless authorship for his
authorship of Hunter – a fictional story in which the protagonist, Oscar
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Yeager, embarks alone on a killing spree against interracial couples,

politicians and Jews. Furthermore, Pierce dedicated the book to Joseph Paul
Franklin – a former neo-Nazi and convicted serial killer responsible for the
deaths of approximately 20 people.18 Finally, it is worth noting that Jeffrey
Kaplan, a leading authority on the subject of the American far right, argues
that during the period from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, Pierce
cultivated a following of young reckless neo-Nazis who put into practice
lone-wolf terrorism.19
However, there is very little documentary evidence to suggest that Pierce
believed in the viability of sporadic acts of reckless violence, at least for
most of his political career.20 Despite the popular assertion that his novel
served as a paradigm of the leaderless resistance approach, Pierce claims
that propagandizing and not a call for terrorism, was the intention of the
book as he conveyed to the author in an interview:
GM: Is Hunter meant to be read as an advocacy of the leaderless
resistance approach?
WP: No it’s not. In the first place when I wrote the book, I might have
heard the term leaderless resistance, but it’s nowhere mentioned in the
book, and I certainly was not advocating that. The big difference
between Hunter and The Turner Diaries is that I hope I learned
something from the reaction to The Turner Diaries ... I came to
understand it. I mean, fiction, drama, generally is powerful because the
reader or the viewer puts himself into the position inside the skin, inside
the head of the protagonist if he can identify with the protagonist. Then
he not only experiences vicariously the action as it’s taking place but he
observes the world through the eyes of the protagonist. He hears the
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T H E R E V O L U T I O N A RY M O D E L O F D R W I L L I A M L . P I E R C E 71
thoughts of the protagonist. You know you have a lot of long
monologues both in the Turner Diaries and in Hunter.
[…] you see the Turner Diaries had no character development. Earl
Turner sprang full-blown into the world in the beginning of the story
and he didn’t change throughout the whole novel. So I said, ‘Jesus, this
could be a teaching experience because what I’ll do is I’ll have the
protagonist learn as he goes along, change his ideas. I’m going to have
the protagonist start off as a typical idiot conservative who can see the
niggers but cannot see the Jews, because the Jews are much less visible
… He didn’t understand the influence that the Jews had … 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 …’
But no, it’s hardly an advocacy of leaderless resistance. I mean,
Oscar Yeager was a lone wolf when he started but he changed fairly
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early in the book and came to the conclusion that was no way to get
things done. It was therapeutic for him. He was doing this for selfish
reasons. But if you really wanted to have an effect it would have to be
in an organizational context and that’s completely contrary to the
leaderless resistance thesis.21
All of that said, Pierce held little hope of creating the type of world he
wanted to build through conventional democratic measures. As he once put
it, ‘It’s not likely we’ll emerge from this mess in a peaceful, lovey-dovey
way.’22 Pierce believed in a gradual approach to terrorism with a preparatory
stage which emphasized propaganda and organization.

The Organizational Strategy

Much of the cogency of Pierce’s propaganda lies in his analysis of the
revolutionary right’s predicament. He is very cognizant of the opposition
arrayed against his movement. He offers no pie-in-the-sky solutions for his
followers. Instead he emphasizes building a revolutionary infrastructure in
which he can disseminate his message to more people. He has no illusions
of successfully confronting ‘the system’ at this particular point in his
struggle. He does, however, look for opportunities to spread his message
and expand his following.
The National Alliance’s Membership Handbook explains the
organizational structure. Inasmuch as the National Alliance rejects
democracy as an ‘organizational principle on both practical and theoretical
grounds’, it is not surprising that it is hierarchically organized with the
Office of the Chairman (the position held by the late Dr Pierce and currently
by Eric Gliebe) at the apex of the Alliance. The Chairman is part of the
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72 TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE

National Office, which includes numerous departments including

publications, catalog sales, radio and TV, membership coordination,
business operations, records, and physical facilities. Just below the National
Office are the various regional offices, which are composed of numerous
local units. Finally, individual members can be attached to local units or
simply be affiliated with the national organization without any connection
to local units.23 According to Pierce, ‘the structure of the National Alliance
was developed with the intention of providing tactical flexibility and the
ability to resist both external attack and internal subversion during a long
period of struggle’.24 Despite the seemingly autocratic leadership style,
Pierce commented that the structure of the National Alliance is ‘not a
hierarchy of privilege; it is a hierarchy of service’.25 Just how much the
National Alliance in reality corresponded to the organizational model as
described in the National Alliance Membership Handbook is open to
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question. In Pierce’s own words, the National Alliance struggled to survive

for much of its history, and for many years could not attract a sizable
membership. Presumably near the end of Pierce’s career, the National
Alliance developed more characteristics of a fully functioning organization
and its opponents began to take it more seriously.26
Instead of relying on the white masses, Pierced hinged his revolutionary
hopes on a small cadre of ‘independent thinkers’. He sought to discourage
the stereotypical disgruntled right-wingers from his organization and
instead reportedly focused on recruiting educated and productive people
with resources and authority. Ideally, Pierce hoped to attract college
professors, engineers, doctors, police officers, and other professionals to the
National Alliance. Pierce knew very well that building a revolutionary
movement would be no small task considering the opposition arrayed
against him and the general unreceptiveness of his targeted audience. This
required a substantial amount of preparatory work. The first priority was to
communicate effectively with as many people as possible. Towards that
end, Pierce sought to develop his own parallel – albeit more modest – media
through the production of leaflets, magazines, books, CDs, music, radio
broadcasts, and internet websites. Through these media, Pierce believed that
he could reach the ‘perceptive few’ that – in his estimation – compose one
to two per cent of the white population. Only by reaching more people
would the National Alliance be able to develop a critical mass necessary to
consider bolder propagandistic and revolutionary action.
Pierce determined that the best approach was to reach out to those
segments of the population occupying what is often referred to in the current
vernacular as ‘middle management’ that would be suggestible or receptive
to his message. This required formulating ‘self-evidently viable’
alternatives to the policies of the current US government:
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T H E R E V O L U T I O N A RY M O D E L O F D R W I L L I A M L . P I E R C E 73
Policymakers are a bit more intelligent and substantially better
endowed with self-discipline than the rank and file, but they are not
notably more courageous or less superstitious. In fact they are more
often terrified by the thought of being unfashionable than are their
organizational inferiors, because they have more to lose. This means
that our alternative must be one which already has been pounded into
their consciousness – and the consciousness of the rank and file as
well – until they are sufficiently familiar with it that they can a least
be persuaded that it could become the new fashion.27
Adequate compensation, Pierce argued, was vitally necessary to induce
policymakers to switch sides on important issues. As he saw it, competitors
to the status quo must convince policymakers that they could improve their
personal positions in the long run by supporting a new policy which
happens to be unfashionable at the moment. However, inducements – or
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carrots – must be followed with a credible stick. In that sense it was

important to convince policymakers that the danger to themselves was
greater in sticking to the old fashions than the danger in switching to the
new.
To Pierce, crucial to success was the application of leverage.
Interestingly, he viewed Jewish group strategies as exemplifying this
organizational approach.
The organizational strategy has been an appropriate one for the Jews,
and it is equally appropriate for any group whose members constitute
only a small minority of the population they want to persuade, and so
need the advantage of leverage in order to accomplish their task.28
Pierce saw a high leverage strategy as the most viable approach for a
movement that comprised only small numbers. Inasmuch as Pierce’s
following constituted a very small minority of the population he argued for
a strategy of leverage as the most viable approach for gaining influence and
achieving the Alliance’s goals:
Whether one is dealing with a formal, highly centralized structure or
a very loose and informal organization, the goal is leverage. Instead of
focusing all of his efforts on persuading the rank and file to change
their policies, the good strategist may direct a portion of his effort
toward the established policymakers.29
According to Pierce, most people are not rational, nor do they function
as free-thinking individuals. Rather, he argued that most people function
more as members of a group or as elements in a social milieu than as
individuals. Consequently, Pierce believed that his organization must deal
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74 TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE

with people in a group or organizational context in order to be effective on

a large scale. Pierce reasoned that there were basically two approaches
towards this end. The first was to attempt to persuade the great masses of
people directly through communication of his message. The second was to
seek to persuade the elites who occupied the echelons of influence in
various institutions. To Pierce, the two approaches were not really mutually
exclusive; rather the key to effectiveness was to know how much emphasis
to place on each approach as Pierce explained:
Which is the better way for changing the government’s policy
apparatus from a force for evil into a force for good: to attempt to
make each policeman individually do that which is contrary to his
nature by rebelling against his appointed supervisors – or to change
the interests and loyalties of a relative handful of superiors?
The answers depend on the details. If the history department heads,
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journal editors and police chiefs are Jews, and the rank-and-file
professors and cops are mostly our people, then only the first
approach has any merit. This is the case with most of the mass media,
for example, where there is no chance at all of changing the interests
of the fashion-setters. Fortunately, among professors and cops the
people at the top are far more open to persuasion. Even where
substantial headway can be made at the top of a group, however, it
remains necessary to saturate those at the bottom with our message: if
professors discover one fine morning that it has become permissible
for them to sing a new tune in class, they must at least be familiar with
the new lyrics.30
At the then present time, Pierce favored the development of a tight-knit
propaganda-utilizing cadre. This approach was perhaps the most feasible in
the current environment in which the far right’s activities are closely
monitored by law enforcement authorities31 (and the various non-
governmental organizations with which they work closely).32
To Pierce, virtually all contemporary institutions were thoroughly
corrupt with no hope of redemption. Pierce believed that although these
institutions were corrupt, they still contained decent individuals who would
be receptive to his message, which leads to another organizational priority.
Reaching, educating and inspiring these insiders was the centerpiece of
Pierce’s revolutionary model. To Pierce, in an age in which the stupefied
masses were hopelessly misled by the influence of the media, it was
unfeasible to seek to organize them into a revolutionary howling mob.
Instead of concentrating on solely storming the Bastille, Pierce thought it
more viable to recruit insiders who are already part of the machinery and
have access to the levers of power. When the proper revolutionary
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T H E R E V O L U T I O N A RY M O D E L O F D R W I L L I A M L . P I E R C E 75
conditions had arrived, they could then throw open the gates to their
ideological compatriots on the outside. Furthermore, Pierce believed that as
conditions in the world changed, leaders and other persons of influence
would change their calculations and act accordingly. However, in order for
them to act in accordance with a strategy favored by Pierce, it was necessary
to communicate his message:
Even now we are reaching a small but significant portion of white
America. We aren’t reaching the couch potatoes, of course; television
is required for that. But, with your support, we are beginning to make
a small difference in the thinking of independent-minded Americans.
The leadership stratum is becoming aware that the feelings and
thoughts we represent must be taken into account. As we keep on
pushing, keep on reaching more and more Americans with our
message, we will force at least some of America’s non-Jewish leaders
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to begin making new calculations about what is in their best interests.

And let us remember that that is all that matters to them: their own
interests. They collaborate with the Jews now, but they will turn
against the Jews without a moment’s hesitation when they have been
convinced that collaboration is no longer in their best interests.
Understanding that certainly gives us encouragement to persevere.33

The Millenarian Vision of Cosmotheism

Much has been made about Pierce’s novel The Turner Diaries. It is
frequently referred to as a ‘blueprint for revolution’, and the ‘bible of the
racialist right’.34 Despite these characterizations, there is really little
practical advice for would-be revolutionaries that can be gleaned from the
book. Rather, it is more expressive of Pierce’s chiliastic worldview in which
millennial themes feature prominently. The apocalyptic scenario depicted in
The Turner Diaries has a redemptive quality in that those characteristics of
the contemporary world Pierce deigned corrupt, decadent and corrosive, are
cleansed through great upheaval and destruction. Consistent with Roger
Griffin’s ‘palingenetic myth’ (i.e., process of death and rebirth) as the core
essence of fascism,35 Pierce posited that the old order must be destroyed and
rebuilt from the ground up. The great struggle and tribulation endured by
the ‘Organization’ (the term used to refer to the white racialist revolutionary
movement in the book) ultimately purifies and strengthens the surviving
remnants of the white population so that they can build a new civilization.
However, unlike previous European-derived civilizations, the civilization of
the ‘New Era’ will consciously and willfully seek an evolutionary path that
will enable it to reach divinity. Although some of his critics have questioned
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76 TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE

the sincerity of Pierce’s commitment to spirituality, a fair reading of his

material would indicate otherwise. Pierce occasionally invoked the
‘Faustian spirit’ as the guiding ethos of the ‘western man’. Furthermore, he
frequently argued that the malaise of western civilization was principally
neither political nor economic, but rather spiritual in nature.

Conclusion and the Future

On one of the days shortly before his death on 23 July 2002, Pierce chose Eric
Gliebe, the manager of Resistance Records (a branch of the National Alliance
that sells ‘white power’ music CDs primarily to a skinhead market), as his
successor to the National Alliance. His choice of leadership may indicate the
direction toward which he wanted to take the organization. The 39-year-old
Gliebe, a former boxer who fought under the moniker ‘the Aryan Barbarian’,
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has given high priority to recruiting teenagers into the organization through
the promotion of ‘white power’ music.36 Capitalizing on the provocative style
and lyrics in this genre of music, Pierce sought to channel the anger of
disaffected white youths into his brand of political activism. Furthermore, this
enterprise has proven to be very profitable (by far right standards) as it was
estimated that it took in approximately one million dollars in annual sales.37
Like his ideological mentor, Hitler, Pierce concentrated on recruiting young
members as he saw in them the future of his movement.
Although the current ‘war on terror’ has had a chilling effect on some
far right activists as they fear the government’s campaign against
international terrorism could turn inward against domestic dissidents as
well, the events surrounding 9/11 seem to have emboldened the National
Alliance. In recent months the National Alliance has demonstrated a
penchant for street activism, which has included several National Alliance
demonstrations at the Israeli embassy in Washington DC to protest against
American and Israeli policies in the Middle East and nationwide
distribution of literature to coincide with Jewish holidays and September
11.38 These efforts may indicate a desire to reach out to a larger audience
than the segments to which the organization has traditionally appealed. In
the final years of his life, Pierce occasionally offered veiled praise for
Islamic terrorists such as Osama bin Laden and increasingly spoke
admirably of Palestinian suicide bombers who were ‘paying a terrible price’
to liberate their land. The notoriety stemming from these activities has
earned the National Alliance the recognition as the most formidable entity
of the revolutionary racialist right. However, this reputation has come with
a cost as law enforcement authorities and non-governmental organizations,
such as the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center,
have sought to stymie the organization.39 Despite this opposition, the
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T H E R E V O L U T I O N A RY M O D E L O F D R W I L L I A M L . P I E R C E 77
National Alliance continues to attract recruits and publicity. Although the
National Alliance has never really broken out of the far right ghetto and
attained influence in mainstream politics and society, by far right standards
the organization is significant with an estimated membership of 1500–2000
at the time of Pierce’s death. Furthermore, many people in the far right
regularly listen to the American Dissident Voices radio program.40 Finally,
the widespread availability of the world wide web has made the propaganda
of Pierce and the National Alliance accessible to potential sympathizers
around the world. As a result, potential revolutionaries from different
orientations can draw inspiration from Pierce. Only the future can tell if
Pierce’s vision will ever be realized. Although the contemporary far right in
America is generally weak and loosely organized, Pierce formulated
arguably the most feasible revolutionary strategy that the movement had
ever produced. If the multicultural paradigm in America should falter, then
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conditions more conducive to revolution could manifest in the future.

Although deceased, it is likely that Pierce will long continue to inspire right-
wing extremists from beyond the grave. As such, his legacy could have a
significant effect on domestic terrorism well into this century.

NOTES

1. Statements by McVeigh seem to indicate that The Turner Diaries may have been
determinative in his choice of target and his decision to carry out the attack. See Lou
Michel and Dan Herbeck, American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City
Bombing (New York: Regan Books 2001) p.304. For more on the Order see Kevin Flynn
and Gary Gerhardt, The Silent Brotherhood (New York: Signet 1990). For more on the
Aryan Republican Army see Mark S. Hamm, In Bad Company: America’s Terrorist
Underground (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press 2001). For more on David
Copeland see Graeme McLagan and Nick Lowles Mr. Evil (London: John Blake Publishing
Ltd. 2000).
2. See Brad Whitsel, ‘Aryan Visions for the Future in the West Virginia Mountains’, Terrorism
and Political Violence 7/4 (1995) pp.117–39 and Brad Whitsel, ‘The Turner Diaries and
Cosmotheism: William Pierce’s Theology of Revolution’, Nova Religio 7/2 (April 1998),
http://www.sevenbridgepress. com/nova.whitsel.html. Renee Brodie, ‘The Aryan New Era:
Apocalyptic Realizations in The Turner Diaries’, Journal of American Culture 21/3 (1998)
pp.13–22.
3. Robert S. Griffin, The Fame of a Dead Man’s Deeds: An Up-Close Portrait of White
Nationalist William Pierce (Bloomington, IN: 1st Books 2001).
4. The American Dissident Voices program was launched by National Alliance Kevin Alfred
Strom in 1992. The ADV broadcasts are released on a weekly basis. Originally they were
broadcast via short-wave radio and selected radio stations. However, in the late 1990s they
were made available on the National Alliance’s website. A typical broadcast is about 25
minutes in length. Strom left the program in 1997 and Dr Pierce took over responsibility.
Through this medium, Pierce really came into his own as a far right propagandist as his
program developed a large following among the far right. Usually he began each program
with some current event as a launching point to get ‘behind the scenes’ of the news to
uncover alleged machinations of Jewish power. Upon Pierce’s death, Kevin Alfred Strom
resumed control of American Dissident Voices.
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78 TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE

5. Pierce was not alone in this assessment. The well-known conservative pundit, Patrick
Buchanan, marshaled demographic data in his book The Death of the West to illustrate the
same point. See Patrick Buchanan, Death of the West: How Dying Populations and
Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization. (New York: St. Martin’s Press
2002). Furthermore, demographic projections predicting the reduction of whites to minority
status by the year 2050 are generally held to be reliable by both mainstream and non-
mainstream commentators alike. Where they differ is on the normative implications of this
development. Multiculturalists and liberals generally applaud it. Neo-conservatives
generally argue that it is inconsequential as long as the current economic and political
system is maintained. So-called paleo-conservatives and extremists tend to see it as
amounting to cultural displacement at best and racial and ethnic genocide at worst.
6. Kevin MacDonald makes a similar argument with regard to the so-called Frankfurt School.
He argues that Jewish members of this clique sought to ‘pathologize’ Gentile group
affinities and by doing so, decrease the likelihood of collectivist anti-Semitic mass
movements. See Kevin MacDonald, The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of
Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements (Westport,
CT: Praeger 1998), pp.165–70.
7. William Pierce, ‘The Big Picture: A Bare-Boned Outline of our Present Predicament’
American Dissident Voices II/6 (June 1996).
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8. Andrew Macdonald, (pseudonym for William Pierce) Hunter (Hillsboro, WV: National
Vanguard Books 1978) p.40.
9. Ibid. pp.72–3.
10. For more on Pierce’s views on the Second World War see ‘America Since World War II’,
American Dissident Voices (7 Nov. 1992).
11. For more on Pierce’s views on the Second World War see Griffin (note 3) pp.51–2.
12. Research Staff of National Vanguard Books, Who Rules America (Hillsboro, WV: National
Vanguard Books 2000).
13. An academic from California State University, Kevin MacDonald, published a three-
volume series on the subject of Jewish–Gentile relations in which he came to very similar
conclusions. Essentially, MacDonald argues that through history, Jews have adopted an
‘evolutionary strategy’ that is at cross-purposes with the group interests of white Gentile
hosts. Consequently, as he sees it, anti-Semitism is reactive and serves as a group-oriented
defense mechanism against displacement in the realm of resource competition.
Interestingly, like Pierce, he discerns a Kulturkampf in which Jews allegedly seek to best
their Gentile rivals in the sphere of ideas. However, unlike Pierce, MacDonald’s analysis is
dispassionate and lacks stridency. Not surprisingly, MacDonald’s scholarship has gained
him high stature in the milieu of the far right. His trilogy includes: A People That Shall
Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy (Westport, CT: Praeger 1994;
Separation and its Discontents: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism
(Westport, CT: Praeger 1994); The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish
Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements (Westport, CT:
Praeger 1998).
14. William Pierce, ‘Those Who Care’, American Dissident Voices (6 Jan. 2001).
15. Griffin (note 3) p.165.
16. William Pierce, ‘Knowledge and Discipline’ American Dissident Voices V/7 (July 1999).
17. William Pierce, ‘Killing Little Children’ American Dissident Voices V/9 (Sept. 1999).
18. Franklin was once a member of the National Socialist white People’s Party (the successor
to the original American Nazi Party) – the same organization of which Pierce was also a
member. Jeffrey Kaplan asserts that Pierce surely knew Franklin. Jeffrey Kaplan,
Encyclopedia of White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical Right (Walnut Creek, CA:
AltaMira Press 2000) p.247.
19. For example, Kaplan identifies Joseph Tommasi, James Mason and Joseph Paul Franklin.
According to Kaplan, Pierce inspired Tommasi to create the National Socialist Liberation
Front (LSF) – a small neo-Nazi sect that stylistically patterned itself on the model of far left
underground groups that were active during that period (e.g., the Weather Underground and
the Symbionese Liberation Army). A very small underground core of the group carried out
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T H E R E V O L U T I O N A RY M O D E L O F D R W I L L I A M L . P I E R C E 79
sporadic acts of violence in 1974–75. After Tommasi’s murder at the hands of a rival
member, Mason went on to lead the group and become one of the far right’s most strident
advocates of leaderless resistance. See for example, James Mason, Siege (Denver: Storm
Books 1992).
20. Kaplan argues that Pierce was in effect ‘a cheerleader from the sidelines’ who used
‘hopeless campaigns of revolutionary violence while he himself [remained] at a safe
remove’. Kaplan (note 18) pp.247–8. While I would concede that Pierce may have at one
time considered the leaderless resistance approach, the documentary evidence suggests to
me that he did not take it seriously for most of his career. In the July 2000 interview when
I asked Pierce about James Mason and the National Socialist Liberation, he scoffed, and
dismissed Mason, noting that the latter was a devoted admirer of Charles Manson.
21. Interview with Dr William Pierce, 12 July 2000 in George Michael, Confronting Right Wing
Extremism and Terrorism in the USA (London: Routledge 2003) pp.117–18.
22. David Segal, ‘The Pied Piper of Racism’, The Washington Post, (12 Jan. 2000).
23. National Alliance, National Alliance Handbook, (Hillsboro, WV: National Vanguard Books
1993) pp.12–15.
24. Ibid. p.14.
25. Ibid. pp.14–15.
26. In 1998 the Anti-Defamation League released a report that warned of the growing influence
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of the National Alliance calling it the ‘largest and most active neo-Nazi organization in the
nation’. The ADL attributed the National Alliance’s strength to several factors: ‘its skillful
embrace of technology, its willingness to cooperate with other extremists, its energetic
recruitment and other promotional activities, and its vicious, but deceptively intellectualized
propaganda’. Anti-Defamation League, Explosion of Hate: The Growing Danger of the
National Alliance (New York: ADL 1998). In the last few years of his life, Pierce claimed
that his organization had experienced substantial growth in members, financing and
influence. In an interview that I conducted with him in July 2000, he told me he had several
full-time staff members at his national office and that the organization had even developed
some ‘redundancy’ whereby numerous personnel could perform multiple tasks such as
internet and computer operations.
27. William Pierce, ‘The Organizational Strategy’ National Vanguard Magazine, 114
(Nov.–Dec. 1994).
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. Brad Whitsel, ‘The Turner Diaries and Cosmotheism: William Pierce’s Theology of
Revolution’, Nova Religio 1/2 (April 1998).
32. Michael (note 21).
33. William Pierce, ‘Capitalism and Equality’, American Dissident Voices VI.2 (Feb. 2000).
34. This is how the FBI characterized the book. See the FBI Internal Memorandum, File
Number 100–487473–50, 23 Jan. 1987 and FBI Internal Memorandum, File Number:
100–487473–67, 10 Sept. 1987. Robert Burnham, the FBI’s section chief for domestic
terrorism, remarked on the connection of the book to acts and potential acts of terrorism.
According to Burnham, FBI field offices have received numerous calls from local police
departments reporting that they found terrorist materials such as guns and bomb making
materials in addition to copies of The Turner Diaries. ‘Domestic terrorism: the FBI view’,
MSBC (30 May 2000), http:www.msnbc.com/news /272286.asp.
35. Roger Griffin originally outlined his definition of fascism as the embodiment of an ultra-
nationalist paligenetic myth in Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism (New York: Routledge
1993). He later buttressed his theory using the paligenetic myth as the leitmotif of an
anthology of essays, which he edited, with contributions from both fascists and observers of
fascism. See Roger Griffin, Fascism, Oxford Readers (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1995).
36. Anti-Defamation League, ‘Eric Gliebe: “The Aryan Barbarian”’, http://www.adl.org/learn/
extus /gliebe.asp, (5 Aug. 2002).
37. Anti-Defamation League, ‘Deafening Hate: The Revival of Resistance Records’
http://www.adl.org/resistance%20records/summary.html (downloaded 7 June 2000).
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80 TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE

38. For more on the National Alliance demonstrations at the Israeli embassy see H. J. Brief,
‘White Supremacist Rally draws Protestors’, The Washington Times (12 May 2000); Lengel,
‘Neo-Nazis, Foes, Clash At Israeli Embassy’, The Washington Post (12 May 2002) p.A19;
and ADL, ‘Neo-Nazis Rally in Nation’s Capital’ (26 Aug. 2002). http://www.adl.org/
Learn/news/Neo_Nazis_Rally.asp. At the first demonstration in November 2001, the
National Alliance released a list of 18 demands to the Israeli government, which sounded
like anti-imperialist pronouncements of traditional left wing groups. The demands included
inter alia: ‘Stop using American military aid to commit unlawful acts of terrorism, murder,
and genocide against Palestinians’; ‘Obey UN Resolution 242’; ‘Obey UN Resolution 194’;
‘Allow true freedom of speech and assembly for all people in Israel’; and ‘Turn Ariel
Sharon, the “Butcher of Beirut”, over to the World Court’. For a complete list of the
demands see http://natall.com/demands/index.html. For more on the leafleting campaign see
Anti-Defamation League, ‘Hate Literature Blitz Planned By Neo-Nazi Groups To Coincide
With Jewish Holidays and 9/11’ http://www.adl.org/PresRele?AUS_12/4148_12.asp, (27
Aug. 2002).
39. Declassified FBI documents reveal that the agency has kept close tabs on the National
Alliance almost from its inception. Pierce and the National Alliance were the targets of an
SPLC lawsuit in the mid-1990s. As mentioned earlier, the ADL has sought to raise public
awareness of the threat it sees stemming from the National Alliance through its widely
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promoted report Explosion of Hate (note 26).

40. According to a statement Pierce made in 1999, his website receives on average 8,500 hits
per day. Greg Barrett, ‘National Alliance grows quickly’, Detroit News (16 July 1999),
http://detnews.com /1999/ nation/9907/16/07160113htm. Not long after the September 11
terrorist attacks, Pierce claimed that downloads of his ADV program doubled.

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