The Task of the National Alliance

An Editorial by Dr. William Pierce

IN THREE EARLIER ISSUES (National Vanguard, nos. 64, 65, 66) we examined some of the social factors relevant to a racially oriented revolution in America and stated several general criteria for any organizational basis of such a revolution. In this issue we will look more specifically at the factors which govern the priorities of the National Alliance and determine the nature of its task. We will attempt to understand, on the basis of present conditions in America, what can be done now and what cannot be done, so that we can see better how to concentrate our energies on those organizational objectives we can realistically hope to achieve. (ILLUSTRATION: "A lion might be fair or just... but the possibility does not even exist for a sheep." -- WLP)

One fact of overriding importance should be kept in mind throughout what follows: the situation faced today by the National Alliance is historically unique. Very few of the “classical” conditions for revolution exist in America today, and therefore, the classical expositions of revolutionary theory are largely irrelevant to an understanding of our task.

There is, for example, no revolutionary class in the White population of America, nor a revolutionary consensus. And, as explained earlier, the system of public opinion control which functions in America today — the central nexus — makes it extraordinarily difficult for anyone without his fingers on the controls of that nexus to generate revolutionary sentiment. That is a situation entirely new under the sun.

America is hurtling down the steep slope of racial mongrelization; national, cultural, and racial death lie in wait at the bottom of the slope. But the prospect is not one which rouses revolutionary fervor in large numbers of people; the level of abstraction is too high for the average person, who does not yet feel personally threatened.

That will change somewhat as the press and clamor of the growing non-White hordes in America become more vexing and the economy worsens. The latter irritant will probably increase more precipitously than would have been predicted only a few months ago, now that President Jimmy Carter has put the finishing touches on the alienation of our sources of imported energy with his Jew-dictated “peace” in the Middle East.

Nevertheless, the relative comfort and sense of security — justified or not — of the average White American at this time cuts the ground beneath any strategy based on winning mass support for revolutionary action.

What applies to the White masses also applies to the business, professional, and intellectual elements of the middle class. Most of the latter are better informed than the masses about the destructive processes at work in America, and there is a substantial amount of concern for the future among them; nevertheless, their state of mind and their viewpoint are such that there is very little prospect of winning the support of a majority of them for a radical program at this time. The same conservatism and egocentrism which afflict the masses afflict them, although the maladies may be manifested in somewhat different forms in the two cases.

The masses always have been and always will be essentially conservative in outlook rather than radical, whether they are supporting or opposing the government over them at any particular time.

During the Vietnam War for example, there was a great deal of talk, especially on university campuses, about opposition to the government’s policies “radicalizing” the students and others opposed to continued U.S. participation in the war. The talk was sheer nonsense, as was proved when the whole so-called “movement” collapsed in 1973. Its existence had depended on the immediate irritant provided by the war, rather than on any demand for fundamental social changes.

This editor participated in several of the largest anti-war demonstrations in Washington during the 1968–1972 period, mingling with other demonstrators and listening to their conversations (and getting severely tear-gassed once for his efforts). Not only did the great majority of the demonstrators have no real understanding of the issues involved, but they had no more radical an outlook than the average American.

Even among more violent demonstrators, who “trashed” government buildings and assaulted policemen, no evidence of real radicalism was seen, except on the part of their Jewish leaders. There may have been more alienation, more irresponsibility, but very little commitment to fundamental ideas of any sort.

The one thing the anti-Vietnam leaders had going for them was an effective organizational basis for their demonstrations and their propaganda. This organizational basis was staffed with capable and highly motivated cadres, and it allowed the Reds to accomplish a remarkable feat of subversion, even without a revolutionary consensus or radicalized masses. At the height of their power they could put more than a quarter-million protesters on the streets of Washington, and they could make it look convincingly revolutionary.

There are other valuable lessons to be learned from the Jewish effort to use the Vietnam War as a revolutionary instrument, but for the moment we are concerned with just two: first, the aforementioned non-radical outlook of the average White, even when a temporary situation exists which makes him amenable to recruitment for a revolutionary purpose; and, second, the absolute necessity of a thoroughly radicalized cadre organization being already at hand if any useful action at all is to be gotten from the masses when such a situation does arise.

During the Vietnam era the Left drew its cadres almost exclusively from the Jewish population, which constitutes a perpetually radicalized reservoir of manpower and leadership for almost any anti-White cause. An analogous reservoir of pro-White radicals does not exist at this time, either among the masses or among the more illuminated strata of the White population: those White elements whose intelligence, sense of responsibility, and relative independence of the media lift them well above the level of the masses.

The conservatism of the masses is mindless resistance to change and to new ideas. The conservatism of the other elements is more the inability to encompass ideas which lie outside a rather rigidly egocentric mental frame, an inability to rise above a conceptual basis which is constructed on outmoded values, an inability to visualize a wholly new kind of world or to grasp the ethical concepts which must govern that new world and which transcend their own. And it is ultimately based on a lack of moral courage.

Let us look at this latter conservatism; let us trace its roots and see how it relates to the task of the National Alliance. Over and over again one hears this argument: “The National Alliance has a fundamental lack of goodwill towards Blacks, Jews, and the members of the present political establishment. Without such goodwill the Alliance cannot hope to achieve any kind of fair settlement of America’s present problems and internal conflicts. Therefore, most White Americans, who are fair-minded and are people of goodwill, will not go along with the Alliance.”

This argument comes not only from TV-brained nitwits, but also from a great many intelligent, thoughtful Whites. And it is, with a couple of important qualifications to be mentioned shortly, a correct argument.

It is true that the Alliance has no goodwill at all toward the enemies of our race. The Alliance is not concerned with Black survival or Jewish survival or Mexican survival, but only with White survival. The Alliance has not an ounce of charity for the gallows birds who make up the System currently governing America and who have so shamelessly betrayed our race.

It is also true that the average American is fair-minded — in a sense. He thinks in an individual-centered frame, while we think in a race-centered frame. He carefully distinguishes between “good” Blacks and “bad” Blacks, between “loyal” Jews and Zionists. We lump them all together, and that clearly is not “fair,” by his standards.

Implicit in the argument for fairness and goodwill are two major assumptions; one concerns the nature of the race problem and the other its solution.

It is assumed that the race problem is one of street crime, deteriorating schools, declining military morale and efficiency, rising welfare burden, etc. There would be, from the viewpoint of the person making the argument, no race problem if all Blacks obeyed the law, supported their families by honest labor, adopted a White lifestyle, and voted Republican — as some actually do.

And the only solution of which a person with such a viewpoint can conceive is a negotiated one, a compromise designed to end the present strife and unpleasantness, a sitting down with Black and Jewish leaders and saying to them in effect, “If you will keep your people in line, if you will reason with them and be reasonable with us, then we will bend over yet a little further backward for you. We’ll work something out which will protect your interests as well as ours.”

Of course, such an approach to the race problem is not only based on the wrong values, it is an approach which must ultimately fail, as it is failing now, because the problem is a biological one, and it requires a biological solution — a fact which has been treated at length in other issues of National Vanguard.

But the relevant point here is that the average American’s mental frame simply cannot expand to encompass that fact and its implications. And, at this point in history, the same is true of most un-average Americans as well. Therefore, most Americans (including most intelligent and thoughtful Americans) will not support the National Alliance — at this time.

The divergence of viewpoints between the Alliance and the average American goes so far that many Americans are suspicious of our motives. They think, “The Alliance must secretly be a communist organization, whose purpose is to make the country’s problems worse instead of curing them.” They reason (correctly) that any non-White who reads a National Vanguard will become more hostile toward Whites as a result, making a peaceful settlement all the more difficult. Therefore, they conclude (incorrectly) that we don’t want a solution to the race problem.

It is difficult to convince a person who believes the foregoing that he is in error, because our value system and his are entirely different.

Nevertheless, despite the barrier to communication caused by this difference in viewpoints, the future is not so bleak as it may seem. The qualification made a couple of paragraphs earlier — “at this time” — is an important one. That is because the famous American “fair-mindedness” is a rather more tenuous thing than those who presently glory in it are willing to admit. The time may never come when honest Americans — even intelligent ones — will be able to expand their mental frameworks enough to fully encompass our view of the world, but the time will certainly come when their view of what is “fair” will change drastically.

The fact is that White Americans like to think of themselves as fair-minded, as just, as humane, but the truth is that the great majority of them simply do not have the moral courage which is a necessary concomitant to those traits.

Consider, for example, America’s entry into the Second World War. The masses, of course, were oblivious to what was going on, as always. But a great many Americans were not. Tens of thousands of journalists, of public officials, of teachers and professors, of leaders of German-American groups, of influential writers knew the truth of the matter at first hand.

They knew the true nature of the National Socialist awakening in Germany, and they approved of it. They knew that something of the sort was necessary for a resurgence of the White race. And they knew that the Jews were behind all of Roosevelt’s deceitful moves to get America involved in the war to destroy Germany — in particular, his maneuvering to bring about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and enter the war via the back door, after his infamous orders to the U.S. Navy to fire on sight at all German vessels on the high seas failed to provoke the Germans into a declaration of war.

And in 1939 and 1940 many of those who knew what was going on spoke out. Even after the war started in Europe in September 1939 National Geographic, for example, carried unbiased reporting on Germany, despite the torrent of venomous Jewish abuse this policy caused to be directed at the magazine. While the Jew-owned Washington Post and New York Times shrieked about the German annexation of Danzig in terms of a “brutal crushing of Danzigers’ independence under the hobnailed jackboots of Nazi stormtroopers,” the National Geographic quietly pointed out in its issue of November 1939 that 93 percent of the Danzigers were Germans, and that the city-state had joyfully welcomed its reunification with Germany after the artificial separation imposed 20 years earlier by the Versailles Treaty.

Well-known speakers, including aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh, addressed huge public meetings denouncing Roosevelt and the Jews and the other war schemers. History, political science, and law professors at Yale and Harvard openly scoffed at the official government lies of German aggression and of Hitler’s supposed plans for invading the United States via South America.

There were even a few politicians in the Congress who were still willing to speak the truth as late as 1941.

But as the Jewish economic and political pressure mounted, as more and more politicians were bought for the Jewish side, as the pro-war newspapers became shriller and more insistent, the fair-minded people who knew what was going on began to become more timid about speaking out. After the successful engineering of the Pearl Harbor attack, virtually all of them fell silent. Hardly any of them were brave enough to say what they all knew: that it was the United States, not Germany, which was the aggressor.

Only a tiny handful, a few dozen out of the former tens of thousands, continued to stand up for the truth, for justice, for humanity, for what was right. The rest fell into line with Roosevelt and the Jews.

When the U.S. government announced that the Germans were boiling down babies to make soap, the thousands who knew it was a lie kept their mouths shut. When the United States began its policy of saturation bombing of German population centers in response to the hate-crazed Jews’ demands that as many German civilians as possible be killed, all those White Americans who knew it was genocide remained silent.

They not only remained silent, but most of them hastened to appease those they should have opposed. They joined the armed forces; they did volunteer work; they became even more “patriotic” than the warmongers, so no one could suspect them of being pro-Nazi.

There were liberals, true pacifists opposed to all wars on principle, who were more courageous in their opposition to the Jews than these “fair-minded” conservatives. When fair-mindedness became inconvenient, they abandoned it. When it became dangerous to stand up for justice, they accepted injustice. When the moral pressure to conform became sufficiently great, they switched sides and supported policies they had previously opposed.

It wasn’t just that they weren’t willing to put their lives on the line for what they thought was right; they weren’t even willing to put income or social status on the line.

And it has always been the same. In World War I the eminent British historian Arnold Toynbee wrote a jingoistic pamphlet for mass distribution in which he claimed that the Germans were bayoneting Belgian babies and cutting off their hands for souvenirs. He knew it was a lie, and he knew it would encourage British counter-atrocities against the Germans, but he didn’t have the moral courage to refuse to “do his bit” for the British war effort.

But one doesn’t have to go to history to understand the point being made here. Every member of the National Alliance has had the experience of hearing a “fair-minded” conservative explaining that he can’t support the Alliance because we are not as concerned about justice for non-Whites as we are about justice for Whites, but who has been conspicuously silent about the Jewish treatment of the Palestinians — and about every other glaring injustice in today’s world, when silence was the only safe response.

One might point out to one of these virtuous citizens that unless drastic and sweeping measures to bring about total, geographical racial separation are taken — measures which are sure to cause hardship to a great many non-Whites who have never deliberately harmed us — then the White race will continue to suffer the contamination of its gene pool which is the inevitable consequence of racial integration. One might point out that if this contamination continues, it will eventually destroy the White race, as it has destroyed segments of our race in various parts of the world throughout history, from India to South America, and one might ask what is “fair” about that.

One might ask whether he favors giving North America back to the Indians, since it was certainly “unfair” of our ancestors to take it away from them. One might ask whether he believes the whole White race should just lie down and die, since the entire history of the world in reality consists of nothing more than a series of “injustices” perpetrated on the weak by the strong in Nature’s unending process of upward struggle — and it is a fact that until this peculiar obsession with “fairness” to non-Whites took hold of us in recent years, it has been the White race which has most often been strong — and which has, in other words, been most “unfair.”

One might point out to him that the notion of fairness is one which arose and exists in the White man’s mind only. It is a notion concerned only with the White man’s dealings with his own kind, and it loses its whole meaning when applied to interracial relations.

But, of course, there is no point in asking such questions, in raising such points, for the fair-minded Americans who criticize our lack of charity for the enemies of our race are totally inconsistent in their logic, and logic will not persuade them.

They are like the Pharisees in the old parable who fastidiously strain out a gnat from their wine but swallow a camel without noticing it. Their position has nothing to do with fairness or justice, but only with hypocrisy and cowardice.

A lion might be fair or just, if he were so inclined, but the possibility does not even exist for a sheep.

What all this means for the Alliance is that the moral attitudes of the better-informed elements, just like those of the masses, are almost wholly dependent on external circumstances rather than on any unyielding inner convictions. Most will never expand their ethical concepts to the extent that they see fairness and justice from a racial or cosmic viewpoint instead of an egocentric one, just as a sheep will never become a lion. But they most assuredly will change their attitudes about what is fair as their personal circumstances change, and a great many who will not support the Alliance now will support it in the future.

The Alliance does not have the capability at this time to change the objective conditions which determine most people’s attitudes; it must depend on the forces of history for that.

It follows, therefore, that the Alliance must pursue a minority strategy rather than a majority strategy for the time being, unless it abandons its fundamental approach altogether and caters instead to the shortsighted prejudices of the majority. The latter is a course wholly alien to the Alliance, one which would destroy the very foundations on which it rests.

Thus, the short- and intermediate-term strategy of the Alliance is based on participation by an elite minority carefully sifted out of the overall White population rather than on direct participation by the White masses or by the bulk of the conservative elements among the professional/intellectual class.

For the foreseeable future our program is to appeal to, reach, move, and recruit the members of this radicalizable elite, wherever they may be, and to build with them a function-oriented organizational structure: a structure made up of cadres, each of whom has specific functional responsibilities.

It is one thing to tackle such a building program during a time of mass revolutionary ferment, when these functional responsibilities can be oriented directly toward immediate revolutionary goals involving large numbers of people; it is quite another thing during times of relative public lethargy and indifference, when cadres and masses have much more strongly divergent interests.

The latter case prevails, and the tasks of the National Alliance have been defined accordingly.

These tasks, in accordance with the conclusions reached above, are not directed at attempting to persuade or mobilize the masses, or to change the objective conditions or irritants to which the masses are subjected. They are directed instead toward building a permanent basis and a permanent structure which exist independently of the masses and which grow and develop without mass participation, but which nevertheless have the capability of persuading the masses, for changing the conditions which motivate them, and for mobilizing at least portions of them at some later time.

The difference may seem only one of emphasis, but it is a very important difference. One cannot hope for much success in building an organization whose entire raison d’être is its ability to mobilize masses, when it is clear to any intelligent observer that the chance of accomplishing such mobilization is vanishingly slim. Such an organization is in essence an ad hoc organization, and the hoc is just not credible at this point in history.

Yet the fact remains that without an organizational basis for mobilization at hand when we reach a different point of history, one at which mass mobilization is conceivable, it cannot be accomplished. And the conditions which will prevail at such time will not be conducive to laying careful foundations and erecting sound, well-designed structures on them. The prize will fall to the faction which has done its building beforehand, not to the one which begins then.

And so the National Alliance has backed off a bit from the ad hoc approach and has addressed itself more instead to providing an organizational embodiment of a world view, an embodiment whose value is as much per se as ad hoc, as much intrinsic as extrinsic.

That is, while the tasks and functions of the Alliance are never wholly divorced from the eventual necessity of mass mobilization, neither are they wholly dependent on that eventuality. They offer to the prospective cadre worthwhile goals to which he can wholeheartedly devote all his energies, for a lifetime if need be, even if he never engages in any mass-oriented activity. At the same time, however, he is never allowed to forget that such activity must eventually come and that the capability for it must have been prepared beforehand if it is to be meaningful and productive.

The intrinsic tasks and functions of the Alliance, those necessary for their own sake, are several. One is to provide a fixed pole of the spirit in the swirling chaos of falsehood and illusion surrounding our people in this era, an outcropping of bedrock of immutable principle amid the drifting sands of change and decay, a citadel of the ageless values of our race.

At a time when not only the alien-controlled media, but also the schools, the churches, the government, the political parties, big business, and big labor — every institution with a stake in the present system — habitually lie, changing their tune from month to month, holding a moistened forefinger to the shifting breezes of opportunity before deciding what stand to take, tolerating every evil and encouraging every weakness for the sake of expediency, riddled with cynicism and a total disregard for the truth, it is essential that there be one institution which knows and speaks the truth.

Even the supposedly “patriotic” and “conservative” institutions in the society of today weasel on the really vital issues, fawning at the feet of alien masters, denying the differences in the value of the various races.

One institution must be incorruptible and uncompromising, speaking the truth not just on the “safe” issues, but on all issues; not just the fashionable and convenient aspects of the truth, but the whole truth.

One institution must, in particular, say the things about race, about the Jews, about the inequality of individuals, about the corruption of this society, about the false values on which it is based, about the inadequacy of democracy, about the falsification of our history, and about all the other things which are essential to the material and spiritual life of our people but which other institutions will not speak about.

And this one institution must not be merely a dusty repository of the truth, speaking in a quiet voice heard only by a few. Many academicians are already doing that much, on at least a few issues, reporting the truth about race in their dry professional journals, or quietly setting the historical record straight. But very few people hear or see those truths. There must be one institution which is a beacon of truth for all those who want to see, a loudspeaker for all who are willing to hear, so that the truth is at least accessible to every intelligent and open-minded man and woman of our race, to every potential member of the elite mentioned above. The masses may not want to hear or see at this time, but there are a great many individuals who do.

Even though this institution may not be able to compete with the controlled media for the minds of the masses — even though it may not even try to compete — it nevertheless needs to be more than a static oracle. It needs to elaborate and elucidate the truth, to simplify and explain it as well as proclaim it. It must speak to more than scholars, and it must be dynamic, exploring new ramifications, developing new vehicles: fiction, poetry, film, drama. It must speak to the heart as well as to the mind.

In addition to the propagation of truth, a vital task of the Alliance is keeping hope alive. A key element of the strategy of the enemies of our people is convincing all of us that the destruction of the White race through racemixing is inevitable, that there is no point in resistance, that mongrelization and White decline are the wave of the future, that the Jews are unbeatable, that all the smart money is on their side and that anyone who opposes them is a sucker, a loser, a fool.

One of our responsibilities is to remind people — not necessarily the masses, but those individuals concerned with more than their sex lives and their bank accounts, our elite — that the Jews are beatable; that not everyone has given up; that there are intelligent, responsible, articulate people who are unconditionally committed to putting a final end to Jewish scheming and to this system based on Jewish values, no matter how long it takes or how much sacrifice is required.

We must always keep one light burning and one door open, no matter how black the darkness before the dawn, so that every racially conscious White person has a place to turn when he is finally ready to take up the fight himself.

Propagating truth, upholding hope, even for the few — those are two very concrete and vital functions. And there is another, which is the closely related function of maintaining a living community embodying the spiritual values of our race.

In a certain sense every spiritually healthy White person does this, whether he is a member of the Alliance or not, because these values are inherent in the race-soul of our people; they exist at the genetic level. But aside from the fact that there are all too few spiritually healthy people in today’s sick world, that living in the midst of soul-sick people tends to be spiritually unhealthy in itself, it is important that spiritual values do more than lie dormant in our genes; it is important that they be manifested in the life of a community, that they be expressed in the program, the activities, the propaganda of a living group.

And all these functions, involving truth, hope, and spirit, are clearly tied quite closely together. As already stated, the organization which wants to effectively propagate truth must do more than simply print dry news, accessible only to specialists. In order to have any effect on even an intelligent and open-minded minority of our people, it must, as stated above, speak to the heart as well as to the mind. It must employ media other than newspapers.

And it follows, then, that when the Alliance is fulfilling its task of propagating truth effectively it is also upholding hope for White survival and manifesting the spiritual values of our race at the same time.

Now, because our task involves these several interrelated functions — because we are concerned not just with printing a newspaper but with doing all the other things necessary to reach, to inform, and to move an elite minority of our people — it must also involve certain organizational functions.

Even if our only function were to be the publication of a newspaper, requiring a full-time writing, editorial, and business staff of only a dozen or so cadres, we would still be obliged to concern ourselves with organization, because of the necessity of carrying out our own distribution. The elite minority capable of responding to our message now consists of several hundred thousand persons — perhaps as many as one percent of the adult White population of the United States — and reaching them effectively requires an active membership of several thousand persons willing to participate in a vigorous distribution program.

And doing the other things we must do besides publishing and distributing a newspaper requires much more in the way of organizational capacity. It requires more cadres; it requires a larger rank-and-file membership from which to draw those cadres and to carry out supporting functions (newspaper distribution being only one); and it requires a well-designed, smoothly operating organizational framework within which both cadres and rank-and-file members can function effectively in the performance of their coordinated tasks.

All of these things fall into the category labeled above as “intrinsic.” They are necessary and worthwhile even in an era in which mass organization for a radical purpose cannot be realistically attempted. But it is clear that our intrinsic and extrinsic functions are closely tied together. The intrinsic capabilities described above are very similar to the capabilities needed for reaching and moving a much larger number of people, when conditions are proper. The organizational structure necessary for coordinating our intrinsic activities provides a nucleus around which a much larger organization can eventually be built.

Today — and next year — we concern ourselves almost solely with our intrinsic task. But at a later time, no matter when, we shall find that all our intrinsic labors, if we perform them well, will have laid the necessary and sufficient foundation for accomplishing our extrinsic task.

* * *

From Attack! No. 69, 1979, transcribed by Anthony Collins and edited by Vanessa Neubauer, from the book The Best of Attack! and National Vanguard, edited by Kevin Alfred Strom