The Cobbler and the Professor

by Dr. William L. Pierce (pictured)

INTRODUCTORY NOTE: On April 30, 1978, Dr. Pierce spoke to a group of Washington-area Alliance members on the type of people we want to recruit for the Alliance. His talk was prompted by an incident which had occurred two days earlier, at an international meeting of anti-communists in Washington. Although virtually all those attending the meeting were Jew-wise, they were mostly middle-class types who are afraid to express their view openly for fear of jeopardizing their incomes. They will talk a very brave line against the Jews behind closed doors and drawn blinds — i.e., when they are sure that their talk will not provoke the Jews into some form of retaliation — but they will run like rabbits at the first threat of being “exposed.”

Into the meeting walked a 74-year-old gentleman, a retired cobbler, with a wooden leg. He had lost his leg during World War II, fighting communists as a member of the underground in his native Lithuania. When a Jewish commissar had ordered him arrested and executed, he had escaped to the West — but not before his left leg was shattered by 13 machine-gun bullets.

This old gentleman, who has often distributed Alliance publications in the past, began distributing leaflets explaining the Jewish origins of communism to the other persons at the meeting. Hardly had he begun, however, when the director of the meeting, a former university professor who now makes a very good living arranging middle-class anti-communist meetings, sicced the police on him and had him thrown out of the hotel where the meeting was being held.

What follows has been excerpted from Dr. Pierce’s talk:

THE BASIC QUESTION raised by Friday’s incident in Washington involving the ex-cobbler and the ex-professor is this: Which of the two is the sort of person we are looking for? More generally, which of the two represents the type of man or woman who can be organized into a force capable of whipping the Jews and their allies and then carrying our truth on to victory?

It’s easy, of course, to jump to the conclusion that the ex-cobbler is the type we want. We admire him because of his background. We deplore what the ex-professor did to him. Our hearts go to the cobbler, and we feel contempt for the other fellow.

But we have to use our heads as well as our hearts in this matter. We cannot afford to make a decision purely on the basis of sentiment. Too much is at stake. We have to win this struggle against the Jews, and if winning means that we have to work with some people we don’t particularly admire and that we have to sacrifice some that we do admire, why, then, that’s what we’ll do.

I don’t mean to say that we operate without principles, but we do try to minimize the sentiment involved in making decisions. We try to consider all the factors as objectively as possible.

So let’s consider the factors. The ex-professor is much better educated than the ex-cobbler and probably more intelligent as well. He has written several books. He has a lot of material resources. He knows a number of wealthy and powerful people. He rubs shoulders with senators and congressmen. And I have no doubt at all that he genuinely hates Jews and is genuinely a racist.

And, being brutally realistic about it, the other fellow is just a 74-year-old, one-legged, retired cobbler who doesn’t speak very good English. He has no money, no university degrees, and has no wealthy or powerful friends. On top of all that, he’s probably cantankerous and hard to get along with. He is not a very likely recruit for us, and it’s really very doubtful whether he can do anything more for us than he’s already doing by selling our newspapers on street corners.

The professor, on the other hand, could undoubtedly help us in various ways, if we made an effort to cultivate his favor.

But beyond these two individuals is the bigger question of types, of the kinds of people on whom we must depend in the future for building the Alliance so that it can achieve its goals. To put the question in its crudest terms: Will the Jews be whipped by clever, careful, successful men who make a good living and rub shoulders with the right people — or will they be whipped by a bunch of dedicated nobodies?

For ten years or so I have observed the militant right in this country, the people who claim to be fighting the Jews, and I have been continually appalled by their lack of cleverness, their lack of carefulness, their lack of success. And I have been tempted to conclude from my observations that the clever, careful, successful men like the ex-professor are correct, that they’re going about it the right way. One thing I have definitely concluded is that the right-wing militants will never whip the Jews — never. I am sure of that; but I have also become sure that the clever, careful, successful fellows won’t do it either.

The reason they won’t do it is that the basic values these fellows have make it just as impossible for them to beat the Jews as does the lack of cleverness and care of the right-wing militants. Their first value, which comes way ahead of everything else, is their own welfare and comfort. I don’t mean to say that these fellows are arranging anti-communist meetings solely for the money — but whatever else it is they’re doing it for comes in a distant second.

They won’t beat the Jews, because their personal values are essentially the same as those of the Jews, and the Jews are not going to be beat at their own game, when they’ve got the game rigged so heavily in their favor. The clever fellows may hate the Jews, they may want very badly to beat them — but they’re not going to sacrifice their own welfare in order to do it. In fact, most of them aren’t even willing to sacrifice the comfortable lifestyle to which they’ve become accustomed. They’ll fight the Jews as long as they can do it securely and comfortably — but if their income becomes threatened, if it looks like they might lose their investments, they’ll back off in a hurry.

Henry Ford is a good example. He was a clever, successful man. And he was a good man. And as every good man must, he fought evil; he fought the Jews. He strongly opposed the Jews when they were working to get the United States involved in World War I, and after the war he continued to fight them. He undoubtedly spent a lot of money in the fight. There was a period when he gave away a free set of The International Jew to every purchaser of a new Ford automobile.

But eventually the Jews became worried enough about Mr. Ford that they ganged up on him and began applying financial pressure. Henry Ford was a wealthy and powerful man, but the Jews clearly had him outclassed, and he was forced to choose between continuing his fight against them or keeping the thing he loved more than anything else in the world, which was the industrial empire he had created. He chose to keep his empire, and so he threw in the towel in his fight against the Jews.

I have some acquaintances who share the values of the ex-professor in Washington. One of them tells me that the way to beat the Jews is to win over the top generals in the Pentagon and then arrange a military coup. Others have other pet schemes. One thing all the schemes have in common is that they allow the people who propound them to continue doing what they’re doing now — driving nice cars, owning nice homes, living the good life, as they see it. No nasty attacks by the controlled press, no loss of social status, no unpleasantness, no danger, no discomfort.

I guess I’m being pretty hard on these fellows — but, actually, I’m glad they’re around. I’m glad they’re at least doing something, which is more than most people are doing. They certainly aren’t hurting anything. But — and this is the important thing — it is impossible for them to beat the Jews. When it comes to the real crunch, they will always opt for their money, their safety, their comfort. And there just is no safe, no comfortable way to whip the Jews. The people whose values are those of the ex-professor simply cannot win.

Many different kinds of people oppose the Jews in many different ways today, but in the end the only ones who can whip them are those who are prepared to give up everything — their wealth, their security, their comfort, even their lives — in order to do so. Everyone else will back off when the going gets rough enough.

The Jews know how to fight people who think the way they do — people whose primary concern is wealth and security. The only people they don’t know how to beat are people who are willing to die in order to achieve their goals. That’s the one thing the Jews aren’t prepared to do. We can see that from the way they behave here and from the way they have behaved elsewhere at other times. We can see it from the way they conduct their wars in the Middle East. Unless they have a massive military advantage they will not fight. They are not willing to take casualties. The Palestinians are, and if the Palestinians had even half the Jews’ cleverness and wealth, they would whip them easily.

Or maybe I should say, if the Palestinians had half the Jews’ cleverness and weapons, they would whip them. If they had the Jews’ wealth, I’m afraid they would lose their willingness to die.

Jesus said it a long time ago: "It is easier for a camel to pass though the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of Heaven." That is a profoundly true statement. I do not want to sound like a Marxist, but it is a fact that wealth corrupts, that comfort corrupts, that a soft and safe lifestyle corrupts. These things rob us of our courage and our determination. They distort our values. They make cowards and weaklings of us. It is a fact, which we have all observed over and over again, that the man who accumulates property, the man who lives well, comes eventually to value that property and that lifestyle more than anything else. There may be exceptions to that rule, but they are as rare as camels who can pass through the eye of a needle.

And so we come back to our question, as to what sort of men and women we want in the Alliance, in order that they may carry our truth onto victory some day. The dilemma for us is that the character traits, the personal qualities, which lead to success, and often to wealth and comfort, namely, intelligence, diligence, toughness, tenacity, and energy are exactly the traits our people must have. We cannot build the Alliance on the dregs of our society, on a bunch of born losers, dedicated or not, like the right wing has done. Dedication, single-mindedness, is by itself, not enough.

But neither are cleverness and success.

Both together are required. And people who have both are a rare commodity. Not as rare as camels who can pass though the eye of a needle — at least not while they’re still young, not before they’ve become successful and comfortable. But still rare. They are the best of our people, people who combine idealism with intelligence and energy, people who have the capability for success but who have not yet become corrupted by it, so that their intelligence and energy can still serve their idealism rather than a quest for more security and more comfort.

So that is what we’re looking for: the best people our race has produced in this generation. They’re the only ones who’ll do, the only ones who can whip the enemy and build a new order of beauty and progress and health and sanity and truth on this earth.

And I might also point out that what we’re doing is unique. Other groups and individuals who claim to be fighting the enemy are following one of two courses: either the course of the ex-professor in Washington, or a course which speaks much of heroism and idealism but which manages to attract almost exclusively people without the capability of effectively serving that idealism. Only we are consciously looking for young people who could become the founders of banks, or successful industrialists, or well-paid writers or engineers or military leaders — but who also have an idealism which has not yet been corrupted by success, a courage which has not yet been smothered by too comfortable a life.

Finding enough of these people to do what we must do is a difficult goal, but it is necessary. There is no other way. And a great leader of our people once said: "We must not ask whether it is possible to attain our goal, but only whether it is necessary. If it is impossible, then we shall try our best and perish in the attempt; but if it is necessary — and proper — then we must believe that it is possible."

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From the National Alliance BULLETIN, April 1978