Since William Luther Pierce shuffled off this mortal plane, there has been a lot of accolades, poems and “Hail Pierce!” coming from the White Supremacist crowd. Some, however are not in mourning. This came from someone who posted to an Egroups list under the name “Phlegethon”.
Phlegethon
Am I the only one who will not miss Pierce?
Having read the threads on the Stormfront and AryanDawn webboards referring to Pierce’s death and just having deleted about 200 chain emails of the Gerhard article I seriously have to ask myself whether I am the only one here who does not miss Pierce at all.
Although many here won’t believe it (not that it really matters) I have been in opposition to Pierce long before Harold Covington started his anti-NA campaigns in the early 90s. This silly “De mortuis nihil nisi bene” concept has for decades kept us from analyzing our own weaknesses and mistakes and learning from them. What we (we as activists, we as the “movement”, we as those seriously pissed) need in order to ever get anywhere as far as visible results are concerned is critical thinkers – and not yah-sayers and pathological groupies.
Now let us cut like a knife through this veil of impulsive and subjective hagiography and look at what the Doc Pierce has really achieved in over three decades:
1. He worked with/for George Lincoln Rockwell, most probably the most dead-end political course one could take in America. The NA originally sprang from the Youth For Wallace, which is also quite dubious as this was a clearly conservative all-American “movement” and not revolutionary in any
way.
2. The whole NA was basically Pierce’s private property, run in an authoritarian and anything but halfway democratic style. The sheer idiocy of the majority of Pierce’s sycophants was outstanding. Apparently Pierce was aiming very low for membership as he certainly did not tolerate anyone potentially equally intelligent in the ranks of the NA.
3. Pierce was the teflon man of the “movement” although he probably gave the feds more reasons for investigations/actions than any other “movement” group, maybe with the exception of the WCOTC. Yet nothing ever happened, while there were sieges in Ruby Ridge and Waco.
4. Despite all that revolutionary and violent rhetoric Pierce was probably the most conservative man in the movement and far as habitus and personal behavior is concerned. Being a major shareholder while on the other hand disguising as sort of an anti-capitalist does not make you very trustworthy
5. Pierce’s NA empire is basically the result of what I would call “hostile takeovers”. He profited from the infighting and quarrels his missionaries incited in other organizations. While I admit that I cannot
fully judge the results of that strategy (Resistance Records come to mind as an example) I am fully aware of the results in Europe, where Pierce tried to undermine and destroy legitimate nationalist organizations and basically acted like an agent provocateur from the safety of his WV compound while his NA cannon fodder in Europe did the dirty work. And by dirty work I don’t mean morally
or ethically questionable tactics. I am talking about criminal activities (and yes, they are even criminal in the U.S.)
6. Pierce never spent any energy on building structures. The NA has no cadres, no mandatory training and education for members and basically nothing ever got delegated from WV to state or local chapters. There is no clear chain of command. I also doubt (and the future will show)
that the NA as an organization is legally owning anything. NA operations were financed
exclusively according to Pierce’s good will.
7. There is no legal way the membership of the NA can replace it’s Führer At least there are no charter provisions for that scenario. Would you want to be a member of such an absolutistic group? I certainly wouldn’t.
8. The Cosmotheist Church concept was so ridiculous that even the Area 51 conspiracy nuts make a whole lot more sense.
Now that Pierce is dead there at least is the theoretical chance that the NA might evolve into a serious political force. But in order to achieve that almost everything will have to be changed. You really cannot achieve anything when you’re hiding in the backwoods of West Virginia, where you
pool your resources and members will have to do a pilgrimage there like muslims do their hadj to Mecca. In order to be more than just a personal cult the NA will have to define itself as a political force. As such it will have to influence the political process directly – and that is the hardest part. Therefore most “movement” groups have always shied away from that responsibility. But exactly that is expected by the people. Selling books and CDs just isn’t enough. The ADV broadcast lacked coherence and never offered a viable strategy for the listeners. The bottom line was “Send me your
$$ so that I can perpetuate these ADV sermons from the WV hill and sell more trinkets”.
There may have been longtime goals, but they were anything but concrete. It all boiled down to “Trust me, I know the way”. But the point is: I doubt that Pierce ever did. He probably was the one most surprised by the fact that such a comic book, mad professor type guru could attract a substantial
number of allegedly political groupies. I mean, Pierce had the charisma of a dead fish. That guy really creeped me (and not only me) out and those who know me also know that I am not very sensitive in that regard.
Of course, if you know anything about Dick Barrett, you know he had to chime in, of course with a little bit of self-promotion for himself. This was found on a listserv called Upstream:
Pied Piper from Hell
July 23, 2002
Tim-McVeigh-instigator William Pierce dead at 68
Campaign of maimings, jailings and bombings ends
The man inexorably promoted by the Jewish Anti-Defamation League as the leading neo-Nazi in America is dead at 68. William Pierce, the West-Virginia-based proprietor of various Internet, music
and publishing operations, had been an associate of George Lincoln Rockwell, who had proclaimed himself the “American Fuhrer” during the Sixties. According to historian David Irving, the Jewish
Lobby had hyped certain neo-Nazis in order to raise funds and keep a sort of “boogeyman” before the public.
According to Richard Barrett, “There were two figures who the Jewish Lobby had touted in an attempt to portray American rightists as Hitler-worshipers: Richard Butler and William Pierce. The
path to pro-majority social reform, based on pure patriotism and pure blood, is no longer marginalized or distracted by such diversion.” Pierce, a self-professed atheist, had “made his mark, but it was not a red, white and blue one.”
In 1969, Pierce had pilfered the mailing list of the National Youth Alliance, the organization founded in Washington, DC by Barrett to carry on the efforts of Youth for Wallace, which he chaired. When Barrett left the capital to attend law school, Pierce used the list — and the name — to distribute a newsletter adulating Hitler, which, also, called for the assassination of public officials. Pierce, also,
changed his name to National Alliance, which he ran as a sole proprietorship.
(Editor’s note: Son of a—! We didn’t know this bit of info!!! Of course, Barrett has a habit of skewering the truth, so we cannot say what role he had in all of this for certain. I do notice that the name of Willis Carto is left out of this, and it has been well known that Pierce and Carto was at war over this list controversy for years.–DLJ)
In 1982, Pierce established what he termed the Cosmotheist Church, which had its tax-exemption yanked by the Internal Revenue Service after it was adjudged to be a sham for atheism. Pierce
had contemplated using the “church” to manage an estate he acquired in Hillsboro, West Virginia. In a far-reaching legal precedent, the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the Di
strict of Columbia held,
when Pierce sought exemption for his Alliance, that use of the word “European” and “white” disqualified an organization from claiming exemption.
According to Barrett, “the 1982 Pierce-ruling was a major bungle, which set back rightist activists. It changed laws, which had existed for hundreds of years, to penalize those who promoted education.” The IRS used the rule to shut down virtually every solvent rightist institution in the country. In 1988, Ben Klassen, an atheist Russian immigrant, offered to deed his North Carolina compound
to The Nationalist Movement, but was turned down because a Klassen associate had been sued for murder and any of Klassen’s assets would be subject to levy.
Judgment assessed
Pierce struck a deal with Klassen for the property. However, Pierce was then sued by pro-minority activist Morris Dees, who secured a $200,000.00 judgment against Pierce, which Pierce paid
off in cash. Barrett, who had defeated Dees when Dees sued the Nationalists, said that the judgment against Pierce had set a bad example that rightists were vulnerable to lawsuits. Mark Thomas, an associate of both Pierce and Butler, was, then, jailed for receiving funds from various
mid-West bank robberies. The money was never traced directly to Pierce, however Attorney-General John Ashcroft, in recent FBI testimony before Congress, stated that the National Alliance was a “domestic terrorist” group.
Pierce openly displayed Hitlerian insignia on his Internet site, while touting the brand of anarchy which had attracted Tim McVeigh. McVeigh ascribed his bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal
Building to the plan advanced by Pierce in his book, Turner Diaries, and Pierce maintained that he was an avid fan of McVeigh and the bombing. Wendell Gardner said that Pierce’s preoccupation with violence had been Pierce’s most negative and harmful attribute. “He had gotten many people killed, maimed and jailed, kind of like some Pied Piper from hell,” said Gardner. Barry Hackney called Pierce a “talented writer” who “identified cogent problems but not viable solutions.”
Larry Shumake, a Pierce devotee, killed himself after engaging in a shootout with police in Jackson, Mississippi. Todd Vanbiber, a member of Pierce’s Alliance, was blinded when a bomb he was
making exploded. Vanbiber received a lengthy prison term. Another Pierce admirer, Alex Curtis, called for “lone-wolf” killings and bombings, over the Internet. Curtis is serving a federal prison sentence for “intimidation” and conspiracy. Hendrick Moebus, an escaped murderer, took up refuge at Pierce’s compound, but was denied political asylum on the grounds that he had associated with Pierce, who was adjudged by the courts to have been a violence instigator.
Pierce has lately taken up the publication of “black metal” music, which he acquired from George Burdi, a Satan-worshiper who also professed devotion to Hitler, but who shifted to promoting
miscegenation and who moved in with his East Indian concubine. According to Roger Rawls, “Pierce had a penchant to make Skinheads appear as raunchy as possible. He pushed the Beatnik style in a way that debased the pure blood, pure skin and pure cause of the Skinhead movement.” Varg Vikernes, who had collaborated with Pierce in his music venture, is imprisoned in Sweden for burning down a string of churches.
In jail or dead
Pierce had published a comic book depicting individuals using clubs to beat up their foes. “Those, such as Benjamin Smith, who followed his advice, wound up either in jail or dead,” complained
Rawls. “And Pierce was nowhere around to help out the ones who he got in trouble.” Pierce had become the beneficiary of ADL publicity only after the Jewish Lobby’s first choice, Andrew Greenbaum, folded. Greenbaum, who used the alias “Bo Decker,” had dressed up as Hitler and was claimed by ADL-chief Abraham Foxman to be “the fastest-growing group in America.” When Greenbaum was exposed as a Jew, he dropped from sight and Foxman bestowed the title upon Pierce.
According to Foxman, Pierce had amassed a multi-million-dollar fortune, but the sources of Pierce’s funding remain shadowy. Only a month ago, Washington reporter Jim Oliphant had suggested
in Legal Times that Pierce was being financed to the tune of one-million dollars per year by Ahmed Huber, a half-Jewish, half-Arab millionaire living in Switzerland, who shared a passionate hatred of
Christianity with Pierce. Shortly before his death, Pierce had “declared war” on Nationalists and Christians. His spokesman, Billy Roper, had begun issuing public statements that Nationalists were “insignificant” and “mentally ill.” Eric Owens chimed in terming Nationalists “crazy” and “nuts” on Pierce’s website, right up until the end.
The day that Pierce expired, after a one-month bout with liver and kidney cancer, an 11-year-old had asked Nationalists if it would be all right to put up Pierce’s stickers. The youth said that he planned to use “surgical gloves” in the operation to prevent leaving fingerprints. He was told by Crosstar that Pierce-follower Richard Desper and others had already been charged with felonies for doing that very thing. Crosstar’s suggestion was to learn and follow the law and to get with an organization which offered some legal protections. Pierce replied on his website, however, that it is “best
to stay underground for awhile and not get caught doing anything. Best advice I could give you is … practice not getting caught.”
Pierce had preached an odd mixture of Hitlerism, anarchy, Satan-worship and nihilism. He had once imported a mail-order bride from Eastern Europe, who quickly dumped him upon arriving in America. Mark Cotterill, a former spokesman for the British National Party, struck up an acquaintance with Pierce, but was immediately hounded by immigration authorities for being an illegal agent of a foreign government and hob-knobbing with a violence-instigator. Harold Covington, a self-declared neo-Nazi who had accused Pierce of being a “fraud,” stated that “as far as I am concerned, the Pierce episode in our history is closed.”
This is not the first time we have published an account of a Nazi hating Pierce. Last year we came across an essay entitled Why I Broke from William Pierce.
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