Dr. William L. Pierce, Chairman of the US-based National Alliance, died unexpectedly at his West Virginia home on the 23rd July, following a battle with cancer lasting less than a month.

I never knew William Pierce, though I felt I knew him well enough from extensive reading of his published works, especially those contained in the Free Speech archives.

At times, his writing seemed to strike directly home, almost as though he was reading my mind:-

‘And while I was doing these things - while I was growing up and studying and working - America, my country, the country my parents and grandparents and great grandparents and great-great grandparents for many generations had built with their hands and their hearts and their brains and their blood, was being destroyed, was being turned upside down and inside out, was being degraded, was being perverted into something ugly and alien. You've seen it yourself. You know what I'm talking about.’

Born in 1933, William Luther Pierce was apolitical in his youth, devoting his time and energy exclusively to his scientific and academic career, gaining a physics doctorate from the University of Colorado, before beginning teaching at Oregon University.

As soon as Pierce began to realise that something was deeply rotten in the state of America, he abandoned his safe and well-paid job to start extensive reading and investigation into political and historical matters. Dr. Pierce deserves high praise for demonstrating in such a dramatic fashion that for him principles were more important than money.

After founding the National Alliance in 1974, Dr. Pierce usually worked up to 80 hours a week to build up that association into America's premier nationalist movement.

No mincing of words

Now, just as was his right under the First Amendment, established by America's founding fathers, Pierce never minced his words when attacking those he perceived as destroying his country.

As with another cat-loving American, Ezra Pound, when we look though Pierce's writings and broadcasts it's foolish to consider them in PC-fashion, as ‘hurtful’ or ‘harmful’ just on the basis of a few stray phrases. Instead, we should consider the overall body of work in the round, and ask: are these things really so? To which question the answer must surely be in the affirmative: yes - with the proviso that a little quibbling over some of the details is perfectly acceptable.

Even the little rabbit or vole in the meadow will defend itself when it comes under attack. But we in Britain often seem unable to realise that a ruthless multi-front war has been waged against us for decades, and that we are being defeated and routed while - incredibly - hardly realising what is happening to us. There are just a few inconsequential grumbles as crime hits the roof, another boatload of asylum-seekers reaches our land and what's left of our industrial base gets exported eastwards. Shuffling to the slaughterhouse, as one of Pierce's broadcasts put it.

Now we all know that the ‘civilised world’ can put up with quite a lot. A raid on Baghdad air-raid shelters that slaughters a thousand or more women and children can be sanctified as a ‘surgical strike’. Civilians sheltering under Red Cross protection can be shelled out of existence at Qana without attracting too much attention. The Jenin massacre, witnessed by dozens upon dozens of people, can be airbrushed out of history by the compliant UN.

Selective description of ‘hate’

But direct, as Pierce did, the occasional derogatory bar-room or parade ground racial epithet towards Marc Rich and the ‘civilised world’ will go into shock! The looting and degradation of Russia, and the frozen old babushkas begging in the streets are of little account, it seems, compared to such ‘hate’! One is reminded of the little joke about ‘hate’ literature and speech: it's just what the powers-that-be would hate you to read or hear.

Pierce, in conversation with his biographer Robert Griffin, did realise that he had a tendency to over-simplify and exaggerate the issues. What was necessary was to pitch the argument such that someone just a level above ‘Joe Sixpack’ could understand the message. As William Pierce warned in one of his last broadcasts, time was running out for America, and given that fact it was futile to try to get the masses to understand the subtleties of Werner Sombart or Oswald Spengler.

In what was to be the last series of American Dissident Voices those made following the September llth attacks in New York and Washington - Pierce seemed to be trying to reach out to a broader constituency and appeal to those awakened by the terrible consequences of the US's unconditional backing for Israel.

Humour

In spite of the deadly seriousness of the situation, flashes of humour are evident throughout Pierce's broadcast writings: "I believe that Howdy Dowdy or Fred Flintstone could have been up there on the speaker's podium with the Presidential seal, saying the same things Clinton said, and as long as the media people treated it seriously the viewers would see nothing amiss."

This surrealistic situation applies in this country too. As the political equivalent of the ex-pop star Jason Donovan - an earlier discovery of the noble Lord Levy - Blair is simply not worth getting excited about. He's no more than a one-minute wonder who will be completely forgotten if and when some even more pliant puppet is inflicted upon us. Incidentally, whatever did happen to that Major chap? Is he making an inventory of cricket balls and batting pads at Lords, perhaps?

William Pierce always lamented the loss of our old virtues of honour, nobility and loyalty. He warned time and time again that a people who lacked a sense of honour, and were concerned only for the ‘fast buck’, would inevitably turn into a rabble, fit only for exploitation or destruction. He was one of those who realise that civilisation must be built on a spiritual basis, in marked contrast to all the repellent ‘jobsworths’ and twisters who infest politics and journalism with their ‘look-after-number-one’ mentality. In contrast to these ‘leaders’ of despair, decay and fragmentation, William Luther Pierce understood the spiritual, indeed mystical, basis upon which a healthy society must be founded:-

‘Our truth tells us that no man, no race, not even this planet, exists as an end in itself. The only thing which exists as an end in itself is the whole. The whole of which the things I just named are parts. The universe is the physical manifestation of the whole. The whole is continually changing and always will be. It is evolving. That is, it is moving toward ever more complex, ever higher, states of existence.

‘From the beginning, the whole - the creator, the self-created, has followed, has in fact embodied, an upward urge - an urge toward higher and higher degrees of self-consciousness, toward ever more nearly perfect states of self-realisation. In man - in our race in particular - this upward urge, this divine spark, has brought us to a new threshold.

‘All we require is that you share with us a commitment to the simple, but great, truth which I have explained to you here, that you understand that you are a part of the whole, which is the creator, that you understand that your purpose, the purpose of mankind and the purpose of every other part of creation, is the creator's purpose, that this purpose is the never-ending ascent of the path of creation, the path of life symbolised by our life rune...’

Reminiscences and salute from John Tyndall

The cause of white survival throughout the world often suffers through lack of leaders equal to the greatness of the mission thrust upon them. This most certainly could not be said of William L. Pierce one of the few really exceptional men to answer the call to defend our race in modern times.

There is much that I could say about William Pierce which has been admirably said by Ian Buckley, so I will not bore the reader with repetition. However, I did know Pierce personally - as well as the distance between the continents allowed. I was a guest at his home on my visit to the US in 1979 and he at mine when he came to Britain in 1995. The latter visit enraged our Jewish Home Secretary Michael Howard, and the visitor was curtly told by Howard's office that he would not be permitted to enter the United Kingdom should he wish to come here again. This was despite the fact while here he engaged in no public agitation of any kind, had never broken the law either in his country or ours, and in fact was almost wholly of British stock - a descendant of the very best of the breed who had pioneered America and built it into a super-power. By contrast, every kind of alien troublemaker is allowed into Britain to do almost as he or she likes without any action by our civil authorities to deport.

William Pierce was good company - I can confirm Ian Buckley's testimony to his sense of humour. What was also refreshing about him was his complete disinclination to engage in personal attacks on other nationalist leaders or their organisations, despite the readiness of many of them to attack him. The same was noticeable in his written and spoken output. He was utterly lacking in pomposity or any evident sense of self-importance. If he believed himself to be someone special - which he had every right to do - he never showed it.

William Pierce was a capable platform speaker, though not an exceptional one. Showmanship and histrionics were not his style. He once said to me that he found fluency of words difficult and needed to speak from a thoroughly prepared script. This, of course, was possible in his radio broadcasts, and in that field he knew no superior. Not only was the content of these talks brilliantly put together, because both intellectually powerful and at the same time understandable to the most unsophisticated listener, but the talks were expressed with a force and urgency that really imbued those who heard them with the desire to act.

It was difficult to compare Pierce's organisation with our own British National Party because the National Alliance was not a party itself and did not engage in elections. Pierce's view was that an elite force comprising people of high intelligence and character must first be built before any effective political breakthrough would be possible. As to how that breakthrough would occur, he was a little ambiguous but often spoke as if he couldn't see it coming except by armed insurgence. From a British standpoint, it is difficult to evaluate such a strategy when it is applied to the American scene. However, Pierce tended to be one who operated according to the formula of first things first: he stressed that what was needed immediately was the creation of an alternative opinion media able to reach the intelligent and the publicly spirited and it was upon this that he concentrated his efforts. In his radio broadcasts he took advantage of a medium almost certainly beyond the reach of nationalists in Britain at the present time. The size, spread and decentralisation of the United States, together with the non-conformism of many of its people - the descendants of rebellious stock, has resulted in the existence of radio stations run often by proprietors with a sturdy sense of independence. He related to me once with a chuckle how one such proprietor was visited by an aggressive representative of the most powerful ethnic lobby in the country and urged to drop the Pierce broadcasts to which he responded with two short Anglo-Saxon words of four and three letters respectively. Would that there were more of such men around!