Above a whisper
My own formal initiation into the ranks of the “hard-core” took place in the barracks and the ward rooms of the American Nazi Party headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, during the latter half of the 1960’s. There, amidst the off-hours high jinks, the “smokin’ ‘n’ jokin” typical of the paramilitary style of the day, would come forth expressions of unsanctioned, forbidden ideas of violence and revolution more closely resembling those of the Enemy we were regularly fighting in the streets of Washington, D.C., as the Vietnam War raged ten thousand miles away. We believed in what we were doing but most of us felt uncomfortable, left wanting with the current program and strategy. We wanted to attack the real Enemy, and, furthermore, we were more than tired of knocking down Enemy minions only to have them get back up later.
We openly confided among ourselves—the duty officers, the pressmen, the clerks, shippers, the rank-and-file troopers—that what was required was a gaping hole knocked in the System order-of-things so that blood could be splashed from one end of the country to the other. None of the officers ever voiced these same opinions and, to be sure, they never inquired of ours. Nothing was open for discussion between these two sharply distinct levels.
It was Right Wingism at its darkest. It was never spoken, never printed and was, in fact, taboo in official Party dealings. In those days we were still wasting our time—and our blood—defending the honor of an all-but-dead Republic against a mob of vile Jews, Liberals, Blacks, etc., demonstrating for its final demise and, in our printed propaganda, taking a futile and sado-masochistic trip by dredging up the most recent outrages committed by Blacks in the streets and Jews and traitors in the government.
The loss of Commander Rockwell was so recent and his memory so fresh then that we carried on in his absence as though we expected his eventual return. As it turned out, no one had the vaguest idea of what to do or how to do it. The prevailing school of thought was that of “Professionalism & Orthodoxy”, in other words, to continue the “1933 approach”. I recall one heated occasion when I crossed ideological and strategic swords with one junior officer at the headquarters building. I was talking then a very adolescent version of what I’m talking now and his response was that I would one day have to be “restrained”… by the Party. He hasn’t been active now in many years.
But just as vividly I recall the first snapping of the ice in the earliest springtime of our Movement as we have it today. The refreshing and invigorating changes were first provided by Dr. William Pierce, as our propaganda chief then, in his hugely effective and widely listened to “White Power Messages” that thousands of people across the country would call in to hear. He had recorded a message in reference to a certain clique of Senators and Congressmen who were busy selling-out the soldiers in Vietnam.
He concluded that one doesn’t talk against people like these, one doesn’t vote against them in the next election, one kills them. About that same time, during one of his addresses to the First Party Congress in 1969, after he had invited questions from the floor and one naive delegate asked what we should do with the White race traitors, he spoke not a word but, gesturing with thumb and index finger forming the barrel and hammer of a pistol being fired, brought the entire assembly to its feet in the loudest outburst of cheering and applause heard during that three-day gathering.
So it was out, above a whisper, and, more than that, it was official. In less than one year. Dr. Pierce was out of the Party and on his own with the endeavor he still currently heads. Through a number of cosmetic and tactical changes in style and technique, he has never in thirteen years compromised his stand as being among the foremost of the Hard Core Idealists. And whose name and organization carries more weight in Movement circles today than Dr. William Pierce and the National Alliance?
Vol. XII, #8 – August, 1983