Survival Notes
Survival Notes is a commentary by Dr. William Pierce which appeared in the National Alliance Bulletin of May-June 1983.
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There has been a recent increase in interest in the Posse Comitatus and similar "survivalist" groups among some Alliance members, aroused in part by the fatal June shootout between Posse Comitatus member Gordon Kahl and law enforcement offices in Arkansas. The purpose of the following comments is to guide the thinking of members on the general subject of survival communities, resistance against governmental agencies, and related matters. These comments are especially relevant to the directions of the Alliance’s own future growth.
The Alliance’s long-range plans are conditioned by several assumptions about the most likely course of political, social, and economic development in the world--especially in the United States--during the next few decades. Among other things, it is being assumed that:
- 1. There will be no sudden collapse of U.S. governmental authority, due either to an economic catastrophe or to military action by a foreign government.
- 2. Instead there will be a continuation of the present trend toward more governmental cynicism, corruption, and inefficiency. As the present generation of senior, White civil servants dies off and "affirmative action" brings more non-Whites into the bureaucracy, along with a less-responsible generation of Whites, there will be more bungling and minor breakdowns, until the level of governmental efficiency and integrity approaches that in Honduras or El Salvador.
- 3. At the same time, however, the government will grow more repressive, with eventual bans on private firearms and free speech almost certain.
- 4. Despite their growing unpopularity, the jews will retain their control of the mass media, of the affections of most of organized Christianity, and of the political process. As by far the best organized, most purposeful, and most intelligent pressure group they will become even more powerful and dangerous as the standards and institutions of the host society around them continue to decay.
- 5. Although there will be reactions among the general White population outside the Alliance to the breakdown of their society and the continued worsening of their living conditions--minor (or even major) taxpayer revolts, organized protests and demonstrations by farmers or other occupational groups, occasional assassinations of leading politicians, and the popping up of all sorts of fads, cults, and new ideological movements either implicitly or explicitly hostile to the policies of the authorities--the media, the churches, and the government, working in tandem, will be able to keep most of the population obedient most of the time, so long as there is not a sudden, catastrophic, and prolonged collapse of the economy.
- 6. Most White Americans will continue to drift in the same direction they have been moving since the Second World War, toward a greater acceptance of miscegenation, the presence of more non-Whites in their midst, and such evils as drug abuse and homosexuality. Even racially conscious White parents will have little success, on the average, in preventing their own children form being swept along with this tide.
- 7. History is full of surprises. All of the forgoing notwithstanding, there certainly will be developments, major and minor, which neither the Alliance nor the jews will have anticipated. One of the possibilities, even though slight, is a catastrophic collapse of the economy and of governmental authority.
With these assumptions in mind, the Alliance must govern its own development in such a way that it can continue its growth over a very long period of time, under increasingly repressive conditions and in a society whose Whites are even more intimidated and brainwashed than today. At the same time the Alliance must be prepared to take advantage both of long-term trends which may weaken its adversaries and of unexpected, acute conditions which may provide temporary opportunities.
An Alliance survival community can serve these needs in several ways:
- 1. In the short term (roughly, the next decade), it can provide certain facilities and conditions useful--perhaps even external--for further growth and development of the Alliance. Among these are land and buildings not subject to the financial/political uncertainties of a rented urban office; increased physical security for the most essential and irreplaceable Alliance property; sufficient space for the continuous expansion of present operations and the initiation of new operations (such as specialized training programs for members), without the disruption associated with the relocation to new and larger rented offices every two or there years; the ability to maintain a larger National Office staff than would be economically feasible in an urban environment; and a degree of spiritual isolation conductive to the development and strengthening, in members of the Alliance cadre, of ideals and principles totally at odds with those of the larger American society.
- 2. In the intermediate term (the next two or three decades), when urban conditions may be expected to become quite chaotic, with large-scale rioting by minorities and major, though temporary, breakdowns of such utilities as fire and police protection, telephone service, and electrical power, considerations of physical security and the non-disruption of essential Alliance operations will become much more urgent than they are now. It is also reasonable to expect substantial political repression and curtailment of civil rights during this period. In Canada, for example, Human Relations Councils are already able to demand and obtain the banning from the mails of whatever they deem to be “racist” material. jews are quietly pressing for legislation to permit similar bans in the United States. Such a ban would drastically disrupt the Alliance’s source of operating funds, among other things, and would require facilities suitable for ridding out the crisis and developing alternate modes of communications and recruitment.
- 3. In the long term (beyond the next 25 years), considerations of ideological and genetic continuity will become paramount. If values, ideas, and goals are to be passed intact to a succeeding generation of Alliance members, they must be embodied in a living, growing community of men and women. The nucleus of this community, at least, must have a substantial degree of isolation from the corrupting influences pervasive in the larger society, so that children can be bought up, and adults can work, in a social-cultural environment which reinforces rather than erodes the spiritual and ideological foundation in each individual which is essential to his serving as a bearer and agent of the Alliance program. Eventually, if the Alliance is to remain a community of blood as well as spirit, it must be a breeding community genetically isolated form the mulatto world outside.
Practicality dictates a step-by-step approach to serving these needs. An isolated breeding community is neither necessary nor feasible in the short term. Expanded facilities on land owned by the Alliance are feasible in the short term and can serve as a first step toward the independence and security which will be necessary in the intermediate term. The cadre, the experience, and the resources developed in the intermediate term can then make feasible the establishment of a community able to maintain ideological and genetic continuity over the long term.
In following these steps the Alliance will be guided by two fundamental principles: first, while independence and isolation are necessary and desirable qualities of a survival community, they are neither necessary nor desirable of the Alliance as a whole: and second, it will be a long while before the Alliance will be able to outshoot its enemies, and so it had better take care to avoid starting a firefight before it is able to finish it successfully.
To elaborate: Even when a nucleus of the Alliance exists in an isolated community, the rest of the Alliance must continue to extend and develop, not withdraw and dismantle, its communications network among the general public. The publication and distribution of books, magazines, leaflets, and other educational materials must be continually expanded and made more effective in disseminating the Alliance message to all who are capable of understanding it. Recruiting efforts must always be stepped up, never relaxed, so long as there remain any racially sound White elements among the general population. And the bulk of those recruited must remain among the public, there by increasing the Alliance’s influence on the public, instead of being withdrawn into the nucleus.
This strategy is rather different form that of virtually all presently existing "survivalist" groups. Most of them have advanced beyond the conservative stage, of believing that the jews can be held in check and the other minorities put in their place if only a few honest politicians can be elected to make the necessary changes in the laws. A few of them understand, as the Alliance does, that the moral basis for the West’s existence has thoroughly rotted away and that, therefore, the West is even now, despite its armed might and its industries and its money, merely a walking corpse which inevitably must fall down and cannot be resuscitated. But nearly all make the mistake of assuming that the corpse will collapse quickly and cleanly. They cannot imagine that it will go staggering on for decades, even as its putrefying flesh drops form its bones.
So some head for the hills with their rifles and other necessities, thinking of riding out a storm which can only last a few years. Their planning is shortsighted by at least an order of magnitude. They are not building strongly enough to last though the storm.
And some imagine that they can defy the corpse and hold it at bay with a few dozen or a few hundred armed men. That is sheer folly. Tax collectors and FBI agents may deserve to be shot. Shooting them may be virtuous. But the Alliance must not become involved in a war, no matter how holy, which it cannot win. The armed minions of the U.S. government may be less efficient than they were a few years ago, but their numerical advantage is still far too great for any survivalist group now existing or likely to exist in the next decade or two to overcome. The only course for the Alliance now is to obey those laws which must be obeyed and to build its strength for the day when there will be laws which cannot be obeyed.
Ever Alliance member--certainly every able-bodied male member without exception-should own and be proficient with at least one handgun and one long gun. But when it goes beyond that, to unlicensed mortars, grenades, machine guns, and other illegal weapons, then the member must understand that, at this time, he is acting entirely on his own. He must keep his illegal activities to himself and not attempt to involve other members or the Alliance as a whole in them.
Just because one cannot outshoot the government at this time, one should not imagine that one can afford to ignore it either. There is an attitude of withdrawal, a bunker mentality, in some "survivalist" groups. The members have withdrawn from a world of which they do not approve and with which they cannot cope. They post "keep away" signs and demand to be left alone. If they pay their taxes-- and if they manifestly pose no threat to the jews or to the mulatto new order the jews have planned for the world--then perhaps they will be left alone, for a while.
But the Alliance does not intend to withdraw from the world, partly because only by maintaining its educational and recruiting operations in the larger society, no matter how much it disapproves of that society, can it hope to build its survival community strong enough to pose a genuine threat to the jews; and partly because only by maintaining its ability to cope with the jews on their terms--using lawyers and courts and public opinion--can it hope to defend its survival community from them. In this regard, it is well to remember that Israel is not defended primarily by its own force of arms, despite all of the Israeli bluster to that effect, but rather by the diaspora jews who manipulate the governments of their Gentile hosts. The Alliance cannot match that act, but it can learn something form it.
There are two other ways in which an Alliance survival community will differ from most which exist today. The latter tend to be "back to Nature" settlements, with the members seeking a simpler life, centered around farming, than they knew in urban America. That approach would have much to recommend it, if the jewish problem and the race problem had already been solved. Because they have not, an Alliance community cannot afford the luxuries of a simple life. Its members will be accomplished copers, who will be escaping form a Judaized, multiracial environment, but not from the need to be intelligent, diligent, and careful, and to be proficient in the use of the most powerful tools and techniques the race has devised, as well as the homeliest: skilled stonemasons and carpenters alongside computer circuit designers and radar experts; master welders and solar-energy technicians together with botanists and gene-splicing biochemists; backhoe operators, diesel mechanics, toolmakers, and foundry men beside chemical-warfare specialists, pediatricians, industrial chemists, and dentists. They will be people who keep up with every valuable technological development on the outside, and who strive to go beyond that in every way they can.
While they will be spared the sight of a McDonald’s or a Burger King, the food they eat will more likely be grown in a controlled-environment greenhouse than a manured field plowed by a team of mules. The breeding of their next generation will depend heavily on in vitro fertilization of the best eggs in the community by the best sperm, and on the use of surrogate mothers. And the schooling of the young will not stop with the "three R’s" taught in a one-room schoolhouse with a potbellied stove, but will carry them well beyond their contemporaries in the best schools of the outside world, both in the knowledge they acquire and in the level of intellectual discipline they attain.
In the long term, it will be a community which will be not only White and independent, but which will also be, in effect, an ark; it will begin, in the short term, with members who, at least, are a cut above the average for the general White population, and it will head upward form there, while the outside world continues downward. It will be a goal-oriented community, rather than a self-serving community; it will exist to serve a racial need, rather than the personal needs of its members.
Finally, it will differ in its ideology and its spirituality form existing communities, which tend to carry along with them some of the worst ideological and religious baggage from the outside world: most, for example, have a strong Old Testament orientation--though usually with a few novel twists, to be sure. In evaluating another group, Alliance members should not overlook what the group believes. The quality of the people in a group is important, but so are their ideas--especially in the long term, because the ideas will determine where the group is headed and whether or not it gets there.