Thoughts on Radicalism
Thoughts on Radicalism is a commentary by Dr. William Pierce which appeared in the National Alliance Bulletin of November 1978.
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About a year ago the Alliance had as a supporting member one of the wealthiest women in America. One day, however, the National Office received a letter from her which said, in effect, “I’m beginning to believe from some of the things in your paper that the National Alliance is not a patriotic organization at all, but is radical and wants to destroy America. Please cancel my membership immediately.”
The woman was probably a dyed-in-the-wool conservative and couldn’t have been salvaged in any event. In many cases, however, people who have been accustomed to thinking in conservative terms can be illuminated. This little essay is intended to throw some light on the difference between the conservative and radical outlooks and to make it clear why the Alliance is, indeed, a radical organization. It is assumed from the beginning, of course, that every Alliance member understands that the word “radical” says nothing whatever about the “rightness” or “leftness” of a person’s views, but only about the degree to which those views are rooted in fundamental principles.
Consider first a few concrete illustrations: When the stock market takes a nosedive, most conservatives will groan, and most Alliance members will chortle. When food prices take an especially sharp jump, the same reactions occur--even though conservatives and Alliance members eat the same food, and both have to tighten their belts. And when a politician is caught taking bribes or cavorting with homosexuals or prostitutes, the conservative will grit his teeth and vow to vote against the rascal at the next election, while the true radical will smile and say, “Bless you, Senator.”
And if the conservative sees the radical’s reaction to these things, he will certainly not understand. He will say: “No patriot could be happy that we have a bad economy and a corrupt government. Therefore, radicals are not patriotic.”
The truth of the matter is that the Alliance radical no more wants an unstable economy and high prices than does the conservative, and the radical is actually far less tolerate of political corruption than is the conservative. But . . . the radical’s understanding is also far deeper than the conservative’s, and his values are probably different as well.
The reason why the two react differently to the sorts of things mentioned above is that the radical is distressed by the disease eating out the soul of Western civilization and is determined to effect a cure for the disease while the conservative is distressed only by the symptoms of the disease and will be happy if they can be suppressed, even though the disease itself remains. The radical knows that, as long as the cancer is in our guts, it is better that it hurt like hell than we feel no pain, because only in the former case will we actively seek a cure.
Consider some more concrete illustrations: Given a choice between Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson as U.S. Presidential candidates, the conservative--even the intelligent conservative--will unhesitatingly choose the former, because Ike at least looked honest, while not even the most naïve rube would have bought a used car form LBJ.
And for exactly the same reasons the radical will choose LBJ. As long as the inner rottenness remains--as long as the same destructive forces are at work behind the scenes--then it is better that the perfumed bandages be ripped off America’s running sores, so that they can stink in the nostrils of those who would rather pretend that all is well. Better LBJ’s sly, oily, palm-rubbing, all-too-evident crookedness to remind the American cattle what their political system has degenerated to than Ike’s phony façade of propriety, which only encourages the cattle to continue munching contentedly.
And on the foreign scene, better a reptilian , hate-oozing, bloodstained, Old Testament, hook-nosed, Yiddish-accented jew like Menachem Begin out front as leader of world jewry, leading hard the contemptuously on the U.S. government as he arrogantly demands more and more for his Chosen Race, than a blond, half-Europeanized, “reasonable” jew like Yitzchak Rabin. World jewry remains the same in either case, and Begin is like the rattlesnake’s rattle or the skull and crossbones on the bottle of cyanide.
So far, so good. Most Alliance members can probably accept, whiteout lengthy soul-searching, that it is better, for the time being, that we be governed by carelessly greedy corrupt politicians than by carefully greedy corrupt politicians; that we be confronted by fire-breathing Black militants than by “good niggers” who work hard and stay off the streets; that the media masters be Talmudic stereotypes than Aryanized, baptized jews.
But there is more. We are living now under a system which is inherently racially destructive. Either we destroy it, or it will destroy our race. The Alliance is, therefore, in a state of total war with the System. Whatever aids a successful outcome of that war is good, and whatever hinders a successful outcome is bad.
If the shooting had already started, it would be easier for everyone to maintain a proper wartime outlook and to evaluate things accordingly. But the shooting has not yet started, and this fact tends to keep some people disoriented. They tend to think that we have some sort of temporary truce with the System--that hostilities are, at least, limited, if not altogether suspended.
That is not true. Hostilities are not limited; it is merely that both sides are restricted in their choice of weapons at the moment. Anything that we can do, with that one qualification, to help our eventual victory--anything--must be done whenever the opportunity arises.
This means that we approve of many things which a person who has not yet developed a wartime outlook finds quite shocking. Committed to total war, we think of the System only in terms of damaging it and eventually destroying it, whereas the conservative thinks in terms of reforming it. There are many people who share our racial views and who have advanced beyond conservatism, but who simply have not yet drawn the necessary conclusions from their views; they will, therefore, often find themselves on the opposite side of an issue form us, aligned with the conservative rather than with the radicals.
Destruction and waste appall most sane people, but these are unavoidable concomitants of war. We all have a stake in America’s resources, in her public buildings and facilities, in her industrial capability, even in her cities. And yet we must be willing to sacrifice as much of this as necessary in order to defeat the System, if the one thing which really counts is to be saved. The moral decision is not unlike that in the well-known motion picture, The Bridge Over the River Kwai. We must sever our emotional attachments to things which are of more benefit to the enemy then to us, until the war is won.
The transition to a truly radical outlook comes when the individual has severed these attachments and is no longer trying to save the bridge (to continue the analogy) into which he has put so much work, but accepts the fact that it must go. And has been stated before, The Turner Diaries is not plan or blueprint, and it is highly unlikely that the events of the next few years will bear a detailed resemblance to those of the novel. But the book has more than entertainment value, because it helps the reader understand the aforementioned aspect of the radical outlook.
We must be radical, but we must also be careful. The dyed-in-the-wool conservative will always equate radicalism with nihilism, but we want to take pains to ensure that the people we’re trying to recruit don’t make that equation. We also want to be sure that we do not, by out attitudes or our actions, allow such an equation to become valid.
These dangers are very real. Every revolutionary movement will inevitably pick up adherents who are genuinely antisocial rather than merely anti-System. I have known people calling themselves revolutionaries who use that label as a justification for shoplifting and other petty criminal activities, the real motive for which was personal gain rather than advancing any revolutionary cause.
Indeed, one can argue that such activity strikes a blow against the Enemy--or, at least, that segment of the Enemy represented by jewish department store owners. Vocal elements on the left make similar arguments in favor of petty criminal activity as means of “ripping off the ruling class,” and a couple of best-selling books with that theme have been published in the last decade.
One does not have to defend the property rights of jewish merchants in order to refute such arguments, however. Pettiness is one stigma we do not need to inflict on ourselves. Self-indulgence is another. Irresponsibility is a third.
The radicals we want must have an outlook which prepares them to do what is necessary to win, without squeamishness or self-doubt. But whatever they do must be done with the highest sense of responsibility to the future and with our motives of self-interest--rather than merely to prove that they have rid themselves of “bourgeois morality, “ as seems to be primary incentive on the left.
We must be imbued with a higher morality, rather than with amorality. Our radicalism, in word and deed, must have about it an aura of nobility, rather than pettiness.
Even so, relatively few people from the general public--just like our wealthy ex-member--will understand our approve our radicalism. Most will not voluntarily accept the revolutionary remedies we propose.
The radical--as the Latin radix indicates--is concerned with the roots of things, which are often hidden from view, while the average person is concerned only with the obvious and the apparent. The radical is also concerned with the temporal extension of things--with what they have been in the past and what they will become in the future, while most people consider only the present or , at most the immediate future.
The radical extrapolates a social or racial process to its conclusion and justifies his remedy by this conclusion. If the conclusion is drastic, then the radical is willing to propose a drastic remedy.
The average person, however, does not see the conclusion; he sees only the present stage of the process, and he is unwilling to accept a remedy more drastic than warranted by the present stage. Thus the average person always reacts to something which has already happened; he never anticipates a development and takes preventive action.
The remedies for which we are calling now seem “extreme” (i.e., we are “extremists”) to the average citizen. Our proposed cures seem “worse that the illness.” To one who is capable only of seeing the present danger, the large-scale social economic disruptions concomitant to our program seem an unacceptably high price.
When the process for which we are now proposing radical remedies, presently rejected by the public, reach their conclusion at some time in the future, then the public will feel the presently proposed remedies are appropriate. But then it will be too late.
There are just two ways around this problem. On is to ignore public opinion and do what must be done in spite of it. The other is to stimulate the public’s feeble imagination so that it can see, at least in part, what the radical sees. We are obliged to use both these ways, to a greater or lesser extent, and we shall consider which should be greater, and which lesser, at another time.