Thoughts on Recruiting, part two
Thoughts on Recruiting, part two is a commentary by Dr. William Pierce which appeared in the National Alliance Bulletin of June 1985. See part one here.
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What type of person does the Alliance seek as a member?
It has been said often in these pages that there are many different types of persons in the Alliance, ranging in age from 18 to 93, in educational level from high school dropout to PhD, and in economic status from unemployed and destitute to quite wealthy. In view of this diversity it might seem that it would be difficult to define a "type" as the desirable membership prospect. Nevertheless, some things can be said on the subject to good effect. And they need to be said, because otherwise individual members will form their own ideas--diverse ideas--as to who should be in the Alliance and who should not, and as to the type of person to whom the Alliance should direct its appeal and the type of image the Alliance should project for that purpose.
It is natural for people to judge others by themselves and to seek others of their own kind. But this tendency limits the amount of diversity which can safely be tolerated in any organization. On the one hand, if diversity is too narrowly limited, then one may have an organization whose members feel a strong bond of comradeship, but whose numbers will always be too small for effectiveness; on the other hand, too much diversity--an effort to bring too many different types of people together for the sake of large numbers--may result in an organization without internal cohesion.
In the case of the Alliance, the argument has been made that a large degree of diversity can safely be tolerated, because cohesion is provided by the shared purpose of racial survival and racial progress. As long as each member keeps this purpose foremost in his mind and believes that other members are doing the same, then differences in attitudes on other matters, in lifestyles, and in socioeconomic status will not be important. That is the ideal; unfortunately, it does not always match reality.
In reality, the strains caused by different perceptions of what an Alliance member should be are continually manifesting themselves. A few examples will illustrate this problem.
Many--perhaps most--members are fervent admires of Adolf Hitler and his movement in Germany during the 1920-1945 period, and their admiration carries over into a more general Germanophilia. A few members, however, do not share this admiration, and they believe that any public display of it (as in articles in NV dealing with the Second World War) is harmful to the Alliance's recruiting effort. This difference of opinion already has resulted in a heated debate among members of the Southeast Florida Unit.
Many members are enthusiastic about the efforts of the National Office to develop a number of Alliance songs and to make the singing of those songs a regular part of Alliance meetings. Some members, on the other hand, feel that while singing in itself may not be an objectionable activity, the Alliance's present selection of songs does not appeal to the right type of people. This latter group is itself divided: there are those, nearly all young males, who believe that our songs are not militant enough--that they should have more of the character of fighting songs or marching songs; and there are those who object strongly to the spiritual--one might even say hymnlike--quality of many Alliance songs. The Alliance, they say, is a political organization, anything which smacks of religion will "turn off" the type of person we need to recruit.
The April-May issue of the BULLENTIN brought out another difference of views on the type of person the Alliance should be seeking for its membership. Several members responded positively enough to the comments about former collaborators to telephone our write the National Office with their expressions of appreciation for the new insight those comments gave them. One member, however, responded very negatively, expressing great concern that former racemixers might be admitted into the Alliance.
How can all of these differences of opinion about the type of appeal the Alliance should strive for in its recruiting be reconciled? The cold truth is that some of them cannot be reconciled; the best we can do with them is attempt to keep them from becoming so troublesome that they alienate one faction or another of our membership. That is, in some cases we seek to ignore irreconcilable differences, for the sake of getting the job done. In other cases we can eliminate differences--or, at least, minimize them--through education, through clearly explaining why we strive harder to recruit certain types of persons than other types: the education, if effective, will change members' minds and produce more nearly uniform views. That is certainly a course preferable to ignoring the differences and wondering when they will flair up destructively.
Before attempting, in a later BULLENTIN, a general answer to the question posed at the beginning of this section, let us deal with a few of the specific questions raised in the examples above.
First, in their recruiting efforts, what positions should members take on Hitler, the National Socialist movement, and the Second World War?
Any member who has been reading NV for a year or so--especially those issues with the last two installments of the "Who We Are" series--must have at least a rough idea as to the correct answer to this question. The Second World War wan not so much a defeat for Germany as it was for the White race. To quote NV No. 85: "It was the greatest, the most catastrophic loss the race has yet suffered." Adolf Hitler was the leader not so much of the German side in that war as of the White side; Franklin Roosevelt was the leader of--or, at least, the front man for--the jewish side. The National Socialist movement was not so much a movement for strengthening Germany as it was a seed which had the potential for regenerating our race. Every member should understand these things, take them to heart, and represent them correctly in dealing with potential recruits.
This said, it also should be noted that discretion and tact are required in representing these things, as with every other Alliance position. Many U.S. veterans of the Second World War, especially those who experienced combat in Europe and still have a large emotional involvement in the war, cannot easily face the fact that they were fighting for the wrong side. Helping them over this hurdle may be a difficult task, calling not only for persuasiveness, but also for patience and sensitivity. Any overt display of Germanophilia probably will not be helpful in this regard.
Germanophilia, in fact, can easily get out of hand. We can see a pathological form of it in some of the tiny "Nazi" groups in America whose members attempt to mimic, in dress and manner as will as in ideology, the German National Socialists of the Hitler era. Needless to say, even the slightest whiff of such pathetic foolishness is counterproductive in our recruiting efforts. We do not want and cannot afford to have in our ranks members who through such an appeal, and it can only drive away form us the persons we need to recruit.
It's all right for members to have a special admiration for things German. It's also all right not have such an admiration, even to believe that Germans are too stuffy, that they are just as prone to error as Americans or Frenchmen, and that their degenerate behavior since 1945 proves that they are no better than any other White nationality.
Members may discuss freely the merits or demerits, the applicability or inapplicability to present-day America, of various aspects of the German National Socialist program, in the absence of any official Alliance position statement on the matter under discussion. What they must avoid is, on the one hand, any obsessive preoccupation with the subject which might tend to give the Alliance a "cult" image; and, on the other hand, a negative attitude toward Hitler and his doctrine or a denial that the central issues in the Second World War remains in the central issues in our struggle for racial survival.
In this regard, then, the type of member we are seeking is one whose intellect and instinct have lifted him above the Ronald Reagan brand of flag-waving American nationalism to the higher plane of racial nationalism. Only such a person is capable of understanding our assertion that America fought on the wrong side in the Second World War, and that every ill which has befallen the nation since then, from racially integrated schools and a soaring rate of miscegenation to the flood of Asian and Latin immigrants now sweeping over the land, is a direct consequence of that grave sin.
Do the present Alliance songs appeal to the right type of prospective member? The answer is, generally yes. The selection is still limited, and there certainly will be more fighting and marching songs added in the future. The type of member the Alliance seeks--at least, the type of male member--should respond positively to such songs.
But there also will be more hymns, and the type of member the Alliance seeks, of either sex, should respond positively to them as well. The Alliance is not a church, of course (nor is it a political organization, because it does not participate, at this time, in the electoral process). But it is an organization with spiritual dimensions and a spiritual task. It is concerned with the whole person, when it evaluates a potential recruit.
Every Alliance member should understand that at root it was not dirty politics that got the White race into its present jam: it was spiritual corruption. Unless there can be a transformation of values, a spiritual renewal and reorientation, the race cannot be saved. Education is part of the task of the Alliance, but facts and ideas alone will not win the war for survival in which we are engaged.
Many racially conscious Whites have reacted so strongly against alien Judeo-Christianity that they have acquired a negative attitude toward not only the poison-peddling, racemixing Protestant and Catholic establishments which they have rejected, but also toward everything else which seems "religious" to them. That is unfortunate indeed, for we are a religious race by nature. We need religion in order to be whole and healthy.
In particular, Alliance members need spiritual inspiration as well as a fighting spirit if they are to accomplish their task, and we seek recruits who are capable of being inspired spiritually.