Prospectus for a National Front
Prospectus for a National Front was a document circulated among White activists reflecting Dr. William Pierce’s ideas on forming a National Front to achieve the goals of National Socialism in America. Earlier that year Dr. Pierce left the National Socialist White Peoples Party. In December 1970 he joined the struggling National Youth Alliance and a few years later reorganized the group into the National Alliance. Interestingly, Dr. Pierce's long-time rivel Willis Carto proposed something similar a year later.[1]
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August 31, 1970
Introduction
America today — and, more specifically, the American people — face the most serious and deadly menace which has arisen in their entire history. This menace far overshadows that posed by any war we have fought, any economic catastrophe through which we have passed, or any previous domestic strife which has torn us. For today we are faced not just with a threat to our territorial integrity, or to our material possessions, or to our way of life, or even to our own lives, but to something far dearer. Today all that we ever have been and all that we ever might be — our race itself — is threatened with extinction.
Everyone to whom this is addressed is already fully aware of that grim fact and, furthermore, understands the reasons why. Yet, despite this fairly widespread recognition of the threat — a recognition which has been present for many years now — virtually no effective defensive measures have been undertaken by any segment of the American people — neither by the racially oriented “radical right” nor by “responsible” right wingers nor by anyone else.
Certainly none of the presently existing conservative or right-wing or anti-communist or racist organizations in America, regardless of the militant stance and revolutionary pretensions of a few of them, can by any reasonable stretch of the imagination be seriously considered as a basis for building the sort of large-scale revolutionary movement we must build within the very near future if we are to maintain our racial integrity and survive as a people. This is not because none of these organizations espouse good principles or have proper goals; many do. They simply are not constituted in such a way and do not work in such a way that it is feasible for them to achieve their goals. Their long-established and unbroken record of failure is the best evidence of this fact.
About the only good thing which can be said of all these little groups is that they do generate quite a flood of pamphlets, leaflets, bulletins, newsletters, and other printed materials which express some excellent sentiment. But even here it is largely an incestuous sort of affair, in which the propaganda — and the sentiment — are circulated largely within the same vaguely defined “movement” in which they were born. Any real contact or rapport with the general population is absent. And this lack of contact with the public is not due simply to problems of distribution or a lack of access to the mass media. Most movement literature would fail to evoke a sympathetic response from “the masses” even if it could be placed regularly in their hands. It is, for the most part, too esoteric, too introverted, and too “kooky” to strike a responsive chord among the general public.
Instead of genuine political organizations the groups which constitute “the movement” are, in most cases, clubs, cliques, societies, or cults. They each tend to have quite narrow and specific organizational personalities to which they require every new member to conform. They each have a unique “way to do it,” which they insist is the only correct path to salvation. As a matter of fact, these various programs for victory seldom have much to do with reality. They are based more on daydreams and theory than on hardheaded political thinking.
Above all, each group or party at least subconsciously regards itself as an end rather than merely as a revolutionary and expedient means. Belonging to the group, carrying a membership card, attending meetings, and learning to parrot the group’s slogans and the “party line” serve as a fulfillment for most members, with relatively little worry being wasted about the meaning or relevance of the group’s abilities and the lack of any real political progress.
It may be said of the major (i.e., successful) political parties that they consist almost entirely of men devoid of principles or ideals, of men governed completely by materialism, opportunism, and selfishness. But, at least, these men are adults who know what they want and know how to go about getting it. Politics is not a game or a diversion for them, but a deadly serious business.
The movement, on the other hand, is filled with overgrown children whose main occupation is talking about what things will be like “when we come to power.” This escapism and lack of maturity extends from the ranks on up to the highest levels. There is a superabundance of talk and wishful thinking and virtually no constructive action to bring the dreamed—about power any closer to realization.
Idealism, of course, is an essential ingredient of any movement which hopes to secure the future of our race. But the idealism must go hand-in-hand with clear-sighted realism — not escapism.
One evidence of the lack of realism among the leaders of the radical right (including National Socialist and other racially oriented groups) appears whenever their failure to recruit more than a relative handful of followers is mentioned. The standard defense is: “Yes, but we have a ‘hard core’ who are really dedicated to our particular goals. Numbers aren’t really important; what counts is quality, etc.” Usually this is nothing but self-deception, for there is nothing about having a large number of followers which precludes selecting front that following a hard core of the most capable and most dedicated. But without real masses of people there will never be any real power. And more often than not, where the following is tiny the “hard core” doesn’t exist either; it is more a clique of especially persistent misfits or crackpots than the makings of a functional cadre.
If the appeal of a group is narrow, only a narrow response can be expected from the public. If certain aspects of a group’s appeal limit public response by creating a crankish, redneck, or unrealistic image, then those aspects should be curtailed or eliminated — regardless of how dear they may be to the hearts of the “hard core.”
The overall state of affairs confronting us in the movement is certainly sad, although perhaps not unnatural or surprising.
The standard remedy, which has been repeatedly put forth, is a coalition to harness and synchronize the randomly directed organizational energy which does exist. Such a coalition has not worked in the past. Furthermore, it will not work in the future, because the various groups making up the movement will not co-operate through any common sense of idealism. Their particular idealisms are simply too narrow, in general, to overlap. Jealousy and organizational loyalties in the long run defeat every serious plan for large-scale collaboration.
And even if these difficulties could be overcome by convincing representatives of the various organizations that it would be to their advantage to collaborate, it is doubtful whether anything useful would emerge from such collaboration. For one does not create strength simply by joining a number of weaknesses. A new approach is needed which avoids from the beginning the pitfalls which have rendered present and past organizations ineffective.
Criteria for a new effort:
The first thing which must be clearly defined is the goal of any new political effort. Our political goal must be nothing more or less than the building of a power base for a White people’s revolution led by National Socialists. Keeping this single objective always in mind, we must be prepared to use whatever methods and take whatever path will lead us most surely to that objective.
In particular, ideology must never be used to establish tactical criteria. Anything which brings us closer to our goal, which enhances our political strength, is acceptable. If respectable tactics are called for, then no fear of being labeled bourgeois must deter us. Likewise, if illegality and terrorism are called for, no charge of “bolshevism” must be allowed to cause us to hesitate.
This doesn’t mean, of course, that we should not apply our experience and our judgment in establishing tactical guidelines; it simply means that those guidelines should not be influenced by doctrinal considerations.
In most cases now the wrong tactics are being used simply because they are not based on a thorough understanding of and an intimate contact with the public to be influenced and recruited. It may be depressing and discouraging to realize what that public is like, what is important to them, and what it takes to move them, but only from such knowledge can proper tactical decisions and consequent revolutionary progress come. Decisions made on a theoretical basis, in isolation — or only in contact with other members of the movement — will almost certainly be wrong. We can at this time, however, establish at least two criteria for tactics to be used in a new effort: one pertaining to the utilization of leadership personnel and one pertaining to the recruiting of members and supporters.
In the first case, we must recognize that there is a dearth of capable leaders in the movement. Mature, experienced, and capable revolutionary leaders — on our side — are almost non-existent. And, yet, we cannot sit back and wait for Providence to send us another Adolf Hitler to unify our people. We must do what needs to be done now, without any great and charismatic leader, but using as best we can the presently available leadership material.
Actually, there is more good human material in the movement which is simply floating loose, without any strong organizational attachments, than is definitely bound to the various groups. If we simply round up the best of this material and launch another party, however, then this new party will very quickly find itself one among many in the rat race, competing with others for the money and brains and bodies in the right wing and neglecting the development of a genuine mass movement. This is what happens despite the best of prior intentions, for, once in the day-to-day struggle to keep a small party afloat, the waves become so big that even the most farsighted of leaders tends to lose sight of the ocean.
The above considerations should not discourage us from starting new organizations, but they should instead encourage us to invent some new ways of going about things so that we make better use than heretofore of our scarcest resource — leadership.
A second criterion follows from a look at the extraordinarily successful tactics of our enemies. They are achieving their aims in America with the collaboration of a substantial portion of the American people — and, yet, the American people remain firmly anti-communist in sentiment. The secret lies in the use of fronts.
Consider as an example the massive anti-Vietnam demonstrations of the past two years. These demonstrations have been planned, organized, and led by people — racially alien, for the most part — whose avowed aim is to destroy America and the American people. Yet, probably fewer than five percent of the participants in these demonstrations have been hardcore communists. Probably no more than 15 or 20 percent of them have been jews (excepting campus demonstrations, where jewish participation is generally between 40 and 60 percent). Almost none of them have been Negroes. The overwhelming majority of them have been ordinary, essentially decent Americans — our own people — who don’t even realize that the clenched-fist salute they have mindlessly raised in these demonstrations is the long-established trademark of an alien, Bolshevik cult which has butchered tens of millions of our people and enslaved hundreds of millions more. When they march in one of these demonstrations, they do not think of themselves as furthering the cause of communism, but as merely showing opposition to an unpopular war.
And what has worked for undermining American morale in the Indochina war has also worked for a hundred other projects. The enemy is able to coordinate a huge amount of activity without any single, rigid, formalized structure which can be readily counter-attacked. And he is able to do this with relatively small numbers of hard-core leadership personnel. But, most importantly, he is able to enlist for his purpose great masses of the American public, because he does not insist that everyone who helps his cause along must swear allegiance to Mao Tse-tung and carry a Communist Party card, or some other unnecessary foolishness.
For his one unholy end he mobilizes brainwashed collegiate liberals, who believe they are working for more individual freedom; parlor pinks, who believe they are struggling for “social justice”; alienated kids, who are looking for excitement and a chance to smash something; frustrated women, who think they need to be liberated; pacifists, who believe they are working for peace; priests, who believe they are helping “humanity”; and lots of plain, old-fashioned materialists and opportunists, who believe they see in a Judaized, bolshevized, and mongrelized world the “wave of the future.”
The enemy works his will through thousands of separate groups, very few of which appear on the Attorney General’s list of Subversive Organizations. Each group, whether the Ad Hoc Committee to Free the Catonsville Nine or the Kerner Commission or the Ripon Society, has its own particular rationale, but each in its own way is “coordinated” into the overall effort. This coordination is seldom something so dramatic or direct as receiving a sealed and coded packet of orders each month from New York or Tel Aviv, but it exists, nevertheless. And it exists without most of the rank and file really being conscious of it most of the time, even though it is no real secret.
One or the lessons for us in this is that the American people, for the most part, are not interested — or as interested — in the great, vital, world-historical issues of our time as they are in more mundane, parochial, immediate, and personal issues. Even when they do become emotionally involved in a vital issue, the involvement will nearly always be peripheral and personal. For example, the average American who is concerned about the race issue today is deeply concerned only about some highly particular aspect of the issue: Negro vandalism in his neighborhood, or racial fights in his child’s junior high school, or the effect of Negro welfare programs on his property taxes. But he does not relate his specific concerns to the more general problem. He may respond to an appeal to do something about Negro vandalism in River City, but not to an appeal to put a permanent and worldwide end to the threat of miscegenation. Since we have neither the time nor the resources to educate them and change them now, we must begin by taking our fellow men as they are and moving them by means of the handles that are already on them.
Another lesson for us in the enemy’s use of the “united front” strategy is that a diversity of people with a diversity of interests — sometimes even conflicting interests — can be directed toward a single goal, not so much by presenting that goal, as such, to everyone concerned, but rather by representing (or even misrepresenting) the goal in a particular way to each particular element of the united front.
Thus, when we are attempting to organize policemen, who have learned to hate all “revolutionaries,” we should not talk about building a revolution — even a “White people’s revolution” — but, instead, about fighting bolshevism and anarchy, perhaps about building White solidarity. On the other hand, when talking to radicalized university students we can speak much more freely of smashing the System and building a new order, although we might wish to be more discreet in talking about racial matters to students than to policemen.
That is what we must carefully consider and then to use – not ignore – the prejudices and special interests of each element in the population to which we wish to appeal. This does not mean that we cannot go much further and be much more frank with promising individuals in any group than with the group as a whole. This further development of selected individuals — of policemen who can understand and accept the need for revolution, of students who are racially as well as socially motivated — is absolutely necessary, in fact, to provide reliable leadership for the various groups.
We must always remember that our immediate aim is power — the capability for mobilizing and directing the energies of large masses of people. In order to do this we don’t have to compete with the Democrats and Republicans for blandness or mediocrity. But we do have to avoid isolating ourselves from the public with programs and images so radical that only a small fraction of one percent will respond.
We must attract quantity — in which alone the power lies — and then extract from that quantity those individuals suitable for a cadre. We need both the masses and the cadre — neither alone will suffice.
A final lesson from the united front is that, properly operated, it allows the most efficient use of human resources. A relatively small number of top-echelon people — planners, tactical specialists, liaison men — are able to coordinate and guide, even if indirectly, the activities of hundreds of thousands of individuals in thousands of separate organizations. The day-to-day affairs of the various organizations are handled by members of the organizations themselves; the coordination and general guidance, on the other hand, is provided by leaders who do not become entangled in these affairs and, thus, are able to exercise their skills freely and effectively.
A National Front
What suggests itself, then, to meet our two criteria of mass recruitment and effective use of leadership personnel, is a National Socialist analogue of the Reds’ united front. This would involve, instead of simply forming another party, the building of a two-level political structure.
First, there would be formed a political superstructure, consisting solely of a working staff of experienced leaders — organizers, propagandists, fund raisers, and persons of demonstrated competence in a few other essential areas — and totally dedicated to the single Job of guiding and aiding the building of a White people’s revolution in America.
The immediate task of this superstructure would be to spark the formation of a political infrastructure, based on the broadest possible spectrum of White Americans: liberals and conservatives, longhairs and hardhats, policemen and student radicals, truck-drivers, businessmen, and housewives.
The infrastructure would necessarily consist of many organizations, rather than one. The reason for this is that a single party is expected to have a single, well-defined character; it cannot behave one way in Chicago and another way in Detroit. But an infrastructure consisting of a number of separate groups, linked only through the superstructure, is ideally geared to exploit a variety of situations. A National Front could, for example, coordinate the activities of one group of middle-class property owners in New Jersey, for whom “respectability” might be a prime consideration, with another group of blue-collar workers in Michigan, for whom rough-and-ready activism night be the keynote.
Whereas a party, by its nature, needs a more specific program than merely White solidarity and revolutionary change and also binds its leaders to that specific program, a National Front would allow its talent to be used on a broader front, to exploit a wider range of possibilities, and to mobilize more people through a variety of appeals.
A National Front can form and coordinate more-or-less permanent groups: the East Side Citizens’ Association, the National Policemen’s League, or Students for a New Order; and it can also quickly exploit new opportunities with strictly ad hoc groups: Cleveland Citizens for Impeaching Stokes, Committee for Justice in Palestine, or Richmond Mothers to End Terror in Our Schools. – And it can do both these things at the same time, while keeping its eye on the single, continuing task of building the revolution. While individual parties and groups have their ups and downs, some dying and the best surviving, the National Front maintains its continuity of purpose.
This prospectus is too brief to describe in detail the various activities to be expected of a National Front staff. Only a few suggestive examples can be offered here: In addition to providing regular counseling, outlining of monthly group projects, and so on, National Front organizers can solve for local groups such specialized problems as those involved in holding successful Street demonstrations or public rallies; in opening and operating a political bookstore; in setting up a revolutionary print shop; in installing and operating a recorded-message telephone service; and, in the case of the largest groups, in producing a local party newspaper. Monthly, or even twice-monthly, workshop sessions for each local group, with National Front staffers training local organizers, would provide an enormous boost to the capabilities of the local groups and at the same time generate a fresh supply of the best local talent for recruiting into the National Front staff.
Services of this sort would require National Front organizers to keep on the move, spending a day or two each month (more if necessary in special cases) with each group. Other staff services could be provided with relatively little travel. If three or four of the local groups are large enough to print monthly tabloids, for example, much of the content can be provided by the National Front propaganda staff: all the national and international news items, editorial cartoons, feature articles, and even some of the local news stories. A service of this sort would not only make it enormously easier for a local front organization to have its own propaganda organ, but would maintain the essential thread of unity of purpose among all groups affiliated with the National Front.
Ultimately, some single party, with an undisguised National Socialist program, may very well become the bearer of the revolution. But, without a leader of extraordinary capability, that is not likely in the near future. We must act now, and we must choose a mode of operation which allows us to build the largest possible power base with the greatest possible speed. The two-level operation suggested here, with an infrastructure of organizations designed to recruit a mass base and a superstructure which coordinates these organizations from an überparteilich standpoint, offers a number of advantages over previous efforts.Notes