A Few Notes on Strategy - part one
A Few Notes on Strategy, part one is a commentary by Dr. William Pierce which appeared in the National Alliance Bulletin of June 1986.
This is a source text. Spelling and smaller errors in the content can be corrected. The source is given in the "Source" part.
Looking back over the past five years of organizational activity, hardly anyone in the racial-fascist camp in America can find much with which to be happy. Glenn Miller, the former Klan leader who has been organizing larger and larger marches of smartly uniformed, flag-carrying troops through the towns and cities of North Carolina in recent months, is one bright spot in and otherwise gloomy organizational picture. Most established groups, however, have had little or no growth, and there have been few if any new organizational undertakings (excepting the aforementioned Glenn Miller's White Patriot Party in North Carolina) which have shown signs of viability.
The Alliance also has stagnated, if judged in terms of membership growth or public activity. There is less membership turnover today than five years ago, but that is primarily because the rate of recruitment is lower. (Another factor is the greater dependence on personal recruiting today, which tends to yield more stable and committed members than those recruited solely through Alliance publications.) About the only positive thing which can be said of the Alliance in an organizational sense is that the average quality of the members has continued to increase.
Some critics have suggested that the lack of growth in the Alliance is the consequence of the failure of the National Office to publish more frequently--and it undoubtedly is true that if NV had been published every month, and the National Office had focused more on public propaganda and recruiting activities, some additional new members would have been recruited and some who have quit would have stayed. But the overall organizational picture would not have been the result of the inability of the National Office to both maintain frequency and undertake some new projects during the past two years: projects which were initiated with an eye to the overall conditions affecting organizational growth in the racial-fascist movement.
The conditions in America today are for the most part not favorable for organizing a radical, revolutionary movement. Morally, the state of the nation has never been worse, and alienation continues to grow. But economic prosperity remains high, and the average citizen, despite his sensing of the moral degeneracy around him and his own feeling of alienation and lack of hope for the future, is quite comfortable materially. Furthermore, television is doing an effective job of keeping him hypnotized, so that the breakdown of his world around him does not seem quite real to him. His tendency is to cling tightly to his current economic well-being and ignore everything else.
This is not true everywhere; farmers in some parts of the country are suffering economically, and this opens up possibilities for organizational work among them. Unfortunately, however, farmers as a class are the most conservative in the population; in addition, the Christian churches have a stronger stranglehold on their minds than those of any other group.
Organizational activity can and must still be undertaken, despite the unsuitability of the conditions. But we should understand that the success of this activity will continue to be very limited, as long as the present conditions endure. We can only hope that they will not endure long, but we can do little at this time to change their duration--and we must not yield to the temptation to try. In particular, terrorism is not a feasible tactic now.
We may ache to pull the plug on all the refrigerators, television receivers, and air conditioners of all the smug, complacent yuppies in America; we may ache to cut off their gasoline supply, to put the torch to their bank accounts, to halt the elevators and subway trains they depend on, to blast their airliners from the sky and close their airports; we may ache to poison their reservoirs and loose plagues among them, to make them smell death in the air all about them, to make them know fear and hunger constantly, and so to turn them finally against the beast they now serve--but the time for that has not come. We must nurse our aches for a long time yet. We cannot act, we are foolish even to waste our time making plans to act, until a great many things have been done first. The racial-fascist movement in America is largely an undisciplined rabble, incapable even of dealing with the informers who infest its ranks. Until we have at least learned to do that, and to govern ourselves so firmly that every man among us must fear the penalty for disobedience or dereliction of duty a thousand times more than he fears the enemy, it is folly to think of turning to terror as a tactic.
But there are other things as well which must be done now and in the years to come, things which many may consider to be outside the realm of conventional organizational activity, until the time comes when organizing once again can prosper. They are all of the things required to build a strong, viable, long-lasting infrastructure capable of supporting an organizational superstructure.
Some of these things have been mentioned in previous issues of the BULLENTIN: fund raising, publishing, education. And then there is the most important thing of all: community building, which has been discussed often in these pages.
It is the general task of building this infrastructure--or, at least, laying the foundations for it--which has been occupying an increasing portions of the efforts of the National Office during the past two years. And in some parts of the task much greater success is being achieved than in recruiting/organizing activity. The development of the Alliance's book-distribution network, for example, has continued vigorously, even while membership has remained stationary. This may be seen as a refection of the general conditions in the country: even while people are wary of making a commitment to a radical organization, they have plenty of disposable income and are able to vent their frustration with the moral and racial decline of the nation by buying books.
Further, while alienation grows, and more people feel themselves observers, rather than responsible participants in the events around them, only a few will act, but many will augment their observations with books, with video tapes, and with other materials. Exploiting this condition, lamentable though it may be, serves two essential purposes: it continues to advance the educational task of the Alliance, even if those who are educated remain passive for the time being; and it continues to build the educational capability of the Alliance, to add to its ability to generate and distribute more and more materials, more widely and more quickly.
It also has the potential for serving a third essential purpose: adding to the number of capable people permanently locked into the growing revolutionary infrastructure, by providing their means of support. It may be a decade or more before conditions are again favorable for organizing, when large numbers of people can be recruited for organizational activity. Even then, however, the organizing will have only transitory and limited results, if a strong infrastructure has not been built in the meantime; as soon as conditions once again become unfavorable for organizing, most of the organizational gains made during the favorable period will be lost.
A revolution cannot be made by organizational activity alone; it requires, in addition to a few full-time writers, speakers, and organizers, and a large number of part-time organizational members recruited by them, an entire revolutionary society within the larger society, a revolutionary industry within the larger industry, a revolutionary economy within the larger economy. The lack of such an infrastructure now is the primary reason for the failure of racial fascists to maintain the organizational momentum they gained during the 1970s, when conditions were favorable.
The task of building the necessary infrastructure requires years; it requires the full-time involvement of thousands of men and women: in writing, in publishing, in bookselling, in film making and song writing, in providing legal defense and other essential services, in keeping alive the spirit of revolution in isolated communities form which seeds can be sown in the larger society.
Mention was made in the last BULLENTIN of the need for greatly expanding and diversifying the revolutionary publishing industry. The key point to keep in mind is that conditions now, although hostile to organizing, are favorable for such a development. What is true of publishing is also true of many other essential components of the infrastructure. There will be an increasing opportunity in the years ahead for attorneys skilled in criminal law and civil-rights law to defend White activists; those who begin specializing now can not only serve a need, but they also can develop an expertise which will provide their bread and butter in the future. The use of video as a revolutionary medium is just beginning, with only a couple of people producing original video material of value; there is room for hundreds more to make a living at this. Many other examples also could be given.
The Alliance is taking a lead in the development of several facets of a revolutionary infrastructure. To repeat what was said above, however, it must continue its organizing, continue holding meetings and engaging in personal recruiting, continue distributing Alliance publications among the general public, even in the face of diminishing returns from this activity. This will require adapting some of our tactics to the changed conditions we face, and future issues of the BULLENTIN will deal with that subject.