A Hate-Filled Netherworld

Around the country, local National Alliance leaders are responsible for ensuring that their charges read Pierce's novel, The Turner Diaries, from cover to cover. Some of these unit coordinators have suggested that they regard the novel -- which depicts an Aryan world takeover -- as a model for their own activities. For instance, The Turner Diaries describes the protagonists' defiance of the fictitious "Cohen Act," a law against private ownership of weapons. Convinced that the government will one day confiscate the weapons of all citizens as it does in The Diaries, some NA leaders have instructed members to keep guns and ammunition hidden on their property. Some coordinators have further advised followers to acquire M-16s and other weapons used by the U.S. Army, so that in the event the government does disarm its citizens, NA members will be able to raid military bases and steal ammunition for their hidden guns.

The Ideology of Hate

Beyond these specific tactical instructions, National Alliance leaders school their adherents in an ideology of hate. The NA is determined to secure "a racially clean area of the earth. . . no non-whites in our living space. . . a thorough rooting out of Semitic and other non-Aryan values and customs everywhere. . . . We must have new societies throughout the white world which are based on Aryan values and are compatible with the Aryan nature." The National Alliance claims it "will do whatever is necessary to achieve this White living space and to keep it White. We will not be deterred by the difficulty or temporary unpleasantness involved, because we realize that it is absolutely necessary for our racial survival."

Fundamental to the organization's doctrine is the belief that "our world is hierarchical" and that the Aryan race is endowed by nature with superior qualities. The National Alliance laments that "nature" is currently unable to take its course, because "the sickness of multiculturalism is destroying America, Britain and every other Aryan nation in which it is being promoted."

Rejecting Democracy

The group's racist vision extends to its views on government. The National Alliance decries "the growth of mass democracy," including "the enfranchisement of women and of non-whites," and favors a government that will "reverse the racially devolutionary course of the last few millennia and keep it reversed."

NA activists are also eager to erase the social progress made by women in the last century, and believe that "feminism is a threat to our race." "A woman's battlefield is the maternity ward," they say, and her "greatest 'diploma' is to give birth to the 'superman' or 'superwoman.'"

NA members believe that people are the masters of their destiny, and can control the trajectory of their lives, within the laws of nature. The doctrines of various religious groups are therefore a target. The National Alliance specifically rails against Christianity, because most of its members have Christian family backgrounds. "We are obliged to oppose the Christian churches and to speak out against their doctrines," read the group's tenets. "It is not an Aryan religion . . . like the other Semitic religions [it] is irredeemably primitive."

Jews as The Threat

While Pierce and other NA figures dehumanize both Blacks and Jews, depicting them as threats to "Aryan culture" and "racial purity," Jews are considered a more immediate menace to white survival. In his infamous essay, "Who Rules America?" Pierce's hatred of Jews turns to paranoia and conspiracy mongering, as he describes the United States as being in the thrall of a malevolent Jewish-owned media.

"The Jewish control of the mass media," Pierce writes, "is the single most important fact of life, not just in America, but in the world today. There is nothing -- plague, famine, economic collapse, even nuclear war -- more dangerous to the future of our people."

The National Alliance attempts to intellectualize its racist agenda in the pages of its glossy magazine, the National Vanguard. The magazine, which is published irregularly, glorifies Aryan civilization and racial purity in articles such as "Aryans: Culture Bearers to China" and "Miscegenation: The Morality of Death." The National Vanguard's highbrow tone contrasts sharply with the cruder, poorly edited propaganda materials of some other extremist groups, and perhaps heightens the NA's appeal among better-educated bigots.