[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 140 (Thursday, October 8, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1970-E1972]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 THE NATIONAL ALLIANCE: HATRED AND BIGOTRY IN ITS MOST FRIGHTENING FORM

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, October 8, 1998

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my colleagues to join me 
in studying the recently released report of the Anti-Defamation League 
(ADL) entitled Explosion of Hate: The Growing Danger of the National 
Alliance. This comprehensive and well-written document addresses the 
activities and proclivities of one of the most dangerous hate groups in 
America, the neo-Nazi National Alliance.
  The stated goal of the National Alliance is 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.'' To achieve this warped end, this organization of 
intolerance pledges ``to 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.'' Indeed, the ADL 
report details the depths of ``temporary unpleasantness'' to which the 
National Alliance has sunk in its pursuit of its depraved agenda, 
tracing numerous cold-blooded murders and other terrorist activities to 
National Alliance members. Declared National Alliance leader William L. 
Pierce: ``We should not flinch from this. We should not focus on the 
fact that it will be horrible and bloody, but on the fact that it is 
necessary, and because it is necessary it is good.'' The dramatic 
growth of this frightening organization over the past several years 
should alarm us all.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to enter into the Record selected portions 
of ``Explosion of Hate: The Growing Danger of the National Alliance.'' 
I hope that my colleagues will read the entire report on the ADL's web 
site at www.adl.org.

 Explosion of Hate: The Growing Danger of the National Alliance


                     Introduction: Thriving on Hate

                The Most Dangerous Organized Hate Group

       A new ADL investigation reveals that the neo-Nazi National 
     Alliance (NA) is the single most dangerous organized hate 
     group in the United States today. The NA sprang to national 
     attention several years ago, when it was discovered that a 
     fictitious incident in The Turner Diaries, a violent and 
     racist novel written by the NA's leader, might have been used 
     as a model for the Oklahoma City bombing. Convicted bomber 
     Timothy McVeigh was a devoted reader of The Diaries, which 
     features a bombing scenario that is eerily reminiscent of the 
     April 19, 1995 blast. The book was also the blueprint for The 
     Order, a revolutionary terrorist group that robbed and 
     murdered its way to fame in the early 1980s. The ringleader 
     of The Order was an organizer for the NA.
       Now, the National Alliance has leaped to prominence again. 
     In the last several years, dozens of violent crimes, 
     including murders, bombings and robberies, have been traced 
     to NA members or appear to have been inspired by the groups's 
     propaganda. At the same time, the National Alliance's 
     membership base has experienced dramatic growth, with its 
     numbers more than doubling since 1992. The group, 
     headquartered near Hillsboro, West Virginia, is led by former 
     University of Oregon physics professor and veteran anti-
     Semite William L. Pierce.

                    Active Cells From Coast to Coast

       With 16 active cells from coast to coast, an estimated 
     membership of 1,000 and several thousand additional Americans 
     listening to its radio broadcasts and browsing its Internet 
     site, the National Alliance is the largest and most active 
     neo-Nazi organization in the nation. The group has also 
     developed significant political connections abroad. In the 
     past three years there has been evidence of

[[Page E1971]]

     NA activity in no fewer than 26 states across the country. 
     The organization has been most active in Ohio, Florida, 
     Michigan, New York, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, and 
     New Mexico.
       The National Alliance's current strength and influence can 
     be attributed to several factors; its skillful embrace of 
     technology, its willingness to cooperate with other 
     extremists, its energetic recruitment and promotional 
     activities, and its vicious, but deceptively intellectualized 
     propaganda.


                       A Hate-Filled Netherworld

                    Learning From The Turner Diaries

       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 special 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 
     menance 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 page 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.


                      The Diaries: An Inspiration

       While he wrote ``The Turner Diaries'' more than two decades 
     ago, Pierce continues to champion its ugly vision of a world 
     for whites only. A National Alliance radio broadcast aired in 
     early 1997 provides one of many examples:
       In 1975, when I began writing ``The Turner Diaries'' . . . 
     I wanted to take all of the feminist agitators and 
     propagandists and all of the race-mixing fanatics and all of 
     the media bosses and all of the bureaucrats and politicians 
     who were collaborating with them, and I wanted to put them up 
     against a wall, in batches of a thousand or so at a time, and 
     machine-gun them. And I still want to do that. I am convinced 
     that one day we will have to do that before we can get our 
     civilization back on track, and I look forward to the day.
       Following its broadcast on shortwave and conventional radio 
     stations, a recording of Pierce's explicitly violent 
     statement was featured on the NA's Web site.

                          A Racist Crime Spree

       Other murderers and terrorists appear to have shared the 
     racist fantasies Pierce voiced in his radio address. ``The 
     Turner Diaries'' is thought to be the inspiration behind a 
     crime spree in the early 1980s perpetrated by a gang of 
     extremists called The Order. The Order's crimes included 
     murders, robberies, counterfeiting and the bombing of a 
     synagogue.''
       After a Seattle bank robbery in 1983, the terrorist gang's 
     leader, Robert Mathews, told an acquaintance that he had 
     orchestrated the heist as the opening scene in what he hoped 
     would be a reenactment of Pierce's American Nazi revolution. 
     Prior to The Order's formation, Mathews was a Pacific 
     Northwest representative of the National Alliance, and other 
     founders of this terrorist gang also traced their roots to 
     the NA. Even the group's name, ``The Order'' was chosen as a 
     reverent nod to its inspiration--an elite, clandestine 
     paramilitary unit featured, in ``The Turner Diaries.''

         The Aryan Republican Army: Reading the Turner Diaries

       More recently, members of a white supremacist gang calling 
     itself the ``Aryan Republican Army'' took its cues from The 
     Order. Authorities say the ``Army,'' led by Peter Langan, 
     committed 22 bank robberies and bombings across the Midwest 
     between 1992 and 1996 using tactics reminiscent of The Order. 
     Four members of the group have pleaded guilty to a variety of 
     robbery charges, while Langan was convicted in two Federal 
     trails. In a racist video discovered by the FBI, Langan 
     praised Robert Mathews and instructed his viewers to ``learn 
     from Bob,'' Federal prosecutors have also demonstrated that 
     The Turner Diaries was required reading in the Aryan 
     Republican Army.

                    The New Order: Planning Violence

       The activities of The Order have also been cited as a role 
     model for an alleged conspiracy by a group of white 
     supremacists in East St. Louis, Illinois. In March 1998, 
     Federal authorities arrested Dennis McGiffen, an Aryan 
     Nations leader and former Klansman, Wallace Weicherding, 
     also a former Klansman, and Robert Bock. The three were 
     charged with conspiracy to possess and make machine guns. 
     McGiffen and Bock pleaded guilty to the charges one month 
     later. Wallace Weicherding was convicted on September 1, 
     1998.
       At the time of their indictment, an FBI agent testified 
     that McGiffen had been forming a group called ``The New 
     Order,'' patterned after Robert Mathews' terrorist gang. The 
     group allegedly planned to bomb the Anti-Defamation League's 
     New York headquarters, the Southern Poverty Law Center in 
     Montgomery, Alabama, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los 
     Angeles. They had also talked of bombing state capitols and 
     post offices, and poisoning public water supplies with 
     cyanide. Like other admirers of The Order, McGiffen's beliefs 
     were reportedly heavily influenced by ``The Turner Diaries.''


                              Racist Links

                         The Fort Bragg Murders

       Also on the East Coast, the NA has attempted to attract 
     members among U.S. Army personnel at Fort Bragg, in 
     Fayetteville, North Carolina. A member of the elite 82nd 
     Airborne Division, Robert Hunt, reportedly worked as a 
     recruiter for the National Alliance while stationed at Fort 
     Bragg. In April 1995, according to the NA, Hunt rented a 
     billboard outside Fort Bragg and used it to post an 
     advertisement and local phone number for the group.
       In December 1995, a Black couple was gunned down near the 
     Army base in what prosecutors called a racially motivated 
     killing. James Burmeister and Malcolm Wright, members of the 
     82nd Airborne Division, were ultimately convicted of the 
     murders and sentenced to life in prison. (A third soldier, 
     Randy Meadows, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and accessory 
     charges.) Burmeister and Wright were active neo-Nazi 
     Skinheads, and reportedly read National Alliance propaganda.

                     Racist Shooting in Mississippi

       Another racial incident that can be linked to National 
     Alliance propaganda occurred in April 1996, when Larry Wayne 
     Shoemake killed one African American and injured seven others 
     in Jackson, Mississippi. Police say Shoemake piled a small 
     arsenal of weapons into an abandoned restaurant in a 
     predominantly Black neighborhood, and from his hideout began 
     shooting wildly into the street in a murderous rampage. As an 
     ambulance tried to rescue a dying victim, Shoemake continued 
     firing his rifle, preventing emergency workers from remaining 
     on the scene. Shoemake ultimately took his own life.
       In a police search of Shoemake's home, authorities found a 
     Nazi flag draped over his

[[Page E1972]]

     bed, a copy of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf and literature from 
     the National Alliance. According to his ex-wife, Shoemake 
     first encountered NA propaganda in the mid-1980s, when he 
     borrowed ``The Turner Diaries'' from a friend. She said her 
     husband wasn't the same after he read Pierce's novel. ``It 
     was like an eye-opener for him,'' his wife said. ``There was 
     a distinct difference in him.'' Shoemake also began 
     subscribing to Pierce's monthly publications.

                       Separation or Annihilation

       The October 1995 issue of ``Free Speech,'' a monthly 
     newsletter sent to financial supporters of the NA's 
     ``American Dissident Voices'' radio program, seems to have 
     had a particular impact on Shoemake. The issue featured an 
     article called ``Separation or Annihilation,'' which exhorted 
     readers to choose between ``racial separation'' and 
     ``annihilation'' of whites. It stated that ``attaining racial 
     separation and avoiding racial annihilation is worth any 
     cost. We should be willing to give up every material thing we 
     own to achieve it.'' Along the margins of the essay, Shoemake 
     scrawled: ``I say: Separation or annihilation! Who is crazy? 
     Me or you? We will see.'' Shoemake repeated the NA's slogan 
     in a final, rambling letter obtained and published by the 
     Jackson, Mississippi, Clarion-Ledger. Shoemake wrote: ``Black 
     is the problem. It's in their genes. . . .  They will never 
     forgive whites for all the supposedly terrible treatment we 
     did to them. The bottom line is: Separation or 
     annihilation.''


                            A Venomous Voice

                           Broadcasting Hate

       Despite these crimes, Pierce continues to glorify violence, 
     offering it as the ultimate solution to what he calls--in 
     words reminiscent of Adolf Hitler--``the Jewish problem.'' 
     Much like his writings, Pierce's weekly radio show is rife 
     with incendiary speech. Moreover, while the program's topic 
     varies from week to week depending on current events, 
     Pierce's material never truly changes. Each broadcast is a 
     springboard for the NA's enduring message of anti-Jewish, 
     anti-Black and anti-government hatred.
       The broadcasts can be picked up in most of the country on 
     shortwave radio, are aired on local radio stations in parts 
     of Arkansas, Texas, Alabama, New England, Florida and 
     California and can be downloaded in audio form from the NA's 
     World Wide Web site. Transcripts of the speeches are sent via 
     E-mail to subscribers and are sent to financial supporters in 
     the form of a monthly newspaper.

          A Continuing Theme: Eliminating Jews and non-whites

       In a November 1997 broadcast discussing the revelation that 
     a Black man in upstate New York had infected dozens of local 
     white girls with the AIDS virus, Pierce said:
       Ultimately, we must separate ourselves from the Blacks and 
     other non-whites and keep ourselves separate, no matter what 
     it takes to accomplish this. We must do this not because we 
     hate Blacks, but because we cannot survive if we remain mixed 
     with them. And we cannot survive if we permit the Jews and 
     the traitors among us to remain among us and to repeat their 
     treachery. Eventually we must hunt them down and get rid of 
     them.
       Continuing his tirade, Pierce said that while individual 
     Blacks and Jews may seem worthy of redemption, the only 
     tenable solution for white people is to eliminate all non-
     whites.

                      Calling for Racial Cleansing

       In January 1998, in a speech titled, ``What Is a Patriot to 
     Do?'' Pierce spoke of starting an armed revolution against 
     the Jewish people. He agreed that such an act of resistance 
     would demand sacrifice, but deemed its rewards far greater:
       Yes, the great cleansing which must come may destroy 
     millions of our own people, the innocent along with the 
     guilty, the good along with the bad. * * * But eventually it 
     must come, because otherwise our people will die, and 
     everything that has gone before as well as everything that 
     might come in the future will be lost forever. The great 
     cleansing must come, and we must do whatever it takes to 
     ensure that it does, so that our people will live.
       The bottom line to listeners was a shrill cry for violence. 
     ``We should not flinch from this,'' Pierce said. ``We should 
     not focus on the fact that it will be horrible and bloody, 
     but on the fact that it is necessary, and because it is 
     necessary it is good.''


                             Looking Ahead

       The National Alliance's dramatic growth is significant 
     because it comes at a time when other neo-Nazi organizations, 
     as well as groups like the Ku Klux Klan, are becoming weaker 
     and more fragmented. Moreover, the NA does not appear to be 
     siphoning members from these declining groups, but actually 
     recruiting a fresh cast of educated, middle-class bigots. 
     These new followers appear to be attracted to the National 
     Alliance's dedicated membership, its commanding presence on 
     the Internet, its emphasis on maintaining a ``sophisticated'' 
     image, and its powerful leadership. As the National Alliance 
     continues to gather momentum and strength, its threat of 
     violence grows. Crimes being plotted or committed by NA 
     members of ``Turner Diaries'' devotees have been mounting. By 
     publishing this report, ADL seeks to increase public 
     awareness of the dangers posed by these individuals, as well 
     as to encourage stepped-up vigilance by law enforcement 
     officials at all levels.

     

                          ____________________