Douglas Mercer
February 20 2025
Continued from Pierce (Part One)
The world that William Luther Pierce (1933-1922) was born into was a world which was subtly changing; in High School text books in the 1930s Settler ideology (the grand story of conquest) was being replaced by that of the Melting Pot. In 1934 Madison Grant published a book called The Conquest Of A Continent about the English in North America which was ignored whereas his previous books were bestsellers; the Depression so frightened the population that any talk of Anglo-Saxon pride seemed misplaced, at least to the masses. The massive change which was being wrought can be seen in the fact that such a one as Grant in the 1920s was among the intellectual elite, he was on boards, he wrote regularly for magazines, he was a national leader, and he wrote letters to Roosevelt addressed as Dear Frank. But the truth of the matter is that thirty years later anyone who held the exact same opinions as he did, well, his name was mud. This is a revolution, if one that has too often gone unnoticed.
Pierce’s birth date (September 11 1933) is symbolic of the forces at work at the time. 1933 was the year that Hitler and Roosevelt, those two power centers who determined the fate of the 20th century, arose to office. And September 11 is now of course redolent of the felling of the twin towers, an event which, as we shall see, Pierce had a contrarian view on and which epitomized his view of the world.
I will never forget the day that I met him. I am not quite sure what I expected but when I got there a man got in the car with me and we drove up the road to where the buildings were. I can assure you it was not like in the movies. There were no swastikas or remnants of burning crosses or children offering the Hitler salute. I would learn later that one of the things which led Pierce to part with Rockwell was his disdain for such flamboyant and, to him, needless provocation.
When I got out I saw a tall man walk out to meet me and shake my hand. It was Pierce and what I had read about him was true, that he was charming and gracious and understated if always outspoken. I’d say he was about 6’4”, what I’d call a rangy Texas type, one of those old school gentlemen who built this country, flinty and resolute and clear-eyed. I also noticed right away that he had a gun on his hip and I soon learned that it was with him wherever he went. After all Rockwell was hit by a sniper while he was doing laundry. And as I learned over time he got a cascade of letters written by people who were promising to kill him.
When we sat down he eyed me over and said that he supposed that I was one of those moderates he had heard so much about. I told him that I did not know quite what I was but that while I was there I was an investigator and a researcher and a writer. Without fear or favor he said, and I could tell that he had done more than read a little of my work. He told me that line was actually without anger or passion and that it came from Tacitus who, he assured me, had been a very important writer for the National Socialists. As we got to talking I could see that his favored mode was that of educator, and I certainly found out that he could discourse deeply and persuasively on a great variety of topics. Either way we were off to what I considered to be a good start. The start of if not a friendship, for it was not that, the start of perhaps a grudging admiration. Though I can say for my part, perhaps despite myself, the mitigation of the admiration did not survive my stay.
***
Pierce’s father (also William Luther) was born in 1892 in the city of Williamsburg, Virginia. His father was 41 years old at his birth and died in 1942—when Pierce was just eight. His father sold insurance and his mother was of a poetic and artistic temperament. When I suggested to Pierce that his father’s early death inculcated him a sense of independent self-reliance and maturity and his mother’s artistic leaning led him to his speculative religious thought he agreed. He also told me that on his mother’s side of the family his great-great grandfather was the governor of Alabama and the Attorney General of the Confederacy—so, to his way of thinking, his pedigree was nothing less than American Royalty.
When his father died the family moved to Montgomery, Alabama and then a year later to Dallas, Texas. Here Pierce began to work at an early age and learned the value of discipline. He told me that the thing that most people lack is the ability to do a job that they dislike or hate, and do it simply because it was necessary. He said that in the day that he grew up there was no option to have the luxury and softness that so many youth have today. He also learned the lesson that one must always be more than willing to take the consequences of one’s actions. He told me that idea of living of the government was anathema to his folks.
When he told me of his upbringing and the way he was raised it was not so much nostalgia but respect for the way his people lived, so different than the effete and indulgent lives we lead now. He told me he looked back on his hard scrabble depression era background and he knows that that way of life is gone and it does no one any good to try to bring it back. He likes to tell people that they have no idea of the virtues of a White country; he suggests to young folk that they go back to read the magazines of the time such as Life and look at the pictures, look at the advertisements and see how White of a country it was. When I asked him if this mattered he said of course it does; that every race has a culture and the what White culture is, or was he supposed, was a culture of hard work, inventiveness, planning and thoroughness, combined with a gallant sense of fair play. He asked me where can one find this today? Certainly not in the social sewers that pass for culture in our time.
There is a picture of Williams Pierce, probably from around 1960: he has a crew cut and a jacket and a tie and he looks like nothing so much as the astronauts of that era. This is no surprise as when he was a young man Pierce dreamed of outer space and wanted to be an astronaut. It turned out that at 6’4” he was too tall and his eyesight was too poor. His background in science, however, has held him in good stead but he told me that he wished he had read more in the humanities when he had the chance, as he said, to become educated. But I wonder if he was right. One of the great ironies is that one could easily portray Pierce as of a piece with the New Age mystics and gurus who sprouted to such prominence in the 1970s. But in reading his words on Cosmotheism how different is he! There is a reason that most New Age thought is considered to be light and inconsequential: because it is. But Pierce’s version is fierce and hard and clear and icy eyed; indeed, it his background as a scientist which brings to bear this lucidity on a subject which often descends into vague formulations. He smiled when I told him this, and he said that I might just be right. At the very least he liked the way it sounded.
Pierce’s interest in science began when he worked odd jobs in his youth in order be able to buy chemicals, test tubes, flasks and electronic equipment—his life from then on was Boy’s Own Stuff, always tinkering and full of character and exploration and life in nature. With his great intelligence he swiftly ascended through the ranks of the postwar scientific establishment: undergraduate at Rice, time at Los Alamos and Cal Tech where he worked on rockets, and then his doctorate in physics at Colorado. By the time he got to Oregon State University he moved to being a full professor very swiftly. He told me he did this through dint of hard work; if there was a substitute for it he did not know what it was.
But then a funny thing happened to William Pierce—he got a social conscience. Others of course would say that that is what he lost but that is not how Dr. Pierce looks at it. By his own admission he had always been an apolitical man but the great social and racial changes which came about in that time period woke him up. He said one of his favorite stories was The Emperor’s New Clothes, about a child who can see that the king is naked. He said that he felt just like this child at the time—that changes which were going to lead to the destruction of society were rapidly taking place and as far as the media was concerned these were movements of long overdue liberation and justice. It made him want to shout: you all have no clothes—can’t you see?
His new found concern led him to leave Oregon State and get a job in the Defense Industrial Complex at Pratt and Whitney. His motive was to become financially secure so when the time was right he could finance the writing of the books he was then dreaming of. He saw right away that the kinds of ideas he was going to put forth would never pass muster from the average publisher. But over the course of time Pierce decided to put all his cards on the table and left his job. That sudden decision had always impressed me. I remember the day that I saw him for the last time and I wanted to tell him something suitable. I spoke from the heart when I told him that what I admired most about him was that he easily could have stayed in academia or continued working for a defense contractor and live a life of ease and comfort. But instead he chose the hard and difficult life working only for what was most near to his heart. And that he was not a selfish man. Dr. William Pierce was not an emotional man by an means and when I said that he looked at me though his horn-rimmed glasses and said that he supposed I was right—that what did the man say: here I stand and I can do no other.
***
Over here you have our time capsule or our mother ship I guess—so said William Pierce to me on my first full day with him. He was showing me around the project which meant the most to him, The William Pierce Memorial Library and Research Center. I’ve always been a magnet for books, he said, and with my high profile I’ve always received donations of book collections. There came a time when we decided we needed a suitable place to house these artifacts, and this structure was built by the sweat of the brow of our members. So much of the lore and the history of our race is being swept under the rug—you can barely sell anything important in public right now, as I’m sure you know. This is a place for the preservation of history and knowledge for future generations; a place for true education; for generations it will be a place for study, reflection, and creativity for scholars and writers; a retreat for thinkers and philosophers — and builders of the White world that is coming; a place for the creation of new works that will still stand when our race reaches its first new home in the starry sky that Hipparchus first mapped 2,200 years ago.
He had the drill down pat. The building itself was stripped down but durable and elegant, just as he was. I could imagine this as some kind of reservoir where the knowledge of the past would be transmitted to the future. There was certainly not anything Christian about this organization but it reminded me of a monastery where dutiful monks worked tirelessly to record and remember and create. It was a fitting and living tribute to the man, a man who had by then weathered many storms and come through the fire of controversy as a lightening rod. And a man who had erected a lasting edifice and a body or written work which is unparalleled in my judgment.
Of course to most he will be remembered as a racist and a White Supremacist, but how they really feel about him is evinced in the articles and papers and movies they produce. Some nine years ago a major film was made about splinter group related to him which had gone on a crime spree; but anyone who watches the movie can see that the actual subject of the film is no less a person than Dr. William Luther Pierce. That is they are afraid of him and they still are. I am too I must say, at least a little, I'm not really sure where all this is heading, but without fear or favor they say. And as I picture him standing there in that building, gun on his hip, I think they are right to be so afraid. Which is why the tale of how this man went from the grove of academia to the greatest White Racialst writer of all time, and founded the first new religion in 2000 years, is well worth telling. Cattle die and kinsman die as he told me—but his fame never. Certainly not if I have anything to say about and I surely do.
Continued at Pierce (Part Three)
