Pierce (Part One)

[Douglas Mercer]

Douglas Mercer
February 18 2025

Why has it taken me so long to print these memoirs? As a journalist my ethos has always been without fear or favor—and I hold to it still, at least in terms of what I have written. For I think the reader needs to know that what he is about to read was written nearly a decade ago. Perhaps I delude myself but I think what I am printing now is of real importance, a kind of importance that I could not have dreamed of when I began the project. What I can say is that writing a piece about the most reviled and feared White Racialist of the last eighty years—bar none—the author of a powder keg book which elicits shrieks of horror—a man who was involved in some ways (this is disputed) in two of the most sensational violent events of the past century—and doing anything other than coming to bury him would never have improved my prospects in my profession. But as time wears on one gets a little bit older and a little bit bolder—as was said—and it’s time to put my cards on the table as it were, to come clean, come hell or high water.

And the reader will notice that I did not come to bury him—I have more than a few good words for him, much more than a few actually, and it was this which had until now made me more than a trifle queasy to have this see the light of day. And also the timing seems right. It is now the Centennial of his birth, first off. I met William Pierce in 2021 and spent several months with him at his remote location—compound is too pejorative—and I can see now that that year was just about the low point in terms of the prospects of his only great love, the White race. Since that time things have changed considerably. For sure no one in power now in 2033 is about to speak of America as a White Country, but what in hindsight many see as the nonsense and drivel of the first twenty years of this century—the heyday of anti-racism---is for the most part good and gone. Certainly, there is a vocal minority who still peddle that product by the yard but the sane middle sees them for what they are—muttering in a corner. By no means is this the Paradise that Pierce promised---and were he here today would promise still—yet no one can doubt that it is a country---a milieu---a context--or what you will, in which his people and his ideas can live and exist in relative peace.

Not of course that the opinions expressed herein won’t be sensational, or a bombshell, they are all that and more. Pierce was nothing if not a fanatic and a diehard—not to say a bitter ender—yet he was also a gracious and courteous and precise and a methodical man, a kind of explosive wrapped in honey tones. And as for the changes that have been wrought they would have cheered him but only a little; for Pierce never really thought that the government of the United States would ever again be to his liking or would not, in the deepest sense, be his implacable enemy .

The biggest surprise when I met him was that I was expecting a pure hot head or zealot or a firebrand revolutionary, but instead I met a wise and far seeing man who at most was trying to create pre-revolutionary conditions, who was hell bent on keeping his powder dry and his organization cleaner than Caesar’s wife. More than once he quoted Gandalf’s advice about the ring: keep it secret, keep it safe. And though I suspect that in his heart of hearts he cheered when people who had been associated with himself—however closely or tangentially—committed outrageous and showy acts of violence, he himself would never condone or promote this, at least not in the eye of the public.

The other great surprise was that when I made that lonely trek to his Aerie I fully expected to meet a totally political man but, and I say this with no hint of irony, I met a seer and sage—a holy man. It was well said by the man who inherited his organization that when the time is right Pierce will not be remembered for his one great novel, or for his racial or political thought, but as a religious personality. That is Pierce had a holistic view of his movement and went so far to say that in the end even racial considerations will be secondary; that the race (for him which always meant the Aryan race) was the material out of which a new man, a new race would emerge. And if he had a credo it was this: keep your eyes on Eternity.

The other slander and misconception about this great man was that he was, in that term that trips so easily off his enemy’s tongue, a White Nationalist. Most obviously of course he was nothing of the sort. What he was was a White Separatist. So baleful and evil did he consider the world and the popular culture of his time that he wanted to cocoon and protect an elite, a hardened and steeled elite—an elect one might say. And this elect, this rump or remnant, needed to be schooled in an uncompromising ideology, must be well versed in the history of its people, and must be unwaveringly opposed to the snares of the outside world. For at the bottom of his soul Pierce believed that it was only the Aryan race which could carry to completion the grand plan of the creator. And that in order to achieve this his people must remain pure and untainted by the disease of the world in which they lived. Indeed I amused him once when I told him that he was creating a band of modern Essenes—that Jewish group who went into the desert in order to be undefiled. It was a provocative statement for it was the Jews—and the Jews alone--whom he believed that since time out of mind had been the enemy of his people. But he saw what I meant and said that I was right---in terms of the method if not the spirit.

The last question to be answered is why did he choose me? For choose me he did. One day in late 2020 I received an innocent looking letter from him which he asked me forthrightly if I would like to come to his home and meet him. He said both that he assumed that I knew his reputation and that as he felt his life drawing to a close he would like to spend some time with one who was at least nominally impartial and who could record what he had to say for posterity. He said that he had read a piece I had written on the Floyd fiasco, a piece in which though I (to his way of thinking) beat around the bush he liked how I ended it with the sentence: can’t we do better than this? He assured me that we could do so, much much better; but that the line had piqued his interest and he had looked at a few more things I had written and said (in his most gentlemanly manner) that at least they were not awful.

It was a bolt out of the blue. I had written nothing on what was then deemed the “far right” or the “far out right” but of course in that year using the phrase White Supremacist was quite fashionable. Of course the people to whom that sobriquet was attached at most wanted a color blind society; but once I did a bit of looking I saw that in Pierce at least plausibly that name could be attached. He certainly believed that it was the Aryan race which was superior though any notion of domination he deemed impossible which is why he focused on---as mentioned—separation.

I can say that the friends or colleagues I mentioned it to advised against it, though with my inner oppositional nature that was no argument against me going. One told me that before I step foot in his presence I should read Turner. I figured that it would be a good place to start and I can say that the book is not for the faint of heart and is bracing—but the reading, far from deterring me, whetted my desire to know more. The way I envisioned my story unfolding was that in William Pierce one had that most American of figures, a fully convinced dissident who wanted to sequester his organization and show them the way to the Promise Land. In many ways it is the story of the country itself and certainly it was as American as apple pie. And if the morality seemed to me at the time to be a bit dodgy, that only made it more sensational to me, gave it that air of being forbidden which always lends a piece its frisson. And as I think now this idea that he was somehow quintessentially American, though true at first blush, is not quite right. He was something of quite another order, as I believe you shall see.

And what finally led me to go was that I’ve always been convinced that the truth, should it ever come, will not come from the within the confines of accepted thought, for consensus is always just a synonym for error. And in this spirit I answered him simply by sending him a letter suggesting that we speak on the phone. The ground rules we set were simple, I would be able to shadow him for a matter of weeks—it turned out to be two months—and I could write whatever I liked. In retrospect I think so confident was he in his judgment of my character and in the power of his own spoken word and of his (almost preternatural I now know) powers of persuasion that he need fear nothing of the finished product. And as I now send it forth into the world I too am fully confident that his prescience in both matters was completely well founded.

Continued at Pierce (Part Two)

[Douglas Mercer]

[Douglas Mercer]

[Douglas Mercer]

[Douglas Mercer]

[Douglas Mercer]

[Will Williams]

Very interesting, Douglas. Waiting for Part Two.