Hitler, National Socialism, and Recruiting for Our Cause
by Dr. William Pierce
INEVITABLY, EVERY MEMBER who engages in public activity, so that he is recognized publicly as a member, will be asked, “Are you a Nazi?” or, “Are you a neo-Nazi?,” just as the National Alliance is routinely described in the controlled news media as a “Nazi (or neo-Nazi) organization.” (For those who make the distinction, the difference between “Nazi” and “neo-Nazi” seems to be this: The former term refers only to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party and its members. The latter term refers to organizations and people who draw their inspiration from the former, or from the same sources as the former, but which are too young to have been directly associated with the former. Many people, of course, make no distinction between the two terms.)
So how does a member answer the question? If he wants to give a meaningful answer, he must know what is in the mind of his interrogator: What is his interrogator’s understanding of “Nazi”? If it’s a Politically Correct bigot (which will be the case for anyone working for the controlled media), or even a typical “couch potato” whose ideas all came from a television tube, we know that he is thinking of sinister-looking men in black uniforms and swastika armbands who like to click their heels together, thrust out their right arms, and shout, “Sieg! Heil!” before marching off to gleefully machine-gun a group of prisoners who were arrested for listening to the wrong radio program or failing to have a photograph of the Führer displayed in their living rooms. This mythical “Nazi” is an invention of the merchants who control the mass media, and so the member is perfectly correct in answering, “No, I am not a Nazi, and the National Alliance is not a Nazi organization.”
Suppose, however, that the person asking the question is a potential recruit, someone with an open mind who really wants to understand our beliefs and goals. In this case we are obliged to explore the question more deeply, and in so doing we may have an opportunity to use one of the catchiest ideas of all: the idea of National Socialism.
Using this idea requires great care and good judgment. It is an idea which evokes such strong feelings that even some members cannot face it squarely. On the one hand there are those who are embarrassed by it and would be happier if the National Alliance would explicitly disavow it. On the other hand there are those who accept it wholeheartedly but are unable to distinguish between the idea itself and its specific manifestations in Germany between about 1920 and 1945. They are caught up not only in the idea but also in the mystique of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist era in Germany, and there are very real dangers in this. For one thing, many of the latter people make a cult of National Socialism, with an emphasis on symbols, uniforms, insignia, rituals, and the like. The danger in this is that National Socialism becomes a hobby, and hobbyism becomes a substitute for effective action.
And if we associate ourselves with the cult of National Socialism, as contrasted with the idea, we are forced to contend with the mythical image created by the merchants, for that will be the image raised in the mind of the average person who comes into contact with us.
It is largely for this reason that we have the admonitions elsewhere in this handbook against uniforms, quasi-uniforms, and non-Alliance insignia. Breaking through the wall of misunderstanding between us and the White public is a large enough task without raising the specter of made-in-Hollywood “Nazis.” Even if there were no such negative image to overcome, however --- even if the merchants never had made an anti-“Nazi” film or television show — it would be wrong for the Alliance to associate itself with the cult aspects of National Socialism in Germany prior to 1945. Things that were natural and helped form a positive public image in Germany at that time seem unnatural and alien in America and many other parts of the White world today. For example, party uniforms were the accepted norm in Germany, not just for the National Socialists, but also for the Communists, the Catholic Centrists, and other political groupings. They never have been the norm in America.