WHAT IS THE NATIONAL ALLIANCE?

The National Alliance (NA) is one of the larger neo-nazi groups in the United States. Estimates of its size range from 1,000 to 1,500, and NA activities have been reported in 51 cities. For most of its 27 years it has been, by design, a propaganda machine for the white racist movement, publishing books, a newspaper, audio cassettes, and racist paraphernalia. Organizations which routinely monitor right-wing groups regard the NA as the best organized and the best funded 9of the racialist movement in the U.S.

NA began in 1974, founded by William Pierce. Pierce, a former university physics professor, had been actively involved in the John Birch Society, the Liberty Lobby, and especially, the American Nazi Party. Pierce defined NA as an "organization for racial survival and progress," and has commemorated Adolf Hitler as "the greatest man of our era."

WHAT DO THEY BELIEVE?

The Alliance is quite unlike the strident racialists whose very visibility is part of their persona. Although they have a logo, it is quite sedate. They do not display swastikas, wear robes or uniforms, or fashion a distinctive appearance such as the skinheads do. Their rhetoric borders on academic prose. For example, in their "most popular leaflet" -available on their website--they write under a photograph of a young girl and the headline "Missing--a future for white children": "There will be no future for her in the Third World America that our nation's enemies are planning. Let us take back our country and make it clean, decent, and beautiful once again. For our children's sake. The men and women of the National Alliance want you to join in this great patriotic effort."

In his founding program for survival, Pierce makes explicit his belief in innate racial differences and that each race has a distinctive set of values which themselves are instinctually determined. Non-whites are "flooding the cities" continuing "the decay of society and the worsening of living conditions." Among the goals of the NA is an exclusively white "living space", a central government charged with racial cleansing, and the removal of all "Semitic and non-Aryan values and customs everywhere."

Until recently, the NA viewed itself as working on the first stages of a revolutionary project which they described as propaganda and organizing. Their current visibility and their new leadership suggests a more open and public attempt at recruitment and political action.

WHO JOINS THE NATIONAL ALLIANCE?

According to the Anti-Defamation League and to the leaders of the National Alliance, members of NA vary widely in terms of age, class, and occupation. Membership includes everyone from young couples to middle-aged, upper-middle class professionals. Because NA has little name recognition among the general public and does not demand high visibility from its members, it is thought to be an especially attractive organization for those racists who hold "respectable" positions within their community. The NA website attempts to display the diversity of its membership by posting profiles of a housewife, a head firefighter, a business professor, and an electrician - all faithful members of the organization. NA allows such individuals to bond with like-minded others while not calling unwanted attention to themselves. Even within the organization, such members may only be identified by their first names and last initial, in order to protect their public image.

HOW ARE NATIONAL ALLIANCE MEMBERS RECRUITED?

NA leaders are energetic recruiters, and they make used of innovative methods to advance their message of hate. Occasionally, they employ indirect tactics, such as organizing seemingly innocent events like the Cleveland "European-American Cultural Fest" of 1998 (actually a hate rock festival). More often their tactics are quite blatant. They hang banners in public places, rent booths at gun shows, post materials on public property and distribute their propaganda by hand in suburban neighborhoods. They especially like to exploit incidents of Black-White conflict and local racial tensions in order to elicit interest from potential supporters.

NA operates 21 telephone hotlines across the country, and uses the Internet and radio to disperse its racist propaganda as well. The phone hotlines feature a standard recorded message explaining NA's ideology and inviting callers to leave their names and phone numbers so leaders can reach them for further discussion. In order to procure callers for these hotlines, NA members will often make unsolicited phone calls to people's pagers, leaving the hotline as the callback number. When the call is returned, the respondent is greeted with NA propaganda.

On the Internet, NA members send unsolicited emails espousing the group's racist and anti-Semitic teachings, and they often invade chat rooms and newsgroups with their message. NA also maintains a hate site on the World Wide Web. One of its features is a series of racist flyers in PDF format so that Nazi activists can easily reprint the NA's sophisticated propaganda.

Even those who don't use the Internet may encounter NA's neo-Nazi ideology on the radio. William Pierce's weekly half-hour radio broadcasts, where he addresses current events and political issues from an "anti-multicultural" perspective, are transmitted by short-wave and over nine AM and FM stations and are used to recruit new members as well. Audiocassette copies are sold.

Some observers see the NA as attempting to piggy-back on the environmental, anti-globalization, and Palestinian independence movements in order to recruit.

The Alliance appears to be growing. One estimate suggests a doubling in size over the last ten years. The largest estimate of membership size is 1,500, but there does seem to be a growing collaboration with the Church of the Creator and the Hammerskins.

WHERE DOES THEIR FINANCIAL SUPPORT COME FROM?

The major funding for the National Alliance likely comes from their extensive catalog of books, audio, and video tapes. They claim to have more than 600 items in their catalog, and the ADL has claimed that the NA receives 50 orders a day.

Early in its growth, the Alliance established its publishing house, National Vanguard Books. The centerpiece has been Pierce's novel, The Turner Diaries. It is a movement "best seller," and has been described as the American Mein Kampf. It is the story of a group of neo-Nazis who overthrow the government, financing themselves by bank robberies and counterfeiting. It has been regarded as a "blueprint" for a Nazi revolution. It inspired The Order, a group engaged in extensive armed robberies and murder. The gang was based on one portrayed in the novel. Most of the $4 million dollars which the gang stole from armored cars was not recovered. Some of that money likely went to the National Alliance and Tom Metzger's White Aryan Resistance (WAR), but police were never able to confirm that. Turner was also a major influence on Timothy McVeigh's and Terry Nichols's 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building. The bomb constructed had been described in the novel, which McVeigh had in his possession, and McVeigh had called the National Alliance several times prior to the bombing.

Perhaps the NA's major income these days comes from their purchase of Resistance Records, in 1999, from a Canadian Nazi who had to liquidate for cash. The Resistance Records catalog is an extensive collection of white supremacist materials from "Get Jews" mouse pads to "White Power" pins and stickers, books, clothing, jewelry, posters, and Resistance magazine. Its 607 CDs are likely the largest collection of hate music anywhere.

THE NEW LEADERSHIP

On July 23, 2002, William Pierce died. Erich Gliebe, 39, was appointed as the new head. He had a short career as a professional boxer under the nickname of "The Aryan Barbarian," and had worked as a tool and die maker. He has been active in the National Alliance since 1990. He directed the Cleveland office of the NA, its largest. With NA, he has been a promoter and organizer of hate rock concerts, directed Resistance Records and edited its magazine since 2000. He bought the black metal record label, Cymophane.

His father fought in the German army during the Second World War, and Gliebe sees the war against Jews and nonwhites as "a lifelong and never-ending struggle." As director, Gliebe will likely focus his efforts on recruiting teenagers and on using "resistance" music as a major tool in doing so. "It is important that we reach these kids before they go off to college and are really hit hard with Jewish, multiracial propaganda."