Individualism and Alienation

by Dr. William Pierce

Most of the comments I receive from listeners are very supportive, but I do get some hate mail as well. Most of the hate mail is either nutcase stuff from people who have some personal problem, which they project onto me, or it's from lemmings who are very indignant that I'm not in step with everyone else in the mass media. They just need someone to hate, and I think it makes them feel better if they tell me what a rotten person I am.

But I also receive a somewhat more thoughtful type of hate mail from people who curse me because I can't understand that race really doesn't count. They tell me that I should never judge another person as a member of the race to which he belongs, but only as an individual. They tell me that many Blacks are law-abiding, hardworking people who don't use drugs or throw their trash in their yards and that many White people are criminals, are on welfare, and are generally trashy and worthless. Therefore, these individualists tell me, racism is stupid. I'm stupid, they say, because I embrace all White people, the bad along with the good, and I condemn all Blacks, the good along with the bad.

They tell me that when they're looking at a neighborhood with the thought of renting an apartment or buying a house and moving into the area, they don't judge their prospective neighbors on the basis of whether their names are Chung Lung Fu and Abraham Goldberg or Bill Smith and Earl Turner; they judge instead on how much their neighbors paid for their homes and how well they keep them up. They'd rather live next to an Abe Goldberg or a Rastus Brown with a nicely waxed, new BMW in the driveway than next to a Bill Smith with a ten-year-old Ford.

Individualists also believe that whether a person is homosexual or heterosexual is unimportant. What counts is whether or not he's well groomed, well mannered, and pays his bills on time. Undoubtedly there are individualists who will say that sex doesn't matter, either. No one should be judged by group characteristics, but only by those individual characteristics relevant to the immediate situation: will he or she make a good neighbor, a good employee, a good congressman? That's all that counts, the individualist will say. And I'm sure that many individualists actually believe this. In fact, it is a religion for many of them, judging from the emotional nature of their hate mail to me.

To explore this matter further: some individualists -- a minority of them, I suspect -- have bought into a semi-religious, semi-philosophical world view called "Objectivism" and peddled most notably by a Soviet-trained Jewess named Ayn Rand, who came to America from the Soviet Union in 1926 and began writing books extolling the virtues of selfishness and individualism. Some of her best-known books are The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, and The Virtue of Selfishness. Another notable individualist in the Ayn Rand mold is Harry Browne, who recently has been the Libertarian Party's candidate for President of the United States and who wrote a book titled How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World.

The basic idea of Browne's book is that no one owes anything to anyone except himself, and that the only rational objective for any individual is to look out for himself, get as much for himself as he can, do whatever he wants to do that he can get away with, and to hell with everyone else. Anyone who doesn't accept this view of things is either a sucker, just waiting to be fleeced by a more objective and rational person -- or is a person with ulterior motives aiming to fleece others.

As I said, some people have made a semi-religion out of this way of looking at things. One finds many of these people in organizations such as the John Birch Society and the Libertarian Party. But for other people -- the majority, I suspect -- individualism is simply an excuse for their selfishness and lack of responsibility. Perhaps for some it's an indicator of cowardice: faced with an intolerable racial situation in America today, they opt for an explanation of things that will not get them kicked out of the country club. They are aware of what non-White immigration is doing to America, for example, but they are afraid to take a position that might be considered "racist." They are afraid of the label. And, at the same time, they can see the catastrophe that is looming for America, so they simply abjure all responsibility.

The views of most individualists have grown out of alienation. When people have been cut loose from their roots, when they have lost all sense of community and belonging, when they have become simply human atoms floating in a cosmopolitan soup, they try to make sense of things. They look for some standard or rule to go by to justify their behavior and their feelings. And some opt for individualism. Individualism doesn't have the social stigma that "racism" does. Individualism has been given the stamp of approval by Jews, and Jews are powerful people who are in good odor with the media and with the government, so it must be OK. They can't get kicked out of the country club for being individualists.

Before I talk further about the connection between alienation and individualism, let's back up a bit and look a little more closely at the individualist mind-set itself. Why do individualists send me hate letters? Because, they say, I stupidly embrace White welfare trash and condemn honest and hardworking non-Whites.

Now, that's really a misleading claim, although in a sense there may be some truth in it. I don't embrace White welfare trash, as such. I embrace my people, my race -- all of it -- recognizing that some White people are trashy and are not the sort I would want as neighbors or would want my sister to marry. It's like embracing my family, while recognizing that some of them are black sheep. And I don't condemn honest and hardworking non-Whites. It's not my business to set standards of honesty or industry for non-Whites. That's their business. I just want them off my people's turf, out of my people's territory -- all of them. When we have settled our external problems, then we will deal with our internal problems -- including our White welfare trash.

You know, this whole debate of individualism versus racism is really tricky. It's easy for people to become confused. I, for example, am more of an individualist than most of the individualists who hate me. What that means depends upon how one understands the term "individualist." I am an individualist in the sense that I don't have a lot of sympathy for people who can't or won't pull their own weight. I don't like to meddle in other people's business, and I like it even less when other people meddle in my business. If one of my fellow Whites doesn't want to take care of himself, that's his business. Just don't ask me to take care of him. I believe in natural selection and the survival of the fittest. I believe that we weaken our race when we help the least fit to survive and reproduce. If we're going to have a welfare system for our people, then we need a compulsory sterilization system to go along with it. I become more upset when I see a 400-pound White welfare mom surrounded by her brood of runny-nosed kids in the checkout line in front of me paying with food stamps than when I see a Black welfare mother.

I believe in helping my fellow White people in a way that strengthens them as a whole, not in a way that weakens them. I believe in helping the best and brightest and strongest of my people to be more effective, because by strengthening my whole people I strengthen that of which I am a part. That is my selfishness. That's the sense in which I'm an individualist. I'm an individualist within a certain framework: the framework of my race and my civilization. I'm an individualist with roots, an individualist with a sense of community, a sense of belonging, a sense of responsibility.

And you know, that's the sense in which our people have used the term for a long time. When the Greeks talked about individualism 2,500 years ago, they spoke about it with the same understanding I have today. In the sixth century BC, when individualism characterized Greek poetry, one of the greatest of the Greek poets, Theognis of Megara, expressed his sense of responsibility and his concern for his race when he deplored the careless breeding habits of many of his people and the consequent decline in their racial quality. Theognis wrote:

"The best men . . . wed, for money, runts of poor descent. So too a woman will demean her state And spurn the better for the richer mate. Money's the cry. Good stock to bad is wed, And bad to good, till all the world's cross-bred. No wonder if the country's breed declines. . . ."

And what is the understanding today of the individualists who send me hate letters? To be frank, I think that they understand nothing. They don't see themselves in any framework of race or history or civilization. They think of themselves as pure, disconnected individuals, with responsibilities to no one, existing only for themselves. They do not embrace a race. They embrace only themselves. When they choose neighbors or co-workers or business partners -- or marital partners -- they do so solely on the basis of what pleases them at the moment. A Chinese neighbor is just as good as a White neighbor of the same socioeconomic status. A Jewish co-worker is just as good as an Aryan co-worker. Individualists may form alliances with others they perceive as having similar interests, but their own interests always are strictly personal.

And they really think they're smart. Not only do they avoid the stigma of "racism," but by shedding all responsibility to anyone but themselves they believe they gain an advantage over suckers like me who are burdened with responsibility to my people, to my forefathers, to my descendants, and so on.

Let me tell you: this rootless individualism is not a "smart" way of relating to the world. It is an infantile way. It is based on the same attitude we see in an infant screaming and throwing things because he didn't get what he wanted. In a normal world, in a healthy environment, as an infant grows up he learns that he can't always get exactly what he wants when he wants it. He learns not to expect that or even to make that his goal. He learns that he is a part of something larger and more permanent and more important than himself. He develops roots in his community, in his race. He learns to see himself in a larger context, in a framework of race and history and culture. His concept of "self" expands to include these things of which he is a part.

That the type of development is normal and healthy, the type of development that leads to a sense of community responsibility and racial responsibility. And it leads to a stronger and healthier community and to a stronger and healthier race, in which the members of the community and of the race care about these larger collectives. But if a child grows up in a world where he is deliberately cut off from tradition and history, so that he cannot develop any sense of rootedness, or if his environment is so polluted with "diversity" and multiculturalism that he cannot identify with his racial community, then he does not have a proper framework within which to see himself relative to the world. He feels no sense of belonging and no sense of responsibility. He becomes an individual in the sense of Ayn Rand and Harry Browne.

There's a name for this condition. It's called alienation. It's what happens to many young White people who attend schools where they are in a minority, who attend universities where "Eurocentrism" is Politically Incorrect, who live in cities swarming with Third World immigrants, who see Black and Brown faces and get the Jewish slant on things every time they turn on the TV. Strong and healthy people react to this alienating environment by seeking their roots anyway, by doing whatever it takes to develop a sense of racial identity anyway, but many weak or confused people become individualists.

And you know, this alienating environment in which we live is not an accident. It was imposed on us deliberately by people who want to increase the level of alienation in our society, by people who encourageour people to become rootless individualists, by people who use all of the propaganda media at their disposal to convince everyone that it's "racist" to have roots, that it's "hateful" to have an interest in the history and traditions of one's own people, that it's practically criminal to be concerned about the welfare or even the survival of one's race -- if that race is White, if it's European.

My organization, the National Alliance, attempts to fight alienation among our people in many ways. For example, we distribute a sticker showing the simple message, "Earth's most endangered species: the White race. Help preserve it." That's all. No mention of any other race. Nothing even remotely "hateful." And yet every time these stickers of ours are mentioned by the controlled news media they are called "hate propaganda." Really: "hate propaganda."

Now, that is deliberate. This simple message calling on our people to be concerned about the preservation of our race always elicits a hysterical reaction from the controlled news media. The media bosses are afraid of our racial consciousness. They are terrified that we may feel responsible for our race. They are desperate to stamp out any feeling of rootedness or identity. That's why they always respond to our simple, inoffensive message with their favorite scare-word: hate, hate, hate. And that's a collective response. It's not based on the decision of any single, individual media boss. They have gotten together and formulated a strategy to advance their collective interests. And that is why they're winning their war against us now.

Well, I don't know that anything I've said today will change the attitude of the rootless individualists. They're lacking something in their upbringing that I can't give them in half an hour. They really do think they're being smart by not accepting any responsibility. They believe that they can survive and prosper as individuals, with no community or racial connections.

Listen: the world doesn't work that way. The rootless individualist doesn't realize it, but he really is all alone out there. The other people with whom he is competing -- the Jews, the non-Whites, the feminists, the homosexuals -- think of themselves as members of groups. They think collectively. They collaborate. Their aim is to disarm and destroy us -- collectively. And they're doing it.

I'll give you a very recent and shocking example of how this works. Do you remember the case of Matthew Shepard, the homosexual who went into a bar in Laramie, Wyoming, last year and tried to get a date? Two of the men in the bar gave him a good beating and then left him tied to a fence, where he died of exposure. Of course, there's no way you could forget that case. It has been a cause celebre in the national media ever since it happened. It has been on every television screen in America again this week in connection with the trial of Aaron McKinney, one of the men accused of killing Shepard. Janet Reno and Bill Clinton have given solemn commentary on the case and have cited it as a reason for why we need to have an expanded "hate crime" law to protect homosexuals from heterosexual White males. Half the Christian preachers and rabbis in America have publicly deplored the "hate" they say was responsible for Shepard's death.

Now I'll tell you about another case involving murder and homosexuals that I'm certain you haven't heard about, unless you happen to live in northwestern Arkansas and read the newspapers there carefully. Less than three weeks ago, on September 26, two adult homosexuals in the town of Rogers, Arkansas, grabbed a 13-year-old boy off the street, took him to their apartment, drugged him, and tied him up and gagged him so that no one could hear his screams, and then they raped him to death.

The 13-year-old boy was Jesse Dirkhising. The two adult homosexuals are Davis Don Carpenter and Joshua Macave Brown, each charged with capital murder and six counts of forcible rape. I mention these names to help you search for information about this horrible crime on the Internet, so that you can verify for yourself what I'm telling you. Try the Internet site of The Morning News of Northwestern Arkansas, the local newspaper there, which has been virtually the only newspaper to carry news of the murder.

As I said, this vicious rape and murder of an innocent child by two adult homosexuals occurred less than three weeks ago, and it's been totally blacked out of the national news. At the same time the beating death of homosexual Matthew Shepard, who made the mistake of looking for a date in the wrong bar, is still receiving national news coverage every day, more than a year after it happened.

Why? I'll tell you. It's because other groups in this country want it this way. No individual in America has the power to black out the news of the homosexual rape and murder of 13-year-old Jesse Dirkhising. And no individual has the power to give the enormous, non-stop national coverage to the beating of Matthew Shepard that we are seeing. This is the result of a collective decision -- a racial decision -- by the Jews who control the news media in America. The message the Jews want to send to White Americans is that homosexuals are innocent victims and that heterosexual White males are aggressors who prey on them. And so they give us the news that fits this message, and they black out the news that doesn't.

I mean, really, think about it. Which is the more newsworthy crime: the beating to death of Matthew Shepard by two men he approached for a date or the kidnapping and raping to death of 13-year-old Jesse Dirkhising by two adult homosexuals? The Jews do this manipulation and distortion of the news for a reason: a collective reason, a racial reason. And it's working. Idiot White women and idiot White Christians are joining the homosexuals around the country in even more candlelight vigils in memory of Matthew Shepard. But there will never be a candlelight vigil for Jesse Dirkhising. No one will ever hear about Jesse Dirkhising -- except those of you listening to me now.

That is the way this world in which we are living works. The suckers are not people like me who feel a sense of racial identity and racial rootedness and racial responsibility. The suckers are the rootless individualists who follow the poisonous teachings of Ayn Rand and Harry Browne.