An Interview of Dr. William L. Pierce
By Kevin Alfred Strom
KAS: There is a continuing public debate about the role of women in our society and the related subjects of sexism and feminism. One example was the hullabaloo that occurred during the confirmation of Clarence Thomas’s appointment to the Supreme Court. Feminists and their claque in the media charged that this confirmation was an affirmation of the “sexism” rampant in the U.S. political establishment. The cure for this alleged problem is to get more women into positions of political power, according to many people in the media.
Another example was the uproar about a drunken party several years ago in Las Vegas for Navy fliers at which several women who showed up were manhandled – in particular, a female flier who later complained to the media about her treatment. The news coverage of the Las Vegas party brought demands from media spokesmen and politicians for rooting out the “sexism” in the armed forces and giving women equal roles in everything from infantry combat to flying fighter jets. Do you see any real or lasting significance in this debate?
WLP: Oh, it’s certainly a significant debate. The significance is perhaps not exactly what the media spokesmen would have us believe it is, but there is a significance there nevertheless. Getting at the real significance, pulling it out into the light where everyone can see it and examine it, requires a little care, though. There’s a lot of misdirection, a lot of deliberate deception in the debate.
Look at the first example you just mentioned. The controlled media would have us believe that the approval of Clarence Thomas by the Senate Judiciary Committee in the face of Anita Hill’s complaints about him demonstrates a callous insensitivity to women’s welfare. But what were Anita Hill’s complaints? They were that when Thomas had been her boss in the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission he had asked her several times for a date and that on one occasion he had begun describing to her a pornographic film he had seen the evening before. She never alleged that he had demanded sexual favors from her, threatened her, or put his hands on her. Her complaint was that he had shown a normal, healthy interest in her as a woman. He had asked her for a date.
Talking to her about a pornographic film may have indicated a certain lack of refinement on his part – at least that would be the case if the two of them were members of a traditional White society, in which gentlemen didn’t talk about pornographic films in the presence of ladies, at least not in the office – but what the hell, the folks who were raising such a fuss about Thomas’s behavior are, like both Clarence and Anita themselves, all members of the brave, New World Order society, which is neither White nor traditional. It’s a so-called “multicultural” society in which there are no gentlemen and there are no ladies; there are just male and female people, and the female people are no different from the male people: they are just as bawdy, just as vulgar, just as aggressive.
KAS: So you believe that the whole thing was just a tempest in a teapot, that it really wasn’t significant?
WLP: A tempest in a teapot, yes, but still very significant. One aspect of the Clarence and Anita circus was that it was simply seized on and used by people with a certain political agenda, and so of course their tendency was to make as much ado as they could about it. But another aspect is that many of the feminists who were screeching against Thomas and against the Senate’s approval of him really were indignant that the man had asked Anita Hill for a date. They really were outraged that he had an interest in her as a woman and did not simply treat her as another lawyer in his office. Men are not supposed to notice women as women, but only as people, and radical feminists really do become angry if one drops this unisex pretense even for a minute. Open a door for one of them and you’ll get a nasty glare; call one of them “my dear” or refer to her as a “girl” and you’ll be slapped with a civil rights lawsuit.
The fuss about this Tailhook Association party in Las Vegas reveals the same sort of nuttiness. I mean, what do you expect when a bunch of Navy fliers throw a wild, drunken orgy? They had held their party in Las Vegas several years in a row, and the party had gained a bit of a reputation. It was notorious. Everybody in Naval aviation knew all about it. The Navy women who went to the party knew what to expect. They joined the orgy. Any woman who didn’t want to be pawed by drunken fliers and have her panties pulled off stayed away. Certainly, if these Navy fliers had shanghaied some unsuspecting woman off the street and forced her to submit to indignities, I would be the first to call for their being put up against a wall. I’ll go further and say that I really don’t approve of drunkenness under any circumstances – although I believe it’s only realistic to accept drinking as a fact of military life. But I cannot work up much sympathy for a woman who, knowing what the Tailhook parties are like, decides that she will pretend that she really isn’t a woman but rather is a genderless Navy flier and so can go to the Tailhook party without worrying about her panties.
KAS: That’s really irrational isn’t it? It doesn’t make sense to ignore human nature like that.
WLP: Irrationality seems to be the rule rather than the exception in public affairs these days. Feminism, of course, is just another exercise in reality denial, which has become such a common pastime. There are too many people out there who seem to believe that if we pretend that men and women are the same, they really will be; that if we pretend there are no differences between Blacks and Whites except skin color, the differences will disappear; that if we pretend that homosexuality is a normal, healthy condition, it will be.
Feminism is one of the most destructive aberrations being pushed by the media today, because it has an immediate effect on nearly all of us. There are many sectors of the economy, for example, in which racial-quota hiring and promotion – so-called “affirmative action” – isn’t a real problem, and so White people who work in those sectors remain relatively unaffected by the racial aspects of America’s breakdown, but feminism is becoming pervasive; there are few relationships between men and women, especially between younger men and women, which will not suffer from the effects of feminism in the near future.
KAS: You just referred to feminism as “a destructive aberration” and spoke of the breakdown of America. Are the two things connected?
WLP: When homosexuals come out of the closet and women go into politics, empires crumble. Or, to say that a way which more accurately reflects the cause-effect relationship, when empires begin to crumble, then the queers come out of the closet and women go into politics. Which is to say, that in a strong, healthy society, feminism isn’t a problem. But when a society begins to decay – when the men lose their self-confidence – then feminism raises its head and accelerates the process of decay.
KAS: Before we go further, exactly what do you mean by feminism? Can you define the word for us?
WLP: Feminism is a system of ideas with several distinguishing characteristics. First, it’s a system in which gender is regarded as the primary identifying characteristic, more important even than race. Second, and paradoxically, it’s a system in which men and women are regarded as innately identical in all intellectual and psychical traits, and in all physical traits except those most obviously dependent on the configuration of the genitalia. Third, it’s a system in which filling a traditionally male role in society is valued above being a wife and mother, a system in which the traditional female roles are denigrated. Finally, it’s a system in which men and women are regarded as mutually hostile classes, with men traditionally in the role of oppressors of women; and in which it is regarded as every woman’s primary duty to support the interests of her fellow women of all races against the male oppressors.
I should add that not every woman who describes herself as a feminist would go along 100% with that definition. Real feminism is not just an intellectual thing; it’s a sickness, with deep emotional roots. Some women just want to be trendy, but are otherwise normal. They just want to be fashionable, and feminism is held up by the media as fashionable these days. It’s Politically Correct.
And while we’re at it, we should note that there is an analogous malady, usually called male chauvinism, which expresses itself in a range of attitudes toward women ranging from patronizing contempt to outright hatred. Feminists often attribute the growth of feminism to a reaction against male chauvinism. Actually the latter, which never afflicted more than a minority of White men, has been more an excuse for the promoters of feminism than a cause of that disorder.
KAS: OK. So that’s what feminism is. Now, in what way is it destructive? How is it connected to America’s decline?
WLP: Feminism is destructive at several different levels. At the racial level it is destructive because it divides the race against itself, robbing us of racial solidarity and weakening us in the struggle for racial survival; and because it reduces the White birthrate, especially among educated women. It also undermines the family by taking women out of the home and leaving the raising of children to television and day-care centers.
At a personal or social level feminism does its damage by eroding the traditional relationship between men and women. That traditional relationship is not based on any assumption of equality or sameness. It’s not a symmetrical relationship, but rather a complementary one. It’s based on a sexual division of labor, with fundamentally different roles for men and women: men are the providers and the protectors, and women are the nurturers. Men bring home the bacon, and they guard the den; women nourish the children and tend the hearth.
Many people today sneer at this traditional relationship. They think that in the New World Order there is no need to protect the den or the condo or whatever, because these days we’re all very civilized, and that all one needs to do to bring home the bacon is hop in the car and drive to the nearest shopping mall, and, of course, a woman can do that just as well as a man. Therefore, because the times have changed, roles should change. There’s no longer any reason for a division of labor; now we can all be the same, claim the apologists for feminism.
Now, I have a couple of problems with that line of reasoning. First, I’m not as eager to toss million-year-old traditions in the ash-can as the New World Order enthusiasts are, because I’m not as confident in the ability of the government to provide protection for all of us as they are, nor am I as confident that there’ll always be bacon at the neighborhood shopping mall and we won’t have to revert to earlier ways of getting it. Actually, I’m an optimist by nature, but I’m not so optimistic as to believe that I’ll never be called on to use my strength or my fighting instincts to protect my family. In fact, every time I watch the evening news on television, I become more convinced that there’s a very good chance we’re going to end up having to fight for our bacon within the next few years.
In the second place, Mother Nature made a very big investment in her way of doing things over the past few million years of primate evolution. It’s not simply a matter of our deciding that we don’t like Mother Nature’s plan because it’s not fashionable any longer, and so we’ll change it. We are what we are. That is, we are what millions of years of evolution have made us. A man is a man in every cell of his body and his brain, not just in his genitalia, and a woman is a woman to the same degree. We were very thoroughly and precisely adapted to our different roles. We can’t change reality by passing a civil rights law. When we deceive ourselves into thinking that we can, there’s hell to pay. Which is to say that we end up with a lot of very confused, disappointed, and unhappy men and women. We also end up with a lot of very angry men and women, which accounts for the feminists and the male chauvinists.
It’s true, of course, that some women might be perfectly happy as corporate raiders or professional knife fighters, just as some men have willingly adapted to the New World Order by becoming less aggressive and more “sensitive.” But it doesn’t work that way for normal men and women. What the normal man really wants and needs is not just a business partner and roommate of the opposite sex, but a real woman whom he can protect and provide for. And what a normal woman really wants and needs with every fiber of her being, regardless of how much feminist propaganda she’s soaked up, is a real man, who can love and protect her and provide for her and their children. If she’s watched too much television and has let herself be persuaded that what she wants instead of a strong, masculine man is a sensitive wimp who’ll let her wear the trousers in the family half the time, she’s headed for a severe collision with the reality of her own nature. She’ll end up making herself very neurotic, driving a few men into male chauvinism, and becoming a social liability. Our society just can’t afford any more of that sort of foolishness. If feminism were only making individuals unhappy, I wouldn’t be very concerned about it. I’ve always believed that people were entitled to make themselves as unhappy as they wanted to. But unfortunately, it’s wrecking our society and weakening our race, and we must put a stop to it soon.
KAS: How do you propose to do that? The feminist movement really seems to be snowballing, and as you noted the mass media are all for it. It would seem pretty difficult to stop. Anyone who opposes the feminists is perceived as a male chauvinist who wants to take away women’s rights and confine them to the kitchen and the bedroom.
WLP: Well, of course, I’m not in favor of taking anything away from women. I’d like to give women the option of being women again in the traditional way, in Nature’s way, the option of staying home and taking care of their children and making a home for their husbands. It wasn’t the feminists, of course, who changed our economy so that it’s no longer possible for many families to survive unless both the man and the woman are employed outside the home. A society which forces women out of the home and into offices and factories is not a healthy society. I’d like for our society to be changed so that it’s possible once again for mothers to stay at home with their children, the way they did back before the Second World War, back before the New World Order boys got their hands on our economy and launched their plan to bring the living standard of the average American wage earner down to the average Mexican level. I think many will want to stay home when it’s possible to do so. And I am sure that if we provide the right role models for women, most will want to. If we regain control of our television industry, of our news and entertainment and advertising industries, we can hold up quite a different model of the ideal woman from the one being held up today.
Most women, just like most men, want to be fashionable. They try to do and be what’s expected of them. We just need to move that model back closer to what Mother Nature had in mind. Then there’s no need to take away anybody’s rights. A few female lawyers with butch haircuts can easily be tolerated in a healthy society – a few flagpole sitters, a few glass eaters, a few of all sorts of people – so long as their particular brand of oddness doesn’t begin undermining the health of the whole society.
KAS: But what about the people who control the media now – what about the legislators – who are on the feminist bandwagon? They are very powerful. What will you do about them?
WLP: We’ll do whatever is necessary. Now we’re helping people understand feminism and the other ills which are afflicting our society. Understanding really must come first. After understanding comes organization. And then, as I said, whatever is necessary.
And I should add this: Whatever flies in the face of reality is inherently self-destructive. But we cannot wait for this disease to burn itself out. The toll will be too great. We have to stand up against it and oppose it now. We have to change people’s attitudes about feminism being fashionable. We have to make the politicians who’ve jumped on the feminist bandwagon understand that there will be a heavy price to pay, someday, for their irresponsibility.
KAS: Do you really think that you can change the behavior of the politicians?
WLP: Perhaps not, but we must at least give them a chance to change. Unfortunately in the case of the politicians most of them have many crimes besides an advocacy of feminism to answer for, and they know that they can only be hanged once.
