William L. Pierce (September 11, 1933 - July 23, 2002) was a prominent ideologue of the American Nazi Party (ANP) and far right elements of the militia movement. Trained as a physicist (Pierce held a Ph.D. in Physics), he rose to prominence in the extreme right following the assassination of George Lincoln Rockwell, the original founder of the ANP.
Pierce was born in Atlanta, Georgia and graduated with a bachelor's degree in physics in 1951. He worked at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory before attending graduate school, first at Caltech and then the University of Colorado, at Boulder, where he earned his Ph.D in 1962. He soon lost interest in physics and joined various white supremecist groups, forming his owner splinter group of the National Alliance in 1974. [1]
Pierce came to public attention following the Oklahoma City bombing. It has been suggested that the perpetrator, Timothy McVeigh, was influenced by The Turner Diaries (1978), a novel written by Pierce under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald. The book is a graphically violent depiction of a future race war in the United States as told through the perspective of Earl Turner, an active member of the rightwing underground. The book opens with the bombing of FBI headquarters, which, critics say, could have served as a model for the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. Although The Turner Diaries was originally only available by mail order and at special events (such as gun shows), it is believed to have sold half a million copies, and to have had many more readers, because it was handed from one person to another.
The Turner Diaries is also believed to have been the inspiration behind a small group of militant racists in the early 80's who called themselves the Bruders Schweigen or sometimes simply "the Order." The Order was connected to numerous crimes, including counterfeiting and bank robbery. The Order's leader, Robert Jay Matthews, died in a shoot out with police and federal agents on Whidbey Island in Washington. Other Order members, most notably David Lane, were captured and sent to federal prisons, where they continued to voice their support for racist ideologies.
Other titles by Pierce include Hunter (1984), which reads more like a survival manual for individual militants than a blueprint for revolution, and New World Order Comix # 1:The Saga of?White Will!! (1993), which is openly directed at white youth.
Pierce spent his final years in relative seclusion in West Virginia, where he hosted his own radio show, American Dissident Voices, and oversaw his publishing and record companies devoted to the promotion of his racist White Power ideology. After the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack he declared that "The enemy of our enemy is, for now at least, our friends...we may not want them marrying our daughters...but anyone who is willing to drive a plane into a building to kill Jews is alright by me. I wish our members had half as much testicular fortitude.".
See also: Civil rights movement, Racism, Race