White Supremacist Recruits With Music

Associated Press/July 16, 2001

Charleston, W.Va. -- The white-separatist author of "The Turner Diaries," the 1978 novel said to have inspired Timothy McVeigh, is going after a new, young audience with a record label specializing in racist and anti-Semitic rock. William Pierce, 67, leader of the National Alliance, is using the Internet to promote his label, Resistance Records -- "The soundtrack for white revolution."

Although Pierce, who bought Resistance Records in 1999, will not disclose the label's earnings, sales have been good enough to allow his National Alliance to expand into video production. The Anti-Defamation League estimates that Resistance Records receives 50 orders a day, at an average of $70 each. That would make gross revenue of about $1.3 million a year.

The label promotes largely hard rock with angry, profanity-laced lyrics. The song "Heart to My Nation" urges whites to "save the race. White people united we will all be free, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil." The music is aimed at "young people who feel they have been dispossessed," says Pierce, whose headquarters is near Hillsboro, about 140 miles from Charleston. "These are young people who, for the most part, have gone to big-city high schools. They have had their noses rubbed into multiculturalism. They are told they have to accept this whether they want it or not. They are angry."

Joel Ratner, the regional director in Cleveland for the Anti-Defamation League, says the National Alliance's use of pop culture to try to reach young people and its strong internal organization make it the single most dangerous hate group in the United States.

The ADL estimates the National Alliance has 1,500 members. Pierce refuses to release membership figures. "We think it needs to be taken seriously," Ratner says.