The Fame of a Dead Man's Deeds

In late 1997 I wrote Pierce a letter broaching the idea of writing a book about him and his ideas. In the letter, I said:

 I'm not talking about anything authorized, that is to say, where explicitly or implicitly I have the job of fronting for you, making you look good, selling you. But at the same time, I wouldn't be aiming to demonize you or set you up as a straw man to serve some agenda of my own. I also don't want to play a game academics often play [I am a university professor], which is to stand above their subjects, as it were, and patronizingly critique them and make themselves look good in the process. What I do want to do is focus on the issues you raise and the ideas you affirm and your current activities within the context of the events and circumstances of your life, and to present it as objectively as I can. Whatever else comes through, I want who you are and what you are and where you have come from put out there for readers straight and true. I am not interested in exposes or inside journalism. I am interested in where this culture and society is heading and how we live our individual lives, and what you and what you represent have to do with that. 

 Pierce wrote back:

 Your idea is an intriguing one. I am not convinced that the things I have accomplished to date merit a biography--although I always am trying to acquire more merit. From a practical point of view, if you succeed in getting a biography of me published and it is not a hatchet job, it should be helpful. Although you might be subject to pressure from your publisher to produce a book fitting a certain stereotype of me and m y message. Anyway, it is a project that I am willing to discuss with you.

 I wrote back to Pierce that I wasn't planning on writing a full-scale, detailed biography, bringing in multiple sources and perspectives and all. Rather, I was thinking of something akin to what goes on between a subject posing for a portrait and an artist. That is to say, the book would essentially be about him and me: the way he presents himself to me and the way I make sense of and render that presentation. I said I wanted to hear him talk about his life growing up and what he has done as an adult. I wanted to learn about the circumstances in society and the people and experiences and ideas that have had an impact on him. I wanted to become familiar with the books that have made a difference to him--I'd like to read them if I haven't--and see if I can learn why they affected him as they did. I wanted to look at how his public life and private life have affected one another. I wanted to do those things in order to paint a picture of him, so to speak. So a portrait would be a more accurate way of referring to what I had in mind than a biography.

 And, really, I said in the letter, I am not setting out to do a hatchet job on you. I am not intending to write a judgmental book; rather, I want to be a vehicle that will allow readers the chance to get a good look at you and to decide for themselves what they see. I told Pierce I would stay away from slanting or channeling people's impression of him by tacking negative labels on him--neo-Nazi, anti-Semite, bigot, hater. However, he had to understand that after hearing what he has to say and reviewing what he has done with his life, readers may well decide that, indeed, those labels suit him. And as for publishers pushing me to fit him into a certain stereotype--he had mentioned that possibility--I told him that I was not going to bend reality for anybody.

 I told Pierce that I wanted to meet him in person--I hadn't at that point--and talk more about this project and see if it seemed as if the two of us could work together. I said I thought a couple of hours with one another should give us a good sense of whether we ought to keep exploring this idea. Pierce said that was all right with him, and I went to see him in West Virginia. This was in the fall of 1997. We talked for two hours in the afternoon at his office in the National Alliance headquarters building on his three hundred forty-six acre plot of land. Basically, we got acquainted. He asked me about what things were like at the university where I am on the faculty, and we talked about university politics for a time. I thought the session went well. Pierce seemed open and unthreatened--I had expected more wariness, which would have been understandable--and he was congenial and expansive. At the end of that first meeting, we decided that I should come back and spend a full work day at the property.

 A couple of months later--this was early 1998--I came back and Pierce and I ended up talking for seven hours straight. Rapport was building between the two of us and, I believe, his trust in me and belief that I brought an adequate amount of competence and commitment to this book-writing endeavor. I took notes during our lengthy conversation and wrote down my recollections and impressions afterward, but I found that I missed much of what Pierce had said. I made a vow to myself that from then on I would have a tape recorder with me. At the end of the day, Pierce invited me to stay for dinner with him and his wife Irena, so I got to meet her and see the trailer they share about five hundred yards up the mountain from the headquarters building.

 About a month later, I came back for a weekend. At that point, I proposed that I spend a month during the summer at the property working on the book. I told Pierce that I wanted to conduct a series of taped interviews with him during that time. I said that three two-hour sessions per week should suffice. Plus, I wanted to go over materials--books, tapes, letters, papers, and so on. And I wanted to just generally absorb what was happening on the property and get a feel for the place and the people who lived there. Pierce said that was fine, and I spent from mid-June to mid-July of 1998 there living with one of Pierce's assistants, a former business professor by the name of Bob DeMarais. Since that time, I have stayed in contact with Pierce. In November of 1999, I spent four days with Pierce in Munich, Germany, where he had traveled to give a speech at a rally of the National Democratic Party. I think through all of this I have come to know him very well.

 I have asked myself why Pierce agreed to go forward with the book project, and indeed he has been most cooperative. In our initial correspondence he had said that he thought the book could be helpful. What did he mean by that, and what was he personally getting out of his connection with me? I have decided that the main reason Pierce has gone along with this book is that he thinks this is a chance to become known b y a mainstream audience. He is convinced that to the extent he hasn't been ignored he and his ideas have been twisted to serve the purposes of those who oppose him. That is not to say he is right in thinking that, but lam sure that is what he believes. Also, I think the fact that I am a university professor appeals to him. He has expressed frustration to me that the academic community pays no attention to him. I believe he hopes that something I will write will reach university people, both faculty and students, and contribute to him and his message being considered more seriously by that segment of this society. And too, I believe the fact that I am an academic helps in another regard. Pierce was once a physics professor, and he and I have compatible personal styles. I am bookish and get caught up with ideas, and he is the same way. Simply, we relate well, and I think there is a personal payoff for him in a relationship with someone like me. And last, I believe I serve the need he has for someone to talk to about his life. It is a rewarding experience for just about all of us to have a listener who is truly interested in what it was like for us as a child, what happened when we were just starting out in our career, how we look at things today, and so on. It is rewarding to have someone who truly wants to hear more from us and doesn't make judgments or bring the subject around to themselves. As the days and weeks went along, I noticed that Pierce seemed to look forward to our sessions, which were from 7:00 to 9:00 in the evenings after his long workday. It was at his suggestion that we talk consecutive evenings rather than the three times a week I originally had in mind.

 As for what I wanted to get out of my contact with Pierce, I was looking for a way to deal with American culture and society in an overall, integrated way, and in an accessible and interesting way, and Pierce seemed to me to be a good vehicle for doing that. Pierce is concerned with it all and how everything fits together--history, philosophy, politics, economics, the media, education, men-women identities and relationships, child-raising practices, and approaches to leisure--and that offered me the broad canvas, the inclusive frame of reference, I wanted. I didn't think the fact that Pierce approaches these concerns from a position on the extreme end of the ideological spectrum was a drawback, because one of the ways to make better sense of what is going on at the core of American life, which is what I really want to do, is to contrast it with what is happening on its outermost edge.

 A second reason I had for investing time and energy in this project is I thought I could be helpful to others if I were to report what had come out of my experience with Pierce. It is imperative, I believe, that we know the enemy, to put it that way, and I think the consensus view is that no one is a more threatening domestic enemy than is William Pierce. I had been given an opportunity to get close and learn how Pierce thinks and behaves as well as what accounts for him--how does someone like Pierce come to be? This is a opportunity, I thought, for people to hear from this man in his own words and to look at the world through his eyes. If we are going to deal with people like Pierce, it helps greatly if we understand them.

 And a third motivation for me, one that developed as time went along: I find Pierce to be an absolutely fascinating character and his story to be a whale of a tale. And besides Pierce, in the course of putting this book together I came across a number of other fascinating--which is not to say admirable—characters, among them, George Lincoln Rockwell, Robert Lloyd, Revilo P. Oliver, Francis Parker Yockey, Savitri Devi, Elizabeth Dilling, Bob Mathews, and William Gayley Simpson. This cast of characters and their world was all new to me, and I have had the treat of a terrific, real-life movie for the year and a half I have been working on this book. I found that that alone has been enough to keep me going.

from: The Fame of a Dead Man's Deeds:

 An Up-Close Portrait of White Nationalist William Pierce

 by Robert S. Griffin