Why We Will Succeed Where Others Fail
Why We Will Succeed Where Others Fail is a Cosmotheist lecture given by Dr. William Pierce on October 24, 1976 at the office of the National Alliance in Arlington, Virginia. A recording of the lecture is available here: [1]
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I don’t think I need to convince anyone here that what we are trying to do is very difficult. It is obvious form our own experience of the last few months that it is not easy to build up our numbers even to those needed for a truly viable organization, which I talked about a few weeks ago. It is not easy to bring new people to our meetings in the numbers we would like.
The difficulties we experience temp some of us, I am sure, to place less emphasis on the fundamental Truth we express in our Affirmation and to turn instead toward gimmicks of one sort or another. If people will not listen to our Truth, some of us may think, then we should talk to them about things they are interested in: income taxes, school busing, pornography, abortion, the right to keep and bear arms.
Now, there is no doubt that, right now, we could win a greater response from the general public if we stopped talking about our Purpose, our Truth and concentrated all our efforts on one of those topics. We would also be more successful, in a certain sense, if we were careful not to mention the Jews or to talk about race. We could win more people, in other words--we could be a bigger organization--if we would behave like conservatives or right wingers.
The reason is that most people have always been more interested in concrete, personal things like money, sex, or their own safety and comfort than anything else. And they have always been shy of anything controversial, anything that might be inconvenient, or even dangerous, for them to get mixed up with. That’s why conservatism has always been more popular that radicalism. And it’s also why the two major parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, have always been even more popular. They appeal to the public’s basest instincts. They promise each segment of the population more of what most of them really want: more money, more comfort, more security.
Now, I’m sure no one expects us to try to out-Democrat the Democrats or out-Republican the Republicans. But we must also understand that, regardless of the difficulties it means for us now, we must not try to out-conservative the conservatives and right wingers either.
Because, while it is true that a conservative appeal, based on immediate self-interest, may win us more people in the short run, in the long run on appeal based primarily on self-interest can save us as a race. No ad hoc program, no matter how cleverly disguised, is going to achieve our long-range goals for us. We are not going to sneak a sack over the Jews’ heads under the pretense of an anti-busing or an anti-tax movement.
And there will be no general awakening, no general uprising of the public any time soon as the result of any conceivable right-wing program. No matter how unhappy people are about what’s going on in the schools or abut Henry Kissinger’s program to liquidate White Rhodesia, the majority of them will keep on voting for the Democrats and the Republicans as long as they think that will allow them to keep their station wagons and all their shiny electrical appliances. And reasoning with them that their children or their grandchildren will be better off if they make some sacrifices now won’t help either.
We’ve talked about all that before. It can be summed up this way: The great majority of people do not behave the way they do primarily as the consequences of either reason or any idealistic impulses. They respond, most of them, to their crudest and simplest instincts: herd instinct, or a compulsion to conform; hunger, including the compulsion to accumulate money and other material goods besides food: and the instinct to avoid dangers and discomforts. Those are the instincts the Democrats and the Republicans appeal to, the instincts the mass media appeal to--and if we want a massive public following, we must ultimately, at some time in the future, appeal to the same instincts. It is no accident that throughout all recorded history, fire and the sword have been the means necessary to bring the masses of people around to a radically new view of things. And the fact is that the other side has all the fire and the swords, so to speak, at this time.
So that means that we must, for some time in the future, remain a minority movement. Not forever, of course. There will come a time of fire and sword--an ax-time, a wolf-time, as the sagas say--and the great masses will come to see the error of their ways and will be persuaded to change their views and their allegiances. But we have much building to do, much long and hard work to do before we can be sufficiently persuasive.
And the way in which we must build--the way in which we must recruit our minority--is not simply by copying the Democrats and the Republicans, that is, by appealing at this time to the same instincts that they appeal to. Because, as I have already told you in our earlier meetings, the relative balance of power between us and the enemy being what it is, we can recruit only fools in that way. Only a fool can believe that he will come out ahead, with more money in the bank or an easier or more comfortable or safer life, by joining our fight, by opposing the Jews and their solidly entrenched power. And we do not need fools for the work that lies ahead of us.
We must appeal to instinct--because that is what motivates people--but it must be a different instinct. And you know what different instinct that is, because we’ve talked about it many times before. It is the Creator’s Urge toward Self-Completion. It is the basic driving force behind the evolution of the Universe. It is the most powerful, the most irresistible force in the universe--potentially. It lies slumbering the souls of all our people, even though in many it may be as hard to detect as in a lump of clay. In others--in a few-- it predominates over all the other instincts. But even in those few, it is nearly always an unconscious force, unrecognized for what it really is.
It is the instinct, the unconscious drive, which motivates the creative minority of our people, the poetic minority. We see it at work in our inventors and explorers and adventures, in our poets and artists. But we also see evidence of this same instinct in every craftsman who does the best job he possibly can in everything he makes or repairs--not to earn more money, but to satisfy an inner need. And it manifests itself every time we feel a stirring, a response, in our souls to something beautiful or noble or sublime--every time our souls respond to something unrelated to heard instinct or to hunger or sex or fear or greed--the sort of response we have, some of us have, to viewing a beautiful sunset, or hearing a tale of heroism, or first understanding some new secret of Nature, some new mystery of the Creator.
This instinct is, as I have already said, very real. It exists. It is the Divine Spark, the Fire of God, in our souls, and it is potentially the most powerful force in the universe. When it is properly harnessed and directed it will sweep the Jews and all their clever, practical, successful henchmen out of existence forever. The materialism and egoism which they have harnessed and which seem so powerful today will seem like straws in a hurricane. Of that I am sure. And I am also sure that there is no other force which can prevail over our enemies, no clever, right-wing gimmick, no pretending to be an anti-busing movement or an anti-income tax movement to build up our strength without the Jews or the masses realizing what we really intend to do until we suddenly pull the rug our from under them. No, there is no other way but ours. Now, while we are building our strength, we must follow openly and straight-forwardly the same Path we want our whole race top follow one day. That is the way to victory--the only way.
But, as I said earlier, there are many difficulties in our path. This irresistible force we want to harness is, even in most of those where it is strongest, an unconscious force. Its bearers do not recognize it for what it is, as the Creator’s Urge in them. Many are confused. Many even work for the enemy, distorting and perverting their creative instinct. So, even though we know what the instinct is to which we want to appeal, we have problems. We must make the minority in whom this instinct is strong recognize its true nature.
That is a great and difficult task of enlightenment which we must perform. Very great. Very difficult. And you many wonder whether we are really any better off now than we were before I started talking this evening. We already knew we had a big job in winning over enough people to make victory possible for our cause. And it may seem like I’ve just stated our problem in different words, and that contemplating the task ahead is just as discouraging as before.
But I have done more than just state our task in different words. I have tried to show you that our actual task is one quite a bit different form what it may have seemed. That is, I have pointed out that, instead of trying to win by appealing to an instinct that seems very weak in most people, instead of trying to awaken an idealism which seems completely smothered by materialism and egoism, instead of trying to make idealists out of materialists--instead of that we are attempting to reach a minority of our people in whom the Creator’s Urge is naturally strong and educate them as to the true nature of that Urge. We are not trying, in other words, to coax into life the very weak Urge of the masses bur rather to waken into full consciousness the much stronger Urge of the minority. And that is not only an altogether different task, but it is also a much more hopeful one. And when we have accomplished that task, then the other becomes feasible also. Then we can think in terms of whatever it takes to persuade the masses. But the key to victory--the path for us now-- is one of consciousness wakening and consciousness building.