The National Alliance was a white supremacist,[3][4][5][6]neo-Nazi[3] political organization founded by William Luther Pierce in 1974 and based in Mill Point, West Virginia. Membership in 2002 was estimated at 2,500 with an annual income of $1 million.[7] Membership declined after Pierce's death in 2002, and after a split in its ranks in 2005, became largely defunct.[3][8]
William Pierce was arrested in 1995 on charges of assaulting a female staff member on the grounds of the Mill Point headquarters.[10] Twenty years later, Will Williams was also arrested for assault of a female staff member while serving as chairman of the National Alliance.[11]
The Order was an offshoot of the National Alliance and modeled themselves after a similar group depicted in The Turner Diaries. Timothy McVeigh was in possession of a copy of The Turner Diaries at the time of his arrest following the Oklahoma City Bombing.[12] McVeigh bought copies of the book (published by the National Alliance), sold them at gun shows, and otherwise distributed them.[13]
In 1997, two National Alliance members were charged with committing bank robberies in Florida and Connecticut.[14] One of them admitted to channeling funds from the robberies to the National Alliance. He was charged with attempting to detonate a series of pipe bombs in order to divert attention from a future robbery.[15]
German fugitive Hendrik Moebus was captured near the National Alliance compound, at which he is believed to been hiding, in August 2000.
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Following Pierce's death from cancer in 2002, the Alliance's board of directors appointed Erich Gliebe to succeed him as chairman of the organization.[17] A series of power struggles began almost immediately, with high-ranking members either resigning or being fired. A boycott of the National Alliance's Resistance Records label resulted in a steep drop-off in generated funds.[18]
In April 2005, prominent Alliance member Kevin Alfred Strom, then editor of National Vanguard magazine, issued a declaration calling for Gliebe to step down;[19] the Alliance's executive committee and most of its unit coordinators supported the action. Gliebe refused, claiming that the Alliance operated under the "Leadership Principle" and stating that he would not yield to any coup. Strom formed a new group called National Vanguard.[20] In January 2008, Strom pleaded guilty to one count of possession of child pornography in exchange for the other charges to be dropped.[21][22][23] He was sentenced to 23 months in prison on April 23, 2008.[22][24][23] Strom told the court before being sentenced that he was "not a pedophile" and was "in fact the precise opposite of what has been characterized in this case",[22] saying he had been "unwillingly" possessing 10 images of child pornography and that those came from an online forum he had visited which had been "flooded with spam", which included "sleazy, tragic" pictures of children that he deleted. The judge of the case responded: "Mr. Strom, you pled guilty to charges that now you're saying you're innocent. I prefer people plead not guilty than put it on me."[24]
Shortly after the attempted coup by Strom, Gliebe resigned as chairman of the Alliance and briefly appointed Shaun Walker as his successor. However, following Walker's arrest in June 2006, Gliebe again assumed leadership of the organization.[25][26] By that year, paid membership for the Alliance had declined to fewer than 800 and the paid staff was down to only ten people.[27] By 2012, the Alliance reportedly consisted of fewer than 100 members, with no paid staff other than Gliebe.[28][29] The following year, it was revealed that the Alliance's property in Mill Point, West Virginia, had been put up for sale. The end of the National Alliance as a "membership organization" was confirmed by Gliebe in September 2013.[30]
Will Williams offshoot
In 2014, Will Williams became head of an organization which calls itself the National Alliance (NA).[31] However, a rival faction disputes the claim that this group is maintaining continuity with the original Alliance which was founded by Pierce.[32] The Williams led NA has since been embroiled in several legal issues.
In 2015, an accountant was hired to audit the NA's books by Williams. According to a lawsuit which was filed by a former Baltimore attorney against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), there was a confrontation between the accountant and Williams. The lawsuit further claims that after the accountant left the NA headquarters he released documents that he had scanned to the SPLC.[33]
In December 2015, Williams was arrested and charged with battery after he allegedly hit and strangled a female employee on the grounds of the Mill Point compound.[34] He was convicted, briefly incarcerated, and placed on probation. He appealed the sentence and the appellate court affirmed the conviction.[35]
Williams was banned from the NA compound in West Virginia pursuant to a court order stemming from his 2015 arrest.[36]
In 2018, NA filed an $850,000 claim against the estate of John McLaughlin, a former NA director who had filed suit against the organization. The purpose of this legal action was for McLaughlin's "tortious breach of fidiciary duties." The claim was denied by the Circuit Court of Piatt County, Illinois.[37]
Williams claims that the National Alliance "(is) back. We are definitely back".[38] He also said in a letter to a newspaper sent from Laurel Bloomery, Tennessee (allegedly the NA's headquarters) that "(The National Alliance does) not appreciate being called 'haters' or being associated with some 'hate movement'."[39]
Murder of a British MP
Thomas Mair, later to be convicted of murdering the British Labour Party politician Jo Cox, was connected to the National Alliance.[40]
Business
Before the death of Pierce, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Federal Bureau of Investigation called the National Alliance the best-financed and best-organized white nationalist organization of its kind in the United States. In 2002, the National Alliance was estimated to have 2,500 members, with an annual income of $1 million.[7]
In 2004, Harry Robert McCorkill of New Brunswick, Canada, attempted to will his entire estate (valued at almost $250,000) to the National Alliance upon his death. However, in 2014, the Court of Queen's Bench of New Brunswick invalidated his will on the ground that the National Alliance was a criminal organization which was formed and existed for the purposes of spreading hate speech and incitingviolence against non-whites.[41]
Media
Resistance Records
In the past, the organization ran a white power record label which was called Resistance Records. In 2002, it released the video game Ethnic Cleansing, an action which was criticized by the Anti-Defamation League.[42]
Cosmotheist Church
The spiritual aspect of the National Alliance's ideology is espoused by the Cosmotheist Community Church.[43]
^State of West Virginia vs William White Williams (State of West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals 2020) ("For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the circuit court's order"), Text.
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