The Strong Will Survive: An Interview with Kevin Alfred Strom

This 2012 interview with Kevin Alfred Strom by Black Sun Invictus gives us insight into the thoughts and background of Mr. Strom (pictured), and a look at conditions as they were one year before the restoration of the National Alliance.

Firstly let me thank you Kevin for your time and also sharing your knowledge in this interview. Please give the readers a brief summary of who you are and what your general ideology is.

I was born in Anchorage, Territory of Alaska. My parents were Minnesota farm kids, both of Norwegian descent. My father had been sent to Alaska by the Air Force.

I think the beauty of the place affected me — titanic pines and wheeling eagles, huge mountains that fall right down into the sea. Even the light is different there; golden slanting light that is always low in the sky and fades into purples and reds that last for half the day. The only way to avoid seeing stunning beauty in Alaska is to close your eyes.

We moved to the Washington, DC area in the 1960s — in fact, oddly enough, our first day there was the day Kennedy was killed.

I was deeply impressed by the neoclassical architecture and art of the place, just at the time when the misrulers of our country were severing us from the ancient genetic and cultural heritage that made that art possible. The majestic buildings and sculptures and paintings resonated deeply within me, and, though as a child I couldn’t have put it into words, I began to feel a part of something eternal, something much greater than myself.

It was in the late sixties that I began to have my first inklings of understanding. I began to sense that there was deep purpose behind the beauty I’d experienced. And I started to suspect that the prepackaged belief systems to which I’d been exposed — mindless “my country right or wrong” conservatism, Christianity, “everybody’s equal” liberalism, and all the rest — might be seriously defective, perhaps even nonsense.

Don’t misunderstand me — I am a social being, and I wanted to “belong” as much as any adolescent. I wanted very much to find my place in the civilization that could produce the great art I’d seen in Washington — that had achieved the Moon landing — that had created the amazing technologies I was starting to study like radio and electronics — and that had brought freedom of thought to an apex of grandeur, beauty, and magnificence that was almost overwhelming.

But I also sensed something was seriously wrong.

I saw the huge anti-war marches in Washington, and the Moratorium protests. I saw many of the protesters there carrying the red flags of Communism, calling for destruction of our civilization, calling for the rule of the worst and the lowest and the meanest, and the exaltation of all that was alien, ugly, and spiritually dead. And I heard the high-placed men of the establishment, like network commentators and politicians and church leaders, sympathizing with and even supporting the Communists — the same Communists who said they were planning to hang those same high-placed men. There was a contradiction there, and no one could explain it to me.

I heard the pastor of our Lutheran church quote Bible verses with reverence and offer them to us as the highest truth and the ultimate guide to life. And yet, when I questioned him in private on some of the more amazing claims in the Bible, such as “demon possession” and certain miracles, he dismissed them, saying “We really don’t believe in the supernatural; the Church is like a family, and these traditions and stories hold us together and guide us without being literally true.” A jaw-dropping admission, and a clear contradiction.

I was still in junior high school when I perceived that almost all of the “best people,” those with the most advanced education, with the most cultural awareness, were the very ones most attached to trends and movements and beliefs that were dedicated to the eradication of their own culture: The pro-Communist “liberal intellectual” — the Marxist scion of a wealthy family — the kind and gentle genius-level PhD who devotes his entire adult life to the elevation of the lowest, the crudest, the most cruel, and the stupidest to positions of power. An almost unbelievable set of contradictions. Yet examples were everywhere.

A most impressive example, to me, was the behavior of the more “intellectual” teachers and administrators in the months following the death of “Martin Luther” King.

First, King’s self-authored mythology as a “non-violent advocate of justice” was widely known to be a fraud, since it was then common knowledge that rape, crime, and riots followed directly in the wake of his well-financed agitation tours across the country. Second, in the aftermath of his assassination, his followers were at that very moment burning large sections of many American cities.

Yet, the “intellectuals” immediately began organizing special classes and programs to promote the worship of King as a hero and near-saint. I vividly remember seeing one of these Big Brains, a literate and attractive thirtyish White woman with multiple Master’s degrees, staring in starry-eyed bliss as the barely bipedal “gospel choir” she had herself invited to the school’s auditorium for a special “Martin Luther King” program atonally grunted out “Mot Loo King, he had a DREAM” interminably and without variation except for a rhythmic shaking of their backsides and forepaws. Tears formed in her eyes, and, as she gazed on the primitives — who surely represented the antithesis of all her finer qualities, and whose elevation to “equality” and power would entail the irrevocable end of every humane value she held dear — I am certain that she was experiencing one of the most profoundly moving moments of her life.

The search for the answer to these contradictions, and my attempt to understand what had made the leadership stratum of our society lose its collective mind, led me to a discovery of thinkers like Ludovici and Lindbergh and Simpson and Mencken, to friendships with Revilo Oliver and William Pierce, and ultimately to a biocentric, evolutionary view of life.

You spent a long period of time with Dr. Pierce’s National Alliance. You were a major contributor to both writing as well as a regular broadcaster for the American Dissident Voices radio program. How did you get started working with Dr. William Pierce and what are your overall thoughts on the experience?

I first met Dr. Pierce in 1982. I was immediately impressed with his wide knowledge, his philosophical mind, his sense of humor, his kindness, his openness and approachability, and his absolute authenticity. In a world of egotistical phonies and puffed-up pipsqueaks, Dr. Pierce was a man of natural nobility, of easy superiority with no need or tendency to call attention to itself, and of unassuming grace. His tragedy is that he did not draw to himself enough men and women with the requisite qualities to continue the institutions that he founded. I did a lot of infrastructure work for the Alliance, including digging ditches, repairing buildings, finding and creating new items for the book catalogue, designing and installing security and communications systems (I still have a few scars on my hand from one of those projects!), moving the entire headquarters from Arlington to Hillsboro, and many other things. In 1984 I edited and published my first book, The Best of Attack and National Vanguard. In 1991, I founded the American Dissident Voices radio program, and in ’95 added Free Speech magazine as a printed adjunct to it. In 2002, Dr. Pierce gave me total responsibility for the National Vanguard magazine and Web site, as well as the National Alliance Bulletin.

William Pierce was a mentor and a friend and an inspiration. One of the most important things about the time I spent with him was the sense of the urgency of our mission — the need to move forward no matter what the obstacles — and the need to use our limited time here on Earth in the most effective way possible — that he imparted to me.

Nothing discouraged him. Even when people abandoned him and he was down to a few dozen members, and the people who had made big promises to come and help him in the mountains of West Virginia had broken those promises, and he was all alone — he didn’t get discouraged. He was alive, his mind was better than ever, and he knew that great things could still be done. And they were done. His greatest work was still ahead of him, and I think he knew it.

William Pierce understood what only one in 100,000 men understand: We are a part of the evolving consciousness of the Universe, and, at our current level of development, the continued evolution of that consciousness is the purpose of Life.

And he understood that the survival and advancement of our kind, our race, is an absolute prerequisite for the achievement of that purpose. William Pierce accepted his personal responsibility to advance that purpose. Unlike almost all others, he did not shirk it. I’ve never seen a man work harder.

Almost broke and with the power of the regime in Washington and the billionaire oligarchs arrayed against his every move, he stared at a rocky hillside and saw — where others saw only weeds and brambles — homes and buildings where a multimedia production team would teach a fresh generation of workers, fighters, and philosophers how to build a whole new world. And he worked hard as Hell — and cajoled and inspired others to work until they could work no more — and he made it happen.

You left the National Alliance in 2005. What were the reasons for that departure? Since you left the organization it really seems to have produced nothing of value and has become a virtual non-entity.

The name means nothing. The spirit, the essence, means everything. Gluing a nameplate on a bottle rocket doesn’t make it Apollo 17.

Those who elbowed their way to power in the Alliance — expelling or alienating almost all of the best members in the process — are unworthy of Dr. Pierce’s legacy. And it shows.

The usurpers and some of their sicker stunts — like accusing innocent people of being “infiltrators” because they asked simple questions of the then-current chairman (and the ambitious hooligan who had his ear), and issuing sick “music” CDs guaranteed to repel the healthy White people we should have been recruiting — were of great concern to many responsible, long-term members. I was instrumental in creating an Executive Committee, the purpose of which was to stop these abuses. But it was too late. The Board had been stacked with sycophants (illegally, I believe) and a prolonged legal battle would have just enriched lawyers and bankrupted us. The publications overseen by the usurpers were laughably incompetent and were driving away serious people. Separation was the best alternative. So National Vanguard was born as an organization.

What are you doing currently with National Vanguard and are there any plans to release a publication? Your work with the original National Vanguard magazine as well as your compilation work with the book, The Best Of Attack and National Vanguard Tabloid were phenomenal.

Thank you for the encouragement!

I recently published a remembrance of Dr. Pierce on the tenth anniversary of his death:

http://www.kevinalfredstrom.com/2012/08/i-remember-dr-pierce/

At present, National Vanguard is a Web site ( https://nationalvanguard.org ) and a state of mind, not a membership organization. Behind the scenes, it and other projects are forming a community of many of the best people from William Pierce’s vanguard. Several stalwarts have begun the monumental task of preserving the written legacy of William Pierce online: http://williamlutherpierce.flawlesslogic.com/

Keep an eye on us — great things are coming. [Since this interview, the original Piercian National Alliance has been restored under the chairmanship of Will Williams, and nationalvanguard.org is its online magazine. — Ed.]

The System has really been on the attack the last several years with both the imprisonment and defamation of character with so many White patriots. Ernst Zundel, Edgar Steele, Matt Hale, David Lane, David Duke, and even yourself have been victims of this corrupt system. It seems as if whenever someone is effective in exposing the “self-chosen elite,” they will do their best to destroy him economically, socially, and politically. What do think is the best mode of attack in getting the truth out there in this present day Soviet States of America?

The best thing that we can do is to grow so much that the System can’t put us all in prison. Put everything on the line to do this.

Work to build a consciousness of resistance and refusal, of secession from the regime and creation of new nations. Dream of a day when two hundred million Whites will refuse to recognize the regime that is killing us — will stop sending their sons and daughters to die for it — will laugh at its war propaganda — will stop designing weapons and spy technology for it — will refuse to contribute one dime to it and will accept voluntary poverty and barter to deny it its “taxes.”

Have courage and work hard — speak out relentlessly and truthfully. Never give up. Speak out in language that the quality Whites we are seeking will understand. Appeal to their higher natures, not their lower. Don’t be cultish; participate in your community and help it evolve. Embody the ideals that you believe in.

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Source: Black Sun Invictus