William Luther Pierce

William Luther Pierce

William Luther Pierce III (September 11, 1933 – July 23, 2002) was an American Neo-Nazi acitivst. He was also an author and a professor of physics at Oregon State University. Under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald he wrote the novels The Turner Diaries and Hunter. Pierce was the founder of the National Alliance and one of the most prominent white nationalist in the United States for some three decades until his death.

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, to a Presbyterian family of Scotsch-Irish and English descent, Pierce was descended from the aristocracy of the Old South, descendant of Thomas H. Watts, the Governor of Alabama and Attorney General of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. As a child, Pierce did well academically, graduating from high school in 1952. He received a baccalaureate in physics from Rice University in 1955, earned a doctorate from University of Colorado at Boulder in 1962, and became an assistant professor of physics at the Oregon State University in 1962, where he joined the anti-communist John Birch Society. In 1965, in order to finance his political ambitions, he left his tenure at Oregon State University and became a senior researcher for the aerospace manufacturer Pratt & Whitney in New Haven, Connecticut. In 1966 Pierce moved to the Washington D.C. area and became an associate of George Lincoln Rockwell, who was assassinated in 1967, after which Pierce became co-leader of the National Youth Alliance, which split in 1974, with Pierce founding the National Alliance.

Pierce intended the National Alliance to be a political vanguard that would ultimately bring about a White nationalist revolution in the United States. In 1978, Pierce wrote, under the pseudonym "Andrew Macdonald", the novel The Turner Diaries, which depicts a violent revolution in the United States which leads to the overthrow of the United States federal government. In 1984, he wrote another novel, Hunter which portrays the actions of a Vietnam veteran F-4 Phantom pilot and Washington, D.C.-area Defense Department consultant who embarks on a plan to assassinate interracial couples and liberal journalists, politicians and bureaucrats in the D.C. area. In 1985, Pierce relocated the headquarters of the National Alliance to Hillsboro, West Virginia, were he founded the Cosmotheist Community Church to receive tax exemption for his organization. Pierce spent the rest of his life in West Virginia hosting a weekly radio show, American Dissident Voices, publishing the internal newsletter National Alliance Bulletin (formerly called Action), and overseeing his publications, National Vanguard Magazine (originally titled Attack!), Free Speech and Resistance, as well as books published by his publishing firm National Vanguard Books, Inc. and music produced by his record company, Resistance Records.

In 2002, Pierce suddenly died of cancer. At the time, the National Alliance was bringing in more than $1 million a year, with more than 1,500 members, a paid national staff of 17 full-time officials, and was better known than at any time in its history, after which it entered a period of internal conflict and decline. His works however continue to attract an audience.