American Dissident Voices Broadcast of October 25, 1997 PROMISE KEEPERS by Dr. William Pierce If you watch the news on television regularly, I'm sure you saw the huge get-together of so-called "Promise Keepers" in Washington a couple of weeks ago: hundreds of thousands of mostly White men hugging each other, holding hands, and rocking back and forth with their eyes closed. Some of them were shaking and crying or singing and clapping their hands much like one used to see in an old-fashioned revival tent. I was fascinated by the phenomenon -- and by the reaction of various elements to it. The most interesting reaction was that of the feminist organizations. They clearly were worried. They did not like the idea of a large number of White males gathered together for any purpose. Some of the feminist commissars made cautious statements to the media. They expressed their concern about the Political Incorrectness of men getting together as men. They saw this as a very dangerous development. What if the all-male Promise Keepers, said to have nearly three million members, decided to use their numbers politically? Suppose they decided to back candidates for public office or to express their collective opinion on some matter of public policy. The very thought gave them the cold shivers. On such matters as abortion for convenience the Promise Keepers, as a fundamentalist Christian group, do not share the views of the feminists. And the Promise Keepers disagree with the feminists on such matters as lesbianism and homosexuality in general -- although, a lot of male homosexuals must have been looking with considerable interest at all of those men hugging each other. The concerns of the feminists went beyond specific issues such as abortion for convenience and lesbianism, however. They were profoundly disturbed by the fact that the Promise Keepers were an unapproved group. It's fine for Blacks to organize, or Jews, or homosexuals, or women, but heterosexual White men are the enemy. They're not supposed to organize. They're supposed to be kept disorganized, confused, and impotent, so that they can't get in the way of "progress" and the march toward a New World Order. But, the more I learn about the Promise Keepers, the more I'm inclined to believe that they really won't be much of an obstacle on the road to a New World Order. On the truly essential issues, they are already there. Consider race, for example. The founder of the group, Bill McCartney, used to be a football coach at the University of Colorado, where I got my doctorate, and his daughter used to love the Black players on his team. He seems to be proud of the fact that he now has two non-White grandchildren sired by different members of the team. Although there are very few Blacks among the rank and file membership of Promise Keepers, it's not from lack of trying on McCartney's part. He has an affirmative action hiring program for his organization which has resulted in his office staff being fully a third non-White. He has vigorously recruited non-White directors for the governing board of the group. At Promise Keepers rallies held anywhere near the Mexican border, he literally buses in thousands of mestizos to add "racial diversity" to the audiences. He talks about the meaninglessness of borders. His meetings often feature Jewish, Black and other non-White preachers, and he uses posters and banners picturing Whites and non-Whites together. And he always plays the White racial guilt card. At a meeting of 30,000 men, nearly all of them White, held in the New Orleans Superdome last summer, McCartney complained about the lack of non-Whites in the audience. "Where are the men of color?" he asked. And then he continued, "I want to tell you why they're not here. There's a spirit of White racial superiority that exists in this nation. It's an insensitivity to the pain of men of color. We have not been washing their feet. We have not been feeling their pain." Whenever the opportunity presents itself, McCartney will get down on his knees, pull off the shoes of any Black within reach, and give a personal demonstration of foot-washing. Now, it's really not important whether one marches toward the New World Order with a copy of the Bible in one's hand, or a copy of Das Kapital. It doesn't matter whether one's admission pass is signed by Jesus or by Karl Marx. I really hate to say bad things about anyone that the feminists don't like, but the fact of the matter is that the Promise Keepers, on the basis of their racial doctrines alone, are a dangerous and destructive group. Perhaps patriots should be grateful that the feminists have a new group to worry about and to contend with on social issues, but patriots should not let themselves be fooled into believing that Promise Keepers can be our allies, just because they are saying the right things on some issues: just because they condemn homosexuality, for example, or because they deplore the decay of the institution of family. They are so dead wrong on race that nothing else they say or do can possibly compensate for this. Racial egalitarianism and the encouragement of racial mixing are not the only problems with the Promise Keepers. There's something basically unhealthy about these people -- I might almost say unmanly. When I watch a group of them doing their thing -- holding hands and rocking back and forth with their eyes closed and praying aloud -- I become distinctly uncomfortable. I mean, these are grown men. Why are they doing this? Is this religion? Or is it some sort of feel-good group therapy? The whole thrust of the Promise Keepers' doctrine bothers me, with its emphasis on guilt, confession, self-flagellation, submission, and the washing of Black feet. I realize that there are different currents in Christianity which have come to the fore at different periods in history, but there's something distinctly un-White, something essentially Levantine rather than European, about the current in the Promise Keepers' doctrine. I really don't like this soft and weepy "forgive me, oh Lord, for I am a sinner" approach to the problems we are facing as a race when what's needed is the vigorous use of a whip to drive the destructive and unhealthy elements out of our society. Even if we had to deal only with the problem of trying to repair the damage which has been done to the American family and oppose the feminists who are largely responsible for that damage, and even if we had to deal with this problem in a Christian manner, we wouldn't need the Mother Theresa approach of the Promise Keepers; we would need instead a much firmer approach. It is good to remember the story of the 13th-century papal legate. He was asked by a military leader attacking a city in southern France -- a city which was a stronghold of heretics -- how his soldiers could tell who was a heretic and who was not. The papal legate answered simply: "Kill them all. God will sort them out." I don't believe that we need to take a religious approach at all to fixing America. However, when dealing with radical feminists, I do believe that the proper approach is closer to that of the papal legate in 13th-century France than it is to that of Mother Theresa. They are an incurably sick bunch. There's something else that bothers me about the Promise Keepers. It's the style as well the content of their doctrine. Let me go back to what I mentioned a minute ago about their penchant for holding hands and weeping and confessing their sins to strangers in big meetings. These things are not just incidental or peripheral. The men in Promise Keepers are told that this sort of behavior is not only acceptable, but it is necessary. It is a constant at their meetings. It is the central feature. What this reminds me of more than anything else is so-called "sensitivity training," a brainwashing technique that is very effective with a certain type of person with a weak sense of personal identity, a low level of self-esteem, and a strong need for group acceptance. It is a technique that can be used very effectively to change many people's ideas and behavior. The Communists mastered the technique back in the 1920s and 1930s and used it on a huge scale. The public confessions they obtained with the method are notorious. Today the U.S. government and many businesses, use the technique to force White people to change their attitudes on racial matters. Cults also use the technique to control the thinking of their members. It makes zombies of people: the right sort of people, that is; people who are susceptible to the technique. I am alarmed by the fact that there are so many of our people who are susceptible. This is a time which demands strength from us. The problems we are facing require every bit of manliness we can muster. Among the attributes of a man are a sense of personal dignity, of self-worth, and of self-reliance. This is true of a White man whether he is a Christian or not. The sort of self-abasement we see at every meeting of Promise Keepers is contrary to our concept of manhood. It is much more in accord with the feminists' idea of what a man should be like: namely, weepy and submissive. We live in an unnatural environment these days which is confusing to our instincts, whether we are men or women. Most boys, in particular, are not raised in a way which naturally strengthens and develops the manly virtues. Boys raised on a farm a century ago were given work to do from the time they could walk. Everyone was expected to pull his own weight. This helped a boy develop a sense of self-worth and self-reliance. And boys learned from a close working association with their fathers what was expected of a man. This association all too often is absent today and in nearly all cases is greatly attenuated in comparison to what it used to be. In very few families today does a boy have an opportunity to do any meaningful work with his father. On top of this is a Politically Correct educational system which makes things much worse by de-emphasizing everything which used to contribute to a boy's sense of identity and to help him acquire a strong set of standards and values. Take a close look sometime at the old McGuffey's Readers, which were used 100 years ago to teach young Americans in our elementary schools how to read and to build their vocabulary and sense of style while strengthening their understanding of grammar and the rules of spelling. Nearly every story also taught a moral lesson, beginning with very simple lessons, of the sort found in Aesop's fables, and progressing to stories which illustrated and praised the virtues of courage, truthfulness, courtesy, honesty, diligence, chivalry, loyalty, and industry. Personal dignity too. Many of the stories were based on historical incidents, ranging from Roman times to the American Revolution. By the time a boy had progressed through the whole series of readers and finished elementary school he had been exposed to dozens of historical role models and had developed a strong sense of identity: that is, a historical sense of who his people were and what they were like, what they had gone through during their history, what their values were, and what they believed. And he had acquired at least a rudimentary concept of personal honor. He might still grow up to be a crook or a bum, but at least he knew the difference between honorable and dishonorable behavior. Now, of course, to modern educators the McGuffey Readers are intolerably racist and sexist. The values they teach are European values, White values, and that just won't do in a multiracial society. The concept of proper behavior is one thing for Europeans and something quite different for Africans or Chinese. The same objection is raised against the historical lessons. Why should boys learn from anecdotes about Romans or Germans instead of Zulus and Ubangis? And to teach boys bravery and chivalry really gets the feminists steamed. So the McGuffey Readers and everything like them were tossed out long ago, our schools have become what they are today, and it is no wonder that a great many of the young men who pass through them are confused and disoriented -- not to mention the young women. Then, there is the effect of the modern entertainment media, primarily television. I won't even get into that today. Let it suffice to say that many of the problems in our society the Promise Keepers talk about are real problems, and they need to be dealt with. But the men who are attracted to the Promise Keepers also have problems -- personal problems -- and those problems need to be dealt with too, but not in the way the Promise Keepers or any of the other cults deal with the personal problems of the people they attract. These personal problems, these personal weaknesses, which have arisen because of flaws which have developed in our society -- in our life-styles, our educational system, our mass media -- are exploited by the cults to win converts. The cults depend on these weaknesses, and they are much more interested in taking advantage of them than in curing them. Which is to say that when the Promise Keepers encounter a man whose sense of manly propriety and manly dignity has gone so awry that he is attracted, rather than repulsed, by the spectacle of other men hugging each other in public, confessing their imagined "sins" to each other, and looking for Black men whose feet they can wash, the Promise Keepers encourage him to join and do these things himself, rather than trying to help him get a grip on himself and behave the way a man should behave. This is a fundamental flaw that all cults have. They attract people who have serious personal problems, and in order to do that they encourage and exacerbate these problems rather than trying to cure them. Some cults become quite large and quite strong by this strategy and are even able to achieve certain goals using their flawed members. But I find this whole cult strategy extremely distasteful. One of the goals of the Promise Keepers is strengthening the American family, but I'm dubious about their prospects for success in the long run. It becomes a case of the blind trying to lead the blind. It becomes a case of the more seriously flawed men in our society setting out to cure the problems which contributed to their flaws. If we are to cure what's wrong with the American family, then we need men with a strong sense of identity and self-worth, men who know who they are and what they want, to tackle the problem. We need self-reliant men, not men who are attracted to a cult like a moth to a candle. One of the unfortunate things about life in America at the end of the 20th century is that we'll be seeing a lot more of cults in the next few years, cults of all sorts. As American society continues to unravel, more and more men and women will be grasping for straws, grasping for something to hold to, grasping for something which promises to give them the sense of security and certainty which they so desperately need. But the solution to our problems, the cure for our ailing society, will not come from these cults: certainly not from a cult which encourages White men to wash the feet of Black men and whose leader boasts of his mulatto grandchildren. We can only have a healthy society again by solving the problems of life-style and education and mass media that I have mentioned. We can only have a healthy society and healthy families again when we are able to return to the sort of life-style which allows children to work together with their parents and learn from their parents -- boys from their fathers and girls from their mothers -- and when our educational system has shaken off the last trace of Political Correctness, and our entertainment media, as well as our news media, have been taken out of the hands of Jews. This does not mean that we must return to the past and all grow up on farms like we did a century ago and all read McGuffey's Readers in school. But it does mean that we must restore to our lives the essential elements from our past which allowed us to be healthy then, and we must get rid of the unhealthy elements and influences which have taken their place. And when we have done that we will have many fewer of the sort of people who look for solutions to their personal problems in cults. It will be a long and difficult task, and we'd better get started soon. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--= The text above is based on a broadcast of the American Dissident Voices radio program sponsored by National Vanguard Books. For more information about National Vanguard Books or the National Alliance see our web site at http://www.natvan.com or http://www.natall.com. To contact us, write to: National Vanguard Books Attention: ADVlist P.O. Box 330 Hillsboro, WV 24946 (c) 1997 National Vanguard Books