The upward path: palingenesis, political religion and the national alliance

Abstract

Since its emergence in the 1970s, the National Alliance has become the leading organisation of the American extreme Right. It was led (until his death in July 2002) by William Pierce, formerly a leading figure in the National Socialist White People's Party and author of The Turner Diaries. Committed to palingenesis and a total revolution, the Alliance calls for a racial revolution and the creation of an Aryan New Order, and is an exemplar of Roger Griffin's definition of fascism. But is it also a political religion? In Emilio Gentile's terms, fascism sacralises a secular entity, placing it at the centre of the beliefs and myths which define existence. For the Alliance, however, the secular would not be consecrated but transcended, and the new state would be ruled by adepts of a new religion.