Leadership vs. Leaderless Resistance: The Militant White Separatist Movement's Operating Model

By Madeleine Gruen

White separatism today bears little resemblance to the movement a decade ago. At that time, the movement could have been described as inhabiting the furthest political margins, yet it was visible due to its outspoken leadership and controversial public demonstrations. The major groups, such as the Aryan Nations, National Alliance, and the World Church of the Creator (now known as the Creativity Movement) were structured hierarchically with big personalities at the top. These groups' leaders, and the leaders of other prominent white power groups, have either died or been incarcerated; and their organizations fractured, either due to infighting or lack of confidence in the systems of operation.[1] The movement has become less clearly organized: there are now no major compounds, very few leaders whom the general public would recognize (such as William Pierce or David Duke), and little evidence of solid organizations with bosses, lieutenants, and foot soldiers.

Some observers think the apparent lack of cohesion within the movement indicates its overall weakness; others believe that it instead means militant white separatists are adopting a "leaderless resistance" or "lone wolf activist" model of operation. Though it is unwise to overestimate the movement's adoption of leaderless resistance,[2] it is clear that leaderless resistance as a concept is widely discussed and promoted in white separatist circles. Moreover, this strategic idea has been put into practice by some white separatists in recent years. There are distinct disadvantages to leaderless resistance in comparison to a pyramidal leadership model, in that a more diffuse model makes it difficult to attain major strategic objectives due to a lack of coordination. However, leaderless resistance also offers the movement several clear advantages by making civil lawsuits or RICO prosecutions more difficult, and helping adherents maintain their eligibility for military service and other sensitive jobs that prohibit participation in racist organizations. This article examines the theory and practice of leaderless resistance.

Leaderless Resistance in Theory

The most frequently-cited work on the concept of leaderless resistance in relation to white separatism is Louis Beam's essay "Leaderless Resistance," which he self-published in his Inter-Klan Newsletter & Survival Alert in 1983, and again in his journal The Seditionist in 1992. Beam's essay argues that the federal government is the foremost threat to liberty, stating morosely that "[t]he writer [Beam] has joyfully lived long enough to see the dying breaths of communism, but may, unhappily, remain long enough to see the last grasps of freedom in America."[3] Beam argues that the government is already oppressive, but has far worse planned: white separatists will be unjustly labeled "domestic terrorists" or "cultists," and their views will be suppressed. (Interestingly, Beam does not actually discuss the white separatist movement or his own racist views in the essay other than a single reference to "those who love our race, culture, and heritage"; but the scope of his biography and thinking makes the context clear enough.)

To Beam, the problem this poses for the traditional hierarchical methods of organizing the white separatist movement is that the government is well positioned to stifle dissent-and beyond that, it is clear to him that "the most powerful government on earth" will surely "crush any who pose a real threat to that power." For that reason, he believes that at some point white separatists simply will not have the option of belonging to a group. His solution is "leaderless resistance," which he describes as modeled after "committees of correspondence" that existed throughout the thirteen colonies during the American Revolution. "Each committee was a secret cell that operated totally independently of the other cells," he writes. "Information on the government was passed from committee to committee, from colony to colony, and then acted upon on a local basis." Similarly, he argues that the white separatist movement should be organized around "very small or even one man cells of resistance." Though Beam concedes that there are many disadvantages to leaderless resistance, he argues that it is "a child of necessity," the only hope of preventing the movement from being crushed. Pyramidal organizations are "an easy kill" for the government, he writes, in light of federal informants and intelligence-gathering capabilities, while in contrast "the last thing Federal snoops" would want is "a thousand different small phantom cells opposing them."

This article, co-written by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, will be included in the upcoming issue of CTR Vantage.

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