Welcome to American Dissident Voices. I'm your host, Kevin
Alfred Strom. This week's program is going to be a little
different. Most of the time on this program, we discuss vital
issues affecting America and Western Civilization, or we uncover
the hidden aspects of events that the mainstream media tend to cover up.
And no regular listener could miss the fact that I am very
concerned about the fate of America's founding race, the European
race, whose numbers and civilization are both in disastrous
decline all over the world. But on today's show, I'm going to
look at things from a very personal perspective.
I'm recording this show on the week just before Father's Day,
and this year I'm a father for the first time. Looking at my baby
boy and helping my wife care for him have made me think quite a
bit about my own life, the world I grew up in, the lessons I
learned, and the world my son is going to inherit. I'm going to
tell you a little about myself, and how I came to the conclusions
and the world-view that I express to you every week on this radio
station; next, on American Dissident Voices.
___________________
Basic Facts
I was born on a Summer morning in 1956, in Anchorage,
Territory of Alaska. My parents had moved to Alaska some five
years earlier, shortly after they were married, since that was
where my father, an Air Force Master Sergeant was assigned. I was
my parent's first child.
Both my father and mother were of Norwegian descent,
hard-working farm kids from Minnesota born during the Depression.
They were just three generations removed from their immigrant
ancestors. My father's father, Alfred Strom, in the early part of
this century, had cleared his homestead of several hundred acres
himself, and built a very substantial two-story house, large
barn, and numerous outbuildings with his own two hands. They
still stand are in still in use by the family today.
In my mother's family, Norwegian was the only language spoken
in the home for many years. My mother only began to speak English
when she started attending school at the age of six.
Growing up in Alaska, I came to love its wild beauty, its
endless twilights, and its titanic scale. I developed an
appreciation for wild animals which expresses itself today in my
abhorrence for any mistreatment or unnecessary killing of my
fellow Earth creatures.
My family maintained close ties with their kin in northern
Minnesota. Some of my happiest memories were of our month-long
visits to my grandparent's farm, where the 1880's farm house
stood in a commanding position on one of the few hills in that
flat land of big skies. It was also a great adventure to travel
by car from Alaska to Minnesota in those days, across the Yukon
on the thousands of miles of curving gravel roads called the
Alcan Highway.
My father eventually left the Air Force and took a position
with the United States Department of the Interior. After several
years, he was promoted to a job in Washington, D.C. We moved to
Alexandria, Virginia, a suburb of D.C.
I became interested in electronics at an early age, spurred by
an exposure to shortwave radio at the age of 11. I became an
amateur radio operator at the age of 16. This interest eventually
led to a career as a broadcast engineer, which I still pursue in
addition to my patriotic work.
Patriotic Feelings
Even as a very young child, I can remember having strong
positive feelings about America - both the grand and majestic
land itself, and its optimistic, intelligent, deeply feeling,
creative, and truly beautiful people. I might not have known how
to put it into words at the time, but I loved my country and I loved my
race. I was a born patriot.
The America I grew up in was the Old America, White America.
Prior to the mid-1960s, when the social and racial and cultural
fabric of America began to unravel, America was a very different
place than it is today. With a few exceptions, the men were
strong, sturdy, honorable and able. The women were feminine, nurturing,
and beautiful. Everyone seemed to know who they were and where
they were going. Identity crises were almost unknown. Everyone
seemed to share decent values. There was a beautiful sense of optimism,
and almost innocence in the air. People trusted each other. They
left their doors unlocked. They helped each other. There was a
real sense of community.
I loved the Old America. I loved its art and its architecture.
I loved its celebrations and its piety. I loved its civilized
codes of dress and conduct. Even today, in the closing years of
the twentieth century, you can still get a feeling of what the
Old America was like in some small towns where the old buildings
still stand, where the streets are still kept clean by the
increasingly elderly White inhabitants, where the minority invasion
has not yet made its presence known. Imperfect the Old America
may have been, but it was, comparitively speaking, a wonderful
place to grow up. I truly felt it to be my country, a place where
I belonged.
Looking back on the 1950s and early 60s now, I can see that
the people of that time were too carefree and innocent. They were
foolish. They let the Old America slip out of their hands. They
allowed alien mind-molders and subversives to take it away from
them. They didn't listen when patriots tried to warn them of the
conspiracy against their freedom and their very race itself. They
failed to understand that "Eternal vigilance is the price of
Liberty." But that's getting ahead of my story.
Expectations of Washington
It was with eager anticipation and high hopes that I arrived
in Washington, D.C. in November 1963. At first I loved the city.
Crossing the Potomac River, I was filled with feelings of awe,
wonder, and reverence as I looked upon the great gilt statues of
Winged Victory, the great Classical-style monuments to Washington, Jefferson,
and Lincoln, and the majestic Capitol and Supreme Court
buildings, among many others. Here, I thought, are fitting
monuments to America, the country I love! Here, I thought, is
graven in stone the greatness and the unchangeable principles of
my beloved nation! Here, surely, must work the great men, the leaders
who will apply those principles and ensure that our nation, our
people, and our freedom shall never perish from the Earth!
I was to be greatly disappointed.
Turmoil of the Late 60's
By the late 1960s, America was being literally ripped apart by
two interrelated battles: the so-called "civil rights"
revolution and the Vietnam War.
I well remember the marches, the assassinations, and the
riots. I particularly remember the so-called "Moratorium"
marches on Washington, which the largely Jewish New Left leaders
had organized around 1969 to 1970. I didn't attend them, though
many of my schoolmates did. Many of those who didn't attend wore
black armbands to school to show their solidarity with the
marchers. At the time, like many American patriots, I believed
that the war in Vietnam was a righteous war against Communism. I
made my own red, white, and blue armband to wear to school to
show my defiance to the New Leftists and the others who were, in
my view, pro-Communist and anti-American. What really disgusted
me was the fact that so many of my fellow students supported the
New Left and wore the black armbands not because of any reasoned opposition
to the war or political ideas, but merely because it was the
fashionable, "in" thing to do.
Like millions of Americans, I watched these so-called
"anti-war" marches on television. I was revolted by the
spectacle of half-naked young people of my generation carrying
Communist flags and publicly using drugs, declaring that the
country that gave them birth was evil. If their opposition to the
war had been that it was waste of young American's lives (which I
now realize it was) and that it was a sham to waste our country's
resources and demoralize us so that a corrupt, criminal, and
pro-Communist establishment could make a pretense of
"fighting Communism," (which I now realize it was),
then perhaps I would have listened with interest to the
protesters. But these protesters, who flouted all standards of
civilization and patriotism, were openly declaring that their
opposition to the war was based on the fact that a few darling Asiatic Communists
were being killed. These swine were carrying the red flags of
Communism in the streets of our nation's capital. They were
chanting "Ho - Ho - Ho - Chi - Minh, Ho Chi Minh is going to win!"
along with various other obscenities.
And I noticed, with growing amazement, that the major
newspapers and television commentators, whom I, along with most
other Americans, had regarded with respect as icons of the
American establishment, were siding with the Communist swine who
had openly declared their hatred for and intention to destroy America.
It was at this point that I first began to sense that something
was profoundly wrong with this country. I began to see that the
problem was far deeper than just a few obvious Communist revolutionaries in
the street. I began to understand that the Establishment itself,
the institutions of money and power in America, were themselves
aligned with the subversive forces that were destroying us.
I began to see that decent Americans were being squeezed from
both above and below; from below came the Black and Communist
rioters in the street and on the campus - and from above came the
news media, mainline churches, Liberal think-tanks, foundations,
and other powerful institutions promoting a "social change"
agenda. From both above and below came the push to change America
from an outpost of European civilization and the traditional
values that that implies, to a multiracial province of a "one-world" utopia
ruled by all-wise and all-powerful "social planners."
My awakening was reinforced when, not much later, our
heretofore rather conservative Lutheran church began praising the
virtues of Black Communist "freedom fighters" in
Rhodesia, singing "We Shall Overcome" after Sunday
School in solidarity with "Martin Luther" King's
"civil rights" movement, and condemning those terrible
right-wing extremists who criticized the United Nations. When the
parents weren't around, the assistant pastor even told the high-school
Sunday school class that "If Jesus came back to Earth today,
he would be called a Communist."
I knew something was wrong. I began to look for answers.
Liberal Teachers and a Patriot
I must give credit for part of my awakening to a courageous
and patriotic history teacher at my junior high school. He
encouraged his students to look beyond the cliches and the
headlines for the real forces at work behind the scenes. Though
he never preached in class, he did present patriotic pro-American
ideas as one point of view to be considered in the ongoing
political and social revolution that was taking place. I inwardly resonated
with and gravitated toward those ideas. As an antidote to the
leftist bias of most of the other teachers, my history teacher
brought into his classroom a number of books, newspapers and magazines
with a pro-American, Rightist, or pro-White point of view, for
his students to read after they had completed their assignments
or to borrow and read at their leisure. How many other 12 and 13-year-olds
were reading The American Mercury, American Opinion, Western
Destiny, Richard Cotten's Conservative Viewpoint, or H. L. Hunt's
Lifeline? My history classes were a welcome island of intellectual
freedom and patriotism and sanity; a refuge from the anti-White,
anti-Western, and anti-American influences that were almost everywhere else
at the school.
Inspired by my courageous teacher, I began to seek out the
truth on my own.
The Birch Business
Eventually this quest for truth led me to a group known as the
John Birch Society. The Society was attractive to me for many
reasons. It was forthrightly and unashamedly pro-American and anti-Communist. It
claimed leadership in the field of patriotic endeavor, with some
justification. It had a long and, I thought, honorable history of
exposing and fighting internal subversion, which has always been a
much greater threat than external conquest. It was not saddled
with a lot of irrelevant reigious baggage, as were far too many patriotic
groups. It exposed those high on the ladder of the American establishment who
were working to destroy this country, whom the Society called
"insiders."
Though the Society had the grandest of intentions, and though
it did do a limited amount of education and awakening of the
public, it really didn't seem to be getting anywhere. I later
discovered that this was because members of the group were
forbidden to discuss a certain topic, a topic that is crucial for
a full understanding of our nation's dilemma. This topic was
race. Ultimately, I came to realize that the Society was a dead
end, a cul-de-sac where patriots expended their precious time,
money, and energy going in circles while America's real enemies
smiled from a distance, secure in their safety because of the
Society's self-imposed censorship.
While a member of the John Birch Society, I continued to
maintain friendly contact with patriots in other groups. One day
in 1981, while I was visiting with a lady who led a weekly
patriotic forum in Arlington, Virginia, I noticed a newspaper on
her coffee table with the provocative headline "Equality - Man's
Most Dangerous Myth." The newspaper was National Vanguard,
edited by Dr. William Pierce and published by the National
Alliance. This was the beginning of an even greater awakening.
Racial Awakening
Though I had long felt that the "civil rights"
agitation was destructive and served the purposes of America's enemies;
and though I had instinctively chosen to associate mainly with
members of my own race; and though the art, architecture, and
music which I loved were all the creation of White Western
Civilization; and though I had sympathized with White Rhodesians
and South Africans as they tried to protect their world from a
Marxist-led savage onslaught; the truth is that before 1981 I had
never thought really seriously about race. If you had come up to
me with the idea of the primacy of race in all things I would have dismissed
it. I, like so many right-wingers even today, was enamored of the
theory that gives primacy to ideas, to what a person or a society
believes. What patriots were fighting for, I thought, were the
ideas of freedom and liberty and order that undergirded America
and the Western world. Although in a limited sense I was right,
what Dr. Pierce forced me to see was that what a person or a
society believes is not nearly so important as what they actually
are. For what one believes is mutable, and often changes throughout
one's lifetime. But what a person actually is, all of his
potential for knowledge or ignorance, understanding or obtuseness,
kindness or cruelty, altruism or selfishness, achievement or
failure, all of these things are graven into his body and soul by
the immutable and unchangable patterns of his genetic inheritance.
Dr. Pierce and National Vanguard expanded the horizons of my
understanding from a narrow political-ideological point of view,
to an all-encompassing biological view of the world and all life
in the world.
I learned that America, and indeed Western civilization itself
in all its aspects was a result of the genetic inheritance of its
creators, the Indo-European or Aryan race. So also was Oriental
civilization the product of the tendencies and potentials
inherent in the Mongolian race, and so on. This was not a doctrine
of "hate," as its detractors had painted it. It was a
doctrine of respect for Life and Nature's laws. I felt as though
a cloudy film had been peeled from my eyes and I could for the
first time see my surroundings with crystal clarity. The racial
world-view puts patriotism in its proper place in the natural
order of things. Patriotism is not a mysterious concept to either
be accepted without question or jeered at by sophisticates who
see its lack of logical foundation - patriotism is simply loyalty
to one's kind, one's tribe, one's race. And those who created
Communism and who are, under a thousand guises, subverting
America, were exposed for the vicious parasites they always were,
whose loyalties have never been with America or with the West -
and never can be, because of what they are.
The biological world-view of Dr. Pierce and the National
Alliance expanded my horizons in other ways as well. I now
thought not just in terms of years or decades or just in terms of
solving temporary political or social problems, but instead in
terms of millenia, and in terms of the gradual development of my
people from their earliest origins to their ultimate destiny.
This is the way in which Americans must begin to think if they
are to remain a viable nation, if they are to have descendants
who will be Americans in anything else but name. If we are to
survive, we must not only have a burning desire that our
descendants will carry on in the land our ancestors conquered and
built; but we must also have an unshakable conviction of who we
are. This is the contribution that the racial point of view makes
to the patriotic struggle. Without a sure sense of our own
identity, all else is for naught. If the enemies of America and
the West manage to destroy all of our cities - if they raze them
to the ground and with them destroy all our libraries, all the
knowledge that prior generations of our race accumulated over thousands
of years, if they destroy every work of art and science that has
ever been created - it could all be built again, even greater
than before. There could be another Athens, another Parthenon.
There could be another Caesar, another Shakespeare, another Poe,
another Darwin, another Edison, another Shockley. Our entire
civilization could be built again from scratch, and our
outreached hands could still grasp the stars, as long as the germ
of our civilization - the gene pool of our race - remains intact.
But if the evil or the thoughtlessness of a single generation
corrupts that gene pool through racial mixing, or attenuates it
through childlessness, what is lost can never be regained. If
such evils persist much longer than a generation, the race will cease
to be what it once was, and we and our kind will no longer walk
the face of this planet.
This is what William Pierce and the National Alliance have
taught me. They are hard truths. Perhaps I was, in some sense,
already prepared for them. I hope that I am preparing the way for
a generation who will carry the Truth, and our uniquely beautiful
and noble race, to victory.
____________________
Every person who listens to this program, who is drawn to the
ideas we discuss here, owes it to himself to obtain Dr. William
Pierce's classic speech entitled Our Cause. Our Cause is one of
the most inspiring and moving addresses ever recorded on tape. It
expresses perfectly and even poetically, yet in language that everyone
can understand, the underlying ideas behind our movement for
national and racial renewal. It answers the questions that others
are afraid to even ask - questions like, Why are we here? What is
our purpose, as a people, as a nation, as individuals? How did
America so tragically lose her way? Is there hope for the next
generation? What are our responsibilities to the next generation
and the next hundred generations of our people? Our Cause goes
deep to the root of the decline of the West. It goes far beyond the
usual "populist" or "conservative" pap. I am
not exaggerating when I say that hearing it could change your
life. Our Cause is available to you today as our Radio Offer
Number 11, for a minimum donation of $12. Just send as much as
you can afford, a minimum of $12, to National Vanguard Books, Department
R, PO Box 90, Hillsboro WV 24946 USA.
This is Kevin Alfred Strom, saying thank you very much for
listening to the story of my personal political and philosophical
odyssey. I'll see you next week at this same time and station on
American Dissident Voices.
at
the Battle of Cowpens, S. Carolina, 1781