At least in life the Commander was able to inspire Dr. Pierce to quit being a PRcuck and make something of himself. I actually have in my bookmarks a quote from Pierce saying as much. (You'll excuse me if I don't greentext it.)
This touch of Hollywood in Rockwell’s approach to revolutionary politics always was a bone of contention between him and me. I argued that the uniforms, flags, and theatrical behavior — even the name “American Nazi Party” — made it difficult for serious people to take him seriously. His medium got in the way of his message. He replied that if he put away the flags and armbands, wore a business suit, and shunned theatrics, the news media would ignore him and no one would hear what he had to say.
His aim, he said, was to make people pay attention to his simple core message of the need for rebuilding a White, Jew-free America based on the principles laid down by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf. When he had tried to present that message in a sober, serious way, no one had paid any attention to him. The newspapers and television stations wouldn’t send reporters to his press conferences, they ignored his press releases, and the public didn’t even know he existed. But as soon as he raised the Swastika banner, the news media went crazy and swarmed all over him. He was seen on all the TV channels and what he said was reported in the newspapers.
Yes, I answered, the theatrics get attention for you — but your message gets badly distorted. The media try to make you look like a madman and a clown, and to a large extent they succeed. The result is that most of the people attracted to you are losers, social outcasts, freaks. If you want to attract winners — serious, competent, idealistic people — you need a serious image.
Rockwell responded that it is the losers, the social outcasts, who make up the ranks of every revolutionary movement. They’re the ones who are available, the ones who don’t have anything to lose by becoming associated with a politically incorrect cause.
Individually they may not be very impressive but large numbers of them, organized and disciplined, would make a revolutionary army. He had tried appealing to what I called the winners: to the teachers and professors, to the doctors and lawyers and engineers, to the writers and artists, to the businessmen and the craftsmen, to his fellow military officers, to the careful, responsible men and women with steady employment and stable families. And he had found that while many of them agreed with him in principle, almost none had the moral courage to stand up and be counted among the righteous.
He had given speeches to groups of these people under the cover of several ostensibly conservative organizations. They would come up after his speeches, shake his hand, and tell him they admired him for saying what they also felt. But the merest suggestion from Rockwell to one of these people, that he ought to participate in an effort to take America back from the Jews and their collaborators would send the fellow scurrying away in fright. They were too comfortable, too corrupted by good living and materialism, too unaccustomed to taking risks and facing opposition. Only in the masses, Rockwell had finally concluded, were the recruits to be found that he needed to launch a political campaign to take America back — and the masses could be reached only through the mass media.
I still had serious doubts as to whether the type of people Rockwell was attracting with his flamboyant tactics could be disciplined and used to build an effective organization, and these doubts made me hold back from a whole-hearted support of his efforts. We collaborated on the publishing of National Socialist World and we continued to argue about other things. I gradually found out, however, that Rockwell was dead right about the moral cowardice and the servile conventionality of the great majority of Americans. Most of them would rather lose an arm and a leg than be suspected of thinking a politically incorrect thought, and as I worked and argued with Rockwell, my appreciation of his own courage and idealism grew.