[Alex Linder]

Originally Posted by Hadding

That's precisely my point. Evola has nothing to do with N-S. I didn't see his magazine. I read his ideological declaration on Overthrow back around 2003 and I noticed that he danced around the question of race, especially in regard to Jews.

No, he's anti-jew and it's real. That's my best judgment. Not just from reading him, but from meeting him and listening to him talk - and believe me, you don't talk much when you're around him. He is in his own world and other living creatures figure very peripherally. I am good at sensing people who are out for money or status, and he is not one of these in the sense we in the movement are well familiar with.

He's a gray area. Parts of him are horrible, parts of him are solid. I wish White were all white but he's not. What I saw in him is a little something of what our cause needs to win. Very similar to Elisha Strom who also had a soupcon of sterling, but alloyed with the temperament of a coachwhip.

I can't say that Kevin doesn't have character flaws -- I was quite annoyed with him for standing by Gliebe as long as he did -- but of the things that you mention, the one has nothing to do with the other. Whatever the content of his fantasy life may have been, he seemed to have it under control when I knew him.

It is telling that no one accused him of physically molesting anyone. I would assume that's why he pretty much got off.

Yes, as irrational as that COINTELPRO broadcast was, I would say he was frantic.

I barely remember it except, geez Kev, do you really have to atom-bomb me? Can't you just call me a useless sihthead? Do you really have to try to kill me off with the ultimate sanction? I felt sorry for him, in a way. There has to be a better way to fight than that, and him with all those brains and can't figure it out.

I was aware that Bill White was talking to Fred Streed. Fred thought he was a sincere convert to our worldview, but I have never been entirely convinced of that. Bill White is a good candidate for the Ideology of the Month Club, because he seems to have tried most of them. Was he ever really sincere about any of them, or is each one just a new vehicle for his attention-seeking?

No, I believe his evolution was real. People who are fake or looking to sell out don't act the way he did. At every stage of his evolution he took real risks, and was involved in real activity - none of it was just virtual, safe and indoors.

What I recall hearing at the time is that you wanted to do media for the NA and Strom lobbied against this, evidently because he wanted to keep all the reins in his own hands.

Well, that makes it sounds like I was pursuing it, but I really wasn't. I was doing VNN, which I had started as an idea after Pierce said he didn't want to hire anyone to do the magazine right then. When he finally did, years later, Kevin came back to do it. No skin off my balls, I love the internet, and after 10 years of trade publishing was heartily sick of the print process. Not to mention I don't have the graphics skills the Stroms do, and those figure heavily in print. But, when Pierce died and it looked like reasonble people might be going to take over NA, I was certainly interested in helping. Not displacing Strom, but working with people who could at least simulate intelligence and rationality. I had no urge to run all their media or do anything but fit in and help pick the best course for everybody.

I personally didn't think it was good for Kevin to have that monopoly. Even the radio show, I thought, should be cut down to about 50% Kevin, because we had other people (e.g. Jerry Abbot and me) that could do some writing, and Kevin was clearly overloaded, to the point that a lot of his programs were sub par. It seemed to me that he could probably do a really good program about every other week. I knew that a lot of people didn't like his persona, a problem which obviously would have been meliorated if half the broadcasts featured other people.

I liked his work, I just didn't like his voice.

I fully admit that there were problems with Kevin's performance but at the same time, he was also a great asset. He created that radio program, which more than anything else was responsible for the growth in NA membership.

It was a good show. In the early years of VNN, when I traveled to meet people during summer, I was always surprised how many of them really liked listening to ADV rather than read it as I did.

The conflict between you and Kevin was a bad thing for the organization and our cause, and I frankly don't believe you when you say that Bill White's participation didn't exacerbate the situation.

Well, I don't think it's humanly possible for Bill not to exacerbate a situation, but really, he and Streed and whoever else were the parties concerned. I may have made one or two calls max to discuss stuff, I wasn't really involved at all, just waiting to see who ended up in control. I have no idea in what way Strom was involved, nor did I care really. Bill went above and beyond in criticizing Strom, but at the same time, the dude did bad stuff, and he clearly could not accept any criticism. Once he showed that, how could I resist piling on some, knowing he couldn't handle it AND deserved it, at least a little.

White's presence tended to increase the irreconcilability of both sides, on one side because you had an ally who was loving the drama and encouraging you to dig in your heels, and on the other side because you had aligned yourself with somebody so disreputable.

I wasn't aligned with anybody. I simply told Bill and Fred Streed I would help figure how to run the media if there were a change. I was never an NA insider or really cared much. I just let people know I would help.

I see many things from that period, when everybody was disoriented after Dr. Pierce's death, that should have been done differently, and one of the most important is that a screwball like Bill White should not have been allowed to have any influence on the situation, and problems that were publicized on internet should have been settled privately.

You're missing the big picture. Pretty easy to see from the outside.

If we'd had somebody with gravitas as chairman, I think these problems would have been solved. A good chairman might have said, Kevin, do what you can do well and let Linder do what he does well, and stay out of each other's way, and whatever you do, do not present your intra-organizational grievances to the general public. Without this kind of order imposed from the top, personality conflicts went completely out of control.

If Pierce had hired a competent manager and let him run the shop, none of these problems would have cropped up in the first place.