Willam Pierce, like Carto, was searching for ways to rejuvenate the ranks of his organization with the type of fresh young recruits that hate-rock music would help attract. Thus, although he has been quoted as saying he does not enjoy listening to hate rock, a record company that distributes the product was a logical addition to the National Alliance's multimedia collection of newsletters, magazines, Web sites and a weekly radio show. Pierce would later write in Resistance, "Our people need what Resistance Records can give them."

By late April 1999, Blodgett and Pierce had reportedly finalized the complicated details of their new partnership over dinner at the University Club in Washington, DC, where Blodgett was a member. Yet that relationship, too, soon hit the skids. After having all of the Resistance inventory and business materials transferred to Washington, Blodgett failed to deliver on a promise to have a new issue of Resistance Magazine on the streets by June.

Apparently, when the summer passed and Blodgett still had not come through, an angry Pierce seized control of Resistance and relocated operations to his National Alliance headquarters outside Hillsboro, West Virginia. Pierce proceeded to humiliate Blodgett at the National Alliance's annual Labor Day retreat and then quickly churned out a Fall 1999 issue before the end of October.

Although this long-awaited but hastily prepared edition met with criticism from some in the movement as "laugh- able" and lacking the substance and quality of its predecessors, the names listed in its masthead were noteworthy: William L. Pierce was now publisher, while contributing writers included Mark Cotterill of the neo-fascist American Friends of the British National Party; Steve Cartwright, a member of both the British National Party and the National Alliance, and Joaquim Peiper, a pseudonym for Steven Barry, founder of the Special Forces Underground, a paramilitary group.

Blodgett soon called it quits and claims he took a financial loss in selling his share of Resistance to Pierce. Although Blodgett's allegiances remain unclear, at the moment, he appears to be out of favor with skinheads and is continually slammed by Eric Wolf, a WCOTC activist, who has taken to calling him "Fraud Blodgett," among other nicknames. Lately, however, Blodgett is rumored to have become active in the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens.⁴ He remains an enigmatic figure whose allegiances are shady and unclear. Although he claims to have no formal affiliations with any of these organizations, he appears at the very least to be sympathetic to their cause.

In several interviews since then, Blodgett has insisted that his involvement with Resistance Records and the radical right was "strictly business" and that he regrets having ever been part of that world. He also maintains that when he first became involved with Carto, he was simply an opportunist and had no idea what the man was all about. These attitudes have made him the subject of much criticism from activists like Wolf and Alex Curtis, a California-based white supremacist. They consider Blodgett a disloyal opportunist and profiteer who exploited and betrayed the movement ­­ especially Resistance Records ­­ for personal gain.

Wolf, who has also gone by the name Eric Fairburn, was said to be "associated" closely with Resistance Records in its early days, through both working for the company and playing rhythm guitar in the band RaHoWa. Although he was not living in the Resistance house in Detroit when the 1997 raid occurred, he was on the scene and spoke to reporters, who described him as wearing black fatigues and sporting an "Aryan" tattoo on his arm. Wolf edits an E-mail newsletter known as Wolfreign Update.

Next: Reviving the Label