William Gayley Simpson

William Gayley "Bill" Simpson (July 23, 1892 – 1991) was an American White nationalist, mystic, author, Presbyterian clergyman and lecture-circuit speaker. Early in his career he was a Christian left-wing labor activist and was the associate director for the National Civil Liberties Bureau, the precursor to the American Civil Liberties Union. For several years in the 1920s he lived a severely ascetic Christian life, throwing away all of his belongings, living in a shack he built, and subsisting off donated food. This lifestyle gained him some amount of notoriety with Christians. He eventually became disillusioned with Christianity and his former politics in the late 1920s. Throughout the 1930s, he lectured criticizing Christianity and instead promoted Nietzschean ideas. He authored a book on these ideas, Toward The Rising Sun, in 1935.

William Gayley Simpson
Photo of Simpson used as the cover of a 2003 printing of Which Way Western Man?
Born	(1892-07-23)July 23, 1892 Elizabeth, New Jersey, U.S.
Died	1991 (aged 98–99)
Education	Lafayette College (BA) Union Theological Seminary (BD)
Organization	National Alliance
Notable work	Toward The Rising Sun (1935) Which Way Western Man? (1978)
Spouse	Harriet Whitcher ​ (m. 1965)​

Simpson later became a White supremacist and a member of the neo-Nazi group the National Alliance, led by William Luther Pierce. Simpson is most well-known for his 1978 book Which Way Western Man? published by the National Alliance in 1978. Which Way Western Man? claims there is a Jewish plot against White people, calls for violence against Jews, and says that Adolf Hitler was right. Simpson's ideology and works, particularly Which Way Western Man? has had an influence on several White supremacist and neo-Nazi figures.

Early life and education

Simpson was born on July 23, 1892, in Elizabeth, New Jersey.^[1] He was the son of Maxwell Gayley Simpson, a physician.^[1][2] His family was established and well respected in the area.^[1] He had a sister, Mary, and a younger brother, Maxwell Stewart Simpson.^[2] Simpson was raised and completed his early education in Elizabeth, where he attended Battin High School. There he graduated at the age of 15 with honors.^[1]

He attended Lafayette College and graduated in 1912 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, with Phi Beta Kappa standing and as valedictorian.^[1][3][4] He attended the Union Theological Seminary, graduating in 1915 with a Bachelor of Divinity, magna cum laude.^[1][4][5] He later moved to North Dakota, and afterwards became a student assistant in a city.^[1]

Career

Christianity

Simpson became a pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, on September 16, 1915. He was ordained as a pastor there in February 1917, at the age of 24.^[1][6][7] He was formally installed in June of that year.^[8] He was given a choice between service in a poor and run-down district in Perth Amboy or a wealthy one, and chose the latter.^[4][9] He advocated a pacifist stance during World War I, which caused conflict with his congregation and led to his resignation.^[5][9] He then left the clergy and devoted himself to private study,^[10] for a time working at the private faculty of Brookwood Labor College.^[5] At this time, he was a racial integrationist and labor advocate, possibly a socialist.^[11] From 1918 to 1919 he was the associate director of the National Civil Liberties Bureau, now the American Civil Liberties Union.^[4][11]

In the 1920s, Simpson began living ascetically in a Franciscan manner, throwing away all of his belongings, subsisting off of donated provisions, and living in a shack he built for a period of 7 or 8 years.^[12][13][14] This acquired him some notoriety among Christians; a commentator later called him "America’s greatest exponent of Franciscanism". Church officials believed him a menace. He lived doing odd jobs including carpentry.^[4][13][14] In 1925, Simpson was found in a "mentally unbalanced" state near a train station in Washington, New Jersey, with a self written tract in his pocket. His concerning mental state was attributed to overwork.^[10] He traveled to several countries seeking spiritual wisdom, including India and Japan.^[4][5][15] Upon his return to the United States, he settled on a farm in Piattsville, Indiana. He became known as a mystic,^[5][16] and for living a life in "startling contrast" to then-modern conventions.^[3][4][14] He wrote that man must disdain such a society, and "must strive to be strong enough to live according to the best that he finds within him, and do so fearlessly, even though society tempts him to join it and become little more than a 'well fed cow".^[3][4] He became disillusioned with his former ideas and the current Christian institutions in the late 1920s. After reading the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, he rejected Christianity and came to disdain egalitarianism and Christian ideas of universalism.^[12][11]

Abandonment and denunciation of Christianity

Cover of his 1935 book, Toward The Rising Sun

In the 1930s, he spoke at various conferences at churches and colleges in the Buffalo, New York, area^[6][17] as well as in Vermont^[4] and Maine.^[5] One speech he gave was entitled "The Meaning of Life".^[17] In one such conference in 1934, he publicly criticized what he called Christianity's "herd morality";^[18] in another conference, he criticized it by stating that it was detrimental to man, alongside democracy.^[3]

In 1935, Simpson authored Toward The Rising Sun, published by Vanguard Press.^[19] The book opens with a biographical introduction by Jerome Davis of the Yale Divinity School, which describes Simpson's background and life.^[13][16][20] The book outlines Simpson's philosophy and religious beliefs,^[4][20][21] influenced by Nietzsche.^[13] Simpson advocated a life of personal revelation, of finding one's own right path. He argued that the most important thing any human can do is to be true to one's self and to be strong, which he said is challenged by anything that limits one's personal freedom, including Christian morality and family life, and so all else should be sacrificed.^[13] He wrote that man should not expend effort "merely trying to salvage human wreckage, on all sorts of life that can never come to anything, and not even on salvaging it, but only on preserving it, on merely keeping alive by artificial means that which ought to die, and which, if left to nature, would die".^[13]

A contemporary review in The New York Times described it as "a rather notable piece of writing".^[16] The Christian magazines The Christian Century and The Christian Leader also reviewed the book.^[13][14] The Christian Century's reviewer W. E. Garrison said of the book that "It is a long time since I have read a book which contains so much with which I heartily disagree but which I can cordially recommend for reading by thoughtful persons"; he criticized Simpson's life philosophy as "empty of content" in that it did not give any recommendation for what the nature of his values were, and his message on how to find their objective in life was obfuscated.^[13] Philip F. Mayer for The Christian Leader wrote that his arguments, though anti-Christian, were "given with masterful clarity and force". He said that though Simpson was then "not at all sympathetic to Hitlerism, there is a parallel between the two points of view", and that the book was a good read if one wished to understand the language of future critics of Christianity, who may be more severe.^[14] The New York Times wrote of the book that:^[16]

Simpson sets forth in more detail the convictions that have possessed him, or, rather, that possess him now, with a backward glance now and then at those in which he formerly believed. In each of the stages by which he has come to his present convictions he seems to have been as sure as he is now that he had found the ultimate truth, only to have doubts creep in, and presently destroy the entire structure, so that he found himself once more searching for truth and, sooner or later, once more finding it [...] one wonders how it is possible for him still to believe so absolutely in his vision when it has played him false so many times, why he still thinks he can know the truth when so many times he has had to decide that what he had thought to be truth proved to be something else.

At a conference which was held in 1938, Simpson declared that the modern West was "one of the most contemptible civilizations that has ever existed", denouncing feminism, "poor breeding", and industrialization, stating that these changes were evidence that man was entering a dark age.^[3] For the next few decades he was largely a reclusive figure.^[22] In June 1965, he was engaged to Harriet Storrs Nichols Whitcher.^[23][24] They married June 30th.^[24]

White supremacy

First edition cover of Which Way Western Man? published in 1978 by Yeoman Press

Simpson was an early advocate of ideological White supremacy in the United States.^[25] Based on some Nietzschean ideas, he wrote the book Which Way Western Man? published by Yeoman Press in 1978, in New York City.^[22] It was also published by William Luther Pierce's neo-Nazi organization the National Alliance in 1978.^[11][12] Simpson became a member of the National Alliance.^[26] The book is over 1000 pages long.^[27] By the time he wrote this book, Simpson had become a significant influence on the racist right in the United States.^[11]

The book, which recounts Simpson's ideological history,^[12] also states that White Christians are in danger of being destroyed as the result of a Jewish plot to promote racial integration, feminism, and multiculturalism. Simpson claimed that birth control and abortion are "the knife by which civilized White man is cutting his own throat".^[11][25][27] The book states that Adolf Hitler was right and advocates violence against Jewish people (who he considered "Enemy No. 1"), including the denial of their citizenship and the forcible expulsion of them.^[28][29] A 1982 bibliography of antisemitic works by Robert Singerman listed it; Singerman wrote that it was "a mammoth glorification of Nordic, Christian civilization by a white supremacist follower of Nietzsche."^[29]

In the book, Simpson criticized Christianity by stating that it was fundamentally at odds with "Western man", leading to the destruction and the spiritual ruin of civilization. In place of Christianity, he promoted an evolutionary approach to spirituality. The book also criticizes democracy and promotes eugenics.^[12][30] Simpson described himself with pride as a racist in the book, writing that: "Race consciousness, and discrimination on the basis of race, are absolutely essential to any race's survival, and to any nation's survival. [...] Unless we recover our race consciousness, and maintain it, and heighten it, and live by it, we shall die."^[11][25]

Death and legacy

Simpson died in 1991.^[31] His ideology and works influenced several White supremacist and neo-Nazi thinkers.^[12][25][26] He was an influence on the ideology of William Luther Pierce, who published Which Way Western Man?^[12] The 2022 book The Case for Christian Nationalism incorporates Simpson's arguments.^[32][33] Which Way Western Man? was a substantial influence on Robert Jay Mathews, the founder of the neo-Nazi terrorist group The Order.^[11][25][34] The book also influenced Ben Klassen, the founder of the World Church of the Creator,^[12] and British far-right politician John Tyndall.^[26]

The title of the book has been used as an internet meme by the far-right, but also by some who are unaware of its origins.^[30][35] In 2025, the official Twitter account for the United States Department of Homeland Security posted an image as part of a campaign to recruit people to join Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The image was captioned "Which Way, American Man?", an apparent reference to Simpson's book.^[35][36][37] The Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary for public affairs, Tricia McLaughlin, denied the post was a reference to Simpson's book.^[28][30]

Bibliography

• —— (1927). A Spiritual Quest and Venture of Faith.
• —— (1935). Toward The Rising Sun. New York: Vanguard Press.
• —— (1978). Which Way Western Man?. Cooperstown: Yeoman Press.
  • —— (2003). Which Way Western Man? (2nd ed.). Hillsboro: National Vanguard Books. ISBN 0-937944-16-5.