After a brief membership in the anti-communist John Birch Society in 1962, he resigned because the Society was uninvolved in race issues. After he moved to Washington, D.C. he became an associate of George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party. During this time he was the editor of the party's quarterly ideological journal, "National Socialist World". When Rockwell was murdered in 1967, Pierce became one of the leading members of the National Socialist White People's Party, the successor to the ANP.