White Nationalists and the Political “Mainstream”

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Thomas Hart Benton, Steel from America Today, 1930

1,928 words

French translation here [2], German translation here [3], Spanish translation here [4]

White Nationalists want political power. We want to gain it, and keep it, and use it to turn our race from the path to extinction back to the path to the stars.

We have truth and right on our side, and we’re going to win.

But let’s not lose sight of where we are today. White Nationalists are a tiny, powerless, despised minority. We are poorly-organized, poorly-funded, and poorly-led. Aside from the internet, we have no way of getting our message to the masses. The political system is rigged against us. The reigning moral consensus holds racism to be the ultimate evil.

We are, moreover, a magnet for dysfunctional types: drunks, cranks, hobbyists, depressives, pathological liars, histrionic narcissists, grandiose maniacs, and outright psychotics. Until we learn to identify and avoid such people, the best we can hope for is two steps forward, one step back. All too often, it is two or three steps back.

A movement that combines lofty idealism with such real-world impotence and squalor is bound to breed a tendency toward wishful thinking and grandiose fantasies. Who could blame us for wanting an alternative to this reality?

What is the difference between healthy idealism and mere fantasy? The healthy idealist does not merely have a sense of where he is going, he also bears in mind where he is now, and how he is going to get there from here. The fantasist, by contrast, is so hell-bent on fleeing the squalor of the present that he launches himself into an idealistic fantasy world with no thought to how this fantasy can be achieved.

I want to discuss two kinds of fantasists: radicals and mainstreamers.

Radical Fantasists

The first kind is the easiest to spot. They are ideological purists who believe in articulating and sticking to the truth, no matter how radical and unpalatable it might seem to the mainstream. Purists believe that the social and political changes they desire will be achieved only after the present civilization collapses due to internal weakness and corruption. Until then, they are content to read Julius Evola and Savitri Devi, post comments on the internet, and maybe stockpile weapons, ammunition, and dried banana chips.

I think the purists are 95% correct. I agree that we need to speak the truth, stand our ground, and try to move the rest of the world in our direction. I believe that we will never be saved within the present social and political system. I believe that we will only get what we want when this system is destroyed. I agree with their implicit assumption that we will never be strong enough to destroy the system ourselves. I especially agree with the reading list.

But I don’t believe in just waiting for history to do our work for us. We can also do something in the meantime. We can create real world communities. We can create networks and organizations. We can publish books and edit journals. We can mentor young people. We can convert people to our way of thinking.

We can do more than prepare to survive a collapse. We can already have a new community—the seeds of a new order—in place when the collapse comes. And who knows, we may even be able to lend our shoulders to the wheel of time, to speed up the process of dissolution and renewal. That which is falling should not just be cheered on. It should also be pushed.

Mainstream Fantasists

The second type of fantasist is harder to spot, because he pretends to be a hard-bitten political realist, a shrewd wheeler-dealer, a pragmatic activist who scorns the radical fantasists as do nothings.

But the mainstream fantasists are often more detached from reality than the radicals. Consider the following mainstream fantasist behaviors.

(1) Election Enthusiasm. Mainstream fantasists followed the recent elections with extreme interest, even though of the hundreds of candidates running for office, only one of them—Jim Russell of New York’s 18th district—was concerned with representing the interests of white Americans (and even he might want to sue me for saying so).

Yes, of course, American politics affects us all. But that does not explain why bona fide White Nationalists are actually rooting for Republicans as if Republicans give a damn about white interests.

What explains that?

It is complex. In some cases I am sure it is just a matter of old habits dying hard. In other cases, it is less a love of Republicans than a hatred of the left.

But the greater part of it is the power of make-believe. I have seen obese couch potatoes pantomiming slam dunks and then feeling like star athletes. I have seen sports enthusiasts who take as much pride in calling a game as the athletes who actually win it. Rooting for the Republicans is the same thing. It is no fun to feel alienated and impotent, so many White Nationalists like to imagine that the Republicans are our team, because when one’s team wins, one experiences a vicarious feeling of efficacy, even though one actually does nothing to contribute to the victory.

Mistaking political commentary for political power is the equivalent of feeling like a rock star by playing air guitar.

But it gets worse.

(2) Supporting System Candidates. Some White Nationalists go much further than giving mere passive support to mainstream politicians. They actually give money and work to politicians who don’t represent us. Indeed, if these politicians knew who we are, they would run away from us.

First it was Patrick Buchanan. Then it was Ron Paul. Now it is Rand Paul and the Tea Party. I personally know White Nationalists who have given thousands of dollars and countless hours of hard work to these candidates, even though there is no way we could influence them.

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You can buy Greg Johnson’s New Right vs. Old Right here [6]

Again, the question is why?

Sure, the left predictably accused them of racism. But that did not make it so. None of these people represent white interests. They would be furious if you accused them of that.

Some White Nationalists claimed they were prospecting for potential converts. But that did not require donating money and actually working for the candidates.

Others claimed that they simply wanted to make trouble for the establishment. But, again, there were enough genuine paleocons, libertarians, and Tea Partiers out there to do that. White Nationalists did not need to give a dime or lift a finger.

So why did they? Again, I think it offers them the illusion of efficacy in the real world.

But it is a very expensive illusion.

Indeed, I would argue that it is an immoral self-indulgence.

Wide awake White Nationalists are very rare. If you are wide awake, then you need to put all of your money and efforts into awakening others. Libertarians and paleocons can take care of their own. White Nationalists need to take care of our own.

To the White Nationalists who are wasting their time and money supporting system politicians, I ask: “If not you, who?” If you don’t support our cause, then who will? White Nationalism is all about taking our own side. So why are White Nationalists working for the system instead?

The next time anyone reading this is thinking of spending $2,000 to eat rubber chicken in a ballroom with a system political candidate, get in touch with me first. For $2,000, I’ll actually sit down to dinner with you and listen to what you have to say. I’ll make sure your money will go directly to promoting White Nationalism. I’ll keep you informed about the effects it is having. Hell, I’ll even pick up the tab.

(3) Self-Censorship. The system wants nothing more than to shut us up. But some White Nationalists actually fantasize that shutting up is the path to victory [7]. They tell us that we have to censor ourselves of every idea that “won’t play in Peoria.” We have to distance ourselves from the radicals and extremists, the people with strange sounding, easily parodied ideas.

Instead, we have to “meet people where they are right now.” We have to appeal to their existing attitudes and interests. Politics, after all, is the art of the possible. We have to work within the existing parameters and incrementally move people in the right direction.

It sounds so reasonable, so concrete and well-grounded. But it is actually abstract fantasy talk. The truth is, there is no political path that leads from Peoria to the White Republic. Between them stands a vast moral chasm that mere politics cannot bridge.

The problem is that the people in Peoria want the system that is poisoning their children’s minds with self-hate and minority worship, flooding our nation with the detritus of the Third World, and setting our race on the road to extinction. They want that world—or they want the approval of their friends and neighbors and Baptist Sunday School teachers and Oprah more than they want to oppose the forces promoting our extinction.

The Tea Partiers [8] want that world too, they just want to make sure that the brown hordes inherit a country with low taxes, limited government, and sound money—as if they’d have any use for them. The Tea Partiers will do nothing explicitly pro-white because they don’t care enough about racial preservation to take the risk. They aren’t racists just because the Rachel Maddows of the world say they are.

Politics always appeals to the existing value system. No White Nationalist politics is possible today, because the dominant value system is anti-racist. Anti-racism really is the only thing sacred in this country today. Unless we change that value system, any political progress we make will be at enormous cost and probably will be easily erased. Yes, one can swim against the current, but it is tiring, and one need only relax a second to see all one’s gains swept away.

The conclusion: We need a metapolitical movement to create the context in which political change is possible, and creating that context requires (1) changing people’s values and (2) expanding their conceptions of what is really possible.

It can be done. But we have to say things that people will think are immoral or impractical, and then persuade them to change their minds. If we are going to save our race, we have to risk offending people.

Politics as usual is the path to perdition: to shutting up, blending in, not making waves, and going with the flow that is leading our people down to the sunless sea of extinction.

(4) Self-Co-option. The system tries to co-opt and neutralize all political dissent. But some White Nationalists fantasize that co-opting ourselves is the path to victory.

I am all for creating front groups and publications controlled by bona fide White Nationalists that intersect with the outer edge of the mainstream. These fronts allow us to recruit and radicalize people, moving them in the right direction.  We need a whole spectrum of organizations and messages spanning the gap between the mainstream and the advocates of a white ethnostate.

But no purpose is served by persuading White Nationalists to move toward the mainstream: to shut up, blend in, and devote our scarce money and time to promoting the success of marginally better system politicians. How, exactly, does this get us closer to the White Republic? Co-opting ourselves is not the path to power but to oblivion.

Again, the libertarians, paleocons, and Republicans can take care of themselves. We are a tiny, powerless, impoverished minority. If we do not devote all our resources to promoting our message, then who will?