“North Americanism”:
A Cautionary Tale

^[1]1,341 words

French translation here ^[2]

Imagine that in 2025, the United States as we know it disappeared. Internal corruption and imperial overreach made the regime incapable of dealing with a number of crises: spiraling government growth; continued economic stagnation; droughts, floods, and earthquakes; racial conflict exacerbated by massive non-white immigration, blatant anti-white discrimination, and desperate economic scarcity; and, of course, the ruinous costs of a new series of wars and interventions in the neighborhood of Israel.

The federal paychecks and handouts stopped. Blacks and browns ran amok, and the federal government could do nothing to stop them. By default, sovereign functions devolved to states, counties, cities, even warlords — anyone who could provide law and order. The official secessions began at the periphery: Alaska and Hawaii went first. But eventually the United States was reduced to just thirteen states: New England, plus New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, West Virginia, and Delaware. The capital was moved to New York City.

Among the newly freed states, many of those with overwhelming white majorities reorganized themselves as white ethnostates, adopting humane and pragmatic policies of separating from non-whites and resettling them outside their borders. Some of these states — Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming — joined into a Northwest Republic. In the South, the Confederacy was reborn and began resettling blacks in New England, where they were still well-loved. Most of the Midwestern states remained independent republics. A Mormon theocracy popped up in Utah, and God decided that Mormons were to be a white people after all. Those portions of California, Texas, and the other Southwestern states with large Mexican populations dissolved into chaos, but white control was slowly reestablished through bitter ethnic warfare against savage gangs and drug cartels.

By 2035, the free states were mostly at peace, and the rump of the United States had survived its crisis and reached an equilibrium of sorts through the emergence of a political strongman who managed to clamp down on ethnic and ideological conflict and lash his sullen subjects — the vast majority of them non-white — into rowing in unison again.

As for the rest of the world: the collapse of American power was a blessing overall. The disappearance of NATO and the European Union led to the resurgence of nationalism across Europe. Jews and European Leftists tried to resist this by stoking petty nationalistic resentments between Europeans and by organizing non-white insurrections under the banner of Islam. Although there was a great deal of bloodshed and destruction, ultimately the violence worked in Europe’s favor, since it unified Europeans behind a swift and decisive program of ethnic cleansing of non-Europeans. Europe was no longer unified, but it was entirely European.

In the Near East, Israel made an abrupt about-face in its foreign policy. Without the United States to subsidize its economy and fight its wars, Israel was forced to launch a “Good Neighbor Policy.” The globe laughed. Then, one by one, countries started making “such deals.”

In the Far East, China emerged as the world’s only superpower. Consequently, the Japanese re-armed overnight, complete with a nuclear deterrent, and the Koreas reunified with a South Korean economy under a North Korean nuclear umbrella.

At New York University, a professor with ties to the US government and intelligence apparatus, began dreaming of how to restore the glory of the empire. His strategy was quite clever.

First, because his goal was to restore something old and terrible, he had to sell it as something entirely new and wonderful, a completely new paradigm of political theory. Since it was anything but new, it had to define its newness in non-essential terms. To protect itself from criticism, it had to present and fuzzy and moving target, cloaking itself in obscure jargon and constantly redefining itself in the face of resistance.

Second, because the politics of identity now ruled the world, and the people of the former US states thought and spoke entirely in identitarian terms, he had to cast the restoration of the American Empire as a new form of identity politics. Since America had split apart on racial grounds, it could not be unified in terms of racial identity. Besides, his goal was not racial integrity but power, and power required that he unify people of different races into a single large machine. For power politics, the natural units are not nations or races, but continental blocs. Hence the ideology of “North Americanism” was born.

Third, because the intended targets of resurgent American imperialism were naturally skeptical of North Americanism, they had to be given something bigger to fear: the world’s sole superpower, China. Thus North Americanism presented itself not as another form of imperialism, but instead as an anti-imperialist movement, in solidarity with other anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist movements around the world, all of them unified by their fear of China.

How can the small countries of North America resist Chinese imperialism? Why, through unifying themselves with the rump of the United States. Not, of course, in a reborn American Empire. But merely in a defensive North American Confederation. But the North Americanists tip their hand when their proposed Federation starts looking exactly like the old United States, and their geopolitical outlook clones American ambitions down to the smallest warm water port. Would members of this new Confederation be allowed to secede? Because it started to sound like an “unbreakable union.” You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

Fourth, since the reborn American Empire requires not just the unification of different racial groups, but also the unification of different religious groups — including large numbers of Muslims whose religion requires the establishment of a Muslim theocracy — the North Americanist ideology also embraces elements of Traditionalism. Traditionalism teaches that all religions are ultimately founded on the same esoteric truths, regardless of their exoteric differences. But if religions differ only on exoteric and thus less important matters, this offers the prospect of religious tolerance, particularly a politically neutered Islam, which would serve the larger interests of power politics. The aim is to install Traditionalists at the top of all religious organizations, then have them implement the policies of their Unknown Superiors. Talk of Traditionalism also serves a dual purpose, since it appeals to many New Right identitarians who find the Traditionalist critique of modernity compelling.

What would New Rightists and identitarians around the globe make of the ideology of “North Americanism”? On the one hand, they would find its rhetoric and stated goals very appealing. They would approve of its critique of modernity and liberalism, its identitarian language, its critique of globalization and colonialism, its warnings about the dangers of a unipolar world under Chinese hegemony, its engagement with Traditionalism, its frequent references to such writers as Nietzsche, Heidegger, Schmitt, Benoist, Faye, etc. It is designed to be appealing in precisely this manner.

But ultimately New Rightists would reject “North Americanism” on ethnonationalist grounds. We regard racial and ethnic identities as more fundamental than any others, including religious and regional ones. Our goal is to preserve our race and our distinct ethnic identities by creating racially and ethnically homogeneous homelands.

We are not interested in joining with other races into empires which serve the interests of small elites at the price of the destruction of distinct peoples. We do not wish to rule over other peoples or to be ruled by them. We regard colonialism and imperialism as bad deals for all involved: first, for the conquered, but then for the conquerors as well, who also lose their identities in the end.

We regard Traditionalism as a way of understanding how different paths might lead to the same truth. We do not think of it as a mechanism whereby religions can be neutralized and controlled from the top by political elites.

New Rightists would eventually see North Americanism as a manufactured ideology. Its intellectual murkiness and inconsistencies would suddenly become intelligible when it is seen as merely a tool to promote a new version of the race-denying, race-destroying imperial power politics that we so rightly reject.