My European Listening Tour, Part 2

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SwedishEdition [1]Spanish translation here [2]

On Saturday, April 18, 2015, I spoke in Stockholm, Sweden before an audience of 120 people. Other speakers included Kevin MacDonald, Mark Weber, and Jonas De Geer.

Mark Weber’s talk, “Looking Ahead in an Age of Darkness,” was very hopeful. Although all the political and demographic trends in the white world are negative, there are intellectual and political signs that whites are becoming aware of the problems and gathering the intellectual convictions and moral resolve to change course. 

Weber focused in particular on Thilo Sarrazin’s 2010 book Deutschland schafft sich ab [Germany Abolishes Itself] as an example of an establishment figure of the Center-Left with the vision and courage to speak out against the destruction of the West. He also gave a compelling account of the United States’ messianic liberal ideology, arguing that this ideology overlooks the essential relationship between European-style societies and the European race. Although he is fundamentally optimistic, Weber ended by arguing that we should not base our actions on our expectations for the future, whether positive or negative. Instead, he argued that we need to base our actions on duty: the duty to speak the truth and do what is right, regardless of the consequences. You can view his talk here [3].

Kevin MacDonald’s talk, “The Psychological Mechanism of White Dispossession” (here [4]), is an extended version of the talk that he delivered the week before at the London Forum. Professor MacDonald is best-known for his research on how the organized Jewish community is promoting white dispossession: multiculturalism, non-white immigration, affirmative action, white guilt, and the like. Now he is approaching the problem from the other side, exploring white susceptibility to Jewish manipulation.

The core of MacDonald’s argument is that Northern Europeans have an evolutionary history that selected for individualism, low ethnocentrism, openness to strangers, egalitarianism, consensus-based government, nuclear rather than extended families, high trust social orders, high status for women, a strong concern with individual reputation, univeralism, moral idealism, and a strong penchant for “altruistic punishment,” meaning a tendency to punish dissenters from the social consensus, even at the expense of the overall fitness of the group. MacDonald argues that these traits are more prevalent as one goes north in Europe and genes are more derived from Paleolithic hunter-gatherers than Near Eastern agriculturalists or Indo-European herdsmen and horseman.

This suite of behavioral propensities makes Northern Europeans uniquely vulnerable to penetration and subversion by Jews and other collectivist, tribal peoples who exploit European moral universalism, low ethnocentrism, and trust and openness toward strangers. MacDonald’s conclusion, however, is quite hopeful, for he argues that once we become conscious of these tendencies, we can work to inhibit such reactions and, in effect, immunize ourselves from Jewish influence.

My own contribution to the meeting consisted of my Debate on Christianity [5] with Jonas De Geer (Spanish translation here [6]). See also the Dutch, French, and German translations of my opening statement, “Christianity and European Identity” here [7].

SwedishAd [8]

The Stockholm event also coincided with Logik Forlag’s release of the Swedish translation of my New Right vs. Old Right. (Translations into French and Spanish will appear later this year.) During the breaks and after the program, I signed many copies of the new Swedish translation and the English edition of my book. It was highly gratifying

Most of the audience came from Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, but others came from Canada, England, Belgium, and the Netherlands. I was very impressed with the Scandinavian nationalists I met. The average age of the audience was probably in the low 30s. I was impressed with the intelligence, articulateness, and commitment of everyone there.

The people I met were uniformly well-informed on race and the Jewish question; they were skeptical of conservatism and “mainstreaming”; and they saw no contradiction between their own particular ethnic identities and a broader racial-national consciousness.

Compared to American racial nationalist gatherings, the number of cranks at the London Forum was much lower, and in Stockholm I met nobody who would fit that description.

The level of English-fluency in Scandinavia is very high, and it was rather humbling that such a large audience would pay to attend a program of lectures entirely in English.

The event was billed as being sponsored by Logik Forlag and Counter-Currents Publishing, which was very generous, considering that my only contribution was to suggest a couple of speakers. Logik Forlag did all the rest, and the event was impeccably planned and went off without a hitch.

photo (2) [9]

Carl Milles, Flygarmonumentet, Karlaplan, Stockholm, 1931

Central Stockholm is a very beautiful city, with magnificent architecture and monuments. I was most taken with the large number of austere, Nordic Jugendstil-type buildings. We visited a number of museums: the Swedish Army Museum, the Swedish National Museum (with very impressive Viking artifacts), the Royal Armory (which also had an impressive exhibit on Swedish royal funerals and tombs), the Strindberg Museum, Stockholm Cathedral and the German Church on Gamla Stan, and the Viking royal burial mounds and museum at Gamla Uppsala.

vasa (1) [10]

My favorite museum, however, was the Vasa Museum [11], the final resting place of the Vasa, the enormous warship that sank in Stockholm Harbor on its maiden voyage in 1628 and was salvaged almost intact in 1961. As a child, the Vasa captured my imagination, but as an adult, I was not prepared for the impact of walking into the presence of a six storey-tall baroque warship. The crowd included many families with children, and I pitied the parents of 8-year-old boys, who surely had to be dragged bodily from the museum. It was hard enough to tear myself away.

In my five days in Stockholm, I saw very few non-whites, and the ones I saw were primarily gypsy beggars and Middle Easterners working in convenience stores. I know Sweden’s demographic and political trends are alarming, but the caliber of the people I met there gives me far more hope for Scandinavia than the United States.

After Sweden, I went to Vienna for a day (April 20), then on to Budapest. I did not give talks in either city but instead spent many hours meeting with writers, publishers, and activists. In Vienna, I visited the Treasure Chamber of the Holy Roman and Austro-Hungarian Empires and the Hapsburg crypts, and I walked for miles enjoying architecture and monuments. Highlights of the Budapest visit were the Hungarian State Opera House, the Franz Liszt Conservatory, Heroes Square, the Parliament Building, the Chain Bridge across the Danube, and many hours of walking among countless beautiful buildings and monuments. I did not feel pressured to cram every attraction into both visits, because I knew I would be back.

I wish to thank the donor who made this trip possible; the organizers and audiences at the London Forum and Stockholm events; plus my hosts in London, Stockholm, Vienna, and Budapest.

I returned to the US physically exhausted but mentally energized and morally inspired. Frankly, it is good to meet people in the real world who actually understand and appreciate what Counter-Currents is about. Sometimes I feel like I am spitting into the wind. I also learned a great deal that can be applied to our struggle in North America. I am already making plans to return to Europe in September and October for more speaking engagements and networking.