The Shadow of Trump:
Interview with Il Primato Nazionale

[1]2,171 words

Author’s Note:

This is the English original of an interview published in Italian [2] on the nationalist webzine Il Primato Nazionale. I want to thank the Francesco Boco for conducting the interview and Il Primato Nazionale for publishing it. 

Francesco Boco: On August 28, 2016 Professor Thomas J. Main wrote an article in the Los Angeles Times entitled “What’s the Alt-Right? [3]” Professor Main said: “The main challenge to our way of life today now comes not from the radical left, but the Alt-Right” and “The Alt-Right represents the first new philosophical competitor to liberalism, broadly defined, since the fall of Communism.” It seems that in just a few years the American Alternative Right has succeeded in becoming important and influential. What do you think about that, and what is the true and authentic strength of the Alt Right?

Greg Johnson: Professor Main is more correct than he knows, for the Alternative Right offers a more fundamental critique of and challenge to today’s multicultural liberal democracy than Communism ever did. The Alternative Right is a broad umbrella term for those who reject the mainstream conservative movement in America. But the ideological core and animating force of the Alt Right is White Nationalism. And from a White Nationalist perspective, both Communism and liberal multiculturalism are based on the same false premise that different races are able to live together harmoniously within the same political system.

The strength of White Nationalism is that it is based on the truth about human nature and society. White Nationalists believe that racial, ethnic, and religious diversity within the same political systems lead inevitably to conflict and the destruction of unique identities. Therefore, to reduce ethnic conflicts and preserve distinct identities, we believe in the creation of racially and ethnically homogeneous homelands for all peoples that aspire to sovereignty over their destinies. This means a return to nationalism and an end to the racially and culturally homogenizing processes of globalization.

The Alternative Right’s rise is being driven by the destructive consequences of multiculturalism and globalization. White Nationalists offer the best account of why these forces are destructive, and we offer the only workable alternative. As long as these problems persist, our movement will continue to grow. We will continue to raise and channel awareness of these problems until it becomes politically possible to fix them.

However, as it stands now, I would not characterize the Alt Right as influential. Yes, our memes have altered mainstream political discourse. Conservatives wince at the epithet “cuck.” Hillary Clinton took to the stage to denounce us. Our echo brackets ((())) and cartoon frog have been added to the ADL’s index of hate symbols.

It’s a great start. But it is a long way from actually shaping political policies. To do that, we will need to be much better organized and funded. In the past few years, the number and quality of people listening and contributing to our message has increased dramatically. But in terms of organization and funding, we are only slightly better off. When we have the ability to capture and productively channel more money, I am convinced that the reach and influence of our ideas will grow dramatically. But that will not happen unless people with money stop wasting it on mainstream conservative organizations.

RB: To most Italian readers the Alt Right is a complete novelty, but you and other authors and activists have been working for many years. Please give us a short account of your political activism and Counter-Currents Publishing. What will be your next steps, and which objectives you want to achieve in the future?

GJ: I have been involved with White Nationalism since the year 2000. From the start, I was guided by the conviction that political change depends on metapolitical preconditions. People have to believe that a political proposal is necessary, moral, and practically feasible, or it will simply be dismissed. Beyond that, for White Nationalism to be politically possible, whites must think of themselves as whites, i.e., as a particular race — a race with a distinct identity and interests, some of which conflict with those of other races, such that separate homelands are the best way to avoid conflict — not just as members of a universal and homogeneous “humanity” that can exist in a borderless world as long as we have sufficient consciousness-raising and progress.

Late in 2000, in discussion with some friends, I began thinking of creating a metapolitical journal that would lay the foundations for White Nationalism in North America. In 2001, The Occidental Quarterly was founded, and I regarded it as largely fulfilling that need. In 2007, I became the editor of TOQ. In the Spring of 2010, I founded Counter-Currents Publishing with Michael Polignano. In 2014, I became the sole owner. The purpose of Counter-Currents is to create an intellectual platform for White Nationalist metapolitics, broadly conceived so as to encompass not just political philosophy and the human sciences but also history, art, literature, etc. We believe that we are the legitimate heirs and guardians of the whole of European culture. It is our tradition, and only racially conscious whites will be able to carry it forward. Counter-Currents is really about everything — the whole viewed from a racially-conscious European point of view.

The webzine of Counter-Currents is called North American New Right. Initially, I also planned to issue an annual print journal, North American New Right, and one volume appeared in 2012. But I came to believe that the last thing that our movement needs is another print journal. I don’t publish anything unless I think that it will contribute to saving our race — and, really, saving the world along with it. And if I really believe that, then obviously it should be published online immediately and for free rather than being held up for months and subjected to the artificial scarcity of print publishing just to make a buck. (I will bring out the second and final volume of NANR in 2017.)

As for the future of Counter-Currents: we have been around for more than 6 years, and we have kept up a steady pace of print and online publishing with significant growth in our readership. I expect this trend to continue.

Counter-Currents is also involved in creating real world gatherings. Starting in June of 2010, we began a tradition of Francis Parker Yockey Memorial Dinners in San Francisco. In 2011, we started a tradition of annual weekend retreats. In 2015, we started a tradition of monthly “Toastmasters” style gatherings in New York City. And in 2016, we inaugurated the New York Forum, modelled on the London Forum. Soon we will inaugurate the Northwest Forum. In 2017, we plan 6 New York Forums (on odd numbered months) and 6 Northwest Forums (on even numbered months). All of these gatherings have been quite successful in stimulating thought, creativity, networking, and solidarity. We put a special emphasis on bringing together racially conscious people who share the same communities and who can enjoy regular fellowship. We hope that these models will be emulated all over the white world.

FB: The Alt Right seems to build upon the European New Right. Alain De Benoist, Guillaume Faye, Jonathan Bowden, and Francis Parker Yockey are often quoted in your books and articles. What differentiates the Alt Right from the European New Right?

GJ: Again, I will not speak about the Alt Right as a whole, since there are plenty of people today calling themselves Alt Right who have never even heard of the European New Right. But what differentiates White Nationalism from the European New Right is a greater importance of the concept of race, which makes sense in the context of European colonial societies in which peoples from different European ethnic stocks blended together and in which the presence of non-whites led people quite naturally to think in racial terms. In Europe, by contrast, nationalist movements think of themselves in ethnic rather than racial terms.

But this difference is really more a matter of emphasis than a hard and fast distinction. After all, Americans, Canadians, Australians, and other European colonial peoples are not just generic “whites.” If all we were is generic whites, then there would really be no difference between Americans and Canadians or Chileans and Argentines. Yet there are differences, and they are not merely racial, attributable to different settlement patterns from different parts of Europe. There are genuine ethnic or cultural differences between Americans and even our closest neighbors and cousins in Canada. Americans, in short, have a distinct ethnic identity, an identity which presupposes whiteness but cannot be reduced to it.

Moreover, European nationalists do not think solely in terms of ethnic identity. There is more to being Italian than simply being a white man, but no non-white can be Italian. Whiteness is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for belonging to any European ethnic group. Non-whites are Americans or Italians or French only because of legal fictions, the untenability of which is increasingly obvious with each passing day. European ethnonationalists also have a sense that our distinct nations have common origins, common enemies, and a common destiny — an awareness that we hope will help us to avoid the petty fratricidal wars of the past and meet the challenges of the burgeoning and increasingly mobile non-white populations.

When I speak of White Nationalism, I mean ethnic nationalism for every particular white ethnic group — Italians, French, Americans, Canadians, etc. — not some sort of European Imperium and melting pot, an idea which is revolting on the face of it, since it replicates all of the problems of globalization merely on a smaller scale, and which could never be realized without the fratricidal European wars it is supposed to prevent. If advocates of a white Imperium want to prove that it is more than a pipe dream, they can demonstrate this by first putting Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia back together. If they can manage that, I will take them seriously.

FB: From a European perspective Donald Trump seems a histrionic and ambiguous person. A capitalist that talks about stopping immigration and making the USA great again. Is he really the candidate of the Alt Right, or he is, to you, something different? Maybe an opportunity to grow as a movement and gain more influence in American society? Do you see a real change, regarding public opinion, in respect to past elections?

GJ: I see Trump as an immense opportunity. He does not want the kind of society that we want, but we want some of the policies that he wants. Trump is a civic nationalist not a racial nationalist. He believes that the United States should be governed in the interest of all its citizens — a citizenry that embraces different races and is defined in legal rather than racial terms. However, the majority of Americans are white, and by being pro-American, Trump cannot be against the white majority, whereas the Democrats and mainstream Republicans both promoted policies destructive of the white majority.

Beyond that, Trump’s proposals to build a wall on the Mexican border, deport millions of illegal aliens, and ban Muslim immigration would slow the demographic displacement of whites, giving us a few extra decades before we become a minority in our homeland. We can use that extra time to rally our people and create a consensus around policies that will halt and then reverse our demographic decline.

Trump is popular because he is giving Americans what we really want: populist nationalism, not degenerate liberalism or “free market” conservatism. Trump does not represent a change in American political preferences. Instead, the change is that he has broken the power of the political establishment, which is based on a gentleman’s agreement not to give the people what they want.

FB: How do you envision the future of North America? What should be the guidelines for renewal? Can European roots still find fertile ground in the USA?

GJ: White Nationalists will reclaim North America for our race. We were a tiny minority on this continent when we founded Jamestown more than 400 years ago. Yet we conquered a continent. With far greater numbers and resources at our disposal, we can reconquer it. It is merely a matter of political will. There is no question in my mind that this will happen. How that happens will be determined on November 8th.

If Donald Trump is elected, he will slow down the demographic displacement of whites which will make it possible for White Nationalists to salvage the United States and turn it into a white homeland. If Hillary Clinton is elected, she will enfranchise millions of illegal aliens and throw open the borders to the Third World, rapidly driving whites into minority status, which will make it impossible for whites to save ourselves within the current political system. That means that we will have to go to Plan B, which is to break up America, carve out homogenously white homelands, and create a new political system to ensure white survival and flourishing. Donald Trump is not the “last chance” for whites in North America, but he is the last chance for the United States of America.