Counter-Currents
1,782 words
Translations: French, Polish, Spanish
White Nationalism is the monstrous and immoral idea that the white race, a unique biological subspecies that is in long-term danger of extinction (due to loss of habitat and competition from hardier invasive subspecies) deserves the same protections as snail darters, spotted owls, and California condors.
White Americans will become a minority in this country by 2050. I know for a fact that a vast number of white Americans—liberals, centrists, and conservatives—are profoundly uncomfortable with this transformation. They know that it threatens the things they value. Rightists realize that individualism, capitalism, and constitutional government will not survive in a black and brown America. Liberals know that women’s rights, gay rights, environmentalism, animal welfare, and support for “the arts” have little place in a nation dominated by Mexicans, Muslims, and blacks. (Sadly, nobody in the white political mainstream thinks of the perpetuation of their extended racial family as a political good in itself. But we are working on that.)
I also know that white Americans will become even more uncomfortable as the tipping point approaches, perhaps restless enough to actually do something to slow down or reverse the process.
I know this, because I am already living in that future. Yes, I have access to a time machine. Just buy a plane ticket to California, where it is 2050 today.
White Americans know that our country is being taken from us, and we are afraid. But white Americans also know that it is dangerous to express these fears for the future, out of fears for much more immediate consequences. We fear that expressing ourselves will make us many enemies and few friends.
But what if the majority of white Americans comes to feel this way? What if a majority decides that there are already too few white European states in the Western hemisphere, and far too many backward, Spanish-speaking non-white states? This country is still democratic enough to change policy, if the people stand up and demand it.
But it is not enough that the majority merely believes something. Majority members have to know that they are the majority, and the politicians have to know it too. But that means that people have to declare their beliefs publicly, so a self-conscious minority can coalesce. A silent majority is powerless.
But for a silent majority to become self-conscious, at least some people have to speak out. A courageous minority have to declare themselves and hold their ground long enough for the less courageous to gin up the courage to join them. Gradually the crowd grows by adding layer upon layer of ever more timid and tepid people, until finally it attracts the necessary ballast of every mass movement: the people who join simply because they want to be on the winning side. At that point, the most contemptible people of all—the politicians—will throw in, and the new majority will carry the day. It is a process that can only begin, however, with a few men of courage who will risk raising a standard to which their less courageous fellows may or may not repair.
In short, we need explicit White Nationalists. We need a lot of them. And we need them to appear sooner rather than later.
Ideally, explicit White Nationalists should be come from all walks of life, social classes, regions, religions, cultures, subcultures, and ethnic groups, so that people from all those groups can identify with concrete examples of explicit White Nationalists.
Furthermore, it would also be ideal if explicit White Nationalists were on average smarter, better-looking, and more successful than the other members of their particular groups, since we want people not merely to identify with them but also to look up to them.
Obviously, we have a long way to go.
But there are good reasons for this.
In the United States, it is not illegal to be a White Nationalist. Not yet anyway. White Nationalists are not arrested, imprisoned, tortured, or murdered by the state. Although we know that our government is doing these very things to non-US citizens around the globe.
Being an explicit White Nationalist does, however, open one to all kinds of private harassment, both legal and illegal. Explicit White Nationalists are subjected to verbal abuse, including moral shaming. Explicit White Nationalists can lose business opportunities and employment. Sometimes one loses friends. One can even be shunned by one’s family or lose one’s marriage. In very rare instances, explicit White Nationalists are subjected to criminal violence because of their beliefs, or are framed as criminals by the government.
But usually the penalties are pretty mild. One might have a few heated exchanges that can get one’s heart-rate elevated. One might have to endure an uncomfortable work environment. One might lose the company of tepid and cowardly friends. (Since one is dealing with cowardice, one often never really knows why certain friends and acquaintances drift away.) But one is well-rid of such people and will eventually come to find new friends who are capable of deeper and more significant relationships—friends who also understand the greatest problem facing the world today.
Because of these difficulties, many people who come to White Nationalism prefer to remain silent about it. They reason that there is nothing to be gained by going public, since so few people think the way we do, and very few of them would come to the defense of someone who is publicly attacked for advocating the continued existence of our race.
This is particularly true of White Nationalists who have a lot to lose—money and status; business, social, and political connections—and who want themselves and their families to stay on an upward social trajectory.
These are exactly the kind of people White Nationalists need on our side.
The only people who have nothing to fear from social opprobrium are those who have nothing to lose. But people who have nothing to lose also have little to offer. And we have enough people like that already.
One of the most popular ways of engaging in White Advocacy while protecting oneself is to use a pen name. It provides most of the protections of silence yet allows one to speak out. A good percentage of the best White Advocates fall into this category.
So how do we build a winning team from mainstream types who are mostly silent and explicit types who are mostly marginal?
A natural division of labor suggests itself. Explicit White Nationalists need to go public, stand their ground, and buckle down for the long, hard, grinding task of winning more people to our side. Silent White Nationalists need to write checks. Or, if they are afraid of writing checks, they need to stuff cash in envelopes.
According to one of his friends, Wilmot Robertson recounted that over the years, he would hear from wealthy and powerful people who expressed their agreement with him but told him that they dare not speak out themselves. When he asked them to support him, so he could speak for them, they said that they didn’t dare do that either. Were they afraid that their checks would be traced? Maybe so, but in all his years of publishing Instauration, Robertson never received an anonymous envelope of cash either.
How can we forge cordial and productive relationships between explicit White Nationalists, including those who use pen names, and those who choose to remain silent? A couple of points of etiquette are a good start:
1. Everyone who comes to White Nationalism needs to determine his own level of involvement and explicitness.
2. Everybody else needs to respect those decisions. White Nationalists have the right to be silent. White Nationalists have the right to use pen names.
This implies that:
1. It is wrong for explicit WNs to denigrate people who choose to remain silent or use pen names.
2. It is wrong for explicit WNs to “out” people who choose to remain silent or use pen names.
Human motives and decisions are complex. From the outside, we cannot presume to know why people choose to remain silent or adopt pen names. These decisions cannot, therefore, be taken ipso facto as evidence of cowardice, venality, stupidity, or dishonesty. And even if such motives do play a role, people can grow in courage, idealism, and understanding.
People of good character can have good reasons for remaining silent or concealing their names. Explicit White Nationalists who cannot or will not understand that are a danger to the movement. They drive people away who could otherwise contribute. And they create a climate of fear and suspicion that makes it difficult for the people who do stay to work together.
When explicit WNs hector and brow-beat silent WNs to get off the bench, or when they excoriate people who use pen names, the natural conclusion of sensible and cautious people is: “Somewhere down the road, this guy is going to start ‘outing’ people.” They are right to be worried, and explicit WNs need to step up and say something about it. The scolds and outers need to be reprimanded, and if they persist, they need to be shunned. It is the only way that the explicit movement can gain credibility and begin to grow.
Silent or anonymous WNs need to reciprocate these courtesies as follows:
1. Don’t complain about the marginal nature of explicit WNs.
The main reason that explicit WNs are less mainstream than the rest is because the more mainstream ones prefer silence or anonymity. The quickest way to change that is not by complaining, but by going explicit. If you are not ready for that, then cut us some slack. We get enough flak from the system. We don’t need our own people chiming in too. Just as there are good reasons why you are silent or anonymous, there are good reasons why many explicit WNs are eccentric. Eccentric ideas attract eccentric people. Once our ideas become more mainstream, mainstream people will be attracted to them. Eccentric WNs, however, are not to be blamed for the bad press WNs get. The bad press comes from offering a fundamental critique of the system.
2. Don’t come to our gatherings and start rehearsing all the reasons why it is best to remain silent and anonymous.
We are all well aware of the world we live in. Flogging that dead horse only makes it more difficult for us to recruit and activate good people, which reinforces the marginality of the movement, which makes it smart to stay silent, and so the cycle continues. Break the cycle by remaining silent. Or, better yet, offer words of encouragement and constructive advice for insulating oneself from the negative consequences of explicit White Advocacy.
17 comments
Could the failure behind “WN” stem from the fact that “white” is a modern creation? For the majority of the past, European people classified themselves by sub-race, and the various cultures and traditions remained apart, as well as the blood (outside of being conquered).
It seems the creation of “white” was a move of desperation, but still remains a very vague concept, that often cannot even be agreed on (as can be seen on every single WN forum).
In America, many of the “whites” were European mutts, so since in the majority of the cases, one-culture, tradition, sub-race could not be claimed, therefore “white” became the unifying factor.
It seems to me if a movement’s most important and core belief is based off a vagueness of a modern creation, that said movement will never manifest itself into something truthful and positive. Which has been the case with American WN movement, from its creation to today.
1. Just because something is modern, that does not make it bad. That is as foolish as the progressivist attitude that everything new is good.
2. If you go back far enough in history, you find times, such as the high Middle Ages, when there was a sense of the unity of the European race. Petty state nationalism is a far more modern phenomenon.
3. If you go back even farther, you find the essentially genetic unity of all European peoples. The concept of “Whiteness” today can be seen as an attempt to recapture that essential unity.
4. In North America, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, the mixing of recently differentiated European stocks is bringing us back to that original unity.
5. Whiteness also is natural as a unifying concept in the face of non-whites, particularly in the colonies.
6. In the end, though, the political validity of the concept of whiteness has nothing to do with its temporal pedigree, but with the fact that all whites are perceived by our enemies as essentially the same, and thus we are treated as the same. Our skin is our uniform in the global struggle for domination.
7. I don’t think WN in North America is a failure. It is just beginning. When an adult falls down constantly, we should worry. But when a baby is taking his first steps, it is to be expected.
In regard to point #2. Could you give specific examples? From, what I know of history, before Nations arose, it was tribalism that was prevalent in man; which in a sense had the same aurora as nationalism. I see no time in history, that a “white” society existed, rather than a Saxon, Norman, Greek etc. society.
In regard to point #7. How long does it take to be an adult? The American WN movement is about 60 years old. And since the creation of active politically WN parties, the white population of this country has dropped about 30-40% ; the morals, physical health, and value systems of whites (all Americans in fact) are in a continued downward spiral. So I am not sure the appropriate amount of time, and results, or lack thereof it takes to consider something a “failure”; but it sure seems to me that, not only has there not been progress, but in fact the exact opposite of progress has seemed to be the result of WNism (at least from what I seen in the past and present of WNism, and see no reason why the future will be any different).
As far as the rest of the points. I agree (on face value) “white” should be a unifying factor, especially in the modern settings; but it hasn’t been, and I am not even talking about the “lemmings” or “un-Awake” but rather specifically, in the racialist scene, or “Awaken.” Solely analyzing the American WN scene, both past and present, shows the inability to get a “religious-like” commitment towards unity, or “whiteness”. While numerous other political/philosophical/religious ideologies have been able to manifest this amongst their supporters/believers, WNism hasn’t . . . And I think that is reason enough to see there is something fundamentally wrong.
1. During the high Middle Ages, there was a sense of European Unity as “Christendom” that was not explicitly racial but was implicitly so. The first Crusade in particular was an expression of this sense of unity. Of course even then Christianity was not co-extensive with the European race, for there were Nestorian and Arab and African Christians, but the average European did not know that.
2. Let’s not pin too much on a developmental metaphor. Let’s just consider that there might be good reasons why WN has not made much progress in the US.
(a) WN is not a form of classical liberalism, as is practically the whole of the US Right Wing with the exception of the Southern Agrarians, which is an extinct academic literary movement. Europe has a genuine right-wing, anti-liberal tradition and subculture which provides deep soil for Racial Nationalism to take root. The US has an overwhelmingly liberal political culture and tradition. So it is not surprising that most attempts to plant WN here have failed.
(b) Marginal ideas attract marginal people, and marginal people usually lack the personality traits necessary to build lasting institutions and communicate ideas effectively. The WN movement in the US attracts much more marginal people than WN in Europe, because of the absence of a pre-existing genuine cultural and political right.
(c) The communications and entertainment media in the US have always been more monopolistic and hostile to us than the media in Europe, effectively preventing WN or any genuine right wing dissent from reaching a broad public.
(d) No matter how rooted WN institutions are, no matter how well-honed the WN message is, people are not going to follow us until they are ready, and they have not been ready yet. They are more ready now than before, and it is sickening to see how little we have by way of organizations and infrastructure to get out our message now that the time has never been more right.
The non-Whites living in White countries are not “hardier invasive subspecies.” They would not be in White countries if it was not for White traitors, who serve money and/or the religion of Political Correctness, ALLOWING them in, and ADVANCING them.
. . .
Yes, many non-whites are brought here and supported merely as parasites and colonists, but not all of them are hopelessly lazy. There is a lot of truth to Kievsky’s new piece over at Fair and Delightsome: http://delightsome.wordpress.com/2010/10/05/parenting-and-social-darwinism/
Dr. Greg Johnson,
I forgot to say how much I enjoyed the piece of writing. I have enjoyed everything I have read of yours.
I also want to say how much I respect you for having the courage to speak out against the Jews. The Struggle needs more men like you. Men of high intelligence AND courage.
Thank you.
One word of caution: Be very careful about what groups or individuals you are “writing checks” or “stuffing envelopes” for. It is a sad fact that we have many charlatans within our Cause, and so it is important for one to really do their research before just giving their resources away to self-styled WNs. When I was much younger, I naively believed that all WNs were righteous people just by virtue of being WNs. As time has passed, I’ve learned that this is simply false.
One might assert that this advice is obvious and unnecessary. I would respond by saying that I once attended an event where a WN speaker talked about purchasing a small island off the coast of Britain and setting up a web-based Congress to manage it’s preliminary affairs, which would ultimately lead to this island becoming a future White ethno-state. Rather than being laughed off the stage, he received heavy applause.
Yes, I was there in the room, at the very same table, in fact. The fact that the speaker was a convicted swindler probably should have disqualified him from appearing in the first place. We really do need to be careful, and we cannot just assume that other people are doing the diligence for us.
Attempts at mainstream subterfuge, explicit advocacy, and radical vanguardism have all had a multi-decade record of failure. All movements which are not yet successful are ipso facto doing something wrong, but it doesn’t follow that we must completely panic and abandon everything and try something new every few years. Some of us should try new things and some of us should try to to refine and improve on existing strategies and projects. Those who propose that all wrong ways must be attacked and abandoned before they even get around to creating a tangible alternative can be safely dismissed as dandies engaging in rhetorical posturing.
This was a very well written article. And I agree with the main points. We have to do our best, whether open WN (and this usually involves Whites who are in positions where they are more free to say what they believe – like high school students, college students or retired, self employed, rich or else able to do without jobs, homes, societal acceptance) or Whites who protect their views and stay within the system.
Greg Johnson writes:
“Silent or anonymous WNs need to reciprocate these courtesies as follows:
1. Don’t complain about the marginal nature of explicit WNs.”
I would agree unless it is the case that the supposedly open – “Explicit WN” is a government informer trying to instigate trouble, arrest etc or else if the explicit WN really is a dysfunctional kook, sexual pervert or a combination of being both a paid government informer and a crazy, dysfunctional kook as was the case of Hal Turner.
I am old enough to remember the Old Spotlight Newspaper that was presented as “Populist” with lots of explicit White Nationalism. The Spotlight Newspaper attracted lots of kooks, conspiracy mongering nonsense that regular White folks never want to be around.
1. We all need to be aware of the warning signs of spies and agents provocateurs and shun them.
2. We all need to be aware of the warning signs of mentally unstable people and shun them.
But you are going beyond that, right back into the problem that I would like to avoid: the mainstream WN who is silent or secret complaining about the bad press garnered by the oddballs who are willing to go explicit in today’s society. What I said bears repeating, so here it is again:
If you are not a kook, and you think that there are too many kooks among explicit WNs, then by all means, increase the average quality by going explicit. That is a positive act that strengthens our cause. Simply complaining about people who used to buy laetril, baldness cures, and flying saucer books from The Spotlight is a negative and destructive and demoralizing waste of time.
If you have good reasons for staying silent, then by all means, do so. I will not judge you. But by the same token, recognize that there are good reasons why eccentrics are disproportionately represented among those who are explicit.
As the success of the BNP in Britain shows, people are willing to shell out cash and join membership rolls only if they feel there is an entrenched and reliable organization on the other end of their donation. The trick is to assemble a team of boots-on-the-ground personnel who have proven themselves capable–in financial and emotional terms–of enduring the name-and-shame attacks of the Establishment.
The BNP have proven that “if you build it, they will come.” The key is that an organizational nucleus is the necessary prerequisite around which everything else coalesces. The nucleus has to consist of smart, tough, and dedicated people who have stable financial and personal lives. They also need to have effective working relationships with each other. Only a core of dedicated and reliable people who trust each other can establish the equivalent of an outpost in No Man’s Land.
The BNP formed a nucleus with people like Nick Griffin, Andrew Brons, Simon Darby et. al. after decades of street-level activism had separated the wheat from the chaff and established a history of operational experience among the BNP’s core leadership. After that, the middle class onlookers and anonymous sympathizers were inspired to send money–AFTER a proven organization was in place which they felt secure about financing.
The money will come–fast and furious–once the WN “Silent Majority” has an organization whose leadership and operations they can believe in. The organization requires a measurable plan for progress, including finite and realistic goals. The BNP are fantastic at marketing, by the way. Nick Griffin has proven himself a genius at promotions, publicity, and the exploitation of Internet media.
GJ: “WN is not a form of classical liberalism, as is practically the whole of the US Right Wing with the exception of the Southern Agrarians, which is an extinct academic literary movement. Europe has a genuine right-wing, anti-liberal tradition and subculture which provides deep soil for Racial Nationalism to take root. The US has an overwhelmingly liberal political culture and tradition. So it is not surprising that most attempts to plant WN here have failed.”
This is a very good point that many American “racialist libertarians” fail to realize.
The extinct Agrarian muse was only asleep- the revival surges. Take a look at the photos from their events- refreshinglinly non diverse- so much so, the SPLC attacked them for being “White” in a Chronicle of Higher Education piece. http://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/
They are explicit that Reconstruction I historiography is corrupted by Civil Rights dogma, and that Lincoln’s myth is corrosive to America’s understanding of itself.
I like the part with, “once our ideas become mainstream”. Many activists don’t have that vision. They’re the sectarians and underground geezers forever residing beyond the pale of society, enjoying the ciaroscuro of the radical lifestyle.
Keep your eye on the Johnny Rebs. They know what losing a race war is all about, and their insights are invaluable. http://www.thesouthernpartisan.com/ They are implicit Whiteness, and they do it delicately, as they love Dixie more than Union, they fear being called KKK.
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