Secret Agents

Tadeusz de Lempicka, painted by Tamara de Lempicka, 1928 [1]

Tamara de Lempicka, Portrait of Tadeusz de Lempicka, 1928

1,458 words

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

One of the great pleasures of being an explicit White Nationalist [4] is that I get to meet other White Nationalists. If you state your views openly and honestly, you will hear from people who actually agree with you, people who will respect you for your views and for your forthrightness. If you spend your life hiding your beliefs—aside from an occasional wink, nudge, or hint—you will surround yourself with dupes or squishy people who would flee from and denounce the real you. I just don’t see the value in that.

I have always prized intellectual probity over social approval and true friends over false ones, so I have a low tolerance for political dissimulation. I believe that ultimately we are not going to get what we want unless we level with people about what, exactly, we do want (a society of and for white people), and who and what, exactly, we are fighting against (the Christian values that have programmed us for collective suicide and the Jews who are organizing and egging the process along).

I tend toward tolerance, but in this area I have a moralistic streak, and I am quite a bastard when I sense cowardice and dishonesty in people. Really, what I despise is dishonesty out of cowardice. As we will see, there is another kind of dishonesty, a dishonesty of strength and self-overcoming, that I do admire. It is a dishonesty I am too weak to practice. It makes my frankness seem like mere self-indulgence.

One of the great pleasures of editing Counter-Currents [5] and North American New Right [6]—and before them TOQ and TOQ Online—is that “highbrow” publications attract intelligent readers, so I have gotten to know the brightest and the bravest people in our cause. Our enemies—and, sadly, all too many of our advocates—constantly reinforce the image that racially conscious white people are dumb and/or unhinged. I enjoy receiving daily empirical proof that this is untrue.

[7]

Tamara de Lempicka, “Saint Moritz,” 1929

I am not claiming that I have been especially virtuous here. Indeed, for me there really is no alternative. There are many people in the racialist movement who publish dumb and crude material, either because they are dumb or because they think acting dumb is the only way to reach “the masses [8].” The trouble with this strategy is that it repulses smart people and attracts dumb ones. Since our movement is small and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future, I would rather it be smart than dumb. History, after all, is not shaped by small elites of dumb people.

Simply by publishing and selling intelligent materials, I have found myself at the center of a nascent network of highly intelligent racialists. Who are they? Of course I can’t say. People who have something to lose take risks every time they contact people in our movement. The only way they will contact me is if they can be assured that I will keep their information confidential. And I will. My mission depends upon it, and nothing is more important to me than the cause.

But I can tell you what types of people they are. First of all, they are far above average in intelligence, intellectual curiosity, idealism, and creativity. They include college professors, writers, artists, designers, publishers, creative people working in the film industry, businessmen, and professionals, some of them quite prominent in their fields.

They include a disproportionate number of people in their late teens, 20s, and 30s—far younger than the average audience at an American Renaissance Conference or a Council of Conservative Citizens gathering—many of them from upper and upper middle class backgrounds who are headed to or who have graduated from leading universities. With a little luck and a little guidance, they are destined to have a disproportionate influence on society.

In short, I believe that I have the makings of a new intellectual and creative elite, an elite that might be able to play a leading role in our people’s victory.

But it is not an elite yet.

[9]

Tamara de Lempicka, “Autoportrait in Green Bugatti,”1925

First, I am often the only racial nationalist these people know, and for the most part, our relationships are merely commercial (they buy books from me) or virtual (email pen pals). We do not have a network yet, just a lot of isolated individuals connected to me by the slimmest of strands. To have a network, we have to create lateral ties between the different strands, linking individuals to the network at multiple points. I am working on that, putting like-minded individuals in touch with one another.

Second, we are few in number and widely scattered around the world. There need to be more of us, and we need to have concrete, face-to-face interactions from time to time. I’m working on that. I am working on bringing in more people and creating safe spaces for face-to-face interactions.

Third, we need people who are plugged into the system and have a lot to lose. But because of these very traits, they cannot afford to be explicit White Nationalists. Not yet, anyway. Nothing would be gained by these people losing their positions in the system by openly avowing White Nationalism in today’s climate.

So what is to be done? We need to keep building our network until we become strong enough, and the system becomes weak enough, for open struggle to have a chance of success. Until then, most of us will have to remain publicly silent, sharing our views with only small circles of trusted friends.

But psychologically, that is very difficult to do. The truth matters to us, or we would not be White Nationalists. Courage matters to us, or we would not be White Nationalists. So it is very difficult for us to withhold the truth, or even pay lip-service to lies, without feeling in our hearts like cowards.

For instance, recently a comrade who is in the position to hire people for his firm told me that he was dreading a conversation with his superior about diversity. He told me that he was planning to flatly declare that he would base his decisions solely on merit. He said that he couldn’t live with himself otherwise.

[10]

Tamara de Lempicka, “Portrait of Dr. Boucard,” 1929

I told him that this was an immoral self-indulgence. His protests would not change his institution’s commitment to diversity. It would only harm his position in the institution and very likely lead to somebody else being given the power to hire people.

I persuaded him that it would be much better to pay lip service to diversity, keep his power to hire people, and then use that power to hire fellow comrades. To hell with “merit” if the best candidate is a racial or ideological enemy. In such a process, “diversity” could actually help us, since he could use considerations of diversity to exclude Jews on the grounds that they are white people.

Being a White Nationalist has many risks and no rewards. One of my goals is to change this by building mutual aid into our network.

To help square this with his conscience, I suggested that he see himself as a secret agent, as a disciplined political soldier. When James Bond is under cover, he doesn’t reproach himself as a coward for not revealing his true identity. He just thinks of his mission, of his duty. A secret agent does not lie out of cowardice, but out of strength and self-overcoming. He suppresses any self-indulgent frankness for the greater good.

Yes, we need more explicit White Nationalists. But if you cannot be one, don’t reproach yourself as a coward, don’t create an inner conflict that exhausts your energies and may lead you to self-destructively blurt out the truth in a moment of mere weakness and self-indulgence.

Instead, you need to fully adopt the role of a secret agent, burrow deep, rise high, bring your comrades along with you, and be proud.

We know that the present system is unsustainable, but we do not know when it will collapse or how. It could be sudden and unanticipated, like the collapse of communism. Or it could be long and slow. However it happens, though, the people who will pick up the pieces and build a new order are likely to be an organized, networked elite already plugged into the existing power structure.

Let’s just make sure that next elite is ours. The best way to do that is to adopt the role and the discipline of secret agents.