Counter-Currents
Félicien Rops, “Pornokratès,” 1878
2,109 words
Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)
Translations: Czech, French, Polish, Spanish
“Man does not strive for happiness, only the Englishman does.”—Nietzsche
The central questions of metapolitics deal with identity, morality, and possibility.
As Carl Schmitt argues, the political is based on the distinction between us and them. The question of identity is: Who are we? And: Who are we not? Specifically, White Nationalism requires an answer to the question: Who is white, and who is not?
The moral question is: What is the right thing to do? Is creating a white homeland a moral thing to do? Even if White Nationalism is politically meaningful, people will resist it if they think it is immoral. But they will move heaven and earth to establish white homelands if they think it is the right thing to do.
But moral idealism is not enough. For politics is the art of the possible. Thus we need to know not just that White Nationalism is morally right, but also that it is politically possible. Is the global, multicultural, multiracial utopia being proffered even possible? Is a world without important differences—and thus without enmity—possible? And, if that world is an illusion, what of the alternative? Are ethnically homogeneous homelands possible? And if they are, is it possible for our people to regain control of our destiny and establish such homelands?
Against Political Cynicism
One of the most pervasive anti-metapolitical attitudes is what I call political cynicism. Political cynics hold that morality is, in fact, irrelevant to politics, meaning that considerations of right and wrong do not enter into political decision-making on the part of rulers or the people who are ruled. On this view, the powerful make laws solely on the basis of self-interest, and the weak comply solely on the basis of self-interest. Political behavior can, in short, be understood solely in terms of calculations based on carrots and sticks, i.e., greed and fear.
Political cynicism implies that all talk of morality is just a mask for more sordid motives. For instance, powerful people promote multiculturalism because it is in their interest, and powerless people go along with them out of fear of the consequences of non-compliance. All talk of white guilt, the evils of racism, and the moral imperative for whites to give way to non-whites is just window-dressing that plays no actual role in decision-making.
Political cynicism has practical implications. If morality is bunk and politics is all about money and power, then we should dispense with moral arguments and focus entirely on pursuing money and power. These views lead some White Nationalists to place their hopes in investment schemes and political electioneering. Others, like the Order, stockpiled weapons and robbed armored cars. But the reason they have made little headway is not merely that the enemy has more money and power, but that our people overwhelmingly believe that our cause is unjust, which increases the scope and intensity of resistance to us.
One cannot deny the power of greed and fear in politics. Nor can one deny that politics requires money and power. What I deny is that they are the only factors, that politics can be reduced to them, and that morality is not a factor as well. The purpose of this essay is to argue that morality—by which I mean people’s opinions of what is right and wrong—is a political factor as well. Beyond that, I will argue that morality can be a decisive and dominant factor, capable of trumping cynical power politics, of triumphing over greed and fear.
I will argue, furthermore, that although White Nationalism is widely thought to be immoral, actually our cause is good and the enemy’s cause is evil. Moreover, we have the means to persuade people that White Nationalism—indeed, ethnonationalism for everyone—is noble and good. We cannot compete with the enemy in terms of money and power. But we can compete morally. If we can persuade enough of the people who hold the guns and checkbooks that we are right, we can win. Political cynicism, then, is the rankest folly. The cynics urge us to ignore the moral factor—where we are strongest and our enemy is weakest—and focus entirely on power politics—where we are weakest and our enemy is strongest.
Saving the Appearances
The first problem with political cynicism is that it does not explain everything about politics. If one thinks that morality plays no role in politics—that morality is merely a matter of appearances, as opposed to the sordid reality of power politics—one still needs to explain the appearances. If morality plays no role in politics, why do people persist in thinking that it does? Why do politicians feel the need to trot out moral arguments? If political morality is a sham, why is it so widespread and deemed so important?
If politics is all about power rather than morality, why do dictatorships, in which individuals have little or no political power, devote immense expenditures to education and propaganda to convince the populace that their rule is fundamentally moral? If politics is entirely about power, wouldn’t one expect the states that have the most power over their populaces to invest the least in moral propaganda?
The cynics can’t argue that moral appeals are merely meaningless residues of the past, for that would imply that there was a time when morality did matter to politics. But if moral considerations truly never did matter, wouldn’t moral appeals have disappeared long ago?
Furthermore, even if there are no moral truths, just opinions—even if morality is just a matter of passionately held falsehoods—opinion is the life-blood of politics. Even totalitarian regimes recognize this, which is why they seek to mold public opinion. Politics would only reduce to money and power if everyone thinks it does. Morality matters to politics, simply because people think it does.
The same sort of cynicism that dismisses all morality as mere falsehood could, and often does, say the same thing about religion. Even if one thinks that a particular religion is true, one must logically conclude that the rest are false. Even if one thinks that all religions are true in some Traditionalist sense, one has to grant that their exoteric doctrinal and devotional differences exist on the level of opinion. But whether one thinks that religion is entirely a matter of opinion or just mostly a matter of opinion, one cannot deny that it matters politically. And if religion—whether true or false—matters to politics, then so does morality. Indeed, although rational and secular moral systems are possible, most existing moral codes are derived from religious revelation.
In short: if morality plays no role in politics, the cynics must still explain why people think it does. And if people think that morality plays a role in politics, then it does play a role in politics, because politics is largely a matter of opinion.
Bourgeois Man and Platonic Psychology
The second and deeper problem with political cynicism is that the “amoral” model of human behavior it puts forward is actually the product of a particular moral code. Man is not “by nature” a selfish calculating creature moved by greed and fear. That’s just Bourgeois man. Bourgeois behavior has always been possible for human beings, but it was not considered normal, much less ideal, until the rise of modern liberalism.
I believe that we can best understand Bourgeois man by looking backwards to Plato’s Republic. At the core of the Republic is a systematic analogy between the structure of the city and of the individual soul. Socrates analyzes the soul into three parts: reason, spirit, and desire.
Desire is directed toward the necessities of life: food, shelter, sex, and above all self-preservation. Since we share these desires with other animals, we can call them “creature comforts.”
Spirit (thumos) does not refer to anything ethereal or ghostly. It is more akin to “team spirit.” Spiritedness is “love of one’s own,” but it is not merely selfishness, for what one regards as one’s own can extend beyond one’s person and possessions to one’s family, one’s community, one’s homeland, one’s race, etc. A particularly broadened spiritedness can lead the individual to sacrifice his life to preserve a greater good with which he identifies.
Spiritedness is very much connected with one’s sense of honor, which is offended when others deny our worth or the worth of the things we love. Furthermore, because spiritedness involves passionate attachment to one’s own and a willingness to fight for its honor and interests, it is the basis of political life. Like Carl Schmitt, Plato and Aristotle believed that politics necessarily involves the distinction between us and them and the potential for enmity, which arise from the spirited part of the soul.
Reason for Plato is not just a morally-neutral calculative or technological faculty, which deliberates about the right means to attain any given end. Reason is also a moral faculty which can discover the nature of the good and establish the proper goals of human action.
Conflict and Order in the City and the Soul
It is possible for the different parts of the soul to be in conflict with one another.
Desire vs. Reason: On a hot day, one’s desires might urge you to drink a cold beer. But one’s reason might resist the temptation because one has a drinking problem.
Desire vs. Spiritedness: One might resist the desire to drink beer because giving into temptation is incompatible with one’s sense of honor.
Reason vs. Spiritedness: If one is insulted by a much larger man, spiritedness may desire to fight, but reason may resist on the grounds that victory would be impossible or too costly. (If valor has two parts—spiritedness and reason—discretion, i.e., reason, is the better part.)
If the different parts of the soul can come into conflict, then there are three basic types of men—rational, spirited, and desiring—based on which part of the soul tends to win out. This is the sense in which the soul is like society: it can be hierarchical; different parts can rule over one another. Man’s most fundamental freedom is his choice of masters. We can choose to be ruled by our reason, our spiritedness, or our desires.
As with an individual, a society as a whole can be ruled by its rational, spirited, or desiring parts.
In the Republic, Socrates calls the city ruled by reason “kallipolis”—the fine or beautiful city. But we have no name for a rational form of government, because it does not exist (yet). But we approximate to it by designing impartial deliberative procedures to make decisions and create and apply laws.
A society ruled by spiritedness is a warrior aristocracy.
A society ruled by desire is an oligarchy, if power is in the hands of the rich, and a democracy, if it falls into the hands of the poor.
Bourgeois Man and Society
I use the term Bourgeois to refer to oligarchical and democratic man alike. The Bourgeois type is ruled by his desires. His spiritedness is constricted to the hard nub of self-love, or love of one’s self-image (vanity), and sublimated into competition for money and the status symbols money can buy. His reason is merely a technical faculty for calculating how to pursue pleasures and avoid pains. His desires basically boil down to greed and fear. His highest value is a life of comfort and security. His greatest fear is a violent death.
Bourgeois man is the source of political cynicism, for he eliminates moral considerations from politics and seeks to reduce it entirely to a calculus of greed and fear. But that itself is a moral decision: the rejection of one model of the good life for another. Bourgeois man is himself a moral type. He thinks that Bourgeois society is fundamentally good. When forced to defend it in moral terms, he lifts his head and squeals about such notions as individual rights, the sacrosanct freedom of the individual, and the moral equality and dignity of man. Then he puts his snout back in the slop.
If all men were Bourgeois men, then resistance to the system would be futile, because nobody is easier to rule than a man whose highest value is a long and comfortable life and whose greatest fear is a violent death. If a man values wealth more than honor or community or principle, he can be bought. If a man fears death more than slavery, he can be enslaved. Indeed, Bourgeois man does not need to be seized violently and sold into slavery. He will sell himself into slavery. Bourgeois man is a natural slave, whether he wears chains or a three-piece suit.
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19 comments
To me the tripartite theory of personality of classical philosophy seems flawed by superficial definitions. To be ruled by reason is ultimately still to be ruled by desire because the only time reason tells us what to do is via a hypthetical imperative: “If you want X, do Y) . Similarly, to be ruled by spirit means your greatest desire is to be respected (or your greatest fear to be disrespected). There are lots of other traits one could be “ruled” by, as well. An artist is presumably ruled by his creativity, or desire to create (unless he has an ulterior motive).
I don’t want to dogmatically insist that everything boils down to desire, but the alternative appears to be that it is possible to be ruled by any number of traits or passions.
Regarding moriality and its importance in the struggle, I agree, and would stress that morality is necessarily universal; in other words, what makes an action moral is that it is motivated by concern for something other thatn one’s own wellbeing, including the wellbeing of the group to which one happens to belong. Universal nationalism has high moral credentials, therefore; I’d only add that the existence of mixed race people is a problem in principle and needs to be acknowledged. If groups were inherently separate, independent of human choices, the problem would not exist, but since miscegenation does occur, we have a growing number of people without moral rights according to the racialist-identitarian paradigm. Where are they suppposed to go? Do we whites expect other racial enclaves to accept them when we will not? Do we envisage a separate territory for them as well?
1. Reason can also set goals, not just serve pre-existing ones.
2. All the parts of the soul have needs that are satisfied by something outside of them. If you want to call that desire, you still need to distinguish between the desire for truth, the desire for food, and the desire for honor.
3. Preferences for one’s own are universalizable as well. Universality does not mean impartiality.
Thank you for another wonderful essay! I particularly find this remark very insightful: “Political cynicism, then, is the rankest folly. The cynics urge us to ignore the moral factor—where we are strongest and our enemy is weakest—and focus entirely on power politics—where we are weakest and our enemy is strongest.”
I must admit however, that while enthusing about Nietzsche too much, I tend to neglect the idea of morality. And when our enemies demonize us, I have the tendency to cry “Well, then I shall show you a devil indeed!” But ‘Satanism’ is not our friend. My own experience teaches me that. I would never have joined the ranks of White Nationalists if it had not seemed just and right. In that sense, I have not changed since my liberal days. I have just learned a lot of new things. Though I must admit: White Nationalism not only feels right, it feels good!
Concentrating on the moral battle also has the advantage that we can see our enemies more clearly. While I do believe that many of the leaders are immoral thugs, most liberals are not evil perverts. Insulting or pathologizing them may feel good because we are angry, but it is unjust and unwise. Most liberals are just blinded. I myself honestly believed in the liberal mantra’s too.
This liberal fog however, is quite thick. The idea that I would be reading this site and agreeing with most of the views here, would be completely unthinkable a few years ago. At the same time, it shows it can happen. The demonization is like a ring of fire. It takes some courage to pass through it. But someone may stretch out a hand. Is that a good description of metapolitics?
Finally, fighting the moral battle also has the advantage, that once a man has discovered the truth, there is simply no going back. He may be beaten, but he can never really surrender. He may betray us, but even then his fighting for our enemy is going to be only half-hearted.
Indeed, the truth shall set us free.
The first calls that I recall, for a white homeland were those of Wilmot Robertson in the early 1970s. A few years later he formulated them into his book ‘The Ethnostate’ which has never had more than a tiny readership and nothing much has resulted from it in terms of action.
That was about half a century ago. We are arguably vastly further away from such a goal today than then, since America has racially darkened so much in that period and the power of the mud people has grown so exponentially. There is no really strong white area left in the USA. Certainly the pacific northwest has greatly darkened and there has been no movement of ‘racial nationalists’ there in any great number. For the northeast, the Dakotas, and elsewhere, it is about the same story. Huge influxes of blacks, Mexicans, turd world aliens of all types. Add to these problems, the fact that white people are far more deracinated psychologically now, than then. Oh, and don’t get me started on differential birthrates.
It is amazing to me that now, in the year 2013, ‘white nationalists’, in their tiny and un-influential numbers, are still grappling with fundamentals like group identity and the basic idea of a white homeland. They are even arguing about the MORALITY of identity, hand-wringing so to speak on this issue.
I am not trying to be negative here, or bleak or defeatist, I am just giving a perspective. I am wondering what the year 2063, i.e. 50 years hence, will bring. America being 80% or 90% mud-colored, the holding of the very concept of racial identity for whites legally punishable, a black or latino president along with a solid and permanent majority mud Congress… And a miniscule few hundred in number of our types – average in age around 70 – hand-wringing over the concept of getting together to form a white nationalist nursing home.
Hard words, but not untrue. We lost everything. And we didn’t realize it so we kept trying to build on crumbling structures. Then we realized it and tried to rebuild on sand – inadequate foundations. Now we’ve seen through that but it’s late in the game. We need a miracle. One can’t expect miracles but their possibility can’t be denied either. If the forest is dry enough, a single spark can set it alight.
“Truthfully, in this age those with intellect have no courage and those with some modicum of physical courage have no intellect.
If things are to alter during the next fifty years then we must re-embrace Byron’s ideal: the cultured thug.” – Jonathan Bowden, 1962-2012
Yes. We need sound bodies in superb minds – awakened Spirits eager to go to Valhalla if the need presents itself or to work hard for the duration if not. As Plato said, Socrates sauntered away from a battle while everyone else was running. No one wanted to mess with a man who had such a genius for sauntering.
A very good essay with important points. Most people do operate based on the belief that what they are doing is moral, good and right, if they stop to think about it. For us to have confidence in our actions, we need to believe that they are moral (or at least not immoral), and for a people to have confidence and will, they must believe that their cause is just. Man is not simply a creature of logic and calculations of benefit, but rather a being where feelings and emotions are crucial guides to behavior and making choices. I would suggest that a typical person is propelled to action 40% of the time based on emotion, 20% based on logic/rationality and for the remainder 40% of the time, he is on autopilot.
While a moral basis in behavior is important for justifying one’s actions, morality often interacts somewhat fluidly with needs, desires and interests. People have a perceive interest, and formulate a morality to justify it, which happens probably primarily on a subconscious level. For example, Southern slaveholders regarded themselves as highly moral people, and justified the institution of slavery based on biblical teachings, a paternalistic view of taking care of the enslaved for their own good, etc. Conservatism, inc. is in the process of adopting pro-sodomy positions in response to changing political realities (a massive shift), while coming to terms with the change that it is indeed a “conservative” value (promoting marriage) and the moral thing to do.
I have little doubt that George W. Bush & co. felt strongly that his policies pursued the highest level of morality possible in the circumstances, and the Iraqis, Afgans and assorted congregations of freedom fighters fighting George’s occupations felt the same way about their own activities. Neither would have been able to function effectively for long without that belief. For that matter, the most politically active Semites have a fanatic and unswerving faith in the morality of their cause. It is also true that the stronger the belief in a moral purpose, the greater the motivation, energy and Nietzchian Will of an individual or population.
Bishop,
I am not trying to be negative here, or bleak or defeatist…
Yet you are succeeding brilliantly in spite of yourself. This is as reliable a phenomenon as one can find in WN.
To expand and hopefully improve on the point you were trying to make (but which would have been lost on many an uninitiated soul), the most astonishing thing about WN isn’t that it’s typically done so poorly; it’s that it’s done so poorly when the opportunities to do it well absolutely abound. As others before me have remarked, by this point there should have been millions, literally millions, of WNs – many of them hopping mad and lusting for vengeance, but many more (I would hope) for the simple human justice of it all.
How can it be, you rightly wonder, that half a century on WNs are still trying to grind out answers to the very basics, such as the morality of racial identity? An important answer – incomplete, but important – is that, given the dominance of ‘naive supremacism’ (as exemplified by the likes of WLP), morality has always been something of a sideshow, a ham-handed postscript belatedly appended to the body of a report whose focus has always been the thundering intro: Whites greatest; other races suck utterly in comparison!
This is problematic because, whatever may be said in supremacism’s favor, for every one white drawn to explicit racial loyalty or motivated to revolutionary racial zeal by its arguments, another thousand are utterly repelled, with many of these inspired to unwavering obstructionism. The logical upshot is that WN’s most impassioned promoters have long been its most inept, leading to my definition of a “nutzi” as: a white man whose racial passion vastly exceeds his racial prowess. (Nutzi is the opposition’s term, but it must be conceded that it is often on target.)
And yet, at long last, one can begin to make out a ray of sunshine. The right questions are beginning to be asked and the right answers are beginning to be provided. May the trend endure. To those contemptuous of my involvement I urge patience: let’s at least unite to lay the groundwork; we can kill each other later.
Actually the right questions were asked, the right answers given, the ‘groundwork’ laid, and all of the above, over and over, and not just a mere half century ago. Arguably, these things were determined in the 1930s, even the 1920s, even a decade earlier than that. Heck, one can go much further back too… I am saying that our side is, if anything, in constant retreat. A ‘movement’ yes, but in reverse.
Lothrop Stoddard and Madison Grant – and many others spelled out the issues about a century ago. They were given great respect and had huge support. IMPOSSIBLE TODAY. The eugenics movement prospered greatly in the 1920s, it was very popular, whole states acted on their solid precepts. IMPOSSIBLE TODAY. There was a strong and very populous movement against American entry into the European war in 1939-1941 and the America First ‘isolationists’ nearly prevented the Jews from dragging America in. IMPOSSIBLE TODAY. White racism and segregation and group identity thinking were the norm for white people everywhere up until the 1960s. IMPOSSIBLE TODAY.
Now I know it is easy to suggest that we are winning, moving forward, winning this or that victory, and usually it is all predicated along the lines of ‘it has begun…’ and ‘a great first step…’ et cetera, but taking a wider and higher view, the vista is not good at all and worsening year by year. I know it is not popular in our circles to say that, but it is true. Also unpopular is to point out that the white homeland thing is not happening and not going to happen so long as mud people flood in everywhere and that too has no prospect whatsoever of being stopped. So…?
Is this about feeling good, or facing reality?
Rather than our side indulging these sorts of illusions, would it not be better or more productive to see the overall reality and plan for what is very likely to be a great disaster coming upon us, i.e. to seek out ways to survive and keep our ideas and ideals and values intact for our descendants.
Staying true to your political cynicism, what you are saying is that our goals are, “IMPOSSOBLE TODAY, that all actions that could lead to the end of White Genocide/a White Homeland are POINTLESS.
Besides promoting a belief that literally ensures our failure and helps promote White Genocide, what are you suggesting, exactly? Or does that pretty much sum it up?
If you legitimately believe what you wrote, than please show us all how you have been contributing to the vague goals you think are productive in your last paragraph. Or does such cynicism lead only to inaction and self-indulgence?
Replying to Greg P. Your responses are not unexpected. Angry inaccurate paraphrasing, setting pressing a straw man construct to kick at, insulting, etc. etc. It’s always disappointing to see people who see themselves as intellectually grounded, completely open-minded, ready to face and reply to any viewpoint, just turning angry and nasty when hearing something they don’t like.
I don’t see myself as cynic, but rather as a flat-out realist, which means facing a reality that many others simply won’t. I did say that the goals are not attainable today, but EVER MORE SO unattainable tomorrow. I did not say that actions leading to ending white genocide are ‘pointless’ – what I am trying to get across is that there is the unrealistic, and there is the realistic. Poseurs clinging to the former will make a lot of noise but in time they simply disappear after getting nowhere.
All of the above is precisely why ‘racial nationalists’ are such a laughing stock everywhere. Fantasizers self indulging themselves with dreamy utopian ideas, getting nowhere yet persuading themselves that victory is imminent.
So-called ‘racial nationalists’ have to wake up from their dreams and face reality, then set realistic goals. Not ‘when we take power…,’ but rather ‘once our ideas our made illegal…’ and once rac-nats are being murdered and imprisoned, and once America and the rest of the white world is around 90% non-white within our own countries. What then? How to communicate, set up support structures, where to apply our very slender resources. How to survive genetically and politically amidst disaster. THAT is what is being suggested.
Then came your ‘what are YOU doing?’ position which is usually meant to mean that if one has not single-handedly retaken the world and crushed all enemies that one is therefore a contemptible slug. But let’s take the question seriously anyway. Whatever one can do in realistic terms. At the very basics, founding a large family and moving one’s descendants in the right directions (most rac-nats remain childless all their lives and can’t even keep a single relationship going). Working with worthwhile people one comes in contact with to persuade them that there is something worth preserving here, that the future is not bright, but that everyone has a role to play as preservationists. Bettering oneself and pressing others to do the same, i.e. working to build oneself as an asset and example to others in ways that are useful. When there is a winnable racial conflict going on, taking part: I put in over a decade of risk and work in Rhodesia as a committed rac-nat, while those who yelled about ‘fighting and dying for their race’ couldn’t hide away fast enough. Supporting groups worth supporting while they remained that, financially and otherwise, for decades more. Writing pieces here and there (Inconvenient History, IHR, and elsewhere) to try to influence small numbers in small ways (there’s the realism again!).
Spread over many years of sticking with it, I have learned a lot and understand what kinds of little successes are worth pursuing. Most rac-nats aren’t worth squat and they don’t last long either. The leaders are usually anything but, and the corruption is wide.
So back to goals. The political course is no longer viable because the numbers are not there (Duke’s election was great but it was an anomaly); whites usually wake up electorally only when things are too far gone. The homeland idea sounds great but it is a joke because of the continuing demographic shifts coupled with our own miniscule numbers. Just surviving as identity communities in scattered neighborhoods would be a titanic victory.
The self-indulgence is that of the poseurs yelling about ‘when we take over’. Come on! Our side can’t even get elected to dog-catcher. Inaction? The inaction is taking easy quasi-noble rhetorical stances that are absolutely empty because it accomplishes nothing and goes nowhere. Most of the self-styled rhetorical leaders have pretty much come out of nowhere and will disappear after a few short years of their own self-indulgence, some of them then turning into the sellouts often commented on here. They don’t stay the course and once the novelty of posing as heroes wears off they evaporate.
I’m already unpopular enough here because I don’t support gays and gay marriage or the legalization of drugs – which btw is why I don’t contribute money here. I think this website has some very good essays and it publishes some very good books – which (realism again) mainly reach a tiny number of the already-persuaded in print runs of 100 or 200 apiece.
You can do the angry name-calling bit but at least think about and learn from my main points.
Mr. Bishop:
Your criticism seems to expand on a point I’ve often made here, and that is it is like White nationalism IN PRACTICE, historically speaking, has been like a series of circuit breakers designed to insure we never get to a critical mass of effective people, and effective activity. I suspect this is not by accident, as The Brand Called White is visually represented by people who consider green silk bedsheets and pillowcases and pillowcases as formal organizational attire, and White trash with green teeth as our spokesmen, as far as the media is concerned.
It speaks to a profound truth Harold Covington said, quoting John Tyndall:
“We will be allowed to do everything but organize effectively.”
It is all too easy to divert us from effective political activities, or, indeed, constructive organizational activities of any kind. Somehow, we seem to be able to wear ununiform uniforms (I didn’t know brown came in so many shades), and are represented in public by the immoral, the inept, and the morbidly obese. I suspect this is not altogether by accident.
Above all, we accepted The Enemy’s framing of us, our mission, our ideas and our ideals. We will never win – Hell, we will never get on the board! – if we accept their definitions of us, and what we stand for.
I can accept your implicit criticism of where the Northwest Republic stands now, but I see it as more, much more, for the Northwest Republic, as an analytical model for Racial organization, starting where we are, has no equal.
Do you suppose we can look back to what Harold Covington correctly called “fifty years of failure,” and see the outline and common thread of our failures, and move forward on positive alternatives? If so, what would they look like? I refer to the comments of VNN/F’s “Hugh” in the “A Better World” thread for examples of short-term, easily doable, ideas.
I might take a moment and comment on your failure to contribute financially to counter-currents, each and every month, because you disagree with the Management’s policies concerning “support (for) gays and gay marriage or the legalization of drugs.” The first two are beyond the scope of our organization to have any effect on whatsoever, they are I repeat ARE political facts. (Mr. Covington shares your belief, by the way). And, as to the legalization of drugs, they ARE legal, simply controlled by the State, and are becoming much more legally available as time moves forward.
Respectfully, if these issues block you from contributing to counter-currents financially, I can only ask you to look a bit closer at all that counter-currents uniquely does. Our battle is metapolitical in nature. Note that our Opposition disagrees viciously among themselves, except when it comes to solidly supporting their organizations, and each other, in a common fight with a common enemy – us, and Western Civilization.
We can learn from them. I suspect the reasons you gave for not supporting counter-currents financially are less rational, than rationalizations. I don’t agree with everything counter-currents does, all of the time. Many of my more exciting posts were censored. But, damn, I strongly agree with counter-currents on more than nine out of ten issues. That’s a grade of better than 90, a solid “A,” deserving tangible rewards.
Money would do fine.
Today would be a good day to send money. Tomorrow will do, too!
Bishop,
Thank you for your measured response to my caustic remarks. I try to restrain myself but anything I perceive as ‘classic WN’ brings out the worst in me.
Your claim that the groundwork has already been laid, and more than once, and that WNs nonetheless have gone from defeat to defeat, carries with it the strong implication that all that could have been said and done in favor of white racial interests has already been said and done and that therefore WNs have little to do but to come to terms with their race’s demise.
I’m pressed for time at the moment, and rather than wait and risk having the comments to thread closed, I’ll simply say I could scarcely disagree more with the above.
People like Stoddard and Grant merely laid out some basics of how race could be politically approached given the ensuing racial mix and rapidly developing modern culture. Similar attitudinal shifts in Europe culminated, notoriously, in the national socialist electoral triumph, but whatever its pluses surely I’m within my rights to claim it was severely flawed – that its defeat massively contributed to the present disaster doesn’t detract from my point.
No, much more than mere delineations of who is who and who has achieved what and who has the potential to achieve more, who is worthy of racial respect and who isn’t, and so on – in short, the stuff of Old Right racialism, as I’m sure Greg would agree – forms only a part of what well a conceived, world-changing racial politics should consist of, particularly in the case of attempting to drastically rearrange a massively multiracial society like the United States, whose people’s loyalties radiate out every which way and then some.
One would not be wrong to question at this point whether change on such scale is even possible. To that I turn to mankind’s historical experience which has demonstrated time and again that where there is a will there is a way, and perhaps never more so than when one’s back is against the wall. I might only update this time-honored proverb for our specific context by suggesting that where there is racial goodwill a way can be found; an update which makes the point that white racialists both need and can put to good use all the help they can get from racialists (and perhaps even non-racialists) of other breeds. Finally, the very fact that I am able to be here and to make these points is itself, I claim, a hopeful tiding and a portent of better things to come.
A reply to the most important points made by Verlis –
It is true that in times past our race has survived amidst great defeats and looming nightmares. The Greeks did defeat the Persians. Christianity did chase the Moslems out of Europe. A Hitler did arise amidst Europe’s nadir. Yes, miracles sometimes do happen – but one can not bank on them or predicate one’s actions on their imminence.
Hope always has to be sustained, and can be, but via utopian fantasy is not the way. Perhaps the aliens will save us and preserve the best of us via their own genetic programs. An asteroid might hit the early, reshuffling the cards in a big way. Perhaps pandemics of some kind will crunch the demographic numbers in new ways. Perhaps more likely, the entitlement state itself will collapse economically and politically and send whites into survival mode while non-whites loot, rape, and murder. I like that last scenario myself, but one can’t bank on that either.
It is true that your being here and writing what you write is a good sign, here, locally, now. It means that atypical ideas and their expression still exist. The bad sign is that out of so many hundreds of millions of whites globally, there is so little similar expression or that so few are paying attention.
Another bad sign is that censorship is growing and expanding as well as prosecutions for not toeing the Jewish line on everything. It is getting worse and rapidly so and the time is coming when websites like this will be illegal or effectively so and those who speak up will be locked up or worse. Those are the times to plan for, prepare for. I am not talking ‘doomsday preppers’ who themselves are just as unrealistic in practical terms, but taking actual circumstances and trends into account and trying to plan accordingly.
“As Carl Schmitt argues, the political is based on the distinction between us and them.”
In the White Nationalist perspective, our enemies are the Jews more than the mass of non-whites. It is also the Jews who try to obfuscate the distinction between whites and non-whites.
“Even if White Nationalism is politically meaningful, people will resist it if they think it is immoral.”
There are two things:
1. What is right and moral.
2. What social pressure (today replaced by the media) and the men in power (today replaced by Jews) want us to do.
1 is under the strong influence of 2.
But there is also conflict and tension between 1 and 2.
Sometimes, we feel guilt and inner tension for doing the right thing, because we know that we are disobeying the authorities. It is also true that battered women feel guilty. Also, the lack of resistance by White people seems to indicate to other Whites that the Jews are right. That is why I think that we urgently need 10,000 Breiviks.
Ideally, in a European society ruled by Europeans, there is little distinction between 1 and 2. The government enforces common moral rules.
But in a dictatorship where Europeans are ruled by Jews, there is strong conflict between 1 and 2. White people cannot completely abandon their natural moral sense, but they are intimidated by the Jewish power, and they start feeling guilty for taking care of their own children.
“Political cynicism implies that all talk of morality is just a mask for more sordid motives.”
Our Jewish rulers do not behave as our former European rulers. The ideal of most White people is to live and let live. But our Jewish rulers think that the right thing to do is to get rid of White people. They make little distinction between what is right and what is good for the Jews.
But I am not a cynic and I don’t think everything is about Jewish self-interest. Actually, it is much worse than that. Today’s Jewish priority is not what is good for the Jews, but what is harmful to the Whites.
“our people overwhelmingly believe that our cause is unjust”
Not true! Most White people vote for politicians who enforce the race-replacement policy, but they still see race-replacement as a disaster. This can be verified by asking people in our own families what they think about immigration and who they vote for. Most people who write for Counter-Currents have voted in the past for the Republicans or the Democrats.
There is a minority of leftist white people who are actively collaborating with the anti-White Jewish agenda, but they are a minority.
The lack of reaction by White people to the current crisis is well symbolized by the cases of criminal aggressions that happen in front of a crowd against a helpless victim without any reaction from the crowd. There is something wrong with people who are afraid to take action in those cases. But it doesn’t mean that they agree with the attackers.
“The purpose of this essay is to argue that morality—by which I mean people’s opinions of what is right and wrong—is a political factor as well.”
Everyone already knows that. The Jews are specialized in moral inversion. What we need is our own mass media so as to undo the inversion.
Most people do think that race-replacement policies are a disaster AND they think it would be wicked to actually do something about them. Both statements can be true. It is not an either/or as you imply.
The lack of ideological coherence shows that people are under pressure from the media. The media themselves don’t try to be coherent. They will never say that they support race-replacement. They simply support unlimited immigration. No need to think about the consequences for White people.
By contrast, many people in the anti-replacement movement are too scrupulously honest. Instead of insisting that White people have a right to have their own country, they will spend time agonizing over the horrible social consequences, for the Mexican who is sent back to Mexico. They will wonder: is it not incredibly callous and amoral to send a Mexican back to Mexico ? And Verlis will write 20 inch long posts on the subject.
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