The Twenty Dollar Dilemma

1,880 words

A nation loses its cohesiveness and identity once its racial homogeneity has been compromised.

You really cannot find a better benchmark for where someone stands politically these days than by asking him what he thinks of the above statement. 

In general, there are four broad categories into which a person can fall. If you embrace this idea and are disturbed by its consequences, you are probably on the Alt-Right. If you accept this idea but pretend not to in public, you are probably a mainstream conservative. If you reject this idea and find it offensive, you are probably a mainstream liberal. And, most importantly, if you also embrace this idea but, unlike the Alt-Right, find its consequences good, you are probably on the hard Left. Note that most politically-minded nonwhites fall into this last category, while the Alt-Right consists almost entirely of whites. This, of course, is no coincidence.

The recent decision to replace Andrew Jackson with Harriet Tubman on the twenty-dollar bill illustrates how far apart these four groups have grown. On one hand, you have a white man who was an extremely consequential president, vociferous patriot, and war hero. On the other, you have a black woman who risked her life and freedom rescuing slaves in the antebellum South. Two remarkable people, sure. The former was one of our best fighters during a time when the future of the United States was anything but certain. The latter a symbolic leader of the Civil Rights Movement which resulted in the political equality between black and white and the subsequent culture of political correctness which now pushes for the supremacy of the former over the latter. Both historical figures played important roles in American history which can still be felt today.

I characterize the replacement of Jackson with Tubman as a move played on the part of the hard Left which accomplishes two things, one intentional, the other less so. Foremost is the further disintegration of the racial cohesion and identity of the United States that Americans have been enjoying since the nation’s inception. We all know that Leftists and mainstream liberals like to pretend that nonwhites have made many important contributions throughout our nation’s history. But where a liberal would prefer to place such contributions alongside those of whites in an ever-expanding rainbow pantheon of national glory, the Leftist insists on removing most contributions of whites and replacing them with those of nonwhites.

This is how you undermine the white racial identity of a nation. This is how you break down conservative resistance to a soulless and universal utilitarianism. This is how you essentially pursue a racist, anti-white agenda with the lie of racial equality. You tell whites that their ancestors who fought for our nation’s survival and led us through hellacious times accomplished less than blacks who did nothing more than save themselves, thereby permanently introducing a needy and criminal underclass to our society.

But since this is only the first step in currency “refacement” (to coin a term), mainstream liberals have no reason not to applaud it. After all, no one is suggesting (yet) to put Martin Luther King, Jr. on the one, Cesar Chavez on the five, and Malcolm X on the ten.

(Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama can fight over who gets to go on the three.)

I’m reminded of how Russell Kirk continually reminded us in The Conservative Mind that no reform can ever be final. One will necessarily follow the next, and, if the nonwhite element of our current hard Left leadership has its way, one day there will be no whites left on our currency at all, as there will be no whites on the Supreme Court, in Congress, in the White House, et cetera. But while this multicultural coalition seems to remain intact for now, the Hard Left has been able to recruit mainstream liberals to help further its anti-white agenda.

Perhaps an unintended consequence of supplanting Jackson with Tubman is essentially forcing mainstream conservatives to either show their hand or fold. This, more than anything else, separates the Alt-Right from the mainstream. If mainstream conservatives support this decision for any reason at all, they are ignoring the big, ugly racial elephant in the room — which is exactly the tack the hard Left wants conservatives to take as they slowly slip our demographic rug out from under us.

A great example is the usually acerbic conservative blogger The Ace of Spades who had little to say on the matter except to tersely praise it. Tubman was a Republican? Check. She fought for freedom? Check. She was against slavery? Check. Okay, what’s not to like? Let’s move on to the next subject.

We need to keep in mind that Ace is never on board with the socialist and anti-white agenda of the Hard Left. He treats it with the contempt it so truly deserves. Yet now it’s different? All of the sudden, he approves? What gives?

Well, what gives is that Ace, who is a mainstream conservative (as opposed to a mainstream Republican, which he definitely is not), does not want to reveal himself as a racist. The Tubman-Jackson issue forced him, as it forces all of us, into a dilemma. And being a fairly high-profile political blogger, he had no choice, really, other than to weigh in. If he were to approve, then the status quo for him personally would be maintained, and he could go back to making wickedly clever, yet crude, sex references, boosting Ted Cruz, and banning unruly members of the Alt-Right who troll his site. If he were to disapprove, however, he would have to say why.

And the only substantive reason would be because Tubman was black.

Yes, Donald Trump decried the switch as “pure political correctness,” but that is not a substantive reason. It is an argument more about the evil of removing Jackson than about the virtue of adding Tubman. Such a position could conceivably allow for Tubman on a new form of currency, like the proposed twenty-five dollar bill. This is, essentially, no disapproval at all, as I’m sure Ace understands.

So the only remaining rationale for disapproval would be Tubman’s race. And Ace and all the mainstream conservative bloggers like him would never dare cop to that. So approval it is.

And honestly, can we on the Alt-Right blame them? Would our effusive accolades be any consolation for a brave young writer who speaks out against the Tubman Twenty and subsequently loses his job? How would our approbation feel after he gets blacklisted by National Review, The Weekly Standard, David Horowitz, Ben Shapiro, and the rest of the mainstream cucks? How many such refugee writers can Peter Brimelow comfortably employ? Or Taki? How many at this point can we, that is you, the reader of this article, and you and you and you, and I, employ?

Not. Too. Many.

Remember, John Derbyshire was fired from National Review. Not the other way around. The Derb, as smart and plucky as he is, was not about to resign in protest simply because Rich Lowry did not allow him to even mention American Renaissance on the pages of Bill Buckley’s hallowed magazine. It is human nature to survive for oneself and one’s family. And that means going (or, in this case, staying) where the steady money is — even if there ain’t a whole lot of it.

Many on the Alt-Right are anonymous for the same reason. If we are going to decry the Ace of Spades for being cagey about the Tubman Twenty, then we should at least walk it like we talk it and put our real names and email addresses on these articles and in the comments sections.

(And God bless every single one of you who does.)

We should appreciate how tough this dilemma is. We should also offer some respect to our enemies on the Hard-Left. They played this one nice. They knew our weaknesses. They knew exactly where to hit us. And they knew there wasn’t a damn thing we could do to stop them.

Remember that moment in the movie My Cousin Vinny in which the prosecuting attorney delivers his opening statement to the jury? He wasn’t being portrayed as a villain or anything, just annoying in an old-fashioned, patriarchal way. He called upon the jurors to recall their shared cultural heritage as developed by their ancestors in Greece and Rome. The scene then cuts to the jury, which contains a few blacks. That was the director’s joke: the old, out-of-touch white guy assuming that everyone he was talking to was also white . . . when they obviously weren’t.

I think this has a lot to do with why mainstream liberals and conservatives (who, let’s face it, mean well for the most part) cannot ever condemn the Tubman Twenty. They understand that not all people they are talking to are white, and so they tailor their speech and writing to not offend nonwhites. To do so would be impolitic, you see. White people, I think, must have a politeness gene that all other races aside from the East Asians completely lack. When placed among other races, whites are willing to sacrifice a lot of things, including their own identity, in order not to offend.

And this, of course, brings us back to the first sentence of this article. Let’s repeat it so we will never forget:

A nation loses its cohesiveness and identity once its racial homogeneity has been compromised.

Late in his second term, President Bill Clinton once joked with a reporter, saying that, in his second term — without any reelection looming — a president can afford to be a little more honest with the people. Well, for those of us on the Alt-Right, it’s always the second term. We have no impending reelection, no appeal to the people for our livelihoods. We have made our choices already, and it certainly isn’t with “the people” — at least not with the browns and the blacks who are infiltrating our nation and trying to bamboozle it away from us. We can tell it like it is because nonwhites aren’t reading us; or, if they are, we don’t care. Truth is more important than politics. And here is the Truth:

Saying that a figure such as Harriet Tubman, regardless of her accomplishments as an individual, is worthy of appearing on any currency in a civilized nation is bowing to the beast far worse than whitewashing the prodigious accomplishments of Andrew Jackson. Harriet Tubman was black, and that alone should disqualify her. She is part of a race of human which, according to overwhelming evidence, is less-evolved, less intelligent, more violent, and more hormonal than all other races, let alone whites. When placed in large numbers in civilized societies, black people make these societies less civilized. And this is putting it kindly. Therefore, we, as whites, the cultural inheritors of the great Western tradition which our ancestors — and only our ancestors — developed through their work, sacrifice, and genius, should reject the notion of Harriet Tubman appearing on the twenty-dollar bill.

To do otherwise would further corrode the white, European racial identity of Western civilization. And when racial identity goes, the civilization it created will soon follow.