On Gavin McInnes & the Alt Lite

2,064 words

Recently, Gavin McInnes, our friend over at Taki’s Magazine, helpfully released a video entitled “What is the Alt Right?” In it, he does a pretty good job of describing who (or what) most of us are, dividing us into the “Alt Lite,” the “Alt Right,” and everyone else. The video is not for the Alt Right in a broader sense, of course. There really isn’t anything new in it. It’s just an introduction to the outer reaches of the Right for normies and an assurance that we’re not as bad as we are made out to be. Again, helpful, but not perfect. At one point, McInnes proclaims that Jared Taylor wishes to discriminate against Jews, which we all know isn’t true. McInnes also neglects to mention anyone, other than Richard Spencer, who is to the right of Jared Taylor – that is, the “everyone else” category above – and more or less questions the influence and sanity of those of us who are in that category.

McInnes’ overall point, as expected, is to make the Alt Lite look good compared to the Alt Right. One of the ways in which he does this is by expressing a key difference between the two: the Alt Right consists of racial (namely, white) chauvinists, whereas the Alt Lite consists of cultural (namely, Western) chauvinists. This we all know, and it is therefore uninteresting, but McInnes’ justification for preferring the latter over the former is. He just doesn’t have the heart to draw a color line when dealing with non-whites who conform to acceptable standards of Western chauvinism. He even states that the Alt Lite should almost be more welcoming to blacks and other non-whites considering how hard it is for some of these people to gravitate to the Right in the first place. In his typical expressive, onomatopoetic manner, he imagines himself rejecting a Right-minded black as if he were a game show host getting buzzer-happy booting a losing contestant off a show. He then indicated without saying it that he could never do something so cruel and absurd.

As someone who, for the most part, belongs in the “everyone else” category of the Alt Right, I can say without the slightest hint of sarcasm that I like Gavin McInnes, and his reasoning behind promoting the Alt Lite is one reason why. Despite his sneering, pugnacious persona (and his dismissive attitude towards people like me), he seems like a genuinely nice and funny guy whose heart and mind are in the right place in the grand scheme of things. I’ve said this before: the world is a better place with race realist writers like Gavin McInnes than without them, regardless of any disagreements I, or we, may have with them.

Furthermore, I like what he and the Alt Lite have to say. Shouldn’t we all judge people for what’s on the inside rather than the outside? In my personal and professional life, I try to adhere to this dictum as much as possible, regardless of a person’s race. Isn’t that fair and just? When wouldn’t one want to be fair and just with people? A worldview like McInnes’, which accepts racial and sexual differences yet still promotes an ecumenical, equal-opportunity approach to in-group status is . . . attractive. Almost seductively so.

For example, if God were to come down and say to me, “Hey, Spence, you schlemiel! Gavin’s right. You’re wrong. Get on board with the Alt Lite tout suite! Capiche?” I wouldn’t do so grudgingly. I would do so gladly, being all too eager to unburden myself of my cynical understanding of human nature and start singing “Kumbaya” with my moral betters.

I’m sure it would be nice, but once I awaken from such an idyllic reverie, I’m forced to realize that my sticking point with the Alt Lite can be found in this cynical (yet accurate) understanding of human nature. There is more to race realism than accepting that blacks do poorly on their SATs, East Asians are really good at math, and white people have a thing for the Gap. Race realism also means that people are fundamentally racial; before all else they will express loyalty towards their own kind, especially when the red, white, and blue chips are down.

This alone is enough to obviate the Alt Lite. Once enough people of various races enter and become a part of the West, what good would Western chauvinism be when these races use all the great aspects of the West to pursue their own interests at the expense of those of other races? Isn’t the point of Western chauvinism to suck in the rarefied oxygen above all that racial stuff? Were we big Western chauvinists when the Japanese made use of Western weapons and technology against us at Pearl Harbor? Are we Western chauvinists today as the North Koreans aim their very Western nukes at us? As Samuel Huntington pointed out concerning Arab Muslims (but it could apply to any non-white racial group), they wish to modernize, not Westernize.

Gavin McInnes fails to see that most non-whites will be Western chauvinists only insofar as it coincides with their racial chauvinism. And if these chauvinisms ultimately conflict with each other, the latter will subsume the former, always.

McInnes should also remember that one of the great flaws of the human mind is to assume that all other minds are (or potentially are) like the one doing the assuming. This is not an obvious mistake; in fact it is quite natural, so I am not blaming him for it. I’m reminded of the wonderful biopic of Temple Grandin, the autistic celebrity and scientist who, according to the movie, has the freakish ability to visualize complex mathematical equations in her mind. When a college instructor asks in disbelief if she really has such an ability, she looks puzzled and responds, “Doesn’t everybody?”

It seems that only white people in large numbers can overcome race to the point where they believe it doesn’t matter. I don’t know why – it could spring from genetics, or from two thousand years of Christian indoctrination, or from many hundreds of years of practice being a host population to other races. In any case, many whites, including those on the Alt Lite (who, frankly, should know better), are more than happy to abjure race entirely and judge individuals strictly on a case-by-case basis.

I think this is noble, yet foolhardy.

When I look at the vast majority of non-whites (with the exception of some East Asians settled in the West), I see racial-minded people behaving racially, as well they should. Israel doesn’t just refuse entry to white Goyim and Syrian refugees from next door. They also give the pointy boot to black Jews from Africa. Furthermore, what nations besides white nations are making real efforts to take in other races in large numbers? Only white nations do this. And hundreds of years of exposure to Western Civ isn’t going to make non-whites do the same – if so, they would have done it by now. They are who they are, and all the West will ever do for them is modernize them, not Westernize them. Therefore, I don’t understand McInnes’ optimism about non-whites. The safer, more sensible path, in my opinion, can be found in the Alt Right, which states that the races for the most part would do best to be separate.

Such a conclusion is less attractive, but certainly more realistic than the ones reached by the Alt Lite. Furthermore, the Alt Right can afford to be wrong. The Alt Lite can’t. After enough race-mixing and miscegenation, as is promoted by the Alt Lite, if it is eventually proven that race really is as important as the Alt Right says it is, then we’re courting disaster. And there’s no going back. You can’t unmix the races any more than you can turn back time.

With the Alt Right, we hedge our bets and play smart, putting white interests first. There’s also the point that Vox Day makes, which I agree with: whites should be shrewd about their racial interests, since what’s good for whites is ultimately good for everyone else. Whites are the architects of the modern world, after all. They have done more great things than all the other races combined. Why wouldn’t we want them to maintain their racial identity?

Another mistake McInnes makes is to assume it’s all about him. Remember his game show host imitation? What he is doing there is putting himself, Gavin McInnes, in the fictional role of an all-powerful guardian of a white ethnostate. He personally does not have the heart to reject people who have all their ducks are in a row just because the ducks are the wrong color. This speaks to the titanic sense of morality I find in many adherents of the Alt Lite. As I said before, I genuinely like these guys. But just because they are going to go to Heaven when they die does not mean that they’re right, and does not mean that what they propose is best for white people (and by extension, for everyone else).

Again, I’m reminded of a movie, this time Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator. In one scene, Howard Hughes, as a young parvenu, is having dinner with Katharine Hepburn and her very wealthy family. When Katharine’s mother informs Howard that they don’t care about money in their household, Howard snaps back, “That’s because you have it.”

To make this analogy about race, Gavin McInnes is willing to disregard race because he, by virtue of being white, has it. He grew up in a world that was mostly white. For many years, only white people mattered in the development of the modern world. Whites were on top and experienced little, if any, oppression in their home territories from non-whites. I am quite certain that as things continue to change and as anti-white sentiment in the West turns more and more into anti-white violence and oppression (like it already has in South Africa and Zimbabwe), whites like McInnes will become less and less generous with this racial business. They will start drawing that racial line in their minds – the lines they are loath to draw today. And they will not care so much about going to Heaven.

I predict that as the proportion of non-whites in the West reaches a tipping point, and as they bring the average IQ of the Western nations further and further down as predicted by Byron Roth in his excellent work The Perils of Diversity, white countries will become what I call “prison nations.” In prisons, races congregate into gangs out of necessity. These gangs are tribal, first and foremost, and they quite fiercely look after their own.

As David Skarbek pointed out in his excellent book The Social Order of the Underworld: How Prison Gangs Govern the American Penal System:

The Mexican Mafia and the Nuestra Familia were the first two prison gangs to form in California, and they were not the last. As they rose to power, inmates of other races and ethnicities formed gangs as well. Morrill explains that, in the following years, inmates “who formed these other gangs felt they had to in order to protect themselves.” In the late 1950s and early 1960s, white inmates formed the Blue Bird Gang. Little is known about this organization, but by the late 1960s, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported that it had become “apparent to other white inmates that a more powerful gang was necessary to protect white inmates from the Black and Mexican prison spawned gangs that were in power in the California Department of Corrections prison system.” The Aryan Brotherhood prison gang formed in 1967 with the explicit purpose of protecting white inmates from black and Hispanic gangs.

This is our future, folks. We will need to stick together in order to survive, just like humans have always done. The Alt Right recognizes this. The Alt Lite, as of now, does not. But they will. And when they do, and when they come over to our side of the political spectrum and admit their mistakes, we should accept them and hold no grudges. At that point, there will only be one Alt Right in a world more dangerous for white people than the one we’re in now. And that will make me happy and sad at the same time.