Counter-Currents
Jeb Bush with a supporter
1,967 words
It’s easy to look back in anger. But is it always the right thing to do? The present, armed with hindsight, will always trump the past. It’s like an unfair fight that way. Nothing seems more obvious than a painful mistake when viewed in hindsight. But without hindsight, much less is obvious.
From a Dissident Right perspective in the United States, it’s easy to interact with our past. Our past is currently walking and talking among us like chattering zombies in patriotic apparel. They’re members of the Republican Party, the wellspring from which most of us came. Sure, there may be some former Leftists or liberals among us. Others, God bless ‘em, seem to have sprung from the womb reciting the Fourteen Words. But most of us, I would wager, have groped their way to the One True Path from the conservative or libertarian camps, i.e., the Republican Party. Some may have lingered in this red-white-and-blue purgatory longer than others. Some, like Ann Coulter, John Derbyshire, and Peter Brimelow, may have been expelled from it in one way or another (“purge-atory”, perhaps?). But out of it, it seems, most of us came.
It makes sense. Of all the mainstream political movements, these two were the most comfortable with inequality. And what’s ethnonationalism without inequality?
A problem arises when we realize that we are more like pioneers than refugees. We’re building something new that is in many ways antithetical to the place from whence we came. And many of our former bedfellows in the Republican Party do not approve. Many of our former bedfellows now attack us harder than they ever attacked their antagonists on the Left. Mitt Romney’s recent op-ed in the Washington Post in which he bashed President Trump is a great example – one of many. Romney, of course, showed little of this fighting spirit when campaigning against Barack Obama in 2012.
At the end of the twentieth century, one could argue (crudely, yet more or less accurately) that the difference between Right and Left could be plotted along an axis of culture and economics. On the Right you had tradition, capitalism, and patriotism. On the Left you had their polar opposites: progressivism, socialism, and globalism. And there was balance. The prohibitive white majority made sure of that. In the twenty-first century, however, three things have upset this balance: 9/11, the precipitous decline of the white proportion of the population, and Donald Trump’s election. Since then, a new axis has emerged differentiating what it means to be on the Left or Right: one of race. On the Right, you have the pro-whites and on the Left you have the anti-whites. It really is that simple. The centers of gravity of these two poles have grown so dense so quickly that they will soon draw all others into their orbits. I predict that feminism, global warming, abortion, gun rights, and a host other issues will be caught up in the swirl.
The cultural and economic axes haven’t gone away, of course; they’re just growing increasingly irrelevant. Regardless, this is the paradigm within which many mainstream Republicans still operate. It is an antiquated mode of thinking, one that proved disastrous in the 2008 and 2012 elections and didn’t serve us terribly well in the 2018 midterms, either. Republicans running on tax cuts and minority outreach against Democrats running primarily on race-related issues is a little like the French betting on plate mail against the longbow at Agincourt. The difference is that the French learned their lesson and the Republicans haven’t – at least not yet. Some Republicans may be true believers, others may lack imagination, and others might resent feeling powerless as they flutter in the winds of change. Whatever the reason, many mainstream Republicans see the Dissident Right, with their racial obsessions, as traitors to the cause. That feeling is most certainly requited.
So I get it when dissidents on the Right see the Republicans as no better than liberals. I get it when they say “never trust a conservative.” While anyone with a “(D)” after their name deserves our instant enmity, anyone followed by an “(R)” has earned at the very least our deep suspicion. In a democracy like ours, politics not just is, but must, be downwind of culture. Since politicians are in the stay-in-power business rather than the Truth business, this is how it has to be. A Republican politician must play by the old playbook if he wishes to attract the least grief and the most donor dollars. If he wishes to play by the new playbook, he has to be extremely careful, since racial taboos against whites in our mainstream culture are still very strong. Trump is the first mainstream politician in a long time to defy some of these taboos. And that’s great. But Trump is a billionaire and a unique character regardless. He can personally withstand most of what the Left will throw at him. Most Republican politicians are neither of these things, and therefore must toe a line if they wish to survive in the cuck-eat-cuck world of GOP politics, let alone beat the Democrats.
Seriously, if a white Republican were to call for a return to Jim Crow-era segregation laws, a ban on Islam, anti-Semitic hiring practices, and a general deportation of non-white immigrants, he would be more concerned about assassination attempts than winning elections. This is the world we live in, and expecting the Republican Party to rise above it all to cater to the Dissident Right is just wishful thinking.
There are four major types of Republicans these days:
- Controlled opposition. These people are essentially Democrats who aren’t quite Communists. Not as bad as actual commies, but bad enough to be considered the enemy. Senators Jeff Flake and Mitt Romney are good examples.
- True believers in the old system. These are your libertarians, traditionalists, and Christians who fight hard to resist the Left and still have quaint notions of American patriotism. These people make up the majority of Republicans and will do what’s right most of the time, but almost always for the wrong reasons. We can work with them but should never trust them. Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul stand out in this bunch.
- Champions of the new system. These are your enthusiastic Trump supporters who embrace The Wall and civic nationalism, and who are not afraid to act implicitly in white interests. These people may or may not be covert race-realists, and at best aspire to halt the Leftward lurch of history rather than reverse it. In this group, we have Trump himself, as well as representatives Jim Jordan and Steve King.
- Overt white identitarians. These may as well be unicorns. The only two examples of this kind who I can think of are disgraced House candidate Paul Nehlen and (maybe) the former manager of a small town in Maine, Tom Kawczynski. If there are others, please mention them in the comments.
Since over ninety percent of the current bunch of sitting Republicans fall into the first two categories, it’s safe to say that the Republicans are not “ourguys,” and putting undue faith in them is misguided, to say the least.
Yet, I care. I still want the Republicans to win and I usually pull for them hard. Why? Several reasons:
- I hate the Left. Maybe this is a personal quirk, but I enjoy seeing Lefties suffer and I enjoy seeing them lose. Further, the idea of losing to the Left galls me. The televised image of white female Obama campaign staffers dancing, once it became clear that their guy was going to win in 2012, haunts me to this day. So does footage of Muslims celebrating on 9/11 and of black college students high-fiving each other when O. J. Simpson got acquitted. The Left drinks toasts with our tears all the time, so I see no reason why we shouldn’t do the same with theirs.
- Bashing Republicans will only make it easier for the far Left to attain power. No matter how duplicitous and cucky a Republican is, you can rest assured that his Democratic opponent is far more radical and extreme. There are very few truly moderate Democrats these days, and if a principled and honest one were to run against a weak-kneed quisling Republican like Jeff Flake, I might sit that election out. But in increasing numbers, the Dems are now fielding far-Left, pro-immigration, anti-white nut cases likes Kyrsten Sinema and Kamala Harris. Against such people, I will definitely hold my nose and vote for the Jeff Flakes of the world. After all, the second or third circle of Hell is still preferable to the tenth.
- Republicans may listen to Republican voters, while the Democrats never will. In 2007, when George W. Bush was pushing large-scale amnesty dressed up as the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act, Republican voters melted down phone lines to tell their representatives not to vote for it. The representatives listened, and the bill died in the Senate. While it remains to be seen if Republicans of the future will respond to such pressure, we know for sure that absolutely no Democrat ever will.
- I still hold out hope that dissidents can convert ordinary Republicans before history does. This means, among other things, amping up our production of articles, books, memes, and videos, as well as executing smart, pro-white activism and maintaining our general willingness to talk to conservatives. So far, so good. But if we hold the representatives that ordinary Republicans elect in too much contempt, then we may repel these people rather than attract them.
- A peaceful solution is still possible, and any champions of this peace in the next twenty or thirty years will have to come from the Republican Party. Here is a vision of such an unlikely, yet still possible, scenario: once non-whites gain their demographic edge in 2040 or whenever, the coalition of blacks, Hispanics, and Muslims in the Democratic Party collapses amid racial strife. Pro-white identity advocates among the Republicans then make a comeback in the face of the sheer chaos brought about by these demographic changes. Finally, and most importantly, anti-Semitism on both sides cause most Jews to either quit politics or leave the country. The result? Whites take back control of their country due to their better funding and organization and then implement explicitly pro-white policies, just as the Southerners did after Reconstruction. This won’t lead to an ethnostate, but it will eventually take us back to the demographic proportions of, say, 1990, with whites solidly and permanently in charge. Smashing the Republican Party to pieces today – as much as it deserves to be smashed – will not only guarantee that such a solution won’t happen, it will also increase the likelihood that a hot civil war within many of our lifetimes will.
Basically, my attitude towards the Republican Party is informed by the following dilemma: Do you prefer a ninety percent chance of getting sixty percent of what you want without a war? Or do you prefer a sixty percent chance of getting ninety percent of what you want with a war?
There’s no right answer here, and I’m not even sure how I feel about it. I dearly want a white ethnostate in North America. I would also like to meet my grandchildren one day. Maybe we’ll get lucky and elect a philosopher-king who will implement a “slow cleanse.” On the other hand, we could get unlucky and lose the war. Interesting times make for consequential decisions.
With the hindsight afforded to us today, I really dislike much of the Republican Party. But it remains the only nationwide apparatus we have to resist the Left. It would take a certain warlike attitude for people on the Right to abandon it completely. I understand and appreciate such an attitude. I’m just not sure I am ready to go there yet.
Spencer J. Quinn is a frequent contributor to Counter-Currents and the author of the novel White Like You.
11 comments
Since I know you intended this as at least in part a response to some of our private conversations, Spencer, I’ll give you my two cents’ worth. I think you’re right that most people on the “radical” Right come to it through conservatism. I didn’t. Even before I could vote, it was evident to me that there was very little difference between the two parties, and virtually none on issues I really cared about. And generally, when there were differences, I found the Democrats somewhat more sympathetic on some issues. I’ve never belonged to a party. By the time I was in my 20s, during the 1990s, I knew I was on the Right, but I recognized very early on that I wasn’t sympathetic to the sort of “right” that prevails in the US. Really, I just see the Democrats and Republicans as two branches of the Left with somewhat different supporters and priorities, who merely disagree on how to achieve the same ends. In the many articles by Sam Francis that we reprinted here last year, you’ll see that he had also come to the same conclusions by the 1990s, and routinely referred to the Republicans as the “Stupid Party.” So I’ve never seen the Republicans as related to anything we want. Sure, Trump has forced them to give grudging support to a few causes that we like, but first of all, it’s quite evident that the vast majority of them are at best lukewarm about it all, if not actively opposed; and second, in terms of actual achievements that help white Americans, they have accomplished very little. The two things that Trump was showing signs of progress in was illegal immigration and non-interventionism; he’s almost undoubtedly going to have to cuck on the first, and almost immediately after announcing the withdrawal from Syria he started attaching caveats to it which render it meaningless. And everyone has been excited at the prospect of having a Supreme Court packed with conservative judges – but what does it matter when John Roberts casts the deciding vote in the decision to uphold the block on Trump’s asylum ban, as happened last month? How are they any better when they ultimately make the same decisions as the Democrats?
If people want to spend an hour or whatever of their day every couple of years to go and vote for Republicans in the belief that they’re the least bad option, I don’t see any problem with it, but where I do see a problem is when people get caught up in the American political charade to the exclusion of looking for other possibilities. People of our inclination who get invested in the Republican Party, or any other mainstream party, are throwing time, energy, thought, and possibly money into an organization that offers nothing in return. Merely hoping that the party will eventually come around to something closer to our perspective, when people on the radical Right have been saying that for the past half-century at least without any signs of it happening, seems naive to me. If they do, contrary to all indicators, end up eventually becoming “the party of white Americans,” it will happen despite anything that we do about it. So we’re better off focusing on our own activities and projects then trying to reform an organization that is beyond our means to influence. If large numbers of Republicans come around to our point of view, they’ll come to it by reading our sites and publications and through our media, and they’ll come willingly, but I don’t think we need to waste resources on doing “outreach” to them. People will respect us for remaining true to our beliefs, not for pretending to be cucks. And this means calling them out for acting like liberals. In your “Vice” review, for example, I didn’t understand why people on the Dissident Right would be offended by the film’s treatment of Cheney. For me, it’s just Hollywood liberals attacking another branch of liberalism. You say the Republicans stand for “tradition, capitalism, and patriotism”; they do indeed mouth these words often, and I have no doubt of their commitment to the second, but the other two are merely concepts they exploit when it’s convenient and forget about the rest of the time. (Or, if we are to really see them as “patriots,” it’s only in their own warped understanding of that concept, which has nothing to do with ours, such as the idea that anybody who happens to show up there can be an American.)
I’ve been tempted to withdraw from the democratic political theater altogether, and I might do that one day, but for as long as I do continue voting, I just judge things according to the circumstances of the time and make my decisions based on that rather than any sort of party loyalty. Prior to Trump, I had only once ever voted for a Republican for President in my life, and that ended in disaster. I can’t relate to what you said about tearing your hair out when Obama beat Romney. I was no fan of Obama but I was glad when he defeated McCain and Romney, given that I thought it was clear that both of them would be far worse than Obama, particularly on foreign policy, and most likely indistinguishable on most other matters. And if Trump had not gotten the nomination in 2016 and Bernie had, I would gladly have voted for Bernie. Sure, Bernie and I disagree on many things, but at least he recognizes that the root of our problems is corporate America, and this is something that the Republicans will never embrace short of a total overhaul. You still treat “socialism” as a dirty word, but this is what will be needed to really make real changes to the country. It’s no wonder that Ann Coulter backed Ocasio-Cortez’s tax proposal for the wealthy last week; she sees that getting an America for white Americans will involve seeing past Left and Right, i.e., beyond the American political theater. We have to be able to think outside the categories that have been imposed upon us by people with a very different agenda.
And as for the scenarios you paint, I’m highly skeptical about the future of a white America with or without war, quite honestly. The idea of “taking back America” still seems quite remote. It’s possible that the faint stirrings of ethnonationalism we see in parts of Trump’s base are the beginning of a trend that will intensify; however, I find it equally plausible that after him, most Americans will go back to sleep and not wake up again until it’s too late (assuming it’s not too late already). Those who want to retain their identity may have to start thinking in terms of going elsewhere, or of setting up microcommunities within the US.
That picture says it all.
John, Thanks for this. It’s all great. I will let the readers decide how they feel about it at this point.
I would like to respond to this, however: ‘In your “Vice” review, for example, I didn’t understand why people on the Dissident Right would be offended by the film’s treatment of Cheney.’
I don’t think dissidents should be offended. Perhaps they might feel the need to defend Cheney from a factual perspective against the dishonest attacks in the film. But there are certainly ways to condemn him for what he did while not demonizing him like a super villain. Steve Sailer goes into that in his review.
Also, McKay’s treatment of Cheney made his own film suffer from an aesthetic standpoint. Take Chappaquiddick for example. That film deals fairly with “Ted Kennedy” the character by depicting his descent into an abyss of equivocation. In the beginning he had admirable qualities, but in the end he is consumed by his own weakness. It’s tragic and moving. I am keeping this apart from the real Ted Kennedy of course and made that clear in my review of the film. But in Vice there is none of that. McKay portrays Cheney as an asshole from the very beginning (with some anti-white racism thrown in). There is no character arc, no gain, no loss, no triumph, no tragedy. As a result the film has no soul, IMO.
“Do you prefer a ninety percent chance of getting sixty percent of what you want without a war? Or do you prefer a sixty percent chance of getting ninety percent of what you want with a war?”
My unmitigated contempt of anti-Whites (and the sorry excuse for culture that they currently lord over us) compels me to roll the dice on the latter. In fact, I’m fairly certain that we’ll never achieve our goals without some level of actual combat. They will never just hand the stolen goods back over to the storeowner. But we must remember that we didn’t bring this fight to them; quite the opposite. So to my Southron mind, they deserve to suffer the full measure of the consequences. My anger isn’t irrational and it’s not boiling over the pot; but it is a righteous slow boil that’s still going burn like hell when it hits the enemy.
Sam Hyde (if I recall properly) was largely correct when he said, “they want us dead, our children starving, and they think it’s funny.” I believe many anti-Whites actually do feel this way and I’m not reticent to agree and amplify the sentiment in response. There is nothing inhuman about a properly maintained hatred. As a mindset, hatred is as natural and protective as love or war is– and indeed, it can be just as dangerous to one’s own psyche if not kept in check.
Regardless, our enemies have worked tirelessly to earn it. It’s about time for remittances.
Perhaps the best argument for Spencer Quinn’s position is that the Buchanan insurgency in 1992 and Trump’s candidacy in 2016 could only have occurred within the Republican party. The Left is not an hospitable place for anything resembling nationalism, and it is increasingly hostile to borders.
On the other hand, in the past the Left was often better, at least outwardly, on some important issues, like trade and war.
This comes from an Australian perspective; our politics are arguably in worse shape as while we have a stronger current of muh racism among the anglo-stock we also have a massive structural disconnect for people of who they vote for being tied to what happens then happens in the world in anything but economic terms (ie significant x% will be anti-immigration and consider it a prime issue….. but will still vote for one of the major parties who are both pro-immigration). I also have this dread that we had our trump in 1999 but he was overshadowed by the concurrent rise of essentially a right-wing AOC [who then became something of a joke,,, though she has made something of a comeback in recent years]
I used to vacillate constantly between various “speeds” of accelerationism and political engagement, seeking a correct path that I would hazard is an affliction atleast somewhat common in our circles, until i come across a quote, now barely remembered unfortunately, about setting oneself too strongly against fate that caused me to reassess. I decided instead to set for myself a path that is right within the circumstances of now but with defined fail points so that I would no longer have that constant pressure of doubt that I have committed to something that I may doggedly hold onto to the point of absurdity. In Australia, for example, we will get a “democrat” almost assuredly in the this years election and various quotas, equality laws and money for everyone but white guys will be stepped up. In the election following I need to see certain increases in minor nationalist party vote share or changes in the then oppositions rhetoric (unlikely), that if not meet i will switch to a full acceleration mode unless other circumstances have changed so much as to make drafting new milestones a better idea. Either way I have a fixed end point to my current position.
I don’t know the authors work well and it I’ll be abit tacky and offer advice from out of nowhere but perhaps this could be a way to frame things that could be helpful, if not internally, as a future point of potential convergence with the accelerationist crowd. Not “support the GOP because a, b and c” but “support the GOP because a, b and c; until x, y and z”.
In Australia, my view is that the whole Lib/Lab circus is just that – a sham ‘democracy’ where the actual differences between the policies enacted by the two parties are so vanishingly small as to be irrelevant.
Both parties are socially liberal, economically right wing and off-the-scale globalist. The iron fist of neo-classical economics wrapped in a rainbow glove of fake social progressivism.
I have no faith at all that any form of the current Lib/Lab hegemony will deliver salvation for the organic Australian nation.
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oh yes, this is the way it is in just about every western country AFAIK, worse in the two party ones. I personally don’t hold much hope in the political system but I’ll stick with it for now and at the very least use vote share for ON or AusCon as a barometer
“Democrats running primarily on race-related issues”
They didn’t, at least not in 2018. I live in a swing district. All the ads were about health care. That’s not a “race-related” issue. Instead, it is a sensible economic concern which the Republicans cannot address because they are too beholden to donors.
Repurposing existing organizations is the way to go.
Simple subversion of local party apparatus via the immigration issue is the most effective way to take the existing party structure and start using it in a more productive manner.
Our folks should also be in positions to exert influence over local VFW and American Legion Posts.
Another thing to consider is how Democratic operatives have been trying to lead us down the anti-Republican path lately by manufacturing fake-frustration with the GOP.
https://dailycaller.com/2019/01/08/democrat-facebook-campaign-supress/
I’d hate for this strategy to work.
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