1,772 words
“The Old Believer, who is the quintessential modern conservative because he is the quintessential classical liberal, is probably the most effective of all Americans in keeping the Majority in the deep freeze of racial apathy.” – Wilmot Robertson, The Dispossessed Majority
The past few weeks have seen a revived interest in conservatism – particularly, what the ideology even means in modern America and how it will fare in the current Trump era and beyond. Recent developments have, for the most part, been small steps forward, and indicate an openness to nationalism.
A manifesto in First Things titled “Against the Dead Consensus” and signed by conservative Catholics such as Sohrab Ahmari and Rod Dreher caused controversy and sparked an ongoing debate. The statement decried the inability of conservatism to defend the culture against Leftism and said the movement “too often bowed to a poisonous and censorious multiculturalism.”
A new organization called the Edmund Burke Foundation calls itself “a public affairs institute dedicated to developing a revitalized conservatism for the age of nationalism already upon us.” They will hold a “National Conservatism Conference” in July in Washington, DC. Some of the speakers are on the Dissident Right (or close to it), such as Tucker Carlson, Amy Wax, Peter Thiel, and John O’Sullivan. (Although why is a dud like Rich Lowry involved in this event?)
Human Events, a long-time conservative publication that had shuttered in 2013 after nearly seventy years of publication, was revived in May under the leadership of Raheem Kassam and Will Chamberlin. Mr. Kassam has admirably defended Enoch Powell and pointed out the reality of Muslim “No-Go Zones” in Europe.
Wilmot Robertson (1915-2005) dedicated a chapter to conservatism in his 1972 book, The Dispossessed Majority. According to F. Roger Devlin, no less an authority than Sam Francis called the book “his own generation’s authoritative statement of racial nationalism.”
The book went through five printings, and my version is the latest one (1996), so it is updated a bit from the original. But what Robertson had to say about conservatism decades ago still has relevance today and may tell us about the prospects for American conservatism, whether it embraces nationalism or not.
Conservatism redefined
Robertson starts out his chapter on conservatism by noting that classical conservatism has little to do with modern conservatism:
The classical conservative upholds the mystique of authority and rank in society. He is an aristocrat by birth, anti-democratic by nature, and his principle concerns are family, race and continuity. To him the chain is more important that the links. He perceives the divine afflatus in man, but he also recognizes the odds against which it is working. He places the collective wisdom of the species (folkways and institutions) above the wisdom of governments and individuals (laws and politics).
Who is the modern conservative and what does he believe?
He favors democracy up to a certain point, believes in racial equality – or says he does – and wants less government, not more. He is all for human rights, but is equally, if not more, enthused about property rights. Believing himself to be a rational, commonsensical person, he takes his religion with a grain of salt. He is, in sum, a classical liberal and has strayed as far from the fountainheads of classical conservatism – Plato, Dante, and Hobbes – as the modern liberal has strayed from Locke.
A brief history of American conservatism
Conservatism in the United States got off to a surprisingly good start, in Robertson’s view, despite the fact that the most conservative element – one hundred thousand Loyalists – were expelled or fled to Canada during the War of Independence. He counts Washington, Hamilton, and the Federalist party as Burkean conservatives, and believes the Constitution was conservative enough for men who had just set up a representative government that horrified European aristocrats.
From there, Robertson describes conservatism as slowly weakening, first through Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democracy, then through the Civil War, which divided Northern and Southern conservatives. He cites Theodore Roosevelt as an exponent of “perhaps the last expression of an American conservativism with a high sense of national purpose.” But it was the one-two punch of the Great Depression and the Second World War that nearly finished off American conservatism.
As the New Deal wrestled with the great economic problems of an increasingly industrialized society, conservatives stuck to defenses of unrestricted capitalism. Conservatives were blamed for the Depression, and liberals were given credit for alleviating it. Then, the rise of European fascism gave Leftists another stick with which to beat conservatives. See if this isn’t familiar from today’s politics:
There are, of course, vague bloodlines that tie certain aspects of conservatism to the Nietzschean attitudinizing of Hitler, just as there are historic ties that link certain aspects of liberalism to the demoniacal politicking of Lenin. Both liberals and conservatives had often taken advantage of these tenuous analogies for purposes of mutual slander. But since liberals held the reins of power from the mid-1930s on, they were better able to make the calumnies stick.
These two setbacks caused normally conservative voters to vote Democrat for a generation or more. And it wasn’t just political conservatism that declined. Intellectually, the movement was almost non-existent. The works of Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard “fell into disrepute.” Burkean conservatives Irving Babbitt and Paul Elmore More were forgotten. Even economic conservatives such as Wilhelm Ropke, F. A. Hayek, and Ludwig von Mises “were only given cursory attention.”
It wasn’t until the 1960s and ‘70s when black crime, riots, forced busing, and affirmative action forced many whites to rethink their allegiance to the Democrats. These issues (along with inflation) helped usher in conservative political victories in the 1980s. But by that point, they were pyrrhic victories. Liberals were in complete control of every American institution and set the terms for debate. Again, see if this does not exactly describe our current politics:
Before he was allowed a national platform the modern conservative had to demonstrate that he was a member of the loyal opposition, that on the “sensitive” issues he was of one mind with the liberal himself. No public manifestation of classical conservatism – i.e., no forthright attack against democracy and minority racism – would be tolerated. If the fires of minority illiberalism and minority racism could not be quenched by modest, low-decibel appeals for decorum, they were to be left raging. The only notes of dissention permitted the modern conservative were the safe ones. He could be more reverent toward big business, property, patriotism, religion, government decentralization, and law and order. He could be more critical of socialism, Marxism, Castro, overregulation, labor unions, and budget deficits. But the permissible differences were differences in degree, not in kind. On the larger issues, the issues behind the issues, modern liberalism and modern conservatism were often becoming synonymous.
According to Robertson, not one prominent conservative has failed to observe these rules. This includes Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan. Moderates such as Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon “both preached the fundamental tenets of modern liberalism as loudly as any American in public life.” Even mavericks such as George Wallace “complied with the ban on open discussion of the race problem. In his campaign speeches he relied on inference rather than statement, allowing his listeners to draw their own conclusions whenever he attacked school integration.”
So why do whites still vote overwhelmingly for conservatives and Republicans? Robertson notes that conservative politicians are almost always white and nominally Christian. They are usually not strident, abrasive, or openly anti-white, like many liberals and Democrats. They do not rub whites the wrong way, since they seem to be for everyone, and not just for minorities. Robertson does not mention this, but Republicans who do flirt with minority pandering by attacking “white racism” often find themselves with fawning media coverage, but few votes (see the GOP primary efforts of Jack Kemp in 1988 and Rand Paul in 2016). The “Trump 2020” re-election team may want to keep this in mind.
Perhaps it would be better for whites if conservatives were as openly anti-white as liberals:
By combining the humanistic abstractions of classical liberalism with modern liberal notions of equality and social democracy, the modern conservative’s net effect on Majority members is to anesthetize them in to dropping their racial guard at the very moment they need it most.
That is why, of all those who consciously or unconsciously oppose the Majority cause, the modern conservative is the most dangerous.
Stronger medicine required
American conservatism may well move in a more nationalist direction. The First Things letter, the lineup for the “National Conservatism Conference,” and the new Human Events all seem to augur a more adversarial approach to combatting Leftism. Most Counter-Currents readers will likely find this preferable to Conservatism Inc. and the Bush/McCain/Romney Republicanism of recent decades. It seems the new conservative leaders, echoing Trump, will be more open to attacking multiculturalism, immigration, political correctness, and affirmative action. They certainly seem less likely to meekly accept the insults, slights, and double standards of Leftists.
Robertson himself would have noticed that the leaders of these various efforts are named Sohrab Ahmari (a Persian who converted to Catholicism), Yoram Hazony (an Israeli academic), and Raheem Kassam (of Indian Muslim stock, but now an atheist). He would have classified these men as “Unassimilable Minorities,” meaning they cannot truly become part of the historic Majority due to racial and religious differences. Though their hearts may be in the right place, the American Majority will not be saved or preserved by these men.
So, can conservatism be of any help to whites as they battle a dispossession that is much stronger and closer than when The Dispossessed Majority was written? Robertson doesn’t believe so, at least if conservatism survives in its present form:
Modern conservatism, which lacks the racial drive of modern liberalism, has been and will continue to be of little help in unifying the Majority and raising it to the high pitch of performance necessary to reverse its present decline. Stronger medicine is required for those who are trapped in a racial conflagration getting out of hand and who must fight fire with fire to avoid being consumed in the flames.
The only conservatism that can be useful to the Majority in its present state of siege is a conservatism stripped of the dead weight of outmoded political dogma, one that appeals to the young as well as to the old, to the heart as well as to the pocketbook, to the imagination as well as to reason – a conservatism, in short, which vitalizes tradition and builds continuity, as it concentrates on the care and feeding of the Majority ethos.
Peter Bradley writes from Washington, DC.
19 comments
“It seems the new conservative leaders, echoing Trump, will be more open to attacking multiculturalism, immigration, political correctness, and affirmative action.”
Eh. Trump seems more open to attacking people for alleged anti-Semitism than attacking multiculturalism or affirmative action. There’s a way nationalism can become “colorblind nationalism” that worries me.
Hard to believe TDM is nearing 50 years. Robertson started writing it in the mid-to-late 1960s when the US was nearly 90% white. He was a true prophet.
TDM?
TDM = The Dispossessed Majority by Wilmot Robertson.
I’m sure it was pretty lonely for him too. Most Whites would’ve thought he was insane or a conspiracist of some type. He would’ve been viewed as an odd-ball for sure.
White Americans at the time couldn’t see the Browning and third-worlding of their country, even though the signs were readily apparent – that is, if you had eyes to see and ears to hear. It’s clear that Wilmot Robertson had both.
That’s not altogether true. In the 1920s, the Klan had over 4 million national members (that at a time when there were many fewer White Americans in absolute numbers, and when the KKK frowned upon Catholics like [most of] my family). OK, there was huge degeneration after WW2. But in the 60s, Carleton Putnam’s books Race & Reason and Race & Reality were enormous sellers. My own grandparents back in the 1970s were constantly complaining about how Whites had been “sold out” by “the liberals” (though they never to my recollection identified liberals with Jews).
A lot of normal Whites were indeed opposed to totalitarian integration with blacks, though never enough or with enough passion to overturn the civil rights revolution. Ever heard of “White flight”? That was mostly a 1970s phenomenon. As to the immigration invasion, I was perfectly aware of and opposed to it by the mid-70s. Family and friends have been complaining about the invasion for what is now our whole adult lives. The problem was that the new colonists mostly settled and concentrated in places like CA and NYC, so it really wasn’t until after 2000 that masses of Whites around the country became aware of it. By that point many of those (eg, my grandparents) who would have voted at any point from 1970-2000 for a moratorium were dead – and the new generation had spent its formative years being ever more intensively indoctrinated with diversity propaganda (and so is now “comfortable” with its racial dispossession and demotion).
It’s an incredible story – how the West was destroyed (or perhaps, “surrendered”) – that’s yet to be fully written.
The 1920s Klan was mainly about anti-Catholicism. I recall reading a book called The Ku Klux Klan in the City many years ago. The chapter on Chicago in the 1920s is entirely about Protestant vs. Catholic conflict. What is most impressive about the 1920s is that Lothrop Stoddard and Madison Grant were major public intellectuals whose books were big best-sellers.
A perfect photo for the article: Romney, Bush and Rubio are poison for whites.
Race Riots in London almost inevitable given what I’m watching on Question-Time.
Fiona Bruce is in Tottenham (roughly where the 2011 riots sparked) and the various Vibrants in the audience look like they want to street fight again.
Yes, I watched that. The black women in the audience were given leave to go on interminable rants complaining that white politicians were not doing enough to stop knife crime.
A true conservative would have pointed out that in London it is overwhelmingly a black issue and clearly related to the nihilistic culture of black youth.
Similarly, during the Conservative Leadership debate on BBC a genuine conservative (like Roger Scruton) would have pointed out that “Islamophobia” is a propaganda term intended to suggest that opposition to Islam – or Muslim practices – is totally irrational. It ain’t.
The infuriating thing is that such a response would not only have appealed to the Tory base but also attracted many Labour voters frustrated with PC censoriousness.
The “First Things” people seem be legit and genuine guys, thing is though, it might be too little too late for this sort of thing.
I’m provoked to anger when I gaze upon these cuckservatives as pictured in the article. They are weak and hypocritical men, and how shameful it is that so many White conservatives have looked to them as national leaders hoping they could somehow ‘save’ or ‘reform’ America.
There’s no crisis of conscience among them as they sell out the Founding stock of this once great nation. They gladly welcome the Brown invaders, and urge each of us to do the same. The most convoluted forms of logic and reason are employed to justify illegal immigration. We’re told the hordes of third-world peasants are ‘natural conservatives’ and possess the same ‘family values’ as heart-land conservatives. Jeb Bush even declared that Mexicans invade our country ‘out of love’!? This is but a small sampling of the insanity that cuckservatives spew in their foolish efforts to justify the ‘Great replacement.’
There are many well-meaning and decent White conservatives who simply don’t understand what’s at stake in all of this. We need to inform them, and plead with them to think differently. As for the Bush and Romney types, however, they are wicked enemies of our people who work against our racial and cultural interests.
I hope that a future generation that looks back at the insanity of our times and the struggle for our people will daily curse the names of Mitt Romney, George and Jeb Bush, and any prominent White person who could have spoken out but refused to out of fear and lack of integrity.
Conservatives have no desire to conserve anything other than their own ‘property rights’ and the legal means to profit by the disintegration of homogeneous social groups. When it suits their purpose they with fake gravitas make appeals to patriotism and national pride, but these appeals are generally intended to serve the purposes of globalist wars.
The only thing worthy of conservation is race, and that is the very thing so-called conservatives are most reluctant and incapable of nurturing.
Highly encourage people to go online and read Wilmot Robertson’s “Instaurations”. It’s 20 years of articles in magazine format. Great stuff.
The Instauration archives now seem to be only at big-lies.org:
https://www.big-lies.org/instauration/instauration-pdf-file-list.html
I read The Dispossessed Majority over 30 years ago (and twice since). I was already an implicit White nationalist simply on the basis of my own awareness and thoughts, but TDM helped me clarify many issues. Of course, today, White nationalism is all that can save America – or even the principles and policies conservatives (and even libertarians!) claim to cherish most.
That said, however, the conservative position still has much to recommend it beyond race. Contemporary WNs may be excellent on race and sociobiology, but too many, especially of the younger generation, have imbibed way too much leftist brainwashing. They think it’s possible to combine White preservation with “progressive” policies outside of race. I find this troublingly naive. The proper metaphors for society are organic, not mechanistic; that is, the body politic, like any other living body, is holistic. Its parts are not replaceable or removable without doing violence to the whole. “Progressive” WNs, who think they can adopt most of the leftist agenda, but adapt it to White separatism, fail to understand this, unlike leftists. The latter understand that EVERY blow against traditional America is a blow against the race/culture/people which built that nation. The Constitution, private property, the nuclear family, traditional values and education, law + order, strong defense, etc, all reinforce each other and create a healthy society. Why else do our (((enemies))) attack ALL aspects of the Old America, and not content themselves with pushing race mixing and mass immigration only?
What is needed, both strategically and pragmatically, is a conservative WN – the insinuation of race realism and White preservationism into what is otherwise a standard conservative/GOP agenda. Indeed, non-Nazi WN is, I argue, a species of conservatism properly understood. Conservatism begins with the gene and the race, but of course does not end there.
“Robertson himself would have noticed that the leaders of these various efforts are named Sohrab Ahmari (a Persian who converted to Catholicism), Yoram Hazony (an Israeli academic), and Raheem Kassam (of Indian Muslim stock, but now an atheist). He would have classified these men as “Unassimilable Minorities,” meaning they cannot truly become part of the historic Majority due to racial and religious differences. Though their hearts may be in the right place, the American Majority will not be saved or preserved by these men.”
As usual, Robertson was correct:
https://vdare.com/articles/east-is-east-and-west-is-west-what-the-hazony-brog-heresy-hunt-says-about-july-s-national-conservative-conference
It was back in the 70’s. I was browsing in a left wing book store which was the only kind of bookstore in my university town. I came across The Dispossessed Majority. It didn’t compute that such a title could be in this store. I browsed thru it like it was my first look at pornography. I kept thinking “I can’t believe this trash is in this store”. But I couldn’t put it down.
It really was like looking at titties. It was stRiki-Eiking at something in my consciousness and my nature that hadn’t been completely emulsified by my good education. I was white, working class,ex Catholic and first generation college now on my way to a Ph.d in ethnically cleansed history. But this book was getting at something that meshed with my inner though unacknowledged WHITE GUY. I leaned against the wall and perused it for awhile. I considered buying it. But then my GOOD GOY rose up. In a completely unreflective way, I put the book back, went to the bar next door , had a few, and forgot about it. Near 50 years later, with The Dispossessed Majority centered on my shelf, I wonder what my life would have been like if I had bought that book
What a great piece of writing. I find myself constantly referencing Wilmot Robertson in my own writing and thinking. He still serves as a fountain of wisdom on so many different issues.
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2017/09/25/the-prescient-wilmot-robertson-writing-on-the-middle-east-and-minority-control-of-us-foreign-policy/
https://www.amren.com/commentary/2016/12/black-separatism-wilmot-robertson-keith-ellison/
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