Counter-Currents
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Disgraced “Traditionalist Workers Party” leader Matthew Heimbach came out as an anti-racist socialist on April Fool’s Day. His video, produced by an organization created by a former Islamic extremist, pleaded for white nationalists to leave their hate behind and embrace socialism instead.
This was no April’s Fool Day joke — Heimbach seriously believes he can pull off this pivot to the Left. This should be the sad end to an embarrassing political career. We’ve witnessed many turncoats over the years who disavow their old views for a chance at clout. The interesting thing about Heimbach’s move is how similar his new views are to his old ones. Heimbach previously proclaimed himself a socialist; now he just drops the nationalism and race realism. Heimbach isn’t alone in this thinking; some within our ranks also want to move closer toward the Left.
Most want to keep their racial views and somehow appeal to modern leftists with grandiose economic policies. They think the Left is more receptive to their radical ideas than anyone on the Right. It’s a great chance at a redemption arc and mainstream attention, or so the adherents think. But the “Red-Brown” alliance is a figment of marginalized right-wingers’ imaginations. No one on the Left wants this alliance. The far-Left cares far more about social issues than economic justice — they’re not gonna accept an unironic neo-Nazi because he supports Medicare for All.
There are two different possible pivots to the Left for disgruntled wignats: they can follow the Heimbach path or they can vainly hope socialists will come to countenance white nationalists in their coalition. Neither strategy will work.
The Heimbach strategy is bad for several reasons. Most obviously, it requires you to sell out your former friends and bend the knee. You have to abandon everything you once believed in for one final chance at political relevance. This is bad because you deny the truth of race realism and nationalism and side with our enemies. You no longer advance your people’s cause, but only your own selfish vanity. Whites will not benefit at all from colorblind socialism or uniting with all races against the bourgeoisie.
You can buy Greg Johnson’s The White Nationalist Manifesto here
It’s also not going to work for your rehabilitation. There are probably some Alt-Right figures who would consider a similar move to Heimbach, but they don’t have the ability to acknowledge any failures or wrongdoing. Contrition is required for this process — you can’t blame everything on other people and insist you were never really a racist. You have to be forthcoming about your past sins. Heimbach did this, but it’s impossible to imagine other figures doing the same. Their egos could never bear it.
There’s also the demand that you have to inform on your former comrades. Heimbach did not go that far in his rehabilitation — at least not yet — which limits his redemption. The same can be said of former National Socialist Movement leader Jeff Schoep, who recently disavowed his past views to help with his legal troubles. Leftists demand information in exchange for praise.
Compare Heimbach to notorious turncoat Katie McHugh. McHugh continues to offer information on a variety of Right-wing figures to Antifa journalists. Her treason has brought her a degree of praise from the Left. She’s appeared on a few popular liberal podcasts to share her harrowing story of attending Right-wing events and accepting their help for her career.
But even though her doxing has threatened the jobs of White House advisers, she’s not exactly getting what she wants. Nobody is publishing her writing, and no one cares about her takes on politics. She will never get a byline in Jacobin or HuffPost. Leftists just want her to dish dirt on the Right. They’ll just discard her once she is squeezed dry. The Left is not going to make her a leading pundit or offer her the opportunities conservatism did. It just allows her to satiate resentments.
When you sell out, you’re never offered a chance to be a serious political figure. You’re only a tool for groups like the SPLC or ADL. No one is going to see you as a leading political thinker or activist. The life of Christian Piccolini is the most you can aspire to. Right-wingers looking to rebrand don’t want that.
The better option, in wignats’ minds, is to hope the Left comes to appreciate Right-wingers’ support for single-payer healthcare and UBI. They reason that the majority of their messaging must be geared to winning over disaffected Bernie Sanders supporters. “Conservatives” are useless and only deserve spite.
This strategy assumes that hardcore Leftists will unify with White Nationalists to secure the bag. It imagines a Left that doesn’t exist. The modern Left hates white people and nationalism far more than it hates billionaires and capitalism. The average Chapo Trap House listener is a bitter loser who takes his dejection out on his fellow whites and traditional social order. A certain segment of them will eventually wake up and realize the error of their ways; the majority won’t.
We should strive to win over the smarter, healthier Leftists to our side. But that doesn’t mean we need to pretend we are the Left to convert them.
The Left definitely doesn’t want the support of a few fringe Right-wingers. Wignats don’t have the numbers to form a solid political coalition. Any alliance with wignats would jeopardize Left-wing political efforts to work within the Democratic Party and establishments. They would be threatened with deplatforming and unemployment. They would lose many within their own ranks who would never take any alliance with “fascists.” All this, and you just get the most hated people in America to like you more.
An alliance must benefit both parties. This alliance only benefits the Right.
There are some interesting crossovers between the far-Right and far-Left at the moment. Former Breitbart chieftain Steve Bannon appeared on the “anti-woke” Left podcast Red Scare this month, surprising the entire political spectrum. The conversation was cordial, but not that groundbreaking. Most of the Left was furious Red Scare had a “Nazi” on, while the Right was thrilled with the development.
Would Red Scare take a step further and have a Charlottesville participant on? Doubtful. That would be too far for their allies, gain them no favors from the mainstream Right, and outrage their audience.
Red Scare has a sizable audience, but it is an outlier. Most of the Left has zero tolerance for anything Right of Bernie Sanders. Joe Biden is a fascist and a racist to many of them. Just imagine what they think of people who support immigration restrictions.
But the red-brown dream lives on. There is one example of a semi-successful red-brown alliance. However, it is not an example that can be emulated. During the 1993 Russian parliamentary crisis, communist lawmakers welcomed the support of nationalists who also opposed free-market reforms. Boris Yeltsin and his compatriots blasted this red-brown alliance as a fascist threat to the Motherland. Yeltsin, of course, won this struggle with the help of military firepower.
The alliance lives on for many Right-wingers as what could be. Yet, they overlook who composed this alliance. The Russian communists of 1993 were very different from any Leftists who currently exist in the West. They were not fighting for trans rights or open borders. They were fighting to restore national dignity and preserve Russian power. They celebrated traditional values, and many military commanders supported their struggle. They were more nationalistic and conservative than many so-called nationalists in the West. They didn’t mind that a few Right-wing militants offered their support.
There’s no possible scenario where this would arise in the West. Our communists are more likely to be transgender sex workers than hardened military veterans who want their country back.
Instead of trying to make fantasy alliances work, the Dissident Right should focus on appealing more to the people who are actually open to our ideas. We will not get anywhere by further alienating ourselves from the mainstream by embracing communism. We obviously don’t mind state intervention in the economy, and we aren’t embarrassed by big government. That doesn’t mean we need to defend Stalin and Mao to win over Leftists who no longer exist.
At best, the Leftist flirtation leads to embarrassing overtures to Bernie Bros. At worst, it turns you into Matt Heimbach. It’s better to focus on building our own political power and growing our own numbers through sensible ideas than pretending we’re actually Leftists.
We’re on the Right, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of.
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34 comments
Strange days indeed. Think I’ll go listen to “Strange Days” by The Doors.
I could not believe that video when I first came onto it. I thought it was an April Fool’s joke or a seriously good infiltration op. Sadly, neither of those options are true (probably).
Making overtures to the Left is an interesting and non-trivial topic of discussion. Much like the Right in its current incarnation, the Left consists of many sub-groups, many of which get along with each other just about as well as Johnson and Spencer (i.e. not at all). The serious Left – those who have read their Žižek, as Spencer would say – share a lot in common with the serious Right: a disdain for modernity and “woke” culture. They are distinctly “illiberal”, offering a critique of the modern world and the Enlightenment from the Left.
Is this enough common ground to find common cause? I’m not sure, but one certainly shouldn’t rule it out off-hand.
Once again, Mr. Hampton delivers a dose of political reality. The major problem is the false Left vs Right dichotomy set up by the two-party system in America. Anything to the left of center-right on the economic axis of the political compass has become associated with open borders, hedonism, gun control, etc. in the minds of Republican voters. Nevertheless, the majority of whites that are most open to our views on race and nationalism are Republican voters. I believe it is an easier task to get these Republicans voters to move to the left on economic issues, than it is to get Democrat voters to move right on race and nationalism. Constantly attacking and insulting conservatives in the way Spencer-wing does strikes me as being counter-productive. Although, this wouldn’t be as much of an issue if we had our own explicitly white nationalist third party that all white nationalists could unite behind. While the struggles of third parties in America are real, the Republican Party might very well be irreformable.
This red-brown fantasy comes up every once in a while. But only on the right.
Leftists (whether commies, socialists or globohomos) hate us more than anything or anyone else. Yes, the commies and socialists say they don’t like corporations, capitalism and neocons. But they would gladly take them over us and it wouldn’t even be close.
The closest I’ve seen to this red-brown alliance coming true is the group gathered around the late John Taunton. It used to combine racialists, nationalists and communists/socialists united by desire for immigration and population control combined with pro-environmental policies. Almost all of them were atheist or agnostic whether on the left or right.
But this group is very old now and it seems the nationalists have won out. The leftists either died or made their peace with open borders, infinity Africans and environmental disaster.
I believe if there ever is such an alliance, let them make overtures to us. Let them cater to us. Let us call the shots. We can pick and choose and be very careful about working together.
I for one, never entertained any illusions about the possibility of a Left-Right alliance as they stand today. The problem with this theory is in that it demands that what is fundamental – which is basic values, principles and ethical positions – be cast away in order to rally around “issues”, which are as transitive as they are superficial. “Issues” change day-to-day, are peddled by the media, and people who obsess over them are susceptible to manipulation. It takes just one big “happening” for ultra-trad-based-cynical-mediasavy Right Wingers to quote a mainstream media outlet and say “See, I told you so, New York is digging mass graves”.
People like Dicky Spencer are ruefully lacking in imagination, or simply do not talk to people outside of social media, and have no idea that the Left has entirely different vision in mind when musingabout such things as “injustice”, “solidarity”, etc. For the Left, it is always and forever going to be rooting for the underdog, doing away with the Big Man, resentment, petty jealousy, revulsion with all kinds of rules, blaming the system, etc. A Right winger imagines a hardened, blue collar family with perhaps simple-minded, but diligent offspring, to whom a new car, or a little loan, or cheaper healthcare would do wonders to improve their lives, and suddenly, they think they got common ground with the Left,when nothing could be farther from the truth.
Besides, what would be accomplished by this crusade? That America would resemble Sweden more? To what avail?
Although I hesitate to put any hope in Trump, he could potentially convert the Bernie Bros if he “ran to the left” of Biden. What would happen if Trump were to call for Medicare for All, an amnesty on student debt, and some form of UBI.
I think that populists should run to the Left on these issues. We can take voters from the Left, but there are very few Leftist ideologues that would change sides. These people hold their own voters in contempt, as a bunch of Archie Bunkers.
While I agree with the article, I will caution people that by leaving the red-brown alliance door open, we give an opportunity for economic leftists to make a separate and face-saving peace with us when we are indeed powerful enough to be reckoned with.
The “red/brown” thing has always been a non-starter. The two ideologies are polar opposites. It’s pure fantasy, like black republicans, conservative latinos and “bipartisanship”.
I have to ask this.
I frequently wish to Reply to someone’s comment, but for the past few weeks, have been unable to do so. I don’t seem to have trouble on any other site I frequent. Nor have I discovered any computer malfunctions. Are others experiencing this issue? Is CC aware of this?
I would note that when I try to access CC now (and for the past month or perhaps longer), I get some weird “countdown” image, which then “redirects” me here. Not sure if all this is interrelated. Thanks.
We’re migrating from our present infrastructure to something new. The long and short of that means features, like the replies, that break in the meantime will be fixed after we make bigger changes. Sorry about it being a bit of a pain.
The interstitial page was something we put on. It filters out bad IPs, helping to prevent the site from being overloaded. We have seen a rash of denial-of-service attacks both on our site and others in the movement over recent months.
Looking after our own “Volk” in hard times does not mean we are becoming Jewish Bolshevik Communists. Remember that corporate Capitalism is no less Jewish than “liberalism.”
A certain animal-loving Austrian artist had no problem with looking after his people.
This article has been long-overdue. Thank you for rebuking the LARPing wignats.
Some of the “Bernie Bros” may come over to our side, especially now that Sanders has sold out his base for the second election in a row. But, these White male blue-collar workers were never actually “leftist” (read: SJW) in the first place. They were only voting for their economic interests from the start.
You’re not going to convince actual bonified communists of our ideas, and Sanders’ SJWs supporters (i.e., the “woke”) were never /our guys/ to start. Many of those people are very dysgenic looking, Edward Dutton’s “spiteful mutant” characterization is apt. Those kinds are not susceptible to any form of rightism
I also can’t reply to comments.
No surprise with Heimbach. He is the usual sort of unstable goofball who tends to be attracted to dissident politics (and his wife’s stepmom); bouncing around from one ideology to another.
I agree that an alliance between the socialist left and new right is impossible, but the left could end up fracturing to the point where some of them start to notice that traditionalist values make sense and can be combined to some extent with socialist policies.
In trying to seduce leftists, we have to always remember what it was that made us want to start down this path ourselves. For me, as I’m sure for most, economic policy was not one of them. It was the prospect of losing something irreplaceable, through the ever-increasing breakdown of culture and society, with no hope of ever getting it back. This notion alone, coupled with the issue of Islam, is what cured me of left-wing socialism.
The right holds the truth, the way of nature and the health of the human race and soul in highest regard. If you are facing a crowd that visibly doesn’t care for any of those things, there’s no point in attempting a conversion.
“Economic justice” is called capitalism. We don’t need to prop up losers of our “volk”, we need them to not breed and hopefully die out.
Also, russian nationalists and communists are indeed the same thing. They pretend to be victims yet they are both responsible for atrocities against nationalities bordering that evil empire and the peaceful minorities inside of it, unlike the aggressive, criminal russian “minorities” in those other countries.
It has been my experience that White Republicans are much more receptive to the truth about race than White Bernie bros. All White Bernie Bros who I have known except for one (& I know/have known quite a few) are 100% on board with all of the social justice anti White garbage agenda. I think that those who are ostensibly on our side and pushing the idea that massive amounts of Bernie bros can be converted to nationalists are delusional or have questionable motives, or are weird misfits who don’t have many interactions with people outside of our politics in real life.
The Republican Party, for all of its many faults, is the implicitly White party and most people understand that. Yes there’s the constant virtue signaling from that set and nauseating promotion of “based” nonwhites but I would definitely argue that a much higher percentage of White Republicans than White Bernie bros at least have the right instincts on race deep down inside. Because of those healthy instincts, it should be easier to convince them that unfettered capitalism is a bad idea than to convince the vast majority of White leftists that we need borders, mass deportations, and other sensible policies along these lines because as others have stated, these leftists sincerely believe that we are evil incarnate and most are too far gone to be saved. It’s true I believe that social justice/anti-White garbage is the chief concern for many of them, economics and everything else is lower on the scale of importance.
I think most of us here realize that whatever economic model we use is not of primary importance. Personally I think a combination of free market and socialism is best, unfettered capitalism with no restrictions on harmful businesses and business practices is bad & so is communism. As above we should focus recruitment efforts on those with healthier instincts on race, and that is by a wide margin Republican types. This will bear more fruit than focusing on economic leftist types, the extreme majority of whom have very unhealthy unhealthy racial instincts.
Screw nationalism. What we need is to stop appealing to national borders and start uniting the white race.
“For Socialism in itself is anything but an international creation. As a noble conception it has indeed grown up exclusively in Aryan hearts: it owes its intellectual glories only to Aryan brains. It is entirely alien to the ***.
The *** will always be the born champion of private capital in its worst form, that of unchecked exploitation…. Voltaire, as well as Rousseau, together with our German Fichte and many another – they are all without exception united in their recognition that the *** is not only a foreign element differing in his essential character, which is utterly harmful to the nature of the Aryan, but that the ***ish people in itself stands against us as our deadly foe and so will stand against us always and for all time.
The master-stroke of the *** was to claim the leadership of the fourth estate: he founded the Movement both of the Social Democrats and the Communists. His policy was twofold: he had his ‘apostles’ in both political camps. Amongst the parties of the Right he encouraged those features which were most repugnant to the people – the passion for money, unscrupulous methods in trade which were employed so ruthlessly as to give rise to the proverb ‘Business, too, marches over corpses.’ And the *** attacked the parties of the Right. ***s wormed their way into the families of the upper classes: it was from the ***s that the latter took their wives. The result was that in a short time it was precisely the ruling class which became in its character completely estranged from its own people.”
-It seems someone agrees with you
@ G.B
Wrong, what we need is to empower white countries and their borders through nationalism, making them strong individually so that they can be strong together.
With regard to the plea expressed in the video, I am always intrigued at the notion that socialism is a repudiation of “hate.” The pope Bergoglio made a similar analogy when he stated that the Marxists in South America had replaced the Church’s role in their compassion for the poor.
Everyone adapts overtime. Rail on Conservatives for being “Cuckservatives” but cuck a few years after they do. You can’t see how absurd your view changes are because you have that internal dialogue tracking it and trekking you through. A story of reason only you see. Plausible in a twisted way.
Perhaps you hold strong to your position but those whom you know and care about absorb prominent thought and slowly persuade you unintentionally; Those whom you respect gradually adopt minor pieces of the dominant trend over time and you begin to feel left behind. Naturally you have to catch up. But not so brazenly; you do it your way. Slowly see those whom remain with you as old, stale, dull or unfulfilling etc. Then you become the bishop to your flock and convert even more to the dominant trend. Everyone adapts.
An endless game of social influence and trend; orchestrated or otherwise. The Right, White Nationalists, traditionalist, etc. don’t know what true belief is. To think we could ever be as resilient as Jews is laughable. Aporia is plague.
For a touch of humor, here (from the NYT article) is something we can laugh at:
Mr. Picciolini said he believed that Mr. Schoep was diving too quickly into intervention work without taking the proper steps to understand his own issues — that he needed to see a therapist and go into the communities he targeted, listen to the people he hurt and ask for forgiveness.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/us/jeff-schoep-white-nationalist-reformer.html
Picciolini and Schoep must once have had some dignity. Now they could both give tearful interviews on Oprah-like talk shows, sobbing while thanking their therapists for uncovering the hidden traumas that caused them to believe that whites deserve their own nations.
I’ve always found it difficult to understand turncoats.
I can understand a white nationalist concluding that we will fail, so he decides that it’s not worth trying any more. I cannot grasp how any reasonably intelligent WN could ever sincerely conclude that we are *wrong*, either factually or morally.
The best explanation, of course, is that “recovering racists” are just lying.
***
Great comment by Vauquelin.
For me, as I’m sure for most, economic policy was not one of them. It was the prospect of losing something irreplaceable, through the ever-increasing breakdown of culture and society, with no hope of ever getting it back…
Racial nationalists/separatists should be adept at arguing our position from either a ‘left’ or ‘right’ perspective since our perspective is not on that Left/Right political continuum. Notwithstanding the positions of some of my European comrades, in the US it helps to be a populist, to believe that ‘what the people want, the people should get’ filtered through a racial lens. As a Person of Boomer, I’m so glad to have finally come to the White Nationalist perspective. It’s so clarifying: What’s good for Whites is good. What’s bad for Whites is bad. As a populist, the people decide the details. Yes, the people need to be lead, but they need to be lead by those who love them and like them not by technocrats and social engineers. The people really do know what’s right when they hear it. Sure, they can be bamboozled by ‘sharp’ operators, but never permanently. Whites almost universally have buyers remorse on ‘civil rights’ and ‘equality’. The foundations of the neoliberal regime have eroded to almost nothing and the Racial Right has the only set of ideas for how to craft a new, better and more human order from the wreckage of what neoliberalism has wrought.
PS: I can also verify @Lord Shang’s experience. The option to reply to previous comments has not worked for some time.
My message for turncoats:
https://rainbowalbrecht.wordpress.com/2019/10/28/how-to-quit-the-alt-right-and-stop-being-a-right-wing-extremist/
I don’t know but for my part, I don’t like the radical left, what the democratic party actually is today, being given one tiny bit of credit for ANYTHING.
@Mike Ricci
Yes. It is called National Socialism.
(I am unable to reply directly on your comment).
I can’t reply to comments any more. I also can’t update my RSS feed since the introduction of this Cloudfare system. I wonder if it’s related.
I am guessing that probably 50% to 70% of the White people in the world can be classed as bourgeois or aspiring to be, and that would include — and I am guessing again — about 75% of the lovely White women. So, can someone please explain how White Nationalists can ignore this class, or actively work against it. Sorry, I must have failed Socialism 101 in college, so I need some simple explanations.
First I’ve heard of the Red/Brown would be alliance. We’re the Browns I assume? Why?
Yes, Leftists have a deep contempt for human nature as does the Far Right. We’re supremacists as are they. It’s simply not enough though. We want to improve man while Stalin dreamed of crossing us with Apes to create the perfect worker. We want to go up and they want to go down.
Didn’t Greg Johnson say the Left was closer to us a few years ago if they just become racially aware?
Re: Heimbach: I knew nothing about this guy, but I instinctively distrust open Nazis. I distrust their ethics, esp when the chips are down, and their judgment. What kind of a person today parades around as a Nazi? Really. There was much that was laudable and worthy of study in the Third Reich. But there was also a great deal of cruelty and sheer evil, not to mention the incredible carnage that Nazi arrogance inflicted upon fellow whites, as well as Jews. Many Germans of that time have nothing to apologize for in supporting the Nazis (esp in light of alternatives, the main one of which was far more horrific and evil Bolshevism). But many of the Nazis themselves were indeed morally repulsive, and no amount of ‘revisionism’ will ever change that fact for dispassionate and honorable men.
The actual moral status of Nazism, however, may be less relevant as a criticism of people like Heimbach than the fact that Nazism, fairly or not, has become a kind of public myth denoting absolute evil. What kind of person would be tempted to think that wrapping oneself in that myth is the way to advance white interests? A person who is either a) genuinely evil; b) really stupid; c) unhinged; d) a closet antiwhite subversive; or e) possessed of an incredible lack of discernment and judgment.
Whatever answer is correct, that is not someone serious white preservationists should engage with.
A red-brown combo HAS been pulled off quite succesfully in Eastern Europe over the last years.
For example the “Attack!” party, which is totally a mix of far rightism and far leftism:
https://infogalactic.com/info/Attack_(political_party) It’s mix of anti-Zionism, anti-NATO, and annti-Muslim message has gotten it support from both lefties and righties, to the extent of helping Attack have a consistent presence inside national (and supramational) parliament, and even sometimes combines with others for a ruling coalition.
https://www.vnnforum.com/showthread.php?t=528051
Hungary’s Jobbik too, to an extent.
But most former commie countries have at least one of those parties, if not on the level of national and EU parliaments, then at least on the level of mayors and municipalities.
Also, if you go east enough, until you reach Russia, the Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and such, there the local communist parties (who also are in parliament) are pretty much already “Traditionalist Workers Parties” with Christian icons and law and order messages and stuff.
This fusion has already happened all across the whole former totalitarian half of Europe. It hasn’t *take over* anywhere, but is a serious presence in mainstream politics on the level of parliaments and governing coalition partners.
So it CAN be done, and HAS been done, not only in theory, but very much in practice. The issue is rather can it happen in the GloboHomo Anglosphere? Maybe. Maybe there’s like 10% of leftist populists who can be given a place to belong in this manner. The thing is, it can only ever work on a local level. A municipal councilor here, a mayor there. But it’s a start.
Very good statements from lord Shang and as always, Irmin Vincent.
Re “identifying” as a Nazi, sometimes people who are so disaffected with or who feel so exiled from the prevailing order will consciously identify with its nemesis, even if that is mythical, as much of our historical understanding of that period may be. For example, in India in a book called Many Ramayanas, the author describes a group of low caste or untouchable people who actually identify with the demons in the Ramayana! It may be that some working class whites are psychologically taking this approach.
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