Counter-Currents
7,991 words
“The groyper thing is going to burn out fairly soon (don’t believe me? Let’s talk again next fall).”
— David Cole, November 26, 2019
When I heard about the upcoming Million MAGA March, I was torn as to whether I wanted to go. I generally despise traveling. I knew I should go but I really, really didn’t want to. And yet, something told me that if I didn’t go, I would regret it.[1]
I was planning to go to Charlottesville, but I couldn’t get off work the day before. I could theoretically have still gone but the logistics would have been insane. I would have had to go straight from work to the bus station and then taken a 14-hour bus ride and then gotten there sometime in the afternoon. Then I would have had to take a cab to and from the event. Eventually, I just said “Fuck that. This all sounds very complicated, annoying, and expensive. I’ll be there in spirit.”
But with the Million MAGA March, I knew I wouldn’t have either of those excuses. I knew up front that this was going to be something huge and historic. Plus, DC was fairly close, a ticket was cheap, and the event was within walking distance of the station. I had the money, so that wasn’t a problem. And it was taking place in DC, so it was unlikely to descend into a shitshow. Given all this, I knew that if I missed this event, not only would I regret it, but I would have no excuses.
These days, I can afford a train ticket. However, I waited until the last minute to buy one, so by the time I tried, they were sold out. Alright, I guess I’ll take a bus. I checked Greyhound and they were sold out too. I dug deeper and I eventually got a $20 ticket from some no-name bus company (Flixbus, if you must know). The bus left at 3:00 AM and was set to arrive in DC at 8:00 AM. I naively hoped that I might be able to catch some sleep on the bus, but that didn’t happen. I can sometimes fall asleep on a plane with moderate difficulty, on a train with the assistance of alcohol, but sleeping on a bus is impossible for me.
Behind me were a couple of black guys. They struck up a conversation. Listening to them talk, it turned out that they were also going to the Million MAGA March. Ah, so they are based black guys. Eventually, I gave up on trying to get to sleep and struck up a conversation with the two. One of the black guys was a dude named Tim. He seemed pretty Alt-Lite but fairly well-informed. He was up to speed on the various voter fraud talking points. Tim said he was a writer and did “investigative journalism.” My intuition suspected that there was some exaggerated black braggadocio to these claims. Upon clarification, he had a blog and did Twitter. The other black guy was named Joe. He seemed like a fairly normie MAGA guy who just so happened to be black. I talked with the based black guys for a bit about the voter fraud situation, COVID, and other stuff.
Eventually, this fresh-faced 20-year-old white kid from Boston came up to us and said “I heard you guys talking and saying some straight facts so I thought I would come join you.”
(I won’t tell you this kid’s name because it’s one of those newfangled white names. People like to make fun of blacks for giving their kids bizarre names, but to be honest, white people give their kids pretty weird names too. White people will do that thing where they take a normal name but they change one letter. “Hello, I’m Kennifer.” I mean, is naming your kid Brayleigh really less stupid than naming your kid Tashiqua? Okay, maybe Brayleigh is a lot kinder to the ear than Tashiqua, but is it any less stupid?)
Anyway, this white kid from Boston had one of those names. The poor thing. It would basically be doxing him to tell you what it is, because I doubt that there are any more than 3 people in the universe who have it. I asked the kid if he was a Groyper, and he said “yes,” which was not surprising. The kid had Groyper written all over him.
The four of us were now a clique, and eventually, other Trump supporters on the bus started moving to the back to join us. There was one long-haired fellow. He was a libertarian but was apparently high on Antifa’s shitlist. He told me about how Antifash Gordon and Spencer Sunshine had put him on blast. And then others came.
By the end of the bus ride, there were about 9 of us, and we resolved to walk to the event together. However, we eventually got disconnected, and it was just the original four: me, the two based black guys, and the kid from Boston. I had until now kept secret the fact that I was a star writer for one of the major white nationalist websites. I didn’t want to get into it with the black guys. But as we were walking, I did pull Kid Boston aside and say: “By the way, I’m Travis LeBlanc. I write for Counter-Currents.” He said he was not familiar with Counter-Currents. I asked if he knew who Greg Johnson was. He said he did, and I told him “Well, Counter-Currents is his website.” Kid Boston told me that he started watching Nick Fuentes about a year before the Groyper Wars, but before that had been a 4chan lurker. By Groyper standards, that pretty much made him an OG.
It was pretty early by the time we got to Freedom Plaza; about 9 o’clock, and things weren’t supposed to get going until around noon. We had some time to kill. Tim said he knew DC pretty well and knew of a nifty diner where we could get breakfast. It was a short walk. On the way to the diner, a white boomer woman passed us by, smiled at Tim, and said “Oh, thank you. We need more black Republicans.” Sigh. So much work to be done. . .
When we got to the diner, the place was packed with Trump supporters. There were a ton of Proud Boys there, mixed in with a fair amount of normie MAGA types.
As I sat in the diner waiting for my food, I looked over the room, and one of the things that stood out to me was the fact that not a single person in the place was wearing a mask. No exaggeration. Not. A. Single. Person. The only people wearing masks were the staff. A few people had their masks around their chin, but most people were going commando with the face covering. COVID skepticism appears to be the default among Trump supporters.
It was somewhat surreal to look at this. A year ago, this would have been a perfectly usual scene. A bunch of people sitting down in a restaurant eating breakfast. But in November 2020, I was looking at a scene of defiant civil disobedience. I thought this was illegal. I didn’t know how the restaurant was allowed to do this. They were screening people. Going in, they took my temperature using one of those laser thingies. But I thought sit-down restaurants were banned, and yet here we were.
After breakfast, we went outside, and it turned out that the Proud Boys had selected that location for their meetup spot.
I have some experience with the Proud Boys. A friend of mine was in Gavin McInnes’ extended entourage and I was present at the first-ever Proud Boys meetup, which took place at some Irish bar in Long Island City. I also went to a couple of Proud Boys meetups during the Gavin era, but never got that involved.
One thing I noticed about the Proud Boys in DC that day is that they seemed, on average, a lot older than I remembered. At the few meetups I went to, the crowd seemed mostly late millennial with maybe some early zoomers. However, the Proud Boys I saw at the Million MAGA March seemed to skew older, mostly early millennials and quite a few Gen X and Gen Y types. It may be that older people are more likely to have the money to travel to DC. But I think most of the younger Proud Boys defected to the Alt-Right circa 2016-17. They also seemed less hipsterish and more Chad. Once the Proud Boys got a reputation for street action and confrontation with Antifa, that attracted a new type of person.
People in the Dissident Right give the Proud Boys a lot of grief for being CivNat cucks. I mean, sure. Ideologically, they leave much to be desired. And yet there is a lot to like about the Proud Boys. They place a very high value on masculinity, and their sense of brotherhood is admirable. They are a very tight-knit group.
As we stood there, the Proud Boys would occasionally break out into spontaneous chants of “four more years” and “fuck Antifa.” Their spirits were high and morale was off the charts.
The Proud Boys are certainly having a moment right now. They recently got a semi-endorsement in an internationally-televised live presidential debate followed by a much less-publicized disavowal from none other than President Trump himself. Of course, the Trump apologist will insist that his initial reaction represented Trump’s true feelings. Trump’s kneejerk reaction, his gut instinct in the spur of the moment, was to defend the Proud Boys, and his later disavowal was a pragmatic necessity done with a wink and a nod. I’m neither endorsing nor disavowing this claim. I’m just telling you what the argument is.
There are currently rumors that the Proud Boys are experiencing a crisis in leadership. Word on the street has it that Kyle Chapman, AKA Based Stickman (remember him?), is attempting to oust the Proud Boys’ current leader, the Afro-Cuban Enrique Tarrio, and intends to transform Proud Boys into an explicitly White Nationalist organization.
In a recent post, Chapman declared:
Due to the recent failure of Proud Boy Chairman Enrique Tarrio to conduct himself with honor and courage on the battlefield, it has been decided that I, Kyle Chapman, reassume my post as President of Proud Boys effective immediately. We will no longer cuck to the left by appointing token negroes as our leaders. We will no longer allow homosexuals or other ‘undesirables’ into our ranks. We will confront the Zionist criminals who wish to destroy our civilization.
He has also said that Proud Boys’ talk of “Western Civilization” has always been a dogwhistle (which is probably true) and that they should just drop the pretenses. “We recognize that the West was built by the White Race alone and we owe nothing to any other race” (which is definitely true).
Eh. . . I mean. . .
Look, I’m the last guy to criticize any person or group for wanting to go in a more ethnonationalist direction. But the fact that Chapman is talking like a movie villain (or a typical wignat) makes my spidey-senses tingle. Best case scenario, this guy’s a LARPer. Worst case scenario, he’s a Fed. Somewhere in between those two extremes is the possibility that he was just drunk when he wrote that.
Using the word “negro” is one of those things that can sound either retro-cool or tryhard cringe depending on context. It’s like calling someone a “sodomite.” Now, if you are an old-school kind of guy, you can really make “negro” work for you. But if you’re not, it’s like “Bro, you are trying too hard.”
Now, I am a lover of all things old-timey. But in my opinion, if you are going to go old-timey, you should go full old-timey. Don’t just go old-timey with your racism. If you are going to call blacks negros, you should also refer to cat ladies as “spinsters” (“old maid” is also acceptable). Stop calling them “thots” and start calling them “floozies” (unless they are a thot for married and/or rich guys, in which case they are an “adventuress”). Go full old-timey, and then when you use the word “negro,” people will say “Well, he’s just an old-school kind of guy.”
Personally, I think “colored” has more retro charm.
Secondly, the fact that the Proud Boys are not explicitly white nationalist gives them enough plausible deniability that they can go out in public and confront Antifa in ways that we cannot. If they went full white nationalist, the establishment would start throwing these guys 30-year prison sentences for jaywalking.
I’m always happy to see people come over to the white nationalist side, but the Proud Boys do have some value as a junior varsity team.
While we were standing around with the Proud Boys, some boomer came walking up with a camera in his hand filming the scene. Physiognomy suggested he was a liberal. Experience suggested that he was likely Antifa and doing recon work for the anti-fascists who were assembling down the street. One of the Proud Boys yelled at the guy: “Fuck Biden! Go ahead, support a pedophile!” Ah, he means well. Whatever we in the Dissident Right think of the Proud Boys, Antifa considers them full-blown Nazis, de facto if not de jure.
I watched the Proud Boys as they mingled. One of them approached our group. I was taking pictures of them and I think he may have suspected that I was either Antifa myself or possibly a journalist. But after talking to us, the Proud Boy seemed convinced that we were, in fact, honest-to-God Trump supporters.
Before heading out to the event, the Proud Boys all took a knee to pray for the good Lord’s blessing for a successful day of activism. I know a lot of white nationalists are not too hot on Christianity. I know all the arguments and I get it. I understand where they are coming from. The counter-argument from pro-Christian Dissident Rightists has always been to point to the potential of Christianity as a social binding force. Seeing the Proud Boys come together for prayer was certainly evidence of this. I would see more evidence later in the day with the Groypers who use “Christ is King” as a battle cry.
We followed the Proud Boys on their walk to Freedom Plaza, which was already teeming with Trump enthusiasts. Around this time, I got separated from the three guys from the bus and was kicking it solo for the rest of the day.
If I weren’t a believer in physiognomy before reaching Freedom Plaza, I was soon afterward. White liberals and white conservatives just look different. They look about as different from each other as Italians and Germans do. You occasionally meet someone who could pass for the other, but you will guess right over 90% of the time. As someone who has spent the last several years in one of the most liberal cities in America, that’s something that really stood out to me: just how different conservatives look. Part of it may be differences in fashion and dietary habits. Maybe with a different haircut, clothes, and a vegan diet, some of these people might look more liberal, but I don’t know. People just look conservative, and being around them felt like I had traveled not just to a different city but a different country. I’m sure Ryan Faulk could come in here and give a big-brained explanation as to why that is, pointing out the different migration patterns between red and blue states, and all the gene correlations that go along with a conservative disposition. But that was something that was really hard not to notice.
There was quite a bit of cringe going on. All the cringe you would expect from a normie conservative crowd. I’ve been redpilled for quite a while but never before had I ever felt as redpilled as I did that day. “The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you are inside, look around, and what do you see? Civnats, Christcucks, classical liberals, Zio-shills. The very minds of the people we are trying to save.”
Much brouhaha has been made of Trump’s uncharacteristic-for-a-Republican popularity among POC, particularly blacks and Hispanics. Several theories have been put forth to explain this and almost all of them are stupid.
Many conservatives have hailed this as evidence that blacks are beginning to see the wisdom of conservatism. That maybe blacks are finally (FINALLY!!!) starting to assimilate into white culture. Others have said that the Republicans have become the true party of inclusivity. You see, Democrats divide people into groups, black, white, gay, straight, trans, cis, but by golly, Republicans look at those same people and all they see are Americans. I heard sentiments like this expressed by speakers approximately 8 billion times throughout the day.
Over on the Dirtbag Left, the Bernie Bros have been claiming that Trump’s support among POC is evidence of POC’s awakening class consciousness. The Democrats, they say, have become too bougie. They are now the party of the college-educated and the tech giants, so POC are drifting to the Republicans whom they perceive as the more working-class party (at least rhetorically, if not actually). They are just following their class interests.
They are both overthinking it.
I think Trump’s popularity with these groups has to do mostly with Trump personally and little else. Blacks dig alpha behavior and an effortlessly cool don’t-give-a-fuck attitude regardless of race. Just look at blacks’ reverence for the movie Scarface. Back in the 1930s and 40s, James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart were both extraordinarily popular with blacks and young black men would strive to emulate their onscreen personas. Blacks are often credited with inventing the concept of “cool” during the jazz era, but a lot of that vibe was actually blacks trying to imitate Humphrey Bogart.
For their part, Hispanics, like all Latino people, have a soft spot for strong men. I doubt that someone like Nikki Haley or Jeb Bush could inspire the same level of passion from these groups. I doubt even an ideological Trumpian like Tucker Carlson could.
Whatever the cause, Trump’s support among minorities is apparently a very real thing. If anything, they appeared to be some of Trump’s most passionate supporters. The crowd seemed to get whiter as the day progressed and then darker again near the end, meaning that the POC were among the first to get there and among the last to leave. It could be that the POC were disproportionately locals, but who knows?
I don’t know if I would describe Trump’s POC support as “significant,” but it was certainly conspicuous. I don’t know if there were a lot there or if the ones who were there just stood out more. But there were plenty, and it felt like half of them had a mic in their hand. Republicans are supposed to hate affirmative action, but they definitely affirmative action the shit out of any POC with conservative views.
Like this guy.
The white dude on the right was from some outlet whose name I can not remember. It was some pro-life group or something. He was going through the crowd at Freedom Plaza, picking out all the blacks, handing them a mic, and getting them to make pro-life statements. He was like a kid in a candy store looking at all the blacks in Trump hats. It was like Christmas for this guy.
Sigh. . . So much work to be done. . .
There have always been black Republicans for as long as I have been alive. Not only were they extreme outliers, but most of them gave off a strong Uncle Tom vibe. Either they were highly assimilated and white-presenting and/or they gave off a stench of ruthless careerism. Now, if there is one thing I love, it’s whiteness. While they say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, even I had a hard time respecting these guys. “C’mon, bro. We subjugated and enslaved your people. At least try to make it look like you put up a fight.”
However, one thing you couldn’t not notice was the number of black-presenting black Trump supporters, which is the real novelty. Though, while watching some of them, I was wondering if I was actually watching some kind of minstrel show.
I passed by one black guy giving a speech on a megaphone just as he was talking about illegal immigration. He was saying: “Yo, I can’t just cross duh border over into Russia. Like, yo. I’m an American. This right here is my shit. You can’t just walk into my shit like that.”
There’s an extremely popular genre of YouTube videos: black people reacting to white music, usually hard rock, classic rock, and heavy metal. They almost always react positively, with stereotypically black enthusiasm. They will play some Led Zeppelin, then say “Aw shit! That beat is dooooope! Hell yeah, that guitar solo was hot. Dayum, that change up was tight!” And they do all the black facial expressions and body language, head bobbing. The whole bit.
These videos get millions of views. I see my normie friends post these videos all the time. “Two black guys listen to “Crazy Train” and they love it!”
Apparently, there is huge demand from white people to have their taste in music blessed by black people. And they don’t want to hear it from Carlton Banks. They want to hear an honest-to-God “real nigga” tell them that they have good taste in music. And apparently, quite a few blacks have picked up on this fact and have found a way to monetize it.
I imagine that a very high proportion of the people watching these videos are red-state conservatives. Hard rock, heavy metal, and classic rock is really the music of the red-state conservative. It’s direct, masculine, unpretentious, and heterosexual (albeit frequently unintentionally homoerotic). It gives them false hope for a future multicultural world where people of all races, religions, and orientations can put aside their differences, join hands, and listen to Black Sabbath together.
I wonder if a lot of these blackety-black Trump supporters are working a similar grift. Maybe it’s not about the money with all of them. Maybe some just like getting a pat on the head from whitey.
I’m going to predict right now that this will become the hot new trend at Conservative Inc. We are going to see the emergence of the “real nigga conservative.” Con Inc. has been pushing black conservatives on us for decades, but I think we will see a sort of “black authenticity” arms race.
If the GOP is going to maintain people’s faith in the feasibility of multiculturalism, they have to be doing more than just putting forward a bunch of Carlton Banks types. Everyone knows that Carlton Banks types are outliers and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future. If they are going to keep people on the multicultural plantation, they are going to show that conservative ideas have appeal with “real niggas.”
I can only imagine how bad it is going to get. “Look, y’all. That bitch-ass Assad is wack. He be gassing his own people and shit! America needs to go in there, whoop that nigga upside the head, and be like ‘Blow! America, bitch!’ Cause look, yo. In duh hood, we believe in having your homie’s back. Ya gotta have your homie’s back, y’all. And Israel is America’s number one homie.”
When it is all said and done, Diamond and Silk will be seen as being way ahead of their time. That’s my prediction.
I noticed a similar phenomenon with Lady MAGA.
When I encountered Lady MAGA, he was surrounded by a phalanx of faghags clamoring to have their picture take with him. I kid you not. Conservative women were utterly fascinated by this creature. The fact that someone could be both a drag queen and a Trump supporter completely blew their tiny little minds.
So much work to be done. . .
That said, most of the based black guys I encountered seemed like genuinely nice, sincere people. Even I, a cold-hearted veteran White Nationalist, felt bad for these guys. If all blacks were like them, then maybe there wouldn’t be a problem, or there would be manageable problems. But they are not and never will be. No matter how sincere these guys are, where we are going, they cannot follow if whites are to survive. But that is some ways down the road. For the time being, the main objective is to get Trump reelected and in that, we can be on the same side. At least for now.
As for the role of blacks in the future of the Republican party, who knows? We’ll see. Just as the internet allowed all the white racists to find each other, it has also allowed all the black conservatives to find each other. There does appear to be a small organic black conservative subculture on the internet and a lot of the based black guys present were there with their based black friends, sometimes in groups of 4 or more.
One of the ways conformity is enforced is by threatening social isolation. The existence of these sorts of subcultures undermines the power of that threat. You can make me persona non grata from 90% of society, but there’s still that 10% of people who will think I’m cool. Some people will make the cost-benefit analysis and decide that they would rather be themselves within a tiny subculture than live a lie in wider society.
A black conservative subculture may be able to siphon some support away from the Democrats but I would guess that it might top out around 30% of black men and 15% of black women at best (black women will always need the welfare more). That might be enough to swing a close election in some places, but would also result in more over-the-top pandering from the GOP establishment.
Once at Freedom Plaza, I started to looking around for the Groypers, who would be the Dissident Right’s representatives at the event. They were hard to miss. If you didn’t see the cluster of AF flags, the Groypers would occasionally break out into spontaneous chants of various AF slogans, which were audible throughout the park. “America First,” “No more neocons,” and the occasional “Christ is King.” At one point, I think even a “No E-girls” chant got going.
Nick Fuentes was not on the scene yet, but the Groypers were already pretty charged up. A collection of them were standing on top of a. . . I don’t know what it was. Some pedestal thing that was being used as a makeshift stage. Beneath the “stage” were a few hundred Groypers, already amassed. To keep the energy up, people on the stage would get chants going.
“I say Groypers, you say rise! Groypers!”
“Rise!”
“Groypers!”
“Rise!”
They even managed to get some pretty long chants going, like reciting a Fuentes quote from the intro music of the show. One guy would yell “America First is inevitable! It’s unstoppable!” and the Groypers would respond: “AND THE REASON WHY IS BECAUSE IT’S NOT COOL TO SHILL FOR BIG BUSINESS! IT’S NOT COOL TO SHILL FOR ISRAEL! IT’S NOT. IT’S GAY!”
Speakers began talking on the “official” main stage and Fuentes still had not arrived. However, rumor was spreading among the Groypers that Baked Alaska was on the scene.
Suddenly, a commotion began. I asked some kid next to me what was going on. He said that a wignat showed up a flag of the Spanish Falange party. I said, “A wignat is here?”
He said: “Yeah, a wignat. A wignat is a White Nationalist.”
I wanted to grab him and say “Look, kid! Do you think I don’t know what a wignat is? Do you know who I am? I’ll have you know that I fought in the Optics War, goddamn it! I helped popularize that term. I was fighting wignats back you were still in high school which, granted, was only about 6 months ago, but still. And look, kid. A wignat is specific kind of White Nationalist. I’m a White Nationalist but I’m not a goddamn wignat!!!”
But instead, I just said “Yeah, I know what a wignat is.”
I would find out later that the wignat in question was one Jovi Val, an infamous provocateur from New Jersey who was kicked out of Proud Boys for pulling similar bad optics publicity stunts, including a rather famous one at Union Square in NYC.
The Groypers then broke out into chants of “Fuck Wignats” followed chants of “Optics” and “Fuck that, wignat” and then “fuck off, Fed” and “glowing.” At one point, the Groypers surrounded the Wignat in T-poses.
After Mr. Val left, I heard one of the Groypers say “Now, don’t get me wrong. A Francoist America would be pretty cool, but this is not the time for that.”
When Nick Fuentes finally arrived on the scene, it was like something out of Hard Days Night. The Groypers erupted in jubilation. The kid’s a rock star. With some effort, Fuentes was able to wade through the throngs of his worshipful supporters and make his way to the makeshift stage that had been commandeered for him by the Groypers and began testifyin’. This would be the first of two speeches he would give throughout the day.
From a certain distance from the Groyper stage, you could hear both Fuentes and the “official” speakers on the main stage, and it was apparent just how much better Fuentes was at what he does than the professional politicians screeching Con Inc. boilerplate on the main stage. Fuentes of course had the Groypers eating out of his hands but also attracted quite a few normie passersby curious about all the excitement.
As I was watching Fuentes speak, a couple of young girls walked by. The prettier of the two stopped and her eyes lit up as they looked over to the Groyper stage.
“Is that . . .?”
I told her “That’s Nick Fuentes.”
The pretty girl’s friend said “Oh . . . We don’t want that.” The friend then grabbed the pretty girl’s arm and led her away. Not a fan of Cookie Monster jokes, I suppose.
Other people from the America First extended universe appeared on stage, including Jake Lloyd, Vincent James, Steve Franssen, and Jaden McNeil.
And of course, there was Baked Alaska.
Baked Alaska has staged one of the most remarkable and unlikely comebacks in the history of e-celebrity. He’s like Jason from the Friday the 13th movies. You see him get killed over and over, but then he just keeps coming back. Over and over. You watch his e-celebrity go up in flames, but then a year later, you find out that they are coming out with a Baked Alaska Part VIII, and think “Wait, he’s back? No way! How is he back? How is that even possible? I saw him die in a fiery explosion that surely no one could walk away from. The end credits started rolling. That’s supposed to be The End. How is that not The End? How is he back?”
I thought he was done after the whole Sweet Erin/Ice Poseidon thing when he attempted to rebrand from an Alt-Right personality to a normie IRL streamer. I wrote an article about it that I thought would serve as his obituary. I thought that if the controversy itself did not ruin him, that surely a hit piece by yours truly would sow the fields with salt.
Sometime later, Porsalin made a documentary where he absolutely bodied Baked Alaska. The Irony Bros were nice enough to let him join their crew, but then his psychotic Alt-Lite girlfriend started reporting them to Antifa. Few people have the kind of cringe rap sheet that Baked Alaska has. Literally. The guy’s Kiwi Farms page is longer than War & Peace.
There are people who have become White Nationalists. There have been people who have become White Nationalists who then later publicly disavowed White Nationalism. Baked Alaska might be the first person to become a White Nationalist (when the Alt-Right got hot), publicly disavow White Nationalism (after Christchurch), and then publicly un-disavow White Nationalism (once Fuentes got hot). The closest example might be David Cole, who disavowed and then un-disavowed his work in Holocaust revisionism, but Cole at least has the excuse of the JDL putting a $25,000 bounty on his head.
But I’ll be damned if Baked Alaska is not more popular now than he was when he was the #2 Internet Bloodsports channel (behind Warski Live). His IRL streams have been getting over 3,000 live viewers, which makes him the 3rd biggest streamer on DLive behind Fuentes and Owen Benjamin.
Throughout all his controversies, Fuentes has remained stubbornly loyal to Baked Alaska in ways that bewildered even some of Fuentes’ most ardent plan-trusters. If nothing else, it speaks to Fuentes’ loyalty as a friend that he would stick up for Baked Alaska even when it was extremely uncool to do so. Whether it was right or wrong, wise or unwise, is another matter. It took some balls.
I don’t fully “get” Fuentes’ reasoning on Baked Alaska but I’m going to go ahead and trust the plan nonetheless.
I’ll admit that I am an unapologetic Fuentes plan-truster.
Look. I’m a militant pragmatist. Redpilling people is really fucking hard and we are in a race against time. To that end, I am pro-whatever works and I am anti-whatever doesn’t work. If you could show me irrefutable evidence that strapping on a swastika armband and marching through town in a plastic Stahlhelm was effective at winning people over to the pro-white cause, I would do it. I would feel like a complete idiot while doing it, but I would do it for the white race. Lucky for me, no such evidence exists.
The fact is that Fuentes knows what he is doing and he gets results. I’m willing to overlook a lot if someone gets results. I’m not interested in hearing you “Yeah, but. . .” There is no “yeah, but. . .” after that. If you want to convince me that your way is better, get results.
Wignats like to say “AmNats may be doing well now but they will eventually reach a dead end.” Okay, if AmNats reach a dead end, then we will change direction when we get there. The point is to keep moving forward. Wignats, on the other hand, are already at their dead end.
I’ll take effective over pure any day of the week.
The thing about purity and why it is not very impressive is that you don’t have to do anything to be pure. Being effective requires some combination of talent, skill, hard work, and patience. Being pure, on the other hand, is simply a matter of ticking boxes. As such, people who don’t do anything for the movement and/or people who are not effective at what they do are always going to place a high value on purity because it’s an easy metric for them to score high in.
Useless people will always push for more purity.
There’s also the fact that most purity spiralers are anonymous. Not only do they not have to do anything to be pure, they don’t even have to prove that they actually live up to their ideals. We’re just supposed to take on blind faith that they are not having gay interracial orgies at their house every weekend while they dissect the personal lives of people who, you know, actually do stuff. I’m from Missouri, so you have to show me something before I believe it. My default assumption is that all anonymous people attend gay interracial orgies until I have specific reason to believe otherwise. I do not consider the burden of proof to be on me.
If someone is anonymous, I can only assume that they go about their day to day life pretending to be some kind of liberal, either classical or full-flavored. And yet I’ve been called a coward by more anonymous people than I can count (and I can count very high).
I realize that anonymity is necessary for some people, and there are anons who do good work, but goddamn, it’s hard not to resent them sometimes. “They are going to call us Nazis no matter what we do!” No, motherfucker, they are going to call me a Nazi. Maybe they will call your fake fucking screen name a Nazi, but no one is going to be calling you shit. And if someone did call you a Nazi, you would probably quit the movement and go into hiding, which is what all anonymous tryhards do after they get doxed. We’d be lucky not to get a public disavowal. Remember the Bowl Patrol? The Dylann Roof-worshiping accelerationists? Those guys were like the wignats’ wignats, and oh how they folded like a deck of cards under the light of scrutiny.
In my opinion, anonymous people should not be allowed to have an opinion on optics. Why should they? Let’s say that we take some anonymous guy’s opinion on optics, make it movement-wide policy, and then things go horribly wrong as a result. Well, that anonymous fellow can just quit the movement and go on with the rest of his life as if none of this ever happened. Meanwhile, us non-anons for whom there is no turning back would be left cleaning up the mess. So why would I want to listen to that guy?
If you are invisible, optics should be a non-issue for you.
One of the virtues of not being anonymous is that it makes you never want to make a mistake. Anonymous people act like they are playing with Monopoly money.
No doubt, some of you are probably thinking “Well, Trav, it’s easy for you to not be anonymous. You have a cool-sounding name. You’re a white nationalist whose name literally means ‘The White.’ Who named you? Charles Dickens? The only reason I go by AryanWarrior1488 is that no one wants to hear about Khazar Theory from a guy named Melvin Snodgrass. If I had a cool sounding name like Travis LeBlanc, I’d be out there peacocking it like you do!”
That’s no excuse. Okay, so you have a silly-sounding name. Do you know who else had a silly-sounding name? Mussolini. I mean, Benito is not bad, but the name “Mussolini” is objectively silly. But Il Duce didn’t let that stop him. He went out and did badass things and now people associate the name “Mussolini” with being a badass.
Be like Mussolini.
Let me preemptively address another one of your arguments.
“So Trav,” you say. “You claim that people who don’t do anything turn into wignats. And yet most of the Groypers don’t ‘do anything’ in terms of making content, serious activism, or whatnot. So why don’t they all turn into wignats?”
That’s because the Groypers are, to a very large extent, a cult of personality. Within the context of the Groypers, “purity” means believing whatever Nick Fuentes believes. A purity-spiraling Groyper would be someone who was a militant optics-respecting AmNat.
This is one of the things that separates the Groypers from the Alt-Right of yore. I think Richard Spencer very much would have liked to have turned the old Alt-Right into his own private cult of personality, but unfortunately for Spencer, one of the requirements for starting a cult of personality is actually having a decent personality.
Within the Groypers, it’s all based on Nick. He is the President and the Supreme Court. What he says is law. There are some upsides and downsides to this.
The downside to this is that if Nick were to die in a car accident next week, I don’t think there is anyone within the America First scene who could step up and do what Nick does. Or at least, not anywhere near as well as Nick does. There are smart guys in the AF scene (like Vincent James) and there are funny guys in the AF scene (like Beardson Beardly), but Nick is the complete package.
At the moment, Nick is irreplaceable to his movement. He has said that he does not plan to do his show forever. At the rate he is going, he will probably eventually be called up to the big leagues of either TV or government or something. At some point, he should find himself a protégé to mold into a potential successor.
There are some upsides to the Groypers being a Cult of Nick.
First of all, there are a lot of mistakes that I trust Nick not to make. He doesn’t drink, use drugs, or chase girls. I trust Nick not to go on drunken rants about retaking Constantinople. I trust Nick not to upload videos of himself crying. I trust Nick not to allow himself to be photographed giving Nazi salutes. I trust Nick not to make up stories about being a war hero. I trust Nick not to have sex with Jaden McNeil’s girlfriend and then start strangling him in a trailer park.
Back in the Alt-Right days, there were about a dozen high-profile figures you had to constantly worry about. “Please don’t embarrass us, please don’t embarrass us, please don’t embarrass us. . .” With the Groypers, you really only need to worry about one person. And the fact is that Fuentes does not make many unforced errors.
Secondly, because there is no dispute as to who is in charge, you don’t see the same kinds of ego-crashing and jockeying for status among the Groypers that you saw in the Alt-Right. Infighting is virtually non-existent within the Groyper movement. The rest of the extended America First crew seem perfectly happy to simply ride Fuentes’ coattails.
Back to the story. . .
From Freedom Plaza, it was difficult to get a feel for how big the crowd was. Your eye could only see so many people from any given vantage point. Plus, there were Trump supporters all over DC, some sightseeing, others getting lunch, others rendezvous-ing with friends. But when the march proper began and we started climbing up the hills on the way to the Supreme Court, you were able to see just how massive the attendance actually was. It was truly a breathtaking sight. Red hats and Trump flags as far as the eye could see until they vanished into the horizon. You literally could not see the end of it.
Fuentes marched flanked by security guards and spent the entire walk shaking hands, signing autographs, and having his picture taken with fans. Hundreds of Groypers followed in tow, breaking out into occasional chants and slogans.
After arriving at the top of the hill, we reached a park and Fuentes began setting up to give another speech. A boomer lady looked over at the crowd of Groypers and could tell that something interesting was happening.
“What’s going on over there?” she asked.
I said: “That’s Nick Fuentes.”
The lady said “Oh really? Where is he? I want to see.”
The second speech was plagued by bad sound. The acoustics were not as advantageous as they were at Freedom Park. Even with the bullhorn, you could only hear him from about 20 feet away. Slightly more if the bullhorn was pointed directly at you. But if he turned (as he did often because he was completely surrounded), he would become inaudible. I heard someone behind me ask a woman “Can you hear him?” She answered “I can hear every other word.”
But the wild enthusiasm of the Groypers still attracted curious onlookers who continued to watch Fuentes even though they could not hear what he was saying.
At some point, Antifa showed up across the street and the Groypers and Proud Boys pelted them with taunts of “get a job” and “take a shower.”
It was slightly after this that Trump made his much-anticipated cameo appearance as he was chauffeured by in his motorcade. I’m afraid I missed this part as I was busy getting an overpriced cheeseburger at a food cart down the street. Curses. Somehow, this bothers me less than missing Kurt Cobain in high school.
By the time I finished my cheeseburger, the crowds were breaking up, the sun was going down, and the festivities were coming to a close. I didn’t know what the Groypers were up to after that — if they were having some kind of afterparty or whatnot. If they were, I was happy to leave them to it. I’m old enough to be some of their dads and didn’t want to be the old guy trying to hang out with a bunch of kids. I was a kid once and I remember that guy.
I walked to the train station and got a ticket. All the liquor stores in DC were closed, so I would be making the journey back sober — and very awake.
If you want to support Counter-Currents, please send us a donation by going to our Entropy page and selecting “send paid chat.” Entropy allows you to donate any amount from $3 and up. All comments will be read and discussed in the next episode of Counter-Currents Radio, which airs every weekend on DLive.
Don’t forget to sign up for the twice-monthly email Counter-Currents Newsletter for exclusive content, offers, and news.
Asides
1. When I was in high school, I passed on the chance to see Nirvana four months before Kurt Cobain killed himself, and I’ve been annoyed with myself ever since. I thought Nirvana was okay, but I wasn’t a huge fan. I liked Nevermind, but In Utero left a lot of people scratching their heads. It was looking like Nirvana were going to be one-album-wonders like The Stone Roses. At my high school, Nirvana had already been surpassed in popularity by Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains. All the preppy kids listened to Pearl Jam while the stoners and social outsiders listened to Alice in Chains. It was sort of like a tribal signifier. Nirvana was sort of everyone’s 2nd favorite grunge band. Point is, at the time, Nirvana appeared to be on the decline.
But since then, Kurt Cobain has become the avatar of my generation. When people think of the early 90s, they think of grunge, and when they think of grunge, they think of Kurt Cobain. As a consolation prize, I did get to see Alice in Chains (original lineup with Mike Starr on bass), and half that band is dead now. But Mike Starr and Layne Staley both died post-Zeitgeist. That’s not as cool. I’ve seen a few dead people in concert. I mean, we all die. But the ultimate in cool is being able to say you saw a person who died young, at the peak of their success, and Cobain was a real shooting star. Blink your eyes and the opportunity is gone. As time goes by, more and more, I really wish I had gone to see them when I had the chance.
In my defense, I didn’t know that Cobain was going to kill himself. Cobain’s suicide created a mythos around him — had he not killed himself, Cobain may very well have faded into has-been obscurity (I believe that 100 times about Ian Curtis). I can at least console myself with the knowledge that I had no way of knowing the historic significance of what I was passing on.
I didn’t go to Charlottesville either, but my feelings on that are more mixed. On one hand, it was a historic event, and the street cred and bragging rights of having been there would be a nifty feather in my cap. But on the other hand, if I had gone, I might very well be in prison right now for defending myself and/or tied up in some huge lawsuit.
52 comments
I had to look up the word ‘groyper’ and read the Wikipedia log to see what they were about. I couldn’t get into the story above, too much like a frat party. They seem to be the antithesis of the scholarly-based Counter Currents team, but maybe I’m ignoring a vital group of young people who are truly fighting for the same ideals as is ‘mainstream’ White Nationalism. I honestly think they will divide us and/or give us a bad name, but I’m sincerely hoping I’m wrong. I hope that within 3-5 years, they will be nicely married and on their way to producing 3.3 lovely white children to get us out of our current demographic dilemma, which threatens to torpedo all our efforts, hopes and dreams. Don’t get sidetracked, fellows, over outlier battles. And for gosh sake, get another name and symbol. But, I guess it’s a nice lark while it lasts.
I was there also, read it quickly, could be mis-intrepreting. I was at Harry’s in the morning before 11 then went to Freedom Plaza. The PB weren’t too much there early. Trump did his drive through “early”, not late in the afternoon. Just my remembrances. I didn’t walk around much, just sat by the Polish statue on the east of Freedom Plaza.
I dunno. That may be true.
I purposely did not read any news articles about the event and wrote it all from memory to give this article a more “gonzo” feel to piece.
The one exception is the part about Jovi Val. I only know that because I follow a few antifa Twitter accounts (for oppo research, I keep half an eye on several scenes) and they were talking about it.
There were rumors throughout the day that Trump would be speaking and then at the end of the day, I started hearing the he drove by.
Maybe he drove by earlier. I dunno. This article was intended to be gonzo journalism, written as I experienced it, not necessarily how it actually happened.
Hey, Trav!
Regarding Antifa, what’s your hot take on the fact that Beardson—that tiny little “funny” guy who looks like Allen Ginsberg—is on a livestream telling me it was “awesome” that Matt Forney is on record plotting to send Antifa to an Ann Coulter event in LA to have it wrecked because David Cole snubbed Forney?
What’s your take on the fact that during the same livestream, Nick Fuentes, Forney, Beardson, Prince Hubris, and Baked Alaska took the side of a black man they’d never met to deny outright—against all the evidence that finally came in—that this black man raped a white woman named Ann Sterzinger? You’re cool with a group that takes a black rapist’s side over a white woman’s so long as there aren’t any “wignats” disrupting their incel nerd huddles?
David Cole is a prophet. Being a goofy sideshow at a MAGAtard jubilee is not “winning.” This shit peaked a year ago, will completely evaporate if Biden is sworn in, and you’re going to all look like the gullible cultists that you are.
Hey Jim,
I have a motto: If they’re a net gain, don’t complain.
For example, I believe the sun rises and sets out of Andrew Anglin’s asshole. And yet, Anglin still does all sorts of stuff that I wish he didn’t do. He says stuff all the time that makes go “OK, was that really necessary?”
But I’m not going to complain about it or try to give him advice. First of all, he wouldn’t take my advice. Second of all, and here’s the real son of a bitch of the matter, if he DID take my advice, he wouldn’t be as good.
All that over-the-top stuff that Anglin does is just part of who he is. If he wasn’t doing all that, especially if he wasn’t doing it just to make me happy, then he wouldn’t be being himself. And if he wasn’t being himself, then he wouldn’t be having as much fun. And if he wasn’t having as much, then he wouldn’t be as good. You can tell when content creator was having fun when creating their content and that sense of fun rubs off on the content consumer.
I believe, as the blacks say, that you gotta “let a playa play”. If someone gets results, if someone is an absolute redpilling machine, then you just have to step back and let them do their thing. It’s a take it or leave it deal.
Now, in regards to the Irony Bros, it is my understanding that it is part of their shtick to have a guest on and then say anything and everything to try to ruffle their feathers and get an emotional reaction out of them. That’s their brand and yeah, they will get really dark to achieve that goal. I’m not sure how much they actually believe what they say and as such, don’t know how seriously I should take them.
The stuff about Ann Sterzinger, yeah, I would not have said that. I wish they had not said that. But a lot of those guys are young and I know that I would not enjoy having to answer for everything I said and did at 21.
But again, I am first and foremost a militant pragmatist. Secondly, I do not consider victory to be inevitable. I think there is a real possibility that we will lose.
So for me, the question is not “Do we want to stroll to victory while making fun of Ann Sterzinger’s rape or do we want to stroll to victory NOT making fun of Ann Sterzinger’s rape?” If that were the question, if believed victory was inevitable, then I would choose “stroll to victory not making fun of Ann Sterzinger’s rape”. But that’s not the question. The question is “Do we win or do we lose? Do we survive or do we go extinct?”
Granted, I don’t know Ann Sterzinger so I feel no emotional conflicts of interest on this matter. If I did know her or the said the same thing about someone I do know, I might feel honor-bound to take a moral stand or at least withhold my support for these people. But I don’t.
My only obligation is to the white race in general and to my ancestors in particular. And to that end, I would be willing to shake hands with the devil himself. Ours is a cause worth going to Hell for.
Thanks for the measured response. Regarding this:
“My only obligation is to the white race in general and to my ancestors in particular.”
From my observations, just for saying that, the half-Mexican Nick Fuentes would call you a “wignat”—and probably a “fed.” He smirked the other day when that creep Ali Alexander defamed “hillbillies” as if it was cute.
He has been vocally critical of white Southerners—unendingly so.
He’s pals with E. Michael Jones, who denies the very existence of the white race. Almost everyone I’ve ever seen who follows him aggressively attacks anyone who makes a point of being white.
If you want to take a softer approach to courting “normies,” I won’t stand in your way. I think all sorts of approaches are necessary. What’s suspicious, though, are the constant attacks on anyone who doesn’t think exactly like Fuentes and his crew do.
Also, as far as the white race and strategies to preserve it go, do his acolytes seriously think they’ll be doing a lot of breeding with their whole “Shut up, woman, you shouldn’t vote, you always lie, and you’re nothing more than a brood sow I’m going to keep chained in my basement” shtick? Talk about turning off the normies!
Along with the insistence on religion—even to the point of defaming Protestants—it seems that nearly everything they preach is intensely divisive, almost as if that’s really the “plan” we’re supposed to trust.
Travis LeBlanc: “My only obligation is to the white race in general and to my ancestors in particular.”
Nicholas J. Fuentes: “I am a LATINO CAMPUS CONSERVATIVE….How could I be a white nationalists when I’m NOT EVEN WHITE?…50% Italian, 25% Mexican, 25% Irish, 2% black African…where exactly is the white?”
https://jimgoad.net/images/fuentweets.png
Do you really don’t get that he’s being ironic when he denies being white???
You’re cool with a group that takes a black rapist’s side over a white woman’s so long as there aren’t any “wignats” disrupting their incel nerd huddles?
Why, thank you, Mr. Goad. I greatly appreciate your solidarity with White women. Moreover, I am delighted to see that you are here and that you have moved on from “defensive whiteness.”
In any event, the fundamental problem with Travis’s reasoning is that we don’t actually know if he does more harm than good. If we go by polls of American men’s attitudes about gender equality, Fuentes’ gynophobia is not marketable. Yes, they dislike radical feminists, but there is no appetite among men for a hostile backlash against women either. Honesty is the best policy, and it is also our greatest strength. It is supremely foolish to undermine movement credibility to pander to “incel” psychopaths.
The understandable but short-sighted knee-jerk response of unabashed misogyny seems to me a calculated reaction anticipated by those who push the most obscene forms of feminism. It confirms the wild generalizations of the fearmongering misandrists and serves to stoke the fires of discord between the sexes, which is exactly the point of feminism. It helps them. This is why the misogyny of these chan-culture geeks comes across as such a joke to me, it’s obvious they’re being played, affirming the myths of feminism, lashing out, out of a sense of genuine insecurity. White nationalism cannot win without collaboration between all whites, and that includes not just collaboration between classes but also between the sexes. How can you claim to support the white race if you dismiss half of it outright? Because white women didn’t like Trump as much as the guys? What a joke. You don’t like the way they think, try changing their minds then, instead of further driving them into the stifling, flabby, tattooed and fuzzy arms of sexual Marxism.
The rational response would of course be to demonstrate that feminism does not equal femininity, to discuss all of the harm that third wave feminism has done not only to women but society at large. Show women that the left doesn’t owe them their support just because they were born with a vagina. Show them that feminism destroys the family values that form the bedrock of society. Show them that they belong to a community, a racial community that is blood-deep and supersedes the community of the female gender. It’s a start.
The understandable but short-sighted knee-jerk response of unabashed misogyny seems to me a calculated reaction anticipated by those who push the most obscene forms of feminism.
Indeed, feminism has run its course. It’s legitimate objectives have been achieved. Now, there is an attempt to keep White men and women at each other’s throats by instigating misogyny in dissident groups. It’s all so predictable.
Good to get an “on the ground” perspective. Thank for for perservering.
Glad that you have also noticed the black Youtube music reviewer phenomenon. I started to observe this about a year ago with more and more channels popping up all doing the same thing. I was wondering if this was just a coincidence or somehow more contrived. The comments on these channels are awash in presumably White Gen Xers and Boomers desperately excited and grateful that blacks seem to like their favorite songs.
Gosh. I had completely forgotten about The Stone Roses. I have to admit, I did quite enjoy Pearl Jam back in the day. Dissident… what a song that was:
“When she had contact with the conflict
There was meaning but she sold him to the state.
She had to turn around
When she couldn’t hold, she folded
A dissident is here…”
Real nigga conservatism is inevitable as society gets more and more pozzed, street nigs and black women do not like gay pride or trannies. They’re also too low IQ to learn the mental gymnastics necessary to make them lionize degenerative freaks the way white liberals do. It’ll never become a major movement since the desire for gibs and legalized crime trumps everything else for the vast majority of negroes but it will certainly become more prominent. Doubt it will have any effect on elections though since the GOP is absolutely determined to shadow progressive lunacy.
White Conservatives’ will mistake ‘real nigga conservatism’ as Blacks ‘coming around’ to their way of thinking. It’s not. It’s White Conservatives becoming ‘nigga’. Sad. Just sad.
I don’t think they actually believe that it’s possible for any sizable amount of non Whites to become conservative and they also don’t actually care if they do, though they would never openly admit to either of these things. The logic is that if just one non White is genuinely conservative then it is immoral to use pattern recognition about them for anything other than trying to convince them to join their side. It’s like they implicitly accept the idea of White man’s burden without even realizing it, the irony is lost on them.
All they really care about is strictly adhering to the race blind individualistic ideology, costs and lack of progress doesn’t matter to them in the slightest. They cling to any shred of evidence no matter how statistically irrelevant it is to prop up the illusion that, any minute now, minorities are all going to vote GOP. It’s also both lucrative and helpful to the movement to have token minority mascots around to sell dreams of a multiracial conservative society so this is going become increasingly employed as the country gets less and less White.
I’ve generally been indifferent to your work, but this essay is quite revealing.
You speak all the right politics, but you’re IRL observations come across as those of a pompous, hipsterish, alt-lite tool.
But if you think that that anything about this giant, dead-end farce is a road ahead to anywhere, then good luck to you.
“I believe that 100 times about Ian Curtis”
Imagine, if you will, being this wrong.
Good writing. Enjoyed your account.
I’m encouraged by whatever young people are doing for the DR, God bless and keep them safe from the clutches of elite globalists. Do not allow any of them to be railroaded.
As James Fields, Ram guys and New York
Proud Boys were.
I guess bad optics does not include hanging around catboys. Good luck with that.
Apparently a wignat is just someone who says out loud what groypers are privately thinking, if that Francoist groyper is any example. But sincerely expressing your political beliefs is cringe and might scare the skitish conservatives. Never say or do anything that might scare or upset people.
As far as Fuentes own optics are concerned he once pulled a knife out on webcam with the Jew Halsey English, he cracked a joke about 6 million cookies, his insistence on no egirls delves into the realm of woman hatred and he’s tried to rehabilitiate the gay Jewish fed informant Milo. For all his deep concern over optics, his optics are just as attrocious as any wignat, but apparently you can say or do anything as long as you drape yourself in the red, white and blue and pay lip service to that crumbling empire America.
Optics is a very misunderstood concept. When you get down to it, Good Optics is that which is effective and Bad Optics is that which is ineffective.
“For all his deep concern over optics, his optics are just as attrocious as any wignat”
If that’s true, then why is Feuntes 100 times more popular than any wignat? I mean, talent may account for some of it. Maybe he’s just a great salesman. Maybe he’s the kind of guy who could sell ice to Eskimos.
This leads to an interesting question. Would a bizarro Wignat Fuentes be as popular as he is now? Would Wignat Fuentes have 52,000 live viewers watching his election night coverage on DLive if his message was “there is no political solution” and “they’re going to call us Nazis no matter what we do”.
Something tells me no. First of all, there’s no market for despair. Secondly, when you get down to it, wignats have a deep contempt for normal people. A lot of the recent memes coming out of the wignat camp revolve around making fun of normal people. That’s what the whole ironic use of “libtard” is about. Or references to the “big truck” people and whatnot. Wignats hate normal people so I don’t think a Wignat Fuentes would have the same plebian appeal.
Look. You don’t get to be as popular as Fuentes is while doing EVERYTHING wrong. I mean, he has to be SOME things right. So then why don’t you take what Fuentes is doing right and then put your own little wignat spin on it? I would actually be very curious to see what happen if someone attempted that.
If you think popularity is a gauge of anything, Charlie Kirk has 15 times the Twitter followers that Fuentes does. He has 10 times the Google search results. More people view his Wikipedia page. And Donald Trump loves him, while they won’t even let Fuentes into CPAC. Quite a slippery slope, that “popularity” luge track.
Another answer to your question is that most of the “wignats” have been completely deplatformed or jailed—while the groypers cheered.
Everyone seems to have lost sight of the common enemy.
What is a “wignat”?
I really liked this article. Was a nice change of pace. It has the excitement of embedded journalism while also including insights about the challenges we are currently facing, anecdotes from the author’s life, and how these relate to the event being reported on.
In the decade I’ve been visiting Countercurrents (one word), I cannot recall laughing myself silly. I had to silence myself to not disturb my sleeping wife. Great smart-aleky Gen X reportage from the front. We need more of this. It’s what earned InfoWars 2 million subscribers on YouTube before his defenestration, and most of us just cannot or would not go to political events like this. Cheers.
Yeah, you can ask James Allsup about that.
Exactly. Fuentes tossed Allsup WAY under the bus.
So since we’ve exploded this “rugged loyalty” canard, the only possible explanation for why Fuentes continues to rub elbows with the mentally retarded grifter Baked Alaska, the senile race-denier E. Michael Jones, the cross-dressing Catboy Kami, the vehemently anti-white convicted fraudster Ali Alexander (real name Ali Abdul Kazaq Akbar), and the human worm Matt Forney is that he doesn’t have a fucking clue about bad optics.
Does everyone forget that in early 2019, these tools were ALL on the Yang train?
It’s been my opinion for a couple years now that the “Optics War” was either engineered by the government or by big money within the GOP to throw anyone who focuses on whiteness under the bus in an attempt to transform everyone into Bible-thumping, flag-waving Republicans—which to me is the definition of “cringe.” Whatever the left didn’t manage to fracture, the Fuentards did. They’ve been an endless source of infighting and division.
Fuentes mentions “white race” and “whiteness” very often.
His goal is a race-realist pro-white “America First” USG that includes non-whites. It’s less radical than other forms of WN that advocate for complete separation and/or repatriation of aliens.
Enjoyable read, and imo, a very proper assessment of AF movement and new right generally. Also, loved this quote: “I think Richard Spencer very much would have liked to have turned the old Alt-Right into his own private cult of personality, but unfortunately for Spencer, one of the requirements for starting a cult of personality is actually having a decent personality.” Poor Richard.
Maybe so, but I’m a big believer in giving credit to those who start movements. Richard Spencer may be a messed up guy, but in 2010, with his alternative right website, he began something nobody else was doing. I mean that quite literally. He was an original. There was no trump back then, no bannon, no breitbart, no Allsup, no Fuentes, no right stuff, nothing. There was no white nationalism. Say what you will about Spencer, but I’m telling you nobody did what he began, in 2010.
I don’t even think Richard Spencer is this delusional.
White Nationalism existed before the Alternative Right site. And TOQ Online, created by yours truly, as well as The Occidental Observer, created by Kevin MacDonald, were in the same webzine niche as the Alternative Right site before Spencer came along. We’re still publishing too, whereas Spencer has gone through three failed webzines since 2010.
You also had John Derbyshire who was promoting semi-quasi–kinda-sorta-white nationalism in the mid-00’s.
Amren, vdare, David duke, voice of reason radio(now defunct), Stormfront all go way back. National Vanguard has a website which goes way back. Was that William Pierce’s organization? His too, if not. IHR? Some of these existed before the internet in print form. I’m sure there are organizations that flowered and died before my time as well. Nothing new under the sun.
There were actual white separatist settlements back in the 90s. That’s what got the Weavers in trouble. I think things have gotten more intellectually focused and coherent, but as far as real community and appeal it’s gone backwards, for better or worse.
Yes, I didn’t word that clearly at all. There is indeed an entire treasure trove of white nationalist activity prior to Richard Spencer, of course. Obviously. Instaurations, by Wilmot Robertson, goes back to the ‘70’s.
What I should have said is that Richard Spencer was essential in spreading white nationalism to the masses. Of course, that’s just my opinion. I have no proof of that. All I know is prior to Spencer, it was dormant. After Spencer, Trump is mysteriously elected. I cannot prove a causal link. I can only speak for me. I can honestly remember listening to Spencer’s podcasts back in 2010 and thinking to myself, “this guy is going to change the world”. I want to be clear: this isn’t hero worship. I’m merely stating how I view it. I cannot prove it. It’s entirely subjective.
There’s no evidence that White Nationalists elected Donald Trump. Beyond that, the Alt Right that emerged in 2015 had very little connection to Spencer except using the term Alt Right, which hung around long after Spencer had lost interest in the Alternative Right magazine, which he stopped editing in the Spring of 2012 and shut down at the end of 2013. The online Alt Right emerged from 4chan and TRS and became influential on Social Media.
I remember debates in the TRS private discussion group about what to call the movement, and many people who favored Alt Right had not even heard of Spencer and his zine. Those who knew of Spencer knew of him from Radix. Most of them thought he was a pompous tool.
Spencer, however, used the dubious claim that he had invented the term Alt Right, as well as the fact that he was a public figure and the real creative people at the time were not, to claim that the movement was his. He then set out to drive out rivals, first focusing on Milo and other Alt-Lite figure. In January 2017, he created the Alt Right Corporation as a hairbained scheme to centralize the movement under his control. On June 1, 2017 in AltRight.com he published an idiotic piece coauthored with Daniel Friberg called “Greg Johnson’s Attacks & How to Deal with Them,” attempting to read me out of “his” movement, like a Jew crying out in pain as he attacked me. He also tried to take over Identity Europa, and when that failed tried to destroy it and create a rival organization.
Spencer is pretty much the paradigm of the selfish movement grifter who was happy to create conflict and division within the movement to build up his own brand and personality cult. But in the end, he did not have the talent to pull it off. Nick Fuentes has proved much more adept at this selfish and destructive game. Who knows how long he will last. I just don’t think it is wise to invest much hope in such obviously selfish people.
You lament the fact that white attendees were desperate to be seen around based blacks and transvestites, but fail to see that this is just an extension of the obsession with optics. The “I’m not a racist” impulse is just one step up the optics ladder from the frantic disavowals that make up the bulk of optics advocates’ political activity. Republicans have been practicing optics since the days of William F. Buckley.
Pragmatism is not a political ideal, but the absence of political ideals. You say you’re for whatever works. Well, the Republicans have concluded that what works is a non-white coalition emphasizing stakeholder capitalism and neoliberalism. They’ve concluded that Diamond and Silk are effective optics. I suspect most in the optics community will come to agree. Most are already engaged in a shift away from White nationalism towards impotent, slightly edgy Trumpism.
You prattle on about what Fuentes is accomplishing, but this rally accomplished nothing for the Republicans and less still for the Dissident Right. This was a normie Republican rally aimed at keeping Trump in office, but it changed nothing on that front. States continue to ratify the election results. For his part, Trump couldn’t even bring himself to roll down the window of a moving car to address these people.
This, like every optics cuck proposal, went nowhere, accomplished nothing, and didn’t even manage to be aesthetically or intellectually interesting. This site, and all others like it, have become a shell of its former self. 2020 Counter-Currents is little more than 2016 Breitbart. You people abandoned every principle to make your movement solely about the Trump cult of personality, and you were incapable even of getting the man himself reelected. Enjoy shilling for Nimrata Randhawa/Tim Scott in 2024.
“You lament the fact that white attendees were desperate to be seen around based blacks and transvestites, but fail to see that this is just an extension of the obsession with optics. The “I’m not a racist” impulse is just one step up the optics ladder from the frantic disavowals that make up the bulk of optics advocates’ political activity. Republicans have been practicing optics since the days of William F. Buckley.”
Blah, blah, blah….
People make these arguments as if what they are advocating for hasn’t already been tried. The Alt Right already tried the “anything goes” approach. We don’t need to wonder what would happen if we threw optics out the window and went with an unadulterated don’t-give-a-fuck approach.
It’s. Been. Tried.
These arguments were all defensible back in 2015-16 when we didn’t know as much. I made some of those arguments myself back then. But we have a lot more data now. We have seen how the public responds to all sorts of different approaches and time to anylize the results. We don’t have to wonder anymore. We know.
If you believe all the same things about strategy AFTER Hailgate, AFTER Charlottesville, AFTER Internet Bloodsports, AFTER Groyper Wars as you did BEFORE all those things happened, I don’t know what to tell you. You’re just not paying attention.
“It’s. Been. Tried.”
Yeah, so has the Bill Buckley approach. And here we are.
Sure, Jim. The Bill Buckley approach is every bit as ineffective as the Richard Spencer.
One started a magazine that became the institution on the Right, was read by the president, and is still going after 60 years and the other was spokesman of a movement collapsed into a smoldering heap of ashes after two years. Samesies.
I mean, I have my issues with Bill Buckley but if I had to say who created a more effective model for getting their ideas out, Bill Buckley’s approach was undoubtedly more successful than the Alt Right.
There is nothing in the laws of physics that say that if you adopt elements of Bill Buckley’s style that you must also be Bill Buckley in substance. It would not rip a hole in the space-time continuum to take the things that Bill Buckley did well and then discard the rest.
Once again, the Alt-Right was blamed by Hillary Clinton during a presidential campaign. Spencer was interviewed by all the major American media outlets. Richard Spencer probably still has a much higher name recognition than Nick Fuentes. That’s a fact, as much as it pains many of you to hear it.
Nick Fuentes was able to embarrass Charlie Kirk and almost gets as many DLive listeners as the lunatic Owen Benjamin. Yet all we hear from the Groyptards is how much more successful they’ve been than the Alt-Right. You people live in a tiny, tiny circle jerk.
Funny thing is, when all the “wignats” were barking as loud as they could, Trump won an election.
The only reason Buckley was allowed success was because he refused to mention Jews.
But neither Buckley nor Spencer left a dent in America’s demographic decline, and neither will Fuentes.
If Fuentes should ever—and that’s a gigantic “if”—reach the level where presidential candidates are mentioning his organization and all the major media outlets are mentioning him, let’s see how long he lasts.
Prediction: Five minutes.
You know why the left is winning? Because even though there are huge fundamental ideological and stylistic differences within their ranks, they don’t suffer from this endless compulsion to cannibalize one another.
There’s no black-nationalist equivalent of a “wignat.” You don’t see Cornel West dumping on crackheads. They’re all black to him, and that’s the only thing that’s important to him. Maybe take a hint from that template.
If you don’t like Spencer, ignore him. If the Groypers just did their thing without the constant need to bash non-Christians, southerners, low-income whites, and anyone who doesn’t fall in lockstep with what is basically a mildly edgy form of Republicanism that to this point hasn’t even managed to infiltrate the GOP, I wouldn’t see a problem. But it’s like they can’t help themselves—or they’re being paid to do it.
These videos get millions of views. I see my normie friends post these videos all the time. “Two black guys listen to “Crazy Train” and they love it!”
Apparently, there is huge demand from white people to have their taste in music blessed by black people. And they don’t want to hear it from Carlton Banks. They want to hear an honest-to-God “real nigga” tell them that they have good taste in music. And apparently, quite a few blacks have picked up on this fact and have found a way to monetize it.
To be fair, the popularity of reaction videos extends beyond just POC youtubers, and some of them can be very educational. One of the most “reacted to” songs on the internet is “Sound of Silence” by Disturbed, a cover I only know about from one of my kids. I was absolutely transfixed by it for days, and I got a little warm and fuzzy seeing all the emotional reactions by people from all walks of life.
Yes, music really is somewhat of a universal language. There are things we all have in common. For some reason, though, liberals think that only Whites are capable of sympathizing with someone else’s nationalism and/or respecting other groups’ collective interests. They insist that POC feel so disrespected and even threatened by any White self-assertion, however tepid, that White advocates must be completely silenced to keep the peace. I don’t know whether they’re right about this or not, but I do know that it’s a strange assumption for people who maintain that we’re all exactly the same. It almost seems like they believe, deep down, Whites are particularly open-minded and empathetic or something.
Here is one of my favorites:
https://youtu.be/Xdtsgo559LM
Great up front reporting!
Let’s see more of this on C-C.
I really am enjoying this gonzo style approach. If the author could have been at Charlottesville, he could have written the gonzo classic book of the alt right!
Re trumps popularity among blacks: I think it has a lot to do with his bling aesthetic and consequently that he is “paid.” Also Kanye’s endorsement probably does much for him. I like to think too that some blacks have the IQ to realize that Hispanic border crossers are competitors for their natural economic niches and competitors for the same, exhaustible social services which they both partake of.
Travis,
You need to re-read about a hundred articles by the late Sam Francis. His was the correct approach in 1980; it remains the only viable strategy today. All this talk about “optics”, “edginess” and similar crap is just an excuse for avoiding the real issues in an adult manner (which your generation spectacularly is not – adults).
We need to build a mass-America First civnat movement – as a first step. Trump has started this (but did not advance it in terms of actual legislation). The primary policy foundation of this movement is advocacy of real immigration changes: 1) sealing the US/Mexico border via a physical barrier/Wall; 2) the mass-deportation of all 35 million illegal aliens (about 98%+ of whom are nonwhite; I do know a couple of illegal Irish day laborers I have employed, but white illegals are a tiny minority), not just to rid ourselves of yet more race aliens on our territory, but to ensure that they will never be afforded a “path to citizenship” which would then allow them to import hundreds of millions of their extended families; and 3) a permanent legal immigration moratorium, with the stated goal of ending the carrying-capacity-exceeding USA as an immigrant recipient society.
Failing #3 at first, we can push for lower legal immigration and then advocate as a second-tier solution the reconfiguration of America’s currently insane (and widely recognized as such) “family reunification” immigration policy goal to a merit-based program emphasizing skilled immigrants. I oppose skilled immigration, too, recognizing that it is a mechanism by which (((woke))) corporations can more easily replace older white workers. But replacing family reunification as well as “diversity lottery” provisions with a uniform and exclusive emphasis on immigrants skills as the only selection criteria will a) increase the percentage of immigrants who are white, while b) actually aiding the American economy to some extent, and c) reducing the number of future immigrant welfare recipients, thus further aiding beleaguered (disproportionately white) taxpayers.
I wouldn’t mind completely changing US immigration laws to encourage maximal WHITE immigration, even though I understand valid ecological concerns about overpopulation. Increasing the whiteness of the USA outweighs, imo, the concomitant environmental problems engendered by population increases. But I see no way – other than the aforementioned reconfiguration of immigration streams towards higher skills and away from current policy preferences – actually to get this legislated. So patriots will have to be content with simply working for constantly lower legal immigration, along with border security and illegal alien removal.
This immigration-focused agenda advances the prowhite cause without having to be in any way formally associated with “white nationalism”, or any of its bad optics in an incredibly and pathetically braincucked nation. There are so many reasons why immigration is bad that its white-dispossessionary effects never even have to be broached (though of course we understand them, as do our racial enemies). And nowadays, virtually all real conservatives and real patriots understand immigration and its effects, and oppose it and them.
Beyond halting the Immigration Invasion, an America First civnat movement – something I believe Trump’s base popularity and mass rallies demonstrate is absolutely achievable – can advocate a host of additional policies which likewise advance prowhiteness while being justifiable on race-neutral grounds. Here are a few:
A) Independent Nationhood for Puerto Rico – and Hawaii (both of whose present statuses are literally the products of US imperialism, and both of which are mostly nonwhite parasites).
B) National Secure Voting Reform, whose effects will make it harder for Democrats both to steal elections and to vote at all (as witnessed by Democrats’ constant efforts to ease voter registration, ID poll requirements, ect).
C) National Felon Disenfranchisement. Yes, everything is insanely moving in the wrong direction on this, but you can bet America Firster patriots would support this (even if it might never get legislated; it would also expose Congressional GOP cucks, as well as black nationalists hiding and sucking up GOP resources as “conservatives”).
D) No More Foreign Wars of Choice (ie, for Israel or to serve other interests unrelated to Middle American wellbeing).
E) Defund the Universities!
F) Patriotic Tax Preferences: Trumpian tariffs are stupid and ineffectual; companies that move manufacturing overseas, or that have a larger foreign than American workforce, should be taxed at a far higher rate than companies which maintain production within the US, and employ mostly Americans.
G) Race Quotas and Affirmative Action should be banned.
H) Militant Constitutionalism, with emphases on First and Second Amendment restoration.
I) Abolition of HUD (which leftists use to plant nonwhite public housing in working class white neighborhoods so as to control and destroy them).
J) Defend Law Enforcement and Prisons.
K) Racial Segregation of Prisons (this will be tough to effectuate legislatively, due to bogus SCOTUS ruling, but it can be at least advocated as a means of reducing prison violence).
L) Regulation of Social Media as Public Utilities.
M) Nationwide “No Duty to Retreat” Laws, to make it easier for citizens to defend themselves from criminals and leftist mobs.
I (and others – please contribute to this list) could probably come up with dozens of other national civnat proposals that would advance white interests without actually constituting white nationalism. I have a Mexican-American conservative acquaintance whom I believe would support all of the above. So would most Trump voters.
This is how our movement gets off the ground. Neo-nazis, groypers, Holocaust revisionists, alt-rightists – all of this is irrelevant child’s play. What are needed are 1) an organized mass movement, even if the mass movement is not at this time pristinely white nationalist; as long as white interests are being advanced, what is important is that whites are becoming organized and activist; and 2) ACTUAL PUBLIC POLICY VICTORIES! We have to start winning on some-things, even if we do so mainly on non-white-nationalist grounds. The important thing is to have some kind of aggressive, action-oriented, mass movement on the Right, one that is at least implicitly white, and some legislative victories demonstrating forward motion, and the sense that power is moving our way. Most people are not ideologically principled; they like to be associated with winning often as much as with particular positions (I think this is more true of whites than any other group).
We have to start somewhere. Trump has proven that that start is a serious, militant civic nationalism – which can very easily mutate into explicit white nationalism as conditions worsen and times become auspicious. No more Nazis, 20-something gurus, weird agendas, bad optics, etc. But let’s see tens of millions of red MAGA hats oriented towards policies that advance their true, racial interests.
This is a great wishlist of policies favorable to whites. One problem I see here is that if we had the power to make any of these happen, then we wouldn’t be in the position of needing most of these to begin with. As both Greg points out, these things have to be metapolitically possible before they can be politically achievable. The NRX crowd would say that the Cathedral prevents these ideas from even taking root in the minds of anyone who has the power and influence to make changes. Yes we have 73 million Americans that would vote for them, but we are the “townies.”
The second problem I see is that any policy that is implicitly favorable to whites will be attacked by our enemies as “white supremacist.” We have already seen that anything that has a “disparate impact” on non whites will be attacked with the full weight of the system as a racist policy (eg voter iD laws). Then we’re back to where we started. Sooner or later we are going to have to get other whites to recognize they have a racial identity and interests, that it’s perfectly natural and normal, and that it’s not just morally permissible, but morally required that they defend it.
I can’t believe I actually read about all of it… well done!
Excellent on the ground reporting and article!
Remember Ian Stuart from Skrewdriver was waving the Cross of St.George flag during their concerts circa early 90’s.
That flag and symbolism is good optics.
How can the media insult that flag without insulting normie Republicans?
Ian Stuart Tom Metzger + William Pierce were in the WN movement long before any of these Men mentioned in previous comments.
>Few people have the kind of cringe rap sheet that Baked Alaska has. Literally. The guy’s Kiwi Farms page is longer than War & Peace.
Funny you should mention that, Trav. Aren’t you forgetting something?
kiwifarms. net/threads/nicholas-j-fuentes-america-first-nick-the-knife.64977/
Sitting proudly at more than 1.5 times the length of the aforementioned shapeshifter’s rap sheet, this one even features cameos by once upon a time groypers denouncing all of their former shepherd’s misleading ways and expands some the best I’ve seen on all of the already rehashed to hell and back arguments like the ones being put forward in this very own comment thread.
But seeing as you’re so busy having your nose dutifully far up Anglin’s asshole, per your own admission more or less, you will surely dismiss it as amounting to nothing more than wignat cope.
The mountains of hypocrisy from which groypers and their apologists are lording over the rest of us is definitely something the alt-right of yesteryear could never have been a match for.
Another satisfied customer!
“Secondly, because there is no dispute as to who is in charge, you don’t see the same kinds of ego-crashing and jockeying for status among the Groypers that you saw in the Alt-Right. Infighting is virtually non-existent within the Groyper movement. The rest of the extended America First crew seem perfectly happy to simply ride Fuentes’ coattails.“
So, basically the furher principle? I’m being half serious here.
But it’s Ironic how the wignats should supposedly be all about that, but in a certain sense, as you implied, it was the lack of a strong leader, in whose character you had faith, that was the downfall— in so many ways! Lack of clear leadership and leaders of poor character.
Comments are closed.
If you have Paywall access,
simply login first to see your comment auto-approved.
Note on comments privacy & moderation
Your email is never published nor shared.
Comments are moderated. If you don't see your comment, please be patient. If approved, it will appear here soon. Do not post your comment a second time.
Paywall Access
Edit your comment