2,040 words
A couple of days before I was due to leave for the 2021 American Renaissance conference, I told a good friend of mine that it was not too late to change his mind and come along. He’s very much on our wavelength but is anti-social and finds our movement gatherings somewhat tiresome. “I think I know what they’re going to say,” he responded, sarcastically — implying that he’s heard it all before.
“But that isn’t the point,” I wanted to answer, but decided to hold my tongue. Even if every speaker at AmRen was simply repeating the same information we’ve been hearing for years about race, IQ, crime, and changing demographics, an AmRen conference would still be worth attending. For the real point is to enjoy the company, for two brief days, of others who think the way that we do and to be in a setting where we can freely speak our minds, which is an incredibly rare opportunity these days. An AmRen conference is a chance to briefly experience what it is like to live in a healthy community of sane white people who value the truth and are not in revolt against reality.
Of course, my friend was wrong on another level as well. He had not heard it all before. Jared Taylor, who has been organizing these conferences for many years now, always does an excellent job of choosing speakers who present new research or new and sometimes surprising perspectives. The only common denominator is that they are “race realists,” and pro-white. An excellent example of this is F. Roger Devlin’s talk, which was the very first presentation of last weekend’s conference. Devlin, who has a background in philosophy (just like yours truly), spoke about the role of envy in race relations. While whites are, sadly, no strangers to this deadliest of sins, envy plays a central role in many non-white societies. It retards progress and productivity because everyone fears being seen as having outdone their neighbors. We witness this phenomenon in black high school students, who will avoid exceling at academics, even when capable of it, for fear of the resentment this provokes in their peers.
Devlin argued, further, that what fuels these envy-based societies is the primitive conviction that wealth is a static quantity. If I grow or gather a lot of yams, this means that others necessarily have fewer. The same reasoning is applied by blacks and their enablers to complex, modern economies. The success of others is always understood as being the result of taking “more than one’s fair share,” or as the result of outright theft. Success, in other words, is built on the oppression or disadvantaging of others. Devlin astutely noted that this primitive “yams” theory of success is essentially the economic philosophy undergirding Critical Race Theory, and that CRT is a means of promoting and intensifying envy among blacks and Hispanics. (Somehow it is always whites alone whose property is theft, despite the fact that Asians in the US have higher average earnings than whites.)
Had Nietzsche shown up at AmRen to give a talk on race and resentment, I doubt he could have done a better job. Devlin got the conference off to a very strong start, and there was not a weak presentation the entire weekend. However, I am not going to offer a blow-by-blow account of the conference events. Gregory Hood has already published a detailed account at the AmRen site itself, and readers who want more details are referred to that piece. Instead, I will offer some general observations about the conference itself: the spirit of the occasion, the buzz, and what I took away.
To begin with, this was the first AmRen conference in two years, the 2020 conference having been cancelled, like so much else, by COVID. However, it was my first AmRen conference in close to twenty years. I had been lying low and hiding my face, concerned (quite reasonably, it turned out) that I might be doxed and fired from my job. But now that I am retired I do not care if my face is seen, so long as it is not badly lit. Having been absent from so many conferences over the years, I was not in a position to judge this year’s event in comparison to earlier ones, but I made a point of asking regular attendees for their impressions.
This year’s conference attracted around 200 attendees, while the 2019 conference had around 300. This may have been a disappointment to Mr. Taylor, but it should not be. Given that we are still in the midst of a pandemic, with many people afraid or unable to travel, I think this makes the 2021 conference a great success. A friend who was in attendance said that he thought the mood seemed a bit “down” compared with previous years. But my friend tends to be negative. I think that what he was picking up on is that our people are now very pessimistic about changing or reforming the system and putting America on “the right track.” Remember that in 2019 Trump was still President and many of us thought that he would win a second term. Wrongly, as it turned out, we thought that Trump offered some hope for the country.
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Since the last AmRen conference, we have seen Trump removed from office in an election rife with voter fraud. We endured an entire summer of riots perpetrated by BLM and Antifa, with the most anemic and cringey responses from Republicans. A billion dollars in property damage and God only knows how many killed or maimed. And while BLM raged, so did COVID hysteria. I began to experience, as did so many of my friends, “outrage fatigue.” While there were almost no consequences for the BLM and Antifa thugs, a group of well-meaning cranks who decided to take a peaceful stroll through the Capitol on January 6th are still, to this day, languishing in jail (and are reportedly being denied even basic medical care). We are living in the inverted world, folks, where wrong is right, injustice is “justice,” and every standard is double. Yes, indeed, a lot has happened since 2019, and there is not much to be chipper about.
And yet, with all due respect to my learned friend, I would not describe the mood at last weekend’s conference as “pessimistic.” Instead, our people seem to have taken a major step forward. At the 2021 AmRen conference, there was a word that was on everyone’s lips, though it got expressed in different ways. That word was “secession.” Again and again I heard speakers and attendees declare that America is now beyond hope, and that “the system” is irretrievably lost and cannot be reformed “from within.” Michelle Malkin put it succinctly when she said that the answer to St. Rodney King’s question “Can we all just get along?” is “Alas, no.”
Throughout all of human history, people have believed that their own civilizations are immortal. They have all been proved wrong. The United States is fated now, it seems, to go the way of the Soviet Union, as a failed ideological state. The US has lasted longer, but the cultural and political degeneration that have taken place in just the last two hundred years of this “greatest country in the world” is shocking and without historical precedent. America is doomed and we must now look to what comes next — to what we can build for ourselves in a post-America future. This was the theme that tended to dominate discussions last weekend, over coffee and meals, in the hallways, and between presentations (and sometimes within presentations). But I would characterize this as forward-looking optimism. The events of the last two years have liberated us from caring about America, and liberated us from our illusions about our system and what can be accomplished within it. Now we must face the task of creating something new.
As I mentioned earlier, for me the great attraction of AmRen is the opportunity to rub elbows with people who think as I do and who share my fundamental values. I am not a naturally sociable or gregarious person. Even when surrounded by likeminded folk, I have a tendency to stay in my shell. But, knowing that such an opportunity would not soon present itself again, I worked to overcome my natural tendency to socially distance (COVID isolation, you see, was no problem for me at all). Indeed, I had to do this — for again and again at this conference I was approached by individuals who said that they had read my work and that it had made a difference in their lives.
This was immensely gratifying to me, and also a bit humbling. I sometimes wonder if anyone is reading my articles. (And I can’t tell from the comments section on this site, since so many of those people – though not all – seem to comment on my articles without having read them.) None of the individuals who talked to me was so unkind as to point out the obvious: that I haven’t written a whole lot in the past year. Indeed, I have published only two original articles since November of 2020. You can easily guess the reason: I have been somewhat blackpilled. I prefer the term I used earlier: that I have been suffering from “outrage fatigue.” So much is so wrong and so awful I scarcely know where to begin to comment on it. And, yes, sometimes, in my darker moments, I wonder if there’s a point. But as I said to Jared Taylor literally going out the door on the last day, his conference has energized me. I feel like I may have my mojo back. As Ayn Rand might say, AmRen 2021 was the “spiritual fuel” I needed to get going again.
Security at the conference was tight. We were greeted at the door by a large contingent of Park Rangers wearing tactical vests and sidearms. Our bags were searched and we were wanded with metal detectors. The Rangers, who were quite friendly, told us that there were protesters at the conference. However, they were confined to another area of the park so distant from us as to make them completely invisible. I therefore neither saw nor heard protesters the entire weekend. This is importantly symbolic. Though the protesters may have the backing of a powerful system, they represent a dying ideology. And in this age of “Fuck Joe Biden,” everyone can sense that the system is, in fact, weakening and becoming decrepit. In essential terms — in historical and philosophical terms — Leftists are now as irrelevant as they were invisible last weekend.
On my way to the conference, I wondered how we would be treated by the hotel staff. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they were unfailingly friendly and polite, and without any trace of hostility. It was also immensely encouraging to see how many young and attractive people were in attendance — many of them married, many of them actively producing the next generation. There is hope for the future; a great deal of hope.
Though I have my ups and downs, I have never succumbed to pessimism in a serious way, or for a prolonged period. In the ten years I have been writing for Counter-Currents I have never revised my basic conviction that victory is, for us, inevitable. The simple reason is that our enemies are at war with nature and with reality. A system or an ideology at war with nature and reality can maintain itself for a time (as did the USSR), but it is always doomed to fail. It is unsustainable. If we did absolutely nothing, the society built upon this ideology would eventually collapse. But we are not going to wait for that. It is falling and, like Nietzsche, we are going to push it. And we are going to plant the seeds of a new, healthier society.
In this task, American Renaissance is indispensable. Jared Taylor, Henry Wolff, et al., are to be commended for all of their good work, but especially for keeping these conferences going. They have provided much-needed “spiritual fuel” to many people who stand on the side of nature and reality and plain commonsense. I can’t wait for next year.
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23 comments
Amren happened already?! Ugh! I was looking forward to going!
I would like to go to amren in the future, but I am worried about doxxing for my job. What are the risks of doxxing for someone like me, would you think, also taking into account my peculiar situation? I would love to meet Michael hart and Jared Taylor and George hood.
I find it interesting that so many alt rightists seem to emerge from a background in philosophy. G Johnson, mark gullick, etc. I wonder why. Is the “will think for food” crowd taught a process of objective thought, a shunning of facile social acceptance, which leads them to correct conclusions? One would think STEM lead people in that direction. Food for thought, or philosophy I suppose.
The chances of being doxxed are very slim. If you want to take extra precautions, don’t leave the conference center during daylight hours since the protesters are kept at a distance and people attending the conference aren’t allowed to run around taking pictures. You can also arrive late at night and leave early in the morning without fear of someone snapping a picture of you in your car since the protestors are all gone by then. If you get bored inside, there’s plenty of people to talk to and plenty of tables full of books for sale that make good reading material.
I find it interesting that so many alt rightists seem to emerge from a background in philosophy.
Interesting, but not surprising. I suspect it’s down to an inability to stomach lies, double standards, and sophistry.
In any case, when I see the name “Jeff Costello” I click and read… all the way to the end.
It’s that philosophers are smart and disaffected. Stem people are plugged into the economic system and make money and are therefore subservient to their economic masters. Philosophers are overlooked in the technocratic society, so they are more likely to turn a critical eye against it. Not to mention certain subgroups have great prowess in stem.
Not as mush as you’d think. I’m a machinist by trade and later became a mechanical engineer. I look at things through the lens of “what will work in the real world”. I arrived at CC because the high minded principles of diversity being our greatest strength and equality for all just don’t work and are a recipe for societal disaster.
They also have an ability to write and may be over represented among the content creators therefore.
I definitely agree with that. A lot of stem types can be a bit socially retarded and struggle to convey things with wit, nuance or eloquence. Not necessarily a bad thing, just a different skill set.
It’s that philosophers are smart and disaffected. Stem people are plugged into the economic system and make money and are therefore subservient to their economic masters.
A reasonable surmise, but the facts of the matter suggest that’s probably not the whole story.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/philosophers-dont-get-much-respect-but-their-earnings-dont-suck/
https://www.computerworld.com/article/2490243/it-careers-for-half-stem-degrees-lead-to-other-jobs.html
Nonetheless, MOPP4’s point about an engineer’s practical, real-world point of view is well-taken.
Thank you! 🙂
On the subject of being blackpilled, it seems to me that giving up isn’t really an option, unless you have a guilty itch to live a life of mindless hedonism and degeneracy. Given the alternatives, I would rather be a miserable, hopeless right-winger, whatever the drawbacks.
That’s how I see it too. I’d rather be a miserable cool person than a dumb fag.
Read and appreciated.
Agreed. This was a good read. Enjoyed the summary of Devlin’s yam theory.
It looks like there were only 7 speakers over the course of one and a half days. That leaves a lot of time between lectures. Is all of that time spent socializing and networking, or are there other activities between speaking sessions?
A friend who was in attendance said that he thought the mood seemed a bit “down” compared with previous years. But my friend tends to be negative. I think that what he was picking up on is that our people are now very pessimistic about changing or reforming the system and putting America on “the right track.”
Not to nitpick, but aren’t “down” and “pessimistic about the future” kind of the same thing? Or at least in the same family? How are you disagreeing with your friend?
“America is doomed and we must now look to what comes next — to what we can build for ourselves in a post-America future. This was the theme that tended to dominate discussions last weekend, over coffee and meals, in the hallways, and between presentations (and sometimes within presentations). But I would characterize this as forward-looking optimism. The events of the last two years have liberated us from caring about America, and liberated us from our illusions about our system and what can be accomplished within it. Now we must face the task of creating something new.”
I attended for the first time this year, so I don’t have any frame of reference for the mood of earlier conferences. I would say that the mood this year was more stoic and determined than it was pessimistic or black pilled. In fact, most of the speakers brought some warmth and humor to their presentations, and there were even some emotional moments, particularly during Mr. Taylor’s and Mrs. Malkin’s talks. The unsung highlight of the conference, IMHO, was Sam Dickson. As we Southerners say–he’s one of us–he’s a character, but he’s also a rousing speaker. During the panel discussion Saturday evening, he made the observation that Southerners can be rather politically retarded (true that), and during his closing presentation on Sunday, he tied everything together by saying that our enemies (i.e., the far left) have exhausted the moral capital (I’d argue that they were morally bankrupt to start with), in doing so have dropped their masks, and it’s ghastly. Amen.
Sam Dickson’s speech is always the highlight of any meeting, no matter how good the other speakers are.
I met Jared Taylor in I think 1993 (or was it ’91?) at a John Randolph conference. I was very impressed then, and remain so to this day. I recall him saying that he wanted AR to be a sober minded publication that white people of social standing would not be embarrassed to have out on their coffee tables, for all the world to see. Alas, he was thinking as an historically normal white man; he could not have foreseen (I surely didn’t) how abnormal our society and the next generation of whites would become. I suspect that he thought as I then did: that whites would grow tougher in spirit as their objective racial strength weakened. That this has not happened is something crying out for serious examination. It possibly offers the prospect of profound insights into our racial nature, and perhaps human nature more generally.
On another note: the picture of Dr. Devlin at AR was not remotely what I would have expected. Anyone know how old he is? I always assumed he was a guy in his late 30s-early 40s from the way he writes, and many of the topics he chooses. He’s a real asset to the cause, whatever his age. Has he written other books besides Sexual Utopia?
He’s one of the greatest essayist alive. Peruse the archive here. If you like his style i recommend Hans Hermann Hoppe. Also Oliver Revilo @ National Vanguard.
It’s easy to talk about blacks because they have an average IQ of 85 and 4x more blacks commit murder. The question is what about Hispanics, who are 18.7% of the US population? Or Asians, who are 6%? Those two groups together are almost double the number of blacks. The two main Hispanic groups, Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, have average IQs of 88 and 84, respectively, but their predicted IQs based on genes are 95 and 93, respectively. The predicted genetic IQ of US blacks is 84. Blacks are already batting above their level, but assuming that study was accurate, Hispanics will probably see a rise in IQ due to living in a mentally stimulating first world economy. Meanwhile, Asians generally outearn whites, and Asian females are particularly successful. This is not to mention another group which looks huwhite that has an average IQ around 110 and is responsible for much of the Left’s money and ideology. I’m sorry, but the 1990s white vs black Amren won’t work as we go further into the 20th century. Non-whites in America are no longer so wretched on average, and they no longer have so much cause to be envious. Oddly enough, though, non-whites and the Jewsmedia seem to be pushing blacks as their downtrodden avatars. We need to expose the reality of non-white existence. Their mansions, elite status, and expansion through the nation.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272408010_Estimating_the_genotypic_intelligence_of_populations_and_assessing_the_impact_of_socioeconomic_factors_and_migrations
The main problem of the past half century is white apathy and ignorance. Medieval whites somehow were Jew-wise, yet lived such primitive lives compared to us. They opposed Muslims too. We are totally incompetent in the face of both Muslims and Jews and every other non-white group. What happened to us?
I think I’ve got it. Species that evolve too quickly often lose out to those that evolve more steadily and slowly. Blacks clearly seem to be less evolved up from prehuman forms than whites. Maybe their primitive nature is saving them.
I’m interested in principal component analyses of how differentiated human groups are genetically relative to our shared Paleo African ancestors (f there are any samples of the latter). I want to know not just the genetic distance but relevant phenotypic correlates with those differentiated genes. I want to know, are we too niche-evolved for our own good? Is it impacting our genetic fitness? Would mutational load be a barometer of that? If we are too evolved in one direction? Can we get whites to counteract whatever is making them commit racial suicide rather than fight their group instincts like they do now? Let’s feel guilty about evolving too fast for our own good and fix it by being normal like every other human group and retaining our land and repelling invaders. We’ll either be absorbed by primitive non-whites or we’ll need to come to terms with our suicide-susceptible genome.
Don’t leave out freedom of the moral will (or some kind of undetermined human choice). Whites, the most ethical race, have been persuaded that advocating tribal identity for us is somehow immoral. That mentality has to change. But how did it come to this? The intellectual “archaeology” of this is extremely complex (certainly, disproportionately influential Jewish thinkers played an especially destructive role, but I doubt Jews are the whole story – whites are better than that!). But I also look at the matter of white decline sociologically. Many whites have been resentful at the racial changes imposed upon us since WW2, but have been too afraid to speak out – especially since the 1960s. Part of this is a recognition of the broad moral changes that were somehow insinuated into white mass consciousness (though of course they were playing off latent evolved white tendencies towards individualism and ethical universalism).
But I suggest that another key component was the sheer, disproportionate destruction of the most manly and aggressive white genomes in two fratricidal European “world” wars. Those wars weren’t just dysgenic in terms of killing off a lot of healthy white men who hadn’t sired children. I believe they radically lowered the modal level of (genetically-determined or at least statistically influenced) white courageousness, and that this deprived the postwar period of the kinds of white tough guys (tough in character, not just physically) who might have been racial leaders pushing back against the whole (Jewish) assault against the West and its genetic interests across all sectors of life.
“I am not a naturally sociable or gregarious person. Even when surrounded by likeminded folk, I have a tendency to stay in my shell. But, knowing that such an opportunity would not soon present itself again, I worked to overcome my natural tendency to socially distance (COVID isolation, you see, was no problem for me at all). Indeed, I had to do this — for again and again at this conference I was approached by individuals who said that they had read my work and that it had made a difference in their lives.”
This particular passage of this very fine review leaped out at me – because it is a perfect description of my own personality. I am also not a naturally sociable or gregarious individual and I’ve been that way for as far back as I can remember. I have attended only one American Renaissance Conference and it was one that was held at a Hotel near the Dulles International Airport in Fairfax country, Virginia. And, I can distinctly remember the feeling of ‘camaraderie’ I felt by being surrounded by like minded White race realists. However, unlike Mr. Costello – I was not able to overcome my natural tendency to suppress my gregariousness – so, I mainly watched, listened, and absorbed the positive and healthy racial vibes that were present all around me.
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