I never thought I would see some of my ideas and views go mainstream. And I certainly never thought I’d see them enter public policy. As recently as 2014, the idea of deporting anybody, no matter how illegal or criminal, was seen as impossible. During that era, as recently as within the decade, the idea of ending birthright citizenship was seen as simply laughable. The GOP was still fully neoconservative and led by the likes of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. It was an abysmal time politically, as was most of my life.
Not that long ago, advocating for two very reasonable things, deporting aliens and ending birthright citizenship, were met with total ridicule. People would laugh, scoff, and quip, “Go back to Stormfront.”
A professor of mine who was well-connected in the GOP told me that my views were simply too unrealistic and that I should consider being much more moderate unless I want to “be out in the forest screaming into the void.” I chose the void for many reasons. I could not get on board with the mainstream talking points of “as long as they come legally” and “if it’s good for the economy.” Not because I don’t care about the economy–I do–but because my concern is not merely on next quarter’s profits or the bonuses of middle and upper management. I had concerns that went beyond maximizing short-term profits as that is seldom compatible with long-term success and stability.
I was, by all definitions, a dissident. I stood against the official policies of both United States political parties and any sub-parties. For my entire life, no politician or entity advocated for more than one policy or idea I believed in or wanted. There might have been a random politician or two here and there who would run on a single issue that I held in common, but for the most part, it was all foreign wars, foreign aid, open borders, soft on crime, preferential treatment to all non-whites, while demanding huge taxes to pay for it all. Even my fellow citizens seemed to go along with it all as standard fare. As such, I paid a heavy price. I have had countless accounts banned over the years, all for perfectly legal free speech.
I never swore heavily and always avoided using slurs or calling people names. But I was sincere. As recently as a year ago, the ADL published an article about me that caused me to be kicked off four separate crypto platforms. I’ve been swatted, received so many death threats I find them funny now, and have had virtually any job prospect destroyed because of organizations like the ADL, SPLC, Stop Antisemitism, and the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights. All have written about me. I won’t say they defamed me. What they usually say is accurate, truth be told. But they present things in a way that would scare off any prospects of regular employment. I wouldn’t argue with them using terms of “Nazi, white supremacist, and fascist” because to them, based on their definition of those words, I am those things. They are allowed to say that. And there is some truth to it. My view, of course, is that these are not bad things. The only disagreement I have is when the ADL referred to me as a “violent domestic extremist.” I am not violent and do not advocate violence. Their view is that being “fascist” necessarily means violence. I disagree, but that’s neither here nor there at this point. They are allowed to believe and write those things. The fact is that my sincere public views have cost me a lot over the years.
This brings me to the crux of the issue: with Trump openly making a good-faith attempt to end birthright citizenship, pull foreign aid (with a couple of obviously notable exceptions), and deport aliens, am I still a dissident? The President of the United States is sending troops to the border and setting traditional architectural standards, both topics I wrote about many years ago. With these ideas becoming more mainstream, what does that mean for me? Many commentators are now pivoting to an anti-Trump position: “Anything he does is not good enough.” I have seen comments online arguing that because Trump did not pardon the January 6th prisoners before he left office in 2021, it’s now too little too late. Trump did not even know who to pardon when he left office two weeks after January 6th. Most of the folks who would be arrested were arrested after those two weeks. The FBI was hunting people who were in DC for the protests well into 2021. A president at least needs to know the names of the people he will pardon.
More broadly, some people want to remain “dissident,” not mainstream. They are married to the notion of being “against the system,” It is part of their personality. I want to be the system.
I would love for all of my views to be mainstream. I would love nothing more than to turn on Fox News nightly and see them openly quoting me or to work with the GOP to craft policy and laws imbued with my rationale and legal strategy. That would be what winning looks like to me—not being marginalized on a small Telegram account forever. Now, this may be a total pipe dream, OK, but it’s an insight into my position.
For these views, I have recently, and previously, been called things like an “edgy Republican” and “racist liberal.” The idea behind these insults is that I am not radical in any true sense or properly “revolutionary” for the tastes of some. However, those people are only radical and revolutionary in their minds, as they do nothing but talk online, and by ostracizing themselves from society, they render their work useless as it is entirely detached from anything happening in the real world. As for myself, I am only aligned with the GOP to the extent they support policies I have already believed in and will speak out against policies that are against what I believe.
Theoretically, there would be a certain point where a mainstream political platform is so aligned with my views that were once considered entirely out of bounds that I could no longer see myself as a dissident. If everything I believed in was the norm for society, it would follow that the remnants of the Left would malign me but as a mainstream figure. That scenario does not upset me in the least. Being irrelevant while a Bush-era neocon platform prevailed would bother me. Or worse, an aggressively left-wing platform taking over and pushing me back into the obscure corners of the Internet. I do not want to go “back to Stormfront.” At such a point, I would consider myself an illiberal radical. I would assume the role of the illiberal vanguard, working to root out the remnants of liberalism anywhere and continue to solidify the right-wing foundations of society. There would still be plenty of work to be done, old policies to root out, and guarding from left-wing attempts to undermine a nice, safe, high-trust society.
I never wanted to be a dissident. That is just where I found myself politically. I accepted the hand I was dealt and had to continue marching on. I hope a day will come when the once-verboten ideas I hold and continue to hold are increasingly normalized. The GOP did not organically decide to end its Neocon era and move into a more populist direction. Trump forced their hand, and people who had been pushing against the mainstream for years and years until the ideas were too serious to ignore, there was no option but to change course. In short, the GOP did not drag me into their ranks; I worked to drag the GOP towards me out in the forest, screaming into the void. Being a dissident is not something I am married to at all. I’d rather not be a political outcast but a political force. Thankfully, those who insist on remaining irrelevant will be just that.
If the mainstream right moves closer towards me and my views are normalized, I will, at some point, be more of an illiberal than a dissident. However, that is still a vital role. Some groups or people need to be on the cutting edge of moving towards a better society. There is still a Herculean amount of work to be done and plenty of room for these ideas to advance. There will always be a place for an illiberal radical, even if we were to achieve our ideal society. New threats arise, and new illiberal projects outside of politics will need to be developed.
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28 comments
Trump will not end birthright citizenship barring overturning the 14th Ammendment, never going to happen. He’s not banning aid to the most important countries, Israel will be a parasite for a long time, as well as the Ukraine. Illegal aliens have also always been deported, in fact Biden removed more per day on average than Trump in his first week in charge.
If you think White nationalist views are anywhere near the mainstream you need to have your head checked.
If anything Trump is a handy release valve for people who only four years ago could have legitimately considered staging a real insurrection. Now they think we’re “winning” and will go back to sleep.
What sort of evidence would you need to conclude that you’re wrong?
I do think he’s right that Trump will be stymied. Hawaiian judges will say “a’ole” to MAGA. Will Trump have the balls to ignore them? If Trump keeps deporting at the current rate, he’ll only manage to kick out 18% of the number that flooded in during Biden’s term.
If he can 10x the numbers then he’ll be making a good start, but that’s a tall order. Still, although Nothing Ever Happens, something just might, and if he’s ineffective I don’t think it’ll be for a lack of trying.
Trump is the lightest shade of grey that we could have realistically hoped to find in the bottle of blackpills, and we should be glad that we got it…
Actually I was wrong. First-week numbers put him on track to expel 8% of the number that flooded in during Biden’s term. But one week’s worth is not much data, and I know they’re trying to increase that.
Is that you Mr. Stack?
Regarding the EO signed on the banning of birthright citizenship based on a misinterpretation of the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof”, should we defer to your judgement, or that of the Federalist Society, which has selected most Federal and Supreme Court appointees since the Reagan era based on the candidates’ interpretation of “subject to the jurisdiction thereof”?
Bravo!
🙂
A great and timely article! I love seeing the old Pepe meme. Let’s go mainstream. Apply at donaldjtrump.com. If he starts The American Academy I want to be an instructor or curriculum designer.
Rich’s chances of becoming a normie during his lifetime increased exponentially when on October 26, 2024 Donald J. Trump tweeted: WHEN I’M PRESIDENT THE MCDONALD’S ICE CREAM MACHINES WILL WORK GREAT AGAIN!
Lol, I’ve noticed that too. They never seem to work, esp in certain locales…somehow this small thing is paradigmatic of the bottom up rot that afflicts our civilization.
they have brought up nearly every single issue i have ever written about at this point. it’s surreal.
i’m not sure what else i could ask for except maybe an Executive Order about corner store security or being an advisor.
Maybe behaving like the left would help our cause. Their “thought” leaders are never happy even as they get everything they want, they still demand more and more and more. Maybe that’s why they can’t stop winning. Even as system lackeys they piss and moan like they’re renegades and rebels.
Does this site you write for do business freely in accordance with standard business and free speech principles? Or does Counter-Currents get put on the MATCH list and get banned on Amazon and stuff like that?
That’s how you know you’re an honest man.
Unlike Abu Mohammad al-Julani of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham you’re not respectable yet.
Well now he’s respected in society, he don’t worry about the things that he used to be …
It’s definitely important to not get stuck somewhere prior, to not recognize things that are actually going in a better direction, and there many good signs. But also we have to keep focused on real world changes and the hard measures of success. In some ways what we’re looking at might be the shift of the US to a banana republic that’s being played out in a certain way, and Trump 2 has yet to be tested.
Our enemies don’t care about the specifics about where on the spectrum someone is, and exactly what they believe.
They are waiting patiently. They’re waiting for the next George Floyd. They’re waiting to generate mass hysteria and floods of sentimentality to try to set things backwards again.
They’re looking for new cracks in the ruins, new things they can exploit.
At this point, the language, the vocabulary has shifted somewhat in our favor, allowing for the big more normie conservative following Trump has, but it would be incorrect to say ‘now we’ve won’. There was strong sentiment in 2016 that some critical tipping point of winning had happened and it hadn’t. And it was a nasty shock to many people.
Thank you for this article. Indeed, our ideas are closer to mainstream than they’ve been since AT LEAST the 1990s, when Jared Taylor and Pat Buchanan would be invited on a news panel discussion, and more likely the 1960s.
I’ll be happy to see our ideas expand and grow in the public sphere.
It is very disheartening to see what has become of the core of the old “alt right”. Most of them are pathetic whiners who have no desire to actually win anything. To be mainstream is to be without an edge, and they’ve always been nothing but “edgelords”. If and when cutting a child’s penis off becomes verboten again, these weirdos will become LQBTQ supporters. AS LONG AS BEING AGAINST “X” IS SYNONYMOUS WITH BEING ANTISEMITIC, this is what they’ll be. If Jews all of a sudden start coming out against immigration, then these losers will be setting up go fund-me accounts for Haitians.
Thank you for reading. I think some people are mistaking my position for blind optimism. They are simply so contrarian and wanting to be the underdogs forever, they do not see anything objectively. Like you, I a happy to see our views out there in such a huge way. I know there is a long way to go, but they seem to think there was some better alternative. This is about as much as I could ask for at this point.
100%
Success, to them, is simple:
Give the omnipotent Jews their comeuppance + maintain edgelord status.
That’s it.
They don’t want a nice white country, because they don’t want to be the kind of people that make a nice white country.
“Our enemies don’t care about the specifics about where on the spectrum someone is, and exactly what they believe.”
They don’t want to know our facts or our logic. They want to know what number to call to get us fired.
I oppose his AI policy. And I would prefer illegals be executed rather than deported, but baby steps. Ancient nations did exile, meaning if you come back you are executed. That’s what we need. Any illegal who has been deported before (at the very least) should be executed by the state. Its the only way to prevent them from just coming back, illegally or “legally.” And that’s the problem, they could cave later and let the same animals in “legally.” Ergo, executions are preferable. So in that sense, I’m still a dissident.
“They are allowed to say that.” I disagree with this framing. It is defamation and it should not be tolerated given the severity of the consequences.
You have every right in the world to decent employment and to use this country’s basic social, financial, and technological infrastructure — i.e., its utilities. Until whites have civil rights and are no longer second class citizens in our own countries, we are, and will remain, dissidents.
Long time no post.
It is so rare to have won in the last 30 years that it can be hard to believe it’s going well. But pinch me. Two there are some wins.
However,INS USCIS and ICE and Customs have always done their jobs. Some of Homan and McGraw’s recent revival of the Cops TV format is just that. Repackaging what they’ve always been doing. Finding ner do wells who escape other criminal legal dragnets. Race replacement is still underway. Nothing has fundamentally been reversed.
Seeing the pathetic meltdown certain people are having over Trump doing what we want has made me want to drop le Dissident Right label forever. I would prefer to be called almost anything else now.
I will not stop being a dissident until we see things such as these:
— Constitutional term limits and minimum age for presidency both eliminated
— Presidency becomes a sort of Caesardom that is passed by being chosen by the current President in his deathbed (or, failing that, by success in internal power struggle) and not by democracy
— Manifest Destiny expanded to the entire American continent, from Nunavuk to Tierra del Fuego, including Greenland.
— Eugenic breeding programs enacted even amongst whites
— Enforced monotheism of your preferred variety with state sponsored grand worship rites
— A policy of open warfare with every enemy nation and near unlimited military spending enacted
— Mandatory megalopolis-style urbanization of every 50 square miles area in the continent
— Massively ramp up space colonization with a realistic timeline to bring the whole Solar System under actual physical control of humankind within this century
— Eliminate resource scarcity and the necessity for humans to do work in order to be able to consume said resources globally
— Eventually on a long enough timeline obtain unlimited energy for use by humankind and achieve immortality and eliminate the need for defecation, urination, and sexual reproduction in human beings
You’re either a great troll or a great example of WN absurdity.
Morality Squad: January 29, 2025 You (The Honored One) are either a great troll or a great example of WN absurdity.
—
Both.
You left out “everlasting crack pipe”
Very good article to think about. Are you still a dissident? Can Counter-currents articles be posted on Facebook? Can Greg Johnson and Jared Taylor’s X account be set up? Can David Duke have an official YouTube channel? Is one political option to have your own white ethnostate and overthrow multiculturalism in at least one white country? Answer these questions for yourself. We are still dissidents in a rapidly changing environment.
Rich the GOAT
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