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Author’s Note:
These are the notes for a talk that I gave at the Institute for Historical Review in Orange County on Saturday, November 1st, 2025. I want to thank Mark Weber for inviting me to speak and everyone who showed up for their warm reception.
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Recently, I was asked to comment on white identity politics “after Trump.” “After Trump” can mean two things: after his election or after he leaves office.
After Trump’s election, things have been great for white identity politics: the border is closed, deportations are happening, DEI and wokeness are being rolled back, and Trump even surprised me by being less subservient to Israel than I expected.
But today I want to talk about a transformation in dissident spaces after the Trump inauguration, namely the steady removal of invisible barriers. It turns out that we were being impeded by barriers that we didn’t even know existed. There are two kinds of these barriers: external and internal to the Right.
The most important external barriers were revealed by DOGE. The US federal government was giving massive subsidies to the radical Left all over the globe. For instance, in 2024, the US federal government paid $8.2 million for “institutional subscriptions” to Politico, a partisan Left publication. After USAID’s budget was cut, Left-wing journalists lost their jobs in places like Poland and Hungary, which were being targeted by the US establishment for regime change.
Ideas and idealism, not material factors like guns and money, ultimately determine policy and history. But the Left does not run on idealism alone. Leftists also raise enormous sums of money to propagate and enforce their ideas. They build institutions. They create legions of paid activists in nonprofit organizations and academic sinecures such as the many identity politics programs: women’s studies, black studies, etc.
Now that many Leftists have been defunded and are looking for other jobs, they are less able to oppose us. Many barriers that we did not even know about have been removed. Many doors are now unlocked and unguarded. But we will never know what we can accomplish until we try. Thus, the Right needs to push harder on all fronts.
Many barriers within the broader Right are dissolving as well. A major cause of this was Trump’s victory, followed by his surprisingly strong start as president. It produced what the kids call a “vibe shift” within the Right. Cynics and doomsayers were discredited, and even Trump skeptics like me were delighted that he was actually doing the sort of things we would do if we were in power.
Winning begets confidence, which is contagious. As confidence spreads, it encourages cooperation between people and groups that were previously insular, diffident, even hostile. People get along together when they feel that they are getting ahead together.
I first saw this in Europe in February when I attended a nationalist conference. There I met people who had never given me the time of day, but suddenly they wanted to get to know me and talk about the greater movement and the greater good.
Another set of barriers fell when Charlie Kirk was murdered, and very significant figures like commentator Matt Walsh said that they wished to put aside any disagreements with people to their right—which basically means white identity politics—because we need to work together to crush the Left and save America. This represents real progress. Only a few years ago, Walsh was criticizing white identity politics and running cover for the likes of Ahmaud Arbery. But Walsh has grown much closer to us. He is now willing to defend white identity and pro-white policies. The Kirk assassination gave him an opportunity to move beyond intellectual convergence to political cooperation.
Another interesting barrier fell when Politico released the racist group chats of some Young Republican activists, and Vice President J.D. Vance refused to disavow them. In my travels earlier this year, I met some of these Young Republicans, and for once I felt like I was the moderate in the room.
Sam Francis argued that politics moves to the Left because the leaders of the Democrats are to the left of their constituency, and the leaders of the Republicans are also to the left of their constituency, thus there is no countervailing force to the Leftist vanguard. Now, in many parts of the Right, especially the young Right, that is no longer true. White identitarians are now a vanguard moving large constituencies on the Right in our direction.
Another example of barriers between white identity politics and the mainstream dissolving is Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with Nick Fuentes. I am not a fan of Fuentes, but in this case his toxicity and outlandishness actually work in our favor, for if Tucker can platform Fuentes, nothing is stopping him from platforming better advocates for white identity politics like me or Jared Taylor, Kevin McDonald, Kevin Deanna, and James Edwards.
Metapolitics isn’t just the battle of ideas, it also involves creating institutions and communities. This is important for understanding the behavior of people like Elon Musk and J.D. Vance. Elon Musk was humiliated in the great H-1B visa debate last Christmas and had what the extremely online call a “crash out,” a public tantrum on X. It looked like the friendship between Elon and national populists was over. But then Elon pivoted to discussing anti-white rape gangs in the UK and the censorship of European nationalists and populists.
Why? Because he wanted to win back the approval of online racists. But why do that? Elon Musk is the richest man in the world. He doesn’t need anything material from us. Yet he courts the approval of online racists because he feels, in some way, that we are his peer group, and he wants us to like him. This is an enormously important development.
The same is true of J.D. Vance’s defense of the racist Young Republicans. Some people will spin this as a cynical attempt to win votes. Maybe Vance has polling data showing that online racists can make or break him as president in 2028, but I doubt it. (Our movement should be trying to determine whether that’s true or not with our own polls.) I think the more likely explanation is that Vance too is plugged into our online spaces and sees us as part of his broader peer group.
This brings us to the question of our movement after Trump leaves office. If Vance is his successor, I think we will continue to make progress. If the Left returns to power, however, they will be out for blood, and things will get much harder for us.
Last year, I spoke in this very room just before the election, and I argued that American democracy is coming to an end. Multiparty democracy only works if you’re willing to hand state power—the equivalent of a loaded gun—to your opponents from time to time. In America today, both parties increasingly feel that the other is too dangerous to be allowed back into power, regardless of who gets the most votes. The first party to ban the other will control the future of post-democratic America.
When I asked which party you thought more likely to ban the opposition—Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats or Mike Johnson’s Republicans—everyone in this room picked the Democrats. I certainly did. But now that Trump is in power, I’m not so sure anymore. I’m seeing a steely glint of will-to-power in the eyes of young people on the Right, who increasingly think of themselves as revolutionaries not conservatives. It makes sense: they’ve got nothing to lose, which means: nothing to conserve.
When I sat down with those based Young Republicans, I eventually felt I needed to one-up them a bit. So I suggested that it is time to have a mature conversation about simply banning the Democrat party as a criminal conspiracy. There was a hard gulp here, a small gasp there, but then they relaxed into the discussion. Objections were raised and answered. Convictions began to change. I started seeing that steely glint.
The things we say today in our racist group chats will be discussed tomorrow in Austin and Silicon Valley and in Washington DC the day after that. David Zsutty calls this the “racist group chat to White House policy pipeline.”
We are winning the battle of ideas, but we haven’t yet won the political war. To get what we want, we need to do more of what works and to stop doing what fails. We need to go “all in” in the battle of ideas, because that’s what’s working. When I joined this cause a quarter century ago, we were lonely voices crying out in the wilderness. Now the whole political mainstream is abuzz with our ideas.
One thing that doesn’t work is creating what we somewhat optimistically call “third” parties. That’s a waste of time and money in the American political system. White identity politics will progress largely through the Republicans, but in some places it might make sense to work through the Democrats too.
Another thing that doesn’t work are groups of marching men who think they can Nazi their way into power by duking it out with Antifa and police. We can’t beat our enemies with guns and money. They have all the advantages there. Instead we need to fight where we have the advantage: in terms of truth, that is to say, in the battle of ideas. Everyone knows it is dumb to take a knife to a gunfight. So is taking a gun to a battle of ideas.
There is a danger, however, that our movement might become a victim of our own successes. A lot of people think we’ve won. Yes, we are winning online debates. We are building new institutions and coalitions. We are influencing the political mainstream. But we haven’t really won a political victory, because everything Trump has done can be reversed in a few years.
During the Reagan years, our movement went through a long dry spell because back then people on the Right thought we had won too. Now, we are noticing a sharp downturn in fundraising. The bad economy is surely responsible in part. But it was bad last year and the year before as well. What changed is Trump winning. Now some of us want to go back to grilling.
But that’s a mistake. To keep our message strong, we must keep institutions like the IHR, Counter-Currents, and American Renaissance strong as well. Politics goes up and down. It is an emotional roller coaster. But our movement must be a sober, steady drumbeat. We must keep repeating old truths to new audiences in new ways.
But let’s pause to reflect on what a wonderful problem this is. We’re not bemoaning how we are victims of our enemies’ machinations or our own failings. Instead we are now facing the possibility of being victims of our own success. That’s a great problem to have.
13 comments
100%! Entryism all the way.
The thought of entryism has become increasingly alluring. I used to recoil at the thought of it, feeling it was somehow indecorous to impose myself and my ways on any outfit whose mission statement was incongruous with my own beliefs. (An obviously unfortunate holdover of the “how would you like it if they did that to you” days.)
The way, for example, that the left has no qualms about taking even something like Jefferson’s clear statement about slavery and perpetual black-white incompatibility (lopping off the end of it, carving the first part in stone, all to shamelessly buttress their egalitarian and integrationist beliefs) appalled me.
Now, however, I long to become one of the most greathearted “parasites” a race-blind institution could ever “host”. Bring on the subterfuge.
This is very encouraging, Greg.
“After USAID’s budget was cut, Left-wing journalists lost their jobs in places like Poland and Hungary, which were being targeted by the US establishment for regime change.”
That is an interesting subject, given the almost completely neo-colonial character of radical left in Eastern Europe. Money from German Stiftungen or the “Norway Grants” and finally the operations from outfits like Open Society Foundation provide often the vital lifelines to many far-left activist organizations as well as formally “neutral” social activists lobbying for policies or engaging in opposition. Those funds also provide another form of bribes to buy allegiance to the EU or US liberal foreign policy pet projects. This is only a fraction of the entire system of money flowing into our countries to buy our elites.
Elon wants us to win.
He must. He sees what happened to his beloved SA and surely doesn’t want that here.
The greatest danger to this incipient movement would be a sudden “upturn” in the economy. We want it to be bad, but not so bad that voters turn to the democrats for handouts. We want it to be good, but not so good that voters go back to partying. Great article. 🙃
Arctic Frost shows that Republicans only have a choice between taking power for real and being victims of weaponized state agencies and the unpunished conspiracies of the left.
I think the loaded gun metaphor is very apt. This is apparent with Calaifornia redistricting to counter Texas’ redistricting. Politics has become a zero-sum game on steroids.
I think the “but I’m not so sure now” remark on who is going to ban who is wishful thinking. Rest assured, come 2028 the pendulum will most likely swing left and swing left very hard. Sure, there are right wing revolutionaries but they do not have state power. The ones yielding state power are the “muh principles” conservatism inc. people who won’t do, pardon the scatological cognomon, shit. Kevin DeAnna or one of his other avatars put it best, the left knows how to exert state power against its enemies. The left waged Manhattan-project level lawfare against Trump while the right does nothing. The James and Comey indictments are a start but pale in comparison to what was done to Trump.
On the note of banning a political party, Israel did exactly that when banning Meir Kahane’s Kach party. Of course, in typical Ashkenazi pilpul fashion, this very undemocratic act was framed and stylized to protect democracy. While I find the idea of banning the Democratic party as a criminal organization a good one it is simply not practical. At least with Kahane’s party it was a small one; he got a single seat. Democrats are half the country.
That being said, I think Newscum may have fallen for a trap with the counter redistricting. This could set in motion some serious secessionist movements. The unforseen consequence could be the rural counties of Oregon and California being absorbed into Idaho or even better, creating new states. I like the status quo as much as the next guy, but the “muh principles” conservatism inc. people need to wake up and smell the Muslim mayor elect of New York. The time to exert state power for pure Machevellian purposes is now.
So glad you did this, Greg. You gathered up all the timely rosebuds and pelted them at the blackpillers out there. (I don’t know what that venue is like these days, but naysayers were whispering everywhere.) We have indeed reached some kind of watershed where mis-sorted priorities will be called out.
“In America today, both parties increasingly feel that the other is too dangerous to be allowed back into power, regardless of who gets the most votes. The first party to ban the other will control the future of post-democratic America.”
You failed to add a significan adjective, Greg: “The first party to successfully ban the other will control the future of post-democratic America.”
As a thought experiment (in Minecraft), let’s imagine that Trump were to flat-out declare martial law and ban the Democrats. Can we really expect that riots and protests to dwarf George Floyd would not break out, or that the military, the National Guard, the local police would execute his orders and arrest key Democrats and not rebel? Recently a South Korean President tried to assume total power. He got kicked out of office almost immediately.
The same applies to the Democrats. Say AOC were elected and decided to throw the whole Trump family in jail and then execute them. Would the troops follow her orders? Coup d’etats fail more often than they succeed.
IMHO, Trump lost his chance in the pandemic. If ever there was an opportunity t0 suspend elections and declare martial law, that was it. It would take a comparable crisis–a foreign nuke, say–for the party in power to declare a ‘temporary’ Schmittian State of Emergency.
Could it be arranged? Maybe. But what you can’t arrange is the will to take the other party down. And I don’t see anyone in politics today with enough. From a white nationalist perspective, he best we can hope for is a failed putsch followed by a determined effort to exploit it: not one-party dictatorship, but just enough quasi-dictatorship in passing to impose irreversible demographic change.
Wonder if we are up against a “practical superiority”, from sobrans Alias Shakespeare:
“In Shakespeare’s most serene tragedy, the wonderfully ripe and relaxed Antony and Cleopatra, we find, manifest but unassertive, his sensual conservatism and his aversion to the purposeful ambition of Octavius. Shakespeare understands fully that Octavius is bound to defeat the lovers, and he accepts this. But the lovers are still more admirable to him than their victorious opponent. They have a touch of the infinite that even Octavius recognizes and honors. They represent the careless, even reckless greatness of a passing order; he represents only the future.
Antony announces his generous but self-destructive philosophy in the opening scene: “There’s beggary in the love that can be reckoned.”
Here there is no doubt which side Shakespeare is on. For him as for
Burke, an age of chivalry is yielding to one of calculators, sophists, and economists. He is thinking not of Rome but of England, where up-starts, Puritans, and businessmen are taking over, and the old nobility may soon be extinct. The play may be read as a kind of elegy for [the aristocratic] class and the people it could produce. It is not an argument; it does not aim to convert anyone. It merely displays the splendor of the lovers’
“sovereignty of nature” and lets it speak for itself. Yet it also recognizes the practical superiority of Octavius, whose virtues suit the time better than theirs.”
Hello, Dr. Johnson. Do you have audio of this speech? The Institute for Historical Review did not have your lecture.
Sorry, I don’t.
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