Edmund Blair Leighton, Duty (1883)
Source: Wikimedia Commons

2,301 words

This talk was delivered at the Counter-Currents Spring Retreat in Rome on April 11th, 2026, and again at the Finnish Awakening conference near Helsinki on April 19, 2026. I want to thank my hosts and my audience at both events.

We are spending today in the company of friends, sharing ideas, fellowship, and jokes. There’s a lot of laughter. Any outside observer would say that we’re a cheerful lot. But we are gathered here because we all share a very serious belief, namely that if we do nothing, our race has no future.

Of course we are doing something, and there’s increasing reason for hope, but the threat remains with us, a death’s head at our feast, because “doing something” doesn’t matter unless that “something” eventually includes winning. And for that, we need political leaders, not just thinkers, authors, and podcasters.

Years ago, a listener on a livestream asked me a question. Given what our race is facing, whoever turns things around will be the greatest hero of all time. He might someday be worshipped as a god. So why aren’t more people coming forward?

The crown of our people is in the gutter. Eternal glory belongs to whoever picks it up. So why are there so few contenders today for such an honor?

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It is a good question. I’d like to share my thoughts and hear yours.

First of all, although the image of one man on a white horse riding to the rescue is very powerful, it won’t just be one man. Our whole race needs saving. But if that immense task falls on the shoulders of one man — well, that might be why so few people are coming forward, because the task seems impossible.

When faced with an intimidatingly large task, the best way to complete it is to break it down into smaller ones.

There are many white tribes and many white countries. They all face the same decline. They all require the same solutions. So leaders must come forth from each of them.

There are 52 historically white countries in the world today, all of which had white identities and majorities in the last half-century. Ideally, I would like to see white preservationist movements in all of them.

So we don’t need just one guy. We need more than 50. Of course, this observation doesn’t diminish the problem; it increases it. It doesn’t answer the question; it just makes it more poignant.

Second, although we obviously want more and better contenders grasping for eternal glory, we are already seeing such people. I have seen more and better people joining our cause every single year of the quarter century I have been involved. That trend is sustained both by the problems we face and the solutions we offer. Since the system won’t stop creating problems, and we won’t stop offering solutions, I expect that trend to continue.

Third, we want great political leaders, because we know that one man can save a nation. But the desire for a man on a white horse, the desire for a dictator to set things right, is often a confession of loneliness and desperation.

Just look at the evil people running things. Just look at the hopelessly deluded masses that support them. It is quite natural to conclude that you need one man with the power to clear the current leaders out, quell the opposition, and force the normies to abandon their televisions and putting greens and — to borrow a phrase from my friend Tito Perdue — acquire a taste for marching through field and forest singing songs of death.

Although even the greatest leader cannot save his people alone. No man is a leader until he acquires the first follower. We remember King Leonidas, but he could have done nothing without his 300 bodyguards, plus Sparta’s allies.

If you don’t feel cut out to be a political leader, you shouldn’t just loaf around waiting for someone to rescue you. Instead, you should try to be the best possible follower: develop skills, build up your network, polish your resume, accumulate assets, become an asset to any movement you belong to. Work to build a movement that can attract or foster a great leader, or leaders.

Perhaps the leader you are waiting for is actually waiting for you to show signs of worthiness.

Beyond that, if you work diligently on becoming the best nationalist you can be, and networking with likeminded people, you will find that your sense of being alone will diminish, and so will your pining for a man on a white horse. Because you will be part of a whole cavalry.

Aristotle observed that one-man rule is natural if we have one individual whose virtues tower above those of his contemporaries. If, however, one has many superior individuals, then aristocracy is the natural regime, for if there are many men of merit, they will not suffer one of them to rule the rest forever.

I believe that our movement has been retarded by two models: the totalitarian political movement and the religious cult, which has now spawned a mutant strain, the podcaster cult of personality. The common denominator is a permanent and dramatic difference between leaders and followers. We must be honest: Many people hunger to be followers. We must be wary of that. I am even warier of the people who hunger to be leaders.

One trap of the dictatorship/cult model is that the Dear Leader always wants to be the smartest guy in the room. Unless he really is the smartest guy around, however, that’s a bad model, because it makes improvement virtually impossible. The Dear Leader isn’t looking for peers. He isn’t looking for mentors. He’s looking for a few hatchetmen and a lot of “paypigs.” It repulses better people.

Thus if we want the movement to grow and improve, we need a better model. I suggest that we look to the aristocratic republics of the ancient world. We want to attract truly superior people. But the best people do not hunger for sycophants. They want to be around people they look up to.

The ancients understood the need for leadership, of course. The Roman aristocracy invented the office of the dictator to serve the common good in times of emergency. But dictatorships were granted for fixed terms or the duration of the crisis that prompted them. The Romans saw dictatorship as a sword, to be drawn only in most dire need, then sheathed quickly when the need had passed. As they found out, permanent dictatorship is the road to ruin.

Wilmot Robertson had faith that when the fateful hour tolls, leaders will come forth, and they would not be people he knew. They would come as complete surprises. I share that conviction. Our movement is vast and growing. More than ten years ago, I gave up even trying to keep track of all the new platforms and personalities popping up every day.

Just because you don’t know anyone with the skills of a Napoleon, that doesn’t mean such people aren’t already out there. There are lots of quiet, thoughtful young men watching and learning and waiting for their moment to take part.

Rupert Lowe of Restore Britain gives me a great deal of hope. Two years ago, I had never heard of him. Now I want him to be Lord Protector — for the duration of the current crisis, of course.

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Here are a few things we can do to foster the rise of a new elite from which leaders can emerge.

First, we need to increase the number of people who are on our side, who believe what we believe about what’s true and good. In short, we need to change minds. The more the better. But at the top, we want quality, not quantity. Thus we must sift the people who come to us for the very best: the best in character, intellect, education, skills, taste, connections, etc.

Second, we need to create a genuine leadership cadre. That means bringing people together in the real world — not just to educate them, but also to build friendship and trust, and to lay the foundations for common projects and common struggles. That’s why we have gathered here today.

Third, in addition to increasing peoples’ desire to get involved, we must also lower their resistance. What is the main source of resistance? It isn’t physical violence. That happens rarely, and only to people who publicly speak their minds. But what keeps people from speaking their minds in the first place?

Years ago, at a movement gathering, a young fellow started bemoaning the fact that he couldn’t talk about his convictions in public for fear of losing his livelihood. One of the people present, a rather abrasive old man, piped up: “What, you don’t want to be a hero?” He may have made an enemy that day, but he also made a good point.

That’s really the question we face. Why don’t more people want to be heroes?

In the abstract, of course, everyone would like to be a hero. They start bailing out, however, when they look at the costs.

There were 89 Roman emperors from Augustus to Romulus Augustulus, and 54 of them, fully 60 percent, met with unnatural deaths: assassination, death in battle, suicide under duress, etc. Moreover, at least 74 would-be emperors tried to seize the purple, failed, and died violently. In the chaotic decades of the third century, the emperor Gallienus alone vanquished 19 challengers before the 20th beat him.

Given the hazards of imperial power, why were there so many candidates for the job? The simple answer is that the Romans were ruled by men who preferred a short and dangerous life crowned by glory to a long and safe life lived in obscurity.

Note also that the glory for which these men were willing to risk everything was quite conventional. Often their only accomplishment was to scramble to the top of the political hierarchy. Few could be called saviors of their people or civilization.

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So what has changed? I don’t think that human nature has fundamentally changed, but human values have. Modern men simply prefer long, comfortable, and private lives to risking death in the pursuit of glory.

Last year I gave a speech on this topic at the American Renaissance conference. The title was “Our Sacred Honor.” My argument was that when the 56 American revolutionaries who signed the Declaration of Independence pledged their “lives, fortunes, and sacred honor” to the cause of liberty, that meant they were willing to lose their lives and fortunes, but not their honor. That’s what made it sacred. They were rebelling against the king because he had not given them the respect they felt due as free men.

That’s the ethos of a revolutionary. That’s the ethos we need to cultivate. We need to make a cult of honor: specifically, loyalty to our people and their cause.

For the ancients, a free man was willing to risk life and fortune in the struggle for honor. They regarded those who refused that risk as slaves by nature, because they would endure degradation to preserve their safety and comfort.

You aren’t really free if you don’t know what your options are. Yet most people are blissfully unaware of this choice. They think that standing up against evil can ruin their lives, but what they really mean is their economic lives. They don’t understand that submitting to evil can ruin their lives as well. Namely, it can corrupt their souls.

I believe that if we make people see that they have this fundamental choice, more of them might choose to be heroes.

But there’s a problem with honor and glory. These are public things. They are bestowed by others. But, as my friend Wilhem Ivorsson put it: How many people in the movement today would stick with it if they were told that yes, we are going to win, but nobody will remember your name?

This points to a motive for doing the right thing that is even more sublime than honor: namely, duty. When the dutiful man learns what is right, he doesn’t need any further incentive to act — not honor, not pleasure, not happiness. He never thinks, “Yes, it is the right thing to do, but what’s in it for me?” He never thinks “Will I be remembered?” but only “Will I be worthy of being remembered?”

The best possible life is to enjoy honor, glory, and personal happiness perfectly apportioned to one’s worth.  They are the crown of moral worth, but only the crown, the reward but not the merit. Sometimes we are forced to choose: between reward and merit, between happiness and worthiness of happiness, between glory and worthiness of glory.

What makes us worthy of happiness and glory is doing the right thing, regardless of the consequences. When faced with the choice between moral worth and its rewards, we can choose to be worthy, or we can choose the crown without the worthiness to wear it. We can choose to be unsung heroes or the frauds who wear their laurels. Which type do you choose to be?

In a heroic task such as ours, duty-driven men are far more reliable than the seekers of glory. Such men can move worlds. They are rocks, over which the waves of history break impotently and foam with rage. But they may remain entirely invisible and unsung. You may pass them in the street every day. But the only one you may ever meet is the one that you create in the privacy of your own soul.