Fortunato Depero, Lightning Composer, 1926
8,847 words
French translation here, German translation here
Author’s Note:
The following text is a transcript by V. S. of my interview with Lana Lokteff on Radio 3Fourteen on Red Ice Creations, which you can listen to here. I have punctuated and introduced paragraph breaks for maximum clarity and removed excessive wordiness.
Lana Lokteff: Hello, ladies and gentlemen. My guest today, Greg Johnson, is the Editor-in-Chief of Counter-Currents Publishing and its journal and webzine, North American New Right. Greg, thanks for being here.
Greg Johnson: Thanks for having me on.
LL: Well, I regularly check in on and greatly enjoy your website Counter-Currents, and I am curious about your conversion into nationalism, so tell us how it happened for you.
GJ: Well, I went through a process, a long process — mostly based upon reading and observing things around me — from being a libertarian when I was an undergraduate student to becoming more conservative by the end of my undergraduate years. Then, when I went into graduate school, I was a conservative. I read a lot of neoconservative stuff. The New Criterion was one publication that I subscribed to. I subscribed to Commentary primarily because I liked the higher intellectual quality of the neocon writing. In terms of policies, I was more paleocon, I guess, but I liked the neocon writing. Never could stand National Review. Couldn’t even look at it. It was such an ugly magazine. Stupid, too.
When I was in graduate school, I started realizing that, first of all, we’re not just universal human beings, that we have specific ethnic identities. Of course, the liberal project and the libertarian project is premised on the idea that there’s just this universal humanity. We’re these universal bearers of rights. We’re basically fungible and interchangeable. Wherever we go, we’re the same. That idea, I think, is fundamentally false. It goes along with the Enlightenment idea that ultimately we can settle everything by appeals to reason, by appeals to nature, whereas in the arena of politics you ultimately end up making an argument from identity.
In political debates you come back to a principle like this: This is just who I am. This is just what I’m comfortable with, and I can’t budge. In other words, politics ultimately boils down to appeals to identity and being true to yourself. And since there are many different identities, many different groups, if you have non-negotiable appeals to identity, you’re going to have conflict.
The idea of the Enlightenment is that we can resolve all conflicts because reason is one, and truth is one, and reality is one. So we can talk it all out and come to a consensus. But if in the realm of practical affairs you ultimately come back to appeals to identity, and identity is plural, that whole conflict resolution model is out the window.
Therefore, we are never going to live in a world where there’s no enmity. The only way we’re going to live in a peaceful world — or maximize the amount of peace in the world — is to allow different peoples with different identities to have their own spaces where they don’t have to argue with others, where they don’t have to convince others, where they can just live according to their identities, according to the way of life that feels natural to them.
This is true of individuals, too. Just have to share a bathroom with somebody, or have to share a bedroom with somebody, and you find that there’s conflict. But that conflict can be easily removed if you just don’t have to share certain spaces.
I think it was Virginia Woolf who talked about how there would be just as many great women writers as men writers if they only had a room of their own to go to.
Nationalism is basically the idea that we should all have a country of our own to go to. A place where we can retreat and be ourselves and not be on trial by the standards of universal reason or by the different standards of our neighbors, but where we can simply relax and be at home and be ourselves.
So, I became a nationalist when I realized that there are certain irreducible differences between people, and that those have to be respected and honored, and that’s the only route to a world that’s going to be as close to utopia as possible, where everybody has a country of his own.
LL: Well said. I read your book, New Right vs. Old Right, which for me was a lot of fun, but for those just hearing about the New Right, what is new about the North American New Right and how does it differ from the Old Right and the European New Right?
GJ: These are good questions. First of all, in the 1970s some French journalists labeled Alain de Benoist as an exponent of something called the “New Right.” He’s never been comfortable with that term. His followers have never been comfortable with that term. They always clear their throats and announce that they’re not comfortable with that term, and that this is a term that other people have placed upon them.
Personally, I’m just going to claim that term. [1] I’m following Jonathan Bowden in this. He claimed the term “New Right.” I think it’s a fine term, because, first of all, it’s meaningful to talk about being Right-wing. What’s essential about the Right is that we believe that human inequality is not always a bad thing. The Left is elitist in practice, but in terms of their principles, in terms of their values, they are anti-elitist. They’re egalitarian. I think that is an essential difference between Left and Right.
In many of my policy views, in many of my lifestyle choices, in the kinds of people I hang out with, in the kinds of coffee houses and neighborhoods I go to, I’m pretty liberal. However, in terms of my basic value orientation I am a Rightist, because I believe that inequality is natural, normal, and not necessarily bad.
Now, what’s the difference between the New Right and the Old Right? I think that, really, you have to talk about the difference between the New Left and the Old Left in order to understand that. The Old Left was totalitarian. It was militant. It was imperialistic. It was certainly genocidal. We’re talking about classical Communism.
After the Second World War, something emerged called the New Left. First it was called Western Marxism, but then the “New Left” was the term that was used beginning in the 1960s. It was an alternative to the totalitarian political model. Basically, it aimed to advance the values of the Left through different means. Instead of battles in the streets or on battlefields in the Old Left style, they took a page from Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist, and talked about attaining hegemony in culture.
Classical Marxism claims that culture is an epiphenomenon of economics and politics. Therefore, to change the culture you change the political and economic sublevel of society. Whereas Gramsci said no, we can actually change politics by changing culture, by changing the way people think and perceive the world.
The New Left has created this strange phenomenon that we have today of a Left-wing capitalist oligarchical society. We have a hyper-oligarchical capitalist society. And yet all of its reigning values are Leftist, because the Left, particularly after the Second World War, put a huge amount of its emphasis on changing culture, changing ideas. And they have achieved a kind of cultural hegemony. [2]
I think that the New Right needs to take a page from the New Left. We need to reconfigure our project so that we’re not imitating Old Right models anymore. A lot of people on the Right today really do have Old Right models. They want to have a uniformed, militant political party that’s centralized, has a leadership principle, and aims to create a totalitarian society.
We need to deconstruct the existing intellectual and cultural hegemony of the Left through intellectual and cultural means. Then we need to construct a new hegemony, a Rightist hegemony that makes the preservation of our race a non-negotiable political principle across the whole political spectrum. That’s the aim, as I conceive of it, of the New Right.
Now, I have to say something: The Old Right was totally legitimate in the tactics that they chose. I can’t endorse everything they did, because you can’t endorse everything that happens in a war. But tactically it was totally legitimate for Hitler and Mussolini to choose paramilitary organizations, centralization, and a militant kind of totalitarian one-party politics. Why? Because that is what they were fighting against.
They were fighting against Communism, and Communism was one of the great dangers that our civilization has faced, the greatest danger since the Muslim invasions and the Mongols and the Huns. Communism is one of the worst things that ever happened in human history. They had to fight it, and they had to fight it using its own means, because liberal democracy was not up to the task. So, that said, I think it was totally legitimate for them to adopt the strategies, the tactics, of their enemies in order to defeat them.
However, the enemy has adopted new strategies and tactics, and we need to be just as supple and flexible. We need to keep our aims the same, and I do think the aims of the New Right are basically the same as the Old Right. We want some kind of organic society that’s ethnically defined. But at the same time we need to change our means of getting there in order to effectively combat the way that we are actually being ruled, which is not through a hard totalitarianism but through a kind of soft, intellectual, totalitarian hegemony that the Left has created in our culture today.
LL: Now, if you boil down the message of the North American New Right, what would it be?
GJ: That’s a good question, and basically what I say we stand for is “truth, justice, and a nice white country.” [3] That’s what we want. The enemy stands for lies and injustice and multiculturalism. They stand for mixing it all up and making a pigsty of every white country that exists.
Political correctness, which is the face of the Left today, boils down to a kind of moralistic drama of lying. Political correctness has two aspects: one, false excuses for privileged groups, and two, false accusations of blame directed at us, at white people. That is lying. That is injustice. We stand for truth and justice.
We’re going to tell the truth about race. We’re going to tell the truth about identity. We’re going to tell the truth about what makes a society work.
Justice for us means treating people appropriately given their nature. It’s just to treat equal people equally. It’s unjust to treat unequal people equally. Since all people are different, our view of justice basically boils down to treating people appropriately, and that is going to create a hierarchical society. Some people are going to have more: They’re going to have more things; they’re going to have more responsibility; they’re going to have more fame and acclaim. Others are going to have less. But we’re going to make sure that different outcomes are proportionate to real differences in their natures. It’s not just based on birth or wealth and things like that.
The third principle, the nice white country, well, that’s the aim. We want to create an ethnostate. We want to create a lot of ethnostates. By ethnostates, I mean, basically, sovereign entities where distinct ethnic groups have their own country. That means Swedes, but it also means the Piedmontese; it means the Sicilians. There are lots of different ethnic groups that don’t have their own countries today. I was a big supporter of Scottish independence, and I’d love to see Wales become independent, too, if they prefer that. Again, I think the best solution for ethnic conflict, and the best way to create conditions of peace and progress, is to create separate homelands for all the different, distinct white ethnic groups.
In the United States, different European ethnic groups have blended into a new people. I hope the United States will break up into regions, probably along existing jurisdictions, along state boundaries, or sub-boundaries within states. So, there might be many different white areas in North America. I think that would be a good thing.
Again, we stand for truth, justice, and a nice white country. Lots of nice white countries. To gain that we believe that we’re going to have to redraw borders, and we’re going to have to move populations around.
I think that one of the worst betrayals of Nick Griffin in the British National Party was to give up the idea of repatriating nonwhites from England. These people have no business being there. Absolutely no business whatsoever. And if it was feasible for these people to be brought there in the millions, it’s feasible for them to leave in the millions. There’s nothing that stands in the way of doing that except the political will and courage to do it, and it could be done in a completely humane fashion. [4] It doesn’t even need to be a giant government program. Most of these people came under their own volition. They can leave under their own volition once we make clear that this is what we want and once we create incentives for that to happen. So, again, a nice white country is going to require changing boundaries, and it’s going to require moving populations
But we think it’s worth it, because ultimately if we don’t have White Nationalism our race is going to become extinct. [5] The white race is on the path to extinction right now. If current trends continue there will be no white people in the world, and the only way to really prevent white extinction is for us to have our own sovereign homelands.
LL: Now, some people will say, “Uh oh, isn’t this Fascism or National Socialism?” so how would you distinguish the difference here?
GJ: First of all, I’m not going to just say, “Oh, no. We’re not like those horrible people!” We are like those people, and I don’t think they’re entirely horrible. I can’t endorse everything they did, of course, but I think Fascism and National Socialism were legitimate responses to their time, and that they also contained within them things of permanent value.
At the core of them is the idea of restoring a kind of organic, hierarchical society in the context of modernity, and I think that is a reasonable goal. There is a critique of capitalism; there’s a critique of liberalism; there’s a critique of internationalism and globalization. All of those things are completely valid, and I want to maintain those. I want to maintain their concern with race; the German National Socialists, specifically, were very concerned with that. The Italians sort of lagged behind. I want to preserve their absolutely important concern with identifying the Jewish question, the Jewish problem. That has to be kept fully in mind. So, there’s a lot about these people that I agree with and I want to preserve.
What’s the difference? Well, like I said, I think at the time when they were fighting against totalitarian, imperialist, and genocidal Communism they adopted appropriate counter-measures. They took a gun to a gun fight. Today, we are ruled not by hard totalitarian Leftism. We’re ruled by a kind of soft totalitarian cultural and intellectual hegemony, and instead of taking a gun to a battle of ideas we need to take ideas to a battle of ideas. So, that’s really the difference.
What is the outcome as I view it? My view is this: We live in a society where we have tremendous choices, and people feel quite free. The average person feels free. You and I don’t feel free because we see the strings, right? The average person feels quite free. They have all kinds of trivial options to choose from in toothpaste, in politics, and so forth.
At the core of the Left is the organized Jewish community. When I talk about Left-wing domination, I really am talking about Jewish domination, Jewish hegemony. They’re the key, the core to the Left, and they always have been. What we have in America today is a range of political options, but every one of those political options is carefully vetted so that it’s safe for Jews, and it’s conducive to Jewish interests.
Now, I don’t see any reason to change the basic system of having lots of choices. I just want to make sure that once the New Right attains power, all the political choices that people have available to them are safe for whites. White genocide, white extinction, white degradation are going to be off the table and no longer options for anybody up and down the political spectrum. You simply won’t be able to choose that, just like you can’t choose anything that endangers Jewish interests today. I think that whites in white countries should be as sacrosanct as Jews are today. That’s basically the end point.
So, what would it look like? Well, it would look a lot like today if I had my druthers. There’d be lots of choices. There’d be pluralism in politics. But behind the scenes, there would be a consensus that vets every political candidate, that would be working to create a culture that would be conducive to white interests.
There would be lots of differences. Whites would still be arguing about abortion and taxes and feminism and so forth. But it would just be an argument within the family. We would have family differences, and there would be no option of bringing in outsiders as allies to gain advantages over members of our own extended family. So, that’s the end game as I conceive of it.
Not such a scary prospect, because liberals today consent to live under that system. It’s just that it’s a system rigged to destroy them and their values and all the rest of us. I just want to get rid of that rigging, so to speak. I want to get rid of the anti-white bias and the pro-Jewish bias and switch the system around so it preserves and enhances our interests.
LL: Yeah, you talk about why you think it’s important for White Nationalists to adopt an elitist strategy and you also talk about directing the message to the educated, the professional classes and above, to mold the masses. Can you talk about that?
GJ: First of all, I don’t want to carry around the banner of elitism primarily. I think that is something of a mistake. It’s necessary. You have to say it in some contexts. But we’re never going to have a political movement that is potent if we go around saying, “We’re elitists! Vote for us! Vote for the few!” It’s never going to happen, because most people are going to look at that and they’re going to say, “What’s in your elitism for me?”
My attitude about elitism is that it is an inevitable consequence of justice. And there’s something in justice for everybody. So, this is why I say “truth, justice, and a nice white country.” Justice is something that everybody wants. Unless you’re bad, and then you don’t want to get what you deserve, right? But most people want to be treated justly.
But, as William Blake says, “One law for the ox and the lion is injustice.” So, we need laws that treat equal people equally and unequal people unequally. Aristotle called this proportional equality. The idea is that people should be unequal proportionate to their real worth. That’s the model that we want, and that means that there will be people who have more responsibility, more fame, etc. based on their worth. I think that’s important to bear in mind. What we stand for is justice, but justice will lead to hierarchy in society, and we want to make sure that is a just hierarchy, rather than the unjust kind of hierarchies that exist today. Even though we have a society that’s constantly paying lip service to equality, it’s a very stratified and very unjust society.
So, where does elitism come in in terms of our strategy? Well, we have to recognize that for the most part history is made by minorities. Most people don’t have the time or the understanding or the education to have an impact on society. Most people are just dragged along by the few, by the elites. That’s always been the case. The best sort of situation for a people is to have an elite that is organically connected to them and that looks out for their interests.
I wrote a piece for Counter-Currents called “Notes on Populism, Elitism, and Democracy.” [6] What I make clear in there is that I’m a populist in the sense that I believe the only legitimate political system looks out for the interests of all the people. However, I also argue that the political system that best looks out for the interests of all people is going to be one where leadership is on average better than the masses.
Most people understand that instinctively. We want our leaders to be better than us on average, just as we want our doctors to know more about medicine than we do, and our dentists to know more about teeth than we do, and the guy who sets up our new TV to know more about TVs than we do. We recognize that expertise gives authority, and we want that in politics as in every other area of life.
Yet at the same time we want these experts to be responsive to the interests of the whole. So, that’s my idea. I think we have to be populist in the sense that we look out for the interests of everybody, elitist in the sense that we recognize that the best way to do that is to have people who are on average smarter and more public-spirited in positions of authority.
To get that, we need to create that elite. Our race is leaderless. There’s nobody looking out for the interests of white people. The people who run our societies are looking out for the interests of Jews. They’re looking out for the interests of themselves. They’re looking out for the interests of the rich. Nobody’s looking out for the interests of whites. If we are going to have a society where white interests are sacrosanct we are going to need a leadership caste that looks out for white interests. And the only way to get that is to start appealing to people today who are better than average in terms of intelligence, morality, public-spiritedness, taste, and so forth, to try to create the leadership caste that we are going to need down the road.
My approach is basically to search all existing social classes, all existing white constituencies. I’m spreading a very broad net. I want to find the best white people for the cause, and I want to persuade the best white people of my vision of things and to get them writing, thinking, organizing, and becoming that organically connected elite that will provide the leadership caste for our race. Because eventually we are going to have to take control politically of our own destiny again, and to do that we must have the leadership. That’s my goal. That’s why I have an elitist focus.
By an elitist focus I do not mean that I am just appealing to the educated. I’m trying to appeal to the best people in all political classes, in all social classes, in all levels of education. There are lots of really bright people who’ve never been to college, and in fact some of the brightest people I know are largely self-educated. So, I’m not a snob in the social class sense of the term, although I do recognize that people with better educations and more money do have more power in society. But I am a snob in the sense that I want to find the best people no matter where they are in the current social system, and I want to bring them into my vision of things, because I do think we need a leadership caste that will actually take the interests of our race into account.
LL: Now, you also write about the need to focus on metapolitics and you compare it to occult warfare and the points you talk about are (1) propaganda and (2) community organizing. [7] Can you talk about this?
GJ: Metapolitics is just a term that refers to the things that have to be established for there to be political change. Basically I break metapolitics down into two categories. One is the battle of ideas, propaganda basically, and two is community organizing.
There are certain ideas that need to be established in people’s minds if we’re going to live in a White Nationalist society. We have to get people concerned with the danger to our race. We have to awaken people to the fact that there are bigger problems than abortion and school prayer and what’s going on in the Middle East. Namely, our race is becoming extinct. It’s that dire, and we need to be as worried about white extinction as some people are worried about Bengal tigers and snail darters and rare frogs that are going extinct as well. We’re going to be extinct. And when the white race goes extinct, all those other species are going to go extinct too, because we’re the only ones who really care about preserving them. So, we need to awaken people to the danger.
We need to awaken people to their identity. We need to get white people to think of themselves as white people, and to think of themselves as white people unapologetically. So, there’s a moral element to this, too. We have to teach people that it’s not only normal to belong to a group, but it’s also right to take your group’s side in conflicts. White people have had that notion bred out of them, and we need to start taking our own side, because we do live in a world of ethnic conflicts.
We also need to have ideas about what’s feasible. Nobody’s going to accept the idea of the white ethnostate if they think that it’s simply impossible to create. So we have to convince people that it is possible.
These are metapolitical ideas that need to be argued out and established, and they need to be propagated to all white groups, and we need to have ways of propagating these things and making them appealing to every white constituency, every white age group, every white ethnic group, every white nation, and so forth. That’s the intellectual aspect of metapolitics.
LL: And that’s why political diversity among pro-whites can also be a good thing, right?
GJ: Whites are a diverse group, and pro-whites are going to need to be able to speak to all different groups. So the more diversity among pro-whites, the more ways that we have of matching up with the existing diversity of white groups, so it helps us. We should embrace that. That’s a strength. It really is a strength.
Now, the community organizing aspect of metapolitics is basically the idea that it’s got to be more than just ideas. We need existing communities among white people. I’m not talking about political parties. That’s politics proper. I’m talking about metapolitics. I’m just talking about real world networks, families, extended families, tribes, mutual aid networks, businesses, and things like that. We have to think in terms of taking it off the internet, geographically localizing, and building real communities. So, that’s the second part of metapolitics.
My focus is on those two things. Mostly on the battle of ideas, because I’m just one guy out here on the internet, so that’s primarily what I can do. However, one of the things that I try to do in the community organizing field is to bring together people I know of who are in the same area but who might not know one another, and get them to meet one another, and try to foster face-to-face interactions amongst our readers.
Counter-Currents is a node. I have all this information going out, and I have all these people checking in. When people check in they say, “Hey, I like your work. Here’s a donation. Here’s a book order.” I look at the address, and I say, “Wait a second here. I know another guy in the same little town in Florida that you’re in right now. Do you want to meet?” and they say, “Yeah, sure!” So, I put these people in touch, and suddenly two very lonely dissidents have somebody that they can meet for coffee.
LL: Yeah, that’s great.
GJ: It’s a small beginning, but, you know, the longest journey begins with a single step. Also, I go around and make occasional talks. I meet people in the real world. I used to have dinners, and at these dinners I discovered that there were a couple of people in the same town, but they didn’t know each other in the real world, so I made sure that everybody in the room raised their hands and said what town they’re from. I said, “Hey! You two are from Petaluma! You better get together after the talk and exchange cards.” So, I’ve done that kind of stuff. I’d like to do more of it, but, you know, there are only so many hours in the day.
So, those are two areas that I am focused on, and I’m hoping that if the metapolitical foundations are strong, then somebody’s going to come along with the right combination of political skills and charisma, at the right time politically, and suddenly it’s going to be possible for a really effective political movement to just gel. But until those metapolitical foundations are in place, there’s going to be a lot of headwind against it. It’s going to be very thin and AstroTurfy. There’s going to be no grassroots basis for it, because there’s no real grassroots white community, no conscious white community. Most of our people are unconscious, and we have to change that.
LL: Well, some people claim that the genocide of Europeans is something we did to ourselves, and I know you strongly oppose this. So, to what extent is white dispossession our fault? [8]
GJ: Well, once we are fully aware of the problem and we choose to do nothing, I think then we become part of the problem. However, most people are not responsible for what’s happened to them. Again, politics is something that is created by elites, and it’s done to most people. White dispossession is being done to white people, and I strongly oppose this rather grandiose idea that, “We’re doing it to ourselves! Our race is committing suicide!” It’s not true. Our race is not committing suicide. Some people are doing this to the rest of us.
Who are those people? Well, they’re disproportionately Jews. They’re not even whites. So, it’s my view that it’s closer to the truth to say whites are being murdered, and the people who are putting in place the trends that are leading to white dispossession and white extinction are disproportionately Jewish, and that Jews are not only disproportionately responsible for setting up this system, they are the main impediment to changing it. And I think that’s an important distinction.
A lot of whites will get sidetracked, basically, arguing about what percentage of our problems are caused by Jews as opposed to Christianity or capitalism or whatever. It’s an argument about whether we’re doing it to ourselves or whether it’s being done to us. Arguing that point can be sterile. We can do that forever.
Ultimately though, we are not a debating society. We’re not here to establish merely historical points. We’re here to change the future. And when you talk about changing the future, when you talk about changing the existing trends that are destroying our race, ask yourself, “Who’s standing in the way?” It’s the organized Jewish community. They are the linchpin of resistance to every sensible policy to halt white extinction, white dispossession. So, when you start thinking politically and you start thinking about who winds up against us, it’s the Jews.
They’re not the sole group. They’re very small in number. They’re very powerful, and they have power because they’re good at making coalitions. So, the Jews are the core of this minority/disgruntled coalition, which of course is the majority of humanity when you start incorporating all nonwhites into it. But within white societies they organize nonwhite minorities, they organize gays and lesbians, they organize environmentalists. Anybody on the Left, they try to organize and make part of their coalition in order to project power.
Yet, at the same time, when you look at which policies dominate, it’s the Jewish agenda of white race replacement that always dominates. So, for instance, feminists always fall silent when anybody brings up the problem of rape. Because when you look at rape in Scandinavia it’s not Scandinavian men who are raping women at levels that you find in a war zone, it’s nonwhite immigrants. And yet, where are the feminists opposing this? There are no candlelight marches against Islamization. They are silent, because the feminist agenda is always trumped by the Jewish anti-white race replacement agenda.
We need to break up the coalition of the Left by making clear that these non-Jewish groups on the Left, that are part of the Leftist coalition, will never get their way whenever their values conflict with white race replacement. It’s true of gays and lesbians. It’s true of feminists. It’s true of environmentalists. All these groups routinely get steamrolled whenever there’s a chance to bring in more diversity.
LL: Well, on that note, is Judeo-Christianity compatible with White Nationalism?
GJ: Well, when you put the “Judeo-” in there it sort of prejudices me.
LL: Yeah, because I know there are a lot of nationalists . . . You know, the Christian versus pagan argument.
GJ: I think that’s an important discussion to have. I think that the value system of Christianity is incompatible with White Nationalism. I think that if you look at the suicidal values, if you will, that a lot of whites do have programmed into them, they are justified in terms of Christian doctrine, Christian attitudes, and we’d be better off weaning these people away from these attitudes. When you start talking about the necessity of taking our own side in ethnic conflicts, the first thing a lot of people will say is, “Well, that goes against my Christian values. Turning the other cheek and things like that.” It’s a problem. It’s definitely a problem. So, I think we need to have a mature discussion of this within our ranks.
I’m not a Christian. I’ve never been a Christian in the sense that I believed in the Christian value system, and I think that it’s a weakness in our race. It’s one of the weaknesses that has allowed Jews so much power over us. Because of course if you believe the New Testament then the Jews have a particularly important place in the history of mankind, specifically the sacred history of mankind, and that has given them a great deal of power over us for one thing.
So, my tendency is to think that Christianity is one of the weaknesses in our society, and I think that as whites become less influenced by Christianity, maybe that is going to open up the possibility of being less sheep-like and weak in the face of our impending genocide. That’s my hope.
LL: Well, another weakness we have and you talk about it in a chapter called “The Perils of Positive Thinking.” [9] Ultimately, you say, it cannot save our people. Can you talk about this?
GJ: “The Perils of Positive Thinking” piece relates to the “blame ourselves” meme. I definitely think that people who want to keep it all positive and people who want to not go populist and not talk about reasons for white people to feel resentment and anger are on the wrong track. Our race is being destroyed. We have every reason to be righteously resentful and angry about that. The people who say, “Keep it positive!” are sort of delusional. It’s like sticking daisies in the rifles of soldiers. It’s not a very effective counter-measure. Talk about taking a knife to a gunfight, how about taking a daisy to a gunfight? It’s sort of a hippy-dippy non-starter.
I think that being negative and being depressed is a bad thing. I am a fundamentally optimistic person in terms of the struggle. But I think that the people who say we’ve got to keep it all positive are wrong. We need to fully embrace and understand the horror that’s being committed against us, and we need to fully mobilize the righteous indignation that white dispossession and white extinction should be causing.
LL: Yep. Would you say that we’re still in the early stages of formulating the foundations for a white republic?
GJ: Yes and no. I think the basic ideas are there. I don’t think that we need to worry too much about what legal system we’ll have and will there be two houses of parliament or one or anything like that. All of that stuff has been done, basically. Whites have come up with brilliant systems of government for thousands of years. It’s in our genes. We’ve got that handled. As soon as white people put our minds to it and get serious about it, the political stuff will simply take care of itself.
What we’re in the early stage of is convincing people of the necessity of doing that. So, drawing blueprints and designing flags and uniforms is all premature. All that will take care of itself, and a lot of that stuff has been taken care of by the rich political tradition that whites already have. The United States constitution, you could spruce that up a little bit and it would be just fine. I honestly think so.
But we’re just at the beginning stages of getting people to realize the necessity of reorienting politics away from the center-Left vs. center-Right bickering about things that don’t really matter, towards preserving our race. Once people get their minds wrapped around the danger and the necessity of moving towards a white republic, politics will take care of itself. But we’re just at the beginning of that journey.
LL: What could you say to willing, intelligent folks who are passionate about this cause, but don’t know what they can do?
GJ: It depends on where they are in their lives, what they have going for them, if they’re just starting out, if they’re well established, if they have a lot of independence, or if they’re very dependent on others for their livelihood. So, there are a lot of different options. I guess the first thing I would say to anybody is just get educated about these things and get passionate about them. Second, take stock of your life and determine what you’re willing to give up, what you’re willing to spend, and therefore what you can do within those parameters.
I think it’s very important for you to meet other people in your area who share these views, but you’ve got to be really careful because, you know, some of the best people I know are White Nationalists, and some of the worst people I’ve ever encountered are White Nationalists. You’ve got to be a little careful about who you meet. Don’t invite people to your house that you’ve never met before. That can be a very big mistake. People on the Left are very careful about that. They always pick neutral places to meet people. They don’t invite somebody they’ve never met to their houses. So, we need to be smart about things like that.
So, get educated and start making connections with like-minded people in your area. Those are the first things that you could do. After that, the direction you go depends on where you are in your life, what your resources are, etc. If you’re retired, if you’re quite comfortable, you might consider becoming a more open advocate. If you’re just a college student starting out in life, you don’t want to go through life with a big cloud of controversy over your head, you might want to think about being a secret agent rather than a public standard bearer.
The point that I try to make in New Right vs. Old Right and my other writings is that we must be willing to accept a whole range of different white options. We have to allow every white person who’s racially conscious to determine his or her own level of explicitness and involvement. We’re not going to be chewing them out and saying, “You coward!” I don’t know why certain people make the decisions they make. Especially people I’ve never met. I’m not going to question their decisions. I will try to persuade everybody to expand their comfort zones. I’m constantly trying to persuade people to do more. But I respect people who keep it on the down low, so to speak, who want to be secret agents.
We need people like that, because if every person who believes what we believe suddenly decided on National Coming Out as a White Nationalist Day to out themselves, well, the system would have them in its beams, and a lot of these people would be scarred and jobless and friendless and be harmed by it. And that would only make the system stronger and the movement weaker. I don’t want that to happen.
LL: Stay in the nationalist closet!
GJ: Some people need to. And we need to respect those decisions. Other people who can afford to be out there, they should be out there. I want there to be more explicit White Nationalists. I want there to be people in every community who are known as White Nationalists.
I talked to Robert Taylor of the band Changes recently. He talked about his own activism. He said one of the most important things for any activist to do is sell yourself as a person before you can sell your message, your program. I think that’s a very important thing for people to contemplate, because if you’re living in a community and you’re not very well known in that community and suddenly you become an explicit White Nationalist, you’re going to become the local crank. Because a lot of people are not going to know who you are. They’re only going to know you as somebody who has aberrant, radical political views. That’s probably not a good way of going about it. You’re not going to do much for the cause, and you’re not going to do much for yourself. You’re eventually going to get alienated and burned out, and we don’t want that. We want for people to stick with this in the long haul.
So, what do you do if you want to become the local White Nationalist? Well, first of all, it’s important for people to know who you are without the politics, before the politics. It’s important to be a good dad and a good Little League coach, a member of various community groups, the guy who’s involved with the art show. Anything that makes you a public, known figure and sells you as an individual.
If you are a well-established member of a community, if people like you for who you are, if people know that you are responsible, public-spirited, altruistic, and trustworthy, then, when it comes out that you have some kind of aberrant political views, it’s not going to hurt you as much. In fact, by being a stand-up guy and a member of the community it’s actually going to positively advertise those views.
So, make yourself as good a person as possible, as an individual and as a member of the community. Be as well-liked and likeable as possible. Be involved. If it’s animal rights or organizing a farmers’ market or whatever, be involved. Sell yourself as an individual. Be a person who’s trusted. And when your ideas come out, or when you decide to talk about your ideas, you’re going to have some authority. That’s going to cushion the blow. You might find yourself in a very strong position to actually change people’s minds. Sell yourself before you sell your ideas. Establish yourself before you start establishing your ideas. I think that’s very wise advice.
LL: Yeah, it reminds me of Kai Murros. He’s right. I hate to say it, but in today’s world you have to be well-packaged and also sell the idea culturally. Nationalism has to look cool. People have to want to be a part of it. Unfortunately, that’s how it is.
GJ: That’s true. And isn’t it always better to be cool anyway? Jonathan Bowden talks about that too.
Part of the appeal of our ideas is that they are a little out there. Our ideal advocates are respectable and well-established in their communities. But they’ve got something a little extra, even something a little dangerous about them. That’s also very appealing.
You don’t want to be totally out there. You don’t want to be some guy with long stringy hair and a sandwich board standing in the park baying about the end of the world. That just makes you the local crank. But if you’re totally indistinguishable from any other milquetoast Rotarian, that’s not a good thing either. So, you’ve got to be the well-respected local guy with a quality of idealism, a visionary quality that sets you apart and attracts others to you. That’s a hard balance to strike, but it is ideal.
LL: Well, I really see the new counter-cultures coming out, and it’s young nationalists I see. You know, good-looking, well-dressed. They’re fun; they’re trendsetters; they have an edge. I think we’re going to see a lot of that coming out probably even in the next ten years.
GJ: I totally agree. I think the trend that I’ve seen since I’ve gotten involved with this . . . I’ve been really involved with this since 2000. The trend has been that every year it seems the average age of people involved is younger, the average education level is a little higher, the sex ratio is a little more balanced. When I got started I was frequently the youngest person in a room of grey-headed men. Now, it’s a room with 30% women or 40% women in some groups and the average age of people is under forty.
That’s a huge change, and that’s a change that really makes me hopeful, because you need to be able to look and see the future of our cause. When the cause is over sixty on average, it doesn’t have much future, but younger people have more future in them. So, when I see younger people who are really together involved in this, it’s just encouraging. It’s a concrete proof that our race has a little bit more of a future than it did just a few years ago.
We strive to represent the interests of all white people. Whites as a race do not have a future right now. And we have to bear in mind — the back of our minds, perhaps — that not all whites will have a future. We can’t save everyone. We might be becoming a new race, the whites who have a future.
That’s what I see when I go to these gatherings now. When I went to the London Forum meeting back in September it was a very impressive group of people. I really felt these are white people with a future. It might not be the whole race, but there is a group of whites forming now that do have a future, and that’s very encouraging.
LL: As we end the hour, please share any closing remarks for us.
GJ: Please visit Counter-Currents. I’m prejudiced, but I think it’s the best English language, Right-wing, New Right webzine out there.
LL: I would agree.
GJ: We try to publish new material every weekday. A number of days we have multiple new things on the website. It’s a growing community. It’s a growing movement. It’s getting younger and smarter and cooler and more effective. Every day I get up I feel new concrete reasons to be hopeful for the future. So, I really want to thank you for all the work you’re doing at Red Ice Radio. I think you’re part of this rising tide, and I really appreciate the chance to be on your show.
LL: Thank you so much.
Notes
[1] Greg Johnson, “New Right vs. Old Right,” New Right vs. Old Right (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2013).
[2] Greg Johnson, “Hegemony,” New Right vs. Old Right.
[3] Greg Johnson, “Introduction: Truth, Justice, and a Nice White Country,” Truth, Justice, & a Nice White Country.
[4] Greg Johnson, “Restoring White Homelands,” The White Nationalist Manifesto.
[5] Greg Johnson, “White Extinction,” The White Nationalist Manifesto.
[6] Greg Johnson, “Notes on Populism, Elitism, and Democracy,” New Right vs. Old Right.
[7] Greg Johnson, “Metapolitics and Occult Warfare,” New Right vs. Old Right.
[8] Greg Johnson, “Our Fault?,” New Right vs. Old Right.
[9] Greg Johnson, “The Perils of Positive Thinking,” New Right vs. Old Right.
