Keith Preston over at Alt.Right has written an article critical of White Nationalism. The title is “White Nationalism is Not Enough”. That’s sensible enough. Few thinking people in the White Nationalist movement think mere adherence to racial identity is a political movement in itself. I’m a White American, with a specific heritage, way of life, and way of perceiving the world that’s unique to my ethnonational tribe. I’m not a citizen of some mythical “Whitemanistan”. To put it succinctly, racial kinship is a necessary but insufficient condition.
But the article would have been more appropriately entitled “White Nationalism is Not Necessary”, or “White Nationalism Sounds Trashy”, or even “Screw Preserving our White Heritage, There are Colored Conservatives!” He endorses anarchism in the first sentence, which led me to predict, accurately, that this is a man of abstractions, unconcerned with the sweaty and sticky reality of the human condition. Anybody so lost in abstractions that he loses sight of the incontrovertible reality of sovereign oligarchies as direct results of mankind’s instinctive quest for territory and dominance is lost to me. Regardless of his motives or intentions, a man who objects to submitting to a sovereign oligarchy in a world in which we’re threatened by powerful predatory oligarchies is as useless on the political battlefield as a pacifist is on the military battlefield.
He then declares that “the first order of business is the identification of the enemy”. This is perfectly upside down, as the first order of business is identifying what we’re defending. For me, that’s preserving the community within which my children, nieces, and nephews are at home. And that community is the White American one. David Yeagley is a great guy, and I respect him a great deal. But he doesn’t belong in my community any more than I belong on his Comanche reservation. I have a common cause with all movements for ethnic self-determination the world over, but it can only be an alliance. I am a big supporter of folks who believe in strong families, but it doesn’t follow that this commonality necessitates converging into one big pro-family family.
By declaring that the first order of business is identifying the enemy and then listing off the enemy’s enemies, Preston tries to tempt us into climbing into bed with every movement and group the prevailing oligarchy is against. He rattles off a bunch which are more or less compatible with your typical White Nationalist’s worldview. But it also follows from this logic that we would side with the Palestinians, Europe’s Muslim invaders, Randroid libertards, and others with whom we have nothing in common except this common threat.
He appears to be suggesting that White Nationalism is so thoroughly stigmatized and discredited by enemy propaganda that we should shut up, drop our “race thing”, and fight for the abstractions that the Alternative Right is ostensibly all about. Personally, I’m not anti-government. I’m anti- this government. I’m as far from being a libertarian or an anarchist as I am from being a Marxist. These theories all begin with the premise that “humans” are atomic abstractions independent of the very links to Tribe and Tradition that actually make us human in the first place.
I’m excited about our provisional inclusion in this nascent development of an “Alternative Right”, and I believe we would do well for ourselves to play well with others. But this is exactly the kind of slippery slope I warned about in my previous post on Intellectualism and White American Advocacy. In our abortive attempt at a podcast at the recent CofCC meeting, William Rome jokingly asked if he could move into my home and take my wife. I quipped back that it was fine with me as long as it’s compatible with my abstract fancies. This was, of course, a joke. Compromising either my home or my homeland in pursuit of an abstraction or in an alliance against a common enemy is a joke to me.
If silence or compromise on the issue of racial integrity is the cost of entry into a coalition against those who threaten our racial integrity, then count me out. If there’s no place in the future for my tribe, then I couldn’t care less whether that future is a statist one, an anarchist one, a theocratic one, or an antidisestablishmentarian one. Now, I believe in more than blood, and I cherish more than family, nation, and race. We must always strive for the transcendent and remain intellectually curious. But history has repeatedly shown what should be intuitively obvious: that the dilution of the blood of a people inevitably results the dilution of the spirit and ideals that those people upheld.
Well put, Matt.
Personally, I am very distressed at the libertarian turn Alt Right has taken. I simply do not understand them or what they want. They seem to me to be simply run-of-the-mill liberals who hate taxes or, worse, the kind of over-academic quasi-anarchist you rightly take issue with here.
I thought the article was pretty good. He’s not saying racialism should be abandoned, just that ‘white nationalism’ under that name will not be enough to overthrow the existing order on it’s own. Perhaps a better way of saying it is that victory will likely only be gained under the banner of ‘implicit whiteness’. Our first order of business should be removing the anti-white elements of the order, which can be used using facially neutral terms.
Perhaps they are trying to triangulate.
Consider that Kevin MacDonald is important to the white movement, and yet Kevin MacDonald does not shave his head and show up to the faculty lounge wearing Doc Martens and “suspenders” (braces) to hold up his bluejeans.
Recall that in the early days of the John Birch Society, people would talk about these things in a genteel, white manner. Perhaps that is their goal.
From the original:
‘Beyond that, we need to consider the not insignificant number of minority, mixed race, or persons from mixed families that share many of our ideological and cultural concerns, or at least sympathize with many of our issues. Is it wise to push away an Elizabeth Wright, Paul Gottfried, Norman Finkelstein, David Yeagley, Carol Swain, Michael Hart, Michael Levin, Jesse Lee Peterson, Israel Shamir, or Mayer Schiller?’
I only recognize Norman Finkelstein and Israel Shamir. Both of those men are dedicated writers. They do not need sympathy and hugs. One can buy their books and read their books and nod gravely. But we do not need to have Finkelstein over for cookies so that he stays chipper. He is a big boy. (In emergencies, of course, post bail for him, and get him to his support network. But do not become his new goy support network.)
I think Kevin MacDonald has a healthy attitude toward other races. He has no neurotic xenophobia; he merely recognizes that his people are white and he also has no lack of healthy affection for his own people. For that reason, we ought to have Kevin MacDonald over to the house for cookies and juice, just to build a sense of community.
The fact that we discriminate in our allocation of cookies and juice reflects the fact that our resources are finite. It does not mean that we are ‘pushing’ any outside away; it just means that it is natural to give hospitality to one’s kin first.
Furthermore, Kevin MacDonald recently granted an interview to Brother Nathaniel Kapner, which just goes to prove that MacDonald is broad-minded, that he reaches out to genetically different people, that he can tolerate diversity.
http://www.realzionistnews.com/?p=511
I think this kid might have it a little skewed.
Of course we can have common cause with other groups in limited, narrowly focused projects and such…I’ve always had frank discussions and pretty amicable relations with some black nationalists, Nestorians from Syria, etc. They know just as well as we do the importance of group-survival, and that they must rid themselves of their uncle toms and we our uncle biffs who are full-throated lackies for the establishment.
BUT, that’s pretty much as far as it can go. Our loyalties/affinities are like layers of skin on an onion, with our own closest family at the center, our white nation beyond that, our broader race beyond that. This seems simple enough to me and beyond question, but apparently some folks think the cart more important than the horse.
He endorses anarchism in the first sentence, which led me to predict, accurately, that this is a man of abstractions, unconcerned with the sweaty and sticky reality of the human condition.
Spot on.
And who CARES about Hitchens?
Superbly written.
Libertarians are smug lot of bloodless eunuchs.
As for anarchists, an organization against organization? Where do I start?
Home run, Matt.
As Western civilization devolves into Third-World anarchy White people are going to look for answers. They want their law & order back. They want their clean hospitals back. They want to be able to let their teenage daughter go to a party without having to worry about whether she’ll be raped and dismembered. These disturbed White people start grabbing at things like libertarianism, conservativism, and christianity. What they fail to realize is that you can’t have any of this unless you live in a White country. Our race is a prerequisite for decent society.
If we solved the race problem we could begin to tackle other issues. If we fail to solve the race problem we will continue slipping into the darkness until we devolve into something like Somalia. Another libertarian paradise.
Scratch a libertarian and find a white guy in flight from his whiteness. Any excuse will do to avoid the plain fact that the white libertarian is a member of an endangered species by virtue of his whiteness.
Feeble formulations ignore the reality that whiteness is the pivot in contemporary politics, entertainment, media, and law. Because it is the color of our skin that targets us in so many areas, it has to be the number one issue in our daily work.
Call it “white nationalism” to distance yourself if you like, but never forget we are in the business of “white liberation” as well.
Someone on here said conservatives are too cowardly to fight and too fat to run. The same goes for libertarians.
“He’s not saying racialism should be abandoned, just that ‘white nationalism’ under that name will not be enough to overthrow the existing order on it’s own.”
He is saying this. Or he’s suggesting that the alternative right as a political alternative needs to be more inclusive. Which is obviously correct. Look, given the situation, the focus of ‘white nationalism’ should be on, as Kievsky points out, developing a authentic white communities, maintaining white ethnic identity, and defending against anti-white discrimination. The immediate goal should be to build something like the Jews have, with their many cultural institutions, lobbies, international ties, and so forth.
While I do, indeed, believe this to be the case, the question remains as to whether white nationalism is an adequate intellectual or strategic paradigm for the growing alternative right. I would maintain that it is not.
I’m not reading this now, though I may read it later. But sight unseen I have to guess it’s the usual “obsessed with race” or “reductionist” argument.
It’s true in its context – political science types. But I’m not a political science type. I don’t CARE what winds up protecting my race. That’s hyperbole, but the kernel is true; I wouldn’t be 1/4 as interested in politics if not for race. That’s the part I want fixed, the racial part. That’s the war I’m going to fight, the racial part. When that’s fixed I’ll gladly turn back to my personal interests and leave the wonks to their eternal debates.
There’s nothing wrong with not being a wonk. There’s nothing wrong with being a “one issue” voter.
Mr Preston is an idealist who does not see that there is a -Big- difference between ideas of a poly glot society and those person of a common racial stock. The problem with idealist, such as Mr Preston, is that a cause , such as anarchy without an understanding of racial issues, is like a ship at sea without a sail… doomed to drift the sea until it is either sink or get’s sunk.
He can keep his vision of right , his open arms to ideas that agree with his anarchist view and I will keep mine.
Whites will eventually be forced to bond into common communities as whites , ideas cannot replace the inherent ability of racial stock.
Right on, Matt.
Keith is an excellent fellow -who is going to be gob-smacked if he attempts to reach out to Non-Racialists. I wish him well. H’es a big boy – he’ll be able ot pick himself up, and dust himeslf off.
White Nationalism is all there is, for the survival of the White Race.
I don’t think he is saying abandon ‘white nationalism’ as we think of it, only to incorporate it into a wider milieu, and perhaps refrain from using the lable:
There is a nearly inexhaustible list of such tendencies, including advocates for fathers’ rights, men’s rights, family sovereignty, religious liberty, the right to bear arms and act in self-defense, anti-tax, pro-life, national sovereignty, property rights, cultural preservation, quality and freedom in education, local autonomy, and many other things. Additionally, there is the growing list of economic issues generated by the ongoing dispossession and eradication of the traditional middle class courtesy of our plutocratic overlords.
“I’m not a citizen of some mythical “Whitemanistan””
Matt, et. al.
Maybe you should consider it. Hear me out, if you can excuse the stream of consciousness– I’m a little drunk now:
Lets call this: White nationalism: Participating in an Idea.
While collectivism markets to some people, and the realization of an ethnostate would be delightful for many, we are yet living in a ever increasing plural world. Given this, how does one navigate around the ‘other’ in such a world with one’s collectivistic, tribal sensibility — a sensibility that is not, as it is, particularly nature for those with a nature born tendency to individualism? I am suggesting that for some it might to valuable to view White Nationalism not only as a vehicle of political realism but also one of, how shall we say, philosophical idealism — to see Europeanness as an Idea, in the platonic sense minus the idealism. And, moreover, White nationalism as a participation in an Idea. Let me elaborate.
There was a time when it was common to think as a people, in the sense of tribal consciousness. Now we think as Individuals — mostly. We have our own identities. We are all individuals now — which is not to say individualists. Individuals, of course can live as a cultural nation — as is natural — sharing the bourgeois values that cultural marxists hate for the local community building effect it has. Indeed, if community wasn’t natural, you wouldn’t see so much agitating for left-collectivism. So it is.
As it is though, national community requires proximity and shared experience. Which we are loosing. Everywhere there is some ‘other’ popping up or being positioned in between us. This is why we want a nation state. That why, we need not have globalist and marxist managers continually mixing things up and breaking us down, making us as spiritual being, cogs in their machine — to their ends. There are other reasons of course. Our naturalism. Our Filial piety. Our transcendent view of time, where we see ourselves as part of a lineage. The meaningfulness this gives us. Our love of robust diversity. And of course, our disgust at the social, political, and cultural violence done against us, our revulsion at the lies and deceit etc. etc. But largely, a nation state is desirable because it allows for self-determination. Not progressive determination — for the sake of others. Not other-determination for the sake of them. Self-determination, pure and simple.
Now how does one go about realizing a nation? The paradoxical thing about the situation is that you want to be a political nation to stay together, so not to be divided and controlled, but you need to be a people, a nation, who wants it, to get it. And it’s rather difficult to be a people when you are loosing proximity and shared experience and when that now fragile sense of identity is aways being disturbed. So let’s put this question on hold.
Now back to my above question, given our plurality: “How does one navigate…” I suggest navigating by embracing a philosophical idealism. I am a particular fellow and have trouble thinking in indefinite terms. While I am now in an increasingly cosmopolitan city, I am an individual, and my philosophical perspective gives form to my identity. It mediates between me and the world. As mention that Idea is of Europeanness. Of course, I’m not an idealist, in the classical sense. I recognize that this idea, this ethnoracial essence, in which I have the good fortune of participating in is not an ideal, as such — it really only exists because I do. And I realize that it is only alive, and can contribute to my identity and is not mere solipsism, only because other also participate in it — and further its quality is contingent of the quality of the participants. It has a holographic reality. In part a social construct? sure. Built on biopsychohistoric facts? Of course. But an essence nonetheless — one as True as I, myself.
Now given this Idea, it is only natural to realize some of it — and work to from formal and informal social, cultural, and political institutions dedicated to this — perhaps because we are collectivists at heart and what to realize this image, because we are true conservatives and want to enact it in a community, or because we are of the more individualistic bent, yet not radically so, and wish to participate and excel through a fist rate identity, which requires helping others become first rate participants. All of which of course, is how you can realize a nation — this day of age, at least.
Let me note — frames, concepts, scripts, mental models, schemata, Ideas, perspectives, complexes, philosophies are important. Abstract meditation are important. The create cognitive partitions which shape our patterns of feeling-thoughts. The west became what it did, in part, because of some basic differences in the ways of seeing. It’s becoming what it isn’t, for some of the same reasons. People can become and unbecome a group likewise. Thinking properly is the the first step here. And I’m suggesting that we begin reconceptualizing our relation with ourselves. Someone wrote about deprogramming white people. I replied that that was a mistake. You need to reprogram them. You need a new vision. I am suggesting starting with a fairly open ended philosophical Idealism, or a way of thinking similar to that. In my view such a way is bio-culturally compatible with us. For the religious among us, this philosophical particular stands as an intermediate between you and your spiritual universal. For those of us, who are awaiting the ministry our religious brethren, is our heathen filial spirituality. For some it’s a manifestation of their wille zur macht. For others the necessary condition for arete. For others a truth to be realized. For others the conceptual (we’re not tribal semites after all) foundation of a transnational community. For the individualists the mediate grounds for the immediate differentiation and radical particularization. Homininae Hominini Homo sapiens sapiens european individualus. For some a strategy for negotiating around psychological effect of pluralism. And so on. It also works with the immediate times.
But obviously an a Jungian INTP, I’m biased. Regardless, some reconceptualization is needed. And a mishmash of fond memories, realpolitics, and Kmac/Salter’s group selection is not going to cut it.
HRW,
If that was his message, then I missed it. I’m hoping he’ll clarify a bit on exactly what place he perceives for us in the movement.