The Great Plantation: A Better Paradigm

Editor’s Note: I’ve grown a lot over the past year especially physically in terms of my health, spiritually in terms of my religion and I have also continued to flesh out both my economic beliefs and work on my interest in political science.

I’ve given a great deal of thought to a particular problem.

The problem that I have been steadily working on for the past 18 years is how do we fix the American South. How do we fix the poorest, most heterogeneous places like the Alabama Black Belt which have been left behind under the paradigm of free-market capitalism? As a lifelong resident of this area, it is obvious to me that the current system isn’t working for the Southern people.

My first answer which I embraced somewhere around 2001 or 2002 was White Nationalism 1.0. This is a solution which undoubtedly horrifies most “progressives.” As a smart person though, I found a lot of hidden truths, however, in the White Nationalism 1.0 paradigm. It is true, for example, that race exists and that cognitive stratification in the context of a free-market capitalist economy is constantly draining my area – just as it also happens globally – of its brightest minds and most talented workers. Smart people don’t want to live in a poor place like the Mississippi Delta or Appalachia.

The second great truth that I found in White Nationalism 1.0 was the suppression of the truth about the Jewish Question. It is simply true that Jews are disproportionately concentrated in the American political, cultural and economic elite. It has been that way since the mid-20th century and has arguably reached its climax in the age of Blompf, Sheldon Adelson and Bibi Netanyahu. Future historians will look back on the 20th century and see the rise of Jewish power, wealth and cultural influence in Russia, Germany, the United States and other European countries as one of its dominant features.

The third great truth that attracted me to White Nationalism 1.0. was a positive sense of White identity. As I came of age, I encountered a world in which White identity had been stigmatized in “mainstream” society many years before I was born. It was demonized on the Left. It was suppressed on the cuckservative Right which was afraid to rock the boat of political correctness. Quite simply, no one but the White Nationalists were willing to create a discursive space, even if it was only one that was shrouded in the anonymity of the internet, that validated a positive and healthy sense of White identity.

The fourth great attraction of White Nationalism 1.0 was the idea of a White ethnostate. As someone who grew up in one of the blackest, poorest parts of the United States, which also happens to be one of the most racially polarized parts of the United States, the idea of unscrambling the South’s historical demographics was intuitively appealing. In the 21st century, we are still shouting at each other across racial lines. We are still arguing over antiquated, obsolete grievances like slavery which ended in 1865. In fact, the whole country has gone over to racial resentment and identity politics. When I look at countries like Japan or China that are still ethnically, culturally and racially homogeneous and thus have much greater social cohesion and far less government dysfunction, I see this as a significant advantage over the United States which celebrates the notion that “diversity is our strength.”

Unfortunately, the White Nationalism 1.0 paradigm suffers from any number of flaws which became more apparent to me as I spent more time engaging with people in that online space. Specifically, the greatest problem with that model is that White people lack a common culture. White people are not an ethnic group like, say, the Chinese or the Poles. We lack a shared sense of culture and identity. It occurred to me that even within the United States that there are several White cultures which historically have been rivals. I’m referring, of course, to the age old rivalry between the White South and the White East. I found that this sectional rivalry explains much about American history and politics.

Perhaps the United States really needed to balkanize along racial and cultural lines? Instead of a White ethnostate, we could bring back Dixie, Yankeedom or Cascadia? It was this line of reasoning that led me to believe that Southern Nationalism was the answer. In an independent South, we would be far more culturally homogeneous and our new national government would be far less dysfunctional. Obviously, dissolving the Union would allow us to move forward into the 21st century.

I still think Southern Nationalism is an advance over White Nationalism 1.0.

The driving idea that attracted me to both of these paradigms was a perceived loss of social cohesion. White Southerners are a branch of the great European family of nations. We have our culture, history, heritage and sensibilities, but it is foolish to say that a Southern man is just interchangeable with Poles, Italians, Yankees, Greeks, etc. It became increasingly obvious to me that White Nationalism 1.0 was deaf to the reality of cultural geography. We don’t merely need a common racial identity because that is too weak of a sauce to mobilize around. We need a common culture as well.

Unfortunately, Southern Nationalism has its own baggage and problems. The biggest problem is that until recently it was only attractive to Boomers who want to “restore the Confederacy” in the 21st century, but who are motivated by mere nostalgia, an aesthetic attraction to the Confederate Battle Flag and who are deeply ignorant of what the Confederacy actually was and imagine it to have been a modern day multiracial paradise where hundreds of thousands of Black Confederates “rode with Forrest.” We’ve nicknamed these people the Rainbow Confederates for their comical takes on the Southern past.

The second biggest problem of Southern Nationalism which became increasingly obvious to me during my 6 years as an activist is that Southern identity in the 21st century is heavily stigmatized. It is also extremely attenuated and low-wattage. In Blood and Soil: How Southerners Became a Separate and Distinct People, I closed with a warning that “if that ethnic core which was built up over three centuries is allowed to be displaced or its historical sense of solidarity is allowed to disintegrate, the South will lose its coherence and whither away. We will become strangers in our own land.”

In his 1997 book Power in the Blood, the Canadian writer John Bentley Mays who traces his roots back to the South beautifully describes the Southern tradition as “noble, failed attempts to raise on Southern ground a culture rooted in the natural order of our seasons, to build a civilization free of cruel utopianism and metropolitan alienation, sustained by loyalties to place.” I remain as deeply committed to this project of rehabilitating the Southern tradition as ever. I will go to my grave as a proud White Southerner and no force on earth will ever make me renounce my loyalty to my people.

For most of the 2000s and 2010s, I experimented with White Nationalism and Southern Nationalism, but I also had a lot of overlap with the Alternative Right. That was because I was interested in more than the existence of race, the Jewish Question, White identity, creating an ethnostate and Southern culture and identity. I’m also a populist who is deeply interested in history. I have developed strong views on economics and foreign policy which put me squarely in the “alt-right” camp.

As I have explained in The 15 Points of 3.0, the alt-right built on White Nationalism 1.0. Specifically, it took those ideas inherited from an older generation and it wrapped them in a sense of humor. It added digital art and meme warfare as a tactic. The alt-right also became highly interested in infiltrating American politics and identitarianism became the backbone philosophy of the movement. This was also an advance over White Nationalism 1.0 in many ways and it resonated with a broader audience. More than anything else, it occurs to me that the difference between the two boils down to style.

Unfortunately, the alt-right has its own series of massive problems, and it came crashing down at Michigan State last March. It was at that point that I decided that I had seen enough. I decided that I was going to take some time off, clear my head, rethink everything and start to build my own paradigm rather than relying on the thinking of all these other failed paradigms. It is a task which I spent a solid year working on largely offline in preparation for writing a book to launch a 3.0 movement.

What would it realistically take to fix a place like the American South? How do we revive the Southern tradition in the world of the 21st century?

In order to fix the American South, we first need to fix the Southern economy. We have to fix Southern culture. We also need a different political strategy. It is only after these three steps have been accomplished that we can begin to reconstruct Southern civilization. In short, everyone must have a stake in the Great Plantation and must be persuaded to adopt a better paradigm.

We’ve been going about this the wrong way expressing our own identity by holding these little Confederate rallies across the South. Instead of fighting with our elites, we should try cooperating with them and persuading them for a change. Instead of engaging in conflict with other racial, ethnic and cultural groups, we should try to find common ground with them. More to the point, we need everyone to adopt a better vision of the future, a better paradigm of how to live in the 21st century and then we need to start building the consensus that we need to advance mutual goals.

Culturally: We must singlemindedly focus on detoxifying our culture by eliminating political correctness. It is an evil ideology that only alienates and divides people, inflames them with hatred and resentment and pits groups against each other. It pits women and against men. It pits everyone else against the White majority. As a consequence, we are living in the most dysfunctional culture and government we have had since the Civil War. No one really enjoys the present state of affairs and would rather be relieved of it for we can all move on with our lives to accomplish better things like, say, going to Mars.

There is a better way forward for everyone. This is especially true of the American South. Instead of political correctness, we can communicate across the political divide in a common moral language, Protestantism, or more generally in terms of simply returning to Christianity. We could also revive the shared heritage of the Enlightenment which had interesting solutions to the bigotry and fanaticism of the 17th century like freedom of speech, individual liberty and religious tolerance.

I would also strongly suggest rehabilitating the classics as well especially Aristotle who was greatly admired in the antebellum South. When everyone focuses on practicing how to be a better Christian or a kinder person or a more temperate person instead of asserting their identity and demanding that it be validated by whoever is currently in power, shouting down other people on Twitter or engaging in street violence, then we can depolarize things and move forward as a country.

Real morality is universal and accessible to anyone. Ethics is not identity politics. Political correctness is just the opposite. It simply damns people on the grounds of immutable characteristics, creates resentment and stirs fanaticism, which inevitably leads to violence. It offers them no escape. I’ve compared it to a secularized version of Purgatory but for one for which there is no indulgence. Seriously, if you had committed a great sin under the Renaissance Papacy, you could simply buy an indulgence to settle the matter.

How is this not a better solution than the system we live under today?

Economically: The paradigm of free-market capitalism has failed the American South. It has especially failed places like where I live such as the Alabama Black Belt. If we are honest with ourselves, we would acknowledge that the economy hasn’t been all that dynamic here since slavery. We’ve gone from being one of the richest regions in America to one of the poorest.

The answer as to why this is the case is staring you in the face. Just drive through the Alabama Black Belt and see what I see. It is first and foremost a vast, depopulated wilderness now in the 21st century. It has been that way since the end of sharecropping by the mechanical cotton picker and the tractor from the 1940s to the 1960s. It was technology and federal investment that liberated our people from the cotton fields, not Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation.

The reason that chattel slavery worked and generated so much wealth in our region is because it skillfully combined management, labor, scientific research, capital, technology, investment and international trade to generate wealth in the old plantation complex. The free-market capitalist system, however, simply pronounced that everyone was henceforth “free” and the result was chaos, disorganization, underinvestment, technological retardation and the cognitive stratification of the workforce with all the smart people moving out of this area in such of economic opportunity in large metro areas like Houston or Atlanta. The industrial jobs were also free traded away except for the assembly plants that foreigners like the South Koreans, Germans and Japanese have built here to conquer our market.

Fortunately, the People’s Republic of China has realized this and has created a better economic model that has lifted nearly a billion people out of poverty over the past several decades. It is building infrastructure like high speed rail all over China. Soon, China will surpass the United States by applying deep learning AI – the electricity of the 21st century – to the Chinese economy. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is incapable of even building a single mile of border wall much less passing his infrastructure plan.

Where do you think we are going under the current system? Forward?

Politically: If we truly want to move forward into the 21st century, we must recreate the populist-progressive political coalition of Franklin Roosevelt, and we must offer a 21st century New Deal to the Millennial and Zoomer generations that harnesses the power of deep learning AI to abolish wage slavery and poverty in our country. For generations, we’ve been barking up the wrong tree by voting for the Republican Party, which has been too cowardly to resist the encroachment of political correctness. By electing Andrew Yang as the 46th president, we can reconstruct the center of the American electorate and depolarize Washington, DC, and when the White working class returns to the Democratic Party and accepts its role as America’s largest racial tribe then political correctness and mass immigration as an ethic and political strategy will be shown to be both harmful and redundant.

Does the current dysfunction in Washington make more sense to you?

The rise of artificial intelligence will change everything about the world.

It will render all ideologies obsolete. If you are worried about “white supremacy” in the 21st century, you are a moron because AI is now the most intelligent race on earth. If you are a White Nationalist, the coming abundance of wealth generated by an automated global economy will give your descendants the means to live wherever they want in the world.

“Socialism vs. capitalism” will be made obsolete. “Progressivism vs. conservatism” will be obsolete. “Populism vs. libertarianism” will be obsolete. The gradual abolition of work in the 21st century will create so much wealth that we will have no choice but to redistribute it to the people through either the mailbox or through a simple debit card to buy products made by robotic slaves. The choice facing the political establishment in such a scenario will be either redistribution or a violent revolution.

In the context of an automated economy, the primary challenge moving forward will be how to reconstruct our shredded culture, as economics will become less of a concern as scarcity begins to vanish. Thomas Jefferson believed that economic independence was synonymous with the republican concept of liberty. In such a world, people will be truly free for the first time in history. They will be free to pursue higher order goods now only accessible to our elites and will inevitably become less resentful. As George Fitzhugh observed in the 1850s, all the -isms are ultimately generated by free-market capitalism, and the demise of free-market capitalism will lead to the healing of the social fabric.

In the long run, I think we will all go back to just being people again, as all of our currently irreconcilable ideological conflicts will be mysteriously solved. I think the abundance of wealth will relax and unwind racial, ethnic, class and religious hatred as people just resort themselves out in a post-modern economy in ways that are more satisfying and homogeneous. I don’t even think it even really depends on who wins the 2020 election because no one could stop railroads or electrification. Similarly, no force on earth will stop artificial intelligence, automation and robotics from changing the economy.

Note: The only real question is how fast are we going to start adapting to this new reality. How long will it take our culture, our politics and our sense of the future to catch up with technological change? Are we going to vote for $1,000 a month in 2020 or will we wait another few cycles as automation chews through the workforce and creates even more social and economic havoc?

About Hunter Wallace 12379 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

8 Comments

  1. “…constantly draining my area – just as it also happens globally – of its brightest minds and most talented workers. Smart people don’t want to live in a poor place like the Mississippi Delta or Appalachia.”

    Having moved South some years ago for employment, it has taken me about 5 years to realize that race is not just a part of the equation – IT IS THE EQUATION. Coming from “Yankeedom” to ‘Greater Appalachia’ (using Woodard’s map of the US, to which I am indebted to you for introducing it to me), the reality of: a) a less homogenous population, coupled with b) a less intelligent populace, even when white, leads to c) an area that may be geographically beautiful, but is astoundingly d) plebian, Kulturlos, stultifyingly ignorant (and often proud of it!), as well as lacking in the ability to even see beyond their own cultural delimiters, should there be even an inkling of a desire to better one’s self.

    As much as people like to ‘pooh-pooh’ the Scandics of the Upper Midwest (Western WI, MN, N/S Dakota, and Northern Iowa) the beauty of face, the nobility of mien of the Nordic genotype, the placidity of spirit and ‘noble commoner’ categorized (I now see, with trenchant lucidity) by Garrison Keillor; the sense of ‘knowing one’s ancestry’ even as it becomes a smorgasboard of Nordicness, the orderliness (and pervasiveness) of the social systems- in short the very ‘Scandinavian-ness’ of it all, is something that, once experienced, is nothing short of almost viewing the City of God…. minus (of course) the 6-month winters, the Jante lawcode obtuseness, the liberal blinding do-goodiness that allowed the most bestial of Niggers (Somali mud-slimes) to RUIN the area, because we all thought everyone was as noble as we were (they’re not) ….oh, and the mosquitoes. Can’t forget the mosquitoes.

    But the LACK of that orderliness in the South – the gap-toothed visual as well as the intellectual ignorance, the lack of city code compliance, zoning that isn’t even in existence, the gross obesity, the lack of culture, big bugs and even bigger dangerous animals, an almost total absence of good grocery, quality restaurants, good services (both via cities, as well as retail establishments, etc.,) replacing it instead with a backwoods glaring lack of civility, a slackjaw multi-phoneme pseudo-English that grates even as it takes two times longer to articulate, a decidedly inferior genetic stock of dark-haired, beady-eyed pictish backwoods types, and the entire corpus of ‘hell, yeah’ C/W trash culture – all of it, DESERVES to be run from, once one experiences it, dragging you down day after day, month after month.

    You’re correct, HW. WHY would anyone want to live in a ‘poor place’ if you can’t even run your states’ infrastructure well? Why arrest criminals if your police force is corrupt, and unwilling to stop the drug and prostitution scum? If you can’t rid yourselves of the darkies that, while slightly more ‘passive’ than the Northern nigs, are still nigs? Why invest time, money, and endeavor in an area where education is worthless, because sons of slaves are still slaves in their minds- and always will be? Why put money into real property, when code compliance is non-existent, and a derelict property can sit next to an area where (back in the day) ‘decent people’ still wished to live; where construction does not take into account the fact that winter still exists in parts of the south, and $500 monthly heating bills in January are the yokel’s answer to not spending the money to insulate a house PROPERLY, because ‘it doesn’t show’ or ‘costs too much’? Might as well leave your fridge on the front porch, and rusting cars in your front yard… oh, wait. THEY DO!

    Why strip mine the hills in plain sight, with no ecological cost to consider how that will impact water, air, and flora and fauna? Why not have air purification systems to minimize the burnt dust smell of coal mines in the area? Why bother having fresh produce, when everyone eats nothing but empty [fried] carbohydrates, and ‘Mountain Dew mouth’ destroys children’s permanent teeth, before they even appear?! Why think any of this is worth improving, if the degeneration of the NATION is paralleling the destruction of the South of a 100 years ago? Why remain in an area you find odious, until you begin to look at pre-fab homes as ‘ok,’ and double-wides as acceptable domiciles?! UGH.

    Some of the voices here, arguing for partition, have either not lived in the South, or think that the trailer trash antics of people like Matt Heimbach and Parrot, are the NORM. THEY ARE NOT. One can move out of the trailer park, and gain an ‘edumification’ yet remain trailer trash their whole lives. I’d rather see that die, than continue to be pointed to, as an exemplar of modern America. The best our country gave us, was the whitest, most Aryan, most ‘Germanic’ types of people, to whom we are ALL indebted, whether we like it or not! It’s become clear to me that Elvis was the leading edge of ‘Southern culture’ back in the day, when preachers and civic leaders called his antics what they were- Nigger. We’ve niggerized at least two generations with that Southern accommodation to bestial blacks and their anti-culture, via rock, drugs, rutting sex debauchery, and hypocritical “Jebus” talk while being Masons, and Odd Fellows, countenancing such perversions as Loving vs. VIRGINIA, and all the rest that followed from this Southern ‘culture.’ The South may be a great place to visit, but it sure sucks to live here.

    Such a culture cannot/dare not survive into the 4IR/AI future. It’s nothing but ‘wood, hay, stubble’ and only fit for the fire.

    • Pseudo-intellectuals like you are what prompted Goring to utter his famous words: “ When a hear the word culture I can’t help but reach for the holster.”

    • Padre, some of the pooh-poohing of Minnesotans has come from you. (The term “luterfiskers” comes to mind.) I’ve lived here all my life, and can tell you that compared to the other states around us we take better care of our roads and infrastructure. Our social services system is much more generous than most states, period.

      But like WV, we had mining, on our Iron Range. The only reason we stopped (besides environmentalism) was that they were no longer profitable. So now people there mainly have to get by in the lower-paying “service” industry jobs, just like in the poorer states. Tourism and Indian casinos are the economic mainstays in those areas. The kids always want to leave their hometowns and come to the Twin Cities. Our weirdly invasive and cumbersome legal system makes even simple things like name changes difficult. We’re going through the same problems and dysfunctions as most other states, just with a local twist.

      As you mentioned, every oppressed group gets invited here: Vietnamese boat people, Hmong, Katrina “survivors,” Somalis by the planeload; black Chicagoans looking for less carnage somehow get public housing and services while some of us natives wait years. That forced influx has made what was formerly a world-class metro area full of beautiful greenscapes and parks, excellent museums, a terrific restaurant, nightclub and music scene, and so on, into a nightmare. Crime rates are shooting up; cultural enrichment is literally killing us. Remember the Mall of America? That giant, shining monument to consumerism? Man, has that gone downhill. You would have to pay me well to go there now, because of how enriched it is by vibrancy and the accompanying crime. Diversity is a disease eating at the body politic. Hold on to your European brethren, no matter how benighted you think they are. Your world will be a safer and better place.

  2. All this arguing about optics and feelings is going to lead to only one thing – surviving whites being herded at bayonet point on to reservations, while colored savages literally tear down everything our civilization built.

  3. Good smart article. I agree with much of it, so I’ll touch on a few caveats. 1. Huge things don’t turn on a dime : AI won’t displace us next week or next year. 2. We need a new phrase : The Big South. The south doesn’t instantly stop at the deep south borders. It’s expanded a bit over the decades, AND a lot of deep souther’s popped a tiny bit outside the borders during the fighting … and stayed … went back … and back and forth. This is good. We need more land. 3. We’ll need WHITE CHRISTIAN immigrants from Europe and South Africa to fill voids of unskilled semi skilled and skilled labor as well as those with huge $$$$ to invest in the BIG south, as Confederacy 2.0 gets massaged into existence. When you say “culture,” all we need is 1 big book and 1 good documentary to be the “official” guides to our culture … complete with tests and Confederate Certification & Citizenship Exams for the new arrivals. 4. What are Yangs TRUE policies promised to stop 3rd world darkie immigration ? 5. We MUST Balkanize to survive based on race color religion politics. He boons and she boons will NEVER change and just settle down and be at peace ! It’s not in their dna. Ever hear them talk when together in bunches ? They’re very loud ignorant and brainwashed. They are a different “species” of human. The BIG south must be all white. 6. Any whites that stir up trouble ( them yanks etc., ) can be deported. 7. No … you don’t want to fix the souths economy first. That would attract jigaboos and other OTW’s ( other than whites. ) You want a gradual morphing of a country within a country, so AS it progresses, WHITE CHRISTIANS are increasingly in positions of power and influence and have been all guided to “be on the same page, same culture, same big picture goals.” Little by little, ( we don’t want abrupt economic roller coaster, ) OTW’s realize they’re not getting ahead in the BIG south, but their peers are in other parts of AmeriKa. So … they move. Voluntarily. 🙂 Which leads me to 8. If Balkanization’s presented correctly … 90 % of OTW’s ( and self hating whites, ) will not only want to move … they’ll DEMAND IT !!!

    Happy and blessed is the nation who’s rulers are wise Godly MEN. ( Not women. ) God once punished them thar Jews by causing them to be ruled over by, “women and babes.”

    Our Constitution would need to be laid out with the most important things called PILLARS. Certain things are “timeless,” and timeless pillars will hold up our civilization. They could not be changed even with every vote from every state in The CSA, and it would be a crime to publicly call for any change to any pillar in The Constitution.

    One of the pillars would be no women representatives, judges, prosecuting attorneys, police, or in charge of men in prisons or the military. If you balk at that “you’ve been brainwashed by them thar Jews !!!” Men were men and women were women for 6,000 + years. Then came media.

    We need to teach “timelessness.”

    The rest of The Constitution could be much like The US version, but with more freedoms and spelled out very clearly so no activist judges could misinterpret anything.

    Start with a think tank. Be timeless where you should be welcome change where it should be welcomed. Draft a Constitution, etc., and form The Confederate Party.

    Go slow. Nice n easy …

  4. The South can be built into a nation that combines high tech manufacturing with small town and rural life. Not unlike Germany with it’s mid sized firms located in mid sized towns, in the countryside.

    Another 3/4th wave trend that’s already here.

    When I was in elementary school, we read a science fiction story about kids who went to school online and had a facilitator/teacher, and took tests electronically. It was written in the mid 1960’s

    This isn’t fiction anymore. Brick and mortar schools are in danger of extinction. With the government providing the equipment, which they do, Leftists won’t be able to cry that it’s unfair to nigglets.

    They won’t be relevant anymore, anyway. They’ll sound like the Duke of Burgundy, brought back to life and arguing against peasant literacy and the printing press.

    As an aside, UBI takes away the Leftist arguments about unfairness and injustice. The only argument they’ll have left is that Niggers don’t take advantage of UBI to better themselves, or start a small business, or work for extra income, because of “racism.” In fact, the Left will be reduced to being race hustlers that nobody listens to anymore.

    The Left will be reduced to being race hustlers that nobody listens to anymore.

    Keep that in mind.

Comments are closed.