Posted on November 13, 2019

Chris Roberts Returns to AmRen

AR Staff, American Renaissance, November 13, 2019

AR Staff: Welcome back to American Renaissance! We’re glad to have you. Please tell our readers why you left, what you did while you were away, and why you came back?

Chris Roberts: That’s three questions in one.

As to why I left, the short answer would be “depression.” By late 2017, I was overwhelmed with disappointment over a number of things: Donald Trump’s presidency seemed to have become nothing but a string of let-downs and betrayals. The world of white advocacy was internally fractured and squabbling. The Unite the Right rally at Charlottesville had been an disaster in nearly every way. Two years earlier, the cause of saving our people seemed to be surging into the mainstream. In 2016, there were days when our cause seemed invincible and inevitable. But starting in February of 2017, and culminating that August, the sugar high had faded into a nightmarish hangover. I needed a break.

What did I do while I was away? Many things. I traveled a great deal, both nationally and internationally, taught English abroad for a bit, and worked in real estate here in the US for nearly a year. Probably of most interest to American Renaissance readers was that I lived with the Brimelows for a short while, during which I put together the James Kirkpatrick anthology Conservatism Inc., recently released by Arktos — a project of which I am quite proud.

Why did I come back? Basically because everything I saw during my two years in the wilderness reaffirmed everything about the convictions that led me to work for American Renaissance in the first place. Summarizing that is not easy. But the cities I grew up in are so much more “diverse” than they were when I was a child, and so many of the talented, artsy white folks I spent my teens and early twenties with are just sitting around getting high, working dead-end jobs, and drowning in their own nihilistic ennui.

It’s so sad, and the “alternative culture” they’re immersed in is constantly telling them that their very whiteness is evil, which further fuels their hedonistic self-destruction. No one is looking out for them — not the media, not the elites, not the universities, not the unions, not anybody. It just feels wrong to sit on the sidelines and do nothing about it. Getting them out of their rut will take a racial and spiritual renaissance, not more multiculturalism or government-given material goodies. Going home after having been away for so long and being reminded of all that made we wonder why I’d left American Renaissance in the first place.

The money I made buying and selling houses was nice, but I didn’t find the work very meaningful. Teaching English in another part of the world was interesting (and I’m not the first race realist to have done so) and I’m glad I did it — but it’s definitely not something I want to do forever.

AS: What will be the nature of your work?

CR: Hopefully, a bit of everything. I love Lydia Brimelow’s description of her role at VDARE: “. . . fundraiser and office manager, lion tamer, fire extinguisher and miscellany handler. . .” I know our enemies will read this, so I don’t want to get into too much detail, but I want to ensure that the website is more dynamic, more frequently updated, and more original. I will also try to see that American Renaissance releases a few more books in the coming years. The last one we published, Jared Taylor’s If We Do Nothing, found its way into the hands of some influential people, and we need to be certain that we continue to influence the broader media landscape. Even in our internet-fueled age, books do this well. In short: I hope readers and supporters will soon start seeing a new and improved American Renaissance — I’ll let the results speak for themselves.

Credit: Album / Prisma

AS: What was the process that led you to an undeceived understanding of race?

CR: That’s an easy one: public schools, public parks, and public transit.

AS: Are there any books or authors who were a particularly strong influence?

CR: The last time I was asked that I made a special note of Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt: Towards a Secular Theocracy by Paul Gottfried, and that answer still stands. Beautiful Losers by Sam Francis was also important in helping me understand the American conservative movement. What Hath God Wrought by Daniel Walker Howe, despite its liberal bias, cemented my fascination with American history. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is the book that has most influenced me spiritually/religiously. A few others worth mentioning would be The Managerial Revolution by James Burnham, The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus, and Aristotle’s Politics. As for fiction — which does, inarguably influence one’s worldview — I’d say Flannery O’Connor and Raymond Chandler.

Flannery O'Connor

Flannery O’Connor

AS: Do you think the Republican Party will ever become an explicit expression of the interests of whites?

CR: That question is worth responding to by way of essay — or monograph. In brief, “no,” because your question contains the word “explicit.” But, it is, and will continue to be, possible to bring it to a point just shy of “explicit” — which is something worth doing. It is easy to proclaim that the GOP is nothing but a bunch of useless cucks obsessed with economics, but places without even weak-willed center-right parties are not pretty; Venezuela and South Africa are examples.

AS: What is your sense of what can be achieved for our people in the next five years? The next 10? The next 20?

CR: First, let me remind all readers that the answer to this question is in many ways up to us: the work we do, the sacrifices we make, the paths we follow. I couldn’t give you a good answer in terms of your particular chronology, but until further notice, I’d lay out two types of goals, defensive and offensive. Defensive: Ensure no further limitations are put on the right of self-defense, the Second Amendment, freedom of speech, and homeschooling. Offensive: Discredit our most vociferous enemies, such as ethno-masochistic politicians like Beto O’Rourke and organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center; keep subtly influencing mainstream conservatism; relentlessly publicize the scientific reality of race and the moral imperative of white survival. Limiting non-white immigration as much as possible straddles the line between my defensive/offensive dichotomy — but it should certainly be viewed as a priority.

There’s always lots of talk about ethnostates in our circles, but in the here-and-now, what we need are informal, even unofficial and unnamed, neighborhood and civic groups of whites who live close to each other. These “white cooperatives” are what on a local level can bring down anti-white teaching curricula in public schools and build pro-white homeschooling networks, get local news to report on non-white crime and welfare abuse, set-up armed defense networks during times of racial unrest, and support one another during hard times brought on by unemployment, slander, etc. Note that the goals I list in the paragraph before this one are the bedrock for creating white cooperatives. In the long term, these groups can do campaign work for worthy politicians, show their strength as a voting bloc, push our labor unions into a more anti-immigration stance, and one day serve as the basis for a separatist movement.

Most importantly though, we must not despair. We owe it to both our ancestors and our descendants to win, and our cause is a glorious one.