Are We Winning? Did We Already Win?

Credit Image: © Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images via ZUMA Wire

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We need to remember the way things used to be.

A decade ago, race realists often felt like we were talking only to ourselves. It was a low point of relevance and public attention. Obscurity was worse than defeat.

In the 1990s, after the end of the Cold War, there was a brief period when Americans could talk about race. C-SPAN hosted American Renaissance conferences. Mainstream magazines discussed The Bell Curve, The Camp of the Saints, and Alien Nation. Pat Buchanan made two strong challenges for the Republican nomination. The O.J. Simpson Trial and the Los Angeles riots got angry reactions from whites, and President Bill Clinton famously overruled blacks in his own party on welfare reform and crime.

That opening faded. In the George W. Bush years, what passed for right-wing activism meant trying to defeat attempts to pass amnesty for illegal immigrants by the leaders of the GOP. Even the rise of Barack Obama didn’t drive racial consciousness, with many in the conservative movement even excited about “getting past race” with a black president. Jared Taylor used to say he felt like he was only “making a record” so that some curious future scholar might know that not all of us were fools and cowards.

In February 2010, AlternativeRight.com launched, with the first two columns by me and Richard Hoste. While the Alt-Right was not only about race, that was a major priority. There were differences between the Alt-Right and the older conservative outsiders, the paleoconservatives. But those differences didn’t matter. In those days, Paul Gottfried once referred to Pat Buchanan (then still allowed on television) as our “window to the outside world.”

Aside from a few voices, our arguments were banished to the margins. There were websites, conferences, and organizations, but they rarely bled into mainstream political debate or even into the conservative movement. It was a big deal if a relatively unknown conservative columnist cited VDARE.com or if a staffer told you at a DC bar that he agreed with everything on AmRen, “but please don’t tell anyone.” We could organize, write, and say whatever we wanted, but it didn’t matter.

The Donald Trump 2016 campaign changed things, but there is a great deal of revisionist history about this. It was considered a breakthrough when Mr. Trump retweeted a “Can’t Stump the Trump” video with a Pepe. When he retweeted a (largely inaccurate) meme on the color of crime, it was a victory for race realism. Hillary Clinton denounced the Alt-Right, which meant we were relevant. Conservative pundits such as Erick Erickson, David French, Jonah Goldberg, Ben Shapiro, and the staff of National Review crusaded against the Alt-Right and the Trump campaign, and some called for outright purges all the way out to Breitbart. Trump’s takeover of the GOP and his election seemed to herald a transformation of the American Right.

Some might say that the transformation has taken place. Our ideas are posted on X every day. Mr. French and Mr. Goldberg have essentially been driven out of the movement, and Mr. Trump effortlessly won a third GOP nomination. Today, conservative Fox News pundits often condemn anti-white discrimination. Indeed, “Walt Bismarck” argues that he left white nationalism not because he has given up on it, but because the cause of spreading race realism has been won and cancel culture is largely over.

In 2019, Charlie Kirk was American Renaissance’s “White Renegade of the Year.” This year, he attacked Martin Luther King Jr. In 2019, during the “Groyper Wars,” Matt Walsh recycled the idea that America was special because of its “ideas,” not because it was white. Now, he says “diversity absolutely means anti-white.” Immigration is the number one issue for voters — and not just Republicans. A recent article from Axios worries that fighting anti-white discrimination could become a major goal for a new Trump administration.

The former president has a good chance of recapturing the Oval Office. President Trump has promised the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” and has identified Operation Wetback as a model. It would include building deportation camps and involving the military. The Trump campaign warned that illegals “should not get comfortable because very soon they will be going home.” This is arguably more promising even than 2016.

Speeches, columns, and posts from race realists and even outright white nationalists circulate on social media despite heavy censorship and they flourish on free speech sites such as Rumble, Gab, and Telegram. The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, reposts them. Our ideas are everywhere.

From the perspective of 2010, this is undoubtedly a victory. In those days, victory was getting a link in a mainstream publication or a footnote in a book. Our ideas are spreading and being taken seriously by people with power. We now have a mass base that is larger than ever. Online content, real world activism, book publishing, and networking are all at levels undreamed of a decade ago, even in the face of ferocious persecution.

Yet, what have we gained in the real world? Nothing. There are still no pro-white elected officials. Indeed, a local official who attended Unite the Right and was attacked by far-left groups was recalled by local Republicans who voted with the far-left rather than ignore the media. No Republicans fight explicitly for white interests, but this is not because they don’t believe in “identity politics.” They are trying to ban speech against Israel and Jews, even though Jews mostly do not vote for them. Whites, and whites alone, are utterly unrepresented as a collective interest group.

There have been cutbacks to DEI programs, but the industry (and it is still an industry) is still vastly larger than in 2020. The money spread around just by Jeff Bezos’s ex-wife dwarfs all the money given to every American nationalist group since the end of World War II. “Anti-racism” is still a great career. The likes of Ibram Kendi get MacArthur Genius Grants and cozy berths in academia, corporations, and government. Even AI is crudely anti-white. Top universities train intelligent young people in what could be called “offense archeology,” or discovering ever-more reasons to take money from whites and give it to blacks. Indoctrination and propaganda work. Generation Z is not “based.” Young Republicans are well to the left of their elders on race.

The entire West has shifted from “colorblind” to overtly anti-white, with “whiteness” defined as privilege, oppression, and exploitation. The Great Replacement goes on unchecked. No white men run a single government in the United Kingdom. America’s foreign-born population has grown by 15 percent in 12 years. Immigration is fueling the greatest population increase in Canadian history — against the wishes of most Canadians.

In the early 2000s, you could still say that the transfer of power from one civilization and race to another had not yet begun in Europe. It’s now well on its way. Almost one in five people in Germany are foreign-born, and about five million had immigrant parents. White Britons are a minority in their two largest cities, and Labour is virtually certain to win the next election. France is groveling to its Algerians. Eastern Europe has shown some resistance, but even Poland now has a left-wing government.

Perhaps the greatest cultural shift has been the loss of free speech, even as an ideal. With almost no resistance, it has vanished from almost the entire Western world. Even in the United States, it is no longer a cultural norm. After Unite the Right in 2017, the ACLU officially abandoned its traditional defense of free speech, “even for racists.” The First Amendment is now a fringe cause.

Being openly pro-white won’t yet land you in jail, but it can freeze you out of bank accounts, social media, payment processors, and other services, from Uber to Airbnb — who may even confiscate your money. TikTok stars are getting sympathetic coverage because they might lose their livelihoods if TikTok is banned. There were no such misgivings about the ruthless deplatforming that started in 2017. The federal government has singled out people for muzzling, and the Supreme Court is likely to bless the practice. There has always been intense hostility against white advocacy, but our rulers are longing to use hard power against us. In Canada and Europe, new methods of repression could have been modeled on the Soviets.

Many “implicitly” white symbols are gone. You can’t buy a Confederate Battle Flag on Amazon. Confederate monuments have been torn down all across he South, and statues of “racists” have come down everywhere else. “Conservatives” capitulate.

Steve Sailer noted that sometime during Barack Obama’s second term, “white” became an insult. Insulting whites is now an ideology and an industry. The media may be even more anti-white than academia, though the story is complicated. The Southern Poverty Law Center and the ADL are less relevant than ever. Conservative organizations used to panic over a single phone call. Now, groups brush off criticism. The ADL was once untouchable; now, it is invariably flayed on X and fewer people fear it. At the same time, many articles in the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal sound almost like the SPLC’s Hatewatch blog. Maybe the watchdogs themselves are wondering what’s the point of organizations that try to silence “racists” when The Gray Lady herself does the same thing.

Finding something that is historically white, complaining about it, and promoting a “victim” who wants money is a new genre of journalism. Some reporters seem to do nothing but research “extremism” and the “far right,” and then write articles that are thinly veiled calls for censorship. They work with universities to do the same thing, notably with Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center. Tech companies usually bow to their demands, especially if the government is quietly telling them the same thing. The media’s efforts since 2016 are like an information counterinsurgency.

What would have been considered lunatic a decade ago is now common. The Associated Press says Black should be reverently capitalized, but not white. Jargon such as “marginalized communities” or “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” or “racial reckoning” or “the underserved” is everywhere. Possible reparations for slavery are big news. Much of entertainment is anti-white, not just replacing historically white characters with non-whites, but even promoting contempt for whites. Streaming services include a “black voices” section whether you want it or not. The double standards on race have reached comic heights; we sing the “Black National Anthem” before the Super Bowl.

Two decades ago, white advocates and even just normal Americans would have predicted outrage. There has been none. The Left is pushing on an open door. Not only have These Colors Run, they ran without a skirmish. The same people who beat their chests about a “strong” American foreign policy don’t seem to have noticed the death of American patriotism. The “State Conquest” I predicted in 2019 got its start during the Summer of Floyd in 2020, and has gone from strength to strength.

Some call Mr. Trump a reaction, but he has done little for whites. Black Senator Tim Scott now seems to be his most likely running mate. An aging man could be easily rolled, and President Biden is pulling ahead in the polls.

Conservatives have shown increasing opposition to anti-white policies, but the GOP itself has done nothing. Although the Republican Party is overwhelmingly dependent on white voters, it would never work for whites the way Democrats work for blacks. Pro-white voices are banned from almost all social media (AmRen is still banned from Elon Musk’s “free speech” platform X), anti-white speech proliferates. The GOP is almost entirely silent on deplatforming, denial of services, lawfare, or censorship. Not one prominent figure has pushed for platform access as a civil right. Conservatives may even be happy when their competitors to their right are squelched. Almost no one mourned the end of the old “free speech” internet.

Censorship makes it hard to send a pro-white message, but you can blame the World Economic Forum or King Charles III or vaccines for anything you like. If you do, no one will care, because you’re not over the target.

The Alt-Right of 2015-2016, promoted human biodiversity, critiqued liberalism, and investigated Identitarianism and the European New Right. It was a competitor to conservatism — a literal alternative to the Right. Today’s Dissident Right is a grab bag of the politically marginalized, made up of incompatible religious factions and mutually contradictory beliefs, vaccine skepticism, opposition to American foreign policy, and with a dose of the Trump personality cult.

Some of this may be necessary. A personality cult may be required to combat liberalism, because only personal charisma can overcome such an all-encompassing system. The same may be said of religion. Yet, much on the Right is nonsense, and some is undoubtedly just cynics making a living. The Alt-Right — at some cost — did force a discussion of race into the center of American politics. The emerging Right is slowly trying to build a coherent message that will resonate with white Americans.

It will be an uphill struggle. The Left has interlocking, credentialing institutions that send a united message through universities, media, and government, with whites as the unifying enemy. The Right’s message is confused. Even the Trump campaign’s response to the Biden Administration’s declaration of “Trans Day of Visibility” on Easter Sunday was marred by an argument over distinctions between “Catholics and Christians.” If people take their faith seriously, denominational differences are more important than temporal politics — but that won’t stop the egalitarians’ more coherent and militant faith from steamrolling them. There are many “Rights,” because people on the Right have different ideas about what is ultimate authority and legitimacy. There is only one Left — the drive to reduce everything to “equality.”

For me, the source of authority is race. What Sam Francis said is true: The fight against us is being waged in racial terms and must be met in racial terms. Even the fiercest anti-Christian zealots aren’t attacking black churches or the pro-trans preachers of the mainline Protestant denominations. The people attacking “Christian Nationalism” aren’t worried that the Rev. Al Sharpton has a television show. It’s whites — and their symbols, heritage, and hopes — that are under assault. Unless whites unite as whites, they will be defeated, whether they call themselves Christians, conservatives, Americans, or white advocates.

Many will argue that a “race only” opposition isn’t enough. Sam Francis would have agreed. A religious, cultural, and spiritual element is almost certainly necessary to withstand what is to come, whereas anti-white sentiment — whether called equity or CRT or decolonialism or anti-racism — is enough to unite disparate and even feuding groups against us.

White advocates may argue that race is central; others may say it’s important but not the main issue. But we can’t “sneak up” on the opposition, nor trick it by claiming to be defending the Constitution or promoting “America” against the “elites.” Without white racial consciousness, it is hard to recognize hostile elites. Without white consciousness and the recognition that race is a biological reality, there is no way to explain why equality is impossible, or why The Great Replacement is immoral. The Left sees all white people, regardless of belief, career, disability, religion, or income, as “privileged.” Whites share a common fate regardless of whether we wage a common fight.

Establishing the importance — if not the centrality — of white identity in whatever emerges from the Dissident Right and the Trump movement is our most important task. Our ideas circulate more widely than ever. Yet, we are not winning. We cannot organize openly, and the stakes for political battle get higher by the year. Without immense willpower, sacrifice, and determination, our people and civilization will end soon.

Am I pessimistic? Look where we were just a few years ago. In 2014, Jared Taylor asked me and other writers to predict what would happen in America by 2034. I predicted several things that have come true: more censorship, an intensifying witch hunt both on- and off-line, whites desperately trying to become members of other groups to save their careers, and ever-expanding definitions of what is “racist.” Yet what I did not see was a pro-white movement with a real cultural and potential political impact emerging in the short-term. Today, we have one. The costs for being a white advocate are higher now than ever, but there are more of us than ever. Expressions of implicit whiteness are declining, but explicit whiteness is increasing — hence the system’s paranoia.

The price of opportunity is danger — danger of losing not just money or a fancy career, but of losing freedom and safety. We face such dangers now because we are closer to success. What holds us back is raw, repressive power, and the fear it strikes in the hearts of those who would be our allies. We must build networks and institutions that can protect others who step forward.

The current madness could collapse just as the Soviet Union did, but there would still be suffering. Our rulers will violate constitutional norms and liberal assumptions to keep power and achieve their goals. We must endure and defeat them, with the realization that classical liberalism is dead and not coming back.

We must have faith in victory but recognize that defeat is possible. We must act, if only because the fate of those who do and those who do not will be the same. We are not winning — but we can win, and victory may be closer than we think. I would not have said that a decade ago. We are in a fight now, like never before. Let us finish it.