“Citizenism” vs. White Nationalism: A Second Reply to Steve Sailer

[Peter Brimelow writes: Should American whites explicitly pursue their own interests as government policy moves them to minority status — a strategy sometimes called “white nationalism” — or can they hope to safeguard their interests in a more general political movement, which might be called “citizenism’? Our debate between Jared Taylor (white nationalist) and Steve Sailer (citizenist), begun by Steve’s review of Jared’s new book The Color of Crime, has excited so much interest that we asked Jared to give Steve another thump. Steve will reply shortly.]

Steve Sailer’s charmingly discursive reply to my defense of white nationalism covers a lot of ground. I take considerable liberty in over-simplifying his views as follows:

1. The natural object of our loyalties should be the current citizens of our country, and their interests are served by restricting immigration.
2. Whites will spurn any movement (including immigration control) that is based on an appeal to racial solidarity.
3. They do this for two reasons: They are idealistic and consider such appeals beneath their dignity, and secretly they do not think non-whites are going to take their jobs.
4. White racial consciousness must at least imply hostility towards blacks, and mobilizing hostility is a waste of effort that should go into immigration control.

These are all interesting points and not necessarily wrong. But they do not add up to an argument that whites should abandon their own group interests.

As for point 1, there would be no disagreement from the 60 to 80 percent of Americans who want less immigration, including me. Stopping mass immigration should be the number one priority for American whites.

In Europe, where multi-party systems give voters real choices, racial considerations are a large factor in the success of restrictionist parties like the French National Front, the Austrian Freedom Party, and the Danish Peoples Party.

Nevertheless, Mr. Sailer is probably right to argue that an open appeal to the interests of whites may not be the most successful way to sell immigration control. His point 2 is correct: White consciousness has been so thoroughly demonized that although whites do not want to live with blacks or Mexicans, they dare not admit it in public. No congressman would say we must guard the border because whites have the right to a country in which they are the majority.

Of course, there are plenty of good ways to oppose immigration and not sound “racist”: The country is crowded; we already import too much oil; immigrants commit crime, push down wages, burden schools, spread disease, go on welfare refuse to learn English, gather in indigestible clumps, etc. etc.

I have always argued that the consequences of immigration — entirely aside from the dispossession of whites — are so awful that if the newcomers were white, but doing exactly what current immigrants do, we would shut them out without a fuss. Were it not for cries of “racism,” the borders would close tomorrow. It is only because immigrants are brown and yellow and black that people twist themselves into pretzels, imputing imaginary benefits to a process that is obviously bad for the country in nearly every way.

This is the sort of thing that happens when whites lose the ability to think straight about race.

But why can’t whites think straight about race? Mr. Sailer says, point 3, that it is because they are too idealistic and don’t see non-whites as a threat.

Idealistic? White liberals are openly, breathtakingly hypocritical. The appearance of racial rectitude is perhaps America’s most highly-regarded virtue, but it comes at essentially no cost.

You don’t have to have black friends, you don’t have to have Mexican neighbors, you don’t have to send your children to schools where no one speaks English, and you don’t have to invite Hmong refugees to your dinner parties. You can be racially respectable without doing anything. Just gush about the things you, yourself, carefully avoid: integration, multiculturalism, and diversity.

This is the Clinton/Kennedy/Bush racket.

People get away with it because everyone is in on the charade. By any real racial test, by any measure that requires sacrifice, everyone fails, so whites never apply real tests to each other. Mouth the right clichés and you’re on the side of the angels. Racial rectitude is therefore the most cheaply bought virtue in American history — and also the most easily forfeited. Because only words matter, not deeds, a single sentence can wreck a career.

Idealistic? Americans are as tolerant as ever of whoring movie stars, lying politicians, executives on the take, and thug athletes (mix the nouns and modifiers any way you like). When it comes to race, all they require is hypocrisy and slogans. The “idealism” is fake — but everyone had better be equally fake. By today’s twisted standards, a man with murder convictions could easily be the moral superior of one who says he hopes the country stays white.

This is yet another example of what happens when whites lose the ability to think straight about race.

Few people realize how recently we jumped the tracks. Up until the 1950s, whites took it for granted that this was a country for white people and would stay that way. They could not have imagined routine denigration of whites and obligatory bleating about the joys of being replaced by aliens. Every President up to Eisenhower would have agreed with me, and would have found Mr. Sailer’s views incomprehensible. It had nothing to do with immigrants competing for jobs. Americans liked the country whites had built and didn’t want it mucked up.

The great, unanswered question in American — and world — history, is why the white man lost his nerve and went from warrior and colonizer to liberal and loser.

I don’t believe the traits that characterized whites for all but 50 years of recorded history have disappeared for ever. We should not prepare for the future on the assumption that they have.

Although immigration is today the greatest threat to the survival of Western Civilization on this continent, it is hardly the only threat. Every social problem — poverty, crime, illegitimacy, school failure — has a clear racial dimension that Americans refuse to recognize. There will be no honesty and no solutions until whites clear their heads of cobwebs and start thinking straight again. This will be better for everyone.

At the same time, I apologize to no one for putting my group first, just as non-whites do. Whites have a duty to their ancestors and an obligation to their children. Duty does not calculate the chances of success, as Mr. Sailer would have us do. Duty calls us to what is right.

My children deserve a country in which they can be proud of their heritage, where their culture is taken for granted, where their history is not treated like a criminal record, where they can be confident their own children will walk in the ways of their ancestors.

Indeed, all children deserve this — not just mine. This is why multiculturalism and multi-racialism are frauds. Racial interests, like family interests, sometimes cannot be reconciled. Every people should have the right to pursue its destiny, free from the unwanted embrace of others.

Decades of post-1965 immigration mean it will not be easy to arrange this on our continent. But unless whites awake from their 50-year trance, they will be pushed aside by groups that have never lost sight of their racial interests, and never will.

No one else cares whether whites or their civilization survive. If whites do not regain the capacity to defend their interests they condemn themselves to oblivion.

Mr. Sailer, quoting Enoch Powell, reminds us that “the supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils.”

I invite him to lend his considerable talents to preventing a tragedy that would be as great as it would be needless.