Shaping the Perfect Subjects

In 2005, Professor Nicholas Shackel analyzed a series of deceptive rhetorical maneuvers used to proselytize failed post-modern ideas. Among these, he identified the “motte-and-bailey doctrine,” which takes its name from a medieval castle-defense system: peasants would flee from an indefensible courtyard area—a bailey—up into a fortified tower—the motte—during an attack.

An individual is guilty of the motte-and-bailey in a debate when he conflates two positions that share similarities, one modest and easily defensible (motte) and the other controversial and untenable (bailey). The debater advances the second, far more radical position until it comes under attack, at which point he retreats to a defense of the motte by insisting that this was his claim all along, effectively reframing the bailey as a straw man invented by his opponent. If this move is successful, the controversial—and real—position goes unassailed while the critic appears unreasonable.

The most consequential example of motte-and-bailey tactics in our time is the debate over the Great Replacement, i.e., the racial and cultural dispossession of America’s historic, European-descended stock. The dominant powers in the United States endorse and actively hasten this dispossession, while simultaneously denying its existence altogether.

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Calls for the political, cultural, and physical marginalization, replacement, and even death of white people have become mainstream in the United States and elsewhere in the West. But when advocates of the Great Replacement are confronted with criticism, they retreat to the motte, cloaking their real positions behind the rhetorical walls of “diversity and inclusion” language, which, they insist, is merely metaphorical and harmless. In what Michael Anton has coined the “celebration parallax,” radicals alternatively insist to their critics that they do not aspire to the extreme goals they are accused of, then strategically advance and celebrate those goals among their champions, who deploy innocuous lines about “equity” and “diversity” when challenged. This pattern is displayed by or receives the support of corporate, political, media, and academic elites.

In an article called “When Is It OK to Kill Whites?” Tommy Curry, a black associate professor specializing in critical race theory at Texas A&M University, declared that “in order to be equal, in order to be liberated, some white people might have to die.” That conclusion follows logically from Curry’s diagnosis of the white race’s condition. In a YouTube interview, he said that history shows whites are irreparably bigoted, and therefore attempting to reason with them is futile. But when these anti-white remarks were reported in The American Conservative, Curry complained that it was all taken out of context and that “white supremacists” had consequently threatened his life. He said that criticism of his statements about killing and marginalizing incurably malicious whites only “demonstrates the very real danger of anti-Black racism for Black people in universities.” Curry’s department colleagues wrote an op-ed defending his assigned role “to teach and research in critical race theory, an area where he is an acknowledged expert,” calling on Texas A&M to unequivocally defend him.

At Yale, an academic named Aruna Khilanani fantasized to students about joyfully shooting white people in the head during a lecture where she also bemoaned the futility of reasoning with whites. Like Curry, she said it was all just a “metaphor to evoke emotion” after her comments sparked public outrage. Most recently, Brittney Cooper, a black professor of women’s and gender studies and Africana studies at Rutgers, said that white people can’t afford to have children and “kind of deserve it.”

“I think that white people are committed to being villains in the aggregate,” Cooper said. “You know, their thinking is so murky and spiritually bankrupt about power that they…they fear this really existentially letting go of power because they cannot imagine another way to be,” she added. Cooper concluded that the ideal solution would be to “take these motherf**kers out,” before insisting that she doesn’t advocate violence. The discussion, “Unpacking the Attacks on Critical Race Theory,” was hosted by the Root Institute in partnership with Target and Fidelity Investments, one of the largest asset managers in the world. That’s not at all surprising; State Street Global Advisors, another one of the world’s largest investment firms, now requires leaders to ask permission before hiring white men as part of a “diversity” initiative.

The most consistent and remarkable feature of the Great Replacement is that its advocates simultaneously deny, cheer, and conceal their true positions. On June 24, 2018, Charles Blow, a black New York Times columnist, reported contentedly that whites “have been the majority of people considered United States citizens since this country was founded, but that period is rapidly drawing to a close.” Blow would denounce the Great Replacement in April 2021 as a “racist, anti-Semitic, patriarchal and conspiratorial ‘white replacement theory,’” only to celebrate “the shrinking of the white population and the explosion of the nonwhite” evinced by census data in August 2021. Blow has even called for a “reverse Great Migration” to the south for the express purpose of replacing whites.

In an article titled, “We Can Replace Them,” Times columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote that “America is tearing itself apart as an embittered white conservative minority clings to power, terrified at being swamped by a new multiracial polyglot majority.” Roger Cohen followed up with a similar argument in the Times in “Trump’s Last Stand for White America” on the eve of the 2020 election. He opened by quoting demonstrators at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville who reportedly chanted, “Jews will not replace us.” Goldberg named her piece from the previous year as a play on that chant. It was designed to provoke and conflate opponents of her position with extremists, essentially creating a trap where to disagree is to commit an act of bigotry.

Occasionally, the mask comes off entirely, as illustrated in a tweet by Morgan J. Freeman. “Why can’t Republicans just accept that the ‘whiteness’ they so very cherish will be bred out of the human race?” he wrote. Freeman is a self-described “human rights and racial justice advocate,” and yet here he essentially celebrated the United Nations’ textbook definition of genocide: “Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.”

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It is hard to name all the ways local, state, and federal governments sanction racial discrimination that disadvantages and displaces whites. In grants, subsidies, contracts, and employment, the establishment regularly incorporates racial preferences, quotas, and agendas. That whites are excluded from them, punished for failing to comply with them, and disadvantaged in opportunities by them makes these policies of de facto discrimination.

Even after the Afghanistan catastrophe, the Pentagon’s priority is making the armed forces less white. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff recently said that the military must increase opportunity and improve advancement for black service members, including among Air Force pilots and in the most senior ranks. Bishop Garrison, the Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Defense on Human Capital and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion issues, recently pushed critical race theory on a panel at the Center for a New American Security. “Diversity” must inform every aspect of the military’s recruiting, promotion, operations, and policy implementation process, Garrison told CNAS, which has received funding from every major defense contractor, Wall Street’s biggest banks, several foreign governments, and George Soros’ Open Societies Foundation.

In 94%-white Vermont, Governor Phill Scott recently appointed the state’s first executive director of racial equity, a black woman named Xusana Davis. According to the governor’s press release, she “will work with state government agencies and departments to identify and address systemic racial disparities and support the state’s efforts to expand and bring diversity to Vermont’s overall population.” Last year, Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said on Instagram Live that “southern states are not red states, they are suppressed states.” The New York termagant pointed to “multi-racial” and “multi-cultural” grassroots mobilization in Georgia that led to Democrats taking control of the Senate as proof. In other words, states are not truly free and democratic and, therefore, politically legitimate unless they are “diverse” or are committed to “diversity.”

The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act effectively legalized discrimination on a national level through what has essentially been affirmative action for non-European immigration. The same people who inanely compare the framers to illegal aliens, insist there is no difference between European and non-European immigration, and dismiss the implications of America’s radical, rapid demographic transformation, occasionally cop to believing that race really does matter when it comes to immigration: “The people who moved here after the 1965 act made the United States a truly multicultural nation,” wrote Tom Gjelten in an NPR article entitled “Influx Of Non-European Immigrants Defines America Today.” Will we ever see such advocacy efforts on behalf of whites when they are reduced to a minority nationally, as they already have been in California? To ask the question is to invite ridicule from the diversity commissars, who simultaneously deny and champion these demographic realities that carry the imprimatur of the regime.

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The Great Replacement, then, is a symptom of this political formula, which represents the interests of the elites and their allies who view America’s whites and the institutions with which they are associated as obstacles to their dominance. The process of replacement is akin to something like changing the “base”—the materials and resources of a society—to alter the “superstructure,” the organization of human life that includes the ideology, norms, and identities of a people.

Although conservatives and some liberals think “American values” are universal, evidence suggests that the survival of many foundational cultural and political assumptions depends at least in part on the continued survival of whites. Consider that a Pew Research Center survey found 75% of blacks, 72% of Asians, and 65% of Hispanics say gun laws should be stricter compared to only 45% of white people. White evangelical Protestants are the country’s socially conservative core on culture war issues from sex and gender to transgenderism. Blacks and Hispanics are also more likely than white Americans to believe hate speech is an act of violence (75%, 72%, 46%), and policing politically correct speech and behavior only empowers the managerial regime.

To be sure, this is not to say that ideas unique to certain cultures cannot be transmitted regardless of race. Rather it is to insist on the basic truth that a people functions as a carrier of culture. The ideas that arise from a culture have their best chance of survival so long as the people from whom they’ve sprung remain physically and psychically intact. As Thomas West wrote in The Political Theory of the American Founding: “It is unlikely that the American Revolution could have succeeded without something like the Anglo-American people with their distinctive ethnic character, religion, and legal heritage.” Natural rights, West concludes, “are not enough.” Moreover, while immigration is not inherently good or bad, the status quo is only increasing political polarization.

A study published in the academic journal Kyklos noted what seems obvious: “immigration from culturally distant countries…reduces political stability compared to immigration from culturally similar countries.” But another consequence is that the national security apparatus grows in anticipation of instability. Consider that the Department of Homeland Security views “white supremacists”—essentially anyone who disagrees with mass immigration—as “the most persistent and lethal threat in the homeland.” The Defense Department has also warned about the scarecrow white supremacy. All this, of course, means the regime must spend more and surveil more to quell real or perceived political instability.

More to the point, changing the demographic base of a country will change the character of its social institutions and political structure. {snip}

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