Is America Doomed?

On May 9, 2024, Jared Taylor released a video entitled “What Is Our Goal?” that, quite frankly, surprised me. After a litany of well-chosen illustrations of America’s decline, he declares:

It doesn’t matter who is elected President this year or four years from now or 40 years from now. It’s over. We can’t take the whole country back. We’ll have to settle for something less.

The only solution, as Taylor sees it, is “. . . an ingathering of our people on this continent, and we will finally succeed in building a new home in North America for Europeans and their civilization.” In short, Taylor advocates the creation of a new white homeland in North America, a post-American ethnostate.

Jared Taylor usually produces tight arguments, so I scanned back through his text in search of support for the claim that “It’s over.” But I found nothing conclusive. Mind you, a case could be made for giving up on America. I could make that case. But Jared Taylor does not make it. Instead, he’s clearly speaking from his heart or his gut. But he’s drawing upon decades of observation and experience. So, arguments or not, he deserves to be taken seriously.

Things really are bad. The Democrats are the party of anti-whiteness, and the so-called opposition is just as wedded to the silly dogma that white identity politics, and only white identity politics, is the worst thing imaginable. No matter what party wins, anti-white policies will reign. They’ll just speed up or slow down. Without a fundamental change of course, America will cease to exist in any meaningful form, and eventually the white race will cease to exist in North America.

The main problem with this bleak analysis is that it assumes that the establishment parties are the only political forces and that White Nationalists are and will remain mere helpless spectators, looking on as Democrats and Republicans trade deck chairs on the Titanic. We’ll come back to this later.

Still, in my heart, I know Jared Taylor’s right. I don’t think “It’s over” for the white race in North America. But if I were a bookie, I wouldn’t lay favorable odds on the United States existing in its present form 20 years from now. After all, even a serious empire such as Rome fell. And America ceased being a serious country a long time ago.

Scott Greer, who according to his Twitter/X bio is as tall as me and much smarter, responded to Taylor with an article called “It’s Not Over for America” on his Substack, Highly Respected. Greer’s best argument is pragmatic:

The issue is that the vast majority of whites are going to tune out the message of “it’s over.” They think on a different level from those of us in the know. The message also has the unintended effect of blackpilling our own audience. If told normal politics is a waste of time and we must pursue a far-fetched goal that’s hard to work toward in our day-to-day life, many will simply give up on politics altogether. Rather than work toward an ethnostate, they will turn to other pursuits. This would obviously fortify the corrupt status quo.

It’s better to think it’s not over and work with what we have.

The truth in this argument is that one’s mindset matters. If one thinks there are opportunities for positive change in the here and now, then one will look for them, and one’s animal spirits will be engaged. If you seek, you just might find. And if you are enthusiastic, you just might prevail. However, if most people think there are no such opportunities, they won’t look for them. They will disengage from politics and focus on other immediate concerns. This is because most people have high time preferences and weak imaginations. They aren’t cut out for multigenerational political crusades.

The weak part of this argument is how Greer interprets working with what we have. Of course we must start with what we have. The crucial question is: What do we do with it? This gets us back to perennial debates about vanguardism vs. mainstreaming. Will we save our people by following the mainstream or by leading them to a new worldview?

In support of his argument, Greer cites a 1995 article by Sam Francis, “Prospects for Racial and Cultural Survival,” which seeks to dampen enthusiasm for secessionism. I thought Francis’ argument was weak when I first read it 25 years ago, and it has not aged well.

Francis’ argument is based on a fundamental failure of imagination, which is to say: it is conservative. Like many conservatives, Francis implicitly assumes that we could start with the present GOP and get to something like White Nationalism in ten or 12 steps. Thus we must pitch our case to the GOP, which would never countenance giving up territory or the political symbols and ideas associated with America. Francis couldn’t even imagine weaning them off cheap labor. In the end, the best he hoped for was a return to some form of white supremacism in a multiracial union. But this time, apparently, the results would be different.

The problem with working with “what we have” is that “what we have” is a system that dooms us, as well as a tissue of delusions that prevents us from fixing it. We are ruled by a political establishment in which anti-white ideas are hegemonic, no matter what party rotates in and out of office. Even Donald Trump, in whom Greer invests so much hope, thinks that white identity politics is taboo but will endlessly pander to blacks and Jews and proudly brag about it. If we keep playing by those rules, we are doomed.

But conservatives, especially older conservatives, are wedded to a delusional ideology that prevents them from confronting this fact and fixing it. Imagine white people thinking that this America is “our” country and being willing to spill blood to keep it together. Imagine thinking that the Constitution is the basis of today’s political system. Imagine believing in “colorblind individualism” and the proposition that “All men are created equal.” Imagine thinking that you belong to a conquering, Faustian race while you flee enemies you fear to name to ever more distant suburbs in search of “better schools” and “less crime.” Imagine thinking that the symbols of America remain meaningful when the substance of the regime and the people have been radically altered.

Greer cites polls indicating that Republicans today are resistant to secessionist ideas as well. That would be “racist.” But we won’t fix America, either, if racism remains the ultimate political sin, but only for whites.

Yes, we must work with “what we have.” But it is self-defeating to compromise our core ideas to accommodate delusional Republicans. Our job is not to agree with the mainstream, but to make the mainstream agree with us.

Mainstreaming only makes sense when it comes to tactics of persuasion. We should be maximally flexible and pragmatic about how we persuade people. We should divide our camp and find ways to pitch White Nationalism to every white constituency. But we must be adamantine and dogmatic about our core principles and goals.

What is the best way to start moving the mainstream in our direction? Is it by affecting Olympian disdain and world-weary cynicism toward politics, especially electoral politics? Is it to say, “It doesn’t matter who is elected President this year or four years from now or 40 years from now”?

No. Actually, the mainstreamers are right on this as well. Most Americans only pay attention to politics when it affects them locally or when presidential elections roll around. If our goal is to lead them toward a better worldview, then we need to approach them when and where they are most engaged, get their attention through topical political commentary and activism, and move forward from there.

There is another reason why White Nationalists should care who will be elected President of the United States this year. No, Donald Trump is not going to give us White Nationalism. That was never in the cards. Creating White Nationalism is our job. What Trump can give us is time.

Trump didn’t build a wall, but he did slow down immigration. The Biden regime has opened the floodgates, because they know that at a certain point, the numbers of non-whites will become so large that there will be no chance of America becoming a white country again, at which point we go to post-American “Plan B” thinking.

A million non-whites can cross the border in the time that it takes us to convert a thousand whites to our thinking. Yes, the fact that millions are flooding in helps us convert people. But numbers matter to politics. We aren’t trying to create an enlightened but politically impotent minority. We are doing this to win. Since we win by having more people on our side and fewer people opposing us, we need a slowdown of immigration.

Indeed, remigration is now at least being discussed in the mainstream. There is also widespread popular support for it, even among Democrats. So it may happen. This is why Trump is clearly better for white people than Biden or any other Democrat who might run.

Even though today’s voters need to be thoroughly deprogramed and deloused, I see no reason why White Nationalists need to reject the symbols of the American political tradition. Most people are superficial. That means that they respond to symbols, not substance. That is what allowed them to lose their nation in the first place. Our rulers kept the flag and the parchments and began to replace the people. But the targets of slow white genocide are mostly still sleeping. They would fight like lions, however, to preserve the Constitution and the stars and stripes for the brown people who are replacing them.

I also see no reason to reject much of the substance of the American political tradition.

Republican rather than hereditary government is a good thing. The true meaning of the claim that “all men are created equal” is simply a denial of the principle of hereditary rule.

The mixed regime set out in the Constitution has ancient roots because it more reliably secures the common good than unmixed regimes. The Constitution even refers to the idea of the common good (“the general welfare”) as opposed to the radical liberal individualism that has been foisted on it.

The Naturalization Act of 1790 made it explicit that America was to be a white nation. Thus there is no contradiction between white identity and American identity, properly understood. (See my essay “American Ethnic Identity.”) America was founded as a white society. Americans are a distinct white ethnic group. The United States was normatively white until only recently. Thus, repealing multiculturalism and making America white again is entirely consistent with the intent of the Founders and most of American history. (See my essay “Is White Nationalism Un-American?”)

Such facts are simply ignored by the Left, which has redefined Americanism as a civil religion with a catechism cobbled together from a line from the Declaration of Independence as misinterpreted in the Gettysburg Address, some doggerel by Emma Lazarus, and a line spoken by Martin Luther King (who was the last man in the world who would want to be judged by the content of his character).

If the present system continues, it truly is “over” for America and the white race in North America. But it won’t continue. It has already been disrupted. It will continue to be disrupted. Americans are increasingly rejecting racial egalitarianism, anti-white racism, open borders, globalization, and the political sham known as “liberal democracy,” which means rule by a decadent elite that has made an art of not giving the people what they want.

There are two reasons for this awakening.

First, anti-white policies have had catastrophic consequences which can no longer be covered up. Second, our movement needs to take some credit as well. We warned against these follies, we documented their failures, and we dismantled their rationales. We began on the margins. We felt we were talking to ourselves. We felt that we were speaking to future generations. But we persevered. People began hearing us, and our ideas have moved slowly from the margins to the mainstream.

In 2015, the political establishment had a gentleman’s agreement to never compete on immigration, globalization, and multiculturalism. That consensus was smashed by Donald Trump. In 2011, ideas such as “white genocide” and the “Great Replacement” were marginal within the White Nationalist community. Now they are being discussed by the Republican mainstream. A decade ago, ideas such as secession, partition, and the mass deportation of non-whites were only discussed among White Nationalists. Now they are discussed by mainstream Republicans.

I have my political preferences, but ultimately, I am an agnostic on questions such as: Is America doomed? Will the United States go White Nationalist? Or will White Nationalism first emerge in a post-American state? Will the present regime be overturned through the political process, through violent revolution, through secession, or simply through a general collapse? Will White Nationalism take power through an organized political movement, or through some sort of metapolitical awakening? Will there be one white state or many? There are just too many incalculable factors to make confident predictions about such matters.

But I am sure of three things. First, nothing lasts forever. America will be over someday. The big question is whether it will become White Nationalist before then. But every regime is mortal. Second, that goes double for inherently violent and unstable regimes such as multiculturalism. Third, if White Nationalism emerges, no matter how it emerges, no matter what political preferences you have, we all must do the same basic things in the present day. We must lay the metapolitical foundations for White Nationalism.

The beginning is ideological. We must defend a positive vision of White Nationalism. We must dismantle competing worldviews. We must create institutions to propagate our message. And we must create communities that gather and preserve our people, giving them a taste of the ethnostate in the present wasteland. Yes, I treat politics as an afterthought, because politics really does come after thought.

Whether you think America is over, or whether you think it can be saved, there’s really no point getting too heated about the issue, because practically speaking, in the here and now, we all have the exact same job. But white people are a diverse lot, which means we can carry out the same job in an exciting variety of ways. (See my essay “Redefining the Mainstream.”)

All we have right now is metapolitics. But that’s where we must begin, anyway. We don’t need to persuade everybody. Some white people cannot be saved. We don’t even have to persuade the majority, because most people follow others. All it takes is a significant minority of highly intelligent and engaged people. And if enough such people reject this anti-white system, it will end.