Has the White Nationalist Movement Collapsed, or Is It All Powerful?

Pack it up boys, it’s all over.

The System media is taunting white advocates because of the low turnout at the second Unite the Right rally, held on Augusts 12 in Washington D.C.

The erstwhile “Southern Avenger” Jack Hunter, who would be vastly more influential today if he had stuck to paleoconservatism, wrote in the Washington Examiner that Unite the Right 2 was the “swan song” of the movement. “[T]hese cretins are done.”

“Unite The Right 2018 was a pathetic failure,” wrote German Lopez at Vox, calling it a “total dud” and a “pathetic display.” Allison Kaplan Sommer at Haaretz called the rally a “pathetic flop.” James Bovard at USA Today said demonstrators were “pathetic rabble.” Gothamist called the rally “pathetic, puny,” and Max Diamond at The Weekly Standard said it was as “pathetic as it was disgusting.”

Unite the Right 2 rally. (Credit Image: © Maxppp via ZUMA Press)

It’s unclear why anyone thought the rally was going to be massive. Most groups within the movement and recognizable figures, from Identity Evropa to Richard Spencer, declined to participate and urged followers not to attend. Considering how many journalists, “watchdogs,” and ideological hall monitors make a living “tracking the Alt-Right,” many of them probably knew that beforehand.

New Statesman and The Young Turks celebrated the low turnout as a proof of the effectiveness of antifa, even though their enthusiasm might have been tempered by antifa’s penchant to attack journalists. Meanwhile, in the court of public opinion, the weekend was a defeat for antifa; a new poll shows a solid majority of Americans now disapproves of them, and positive feelings towards the group have declined since last year. The second “Unite the Right” rally helped expose them for the violent radicals that they are, even if it failed to present “white nationalism” or white advocacy as united or mainstream.

However, even as journalists heaped scorn on the rally, different views emerged, claiming that racial dissidents are more powerful than ever. Adam Sewer in The Atlantic warned that the “white nationalists are winning” because “the white nationalists’ ideological goals remain a core part of the Trump agenda.” He argued that because commentators such as Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson now openly talk about the effects of demographic change, the beliefs of white nationalists are “championed on Fox:”

White nationalists win by activating white panic, by frightening a sufficient number of white people into believing that their safety and livelihoods can only be protected by defining American citizenship in racial terms, and by convincing them that American politics is a zero-sum game in which white people win when only people of color lose.

If Mr. Sewer really means this, he needs to condemn many more people besides Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson. There are plenty of news articles soberly discussing or eagerly trumpeting the political advantages Democrats get from mass non-white immigration. Tim Wise’s screed about the “last gasp of aging white power” in the 2010 midterms was furious, but the connection he drew between changing demographics and future political outcomes is basically sound — and largely shared and celebrated by the mainstream media. Charles Blow often makes the same points at the New York Times, home of the forthrightly anti-white Sarah Jeong. Mainstream media now air taunts about the “death” of white culture.

The only people who don’t see the connection between demographic change and election results are the house “intellectuals” of the conservative movement, who assure us that “identity politics” is bad and that conservative “ideals” are universal. Whether this belief is sincere or not, there is little reason to hold it. All the evidence suggests that not only will conservatism not survive a non-white majority, an American nation won’t either. One suspects the real problem Mr. Sewer has with Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and others is that they are warning white people that there may be political and economic consequences to demographic dispossession. Although Mr. Carlson and Miss Ingraham speak far more cautiously than the “progressives” licking their chops at the prospect of our decline, their words might inspire whites to take action. Whether a piece about the political consequences of demographic change is called “progressive” or “racist” depends on the person writing it and whether he thinks it’s good news or bad.

Whites seem to become more conservative politically as they become more clearly aware of dispossession. Ezra Klein of Vox recently cited a study showing that whites exposed to the idea of becoming a minority were more likely to support Republicans. In another study, white subjects given a “racially tinged” press release about a future white minority “produced more conservative views not only on related issues such as immigration and affirmative action, but also on unrelated issues such as defense spending and health care reform.” Professor George Hawley estimates that 11 million Americans qualify as “Alt-Right” because they have “a strong sense of white identity, a belief in the importance of white solidarity, and a sense of white victimization.”

Of course, most of those people would reject the “Alt-Right” label because they know it is pejorative. It’s an invitation to being attacked by the mass media, with the possibility of losing your job and even being physically assaulted. But whether they are “racist” or loudly “anti-racist,” whites mostly live and go to school with other whites and don’t want to be a minority in their neighborhoods.

Thus we find ourselves in a strange ideological position. There is no viewpoint more pathologized, profiled, or obsessively tracked than white advocacy. Yet housing patterns and school demographics suggest most whites, including “anti-racists,” want to live in white majority societies and neighborhoods, and judging from immigration patterns, so do the non-whites who are constantly complaining about white “racism.” What whites truly fear are the social, economic, and physical consequences of being called a “racist.” “Anti-fascists” aren’t critical in this calculation, because it’s the mainstream media that have the power to impose consequences with their sensationalist campaigns of personal and economic sabotage. Race realism or even outright white advocacy could easily have a mass following if the mainstream media’s repressive capability were even momentarily relaxed.

For now, the media are obsessed with their clickbait tales of racist villains, but they give us two contradictory stories. The first is that “white nationalists” are pathetic, extreme, and marginalized; this was the purpose of celebrating the low turnout to Unite the Right 2. But at the same time, “white racism” must be pumped up to appear dangerous, threatening, and worth reading about, so there’s an incentive to exaggerate its scope and intensity. Thus, reporters initially exaggerated the probable turnout of Unite The Right 2 or simply redefined “racism” to mean common-sense views held by millions of Americans. As an article in the satirical Onion put it, “Millions Of White Nationalists Gather In Streets, Offices Around Country To Normally Go About Day.” White nationalists are pathetic, isolated weirdos — but they are also crafty, ubiquitous, and even in the White House.

These conflicting stories will be continue to be told, but the contradiction cannot be ignored forever. While progressives may be content to twist themselves into ideological knots with ever-more elaborate and expansive definitions of “white privilege,” an increasing number are not. As “racism” comes to include more and more commonplace behavior, the word loses its pejorative power. What’s more, the premises of critical race theory, particularly the supposed impossibility of white victimization, seem ever more unrealistic as every Western nation is besieged by mass immigration, and anti-white discrimination becomes more crude and overt. Finally, whatever the professed beliefs of “anti-racists,” few whites actually want to live as committed racial egalitarians in non-white neighborhoods or send their children to majority non-white public schools. “Anti-racists” gain more power as “racism” is defined more expansively, but “anti-racism” would be an impossible goal if the creed were enforced seriously.

The other side has reason to be worried. Social and political forces and even scientific findings are forcing an ever greater number of whites to discover their racial identity. The only thing holding them back is naked repression, chiefly exercised by the media. However, attempts simultaneously to pathologize “racism” and exaggerate its prevalence will backfire. The truth can only be suppressed for so long. As soon as we can have an honest conversation about race, we will win.