I. The Marxification of the US conservative movement
It seems that the Epstein suicide scandal eclipsed the most three mass shootings - the news cycle in America is fickle and ephemeral - and to judge from recent news reports, the American public has already moved on from Epstein. But the political reaction to the mass shootings is worth analysing in depth because of what it reveals about American politics, and American dissident Right and white nationalist politics in particular.
The establishment American Right called for gun-grabbing and pronounced a fatwah on 'white nationalism' and 'white supremacy' soon after the El Paso shootings, and this was spear led by the National Review, the mouthpiece of Conservatism, Inc.:
The term 'white supremacy', if not invented by American communists, has been appropriated by them, and you can correctly infer - most of the time - that anyone who uses it in 2019 is either a communist or infected with communist ideas. (So far as the term 'white privilege' or 'white skin privilege' is concerned, we can be certain as to its provenance: it most definitely was coined by American communist groups - in particular, the neo-Maoist and Third World Marxist groups of the 1970s). Communists more or less control American political life, or at least, what I call the back end of politics, not necessarily the front end. For example, the candidates running in the Democratic Party primaries for the 2020 presidential election may not be card-carrying communists, but they are pandering to a base that supports communism and Marxism. (Given that many of the proposed Democrat policies (such as free healthcare for illegal immigrants) are unpopular with actual registered Democrat voters, the question is who are the candidates trying to appeal to: who is it that runs the Democratic Party?). As to why the conservatives of the National Review and similar publications are pandering to the Far Left, the answer is that these conservatives believe that they can cut a deal with the Left, much like the conservative Christian Democrats of East Germany, who you can read about here.
Anne Applebaum's book Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956 (2012) details how the Christian Democrats and other conservative Central and Eastern European parties were absorbed into the communist political system during the postwar Soviet occupation, and, to add insult to injury, forced to take Marxist ideology on board - Marxism became part of their 'conservative' platforms. The US Republican Party seems, at present, to be undergoing a similar transition, but one would never guess from surface appearances alone that this Leftification is taking place. The Republican Party, and the conservative moment, spends much of its time denouncing socialism, and Trump - who is hated by the Left above all - follows their lead. This is why I said before that communists have taken over the back end but not the front.
II. The three factions of American white nationalism
Ironically enough, American white nationalism forms one of the last bastions of conservatism and right-wing ideas in America: they are doing the job that the Republican Party and the mainstream conservative institutions should be doing but are not. With that in mind, let us look at the three main factions of the American white nationalist (or anti-immigrant nativist) movement and their relations to Trump, who is (according to the media) white nationalism's man in the White House.
The Trumpian Populists. The supporters of Trump still exist on the dissident Right, even though the impression on the dissident Right is that Trump has largely discredited himself. Trump will be going to the 2020 election with some awful metrics not in his favour: how many immigrants, legal and illegal have entered America, before the beginning of his first term and at the end; how many miles of the wall have been built; how many American jobs have been lost to immigrants, legal and illegal. Trump has performed poorly on all these except for, perhaps, the last - the job market may be finally moving in favour of the native-born. The question is whether or not one or more rays of sunshine suffice, whether they justify the Trump presidency. Judging by the numbers overall, Trump, if he had been an employee at his own organisation or a contestant on his own TV show The Apprentice, would have been fired long ago. The Trumpian Populists on the dissident Right will not abide by this, however, which reminds me of something the Jewish conservative Michael Savage said of Trump's followers - that they are akin to a cult. (Another irony: Savage, a Jew - and Jews occupy prime place in white nationalist demonology - stuck up for white people after Trump's recent condemnation of 'white supremacy').
The other two factions of white nationalism are divided when it comes to Trump and his re-election: on the one side are the Greg Johnsons, who run with 'Trump is all we've got' argument, on the other, the Hunter Wallaces, who are of the 'Punish Trump and Conservatism Inc. at the polls' school.
This brings us to the next faction of white nationalism: the genteel conservatives. In this category we find Greg Johnson (Counter-Currents), Peter Brimelow (VDare), Jared Taylor (American Renaissance), Kevin MacDonald (Occidental Observer), Steve Sailer (Unz.Org) and a few others who seek to make white nationalism 'respectable' and 'American'. They do not really seek to make great changes to America's social, economic, political structures: they only want to return America to the days when it had a white majority, the time when it was last the 'historic American nation' - the America of 1960 or 1970 or even 1980. The genteel conservatives belong to the mainstream of the American conservative and nativist tradition, and for that reason, do not go near controversial topics such as Holocaust or WWII Revisionism. For example, Johnson is renowned for castigating European fascism (while simultaneously exploiting it thoroughly at Counter-Currents), and even MacDonald, anti-Semitic as he is, will not touch Holocaust Revisionism and German National Socialism with a barge pole.
The genteel conservatives are disappointed with Trump by and large, and a few (such as Johnson and Taylor) have openly denounced him.
The National Bolsheviks make up the third and final category. Hunter Wallace of Occidental Dissent leads this gang - other contenders for the leadership such as Richard Spencer seem to have disappeared into obscurity. When it comes to the Trump administration, Wallace takes the same positions as the Marxists. He preaches class war, e.g. he opposes Trump's tax cuts for 'the rich'; he opposes any US intervention in Maduro's socialist paradise; he opposes US intervention in Syria; (he wants the US to pull out of its piece of Syria and hand it over to the Russians; in much the same way, the US Left wanted to relinquish South Vietnam to the communists of the North); and, it goes without saying, he opposes American warmongering and interventionism while supporting Russia's. In the American National Bolshevik worldview, capitalism as a system is viewed as the enemy and economic and social policy must be directed towards the interests of the (white) working class. It follows quite naturally then that Wallace, along with many others of the National Bolshevik and Alt-Right faction of white nationalism, was strongly attracted to Andrew Yang campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. Ideologically, the National Bolsheviks more less stand on the same side as the CPUSA in 1975 or 1985.
One may object that the comparison is invalidated by the fact that the CPUSA championed busing and the like in the 1970s, and actively fought against segregation, Jim Crow, state's rights, for most of the 20th century. But this ignores the underlying racial dynamics in American communism at the time. An interesting and trenchant critique made of the CPUSA in the seventies and eighties was made by the Third World Marxist, 'anti-revisionist', New Communist Movement - the same movement that invented the concept of 'white privilege' - to the effect that by around 1970, the CPUSA had geared itself surreptitiously towards a class struggle on behalf of the white working class only. In practice but not in theory, the CPUSA had become the domain of Jews and blue-collar WASPs, and by way of contrast, the New Communist Movement had embraced black, Asian-American, Puerto Rican and Chicano nationalism and racialism. Unlike the CPUSA, the New Communist Movement understood that the identity politics of the 1970s presaged the future of American leftism, and so by the 1980s, the Movement had thrown its weight behind Democratic Party African-Americans running for office (the most famous of these being Jesse Jackson, who ran for the Democratic nomination in the presidential primaries of 1984 and 1988). This divide between the two communisms should be not be seen as a mere historical footnote: events have shown that the New Communist Movement won the argument: in leftist circles in 2019, a non-white, 'ethnic' communism rules the roost. The Gus Halls, for all their rote denunciations of 'racism' and 'white supremacy', belonged to old guard - which was mainly white, and Jewish - of US Marxism, and is to this tendency that the Wallaces and Spencers vibrate in sympathy with.
It goes without saying that the National Bolshevik faction repudiates Trump. The brilliant Wallace has written some of the best polemics against him - polemics which are witty and amusing.
III. A fourth faction?
Here belong the white nationalists who cannot be categorised, or at least, cannot be classified as Trumpian populist, genteel conservative or National Bolshevik. Because they do not belong to the big three, they lack political power and should be viewed as minor players on the white nationalist scene.
In this rag-tag collection of individualists, we get: the occult, pagan and Satanist nihilist types (Andrew 'Weev' Auernheimer and the Atomwaffen Division gang) who endorse violence and accelerationism; the bohemian and avant-gardists of the Alt-Left (see Robert Stark); the neo-pagans and conspiracy theorists (see the Renegade Tribune and the like). The nihilists and neo-pagans claim to be grounded in meat-and-potatoes National Socialism, whereas the Alt-Left are so far away from it - and traditional white nationalism - that they may as well be on another planet. Sometimes you can stray so far from your roots that you lose your moorings.
IV. The end of white nationalism
James Kirkpatrick of VDare writes that 'The Alt Right remained a coherent force even after Charlottesville until it was essentially crushed by government action, lawfare, defunding and deplatforming'. White nationalism could meet with the same fate. But it faces its biggest threat from forces which are internal, not external.
In politics, one needs to bow to certain realities, one of these being the fact that even the most elitist and aristocratic political movement needs to form a party, run in elections and win votes. To those ends, some nationalist organisations do better than others. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) at present leads the pack of German nationalist parties - its electoral success has left the National Democratic Party (NPD), Third Way and others in the dust. Likewise, the Brexit Party in the UK has become Britain's premier nationalist party and has eclipsed UKIP, which went astray following Farage's departure. (UKIP after Farage left the mainstream of British politics and descended into the murky netherverse of the British Far Right, to the level of the British National Party, Britain First and other now inconsequential parties).
Because of the unique structure of the American political system, a third party in America will never succeed; America has always been and always will be a two-party state. Anyone on the dissident Right, then, who wants to engage in politics must work with the Republican Party. (The communist Left instinctively this principle, i.e., that in the last analysis, one's best efforts should be made within the sphere of mainstream politics, which is why the Left has expended so much energy on infiltrating and corrupting the US Democratic Party and the UK Labour Party). The implication of this is that the dissident Right must get used to looking at the Republican Party as its own and struggle to wrest control of it from the hated donor class, which wants unrestricted non-white immigration.
In 2015-16 a miracle occurred: a Far Right populist and avowed nationalist undertook a hostile takeover of the Republican Party, won the primaries and then the presidential election. But after Trump's inauguration, the donor class faction of the party struck back and seemed to have taken control back from the civic nationalists and populists. Or perhaps Trump's heart was never in it in the first place. One can understand the disappointment of the American white nationalists. Yes, Trump should be praised for several of his initiatives (such as the proposed Public Charge law), initiatives which would have been unthinkable ten years ago, but so far, Trump has not performed up to expectations.
Imagine that you manage a large retail store and hire a store detective or security guard to apprehend shoplifters and other rapscallions, but despite an enthusiastic attitude, the new employee only delivers on 10-15% of what he promised at the interview - he does not meet his key performance indicators (KPIs, in today's annoying corporate jargon) at all. To make matters worse, the previous man who occupied that position - a skinny black homosexual who had attitude problems and hated the company - performed better when it came to certain metrics. (Obama had deported more illegals than Trump). By all rights, the new employee should be fired and replaced - but, say some of the store owners who are fond of him and praise him , 'He's all we've got'. Indeed, he is all you've got - and what does this say about Trump? The Republican Party? White nationalists in general? Given that the Tories under the new British prime minister Boris Johnson (who is ideologically sympathetic to Trump) seem to have gone back on their earlier promises to curtail immigration, one has to ask why the Anglo-Saxons find it so difficult to close their borders and why the Italians and Hungarians find it so easy?
The Far Left in the US and UK are playing a long game; they don't expect to win overnight. Any year now they can expect to take complete control, and this will happen, like the Czechoslovak communist coup of 1948, without a shot being fired. Time is on their side, but the clock is ticking for white nationalists, who want results and want them now.
When they don't get those results, white nationalists are inclined to give up, and are then faced with the question of what to do once a return to an American white majority no longer seems possible. This became one of primary themes of the discourse of Andrew Yang's white nationalist followers. We began to hear, on the Robert Stark radio show and elsewhere, talk of a 'post-America', that is, a post-white America. One compelling argument for Yangism, made again and again (see here for an example) was that 'White America is going down the tubes, so I may as well kick back and enjoy the decline - and pocket my $1000 a month UBI cheque'.The prevalence of that argument and its ready acceptance by many white nationalists indicate that by early 2019, white nationalists had become severely demoralised.
Such demoralisation ('black pilling', in chan speak) will lead white nationalism down some strange paths. Suppose you are a white nationalist, and out of a desire to hew to the center (or cowardice, or both), and you are willing to steer away from certain uncomfortable subjects out of fear that you will alienate 'middle America', among those subjects being Holocaust Revisionism and revisionism regarding America's involvement in both world wars; suppose that you find yourself in opposition to any sort of German nationalism, like Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and at the same time broadly supportive of any Polish nationalism, like Wilson and Roosevelt; suppose you have reached an uneasy peace with right-leaning Jews of the Israeli nationalist sort, Jews who applaud Bibi Netanyahu's highly effective 'anti-infiltrator' border wall; suppose you have reached a 'black pilled' state of mind, and now despair of Americans ever getting their country back from illegal immigrants (in the way Italy, Hungary and Israel seem to be doing); where does that leave you? The answer is, on the same page as the conservatives who never gave a damn about thwarting non-white immigration in the first place; that is, the anti-white nationalist, anti-fascist, anti-anti-Semitic conservatives - David French, Jonah Goldberg, Bill Kristol, John Podhoretz, Kevin D. Williamson-type conservatives, schmaltzy 'America is an idea' conservatives, Never Trump conservatives...
