North American New Right 1

by Greg Johnson

  As Reagan’s “conservatism” supplanted notions of the public good with the primacy of the profit motive, it could not but create a social-economic situation, whose market priorities lent themselves to the moral transvaluations and anti-white policies of the Left’s Cultural Revolution. Not coincidentally, the social permissiveness of the ’60s’ anti-materialist hippies gave way to the social permissiveness of the materialist yuppies. It’s my impression that even the best conservatives (like Pat Buchanan) still refuse to acknowledge that the other side of Reagan’s “market-friendly” policies was a hedonistic consumerism.

  I also don’t think the Right today is in an analogous situation to the Left of the late ’50s—except to the degree that the anti-system forces will need to go through a metamorphosis as significant as that which produced the so-called New Left in the early ’60s.

  Given America’s liberal creedal foundations, the country has always been inherently disposed to “progressive” politics; the Left simply needed to find a way to intersect this disposition, which wasn’t too difficult, given that it had already seduced the country’s largest cohort group: the TV-educated baby boomers.

  By contrast, the present establishment Right, as well as a good deal of the so-called “alternative” and racially-conscious Right, has, in fact, yet to break with the underlining premises of liberal modernity, especially in its overarching fixation on the economy and its identification with the indefatigable individualism of its Protestant culture and market values.

  Ideologically and culturally, virtually all the anti-system forces (including that peculiar cyber tendency which calls itself “White Nationalism”) seems congenitally unable to think outside the parameters of the country’s liberal Protestant heritage.

  A metapolitically-armed Right, I suspect, may possibly (hopefully) emerge from the coming anti-system struggles, but not vice versa, as is happening in Europe.

  Such an American New Right, if it is to succeed, will, moreover, have to privilege its European heritage or else it will constitute no Right at all. For above all the one thing we seek to conserve amidst the reigning nihilism is the biocultural heritage we inherited from our patria, Magna Europa. Indeed, once we recognize that we are an outgrowth of European civilization and that America was no gift of Yahweh (as those Protestant Bolsheviks of the 17th century thought), then perhaps we will finally escape the Americanist ideology that sees the country as somehow free of those historical and cultural restraints which affect other peoples—for it’s history and culture, or rather the denial of history and culture, that are, I believe, at the heart of the crisis afflicting not just American, but Western Civilization.

  This gets me to my final point. You speak of American whites creating themselves “as a people for themselves”—assuming that they already exist as a people “in itself.” This Marxist principle—which holds that the objective existence of “a class in itself” is historically insignificant until it becomes “a class for itself” (i.e., self-consciously ready to assert itself)—was, of course, crucial to the development of the great labor and nationalist movements of the last century and a half. I fully accept the importance you attribute to this process. Nevertheless, in my understanding of US history, it’s never been possible to speak of white America as a nation in the European sense.

  This is not simply because American identity was historically more racial and ideological than ethnic, but also because the particular evolution of the American “people” was such that the country never experienced the centuries-long ethnogenesis that goes into organically forming a self-conscious nation.

  In fact, I would argue that only today, for the first time in US history, the challenge European Americans face presents them with a significant “Other”—the non-white hordes crossing our borders—and thus with the potential to discover, in opposition, who they are.

  The truths unconcealed in this struggle, like earlier labor struggle against the bosses, cannot but help European Americans to recognize and affirm the blood-culture that distinguishes them from the non-whites presently representing America’s officially designated future.

  The battles that lie ahead may therefore possibly make our people more conscious of themselves as a “people” and of the necessity to act “for themselves.” This is the way nations arose in the past—as tribal confederations settled conquered lands, growing, under the auspices of their shared myths and struggles, into a single people.

  If such a national awakening should occur in the ensuing struggles, perhaps then we’ll see the emergence of an American nation—“for itself”—reborn as a nativist offshoot of the European “nation” from which we Americans take our primordial identity.

  The type of grassroots and populist struggles, which white people are now beginning to wage, constitute, as you argue, the central arena for all who care to participate in the key political movement of our time.

  My quibbling with you here is just a roundabout way of saying that your persuasive argument helps me better understand how the Tea Party will find its way toward the Whiskey Rebellion.

  REPLY OF JOHN SCHNEIDER

  Your latest response treats so many major questions in such a provocative way that a proper response would take far more space than we have here, so I will limit myself to a few observations.

  Regarding the challenges facing our elites at present and in the near future, I think that we both recognize that the system under which we live has survived similar crises in the past. We also agree that the trials it will undergo in the coming period will take place in a context that makes the solutions of the past much less viable. We differ, however, in our evaluation of how likely the powers-that-be will be able to “keep it together” and thereby avoid potentially fatal systemic crises. Contra your view, I continue to believe that the elites are probably sufficiently flexible and creative to endure, unless some political agent is able to intervene successfully.

  As far as your evaluation of the Reagan era is concerned, I essentially agree with your assessment. I described him above as a “good conservative” in part ironically, but I also would argue, giving him credit for sincerity, that his presidency precisely demonstrates the utter failure of that variant of classical liberalism which poses as conservatism in this country.

  In discussing the parallels between the late ’50s and today I did not mean to indicate that there is an identity between the two periods. I do believe, however, that like the late ’50s/early ’60s, when a mass New Left seemed to spring out of nowhere and in the process transcend both the establishment and the alternative institutions of the traditional Left, there is a similar possibility that such a movement of the Right could arise in the coming years.

  Like you, I recognize that the current institutions and discourses of both the mainstream and the alternative Right are woefully inadequate—especially in the stubborn insistence across almost the entire spectrum of the Right in clinging to the very ideology, liberal individualism, which lies at the core of the current order. This too, however, is not so different from the position of the Left fifty years ago. The Democratic Party then was completely committed to a Cold War liberalism which would become one of the main targets of the New Left, while the existing organizations of the old Left were in decline and disarray.

  I acknowledge, of course, that there are important differences as well. The most important of these, however—and the one which makes clear just how much more difficult our task will be than that of the New Left—lies in the distinction between our movement and theirs as social phenomena. The movements of the 1960s, for all their radical bluster, essentially represented a rebellion by one sector of the elite against another—it was more a matter of the system’s growing pains. As you wrote of France’s soixante-huitards in New Culture, New Right:

  Retrospectively, the French student rebellion of May 1968 appears to have been less a revolutionary challenge to the liberal order, which it seemed at the time, than a radical spur to its ongoing subversions. . .
. While spouting the revolutionary teachings of Mao Tse-tung or extolling the heroism of Che Guevara, [the student radicals] displayed an occasional idealism. But this was mostly the gloss of an individualism whose anti-authoritarian and hedonistic impetus constituted less a revolt against postwar society, as Herbert Marcuse thought, than a youthful assertion of its underlying tenets. . . . Thus, instead of assailing the socioeconomic structures of bourgeois society, the May Events actually sought the final liberal triumph over whatever “obscurantist” traditionalisms still lingered in European life . . .

  Because it did not really challenge the capitalist system—it merely completed the bourgeois revolutions which started hundreds of years ago—the Left’s counterculture easily established its hegemony in the decades after the ’60s.

  Our task, by contrast, will be much more difficult because it will be a truly oppositional one. In insisting on the specific, the organic, and the permanent, we will fundamentally oppose the global, atomized, and soulless “culture of appetite” (E. Michael Jones) which is the natural product of mass consumption capitalism.

  Whether we succeed or not (and what “succeeding” actually means) is less important than simply waging the struggle, since the struggle itself is what will make us a people for ourselves.

  Counter-Currents/North American New Right,

  August 30 & 31, 2010

  PAN-EUROPEAN

  PRESERVATIONISM

  TED SALLIS

  _____________________

  As a long-time “pan-Europeanist,” I have read a number of critiques of pan-Europeanism focused on that ideology’s alleged opposition to the preservation of differences that exist between various European peoples. Further, it is said that pan-Europeanism believes that all whites are identical and interchangeable; therefore, the pan-European worldview has been viewed as fundamentally incompatible with intra-European ethnoracial activism. These critics do not distinguish between a pan-Europeanism that does value, and wishes to preserve, intra-European differences and a more panmictic version of pan-Europeanism that does not.

  I would argue that—at least theoretically—a person can be, at the same time, both pan-Europeanist and Nordicist, or pan-Europeanism and pan-Slavist, pan-Germanist, ethnic nationalist, etc., so long as the all the latter “ists” in question are of a “defensive” nature, and that the pan-Europeanism respects and values narrower particularisms. Of course, even if this is true, it is natural to expect that certain levels of ethnic interests92 would be more important to an activist than others (e.g., a Russian may be a Russian nationalist first, a pan-Slavist second, and a pan-Europeanist third).

  More importantly, even if this melding of activist identities does not often occur in the real world, it should, at minimum, be possible for individuals identifying themselves solely as pan-European or Nordicist or pan-Slavic or pan-German or Basque nationalist-separatist or English/British nationalist to productively and respectfully work together to achieve common objectives, even if there are important points of disagreement remaining between them. Indeed, a British nationalist had the following comments on this subject:

  I think it is perfectly feasible for a British Nationalist to have a hierarchy of levels within which he or she operates and thinks when it comes to the rest of the world around us and its structure and integrity. Ethno British Nationalism need not conflict to any severe degree with racial nationalism as I see it to be, because I don’t believe “racial nationalism” seeks to forge the ties mentioned above, just care for and preserve our fellow Nationalists and European peoples by supporting their right to do what we are trying to do.

  A calm and rational approach to looking after ourselves first whilst keeping an eye out and an interest in (and a support to) our European counterparts and the order of the world around us is no bad thing in my view, but yes, of course, we have to be careful of what others commonly perceive the definitions to be, and ensure that we split off what to me is “traditional” Nationalism from anything that aims to go further than that.

  Does caring about their plight and the wider European nation states and the dwindling European racial presence on planet Earth make me somehow beyond the pale or some wild extremist or supremacist? I do not believe so.93

  This is reasonable, and stands in contrast to certain British National Party operatives who believe that any concern for the broader race must be detrimental to ethnic nationalism. The opposite is more likely, since a nationalist Britain will be more secure in a European, white Europe, and infinitely less secure as a lone white island in a continental sea of color.

  Although we should never let the opponents of preservationism define us, it is still interesting that “divide and conquer” is a tactic used against nationalists. One suspects that our opponents would most dread the varied European peoples coming to an agreement on fundamental interests, to work together for Western survival.

  Indeed, if we reach the point in which Basque separatists can work with Spanish nationalists, Irish Republican nationalists with Ulster Protestant Unionists, Padanian separatists with Ausonian nationalists, Flemish separatists with Wallonian nationalists, Hungarian nationalists with their Romanian counterparts, pan-Slavists with pan-Germanists, and American pan-Europeanists with American Nordicists—all in the cause of white, Western survival—this will be a development which will give the enemies of white, Western survival cause for grave concern.

  Perhaps pan-Europeanism is best viewed as a flexible meme and not as a rigid set of specific polices; it generally promotes the idea of mutual respect among the varied European peoples, and therefore attempts to search for solutions that will allow for the biological and cultural preservation of all Europeans worldwide.

  Pan-Europeanism asserts that all persons of European descent should have a “seat at the table” when decisions are made about the fate of the West and its peoples. Pan-Europeanism, properly considered, can be consistent and compatible with concerns about narrower ingroups: Nordicism, pan-Slavism, pan-Germanism, or whatever ethnic or subracial nationalism one wishes to consider.

  What pan-Europeanism introduces to these other ideologies is an additional concern for the broader European family. What if an individual does not care about the broader family of Europeans, and has an interest solely in his ethnic group or subrace? There is certainly nothing inherently wrong with that; everyone has the right to define the limits of his ingroup as he sees fit, and invest in that defined ingroup as is appropriate.

  However, the purpose of this essay is not to proselytize, but rather to explain how a specific strain of pan-Europeanism is compatible with the preservation of narrower particularisms, and to place the history of pan-Europeanism within the context of the overarching objectives of “White Nationalism.” I will start with the issue of ethnic interchangeability and panmixia, and move on to an examination of other facets of pan-Europeanism, including a very brief historical survey.

  INTERCHANGEABILITY & PANMIXIA

  One meme asserts that pan-Europeanism means that all whites are “fungible/interchangeable.” I do not believe that most responsible pan-Europeanists hold that view. I certainly do not. I believe in a mixture of racial conservationism—making certain that extant ethnoracial stocks are preserved in significant numbers in specific territorial states—and racial palingenesis—which supports eugenics as well as the acceptance of new, stabilized Euro-breeds that may occur in the European Diaspora and that can constitute new ethnies and expand the range of European-specific genetic and phenotypic biological diversity.

  When the two ideas are in conflict, racial conservatism trumps racial palingenesis, since the original stocks, once lost, can never be recovered. Hybridization, if it occurs in Diaspora regions, should be carefully monitored so as to create productive new stabilized strains while, at the same time, not resulting in the elimination of parental stocks. This pan-Europeanism, which values and wishes to preserve intra-European differences, can be contrasted to other viewpoints.

  One can occasion
ally encounter a more panmictic vision of pan-Europeanism. For example, in his otherwise useful and interesting preface to Norman Lowell’s important book Imperium Europa, Constantin von Hoffmeister writes:

  The mixing of different European nationalities should therefore be encouraged. We must support sexual unions between Russian women and German men, Spanish men and Swedish women. Only by radically breaking down the artificial barriers dividing Europe can we create the new breed of man . . .94

  Von Hoffmeister’s overall pan-European vision is positive, I agree with much of it, and he should be commended for his support of Norman Lowell, who is a real fighter for our race and our civilization. However, I do not agree with the specific viewpoint quoted here, which does not represent the totality of pan-Europeanist thought. I believe that we should not be in the business of encouraging mating between Russians, Germans, Swedes, Spaniards, or any other groups within Europe. One could imagine Russian, German, Swedish, and Spanish nationalists—people who may otherwise agree to the basic premises of pan-Europeanism—objecting quite strongly to the idea of a general panmixia involving their respective peoples.