Jeb Bush with a supporter

1,967 words

It’s easy to look back in anger. But is it always the right thing to do? The present, armed with hindsight, will always trump the past. It’s like an unfair fight that way. Nothing seems more obvious than a painful mistake when viewed in hindsight. But without hindsight, much less is obvious.

From a Dissident Right perspective in the United States, it’s easy to interact with our past. Our past is currently walking and talking among us like chattering zombies in patriotic apparel. They’re members of the Republican Party, the wellspring from which most of us came. Sure, there may be some former Leftists or liberals among us. Others, God bless ‘em, seem to have sprung from the womb reciting the Fourteen Words. But most of us, I would wager, have groped their way to the One True Path from the conservative or libertarian camps, i.e., the Republican Party. Some may have lingered in this red-white-and-blue purgatory longer than others. Some, like Ann Coulter, John Derbyshire, and Peter Brimelow, may have been expelled from it in one way or another (“purge-atory”, perhaps?). But out of it, it seems, most of us came.

It makes sense. Of all the mainstream political movements, these two were the most comfortable with inequality. And what’s ethnonationalism without inequality?

A problem arises when we realize that we are more like pioneers than refugees. We’re building something new that is in many ways antithetical to the place from whence we came. And many of our former bedfellows in the Republican Party do not approve. Many of our former bedfellows now attack us harder than they ever attacked their antagonists on the Left. Mitt Romney’s recent op-ed in the Washington Post in which he bashed President Trump is a great example – one of many. Romney, of course, showed little of this fighting spirit when campaigning against Barack Obama in 2012.

At the end of the twentieth century, one could argue (crudely, yet more or less accurately) that the difference between Right and Left could be plotted along an axis of culture and economics. On the Right you had tradition, capitalism, and patriotism. On the Left you had their polar opposites: progressivism, socialism, and globalism. And there was balance. The prohibitive white majority made sure of that. In the twenty-first century, however, three things have upset this balance: 9/11, the precipitous decline of the white proportion of the population, and Donald Trump’s election. Since then, a new axis has emerged differentiating what it means to be on the Left or Right: one of race. On the Right, you have the pro-whites and on the Left you have the anti-whites. It really is that simple. The centers of gravity of these two poles have grown so dense so quickly that they will soon draw all others into their orbits. I predict that feminism, global warming, abortion, gun rights, and a host other issues will be caught up in the swirl.

The cultural and economic axes haven’t gone away, of course; they’re just growing increasingly irrelevant. Regardless, this is the paradigm within which many mainstream Republicans still operate. It is an antiquated mode of thinking, one that proved disastrous in the 2008 and 2012 elections and didn’t serve us terribly well in the 2018 midterms, either. Republicans running on tax cuts and minority outreach against Democrats running primarily on race-related issues is a little like the French betting on plate mail against the longbow at Agincourt. The difference is that the French learned their lesson and the Republicans haven’t – at least not yet. Some Republicans may be true believers, others may lack imagination, and others might resent feeling powerless as they flutter in the winds of change. Whatever the reason, many mainstream Republicans see the Dissident Right, with their racial obsessions, as traitors to the cause. That feeling is most certainly requited.

So I get it when dissidents on the Right see the Republicans as no better than liberals. I get it when they say “never trust a conservative.” While anyone with a “(D)” after their name deserves our instant enmity, anyone followed by an “(R)” has earned at the very least our deep suspicion. In a democracy like ours, politics not just is, but must, be downwind of culture. Since politicians are in the stay-in-power business rather than the Truth business, this is how it has to be. A Republican politician must play by the old playbook if he wishes to attract the least grief and the most donor dollars. If he wishes to play by the new playbook, he has to be extremely careful, since racial taboos against whites in our mainstream culture are still very strong. Trump is the first mainstream politician in a long time to defy some of these taboos. And that’s great. But Trump is a billionaire and a unique character regardless. He can personally withstand most of what the Left will throw at him. Most Republican politicians are neither of these things, and therefore must toe a line if they wish to survive in the cuck-eat-cuck world of GOP politics, let alone beat the Democrats.

Seriously, if a white Republican were to call for a return to Jim Crow-era segregation laws, a ban on Islam, anti-Semitic hiring practices, and a general deportation of non-white immigrants, he would be more concerned about assassination attempts than winning elections. This is the world we live in, and expecting the Republican Party to rise above it all to cater to the Dissident Right is just wishful thinking.

There are four major types of Republicans these days:

1. Controlled opposition. These people are essentially Democrats who aren’t quite Communists. Not as bad as actual commies, but bad enough to be considered the enemy. Senators Jeff Flake and Mitt Romney are good examples.


2. True believers in the old system. These are your libertarians, traditionalists, and Christians who fight hard to resist the Left and still have quaint notions of American patriotism. These people make up the majority of Republicans and will do what’s right most of the time, but almost always for the wrong reasons. We can work with them but should never trust them. Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul stand out in this bunch.


3. Champions of the new system. These are your enthusiastic Trump supporters who embrace The Wall and civic nationalism, and who are not afraid to act implicitly in white interests. These people may or may not be covert race-realists, and at best aspire to halt the Leftward lurch of history rather than reverse it. In this group, we have Trump himself, as well as representatives Jim Jordan and Steve King.


4. Overt white identitarians. These may as well be unicorns. The only two examples of this kind who I can think of are disgraced House candidate Paul Nehlen and (maybe) the former manager of a small town in Maine, Tom Kawczynski. If there are others, please mention them in the comments.

Since over ninety percent of the current bunch of sitting Republicans fall into the first two categories, it’s safe to say that the Republicans are not “ourguys,” and putting undue faith in them is misguided, to say the least.

Yet, I care. I still want the Republicans to win and I usually pull for them hard. Why? Several reasons:

1. I hate the Left. Maybe this is a personal quirk, but I enjoy seeing Lefties suffer and I enjoy seeing them lose. Further, the idea of losing to the Left galls me. The televised image of white female Obama campaign staffers dancing, once it became clear that their guy was going to win in 2012, haunts me to this day. So does footage of Muslims celebrating on 9/11 and of black college students high-fiving each other when O. J. Simpson got acquitted. The Left drinks toasts with our tears all the time, so I see no reason why we shouldn’t do the same with theirs.


2. Bashing Republicans will only make it easier for the far Left to attain power. No matter how duplicitous and cucky a Republican is, you can rest assured that his Democratic opponent is far more radical and extreme. There are very few truly moderate Democrats these days, and if a principled and honest one were to run against a weak-kneed quisling Republican like Jeff Flake, I might sit that election out. But in increasing numbers, the Dems are now fielding far-Left, pro-immigration, anti-white nut cases likes Kyrsten Sinema and Kamala Harris. Against such people, I will definitely hold my nose and vote for the Jeff Flakes of the world. After all, the second or third circle of Hell is still preferable to the tenth.


3. Republicans may listen to Republican voters, while the Democrats never will. In 2007, when George W. Bush was pushing large-scale amnesty dressed up as the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act, Republican voters melted down phone lines to tell their representatives not to vote for it. The representatives listened, and the bill died in the Senate. While it remains to be seen if Republicans of the future will respond to such pressure, we know for sure that absolutely no Democrat ever will.


4. I still hold out hope that dissidents can convert ordinary Republicans before history does. This means, among other things, amping up our production of articles, books, memes, and videos, as well as executing smart, pro-white activism and maintaining our general willingness to talk to conservatives. So far, so good. But if we hold the representatives that ordinary Republicans elect in too much contempt, then we may repel these people rather than attract them.


5. A peaceful solution is still possible, and any champions of this peace in the next twenty or thirty years will have to come from the Republican Party. Here is a vision of such an unlikely, yet still possible, scenario: once non-whites gain their demographic edge in 2040 or whenever, the coalition of blacks, Hispanics, and Muslims in the Democratic Party collapses amid racial strife. Pro-white identity advocates among the Republicans then make a comeback in the face of the sheer chaos brought about by these demographic changes. Finally, and most importantly, anti-Semitism on both sides cause most Jews to either quit politics or leave the country. The result? Whites take back control of their country due to their better funding and organization and then implement explicitly pro-white policies, just as the Southerners did after Reconstruction. This won’t lead to an ethnostate, but it will eventually take us back to the demographic proportions of, say, 1990, with whites solidly and permanently in charge. Smashing the Republican Party to pieces today – as much as it deserves to be smashed – will not only guarantee that such a solution won’t happen, it will also increase the likelihood that a hot civil war within many of our lifetimes will.

Basically, my attitude towards the Republican Party is informed by the following dilemma: Do you prefer a ninety percent chance of getting sixty percent of what you want without a war? Or do you prefer a sixty percent chance of getting ninety percent of what you want with a war?

There’s no right answer here, and I’m not even sure how I feel about it. I dearly want a white ethnostate in North America. I would also like to meet my grandchildren one day. Maybe we’ll get lucky and elect a philosopher-king who will implement a “slow cleanse.” On the other hand, we could get unlucky and lose the war. Interesting times make for consequential decisions.

With the hindsight afforded to us today, I really dislike much of the Republican Party. But it remains the only nationwide apparatus we have to resist the Left. It would take a certain warlike attitude for people on the Right to abandon it completely. I understand and appreciate such an attitude. I’m just not sure I am ready to go there yet.

Spencer J. Quinn is a frequent contributor to Counter-Currents and the author of the novel White Like You.