Edit: I was working from the draft copy that Greg was kind enough to send me over the summer. He changed the chapter titled “Slow Cleanse” in the final version and made clear that “ethnic cleaning” is used as a leftist slur. The irony here is this was a recommendation I made after I read the draft. My apologies to Greg and the readers for the error.
What is “white nationalism”? If you ask a Progressive, you will get a list of the other abracadabra phrases they use to label heretics. A white person insufficiently enthusiastic for things like egalitarianism, unlimited immigration or racial quotas is dismissed as a white nationalist. They call President Trump a white nationalist, for example. For normal people, the term conjures images of white separatists, maybe, or perhaps nothing at all. Unlike black nationalism, the phrase white nationalism lacks an agreed upon definition.
Greg Johnson, in his new book The White Nationalist Manifesto, sets out to define white nationalism and also make the case for it. The book is a series of essays, grouped around three major themes. The first section focuses on the state of white people, the forces operating against whites and the need to restore white homelands. The second section covers the basic concepts of white nationalism. The final section addresses the cultural and political movement necessary to make White Nationalism a reality.
The first thing that recommends the book is the structure. In this age of short attention spans, breaking it into a series of essays is more effective. Writers will have to come to terms with the fact that their audience simply lacks the patience to read long complex arguments. In the case of something like white nationalism, the format allows the reader to quarrel with one or two points without having to reject the overall argument. Even people comfortable with white identity politics are going to have their disagreements.
There is also the fact that most white people remain allergic to thinking sensibly about the issues facing white people. The adherents of Frankfurt School arguments and tactics have been in control of public discourse for generations. They have controlled the school curriculum since the 60’s. As a result, few white people alive today have ever existed outside the poaching liquid of multiculturalism. Short, easy to digest arguments that explain the basics of white identity politics provide a useful antidote to this conditioning.
Perhaps the most important argument in the book is at the beginning, where Johnson lays out the facts of white demographics. To people familiar with white identity politics, none of this will be new. Sadly though, most white people simply have no idea they are members of an endangered species. Even when the facts are presented to them, they will find some way to deny reality. Again, generations of proselytizing by an alien intellectual elite have conditioned whites to avoid facing the reality of their own dispossession.
The other aspect of this is the cause. The public policies that are putting whites in danger are not accidental. He makes the important point that the elites pushing these polices must know the results of those polices in advance. Otherwise, it means the cultural and political elites are smart enough to craft and implement these policies, but too ignorant of reality to understand the inevitable consequences. In other words, the ads on your television that always feature a brown man, and a white woman are calculated.
That removes the handy excuse whites have used for generations for not revolting against their rulers. For as long as anyone reading this has been alive, the claim has been that all the opposition needs to do is craft the right argument. Once they do that, the ruling class will throw down their weapons and embrace us as brothers. The responsibility is shifted from the people implementing public policy to the victims. By eliminating the excuse that they simply do not know, the burden shifts back to the elites.
Another highly useful essay is titled Homogeneity, chapter eleven in the book. For American readers this is going to be challenging because the argument in favor of homogeneity contradicts everything they have been taught about diversity. The challenge presented in this chapter is that everything about observable reality makes clear that ethnically homogeneous societies are healthier and happier. More important, up until fifty years ago, everyone understood this, even in America. It is a big red pill for normie.
Now, in fairness, the book could do a better job explaining white demography. The empirically minded will hate the fact that Johnson makes a lot of assumptions, without providing studies, graphs and so forth. For American readers, an essay on the history and nature of white American ethnicity would be helpful. For generations, whites have been pitted against one another on ethnic and regional lines, so thinking about white identity is very difficult. White Americans do not exist, even to themselves.
I am also firmly in the camp that thinks we must be careful with the choice of words, when it comes to discussing these topics. White nationalism is going to conjure mostly negative images. The essay titled The Slow Cleanse uses the phrase “ethnic cleansing”, which recalls firing squads and death camps. The word “cleanse” reminds people of Hollywood weirdos drinking prune juice for a week. Fair or foul, the bad guys control the language, so using words and phrases that make that hard for them is important.
That said, a big part of this project is the rejection of the prevailing moral orthodoxy. This does not mean the puerile role playing that came to define the alt-right. That is just juvenile rebellion that accepts the moral supremacy of the Left. The proper way to reject the prevailing orthodoxy is to not be bound by it and not react to it. One way to do that is to return to the clear use of language. Nothing infuriates the people in power more than the indifference of their subjects, so maybe Johnson is on the right path with the language.
Finally, the target audience for the book is not your MAGA hat wearing granny or the Ben Shapiro loving CivNat. The book is best aimed at the type of person who generally knows the reality of race, but maybe thinks “racism” is crude or low-class. What a book like this does is provide language and arguments that the typical white person can use to inoculate their own mind to the prevailing culture. It also supplies the tools to help bring people over to this side of the great divide. It is the Little Red Book for modern white people.
