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.

Ron Unz has put out a handful of long columns under the American Pravda category on his personal website. These are posts where he digs into the official narrative on a subject and relates his experience with discovering the truth. They are packed with lots of well researched bits about the topic, often from obscure sources that have been erased from the official narrative. To his credit, he digs into the credibility of his source material, which is always useful.

They are a bit too long, but that may be a matter of taste. There is something about reading from a screen that makes long articles less pleasant. People have investigated this and found that shorter is better than longer on-line. It’s one reason the long form essay is going away. Most people consume their content on-line, so they prefer short pithy articles. There’s also the fact that most of this stuff is read at work, where you steal a few minutes to read something before lunch or on a break.

Anyway, this entry on post-war Europe was interesting. The post-liberation reprisals in France and Belgium get some mention in the official narrative, but almost exclusively with regards to women who slept with German soldiers. The gang-like warfare between communists and their enemies is never mentioned. Of course, there is never any mention of what happened to German soldiers in prisoner of war camps. War is an ugly business, and ideological war is the ugliest.

Regarding the ideological aspects of it, the blind hatred of the Germans by the American elite is never discussed. That’s why no one learns about the Morgenthau Plan in their history classes. It is another example of how ideological enemies cannot see the humanity in one another. The rage-fueled progressives were no different than their opponents in the war. They came to see the other side as the pure expression of evil and wanted them exterminated. The Morgenthau Plan was about genocide.

The most interesting part of theses posts is that they fit into the “red pill” experience you hear from many who journey to this side of the divide. Not everyone makes the journey, as they were always here, but did not know there was a “here.” Many do have a moment when the light went on and they either began to question their view of the world or simply changed their mind about some important item. Often, it is a book or article that is the triggering event.

Of course, none of his posts would be possible without modern technology. When the only store of knowledge was controlled by the people running the official narrative, there was no way to red pill anyone or be red pilled yourself. Unless you found a stash of old books, you had to accept the official narrative. Whatever happens in these troubled times, the fact that the society that produced the technological revolution could be consumed by it suggests nature in the long run, is self-correcting.

The article on post-war Europe, brings up something that often gets forgotten. It is not enough to undermine the moral legitimacy of the prevailing orthodoxy. That phony narrative sold to us is not just propaganda in support of the current order. It gives Americans a reason to feel patriotic. It makes us proud of who we are as currently defined by the people in charge. Learning that it is a lie is like learning that you were adopted. It leaves a hole, and something must fill it.

While undermining the moral authority of the people in charge is a big part of our project, we also must work on a replacement. It’s not enough to get people wise to the hypocrisy of the New York Times, for example, with regards to race. The Sarah Jeong fiasco does red pill a lot of people, but that only matters if they have something else to embrace. In the movie from which the term “red pill” originates, the characters had an alternative vision of their future.

This is the lesson of the Great War. The collapse of the monarchical system left a giant void in Europe. That system had been discredited, but there was no replacement for the people to embrace. Liberal democracy had yet to evolve the secular morality to justify it, so into the void flowed Marxism and Fascism. The twentieth century was the fight between liberal democracy, fascism and communism, with the result being the neo-liberal order we have today.

The posts on antisemitism will be of some interest. Ron is Jewish, so he comes to the subject from a different angle than the anti-Semites, but he is refreshingly frank about the material. It’s good reminder that Jews are not the monolith JQ people need to believe. There are a lot of alt-Jews out there. It’s not a majority or even close to one, but it is a substantial minority. Their fight within the Jewish community over Jewish identity is a mirror of what is happening within the Occident.

It’s a good reminder that even if you embrace the fact that human diversity requires separation, it does not mean hostility. In fact, diversity requires cooperation for peaceful separation to work. Even though one group may have different interests and a radically different sense of identity than another, they can still cooperate with one another where their interests align. For the JQ people who think they have taken the ultimate red-pill, this understanding about cooperation and diversity is the ultimate red-pill.

I’m fond of pointing out that much of what defines the modern age is that everyone forgot the timeless lessons of the human condition and now we must rediscover them. This great awakening we see on our side of the great divide is, in many respects, a rediscovery of the past. So much has been hidden from view to prop up the current regime, it’s shocking to most people. Like that kid who learns his parents had lied to him and he was adopted, what matters next is what we do with this new knowledge.