This article is adapted from remarks given at the American Renaissance conference on November 19, 2022. See here for Part I.

When we think about who is white and who is not, we’re talking about biological realities. But race also has a spiritual and social dimension. Our people have strengths and weaknesses and we may not be, on average, the smartest. We’re not white supremacists. We’re just not filled with self-loathing. More accurately, white leftists loathe poorer, more conservative whites, not themselves.

In 2020, Zack Goldberg found that leftist whites think their own race is more violent, lazier, and less intelligent than blacks. They have no data to support this, but they don’t need any. It’s a manufactured belief they cling to. Likewise, if despite 60 years of “civil rights” and fighting “racism,” blacks still have so many problems, it must be because racist whites sabotage everything. It certainly can’t be because races are different and will never perform equally. Leftist whites are unique among all other groups in that they have a bias against their own race.

There’s a lot going on in leftists’ heads; if you want to get complicated, you can look at research that indicates white progressives talk down to blacks. No doubt you remember white liberals cooing that Colin Powell or Barack Obama were so “articulate.” Even Joe Biden said his old boss was “articulate and bright and clean.”

These attitudes are a class marker. The pride flag, the BLM signs, the “In This Home” professions of faith — all are a claim to class superiority and special rights, especially if you claim membership in one of the new sexual categories. I wonder if we’re going to get a sexual version of Rachel Dolezal soon, with someone accused of co-opting one of the new victimhood categories. More importantly, these signals show a will to power, a claim that “victims” have the right to decide what we can and cannot say. Perversely, the way to power in this society is either to claim victimhood or showily renounce “privilege” to prove your moral superiority.

Credit Image: © Bastiaan Slabbers/NurPhoto via ZUMA Press

You can profit from a victimhood-based morality. Some people profit from it cynically, undoubtedly, but most probably believe in the Woke catechism and the ever-present threat of white racism.

There is a political formula that tells us what we are supposed to believe about life in the United States. Racial inequality is due to white racism and privilege, embedded both within our consciousness and our institutions. This gives leftists something to crusade against: nature itself. Fighting an unwinnable battle makes people more fanatical, not less, and our own faith in data and facts may be a weakness. Materially, the myth of white privilege is useful because it justifies the existence of a whole class of social engineers who must meddle with everyone’s behavior — for our own good.

Some leftists might still say that the real problem is capitalism, though I can’t help but notice that many are sponsored by corporate conglomerates. I don’t think any of the socialists on Patreon ever worry about losing their bank accounts the way genuine dissidents do. Some say that whites can become allies against racism, a claim that can win over the naïve and well meaning. Others say whites are inherently racist, and all they can do is “the work” until they die. That will appeal to masochists. Conservatives argue that much of American history is terrible but we’re not racist now, that we should work together to move forward. The only people who believe that are old white conservatives and the young non-whites who earn a fat living telling them what they want to hear.

This can no longer be tolerated. This is no way to live individually or collectively. More than this, this society is an embarrassment. We should feel disgust and contempt at what’s been done to our cities, our schools, our museums, or culture. We should say, with utter sincerity, that the egalitarians have taken the commanding heights of our culture — and wrecked it.

We need a new way forward. If you feel loathing at what’s been done to this country, or any Western country, if you are sick of double standards, if you don’t want to live in a country that preaches destruction, degradation, and damnation for your race, I’m going to tell you what to do. I’m not going to say vote harder, wave American flags, or pray for someone to save you. No one’s coming, whether from the heavens or Washington. It’s up to us.

When I was organizing college students into conservative and libertarian groups, the first question I would ask is what they would do if they had unlimited money and staff. You’d be surprised how few had a plan. Most would say something like “start a newspaper” or “print more flyers.” That’s conservatives for you, and why conservatives can’t win. We must move past that and the national GOP, while bringing along as many of our people as possible. More than this, we must know what we are fighting for, the ultimate dream, the Sorelian Myth that inspires heroic action and the willingness to sacrifice. We need that flame within that gives life meaning. We are a sun people, after all.

But there’s the problem. Do our people recognize themselves as a people? Sam Francis said whites exist objectively, but not subjectively. Others know who we are; we’re the only ones who don’t. We lack racial, cultural, and political consciousness. Building that consciousness is the first step.

The question about “white identity” — and whether it’s permissible or meaningful — has been answered, and not by us. Your rulers answered it for you. You are white because those in media, academia, and government treat you as white. This treatment goes beyond any nation or legal code. It’s throughout the entire West, except for some parts of Eastern Europe, and I think they are just a little behind on the path to decline. The Anglosphere is especially rotten.

We are assigned an entirely negative identity. You are told it is shameful to feel pride in your ancestors. You must feel guilty because of them. Meanwhile, the failures of other races are your fault — and you owe them spiritually, politically, and financially. Reparations are mainstream, and whites throughout the country will need to deal with this. There is no reason why the descendent of European immigrants who came to this country in the 20th century must pay reparations to someone like Barack Obama, or Kamala Harris, or an African immigrant who arrived yesterday. That doesn’t matter. “White privilege” explains why we are always the guilty party. The smear of “white nationalism” warns whites not to organize resistance.

Many whites sense this. They react, but in ways that are doomed to fail. They might back a non-racial form of rebellion — conservatism, Christian Nationalism, or American civic nationalism, maybe even MAGA. Some believe in “common good” legal theory or Catholic integralism or Southern Agrarianism. But the issue is race; that can’t be avoided. American institutions were built by white men who expected America to be a white country. If you’re a “colorblind” conservative, what can you say to those who argue the Constitution doesn’t fit the needs and desires of “our” modern population? You can say Christianity is the solution, but whose Christianity? Haitians and Frenchmen may both be Roman Catholics, but they don’t meaningfully practice or understand the same faith.

I note in passing that a few dozen religious leaders here in Tennessee supposedly spoke out against this conference. We shrug because we know that progressivism itself is the real faith, not the Christian God. If you think a specific denomination is going to order society, you might be able to build a successful church. However, recent elections showed that even conservative states such as Montana and Kentucky don’t want to ban all abortions. Where are the ingredients for a Christianity strong enough to unite and govern?

America can no longer define itself. If you go to Mount Vernon, Monticello, or Montpelier, the Founders are being turned into villains in their own homes. The American Civil War, our modern Iliad, has been rewritten with the Confederates altogether evil and worthy of death. The Union is also evil because it didn’t finish Reconstruction (but did finish the conquest of the West, which belonged to others). Those who taunt Southerners because of what General Sherman did fall silent when you bring up what he did to the American Indians.

Robert E. Lee astride his horse, the largest Confederate statue remaining in the United States, was removed from its plinth September 8, 2021. (Credit Image: © Jay Mather/ZUMA Press Wire Service)

There’s an air of madness to political discussions between Left and Right because no common good is possible. Arguments for mass immigration collapse very quickly into claims that yes, this will be bad for the existing population, and that’s precisely why it is necessary. I quote one Suketu Mehta in an article in the Washington Post. He’s the author of This Land is Our Land: An Immigrant’s Manifesto.

I understand the soul of this nation just as well, if not better, than they do: a country that stole the futures of the people who are now arriving at its borders, a cacophonous country, an exceptional country, but one that seems determined to continually sabotage its journey towards a more perfect union. Nobody powerful ever gave the powerless anything just because they asked politely, and immigrants don’t come hat-in-hand. I am an uppity immigrant. I am entitled to be here. Deal with it.

So we must.

At best, today, America is a marketplace. Our rulers are eagerly welcoming the new consumers rushing the southern border — they are cheap labor and easy votes for the Left. The midterms showed complacent conservatives the danger of thinking people will vote the right way because of a declining economy. The genius and evil of America is that whatever is negative or harmful can be taken, turned into a product, and sold back to us, increasing GDP. The downside is that our ruling class, perhaps for the first time in history, acts as it if wants citizens who are weak, sick, poor, unpatriotic, and divided.

Most Americans feel that the country’s best days are behind it. An overwhelming majority think it’s going in the wrong direction. Yet they don’t think they can change it. More specifically, they don’t think they are allowed to change it. I’ve noticed this kind of moral paralysis on the American Right my entire life. Many Americans know that current policy will lead to catastrophe but because they’ve been told equality is the highest goal, they go along. We know the country’s in decline, but aside from moving away, there’s not much we can do about it.

And if you stand and fight, all those tools of Our Democracy are unleashed against you. We have a white identity, whether we want to or not. It’s just entirely negative. It’s also increasingly important. It’s at the center of our political and cultural system. The theory of white privilege justifies almost everything our rulers do. White nationalism is the boogeyman that discredits resistance. We are losing the very things that once defined America: freedom of speech, freedom to bear arms, freedom of association, and our culture of victory, exploration, and advancement. We may have rights on paper, but not in flesh and blood.

Yet I find myself increasingly excited. I see a great task unfolding before us. I’m far more optimistic now than I was last year, or even in 2016. Here’s why.

The midterms confirmed something that I’ve been considering, but resisting, for some time. I’m tired of goofing off with the Republican Party guys, or thinking we can change conservatism, or thinking that the GOP even wants to win. Yes, it will always be there. But it’s not our job to throw our bodies on the line for people who at best take us for granted and at worst despise us. The GOP seems happy to lose elections if it slightly increases its share of the non-white vote.

Congressman Steve King can tell us a lot. He was a conservative icon. He built the conservative movement in Iowa. He served loyally in every Conservatism Inc. cause, from fighting abortion to government spending. Yet, when it counted, his own party chose the word of deceitful New York Times reporters over his. Why give your life to such dishonorable poltroons?

Speaker Paul Ryan administers the House oath of office to Rep. Steve King during a swearing-in ceremony reenactment inside the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 3, 2017. (Credit Image: © Jeff Malet/Newscom via ZUMA Press)

I am not trying to discourage you. We have a mass base. They feel abandoned by their spiritual leaders. They don’t understand why Christianity suddenly means they must destroy themselves. They feel threatened by big government meddling in their private lives. They are worried about the union of government, media, and finance that many journalists seem to serve and cheer on. They want immigration stopped and American culture preserved and don’t understand why treason is rewarded. They may suspect the integrity of elections. Given the countless lies they’ve been fed over the last few years — Hands Up, Don’t Shoot, the vaccine prevents transmission, the Russian collusion hoax, Twitter denying that they censor conservatives — who can blame them?

I see similar trends around the world, especially in Europe. I see a whole army of my people, my race, my civilization, that at least sees something is wrong. Yet I also see an uncomfortable political reality — in many European countries, capturing state power may not be possible. At best, it would be a permanent second-place presence, which does little but conceal the system’s lack of legitimacy.

There is a time limit. If trends continue, whites will be a minority not just in America but in our indigenous homelands of Europe. The votes will not be there. In much of America, it’s already too late. When we are a minority, we won’t get affirmative action. We know how this story ends. South Africa is probably the best case outcome. Whites there were able to negotiate constitutional protections we wouldn’t get.

So what do we do? If we had unlimited resources and manpower, what would you want?

What I want is a unitedWesternCivilization-State that will ensure the physical survival of our race. It will relink our people to our most sacred Traditions that provide meaning and happiness. It will use science to build better, healthier people rather than fatter, more pliant consumers. It will be the new sacred center of our civilization. It will be the culmination of our Western struggle — the final unity of all the peoples of the sun in one polity that respects local cultures but ensures our racial survival and upward development.

It’s the Imperium that the greatest moments of our history — the Roman Empire, the Crusaders’ capture of Jerusalem, the Siege of Vienna, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Discovery of the New World — have all given us glimpses of. We have been one people before the relatively new phenomena of national identity and Christian denominational differences divided us. Our greatest moments came when we fought together. And the struggle itself will be a spiritual awakening that gives the new state a sacral foundation.

Yes, I’m calling for a tremendously ambitious project. This sacred Myth is what should move us to action. We build tribes and networks from the ground up, but we aim towards unity and the restoration of a true state that will direct our people forward. The current system fails our people and teaches self-loathing. There is nothing viler. In this climate, every white person who kills himself, takes solace in drugs and alcohol, and withdraws from life into TV and video games is a psychic casualty I lay at the feet of the regime.

There are more white advocates than ever, all looking for something to do, all pushing in a million different directions. We must have a final goal that gives us a common direction, even if we disagree on tactics, ideology, or organizational missions. The Western Imperium, the sacral empire that would unite and protect the white race, is that final goal.

Building strength locally is a first step, and it allows for political action. It’s what people should do even if they disagree with the final goal. However, liberal democracy is a system that prevents change. It is laundered oligarchy; it is rule by media. It’s very hard to dislodge once it’s taken root, and it is so widespread it threatens even a country like Hungary.

We whites are stateless, not just in America, but around the world. And I argue that we are a people, not simply a group of peoples. We whites are mutual victims of our powerful opponents, legal and cultural attacks against us, and immigration patterns that will turn our global minority into a minority even within our own countries. Being white is the most meaningful identity we have. Our rulers gave us a negative one. We need a positive one.

Every people has a creation myth, usually one of a divine origin, or a special mission, or a sense of destiny. Postwar whites have a destruction myth. World War II, that tragic second Western Civil War, has been retconned into a war not against Japan, Germany, Italy, and the Axis Powers, but a war against our own internal racism. The victorious powers, especially the Anglosphere, have inflicted on themselves many of the same policies imposed on Germany to rid the Fatherland of its national identity, pride, and solidarity.

Those who gave their lives in World War II unwittingly built a system that will keep attacking their descendants, inventing new grievances, and attacking us until we are all gone. I will not tolerate it, nor call it moral. Yet I will also tolerate no fantasies. So I give this hard truth: We do not have the numbers or the organization to take every country back. We are a global minority, we should act like a global movement, and we should aim towards a universal goal as one people.

I think often of something Barack Obama wrote in one of his autobiographies. The former president talks about going to Europe and says it was as beautiful as he thought it would be — but it wasn’t his. My experience on the Continent was different. I was home. I hope Europeans who come here — at least to the First World areas of America — feel the same. Let it be said plainly: I have more in common with whites in Europe whose language I don’t even understand than I do with many of my “fellow Americans” who have the same passport. And many of them don’t speak my language either.

National identities themselves are relatively recent creations. They are fading with travel, technology, and geopolitical arrangements that are breaking down the nation-state. The multipolar world that is emerging is a battle between civilizations. What unites a white person in America, England, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, South Africa, Australia and every other place is stronger than what unites him to those of different races who carry the same passport. As the world becomes more connected technologically, race isn’t fading. It’s becoming more important, and it’s our opponents who insist it is central to every social interaction. We didn’t ask for this. We’re only playing the cards we were dealt.

What is to be done? We will build tribes, churches, networks. We will turn our backs on their world and build our own. We will move if we must. We will build political power locally and wield it where we can. And we will build towards the dream of a Western Imperium that is our destiny, that will bind our people together in unity, honor, and strength.

What is called the West today is not a real civilization, but an anti-civilization. Instead of a founding myth that justifies our existence and growth, we have a religion of death that requires our dispossession. Except for the occasional vague gesture to something like the Green New Deal, there’s a nihilism to the Left’s projects that wasn’t there before. Are we going to get scientific socialism, a brotherhood of man, luxury communism? No, we’re going to get cities that no one wants to live in, an economy based on name-calling, bugs for lunch, pods to sleep in, and a future we needn’t think about because we won’t have children. Consume one product and get ready for the next.

The French author Michel Houellebecq wrote the book Submission about an Islamic takeover of Europe. His point was not the usual counter-jihadist rhetoric. Instead, it was that Europe is spiritually dead and needs revitalization. If we don’t revive the continent, someone else will. He’s also critical of today’s democracy. Mr. Houellebecq referred to de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America:

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industries animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

In another interview, Mr. Houellebecq quotes de Tocqueville about the way democracy keeps people as permanent children. Look around at the swarming consumers, those trapped in the Longhouse mentality of shame, guilt, and fear. The choice is simple: the white race, yes or no? If the answer is yes, we can no longer be Nietzsche’s Last Man, but the Western New Man — or at least Traditional Man. And let’s be clear: Without white people, the civilization we created dies.

I was stuck that when Vladimir Putin annexed parts of Ukraine that he’s still having a hard time controlling, he said that the Russian people didn’t want to be Parent 1 or Parent 2 on ID cards, but to have a real culture. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is one of Russia’s strongest critics. She is, in that sense, a geopolitical enemy of Russia, but she shares with Mr. Putin a basic way of looking at the world. Yet I don’t think either is destined to win. As we’ve seen in the West after World War II, in any conflict the true enemy becomes ourselves: xenophobia, or jingoism hidden within our souls. That’s why we constantly need fact checkers, health experts, and government bureaucracy to keep us in awe and make sure we don’t get ideas.

We despise all that. We reject this phony anti-civilization. This is occupation. It is centered in the city that disgraces the name of Washington, but its tentacles spread over the West, from New York, to Hollywood, to the City of London, to Brussels. That is not Western Civilization. That is not what we fight to save. It is the occupation we must overthrow.

Our fate will be decided as whites. Thus, we must act as whites. It will not be as members of different nations. It will not be between those countries that had vast colonial empires and those that didn’t. It won’t be between those who were Allies or Axis, for the true enemy of that war that shaped the current world order — as we are now told over and over — was whites as such. It won’t be religion — even those within the same denomination have different political beliefs and understand God differently, with that understanding often breaking down on racial lines. Critical race theory is in the churches as much as in the schools, and if you can’t beat it in the schools, you won’t beat it in the churches.

Civic nationalism has become, if not a dead end, almost irrelevant. In many countries, the numbers are not there for a takeover. Yet we have people, many millions strong, who can coordinate political, financial, and cultural action. But we need to do it as part of one struggle.

The evils of whiteness know no bounds. Being on time, going to space, getting good grades, being in shape: These and many other things we used to simply call good or even merely normal are now called part of white supremacy. And though leftism is a revolt against nature itself, that won’t stop it. Conservatives who wouldn’t fight back when the left said it was illegitimate to talk about race can’t complain when they are crushed on trans issues. You have to fight egalitarianism head-on — in all its dimensions.

A graphic from the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Wokeness is a mind virus built around resentment and victimhood. Egalitarianism is achieved only in the grave. It’s a death cult, and we reach for life — and that which goes beyond life, transcendence, heroism, victory. We must have the courage to wage a spiritual war, to reject the values of this filthy anti-civilization in toto and step over those who claim moral authority over us. They have knocked all the planks out of their democracy. They clearly don’t think people have the right to make up their own minds or hear every argument. So why do we have to pretend these people have any legitimacy, even by their own democratic standards?

The mission I lay before this room, this country, this one people — our ultimate goal, our Sorelian Myth — is unity. It is to pursue the vision of a sacral, united, Western Civilization-State. If this be white nationalism, let us make the most of it. This True State, this final Imperium, should be the culmination of our civilizational struggle. And even this is just a means to an end: to build better people, a more beautiful world, and the technology to conquer the stars.

This is not a dream. It’s a necessity. Whites are a hated, shrinking, global minority. We need a geopolitical lifeboat capable of ensuring our physical existence. Any other people would take this for granted. We must protect the people who alone can lead humanity into a better future, rather than a global shopping mall/slum. We whites need a universal mission to inspire us to take our own side.

This state will be built on the traditional culture of the West, to defend its accomplishments but to carry it further. This means the state’s duty is to promote the flourishing and full development of whites — the people who built Western Civilization, who sustain it, and who alone can ensure that civilization endures. Rather than weakness, we promote strength, rather than ugliness, beauty, rather than victimhood, heroism.

This is what I will pursue for the rest of my life. It’s the only thing worth pursuing for the rest of my life. And I ask all whites around the world to join me. Perhaps we Americans, who truly have become a “white” nation within this sprawling empire, can show how Europeans can once again act together.

Life is not about “finding yourself,” or “creating yourself,” or cynically inventing a drama where you get to feel important. It’s about becoming the best version of yourself. Most of what you are is inherent and unchosen. All that matters is what you do with that legacy. If you are white, you are part of a bloodline. It’s not something that makes you better. Instead, it is a great and awful burden that calls you to the demands of history.

The term “white nationalism” is controversial. Many in media or academic find it threatening. I say, the parasite has no right to complain about the behavior of the host. Our most salient characteristic is our race, that which controls the way we see the world, and, more pertinently, the way those with power see us.

Identitarianism, as a political philosophy and a force that can contain history, is our intellectual path forward. I see the beginnings of a way of looking at the world, an ideology, a methodology, and a historiography, that can be just as comprehensive and influential as Marxism — only rooted in truth.

My dream is that the small efforts taking place around the world — the tribes, the churches, the co-ops, the businesses, the parties, the meetups, the movements — will culminate in the state that can uphold all of Western Civilization, that aspires to unite all of our historic homelands (even those occupied by foreign peoples or governments today), and will carry forward the great artistic, scientific, and intellectual projects of our people. And it will ensure our physical survival.

Let us pursue our destiny, reject the scraps our rulers have tossed us, and have a life worth living. As our revolutionary forefathers put it, Join or Die.