This speech was delivered at the 2013 American Renaissance conference, which took place on April 5–7 near Nashville, Tennessee.  It was posted originally at the website of the National Policy Institute

For as long as anyone can remember, immigration has been the chief political concern at gatherings such as this. At last night’s cocktail party, “amnesty,” “illegals,” and various heroes and villains in Washington were discussed with great interest.

For people like us—who are asylumed away to the margins—one could say that immigration is our connection to the outside world.  It makes us feel like we have a horse in the race—maybe even that, through our silent partners in the Beltway, we can affect national policy.  We even, we should admit, get captivated by the political theater of “immigration reform.” Ann Coulter’s speech at the last Conservative Political Action Conference, for example, was catnip for racialists. Ann staked out the far rightward territory of respectable debate; and though she used the language of Republican electioneering, she seemed to be winking and nodding at us the entire time. . .

Whenever any issue or idea receives universal accord—when it become an assumption, when it’s taken for granted—it’s time to put it under serious scrutiny.  We should ask what an issue like immigration can tell us about ourselves—about what our goals are, and should be, and how we could best engage in political action. I hope we can do that today.

* * * 

That we have failed to stem immigration in our 45-year struggle is obvious enough.  Some major amnesties have been halted due to energetic, grassroots activists, but mass-immigration proponents have walked away from these battles with confidence that “we’ll get it done next time.”

That we have continuously failed is not, in itself, an argument against continuing along this course.  Still, sometimes when we focus on various political skirmishes (like the current one over “amnesty”), we lose sight of the big picture—we lose sight of the fact that we have failed on a much deeper level than mere policy.

In the summer 2011, the Census Bureau reported that the majority of children born in the United States are non-White.  Thus, from our perspective, any future immigration-restriction efforts are meaningless.  Even if all immigration, legal and illegal, were miraculously halted tomorrow morning, our country’s demographic destiny would merely be delayed by a decade or two.  Put another way, we could win the immigration battle and nevertheless lose the country, and lose it completely.

And we shouldn’t focus too much on the “2050” date, when Whites will become a minority, as if once Whites drop to 49 percent, a bell will go off announcing the end of the American Dream. We are at a major crisis point now. And we are well past the point of no return with regards to “patriotic immigration reform.”

Furthermore, this insight into the irrelevance of immigration reform holds for the whole kit-and-caboodle of “conservative” causes. Should we, for instance, really be fighting for “limited government” or the Constitution, so that the Afro-Mestzizo-Carribean Melting Pot can enjoy the blessing of liberty and a sound currency? (To ask the question is to answer it.)

Symbolic Politics

Beyond failure, there’s always been something . . . mendacious about immigration reform. Leftists (who sometimes understand us better than we understand ourselves) have always sensed this; they know that when we talk about immigration, we’re not really talking about immigration.

There are very good reasons, of course, for any nation to oppose lawless entry. And there are unalterable mathematical factors at play: all things being equal, more workers equals lower wages. These are (and should) be the concerns of the “respectable” immigration-reform movement.

But these are not our concerns.

The issues the Beltway immigration reformers focus on are essentially quantitative in nature, as you can see by the names of their organizations: “numbers,” “carrying capacity,” etc.

Our concerns are qualitative. As it should be. For in war, art, and enterprise, great quality can predominate over mere “numbers.” Our race’s history is replete with examples of this: of continental or overseas empires—the globe itself—being administered by a central elite. More impressive still are the examples of one man with little money or support—whether it be Copernicus, Martin Luther, or Nietzsche—overturning whole schools of thought and institutions and society’s most basic assumptions.

Quality should have a practical effect on how we think about the immigration issue. What would we say and do, to take a hypothetical example, if a million Swiss or Russian “boat people” washed up on a seashore, due to some international catastrophe.  Would we oppose granting them citizenship, out of some devotion to legality and fairness? I wouldn’t.  I would become a bleeding-heart liberal and argue that these refugees would improve our economy and enrich our culture (as they likely would). And such an example might not remain hypothetical. In the foreseeable future, we may very well face this exact situation with the Boer people of South Africa.  We need to think now about how we will react and articulate our position.

For us “immigration” is a proxy for race. In that way, immigration can be good or bad: it can be a conquest (as it seems now) . . . or a European in-gathering, something like White Zionism.  It all depends on the immigrants. And we should open our minds to the positive possibilities of mass immigration from the White world.

Taking a step back, it seems that for everyone, “immigration” is a proxy, a mask, a lie.  Perhaps all of political activism and wonkery are manifestation of deeper, largely unconscious desires for power. When we hear any professional “Latino” support this or that social program, we sense in our guts that her policy proscriptions are rationalizations for nationalism. She might say “more immigration is good”; she means “The Anglos are finished!”

In turn, we are right to view “conservative” activism—especially those hokey and embarrassing events like Glenn Beck rallies—as symbolic in-gatherings of America’s historic majority, as ways for Whites to feel a sense of belonging and identity in a world that is increasingly cold and hostile. Generic “conservatism”—despite itself—has become a kind of White identity politics.  And however flawed, all of its prominent ideological features resonate in the hearts of decent White people: self-reliance, freedom, uprightness etc.  And when White men talk about “restoring the Constitution”—or, more so, “Taking Our Country Back”— leftists and non-Whites are right to view this as threatening and racialist: it implies a return to origins and that the White man once owned America. However much we might critique these conservative ideas, we cannot deny this basic symbolism.  Indeed, it is due to this symbolism—and not policy—that conservative leaders like Glenn Beck have to envelope all-White events in “Martin Luther King” and the most useless political issues possible. They can’t let the natives get out of hand. . .

* * *

Now, if we accept that generic conservatism is symbolic, we should ask a higher-level question—whether this proxy is actually good for our movement and, more important, for our race and civilization.

We were able to understand the futility of the immigration issue by asking not what would happen if the movement lost, but what would happen if it actually won.    In turn, we should ask an analogous question: what exactly would conservatism “restore” or “take back”?

We can look to history for answers.

In 1789, we had the Constitution. We had a government that was a mere flea in comparison to the elephant that rules us today. Confiscatory taxation was unheard of; the invasions of personal privacy we experience today were not only rare but were, for the most part, infeasible.  We had a more republican, indeed, aristocratic, political system. We had bounteous natural resources and no threatening world power bordering our country.

Yet, within 75 years, we had inflicted upon ourselves a devastating Civil War—one that was brought on by the presence of Negroes on the continent and which decimated the Founding stock of the country.  Within 125 to 150 years, our political system had become dominated by the same kind of liberal egalitarianism that rules today.

Why should we believe that if we could “restore the Constitution,” the outcome would be any different? One should not rewind a movie, play it again, and then be surprised when it reaches the same unhappy ending.

Of course, history is not determined; it is not a film reel or script. But looking dispassionately at our current situation, we can only conclude that if we could hit a political “reset button,” this time around, the outcome would be far worse.

We are entering a world of resource scarcity (not abundance), and we are not dealing with Blacks that are socially and politically inferior, but some hundred million non-Whites who are empowered by our political system.

Thus, we don’t have to speculate about whether Rand Paul (and any other “right-wing” Republican) really wants to restore constitutional government or would actually be able to do so. This is all irrelevant.  The goals themselves are wrong and must be abandoned.

Supporting Paul, or whatever version of the Tea Party or Republican “immigration hawk” comes up next, is not “pragmatic”; it is, to the contrary, entirely impractical.  And it would be devastating for our movement politically: we would be spending our limited resources of time, energy, and money on politicians whose rosiest conceivable outcome would not change anything.  “Restoring the Constitution” and “patriotic immigration reform”  are just more in a series of safety valves and escape hatches preventing us from confronting the real issue facing our race.

Before we can move forward, we must come to terms with some rather dismal truths. There are no policy prescriptions or politicians currently open to us that will fundamentally alter our destiny.  And, most likely, within our lifetimes, we will not see the kind rebirth of Occidental civilization that we in this room know is necessary.

What we can do now is begin to set a new and different course.  Our challenge is to reorient our people, spiritually as much as intellectually and politically, to a world that will be hostile towards them and towards a future beyond the United State of America.

Minority Report

I’m sure that when many heard the title of my talk, “Facing the Future as a Minority,” they cringed at the very notion.  It insults our pride and dignity to think that I might be suggesting we go out and find ourselves a White Al Sharpton, who could speak at demonstrations after various hate-crime hoaxes and badger politicians until Whites got a seat at the trough.  Perhaps I might start calling myself  “The Reverend” Richard Spencer and hold prayer vigils after some celebrity misused the word “cracker.”

Believe me, I find this just as offensive as you do.

The good news is that the “Al Sharpton” option will never be open to us.  Whites are and will always be the exception to multiculturalism; we will never be allowed to play the game.

We must also recognize that not only will we always be at odds with the multicult, but, at least at the beginning, we will be at odds with the people we seek to defend.  In White America’s unconscious, they are America.  And the process of letting that dream go will be painful.

Moreover, the era of mass immigration into Western countries coincided with stunning advances in consumer capitalism, technology, and access to higher eduction. In the public’s imagination, multiculturalism was linked (however irrationally) with increased living standards and general “progress.”  For some, a White society might seem to be a retreat, towards less prosperity and dynamism.

Suffice it to say, this will be a hard path.

One characteristic that we adopt as White minority advocates is a new openness to alternative political forms, even things that have previously made us cringe. One of those was suggested by our friends outside protesting our gathering.  No, not “Bomb Dresden Again!” but “Go Back to Europe!”  Emigration with an E is, of course, not practical for all Whites in North America, and at the moment at least, it seems that Western Europe is dedicated to its destruction almost as much as Americans.   But we should be open to this option.

I would also direct you to the work on racial separatism of two men: Michael Hart and Rabbi Mayer Schiller, both of whom have presented real plans for dividing up the existing United States, mostly on the basis of race and partly on ideology.  (Michael generously offers Liberals the chance to live in a “Diversity” canton if they so desire. . .)

There is, I admit, a certain pie-in-the-sky quality to these proposals, as if a map-maker in his study could create new countries.  But we should remember that in the last century, racially defined nation-building was a major “progressive” cause. We now think that the so-called “liberal elites” are dedicated to multiculturalism and race-mixing.  This is not quite the case, as liberals have a history of adopting “national determination” and even “ethno-nationalism” as their cause.  In 1919, following the Great War, world’s statesman met in Paris to, for lack of a better term, re-map the world after the dissolution of the defeated empires. New countries were invented (the Kingdom of Croats, Serbs, Slovenes), old ones were reborn (Poland), and ethnicities got their day in the Sun (Czechoslovakia).  Related to this process was the Balfour Declaration and British mandate for a homeland for the Jews in Palestine.  Nationalists of many different stripe had captured the hearts and minds of political actors.

Today, in the public imagination, “ethnic-cleansing” has been associated with civil war and mass murder (understandably so).  But this need not be the case.  In 1919, we have a real example of successful ethnic redistribution—done by fiat, we should remember, but done peacefully.

Our Cause

Like the nationalists of a century ago, we need a cause—and one that is different, greater, and more advanced than the conservative “hot button” issues that are fading into irrelevance.  We need to be more than mere “reactionaries” who spasmodically ignite in the face of some new liberal innovation—all the while being gradually pushed in their enemies’ direction, towards accepting their enemies assumptions, towards defeat. We need a telos, an outcome or end goal—something that we are working towards, that channels our energies. We need an ideal. And ideals are greatest when they at first seem impossible.

The ideal I advocate is the creation of a White Ethno-State on the North American continent.

Vis-a-vis most contemporary states that are putatively based the Rights of Man and “democracy,” our project would be a new kind of political and social order. It would be state for the 21 century—or 22nd: reflecting advances in communication and transportation, it would be a home for Germans, Latins, and Slavs from around the world. On one level, it would be a reconstitution of the Roman Empire. The Ethno-State would be, to borrow the title of a novel by Theodor Herzl (one of the founding fathers of Zionism), an Altneuland—an old, new country.

* * * 

I’m sure there’s no shortage of people, most likely even people in this room, who’d tell me that an Ethno-State would be beautiful but, alas, “infeasible.”  In the face of this, we need to remember something very important: the creation of a White Ethno-State on the American continent is perfectly feasible. Indeed, it is a modest project in comparison to bringing democracy to the Middle East, narrowing the SAT score gap, or inspiring young women to become mathematicians, or countless other looney and infantile trillion-dollar initiatives with which the American government is currently engaged.

We shouldn’t forget that before the current government dedicated its resources to equalizing mankind, it could channel billions—create industries, indeed, create whole cities—for the goal of space exploration. (It has given up this project in favor of boosting the Muslim world’s self-esteem.) When I traveled to my home town recently, I noted the wealthy Whites of Dallas, Texas, have dedicated their disposable income to a charity hospital skyscraper, built in the hopes of taking care of other peoples‘ children and other peoples‘ problems. (It’s hard to get them to give 100 bucks to AmRen or NPI.)

Action is, in a way, the easy part.

Channelling action, setting a goal, identifying a telos—saying yes and saying no—that is what is difficult.

In this way, our challenge is one of the spirit.

Our task is to capture the imaginations of our people (or the best of our people), and shock them out of their current assumption of what they think is possible.  The means of doing so is not to promise a 20-percent reduction in immigration or sales taxes—or the narrowing of the scope of government. To the contrary, we need to offer our people what Herzl called “the voluptuous idea.”

We need an ethno-state so that our people can “come home again,” can live amongst family—to put it banally, so that they can feel safe and secure. But we also need an Ethno-state so that Whites can again reach the stars.  Before the onset of equality sclerosis, Europeans had a unique ability to risk everything for ends that are super-human. We must give up the false dream of equality—not so that we could “wake up to reality; reality is boring—but so that they can take up the new dreams of channeling our energies and labor towards the exploration of our universe, towards the fostering of new people, who are healthier, stronger, more intelligent, more beautiful, more athletic.  We need an ethno-state so that we could rival the ancients.

In Altneuland, Herzl wrote, referring to his “utopian” plan for Jewish state in Palestine: “If you wish it, it is no fairy tale. …  If you don’t wish it, it is a fairly tale and will remain one.”

Or, to quote another historical figure: “I have a dream.”