Inducing White Guilt
“Group-based guilt is debilitating because it may undermine internal attributions for in-group success and may threaten the in-group’s identity as moral and good.”
Iyer et al. “White Guilt and Racial Compensation,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2003.[1]
“We’re not sorry! And we’ve stepped over the prospect of being sorry.”
Jonathan Bowden
I am frequently bemused by the mystery of the failure of our ideas to win over those White masses sleepwalking into permanent displacement from their own lands. That which seems self-evident — the demographic projections, the crime figures, the well-documented plans and trends, the bold intentionality of it all — is yet insufficient to break through into the deeper instinctual consciousness. Why? In a recent conversion I had with Kevin MacDonald, it was mentioned that when White people are told they are being slowly replaced, they get angry. And yet it appears a gentle and transient anger, incapable of translation into clear political trajectories and easily muzzled by the poisonous triad of media, entrenched government, and the academy. My recent reading of Ed Dutton’s Race Differences in Ethnocentrism answered some questions, but provoked more. The text is primarily concerned with what might be termed “hard biological” explanations for low ethnocentrism among Europeans, possibly at the cost of placing too little emphasis on cultural and socio-ecological factors. In particular, I felt the text understated the case that present-day low ethnocentrism is something that has been deliberately cultivated over time, and that part of that cultivation has been the widespread dissemination of shaming propaganda carefully designed to threaten and undermine White in-group identity. I am thinking, of course, about the concept of White Guilt.
Discussions about White Guilt are becoming increasingly common on both the Left and Right, and basic distinctions can be made between explanatory theories. One set of theories ascribes to White Guilt a “dishonest and evasive” character, in which White Guilt is on some level a self-serving and self-satisfying charade that enables Whites to continue to patronise and dominate minorities. These theories emanate from the harder, old-school Marxist Left. Another set of theories ascribes to White Guilt an “honest and spontaneous,” character, in which it arises as genuine feelings of regret at alleged historical wrongs or at the holding of a privileged position in society. These theories emanate most commonly from the center-Left of the ideological spectrum. Another set of theories, ascribes to White Guilt an “honest but cultivated” character, in which White Guilt arises as genuine feelings of regret and discomfort at alleged past and present wrongs, and is the product of a debilitating and ceaseless social critique designed to undermine the ability of Whites to see their interests as legitimate and thus the ability to defend and protect those interests. These theories emanate almost exclusively from the dissident Right. The centre-Right appears to stand alone as advancing no position on the matter, much as it has forfeited taking any positions on mass migration or issues of ethnic identity. Read more