The Crusades: The World’s Debate
Hilaire Belloc.  Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Company, 1937; Republished Tan Books and Publishers, Rockford, Illinois, 1992.

Reviewed by Antonius J. Patrick

Introduction

Despite its publication a little over eight decades ago, Hilaire Belloc’s The Crusades: The World’s Debate is a book worthy of another look on several fronts.  Not only does Belloc present a novel interpretation of the crusading era while providing an array of interesting insights and thoughts, but throughout his analysis the author talks of the role that race and ethnicity played in the conduct of the crusades and in the establishment and tragic fall of the Latin Kingdoms in the Levant.

Ever since the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), Catholic scholarship, mirroring what was taking place within the historical profession at large, either ignored the subject of race, or when they spoke of it, downplayed any differences that might have had an impact on historical developments.  This was not the case for Belloc nor for most historians of his time.

The Crusades were inspired by the Catholic Church and the Papacy which rightly saw the threat that Islam posed to the West and encouraged military action to counter it.  The Mohammedans had taken over vast parts of the eastern half of the Roman Empire and with it control of the Holy Land which they increasingly made tougher to access for pilgrims.  The Crusades were an expression of Christendom’s highest ideals which contemporary secular Europeans could not hope to grasp or understand.  The expeditions initial success, the creation of societies in the Levant and their later collapse tells a lot about the historical epoch in which the movement took place.

Crusades Historiography

Belloc takes a unique perspective on a number of aspects of the crusading era which differ, in some cases, quite significantly from most modern scholarship. Almost all contemporary histories are of the school of thought that the Crusades lasted until at least the campaign of 1295 (the Fourth Crusade) while some, like the late J. Riley Smith, see “crusading activity” going well beyond that time.[1]

For Belloc, the First Crusade from its “calling” in 1095 by Pope Urban II, to its improbable and truly miraculous capture[2] of Jerusalem in 1099, was the most important.  It not only accomplished its odds-defying goal of freeing the Holy Land for pilgrimage, but in its wake established Western feudal-style governance after its military success.

With the view that only the First Crusade mattered, since it accomplished its objectives, the vast majority of the book covers the years between 1095 to 1187 which ends with the tragic Battle of Hattin in 1187, in which Saladin conquered most of Palestine from the Crusaders. As Belloc asserts:

There was . . . but one Crusade. . . . it was the great breaking out of all western Europe into the Orient for the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre, and within one very long lifetime it had failed; for with Jerusalem in the hands of the Infidel the purpose of the original great campaign was gone, its fruits were lost. [244]

Everything that came in the wake of the first Christian triumph in Asia Minor was something different:

That historical episode, 1095—1187, was the true Crusade, from its inception to its final failure.  All that followed was of another kind. [Ibid.]

Yet, within their initial victory, the seed of the Latin Kingdoms’ ultimate downfall was laid. Strategically, Belloc repeatedly stresses that the crusaders’ failure to secure Damascus proved fatal to their long-term survival.  Without control of the city, the later expeditions were never a serious threat to the Muslim strongholds and were in the historian’s words “the rear-guard action of a defeat.”[4]  The vital position of Damascus in the overall control of the Levant is not emphasized by contemporary historians.

While Muslim rule appeared to be permanent after the defeat at Hattin and especially after the fall of Constantinople, Westerners would later return. After repelling several Islamic assaults on the European heartland, the next sojourn into the Levant was different, but this time the conquerors came not as Christian liberators but as imperialists.

The colonization of the Middle East throughout the course of the nineteenth century up until the time of his book (1937) was accomplished not by Christian knights, princes, kings or inspired by popes, but under the direction of religiously pluralistic nation-states.  Christendom had long been dissolved, and although the new overlords were superior in resources, technology, and skill, their religious vitality was on the wane and would continue to evaporate as the years rolled on.  “We have returned to the Levant,” Belloc laments, “we have returned apparently more as masters than ever we were during the struggle of the Crusades — but we have returned bankrupt in that spiritual wealth which was the glory of the Crusades. . . . [N]or is the Levant held as one whole [Christian dominion], but divided between separate nations to whom the unity of Europe has ceased to be sacred.” [249]

Belloc believed that the West would eventually lose out to a more religiously robust and demographically fertile Islam.  Once Westerners strayed from a Christian social order with its defense of the family, the indissolubility of marriage and the traditional role of women as homemakers and mothers instead of co-equals to men in all aspects of life, a drop off in White birth rates would result.  The now beyond frightening low population replacement rates among Occidental peoples has proven the ever-perceptive Belloc correct.

While a collapse in White birth rates had not taken place during his lifetime, a more ominous event occurred which would shape not only the course of Middle East history, but world events with the founding of the Jewish state in 1948.  With unconditional support from the U.S. government and wealthy Jews throughout the world, Israel would come to dominate the region reducing the neighboring Arab states and extirpating the indigenous Christian population and landmarks.

Race

In the modern era of Political Correctness, one can no longer speak of race, ethnicity, kinship, or “blood” unless one is disparaging Occidental people or their ancestors while at the same time trumpeting the virtues of the assorted non-White peoples of the globe.  Not so with Belloc, who was far from alone among his generation who understood the significance of race in the episodes of the human past and how it played an important factor in the creation of societies.

To Belloc, race did matter, and in his view, it was a significant reason why the Crusades ultimately failed to hold their possessions.  Of course, there were other reasons that the author duly notes—the failure to control Damascus, the lack of reinforcements both in arms and people from Western Europe, the refusal of Byzantium to come to the Crusaders’ aid, and the lack of a strong monarchy in the Latin states.  Race, however, in this instance the “mixing of blood” between the Franks and the Near East population, especially among the leadership, proved deadly.  Few, if any, academics today could write such things.

The miscegenation of the Latin nobility with the upper-class provincials led to an “inferior” ruling elite which lacked the necessary talent, ability, and leadership skills to sustain and build a permanent Christian civilization in Asia Minor.  A stark example of this can be seen in the loss of Edssa:

We have seen that among other causes the mixture of Western with Oriental blood, especially in the case of the rulers, played a chief part.  Now, it was  precisely to this that the first of the great disasters was due. … The loss of Edessa … was mainly due to the character of its ruler, the second Jocelyn. . . .  The mother of the second Jocelyn was an Armenian. . . .  [T]he mixture of blood did here what it so often does; it gave a certain brilliance to the character of the second generation, but that brilliance was accompanied by instability. [192] …

It must be emphasized, for it underlay not only the tragedy of Edessa but all that followed, up to the loss of Jerusalem itself. . . . it was Jocelyn the Second, who with his contemporary, the half breed Queen Melisande, so conspicuously typifies that new and too-sudden mixtures of races which was largely responsible for the catastrophe. [193]

The political structure that the crusaders set up was similar to that of Western Europe at the time—feudalism.  Despite criticism of it and the Middle Ages in general by academics stretching back to the Enlightenment, feudalism mightily contributed to the widespread level of personal freedom and economic growth found in Western societies.  And, it was feudalism’s decline which paved the way for royal absolutism and later the emergence of the totalitarian democratic nation-state.

Like all social systems, feudalism relied on the quality of its practitioners.  While the crusaders brought feudalism to the Levant, its application was inferior to that of Western Europe, mainly because of race as Belloc points out:

In the interval of nearly fifty years there had arisen that large population of mixed blood to which we continually return.  Most of the half-breeds [were] born of Western fathers and Eastern mothers; others in somewhat smaller numbers, sprung from the marriage of Eastern fathers and Western women. [204]

Intermarriage took place among the ruling elites and for Belloc it proved detrimental for the sustainability of the Latin Kingdoms.  The difference in character and quality of the new racial class was unhappily noticed by Westerners:

Of these [half-breeds] a due proportion were nobles: the social equals of the ruling armed class throughout the feudal world.  Some of them (as we saw at Edessa) stood in the highest places.  It was inevitable that the pure-blooded Westerners should look down somewhat on the men of mixed blood. [Ibid.]

While they could do little about it, from their comments and attitudes Westerners understood the disastrous consequences from the dilution of Frankish blood:

[The Frank] had to deal with them; they were necessarily mixed up with his life, often claiming equality and receiving all the outward marks of it. But behind their backs they were now given a slang name—‘the colts’ — and it was not meant to be flattering. [Ibid.]

The historian makes an interesting distinction between what a colony or colonizing means and what took place in the Levant.  “The idea of a colony,” Belloc notes, “connotes the transplanting of men from one place to another and the vigorous growth in the new soil of the thing so transplanted.” [171] In this meaning, colonizing did not take place during the crusading era which proved to be of fundamental importance:

Now, the Crusaders did bring all this Western blood onto the coastal plain of Syria, they did plant our religion, our customs, our social organization.  But the new thing flourished as a thing transplanted, it flourished as a mixture.  There was intermarriage and there was a corresponding change in blood; there was the adoption of Oriental social habits by the descendants of the first Crusaders. [Ibid.]

While Westerners maintained their Latin religiosity, they, mostly because of intermarriage and the difference in climate, became submerged in their host population’s culture:

Men living in Syria had to live under Syrian conditions, or very soon they would not have lived at all.  The kingdom of Jerusalem and its dependencies could not remain wholly like ourselves.  They took on an Oriental color and upon the whole this weakened them in their task, that of resisting the Orient. . . .   That social structure which goes with the climate of the West, invigorated by the northern winter and nourished by the well-watered lands of Gaul and Britain . . . was altered. [Ibid.]

Because of the conditions, perhaps nothing could be done, but the “alteration” was necessary for the crusaders survival which if they had not adapted to the surroundings and from a lack of reinforcements from the West, would not have lasted as long as they did:

It was altered to advantage insofar as it enabled the transplanted to survive — but it was altered to disadvantage insofar as it lessened the pristine energy and tenacity of the transplanted [Ibid.]

Blood lines were instrumental not only in the downfall of the Latin Kingdoms, but in the initial preaching of a crusade by Pope Urban II.  A description like Belloc’s of the character and personality of the first wave of Frankish knights would be hard to find in modern accounts of the Crusades:

The Christian, Western host . . . was mainly Gallic. . . . But the blood told, and the Franci . . . had the weakness as well as the strength of their race as it has been known throughout history. They had its intense energy, its aptitude for arms, its sudden enthusiasms and, in such moods, exalted unity of aim;[2]

In today’s politically-correct environment, an author of such lines would be labeled a “racist” even by the Church which Belloc defended throughout his voluminous writings.  The Catholic Church, after Vatican II, has renounced its role in the Crusades, even though saints, theologians, popes and Divine intervention have all signaled their approval of the undertakings.

In the depth of despair at Antioch, faced with an oncoming Turkish force, plagued by hunger, disease and insufficient manpower, the quality of the Franks came to the fore emboldened by the discovery of the Holy Lance:

Anyhow, the lance head was found, and it worked a moral miracle.  That same French temperament which we must always keep in mind when studying the fortunes of the Crusade, lit a sudden enthusiasm through the army.  It was roused from its lethargy . . . it was filled with the certitude of victory, and in that mood it had sallied out by the bridge gate and won its great triumph over the besieging Mohammedan host. [100]

Despite what has been displayed in movies and television and what has been written in literature and historical accounts, the Western warrior was superior to his Turkish foe in every aspect.  “The French mounted knights, when sufficiently supported by the infantry were certain of victory against the light-armed and light-mounted swarm of Moslem bowmen. . . . Weight for weight, stroke for stroke, energy for energy, the Oriental could not stand up to the Western man.” [93]

Again, it was the “dilution” of Frankish blood that led to the collapse:

The danger would come years on when Western numbers were so depleted and Western blood so diluted that conditions between the opponents would be more equal. [Ibid]

It would be remiss to focus solely on the genetic make-up that shaped the character of the Franks in explaining why the Crusades took place at all.  This was the Age of Faith and despite their personal ambition, those who took up the cross were committed Christians who believed that their sacrifice would eventually merit an eternal reward which Belloc accounts for:

The feudal motive was mixed with the love of personal gain, but it is a misreading of the time to think that the love of gain was the driving power of these men.  And there was not one of them, not even Bohemond, who did not feel the inspiration of the Cross.  The Christian name is perpetually invoked, it is the rescue of the Christian populations in the East which fills the story, and for the common purpose there is always to be discovered, in spite of fierce rivalries, a common action. [70]

Conclusion

Hilaire Belloc’s The Crusades is more than an analysis of the racial make-up of the brave souls which took up the cross and rid the Holy Land of the Mohammedans.  It is an exhaustive account of the factors which made the first wave of Christian liberators so successful and explains why the expeditions and the societies which came in their wake ultimately failed.  Moreover, the book is important for it gives insight on the conditions and the mindset of the peoples of Western Europe when the great movement began.

Belloc’s tome is noteworthy for it shows how the writing of history, as have all the social sciences, succumbed to political correctness.  The author’s masterful weaving of a discussion of race in the narrative is not a display of Eurocentrism or bigotry, but is explanatory—necessary to demonstrate how and why the events of the era came to be.  Ominously, such a historical analysis is no longer possible in the present age.

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[1] Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades: A History, 3^rd ed. (London: Bloomsbury, 1987, 2014).

[2] While Belloc does not stress it, the First Crusade was aided by heavenly intervention which has been attested to by Crusaders as well as modern secular historians in their narratives. See Thomas Asbridge, The First Crusade: A New History (Oxford: University Press, 2004).

The Military Lockdown of Washington DC

The rhetoric of these people was revolutionary: there was talk of “crossing the Rubicon.” A crowd chanted “Hang Mike Pence.” Somebody erected makeshift gallows. Some grandiosely claimed, “The storm is coming,” while Alex Jones promised that “1776 will commence again.” In a similar vein Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert controversially tweeted “Today is 1776” while events were still unfolding. For all that, the event was far from a bona fide coup attempt. Inside the building, a protester responds to a reporter’s question, “What’s the plan? I have no idea.” Nick Fuentes, host of America First, described his own involvement in the event: “I was joking about storming the Capitol. We were marching in the parade and I was saying ‘we’re gonna get in there’. I was saying that basically ironically.” Watching the Baked Alaska livestream, it was hard not to view this event as a cross between a goofy carnival and cringeworthy fiasco. A videogame gone terribly wrong.

Imagine storming the Capital of the United States as the government of the country literally fucking flees and then just wandering around the building confused about why the level isn’t ending. — Kantbot

The QAnon Viking did not in fact seize power. There were a few broken windows. They didn’t burn anything down. They didn’t even leave any graffiti. People got bored and left peacefully. As one Twitter account put it, “the most heavily armed population in the world attempted an ‘insurrection’ completely unarmed.” One police officer was filmed posing for selfies with Trump supporters inside the Capitol. “Any chance I can get you guys to leave the Senate Wing?” a police officer asks. “We will,” comes the polite answer. “Occupy, do not destroy,” chant others, “do not break anything.” Obvious parallels have been drawn with the occupation of the Wisconsin Capitol building in 2011, or when heavily armed Black Panthers walked into the California state Capitol building in 1967, or when protesters pushed past a police line on Capitol Hill while protesting against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in 2018. It was, by any fair definition, a mostly peaceful protest. Most of the people who entered the Capitol simply walked through an open door and took some selfies. They will now be hunted down.

Even libertarians: A Patriot Act against patriots

A giant federal apparatus built to fight al Qaeda will shift some capacity to fighting you… You cheered on lawyers who said they’d release the Kraken. But now you’ve poked Leviathan. — Nicholas Grossman

Not so long ago, in June of 2020, an editor at the New York Times was forced out for publishing an op-ed entitled Send in the Troops in the midst of nationwide riots. “Running this puts Black @nytimes staff in danger,” the papers own journalists furiously tweeted. In July Nancy Pelosi tweeted, “Trump & his stormtroopers must be stopped. … First Amendment speech should never be met with one-sided violence from federal agents acting as Trump’s secret police.” Now the troops are here and journalists couldn’t care less — 25,000 “stormtroopers” locked down Washington DC for Joe Biden’s inauguration — more than in the entirety of Iraq and Afghanistan combined, and larger than the entire military personnel of some European countries. To Wolf Biltzer, Washington was reminiscent of “war zones I saw in Baghdad or Mosul or Falluja.” In downtown Washington a green zone was established, a term previously used for a fortified area of Baghdad during the occupation of Iraq. Such measures are a sign of a deeply dysfunctional society: this is a regime afraid of its own people.

The pretence that this was a serious attempt at armed insurrection must be stoked for political expediency. This is a Reichstag fire moment. Having inflated the alleged threat, “making sure something like this never happens again” will be the pretext for an ideological crackdown. It was “one of the darkest days in the history of our nation,” according to Joe Biden. Moral panic, histrionics, demonization and fearmongering are in full display. “This is Liberals’ 9/11,” Glenn Greenwald pointed out, warning of “a new War on Terror has begun, domestically.” Democrats are explicitly comparing the Capitol breach (during which protesters killed, at most, one person) to 9/11, when Al-Qaeda killed 2,977 civilians. The target of this new internal war on terror is not radical Islam, it’s Trump voters and any adjacent political movements, including mainstream conservatism.

Hillary Clinton argued for leaders to immediately pursue “new criminal laws at the state and federal levels that hold white supremacists accountable.” For Biden too, passing a law against domestic terrorism has been declared a top priority. What is it that is currently legal that needs to be rendered illegal? Press Secretary Psaki announced the “building of a NSC capability to counter domestic violent extremism” as well as “support efforts to prevent radicalization” and “disrupt violent extremist networks.” Kamala has argued for a “red flag” law to seize the firearms of White nationalists. On Twitter some Americans responded with the words “about damn time,” perhaps picturing violent skinheads and militant Neo-Nazis. Yet the definition of who counts as a White supremacist has been wildly expanded. It’s a term that has consistently been used to describe Donald Trump.

One talking head repeatedly appeared on CNN calling Trump “the leader of a terrorist organization.” Meghan McCain, daughter of John McCain, suggested on The View: “I’m not against sending these people to Gitmo. … They should be treated the same way we treat Al-Qaeda.” In the eyes of the mainstream discourse, MAGA supporters have moved from being “deplorables” to “domestic terrorists” — for sitting on Nancy Pelosi’s chair. A BBC journalist asked whether Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley “are guilty of attempted insurrection” (insurrection is defined as a violent uprising against an authority or government) simply for discussing possible election fraud. The chair of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security called for the two GOP Senators to be put on the No Fly List. Sue Gordon, former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, told PBS Newshour “there are elements of this that remind me of the rise of Islamic extremism. … There are probably a fair number of lessons that we learnt against foreign terrorism that we can apply here.” Waterboarding? Drones? Black sites? John Brennan, former director of the CIA, compared MAGA supporters to “insurgency movements that we’ve seen overseas,” and described the Biden administration as “moving in laser-like fashion” to “root out” what he deemed “an unholy alliance of religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians.”

Representative Steve Cohen told CNN he was worried the troops deployed to protect the inauguration may themselves be a threat — because they are White and male. Perhaps this explains why the New York Times reported that the troops were armed with unloaded assault rifles. The FBI vetted all of the 25,000 National Guard troops coming into Washington — 12 were removed from duty. The National Guard is being purged of political dissidents. “If there’s any indication that any of our soldiers or airmen are expressing things that are extremist views” chief of the National Guard Bureau explained, “it’s either handed over to law enforcement or dealt with the chain of command immediately.” Biden’s defense secretary, who is African, pledged to rid the military of “racists and extremists.” The New York Times reports: “Defense Department officials say they are looking into stepping up the monitoring of social media postings from service members.” While the leadership of the military and the police long ago gave in to PC shibboleths, they are the two remaining institutions where some of the rank and file maintain some allegiance to traditional America. We are now seeing the total consolidation of power, ridding institutions of any last vestige of non-woke opinions.

American democracy in crisis: Illegitimacy and the normalisation of political violence

Both sides have challenged the legitimacy of the other: the end result is widespread lack of faith in the American political system. Hillary Clinton deemed Trump an “illegitimate president” and, sounding like a member of a rebel insurgency, declared herself “part of the resistance.” Even now, Hillary is still obsessed with Russian conspiracy theories: “I hope we do find out who he’s beholden to, who pulls his strings. I would love to see his phone record to see if he was talking to Putin the day that the insurgents invaded our capital.” Jimmy Carter claimed Trump “lost the election” in 2016 and was “put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf,” while Nancy Pelosi tweeted “Our election was hijacked.” Russiagate became Russiagategate: the investigation into collusion was itself scandalous. Disputing election results was normalized by the long-running hysteria of the once-respectable press. The peaceful transfer of power is a key element of American democracy. It is, however, a norm that had already been violated: on inauguration day in 2017, Reuters reported:

At one flash point, a protester hurled an object through the passenger window of a police van, which sped away in reverse as demonstrators cheered. Earlier, activists used chunks of pavement and baseball bats to shatter the windows of a Bank of America branch and a McDonald’s outlet. … Multiple vehicles were set on fire, including a black limousine. A knot of people dragged garbage cans into a street a few blocks from the White House and set them ablaze, later throwing a red cap bearing Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan into the flames. … The various protest groups scattered around the city chanted anti-Trump slogans and carried signs with slogans including “Trump is not president” and “Make Racists Afraid Again.”

The day also saw the largest single-day protest in US history — against a man who had been duly elected. In 2020, when Trump had to be moved to the White House bunker due to violent protests, there was at least an air of sedition. Businesses in Washington DC boarded up ahead of the 2020 election in anticipation of a Trump victory leading to chaos. Biden himself recognized that another Trump win would lead to violence: in the midst of Black Lives Matter riots, he asked rhetorically: “Does anyone believe there will be less violence in America if Donald Trump is reelected?” Black Lives Matter set a precedent, and radicalized the other side.

But now it’s 2021, and for politicians of both parties, the Capitol incursion has been used as an excuse to make grandiloquent speeches about “our democracy.” Unlike Black Lives Matter, who targeted random businesses and innocent civilians, the stormers took the battle directly to the heart of the American power. Nancy Pelosi described the protest as “gleeful desecration of the US Capitol which is the temple of our American democracy.” It isn’t just a building, it’s a totemic symbol. We would all like to believe it’s a symbol of a venerable democracy, the hallowed and imposing forum of distinguished and eminent leaders of the greatest country on earth. The truth is this is the shell of a dead civilization, the creature that lived inside was long ago transplanted to the margins. The new occupiers have spent the last year attacking American history as irredeemably racist, yet now cast themselves as the true patriots standing up against traitors to America.

Regardless of what one makes of Trump’s claims of voter fraud, in a far more fundamental sense, American democracy really is rigged. American politics is unrecognizable as a result of demographic change. The real coup happened slowly — the real insurrection was decades of open borders. These people didn’t steal one single election — they stole the entire country. Had only Whites voted, David Duke would have won Louisiana in 1991. America, far more diverse today than in the early 90s, has disenfranchised the historic White population through decades of mass migration. The protesters at the Capitol seemed to realize this: they can be heard saying “this is our country” and “we’re taking our country back.” The election was rigged by far more than voter fraud:

The election was rigged by the censoring of popular voices and opinions on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Google. … It was rigged by the corrupt and illegitimate system of campaign finance where a handful of billionaire donors determine the fate of millions. … It was rigged through decades of flooding America with tens of millions of legal and illegal immigrants … who have openly bragged for years about their intention of outnumbering White, native-born Americans in national elections.

In 2016 people voted for a border wall and the deportation of illegal immigrants. They got endless money for Israel. One of Trump’s few achievements was a much-needed executive order banning Critical Race Theory from the federal government. It was blocked by a federal judge. The courts can topple clear democratic mandates. The stormers didn’t desecrate a noble temple of democracy. If it was sacrilege, as some claimed, it was sacrilege against an anti-White plutocracy that hates us. These are the people that cheered on Black Lives Matter as they burnt down many of America’s largest cities. Democracy is constrained by the mores of the liberal elite: that explains the popularity of terms like Uniparty to describe the Republican and Democrat establishment, and deep state to describe the vast and immovable Washington bureaucracy, all sharing an identical worldview of radical political correctness, an ineluctable woke blob that cannot be voted out of office.

Biden has talked constantly about uniting the country but his agenda is bound to antagonize much of the country. The god-know-how-many-million illegal immigrants Trump failed to deport will now be given citizenship. “There’s a big difference between equality and equity,” tweeted Kamala, along with a deranged video. Across the entire federal government, equality of opportunity will be replaced by equality of outcomes—an implicit acknowledgement that the IQ gap for Blacks and Latinos is too large to overcome with educational opportunities. Biden already followed through with his Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity. In a recent speech he promised “Our priority will be Black, Latino, Asian, and Native American owned small businesses, women-owned businesses.” It will be the first administration, according to Axios, “to construct economic policy around issues like race, gender equality and climate change, rather than around traditional indicators like gross domestic product or deficit ratios.” Andrew Sullivan concluded, “America is no longer about individual freedom; it’s about identity group power, and its constant management by government.”

People are right to be angry.

I’m not yet ready to abandon the possibility of America. … The world watches America—the only great power in history made up of people from every corner of the planet, comprising every race and faith and cultural practice—to see if our experiment in democracy can work. To see if we can do what no other nation has ever done. … The jury’s still out.

So begins Obama’s post-presidency autobiography. The jury just came in. From LA to Ferguson, riots have, for the best part of a century, been an exclusively African-American activity. Blacks fight for their self-interest through violence, Whites write strongly-worded letters or irate tweets. White people have, for decades, responded to every indignity with supine submissiveness. The Capitol stormers surprised us all: they actually did something. They reminded us all that Whites can still fight back. For a single day, White people stood up for themselves, and that is why the entire establishment is furious. White Americans aren’t going to be silently shuffled off the stage of history.

Go to Part I.
Go to Part II.

Part III. Separatist Solutions

As Lincoln observed in 1857 (see quote at beginning of Part II) racial preservationism logically leads to racial separatism. But not all preservationist proposals are equally effective at achieving that end. Some are not even intended or designed to do so in any meaningful sense. Others intend well, but have flaws in the design that would prevent them from preserving the White race even if they were implemented.

The range in scale of possible acts of racial separation is extreme. At the micro level it consists of a White individual, family or small group moving away from non-Whites to an area that is all-White or almost so—an act that has already been repeated so many millions of times it has acquired the sociological label of “White flight.” Such an act is not only racial separatist, but also racial preservationist, as it increases the likelihood that offspring will reproduce within their own race, although the more likely purpose of an ingathering is to create an informal community that can provide mutual security and support without attracting unwelcome attention. The difference between separatist and preservationist actions at the micro and macro levels is not in kind but in degree. At the micro level little is required and little is accomplished. At the macro level, the requirements are far greater, and so is what can be accomplished. Political power is necessary, and this requires the support and active participation of millions. The recognition of this necessity should inform all our deliberations. We should plan and act on the assumption that nothing sufficient, and therefore ultimately meaningful, can be accomplished, or is even possible, until we are in power, and then any proposal will be possible. Gaining that power will require the support of at least a majority, and probably a super-majority, of Whites for our solution. Winning the hearts and minds of our people for the preservation of their kind is more than half of our battle. It is the decisive battle which will decide the war. The specifics of our solution, as detailed in our proposals, will be central to winning that support.

Undetermined or Unspecified Solutions

Some White advocates hold a position without clearly stated solutions. Instead, they avoid the subject in the belief it could alienate supporters, so they have no tangible goal. Others only refer to vague or unspecified solutions, perhaps using the generalized terms “separation” and/or “ethnostate,” but without the specifics necessary to make them seem like something that could possibly become real. These positions can also be based on the belief that it is better for individuals to reach their own independent conclusions about a solution. In either case they view detailed solutions as a negative rather than a potential positive. They oppose the belief that offering a racially preservationist solution would be a net positive in attracting support and indeed essential to give substance and direction to a movement by providing it with a concrete goal.

Insufficient Solutions

Some White advocates accurately describe the full existential gravity and scale of the problem, but propose solutions that are woefully insufficient and incommensurate in scale. Perhaps they are so intimidated by the scale of a commensurate solution that they shrink from the prospect. But a sufficient solution, by definition, must be commensurate in scale with the problem to be solved or it cannot be a contender for serious consideration. The scale of our problem is extremely large, and so a sufficient solution must be as well. It is common for people, even fully informed White advocates, to be unable or unwilling to think big. Or they may be afraid to envision a solution commensurate in scale with the problem. We must overcome this fear or it will overcome us.

From its antebellum beginnings, separatist thought traditionally centered on the sufficient solution concept of a deportation of non-Whites and their resettlement in another country or countries. Around 1970 there was a paradigm shift in separatist thought that went all the way from a quest for victory to sauve qui peut—from the sufficient solution of a complete deportation of non-Whites to insufficient solutions, usually in the form of a partial White secession, that effectively surrender the far greater part of the White race and its territory. Richard Butler was an early proponent of such an insufficient solution, and his influence caused the concept to focus on a homeland for a small minority of Whites in the northwestern region of the country, with others like Michael Hart, Harold Covington and many subsequent movement writers and activists following in his path. Curiously, the concept of partition, which in its “National Premise” form is a sufficient solution, was passed over by this shift with scarcely a mention outside the pages of Instauration, and remains largely ignored.

Judged by the goal of White racial preservation and independence, all secession and similar insufficient solution plans I am aware of share four major flaws. The first is that they are all intended and designed to preserve only a lesser fraction of the White race, surrendering the majority to destruction in the larger multiracial nation. The second is that they are designed to include only a lesser fraction of the national territory (usually where only a small fraction of the White population resides), with the far greater part retained by the multiracial nation. The third is that they allow the still existing and larger multiracial nation to be the continuation of the United States, and still a nuclear and economic superpower with overwhelming military supremacy over North America and possibly effective dominance over Europe. The fourth is that they are cut off from lines of communication with Europe—an indication of their lack of consideration for Whites outside of the U.S.

Figure 10: Michael Hart’s racial partition map of the United States as presented at the 1996 American Renaissance conference

I was in the audience at the 1996 American Renaissance conference when Jewish astrophysicist Michael Hart presented a separatist proposal titled “Racial Partition of the United States,” based on a voluntary three-way partition,^[16] which I understand he has since disavowed. It is the most detailed plan for an insufficient solution that I have seen and shares the racially harmful flaws typical of secession and other insuffcient plans, starting with the critical flaw of being voluntary. His “White Separatist State” or “WSS” would be located in the northwestern part of the country, and in his most optimistic scenario (the purple and white areas in map in Figure 10) only 32.4% of “whites” would choose to live there (62.5 million of the 193 million “whites” in the 1990 census and 25% of the total population). Hart apparently presumed blacks would be much more enthusiastic about separation than “whites,” as in the same scenario he estimates 85.3% of them (25 million of the 29.3 million in the 1990 census) would choose to live in his “Black Separatist State” or “BSS” (the two gray areas in map in Figure 10, apparently including the national capital and Philadelphia, the previous capital). His

third country, the integrated state, will be a continuation of the present United States of America, but with a reduced area. All American citizens who do not explicitly choose to become citizens of the BSS or the WSS will remain members of the integrated USA.

This multiracial nation of 162.5 million (the yellow area in map in Figure 10) would contain 65% of the total population, and 67.6% or 130.5 million of the “white” population, in the 1990 census, and a proportionate amount of its territory.

Hart’s presentation never mentioned racial preservation as even part of the motive or purpose for his plan. Insufficient solutions in general cannot do so in good faith, as explicitly surrendering the majority of the race to the destructive embrace of multiracialism is the opposite of preserving it — it is offering it up for destruction.

Insufficient solutions like secession plans and Hart’s partition plan show little consideration for the fate of the majority of the White American population and no regard for the White populations outside the U.S. Also, next to its own physical existence, the most valuable physical possession of a race is its territory. As a result, such plans, by unnecessarily surrendering the far greater part of that territory, must also be regarded as contrary to White territorial interests. In the context of racial preservationism, they are only a more developed form of “White flight,” appealing to a small minority of disaffected Whites and racial survivalists who are fleeing the larger racial cause and accepting White defeat by surrendering the far greater part of their race and its territory.

A sufficient White preservationist solution requires the replacement of multiracialism by separation, with the great majority of Whites being united in an all-White country or countries. The surprisingly varied proposals to continue multiracialism in the supposedly White country, by including non-Whites in various degrees, therefore do not meet a sufficient preservationist standard in design. Such plans are typically based on certain designated racial proportions in the population. Some only seek to ensure the continuation of a simple White majority country, with a non-White minority population theoretically as large as 49 percent, and would therefore presumably not require any separation but only to stop non-White immigration and somehow prevent racial intermixture and the non-White birthrate from exceeding the White. Others seek to maintain a White super-majority or to reduce the proportion of non-Whites to perhaps 5 or 10 percent. These plans seem to be based on the fallacy of multiracial stasis, or the idea that an overgrown garden can be pruned back to its ideal state.

The first solution, a simple White majority, is already too late for the U.S. to achieve without removing some of the non-White population, given that the under-thirty population is now minority White.  But any multiracialist solution is qualitatively insufficient in terms of racial preservation and independence, as it would limit or effectively negate White racial independence (i.e., control of its own existence) and result in racial intermixture with the non-White elements — either blending with a large 20–49 percent non-White minority or assimilation of a smaller (below 20 percent) non-White minority — resulting in White racial destruction. Given that the U.S. White population (as of 2015) is genetically 98.6% European, accepting a limited infusion of even 5% non-European genes would create a genotypic shift that could be expected to produce significant and visible phenotypic effects. This is antithetical to the most essential principles of racial preservationism, and since reducing the non-White proportion of the U.S. population to 10% would still require the separation and removal of over 100 million non-Whites, or over three-quarters of them, it raises the question, “Why stop there, at that point, instead of going all the way when you’re most of the way there.” It seems arbitrary, unless the intent and purpose of the plan is based on something other than White racial interests, such as an idealized multiracial stasis that is “gone with the wind.”

There are also what might be called “limited” multiracial plans that permit the inclusion of certain categories of non-Whites in the ingroup, such as Asians (permitted in Hart’s plan among others), but exclude other categories, such as Blacks. Such plans indicate that the purpose is to separate from certain negatively-regarded races but not the preservation or independence of the White race. Such plans are motivated by negative emotions regarding the excluded non-White races rather than positive feelings for the White race. Other limited multiracial plans would include mixed-race half-Whites — i.e., the mixed-race children of Whites and non-Whites — in the White country without any apparent awareness of the numbers involved or the consequences. If their numbers were so low as to be assimilable without harmful racial effect it wouldn’t be worth making an issue of them, but that is not the case and never really was. If the mixed-race children of earlier generations had all been blended into their White line instead of the great majority being assimilated into their non-White line, the White population today would have a proportion of non-White ancestry much greater than the 1.4% it actually has.

Lastly, there are plans that feature idiosyncratic proposals with little or no connection to racial preservation. Examples include plans that would require adherence to a particular ideology and would exclude a large part of the White race, perhaps the majority. Other examples are plans that would divide the White population into multiple separate nations, e.g., separating the Whites of Ohio, Oregon, Massachusetts, Florida, etc. from each other. Such divisions of the race, whether territorial or ideological, serve no racial preservationist purpose, and indeed no pro-White purpose, as such divisions would be harmful to White interests by placing the White population in a much weaker position both continentally and globally vis a vis other races.

Even if well-intentioned, the insufficient solutions briefly surveyed above would do more harm than good for White racial interests. Some could hardly have been better calculated as spoilers to sow division and to minimize White support, to divert attention from better plans, or be so unfavorable to Whites that many give up and despair of separatism itself. In varying degrees they deviate from what should be the guiding purpose of racial separation — racial preservation. Plans designed to preserve only a minority of the White population, or to enable its intermixture with half-Whites, cannot be accurately described as preservationist.

Sufficient Solutions

An important consideration for White preservation is that the White race is not a single homogeneous population, but a group of populations with great variety and diversity within the group yet distinct genotypically and phenotypically from the populations outside the group. A sufficient solution for White racial preservation should also preserve that sub-racial population diversity. To do this in the European homelands is a relatively straightforward matter of maintaining the historical or native populations in the different European nations by limiting migration between them to normal historical levels. As Ronald Reagan famously said, “Let Poland be Poland.” I would add “forever.” Let Poland be Polish forever, and the same for every European nation. “There’ll always be an England” said a song from racially more certain and happy times, to which should be added the caveat “only if it’s always English.”

Preserving the varied European population types in the New Europes outside of Europe is a less straighforward matter. Over 80% of the European migration to South America came from Southern Europe and to North America from Northern Europe. In both continents the combined European elements have essentially amalgamated into a single people to a degree that makes their division neither practical nor desirable, but their primary Northern or Southern European identities can and should be preserved by controlling the proportions of future immigration.

As noted, the most common concept of a separatist solution among pro-Whites until the 1970s was the removal of non-Whites by deportation. This followed the tradition of Abraham Lincoln’s 1862 proposal to a delegation of Black leaders to resettle the Black population of 4.5 million in Central America.^[17] At that time the concept of White secession would have been seen as something for losers who were giving up and running away. Whites were supposed to remove the non-Whites from their country, not give it to them and remove themselves.

What has changed since the 1960s is the number of non-Whites in the formerly all-White, or over 80% White, countries has grown so large that it is hard to imagine any non-White country that would be willing and realistically able to accommodate the deportees. Partition provides a place to put them, in territory that is controlled by the country conducting the partition. But for the countries of Europe a partition solution is not even remotely practical, just or acceptable. They could not part with even the smallest fraction of the territory needed to provide such a place. Every square centimeter of Europe is part of their ancient racial homeland, and has been so since time immemorial, whereas — with the exception of the circa 1.2 million Jews — over 99% of the non-White elements have only been there since after 1945, after the postwar triumph of the Anti-White Coalition that opened the gates to their invasion. They have no valid historic or moral claim on any European territory. Removal of all the non-Whites from all of Europe is the imperative for the preservation and independence of the European peoples. But where would those 49 million (as of 2020) non-Whites go, or where could they be settled? A racial partition of the United States could provide enough territory for a non-White multiracial country to also accommodate the non-Whites now in Europe, Canada and Australia, if all the countries were to act together in a coordinated common effort. For Europe this separation would take the form of a deportation, but for the White race as a whole — and for all the non-Whites in Europe and the New Europes of North America and Australia — it would actually be in the form of a partition, with the territory for the new non-White country or countries provided by the United States.

The difference between non-sufficient solutions like secession and sufficient solutions like the “National Premise” concept of partition is the difference between the surrender of most of the White race and its territory and a White victory that succeeds in preserving most of the White race and its territory. The first is a small White rump state that spins itself off from a country seen by Whites as no longer theirs. The second is a majority, preferably super-majority, of the White population spinning off the non-White races into a separate country while keeping the greater part of the country. This is the White repossession Wilmot Robertson referred to by the Latin term “instauration.” In the April, 1976 issue of Instauration he coined the phrase “National Premise” to describe the partition concept in its sufficient solution form. An example of the “National Premise” partition concept can be seen in the map of my third (2020) proposal in Figure 11.

Figure 11: Map of the Third McCulloch Partition Proposal (2020)

In this proposal there would be a three-way partition into:

1. A White American nation with a contiguous area of 2,225,841 square miles, 75.1% of the “lower 48” area of 2,962,031 square miles for the racial group that was 81.1% of the population in 1970, i.e., at the beginning of the massive non-White immigration promoted by the Anti-White Coalition. Alaska would be retained by the White nation. Hawaii would be divided, with the White nation retaining the 597 square mile island of Oahu as a White state — to secure the lines of communication across the Pacific to Australia and New Zealand — and the 4,028 square mile “Big Island” of Hawaii as a place for non-Whites after the partition. The other islands (Maui, Kauai, Molokai, Lanai, etc.), totaling 6,306 square miles, would be an autonomous, and possibly independent, state for the native Hawaiians and other Polynesians. The White American nation would be the continuation of the historic American nation with the national capital and all of the original pre-1803 territory, and most of the post-1803 territory, where circa 82.5% of the White population already live.
2. An Amerindian nation with an area of 66,798 square miles.
3. A non-White multiracial nation with an area of 669,392 square miles, making it the seventeenth largest country in the world at 3.19 times the size of France. It would be assigned all non-Whites, which would include all mixed-race or multiracial persons who are part-White but who are outside of the normal European phenotypic range. White Hispanics who identify as Hispanic rather than White could choose to live with the non-White Hispanics in the multiracial nation. White parents and grandparents of non-White children (including part-White mixed-race children, of whom over 14 million were born in the half-century 1970–2020), and White spouses of non-Whites, would be permitted, but not required, to live with their children and spouses in the multiracial nation. Other Non-Hispanic Whites who might prefer to live in the multiracial nation could make their own arrangements to do so dependent on the multiracial nation’s consent.

This plan would require the relocation of circa 131.2 million people — 34 million or 17.5% of Whites and 97.2 million or 61.4% of non-Whites — and their personal property (see details in Appendix). As large as these numbers are, in a previous essay I calculated that the transportation logistics of relocating 150 million people and their personal property in a time frame as short as a year is feasible.

One of my long-standing principles of racial partition^[18], applied in my first two partition proposals (1983 and 1989), has been that the partition allow no multiracial states on the grounds that a multiracial state is not a legitimate racial entity and therefore should have no standing in a plan for racial partition. My primary concern behind this principle was not that the non-White groups would be united in a multiracial state, but that allowing a multiracial state would be misused to justify the retention of most of the country’s White population and territory in a multiracial state that would divide the White race and be the primary successor and continuation of the United States (e.g., Michael Hart’s proposal discussed above). A secondary reason was the assumption that each of the non-White races would prefer to have separate monoracial countries like the White population and that fair and equal treatment should accommodate this. Except for the aboriginal Amerindian population, for which I continue to propose a separate country of their own, I now think this assumption may be incorrect — essentially a projection of White racial interests onto non-White populations which they may not really share. Non-White groups have always supported multiracialism, and those who immigrated to the United States voluntarily did so knowing it was not a racial state for them and with no expectation it ever would be, and certainly those who immigrated after 1965 knew they were coming to a multiracial country. It therefore seems more likely they would prefer to be joined into a large multiracial state that would be a major country at the world level by every measure.

If the Black and/or Hispanic populations preferred separate states for themselves they could sub-partition the territory of the multiracial nation into separate racial states, possibly along the lines of my second (1989) proposal, following the white lines on the map with the Black nation allotted the circa 252,200 square mile territory north of the Colorado river and east of the New Mexico border, the Hispanic nation the 199,000 square mile area south of the Colorado river and as far west as the Arizona border, and a multiracial nation for Semi and Non-European Caucasians and the various Asian racial groups in the remaining 218,192 square miles. In this arrangement visibly part-White persons would be assigned to the nation of the majority of their non-White ancestry.

This proposal aims to attract maximum White support consistent with the goal of racial separation and independence while avoiding non-existential and potentially divisive issues. Territorially this means retaining most of the country, and especially the areas that are the more historically and culturally significant and where the great majority of Whites live. Ideologically and politically, this means that, other than as required for the purpose of racial preservation, there should be no changes to the American constitutional system until after the completion of the partition, when any proposed changes to their country would be decided by the newly all-White population consistent with its sovereign prerogatives.

Appendix: The Logistical Scale of Population Transfer

In 2020 the U.S. non-White population was 135.8 million. Add to this the 8.2 million non-Whites in Canada (7.7 million “visible”) and the North American non-White population totaled 144 million. Add to this the 49 million non-Whites in Europe (43 million in northwestern Europe, 2.5 million in Italy, 1.5 million in Spain not counting Hispanic non-Whites from Latin America, 2 million elsewhere) and 3.2 million non-indigenous non-Whites in Australia and there are at least 196.2 million non-Whites to be geographically and politically separated from Whites for a complete and sufficient solution that would fully secure White racial preservation and independence. The 4.3 million indigenous Amerindians would have their own separate nation, leaving 191.9 million non-Whites for the multiracial nation. Many of the postwar immigrant non-Whites, including many Hispanics and Asians in the U.S. and many Turks and Arabs in Europe, are still citizens of their countries of origin, or dual citizens, and even vote in its elections. Many others still have strong family connections in the “old country.” It might be presumed that they would have the option to return there if they chose to do so. How many have this option, and how many of them would choose to exercise it rather than resettle in a new non-White country? It could be ten million or more among the non-Whites in Europe, and twenty million or more in North America and Australia. If 20 million non-Whites (e.g., 12 million from the U.S., 6 million from Europe and 2 million from Canada and Australia) with the option to return to their original countries chose to do so, 18 million White parents, grandparents and spouses of non-Whites (circa 15 million from the U.S.) chose to live with their relations in the multiracial nation, and 3 million White Hispanics chose to live there with the non-White Hispanics, it would have a population of 192.9 million, with about 137.5 million of this total from the United States.

In 2020 the U.S. White population was 194.9 million, including 9 million Hispanic European Whites. Per the same scenario as the previous paragraph, if 15 million White parents, grandparents and spouses of non-Whites chose to live with their relations in the multiracial nation, and 3 million White Hispanics chose to live there also with the non-Hispanic Whites, the White American nation would have a post-partition population of 176.9 million.

About 34 million European Whites (including Hispanic European Whites), or about 17.5 percent of the total European White population of circa 194.9 million (including Hispanic European Whites), and about 38.6 million non-Whites, or about 28.4% of the total non-White population of circa 135.8 million, currently reside in the area designated for the multiracial and Amerindian nations.

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[1] David Reich, Who We Are and How We got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past (New York: Vintage Books, 2019), 229.

[2] Rabbi Mark Winer, “An Unbreakable Alliance: African-Americans and Jews,” Sun Sentinel, October 5, 2020 https://www.sun-sentinel.com/florida-jewish-journal/opinion/fl-jj-opinion-winer-unbreakable-alliance-african-americans-jews-20201005-4nmwxdxqtne2bowttok4xpojda-story.html

[3] Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: the Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, Vol. 1 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1944), 167.

[4] Ruth Benedict and Gene Weltfish, The Races of Mankind, Public Affairs Pamphlet no. 85, 3^rd ed. (New York: Public Affairs Committee, Inc., 1961), 11.

[5] Katarzyna Bryc, Eric Y. Durand, et.al., The Genetic Ancestry of African Americans, Latinos, and European Americans across the United States, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4289685/

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Weltfish

[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFZf_QGYCkM

[8] Phineas Eleazar, “Interracial Marriage & White Genocide,” Counter-Currents, December 6, 2019.  https://www.counter-currents.com/2019/12/interracial-marriage-white-genocide/#more-113519

[9] Richard McCulloch, “Confronting Our Genocide,” The Occidental Quarterly, vol. 18, no. 4 (Winter 2018—2019) 56.

[10] Ibid, 57.

[11] Ibid, 46.

[12] Richard McCulloch, “The Ethnic Gap,” The Occidental Quarterly, vol. 1, no. 1 (Fall, 2001) 82 and 87.

[13] “In narratology and comparative mythology, the hero’s journey, or the monomyth, is the common template of stories that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed or transformed.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero’s_journey

[14] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_population_by_country

[15] Kevin MacDonald, Separation and its Discontents (Westport: Praeger Publishers, 1998), 268.

[16] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mvXthKTmJE

[17] Abraham Lincoln, “Remarks on Colonization to African-American Leaders,” August 14, 1862.  http://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/40448

[18] Richard McCulloch, “Separate or Die,” The Occidental Quarterly vol. 8, no. 4 (Winter 2009) 15-38, and Richard McCulloch, “Visions of the Ethnostate,” The Occidental Quarterly vol. 18, no. 3 (Fall 2018) 29-46.