Adapted from remarks given at the 20th American Renaissance conference, August 12, 2023.

On the surface, the last few years in American politics have been dramatic. We’ve witnessed the rise of the Alt-Right, the counter-revolution of 2020, the most destructive riots in American history, and a storm of destruction of American heroes, monuments, and culture, including some that weren’t even controversial until a few years ago.

Some social movements, notably “trans kids,� have gone from paranoid right-wing conspiracy theory to a legal reason to take your child away in California. Free speech has gone from an unquestioned social norm — something that defined America — to something that only the far right believes in. And while the federal government itself has condemned the so-called Great Replacement theory, The Hill cheered just a few days ago that America’s white majority is aging out.

We’ve seen people who speak at this conference go from marginal, unknown figures to the center of American politics, and back. We’ve seen some of our most militant activists surrender, renounce everything they’ve ever believed, and beg for mercy. We’ve seen other figures — some who you wouldn’t even think were political — put themselves at the center of controversial racial battles and essentially light themselves on fire. Who would have thought that the Dilbert cartoonist would, for a brief time, be the most prominent person in the country bemoaning black-on-white crime? On social media, we often hear from both sides about civil war, national divorce, secession, or other ideas that were once unthinkable.

And yet, on another level, nothing has changed.

In fact, politics looks boring. The presidential election will probably be a rematch of Joe Biden and Donald Trump. The brief promise of the American Right being transformed seems to have retreated. The Left doesn’t look much better. The idealism you once saw from candidates such as Bernie Sanders, or even the revolutionary ideals that some may have held in 2020, have become robotic hectoring from reporters and diversity commissars.

There is a sense that we’ve said everything there is to say particularly on race. I want to quote something Rep. Cori Bush, a black Congressman, said a few days ago about Michael Brown. Brown died nine years ago, and it was his death that started the Black Lives Matter movement. Cori Bush said, “He would be alive today if the institutions of racism and white supremacy were eradicated.� Set aside whatever it would mean to eradicate the “institutions� of white supremacy. We all know “hands up, don’t shoot� was a lie. We all know Brown tried to take away an officer’s weapon and was charging him when he was killed.

Yet none of this matters. We can’t even say it was covered up by the media. The media reported it all accurately. It was Eric Holder’s Justice Department that found out the truth. However, people still believe nonsense, and even if the truth comes from an unimpeachably liberal source, they will keep believing it. BLM rhetoric hasn’t changed in nine years, and the movement has ever more support from the Great and the Good.

I think this is why there’s a sense of exhaustion. Race has become the center of the American political debate. The fight against racism has become the way the ruling system legitimizes itself. It always comes back to race and yet we aren’t allowed to talk honestly about it. Thus, no progress is possible, and no problems are solved. Every institution has to bend the knee to diversity, inclusion, and equity.

Headlines become increasingly absurd.

• “Hate crime experts to rule whether the English countryside is harboring rural racism.â€�
• “The colorful world of birding has a conspicuous lack of people of color.â€�
• “English cricket is racist, sexist, and elitist says landmark paper.â€�

Who could have imagined that when you bring in “experts� on race to decide whether something is “racist,� they would find that it’s racist? Guess what the cure is? Give them money to monitor the problem.

This is happening to the institutions that once defined Western Civilization. Heather Mac Donald wrote in her book When Race Trumps Merit that museums, schools, music conservatories, and other elite institutions are now working to deconstruct and abolish their own existence. They say that they are dominated by racism. Staff are essentially apologizing for their own lives and for working as part of a system of evil.

This tells us a lot about how democracy works. In theory, in a democracy, we discuss ideas and eventually find the best one. We then take a vote, and agree to abide by the result. We all celebrate that we are all in this together.

That’s not how it works.

It seems that democracy is the most effective system for making sure the people don’t get what they want. We heard from Keith Woods that the Irish people are overwhelmingly opposed to the mass immigration that is swamping them. However, in a democratic system, this fact has no importance.

Increasingly, democracy takes on a formal tone. It has become Our Democracy, capital O, capital D. We begin to sense that it is a closed system, in which rulers shape the population and condition it to support, or at least tolerate, the policies rulers want. The best way to do this is to turn the population into a collection of victim groups, or what our system calls “Communities.� If that doesn’t work, you can always import a new population, which is what the Great Replacement is all about. Public opinion is dictated — an effect and not a cause. If public opinion doesn’t match what the rulers want, they ignore it.

The United States Congress was recently debating whether The Great Replacement was a white supremacist conspiracy theory. Yet the press keeps cheering it on. Maybe it is a conspiracy theory, maybe it isn’t, maybe it just depends on who talks about it. Whatever the case, it’s happening. In fact, it seems to be one of the main things the current system exists to do.

The goal of power is power — in all systems. Christopher Caldwell, a mainstream conservative, argued in The Age of Entitlement that the Civil Rights Act essentially replaced the American constitutional order because it lets you pass whatever laws you like. You can boss around any business or public institution. You can change election laws if the groups you like don’t have enough power. Now, with transgenderism, you can even break open the family and start taking children away in the name of individual liberation.

Democracy is often justified in the name of liberation, but it has become a system of unlimited government, where bureaucrats supervise social relations. They must regulate and monitor speech because the wrong words could be “unsafe.� Our rulers seem far less worried about actual violence.

Perhaps the best way to explain democracy in theory and in practice is with what Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said in her dissent in the recent case about affirmative action. This decision did not actually abolish affirmative action. It left a big loophole for claims of racial victimhood that will give a boost to non-whites. Still, the headline was that it would get rid of affirmative action, and she was angry about this. I quote from her dissent.

Gulf-sized race-based gaps exist with respect to the health, wealth, and well-being of American citizens. They were created in the distant past, but have indisputably been passed down to the present day through the generations. Every moment these gaps persist is a moment in which this great country falls short of actualizing one of its foundational principles — the “self-evident� truth that all of us are created equal.

Let’s call that the theory of egalitarian liberal democracy. Now, for the practice, I quote:

The only way out of this morass — for all of us — is to stare at racial disparity unblinkingly, and then do what evidence and experts tell us is required to level the playing field and march forward together, collectively striving to achieve true equality for all Americans.

Of course, this would be a good idea if we chose the experts and assembled the evidence. She doesn’t mean that. Under this theory, some “experts� come along, tell you what to do, you shut up and “march forward� towards an impossible goal. Apparently, this just goes on forever and this is your life.

Any kind of national existence where this is your purpose lacks both law in the proper sense and freedom in any sense. It’s also the Sisyphean task of pushing the boulder up and letting it roll back. It lacks even the self-awareness of the myth, because instead of acknowledging our doom, we must insist that this is the highest aspiration of mankind.

Liberals deceive themselves when it comes to race. A 2018 study found that white liberals talk down to blacks, use simpler language. They talk to them as if they are talking to children. White conservatives don’t. White liberals seem more aware of racial differences.

At the same time, we know that white liberals have a negative bias against their own race. According to data assembled in 2020 by Zack Goldberg, they actually think whites are dumber, lazier, and more violent than blacks. He points out that if you believed in racial equality, you wouldn’t say such things. A true egalitarian would dismiss all racial stereotypes and say all groups are equal. Instead, white liberals seem to believe in racial hierarchy, but they associate all negative things with whites. To complicate this picture further, a study from the author of Whiteshift, Eric Kaufman, finds white liberals can act like race realists. A study called “White flight from immigration?� found that “whites — whatever their ideology — choose significantly less diverse neighborhoods from nonwhites.�

We can’t just say white liberals are hypocrites. They seem to believe the things they say. Perhaps they act subconsciously.

Part of it comes down to seeking power, especially power over people you don’t like. A recent study from Current Psychology found a link between left-wing authoritarianism and narcissism and psychopathic behavior. Such people are “attracted to certain forms of political and social activism which they can use as a vehicle to satisfy their own ego-focused needs instead of actually aiming at social justice and equality.�

We may live under a left-wing authoritarian system. Thus, if you thrill to pushing people around, you are going to adopt the ideology that lets you do that. Whatever people may think about us, we race realists don’t have much of an opportunity to abuse power over others. However, when we look at the history of leftism, we see that egalitarianism lets people who want to push other people around do it and feel good about themselves.

There is no escape from this. Consider education. You may have seen that New York City paid $1.8 billion to teachers and would-be teachers precisely because they failed a test. Too many white people passed the test and too many non-whites failed. In our system, those who fail cash in.

Amazingly, if you subsidize incompetence, you get more of it. Just 14 percent of blacks and 15 percent of Hispanics were proficient in fourth grade math in recent tests. That’s a decline from 2019 and it wasn’t much better then. Nationally, about 85 percent of black students are not proficient in math or reading. In Baltimore, in 23 schools, not a single student was proficient in math. Naturally, in at least one article, the author blamed a lack of money because we don’t pay for the students’ food as well as education.

Yet many of the nation’s top prep schools worship Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Whatever problems education has will get worse.

Consider housing. Under the Obama Administration, the government pushed something called Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH). This let cities such as Chicago outsource Section 8 housing to other places. The Trump Administration scrapped it, but now the Biden Administration is back, insisting that communities must develop “equity plans.� These would open up resources to everyone, even those who don’t live there. Steve Sailer has humorously said that “equity,� to most Americans, means how much of their houses they actually own. That won’t be worth much if the federal government puts in Section 8 housing next door.

California is considering a bill that would require judges to consider race to reduce sentencing disparities. This would help “criminalized� populations. After all, people don’t commit crimes, they are “criminalized.� “Black bodies� don’t have agency. They simply exist until repressive systems do things to do them. Our job is to restrain these repressive systems from harming “marginalized populations.� Sometimes, there may be crimes, which if unfortunate, but we certainly can’t punish the “marginalized,� who have been punished enough already. Instead, let’s think about “root causes� and pursue “restorative justice.�

In Oakland, an anarchist and anti-fascist activist — a woman — was robbed and killed. She fought for her property in her final moments, but I won’t draw too grand a conclusion from that. In any event, her friends issued a statement calling for her killer not to go to prison. That attitude is apparently common in Oakland. No wonder it is becoming a jungle.

Contrast this to El Salvador, where President Nayib Bukele cut crime dramatically when he threw the gangs in prison. The Guardian was very upset about this, saying he hadn’t addressed the so-called root causes of the crime, including “poverty, inequality, and discrimination.� I’d argue that the results show these are not the root causes of crime. More than this, I don’t think The Guardian really believes they are. If you say El Salvador’s approach to crime is ineffective and what we really need is “restorative justice,� I don’t believe you. If you look at the results and continue to believe in “restorative justice,� that is worse. A deliberate refusal to understand is a moral offense. There does come a point where willful stupidity is a crime.

Consider health. More than 50 municipalities and three states say racism is a public health crisis. Nonetheless, overall life expectancy is declining in the United States. Suicides hit an all-time high last year. The adult obesity rate is now about 42 percent.

I don’t think anyone in power cares about these problems. There’s no money to be made trying to persuade old white men not to shoot themselves. If we understand that the object of power is power, we understand why no one cares.

If you find a problem in a therapeutic-state mass democracy, you get money and power to manage the problem. If the problem goes away, so does money, influence, and sense of righteousness. If we don’t have problems, government, “NGOs,� journalists, and academics have reasons to make them up. The more victim categories, the more problems and therefore the more money and power.

In George Orwell’s 1984, the wars Oceania fights are not meant to be won. They are meant to uphold the social order. Similarly, I don’t think the problems we have are meant to be solved. This is especially true of “racism� — a fake problem — and the fight for “equality,� an impossible, nonsensical goal. They justify an ever-expanding bureaucracy and social engineering. Perhaps instead of arguing with people that their programs are ineffective or that they are actually hurting the people they say they want to help, we should view this in terms of power.

Are we supposed to be surprised when those at the top invent justifications for their positions? Every ruling class in history had its excuse. Rulers usually and conveniently materially benefit from these rationalizations. We are under no moral obligation to take them seriously, particularly when the underlying theory, racial egalitarianism, is false. The evidence is so overwhelming that it’s false that calling our rulers liars may by charitable. The alternative is ignorance of astonishing magnitude.

Immigration is probably the greatest example of bad-faith social engineering. We are constantly told we need more immigrants of all kinds. Yet white South Africans are not welcome in the West. In fact, in Canada, white South Africans were denied refugee status and then shamed for applying. In contrast, NGOs, many of which are well paid by governments for their efforts, are eager to bring people from all over the world into Europe and the United States. The justifications are often nonsense.

Let’s think about El Salvador again. The Biden Administration recently extended protected status for so-called refugees from “unsafe� countries to stay in the United States, including El Salvador. Why is El Salvador unsafe? High crime. Yet the State Department is also upset with El Salvador’s crime-fighting efforts. Something tells me that no one in power is actually worried about crime in El Salvador or believes it is too unsafe for people to go back.

In this and other cases, it’s precisely because migration causes more problems to be managed that advocates want more migrants.

You may think you can run away but you can’t. Education, housing, law — we must deal with them every day, and our new racial religion poisons them all. It also infects even the most personal issues. A white man, quite wealthy, was hit from beyond the grave by his own daughter at his eulogy. She called him a “racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, Trump-loving, cis, straight white man.�

It would have been better for him if he had he not also been a miscegenator.

His daughter accused him of insulting “entire communities.� Whenever we hear this word, we know there is no real community, just groups of dependents with bureaucratic labels constantly demanding handouts.

How quickly language changes! Bums and derelicts have been gone for years, but suddenly the homeless are now the “unhoused.� No one has an obligation to pay rent. People just have things done to them. What are “vulnerable populations?� The groups that you must worry about robbing you when you walk home from a filthy subway in a crumbling city. Who are the “disenfranchised� and “marginalized?� The groups that people fake their identity to belong to, to get the special privileges denied to whites.

President Joe Biden recently brought up Emmett Till. It was certainly wrong to kill him, but that was in 1955, not exactly breaking news. Far more recent and common black-on-white crimes are beneath his notice. One can’t help but suspect the President’s motives, constantly bringing up a racial wound, as if to further divide an already divided society. If you were in a relationship with someone who kept bringing up something bad that happened decades ago, and refused to see his own errors, you would call it off. America’s forced multiracial marriage needs a divorce.

What happens when one of the Left’s pets does something? A transgender shooter attacked a Christian school in Nashville, even killing children. It was the result of a myth, newly invented, that told so-called transgenders they face “genocide.� It’s not surprising someone fought back.

One might say I shouldn’t say that, that speech and action are two different things. However, we are constantly accused of “radicalizing� whites by telling the truth about race. What was the media reaction to this shooter? Was there any self-examination? No, there was sympathy for the killer.

• “The right exploits Nashville shooting to escalate anti-trans rhetoric,â€� Washington Post, March 30, 2023
• “Nashville school shooting: Trans community fears backlash after attack by Audrey Hale,â€� Sky News, March 29, 2023
• “After school shooting, some trans Tennesseans face backlash,â€� Reuters, March 31, 2023

MSNBC declared, “Research shows mass shooters often experience trauma and deep levels of social rejection and bullying, conditions that far-right rhetoric reinforce.� What happened in Tennessee, an overwhelmingly Republican state? It tried to pass more gun control. That’s how morally uncertain and beaten down Republicans are.

I’m reminded of the joke from the late Norm MacDonald. Imagine if ISIS set off a nuclear weapon in an American city — and the horrible backlash there would be against peaceful Muslims.

Consider the status of someone who actually has to live with the consequences of egalitarianism. What’s more low status than living in a place like Selma? What could be more low status than using the public schools in Baltimore? It’s increasingly embarrassing to rely on public transportation.

The Left seems to defend its failures by calling them signs of vibrancy and authenticity. The Soviet Union called subways “Cathedrals of the People,� something to ennoble the common man. The filth, squalor, and crime of our subways almost seem meant to taunt conservative whites who are so unfashionable as to be disgusted by then. The arrest of Daniel Penny — the man who restrained and unintentionally killed a crazy black man on the subway — is a powerful indication of how far the System is willing to go to defend its failures.

There’s even a kind of sick racial martyrdom whites sometimes seek. How better to prove your dedication than to lose your own child to a Hispanic murderer and say at her funeral that Mexicans have better food than we do?

What justifies this system? Why should we go along with it? What gives our rulers authority? The God they don’t believe in, the Constitution they ignore, the national history they despise, the rule of law that’s a sick joke, the masses they are desperate to escape? The only thing we face is power. I will do what you say only if you point a gun to my head. I think a lot of Americans feel that way. We are submitting to force with no righteousness behind it, or even the pretense of righteousness.

We’ve spoken a lot this weekend about the need for a new political theory to respond to liberalism. Perhaps it will be Identitarianism. It has three pillars. First, the “Machiavellian� political tradition, best explained by James Burnham and Sam Francis. Second, a biological understanding of human behavior, emphasizing evolution and the reality of human inequality. Third, a Traditional view of spirituality, because we are not just animals.

In the end, it’s not about “the elite,� or even about overcoming power. A materialist, cynical view does not motivate men. It’s not about them. It’s about us and the way we respond to what we face.

We don’t even face a real political movement so much as a spirit of entropy and chaos. You get status in America by achieving maximum hypocrisy and living in a way that defies the commandments of equity. What makes life worth living for all people has nothing to do with “equality� — pride in your work, your children, your family. Judging from the way our rulers live, they agree with me. If hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, the lives of our rulers are the tribute liberals pay to white nationalism. So why do we continue to go along with this?

The trans movement is more entropy and chaos. Our rulers tell people they were born wrong, born disordered, born broken. This is about the evilest thing one can do to a child, and increasingly, people understand this. Yet isn’t this what they’ve been telling whites for 50 years at least? Haven’t we been told that we are born guilty and that there is nothing we can do about it? Refusing to believe we were born guilty is the very definition of “white fragility.� This is a psychological prison. Heather Mac Donald noted that this may be one of the reasons so many white children kill themselves. Why shouldn’t you kill yourself when every institution in society is telling you you are scum?

Everything that is great in this society is being enjoyed by the people who tell us nothing is great. Everything that reminds us of better times is claimed by those who say there were no better times. The lust for hierarchy is most fanatically pursued by those who say there must be no hierarchy. All of American life revolves around earning enough money to escape the consequences of the civil rights movement. It’s one giant intelligence test of avoiding legal traps, escaping compromised institutions, and denying even to yourself what you are actually doing. The system is creating a nation of sniveling cowards. I won’t accept it.

Rejecting this is a moral imperative if you are human. If you are capable of choice, it is a choice you must make. This challenge is thrown down at our feet not as Christians, not as conservatives, not even as Americans, but as whites. We must meet that challenge as whites. This whole rotten past century of fratricide and egalitarian poison will be redeemed if for once in our long and glorious but frustrating history we can unite as a people, perhaps even as a new people.

We should be permanently dedicated to that spirit of overcoming and greatness, reaching forward to that world of health, fulfillment, and flourishing that so many people have in their hearts and want so badly. We must lead the way, especially we whites at the center of a rotten American empire that has spread so much poison throughout the world. If we can step forward as whites and claim our birthright, build a state explicitly dedicated to our survival and development, all will have been worthwhile.

When you see how rotten our so-called elite really are, how hypocritical they are, this system, even at its summit, offers you nothing. The alternative is obvious.

Of course, I’m a white nationalist!

Why aren’t you?