The rise of Donald Trump is a good excuse to discover or rediscover one his most intelligent supporters, himself a former candidate for Republican leadership, Pat Buchanan. He has now become an unapologetic cheerleader of Donald Trump, defending with arguments and brains what Trump is yelling with a populist tone, thus giving an intellectual stature to the one the media portray as Donald Dumb.
It is always hard to pinpoint the best text to read and analyze when trying to understand someone who has written a dozen books and countless articles. The choice is subjective and might be misleading, but the New York Times bestseller The Death of the West sparked my interest. How could a book with such a Spenglerian title become so popular? And how could a book said to be that politically incorrect get such high rankings and recognition? I then decided that this would be the book I would read to better understand the American politician so often quoted by Guillaume Faye and other New Rightists.
The first impression while reading this book is that it was not written by a politician, but by a devout Catholic. Even though most references are about “Christians” and not specifically about “Catholics”, The Death of the West is a deeply Catholic work and could have very well been written by a pre-Vatican II priest. Indeed, while he often labels himself a “Conservative” – I will come back on that term later – he also calls himself a Traditionalist, a term that can be understood not in reference to Evola but to pre-Vatican II Catholicism. All of his doctrine is based on the social teachings of the popes. He encourages the implementation of the social church doctrine, which means the implementation of corporatism, exactly as in Fascist Italy. He does not mention corporatism openly, but he does mention the papal bulls that promote it as good examples of what should be done. Is Buchanan ignorant of the corporatist aspects of these bulls? Highly improbable!
Now, Pat Buchanan is probably the most lucid mainstream politician the US has had over the last few decades. Unlike many on the “Right,” he does understand political correctness and the social changes that brought it about.
Unlike many pro-lifers, he understands that it is not the legality of contraception and abortion after WWII that explain their popularity and why the birthrates declined. Countries where abortions were just legalized still suffered from low birthrates for decades. What caused the beginning of what Buchanan rightfully labels the “autogenocide” of Western Peoples was a cultural shift when the Boomers got into college in the 60s. Indoctrinated by TV and a hedonistic pop culture, they wanted to free themselves from their parents’ and teachers’ yoke. They wanted to overturn authority.
These rebellious and radical students eventually got into society and managed to take the reins of the media and academic world, thus making their ideology the new dominant culture.
It is the cultural revolution that has changed the mindset of Catholic and other Christian women who used to have large families. With a sexual revolution where women tried to emulate the worst aspects of man’s sexuality, to paraphrase Daniel Friberg, with the new priorities being comfort, career and pleasure, many now considered families as a burden. The nuclear family was then replaced by the non-family and the demographics of Western nations took a dramatic turn. The decline of birthrates, coupled with mass immigration, is a threat for the Western Peoples. If the term Great Replacement coined by Renaud Camus had been known, he would have used it without a doubt.
The cultural revolution mentioned earlier had other effects like the perversion of history and the rise of a new religion, a new faith in which the White man is the devil. History was revisited and the White race was judged for its past sins, both exaggerated and fantasized. History courses became courts where Whites were judged for their past sexism, racism, colonialism, and imperialism. Parallel to that, claims of reparation and apologies based on “White guilt” came to be the norm, and as he rightfully points out, even the Church is turning against itself, willfully playing this sick game.
Heroes of yesterday like Columbus and Washington are vilified. Confederates and everything related to Southern independence is demonized. History is being perverted and rewritten, some parts being simply erased. This is not very different from what the radical Moslems are doing with monuments that are not compatible with Islamic doctrine.
All of this had as a consequence the demographic decline of European peoples, while Third World country populations continued to soar. Already in 2002 when Buchanan published his book, he was predicting a Camp of the Saints scenario! How much truer today with the millions of “migrants” pouring into Europe!
He goes on and predicts more Islamic terrorist attacks and the inability of Europeans to react. For the author, Europe is a dead man walking; a harsh but so true statement. Because of that lack of will, the United States should stop defending a continent that has stopped defending itself. If this logic is flawed, it is still based on an erroneous assertion, namely that America is defending Europe, a statement no one outside the US takes seriously.
But overall, Buchanan, like Donald Trump, is thinking of an America First foreign policy, where the United States would defend itself and its interests but would not play the world’s police, a strategy that has done more harm than good. The US has been invading the rest of the world but has not even been able to secure its southern borders, through which millions of Mexicans have invaded the States. Crossing both legally and illegally, these “immigrants,”who do not wish to assimilate in any way or to adapt, impose their own customs and traditions and act as new conquerors, even talking about annexing some parts of the US in a Greater Mexico.
So, what to do now? Like Peter Brimelow and Jared Taylor, Buchanan believes the GOP is implicitly the party of Whites, the Democrats having lost the support of the majority of White Americans since the 60’s. Only, with the dramatic demographic changes taking place, the Republican Party might lose any possibility of getting the White House back. So for him, the GOP, despite actually supporting the demographic changes serving to marginalise it, is a solution to the current problems America is facing.
This, of course, seems naïve at best, especially as he is fully aware that many conservatives have totally left metapolitics to focus almost entirely on economics. Even worse, those who don't think solely in economic terms have adopted a purely defensive posture and fail to attack on the cultural level.
This is probably the major flaw in Buchanan’s thinking: that conservatism is part of the solution. He envisions a flag waving movement of conservatives who dream of a world not too much unlike the world of the pre-60s, and totally fails to see that this pre-60s world lead to the 60s and so on.
Conservatism will always be on the losing side of things; the best it can do is slow down the changes proposed by the Left. Each concession from the conservatives leads to a new battleground that the conservatives then have to defend. And this permanent shift can only slow down the movement of the Left.
To exemplify this, we can look at gay rights in Canada. In the 60s conservatives struggled against the legalization of homosexuality. In the 90’s the conservatives unanimously agreed that homosexuality should be legal, but opposed gay marriage and adoption. Now, they agree on gay marriage but want to keep “trans” promotion away from schools. In less than ten years, conservatives will defend “trans” education and will struggle against a new lunacy proposed by the always moving forward Liberals.
So, Pat Buchanan calls for conservatives and Christians – clearly avoiding an explicit call to Whites – to get into the cultural battle. But what is he really advocating? Many policies he proposes do make sense and would improve society, but after reading the long list of measures he advocates one has the impression that he wants a color blind society based on the principles laid down by the founding fathers, who of course did not need to specify race as America's Whiteness was implicit.
Unfortunately this has not helped America to avoid the current turmoil; half measures simply will not do. His assessment of the current situation is perfect; the problem is that he is unable to avoid the political correctness himself when proposing an alternative.
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It is always hard to pinpoint the best text to read and analyze when trying to understand someone who has written a dozen books and countless articles. The choice is subjective and might be misleading, but the New York Times bestseller The Death of the West sparked my interest. How could a book with such a Spenglerian title become so popular? And how could a book said to be that politically incorrect get such high rankings and recognition? I then decided that this would be the book I would read to better understand the American politician so often quoted by Guillaume Faye and other New Rightists.
The first impression while reading this book is that it was not written by a politician, but by a devout Catholic. Even though most references are about “Christians” and not specifically about “Catholics”, The Death of the West is a deeply Catholic work and could have very well been written by a pre-Vatican II priest. Indeed, while he often labels himself a “Conservative” – I will come back on that term later – he also calls himself a Traditionalist, a term that can be understood not in reference to Evola but to pre-Vatican II Catholicism. All of his doctrine is based on the social teachings of the popes. He encourages the implementation of the social church doctrine, which means the implementation of corporatism, exactly as in Fascist Italy. He does not mention corporatism openly, but he does mention the papal bulls that promote it as good examples of what should be done. Is Buchanan ignorant of the corporatist aspects of these bulls? Highly improbable!
Now, Pat Buchanan is probably the most lucid mainstream politician the US has had over the last few decades. Unlike many on the “Right,” he does understand political correctness and the social changes that brought it about.
 |
| Buchanan: faith in providence? |
These rebellious and radical students eventually got into society and managed to take the reins of the media and academic world, thus making their ideology the new dominant culture.
It is the cultural revolution that has changed the mindset of Catholic and other Christian women who used to have large families. With a sexual revolution where women tried to emulate the worst aspects of man’s sexuality, to paraphrase Daniel Friberg, with the new priorities being comfort, career and pleasure, many now considered families as a burden. The nuclear family was then replaced by the non-family and the demographics of Western nations took a dramatic turn. The decline of birthrates, coupled with mass immigration, is a threat for the Western Peoples. If the term Great Replacement coined by Renaud Camus had been known, he would have used it without a doubt.
The cultural revolution mentioned earlier had other effects like the perversion of history and the rise of a new religion, a new faith in which the White man is the devil. History was revisited and the White race was judged for its past sins, both exaggerated and fantasized. History courses became courts where Whites were judged for their past sexism, racism, colonialism, and imperialism. Parallel to that, claims of reparation and apologies based on “White guilt” came to be the norm, and as he rightfully points out, even the Church is turning against itself, willfully playing this sick game.
Heroes of yesterday like Columbus and Washington are vilified. Confederates and everything related to Southern independence is demonized. History is being perverted and rewritten, some parts being simply erased. This is not very different from what the radical Moslems are doing with monuments that are not compatible with Islamic doctrine.
All of this had as a consequence the demographic decline of European peoples, while Third World country populations continued to soar. Already in 2002 when Buchanan published his book, he was predicting a Camp of the Saints scenario! How much truer today with the millions of “migrants” pouring into Europe!
 |
| "Hello, Europe!" |
But overall, Buchanan, like Donald Trump, is thinking of an America First foreign policy, where the United States would defend itself and its interests but would not play the world’s police, a strategy that has done more harm than good. The US has been invading the rest of the world but has not even been able to secure its southern borders, through which millions of Mexicans have invaded the States. Crossing both legally and illegally, these “immigrants,”who do not wish to assimilate in any way or to adapt, impose their own customs and traditions and act as new conquerors, even talking about annexing some parts of the US in a Greater Mexico.
So, what to do now? Like Peter Brimelow and Jared Taylor, Buchanan believes the GOP is implicitly the party of Whites, the Democrats having lost the support of the majority of White Americans since the 60’s. Only, with the dramatic demographic changes taking place, the Republican Party might lose any possibility of getting the White House back. So for him, the GOP, despite actually supporting the demographic changes serving to marginalise it, is a solution to the current problems America is facing.
This, of course, seems naïve at best, especially as he is fully aware that many conservatives have totally left metapolitics to focus almost entirely on economics. Even worse, those who don't think solely in economic terms have adopted a purely defensive posture and fail to attack on the cultural level.
This is probably the major flaw in Buchanan’s thinking: that conservatism is part of the solution. He envisions a flag waving movement of conservatives who dream of a world not too much unlike the world of the pre-60s, and totally fails to see that this pre-60s world lead to the 60s and so on.
Conservatism will always be on the losing side of things; the best it can do is slow down the changes proposed by the Left. Each concession from the conservatives leads to a new battleground that the conservatives then have to defend. And this permanent shift can only slow down the movement of the Left.
 |
| Traditional conservativism. |
So, Pat Buchanan calls for conservatives and Christians – clearly avoiding an explicit call to Whites – to get into the cultural battle. But what is he really advocating? Many policies he proposes do make sense and would improve society, but after reading the long list of measures he advocates one has the impression that he wants a color blind society based on the principles laid down by the founding fathers, who of course did not need to specify race as America's Whiteness was implicit.
Unfortunately this has not helped America to avoid the current turmoil; half measures simply will not do. His assessment of the current situation is perfect; the problem is that he is unable to avoid the political correctness himself when proposing an alternative.
Become a Patron!
