WHY I AM NOT A WHITE NATIONALIST

"Snowflake" 

by Jack Donovan

I am not a White Nationalist.

I’m just not a spineless cuck who pisses his pants every time someone calls him a racist on Facebook. And I don’t let people who I have no respect for tell me who I’m allowed to support or call a friend.

Six years ago, before I ever spoke at an “Alt-Right” event or submitted an article to Alternative Right or Radix or Counter Currents, I wrote an essay titled, “Mighty White.” I stand by it to this day, and my views have changed very little over the years.

In fact, there’s very little new to say, except that, if anything, I’ve learned to hate white people and White Nationalists more than any of their opponents. Not because they are evil monsters, but because they generally suck. I hate white people and White Nationalists because they are weak, broken, phenomenally autistic, or all three. I am now, more than ever, clearly still not a White Supremacist.

(Actually, almost no one is. “White Supremacist” is a political slur. Ironically, only inbred rednecks identify as “White Supremacists” and the KKK hasn’t been a politically powerful organization, even among avowed racists, for decades. Anyone who talks about “white supremacists” is either clueless or a liar. Or the media. So, a clueless liar.)

As anyone familiar with my work knows, I support tribalism always and everywhere. As the 1970’s motto goes, I believe that “small is beautiful” when it comes to human communities. However, a tribal community has to have a lot more going for it than race. And this is where the idea of White Nationalism falls apart for me. Race alone isn’t enough to unite a people.

I flew to Germany to speak to German Identitarians recently, and I totally support their efforts to preserve their culture, because they have a culture — the culture of the majority of my own ancestors. The Germans aren’t just “white.” They’re German. They have a distinct language and a history as a people.

Most Americans are pan-European mutts. America, by omission if not by design, has no people. It has no religion, and its only culture has been a culture of inclusion and expansion. Adventurous settlers paved the way for generations of enterprising businessmen — not unlike Donald Trump. They have been its conquerors and kings and popes — and the culture they’ve produced has been entirely market-driven.

White Nationalists in America see the legacy of their ancestors — white European settlers — being destroyed, and because they are too realistic at this point to imagine the expulsion of non-whites (as progressive heroes like Lincoln did), they want a homeland for whites somewhere in America like the Jews have in Israel. It’s not a terrible idea, and no more unfair than creating a state for any other ethnic group.

But within the group of White Nationalists, you have pagans and atheists and Orthodox Christians and Catholics and Nietzscheans and Evangelicals and Baptists and a whole mess of other sub-groups who have nothing in common but a shared white European heritage and who in fact have a long history of fighting with each other. If a whites-only ethnostate materialized tomorrow, the sub-groups would start genociding each other almost immediately, because although they may be able to come to an agreement on some basic HOA rules about lawn care, their philosophical worldviews are mutually exclusive and ultimately incompatible.

America is pluralistic by design not because the Founding Fathers wanted to protect the rights of women or racial or sexual minorities — but because white European Christian men have spent centuries murdering and imprisoning each other over religious differences. I see no reason why this phenomenon would not immediately become a problem within a “diverse” population of whites. In fact, if you want to get rid of all of the White Nationalists in America, my advice is to give them exactly what they want. As soon as you give them their own land and eliminate all of their common enemies, the sky will turn black as they scramble to give each other “free helicopter rides.”

The various factions of White Nationalists already spend more time gossiping about each other (usually anonymously), stabbing each other in the back and jockeying for power and influence than any group I have ever seen — except maybe Social Justice Warriors, who are also predominantly white. I’m not sure which group is the Jungian shadow of the other, but the majority of people in both groups are some of the most broken, shittiest white people on the planet.

Social Justice Warriors think they are better than everyone because they apologize theatrically for being white and spend their time trying to destroy the lives of other white people. They are intellectual cowards who forgive every black athlete or rapper who shoots someone or beats his wife and they would never question a Muslim’s Allah-given right to throw a homosexual off a building or stone a woman to death. They only care about racism, homophobia or misogyny if white men are the offenders.

White Nationalists theatrically claim to be proud of being white because it is usually the only thing they have going for them, and then they spend countless hours obsessing over who is to blame (aside from their white parents) for the fact that they have nothing else going for them. If you’re an elite athlete or a brilliant inventor, you don’t need to get “white pride” tattooed on your chest.

And yes, “brown pride” is equally lame.

I recognize the argument that “pride” is a corrective to “anti” messaging, but if there’s anything truly and cussedly American in my nature, it’s that I am instinctively meritocratic. (That, and I’d like the government to stay off my goddamned lawn and out of my fucking business.) I wrote Androphilia in 2007 because I’ve never believed that homosexuality was something to be proud of, and that men should be characterized by, “what they do, not who they screw.” Paper-thin identities that require snowflake affirmation parades have been triggering me for a long time. Instead of being proud of something relatively superficial, you could always, you know, do something interesting with your life and give yourself something worthwhile to be proud of.

The “white pride” crowd is generally desperate and sad. Some of them are so stupid and conspiracy-oriented that they have convinced themselves I served in the Israeli military and/or am working as a planted agent provocateur for the CIA (seriously, that’s a thing). But there are exceptions. As far as White Nationalists go, I’ve met some guys I really respect.

It’s cool, almost hipsterish, to hate Richard Spencer these days — even in WN circles. But I like Richard. He’s witty and stylish and above all committed to a cause that — even if I don’t exactly agree with it — is not only socially but physically dangerous to support.

A man of Spencer’s provenance could be spending his days making personal calls from his office at some high-status, low responsibility job, and his evenings doing coke in the bathroom as he parties with models at museum fundraisers. He doesn’t have to do anything. He’s basically Bruce Wayne.

Richard Spencer decides it's time
to do another speaking tour.

Instead, he has a vision and stands up for it in public. It makes him no money and lowers his social status. He gets run out of gym after gym by notoriety-seeking professional virtue signalers. He’s been publicly denounced by almost everyone who ever supported him outside of his community of Alt-Right intellectuals. He is routinely attacked in public, and major celebrities and newspapers have hypocritically agreed that while violence is theoretically always wrong, it is totally OK to punch Dick Spencer. Meanwhile, Spencer has never attacked anyone or committed a “hate crime” and having met him on several occasions I am certain that he thinks “hate crimes” are the pointless, counterproductive and insufferably plebeian efforts of infantile crackpots. (On this, we absolutely agree.)

Whether you want what Spencer wants for the West or not, you have to agree that what he is doing takes balls.

The same could be said of a variety of other right-wing intellectuals who fearlessly speak out under their own names — instead of hiding behind anonymous handles as the majority of them do. The extremely decent and reasonable Jared Taylor comes to mind. He invited me to speak at one of his American Renaissance conferences years ago even though I am sure he was harassed incessantly for scheduling a “known degenerate” to speak at a conference held deep in Tennessee. Taylor has also been physically attacked for speaking in public about ideas with words.

I’ve also written for Counter-Currents and spoken at a few private Counter-Currents gatherings. Greg Johnson is less of a public figure, but he produces a lot of top-tier intellectual material on philosophy. He’s never been able to bring me the whole way ‘round on White Nationalism, but I’m happy to talk about ideas over dinner with him — you know, like “free thinkers” did before they lived in constant and paralyzing fear of the game of “Alinsky Ad Libs” now casually referred to as “journalism.”

I’ve met a fair number of White Nationalists at conferences and events over the years. Many of the attendees are exactly what you’d expect them to be — pasty losers and basement nerds obsessed with blacks and Jews, who fetishize whiteness because they want to feel better than someone else. Their culture is a culture of jealousy and ressentiment and entitlement.

But I have also met hundreds of bright, courageous young men who have legitimate concerns about their own futures and the futures of the children they hope to have. Most of them are attending or fresh out of college, and they’ve gone through decades of anti-white “diversity” programming and listened to lie after lie taught as fact. I have a friend who is going to Portland State University right now, and he sends me photos and screenshots of teachers presenting anti-white, feminist and “gender-fluid” material in science classes. He’s not a White Nationalist, but he would certainly agree with many of their criticisms of American society, and so do I. We’re just not race fetishists, and we just don’t agree that White Nationalism is a viable solution to those problems.

Speaking at NPI

I have spoken at AmRen and NPI because my criticisms of American society and the direction of Western culture generally have overlapped, and continue to overlap, with criticisms made by writers in the Alternative Right and White Nationalist communities (to the extent that such communities even exist in any monolithic way). My criticisms of modernity also overlap with similar criticisms made by various men’s advocates, anti-feminists, Radical Traditionalists, anarchists, students of the occult, Orthodox Christians, pagans, folkish heathens, gun advocates, self-defense advocates, martial arts instructors, and physical fitness experts. I don’t agree with everything that any of them say, but I refuse to live in fear of associating with whomever people who follow the ladies gossip magazines have decided “the bad people” are this month.

That brings me to my disappointment with white men, generally.

The majority of the best American white men are complete cowards.

They’re not afraid of a fight necessarily — they don’t lack physical courage — but they are terrified of any social ridicule that could result in a loss of money or status.

I’ve seen the strongest men I know, some of the strongest men in the world, reduced to cowering, pleading, desperate babies because someone — anyone, no matter how credible — threatens to expose them as a “racist” or “sexist” or some kind of “phobe.”

They’ll do anything and debase themselves in any conceivable way to make the accusations go away. Whiny apologies, carefully crafted public statements condemning whatever they think people want them to condemn, awkwardly staged photos with token friends and business associates and employees. They’ll tell sloppy lies and throw close friends under the bus to try to save themselves and their “personal mission,” which is always some fluffed-up, messianic, Stephen Covey version of Peter Gabriel’s “Big Time.”

Most of these men aren’t White Nationalists or White Supremacists. They’re far too self-centered to support any cause that doesn’t offer a tax-write off and immediate public relations benefit. They’re too ambitious to support anything that might limit their market or reach or cause them to lose Instagram followers. America’s market-driven culture has transformed Western individualism into pure narcissistic nihilism. The white men who are actually successful in America are more like Patrick Bateman than Tyler Durden. They’ll pretend to care about whatever they are supposed to care about and say all the right words — but it’s all bullshit.

I’m writing this on Memorial Day, and most of these guys are probably holding Memorial Day sales and posting about how much they appreciate those who served, even though — with the exception of those who have actually served — they really give zero fucks about Memorial Day. It’s just a “marketing opportunity,” like every other holiday, season and major public tragedy. They don’t care about the charities they give money to or the people they say they are trying to help, or whoever they say they want to “feel included.” They care about getting their dicks sucked, literally and metaphorically.

Most of these strong, successful white men would probably agree with White Nationalists on a variety of issues, as they’ve had to sit through the same feminist/diversity indoctrination sessions as everyone else. They’re smart enough to know that they are being lied to by people with an agenda. And they love themselves, so they certainly don’t hate being white.

But ultimately, they worship success, not race or culture or even manliness. They don’t care about honor or integrity. They’ll say and do and even convince themselves that they believe anything that will make them more successful. Success is not a terrible god, as gods go. Winners care about winning, right?

Because I pride myself on being one of the most honest and self-aware thinkers I know, I’ll make an introspective aside here. We become angry and disappointed with people largely because they fail to live up to some ideal that we’ve constructed for them. This is my problem with people who pretentiously refer to themselves as “misanthropes” and profess a hatred for all humanity. They hate people for not being who they want them to be, for not conforming to some idiosyncratic personal fantasy about how people should behave. Wiser men observe how people actually behave, recognize who people actually are, and adjust their expectations accordingly. Better to be realistic and find yourself pleasantly surprised than to be eternally sullen and disappointed.

Maybe I want the best white men to be better than they are or have ever been.

I wish they conducted themselves with more integrity, but maybe they never did.

Maybe no one ever did.

Maybe I’m the sucker here.

That might be true to some extent.

But the fact remains that the best white men, the most successful white men, are actually quite fragile and easy to manipulate and pressure. They’re weak because they exist in constant fear of being exposed as racists and sexists — even if they aren’t any more racist or sexist than anyone else. Even if they really have little or nothing to hide.

The best and most successful white men are weak because they let the most pathetic white people imaginable run them, blackmail them and extort them. They cave over and over and they never speak their mind because they live in constant fear of backlash from people who they have — and should have — nothing but contempt and disgust for. I’m not talking about other races or people of other religions or women, generally speaking. I’m talking about virtue-signalling people — mostly other white people — who threaten charges of racism and sexism for their own personal gain.

We live in an age where the strongest white men in the world allow themselves to be pushed around by gossipy bloggers, church ladies, sleazy reporters, rent-seeking academic activists, little fat screaming lesbians and weak autistic hipsters.

The best and most successful white men in the world are infected with parasites and if they refuse to stand up and tell these garbage people to fuck off, they deserve to fail. They deserve to be enslaved by their lessers. Their race deserves to perish.

I’m not a White Nationalist because I don’t think people are worth saving just because they’re white.

Okay, you’re white. Great. Most white people suck. What else have you got?

I share a genetic and cultural heritage with white people. Race is more than “skin color.” But all white people are not my people. I don’t particularly care about the fate of any racial group. What happens to “white people” is not my problem or my responsibility. I want to be surrounded with people who share not only my vague common ancestry, but my values and beliefs. Anyone who read Becoming a Barbarian knows I don’t care about “the politics of the Empire.” I want to leave it all behind. I just want to hang out in the woods with my friends and build something beautiful — I want to build a new culture. I want to invest in the people I know personally and my family and the people I am oathed to — my tribe, The Wolves of Vinland.

I’m not a White Nationalist, I’m a Wolves Nationalist.

My aim as a writer isn’t to get you to support some major political movement or to join mine.

It’s to inspire you to find a group of people you’d be willing to say the same thing about.

Bonfire of the Vanities?

Originally published at Jack-Donovan.com