White What?

     I’ve misplaced the link, and I have no inclination whatsoever to backtrack through the hundred-odd websites I read each day to recover it, so concerning the next few sentences, my Gentle Readers will have to take my word – or not – that they’re accurate.

     Some clown in the Punditocracy led off a recent article by mentioning that he’d just had a conversation with Richard Spencer that left him feeling “physically ill.” If memory serves, he didn’t say why that conversation had left him feeling that way. And to be fair, he went on to discuss a subject few commentators have the balls to touch: the way in which black racialism and its promotion of notions such as “white privilege” are actually fueling the white identity movement. But his first sentence about feeling “physically ill” for having to talk to Spencer was what stuck with me.

     Now and then a loathsome figure will appear in the national discourse. However, what makes such a figure loathsome isn’t uniform. It can be the substance of his contentions, it can be the goals he promotes, it can be the methods he advocates, it can be the man’s personal style...or it can be the media’s determination to make him and those who agree with him look loathsome.

     I know relatively little about Richard Spencer:

• He once worked at The American Conservative and Taki’s Magazine;
• He’s identified with the Alt-Right movement and the website AltRight.com;
• Liberals hate and revile him;
• A great many persons who style themselves “conservatives” fear to have anything to do with him.

     I plan to learn much more about him. Anyone who’s inspired that much revulsion, in an age when black racialist hucksters such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton receive respectful, even fawning treatment from the press, is someone who deserves to be investigated.

     It’s no secret that, just as with Islam, the media are terrified of saying anything even mildly critical about the black-identity movement, Black Lives Matter, or the forces fueling it. The entertainment industry has been relentless in promoting black-identity politics, while it’s condemned any aspect of the white-identity movement. Some of its tactics are particularly noteworthy. If you have the stomach for it, count up the proportions of black characters and black-white couples in four or six hours of broadcast television. (If after that you still have room on your scoresheet, count up the proportion of homosexual couples.) The numbers will shock you.

     American education is following those trends as well. This recent piece about the schools of Edina, Minnesota should give you a taste. The Edina schools are not an outlier, but fully representative of the direction in which our schools are moving.

     Black-identity politics, Black Lives Matter, “white privilege,” “structural racism,” and an ongoing attempt to present black-white miscegenation as normal, even desirable...don’t you get the feeling there’s something going on here? And doesn’t it seem altogether too consistent with the demonization of white-identity spokesmen such as Richard Spencer?

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     Allow me a brief digression. It may come as a terrible shock to you, Gentle Reader, the sort of thing you’d rather not confront on a peaceful, generally pleasant Sunday, but I have an absolute principle that I refuse to bend regardless of any other consideration, and I’ve resolved that you should know it:

I speak my mind, under my full and correct name.

     To me, there is no such thing as a sincerely held conviction that “should” be kept to oneself. Keeping your beliefs to yourself is a form of self-negation. This is especially significant when the overwhelming majority of the world is determined to shut you up.

     What’s that? Some such convictions, however sincere, are offensive? So what? What if they’re correct -- more consistent with observable reality than the “received wisdom” the media are promoting? If they’re incorrect, isn’t that an even stronger reason to have them out where they can be refuted and their holders shown the error of their thinking?

     Concerning the tendency among persons who hold “controversial” beliefs to employ pseudonyms and monikers to protect their identities, I have something else to say:

Right or wrong, they’re cowards.

     The willingness to stand up publicly for what you believe is the touchstone of intellectual honesty. It’s the sine qua non of a free, advancing society. Moreover, unless you take a stand and maintain it resolutely even in the face of vicious denunciation, you’ll never know how many others agree with you. There is strength in numbers, but the numbers won’t accumulate without a display of personal courage.

     Here endeth the digression.

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     The last objective reasons for claims of political discrimination against blacks disappeared with the Civil Rights Act. Since then, governments have been absolutely forbidden to treat Americans differently on the basis of race... except for when race discrimination is mandated by law.

     During the debates over the Civil Rights Act of 1964, several objectors argued that it would lead to government-enforced racial quotas. Hubert Humphrey responded to them by swearing, on the floor of the United States Senate, that if that should eve come to pass he would eat the entire text of the bill while the television cameras were rolling. Well, the quotas did come to pass not long afterward. However, Humphrey has gone to whatever reward he earned, and can no longer be called to make good on his promise. Indeed, even to mention his strident statement, though it’s written into the Congressional Record, draws denunciations and cries of “racist!” from the Left and the bien-pensants of commentary.

     Today, government power is routinely used to penalize an employer for hiring a white worker rather than a black one, or for not soliciting employment applications from “enough” blacks. Isn’t that government-enforced discrimination by race – this time, in favor of blacks? Isn’t it quite as serious a matter as the reverse? And isn’t it right, just, and necessary that this be pointed out by persons sincerely concerned with fairness? Yet that, too, evokes cries of “racist!”

     It’s my contention that there would be little or no interest in the white-identity movement if it weren’t for the asymmetry above. Evenhandedness is easy to verify. So is its absence. Only in the latter case do identity movements dedicated to promoting a particular group’s fortunes arise.

     The black-identity forces are an illustration of the “March of Dimes” phenomenon. The March of Dimes originated as a campaign to solicit contributions “to fight polio.” When the Salk vaccine wiped polio out of existence, the operators of the March of Dimes, immediately perceiving the threat to their livelihoods, shifted the campaign to birth defects. A few titles were changed; a few people swapped desks; and the March of Dimes continued onward – this time, secure in the conviction that birth defects can never be eliminated by any effort of medicine. (Just wait till genetic engineering and zygotic surgery get fully into gear.) And so it goes today.

     With the political enforcement of race discrimination against blacks a toppled windmill, they whose power, prestige, and perquisites depend upon racism against blacks remaining a live issue have “doubled down.” Their raison d’etre cannot be allowed to expire; they must go on as they began. So nonsense claims such as police racism, “structural” and “institutional” racism, demands for “reparations,” and similar chimeras must be animated and kept flying. Nor will they permit anyone to cite evidence to contradict them without denouncing him as viciously as the English language will allow.

     Those are the reasons for the living, growing white-identity movement. That movement will grow for as long as the reasons remain in force.

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     It’s not necessary to hate anyone to want fair treatment for oneself. That sort of hatred arises when one is hated for asking for fair treatment for oneself...and we’ve been well past that threshold for some years now.

     There’s some hatred among white-identitarians toward black racialists. There’s enormous hatred among American blacks toward American whites. That hatred is carefully nurtured by black-identity activists; it’s their meat and drink. In time, it will evoke equal animosity from American whites generally. I dread the coming of that day, but American blacks should dread it even more.

     Whenever the spokesmen and advocates of black-identity groups respond to white identitarians by demonizing them rather than recognizing their claims as worthy of discussion and possible redress, that day will draw nearer. Whenever commentators of whatever race or political disposition speak of white-identity leaders such as Richard Spencer as “neo-Nazis,” the approach of that day will accelerate. And whenever anyone conflates white-identity advocacy with white supremacy, it will fuel the latter while weakening the former: a development that only those who really want to see American blacks subjugated by law will applaud.

     Think it over.

     PS: If anyone would like a copy of Robert S. Oculus’s The White Book, let me know and I’ll email it to you.