I’m Not A White Nationalist

Clearing the air on my politics

The media calls me many things. Usually I’m described as a “right-winger.” If the reporter really doesn’t like me, I’m called a “white nationalist.”

The latter accusation keeps popping up in media outlets. When the Washington Post republished two of my American Conservative columns last month, liberals (and some conservatives) freaked out that the respectable outlet had elevated a “white nationalist.” Last week, Ezra Klein, one of the biggest liberal commentators today, questioned why Christopher Rufo interviewed me, a person with “white nationalist” associations. Klein pointed to your humble author as evidence of the disturbing “white nationalist” takeover of conservatism. (At least he gave my new book, Whitepill, a shoutout.) The ever-resentful Richard Spencer also recently insisted I’m a white nationalist while curiously leaving out I’m called one for writing for him. It’s unclear if Spencer would consider himself one today. His ideology depends on who he feels particularly aggrieved by at a given moment.

You can’t control what critics say about you, especially when you’re right-wing. But it’s necessary to define what you are and what you’re not. My political evolution is covered at length in Whitepill, but it’s worth clearing the air on what I am.

I’m not a white nationalist. As a concrete thing rather than a liberal epithet, it’s a political dead-end that cannot succeed in modern America.

I’ve always preferred “right-winger” or just nationalist to describe my political beliefs. But with the transformation of the mainstream American Right, I find myself more comfortable with the label “conservative.” Conservatism now largely reflects Dissident Right views and translates those opinions into policy changes and widely shared talking points. If you care about curtailing immigration and anti-white racism, normal politics offers the best way to do so. There’s no reason to marginalize oneself with LARPing.

What exactly is white nationalism? Everyone from Donald Trump to the O.K. hand sign has earned the label. Ezra Klein offered a very broad definition of it that allowed him to include mainstream conservatives within it. According to him:

I think that there is a straightforward view in white nationalism that there is such a thing as a white race. That race is fundamentally European, came here and founded this country. That race has, depending on the variant of white nationalism we’re talking about, genetic advantages or cultural advantages, and that race deserves to have — should have — dominance, particularly over this country.

Essentially, if you acknowledge basic facts–such as that the Founding Fathers were white and race is a real thing–you are a white nationalist. Klein adds “white dominance” to insinuate certain policies, such as immigration restriction and true meritocracy, will somehow establish an order based on racial supremacy. His definition is so broad as to render it meaningless. That’s the point. Klein and other liberals want to maintain it as an epithet to use against those who oppose mass immigration and anti-white racism.“White nationalism” is still specifically banned on Facebook and other platforms. You can still get censored and pushed outside the bounds of normal political discourse with that label.

I offer a much clearer definition of this ideology in Whitepill. White nationalism “envisions a sovereign white nation, whether through territorial separation or political revolution.” It generally believes the present state of America can’t be saved and whites must separate from the nation. It generally views normal politics as a waste of time and advocates for solutions outside the present order. But they rarely take up these solutions, because they lack the real-world presence and commitment to carry them out. Few want to move out to the woods for an all-white community or form a militia with internet randos. The only tangible results of WN activity is getting its followers doxed. (The doxing is often done by WNs themselves against movement rivals.)

Liberals imagine white nationalism as something that could exist within our normal political order. White nationalists disagree. Whether they explicitly acknowledge it or not, WNs see their ideology as inherently opposed to the political order and thus incapable of functioning within it.

This greatly limits its ability to effect real change. Politics is supposed to be the art of the possible. But many people turn to politics to express non-political ends and they don’t care about creating actual change. They want politics to fulfill a fantasy instead of addressing reality.

White nationalists, among other niche ideologies, suffer from this mentality.

The ideology faces two massive obstacles. One is that the present order is remarkably stable. There’s little sign of national disintegration or masses of people turning to racial separatism. We aren’t Yugoslavia, Weimar Germany, or the Austro-Hungarian Empire. People feel the system provides them enough security to support themselves. They don’t want to challenge it, especially when they have something to lose. Demands that ordinary whites separate themselves from mainstream society fall on deaf ears.

WNs wish to transform white Americans into something they will likely never be. White Americans are not interested in the identity offered by white nationalists. Very few whites see their racial identity as important. They identify more with America than they do with being white. Even conservatives who oppose mass immigration wince at explicit white identity. There are few indicators of whites “tribing up.” Whites are still very individualistic and shy away from collectivism, especially when offered by strange malcontents. Whites aren’t interested in a Caucasian version of black nationalism, complete with the white equivalents of Kwanzaa and dashikis. Their culture is mainstream Americana. They see no need to invent something out of thin air.

Whether you sympathize with white nationalism or view it as morally repugnant, it can never succeed in America. Under the present circumstances, it can only be a small subculture that attracts headlines but can’t create political change. Rather than waking up the “racial consciousness” of white America, white nationalism usually ends up alienating its adherents from white America.

It’s a free country. People can do what they want. But if you want to make this country a better place, conservatism is a far more viable vehicle than radical LARPing.

While Americans aren’t interested in white nationalism, millions do support the New Right vision offered by Trump and other mainstream figures. They want immigration restricted, law and order upheld, DEI cast aside, affirmative action terminated, and anti-white classroom lessons eliminated. These issues are no longer ignored by Republicans and mainstream conservatives. When they were, it made sense for the Alt Right to exist.

As I discuss in Whitepill, this is how your humble author and many other people found themselves within the Alt Right. Conservatism refused to address the issues that threatened our civilization. They were content to focus on frivolities. The only people who talked about these things were white nationalists, which naturally drew in people who would’ve otherwise never associated with it.

Normal politics in the Obama Era seemed hopeless. It looked like the battle would just be between anti-white liberals and out-of-touch fiscal conservatives. Abandoning ordinary politics was appealing when faced with these options and no clear way to challenge them. But then Donald Trump came down the escalator, and new opportunities followed.

There was a time when I was young and dumb and imagined a few people on the internet could create an ethnostate. But I grew up and adjusted to the reality of the political world created by Trump.

There’s no need to apologize for my past writings. But they don’t reflect what I advocate for today—even though much of what I wrote back in my “wignat” phase is now mainstream conservatism.

The goals of groups posing as radicals are achievable by normal political means. In the past this was less clear. But today it’s obvious that a practical, America First policy can be advanced via boring party politics. And the people who argue against this simply want to cling to a personal fantasy.

The US political system is stable. The American Empire is a fact of life and mostly good for our citizens, especially for the “Heritage Americans.” The goal of right-wing policy is to improve middle American living standards. All this can be accomplished by ordinary politics. The GOP and a conventional conservative platform can now be considered “pro-white.” As readers of Whitepill should learn, white nationalism is now obsolete thanks to the mainstream Right taking up the identity issues.

I support an agenda that keeps America American. I back immigration restriction over open borders, authentic patriotic education over anti-white indoctrination, meritocracy over diversity, capitalism over socialism, and Anglo-Protestant culture over Third Worldism. Contrary to what Klein claims, these aims can be achieved through “colorblind” means rather than through some form of “white dominance.” Simply providing a fair field of play will benefit both ordinary whites and the nation itself. Mainstream conservatism now broadly accepts this agenda as its own.

If we want to make the country we live in a better place, we need to accept the world as it exists rather than the one we imagine it to be. If that makes us conservative, then so be it. We now get to define conservatism, not David French or Jonah Goldberg.

That’s why I’m not a white nationalist. You can call me a conservative, instead.