The Case Against Marginalization
A response to Jared Taylor’s request to be a white nationalist
A few weeks ago, I declared I was not a white nationalist. That drew some vigorous responses from white nationalists, all of whom believe I should embrace their movement. The smartest reply came from American Renaissance founder Jared Taylor. Taylor is a true man of principle and has bravely stood up for his beliefs for nearly 40 years. He plays a big role in the story told by Whitepill and we wouldn’t be where we are today without Mr. Taylor’s pioneering work. He deserves tremendous respect for discussing inconvenient truths when no one else would.
But I don’t find Taylor’s argument for why I should be a white nationalist compelling. He argues we must embrace that name in order to truly win. The white nationalist label allows us to be “pure,” but also politically irrelevant. It’s a case for self-marginalization, which I reject.
First, what are we talking about here when we speak of “white nationalism”? Jared Taylor provides a broader definition of white nationalism than I do. He says it means advancing the interests of whites. But a lot of things could advance the interests of whites. Tax cuts could do that, but I don’t think anyone would call it white nationalism.
The proper definition of it is in the name: white nationalists want an all-white nation, either through separation or revolution. As I made clear in my article, I don’t support that goal. America is a stable society without the turmoil needed to create the conditions for such a revolution. White Americans also have little interest in this idea. A serious political movement needs to adjust to this situation to have any success.
Taylor insists white nationalism is the ideology we must adhere to in order to achieve real immigration restriction and other ends sought by American nationalists. His definition of white nationalism has both a radical and a moderate side. The radical side wants an ethnostate and would require a dramatic means to achieve. His moderate side simply wants freedom of association to form intentional, all-white communities in America. That wouldn’t require a revolution to achieve, but only a change in our current laws.
Most white nationalists prefer the radical solution, which is what much of this essay will deal with. Later on, I’ll address the “moderate” strategy.
Taylor contends that conservatism is not effectively “pro-white.” He points to the GOP as evidence. This misunderstands what I mean by conservatism and the story told in my book. The conservative movement is separate from the GOP. If you look at what conservative media and think tanks care about today, it’s the identity issues. Immigration, demographic replacement, and anti-white racism are front and center. Obviously, John Thune and other GOP leaders aren’t on board with this, but much of the Trump administration is. How else can we explain the determination by the admin to reduce legal immigration through executive action and ensure the only refugees who come to the U.S. are white Afrikaners?
Mr. Taylor feels it’s necessary for Republican politicians to discuss the connection between race and IQ to demonstrate a serious change in conservatism. Politicians are trying to get elected and cater to popular sentiment. No politician is going to be elected through showing off racial intelligence charts. It’s something that the average voter can’t understand, doesn’t care about, or is repelled by. David Duke, the most successful white nationalist politician, did not campaign on this subject. He talked about issues that mattered to people in their daily lives, such as crime and affirmative action. Plenty of Republicans talk about those topics.
Taylor is right that Republicans don’t openly discuss repealing the civil rights regime, but this admin is still curtailing core parts of it. We don’t need Republicans to talk about race and IQ to do good things.
While politicians don’t address these controversial matters, prominent conservatives do. For instance, Matt Walsh, one of the most important conservative commentators today, put out a docuseries on the lies of the civil rights revolution. Conservative pundits are far more critical of the civil rights regime and are willing to discuss the biological aspects of race. GOP lawmakers may not discuss this, but it will influence their staffers who create policy.
No one, especially not me, is demanding right-wingers turn into uncritical cheerleaders for the GOP. What I suggest is that right-wingers recognize that mainstream conservatism offers more opportunities for advancing the causes of immigration restriction and challenging anti-white racism than self-marginalization through bad branding and radical posturing. This doesn’t require us to become lapdogs for the RNC or fawn over Ted Cruz. It just means we participate in politics as it actually exists rather than how we imagine it to be.
While Mr. Taylor acknowledges the good things the Trump administration has done, he claims they may mean nothing because Democrats could reverse them. That may be true, but that’s politics. Like in war, advances in politics can be reversed. That’s why it requires participants to constantly fight to achieve their goals. Saying the Trump admin’s achievements are worthless because of their reversibility is like saying it’s pointless for a general to fight the battle because he could lose the next one. No one knows what will happen in the future, and the admin’s achievements set a precedent for what future Republican administrations can and will do.
That’s a far greater achievement than current white nationalist activism. A few hundred guys marching around in masks for an hour doesn’t change anything. It would be one thing if this side had a plan for realizing permanent change. But there is no concrete plan offered by white nationalists besides not being Republicans and insisting they call themselves white nationalists. This leads to demoralization rather than serious change. Telling people that ordinary politics is hopeless and not offering a clear alternative is a great way to blackpill the audience. If they see no way to change the world through achievable ends, many will give up on politics entirely and focus on other things instead.
The Democratic Socialists of America are not gaining power by rejecting the Democratic Party and declaring themselves communists. They are competing for power within mainstream politics in terms appealing to ordinary Americans (or at least, ordinary voters in Democratic primaries). There is a lesson to be learned here, one that’s forgotten in how Alt Right ideas went mainstream.
Taylor misconstrues my argument on how Alt Right ideas went mainstream. He thinks it took over conservatism through explicit white nationalist activism, which I call LARPing. That’s not how it happened. The Alt Right was able to gain traction in 2016 because there was ambiguity to the label and these were some of the only people defending Trump online. If the movement openly called itself white nationalist, it wouldn’t have made as much waves or attracted many converts. The media saw it as something different from the Klan and skinheads due to branding. When the Alt Right decided to openly declare itself as white nationalist (as well as Nazi sympathizers), it began its downfall and people began distancing themselves from the movement.
While the Alt Right died, its ideas were able to survive thanks to mainstream conservatives, such as Tucker Carlson, adopting them and broadcasting them to millions of Americans. Once these ideas were associated with mainstream conservatism rather than with Charlottesville, they took over the American Right. Much of the old Alt Right didn’t adapt to this moment. Some couldn’t because they were permanently blacklisted; others because they wanted to LARP as Nazis.
Taylor largely concedes my point that white nationalists lack a mass constituency to achieve their goals, but he insists that this is beginning to change. He points to the popularity of white nationalism on X as one example. This is not the best standard for assessing popular sentiment. If X were real life, then The Odyssey would have bombed, Vivek Ramaswamy would’ve lost his primary by a landslide, Hitler would be the most beloved historical figure in America, leftists would be welcoming in neo-Nazis into their coalition, Trump would’ve been overthrown by millions of Americans loyal to the Ayatollah, and Elon Musk would be the funniest man on Earth. None of these things are happening.
It is undeniable that WN content is much more popular than at any time, but it’s also true that X is less reflective of public opinion than in previous years. Interest in explicit white nationalism is certainly greater than a decade ago, but it’s still marginal. White nationalist groups are only able to count, at most, a few hundred members and the few open white nationalist candidates lose GOP primaries by astronomical margins. At the same time, candidates who present themselves as regular conservatives win elections on immigration restriction and challenging the notion America is a mere idea.
Mr. Taylor also points to a study I cite showing hardly any white Americans place importance on their racial identity, but he sees this as grounds for his cause. He believes that the figures have changed dramatically since 2019 and, in any case, that same study found a majority of whites believe race relations aren’t good. He sees this as the seeds of burgeoning white tribalism. But it can also mean that whites are even more committed to colorblindness and are upset other groups aren’t embracing it.
We do have other figures to assess whether white tribalism is on the rise among the masses. A 2021 Gallup poll found 93 percent of white Americans have no problem with interracial marriages between blacks and whites. A 2025 YouGov poll found that only six percent of Americans say whiteness is important to being an American. These figures don’t speak to growing white nationalist sentiment among ordinary whites. But you can find plenty of data showing white Republicans are concerned about America’s demographic replacement. They just want to feel it’s part of normal conservatism to talk about rather than something fringe.
Taylor laments that the Trump administration hasn’t broken the racial solidarity of non-whites in less than two years in office. That’s a big expectation to make in such a short amount of time, but there are some signs of breakdown in some groups. Forty-six percent of Hispanics and forty percent of Asians voted for Trump in 2024, indicating these groups aren’t following the path of black Americans. The crippling of affirmative action by the courts and the administration may further dampen the solidarity among Hispanics and Asians. If the benefits are gone, it may no longer prove useful. In addition, the political, demographic and cultural power of blacks is in decline.
But Taylor would be right to still see a problem even if there’s a weakening in the racial solidarity of non-whites. America’s new immigrants aren’t assimilating into the Anglo melting pot; they’re threatening to turn the national character into an ethnically and ethically ambiguous slop bowl. That’s why immigration restriction and strengthening of the historic American character is essential.
Taylor doesn’t address my point about America being a stable society and how that precludes radical solutions to ordinary political problems. I assume he believes that that will change in the near-future. But if it doesn’t, it leaves white nationalism with few options for advancement. To reiterate, the ideology needs a destabilized America and a significant chunk of white Americans interested in an ethnostate to have any chance of success. Neither factor is present at the moment.
It marginalizes the identity issues to insist that anyone who cares about them is a white nationalist. This is the same argument liberals make. The inspiration for my original article was Ezra Klein calling conservatism’s new identitarian focus “white nationalism.” He wasn’t using the term because he thinks white nationalism is a potent movement. He deployed it to turn normies against these ideas and argue they should be excluded from political discourse. Some WNs are happy with this dynamic. A critic of my argument recently bonded with an SPLC writer over how we need to dispense with my Whitepill of a transformed conservatism. It serves both parties’ interest to marginalize identitarian ideas.
Hardly anyone wants to be known as an open white nationalist. It’s why Patriot Front does marches in masks and most WN discourse is carried out by anons. If this were a popular force, people would publicly associate with it. But WNs themselves demonstrate its limits. They know that open association with it could ruin their lives, so they only interact with white nationalism through an anonymous X account. In an ideal world, people could freely discuss these things without worrying about the risks. But we don’t live in that world, and it doesn’t appear to be changing anytime soon. You can’t build a mass movement that’s capable of creating real-world change when only a handful of people can openly associate with it.
Further adding to this problem is the number of maniacs in the movement who will happily dox people over extreme pettiness. I’ve watched this problem get worse in right-wing circles over the years, and it’s exacerbated by people now defending the practice when used against their rivals. Even if you could build up a real-world movement largely through anonymity, you would always be one groupchat dispute away from the whole thing being blown up by a jilted member.
In contrast, one can discuss the Great Replacement, anti-white racism, and other once forbidden topics within mainstream conservatism under your own name and face without ruining your life. The Alt Right made sense when these opportunities didn’t exist within mainstream conservatism. But when many conservative commentators, College Republicans, and TPUSA leaders say these things, it doesn’t make as much sense to embrace a tainted label for the sake of political purity.
While Taylor warns that the effects of Trumpism will disappear with his admin, so will the favorable climate for white nationalism. Right now, we have a social media environment that allows free speech and a government that prioritizes targeting Antifa over white nationalists. That could quickly change with a Democratic administration. Once again, we could see major platforms suppress content simply because it’s deemed “racist” and see the government actively persecute people with WN beliefs. Open white nationalists will be easy targets as they lack the necessary allies and public support to defend themselves. The Alt Right made itself ripe for extinction when its leaders turned on MAGA and embraced radical posturing. No one wanted to defend these guys after Charlottesville.
Now to discuss the “moderate” white nationalist path, which would settle for freedom of association over an ethnostate. This is possible to achieve and people should have the freedom to set up these communities. Free association is a fundamental American principle and should be upheld. The undermining of it by the civil rights regime is one of the many reasons the Right should dismantle that structure.
If the goal of white nationalists is simply to form intentional, all-white communities and attract the like-minded to these places, then it makes sense to call yourselves white nationalists or something similar. They would only want whites to be there after all, so pitching yourself in these terms makes sense.
But even this path requires coming to terms with normal conservatism. WNs would need political allies to establish the legal framework to create these communities. Without that framework, it would be easy for the government to wipe them out. The Amish, who’ve successfully lived out this strategy for centuries, mostly vote Republican to protect their interests and have made themselves an important constituency in Pennsylvania. For purely pragmatic reasons, WNs who adopt this path would still need to work within normal politics to protect their interests. It would just be a narrower set of interests than wanting an ethnostate or whatever.
This path will not reduce immigration or curb the other problems of America and this strategy does embrace “marginalization” away from the rest of society. I also doubt these will work at scale as most WN groups collapse from members turning on each other rather than from outside forces. But people should have the freedom to choose where and how they live. If WNs want to live in remote all-white towns, there should be no laws to stop them.
With our society and people being the way they are, the only avenue for change is through politics as it actually exists. This is how various interest groups have created change in our society. The DSA is one example. Pro-lifers are another. Pro-lifers did not make their cause mainstream by calling for anti-abortionists to secede from America, reject the GOP, and define themselves by their enemy’s terms. They got involved in normal politics, pitched themselves in terms appealing to normies, and became a critical part of conservatism. The same is true with gun rights enthusiasts, free marketers, and foreign policy hawks.
If we want to see immigration restricted and anti-white racism defanged, we need to operate as a political interest group rather than as a fringe subculture. You define yourselves in terms appealing to ordinary Americans rather than what your enemy calls you, and focus on achieving things through the system rather than placing your faith in the masses suddenly overthrowing the government over the Odyssey’s diverse cast.
The conservative movement and the GOP are useful vehicles. They don’t require our absolute obedience, but they are the only means to enact change.
That might prompt accusations of “selling out,” but that’s the wrong way of approaching politics. Politics is not a music subculture. You’re not trying to create the purest form of ideology to appeal to a narrow demographic. You’re trying to win elections and create change. That requires tailoring your beliefs to a wide audience. That doesn’t mean you give up certain core principles. It just means you prioritize persuading outsiders over pleasing Rumble commentary.
There is a necessity for people like Taylor to discuss issues that Republican politicians dare not touch. American Renaissance is a valuable resource for that reason alone. Not everyone needs to adapt to mainstream conservatism and there’s plenty of room for a diverse range of thoughts. There is plenty of space to talk about things that would make for an unwise campaign ad.
But if you care about restricting immigration, ending affirmative action, curbing anti-white racism, and making America great again, there’s only one viable path to achieving those goals. It’s through conservatism. Calling these ideas “white nationalism” serves the Left’s interest in keeping them out of political discourse.
That’s why you should not be a white nationalist.
Order Scott Greer’s new book, “Whitepill: The Online Right and the Making of Trump’s America,” from this link.
I'm a bit confused. What is the main goal of restricting immigration if not to ensure America remains as white as possible?
I think whites will become nationalist when whites become an ethnic minority, one generation hence.