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Notes -
Richard Hanania interviewed Jared Taylor.
Jared Taylor, founder of white nationalist publication American Renaissance, was recently reinstated on Twitter/X after a years-long (and, under the Elon Musk “free speech” era, increasingly controversial) ban. Many have hoped that, as Dissident Right and race realist ideas are beginning to break into semi-mainstream online discourse, some of the old-guard figures like Taylor may enjoy a long-overdue rehabilitation in the public eye. (Something like this has recently taken place for Steve Sailer, who, after decades of being the commentator whom all the serious thinkers read but never publicly acknowledged, recently undertook a lucrative book tour and has finally been published by several mainstream conservative publications.) While Taylor was once a semi-regular fixture on serious news programs, and his speeches at American Renaissance conference were even occasionally broadcast on C-SPAN, his banishment over the past decade has been comprehensive; if he is, at this late stage of his life, able to make some money and get his name out there, it would be a well-deserved culmination of an honorable life. Taylor’s work has been formative in my intellectual development, and I consider him a formidable thinker as well as a true gentleman.
That being said, I think his conversation with Hanania (who promoted the interview as a debate) unfortunately revealed how the world has, in some sense, passed Taylor by. Part of this is simply that he is old and has lost a step cognitively. In his prime, back when he was often asked to appear on mainstream news segments, Taylor was known as a sharp, charismatic, and erudite debater; at his advanced age, he can now be outmaneuvered by more agile thinkers — and, whatever you think about Richard Hanania (who, in his now-disavowed younger days as a white identitarian commentator, wrote several pieces for American Renaissance), he clearly has a keen mind. More importantly, though, Taylor’s model of the world does not appear to have adequately adapted to observed reality.
One of the central pillars of Taylor’s racial worldview is that human beings naturally seek to cluster among others to whom they are similar. For Taylor, the “white flight” of the 1960’s and 70’s, in which white families fled urban areas for the growing suburbs in response to the growing presence of blacks, is an archetypal example of humans naturally and subconsciously coordinating to segregate themselves into racial affinity groups. Writing and speaking in the 1990s and 2000s, when Mexican immigration to the U.S. (both legal and illegal) was at a tidal surge, Taylor predicted that this would set off a fresh white flight, in which white Americans would flee states with growing Hispanic populations. The looming confrontation between whites and Latinos, in which whites would be forced to put up a mighty fight to prevent themselves from being replaced and politically outvoted by drunken and crime-prone illegals clamoring for Latin American socialism, was a central theme of white nationalist discussion at this time. “Demographics are Destiny!”
However, as Hanania deftly points out, the intervening years have been… less than kind to these predictions. Though left-wing agitation by a certain section of the Latino population did have some impact on politics in the early part of this century — I distinctly remember a segment of the Mexican and Mexican-American segment of the student body at my high school staging a full-fledged walk-out in 2006 in protest of the failed “Sensenbrenner Bill” (H.R. 4437) which would have curtailed illegal immigration — the long-term political realignment among Latinos in this country has been a surprise to both political parties. Famously, Trump’s 2024 campaign achieved considerable success among Hispanic men.
Additionally, while white identitarians were correct to predict an exodus of conservative whites from racially-diverse liberal states, they probably did not anticipate that such whites would flee not to Whitopias such as Idaho and Montana, but rather to racially-diverse conservative states. The racial demographics of Florida and Texas are hardly more favorable to racially-conscious whites than California’s or New York’s! As Hanania points out, it seems like the revealed preference of many white Americans is to move to places with plenty of Hispanics (and a decent number of blacks, provided they’re well-policed) as long as the economic prospects and the political environment seem headed in a positive direction. White Americans seem to have no problem whatsoever living alongside Asian immigrants, who generally make excellent neighbors, friends, and classmates.
(Taylor’s stance on race relations between whites and Asians has never been coherent, which is particularly surprising since he was famously born and raised in Japan as the child of two American missionaries. He acknowledges the many great things about Asian culture and the various metric on which Asians are on par with, or even superior to, whites, yet when asked why it would be a bad thing for whites and Asians to intermarry and their countries become more integrated, he retreats to some wishy-washy petty nationalist “Well, I just think white people should stay white and Asians should stay Asian because I believe in real diversity.” This has never been persuasive, and Hanania rightly skewers him for it.) Ultimately, Taylor’s predictions of mass racial strife and whites fleeing to the hinterlands to form whites-only communities just have not panned out. As Hanania says: There are plenty of extremely white places in America, and almost nobody is moving to any of them.
This particular section of the interview (beginning around the 55-minute mark) has also produced controversy among Taylor’s ostensible allies. Hanania brings up West Virginia and asks why, if living among other whites is the highest instinctive concern for most white people, why are so few people moving there? And, furthermore, what sort of white person would want to move there, knowing how poor and dysfunctional the local whites are? Who would prefer living among fentanyl-addicted hillbilly whites rather than living among educated and productive Asians and Hispanics? Taylor expresses agreement with Hanania, and indulges in some accurate criticism of the white people he witnessed while visiting the capital city of West Virginia.
This has caused many on the online right to turn on Taylor, as discussed by Scott Greer. (Many of the responses to Greer’s tweet perfectly encapsulate the phenomenon pointed to in his article.) The criticism of Taylor’s remarks strikes me as identical to a phenomenon many have observed in black culture. When blacks congregate among themselves in places like churches, a frequent topic of discussions and sermons is frank self-criticism of the failings of the black community. “Black men, we need to do better! Work harder, be better fathers! There’s too many young black men out there acting a fool, killing each other over nothing, leaving our communities shattered.” All true, all healthy, all necessary, and maybe at some point the introspection will lead to material changes. However, when blacks (or, at least, black activists and “community leaders”) are talking to white people, suddenly they’re a united front: “All our problems are your fault.” Any criticism of even the worst aspects of underclass black culture is suddenly forbidden, as it might give succor to the enemies of black political advocacy. Black commentators who break this taboo (Glenn Loury, Thomas Sowell, etc.) are savaged as traitors and dancing monkeys by the very same blacks who, among their own, will acknowledge the truth behind that very same criticism.
Apparently we now have a vocal contingent of aspiring “white community leaders” who similarly cannot brook any public criticism of the worst elements of white trash culture, lest it empower “the enemies of our people.” This is pathetic, insecure, dishonest behavior. Whatever one might say about Jared Taylor, he has never been afraid to publicly air out the neuroses and failings of his own people; his brand of upstanding, intellectually honest discourse appears fundamentally unsuited for an increasingly propagandistic “siege mentality” discourse on the modern racially-aware right.
I have many problems with Richard Hanania, but seeing the army of pro-Taylor trolls spamming the comments section of the debate with petty insults about his appearance rather than even attempting to engage with the substance of his arguments, I have to concede that the new contours of the debate have squeezed out principled but overly-old-fashioned men like Jared Taylor, and will require the torch to be passed to high-character individuals who can thread the needle between the increasingly low-brow Chud Populism of right-wing Twitter, and the respectable but vacuous thought leaders of the dying Boomer right.
The one thing he keeps bringing up that I think actually lands, and it's not surprising he started with it because of that, is the unilateral disarmament that is whites not having an affinity group despite every other racial group having one. I don't really know how that point could realistically be discharged though - It's too easy to compare to naziism. Considering the makeup of likely people who would first advocate for and join such a party the comparison would probably not even be unfair.
edit: I should say my preference would be to abolish all the affinity groups, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards.
This is just misunderstanding how and why these advocacy groups work. WN talk as if minorities are "stronger" than whites collectively due to this advocacy, and that current racial politics are caused by their "winning". This is not how things work outside Zimbabwe et al. Its pretty clear Blacks cant actually threaten the US government if you think about it for a bit. These organisations exist because liberalism thinks they should, and they are given concessions because it thinks they should """win""". A white organisation mirroring them is pointless, because its not the internal structure that makes them work. If you could convice mainstream whites that it would be ok to have one, you have already convinced them on the way there to stop this theater, and then it wouldnt be necessary anymore to have one.
I totally disagree. Affinity groups around tribes or causes is how electoral politics work. Labor organizes around unions, Christians organize around various advocacy organizations, AIPAC, various trade groups, environmental organizations, you name it, all of them are to one degree or another affinity groups. What doesn’t work is individual political actors or very small groups, because without a large bloc, and especially a large bloc with big bags of cash, it’s not really possible to get modern politicians to bother.
I find the opposition to such an idea to be one of the best propaganda wins in recent history. You almost can’t actually have the conversation with people who don’t already agree to the proposition. Everyone else stops up their ears at the mere mention of the idea of a white advocacy group. I’m not proposing that they push segregation or anything of the sort, I’m not looking to disenfranchise people. But even the suggestion that there be a white group with a seat at the table when the ideas of DEI and affirmative action and even other policies around affordability are discussed. It’s like a cognitive kill switch to bring up the idea that they are allowed to have ancestral pride, advocate for their interests, and promote their culture just like everyone else. They might on the margins be okay with Irish groups marching on St. Patty’s, or Germans forming cultural heritage groups to drink beer and eat sausages.
@hydroacetylene because I think your objection is similar.
Why do you think white people vote for the left? On the "tribal power" model, it would have to be something like "Theyre being freeriders in the common white cause, and prioritising their other interests". Does that seem true? It looks to me that they dont just accept minority demands, they way you would give your allies their due. No, they generally consider it a positive to support these demands even at their own expense - not necessarily if that expense gets very large, but still. Dem primary candidates outwoking each other is for whites, the black machine voters gave us Biden.
Politics is never just interest blocks smashing against each other, not until you collapse all the way, at which point its war and diplomacy, rather than politics. Without a shared Nomos there is no polity, but only something like Realist international relations, which US domestic politics is visibly not.
I agree, and it can be valuable to talk about this - what I disagree with is your model of what happens when that changes. You seem to think that theres some stage where theres a politically viable white movement that competes with the other ethnic movements, and sometimes one wins and sometimes the other, and I think you actually win before it gets there. "Stop listening to the black movement" is an easier ask than "start listening to the white movement".
They’re on the left because they value other coalitions they are in. I’m not suggesting that a person can only be in one group, I can be in the NRA and the Labor bloc at the same time. I don’t think you aren’t doing coalition based politics just because a person might be part of several. It’s just that for a bock to win on an issue you have to get enough potential members of that bloc to make that their top issue.
If you are in the NRA and the Labor block and you vote Dem, I would expect that you at least dislike the Dem policies on guns. But white liberals dont dislike Dem policies on race. Why not?
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