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Notes -
I would suggest to the white nationalists that, within their own framework, right now is precisely the correct time for white nationalists to quietly disappear.
Look, I am not going to pretend to be on the same team as the white nationalists. I do think that it's pretty bad that white people were and are being discriminated against for being white (let's set aside the rabbit hole of how far freedom of association should go for a minute). And inasmuch as that was bad, even if I am skeptical of racial identity politics, I can at least understand the desire to form an ethnic coalition, to pursue a sort of perceived counterweight to other ethnic groups. Defection, game theory, and all that. But with the Latest Developments it seems likely that discrimination against white people may be on the wane. Inasmuch as whites as a group have any interest, if you think that whites perform adequately in a meritocracy, (which I think most white nationalists think – and of course I think there are other reasons to favor meritocracy) then the interest of "white people" seems to be to make sure that meritocracy sticks as the law of the land. As such, supporting the new meritocratic norms that the new administration is trying to push is probably more likely to be effective and good for whites than agitating for white nationalism. And since white supremacy was what originally gave cover for discrimination against white people to begin with, I would think it is tactically advantageous for white nationalists to be particularly unthreatening so as to not give ammunition to team anti-meritocracy (that is, assuming the goal of white nationalists is "stuff that is good for white people" writ large.)
That assumes the purpose of white nationalism is to fight anti-white discrimination rather than what their name actually says: establishing a white ethnonation. That's a terrible pipe dream of pipe dreams, but "we're just here to fight against discrimination against our in-group" is the motte, not the bailey, and it's not truly the central goal they want to accomplish. If you take their actual goals seriously, then now is actually the time to become louder: the broader political coalition they like is gaining power and implementing goals they approve of, so they have momentum.
Yes, I think you're right about this (and I'm a bit stupid for not taking the name more seriously). But on the other hand, if my argument about what is good for white people in the United States is correct, it's helpful to clarify that what white nationalists want might diverge from what is good for white people.
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