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In this episode, we talk about white nationalism.
Participants: Yassine, Walt Bismarck, TracingWoodgrains.
Links:
Why I'm no longer a White Nationalist (The Walt Right)
The Virulently Unapologetic Racism of "Anti-Racism" (Yassine Meskhout)
Hajnal Line (Wikipedia)
Fall In Line Parody Song (Walt Bismarck)
Richard Spencer's post-Charlottesville tirade (Twitter)
The Metapolitics of Black-White Conflict (The Walt Right)
America Has Black Nationalism, Not Balkanization (Richard Hanania)
Recorded 2024-04-13 | Uploaded 2024-04-14
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Notes -
I used to argue with white nationalists a lot many years ago on /r/anarcho_capitalism and what I found very frustrating is they refused to properly defend their point of view, particularly on the point of who counted as white. The rare time they would say, it was usually strictly people born on the European continent, so Turks in East Thrace were white but not Turks on the other side of the Bosporus strait were not, I guess. Attempts to pin them down on definitions like this were taken as bad faith tricks to undermine their cause and there was not a lot of interest in having real intellectual discussion about the merits of white nationalism. I found I could get them to explain why they thought whites were superior to non-whites, but I could not get anywhere discussing the practicalities of how a white ethno-state would work.
I completely agree that it makes more sense to select immigrants by the traits that whites are claimed to possess. Selecting them based on race is extremely crude.
Walt seemed like he was participating in good faith, but I found he rambled on a lot and would have preferred to have him pinned down more on some of these issues. I think he reinforced my impression of the alt-right, which is not that they were a bunch of super intellectual misfits but that they actually had terrible epistemic habits and were white nationalists more for the vibes as the kids say rather than its intellectual merits. I've read some of Richard Spencer's stuff and seen interviews with him. He's not that smart. I haven't been impressed by anything from the alt-right as far as intellectual arguments go.
I think that's separate from believing in human biodiversity. It's the leap from human biodiversity to white nationalism that I have never found convincing. I think there is a parallel here with communists, who are extremely difficult to convince to enter into a serious debate. Attempts to debate communists are shot down as risking undermining class solidarity. Similarly, attempts to debate white nationalists are shot down (though not nearly as quickly and definitively) as risking undermining white racial solidarity.
Another parallel is how communists put a huge amount of effort into debating theory (though not at addressing the best counter-arguments to that theory as they mostly only debate other communists) and almost none in how a communist society would actually work.
I agree with almost everything you said. If we had six hours, I would've started the discussion with "how do you know who is white?". I tried to pin Walt on some answers about "white interest policies" but there were only so many ways I could rephrase a question. I know a white supremacist I've been talking to for years who has been agonizingly obfuscatory on very elementary questions across many years,
so I didn't have high hopes for clarity.Edit: It was wrong of me to impugn @WaltBismarck by association, especially through a connection he has explicitly abandoned.Do you hold any other ethno-identity interest group to this standard? Or is this an issolated demand for rigour?
Did you ask Black Lives Matter, Ukrainian Nationalists, Zionists, or Quebecois Nationalists to narrowly define Blackness, Ukrainianness, Jewishness, or what it means to be quebecois?
THE ENTIRE POINT of ethno-nationalism is that the core of the ethnos gets to define and redefine and redefine again the meaning of the ethnos so as to advance their interests the exact same way the wokes redefine "oppression"
"How do you define whiteness? What about all the edge cases?"
You define it exactly the way that maximally benefits the core white ethnos that no one contests is white, and then you redefine as new more precise definitions come about that can more readily benefit the core of the ethnos.
This isn't hard. Ethno-tribalism is the OLDEST ideology in human history.
To the extent White Nationalists won't answer you it's because they know the game is to play 20 questions and keep digging down til we're debating the definition of the word "is" when no Irish nationalist, black nationalist, or Polish Nationalist was ever held to this game of defining exact haplogroups. Everyone knows what a pole is, everyone knows who an Irish person is, everyone knows what a white person is... To the extent someone was an edge case it was on THEM to show profound unyielding loyalty to the cause to prove that they were truly part of the group, not on the group to come up with narrow definitions that escape every exception.
"How do we know this won't be applied perniciously or cruelly? How do we know you will be consistent at all?"
You don't. That's what sovereignty means, he who decides the exception. Just as the Supreme Court gets to torture the meaning of words to contort your rights whichever way they feel fit, and mixed race and jewish millionaires get to torture the meaning of "oppression" to grant themselves more and more privileges and punish dissent even harder, the white nationalists will define and redefine white however they choose whenever they choose so as to protect the core of the ethnos and advance the interest of unambiguously white people.
The only way marginal cases can protect themselves from being redefined as "NOT WHITE" and deported is to continuously make themselves assets to the white ethnos, the exact same way on the left white "Allies" have to constantly be the most fanatical advancers of the cause or be attacked and destroyed.
"how do you define white?"
Whichever way maximally benefits blonde haired, blue-eyed people of north european descent at that exact moment.
I hold any ethno-identity interest group that seeks control over a larger group I want to be a member of to this standard. If I sought to be part of a black community, I would apply the standard to BLM; if I sought to be Ukrainian, I would apply it to Ukrainian Nationalists (and indeed, part of the Russian-speaking Ukrainians trying to apply this standard to Ukrainian Nationalists is a nontrivial component of the civil war!); if I were or sought to be a citizen of Israel, I would apply the standard to Zionists, and so on.
I am generally pro-whataboutism, but in this particular case it's really silly to insinuate that being concerned with the exact definition of the WN ingroup and the ingroup of, say, Zionists are at all comparable. WNs want control of countries that I live in, or at least to split off parts of them. Of course it concerns me to know whether I, and other people I care about, will be inside their circle of concern, in a way that is orders of magnitude apart from what happens in some enclave across the world. I doubt that you do not understand that, so what exactly is it you are trying to say? Simply that WNs are under no obligation to answer the question because they will do what is in their own interest and that's their god-given right? Fine, but then I'm under no obligation to stop asking questions or concern-trolling in a way that will make WNs look bad to prospective allies either, because I find that to be in my own interest and then surely that's my god-given right too. Once you commit to that level of conflict theory, there is generally little point in hosting a debate at all anyway, unless you stand to benefit from seeing one of the sides humiliated and expect to be able to railroad the debate to make that happen.
I don't follow. Are you seeking to be a part of a white ethnostate? If not, why are you leaving BLM off the hook?
No, but I seek to/am part of states that WNs want to make into white ethnostates. (Ignoring the part that I no longer live in the US nor was ever a citizen) I don't think that BLM ever wanted to make the US into a black ethnostate, or split off a part to form one, either; and even if they did, I for sure would not meet the definition for inclusion, nor would anyone I know or have care for beyond of the level I have for the generic stranger (as I somehow managed to spend my $many years in the US completely insulated from the African-American community).
To the extent to which they do want to seize control of things that I or those in my circle of care currently have (possibly shared) access to to hand to those outside of my circle, BLM would be a straight-up enemy to me, but how they define their membership in detail is then not so relevant to me. Unlike in the case of WN, they would presumably not try to lure me or anyone in my circles with a dubious promise that they are fighting for our benefit; it would be beyond any doubt that it is not so.
So if I understand you correctly you're only applying this standard to groups who presume to speak in your name and/or fight for your interests? If so, wouldn't that mean all they have to do, for you to drop the question, is to say something like "don't worry about it, we're not including you"?
Sure, that would be sufficient (though the first half of your statement has to be extended to cover groups that want to seize a role that I expect to speak in my name and/or fight for my interests, such as the government of a country I live in). Having that black on white would make it easy, since then there would be no debate that I can treat them as enemies with all that entails. "Either you owe me some clarity regarding whether I'm in your circle of care and to what extent, or you can direct further inquiries to the business end of the police/military representing me" is a binary choice I'm happy to offer.
You might want to protest that BLM-like groups also want to govern, but there the uncertainty that matters for me is fundamentally different. They would presumably claim that they want a government for all, and only intend to stop unfairness that black people currently experience. There is no sense in which fluctuations in their definition of black could become relevant for me; I would only doubt that the "government for all" part would be executed in earnest. On the other hand, the WNs leave no doubt that they do not want "government for all", but the exact boundaries of the set of "whites" for whom they intend to govern would have a great deal of impact on me and things I care about.
To be very concrete, I believe that WNs understand that most whites are against them, but think that given sufficient power and time they could brainwash most of them to support the WN agenda, and kick the remaining ones out as race traitors. The real definition of the "whites" they fight for is therefore "Caucasian + will be persuaded by our propaganda". This is not a very good pitch to those in this set who have not yet been persuaded by the propaganda, and therefore they want to remain coy about it.
It doesn’t seem very fair to call WN as “brainwashing” or “propaganda”. A lot of their ideas seem very truthful to me. It’s probably impractical to make the US Sweden today, but a society like that with low crime and a far larger percent of their population being able to function in the modern world and therefore a higher trust society and a larger capability for a welfare state feels truthy to me. It’s not like they are just making stuff which brainwashing or propaganda seems to apply to me.
It’s definitely an honest debate on whether the US should move in a white nationalist direction (limit immigration, promote western civ, meritocracy, expect minorities to live by white standards, etc). And very honest for Europe to turn anti-immigrant so they do not develop similar problems as the USA.
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This thread speaks to something I really don't like about rationalism.
It is incredibly pedantic and overly concerned with explicit formalist truth/knowledge in a way that doesn't reflect how identity and power work in the real world. It comes off as extremely autistic at times. The fact is that reality is nuanced and messy and contradictory, and virtually all heuristics will be inapplicable to some situations. It's sturm and drang, not high minded spergy debate. As a successful propagandist, I know that irrational emotions and especially the invisible rules of prestige/cultural coding are a million times more powerful than beautifully crafted syllogisms.
When it comes to race--The shoreline of England is infinite if you keep zooming in. You can't define the world in terms of edge cases. Sometimes you need the low resolution filter to reflect how people actually behave. And in a lot of situations people will only use (and very frequently, can only use) the low resolution filter. When you are attacked as a white person, it makes sense to defend yourself as a white person, and not as some New Libertarian Man who exists outside of the world's tribal classification schema.
You might not care about race, but race cares about you. In prison you hang out with the other white guys or you get raped.
When it comes to immigration policy, from a WN perspective there simply isn't a good answer as to where to draw the line and any smart WN will tell you this, but that doesn't mean race is irrelevant. Race is clinal, and whenever you try to chop it up into discrete subgroups you will have to make some simplifications that reduce the accuracy of your model. This doesn't mean the variation covered by the original cline/gradation isn't significant. It just makes creating immigration policy etc. that isn't overly accepting or too prohibitive very difficult.
This is something WNs are very thoughtful about and will discuss internally, but when asked by an outsider it always feels very shifty and bad faith. Thankfully as a former WN who hasn't renounced my past, I can still have those discussions with active WNs in a way you can't. If you look at episodes 5 and 14 of my podcast I explicitly grill them on where/how they draw the line, and they make a genuinely good faith effort that leads to very interesting discussion.
I don't appreciate you trying to frame my rhetoric as shifty or evasive, or trying to "pin" me. I'm not some drug kingpin you're trying to prosecute. We're supposed to be gentlemen trying to hash out how the world works, and these are incredibly complex and nuanced issues that need to be answered in an expansive way with the proper historical and scientific context. Sometimes you need to let someone ramble for a few minutes so they can adequately provide this context, but you were grilling me like a prosecutor with very simplistic and direct questions and it felt on many occasions that you were coming at me in bad faith or with an agenda. I don't think that's what you wanted to do, but I also think you have a lot of unexamined biases.
I detected in the first few minutes of the discussion that you weren't interested in a broad historical/philosophical discussion that could get into the meat of the issue, and wouldn't let me provide enough context to satisfy a neutral party. I subsequently gave an extremely direct answer to literally every question you asked. But no, I didn't let you trap me into defending something I don't even believe, because I have a much higher IQ than the frog twitter wignats you're fighting with on Twitter, and can tell when I'm being baited.
This reflects an uncharitable and supercilious attitude I think you should work on. Nobody calls themselves a "white supremacist" first of all, so when you say this you just sound like an asshole who won't let someone define their own beliefs. But I know you're not an asshole, so you should stop this behavior.
Second, I am clearly someone who is engaging in good faith in an adversarial environment, and deserve be treated entirely on my own merits, and not be spoken down to because of your interactions with past interlocuters of an ostensibly similar worldview. But you were acting like I was still a WN and were entirely uninterested in my deeper and more abstract thoughts about race.
If you had let me ramble more and actually flesh out my worldview rather than pressing me to defend tenets of an ideology I had very explicitly abandoned I think the convo would have been more enlightening.
Perhaps we can aim for that in a future discussion?
Rationalist hubris is believing politics can be understood 100% rationally. Only to the degree you can place yourself in the heads of the emotionally-driven other will you understand what's going on. It was strange to me you got laughed off/brushed aside so often in the podcast, because your low res filter is much closer to how average Americans engage with politics than this abstract-1000-moving-parts-strict-heuristics-analysis-machine the ratsphere attempts to lug everywhere.
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In general I think formalism is a good thing. If we’re to have a debate on the merits of a certain social system or political ideology, we must know what it is that we’re actually talking about. If I’m advocating for “democracy” or “white nationalism” or “communism” it’s absolutely important to know what the terms actually mean. The first reason this is important is that it prevents people from speaking past each other. If “communism” is formally defined as “state ownership of capital” then we can be sure we won’t get lost in the weeds of talking about things that look like communism that actually aren’t like Kibutz or monasteries or nuclear families. It also avoids the issues of changing definitions and snuck premises. If we don’t define Communism, then either one of us are free to change the definition in ways that suit us. If I don’t agree with communism, I can redefine it to be only totalitarian socialism and dismiss everything else as “not really communism” even if it would meet the definition. If I’m in favor of communism, I can do this in reverse and start including Sweden as a communist country because some utilities and the health care system are state run. It also prevents to snuck premise problem where I talk about things that I really wish were part of the communist system but aren’t.
But there is a related problem there where people try to win arguments solely by definitions. For example, you defined communism as state ownership of capital. What about a state that allows for private ownership of capital but imposes very high levels of taxation and requires regulatory approval to basically make any decision?
But that then devolves into a discussion of “what constitutes high levels of tax” or “approval.”
All of those things are important but frequently when I see someone overly focused on definitions they often forget that the map was made for man.
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There was no malice at all on my end, and I'm more than open to having any of my unexamined biases pointed out. My goal with asking questions is ideally to reach a point where I can pass an ideological Turing test and be able to accurately rephrase my interlocutor's position. The questions I ask therefore come from what appears to me to be either contradictions, ambiguity, or lack of evidence. I can't claim to really understand someone's beliefs or how they came to form those belifs if I gloss over that nagging curiosity. I understand that any categorization will run into limitations. I wouldn't expect the answer to my question about who is white to come with crisp demarcated lines, but I am nevertheless interested in how someone would try formulating an (imperfect) answer.
You're right about this. It was wrong of me to impugn you by association and I retract and apologize for that.
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Why do you consider yourself a good propogandist? The only thing I know you for are racist Disney parodies and articles that went viral where everyone made fun of you for them on both the left and the right. Didn't you also participate in Charlottesville which basically destroyed the Alt Right? What successes have you had?
I've read a few of your articles and listened to a few of your podcasts and honestly your arrogance is extremely off putting and I don't think I'm in the minority here based on the reactions I've seen online. The only people who you appeal to are people like Richard Spencer who are supposedly on the dissident right but somehow prefer Democrats to Republicans. You don't think this matters because you are only trying to appear to elites but that is simply just not going to happen.
I did not participate in Charlottesville. In 2015-2016 my content brought tens of thousands of people into the Alt Right. I was the biggest AR creator on Youtube for several months. You can learn more here: https://newaltright.substack.com/p/how-the-alt-right-won
Since returning to the public sphere I have built a large and lucrative Substack extremely quickly and several of my essays have gone viral. I can pretty consistently influence discourse in the dissident right and adjacent scenes whenever I want.
It's just empirically demonstrable truth that I am an effective propagandist.
Was your content creation anything other than racist Disney parodies? Please give me an example from this time period that you consider good propaganda that had any impact on the real world. The alt-right had essentially zero new ideas. It was just a rehash of old ideas like the Culture of Critique or Jared Taylor. These ideas had been kicking around for decades, and who is to say that the alt-right really had anything to do with their recent popularity since there are so many confounding variables. Do you think if your "propaganda" never existed then there would have been any measurable difference in the alt-right's popularity?
Your articles mostly went viral for all the wrong reasons. They had more negative reactions than positive ones even on the dissident right. The only places I've seen ay of your articles discussed are by extremely online people. You can only influence discourse in an extremely niche and powerless portion of the internet. You're just a minor e-celeb at best. Say what you want about Andrew Tate, but he is an extremely effective propogandist. Same with Moldbug. Nobody really knows who you are or cares about your ideas. You will have to be a lot more effective before you are an empirically effective propogandist.
I explain how my videos influenced the discourse in my retrospective. Feel free to consult that.
In summary--my videos cemented a lot of memes/brainworms that defined Alt Right culture in late 2015 to early 2016 ("shift the overton window", "don't punch right", "no enemies to the right") and this absolutely influenced tactics on the ground.
Bizarre statement. The Alt Right was their recent popularity. Their newfound relevance literally manifested as the Alt Right.
Absolutely. I was one of the most influential content creators from this period and I've spoken to literally hundreds of people who said they found the movement through me. This includes a lot of future leaders of the movement, including Richard Spencer's current right hand man: https://x.com/TAlbert0Barbosa/status/1720146998358049043
Jared Taylor would not have had me create a music video for Amren 2016 if I hadn't been one of the most important figures in the movement at the time.
That hasn't been my impression at all. The IDW is currently raving about me for instance.
In any case, my essays have gotten people talking about me and have put thousands of dollars in my pocket. That's the first step to creating any kind of influential platform.
Also, I'd like to note that in another comment you say this:
Ask yourself why I was able to get such a rise out of you that you created an account just to lambast me? Does that not speak to a particular talent or skill? You yourself have demonstrated that I'm able to inspire exceptional reactions in people.
Right now I am optimizing for controversy because I need to rapidly increase salience, and to that end it's fine to piss some people off. Whenever guys like you loudly complain about me, there are inevitably a few people who are rubbed the wrong way, and a few of those guys will end up giving me views and money.
So I welcome the negative reactions. At this stage all publicity is good publicity.
Just to add on to my comment, I feel like I have been incredibly negative towards you because of my biases. You are clearly an incredibly educated and smart person. I think the disagreement between us is how effective you are. I have read your articles and they are well thought out and make a good point. I just disagree with you and the way you write really annoys me. I don't doubt that you are an incredibly smart person who can write well. So don't take my attacks as anything personal. I fully admit you are intelligent person who has gotten their ideas out there. I just don't like how you are doing it.
So I apologize for the personal attacks. It's just your comment made me have to make it personal. You seem like a cool person. I just hate your ideology and arguments. And I say this as someone who is sympathetic to the alt right.
this is a very sweet and thoughtful comment, thank you!
I completely understand your reaction and don't resent you for it. As I said in my other comment, on some level I am playing a character with Walt Bismarck and want to piss people off. Right now I just need to very rapidly build salience. That will tone down once I doxx myself and can relax into a less exaggerated persona.
I think at that point you'll find me a lot less annoying.
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There is no movement. You can't join something that doesn't exist. And having Richard Spencer and his people like you is not a good thing if you want to be popular because he is hated by everyone.
And there we go.
So the Skip Bayless method.
I'll be honest. I find people like you incredibly distasteful and harmful to white interests and the right in general. You optimize for controversy which repulses as much as it attracts. But you're getting money for your substack and people are talking about you, so in your mind you are winning. I personally think this goes nowhere except for money and attention for you, and I will leave it at that.
I respect this attitude. All I'll say is that I'm trying to quit my normie bug job as fast as possible, and once I can pay my bills via Substack will likely adopt a less explicitly provocative approach. That kind of naturally happens anyway to creators once they reach the 25-50k mark. My public persona will grow to resemble someone like Kaschuta or Default Friend. But it's literally impossible to grow at a decent rate initially without throwing a few grenades.
Even now, I think you'd probably find my overall metapolitical strategy mostly agreeable. I am a very civicminded person and believe in building bridges and talking to virtually anyone. I just like to "pop the zit" when it comes to scary topics instead of letting pus fester under the skin. This isn't always pretty or clean, but my actions are definitely helping to sanitize prowhite / rightist politics. If I can pull any of my old friends out of the ghetto I will be very proud of that.
"Jeb Bush who talks like Benito Mussolini" is kind of shorthand for my rhetorical strategy as well.
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I'm approving this comment despite it being your first and only one so far. It's a bad comment, it's nothing but "You suck," and if you just spun up an alt to attack someone you don't like, congratulations, you got your dig in, but if you post more in this vein this account will be banned.
I apologize. I made a response to his response that was also antagonistic but deleted it after seeing this. I'm a long time lurker but I found his post that I responded to extremely irritating. So much so that I had to create an account to respond to it. That being said, it would be pretty hard to respond to that without being a bit personal because he made it personal himself with the "I am a master propagandist" bit. If someone says that, it's difficult to criticize them without making it a bit personal because you're saying no you are not.
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I mean it's pretty antagonistic, but his points seem valid enough -- it's not so much "you suck" as "what makes you think you're so great". Which seems like a pretty valid thing to ask somebody who's proposing some radical shit on thin rationale?
If you guys really want a forum of witches, tone-policing the antiwitchers when they make mild criticism of the witches would be a good first step.
Tone-policing and telling people not to be antagonistic has always been a thing here. If you can't call out the witches civilly, don't spin up a new alt just so you can do it uncivilly.
Sure, but this comment seemed civil enough, and you felt compelled to warn it -- think on that for a bit, and then maybe think some more on why long-term quality posters might gradually turn towards antagonism in this realm.
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