Why "Racist" is Losing Its Power

Nathan Doyle

In college I learned over and over that during a debate of any kind, my Leftist opponents could immediately assess themselves the winner and end the conversation by pointing out my white privilege, and hence, my subconscious racism. If I was making the case that Maya Angelou’s book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was lousy, I would be informed that I could not possibly understand it because I’m white. If I was making the case that Ron Paul would be a good President, I would be informed that I only thought that because I was white and couldn’t possibly understand the fear Dr. Paul inspired in non-whites. If, in a casual conversation about music, I mentioned that I didn’t care for rap, I would be told that I didn’t like it because, as a white guy, I was subconsciously racist, making it impossible for me to appreciate such a black genre. No matter the topic of debate, I could be routed so long as the other guy invoked “racism” or “privilege.”

Calling someone racist or privileged is tactically very useful. Inherent in the concept of white privilege is the fact that it is invisible, or at least invisible to untrained eyes. The original promoter and popularizer of the concept of “white privilege,” Peggy McIntosh, described this privilege as an “invisible knapsack” and spoke of the racism of “invisible systems” that protected this privilege. Similarly, modern definitions of racism are opaque and stress that people can be racist without themselves knowing it.

Its invisibility is what makes it impossible to rebut. When someone accuses you of something that you yourself cannot see, in the eyes of your accuser, you cannot refute it. If I accused you of wearing a shirt that was stained by invisible jam, how could you tell me it wasn’t so? Its invisibility makes it so that you cannot see it, and implicit in my accusation is the assertion that I, for whatever reason, can see it. So it goes with racism and white privilege. When someone would accuse me of either, I would deny it. My opponent would then note that racists with white privilege do not believe they have it, and that not believing you have white privilege is a fundamental part of having white privilege. Said privilege also blinds one to their own racism. The tautological reasoning is airtight.

An important dynamic of the accusation of racism and white privilege is that the accusers view themselves as a kind of priestly class. They are a part of the group of people wise and smart enough to be able to see something the average Joe cannot. It is a self-designation, since there is no formal process to “become a seer of racism and white privilege.” There is no official specialized college degree, certification, or membership that separates those who can see racism and white privilege from those who cannot. The fact that there is no official way of becoming a “seer” cements the tautological nature of their arguments. No one accused of racism and privilege can allege that their accuser is not qualified to so designate them. The accusation itself is the qualification. In an argument about economics or mathematics, the involved parties will invoke how well-educated in these fields everyone is, or is not. There is no such equivalent in arguments about racism and white privilege. By virtue of invoking the concept, you are an expert in it, and your opponent an ignoramus.

The only other place we see a similar kind of logic is when the mentally unstable, or at the very least eccentric, talk about God. For example, several years ago I was smoking a cigarette on a streetcorner and a homeless man walked up to me and told me that the Devil was making me smoke. I asked him how he knew the Devil was behind it, and he looked me dead in the eye and said, “God told me.” I did not respond, because how could I? There was no way for me, or anyone else, to determine whether or not God had spoken to this man. To this day, I maintain that God never spoke to him, and that the Devil has never made me smoke. But there is no way of proving this objectively. There certainly was no way for me to convince this guy, in that exact moment, that God had not spoken to him. If I had argued with him, he would have found my arguments ludicrous. How could I know whether or not God had spoken to him? In his mind, for me to even suggest that I could possibly know whether or not God has spoken to him is absurd. By bringing up his conversation with God, this man was establishing himself as one who can “see” or “know” what others cannot. As one who can “see,” he righteously decided it his job to inform the rest of us, who cannot “see,” about what is good and what is bad.

“Anti-racists” use the same logic. They are self-appointed “seers” of racism and privilege. The difference between the kook in the street telling me about the Devil and egalitarians condemning racism and privilege is not that one uses a sounder logic than the other. The difference is one of power. No one listens to the kook; indeed, society at large considers it important to ignore kooks so we can get on with our daily lives. For anti-racist egalitarians, the situation is exactly the opposite. It is considered important to cling to their every word so the unique evil of racism can finally be eradicated from society once and for all.

What further strengthens the tautology wherein something is racist simply by being accused of being racist is that, as Sam Francis noted, “racist” has never been well-defined. There is no algorithm to detect racism, no legal definition, and no way to measure “racism” the way “wealth,” “speed,” or “toxicity” can be measured. Furthermore, no definition of it has ever gained universal acceptance. In lieu of a precise definition, what is and is not racist is decided by whether or not the accuser can get enough people to agree with him.

Why is blackface racist? Because most people say so. Why is the word “negro” racist? Because people agree that it is. Do either of those things have a measurable negative effect on blacks in any way? If someone could magically snap their fingers and make everyone say “negro” instead of “black,” would blacks (or, dare I say, “negroes”) be worse off? This question is moot, as effects are not what determines the label. “Racist” is assigned on a more democratic basis, and when it comes to blackface and the word “negro,” the people have spoken. All it takes for something to be racist is for one person to say so, and enough people to agree.

This is why when something becomes targeted as “racist,” the media whips up such a frenzy. If the Confederate flag is to be deemed racist, a critical mass of people need to know it as “racist” as quickly as possible. Once a certain critical mass is reached, there is no turning back. Nothing has ever been considered racist but then later became “reinstated” as “not-racist.” So to successfully label anything you dislike as “racist” is the ultimate triumph. Not only does successfully invoking racism confer victory, it confers honor. To be a fighter of racism is, after all, a very good thing.

Imagine if the homeless man who claimed I was smoking because of the Devil had a receptive audience. What if people wanted to share in the special feeling that must come with knowing God has elected to speak to you? What if, in a clamor to feel special, more and more people started claiming that God was talking to them, and that God wanted the rest of us to stop giving in to the Devil and smoking? What if several of these people then got on CNN? What if the anchors on CNN agreed with them? What if a few of them got book deals to write about how the Devil causes smokers? What if those books became overwhelmingly popular among academics and they started teaching it to their students? The logic behind the argument would not grow sounder, but the argument itself would suddenly have validity merely because enough people, and enough powerful people, were parroting it.

In our times, the willingness to label something “racist” has increased as the country becomes less and less white. The increasing number of non-whites means that reaching a critical mass of people who agree with you that something is racist is becoming easier and easier. In the 1980s, Bill Clinton as Governor of Arkansas defended his state flag’s allusion to the Confederacy. In 1992, when he was first running for President, he assured white voters he was on their side by publicly condemning black rapper Sister Soulja’s highly-publicized comments about killing whites. With the country still three-quarters white, Republicans like Bob Dole and Jack Kemp, who were pro-immigration and pro-affirmative action, were considered “not racist.” The smear of racism was reserved for more marginal political groups like the Christian Right and paleoconservatives. But after winning re-election in 1996, Mr. Clinton celebrated the forecast that white America was coming to an end, and those changes he celebrated would dramatically change how the Left would use the word “racist.”

But by 2008, with whites having diminished to around two-thirds of the population, the smear “racist” could be wielded much more broadly. Senator John McCain, a longstanding supporter of both unfettered immigration and affirmative action, never managed to escape the taint of racism for merely being in the way of a black man’s ascension to the White House. Once Mr. Obama won, the portrayal of the Republican Party as belonging only to dying white racists became ubiquitous throughout the media and the academy. The Tea Party was immediately labelled racist, and once Mr. Obama won reelection, they were labeled powerless racists headed for history’s dustbin. The Republican surge in the 2014 midterms was also racist, but immaterial. Mr. Obama had won, and twice. The rhetorical tool of yelling that the other guy was a racist, buttressed by an increasingly large chorus of non-whites eager to repeat it, seemed to be an invincible tool for Leftist political power. It was working over and over again and nothing could stop it, not the Tea Party, not Rush Limbaugh, not Mitt Romney. You’re with History or you’re with the racists, and History is on the march.

The complete lack of logic behind the word “racist” was never a problem so long as the victories kept rolling in. Who cares if something makes sense, so long as it gets you what you want? But as the Left was rolling in victory after victory, their own ranks began to split. By the now the children of anti-racist activists were entering the world of politics, journalism, and the academy. Their parents had taught them the trump card of labeling the other guy a racist, but the kids took this weapon and ran with it. Suddenly, young Leftists were accusing older Leftists of racism and privilege. Their parents had apparently never taught their kids that when using the word “racist” as a political weapon, an important string came attached: pas d’ennemis à gauche — “no enemies to the Left.” Or perhaps that lesson was taught, but ignored by this new generation in their lust for power and desire for goodness. Either way, during the Obama years, intra-Left conflicts began where different factions of the Left began lobbing the “racist” attack at one another.

These conflicts would start to crack the power of the word “racist” as they highlighted the incoherence of, and the inability to falsify or disprove, the accusation of racism. When two Leftists accuse each other of being racist, who determines the winner of the argument? I imagine Leftists yearn for the simpler days of only ever punching Right, as they now fall into never-ending cycles of one of these two back-and-forths:

1.
A: You’re racist!
B: No, you’re racist!
A: No, you are!

2.
A: X is racist!
B: No, it’s not!
A: Yes, it is, and you are, too!
B: We need to be more civil and fact-based in our arguments.
A: That’s racist!

Example one is best typified by the fall of Cornel West. Once something of a black guru, regularly on TV and at Mr. Obama’s side, Brother West (as he likes to be called) has fallen from grace in recent years, and fallen hard. Brother West’s sin was coming to conclude that Mr. Obama was not the real deal; not a real friend of blacks, or the poor, or the Third World. Though he had been an unofficial adviser to Mr. Obama, once Brother West took his leave, he began attacking the President from the Left, with gusto, over and over again.

As a black identitarian, Brother West slammed not just the President’s policies, but grappled with what those awful policies said about Mr. Obama’s essence as a black man. Brother West has called him a “Rockefeller Republican in blackface,” and “a brown-faced Clinton. Another opportunist. Another neoliberal opportunist.” He further claimed that Mr. Obama has “a certain fear of free black men.” In other words, Mr. Obama isn’t really black; it’s a mirage, and this can be detected by how little he does for blacks.

In response, black supporters of Mr. Obama dipped their pens in poison. Jonathan Capehart took to The Washington Post to declare that Brother “West is trying to deny him [Mr. Obama] his inherent blackness. By indulging in the ‘Obama-as-other’ narrative, West is no better than a birther.” Prominent black liberals at The Nation and The New Republic were hardly more charitable in their attacks on a man to whom they had all once looked up.

But if Cornel West claims Mr. Obama is a closet racist, and in turn, black supporters of Mr. Obama call Brother West a racist for those remarks, who can declare the winner? Obviously, when any of the three parties in the above dispute call, say, Newt Gingrich a racist, they are the winners. Black Leftists calling a white Republican a racist? No need for overtime, the verdict is in. But accusations of racism within the Left lack a mediator, because no longer can the accuser win ipso facto. If Brother West can claim another black man, the President, doesn’t represent blacks, then why can’t another black man like Michael Eric Dyson claim that it is Brother West who doesn’t represent blacks? Who is to say, especially when Brother West and Mr. Dyson both have large enough followings to keep either from reaching a critical mass of people who agree with them?

The case of Jonathan Chait serves as an example of the second conversation about race within the Left. Mr. Chait, a Jewish, moderate liberal of high-toned tastes, is a very different man from the scrappy Marxian Brother West. No doubt those stark differences led to their very different journeys into the ire of the Left where they were once well-received. Mr. Chait’s sin came in 2015, when he wrote a lengthy essay called “Not a Very P.C. Thing to Say: How the language police are perverting liberalism.” In it, he made the simple case that, sometimes, the drive for political correctness overrides the search for truth, dialogue, and understanding.

By and large, he griped that the weapon of political correctness was being wielded against good liberals like himself instead of bad Republicans. Other journalists on the Left immediately dogpiled on him, eviscerating him for his “privilege” and accusing him of just whining about his loss of status as a white man in America. One rebuttal’s title alone (from the popular Huffington Post) says a lot: “A Brief Rundown of Jonathan Chait’s Angsty White Man Opus.” From her perch at The Guardian, Jessica Valenti, arguably the most important feminist alive, wrote, “Chait’s real problem, it seems, is that he doesn’t understand why his privilege — or anyone else’s — should impact how people perceive what he says.” Amanda Marcotte, now a darling of Salon, but then of Talking Points Memo, noted the obvious in the title of her response as well: “P.C. Policeman Jonathan Chait Can Dish It Out, But He Can’t Take It.” Alex Pareene, that longstanding adversary of John Derbyshire, opened his rebuttal with the line, “So, here is sad white man Jonathan Chait’s essay about the difficulty of being a white man in the second age of ‘political correctness.’”

For white advocates, Mr. Chait strikes an unsympathetic figure: a condescending liberal elite figure who penned a milquetoast critique of political correctness, but regularly attacks Republicans for being politically incorrect. But for outsiders, the perception was different. Here was a well-regarded liberal, a regular in the respected New York magazine, who, after noting the limits of calling things you don’t like “racist” and “sexist,” was eviscerated and condescended to by his fellow Lefties. Noteworthy is that while all his attackers were younger than he is, most attacked him from newer and online-only publications, and quite a few were rising stars within the Left.

What Mr. Chait was hoping for in his moderately anti-PC piece was what the late Lawrence Auster called “an unprincipled exception.” Defined simply: “The unprincipled exception is a non-liberal value or assertion, not explicitly identified as non-liberal, that liberals use to escape the inconvenient, personally harmful, or suicidal consequences of their own liberalism without questioning liberalism itself.” Mr. Chait in no way expressed a desire to do away with the entire program of attacking political opponents for being politically incorrect. He simply wanted himself to be exonerated from such attacks. He aches for the simpler time of a decade or two ago, when only conservatives could be smeared as “racist” or “sexist” and thereafter be ignored. Now that the tactic is being used against him by younger Leftists, he wants to be the unprincipled exception. He wants to get some kind of liberal ID card establishing him as a “good guy” that should never be smeared by other liberals.

Brother West wanted to be an exception of another kind. Blacks and Leftists, and especially black Leftists, regularly denigrate conservative non-whites as “Uncle Toms” or race traitors. The unspoken rule was to never level such an accusation against one of their own. No matter what a black leader like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson might do (e.g., lie and steal), black Leftists understood that loyalty in the ranks was of the highest priority. That always made critiquing their own beyond the pale. Brother West broke that rule, and suffered the consequences. Before him, all black critics of prominent black figures had been obscure Communists or academics such as Carl Dix or Adolph Reed. Brother West was the first black Leftist commentator to reach the heights of national respectability, and then get yanked offstage by his own side for getting too radical.

The sagas of these two figures, Cornel West and Jonathan Chait, as different as they are, represent the beginning of the end of “racist” as a trump card at the end of the Obama era. On the one hand, you had a clique of black talking heads in a public shouting match over which of them was truly black, and which was truly racist. On the other hand, you had a liberal old guard getting buried in a blizzard of criticism for asking to ease off the gas pedal of political correctness. It became clear that the rules were changing. The world was no longer as simple as it was a mere generation earlier, with President George H. W. Bush denouncing David Duke’s runs and President Bill Clinton announcing a dialogue on race filled with hollow rhetoric and no action. Two decades of critical theory, Tumblr, and the rising tide of color, and the political game of attacking racism has become a whole new animal.

What was once a weapon used by the Left against the Right, and occasionally by the Right to save face, is now a free-for-all. The war against racism has morphed from two armies facing off on a traditional battlefield into a state of fourth-generation warfare of Hobbesian proportions. Some Leftists are now openly expressing regret for applying the word “racist” too liberally in the past, and urging that it be used less from now on, as its overuse is weakening its desired sting. Meanwhile, centrist commentators have conceded that whatever “detente” American racial politics once held is now gone. Everyone can be a racist now. Black neoliberals in the WaPo can call a black Marxian who used to be pals with our black President a racist. And young Leftists have discovered that old Leftists are racist, and demanding that, as such, editorial positions be handed over — they have only their internships to lose.

This entropy is what fuels the ridiculous headlines of anti-racist action you see today that would have been unfathomable even a few years ago. Everything can now be labelled racist because whatever rules there once were for the accusation are now gone, and there is always an opportunity to show off how virtuous you are just by making the accusation. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, dress shirts, and even math itself have all been accused of racism this past year.

Inside the academic world, the incentives for levelling the accusation of racism is highly incentivized. Imagine the popularity and satisfaction that must come to a student who outmaneuvers his anti-racist professor to show that the professor himself is racist, too. Universities are also continually expanding their bureaucracies, which of course must be staffed by the most anti-racist candidates possible. If you were a 22-year-old recent graduate saddled with debt and you wanted to get a job in your alma mater’s Diversity Department, would you be willing to assert that the Department as-is had too much white privilege and that you could fix that in order to secure the job? In a world of “publish or perish,” academics can now carve out a niche for themselves by discovering a new manifestation of racism never mentioned before. Doing so will make you a big hit at the next White Privilege Conference, which could help you land a job. Wherever eliminating racism is held as the highest ideal, word-savvy entrepreneurs will find racism everywhere.

The 2016 election highlighted this well. Remember that Ta-Nehisi Coates, the chic black radical of our day, took Bernie Sanders (the socialist and former Civil Rights activist) to task for not doing enough to fight white supremacy. Senator Sanders also had to suffer the indignity of Black Lives Matter activists forcing him off the stage at one of his own rallies so they could speak. Him not letting the activists do so would have represented a latently racist privilege. Even now that the election is over, Clinton supporters and Sanders supporters still trade barbs by accusing the other side of being racist.

With definitions blurred and accusations being thrown in every direction, the word “racist” is losing meaning, and the absurd logic it employs is being exposed. A generation ago, regular, apolitical Americans were fearful of the label racist, and repelled by anyone who carried the label. Today they are less wary. While they certainly are not following the career trajectories of Brother West and Mr. Chait, they see the fallout of those fights, and fights just like them. Everyday conservative media outlets like Breitbart and The Daily Caller shine a magnifying glass on the latest thing college professors have deemed irredeemably racist. Simultaneously, those professors have now influenced the political Left enough that national figures like Hillary Clinton pay lip service to theories about “white privilege.”

These days, everyone is a racist, even anti-racists. To all of this I say, “Cheers.” The breakdown of the status quo order of racial politics is an absolute victory for us. As Jared Taylor and countless others have pointed out, in the last election cycle both the media and the academy threw everything they had at Mr. Trump. He was called a racist, a bigot, a xenophobe, and a sexist just about every day by nearly every mainstream media outlet. Over sixty million people voted for him anyway. It is hard to imagine the America of the 1980s, though much whiter, which was so content to ignore the media’s smear of “racism” on a presidential candidate. Certainly labeling Pat Buchanan a racist in the 1990s did more damage to him than the same label did to Mr. Trump two decades later.

The indifference so many Americans now feel over the label “racist” is certainly due, at least in part, to the ever-oscillating and expanding usage of the word. Over the last decade, the Left has tipped its hand, engaging in too much anti-white rhetoric before demographics made a “whitelash” impossible. Simultaneously, the Left began to drink its own Kool-Aid. The word “racist” proved to be a Pandora’s Box of sorts, a weapon that can overpower its user.

While certainly still powerful, the label “racist” is not what it used to be. The Left is now doing its best to keep from “normalizing” the Trump presidency, by which they mean not reporting and commenting on it objectively, but instead just calling it racist over and over again. Let us hope that they do exactly that. Because if the President can be a racist, anyone can.

Destigmatizing Racism

Greg Johnson & Hugh MacDonald

The following is the transcript of a Counter-Currents Radio podcast that was recorded in March 2015. We would like to thank Mahometus for transcribing it.

Greg Johnson: I’m Greg Johnson. Welcome to Counter-Currents Radio. Today I am going to have a conversation with Canadian film-maker Hugh MacDonald. He is doing some work on an essay presentation that he is going to be giving in London next month. He wanted to bounce some ideas off of me, and we thought it prudent to record it in case other people would find it beneficial as well. So, Hugh, welcome to the show.

Hugh MacDonald: Thank you.

GJ: What’s on your mind? What are you working on exactly? And how can I help you?

HM: I am trying to do a study of the concept of racism. One aspect is to come up with a response when people call you racist. But more broadly it’s just to try to understand what does racism really mean. What is this concept? And does it have any validity? I am trying to look it this idea within the context of feminist argument of “slut-shaming.” I am trying to apply the technology of this feminist argument to racism. And I am calling it “racism-shaming.” 

GJ: Right. So, what’s the feminist position on slut-shaming in a nutshell?

HM: There is something called the “slut walk,” which is a feminist protest movement. It is designed to push against the idea of “slut shaming.” This idea of “slut walk” was first began in my university (York University, Toronto) when a cop came to campus and said that in order to avoid rape, make sure you don’t dress like a slut. Feminists don’t like that argument because in telling women to not dress like a slut or to not be a slut we are controlling their behavior. From their perspective, we are infringing on their autonomy. According to them, women should be free to do whatever they want to do, and they shouldn’t have men telling them what to do. That is what feminism is all about. Probably one big aspect of a certain type of feminism is this idea of female empowerment and then putting women in the position where they can decide for themselves.

GJ: It is odd because the advice to women to not dress like sluts actually presupposes that women have a certain amount of agency. It is assuming that they have some power and that it is within their power to be less likely to be a target of rape. Yet feminists think that by giving women this advice would somehow trying to objectify them. I don’t get it. 

I guess the assumption that they really want to push across is that women are not agents, that they are entirely victims and entirely passive when it comes to the phenomenon of rape. There is nothing that they could do to avoid it. Instead of trying to spare them from rape I guess we are trying to just control them in some mean way. It is really a mentality of a spoilt child. Are these adults coming up with this nonsense?

HM: Right. We often get feminists argue that, “You shouldn’t tell women not to dress like sluts; you should tell men not to rape.” And it is kind of like saying you shouldn’t tell kids to look both ways when they cross streets. You should tell cars not to hit them.

GJ: Yeah. That’s good. And of course, society already tells men not to rape. And in fact, it punishes them quite severely when they are caught and convicted. I guess the assumption here is that we just haven’t done enough to oppress and shame and tread upon men yet. We can’t really criticize women. Nor even can we make recommendations for prudential measures to avoid being raped.

HM: Well, rape is one aspect of the anti slut-shaming argument. But it is even broader than that. More broadly, it is about saying women should be able to be sluts. They should be able to have promiscuous sex if they want to. The feminists would argue that society attempts to morally oppress and stigmatize that behavior, which is a form of oppression. And in doing that we are attempting to control them, and they are saying don’t try to control us, don’t tell us what to do, which is to me a logical argument. Whether or not I agree with it. The moving parts of the machine all add up. When you call a woman a slut, that is a form of punishment.

GJ: It’s moral shaming. It’s a negative term that is used to stigmatize certain forms of behavior so that it doesn’t happen again. I think this is just another version of the whole double standard criticism then. If a man has many sexual partners, he is just a stud, and if a woman does, she is a slut, and that’s a bad thing. 

But you know, there are reasons for those double standards. One of them being promiscuity for women has worse consequences potentially than promiscuity for men. For a man, sperm is cheap. It doesn’t cost men much to produce it and get it out of their system, whereas, eggs are expensive and rare. And if one of them happens to be impregnated, a woman is really stuck with it, barring abortion. 

Given that attitudes about promiscuity go way back before the invention of birth-control pills and abortion, and, probably, to tell you the truth, back before the emergence of modern Homo sapiens, these are going to be deep-seated attitudes, biologically based double-standards between men and women. But let’s not just make it a conversation about feminism. Let’s get to the point you want to make about racism using this basic analysis.

HM: So, what I find interesting about this argument about slut-shaming is they are not saying “Don’t call us sluts.” What they are saying is that there is nothing wrong in being a slut. You shouldn’t try to shame that behavior. You should accept that behavior. I think the most prominent attack on female promiscuity comes from a moral perspective. Traditionally, people would say it’s immoral to be a slut and so sexually promiscuous. It seems to me what’s happening is that if there is no underlying morality for a society then it is easy to make that argument. It is easy to say, “Hey, you are pushing this morality on me, but what it is based on? You are telling me it is immoral to be a slut, but where is that argument coming from?” At a slut walk, I saw one of the feminists holding up a sign that said “Slut is a social construct.” 

Applying the technology of this argument to racism, I think there is a parallel there in a sense that they (slut-shaming and racism) are both socially constructed ideas; to attack women for being sluts or to attack Europeans for being racists. The term that comes to my mind is “racism-shaming.” If I say “Hey, I am a European, and I have a business to help my own people, and for that reason I am only going to employ Europeans, and I am not going to employ any other people,” a Marxist would point at me and say “Hey, you are a racist. It is evil of you to do that. It is bad for you to put your own people first.” So, it’s the same structure of an argument as if you want to attack for being sexually promiscuous. The attempt is to oppress the assertion of our interests through stigmatization.

GJ: Right. So, is it your view then that when you called a racist we should act like a feminist-educated woman who is being called a slut and basically say, “Look, there is nothing wrong in being a racist, this is just a socially constructed word, and we don’t accept the negative stigma that you want to attach to us with this word?” Is that your argument then?

HM: It’s almost like that. Whereas the feminists say that “slut” is a social construct and pull the rug out of the concept of the slut, I would like to apply the same argument to this term called “racism.” I don’t have any respect for the term “racism.” It is a bullshit idea. It is not evil or immoral to stand up for our interests. On the contrary, it is our responsibility to do so. Because the problem with the term “racism” is that it is a loaded term like slut. A loaded term does more than simply describes objectively what is in front of you.

GJ: A non-loaded description of a slut would be a woman who is promiscuous sexually.

HM: Yes, that would be a less loaded way of saying it. Another example of a loaded term would the term “fag” as opposed to “homosexual,” as the former comes loaded with negative connotations. You are implying something further than what is actually there, which is that there is something bad or evil or immoral about that behavior.

GJ: Right. Like “negro” or “black person” vs. “nigger.”

HM: Yeah. What is a “nigger”? A “nigger” is a black person, but you are implying there is something evil or bad about being a black person. And the same thing with this idea of “racism.” You call someone a racist, you are implying inherent to the term “racism” is this suggestion of evil.

GJ: Right. Now with the term “racism,” there is a whole complex of associations that comes to mind. For instance, when you talk about “racism” you think of people who get off on using racial epithets, telling racial jokes, putting down people of other races, perhaps, because they feel like to need to lord it over somebody. There is a whole aura of very negative things that goes along with that term. I don’t like people who are constantly using racial epithets and putting other races down. I look down on them. I do admit that sometimes racist jokes are funny. I won’t deny that they are funny, but I look down on that. There is something wrong with that. 

But there is also something that is being identified with the term “racist” that’s very good, namely, having a preference for your own kind. And again, that is a pre-human, biological imperative. We all think that a mother who neglects her own baby because she is more interested in the neighbor’s baby for some reason has something wrong with her. There’s something monstrous about that behavior. And, yet, on the international stage in relations between races, it’s been defined as evil across the board for a white person to prefer another white person to a person of a different race just insofar as he is white. Why? Because they are more closely related to us. This is wired into the brain that people naturally feel more comfortable around people who are genetically similar to them. And they feel anxiety and discomfort among people who are genetically dissimilar. And these phenomena are part of our nature as animals. We can’t get rid of it even if we thought it was a good thing. And it actually helps us perpetuate our own kind, stay safe, and so forth. These are all moral and good in my opinion. 

So when people use the term “racist,” one way that I handle it is to say, “Look, if by ‘racist’ you mean somebody who is using racial epithets, really gets off demeaning and degrading members of other races, that’s not a good thing. I look down upon that myself, even if I might occasionally laugh at an A. Wyatt Mann cartoon or something like that. I still look down on that. I look down on myself for that. On the other hand, if you are taking about love of one’s own, having genetic preferences for people who are genetically similar to you, there is nothing wrong with that.” 

I would just be inclined to say, “Look, I am not guilty of first bad form of racism. With minor exceptions, I laugh at jokes; let’s be real. But I am totally ‘guilty’ of racism in the sense of having a love for one’s own. But I don’t feel bad about that. I think it’s natural, normal, and right.” And my inclination would be to say. “Well, I’ll own up to that kind of racism. But if that is racism, then there is nothing wrong about the idea at all.”

HM: Right. Part of the idea of this essay is how do you respond when people accuse you of racism. The two most common responses are that “Hey, we are not the racists; they are the real racists.” I try to deflect the attack. Or “Yes, I am a racist. What’s wrong with that?” And that is kind of similar to the slut argument.

GJ: “Yeah, I’m a racist. So what?”

HM: Yeah. These are the two most common responses. I argue that we shouldn’t do either of those. If you think of the attack as the sword that is coming at you, you shouldn’t fall on the sword by saying, “Yes, I am a racist.” Nor should you deflect it. You should shatter the sword, by which I mean deconstructing the concept of “racism.” Are you accusing me of standing up for my own people? Of course, I am doing that, but to call it racism is problematic because inherent to the term is the suggestion of immorality.

GJ: Right. Well, in a way, you are saying it’s not a bad thing. If I were to refer to a black person as a “nigger,” that would be immediately interpreted as “Oh, there is that racist being mean.” But I hear black people call one another “nigger” all the time. What are they doing there? They know that when a white person or a non-black person says the word “nigger,” they are putting them down. And one of the ways they defuse its negativity is by owning it. They are saying that “Yeah, I am a nigger, but there is nothing wrong with being a nigger.” Like “I am a slut, but there is nothing wrong with being a slut.” Or “I am a racist, but there is nothing wrong with that.” 

In a way, I think that is shattering the sword. It’s not falling on it, because the real sting of it is the negative moral connotation that society attaches to it. And when they throw the racism bomb at you, you grab it and defuse it. How do you defuse it? You basically deny the negativity that they want to associate with it. They make that hard, because it’s all loaded up. All these negative pictures of Klansmen burning crosses and lynching negroes and people being assholes and telling racist jokes and all that kind of stuff. They are masters of packing in a whole bunch of negative pictures and stories connected with racism. That is part of the propaganda. 

And my feeling as to how to get rid of it is just to say it is not simply bad a thing; you are trying to cast negative aspersions on something that is natural, normal, and right. In fact, it is something that, if you are honest, you will yourself admit to doing, because most people feel comfortable around their own kind. Most liberals who are massively anti-racist will still have a preference for their own children over the children of strangers. 

Occasionally, you get these people like Mia Farrow who have one of every color. But, honestly, I think Angelina Jolie would probably admit feeling closer to the natural children of her own body than the adopted children she has from Africa and southeast Asia. 

So, I think if we try to make it real and bring it down to the fact that we feel more comfortable around people who are like us, like our families and our children, than the people outside that, the argument could be stretched to our race, i.e., our extended family. And there is nothing bad about that. And as long as everybody gets to do the same thing, like blacks take care of blacks and Asians take care of Asians and whites take care of whites, we are all going to be alright. It strikes me that that approach is good. 

One thing that I have done in discussing these issues with a friend, who is honest, but she is not predisposed to the things I stand for, like White Nationalism, is to begin with twins. She has met identical twins, and she sees how identical twins are really close, to the point they can complete one another’s sentences and read one another’s thoughts. We know that identical twins raised apart make astonishingly similar decisions on things that are so trivial you wouldn’t think they are genetically determined. They vote the same political party. They drive the same make and color car. They date women with similar hair colors. They have similar professions and so forth. All of these things are genetic. Psychologically, the intimacy that twins have is remarkable. Years ago, I met a pair of twins, and one said—and I am sure the other agreed—that they were not so much two people as “one egg divided.” I thought that was really beautiful. I think we can extend that sense of community and closeness on the analogy of twins. The closer people are to us genetically, the more natural harmony we feel with them. We understand them intuitively. We are more likely to able to cooperate with them. 

Let’s say there is a problem in your neighborhood. You want to put speed bumps on the road. Or you want to clean up the creek that runs through your neighborhood. It is going to be easier if people live around you are like you. If they trust the same way you trust, they feel responsibility in the same way that you feel responsibility. But those things are racially and culturally quite variable. If you live in a racially and culturally mixed neighborhood, it is very difficult to get the neighbors to come together to get things like speed bumps or keep the streets clean or enforce any kind of standards. I am trying to bring it down to things like that, and I think if you do that, people realize that there is a natural preference, which is not such a bad thing.

But then why is racism the number one crime? And let’s face it, the only thing sacred these days is anti-racism for a lot of people. Certainly, within the churches that is the only thing that is sacred. I think if we can break it down and get people to think about their own actual decisions and not just confront them with the fact that when they have kids they move to “safer areas” with “better schools,” I think we can get people to get a bit more real about that and take away that negative sting that the term has been loaded with by anti-white propaganda.

HM: Right. I am a nationalist, and I agree that it is totally legitimate for us to stand up for our interests, but I will never call myself a racist. Inherently, it is an attack. If anyone ever called me a racist, I’d just say my approach is that there is nothing wrong with standing up for our interests, but at the same time I would imitate the African-American argument of “Don’t call us niggers.” I would say “Don’t call me a racist. It offends me that you call me a racist, because you are saying it is evil for my ethnic group to assert our interests.”

GJ: Right. So, we come back to the same thing, which is basically that we have to unburden ourselves of the claim that this is evil. We either reject evil along with the term itself, or we say “Look, the term is fine, but it’s not evil.” We don’t have to choose between one and the other. It might be useful to use both approaches, just in different circumstances and contexts. I can feign indignation if people call me a racist, but I would definitely explain there isn’t anything wrong in taking care of my own. 

One thing, Hugh, that we do need to keep in mind is that people are strongly motivated by morality. The real issue is what’s right and wrong. But there is another element to human psychology, and that is that sometimes bad things are very attractive. Specifically, people who are willing to own up to being a bit of a scoundrel, who aren’t afraid and don’t show fear of having a finger pointed at them, there is something lordly about that.

HM: I agree.

GJ: Women like bad boys with a little hint of bad about them. Men find bad girls useful, but they don’t particularly admire them. Anyway, it is not always good to be good, but at times it is good to be a little bad. And I think in this particular case we do not want to say we are bad, but what we really do need to communicate that we are not afraid to be called bad. We are willing to hazard that. We are willing to stand up to that. And we are not willing to accept it in the privacy of our own thoughts. They can call us bad. They can heap abuse upon us. We are not going to accept the negative connotation. Sometimes you just say, “Sure, whatever. You can call whatever you want. It is not going to deflect me from doing the right thing, and that is taking care of my own.”

HM: Absolutely, I agree with this idea. I often say rebellion is the essence of cool.

GJ: Oh, totally. What does cool mean? Well, in the low sense it just means what fashion is being promoted at the time and what crap is being sold to you. What is cool about James Dean? What is cool about Clint Eastwood’s classic cowboy roles? I think he is the quintessence of cool. It is a kind of lordly, aloof quality. It connotes strength, right?

HM: I would never deny that, absolutely, I am putting my people first. I prefer the term European nationalist but really, I mean White Nationalist. It is one and the same thing. My only hesitation in using the term European nationalist is because sometimes people misunderstand me and think that I am talking about some kind of European civic nationalism and my loyalty to people who are citizens of the legal entity called Europe. You know, countries within the continent of Europe. But obviously I am referring to white people. And that in itself is a subversive, dangerous, and rebellious thing to say. 

But still, I would never call myself a racist, because it is offensive to me. It is like it is bad of us to stand up for our interests. And it is just like how African Americans say they would never tolerate us calling them “niggers.” And in the same way the term racism is an epithet the same way “nigger” is. And it is an epithet applicable primarily to people of our ethnic group. You hear this argument more frequently from the Marxists who say that white people can’t experience racism and that white supremacy and racism go hand in hand. The European white is inherent to the concept of racism. To be a racist and to be a white person is one and the same thing. Only white people can be racists, because we have been beneficiaries of a white supremacist system.

GJ: Right.

HM: So, it even offends me to hear fellow nationalist Europeans who are white using the term “racist,” because the mere usage implies the illegitimacy of our cultural and political existence. It is a kind of acknowledgement that it is bad of us to assert ourselves.

GJ: I see what you are saying, but I don’t agree. In a way I don’t want to argue with the word so much as I want to argue over what’s really dangerous about the word, which is that stigmatizing tone that is attached to it. The stigma is the problem, not the word. And if we can separate the word and the stigma, it is fine. 

But here’s the thing: I don’t want them to make us dance. Think of the cowboy movies. They are firing at your feet and making you dance. Somebody shoots at my feet, I am going to move my feet. But if somebody says the word “racist” to me, I’d say “Are you kidding? Grow up. Come on.” I am not going to dance to that tune or get excited about it. And my feeling is that the coolest and most subversive thing is to just say “Look, you call me whatever you want. It is not going to deflect me from doing the right thing, which is taking care of my own.” That’s how I feel about it. 

It weakens us if we hold the idea that the term “racist” ipso facto is stigmatizing, and it offends us to be called racists. Of course it offends me that there are people who want my kind to cease to exist. I would like to pluck that idea out of the world. I would like that to be gone. The words they use are neither here nor there. It is the evil intent that I am really worried about. And I don’t want to be caught up in word games. Especially, I don’t want to leave the power in the word. 

In a way, my criticism of what you are saying is that it leaves the power in the word. You say it offends you inherently. The word inherently stigmatizes. But my view is that nothing inherently stigmatizes, and nothing should inherently offend except the evil intention behind the use of this word. I want to fight that evil, and if the word doesn’t scare me, and we can teach our people not to get scared by the word, then it loses its power, and people who say that just sound like idiots. 

I think we would be turning a corner towards victory when somebody says “That’s racist” and people just laugh out loud. They don’t even feel the need to defend themselves or the need to say “Yeah, whatever.” They just laugh. When we get to the point when people just laugh at that, I think we are there. 

So, I don’t want to give them as much as you are giving them, because if you think the term is inherently against us, then we are going to be ducking and weaving, and I don’t want to do that. I don’t want these people to make me dance with a simple word. We just need to laugh these things off and go about our business. “O racism, where is thy sting?” That’s the attitude I want our people to have. 

I think what you are saying is a stage along the way to getting there. I would like us to be impervious to the charge. When we see these politicians and media people who make some unguarded statements, and then they are being roasted, and they are just blubbering for forgiveness for their horrible crime of noticing something real, I pity these people. I want to take their hand, and sit them down, and say “It’s just a word that is being used by evil people who are out to destroy you.”

These people might pretend they are offering you a path to absolution. That’s just to sway people to working against racism if they think they can absolve themselves of this guilt. But there is just no absolution, because what we are trying to absolve ourselves of is natural, normal, and right. It is hardwired into our nature as healthy organisms. The only way to overcome this is to become a sick, twisted, and mangled organism. And the harder people try to become “anti-racist,” the more twisted and sicker they become as people.

HM: This idea of power and putting us on the defensive and if we respond negatively to the accusation of racism, we are putting the power in their hands.

GJ: Yeah. They are putting us on trial.

HM: I think actually getting upset about the term puts us in the power seat. It actually puts them on the defensive if you can say, “Don’t call me a ‘racist’”; it is an empowering thing. Like for a black to say, “Don’t call me ‘nigger,’” especially when he says, “It is okay for me to say it, but it is not okay for you to say it.” It puts them in a position where they can talk down to us. It puts us on the defensive. It puts us in a position where we say, “Oh sorry, it’s not okay for us to say it.” And by them getting upset about it, it gives them an opportunity to attack. It is the same way native Americans getting upset about the term “The Washington Redskins.”

GJ: Right.

HM: Why are they getting upset about the term? My perspective is by getting upset it gives them an opportunity to attack. It puts them on the offensive and us on the defensive. I think most native Americans don’t actually get offended by the term, but this gives them on an ego level an opportunity to attack. It creates a power hierarchy that puts them at the top. My approach is the same to this term “racism.” “Don’t call me a racist.” 

I don’t call black people “niggers.” Even in private I don’t call them “niggers.” That, honestly, is a literal truth. I am already a White Nationalist, and I would not want to make more enemies for petty things like using terms like that. I don’t call black people “niggers.” I don’t call Jews “kikes.” I don’t call Asians “chinks.” And the reason I don’t call them that, especially to their faces, is simply out of respect. Like I don’t call people names because I don’t want to offend them. My attitude is “Hey, if you expect us no to call you names, then we expect to be shown the same respect in return. We don’t call you names, don’t call us names.” You calling me a racist means it’s bad that I stand for my interests. You are trying to oppress that behavior through stigmatization. It is like saying it is evil of us to do what is good for us. That’s my thinking.

GJ: Right. I remember one time this guy was going off on me on the internet about something, and I responded, “You’re the one on trial here, not me.” And the truth of the matter was that I put him on trial simply by saying that. I simply switched the dynamics by asserting I am not on trial, but you are. And any time we can do that is positive. You put them on the defensive as you are recommending, by saying that calling a white person racist is the equivalent of calling a black person a “nigger.” 

Or you could just attack by saying “Why do you hate white people?” I would not say “Do you hate white people?” because then it’s a “No.” Technically, the former is a loaded question. And if they deny that they hate white people, then we say “Why do you stigmatize what’s normal for every other race, which is taking care of our own?” 

The point is we need to stop being on the defensive and start going on the offensive. Whenever these people start lobbing the racism word at us, we need to go on the offense. The way we do it is less an issue than just doing it. We have to do it. We have to stop being on the defensive about this, because there is nothing wrong with it. Maybe the word is not the word we want to use, but the substance that they are trying to stigmatize is definitely something we have to defend. We have to totally reject the idea that we are guilty. 

This is one of the things that really bothers me about a lot of White Nationalists. They think White Nationalism is some kind of a dirty joke. They think of it as something a little illicit, a little off-color, not for mixed or polite company. They look around and act like they are about to tell a dirty joke before they launch into this stuff. It communicates entirely the wrong attitude. 

I think we need to be unapologetic, self-assured, self-righteous about this stuff without sounding brittle and hysterical. An American-Jewish journalist named Max Blumenthal went to Israel and filmed Israeli Jews running down Obama. Oh, the scandal, the scandal. Everyone was supposed to be upset. One Jewish fellow quite impressed me. It was less what he said than how he said it. He said, “They don’t understand. This land is ours.” He said it in a totally unapologetic manner. It wasn’t strident. It wasn’t hysterical. It was just a firm, matter-of-fact declaration that this land was theirs, and they were going to defend it. And I know if white people or nationalists could be that cool and matter-of-fact and non-apologetic and non-off-color about asserting our interests, we’d be a lot further down the road.

So, I think we agree on the basic goal.

HM: I think I have to make the argument a little sharper, because you are still not convinced. [laughs]

GJ: Yeah. I am still not convinced, but you know . . . you have made some progress here, I have to admit.

HM: I think I did especially the way you used the word “stigmatize.” It’s important for us to use that word. In calling white people “racist,” it is an attempt to oppress, stigmatize, and marginalize the assertion of our interests.

GJ: Exactly. That’s well put.

HM: The whole point of the essay is to appreciate that this is an attempt to control us the same way. In psychological terms, it’s called “conditioning.” You want an organism to do something, you give it a positive reinforcement, and if you don’t want a behavior, you give it something bad. The term “racism” is an attack. It is a punishment. It is a form of conditioning. They are trying to hurt you for things they don’t approve of. They say, “Good white people don’t stand up for their interests. Good white people shut up and sit down. Good white people don’t do what’s good for them. Good white people do what’s good for me.” And they reward you for being a good, obedient Leftist, and they punish you for standing up for your interests.

GJ: I think it’s important for people who are being attacked to stand up against it. But I think it’s important for other people to stand up for them when they are being attacked. I think a lot of our motivation boils down to the fact that we take stock of what our fellows are going to do in a situation. And we know that if we going to be out there alone, and no one is going to come to our defense, we are not going to take any risks. Why do it alone? That is what most people think. It takes a very special and rare kind of person to stand up and to do things when they can be pretty much assured that nobody will come to their defense. 

If more and more instances take place in which people come to the defense of somebody who is under attack, then it is going to encourage people. This is why I think the attacks are so brutal. They are so brutal against somebody who offends the racial dogmas today, because the people in power know that if somebody states the truth—un-PC truth—and is not slapped down and made to apologize or made an example of, then other people will be emboldened. 

One project that I have talked over, which actually never got off the drawing board because we don’t know the right people to do it, is to put together a crack team of people who could do the following. First we sit down and we do an analysis of the process by which a person who has offended the dominant diversity cult is brought under pressure to apologize, his job is taken away, whatever. We need to find out the steps of that process, and then we need to figure out ways the process can be interrupted at each stage. 

So the next time some story like Paula Deen breaks, we send in really sharp-looking, well-spoken people with credentials, like lawyers, sit them down, and lay out what’s going on. We show them examples of people who have been destroyed, even though they apologized, and we try to convince them that first of all they should stand their ground. I call it the “Stand Your Ground Project.” We would give people what they need to stand their ground. We give them legal advice. We would say that we can mobilize a certain amount of public opinion. We’ll get the BUGS people swarming internet chatrooms and comment threads. If we can give people the resources, moral support, and technical advice that they need to stand their ground and not apologize, and if a few people do that, it is going to catch on. 

I think most white people in America and Canada don’t believe this diversity stuff anymore. And they are being suppressed because they think that they are alone, and if somebody who is mildly famous speaks up and they see them pilloried in public, they go back to thinking they’re alone and helpless. I think that if a few people who are somewhat public stand their ground and don’t back down and are not destroyed, that could really be game changing. 

So, part of the discussion we are having today really fits into to teaching people how to resist, to stand up against that kind of charge. But we need to do more than just give them talking points and moral certainty. We also need to figure out how to give them the support they need for standing their ground. We need to help people actually negotiating a real crisis. And if more people do that, I think things will change.

HM: Yeah.

GJ: So, are there any final thoughts on this? 

HM: I think it’s good to wrap up now, and then I’d like to have a discussion with you another time maybe. I want to talk about morality as a whole other thing.

GJ: Oh yeah, definitely.

HM: For now, I think I have used up all my ammunition trying to make an argument about this term “racism.”

GJ: Well, it has really been thought-provoking for me, and those who are listening in are going to be thinking hard too. I’d like to do more conversations like this. Not just an interview but a conversation. I think it’s valuable.

HM: Yeah. Good. Okay, thank you.

GJ: Well, thank you, Hugh.