Social Matter

In the interest of keeping us all on our toes, Social Matter has conducted an interview with Michael McGregor, managing editor of the always interesting Radix Journal, and Gregory Hood, a frequent contributor to Radix, along with Counter Currents and American Renaissance.

Note: In the style of Vdare, some links come from the authors and some from the editors.

Hubert Collins: Everyday there seems to be more and more commentary on “neoreactionaries” (NRx), sometimes loosely called the “Dark Enlightenment.” However, I don’t think they’ve received much strong analysis from the perspective of someone more to the right and less mainstream than they are. In short, and as an Identitarian, what do you make of them?

Michael McGregor: I find neoreaction to be an interesting trend that reveals a lot about the disillusionment smart, young people have with the present System. Many people are starting to be fed up with the comfortable lies of liberalism and are looking for a political alternative outside of acceptable discourse. Many see the problems of today as stemming from the political structure of democracy that allows too much disorder and seems incapable of solving major problems. Ultimately, I see neoreaction as a good thing because it awakens some of the best and brightest of our society to the thought that there is something terribly wrong with the modern world. But I would also say that in many ways neoreaction amounts to what Sam Francis would call “the harmless persuasion” in that the majority of its ideas don’t really challenge the present order and serve as a distraction from more pressing issues. Time could very well prove me wrong on that assumption though.

Gregory Hood: I consider myself a part of it and have followed the rise of the Dark Enlightenment for some time.  I’ve taken steps to be writing a lot more shortly and will be engaging with it more substantially soon.  However, Identitarianism and Neo-Reaction are obviously not the same thing.  What you have is a case of Vesica Piscis where there is overlap between some of these individuals; but it would be a mistake to conflate the two movements.

We’ll get into the differences in a bit, but as an overall tendency, I think it’s a good thing. I think they are raising questions that need to be raised, and I think that the more media attention they receive the better it is for everyone.  That said, I think the European New Right already did a lot of the work that NRx is taking on today.  The differences seems to be that it is possible to be in NRx and have a certain separation from racial or ethnic questions, whereas in the ENR it seems to be utterly central to the whole project.

The critical difference is that Identitarians can, at least theoretically, adopt some aspects of the modernist project.  Nationalism (which is not the same as Identitarianism but there’s obviously some conflation) is a modernist project.  The idea of ethnic homogeneity is modernist.  The idea of culture being rooted (at least partially) in biology is modernist.  Some would even call it reductionist or materialist, like what Julius Evola said of German racial science. Mass participation in politics, suspicion of organized religion and the Church, and impatience with monarchy can be found both in Identitarianism and in “far right” movements of the past, but I think most involved in NRx would be quite critical of it.

HC: Many of the write-ups (both left and “right”) on NRx paint them as being more or less Identitarians (or white nationalists or what have you) already. As someone who reads both Social Matter and American Renaissance, this never struck me as being the case, but at the same time, there does seem to be some common ground – if nothing else, both parties share a similar understanding and hatred of “the Cathedral.” What do you think are the key differences, and do you think there is a real possibility of further convergence between the two, or will they always stay an arm’s length apart, almost like paleo-conservatism and Identitarians?

MM: The key difference is that race is THE fundamental principle for Identitarians. That isn’t the case for NRx. I don’t see the Dark Enlightenment as particularly racial and it seems more concerned with the problem of democracy than the problem of White dispossession. It’s also a movement that will appeal only to a select few, while Identitarianism tries to appeal to a whole broad range of White people. I know some Radix readers who are construction workers, and I know some who are college professors. I don’t think you would have the range of class diversity with Social Matter for example. I think some of the NRx crowd will break off into Identitarianism over time, but if it survives and comes to have more influence over libertarianism, we will definitely be at arm’s length.

GH: Actually, I predict a greater separation over time.  I hope to be proven wrong.  As with mainstream American conservatism, there will be a tendency for people involved in NRx to make their peace with the Cathedral by carving out a more “acceptable” form.  This will focus on the exclusion of Identitarians and anyone who takes racial questions seriously.  Certainly, I’ve run into a number of people like this in real life – people who feel quite comfortable proposing that the United States should be ruled by a Hapsburg or that we should ban cars, but at the same time react with shrieks of fear and feigned outrage when someone brings up Jared Taylor or Richard Spencer.  The problem is that racial egalitarianism is the core of the Cathedral’s program, and giggling about Throne and Altar on the margins won’t get us anywhere.

Of course, it goes both ways.  I’ve argued in the past that race is sufficient in and of itself to serve as a foundation for state policy.  However, just saying that tells you very little about how precisely you execute that program.  NRx and its theoretical predecessors are absolutely core to understanding how society works and how power functions.  I think any Identitarian who doesn’t incorporate NRx into his thought isn’t going to have much to say when all is said and done besides repeating “muh folk,” or “muh people” over and over again.  And he’s certainly not going to have any idea of how we can get out of the mess we are in.

As far as the media goes, of course they will try to call it racist.  That’s all they have.  But that should also tell you something about what the Cathedral is really built upon.

HC: Over the last year, I’ve heard NRx described as both “hipster paleos” and as “elitist Identitarians” (that is to say, Identitarians without the sympathy for the white working class that most have). Do you think there is anything to these descriptions?

MM: Directly linking neoreaction with White Nationalism is misguided, so I would say the second term is very inaccurate, and the first term seems wrong as well. NRx doesn’t seem inherently socially conservative, which is a defining feature of paleoconservatism. It is certainly elitist and almost entirely composed of young people, so the elitist and hipster tags might be accurate. In my opinion, the main concern of neoreaction is taking away power from the masses and placing it in the hands of an elite few, who are also the most intelligent members of society. You could call it a “geekocracy.” Correct me if I’m wrong in this assumption. I think it would be more accurate to consider neoreaction as Paleolibertarianism 2.0, with more elitism and less social conservatism.

GH:  There’s definitely some of that, though I think it is overstated.  Even the kind of patronizing attitude most NRx types have for the working class is still better than the overt fear and hatred our democracy offers white workers.  And the actual rich in this country are fanatically pro-Cathedral either out of fear or actual belief.  Your typical Internet reactionary may favor an aristocratic social order, but I doubt he’s got money to burn in the here and now.  I think he may not consider himself a “worker” in a social sense, but he knows what it’s like to worry about the rent.

Still, I think a real base for NRx is in the tech industry and there’s definitely a sense of “we want to break away from these proles.”  As the American Right has become identified more broadly with Middle American Christians who are anti-elitist, low-church Protestant, and strongly pro-American, it seems predictable that NRx is going to be defined as a kind of Right Opposition – overtly elitist (just against who runs the Cathedral today), high Church, and suspicious (at the least) of the entire American experiment. Identitarians are also against all that, but there’s a greater sense of “we have to save these people.”  In NRx, you can be frankly indifferent whether we will deal with them at all.

HC: Surprisingly, out of all the analyses on NRx that have been done, rarely does anyone make predictions about where they are going. Where do you think they are headed?

MM: As I said before, I see some of the more racially-concerned neoreactionaries becoming Identitarians. If most of the NRx bloggers hold out past 2016 and don’t drop out like Moldbug, I see it having an influence on the libertarian movement that might turn away from appealing to the masses and instead focus on tactics outside of campaign politics. If Rand Paul fails miserably, I can see many a libertarian begin to question democracy and pick up Hoppe. The libertarianism of the future could be very elitist and demand a monarchy to counter the problems of democracy. Though if neoreaction becomes more influential, I can guarantee the more dangerous thinkers like Julius Evola will be dropped.

GH:  As I said before, I think you are going to see the emergence of a media friendly, “respectable” NRx that will present silly little essays on how whatever reactionary principle would ameliorate whatever is the social problem of the given news cycle.  But I don’t think those guys are really going to be that important or relevant.  There are plenty of people in the mainstream American conservative movement who will say things in private about how the South should be independent or how only property owners should vote, but when all is said and done they still go knock on doors for the likes of Ed Gillespie.  I think a big chunk of NRx will move in that direction – more acceptable and less interesting.

But another chunk will enter Identitarianism, which is just getting started.  Ultimately, the dividing line is race — not even whether you think it is important, but whether you are willing to even acknowledge it.  The sheer scale of demographic change and the empowerment of immigrant groups via mass democracy is going to overwhelm all other considerations.  The schools of thought that are going to matter are the ones who have something to say about it.

HC: In the interest of propagandizing a bit, what books/authors do you think NRx should read in order to challenge themselves?

MM:

The Dispossessed Majority by Wilmot Robertson

Archeofuturism by Guillaume Faye

New Right vs. Old Right by Greg Johnson

The Way of Men by Jack Donovan

The essay “Our Cause” by William Luther Pierce

GH:  I assume all of us involved in the Dark Enlightenment already have our basics down (I find myself returning again and again to de Maistre) so I think you want more race related stuff specifically.  Actually, the first book I’d recommend is a history book – The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity by James Russell.  The understanding how religion becomes an expression of ethnicity is a valuable asset in avoiding the kinds of doctrinal enthusiasms that plague NRx.  A German neo-pagan has more in common with a German Traditionalist Catholic than the latter has with various Haitians or Chinese who may be ostensible members of his Church.

I’ll skip over the usual racial books — I think everyone here knows all that.  One person who I think has been woefully neglected by NRx is Sam Francis.  Francis, through his in depth analysis of the work of James Burnham, was really outlining what the Cathedral was years before anyone heard of NRx.  Sadly, he never got to finish his magnum opus, but the columns and collections that survive are an invaluable guide to seeing how the Cathedral uses racial egalitarianism as a way to exercise power.  He provides a way of understanding egalitarianism as an elitist strategy.

And of course, anything from the European New Right.

Hadley Bennett: Could you settle for white-presenting nationalism? That is, instead of deporting (or theoretically structuring a society so that this problem doesn’t emerge) an East Indian at MIT, would he be acceptable if he signalled whiteness in totality? Must the whiteness of Identitarianism be biological?

MM: No to white-presenting Identity. We define White Identity as the biological and cultural heritage of Europe. They are intrinsically linked and they are both essential to making us who we are. I believe that your hypothetical East Indian should, like all people, identify with his own culture rather than that of one that he has no blood connection to.

GH:  Well, yes – because identity is biological.  The question presupposes that I would only be happy with a 100% white ethnostate.  Even if we get that, there are going to be nonwhites in the state at one time or another to trade, visit, study, what have you. And obviously, you treat them with respect and dignity, same as you treat everyone else.

But no, I would not allow them to be full citizens.  The reason is because I believe culture is an expression of biology and that ideas get taken to their logical conclusion.  Even if you have a nonwhite who considers himself “European,” there’s no guarantee that his kids will.  Furthermore, once you introduce the premise that it’s all culture, it’s just a short jump to saying everyone can “assimilate” as long as we hold the line on not granting racial preferences and preserving the language.  Well, we saw how that worked in France.

It’s also kind of funny how we think the West can somehow be universal when almost no other culture is.  If a white man said he “felt” Japanese, or Indian, or Nigerian, we’d raise our eyebrows and few members of that community would accept him as “one of them.”  Yet we somehow believe a Japanese, Indian, or Nigerian can somehow “become” European.  To me, it’s just as weird.

As I believe Jared Taylor put it, “Only we can be us.”  Every Western country spent the last half century pretending it was a matter of culture, not race.  Well, culture comes from race.  It’s an expression of race.  And we’ve seen this movie before and can’t afford to screw this up again.

I want to clarify something important though — I have no patience and no time for people acting rude or self-righteous based on race.  Being “white” doesn’t make you better than a non-white.  It’s just part of your identity.  I love my family, but being in my family doesn’t make me automatically superior to everyone else.  The question of how we order political society and where we owe loyalty is different from the question of how we treat people as individuals.  But that doesn’t mean everyone is the same or that everyone can “become” white.  You’re white or you are not. Full stop.

HB: What are we supposed to do with whites who shop at Whole Foods? In other words, is there enough commonality in whiteness as such, especially in the United States, to even think polity formation could feasibly arise on that premise? Or is it a particular kind of white/whiteness?

MM: All Whites carry the heritage for which we can base a commonly-shared racial consciousness on. It depends on the individual to make a decision whether they want to be a Last Man and watch his people die, or embrace his identity and understands that all Whites share something more than a desire for comfort. The Whites who typically shop at Whole Foods (better known as SWPLs and the worst ones known as “urban elves”) have some great characteristics such as high intelligence, but are typically the most disgusted by White Identity since they are heavily indoctrinated and have the most to gain by sticking with the System. Many Identitarians, including myself, are just as well disgusted with the low T behavior exhibited by many SWPLs and stress a virile, masculine White Identity to counter it. I personally don’t view the Whiteness (which is often portrayed as goofy and effete by the media) of SWPLs very highly and wish to promote a different kind of Identity. Those that adopt our Identity will be able to form a polity if and when the present order breaks down. I think this Identity appeals to all kinds of Whites to the point that we can have a well-ordered society.

GH:  I don’t entirely reject Evola’s idea that race is partially spiritual, but it is still, when all is said and done, biological.  And just as a family is rooted in genetics and not “culture,” race (which is just an extended family) is rooted in biology.  Of course, the culture is screwed up – but the culture is screwed up because we’ve lost the centrality of ethnic identity.  And once you restore that, as I said in the article I linked to previously, you do have enough to serve as a foundation.

Still, houses need more than a foundation.  And that’s where NRx comes in.  But as I’ve argued before, so many of the substitutes that others propose as a foundation for society – religion, “values,” propositions, economics, monarchy, what have you – are secondary to biological considerations and are in fact outgrowths of it.  And again – we’ve seen this experiment fail this century.

But what about self-hating whites, i.e. whites who deny their very identity?  And isn’t “ethno-nationalism” separate from whiteness?  Well, one of the things I think NRx can show us is how relatively new – and artificial – a lot of these nations really are.  And also how the egalitarian poisons of the age are really a religious phenomenon — an outgrowth of a Christian heresy (the key book here is Paul Gottfried’s Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt: Towards a Secular Theocracy).

Ultimately, I see Europe (which I define as wherever Europeans are) as a Broken Empire and while I believe in a diversity of regions and want government pushed to the most local level possible, “Belgian” isn’t somehow a more meaningful identity than “European” or “white.”  And that identity can be sufficient to build a society, if properly understood.

Does that mean it’s just a question of biology?  Not really — otherwise the white homeland would already exist (we’d call it Portland.)  But it does mean that if you say the preservation and upward development of your race is the foundation of your state and cultural order that you have enough to go on.

HB: If pathological altruism is true, and whites simply are unable to act like, say, the Japanese, then what are we to do with countries essentially composed of outbred, European mutts? If clannishness isn’t innately present and has instead been replaced with pathological altruism, is the game finished before it’s even started? Should Identitarianism be modulated by a mixture of traditionalism and techno-commercialism to get at the truly good quality stock, rather than using whiteness as a proxy?

MM: I think it needs to be said that we’re not trying to save all Whites, nor do we think it is possible. Many Whites will trade in their identity to be apart of an amorphous and decadent monoculture that stamps out all identities and rewards its adherents with material comfort. I may be misinterpreting you, but I believe by good stock you mean high-IQ people regardless of race. White Identity is our core principle and is what drives our people. Without it, there’s no purpose to our race and I don’t want to live in a world where it is extinct. Pathological altruism will overcome many Whites, but the clannishness and strong Identities of other races will likely forces enough Whites to adopt a tribal mindset that will ensure our heritage and our race will survive. Taking race out of the equation is a non-starter for us.

GH:  Excellent question and I think such a strategy may be what we end up doing in order to achieve an “exit” from all this.  But you still are going to bump into the key question of how you justify “good quality stock” and how you build something that’s sustainable not just for a group of people, but for their kids and their kids and so forth. The obstacles to fulfilling this kind of strategy and achieving a white ethnostate are essentially the same and I see the latter as more sustainable in the long run.

If pathological altruism is inherent, then yes, it’s all over.  But when all is said and done, it was an evolutionary response that is simply not working for us anymore, and we are seeking one that is more effective for us today.  And again, I don’t see “whiteness” as a proxy, but something authentic and meaningful.  As an outbred European mutt (i.e. an American) I actually can see us leading the way in this regard.

HB: What do Identitarians have to say about polities possessing multi-racial elements from their inception? In those scenarios, how does the end goal of whiteness match against higher-order governance values like peace, order, good government, the rule of law, and so on? Would whiteness as an end goal even apply in a multi-racial scenario? Is Identitarianism only useful if your polity is composed of majority—or almost majority—whites?

MM: They have no organic basis and will destroy themselves shortly after creation. People don’t unite on abstract values. They unite based on blood and land. While you may create this society on raceless principles, some of the people who make up this society will have strong racial identities and will work for their own people, rather than that of their own society. This will lead to disintegration and balkanization. Identitarianism is firmly opposed to artificial, multiracial polities.

GH:  I think they are inherently unstable and destructive.  Where I differ is that I don’t see these other things proposed – rule of law, etc – as a “higher order.”  As I said, I think the preservation and upward development of the race should be the foundation of the state.  All else follows.  America today has the “rule of law” and a reasonably reliable system of commerce, but it is leading us to destruction.  Therefore, I favor dismantling it.

In a multi-racial scenario, it’s not that “whiteness” would be the end.  It’s that what happens to the multi-racial polity would be irrelevant to me except insofar as it affects Europeans.  What does an Identitarian say about a multi-racial polity?  Protect your interests and existence within it until you can get out of it.

HB: Final thoughts?

MM: I look forward to seeing where NRx heads in the future and whether it can transform itself into a larger movement. Also, I hear this website RadixJournal.com is pretty neat. You should visit it.

GH:  Though I focus on race, I actually get annoyed by people who focus on it to the exclusion of all else.  Life isn’t just about race.  But race and identity is at the foundation of everything we do.  You can call yourself whatever faith you want, you can call your race or ethnicity “incidental,” but it’s as core to you as your sex, your family, or the language your were taught to speak in as a child.  I don’t like talking about it all the time because it’s equivalent to talking about being attracted to pretty girls or needing to eat food – it’s always there, so what?

What NRx offers is a way to give meaning to this foundation, to build something worthwhile upon it.  It’s the most exciting intellectual development in some time.  But the challenging days are still before it.  To remain relevant, it has to remain dangerous and be willing to take on the critical source of the Cathedral’s power.  That is source is race.  And while I don’t want to see NRx talk about race all the time (or even most of the time), the real danger is that NRx will simply surrender.

And if that happens, well, hell, why not just read National Review?