The H.L. Mencken Club

In two weeks, the H.L. Mencken Club will be holding its second annual conference in Baltimore. The most influential paleos will be there: Pat Buchanan, John Derbyshire, Steve Sailer, Paul Gottfried, Jim Kalb, Thomas Woods, etc. In particular, I noticed a panel will be holding an exchange on the “post-conservative right,” which is a subject of considerable interest to White Nationalists.

I was searching through YouTube when I stumbled upon some videos from last year’s conference. I’m not sure if any of you have seen these, but I watched all of them late last night. Here is the presentation Paul Gottfried gave on “The Post-Paleo Movement” which he wrote about several times last year:

I’m not a paleoconservative or paleolibertarian by a long shot, but I admire certain aspects of both movements. It must be admitted that the paleo movement has reached a much higher level of maturity than White Nationalism. They are holding regular conferences like those put on by the H.L. Mencken Club. They have popular webzines in Takimag and VDARE. The paleos have a venerable intellectual journal, Chronicles, in which to discuss their ideas. They have The American Conservative which is on sale in every chain bookstore. Most importantly, the paleos have a tentacle, Pat Buchanan, that reaches far into the mainstream.

These people are carrying most of our water. If our side ever hopes to gain credibility and respect, we have to start building our own institutions. The closest thing we have at the moment is American Renaissance and The Occidental Quarterly. Jared Taylor has plenty of critics on the far right, but he has done more than any other racialist of the past twenty years to rehabilitate our public image. It is relatively easy to denounce the race realists and paleos for their shortcomings. It is much harder to create viable White Nationalist alternatives.

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19 Comments

  1. I thought we were in general agreement that paleos are “faileos” and consequently of no value to us.

    The alternatives we need are a new set of policies to present to the public that will win us distinction,attention and ultimately influence and power.

  2. They can say the same thing (perhaps with more justification) about White Nationalists. We haven’t even created so much as a daily webzine yet. There are no White Nationalists holding any elected office in America. We’re represented by the likes of the NSM in public. This is actually a decline from where we were ten years ago.

    I’m not saying we should become paleocons or libertarians. The point I was making is that the White Nationalist movement still has a lot of growing up to do. We really need to get our act together. I think we can learn a lot from the paleocons and libertarians about the rudiments of political organization.

  3. Thought you all might find the following blog post, entitled “White Secession,” interesting:

    It’s unfortunate that people could not listen to conservatives like H.L. Mencken who pointed out that diversifying our culture led to less agreement rather than more and therefore, required more government and corporate intervention, but realistic views have never been popular. Telling everyone they can be whatever they think they are however remains popular.

    It will be interesting to watch the USA at it attempts to deal with this latest trend — a migration from cities to isolation.

    http://www.amerika.org/2009/organization/white-secession/

  4. Gottfried’s Jewishness really comes through, both in appearance, voice and mannerism. He reminds me of Michael Levin.

    I agree with Hunter, WNs aren’t in a position to call others failures.

  5. Gottfried represents the farthest extreme of his tribe. He is closer to us than Lawrence Auster or Michael Hart. I’ve seen him make critical comments about Jews in the past, but he pins most of the blame for our racial decline on Anglo-Protestants.

  6. @Hunter
    >building our own institutions

    I think paleoconservatism and progressive-leftism are the only groupings that are presently allowed to criticize Jews.

    Chain bookstores will not carry a WN magazine. The chains and publishers are all tightly connected, and they will simply boycott and ignore anything WN. It’s the exact same situation with television; aside from having Duke on once every 5 years to attack him as an anti-semite, criticism of Jews, much less WN, will simply not be allowed to air.

    The recent interesting cases are James Traficant the former Ohio Congressman getting on FOX News twice and holding his own, and the fact FOX once actually aired a decent piece on the Israeli spy network. As far as I can tell, that’s it.

    So whatever kinds of institutions we create, we will simply be shut out of publishing and broadcast. Crypsis in paleoconservatism is our only current option, even though I wonder about crypsis in progressive leftism. Consider the recent Sierra Club immigration fight, and how popular your appeal to endangered species was. Blue collar working class Americans certainly have no interests in filling the country with third world immigrants that take their jobs. Middle class America just got ripped off by Bernie Madoff and Jewish Wall Street.

    What about that angle?

    To comment on the general theme of populism vs. elitism that’s been discussed here recently, count me in the populist camp. I have no interest in replacing the Jew ruling class with a White tinpot dictator, and some of the elitist commentary sounds bizarre and even sexually degenerate to me.

  7. Merlin Miller of Americana Pictures has written some articles on OccOb about his experience making pro-white movies, and he makes a specific point about the need for an independent distribution network.

    http://www.americana-pictures.com/

    Mel Gibson is the gold standard for bypassing Hollywood, both Passion and Apocalypto made tons of money despite a near-boycott. Gibson sold Passion through church groups and going directly to local cinemas, Apocalypto followed up the strategy but made significant money and publicity through non-white audiences and media.

    Obviously the internet will be central to any alternative media/communication strategy, but breaking out of the internet-only tactic can be very successful. Netflix has make millions by sending DVDs through the US Post Office, ordered from a website, the perfect combination of offline and online.

    Find the mostly White institutions that already exist (churches, small towns, Southern college kids (Hunter’s key idea), even SWPLs, and work that network, and use the resources that exist. The Hoosier CCoC highlighted earlier was a great tactic.

  8. Writing as an ex-paleo, I would say the paleos have been very effective at creating echo chambers and furnishing them with comfy sofa chairs, claret, and fine cigars. But that’s about it.

    Political organization? Not so much. I can’t name one paleo politician today. There’s little popular following, let alone recognition.

    I think the libertarians (though I despise them) have been more politically effective, to which Ron Paul’s following can attest.

    For lessons in political organisation, I look to the European nationalists.

    “WNs aren’t in a position to call others failures.”

    It was my understanding that the paleocons themselves (or maybe just Gottfried) have deemed the movement a failure, which is why he has appeared ready to hand over the baton so to speak to the young postpaleos.

  9. I have no problem with Jews like Gottfried, Levin, Auster, Hart, or Schiller.

    I know that I am noted for my “antisemitism”, but I am really starting to think that the Jewish factor is overemphasized. There is no reason to exclude (or scare away) good Jews from out movement.

  10. Yosemite — getting a bit soft on nation-wrecking Jewry there are ya?

    I agree with some of your comment though. There are some Jews who are undoubtedly our side; however, there aren’t very many at all. Nevertheless, Jews are instinctually anti-European in their outlook since we are the primary Darwinian competitors against them for control of Earthly resources, and thus they can never, en masse, be trusted.

    Here in the USA we luckily have lots of land/space, resources, and human talent at our disposal, so if they honestly work with us we can likely arrange a plan that is acceptable to both us and them, a plan such as the establishment of a semi-autonomous Jewish ethnostate or ethnocitystate (such as in NYC and its environs). The best and most rational thing is to do is humanely separate them out of the general White/European American population (genetic testing will help us to do this), give them their own area(s) of the nation in which to live (NO EXCEPTIONS TO THIS), and then subsequently start working to rebuild the traditional non-Jewish racial, political, economic, media-related, and general sociocultural foundations of the nation; once meddling Jews are cleared out of the way it will be a lot easier to repair the damage they have wrought upon us. I am a humane person and I do not in any way endorse violence against them unless they fire the first shot(s) or otherwise severely provoke us to do so.

    I’ve written before about acceptable vs. non-acceptable percentages of Jewish blood/Jewish ancestry in the American pro-White/White nationalist movement. I think that people who are about 1/4 ethnically Jewish or less are probably OK provided they are never allowed to gain leadership positions or other prime roles in the American pro-White/White nationalist movement. Like the pro-Western Jews you cite above, they can be writers, scholars, journalists, rabble-rousers, ideologues, and even some lower/middle-level bureaucrats within the movement if they want, but they can never be allowed to climb too high in it lest the overall movement become corrupted from within.

    People of White/European descent the world over should ‘never forget’ (HA) that, throughout history, Jews have very often tended to poison or sully much of what they’ve become too heavily involved in, and as you may know Jewish history in the last 2,000 years is a very tragic one consisting of, approximately: (1) slow infiltration of Jewry in to a nation/region/area/etc; (2) the gaining and subsequent centralization and hoarding of Jewish wealth, power, intellectual powers, propaganda/media, and other influence; (3) rising hostility against them by native ethnic/racial groups as the rootless Jews come to unduly predominate in too many important areas of national, cultural, or economic life; (4) the beginnings of rising anti-Semitism and then overt anti-Jewish persecution; (5) legal/governmental or other official actions against them (forced emigration/ghettoization, seizure of their illegal ill-begotten wealth; etc); (6) violence/pogroms and sometimes even wholesale genocide against them; (5) and then often outright expulsion, which is followed by subsequent (7) Jewish nomadism or ‘horizontal transmission’ and the restarting of the vicious Jewish cycle of virus-like parasitism all over again in one or more new places as the Jews start the slow infiltration phase all over again.

    In summation, Jews are an extremely virulent group that must NEVER be allowed to gain too much control or influence over non-Jewish peoples or nations because their domination will eventually lead to the ruination those peoples and nations. Why would any people let Jews run or gain too much macrocontrol over their nation-state or economy when stateless and so often economically-corrupt Jews have been utter failures in the fields of statecraft and honest economics for about the past 2,000 years?

  11. I watched the seven vids from last year’s Mencken Club meeting and (IMO) the most important thing anyone said is “The problem isn’t hate speech; it’s hate facts.” We must change the current zeitgeist in media, education and politics that facts must fit ideology or be suppressed. We need to re-establish the primacy of the principles of the First Amendment, that facts are facts and people have the right to espouse truly held opinions.

    Once honest dialogue about racial, ethnic and gender differences is respected, then the second important step is to dismantle initiatives based on the premise that demographic differences in achievement are prima facie evidence of denial of opportunity. I do believe that achieving these two steps would eliminate the need for many of our more controversial proposals. A white nation-state wouldn’t be necessary if society accepted the premise that the values of whites are dominant because they’re superior, and that it’s right for those to be the basis of our laws and culture.

    Language is important here. We need a better way to label statements like “Blacks have average 15 points lower IQ than whites” than to call it a ‘hate fact.’ Also, it would behoove tremendously if we distinquish between the original meaning of “affirmative action,” which related to guaranteeing opportunity, as opposed to its later variations “results-based affirmative action,” “preferences” and “diversity” which promise equal results.

    And part of the solution needs to be getting rid of our own mythologies. Holocaust denial is idiotic and makes everything else look bad. Creationism also has no place. It’s a perfect example of ideologically-based fact-rejection, and evolutionary explanations are a prime part of explaining racial differences.

  12. RandyB,

    I’m going to have to disagree with your analysis.

    We must change the current zeitgeist in media, education and politics that facts must fit ideology or be suppressed.

    You have that upside down. We fail to dominate the current paradigm, therefore we don’t control the zeitgeist.

    A white nation-state wouldn’t be necessary if society accepted the premise that the values of whites are dominant because they’re superior

    Other groups are not going to accept that we’re “superior”. The data doesn’t really even support that by your preferred metric of IQ. Nobody is in an inferior group and nobody has an ugly baby.

    Furthermore, this scientific data should remain in your quiver until called for in the course of a lively debate. Any time you start explicitly arguing about race in terms of intelligence, genes, or fitness, you’re implicitly arguing for supremacism.

    Argue that we’re a distinct people with a natural will and right to exist. Put them in a position where they’re arguing against your right to exist and only drop bell curves and crime rates when necessary. Nobody likes a braggart. But most importantly, only discuss it with persuadables and tailor your message toward them, even if you’re ostensibly debating with somebody else (target the audience, not the opponent).

    Language is important here.

    Yup. At the very least, we need to have an alternative lexicon which isn’t overtly biased against us.

    And part of the solution needs to be getting rid of our own mythologies.

    Mythology is the firmware of the human mind. You can’t just rid a people of mythology. To pretend to do so is a farce. It’s ironic that you would start off with Denial, given that the movement relies on the proposition that mythologies need to be deconstructed.

    People who purport to be devoid of mythology typically have some contemporary secular mythology in its stead. Nazis for demons and Jews for angels. Scientific research for scripture and Dawkins for prophet. All but the most dogged of philosophers are capable of comprehending the depth of the abyss, of accepting the absurdity of it all. Everybody else needs a mythology. To believe otherwise is to be a victim of the modernist myth of scientific progress and enlightenment through temporal knowledge.

  13. 1. “We need to re-establish the primacy of the principles of the First Amendment, that facts are facts and people have the right to espouse truly held opinions.”
    2. “Language is important here.”
    3. “Holocaust denial is idiotic and makes everything else look bad.”

    Nobody who had bothered to study the territory has ever “denied” the holocaust (and quit capitalizing it!). When you employ the word “denial” or denier” you’re using a semantic attack on inconvenient research into these events formulated by Jews to protect the myths they’ve used to create and maintain their bandit ethnostate of Israel. Draconian holocaust hate speech and defamation of the dead laws in 11 European nations and Canada are models for the assault on American First Ammendment rights that Jew lead communitarians in the US senate and congress have mounted. Free speech is anathema
    to the people who invented political correctness. If you think the fight for free speech as it relates to the incessant holocaust agitprop we’re subjected to tarnishes any hope for the success of a post paleoconservative WN movement than you’ve already capitulated to the enemy before you’ve begun to fight him. Holocaust “denial” isn’t “idiotic” when courageous people like congressman James Traficant
    are railroaded into prison for coming to the defense of John Demjanjuk.

  14. RandyB,

    As a long-term Holocaust revisionist, I never thought I would agree with you on the subject of the Holocaust, but I have come to the conclusion that “denying” or downplaying the Holocaust does not yield fruitful political gian.

    There are three possible stances we can adopt:

    1.) We can accept that the Holocaust happened, but insist that it is being cynically exploited for leftist political purposes. This was the position taken by Nick Griffin when he was recently asked about the Holocaust in a Sky News interview; he even accepted the six million figure.

    2.) We can deny the Holocaust. This makes us look like Nazi apologists, even if we insist we are only concerned with “truth” – just as a leftist who denies the crimes of Stalin cannot fail to appear as an apologist for the Soviet union.

    3.) We can regard the Holocaust as an historical event that is irrelevant to our cause. This makes us appear cold and almost psychopathic, given the tremendous moral implications of the alleged event. It’s like saying we are “indifferent” to paedophilia because it’s irrelevant to the cause of white nationalism.

    I am in favour of a compromise between option 1 and 3 above. We should never ourselves bring up the subject of the Holocaust – regarding it as an irrelevant historical event – but when pressed about it by our opponents, as we shall be, we must take the stance that it was a horrible crime, that six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis, but that the event is unfortunately being exploited by leftists for political purposes.

  15. If you’re talking about talking baby steps for white nationalism that’s one thing. But if a web zine and annual conference are considered the pinnacle of a political movement and a precursor to an ethnostate I don’t follow. Again, if the web zine’s purpose might serve to attract a small following that would metastasize over time I’m all for it.

    I suppose the difference between a WN conference being proposed and Amren and the HL Mencken club versions would be our willingness to discuss Jewish influence in Western man’s rapid decline.

  16. I think Hunter’s idea (and he can correct me if I’m wrong) is to look at how Lew Rockwell, for example, laid the foundation for the Ron Paul movement with his website and the Mises Institute. By sticking to his guns for ten years putting up links to articles six days a week, many of them written by his stable of libertarian pundits, Rockwell created a national constituency for Paul, and now Paul has several best selling books to his credit and he’s being listened to with a lot more respect.

    My criticism of this approach is that unlike libertarianism our cause is in direct opposition to the owners of the media. We’ll never get a book on the NYT best seller list, for example. One model that’s worth looking at is the far Christian right, especially the home schooling movement. With almost absolute opposition from the media in the 1960s the religious right was able to organize and push through the deregulation of home schooling in most states using direct mail and other methods that completely bypassed the media gatekeepers.

    Of course even the most radical right wing Christian isn’t facing the opposition that we are, despite the hysterics of jewish liberals the “elders of zion” know that right wing Christians aren’t going to expel the jews.

    But we can still use some of the methods pioneered by the Christian right. We just have to expect and prepare for much greater media opposition.

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