Review: 2014 American Renaissance Conference

2014 American Renaissance Conference near Dickson, TN
2014 American Renaissance Conference

Tennessee

The 2014 American Renaissance Conference was held this weekend at Montgomery Bell State Park near Dickson, TN.

The CofCC at Amren

I briefly spoke there on Friday evening as the representative of the Council of Conservative Citizens. In my speech, I addressed the disorganization, apathy, and isolation that prevails in the pro-White movement, which I believe is the cause of the present state of powerlessness, and advocated becoming better organized, more active, and engaged with others in the real world as the solution to the problem.

Instead of talking about the racial and cultural impact of immigration and changing demographics, which affects our race as a whole, I addressed the favorite tactics of our opposition – ritual shaming, employment discrimination, and violence – which are used to target us as individuals. I emphasized how getting properly organized in the real world is the practical solution to all these problems. It is something that could be acted on immediately and would bear fruit for the movement rather than being endlessly debated like most abstract discussions on the internet.

Representing the CofCC at Amren
Representing the CofCC at Amren

Aside from representing the CofCC, I attended the Amren conference because I wanted to see and enjoy Montgomery Bell State Park, network with likeminded people, see our friends from the Tennessee Anti-Racist Network and make good on my promise after Richmond to film the opposition, and maybe learn something new from the speeches. I prefer to watch speeches on YouTube, especially by intellectuals, because most are easier to break down and digest in the comfort of my own home.

Montgomery Bell State Park

The view from our balcony at Montgomery Bell State Park
The view from our balcony at Montgomery Bell State Park

Far from being a scene out of Deliverance, I can’t speak highly enough of the decision to have the Amren conference at Montgomery Bell State Park. The food was great. The staff was friendly and courteous. The scenery was spectacular.

The environment at Montgomery Bell State Park was much more conducive to discussing ideas than it would have been in a large and “diverse” metro area like Atlanta or Washington, DC. I’ve already recommended that the League of the South have its annual conference at a similar location like Fall Creek Falls State Park. Business groups have retreats and seminars at these state parks for obvious reasons.

The Counter-Protesters

captain-manboobs

The campaign to “Shutdown Amren” at Montgomery Bell State Park was a failure on every conceivable level:

– In between the 94 people who told the Tennessee Anti-Racist Network and the Clarksville SDS that they were coming to the counterprotest, only 17 or 18 of them bothered to show up on Saturday evening.

– The counter-protesters were specifically told by the organizers to tweet their opposition to having Amren at Montgomery Bell State Park. As it turned out, they couldn’t even be bothered to tweet #StopTheHate on Twitter!

– Last year, I am told the counter-protesters bused in “anti-fa” activists from the Northern states and several carloads of them came from out of state to participate, but this year there was no sign of them at the Amren conference.

– Last year, there was a bar fight at a local bar in Dickson, but after returning to the same bar that evening we didn’t run into anyone from the counter-protest.

– Last year, the counter-protesters were there on Friday and Saturday, but there was no sign of them there on Friday evening.

– Last year, the Tennessee Anti-Racist Network organized a “counter-conference” at Montgomery Bell State Park, but this year there was no counter-conference.

In 2013 and 2014, the counter-protesters started two petitions on MoveOn.org to run Amren out of Montgomery Bell State Park. Almost 3x as many people signed the 2013 petition and neither petition accomplished its stated objective.

– The counter-protesters succeeded in annoying patrons and staff of Montgomery Bell State Park and made themselves look ridiculous. We knew they were coming this year and had multiple people film them from different angles.

– Inside the Amren conference, the attendees watched the entertainment unfolding outside with great amusement, many of whom later told me after drinks that it was the highlight of the conference, and the general consensus in the room was that the counter-protesters just really didn’t have their hearts into it this year.

The Attendees

Hanging out on Friday and discussing the important issues
Hanging out on Friday and discussing the important issues

I’ve been to a lot of conferences where attendees have asked nutty questions, but this one was notable for the relative absence of the kook element.

I enjoyed meeting lots of OD readers for the first time and reconnecting with several people who I haven’t seen in many years. I met RamZPaul, John Morgan, and Jack Donovan and a lot of other bright people who I haven’t met before. Last summer, I met my future wife at the 2013 CofCC national conference, and I have met some of my best friends at the last two League of the South national conferences.

I can understand that some people don’t go to conferences because they would rather watch the speeches at home or because they can’t afford to do so or because they personally don’t like some of the speakers, but I owe my wife and son to a spur of the moment decision to go to a national conference.

Many blessings have flowed from that decision. Now I always try to find the time to go. Thankfully, I wasn’t deterred by some of the people who spoke at that conference because its real value was the people who I met there.

I’m a strong proponent of taking “the movement” off the internet and into the real world. I’ve learned through experience that I prefer to interact with people in real life rather than online because the internet brings out the worst in people. In the League of the South, we use the internet as a communications tool and hold multiple events throughout the year, in addition to an annual conference, so that our people, who have the advantage of being more culturally similar to each other, can have plenty of chances to get to know each other and trust can be built within our organization.

The Amren conference is one of the few institutions in the pro-White movement that serves this function. There needs to be many, many more of these “entry points” where people who are “pro-White” can congregate and socialize in the real world, especially in light of the fact that White Nationalists lack a common culture and spread their message almost exclusively through the internet. It is much harder for trolls and other dysfunctional individuals to flourish in a real world setting.

The Speakers

Jared Taylor's opening remarks at the 2014 Amren conference
Jared Taylor’s opening remarks at the 2014 Amren conference

Of the speakers at the Amren conference, RamZPaul’s speech on The Dark Enlightenment was the funniest and held my attention the longest. At the same time, the speech was very substantial and traced the origins of progressivism back through the Soviet Union, Jacobin France, and the American Revolution to Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans and ultimately all the way back to Martin Luther and the Reformation.

It was refreshing to be in a room and hear someone finally “name” democracy and the American Revolution. The tragic consequences of the American Revolution and the benefits of monarchy is a theme which we have harped on here on many occasions. Sam Dickson also elaborated in his speech on how America was doomed to fail from the beginning because of its radical individualism and egalitarianism. Jack Donovan spoke about the importance of loyalty and discrimination.

The biologist speaker, Douglas Whitman, gave a fascinating presentation on the evolution of racial differences. It was the kind of presentation that I would like to go back and watch in slow motion on YouTube while Googling various things were brought up that I would like to read more about. John Morgan of Arktos spoke at length about nationalist movements in Eastern Europe and made several points about how White identity in the United States is too abstract while European nationalists are living out their identity in a more concrete way that makes it more attractive.

I believe it was Jared Taylor who spoke about the prejudices of our opponents and the importance of undermining stereotypes by conducting ourselves in such a way that makes our ideas more attractive. In my view, this comment summarizes the entire arc of Jared Taylor’s twenty year career in the pro-White movement, and it was interesting to see it juxtaposed against Jared’s warning about the perverted virtues of kindhearted Whites who think so highly of non-Whites that they are giving away their own countries.

Dr. Michael Hill told us at the 2013 LS Alabama state conference that “There comes a time when you got to get just pure mad-dog mean. If your civilization is worth fighting for, that’s what you will – you will let nothing deter you from it.” I’m sure that Jared Taylor feels the same way about our civilization, but he would say “no” in the nicest and most polite way imaginable.

There’s a right way to go about this and the happy medium is a combination of Dr. Hill’s “just pure mad-dog mean” and Jared Taylor’s good manners that will resonate with White people without causing them to lose their backbone.

Update: Shotgun has posted a review on his website.

Note: Amren has published its own article about the conference which includes an expanded account of the speakers and their presentations.

Videos:

About Hunter Wallace 12379 Articles
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36 Comments

  1. And one of these years, I’ll get to go to AR. I originally thought that if AR this year was just one weekend later, that I could have come. But as it turns out, I won’t be able to leave Jefferson City until the end of next week at least and maybe yet another week. The only fortunate thing is that I won’t have to hang around until the end of the legislative session, because the actual elected politicians will be doing nothing but budget budget budget in the last few weeks, and any legislation that isn’t on the conveyor belt by mid-May has no chance of happening this session.

    As for AR, it was a dead tree and ink publication and a conference before it ever was an internet presence, and even at that it didn’t become a formal weblog with commenting ability until (I think) in 2003.

  2. We (in Canada) are having our own version of an Amren gathering in Toronto, Ontario on Saturday, May 24, 2014.

    http://canadianimmigrationreform.blogspot.ca/2014/04/public-information-meeting-for-toronto.html

    A flyer highlighting this event was was distributed in the adjoining city of Brampton that has been transformed into a majority NON-white area only within the past 30 years.

    This is the reaction:

    http://globalnews.ca/video/1292514/flyer-circulating-in-brampton-being-called-racist

  3. Hunter/Brad/Fade,

    I find it interesting that you try (miserably, I might add) to separate southern patriotism from the American Revolution. You cannot have the former without the latter. In the past, Southern patriots were always careful to separate the Virginia-centric Founding, which Virginians and Southerners largely led, from the Massachusetts-centric nation that was birthed after the Civil War.

    For all your talk against ‘vanguardists’, you’re in reality just another one of them – just another WN currently wearing the guise of a Southern gentleman yet who remains alienated from his own country and history.

  4. Beautiful.

    I couldn’t have said it better myself…

    No. That’s why I’ m at best the #2 writer here at OD.

    That’s why Hunter is our best, youngest leader, writer and he has a beautiful young wife and soon to be a father…

    Meanwhile I’m stuck in Chicago trying to survive the longest winter in Chicago history and it ain’t over yet, nearly froze to death last Saturday doing something really stupid, trying to ride a bicycle 41 degree, brutal winds.

    And the brutal, nasty Chicago winds and gale force winds are positively kind compared to Chicago’s no fun, mean, gold digging, hosing women!

    Chicago’s Black gang bangers with guns have more respect for my personal property than these gals!

    🙂

    Great write up Hunter.

  5. “The South is not synonymous with Virginia.”

    Yes it is. The vast majority of Southern colonists originally started off there and migrated to other states. It was the most populous state (colony, if you like) at the time of the Revolution in the entire 13 colonies.

    It is not my intention to argue with you Brad. We would probably agree on many things, I just believe that you and Sam Dickson are wrong.

  6. No, it is not.

    The history of the settlement of Tidewater Virginia is very different from the settlement of the Southern backcountry and Carolina. I’ve already written at length here about how Carolina was founded by settlers from Barbados.

    The history of North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Georgia during the American Revolution is also different from Virginia. Georgia didn’t even send representatives to the Continental Congress and rejoined the British Empire during the American Revolution.

  7. I don’t think you will find much scholarly support for such an argument. Without Virginia, there wouldn’t be much of a South left.

    What I am trying to tell you is that you are arguing for what amounts to an oxymoron. Without the American Revolution, there is no Confederacy, no John C. Calhoun (the last ‘founder’), etc. etc. You can’t not have one without the other. Places like Barbados had more in common with the slave colonies of the Spanish Empire than they did the the yeoman colonies.

    You should know better to peddle a high schoolers version of American history. ‘Democracy’ was a dirty word in the 1770s. Roman and Greek history were the popular culture of much of the educated world then, and they were aware of the pitfalls of it.

    ‘Democracy’ in America came about much later – Andrew Jackson and others extending suffrage to all freeborn white men – 99% owned and farmed their own land. It had bad (very) long term consequences, but for the time, it probably seemed completely reasonable.

  8. Hunter has done some rather excellent research on the foundation of the core states that went on to make the confederacy.

    Scotsman, you are ignoring the fact that West Virginia split from Virginia over the questions at play in the civil war and the idea of the confederacy.

  9. Also, although DC isnt technically Virginia it is essentially part of Virginia’s geography. It’s the Federal City that sits on the top eatern edge of the state and crape regularly upon it.

  10. North Carolina had a large loyalist population in the backcountry:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyalist_(American_Revolution)

    “According to Calhoon, Loyalists tended to be older and wealthier, but there were also many Loyalists of humble means. Many active Church of England members became Loyalists. Some recent arrivals from Britain, especially those from Scotland, had a high Loyalist proportion. Loyalists in the southern colonies were suppressed by the local Patriots, who controlled local and state government. Many people — including former Regulators in North Carolina — refused to join the rebellion, as they had earlier protested against corruption by local authorities who later became Revolutionary leaders. The oppression by the local Whigs during the Regulation led to many of the residents of backcountry North Carolina sitting out the Revolution or siding with the Loyalists.”

  11. West Virginia’s ‘secession’ had more to do with the presence of the Union Army in nearly all of the counties (and they still only got about 1/2 of them in the vote) that were nearly empty because of men fighting in the Confederate Army than it did much real popular sentiment.

    South Carolina had the most radical republicans in the entire South – a tradition going at least back to Calhoun and the Nullifier Party.

  12. The confederacy wasn’t a natural extension of the revolution.

    To some extent what Lincoln did was more of a logical outcome of the attitude peddled by Adams, Jefferson, Washington and others. Their respective slave holdings notwithstanding.

    The confederates seem to have been reacting in shock n horror to the ultimately suicidal nature of equality for all.

  13. Yeah, you got me, that is what it was. That’s probably why Washington was on the Confederate Seal, right?

  14. I have diverted this thread far beyond the topic at hand.

    Years ago, I had considered attending the conferences but was told attendance had dropped in comparison to the previous several years. Would anyone who attended say if it was an improvement or not over the conferences since AR has not been able to be held in the Old Dominion?

  15. I’ve only been to two Amren conferences – the one in DC in 2010 that Jeffrey Imm got cancelled, and this one. The 2011 conference in Charlotte was cancelled. I’m sure lots of people were discouraged from making reservations to show up in 2012 when the first conference was held at Montgomery Bell State Park.

    The Amren conference has been at Montgomery Bell State Park for the last three years. The “Shutdown Amren” campaign has been broken. I’m sure more people will start to come again now that the conference has a secure location.

  16. ‘Carolina was founded by settlers from Barbados’

    Hunter, you never mention Santa Elena and La Florida. I believe the Latins, with their own coloureds, were the first settlers of southern Carolina, and they eliminated (literally) Huguenot competiton to settle what is now northern Florida. Of course, the Barbadian settlement was larger.

  17. “Why are 90% of the protesters white? Why are whites the main anti-whites?”

    Logan, part of it is ‘selbst-hass’ – self-hatred. Cambria has written numerous posts on the idea that Whites have left their first love (Christianity and Christendom) for the idol of the Negro Savage and a serious new class of priestcraft= scientism, and the data mongers.

    Because they have no love left for their own kind, or kin, they come to hate that which they once held dear. They have become schizophrenic, which is a sickness, and not a normal state of affairs. What Hunter talked about… the philosophical arguments on matters all over the map, used to be the NORM in civilized society- one thinks of the Inklings of Lewis’ and Tolkien’s era, sipping a pint, and discussing medieval English poetry. It’s the ‘academic leisure’ of a former age that we can no longer indulge in, because the Spinmeisters have made us all guilt-mongers, or self-hating sickos.

    The inmates are running the asylum, as it were….

  18. “In my speech, I addressed the disorganization, apathy, and isolation that prevails in the pro-White movement, which I believe is the cause of the present state of powerlessness, and advocated becoming better organized, more active, and engaged with others in the real world as the solution to the problem.

    You see, THIS is the problem: the incessant inability (or just plain laziness) of pro-white advocates to keep track of their own Cause – meaning who’s done what, who’s doing what, what’s already been done, and what’s being done. As for the above statement, countless others have “advocated” exactly the same thing over the long years so advocating it now is nothing new. In fact, by the very act of advocating such action indicates that no one has been listening. So why should they listen now?

    The pro-white cause is moribund precisely because the same tired activities are still being done by the same tired people. You know the old saying, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again?” So making speeches about being “better organized” is a been-there-done-that kind of thing – and it’s as stale as a box of year old Nabisco crackers. Pro-white advocates need to start thinking outside of that Nabisco box but until Jared and Don and David croak – it ain’t likely to happen. At least one of that triad is sitting on the precipice of a second stroke, and when that happens that will take care of one of ’em. Unfortunately, those waiting in the wings have no fresh ideas either, so expect no progress for the foreseeable future.

    Simply put, our inability to self-examine ourselves is why we are losing the struggle.

  19. Michael Hill said: “Good report, Brad. I’d like for The League of the South to have a presence there next year. Jared Taylor and Sam Dickson are long-time friends of mine.”

    Weren’t you once opposed to “racists”? Yes, I believe you were. So I find your “allegiance” now rather problematical.

  20. Re: Odd Thomas

    Saying is one thing. Doing it is another.

    To draw an analogy, it is pretty simple to lose weight. All it requires is creating a calorie deficit by expending more calories than you consume on any given day and remaining consistent over an extended period of time. Knowing how to lose weight though isn’t the same thing as doing it.

    I’ve been around for 13 years now and the WN is movement is less organized, less active, and more internet reliant than it was around the time of 9/11. It is still thousands of anonymous people posting comments on the internet, sharing ideas, and focusing on educating the public.

  21. “Also, although DC isnt technically Virginia it is essentially part of Virginia’s geography. It’s the Federal City that sits on the top eatern edge of the state and crape regularly upon it.”

    No. While the original boundaries of the District of Columbia included a portion of the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1846 Congress returned the land originally ceded by Virginia back to it. DC now sits entirely on the Maryland side of the Potomac.

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