What Southern Nationalists Can Teach The Alt-Right

October 7, 2016 Hunter Wallace Alternative Right, American South, Dixie, Southern Nationalism 40

Over at Counter-Currents, Patrick Le Brun has some thoughts to share this morning on what the Alt-Right isn’t and one of those things is Southern Nationalism:

“In the early days of GRECE, the think tank of the Nouvelle Droite (New Right), which included such luminaries as Alain de Benoist and Pierre Vial, it was considered necessary to make a clean break with the failures of the past, totems that many on the Right still clung to. This new generation of writers, mostly in their 20s during the cultural revolution of ’68, felt that nostalgia for a lost cause — and there were several — stood in the way of their values finding political and cultural support from the majority of their countryman. This left a void which the Left exploited without hesitation or limit. …

This article seeks to create an understanding as to how these other schools of thought understand better than the mainstream narrative what is wrong with our society, but they fall short of providing a holistic view or a manageable solution. …

North is a direction; the South is a place, a culture, and a source of pride. It is no surprise that many descendants of the heroic soldiers of the South cherish the memory of their ancestors. This strain of Albion’s seed, the traditionalists, are far less culpable than their Northern cousins, the moralists, in allowing the United States to be subverted by the eternal enemy of our people. The culture distorters who control the media of the US have done all they could to discredit the Southerner, both the aristocratic and down-and-out archetypes. When these proud and demonized Southerners observe the recent evils of the Federal government noted above, the same Federal government that made war upon their ancestors, it is no surprise that many would dream of a renewed separatist struggle. …

The struggle to preserve a future for our people will be an all or nothing struggle. The empire cannot allow for a separate peace, and it certainly won’t be based on reverence for a political economy that was dysgenic and anti-nationalist. …

He goes on for a minute or two before arriving at this conclusion:

“Conclusion

While articles like this have a certain impact on the thinking of a small number of people within the movement, ultimately, it is those who speak in poetry rather than prose who have the broadest impact. As RamzPaul stated, following the Bastille Day attack in Nice, “White Nationalism is about our need for a home, a home of our own.” All of these movements that the Alt Right is not, whether they are centuries old or are simply YouTube channels that have been around a couple years, they diagnose some of the problems of our civilizational and racial decline, but none of them have the whole story or the proper prognosis.

White People need living space separate from the other races to survive and thrive. Jews of all political stripes are a parasitic element that will stand in the way of that goal. Achieving these goals requires a broad movement that seeks total victory and the resulting peace and order will only be maintained by a strong state. Our historic religious commitments, enlightenment ideals, and family values will be reinterpreted through the lens of racial survival . . . we are free to keep what works and discard what doesn’t work well with this goal.

We are also free to maintain our commitments to these Dead Ends that lie outside the Alt Right, but we do so at the peril of securing the existence of our people and a future for white children. What could be more important than that?”

What shall we make of this?

In my article “What Is The Alt-Right?”, I said the movement has three hallmark characteristics: a radical sense of realism, an emphasis on identity, and a strong streak of iconoclasm. That’s as far as I was willing to go. I didn’t say it was White Nationalism because my sense was that the Alt-Right was broader than that.

When I think of the Alt-Right, I think it in terms of taxonomy as being like a “genus” that encompasses a multitude of “species.” So for example, I think of The Daily Stormer as clearly being of the genus “Alt-Right” and the species “National Socialism.” I’m not a National Socialist myself, but I recognize their radical realism, their emphasis on identity, anti-liberalism and iconoclasm, and that is why I classify The Stormer in the Alt-Right box. It is undeniably part of the same phenomenon.

Jared Taylor and Kevin MacDonald are also part of the Alt-Right. American Renaissance is focused on race realism. The Occidental Observer is focused on Jew realism. Both websites consider the interests of Whites to be paramount. Both websites are focused on analyzing a taboo subject. Both websites are iconoclastic in their approach to the issue. Jared Taylor and Andrew Anglin might be polar opposites on the “searching for respectability” question, but both are part of the same broader phenomenon.

Moving on down the list, the Mens Rights Activist community is also part of the Alt-Right, but it is coming at it from a different angle. Instead of racial realism, the emphasis is on sexual differences and gender roles. There is the same focus on identity. In this case, it is male interests instead of White people as a whole. You also have the same iconoclastic streak that is a hallmark of the Alt-Right. Many people on the Alt-Right are not a part of that scene, but it is part of the same phenomenon.

The White Nationalists are part of the Alt-Right. A sense of radical realism on race and Jews. Check. An emphasis on identity. Check. A strong streak of iconoclasm. Check. A rejection of liberalism. Check. There are many varieties of White Nationalists. Just on the subject of religion, there are Christian Identity White Nationalists, neo-pagan Odinist White Nationalists, atheist and agonistic White Nationalists, Orthodoxy-or-Death White Nationalists. There are your garden variety White Nationalists – the sort of people you would never be able to distinguish in a crowd – as well as the more exotic costume fetishists and those who like to be covered head to toe in tattoos.

I don’t believe White Nationalists are synonymous with the Alt-Right. Similarly, I don’t believe calling yourself an Exalted Cyclops, shaving your head and wearing boots and braces, or dressing up in a 1930s Stormtrooper uniform made in China is synonymous with White Nationalism. These smaller factions are part of the scene.

Is Milo Yiannopoulos part of the Alt-Right? Some would say the Alt-Right is defined by atheism and faggotry and that Milo as a drag queen is its avatar. Every reasonable observer would grant that Milo is iconoclastic and shares that much with us. Is he breaking with liberalism though? Is he uttering hard truths with no regard for the consequences? Is he identifying with Whites or criticizing identity politics? I would continue to place Milo on the “Alt-Lite” border with mainstream conservatism.

What about my people, the True Southrons of Southern Nationalism? Are Southern Nationalists part of the Alt-Right? Yes, I think of Southern Nationalists as being part of the Alt-Right in the sense that I have defined it. Southern Nationalists certainly agree with race realism. They agree with Jew awareness. They are unquestionably conscious of their own identity. They are extremely iconoclastic. They pioneered the rejection of liberalism in the United States. These are all the hallmarks of the Alt-Right.

Alt-Right is an umbrella term that encompasses a much broader movement. Every faction within that umbrella has disagreements with the other factions. Within those factions, there are a multitude of even smaller factions such as Orthodoxy-or-Death White Nationalists vs. Odinist White Nationalists.

While I consider White Nationalists and Southern Nationalists to both be part of the broader Alt-Right, there are some important disagreements worth exploring here:

1.) First, Southern Nationalists are ethnonationalists whereas White Nationalists are racial nationalists. We want Dixie to be an independent country like Ireland. We believe in staying put where we are, organizing and networking in the real world, and working toward the goal of Southern independence from the United States.

White Nationalists want to move somewhere, secede from the United States, and create a White ethnostate in North America. 20 years later, White Nationalists still haven’t decided where the White ethnostate will be located and there hasn’t been any mass migration of White Nationalists. The White ethnostate is an abstraction.

2.) Second, Southern Nationalists are deeply skeptical of the idea that a “White ethnostate” could work. Isn’t that what the United States was in the first place … a proposition nation for White people? White people from all over the world were invited to come to our shores and live under the Constitution. Clearly, that experiment was a catastrophic failure, so why are we so eager to give Americanism another chance?

3.) Third, Southern Nationalists believe the United States failed because race and constitutionalism wasn’t enough to prevent White America from destroying itself. The root cause of the failure was ethnic and cultural divisions among Whites. European immigrants came to the United States and assimilated into regional cultures.

4.) Fourth, Southern Nationalists believe that liberal democracy was another root cause of our decline, but it was compounded by these ethnic and cultural divisions which were established by settlement patterns. For centuries, American politics has been an unending contest for sectional dominance within the Union between two White coalitions in which non-White minorities hold the balance of power.

Blacks were the first minority to be enfranchised in order to hold down the South. Hispanic immigration is another means to flood the South and West with non-Whites in order to tilt the balance of power within the Union toward the Northeast.

5.) Fifth, while there has been much happy talk about how Whites have been successfully blended into a generic huWhite America, this is far from the truth. The interstates, suburban sprawl, and trashy pop culture have given us a false sense of our homogeneity.

Cultural geographers have charted these enduring divisions which run across seemingly homogenous areas in states like Pennsylvania, the Kentucky/Indiana border and through lily-White Iowa. As America’s mid-20th century common culture dissolves, these divisions among Whites over ethnicity, culture, class, religion and ideology are deepening and sharpening, not the other way around.

There was a moment in the primaries when these ethnic and cultural divisions began to dawn on the Alt-Right when it became clear that Deseret really, really did not like Donald Trump. Just by knowing the cultural geography of White America, you could predict in the primaries where Rubio, Kasich, Cruz and Trump would win or lose.

Where will we be a month from now? I predict the Alt-Right will have developed a new awareness of concepts like Greater Appalachia, Deep South, Yankeedom, The Left Coast, Tidewater, Far West, Deseret and The Midlands. Also, within these broad ethnocultural sub-nations, there will also be a new awareness of the divisions between The Urbanite, The Suburbanite, and the Rural American.

What’s more, if Trump loses the election, I dare to say that there is a strong possibility that Southern Nationalism could be a hot new thing a month from now. Far from being a Dead End of history, the result of the presidential election is going to produce a new awareness among all commentators of what Southern Nationalists have been saying for years now, which is that White America is deeply divided into regional camps.

Note: Stay tuned to Occidental Dissent for post-election coverage. We’re going to analyze how the Yankee, the True Southron, the Appalachian, the Left Coaster, and the Urbanite voted on Trump vs. Clinton. We’re going to break it all down for you.

About Hunter Wallace 12392 Articles
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40 Comments

  1. Excellent analysis as always, Hunter. I always enjoy your insight into explaining the various cultures that make up the South and the greater United States.

  2. Southern Nationalism is much more do-able in the long run because it has a starting point. White Nationalism, while a good idea, has way too many figures vying for importance and no one willing to say STOP THIS IS THE PLAN. Dr. William Pierce (A Southerner BTW) of the National Alliance was one of the few true White Nationalists who could command this type of respect as was George Lincoln Rockwell before him. The main problem with WN’s is that you have Neo-Pagans/Odinists, Atheists, a tiny number of Satanists, Christian Identity, Creativity, and a million other groups. Southern Nationalism is ONE PATH. Of course there are problems within Southern Nationalism. I wasn’t a fan of Dr. Michael Hill for a few years because I felt he didn’t go far enough, I understand his conservatism but God Bless Hunter. He saved the movement.

    • Agree. I don’t want our newly independent South to become a haven for every crackpot religion/irreligion under the sun, and that is exactly what will happen if we do not significantly restrict freedom of religion. Just banning Islam isn’t good enough. We are an overwhelmingly Christian nation and shouldn’t give that away any more than we should give away our being a white nation.

      • 100% in agreement. The Old CSA was a failure in part because it didn’t want to be exclusively Christian. The people wanted it to be, most of the military especially Stonewall wanted Christianity strictly deliniated in law, but Judah P Benjamin and the Jews blocked official sanction of Christianity. Allowed God to be in the Confederate Constitution but Jesus was a no-no

          • That has to be destroyed but that will also necessitate some persecution of those churches to teach it. How do we go about it? No Clue

          • My bet is to just keep redpilling people. Don’t underestimate to power of memes. Remember most people are sheeple and will believe whatever they are told they believe, or whatever is fashionable to believe.

          • That is my belief as well. The problem as I have said before and will say again is draconian measures will in some cases need to be used. Too many Nationalists reject this, but its just a fact

      • I dabbled in National Socialism for a while. Then I realised that I’m a Texan and have no desire to recreate 1930’s Germany in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Besides, my elementary school teachers had already inculcated Southern and Texas nationalism in me from the beginning.

  4. As usual, you present your Southern stance as something other than mere antipathy to non-Southern Americans and, really, to non-Southern whites everywhere. Southern Nationalism is not part of the alt-right or of anything else.

  5. Another good read. The Alternative Right is changing the game in politics. Now our views are becoming even more mainstream. Good thing for activism and the future of our People. WPWW !

  6. It was also never the position of confederates to deport every non-white. They treated people differently based on race, but they never argued for physically removing all non-whites. Confederates in my opinion had a racial ladder more than a desire for homogeneity.

  7. The regnant majority of MRAs are left-liberals, cultural determinists, and sexual egalitarians who agree with feminists that the sexes are exactly the same apart from the inescapable differences in anatomy -i.e., that “gender” (masculine/feminine) as opposed to sex (male/female) is an “artificial social construct”- and share the vision and goal of creating a society in which the sexes are equal in virtually all areas and aspects of life and in which all forms of “sexism” and discrimination are abolished. They disagree with orthodox feminists in claiming that men and boys are now more harmed and stultified than women and girls by traditional sex-roles, “sexism,” “gender-stereotypes,” discrimination, etc. The “men’s movement” is the mirror-image of the “women’s movement.” As feminism is the ideology of female victimization, so “masculism” is the ideology of male victimization. Their view of males as a victim-class, the victims of “sexism” and “misandry” and discrimination, is distinctly false and absurd if one realizes that they “speak for” men and boys of all races and depict males of all races as a victim-class. What does any of this have to do with conservatism, much less the “alt-right”?

    • Their newest MRA discussion over at the Stormer is about how 9-12 year old girls should be married off and the best way to go about securing them.

      It’s very hard to believe these articles are being written and published so close to election time without the knowledge that a) it’s illegal and disgusting and b) the left is watching every alt right site like a hawk. Encouraging felony pedophilia is worse than encouraging violence.

      Their entire philosophy is built on guys like Roosh the Muslim, who went to all European countries to give women alcohol and drugs and have sex with them, then write books on how best non Euro men can ‘Bang’ European women. It’s far worse than multi culti.

  8. This is amazing. Good work. Like a lot of Alt-Righters, I suppose, I adhere to more than one Alt-Right category. Much of it isn’t very American. I look primarily to Europe for inspiration.

    • Pardon the pun, but I’m suprised nobody’s defined the alt-right as a confederacy of pro-realist (eg pro-white) ideologies, I mean if you want to be autistic I’m an Aristocratic Republican Fascist Traditionalist and probably a damn site more if I thought about it, but I would throw myself into a meat grinder for, say, a pro-white, antisemitic Monarchy or National Socialist regime. So I think the best description of the Alt-right would be; “The last stand of the white man”, we’re all brothers in the same war, yesterday’s disagreements and tomorrows squabbles are fantasy until we get out of this mess

  9. You didn’t seem to address the issues of A; indefensible/ lack of natural borders, and B; the problem with secession being that there is so much invested in the South that the rest of the country would never leave it go, could somebody please tell me how Southern nationalists address these questions? Also, would any states which have since come into being since the Civil war/ Northern states which also wish to secede be eligible/welcome in a confederacy? If you’re feeling particularly generous could you tell me what form of government the new confederacy would have? I’m Alt-Right and Irish so really I’m just trying to tease out some of the regional identities of the states, bought Albion’s seed the other day V good so far, my great great great grandfather actually fought for the confederacy, then came back to Ireland afterwards, so I wouldn’t be averse to doing the same if it came to it, I just want to know a bit more

    • 1.) Is the Canadian border a natural border? What are the borders of the White ethnostate? Oh wait, it doesn’t even exist in the real world.

      2.) We don’t have to invade Canada to trade with Canada.

      3.) If I had it my way, the answer would be no.

    • The CSA would be for the South, other states are welcome to Secede and form confederations of some sort of their own

  10. The Jewnited Snakes needs to be broken up into smaller, revolutionary White republics. I think that will eventually happen, because the Federal Empire is about to collapse under its own weight.

  12. Very interesting. i am in southern Indiana, which you count as part of “Greater Appalachia”. I am about 60 miles north of the Ohio that separated Clarksville, In from Louisville, KY. I would rather drive an hour south than a hour north.
    I consider my self a white nationalist. I am a Founding Fathers and the 14 Words type white nationalist. I suppose that I have much in common with southern nationalism, and little in common with NS Germany other than awareness of Jewish subversion.
    I personally do not think secession is the answer for the South. But it would be better than being overran with non-whites. i hope that all whites -German, Celts, and Slavs- can band together here against our common enemies.
    I am looking forward tot he next installment where voting by region will be broken down.
    14 Words

    • If you can, read: The Dixie Frontier: A Social History. It’ll explain the north shore of the Ohio river.

  13. If the South could achieve independence, it would be great for the White cause. The question is whether it is achievable right now. If there is little hope in the immediate future, you have to think about the risk that the activism in favor of secession could harm the WN cause. But Patrick Le Brun doesn’t actually say how it could harm the WN cause.

    If Scotland had voted for independence, I think it would have weakened ZOG and helped the White cause. The more countries leave the European Union, the weaker ZOG becomes.

    To save the West, the first step is to get rid of ZOG. Then, we’ll have to repair society. It could be useful to establish a centralized pro-White military dictatorship so as to establish racial separation and take all kinds of urgent measures as soon as possible.

    But we cannot trust a centralized system to do what’s best for everyone in the long term. I think the best way to give meaning to people’s lives is to have a decentralized system where every part of the country that wants political independence is allowed to secede.

    Whether it is in the USA, the European Union, Britain, Spain or France, the Jews always oppose secession. And I think the nationalist aspirations in Scotland and in the South of the USA are largely the same as WN aspirations. It is largely the same struggle.

    In the abstract, many White Nationalists will agree with the idea of decentralization and allowing people everywhere to be themselves and do their own thing. But when you explain what will be the concrete consequences: the secession of the South, of Scotland, Catalonia, Brittany and so on, then a lot of them suddenly return to being arrogant little imperialists who think just like ZOG!

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