No, We Shouldn’t Reject Identity Politics

The Rebel has some black guy telling us we ought to reject “identity politics.”

Why on earth would we do that? As I pointed out in the previous article, every single generation of Americans prior to the Baby Boomers embraced what is now called “identity politics.” Whites had a positive sense of racial identity. Christians had a positive sense of religious identity. We Southerners had a positive sense of ethnic and cultural identity.

Alexis de Tocqueville, whose book Democracy In America was first published in 1835, was the most important foreign authority on Americanism in the 19th century:

“I have shown how it is that in ages of equality every man seeks for his opinions within himself; I am now to show how it is that in the same ages all his feelings are turned towards himself alone. Individualism is a novel expression, to which a novel idea has given birth. Our fathers were only acquainted with egoisme (selfishness). Selfishness is a passionate and exaggerated love of self, which leads a man to connect everything with himself and to prefer himself to everything in the world. Individualism is a mature and calm feeling, which disposes each member of the community to sever himself from the mass of his fellows and to draw apart with his family and his friends, so that after he has thus formed a little circle of his own, he willingly leaves society at large to itself. Selfishness originates in blind instinct; individualism proceeds from erroneous judgment more than from depraved feelings; it originates as much in deficiencies of mind as in perversity of heart.

Selfishness blights the germ of all virtue; individualism, at first, only saps the virtues of public life; but in the long run it attacks and destroys all others and is at length absorbed in downright selfishness. Selfishness is a vice as old as the world, which does not belong to one form of society more than to another; individualism is of democratic origin, and it threatens to spread in the same ratio as the equality of condition.”

We’ve finally reached the “long run” that Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about in 1835. Extreme individualism, which has its origins in liberal democracy, has consumed American public life:

“Among aristocratic nations, as families remain for centuries in the same condition, often on the same spot, all generations become, as it were, contemporaneous. A man almost always knows his forefathers and respects them; he thinks he already sees his remote descendants and he loves them. He willingly imposes duties on himself towards the former and the latter, and he will frequently sacrifice his personal gratifications to those who went before and to those who will come after him.”

Is there a better description anywhere of our peculiar mindset? That’s exactly how we see the world. That’s why I spend so much time and money writing these blog posts:

“Aristocratic institutions, moreover, have the effect of closely binding every man to several of his fellow citizens. As the classes of an aristocratic people are strongly marked and permanent, each of them is regarded by its own members as a sort of lesser country, more tangible and more cherished than the country at large. As in aristocratic communities all the citizens occupy fixed positions, one above another, the result is that each of them always sees a man above himself whose patronage is necessary to him, and below himself another man whose co-operation he may claim. Men living in aristocratic ages are therefore almost always closely attached to something placed out of their own sphere, and they are often disposed to forget themselves. It is true that in these ages the notion of human fellowship is faint and that men seldom think of sacrificing themselves for mankind; but they often sacrifice themselves for other men. In democratic times, on the contrary, when the duties of each individual to the race are much more clear, devoted service to any one man becomes more rare; the bond of human affection is extended, but it is relaxed.”

Penetrating insight.

I know lots of people in the Alt-Right movement who are “disposed to forget themselves” because they are constantly thinking of their ancestors and descendants or the humiliations their people are suffering in the present. Similarly, I know lots of progressives who express a faux sympathy for humanity in general, but who probably don’t know the name of their next door neighbor.

“Among democratic nations new families are constantly springing up, others are constantly falling away, and all that remain change their condition; the woof of time is every instant broken and the track of generations effaced. Those who went before are soon forgotten; of those who will come after, no one has any idea: the interest of man is confined to those in close propinquity to himself. As each class gradually approaches others and mingles with them, its members become undifferentiated and lose their class identity for each other. Aristocracy had made a chain of all the members of the community, from the peasant to the king; democracy breaks that chain and severs every link of it.

As social conditions become more equal, the number of persons increases who, although they are neither rich nor powerful enough to exercise any great influence over their fellows, have nevertheless acquired or retained sufficient education and fortune to satisfy their own wants. They owe nothing to any man, they expect nothing from any man; they acquire the habit of always considering themselves as standing alone, and they are apt to imagine that their whole destiny is in their own hands.”

This is a devastating insight:

“Thus not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but it hides his descendants and separates his contemporaries from him; it throws him back forever upon himself alone and threatens in the end to confine him entirely within the solitude of his own heart.”

Alexis de Tocqueville was pro-American! He said that the extreme individualism of democracy “threatens in the end to confine him entirely within the solitude of his own heart.” We believe America’s extreme individualism and its cultural decomposition in this advanced stage of liberal democracy, not identity politics, is the real problem.

Baron Edmond de Mandat-Grancey, a distant cousin of Alexis de Tocqueville, had an even harsher assessment of the American democratic man:

“Past acquaintances with the United States had given Frédéric Gaillardet a head start, but his anti-American venture would not be a solo one for long. Ten years later there would a great editorial rush toward America, the Uncle Sam rush. For the moment, Gaillardet had to make do with the unexpected Edmond de Mandat-Grancey as a traveling companion.

A distant cousin of Tocqueville, whose ideas he boasted of not sharing, the Baron de Mandat-Grancey was an ultraconservative. A serene racist and confirmed antidemocrat (he predicted the rapid demise of New York, an inevitable result of “the spirit of heedlessness which is inherent in democratic governments”), he seemed more interested in the enhancement of the equine race than in the workings of America’s social and political institutions. Spry and instructive, he peppered his travel diaries with remarks that gave off the whiff of high society. Thus he disapprovingly noted that in New York one saw “very few private carriages” and that “those one does see are ill-harnessed, ill-kept, and driven by coachmen with unspeakable mustaches.” Elsewhere, he waxed indignant over “the incommensurable culinary ignorance” of Chicago’s 600,000 inhabitants, who had never prepared crayfish à la bordelaise, despite the fact that ” all the streams in the vicinity are literally crawling with the admirable crustaceans.” It would take all the irascible baron’s aplomb to articulate such grievances with solemn gravity and use them to flesh out the docket in his case against the United States. …

These authors’ treatment of the “black question” was both more brutal and circuitous. Mandat-Grancey’s racism was not paved with a single good intention. He did not mince words, declaring the black race “absolutely inferior to the white race.” Abolitionism was an abomination to the baron, who had not forgiven Victor Hugo (and this in 1885, when France gave Hugo a state funeral) for having “spilled so many tears over the misfortunes of John Brown and all the Dombrowskis and Crapulskis of the Commune.”

It speaks volumes about Mandat-Grancey’s intellectual universe that he would associate Communards with unpronounceable names with the famous abolitionist hanged in 1859 in Charlestown for having roused the blacks to insurrection. But this fundamental racism, loudly and clearly expressed, did not stop the very same Mandat-Grancey from placing the entire responsibility for the unworkable and explosive situation created by the “black question” on the hated Yankee’s shoulders. Without the North’s hypocritical propaganda, the blacks would have stayed in their place.

It was the Yankees who had opened Pandora’s box, and in this sense, they were more hateful than the former slaves misled by their promises. How could you blame the Southerners for taking a few steps toward self-defense – such as creating the Ku Klux Klan – in reaction to the unbearable “state of things”? And how could you avoid fantasizing (aloud) about the Yankees’ annihilation by the very people they had purported to want to free at any price? “If this continues,” Mandat-Grancey glibly prophesized, “the Yankees, who struggled so hard to free the blacks, will be conquered by them like the Tartars were by the Chinese, or else they will have to suppress universal suffrage.”

In this, Baron Edmond de Mandat-Grancey was correct. He continues:

“After substituting the Indians for the cowboys, why not replace the Yankees with the blacks? At least the choice he was offering America’s Anglo-Saxons had the merit of being clear-cut. They could choose between their own demise or the destruction of their founding institutions, starting with the tradition of “one man, one vote.” The blacks would practically find favor (a very temporary one) in Mandat-Grancey’s eyes. Immanent justice that they should be ones to inflict punishment on the self-same Yankees who had, in more than one sense of the word, unleashed them. Frédéric Gaillardet had been satisfied with a less apocalyptic historical irony in stressing the fact that the freed blacks had used their right to vote in favor of their former masters. But for both writers, there was the same dialectic, in which the Yankees were presented both as the exterminators of the non-Anglo Saxon races and the sorcerer’s apprentices of a false and calamitous emancipation. …

Their views about the Civil War’s being a missed opportunity were also identical. Mandat-Grancey’s sympathies are less unexpected than Gaillardet’s: how could a conservative aristocrat not be on the Confederates’ side? Like Gaillardet, then, he reshuffled the diplomatic cards; he recast and replayed France’s had with big swipes of “we should have” and “we would only have had to.” For “we would only have had to unequivocally back [the Confederates] to make America permanently split into two rival States which would have mutually paralyzed each other, and of which one, made up of populations with preponderantly French roots, would have been a precious ally for us.” Self-interest and honor worked together here: “Having started the war in Mexico, this was the only way of getting out of it honorably.” So it was the same old story? No! France’s spinelessness was what had allowed a devouring monster to come to life – “the reconstructed United States.” It had now “achieved the economic conquest of Mexico by constructing its network of railroads, and soon it will take over the Isthmus of Panama in order to profit from the millions we are so madly spending there.” But Mandat-Grancey was a better prophet in announcing France’s misfortunes than in wishing them on the United States. The Panama Canal would be taken over in the end, as he had predicted, but the secession of the American West, which he considered just as inevitable, would not take place. In Mandat-Grancey’s opinion, France had played its cards so badly during the 1865 conflict that it would only have been sporting of America to give it a second chance with an encore of the Civil War – but his wish would remain unspoken …”

Is it racist? Is it reactionary?

This is a view of the United States from 19th century France which at the time was more liberal on race relations. Baron Edmond de Mandat-Grancey was a moderate on race compared to Comte de Gobineau. The narrative presented in The Rebel video below, which attributes “identity politics” to Marxism, is so absurd and historically ignorant that I don’t even know where to begin responding to it. If this kid was one of my students, I would give him an F in history and political science. I would be embarrassed to publish this video on my website.

White identity is over a century older than the United States:

“In significant contrast, the colonists referred to Negroes and by the eighteenth century to blacks and to Africans, but almost never to Negro heathens or pagans or savages. Most suggestive of all, there seems to have been something of a shift during the seventeenth century in the terminology in which Englishmen in the colonies applied to themselves. From the initially most common term Christian, at mid-century there was a marked drift toward English and free. After about 1680, taking the colonies as a whole, a new term appeared – white …

Altering his emphasis a few pages later, Godwyn complained that “these two words, Negro and Slave” are “by custom grown Homogeneous and Convertible; even as Negro and Christian, Englishman and Heathen, are by the like corrupt Custom and Partially made Opposites. Most arresting of all, throughout the colonies the terms Christian, free, English and white were for many years deployed indiscriminately as metonyms. A Maryland law of 1681 used all four terms in one short paragraph.”

By around 1650, there was an embryonic American identity. When Englishmen founded Virginia and Massachusetts, their identity was English, Christian and free. By the second generation in the New World, the English colonists had started identifying as White people.

Jamestown and Plymouth wrestled with identity politics in military conflicts with the local Indians. American history is unintelligible in the absence of identity politics. White identity was central to American national identity all the way up until the 1960s. Far from being a foreign import, White identity is indigenous to colonial societies. It organically grew out of the struggles of Europeans with other races who were born in the New World.

Why are we even discussing White identity politics? I would say it is due in large part to the vacuous American identity which is based on “values.” Young people intuitively sense that something has gone wrong in America. There is something fundamentally missing in our lives. They find a purely personal identity or consumer identity to be unsatisfying. What’s missing in White America is a rich sense of identity that gives our lives structure and purpose and connects us to each other and the living with past and future generations.

As Alexis de Tocqueville said, democracy made us forget our ancestors, it has hidden our descendants and it separated and isolated us from our contemporaries. It has robbed us of our identity.

About Hunter Wallace 12390 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

17 Comments

    • Guarantee a group of blacks vandalized that cemetery. University City backs up to the North side ghetto and dindus have been causing a lot of problems for the Jews and shitlibs that occupy U City in recent years.

      • Bingo. It’s going to be fascinating to see how they bury it.

        I did a set of google searches and a few specific things came up with Grave Vandals.

        1. It’s always teens. Age 12 and 13 most common.
        2. It’s always a few of them 3 is the most common number.
        3. The only households with teens in that area are Dindu.

  1. DeToqueville predicted that one day the world would be dominated by America and Russia. He also believed that Taco Bell drive-thrus would eventually stay open until 2, perhaps 3 am.

  2. I find it curious that when Jews say Trump is ‘Hitler’ and his supporters are ‘Nazis’, they never argue for equality.

    After all, Hitler and Nazis were supremacist, right?

    Okay, if supremacism is bad and if Trump is an evil supremacist, then Jews ought to pressure him to abandon supremacism in favor of equality.

    But we never hear Jews demanding that Trump treat Israelis and Palestinians equally.

    We never hear Jews demanding that Israel and Iran be treated equally.

    We never hear Jews demanding that all people be treated equally under Rule of Law. After all, what is a ‘sanctuary city’ but one that allows illegal invaders to be above the law?

    We never hear Jews demanding that US media be more proportionate in representation. Jews have no problem with Jewish supremacist control of MSM.

    We never hear Jews demanding Hollywood, Wall Street, and other elite industries to be more equal and proportionate instead of being dominated by Jews.

    If anything, it seems like Jews are nervous that rise in nationalism will chip away at Jewish Supremacist control of much of America.

    Jews claim to love refugees, but why do refugees exist? They were created by warmongering by the US. Weren’t Nazis warmongering? So, if US is to be anti-Nazi-like, it should offer an olive branch to nations around the world. It should stop with the belligerence, almost always at nations disliked by Jews. But the idea of peace freaks so many Jews out. Jews are as allergic to prospect of peace as Hitler was when some advisers warned against more wars.

    Peace in the Middle East might lead to Arab and Muslim nations rebuilding and growing in power. Oh, we can’t have that. Spread more Wars for Israel and globalist domination.

    And peace with Russia would mean good relations with a nation that emerged from Jewish Globalist Supremacist bondage. Can’t have that either. We need a new cold war where all of us are told that Russia is a bigger threat than during the Cold War. But a threat to whom? To Jewish globalism, of course. But Jews would have us believe their supremacist interests are ours even though they hog the power and wealth while the rest of us got nothing. It’s like a king insisting that the poor wretches should obey and serve him since HIS RICHES AND POWER are their as well… even though HE hogs all of it.

    So, when Jews accuse Trump of being ‘Hitler’, they really mean they want Hitlerian powers to be monopolized by themselves. It is sheer projection.

    Deep down inside, Jews are not angry because Trump is really ‘hitler’. It is because he’s not too keen on serving Jewish supremacist hitlers who do so much damage around the world with control of media, finance, military, intelligence, etc.

    Jews say they are for more immigration because they want all the world to have an equal chance. But the real agenda is Hitlerian in favor of Jewish supremacism.

    It is Jews trying to destroy white Americans with demographic imperialism. It is white ethnocide, like what happened to Serbians in Kosovo. What happened to Palestinians due to massive immigration?

    Also, more immigration doesn’t lead to equal success. Some groups rise higher, some groups don’t. More diversity only creates a permanent ruling caste and permanent servant class. Just look at California. Jewish masters on top, Asian middle management class, and everyone else slipping further and further.

    What are the chances that Mexicans or Muslims will challenge Jews for elite supremacist power? More diversity means more servant classes for the ruling elites.

    So, when Jews say Trump is ‘hitler’, they really mean Trump isn’t doing enough to treat Jews as the Only Hitlers.

  3. I find it curious that when Jews say Trump is ‘Hitler’ and his supporters are ‘Nazis’, they never argue for equality.

    After all, Hitler and Nazis were supremacist, right?

    Okay, if supremacism is bad and if Trump is an evil supremacist, then Jews ought to pressure him to abandon supremacism in favor of equality.

    But we never hear Jews demanding that Trump treat Israelis and Palestinians equally.

    We never hear Jews demanding that Israel and Iran be treated equally.

    We never hear Jews demanding that all people be treated equally under Rule of Law. After all, what is a ‘sanctuary city’ but one that allows illegal invaders to be above the law?

    We never hear Jews demanding that US media be more fair and proportionate in representation. Jews have no problem with Jewish supremacist control of MSM.

    We never hear Jews demanding Hollywood, Wall Street, and other elite industries to be more equal and proportionate instead of being dominated by Jews.

    If anything, it seems like Jews are nervous that the rise of nationalism might chip away at Jewish Supremacist control of much of America.

    Jews claim to love refugees, but why do refugees exist? They were created by warmongering agenda of the US. Weren’t Nazis warmongering? So, if US is to be anti-Nazi-like, it should offer olive branches to nations around the world. It should stop with the belligerence, almost always toward nations disliked by Jews. But the idea of peace freaks out so many Jews. Jews are as allergic to prospect of peace as Hitler was when advisers warned against more wars.

    Peace in the Middle East might lead to Arab and Muslim nations rebuilding and growing in power. Oh, we can’t have that. Spread more Wars for Israel and Jewish globalist domination.

    And peace with Russia would mean good relations with a nation that emerged from Jewish Globalist Supremacist bondage. Can’t have that either. We need a new cold war where we are all constantly warned that Russia is now a bigger threat than during the Cold War. But a threat to whom? To Jewish globalism, of course. But Jews would have us believe their supremacist interests are the same as ours even though they hog the power and wealth while the rest of us get nothing. It’s like a king insisting that the poor wretches should obey and serve him since HIS RICHES AND POWER are theirs as well… even though HE hogs all of it.

    So, when Jews accuse Trump of being ‘Hitler’, they really mean they want Hitlerian powers to be monopolized by themselves. It is sheer projection.

    Deep down inside, Jews are not angry because Trump is really ‘hitler’. It is because he’s not too keen on serving Jewish hitlers who cause incalculable damage around the world with control of media, finance, military, intelligence, etc.

    Jews say they are for more immigration because they want all the world to have an equal chance. But the real agenda is Hitlerian in favor of Jewish supremacism.

    It is Jews trying to destroy white Americans with demographic imperialism. It is white ethnocide, like what happened to Serbians in Kosovo. What happened to Palestinians due to massive immigration?

    Also, more immigration doesn’t lead to equal success. Some groups rise higher, some groups sink lower. More diversity only creates a permanent ruling caste and permanent servant class. It leads to ethnic supremacism and ethnic submissivism. Just consider California. Jewish masters on top, Asian middle management class, and everyone else slipping further and further.

    What are the chances that Mexicans or Muslims will challenge Jews for elite supremacist power? More diversity means more servant classes for the supremacist ruling elites composed largely of Jews and their favored groups.

    So, when Jews say Trump is ‘hitler’, they really mean Trump isn’t doing enough to treat Jews as the Only Hitlers.

  4. They’re running scared.

    No doubt about it.

    They’re scared that White racial consciousness is rising.

    What makes this all the more interesting is that the Alt Right is a largely underground movement, operating as insurgent networks via the Internet and related information technologies. The Alt Right is like Castro in the Sierra Maestre in the 1950s, like Commandante Zero in the Nicaraguan jungles and mountains of the 1970s. It’s not just some scattered activists, but an idea, a revolution, a force of nature which can and will overthrow the existing order.

    A specter is haunting the globalist-multicultic system: the specter of Nationalism.

  5. ‘individualism, at first, only saps the virtues of public
    life; but in the long run it attacks and destroys all others and is at
    length absorbed in downright selfishness.’

    As you know, in North Carolina werecently had an election, and all the forces of The New England Government/Jewish Alliance/Homosexual Empire came after him, because he had dared sign a bill that insists men don’t potty with our mamas and daughters.

    Sadly, our brave governor lost the election by not even 1/10th of 1%.

    Sensing such a thing might happen, because our governor was not waging an identity campaign of 2016, but an outmoded fiscal GOP campaign from 2004, everywhither I went, I talked to folks and urged them to vote for our brave Governor McCrory – even though he was hardly a ‘Southern Nationalist’.

    I remember one retired man in our country church, a fine and upright fellow he is, and do you know why he voted for Governor McCrory’s scalawag opponent?

    He blamed Governor McCrory for not having raised his pension enough, over 4 years – even though he has everything and lives just fine.

    There were others like that, but, it’s too depressing to recount them all.

  6. ‘It speaks volumes about Mandat-Grancey’s intellectual
    universe that he would associate Communards with unpronounceable names
    with the famous abolitionist hanged in 1859 in Charlestown for having
    roused the blacks to insurrection. But this fundamental racism, loudly
    and clearly expressed, did not stop the very same Mandat-Grancey from
    placing the entire responsibility for the unworkable and explosive
    situation created by the “black question” on the hated Yankee’s
    shoulders.’

    In his recorded recollections, Miss’ippi White Knights Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers said something to the tune of –

    ‘It’s not so much the Negro Race that I mind, but, those White justices on the courts whom I think ought be hung.’

  7. ‘… Democracy made us forget our ancestors, it has hidden our descendants and it separated and isolated us from our contemporaries.’

    That may just be.

    On the other hand…

    Is it that Democracy did this to us?; or is it that the New England version of it, (identityless practice of it) that did it?; – because, The South managed it’s own democracy WITH it’s identity for a long time, and seemed to have little trouble at balancing both.

  8. ‘There is something fundamentally missing in our lives. They find a
    purely personal identity or consumer identity to be unsatisfying…’

    They’ve had something stolen from them, yet, they don’t yet really comprehend the who, whys, and what-fors of it.

    I reckon that’s their work, for the coming decades.

  9. Any time a non-white tells us we need to reject identity politics, all that’s really being said is: “Cracka, you rockin’ da boat. Shut up.”

  10. This Jay Fayza guy has black skin but his face looks Arab or Indian or something. (Or is it just me?) Either way, it’s easy for someone of an ascending race to tell someone whose race is on the decline what to accept or reject.

  11. The left will not reject identity politics so it is foolish for anyone else to. Their candidate’s entire campaign was based around identity: “we have the same reproductive organs and I belong to the party of the non-whites — vote for me women and non-whites!”

    Their entire party is now based around identity: non-whites, an urban coastal elite, the wealthy upper-class, and, to a smaller degree, women. Just look who runs their party: ((Chuck Shummer)) East Coast NY Senator and Nancy Pelosi (net worth $200 million), female West Coast representative.

    Hillary never even bothered to appeal to white men and didn’t visit Wisconsin for 7 months after her convention because her advisors thought that America was now filled with so many minorities and women voters that her victory was assured – that they would just vote for her because they identified with her gender and ethnic party, ideology and policy aside.

  12. Excellent read. I used to be of the mind that ID politics were an extension of Marxism, but it’s clear now that that’s not the case. That game has been played since the dawn of man; it’s just that we stopped trying and nobody else did.

  13. The Souths biggest mistake was not doing everything we could to push Blacks into the North. We did a lot of that but not enough.

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