White Renegade of the Year — 2021

The White Renegade of the Year is the man who could have done the most good for his people, but instead did the most harm. This year’s renegade isn’t a single man but an entire industry.

If one were to identify the “Democrat Renegade of the Year,” the answer would be simple — Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. He “tore the heart” out of the Biden Administration’s legislative agenda. We should thank him (and Senateparliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough) for sparing the country another amnesty for illegal immigrants.

Who is the White Renegade, the one who did the most damage when he could have done the most good? It’s hard to identify a single person. Most opposition to the progressives cultural revolution is pure reaction. While some may say they are against “wokeness,” no one with power is outlining ways it could be rolled back or abolished. There’s no agenda, no “Contract with America,” no plan.

There is little reason to think a Republican congressional majority in 2022 will make things better, and there are reasons to think it might make things worse. At the time of the greatest potential opportunity, conservatives could completely blow it — and that’s why Conservatism Inc. is this year’s White Renegade of the Year.

This is frustrating because now is a time for optimism. The conditions have never been so favorable. The conservative base, and whites generally, are more energetic, organized, and racially aware than in recent memory. The movement is far more serious and dedicated than during the eruptions of 2015–2016.

Crowds chant “Let’s Go Brandon” (or more direct insults) at a president who is underwater in polls and unlikely to surface. Almost three-quarters of Republicans think the President is illegitimate. Most Republicans think January 6 rioters (or “protesters,” as most Republicans describe them) should not be prosecuted. Despite the media focus on the Capitol riot and a congressional probe of the former president, most Republicans want Donald Trump to run again in 2024. Considering the Regime Media’s campaign against all this, these are stunning figures.

Even if you don’t think there’s an electoral solution to our racial problems, elections reflect the social situation. At least some elected Democrats are afraid of the midterms and are retiring instead of running for re-election. They should be afraid of losing. In 2021, the GOP scored a crushing upset in the Virginia governor’s election and almost flipped New Jersey. Parents around the country are spontaneously organizing against Critical Race Theory in schools. Democrats are having a hard time holding on to the Hispanic vote. Most importantly, Americans are increasingly willing to violate media taboos, even in the face of official persecution.

This is really what’s been the story of this entire year, almost since the beginning. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (with CNN’s help) is currently trying to turn January 6 into a weird anti-holiday. A year since the riots, the militant support for Donald Trump is astonishing — more than he deserves. Tens of thousands of people traveled to Washington DC to try to keep him in office. Some broke into the Capitol. One person, in my opinion, died for him. Millions believe we are ruled by a usurper. Whether you think January 6 was a riot, a protest, a crime, a righteous uprising, an FBI operation, or all of that, everything that happened that day and since shows remarkable loyalty to the 45th president. It also shows a willingness to go beyond Donald Trump.

This is a crisis of legitimacy for the regime, and the courtier media are acting accordingly. The sinister term “Our Democracy” and warnings of a “coup” are reaching the level of hysteria. The supposed Republican “coup” consists of tightening voter laws or allowing states to appoint their own electors. That’s not a shocking departure from the way the Constitution was supposed to work.

• “‘Terrifying for American democracy,’: is Trump planning for a 2024 coup?,” The Guardian, December 29, 2021
• “Trump’s Next Coup Has Already Begun,” The Atlantic, December 6, 2021
• “Donald Trump’s ‘slow-motion coup’ is becoming a runaway train,” Salon, October 27, 2021

Both progressives and conservatives make the stakes seem higher than they are. Donald Trump, a man who didn’t stand up to Paul Ryan on immigration even when the President was at his most powerful, is a Boulanger, not a Bonaparte. If he was plotting a “coup,” he would have used the military or whatever forces were loyal to him. He didn’t. He didn’t pardon those arrested or march to the Capitol. He told people to “go home.” The militancy came from the grassroots. They were willing to go farther than the would-be Emperor.

And with little support. Big Tech censored President Trump’s supporters (and even the President himself) during his term, while those who opposed the President became celebrities. Now that Mr. Trump is out of office, ratings have collapsed; not even journalists can turn COVID into the moral drama they thought they had with a president they hated. When people who benefitted from race preferences under the Trump Administration claim “fascism” is nigh, it’s hard to take them seriously. They have platforms the former president himself doesn’t have. A recent Washington Post columnfrom retired military officers claiming that a Trump “insurgency” is a real threat is such a string of fantasies it helps explains why the military can’t win a war.

January 6, and perhaps the Trump movement itself, was a confused signal from millions of people who sense — correctly — that they are losing their country. They rallied around the only leader they had. Still, forget the overheated rhetoric about coups, fascism, and insurrections. If President Trump were still in office, what would be different? Since 2017, it’s been tempting to name President Trump himself as “White Renegade of the Year.” I didn’t because on balance he was positive, in his bumbling way. He gave something momentum that is bigger than he is, but he has had his chance.

If we still had President Trump, some legislation would be different and immigration would be down, but we wouldn’t be living in the vastly different situation many hoped for in November 2016. Instead, President Trump would be suffering from the same problems President Joe Biden does today, problems that the Chief Executive can’t control.

The COVID-19 pandemic, which Vice President Kamala Harris said would be the “first thing” the new Administration would handle, has more cases than ever. President Biden himself now says there is “no federal solution.” President Trump once boasted he could shoot someone without losing support, but some have turned on him because he won’t denounce vaccines.

COVID-19 — this black hole that is swallowing so much political energy — would still be there no matter who was in office. The main difference is that President Trump would not have ordered a national vaccine mandate, but a federal judge halted President Biden’s order anyway. Those who got a vaccine they didn’t want largely did so because their jobs were at stake. Though white advocates have good reason to distrust the so-called experts, there’s no identitarian line on the virus except to say that it has shown the dangers of open borders. Blacks are less likely to be vaccinated than whites, though whether mandates will be enforced against them is a separate question.

Still, there’s a huge political opening for Republicans to defend their voters, who are far more likely than Democrats to resist vaccine requirements. This brings us to what could be done now with President Trump out of office. Republicans could protect their voters not just by fighting vaccine requirements, but by banning employees from being fired for ideological reasons. Blatant censorship is an opening for conservatives to push for more stringent regulation of social media companies, particularly by forcing ones that get public money to honor First Amendment standards on lawful speech.

Instead, figures associated with President Trump have promoted various “alternate” platforms such as GETTR, Parler, and reportedly Rumble. Even after everything that has happened, conservatives will not directly take on social-media monopolies. With few exceptions, they won’t even use Gab.

Rep. Jim Jordan has proposed a three-step plan for Big Tech that includes removing Section 230 protections, having the Supreme Court deal with “the antitrust issue,” and a “private right of action you can bring when you know Big Tech is censoring your posts.” None of this will help. Eliminating Section 230 protection could make things worse, imposing requirements alt-tech companies can’t meet. Our own experience shows lawsuits against multibillion dollar companies don’t work. This is the same empty talk we’ve had since President Trump’s “Social Media Summit” in 2019.

Likewise, there is no action to stop the denial of financial services for ideological reasons. Christopher Caldwell argues in The Age of Entitlement that the Civil Rights Act has replaced the American Constitution. Conservatives aren’t trying to abolish the Civil Rights Act or (more plausibly) extend its protections to their own (white) voters; they’re doing nothing.

This is especially ominous because President Biden’s “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism” is a clear blueprint for expanding the national security state against whites. It’s a campaign cheered on by USA Today, even though a Washington Post article from the author of Spreading Hate: The Global Rise of White Supremacist Terrorism identified zero acts of politically motivated right-wing terrorism this past year. The federal government isn’t doing much about normal violent crime, but both it and countless journalists on the “far right” beat are busy hunting for thoughtcrime.

It’s therefore inspiring that ordinary Americans are organizing against Critical Race Theory. Where is the conservative movement? Missing in action. Bans on Critical Race Theory may be useful, but as long as there’s affirmative action, a powerful academic network will keep promoting poisonous ideas.

No one with power says we must abolish racial discrimination against whites. When Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tried to start an “America First” caucus within the GOP, her own party shut it down. She’s since “owned” liberals by attacking the “White Democrat President” for supposedly putting illegal immigrants before “Sheila Jackson Lee’s Reparations bill for Black Americans.” Thus, a representative whom some would consider the most “right-wing” in Congress is supporting an idea that would have been ludicrous a few years ago.

There is also little resistance to the barbaric iconoclasm that has swept the South. Republican Glenn Youngkin won in Virginia partially by campaigning against “wokeness,” and one progressive called his election a victory for “whiteness.” Others made similar wild claims. However, that won’t prevent Confederate statues from being handed over to a black history museum. What makes it even more remarkable is that all referenda to relocate or remove Confederate memorials in Virginia failed on Election Day. Charlottesville rejected an offer to buy the Lee statue and instead gave it away to be melted down. Our rulers can be just as culturally barbaric as the Taliban that defeated them in Afghanistan. However, our anger should not be with the radical leftists who begin these campaigns, but with conservatives who do nothing to stop them despite profiting from the backlash.

Isn’t “Confederate” symbolism more relevant amid talk of a “National Divorce?” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene broached the idea in response to the many cases of progressives fleeing states such as California and New York for Texas or Florida. However, this is also just for show, since the real political divides are between urban and rural voters and between different races. President Trump won Texas by fewer than six points in 2020. That’s not the basis for secession. Possible presidential contender Ron DeSantis won an extremely narrow election to become governor of Florida. He’s not going to be the caudillo of some new tropical empire. (His black opponent, Andrew Gillum, was later found in a hotel “with a male sex worker and suspected drugs,” in GQ’s delicate language, though it still published a puff piece calling him a “rising Democratic star.”)

What alternatives are there to secession? State and local elections could mean something if residents had to live in a certain area for several years before being allowed to vote. More plausibly, state boundaries within the Union could be redrawn. This could be done very easily in some places. It’s also something Republicans will need to do if they want to keep the balance in the Senate after Democrats give statehood to the District of Columbia (assuming it is still named that) and to Puerto Rico. Of course, this is just buying time unless demographics are brought under control by halting mass immigration, repealing birthright citizenship, and deporting illegal immigrants — the things Americans voted for in 2016. Gerrymandering congressional districts or having state legislatures select presidential electors means nothing if the entire country goes Third World.

There is a time limit for whites to act. About a half million illegal immigrants managed to evade the Border Patrol and make it in this year. Their children will be citizens. If they are black, Hispanic, or some other privileged class (or just claim to be), they will enjoy greater privileges than whites whose families have been here since the Revolution. What do Republicans or conservative organizations say about that? We are farther away from repealing birthright citizenship, building a wall to control immigration, or imposing a remittance tax than we were in 2015, even within the conservative movement.

Congressman Paul Gosar has sponsored a bill that would impose an immigration moratorium for a decade. It has zero co-sponsors. If Republicans win back control of Congress, we might get yet another amnesty bill from Republicans pimping for the Chamber of Commerce. Though corporate America has clearly sided with progressives on race, there’s been little reaction from Republicans or conservatives, except to accuse them of being too soft on China. This is typical: Conservatives duck the fights that matter to their voters and instead search for monsters abroad to whom they can lose in pointless wars.

President Biden’s fall in the polls began with the collapse of the Afghan puppet regime. However, while Americans were disgusted with the chaos and unnecessary deaths, they wanted to end the war. Prominent Republicans wanted more fighting. Lindsey Graham said the United States will be going back because the Taliban has “a view of the world that is out of sync with modern times.” Mitt Romney and colleagues including Marco Rubio, Rick Scott, and Marsha Blackburn introduced a billthat denied recognition of the Taliban as Afghanistan’s government. It would also set up a State Department task force to evacuate “Afghan Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) who are still stuck in Afghanistan.” President Trump claimed that the United States should have never gone into Afghanistan but after the withdrawal mused about bombing the country. Republican leaders could take us right back into Afghanistan, with the conservative movement cheering it on so it can “own” the liberals.

And what happened after the defeat? A report in September from the State Department found that about 24,000 Afghans had already come to the United States. Republican governors Spencer Cox of Utah, Doug Docey of Arizona, Kent Stitt of Oklahoma and others pledged their states as potential havens. South Dakota and Wyoming alone refused. The main result of the Afghan war, aside from the American servicemen killed and maimed and the money wasted, is a new class of Muslim dependents who will quickly learn to claim discrimination and shout “racism.” Republicans will never send them back.

There is conservative hawkishness over Ukraine, Taiwan, and Iran. Just what we need: a flood of Iranian “refugees” into Europe and the United States. Conservative Republicans such as Senator Tom Cotton are among those who want more foreign intervention. This isn’t just a case of “RINOs.” If President Donald Trump was supposed to mark a return to an “America First” defense policy, his influence has already faded.

White conservatives are reacting against whatever the Biden Administration does abroad. There may also be some residual attachment to American honor, and loyalty to a country that has already turned on us. All of this conceals the brutal reality that we live under a social credit system more arbitrary than China’s and that promotes destructive values. To adopt a slogan from Vietnam-era leftists, bring the war home.

The repression we face is mostly through private companies. That doesn’t excuse conservative inaction. Such arguments have been irrelevant since the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It is not radical or racist to demand equal treatment under the law. It’s not extreme or “big government” to say that banks, which are practically inseparable from government anyway, shouldn’t be able to cut you off because they don’t like your views. It should be common sense that the law should deal only with illegal acts, not turn into exercises in mind-reading in which political views determine the level of punishment.

Without endorsing the most militant troublemakers (some of whom are not in custody, raising the question of FBI involvement), it’s not surprising that January 6 rioters thought they would get concessions by turning violent.Corporations, politicians, and journalists almost unanimously supported BLM rioters. White conservatives who thought it worked both ways learned a harsh lesson.

Republicans, even supposed conservatives, seem comfortable with double standards. Every Republican Senator stood against President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan. However, few argued why, except for the cost. Ann Coulter found close to two billion dollars in handouts for non-whites. Republicans didn’t complain. Parts of the bill looked much the same as President Trump’s “Platinum Plan,” with huge sums for Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Is it too much to ask that Republicans protest government discrimination against their own base?

The 2016 election showed that it wasn’t just the Republican party but the conservative movement that had lost touch with its base. Given something close to the fabled “marketplace of ideas,” we win. Movement conservatives often want to help blacks who are “stuck on the Democrat plantation,” but they consistently flimflam whites who expect their representatives to do more than give Jeff Bezos another tax cut. Conservatism Inc. is more reliant on censorship and deplatforming than Black Lives Matter. The resistance to the Biden Administration, the continuing support for President Trump, and Republican election victories in the teeth of Regime Media show that there is huge political potential. All we get is Conservatism Inc. functionaries reciting slogans from the Reagan Administration.

In the long run, even the most respectable conservative is doomed to defeat if current trends continue. The campaign against America didn’t stop with Confederate generals, and it won’t stop with the Founding Fathers, Teddy Roosevelt, or John Wayne. Most people don’t like this, but an organized minority will triumph over a disorganized majority. Ordinary whites require at least some political cover to be effective. That means someone who has power, a platform, and a plan to take the offensive for their side. There are tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions, just begging for leadership, but such a leader would be savaged by mass media.

“De l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace et la Patrie sera sauvée!” cried Danton. He changed history, but we all know what happened to him. The cries for Donald Trump to be put in prison for even the modest challenge he represented is surely meant to encourager les autres. Many accept subjugation by putting self-interest and safety above what’s right. This includes many in Conservatism Inc.’s ranks whom I know are aware of the truth because they’ve told me so.

What may save us is that there are forces in motion forcing millions who simply want a normal life to become dissidents, then activists, then perhaps revolutionaries. By our very nature, we’re not trying to overturn society, but to build something greater. We’re not naturally subversives. We’re held captive by our virtues. However, if we are forced out of so-called respectable society — a respectable society that looks increasingly perverse — then we must organize and act.

COVID-19 is part of this. The pandemic is not directly a racial issue. However, it’s leading to a society in which ordinary people are losing control over their own lives. If business is done online and powerful tech companies control data in the “cloud,” this means those who control these economic choke points have power over us. Access to social media, financial services, cloud servers, and other tools are becoming an economic necessity. It is the difference between being able to earn a living or not.

If “Our Democracy” is to be anything other than a cynical joke, there must be some way for ordinary people to seek out information, debate issues, and make up their own minds. If tech companies and the government have the power to ban what they think is “misinformation,” that is more “authoritarian” than President Trump complaining that the election was stolen. Time even said, “In a way, Trump was right” about the election. It added that “an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans” was working against him. “They were not rigging the election,” Timeassured us, “they were fortifying it.”

Censorship began with white advocates, but we now live under a vast system of control that bans dissidents, manipulates information, and uses selective law enforcement for political ends. Our rulers will continue to invent new justifications for repression. When political operatives openly discuss the political benefits of bringing in foreigners to replace you, what legitimacy does an election have? An invading army could presumably outvote the natives, but that would not be democracy.

Despite colossal levels of censorship and propaganda, ordinary whites are seeing through this. They are resisting a system more insidious and degenerate than that of the Soviet Union. The Regime Media prop up the Biden Administration, but it’s still failing. Conservatives are poised for a historic victory next year, even though 2021 began with an event many thought would discredit them. Donald Trump could even retake the presidency in 2024.

Of course, Donald Trump will not save us. A Republican Congress will not save us. Conservative activists, who these days are essentially performance artists, won’t save us either. Indeed, the fact that they get media access just gives the impression of opposition. The Eastern Bloc had “elections” too, which changed nothing. Millions of white Americans know something is wrong, but those whom they trust to protect them aren’t just failing them but helping to oppress them.

We are left with politics as entertainment. One might as well argue about which Marvel superhero is the strongest. “Let’s Go Brandon” captures the phoniness of the opposition, a joke masquerading as politics. It started as a vulgar chant against President Biden. A reporter told us it was “Let’s go, Brandon.” It was just another example of what we face every day: so-called experts trying to hide the obvious. “All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal,” said Enoch Powell. Conservative activists at least admit we are being lied to. Yet I’d say that to see, to speak, and then not to act is a greater betrayal, especially when your people are suffering.

Countless men and women are just trying to survive in a world that seems to have lost its mind. They are trying to serve and save a country that has turned on them. However, there are people with power, platforms, and resources who know there is something deeply wrong. They must know another world is possible. Perhaps some will step forward. Perhaps others will support us quietly. Until then, we must rely on ourselves alone. Help won’t come from CPAC.

The good news is that our ranks increase daily with serious activists who know exactly what they are signing up for. After blasting the failure and cowardice of conservatives, it’s important to have perspective. I’m not attacking those people because they are unwilling to sacrifice themselves in a doomed cause. I’m begging those who have the power to pick up a crown that’s already lying in the gutter. This is not a grim struggle for survival, but an opportunity for greatness. It baffles me that so many refuse to take it and are content to let this perverse comedy roll on.

First published on American Renaissance on December 31, 2021.