Something is happening. Is it a tectonic shift, or merely a minor interruption in today’s liberal hegemony? Only time will tell. But if the mood at the National Policy Institute’s conference this past weekend was any indication, there is a hunger for an alternative way of seeing our world, one that doesn’t look to be sated any time soon.
Over 150 people, mostly young and sharply dressed, converged upon Washington D.C.’s Ronald Reagan Federal Building. The theme of the conference was “Identity Politics,” an exploration of what the Trump phenomenon means for Euro-Americans today and the future of an explicitly White identity politics in the future.
The conference was addressed by three speakers: NPI’s own Richard Spencer, Occidental Quarterly/Observer editor Dr. Kevin MacDonald, and YouTube vlogger Paul “RamZPaul” Ramsey. Each addressed a different aspect of Donald Trump’s impact on politics and wider cultural questions.
RamZPaul, a kind of comedian of the alt-right, kicked off the evening with some light ribbing of everyone’s favorite GOP consultant the Rick Wilson. He then went into the concept of the “alt-right” and what it stands for (besides anime waifus). He broke down the alt-right into three basic components: sex realism, race realism, and the Natural Order.
Each element lays the ground for disentangling the lies that grip our society. In some ways, they are like a dark counterpoint to Conservatism Inc.’s own three-legged stool of national security, free markets, and “family values.” His speech ended with a call to arms, to not waste one’s life but to take charge and make something of it.
For many of us on the “alt-right,” we always put off doing something for the cause until tomorrow, or next year. Maybe after we get our finances in order, or after we find that girl, or land this or that new job. RamZPaul made the important point that if we don’t persue our dreams now, we may never find the will or courage to do so.
If not us, who? And if not now, when?
Which brought us to Dr. Kevin MacDonald’s speech, which laid down the stark realities that are facing our people. Dr. MacDonald laid out how the Republican party has continued to sell out the interests of its voters, mostly white Americans, to the Chamber of Commerce on domestic policy and the Israel Lobby in foreign policy.
Trump, for Dr. MacDonald, represents what is now only the implicitly white backlash going on in this year’s election season. He built on the way in which Trump handles the media and refuses to play into games about being called “racist” or bigoted points a way forward for white Americans to act outside of the media-political narrative that has silenced our interests for so long.
NPI President Richard Spencer was the evening’s final speaker. His talk centered on what Trump has already accomplished and what we should take from it. He cautioned wisely not to get too invested in this cycle’s politics. After all, a Trump victory would not be an explicit victory for our cause, but merely the opening of space within which, we could grow.
But, what Trump has acheived is in demolishing old ideas about “conservatism” and what can and cannot be said in America. Trump, Spencer said, has become a “killing word.” Indeed, throughout America and even in Europe, the name “Trump” has now become synonymous with resistence to the multi-culti feel good ideology that has reigned for so long throughout the current years of our lives.
In that way, Trump does act as a figure of the coming era. In many ways, the setting of the conference—a building named after Ronald Reagan—was more than appropriate. The past, which includes not only Reagan but the entire post-war conservative movement, is now behind us. Only if we recognize this and seize upon it and build our own institutions and become serious about our cause, then tomorrow as Spencer said, will “belong to us.”
After Spencer’s speech, conference atendees mingled and met each other. Sometimes only knowing each other by Twitter handles or forum screen names. Their masks in many ways were coming off. Who they are came together with who they have to present themselves as, in a way that truly resonated with the conference’s theme: identity.
NPI’s last conference, Become Who We Are, implored us to figure our that question. Now, at least for many attendees, that question has been answered. We are Europeans who have a right to exist. We have a proud history and we should have a future.
Today’s implicit identity will lead to the explicit empires of tomorrow. Last year in October we were all dreaming of who we were and could become. This past weekend, we woke up.
We are a people who have a future, history has returned. We must play our parts or face oblivion.
The new era of “Identity Politics” is here, and we know who we are!