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Aug. 8, 2020 - Radio Renaissance - Jared Taylor
46:25
John Morgan: "What Nationalism in Eastern Europe Can Teach the West" (2014)
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Our next speaker is someone I greatly admire.
He's a man who saw a need, he set out to try to fulfill it, and he succeeded.
That's the kind of effort that makes a movement.
John Morgan graduated from the University of Michigan in 1997 with a degree in literature, and he spent about ten years working in administration in the university.
But in 2006, he started his own publishing company.
Integral Tradition Publishing.
The idea was to bring the works of the European New Right to English-speaking readers.
And in 2009, in order to cut down on his own living expenses and so as to be able to work full-time for Integral Tradition, he moved the entire operation to India.
That's quite a commitment.
Later that same year...
Integral tradition merged with another publishing company and became Arctos Media, which is its current name.
Arctos Media has now published more than 100 original titles in six different European languages, and it is unquestionably the foremost source in English for authors of the new rites such as Alain de Benoit,
Guillaume Fay, Alexander Dugan, Julius Evola, and also from many of the important young authors of the European identitarian movement.
In January, Mr. Morgan moved Arctos Publishing again, this time a little bit back more in the European direction, and he's now established in Budapest, Hungary.
At that time, he also visited the Ukraine and addressed the Maidan revolutionary movement.
So please welcome John Morgan, who will speak on what nationalism in Eastern Europe can teach the West.
Thank you, Jared, for that very generous introduction, and thanks to all of you for having me here today.
It's good to be back in the U.S. among friends, however briefly.
Before I begin, I just want to make a quick disclaimer, which is that I'm going to be discussing a number of groups today that I've had contact with, but I don't want the fact that I'm talking about them to seem like an unqualified endorsement of their programs and policies.
I think all of them are interesting and are worthy of being examined in their own right, but I'm not here to act as a spokesman or a promoter for any of them, just to be clear on that.
I'll begin by describing two images that I witnessed in January of this year that I found highly inspirational.
The first was in Kiev, Ukraine, the night I first arrived, as I was approaching the Maidan, or Independence Square, in the center of the city.
From far away, I could begin to smell the smoke wafting from the many barrel fires that were being used by the protesters camped out on the Maidan for warmth and for cooking.
As I got closer, I could hear the sounds emanating from the speakers attached to the stage that had been set up by the revolutionaries.
As I was to learn later, the revolutionary committee maintained a 24-7 schedule on the Maidan.
Whether one ventured there at 4 in the morning or at 4 in the afternoon, there was always something happening, either a speaker, a musical performance, a patriotic drama, or some such thing.
This was true of the entire Maidan.
It was always just as bustling in the middle of the night as during the middle of the day.
The protesters wanted to make sure that the government understood that their rage was not a passing phenomenon.
When I reached the Maidan, I could see that the entire area had been transformed into an enormous, self-sufficient city of tents and other makeshift structures.
This miniature city within a city extended for many blocks in both directions to the barricades that had been hastily set up against the police the previous month during the street battles and which were still being guarded by volunteers.
Occupy Wall Street had nothing on these guys.
Hundreds of activists had been living there for over a month in the middle of winter and would continue to do so for many weeks after I was there, knowing full well that the police might attack them at any moment.
And possibly even kill them, of course.
Some of them are still camped there as I speak.
Flags and patriotic slogans festooned everything in sight.
There was no doubt in my mind as I surveyed this scene that change was inevitable.
The other image I want to convey is something I saw only a few days later in Budapest.
I was invited to the annual congress of the nationalist party, Jobbik, or the Movement for a Better Hungary, the only party in Hungary today that stands as a serious rival to the ruling center-right party, Fides.
It was held in an indoor sports arena on the outskirts of Buda.
When I arrived, the first startling fact was that, unlike most events of a similar nature that I'd attended in Western Europe or here in the US, there were no protesters.
Views that are considered extreme in the West are usually considered normal in the East, which came as quite a surprise to me.
The second startling thing that struck me as I was entering the arena was the number of people in attendance.
This wasn't a hundred or so people, as is typical for nationalist-related events I usually attend.
This was an entire arena that could seat thousands.
In addition to the rafters, the floor itself had been filled with chairs.
Both were filled to capacity.
The day's program consisted of speakers and musical acts, with many of the speakers and performers beginning their segments with a cry of, which was always echoed by the audience.
This means, Arise Hungarians!
And are the opening words of the poem, National Song, that was written by the Hungarian poet Petofi for the 1848 revolution.
The enthusiasm of the participants was palpable.
They were motivated to save their people.
And this was no marginal phenomenon.
Three months later, in the national parliamentary elections that were held earlier this month, Jobbik went on to secure over 20% of the vote and established itself as the second most powerful party in the nation.
My immediate reaction both times was the same.
Something like this could never happen in Western Europe or the United States.
I'll get into that more later.
But the main thing that these experiences taught me is that concern for the future of our people, which I was accustomed to seeing being consigned to the margins of society, is no fringe subculture in Eastern Europe.
There, nationalism, by which I mean genuine nationalism and not the sort of nationalism that masquerades under that name in America today under the auspices of Fox News and such, is still very much a mainstream phenomenon.
First, a bit more description about what is going on there.
I don't want to discuss the Ukrainian revolution, the politics of it, in great detail since there's already been so much written and said about it from many different perspectives in recent months that I'm sure you're all familiar with.
The one comment I'll make on the political situation is that outside of Ukraine, it's almost always framed as a dispute over geopolitics, Russia or the EU.
I can only say that while that was certainly a catalyst for the revolution, that was not the main issue for most of the people I talked to there.
For them, the Maidan was about getting rid of the Yanukovych regime, which was seen pretty much universally, as far as I could tell, as corrupt, anti-democratic, and self-serving.
And certainly the activists I talked with were more interested in ensuring the existence of an independent Ukraine as opposed to one that was merely a vassal of Washington, Brussels, or Moscow.
I was invited to speak to the Kiev Revolutionary Council by some friends in the Nationalist Party, Svoboda, which means freedom, who are familiar with my work with Arctos.
In the last election in 2012, Svoboda won more than 10% of the national vote.
And is likely to do even better in the upcoming election.
So, like Yavik, it is much more than a marginal phenomenon.
Swoboda's platform is one of anti-liberalism and anti-communism, as well as opposition to immigration, and calls for a return to spiritual and traditional values.
As a side note, I'll mention that I was informed that the term European values is a code for traditional values in Ukraine, which is understood to mean those values which prevailed prior to the coming of communism and later liberal rule.
My speech was held in the Kiev City Council building, which is just off the Maidan.
Members of Svoboda had stormed and occupied the building a month earlier, in early December, and it had been converted into a revolutionary headquarters.
Different areas of the building had been assigned to the various political parties involved in the Maidan, both left and right, and Svoboda itself had occupied the main hall.
Once the guards at the entrance allowed me in, I was greeted by the strong smell of a building in which many men were living, but which obviously hadn't been cleaned for some time.
I went there several times, both during the day and at night, and people were always busy at work on something related to the Maidan.
For me, it was quite a unique experience coming from the U.S. and inspirational to be at the nerve center of a revolution in progress.
In the main hall, chairs had been set up in an auditorium style so that those volunteering on the Maidan could sit and rest during their breaks.
On a screen at the front of the hall, films were projected, most of them about cases of activists who had been tortured or killed by the police.
Off to one side of the hall, next to the Christmas tree, was a collection of sleeping bags, where Swoboda's volunteers would get some rest whenever they found the opportunity.
The walls were adorned with the flags of the various parties.
As well as the image of Stepan Bandera, the founder of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, that had opposed the Soviets in the mid-20th century and who continues to serve as an inspiration to national activists there today.
Once again, I was impressed by the austerities that these people were willing to undergo for the sake of their people.
The people who were staying there, many of them had come from other parts of Ukraine and had had no contact with their families or friends since coming there and actually were living in the city council building.
My own talk was on European values and European patriotic movements, which is the theme I'd worked out with the organizers beforehand.
In essence, what I told those present was that the most important issue facing the Maidan wasn't Ukraine's geopolitical orientation, but rather how best could Ukraine orient itself to combat liberalism?
To underscore my point, I outlined some of the many horrors that liberalism has wrought in North America and Western Europe in recent decades.
My talk seemed to be well received, and many people approached me afterwards with questions.
It became apparent to me that while some Ukrainians indeed still aspire to the mirage of the lifestyle that they imagine we have here in America and Western Europe, many of them also understand that America as it stands today represents something that should be avoided at all costs.
I'll mention another amusing anecdote from the same evening I gave my talk.
Afterwards, a rumor started to spread through the Maidan that the police were going to storm it that very night.
This turned out to be false, although we had no way of knowing that at the time.
But an old man who had listened to my speech approached me afterwards and asked, aren't you afraid of being beaten?
At first I laughed, but upon further reflection I realized that what he was suggesting was a very real possibility.
As one of my Ukrainian friends had told me, once they find out you have an American passport, sure, they'll let you go, but they're not going to bother to ask you first if they come charging in here with truncheons.
And I realized I had never really had to think about such a thing before.
I've been publicly associated with what could be loosely termed the new right for about seven years now, but previously I'd never had to worry about much more than being heckled by Antifa or receiving an occasional nasty email.
But here I was faced with the prospect of actual physical violence.
Had the police attacked that night, would I have been able to stand firm, as so many others did at the Maidan, in the face of the possibility of being injured or killed?
I hope and believe that the answer is yes, although I have no way of knowing for certain until the moment actually comes.
This brought home for me the fact that activism for us here in the West tends to be something very abstract.
A battle waged in the pages of journals or in online comment sections rather than on the streets.
But in the East, it still has a very palpable existential character with very real and immediate consequences.
I think this is something that we would do well to keep in mind as we go about our own activities.
Identity is not an idea, but something that we embody and live.
And as such, it should be something visible in the world around us, insofar as we have the ability to affect it.
The struggle in the world of ideas is important, certainly.
But ultimately, this is not merely a debate, but an attempt to reshape and redefine the world, a world that is always going to fight back.
I'll conclude talking about Ukraine by acknowledging that I realize that there may be many strong views on the Ukrainian situation among some of you.
And indeed, no matter how one looks at it, there are certainly aspects of what has been happening since the revolution that are worrisome, as in any revolution, I suppose.
Nevertheless, when viewed from the perspective of European nationalism, I think the fact that regardless of whatever one thinks of the ends they were pursuing, the fact that thousands of ordinary Ukrainians were willing to give up their time and the comforts of home for the sake of living in tents for months and to risk their lives for the sake of their nation,
And certainly without the sense that they were being manipulated by outside forces, it's something that should be inspirational to anyone looking for really existing nationalist activism in the world today.
The story of Jobbik is much less dramatic, since it is a traditional political party pursuing power through the democratic process in Hungary, and the political situation there is quite stable at the moment.
What makes Jobbik particularly interesting is the degree of its success and the ideas that it propagates.
Thus far, I've encountered nothing like it in European politics.
Javik was founded just over a decade ago in 2003, and when it fought in its first election in 2006, it won less than 2% of the vote.
As I mentioned before, in this month's election, Javik won more than 20% of the national vote, which in terms of sheer numbers ranks it as the most successful nationalist party in Europe at the present time, apart from the national front in France.
They have attained this success, I believe, by appealing to the growing dissatisfaction of many Hungarians with their membership in the European Union, as exiting the EU is one of the planks of the party's platform.
Increasingly, Hungarians are beginning to see the EU as nothing more than a way for the major Western European powers to amass cheap labor, while Hungarians see few benefits in return.
Likewise, many Hungarians, especially in the countryside, are beginning to worry about the gradual erosion of their traditional values and customs.
Jóvik, in contrast, stands for return to those values and plans to increase incentives for Hungarians who are working abroad to return home and to ensure that immigration, which is currently not a major factor in Hungarian society, remains that way.
Jóvik also makes an issue out of the international capitalist system, which it claims is the primary force eroding all cultures and traditions in the world today.
Jobeck favors a return to a more locally-based economic model.
Much of the rest of Jobeck's program is highly unorthodox.
Jobeck favors stronger ties with Turkey, Russia, and Germany, all of which have been historical enemies of Hungary, but which Jobeck sees as essential for constructing a bulwark against the continuing encroachment of American and Western European liberalism upon the rest of the world under the auspices of NATO and the EU.
Notable in this regard is Yabek's close cooperation with the Eurasia movement in Russia of Professor Alexander Dugin, which is worth discussing briefly in its own right.
Professor Dugin has long been an unofficial advisor to Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin.
In addition to his prodigious work as an author, Mayon Arctos publishes his books in English and is a professor at Moscow State University.
All of his work is directed at combating the prevalence and proliferation of liberalism throughout the world.
It is unique in that he is one of the few to attempt to apply the ideas of the European New Right, as embodied by such thinkers as Hollande Benoit, to geopolitics.
The spiritual traditionalism and perennial philosophy that was originally taught by figures such as René Guinan and Julius Evola is also central to his thought.
Many of Jovic's writings, programs, and public statements show the influence of Professor Dugin in his work.
One of the most controversial aspects of Yawbek's program is its stance towards Asia and the Middle East, and the Islamic world in particular, both of which it favors allying itself with.
Yawbek views the anti-Islamic stance assumed by many other nationalist parties in Europe as an error.
Yawbek's leader, Gabor Vono, said in a widely publicized statement last year that the Islamic world is the best hope in the world today to combat liberalism.
Although what is usually left out is the rest of that sentence in which he said, and I say that as a Catholic.
This statement alarmed many, although has usually been misrepresented, since Bona has made it clear elsewhere that he doesn't favor immigration from Islamic countries into Europe, he doesn't favor the Islamicization of Europe, and does not think that Turkey belongs in the EU.
However, Javik's view is entirely consistent with the metaphysical perspective of the aforementioned traditionalism of Genan and Abela, which holds that all traditional religions share a common core, and which all stand in opposition to liberalism and the excesses of the modern world.
I don't think it's possible to understand Jobbik without some understanding of traditionalism.
Following Jobbik's Congress in January, I spoke with a man who was introduced to me as one of their top ideologues, and he said to me, politics is nothing, traditionalism is everything.
And I've seen one of their major magazines, Magyar Hupirion.
Which contains translated essays by the central thinkers of traditionalism, including Ginnon, Evela, and Fritjof Schuon, along with articles on politics from a traditionalist perspective.
Therefore, traditionalism is one of the major elements of Jobbik's worldview, so one can only understand Ivana's statements about Islam in terms of that.
When he calls Islam one of the major forces that can combat liberal values, as can all traditional faiths, he does so in reference to Islam as a religion, rather than as a call for an alliance, With the more radical and distasteful elements of political Islamism and jihad.
If you're like me, by this point you might be wondering if nationalist movements are having such successes in Eastern Europe, why can't it happen here?
I think the answer is simply that the cultural foundations for such movements are still present there, while they have long since been eroded here.
Whatever one may think about the Soviet Union, the Iron Curtain prevented cultural Marxism.
And the worst excesses of liberalism from penetrating into the East for half a century.
Thus, those societies remained ethnically cohesive and retained a strong sense of national identity, and even their religious institutions, while officially suppressed, only grew in strength by being cast into a dissenting role.
Those are all the factors upon which any sense of a national or ethnic culture must be founded.
This is not to say that liberal trends are not taking root in Eastern Europe.
They are.
And they do threaten to cancel out this advantage.
And this is particularly true in the urban areas.
But the rot hasn't yet proceeded to the point where change has become impossible, I think.
So the question is, what can Eastern Europe teach to those of us in the West?
Since the vital foundations of identity, culture, and religion have already largely evaporated in any real sense, what is left to us?
No doubt this situation is dire.
Nevertheless, I think Eastern Europe and also what I've seen taking place through my own Arctos can be instructive.
My conclusion is that if any progress is to be made, we need to approach the problem culturally and in terms of ideas rather than politically.
Any political movement is doomed to failure unless it can reflect the desires of a large number of its community.
At the moment, what we who are concerned with the future of our people are offering is not what our people desire for the most part.
For that to change, we have to influence the culture.
This is what the European New Right has been saying for nearly half a century now, although little attempt has been made to put it into practice, but I think this is the way forward.
More importantly, I think we need to inspire the passions and imaginations of our people, which we have also been failing to do for quite some time.
The identitarian movement, which has been extremely popular among the youth in Europe in recent years, is in my view the first spark of such a development.
The identitarians have shed the old language and hangups of conservatism without sacrificing its values, and are winning popularity by adopting many of the tactics of the radical left: street-level activism, snazzy videos, and the like.
In short, it's cool.
Also, the identitarians have recognized what the core issue really is: identity.
Going beyond mere politics and ideology to something visceral.
People can feel what it is to be a Hungarian or a Frenchman.
It's something obvious.
It's not something that needs to be expressed in words or concepts.
Identitarianism is good for Europe, and I have hope for it.
The problem I see is how to transfer this to the United States.
What sense of identity do the majority of those of European descent have in America today?
Perhaps here in the South, something still remains of the venerable Southern tradition that could still be revived.
But the situation in the rest of the country seems hopelessly tragic.
Identity has become a matter of consumerism.
Your identity is the slogan on your shirt or which television series you like.
Appeals concerning the benefits of the American identity of the 1950s or earlier for most Americans today is something as foreign and unappealing as asking them to consider assuming the identity of ancient Egyptians.
Some have suggested white nationalism as a solution to this problem.
For me, this is insufficient, first because it's a slippery concept in itself, and also because I find it hard to become enthused over the idea that I'm white.
A Hungarian or a Pole or a Swede has an entire history and tradition behind him to look back on.
Whiteness, to my mind, is just too vague.
If Americans don't have an identity to draw on, what remains?
We still have the remaining factors of culture and religion to consider.
Again, Eastern Europe already has these in spades, and these still form the basis of any nationalist politics there.
In America today, all we have is consumer culture and liberal platitudes.
The heady days of America's early years, which produced such wonders as transcendentalism and the American Renaissance and literature, are long gone.
And as for religion, most of what passes for religion these days is either thoroughly compromised by liberalism or else thoroughly moronic, and often both.
But what I have observed through my dealings with Arctos' readers is that there is a great hunger, especially among young people, for new perspectives on culture, politics, and religion that are suffused with the authentic values of the traditional West, to give them a sense of something to belong and aspire to.
What they want, I believe, are new ideas and myths to inspire them and to give them a sense of purpose.
This does not mean merely conservatism in a new guise.
What is wanted is more radical thinking, in the sense of going beyond the limits of what is normally considered right-wing.
In some cases, I think it may even involve synthesizing ideas and approaches more traditionally identified with the left.
Likewise, Conservatism in the West has decayed to the point that even much of what would normally have been considered traditional or right-wing in Western thought in previous eras now seems like something new and revolutionary, if presented in the proper way.
It should be clear by now that the ideals that first took root in the 1960s and which have dominated our society ever since are becoming more and more shop-worn.
The reality the young people see around them today is full of evidence of the failures of the attempts to enact these ideals.
More to the point, they are growing tired of hearing these same old catchwords trotted out again and again.
I firmly believe that the culture vigor of the West as a whole is passing, if it hasn't already passed, from the left to the right.
By this, I don't mean the Republican right, which is just as liberal as its opposition, but rather what Avila termed the true right, the right founded on the timeless principles and traditions of our people.
If we continue to offer fresh perspectives in an intriguing manner, And if people continue to respond to it, I think this will follow inevitably.
It is not enough to offer a critical, purely negative view of our civilization as it is presently constituted.
We must offer a positive, constructive, alternative vision of what we want that can be attractive to people, and also so that we ourselves know where we want to be heading.
In our own modest way in Arctos, we're trying to offer the appetizers to inspire a greater hunger in our people.
For a more authentic mode of living and being.
Books about the realities of race and of social trends are important, and we must continue to propagate them.
However, I think it is even more important to offer new ideas in politics, culture, philosophy, and religion, and also to produce more creative works reflective of our worldview.
Fiction, poetry, art, music, videos, perhaps even one day fully-fledged films.
Nothing can inspire people more than a creative vision with which they can readily identify.
I hope many more groups will follow in Arctos' footsteps in this regard.
I've mentioned religion, and I think I should delve into this briefly.
This isn't universal, but I have noticed a distinct attraction among many young people towards more traditional forms of spirituality and the sorts of books that Arctos publishes related to that.
Traditionalism is certainly part of that.
I think this is only natural since religion, at its best, offers one of the last refuges of authenticity.
Amidst a society that has become mostly plastic and virtual today.
And certainly, many of the most highly motivated movements and activists I have known on the right have drawn their sense of purpose, at least in part, from a sense of the spiritual.
This is particularly true of Jobbik.
I think the sacred must be an integral part of any attempt to forge a new nationalist culture.
This is not to say that we should attempt to propagate a specific religion as I think such an effort could do more harm than good by creating divisions.
But the cultivation of authentic forms of spirituality provided that they are consistent with our own norms and values should be something that we engage more with.
A spiritual sense of purpose is the most highly effective way to inoculate oneself against the diseases and temptations of the liberal world.
Therefore, I think this is something we need to tap into further.
What all of this will lead to, hopefully, is what corporate America learned was the key to power decades ago, and also relates to what Jack Donovan spoke of earlier, the creation of a subculture and the identity that follows from that.
And given the right circumstances, a subculture can very quickly end up influencing the prevailing culture.
If this happens, it might not even be necessary to have a political movement as such.
The perspectives we offer will become commonplace and second nature.
In effect, an identity, and society will be inevitably transformed as a result of this.
I realize this may sound overly idealistic, but the powers of ideas and cultural forms should never be underestimated.
In conclusion, then, I'll say that what Eastern Europe has shown me is that the political struggle is only the outward form of a battle that is really more cultural, and culture rests on what lies within each individual who participates in it.
In order to be willing to sacrifice the comforts of home and camp out in the freezing cold or to risk getting beaten by a policeman, a solid sense of identity and purpose must be present.
Unfortunately, what Eastern European nationalists are born and instilled with is something that we must strive to create for ourselves because it's absent.
If we want to form the basis of something capable of transforming the societies we live in.
And once we have achieved that for ourselves, we'll provide an example that others will strive to imitate.
As that great politician Gandhi once said, if we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change.
As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him.
We need not wait to see what others do.
I think we can do this.
Thank you.
I think that this issue of American identity and trying to find or recreate our identity is one of the key reasons that we are here this weekend.
I would like to suggest that there, as a minor aspect of hope, that there is some identity still going on, as you said.
Not just in the South, but also in the West, where we have in parts of the West, part of the traditional cowboy-type identity.
As for myself, I have been working on redeveloping more of my identity as a Christian.
And also an identity of myself and others who are veterans.
But I would also like to tie on and re-invoke.
Bad Eagle was mentioned the other day with restoration of Indian identity and transferring it to America.
Yes, I agree, absolutely.
I don't know if the...
The cowboy identity is something that a lot of young people in America, perhaps in the West, I don't know.
I mean, I'm mostly familiar with New York and Michigan there.
I don't think it has much prevalence today.
But, yeah, I certainly think there are still pockets here and there that we can exploit.
Do you have information on what led to the split between Slovakia and the Czech Republic?
No, I'm not so familiar with the situation there, sorry to say.
Do you think that there are any other Eastern European revolutions on the horizon?
And also, I was hoping you could talk a bit about the Hungarian Guard.
Well, the Hungarian Guard is sort of the militia of Jóvik.
It was created by Gabor Vána, I think, about five years ago.
He actually, when he was first elected to the Hungarian Parliament, he actually took his oath in the uniform of the Guard.
But they were actually banned by the Hungarian government about a year ago.
They still exist, but they can't wear uniforms, and they have to do other things to kind of get around the law.
But yeah, they've had some run-ins with the government now.
How prominent is that?
How many people are a part of that?
Is it a legitimate threat to the state's monopoly on violence?
I'm not sure that they were so afraid of it in that regard.
It's just that it was embarrassing them in certain ways.
There was a meeting of the World Jewish Congress in Budapest about a year ago, and the guard just kind of stood outside, and images of this got on the news, and it was quite embarrassing to the government.
I don't think that they actually felt threatened by it, although, of course, since the Treaty of Versailles, Hungary doesn't have a real army.
They have just a small defense force.
It really wouldn't take much.
But, I mean, Javik has never really talked about violent revolution.
I mean, they're fully convinced that they'll eventually win power through the democratic process.
Thanks. John, I agree that we have a lot to learn from European traditionalism, and I think also that the vanguard of our movement really is looking towards Europe and not looking towards American conservatives.
But do they have anything that they could learn from us?
Yeah, I mean, I do think that...
Because of this identity problem I showed, the Europeans tend to be ahead of us.
I mean, here in America, we also tend to be a bit anti-intellectual, and I think that's why most of the most interesting intellectuals on the right have been in Europe in recent decades.
But I do think that they tend to sometimes get a little bit too hung up on things that are abstract, like identity.
And like traditionalism, and something that we're good at here in the U.S. I think is being very hard-headed about these things.
And certainly the kind of racialist perspective, like many speakers are offering here today.
You don't hear much about that in Europe, and I think they could use a healthy dose of that, to be honest, because I don't see the two perspectives as being conflicting with one another.
I see them as complementary.
So I think that's something that we have to offer.
Two quick questions.
Does Yobik's 20% of the vote mean a poor vote?
Proportional representation in the legislative body?
Yes, yes.
There's actually a leftist coalition that scored 26% of the vote, but that's actually five different parties, communist and socialist, and none of them have a history of working together in parliament.
So, effectively, that doesn't really mean anything, even though they'll have more representatives.
So, the only party at this point that has more representatives than parliament is...
Fidesz, the ruling party.
And they still have a supermajority, which means that they can make changes to the Hungarian constitution without consulting the opposition.
If you want to see all the details about the election, I wrote an article about it that's up on the Radix blog from about three weeks ago, and I put all the numbers and everything from the election.
Second quick question.
Do you speak any of these languages?
So you're learning from these people in, you know...
Fluently, I would say.
Well, I was only in Ukraine for ten days.
So I didn't really have a chance to pick up much there.
Most of my friends there speak English.
Hungary, I've been there for three months, and I picked up a few words.
But as a language, it has no connection to any other European.
It's not an Indo-European language.
So it's extremely difficult for outsiders to learn.
So hopefully I'll pick up some eventually, but I haven't really yet.
You know, John, you've mentioned these different parties, you know, Yubik for Hungary and Svoboda for Ukraine.
My question for you is, with white Americans, and there's like 200 million of us, I believe, as of the 2010 census, Do you see a future where, you know, we're all united as one, so to speak?
Or do you see maybe us going, you know, culturally and regionally our separate ways?
Kind of similar to, you know, Europe is Poland for the Poles or Germany for the Germans, etc.
You know, is there...
America for the Americans doesn't even make any sense, to be perfectly honest.
So, like, what do you see in regards to, you know, the future of whites on this continent?
Multiple nation states are one.
Well, I think it's very difficult to say right now.
I mean, I don't see any real hope for meaningful change the way things are now.
But I mean, I think most people in this room would agree.
I mean, all the trends show that the current state of affairs can't be sustained for much longer.
I mean, the bread and circuses are going to run out eventually.
After that, I think it's anyone's guess.
I mean, I would like to see something like what you're describing, some sort of ethno-nationalist.
Divisions springing up.
I think the idea that we could maintain America in the vastness that it has now and also have a state founded on our principles is not realistic.
It would probably be something like smaller communities here and there.
I appreciate your talk, Mr. Morgan.
One concern I have with the OBEC and other nationalist parties is...
It goes to the point of chauvinism to borderline jingoism, such as Jobeck's territorial claims on Voivodina in Serbia, in Romania, in Transylvania.
Does this hurt our greater movement as all Europeans around the world?
That actually is the part of Jobeck that I'm less enamored with.
They do have these claims on some of their neighbors.
One has to remember, historically, in the Treaty of Versailles, Hungary was divested of like half of its territory that were given to other countries.
And there's still a lot of Hungarians living in these areas.
So I can understand why it's a concern for them.
But at the same time, I mean, something the identitarians are always talking about, which I think is good, is the need to forge a greater European identity and emphasize less.
These regional conflicts.
I think that's the ideal to move towards.
With Jobik, I hope that maybe by the time they come to power, they'll have changed somewhat, and maybe they won't be as concerned with these things.
I mean, since Hungary doesn't even have a military, they really have no effective way of making it happen now anyway.
But, well, we'll have to see what happens.
But, yeah, I agree with you.
I think that can tend to be counterproductive.
As European Americans, we don't bring this baggage with us, so we could have a building block.
Of, you know, we're so far removed from our mother countries, we can go only forward together.
Yeah, I mean, you know, like Richard asked me before about what can Americans bring to the Europeans.
That might be something.
Although, at the same time, I mean, they have their regional and national identities, and I think those should be maintained.
I mean, they're perfectly legitimate and, you know, should be respected.
But at the same time, hopefully the fact that we've all been able to get along here could suggest to them that they can all live on the same continent peacefully.
Thank you.
Thank you.
My knowledge of the European New Right comes mainly from reading Tom Sunick's excellent introduction to it, which you have back there.
But I've been struck by the lack of British influence in that.
Most intellectual movements in Europe, the British with the forefront, but the only one I can think of...
What comes to mind is the British playwright Michael Walker.
Why so few British in the European New Right?
That's a good question.
It's one that I've heard raised before.
I mean, when you talk to people on the continent these days, I mean, they really see England and America as kind of off on their own.
They don't even really think of England as part of Europe entirely.
I mean, I think that there is something in the English psyche that's a little bit anti-intellectual in the same way that American culture tends to be.
They tend to not want to question...
Certain things politically and socially.
I'm just throwing out ideas.
I don't have the answer, but that's my feeling.
The cultural conditions in Europe aren't the same as on the continent that would lead to something like the New Right.
The other thing is that the European New Right was originally created with the idea of getting the right out from the Paul of fascism.
How can we recreate the right in a way that it won't have this contamination?
The English never had to worry about that.
They were on the winning side.
So they never really were forced to do that reinvention.
Thank you.
In discussing Mr. Derbyshire's speech earlier this morning about the Chinese, for instance, having a very kind of hive mind mentality, the radical individualism that plagues, it seems, the Western European peoples, and especially in America where you see the libertarian movement,
for instance, is...
The worship of self taken to the nth degree.
So in regards to political movements and cultural movements that inevitably have to be socially based, how do you think we can best overcome our radical individualism?
Because the idea of the rugged cowboy out on his own is great for movies, but it's not great for building a movement to actually get some stuff done.
So how do you see us being able to transcend American individualism and becoming folkishly based?
Yeah, I think that's a good question.
I'm of two minds about this because, as Jared mentioned, I lived in India for nearly five years.
And while there are some very positive things about Indian culture and civilization, they do still very much operate in this hive mind way.
And when I was living there, I just couldn't help but think of all the advantages that our civilization has gotten because we're not like that.
So, you know, individualism I don't think is a bad thing.
It's just the excess of individualism we have now where, you know, individuals are actually atomized from one another.
I think if you look back at our civilization a hundred years ago or so, I mean, we had individualism, yet we still had, I mean, people were still willing to do things for each other, to sacrifice for each other, to think of themselves as a community without seeing it as an imposition.
So I think there's a middle ground.
I don't know exactly how to say to get back there.
I mean, I think it's something that each individual person would have to figure out for themselves.
I don't think it's something you can force.
So, yeah, that's just what I'll have to say.
I think there is a middle ground there that we can attain without going to the other extreme and just becoming pure communalists.
Hi. I wanted to ask...
I guess in how you quantify or maybe qualify the success of Eastern nationalist movements compared to Western nationalist movements was as the level of organic support or willing to participate or put oneself in harm's way or undergo hardships on behalf of the nationalist movement or the cause,
so to speak.
But I guess one thing that I see that What would indicate otherwise to me is the vast numbers of Eastern Europeans that go to Western nations to live.
I think it was the UKIP in the UK recently called for I guess hard stops on the numbers of Bulgarians and Polish people, I believe, immigrating into the UK, which kind of would seem to conflict a little bit with the notion that,
you know, that there's this, I guess, very widespread and organic inclination towards nationalism, you know, if, you know, they have to, you know, create these policies to lure their people back home.
It seems like a lot of people who can leave do.
So I'm just interested to hear your feedback on why that would be, given that nationalism is so widespread and heartfelt there.
Thank you.
Well, I mean, to quote Jim Morrison, the West is the best.
I mean, we are in the world today, I mean, if you look at in India or Eastern Europe or whatever, I mean, our lifestyle.
It's held up as the ideal, so it's not really that surprising that a lot of people are attracted by it.
And of course, they do have legitimate concerns when it comes to finances and so forth that leads them to consider coming here.
That's why I mentioned that the liberal trends that are active here are also present there, and they're certainly very attractive to a large number of people.
But I would still say that the prevailing culture, at least now, Is more nationalist in nature.
And yeah, I mean, there's a significant drain of people from Eastern Europe going West.
Obviously, for the most part, they're not the nationalists.
So yeah, I don't want to make it sound like there's a monolithic nationalist culture in the East.
But still, it's something that's much stronger than what we have.
In another 20 years, maybe it won't be there anymore.
But at least for the time being, it is.
I think there's a strong argument to be made that the sort of intra-European ethnic and nationalist divisions had a large role in destroying Europe twice in the last century.
With that in mind, do you see any sort of danger in returning to that sort of nationalism versus a broader-based pro-European identity?
Absolutely. I was trying to sort of address when I was talking about Jobbik and their concerns with getting back these lost territories of Hungary's.
Again, I understand that, but I actually think what the identitarians are saying about the need to create a pan-European identity, I think that's the way forward.
How to do that and balance it with maintaining regional identities and so forth.
I'm not entirely sure.
But, yeah, I agree.
I think that that's a risk because we don't want to end up back in a situation that would create more civil wars in Europe.
I'm glad you talked about pan-European identity because before you write off whiteness too quickly, I think that's the one fact that Europeans really have in common.
That's true, but I mean, since my colleagues, I'm the only American in Arctos, all of my colleagues are from various European countries, and living there, they find it kind of strange when people talk about being white.
It's not something they can relate to.
I mean, they think of themselves as being Swedish or Hungarian or British or whatever.
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