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Nov. 22, 2024 - Radio Renaissance - Jared Taylor
52:07
Gregory Hood — “The Last Election and the Last American” (2024)
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Our next speaker, the last speaker for this afternoon, is Gregory Hood.
He is American Renaissance's star writer, and as you'll also find, he is a gifted orator.
What more do I need to say?
I will add that he hosts a weekly podcast with Paul Kersey called View from the Right.
And we can all congratulate him on the safe delivery just a few days ago of his third child.
Congratulations. There are several of his books available for sale, some under the name of Gregory Hood and some under his other alias,
James Kirkpatrick.
He would be pleased to sign them for you.
So please welcome Gregory Hood.
I mean, I didn't actually deliver the kid.
I tried.
I said, doctor, stand back.
I'll handle this.
But he wouldn't let me, so...
You know, this would have been so easy to give if Donald Trump had lost.
Because all I would have to do was get up here and say, brothers and sisters, there is only one path forward.
We must carve out a white homeland through blood and fire, whatever the cost, and salt the earth before us.
I see Sam Dixon is applauding anyway, so...
And in many ways, the end itself hasn't changed.
At least for me, the end has always been a white homeland.
I mean, that's what it's been for me since day one.
But with Donald Trump winning, it does seem a little self-indulgent to just get up here and start screaming and waving my arms around because I want to win this thing.
I'm not interested in just being right.
I'm not interested in being self-indulgent.
I'm not even interested in being ideologically correct.
I want to win this thing.
So what does that look like?
What does it mean?
You know, in 2013, I wrote a book.
It's actually in the back there.
And one of the lines was, it's time to stop being Americans.
It's time to start being white men again.
That was 2013.
I even said...
Thanks, Sam.
I even said, once your country goes black, you don't go back.
Well, you know.
But then came Donald Trump.
Then came Donald Trump.
A few days ago, one of the New York Times' affirmative action writers said something along the lines of, you know, if Kamala Harris wins, I'm going to talk so much S-word because we need to emphasize that Donald Trump is not some man of destiny.
He's just some dude.
Turns out he actually is a man of destiny.
And it turns out, whatever you may think about him, and I know people go, oh, you know, he's vulgar, he's this and that.
Nobody. Nobody, nobody, nobody else in America could have done what Donald Trump did.
It is the greatest political comeback in American history.
No one else could have done that.
No one.
There is a certain temptation to doomerism, I think.
One of the other things I quoted in that book long ago was this line from The Sopranos where Tony says, it's good to be in something from the ground floor.
I know.
I came too late for that.
But lately I get the feeling that I'm coming in at the end.
Well, what I've grown to appreciate is for many people, maybe even including myself at times, there's something to be said about being in at the end.
Because if it's all going down, at least you can say, well, the world will never see the likes of us again.
I predicted this.
I was right.
Isn't it terrible?
But if only you would listen to me.
But that's not good enough.
And when we admit that that's not good enough, there are certain costs to that because...
We have to start thinking about things like political compromise.
We have to start thinking about things like pragmatism.
And we have to start thinking about things like power.
And the fact is, we do not have power right now.
Donald Trump is President of the United States, or at least will be, but that does not mean we have power.
A lot of people in 2016 were talking as if we have power.
And maybe a lot of us who remember 2016, who were in the original alt-right, Think back on some of the things we did in 2016 and 2017 under the assumptions that we now have power.
We all kind of remember how that worked out.
Certain things happened in this election that were counter to many of our expectations.
First and foremost, Donald Trump did not expand his share of the white vote.
As a matter of fact, he won fewer white votes, or at least fewer share of the white vote, than he did in 2020.
There was no in-reach to the white base.
People like me have been predicting for years, like, look, there's no point in trying to appeal to the Hispanic vote.
There's no point in trying to appeal to the black vote.
And if you are going to appeal to the Hispanic vote, the smart money was always, well, you have to liberalize immigration controls, you have to pander to them on this or that thing.
Donald Trump won a greater share of Hispanic men than he did of white women.
Now, it's based on exit polls.
Who knows if that'll pan out?
We all remember that the exit polls about George W. Bush winning on those Hispanic votes weren't actually true.
Seems fair to say that he actually won the election by expanding the non-white vote and, at best, holding on to the white vote.
This raises an important question.
Are whites a political base worth cultivating?
Are we a political power in our own right?
Is there even a white vote that we can talk about?
A lot of people in the Republican Party, a lot of people in Trump's team, are talking about this as some new American majority.
But I can't help but think that this majority might be a little bit thin.
I'm reminded of another time when a guy with blonde hair running on immigration won a decisive majority breaking into the areas that the Liberal Party controlled.
And I don't mean Donald Trump in 2016, I mean Boris Johnson.
Boris Johnson had the potential to completely reorient British politics.
He ran against immigration, he ran a populist campaign, he even ran what some would call a national conservative campaign.
What ended up happening?
He did nothing and then they got destroyed in the next election.
There's a real danger that could happen to Trump.
We all remember, at least I do, how many of us were just done with this guy in 2020?
I mean, I voted for him.
I voted for him every single time.
There was never any hesitation about that.
I want to hasten to add that the New Century Foundation is a nonpartisan nonprofit and we don't endorse candidates, but I, speaking as myself, voted for him every single time.
But I did it in 2020 just because.
There wasn't any great enthusiasm.
I had a lot more enthusiasm this time, I would say even more than I had in 2016.
And the reason is because the political establishment kept heightening the emotional blackmail.
They kept saying, well, he's an authoritarian, and when that didn't work, okay, he's a fascist.
When that didn't work, okay, he's a Nazi.
As a matter of fact, just today, I don't know if you saw this, Jim Clyburn, the black South Carolina Democrat, the only reason, by the way, Joe Biden won the nomination in 2020 was because of this guy's endorsement, doubled down on calling Donald Trump a Nazi.
And when the news host said, don't you think that's a little extreme?
He said, well, you might think so, but I don't.
Well, that's not going to work anymore.
And if there's one major white pill to this election, it's that the American people are no longer suffering from this kind of emotional blackmail.
They're not putting up with it.
They're not taking it anymore.
They're showing an independence of the mainstream media that I don't think was possible ten years ago.
And that is something that should give all of us a lot of hope.
That is something we can build on.
The Democrats...
The media is sovereign in a democracy.
Media power is political power.
It's the only thing that really matters in the end.
And you see in the days after the election, the Democrats have been saying, well, the reason we lost is because of misinformation online.
It's because we can't control social media.
Jen Psaki, the former press secretary for Joe Biden, even said, laws have to change.
I don't know what that looks like.
You know, I'm just innocent, wallflower.
I don't know anything.
But the laws need to change.
It's always the people who deny that they have political power who are the most eager to wield it.
I think they're actually right.
They are right, not about misinformation.
I mean, certainly, when you are a race realist, the very idea that all the races perform equally and the only reason for discrepancies is because of racism and bias.
That by itself is enough misinformation that it discredits everything every so-called expert says in American society.
That alone is the most destructive conspiracy theory in American history.
So I don't want to hear about misinformation, but I think they're right in that they can't control social media and that fundamentally destabilizes the political system.
For most of our lives, it was a very centralized, top-down system for distributing information.
Some older people here might remember when there were just a few networks and you just couldn't get another perspective.
And I don't think it's an accident that the collapse in political faith in the government that Jared Taylor talked about coincides with the mainstream media monopoly essentially being broken up.
And you see in every single country of the West, of the so-called free world, that the governments are doing everything they can.
Through repression and through hard power to bring this back under the control in Australia, in the United Kingdom, in the European Union, where people are going to jail for social media posts.
Don't think for a second that won't happen here at some point.
And don't think for a second that that piece of paper called the U.S. Constitution is going to stand in the way of some affirmative action Supreme Court justice who says that they don't want to put up with hate speech.
Thank you.
Thank you.
That said, I think there's a lot to take heart from with Donald Trump's election.
But there is a case, and I'm going to preface this by saying I don't agree with it, but I want to give it airtime.
There is a case that this is a problem for us.
And I think there are three reasons why.
The first is that they'll say, well, Donald Trump getting elected means that white people are going to go back to sleep.
You're not going to have this resistance to the system that Donald Trump has been able to mobilize.
The second thing, and you hear this from, how shall I put this, certain defectors from the original alt-right, who shall remain nameless, that the Magma movement is too lower class, and we don't want to be associated with these types of people.
Instead, we're going to try to kiss up to the reporters and hope they return our phone calls again, or maybe Gavin Newsom will listen to us, and we're going to write little funny articles being edgy and contrarian.
And the third thing is that, and I think this is the most serious one, that the movement and that his government and that his administration is essentially just going to be co-opted.
And that they're going to take this energy and use it for ends that are destructive towards us.
And I want to take each of these objections in turn.
The first is that, although I've been accused of dumerism, particularly when it comes to election predictions, and I think there's a lot of truth to that, it's because I always see complacency as a major danger.
I remember what people were saying in 2020 and 2022, and I've always been skeptical of this idea that the people are going to rise up.
There's a line.
You better not cross it.
People aren't going to put up with this forever.
People will put up with pretty much anything.
And if you complacently expect that people will rise up and take your side, you're going to be waiting a long time.
But there's a flip side to that, which is despair is just as destructive, if not more destructive, probably more destructive, than complacency.
Successful movements deliver small victories upon small victories upon small victories.
And if you aren't delivering victories, people don't get angry and radicalized.
What they do is they go away.
They disappear into private life.
They disappear into drugs, into alcohol, into sports gambling, into whatever private hobbies.
They don't do anything.
Politically, they don't matter.
You may say, oh, I'm not giving my consent to the system.
I'm not going to vote.
The system doesn't care about that.
If you want to resist the political system, if you want to not give your consent to the political system, don't pay your taxes.
I promise they'll care about that.
They don't care whether you vote or not.
The second objection is this idea that MAGA is lower class.
Okay, sure, fine.
But what defines class in this country?
What defines class in the West?
You know, for most of world history, if you talked about the aristocracy, what did that mean?
And then a military ruling caste.
You conquered a country, it was actually the poor who paid taxes, not you, because the whole point of invading a country was so they would support you.
That's what it meant to be an aristocrat.
Well, how do you wield power in our modern societies?
You control narratives.
You control information.
You control the morality.
If politics is a substitute for war, the critical battleground is always will.
And if you control information and you control narratives, you control will.
That's a far more dangerous weapon than weapons themselves.
Why are the educated, and I think they're absolutely right about this, people who write about...
Progressives, white progressives anyway, being the smarter group of white people on balance.
But why is that?
I think it's because smarter people tend to go to elite institutions and then they're just going to adopt whatever ideology they're taught that legitimizes their hold on power.
And how is their hold on power legitimized?
They are able to say bias...
And racism and all these terrible things are why we need to manage society.
And that's why I deserve to have power.
And that's why I deserve to have your tax dollars.
And that's why you have to do what I said.
But you know what?
If you change those incentives, if you change the power, you are actually going to change what people believe.
Ideology is usually just a mask for power.
And if you could change the underlying power dynamics, you're probably going to change the ideology, too.
I mean, just for one small example of the vibe shift, how many people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are removing their pronouns from their Twitter bios?
It's because they see people are making fun of this stuff.
It's because they see that there's no longer any social benefit to this kind of thing.
Instead, it's something for mockery.
If you actually want to change these things, it's going to require state power.
It's going to require going in there and removing affirmative action laws and removing the reasons why we have DEI programs, which is essentially that it's illegal to have free association in this country.
The reason HR has become such a force in American life is because it's the law.
It's because it's basically illegal to be right-wing in any corporation of any size in America.
And as my friend Sam Dixon said, the only free people in this country are blue-collar workers.
Because they're the only ones who don't have somebody looking over their shoulder every ten seconds.
You change that, you're going to change people's minds.
And guess what?
You're also going to change the class dynamics.
And if that means coming to power with a populist movement that certain people in D.C. or New York or L.A. or people who wish they lived in D.C. or New York or L.A. find to be disturbing, well, that's too bad for them.
But if we're serious about this thing, that's what it's going to take.
And the last thing I think is the most dangerous thing, which is the idea that it could be co-opted.
Yeah, that could happen.
Could happen.
A lot of people who supported Trump are going to look very stupid if he blunders us into World War III or an invasion of Iran or whatever else.
But you know what?
That was true in 2016, too.
And are we really going to say that the run in 2024...
Was less of an anti-establishment run than 2016?
Was Mike Pence some great radical against the system who was going to overthrow the taboos of our time?
And even if you think, well, 2016 was such a shock and 2024 was fundamentally different because the GOP had his back, are we really going to say 2024 was that much worse than 2020?
2020, where he ran basically as an establishment Republican, where he ran on the Platinum Plan, where he ran on more handouts to non-whites, and people were still willing to go to D.C. on January 6th to stand up for him.
I think 2024 was a vastly different run than 2020, and his triumph there was infinitely better for us and for those who question the system we live under than if he had won in 2020.
So yeah, it could be co-opted, but that danger has always been there.
And it's no different now than it was in 2016.
And I think there are far more reasons to hope now than there were in 2016, and certainly far more reasons to hope than there were in 2020, or during much of this administration.
And if you're determined to see everything as bad, as we can't possibly win, as everybody is compromised, as everybody is controlled, then what are you even doing?
What's the point?
Just go, I don't know, start a business or something.
I mean, like, who cares?
Why even bother?
But I do have hope.
And frankly, even if he does disappoint us, a successful revolution that is betrayed inspires more people to fight and more people to think they can win than a revolution that fails from the outset.
And that's why I think Trump 2024 winning was objectively a good thing for us.
Now, the media has been arguing that disinformation is the biggest threat that free societies face today.
And I think if you interpret free societies as their power, they are fundamentally right.
I think they are absolutely right that for what they see as legitimacy to be restored, all of these social media networks need to be shut down.
That Elon Musk needs to be brought to heel.
That rumble needs to be shut down.
That gab needs to be shut down.
That things need to go back to the way they were in 2017 or 2018 at the height of censorship and what some have called the Great Awakening.
It's worth remembering that everybody loved this stuff in 2012, 2013, 2014.
And when you see the big shift to the left in American society on racial issues, it came about at that time when there really were no right-wing voices on social media, at least not prominent ones.
But the minute they lost control of it, all of a sudden, all the illusions about free society, all the illusions about, well, actually, everybody's just allowed to say whatever they want, all that gets taken away really fast.
And suddenly you see the iron glove, the iron fist, I should say, behind the velvet glove that is liberal democracy.
Liberal democracy is a system of control, just like anything else.
And in many ways, it's actually worse than so-called authoritarian rule, because a lot of times you can't point out who is actually sovereign.
And I would say the first condition of political freedom is you need to be able to identify who is sovereign.
Because if you can't do that, there's no way to resist that person.
Now this is one of the dangers Donald Trump faces because, and I think this is one of the reasons many people voted for him, he presents himself almost like a king.
We all kind of know he's in charge.
Nobody, not even Joe Biden, thinks that Joe Biden is in charge.
And nobody thought...
That Kamala Harris would be in charge.
I think Steve Saylor pointed out that she's sort of like the DEI stock photo lady.
She's basically just kind of a system, a stand-in for a whole system of social control.
I think even Elon Musk said the same thing.
That's basically true.
There was no Kamala Harris.
Trump, a lot depends on what he personally does.
But there is a team behind him.
And more importantly, I think there's a shift in the culture that wasn't there when the alt-right was a thing.
One of the big things, and I know I'm going to get some criticism for this, but this is just my take.
The alt-right and the alt-light, as they called it back then, were more or less united during the first Trump campaign.
And I know this because, I mean, people were hanging out IRL and getting along, and it was one big thing.
And then you saw that kind of splinter apart in the aftermath.
Now there is no such unity.
People are very much in distinct lanes.
But you are seeing a lot of people who would never come to something like this, or would never admit that they read the site, even though they do.
I don't think that's how power works.
The way we win is going to be an incremental approach.
And the biggest thing that I can say to everybody here, and also people watching, especially younger people, is you've got to know your lane, and you've got to stay in it.
Every single one of us has a different role to play in this struggle.
And it's going to be very different than the world I stepped into maybe ten years ago.
I mean, Jared introduced me by, I've got, you know, two pen names.
There's actually, like, I think three or four more that he doesn't know about.
And then, of course, you know, I was working in the conservative movement under my given name and all the rest of it.
There's no reason to do any of that stupid stuff anymore.
There's a lot more of us now.
You pick one lane, you stick to it, and you've got to kind of assume that the doxing is more or less inevitable.
It comes with the territory.
And if you don't want that, you don't have to do it.
The way I see it, there are basically three fundamental paths here.
The first is the path that American Renaissance is on.
Which is essentially that of intellectuals who are presenting research, who are presenting arguments that people with power can use.
They don't need to admit that they got it from us.
And we have to be willing to accept that.
If nobody ever says that they read me, I don't care.
I don't matter.
What matters is the results.
And if you step down this path, the price for being able to tell the truth as you see it is you're not going to get the credit.
Fine. That's okay.
The second thing is the people who are seeking power.
If you're going to seek power, seek power.
But that means you have to avoid the kind of self-indulgent things that will compromise you on that path.
The kinds of things that, I don't know, I used to do.
And still do on occasion.
Don't do those things.
Because we're going to need...
There's a calculation that happens in politics where the people who know can't.
And the people who could don't know.
And this has always been true with racial issues, with immigration issues, with the Republicans, with the right-wingers who take these positions of power.
They have no idea what they're talking about, people.
I've been in the same room with these people.
They have no idea what's going on.
They have no idea what the law is.
They have no idea how these programs work.
They have no idea where the funding is going.
The leftists know.
And the leftists know because there's a whole network.
Of NGOs and activist organizations, organizations that every single one of you are paying for.
And with the exception of maybe some of the largest donors to American Renaissance in this room, I promise you, however much time you've spent on right-wing groups, however much money you've given to right-wing groups, you, you directly, have funded more full-time left-wing activists than you have right-wing activists,
because you did it with your tax dollars.
Or you did it with your donations to your churches.
That's the reality.
Or you did it, frankly, with the products you buy from corporations who then turn around and give it to left-wing groups.
The third path, I think, and there's some great guys here who have been operating this path, I think, more effectively than just about anybody else, is where you start building parallel networks of power.
Will you stop building things that are outside the system but are still political in the sense that you're mobilizing manpower.
You're mobilizing resources.
You're getting people jobs.
You're building power on a local level.
Maybe the media is not totally focused on everything you're doing, but that's good.
We're not here to make spectacles of ourselves.
We're not here to be dancing monkeys so every time the media wants controversy, they can put a camera on you and go,"Oh, look at that guy.
Don't you hate him?" No, we're here to actually build power.
And eventually, that will translate into state power.
And make no mistake, people say things like, well, there is no political solution.
Of course there's a political solution.
The political solution is you take control of the state, you use it to reward your friends and punish your enemies.
That's the solution.
That's always the solution.
There is no solution apart from power.
And if you tell me, well, we're going to win through the power of truth or the power of arguments, you need those things to be sure.
But do you think communism triumphed through the power of truth?
Do you think academia is the way it is because people read these books that are barely comprehensible and said, oh, this is so convincing.
I just have to do what they say now.
No. It's because there's patronage and there's finances and there's laws behind these people that allow them to build power in these institutions.
You need those things.
And I think we've ignored these things for too long.
You know, one of the first articles I wrote for American Renaissance, I don't know if Mr. Taylor remembers this, but it was actually about Malcolm X. And it was a book called Malcolm X, The Life of Reinvention.
And of course, you know, like most people, I think, the image you have of Malcolm X is from the Spike Lee movie.
Where, you know, he's almost like this kind of holy warrior who had a kind of degenerate youth, but then he became, like, very pious and never cheated on his wife and never did any of these things.
Turns out all of that is false.
I mean, he was basically not quite Martin Luther King levels of degeneracy, but getting there.
And there were a lot of lies that we've been told about him and everything else, but the book was written by a progressive activist, and so it has a lot of good lessons for our side.
And it's written...
From a sympathetic point of view toward him.
It's just one of those rare things.
A progressive book written by an honest critic who tells the truth.
Tells the truth as he sees it.
And one of the things that he points out with Malcolm X is that, especially later on in his life, he was trying to do two things at once that don't really work.
Which he was trying to build this sort of vanguardist religious cultural thing through his own idiosyncratic version of Islam.
And at the same time, he was also trying to be this kind of socialist organizer who could put himself at the vanguard of all these leftist movements and appeal to the UN.
But he was also telling blacks that they shouldn't vote and that the whole system was rigged and there was nothing they could do.
And he pointed out that the whole thing was just kind of incoherent.
Now, for him, you're able to get away with it because the media was so determined to give him the spotlight and to make him a new hero.
It's not going to work that way with us.
I think a lot of people, including myself on occasion, maybe even now, try to do these things too often.
Try to do these things at the same time.
And you really got to do one or the other.
There is no political solution.
If we acknowledge that power is the key, there's not going to be a political scenario where you get a revolution from the periphery where people who have no political power now suddenly inherit everything.
In the midst of a crisis.
It doesn't work that way.
And there are examples in our own time where we can look at this.
If you look at the collapse of the Soviet Union, for example, the guys who inherited power after the system broke up tended to be the guys who already had power at the local level.
And yesterday's communists reinvented themselves as today's nationalist radical.
That may be how it turns out for us.
But... We better make sure that we have some of those local positions.
We better make sure that we have some of those networks.
We better make sure that we have people on the ground IRL, because if we don't have those things, we're just kidding ourselves.
Over the next couple of years, I'm going to be focusing a lot more on new media, but I'm also going to be focusing a lot more on investigative reporting, on reports, on the kinds of real-world things, and less on polemics, because I think the polemics for now, Know what I think on this stuff,
and I think you guys know what's necessary.
But we've been talking about this for a very long time.
And the reckoning is still coming.
Only whites voted for Donald Trump as a race.
Though he expanded the minority vote, if non-whites determined elections in this country, Donald Trump would not be president.
In fact, he'd be going to jail.
That is what was at stake for him personally.
But what is at stake for us is if people like him never win power again...
We are going to jail.
And if you think that's unrealistic, look at what's happening in Europe.
Look at what's happening in Australia.
Look at what's happening in the United Kingdom.
Those are the stakes.
This is real politics, people.
It's not a game.
This is life and death.
Your life and mine.
My kids' lives and your kids' lives.
Everything is at stake.
And we have to take it seriously.
The reckoning is still coming, but we've got to stay of execution.
That's how we should look at this.
We have an opportunity over the next few years to try to build power on a local level, to try to get our ideas implemented through the administration and through people in Congress and through the courts and through lawsuits and by getting earned media that actually moves people in our direction.
But you've got to pick one approach and stick with it and be serious about it.
This isn't about emotional self-satisfaction.
This isn't about just being infamous.
I have no patience for that kind of stuff.
This is about winning and about building power.
And I don't care who has the brass ring at the end.
I just care that these things get done.
Maybe a year from now.
Maybe two years from now.
Maybe four years from now.
Hopefully 12 years from now.
I'll get up here and I'll give you that fiery speech.
I'll give you a polemic.
I'll tell you that the time is now to secure our homeland.
That there are no other paths forward.
That this is it.
Do or die.
But we don't have those things on the ground yet.
So show me something.
Let's start building these things now.
We have an opportunity.
We have a second chance.
That is not going to come again.
But the clock is ticking.
The reckoning is coming.
And if we are not ready, when that clock strikes midnight, we are going to pay for it.
Act. Thank you.
Thank you, everyone.
We really appreciate all of you coming out to this.
It's great to see a turnout like this, and I know everybody's spirits are very high.
I think I've got about, what, 15 minutes for questions?
Okay. I was wondering, what would you consider to be the best strategy taking Trump in, as he is now, for the online right, that is, people that are involved with memes, basically, and people that are involved in, let's say,
right-wing activist networks?
That's a very good question.
I think one of the big things that we kind of learned to our sorrow in 2016-2017 is that online politics and real-world politics are not the same thing.
And one of the things I've kind of noticed is that people who are, I don't want to give names because I don't want to get them in trouble, but people who are respectable somewhat now, people who might be in positions of authority, are sharing some stuff that You couldn't get away with even a few years ago.
But you can get away with it because there is a kind of plausible deniability when you're online that doesn't translate with real-world stuff.
So I'm not really opposed to people pushing the envelope when it comes to memes, when it comes to online stuff.
The only thing I would say is that what exactly is the objective here?
Because I think it is destructive if the objective is basically to just say, well, there's nothing that can be done.
Everybody sucks.
Now, if you believe that, if that is honestly the truth as you see it, who am I to tell you otherwise?
But what is your solution?
What exactly are we supposed to do about it?
Because if you don't have an answer to that question, maybe you should think about it a little bit.
Well, that's actually kind of exactly my question.
Like, open-ended question.
Like, what, taken as they are, what ought they to do?
Like, what is the most effective use of their time?
I mean, you're talking about pressuring the administration specifically or shifting the Overton window?
Because those are two very different things.
Either or.
Pick one is the short answer.
I mean, you can't do them both at once.
I mean, you know, if you're like, actually, if you look at the immigration settlement from Haiti, there are serious problems about the expenditure of federal funds.
And then, you know, in the very next post, you have like a black sun spinning around.
Like, it doesn't work that way.
You can't do that.
Like, one of the other people.
I realize I'm probably describing my own Twitter account.
X account, sorry.
I do think that even online, it is a question of picking a lane.
The only thing is that I don't think there's necessarily a cost of pushing the envelope online.
If you are going to push even extreme stuff, understand that that's where it stops.
Understand that you're not going to get people in the administration Following you, maybe under an alt or something, you're not going to get some of the ideas.
If you do want to talk about something serious in terms of policy or in terms of something short-term, you're just going to kind of be ignored.
Now, that's fine as far as it goes.
I mean, I think this movement needs many approaches, including even contradictory approaches, including people who hate each other's guts.
And we're always going to be screaming at each other.
I mean, at the end of the day, we are all in the same movement.
But I think it's destructive when people...
I try to do everything at once and then act surprised when people just start tuning them out after a while.
Makes sense.
Thank you.
Thank you.
It's a good question.
Is redirecting federal money to state governments, is that part of the solution?
And if so, how would you do that?
I mean, it depends which states.
I wouldn't give any money to California or something like that.
I mean, one of the things that I want to kind of hammer down on the, as far as the mainstream right goes.
Basically, it's a question of who, not what.
That's what politics is really all about.
A lot of times, you'll see conservatives, especially in the past, you'll win an election or something like that.
I say this as somebody who worked basically in the normie conservative movement for 15 years.
There's still part of me that still thinks that way.
I'm trying to beat it to death, but I still think that way on occasion.
One of the problems is that they sort of do these things From the perspective of universal principles or constitutional principles that don't really hold up in the modern context.
So, for example, to say, like, well, we just need to give more power to the states or to localities.
But is that really a good thing if the locality is somebody like San Francisco and they're going to be teaching all the kids that all white people are evil?
You saw this with the immigration debate where you saw both parties flip their positions on occasion where they would say, states...
Arizona originally, states can enforce immigration laws.
And then during the Obama years, it was no, states cannot enforce immigration laws.
And then when Trump became president, it was no, actually states can enforce immigration laws again.
And they can enforce those immigration laws by not enforcing the immigration laws.
Really, I think, just kind of cut past the principles and ask yourself, Which constituencies benefit from these policies?
Which constituencies suffer from these policies?
Which side am I on?
Like the old labor song, you know, which side are you on?
That's really the only question that matters, I think.
I mean, if the path to victory is through extreme centralization, fine.
If it's through local autonomy, fine.
I'm concerned with the end, not means.
Thank you very much for your talk.
It was much easier to follow than the last one I heard from you in Detroit.
Yeah, we had people screaming at us and I was shouting insults at people in the...
I know how to handle hecklers.
What can I say?
In part of your speech, you mentioned that you didn't care who wore the brass ring.
You only cared about results, which I believe is entirely understandable.
We definitely want to see the results and the fruits of reduced immigration, remigration, things along that line.
But my question is, if the people who eventually end up wearing the brass ring aren't really one of us, they're just kind of skin-suiting our ideology.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, that's a very valid concern, yeah.
Yeah, and they're only giving us part of what we want now so they can placate us.
Only to take it back later down the line.
How can we guard against that, and should we be more concerned about that right now, especially when there is kind of an ideological battle being waged for Trump's administration at this certain moment?
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely. I think that's an excellent question.
Well, there's two elements to that.
First is, if you consider the hardcore element, let's say that we, for the sake of argument.
Are we a political force in our own right?
If these people defy us, can we impose a cost?
Because if the answer is no, then we're just kind of complaining.
So this is why one of the things I said in terms of building local power, like you actually have to be able to primary somebody.
You don't even have to win, but you have to at least be able to impose a cost on these people.
You have to be able to win some elections.
You have to be willing to take over a party somewhere.
Maybe if it takes that, you run a third-party spoiler candidate or something like that.
But if you can't impose a cost, then you're just kind of accusing people of not doing what you want.
And, I mean, that's sort of like not voting for somebody but still paying your taxes.
What difference does it make?
You know what I mean?
And the second thing is there is an element to...
People who aren't true believers who then step to the front.
That actually kind of happened with the Confederacy.
All the fire eaters, the guys who were really hardcore for secession, they had their moment of glory at the state conferences where all these states voted to leave the Union and form the Confederacy.
And then none of them got power.
And guys like Jefferson Davis, who were never really considered radicals and were never really considered guys who could be trusted, they were the ones who kind of inherited power.
Now, on the one hand, you could say, well, you know, that's bad because the people who deserve the credit didn't actually get to exercise power.
But on the other hand, it's pretty hard to argue.
Whatever you think about his decisions, it's pretty hard to argue that he didn't go down with the ship.
It's pretty hard to argue that his own political self-interest then became identified with this other thing.
I think that might be true of Trump himself.
I mean, let's not forget.
When he ran for the Reform Party ticket in 2000, he was calling Pat Buchanan a Nazi.
He was calling him an evil guy.
I mean, he has since apologized.
He's the only guy, as far as I know, that Trump has ever apologized to.
But you wonder how much of what he's saying now he really believes.
I think the answer to that is maybe at the beginning he was saying it because that was in his political interest to do it.
That's where he could find a...
Popular base.
But once you say it enough times, you actually do kind of tend to believe it.
Once your self-interest is tied in with the self-interest of this movement, I mean, there's a great line from St. Ignatius Loyola, perform the acts of faith and faith will follow.
So that's kind of my answer to can people who are more moderate who come over because of the political wins, can they be trusted?
I think the answer eventually is yeah, they can.
And if you don't think so, you better have something that you can oppose them with other than just complaints.
You know what I mean?
Tufts University conducts studies of the youth vote.
And the general assumptions have usually been that younger people tend to be more liberal.
But I was pleasantly surprised by the results of their survey this year where they found that young white men strongly support Trump.
And they gave a surprising figure of 63%.
And for young white women, 49 percent between the ages of 18 and 29. How do you think we can best take advantage of this situation?
One of the problems for the white right, if we can call it that,
Trump has always been sort of tough on a college campus anyway.
You know, what is the symbol that you rally around?
Because you could talk about issues, you could talk about certain symbols or whatever else, but what's something that everybody recognizes, that everybody understands in their gut what it's all about?
And basically for the last decade, it's just been Trump himself.
Now, I don't know if that's going to change anytime soon.
I will say that Trump has become An avatar of resistance to the kind of scolding HR, feminized culture, affirmative action culture.
And whether you can have groups that are not firmly tied to Trump himself.
And actually begin organizing on college campuses.
Because I tried that.
I mean, I had Youth for Western Civilization decades ago.
We had Tom Tancredo, but we didn't have like a figure with universal name recognition, universal appeal that everybody knew about, or at least the people that I cared about attracting.
I think that for now, I would continue to ride Trump's coattails if you're trying to organize on a mass level.
Because, frankly, that's why...
The alt-right came to prominence in 2016.
And then from there, we may get a second chance to introduce our ideas to a constituency that I think is more ready for them now than it was back then.
And also the ideas have shifted somewhat and can be presented in a better way.
One of the things that we should also discuss is consider what a big deal it's been in terms of the ideas that we talk about, even with things like race and IQ.
I mean, it was a big deal.
When Breitbart had that article saying, like, this is the alt-right that Milo wrote way back when, it was a big deal when Hillary Clinton mentioned us.
It was a big deal if such and such a blog took notice of what you did.
When I was writing in, like, 2013, you were basically screaming into the ether.
I mean, you just had a small group that was seeing this.
Now... I just take for granted that a bunch of billionaires and people with millions of followers are seeing my stuff, RT-ing it, circulating amongst themselves.
Like, I know our message is getting out there in a way that it never has before.
That's a huge triumph.
It's something that we would have called victory a few years ago, and now it doesn't even pass notice.
So, we are operating from a higher plane, and that may create more opportunities, but...
We don't yet have the kind of universal figure or universal symbol that can mobilize people on a mass basis aside from Trump himself.
I mean, this is why I've been saying that if there are kids out there who they don't have anything on quite yet, I mean, if you're thinking about running for office, if you're thinking about building a political network, if you're thinking about stepping up, now is the time.
Because I don't think there's ever going to be another opportunity like this again.
Ever. This is really it.
Over the next four years for in real life, community, organizing, intentional communities, do you have any other recommended specific examples or things to get involved with for tangible projects?
Yes, but they're the kind of things I don't want to necessarily say publicly.
I mean, this is actually a good point.
If you're having an intentional community, like some of the things that Mr. Taylor spoke about before, if you're talking about moving to a certain area, say, and I don't even want to use this phrase, taking over an area.
That's not the kind of thing you should necessarily advertise before you do it.
You know what I mean?
Or if you are building something off the grid and you're having you and your friends operate in a certain area, the fewer people who know about that probably the better.
Obviously, there are certain things that you do want open to the public in terms of community service.
If you're, I don't know, if you're operating a gym, if you're operating a business, if you're trying to advertise something.
I mean, you do have to do these things.
And there's even a role for, like, demonstrations and things like that because you have to attract people, right?
You have to show people that you're out there.
But as far as the kinds of networks that are actually going to sustain power on a local level, I wouldn't advertise that stuff.
I mean, that's actually the best advice I can give.
Yeah, I wanted to pick your thoughts a little more on the Trump administration's cabinet picks so far.
There's some white pills and there's some black pills.
Yeah. Well, most of them that I've seen so far that he's picked are pro-Zionist.
And whether you think that's a positive aspect for movements like American Renaissance or there's negative aspects to it.
I mean, I wouldn't say American Renaissance has a particular...
Well, Mr. Taylor is probably the one who can speak to this better than I can.
As far as the cabinet positions go, certainly it's there, but it's not really all that different than what we got in 2016, or certainly 2020.
I mean, the idea, if you were critical of Donald Trump, and your one issue was, look, I do not want a Zionist foreign policy.
There's no way you can support Donald Trump in 2016.
And not support him in 2024.
Like, this is not an unknown thing.
And the idea that he's not Pat Buchanan, he's just not.
And that said, we have seen, I think, a certain independence in his first term, despite some of the, frankly, horrific picks that he had in his first term, John Bolton, guys like that.
But he didn't get us into a Middle Eastern war, did he?
I mean, he bombed Syria, which I'm not a big fan of, but...
He didn't get us into the kind of wider war that I think a lot of people feared, which I frankly feared after he bombed Syria the first time.
And could it happen this time?
Maybe, but if you wanted to say, well, who's somebody he picked who's not going to go in for these sorts of things?
I mean, Tulsi Gabbard has a pretty strong anti-interventionist record.
Maybe not on the Middle East specifically, but I don't think that it's fair to say that he's got a totally interventionist cabinet.
But, look, I mean, let's be honest.
I don't think any of us were...
If you're like the old right, Pat Buchanan old right, Donald Trump is not your guy in foreign policy.
But then again, he never was.
So... Last question.
Thank you for your comments.
I really enjoyed them.
Thank you for speaking, because I think you've shown more guts than just about anybody here.
and I'm going to give you a little bit of a thought.
Thank you.
Well, I'm going to let you all down by saying something very wonky and policy-oriented.
I like wonky stuff.
That's fine.
I would like your impression of two proposals, which I think are for the first time really within reach and could have dramatic effects.
So one of them is E-Verify.
Oren Cass, last week in the New York Times, one of the few coherent pieces that I've read in the New York Times in a long time, It's time for E-Verify.
Now, of course, there's going to be a hue and cry from the left, but also from the right, from the big businesses that depend on illegal workers, right?
Unlike in Europe, our illegals actually work.
Yeah. But I think if, you know, we get Trump's ear, the right people do, this might be possible and it would tremendously change the landscape.
You know, re-migrate out because they wouldn't be able to work.
The second, I think, potentially dramatic policy is to cut off federal funds to higher education using Title VI.
There is tremendous funneling of massive amounts of federal money to Higher ed institutions, public and private, through a million different programs, our higher ed establishment has openly and defiantly flouted the law on colorblindness.
They do it every day in every way.
And if I were head of civil rights, I would, day one, say no more money, they can sue to get it back.
And that would take a lot of guts.
And there would be, you know, screams from every quarter.
But if the right person were in that position, it could happen.
So there is potential there.
And I think, unlike 2016, it could really, people are ready for it.
I don't think he's, I mean, he's...
Pledged to get rid of the department, but then again, so did Reagan.
I don't think he's nominated an education secretary yet, but if you've got Stephen Miller's deputy chief of staff for policy, and then if he can somehow get Gates in there for Department of Justice, I mean, this is really one of those things where it's just a question of somebody who has the ability to do it knowing about it.
Because I promise you, most Republicans who have been appointed to these positions don't even know what you're talking about.
They don't know what E-Verify even is.
Now, I'll say this.
Trump's record on E-Verify is not that great.
It's actually one of his big disappointments.
So this is something where a lot of the immigration patriots in Congress really need to step up for this thing specifically.
Because... He needs to deliver on that.
He needs to deliver on taxing remittances.
There are a lot of great policies that were just kind of left on the table in 2016.
It's going to take pressure.
But I'd say two other things that I'm really hoping for.
One is a court decision going after disparate impact, which I think is at the, I mean, that's the poisonous root at so many things.
For those of you who don't know about it, disparate impact is a legal doctrine which essentially says if there is a difference, if a policy affects groups differently.
It must be concluded that it's because of bias or discrimination, even if it wasn't intended.
So when you read these articles like black wannabe firemen get $10 million because they failed the test, why is this happening?
It's happening because of things like disparate impact.
It sounds so crazy that most people don't believe that it's the law, but it is.
And I would say the second thing...
That I really want to see from the Trump administration is defunding of all these NGOs.
The NGOs, you know, if you ask yourself, well, how are these migrants getting here?
Why are they getting hotels?
Why are they getting food?
Why are migrants from overseas flying to our country and coming in here?
Well, I'll answer the question.
You're paying for it.
You, right now, are paying for it.
And you would think that the limited government conservatives would have something to say about this, but...
Thus far, nothing.
I hope that's one of the first things that the new administration takes action on.
But those of you who do have contacts in the administration, those of you who know people on the Hill and wherever else, I mean, this is where you need to start contacting people because it sounds simplistic and it sounds maybe naive that, you know, the Republicans just don't know about this stuff.
But in my experience, that's actually true.
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