By Greg Johnson | 8 Comments | 
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Leonard Zeskind on The Occidental Quarterly
Leonard Zeskind’s Searchlight article “Stateside: The far right in Obama’s first year” argues that the election of Barack Obama has not been a boon for white nationalists, citing low turnouts for David Irving, David Duke, and Council of Conservative Citizens events.
Zeskind notes that there has been an increase in discussion of secession and racial partition. He mentions the creation of Harold Covington’s Northwest Front, but predicts nothing will come of it because of Covington’s controversial past.
Zeskind also mentions TOQ and our “Secession and Racial Nationalism” essay contest:
The Occidental Quarterly, with half a dozen PhDs on its advisory board, has emerged as the central address for the most advanced strategic thinking among intellectual antisemites, scientific racists and anti-immigrant white nationalists.
Zeskind then mentions Michael O’Meara’s prize essay “Toward the White Republic.”
I have been editing our special issue on Secession and Racial nationalism, and I have been again impressed by the quality of the entries. Dr. O’Meara’s prize essay was the best, but the best in a crowded and highly competitive field. Of the 19 entries, nine will be published in TOQ, including the prize essay, and a tenth has already been published on TOQ Online.
The purpose of TOQ‘s essay competitions is precisely to solidify our position as “the central address for the most advanced strategic thinking among intellectual antisemites, scientific racists and anti-immigrant white nationalists” by encouraging the best minds in our movement to apply themselves to issues of vital importance to our people’s survival and flourishing.
Click here for details on our next essay contest, on “Libertarianism and Racial Nationalism.”
For reviews of Zeskind’s Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream, click here and here.
Greg Johnson
Greg Johnson, Ph.D., is the Editor-in-Chief of Counter-Currents Publishing, Ltd. He can be reached at editor@counter-currents.com.
By the way, the David Irving talk in Orange County last July attracted almost 70 attendees, ranging in age from 16 to 90, with a large group under 30. It was an unusually large turnout. That’s where I met the Freedom 14 people among others.
Group membership is a poor measuring stick of White Nationalism. The vast majority of WNs are unaffiliated with any organization. This includes people who have been around a dozen years or more.
Zeskind is deliberately obsfucating the distinction between supporters and activists. The number of activists remains about the same because the social penalties haven’t changed.
I do think we have a lot more supporters. Our message is reaching a wider and more receptive audience. In the right conditions, these supporters could evolve into activists.
Out of curiosity, is Zeskind/Searchlight also against racism in Israel? Is Searchlight/Zeskind willing to support a one-state solution? I really don’t know, he might be.
But unless he is willing to support Jews and Palestinians living together in one State with democratic institutions then I do not believe anything he writes. He has written that most Muslims are not extremists, so naturally he would have no problem with a one-State solution. Unless he is a hypocrite . . . or has an agenda.
Typical Jewish response to an increase in White Nationalism would be to say the movement is stalling. They know success attracts people and that results in more being being attracted, etc. Momentum is starting to be seen, so I bet Zeskind is hoping to stop it.
WWII focused events aren’t attention-getters. So what? The movement actually has been working hard to change the primary focus away from WWII.
Some bits of evidence that this article ignores:
1. Massive growth in Stormfront and in WN-related websites. The online social framework for WN is now well-established.
2. The momentum that the BNP victory had in the UK is working its way to the US. American Third Position was formed, so now the political structure of the movement is being developed. This framework was missing for a long time.
3. There are several organizations that support the diverse political/social views within WN. I would bet attendance overall is doing quite well. Taking a narrow look at attendance is not a good measurement.
Progress is tangible — the next steps are to increase offline (i.e. real world) networking, profession and social. Once that happens en masse then the momentum will be too strong to stop.
I think Zeskind is shaking in his boots that open discussion of the Jewish Question is just around the corner.
“…citing low turnouts for David Irving, David Duke, and Council of Conservative Citizens events.”
The Occidental Quarterly needs to do an issue on populism. One that is mostly critical of it.
“scientific racists”.
The more you think about it the funnier it gets.
I think they should be taken to task for using expressions like this.
We should use it to embarrass them. And do it with all of the causal self-possession we can muster.
Personally, I have come to look at terms like “scientific racist” as their equivelant of the sorcerer’s wax image of their enemy.
The sorcerer actually believes that the wax image of their enemy is the same thing as their enemy. They only need to make one, burn it, or, stick pins in it, and wait for the real thing to drop over.
Which will happen if the real thing happens to share the same beliefs – humans are really rather obliging in such matters, as a glance at those who cower when called a racist make perfectly obvious.
But this doesn’t work with those who don’t share the same belief system, as many of us don’t. Now we see the real reason behind the Hate Crime Bill.
In any event, the scientific racist slur makes it clear that they are putting ideology over science, since the accusation is clearly ideologically grounded.
After all, anyone who values the exploration associated with science, over the blind obedience associated with an intense emotional commitment to a narrow-minded political ideology, is not going to need to demonize dissent and pathologize opposition. They positively welcome it!
But guys like Zeskind is using an ideology dishonestly masked as science to denounce a science that has no desire or need to hide at all!
Sooner or later this is going to become obvious to everyone.
I wouldn’t want to be Zeskind when it does.
KP:”The Occidental Quarterly needs to do an issue on populism. One that is mostly critical of it.”
Are you kidding? Pro-White populism is the main way forward, and is especially the best way to grow White Nationalism in the USA and other White nations. WNists ought to focus more on the White middle-classes and working-classes, along with the upper-middle (professional) classes; however, they ought to keep the lower class Neo-Nazi thug types far away from burgeoning WNism.
Whites are already too individualistic — White hyperindividualism is a main reason for the current dispossession of us and our lands. Or maybe that is what you want KP, Whites continuing to be atomized and ineffective isolated individuals?
As history shows, when Whites work together closely and cooperatively no one and nothing can stop us.
“First they ignore you, then they mock you, then they attack you, then you win.”
“”Towards the White Republic” by Michael O’Meara, addresses itself to objections to the partition strategy raised by the late Sam Francis and others, who did not wish to abandon all hope of recapturing the United States government in its entirety. “Partition” rests on the premise that white nationalist forces are not strong enough to win the entire country back.”"
In about 2000 I sat listening to Sam Francis brief a British white nationalist reporter at the C of CC national meeting.
Sam was an American Nationalist like Pat Buchanan, and very attached to the outline of the map of the United States, but he told the reporter that “I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that we may have to give up some of the country.”