RACE IN AMERICA IN 2020s

Raw Egg Nationalist

This is an essay about the role of race in America in the 2020s – but not in the sense you might expect. What I’m not going to be talking about, or at least it won’t be the primary focus here, is the relationship between the different racial groups within the US – white, black, Latino, Asian – nor even one racial group in particular. Of course, race in this sense is a very important topic, but one that plenty of other writers, some capable but most far less so, have written about and will continue to write about until the stars fall from the sky. No, I’m thinking of an altogether different kind of race, which I’ll refer to from now on in inverted commas to distinguish it from the more commonplace definition. I’ll make a prediction, too: that this kind of “race” will become much more visible as America continues its slide into chaos. This could actually be a very good thing: perhaps even the salvation of the Republic. Or, alternatively, it could be no more than a last defiant shout in the face of annihilation.

What I mean by “race” is a quality rather than simply a biological marker. “Race” as an heroic ethos that is manifested through action; a quality, then, that is not given simply through birth, but which must be cultivated and, most importantly, demonstrated. This is the definition that the great German philosopher Oswald Spengler (1880-1936) advanced, in addition to considering the conventional definition. While this alternative definition featured throughout his work, it found its most poignant expression in one of his shorter, simpler books, Man and Technics. There, in the book’s melancholic conclusion, Spengler compares the final fate of European civilisation to that of a Roman soldier whose remains were discovered among the ruins of Pompeii. This soldier had died at his post when Vesuvius erupted, presumably because no order had arrived for him to leave it. Paraphrase hardly does this short passage justice, so I’ll quote it verbatim.

Faced with this destiny [the end of our civilisation], there is only one worldview that is worthy of us, the aforementioned one of Achilles: better a short life, full of deeds and glory, than a long and empty one. The danger is so great, for every individual, every class, every people, that it is pathetic to delude oneself. Time cannot be stopped; there is absolutely no way back, no wise renunciation to be made. Only dreamers believe in ways out. Optimism is cowardice.

We are born in this time and must bravely follow the path to the destined end. There is no other way. Our duty is to hold on to the lost position, without hope, without rescue. To hold on like that Roman soldier whose bones were found in front of a door in Pompeii, who died because they forgot to relieve him when Vesuvius erupted. That is greatness; that is to have race. This honourable end is the one thing that cannot be taken from man.

Spengler’s predictions for the future were deeply pessimistic (“optimism is cowardice”), at least when it came to European or “Faustian” man, as he called him, and the Roman soldier is a perfect example of this. The cataclysm that destroyed Pompeii and the individual soldier suggests the even greater cataclysm that Spengler saw looming before Western man in the 1930s. This civilisation-ending disaster would be the inevitable result of Europeans surrendering, voluntarily, the means of their own technical supremacy to the rest of the world. Although the production of this technical supremacy is the raison d’être of European man – this is what makes him “Faustian”, an inner drive to mastery at any cost – non-European man would simply use this same technology as a means to multiply and, finally, destroy its creator.

It’s clear that Spengler saw “race” as a quality not all members of a race are in possession of. In this, he was very obviously a disciple of Nietzsche (Spengler was actually buried with a copy of Thus Spake Zarathustra). There is man and there is the herd, and even if these two are of the same race, they do not necessarily share “race” in common; they are not even really the same animal. What is it about the Roman soldier that exemplified “race” to Spengler? It’s not necessarily the physical or character traits that we might associate with soldiers as a class –strength, training, loyalty to fatherland etc. – although those things obviously figure. It's that that particular soldier, even while staring down catastrophe – as collapse takes place not just around him but quite literally on top of him – refuses to compromise his honour and duty. He has a role. He fulfils it. There is a grim determination in this that is the opposite of what we might call “blackpilled”, especially since the blackpiller usually faces a situation that is not, in fact, hopeless, and so merely betrays his own lack of courage in the face of adversity. “Race”, then, is a transcendent force that raises the possessor above the circumstances he finds himself in, providing an immortal example in the process.

So what do I mean when I say that “race” will become more visible in the coming years? First, an example. Rather than describing it in exhaustive detail, I’ll just outline what I consider to be the most pertinent facts, since this example is likely to be familiar to you already.

On August 25 2020, Kyle Rittenhouse, then aged 17, was in Kenosha, Wisconsin with a friend to protect businesses during riots that were trigged by the shooting of Jacob Blake by police. He came armed, with an AR-15, as well as medical supplies, and spent most of the day cleaning graffiti off a school, protecting a car dealership and offering medical attention to passers-by. He also came of his own free will: he was not paid or given any other recompense. Towards midnight, Rittenhouse was attacked by Joseph Rosenbaum, a child-sex offender, who had been acting aggressively to a number of people in Rittenhouse’s vicinity. Rosenbaum, who was apparently enraged by the efforts of Rittenhouse and others to prevent the rioters from burning a petrol station, pursued and tried to disarm Rittenhouse but was shot four times, killing him. Rittenhouse fled the scene in the direction of police, with other rioters in pursuit of him. A rioter struck Rittenhouse, who then tripped and fell to the ground. Anthony Huber, another felon, hit Rittenhouse with his skateboard and attempted to disarm him. Rittenhouse shot him once, killing him. While Rittenhouse was still on the ground, a third convicted criminal, Gaige Grosskreutz, advanced on Rittenhouse with a drawn pistol – which he had been carrying concealed, despite his permit having expired – and Rittenhouse shot him in the arm, severely injuring him. Although Rittenhouse attempted to turn himself in to police who were arriving on the scene, he was not taken into custody, but instead presented himself to police in his hometown of Antioch, Illinois. Between November 1 and 19 2021, he was tried on five counts, including first-degree intentional homicide. Despite the prosecution’s attempt to portray him as a “criminal gunman” who deliberately sought to kill, and a political and media circus that fostered the lie that he was a white-supremacist domestic terrorist, Rittenhouse was unanimously found not guilty on all charges.

This notorious incident is, to my mind, a clear display of “race” in America today. It represents a refusal to abandon established moral standards and, as a result, a refusal to allow the encroaching tyranny to humiliate, isolate and punish ordinary Americans, despite its overwhelming power. Like the Roman soldier’s last stand, what Rittenhouse did in the moment was not conscious or planned, but an organic response to a situation that would elicit a very different response from another kind of person. Rittenhouse demonstrated his “race” simply by responding in the way he did.

“Anarcho-tyranny” is a phrase that is often used to describe what is happening in the US and elsewhere in the Western world today. What this phrase means, basically, is a descent into managed anarchy as a way of ensuring regime control, especially of the tax-producing middle classes. The state permits certain forms of lawlessness to scare citizens straight, as it were, and to stifle dissent. The term was first coined by columnist Sam Francis in 1992. He describes the means by which this new form of governance is achieved:

exorbitant taxation, bureaucratic regulation; the invasion of privacy, and the engineering of social institutions, such as the family and local schools; the imposition of thought control through ‘sensitivity training’ and multiculturalist curricula; ‘hate crime’ laws; gun-control laws that punish or disarm otherwise law-abiding citizens but have no impact on violent criminals who get guns illegally; and a vast labyrinth of other measures.

Sound familiar? Anarcho-tyranny is why BLM protestors can spend an entire summer burning American cities without official repercussions, yet an Iowa man can be sentenced to 15 years in prison for burning a pride flag. Anarcho-tyranny is why critical race theory and barely disguised paedophilia are essential parts of the public school curriculum, but parents who attend school meetings to voice their disapproval are monitored and investigated by the FBI. Anarcho-tyranny is a police SWAT team waiting for nearly an hour in the corridors of a school during an active shooting, while the parents are tasered and restrained outside for trying to do something themselves. I’m sure you can think of further examples.

One thing that the phrase doesn’t really capture adequately, though, is the genocidal aspect that characterises the present descent into chaos. “Anarcho-tyranny” seems to presuppose that the regime wishes, in some sense, to preserve the middle classes, to shepherd them into an enclosure, if only to terrorise them and milk them of value, whereas there are clear intimations that something much worse is on the cards. Bronze Age Pervert has described the modern left as the “Interhamwe left”, to draw parallels with the course of politics in Rwanda in the 1990s. The Interhamwe was founded as a youth movement of the Hutu MRND government and was one of the main perpetrators, with the government’s backing, of the genocide of 1994, which killed perhaps as many as a million Tutsis, Twa and moderate Hutus.

Anarcho-tyranny or Rwanda 2: Electric Boogaloo – the exact nature and goal of the American decline is a matter for another essay. What’s clear, though – clear as day – is that decline is happening and it’s happening fast. The ultimate embodiment not just of the decline but of its accelerating pace is, of course, the POTUS himself, whose whistlestop journey through the seventh age of man is broadcast daily to billions.

To return to our example, Kyle Rittenhouse, what we are basically concerned with is an ordinary American – a teenager, at that – exercising foundational American rights and liberties, and it’s these rights and liberties that must now, from the perspective of the regime, be expunged. This is precisely why, in my opinion, “race” will only become more visible as time passes. As living standards decline and ordinary people’s livelihoods and lives are imperilled more and more, there will be people who refuse to accept these things. Like Rittenhouse, these people will stand up for themselves, their families and their property, and this will necessarily demand correction from the regime, correction which must be public – pour encourager les autres, as they say. This may take official or unofficial form. I’ve already alluded, two paragraphs ago, to recent events at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, where the police disgracefully refused to engage an active shooter, despite being perfectly trained and equipped to do so and, even worse, despite knowing that the shooter was in the process of killing children. For the crime of embarrassing the police by trying to take matters into her own hands, at least one parent is now apparently being harassed by police officers. We might call this “unofficial” correction.

As for official correction, Rittenhouse and his treatment by the justice system and the media is the archetype here. In other parts of the US, and probably the whole country just a decade or two ago, Rittenhouse would never have ended up in court, so clear was the evidence of self-defence, but political and social conditions were right for him to be made an example of. Yes, Rittenhouse was rightly acquitted, but the trial and media circus had the intended demoralising effect all the same. The message could not have been clearer. If you pick up a gun to defend yourself, even if you really are defending yourself, you will be dragged through the courts. At the very least, your life will be changed irretrievably, if not ruined, and with the right – or wrong – jury, you’ll be sent to prison for a very long time. People will now hesitate and second-guess themselves where before they might have acted decisively. Perhaps I’ll just let these robbers take my car – after all, it’s only a car… And so the regime has accomplished its mission.

Of course, by making a public example of displays of “race”, the regime is taking a risk. As much as Rittenhouse was reviled, he was also lionised. Which is to say, the regime needs to be careful not to create a hero who can unite the people behind him. In another time, Rittenhouse’s actions might not have received very much attention at all, especially if he had not gone to trial. He would be just another dude who defended himself with lethal force, perhaps an object of local admiration, but nothing more. After everything he’s been through, Rittenhouse has not yet become the popular figure of resistance to the regime he could become; although he has made a few political appearances and sued some of the many, many people who slandered him as a white-supremacist murderer. But he has not cut a swathe through these people in as public a manner as possible, as many hoped he would do, nor does it look like he will live anything other than a normal life in the future. We shall see.

On balance, the distribution of force obviously favours the regime, which works in direct coordination with the mainstream media and tech giants to spread its message and manipulate public opinion, as well as having increasing political control over the courts, law enforcement and supposedly non-governmental activist organisations like Antifa and BLM. There is good reason, like Spengler, to be pessimistic in the twilight of American empire. Such demonstrations of “race” as we are likely to see may very well end up being nothing more than gestures in the sense that the Roman soldier’s was – heroic yes, but ephemeral, forgotten, buried among the ashes of the culture.

In behavioural terms, we can think of the American collapse as a kind of “great filter” which will reveal those who truly have “race” and those who don’t. It will do this by forcing people to demonstrate, like the police at Uvalde, whether they truly are as good as their word and ideal. For many conservatives, what happened at Uvalde has been a shattering experience, not just because children are dead – obviously – but because one of their cherished institutions has failed so miserably to do what it was supposed to do. All the talk of a “thin blue line”, “backing the blue” and “based cops” now seems laughably empty. If police won’t even put themselves in harm’s way to protect the lives of children, even when present in number and armed with tactical gear – well, what can they be relied on to do? Do you really think they won’t enforce unconstitutional orders, for instance to confiscate people’s legally owned weapons?

That sound you hear? It’s an entire worldview crumbling.

Truth is, it should come as no surprise to us that, when push comes to shove, many will be found lacking. There is a deep body of work in social psychology and philosophy, going back through Stanley Milgram’s electro-shock experiments to the Scottish Enlightenment and beyond, that reveals how contingent people’s good behaviour is on the circumstances they find themselves in. In the case of Milgram’s experiments, it took little more than the garb of authority – a white lab-coat – to make ordinary people administer, or at least believe they had administered, lethal shocks to people whose only apparent crime was failing to answer a set of questions properly. I don’t believe, as some extreme proponents of the “situationist” theory of ethics believe, that there is no such thing as character or virtue, but I do think that people are too confident in their own, and others’, virtue, precisely because it is largely untested. So, to add some nuance to my prediction, I’ll say this too: we will be surprised by who does and who doesn’t end up having “race” when the cookie finally crumbles.

For all this pessimism, though, which is of course well suited to an essay whose starting point is Oswald Spengler, I still think it’s possible that “race” could be an X-factor in the coming years. If Kyle Rittenhouse, the example I’ve used here, turns out to be a disappointment, we can and should look elsewhere for other examples, and not just in the real world. The much-maligned Kevin Costner film The Postman suggests an alternative path. The Postman is a rather straightforward post-apocalyptic film except in one regard: by the end of the film, the collapse has been reversed. This happens through the example of one man, an eccentric unnamed drifter, played by Costner, who discovers a US Postal Service mail carrier and decides to re-found the Postal Service. By delivering letters from the scattered inhabitants of the former United States to one another, Costner’s character reminds them of what they have in common, inspiring them to defeat the regional warlords who have taken over. The film ends thirty years later in a restored United States, with the unveiling of a statue to the Postman, beneath which is a plaque: “The Postman: He delivered a message of hope embraced by a new generation”. Cheesy? Of course – it’s 90s Costner! Cheese aside, the film demonstrates clearly that, while an heroic example is necessary, it’s not sufficient for renewal. There must be a broader movement, which is presumably what develops in the unseen time between the film’s final battle and the unveiling of the statue. The question of the conditions that make such a movement possible will have to wait, however, for another day to find its answer.