19 Februry 2011
![](/web/20180104212631im_/http://www.wermodandwermod.com/newsitems/Richard Spencer - Against Wall.JPG)
Interview with Richard Spencer
Alex Kurtagic
I first met Richard Spencer at an event in October 2009. At the time he was executive editor at Taki's Magazine, a website hosting prominent authors somewhat to the right of the American paleoconservative movement. Spencer was impeccably attired and irradiated a smiling confidence that set him well apart from others; he was well connected and with the cheerful and vaguely insolent air of someone destined to go far (success demands a modicum of insolence, otherwise one is too accepting of the status quo). He was interested my writing for TakiMag and I was interested in widening my audience, so we agreed I would write an article about Black Metal—an obscure but culturally significant phenomenon. Two years later we would be co-editing his more radical website, Alternative Right. Now that Spencer has become formally involved with Washington Summit Publishers, home of Richard Lynn, Tatu Vanhanen, John Glad, and other racial scientists, he makes an opportune subject for my running series of interviews with individuals involved in politically incorrect writing and publishing.
Your assistant editorship at The American Conservative is the first item in your official biography, but by the time you got the position you clearly knew you were fundamentally different from your coevals—otherwise, you would have chosen a safer, and a potentially more remunerative, career in mainstream journalism. When I met you in 2009 I encountered a man of 31, with intelligence, a nice suit, educated speech, and a Hollywood smile. And yet… you consort with the most hated heretics of our age. What happened to you?
I guess I’ve always been like this. The desire to conform to society’s conventions and unwritten rules is natural, and, in many ways, healthy. Most normal people want to do something that’s looked upon as decent and respectable in the eyes of their peers; they want a life with a predictable cursus honorum.
We’ve all experienced it—those admonishing, bewildered stares you get when you dare to broach the topic of, say, racial differences. You just don’t say that! What are you, crazy? (This despite the fact that so much of our “heretical” views are taken for granted by most humans around the world, and were accepted by most Westerners until around 50-75 years ago.)
My sense is that those who are willing to speak the unspeakable—and shun the natural desire to conform to the ways of the world—are either naïve and quasi-autistic or else arrogant jerks. The first type often lacks social skills, and much like someone who’s tone deaf, is simply unaware of society’s tacit rules, taboos, and shibboleths. This type follows logic, and his own instincts, to their endpoints; he might reach “far Right” or “extreme” conclusions, but he doesn’t necessarily start there. (There’s one particularly controversial writer and blogger who is genuinely shocked by the fact that many find his writings on IQ differences wicked and unacceptable. He doesn’t seem to have any idea of what he’s up against.)
The second type (whom I refer to as the arrogant jerk, only somewhat in jest) is aware of the social consequences of openly talking about forbidden subjects, but is willing and able to do so due to his powerful internal constitution—and maybe even a confidence that tomorrow belongs to him.
That these psychological types make up our “movement,” if we’re to call it that, has ensured that too much of our time is spent in furious, internecine disputes.
At any rate, I think I’m a mixture of the types . . . probably more type 2 than type 1. Likely my mother is to blame, as she filled me with excessive confidence as a child. And ever since I was in high school, I’ve dedicated myself to disciplines that are out of the mainstream and not particularly remunerative. I directed and designed all sorts of productions of Shakespeare in college, culminating in an avant-garde Hamlet mashup that was almost like Noh drama at some points. Afterwards I interned with a number of major directors, including Robert Wilson for his production of Wagner’s Ring. . . in Zürich. I might say that my ultimate dream is to direct the Ring . . . , though, alas, it will likely be unfulfilled. To sum up, I’m a habitual bohemian.
A writer necessarily lives partly through what he reads. What were the key texts and authors that influenced or informed your worldview?
I’d rather not just give a list of authors who’ve influenced me, as it’d be long and I’d likely leave many important figures out. As I was coming into my own intellectually, when I was around 19-22 years old, Nietzsche had an enormous effect on me. I would also devour Shakespeare’s plays. His texts, which were something close to being a foreign language for a young person and have layers upon layers of irony and ambiguity, taught me the art of close reading.
At AltRight, I’ve recently written about my idea for the modern canon; this piece could give readers a sense of the current material that I think is important. I’d mention that the efforts made by the Arktos publishing group to translate and edit the works of the so-called French New Right is extremely important. (Arktos is an advertiser at AltRight, but I’d be a fan even if it weren’t.)
Over the past four to five years, I’ve been studying Austrian economics rather seriously. I’m hardly a pure libertarian, but my readings have helped me think rationally about human action, and not just “economics” per se. Hans-Hermann Hoppe has been quite important in this regard. (Our side is certainly hampered by the fact that so many of us have rather mystical economic views . . . )
A consistent theme across the publications you have been involved with is the idea that modern society has gone badly wrong and requires political leadership with a fundamentally different orientation—different from the liberal orientation, certainly, but also different from the mainstream conservative orientation. If the problems of contemporary American society are as grave as is described, why do you think journalism is the best channel for you?
Obviously, the kind of people we need in leadership positions aren’t the kind of people who could get elected, in this or really any other democracy. It is, indeed, important for us to understand democratic politicians as a class—or as a type of human, really. Whatever the case, it’s a class that’s comprised, almost entirely, of cowards, kiss-ups, and amoral sociopaths. A genuine person like Ron Paul is the exception. I have met a couple of higher types who are part of the Vlaams Belang (the Flemish nationalist party), but even these men haven’t changed my mind on democracy and democratic politicians.
There’s another element, one that is related to Kevin MacDonald’s concept of “implicit Whiteness.” Staying within the American context, let’s say the entire Tea Party gets elected to Congress tomorrow—what would actually happen? Likely nothing, besides some efforts to “cut spending” (laudable in itself, but hardly sufficient.) I believe Keith Olbermann (and the liberal-Left in general) is absolutely correct about the Tea Parties—they do represent a White movement of people who feel that they’ve lost control of their country, due to economic uncertainly, to be sure, but also due to the presence of a Black president. Middle-class Anglo-Saxons haven’t been in control of America for quite some time; however, now the president really “looks like his policies,” as one friend put it. The problem is, your average politically engaged Tea Partier has spent his whole adult life steeped in the now-irrelevant and bankrupt philosophy of American “conservatism.” He recognizes that his country is turning into a terrible, debt-ridden, Brazil-like place (think the country and the movie), and yet the only things he can talk about is the Constitution and the threat to individual rights.
Obviously, American Whites—and the Western world in general—need a re-orientation; they need to learn to speak a new language. The politician—whose essence is flattering constituents, dolling out goodies, and getting re-elected—is simply not up to the task of teaching them.
![](/web/20180104212631im_/http://www.wermodandwermod.com/newsitems/Richard Spencer - with Pat Buchanan and Paul Gottfriend.JPG)
Pat Buchanan, Paul Gottfried, and Richard Spencer at the H. L. Mencken Club Conference in 2009.
Tell us about your initial experiences at The American Conservative. What was it like when you first sat behind your desk on the morning of the first day? And how were things different on the afternoon of the day you left? What did you learn during this period?
Well, “the cubicle” was a new experience to me. While I was at Duke graduate school before then, I had essentially made my own schedule. And though I wouldn’t want to repeat it, it was actually refreshing at the time to take the metro to work everyday at 8:30 AM, operate in an office, and report to “the boss”—in this case, Kara Hopkins and Scott McConnell. TAC was also necessary for me in that it taught me what it takes to bring a publication into fruition—I got experience commissioning articles, meeting deadlines, cutting down a 2500-word piece so it would fit in a 1600-word space, etc. At TAC, I also learned how to work in a “guerrilla” operation and how to give the public the illusion that your organization boasts a full-time staff of 20 and an army of interns. Amazingly, four people (Scott, Kara, Michael Brendan Dougherty, and I) were able to put out two high-quality editions a month. Many other publications do less with more . . . TAC was a kind of boot camp for me. Every editor needs to go to boot camp.
I was also a newbie to Washington, DC. To be honest, I quickly began to loathe the city and its mind-numbing suburbs of beige high-rises. (Whenever I go back, I visit my friend Marcus Epstein in Alexandria, Virginia, one of the very few places in the area with character and charm.)
![](/web/20180104212631im_/http://www.wermodandwermod.com/newsitems/Richard Spencer - with Marcus Epstein.JPG)
With Marcus Epstein in Alexandria, Virginia.
After The American Conservative you resurfaced at Taki’s Magazine, an online publication created by Taki Theodoracopulos, one of TAC’s founders. At Taki’s held the position of executive editor. What did this entail and how was working for Taki different from working at TAC? What were most enjoyable aspects of this job and the most frustrating ones?
From day one, Taki put enormous trust in me. This had something to do with the fact that Taki is not one to get involved with the nitty-gritty of a website himself: he’s off writing his columns, practicing judo, chasing tail, and the rest. But it also has something to do with the fact that Taki trusts his employees. That Taki would fund the venture and allow me, more or less, to do what I want, was quite an incredible opportunity.
![](/web/20180104212631im_/http://www.wermodandwermod.com/newsitems/Richard Spencer - with Taki Theodoracopoulos and Peter Brimelow.JPG)
Richard Spencer, with Taki Theodoracopoulos (behind) and Peter Brimelow (right), in Manhattan in 2009.
As I look back upon my experience, it’s clear that I got more radical as time went on. In 2008, when I first started, my expressed views and the pieces I commissioned were quite similar to the TAC line—and not really too different from those of movement conservatism. By 2009, I was much more willing to express heretical views on race and egalitarianism, as well as write more forthrightly on culture. I was also opening up new horizons: we did articles on Revilo Oliver, Black Metal, and the illusion of technological progress. We had exited the realm occupied by The Weekly Standard and Townhall.com.
Besides little things, there was ultimately nothing frustrating about the arrangement I had with Taki; it was a dream come true. One frustrating thing I did face was some colleagues’ breaking from me—and quasi-denouncing me—due to my “radical” turn. Note that I don’t mind people disagreeing with me; it’s the high-and-mighty tone they adopted that I found truly annoying. (And it probably did affect me emotionally. I guess everyone wants to be liked on some level.) Anyway, I noticed right away that those who broke with me over race issues and the like were, with a few exceptions, the ones who self-identified as “public Catholics” and/or laid claim to being atavistic, über-traditional moralists. It just so happened that these Medieval avatars hold views on race and other touchy subjects that adhere to every PC “equality” dictate laid down by post-MLK America. How convenient.
Towards the end of 2009, you decided to resign your editorship at Taki’s and begin a new venture. We have since seen Taki’s Magazine undergo a complete redesign as well as a shift in editorial emphasis. Are your departure and the abovementioned changes related? What led to your decision?
Yes. Taki is a man who resides in a couple of different worlds. Instinctually, Taki is a “paleoconservative” or “traditionalist” . . . or perhaps I should say “fascist” (I, of course, mean that as a compliment. I always have this image of him wearing a Wehrmacht helmet while skiing in Switzerland, as he related in one of his columns.) At the same time, he’s also connected with the fashionable New York scene (which is made up of people who are far cooler than I, that’s for sure.) And though in his 70s, he has the energy—and libido—of a 25-year-old. The “Taki legend” is definitely true. I remember in 2008 eating dinner with him at the Waverly Inn alongside a number of his old cronies and various pretty girls. It was definitely not your average night at the movies . . . I digress.
The point is that Taki is connected to this world—and he feels at home around these people. And Taki is probably the only person on Earth who can navigate both the John Randolph Club and the Waverly Inn! I remember a now-legendary 2008 Christmas Party at his apartment; it was quite a bash: John Derbyshire, Paul Gottfried, Peter Brimelow, Lawrence Latham, and Peter Schiff were present. In the early morning hours, after these guests of honor had left, my cronies and I were quite drunk and acting rather . . . right-wing (doing just about everything short of singing the Horst Wessel Lied!) I remember horrified looks on the faces on the hip young people who remained. My friends and I simply can’t get away with acting outlandish around the NYC set; Taki can. He’s one of a kind.
I digress again. Taki expressed his wish that Takimag conform more to his Manhattan self, as it is now, and less with his “radical traditionalist” self. And by fall/winter of ’09, as an editor and writer, I was getting closer to what now is an identifiably “alternative Right” position—actually, the publication of your first Takimag piece, “White Noise”, was a major part of that. I decided it was time to strike off on my own.
Needless to say, the new redesign isn’t my style, but that’s fine. But at the same time, much of what I brought over has remained, most notably John Derbyshire and Steve Sailer. And I’m quite proud of the archive. Our movement needs many different entry points, and I wish Taki, Mandolyna, and Takimag all the best with theirs.
In March 2010 you founded Alternative Right, where you are the executive editor. What were your aims with this publication?
I actually wasn’t trying to found an institution. It’s strange to say, but I hope that AltRight always remains rather smallish. My vision is not for it to one day grow into something like National Review or The Spectator; I hope it will always stay “edgy” and remain a testing ground for new ideas and new writers. (It shouldn’t be just given over to the kids, of course, but you understand.) The business model of NR is suited to a different time, and, in many ways, TAC was foolish to follow it when it was founded in 2002. I think our side is in a better position having a number of different small, flexible, efficient groups, then one big monolith. We need to work together in some ways, but as a constellation of various organizations: VDARE, the “Sailer-sphere,” AmRen, TOO, some “Austrian” bloggers, et al.—this is the “alternative Right.”
In the last fundraiser video you stated that when you began Alternative Right it was far from certain whether it would have a readership and whether the website would be able to sustain itself through individual donations. What do you think are the factors that contributed to its having done so well to date?
Surprisingly, at the very start of it all, the “alt Right” idea struck a chord with some larger donors. Around a year ago, I created a password-protected website where I explained what I wanted to do and asked for some start-up capital. It got a nice response. I think these people were simply confident that I was going to post good content, and they wanted to read it.
In the aforementioned video you also mentioned that keeping the website going has been a struggle. Illustrate for our readers exactly how hard it has been. What have been some of the most challenging moments you have encountered?
It’s quite simple: money is an issue. Working for Taki was a dream; funding was never in doubt. I can hold my head up high that I’ve created my own project; however, finding donors is always on my mind. I’m positive that there are people out there who are quite wealthy who share our views completely; but there’s this tendency of elite types to get sucked into the world of either party politics or The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It’s important to remember that it wasn’t the Rockfellers who funded the early conservative movement but Midwestern reactionaries. We need to find some of those.
I’m also very interested in “micro-funding,” that is, not just looking for one big donor but getting tons of readers to give small donations via PayPal, something on the order of $5 apiece. I still believe in this scheme, but even getting people to donate that small amount is a challenge. The strategy I’m now adopting is to offer people something in return for their donations; things like gifts are good, but I’d also like to explore offering readers greater access to the site, as well as additional products like high-quality videos and books, etc. We can’t just rattle the tin cup every Christmas and plead poverty; we should run our movement like a business.
In terms of content, what have been your favourite articles in Alternative Right thus far? Where do you think new ground has been broken?
We’ve had over a thousand posts, and I honestly think that for at least three quarters of them, you could say, “You wouldn’t read that anywhere else.” People like Colin Liddell, Derek Turner, Andy Nowicki, James Kalb, and yourself are certainly doing things that no one else even attempts.
![](/web/20180104212631im_/http://www.wermodandwermod.com/newsitems/Richard Spencer - introducing John Derbyshire.JPG)
Introducting John Derbyshire at the H. L. Mencken Club Conference of 2010.
The term “alternative Right” started to have a lot of meaning for me in 2009, on the occasion of the second HL Mencken Club conference. The first meeting had been attended mostly by “paleo” types; I knew almost everyone who was there. At the second conference, however, a new breed was in force: they were younger and came from outside the conservative movement (this is not the case for the paleos.) Some were Rothbardian anarchists; some were White Nationalists; some were Traditionalists with a capital-T (Evolians and neo-Pagans); some were even more idiosyncratic, such as the followers of the blogger Roissy. As many have seen, these types have been submitting excellent blogs over the past year, often under pen names. Paleoconservatism has reached a dead end in terms of readership; that much is obvious. What I glimpsed at the conference was an entirely new movement emerging. Giving a home to these bloggers, commentators, and writers has been AltRight’s greatest breakthrough.
Alternative Right was conceived as an internet publication. The advantages of this approach are obvious: no printing or distribution costs, potential global reach, and so on. Yet, although a website can potentially be visited by anyone anywhere who has access to the internet, that still does not guarantee that anyone anywhere will actually visit it. In fact, without very specific Internet searches or mentions in some mainstream outlet, a casual internet surfer may never even hear of Alternative Right. How can a dissident website, a website designed to create enemies within the mainstream, ever hope to achieve the wide readership it needs to have an impact outside the wild political fringes, rather than preach to a choir?
Well, let’s build up the choir before we start trying to convert the heathens (so to speak.) Obviously, if FOX decided to pay me big bucks to be a nightly commentator, I’d take the job (and hold my nose.) But I’ve generally given up on trying to “make it” in the conventional sense. Making it in the conventional sense is overrated. There’s much that is frustrating about the lot of a dissident. I can objectively say that I am superior in every way to Jonah Goldberg, SE Cupp, Kathryn Jean Lopez, and the rest of the dim bulbs in mainstream conservatism. And it, of course, peeves me that they get screen time and I don’t.
But in other ways, it doesn’t bother me at all. At the risk of sounding like Wired magazine from the ‘90s, we are reaching a point at which the gatekeeper media no longer matters—at which we can create our own online television networks, and not just hope that FOX lets us on—that we can create AltRight, instead of applying for an internship at NR and keeping our heads down.
And there’s another thing. The alt Right isn’t the flat-earth society. We are putting forth ideas that are grounded in tradition and reason—and in mankind’s own biology. At the risk of sounding like a Protestant reformer from the 1520s, we carry with us the truth. That’s no small matter.
With contributing editors constantly uploading articles at all times of the day and night, you presumably have to be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Indeed, Alternative Right must be seeping into every corner of your consciousness, every nook of your unconscious, indeed every recess of your life. What are the less obvious skills that are needed successfully to run a website like Alternative Right? Give us also an idea of your typical day, if there is such a thing.
It’s true; as editor, one must become obsessed with one’s magazine. But the less obvious qualities are actually more important. To run a magazine successfully, one must do two things, which might sometimes seem contradictory: 1) take responsibility for everything that’s published; and 2) give writers leeway and freedom, and often defer to them on matters that they find important (for they, too, are obsessed with AltRight, one must remember.) There are a couple of famous, and certainly talented, conservatives who have succeeded in turning themselves into Ayn Rands of their own little cliquish in-groups: they have denounced everyone around them for deviationism to the point that their readership could fit in a phone booth (if phone booths were still around). I don’t want minions; I want to be surrounded by smart, independent people who trust me. That means giving over some power to them.
As for my glamorous life—yesterday, I indexed and copy-edited Richard Lynn’s new book on Jewish intelligence for a couple of hours; I had two conference calls with colleagues; I wrote some memos about a new event ideas; and at dusk, I edited a few blogs for AltRight. I like my work schedule in my adopted hometown of Whitefish, MT, which is: work, work, ski, ski; work, work, ski, ski.
You have recently begun giving talks in university campuses. A recent one led to some difficulties with the Canadian authorities. Tell us about that experience and what you learnt from it.
I’m very lucky to be friends with Kevin DeAnna and Devin Saucier of Youth for Western Civilization. I think this group is extremely important for our side. No, YWC is not AltRight or AmRen—they’re not even TAC; the group is more identifiably “conservative.” However, YWC doesn’t treat us as toxic—they’re actually willing to give us a hearing—and they focus on the issues that give the blazer-and-kakis College Republicans the willies: mass immigration and affirmative action.
When my friends heard that I went before a Vandy audience that was 50-percent Black and talked about the damage done by affirmative action—talked about how most of the people in the room shouldn’t be involved in higher education—they would look at me agog as if I might have started a riot or had flaming bags of shit thrown at me. The reality is that when you talk to these people in a straightforward and courteous manner, they’ll respect you for it at some level. Only one person stormed out of the room, and he was a White SWPL. There was a Black Nationalist type who said she respected my view that Blacks should educate themselves, and at the end, a nice Asian girl stood up and talked about how Vandy should listen to my point of view. (As I think about it now, maybe it was only the Whites who were PC wimps?) The Left wants us to go into a room and start waving a swastika flag and yelling “White Power!” or some such nonsense. What they don’t want to see is an intelligent person, who’s confident but laid back, come in and talk about how democracy is bad and the races are different.
Think about it this way: how many times have you seen a fat, bearded, inarticulate Klansman on The Maury Povich Show, or a Law & Order episode that is about the threat of neo-Nazi killers. (I don’t know myself; I cancelled cable; but I get the impression that there are quite a lot such programs.) Now, how many times has a mainstream journalist sat down with Jared Taylor and talked about what he thinks about race—or better, of social and political issues.
We are, functionally, heretics, to be sure, but we should act as if we’re not. We’re more subversive that way. And the establishment knows it.
![](/web/20180104212631im_/http://www.wermodandwermod.com/newsitems/Richard Spencer - Front Page of The Vanderbilt Hustler.JPG) My encounter with the Canadian authorities wasn’t actually related to my speech at Vandy. My wife—as of January 18!—is Russian-Canadian, and a denizen of Toronto. (She will be moving to the States soon; immigrating legally to America is quite tedious and time-consuming.) Courting her entailed that I traveled frequently to Toronto, and for most of 2010, I actually resided there. (I can’t say that I fell in love with the city, but as a shiny example of state-enforced multiculturalism, Toronto was a great source of material!) I never overstayed my tourist visas, and I never broke any laws or availed myself of the city’s generous social welfare programs, but I admit that I was likely bending the immigration rules by practically relocating to the Great White North.
This past September, I had a trip planned to visit a potential AltRight donor on his ranch in South Texas, and I decided to fly out of nearby Buffalo, New York, as flights were significantly cheaper there than in Toronto. This proved a penny wise, a pound foolish. After I had arrived back in Buffalo and was driving back into Canada, the goody-goody two-shoes manning the Canadian border noted from my passport that I was spending quite a bit of time in Canada and began asking questions . . . She seemed rather suspicious of the idea that I ran a website for a living and decided that I should be detained and my car searched.
After their exhaustive examination, the authorities found two things in my vehicle of interest to them: 1) my Alternative Right business cards and 2) a pamphlet titled, innocuously, it would seem, “Common Sense on Mass Immigration.” One of the men who searched my car, who was dressed all in black and wore a bullet-proof vest, asked me, “‘Alternative Right,’ you say . . . as in right-wing?” I answered in the affirmative. He began furiously typing at his computer. The border guardress, who was examining the pamphlet, observed, “Isn’t it ironic that you oppose immigration into America—and yet you’re trying to illegally immigrate to Canada!” I refrained from rolling my eyes. And then came the kicker. The man in the bullet-proof vest had apparently found something on his computer and called his colleague over to check it out. Both expressed a mix of shock and self-satisfaction. Bullet-proof vest noted, “So, we visited your ‘website’”—putting “website” in “scare quotes”—“and the first thing that comes up is . . . HITLER!” He turned his monitor around to reveal the Führer in the AltRight slide show.
As it happened, I had just published an article, by Keith Preston, on Carl Schmitt and the end of the Weimar Republic, and I’d illustrated it with the famous image of Hitler shaking hands with President Hindenburg just after winning the chancellorship. I noted to my interrogators that the article in question was hardly “pro-Nazi” and asked them whether it was legal in Canada to publish historical articles on Hitler. This didn’t help. My border guardress began congratulating herself that she’d located a genuine threat to all that is good and decent. I was expelled from Canada.
I won’t go into any more details, but suffice it to say, I experienced a terrible couple of months living out of a suitcase. I am in debt to my friends who took in a weary traveler. My exasperation with the border authorities waned after I successfully re-entered Canada two months later. I flew in this time, and not only did I show the immigration authorities my return ticket, but I overwhelmed the immigration bureaucrats with every sort of forms and proof of citizenship I could find.
I firmly believe that were it simply a matter of my spending too much time in Toronto, the border guardress would have let me through with a warning. In my own small way, I was a victim political oppression in a country that doesn’t have a pretense of free speech and treats Ann Coulter as a dangerous extremist.
After I had been expelled, my wife sent me a news report on how Toronto had just decided to accept a load of 500 “Tamils Tigers” as political refugees. So, let’s get this strait: An Anglo-Saxon who blogs about Right-wing ideas—out! Third-world Marxist bomb-throwers—in! Anarcho-Tyranny in action.
You have also recently talked about expanding Alternative Right. What are your plans for this venture? What do you hope to achieve in the next five years?
Your coming on board, Alex, has been the most exciting new project I’ve launched. When we talked last with our programmer and designer, Austin Saucier, we also came up with a quite interesting way of organizing content around various cultural matters. There is also web TV, which I think is extremely important. I’m going to remain a bit elliptical about these matters, as I’ll be rolling out new initiatives soon.
I understand you are now involved with Washington Summit Publishers. So far this publishing house has carved a niched with books about race differences in human intelligence and their implications in modern technological societies, particularly in the areas of democracy and economic performance. What are your aims and plans with WSP for this new period, both in terms of its scope and development as a business?
Louis Andrews has done a superb job establishing Washington Summit as the premier publishing house in this niche. As he’s joked, WSP’s catalogue is the academic equivalent of Mission Impossible—the major presses would sooner promote cannibalism than publish, say, Richard Lynn’s studies of race and IQ. That said, Louis has hardly been toiling in obscurity; he’s actually published material that has changed the world. One shouldn’t forget that James Watson began speaking publicly about his “gloomy prospects” for economic development in sub-Saharan African—and the dubious nature of racial egalitarianism—after he studied Racial Differences in Intelligence. How many of us can claim that we’ve sparked a global scandal? And the ferocity with which the media and government powers went after Watson—who had been one of the world’s most revered scientists—attests to the power Lynn’s research.
As some might know, Louis is quite ill and won’t be able to continue his work much longer. Going forward, I definitely want to build on what he has accomplished. I also have some goals of my own. First, WSP will soon offer readers a totally refurbished online store, which will hopefully become not only a one-stop shop for the serious study of race and genetics but an online community for the “HBD” world as well. Secondly, WSP will also be rolling out a new imprint, “Radix,” which will offer titles on the intersection between genetics, culture, and society. I hope to publish books that will take much of the research and theory completed by people like Lynn, J.P. Rushton, and Arthur Jensen and begin asking questions about how it can inform our understanding of society. I don’t want to give too much away, so I’ll leave it at this—look for the revamped website and some new titles soon!
You are also now involved with the National Policy Institute. What is the purpose of this organisation, and what do you hope to achieve with it?
NPI is actually a sister organization of WSP. It was begun as a think-tank for the late Sam Francis, a great man who began his career as a hardboiled Washington operative and conservative columnist at The Washington Times. Paul Gottfried claims to have learned more from Sam than any of his other colleagues and teachers. Sam was forthright—and, most dangerous of all, articulate—in expressing unorthodox opinions on race, and this resulted in his going from Washington insider and conservative stalwart to persona non grata in a very short period of time. And for people on our side, his purge has become emblematic—along similar treatment accorded to Joe Sobran—of American conservatism’s total surrender to PC. Sam is often associated with “paleoconservatism,” but looking at this group now, it’s clear that he doesn’t much fit in. A reading of his collection Essential Writings on Race, which Jared Taylor put together a couple of years ago, reveals a man whose worldview was closer to that of White Nationalism and the alt Right.
At any rate, Sam died just as NPI was getting off the ground, and though the Institute has published some very useful papers over the years, for the past couple, it has been mostly dormant. My first major initiative was to launch NPItv.com, which will serve as a kind of online television network “for the West.” We want to host videos that support NPI’s mission, as well as, most excitingly, begin live web-casting various conferences, interviews, and events. Now, we failed rather embarrassingly in our attempt to live web-cast the 2011 American Renaissance conference . . . but this false start was an excellent learning experience. Web-casting is certainly the future of TV—and it represents another way that the alt Right can make an end run around the gate-keeper media.
Being editor of a busy website and also involved with a publishing house, an institute, and a television channel is certain an effective way to fill up your days. I suppose that if your human physiology did not demand you stop to sleep, you could easily work 24 hours over 24 without finding a moment of idleness. How do you coordinate such diverse and demanding activities in order to stay on top of things and still have time for a healthy personal life?
I try to keep busy. In many ways, Alex, your own entrepreneurial activities have been an inspiration! As I’m sure you agree, the heretical Right cannot simply be an avocation; it can’t just be something we do late night on the interwebs after we’ve earned our livings working for The Man. We need full-time activists, organizers, writers, and artists. I’m trying to make this possible.
The Left would like the apolitical man in the street to imagine that our winning the argument would mean a return to the bad old days: women would be summarily fired from their jobs and told to make babies; Blacks would be re-enslaved and lynched; Savitri Devi’s works would be standard university textbooks; people would be forced to carry bagfuls of gold coins to conduct their business transactions; television programming would consist of 24-hours solid of political speeches; court witnesses would swear on a copies of Mein Kampf; science would be abolished (except for eugenics) and society would be plunged into a dark age of brute force, ignorance, fear, and superstition. What does, in fact, a future where we have won the argument look like?
Oh sorry . . . while I was reading your last question, I became lost in a rapturous fantasy. No, what you describe is terrible! I would never want to live in this fascistic, masculine, gold-standard nightmare world.
Seriously, I think one of your most important contributions is to inspire us to imagine a future—even one that’s “impossible” or utopian—and avoid the standard reactionary trap of staunchly defending the last revolution.
Before I answer this question fully, let me quibble with your question a bit. One thing I’ve noticed about American conservatives is that they often fantasize about “winning the argument”—they think that, deep down, every American--maybe everyone on earth—is really a conservative, and if preached to the right way, he will embrace the current catechism of loving the Constitution, free markets, family values, color-blind Civil Rights, and the whole kit and caboodle. I don’t use these metaphors lightly; most conservatives imagine political activism as a form of religious conversion.
I don’t think this way. First off, I think we have enemies and foes who want to destroy us. We won’t be able to convert these people with the right cocktail of new data and argumentation.
Beyond this, I believe the impulses that we label “Right” and “Left” are natural aspects of nature and society that will never go away. Right and Left aren’t just seating arrangements in the French revolutionary parliament; they express fundamental human tensions such as collectivism/individualism, authoritarianism/anarchy, innovation/traditionalism, etc. And much like Good and Evil, Right and Left, and the other values mentioned above, exist in the same human heart. They certainly do in mine.
One extremely important thing the alt Right (and AltRight) seek to accomplish is to shift society in a fundamental way; we’re much more interested in this than “winning” some particular Left/Right dispute over, say, immigration policy or the new START treaty.
I want Western society as a whole to move away from egalitarianism—which manifests itself most obviously in “multiculturalism” and “anti-racism”—and towards an acceptance of Western identity and natural hierarchies.
To understand what I’m saying, let’s turn things around. We should recognize that multiculturalism and egalitarianism aren’t simply particular “issues,” “policies,” or “party platforms”—they are fundamental groundings for political and social discourse. These concepts determine our horizons. Both the modern Left and Right argue within multiculturalism and egalitarianism. No one (at least no mainstream person) is really arguing for or against racial equality; they accept it as a given and simply quibble over how “equality” is best protected and implemented. American “conservatives” and Christian “traditionalists” aren’t offering alternatives to egalitarianism and multiculturalism, so much as their own versions of them.
Let’s not focus on the obvious racial examples and look instead at the recent “gay marriage” debate. Superlawyer David Boyes, who’s been hired to make the case for this practice, asked a number of self-styled “conservatives” a series of questions, which included, 1) “Is marriage good for children?” (in an completely utilitarian sense) and—here’s the kicker—2) “Isn’t America really about equality?” The “conservatives,” of course, answered “Yes!” enthusiastically to both questions. Boyes then asked, “How then could you possibly oppose gay marriage?” They, of course, couldn’t rationally oppose gay marriage. And Q.E.D. for Mr. Boyes. When Left and Right operate under the same assumptions, they’ll usually reach the same conclusions. Indeed, those who actually do oppose the latest egalitarian advance can easily be deemed dangerous lunatics who should be locked away with Jared Loughner.
Put simply, we need to change the big stuff; the little things (for example, policy matters) will follow.
This recognition has also led me to conclude that trying to “work within the system,” or appeal to European-Americans using the language of FOX News and the GOP, is a bootless—not to mention a tasteless—strategy.
To return to your provocative question, in my fantasyland, there would still be a Left and a Right—and granolas and libertarians and animal rights activists and Mormons, et al.—but they would operate within Western unity and natural hierarchy.
Some, no doubt, might counter that you can’t have a “non-egalitarian Left.” But I don’t agree with this at all. Jack London was a collectivist; HL Mencken, an anarchist; both were “leftists,” of sorts, and both rejected egalitarianism. And they both operated on a different planet than the whole spectrum of contemporary Leftists and Rightists, from Glenn Beck to Cornell West.
Finally, how would you like to be remembered in 100 years?
In bronze. Just kidding. But I do hope to appear in your next novel!
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