My argument with white nationalists

They're wrong, but they're the natural outgrowth of left-wing multiculturalism. We are all prisoners of identity politics now.

By David Horowitz

Sep 3, 2002 | On July 16, Frontpage Magazine ran a story about the "Wichita Massacre," the brutal execution of four white youth by two criminal brothers who happened to be black. It was our second look at this tragic incident, which took place at Christmastime two years ago. We ran it as a special feature -- this time on the occasion of the trial of the perpetrators -- because it crystallized for us a national hypocrisy on race. This hypocrisy regards the murder of blacks by whites as an indication of the existence of a characteristically American racism and therefore banner news, while the far more prevalent murder of whites by blacks is routinely considered to be without racial overtones and -- as in the Wichita case -- not to be newsworthy at all.

The more recent article about the Wichita events originally appeared on the Web site of American Renaissance, a white racialist group founded by Jared Taylor. Even though the article stayed with the facts in the case and did not include any interpretative remarks that might be construed as racist, reposting it from this site seemed to require some commentary about the source, so I reprinted the piece with my own commentary. But Salon readers probably require additional explanation as to why I would post even a factual article from a tainted source.

The short answer is this: Why not? We live in an age of multicultural excess, in which the current issue of Harvard Magazine (September-October)features -- without apology -- an article by Noel Ignatiev titled, "Abolish the White Race." Ignatiev's piece proudly mentions his infamous magazine Race Traitor, with its inflammatory motto: "Treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity." Ignatiev is currently a fellow at Henry Louis Gates' W.E.B. DuBois Institute, the nation's most prestigious African American Studies department. Neither Harvard Magazine nor Henry Louis Gates seems to feel an obligation to explain why they are sponsoring a race-hater like Ignatiev. Since I was not sponsoring Taylor but merely reposting a factual report from his magazine, to go out of my way to justify my deicision would seem to me like a capitulation to the racial double standards I was protesting in the first place.

Nonetheless, I was aware that others committed to those double standards would attack me for merely posting Taylor's article. So I did provide a brief commentary outlining the difference between Taylor's views and mine. In the commentary I wrote to accompany our feature, I described Taylor as "a man who has surrendered to the multicultural miasma that has overtaken this nation and is busily building a movement devoted to white identity and community," agendas we "did not share." I further explained:

"What I mean by 'surrendering' is that Taylor has accepted the idea that the multiculturalists have won. We are all prisoners of identity politics now. If there is going to be Black History Month and Chicano Studies then there should be White History Month and White Studies. If blacks and Mexicans are going to regard each other as brothers and the rest of us as 'Anglos,' then whites should regard each other as brothers and others as -- well, ... others. Within the multicultural framework set by the dominant liberalism in our civic culture, Taylor's claim to a white place at the diversity table certainly makes sense. But there is another option and that is getting rid of the table altogether and going back to the good old American ideal of E Pluribus Unum -- 'out of many, one.' Not just blacks and whites and Chicanos, but Americans."

In the current issue of American Renaissance Jared Taylor replies to these comments and raises the fundamental question of whether America is or should be a multiethnic, multiracial society, or whether it was conceived and should be preserved "as a self-consciously European, majority-white Nation." Among literate conservatives, Jared Taylor is the most blunt in expressing this vision, but it is a theme of others who might be called "Euro-racialists." (This is a bastardized and somewhat incoherent coinage, but one that adequately describes a bastardized and somewhat incoherent perspective).

Prominent among the articulators of Euro-racialism are writers for the Web site Vdare, and Pat Buchanan, whose bestselling book "The Death of the West" articulates its most familiar version. If Buchanan's last electoral run is any indication, Euro-racialism is a still a fringe prejudice among conservatives. But if it were to emerge as the view of conservatives themselves, it would in my view mean the death of the conservative movement. Since I consider the conservative movement the last bulwark in the defense of America and the West, it would ironically also fulfill the prophecy in the title of Buchanan's book.

Taylor describes me as a "neo-conservative," but I have no idea what reference this has to my positions or my work. The two most prominent theoreticians of neo-conservatism announced its death some time ago, because it had always defined the defection of a group of New York liberals from liberalism over its failure to stay the course in fighting the anticommunist battle during the Cold War. Since the end of the Cold War, neo-conservatism - at least in the view of its founders -- has become indistinguishable from conservatism itself.

I have never identified myself as a "neo-conservative" because belonging to a younger political generation I did not share some of the social attitudes of the neo-conservative founders. Since attitude is fundamental to some conservative perspectives, I have preferred to define my own. To be a conservative in America, from my perspective, then, is to defend where possible and restore where necessary, the framework of values and philosophical understandings enshrined in the American founding. This should not be taken to mean a strict constructionist attitude toward every clause of the documents that constitute the founding. If the framers of the Constitution had presumed to see the future, or had wanted to rigidly preserve the past, they would not have included an amendment process in their document.

My brand of conservatism is based on a belief in the fundamental truth in the idea of individualism; in the idea of rights that are derived from "Nature's God" and therefore inalienable; in the conservative view of human nature and the philosophy of limited government that flows therefrom; and in the recognition that property rights are the proven foundation of all human liberties.

Thus, for me, Taylor's challenge goes to the heart of what it means not only to be an American but also to be an American conservative.

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