Jared Taylor, American Renaissance, October 18, 2017

I have just returned from two conferences in Europe, and am greatly encouraged by the efforts of our European comrades.

The first meeting was in Dublin, Ireland, and was organized by Mártan o’Héal under the banner of Comhrá Dublin (comhrá means “conversation” in Gaelic). Mr. o’Héal described the meeting as the first Alt-Right gathering ever to take place in Ireland. Comhrá Dublin is allied with the newly formed Irish National Party, which is dedicated to preserving Irish identity. The approach of the National Party is entirely different from the much better-known Sinn Fein, which many see as a “nationalist” party because of its opposition to England, but which pushes an inexplicable refugees welcome/open borders policy.

As is often the case in Europe, attendance at the meeting was open only to screened participants, and the location was secret up to the last minute to prevent disruption.

Millennial Woes was the principal speaker, and gave two well received talks, which are both available on his YouTube channel. His first was a careful analysis of the nature of hate crime laws — Ireland is now debating new ones — and his second was a more general commentary on the suicidal myths of diversity and equality. I spoke about the need for a world-wide brotherhood of Europeans, and why all whites everywhere face the same threats and are locked in the same struggle for survival.

The third speaker was Damhnait Mc Kenna, who is starting the Irish branch of Generation Identity. She spoke of her hopes for attention-getting action of the kind for which GI is well known, and noted that the Irish branch is unusual in that it was founded by three women.

The meeting was a modest beginning with only several dozen people, but Comhrá Dublin expects to hold more conferences, and will establish close ties with activist groups.

This was my first trip to Ireland, and I was struck — just as I was during a 2014 trip to Hungary — by the strength of lingering intra-European rivalries. It is hard to know just how seriously the Irish nurse their grievances, but many still seem to think of the English as hereditary oppressors. When I asked a taxi driver about the English, he spoke unhappily about the “Black and Tans,” an auxiliary force that fought the Irish Republican Army during the Irish War of Independence of 1919 to 1920, and was known for attacking civilians.

There are several prominent exhibitions in Dublin on what is called the Easter Rising, which was a failed attempt to establish an independent Irish republic in 1916 while Britain was fighting in the First World War. There is still bitterness about the 260 Irish civilians who died when the British put down the rebellion, and about the execution of 16 Irish leaders.

Racially conscious Irish nationalists of course understand that their country now has far more important things to worry about. Still, compared to virtually any other major city in Western Europe, Dublin is pleasantly white, and the countryside is practically untouched by immigration.

White advocacy is much farther along in the Netherlands, which has seen high Third-World immigration from former colonies Surinam and Indonesia, as well as from North Africa. In the 2017 general elections, Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom finished second with 21.3 percent of the vote, and a brand-new nationalist party, Forum for Democracy, won two seats.

Erkenbrand, the organization that organized a conference on October 14th, is correspondingly farther along than Comhrá Dublin. This was its second big meeting, and it attracted an audience of 180. Speakers were again Millennial Woes and myself, with the addition of Guillaume Durocher and the Belgian New Right thinker Robert Steuckers.

Like the Dublin meeting, all participants were screened and the location was kept secret, so there were no disruptions. The event really was a world-wide brotherhood of Europeans, with participants from virtually every European country, Canada, the United States, and even Australia. The audience was like that of an American Renaissance conference: young, well educated, and committed.

English was the official language, but the room buzzed with everything from Greek to Finnish. When I ate lunch with two Italians, a German, and a Finn, we found that our best language in common was French.

Erkenbrand is the name of a heroic figure in The Lord of the Rings, but that is a coincidence. The organizers chose a Dutch word that means “purified by fire,” and Erkenbrand is doing first-rate work. Its meetings — growing rapidly — are a unique opportunity for nationalists to meet, exchange ideas, and establish cross-border connections.

I suspect that if Erkenbrand had opened the conference to the public rather than screening everyone, it could easily have doubled its audience. However, in Europe there is no equivalent to American government-owned facilities that must guarantee freedom of speech and assembly, and private venues are subject to tremendous pressure from “anti-racists.”

It is too soon to expect a nationalist party to throw its weight behind a meeting on white racial consciousness, but European “far-right” parties are making impressive gains. Let us hope that the time will come soon when groups like Erkenbrand will get logistic and moral support from established parties. In the meantime, the conference was an inspiring sign of Europeans on the march.