Henry Wolff, American Renaissance, March 19, 2012

The 2012 American Renaissance conference was held over the weekend in a beautiful state park in Tennessee. The audience of 150 was below the 250 who attended in the days before the partisans of “tolerance” disturbed the meetings in 2010 and 2011, but it was an inspiring beginning to the process of rebuilding. The event proceeded smoothly, with the complete cooperation of the state authorities and without a demonstrator in sight. A couple of lonely scruffies were reportedly waving placards out of sight at the entrance to the park — perhaps a mile away from the conference site. The beauty of the park — woods, lakes, trails, and lovely views from all the rooms — as well as the Southern hospitality of the staff won high praise from attendees.

The event began Friday evening with a reception, after which AR editor Jared Taylor gave welcoming remarks. He thanked Comanche activist David Yeagley, plaintiff in a suit against the “anti-fascists” who caused trouble in past conferences, as well as the legal team of Camara & Sibley that has been managing the case. The suit has already produced one settlement, and its sobering effects on the opposition resulted in a very quiet run up to the conference.

The first speaker Saturday morning was the always stimulating Robert Weissberg, Emeritus professor of University of Illinois at Champagne, who proposed “A Politically Viable Alternative to White Nationalism.” He argued that any movement explicitly based on white racial identity is “dead on arrival,” and must be repackaged in order to win successful recognition. The reality — that racial nationalism “is intuitive and written in our genes” and that even children are conscious of race — is a huge advantage for those who want to build a racial movement, but any white movement today that takes an explicitly racial stand will fail: “We are considered just above child molesters.” Prof. Weissberg also noted that there is no economic advantage to promoting white racial consciousness, and that most people do not act without financial incentives.

Prof. Weissberg argued that an “80 percent solution” would be one that enforced the “First-World” standards of excellence and hard work that attract and reward whites. He pointed out that there are still many “Whitopias” in America and that there are many ways to keep them white, such as zoning that requires large houses, and a cultural ambiance or classical music and refined demeanor that repels undesirables. This approach to maintaining whiteness has the advantage that people can make a living catering to whites in their enclaves.

Prof. Weissberg went on to argue that liberals are beyond reason when it comes to race, that explaining the facts of IQ or the necessity of racial consciousness for whites “is like trying to explain to an eight-year-old why sex is more fun than chocolate ice cream.”

He did note, however, that because racial consciousness is so natural, it could return with surprising rapidity. He pointed out that ten years ago it would have been impossible to imagine homosexual marriage becoming a fashionable cause. Just as “homosexuals went from in the closet to being proud,” thinking about race could change dramatically.

In answer to questions about the adequacy of his “enclave” solution for poor whites who cannot afford to live in them, Prof. Weissberg expressed the hope that less financially successful whites could draw on their sturdy, warrior heritage to protect their own enclaves.

The next speaker was Alex Kurtagic, a musician and author who flew from Britain for the conference. He argued that the very idea of “defending Western man” was a mistake because Western man has brought catastrophe on himself: “Let him die so that he may be reborn twice as strong as before.” Western man has become his own worst enemy, opening his borders to the rest of the world and thus “sponsoring his own decline.” To defend is merely to react, whereas we must not only react but create.

Whites have helped the peoples of the Third World “turn the Western Eldorado into a big piñata.” They have “become enamored of their own fine ideas that have an in-built logic that works in a racially homogeneous society but in a diverse society leads us to the catastrophe in which we now find ourselves.”

Mr. Kurtagic urged racially conscious whites not to define themselves as always against the current ethos: against egalitarianism, against globalism, against multiculturalism, against materialism, and all the other scourges of the present day. If we define ourselves merely as in opposition, we can be caricatured as “whining old men.” Therefore we must not let our opponents define the rules of the game and establish the vocabulary of our times. We need a positive enterprise of our own that is beyond politics and that simply ignores current orthodoxies.

Indeed, said Mr. Kurtagic, it is the Left that is a negation: it negates differences, quality, ability, beauty, independence, strength, and mandates drab uniformity for all. It thus negates life itself.

Mr. Kurtagic described our struggle as primarily a cultural war, one that is waged not only with words but with all the cultural tools at our disposal. He urged all racially conscious whites to throw themselves into our culture, to create living alternatives to the false consciousness that is destroying us. “Culture defines politics and not the other way around; We must win the culture before we can win elections.”

Mr. Kurtagic noted that the left is strong because it presents itself as a moral crusade and that it is the nature of the white man to believe that his plans and projects are moral. He concluded by pointing out that our enterprise should be seen for what it is: a heroic struggle for glory.

Donald Templer, who is now retired as a professor of psychology at Alliant International University, spoke on the geographical distribution of intelligence. He pointed out that the craze for equality now means that America no longer even believes in competition because it shows that some are better than others. And “because we are supposed to pretend that everyone is equal in all respects” we have no grounds on which to judge or distinguish. “Grade inflation therefore begins in grade school and continues through graduate school.”

Prof. Templer drew a sharp contrast with the East Asians, who do not think as we do, who know that the victory goes to the strong. If we are to compete, we must stop worshiping mediocrity and start worshipping quality.

Prof. Templer distributed a table that listed academic disciplines and the average scores on the Graduate Record Examination of the people who study those disciplines. The hard sciences are at the top and education and social welfare are at the bottom. It is thus the least intelligent who teach us and socialize us to the dogma of equality.

Professor Templer spoke at length about the dysgenic effects of social policy. He noted that 70 percent of white women on welfare in the United States have IQs of less than 90, and that only 5 percent have IQs over 110. Voluntary, compensated sterilization for welfare recipients would be cost saving, and prevent many burdens on society.

Professor Templer pointed out that prison inmates are of below average intelligence, and that permitting conjugal visits is dysgenic in that it allows prisoners to reproduce. He said that prisoners often time visits for when the woman is most fertile, with the result that society must support genetically disadvantaged children.

The pretence of equality leads to a blundering foreign policy. The average IQ in Arab countries is 84, so it is foolish to expect these countries to establish democratic regimes. Our most high-minded interventions succeed only in replacing one tyrant with another. Prof. Templer wondered whether the flowering of ancient Middle East cultures must have required a higher average intelligence than that of today’s Arabs. Declines could have come about through mixture with African slaves, and the emphasis of Islam on rote memorization may have rewarded plodders rather than creative thinkers. Prof. Templer closed with a call for a recognition of reality rather than the current fetish of egalitarian fantasy.

After lunch, AR editor Jared Taylor spoke on “Why We Are Right.” He first pointed out just what we are right about: the reality and importance of race and the fundamentally tribal nature of man. These two insights, coupled with a basic understanding of the genetic contribution to human differences, means we understand “problems that baffle geniuses certified by the MacArthur Foundation.”

Mr. Taylor likened the current dogma about racial equality to the ancient view that the sun revolves around the earth. In both cases, everything built on a faulty assumption is wrong. In the geocentric conception of the universe, astronomers even had to assume that planets sometimes reversed course in their orbits — retrograde motion — in order to explain the movements of the heavenly bodies.

Mr. Taylor argued that faulty assumptions about equality lead to policies of retrograde motion: racial preferences, lowered standards, assumptions of white “racism,” etc. He said that the No Child Left Behind Act was almost Medieval in requiring equal academic results for all racial groups: “It is the equivalent of saying ‘the earth does not move, damn it!’ and passing a law to ensure that it stays still.”

Mr. Taylor said that a faulty understanding of human nature makes it impossible for egalitarians to understand the profoundly moral nature of the white desire for a homeland.

James Edwards, host of the Political Cesspool radio program, then spoke about effective white advocacy, reminding the audience that “loving our race is the key.” He urged whites to model their lives on heroes, and spoke admiringly of the men that he, as a Tennessean, admires: Andrew Jackson, Davey Crockett, and Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Although we seem to have few men of such stature today, Mr. Edwards reminded the audience that “we still have those genes; they are lying dormant, waiting to be stimulated.” Epic heroism is not possible for all men, but we “can start by being heroes in our homes, by being good husbands, good fathers, good brothers, and good sons.” He urged whites to “walk with your shoulders square and tell people the truth.”

Mr. Edwards spoke of some of the achievements and satisfactions of radio work. In Memphis, where he lives, blacks outnumber whites two to one, and that may be why his program is so popular. He noted some of the triumphs he had helped bring about. Al Sharpton had planned a demonstration in Memphis but Mr. Edwards helped organize a counterdemonstration of such magnitude that the good reverend decided not to come to town after all.

As a talk show host, Mr. Edwards gets fan mail from all over the country and even the world, and believes that more and more whites agree with us: “We are making our issues fashionable again.” Still, he bemoaned the lack of action: “We are too civilized to start rioting when a white couple is kidnapped and tortured by a gang of diversity.”

When it comes to changing how America thinks, “we are fighting an uphill battle on slippery ground,” and although we have organs of communication of our own, “the occasional Viking raid into the mainstream media” is very valuable. Mr. Edwards concluded that the main message of our people — “You cannot have a First-World nation with a Third-World population” — is so compelling that it cannot help but break through.

Richard Lynn, the author of many by-now standard works on eugenics, dysgenics, and race differences in intelligence, spoke about the world-wide problem of declining intelligence. He briefly summarized the field of eugenics since Francis Galton coined the term in 1883, noting that the West has now had six generations of dysgenic fertility that has led to a decline in genetic IQ of about one point per generation. Improvements in nutrition have increased tested IQ, thus masking the genetic decline, but this is a one-time environmental boost that has run its course in the West.

Prof. Lynn warned that there is a global dysgenic effect, because the high-IQ peoples of Europe and East Asia have sub-replacement fertility while sub-Saharan Africans have six to eight children. Prof. Lynn therefore calculates a world-wide decline of 1.3 IQ points per generation. Immigration is likewise dysgenic in a global sense, inasmuch as it is often the brightest Third-Worlders who leave their homelands thus impoverishing them, but are still well below the average intelligences of the receiving countries. Prof. Lynn warned of “probably unstoppable immigration into Europe and America and hence a continuing decline of the IQ of our populations.”

Eugenics is the obvious solution, but it is notoriously difficult to accomplish. There have been a few attempts to pay intelligent people to have more children, but they have not been widely successful. It would be possible to pay people of less than average intelligence not to have children, but Prof. Lynn argued that no democratic nation would ever have the firmness of will to restrict reproduction by the unfit.

Embryo selection — the fertilization of many of a woman’s eggs and implantation of the most promising — has the potential dramatically to raise intelligence, but Prof. Lynn predicted that the practice would be banned in the West for “moral” reasons. China, on the other hand, is poised to benefit from eugenics. It has an authoritarian government of the kind that could implement sensible procedures, and the one-child policy that has given it a 123:100 male-to-female population ratio is an unusual opportunity: When men outnumber women, women choose the men who are most genetically fit as their mates. If the bottom 23 percent of Chinese men are denied mates and effectively sterilized this will considerably boost average IQ.

We in the West, as Prof. Lynn argued, “have become too nice.” We do not have the will to stop dysgenic reproduction or dysgenic immigration, which leads Prof. Lynn to predict that “the torch of civilization will pass from the Europeans to the Chinese.”

American Third Position (A3P) was present at the conference, and its vice presidential candidate, Virginia Abernathy, introduced the presidential candidate, Merlin Miller. Mr. Miller said that theirs was the only party that stands firmly against “the dispossession of the white race,” and sought voters in the 13 states where A3P will be on the ballot. He also sought support for an effort to get the A3P ticket the support of AmericansElect.org, which could result in ballot access in all 50 states.

Gordon Baum, who has attended every AR conference since the first one in 1994, was unfortunately not able to attend this year because of health problems, but Roan Garcia-Quintana represented the Council of Conservative Citizens in his place. Mr. Garcia-Quintana declared himself “Cuban by birth, American by citizenship, and Southern by the grace God,” and spoke of the need to organize more chapters of the C of CC. He said that the council had been most effective at the state level, and looked forward to the states taking power back from the federal government.

The Saturday night banquet speaker was Guillaume Faye, who is perhaps the most prominent European spokesman for white identity. In his charmingly accented English, he spoke of the absolute necessity of creating a world-wide white racial consciousness. He noted that just as America faces invasion by Mexicans, Europe faces invasion by Muslims; France alone now has more mosques than Morocco. Mr. Faye quoted Charles de Gaulle on the fundamentally white, European nature of France, and noted that the general “would not recognize the France of today.”

Mr. Faye mocked the blindness of French intellectuals who pretend that there is no connection between immigration and crime. “I tell them that there is no link between rain and rivers.” He also mocked the insanity of current national priorities. “The borders are open and yet we bomb Libya. Why? Why? It is completely stupid.” Unfortunately, many whites continue to spread the poison of multiculturalism, and to welcome the people of the South. “The world belongs to the ones who make children,” warned Mr. Faye, and whites are everywhere being outbred.

Mr. Faye predicted a century of possibly cataclysmic struggles, arguing that the Cold War was nothing compared to the conflicts that could erupt between the West and those who seek our dispossession. He likened the West to a tree, of which the roots are race, the trunk is culture, and the branches are civilization. The branches and even the trunk may be damaged, but so long as the roots — the biological substrate — survive, the tree can grow back. The greatest threat we face is biological displacement, from which there can be no return.

He concluded with a message of hope: “We must never be fatalistic or discouraged. Never surrender. Our worst enemy is indifference. Always there is victory to those who are confident and strong.”

The Sunday morning program opened with David Yeagley, great-great grandson of the Comanche chief Bad Eagle. He began by explaining why he had been willing to be the plaintiff in a case against the “anti-fascist” thugs, “especially when it was the white man who conquered the Indian.” First, he explained, “my father was a Krout and my mother was a Comanche, so I was destined for battle one way or another.” Further he holds no resentment for the past: “The white man’s conquests were no different from those of the Comanche; they were just better and on a larger scale.” Real warriors, he added, admire other warriors: “I don’t have any hard feelings about being beaten by real warriors. I don’t want to identify with professional Indian belly-achers.”

Dr. Yeagley said he supports our cause out of loyalty to America: “How can you give this land you took from us by force to Muslims? I won’t let you do that.” He had a consistent warning for whites: “Be as strong as you can be, because whatever it is you have, someone will take from you. That is the law of the jungle and the law of the prairie. If you value what you have, and you value what you are, you must be prepared to fight.”

Dr. Yeagley said he could not understand why the white man has turned his back on his warrior past. He said white capitulation reminds him of the Indian ghost dancers who live in the past. “Don’t become ghost dancers,” he said. “If you find yourself herded onto some kind of psychic reservation, you will become an Indian, a white Indian.”

“We are all trying to understand what’s wrong with the white man,” he said, adding that it is important to understand the problem because that will dictate the solution: “If your understanding of the problem is wrong, you are going to waste a lot of arrows.” Dr. Yeagley said he doubted what other speakers had said about the necessity of formulating a moral foundation for survival. “Trying to be moral puts you in with the liberals,” he said. “Liberals are always trying to be the better white man.” He said we should defend what is ours because it is ours, and never apologize for what we have achieved at the cost of our own blood.

As he always has, since the very first AR conference in 1994, attorney Sam G. Dickson brought the conference to a close. He began with a new retelling of the story of the emperor’s new clothes. Even a child, he noted, can see the foolishness of multiculturalism and forced mixing of the races. And yet, in today’s version of the story, the child who points this out is taken from his parents and turned over to the SPLC for reeducation, the parents are put under arrest, and Hillary Clinton declares that all decent people should be shocked by such hateful talk.

Facts and truth, noted Mr. Dickson, simply do not matter to egalitarians. There is not a shred of evidence that integrating black children with whites increases the academic performance of blacks — yet egalitarians insist this be done. Even if it were universally recognized that integration has no benefits, the ethnomasochists would insist on it for the sole reason that they believed it makes black people happy.

Mr. Dickson argued that racial consciousness is neither of the Right or of the Left and is so vital that it must transcend politics. We must be open to people of all views and persuasions, so long as we agree on the fundamental fact of race. We can work out our problems among ourselves, but we must first have a place we can call our own.

Mr. Dickson closed with a description of what can be the only guarantor of our survival as a people and culture: the ethnostate. He took inspiration from the founding of the state of Israel, calling it “the most remarkable example of racial idealism in the history of the world.” He said we must be “Euro-Zionists,” seeking a homeland in which we can welcome all of our people — liberal, conservative, rich, poor, homosexual, heterosexual. Here “the health of the people will be the supreme law,” and if, today, whites are the problem, in our own state whites would be the solution. Only in an ethnostate, he said, can there be true tolerance, because when people are all of one stock, naturally occurring diversity poses no threats and truly can be celebrated.

With this invigorating benediction we returned to our homes, encouraged and inspired to fight on.