This article is adapted from remarks given at the American Renaissance conference on November 19, 2022.

We’ve lost ground in the last few years. Leftists have desecrated monuments throughout the South. Pledges for Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity, or DIE, have spread from universities to the military. Church services begin with an acknowledgement they are held on “stolen land.” Many young people support this.

Though the System seems stronger than ever, it also seems hysterical and weak. By its nature, it must always be uncovering new threats or inventing enemies. Everything can be racist, from the Founding Fathers to objective standards to being on time. The demand for “racism” surpasses supply. The System fears white advocates who can calmly and confidently call out double standards, exploitation, and outright deception. Our rulers are afraid. When everything is “racist,” nothing is, and that provides an opportunity for groups like American Renaissance.

But our rulers are also crafty. “White nationalist” — and sometimes “white supremacist” — has replaced “racist” as the slur of choice. In practice, “racism” means what Peter Brimelow said long ago: “A conservative winning an argument with a liberal.” Earlier this year, the Anti-Defamation League, which among other groups has appointed itself guardian of what people are allowed to see and read, has repeatedly changed its definition of racism.

“Racism is the belief that a particular race is superior or inferior to another,” it once said, and that “a person’s social and moral traits are predetermined by his or her inborn biological characteristics.” Then it was “the marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people,” which became “racism occurs when individuals or institutions show more favorable evaluation of treatment of a group based on race or ethnicity.” By that standard, every race in the world is racist, except whites.

The ADL is so confused, it asked the public to help it define what it has presumably been fighting ever since its founding 99 years ago.

Sometimes the word “hate” is a catch-all, but it means anything progressives don’t like. If you want to see the real haters, talk to antifa — or a black-studies professor — for five minutes.

“White nationalism” as a slur is poorly defined. Several major publications have tried to associate “white nationalism” with President Trump. This is strange because he wouldn’t even oppose anti-white discrimination, which is euphemistically called affirmative action.

I’ve even seen “white nationalism” used to describe America’s immigration policy, but if that were true, we wouldn’t have a problem. We certainly wouldn’t have Senator Chuck Schumer’s call for replacement. “We’re short of workers, we have a population that is not reproducing on its own with the same level that it used to,” he said in November. “The only way we’re going to have a great future is if we welcome and embrace immigrants, get a path to citizenship for all 11 million or however many there are here.” But remember: The Great Replacement is just a conspiracy theory.

Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. (Credit Image: © Emily Hanna/Alto Press via ZUMA Press)

Note the casual acknowledgement that the government has no idea how many illegals are here. The government spies on its citizens, but won’t enforce immigration law. Far from white nationalism, we live in a country in which law-breaking non-citizens enjoy benign neglect while citizens suffer censorship, taxation, and forced submission. It’s a small victory to see the term “anarcho-tyranny” popping up in the mainstream.

By modern standards, the Founding Fathers and the Framers were clearly white nationalists, in that they limited citizenship to free white persons of good character. The revolution in America’s immigration and racial policies didn’t happen until the mid-20th century. Ted Kennedy assured the American people that the 1965 Immigration Act wouldn’t radically change the country.

The country has been transformed, against the will of the population — when they get the chance to express it. In California, voters overwhelmingly supported Proposition 187, which would have stopped mass immigration to the Golden State. A court thew it out, a governor so unpopular that he was recalled for it refused to defend it, and thus was the will of the people flouted.

This is the way things work in what our rulers call “Our Democracy.” Popular sovereignty supposedly legitimizes government but the people mustn’t decide anything important. There’s no way to hold the powerful accountable because there’s no one person to blame. There’s just a process that drives our country into the rocks.

The supposed rights we enjoy in “Our Democracy” are vanishing. To be a modern progressive, you must believe that the reason there’s a huge increase in young people calling themselves “trans” is because repression has finally ended. It can’t be because of media, or social pressure, or teacher and administrator grooming. It’s offensive — even dangerous — to suggest that. Everyone, including children, has the right to make irrevocable decisions, regardless of what their parents think.

Concern over media power depends on the issue. When a television show called Thirteen Reasons Why led to suicides, Netflix added viewer warnings and some people thought it should be taken off the air. In one of the earliest online controversies, internet pages that praised anorexia were taken down or censored. The same people who can supposedly invent a new gender at age 12 can’t be trusted not to starve themselves to death. And today, we celebrate obesity as “body positivity.”

We now know the federal government works with social media companies to throttle reporting it doesn’t like. Censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story might have thrown the 2020 election to Joe Biden. When the FBI works with corporate America to pick sides in a presidential election, it makes a mockery of self-government — and most journalists approve. Even adults are too stupid to know whom to vote for. Those with power must censor and ration out information to voters — all in the name of democracy.

On some issues, progressives completely lose faith in the abilities required for self-government. According to a lawsuit filed against gun manufacturers, they are criminally responsible for marketing to the “impulsive, risk taking tendencies of civilian adolescent and post-adolescent males.” That sounds like a bigoted stereotype.

If marketing is so powerful, shouldn’t we ask why murder rates soared after the Black Lives Matter riots? Does media determination to exaggerate police brutality constitute “misinformation” that encourages ambushes of police officers? What about the consequences of government, media, and academia all telling blacks that white racism causes their problems? If a gun ad somehow causes mass shootings, blaming all blacks’ problems on whites surely encourages some blacks to attack whites and implicitly excuses high black crime rate.

Demonstrators attempt to push down the barricade at the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse in Portland, Ore. on Friday, July 24, 2020. (Credit Image: © Daniel Kim/ZUMA Wire)

A liberal cannot believe such things. He must believe that Donald Trump was incapable of winning even a sliver of the black vote, but incited so much “anti-Asian hatred” by talking about the “China virus” that blacks started attacking Asians. He must believe it is a racist injustice that banks are more hesitant to lend to blacks — even though they are more likely to default. However, he must also believe it is exploitation when payday-loan companies advertise to blacks. More than a dozen states and the District of Colombia have banned those businesses.

A liberal must believe non-whites can make complicated political decisions about who should have power, but that they can’t get to the polls. He must also believe blacks must be protected from themselves. The FDA wants to ban menthol cigarettes because “we think a substantial portion of African American smokers will take this opportunity to quit.”

A liberal must believe preteens know that their biological sex is “wrong” but are also too stupid to own a gun or drink a beer. He must believe that whites are driven by white nationalist propaganda systematically to oppress blacks. He must worship democracy but also be convinced that the people can’t be trusted to make up their own minds.

Every person, business, or politician on the main social networks is merely allowed to be there. Each has the System’s approval. Each is a product of a corporate-government alliance. Every “success story” can be taken away all but instantly. I can think of a rapper who could be reached for comment.

When people who call themselves socialists or even communists are on YouTube or Patreon, they aren’t threats to the System. They are part of it.

We are censored, controlled, and managed. The idea that it’s a free country where everyone can have his opinion is long gone. Most journalists support censorship. Some people may think it’s strange that the same leftists who drew inspiration from the 1960s “Free Speech Movement” want to silence their opponents today. It’s not strange at all. It’s about power. Leftists want us silenced.

Criminal penalties depend on one’s politics. Urooj Rahman got a deal with the Biden DOJ for 15 months in prison for throwing a Molotov cocktail into a police car to protest supposed police brutality and racism. The bare-chested Viking who was trying to accomplish God knows what on January 6 got 41 months, while the judge told him, “What you did was terrible.” The FBI occasionally stirs up plots it can then “foil” and get headlines.

Jacob Chansley, also known as the Qanon Shaman, cries ‘Freedom’ inside the U.S. Senate chamber. (Credit Image: © Media Drum World via ZUMA Press)

If you have a dispute with a non-white, your life could change radically in a day. The media can put you at the center of a “scandal” and you can lose your job, your friends, and even your physical safety. The Civil Rights Act has arguably replaced the Constitution. Judges and prosecutors may use subjective concepts such as a “hostile environment” or “intimidation” to decide your fate. At any moment, whites must worry that they could lose everything if the media — and the government that does its bidding — decide to make you the story.

I’m haunted by the case of Jake Gardner, a bar owner in Omaha, a man who fought for his country. During the 2020 riots, he shot a black man who attacked him. He was initially cleared but “activists” complained. A grand jury indicted him, his landlord evicted him, and he got death threats. He killed himself — another veteran betrayed by a government not worthy of his sacrifice.

There is not much distance between the most sophisticated propaganda system ever devised and your family. The System teaches white children to hate themselves and pushes identities (mostly sexual) that let them opt out of being cis-white. You must fight — but fight wisely. Dissent may yet be called terrorism.

Hakeem Jeffries, now the leader of the Democrats in the House, said Republicans are “fanning the flames of hatred and embracing a racist conspiracy” — The Great Replacement — that causes violence. He rails against “white supremacy” as if it should be made a crime. The soft tyranny of political correctness is approaching the hard tyranny of Wokeism.

I was white before I was American, and you all were, too. Let’s unite on that ground. If we wait for a political savior, we will wait in vain. Our homeland becomes a reality when we say it does. We know what is in our path; we will step over those who oppose us.

If this generation of the West must be the greatest for it not to be the last, so be it. Let’s accept this challenge, and, in unity, build what our entire history has been striving for — a country by us, for us, and that will ensure that our people live forever.