Hope and Defiance at the Castle

VDARE.com — indispensable over the past quarter century for its coverage of immigration and the national question — is now facing a grueling investigation by New York’s Soros-funded attorney general Letitia James. Sadly, legal expenses have temporarily forced editor Peter Brimelow to scale back posting on his site and suspend all other activities — except for the outstanding conference we report on here, held at the Berkely Springs Castle last weekend. Despite a couple of skulking SPLC snoops (one reportedly a transsexual), the conference brought together a sell-out crowd of some 80 American patriots for a weekend of fellowship and informed discussion. Livestream viewing figures reached 20,000 for the most popular speakers.

The conference’s first evening was on Confederate Memorial Day, and Jared Taylor kicked things off with a talk to mark the occasion. Mr. Taylor recalled how he played in a band at Arlington National Cemetery on Confederate Memorial Days past in the shadow of the great Confederate Monument, informally known as the “Reconciliation Monument.”

Arlington Cemetery was created in 1864 as a burial ground for Union dead, but after the Spanish American War in which Northerners and Southerners fought side by side, President William McKinley, himself a former Union soldier, approved the establishment of Section 27 of the cemetery for what he called the “heroic dead” of the Confederacy. In 1914, a magnificent bronze memorial was erected there. At its top stands a female figure crowned with an olive wreath as a symbol of peace, and holding a pruning hook which rests on a plough, an allusion to Isaiah 2.4: “And they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.” The monument breathes a spirit of peace and reconciliation.

Reconciliation was once a near-universal attitude. Mr. Taylor quoted more than one Yankee’s heartfelt tribute to the gallantry of his defeated enemies. Ten military bases used to be named after Confederate commanders. As recently as 1989, a ship of the US Navy was named the Chancellorsville, after Gen. Robert E. Lee’s greatest victory. But last year:

our black secretary of defense ordered every trace of the Confederacy eradicated from federal land. We now know that President William McKinley and others of his generation who honored the valor and the sacrifice of Confederate soldiers were morally stunted. They didn’t have the exquisite ethical sensibilities of Lloyd Austin and Charles Schumer. . . .  In our era there are many things that infuriate me, but of the most infuriating is the worms who don’t deserve to black the boots of a Confederate general prancing and howling and posing as their moral superiors.

And so last December, at great trouble and expense, the Reconciliation Monument was removed. None of America’s other historic enemies — British, Mexican, Spanish, German, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese — have ever been made the object of such inextinguishable hatred as our own Southern brethren.

Mr. Taylor noted that his own mother was a liberal who believed in integration, feminism, and gay rights, yet saw no contradiction between these beliefs and the Southern identity into which she was born. There used to be plenty of Southern liberals who felt the same way, but they are extinct today. While many Southerners still revere the heroes of the Confederacy, they are part of a limited, conservative fringe. The South has ceased to exist as a nation.

Harrison Smith of Infowars said that policies of “infinite immigration forever” are meant to make opposition to technocratic power impossible. He suggested, for example, that one reason no one tries to impose “refugees” or antipollution measures on China — the world’s biggest polluter — is that the Chinese are already under effective control and threaten neither their own regime nor the ambitions of the World Economic Forum. The white population of the West, on the other hand, has “a heritage of resistance to tyranny,” which makes us the greatest threat to globalists’ plans. This is why they want “the destruction of whiteness,” where “whiteness” is defined as the European virtues of self-sufficiency, hard work, the nuclear family, and free expression.

Mass immigration to white countries is justified to natives as a way to save the Ponzi-scheme pension systems of European countries, but many immigrants go on welfare. Germany is now considering raising the retirement age to 70. Is it any wonder people suspect some sort of conspiracy? “If the policy has the opposite outcome from the stated purpose, but they keep doing it anyway, maybe something else is going on.”

Stopping immigration should be as easy as saying “no.” We can no longer shelter dissidents fleeing oppression, because there are too many unscrupulous people willing to abuse our generosity.

I almost feel bad for our enemies. I can’t imagine having convictions that are fleeting, a worldview as shallow as it is foreign. Our enemies will never know what it is like to tell the truth when the whole world wants you to believe a lie. They have traded their immortal souls for a pat on the head from people who despise them.

Saturday presentations began with popular Irish YouTuber and 2023 American Renaissance Conference speaker Keith Woods, who has risen to prominence through his pointed criticism of the ADL and Ireland’s expansive new “Hate Speech” laws. Mr. Woods pointed out that immigration is “the queen of the battlefield,” meaning that if we lose on it, we lose on all other issues. There are people who disagree with us on immigration but who care about free speech and European traditions; they fail to understand that these things cannot be preserved unless we stop mass immigration.

Just as he arrived in America for the conference, Mr. Woods learned of events in an Irish village of fewer than 3,000 inhabitants, chosen by the government to accommodate a thousand unvetted male migrants. When the locals protested, riot police searched homes and vehicles and barricaded streets. Officers pepper-sprayed journalists and beat and arrested people. Such violence has not been seen since the Northern Irish troubles of the 1970s.

Last year, a longtime Algerian resident stabbed a five-year-old girl and a woman trying to protect her. Afterwards, there was a large protest that became a riot. Some politicians urged a crackdown, but the most radical suggestions came from immigrants. One smalltown officeholder of Bangladeshi origin said protesters should be “shot in the head” or “beat[en] until they die.”

“Not a single mainstream [Irish] political party,” notes Mr. Woods, “not a single mainstream media institution” wants to cut immigration; there has been nothing but lockstep consensus among the elites.

Mr. Woods also talked about recent prison sentences for nationalists in England and Belgium in cases where even the prosecution acknowledges an absence of any public complaint or illegal activity — convictions based purely on opinions. In Ireland, a recently proposed law would mean jail sentences for people merely found in possession of “hateful” material.

Support for traditional parties is drying in Europe, and they have reacted by redefining “democracy” to mean immigration combined with their own continued rule. Liberal norms are being abandoned. Belgium once banned a nationalist party that was becoming too popular, and Germany may well be getting ready to do the same. But the establishment’s loss of legitimacy appears unstoppable; voters don’t care about debates over tax policy when the survival of their nations is at stake.

Dan Lyman is president of Border Hawk News Corp, a frontline video production company. He began by referring to a recent SPLC hit piece that, in four days, managed to “rack up a whopping 12 ‘likes’” from its X followers — along with five comments, all in support of Border Hawk.

Mr. Lyman calls Border Hawk “a trim outfit with just a few contributors and reporters,” but its dramatic videos have had tens of millions of views and drawn favorable notice from Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Fox News and, The Daily Wire. Border Hawk often reports from inside Mexico, and has a permanent correspondent there. It was the only organization to film the US Border Patrol clearing razor wire installed by the state of Texas, so hundreds of migrants could enter illegally. In some places, razor wire is rolled out by day and cleared by night — to deceive the public.

NGOs have shelters in Mexico for prospective crossers. Border Hawk was the first American organization to film one of these shelters — for 15 minutes, until the migrants circled them and flashed knives. Border crossers get GPS coordinates to guide them to places where they can overwhelm Border Patrol by strength of numbers, and they learn what to say to American officials if they are stopped.

Mr. Lyman noted that even Border Patrol agents have thanked him for Border Hawk videos and that ordinary American have changed their minds on immigration after seeing them.

John Lott spoke on Saturday. Older readers may recall that in the 1990s, he more or less brought an end to serious scholarly debate over gun control by proving that concealed carry laws reduce violent crime. Muggers are afraid of getting shot: who would have guessed?

In his talk, Dr. Lott described the collapse in law enforcement since the summer of George Floyd. The administration has partially concealed this collapse by citing FBI data only on reported crimes, even though most crime is not reported. More accurate data come from the National Crime Victimization Survey, and FBI statistics used to vary in approximate tandem with them. Since 2020, however, the two data sets have sharply diverged. One reason is that many cities, including New York and Los Angeles, have stopped reporting any crime data.

The more important reason is that fewer people report crime. Because of years of terrible publicity, police are easing up on arrests or leaving the force entirely. Word quickly spreads that cops are not doing much, so victims don’t bother to report crimes. Some district attorneys, such as New York’s Alvin Bragg, now favor race-normed law enforcement, which means that many black felons are not prosecuted. This makes police even more reluctant to make arrests. For all these reasons, only eight percent of violent crimes and 1.4 percent of property crimes now result in arrests. FBI statistics are therefore practically worthless — except for deceiving the public.

Dr. Lott also noted that the debate on crime is biased by the automatic classification of mass shooters as “right wing” regardless of their political views or motivations.

Scott Greer, podcast host and author of No Campus for White Men, spoke about why we should support Trump despite disappointments with his first term. From about 2019, Mr. Trump greatly cut the intake of refugees, H-1B visa holders, and immigrants as a whole. He banned travel from several Muslim countries, and used the defense budget for the wall. His Remain in Mexico policy kept out supposed asylum-seekers.

Mr. Trump now promises mass deportations, an end to Temporary Protected Status, and (finally!) the end of birthright citizenship. His victory would also be a tremendous symbolic and moral blow against our rulers, who have gone to extraordinary lengths to try to destroy him. Mr. Greer noted that some dissidents think further deterioration will “wake our people up,” but he pointed out that many Americans already believe the country is ruled by Satan-worshiping pedophiles.

VDARE.com columnist James Kirkpatrick — who writes for AmRen as Gregory Hood — talked about the role of faith in politics. One of the reasons we are so angry at what is being done to our country is that we see our patriotism — a kind of faith in our nation as something greater than the sum of its parts — being squandered and exploited. Cynics and sociopaths are rewarded, while those who have kept the faith are the first to be betrayed. If this keeps up, faith dies. Enormous sacrifices have been made for America and the other nations of the West, and people are now forced to ask what it was all for. The soldiers of World War II would never have laid down their lives for multiculturalism, but that is what they got.

A common enemy, however, may be an even stronger political advantage than a common faith. Democrats have a useful common enemy: white people. Republicans lose because they pretend not to have any enemies.

The current split on the Left about Israel is over the question of whether Israelis are white: both sides are our opponents. Republicans hoping to make political hay by denouncing anti-Semitism are wasting their time. We don’t need to take sides in this internal leftist fight, but to take our side, something no Republican seems able to understand.

Immigration is the issue that can unite us. Claims that immigration is good for us or for the economy quickly collapse, and yield to admissions that, yes, it is bad for us, but that is good because we deserve to be punished. Meanwhile, 45 percent of Hispanics and 42 percent of Democrats support mass deportation. It takes tremendous Republican stupidity to fail to take advantage of this changing mood.

Mr. Hood asked: What matters more than nationality and citizenship — what matters when you are trying to get into a school, get a job, when you are confronted on the street? Race. This is certainly what our rulers believe. Politics is largely biological, and biology is our human hardware; religion and ideology are software. Law and institutions are passed down as the patrimony of a specific people, and work only for that people.

When Americans see Mexican demonstrators cursing them, waving Mexican flags, and celebrating the end of white America, it no longer matters what Republicans wants them to think. They see that the real issue is us vs. them. The visceral sense of identity they are forced to feel will rally our people for the struggle.

Steve Sailer read the final chapter from Noticing, an anthology of his best writing over the past half century. To the question “What if I am right?” the answer is not genocide, contrary to what many people seem to believe. The world will not be transformed into utopia either, but we will stop doing many stupid, unproductive things. I urge those who want more details to read the book.

The conference left plenty of time between presentations for fellowship and discussion. There was a raffle which everyone enjoyed, and Peter and Lydia’s charming daughters put in occasional appearances. Participants even got to meet Jared Taylor’s “indispensable [podcast] co-host” and occasional VDARE.com contributor Paul Kersey, proving that he is not just a disembodied voice. There was also a panel discussion and Q&A on Sunday morning.

The challenges VDARE faces are serious, but I cannot believe that Letitia James can stop the Brimelows, and still less the many dedicated Americans I met last weekend. The conference was a celebration of hope and defiance.

Original Article