Jared Taylor's Banned Conference Speech

"The American (European) Dilemma"

Banned first in Paris, then a second time in Versailles where it had been relocated by the organizing group Les Natifs, the conference of the American intellectual Jared Taylor was ultimately shut down on June 3 by the police on orders from the prefectural authorities.

One might think the Ministry of the Interior had nothing more urgent to do. This helps explain how rioters can trash city centers with total impunity or how repeat-pedophile offenders continue to roam freely: for the State, instead of protecting little Lyhanna, there seems to be no more urgent threat than a private conference.

This is how freedom of expression works in France. Until now, no one knew exactly what justified such a ban: the conference was not censored for words that were spoken, but for words that might be spoken.

Here are those words. Whether or not one shares Jared Taylor’s analyses, the editors of Éléments believe it is up to the readers to judge for themselves and are proud to publish the French version today.

— Éléments

Arktos Journal is proud to join this initiative by presenting the English translation below.

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The American dilemma is now the European dilemma.

What is the American dilemma?

In America, it all begins with the fact that we have had a multiracial society from the very beginning. When the English arrived, there were already Indians. We then imported another race: Africans. And after that, we let in everyone, from everywhere. The American multiracial society has been a total failure, and that should have been clear to Europeans at a time when they still had white countries.

Part of the problem, however, was that even if European intellectuals had understood that America had a racial problem, they were convinced they could solve it. They thought the problem was not multiracial society itself. The problem was those ignorant, prejudiced Americans—especially Southern Americans—and Europeans were sure they could teach us to do better.

How many of you have heard of a Swede named Gunnar Myrdal? He was a left-wing economist who won the Nobel Prize. But he also published in 1944 one of the most influential books ever written on race relations in the United States. It was called An American Dilemma. It went through 25 printings, came out in a second edition in 1965, and was even reissued in two volumes in 1996.

For years, An American Dilemma was virtually the Bible, the essential guide to American race relations. I read all 1,400 pages of that thick book, and I can summarize its content very easily: it is entirely the fault of whites.

It is always like that. Whites—in this case a Swede—who have little experience with people of other races always think they know better—that they are more virtuous than those who may have lived with other races for hundreds of years.

At the time, Gunnar Myrdal called the problem of race relations the “American dilemma,” and in 1944 that was accurate. Today it is the European dilemma, the Canadian dilemma, the Australian dilemma. It is everywhere the dilemma of the white man.

And look at Sweden today. When Myrdal died in 1987, Sweden was 98% white. Today, thanks to immigration, Sweden is about 30% non-white and has virtually every year the highest rape rate in all of Europe. The Swedes have more or less stopped lecturing Americans.

The Jamestown Colony Experience

First, I would like to tell you some things about American race relations that you probably do not know. And then I would like to talk about the bigger picture: the European dilemma.

Let’s begin with America.

I assume most of you have heard of the Jamestown colony in Virginia? It was the first permanent English settlement in the New World, founded in 1607. Of course, there were already Indians in Virginia. So when next year marks the 420th anniversary of the beginning of my country, it will also mark 420 years of race relations—420 years during which Americans learned certain racial lessons, forgot them all, and are slowly relearning them today.

When the English settlers arrived in Jamestown in 1607, the Spanish had already been in the New World for more than a century. By 1607, 200,000 Spaniards had emigrated to the colonies. They had found gold and silver and brought immense wealth back to Spain. At the same time, the Spanish had earned a worldwide reputation for cruelty toward American Indians.

That is why the goal of the Jamestown colony was to seize treasures, but the English were determined not to make the Spanish mistake of mistreating the Indians. As usual, those with no experience thought they would do better than those who already had a century of experience.

It is important to note that the English had no preconceived notions of racial differences or superiority. They saw the Indians as essentially the same as themselves. This was completely different from their view of Arabs or black Africans, whom they considered strange and foreign.

From Difficult Coexistence…

The colony began with only men—about a hundred—and they cautiously and peacefully chose a location for their camp that was neither claimed nor inhabited by anyone. They did not want to offend anyone. The head of the colony, Edward-Maria Wingfield, even decreed that since the English came in peace, they would build no wall and there would be no weapons training.

However, when the camp was barely two weeks old, hundreds of Indians attacked and tried to exterminate the English. There were deaths on both sides; the English would have been massacred if they had not fired a cannon that was aboard one of the ships. The sound of the detonation terrified the Indians, who fled. After that, the English quickly built a log fort.

Despite this bad start, all existing documents agree: the English still wanted to do better than the Spanish and live in peace with the Indians. However, to their great disappointment, the tribes living closest to them liked them the least. Only those living farthest away were friendly and willing to trade. This is a fundamental principle of race relations: they are always better at a distance.

The chief of the neighboring Indians was named Powhatan, and his favorite daughter, Pocahontas, converted to Christianity and married an English settler in 1614, seven years after the start of the colony. This was the beginning of a period of peace.

The new head of the colony, George Thorpe, worked tirelessly to please the Indians. If settlers mistreated Indians in any way, the documents say that George Thorpe “punished them severely,” although there are no specific examples. They were probably whipped. It is worth noting that when English dogs barked at Indians, Thorpe had them killed in the presence of the Indians—to the great dismay of the dogs’ owners.

…to Impossible Coexistence

But in 1618, four years after the Indian princess Pocahontas married a settler, her father, Chief Powhatan, died, and his younger brother, Opechancanough, became chief. Opechancanough did not have a favorite daughter married to an Englishman, and he did not like the English.

Thus, in 1622, four years after becoming chief, Opechancanough decided to exterminate the English. At that time there were about 1,200 of them in Jamestown, spread across several different locations. Every morning, Indians came into the settlements and worked with the English on the farms and in the workshops. On March 22, 1622, the plan was for the Indians to rise up and kill all the men, women, and children.

However, the main Jamestown settlement was warned of the attack by an Indian who had converted to Christianity. The men kept their weapons close at hand and nothing happened. In other areas it was a total surprise, and the Indians killed about 400 settlers, one third of the entire colony. Interestingly, they were particularly cruel to John Thorpe, who had killed dogs that bothered the Indians and who cared so much about their well-being. They tortured him and mutilated his body.

The English briefly made war on the Indians, but both groups returned to peaceful relations as before. Opechancanough remained chief.

Astonishingly, in 1644—22 years later—Opechancanough launched an identical surprise attack, and this time managed to kill between 400 and 500 people in a new attempt at extermination. But this time the English struck back and launched their own extermination campaign, killing many Indians, including Opechancanough.

The Indians Were Destroyed

I call this the inherent tragedy of race relations. The English seem to have been animated by genuinely peaceful intentions. They were not aggressive, arrogant, or possessed of any sense of racial superiority. The Jamestown colony seems to have been as promising an effort as possible to establish peaceful race relations.

And yet, the mere presence of white men was an act of aggression, even if they did not realize it. The Indians were there first. There is always someone who is there first. One can judge Opechancanough’s two attempts to exterminate the settlers by sneaky surprise attacks as condemnable, but I do not blame him. It was the only way for the Indians to drive out the white man and remain masters in their own house. Those attacks failed and the Indians were destroyed.

And that is the story of the conquest of America. The intentions of the whites—sometimes good, sometimes bad—do not matter. The fundamental fact is that one people possessed a land, and another group, more advanced and more powerful, wanted it. The result was the dispossession of the Indians, and even today, despite real mixing, the Indians remain a distinct people with a distinct identity, which shows how problematic racial assimilation remains, even after 400 years. Race relations always bring difficulties.

It was bad luck for the Indians that Christopher Columbus could not delay his voyage by five centuries. If he had landed in 1992 rather than 1492, the entire continent would probably have been classified as a nature reserve or a protected World Heritage site, open to a few carefully controlled ecotourism circuits, but certainly not to colonization.

The Real Drivers of Abolitionism

Now I would like to change the subject and talk about blacks and slavery.

If you think there was slavery only in the South of the United States, you are wrong. In 1770, just before the American Declaration of Independence in 1776, there was slavery in all parts of the New World: English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. North and South America. In 1770, 40% of white households in what is now New York City owned black slaves, and there were more slaves in the northern New York colony than in the southern Georgia colony.

Let us return to the early days of the independent United States. The new country ratified its Constitution in 1788. The United States Congress met for the very first time the following year, in 1789. As a new country, the first Congress had to decide many things. It had to set up a court system, the postal service, the Treasury Department, the War Department. It was this Congress that adopted the famous first ten amendments to the Constitution. It was also the one that had to decide where the capital would be.

It was also the one that had to decide who could be a citizen of this new country. Do you know who could be a citizen? The first naturalization law, passed by the first Congress in 1790, reserved citizenship only for “free white persons of good moral character.”

It was to be a nation for whites.

At that time there were about 760,000 blacks, most of whom were slaves, but even free blacks could be citizens of a state, but not of the United States (3.3 million whites).

The North of America was not suited to plantation slavery, and the Northern states gradually freed their slaves. The abolitionist movement, however, is one of the most misunderstood movements in American history. Most Americans today think that the abolitionists wanted to free the slaves and make them equal to whites. Not at all. The abolitionists thought slavery was wrong, but the vast majority wanted to free the slaves and send them out of the United States. They called this colonization—sending blacks to overseas colonies—and you can see it as a remigration plan if you like.

The Policy of Return to Africa

This idea goes back to the founding of America. Our third president, Thomas Jefferson, owned several hundred slaves, but he considered slavery a terrible dilemma—to use that word again. As he famously said: “We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go.” Imagine holding a terrifying wolf by the ears. Holding on is dangerous; letting go is also dangerous. Jefferson thought slavery was a grave injustice, but what would happen if you freed the slaves? He thought it would be impossible for free whites and blacks to live together.

In Washington DC there is a magnificent monument to Thomas Jefferson, with Ionic columns, a pediment, and a dome—somewhat like the Pantheon in Rome. Inside, there are quotes from the third president engraved in marble. One says: “Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people, the Negroes, are to be free.” But at the memorial, the quote stops there. In the original, however, Jefferson did not stop there. He wrote: “Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live under the same government.” The building was completed and inaugurated in 1943. Even then, Americans were lying to themselves about Jefferson.

He wanted to remigrate blacks “beyond the reach of mixture,” as he put it.

The next president, James Madison, tried to have the federal government buy the entire slave population of the United States in order to resettle them overseas, but he failed to obtain the necessary funds from Congress.

After leaving office, Madison became president of the American Colonization Society, a very influential private organization that raised funds to send blacks to Africa. The next American president, James Monroe, was very active in creating the nation of Liberia as a home for freed American blacks. The capital of Liberia, Monrovia, is named after Monroe in gratitude for his help in creating the country. From the very beginning, leading American figures wanted the entire black population to leave the United States.

Nine of the first eleven American presidents, by the way, starting with George Washington, owned slaves.

Most Americans think that Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president, called the “Great Emancipator,” wanted to make blacks equal to whites. They are wrong. He too thought slavery was a terrible injustice, but he also insisted on the colonization project.

No Abolition Without Remigration

As you know, the United States fought a terrible civil war over slavery. More Americans died in our Civil War than in all other American wars combined: 750,000 dead.

While this terrible war was raging, Lincoln anticipated that it would end with emancipation. But he did not want free blacks living in the United States. He appointed a commissioner of emigration to find a place to send free blacks. He looked in the Caribbean, Central and South America, but the project did not succeed.

Lincoln received a delegation of black pastors at the White House. He explained to them that the war originated in the racial question and urged them to convince their flocks that emigration out of the United States was the best solution, believing that whites and blacks could not live together.

Blacks had already come to the White House, but as servants or workers; this was the first time they came for an official matter. And it was so that the President of the United States could tell them they were not wanted and that they should leave. This episode is now considered so shameful in American history that it is rarely mentioned. Probably only one American in five hundred has even heard of it.

Many Northerners, in states where slavery had already been abolished, opposed abolition even in the South unless it led directly to remigration. They even went so far as to ban abolitionist meetings unless they explicitly advocated a clear plan: no abolition without remigration.

Abolitionists who did not also support colonization were so unpopular, even in the North, that they struggled to find venues for their meetings—just as we identitarians do today. And so in 1839, twenty-two years before the Civil War, the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society built its own building in Philadelphia so it could hold its meetings. The building was called “The Temple of Free Discussion.” The hall had barely opened when it was burned down: just three days after its inauguration, several thousand people gathered in front of the building and set it on fire. The firefighters came, but only to make sure the fire did not spread to neighboring buildings. The “Temple of Free Discussion” was completely destroyed. The people of Pennsylvania did not want to live with free blacks. Perhaps one American in five thousand has ever heard of the “Temple of Free Discussion.”

What America Was Until the 1950s

Several states that joined the United States before the Civil War hoped to avoid racial problems by remaining entirely white. The inhabitants of the Oregon Territory, for example, first voted not to allow slavery. Then they voted in even greater numbers not to allow blacks in the state at all. This ban was written into the Oregon Constitution of 1857.

Many eminent Americans said very harsh things about blacks and also about Indians.

President James Garfield, elected in 1881, wrote: “I have a strong feeling of repugnance when I think of the Negroes becoming our political equals and I would be happy if they could be colonized, sent to heaven, or disposed of in any decent way.” Theodore Roosevelt was president from 1901 to 1909. In 1901 he wrote that he had “been unable to find a solution to the terrible problem posed by the presence of the Negro on this continent.”

About American Indians, he wrote: “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indian is a dead Indian, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I wouldn’t inquire too closely into the health of the tenth.”

Mark Twain, the famous humorist, called the American Indian “a good, just and desirable subject of extermination if there ever was one.”

Indians only received American citizenship under an Act of Congress in 1924.

Dwight Eisenhower, president from 1953 to 1961, said it might be necessary to grant blacks certain political rights, but that this did not mean social equality “nor that a Negro could marry my daughter.” It was only with John Kennedy that we finally have a president whose ideas on race begin to be acceptable by today’s standards.

As many of you probably know, until 1965 the United States had an immigration policy designed to keep the country white, and at the time it was about 90% white. The Hart-Celler Act, which ended that policy, was passed by Congress only after its promoters assured that non-white immigration would remain limited and that the country’s demographic balance would not be altered. If those members of Congress had known that in just 80 years whites would become a racial minority, I can promise you they would NEVER have passed that law.

So until about the 1950s, that is what most white Americans believed.

A Radical Paradigm Shift

People of different races differed substantially in intelligence, temperament, and ability; and that is why the different races built different types of societies. They wanted only whites to live in America, because only they could maintain the type of civilization that Americans valued. Non-white immigration seemed to them a mortal threat. It was common to argue that if non-whites could not be expelled, they should be separated socially and politically. Whites were very strongly opposed to marriage with non-whites.

What whites are now supposed to think is exactly the opposite. I see few examples in human history where fundamental values have been so completely reversed in so short a time, except for the Islamic Revolution in Iran or the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union.

Now whites are supposed to believe that races are absolutely equal in every respect. Race must never be a reason for making a choice. Whites have no legitimate group interests, so they must never organize as whites. It is immoral for whites to want to remain majorities in their homelands.

Racial diversity is inherently wonderful, so whites should welcome populations from everywhere into their countries, neighborhoods, institutions, and schools—even if this reduces whites to a minority. We have not yet reached the point where whites are actively criticized for marrying other whites, but dating and marrying non-whites is considered wonderfully progressive. And you see this promoted in advertising images all the time.

The Demographic Shift

The idea that all races are equal in every respect is practically the 11th Commandment of American society. But of course, this is obviously not true.

On average, whites have a higher IQ than Hispanics and Hispanics higher than blacks. In the United States, where blacks make up 14% of the population, they constitute only 1% of people with an IQ of 130 or higher and about 0.5% of those with an IQ of 140 or higher.

So what happens when they fail to reach the same level as whites? Since all races are officially equal, the only permitted explanation for the failure of blacks or Hispanics is oppression by evil whites. Astonishingly, almost no whites publicly contest this. They submit to humiliation and blatant discrimination because it is their fault that others do not succeed.

This subject is forbidden in Europe just as in the United States. But in a multiracial society, it is madness to pretend that every group is the same.

And while we ignore the reality of race, current demographic projections in the United States indicate that whites will become a minority by 2045, in just 19 years. Already, every white child in the United States under 18 is a minority. By 2060, Hispanics will be the absolute majority and whites will represent only 30% of the population.

The majority is supposed to believe that losing numbers, losing influence, losing control of its own destiny, and perhaps even disappearing, is a wonderful thing.

America is slowly ceasing to exist. It is an unspeakably painful thing for me to watch my country delude itself into self-destruction.

In my opinion, the white man hit rock bottom on May 25, 2020. Do you know what happened that day? George Floyd ascended to heaven. Afterwards, three hundred cities declared curfews. Thirty states called out the National Guard to keep the peace. But since then there has been a remarkable recovery.

From the American Dilemma to the European Dilemma

So far I have spoken to you as an American.

And it would be hard to be more American than I am. The first Taylor arrived in the English colonies in 1635. We have voted in every election, we have fought in every war. At the time of the Civil War, all my male ancestors of fighting age fought for the Confederate States. My country is filled with our bones, soaked with our blood.

And yet my culture is European, my heritage, my language, the faith of my fathers—everything that makes me an American has its roots deep, very deep, in Europe. And just as my heritage is the same as yours, my future and my destiny are too. Our destinies are linked and inseparable. And so, with your permission, I would like to claim the honor of calling myself a European — a European of American expression, to borrow and modify a phrase used by Jean-Yves Le Gallou.

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I believe that wherever you find our people—in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the southern tip of Africa—you find what I call the worldwide fraternity of Europeans.

And everywhere, our people are waking up to the terrible crisis we face.

For those of us in this room, it is obvious. Our ancestors did not build Europe so that our generation could hand it over to foreigners. Foreigners who are not us, who cannot be us, who do not want to be us, and who often hate us.

Europe must belong to Europeans. We find it almost impossible to understand a white person who does not understand this instinctively.

Muslims, in particular, are sworn enemies.

For a thousand years, from the Moorish invasion of Spain in 711 to the siege of Vienna in 1683, Islam was a mortal threat to Europe. But now we are supposed to let Muslims flood into our countries and think they will take care of us in our old age? Who can believe this madness?

And do our leaders really believe that Somalis and Congolese belong in this society?

Fortunately, millions of us now understand that it was a terrible mistake to imitate America by opening European homelands to immigration. Millions are determined to reconquer their homelands and build societies in which our children will learn that it is not only acceptable to be white. They must learn that there is no greater blessing than to be sons and daughters of Europe, to be the living, breathing heirs of a magnificent heritage, full participants in that fabulous adventure we call Western civilization. The others are only spectators. Imitators.

That is why remigration is the only solution.

The Greatest of Battles

Yes, we are in a fight for our lives, just like our ancestors at Thermopylae, at the Battle of Tours, and at the siege of Vienna, the Afrikaners at the Battle of Blood River. But our fight is different. Our ancestors had a simple goal: defeat the enemy or fall with weapons in hand. I wish it were that simple for us. I believe every man in this room would give his life to ensure the survival of our people. The blood of past heroes flows in our veins.

But our fight is much harder. Because among the forces facing us are also many of our own, our brothers and sisters. Europeans like us. This is the great tragedy of our struggle and it makes it different from any other struggle in history. We are in the horrible position of having to explain to our own people that it is moral for us—for them—to survive. No one else has ever had such a terrible task. Our adversaries are therefore not our sworn enemies. Often they are members of our own households.

I believe that in almost all of our people there is still a glimmer, a small spark of European identity. Our job is to find that spark, to blow gently and lovingly on it, and to light a devouring fire.

I believe this is the greatest struggle in all of human history. Upon us rests the destiny of our people, the destiny of the West, the destiny of everything our ancestors fought for, the destiny of everything we love.

I would give anything to be forty years younger, to have forty more years to live in the service of our people. I may not live to see Europe’s future secured and fortified against all threats, but YOU who are young, YOU will see it.

And from the depths of my grave, I will smile when I hear the laughter of your children.

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Originally published in Éléments on June 8th, 2026

Translated by Alexander Raynor

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Jared Taylor wrote the foreword to American History Z: Gen Z’s Journey to the Far Right by Joey Oliver (aka The Right Wing Coalition), recently released by Arktos: