The Time Limit: The Greatest or Last Generation
by Kevin DeAnna (joined by Afonso Gonçalves (VIDEO INTERVIEW)
It is always time for metapolitics, never politics, on the nationalist right. The arguments are familiar:
Democracy as a system is almost impervious to systemic reform. The people are not ready for radical solutions. The media, the judiciary, and the political establishment manipulate the system so that running for office becomes an exercise in futility. The ruling elite that controls everything must be removed before we are allowed to do something, and this will somehow happen outside of state action. We must discuss radical ideas, cultivate elites, and change the culture before any political action is possible.
Perhaps we can even build networks that will somehow survive losing ethnic majorities in our countries. Presumably, they will just be left alone by the new regimes that will take power, controlled by non-whites who are already winning political power throughout the West by voting as an ethnic bloc. We might even try to convince them that this is in their interest under some theory of “ethnopluralism” or the alleged right to a unique identity for all people. Surely, they will be fair.
Such arguments are an elaborate cope for defeat and acceptance of dispossession. They are excuses for failure. In a way, they are even comforting. They tell us that the time for action is always in the future.
That doesn’t mean they are wrong.
We should not be deceived or deluded. The system has been built, specifically and intentionally, to prevent nationalists from exercising power through democratic institutions. Are we really to believe that we will simply be allowed to take and exercise power, even if we win an electoral contest that so often seems rigged? If the answer is no, then building institutions and an intellectual vanguard to survive a horrific time of trial may be the best, if not the only things we can do.
The truth is that it is too early to say. Neither victory nor defeat is certain. Any institution or constitution is ultimately powerless to defend itself. There is no “government of laws,” only of men, and there is thus no inherent reason any institution or constitution could not be turned to our goals if staffed with different personnel. More importantly, the crisis of legitimacy any accelerationist or separatist approach ultimately relies on will not just happen by itself.
The nature of the system must be exposed in the eyes of the masses when it fails to obey its own rules. Even if one does not believe in the system’s legitimacy, one must initially contest for power within their system before one can break it or radically change it. A crisis must be created deliberately. It will not just arrive, nor will the masses spontaneously “wake up.” “There are still white liberals in South Africa,” as the saying goes. There is also no prize for being ideologically pure in one’s own eyes besides still paying taxes and obeying the laws of the occupation regime just like everyone else.
Metapolitics alone can only go on so long. The time to move is when a concept has been introduced into public consciousness and has won a mass following. The recent Remigration Summit in Portugal marks the moment that we can say Remigration has gone mainstream.
Following the conference, Eva Vlaardingerbroek and Dries Van Langenhove delivered more than half a million signatures to the European Parliament. Even this modest action was initially banned by the mayor of Brussels. Van Langenhove is already under a suspended sentence and his career as an elected official was cut short, but this is not stopping him.
Martin Sellner argues that the Save Europe Act is the practical expression of the patriotic consensus on the need for remigration and ethnocultural continuity, and that it will “bridge the gap between party politics and grassroots activism, bringing groups together from every corner of the continent.” Obviously I hope such optimism is warranted. Yet, even if it’s not, it’s a good approach precisely because it does not count on one tactic delivering victory.
Metapolitics, activism outside party politics, creating parallel structures and networks outside the state, running for office, lobbying those already in office, and presenting practical policy ideas — all these things must be done simultaneously. What tactic, if any, will triumph depends largely on circumstances entirely out of our control. What is critical is to have organized groups in place that can exploit any eventuality.
I recently discussed the state of the movement with Afonso Gonçalves, one of the leading organizers of the Remigration Conference and one of the founders of Reconquista. He exemplifies the dual nature of the movement, with Reconquista serving as a pressure group, but he follows the Chega party and sees its growth as a sign for hope.
He noted that there was a sense of urgency, not just optimism, at the conference because his is the last generation that can handle remigration “in the way that we want,” in an orderly, legal manner through state action. There is a time limit to all this.
“I don’t know if we have ten or fifteen or 20 years, more or less,” Gonçalves said, “but I know that we are the last generation, because the ones that come after us will already be born into this multicultural atmosphere and so it will be like normal, or almost normal to them.”
Many have noted that one of the most radicalizing things one can do online is simply watch old videos of what European cities were like just a few decades ago. The contrast is so foreign that I think this is one reason why conspiracy theories about Tartaria or some other lost civilization that built such wonders are so popular. Few can believe that we used to live this way — and that it was simply given away out of cowardice and moral blackmail.
The transformation has been remarkably swift. In Spain, the government, with the backing of the Roman Catholic Church, is moving to legalize half-a-million migrants, a number that is likely to swell to three million because of so-called family reunification. Gonçalves noted that in his youth, it was rare to even see foreigners in Portugal except for tourists; but now, within just 15 years, young Portuguese are minorities or near minorities in many neighborhoods. As in Spain, the Church has largely backed this demographic transformation.
Gonçalves argued that one problem facing the Portuguese is that the Estado Novo of António de Oliveira Salazar deliberately depoliticized the masses, encouraging them to focus on their own lives. The result is that many Portuguese, including those with a basic sense of patriotism, are unaware of what is happening to their country and the speed of the racial replacement. This is an implicit criticism of the more aristocratic view of politics many of us would like to return to, with the masses isolated from the political sphere. Instead, it appears that the failure to politicize the masses and incorporate them into the state simply creates future problems.
Reconquista focuses on serving as a vanguard movement, using bold slogans, confrontational activism, and a massive social media presence to force the issue of immigration into politics. Gonçalves has a lager social media footprint than anyone else in Portuguese politics, including the Prime Minister. These efforts have forced Chega to define itself explicitly as an anti-immigration party, rather than simply a populist catch muttering vaguely about “corruption” or easy issues like transgenderism.
Ultimately, it is the center-right that the existing system uses to perpetuate itself, and thus it is the center-right that must be targeted above all.
Yet that raises a major question about the “right.” Everyone, after all, draws their own lines about what counts as the authentic right and what is simply controlled opposition. Most of us think we’re the former; it’s not hard to find someone online who will contemptuously tell us we are part of the latter. At the same time, everyone also has a shared contempt for the cowards of the center-right, but at least some of them will need to join us if we actually want to win power.
Gonçalves argued that the immigration issue will come to define the two sides in politics, but only a minority of the center-right will ultimately align with the nationalists, about 25% judging from runoff elections. However, this is not an insignificant number. Many well-meaning, albeit naïve patriots remain within the center-right and will come over as polarization increases.
This requires building a nationalist right that is intellectually sophisticated, serious, and willing to use a populist economic platform and emphasize the financial returns that Remigration will deliver for ordinary Europeans if we want to win a stable governing coalition.
All this takes time, and we do not have time. Young Europeans are faced with the terrifying choice of becoming the greatest generation of their people, or possibly the last.
But there is far more hope than there was even a decade ago. The stakes are clear and the organizations, institutions, and movements are being built. Tactics will need to be diverse, comprehensive, and even contradictory, as we will need to appeal to different constituencies and prepare for unknown circumstances. Yet there is a coherence and direction to the movement that was not there before.
We are not merely “populists” advocating a grab-bag of “anti-establishment” issues, but nationalists advancing a platform of Remigration explicitly to secure the political, economic, and biological future of Western Man.
READ MORE:
Remigration: For a Europe for Our Children — the rallying manifesto by Jean-Yves Le Gallou of the Institut Iliade — is now available in English, brought to you by Arktos:
