Contemporary Voices of White Nationalism in America

by Carol M. Swain (Editor), Russ Nieli (Editor)

This book presents ten alarmingly candid interviews by some of the most prominent members of what co-editors Carol M. Swain and Russ Nieli warn is a growing White Nationalist movement. The ten people interviewed in this volume make statements that are sure to shock, amuse, challenge, and provoke readers. Their remarks are of particular interest, Swain and Nieli believe, for understanding how the many race-conscious whites who lie outside the integrationist consensus on racial issues in America view developments that have taken place in the United States since the Civil Rights movement. If current trends continue, the authors predict, these ideas will become more common, especially as whites become a diminishing portion of the U.S. population. They argue that the claims of white nationalists need to be aired in open, public forums, where they can be vigorously challenged and subjected to refutation. Carol M. Swain is Professor of Political Science and Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University. She is the author of Black Faces, Black Interests (Harvard, 1993). She has published numerous articles including the op-eds in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the Chronicle of Higher Education and lectures widely across the country, on issues ranging from congressional redistricting to the future of affirmative action programs. Swain was one of twelve children born into rural poverty, is a high school dropout, and a first generation college student who started her education at a community college and went on to receive a doctorate and law degree. She spent the first ten years of her career teaching at Princeton University, where she was a tenured professor of political science and public policy at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. A former Fulbright Scholar, Russ Nieli is currently a lecturer in politics at Princeton University. His areas of academic interest run the gammet from Wittgenstein to race relations, and he is currently working on a book on the decline of the inner-city African American communities in the decades following the Civil Rights Revolution of the 1960's.

Genres: Nonfiction

316 pages, Paperback

First published March 24, 2003

About the author

Carol Miller Swain is a retired professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University. A frequent conservative television analyst, she is the author and editor of several books. Her interests include race relations, immigration, representation, evangelical politics, and the United States Constitution.

Reviews

[Brittany · Rating 4 out of 5]

Note that my rating of this book isn't based on agreement with what is said in this book.

This book is a collection of ten interviews with various white nationalists preceded by an introductory essay by the author. The interviewees range from people who (based on what is shared in the book) banally oppose things like affirmative action from a civil rights perspective to people who can be described, without hyperbole, as having drawn 'much of [their] inspiration from Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf'. To the extent that I'm curious in hearing from people who hold views in opposition to my own in their own words, it was interesting to read how white nationalists differ in their views relating to the role of Jews (and Israel), Asians, religion, the internet, and the government in white nationalism. There were definite consistencies throughout the book such as general and repeated disdain for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, immigration from non-European countries, and affirmative action policies. Some of the interviewees were eloquent and able to maintain a sense of respectability about themselves, while others seemed to thrive in calling themselves racist (a label some willingly accepted, others opposed).

"America as a cohesive, multiracial, multiethnic society can only endure if group differences of this kind, like individual differences, are perceived as a natural and inevitable result of diversity and freedom. While perhaps the basis for some disappointment on the part of the less-successful groups, such differences cannot be allowed to become the basis of politicized grievances or a deep sense of social injustice. If differential achievement of this kind is allowed to become the basis for intergroup bitterness, hostility, and resentment, or if it gives rise to widespread paranoia and conspiracy thinking among the less-successful groups, then a pluralistic, multiracial, multiethnic society cannot endure. Under such circumstances, the pessimistic conclusions offered by ethnic separatists become inescapable, and the partition of the country into racially or ethnically separate subdivisions would cease to be such a crackpot idea (or such a remote possibility)."

"But this part of our history is now hidden from most students going through our school systems today because it's not politically fashionable. People like Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and James Monroe spoke out forcefully on the issue of race, but that part of their philosophy is simply ignored."

"It's really not diversity, it's antidiversity when one promotes the mixing and homogenation of every race. From that standpoint, we at Stormfront are the true promoter of diversity because we want to see our race preserved, as well as every other race, as a distinct cultural entity."

"Q: In one of your two novels, the novel Hunter, you depict the killing of interracial couples in a manner that many people have seen as endorsing those kinds of actions. Was it intended as such an endorsement?

A: Well, if I thought that that could be done on a significant scale today, why then, sure, I would endorse it."

[Zefyr · Rating 4 out of 5]

An academic colleague of the editors (whose name may be listed somewhere but at the moment I'm failing to find it) specializing in black/white relations is quoted:

In the mainstream media, when such views are given voice, they are only dismissed and not refuted. Simply saying that the views are wrong and sending Atlanta Braves pitcher John Rocker for psychological rehabilitation is counter-productive.

The purpose of this book isn't to interpret these white nationalists' ideas, it's to hold them up to a lens with a good strong spotlight and a library or five nearby, so that those who might seek those ideas out regardless aren't as likely to have to go to white nationalist spaces to do so. It starts with a generally conservative-trending (if also biting) essay that defines its terms:

By contrast [to the Klan and skinhead models of organized racist groups], the new white nationalist movement that has emerged in America over the past ten years is a movement whose major mode of operation is discourse and ideas. At least for the present, it pays little regard to rituals or mass rallies and seeks to expand its influence largely through argument and persuasion directed at its target audience of white Americans aggrieved over race-based affirmative action policy and impending demographic change. In this regard, it is more analogous to the parties of the Left around the world -- or to the Libertarians in the United States -- than to the older style of Klan and Nazi groups.

What makes some of the newer organizations so dangerous, we believe, is that they address many important issues of race and nationality that are often ignored in polite company, and they do so with a degree of candor and openness not found in more mainstream discourse. On sensitive issues of race, mainstream discourse, we believe, has become so cluttered with the baggage of political correctness and taboos that it is not an arena where many people -- and certainly not white people -- feel comfortable expressing openly their deepest convictions and concerns. As a result, silence and self-censorship become the order of the day...

The great danger here is that with few legitimate mainstream arenas in which to discuss many of their deepest anxieties and forebodings, people turn to white nationalist and white supremacist groups, which may offer the only forum for candid discussions of race. This may explain the incredible popularity of such institutions as the Stormfront website, which since its inception in 1995 has reportedly received several million visitors. And within these groups, one-sided pictures and half-truths, which usually have the great advantage of containing at least an important kernel of the truth on the tabooed subject, come to exert considerable appeal...We present the following ten interviews to the general public with the hope that they might help stimulate more open discussion on issues of race and nationality among people who share our own basic commitment to the civil rights era vision of integration, common humanity, and the inclusion of all in the American Dream.

The most interesting thing to me about the essay was the way it edged around presenting the way America has become so friendly to the growth of a particularly white-centric Libertarian politic. For example:

Emigrating to America, writes Arthur Schlesinger [The Disuniting of America], "was seen as a severing of roots, a liberation from the stifling past, an entry into a new life, an interweaving of separate ethnic strands into a new national design...The unstated national motto was 'Never look back.'" Schlesinger illustrates this with the advice given by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams to a German nobleman who inquired about the wisdom of emigrating to America. Those contemplating such a relocation, Adams advised, "must cast off the European skin, never to resume it. They must look forward to their posterity rather than backward to their ancestors." The salutary effect of this attitude can hardly be understated when it comes to understanding how America was able to incorporate within the same nation, ethnic, religious, and national-origin groups that in the Old World often seethed with the deepest hatreds of one another and considered themselves mutual enemies. An ancient Chinese proverb observes that "men do not live even one hundred years, yet they harbor the grief of a thousand."For many of those who were willing to uproot themselves and emigrate to America, the grief of a thousand years was put behind them as a new horizon opened with new possibilities for economic cooperation that would lead to the advancement of all.

All that were willing to give up their ethnic identity to be white, anyway. So it's then not particularly surprising that the interviewed subjects are largely Libertarian, pushing not for direct violence against people of color but for the freedom to control association via borders. How American, how modern. In fact, what's surprising is really realizing just how much several of these interview subjects sound like the "moral" voice behind a South Park episode. I mean, I know that show was some creepy shit, but yikes.

The interviews made me check myself on my own knowledge and ability to argue what I know, as opposed to what I feel.

I've been sitting on this review for a couple weeks now, and actually half-wrote it two nights ago and gave up when I realized I'd strayed far outside the realm of the review and far into territory I still haven't quite felt out as I tried to lay out some theories around the current intersection of racism and queer-friendliness in Portland, Oregon. (Worth noting: multiple mentions within this book of a specific region to go if you're a white nationalist looking for a friendly place to live. That region is the Pacific Northwest.) Probably I'll need to re-read it in a year or so. I guess though that the gist of the perspective of the interviewees can be summed up in William Pierce's response regarding the intended readers of The Turner Diaries:

That's sort of redundant, racially conscious white Europeans.

It's ...agh. The sheer number of chair-flingy arguments about race in which white people are called on their privilege and ignorance should probably replace pi as the number whose calculation breaks computers, but it's not an entirely irrational number. (Oh yes, I went there.) White people do have the privilege to be ignorant of so many things about being white, but that's not the same as being completely ignorant about their experiences being white. And maybe the scariest thing this book hammered in for me is that there are a whole lot of white people whose experiences are almost exclusively being validated by people with a white nationalistic agenda.

[Vagabond of Letters, DLitt · Rating 3 out of 5]

6/10.

The 80-page front matter was surprisingly good for kosher conservative writing. Although it came standard with egalitarianism, Judeolatry, and the claim that neoconservatives are the great hope of the Right, the truth between the lines blares louder than the withering whisper of the text proper.

As to the interviews:

As expected, William Pierce's was the best. Read The Fame of a Dead Man's Deeds.

The two from members of the World Church of the Creator (including Hale) displayed in living color the full force of quasidemonic ideological possession typified by members of that sect. This is the Left of the Right.

Dan Gayman's interview, the only one with a Christian Identitarian, is the most interesting for someone such as myself who is a trad Catholic, has heard of Christian Identity, but has no idea what it is beyond polygamist. Ironically, Gayman converted to CI from a polygamist Mormon breakaway sect.

The two Jews included, Michael Hart and Levin, were mediocre. Levin's ideas can't be expressed in this format. Read his books instead.

Rushton wasn't interviewed. Duke's interview was surprisingly weak. Jared Taylor's introductory interview is milk.

[Cwn_annwn_13 · Rating 3 out of 5]

After a long boring politically correct intro essay you get interviews with people like David Duke, Don Black, Jared Taylor, Matt Hale, William Pierce and several other "white nationalists" that I had never heard of before. Strangely enough two of those included were Jews.

The interview format, while being a lazy way to write and put together a book, is at least fair because they were allowed to say what they wanted to say. The contents of the interviews is nothing that I haven't heard before but some people may find them interesting.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an academic publication with a definite axe to grind, but it is also surprisingly (perhaps depressingly) prescient in terms of its editors having foreseen the growing popularity of white nationalist viewpoints at a time when most of us who studied the phenomenon dismissed its chances of mainstream acceptance.
Let’s get that “axe” out of the way, first. Carol M. Swain is a black conservative academic who opposes Affirmative Action and this book as well as her previous one was largely published to argue that unless Affirmative Action is abolished, more and more whites will feel discriminated against and drift to increasingly extreme racist viewpoints. Again, however, regardless of how you feel about her positions (she supported Donald Trump in 2016, for example), there is no disputing that Affirmative Action is now broadly unpopular (and on the way out, thanks to Supreme Court decisions) and that white nationalism has grown exponentially in the years since this was published.
There is another editor, Russ Nieli, about whom I know far less, and who conducted all of the actual interviews for this book, possibly on the assumption that the subjects wouldn’t respond well to a black woman. Together with Swain, however, he did contribute to the extensive “Introductory Essay,” or position statement, that precedes these interview transcripts. Essentially a lengthy disclaimer to explain that the authors are not, themselves, racists, even though they are publishing a forum for racist perspectives, this essay clarifies their positions on civil rights, legal color blindness, the concepts of the “Melting Pot” and the “American Dream,” and Christianity in America, as well as providing some observations on the question of relative IQ between the races and anti-Semitism, both of which come up in most of the interviews that follow. My first reaction was that this essay would have been better placed at the end of the book, but I do think, especially in terms of those last points, that it is probably helpful to provide a counter-argument to some of the myths that are repeated before an uninitiated reader encounters them.
The interviews themselves are arranged thematically, arguably from the least extreme positions to the most extreme, although of course there are nuances within that sort of classification. The categories they chose are “white rights advocacy,” “white nationalism and white separatism,” “white Christianity,” and “White supremacy and neo-Nazism.” Most of the categories have three representative each, but “white Christianity” only contains one exemplar. The rest of this review will discuss each of the interviews in turn, and what information may be useful to researchers.
The first interview is with Jared Taylor, editor of “American Renaissance,” a magazine that has since transitioned online. He is articulate and polite, and probably represents, if not truly the “least extreme,” than at least the most acceptable face of white advocacy to intellectuals. He maintains that European Jews are Europeans, and does not exclude them from his concept of “whiteness.” He argues that the government should be color-blind and that immigration policy needs reform to prevent waves of criminals and non-white underclasses from overwhelming the country. Generally, his policy positions are pretty close to the modern-day Republican Party, once again affirming Swain & Nieli’s predictions.
The next interviewee is Reno Wolfe, who in charge of the National Association for the Advancement of White People (NAAWP), though he insists that his organization is separate from the NAAWP founded by David Duke in the 1980s. There is some information online which seems to dispute this, but following sources I was unable to confirm or deny. At the time of the interview, the NAAWP was actively recruiting and holding local meetings in a number of States, though Wolfe was based in Florida and it seems like the Southeast was the basis of most activity. He also mentions some “food drives” and work to ”support” a School Board in Illinois. His position is less articulate than Taylor’s, and probably more accurately reflects the general feeling among non-privileged whites that minorities are getting unfair advantages due to “reverse discrimination.” The membership numbers he claims are pretty outlandish for the period, but could easily be surpassed by a similar organization today (evidently the NAAWP is either defunct or dormant).
The third interview is with Michael Levin, a Jewish writer who insists that evidence of genetic differences in ability between the races is suppressed and ignored for political reasons, to the detriment of everyone concerned. He is an academic, with a degree in philosophy, but not a specialist in any of the scientific fields, such as genetics, that would be relevant to his thesis. Interestingly, despite his credentials, he comes across here as less articulate, or maybe just less engaged, than Taylor. He answers many of the questions curtly, rather than going into philosophic discussions or engaging in complicated arguments. He is dismissive of the fact that anti-Semitism is prevalent among the people who agree with him, though unsurprisingly he does not endorse anti-Semitic views.
The section on “white nationalism and white separatism” is led off by Don Black, a longtime figure in white nationalism who was more familiar to me going in than any of the previous interviewees. Don Black’s background was with both the National Socialist White People’s Party and the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, but by the time of this interview he was more significant as the creator and owner of the website “Stormfront,” which continues to this day as the premier site for racist propagation. In that sense, Black is perhaps the most prescient of the interviewees seen here – he was an early adopter of the best tool in the white nationalist toolbox at a time when almost no one could see how powerful it would become. Ironically, he learned how to program computers while serving prison time for racist crimes, so that efforts to suppress his activities only made him a more dangerous opponent of “the system.” He advocates full separatism and the creation of an “all-white nation.” He is the first, and one of the relatively few, of the interviewees who whole-heartedly embraces the term “white nationalism” as an identity.
This is followed by an interview with David Duke, whom the editors name “the only person…in this volume who needs no introduction.” Twenty years later, his name is still pretty well remembered, but just to refresh your memory, he was the former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the KKK who was elected to the Louisiana state House of Representatives and had at that time the most successful political career of any avowed American white nationalist. He frames his activism as advocacy for white rights, which might seem to place him in the previous category, but his arguments for protecting the European character of the United States and re-legalizing segregation edge close to a form of separatism, which he has advocated at times, but does not explicitly call for here. Instead, his focus is on fairly radical immigration reform to prevent the erosion of the white majority and an end to anti-discrimination laws. He is also outspokenly anti-Semitic, and denies any European heritage in Jews. Despite his position, he comes across here as well-spoken and logically consistent, and actually is among the more articulate voices in the volume, which may help explain his early electoral successes.
Michael H. Hart, the subject of the next interview, is less-well-known and something of an anomaly. He seems to be here to be the one person representing a schema for separating the United States along racial lines, having presented a proposal for this at an “American Renaissance” conference. He is by training an astrophysicist and, like Levin, is Jewish by birth. His basic idea, that the country can be divided into a white state, a black state, a Hispanic state, and one integrated, mixed-race state, will seem pretty outlandish to anyone with political experience, but he is an educated person who is able to explain the idea well. He feels that there is more anti-Semitism among blacks than among white nationalists, which also seems pretty outlandish, perhaps reflecting a somewhat sheltered experience at that time (more recently, he has confronted David Duke and others over their anti-Semitism).
The next interview is with Dan Gayman, another person I had not heard of before this. He was at the time of the interview pastor of the Church of Israel, a denomination that advocates the Christian Israelite argument that white Europeans are in fact the lost ten tribes of Israel. This position is often identified with Aryan Nations and other Christian Identity organizations, but Gayman is definitely of a different stripe. He does not claim that Jews are not Israelites, he rather claims that Europeans are too, which makes a pretty big difference, especially in terms of anti-Semitism. The Church under his leadership disavowed any violent or criminal connections. He does essentially argue that black Christians and those of other races cannot be “true” Christians, since the Word was meant for white people and not for them. His biblical arguments are convoluted, but internally consistent and logical. I actually found him easier to take than most Evangelicals. Although it is a small denomination, I wonder if the Church of Israel has been quietly influential on the larger right-wing Christian world.
The final section is the most extreme, and may be included as much to remind readers that the relatively articulate interviewees of the previous sections are not the only representatives of white nationalism. The first interviewee for this section is Matthew Hale from the World Church of the Creator, which despite its name is an atheistic organization dedicated to promoting white supremacy as a religion in itself. At the time of the interview, Hale had been disbarred from practicing law, but he was educated and trained to present an argument. His belief system is based on unmitigated Social Darwinism with little real science to back it up. He insists that racial divisions are real and that races are programmed genetically to compete, rather than a Darwinian focus on the success of the individual or a more modern view of competition at a species-level. His anti-Semitism is palpable, but it is somewhat mitigated by his belief that the religion of Judaism is what causes Jews to work against white interests, not a genetic drive – therefore converted Jews can “repudiate” Judaism and become acceptable in his view.
The second interviewee in this section, Lisa Turner, is an exception is several ways. First and most obviously, she is a woman, where all of the others were men. Second, she is also a member of Hale’s organization, being the Women’s Information Coordinator of the World Church of the Creator, though she had left this group between the interview and its publication. Finally, she does not come across as articulate and logical, but rather as zealous and intolerant. She admits former interest or association with groups like White Aryan Resistance and David Duke’s NAAWP. She claims to have become a racist when her family moved into a neighborhood with a “safe house” for undocumented immigrants from Mexico. This was apparently enough to convince her of the impracticality of mixed-race housing and soon she was reading “Mein Kampf” and identifying as a Nazi. It seems like there’s more to this story, but she does not present it. She disavows feminism, but sees herself as a leader among the women of white nationalism. She embraces terms like “RAHOWA” (racial holy war) and “mud people” and appears much readier to endorse violence than Hale or any of the others to this point.
The final interview is with William Pierce, author of “The Turner Diaries” and founder of the National Alliance. He had actually died by the time this book went to print. He advocated a fairly straightforward Americanized National Socialism, having been associated with George Lincoln Rockwell’s American Nazi Party prior to Rockwell’s assassination. In this interview he defends Adolf Hitler and denigrates Jews, blacks, and pretty much all nonwhite people. He engages in some interesting verbal gymnastics to both separate himself from the then-recent Oklahoma City bombing, but also to suggest that “when the time is right” such terrorist actions will be appropriate (unfortunately, the interviewer does not discuss Robert Jay Matthews and The Order which was even more indisputably inspired by the “Turner Diaries.” There are few surprises in this interview, but it does give a clear snapshot of an unrepentant neo-Nazi in the last phase of his life.