In Defense of American “Isolationism”

I think we should have this debate.

Greg Johnson is opposed to American isolationism.

“Sorry to have upset you, Hunter.

There are a couple inaccuracies in what you have written.

First, I have never said that Russia is the number one threat to white people.

Second, I absolutely do not discount or gloss over the differences between white ethnic groups. I am quite explicitly opposed to idea that White Nationalism is a one-size-fits-all political solution for generic white people. I am an ethnonationalist because I think that the best form of government is to create sovereign homelands for all distinct peoples who desire them. This is why I am opposed to empires like Russia and side with nations trying to hold onto their homelands as opposed to empires trying to take them away. I am even opposed to defenders of empires in our milieu, like Francis Parker Yockey or Guillaume Faye.

However, even though I oppose the idea of “one big white state,” I am still a White Nationalist insofar as I feel a strong solidarity with white people around the globe and would like to see all of them flourish in their own homelands, including Russians. Whites worldwide share a common race, a common history, common enemies, and common problems.

Thus I oppose American isolationism as much as I oppose American imperialism. Whether you think that America should remain isolated or act as a light unto the nations, both spring from the idea that America is an exceptional place rather than an offshoot of European civilization and the white race. America has no business lording it over other peoples around the world. But I think it is natural, normal, and right for Americans to be concerned about protecting other white nations, especially nations in Europe, which is the heartland of our race and civilization.

It is easy to dismiss the Ukraine enthusiasm of the Twitterati. But I am seeing a great deal of spontaneous white solidarity with Ukraine, much as I saw during the migrant crisis, when people who had never uttered an unconventional thought in their lives were suddenly worried about the future of Europe due to demographic swamping. I think that is a healthy impulse. Isolationism, by contrast, is petty-minded. I think it is silly to want to make the world safe for “democracy.” But I think it is healthy to want to make the world safe for white people.

PS: You really need to clean up your comment section. I am sure you think that platforming this collection of paranoids, cranks, and Russia shills makes you look good by comparison, but it repulses better commenters. You are judged by the company you keep.”

My position is simple.

White identity in America was strong throughout the 19th century when the United States pursued an “isolationist” foreign policy instead of liberal imperialism. The country expanded from the Atlantic to the Pacific to the Arctic, industrialized and developed a broad middle class at least in the North and was open to European immigrants who fled from the dumb imperial dynastic wars of that continent. Throughout that entire century, we had good relations with Russia and engaged in peaceful trade with that country and did not concern ourselves with the status of Finland, the Baltic states or the Ukraine. The United States was the freest country it has ever been in the 19th century when it was on the way up.

The United States was never an “isolationist” country. We always engaged in trade with the rest of the world. We declared the entire Western hemisphere to be our sphere of influence. “Isolationism” meant a conscious rejection of Atlanticism. It meant avoiding entangling alliances with European states and getting sucked into European wars like the Napoleonic Wars and the Crimean War. It meant rejecting the globalist model of the British Empire in favor of the organic growth of westward expansion. The United States saw itself as a North American power and pursued a continental model of national development.

There were plenty of European ethnonationalist struggles in 19th century: German and Italian unification and the Irish, Hungarian, Polish and Greek independence movements. Americans cheered on all those causes, but the United States also never got involved in them. We never went to war with Britain, Austria, Russia or the Ottoman Empire for the sake of Irish, Hungarian, Polish or Greek independence. As we learned in the 20th century, the problem with ethnonationalism is that reality is messy and different European nations often have rival claims and that involves choosing sides which leads to bloody conflicts that end up killing millions of people. Ethnonationalism can also be taken to extremes.

Anyway, the United States abandoned our traditional “isolationist” foreign policy long ago in the age of William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. The British Empire was at its Victorian apogee, the East was ascendant in the late 19th century and British liberalism had become fashionable among the old Anglo-American establishment. The East had long opposed the old Jeffersonian policy of westward expansion and development which it saw as mainly benefiting settlers from the South and the West. In those days, American expansion benefited rural America rather than coastal educated urban dwellers.

Frankly, I am surprised that I have to recall the history of American liberal imperialism. You would think it would be self evident from a racialist perspective that it has been an unmitigated disaster. The first step was the destruction of the Confederacy and the emancipation of slaves and the incorporation of blacks into the United States as citizens with equal rights which permanently changed our politics and has bedeviled us ever since. This was followed by the expansion of the nascent American Empire into Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines which was a break from the precedent of expanding into areas with large non-White populations. This was followed by interventions all over the Caribbean, Central America, the Western Pacific and East Asia in the years before we made the leap into World War I.

We famously intervened in World War I to “make the world safe for democracy.” The peace that followed established the basic pattern of American interventions in Europe. The Poles, Czechs and Serbs were deemed to be the Autobots in that conflict and the Germans, Austrians and Hungarians were deemed to be the Decepticons. The Soviet Union emerged from the wreckage of the Russian Empire. The outcome of the war in Germany, Italy and Russia set in motion a whole chain of destructive events. Alternatively, European history could have taken a different turn if Imperial Germany had won that war or negotiated a settlement that would have avoided the grievances that stoked and led to World War II.

World War II, of course, was the defining moment in the destruction of America’s traditional identity and the mindset of liberal imperialism and a willingness to intervene in another European war was the cause. It was at that point that something called “racism” entered the lexicon. “Racism” has been the greatest of all evils ever since. American liberals defined their own identity against Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler replaced Satan. Nationalism became taboo. “Racism” became taboo. It was in that conflict that “isolationism” became taboo. The war empowered liberals to push their civil rights agenda in their “Double V campaign” against the Jim Crow South at home. It drove Denazification in Germany from which the Germans have never recovered. It rescued the Soviet Union and set the stage for the Cold War between liberals and communists for global domination. It led to the creation of NATO which entrenched the American Empire in Western Europe and fostered liberal imperialism there. National security dominated our politics for generations and everything from our immigration policy to our trade policy has been subordinated to it. The idea that a global liberal empire can foster, say, White identity is preposterous.

How in the world is NATO or the European Union protecting the sovereignty of European nations? Every single one of those nations is being dissolved by the acid of liberalism. Their populations are all being systematically replaced by non-White immigrants who are cultivated by the liberal professional class. Hungary is currently being punished for reelecting Viktor Orbán. In the last two weeks, the EU has attempted to thwart Marine Le Pen’s victory in the French presidential election and has passed a draconian censorship law to crackdown on “hate speech” and “disinformation.” The EU is explicitly an enemy of nationalism, populism, traditional Christian values, the White race and freedom as well. It has eroded the sovereignty of all European nations. It has led to a loss of ethnic identity as it blurred and homogenized their populations by transforming Europe into a sterile, deracinated marketplace on the American model. Insofar as Russia tries to intervene in American or European politics, it has largely been to bolster the forces which are opposed to these developments, which is why Russia is so deeply resented by liberals.

Without getting into all of our Eurasian adventures from North Africa to the Middle East to Central Asia to East Asia to the Western Pacific, I will simply note that the war in Ukraine is nothing more than the replacement for the war in Syria. It is another devastating proxy war between rival empires. It is due to the need of our own liberal imperialists in Washington and the forces that back them to constantly incite these conflicts. The United States never had a strong relationship with the Ukraine before these people decided it would be the next theater of their operations which wrapped up in Afghanistan last summer.

In practice, liberal imperialism has decoupled “the Homeland” from the American Empire, and it has dismantled and destroyed the historic character of the American nation. We haven’t helped ourselves or European nations or Ukraine by supporting this process. Ideologically speaking, the real threat to all of our nations and especially to those who want to change our course comes from within. Pretty much the last thing we need right now is liberals starting World War III with Russia in the name of fighting an ideological crusade for their idea of “liberal democracy” (which doesn’t include us) vs. “autocracy.”