It is worth noting, about a month before the election, that the central issue in this election happens to be sovereignty. All of the issues Trump really cares about—immigration, trade, wars focused on the fortunes of other countries—summed up in his “America First” slogan center on the question, in his words of whether we are going to have a country or not. In other words, will America be a sovereign nation? All of Clinton’s passions, meanwhile, are negative answers to Trump’s question: we will not have a country, because the core of that country is deplorable and needs to be undermined by the global economy, overwhelmed by immigrants, harried by violent minorities, restrained by international law and the international community, and humiliated by “anti-testosterone” sexual politics (I have not heard anyone remark that Clinton’s comments on Trump’s love of beauty pageants in the first debate was essentially a casual demonization of normal male heterosexual desire—how creepy it is to like being around beautiful women! [I can now add a note about the latest video revelation, in which we find further confirmation of Trump’s heterosexuality, and his pleasure in discussing, graphically, with other men, his attempts—in this case, failed—to bed beautiful women. Perhaps Hillary’s health care plan will include free neutering services.]). Trump’s campaign, whatever the outcome of the election, has done us the enormous service of revealing that the vast majority of American elites are inalterably hostile to American sovereignty, and filled with hatred towards anyone who would assert it. The symmetry is striking: Trump is opposed by the entire Republicrat uniparty, precisely what would need to be replaced by an absolutist restoration. Who knows what intriguing measures even the ultimately liberal Trump might be driven to in the struggle to preserve his Presidency?
In that case, Trump’s campaign should provide us with a preliminary template of the rigors, dispositions, and, of course, political decisions, that would be required in restoring sovereignty. Let’s begin with this—the restoration of sovereignty would require heroes, and Trump is a hero. I remember at the beginning of this campaign a lot of people saw his candidacy as some kind of publicity stunt meant, perhaps, to help the ratings of his reality TV show. Nobody says such things anymore because of the obvious fact that he’s far more likely to lose everything as a result of his perhaps quixotic struggle to restore American sovereignty. Does anyone doubt that if Trump loses, he will be ostracized from the business communities he has frequented, boycotted by companies and countries, probed incessantly by Hillary’s IRS, foreclosed upon by banks wishing to remain in the administration’s good graces, and so on? Even if he wins, much of this is likely to happen, along with a rising up of the entire D.C political class and perhaps a bipartisan impeachment. In other words, we have a man risking everything to save his country. When was the last time we could say that about a candidate for high public office in the US?
Most obviously, restoration will involve control over the country’s borders, and rational, accountable decision making regarding who enters and who stays. Not a single decision made about immigration and naturalization in recent decades has been made in a way anyone could actually account for, other than through clichéd gestures toward “diversity” and the supposed economic benefits immigration brings. The post-1965 mass immigration has been one of the most hostile acts by a ruling elite against the people it rules in recent history, and the whole thing will have to be audited. Trump is barely scratching the surface here: if the processes and interests involved in pushing massive legal and illegal immigration on Americans were brought to light it would be necessary to review the entire enterprise, and determine how many citizenships have been obtained fraudulently in recent decades. And, of course, this might embitter relations with countries to whom we might be returning quite a few people (but if we are supposed to want them, shouldn’t those countries be eager to have them back…). The broader point is: restoration would itself be a kind of war against the crimes against the sovereignty of American that led to the summoning of the forces of restoration in the first place.
Restoration implies returning things back to the way they were before, as well as setting things right. The alt-right provides a blueprint for rolling back the victimary—and it must be rolled back all the way for sovereignty to be restored. The alt-right, on one level, is just an aggressive, uncompromising defense of normality—the normality of in-group affiliative preference, of masculinity and sexual difference, of love for country and its traditionally admired accomplishments (monuments of wealth, conquest, association, etc.), of freely observed group differences. The alt-right is what normality would be if pressed, every minute of the day, to defend its right to exist in the face of an obsessively hostile abnormality. Beyond that, just as a king leading a conquering force would have to divvy up the rewards to those who have fought alongside him, the restoration of sovereignty would have to give existing institutions—universities, the media, corporations, and so on—to those who have been marginalized under the liberal order and helped fight back. That means that Trump’s addiction to tit-for-tat responses to all attacks, even the most trivial insults, is both his greatest flaw and the most perfect embodiment of the restorer, who will have to assure all his followers that every blow will be met with a commensurate counter-blow. And that all the victorious blows will be commemorated and institutionalized in the restored state.
America First in relation to the world means the sovereign being a systematic filter between the country and the world. For starters, dual citizenship will have to be eliminated: you’re an American or you’re not. The internal market can be made much freer (no minimum wage, no unions, drastically reduced regulation, no corporate taxation) in exchange for capital repatriation—corporations, too, can be made to choose whether they want to be American or global. Tariffs will slow, but not eliminate international trade; corporations can set up shop within the US by paying for the privilege of accessing the American market, or through bilateral arrangements with peer countries. Since global media corporations like Twitter, Google and Facebook have shown themselves subservient to foreign governments and choose political leftism over fair dealing with their customers at every point, there need be no hesitation in subordinating them directly to centralized political control. Trump’s much derided threat to sue the media for lying about him adumbrates this possibility, and the breathtaking pace of change advanced by the victimocracy allows us to, take a leftist slogan, “imagine the impossible”: just as people can in an instant be expected to accept that they must allow teenage boys in their daughter’s locker room and Syrian refugees in their neighborhood, they will tomorrow accept that, of course, Google must tailor its search parameters, Twitter must undertake to slow the spread of certain tweets, and Facebook must deliver information as requested by the sovereign. The emphasis should be on suppressing lies and broadcasting truth, but questions of public safety and public morality will shape decision making as well. These companies promised so much, and betrayed it all, so few will weep when they are brought to heel.
A restored sovereign will undoubtedly be natalist—it will openly encourage and reward large families, it will promote entertainment presenting such families as the norm, and offer no protection to other “lifestyles.” Sticking to such a policy would probably be enough to neutralize the feminist and sexual diversity agendas. No-fault divorce will be eliminated, and discrimination in favor of married couples (in housing, employment, accommodation, etc.) allowed and encouraged. The implications of a restoration for schooling are obvious enough, but religion seems to me tricky. Absolutism requires transcendental support, but the sovereign can’t simply invent a religion and the existing ones are all completely unsuitable for a restored sovereign order. I think the sovereign would have to immediately make a list of clergy from all religions who are forbidden to preach and minister, because they have been complicit in the crimes of the previous regime. Then some kind of meeting must be convened including the trustworthy and penitent clergy to lay down some ground rules. Input can be encouraged, as the clergy will know best how their beliefs and doctrines can be brought into accordance with the terms of restored sovereignty. There’s also no need to be hostile to all new forms of spirituality—perhaps a renewed sovereignty and social order will release new spiritual energies. All this will be easier as more and more people realize that free speech, freedom of religion and the rule of law have become meaningless concepts, as social media, universities and corporations censor and ban right-wingers, Christianity is increasingly subordinated to various anti-discrimination and sexual deviancy agendas, and courts become shameless enforcers of elite opinion. At some point it will come down to the simple question of who will take care of us?
But all of this means nothing without reactionaries undertaking their own long march through the institutions. Of course, alternative media and social media institutions will need to be built, and schools and (far more difficult) universities and businesses. But all this pales in importance compared to the real institutions of sovereignty: the military and police forces. The tops of these institutions are already highly politicized—Obama has carried out a Stalinesque purge of the top military brass, which now parrots his moronic talking point that climate change is our main national security concern, and we can see how the FBI has been coopted by the Democrats—while the ranks themselves remain right wing. The only way restoration will ever be possible is if a large majority of those charged with defending sovereignty are prepared to do so in defiance of political orders and the orders of their own superiors. Here, we’re obviously beyond anything conceivable to Donald Trump, but addressing directly the following he has inspired, by which, of course, I mean the alt-right. When driving home from work, I switch back and forth between Michael Savage’s and Sean Hannity’s shows, respectively. Hannity is still on the endless true conservative loop, going on about taxes, regulation, smaller government, etc. Savage realizes there is a war against very specific targets—white men, masculinity, patriotism, what blogger Brett Stevens calls the “Amerikaners.” All the small government crap doesn’t matter anymore. “There’s Obama’s army” Savage exclaimed when discussing the Charlotte riots—that’s exactly right. Don’t be surprised if we start to see “necklacing” soon, or some distinctive American equivalent. And don’t be surprised to see an ex-president Obama emoting plaintively on their behalf, even while deploring the lengths this racist society has forced them to go. The only way a resistant force can be built within the armed forces is on the basis of race—the logic is not all that different than that of prison gangs. This is wasteful, because sovereignty can only tacitly acknowledge a preferred racial pattern, it can’t base its legitimacy on it—which means those movements would have to be curtailed, and we can imagine they won’t want to be curtailed. But you won’t recruit cadres ready to restore sovereignty on the basis of lower taxes and less regulation—much less brow-knitting over abortion. You will only be able to do it by drawing on people who are cornered, who understand the war against them in the most pointed way, and can discipline themselves for the long term (and the rapid and aggressive politicization of these institutions currently underway means it will take a great deal of discipline and long-term thinking). Racial thinking can bind people together in an imagined history going back hundreds or even thousands of years, and it will provide ready means of identification and shared experiences—already we can see that the alt-right has an extensive system of symbols and passwords that allow one to signal to others one’s contempt for the pre-approved BS. The truth is that the anti-white dimension of the globalist/leftist juggernaut goes far deeper than any “welfare state,” “regulatory,” or “meritocratic” issues can get at, and requires for its intellectual dismantling a more sophisticated hermeneutics that relies upon in-group tacit agreement. It need not involve enmity towards other groups, even if that’s likely—it’s a question of harvesting high levels of trust. Outsider allies should respect that when it comes to choosing sides. The more invested such high trust groups are in sovereignty, the better, even if that kind of trust cannot in itself guarantee sovereignty. At any rate, any sovereign will want to replicate, to the extent possible, such prior investments in restoration in the restored sovereignty itself. Those who entered early and contributed significantly should only be excluded from the power structure for extremely compelling reasons. A large part of the attraction of a genuine sovereign, as things are falling apart, is the promise that people will be far more likely to get what they deserve—so, the foundational sovereign acts should exemplify that promise by giving those who ensured the restoration their due.
